“We are not Starfarers. The rules binding you do not apply to us.”
“But you aren’t Elders, either.”
The Warpling continued smiling but said nothing.
“You, know, Flayer, I have the feeling that you are telling me the truth, but not all of it. Just enough to convince me to play along.”
“Maybe there are things that an ant or even a toddler wouldn’t understand.”
“And what if I refuse your deal?”
“At best, a few decades of peace before your civilization’s enemies grow bold enough to try again. At worst, your species will suffer an eternity of torment before being obliterated. You will be selected for special attention, of course. It doesn’t matter. We will eventually find willing servants, either among your kind, or other species. We can wait.”
The monster wearing the dead scientist’s face leaned forward. Its eyes became endless dark pits.
“Choose, Lisbeth Zhang. Choose now, or I will choose for you.”
Seventeen
“All enemy fighters have been destroyed, Admiral.”
Sondra Givens nodded wearily. It had been a close-run thing; she had fifteen War Eagles left, and the gunships had disappeared into the maw of a massive warp aperture. Three thousand kilometers long and half as wide, give or take, since its outlines kept shrinking and widening like a throbbing heart. Either the enemy was planning to spring their version of the Wall of Fire on them, or something that needed a doorway that big was going to squeeze through, and she didn’t think there were enough guns in the system to shoot it down.
“The Black Ships still remain,” the Tactical Officer added, rather unnecessarily, since the enemy icons were all shining brightly on the holotank. “We cannot assess how much damage they have suffered.”
“By all account, our weapons suffer a ninety to ninety-nine percent reduction in power against a target suspended in warp space,” she replied. “So what’s your best estimate?”
“No significant reduction in fighting capabilities, and minimal personnel losses,” the officer replied immediately. “Other than the effects those levels of warp exposure must have on their crews, that is.”
“They are already crazy. I doubt they are going to obligingly drop dead.”
She had a decision to make, and knew she would hate herself for making it.
“Send in the Marines.”
“Ma’am?”
Nobody was sure what would happen if you tried to warp-drop troops into a ship that was already in warp space. Just getting a targeting solution that would place the Marines inside the selected vessel would be difficult enough. It would have been utterly impossible before t-wave implants gave a select few Navy crewmen the ability to ‘see’ into warp space. Now it was merely next to impossible. And even with the new drugs and implants, there was no telling if the Marines would be able to operate normally aboard a ghosting ship. The leading theory was that Kerensky’s vessels had created a bubble of normal space inside them, which allowed the crews to operate them. If the theory was wrong, she’d be sending those Marines to stumble blindly among self-created hallucinations, easy prey for warp adepts or Null-Space Sophonts.
“They are going to kill us all before we can inflict enough damage on them,” she said. “They can’t sink us, but all they need is to breach our shields for a few seconds and the Warplings will finish the job. Half of the Imperium Guard is gone. Their ships are fine, but everyone inside is dead or catatonic. We are barely hanging on. And then there is that aperture. Nothing good is coming out of that. We have to take out those bastards quickly, and that’s the only way. Our fighters are on their last legs. The Death Heads are gone.”
Sometimes all you had left was a Hail Mary pass. To win or lose it all.
“Send in the Marines,” she repeated, feeling like she’d passed a death sentence.
* * *
“I need to go on the first wave, sir.”
“And why is that, Fromm?”
“Second Platoon doesn’t have a CO, sir. And we need a senior officer to coordinate. Lieutenant Hansen can do the job, but he can also handle anything that needs doing from this end. I’ll do more good leading the attack than in the rear with the gear, sir.”
Colonel Brighton didn’t look happy on the imp-to-imp display. The battalion commander knew as well as Fromm that his arguments worked just as well for sending Hansen on the drop. The XO could do the job – had done the job – as well as or better than him. It took Brighton a couple of seconds to make his decision. Time was in short supply.
“All right, Captain. If you want to play Second Loot, I won’t stop you. Carry on.”
