by J. N. Chaney
Geysers of shattered rock erupted around the Archetype, showering the mech with splinters and debris. The blasts exposed something metallic beneath the surface, but Dash had no time to think about it. He pitched up hard, climbing away from the surface, yawing as he did and firing the dark-lance. The Battle Prince dodged one of the twin beams, but the other struck, flaring against a shield. The Deeper returned fire, likewise slamming a burst of energy into the Archetype’s shield, which Sentinel had managed to regenerate.
The Battle Prince abruptly reversed course and came boring straight in for Dash again. He pumped out nova-cannon and dark-lance shots and prepared to fire the wrist-mounted rail gun before remembering that it was just shattered fragments littering the dreary landscape below. The instant of confused hesitation cost him his focus. The Battle Prince flashed past, landing a punishing blow with its power-maul that spun the Archetype completely around.
Dash yelled out loud at the impact, accompanied by a tremendous bang, as the power-maul smashed into his shoulder armor. Once more, it hit Dash that, had the mech not been upgraded, the blow would almost certainly have ripped off his remaining arm. As it was, the force of the hit bent and distorted one of the shoulder actuators, giving the arm a slight lag behind Dash’s movements.
“Can’t fight this way,” he snapped. “Sentinel, I’m gonna deploy the power-sword. As soon as I do, lock that shoulder, would you?”
“You will lose a large portion of the arm’s mobility. That will reduce your potential strike zone for the sword by—”
“A lot, yeah, I know. Just humor me.”
“Will do.”
Dash activated the power-sword, then Sentinel froze the actuators in place. He could still move the arm at the elbow, but his shoulder had been locked into rigidity.
He resumed climbing, spinning the Archetype as he did. The Deeper Battle Prince had already started another run at him and was only seconds from impact.
Dash made himself forget about trying to carefully judge or calculate his moves and instead thought back to his dream when he’d been piloting the air-cycle over the lake.
Every move he made was by instinct, by the feel of what just seemed right in that instant.
And what felt right was this.
Dash rolled the Archetype, at the same time firewalling the Blur drive. What the thrusters started as simple rotation, the Blur drive turned into nearly one hundred g’s of spin.
The power-sword connected with the Battle Prince, just as its maul smashed into the Archetype. The same ferocious snap-roll that drove the sword caused the maul to glance away, although not without knocking a chunk of chest armor off the Archetype with a shower of sparks.
Dash bellowed a string of curses at the impact, even while trying desperately to corral the Archetype back into some semblance of control. Frantically, he searched the tactical display for his foe.
There. The Battle Prince raced away from him, trailing bits of debris. Dash had hurt the thing, but the Archetype was reaching the limits of what it could take, even in its much-improved form.
Sentinel spoke up, confirming it. “We’ve now experienced multiple, permanent system failures. I’ve rerouted power and data where I can, but the Archetype has no further capacity for self-repair.”
“What you’re saying is that any further damage is going to stick.”
“Correct.”
“Then I guess it’s time to end this,” Dash said, and once more ramped up the Blur drive, chasing after the Battle Prince.
The Deeper leader had pitched up, accelerating away from the radiation-scoured surface of the moon. Its trajectory was aimed directly at the brown dwarf. Dash wasn’t sure why. Tactical showed a few more small rocks orbiting in-close to the would-be star, but nothing of consequence.
“I believe that the Battle Prince is, likewise, badly damaged,” Sentinel offered.
“Good. But so are we. So where does he think he’s going?”
“Do you remember the first time you fought one of the Golden Harbingers?” Sentinel asked.
Dash did. The Archetype had been nowhere close to its full capabilities at the time, so the Golden mech had been its match. Dash had taken advantage of a brown dwarf star caught in a loose orbit in the Forge’s origin system, using the blizzard of radiation to confuse the Harbinger’s scanners. He’d been able to hide in more or less plain sight while taking time to do some damage control and catch his breath.
Oh. He got it.
