by J. N. Chaney
“Okay,” Dash said. “Just hold fire for now. Sentinel, gravity polarizers will work better the deeper into the system they come, right?”
“Correct. The higher the strength of the gravitational field, the more efficiently the polarizers operate.”
“So they’ll be wanting to get in-system fast. That should give the Forge lots to do. Leira, let’s allow a couple of these ships to get in relatively close to the Forge. I want to see how they maneuver at their best. I also want to see how effectively the Forge can take them on.”
“You sure about that? Wouldn’t you rather just destroy them as fast as we can?”
“Oh, we’ll destroy them, all right. But let’s see what we can learn while doing it, okay?”
“You’re the boss.”
Together, the Archetype and the Swift raced away from the Forge, their trajectory head-on for the approaching Bright ships.
The ships—the Bright ships, they assumed, though that still wasn’t certain—plowed deeper into the system’s gravity well. As they did, their gravity polarizers gained more and more traction in the fabric of space-time, driving them ahead even faster. Dash now led Leira by several thousand klicks, the two mechs still boring straight in, head-on at their oncoming enemies.
“I have calculated firing solutions for all weapons,” Sentinel said.
Dash nodded and kept his eyes on the heads-up, his attention to its data augmented by the Meld. He lined up the dark-lance on the lead ship. It was just entering extreme range, so he’d hold fire for another thirty seconds or so, and then—
“We are the Bright. We offer you the gift of elevation. Accept it and you will enjoy eternal life. Spurn it and you will be destroyed.”
The voice was identical to the broadcast that had come from the massive ship that appeared near Brahe, as far as Dash could recall it. It was flat, mechanical, and yet somehow weirdly smeared across a narrow range of frequencies, as though it actually consisted of several voices speaking in unison.
Dash slowed the Archetype, delaying their intercept of the Bright.
Leira immediately spoke up. “What are you doing?”
“I want to see if we can draw out some information about this Bright thing, who or what they are—mainly because I’m tired of always having to add information like who or what they are when we talk about them. Tough to do that in the middle of a battle, so I’m going to negotiate.”
“I just hope they don’t turn out to be a race of gorgeous, promiscuous women, or we’re all doomed.”
“Not sure that’s a deal breaker, given that we’ve got plenty of room on the Forge. Sentinel, open a reply channel to these Bright and let’s see what happens.”
“We are the Bright. We offer you the gift of—”
“Elevation,” Dash cut in. “We get it. And that’s all well and good, but maybe you should send along, I don’t know, a brochure or something, describing whatever the hell elevation means. Hard to decide if we want to be elevated if we don’t know what it means. Oh, by the way—I’m the Messenger. I’m comfortable in that role despite the implications. What I’m saying, in case it isn’t clear, is that I’m in charge around here.”
A window opened on the heads-up. Dash stared at it, unblinking.
“Who—no, what the hell are you?”
There were three of them—outwardly human, in that they had torsos and arms ending in hands, and a head, itself with all of the usual features in the usual places. But that was about as far as it went, because nothing else about them seemed remotely human. For one, they were virtually identical. Their skin gleamed, smooth and slick. They resembled nothing more than sculptures rendered in wax or some synthetic, pale and vaguely flesh-colored, but untouched by as much as a freckle.
That was all unsettling enough, but their eyes were the worst part.
They shone like crystal, like yet more artificial components of a manufactured statue, but they were too irregular to be wholly synthetic. They glittered with awareness, with an intelligence that was vast, but also cold and indifferent.
“We are the Purity Council of the Bright,” they said. Sure enough, the three of them spoke in unison, their voices each separated just enough in tone to give that weird harmonized-yet-discordant quality. “We are ready to accept your submission, whereupon you will be elevated. No other outcome will be accepted.”
Dash shook himself free of his stunned gape at these living mannequins. “Uh—yeah, thanks, but I think we’ll pass on the elevation thing.”
