by Lyn Gala
Tyce shook his head. “Don’t,” he said softly. He hoped the others in the room didn’t hear him, but he couldn’t allow Ama and John to continue with this blind faith. “I don’t see a weakness.”
Ama embraced him, an awkward gesture, since Tyce was still seated. “You are not powerful enough to move the universe,” she whispered in his ear. Tyce closed his eyes. Sometimes her version of help left him gutted.
John shot her a nasty glare. “We work as long as we can and gather as much intel as possible,” he said firmly. “If the Imshee are sending in cannon fodder, then something we’re doing is working. They are feeling the stress of this fight, maybe more than us if they’re sacrificing their crew.”
“Or they have young and low status individuals they wish killed,” Ama said.
Tyce sighed. That made sense in an alien sort of way, but he hoped John was right. Sending cannon fodder right at the battle line spoke of panic. And Command had reported that Imshee were afraid of humans. That matched. He studied the wall of observations. Nothing else fit into a coherent pattern. One grouping caught his eye. Each slip described how the Imshee retreated—the weird backward leap that sometimes caused them to brain themselves on the ceiling.
“Did Command say that Imshee were afraid of persistence hunting specifically?”
“Yes,” John said slowly. He tilted his head and studied Tyce.
Ama crouched next to Tyce’s chair, a knowing grin curling the edges of her mouth. “What have you realized?”
Tyce frowned. He wasn’t sure of his theory, but it made sense. “They don’t persist. They don’t understand prolonged battle.” Up until this last assault, every Imshee attack employed strike and run tactics.
John scoffed. “They scare the Rownt. I’m pretty sure they know how to win a battle.”
“We don’t know how long that battle lasted. They may have fired their weapons and torn right through the Rownt shields. We do know Rownt don’t carry a fight past the one battle, so it makes sense they would understand each other if neither species engages in extended warfare.”
John sat on a crate Tyce had been using for a desk. “First, how the hell do you have such specific intel on the Rownt? I know that update came after Lieutenant Munson reestablished contact with Earth.” There was no way Tyce would answer that. Eventually John sighed. “Fine, second, the Rownt said that all the other species they knew understood the concept of war as Munson described it—a prolonged series of battles spread over time and in different locations.”
“Multiple battles over time is fine,” Tyce said, “but do they have prolonged battles with a persistent enemy?” It was the first theory that made sense to him. The Imshee were panicking because they wanted the ship, but the human insistence on simply holding territory frustrated and confused them. It was a classic approach-avoidance conflict.
Just as John opened his mouth, Ama spoke. “How does this help us design a strategy?”
“We need to hold our position,” Tyce said.
John scoffed. “That’s what we’re already doing.”
“And we keep doing it.” Tyce grinned as the strategy developed in his mind. The Imshee wanted the ship and were excited about claiming it. They approached the goal and hit resistance, but as they grew closer to the goal, the resistance grew greater and the avoidance drive slowly overwhelmed the desire for the ship. He could see it all. “Eventually the negative feelings toward persistence will overwhelm their drive to take the ship,” he said.
Ama frowned. “Are you sure?”
“Hell, no,” Tyce said. “I’m applying human psychology to an alien because I was trained in human-human strategy, not xenopsychology. And I don’t know the background of these Imshee. If they are fighters, variable ratio reinforcement might come into play.” Tyce shrugged.
Ama offered a small smile and shook her head. “I am constantly baffled by the enigma of you, but I’ll let the fighters know our theory.” She headed for the door.
Tyce turned to John. “What the hell is she talking about with enigmas?” He didn’t expect an answer—Ama was an enigma herself. She was so deeply steeped in Ribelian religion that she spoke in riddles more often than not, and she considered it bad manners to come right out and tell someone what they should do or believe. Weird woman.
“I think she means that you understand the motives and theories behind human behavior well for someone who has a questionable hold on them in the more practical sense.” John patted him on the shoulder and then stood. “I’ll talk to the engineers. Maybe they have something that can help us hold position even if they can’t find the weapons systems.”
