by Richard Fox
“Get to it,” Hale said.
Egan switched workstations, his hands moving with a great deal more certainty on the communication section than at the controls of the ship.
“Do you think we killed that Xaros leader? The General?” Jacobs asked.
“We did not see him in the command center when we retreated,” Steuben said. “It is unwise to believe an enemy dead unless he lies at your feet.”
“You blew up the conduit before he could leave,” Hale said. “He’s stuck in our solar system. Don’t ask me if that’s a positive. Something tells me beating the drone’s programming is a lot easier than beating someone who reacts, who makes intuitive decisions.”
Cortaro cleared his throat.
“Sir, ma’am, not to rain on the parade, but how are we going to get back to Earth? Or someplace we can wait out an extraction? Don’t tell me this thing can make the long haul to Uranus? Or Neptune? I don’t even know where the hell we are compared to the rest of the solar system,” Cortaro said.
“We’ll get out of here and contact Earth. We’ll sit tight until they’ve got an answer for us on an extraction,” Hale said.
Mathias and Jacobs glanced at each other.
“We spoke with Allen before we came up here,” Jacobs said. “We’ve got maybe three days before the ship goes dark.”
“Then we’ve got three days to figure something out—plenty of time,” Hale said. “For now we need to wait for Egan to—”
“Ha! Got it.” Egan pointed to a column off the port bow. “That was our way in, and it’ll be our way out. Don’t everyone thank me at once.”
“I blame Standish for his attitude,” Cortaro muttered. “Get your ass to the other seat and get us moving, Marine.”
CHAPTER 22
The Iron Hearts and their Dotok companions rolled to a halt at the stories-high doors leading into Camelback Mountain. Turrets on either side had their gauss cannons pointed high, scanning for any Xaros on approach.
Elias shifted back into his walker form and went to a camera panel beside the doors.
“Open up,” Elias said.
“Yes, hello,” came through a speaker. “We’re on force protection condition alpha plus. I challenge: ellipse. Please provide the countersign.”
Elias looked back at Bodel, who shrugged.
“Ellipse. I need the correct response before I open the gate.”
“I am Elias of the Armored Corps. You either open up or I will reach through this wall and crush your skull,” Elias said.
One of the doors swung loose ever so slightly. Elias stomped over and waited as hydraulics slowly moved the door.
Inside, an army major in full battle armor waited with his hands clasped behind his back. The hangar behind him was full of techs in lifter armor moving large-caliber munitions crates and ammo dollies loading up. Elias saw a container that held spare ammo and parts for his and the rest of the team’s armor.
“Major Dane, Camelback command, welcome to our little slice of heaven…” Dane stepped aside and held his hand out to a large case at the back of the hangar. “This is for you. Showed up in a white flash of light. Marc Ibarra, the Marc Ibarra, cut through my comms and told me not to touch it until armor showed up. I was told to expect more than…four.”
“We’re all you’ve got.” Elias went to the case, which popped open on his approach.
Swords as long as Elias’ forearm gleamed within. Elias grabbed one by a stubby handle and lifted it into the air. Light went through the clear blade that looked like it was made of glass; tiny gold lines of inlaid circuits ran through the length.
“Is Ibarra kidding?” Elias asked.
“No, I’m not.” Ibarra’s hologram appeared from a projector in the case. “Elias, I know your work. Nice to meet you at last.”
Elias knocked the flat of the blade against the side of the case and tossed it inside.
“Explain,” Elias said.
“The General is a photonic being. The armor is just a containment vessel. For total decoherence we need to disrupt the quantum matrix…you want the whole thing or brass tacks?”
“Get to the point.”
“You shoot the General, rip his heart out, won’t matter. He’ll just retreat and reform, but we’ve got him stuck in this solar system until he builds another conduit. You need to stab the bastard and keep the blade in his guts until he’s good and dead,” Ibarra said.
Elias picked up a blade and sliced it through Ibarra’s neck, tugging at the hologram as it passed.
