by Tim C Taylor
Swallowing down the waves of dread, she undid his neck seals and lifted his helmet off and stared into John O’Hanlon’s nightmare face. His eyes were bulging yet unseeing. The muscles stood out on this neck like cables, and his mouth was tearing open his face in a silent scream. There was movement, though. She put her ear to his mouth and, yes, he was breathing. Very faint but it was there.
Bryan had been on stealthed missions in the void of deep space that lasted days sealed tight in her suit with only her own voice for company. But she’d never felt so utterly alone as that moment.
She bumped foreheads with O’Hanlon. “Stay alive, John. I’ll be back for you.”
Her plan was to race down the ramp to make contact with the other Marines. And if they were frozen too, then she’d get out away from the signal jamming and contact Karypsic.
Only two strides across the obscene leather floor, she heard the vibrating buzz of Hardit laughter and spun around.
Three Hardits and a Wolf human stepped into the room from… nowhere. It wasn’t a hidden alcove. Before declaring the room clear, they’d checked interior and exterior dimensions of the room matched expectations.
One of the Hardits had a pistol aimed at her chest, and another a rifle. Would her armor shield her long enough to break their necks? The human wore a golden chain around his neck. He had to be the traitor, Romulus.
“You have given us priceless moments of amusement,” said the Hardit with the pistol, whose elaborate dress suggested it was an officer.
She hesitated, her Marine mind giving the illusion of slowing down time as she sought options. Her GX-cannon over to her left wasn’t assembled. Corporal Joshi’s crew had their cannon ready to fire over by the eastern viewport, but it would cost her several precious seconds to reach it and ready it to fire.
There were SA-71s around, but she’d have to rip them out of their Marine owners’ grip. The plasma pistol at her hip was a better bet, but the fire rate was slow.
And the guns the Hardits were carrying? She didn’t recognize the pistol, but she did know that Hardits didn’t enjoy their gloating until they were sure of overwhelming odds over the lesser species they had bested.
They were confident their weapons would defeat her armor.
She would hit them the hardest and fastest way available to her. With her suit propelling her at maximum thrust, she would barrel into the two armed Hardits and grab, twist, rend, and slam until either her enemies lay dead with their necks broken and skulls crushed… or she did.
Her mind spooled time back up to normal speed.
As she took her first step forward, she gasped. Another figure revealed itself. A Night Hummer in its tank. Her training warned of the aliens’ telekinetic power that could result in a short savage repulsive blast.
She felt inky black fingers on her neck. Probing her. Choking her. Violating the back of her mind and pushing deeper to claim her will.
It stopped, leaving her teetering on the precipice of losing control.
“You humans are so predictable,” said the unarmed Hardit, who walked over and studied her as if she were an art exhibit. Its snout was badly scarred, and its upper eye was blind but nonetheless resonated with evil. “I knew that if you ever came back, you would return here, so I laid a trap with the help of my foreseer friend.”
Quick! Gotta think!
The moment that ugly Hardit tired of her gloating, Bryan knew she would be frozen like the others. If she tried to fly at them, she’d be locked out of her mind. What could she do that might win an edge?
She ignored the Hardits and turned to regard the traitor, Romulus.
His face was distorted in horror. She recognized that look because she was sure it was mirrored in her own face. He was no willing ally of the Hardits; he wanted to strike them down but felt helpless with despair.
“Traitor!” she screamed and ran at him. “Traitor! How could you do this?”
The grip on her mind and neck released just a little. Enough to permit this amusing display.
Bryan grabbed Romulus by the shoulders and kneed him in the groin.
As he grunted in pain and slid down the wall, she punched him in the gut and watched him curl up in agony.
“You should be rewarded,” said the Hardit she assumed was Tawfiq. “When the time comes, make her death quick. See, I am generous even with my human slaves.”
Bryan refused to give Tawfiq the satisfaction of a reaction. She stood at attention and felt the Hummer’s constriction around her neck squeeze, and then everything went black.
