by Jake Elwood
The handle of an axe protruded from the back of the alien's torso. The axe head was invisible, completely buried in alien flesh. Enright gave Nicholson a weak grin and said, "I don't think I want my axe back."
"I do," said Nicholson. "I've got an idea." He walked around the alien and shoved his rifle into Enright's hands. "Hold this."
He had to brace a foot against the creature's body and wiggle the axe handle back and forth several times before he was able to pull it free. The axe head was covered in purplish blood, thick and ropy. Nicholson gave the axe a shake in a hopeless attempt to clean it, then walked back to the power box. He stood in front of the cable that led to the tower, lifted the axe high, and brought it slashing down.
There was a spark so bright it left a white smear across his vision. The axe handle jerked once against his hands. He smelled ozone and burned flesh, and he looked himself over for fresh burns. The smell was coming from the axe head, though. The alien blood was gone, replaced by black flakes that broke away as he pulled the axe free.
"It's happening again," Enright said, and pointed upward.
Nicholson didn't bother looking. He just jumped over the damaged cable and ran for the next power box.
This time he closed his eyes in the last instant before the axe struck. The spark was plainly visible through his eyelids, and smaller sparks kept jumping in the cut after he pulled the axe free. He gave it another chop, just in case.
"I think that did the trick," Enright said, and Nicholson glanced up. Instead of a white flash, streams of sparks were erupting from the gun barrel at the top of the tower.
"Let's make sure," he said, and continued around the tower.
Enright said, "Do you hear that?"
Nicholson paused. He heard clicking noises, lots of them, distant but coming closer. "Aw, hell." He glanced at Enright. "Get out of here. I'm going to keep cutting." He ran to the next cable, planted his feet, and swung.
As he pulled the axe free he saw the first of the aliens swarming across a side street and entering the park. There had to be at least a dozen, and he felt a cold chill wash across his skin. Well, no one lives forever. This will be a pretty good death.
A different clicking sound made him turn. Enright stood beside him, rifle at his shoulder, helplessly pulling the trigger.
"It's locked to my handprint," Nicholson said. "Here." He traded weapons with Enright. "Now run."
Enright didn't answer, just hefted the axe and waited.
Nicholson lifted the rifle and took aim at the lead alien.
The alien was running on all six limbs. As Nicholson raised the rifle it brought up its front two limbs protectively. He touched the trigger and the arms came apart, the tips falling away to bounce on the grass. A moment later the alien's body broke into chunks, sliced in half horizontally. Three more aliens flew to pieces before the rest of them saw the danger. They stopped, and one more alien fell, front limbs severed.
A moment later full-blown panic took the survivors. They fled, scrambling over each other in their haste. Nicholson watched them go, his finger still on the trigger. He hadn't fired a shot.
Enright cackled, slapped Nicholson on the shoulder, and pointed.
The industrial laser lay on the wall of the fountain where Nicholson had left Jackson and Bennett. Jackson sat on the ground behind the laser, hands on the controls. He gave them a jaunty wave.
Nicholson waved back, then trotted quickly around the tower, putting a few shots into each of the remaining cables. Then he walked to the fountain.
"If you two can help Beckett," Jackson said, "I'm going to bring the laser. It's handy."
"It is," Nicholson said, and slung his rifle across his back. "Let's go."
For those of you who are still listening, thank you for your stubborn persistence, and I promise not to play any more electro-funk for at least a couple of days. Maybe longer. This is Sharon Crowfoot, bringing you some of the worst music ever recorded, to help you realize that the deprivations of invasion aren't really all that bad.
I have it on good authority that the city of Harlequin has been liberated. I repeat, Spacecom troops have landed and recaptured the city. If any aliens remain they're running for the hills, so those of you who are hiding in the hills had better keep your eyes open.
It remains to be seen if we'll need someone to liberate us from all these soldiers, but that's a conversation for another day.
