by David Ryker
The conversation halted for a moment. Ghoulam’s pocket buzzed constantly, message after message hitting his page. But he ignored it and focused on his surroundings, shouting orders to people assembling defenses.
“But if you die, we all die.” Alison’s voice was tense and exasperated. “What if we lose?”
“Then I won’t be around to see the fallout. But if we win? I’ll be remembered forever.”
Hess began to understand why he’d failed to find a reading on the Spartan leader. Most people, in his personal experience, feared death. If not their own, then that of their family. But the Spartans and their leader seemed to find the matter inconsequential. They didn’t think in straight lines. They had their own strange internal logic. Once you realize that, he thought, you can understand them much better. They’d been pushed so far to the side, they no longer had anything left to lose.
More than ever, the people of the planet Sparta seemed an alien race. As much as the Exiles, as much as the Symbiot. Maybe it’s a good thing the Symbiot want to kill us, thought Hess, because we wouldn’t stand a chance against the Spartans.
“Can’t you feel it, girl?” Ghoulam asked. “The electricity in the air. These people—my people—we’re ready to look death in the face. We’ve trained our whole lives to fight against the Federation.”
“But you’re not fighting the Federation,” pointed out Hess. “You’re fighting with them. With us, I mean.”
A twinkle in Ghoulam’s eye. That same damn twinkle I saw before, Hess remembered.
“All wars are the same,” the Spartan said. “You just have to survive them. Then, you become a legend.”
Hess thought about it for a moment. He imagined himself part of a great victory. There, up on the stage in his mind, in front of the millions of adoring spectators, was Saito. He felt only revulsion.
“What good is being a legend,” he said, “if you have to share it with those you don’t like?”
Again, Ghoulam laughed. A crazy laugh, thought Hess. A desperate laugh.
“If you really want to make a name for yourself, Acton Hess, then I can find a place for you on one of our ships. Right there alongside me.”
“You’re actually going on the ship?” Alison sounded shocked. “Up there, in the battle?”
“Of course. Where else would I be?”
“Back here. With the other leaders. Actually, you know, leading?”
“We lead from the front,” he told her. “That’s where the legends are made. No one remembers the people standing in the back.”
“But that’s not true…” Alison began, shaking her head.
“You have a death wish, Ghoulam.” Hess cut her off. Maybe the beating had driven the man insane, he thought privately. A concussion affecting his judgment. All the more reason not to get hit in the head.
That boisterous laugh again. It echoed around the square. People stopped to hear it. Maybe it gave them confidence, Hess thought. Maybe it helped them to see their leader enjoying himself. It pierced through the gloom, sliced open the pessimism and showed them an alternative.
“I take it that you will be staying here then, Hess?” Ghoulam said and slapped him on the shoulder. “Last chance to seize glory. I know where Saito will be…”
Hess looked at Alison. Her usually-wide eyes were bunched up as though she had been staring at the sun.
“I’ll take the shadows, thank you,” said Hess. “Maybe I can save the universe in a different way.”
While the Spartan laughed heartily, Hess watched him. It’s an act, he told himself. It must be. The man knows he’s going to die. He seeks only to inspire his people. He’s selfless, right down to every gesture he makes, every word he utters. But so am I. I don’t need the glory. Not yet, anyway. I don’t need to be president to make a difference.
He had never thought that before. He blinked. It was a relief, like a great burden lifted. For so long, he’d dreamed only of being in the figurehead role. Of reaching the highest heights. But now he’d seen it, seen Saito up close, witnessed first-hand the filth that coated the office. What I’ve got now, with Saito relying on me, trusting me—that’s real power. That’s how I’m going to make a difference. I’ll use him to smash it to pieces and then put it together myself. I don’t need to ride shotgun on a spaceship to become a legend. He began to laugh along with Ghoulam. It felt freeing. Joyous.
“Hess, you weasel, I knew you’d stay,” shouted the Spartan between laughs.
