Gus felt his Foo grow stronger and share its pleasure with him. It was an almost sexual rush. Power was like a drug, and he was riding high on it. They all were.
Mind-Killers exposed anybody within range of the low-power graviton emission to micro-warp events. Against beings who couldn’t stand exposure to warp space – over ninety percent of most aliens – that meant death or insanity. With Foos hovering just on the other side of those warp pinholes, it meant death for even most FTL-capable creatures. Even better, those victims’ souls went directly to the ravenous Warplings, who grew stronger with every killing.
At some point, the process would take a life of its own and reach the psychic version of critical mass. An army of Foos would enter the world and cleanse the system of all sophonts. A part of Gus was worried about that. The monsters might turn on their human allies once they didn’t need their help. Another part of him didn’t care. He and Bogey were now so close together that he didn’t think he could die anymore. If the Foos destroyed his body, he’d live as part of the thing that once scared him the most. Gus would become the Bogeyman. And that was fine with him.
He frowned when he realized more tangos were surviving than expected. He’d been tasked with wiping out a city near a Planetary Defense Base, killing two birds with a stone. Over ninety percent of the ETs groundside should be goners by now, but thousands of them were still alive and kicking, hiding behind some sort of force field umbrella. Shields had never worked against Mind-Killers before. They’d have to do something about that. Blasting them open would probably do the trick, and he didn’t mind treating the aliens to some standard 20-inch cannon blasts. He didn’t mind that at all.
Somewhere a few hundred miles away, Lieutenant Martin ‘SOL’ Soledad screamed in terror and died.
His wingman’s mental death-cry hit Gus like a hammer blow to the head. Agony and shock stunned him, and that almost got him killed when some ship he’d never seen before – something like a skeleton wrapped around a capsule – came gunning for him. Came at him from inside warp space. He saw a beam of energy coming at him, which should be impossible except he was in a universe where that sort of thing happened all the time. Reflexes saved his ass; he willed himself to be elsewhere, and his Black Eagle dodged the energy beam. He’d done two impossible things in a row, but the skeleton-ship was coming back for another pass, and he wasn’t sure his luck would hold out.
His Foos went after the weird fighter. They tried to dogpile it, forced it to turn its attention to them. To Gus’ amazement, its energy blast hurt the Warplings. Killed some of them even, which he hadn’t thought was possible. Didn’t matter. He had to get out of there.
He popped back to the Enola Gay, the refurbished freighter the Black Fleet had turned into a carrier, along with the survivors of his squadron. Only four out of six had come back.
“The fuck was that?”
“Human traitors on some sort of alien fighter,” Captain ‘Papa’ Schneider explained; he’d gotten the word from Fleet. “They can engage us in transit or while ghosting. And they’ve trained regular fighters to do the same. It doesn’t matter, though: we need to deploy those Mind-Killers or we won’t get reinforcements. All the Foos we brought along with us are gone, and our ships are getting shot at by every swinging dick within three light seconds of us.”
The deck was vibrating slightly, underscoring the squadron leader’s words. When a megaton-sized carrier started to shudder despite its inertial dampeners and the fact it was ghosting, that meant it was getting hammered pretty hard. The Black Fleet had been counting on the Warplings’ support, but they hadn’t killed enough tangos to feed them.
“We’re sending all our birds on the next run,” Papa went on. “Half of them – that includes our squadron, by the way – are going after the enemy fighters, with heavy Foo support. Our buddies don’t like those assholes any more than we do. The other half will continue the ground-attack mission. They won’t be able to ghost while they do it, either. They’ll get blindsided if they do.”
Nobody was happy to hear that. Not only had they not trained for combat inside warp, they’d be going after American fighter jocks. The part of Gus that still cared about stuff was pretty sore about turning on Grinner back in New Texas. And this time he’d be doing the killing himself. He figured he’d hear their screams of agony when he did it. The idea bothered him, but not as much as it would have a few months ago. Nowhere near as much as it should. He noticed that, but only about as much as he noticed his eyes turning black when he got angry, or the way he got off on killing people. Just something you got used to after a while.
“The Foos are going to act as our sensor and guidance systems. Think of them as spotters. Only thing, though, we’re gonna have to let them in. All the way.”
Gus shrugged. “Way ahead of you guys,” he said. “Me and Bogey have been together for a while now. Told ya it was better that way.”
Half the squadron nodded. They’d made similar arrangements, and they all had a Foo at their backs. Or on their backs, depending on who you asked.
“Shit,” Lieutenant Mike ‘Mooch’ Kowalski said. “No way, Papa. They get in, they ain’t gonna leave, man.”
Mooch had been in the squadron since the beginning, but he’d always been a bit more squeamish than the rest, except maybe for SOL, and Soledad was gone.
“I’ve been assured they won’t overstay their welcome. And if we don’t we’re dead in there.”
“I didn’t want to cross this line, man,” Gus told him. “But we’ve crossed every other line, haven’t we? Point of no return is somewhere way behind us.”
“Point of no return. Roger wilco,” Mooch replied. He sounded like someone volunteering for a suicide mission. “Guess it’s too late for second thoughts.”