“This bastard’s going to try and hide from us, the same way we did from the Harbinger.”
“Quite likely. Moreover, I’d point out that the bio-mechanical hybrid material used by the Deepers is capable of self-repair, literally healing, in a way that the substance of the Archetype is not.”
“Shit. So if he’s able to lose us, then all he has to do is wait. His damage repairs itself, and he comes back at us, but fresh.”
“I know that you’re reluctant to concede defeat, but perhaps it’s the best option in this case. Accepting a tactical defeat in the aftermath of a strategic victory isn’t really failure, is it?”
Dash bit his lip. Sentinel was right. He could just break off the pursuit, race back to the safety of the gate, and return to Backwater.
But.
“There’s only one problem with that. This damned Battle Prince gets away.”
“Again, the survival of one Battle Prince is unlikely to greatly affect the course of the war—”
“Yeah, except we’re not at the Forge, are we? Viktor described how they were able to switch the link from the Radiant Point near there to the Backwater Gate and let Eastern do that arriving in the nick of time thing. But this Battle Prince was somehow able to change the gate again, linking it to here. And he did it on the fly, too.”
“That is, admittedly, a good point.”
“Hey, don’t sound so surprised.”
“So what do you intend to do?”
“How long until we lose a scanner fix on him?” Dash asked, still focused on the icon highlighting the Battle Prince directly ahead.
“At this rate of degradation, in a minimum of five and a maximum of fifteen minutes.”
Dash bit his lip again. This time, he was doing calculations in his head. Even as damaged as it was, the Blur drive was still working, so he still had the edge in acceleration. He was closing the gap but not fast enough to catch the Battle Prince before they lost it in the sea of high-energy radiation filling space around the brown dwarf. He could try to keep chasing it using visual contact only, but that was iffy, at best. It was just damned hard to see things in space unless they were some combination of big, bright, and close.
What it all boiled down to was an immutable fact. Dash had, at most, about ten minutes to come up with some decisive way of defeating the Battle Prince and hopefully retrieve or otherwise figure out the tech it had used to switch the gate. Failing that, he’d have to withdraw because he wouldn’t stand a snowball’s chance in a fusion blast against it if it were able to heal all of its damage and return to battle fresh.
He needed to further accelerate the Archetype. Or slow down the Battle Prince. Or, ideally, both.
“Sentinel, how powerful would a distortion-cannon shot have to be to ensure we’re able to catch this bastard before he gets away?”
“If the distortion-cannon were overcharged, a single shot should be sufficient. However, that would render the weapon incapable of further use. Moreover, I would have to route power through the dark-lance and nova-cannon systems to effect the overcharge. That would also take those weapons offline until repaired.”
“So we can do it, but we’re only going to have one chance at it, and even if it succeeds, we’ll have no weapons left but the power-sword.” As he spoke, Dash reflexively checked the ammo supply for the superluminal missile-launcher mounted on the Archetype’s right wrist. He’d already known the answer, though. He’d expended all of its ordnance during the desperate fight on the other side of the gate.
“Correct.”
“So, an all-or-nothing gamble that could have disastrous consequences if it fails.”
“Again, correct.”
“Well, you’ve got as much skin in this game as I do, Sentinel. What do you think we should do?”
“Logically? We should break off and withdraw.”
“Is that your answer?”
“No. I think we should go for it and run this son of a bitch down.”
Dash laughed. It was a genuine, deep, belly laugh that washed through him like cleansing rain. “Really?”
“Yes, really.”
“Alrighty, then. Sentinel, route whatever you have to route, wherever you have to route it, to make this work. And then we’ll run this son of a bitch down.”
A moment passed as Sentinel reconfigured power and data streams. The dark-lances dropped offline, followed by the nova-cannon as she cannibalized their supporting circuitry to feed more power to the distortion cannon. Dash watched as the last systems flicked from yellow to red.
“We’re ready,” Sentinel said.
