by Richard Fox
“I know that!” Valdar snapped to his feet. “I stood next to Makarov on my flight deck, picking through dead bodies, and that’s when I realized I couldn’t tell the difference between the proccies and the true born. I was wrong. Wrong to see them differently. Wrong to try to get rid of them.”
“Do you know what the Toth would have done with them?” Hale asked. “I’ve seen it with my own eyes, seen them feeding off us. I saw the blocks on Nibiru where they auction off living beings like cattle! That’s what you wanted for them.” The Marine turned away.
“What you did was treason. Why didn’t you turn yourself in after the Toth were defeated?” Hale asked. “Was it because all the True Born terrorists were dead? You thought you could get away with it?”
“Ibarra knew,” Valdar said. “He knew I was involved with the True Born before we even went to Europa. Ibarra played me like a damned fiddle. I think that’s how he got the bomb onto the Naga and gave us a fighting chance against that thing. After that, he forced me to keep quiet, gave him some leverage over me.”
“So you went from making a deal with one devil to another,” Hale said.
“He gave me a shot at redemption. So long as our mission to kill Mentiq was a success, he’d keep what I’d done away from Garret. It all worked out, son. All’s well that ends—”
“You used me.” Hale jabbed a finger at Valdar. “You lied to me. I trusted you and you twisted that bond to make me do your dirty work.” Hale’s hand fell to his side. “You’re my godfather, supposed to be my father if anything ever happened to Dad. I know it’s not the same when I’m grown…but why would you do that to me?”
“Ken, the whole world’s been turned inside out. Our families are gone. The world we knew is over. Then Ibarra comes up with this plot to replace everyone and I…I couldn’t accept that.”
“Jared’s gone, and I don’t think I’ll ever see him again.” Hale’s shoulders slumped. “You were all I had left, and you threw it away.”
“Ken, don’t talk like that. I should never have done that to you—I know it. The way I saw things…I didn’t know what—”
Hale turned around and stood at attention. “My new Marines are waiting for me. Will there be anything else, sir?”
“Ken, hear me out.”
“Will there be anything else, sir?”
Valdar dropped his knuckles onto his desk. “Dismissed.”
Hale saluted and left the room.
Valdar stood at his desk for a minute then sank into his chair. He pressed his hands to his face and fought back tears.
CHAPTER 5
The cell was nothing more than a metal slate for a bed, a toilet, and a force field across bars.
Torni sat on the slate, staring at a cold plate of food on the floor near the bars. Her shell rippled with fractals and checkerboard patterns, all swirling as her mind worked. She didn’t breathe, didn’t blink; Xaros drones didn’t bother with such biologic concerns.
The doors to the prison block opened and a middle-aged woman with mixed Asian and Caucasian features entered. She shooed away the lone guard on duty with a flick of her fingers and then lowered the force field on Torni’s cell.
Torni looked up and didn’t return the woman’s predatory smile.
“You have a visitor,” the woman said. She wiped her hands together several times and produced a small ball in a flair of sleight of hand. She tossed the ball to Torni and it stopped of its own accord just outside the bars.
The ball floated into the cell and a hologram of Marc Ibarra formed around the holo sphere. The old man looked around, his gaze stopping on the untouched food.
“They just don’t understand, do they?” Ibarra asked.
“Shall I leave, boss?” the woman asked. Ibarra waved a dismissive hand at her.
“That’s Shannon. She works here. We haven’t met, have we?”
Torni leaned back slightly.
“Is it the cell? It’s the cell.” Ibarra rolled his eyes. “When I told Admiral Garret that we had a POW returning, his surprise went right up to eleven when I mentioned you were in a drone shell. He insisted on some security measures…then there was that misunderstanding with Malal and the armor on the Breitenfeld. Thanks, by the way, for not letting him be destroyed. We’re on enough shit lists with the wider galactic alliance against the Xaros.”
“Why are you here?” Torni asked.
