by Tim Waggoner
“How many hostiles now?”
“Twenty-three, not counting the ones you’ve already dealt with. The Manti have begun attacking Cydonia City, but so far they haven’t caused any major damage. But I have good news. Several tanks and missile crawlers have left the Armory and are heading this way.”
“About damn time,” Kyoto muttered. “Well, let’s get busy. It’s time to start playing exterminator again.” She sighted on the nearest Bugger and fired.
CHAPTER
EIGHT
Inside GSA Control, Janeesh Glasgow leaped to his feet as the holoscreen showed the image of Kyoto destroying Cydonia’s planetside Stargate.
“Is she mad? Doesn’t she have any idea how hard the damn things are to build, let alone how much they cost?”
The other Council members, along with all the GSA brass and techs, stared at the holoscreen with disbelief. Only General Adams didn’t look upset. In fact, he was smiling.
Aspen DeFonesca gestured to her hovercam and pointed to Adams. She wanted to make sure the cam caught that smile.
He’s smiling because of Kyoto, she thought. He admires her.
Aspen felt jealousy twist her gut into knots, and she didn’t bother trying to conceal her feelings. Besides, the cam wasn’t focused on her right now.
She still wasn’t certain what she thought about the Manti’s return. On the one hand, it definitely would be good for Syscom’s infotainment ratings, and she had been growing weary of interviewing council members. Yes, it was unusual to find them all in one place at the same time, but they all tried so hard to outdo one another, to appear more intelligent, witty, and charismatic than the others. It was all quite childish, really. As if any of them could outshine her.
On the other hand, it was nearly impossible to hold onto people’s attention when they had live scenes of starfighter battles with hostile aliens to watch. Aspen figured she could perform the most degenerate sex acts live and by viewer request and still get only a 10 percent audience share at best.
But Kyoto… everyone was watching her right now. The Warrior of Luna, the Savior of Humanity, and now it seemed, the Hero of Cydonia, as well. That is, if one of the remaining Buggers didn’t take her out. Aspen fervently hoped that would be the case, for she would absolutely love to be the first to broadcast the image of Kyoto’s broken and bloody corpse onto every holoscreen in the system.
She turned her attention back to the battle and silently rooted for the Manti.
In the causeway outside of GSA headquarters, Bounders and Claimers became united in silence as they watched the battle against the Manti through the transparent plasteel ceiling. Warning klaxons were sounding throughout Cydonian installations, but most of the protesters were too stunned to seek shelter. They couldn’t believe that they were really seeing this, after all, the human race had defeated the Manti. The Buggers had been gone for two whole years! Why would they come back now, and on Remembrance Day, no less? It was like something out of a bad vid. It just didn’t seem possible.
But there was one being among the protesters who not only believed it was possible but had known it was inevitable. In fact, he was surprised it had taken this long.
A deep, weary sadness welled up inside the being masquerading as Seth Ganymede. Though his native species didn’t possess tear ducts, the nanocolony that shared his body assessed his emotional state and, since he was supposed to be passing as human, obligingly engineered him a pair so he could cry.
He made no move to wipe away the strange salty liquid that now ran down his cheeks. He looked up at the sky and watched as Mei Kyoto targeted another Lander and destroyed it with a blast from her pulse cannon. He had been quite impressed when she’d neutralized the stargate. If she hadn’t acted when she did, Cydonia would be nothing but smoldering ruins by now. Perhaps, just perhaps, by that action alone, she had proven her race worthy of contact.
He decided to speak with Commander Kyoto as soon as possible— assuming she survived the battle.
Three tanks and two missile crawlers arrived and began targeting Manti. The sky was suddenly filled with sizzling energy bolts and streaking projectiles. Buggers exploded right and left, but the surviving aliens didn’t back off. If the Manti had a language, the word retreat wasn’t in it. Landers and Yellow Jackets began striking back at the GSA forces, firing bio-energy blasts and stingers.
“Memory, put our collision-avoidance system in touch with our friends’ AIs. I don’t want to be shot down by friendly fire.”
A pause, then, “Taken care of, Mei.”
“Good, then let’s get ourselves another Bugger!” Kyoto swung the Defender around and centered her targeting scanner on a Yellow Jacket. But before she could fire, an alarm began shrieking. She checked her holoscreen and saw that the port maneuvering thrusters were experiencing power fluctuations.
Kyoto veered away from the Yellow Jacket and put some distance between herself and the Manti. “Talk to me, Memory. What’s happening?”
“It’s an aftereffect of the hyperetheric radiation burst.”
“I thought you said the rad shielding took care of that!”
“It appears I made a somewhat, hasty judgment. When the port wing clipped the stargate ring, eight point three centimeters of radiation shielding was stripped away. That was more than enough to allow the hyperetheric radiation to filter into the systems housed within. The radiation has created a miniature vortex that is attempting to shift the entire wing into hyperspace, and if that happens— ”
“Ka-boom,” Kyoto finished.
“Precisely.”
If Kyoto had been facing the remaining Manti alone, she would have kept fighting, regardless of the risk, but since ground support had shown up, she decided to set her ship down while it still had two wings.
“Ask the groundies to give us some covering fire, Memory, and prepare for emergency landing.”
“Chicken,” Memory said, but there was no real rebuke in her voice.
Kyoto decreased the Defender’s speed, hit braking thrusters, and then initiated landing sequence.
The comlink chirped. “Kyoto, you okay?”
“Just fine, General. G-7’s going to need some repair work, but otherwise—” Kyoto broke off as the Defender suddenly listed to port and slammed into the ground.
“Kyoto!” General Adams shouted.