Dash gave a wintry smile. “Not much left. Distortion cannon, power-sword, drive and life-support, and that’s it, huh?”
“I could turn the seat warmers back on for you.”
“First, there’s no seat. Second, Sentinel, where do you keep coming up with this stuff? Is Leira coaching you?”
“I believe you have a Battle Prince to kill and very little time left to do it.”
Dash smiled. “Roger that.”
The one advantage to the distortion-cannon, he thought, was that it didn’t require a solid targeting solution, like the mech’s other weapons. All he had to do was—
This.
Dash hit the trigger. Warnings flared and died across the board as systems carried a sudden flood of power from the hexacore, then died under the strain. Showers of sparks and gouts of flame erupted throughout the mech.
A massive hand reached out, grabbed the Archetype, and yanked it forward so hard Dash was shoved almost painfully backward in the harness. Just as it had the left forearm, the sudden surge of g’s tore off the mech’s right lower leg.
Dash groaned as he momentarily greyed out, the sudden acceleration dragging the blood out of his brain. He fought desperately not to fade from grey to black as it would truly suck to lose and die because he’d passed out. But the grey fireworks popping around the edges of his vision died away, and he was able to refocus on the situation.
The Battle Prince hung not far ahead of him. It had lost an entire leg that slowly spun off in one direction while the rest of the Deeper leader spun through two of three axes. Dash saw it firing thrusters desperately, trying to reorient itself and open the range back up.
“Oh, no you don’t,” Dash growled, kicked the Blur drive, and zoomed forward, power-sword raised.
The Battle Prince turned to face him just in time. A single burst of noise came across what remained of the comm.
“We are the Corrupted, and we will have your life.”
“The hell you will,” Dash snapped, swinging the sword.
The Battle Prince lashed out with its power-maul at the same time, connecting hard with the Archetype’s sword. Both weapons snapped in a dazzling burst of discharged energy. Dash didn’t hesitate. All that was left was a brawl, and in a brawl, you had to put your opponent down and win fast. The longer it went on, the more chance you might lose.
Dash flung the Archetype forward, slamming into the Battle Prince. He punched, slamming his fist into his opponent again and again. He kicked at the same time, following up with a knee to a part of the Battle Prince that would have left its eyes crossed and doubled over in pain if it had been a guy. The Deeper reeled under the sudden blitz of kicks and punches, then began to strike back. For a moment, Dash’s world was reduced to the thunderous slam of heavy impacts, alloy on alloy, as he struck out, and his opponent struck back.
The Archetype’s fist struck again, but this time found purchase in damaged armor. He pulled and tore the chunk of armor away. He struck again, buckling exposed structural components, then tearing those free and flinging them away after the broken armor.
The Battle Prince went still and silent.
Dash stared at what he’d exposed, a grotesque amalgam of organic life-form and machine. Once, he thought, it might have been humanoid, but now it was little more than knobs and tendrils of flesh and bone merged with pipes, cables, and the structure of the Battle Prince itself. Conduits hung from where its eyes should have been, one pulling free as Dash gaped at the monstrosity. Shimmering globules of murky fluid spilled from the empty socket.
“Dash? Meld connectivity is down to less than forty percent, which forces me to ask you—are you okay?”
He yanked himself out of his stunned moment of fascinated horror. “Yeah, I’m fine. Beaten up and totally grossed out, but yes, I’m okay.”
“I believe the tech you were seeking is implanted in the middle of the Deeper’s abdomen. A component there is radiating a periodic handshake-signal similar to that used by the gates.”
As she spoke, Sentinel highlighted a particular part of the Battle Prince. Dash retrieved it, a boxy component slathered in gore.
“If this is what I think it is, and we can replicate it, then we can tune these gates to wherever we want them to go on the fly. That’s huge, Sentinel.”
“It is. But I’ve got something to rival it.”
“Really. And what’s that?”
“Do you recall that the Battle Prince’s fire exposed a metallic structure on the rocky moon we first encountered?”