— Chapter 48 —
Governor Romulus
Top of Victory Monument.
Romulus groaned.
The Marine had pulled her punches but they still hurt like hell.
He guessed he deserved all that and far more, but it was worth it. And not just for her timely demonstration of the quick thinking and cunning he’d once taken for granted. A reminder of what it had meant to be a Marine.
He clutched at his lower abdomen and edged the knife she had craftily handed him deeper into the waistband of his pants. Standard human-issue Mark 2 Marine combat knife. Not the poison-tipped crescent of the Mark 1, but the six-inch straight blade Mark 2, which could cut through his chain or tear through a Hardit’s guts but was right now a hair’s breadth from nipping open his femoral artery.
For the benefit of his audience, he grimaced, hiding the smile on his face, because the Hummer showed no signs of noticing what was in his mind. The bubbles in its tank were flowing so fast that they were blurring.
Maxing out your super brain, aren’t you? Nothing spare to waste worrying about me. Just you wait, pal. You’ll get yours soon enough.
But there was someone Romulus needed to kill first.
The Janissary guard had locked Romulus’s chain to the wall and was laughing at his prisoner.
Dine-Alegg and Tawfiq had dismissed him from their minds and were at the west viewport, Tawfiq taking her place on her seat while Dine-Alegg checked the equipment that would broadcast her signature. The general glanced over. Not at Romulus but at the guard, who showed no sign of noticing the officer’s scrutiny.
Romulus felt the knife press against his belly and knew his opportunity would soon be here.
He would be ready to seize it.
——
Arun McEwan
Ground Floor. Victory Monument.
“Hey, what’s up with them?” growled the Far Reach sergeant at the dragoon mounts who had all simultaneously angled their antennae out the open double doors.
So far, the task of cutting open Scipio and his Marines from their dead suits, and bringing them to safety inside the monument, had distracted the NCO from her distrust of the giant insectoids.
“Trouble,” Arun replied and rode outside for a clearer sniff.
He could no more understand Hardit pheromone language than the sergeant could that of the Trogs. But he knew a signal had just been given. A powerful one.
The Ultra Janissaries had changed. The stationary ranks stretching out beyond the pool to the giant statue of Tawfiq had their backs to him, but those backs were now straight, and with ears and tails pricked up. If he could look upon their faces, he guessed he would see the light had come on in their eyes.
The hundreds of thousands of enemy soldiers were alert and waiting for instructions.
Arun wheeled Dane around and led his dragoons up the ramp, scattering Far Reach Marines out of their way.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” shouted the sergeant.
“Saving us all,” Arun shouted over his shoulder.
Behind him, he heard a man shout, “Forward to victory!” His cry was taken up by other voices. The sound of bare feet slapping on the ramp pursued the charging Trogs from lower down the ramp.
It seemed Lance Scipio had the same idea.
——
Governor Romulus
Top of Victory Monument.
Dine-Alegg drew her pistol and shot
Tawfiq.
The supreme commander shrugged off the round that shot through her without interaction, like a passing x-ray, but her general seemed to have expected this because she was already flying at her with a knife in her hand and her tail around Tawfiq’s throat.
The Janissary guarding Romulus raised her rifle and weighed her chances and her loyalty.
None of which mattered to Romulus. His moment had come.
He drew the knife passed to him by the Marine who was still nearby, hands frozen halfway to her throat as if trying to break a chokehold. The blade cleaved his chain and then pierced all the way through the guard’s neck and out the other side, wedging itself stuck in the Hardit’s throat.
Romulus released his grip on the knife and grabbed the dying guard’s rifle.
Tawfiq and Dine-Alegg were grappling on the floor beside the stone chair, oblivious to his freedom.
Romulus in turn ignored them for the moment and emptied the magazine at the Hummer’s life-support cylinder.
Supersonic bullets with explosive tips flew out the muzzle at the alien.
