Chaos Quarter

by Welch, David

  “Too small. Surveillance of some sort?” Flynn spoke.

  “They know we’re here,” Blair grumbled. “We will have to be quick in our actions. Are the Warriors ready?”

  “They have been ready since before we jumped,” Flynn replied firmly. “Should we risk boarding? If time is—”

  “Have the Seers spotted any incoming vessels?”

  “No, but they are overwhelmed. These primitives have many mechanical structures throughout the system, hundreds of them on asteroids and moons. Others in orbit. The Seers cannot see everything.”

  Blair looked toward the distant sun, the Seers transmitting the view through the tendrils to his eyes. He thought for a long moment.

  “We will risk it,” Blair spoke decisively.

  “As you wish,” Flynn replied. “We shall arrive at the vessel in twenty-four minutes.”

  * * *

  It appeared first as a shadow, blocking out the stars behind it. As it came closer, the light from the distant sun illuminated it. The hideous bulk of the ship came into view, its odd whale-with-crab-claws hull looming over them. Mere miles stood between them.

  He had walked with Second to the stern of the dorsal hull, over the cargo bay, to get out of the arc of his dorsal turret. As the ship settled over him, that turret let loose. The rear turret joined in. Twin streaks of light flashed through space as round after round streaked toward the ship.

  The thirty millimeter rounds tore into the damaged hull of the bioship. Orange-red fluid leaked from the small wounds, freezing as it entered vacuum. But the ship kept coming, turning to face them.

  Rex lifted his gun and opened fire. Second copied his motion. Fifty caliber rounds peppered the ship. They did little more than scratch the carapace, but he kept firing. Useless and futile as it was, it beat sitting inside and waiting for some monster to cut your brain from your lifeless body.

  The bioship's defensive rail-guns let loose, hurtling small projectiles at Long Haul. It confirmed Rex’s fears. Had they wanted them destroyed, a single shot from their main guns, two at most, would have reduced his ship to jagged shards. They wanted them alive. The small projectiles rained down, cratering the forward hull, zeroing in on the dorsal turret. The weapon continued its assault, burning through what was left of the ship’s ammo.

  Rex emptied his clip and then turned. Two projectiles smashed into the forward dorsal armor, but didn’t breach the hull. The third slammed into the turret, smashing it in a shattering blow. Twisted metal floated away from the ruined gun, drifting off into space.

  He turned back. Second had loaded a new clip and kept firing. He slammed in another magazine and fired. His bullets streaked into space, hitting next to a large tendril that flexed dramatically, whipping around the ship. He fixated on it, an idea forming in his mind.

  Before he could act on it, a projectile smashed into the ship not ten feet in front of them. Damaged from previous attacks, the round ripped right through the battered hull and into his ruined cargo bay. The smashed remains of the pick-up floated out of the hole made by the shot, rotating slowly as if drifting away. More projectiles trailed down the dorsal hull, moving for the still-functional rear turret.

  The rear gun continued its futile attack, its fire pounding one of the ship’s crab-like forward arms. Explosions rippled across the arm as the shells ripped into it, tearing a thirty-foot gouge out of the enemy’s hull.

  Then the bioship's projectiles slammed home, a trio of them pounding the rear turret, one after another. They blasted through the turret and its mount, carving a gaping hole in the hull. A half-dozen crates of grain floated lazily from the ship, their contents spilling into space.

  Unless the bioship moved beneath or in front of his ship, Long Haul’s defenses were now reduced to two idiots with assault rifles and a death wish.

  He loaded a third clip into the weapon and then fiddled with the dial on his wrist.

  “Second?” he spoke.

  She ceased her assault.

  “Yes?” she replied, looking at him. He could see her face through the glass. It was defiant, the muscles taught across her strong cheek-bones. He let his mind slip for a moment, allowing himself to notice how truly beautiful she was.

  “I am sorry,” he replied. “I couldn’t get you somewhere safe.”

  “I do not understand,” she replied.

  “I know,” he said with a smile. “If they find you out here, just unlatch your helmet.”