He didn’t know how right he was, Gus thought. The way he figured it, Foos already had their hooks on everyone, Mooch and the other second-guessers included. They’d all been exposed to null-space for too long, made too many deals with the damn things. All that was left was seeing things through to the end. To the very bitter end.
They’d stayed in their respective cockpits while the carrier crews did their jobs. The warp coordinates were set: they were going back to Primus-Two, but they were going to spend the entire time inside warp space to deal with the enemy. All the birds were certified ready to fly; time to see if the Foos could save the day.
Transition.
Gus’ personal Foo took over completely. It took a while, and it was worse than he expected.
“Hi, Gus,” it said. It sounded just like the monster under the bed of his nightmares, but it didn’t scare him anymore.
“Let’s get this over with,” he told it, more angry than afraid, but not by much.
“Yes.”
The Warpling crawled into his brain all the way. Before, Bogey had been more like a roommate he could talk to. Now, it got inside everything. It somehow looked at Gus’ entire life. It was more than seeing, he suddenly realized. The Foo actually traveled back in time and showed up to all the special moments in his life. Gus’ memories changed, and now a dark presence hovered nearby, ruining birthday parties and one-night stands, the joy he felt at graduation or the first time he was promoted. Even worse, he ‘remembered’ both versions of his life, one without the Foo, and one with it, and the second one was a walking nightmare, a violation of everything he was or had been. And then the Foo went one step further and completed the link, and the human bits that had been aware enough to feel violated died or became so numb he didn’t care anymore.
Gus could see warp space now: more clearly than ever before. He could see an army of Foos forming up on both sides of his fighter. Some of them were bigger than the materialized Warplings that had gone into battle with the Black Ships. Those were Great Ones, vast and unknowable, and they wanted to get out. His old self would have lost his mind right then and there, but the hybrid thing he’d become just smiled and nodded. Soon the doors would open wide enough, and the feast would
begin.
But first he had a job to do.
One didn’t move inside warp. It was more like switching frequencies until you got the one you wanted. His Black Eagle shook a bit as it ‘climbed.’ Gus saw new shapes in a multicolor stream, growing closer. There were standard US fighters mixed in with the skeleton ships. And piloting one of those skull-things was someone he recognized.
“Grinner,” he said. His voice was oddly distorted, and after a moment he realized he sounded just like the monster under his bed. He’d once cared for the former flight commander. She’d saved his life a bunch of times, and he’d deeply regretted betraying her. But that had been before he and Bogey had become one.
His smile widened, became utterly feral and hungry.
* * *
First came an energy blast that caught one of the War Eagles by surprise and shredded it and the pilot inside. Then a single word that echoed through Deborah Genovisi’s mind.
“Grinner.”
It was Bingo Chandler, but it wasn’t the same Navy pilot she had known. He’d joined with a Warpling, becoming something else altogether. And the new Bingo wanted nothing more than to make her die.
The Black Eagle fired again. Deborah’s gunship should be proof against the fighter’s 20-inch cannon, but the twisting beam that struck it cut through its shields and scored a deep gouge on its bone-hull. She was nearly thrown out of her chair by the sudden impact.
No choice; she twisted around and shot back, or at least her still-human perceptions translated what she did in those terms. The Corpse-Ship fired something much more powerful than a cannon, but several Warplings leaped forward and interposed themselves, absorbing the blast meant for the fighter. They died for their efforts, but her target was unharmed. Gus Chandler grinned maniacally as he shot her again. She could see his expression as clearly as if they were sitting across from each other. That time Deborah managed to dodge away, and never mind that none of those things were possible in the physical realm, where dodging light-speed beams was not an option. Even their enhanced senses didn’t truly see warp space, but something edited for their minds to comprehend.
“Bingo!” she called out to him. “You have to end this!”
“You’re supposed to be dead, Grinner.”
They blasted away at each other, striking with both their minds and their guns system. Around them, dozens of similar dogfights were taking place; Third Fleet’s fighters were doing a little better than Kerensky’s renegades, One on one, they would have wiped out the mutineers, but a horde of Warplings were fighting on the Black Eagles’ side.
She couldn’t afford to waste time on a single enemy, not when several had crossed over to murder any Imperium citizens who hadn’t managed to escape into makeshift shelters. Trial and error had discovered force field frequencies that could block tachyon waves, but only a small percentage of ground-based generators had been converted, mostly around military facilities. Most of Primus-Two’s billions were exposed, easy prey for Mind-Killer weapons.
“Gus,” she pleaded.
“It’s too late, Deborah,” he said; he’d never used her name before. “Point of no return, baby. Way behind me.”
He was right. She gritted her teeth, fashioned her mind into a weapon, and fired it along with her Corpse-Ship’s eye beams. Three white spears of light tore through half a dozen lesser Warplings and shattered the fighter. Gus had time to feel surprise, and then the Bogeyman that had attached itself to his soul turned on him. She would have liked to think the end was quick, but she’d be lying to herself. It wasn’t quick. It might never be over.
