by Meridian
“What is it Specialist?”
“Message just received from the Aves Yorick. ”
“Transfer it to my head’s up.” So, Pegasus had launched more Aves. This was a good sign. Jordan examined the message grimly and then passed it to Redfire.
PLEASE DESTROY TWO NEMESIS MISSILES LAUNCHED FROM PEGASUS.
“Acknowledged,” Jordan said. “That clears up one ambiguity. All stop, holding at 1,000 meters from intercept.” She looked through the canopy. The dischargers were dead ahead, slightly below. Electrical charges crawled up and down their metallic frames like sparking hyperactive caterpillars.
Redfire watched the monitors, looking for signs of the energy build-up that would presage the next discharge of power into the atmosphere. The model of the tower he was reading looked something like a map of a storm cell. Most of the tower’s area showed a lime green energy flow, except for the dischargers themselves, which were emitting a sizzling purple. Rapidly, a volcano-like plume of red began rising through the tower. “Go!” Redfire ordered.
“Moving to intercept point,” Jordan said calmly.
Basil flew into position directly above the dischargers as a giant surge of energy spilled into the atmosphere.
“You better know what you’re doing this time,” Jordan purred.
Redfire reached over his station and made a last adjustment. “Shields at maximum! Brace yourselves, this is going to be a big one!”
The first pulse of energy hit, felt like nothing, but then was followed by a surge much larger than Redfire had anticipated. The ship was slammed with a force of energy like all the power of hurricane, focused and released in a single microsecond. Basil acted like a circuit breaker, directing Terawatts of energy that should have vented into the atmosphere back into the tower.
While the shields were more than equal to the task of protecting the ship from the energy, they did nothing to held it steady in the exploding air.
“Whoa, baby!” Redfire yelled, reaching for an Oh-Shit handle as the ship pitched violently. “I like it like that.”
“Stabilizers at maximum,” Jordan reported.
Redfire watched his display. The energy patterns had gone from red to orange and were shooting back into the tower.
It was too much feedback for the dischargers to handle. They exploded in a spectacular eruption of burning metal shards. The upper levels of the tower also exploded, blowing walls into dust and leaving behind a blackened forest of structural supports. Most of the energy was spent in the uppermost floors.
Lower down, the structure was strong enough to contain its share of the energy feeding back into it, but the entire power distribution network was overwhelmed, burned out and collapsed.
Now, the schematic on Redfire’s display was completely dark. “Move in and prepare for landing,” he ordered Jordan. If there were any people left alive in the topmost layers of the arco-tower, he doubted they would be able to offer much resistance, but he didn’t think they would be clear for long.
“Warfighters, stand by to deploy as soon as we are within jump distance.” He checked the scanners. Lear’s bio-Sliver displayed her location. He also noted she was in fine physical shape, although her elevated heart rate and adrenaline secretions indicated that the destruction of the arco-tower’s power system had surprised her as much as the Merids. He had the ship’s scanners map out the interior of the building and fed a schematic diagram of the internal structure to the Warfighters.
Meridian — The Arco-Tower
Basil descended to what was left of the roof of the arco-tower. “There’s no clear place to set down,” Jordan reported. “I’m going to engage the counter-gravity and let us hover above the debris.”
“Close enough for a jump?” Redfire asked.
She did not respond verbally, but shot him a quick “of course, close enough for a jump” look.
A few seconds later, the rear hatch opened and Warfighters began jumping through in twos and threes. Redfire looked at Taurus and was about to ask if she felt up to going, but she was already charging the open hatch. Redfire ran after her and leaped into space.
The roof of the tower came up surprisingly fast. Redfire’s legs and knees stung with the sudden impact. He looked up to see half the Warfighters already deployed in a protective perimeter. Two of them were working on gaining access to some kind of panel that led into the arco-tower. In their direction, Redfire moved, with Taurus at his side.
