Metal Swarm

by Kevin J. Anderson

The navigator consulted a diagnostic panel. “Four hours, thirty-six minutes.”

  “I’m retiring to my ready-room. Please have the kitchen send me up a sandwich. They know what kind I like—ham and cheese, hot mustard, dark bread, a pickle. And an iced tea, sweet tea this time. Don’t make it that bitter powdered stuff.” The lunch was her standard order, and not surprisingly, the meal arrived within minutes as Willis sat at her table, tapping her fingers on the tabletop. She wasn’t hungry, but ate out of habit and a basic need for energy.

  Peter and Estarra, now being painted as rebels, cowards, and traitors, had actually run away and formed a new government. Why the hell would they do that? King Peter had everything he could want in the Whisper Palace: riches, servants, power. A person didn’t just chuck that out the window and run to a backward planet for no reason. Something really, really bad must have happened. If she had a chance to split her sandwich with Peter and just chat for a while, Willis suspected the King would tell quite a different story from the Chairman’s.

  In fact, she had seen firsthand what the Hansa did to the orphaned colonies. She’d been ordered to stomp on the unruly world of Yreka and mete out an unpleasant punishment to a group of hardscrabble colonists who were simply trying to get by. Now that smacked of betrayal, or at least shirking responsibility. In return for paying their taxes and contributing as any citizen was supposed to, Earth had promised to support its Hansa colonies. But the moment times became tough, the Chairman had jettisoned them like unwanted baggage. Those colonists had every reason to cry foul.

  The sanctions against the Roamer clans were another ugly distraction. At least she hadn’t been asked to participate in the destruction of Rendezvous or any other Roamer facility. Chairman Wenceslas and the EDF walked all over political boundaries, and each day they seemed to be putting on heavier boots. Willis took a bite of her sandwich, felt the burn of the mustard, and washed it down with a deliciously syrupy mouthful of sweet tea.

  On her desktop screen she reviewed the spyflyer surveillance images. She knew that Theroc couldn’t stand up to ten Mantas. Then again, she didn’t believe that the King—not a stupid man—would leave himself vulnerable during such a dangerous time. Maybe he simply hadn’t had enough time to put all his ducks in a row. With the Earth Defense Forces still reeling, Peter might have expected a brief respite to regroup. On the other hand, they all knew the Chairman. . . .

  Brindle contacted her ready-room. “Admiral, thirty minutes until we arrive in-system. I thought you might want to address the crew before we begin our attack.”

  “Thank you, Commander. I do indeed.” She dumped the dishes into the recycler. After leaving the ready-room and settling into her command chair again, she opened the all-ship channel. “Listen up. We are about to arrive at Theroc under orders from Chairman Wenceslas. Our job is to put an end to this conflict, but we are not barbarians. Whatever goes on here today, remember that Theroc is still an independent world. We need to use a light touch.”

  “That means no unnecessary casualties,” Brindle appended.

  “I’d prefer no casualties at all. They won’t stand up against our firepower, so maybe we can wrap this up quickly and efficiently.” Personally, she doubted it. “Approach the system at full speed, then max decel. I want to pop out in front of their faces and use the element of surprise for all it’s worth.”

  The cruisers roared into the Theron system with enough deceleration to make Willis’s bones and muscles ache. Her crew was ready. Brindle stood at attention behind her chair. All of their weapons officers were at their stations.

  But as soon as long-distance images sharpened on the broad viewing screen, panicked outbursts flooded the bridge. “Full stop!” Willis cried. “Do not open fire! That is an order.”

  Theroc was surrounded by what looked like a crown of thorns. Immense tree battleships rose up with great spiky boughs splayed. The verdani treeships began to move toward the incoming EDF battle group, fanning out and forming a blockade like a huge thorny hedge.

  Willis hammered down on the Transmit button. “I repeat, for anyone who has too much wax in their ears: Do not open fire unless you want one of those sharpened branches up your exhaust shaft.”

  Behind the verdani battleships came a flurry of vessels in every conceivable size and shape, ships with bright markings and discolored hull plates. All of them had very prominent slapped-on armaments.

  “Those are Roamers,” Brindle said. “Hundreds of them.”

