by Isaac Hooke
“I suppose.” She looked out at the dark sea. “Sometimes I wonder why fate chose us to live these lives. It’s such a long way from the shores of Bordeaux where I was born, to here. France doesn’t even exist anymore. The man I once shared my life with is long dead. I still haven’t gotten over the irony of how my husband paid to freeze us both, and the military only thawed me out. Maybe it’s better this way, though. I would have never met you, otherwise.”
She reached out, and held his hand.
Eric gazed into her eyes. “Fate chose us randomly. But I’m glad things worked out the way they did.”
“Randomly,” she said, slipping her hand from his. “That spoils the romance of it all. Do you really believe that all of this was random?”
“Yes, I do,” Eric said. “Entropy in a closed system can only increase.”
“Don’t start quoting the second law of thermodynamics on me,” Bambi said. “I’ve got all the physics textbooks in my head, too.”
Eric smiled. “My point is, that although I was chosen randomly, I’m going to show the universe it made one helluva pick. We’re all going to.”
That made her smile. “This is why I love you.”
“We’re closing within weapons range,” Dee announced, ruining the moment.
Eric reduced his time sense back to normal. “All right, Bolt Eaters. Get ready. It’s almost time to fight.”
6
Jain watched as the allied fleet approached the vessels sent to intercept them.
Only twenty of the enemy ships traveled toward the fleet. The remainder stayed behind to protect the staging planet. Jain remained close to this latter group, having achieved orbit only a few hours ago—he had decelerated via his inertialess drives on the far side of the planet, out of view of most of the Link ships. There were a few vessels orbiting the nearby moon that could have noticed the weak radiation signatures produced by his drives and those of the other Mimics, but Jain and the stealth fleet had been close enough to the planet that those emissions could be blamed on the interaction of charged particles from the sun with atoms in the upper atmosphere. Thus, no vessels investigated.
Too bad for them.
The Paladins, Banthar, Tyrnari, and Void Warriors flew past the twenty aggressors without slowing down. The Barrage Buckyballs fired their multi-directional plasma beams, tearing gashes into different ships. The Vaernastian Barbells fired their nets. The Battlestars launched fighters, and the Teleporters were no doubt unleashing teleportation bombs. But the allied fleet continued past.
Jain had to smile.
Did the Link really think that would stop us?
The remaining defenders lined up in a row before the different frameworks. There was a main framework, bigger than all the rest, in the center of them. More a space station than anything else. It was shielded, according to the specs Jain had on it, and responsible for maintaining the 24/7 rifts the Link used for realtime communication to this system: the small energy beams that sustained those rifts could all be traced back to the central space station. It also contained a weapon that would end the battle thirty minutes after activation, at least according to the specs the Mimics had on the station.
Though the shielding system was essentially the same as that of the world killers, with so many ships defending it, there was no way the Mimics would be able to concentrate their lightning fire on the force field. They had run the simulations a thousand times before arriving, but in not one of them were they able to weaken the shield enough for a teleportation-equipped vessel to enter before all of the Nurturer vessels were destroyed. Being cloaked didn’t help, considering that firing the lightning weapon revealed their locations. So instead the fleet had a different strategy in mind.
The Vaernastians would be jamming rift creation right about now, trapping the fleet here. The allies were committed.
The long range Laser Pinwheels among the Vaernastians began to open fire. Jain released a quick burst from his inertialess drives so that he drifted toward one of those ships. Using the drives would have momentarily released a burst of weak radiation, but none of the other vessels reacted to his change in movement—they were apparently too occupied to pay attention to a random emission from the planet.
The Teleporters began to pull ahead, no doubt intending to teleport closer to the incoming fleet. Jain decided it was time to attack.
He unleashed several blobs at the closest Pinwheel. It detected them at the last moment, and tried to change course, but it was too late, and the blobs crashed into the different sections, breaking the ship apart.
Jain issued a quick burst of thrust on the port side so that he sped away from his previous position. The other Link ships would have been paying attention to the burst of radiation produced by his movement this time, and sure enough, several nearby vessels turned toward him. A Barbell launched energy nets at his previous location, while a Tree unleashed its energy whips. A Cube launched a grappling hook. All three weapons missed of course, since he had drifted well away from that location.
More blobs were unleashed from other nearby cloaked Mimics. As well as lightning attacks. The nearby Barbell broke apart, while a Tree was disabled. A Claw launched a series of rectangular rifts in a wide dispersion pattern, and one of them managed to strike a drifting Nurturer. Jain knew, because the Nurturer’s Pyramid materialized, with a big chunk taken out of the starboard side where the rift had passed over the Pyramid, teleporting part of the vessel to another system. Those rifts dissipated when they were eleven thousand meters from the Claw.
Jain temporarily activated his drives to unleash another directional change, and more enemy fire homed in on him. They targeted the spherical region immediately around where he had made the trajectory change, and he was lucky not to get hit by the barrage of energy whips, rifts, nets, and energy beams. Fighters from the Battlestars now roamed out there, and they swarmed when blobs launched from a hidden Nurturer nearby.