  “What? I—”

  He cut the line. Crouching low, he cut the power to his boots. The magnets turned off. Pushing off, he leapt for the closing vessel. He heard himself laughing as he shot through space. The bioship was too close now to miss.

  A line of gunfire silently struck the vessel, Second blasting away. Rounds continued flying right back toward his ship. A hundred yards from the bioship, he turned the magnets back on.

  The magnets picked up the War-beast’s metal-plated exoskeleton, rotating Rex in space. He hit hard, his knees barely able to absorb the impact. He nearly lost the gun, but somehow managed to keep it free and away from the bioship's shell.

  He stood up, getting his bearings. He was on the underside, ten feet from a sphincter-like portal. It opened, a flash of light emerging as a rail-gun inside flung a projectile at his ship.

  He dialed down the strength of his magnets and leapt for it. As he drew near, he turned the magnets back up, bringing him down two feet from the orifice.

  It flexed, opening to fire. Before the projectile could be flung, Rex jammed his gun into the orifice and squeezed his trigger. Bullets ripped into the rail-gun’s interior, shredding the weapon’s containment. It erupted in a flash, sending Rex reeling back, nearly losing his gun again. A jet of flame exploded from the orifice. It died as it reached space, blackening the weapon.

  Rex laughed like a mad-man and bounced away.

  * * *

  “Ventral defensive gun three has been destroyed,” Flynn spoke, his voice worried.

  “What?!” Blair demanded. “We destroyed their rear weapons!”

  He shifted the image in his eyes, bringing up a picture of the weapon in question. It sat, blackened and useless.

  “There is only one stream of small-arms fire coming from their ship now,” Flynn noted.

  “What the hell—”

  The War-beast groaned in pain. The Seers shifted the image in Blair’s eyes, bringing him a view of one of the defensive tentacles. There, standing next to it in some sort of artificial suit, was a primitive with a gun. The man pumped round after round into the base of the tentacle, tearing it from its fleshy route.

  “Foolish,” Blair seethed. “Brave, but foolish.”

  He squeezed protruding villi, sending another tendril sweeping toward the intruder.

  * * *

  Rex exhausted his third clip on the tentacle, nearly severing it. The organ swung wildly on its last threads, orange-red blood leaking into space.

  He leapt back, using his magnets to resettle a few feet from the wounded tentacle. Another tentacle slammed down, striking where he had just been. The force of the blow ripped the damaged tentacle free of its base. It drifted into space, writhing as its dying nerves sent their last, instinctive signals.

  Rex loaded his last magazine and bounded for the attacking tentacle. He came down next to a large gash in the hull, blasted open during the bioship’s battle with the Europans. The tentacle swung toward him.

  He pressed flat against the War-beast’s shell, the tentacle sweeping inches above his back. He leapt up awkwardly in his suit, ready to move again, but stopped dead. Something had caught his eye.

  Inside the War-beast, beneath a translucent film that resembled a spider-web, stood giant monsters. They looked like overly muscular sasquatches, covered in a chitin-like carapace just beneath the skin. Thick, gray hair covered their bodies. They stared at him with yellow eyes, their mouths open and bellowing, but unheard. Clawed hands waved at him in futile arcs.

  He tore himself fr
om the sight, seconds wasted by his curiosity. He bounded across the ship again, just above the tentacle’s next sweep. A cloud of acid erupted from behind him, spewing into space where he had just been. His imagination filled with notions of what it would have done had it hit him, images of his suit and flesh dissolving.

  He landed a few feet from the attacking tentacle and sprinted next to it. Squeezing the trigger, he blasted round after round into the tender flesh of the tentacle. It flailed and writhed as he fired. On fully automatic, his gun burned through the third round clip in seconds. The tentacle bloodied and flailing, he leapt to his left.

  Another tentacle struck where he had been, the tip hitting hard. The bulk of the tentacle caught his shoulder as he flew by, sending him into a spin. Disoriented, his view flashed quickly, from empty-space to War-beast, over and over again as he tumbled.

  Rex jammed on the magnet’s control, slamming him down against the ship’s shell. He retched, disoriented. The suit sucked the contents of his stomach from his helmet so he didn’t choke, but could do nothing for the smell. Nostrils burning from the stench, he looked up to get his bearings. He was on the dorsal spine of the bioship now.

