by Tim C Taylor
“Open it,” ordered White Snout.
“No – not you,” the other one said when Blake moved to release the catches on the double doors at the front of the cabinet. “Kneel! Hands on head.”
As Blake got to his knees, the Hardit pointed its rifle at Priya. “You open it.”
Awkward. From what she knew about the Hardits, they were probably indicating her using scent language. Which meant with her head bowed, she wasn’t supposed to be able to see the rifle gesture. She forced herself to count to four, ignoring the rapidly escalating Hardit snarls, before she dared to raise her head and ask innocently, “Who? Me?”
Without waiting for an answer, she hurried to the front of the box and opened it. It was something the Resistance had found years earlier, although it seemed never to have been used. It was what could only be described as a torture box. Essentially a hollow wooden cabinet on wheels designed to hold a single occupant, though the Resistance had made a few additions to this example.
The Resistance leader was inside. He stood immobilized by the manacles at his wrists, ankles and neck. The metal band across his mouth ensured his silence.
He gave them the credibility they needed to impress the guards, because this wasn’t just a random human, but one of the few the Hardits recognized in scent and sight. This was Tawfiq’s plaything, her pet, paraded in a torture box for her amusement. Who could doubt now that these humans were acting on the supreme commander’s orders?
“You are a traitor,” White Snout suddenly blurted at the other Hardit, making its point by bring its gun to bear on its comrade.
“Deceiver,” stuttered the other, grabbing the threatening gun by its tail and pulling the weapon from White Snout’s grip.
Priya willed the Hardits to kill each other, but there was a limit to even the power of the allied Night Hummer who was secreted in the extension they’d added to the back of the torture box. An alien complete with mobile life-support tank weighed a ton, and didn’t her back know it?
The Janissaries swayed, growling at each other but doing so absentmindedly. They seemed confused.
“Go,” Desiree told Priya calmly.
Act like you’re doing your job, Priya told herself as she reached beneath the base of the torture box to take out the bag clamped there and hang it over one shoulder.
She kept her head bowed as she walked past the squabbling Hardits.
They ceased growling, and she sensed them shift their attention to her, felt it as clearly as fangs piercing her back. “Just doing my job, superior ones,” she said as she passed.
Resisting the urge to shift her eyesight to the feed from the torture camera, she walked to the edge of the shuttle’s open hatch with the external appearance of calm, but fear bubbling inside.
The hull was, in fact, what this mission was all about. They needed it to pass through the corrosive orbital barrier and hand itself to the Legion warships beyond. But the mechanism by which the ship passed through the barrier was unknown, which was the whole purpose of presenting the shuttle to the Legion to figure out. Would whatever the shuttle used to defeat the barrier also defeat Priya’s ability to climb its hull?
The nose was roughly finished with replaceable ablative tiles, but elsewhere the hull had an unbroken glossy sheen. She pressed a finger against the hull, to one side of the open loading hatch, and saw her finger smear away a dull patch. As soon as she withdrew her finger it quickly self-repaired back to the glossy sheen.
There was only one way to find out if she could climb this. Just freaking do it!
She activated the charged pads on her palms, reached out as far above the hatch as she could stretch, and then stepped off the walkway.
Gravity clutched her dangling legs, and pulled too at her mind, beckoning her to look down.
She refused. Her hands were holding firm. She didn’t need to look down. She could do this!
When the charged pads in her ankles also engaged, she could feel the extra grip easily coping with her weight and she started to climb. Before she gave herself time to think, she’d clambered up the shuttle and onto the natural perch of the wing stub.
The bizarre scene with the kneeling policeman and the tortured governor was still playing out below, but it wouldn’t persist much longer because she heard angry voices inside the shuttle.
Better skedaddle.
Her target was the shuttle’s comm array, a bulge like an ugly white wart above her head. With one hand on the fuselage, she raised herself on tiptoes and threw the disk-shaped device in her hand onto the bulge.
The disc thudded against the hull, thought a moment, and then a green light lit up. The shuttle was now jammed. Anyone inside could call for help as much as they liked; no one would hear.
She took a deep breath and snapped her other hand away from the hull. She wobbled for a moment, but the ankle grips held. Trying not to think about the impossibility of balancing on a shiny spacecraft hands-free, she reached into her bag and started to draw out the components of the gun. She had the block and stock assembled, and an ammo clip of microdarts inserted, when four Hardits burst out of the loading hatch and set the retractable walkway clanging with their heavy footfalls.
Priya glanced up – fearful that the Hardits had positioned a sniper on the upper walkway into the passenger section – but saw nothing. They weren’t stupid, these Janissaries. They knew their warfare, but their utter contempt for humans made them overconfident.
And that, she told herself as she calmly screwed in the barrel, will prove a fatal weakness if I have anything to do with it.
The new Hardits clubbed Desiree and Blake to the deck while barking at the two guards driven crazy by the Hummer.
Using the special microdart, Priya shot all six Hardits in the neck or base of the head. One of them scrubbed unconsciously at the back of its neck, but otherwise none of the victims noticed. None looked up. Arrogant morons. Her gun registered six hits and a good signal link to each
“The other slave,” she heard from below when one of the new Hardits switched on its translator pendant. “Two slaves pushed the torture box. Now there is one.”
