Defy the Fates

by Claudia Gray

  There are no exact data on how many mechs are destroyed this way. It’s not considered important enough to take note of.

  “Exactly,” Anjuli says. “You should take a look at the specs before you decide whether you’re willing to do this, Abel.”

  Abel makes one more adjustment to the engine and watches the indicators curve back toward normal. His ship will endure.

  Now he just has to find out if he will.

  The task ahead is theoretically survivable, Abel reminds himself several hours later, as he begins his descent into the access tube.

  Tube is not the most accurate description of this: a three-hundred-meter tunnel carved into the core of this desolate frozen rock. It’s a small planetoid, so it has no atmosphere to protect him and so little gravity that it cannot steady him. The main difference between being here and being in deep space is that, here, Abel’s in a lot more danger.

  The tunnel leads straight down, deep underground, and is only just wide enough to admit one individual in an exosuit. Dozens of sensor rings line the tunnel, glowing faintly orange in the darkness. There is no other illumination, save for the safety lights on his exosuit.

  If he touches a sensor ring, it will explode. If he damages his exosuit, he’ll be exposed to the cold vacuum of space, which will kill him faster than he’ll be able to return to the surface for rescue. And he has to successfully deactivate every sensor ring as he goes, or else removing the massive engine will set off a chain of explosions that will destroy him and the engine both.

  No one part of this is overwhelmingly likely to be fatal, although taken all together it is extremely hazardous. But the real danger will begin only after he’s entered the disruptor engine.

  This fact is not reassuring.

  The comm unit in his helmet crackles with Noemi’s voice: “Ready?”

  There’s no point in discussing his qualms; she knows the hazards already. He says only “Yes.”

  Abel sinks deeper into the tunnel, reaches the first sensor ring, and sets to work deactivating it. The small control lever above each ring has to be pushed into the open position. Doing so without damaging his exosuit is difficult—it requires real physical effort—but he manages. The second one goes like that, and the third, and all the way through to the eighth.

  Yet as he begins work on the eighth, he notices a small panel embedded deep in the stone—one not noted on the earlier plans. “Abel to Persephone,” he says. “I believe I’ve found a secret security fail-safe that—”

  Red lights activate on the panel. Abel shoves himself beneath it 0.113 seconds before a laser grid snaps into place above him, the beams sizzling at an intensity capable of slicing his body in half.

  “Abel?” The fear in Noemi’s voice is unmistakable. “Abel, do you read?”

  “I’m all right,” he says, looking down to see that an identical grid is glowing above the next sensor ring. “Unfortunately I appear to have activated a secondary line of security.”

  “Can you deactivate it?”

  “Yes.” The secondary security is, in and of itself, not very worrying. However, his review of the engine specs suggests this level of security may have activated other defense systems within the engine.

  “I wish I were there with you—”

  “Better that you aren’t,” he says. Abel can face these dangers, but it would be far more distracting if Noemi had to face them, too. His concern for her would undoubtedly occupy a large portion of his conscious thoughts, all of which need to be focused on his own survival.

  Abel deactivates one of the fields, then another, then another. By now he is half a kilometer within the moon. Nonetheless, it is not a relief when he sees the rough bronze-colored surface of the engine beneath him. He reaches down, readies himself, and hits the activation panel embedded within its surface.

  A hatch slides open—revealing dozens of rows of spikes thrashing within, extending and retracting in patterns incomprehensible to humans, too fast for their eyes to focus on. Abel, however, is not a human and can therefore focus on each spike. Logically this is an advantage, but he can take little satisfaction in it.

  “I’m here,” he says.

  Through comms Noemi answers, “Can you patch in a visual for us?”

  “I think you’d prefer it if I didn’t.”

  “It’s that bad?”

  “I’m going in.” Abel leaves it at that.

  Noemi hesitates before saying, very quietly, “Be careful.”

  She means for him to take care of himself, rather than be careful on the mission. His value to her as an individual is greater than the sum of all the things he can accomplish. Abel wonders if Burton Mansfield could ever have understood that.