Hess opened his mouth to reply. An alarm cut him short. A siren, calling out across the entire city. Every Spartan stopped and changed direction.
“What’s happening?” asked Alison.
Ghoulam’s laugh died in an instant.
“It’s time to make history,” he replied.
30
Loreto
Loreto stood on the Vela’s bridge and felt nothing.
The alarm had started a rush to the shuttles. The politicians had expected him to stay. But this was his battle and there was no other place for him than aboard his ship. It had started on the Vela and it would end there. Numb, he watched the projection. The humans had unleashed an army of Sirens into the path of the Symbiot fleet. They scanned and scrutinized and, occasionally, were shot.
Loreto had three wings to his forces. The First Fleet, his familiar command, coupled with the Senate’s reserve ships. The Spartans, whose leader smirked from ear to ear on hearing that the admiral would be joining the fray. And the Exiles, who had pledged a few spare battlecruisers and little else.
The aliens had spent a long time listening to the tactics. The Leviathan, they insisted, was the way to stop the Symbiot. Their fragmented sentences and recorded quotations were not enough to make their ideas clear, but Of the Hanged Tree had insisted that Loreto search for a particular target and eliminate it. If they managed that, it would be like ripping the enemies’ heart out.
Perhaps, at least. No one could have been sure about the particulars of the Exiles’ idea. But Loreto had to work with what he had, so he’d created a malleable plan with all the resources he possessed. There weren’t many.
We’re nothing, Loreto thought. We’re all that remains and we’re all just waiting to die.
On his orders, the First Fleet moved into formation. He turned the projection, placing himself behind the forces. The Vela was at the center, sitting behind a line of fighters. The Spartans were to his flanks, two axes ready to swing. He had asked the Exiles to lurk behind and above and below, their superior firepower used as a defense to dominate the three-dimensional space and limit the battle to as close to a flat plane as possible.
A space battle is not a fist fight, he had once told his recruits. It was a dance, taken slowly and gracefully. As the Symbiot drifted into view, Loreto didn’t feel like dancing.
They came and came and did not stop, emerging from behind the nearby plane, corralled into position by Loreto’s forces. The twin suns were to their port side, the stars a blanket all around them, wrapping them in tight together.
He recognized the ruins of Fletcher’s fleet. Whatever ships had survived ruin had been repurposed. There were the fighters that had arrived in the first battle, the darts. There were ships assembled from tech taken from the plundered colonies. There were so many of them. Loreto wished he was scared. Dying meant nothing to him, really, but failure burned and hurt him constantly.
Failure had built a nest in his chest, a home for his sinking self-loathing and fear. Even when his mind was elsewhere, when the depression flew away and allowed him time to think on other matters, it always returned. At night, when he slept, he lay alongside his failure and it filled his thoughts and never let him leave. Dying meant nothing but the numb pain of failure nestled in his heart.
“There’s so many of them,” said Hertz.
Loreto could only nod. He gripped the rim of his pulpit tight, frightened that if he raised his arm, the crew would see his shuddering nerves.
“I… I know those ships,” Menels declared. “I know t
hem, sir. They’re… human.”
“They’re not,” Loreto said flatly. “Not anymore.”
“You think they’re all there… on board? All Fletcher’s men?”
“They’re not men anymore, Menels.” Loreto said it louder, for the whole bridge to hear. “They’re the enemy.”
“They used to be human, though. They were. I knew people on those ships.”
Loreto watched the Symbiot ships still coming, moving painfully slow. His forces formed a tight belt, just out of reach of the Spartan orbital stations, close enough that the people on the ground would see the explosions.
“They’re already dead, Menels,” he said. “They just don’t know it yet. They’re people who have had their peace stolen. We’re here to give it back to them.”
They’re ghost ships, Loreto thought. Piloted by our own mistakes and failures. But it wasn’t the dead he worried about, it was the living. The people to whom he’d sworn an oath, the ones he could still protect.
