by Richard Fox
“Failure.” The prince pushed a hand at Jared and his armor toppled over. Control returned to Jared’s body and the pain in his chest grew even worse. Blood seeped through his lips and spattered on the deck as he coughed.
“The plan was yours, my Prince,” the emperor said. “You assured us you could capture the humans’ vessel, the technology we need.”
“My attack was perfect.” The prince advanced on Jared, the talons on his mechanical legs stabbing into the deck and ripping out small divots as he moved. “His creatures failed, not me.”
The prince grabbed Jared by the throat and lifted him into the air. Claw tips dug into the mesh on his neck, working towards the arteries beneath.
“Enough,” the emperor said. “I’ll not have you damage him any further.”
The prince gently lowered Jared to the ground, then ran two claws down his face, leaving thin cuts that beaded with blood.
“Masters,” Jared said, “there are human operatives here, more than we thought.”
“And you didn’t think to tell us there would be more?” the emperor asked.
“I’ve never encountered these Pathfinders before,” Jared said. “They-they…”
“I handled the interrogation,” the arch duke said. His painfully thin chassis stalked toward the emperor, like a scarecrow suddenly given life. “They denied anyone else was with them. I didn’t press the issue, as I was far more interested in examining the procedural data.”
“Your focus blinded you to other threats,” the emperor said. “This is not the first time you’ve made this mistake.”
“It doesn’t matter.” The arch duke snapped overlong fingers in the air. “We need this ship and nothing else. Our empire awaits. To dally here for the chance of something useful—”
“The Crucible gates would change the balance of power forever,” the prince said. “Our re-conquest could be done in months. Thousands of years of planning our return and the Crucible gates would guarantee our victory.”
“No.” The emperor rose up, his ornate form standing head and shoulders over the others. “We bide our time here for the keys to the procedural bodies. To return to our empire in this form…there will be resistance; they would see us as the abominations that overthrew us. You do have it, don’t you, Arch Duke?”
The duke bent his head.
“I have what I need. We will be whole…in time.”
“And it will take time to build the Crucible, will it not?” the emperor asked Jared.
“Yes, master.” Jared kept his answer simple, not wanting to goad them into a rush if he gave a short time frame.
“The planet and the humans on it aren’t going anywhere,” the emperor said. “Let us return to those loyal to us…and return at the vanguard of a full Ultari fleet. The other Hale will surrender his people and their technology…or we will take what we need from their ashes. Come. I tire of our prison.”
The emperor pressed his hand to a control panel and Jared felt the engines come to life.
“Open the dome,” the emperor said to the prince. “Deactivate the forcefield once we’re clear.”
“Master!” Jared tried to take a step forward, but his armor locked around his body. “The slaves! If you drop the forcefield, they’ll lose their air. They’ll die!”
“You think I’ve been removed from my body so long I forgot what it is to breathe?” the emperor asked. “They will die. A message to your brother; we show the limits to our patience and mercy and it will make him more pliant when we return for him.”
****
Carson ran down a walkway inside the alien ship. The deck and bulkheads were of human design, ripped out of the Christophorous and repurposed to suit the Triumvirate’s designs. Hasty welds marred the metals, and the corridor was half again as wide as what Carson was used to on a human ship. The ceiling had a slight arch, and light played against the ivory-colored metal like it was reflecting from a pool. The walkway she and her two Pathfinders were on was bolted to the outside of a smaller domed structure within the larger outer hull. The framework for the rest of the ship was present, extending to the hull like a bare skeleton. Behind them, the engines, a mass of green glowing tubes that made no sense to her, thrummed with energy.
A small group of Netherguards rounded a corner and beat the handles of their clubs against the railings when they saw the Pathfinders. Carson aimed carefully and took the nearest one in the forehead. The others went down to precise shots from Birch and Moretti. She glanced at the ammo counter on the back of her carbine and winced. Every shot had to count. Grunts and howls echoed through the ship as her team stepped over one of the bodies, bright green blood staining their boots.
