by Chad Huskins
“Sergeant, send a message to the fleet, relay it through Prophet, hopefully the signal will reach their sat-relay system past the time-warp field. And take over for Ziir’s EyeSpys, deploy them around the Giant Sphere and the facility below it. I want to know it inside and out.”
“Yes, sir.”
“All right, Governor Zane,” he said, hefting his sword in his right hand and gesturing her forward with its blade. “Let’s see what you can do.”
IT HAD BEEN a long, hard road. Kalder gazed out the window of Lord Ishimoto’s observational deck, thinking about the year that had passed them. A year of fighting a battle that few now thought they could win. Enthusiasm for their struggle had waxed and waned, Faith 6A sometimes showing an emboldening spirit among the people of the Republic, and other times showing renewed despair. The semi-regular updates from Captain Lyokh’s team below had rescued Kalder, Desh, and all the rest of them more times than he could count now. It gave it the sense of something epic happening in slow-motion, a battle that was still being fought, and might always be fought, inside that giant bottled world that loomed over Deirdra, orbiting it at a snail’s pace and still affecting its weather.
As he watched the pieces of the Marie-Anne Wang orbit the Watchtower, and gazed into the light of the rippling explosions along the side of the broodling, caused by the combined efforts of an Isoshi ship, two Faedyan craft, and all ten of the ships General Hyatt had brought with him, Kalder ran his yellowing fingernails slowly through his beard, combing it.
The flashes of fire, which had before seemed like the energized lances of gods, had become quite mundane now. An everyday occurrence. An everysecond occurrence, actually. As he watched another Faedyan ship retreat, harassed by a broodling that would not relent, Kalder touched the ring on his hand, and glanced at the promise-band he wore for his wife-to-be, reminding himself of how far he’d come.
“Sir?”
Kalder looked at Julian’s reflection in the window as he walked up from behind. His apprentice’s face had not changed in the last year, he at least had found time to shave and bathe on time. Though, his eyes carried dark bags beneath them, and his shoulders sagged with the leaden burden placed upon him each day. And yet, in his features, there was expressed the most indefatigable spirit, the thing at Julian’s core that Kalder had first seen when selecting him for the Course of Honors.
“What is it, Julian?” Kalder said.
“Sir, I’ve just received word from Pennick.”
“And?”
“The Corporate Arm is in eighty-three percent agreement.”
“Who are the holdouts?” he asked. Then he waved his hand, “Never mind, it doesn’t matter. To what extent are they willing to go?”
“Another fleet, probably what’s left of Twelfth, though at full speed they won’t get here for another four months, they’re way out in the Norma Arm.”
Kalder nodded. “Which corporations are coming along?”
“Well, the people you contacted in the Tulfghan Caliphate really came through,” Julian said. “Their mining operations are prepared to lend whatever raw materials they have at seventy percent market value, in exchange for the tax break you proposed for them in the following year. And Pennick’s own construction companies are prepared to bring prefab units into the safer areas of Taka-Renault, and assemble orbital shipyards around a number of planets. The Duchess—your fiancée—has asked her father to contact the religious zealots that have isolated themselves throughout the asteroid belts, and some of them have opened up lines of communication.”
Kalder nodded. “The Duchess knows her father well. She predicted that his own devotion to that ancient religion would stimulate the stragglers.”
“Yes, sir. Well, they’ve been made aware of what’s going on throughout the system—it’s hard to believe we’ve been fighting for a whole year, all around them, and they haven’t noticed, but their tech is limited, they suffered a major collapse and their culture went through a backlash against technology. The first images they saw of the worldship were hoaxes, they said, holograms or images projected to get them to lower their defenses and permit the rape of their mines. But the Duke of Helmsworth’Lok spoke to them, zealot to zealot, and it looks like we will have the resources to make the ships we need quickly.”
