by Geoff North
His affections sickened her more anything. As the weekly searches became less intensive, the physical advances had grown. August Hegstad loved her in his own diseased way, but the feelings were hardly mutual. It took all of her will to resist driving a knee up into his crotch. She pushed him away gently with her elbow. “Not interested.”
August didn’t appear offended. “The offer won’t stand much longer. The last government vessel will leave orbit in under a week.”
“We’ll take a freighter.” Tarrace would do no such thing. She wasn’t going to leave the red planet, and even if she did, it wouldn’t be for a return to Earth, and it certainly wouldn’t be aboard the same ship as Hegstad.
August sighed. The puff of white chest hair sticking out from his half-buttoned shirt sank. “I’ll check on you one last time in a few days. Maybe by then you’ll have come to your senses.” He flipped three of the grey hairy snakes back over his shoulder and exited the house.
Tarrace watched as the three men went back down the street. Kent tried to kick Charm’s cat from his path, but the feline was too quick for him. It hissed a final goodbye from behind a bag of trash.
Tarrace closed the door and locked it. She leaned her back against its surface and cursed. “They’ve shut down Pavonis,” she whispered, trying to convince herself of the awful truth. “They’re actually going to sacrifice the entire planet.”
She peeked through the window blind next to the door to verify her visitors were indeed gone. August was knocking on the door of a neighbor three houses down. There may have not been many people left in the city, but there were still enough to keep the pompous bastard busy for the next few hours. Tarrace went to the table August had peered under and pushed it two meters across the floor. She pulled an area carpet away, revealing a trap door set into the imitation hardwood. It wasn’t a big door, only one meter square, but it was incredibly heavy. Tarrace heaved at the inset handle and the door began to lift. The auto-open function took over at ten centimeters, relieving her of the heavy work. Tarrace stepped back and watched it open the rest of the way. The door was heavy for a good reason. Sandwiched between the plastic surface and underside was a half-inch of sensor-deadening alloy as dense as lead. It was spread throughout the entire ground floor of Tarrace’s home.
It clicked into place at a ninety-degree angle, and Tarrace started down a ladder into the hidden basement. Dull purple lights flickered into activity as she stepped onto the hard dirt five meters beneath the living room. The light revealed a rock-walled area not much smaller than the one above. Hundreds of weapons hung by their shoulder straps on three of the walls; laser shredders and rocket launchers, sniper rifles, and an assortment of ancient side cannons stuffed into belt holsters. Tarrace went to a row of computers built into the far wall and powered one of them up. A man sitting behind a desk appeared on the monitor in front of her.
“Tarrace,” the man spoke. “You’ve heard the bad news?”
“Then it is true.” Tarrace made a fist and bit into the knuckle of her forefinger. “And this happened last night? Why the hell am I only finding out about it now?”
The man held his hands up in front of the screen. “Easy now, we were only following the rules you put into place. No communication between revolutionists outside the designated contact times.”
“Goddamn it, Jonas, don’t start with me. Pavonis was the largest facility on Mars left running. Without it, everything’s lost.”
Jonas leaned back into his chair and scratched at his chin thoughtfully. Tarrace could hear the nails catching in stubble. “People are shutting things down all the time, boss. Terra-forming factories can be started back up just as easily.”
She grabbed at a chair behind her without taking her eyes off the screen and sat. “I should’ve known you Pavonian devils wouldn’t go down without a fight. What are you planning over there?”
“We’re not fighting the shutdown, just the opposite. Ninety-five per cent of the planet’s population will have been evacuated in a week’s time. The last of the government ships will depart shortly after. That’ll leave clean-up crews only. Humanity may be abandoning the planet, but they’re not going to forget it. Each of the twenty-four terra-factories will require a minimum of sixty technicians to put their respective facilities to sleep. All six—”
“I know how the factories operate,” Tarrace interrupted. “Eighteen of those twenty-four have already had their chimneys snuffed in the last two years. We couldn’t afford to lose Pavonis. You were put there to prevent that.”
