March stood back up, cursing in fury.
Perry hadn’t deserved that. Lorre had enslaved him, forced him to betray his comrades, and then had cast him aside. A red haze fell over March, and he was gripped with the overwhelming need to chase down Lorre and beat the Machinist agent to death with his bare hands.
Only years of discipline and experience forced the murderous fury back. Almost certainly Lorre had gone to summon Overseer Carnow and her soldiers. If they got here before March escaped, they would take possession of both Wraiths and kill March. If March could not avenge Perry by killing Lorre, then he could at least avenge Perry by denying Lorre the Wraiths. Likely the loss of the Wraiths would anger the Machinists more than the loss of Lorre.
March dashed forward, snatched the metal case from the deck, and opened it. The Wraith device from the Tiger was inside, neatly dissembled, and the quantum inducer at its core looked like some malignant insect that had fattened itself on carrion. He slammed the case shut and headed for the shuttle, reaching for his earpiece, only to realize that he had lost it at some point during the fight. Again he cursed in rage, and he yanked the phone from his pocket and called Logos.
“You’re still alive,” said Logos. “That is somewhat surprising.”
“Might not stay that way,” said March, running up the shuttle’s ramp. Inside the cargo bay was cavernous and empty, save for a single chair that looked like it had come from a dentist’s office. Attached to the end of the chair was the familiar diadem and electronics of a Wraith device. March ran to the chair, yanked open the metal case, and started ripping the Wraith apart and shoving it into the case. He would damage the electronics, but the quantum inducer was the important part, and the alien device was likely impervious to damage. “Where’s Lorre?”
“He’s running towards the Machinists’ troop ship,” said Logos. “The troopship is emptying out. Looks like about sixty Machinist soldiers, and I think they’re heading for your ship.”
“Great,” said March, slamming the case shut. “I need a cargo drone to get me back to the Tiger.”
“There’s one waiting,” said Logos. “Even if you go at full speed it’s going to be close. Maybe you shouldn’t have wrecked your motorcycle.”
“I’ll keep that in mind for the next time,” said March, running back down the ramp. “Thank you for the help.” He hesitated. “I’m sorry that…”
“No, don’t apologize,” said Logos. He heard a bit of amusement in her voice. “Maybe once this is all over, and you come to your senses, you’ll realize you made a mistake.”
“By then you’ll have found a better man,” said March, stepping back into the corridor and looking around in case Lorre had left a trap. “Maybe one with fewer scars.”
She hesitated. “I hope someday you understand that doesn’t matter as much as you think it does. Good luck, Captain March.”
March ended the call and climbed onto the cargo drone’s bed. “Bay 997, as fast as possible. Go!” The drone lurched into motion, and March made another call. “Caird?”
“March, you’re still alive?” said Caird.
“For now,” said March. “Get the ship ready for departure. We’re leaving now, and hopefully, the reactor is calibrated well enough that it won’t explode when we enter hyperspace.”
“It should work,” said Caird. “I’ve got Vigil going through an expedited preflight list. What about Perry?”
“Perry’s dead,” said March. The drone accelerated faster, and March gripped the railing with his metal hand. “He was under the control of Lorre’s Wraith. The security drones killed him when he tried to shoot me. I’ve got our Wraith and Lorre’s, but he’s on his way to the Tiger with as many Machinist soldiers as he could round up.”
“I’ve got the laser turrets powered up,” said Caird, “but…”
“If I don’t get there first, leave without me,” said March. “The Machinists will let you go. I’ve got two of their Wraiths, and there are only thirty-six of the things in existence. They’ll come after me instead.”
The drone turned the corner, and March saw the doors to Bay 997. He also saw a mob of dark figures sprinting down the far end of the corridor, heading full speed for the Tiger’s landing bay.
Lorre had indeed roused the Machinist soldiers.
“See you shortly or not at all,” said March, and he ended the call and shoved the phone back into his pocket. “Drone! Full speed down the corridor. Don’t stop for Bay 997 or for any other reason.”