Kalder stroked his beard gently. It had become a meditative habit. He started thinking out loud. “If we pull back what’s left of Task Force Three, and have them set up a permanent station around Vesterpul and use their fab rooms strictly for the production of basic parts, then the drone factories that Pennick’s company is bringing will have a leg up. We can construct a few fast-attack drone ships. Devoid of the need for life-support systems, we could double up on their armament and weapons loadout. If the Takans throughout the system really do come together, that could take care of our resupply problem.”
He looked at Julian’s reflection. Inside that reflection, Miss Persephone rushed forward at full speed, right at the ass end of the broodling chasing the Faedyan ship, aiming right at a tentacle that was hanging on by threads, and smashed through it.
“And Thustra and Torrence are both secured?” he asked.
“They are, sir. The last broodling was destroyed, and the Isoshi are gathering up the pieces like all the others, continuing their research of how communication between Brood nodes work.”
“Have they learned much?”
“I’m not sure. I can try and contact the one Isoshi—what’s his name, Tarmankton Four-Eight-Five?”
Kalder nodded. The Isoshi had a predilection for numerical naming conventions, it had to do with the way they drew their numbers, each one having significance to some element in Nature, and some numbers were considered luckier than others, and others signified a particular matriarch of each clan. “Four-Eight-Five has been the most responsive to our calls, use him as much as possible. Contact the captain of Pride of Our Ancestors, Five-One-Eight-Three-Seven, once this is over and inform him of our intentions to construct shipyards throughout Taka-Renault in the coming months. Tightbeam only, Julian, so that the Brood don’t intercept.”
“Yes, sir. Will there be anything else?”
“Yes. Has Trix been fully repaired?”
“He has.”
“Then send him up to me. I have another job for him.”
“Yes, sir.”
Julian departed, off to complete another series of small tasks that, once initiated, would amount to a war. All wars were built by such small pieces, tiny little messages, seemingly insignificant errands.
Once he was alone, Kalder cast around, looking beyond the Watchtower, beyond even the two-thousand-mile-long worldship, at Deirdra. Down there somewhere was a woman he intended to marry, and a duchy that was at least partially his. There were also billions of people who looked up at the sky every day, and, depending on what part of the planet they were on, glimpsed varying views on a war that would determine their fate. Already thirty million had perished due to falling debris.
Kalder looked at the blue-and-green world, so fragile and precious, so important to Man’s dominance in the galaxy. Every world counts, he thought. Indeed, if he meant to dominate all xenos and bring them under the thumb of mankind, he had to preserve every scrap.
“Every world counts.” He said it aloud this time, balling his fist in conviction and placing it against the window. In the reflection of his left eye, the Watchtower hovered there, protecting Man and its coalition force from the devastating fire of the worldship. For how much longer, though? How long could it sustain?
How long can I sustain?
“Sir Captain Aejon Lyokh,” he whispered. “Hurry. For the sake of all mankind, please hurry.”
AFTER HE LEFT Timon, Lyokh had spent half a year swabbing decks along with the vorta of the starship SDFA Maltese. Aboard the Maltese, he had glimpsed alien worlds, but only from windows. Worlds that had been pit stops on the way to the Academy on Fury 89d. He had seen the scorched plains of Vestrun, a Faedyan world covered in
megalopolises, with its transparent, glass-like buildings and its bridges draped in green vines, almost like a world made of greenhouses. He had also seen two Isoshi moons, where Maltese had moored at spacedocks, the rare kind where humans and xenos intermingled, gambled, bartered, and experimented with one another’s sex organs. The kind of place Holace Kalder would have despised.
But of all the alien landscapes Lyokh had seen, both from afar and in vids, this might have been the strangest. As they ran across the immense platform, they came upon wide corridors made of transparent, pulsating glass, through which they crashed, and murdered their way through another horde of drones. The VPMC proved to be crack shots, and well-regimented, burning down at least as many of the Brood’s creations as Lyokh’s forward guard.
The High Priestess remained at the fore, but so far had not been forced to act. She moved quickly, silently, her head on a swivel, constantly looking for some foe to test her, but always her VPMCs neutralized the threat first.
