by M. D. Cooper
The explosion thundered in the small space, throwing the Sarentons back, though it wasn’t enough to seriously injure any of them.
Jessica snorted a laugh.
A pair of electron beam blasts came in quick succession, each one striking a heavy’s rifle. The blasts burned holes in the weapons’ energy packs, and two massive explosions followed. Then a bolt of lightning arced across the platform and struck one of the highlighted soldiers.
She fired on the fourth heavy weaponer as he moved to new cover. Her round caught him in the head, snapping it back, and she followed up with a second shot that hit under his chin, blowing half his helmet off.
The death of the four heavies in under ten seconds had disoriented the Sarentons, and Tangel took the opportunity to call out, “Lay down your weapons, and no one else has to get hurt.”
There was no audible response, but she saw the platoon sergeant waving his arms angrily, and his troops renewed the attack.
“Not so fast, buddy.”
Jessica’s words came a moment before a lightwand appeared out of thin air and cut off the sergeant’s head. Before his body hit the ground, she disabled her stealth, and a brilliant lavender light bathed the platform.
Jessica glowered at those around her as she lifted her arms in the air, bolts of electricity arcing out from her splayed fingers.
“Surrender, now!” she thundered, her voice more menacing than Tangel had ever heard before.
Unsurprisingly, half the enemies threw down their weapons before the words had finished leaving her lips. The rest weren’t far behind.
The soldiers looked around, their gazes ultimately settling on one of the women who also bore a sergeant’s chevron.
“Umm…me?” she said after a moment. “Sergeant Indi.”
“Get out of your armor, Indi…in fact, all of you, out of your armor,” Sera ordered. “You’re coming with us, Indi. The rest of you are getting back on the train.”
She was surprised that she found it nice to be able to relax while others issued the orders and made sure they were followed.
A woman could get used to this.
Despite that stray thought, Tangel knew that she was incredibly lucky. The vast majority of her people were highly competent, the result of building the New Canaan colony from the very best that Sol had to offer in the forty-second century. And beyond that, the others who led the Alliance—people such as Sera, Krissy, Finaeus, and Rika—each were strong and capable. That they had all come together in this time of need for both humanity and AIs was truly remarkable.
Tangel just hoped everyone in the Alliance would live to see the peace they were fighting for.
A scant three minutes later, the soldiers’ armor was strewn about the platform, and the living were carrying the wounded back aboard the train.
“Have a nice trip,” Tangel muttered as she sent the train back down the track to the far end, a platform seven hundred kilometers distant.
Once the threat that the enemy posed was gone, Sera began to extricate herself from her gel-covered armor, muttering about how some backwater’s grenades shouldn’t be able to smother and ruin ISF stealth tech.
“Gotta love how sometimes low-tech wins,” Tangel said as she pulled off her helmet and triggered her armor to split open.
“Says the woman so modded she’s not even human anymore,” Sera replied with a laugh.
Tangel shook her head as she approached Sergeant Indi, glancing back at the president to say, “Once again, revel in the rarity that is you being the most normal one in the room.”
“Barring our guest here,” Jessica said, nudging their prisoner.
“I meant on the team,” Tangel said as she turned her gaze upon the woman who was trembling slightly, as she was only wearing her armor’s thin base layer. “OK, Indi. I assume there’s a control center somewhere around here. Lay it on me. Where is it?”
“Who—who are you?” the Sarento soldier stammered.
“You’ve heard of the Scipio Alliance?” Tangel asked.
Indi nodded. “They’re the ones making war everywhere.”
Tangel held up a hand and wobbled it side to side. “Ehhhhh, sorta. Orion—they’re who your people are allied with—kicked it off by attacking my system, and this is all fallout from that. Anyway, not to put too fine a point on it, but the Alliance frowns on people smashing planets into other planets.”
“Well,” Sergeant Indi’s expression grew dark, “we’re not big fans of it, either. But several worlds in Sarento space have been destroyed over the last few years by an unknown fleet. A fleet we’ve traced back to Pacifica.”
