by Dain White
Ask, and she shall receive!
The way these suits worked continued to surprise me. We were constantly finding out new capabilities, new ways to see, hear, and move. Their mode of operation, based on intent, meant that unless we knew what it was we needed them to do, we’d never find out.
That might present a challenge, but as luck would have it, both Yak and I were incredibly needy, information-hungry soldiers, so we both had a continual, nearly overwhelming flow of information. Ranges, heat signatures, fine-resolution magnification, delivered at the speed of thought.
The way the suits imaging system worked was quite disorienting, however – it was going to be a while before I completely got used to being able to see anything without moving my head. I could look directly behind me, to the side, up, and so on… all without moving a millimeter. Doing it was another matter. I felt like I was losing my mind.
Yak didn’t seem to have any problems with it, so I wasn’t going to complain… it’s a capability I knew we needed, but that didn’t make it any easier to undo a lifetime’s worth of moving my head around. I would probably never really get used to it.
As we passed through a thicker section of the tendrils, an opening beckoned ahead of us, lit by the pulsating glow from the waves rolling by overhead, much closer now than before. We were at the bottom of an increasingly sandy, rippled slope, rising gradually from the depths towards what looked like an underwater plateau. That was our destination, marked by the crashing whitewater of the waves breaking across the supports of the platform.
Suddenly, without warning, enormous orange flashes of light sent rays down towards us, stabbing through the murky night water.
*****
“Hold”, I hissed, and dropped slowly down to the sandy slope below us. Jane drew up as well, and we both took a knee.
“Something happening up there, Yak”, she said quietly.
“Yeah… should we get closer?”
“Maybe a little, they’re probably pretty busy. They won’t notice us down here.”
“You’re probably right”, I agreed, as I looked upward at the flashing blasts of light reflected through the rolling waves.
We made our way the last few hundred meters to the bottom of the station, marked by a massive ring of supports driven deep into the bedrock of the submerged atoll we had climbed. As close as we were to the surface, the view above us was not encouraging.
“How do you want to play it, Yak?” Jane asked softly. “It looks distinctly violent up there.”
I thought for a moment. “True, Jane… but we’ve essentially completed our mission. We know now that the Revenge is not playing nice out here.”
“With Red in command, I think we all knew if we found him, it’d be a pretty bad situation, Yak.”
I thought again. “Jane, I know what you want to do… I want to do it as well, but we can’t just blow our cover here. The Archaea is aground, Jane, the Captain is out there in a crab, and that ship in orbit has more than enough resources to scan us up out of here and turn the surface of this planet into glass.”
It was her turn to sit quietly, the flashes above casting dancing points of light across the sands below. They abruptly ceased, casting us again in deep shadow.
When she replied, her voice had a cold edge. “I say we go full mimetic, Yak. Just slide up out of the water and take a better look. Might be something we can do…”
I took a deep breath, watching the waves above roll past, swirling clouds of shimmering bubbles tracking their path. “We might as well, Jane. We’re ghosts in these suits.”
We started to ascend along the closest support, when the bodies started to fall into the surf above us, splashes of water followed by clouds of red.
*****
“Oh Yak”, I said softly.
My heart was breaking at the thought we were close enough to make a difference, but our mission, our continued survival required that we maintain cover.
We couldn’t risk exposure. As we approached the surface, the bodies were tossing around in the waves, older people, grey hair and soft skin. I thought about Gene, and realized if I don’t control myself here, it could be him floating forever in these endless waves.
“Jane… easy”, cautioned Yak as we slowly broke the surface. The support nearest to us continued on another 20 meters or so before a lower set of decks fanned out from the central base.
“I have nothing on thermal, Yak. I think we’re clear to climb.”
“I agree, but we need to take it easy. Stay inside of this support, in case they show up.”
“Roger that, moving up”, I replied, lifting clear of the water, willing myself to lift for the platform above. I could see the water streaming from Yak, but that was it, he was invisible.
“Yak, I can’t see you… and that’s not a good thing if we have to get rowdy.”
“You can’t see me? I can see you, easy. And we’re not going to get rowdy, Jane.”
“You can’t see me…” I said confidently.
“The hell I can’t. You can see me too, if you want to.”
I looked over, prepared to scoff, and was rewarded by a halo outline of his suit, perfectly highlighted. “Hey… I can see you!”
“Yeah, all you had to do was want to see me. I noticed that right away, when we were playing around in the cargo bay. I thought you knew as well, the way you were tracking me.”
“No, stinky, I smelled you.”
He chuckled softly, as we came to the first platform. Despite our casual conversation, we were both very much on the job. I waved him to stop, and slid slowly up past the decking to look across the platform.
“Nothing here, Yak… the next level up, maybe?”
“Yeah… listen, here’s a thought. Rather than come up right along the edge, what do you think about us easing back a few hundred meters before coming up? We’re pretty well impossible to spot, unless they smell us.”