  He lowers himself through the first layer of spikes, just before they punch through their holes with a CRUNCH. Holding his body in a tight crouch, Abel counts off the seconds until the pattern offers his next opening—

  Go!

  The spikes CRUNCH just above his head, so close that he feels a vague thump on his helmet. If the helmet is critically damaged, he’ll be as dead as though the spikes had pierced his skull.

  No human could ever pass through here, he silently reasons as he continues making his way to the center of the disruptor engine. Even if they possessed the pattern recognition skills and reflexes necessary, stress reactions would swiftly become extreme and incapacitate them.

  It subjectively feels much longer, but it’s only 12.1 minutes before he reaches the internal engine controls. Once he’s at the controls, floating in zero-G, he speaks through comms again. “I’m in.”

  “Thank God,” Noemi breathes. “But how are you going to get out again?”

  “That part is easier.”

  He levels his feet toward the floor, then turns on his mag boots. They thud down heavily, metal on metal, magnetism doing the work of gravity. This allows Abel to more closely study the small control area.

  The engine is designed to operate almost as an independent vessel; most deep-space machines of such enormous size are, for ease of transport. Secondary mag engines are attached and will power on when he activates the primary engine. When those secondary engines come online, they’ll activate other ship systems—such as vibration dampeners.

  The trick is surviving the three seconds before the dampeners take effect.

  A human might hesitate, take a deep breath, or say a prayer. Abel simply reaches for the control panel. None of his actions now make any difference in the ultimate outcome; he has to take the risk, regardless. He’ll survive or he won’t. He sees no point in dreading either alternative.

  There’s no air to transmit sound, but the vibration through the floor is enough. A dull roar fills Abel’s helmet as his entire body shudders. The shaking grows violent; Abel goes limp, trying not to resist—resisting will only get him hurt—but the thrashing is so bad it may make no difference.

  Within his skin, he is vividly aware of what is metal and what is flesh. They damage at different rates. Both are at risk if this doesn’t—

  An energy field closes around him, pillowy as cotton. Abel can still feel the vibration in his feet, but he’s able to stand steady. Although his head throbs, his nose doesn’t start bleeding again. (A relief, as this would be especially unpleasant in zero-G.) An internal sweep reveals that he has survived with only minor damage.

  Abel allows himself a smile as the vibrations grow more violent and spread outward from the engine into the surrounding rock.

  Cracks appear in the stone surrounding the engine. Dust floats like fog, unhampered by gravity, but it doesn’t obscure the destruction breaking out all around. Abel braces himself as quakes ripple out in greater and greater strength—then cuts the power down to baseline.

  It looks like he’s adrift in opaque mist. When he switches out of human vision, however, and scans more closely, he’s able to see the larger cavern that’s been carved in the center of this planetoid.

  “Abel to Persephone—”

  “Oh my
God,” Noemi says in a rush, “the sensor readings we’re getting—it’s exploding!”

  “Not so much exploding as liquefying,” he answers cheerfully. “Regardless, it’s finished. I’m safe within the engine, and a large space has been carved out from the center of the planetoid. Mining ship lasers should be able to cut a passageway for me to maneuver out within one point one four hours.”

  “Then… then you’ve done it. You’ve saved Genesis.” Noemi’s joy is evident in every syllable she speaks. “On behalf of my ungrateful planet, thank you.”

  “I didn’t do it for them,” he says. “At least, not primarily. I did it for you.”

  Within another hour and a half, the engine is free in space, surrounded by trails of space dust, ready to fight for Genesis. In the distance, the Krall Consortium ships are flashing their lights in applause.

  Multiple Consortium ships focus tractor beams on the engine in order to tow it from the system. As a convoy, they may attract attention—but from a distance, the engine will look like just another ship on sensor scans. This should allow them to tow it to the Earth system, where the plan appears to be to hide it in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, where it will be hooked up to the communications jammer. After that, it will be ready for battle.