“Hey, you dumb pelt,” Priya shouted from above. “Who the hell are you calling a slave? I’m no one’s slave. I’m a human being, and you’re a piece of worthless vermin.”
Cutting it a bit fine, she admitted to herself, activating the darts an instant before the fastest reacting Hardit riddled her with bullets.
The darts obediently released their payload – fleets of nanoscale warbots that sliced through any cell structure they could find, fanning out from the point of entry at explosive speed.
The Hardits were already dead before their heads exploded, arterial pressure fountaining blood out of neck holes, and in one case exploding out of all three of its ugly eyes, leaving the yellow orbs dangling by their optic nerves over the pool of Hardit blood.
“Next time,” said Romulus as he freed himself from the unfastened restraints, “save your speech for later.”
“Keep it professional everybody,” Desiree added as she checked the Hardits for any sign of life.
“You’ve done well,” said Romulus, “but that was just Phase One. Now comes the tricky part.”
— Chapter 62 —
With the course successfully plotted into the flight computer, Romulus hung in the co-pilot’s seat and stared at the empty pilot’s station.
Over the years of his servitude, he’d made it his business to learn all he could about Hardit flight systems. They used three flight sticks, but he’d practiced operating them in the secret places of his mind. He could take that seat beside him and fly this shuttle the hell away from this terrible life.
Gunfire barked from just outside the silo.
“We knew this was likely to be a one-way mission,” he said, as much to himself as the Hummer who was doing that damned hovering below him near the flight deck’s aft bulkhead.
The alien didn’t deny the truth.
Heavier weapons opene
d up, but Romulus didn’t know which side was firing them.
“If I pilot the shuttle into the Legion’s arms, I’ll be a hero. I’ll see Janna. And I wouldn’t need a floating blob shadowing me to shield my thoughts from Tawfiq. If I stay, we’ll probably be caught, and I’ll die at Tawfiq’s hand. Even if I don’t, I’ll be tortured and killed by the Earth people for being a collaborator, my mutilated body strung up for public display. I…” He fell into the memories of executions he’d ordered and massacres he’d turned a blind eye to – all those innocent people in the wrong place or time that he’d had killed. Like that damned astronomer.
Probably, Romulus. But you said you wished to atone.
“I know.”
What do you desire most? Choose quickly! Your life or your honor?
“Honor? I stopped caring about that a long time ago.” He laughed bitterly as he tapped commands into the slate, priming the autopilot. “It’s duty that binds me.” He looked down at the pulsating creature in its tank. “My duty remains here on the surface, while I might still be of use. Are you sure you cannot foresee my future?”
“I am sure. Romulus. At first it was other Hummers in the vicinity blocking my abilities. Many here are aligned with Tawfiq and we cancel each other out, although they believe all of us from other factions were utterly destroyed. But now… I feel isolated, as if my people have moved on and left me behind. I do not understand, Romulus. I am… scared.”
Romulus frowned, and then grinned at the ridiculous situation he found himself in. He was on a captured shuttle in the middle of an insanely dangerous mission that might just mean the difference between liberty and extermination for all humankinds, and he wanted to hug a lonely cylinder of alien orange goo.
It was a little like old times – back in the Legion…
Dangerous memories sobered him and flung him back to the task at hand. “Come on, let’s get this done.”
——
They pushed through a blast door in the base of the silo seconds before the place shook with the explosion that was the shuttle lifting off. The noise was deafening but at least it drowned out the sound of gunfire as the brave Resistance fighters led the enemy off in a different direction.
These were desperate times.
“Will it reach the Legion?” Romulus shouted over the diminishing engine roar when the shaking had lessened enough to push on toward safety.
“Yes, it will.”
Romulus stopped. “You’re just saying that to make me feel better.”
That is correct. I cannot say accurately whether this will succeed.
“You Hummers are crazy. You know, all these years I’ve always thought of you as ‘the Hummer’. Have I always been escorted by the same individual?”
Of course, not. I am the third of my species tasked by Tawfiq to shadow you and foresee thoughts of treachery in your mind before you think them. But I am the first who is not of Tawfiq’s faction. There are not many of my people here who have declared for the Legion. That there are any at all should be… impossible. The matter was supposed to have been settled… one way or the other.
Romulus laughed. This was the funniest thing he’d heard since Tawfiq had imprisoned his soul. “You mean you’re being played? You’re caught up in a Night Hummer conspiracy outside of your control?”
It seems likely.
“Priceless. And Tawfiq’s group… they’re caught up in it too?”
Undoubtedly. It’s the only explanation for how I’ve remained undetected by them. They think my existence is impossible.
Already, they were halfway to his White House quarters. They might actually survive this mission. He felt a chill when he realized how readily he’d discarded Desiree, Blake, and Priya from his mind. Survival for them was even less likely. By now, they had probably been shot dead, or their suicide nano packets had activated rather than letting their hosts be captured alive.