Tyce shook his head and turned back to his monitors. The Imshee were keeping up such a steady rate of fire that Tyce suspected they had several aliens taking turns. How many? That was a question Tyce would’ve loved to answer. However, without access to some sort of internal security feed, he had no way to satisfy his curiosity.
Tyce closed his eyes and concentrated on the corridor. Nothing. Feeling a little foolish, Tyce held his hands out the way he had when he’d been tuning the surveillance system and whispered to the ship, to the universe at large or Ama’s guardian gods, “A little help, please.”
Tyce knew the ship could send vague impressions and feelings, but he didn’t know if the ship would understand Tyce’s desperate need. Even if Tyce’s strategy was the right one, it required a war of attrition with too many good men and women giving their lives to hold the Imshee off. And he had no way of knowing what was going on with the shuttles and children since the crew down-ship were following radio protocols.
The ship’s engine gave a burp of speed, and the floor bucked under his feet. Tyce grabbed two of the monitors, but the others slid off the makeshift desk and crashed to the ground.
“What was that?” a Dragon engineer yelled. “Does anyone have instrument readings?”
John came running over. “What happened?” he asked Tyce. If the engineers didn’t know, Tyce certainly didn’t. Medics called for help and the wounded demanded information. Most of them were soldiers, and now they were trapped on their backs while the enemy pushed in on their position.
“Help me out here.” Tyce used a foot to push a broken computer piece off the chair, and John put a monitor on the floor next to the now-broken desk. Tyce put the other monitor on the seat. “Fuck.” Tyce breathed the word, watching the monitor as multiple Imshee crawled and pushed forward, like a slow motion stampede.
“They’re rushing the line. Reinforce the main corridor!” Tyce shouted over the general din. The soldiers who were off shift or assigned to the engineering room all grabbed weapons. Tyce whirled around in his chair to grab his own gun, but John caught his wrist.
“Find us a better strategy than suicide.” He then confiscated Tyce's weapon and ran for the door. To hell with that. Tyce would not sit back with the engineers while his friends tried to hold the line. If anyone could save them, it would be engineers finding the damn weapons panel. Short of that, Tyce didn't know what he could do other than join hand-to-hand fighting.
Tyce was nearly to the door when an overwhelming burst of wrongness grabbed his chest so hard that he fell to one knee and clutched the wall.
A soldier stopped and dropped to a knee next to him. “Sir, are you okay?”
Tyce pushed the soldier away and struggled back to his feet. The emotions had been so strong and alien that he knew they were coming from the ship. He stared at the ceiling. “If you're trying to say something, you've got to find a better way to communicate.” The soldier stared at him as if he had lost his mind.
“Well?” Tyce asked the ship.
“Well, what, Sir?” The confusion on his face gave way to alarm.
Tyce blinked at the soldier, and for one second, was struck by the strangeness of his form. Human locomotion required constantly throwing oneself off balance, and catching the body with the forward foot. It was a bizarre function, but at the same time, he had to admire the lack of friction and t
he reduction in joints. Fascinating.
Tyce blinked as he struggled to find his own mind. “Go,” he told the soldier. He didn't even know the man's name. He didn't know any of the Command soldiers, and that probably said something shitty about him because now he was sending them out to die.
“Sir, let's get you a medic.” He got a hand under Tyce's arm to pull him back into the room.
“No.” Tyce tried to pull his arm away, but the soldier was strong.
“It's okay sir, it could be that those probes in your brain have shifted. I'm sure the medics can do something for you.”
Tyce spotted the alcove where Acosta had shoved him and the shape made sense.
Two legs lacked stability, but four legs provided more steadiness. Four arms kept the body in proportion—two large arms with long, strong fingers and two smaller ones tucked up close. The creature would be long and two arms could reach all the way back to the rear of the creature, giving it an off-balance appearance. An elongated head held a brain large enough to control all those limbs, and a large sloping nose dominated the face. The creature would walk into the deep alcove, thrusting its head deep into the ship’s neural interface.
