by Orion, W. J.
Oddly comforting.
Trey returned from Luminous with his mining laser mounted back on his chassis, and Trader Joe… well, Trader Joe waited patiently for everyone else to get themselves gathered. Delta remained on Luminous, keeping it manned and ready to depart if need be.
“Your name is Yasmine?” the deep voice of the Mulgorod said near to Yaz’s shoulder.
She spun and looked up at the simian judge with his black fur and red stripes. His two horns lorded over her, casting thin shadows across her face. Pyrameer smiled at her. His gentle nature shined through with warmth from his deep, dark eyes despite his bizarre appearance to Yaz.
“I am Yasmine, yeah,” she practically coughed.
“You will walk with me,” he said, and turned away to leave.
She looked at her friends and uncle, then popped along to catch up to the remarkably fast Mulgorod. They exited the hangar through the translation rooms and entered a corridor beyond with the tree-sized Dwen in the lead. Two more of the Galon joined them in the tall and narrow hall. These armored guards carried two sleek, substantial firearms. One hand remained spare. Like Dwen, they moved with a rotating gait, allowing each of their large, human-like eyes to pass over each and every inch of the terrain they moved through. The trio of Galon took up escort positions around them. Two to the front, one in the rear, with the rest of the group in the center.
They walked through similar corridors, passing through a series of air locks and larger rooms with smooth walls decorated with instructive text in several languages Yaz couldn’t read. Most of the rooms were triangular in shape, reflective of the Galon sense of architecture. Doors hissed open for the two Galon, leading them as they moved, revealing more empty spaces for them to traverse. They kept a frenetic pace, almost a full jog.
“Where is… anyone?” she asked Pyrameer.
“Dwen most likely has seen to it that our path to the courts has been cleared of any pedestrians,” the judge answered. “For safety.”
“And to prevent anyone from seeing any humans.”
“Yes, that would be wise,” the Mulgorod said with a wry, gorilla-faced smile. “You yourself express wisdom. I assume you are not that old for your species?”
“What gave my youth away?”
“Your eagerness, I suppose,” it answered. “Dare I risk saying arrogance. It is rare to find that much naïve initiative in older specimens of most races; no offense.”
Yaz laughed. “Stodgy. Hesitant, I get it. More to lose when you get invested in a life. I guess I benefit from having lost everything already. I can afford to lose what little I have. Won’t take much to get an equal measure of anything back.”
“Is your planet that bad off? Was the crab invasion… devastating?”
“Billions dead, and that’s just the human losses. Our entire ecology… all the animals and plants. I doubt it’ll ever recover. I want to bring the water back and see if we can fix it, but….”
They strode forward without words, the Galon leading them around corners and down wider and wider passageways. At one point they passed a wide oval doorway, twelve feet tall at the center, and blocking any passage through the entrance was a wall of armored Galon, supported by three of the floating Irib’dirari.
“Where are we being taken?” She asked Pyrameer.
“Dwen is bringing us through back access halls to the staff power lifts. No one will interfere with us between here and there. We’ll be brought down to the level where the court’s central offices are, and we can begin the process of just war.”
Chapter Thirty-One
The Enemy Gets a Vote, Too
The lavish deep-water habitat designed for aquatic guests of the Nexus teemed with the crab crew of the Empire cruiser Ravager. Tens of thousands of tiny, glowing squids floated up and down, diving through coral formations and vegetation transplanted from the crab home world. Gentle lights mounted in the distant ceiling glowed with the illusion of a sun casting its rays on the surface of an ocean far above. They rejoiced at the space, the taste of fresh water, and the change of scenery.
In the center of the massive currents of swimming creatures was a large colonial presence: the Diplomat of the Core Collective. Commander of the Ravager and all the tiny little souls crewing it, the Diplomat swam, free of worries, hunting down small schools of fish to feast upon. Like all others of its kind it used blankets of electric shocks to corral and stun its prey, then it devoured its dazed meal in a glorious frenzy.