Dash thought back through the whirlwind blur that had been the fight against the Battle Prince. “Oh, yeah, right. What was that?”
“I will show you.”
The image flicked to the characteristic greyish fuzz of the neutrino display. The detector system apparently still worked. It showed a solid black shape, roughly spherical, amid the soupy grey of the neutrino background.
“What the hell am I looking at?”
“That rocky moon.”
“Huh. Okay, well, that’s interesting, but—”
The implication of it hit him like a rail gun shot.
“That’s no moon.”
“Correct. It is, except for a thin shell of rock, Dark Metal.”
Dash stared. There had to be tens, hundreds of thousands of tons of Dark Metal there. Millions, maybe.
His next words came out as a soft whisper.
“Holy shit.”
“Holy shit indeed.”
Epilogue
Dash crossed his arms and watched the bustle of activity around the newly finished hub of the Kingsport, the Atrium. With it complete, work could now proceed on the successive layers of the enormous, ring-within-ring structure.
He let his mind cast forward to a time when the Kingsport was fully operational. That was still at least a year away, but it would be up to its initial operating capability within the next week or so. It would be able to function effectively as a base for the fleet at that point, but only while supported by Bercale’s modular shipyards and a multitude of other ancillary and logistics vessels. Once complete, it would be capable of supporting not just their entire current fleet, but one twice as large, entirely from its own resources.
“There you are,” Leira said, exiting an elevator and crossing to join Dash at the expansive viewports. “I thought you said to meet you on level twelve, section A.”
“This is level twelve, section A.”
Leira curled her lip and pointed at the elevator. A prominent eleven emblazoned the bulkhead alongside it. “You sure about that?”
“Um, oops?”
Leira put her hands on her hips. “This is going to take some getting used to.”
“Right? And we thought the Forge was big.”
“The Forge is big,” Leira replied, then gave a thin smile. “Although, I have to admit, in comparison to this place, it’s homey, almost cozy.”
“Yeah, it is.�
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They stood in silence for a while, watching as another freighter laden with rough slabs of Dark Metal slid out of the gate anchored by the Radiant Point. It was the most recent arrival from the Dark Metal planetoid they’d named Jackpot. Dash would probably never know why the Deeper Battle Prince had led him there. They might likewise never learn the truth behind Jackpot—who or what was responsible for it and what its purpose was, if any. Given the nature of Dark Metal, Custodian and the other AIs doubted it was a natural formation, but they couldn’t even be sure of that. Dark Metal came from somewhere, after all. They’d assumed it had originated with the Golden, but the Deepers were far, far older. Maybe, Conover had speculated, it had formed in the peculiar conditions of the Big Bang, and the Deepers had just discovered it.
The science of it was beyond Dash, but one essential fact wasn’t. His gut told him that, before this war was over, they’d need to answer that question and figure out the truth behind Dark Metal.
“Oh, by the way, the Archetype looks a lot better than when you dragged your big metallic butt back through that gate at Backwater,” Leira noted, still watching as the freighter cleared the gate.
“Yeah, it does. Tough old mech, isn’t it?”
“I think you’ve probably voided the warranty on it by now.”
“Probably, but she’s still not as tough as that old Earthtech,” Dash said.
“Or the . . . cosmonaut? Inside?” Leira asked.
“Astronaut, cosmonaut. Either way, they built to last back then. We’re more like the Unseen than we want to admit, and we’ve got a deep-frozen cosmonaut to prove it.” He shook his head. “Wonder if she’ll ever wake up?”
“If she does, what will she think about all this? And how would she adjust, knowing her world is gone? I think the Deepers stole more than just Sabina’s life. They—they forced her through time. They robbed her of everything, and now she’s just—”
“Asleep. And if she ever wakes, then we’ll take care of her. But we’ll never stop trying, and she’ll never drift again. Not while we’re around. Too many old dangers out there, let alone new ones,” Dash said with some force.