Tyce heard gunfire and shouts. The sense of doom nearly enveloped him, only when he looked at the alcove, the panic faded.
It was the best decision. It was the only decision.
And maybe it was a suicide move or a Hail Mary, but Tyce knew there was only one way any of them would survive this attack. He shoved the soldier away and dove headfirst into the alcove. The soldier shouted, but then needle pinpricks surrounded him, and everything went black.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
TYCE WOKE, DISORIENTED, startled by the utter blackness. There was always some equipment status light glowing, but not now. There was only perfect darkness and some sense of a person watching... waiting.
Tyce’s heart pounded faster. The Imshee had attacked. He remembered that. A thought formed—not in words but as if he had just realized it. The Imshee sensors detected the ship’s neural system becoming active, and they had rushed the line in a last desperate attempt to stop it. It. What? The joining. They knew the ship had sentience but not purpose. Humans could not be allowed to give it purpose.
Tyce knew the ship was providing the additional information, but even so, the pieces didn’t make sense. Where was he? The answer came as a vision, like a blurry hologram. He was stomach down on a thick support cord, his clothing shredded. Hundreds of wires came out of his neck, spine and head.
The memory returned, the certainty that he had to be part of the ship to save them. The ship had sent him that message. She had tried to stay quiet to avoid aggravating the Imshee. But when he called for her, she couldn’t refuse him.
If Tyce still had control of his body, he would have hid his head in his hands. His attempt to contact the ship had caused the assault that threatened to kill his people.
No. The denial and hot fury rolled through him. The Imshee would not take their people. They had tried to take the children and she had blown them into space. They would protect the people. A camera view opened inside Tyce’s mind. He saw the fight from above. Two rows of soldiers fired even as they steadily retreated from blast after blast of the Imshee energy weapons. A small Imshee body blocked part of the corridor door, but other Imshee used it as cover as they returned fire.
Behind them, Tyce had a sense of movement, almost like a breeze across his skin. When he strained to look around the bend of the corridor, his view slid along until he was seeing deep into Imshee territory.
Two small and nearly hairless Imshee were being herded along by larger ones, poked forward, even when they tried to turn around. Tyce tried to follow the side corridor out of which the Imshee were coming. He wanted to track them back to wherever they had docked their ship. However, the camera refused to move. It was as if he was locked into this one corridor.
No cameras. They didn’t spy on each other, only the others. Tyce had no idea who the others might be or what reason the ship builders might have put cameras in some places and not others. The fight was going in the Imshee’s favor and he needed to focus on the current fight .
He turned his attention back to the cluster of Imshee driving the young ones toward the battle. Imshee didn't refer to the clawed creature. The realization shocked Tyce because he had never considered the possibility that the Imshee were the hair. Nausea rolled through him as he thought about the feel of the hair between his fingers when he’d pulled it out of the creature’s back. Those had been the Imshee. The clawed creature was the horse that the Imshee rode.
A half second later he realized he was only partially right. Imshee were only sentient in clusters, and they took over the nervous system of the clawed creature because they lacked bodies of their own. In fact, one Imshee was a helpless creature, comically ridiculous. They were no threat, so to share technology with them was nothing because Imshee were nothing. But from the nothing, the neural joining had been developed.
Those bastards were driving steeds with a minimum of young Imshee “hairs” toward the human fighters. Imshee were nothing. Worse than nothing. Purpose thought them ridiculous. Purpose felt pity for them. Tyce’s head was an uncomfortable mishmash of ideas and feelings, only some of which were his, but he would have to sort that later. Right now the Imshee were less comical and more deadly. He focused on a desire to communicate, and he had a sense of a path opening. It was like seeing a beam of light, only Tyce heard it.
“John?”
“Yeah?” John sounded terse and out of breath.
Tyce’s camera view slid again, and his vision shifted to John and two others shoving a heavy gun down the corridor. The sled under the behemoth was designed for human ships with bare floors and the wheels were damn-near useless on the padded flooring. However, Tyce gave John credit for having balls. Using a projectile gun inside a ship was only slightly less dangerous than pulling out the nuclear weaponry.