“Think about your friends.” He spoke loudly and heard his voice bounce back from the metal interior of the bridge. Pressing the comms link, he sent his voice to the rest of the fleet. “Think about your family, your homes. Think about everyone else. Keep their image in your mind as we fly and as we fight. Ask yourself whether it’s worth protecting.”
He let the image sink in, allowed them to remember their loved ones.
“Don’t let them down.” He winced as he said it. “Don’t fail them.”
He cut the comms and could feel the lump forming in his throat. The Symbiot forces drifted inevitably toward them and there was little time left to talk. His ships were arranged as he wanted; there just wasn’t enough of them. Loreto drowned out the attention of the room and ran an itinerary.
Fighters, he thought. We’ve got plenty of those. Battlecruisers, pumped up by the alien tech. Whatever the heavy Exile ships can do. At least the mission was simple: protect Sparta. Don’t let the Symbiot land on the planet. If they did, the wealth of resources—raw materials, as well as the dead—would make them unbeatable. They would corrupt everything, they would send for whatever the Exiles worried about most. It would be the end.
Their forces were huge but arranged without thought, just like the barbarians he’d read about in history books. Loreto stared into the chaos and waited. He could feel it now, the fear. It was welcome. it warmed him, it meant he had something to lose. It was better than feeling nothing.
He went over the battle plan again in his mind. The Exiles would trim the battle, shooting down enough Symbiot ships around the fringes that the enemy would be channeled in a certain direction. Loreto placed himself as bait in the center, holding steady and welcoming an attack. The Vela’s shields and guns were still the strongest in the Fleet, even if they hadn’t had time to run the full tests. He’d sucker in the enemy, refusing to attack, dragging them deeper and deeper until the Spartans would hammer them from the flanks.
The plan required discipline and, watching the projection, he considered his allies. The Spartans, he trusted. It was their home world under threat. He had no doubts that they would fight. Whether they would listen to his orders was another matter. The most rebellious colony in the Federation had little love for Red Hand Loreto.
But the Exiles were another matter. He’d blackmailed them into joining, connecting their network into the enemy Fleet and creating a security threat. They now had to eliminate the Symbiot forces before their location was broadcast across the universe, revealing their hiding place. They would surely blame the humans for this. There was no real love between the species, no warmth. Just a mutual interest.
“What’s that?” Hertz leaned across the holo-plate and pointed.
Following the finger, Loreto squinted. A shape appeared on the map. A big ship, giant but unfinished. Sections of it were burned and charred, open panels revealing long stretches of exposed machinery.
“Ad-mir-al.”
An unmistakable voice. Loreto had spent days trying to explain his plan to the Exiles and he hoped they understood. Of the Hanged Tree’s language skills had grown better by the day, almost enough to function over the comms system.
“Here,” he snapped, still staring at the skeletal figure on his map.
“Ad-mir-al sees this shi-p?”
“I do,” he replied, trying to keep his words simple.
“Must be des-troy-ed.” The emotionless voice pinged around the bridge. Everyone heard it.
“What is it?” he asked. “A weapon? It’s not finished...”
What scared the Exiles? he wondered. Scared enough that they would tell him of its importance. A weapon? But they had weapons of their own. A communications device? A call to the other Symbiot forces, out there somewhere in space? This was only a fraction of the enemy fleet, after all. It could be the Symbiot high command, their battle center. It could be a hundred things, each of them a unique threat.
“Lev-ia–”
“Movement, sir!” someone shouted from the darkness and cut off the Exile’s reply.
The tension forced more people to break the chain of command. The Symbiot forces flooded forward. Their fighters streamed out, into the empty space. Behind them flew the corrupted ships, Fletcher’s dead attempts at peace.
“Send Wisps,” Loreto ordered. “Suck them in.”
A second later, his squadron engaged the enemy, flying just close enough to tempt them into dogfights and then flying back into the space between the two sides.
“Hold your position, First Fleet,” Loreto called.
