Free Space

by Scott Bartlett

  It took three hours for them to reach the system’s bottom, where the tunnels terminated in a cavern similar to the one on Oasis, but much bigger. Just as with that Xanthic colony, even her night vision couldn’t penetrate the gloom at this distance. But radar told her that the cave went on for kilometers.

  Avery stepped up beside her as she surveyed the underground vista. “We’re down to two hundred eighty-two marines. From four hundred fifty.” His voice sounded like a guitar string wound too tightly, ready to snap at the slightest pressure.

  I can hardly blame him. Their lifeline to the planet’s surface was long, and fragile.

  And then, there was always the chance that Degenerate Empire would change its mind about leaving the Frontier ships alone. An attack of any size would strand the marines on a world with a scant food chain. If it could even be called that. She wasn’t eager to find out whether it would sustain them in the long run.

  Yes, they had the shuttles, but they weren’t built for long-range voyages across regions. And they’d be incredibly vulnerable flying through pirate-ridden Lacuna.

  “We have to keep moving forward,” she said.

  Avery nodded. There really wasn’t much else to say. They’d come all this way—so far, for a whole lot of nothing. If she had a choice, she’d rather avoid fighting the Xanthic altogether, but making a journey spanning hundreds of light years, only to return to Freedom System empty-handed….

  It would shake her employees’ confidence in her. Not to mention her new allies. Like Sunder, who’d questioned this mission from the beginning.

  The marines ranged across the rocky expanse in formation, with runners in lightly armored suits sprinting ahead to relay intel back to Avery.

  The marine commander cut Rose in on that channel, so she heard it when the report came of what they’d found, a kilometer ahead of the main marine formation.

  “An underground river, Major. Bisecting the cavern.”

  Rose’s ears perked up. She’d never seen one of those before.

  Avery didn’t seem as intrigued by the idea. “Is it deep? Any way of crossing?”

  “Affirmative,” the response came back. “To both questions. An island sits in the center, big enough to fit four platoons or so. A pair of bridges connect it to both, uh, riverbanks.”

  “Anything on the island?”

  For a few seconds, only static came back. Then: “I’m not sure how to describe it, sir. The island is ringed by equipment, almost like a wall, but with parts that stand at different heights. In the center there’s a pillar that comes up to Tiller’s chest. Looks like a terminal of some kind. Everything’s glowing green, but not a pretty shade of green. And I can’t tell where the light’s coming from.”

  “Stay on the island. We’re coming to check it out for ourselves.”

  Rose wanted to sprint ahead, to be the first to the island, so that she’d have as much time as possible to study whatever the Xanthic had left there. Assuming it was the Xanthic. She didn’t know who else would have done it.

  “I’m going to run and catch up with them.”

  Avery shook his head. “Respectfully, ma’am, let’s continue exercising caution. Let me set up a perimeter, with a force on both sides of the island, and as many marines on it as I can manage. After that, you’ll have all the time you need.”

  “Assuming the Xanthic don’t attack.”

  He inclined his head in a jerking motion, almost as an automatic response. “Assuming that. Yes, ma’am.”

  Thankfully, the well-trained marines established their perimeter with admirable speed, and soon they were arranged in ranks on either side, the front rank kneeling so the marines behind them could shoot over their heads. The island was raised slightly higher than the land on either side of the river, so Avery put every sniper he had on it, instructing some marines, mostly Kibishii, to climb up on top of the broad alien equipment to use their tops as sniper hides.

  When Rose saw that, she glanced at Avery wearing a wry smile. “Not too worried about damaging alien equipment, then, Major?”

  His movements became awkward—possibly, he couldn’t see her smile through the gloom, even with night vision turned on. “I’m more worried about keeping my people alive.”

  She didn’t take the time to clarify her joke. Instead, she headed to the central terminal, which the marines had left alone. Clearly, they considered tinkering with the artifact to be her job. The responsibility of screwing anything up was enough to keep them away from it.