“Thank you, sir,” Fromm said before realizing the 101st’s CO had cut the transmission. He’d probably added a few years to his time as an O-3, or killed his chances of making O-4 altogether. Not that he cared either way.
He went over his gear. In addition to his standard combat load, he was carrying extra power packs – he had a feeling they would need them – and one tenth of a portable warp catapult, on the off-chance they had the chance to make a return trip. They were all carrying spares; multiple redundancy was a must when there was no telling who was going to make it through. He was going in with a squad from Second Platoon and two sections from Third. Twenty-four men. It brought back not-so-fond memories of a similar forlorn hope in Kirosha.
He’d thought nothing could be as bad as Kirosha. Life had a way of exceeding your every expectation.
The Marines around him were probably not thrilled to have the Old Man looking over their shoulders. The Second Platoon squad had very few familiar names in it. That unit had taken in excess of a hundred percent casualties in the course of the Parthenon and Xanadu operations. None of the members of the squad had been around when Fromm assumed command of Charlie Company, six years and a lifetime ago. The Guns and Assault fireteams from Third had a higher proportion of old-timers. They included a handful of problem children who had accumulated more Non-Judicial Punishments than the rest of the platoon combined, but also as many commendations. One of them, Corporal Edison, had carried Fromm’s half-dead body out of a blasted crater. They might cause trouble in the barracks, but when the chips were down they would do their jobs.
After you spent some time among Marines in full battle-rattle, you learned to read body language that would be invisible to others. The men were tense, and several were having serious jitters: the third member of Edison’s fireteam was downright terrified, moving with a slow care that didn’t quite conceal the man’s shaking hands. Edison said something to him via a private channel; whatever it was seemed to steady the man. Good.
“Just follow the yellow strips,” Fromm said out loud, earning a few chuckles.
Navy ships had arrows painted on most passageways, bright yellow and with big letters explaining where they were and where they were going. The bubblehead running joke was that they were there mostly for the benefit of Marines and other dim bulbs.
“One minute to drop,” the spacer in charge of the launch announced. Fromm stepped onto the standard catapult and tried not to think about what waited for him on the other end. All of higher’s reassurances to the contrary, nobody knew what would happen when the Marines made this drop. They were about to make history one more time, and Fromm for one was getting sick and tired of it.
He’d mentally jotted out a brief email to Heather on his way to the launching bay. Nothing much, just enough to let her know he was doing the job, plus the three words he still wasn’t used to saying out loud. Knowing that she would read it if Third Fleet came home helped him face the possibility he might not be aboard when it did.
“Drop initiated: Transition in ten, nine…”
I don’t have a death wish. I’m just tired of seeing my people die. Everybody comes home this time.
He knew that was a lie even as he thought it, but sometimes you could turn lies into reality, if you put enough effort into it.
“One.”
* * *
Worst. Drop. Ever.
Russell was used to seeing things during transit. Price of having a brain and all that. The kid he’d killed back in the Zoo was Ghost Number One in this hit list, and he’d gotten used to seeing him, slit throat and all.
But having the dead kid walk up to Russell and stab him in the guts, that was new.
Try to stab him, at least. The sudden rush forward triggered the Marine’s reflexes, and he was twisting aside even as the piece of sharpened rebar darted forth like a striking cobra. The point skidded on his torso armor, scratching the surface with a grating sound that set Russell’s teeth on edge. He swung the Dragonbreath’s barrel sideways and clubbed away the dead kid, never stopping to wonder if this was real or just a very bad trip. Dream or not, if something tries to kill you, you kill it the fuck back.
The ghost was coming back for seconds, shit-eating grin on his face and a bloody smile under his chin. Russell leveled his weapon and cut loose with a blast of fire. The thought that he might be pouring plasma on the backs of the other Marines on the platform didn’t even cross his mind until after he’d fired a two-second burst.