“Elevation is illumination and eternal life. Any other choice leads to destruction. Why then would you spurn elevation?”
“Well, first off, because I’m guessing it probably leads to us becoming something like you. And second, because I can’t let go of my rugged individualism.” Dash shrugged. “No offense, but your kind of eternal life? I’ll pass.”
“If you do not accept elevation, then you will be destroyed—if not now, then when all of those who have chosen the Enlightened Path of the Golden have assembled to render your final destruction.”
Dash narrowed his eyes. “If you mean Clan Shirna, then we’ve kicked their asses once already. Believe me, I’d be happy to do it again.”
“Clan Shirna is but one group who have chosen to walk the Enlightened Path. There are many others. Even now, they gather.”
Dash shrugged again. “Eh, whatever. More asses to kick.”
“We offer one last chance for submission and ele—”
“You know what?” Dash snapped, cutting the Purity Council off. “I’m really tired of pretentious, long-winded assholes, which seems to be all that the Golden ever recruit to their cause. So I’ll keep this short and simple. Screw you guys, and screw Clan Shirna, and screw everyone else who’s been duped into becoming lackeys for the Golden. Oh, and screw them most of all.”
Dash cut the channel before the Purity Council could respond. They resumed broadcasting anyway, blaring their message about submission and elevation and destruction across the system as their ships closed in on the Forge.
“I’d say you hurt their feelings,” Leira said. “But I can’t imagine they—whatever the hell they are—have any. Oh, and after seeing that freak show, yes, I still feel the need to say whatever the hell they are.”
“Actually, we learned a lot there,” Dash replied.
“How so?”
“It seems Clan Shirna might still be in the fight, for one. For another, it seems the Golden do, indeed, have other allies out there that we don’t currently know about. That gives us a new priority: finding out exactly what we’re up against.”
“How do you know they weren’t just lying, though?” Leira asked. “What were they going to say? Yeah, there aren’t really that many of us who like the Golden it turns out?”
“I don’t see these Purity Council guys really being much into subterfuge,” Dash replied. “I mean, I may be wrong, but they strike me as the what-you-see-is-what-you-get types. If the Golden really didn’t have many other allies, they probably just would have said nothing at all.”
“Good point.”
“The Bright ships have launched missiles,” Sentinel said. “Three from each ship, a total of twenty-four inbound—twelve tracking the Archetype, the remainder tracking the Swift.”
“Wow, what an unoriginal attack,” Leira said. “Are these guys really that—I don’t know, mechanical?”
“Let’s find out, shall we?” Dash replied, targeting the dark-lance on the lead ship again. “Once more into the breach and all that…”
Dash rushed at the lead Bright ship head-on, snapping out shots from the dark-lance. Each hit blew chunks out of it. After the fifth shot, its gravity polarizers died, leaving it coasting. The remaining ships drove on, leaving their stricken comrade behind.
“Leira, you finished with your missiles yet? I’d rather not waste time swatting away the ones coming after me.”
“Just about. I—crap, there’s another salvo. These Bright really like their missiles, d
on’t they?”
“Must have gotten a bulk discount—sorry, talk in a second.”
He retargeted the dark-lance and blasted missiles apart one after another. Yet another salvo followed. He’d hoped that Leira could deal with the missiles herself, leaving him to take on the Bright ships, but he wasn’t getting the chance. The Bright strategy seemed to be simply saturating them with missiles, tying them up—
A heavy shock ran through the Archetype. Something yanked Dash to the left, painfully hard. He glanced that way and saw a roiling patch of space, the stars beyond it smeared into whirls and streaks of light. It dissipated as he watched.
“Sentinel, what the hell was that?”
“The Bright ships have opened fire with an implosion weapon of some sort. It is similar to the Archetype’s distortion cannon, with a much stronger, but far more localized effect.”
“Great. Swarms of missiles, and now this.” He flicked the dark-lance out again and again, blasting missiles apart each time; still, two from the first wave—or maybe it was the second, he wasn’t sure—slipped past and detonated against the Archetype’s shield. Dash winced, but the shield held.
