Lacuna: The Prelude to Eternity
Page 22
“You’re not wrong.” The heat surrounded her as she passed through the melted frame of the door and out into daylight. “It’s clear! Light it up!”
“All rifles aim down the corridor,” Cheung said. “Bring the building down on top of them!”
A maelstrom of fire erupted, and Liao clapped her hands over her ears as she ran away from the door. Grenades, missiles, and det-packs flew into the darkness. The Archangel’s ventral turret opened up as well, spewing explosive cannon fire into the hole she had blasted. It didn’t seem enough. Fragments whistled near her, something bit her in the leg, and a splinter of metal screamed as it ricocheted off her elbow.
Then, with a shudder and a rumble, the factory door collapsed, sealing the drones inside.
“Everyone!” Liao shouted above the whine of the descending Archangel. “Get ready to embark! Those drones will dig themselves out shortly, and I don’t want to be here when they do!”
The Marines rallied, equipment discarded as they gathered, ready to be crammed into the Broadsword.
“I think we’re clear,” said Cheung, jogging to catch up to her. “We’ve just go to—”
Cheung’s head exploded into dark-red chunks.
A split-second’s silence. Cheung’s body stood, stiff like a scarecrow, and then crumpled into a heap.
Before Liao could completely process that, a roaring blast wave blew her off her feet. She landed hard, dazed, squinting up at the sky.
The brilliant blue was pierced with streaking stars. The spinning wreckage of the Archangel passed overheard, smoke pouring from a gaping wound in its side. It speared nosefirst into the ground no more than fifty metres to her left, the Broadsword bursting into flames and disintegrating. Secondary explosions shook the ground as the fuel and ammunition stores ignited.
[“Place your weapons on the ground,”] boomed a voice from above. Two Toralii assault ships, glowing red hot from reentry, opened up like unfurling wings. Two dozen or more armoured Toralii Marines descended from the gull-wing protrusions on thin ropes. Dangling from the rear of the ship like an arachnid’s stinger, an unusual glowing blue weapon levelled at the humans below.
The Marines scrambled for cover in the open sand. Liao just watched, half deafened from the explosions, as they were cut down: a thin, sizzling crackle of electrical discharge arced from the Toralii assault ships, jumping from marine to marine.
O’Hill was hit in the shoulder. He was flung to the ground, twitching and jerking involuntarily, as though pushed by the hand of a giant.
And then the wave of energy found her, and the scorching heat of the desert sands were just a memory.
Operations
“We are not leaving Captain Liao,” said Iraj, gripping the command console tightly. “Hail Archangel once more, Lieutenant Jiang. We need more time.”
“The Toralii are firing on us,” she cautioned. “No response from Archangel. Nothing since they entered atmosphere.”
The Beijing rattled as a spray of weapons fire—too inaccurate at that range to penetrate the charged hull plating—splattered off their hull. The ship lurched as it tried to evade, a clumsy beast struggling as the hunters plinked at it.
“Try to call the surface again,” Iraj ordered. “Whatever’s stopping our communications, get through it. Broadcast on a different frequency. Give extra power to the radios. Something.”
“Sir,” said Ling, “there’s no way we can reach the planet. I can barely get targeting telemetry from the Madrid, and the Washington can’t be reached at all.”
“Try Warsong,” he said. “See if they can relay a signal.”
Ling tapped at his console. Kamal half closed his eyes.
Allah, most merciful, most benevolent, now would be a good time.
“Beijing, this is Warsong.” The scream of alarms in the background made the commander difficult to hear. “We’re hit again—the Bevra drones are firing on us from the surface. The closer we get to the planet, the worse our signal gets, not that it matters. Our ventral gunner’s dead, and we’re leaking atmosphere. Sorry, Commander. This isn’t a fight we can win.”
Even if they could hold out, then what? How much time could they buy? An hour? A day?
Warsong was carrying the precious cargo, the key to the Iilan’s gratitude.
“Warsong,” he said, bitterness overwhelming his normally calm exterior, “withdraw on my authority. Break and head for any open Lagrange point. Jump as soon as you are able. Rendezvous at Velsharn.”
“Roger.” The defeat in his tone was palpable. “What about Archangel?”
The Archangel crew were known for taking absurd risks and somehow managing to save the day, but apparently even they knew their limits. “They knew the risks. If you see them, form up and escape together. Allahu akbar.”
