by Kurt Johnson
The burning building exploded. Flaming chunks of Galactic alloy arced skyward, like fireworks, against the darkness of the Storm Wall before gravity smashed them down against Nem’s surface. Godwill, unharmed, stood facing Artem in the middle of the blaze. Artem had manifested an enormous, blazing sword, complete with orange fire that flickered along the length of the blade. Godwill crouched, his blue lightning claws emerging from each hand. If the two scariest beings in my thirteen-year-old existence weren’t out to suck my DNA from me, or worse, I would have thought the flaming sword and lightning claws were ridiculously nova.
Alas.
My, uh, nemisi, nemeses (it’s so rare that people have more than one nemesis, I couldn’t think of the plural) circled, apparently evenly matched, as they searched for openings in the other’s defense. I felt a familiar tingle. Both Artem and Godwill turned in my direction—but they weren’t looking at me. They were looking past me. Mom and Dad’s assault tank hovered to a stop not five meters from my back and blocked out the sky.
The tingles I’d felt were its shields extending their protective radius to encompass me, Nonch, Cri, and Mieant. Elation, relief, happiness—I should have felt these things. I should have crumpled to the ground and waited for my parents to get me, to protect me.
In their shelter, I would be safe. They, as always, would be my sanctuary.
But.
If the Foundationalists had really spent 1,800 years harvesting millions of my people to create the concentrated nano I’d seen in Godwill’s vault, I wouldn’t ever be safe. Humans wouldn’t ever be safe. There would be NO sanctuary for anyone…ever.
That containment pod needed to be destroyed.
I took a deep breath, feeling my heart race as the insanity of what I was contemplating smashed into my consciousness. My fingers were scraped and raw, and my hands burned as I grabbed dirt and brick to haul myself to my feet. Blowing purple hair out of my eyes, I scanned the smoke and ruined camp for Godwill’s vault.
There.
My first step toward the building was filled with fear—the second step, less so. By the third, anger at the cruelty and injustice of what had been done to my kind, and to me, energized my bruised muscles. I was just a kid. What was I doing caught up in this eons-old war? But I was in it, nonetheless. My fifth step was more sure. The time for being a victim was gone.
The harvested nanotech, created with millions of Human lives, HAD to be destroyed. If it was left intact, Humanity would be eliminated. I’d be dead.
By my tenth step, I was more determined and resolute. For once, sure of myself.
While my mind was willing AND focused, my body was still underfed, bruised, and unhappy with the situation. I tried sprinting toward the vault building, but only managed an ungainly half-jog, half-stumble filled with twinges of pain and sore muscles. Speed was important not only because of the thousands of ships pouring out of the Dreadnought, and not only because of Artem and Godwill, but also because if my parents saw me running through flaming Ruins, I was sure they’d try to stop me! I zigged through rubble and blazing detritus, noting that all the guards had fled upon the tank’s arrival. I stepped over a hand that jutted out from under a piece of fallen building. Not all of the guards had escaped, apparently.
Sparing a glance back, I caught the tank’s massive barrels pivot toward where Artem and Godwill clashed with their oversized blades. No. Mom and Dad couldn’t be that insane. You don’t fire something designed to take out spaceships at point-blank range. The atmosphere cannon ZWUMPED. Dirt erupted, burning buildings were scattered for hundreds of meters, and my field of vision went white. I was lifted and thrown halfway to the vault.
I thumped on clear ground like a sack of ’natch, winded, but not injured, and thankful I hadn’t been impaled on the nearby mounds of jagged wreckage. The cannon blast had gouged a cavernous hole in the ground that glowed with molten rock and metal. Godwill and Artem were nowhere to be seen.
Light splashed against the tank’s shield like rain, making soft pattering sounds as the Dreadnought’s swarm of assault ships came within range and began firing. I was running out of time. The vault was twenty steps away. Several approaching ships noticed the little Human girl running toward the building and peeled away from the primary formation focusing on my parents’ tank. And opened fire!
I was twelve paces from the door.
Dirt geysered nearly a meter from where I ran, and I staggered to the side trying to keep my balance.
Only three determined strides to the door.