He scanned the heads-up. Sentinel had compared the newly revealed Bright implosion weapon to the Archetype’s own distortion cannon. The cannon momentarily projected a sudden, deep gravity well at a distance. Even a near hit threatened to wrench apart something caught in the effect. Even a near miss would subject the target to a gravity well of thousands of G’s at the epicenter. Dash tended to use it more indirectly, projecting gravity wells that would yank things off of their trajectories, changing the course of a battle. He’d been holding off using it, not wanting to reveal it to the Bright unless he had to. After all, the less the Bright knew about their capabilities, the better.
But, here was that potentially decisive moment.
“Sentinel, I want to fire the distortion cannon. A lot. At the highest power level we can.”
“I can route additional power to the distortion cannon, but the risk of damaging the weapon increases with increasing overcharge.” After a pause, Sentinel asked, “What do you have in mind? Is it something based on the feel of the situation?”
“Still on that feel thing, huh?” Dash asked, grinning. “Well, sort of, yeah. But it’s also about hard info. The Bright use gravity polarizers to propel their ships, right? And the distortion cannon creates sudden, intense artificial gravity, right?”
“Indeed. The distortion cannon is now overcharged, to one hundred and forty percent of its normal maximum yield. I would advise against overcharging it any further.”
“And I accept your advice,” Dash said, lining up a shot. He chose a target point ahead of the Bright ships, adjusting it as the range continued to diminish.
“Another salvo of missiles have been launched,” Sentinel said.
“Of course they have,” Dash muttered, then fired the distortion cannon. Then he kept firing it as fast as it would recycle.
The newly launched missiles suddenly veered off their trajectories, converging on the distortion cannon’s targeting point. Dash saw them burn furiously, trying to correct, but most of them slammed together in a bunch, becoming a tangled cloud of debris. The effect on the Bright ships was even more dramatic. They slewed directly toward the distortion effect—very efficiently, thanks to their advanced polarizers—the nearest wrenching through such a hard and abrupt turn that its back broke, snapping the ship in two. Two more of the Bright ships swung into involuntary, converging trajectories and ground together, debris spiralling away from the collision.
Dash fired the distortion cannon again, but this time just got a warning message.
“As I feared, the distortion cannon is now offline,” Sentinel said. “The Archetype’s self-repair functions will not be sufficient to restore it.”
Dash gave a resigned shrug. “That sucks, but I think we definitely gave them something to think about, other than just pouring cargo holds of missiles at us.”
Indeed, disarray gripped the Bright fleet. The ships fought desperately to restore their order and sort out their trajectories. Dash capitalized on it by racing in as fast as he could, calling Leira to follow.
Her own dark-lance shots snapped close past the Archetype. “Hey, watch where you’re shooting, woman! I’m trying to fly here!”
“Sorry. Still getting used to wearing this thing.”
Five Bright ships loomed ahead, with two more lagging behind, damaged by their collision. The Bright had connected with the Archetype in a series of implosion shots that rattled his cage, but Dash had cut hard to deflect what damage he could. As he’d expected, this close in, missiles were less effective—they normally didn’t arm until they’d traveled a safe distance away from their launch point, and they needed time to acquire and track a target. The chance of friendly fire was too great, even for combative zealots like the Bright.
Grinning fiercely, Dash raced the last few hundred klicks to the lead ship, then swept along its flank, raking at comms arrays, sensor clusters, and anything else he could strike with the Archetype’s fists and feet.
A barrage of point-defense batteries opened up, the laser beams flickering and sparkling against the Archetype’s shields. Dash winced and grimaced at each hit, feeling them like stings from Kandarian wasps. By the time he’d finished the pass, the Archetype’s shield had been saturated with energy, and she now radiated it away in a scintillating display, actinic light lost as it faded into space.