I smiled, “They won’t smell me, stinky… but I’d rather come up close enough to risk detection, rather than float into an active fire-control radar. Remember, M2 is here, Yak. We’re just meat and bones, wearing fancy pants. There’s a damned machine up there.”
“Good point, Jane. Okay, let’s go up.”
As he spoke, movement caught our eye, as another series of bodies fell from the platform above us. Without a word, we both rose up to the next level, watching in anguish as the bodies fell to the depths below.
There was no way in hell I was going to let this continue.
“Easy Jane, nothing we can do…” he said softly, but I could tell from the ice in his voice, he was every inch as ready as I was to make this all go away.
“The hell there isn’t”, I hissed, and pulled myself slowly along the edge, looking for some cover. A few meters to the side a box of some sort was set closer to the platform railing, and I floated along the bottom to that location, before I waved Yak up from the support below us.
He ascended along the edge of the box for a peek.
“Jane, this looks bad”, he whispered, sighting across the platform from the corner of the box. I floated right below him, a black seething pit in my stomach.
“I can’t look, Yak.”
He thought for a moment. “You need to, Jane.”
I floated up behind him, placed a hand on his shoulder, and took a brief look.
*****
“Sir, we need to move closer!” Emwan called out.
I was purging the lock and moving us across the rocks before I knew what was happening. I was keyed up, we all were. Pauli and I had been sitting in the dark watching shadows, both waiting and hoping for this moment.
“How much closer do we need to be, Em?”
“We need to make network contact with the platform, sir. We need to be within a few kilometers, as soon as possible.”
I raised an eyebrow all the way to the surface, hauled back on the yoke, and followed it up.
“Aren’t they going to see us, sir?” Pauli gasped, as we we
re clearly on a skyward track.
“Son, Em says we need to be there as soon as possible. You and I may have different interpretations as to what that means, but because I’m the Captain, let’s go with mine. I am going to be in range… as soon as possible.”
We broke the surface in the trough between two enormous waves, only to be submerged and twisted by a smash from the following sea. I fed power to the lifters, and as soon as I had us reasonably stable above wave height, I punched it, ripping spray off the waves as we shot into the night.
*****
I could hardly see. I had tears flowing like water down my cheeks, and the pit in my stomach was big enough to swallow the universe. Yak’s hand shook in mine, as we took in what was happening on the platform.
A coldly analytical, detached part of my mind worked through the information I had, while the rest of me ran screaming into the depths of my soul. There were very few remaining survivors, kneeling in a huddled mass across a blood-strewn deck, surrounded by 10 heavily armed men.
The soldiers were wearing full mimetic armor, but they were as visible to Yak and I as if they were painted bright red. One of them was working his way through the crowd of colonists, tearing children away from their screaming, hysterical parents. Another one viciously clubbed what had to be a distraught father into unconsciousness on the deck, and suddenly fired his chemser at point blank range into the back of his head.
Yak’s hand crushed into mine.
The other men were threatening, shouting, kicking and forcing the colonists away from an ever growing group of children, who were all completely scared out of their minds, screaming, crying.
“Yak…” I croaked. “We can’t…”
“Jane, we do this, we’re burned. The Archaea… gone. Captain Smith… gone. This is as bad as it gets, Jane, but we are going to get through this. Stand down.”
“No Yak, no…” I trailed off, as it became apparent to me what was about to happen. Two of the men leveled their chemsers, and advanced on the children.
I grabbed Yak by the shoulder and shook him violently around. “Yak, we are not going to let this happen!”
He didn’t turn… he just replied with a voice as dark as death.
“Yeah, Jane… this isn’t going to happen.”
Our minds were made up. The needs of the small outweighed every concern, any petty fight we may have with some no-name slaver all the way across the galaxy. If all we accomplish is this, we can sleep tonight and feel good about our place in the world.
We both raised slowly on lifters behind the box, as the men continued to tease and taunt the children into a terrified mass, crying and yelling in fear. They were shoving and throwing some of the larger boys, who were fighting back desperately.
A smaller boy was was clubbed to the ground as I moved left, assigning targets as fast as my eyes could move, as fast as I could think. Yak moved right. I was vaguely aware of the dropships perched on elevated landing platforms off to the side, and a thought percolated through my mind that we needed to prevent them from launching to orbit... but even that was now secondary to the task at hand.
The man nearest to me shoved a little girl into the deck, and started to swing up his rifle; I shot without thinking, the word, the thought, leaped out of my head and through my railer and into his skull. His head was vaporized into incandescent ash. It happened so fast, no one had time to react. His rifle was still falling from nerveless fingers as I launched myself towards the crowd ahead of us like an avenging goddess of doom.
*****
We streaked across the black water towards the lights of the platform ahead of us. The ferocity of our acceleration was breathtaking, but I was too busy to appreciate it.