The Diplomat swirled its body in glowing rings of joy as each of its colonial citizens shared in the wild-caught prey.
Diplomat, a neural broadcast reached out to it. Urgent visual and aural message for you.
Broadcast it to the screen in the Duan tidal recess on floor epsilon, it replied back. The Diplomat swam up and over a massive coral formation to a smooth, constructed wall with a wide screen embedded into the surface. As it approached, the screen powered to life, showing the face of a familiar species: the simian, almost human, face of a Mulgorod. The creature sported two sharpened horns on its brow and wore the clothing of the Mulgorod Coalition. It stood on the glass-fronted bridge of a vessel, in front of a giant tree that grew out of the deck and upward until it disappeared from view. The tree’s side and branches were covered with embedded electronics. No other crew were visible behind it.
“Vice Apex Madrap,” it said, announcing itself. “I have critical information to pass along to the Core Collective.”
Several hundred of the Diplomat’s squid bodies brushed their tentacles against the screen and formed a connection for its gathered thoughts.
“Your loyalty to the Empire’s needs is noted, and you will be rewarded beyond any of your expectations. Would that the rest of your Coalition had the sense you obviously do. What is this information you have, Vice Apex?”
“Your most recent harvest has troublesome issues. Some of your traitors have transported indigenous survivors here to the Nexus, demanding an audience. My spies have informed me that their ship was escorted to the new species assessment region of the station, and authorities have convened in the area as well. By now their story has been told to some high-ranking officials, and soon they will address the Interstellar Court with news of what has transpired.”
“Which means we will be judged in breach of the Nexus Accordance,” the Diplomat said. Ah, well. War was always just a moment away. I’m glad to be done with playing nice.
“Unless you can halt the presentation. If you could stop them, then take over the Nexus before word was broadcasted, you could avoid all-out war and instead take control of the galaxy as the Empire pleased.”
“We would win any war that broke out,” the Diplomat said.
“That certainty is why I serve the Empire. But, if war is certain, would it not be easier for the Empire to manage the early stages here? Kill the survivors, seize control of the Interstellar Court and the station itself? As we all know, those who control the Nexus control the galaxy.”
“Hmm. Indeed,” the Diplomat pondered. Does the Ravager have enough combat chassis aboard to take Nexus? Save that, do we have enough to find the rodents that slipped the harvest and burn them to ash? War will still happen, but I’ll be able to enjoy a moment of satisfaction.
“Your own personal glory would be assured,” the Mulgorod said. “But I defer to your judgment and will. My cruiser, Titan’s Horn, is at your disposal if needed.”
“Noted, Vice Apex Madrap. Remain at the ready. You will be contacted if needed,” the Diplomat said then ended the connection on the screen. Commander? It asked the waters in a broad thought burst.
Yes, Diplomat? The Ravager’s commander replied.
The two minds connected in a direct conduit of thought, shutting out any listeners.
We could be at war with the Nexus in the next few moments. Do we have the power to take this station by force?
Doubtful. We have but a hundred combat chassis in the hangar. A dozen tanks. Enough to do substantial damage to
the station’s defenses, but likely not enough to take the station and hold it. Our loses would be staggering; we have no safe haven for colony remainders to repopulate. Deaths would be final if we were to lose this conflict.
That is a risk we must take. What if you limited your targets? Send a force to the courts, then a force to the station port control? Seize the wormhole controls; the rest of the station doesn’t matter.
Even if successful there is no way we could hold out for long, the commander replied. We are facing millions of hostiles.
We could transit in at least two or three cruisers within little time. You know we have battlegroups stationed near many wormholes. We pass a shuttle through and summon them for reinforcement. That’s the real goal of course–pass a vessel through the wormhole to alert the fleet. Anything we achieve on the station while that happens is tertiary.
The Core Collective is aware of what you are planning?
