by James Palmer
Johnson came in high and fast with an eye jab that would have been devastating if Leda hadn’t expected it. She sidestepped the Marine, hooking her right leg and yanking it out from under her. Johnson fell to the mat and rolled out of the way as the others came forward just as quickly. They pulled no punches. Leda had trained them not to. Every training sim was treated like live combat. Leda blocked first one blow, then another. She rolled Ensign Teague onto his ass just as Captain Willis moved in for the kill. The tall man leaped into a flying roundhouse kick that Leda ducked and punched him hard in the man’s right inner thigh. He grunted and went down. She used Carson’s own momentum against him to send him careening into Ellis. Only Johnson remained.
She moved in, assuming a boxing stance. They circled a bit while the others picked themselves up and moved out of the way. Leda let Johnson make the first move, which proved to be a mistake. The tough Marine got in a fury of blows before Leda was able to fend her off. Leda took a step back now, assessing her opponent, waiting to see what she would do next.
As Corporal Johnson stepped forward to attack again, something strange happened. Time itself seemed to slow down for Leda, as everyone around her moved in slow motion. She was suddenly very aware of her surroundings and the myriad minute changes taking place within it. She could hear Johnson’s heart beating, could see a droplet of sweat on Teague’s nose as it began to fall in slow motion. She lunged forward at normal speed, but it felt to her as if everyone else was almost frozen.
Johnson swung her left arm toward Leda, but she sidestepped, got inside her reach, grabbed the arm in her own left hand and brought her right arm up hard against Johnson’s left humerus. There was a loud crack and a cry of pain from Johnson as time resumed its normal speed.
“I’m sorry, Johnson,” said Leda, letting go of the Marine. She gripped her right arm and nodded, but the others looked at her fearfully.
“All right. Go get that looked at,” said Leda. “Dismissed!”
The others cleared out, one of them helping Johnson to the medbay. As the room emptied Leda saw a familiar face standing near the entryway. Leda walked toward him. “Captain,” she said.
“Commander,” said Hamilton. “Walk with me.”
Leda sighed and locked step with him as they left the training room. She looked up at him, waiting for him to speak.
“What was that back there?” he said as they rounded a bend in the corridor.
“Hand to hand combat training,” she said.
“I went along with your idea about pulling no punches,” said Hamilton. “But you just broke Johnson’s arm.”
“The medbay docs can fix her,” said Leda. “She’ll be fully healed and back on duty in two hours.”
“That’s not the point. I saw what you did back there, the way you moved. It shouldn’t be possible.”
Leda shrugged. “I don’t know what to say. It was an accident.”
“What’s going on with you?”
Leda stopped and stared at him. Hamilton waited for his second in command to say something. Instead, she removed her head gear.
“It’s the probe circuitry,” she said, turning her head to the right so he could see. “It’s still there, and I think it’s doing something to me. My reflexes are getting faster. It was like time slowed down back there.”
“You should have seen yourself,” said Hamilton. “You were a blur. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
Leda nodded. “I understand if you want to take me off duty.”
Hamilton grinned. “Why would I want to do that?”
Leda’s mouth opened to say something, but nothing came out.
“I need you, Commander. Whatever that probe did to you, it did so with good reason. But until we know what that reason is, take it easy, OK? And let Sargent Bannister run his cadets through their paces from now on.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Besides,” he said as they resumed walking. “A little Marine style PT would be good for all of us.” He patted his taught stomach.
“I feel terrible about Johnson’s arm,” she said. “I shouldn’t have pushed them so hard.”
“Don’t beat yourself up about it. With what we’re about to face, we need all the preparation we can get. Just don’t break any more bones.”
Leda nodded. “Anything else, sir?”
“Yeah. Get cleaned up and report to the command deck. We enter the Vargas system in twenty standard minutes.”
Leda watched Captain Hamilton continue up the corridor and out of sight, then turned and went to her quarters. She was still getting the hang of where everything was on the massive ship. The Zelazny was shiny and new. While not as big and fancy as a capital ship like the Armitage had been, it was far from spartan like her old Warsprite. Leda scratched at her right temple as her door opened, sensing her presence.
She went to the lavatory and checked the itchy spot in the mirror. It was still there, that thin tracery of minute circuitry running over and through her capillaries, doing who knew what. Not even the Zelazny’s docs could figure out what it was doing or—more importantly—how to get rid of it. It remained a reminder of the strange turn of events they had gone through less than a standard year ago.
“What are you doing to me?” she said aloud, then immediately felt silly. What was she becoming? She thought the strange lines hadn’t changed her, but now, after what had just happened with Johnson in the training room, she wasn’t so sure.
Leda stripped out of her workout clothes and stepped into the sonic, turning on the curtain of sound that would scrub her clean and massage her muscles. She was normally sore after a workout like that, but not lately. Then another thought assailed her.
Am I dangerous?
She pushed the thought away just as quickly and got dressed. Now wasn’t the time for such dark thoughts.
