“Yah!” Yazra’h yelled and struck the ugru again, and this time it reacted as if she had stepped on a landmine. This was the response she had been trying to provoke for the past ten minutes. With a snuffling roar, the ugru lifted up on its tree-like back legs, raising meaty front arms, each as large as a cannon barrel, and used them as battering rams. The monster swung so swiftly that Yazra’h barely had time to yell before it sent her flying.
Anton expected to hear the crack of bone and see blood spray out of her mouth, but Yazra’h spun in the air and fell on her hands and knees. Somehow, she still managed to look graceful.
The ugru rounded on her, and she sprang back up, holding the two crystal prickers as if they might scare the beast. It thundered toward her. Yazra’h bounced out of the way, laughing in a manner that Anton found completely inappropriate.
“Come fight me!”
The ugru charged toward her. Yazra’h darted sideways. The beast responded with surprising swiftness and agility, and she startled it by running straight at it. At the last minute, she jumped into the air, pressed her palms on its shoulders as she flipped herself, and landed behind the creature. She slapped its thick hide and poked again with her tiny stingers.
The ugru managed to anticipate some of her tricks. With another tremendous swat, it sent Yazra’h flying again. Although she landed on her feet, Anton could tell she was hurt, but he knew she would be insulted if he rushed to offer aid. In fact, any such attempt would likely get him trampled. Unable to concentrate on his reading anymore, he watched the fight continue.
“Don’t you think you should leave the poor thing alone now?” he called.
“I must practice and become proficient. There is a war coming.”
“Yes, and your skills will be of great use if we are threatened by a herd of ugrus, but I doubt this will help against the Shana Rei.”
Yazra’h backed away. “I see your point, Rememberer Anton.” She winced as she moved, and he hoped she wasn’t severely injured.
Once she stopped provoking it, the ugru quickly became docile and began to snuffle at the food offerings on the practice field. In less than a minute, the beast had forgotten entirely about her.
Yazra’h came back to Anton, panting and sweaty. “Were you impressed?”
“I am always impressed—your fighting skill is unequaled. I just hope I can impress you with some discovery I make in the old records.”
Her brows knitted together. “I am already impressed with that, Rememberer Anton. You can do a difficult thing that is beyond me. Together we are certain to find a way to defeat any enemy.”
Anton wasn’t so sure, but he appreciated her confidence.
CHAPTER
59
GENERAL NALANI KEAH
From the bridge of the Kutuzov, Keah commanded the surviving CDF ships as they fell back and tried to defend Earth. They kept fighting as they retreated from the ruins of the Lunar Orbital Complex, and she lost three more Mantas on the way.
Waves of bugbot battleships were dumping doomsday blasts on entire continents below. Dozens of major cities had already been obliterated. Millions must be dead. She swallowed hard. It couldn’t be billions yet—could it?
This was already far worse than Relleker.
Anyone with common sense and a functional ship had already tried to escape, but most of those were wiped out by pursuing bugbots. The angular black ships were chasing down terrified human pilots for sport, while others continued the wholesale extermination on the surface.
“I needed more time to build up our forces, damn it,” she muttered to herself. More time! She hadn’t even been able to load up her Juggernaut with sun bombs from Dr. Krieger’s facility.
The Kutuzov plowed through the flurry of robot ships, and Keah watched the slaughter ahead. She stood up from her command chair because she was so furious. Her Juggernaut fired every remaining weapon in its arsenal, but even that could not protect the last streams of evacuees that tried to escape from orbit. Any fleeing vessel looked to have about a ten percent chance of getting away—terrible odds, but the chances of survival for anyone left on the planet would be far less. Thanks to her insistence, Earth’s population had seen images of the massacre of Relleker, so they knew exactly what was coming. But they couldn’t do anything about it.
Maybe she should have kept the threat confidential, let all those doomed people sleep cozily in their beds for a few more days. “What purpose did it serve for us to tell them all to prepare? Prepare how? Are they hiding in their basements? For all the good that’ll do!”