Jain unleashed a lightning attack as he passed a Battlestar, but didn’t fire blobs or skirmishers, because he knew those would betray his direction. Meanwhile, lightning could be traced to a source in space, but wouldn’t reveal his trajectory.
Energy whips from nearby Trees struck his previous location, almost hitting him. Those whips also reached in front and behind him. He kept his virtual finger on the inertialess drive activation button, ready to move out of the way of those whips, but they all missed. Good, because moving would only reveal his location to the other vessels.
He glanced at his tactical display, and saw that the Vaernastian Barbells had teamed up with the Revlon Claws, and launched walls of energy nets and rifts whenever a weapons launch or movement change was detected nearby. That made it nearly impossible for cloaked ships to escape—they’d be hit by a net, or have portions of their vessels ripped away by an expanding rift, and then the others would rail on their new position. It was a similar strategy Jain had used to detect the hidden ships when the Nurturers had turned on him.
By then, thankfully, the Paladins had arrived with the Banthar and Tyrnari fleets so that the enemy had more to worry about—most of those Barbells and Claws turned away to attack the incoming Mind Refurbs.
Unfortunately, Jain’s luck ran out. He activated his drives to get closer to a Teleporter, but that vessel had obviously detected the radiation emission, and gambled that he was approaching it. It materialized a string of teleport bombs in his path, and since he was drifting, rather than zig-zagging, he hit several of them.
He felt the pain inside as some of those bombs materialized within his decks, and also on his skin as he smashed into them.
“Stealth countermeasures are offline,” Xander said.
“Yeah, I kinda got that,” Jain said. He disabled his cloaking device and reactivated his engines to swerve away from the Teleporter ship—there was no point in maintaining the energy drain of the cloaking device if the enemies would be able to track him anyway. He fired blobs and skirmishers at the Teleporter.
&
nbsp; A Buckyball unleashed its multi-directional plasma beams then, and Jain took another hit.
“Damn it,” he said. He unleashed his lightning weapon at the Buckyball, along with more blobs. He tore away portions of its external framework, but the vessel was still in the game.
No time to go back for another pass—a Claw headed toward him. It launched rifts his way, and he steered to the side, before sending a group of skirmishers to intercept it. He’d temporarily exhausted his blobs.
Above him, some Paladins concentrated their fire on one of the frameworks, and it broke apart as he flew past.
The Tyrnari made a pass at the main space station with their Hang Gliders. The defensive shields lit up, protecting the base with the same force field the world killers possessed. A group of Barbells launched a solid wall of energy nets their way, forcing the Tyrnari to disengage.
The main space station itself began to glow. In thirty minutes, when it reached peak attack power, it would unleash a field of energy that would destroy all targeted ships in the system, sparing the Link vessels. Because of the Vaernastian rift jamming devices, none of the allied fleet would be able to jump out to escape it.
If the designated team didn’t take down that space station, they were all screwed.
“Reestablish uplink with the Void Warriors,” Jain said.
A moment later his companions appeared on the virtual bridge, except for Medeia, who would be cloaked.
“Welcome back,” Sheila said.
“Thanks,” he said. “Though I never truly left.”
“Of course not,” Sheila said. “You’d miss us too much for that.”
“Just you,” he said, only half joking.
He swerved to avoid another wall of energy nets from the Barbells. At least the Vaernastians weren’t summoning the System Killer—that was an alien entity capable of devouring entire systems and beyond. The Link had outlawed its usage, since even they couldn’t control it, and the Vaernastians probably wouldn’t flout that ban while so many other Link member species were watching.
Jain glanced at Cranston. “When are you going to deploy the shuttle?”
“I’m looking for an opening,” Cranston said. “It’s too hot out there.”
“I’ll see what I can do,” Jain said. “Xander, get me Hephaestus. Voice only.”
“What can I do for you?” Hephaestus said.
“I need to borrow five of your ships,” Jain said.
“He’s accelerated time,” Xander said.
Jain glanced at his tactical display. His AI core would have accelerated to match: sure enough, external reality had frozen.
“Tell me exactly what you plan to do,” Hephaestus said.
A few minutes later, Jain hurtled toward the space station, which glowed ever brighter. Five Nurturers were with him. Cranston followed behind him in the Forebode, along with Gavin in the Hippogriff. Altogether they formed a tight flotilla.
Two Buckyballs swerved in front to intercept them.
Jain and the others unleashed their lightning weapons, just as the Buckyballs fired. Beams launched in all directions, some bouncing off the shields of the space station to come at the incoming attackers.
Two of the Nurturers were hit, but continued forward.
“That’s a new property of those shields…” Jain said. “I didn’t know they could reflect attacks like that.”
The Buckyballs had survived the lightning damage, but when the Nurturers unleashed waves of blobs, the Buckyballs were unable to avoid them all, and took several debilitating hits.
Gavin and Cranston launched missiles at those vessels as they passed, and blew them to smithereens.
“Was that necessary?” Jain asked, mourning the wasted missiles.
“Don’t want them to leave them drifting, only to have to face them again later when they repair,” Cranston said.
Several Claws joined the line of Barbells in front of the space station.
“Attach to me, Cranston,” Jain said. “This is going to get messy. Gavin, you might want to start pulling up.”