Sera sighed and pressed the heels of her hands into her eyes. “Dammit. Why can’t things ever be easy.”
“Look,” Tangel said. “I’m more than happy to help sort out the last few generations of slights, imagined and real, but for now, my goal is to save the people of Fiji. That’s going to happen with or without your help.”
“Who are you three? What makes you think you can stop us?” Indi asked, a note of belligerence entering her voice.
“Well, I’m the Alliance’s field marshal, Sera here is the President of the Transcend, and Jessica is…well, she’s just super badass and gets shit done.”
“Sure do! We’ll get this thing locked down,” Jessica said with a laugh.
Tangel took a step toward the Sarenton sergeant. “So. Let’s have it. They must have the command center segregated from the main network, or I’d be able to find it. But since I can feel the engines from here, I think it’s close.”
“No.” Indi’s tone was resolute. “I’m not helping the enemy.”
Jessica sighed. “Shoulda picked one of the grunts.”
“Seems like it,” Tangel said as she regarded Indi. “Well, we don’t have a ton of time. Depending on how steerable this lump of rock is, we may not have more than a few hours to get it to miss Fiji by a wide enough margin.”
“Pesky gravity,” Sera muttered. “Always tugging at shit.”
Indi pursed her lips, but didn’t say another word.
“Fine,” Tangel muttered. “Have it your way.”
She held up her hand, and a tendril of light emerged, drifting lazily through the air until it hovered in front of Indi’s righ
t eye.
“What’s that?” Indi whispered, her voice becoming small and frightened once more.
More tendrils of light emerged from Tangel’s body.
“I’m ascended, haven’t you heard? That means I can plumb the depths of your mind—and not with something crude like using nanotech inserting itself between your neurons.”
Sera snorted and shook her head. “ ‘Crude’.”
Tangel ignored her and continued, taking another step toward the soldier. “No, I can just flip through your mind as easily as you can turn the pages of a book.”
Indi had squeezed her eyes shut, but try as she might to think of anything but the location of the engine control center, that knowledge was still present, lurking in the back of her mind. To not think of a thing, one had to identify that which could not be thought about—and that action was all too apparent to Tangel.
“I have the location,” Tangel said, nodding to the exit on the far end of the platform. “It’s that way, about two kilometers.”
Indi’s eyes widened, and Tangel touched her finger to the woman’s forehead, catching her as she dropped.
“Did you go into her mind after all?” Jessica asked as Tangel laid the sergeant on the platform.
“No,” Tangel shook her head. “She broadcasted her thoughts so loudly, I could barely have blocked them out if I wanted to.”
“So you can just read our minds, now?” Jessica asked, her eyes narrowing slightly.
Tangel shrugged. “A bit. It’s like you all just got the Link and you’re bleeding your thoughts across it all the time. I’m getting better at filtering out the noise when needed, but it’s hard in combat—like dozens of voices yammering in my ears all the time.”
“Let’s move,” Sera said, gesturing to the exit Tangel had indicated. “Any chance you can work up a map?”
“Yeah, sure.” She drew out the route they needed to take and sent it to the combat net. “Shouldn’t take us more than a few minutes to get there.”
Utilizing their base-layer’s—or skin’s—stealth systems, the trio made their way through Fortuna’s crust to the engine control room. Tangel felt her strength slowly beginning to return. She wasn’t sure why it had taken so long after boring the tunnel, especially given the fact that she’d used energy from the surrounding matter, and not herself.
I still have a lot to learn about this other-dimensional body I have, and what it requires to heal, she thought. I feel like a baby must when they don’t understand hunger and just cry out from the pain of it.
Jessica was ranging ahead, while Tangel and Sera trailed behind in companionable silence, which also doubled as low EM output. Even so, it was nice to be out with Sera on a mission where it wasn’t the end of the world if they—
Shoot, I suppose it’s the end of a world if we fail.