“Most people would rather know their fates, General,” said First Officer Wingo. “You made the right decision.”
“And some of those people are indeed getting away,” Lieutenant Tait pointed out.
She felt sick to see that her entire CDF force amounted to no more than a hundred heavy ships.
Beyond the rubble of the LOC, a sudden blossoming of brilliant explosions looked like suns bursting inside the heart of the shadow cloud. Keah gawked in surprise. “What the hell? Enhanced magnification!” Her rear screen showed a grainy image, still distorted by chaotic entropy waves. The dark nebula and the hexagonal cylinders sparkled and collapsed, bombarded by an unexpected booby trap of sun bombs. Dozens of them, right inside the shadow cloud. “Good Lord—I guess Dr. Krieger decided to make use of his inventory.”
Patton said, “Wish we had more sun bombs.”
“I’ll take my victories wherever they come.” Keah allowed herself a warm grin. “I bet the Shana Rei just felt a kick in the nuts.”
Though diminished and wounded, the roiling cloud swirled forward to engulf the remaining fragments of the LOC, and she knew that Krieger and his fabrication facilities were gone. Unlike Admiral Handies, who tried to run away in his Juggernaut, Krieger had actually made a difference … at least a small one.
“I’m continuing my attack, General,” announced Admiral Haroun, darting in and out with his battered Okrun. “Jazers and railguns are mostly depleted. I don’t have any sun bombs left, but laser cannons are recharging. That’s another hundred robot ships destroyed, but I’m not really keeping count.”
Haroun yelped as a weapons blast struck his battleship, and he had to reel away.
“Destroying a hundred enemy ships is a good start, Admiral,” Keah answered. “Now do that ten thousand more times, and we’ll win.”
The numbers were completely hopeless. That was a fact, not despair. She didn’t want to run from a fight, but she had a hundred ships against hundreds of thousands. The people on Earth were wailing for help—just like at Relleker.
She watched another Manta explode as a swarm of bugbot ships cut it off, engulfed it, and fired relentlessly until the ship broke into flaming fragments. She could order her CDF ships to stay here and keep shooting at enemy targets until they themselves were destroyed. And then what? They could never save the population of Earth and it wouldn’t help the Confederation.
“Somebody give me a new alternative, damn it!”
She heard only the overlapping pleas on the open comm channels mixed with a litany of damage reports. She saw the flashes of weapons fire in space, and watched dark scars being sketched over the surface of the Earth. The robot extermination bombs were now sweeping across Europe.
“General, look at the screen!” Sensor Chief Saliba pointed as a swollen projectile of pure fire rolled past them. Several bridge crewmembers leaped to their feet.
Crackling, flaming ellipsoids hurtled in from interplanetary space, streaking toward Earth like tracer bullets.
“Faeros? What the hell! Full sensors,” Keah said. “Where are they coming from? How many?”
“Approximately fifty, General.”
Keah stared in awe as the fiery elementals joined the fray. “Haven’t they already caused enough damage?” In the past, thousands of enraged faeros had pummeled Earth’s Moon until it shattered into fragments. Now the fireballs were back, and Keah hated them.
But she chang
ed her mind as soon as the faeros slammed into the clusters of bugbot ships. Countless robot vessels exploded as the fiery ellipsoids tore through them, scattering their clusters and driving them from Earth’s orbit. Keah herself joined the rising cheer.
Reacting, the black robots swarmed around the faeros, attacking like suicidal hornets, but their energy weapons were not at all effective against the elementals. The fireballs swooped around Earth’s orbit, knocking the rest of the robot formations into disarray.
Keah wasn’t going to complain about it. She transmitted to all of the surviving ships, “Let’s not take any more damage. Pull back and implement emergency repairs where possible—even if this breather lasts for only half an hour, let’s make it count.”
The sheer unexpectedness of the arrival had sent the bugbots reeling, but the faeros were as capricious as the Shana Rei were chaotic. Even fifty elemental fireballs could only do so much damage. The flaming beings ricocheted through the black ships and clumsily destroyed numerous evacuating human vessels as well.
