by J. N. Chaney
He glared at the Clan Shirna ship, dodging among rocks and ice chunks as it sought to open the distance from him. “You clever son of a bitch,” he muttered at it. “This was a trap, and you led me right into it.”
He was actually kind of impressed. This ship had lured him here, to a place that was a true threat to the Archetype, knowing that it would probably end up destroying it, too. That was ballsy, which meant it probably wasn’t Nathis, who just didn’t seem like the self-sacrificial type.
But it begged a question—how did the Clan Shirna ship even know about this place? And why was this odd collection of miscellaneous bodies and super-dangerous mines even here, in the intergalactic void, to begin with?
“I really need to talk to that guy,” Dash said.
The probability that the Clan Shirna ship will survive this region is extremely low.
“Yeah, I see that. Which means instead of destroying him, I have to try to only disable him, and also protect him at the same time.”
Dash zoomed after the Clan Shirna ship, determined to catch it and get some answers.
The dark-lance was out. It would almost certainly destroy the other ship. That left Dash with the missiles—which were beginning to run low—and the distortion cannon. He fired the latter, targeting a point behind the Clan Shirna ship, creating a gravity well that tugged it backward, slowing it down, while yanking him forward, closing on it.
In a space battle, vectors are important as weapons, and Dash was using both.
He decided to get a little closer and use a missile, which had enough ability to discriminate targets that he could have it attack his opponent’s drive, and could also scale its blast effect in a way that would limit damage.
He readied the missile, then fired the distortion cannon again. The gravity well it created winked into existence just as the Clan Shirna ship started a hard lateral burn of its fusion drive, trying to make a wrenching course change to dodge behind some large hunks of rock. The combined effect was to send it spinning out of control. The pilot started mad thruster burns, trying to regain control, but he didn’t have enough time. The Clan Shirna ship struck one of the rocks and bounced off, trailing debris.
“Oh, for—”
The Clan Shirna pilot made a last, desperate burn of his fusion drive, slowing his damaged ship enough that when it struck another of the massive rocks, it slewed across the surface and came to rest jammed under a huge outcrop. It vented atmosphere in a shimmering cloud of vapor but seemed to remain mostly intact.
Dash stopped the Archetype a few hundred meters over the crashed ship. As far as he could tell, its engineering section had been mostly demolished, but the rest of it looked only moderately damaged. And there hadn’t been enough atmosphere blown into space to account for its entire internal volume, which meant that a lot of the ship must remain habitable.
But he wasn’t going to be able to do much of anything while still aboard the Archetype—certainly not find the answers he wanted. That meant Dash would have to dismount and enter the damaged Clan Shirna himself, on foot.
Dash found himself really reluctant to leave the big mech. The loss of its power and protection made him suddenly feel very small. As he approached the crashed Clan Shirna ship, shuffling his way across the barren rock, he reflected on how hazardous this really was. Not only was the ship itself dangerous—for instance, its fusion core, if not shut down, could breach at any time and turn him into vapor—but there might still be living Shirnas, as he’d thought to call them, on board. The fact that all of this was happening in the utter darkness of intergalactic space, lit only by the diffuse glow of the sprawling Milky Way galaxy that filled a good chunk of the sky, only made it all the more disconcerting.
He stopped short of the wreck. Of course, maybe everyone on board was dead. It was likely to become nothing more than a ghost ship, like the ones described in hoary tales in grubby little on-world bars.
Dash shook his head and hefted his slugger. Unfortunately, the Archetype had no bizarre and wondrous weapons aboard that could be man-packed, so all he had was the default one strapped to his vac suit. It had ten rounds of self-propelled ammo, and that was it. In comparison to dark-lances and distortion cannons, it felt like he’d armed himself with a handful of rocks.
The dark-matter mines are continuing to reconfigure themselves. They seem to be arranging into a pattern intended to prevent the Archetype from leaving this region without being attacked.
“Great. Are they coming any closer?”
No. But it is conceivable that once they’ve arrayed themselves, they could begin to close in, in order to attack the Archetype directly.
Dash looked over the hull of the crashed ship, selected a gap torn through it immediately behind what was probably its comms array, and began to climb.
“Even better. Do you think that’s what they’re going to do?”
It would be a logical way of proceeding. Accordingly, I would say yes, it is.
Dash grabbed a buckled hull plate and pulled himself up. It was easy in the extremely low gravity; he actually had to work at not flinging himself into space. “Fantastic. So, how long do we have?”
Perhaps as much as an hour, although assuming half an hour is probably more realistic.
Dash reached the gap in the hull then stopped and cautiously peered into it. He could have simply thrusted up and then back down to enter it, but he didn’t want to find a pissed-off Shirna taking pot shots at him while he was soaring through space. But the gap, which was torn right through the double-hall, opened into an empty space, a corridor or compartment. A live power conduit sparked menacingly at the edge of it, meaning he’d have to be careful entering to avoid getting burned or fried.
“Half an hour, huh? I’m always on a clock, it seems.”
Constraints in time and space are a fundamental aspect of the universe.
“You’ve obviously mistaken me for someone philosophical,” Dash said, swinging his legs over the gap and thrusting himself down, careful to avoid the exposed conduit.
