When Roach reached Jake, he saw the glint in the officer’s eye, and suddenly he knew what this was really about.
“Tighten your abdominals,” Roach said softly, and Jake did, praying silently.
Roach’s fist felt like a rocket launched straight into his guts. The chief put his full weight into it, sending Jake reeling back into the recruit behind him, who caught him by the arms.
“Let him fall,” Roach said, and Jake’s fellow recruit immediately let him drop to the floor.
The chief walked over, looming over Jake for several seconds, glaring down at him as he gasped for air. For a second, Jake expected Roach to drive his foot down onto his stomach.
But he didn’t. Instead, he shouted: “Training’s over for the day. Retire to your quarters and lick your wounds.” His lips curled into a tight smile, which he directed at Jake, and then he stalked out of the gym.
Most of the recruits left without ever having to tighten their abdominals.
Somehow, the fact that Roach hadn’t assigned more PT after Jake collapsed was even more humiliating than getting knocked to the floor.
Going down is supposed to mean more PT. But not this time.
The other recruits followed their chief as Jake lay on the floor, still gasping. All but one of them.
Ash Sweeney walked over and offered him her hand. He took it, wincing as she dragged him to his feet.
“Told you it was a death glare,” she said.
Jake nodded. “You had the right of it.”
“I heard a rumor that Roach lost someone to the Quatro. That’s why he hates them so much. Maybe that’s why he didn’t like you defending them.”
“I wasn’t defending them. I was just saying.”
“Yeah. Well, if the rumor’s true, then I know how Roach feels. I lost my sister in the attack on Northshire. My father, too.”
“God. I’m sorry.”
“Thanks. You wanna fight each other in lucid?”
“Yeah. Okay.”
They left the gym together.
Chapter 19
Plenty to Worry About
When Tessa wasn’t running Lisa into the ground, she exchanged increasingly lewd jokes with Andy, with whom she appeared to be holding a contest to see who could be the raunchiest.
That bothered Lisa, for some reason.
Maybe it was because, with Tessa as her mentor, and with Lisa’s vow to mostly ignore Andy, she had no one she could really talk to.
Either way, she’d never been a prude, but being forced to hear Andy and Tessa swapping off-color jokes all day got really old, really fast.
Even though there’s nothing else to do.
They still had access to satellite imagery, though they’d grown less concerned about checking it regularly. Before, they’d taken turns getting up throughout the night in order to search the latest photos for plumes of blue dust that might indicate pursuers.
They were two months out from Habitat 2, however, and Andy figured that anyone wondering about the missing beetle had probably given up looking for it by now.
On the second day of training, Tessa had calibrated Lisa’s implant to properly simulate her actual strength—physical, psychological, and emotional. And though she’d been skeptical, Lisa had to admit that the white-haired woman had been right. Now that she could no longer dream herself into a superwoman, lucid combat had become much harder.
During the times Tessa wasn’t putting her through another round of endless PT, or handing her her butt in lucid battles, Lisa stared out the crew cabin’s silicon nitride windows at the unchanging terrain.
When they’d first left Habitat 2, she’d cherished the planet’s sapphire color. It made her think she hadn’t spent nearly enough time out on the surface, before. But now, she wanted to retreat inside a habitat, any habitat, and never leave it again.
Constant defeat had stolen her joy for going lucid. Now, staring at the terrain was the only thing she had any interest in doing. Not that she had very much interest in that, either.
On the bright side, as the weeks crawled by, she could feel herself growing stronger, more proficient. Much more.
Tessa called those “beginner gains,” but whatever. It didn’t make them any less real. Lisa was making progress.
One morning, she woke to getting shaken roughly. She opened her eyes to find Andy standing over her inflated bed.
“What are you doing in my room?” she asked, her voice dripping with venom.
“Lisa, you need to get up. I just had a glance at the latest satellite photos. I think there’s something coming. Three somethings.”
Leaping out of bed, trying not to think about the fact that she wore only a bra and underwear, Lisa pulled on her uniform and ran out into the habitat’s common area.
“Where’s Tessa?” She glanced back at Andy. “You woke me first?”
He shrugged. “You’re my colleague, not her.”
“Get her up.”
“Sure thing.” Andy went to the portal leading into Tessa’s bubble and opened it.
Soon, they were all standing around the common area, studying a pair of photos Andy had forwarded to their implants.
“These were taken an hour apart, and judging by the distance those dust plumes covered, our pursuers are traveling faster than it’s safe to. The beetles may have been named to encourage slowness, but they’re capable of pretty high speeds. Whoever’s driving those beetles, they’re obviously not afraid to take advantage of their full power.”
Although Lisa was the ranking Darkstream official, and the beetle was Darkstream property, Tessa had already taken command. “I’ll help Lisa deflate the habitat and stuff it into the beetle. Andy, you get the beetle’s systems up and running. Be ready to floor it as soon as we climb in.”
“Sure thing.”
“How much time do we have?”
“Enough, probably, if we stop wasting it this second and hustle.”
