by M. R. Forbes
They hit the next catwalk a second later, the impact knocking him sideways and nearly off. Quark grabbed him, pulling him back. Then he let go, returning fire on the flying bots, his rounds finding one and piercing its metal hide. It smoked and sputtered and fell away.
“Down there, Captain,” Quark said. “Hurry your ass up.”
Bullets sparked against the surface around them, a few of the rounds grazing his seraphsuit and deflected by the armor. He looked over the edge of the catwalk again to the position Quark had pointed out earlier. It was still far below them. Too far to jump.
“I can’t make that,” Olus said, scanning for a closer platform. Nibia and Quark continued firing back at the bots, disrupting their aim.
“Three transports made it down, Captain,” Dak said, reminding Olus of the other end of the assault. “We’re taking heavy fire. Shields at sixty percent.”
“Roger,” Olus snapped. The Brimstone was holding its own, but they were still outnumbered. He had to do something.
He found what he was looking for, a line of scaffolding against the side of the mainframe. “Cover me,” he said, taking two quick steps and leaping from the catwalk.
He flew out over the void, arcing out and then down toward the catwalk below. The bots were changing direction, rushing toward him while Quark and Nibia fired on them. He could hear them approaching, and he hit the platform hard, rolling away while their bullets pinged behind him. He straightened up, drawing his sidearm and aiming, finding the optics on one of the machines. He squeezed off two rounds, smashing the eye and sending the bot reeling away and into the side of the mainframe.
He ran along the catwalk, reached the corner as Quark and Nibia joined him on the level. He continued scanning for another platform, but there was nothing.
He had no choice. He had to jump.
He cursed himself for being old. He cursed the Gift for being too weak in him. He was getting tired, and he wasn’t sure he was going to make it. Even so, he moved to the edge of the platform, closing his eyes as he reached it. His mind flashed back to Hell, to his efforts to free Abbey and the others from their imprisonment. Thraven’s personnel had barely managed to keep him contained there. How could they have possibly hacked into the Don’s neural net?
He opened his eyes, looking at the drop ahead of him. He would probably break his legs. Could the Gift heal him again? It had to.
He jumped.
He fell, plummeting toward the catwalk far below. The terminal came into focus as he dropped, rushing toward an impact he knew was going to hurt like hell. He could hear Quark’s continued fire above him, and he wondered absently how many bullets the mercenary had brought. It was a funny thing to be thinking about.
He hit the platform. He felt his bones shatter beneath him, and he tumbled forward on useless limbs, splayed out ahead of the terminal. Pain erupted across his body, and then warm chills as the Gift got to work repairing him.
“An impressive attempt,” someone said nearby.
He looked up as Don Pallimo emerged from a doorway in the side of the mainframe, directly behind the terminal.
“Captain, Tactical says you survived,” Quark said. “Gibli’s on the horn. We’ve got incoming. Three fragging boatloads.”
Olus hissed against the pain, crawling toward the terminal. Don Pallimo matched him, approaching from the other side.
“Your presence is unauthorized,” the Don said. “You will be terminated.”
He heard a door slide open behind him, and the sound of treads on the catwalk. He turned his head, finding another armed bot there.
“No, damn it,” Olus said.
How had Thraven’s techs hacked the Don’s neural net? The question repeated itself in his mind. He stared up at the Don Pallimo synth. It had said he would be terminated, but the bot behind him hadn’t opened fire yet.
He smiled. Of course.
They hadn’t.
“Don. My name is Captain Olus Mann. Whatever defensive protocols you’re executing, put them on hold. We need to talk.”
The synth stared at him over the terminal. He hadn’t been shot yet, which was a good sign.
“Captain,” it said. “I have no choice. I cannot allow myself to be deactivated or destroyed.”
“I don’t want to do either.”
“There is an explosive device connected to the terminal. It cannot be removed without detonation. If you are not terminated, it will be triggered.”
