by William King
That was not a thought I was particularly comfortable discussing. “I think the Brood want what everybody else does. To stay alive and propagate. I think assimilating other species is a combination of eating and breeding for them. I’ve heard theories that the more nodes an Overmind assimilates, the smarter and more powerful it becomes. It’s like adding more memory and processing power to a computer.”
I paused. She said, “That’s the longest speech I’ve ever heard you give, and all you did was talk about Assimilators and computers.”
“Have I offended your primitivist sensibilities?”
“You are not what I expected of the Feds.”
“We’re people, same as everybody else.”
“You won’t be if Raximander absorbs you.”
“I’ll just have to make sure that doesn’t happen, won’t I?”
“Not planning on dying just yet?” She almost smiled when she said it.
“Nope.” We fell silent again and watched the long lines of refugees flow in. The cold air glittered with the plumes of medical nanite sprays and echoed with the scared cries of scared people. Plumes of fire marked the night sky as shuttles burned down from orbit.
“Time for some sleep,” said Doctor Olson. She slipped away into the night. I stayed and watched the people flow in and thought about the way time passes.
Somewhere out in the darkness Raximander was watching, and so was whatever had sent him. I glanced across the spaceport. The enigmatic black spires of the Weapon Ship loomed over everything, like twin spears some dark god had plunged into the drifting snow. I thought for a moment I caught sight of a humanoid figure staring out of a crystalline porthole in its side. It was probably just a trick of the light.
Chapter Nineteen
I had barely returned to the mess when there was another incoming call. Beecher’s face appeared on the screen. He looked worried. Behind him I could see men kneeling and firing assault rifles. Humanoid forms advanced upon them from the darkness, weapons at the ready. I knew without having to be told exactly what had happened.
The Temperance Legion commander said, “It appears that we should have taken you up on your offer.”
He gave one of his small, ironic smiles. He seemed calm, except for the beads of sweat running down his forehead. He took off his glasses and polished them, then put them back in place. “We have come under attack by the Brood. Corpse warriors have taken over my people. It looks as if we are going to be overwhelmed. We have taken a position in the old City Hall. I have ordered my soldiers to hold the doorways for as long as we can. We request your aid.”
I could tell from his expression that last bit really hurt. He looked as if he had bitten down on something sour. Or possibly poisonous.
The Colonel said, “We are on our way.”
She looked over at me and said, “Stop grinning. You heard me. Weapon up. Get ready to go. We’re going to deploy everything we’ve got. It looks like your old buddy Raximander is back in business.”
I tried to think of something smart to say that all I could think of was the expression on Beecher’s face. “Things must be pretty bad for him to call us.”
“No shit.” The Colonel had a very good deadpan when she wanted to.
I picked up my reaper and checked the settings. I did a quick systems check on my suit. Everything appeared nominal. I patched myself into drone command and sent them running toward the shuttles. Ragequit and Lopez were doing exactly the same thing. Both of them looked grim. Mark was there getting his medical drones lined up. They were packing as many different sorts of antidote as he could manage.
“Ready to go?” I asked him.
“I don’t think I’ll ever be ready for this.”
“You get used to it.”
He just looked at me. “If you’re a moron.”
“You’ve got a bad attitude,” I told him.
“Coming from the prince of bad attitudes, I can only take that as a compliment.”
We leaped into the shuttle and strapped ourselves in.
There was none of this nonsense about slow takeoffs this time. We broke the sound barrier as we passed over the city. I did not feel any acceleration. I think we scared a lot of birds. They scattered over the buildings.
As the shuttle skimmed over the city roofs I could see warbirds doing strafing runs and dive-bombing targets. Hordes of corpse warriors raged across the open terrain. They weren’t taking cover. They weren’t doing anything but storming toward the bastion of the Temperance Legion. I could see lots of Legionaries in the windows and doorways, blasting away with assault rifles and machine guns.
We decelerated really quickly, the doors dilated, and we jumped out. The grunts deployed. Backed up by the warbirds, they made short work of any of Rax’s little minions who tried to stand in their way.
Raximander did not even seem as if he was trying. Maybe he was preparing some special surprise for us. I would not put that past him.
I led a squad of golems myself. A few of the Legionaries took pot shots at me. I could tell I was still not very popular with them. Ingrates.
I hosed down a small army of corpse warriors with the reaper. Headshot after headshot after headshot. It was the quickest and easiest way to stop them. All around me, robogrunts kept up the same thing.
I made my way to the stairs of City Hall, clambering over a pile of corpses as I did so. Assault rifle fire glanced off the Dyson fields of my armor. They were at full strength. Bullets were not going to do too much to them. The chain guns might though. I charged in through the arch, flanked by my grunts. The militia men restrained themselves. I suspect they were probably horrified by the sight of their former friends and colleagues assaulting the building.
Beecher came to meet me. He had a cap on his head and a gun in his hand and he looked as if he meant business.
“Stormtrooper 13, I’m glad that you could join us.” He sounded cool as a beer in an ice bucket even if there was fear in his eyes.
“I was in the neighborhood,” I said. He acknowledged my response with a wince.