  “With hundreds of guns,” Willis added.

  “Tactical stations! Run a quick assessment of battle feasibility. Do we still outgun them?”

  “Belay that!” Willis cut him off. “Are you totally nuts, Lieutenant Commander? Look at those treeships!” The deadly verdani vessels moved closer, loomed larger. “I knew this was a bad idea from the start.”

  55 GENERAL KURT LANYAN

  Even after the Pym colonists and exhausted EDF soldiers retreated through the transportal wall, they couldn’t stop running. The Hansa workers in the Rheindic Co control chamber were taken aback by the sudden waves of scrambling soldiers with torn and bloody uniforms, smoking weapons, and ghostly pale expressions.

  A few haggard colonists fell to their knees and touched the cool, stone floor. Swift-thinking EDF fighters grabbed them and hustled them farther along the tunnels to the exits. “Keep moving! Back to the ships.”

  “Call all the personnel transports up to the city!”

  “Send a signal to the Jupiter! This is an emergency situation.”

  When Lanyan staggered through, he wanted to collapse, but he knew it wasn’t over yet. “Those damned bugs are going to be hot on our tails!”

  Conflicting orders bounced around, and the stunned troops began a disorderly but swift exodus, sweeping the Rheindic Co scientists along with them. Sobs and alarmed shouts filled the stone-walled chamber, along with the clatter of weapons, the pounding of booted feet.

  “What is it?” said Ruvi, the administrator. “What’s going on?”

  “Klikiss.” Lanyan grabbed the balding man by the shoulders and bodily turned him around. “The Klikiss came back to Pym. They killed most of the colonists, but we rescued these.”

  “Klikiss? You mean the real Klikiss?”

  He pointed to a bleeding gash on his arm. “Yeah, they’re pretty damned real. And they’re going to come here soon. You can bet on it. So haul ass! I’m pulling the plug on Rheindic Co.”

  “We—we’ll gather our equipment, pack our things.”

  “You’ll turn around and run like hell. Now! I’m guessing we’ve got only a few minutes, at most.”

  People flooded out of the chamber through the passages, reached the cliff edge, and crowded together like lemmings. Outside, twilight was beginning to fall. Station lights marked the personnel transports in the landing zone far outside the main base.

  The Klikiss city was high up on the sheer wall, with no easy way for great numbers of evacuees to get down. Frantic people jammed the lift platforms, trying to reach the canyon floor. The heavy elevators were reinforced to carry cargo but not designed for speed, and they did not have the capacity to hold so many rescued colonists and retreating EDF troops.

  Some of the soldiers helped scientists and colonists, and some had the composure to activate their comm systems and shout for the personnel transports. “Get up here! It’s a massive evacuation. We have to leave—immediately!”

  Back in the chamber, Lanyan saw the bottleneck situation rapidly growing out of control. Drawing a deep breath that stretched his uniform tight across his chest, he counted to three, forced calm upon himself, then issued orders in a controlled, razor-sharp bark of command. “Remember who you are! We fought the Soldier compies. These bugs are no worse, and they splatter a hell of a lot easier. Now, get some fresh weapons up here!”

  Outside, several troop transports took off from the landing zone and flew in the gathering dusk toward the cliff city, maneuvering to pick up the evacuees. One cocky pilot hovered h
is ship directly against the high cliff opening and slid aside his access door. Soldiers and a few civilians jumped across the gap. For those who had seen the Klikiss, the risk of falling seemed far preferable to the risk of being left behind.

  Lanyan grabbed a spare pulse rifle from a departing soldier, looked around the control chamber, and picked a dozen men who looked the least shaken. Although the General didn’t ask for any other volunteers, several more soldiers chose to stay. Lanyan gave them all a grim nod. “When those bugs get here, we need to be ready for them. We have to hold this chamber to buy time. Set demolitions around the transportal wall. Bring it down so we can cut them off.” Chairman Wenceslas would be livid if Lanyan cut off the main transportal hub, but the Chairman wasn’t here. Nor had he seen the horrifying bugs. “Blast the whole thing into dust.”