Chapter Five:
Among the Wanderers
Colonel Straker floated sleepily. He was slowly spinning at the center of a vast chamber carved out of the center of a giant asteroid, and he was not happy about it. He was dimly aware of a few vague shapes floating above and below him, Wanderers going about their strange business. Their asteroid home was constantly undergoing remodeling and retrofits. The Wanderers toiled endlessly on their makeshift habitat, like bees.
Straker had lost track of how many days he’d spent there in self-imposed exile, but it didn’t really matter. With half the Solar Navy possibly looking for him, it paid to play it safe. And if everyone thought him dead, it was expedient for him to remain so until the Chaos Wave arrived.
There was a buzzing in his inner ear. He opened his eyes.
“What?”
“You said to notify you of any attacks,” said Proxima, his ship’s AI. “And there’s been an attack.”
“Where?”
“The Vargas colony.”
Straker began flailing his arms to try and counter his spin. It only set him spinning faster. “Any survivors?”
“None.”
Vargas was on the very edge of League space. This was it, then. The day he had been promised his whole life. The Ix were finally here. He had been called a lunatic, and worse. But it was all true. Everything his parents had told him would happen was coming to pass. The apocalypse that had come to the Makers, the Progenitors, had finally arrived for man and the Draconi. And nothing could stop it.
“What has been the Navy’s response?”
“They are sending a single ship to investigate,” said the AI. “No word yet on whether or not they suspect the Ix.”
Straker nodded, even though he knew Proxima couldn’t see the motion. “What ship?”
“The Zelazny.”
“Who’s the Captain?”
“Noah Hamilton,” said the AI. “Commander Leda Niles is his second in command.”
Straker laughed. This was almost too perfect. “Very well. Keep monitoring all tightbeam channels and keep me apprised.”
“Just encrypted military frequencies, or the enti
re quantum network?”
“Everything. I’ve got front row seats for the end of everything.”
“Yes, Colonel.”
That last part stung a little. Straker knew he would no longer be considered a Colonel. He’d be stripped of the title if they knew he was still alive, and so far as he knew they hadn’t latched onto that particular fact. If he played his cards right, by the time they realized he was still among the living it would be too late for them to do anything about it. Besides, the title had served him well, allowing him great power and autonomy, agency to bring about the glorious chaos that awaited them all, human and Dragon alike.
Straker touched a stud on the belt of his pressure suit, and the peroxide jets in his boots kicked on, jetting him forward. He craned his neck, staring in the direction he wanted to go. He thought of it as up, but such cardinal directions lost all meaning in zero gee. He moved closer to the cavern’s sides, where there were hundreds of hollowed out crevices and protruding nodes. Straker saw dull gray metal bulkhead slapped over rocky outcroppings to make doors, windows, and storage pods, and was once again amazed by Wanderer ingenuity. There were tons of stolen Navy tech being re-purposed, finding new life in the Wanderers’ inscrutable habitat. He grinned, thinking of all the years the Navy had fought with them. And still the Wanderers thrived, like cockroaches. In a strange way he admired them. They lived life on their own terms, in the dark between the stars. It would be a shame to see them obliterated by the Ix. Almost.
A group of Wanderers were busying themselves with welding sections of pipe together and bracing them to the inner skin of the asteroid. He stopped jetting peroxide from his boots, reached over his head to brace himself on the rock above to stop his forward momentum. He scanned the workers until he saw a familiar face.
“Toff,” Straker said over the common circuit, and one of the men stopped what he was doing to glance in Straker’s direction, as if he had seen him coming.
“Going so soon?” said the Wanderer as he went back to work. He looked thin and frail even in his baggy pressure suit. The Wanderers had spent their entire lives in deep space, often in zero gravity. They were tiny compared to most humans, with thin, brittle bones that would snap on even the lowest grav world. They were absolutely useless dirtside without exoskeletons, at least the ones who could still pass for human at all. Genetic manipulation, outlawed on most League worlds, was common practice among the Wanderers. They were constantly changing their own bodies to adapt to life between planets.
“Soon, I think,” said Straker. “I’ve played dead long enough. Will your people help me?”
“Aye,” said Toff, not looking up from his work. “Aye.”
Straker nodded and pushed off, jetting himself up ever higher, where a set of metal rungs were bolted into the regolith. He grabbed on and hauled himself up along these. He was tired of life in zero gee. He needed gravity, even the artificial kind. “Proxima,” he said. “Power up. I’m coming to you.”
“Of course, Colonel Straker.”
He liked the ship’s AI. It was efficient, unquestioning, dutiful, so much more trustworthy than most of the people who had ever been under his command. If he could, he’d put one in every ship in the Navy and do away with all ship’s personnel. Things would run so much more smoothly without human beings fouling them up. That was one reason he admired the Ix. They were cold, unyielding. They never strayed from their primary goal. Until now mankind had nothing to fear. Not even the Draconi had fulfilled that role, heartless predators though they were. But both races would know fear now.
Straker grunted as he swung up and over the final rung, his momentum carrying him backward over asteroid rock scarred here and there with observation blisters and marred by exhaust vents. He grabbed a pipe that protruded from the rock to slow himself, then pushed himself upright, magnets in his boots clamping down upon nickel-iron in the rock. He turned and walked carefully, methodically toward the docking cluster, where his tiny ship waited.