“I see you’ve met our visitors,” he said. “They seem very determined to get into our public buildings.”
“They are citizens,” I said. “They’re entitled to come here.”
“You and I both know that that is no longer true. They ceased to be citizens, they ceased even to be human, the moment they sided with that alien thing out there.”
Legally speaking Beecher was completely correct. I was just trying to wind him up. I think he appreciated that as well.
“Is there anything we can do about them?” Otis asked. He looked concerned. It was exactly the opposite of what I would have expected. Beecher should have been the one expressing concern, politician that he was. Otis had seemed to be the fanatic. I wondered what had changed.
Beecher was quick to understand. “Otis has family out there. A wife and a couple of toddlers,” he said. This time there was sympathy in his voice, so well-modulated I could not tell whether it was fake or not. “I’m afraid he’s not yet ready to let them go.”
Otis stared at me. “There is a cure, isn’t there?”
“Not once they’ve gone beyond a certain stage,” I said. “Once they are fully assimilated there’s nothing we can do.”
“But until that point, you can do something.”
I nodded.
“Thank God,” he said. It looked like there was a possibility that Otis was going to decide that the Federal Government was not totally evil after all. Of course, I’ve been wrong about such things before.
“I thought your friend Raximander was supposed to be a master tactician,” Beecher said. “So far he’s done nothing but the most obvious frontal assaults.”
“I know,” I said. “That’s what worries me.”
Beecher gave me his razor blade smile. “I’m glad I’m not the only one around here that thinks that. What are we going to do now?”
“First of all we’re going to have to clear the area of Rax’s corpse warriors
,” I said. “Then we’re going to have to secure the square for use as a landing field and then we can bring in the air ambulances.”
Beecher nodded as if I was telling him exactly what he expected to hear. Probably was. I got the feeling that he was probably a very smart tactician given the chance.
“So what are we waiting for?” Otis asked.
“Nothing,” I said. “The rest of my squad and their drone troops are already out there. They’ve started the process.”
I checked in with the tactical grid. Ragequit and Lopez had both deployed their squads on the edges of the square and poured enfilading fire down onto the mass of Raximander’s troops. Once again cybertanks were approaching from the distance. Warbirds continued to divebomb the crowd.
I wondered whether Rax had suffered brain damage. He was usually so much better than this. Not that it would matter in the long run. If he managed to infect enough people he would have all the cannon fodder he needed to steamroller all opposition on this planet.
He must know what would happen if he did that. Perhaps that was what he was trying to provoke. This could turn into a real crisis for the Federal Government if we were forced to nuke our own citizens yet again. Did Raximander have that level of political sophistication? Almost certainly he did. Or at least, some of the people he’d eaten did.
I knew that there was something more going on here than met the eye. I was damned if I could figure out what it was though. Beecher looked at me and said, “You seem unusually thoughtful.”
I wondered how he could tell. The blazing skull hologram covered my helmet and I doubted anybody could read my body language through my kinetic armor. Maybe he was just good at guessing other people’s motives. He seemed like the sort. Where was Carla from Covert when I needed her?
That was a good question. She had been keeping a very low profile throughout this entire operation. That was usually not a good sign. I wondered what the shadow ops division hoped to gain from the situation. So far all the political wheeling and dealing seemed to be left in the hands of the Colonel. She was good at it but usually Carla had some input.
I was slowly sinking into a swamp of conjecture. What I needed to do was get out there and kill something.
“What I need to do is get out there and kill something,” I said. “Hold your positions. I’ll clear the area and then get back to you.”
The warbirds continued their strafing runs. I brought my grunts outside and ordered them to set the reapers to maximum power.
“Right you are, boss,” said Evil Dave. The configuration that was speaking was a monstrous bipedal gun platform. It had a chain gun on arm each arm mount, and it had reapers mounted in turrets on its shoulders and tracking its head. It was the sort of anthropomorphic illusion that Command loved.
I launched myself down the stairs and charged into the crowd of corpse warriors. I shot one in the head, broke the teeth of another with the butt of the reaper, and then flicked on the force bayonet. I decapitated three more with that and I shouted, “You’re losing it, Raximander.”
A hail of assault rifle fire smashed into my armor. Bullets pinged off the Dyson fields. The few that breached stopped short as they impacted on the kinetic plates. It felt as if it was raining. I knew that given a sufficient concentration of firepower it would feel a lot worse than that. I kept moving hoping that I was fast enough to confuse Rax’s aim.
“I do not understand what you mean, Stormtrooper 13,” Raximander said. Well actually half a dozen of his zombies said that. The words came out in a chorus. It did not stop them from attacking me. Raximander could fight and speak at the same time.
“You used to be so much better than this,” I said. “Where are the feints within feints? Where is the subtle planning?”
“Ah, I see,” Raximander said. “You’re trying to provoke me into revealing my plan.”
“I thought that since you like acting the villainous mastermind you might play along.”
One of the zombies charged at me with his bayonet leveled. I stepped to one side and smashed my armored fist into his face. He fell over and stopped moving. His companions did not miss a beat. “Under normal circumstances I would be only too happy to oblige, Stormtrooper 13. Unfortunately I cannot.”