You might not want to rush back to the city quite yet. Just keep tuning in, and I'll tell you when the lights are on and the toilets are flushing properly. In the meantime, enjoy a nice vacation in the countryside.
Now, to celebrate this triumph of human achievement, I'm going to play one of the most glorious achievements in the history of the human race. It's Beethoven's Fifth, as performed by the Mars Symphony Orchestra. Sit back and enjoy, and let's never speak of that unfortunate electro-funk incident again.
Chapter 21 – Hammett
The alien swarm, already badly shot up by the Tomahawk, quickly broke and fled when the Achilles arrived. A couple more small alien ships went tumbling planetward to burn up in the atmosphere of Ariadne as the rest raced away.
Hammett looked out through the starboard window at the comforting sight of the Achilles, without so much as a scratch, floating in the void a couple of dozen meters away. He could see into her bridge. The vac-suited figure in the captain's chair turned toward him, and he heard Brennan's voice over his suit radio. "Captain Hammett. What's your status?"
"A good deal better than it was ten minutes ago," he said. "Thanks for the save." He closed the tactical display and brought up a damage report. "We have no engines. All the fires are out. Multiple hull breaches, but the force fields are holding. One dead and one injured in Engineering." He closed his eyes for a moment. Losing people never got easier. "We're crippled, but we're in a stable orbit. Our biggest concern is that gun on the surface."
"Hang on a moment," she said. "Let me talk to my people groundside. I'll patch you in." She paused. "Never mind. You don't have working implants, do you?"
"No."
She muttered something under her breath. It might have been, "How do you cope?" Then she said "Hang on" again and broke the connection.
Brennan was back online in a couple of minutes. "One of my teams disabled the weapon," she said. "Another team has moved in and is securing the area. Enemy ground forces seem to be retreating from the city center."
Hammett said, "They might come back. I suspect I'll be in orbit for quite a while."
He saw her nod in the distance. "I'm going to have Parrish wire it with explosives. He won't blow it unless he's in danger of being overrun." She grunted. "My science team wants some intact Hive tech to tinker with." The Achilles was carrying a couple of scientists, a man and woman who called themselves 'Xeno-technical Engineers'. Their brand-new specialty was analyzing and understanding Hive technology.
"Good enough," said Hammett. "Just so long as it can't fire at us."
A buzzer sounded on his console. He looked down, and Brennan said, "Uh-oh."
"I see what you mean," Hammett said.
He had a priority message from the Achilles. The corvette's scanners had detected the inevitable Hive reinforcements. They weren't heading for Naxos, though.
They were heading for the Bayonet, and the brand-new Gate.
"I just see a blip," Brennan said. "How do we know how big it is?"
"We don't," said Hammett. "And it doesn't matter. The Gate needs time to connect to Earth. We need to give it to them." He looked around at his ruined ship. "You need to give it to them," he amended.
"You have no way to get to the surface," Brennan said.
"Then you better come back and get me. As soon as the Gate opens."
She was silent for a moment. Then she said, "Are you sure you're okay for a few hours?"
"I'm fine."
"All right." She paused again. "I'm short-handed. If they hit us with an EMP I'll need one more on the bridge."
/> "I'll go," Kaur said, rising from her seat.
Hammett nodded, then waited as the two ships docked. They separated again a moment later, and Brennan said, "Good luck, Captain."
"And to you, Captain."
The faint hum of static in his ears disappeared and the Achilles moved away. He stood and walked to the window, then watched as she moved several kilometers off. The ship was a speck of light barely discernable among the stars when he saw the churning glow of a wormhole opening just in front of her.
A moment later, ship and wormhole disappeared.
He looked down at the planet. It's a good thing we won the ground war. For now, at least. During the Outer Settlements War he'd seen what happened when one side held the planet and the other side controlled the skies. A rain of missiles from above was the best possible outcome. If missiles didn't work, the next step was to drop very large rocks. Missiles could be shot down, but there was no way to stop several hundred tonnes of stone travelling at thousands of kilometers per hour.
