It was fifty meters from the lift to the roof access—one long hallway with only locked doors on both sides. The temptation to sprint to the other end was great, but better for them to move carefully and silently.
So they crept down the hall, Rogers taking extra care not to bang the bulky pack against the walls. When they reached the end, Selene activated a button embedded in the wall. A panel in the ceiling slid open, and a ladder descended. She braced herself, grabbed onto the first rung and climbed.
She’d been bitching for days about needing to see what the situation on the surface looked like, but now that the moment approached…she wanted to turn away.
Dry, acrid air assaulted her lungs as she rose through the opening. Instantly her Glaser was out, sweeping across the roof.
Focused as she was on identifying and neutralizing any threats, her eyes registered the scene before her brain did. Finding the roof empty, the landscape beyond it quickly bombarded her awareness, and her arms dropped weakly to her sides.
She wanted to turn away. The urge to sink to her knees in despair was overpowering, but she wouldn’t do it. She was the leader, dammit, and she had to be strong. Always.
She nodded to Rogers. “Let’s get the drones in the air and get out of here before one of those patrolling ships decides to investigate this roof.”
DAF Command transformed into an insidious maze on their return trip, and they were the rats. As Selene had feared, one too many errant sounds had raised the Rasu’s alert level, and now they seemed to guard every hallway. Ava requested permission to start shooting three separate times; she denied it all three times. There were a minimum of a dozen Rasu in the building, and those odds meant certain death if this became a shooting war.
A branching hallway waited for them ahead. Selene briefly considered heading back to the armory and taking a fifth drone to use as a scout, but military drones were too bulky for in-building surveillance. Still, she was considering regretting her decision.
She slid along the wall until she was able to see down the left hallway and found it mercifully empty. Except they needed to go right. She peeked around the corner—and froze.
A bipedal Rasu strode toward them, its stance conveying alert watchfulness. Three meters away and closing, so she didn’t dare cause so much as a ripple in the air.
In the dim hallway, its form presented as an inky, monotonous shadow of death-seeking metal.
Ηq (visual) | scan.(thermal-infrared)(240°:60°)
Thermal readings barely registered, but far-infrared radiation leaked off the form in waves.
The Rasu was going to pass less than a meter from her, and she willed the shadows to envelop her in greater darkness. The enemy bore no visible eyes, yet she swore she could feel its probing gaze nonetheless.
A thunderous roar erupted from deeper in the building to shake the walls, and the Rasu took off running toward the commotion.
No time to worry about what had caused the explosion. She whispered for Ava and Colonel Rogers to follow her, and they rushed through the now-clear hallway, careened around a corner, then another—then they were once again in the lobby. An Asterion cast in shadows waited at the lift. “Hustle it!”
She didn’t argue. The three of them leapt onto the lift, and it began descending into the depths.
Once they reached the basement, however, she whipped on Joaquim. “What was the explosion? Your handiwork?”
Even in the dim lighting of the basement she could swear he was smirking. “I suspected you’d need a diversion on that last stretch, so I detonated my little improvised power bomb early. The Rasu won’t be getting any further intel out of those military servers.”
“I see…” she sighed, overcome by a wave of bone-weariness “…good work.”
“You’re welcome.”
15
* * *
NAMINO
Camp Burrow
Everyone crowded around Joaquim to watch the first footage arriving from the drones, but curiosity quickly transformed into horror, then despair. In less than a minute, most of the onlookers had slunk away to their claimed space in the bunker, defeatism weighing down their features and sluggish steps.
The warriors and leaders stayed, however, refusing to look away. If they expected to fight this enemy, they had to do it with their eyes open.
The footage showed in bloody color and sharp relief what Joaquim already knew: the Rasu were having their way with the city. At least twenty enormous enemy vessels hovered directly above the crumbling skyline, ready to vaporize anything non-Rasu that dared to move. Bipedal Rasu combed through every building still standing. They carted off hardware, materials…and people. Joaquim watched as half a dozen Asterions were rounded up and prodded into a morphing Rasu cage. Once full, the cage lifted off and flew toward one of the vessels hovering overhead.
“Godsdammit!” Joaquim searched around for something to hit. Not finding anything suitable for abuse, he slapped his cheeks then dragged his hands roughly down his face.
“They’re restarting their experiments on us.” Selene sounded entirely too calm, per usual, though her expression was grim.
“Yes. So all the work we did to destroy their stronghold in our galaxy was for nothing.”
“That’s not true. We refused to grovel and submit to their demands. These people here are being taken by force. We’re not serving them up on a platter.”
“I doubt any of those prisoners care how we take pride in our moral stance.”
“I realize they don’t, Lacese. I’m just saying—”
“I get it. Can we stop them from taking more prisoners? Intercept these cage transports before they haul our people away?”
Selene dropped her head into her hands, though she kept one eye on the visuals. “Without any advance warning of where they’re planning to round prisoners up, I don’t see how.” She sighed. “Why didn’t those people go to one of the bunkers?”
“Fear freezes people. The prospect of moving probably seemed more terrifying to them than staying put.”