I am not planning anything. I am reacting to the previously unknown failures stemming from the Earth invasion. Some survivors of the simpleton mammal race from there have been brought here and are about to be brought to the court. We can depart, but then the Empire would have no chance to return here and attempt to take control if we were shut out. We have no choice. Suffer exile, or act.
Then the decision is made for us.
Assemble two teams of your best warriors. Select the Collective elite. One unit should cut the humans off from the hangar where new life visits as they head to the courts, and the other team should head to the port control to take the wormholes. That should provide a sufficient enough distraction and assault force. Prepare the experimental hover tank chassis for me. I will go into the station myself and win this battle if needed.
For the Empire, the commander said.
For the Empire, the Diplomat replied. The leader of the crabs jetted downward towards the end of the habitat that led to the wetlock that connected the station to Ravager.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Fish in a Barrel
“How much further?” Caleb asked Dwen near the front of their strange pack. Yasmine listened in.
“The species assessment region of the Nexus is by design a good distance from anything truly important. We are passing through dozens of access tunnels and corridors to get to the powerlifts that’ll get us where we need to go,” the pyramid said.
“That’s not an answer. Five minutes? Ten?” Caleb asked.
“I don’t understand your measures of time yet,” Dwen answered as the group shuffled through a large triangular room with two tall pressure doors on each flat facing. “But the secondary staff lifts are three or four rooms ahead.”
“Hell yeah,” Caleb said. “Then we’re down and telling folks all about it. No word about the crabs catching wind of us being here?”
“Not yet,” Dwen said. “Benno should be arriving at port control shortly. He too had a complex route to take. If the crabs were to take hostile action, my Station Security would sound out an alert.”
A klaxon sounded. A grating, electronic noise that rattled her ears and shook her chest matched a series of flashing lights and bizarre pulses of mist that gently sprayed into the room from miniscule ceiling-mounted nozzles. The group halted.
“Let me guess, that’s the crabs going bananas somewhere, isn’t it?” Caleb joked.
The Galon guards stood, spinning slowly in their ceaseless vigil to see in all directions at all times. They kept their weapons at the ready as their leader listened to communications streaming into its… earpiece?
“They’ve managed to get multiple combat chassis into the station and are making a two-pronged assault as we predicted,” Dwen explained. “They are attempting to cut us off at the powerlifts and are also moving towards the station’s control center.”
“What’s changed for us?” Yasmine asked.
“They will need more power than they have to get through the command center’s defenses. We must move with great haste, however. There is no point in heading to the courts now. Their brazen attack on the station is condemnation enough. I am sorry, but you will not get your day in court.”
“I don’t need to testify,” Knox said, adjusting her stance on one leg and two crutches. “I just need payback.”
“You will have ample opportunity for justice, even missing a leg. Now, we will take the lifts up rather than down to my security center, which is adjacent to flight control. We can join the defensive effort there, or you can take shelter in one of our high security facilities.”
“We’ll fight, thanks,” Yasmine said. “We’re not the kind of people who sit around letting others fight for us.”
Dwen moved forward and everyone joined. They passed through one of the twin doors ahead of them as the lights kept flashing and the alarm kept blaring. The misting stopped, but the odd metallic scent it left in the air remained. Yasmine drew her pistol and kept up with Pyrameer and Michelle at her side. The other girl had drawn her weapon too.
True to Dwen’s word, they soon entered a large round room where several wide corridors convened. Broad concentric rings radiated on the floor and ceiling, centered around a podium that broadcast several holograms into the air above it. One image was the sphere of the station, and the other a rectangular interface covered in translucent triangular buttons. Dwen and the two leading Galon guards motioned for them to move to the center of the room at the podium, and the group did.
More Galon down each hall. So many guards. How could the crabs hope to win a fight here?
“Stand within the rings,” Dwen instructed, and they did so. The alien moved to the central podium and used one of its massive hands to interact with the holographic controls hovering in midair. “Stand firm, the gravity fluctuates. We will move upwards shortly.”