Jonas was grinning now. He was the second man that morning bearing her terrible news with a smile on his face. She wanted to punch the screen with her still-clenched fist. “Let me finish,” he continued. “All sixty of the Pavonis shutdown techs are revolutionists. As soon as we have confirmation the last ship is headed for Earth, Pavonis will roar back into life.”
“Sixty revolutionists?” Tarrace thought she’d heard him wrong. “The last I’d heard, we had less than thirty stationed there.”
He nodded. “People have started to come around. Nothing brings them faster to our side than the threat of losing your home, and all the technicians have homes here. It’s the same at the other factories. I would say more than three quarters of the remaining employees are with us now.”
Tarrace was now smiling along with him. “Jonas Edmund. You sneaky, secretive worm. I think I love you.”
“Easy now. We wouldn’t want Alexander to get jealous.”
“Your brother would say the same thing if he was here.” Tarrace straightened up in the chair. “You and your people have done well. Now we must prepare for the reprisals. When Earth governments discover the factories firing back up, they’ll send the Republic right back here to put a stop to it.”
“Let them try. We’ll be so hunkered in by then they won’t be able to do anything about it. Mars will finally belong to the people, not a bunch of Alderamin brain-washed bureaucrats.”
Tarrace pictured an entire fleet of Republic ships laying waste to the planet’s surface, terra-forming factories, cities, and all. It would never come to that, she thought. They wouldn’t sacrifice an entire planet just to stop a few hundred revolutionists.
“We’ll be fine,” Jonas said, as if he could read her thoughts through the monitor. “They’ll want to settle here again eventually. We just won’t let them.”
“I hope you’re right.” She leaned in close to the screen. “I’ll inform the Deimos faction. We have a meeting tonight. Hopefully we’ll be able to plant more of our people into the facility here before Hegstad and his people leave. If our terra-former does get shut down, I want it fired back up sooner than possible.”
“Sounds good.” He paused, and tilted his head to one side, as if he was trying to look behind her. “Uhm, but maybe you should have a talk with my niece and nephew first?”
Tarrace spun in the chair and discovered her children down in the weapons den with her. Charm was still clinging onto the bottom rungs of the ladder, Loke was standing on the dirt floor. Both were looking around with dumbfounded expressions, silently taking in for the first time the space hidden beneath their living room.
“Mom?” The boy asked. “Are you a terrorist?”
Chapter 7
“Fifteen of the sixteen new contacts have broken out of Taranis orbit,” Lornay Simmons called from her navigation section. “They’re headed our way.”
“Weldheim called it right,” SIC Barret said. “They’re using the gas giant as cover to launch their attacks on us. Bringing the ship within spitting distance of the planet has drawn them out. Now we can pick them off, one by one, wave after wave.”
“Four more clusters have just appeared!” Simmons yelled.
“Battle screens.” Commander Edmund stood away from the tactics table. “Full spread.”
“Dropping battle screens,” Lieutenant Gertsen announced.
There was a deep clunking sound throughout the bridge of Retribution as the three-hundred a
nd sixty-degree view screen dropped from the inner edge of the circular ceiling. It lowered down six feet, revealing a panoramic view of outer space. A good section of the screen facing Edmund was filled with the muddy blue atmosphere of Taranis. Most of the planet was cut off at the screen’s top and bottom edges. The commander called out. “Ada, reduce magnification until Taranis is seen completely on screen.”
“Reducing magnification,” the ship’s computer replied. The planet shrank back.
“Display enemy contacts.” Five red lights representing the enemy groupings appeared in Taranis’s upper atmosphere. “How many ships in each of those new clusters?”
Ada answered Edmund before Simmons could. “Two-hundred sixty vessels in each cluster.”
SIC Barret stepped down from the sections ring and stood next to Edmund. “My God, Commander, they’re sending more than a thousand fighters against us.”