Tessa nodded. “Let’s get moving, then.”
They barely spoke as they rushed to put everything away, deflate the habitat, and collapse the airlock. Using the habitat’s venting system, they were able to deflate it and pack it into the beetle’s undercarriage compartment in under thirty minutes. Then they clambered aboard, and Andy gunned the engine.
Just in time. The rear viewscreen showed the pursuing beetles cresting the horizon and barreling toward them, rapidly closing the distance.
“Andy, now is not the time to observe proper safety protocol,” Lisa said. “You need to go faster.”
“I’m on it,” he said, his voice tight.
“What kind of artillery do beetles have?” she yelled, her voice shaking as the beetle went over a shallow ridge. Glancing behind her, she saw that one of the chasing beetles had nearly reached them.
“None.”
“Then we have nothing to worry about, right?”
At that moment, the lead beetle caught up to them.
It slammed into the side of their vehicle, forcing Andy to veer toward a gaping canyon. At the last minute, he jerked the wheel to the right and accelerated, clearing the front of the pursuing beetle by what seemed like inches.
Their pursuers had been trying to ram them, and now they barely managed to rein in their speed before careening into the canyon themselves.
Andy glanced back at Lisa. “Traveling at high speeds over dangerous terrain, with three beetles trying to do that to us? I’d say we have plenty to worry about, Lisa.”
Chapter 20
Test Run
Darkstream’s Department of Military Research and Development was located in Alpha Quadrant, on the opposite side of Valhalla Station from Omega Quadrant, where Gabe’s recruits lived and sweated and washed out.
Gabe stood at an observation window, flanked by two of the company’s nerds. Six more nerds sat behind them at two rows of consoles, poring over various data readouts.
Below, in a large, titanium-reinforced chamber, Chief Zimmerman took another step toward the al
ien mech that Peter Price and his son had discovered inside a comet on the edge of Darkstream-occupied space. The mech reacted as it always did—by doing absolutely nothing.
Gabe had fought alongside Peter Price, during the first missions on Eresos. Together, they and other company operatives had cleared out enough Quatro to make room for humanity to set up shop.
Of course, Price had processed those missions differently than Gabe. They’d taken a heavier toll on Price, who’d been honorably discharged after his psyche broke down for a time.
Following that, he’d fled to the Belt, found a wife, and never returned to the inner system.
Price was a good man. Gabe hadn’t gotten along very well with him, but he could still recognize that the guy was a good person.
That didn’t mean he’d go easy on his cocky upstart of a son.
The nerd on Gabe’s right tapped a console projecting from the bulkhead underneath the window. It had the effect of projecting his voice into the reinforced room. “Are you ready, Chief Zimmerman?”
Zimmerman nodded. “Ready as I’ll ever be.”
“Please approach the mech.”
One of the major roadblocks R&D faced in building a functioning mech of their own involved an inability to figure out a working control interface.
So far, nothing they’d tried afforded the minute level of control required for combat. If the mech didn’t react the instant you reacted, you’d be as good as dead, in a lot of cases.
They’d already learned much from studying the alien mech, and had improved their own design dramatically. But given Darkstream’s inability to grasp the code with which the alien mech was programmed—or whether it was programmed at all—the only way to learn about its controls was to send someone with an implant inside it so that their sensory data and brain waves could be recorded and analyzed.
Zimmerman reached the mech and laid his palm over its left “calf.” Instantly, the guts of the mech distended, forming a ramp for Zimmerman to mount. Gabe had heard somewhere that they’d learned how to open the thing shortly after bringing it here.
Presumably, that mechanism won’t work if there’s someone already inside it. If it did, it would make the thing vulnerable to any enemy that could play tag.
Zimmerman appeared to take a deep breath, and then he climbed up inside the mech. The ramp folded seamlessly back into the machine, making it so that there was no sign of an opening there at all.
The war machine took a step toward the observation window, and instantly, Gabe lost any doubt he’d had that the thing had been created by whoever made the Gatherers and the Amblers.
It had the same fluid metal surface, comprised of overlapping plates like scales, which shifted as it moved.
When Zimmerman had first climbed inside, the feed from his implant had shown a smooth, man-shaped shell waiting to envelop him. Gabe suspected that the mech likely had the same level of versatility as the Gatherers, maybe more—which would make it a weapon of immense power.
He realized something else: no matter how impressive the mechs Darkstream ended up producing, none of them would ever come close to touching the machine he looked at now.
The mech’s right arm jerked toward the observation window, rapidly morphing into what looked like a cannon. Both nerds ducked as the mech fired.
Gabe remained standing, knowing nothing could pierce that window, short of a nuclear blast.
When the glass began to splinter, he gasped, taking a step back.
“Zimmerman!” one of the nerds shouted. “Chief Zimmerman, come in!”
“He’s attempting to regain control!” another shouted.
The cannon-arm zigzagged down, then back up again. The mech took a stuttering step backward.
“Chief Zimmerman, exit the machine if you can!”
Clearly, he can’t.