  While most of the soldiers took up defensive positions, two of the men knelt to remove polymer explosives from their packs. After slapping the wads against the trapezoidal stone wall, tight-lipped, their foreheads covered with beads of sweat, the two began setting their detonators. Before they could finish, though, the transportal wall shimmered, and shadows appeared behind the opaque surface. Lanyan backed away to the line of soldiers and raised his largest gun. “Stand ready!”

  “It’s a trap, General,” said one of the men.

  “It’s a trap for the Klikiss. The moment they show up, open fire.”

  Two Klikiss warriors lunged through, their segmented arms already sweeping from side to side, knocking one of the demolitions men to the floor. The second soldier threw himself at the rigged explosives, trying to trigger them at the last instant before any other bugs could get through. But the spiny warrior skewered him with a long forelimb and tossed him against the stone wall. More bugs charged through, carrying strange weapons in their jagged claws. Before the bugs could take two steps forward or their compound eyes could adjust to the sudden dimness of the cave, Lanyan’s defenders opened fire.

  Four more came immediately behind them, each carrying a bell-mouthed weapon, like a high-tech musket. Lanyan knew this was just the beginning of the wave, and they would never blow up the transportal in time. He had seen how many bugs they had left behind on Pym. “Like shooting fish in a barrel! We have to give the transports time to pick everybody up.”

  As the next Klikiss warriors materialized, more gunfire knocked them back. Insect bodies piled up on top of others. Soon the armored corpses themselves would form a barricade that blocked the trapezoidal wall.

  At the cave mouth, transport after transport flew off, laden with evacuees. Within the stifling chamber, Lanyan and his men continued firing, but the Klikiss pushed through by sheer weight of numbers, faster than the men could shoot.

  “Fall back!” Lanyan said. “I think we bought enough time.”

  His soldiers retreated, running through the tunnels as a new batch of Klikiss clambered over the mounded carcasses. Lanyan’s men ran to the opening in the high cliff. As twilight darkened, a cool breeze blew in their faces, invigorating after the burned air of the transportal chamber.

  One of the overloaded lift platforms had jammed in its tracks halfway down the cliffside, but a personnel transport had already retrieved the stranded people. Standing on the cliff edge, the exhausted defenders waved frantically for one of the last ships.

  The General slapped the comm microphone at his collar. “Get the rest of the transports back up to orbit and call down the Juggernaut. I want the Jupiter here with weapons ready to go. This hasn’t turned out the way we expected.”

  One of his blood-streaked men turned wide eyes at him. “That’s an understatement, sir.”

  Stranded high on the cliff wall, they could hear Klikiss swarming toward them through the tunnels. They would never have time to take the slow lift platforms. “Come on, dammit, get a ship up here! Our asses are on the line.” One partially loaded shuttle swooped close, side doors open, and Lanyan felt weak-kneed with relief. “Get aboard, all of you.”

  The men leaped to the hovering transport ship, while the soldiers on board caught them and pulled them inside. Nobody bothered to find seats. Lanyan, the last to jump across the gap, spun to look behind him just as angry Klikiss surged around the corner. “Take off!”

  The shuttle climbed away from the cliff city, leaving the bugs behind. More and more Klikiss piled together at the edge of the drop-off, staring at the overloaded ships rising away like drunken bumblebees. Lanyan sat in a very undignified position on the slippery deck watching through the wide-open hatch as air whistled past.

  One by one, the monstrous bugs leaped off the cliff, spread their wings, and began to fly toward the shuttles.

  “Give me a friggin’ break! Seal this door and engage maximum thrust!”

  “I see ’em,” the pilot called.

  Three troop transports circled back and opened fire with defensive jazers, picking off the flying Klikiss. But for every one they blasted, three more took flight. Bugs continued to boil out of the cliff city.

  “Only one way to stop this. Get me on the comm directly to the Jupiter. I want my weapons officer.” Like a whale plunging deep in search of krill, the Juggernaut dove toward the lost city while the troop transports continued to shoot at individual Klikiss. “We’ve got to plug the leak. Take out that transportal. Destroy the city. Demolish the whole thing.”