He was out of practice, out of an ACE suit, and the rifle lacked the recoil dampener of the SA-71 pattern carbine that was his Marine birthright. The barrel tracked upward until he was blowing chips out the roof, but the first three rounds had been on target.
They still were.
The rounds spun impossibly slowly. They pushed through the air at a glacial pace, slowed but not stopped, nor showing signs of succumbing to gravity.
What the frakk would it take to kill a Night Hummer?
The rival Hardits had noticed him now, but the priority was still the Hummer. If he could kill it, he would release the room full of Marines from their strange stasis and the human numbers would tell. He threw the rifle to the ground and, bracing his foot in the dying guard’s head, he reached over and drew out the knife, releasing a fountain of Hardit blood.
Maybe it would be down to the Mark 2 Marine blade to end the alien monster?
He heard human voices – from the ramp leading up from the base of the monument. Heavy footfalls too, as if warhorses were approaching!
Romulus panicked. He stepped forward into the pocket dimensional alcove.
He heard three carbine shots, followed by an instant of blinding white light and noise, then a pressure wave that clawed at his lungs.
But only for a moment, and then he was in an unreachable place, cut off from the space and time of the pyramid at the top of Tawfiq’s obelisk. His head ringing, he sat down heavily, blood froth around his mouth but confident his heavily enhanced physiology would patch him up to return to the fight to rid the galaxy of Tawfiq.
Knife in hand, he watched events unfold from his impossible hiding place.
——
Arun McEwan
Top of the Victory Monument
While Springer, Escandala, and Hyper charged into the room, Arun hung back to take in the situation.
The flash bang had cleared to reveal the Far Reach Marines as frozen as Kraken and his two comrades had been when Arun found them on the way up. Springer had aimed her shots carefully, but the blunted dart rounds rested lifeless on the soft brown floor beside Tawfiq and Dine-Alegg who grappled each other for a knife.
Force shield. Had to be.
Should have fired at the formless amoeba in the life-support tank. Bullets and shrapnel were already flying at the night Hummer, but it seemed to have selectively slowed time to stave off the ring of projectiles.
“Take out the Hummer,” he commanded his team, but the alien had other ideas.
As Hyper and Leon crossed an invisible line, they were wrenched out of their thorax seats, clutching their necks as if wire had been strung across the room at neck height.
This had to be the Hummer’s work, though, because Springer and Gretel advanced to the center of the room without incident.
The two clone children clutched at livid red wheals on their necks, but their wounds didn’t look fatal, so Arun left them and followed Springer into the room.
She had her teeth out in the end of her carbine and raised the weapon high to strike down against the Hummer cylinder.
But she didn’t.
Her arms wavered under the gun’s considerable weight and she roared with anger but could not bring those assault cutters to gnaw through the Hummer’s tank.
Arun didn’t hesitate. He aimed his lance at the Hummer and… dark fingers of alien malevolence entered his brain. The Hummer sought to control him, to bend his will to its design, but it could not. He felt it project its will with renewed vigor, persuading him that his entire body was seething with the realization of Springer’s absolute betrayal. Springer must die for her filthy crimes. He must kill her. He must. Kill…
“I’d rather die,” he hurled back in defiance. Whether it was the complexity of his movement through time, the organic computer in his head, or the strength of his love for this woman, Arun knew the Hummer could never make him hurt her.
A sense of delicious irony oozed from the alien creature. Arun saw his moment and with a sudden burst of will, he jabbed his lance in the direction of the cylinder, but still, the Hummer’s grip on his brain prevented him from firing.
Then he saw what had amused the Hummer. Springer was slowly traversing her aim. Her scales gleamed with sweat and she was grunting through a jaw clamped shut, but the Hummer’s control was too strong for her. She aimed at Arun’s heart.
“Please!” she screamed.
He heard her rails charge.
“Don’t make me!”
