Eternal Enemy

by James David Victor

He probably survived, then, Cread thought, as the image seemed to be of the heretic about to ram a rifle butt into the camera. The idea that the troublesome ex-policeman was still alive irked and pleased Cread in equal measure. At least he’ll be mine soon, he thought.

  The other image was from the forward team, the ones who had faced the most resistance as they had first blown the main access tunnel to the north of the rebel hideout, and then surged forward to fire into the masses of panicking people and hastily-assembled defenders.

  The fighting was still fierce there, Cread knew from his sensor readings, with the New Edeners deciding to fight every step of the way. Fools, Cread thought. They should have tried to surrender. Not that he would have showed them any mercy anyway, but he might have spared some of them for a labor camp or two.

  But the still from Keller’s forward team showed the blown-up image of two men, one in profile and the other already yanking at his arm. The other one wore a sort of Marine power suit, Cread squinted.

  “One of that Outcast lot,” Cread muttered in exasperation. Why hadn’t the Sol Marine forces dealt with them yet!?

  The person being dragged away was also wearing one of the Outcast suits but had his helmet-visor off. He was apparently resisting as he half-turned to face the forward team.

  It was J-14, Cread saw in a flash. Right there, before the front lines. It was the human psychic that the Eternal Empress so desperately wanted to control...and that the Eternal Empress was so desperately scared of.

  Cread grinned, primed his long pistol, and stepped out from the tunnel. “This way,” he commanded the waiting squad behind him.

  12

  The Fall of New Eden

  “Jake! Jake, we gotta move!” Patch called out to the teenager behind him. The press of New Edeners was everywhere, streaming past to get away from the advancing line of Throne Marines who were systematically tearing apart the resistance.

  There was a loud cry as one of the factory workers, a man in a similarly sleeveless jerkin as the one they had met in the canteen square, flung himself from a higher level of the stacked container platforms, swinging a great metal industrial wrench almost as large as he was.

  Crack! Patch saw the wrench smash against the blue shield of one of the Marines, while in the same instant, a lance of purple meson fire shot the worker out of the sky. The impact of both was deadly, and the New Edener crumpled to the floor along with his target.

  But these small victories always seemed to come at such a price. For every group of Hazan’s guards who concentrated their fire in seemingly an unending stream of single shots to take down a blue shield and then the Throne Marine behind it, the guards were sought out by sharp and hot blasts of Marine rifles.

  Thap! And then there were the micro-missiles, small black shapes that exploded into the air from some of the Marines’ suits, shooting toward the vaulted ceilings before spearing down on individual trajectories, falling among New Eden guards and citizens alike.

  They were being overrun, and they were hopelessly outmatched.

  But it also appeared that Jake had no concern for the deadly fire hitting the walls and bodies around them. The youth had turned now, flinging off Patch’s grabbing gauntlet and pushing his way back through the lines, back toward the Throne Marines.

  “Jake, no!” the Void engineer made another desperate grab for the youth’s shoulder, only to feel the barest scrape of the youth’s Outcast carapace armor, and then Patch was buffeted aside by one of the fleeing New Edeners.

  “No!” There was a scrabble of flesh and bodies for a moment as Patch sought to fight his way toward the front line, only to see Jake marching over the fallen bodies and the slagged, burst-apart masonry and container walls all around him… The front line of the battle wasn’t being held at all, but there was a slight logjam as the New Edeners had managed to topple one of the containers over, and the Throne Marines’ own devastating firepower had created ruin before them…

  …into which the PK was advancing.

  Thap!

  Patch ducked—too late, of course, to dodge a laser shot, but his body moved instinctively all the same—when the corrugated wall near his head burst with slivers of purple and red.

  Oh no oh no oh no… he was thinking. The firing was too intense. There was no way that Jake would be able to survive such a barrage.