He landed in an empty compartment. Whatever had been in here had obviously been blown into space when it was opened to vacuum.
Gripping the slugger, Dash followed his suit lamp’s glow to a heavy, round door. He had no idea how it normally opened, but it didn’t matter; like most ships, it had a manual operating system as a safety back up. There was no artificial grav working, so he had to brace himself on a structural member to crank it. As soon as the door cracked open, atmosphere vented in a rush and swirling cloud of vapor. He waited for it to clear, then cranked the door open the rest of the way.
It was a corridor. To the left, sternward, it ended after a dozen paces or so in debris. To the right, forward, it carried on, past several other compartments, to another door. It was all canted down toward the stern, and to port.
Unfortunately, even if there was more atmosphere on board, unless he found an internal airlock, he’d have to vent it to enter. He hoped any Shirna survivors—if there were any—had put on their own vac suits, or he wasn’t going to find anyone to talk to in here.
The door at the forward end of the corridor started to open.
Shit. Dash looked around. The best available cover was the door he’d just opened. He stepped back into it then crouched and peered around the corner.
The other door slowly rolled open, revealing a humanoid figure in a vac suit, who immediately opened fire, a searing flash of energy scorching the bulkhead just in front of Dash.
He ducked back, cursing. How had that guy even known he was here?
Oh. His suit lamp. It splashed light all over the place.
Shit.
“Sometimes, I’m not very bright,” Dash groused, then fought a laugh. “Or too bright.”
Then came another blast. The Shirna definitely wasn’t using a slugger. Dash popped around the corner and fired; the projectile popped out of the muzzle, then rocketed away. He immediately jumped into the middle of the corridor, fully exposed. His oppone
nt, who had taken cover from Dash’s wild shot, reappeared and aimed.
But Dash was already aiming at where he thought the figure would appear. He fired again, and the projectile shot away. It slammed into the other figure’s helmet, blowing fragments and gore out the back that immediately began to freeze.
His suddenly rapid breath rasping inside his helmet, Dash kept the slugger trained on the open door, looking past the figure he’d just killed in case he wasn’t alone.
There was nothing. The figure just slowly toppled backward, pushed by the kinetic energy of the slugger round.
“Yeah,” Dash muttered, waiting for his pounding heart to slow, “that Archetype spoiled me. This fighting face-to-face crap is definitely no fun at all.”
Gathering himself, Dash started forward, heading for the open door.
Dash winced as another plasma bolt shot past him. He went to the right of the fallen beam this time, snapping off a bolt at one of the two Shirna firing at him from the plasma pistol he’d taken off the first one he’d killed. He’d fought and killed one more since, although that Shirna had managed to wing him, a searing hot plasma charge just kissing Dash’s upper right arm. The suit had automatically sealed the breach with foam that instantly vacuum-hardened; it also acted as a bandage on the teeth-gritting-painful burn. His vac suit could maybe do that once more, then the sealing foam would be spent.
Two more plasma bolts slammed into the beam he was using for shelter, throwing off showers of sparks and glowing droplets of liquified alloy.
“You know,” he said, “I really am getting too old for this shit.”
You are also running out of time. You have perhaps fifteen minutes left.
“Ten minutes ago, you said I had at least thirty!”
New data has allowed me to refine the estimate.
“Shit.”
Dash considered his options. One of them was to simply give up and retreat back to the Archetype. The trouble was, he’d be leaving here with some huge, unanswered questions, like why had this ship made a beeline for this strange little cluster of planetesimal bodies and dark-matter mines, that were apparently placed here by the Golden? There was a connection between—well, all of it. Nathis tracked him, the Golden were real, and the universe was a heluva lot more complex than he could have imagined, and the Archetype was clearly being tracked. Finding the second power core was a necessity. Being discovered was a weakness.
Two more bolts slammed into the beam. Dash looked around it, low and to the left, and saw that one of the Shirna was trying to advance and close on him, while the other gave covering fire. These guys were determined to kill him, which was itself a little strange, because he was, at least as far as Dash knew, their only way off this remote rock. So either they didn’t care if they lived or not, or they were expecting a ride from someone else.
Dash raised the plasma pistol but changed his mind and snapped off a shot from the slugger instead. It gave off much less of a firing signature, so maybe he’d catch the Shirna coming at him flat-footed.
But the man dodged and the shot clanged into the bulkhead behind him. It did make him take cover, but Dash just didn’t have the time for this.
He looked at the plasma pistol. It had about half of its charge left. Maybe.
The weapon theoretically had a safety to prevent its tiny plasma core from breaching, but Dash had long ago learned how to circumvent that on conventional plasma weapons, and this one wasn’t much different. He did the necessary tweaks, snapping out all but two of his remaining slugger rounds at the Shirna still blasting away at him, then he took a breath, pulled the trigger, and flung the plasma pistol over the beam.
Nothing happened. Oh, for…
The compartment turned white.