Lornay Simmons smacked down on her nav-console. “I’ve picked up six more groupings… they’re coming in from the far side of the planet.” She paused, leaning over her board for a better look at the information, even though the numbers were less than a foot from her face. “Twelve thousand ships. They’re decelerating… assuming Taranis orbital position.”
SIC Barret stared at the Nav Colonel. “Did you say twelve thousand?”
“Affirmative. They’ve locked into orbital spread at 480 K.”
Commander Edmund crossed his arms over his chest and sighed. “What was that about picking them off one by one, SIC?”
Barret didn’t say a word. He just stared at the conglomeration of contact lights on the battle screen, blanketing the gas giant in a sea of pulsing red. Edmund left his second in command standing there and went to the sciences station. “Let’s take a few steps back. Major Weldheim. I trust you’ve been keeping an eye on that first smaller grouping of sixteen ships?”
“I have indeed, sir,” the middle-aged scientist pushed the glasses he was wearing up the bridge of his nose. He was the only man Alexander had ever met that wore the ancient optical aids. “Fifteen are still approaching Retribution.”
“What about the sixteenth ship?”
“One moment, Commander. I’m waiting for the information to be processed in all this magnetic interference. It should only take a few more—there! We have it!” A green three-dimensional rendering of a spacecraft sprung up from Weldheim’s panel. “It isn’t a fighter of any sort… it isn’t even of Pegan origin.”
“Is that what I think it is, Weldheim?”
“It is indeed, sir. We’ve found the Exodus shuttle.”
Edmund didn’t cheer. He didn’t clap his science major on the back and offer congratulations. There wasn’t time for that. He ran to the navigation section instead, towards the woman that reminded him so much of his wife. “Take us in closer, Lornay, and get a tractor beam on that shuttle.”
“Those fifteen Pegan ships might have something else in mind, sir,” Gertsen said. “They’re coming in fast. Less than a hundred thousand KM away now.”
SIC Barret was still monitoring the situation visually on the battle screen. “Greet them with rippers, Lieutenant.”
Retribution surged towards Taranis. Fifteen missiles sprung simultaneously from her bow and found the Pegan targets. The mighty warship to punched through a cloud of dissipating energy and debris.
“Engaging tractor beam,” Nav-Colonel Simmons said when they were in range of Exodus.
Ada took over. “Tractor beam deployed. Exodus shuttle caught. Retrieval in process.”
“Those other clusters are moving in fast,” Gertsen announced. “They’re breaking formation and starting to surround us.”
Commander Edmund was standing beside his SIC again in front of the tactics table watching it all unfold on the screen around them. “Take us into fold as soon as that shuttle’s safely aboard. Plot a course for the Alderamin system.”
Barret was shaking his head slowly. “You’ve poked the hornets’ nest, son. They’re going to follow us, and we don’t have enough rippers onboard to take out even half their force.”
“We’re well beyond rippers at this point, SIC. Load a monarch and aim it at Taranis.”
“A monarch? You can’t be serious.”
“We could spend a few more days, maybe even weeks, fighting off more than ten thousand enemy ships. Or we could be on our way again within minutes. What’s it going to be, Corwin? Are we going to stick around a dead gas giant, or are we carrying on with the original mission?”
A faint trace of smile started on the old officer’s face. “You’re a crazy bastard. I never should’ve let you marry my daughter.”
“Sometimes crazy keeps people alive.”
“Shuttle retrieval has succeeded,” Ada announced. “Exodus is now in bay twelve.”
SIC Barret climbed the steps and went to the weapons section. He pushed Gertsen gently to one side. “Let me handle this, Lieutenant. You don’t want what’s about to happen to be on your conscience.”
The young officer watched the old officer press a sequence of numbers into the keyboard. Retribution’s computer spoke when he’d finished. “Monarch class missile loaded into firing chamber. Planetary core coordinates locked in. Awaiting final launch command from Retribution Commander.”
Edmund placed his hands against the tactics table. “Put as much distant between us and the planet that you can, and launch monarch.”
“Affirmative, Commander. We are now one million kilometers away from Taranis. Weapon will launch in one minute, twelve seconds.”