“I won’t take that personally,” Ibarra said. “It’ll fit in your pike housing. Now, I have to go and explain the weapons to a dozen other teams before they break them. I swear, you tanks are just as bad as doughboys.”
“We’re not tanks!” Caas shouted.
Ibarra rolled his eyes and his hologram began to fade.
“Wait,” Elias snapped. “You said the General can retreat. How?”
“He’s photonic. We’ve seen him pop around the battlefield pretty damn fast. Then he has some manner of quantum displacement field that lets him move through solid matter, albeit a bit slow,” Ibarra said. “I suggest hitting him hard and fast. Don’t wave the swords at him.”
Elias unfolded his aegis shield.
“Can he get through this?” Elias asked. He looked up and pointed to the aegis plating surrounding the hangar. “Can he get through that?”
Ibarra’s holo came back completely. He looked off to the side and nodded.
“Probably not,” Ibarra said. His face contorted in anger. “And just how the hell did you come up with that idea? When I, in all my wisdom and with the help of some of the deepest repositories of knowledge ever even heard of, didn’t?”
“I fought him before with a shield made out of banshee armor. He couldn’t get through that,” Elias said. “Don’t confuse knowledge with experience.”
“I will pass this on,” Ibarra said as he faded away, “but I’m taking all the credit!”
Elias tossed a blade to Bodel, who balanced the flat of the blade on a finger, testing its balance point.
“Hilt heavy,” Bodel said, “you think we should trust Ibarra’s science project?”
“We have a choice?” Elias removed his pike and fixed the blade to the socket. He retracted the blade, then snapped it out with a ching.
“I’m carrying weapons that can kill a starship in orbit,” Caas said, picking up a blade and examined it in the light, “and Ibarra wants me to stab something to death?”
“I’m oddly comfortable with the idea.” Ar’ri picked up a blade.
“Major,” Elias turned to Dane. “Explain this city’s defenses to us right now. Every detail.”
The Iron Heart took the chain with the General’s facemask off his belt and put it over his helm.
CHAPTER 23
Torni finished another crystal and placed it into the device.
“That should do it,” she said. Her stalks twitched in the air.
Lafayette ran a data line from his arm to a control switch. His pupils jittered from side to side as he communed with the machine.
“Everything is in order,” Lafayette said.
“You want to tell me what this thing is now?” Torni asked as she shifted to her human form.
Ibarra appeared over the diminished omnium cube.
“I’ve got some good news and I’ve got some bad news,” he said. “The home fleet is decisively engaged with a maniple that broke away from Mars early on.” His hologram diffused and reformed to a map of the solar system. Red Xs marked where human and Xaros fleets were engaged through much of space surrounding Earth and most of Mars. A large force of drones moved from beyond Mars’ orbit toward the Earth.
“This is real time,” Ibarra said. “The force on the way to Earth will take some hits from the macro cannons on Mars, but the swarm that’s coming for us will break through the orbitals and hit the cities. The Mars fleet can’t make a run for us without getting slaughtered.”
“We need two ships for our plan to work,” Lafayette said.
“Every ship of the line is duking it out against the Xaros as we speak,” Ibarra said. “I can’t…wait. There is one ship. Get one of your science projects to the shuttle bay. You’re going to Pluto, Lafayette.”
“One ship does not solve our problem,” Lafayette said.
Ibarra looked at Torni and tapped his foot.
“I’m telling her,” Ibarra said.
“That is unwise,” Lafayette said. “We do not know if the Xaros can—”
“I tell her and maybe it doesn’t work. She doesn’t help us and the whole plan falls to pieces,” Ibarra said.
“If I feel the General trying to control me, I will release my hold on the kill command,” Torni said. “Destroy myself and any knowledge he would want in the process.”