“To talk! Be neighborly. You are on the Crucible after all and it’s not like I get out much. Plus, we have a lot in common.” Ibarra smiled.
“I am a Xaros drone. You are a hologram with no mute button.”
“And we’re both dead,” Ibarra beamed. “I’m sorry…that came out way too cheerful. I died. Soon as the fleet entered temporal stasis right before the first Xaros invasion hit, there wasn’t any point in me hanging around. So the Qa’Resh probe took in a copy of my mind. Kept a ‘me’ going. Does this sound a bit familiar?”
“Like what the Xaros did to me. Just not voluntarily.”
“And here we are. An ‘Ibarra’ and a ‘Torni,’ the first humans to ever transcend the bonds of death.”
“No. You’re acting like we’re still who we used to be. I’m not human anymore. Neither are you.” Torni eyed the holo sphere in the center of Ibarra’s chest.
“Certainly there’s some…” he said as he wiggled his fingers in the air, “tactile differences. But I feel the same, think the same, same winning personality.”
Torni huffed.
“But you…are so much more than you used to be,” Ibarra said. “I saw what you did to the Breitenfeld, such beautiful craftsmanship with her aegis armor. My shipwrights are in awe of the repairs you made.”
“Malal’s instructions, my efforts. Where is he?” Torni asked.
“Elsewhere in the Crucible. We’re keeping him under wraps. The general public has enough to worry about with the Xaros here. Word gets out we’ve got a soul-eating star god cooling his heels up here with me and there goes the whole day.”
Smoke rose from Torni’s arms. Embers burned over her shell, smoldering as a swath of her shell became pitted.
“He mentioned this.” Ibarra stepped back. “You were close to a Xaros construct when it died. The kill command is still active…obviously.”
“It’s always there.” Torni held a hand out to the food tray and it flew into her hand. She crushed it between her hands. White light seeped from between her fingers and her shell flowed over the damaged areas. A second later, she was as good as new.
“The command is always scratching against my mind,” Torni said. “I lose focus, get angry…it’ll take a piece of me. Malal taught me to fight it, but sometimes I slip.”
“I’m sorry,” Ibarra said.
“On Malal’s vault, I could pick up Xaros communications. Not words, just impressions and desires. I feel something now. There’s something powerful, overriding much of their programming. Something I’ve felt before.”
“The General,” Ibarra said.
Torni’s shell went black.
“We expected him to come. Which may prove useful,” Ibarra said.
“What? If he’s here, then you’ve got better things to do than chitchat with me.”
“Hardly. First, I must thank you. Even without saving the Breitenfeld and returning Malal to us in a timely manner, you did a great service to the entire war effort and I’m not talking about what you did on Takeni.”
“I was their prisoner. I willingly cooperated and gave up sensitive information about the Qa’Resh, the Crucible, our fleet. I am a traitor and I am right where I deserve to be—in a cell,” Torni said.
“Oh, don’t be all doom and gloom! You probably saved us all by cooperating.”
“Come again?”
“See, my girl, the thing about interrogations is that no matter the method, no matter how perfect the questions, a subject can never give up what she or she doesn’t know.” Ibarra hooked a thumb at Shannon. “I learned that from the best.
�
��You told the Xaros that our fleet was beat to hell after the Battle of the Crucible. Then, the General encounters Eighth Fleet in deep space, whose numbers and strength were a bit stronger than what survived the Crucible. Eighth Fleet…was lost, and all the information available to the General was that…” Ibarra raised an eyebrow to Torni.
“He destroyed the last of our fleet in deep space,” Torni said.
“And this last part is important. You never knew anything about the proccies before your physical death, did you?”
“The what-ies?”
“Exactly! You never learned about our re-population plan with the procedurally generated human beings. Nine-day wonders. Tube kids. ‘Blasted abominations’ according to some. The General thought Earth was defenseless as a newborn babe in the woods. He didn’t know we had years to get stronger, build fleets and fortify mountain cities.