Thick, miasmic smoke swirled up out of the ground, coming from tiny pores like the suction cups on a squid’s tentacles. Lyokh breathed in some of these noxious fumes as they leaked in through the crack in his helmet. It was putrid, and the fetor reminded him of a battlefield a decade before, where he’d been stranded with his unit for days, unable to bury their dead because the ground was solid rock. They had smelled their fellows’ rotting flesh. Sometimes, in his dreams, he still smelled it.
As they approached the archway entrance to the “facility” directly underneath the Giant Sphere, Lyokh felt as a plover bird must when facing the maw of an alligator. Only we’re not here to pick its teeth clean. The archway seemed strangely made of stone, though with ulcerous growths that hissed and dripped steaming black liquid.
“Try not to let it touch you,” he warned his people, though it was impossible to steer clear of all of it. As he passed through the archway, and into the dark maw ahead, a droplet of it smacked onto Lyokh’s right vambrace, and he saw it grow a tail, flip, turn, and roll around on his wrist. He wiped it away quickly, and hurried inside.
Stepping inside the facility proved that it was not a “facility” at all, but a wide, expansive, and ongoing plain with random outgrowths of rocks, steel, and chiton, all covered in sparkling humps of moss.
And there were strange ovoid things, like eggs, growing up out of the ground and giving off an inner light. The eggs throbbed, enlarging then shrinking, and something squirmed inside.
I keep forgetting I’m inside a giant living organism, Lyokh thought to himself. The things that have been attacking us—the clawcraft, the centipedes, the four-armed things—they are as like an immune system as any white blood cell my body.
The walls were almost three miles apart, and beating like a heart. The floor itself, made of a black chiton-metal alloy, vanished into a slightly curved horizon far off in the distance. The eggs rose up out of this, the ground parting just for them. Lightning crawled up those distant walls and was funneled into the center of the ceiling, which was an iridescent, pulsating monstrosity of chiton and steel. The hum it gave off was felt in their chests.
There were structures here and there, buildings that looked like relics, almost like ancient and crumbling Roman colosseums, even stepped amphitheaters. In fact…yes…yes, the more Lyokh looked at them, the more he thought that’s exactly what they looked like. Was there a reason for it, or simply a necessary repetition in Nature, a thing so vital and fundamental to how structures ought to be built by intelligent beings, that it was unextractable from their designs for their world? Some design destined to repeat itself in all civilizations? Or were they, the Brood, attempting to emulate something? Were they sending a message, attempting communication by some bizarre means?
As he listened to the explosions outside, the Novas and skyrakes and wyrms all fighting, all dying, right alongside Task Force Mahl, Lyokh moved through the dark world, his path occasionally lit by flashes coming from the walls, the ceiling, even the floor.
Beside him, Zane moved elegantly, taking long, leaping strides, her hands out in front of her, as though she were running towards an invisible lover, ready to embrace them. Her face, only visible by her helmet lamp, glowed with sadistic glee.
An alarm went off inside his helmet. He silenced it with a glimpse, and looked at the flashing message. He had exactly fifty percent of his recyclable oxygen left, and the internal atmospheric pressure was still dropping. He had maybe thirty minutes of oxygen left.
Meiks, the new Knight Companion, noticed at once. “Doyen, you got problems with your suit.”
“It’s fine, keep moving.”
A Mantis scuttled past him on half its legs, climbing as well as it could up a tall, crumbling colosseum, scanning for targets. Lyokh splashed through an ankle-deep stream, on top of which was a thin red-glowing film. An analysis update from Lerwin informed Lyokh that the film was heavily saturated with nanites; their purpose was unknown.
They passed through narrow alleys between more colosseum-like buildings, all topped with sparkling green moss, and surrounded, on occasion, by outcroppings of green-glowing boulders. The ground was etched by random grooves and rills of velvety water. Above purple streams floated thumb-sized jellyfish, propelled, according to analysis, by short puffs of expelled hydrogen. Their pupose was also unknown.
Iridescent strings hung in the air with no observable propulsion, their ends like spider’s webs, blowing in the direction of whichever air current happened to catch them. Again, their reason for being remained a mystery.