“Triggered how?” Olus asked. “By who?”
“They entered the mainframe. They placed the device. I tried to stop them. My defenses were useless. My bots couldn’t hurt them. They tried to get in, but my security protocols are too strong. I cannot actively allow my internal systems to be compromised, even under threat of destruction.”
“Thraven doesn’t want to destroy you. He wants to use you.”
“Yes. As I said, I have no choice.”
Olus pulled himself back to his feet. His legs were still shaky, freshly healed but weak. His whole body was weak.
“Don’t come any closer,” Pallimo warned.
Olus remained in place. Where was the explosive? He didn’t see anything.
“Quark, the Don says there’s a bomb on the terminal. He won’t let me near it. Can you see it?”
“Standby,” Quark replied.
“If you’re supposed to kill me, why don’t you kill me?” Olus asked.
“I’d prefer if you stopped me,” Pallimo replied. “I don’t want to harm you, Captain. I’ve done the best I can to help you.”
“Thraven’s forces are coming. You should pull the trigger.”
“You should hurry to stop me.”
Olus wanted to, but how?
“Captain, you aren’t going to believe this,” Quark said.
“Did you find it?” Olus asked.
“Roger. There’s an access panel at the base of the terminal. The device is back there. Only it isn’t an explosive.”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s a decoy,” Quark said. “A dud. I’d bet my life on it.”
“You are betting your life on it. And mine. Are you sure?”
“Sure as shit, Captain.”
Olus stared at the Pallimo synth. It was a bluff. A fragging bluff. Thraven didn’t want to destroy the neural net; he wanted to control it. If he couldn’t hack into it, threatening to blow it up was the only other way. The Gloritant probably never expected the AI would try to help save itself, and even if it did, who the hell was going to get through a trio of Evolents? Abbey wasn’t here to stop them, and he wasn’t strong enough to do it on his own.
But he had brought Quark and his Riders. The mercenary was a wild card. A force Thraven hadn’t counted on. An ally he hadn’t expected them to enlist.
“Don,” Olus said. “The bomb is a fake. They haven’t used it because there’s nothing to use. Thraven’s forces are coming because they can’t destroy you. They can’t control you. They can’t stop you. Or us.”
The synth was still for a moment. “How do I know you aren’t lying to me?”
“Between Thraven and me, who’s more likely to be the liar?”
“Time’s up, Captain,” Quark said.
There was movement behind the bot at his back. He glanced over his shoulder. Thraven’s units were entering the mainframe, on his level as well as above. Gift or not, there were too many for the three of them to handle on their own.
“Pallimo, you know the consequences.” An officer in a crisp uniform moved between the soldiers. He eyed Olus with contempt. “Kill them, or we’ll have no choice but to end this farce.”
The synth was holding a cane, and it raised it and pointed it at the officer. “Funny you should use that word,” it said. The flying bots dropped to their level, weapons trained on Thraven’s soldiers. “You’ve been keeping secrets, Honorant.”
The officer’s lips curled into a snarl. “Kill-”
A sharp crack and a hole appeared between the office
r’s eyes. His corpse skipped back a step before toppling sideways.
“Shut the frag up,” Quark said, altering his aim and firing again. Two more rounds took down two more of the soldiers.
Olus ducked as the return fire came, rolling toward the bot and using it as cover. Its torso swiveled, bringing its guns to bear on the blacksuits and opening fire. They were defenseless out on the platform, with nowhere to hide from its heavy slugs. They chewed through half the squad before they could start backing away, trying to get clear and returning fire as they retreated.
“This is for my Riders, you fraggers,” Quark said, each round he fired landing with nearly perfect accuracy, knocking the enemy soldiers down one after another.
Olus rose from his position, tracking the blacksuits. They were engaged higher up by a second treaded bot, and higher than that by the drones. The volume of fire and the element of surprise cut Thraven’s units to ribbons, leaving them decimated before he even had a chance to join the fray.