“What I wouldn’t have given to see his face when he looked across the system and saw that we were almost ready for him,” Ibarra said.
“Almost?”
“We planned on having more time, but when the Xaros got a good look at the Breitenfeld on Anthalas and then Takeni, they knew their invasion of Earth hadn’t gone as planned. The General sent Abaddon over sooner than we’d anticipated. At least Eighth Fleet’s sacrifice bought us some more time.”
“Are we going to lose?”
Ibarra pressed his lips together and his head wobbled from side to side.
“The math isn’t in our favor, but we’re working to change the equation. Which brings me to why I’m here besides idle chitchat,” Ibarra said. “We need your special skills. Our omnium reactor is churning out aegis armor and quadrium shells as fast as we can push it, but it’s not really the tool to make something elegant.”
Ibarra held up a hand and the schematic for a complex piece of machinery floated above his palm.
“I don’t know if I can make that,” she said.
“You’ll have the finest tutors known to man and aliens.” Ibarra closed his hand and he passed through the bars of her cell. “Come on. No time to waste.”
Torni went to the cell door, put two fingers against a bar and cut through it with a tiny disintegration beam. She ran her touch over the bars and kicked down her improvised doorway.
Shannon had her back to the wall, a hand inside her jacket.
“Something tells me you could have left that cell anytime you wanted,” Shannon said.
“I didn’t have a reason before now.” Torni’s shell rippled from the top of her head to the tip of her feet, leaving her in fatigues and her original appearance.
CHAPTER 6
Hale looked over the cue cards in his hand and felt his stomach knot up.
Captains don’t get nerves, he thought.
He could hear muffled conversation from around the corner where his full-strength company of strike Marines waited for him. The Breitenfeld’s Marine complement took casualties when they set foot on Earth to recover Ibarra and his probe. Losses on Takeni coupled with entire teams reassigned and not replaced before the mission to Nibiru left the ship with a single full-sized team—Hale’s—and a few support personnel. Strike Marine companies were smaller than line infantry companies, but the idea of commanding fifty Marines instead of five was a big pill for Hale to swallow.
“Sir?” Cortaro said from behind. “Your Marines are ready.”
Cortaro stepped in front of Hale and looked at the new captain’s rank. “Looks good on you, sir.”
“Same to you, Top,” Hale said. With a full company to command, Hale needed a first sergeant as his top NCO.
“Just don’t ever think I’m one of those ‘in the rear with the gear’ first sergeants and we’ll get along just fine, sir,” Cortaro said.
“The thought never crossed my mind. You got them into berthing. Any feel for the new teams yet?” Hale asked.
“Their records are watertight. They’re all annotated as being ‘cohort trained.’ I asked around, turns out that means they’re all proccies who remember each other from their tubes. Means we’ve got fully integrated and trained teams, not a bunch of warm bodies thrown against a manning roster,” Cortaro said.
“Why’d you ask around, instead of asking them directly?” Hale asked.
“A first sergeant knows everything, sir. Nothing escapes our attention or wrath.”
“Right. I suppose the company commander’s supposed to know it all too.”
“If I know it, you’ll know it. Same as when we had just the team. You lead the team. I’ll run the team.” Cortaro slapped Hale on the shoulder.
“Anything else I should know?”
“They’re tense—more than just new-unit jitters. I don’t think it’s the mission either. Heard a couple of them mentioning a movie when they thought I was out of earshot. That, and Yarrow’s been acting weird.”
“Fair enough, let’s get going,” Hale said.
Cortaro went around the corner and called the room to attention.
Hale followed once the sound of scuffling feet faded away. He kept his head up, chest out and looked his new Marines in the eye as he went to a wooden podium in the middle of the briefing room, a pair of screens at his flanks.
“As you were,” Hale said. The new Marines sat down like there were magnets in their seats; his old team took a half second longer. All had note pads and pens ready. Hale picked out four lieutenants, three men and a woman that looked barely out of their teens.
Are they so young or am I so old? he thought.