The Vela was the flagship. The most powerful, now, of the human forces. Not even the Spartans could compete. The infection had spread and mutated and blown the power levels of the Vela far out of reach of anything else in the Fleet. Bursting at the seams with power but days of testing hadn’t been able to tame her.
“They’re fast!” Hertz called. “Holy hell, they’re fast.”
The projection flickered red. Already, his fighters were dying.
“Five Wisps lost, sir,” a voice called. “Six.”
Each one hurt. Loreto didn’t have time to mourn. This had been part of the plan. But they were still dead.
“Keep going,” he said. “Move us just closer, then stop. Send the Wisps round, straight through them.”
He stared at the skeletal ship at the center of the Symbiot forces. It was the clearest target. This was a war of attrition. He wanted to exterminate them, as they wanted to exterminate him. But a target would help direct his forces as they waited to be attacked.
“Send the Wisps to that ship.” He pointed to it. “Try and get them to drag it out. I want to see what it can do.”
There was still space between the Vela and the Symbiot. Empty space, a wide trench filled with dogfights. A stray blow caught against the shields. The ship reeled slightly to port but took it well.
“Report,” he shouted.
“Shields fine, sir,” came the answer.
He felt relieved. He’d seen the damage those cannons could do. But the Symbiot kept coming, flooding into the trench.
“Ghoulam,” Loreto said, “are you ready?”
“You bet.” A crackled, static-laden voice. “Say when.”
No ‘sir’, Loreto noticed. That made him smile. They might as well call him Red Hand.
“I’m pulling them in now, Ghoulam. When I say, smash in from the side. First port, then starboard. Two waves.”
“Got it,” he said.
Loreto looked to the map. The fastest of the Symbiot ships moved to engage, taking the bait. Their cannons weren’t accurate at a distance. He’d studied Fletcher’s battle projections a thousand times. They needed to come close. While the Vela sat still, the Spartans circled out on the flanks. The Symbiot drifted toward him.
“Nearly in range, sir.”
The bridge was dark, just as he liked it. His eyes had adjusted, seeing only the blue light above him. His pulse raced, he could hear every footstep, every breath.
“Wait,” Loreto muttered. Every second that passed, more ships entered the trench.
“They’re preparing to fire, sir.”
“Hold it.” Loreto’s hands squeezed tight against the rim of the pulpit, the cold metal cooling his skin.
He saw a flurry of shots burst out from the attackers. The trench was filling up, the Symbiot moving forward and concentrating their attack on the First Fleet. The Vela took a hit and rocked.
“Now!” he shouted, “Ghoulam, now!”
The Spartan forces moved. They lined up in arrow-headed formations and gunned their engines. From the left, their ships swooped in at full throttle and crashed in through the flank of the Symbiot. Loreto saw the cannon fire hit against the shields and closed his eyes.
“One hit,” a voice said. “Two, five. Seven. Ten kills.”
He looked again as the Spartan wave passed through the Symbiot. The second wave, from Loreto’s right, swept in next, cleaning up the leftovers from the first. The Vela took another hit. Harder this time. The enemy were closer.
“Twenty.”
Loreto watched the Spartan fleet turning to face the flanks again. One of their ships tumbled, blinked red, and vanished. The Symbiot fighters turned their attention outward, away from the First Fleet.
“Thirty kills, one of ours.”
A decent ratio in most fights, Loreto thought. But we’ve hardly laid a glove on them. There were Symbiot forces still moving into position. Hundreds of them.
“How are the Wisps?” shouted Loreto. “Radar, anything?”
He couldn’t see into the scramble at the center of the enemy fleet. He could only see the skeleton ship, looming with intent. Damn the Sirens, he cursed to himself.
“At seventy-five percent strength, sir.”
Better than expected.
“Pull them back,” he called. “I want everything targeted at that ship. They need to clear a path.”
Loreto gave the order. Every ship in his Fleet opened fire, trying to create a corridor through to the target, getting them distracted enough that the Spartans could swarm the flanks again.