Tangel squared her shoulders and focused on regaining her strength. She harbored a suspicion that, from the activity on the enemy’s network and the soldiers that they were continually passing in the passageways, they were going to meet more resistance before long.
As though on cue, Jessica called back.
Tangel groaned, and Jen spoke up.
The AI passed Tangel her analysis, and Tangel had to agree that, while there were best-case scenarios that gave them a few hours, the worst-cases were down to mere minutes.
They chewed one of those up to reach Jessica’s position. Tangel could see that the woman hadn’t been exaggerating on the force arrayed against them—in fact, the number was now closing in on two hundred.
The Sarenton soldiers were formed up in a large foyer that had several passages emptying into it. It was easy to tell from their positions that they were protecting the corridor directly across from where the three women stood.
Tangel sent her an exasperated look over the Link.
Jessica added.
Sera laughed.
Sera and Jessica signaled affirmative, and the three stealthed women walked into the broad foyer, moving toward the rows of enemy soldiers positioned behind portable barriers and grav shields with calm certainty.
At least I sure hope I’m giving off that vibe, Tangel thought as they reached the primary grav shield that spread across the room. She drew in a slow breath and grasped Jessica’s and Sera’s hands.
Drawing on the very energy that produced the grav field, Tangel created a brane around herself and lined it with the gravitons she’d taken.
For a moment, the enemy didn’t realize that anything had happened, but then someone shouted that the shield had weakened, and Tangel took off at a run, pulling Jessica and Sera along with her.
The brane protecting them flared brightly as they passed through the shield, and the Sarentons didn’t hesitate to fire on the glowing ball that was rushing past them.
The shots slammed into Tangel’s protective brane, and the gravitons shielding them were quickly spent, forcing her to draw on the energy around them. She tapped into the SC battery in her rifle, and then the one in her lightwand.
She’d drained both by the time they reached the corridor that led to the command center. It took a moment for Tangel to realize that Sera and Jessica were pulling her now more than the other way around, as she stumbled forward, feeling far wearier than when she’d bored the tunnel.
They burst into the control center, and Tangel barely noticed Jessica and Sera firing on soldiers in the room as she turned and stared back at the corridor and the soldiers rushing toward her, wondering what it was she was supposed to do.
Right! I have to seal it.
With a swipe of her hand, Tangel’s ephemer
al limbs reached out and disassembled the walls, rebuilding them into a solid mass twenty meters deep.
“There, that’ll…” Her voice wavered, as the floor lurched and shifted.
Down was suddenly to her left, then to her right, and then it came up to meet her.
JOB DONE
STELLAR DATE: 09.13.8949 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Tangel’s Lakehouse, Ol’ Sam, ISS I2, orbiting Pyra
REGION: Albany System, Theban Alliance
“So then she gets us in there, seals it, and passes out!” Jessica said, slapping her knee. “It was like a comedy of errors.”
Sera nodded vigorously. “Only surpassed by the looks on the faces of the engineering team when this glowing ball blasts right through their door, and we jump out, shooting all the soldiers in the room before they knew what hit them.”
“Didn’t take a lot of convincing to get those engineers to help us shift Fortuna after that,” Jessica added.
“Glad to have been your ride in,” Tangel grunted, nursing her fifth coffee of the morning while trying to avoid Joe’s level stare. “Also glad that you two were able to hold out long enough for our rescue.”
“Good ol’ Lieutenant Brennen,” Sera said with a smile. “Came charging through those Sarentons like a knife through hot butter.”
“I’m just glad he made it,” Tangel said. “Also glad his half of the ship still had a working QuanComm.”
“You three,” Joe said while shaking his head, a small smile playing at the corners of his mouth. “Good thing we keep you separate most of the time. I can’t imagine what trouble you’d get up to if you were always together.”
Tangel laughed as she raised her coffee cup. “I’ve had that same thought, but never included myself. Either way, we got Pacifica to sign onto the Alliance, and Sarento is reconsidering their allegiance with Orion—so long as we can get to the bottom of that ghost fleet that’s attacking their worlds.”