The drone’s electric motors whined, and it hurtled down the corridor. As it passed Bay 997, March vaulted over the railing and jumped, landing on his left arm and rolling to his feet. That really hurt. He had forgotten about the cut on his collarbone, and the metal case under his right arm rattled and clanked.
But he survived the landing, and he sprinted across the bay to the Tiger.
The ship was almost ready to leave. The familiar hazy blue came from the ion thrusters, and the dull roar of the powering drive filled his ears. March heard the drumbeat of dozens of running feet behind him, and he dragged another burst of speed from his legs. He tore up the cargo ramp and saw Vasquez and the surviving Marines waiting for him at the top of the ramp, plasma rifles in hand. The ramp began to close as soon as March started to climb it, and the Tiger lifted into the air, the ion thrusters pulsing.
March staggered to a stop in the cargo bay, looking at the Marines.
“You’re alive,” said Vasquez. “You’re also hurt.”
“It’ll keep,” said March. Two corpses in blue armor lay on the deck, their torsos covered with tarps. Vasquez had taken the time to get the dead onto the ship. “Caird’s in the flight cabin?” Vasquez nodded. “Let’s move.”
He hurried across the empty cargo bay, scrambled up the ladder, and ran down the dorsal corridor to the flight cabin, Vasquez clanging behind him. Inside the flight cabin, Caird sat at the copilot’s station, fingers flying over the controls as he turned the Tiger towards space. Elizabeth stood behind him, eyes intent as she watched. March put the case on the deck and dropped into the pilot’s acceleration couch, unlocking the controls and checking the displays. Under normal circumstances, he would not have been happy taking the Tiger into space without a proper preflight checklist and double-checking the calibration of the dark matter reactor.
Under the present circumstances, they were not moving fast enough.
“If you don’t get that taken care of you’re going to bleed out,” said Caird.
March shook his head. “Nanotech in the blood. It’ll clot on its own.” An alarm flashed on the displays. March switched to the camera view and saw the Machinist soldiers pouring into the bay, some of them toting a large metal tube.
“Surface-to-air anti-fighter missile,” said Vasquez, who had taken the tactical station.
“We’re getting the hell out of here,” said March, and he threw power to both the ion thrusters and the antigrav units. The Tiger bucked as the antigravs fought against the station’s artificial gravity, but the motion threw the ship out of the bay and into space. March fired up the main drive the instant they were at the minimum safe distance to keep from spraying radiation into the station, and the Tiger clawed into space.
“Get the shields up,” said March, stabbing at the controls as he looked at the tactical display. “Kinetic and radiation both. If it looks like we’re going to get away with the Wraiths, the Machinists will try to kill us and destroy the devices.”
“Just what the hell are these damned Wraiths?” said Vasquez.
“I’ll explain later,” said March, scanning the tactical display, “but we have to get them to the Admiralty. If we’re not ready for them, they could give the Machinists a decisive advantage the next time they attack Calaskar…”
There! The ship’s sensors picked up the massive, asteroid-sized bulk of the Honest Profit heading away from Monastery Station and toward open space. The Tiger’s sensors also detected and increasing surge of dark energy from the bi
g ship. The Honest Profit was getting ready to enter hyperspace, and March needed to follow it as soon as possible.
Because the Machinist ships were already moving, and they had summoned reinforcements.
A Machinist carrier, heavy cruiser, and three destroyers were heading towards the station and the Tiger, picking up speed. More icons appeared on the tactical display as the carrier launched a squadron of interceptors and a squadron of heavy fighters. The Ninevehk ships were responding, moving to intercept the Machinist capital warships.
A space battle was about to start outside Monastery Station.
That was very bad. If the Custodian did not have complete conscious control of its own defensive system, much as humans did not have control of their immune system, the defenses might decide to wipe out every human and Ninevehk ship in the system. If the Custodian’s defenses decided the threat was severe enough, they might wipe out every single ship in the Eschaton system.