He shook his head, pushing those old memories from his mind. That won't happen here. I won't let it. We'll win, and then we'll push on to the next system, and the next. It's the only way to guarantee rocks never fall on Earth.
Hammett turned his back on the window. "Well, that's that." He looked around at the bridge crew. "Where are we at on repairs?"
Chapter 22 – Brennan
The wormhole spat the Achilles out into normal space quite close to the Gate by astronomical standards. The computer told Brennan she could reach the Bayonet and the Gate in as little as twenty minutes at maximum acceleration. Of course, they would go flying past at high velocity and need most of an hour to return.
The need to decelerate meant the trip would take more than twice as long. The enemy ship was closing rapidly on the Gate. There was nothing Brennan could do except order the Achilles to accelerate toward the Gate, and then sit back and fret while she waited for the distance to close.
They were ten minutes out and decelerating hard enough that the whole bridge seemed to be tilted backward when the Hive ship reached the Gate. Brennan brought up her tactical display and prepared to watch the opening moves of the battle.
The Bayonet moved a couple of kilometers from the Gate, advancing to meet the alien ship. The intruder was big, easily triple the size of the corvette, and it began to break apart, separating into its component ships.
And then the holo display flashed, flickered, and reset. The crisp outline of the Bayonet was gone, replaced by a fuzzy blob. The alien fleet looked even worse, a vague smear that might have been one ship or a hundred. Brennan looked up, dismayed.
Kaur at Tactical met her gaze. "Looks like they fixed their EMP weapon."
That wasn't good news. The corvettes were much more effective with computer assistance. Brennan squared her shoulders. "That's fine. This is what we trained for, after all." She pitched her voice for the whole bridge crew to hear. "We carved up the last batch and sent them running for their home planet. We'll carve up this lot, too."
Some of the tension in the bridge drained away. Brennan had served as a lieutenant for long enough to know that when a captain displayed absolute confidence, you couldn't help being carried along.
Even when the Captain was obviously whistling in the dark.
I should turn the ship around. Keep my crew alive for a little bit longer. Because we're going to lose this fight.
The tactical display grew crisper as the distance closed. Enjoy it while you can, Brennan thought. You'll be in range of that EMP weapon soon. What little hope she clung to was rapidly fading. The Bayonet, fighting alone, was having a hard time of it. The aliens tore at her like a wolf pack bringing down a stag. The corvette twisted and turned and fired, but there were always more Hive ships to race in and burn away her hull plates.
Brennan looked for the Bayonet's fighter and couldn't see it. It must have been an early casualty. Dixon wouldn't have lasted thirty seconds in that meat grinder. God rest his soul.
When the Achilles was a minute out, a dozen Hive ships broke away from the battle and headed for the Gate. Brennan stared for a moment in mute frustration, then made a snap decision. "Hopkins. Course correction. Take us to the Gate." The Gate was ultimately all that mattered. She ached to run to the rescue of the Bayonet, but if she defended the Gate, she'd draw the Hive ships away from the other corvette.
When a fat clump of ships came to a halt against the side of the new Gate, she knew she was running out of time. "Kaur. Lasers." She glanced at her tactical display. "Target Nine." The range was extreme, but the target was stationary and the Achilles was moving in a perfectly straight line.
She watched as the ship's lasers wavered and meandered over the enemy hull, the tiny vibrations of the Achilles magnified by vast distance. The effect was devastating, far better than she'd expected. Hive ships burned and broke apart, and the cluster began to scatter.
"Cease fire!" The last thing she needed was to destroy the Gate herself by accident.
"We won't get another shot like that," Kaur said. "They didn't turn their shields on."
The Hive, unfortunately, tended not to repeat its mistakes.
She watched, frustrated, as the little cluster of enemy ships moved to the far side of the Gate. She counted four ships still functioning, with two more that slunk away, damaged. The four ships converged into one, moving up to the metal ring that formed the Gate, keeping the Gate between them and the approaching Achilles.