No more blasts came. The ships were circling for another strafe.
I reached the closed door, gritted my teeth, and threw my adrenaline-fueled strength into the final distance, expecting to fly into the interior of the building as the door slid open.
I smashed into the door, windmilled backward, and landed on my side. I lay there, stunned. My shoulder was on fire.
The door handle gleamed in the darkness. OF COURSE. Because, you know, sometimes those things were used with doors. The ships were screaming in a tight circle, coming around for another shot.
Muttering bad things my parents would instantly ground me for, I picked myself up and pulled the door handle. The door swung open, and I stumbled inside just as plasma bolts tore up the ground behind me. Who uses door handles?
The hallway leading down to the vault was deserted. A blaster lay discarded on one of the desks. I grabbed it as I raced by, checking its charge. It glowed green—a full charge. But whether or not it held a charge, I was committed to my course. I just hoped that Godwill hadn’t had the NPD remove the nanocontainer at the first sign of my parents’ assault, or I’d feel like an even bigger moron than when I’d tried to shoulder the door open.
Plasma pistol held in front of me, like my parents had taught me, I sucked in a breath and stepped toward the vault. All clear. I entered and was greeted by steamy, rotting odors. I pointed the weapon down the dimly lit staircase. No sound. I stepped onto the stairs; the hairs on my neck stood on end as I reached the halfway point. I was too far from either exit to escape if someone sneaked up on me from the rear or ambushed me from the front. I hurried down the stairs, pausing at the corner for one last listen before crouching and peering around the corner.
Empty.
“Ppppplllllthhhhsss!” I exhaled in relief, straightened, and rubbed my bruised shoulder. Everything in the vault was as I’d left it. Something jingled at my feet. I looked down. Even the remnant of Jenna was as I’d left it—grim and sad.
The nanocontainer stood, quietly ignoring me. The chair and rows of virtual screens were sinister reminders of my powerlessness and Godwill’s cruelty. I limped to a spot far enough away from the nanocontainer, where I had a clear line of fire.
Raising the plasma pistol, I flicked the safety off and heard a high-pitched whine, the weapon’s battle cry.
I would be the one to redeem 1,800 years of Human oppression. Eliminate this threat and once and for all eliminate the discussion around access to Human technology. After I destroyed the container, I would be the only loose thread left. Sure, Godwill and Artem were made of the same stuff, but if Godwill was to be believed, I was the key.
OK, Ray, time to finish this.
I pulled the trigger.
48
Orange plasma bolts streamed from the pistol, splashing over the containment pod and washing the room with heat and fire. I raised my arm to cover my eyes and twisted away from the inferno. The rows of vid-screens melted and the chair became a slag heap.
But the nanocontainment pod remained untouched. It ignored my scowl.
Stupid shielded containment pod.
I fired again, aiming at different parts of the pod, squeezing off shots with furious abandon. The energy meter on the plasma pistol dipped to yellow, and my eyebrows were singed. I wiped sweat and burned eyebrows away from my forehead.
Nova. Great gravity wells. Flipping nova and great gravity wells and…auuugh! I raised my arm to hurl the useless plasma pistol
at the pod.
“Raystar of Terra,” someone said behind me. Surprised, I spun and fumbled the pistol. It flew through the air, landing with a crunch at the feet of the owner of the voice.
Sarla.
Orange eyes, huge mandibles, jagged, sword arms—the wall of intelligent lethality regarded me. Her bulk flowed into the vault and I backed up, terrified but resigned to my fate. I could see glistening skin in the areas where her hard shell had been absorbed by Godwill. It looked incredibly painful. Panicked, I reached for my power, but I couldn’t feel anything.
She scooped up my pistol, reversed her grip, and gently handed it to me, stock first. I stared until she shook the pistol impatiently for me to take it.
“If I wanted to destroy you, I could have just let you blast away in here until you cooked yourself. I did not expect truth from you,” she said, waving an arm claw at the nanocontainer, “or honor.”
“It needs to be destroyed,” I said, and then looked down. “Maybe I do too.”