  And then the smoke cleared for a second, and for a moment of perfect stop-time, Patch saw the glittering, bright lights of the Throne Marine suit lights, the blasts of meson fire spearing outwards like a meteor shower—

  And there was Jake, standing in the center of the ruined avenue, his body hunched forward as he screamed ferally straight at the advancing line of Marines.

  Who reacted, of course, as Throne Marines do. With excessive force.

  Thap! Thap! Thap! The line exploded with the angry flare of crimson beams, shooting toward the PK, who threw one hand across himself as Patch felt a sick headache suddenly throb in his head.

  “Augh!” Patch groaned, driven to his feet by the wave of PK power, blinking the tears from his eyes to see that Jake was not dead. He stood, with a light show of burning meson balls around him, fizzing in mid-air.

  Jake howled, inhumanly once again, and the meson bolts shot back toward their origins, exploding fiercely in a flare of blue shields.

  Some of those meson bolts managed to get through, Patch saw. Some of the Throne Marines already had depleted shields thanks to the valiant efforts of the New Eden defenders, and they fell to their own weapon fire. But the psychic energies that Jake wielded did not care about the heavy, military-graded shielding of the Throne Marines. With snarl of power, Jake threw a hand forward, and Patch saw several of the glittering spheres of blue fly back with their encased Throne Marines inside like insects stuck in amber of their own making.

  “Stop!” Jake roared, and Patch once again felt the wave of sickness, headache, and nerve pain erupt from the youth. Even his voice sounded different.

  “Oh, hells…” Patch groaned. He did not have the calm, meditative authority of Dalia, and neither did he have the history with the PK that Anders did. The boss is going to be so angry about this, he found himself thinking as another sweep of Jake’s hand sent another two Marines flying back from the front line.

  To be replaced by more, always more…

  “Boss!”

  Anders’s suit communicator chattered in alarm with Patch’s voice. The ex-policeman ducked to one side as he saw one of the advancing Throne Marines in the east of the rebel sanctuary turn in his direction, and there was a flare of meson fire across his shoulder.

  Anders grunted and swung his rifle up, but he was too slow. There was another heavy purple blast from across the street to his position as Dalia sent the Marine flying backward. They were fighting a rear-guard action against what Anders thought could be an entire fire squad of Throne Marines—between twelve and eighteen of them—and the only advantage that Anders and Dalia had was that the stronghold of New Eden here was tight and packed with narrow avenues branching this way and that.

  We can move fast. Take potshots and retreat, Anders knew. They didn’t have to worry about trying to hold any position, whereas the only thing that stopped the Marines from overwhelming them was that they paused and bunched together every time they were fired on, never knowing if they were facing a concentrated defense or just random attacks from two assailants.

  But for every Marine they stopped, there were always more to take their place, and Anders and Dalia were fast being pushed deeper and deeper into the center of New Eden.

  The Edeners were massing at the southern edge, Anders could hear their cries and see their running bodies. Arya and the others had found another way through, and Anders could only hope that he and Dalia were buying some time for them.

  Thap! Anders rolled across one of the container avenues, shooting another lance of meson fire back toward the Marines, as Dalia copied his shot with another of her own.

  “Patch, report!” Anders
said, old habits making him treat the others like a battlegroup as he bounced to his feet and started running once again, but this time down the avenues that led toward Patch’s signal.

  Which is right at the northern edge of New Eden! Anders saw with horror.

  “Boss, it’s Jake. It’s bad! I can’t get him to stop!” Patch said as Anders, and Dalia emerging out of an avenue beside him, burst into the central lane that ran through the heart of the colony—

  —and into a wall of crippling nausea and panic.

  Anders skidded and cried out, stumbling to a crouch as the impact of the PK force hit him like a bow-wave. When he managed to look up, he instantly saw the effect that Jake was having. The northern edge of the colony appeared to be rent and ruined, with containers thrown and jumbled around each other. There were flashes of both purple meson fire and the bright sparks of fraying electricity cables, as well as the near-constant flashes of blue shielding fields as the person in the heart of the chaos—the person around which the buildings appeared to enfold—continued his terrible rage.