“That’s my girl,” Ibarra said. “At your feet is a hack job of two very different devices. The first is a Tikari shield array; the other is a bastardized jump engine. I say bastardized because it can make short-distance jumps but it’s designed not to function like the engine on the Breitenfeld. The tear in the fabric of space-time will stay open for a longer period and allow more through before it destabilizes. We bashed a jump drive and a Crucible together to make a very ugly baby, one that has a few percentage points of probability to create an unstable rip in space that will annihilate the galaxy.”
“Like what happened to the Xaros’ home.” Torni took a step away from the device.
“Yes…yes, that’s a gamble,” Ibarra said. “One we’re going to risk. If this works, we actually have a decent chance of winning this thing.”
“I still don’t understand how two faulty jump engines are going to make a difference,” Torni said.
“I’ll explain it on the way to the shuttle bay,” Ibarra said. “Lafayette, you still know how to use that pod you and the rest of your buddies came in, right?”
****
The Scipio, trailing wisps of air and sparks from her wrecked engines, limped out of Abaddon.
Hale breathed a sigh of relief. He ran a hand over his face and wondered just how long it had been since he and any of his Marines had any sleep. He touched his helmet on the side of the command chair and cast a suspicious glance at the patch over the starboard window. The repair work managed to keep air and pressure steady, thus far. He went over the symptoms of hypoxia in his head.
Without a canary on the bridge, the crew would have to watch out for each other if the patch sprung a leak.
“Bring us to a halt, Egan,” Hale said. “Then get us in contact with Earth.”
“Roger, sir.”
The smoggy layer over Pluto had nearly faded away. Much of the matter the drill spewed into the atmosphere had fallen to the surface. The massive mineshaft lay dormant. Hale felt more confident that he and his Marines really had shut down the Xaros operation.
Hale’s gauntlet buzzed with an incoming call.
“Looks like Earth found us,” Egan said.
Lafayette came up on Hale’s gauntlet, a padded acceleration seat and alien machinery surrounded him.
“I assume your mission was a success,” the cyborg said. “Good. I was beginning to worry.”
“Yes,” Hale frowned, “wait, are you speaking to me in real time?”
“Very astute of you. I see Steuben’s praise is well deserved. My pod is four kilometers from your ship. Please collect me at your earliest convenience as I have an ersatz jump engine that will bring us back to Earth,” Lafayette said.
“I’ve got him,” Tagawa said. “Weird looking ivory colored escape pod. Should barely fit in the cargo bay.”
“We’re on the way,” Hale said.
****
Frost clung to the Karigole pod as Marines strapped it to the deck.
Standish leaned close and rapped his fingers against the side. He waited a moment and tapped again.
An oval-shaped section of the pod sprang loose with a hiss. Standish jumped back like he’d just seen a snake. Lafayette pushed his way through the pod and stepped onto the deck. His metal feet clicked against the corrugated plates.
“Standish, no screaming this time. Quite the improvement,” Lafayette said.
“Piss off.” Standish tilted his nose in the air and stomped away.
“Lafayette, we’re glad to see you,” Hale said as he and Steuben approached the pod. “Can’t say I’m exactly sure why Ibarra sent you, but still good to have you.”
“This vessel is in worse shape than I anticipated,” Lafayette said, looking over the damaged shuttle bay.
“Anticipated…for?” Hale asked.
Lafayette’s arm snapped back and pointed into the open pod.
“My Karigole brothers and I brought humanity’s first jump drive with us. I have another such device we need to install as soon as possible,” Lafayette said.
“You’re bringing us back to the fight,” Hale said. His tone left little doubt that his words were a command, not an inquiry.
“But of course,” Lafayette said.
“Niles, Standish,” Cortaro said, pointing to the Marines, “get in there and help Lafayette.”
The cyborg raised a hand. “This is a precision piece of engineering. I will carry it. Just show me the way to your fusion reactor.”
****
Lafayette attached a clamp to a power line with one hand and rewired a junction switch with the other. For as long as he’d known Lafayette, Steuben had yet to get used to watching the cyborg’s limbs function independently from each other.
Steuben sniffed the air over the jump engine.
“I scent Stacey Ibarra…and omnium,” Steuben said.