“Sir,” said Ling. “Incoming transmission from the Madrid.”
De Lugo’s voice came to him, panting softly. “Captain, we need to get out of here.”
“Withdraw,” Iraj ordered. “Jump as soon as you can. Full retreat, defensive spread.”
“You’re not coming with us?’
“Captain Liao remains on the surface.”
“¡Dios Mío!” My God. God, it seemed, had taken the day off.
“My thoughts exactly.”
“We cannot remain here,” said de Lugo. “Commander, you are in command now. We face impossible odds. Withdraw with us and save your crew.”
The faces of the Operations room told the same story. Everyone knew that to stay was to die. Nobody contested. Nobody complained. They remained at their posts.
“All hands,” he said, his chest tightening as though he had stones in his heart, “ready to withdraw to the L1 Lagrange point and jump.”
The ship turned, and the world of Qadeem retreated in his monitor. He would have hours to think about what had happened. He’d been awake for long enough that his eyes hurt and his body ached, but weariness was a distinct, secondary feeling to the guilt.
They were leaving Commander Liao and almost fifty Marines behind.
“We’ll get her back,” he promised de Lugo. “We’ll save her.”
“I know we will,” de Lugo said, but Iraj knew both of them were full of bluster. “We will.”
Escaping took hours—ducking and weaving and trying to avoid incoming weapons fire—but Kamal Iraj was fixed on the command console. He could only watch as Qadeem shrank and shrank, as the Toralii cruisers broke off their pursuit and surrounded the planet, and then, with a bright flash of light, the system disappeared entirely.
EPILOGUE
Phase Four
*****
Location Unknown
PAIN.
LIAO’S EYES FLUTTERED OPEN. Her body ached, her skin raw and red, face puffy and bruised. She was lying on a metal floor in a room with metal walls and a metal roof—far from the sandy vault she had last stood in—a five-metre cube.
She remembered the sand. She remembered the electricity arcing over her whole body. She remembered Anderson.
[“Welcome,”] said a voice, feminine and stern, seeming to reverberate around the whole room, coming from no source she could determine. [“State your name.”]
“Melissa Liao.”
[“So it is The Butcher of Kor’Vakkar.”] The voice seemed pleased. [“Welcome, Commander.”]
She grimaced against the light. “It’s Captain Liao now.”
[“I shall update your profile.”] The voice practically curled its words in the air, the normally smooth Telvan dialect rough and bitter. [“We had always thought that you would eventually find your way to us, Captain. Your name has travelled far for a member of such a frail species. Yours is a legacy of destruction that I had not expected to see in my lifetime. I am Commandant Yarri. You and I are going to become good friends, I feel.”]
The faint sound of screaming echoed in the distance. Liao tried to sit up and almost toppled over. Her weight was wrong. A glance at her right side revealed her prosthetic had been removed,
now just a metal-capped stump where her flesh ended. The itching was gone.
“Where I am?” she asked, unsure of what else to say.
[“You are our guest,”] said Yarri. [“Cenar wasn’t the only station we have. Your efforts were impressive, and its destruction has inconvenienced us significantly, but we have others, as you will discover in time.”]
“Go to hell,” Liao spat. “I’m not afraid of the Toralii version of the Hanoi Hilton.”
[“Meaningless babble,”] said the Toralii. [“Your work is war, Butcher, but mine is pain. Let’s see how much your tongue wags after you’ve spent even a night in Zar’krun.”]
Zar’krun. Liao didn’t know the word exactly, but like many Toralii compound words it had a rough translation.
The Hold of Eternity.
Iraj’s lesson drifted back into her mind. Through difficulty comes ease. With a soft click, the metal of the floor rearranged itself, forming itself into grid like a waffle iron. She scrambled to try to find purchase, but the gravity intensified, a mighty hand pulling her down flat against the ridges and against the fiery heat that burned within them.
Then there was only an eternity of screaming.
The Lacuna series continues with Lacuna: The Requiem of Steel, coming in 2015.
THE LACUNAVERSE
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Table of Contents
Contents
Copyright Information
Blurb
Books
Dedication
Title Page
Velsharn
Prologue
Act I
Chapter I
Chapter II
Chapter III
Chapter IV
Act II
Chapter V
Chapter VI
Chapter VII
Chapter VIII
Act III
Chapter IX
Chapter X
Chapter XI
Chapter XII
Epilogue
The Lacunaverse