  “Leave. Us. ALONE!” Anders heard Jake roar. The figure thrust his hands once again for one of the containers to suddenly flip and spin, straight through the air past him.

  “Maybe…” Anders breathed in a sort of stunned awe at the PK’s powers. Maybe he could even win… he thought as he saw more meson blasts flaring toward him, for them to explode in the air before they even got near, or sent winging back to the places they had been fired from.

  “He’s only one man,” Dalia returned immediately, already moving past Anders and keeping close to the wall, intent in every movement of her lithe body. She was already meters ahead of him when he heard her second, quizzical whisper over the communicator.

  “No one wins when the anger is uncontrolled,” she said as there was a sudden explosion of flame to one side of Jake.

  “Jake!” Anders called out as the entire northern end of New Eden washed in orange and red for a moment.

  Where is he? the commander wondered as his sensors swept once again, finding the youth, thrown to one side of the avenue and inside one of the burnt-open containers.

  Dalia had been right. Jake, for all of his power, was only one man. He didn’t have the attention to focus on a couple dozen Throne Marines coming for him, and maybe a dozen more converging on either side.

  CERACK! The container that had been sheltering him suddenly burst open, sending its corrugated plates flinging in all directions as Jake punched through his containment.

  “Watch out!” Anders had to dive to one side to avoid being hit by a gleaming-sharp splinter of metal, and Dalia rolled underneath it with a perfect, cat-like grace.

  And there was Jake, rising in the air as the meson blasts burst around him and flames lapped at the protective concave he was projecting in front.

  “Anders!” Dalia hissed, and he saw what she was referring to. A trio of Throne Marines had crept, perhaps from the eastern or the western attack groups, behind Jake and to the main avenue.

  Anders growled, landing on one knee as he fired a salvo of three shots, hitting one on the shield and forcing another to jump out of the way.

  Dalia had slightly better luck, spinning on her heel to fire her rifle twice, taking out one and forcing back the one that Anders had previously hit.

  But the third Marine did not pause in their mission, not hesitating in the incoming fire on their position or for the distress of their comrades. They were taking aim at Jake’s back…

  Anders flicked his rifle toward that Marine…

  Thap! But the Marine fired first, just as Anders pulled the trigger. It wasn’t the purple blast of meson fire that Anders feared, however, but a glittering cloud of small silver shapes. Darts!?

  The Throne Marine hit the side of the wall and slumped after Anders’s shot, but Jake didn’t have time to see what was coming for him as the darts shot into the youth’s exposed back, some clattering off his power suit, and others…

  Suddenly, the nausea in Anders’s belly stopped, and Jake fell to the ground from a height of almost two meters. Anders could swear that he heard a dull thump, like the snap of a broken bone.

  “Jake!” he shouted, already running down the avenue, Dalia right beside him.

  “Down!” Anders was suddenly knocked to one side as Dalia jumped into him.

  What!? For a moment, his shoulder hurt as he hit one of the container walls, but the mass of meson bolts peppering the main avenue floor showed him what Dalia had seen a split-second before he had.

  The Throne Marines were capitalizing on their sudden advantage, surging forward in a line, almost to the site of Jake’s downed body.

  “No!” Anders fired his rifle, and Dalia beside him did the same, but more meson shots were forcing them back to the edge of one of the containers, and then—

  —small black shapes, spinning through the air over Jake’s body and beyond, hit the central avenue floor once, twice, and—

  “Grenade!” Anders threw his body over Dalia’s, just as there was a vast wave of force that kicked him in the back.

  Warning! Suit Impact!

  >>Backplate Armor Plating -55%

  No-no-no... Anders whipped around, seeing more covering fire burn the floor of the central drag behind them and spark off the small avenue-alley that they had thrown themselves into.

  “Boss! Boss, come on!” he heard, both over his suit communicator and the Outcast suit sensors. It was Patch, emerging at the end of the alleyway and reaching out a hand. “They’re everywhere! We’re overrun!” he said in panic, but Anders wasn’t hearing him, already turning back to the burning main alley.