  And a tentacle was looming above him, lined up for a strike.

  “Oh shit,” he heard himself say.

  It started to flex, moving for him. Then something bright flashed behind it, moving at light speed toward the ship. A large blast of energy slammed into the War-beast, wrenching it several dozen meters through space.

  Another blast hit, then a third. The tentacle went limp as the ship shook. Rex’s mind took a moment to recognize what was happening.

  Pulse blasts.

  They were large pulse blasts, much larger than the Long Haul’s little gun. He jerked around. He could feel tears form in his eyes when his mind registered what he saw.

  Above him loomed what he had thought impossible. A Cato-class destroyer, the fastest ship in the Commonwealth fleet, closed quickly. It let loose with medium pulse cannons, one after another, staggering its shots. Missiles streaked from the long, bulky hull. The tentacles tried to bat them away. They caught the first and then the second; but not the third, fourth, and fifth. The missiles accelerated as they neared the hull, their armor-piercing heads slicing deep into the vessel. The War-beast vibrated violently as explosions gutted its interior. All the destroyer’s pulse cannons, large and small, laid down a withering fire. The bright bursts of energy gouged huge craters in the bioship’s carapace, tearing up chunks of hull and the pink tissue inside, hurling them into space.

  Rex laughed maniacally. Crouching low, he turned off his magnets and leapt away. Flying clear, he watched as his countrymen poured on the attack. The War-beast flung a few desperate projectiles at the closing vessel. A few hit, denting the armor. Defensive pulse guns intercepted the rest. A pair of missiles hit the War-beast’s claw-arm, blasting through it. The massive protrusion tumbled off into space.

  Rex let go of his gun and put his arms behind his head. He didn’t stop laughing as he drifted off into space.

  * * *

  He let the fear run over him, through him. The Seers, the few remaining, showed him the Commonwealth ship. The mechanical monstrosity was larger than his own War-beast and in its undamaged state, far more powerful.

  The War-beast screamed in agony as it died, blasts of energy searing its flesh. Shrapnel and fire tore at its insides as missiles hit and exploded. There was no fighting, no escaping, no success.

  Just failure.

  Blair pulled the tendrils from his eyes and walked from his command pod. He opened Flynn’s and pulled the man from it. Flynn had surrendered to the fear as well, his face covered in tears.

  There would be no coming back from this, no recovery for implantation in a new body, not this far from the Hegemony. After all the long centuries of their lives, they faced oblivion.

  He pulled Flynn into an embrace and kissed him deeply. It was the last thing he did before fire consumed them both.

  * * *

  Second screamed, joyous, victorious. She didn’t know why she did it, but she did, the sound bellowing from her lungs and reverberating around her helmet. In front of her, the War-beast came apart, explosions blasting it into a dozen pieces. The jagged chunks shot off in different directions, spewing out clouds of orange-red fluid that froze and glistened in the cold depths.

  A massive mechanical vessel, easily five times the size of Rex’s ship, approached them. It slowed as it neared. She’d rarely felt glad to see a machine before, but she couldn’t hold back.

  The truth hit her hard, overwhelming any logic in her fractured mind. They were gone. The Masters were gone. They couldn’t reach her, not here, not across the galaxy. A great weight lifted from her. Her joy led to a cascade of tears. She wouldn’t die, forever or for a moment. They wouldn’t take her brain and return her to what she’d been. No more Masters, no more rape, no more second.

  Only Second.

  “Thank you…” she heard herself saying, not fully understanding why. “Thank you, thank you, thank you…”

  * * *

  He sat with his back against the wall. Chakrika lay against him, holding little Quintus. His arms wrapped around them both. She rested her head against his, the warm weight of her body soothing his nerves. He kissed the top of her head.

  “I love you,” Lucius whispered, for the tenth time since locking himself in the medical bay.

  “I love you too,” she replied. “I really wish we’d gotten to, uh, be together.”

  “We are together now,” he spoke. “It is enough.”

  Chakrika smiled, a single tear running down her cheek.