  The Genesis forces will be in position to attack as soon as the Bellum Sanctum order is given. Earth will hardly have time to mount a defense.

  So Abel expects something of a hero’s welcome upon his return to the Persephone. Instead, as he uses the propulsion pack on his belt to return to the ship, he hears Noemi say via comms, “We’ve got trouble.”

  “More?” Abel says. He looks around, but from this vantage point he can see little but his ship ahead of him and blackness all around. “This is a prodigious amount of trouble, even for us.”

  Virginia’s laughter doesn’t conceal her nervousness. “Never rains but it pours. We’ve got an incoming Damocles.”

  A human might panic. Abel simply adjusts the propulsion pack to maximum speed.

  Once he’s on board, he hurries onto the bridge in his exosuit. On the viewscreen is an image of an enormous Damocles ship that has lumbered to the edge of the vast minefield, approaching closer to their position.

  “They weren’t anywhere near this sector,” Noemi mutters as she runs scans. “You think they’re programmed to protect the minefield if they see other ships in the area?”

  “A logical possibility.” Abel has passed through the minefield before, but always in a small, single ship that might go undetected by a Damocles. Dagmar Krall’s flagship and the other Vagabond vessels must have attracted more attention.

  From a distance, the Kismet minefield is invisible to the human eye, but Abel’s sharper vision picks up the tiny, dully bronze pinpoints against the blackness. Every one of those promises death to a ship that gets any closer to the Kismet Gate. The Gate hangs in space, a shimmering silver ring promising as much power and bloodshed as anything out of the ancient novelist Tolkien. With the Damocles approaching from the heart of the system, the dangers surrounding them are considerable.

  “This isn’t a normal Damocles ship,” Noemi says. “This one’s huge. At least double the size of the old ones. How many mechs does that thing carry?”

  “Too many,” Virginia says. “Nothing else matters.”

  “If we run for it, we’re going to draw more of the fleet near Kismet toward us,” Krall says via comms. “But I sure as hell don’t know how we’re supposed to take down a Damocles.”

  Abel does some quick calculations. “It would be inadvisable for us to allow the Damocles to get close enough for me to pit the mechs against each other again.”

  “Is that what happened at the Battle of Genesis?” Krall says. “You turned the mechs on each other? Interesting trick.”

  “Yes.” Abel thinks of the immense pain he felt, the way his nose bled afterward, and the damage he took. Gillian repaired that damage, but that avenue isn’t open to him again. “This time, we’ll require a different strategy.”

  Noemi squares her shoulders. “We have to attack them. Head-on, immediately.”

  “Attack?” Krall and Virginia say, almost in unison. Abel’s almost as surprised, though he swiftly follows her line of thought.

  “We go in as a unit,” Noemi continues as though the others hadn’t spoken. “All our ships, together. That’s what it will take to go up against a Damocles. If we wait, or go in at anything less than full force, we’re just giving them time to signal for reinforcements.”

  “That fleet would attack us after we fought a Damocles!” Virginia protests.

  Noemi answers, “They would—but we might have time to get away first.”

  “They’ll chase us all the way to the Cray Gate,” Krall says.

  “Even if they do, they won’t be able to keep up. We’ll have hours in the Cray system to scatter. Some ships can hide through the Blind Gate; others can head straight for the Stronghold Gate; and a few of you might even be able to get landing clearance on Cray.” Noemi’s dark eyes are unfocused, an expression Abel has learned to associate with intense thought. “With the incredibly high levels of space traffic all over the place, and the general disorder? We’ll have time to get good and lost.”

  Krall’s tone shifts from alarmed to merely wary. “That’s assuming their fleet isn’t trailing behind them even now.”

  Noemi shakes her head. “Take it from someone who’s fought against a lot of Damocles: Every single one of them is assumed to be able to take care of a whole lot of enemy ships. So the others will hold back from an initial fight; as far as they know, it’s taken care of. But if we scatter, they’ll pursue immediately.”