“True.” She regarded him curiously. “I’m surprised you—”
He paused one of the visuals. “What’s this structure here?”
A tower of aubergine metal about a hundred meters tall stood at the center of three concentric rings of lower Rasu structures; the diameter of the outermost ring stretched for half a kilometer. Hundreds of bipedal Rasu and small craft moved to and from the various structures comprising the rings, while additional units arrived and departed from the facility. “It appears as if everything not being ferried up to the big ships is being brought here.”
“Makes sense. They’ve built their own central processing hub. Where is this?”
Joaquim checked the data stream coming from the drone in question. “On the outskirts of downtown to the northwest. 6.2 kilometers from here.”
Selene leaned in to inspect the visual more closely as he restarted the feed. “The rings are clearly focused on resource management, but what’s the purpose of the tower?”
“Power generation, maybe? I’m not sure.”
Grant had been sitting quietly beside Marlee, both of them acting shell-shocked by what they were seeing, but now he glowered at the tower. “It’s appropriately big and menacing, so it must be important. Could it have something to do with the quantum block?”
Joaquim shrugged. “I don’t think so. The block was activated long before this tower existed.”
“True.” Grant rubbed at his eyes; none of them were getting much sleep. “We need to find out where or how the block’s being generated. To my mind, the only thing we can do that might actually make a real difference here on the ground is disable the quantum block. Somehow.”
Selene dropped her chin into a hand. “Lacese, can you instruct one of the drones to move in and get a closer inspection of this compound?”
“Nope. So long as the block remains active, I can’t communicate remotely with them. They’ll execute on their existing programming,
and nothing else.” Joaquim planted his hands on the floor and considered the woman opposite him. “I agree with Grant about the block, but until we know more about it, we’re left with disrupting the Rasu’s occupation however we can. If they were taking the prisoners to this compound, I’d say we should storm it right now. But they’re taking them beyond our reach. So what else can we do?”
“You’re asking my opinion?”
“I am. You were intimately involved with the planning and execution of Project Guerilla, which put us all down here in the first place. What else does it entail?”
“Having a lot more weapons and trained fighters on hand than we do. We didn’t anticipate the quantum block. I’m afraid for all intents and purposes, we are all that exists of Project Guerilla.” She studied the visuals from one of the other drones, which panned across a block that had once been a park and was now a crater. “I think our first order of business should be to concentrate on reaching other survivors who have made their way underground.”
“What good is it going to do us? Without communications, the scattered bunkers will remain isolated even if people are surviving in them. We can’t coordinate activities or report breaches or Rasu movements.”
“If we make contact, it will show people they aren’t alone.”
“Again I ask, what good is it going to do for anyone? Alone or not, they’ll die all the same. We have to do something to hurt the Rasu. Slow them down.”
Selene sat up straighter, the better to throw her hands in the air. “What, Lacese? What, exactly, can we do?”
“Disruptive incursions. We can use the footage from the drones to identify Rasu hotspots. Let’s get up there and fuck up whatever they’re doing, every way we can. We’re all that exists of Project Guerilla? Okay, let’s be Project Guerilla.”
Her gaze drifted across the bunker, where a pall had fallen over the huddled masses. “We have, what, seven or eight people who can fight? It’s not much of a hit squad against an enemy as formidable as this one.”
Joaquim groaned in growing frustration. “It’ll be enough to start. Look, Panetier, I can’t breathe in here. It feels like we’re trapped in a communal grave, slowly suffocating. I have got to get outside and shoot something.”
16
* * *
NAMINO STELLAR SYSTEM
CAF Ghost G-2
The horde of Rasu enveloping Namino resembled ants scrambling over a lump of discarded food. Caleb stopped counting at two thousand enormous warships, never mind the tens of thousands of smaller ships scurrying about.
The Rasu knew they had struck gold here.
No physical marker indicated when he passed through the quantum barrier, but his eVi messaging system abruptly dropped out, as did several other exanet-dependent functions.
Caleb chuckled wryly as he thought back to the last time this had happened, on Portal Prime after Mesme’s dragon kidnapped Alex. Here he was once again, piloting a ‘borrowed’ ship on a mission to rescue someone he loved. Yet everything about his life had changed since then, and he couldn’t help but wonder if it was all changing once again now. Alex, Marlee, Akeso…their future and his place in it was shrouded by the enemy arrayed in front of him.
But he didn’t have time to muse maudlin over the good and bad of it, so he set the memory aside and adopted a course that should deposit him in the vicinity of Namino One.
Even given the size of the armada, on a planetary scale expansive regions remained free of Rasu, and he was able to slip the Ghost through their net while staying more than half a megameter from any Rasu vessel.
The atmospheric entry was brutal, though the pummeling forces posed no risk to the Ghost’s adiamene hull. But the ship was tiny—so tiny Marlee was going to have an uncomfortable ride home in the cramped space behind his seat—and sported no inertial dampeners and only minimal shielding to act as a buffer. His brain rattled around in his skull, ratcheting up the headache he’d endured since the coup attempt to a torturous level. Once he made it through the atmosphere, his eVi could initiate a mitigation routine, for all the good it was apt to do. Akeso’s frantic objections to his chosen course of action screamed in his mind and wound his stomach into a nauseating knot, and this was before he’d raised a hand against a single Rasu.