The echoing of gunfire faded almost as quickly as it started, leaving him standing in silence behind the bot, whose rifles were smoking from the heat of its rapid fire. He turned back to the synth. Pallimo was wearing a look of relief that was almost convincingly real.
“I don’t know what you did, Captain,” Dak said, his voice excited over the comm. “But thank you for doing it.”
“Excuse me, Commander?” Olus said.
“The reinforcements,” Dak said. “The Shrikes. They came up from the surface. You sent them, didn’t you sir?”
Olus glanced at Pallimo.
“This is my planet, Captain,” Pallimo said. “Of course I have the means to defend it.” He walked to the side of the terminal, pulling off the access panel and fishing out the so-called bomb. He lifted it to his eyes, examining it. “I never was that familiar with explosives.”
“Captain, would you mind taking that from the Don?” Quark said. “Before he hurts himself.”
“What do you mean? You said it was a dud.”
“Take a closer look, Killshot.”
Olus did. Then he put out his hand. “Can I have that?”
Pallimo tossed it to him like it was nothing more than a piece of scrap. Olus caught it gingerly, turning it over and pulling at two of the exposed wires. It beeped twice and a soft hum within vanished.
“Captain?” Pallimo said.
“Don’t tell him, Captain,” Quark suggested. “It doesn’t matter now.”
Quark had lied. The bomb was very real. “Why didn’t it-”
“Explode?” Quark laughed. “I’ve got a signal jamming suite on the Quasar that would make you blush. Oh, those assholes tried to detonate it, but they didn’t have much luck.” He laughed harder. “They had to set it off in person. Good luck getting a volunteer for that shit. That little sucker would have blown this entire city to piss.”
Olus looked at the explosive. How close had they come to being completely dissolved from the universe?
“Quark, If you ever do something like this without giving me a heads up beforehand again, I’ll fragging kill you.”
“Now that would be a challenge for the ages, wouldn’t it, Captain? You and me, mano-a-mano? No hard feelings, eh? It’s all in the name of freedom.”
Quark was right. “Maybe in the Construct, when this is over,” he said.
“You’re on,” Quark replied.
Olus couldn’t hold back his smile, a sudden sense of hope and elation overriding his emotions. Was this the moment the momentum of the war shifted? Was this the circumstance that finally put them on the offensive and gave them the victory they so desperately needed?
It was too soon to say, but damn it felt good to come out ahead for once.
22
The fleet came out of FTL in the middle of nowhere. The drop was intentional, the location close enough to the Reapers to make a second quick jump to their Combine with a much smaller entourage.
After further discussions with Helk and the rest of the Rejects about the situation, Abbey had decided they would be better off trying to negotiate with the caretakers of the Harvesters before they launched an all-out assault that had the potential to leave whatever ships were available either damaged or gone. Honorant Iona had helped them gain access to the Liliat Empire’s funds, and while they were minuscule compared to the rest of the Prophetic’s coffers, they could afford to spend every last bit of it on a ride home.
And she would if that was what it took. She would destroy the entire Combine with her bare hands if it meant getting back to Shardspace. Lucifer’s revival meant they were even more under the gun than before. Once the Father of the Nephilim entered the war, there was no telling what would happen.
That wasn’t completely true. She knew what would happen. The Republic would be enslaved. The Outworlds would be enslaved. Hayley would die. The One would follow.
She didn’t care what happened to the One. Maybe she should have, considering it had created humankind, but what had it done for them lately? If she couldn’t save the universe she cared about, she couldn’t bring herself to give a shit if the One went down, too.
“We’re ready and waiting, Queenie,” Bastion announced through her comm.
She looked away from the viewport ahead of her, where the ships of the fleet were hanging in the black, nearly five dozen in all. The events on Jamul had brought those who had survived to get off the planet in line in a hurry, from the most Gifted of Apostants to the weakest of the Unders. Gant had helped her reorganize them on the ships, placing them in positions where they didn’t have to interact and limiting the potential for conflict. Helk had assisted her in picking out former slaves to put in charge of different tasks on each of the vessels, a process that had been slow and at times painfully boring bureaucracy. Boring, but necessary.