“The omnium is Torni. She’s proven most useful these past days,” Lafayette said.
“This isn’t like the same jump engine design we brought the humans. Not the same design of jump engines we’ve been around since we lost our home world,” Steuben said.
“We’ve made some improvements.” Lafayette reached beneath the fusion reactor. There was a groan of metal and the jump engine hummed to life.
“Why improvements now? The Qa’Resh were never ones to stifle technology. The jump engines are theirs.” Steuben narrowed his eyes, sensing something that Lafayette wasn’t telling him.
“Progress can come in fits and stops, or it can be iterative,” Lafayette said. “Malal. Torni.” He tapped the jump engine. “Now we have a tad bit of progress.”
“That,” Steuben said, pointing a claw to a sphere on one end of the jump engine, its surface covered in thin lines running from the poles, “is a Tikari shield generator. Which has no place in a jump engine. Explain.”
“I always suspected you had more technical knowhow than you let on. All this time together and you still surprise me,” Lafayette said.
“All these years together and you’ve never lied to me.”
The faux skin over Lafayette’s face twitched. He reached up and touched his knuckles to Steuben’s temple.
“You have your part in this battle, old friend,” Lafayette said. “I have mine. If you reach our brothers first, in the afterlife, speak well of me.” He removed his hand and touched his forearm screen. “Hale. Cycle the reactor to full power and send your crew to the shuttle bay. I will reach the bridge shortly and handle the jump.”
“Baar’sun, what are you planning?” Steuben asked, addressing Lafayette by his true Karigole name.
“Come on. We do not want to be in here when the gate forms.” Lafayette walked away.
****
Niles stood to attention as his team leader sidestepped in front of him. Jacobs did a cursory inspection over the ribbon-chute fixed to his armor, testing that every tie-down and clamp was secure. Jacobs slapped him on the shoulder and stepped aside.
Hale took Jacob’s place in front of Niles.
“What’s the plan, Marine?” Hale asked.
“High-orbit, low-opening drop to Phoenix, sir.” Niles’ eyes widened slightly. “Join up with
the city’s defenders. Kill Xaros.”
“You ready? This drop’s a bit longer than standard qual jumps,” Hale said.
“Been doing a lot of things I hadn’t trained or planned on lately,” Niles chuckled.
“Welcome to war.” Hale slapped him on the shoulder and stepped out of the line of Marines.
Hale flexed his injured arm. The pain was only enough to make him wince. Whatever Yarrow had injected into his bicep was doing wonders for his mobility. The corpsman had mentioned something about long-term damage, but that worry would wait until after the battle.
Cortaro came out of the Karigole pod carrying a ribbon-chute pack. He brought it to Tagawa and began attaching it to her void suit. The other two sailors had their ribbon-chutes affixed, both looking as awkward as little kids trying to wear their father’s suit. Cortaro mimed how to open the ribbon-chutes for the sailors, repeating himself several times until the three nodded in unison to his instructions.
“Four minutes,” Lafayette said to Hale over a closed IR channel.
Hale clicked his mic twice.
Hale finished inspecting what remained of Crimson team and made his way to the front of the formation. He stopped at the edge of the open shuttle bay.
“Marines,” Hale boomed, “you have done a great thing this day. The Xaros thought they had an ace up their sleeve. Thought they could keep us away while they opened up a back door to flood our home with their machines. You think they’re ever going to underestimate us again?”
Profanity-laced shouts answered Hale.
“You accomplished the impossible. Races across the galaxy will remember this day, but this day is not over. The fleet is slugging it out with the Xaros over Mars. The Xaros made it to Earth and they are trying to burn us out of our homes. I remember Phoenix the day the Saturn fleet came back to retake our planet. Cold. Empty. Never again, do you all understand me? We live. Phoenix lives.
“There was nothing but a spark left, a tiny ember that grew to a fire that beat the Toth. That saved the Karigole. That saved the Dotok. Now, it is time to save our own world.” A white light rose behind Hale.