  I should have brought some techies with us. But that hadn’t occurred to her, since she’d assumed their main purpose here would be to stymie a Xanthic offensive, not hack into strange alien technology.

  Just as the forward scouts had reported, the terminal glowed a sickly green, as did the equipment that ringed the island. The island itself had to be artificial, given it was perfectly circular.

  The terminal stuck up from the rock at an angle, a sleek cylinder, its end a slanted circle. Below the circle, a series of grooves were cut into the device, and Rose saw at once that they were made for Xanthic tentacles.

  Their version of a datapad? The inputs certainly hadn’t been made with human fingers in mind.

  Nevertheless, she extended her thumbs and forefingers—the closest she could come to imitating the aliens’ writhing appendages. Then she wrapped them around the grooves, applying pressure with the power suit’s gloves.

  The terminal didn’t move a centimeter at her touch, clearly embedded firmly in the rock. But its glow changed to a much more pleasant blue, which she interpreted as a good sign. She shifted her grip, and the hue deepened. An image appeared above the circle—a freestanding hologram. She remembered one of her technicians telling her that such a thing wasn’t possible, which was why most corps used holoscreens and holotanks to display 3D images, which at least eliminated the need for special eyewear of the sort they’d used centuries ago.

  Yet here was a 3D image, glowing pink, free-floating, and perceptible to her naked eye.

  It took her a moment to realize what the terminal was showing her. A representation of this system, with the planet she was inside of glowing a soft yellow.

  But though the system shown was clearly the one she’d flown through to get to Recept, it was also different in several ways. It lacked an asteroid field, and its sun appeared smaller—younger. The model also showed three planets that didn’t exist in the real system.

  She shifted her grip, and the star system shrunk away, the view zooming out to show the entire Dawn Cluster.

  Except, it wasn’t the Cluster she knew. It had at least three times as many stars. And the model didn’t just show stars dotting space like warm pinpricks of life—it also showed the connections between those stars. The ‘roads’ between them were much more numerous than in the Cluster she was familiar with….

  And some of them extended outward. Where they led, she couldn’t tell. The image didn’t show enough.

  With a start, she realized one of the outward-extending routes led from this very system.

  She shifted her grip, and the hologram disappeared. The friendly blue glow turned an angry scarlet, and a strident whine sounded from all around her. The island itself was buzzing like one hundred hives’ worth of angry hornets.

  An anguished scream cut through the cavern, from the direction of the entrance.

  Nearby, Avery’s hand shot to his helmet. Rose used her comm privileges to cut herself in on the channel he was using.

  “—come in. Ryerson, Ackerman, come in!”

  Silence was the only reply.

  “Ryerson! Ackerman!”

  Avery’s eyes met hers over the terminal. When he spoke, his voice was flat. “We just lost contact with the surface.”

  Gunfire punctuated his sentence, from the other side of the island.

  Rose ran to that end, vaulting onto a glowing gray cube to gain a better vantage point over the next tower, where a Kibishii marine crouched, already firing.

&nb
sp; Past him, she saw the black mass of Xanthic that flowed toward the island like a living pestilence.

  Turning, she beheld an identical sight on the island’s other side. A wave of Xanthic, coming from the same direction they had.

  They were surrounded.

  She raised her assault rifle, sighted down its barrel, and fired around the tower at the approaching aliens.

  It took her a few seconds to realize the Kibishii marine above her had stopped shooting. Taking care not to present the encroaching enemies with a target, she crawled onto the tower, then gently rolled the slight man onto his back.

  Where a human face should have been, only a black, shining tumor remained.

  Chapter Thirty

  Aboard the New Jersey

  Ucalegon System, Lacuna Region

  Earth Year 2290

  “Sir, we’ve lost contact with the marines underground.”

  Thatcher gave himself the space of a breath to keep his fear from seeping into his voice. “Give it a few minutes, Guerrero. They’ll reestablish contact.”