  The Jupiter’s battleship-caliber jazers glowed orange, then white. A broad lance of blinding energy struck the alien city. A second blast brought down the cliff face, erasing the ruins in a landslide. The invading Klikiss inside the tunnels were wiped out, and the transportal was gone in the blink of an eye.

  The few remaining insect warriors were now cut off from the rest of their hive and flew about, disoriented. Lanyan regarded them as gnats to be squashed. As smoke and fire continued to curl up from the rubble below, Lanyan directed the troop transports back to the Juggernaut, retreating without shame.

  He had to get back to the Hansa. Chairman Wenceslas wasn’t going to like this one bit.

  56 HUD STEINMAN

  Thoroughly disgusted at how the Llaro town had turned into a veritable concentration camp, Steinman decided it was time to leave by any means possible. Many of the more naïve colonists clung to a foolish hope that nothing bad was going to happen to them, kidding themselves that they would be safe from the Klikiss so long as they took no drastic action. Steinman didn’t buy it for a second.

  Conditions were growing steadily worse inside the walls. Margaret Colicos had somehow convinced the bugs to feed the captives, but the mishmash mealy glop certainly wasn’t very appetizing. The bland and disgusting mixture provided basic nourishment, as long as the people ate enough of it—if they could stand it. Steinman had put up with it for as long as he could, and now he just wanted to get out of there.

  Several groups had already organized themselves and slipped away with packs of minimal supplies and tools, rushing off to meet Davlin Lotze. They believed the man had established a sanctuary out there somewhere. But Steinman had no intention of going as part of a group to live in an even more crowded and miserable camp than the one he was leaving.

  Enough was enough. He had always meant to spend his life as a hermit.

  In the late afternoon, he pounded on the door of the dwelling Orli shared. A red-faced Crim Tylar yanked the door open and looked at him with an unwelcoming expression. “What do you want? Any news?”

  His wife, Marla, stepped close behind him. Her dark hair was beginning to be streaked with gray, like a touch of frost on an early-winter morning. “Let him in, Crim. Don’t just stand there glaring. He’s not one of the Klikiss.”

  “I’m here to see Orli.”

  “She’s a bit jittery yet from her visit with the breedex, but she’ll probably want to talk to you.” Crim sniffed in disapproval at the unkempt and dusty old man. “For whatever reason.”

  Several cots had been set up in what should have been a living room. Orli had her music strips out, just staring at them a
s if stunned. When she looked up, her eyes were red and haunted. He felt a sudden stab of deep sorrow. What had those insect monsters done to her?

  She brightened when she saw him. “Mr. Steinman!”

  “Not quite what we expected when we came here, is it, kid? We might have been better off staying in our own house on Corribus.”

  She set her chin in her hands. “Corribus was a Klikiss world, too, and the bugs might already be back there. We’d be eating furry crickets, running away from low-riders—and still being chased by Klikiss.”

  After a long and awkward silence, he said, “I just wanted to . . . I wanted to say that I’m out of here. Tonight.”

  Crim and Marla were both surprised. “Is another group ready to go? We just sent one out last night.”

  “I’m going alone. This’ll be no different from the solitude I intended to find on Corribus.”

  “That didn’t work out too well,” Orli said.

  “Only because of the damned robots.”

  “And because you weren’t very well prepared.”

  “I’ll manage, kid. Just you wait. The Klikiss are boneheaded when it comes to security. They only think they’ve got us corralled.”

  “They do,” muttered Crim.

  “But once you get away . . . then what?” Orli looked concerned for Steinman, and his heart felt heavy. “Are you sure you’ll be all right?”

  “I’ll find a place out in the wilderness, set up camp, and live off the land.” He shook his head. “I was meant to be independent. It’s about time I put that to the test and took my chances out there.”

  Orli hugged him. He remembered how much they had depended on each other until they were rescued from Corribus. He heaved a sigh and pulled away from her. “I don’t like fences, and I don’t like walls. The whole flavor of this place makes me lose sleep at night.”

  Part of him wanted her to ask to come along with him, and he could see the girl was tempted. But she had resigned herself to staying here with the other colonists, no matter what happened. He tousled her hair because he couldn’t think of anything else to do. “Just remember that I’m out there, and I’m thinking of you, Orli. You’re a good kid.”