The roar of the flames was drowned out by an inhuman screech that drove spikes of pain right through Russell’s eardrums and into his brain. The dead kid was consumed by the fire. It briefly turned into something else, something made of shadows and nightmares. Whatever it was, it burned up and was gone.
“Fuck,” Russell said, wonder in his voice. He’d never gotten to kill a warp hallucination before. Maybe now he’d never see that damn kid again.
Emergence.
They were in a storage compartment one deck above the ship’s bridge and about a hundred meters away from it. Their arrival had messed up the compartment pretty good, since they’d been using an old-style catapult rather than the nicer ones that didn’t blow up the LZ. They were short one grunt from Second plat. Russell wondered what Private Cordero had seen in his final moments, and shuddered.
Grampa was wounded. He fell to his knees just as Russell noticed his buddy’s icon had turned yellow.
“What the fuck?”
“Shot me,” he said. There was a tiny bullet hole on the top chest plate. Russell opened the diagnostic window: looked like a shallow wound, already closing up, courtesy of their medical nanites.
“Who shot you?” Russell asked as he helpfully sprayed sealant on the hole.
“Some dude I killed way back when.”
“Sucks when that happens, don’t it?”
“What the fuck?” Gonzo asked again. He was gripping the handle of his K-Bar and looked about ready to start slashing away. At least he was fine. Would suck to be back on the duty roster only to get killed in transit.
“Looks like the warp ghosts are pretty frisky around here,” Russell said. “But we made it. Most of us.”
Three other Marines had light wounds. Sergeant Grant had a broken arm, two cracked ribs and a mild concussion. The Skipper had come out of warp with a nasty second-degree burn on his abdomen. Hell of a drop. Not to mention they were supposed to be still in warp space. Things looked normal enough, though.
“Let’s roll, people,” Sergeant Grant said, cradling his damaged arm over his slung Iwo until the nano-meds fixed it. The skipper let the NCO do the talking. He must be on his imp trying to get in touch with the rest of the unit. They’d dropped about eighty Marines from Charlie Company, and a lot more besides. This boarding action involved three whole battalions. Still a tall order, since they’d dropped on the damn flagship of the fleet, a dreadnought with at least five thousand spacers and two hundred Marines aboard.
They began advancing towards their objective. It didn’t take long to encounter resistance.
The point team ran into a storm of 4mm plasma-tipped rounds. Their heavy portable shield held under the barrage, though, and their counterfire tore through the enemy Marines. The deserters were still using old gear; compared to the new stuff they’d built for them at Xanadu, the enemy might as well be a bunch of primmie aliens. Maybe this wasn’t going to suck as badly as he’d thought.
“Edison, you’re up.”
His fireteam moved towards the front: the heavy force field was still glowing after some asshole on the other side had emptied an Alsie at it: the spots where the 15mm rounds had hit it were still bright with burning plasma.
They want plasma, they get plasma, he thought as he and Gonzo took aim over the heads of the shield team.
“Cleared hot!”
The two Marines poked the barrels of their weapons beyond the force field and filled the corridor and the compartments beyond with hyper-heated gas. Even though seeing through the plasma cloud was impossible, Russell could tell when a Marine’s force field and armor failed. A loud pop and a brief flash of red amidst the white, followed by a crunchier pop and a short howl. The latter sound didn’t come from a human mouth, but rather from a brief burst of steam as the luckless bastard was charbroiled and all the water in his body escaped through the ruptured seams of his armor. He counted seventeen pop-flash-pop-howls, plus a few pop-flashes that marked the passing of an unarmored bubblehead.
Nasty way to go, but they shouldn’t have betrayed their oath.
“Clear,” the point team called out. Nothing alive remained on this segment of the deck. Those bastards might have been Corps once, but they weren’t anymore, and they were fucking with the real thing now.
The Marines moved on.
* * *
“You need to destroy them,” the Prophet said.