At last the skies cleared to reveal a burning and broken city in the distance. Two dozen cruiser-sized Rasu vessels hovered above the wrecked skyline, and a swarm of black dots darted in every direction beneath them.
He slowed to approach cautiously and give the Ghost’s vaunted camouflage technology maximum opportunity to work its magic. As such, he had plenty of time to study the scene.
Off to the left, a sprawling region of low-rise structures and cemented stretches of land—a military or industrial facility—lay in smoldering ruins. Between it and the city proper, multiple levtram cars had been thrown off their rails and upended. On both sides of the route, the shattered remains of suburbs and townlets gradually gave way to what had once been an expansive collection of gleaming towers. Now, though, none—save one—stood higher than ten stories, and most had seen their frameworks shorn away in jagged pieces.
That single tower stood tall at what might be the geographic center of the city, intact but not untouched. Gaping holes marred the glass windows across multiple levels and…he squinted and zoomed his ocular implant…multi-limbed, spider-like Rasu crawled along the façade, dashing into and out of the ruptures. He shuddered. Intelligent spiders larger than a human were not a welcome development.
But he needed to focus now, for the outer edge of the radiating destruction rapidly approached. Nika had given him a schematic of the underground tunnels and bunkers the Omoikane Initiative had constructed or upgraded in preparation for a Rasu invasion, but now that he was here, he realized he had a problem. The entire landscape of the city had changed, and few identifiable landmarks included on the schematic still stood. The schematic did include compass markings, so he wouldn’t be setting off completely blind. Nonetheless, finding one of the cleverly hidden entrances in a foreign city he’d never before set foot in that was being systematically demolished?
Well, it wasn’t as if he’d thought this was going to be easy.
His second problem: he didn’t dare set the Ghost down too close to downtown, or Rasu were bound to eventually run over or mangle it without even recognizing what they’d done. He needed the ship to get Marlee home, so he needed to secure it someplace safe. But the farther away from the city he stashed it, the more lethal territory he’d be forced to cross—and for them both to cross on the return trip.
He settled for landing beside a long, low structure that had been gutted and now sat abandoned, five kilometers from the standing tower. He situated the ship far enough away that if the remaining walls of the structure collapsed, they wouldn’t hit the Ghost, yet close enough that the walls would hopefully provide some degree of protection for so long as they stood.
After switching the ship to low-power mode, which kept the stealth measures active, he stepped through the checklist he’d prepared. He retrieved the archine blade, his Daemon and one Veil from the backpack, then double-checked its remaining contents: an extra Veil for Marlee, first aid supplies, a canteen of water, and a handful of energy bars. Satisfied, he climbed out of the cockpit, clipped the weapons and the Veil to his pants, and breathed in arid, warm air tinged with smoke and ashes.
He stretched out his arm in front of him, frowning. His fingertips remained inside the cloaking field’s range, but he worried the Veil might not be functioning. It was Kat tech turned Prevo tech, which meant quantum programming. Dammit! Stupid of him to not account for this and dig up an old, pre-Prevo cloaking device before he left, but he was woefully out of practice at this.
His eyes closed as he reached for the tranquility of Akeso’s living forest…and found solely darkness. Was Akeso denying him entry to their shared world? Or was the mental block of his own making?
Either way, it was probably for the best. Tra
nquility had no place in a killer’s heart. He’d learned years earlier how to quiet—but not silence—Akeso’s endless thoughts and intentions, and now he worked to build a stronger, more resilient wall between him and his companion. It felt like he was closing himself off from one half of his soul, but if he wanted to live through this ordeal, he had no choice.
A solemn chill descended upon him as he turned his attention back to his mission. He decided he’d wear the Veil anyway, at least until he confirmed it wasn’t functioning. The extra Veil module weighed almost nothing, so he’d bring it along as well. But if the tech was dead, sneaking through the heart of the city promised to be a much more challenging task.
A steady stream of rumbles and booms echoed out from downtown; the Rasu were not quiet about their work. He watched a transport-sized ship rise above a gutted building in the distance to dock with one of the cruisers darkening the sky. Ferrying materials, intel, or worse.
So many people were suffering here. He’d record what he encountered when he was able to, note everything he saw and share it with Nika once he and Marlee escaped the planet, but he had to accept the reality that he couldn’t save all of the people here. With a little luck and a lot of remembered skill, maybe he could save one.
He secured the backpack on his shoulders and set off.
Akeso’s agitated sensations of protest escaped past his mental wall in fragments as he crept along the ruined streets of devastated neighborhoods. The mere atmosphere, the still-smoking remains of destruction on display, disturbed his companion. Or disturbed him, which fueled a spiraling feedback loop between them.
I warned you long ago that not all Others were peaceful.
Inversion (Riven Worlds Book Two) Page 11