Steuben was in the back of the room. The Karigole warrior gave Hale a slow nod, and Hale felt much of his anxiety wash away.
“Welcome to the Breitenfeld,” Hale said. “I am lieu-Captain Hale.” He tapped his cue cards on the side of his podium. “You know what? We don’t have a lot of time before this mission kicks off, so I’m going to get right down to brass tacks.” Hale touched a button on the podium and the mine entrance on Pluto appeared on the screen to his left.
“The Xaros are building a Crucible, which we’re designating as objective Grinder, around Pluto. It is our mission to land on the planet, figure out what they’re using to dig up raw materials for the device and mark it for orbital bombardment or sabotage the device ourselves,” Hale said. “The Breit will jump in on the opposite side of the planet and cover our insertion as they assault Grinder. We’re not going straight into the pit. We’ll secure these shafts leading out of the Norgay Montes and work our way inside. Intell says the shafts are out-gassing the same material as the pit and should be connected.”
Hale gripped the side of his podium. “In a perfect world, we’d have months to plan this operation. Rehearsal landings. A better idea of what the Xaros have in there. Most of this war has been on the fly so we are going to do what Marines have done since the days of sail. Adapt and overcome. Our mission is to destroy the Xaros mine works, stop them from completing the Grinder and get back to Earth and join the line before the rest of the Xaros fleet can reach our planet.”
“Sir,” said the lone female officer as she stood, “Lieutenant Jacobs, Crimson team, what about Abaddon? Have the Xaros kept a reserve force inside that thing?”
“The Xaros don’t keep a reserve,” Steuben said from the back of the room. Marines twisted around to look at the new speaker. “They always mass their strength to overwhelm opponents—a viable strategy. Most solar systems rarely have more than one habitable world to defend.”
“They brought millions of drones to our system,” Jacobs said. “Why bother building another jump gate if they’ve got the combat power to wipe us out?”
“Maybe they’re not as confident as they used to be.” Another lieutenant stood up. “Sir, Lieutenant Bronx, Amber team. Eighth Fleet slowed them down, hurt them pretty bad. They get here and see the solar system bristling with weapons and defenses. Maybe they don’t think they’ll win so they’re building an insurance policy.”
“Sound thinking, Bronx,” Hale said. “High command put investigating Abad
don as a secondary objective…” Hale looked at a screen showing the moon-sized object and shook his head. “If it’s not empty, the Xaros will come pouring out of there the moment we arrive and the mission will be scrubbed.”
Hale glanced at his watch. “We’re on a compressed schedule. All enlisted Marines report to First Sergeant Cortaro at the simulation range. Officers and Mr. Steuben see me after this. Dismissed.”
****
Standish hefted his new rifle against his shoulder and looked down the holographic sites to a Xaros drone floating down the firing range. The plasma rifle was shorter and lighter than the gauss weapon he’d carried since his first day in the Marine Corps, forcing him to adjust his firing stance.
The range was full of strike Marine teams, each firing on floating targets or throwing antiarmor grenades at hanging bull’s-eyes.
“Here goes nothing,” he muttered. He pulled the trigger and a bolt of energy slammed into the drone, breaking off stalks and crushing the shell. Standish held the rifle at arm’s length and frowned at it.
“That can’t be right,” he said. “There’s no recoil. Hey, Oro, this plastic toy set right for the sim?”
Orozco leveled his new heavy plasma repeater at a smaller drone walker construct, the same kind that had chased Standish through the streets of Phoenix, and fired. Bolts the size of Standish’s fist stitched up the constructs torso.
Orozco looked at the weapon, then to Standish. “There’s no recoil.”
“That’s what I’m trying to—like you’d even know. Hey—” Standish waved to one of the new arrivals at the next firing station, “you. Yes, you.” Standish waved him over.
The Marine, a private first class with WEISS stenciled on his armor, hurried over, keeping his plasma rifle pointed up and down range. Weiss’ eyes darted from Standish to Orozco, his breathing quick and shallow.