“I’m home,” he said to the ship’s AI, grinning.
Proxima cycled open the airlock and extruded the ramp. Straker stepped up and inside, the door sealing and pressurizing behind him. He removed his helmet, his nose wrinkling at the burnt tang of oxidizing regolith that filled the cabin for a brief moment. He stood still, allowing his body to adjust to the ship’s artificial gravity, then pulled off his boots. He suddenly felt weak, pulling himself along the narrow corridor and into the pilot’s seat.
“The quantum network is very active with speculation about what is now being referred to as the Vargas incident,” said Proxima.
“Splendid,” said Straker.
He knew the Ix were near as soon as the dreams started. He saw himself floating, surrounded by millions of metallic, insect-like forms, chittering away in the darkness. Multiple alien appendages reaching for him, calling his name. They buzzed inside his head like flies, ever since the Swarm probe incident. They wanted him, needed him. Straker knew what he must do. When the time was right, he would go to them.
That time was approaching fast.
“Proxima,” he said. “Send the signal we discussed.”
“As you wish, Colonel.”
The tightbeam relay aboard the ship twittered. “Message sent.”
Straker leaned back in the pilot’s chair, the stress of his exile leaving him in a great, cleansing sigh.
“What now?” asked the AI.
“Now we wait,” said Straker. “Wait, and rally the troops. It’s time to go to war.”
Chapter Six
Chaos
Grand Leader Thran was having a very bad day.
His ship, the Fang of the Empress, was making a routine sweep of a sector Rakh when their sensors showed the false color heat signatures of hundreds of approaching vessels. He had never seen their like. Thran knew instantly that they weren’t human in design, their drive signatures were like nothing on record; far more advanced than the mammals were capable of producing. He watched as the males and females under his command moved around the command pod as they went about their duties, their tales swishing nervously. Thran squatted uneasily on the command seat, his tongue lashing out, tasting their apprehension.
This was enough. By the Egg Mother, he would have order on his ship. He slammed his fist down hard on a control panel next to the chair. His second jumped at the sound.
“Calm yourselves!” he ordered. “You are soldiers of the Empress. There is no room in the Mother’s belly for cowards.”
This seemed to calm them somewhat. Their tales stopped thrashing, and their eyes focused on the threat.
Thran eyed the viewer, which still showed an empty star field. “Status.”
“Oncomings will be in visual range in twenty dakars.
“Power up deflectors, charge weapons,” said Thran. “If they are peaceful, they shall bow before the Empress. If they are hostile, they will feel her claws in their backs.”
“Evasive action, Grand Leader?” asked the helmsman.
Thran shot him a look that chilled his reptilian blood. “No! We will not move. Maintain present course and speed.”
By the Empress, these wild stories spread among the humans about some mysterious alien armada had made even his toughest officers fearful, and Thran wasn’t having any of it. If this was the so-called Chaos Wave, it would learn to its horror how true warriors conduct themselves. This wasn’t some ore hauler. This was the Fang of the Empress, and to hear that name was to know fear. It had always been that way, and that way it would remain.
“I see them, Grand Leader,” bellowed the helmsman. “There! And there!”
The helmsman pointed a talon at different minute dots along the viewer. They quickly resolved themselves into dark, dense blocky ships, free of any markings or ornamentation of any kind. Each ship was identical to the one next to it, and they flew in extremely close formation.
“How many?” said Thran.
“Unclear,” said his second. “Dozens, hundreds. It’s an army.�
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Thran nodded. It was obvious to him what must be done.
“Send a general message to every ship that will hear us,” said Thran. “Tell them to send reinforcements.”
“What will they do?” asked his second, glancing at Thran warily.
Thran returned his gaze, his eyes narrowed to slits. “They will avenge us.”
Thran rose and stepped down from the command dais. The place for a warrior was on his feet. His tail thrashed excitedly behind him. “Open fire.”
The Fang of the Empress gave the advancing alien armada everything it had, which was considerable. Charged particle beams lanced through the eternal darkness between them and the approaching ships, while titanium-jacketed depleted uranium shells launched toward them, many of them finding their marks.
Tiny explosions dotted the hulls of the strange alien vessels, but didn’t appear to do any real damage.
“They’re still coming,” said Thran’s second.
“Move back twelve hundred spans and continue firing,” said Thran. “Single out a target and keep up the barrage.”
They were bound to break one of the vessels eventually, he reasoned. Provided they could remain unscathed themselves.
The strangest part about these ships wasn’t their imperviousness. It was the fact that they weren’t attacking. They continued their slow, steady advance through the system, seemingly oblivious to the Draconi ship’s assault. It was highly insulting.
“Are there any weak points we can exploit?”
His second shook her head. “None, my Leader. These vessels are immense and densely armored. Nothing is getting through. Nothing.”
“Keep trying,” said Thran.
Suddenly the ship shuddered. “What was that?” Thran demanded.
“We’ve been hit,” said the weapons master. “Small particle burst. Deflectors absorbed most of it.”
“It appears to be a group of small fighters,” said the helmsman. “About half the size of the Fang. They’re incredibly fast.”