All the Netherguard they’d encountered within the ship had been just as aggressive and hostile as usual, but those that had broken through the outer hull remained transfixed on making their way to the engine room. When the two groups met, confusion reigned, a circumstance that Carson appreciated, as there were far more altered doughboys than she had bullets.
Birch pointed ahead to a small depression on the inner hull.
“Another hundred feet,” he said.
Birch and Moretti followed, and soon they arrived at a locked door with no markings. Carson tested the handle; locked.
“Breach it?” Birch pulled a length of burn cord from a pouch. The device could burn through the outer hull of a battleship in a few seconds. The repurposed material from a colony ship would melt like butter…and send off a cloud of toxic gas from the vaporized metal.
“We’re suited, no danger to us, but what about West and the others?” Carson asked. “We burn or blow the door and it could kill them. I doubt Jared let them stay in their armor.”
The deck plating rattled as a tremor crept up the ship from the engines.
“We’re running out of time for subtlety,” Birch said.
“Pin scope,” Moretti said. “Take us five seconds to see what’s on the other side.”
“On it.” Carson took a small cylinder off her belt and pressed it toward the edge of the door.
The door snapped open, and a Netherguard loomed over her, club already swinging for her head. Moretti yanked her back and she saw spikes on the tip of the doughboy’s weapon blur across her vision. The club whacked into the frame and embedded into the metal.
Birch tackled the Netherguard and landed on top of his foe. Birch threw a short punch that the doughboy deflected. The two grappled, the Netherguard clawing at his visor.
Inside the room were egg-shaped pods embedded in the walls. A pair of Netherguard charged at her, light glinting off their clubs. Carson fired from the hip and hit one of the attackers in the ankle, blowing the foot clean off. It pitched forward but kept crawling toward her. She got up and hesitated as she brought her carbine to bear on the other, worried that if she missed, a stray round might puncture one of the pods. Without knowing which parts contained her team, she didn’t want to take the risk of accidentally hitting one.
Carson shouted a challenge, dropped her carbine, and charged the oncoming Netherguard. She pulled her tactical blade from its sheath, then dropped to her knees and slid across the metal floor, arching her head back, narrowly missing the Netherguard’s club.
The blade bit into the doughboy’s thigh, tearing flesh as Carson slid past. The Netherguard screamed in pain and let the club go. It shot out and struck Moretti in the sternum, doubling him over. The doughboy twisted and clawed at Carson’s back, its talons raking the armor between her shoulder blades. She hopped back to her feet, spinning the knife in her hand. Holding it blade down, Carson leaned forward, knees slightly bent, arms held in front of her, ready to parry the alien’s attack.
It turned to face her, bright green blood spurting from the wound on its side, flowing freely through the alien’s fingers. It looked from her to the wound, then back again, as if it didn’t understand what had happened.
“Not so bad without your stick, are ya?” Carson asked it.
It snarled an
d took a step toward her. Carson grinned behind her visor. “Let’s finish this.”
The Netherguard lashed out, but its movements were slow. Carson easily dodged the blow, bringing her knife, slicing through the alien’s arm. She side-stepped to the right, twisting around behind it. She grabbed the top of the skull with her free hand and yanked the head to one side and then cut the blade along the side the Netherguard’s neck, severing the arteries. Forgetting the power of her suit, Carson ripped the alien’s head free of its shoulders and the body collapsed to the floor.
Carson heard muffled curses from behind. Moretti lay against the bulkhead, arms clutched to his stomach. Birch rode on the other Netherguard’s back, one arm wrapped around its throat. The Netherguard backed up and rammed Birch into the wall. It took a step away from the wall and swung an elbow back and Birch released his hold. Birch ducked under the blow and jumped up to grab the Netherguard by the neck again. Birch tucked his foe’s head against his shoulder and Birch lifted his feet off the deck and used the weight of his entire body and suit to pull the doughboy’s head straight down. Birch landed on the deck and the Netherguard’s neck snapped against his shoulder.