  They have to.

  Guerrero’s calm from their last engagement was long gone. Just this morning, she’d spilled coffee all over one of the wardroom tables, then proceeded to clean it up herself rather than have a steward do it. If Thatcher had had her nerves, he’d have skipped the coffee altogether, or at least switched to decaf. But the Ops officer liked the drink strong, and he expected it only amplified her nervousness.

  Right now, she was a bag of nerves sitting at her station—hands trembling as they skimmed across her console, voice shaking. Other than in Kava, Thatcher had never seen her twitchiness affect her performance. But it made the other CIC crew jumpy, and now her anxiety had begun to infect him.

  But she was an exemplary officer. What’s to be done?

  “Still nothing from Major Avery’s main force, Captain.” The tremor in Guerrero’s voice aged it by twenty years.

  “Acknowledged.” He didn’t dare allow himself any more than that handful of choked-out syllables, for fear that he would spread the contagion of worry further through his crew.

  I told Rose to stay on the ship. If something happens to her…

  But surely nothing would. Not with a Kibishii troop ship’s worth of marines surrounding her, along with all the marines Frontier had sent. That they’d lose contact through kilometers of solid earth made perfect sense. It barely bore thinking about.

  Except, he didn’t believe that. Not really.

  His eyes settled on his Ops officer once again. She’d let her fear for her family back on Oasis spread through her psyche, until it affected everything she did. Now her subconscious seemed to connect any negative outcome—even one that happened here, three regions and hundreds of light years away from her husband and two children—to her family’s welfare. Anything that went wrong threatened Frontier, threatened the Dawn Cluster, which she interpreted as a direct threat to her loved ones.

  “Sir, there’s—” Guerrero’s words cut off, and a hand flew to her throat. “We—”

  The Ops officer’s shoulders rose and fell as she struggled to compose herself.

  “Yes, Guerrero?” Though he felt sympathy for the woman, Thatcher was having trouble keeping irritation from his voice.

  “It seems we have problems of our own, sir. Thirty ships just appeared in the same jump zone we entered through. Most of them warships. I’ve already started running some of their profiles. They’re all coming back stolen or lost. They have to be Degenerate Empire ships, sir. And they’re headed straight for us.”

  “Acknowledged.” This time his voice came out steady and neutral. He lifted a hand to his holoscreen, unusually conscious of his own movements as he called up a 3D tactical display that showed only the part of the system occupied by the Frontier and pirate ships. As the enemy ships drew nearer, the display zoomed in, shrinking.

  Looks like Candle was wrong. The pirates do consider us worth dealing with.

  Despite the XO’s analysis, Thatcher hadn’t totally discounted this possibility.

  “Guerrero, instruct the Swan to emerge from behind that moon, under full stealth.” He’d ordered the troop ship to station herself there, keeping the rocky body between her and the jump zone—and out of the line of sight of any ship that entered it.

  The Squall had identical orders.

  “Have the Squall stay directly behind the Swan, so that she remains hidden as well. Both ships are to advance to a position ten thousand kilometers toward the jump zone and a hundred kilometers along the positive Z-axis.”

  “Aye, sir.”

  His tactical display showed both ships creeping out from behind the moon, but only because the Swan’s comm was checking in with the New Jersey’s via laser link. Neither ship would show up for the pirates.

  The idea was simple: hit the pirates with an omnidirectional jamming burst as they passed the two ships. The burst would be too far away to affect the main Frontier force, which would then rush in and pick the pirates apart. Simple, but he expected it would be effective. Especially since the pirates had almost certainly never seen the tactic before.

  He might have tried a Hellfire barrage, here. There was certainly plenty of space. Indeed, his XO had already suggested it as a possibility, in the event the pirates showed up. But Thatcher had vetoed it. Doing so would involve leaving the planet, which would risk the Degenerate Empire ships slipping past them. He wouldn’t expose the marines on Recept to orbital bombardment, or allow the pirates to deploy fighters of their own to attack his planetside troops.