She clacked her armor lightly, something I’d learned from Nonch to be equivalent to a laugh. “Little Human, you are a surprise. But we cannot eliminate the nanocontainer with that blaster.”
We were a “we”? I looked up at her, my new sister in arms.
The building shook as something fell over upstairs with a crash; dust drifted down from the ceiling. A section of her armor slid open, and she pulled out a bulbous missile. “Tactical field nuke,” she said, turning from me back to the device. Her arms and hands blurred with activity, and soon, she’d stripped the nuke of its engine and armor, leaving it a boxy, asymmetrical device. “Go upstairs. Make sure we can exit and are not ambushed. I will set the charge.”
“Why are you helping, Sarla?”
“Human, I will not be psychoanalyzed while in combat. Get out of my way, or do not. I will be leaving quickly.” She turned and approached the nanocontainer.
Right. I sprinted past her, up the stairs and through the corridor. Behind me, I heard a crash and the familiar thrumming of a massive Crynit. I spared a glance outside—all was clear. Not a hundred meters away, my parents’ assault tank was taking fire from countless ships, its shield a glowing umbrella protecting it from the rain of fire.
“RUN, RAYSTAR OF TERRA!” Sarla bellowed from behind me. I heard her thrum up the stairs.
I ran. I had no accurate sense of time, and panic was creeping up on me. All I could do was keep my legs pumping.
Sarla’s powerful hand claws circled my waist. Her speed was incredible, and we crossed the distance to the tank in a blink. She raced just past my parents’ tank and did an abrupt right turn. Once behind the tank, Sarla came to a full stop in the time of a heartbeat, and the whiplash almost broke my back. My breath was squashed out of me as she curled into a protective ball with me at her center.
The ground shook, air was sucked from my lungs, my eardrums felt like they’d ruptured, and the heat was worse than anything I’d felt before. Silence, then noise, then more noise, then full volume. Sarla uncurled and I spilled out of her embrace. We were safe behind the tank, and protected inside the tank’s anti-everything shields.
I rose, noting that the prison camp’s ground was fractured and cracked like a dried riverbed. The camp was gone—completely vaporized. The nuke’s ground-zero crater reached nearly a hundred meters in every direction, extending almost to where my parents’ tank was positioned.
The only things standing were the assault tank and the structures behind the tank. Half buildings, vegetation, bits of fence—all were cleanly sheared off in a neat line between existence and nonexistence.
And then the rain of metal began. Countless attack craft had been flying either too close to the blast radius or too close to each other when the field nuke had literally shoved them through the air. They pounded to the ground in enormous shrieks of whining engines, exploding munitions and fuel cells, smashing metal, and blazing orange and black smoke. The battlefield paused in the aftermath of the bomb’s destruction.
Sarla grunted, satisfied. “THAT, Human, is what was required to destroy the nanocontainer.”
I surveyed the landscape. “Could it have survived?”
Sarla looked around, gently raised an arm claw, and gestured to the scenery around us, and then looked back at me. Right.
“Thank you, Sarla,” I bowed.
“Raystar of Terra,” Sarla said, dipping her head. “Courageous child. The scales are balanced. I would not have survived Godwill’s attack without your intervention.” She dipped her sensor stalks toward me. “I would welcome meeting you again. Tell my sister, if you encounter her, that she will know where to find me.” And with that, she lowered her body so all her arms and legs touched the ground and raced toward the Ruins almost as fast as my dart could have managed. She wound her way through the burning brush at the edge of the skeletal Ruins, slid over several ancient stone blocks, and disappeared into the dark maw of a crumbling building.
49
Sarla was gone. In the time it took to inhale, the pattering I’d thought was rain increased to a steady, dull thumping. Flowers of color blossomed, lighting up the darkness around us. Orange light and blue shadows coincided with each thump and cast eerie shadows into the darkness.
The tank’s protective shields shimmered above me in an umbrella of glowing veins radiating outward from each impact. Assault ships poured down a storm of orange fire in what had become a torrent. Behind the incoming meteors of destruction, a circle of hundreds of Convergence ships settled into position surrounding the camp’s perimeter. Farther off, below the Convergence cruisers, troop carriers illuminated the dark ground with sweeping spotlights as they vomited squads of armored soldiers. My parents had planned ahead, but I was pretty sure they hadn’t considered an entire Battle Group. OR TWO! Nearly every plan I’d made felt like it had been kicked into the gravity well when it met up with reality. Maybe it was the same for grownups.