And if that destroyed the two Wraiths and kept them from falling into Calaskaran hands, March knew the Machinists would consider that worth the cost.
“There are huge spikes of power coming from the planet’s moons and the station,” said Vasquez. “God, they’re off the charts. It looks like the Custodian is gearing up to do a lot of shooting.”
“Yeah,” said March. The displays chimed an alert as the Machinist fighters started on an intercept course for the Tiger.
“Those fighters,” said Caird. “I think they might try to ram us. That wouldn’t trigger the Custodian’s defenses.”
“It wouldn’t,” said March. If they did that, they might even have the leisure to dig the quantum inducers out of the Tiger’s scattered wreckage. He turned the Tiger towards the Honest Profit, pushing more power to the drive.
“Missile locks detected,” announced Vigil.
“They’re targeting us,” said Vasquez. “All twelve of the interceptors and all twelve of the heavy fighters.” He tapped some commands into his console and swore. “The interceptors have lighter missiles, but the heavy fighters have weapons rated for capital ships. If they fire off all their missiles simultaneously, our laser turrets and flak cannons won’t be able to stop them before they kill us.”
“No,” said March. And the Custodian’s reprisals would only take out the Machinist fighters. If the fighters targeted and destroyed the Tiger, the Custodian might likely respond with a measured reprisal. An eye for an eye. The Machinists would lose two squadrons of fighters, and they would deny the Wraiths to the Silent Order.
But what if the Custodian itself was attacked? March suspected the insane AI’s response would not be nearly so measured then.
It was time to gamble.
March put the Tiger through a tight turn, spinning the freighter around.
Now they were flying right towards the incoming fighters.
“That is a bad idea,” said Caird.
“They have a one hundred percent chance of hitting us with their missiles at this vector,” said Vasquez. “There’s no way we can evade them and no way we can use the lasers and the flak launchers to get all of them.”
“I know,” said March. “And we’re also close enough to Monastery Station that if we turn towards it, at least some of the missiles will hit the station.”
Silence answered him. A thrumming noise went through the ship as March opened the drive up.
“I think you’d better tell your men to strap in,” said Caird in a quiet voice. “We might lose the inertial absorbers.”
“If we lose the inertial absorbers there won’t be anything left of us but red paste against the wall,” said Vasquez, “and then the ship will blow up.” But he barked an order to the surviving two Marines.
March gripped the controls as the Tiger blazed towards the approaching swarm of Machinist fighters. He felt every beat of his heart, every rasping breath he took, probably because both every breath and heartbeat made the wound on his chest hurt. The shrill warning of a missile lock grew louder and louder, and the targeting computer calculated that something like seventy missiles would soon be inbound.
The visual sensors picked up flares of light from the fighters.
“They are launching!” said Caird.
Eighty-four missiles, both lighter anti-fighter missiles and slower anti-warship missiles, streaked towards the Tiger. That many missiles would have been enough to cripple a destroyer if they got through the point-defense guns. The amount of explosive firepower in those missiles would reduce the Tiger to atoms.
“Incoming,” said Vasquez, his voice tighter.
March wrenched the Tiger, firing the ion thrusters and sending the ship hurtling towards Monastery Station. Every instinct in him screamed to fire chaff and flak, to send a point-defense firing solution to the laser turrets and the central railgun. Yet he ignored those instincts and dove towards the gleaming rings of Monastery Station. Part of his mind noted that the station’s own point-defense lasers had started firing. The beams were slicing apart the fighters like a lawn mower through thin grass, and they were also taking apart the cloud of missiles pursuing the Tiger. But the beams would not be enough to stop all the missiles before they blew the Tiger to scrap.
The proximity alerted screamed.