  He happened to glance at Guerrero again, and he froze. The Ops officer had a hand to her throat, her wide eyes fixed on her console’s holoscreen. She began to wheeze, clearly trying to speak. Scarlet flushed her face, and her shoulders rose and fell in abnormal rhythm.

  She was hyperventilating.

  Thatcher found himself leaping to his feet. “XO, man the Ops station.” He knew every officer’s file by rote, which meant he knew that before accepting his position with Frontier, Candle had been an Ops officer for three years with a corp that specialized in merchant escort. “Call Doctor Cruz to come escort the lieutenant to med bay. I want Ortega on Tactical, now.”

  But Candle had already leapt from his chair and was helping Guerrero out of hers, settling her into the XO’s chair until Cruz could arrive.

  As he did, Thatcher chanced to look at his holoscreen, and he saw what had triggered Guerrero’s episode.

  A massive fleet had appeared from nowhere, also in Recept’s upper orbit—a mere twenty thousand kilometers from his own vessels.

  Slowly, he tapped at his console until a visual representation of the new ships appeared.

  They looked nothing like the gargantuan Xanthic ship he remembered from the video of the engagement that claimed his predecessor’s life.

  It took him a moment to recognize these ships. To recall the relevant images from the scant footage the UNC had declassified for public consumption.

  There were fifty-one of them to his twelve, all warships. And they looked just like the ones his grandfather had fought half a century ago.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Planet Recept

  Ucalegon System, Lacuna Region

  Earth Year 2290

  Avery breathed out, bringing all his focus to bear on the centimeter-wide crevice between the carapace section covering his target’s chest and the one protecting its neck.

  The sniper kicked in his grasp. Through the sight, he watched dark ichor spray, and the Xanthic stumbled sideways into the alien next to it, throwing off its aim.

  In a smooth motion, Avery slid the chamber open, ejected the cartridge, and fed in another. Long years of training, with the Fleet and with Frontier, had reduced his reloading time to less than two seconds.

  He scanned for his next target.

  All around him, the crackle and roar of rifles, shotguns, and pistols sounded out—a muted din, thanks to his helmet’s sound dampeners, which had kicked
in shortly after the fighting began.

  A whoomph came from his left, sending a round shadow arcing over one of the glowing towers to land amidst the alien horde on the river bank. Some of them ran from the grenade, but others seemed drawn to it. When it went off, it took two Xanthic with it.

  The aliens gave back to the marines just as savagely. A few fired from depressions in the cavern floor, others from behind rock outcroppings or boulders. Most of them relied on their carapaces to protect them.

  Their natural armor was thick enough to make that a viable option. Damn things are basically walking around in power armor of their own.

  Well, not power armor. The marines still had the upper hand, there.

  But even the state-of-the-art tech worn by both Frontier and Kibishii marines was vulnerable to the high-velocity spikes fired by the launchers carried by around half of the aliens. If one of those punctured a suit, it took a matter of seconds for the person inside to become a giant tumor. A few minutes ago, one had taken a Kibishii marine through the chest, and Avery had waved away those who’d rushed to see to him. There was no amputating a torso, and amputation was the only way anyone had discovered to save a victim of the Xanthic’s fire.

  The aliens who carried no weapons seemed content to rush the marines who were arrayed in ranks on both riverbanks. The aliens laid into them with their scythe-like blades, even tossing marines aside with snake-like tentacles.

  “Fall back onto the bridges,” Avery barked over a company-wide channel. “As many as will fit.”

  The marines began to peel back in an orderly fashion to the metal spans, where the choke points would protect some of them, at least from the aliens’ questing blades and writhing appendages. In hand-to-hand combat, the marines had limited options against the aliens’ hardened hides. Avery had seen a few well-placed blows from power-armored fists crack their carapace, but more often than not their claws’ reach was too far for that.