The Gate was, technically, live. It was already generating a wormhole. The far end of the wormhole was surging through space at superluminal speeds, racing for the connecting Gate near Earth. It made the inside of the metal ring, in effect, an impenetrable shield. Anything that passed through that circle would come out light-years away. The amalgamated alien ship was using the Gate for cover, attempting to destroy it from behind.
Brennan magnified her display. She could see the side of one component ship jutting past the edge of the ring. The target computer designated it as "Eight". "Target Eight and fire," she said.
"I'll hit the Gate," said Kaur.
"I know. Just do your best."
A red glow appeared on the exposed side of the enemy ship. The corvette was closing rapidly, making the laser more accurate every moment. The glow wobbled, then disappeared as the laser swung wide, burning into the depths of space. The glow reappeared, swung the other way, and briefly lit up the ring of the Gate. A moment later it swung back out and touched the ship.
The alien shield failed. The laser wobbled, slicing a ragged chunk from the ship, and then the ship disappeared.
A moment later Brennan felt a burst of pain, as if electricity was pouring through her entire body. Static screamed in her ears, then went silent. She saw Samson clutch briefly at his helmet. She shook her head, took a deep breath, and looked around.
The tactical display was gone. Every screen on the bridge was dead. "We're on manual control," she said. "Let's do some damage."
Pitts, her helmsman, tugged at a bank of levers that gave him direct manual control over the ship's manoeuvring thrusters. He brought the Achilles around in a clumsy arc, sweeping behind the Gate. Brennan heard the thrum of rail guns firing. The gun crews wouldn't be waiting for commands from the bridge, which was largely blind. They would be firing at every target they could see.
"One ship destroyed," said a sailor with a phone pressed to her ear. "One fleeing." The Achilles passed the edge of the ring and she said, "Enemy reinforcements approaching."
Brennan looked out the port window and felt her pulse quicken. Hive ships were rushing in, too many to count. They made a lethal cloud, and they were coming for the Achilles. She could see the Bayonet floating behind them, dead in space, burning as she tumbled slowly through the void.
We won't be getting any help from the Bayonet or the Tomahawk. It's all up to us now.
A nightmare battle began. For much of it Brennan was a spectator, watching as the Achilles twisted and dodged
, seeing metal scrap drift past the windows from alien ships destroyed by rail gun rounds and lasers. The Achilles launched its fighter, and it raced around the corvette like an angry wasp.
Again and again clusters of ships raced in close and fired their heat weapon. For a moment the starboard window was filled by an alien hull, dominated by a black circle that flashed red. The steelglass window melted and ran, the bridge lost its atmosphere in a rush, and Brennan's faceplate snapped shut.
The corvette spun on its axis, the alien ship vanished, and when the Achilles finished a half rotation Brennan saw laser-scored fragments through the port window.
A cluster of aliens made a run for the Gate, and Brennan ordered the Achilles to pursue, rail gun rounds driving them off. Then the swarm around her renewed its attack and she forgot about everything but surviving for another moment.
"We lost the starboard rail gun."
"A cluster forming aft! Bring her around!"
"Firefighting team to the engine room."
Brennan wanted to move to the window and get a better view of the battle, but the ship was twisting and jerking so sharply she knew she would never keep her feet. She clung to the arms of her chair, watched her people fight, and wondered if there was something more she could do.
"Cluster forming!" Kaur snapped. "Bring the nose thirty degrees to starboard." The rail gun hummed, then went silent. "We've lost the other rail gun. Bring the nose down. We have to bring a laser battery to bear."
Brennan felt her fingers tighten, helpless and desperate, on the arms of her chair. We've lost the rail guns and at least one laser turret. The engine room is on fire, and half our manoeuvring thrusters are gone. God only knows how many of my people are dead. And the bastards keep coming.