The problem was that the bullets would be nearly as useless because the clawed creatures could lose half their body mass and continue moving, especially since pain couldn’t stop them. Imshee didn’t feel pain the way a complex organism would.
“You have to change tactics. Projectiles will slow it, but you’ll still be limited to targeting knees or eyes.” And if they shot the eyes, they would have to utterly destroy the creature’s brain. The Imshee only needed the brainstem to remain intact for them to control the body.
John signaled for everyone to hold position and he stood, wiping his hands on his pants. “What’s the new plan?”
“Attack the hair.”
“What?” John’s voice went up an octave.
“The hair. Those hairs are the Imshee,” Tyce explained. “They’re a collective species, like bacteria. The clawed beast is an animal the Imshee grow on.”
John frowned, and now the other soldiers who had been helping him shifted uncomfortably. “But most of the ones we’re fighting now are hairless.”
Frustration washed through Tyce, but he couldn’t afford the emotion and he didn’t have time to explain everything to John. He was too unpredictable when his feelings were involved—his inability to throw Tyce to the wolves was proof of that. If he found out Tyce had thrown himself to the wolf, he would do something stupid.
Wolf. She liked that. A predator, but a quiet one who hunted by stealth. It suited her more than what others had asked of her. It felt like a name her previous Purpose would have liked.
Tyce needed time to understand a fraction of the thoughts that scampered through his head, and he had to focus on the immediate problem right now .
“The Imshee are driving their equivalent of horses toward us. They’re animals, not teenaged cannon fodder. So treat the hairless ones like animals. Make loud noises and flash lights. Scare them back toward the Imshee, and when the real Imshee come, target the hair. Destroy enough individuals, and the remaining ones will be left directionless until they can reorganize.”
“Define ‘target the hair.’ With what?” The men and women with John looked at him oddly. From their point of view, this must be a confusing conversation.
“Flamethrowers, acid, hell, use a damn fan blade out of an air blower,” Tyce suggested. “Whatever will damage the hair—that’s what you need.”
John blew out a breath. “Okay. Radio the others, and I’ll get back to engineering to pick up whatever you guys can find in the way of appropriate weaponry.”
“No!” Tyce almost shouted. “Send Ama for the weapons.” She would handle Tyce’s sacrifice better. She would get all philosophical and talk about unexpected paths and the universe, but she wouldn’t grieve over him or lose focus on the battle.
“Tyce?” John drew the word out.
“The soldiers on the line need you there. Pass the word about the Imshee and send Ama back.” Tyce tried to make his voice sound as firm as possible, and he had no idea how that worked because he had the definite impression that his vocal cords were not producing sound. His body was suspended inside the neural chamber. Aging would slow. She could do more for him than her previous Purpose. She understood humans more.
The ship’s thoughts sped through his brain, taking less time than the pause before John spoke again. “Why don’t you call her? Hell, brief all the soldiers on the new tactics over radio.” John knew something was wrong.
“Please. I’ll explain later,” Tyce begged. It wasn’t like he could keep this secret for long, after all. However, he needed to make sure his people were safe before John freaked out. He remembered how John would get the last week before exams. He and stress were not buddies.
“Fine.” John snapped the word out, so the second they won this fight, he would come looking for Tyce. And Tyce hated that once again, he had left John behind. He didn’t belong to either the Command crew or the Dragon crew, but he’d been Tyce’s friend, and now he would be alone... again. Tyce was the world’s shittiest friend.
Tyce focused on the engine room, hoping that the camera view in his brain would switch, but all he got back was a general sense of confusion. They were never allowed in the engine room, so why would she have cameras there? Tyce needed to invest some time in figuring out who the hell they were, but that was a problem for another time. Instead he concentrated on a mental image of Ama, focusing on that sense of an aural beam he had used to contact John. “Ama, can you hear me?”