The electrostatic discharge had left the air crackling dry with a reeking stench of ozone. Redfire’s nostrils stung as he surveyed the damage he had done. The dischargers were scorched, melted and blackened, like the twisted skeletal hands of a hideously burned monster, reaching desperately toward the sky. Nicely done, he thought to himself. I’m a killer when the muse is upon me.
A panel of the tower swung open with a loud groan and three Warfighters trained their weapons into the darkness within. They dropped a stun grenade into the hole. There was a flash from below, and then the Warfighters headed down. Redfire and Taurus set their Spex to Low-Light Environment Enhancement mode and went in after them. Two more followed them. The remainder stood guard outside.
Through a tangle of debris — structural supports, conduits, the remains of pipes and cables — they climbed down until they reached the highest intact level of the Arco-tower. The visors made the damaged interior of the upper arco-tower even more surreal as they made their way along. It was actually brighter than Redfire had expected. The Merids were masterful in the use of light-transmitting crystal. Redfire saw the illogical angles describing the walls of the corridor they navigated, burned out patterns of power conduits scrawled across the walls like robot hieroglyphics.
“Tyro Commander Lear is four levels below us, 120 meters southeast,” Taurus reported.
“Got it,” Redfire confirmed. Led by the Warfighters, they pushed their way further into the tower.
“Look for a way to get down to her.”
“There’s some kind of maintenance access shaft about fifty meters ahead,” one of the Warfighters reported.
“Looking for it,” Taurus confirmed. She pointed to a wall panel. The forward charge of Warfighters ripped it from the wall, revealing a space behind, the head of a shaft leading downward.
The shaft was about two meters wide, circular, with hand-grips running along two sides. One of the lead Warfighters was already dropping into it by the time Redfire and Taurus reached the entrance. Two went down while one remained behind to guard their backs. Taurus climbed into the shaft and Redfire followed.
Before they had made it down very far, they heard two sharp shpip-shpip sounds; the sounds made by shoulder-cannons in non-lethal firing mode.
“What’s happening?” Redfire hissed into his mouthpiece.
“Two unfriendlies encountered us at the shaft exit,” a deep male voice answered in his comlink.
“They are no longer in play.”
“Acknowledged.” So, the Merids had responded a little more quickly than Redfire had expected.
Suddenly, there was a snap loud enough to be heard without auditory enhancers as Taurus’s foot failed to connect completely with one of the footholds in the shaft. The knee she had earlier injured falling into a paranet was wrenched in a direction it had never been meant to go. She clamped her jaw shut tight to keep from shouting out and slid to the bottom of the shaft.
“Taurus!” Redfire called in a shouted hiss.
Taurus didn’t answer. She was still clamping her jaw shut against the pain. Redfire double-timed the remaining length of the shaft.
A large, muscular, brush-cut Warfighter had pulled Taurus away from the shaft and was pulling a pain-suppression ampoule out of a sleeve-pocket in his battle-jacket. Redfire leaned over to Taurus.
“This was a stupid idea,” she growled through clenched teeth.
The Warfighter squeezed the ampoule against her neck.
“We should get her back to the ship,” Redfire said.
“H
elp me get her leg splinted up,” the Warfighter barked. “Sir.” Redfire checked his chronometer. The missiles were due in forty-two minutes. He bent over Taurus as the Warfighter popped her knee joint back where it belonged and began wrapping an immobilizing bandage around the leg.
Neither Redfire nor the Warfighter saw the Merid Enforcers approaching from behind their backs.
Taurus had been squeezing her eyes shut to block the pain, but as the ampoule released its warm, sweet load into her bloodstream, she relaxed just enough to open them, and just in time to see the Merids raise their weapons.
Reacting as her training dictated, Taurus reached up and grabbed Redfire’s arm and twisted it around backward, pointing his pulse weapon at the Merids. She wrapped her hand around his wrist and squeezed. The pulses took out the shock troops in three neat shots.
Redfire wrenched his arm away from her, turned and saw what had happened. “Damb, but you are good.”
“There’s a lot more going for me besides unbelievable beauty,” Taurus purred, wincing at the same time. “Now, get my leg fixed.”