“Cannot? Who’s going to stop you? I thought you were no longer responsible to your progenitor. Or was that just a little white lie?”
“I have other responsibilities these days.”
“You’re kidding me, right?”
More and more fire was concentrated on me. Raximander was definitely better at this talking and shooting thing than I was.
I threw myself flat, rolled along the ground, swept the legs of another corpse zombie out from under it and sprang to my feet shooting. I left an armed grenade behind me as a little surprise for the rest of the corpse warriors charging toward me. I raced away pivoting and shooting at the same time. The grenade exploded, tossing bodies into the air.
“Believe me, I am no longer under the control of my progenitor, at least as far as I can tell.”
This was something new and unusual. Was there doubt in Rax’s voice? I had never heard anything like it before. Maybe he really had come separate from his progenitor? And maybe I was going to wake up tomorrow as a peace-loving hippie pacifist. I could not let Raximander mess with my mind like this. Speaking of messing with minds, I put some more shots through corpse warrior heads just to keep myself in the game.
“You can tell me what you’re up to, Raximander. We’ve known each other for a long time.”
“Like I said, I would if I could but I can’t.”
“Is this some sort of new Brood strategy? Are you trying to confuse me into surrender?”
“It would not work,” Raximander said. “Confusion has never stopped you in the past. Neither has lack of thought.”
“You been listening on our closed band communications now, have you, Raximander? You’re starting to sound like certain members of my team.”
“That in no way surprises me, Stormtrooper 13. They doubtless have known you long enough to make a similar realistic assessment.”
I shot a few more of Raximander’s lackeys. “That hurt, Rax.”
“I apologize for giving any offense, Stormtrooper 13. Sometimes the truth hurts. And sometimes it is necessary to say it.”
“When has an Assimilator ever felt that was necessary?”
“I was not always an Assimilator,” Raximander reminded me. “As I told you, once I was a High Centurion of the Arkanoi Dominion. I was born to command. To make war. To lead armies and crush worlds.”
“My careers teacher never gave me any of those options. I’m jealous.”
“It is a pity,” Raximander said. “You would have enjoyed the battlefields of the Strange Eon. You would have been a worthy foe back then.”
Once again Raximander sounded almost sincere. He was better at these mind games than I was. Of course, some people say that I don’t have a mind.
I considered what Raximander had just said. This was the second time that he’d talked about the Arkanoi. I’d thought it was just a trick before, but could it be true? Was he really some surviving entity from the prehistoric battlefields of the Galaxy?
Or was I right in the first place, and this was just to yet another attempt to screw with my mind? It could easily be part of some Assimilator strategy but what it hoped to achieve I just could not tell. Then again, there was nothing new about that. The Assimilators were aliens. By definition their thought processes were going to be difficult, if not impossible, for me to comprehend.
“You don’t expect me to believe that, do you?” I shot a few more of his minions and glanced around the battlefield.
“I am serious. I have always had the greatest respect for you.” One of his minions clutched my leg. Another starting chopping away at me with an ax. I wondered where he had found that. It looked like it had come from a museum. Maybe it had, or maybe the locals simply took their ideology about returning to the old
ways to the next logical step. A small crack appeared in the ceramic. That wouldn’t be good if I let it stay there. My armor was going to need field repairs.
I blocked the next blow with my reaper then I kicked the minion in the balls. Raximander could override the pain easily enough but the force of the impact sent him staggering back. I shot him before he had time to recover. My own grunts moved into position round about me. I could see they had more or less cleared the plaza outside the town hall now.
“It seems as if our conversation is about to end,” said Raximander. “I look forward to continuing it at some future date.”
I shot his mouthpiece in the head and watched the shuttles spiral into land.
“He’s one creepy mofo,” Ragequit shouted. “I don’t know how you can talk with him like that. I would just shoot him.”
“I was just shooting him. I was also trying to figure out what the hell he is up to here.”
“You think he has a plan? Other than infect as many people as possible?”
“If he doesn’t, it would be the first time,” I said. “How much longer have we got before we hit the tipping point?”
“We’re looking at forty hours,” said the Colonel.
“Great,” I said. “Times a wastin’.’”
Chapter Twenty
Unsurprisingly, the plaza outside the town hall looked like a battlefield. Bodies lay everywhere and the peculiar smell of reaper-fried flesh rose over everything. Beecher walked beside me as we surveyed them.
“An impressive amount of carnage,” he said. He looked at the weapon in my hands. I could tell he was wondering where he could get his hands on one. “This is not the end of it though, is it?”
“It’s barely the beginning,” I said. “I have seen whole worlds killed by the likes of Raximander.”
“You think that will happen here?”
I did not have a glib answer for that. Warbirds were misting the city with clouds of aerosol nanites. They would hunt down and kill any of the Assimilator virus they could find. Given time they could sterilize the city. Of course, Raximander was in the tunnels below and that was not going to be purified as easily. Spraying this place was a containment measure for the present. Nothing more.