Romulus found he couldn’t think of the three who’d transported him to the shuttle. His mind refused to settle there. Instead, he asked, “How long have you been my Hummer?”
Five years.
“Then it’s about time I named you. I shall call you Quintus.”
You will not. I already have a name.
“I… didn’t know you had names. Tell me yours.”
The Hummer was silent for a long while. Only on the threshold of the Governor’s chambers did the alien reveal the answer.
Shepherdess.
— Chapter 63 —
The briefing room screen was highly configurable, designed to show multiple views to occupants of the room, and indeed different information depending on the angle you viewed it from.
Today the screen showed a single image, an unsteady tracking shot of an ugly collection of junk that was blasting toward them from its launch site in a devastated city in Europe.
“This is a bad idea, my friend. We will be seen to fail in the most public arena possible.”
“I acknowledge your reservations,” Indiya told Kreippil. To emphasize the point, she corkscrewed in the Littorane gesture of gratitude through the warm, oxygenated water of the briefing compartment.
He backed her without reservation in public, which is why she regularly met with him privately in compartments shielded from prying ears and eyes on Holy Retribution. Not even Arbentyne-Daex, Indiya’s Kurlei aide and de facto psychological counselor, joined them here.
Unity had always been important to her second-in-command, doubly so after Xin had split the fleet, but in private he gave her his honest counsel with all barrels.
“We have a cloaked and still unidentified fleet mere hours from Earth,” said the Littorane, “and signal intelligence reports major New Order fleets sailing our way from just outside the system. Those threats are where our naval forces should concentrate their attention, not on your human friend’s suicidal gesture.”
“Aelingir is with Arun too.”
Kreippil suddenly flicked his tail side to side, sending Indiya tumbling away with the force of his irritation. “Aelingir is caught in McEwan’s spell. She wants to be human, which is the most excruciatingly embarrassing sight to behold. And what about you, Admiral Indiya?”
“Me? Are you worried that I aspire to be human?”
“Never. You transcend your species. But you are not immune to Arun’s charisma. When – if – he dies in the coming minutes, will you remain fit to command?”
She swam away angrily, but however humiliating the question, it was right for her most trusted subordinate to ask it.
Arun had been tired for a long time. He wanted an exit, a release from his burdens. Even if he survived his escape attempt, the years when he stood shoulder to shoulder with Indiya would soon be coming to an end. Kreippil was right; she needed Arun, but how much?
She swam alongside Kreippil and blinked an apology. “I can’t be sure,” she told him. “Watch over me, my friend.”
“Always.”
Indiya took a calming intake of the warm water through her gills, and then closed the discussion by activating the feeds coming from the task force in near-Earth orbit.
The forces deployed to cover Arun’s escape were mostly expendable drones that lacked expensive quantum-entangled comm links that would give Indiya real-time telemetry from her flagship in Mars orbit. She had no choice but to float helplessly and watch Arun’s adventure as it was relayed to her by the task force command ship, the Gliesan fast cruiser, Dart.
Task force commander, Commodore X’hi X’hi, opened her attack against the barely populated continent of Australia. With apparently weak New Order defenses, Australia had been a strong candidate for the choice of initial Legion landing zone that had eventually gone to North Africa. Centuries ago, in an earlier alien occupation of the Earth, gamma beam weapons fire from orbit had scoured the continent of all life, even down to the bacterial level. The White Knights had soon arrived to offer humanity its protection, though at a heavy price.
The native humans had only recently s
tarted restoring the Australian ecology before they were chased away by the Hardit occupiers. If Indiya possessed the resources, opening up a second front in Australia would make so much sense that the New Order commanders could not ignore the task force’s attack.
Or so they all hoped.
They’d made no progress on cracking the secret of Earth’s corrosion barrier, so Indiya had ordered a stopgap be mass produced and rushed into place in time to cover Arun’s escape.
Much like the spaceship that had been assembled in the courtyard of the Tower of London, X’hi X’hi’s drone fleet had been kitted out with missiles wrapped in layers of armor sandwiched with force shields. They weren’t immune to the corrosion of the barrier, but they were all hoping these defenses would slow the corrosion enough to reach those targets.
Legion drone strikes were landing, destroying the upper tier of New Order defense platforms.
A few drones carried through to lower levels of the enemy orbital defense network, but not many. And for the largest platforms just above the upper atmosphere, even the most heavily armored missiles fired by X’hi X’hi’s forces dissolved away before reaching their targets.
The New Order commander redeployed orbital defenses to defend Australia, sending atmospheric and void fighters that way too, but not enough. Not nearly enough!
Arun would still have to penetrate fighter and platform defenses, as well as the corrosion zone.
Indiya detected another New Order craft launch from Victory City in America. She felt a small pang of relief when this new entrant didn’t seem to be on an intercept course, but it made little difference. X’hi X’hi’s mission to draw away Hardit defenses from Arun had failed.
X’hi X’hi must have reached the same conclusion. All the Gliesan commodore could do now was strike without delay for maximum confusion. Abandoning the drones over Australia, the Dart with TU escorts and a cloud of fresh drones launched their attack over northern Europe.