The Klikiss robots were not the enemies of the faeros, however, and never had been. The fireballs swooped directly toward the oncoming Shana Rei shadow cloud.
CHAPTER
60
DEPUTY ELDRED CAIN
After touring Dr. Krieger’s sun-bomb factories with General Keah, Cain made his way to his mansion built on the edge of what had been Madrid. There, he received the first frantic reports about the Shana Rei, and he knew with cold dread what was going to happen.
Since it served as CDF headquarters, Earth had more warships in residence than any other world in the Confederation. Deputy Cain had the utmost confidence in General Keah. He knew she would fight the battles that could be fought and win any victory that could be achieved, given her resources. He also doubted it would be enough.
Countless civilian ships scrambled to evacuate, but only a handful of the world’s billions would ever manage to get away, and a significant number of those would be destroyed in space as they tried to flee the solar system.
As the enemy plunged in toward Earth, he realized the rest of the decision process was out of his hands. He was a pragmatist, and he had closely studied the images of Relleker. As the battles raged at the LOC and more than a million black robot warships came in unabated, Cain understood in his heart that Earth was lost. The Shana Rei and the robots would attack with more destructive force than they had used against any previous target.
Now that he’d returned to his mansion, Cain was more than an hour from any government center. He had purposely built his mansion far from population centers, and he wasn’t going to be able to arrange an evacuation. He ran the options in his mind, didn’t like his chances, and instead decided how he would prefer to spend that last hour or so.
He clung to precious memories of humanity’s high points. Night had fallen over the Madrid impact crater, but the dark sky was etched with claw marks of fire, the orange exhaust trails of robot battleships racing over Europe. The ships dropped devastator bombs that were far more deadly and more precisely targeted than the barrage of meteor impacts that had caused so much destruction at the end of the Elemental War.
Overhead, the battle provided a terrific light show. Multiple sunrises filled the sky as CDF ships deployed their last sun bombs. No doubt the flashes wreaked havoc among the attackers, but not enough. It would never be enough.
Cain was astonished when flaming ellipsoids rolled in like burning cannonballs. “Faeros? Now that is unexpected.”
He watched from his balcony, looking out at what had once been Madrid, home to the Prado, one of humanity’s most amazing art museums … the loss of which had been as momentous to him as the loss of all those lives. He had spent years trying to collect and restore the remnants of humanity’s great art: works by Whistler, Goya, Hieronymus Bosch, Van Gogh, and his favorite, Velázquez.
Cain went inside his home now, turning his back on the raging conflict as he walked slowly through the gallery, stopping to admire the nuances, the imagination, and the depth with which those masters imbued their paintings. The soft display lights flickered from the disruptive battle over Earth, but once his standby power blocks kicked in, the illumination grew steady again.
Hands behind his back, he drank in the lush details, the swirls and enthusiasm of “Starry Night,” then the gritty horror of Goya’s “Saturn Devouring His Son,” and the many works of Velázquez—a well-respected but, in Cain’s opinion, underrated genius. He stood there knowing that these masterpieces would soon be destroyed, that he was the last person to lay eyes on them.
The shadows were coming.
Not far away, a gigantic hemisphere of light wiped out another Spanish city—probably Toledo, given the position. There was no place to hide. Nowhere safe. The sky was so full of explosions and energy beams it resembled confetti. The blasts of color and swirls of vapor trails looked almost like Van Gogh’s painting. A starry night, indeed.
He went to his home comm center and tuned it to the Kutuzov’s command frequency. The screen showed the Juggernaut’s bridge filled with shouts, sparks, explosions. His transmission was barely loud enough to be heard over the mayhem. “I know you’re busy, General. I just wanted to tell you to keep up the fight. You will find a way.”
Keah was haggard, her hair tangled, her face drawn. “Not now, Deputy.” An explosion rocked the bridge. “Increase the starboard shields! Do we have any railgun projectiles left? Yes, Mr. Patton, I’m talking to you!”