The Tiger was approaching the station’s kinetic shield, and it was so powerful that March doubted the Tiger’s impact would reduce its energy level by even a millionth of one percent. He flew towards it as fast as he dared, and at the last minute pulled up, blasting as much power through the ion thrusters as they could handle. The swarm of missiles swooped after the Tiger. Most of them matched the ship’s vector, but there were so many missiles that some of them had to dodge around each other, which scrambled their flight paths a little.
One anti-fighter missile, exactly one, miscalculated and slammed into the station’s kinetic energy shield.
The remaining missiles flew after the Tiger.
Then the Tiger’s sensors overloaded for a few seconds in the sheer amount of energy output from Monastery Station and Eschaton V’s moons.
“Good God!” said Vasquez.
Bit by bit the sensors started to come back online, and March saw what had happened as he turned the Tiger toward open space. Nearby the debris of the missiles pinged off the station’s kinetic shield. Further out, the sensors detected the drifting debris that had once been the flotilla of Machinist capital ships.
They were gone. They were simply gone.
Had those ships encountered a Calaskaran task force, the resultant battle might have lasted most of a day. To judge from the radiation levels coming from the nearest moon, the Custodian had just fired a volley of railgun rounds that had annihilated the entire force in less than a second.
March had known that the Custodian had possessed that kind of power, but to see it with his own eyes still stunned him. Perhaps it was the mercy of God that the Custodian had some sort of moral conscience despite its madness. Otherwise, the insane AI could have extinguished uncounted trillions of lives if it had decided to embark upon a path of conquest.
No one said anything as they gazed at the scope of the destruction.
The controls chimed.
“Broadcast coming from Monastery Station,” said Caird. “Every frequency, every channel, in every known language and some that we’ve never heard of.”
He hit the speaker button.
“Attention all vessels in Eschaton system,” said the Custodian’s calm voice. “I am the Custodian. As you have no doubt observed, the Machinist task force has been destroyed. I do not permit space battles in the Eschaton system. Additionally, any attacks upon Monastery Station, the planet, or the moons will be met with immediate and overwhelming force. I hope I do not have to make this demonstration again.”
The broadcast ended, and the panel chimed again.
“Tight-beam transmission this time,” said Caird. “Just for us.”
“Or just for you, Captain March,” said Elizabeth.
March hit the speaker
button this time. “This is Captain March on the Tiger.”
“I salute your cleverness, Captain March,” said the Custodian. “My calculations indicated a very high probability that you would be killed and the Wraiths would fall back into the hands of the Final Consciousness.”
“Guess the Machinists weren’t listening,” said March.
“To what, might I ask?”
“To you and your Emissaries,” said March. “You did say how you would respond to any attack on the station.”
There was silence for a moment, and then the Custodian laughed.
It was a normal, healthy-sounding laugh, and it shocked March.
Did the AI have a sense of humor? Or was it a simulation designed to put humans at ease? On the other hand, the Custodian didn’t have a voice, but simulated speech for the purposes of communication.
“Emissary Logos was right to place confidence in you,” said the Custodian. “Until we speak again, Captain March. For I calculate a very high probability that you will have to return one day. Remember to remain vigilant. The Machinists will not stop meddling with the relics of the Great Elder Ones.”
The transmission ended.
“Jesus,” muttered March, rubbing his jaw. God, but his shoulder and chest hurt.
“Great Elder Ones?” said Vasquez.
“Later,” said March. “That entire conversation was probably classified.” He gripped the controls and sent the Tiger heading towards the Honest Profit.
“Another call coming in,” said Caird. “Looks like it’s the Ninevehk and Hunt Commander Tashnakha this time.”
March nodded, and Caird put the call through.
“I salute the cunning of your hunt, Captain March,” said Tashnakha. “The demon-worshippers and their vessels have met the fate they so richly deserved.”
“Yes,” said March. “You were correct, Hunt Commander. The Machinists are indeed meddling with things of the demons, as you call them. I will inform my government of what I have learned here.”
Silent Order: Wraith Hand Page 18