Lyokh caught up with Ganymede Wing at the front of the assault force as they walked splashing through the streams, disturbing the floating jellyfish, which orbited them like lost children, hoping for guidance, or at least a return to their home. When he heard the popping of gunfire a quarter-mile behind him, he checked the cam feeds from Callisto Wing, who was bringing up the rear and had encountered resistance. It looked like the octopus-things they’d seen on Kennit, slightly modified.
“Callisto Actual, this is Sol Actual, report!”
A woman named Zolas shouted, “Taking heavy fire from…” She paused while she consulted the improvised map on everyone’s HUD. “Sector DH-7, uh…northeast relative to—” She cut off. Vitals showed she was okay, but she took a hit.
“Lerwin! Talk to me!”
“I’ve got a general LOC on a strong energy source, closing in on it…” She broke up amid static, then came back. “—waypoint on your map now, doyen.”
Three seconds later, they had a location on their HUDs. Thankfully, it was just half a mile up, and an EyeSpy had an aerial view of it. Another egg, though about five times larger than all the others.
“All right, we’ve got a destination!” he cried. “Hoy up!”
With several tactical chops of his hands, he sent waypoints out, first to the Mantises to do some high-up scouting, then to the Ravagers, so they could start clearing a path through the alleys between colosseums and amphitheaters, then finally to the warhulks to establish safe zones in the wake of each Ravager they followed. Individual captains sent their own waypoints out for their people, scattering them well.
He heard a belch of gunfire. The VPMCs were tearing into a throng of drones on their left flank, and the High Priestess was leading them, her hands waving insanely. Lyokh saw great shards tear out of the ground and impale the drones, as if the ground itself was being conducted by some sorcery. He saw the drones’ insides spill out of the seams of their carapices.
Lyokh left the Widdenians to their battle. Let them die in whatever way they wish, as long as they buy us some time.
Here and there, brushfire battles cropped up, as the floor parted, and out crawled drones of various sizes and shapes. Lyokh’s people knew how to deal with most of them now, thanks to Tsuyoshi, who, as his last task before dying, had analyzed the cams of multiple soldiers, both the living and the dead, to see which tactics had worked best over these last few hours of hard-fought battles. Meiks had finished what he
had started, and the battle strategies had been disseminated to all STACsuit computers, which had, in turn, put up appropriate commands on everyone’s HUDs, showing them where and how to maneuver in order to maximize their force.
Paradoxically, as their numbers dwindled, the Knights of Sol were getting smarter as a group, more efficient, deadlier.
For the centipedes, soldiers gathered in circles around it while either a Dagonite or an Untamak grappled with it, harassing it while small shots weakened in, or until a good grenade launcher tagged it. For the four-armed things, they used a warhulk-buffered phalanx, in the style the Brotherhood preferred. For any flying drones, they used crisscrossing firing from Ravagers and Mantises, with an occasional sharpshooter added into the mix.
They trudged through stream after stream, scattering the hydrogen-propelled jellyfish, and gathering more of them around their bodies.
Then, as before, artificial gravity was switched off, as if the worldship was once again trying to throw them off. Water floated up from the streams in giant globules, and the enemy, obviously having been forewarned, clung to walls seconds before, and went clambering after the Knights of Sol.
Lyokh’s people adjusted beautifully, utilizing the skills they had trained in zero-g. Wing leaders dialed their STACsuits to maximum, then took a running leap forward in a ball, as others in his wing followed behind him, holding on to one another’s belts, moving like floating serpents, occasionally falling back to the ground due to the worldship’s natural gravity. They hopped, floated, bounced off of walls and formed their starburst formations when they needed to concentrate full firepower directly ahead as a group, then came back together in single-file and floated through the alleys like wraiths, shouting, “The wall!”
Only the Ravagers had difficulty in zero-g, but Lyokh dispatched the Mantises to anchor them to the walls, keeping them in the fight.
When arti-grav returned, they were ready for it, most of them landing as easily as cats, their STACsuits stabilizing them, keeping them moving.