“Farewell, General,” Cain said.
Keah gave him a quick look. “What the hell are you doing, Deputy? Get out of—”
An explosion roared nearby—not the Kutuzov, but at the Madrid crater. Robot ships screamed through the air, strafing the ground, and Cain realized that he was cut off. Hundreds of thousands of black warships swept over Earth for the coup de grâce.
Cain emerged again onto the broad balcony, where he had often sat to study the stars or watch the frequent meteor showers. Now, though, the stars had vanished in an entire quadrant of sky. A swirling opaque black shadow unfurled like a blanket descending upon Earth.
Cain couldn’t tear his eyes away as darkness fell.
CHAPTER
61
KOTTO OKIAH
The miracles grew more amazing as his survey craft cruised through the void, delving deeper into a nothingness overlaid with paradoxes. Piloting cautiously, Kotto approached the glowing bright spots of structure, patterns imposed on the inner workings of the sideways universe.
He squinted, pressed his face against the windowport, but the harder he tried to stare, the less focused those vibrant fingerprints seemed to be. “How close are we?”
The navigational systems ranged outward with an array of sensors, but the two compies remained at a loss. “We are sorry, Kotto,” said GU. “We have no reference points for our location, nor any anchor for our destination.”
“Then let’s keep flying closer to whatever they are. I sure don’t think they’re the Shana Rei.” He felt no fear, only curiosity—which was foolish, he knew, but at this point, he had already committed himself. Kotto meant to gain answers—all the answers, if possible. He had always wanted to know.
The smudges of phosphorescence appeared elsewhere around them, seeming to move like mirages. Either Kotto’s piloting was woefully inadequate, or the distribution of those other things continued to deviate. He launched forerunner probes that hurtled ahead, scanning and sending back readings that were at first baffling and then overloaded. He studied the screens and muttered, “That’s not helpful at all.” With a sigh, he looked backward, although the emptiness behind looked no different from the emptiness ahead. “Maybe we should return to Fireheart. We did find the Shana Rei hiding in their lair, and the Confederation needs to know. That’s vital information.” He shook his head, then leaned forward again, fascinated by the glowing smudges. “But I have to say, this is very intriguing. Let’s just go a little farther.”
The technical
readings warbled off the scale, went dark, then flared back with sensor gibberish and a wash of loud static. Kotto began to feel a throbbing inside his head, an external curiosity that was like his own, but seemed to be as vast as the universe. It fascinated him, and he felt an odd, close connection. He tapped his temple and closed his eyes, trying to concentrate. “Hello. Is anyone there?”
“Yes, we are here, Kotto,” said KR.
He opened his eyes. “Not you. There’s something else. Do you feel it in your heads?”
The two compies said, “No, we do not.”
Now that he had made an overture to that looming presence, he could see sharper colors, more distinct traceries of the tapestry underlying the universe. Smudges and lines tangled in webs and mazes. This seemed like behind-the-scenes workings that the very architect of the universe had not meant for anyone to see. Kotto felt puzzled to think that God might have left unraveled edges.
As the survey craft flew closer, the smudges brightened, as if they were now letting him approach, acknowledging him. The throbbing and thrumming grew louder inside his skull.
“Hello?” His voice was just a whisper, but that mysterious presence heard him; he was sure of it. “I’m Kotto. Kotto Okiah.”
When they had flown past the angular Shana Rei ships, he had sensed nothing from the shadows other than a cold deadness that stood out even in the void. This imposing presence was entirely different, and the more Kotto tried to grasp that trickle of consciousness, the more it awakened and noticed him in return. He felt a thought, a package of information, an identifier, and he brightened. “It’s … Eternity’s Mind. That’s what it calls itself.” He looked to the compies, nodding. “Eternity’s Mind.”
“We detected no signal, Kotto,” said GU.
“But we will make a note of Eternity’s Mind,” KR added.
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