There was no time for mourning or regrets. Deborah wiped out the rest of the squadron – her old squadron – just as thousands of sacrificial victims flooded warp space. Thousands became millions of souls. They all arrived screaming and were absorbed by the massive shapes waiting for them. The lesser entities grew stronger as well. They had to put a stop to it before they grew too strong to contain.
Emergence.
She arrived on the heels of a Black Eagle, moving at Mach 3 and spreading death in a hundred kilometers radius around it. The pilot was so besotted with slaughter that he didn’t notice her gunship. A single shot scattered the fighter into a spreading cloud of flaming debris.
“Pour it on!” Colonel Zhang shouted. “We have to stop them before they kill enough – ”
Reality wavered. The sudden shift, affecting all her senses, almost caused Deborah to fly her gunship into the ground. Her vision swam as impossible colors flashed all around her, colors she could hear, even as her fingers tasted the inside of her flight gloves and alien sounds echoed inside her nostrils.
Synesthesia? Or something worse?
A Great One was about to break loose.
* * *
“Fuck me,” Lisbeth Zhang growled as she fought to hold on to reality, any reality. Everything had gone crazy around her.
“That would be highly inappropriate, Christopher Robin,” Atu replied. “I am your teacher, after all. And, to borrow a turn of phrase, I don’t swing that way.”
“Funny guy,” she told her psychic friend. Her five senses were getting back to normal, which was great, because her favorite Warmetal tunes turned out to taste like shit. Of course, regaining her composure meant she had to deal with the humungous blip showing up much too close to Third Fleet for comfort.
The mother of all warp apertures had appeared over the defenders of Primus-Two. It was about to disgorge one of the Starless. A big one. And she had a bad feeling she knew exactly which particular NSS was about to poke its head out. If she was right, everybody on Primus, and probably the known galaxy, was about to have a real bad day.
“Death Heads, prepare for transit on my mark,” she called out. Enough of her half-formed plan leaked through to them to let them know just how crazy dangerous the next stunt was going to be. To their credit, all four of them followed her. They jumped into warp at the same time.
The universe shifted again. Or maybe it was just her.
Lisbeth was sitting in an office. The standard-issue furnishings told her it was a military office. It reminded her of a certain Marine major’s office, the jarhead who’d recruited her into the Corps after her fall from grace in the Navy. She glanced at the ‘I-Love-Me’ collection of holo-portraits filling one wall. Yep, it was the exact same office.
Sitting across the desk was someone else altogether, however.
“Colonel Zhang,” Doctor Munson said, beaming at her. The obese scholar with the wild shock of white hair shouldn’t be there, or anywhere for that matter, having been consumed by the Warpling who wiped out the Marauders. The Warpling who was about to make a triumphant appearance in Primus.
“The Flayer,” she said, feeling like a two-bit character in a cheap action flick.
“That would be me,” the monster said, sounding just as pompous as the man whose face it was wearing. “Our last meeting was rudely cut short, to no fault of my own.”
“Well, you were about to kill everyone in the room. Figured I’d show you the door.”
“And now I’ve found a bigger door, and replenished myself. I won’t be banished so easily this time.”
“So what do you want? I’m kinda busy, trying to collapse the warp aperture and all.”
“I am aware. Which is why I want to offer you a deal, Colonel. One that will benefit you and your entire species.”
“I’m listening.”
No choice but to listen, although her invisible friends were nearby, and they were doing something else. She focused all her willpower into hiding them from the Flayer. There was no telling if it was even possible, of course. The Great One was well beyond anything else she’d faced. Sending him back into the Starless Path had been a miracle in itself, and only possible because the monster had been weakened after a few tens of thousands of years trapped in a Kraxan prison.
“Humanity is an interesting species,” the Warpling said, still using the ‘I’m smarter than you’ Munson tone that had
always grated on Lisbeth. “You have the potential to reach Transcendence faster than most sophonts, which also puts you at high risk for Oblivion. You fear that dealing with my kind endangers you, but I wish to convince you that, to the contrary, we hold the keys to the advancement of your race. We can set you above all other Starfarers.”
“And in return, what do you want?”
“Stand down. Let me manifest in all my power into your realm. Allow me to speak directly to your Admiral Givens. I believe I can make a convincing case to her, but she is currently isolated behind those modified shields of yours. With your help, I can get through to her. After that, all Third Fleet needs to do is stand aside and let me do my work.”
“Kill billions of people.”
“Aliens. What do you care about them?”
“And then what?”
“Our hold on the Starless Path will be strengthened. We will need native civilizations to serve as mediators for us on this side of the Divide. Once we are entrenched, no vessel will be able to enter our side without our leave. Which in turn means it is you who will decide who can travel between the stars. You will be our satraps on this realm, to rule it as you wish. In a few centuries, you will dominate the galaxy, and will have the resources and knowledge to move on to the next stage of your destiny.”
“To become one of the Elder Races, you mean.”
He grinned. “There are many steps. To reach Starfarer status is but one of them. An early one, as a matter of fact; there are more to follow. To an ant, the difference between a toddler and an adult is meaningless, but once you become a toddler, you will realize how far you still have to go.”
“Won’t the Elders disapprove of your actions? You did destroy an entire ecosystem and messed up two others.”
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