Dwen made its statement and the floor went upwards. The rings weren’t just carvings or decorations on the floor, they were the edges of the lift.
The entire room is an elevator. Whoa, Yasmine thought as the group ascended in silence.
The ceiling above opened like an iris, revealing an open column of space that disappeared into the core of the Nexus above. The lift could go so high the top of the tunnel couldn’t even be seen. The tunnel instead dwindled down to a speck of light somewhere in the distant mechanical sky above.
“How many floors? How long a trip?” she asked.
“Eighty-nine floors. Half the time it took us to get here from the hangar,” Pyrameer said. “Relax. These secure lifts are at the core of the Nexus. Very hard to get to for the uneducated, and very hard to damage.”
“I wish you hadn’t said that,” Caleb muttered. “You familiar with the idea of ‘bad luck’? You heard about curses? Because you just cursed the hell out of us.”
“The Mulgorod have a concept that’s similar. Our idea mirrors our ecological experience; we live in jungles and we talk of fouling your tree, or your water, with your own waste,” the horned gorilla said.
“You shit where you ate,” Caleb said, adding a laugh as they ascended upward. Oval doors leading into the many floors passed by.
“Precisely!” Pyrameer said, delighted. “I see this as a good sign about our species. Your name is Caleb?”
“That, or The Baron. Whatever strikes you,” her uncle said.
“We will be friends, The Baron. I see this,” the judge said, and added a thump to its chest to seal the deal.
“Prepare yourselves,” Dwen said. “We are about to pass the level that the crab habitat is on, and they are approaching this vicinity rapidly. Our defenses are struggling to ward them off. They sent a large contingent to kill the humans.”
“Casualties?” Yaz asked.
“Many,” the gun-toting pyramid answered.
For the second time in just minutes Dwen’s prophetic words seemed to change their reality. Several stories above their location a deafening boom erupted, blowing one of the oval elevator doors into the shaft above. The steel smashed against the opposite side of the huge cylindrical
space, propelled by a crackling, hissing, blue beam of crab plasma. The door stuck in the wall with a resounding crash, hissing after with volcanic heat.
“Deploy plasma shields!” Dwen screamed in authoritative shout.
The four Galon warriors in their group used their spare hands to slap an oval device mounted on their armor. With a thrum and an invisible burst of energy, a flat plane of translucent light erupted into reality above each of their pointy, three-sided heads. As they moved, the clear fields of energy matched; umbrellas that could catch more than the rain always staying between them and the deadly crabs breaking into the shaft above.
Yasmine drew her sidearm and aimed it up at the opening and as she did, every soul on the elevator with her did the same. Even the quiet, wise Mulgorod Pyrameer made fists and aimed his horns upward. He snarled, baring massive canines bigger than her thumbs.
The elevator grumbled to a slow stop and Yasmine almost lost her balance. She was still an elevator rookie.
“Ready,” Dwen cautioned. “Ready.…”
“Born ready,” her uncle said, aiming his belt-fed machine gun upwards.
That thing is so heavy. He carries it around like a toy. She snapped her attention back to the looming death just yards above.
Stillness.
Seconds ticked by, each more painful than the last, each taking longer to pass than the last. Sweat poured down faces as adrenaline tore through their bodies, but nothing happened. No screams of pain, not even the warning klaxon sounding off broke the tension.
Then, a dozen shapes entered the column through the destroyed door.
Pouring outward like hornets from a kicked nest, a force of the smaller crab chassis entered their space. Clinging to the walls like insects, the low-slung, almost lobster-like vehicles shot out into the space and propelled themselves around the elevator’s cylinder, funneling down to them in multiple deadly corkscrew trails. Black, glistening, with twin arms tipped with small but powerful pincers, they fired thin rails of plasma fire from small turrets mounted on their backs. The light was blinding.