  “Don’t be a fool!” Dalia’s strong hands seized his shoulder and forced him to the floor, restraining and struggling as Anders fought to get back out there to try and save Jake.

  “He’s gone. You’ll only add yourself to the losses today!” the Ilythian hissed, tugging him back.

  “Maybe I’d rather!” Anders started to snap back in anger, but he stopped himself. He knew that he wouldn’t rather die out there. He knew that there were still people that relied on him, even in some small way.

  “Secure! Contain the area!” They heard the loud, projected shout from some sort of broadcast system that the Throne Marines were using, and Anders frowned, looking back at the burning central drag.

  Why aren’t they advancing? Anders blinked for a moment, his confusion allowing the Ilythian to pull him back with a frustrated grunt of her own.

  “Wait,” Anders gasped.

  “I told you once, policeman,” Dalia said. “If I have to knock you out and drag you out of here, don’t doubt that I wouldn’t!”

  Anders well believed that the Ilythian was entirely capable of doing so, and would do so, but he shook his head and held up a hand. “That’s not what Throne Marines do. Full-spectrum dominance. They don’t leave a job half-done,” he said, speaking from experience.

  “Moriarty,” Anders breathed. “Throne positions. Jake’s position.” Dalia lightened her hold just a tiny bit but looked very prepared to rifle-butt him at the slightest sign of stupidity.

  “Acknowledged, sir,” Moriarty spoke. “Throne Marines holding a defensive line across the main drag of New Eden, accepting the eastern and western task forces into their formation. No further action taken.”

  “And Jake?” Anders asked anxiously.

  “Throne Marines surrounding Jake’s position, sir. From his bio-signs, he was hit by tranquilizer darts, enough to keep him unconscious for approximately eighteen hours, sir,” Moriarty said.

  They mean to capture him, Anders knew, just as Moriarty confirmed it.

  “Throne Marines had picking up Jake and placing him into a mobile isolation tank, sir,” the simulated intelligence said. “They are starting to move back toward the northern entrance.”

  “They’re taking him!” Anders growled, and this time when he got up, he found no resistance from the Ilythian. “They’re stealing my friend!” Anders said an
grily, moving lithely—not back down the avenue, but further out into New Eden to turn the corner to take a different way to the scene of the kidnap.

  Here, the container walls that formed this avenue were slanted and folded against each other, which gave Anders, Dalia, and Patch some cover as they crept forward.

  There ahead of them was ruined mess of the northern end of New Eden, and it looked like a bomb had gone off.

  Which, in a way, one did, Anders thought. There was also the site where a full battle with three times as many defenders might have taken place. There were slagged walls and tumbled containers on all sides, and great scorch marks and craters where meson blasts had hit.

  And there was the double-line of Throne Marines in battlefield formation, not close together but spaced out, with the forward Marines crouching by any available bit of wreckage as cover, and the second line standing, rifles up to their eyes as they scanned the avenue ahead.

  “We’re still running the throne security hack,” Anders hissed to the others as Patch flinched at the seemingly impenetrable line. “Their sensors won’t be able to find us.”

  He turned back, almost lying down to get a better view under the skirts of broken corrugated metals.

  Behind the double lines were the Throne Marines keeping pace beside a floating tube of white metal and blue field. An iso-tube. Anders gritted his teeth in dismay. He had spent time himself in one. Although they could be used for medical purposes, they were far more likely to be used for isolation-containment of truly dangerous heretics.

  Jake spent a lot of his early life in one, Anders thought with guilt and horror at how he was being treated. Jake, or J-14, had been snatched from his parents as a toddler when he had first started to display PK abilities, and he had spent the rest of his formative years being grown in a tube just a little bigger than that, where his genetic profile was sampled and extracted to help build the empress’s psychic clone program.

  They were guiding the iso-tube containing Jake back toward the main entrance where the Throne Marines had entered. They were turning Jake back into J-14.