The occasional wave slapped into our lifters and blew apart as we howled past, tossing us around more than I would have liked, but we had to be as low as possible to avoid detection out here.
“I am in range, sir. I will have network control in 3… 2… 1…”
“Very well, Em” I called out and dropped speed, shoving the crab back underwater probably a little sooner than I should have. A mighty wave crashed into the sky as we plowed deep, hurling up against our crash bars.
“We’re in, sir”, Pauli yelled, working on his screens.
“Orbital link?”
“Yes sir, we’re with Janis. The Revenge is on another pass, located far side.”
“Janis, how are you my dear?”
“Very well, Captain, thank you.”
“Have any communications made it to the Revenge from the surface?”
“Sir, Emwan is following their standard protocol and maintaining constant contact. She is very good at being someone else.”
“That’s good to hear, it sounds like we may have made it here just in time. Em, do you know what Shorty and Yak’s status is?”
“Captain, I can’t tell… it’s a cloud event, sir”, Emwan replied sadly.
“Pauli, what is she talking about?”
“She’s built to visualize probabilities, rather than actualities, sir”, he blathered incoherently as I dropped back into the waves.
I laughed. “Make some damn sense, Pauli, that’s a direct order, son.”
He tried again. “She can’t scan the future like Janis. She’s preactive, but not in the same way, sir. Her preaction is tuned differently. Where Janis sees a straight line path of her experience through spacetime, Emwan sees events as a series of probability clouds.”
I thought for a moment. “That’s going to have to be good enough. Em, do you know what you need to do?”
“My path is clear, Captain, but my visualization of Yak and Jane is probabilistic. My path is in direct support of theirs, but they are on their own track.”
I snorted, and tried comms again.
*****
“Shorty, how copy, over”, the captain called again.
“Captain, solid copy, stand by”, she replied in a quiet voice. I sighted in on a merc breaking away in a run towards the upper platform and vaporized him into a cloud of bits, then continued my sweep inward holding about five meters off the deck.
Jane was off to my left, and doing what I was; moving from target to target, killing without mercy. We were unstoppable, and absolutely remorseless. These weren’t people, they weren’t even animals; they were nothing but targets.
As I continued my scan for additional hostiles, I thought about how the scene we witnessed had been repeated on so many other worlds, thought about the lives ruined and lost… the children, their parents… entire families... entire colonies.
The only people who were getting off this rock were the survivors.
*****
“Clear”, I said softly.
“Clear, Jane”, Yak replied with a hoarse voice. I tried not to look at what we had done, but it was grim, and undeniable. The colonists were absolutely terrified, but they were alive.
“Captain…” I started, but didn’t know how to make the words come out.
“Copy, Shorty. Report status”, he replied immediately.
I looked around at the carnage strewn across the deck, and took a deep breath. “Captain, I don’t really know how to say this… we weren’t able to maintain a covert profile, sir.”
“Shorty, are you okay?”
I gave that some thought, and answered as confidently as I could, “We’re good-to-go, sir. We saved some of the colonists, sir… and their children.”
He was silent for a moment, as he assimilated what we had done.
“Copy that, Jane… Stand by.”
“Standing by, sir”, I replied.
Yak turned off his mimetics and landed on the platform, and I followed his lead. A fresh chorus of screams broke out from the colonists, as might have been expected at the sight of us appearing out of thin air. They weren’t having a very good day, to say the least… but at least it was getting better.
“Jane… this isn’t over. We’re going to need to get up there and finish this”, Yak said, pointing
into the sky. I followed his arm skyward, and thought about what this place was going to look like if the Revenge started dropping nukes.
Suddenly the crab hove into sight off the platform, water streaming off of gleaming surface as the captain dropped mimetics. He pulled forward over the platform, as its legs articulated out of their sockets and reached down for the deck.
The colonists again screamed in terror, and bunched together between Yak and I, with the crab touching down on the other side.
“Jane, Yak, new mission. Pauli and I are going to take these people back to the Archaea, and you are going to infiltrate and subdue the Revenge.”
Yak spoke up, “Interrogative, sir… how do we get up there? We can’t fly their dropships.”
“Emwan will take you up. She’s already taken control from M2, and will rendezvous with Janis in orbit. Janis has almost certainly infiltrated the Revenge by now, so you will have her full support as well. Do you have any other questions?”
I cleared my throat and tried to sound confident, “None, sir. Let’s end this.”
“Ooh-rah, Captain”, Yak added.
“Very well… make it happen, and be safe up there. Do what you have to do… but I want Red alive.”
“Understood, sir”, Yak replied softly.
Chapter 11
“Flight, you are cleared for docking lane three on deck zero-niner”, the voice on the ship comms called out.
“Copy lane three, deck zero-niner”, Emwan said smartly in a man’s confident voice. Jane looked over at me with a smirk.
We had our helmets off, and were relaxing in free fall, in the few moments we had left. Her warm tears were cooling on my cheek, but she looked as tough as ever.