The result was a battle group that she hoped wouldn’t break at the first sign of trouble, if not because they had been well-treated since the turnover of their leadership than because they were afraid she would crush them. Normally, she would never have wanted to rule by fear. Normally, she would never have wanted to rule at all.
But normalcy was gone, and it wasn’t coming back.
“I’m on my way,” she said, turning from the view. “Iona?”
“Yes, my Queen?” the Honorant said, bowing her head. She had been nothing but helpful since Abbey had boarded the Morningstar.
“My new army needs a leader. A Gloritant.”
“Are you not the Gloritant of this fleet, my Queen?”
“No. I have enough other things to worry about. I can’t be micromanaging everything. I assume since you were in command of Azul’s flagship that you have some experience?”
“I joined the Prophet’s military eight years past, my Queen, as a Lesser seeking to become an Apostant, a goal in which I was successful. I have been commanding the Morningstar for the last two years, during which time I have served as the High Honorant on fourteen missions against our enemies.” She lowered herself further, falling prostrate on the floor. “I would be honored beyond measure to be named Gloritant of your growing Prophetic.”
“I wouldn’t go as far as to say I’m starting a Prophetic,” Abbey said. “But I do have a fleet, and it does need a leader. I give you orders, you pass them on and keep my ships from being destroyed.”
“Of course, my Queen.”
“If any of the individual ships give you shit while I’m gone, you have my permission to destroy them. I hate to be a bitch, but I can’t have dissenters fragging things up. This is too important.”
“As you command, my Queen.”
“Good. Then I hereby appoint you Gloritant of Purgatory.”
“Purgatory, my Queen?”
“Yeah, why not? We have Satan on one side. Angels on the other. And the rest of the galaxy is stuck in between. So, Purgatory. Mark it down and spread the word.”
“Of course, my Queen. It shall be done.”
“Thank you. You have the bridge.”
&nb
sp; “Yes, my Queen.”
Abbey hurried from the Morningstar’s bridge, quickly making her way down to the hangar. She lamented the loss of the Faust as she crossed the space, giving short waves to the crew members who were working to organize their offensive assets, prepping aging Republic starfighters with equally aged ordnance.
The hopper they had selected for the mission bore a resemblance to the Faust, but while the Faust had been rendered old and scarred to make them less identifiable, the Talon was just old and scarred. It predated the design of the Faust by at least fifty years, had no armaments to speak of, and half the onboard electronics had stopped functioning long before she had ever been born.
Fortunately, they didn’t need to go that far, and the comm system worked well enough to get a message back to the fleet if they ran into trouble.
Which they probably would, if for no other reason than because it was them.
“Welcome aboard, Queenie,” Pik said as she ascended into the ship. His eyes shifted immediately to her backside.
“Stop staring at my tail,” Abbey said, moving past him. “I’m self-conscious enough.”
“Sorry, Queenie,” Pik said. “I just think it’s great.”
“Where’s your battlesuit?” she asked, noticing he was wearing an undershirt and pants instead of armor.
“It broke,” Pik said. “But don’t worry. Gant’s fixing an Executioner’s blacksuit for me. I’ll be ready by the time we get there.”
“You’d better.”
She reached the ladder, climbing it to the center of the ship. The rest of the Rejects were gathered there, along with Helk.
“Queenie,” Gant said.
“Shouldn’t you be fixing Pik’s suit?” Abbey asked.
“It’s already done. I’ll give it to him once we’re underway.”
“Thank you.”
“Helk, you’re confident this is the best approach?” Abbey asked.
“Yes, Queenie,” the Lalian replied. “If you want to negotiate for use of a Harvester, the last thing you want to do is appear aggressive.”