“Tell me something I don’t know,” Kerensky replied. “And I will not remind you again: I am in command here.”
The Warpling puppet didn’t reply, either verbally or mentally, but the mockery in his expression was answer enough. Kerensky considered emptying his beamer into that grinning face and barely resisted the temptation to put an end to it. The realization that his own bridge crew might turn against him if he tried to kill their spiritual leader had a lot to do with his restraint.
They were all armed; armories had been hurriedly opened and weapons dispensed the moment he’d issued the order to repel boarders, but most spacers had been caught by the invaders with no weapons at hand. Kerensky had to admit that the warp drop had taken him by surprise; while he’d acknowledged the possibility of facing Warp Marines at some point, he hadn’t thought drops were possible on a ship still inside null-space. Even if they’d been better prepared, the fact remained that there were only two Marine companies and three hundred master-at-arms ratings aboard the Odin, and they were lightly armed and equipped. The assault force had arrived in multi-battalion strength. There were an additional six thousand spacers aboard the superdreadnought, and they would fight to the end. Kerensky just didn’t know if fanaticism would be enough.
“We have enemy forces en route to the bridge, sir. Two reinforced platoons, converging from six emergence points.”
“What do we have to stop them?”
“Thirty master-at-arms and a Marine squad. They are making a stand at Compartment 1-20-C.”
Kerensky belatedly realized he should have appointed an acting captain for the Odin. He’d figured his telepathic abilities would allow him to fight the flagship and conduct fleet operations, especially given the paltry size of his formation. He’d figured wrong. There were too many things happening at once. The Black Ships were winning the gunnery battle, since all they had to do was weaken the enemy’s shields so the Psychovores could do the rest. And a Great One was about to enter the fray, which would settle the matter regardless of who won here. Those boarding parties would make sure the Odin’s crew would not live to see the end of the fight, unless something could be done to stop them.
“They must be destroyed,” the Prophet repeated. “And I can give you the means to do so.”
“What are you waiting for? Spit it out!” Kerensky snapped back.
“We tried to stop them in transit,” Dhukai said, leaving no question as which ‘we’ he was referring to. “But the fact
that the interior of the ship is part of your reality hampers us. We need an anchor to operate here. The men about to fight the invaders can provide it.”
“What will happen to them?”
“Unfortunately, under the circumstances most of them will not survive the melding. It would take too long to do otherwise. A necessary sacrifice.”
The honesty was almost refreshing.
“Do it.”
Kerensky didn’t even pretend to hesitate. Victory was too close. No matter what, if he tore apart the heart of the Imperium, he would have succeeded in his primary mission. To that end, he was ready to make any and all sacrifices. He had gone too far, done too much. Quitting so close to the end was unthinkable.
“If you tell them the truth, some may balk and refuse to forge the link.”
“I’ll give the orders, Dhukai. You do your part.”
His instructions to the defenders didn’t mention the consequences of letting Warplings into their minds. He allowed them to believe the process would be similar to what the now-dead fighter pilots had undergone – which was the truth – and that it would be reversible in most cases – a lie. It wasn’t easy to lie over a mental communique, but he managed the feat quite handily. They all agreed, and he couldn’t help feeling proud of their loyalty even as he betrayed them.
His shadow self was nearby. Kerensky could hear it tittering inside his head.
* * *
Time had come to a complete stop.
Deborah Genovisi’s Corpse-Ship was suspended in a frozen sea of many colors. The normal flows and ebbs of warp space had ceased, and the reason for it lay in the impossibly huge entity ahead of them. It was defined by emptiness; it lacked something basic, something it craved. That lack created a deep hunger. The monster was an embodied vacuum that only megadeaths could fill. A Great One in all its glory, a thing of enormous power whose essence had been tainted at some distant point in its past. Not even her enhanced senses could actually perceive it; she mostly saw a living void with hints of waving appendages and rending teeth. Even those were metaphors her mind made up to make sense of something beyond comprehension.
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