In the middle of the room, the Netherguard she’d shot in the leg lay dead, its skull blown open.
Birch shoved the body off and went to Moretti.
“You OK?”
“Damn things hit hard,” Moretti grunted. “Why didn’t you just shoot that one?” He got up and waved at the doughboy with the broken neck.
“Because I’m out of ammo,” Birch said.
Carson went to one of the eggshells. An oval-shaped panel with Ultari runes didn’t offer any clues as to how to open them. Carson cupped her hands to the side of her eyes and tried to look into one of the shells. Nothing.
“Don’t over complicate this.” Moretti grabbed a dead Netherguard by the wrist and brought its palm up to the panel. A shell melted away, revealing an empty T-board with restraints.
Carson dragged another corpse to the other side of the wall and opened an eggshell. West looked up groggily as the outer layer of his cell vanished.
“West!” Carson snapped the restraints on his wrists and caught the sergeant as he fell forward.
“Chief? Good to see you again.” He grimaced as he stepped onto the floor, favoring one leg. His left eye was swollen shut, his skin purple and bruised. Blood from a cut on his cheek had dried in a series of lines drawn across his face. His lip was split in two places. He was stripped down to the thermal layer of his armor, which offered little more than modesty for protection.
He looked over the dead Netherguard and out the door to open space beyond.
“You’ve been busy,” West said.
“Moretti,” Carson said, moving out of the way.
The medic helped Birch to the floor and moved to assess West. “Damn, Sarge, they really did a number on you.”
West coughed. “Nunez and Popov.”
Carson turned and saw Birch had already opened their pods.
Nunez kicked a doughboy and cursed as his bare foot struck its armor.
“Hate these things!” Nunez said. “Hate them so much.”
“Are you okay?” Moretti asked a green-faced Popov. She lurched forward and threw up all over the floor.
Popov spit, then looked up, her sweat-soaked hair hanging over her face. “Oh wow…I feel so much better now.”
The room rocked slightly and Nunez grabbed on to Birch’s shoulder.
“We hanging around for some reason?” Nunez asked.
“We’re near the keel of the ship.” Birch tapped his gauntlet screen. “There’s a gap between the construction scaffolding and the ground.”
“They got something from me,” Popov said. “I don’t know what exactly, but it was important to them. And our carbines,” she shook her head, “they’re not going to kill them.”
“We get off this bucket and get back to the colonists,” Carson said. “Saving them is more important than trying to stop the Triumvirate.” She pointed to the open door. “This fight’s just beginning. Let’s go!”
****
Jared felt the ship lurch up. The Ultari anti-gravity engines carried lift unevenly, and the bridge wobbled from port to starboard. The Triumvirate didn’t speak; each kept to their stations and made corrections to their ascent without the need to coordinate.
In the data tank, he saw the Netherguard assaulting the engines blown away like leaves before a gale. More tumbled off the hull to their deaths. He didn’t care; they were abominations, not the doughboys he’d led during the wars on Earth so long ago.
Overhead, the mountainside broke away and slid down as mining charges planted over the course of years were finally detonated. Jared heard the rumble of the landslide in the bridge. Part of him felt a sense of awe, or accomplishment. Years of effort had finally come to fruition, even though he’d been used to enslave his people to make it happen. A shower of rock slag pelted the ship.
The ship rose higher…and the upper hull passed through the forcefield and broken earth poured over the edge of the craft like rain over eaves.
Not yet, he thought. They won’t do it yet. The decompression will send this ship out of control.
Jared moved toward the command dais.
“Truly,” he said, “your greatness knows no limit.”
The duke clawed at him in annoyance.
Jared watched as data streamed across their screens and waited for the duke to reach for a small set of four buttons on the bottom of his work station. Jared knew the controls as well as they did; after all, he’d built this bridge to their specifications.