  “You would’ve been the first man who didn’t have to pay,” she said wistfully.

  “It is all right,” he spoke, running his thumb over his son’s tiny hands. Quintus’s fingers closed around the thumb instinctively, clutching it with tiny muscles.

  “You mean more to me than any woman I have taken to my bed,” Lucius spoke.

  “Even—”

  “Yes,” Lucius answered firmly. “More than any of them.”

  She cuddled further against him.

  “Do you think Jake made it?” she asked.

  “I do,” Lucius replied.

  “How can you know—”

  “We are being hailed,” the computer spoke.

  Lucius moved a hand to one of the pistols. He brought it against his chest. Chakrika looked at it, then met Lucius’s gaze. More tears streamed from her eyes.

  “Should we just…”

  Lucius looked at the gun, then at the woman in his arms and his tiny little son. His heart rebelled against the thought of what he had to do.

  “It is a Commonwealth vessel,” the computer spoke. “It is asking if we require assistance.”

  Lucius dropped the gun to the floor, struggling to breathe as relief washed over him.

  “Yes!” Chakrika screamed ecstatically. “Yes! Tell them to come help us! Tell them to hurry!”

  Lucius slumped back against the wall. Chakrika squeezed Lucius to her chest, bouncing him excitedly. She turned and barraged him with a dozen kisses.

  “We made it, Lucius. We’re here!” she cried. “We’re safe!”

  * * *

  He’d been floating for forty minutes when the boxy gray shuttle approached. It was a tiny thing, about a third the size of Long Haul, too small to even have gravatic generators. Slowing as it approached, a segmented metal arm extended from its side. It grasped him by the shoulder and pulled him into the side airlock.

  The airlock door’s slid shut and quickly repressurized. A green light by the door flashed. Rex popped off his helmet.

  The air in the shuttle was only marginally better than what had been in his tanks, but it felt magnificent anyway, especially with the vomit stench gone. He took two deep breaths just for the joy of filling his lungs. The inner door slid open with a hiss.

  He floated into the shuttle’s main compartment. Directly in front of him w
ere three armed men, two of which were looking right at him.

  “Adams, sir. Ensign, FTC Vespasian,” a blond-haired fellow said, drifting over and saluting. The man froze in that pose, staring uncertainly at Rex’s prosthetic eye. Rex cocked his head quizzically, breaking the man’s glare. Adams shuffled awkwardly, or as awkwardly as a person can shuffle in zero-G. Rex relented and weakly returned the salute.

  “Vespasian? That’s Ishimura’s command,” Rex said with a smile.

  “When we received the signal, the Captain saw your name and charged in,” Adams informed him. “Lucky for you we were on maneuvers with the System Guard, not too far from here. Cap didn’t exactly know what the hell it was you’d brought with you.”

  “Didn’t stop him from blowing the shit out of it,”said Rex with a stupid grin. “Ishi always did leap before he looked.”

  Adams nodded, looking nervously to his left. There the third member of the shuttle crew had an assault rifle, aimed at a large robotic figure taking up half of the cabin.

  “Jake. Ya’ made it?” Rex asked.

  “Sure did,” Jake replied with a mock-salute. “Could you tell your guys I’m not going to kill them?”

  “You can put your gun down, soldier,” Rex spoke.

  The man looked at Adams, uncertain. Adams waved him down.

  “You know this…uhm, man?” Adams asked.

  “That’s Jake,” Rex replied simply.

  “Is he—is he human?” Adams asked tentatively, looking uneasily at the cyborg.

  “Mostly,” Rex replied.

  “The important bits are,” Jake said with a laugh.

  “So you know him, sir?” Adams asked.

  “Know him and vouch for him. That guy saved our lives,” Rex said, moving to a seat against the wall. “And much as I’d love to explain everything in graphic detail, I’m kinda concerned about my ship.”

  “They’re docking with the Vespasian. Rescue teams should be onboard,” Adams spoke.

  “It would be better if I was there. Some of my crew are, well, unusual.”

  Adams glanced uneasily at Jake.

  “Don’t look at me,” Jake replied with a grin. “I’m the normal one.”