Staring death in his face, an instinct for self-preservation rose up and threw off some of the Hummer’s mental blocks. He used his scent emitter to order the Trogs to intervene. He realized he’d been so engaged with his own mental battle to notice the Trogs were also caught in the Hummer’s psychic web. Their pheromones screamed self-loathing as they disobeyed their Queen of Battle’s commands and stood by to let him die.
Springer was still fighting the alien’s control, gasping in horror. The bullets and shrapnel were still crawling toward the tank, they would not be his salvation. They were too far away.
An incongruent smell of hot oil and brass licked the back of his nose. “I swore an oath,” Arun insisted, acting on intuition supplied by the battle computer in his head, which Greyhart had implied might help him to resist the Hummers. His eyes bulged with the effort to speak aloud under such psychic pressure, but he had to. Speaking was the human way. “I swore to nurture and protect your race,” he groaned. “I swore to give you a homeworld. I have not forgotten. Ceres shall be yours. I will honor that, if you allow me.”
The icy fingers of darkness pushed harder into Arun’s head to snuff out this human arrogance forever.
Arun let it in suddenly, abandoning his mental struggle so abruptly that the Hummer stumbled blindly into the depths of Arun’s mind. And the inside of Arun McEwan’s head was a deeper and more complex place than any human this Hummer had encountered.
His last gasp defense was to lure the alien into his memory of that day as a cadet when Arun had first encountered a Hummer on a mined-out micro-planetoid, and secured allegiance in return for an oath that Arun would provide a homeworld safe from the White Knight Emperor.
It worked.
But not as he’d hoped.
The Hummer hadn’t forgotten Arun’s oath, it just didn’t care. But his other memories of Night Hummers – including the ones on Ceres who had secured his promise that this would be their new home – confused the hell out of it.
The psychic link ran in both directions, Arun realized. For the first time, he was beginning to sense a Hummer’s emotions, because the alien was too shocked to lock him out.
As Arun cautiously probed the psychic link into the alien’s cylinder he came up against such intense mental anguish that he gave up and retreated into his own head. The Hummer was screaming in agony in an attempt to process what it had seen inside Arun’s mind.
“You, McEwa
n, have allies amongst my people. That is impossible. That faction was destroyed.”
“No,” said Springer.
Had she spoken aloud or in her mind? Arun couldn’t tell but she was back. That’s what mattered.
Arun, you aren’t… Barney was back too. I’ve been shouting at you, but you couldn’t hear. What the frakk’s happening?
But Arun hadn’t time to reply. All his mental effort went into lashing Gretel with all the considerable power of his Nest scent to fight off the Hummer’s control, even if he killed her in the attempt.
“You had the available data all along,” Springer taunted the Hummer. “You just interpreted incorrectly. Believe me, I know all about that.”
Screaming with effort, Arun wrenched his body free of the creature’s grip. Just a little. Only enough to twist his head to look at Springer, and see she had done the same thing to look at him.
All they did was gaze upon each other, but the connection that bound them had run so deep for thousands of years that it was palpable. It was too strong for the Hummer to break.
Springer grinned. Give her enough time and Springer would bounce back from the darkest adversity with those dimples on her cheeks and her heart bursting with optimism. That was how she had won her name, and with her on his side, Arun knew he could never lose.
It was like a taut cable snapping.
Gretel jumped so high in the air that her crest cut a score into the roof. Dane cracked his mandibles in anger.
And the shrapnel and bullets awoke from the alien’s spell to accelerate into its tank.
Spider cracks formed, but it wasn’t enough. Still the Hummer was in Arun’s mind.
“At last,” came the translation of a Hardit voice. Dine-Alegg had won her fight with Tawfiq, who sat dazed on the floor, trying to staunch the bleeding from the side of her head. Dine-Alegg ignored her ousted leader and took her place in the stone chair.
“Tawfiq is not yours to kill,” Arun roared at Dine-Alegg and before he realized what he had done, he had shot a lance blast at the Hummer.