The prince touched a lever and Jared felt the ship accelerate upwards.
The duke reached for the controls that would drop the forcefield and vent the chamber’s atmosphere. Jared rammed a fist into the panel and smashed the bottom corner, obliterating the controls.
There was a flash of red light and a sting of pain in his chest. The emperor was on his feet, glowing arm leveled at Jared.
Jared tried to speak, but nothing came out. He looked down and found a neat hole the size of a fist clean through his armor. He smelled incinerated blood and looked back up at the Triumvirate.
He fell to his knees, managed a smile, and collapsed. His thoughts drifted to Terra Nova, to what might have been, as his mind slipped away.
****
Carson stared up at the pale pink Negev sky through the gap in the chamber ceiling. The center of the room was a disaster of mangled scaffolding and dead Netherguard. Boulders slipped through the forcefield and shattered against the detritus.
“Well…shit,” Nunez said.
“We need to contact the Valiant,” Carson said. “Get word back to Terra Nova.”
“Carson!” Danielle ran over, a man with a thin beard and the Gremlin trailing behind her. “You did it! We’re free. Finally free.” She wiped a tear from her eyes.
“I’m Paulson,” the man said. “I’m in charge of the men’s cell block—no, just the men now, I guess. I heard you brought a ship?”
Across the chamber, men and women crept out of their cells. Carson heard people calling for husbands and wives, saw parents searching for their children.
“We’ve a small ship,” Carson said. “Very small. Won’t be enough to get everyone out in one go.”
“There’s another one, ma’am,” West said. “The ore freighter. She’s not in bad shape. Couple engineers and some heavy equipment from the Enduring Spirit and she could be back in action.”
“If it gets us home,” Danielle said.
“I don’t have a magic wand,” Carson said to the two former prisoners, “but Terra Nova’s waiting for you. Just give me some time.”
She looked up at the hole in the dome and realized her work on Negev was just getting started.
****
“I'm telling you, Lincoln,” Greer said from Valiant’s pilot seat. “Standish’s Reserve is the best whiskey you’ll ever sip.”
The co-
pilot shook his head. “And I’m telling you that the MacDougal’s is superior. That smoky finish sets it apart.”
“You are a lightweight,” Greer glanced at a blip on a display screen, then leaned to one side of the cockpit to look through the windows below her feet and down to Negev. She shrugged her shoulders. “Two shots and you’re asleep at the bar. You can’t drink enough to fully appreciate the nuance that comes with enough of the Standish’s Reserve.”
“I heard this is the exact argument that led to Standish and MacDougal’s company splitting up,” Lincoln said. “Standish put a good chunk of his fortune into sponsoring this expedition with the one stipulation that not one drop of MacDougal’s be aboard any of the ships when we came over.” Lincoln smirked.
“The inspectors sure were thorough,” Greer said a little too loudly and with odd inflection. She glanced back toward the crew compartment, then whispered, “You didn’t.”
Lincoln giggled like school girl.
“They never check the titanium cladding spars in the Mules,” he said. “I may have a bottle or seven hidden in one of the slicks back on the Spirit.”
“I emptied my entire bank account on high-end booze before we left,” Greer said. “Got it packed away in a slick on the Standish, seemed appropriate. You planning on opening a distillery or something?”
“Maybe...”
“You’re a smart man. You know centuries ago in the Old West who the richest people were? Miners and bartenders, and one generally lived longer than the other. Same idea here. Everybody loves liquor, but nobody ever thinks about the guy that's supplying it. I'm telling you, with the right recipe, we could be the richest people in the colony in no time.”
“If we ever figure out what happened to the colony.” Oscar flicked a switch on a beeping sensor, then tapped out a series of commands on a panel next to his acceleration controls. “You getting some weird readings from the surface?”
“Weird ticks on the sensors.” Greer shrugged. “Figure they need to be recalibrated. I’ll put that on the ever growing list for the petty officer to fix. He loves his lists.”