“DAUGHTER!” the loudspeaker hailed me.
Mom? Dad? I couldn’t tell whose voice it was, but the ramp to the side of the tank thunked down on the camp’s dry ground. I blinked and lurched toward the cool lights of the tank’s protective inside. The tank’s autoturrets screamed their response to our skyward enemy in a blaze of golden dewdrops. I shrieked, crouched, and raised my hands above me, curling my fingers over my ears. The atmosphere cannon ZWUMPED, shaking the ground and sending a house-sized streak of starlight at a medium cruiser. The oval, bristly ship paused as it took the hit—like it thought it might be survivable.
Fire blossomed from its side like speed-motion vids of flowers opening in spring, and then the ship lit the sky with its nova. Glean assault tanks were made to take and hold a position. This was MUCH better than my hologram. In a millisecond, the turret shifted with microscopic precision to its next target.
But I was beyond emotion. Cold. Is this what AI meant by “frosty?” I’d seen too much. Been through too much. “Too much” crushes you or, if you survive it, it makes you different. Good? Bad? I don’t know.
The doors hissed open, and the tank’s entry ramp slid from its belly to rest on the ground. Dad stepped out in full battle armor. Active weapon clusters mounted on his shoulders scanned the desolation with red sensor beams. His boots clanked as he stomped halfway down the exit ramp and took a defensive position, four plasma cannons aimed at nothing but ready for anything that needed to be annihilated. The golden Ascendancy seal on his chest plate shone against his charcoal armor.
Mom, dressed in her white combat suit, followed a millisecond later, her cape billowing in her wake. In two strides, she was halfway down the ramp, and with four arms, she swung me into an embrace. “Baby!” she whispered as she squished me against her chest. Pivoting, she rushed me inside the tank.
“Raystar,” Mom breathed as the door slid shut behind us. “We have your friends….” Mom looked around. “We would never leave you. You knew that, didn’t you?”
“I have the command,” Dad called as he moved tow
ard the cockpit.
Mom’s face glistened with tears that shone against her purple scar. They glittered in the tank’s white light on her red skin and matted, black hair. “MY RAY.” She pulled me, squished me in her love.
I was overwhelmed with emotion. I sucked in a breath, and my thoughts clarified around my purpose. My destiny. Mine. I pushed away from her all-encompassing warmth to take in the tank’s command center. Cri and Mieant were propped against a wall. Cri curled against Mieant, her arms folded across her chest. Mieant had his arms around her, and his cheek rested on her head. Right then, I hated their bond and the aloneness of my life, the isolating burden of my choices.
Nonch’s feet didn’t so much thrum on the metal floor as they tacked, like the drumming of a hundred heavy fingernails. He approached and kept pace with Mom by scuttling sideways, his head even with mine. His front claw arms, which Sarla had ripped off, were bandaged; otherwise, he was whole. I lay my arm on him, feeling the comfort of his warm shell.
“You live,” he said simply, brushing my head gently with his sensor stalks. “I am happy.”
I looked at him and was about to smile when Mom placed something cool against my arm. There was a hiss, and then a sting.
“For your fever, love.” As I recoiled, Nonch pulled back and my numb arm flopped downward. But the fever in me still burned and pressed against the inside of my skull. To say I had overexerted myself was to say that there was gravity in a black hole.
“Peace, love,” she said.
Peace. It was a concept you had to prove.
I wilted as whatever was in the injection coursed through my body, flooding me with near-overwhelming drowsiness. Mom kindly laid me in an empty command chair.
Words weren’t coming. She pressed a thermometer to my forehead, scowled, and then continued. “I scanned AI. Our guess is he’s containing the nanoinfection, but in doing so, he can’t use any of his other functions. Dad thinks he can convert a power source from the hangar that should provide AI with ample energy to reactivate his higher functions while taking care of you. Mostly,” she added nervously.