Dash had curled himself tight behind the fallen beam; the wash of incandescent, ionized gas still scorched the toes of his boots. When it faded, he looked back around the beam, peering through the still-glowing, but rapidly cooling cloud of gas. One of the Shirnas had apparently picked the moment of detonation to line up another shot at Dash; his head and most of one shoulder were gone. The other one had fared better. He was obviously badly hurt, but started pumping out plasma shots, apparently determined to go down fighting. After his last shot, Dash raised himself over the beam, lined up, and fired his next-to-last slugger round, blowing the Shirna’s chest open.
Quickly, Dash crossed to the fallen Shirna, looking for his plasma pistol. He found it, but it was discharged. The other Shirna’s weapon had been fused by the blast. That meant Dash had exactly one slugger-shot left, and that was it.
Once more, shit.
He glanced back the way he’d come. Maybe just pulling out was the best option.
Sighing, Dash pushed on, heading for the bow of the crashed ship and its bridge.
He’d been hoping that if there were any living Shirna left aboard the ship, they’d be too badly hurt to put up a fight, or would otherwise just give up. Faint hope, he knew, since these Shirna all seemed to be fanatically willing to sacrifice themselves, but still.
But there was one Shirna left. He crouched over a console on the bridge, doing…something.
Dash raised the slugger, then grabbed a loose hunk of debris and heaved it at the Shirna. It struck him, and when he turned, Dash caught a glimpse of reptilian face through the faceplate, then a voice cracked in Dash’s earpieces.
“You’re too late. This ship will not be yours.”
“I don’t want your ship, which, I might point out, is kind of wrecked. I just want to talk.”
“Talk with a blasphemer? That is itself blasphemy.”
“Yeah, yeah, I know, I’m a filthy heathen. Look—”
“I will not sully my death with your words being the last sound I hear,” the Shirna said, then turned back to the console.
Dash heard my death, then immediately aimed and fired the slugger. The round tore through the Shirna’s left arm and upper torso, leaving a shimmering trail of gore leading to its impact point in another console behind him.
Crossing to the console, Dash saw what the Shirna had been about to do. He’d essentially been provoking a fusion core breach, a far, far larger-scale version of what Dash had done with the plasma pistol. He would have collapsed the ship’s fusion containment field, turning a good portion of this asteroid to vapor. And he’d been one connection away from doing it.
“Okay,” Dash said. “Sure. Not close at all. Lots of time left.”
His breath came in shuddering gasps. He carefully pulled two pieces of cabling away from one another to prevent triggering a breach, then pulled away the makeshift jumper the Shirna had rigged that would have made it possible in the first place. Then he turned to look around the bridge.
As far as he could tell, he’d just killed the last Shirna aboard, so he wouldn’t be getting any answers after all,
“Hey, if I bring you the computer core from this ship, can you, like, hack into it? Read it?”
Almost certainly.
Dash frowned at the various consoles, deciding that that one was probably the master computer station. He hurried over to it, pulling himself over other consoles and seats in the virtually zero-G, then wedged himself partly under it so he could rip off the faceplate and get at the core nestled behind.
Your time is—
“Not something I’m interested in hearing right now, thanks,” Dash snapped, cutting the AI off.
Like he wasn’t under enough pressure already.
Dash settled himself in the Archetype’s cradle and let his connection with it reestablish. As it did, he yanked free the pair of plasma pistols he’d found on the wreck’s bridge and put them aside. They seemed kind of pathetic, compared to the power of the Archetype, but they might just come in handy. As soon as the connection was stable, he launched himself off the dreary little asteroid. The Archetype was already at work knitting his burn, repairing him much the same way it seemed to repair itself.
The computer core from the Clan Shirna ship sat on
the floor before him. Several silver-blue cables, that disturbingly reminded him of tentacles, snaked out of the deck and fused with it. He wasn’t sure how long the AI would need.
Information—more knowing—flooded Dash’s mind.
Apparently not long.
“Well shit,” he said. “Nathis isn’t really about all that fanatical religious stuff at all.”
So it would appear. He is in league with the Golden.
It was true, based on the data retrieved from the core. The Golden had surreptitiously approached Nathis several years ago, offering him wealth but, more importantly, power and control over a huge chunk of the Galactic Arm, if he would only help them in their ancient war against the Unseen. It seemed that they’d been able to find Nathis’s price, because he eventually agreed, then slowly indoctrinated the rest of Clan Shirna into the Golden’s stealthy campaign.
But it was actually more complicated than that. Nathis might have had his price, but he also seemed convinced that the Golden were the saviors of the galaxy, that their coming would herald a new age of enlightened order, with Nathis their chief emissary. All he had to do was pave the way for the return of the Golden.
“Well, that explains why he was willing to put his sticky fingers into the Pasture, despite all that blasphemy-this and heresy-that talk,” Dash said. “He was well on his way to plundering the place. Explains why he apparently has a Lens, too.”
He is a willing, if misguided ally of the Golden.
“Yeah. He actually believes their bullshit about order and enlightenment.”
He has failed to discern that the actual intent of the Golden is to eradicate all life in the galaxy, including his own.
“Think we’re way past being able to convince him otherwise,” Dash said, then frowned. “Although, how do I know you’re telling the truth? You know, it could be your Creators that are the xenophobic assholes, and the Golden who want to save everyone.”