More than a hundred of the smaller ships had already surrounded the retreating warship. They started blasting at her hull. “The shields will hold,” Barret said, “but if even one shot gets close to that launch cannon before the monarch clears…”
Edmund nodded, not needing his SIC to finish stating the obvious. “Disregard minimum safety distance protocols, Ada. Launch the monarch now.”
There was no rumble beneath their feet as Retribution’s most powerful weapon was unleashed. There was no streak of light to be seen on the battle screen. Monarchs were designed to jump instantly into fold drive and achieve near lightspeed for a maximum duration of thirty minutes. It was more than enough time for the missile to travel the distance between Retribution and its target. The monarch punched straight into Taranis, detonating its compressed payload of more than a hundred trillion megatons into the planet’s spherical core.
Retribution continued its reverse course from the planet in fold drive. The Pegan ships began dropping away. “Are we going to get away in time?” Edmund asked.
“Impossible to calculate,” Weldheim said. “The only monarch ever detonated was done by remote in the Kuiper Belt. The closest human settlement was twenty billion kilome—”
The scientist stopped talking when Taranis suddenly shuddered on the battle screen. The sphere ballooned slightly and receded, like a burp, or a planetary-sized hiccup, Edmund thought. And then all hell broke loose. The blue planet erupted outwards in flash of blinding white. The Commander and his crew threw their hands over their eyes. Somewhere in the background Edmund could hear the steady voice of Ada saying something about screen brightness compensation.
And then the first shockwave hit. SIC Barret was tossed over the sections ring hand rail before the gravity bars running beneath the bridge deck plates could correct the sudden spike. He slammed into Edmund, and both men collapsed hard across the tactics table. The other officers were either already seated or hanging onto the bulkheads separating bridge sections.
“More distance!” Edmund snapped as his second in command rolled off his back. “Fold drive at maximum!”
Ada broke the bad news to all of them. “Magnetic interference has temporarily rendered fold drive inoperable. Please try again after engine shutdown and magnetic disruption sweep have been completed.”
Major Weldheim struggled to read the garbled information displaying on his screen. “Second magnetized wave coming in! This will be the big
one!”
They didn’t feel it hit with the physical force of the first shockwave. It passed through the ship silently, creating a sudden nauseating punch to each crewmember’s gut. Commander Edmund could see the hair on the back of his hands standing, could feel the tingle of it at the nape of his neck. And then it was over.
“Re—,” Barret struggled a moment to find his voice. “Report.”
“Fold drive is definitely down,” Weldheim said. “A lot of Retribution’s functions are crippled.”
“Could you be a bit more specific, Major?” Edmund asked. “How bad is it?”
“Auxiliary power has cut in. We still have life support, gravitational control, and main computer control. Definitely bad, Commander, but we’re alive.”
The battle screen monitor was displaying white static. Edmund clutched at the tactics table to fight back the urge to vomit. The magnetic wave would undoubtedly leave them all feeling queasy for the next few hours. “Can someone clean up that image?”
Ada responded in a lower tone, as if her audio speed setting had dropped by ten or twenty per cent of normal. “One moment, Commander.”
The static on the battle screen started to clear. Segments of the three-hundred and sixty-degree image flickered, and then the entire thing snapped into a steady display of the space surrounding Retribution. The Pegan ships were gone—more than ten thousand vessels atomized in an instant. All that remained of Taranis was an immense grey cloud, and half a dozen misty blue rings slowly spreading out towards the stars. In a few more weeks, perhaps a month, the rings would break apart and vanish completely. All traces of the immense gas giant planet would be erased from the Pegan system.
Barret wiped a line of sweat away from his brow. He looked about as sick as Edmund felt. “The folks living on the second planet aren’t going to be happy with this, son.”
“I don’t plan on staying here long enough for them to react.” He pushed away from the tactics table and stepped up onto the sections ring with noticeable effort. “The fold drive is inoperable, Marie. Can engineering muster up the nuclear engines?”