  “This way we only have to fight one Damocles,” Krall says. “The bad news is even one Damocles is hard to kill.”

  Finishing his inner calculations of risk and probability, Abel says, “As previously indicated, I won’t be able to send a single command to all the mechs at once this time.” He thinks back to Gillian’s failed effort to install Tether technology in his brain. Would that tech help him control other mechs, or perform other useful feats? Silently he reminds himself to explore his Tether capabilities in the near future. “But I should be able to interfere with their operating systems, which will make each individual Queen and Charlie far less effective. That gives the Kismet vessels a chance to escape.”

  “Life would be a lot easier if we could get through that Kismet Gate,” Krall grouses. “Which is why the damned minefield is there in the first place.”

  Abel and Noemi exchange glances as Virginia shudders. As the only individual capable of piloting safely through the Kismet minefield, he could volunteer to take the Katara through. But that would only maroon the rest of the fleet in the Kismet system.

  He may be the most advanced mech in the galaxy, Abel thinks, but he has some limits.

  “Okay, back to reality, which is a big fight in the near future. We’ll provide cover for the Persephone while Abel takes care of those mechs.” Krall now sounds more confident. Abel wishes he felt the same. “Heading in on your mark.”

  By now Virginia’s long face has gone slack with dismay. “Tell me that we don’t have to do what I think we have to do.”

  “We have to let the Damocles get closer before we attack,” Noemi says.

  “That’s what I thought we had to do.” Virginia slumps back in her seat. “Oh, rapture.”

  In precisely sixteen seconds, the Damocles is in range. Its white bulk fills most of the viewscreen as its panels open to release flocks of warrior mechs. Queens and Charlies zoom out in their exoskeletal suits, more like flexible ship hulls than regular exosuits; these turn each mech into something that can move as fast as a starfighter and is equally hard to damage. Most of the mechs head toward the Katara, the largest ship—but that still leaves dozens free to head straight for the Persephone.

  “Incoming,” mutters Noemi. The mechs are approaching fast.

  At the Battle of Genesis, Abel had to ti
e his entire consciousness to the ship in order to reprogram the attacking mechs. For what he needs to do now, he requires only a partial connection. Once he’s accomplished that, he chooses one of the closer mechs, a Charlie, and fires a beam that should scramble its navigation. The Charlie vibrates—in a human, the reaction would be called a seizure—then throws itself against another mech nearby. Exploding light and debris fill the viewscreen in the instant before Abel moves the screen to target again.

  And again.

  And again.

  Most of the mechs spiral off into the oblivion of space, but a few others are destroyed.

  Consortium ships do their part, firing on individual mechs or mimicking the scrambler signals from the Persephone. Mechs blow one another up, or zoom around crazily without direction, or even collide with some of the outermost mines in the minefield. In effect it creates a gap in the minefield—which could be dangerous for Genesis—but that hole is only on the outskirts, nowhere near the Gate itself.

  Finally, the last few mechs fly back to the Damocles ship, which hangs still and ominous in the sky.

  “Good work, Persephone,” Krall says through the speakers. “It looks like the Damocles has shut down completely.”

  “More likely it’s only in stasis,” Abel replies. “Attempting to regenerate damaged mechs while all but shutting down core systems.”

  “Remember how we figured other Earth ships wouldn’t show up while they thought a Damocles could take us out?” Virginia asks. “Well, now the Damocles is shut down. How are they going to react to that?”

  “They’ll come,” Noemi says. “Not right away. But soon.”

  The enemy is asleep—but not for long.

  17

  NOEMI’S PULSE POUNDS LIKE A DRUMBEAT IN HER VEINS—a military tattoo, a call to action. Her whole life, she’s been afraid of Damocles ships. Every history holo they watched in school showed the enormous hulk of a Damocles at the heart of every battle. As soon as she began preliminary military training at age twelve, she learned how dangerous they were. Like the proverbial sword they’re named for, Damocles ships hang above worlds as a constant, silent threat of the damage Earth can do—and will do—to any planet that steps out of line.