Redfire checked his Spex. Lear was on the next level below. “Get Taurus back to the ship. I’ll get ExTC
Lear.”
“I would not advise going in alone, Commander,” said the Warfighter.
“Taurus is going to need both of you guys to make it back. No sense in all of us getting crispy when those Big Dam missiles hit.”
The three of them looked at him dubiously. Redfire tried the comlink. “Redfire to Lear, please respond. Tyro Cmdr. Lear, if you can respond, please do so.” Nothing.
“With all due respect, commander, the situation sounds rather troublesome,” the Warfighter insisted.
“All the more reason to risk only one of our precious selves. Look, I’m going by myself. No argument.
Once Taurus is safe, you can drop down and bail me out, but I have no more time to argue with you.” Redfire moved, keeping both hands in front of him, pulse weapons ready. The Spex indicated Lear was directly below a large octagonal chamber on his level that held eight Merids. Four turns, and a hundred meters later, he came to doorless, open chamber. He saw Merids standing around a viewport built into the floor. He reached into the front of his battle-jacket and withdrew a smart grenade. He raised the small sphere to his lips and whispered instructions.
“Eight lifeforms in the next room. I need you to take them out of play. There is a kind of portal in the floor. If possible, destroy it, making a clear path to the next level.” He opened his palm and the grenade drifted away, describing a course toward the waiting Merids.
None of them saw it enter, so fixed were they on the task of monitoring Lear. It drifted over their heads to a point it calculated to be at the center of the group. There was a bright flash as the grenade flooded the chamber with an intense energy burst that disrupted the synaptic pathways in the brain.
When the flash cleared, the Merids were down, but even before then, the grenade had punched a large hole in the center of the portal.
When Redfire rushed in a second later, he found the hole in the portal to be dangerously jagged. No way could he jump through. Then, the dust cleared, and he saw Executive Tyro Commander Lear glaring up at him through the hole. She was wearing the same gray robes as the Meridian Insiders. Her arms were crossed in front of her chest, and if looks could kill, she would be on trial for genocide.
“Just what do you think you are doing, Tyro Commander Redfire?” Redfire raised his pulse cannon. “Stand back,” he ordered. He fired a shot into the portal just as Lear drew away. Half of the remaing glass collapsed. Redfire leaped, made a smooth arc through the middle of the hole and landed in a crouch, his boots and the supports at his knees taking the force of the landing. He stood and extended his hand to Lear. “Let’s go.”
“Go? Go? Go where exactly, Tyro Commander?”
“There’s an Aves on the roof standing by to evacuate us. There are aslo two Nemesis Missiles en route from Pegasus, probably launched by one of your glitches. This whole planet is about to be destroyed, with or without us on it. I would prefer to be off it.”
“Did you do this?” Lear said, gesturing toward her dead monitors.
“Did I do what?”
“Send an energy feedback through the system destroying all my work… twelve minutes ago.”
“I did that.”
“You carried out an unprovoked attack on a new world.”
“You say that as though it were a bad thing.”
She slammed her fist on the top of her console. “Damn you! Damn you and all your stupid, undisciplined, reckless … How dare you! We do not attack other worlds. It is against every principle of the Odyssey Charter.” Her voice dropped to a malevolent hiss. “When we get back to Pegasus, I will have you frozen and sent back to Republic for trial.”
“I hope there’s room in the transport for two,” Redfire said, staring her down. “You were collaborating with the alien rulers of this world to help them take over Republic.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. Do you really think these poor backwards people are some kind of threat?”
“You were going to transmit the Regulators to Republic.”
“Or, maybe, I was going to send Republic a warning.”
Redfire did not respond. He was only prepared to halfway believe her, but he recognized that sending a warning would make sense.
She went on. “Do you know much about interstellar tachyon-pulse communications, or is that outside your area of interest? The antennae that serve the Republic system are designed with huge information buffers. These hold incoming messages in order to protect our planetary communication system from contamination, cyber-warfare, spaceborne computer viruses and anything else that could be transmitted through space.