“Yup!” Gavin said.
The Hippogriff activated its Newtonian drives and began pulling away from the flotilla in anticipation of the coming attack.
Jain felt the Forebode’s grappling hooks strike behind him, and then a moment later the solid contact as Cranston reeled his vessel in and secured the Forebode to the Devastator’s hull.
The Claws unleashed rifts, while the Barbells launched a solid wall of nets. Jain was forced to veer far upward to avoid them all. Three other Nurturers in the flotilla joined him, while the other two swerved downward to pass underneath the incoming attacks.
When Jain was over the expanding wave, he veered downward once again. Gavin fired his shockwave weapon, and the spherical shell expanded outward. Gavin had reserved openings in the shell for Jain and the others, and Jain steered the Devastator into one of them. The other five Mimics did the same.
Jain fired blobs and skirmishers indiscriminately at the enemies, targeting a Claw and Barbell, while the other Mimics also targeted two ships each. The Barbells were able to unleash a few more energy nets, but the Claws were still recharging after their latest rift attack, and could only flee before the onslaught.
Jain swerved between the energy nets; he accidentally struck one of the other Pyramids, causing the impacted sections to dissolve.
“Whoops, sorry about that,” he sent.
The Mimic gave no reply.
One of the nets drilled into a Mimic, and it came to a halt, drifting. A lucky shot, on the part of the enemy.
Jain’s blobs struck three Barbells, and broke the spherical sections apart. Jain slammed past the broken sections to continue toward the space station below. The debris struck his hull, causing armor damage, but he ignored it.
The other two Mimics with him continued downward, joining up with the two that were coming from below. They launched skirmishers and blobs at the enemies.
The Barbells attempted to swing their noses about so that they could bring their weapons to bear, but Jain was already descending toward the space station. The Mimics remained behind to shield him and his precious payload.
At that point, the station was blindingly bright beneath him; his cameras filtered that light down to something more manageable so that his external video feeds weren’t rendered useless.
When he was close to the shield, he changed course to fly parallel to it, using estimates of its extents as recorded when it flashed into existence in previous attacks.
“Cranston…” Jain said.
“Releasing the shuttle.” Cranston paused. “It’s away.”
Jain swerved upward, and turned around to place himself protectively between the shuttle and the enemy ships. He wouldn’t be able to hold this position for long, but in theory, he wouldn’t have to.
He glanced at the tactical display, and watched as the dot representing the shuttle moved toward the energy shields.
Good luck, Bolt Eaters.
He returned his attention to the Barbell ships, which were just coming to bear. The Claws would be recharging right about then, as well.
Jain accelerated toward them, weapons blazing.
7
Eric stood aboard the cramped shuttle with the other Bolt Eaters. A harness suspended from the ceiling held him in place. Everyone was here, well, except Slate.
“It’s almost like old times,” Tread said. “Back on Earth.”
“Except on Earth, we had Cicadas,” Traps said. “Not androids.”
“Hey, we could have had Cicadas if we really wanted to,” Tread said.
“Too bulky,” Eric said. “We’re good the way we are.”
Their load out that day involved energy grenades in their harnesses, plasma rifles slung to their shoulders, and jetpacks strapped to their packs.
“Man, I love me some jetpacks,” Eagleeye said. “Hey Slate, bet you wish you were coming.”
“Bitch, if you tease me one more time, I’m g
oing to rename the Bug Killer the Eagleeye Killer!” Slate said over the comm.
“Don’t worry, once we pass through that shield, we won’t be able to communicate with you anymore,” Eagleeye said.
“Oh man, I’m looking forward to that,” Slate said.
“They’re not really jetpacks anyway,” Bambi said. “They’re more like propellant jets. These things wouldn’t work too well in gravity.”
The deck jerked. Eric’s head slammed into the back of Marlborough’s just in front of him with a loud thud—the team members were standing that close together.
A chorus of oofs emanated from the team.
“Who’s flying this sardine can?” Mickey asked.
“My apologies,” the autonomous AI responsible for the shuttle said. “An energy net slipped past our Mimic defenders, and I narrowly evaded it.”
“Narrowly?” Mickey said. “This is what happens when you don’t put a real Mind Refurb in charge of flying. A real Mind Refurb would have put a wide berth between us and that net, not a narrow one.”
“We’re within teleport range,” the autonomous AI said. “Engaging.”
Eric glanced at the nose camera, and watched as the surface of the bright space station below jumped toward them.
“We’re in!” he said.
“I’m bringing us closer to the target,” the autonomous AI calmly intoned.
“Watch for defense turrets,” Eric said.
The vessel lurched violently. The harness strands that secured Eric to the cabin ceiling tightened, preventing him from moving too far out of his previous position. He tightened the machine muscles of his neck this time so that he wouldn’t head-butt the Sarge again.
“What was that?” Crusher asked nervously. Her android fingers clutched the harness above her so hard that her knuckles were white.
“The space station issued sudden decelerating thrust, diving, and causing us to strike the shield,” the AI said. “We bounced off. Armor is holding—damage is minimal. I’m proceeding toward the target.”