As Gabe looked on, transfixed, the mech’s entire torso morphed, folding inward, and he knew that Zimmerman was dead.
Indeed, seconds later, the thing’s guts flexed outward, a thousand jagged spikes protruding every which way. A pulpy, red substance began to leak to the floor in streams.
Having turned Zimmerman into paste, the mech stood motionless once more.
Chapter 21
Beetle Chase
Even amidst the chaos of the chase, Lisa found a moment to feel some sympathy for Andy. He’d only ever been trained as a driver, not as combat personnel. This was probably the first time he’d ever had other human lives depending on him.
At least he’s recognized the importance of speed.
Their beetle now raced just ahead of its pursuers, though Andy was still taking too much time to scrutinize the approaching terrain, even going so far as to glance at recent satellite images.
If he’d been trained as a soldier, he would know that sometimes, taking on immense risk was the only way of having a shot at survival.
The pursuing beetles, which Lisa felt sure had been tracking them all the way from Habitat 2, were clearly no strangers to risk. They capitalized on every opportunity to close the distance, whether it included accelerating over rough terrain or gathering enough speed to sail over pits of unknown depths.
Still, Andy’s skill as a driver went a long way, and though he’d almost certainly never had to drive so defensively, Lisa noticed him experimenting on the fly, and starting to capitalize on opportunities to throw off those chasing them.
“I’m going to try for that narrow canyon, there,” he said, his voice shaky. “I’m pretty sure it’s big enough for the beetle.”
“You can do it, Andy,” Lisa said, going so far as to reach forward to place a reassuring hand on his shoulder.
“Thanks,” he said, actually sounding grateful.
The beetle picked up speed, and behind them, the others rearranged their formation, probably angling to cut Andy off, if it turned out his run at the canyon was a bluff.
But Andy wasn’t bluffing. He roared between the sheer cliffs of blue rocks, and two of the pursuing beetles did the same.
One of them didn’t make it. The sound of its collision with the rock face reached them even inside the crew cabin.
“One down,” Andy said. “Hopefully.”
They screamed out of the other end of the canyon, the remaining two beetles in close pursuit.
Andy jerked the wheel to the right, and the beetle banked suddenly, sending a spray of blue dirt flying out into empty air—out over the cliff he’d narrowly avoided taking them over.
Behind them, their remaining two pursuers also completed the turn successfully.
“Damn,” Andy said. “I thought that would do it.”
“Any other ideas?” Tessa asked.
“One. If I remember right, there’s another cliff dead ahead, which is easy to drive straight over if you don’t know it’s there. That’s fine, because there’s a wide shelf just underneath it, which you can catch yourself on if you aren’t going too fast and you know what you’re doing. But if they follow us over it, there’s a good chance they’ll fly right over the second cliff, and there’s no shelf to save them beneath that one.”
Andy glanced back at them, wearing an adrenaline-fueled grin. “Make sure you’re strapped in nice and tight, ladies.”
The beetle barreled forward, and the knowledge that they were speeding toward a cliff, combined with her ignorance of exactly where that cliff was—it made Lisa’s toes curl inside her boots.
Their pursuers were coming on even faster, which was probably good, but it did nothing to slow her racing heart.
Andy slammed on the brakes, the beetle skidded forward, and suddenly the ground fell away from beneath them.
Lisa’s stomach somersaulted toward her mouth as the vehicle plummeted, and she braced for impact.
The force of the beetle slamming into the hard-packed regolith of the shelf felt like it would dislodge her teeth from her skull.
At last, the tumult subsided, just as one of the beetles soared overhead, toward the second cliff.
“Andy, drive!” Lisa shouted.
He did, gunning the engine and accelerating straight for the other beetle.
The entire frame of their beetle shuddered as the two vehicles collided, and Lisa heard a cracking sound.
Dutifully, the other beetle’s wheel “stepped” over the rock that had saved it, allowing Andy to nudge it the rest of the way over the cliff. It tumbled forward, its rear facing directly upward, and then it was gone. A few seconds later, they heard it collide with Alex far below.
A fracture now stretched from the bottom-left corner of their main forward window to the top-right. It didn’t do much to obscure visibility, but its presence was alarming.
“Is that going to hold?” Tessa asked.
“It should,” Andy said. “Silicon nitride windows are almost impossible to shatter. You’d need a hell of a lot more force than that.”
Lisa took the liberty of angling their rear camera upward, so that the viewscreen showed the cliff they’d just driven over. The third beetle from Habitat 2 was parked up there, watching them. After another minute, it drove away.
“I guess they’re giving up,” Andy said.
“Hopefully,” Tessa said. “But I wouldn’t count on it.”
Chapter 22
For Our Sisters
Jake flicked the air in front of his face, using his v-lenses to scroll through his messages.
A lot of them were from his gaming friends, most of whom he’d never met in-person. He’d barely met them in-game, actually. Because of how long it took signals to traverse the system, out in the Belt he could only ever compete for the highest score, without ever actually fighting other players in real-time.
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