“With advance warning, we could hold the Regulators in an isolated facility, study them, learn their weaknesses. When the Phase II ships arrive in the system, they would know how to defeat them without destroying the inhabitants. And we would know, too, should we encounter their kind again.” Redfire tightened his landing pack. “It’s all academic now. The missiles are coming and we have to get out of here.”
chapter twenty
Space — Prudence
Prudence emerged from Meridian’s atmosphere and the planet became a curve, then a sphere, then spot behind her. Driver could not have been more relieved. On the ground, Prudence was vulnerable, in space, she was a fearsome bird of prey. Like his ship, he only felt himself in his element when he was in flight, when he had taken wing and broken away from gravity’s selfish hold.
Before him spread a field of stars and a definite mission: Seek out and destroy a pair of distinct and identifiable targets: Nemesis Missiles. He rode Prudence hard, and she scanned through space, looking for prey, united in their purpose.
Only the presence of Eddie Roebuck kept him from perfect, undistracted utility.
Roebuck had started out in the back of the ship doing God-knew-what and that was absolutely acceptable to Driver, but when he appeared on the flight deck and plopped himself down in the right-hand seat, Driver became instantly perturbed. Then, he said something that almost made Matthew pitch the ship. “You’re that pilot that Eliza likes, aren’t you?” Driver goggled like a stunned woolbeast. “Excuse me?”
“You know Eliza Jane, she’s the ship’s navigator or something. Does something on the Bridge, anyway. She always eats breakfast with this pilot she likes. I didn’t put it together before now, but I’m pretty sure you’re the guy. Kinda ironical when you think about it.” The question on Matthew’s mind was, “What do you mean, like?” but it seemed completely adolescent, and in the stumble of successive thoughts, he ended up saying, “I thought you and Eliza had … some kind of relationship.”
Roebuck snorted and shook his head. “Not in the way that you’re thinking, beauty. Eliza has standards. She would never settle for less than a hero, and I’m no hero, I’m just a rat.” Matthew could not think of anything to say, but h
is eyes must have spoken for him.
“Don’t look at me like you feel sorry for me. I like being a rat. A rat who knows he’s a rat is lots better off than a rat who thinks he’s hero. Believe me, Eliza Jane wants a hero, the kind of guy who flies through space and goes around savin’ planets.”
If there was envy or regret in his tone, Driver missed it. His heart was the heart of a pilot, formed around calculations of relative and absolute position, normal flight procedures, situational awareness, and power-to-mass ratios. Now, for the first time, it was touched by irony. He brushed irony off and told it to keep its hands to itself.
Driver activated a display showing their quarry. “How much do you know about Nemesis missiles, Eddie?”
“Probably nothing.”
Driver filled him in. “Each missile carries twelve programmable yield warheads. They could wipe out every living thing on the planet, but that’s not important to us.”
“Sounds pretty fraggin’ important to me.”
Redfire pointed into the display. “In terms of defenses, they have the same shielding and pulse cannons as we do. They can give as good as they get. They can also maneuver evasively.” Roebuck paused. “I don’t like the way that sounds.”
Driver pushed the thrusters to full power. “Aye. I have never been trained in defeating a Nemesis missile. No one thought we would be fighting against our own weapon systems.” Roebuck considered this. “Well, they haven’t either, right?”
“What do you mean?”
“You were never trained to fight the missiles as an enemy, but the missiles don’t know we’re the enemy.”
Driver frowned in thought. “Nay, but they will know when we start shooting at them.”
“So, don’t shoot at them until you’re right on their asses.” Driver pictured it in his mind, and then nodded. “All right, that sounds good.”
“Can you get up that close to them, beauty?”
“If we come up from behind, slowly, not on an attack vector, they’ll be programmed to think we’re a reconnaissance ship. We could take out both of them at point blank range.” Roebuck nodded vigorously. “I don’t know about any o’ that, but it sounds like you’re thinkin’ like a hero.”