Ahead, another ship staggered under dark-lance hits as Leira found her target. He saw the Swift a few thousand klicks away, punching out carefully aimed shots. He knew Leira was anxious to get to grips with their enemies, but she had enough wisdom to keep her distance to get the feel of the Swift in its first actual combat.
Dash somersaulted, reversed course, and raced back toward the ship he’d just attacked. This time, he deployed the Archetype’s power-sword, a massive blade that thrummed with energy, giving it an edge that could cut through duranium alloy like a hot knife through protein composite. As he raced close over the Bright ship’s hull, he struck out, slamming the big sword into the plating and trailing it behind him with a shower of sparks, opening a gash most of its length. After wrenching the sword free, he backflipped again, changed course, and cut over a second Bright ship at right angles, cutting it across its beam.
“Holy crap, Dash. That’s amazing!” Leira said.
Dash winced as more point-defense batteries targeted him. The shield, which had radiated away most of the energy it had captured, began to flicker and glow again.
“All in a day’s—ouch—work.”
“That’s it, I’m coming in.”
“Leira, you should—”
“Should’ve, could’ve, would’ve,” she said, whipping the Swift through a course change even the Archetype would have trouble matching, and racing in toward the fight.
Dash considered warning her off again but didn’t. Leira knew what she was doing; she didn’t need him as some sort of protector, and he’d worked hard to encourage her growth. In fact, hearing her whoop as she zoomed in, dark-lance flashing, he had to smile in pride.
Now both the Archetype and the Swift danced among the Bright ships, slashing, punching, kicking, and, in Dash’s case, cutting with the big power-sword. He remembered how disappointed he’d been when it had turned out to be the desperately needed upgrade he obtained right before the fight against the enemy mech known as the Golden Harbinger. It had been entirely misplaced disappointment; the power-sword was, he had to admit, an awesome weapon.
The Bright ships—four of them, now—charged on, picking up speed as their polarizing drives bit hard into the deepening gravity well from the star ahead. Dash and Leira kept up their knife fight, tearing off components, gashing and smashing open hulls, degrading the effectiveness of the Bright attacks. By agreement, they left one ship largely alone, however. Dash wanted to see if it tried anything new or different as it got closer to the Forge. Speaking
of which…
“The remaining Bright ships are now within weapons range of the Forge,” Custodian said. “Awaiting your instructions to open fire.”
“Got it,” Dash said. “Leira, let's take a breather and let Custodian have some fun.”
Together, the two mechs dove away from the battle, putting distance between them and what remained of the Bright flotilla. Both the Archetype and the Swift had taken significant damage and could do with some recuperation and repair time. It was nothing compared to the Bright ships, though, which were now spread out along a path marked by debris and clouds of vented atmosphere. Only three remained under full power, using it to relentlessly bore in on the Forge.
“Firing now,” Custodian said. His voice was unchanged from its typical, mild tone—which didn’t fit with the fury unleashed from the station.
The Forge seemed to vanish behind a wall of dazzling light. Dark-lance and nova gunshots tore at the Bright ships, blasting huge pieces out of them. Meanwhile, salvos of missiles, their every maneuver choreographed across an intricate data network, wove themselves into an inexorable net around the enemy flotilla. All at once, they raced in, tightening the net—and then closing it.
The Bright’s point-defense systems—the ones not disabled or destroyed by Dash and Leira—poured fire at the incoming missiles. Some were destroyed, but most weren’t. All at once, they detonated en masse, bathing the entire fleet in a hurricane of energy made the heads-up on the Archetype go momentarily dark to avoid blinding Dash.
When it faded, Dash saw that only two ships remained underway. They still snapped shots out at the Forge, but its defensive countermeasures, including the quicksilver-bright metallic shielding they’d only recently activated, shrugged off the hits. One of the two remaining Bright attackers abruptly went dead, its power offline, its drive suddenly dormant. That left a single ship—the one Dash had wanted to leave as undamaged as possible—to press home the attack.