She glanced at her holoscreen. “I’m all right, sir. Unfortunately, my port wing just made an unscheduled jump into hyperspace. Luckily, I was only a couple of meters from the ground when it happened.”
“I’ll send a tank over to pull you out of there, but until it arrives, sit tight. And surprise me this time by following an order for once, all right?”
Kyoto smiled. “Acknowledged.”
Adams harrumphed as he disconnected.
“Memory, you still here?”
“Naturally.”
“How are weapons systems?”
“Portside missiles vanished with the wing, but everything else is functional.”
“Good.” The Defender’s pulse cannon wouldn’t be much use with the ship grounded, but the fast-lock missiles were still good to go. “General Adams didn’t say I couldn’t keep fighting while I waited, so let’s see if we can’t take out a couple more Buggers before the rescue squad gets here.”
Kyoto examined her holoscreen, looking for a suitable target. The Yellow Jacket she had almost fired on earlier was gone, and only four Landers were left. One of the missile crawlers had been fragged, and a tank had been disabled. One of the surviving Landers had managed to get hold of a crewman and was in the process of absorbing him.
Kyoto felt her stomach turn. “Focus in on the disabled tank and magnify.”
The Defender’s holoscreen showed a close-up view of the Lander as the alien went about its grisly work. The Manti was larger than the crewman—about the size of a starfighter—and though it was roughly insectine in appearance, its emerald exoskeleton resembled sleek metallic armor more than it did chitin. It woul
d take the Bugger only moments to ingest the crewman’s genetic material and use it to transform into a Mutant. Landers were bad enough, but Mutants were tough, relentless, and damn hard to kill. The best way to stop one was to destroy it before the mutation process was finished.
Kyoto thought of her father, and once more she heard his screams as the Lander pulled him into its round crimson orifice and began feeding.
She targeted a fast-lock on the Lander devouring the tank crewman and fired. The missile flew through the air and struck the Manti dead center. Kyoto had no way of knowing whether or not the crewman had been screaming, but the missile exploded and then it didn’t matter anymore. Both the Lander and the crewman were dead, and the Mutant they would have become was forever stillborn.
Kyoto’s hands were shaking. This wasn’t the first time she’d been forced to kill one of her own kind in order to prevent the birth of a Mutant, but she would never, ever get used to it.
She took a deep breath, then checked her holoscreen for another target. According to the readout, only two Landers were left now, and one of them…
Something thumped down loudly on the Defender’s canopy, jarring the ship.
… was right on top of her.
The Lander began pounding on the canopy with its large foreclaws, and Kyoto experienced a disorienting sense of déjà vu.
This is just like my dream, she thought. Only instead of the Lander attacking her in space, it was coming after her on the surface of Mars.
Kyoto quickly activated the Defender’s energy shield in the hope that it would repel the Manti. The Lander shrieked in pain and fury, but only redoubled its efforts to break through the canopy.
“Nice going,” Memory said. “Now you’ve made it mad.”
The Lander screamed again, and Kyoto shuddered. The sound was so profoundly inhuman that it terrified her on a primeval level, deep down in her hindbrain where the tiny shivering mammal that existed at the core of all humans hid in fear. For a moment, all she could do was sit paralyzed and pray that the monster outside would lose interest in her and leave.
“Mei, I strongly suggest you put on your emergency O2 unit. The Lander is going to breach the canopy at any moment, and unless you want to take a nice deep breath of fresh carbon dioxide…”
That snapped Kyoto out of her paralysis. She undid her restraints and reached under the seat for the emergency survival kit. If she’d taken the time to don a flight suit, she wouldn’t need an O2 unit, but if wishes where starships…
She opened the kit, grabbed the O2 half-mask and fastened it over her nose and mouth. The breather automatically affixed itself to her skin and formed a seal. As oxygen began to flow, she reached back into the kit and pulled out a pair of goggles to protect her eyes. She quickly slipped them on, trying to ignore the sound of the Manti slamming its claws against the Defender’s canopy as it screamed in blood-rage.
“Memory, what’s the outside temperature?” Kyoto’s voice was muffled by the O2 mask, but still audible.
“Ten degrees Celsius. Chilly, but hardly life-threatening.”
“Good.” Because she’d left the hangar in such a hurry, she hadn’t thought to grab a sidearm, but the emergency kit contained a small handblaster. The weapon didn’t pack enough punch to kill a Bugger, but it might be enough to help Kyoto hold it at bay, especially if she softened it up first.
Kyoto fastened her seat restraints once more, making sure they were tight. “Memory, prepare for ejection on my mark.”
“Well, aren’t you the sneaky one?” There was a note of admiration in Memory’s voice. “Ready when you are.”
Kyoto took a deep breath of O2 and gripped the handblaster tight. “Up, up, and away.”
Couplings released and small charges exploded. The canopy flew upward, and Kyoto had a split-second to register the Lander’s roar of pain before maglev repulsors shot her pilot’s seat thirty meters into the air. The ejection-system sensors detected that Kyoto had bailed out close to the surface of a planet and calculated an appropriate rate of descent for local gravity.
As the seat drifted toward the ground, Kyoto shivered from the cold and wished GSA dress uniforms were made of thermal insulation instead of synthetic cloth. Still, she was grateful it wasn’t night, when the temperature could drop to around -80° Celsius. Kyoto worked the controls on the chair’s starboard arm, and her makeshift vehicle spun around so she could see what damage the canopy had done to the Manti.
The Lander lay on its back, flailing its segmented legs not far from where the canopy had come to rest. Kyoto was happy to see a dab of green blood smeared on the canopy, but she had no illusions about the Manti being seriously injured. The aliens were just too tough. All the flying canopy had done was give the Bugger the equivalent of a bloody lip.
Before Kyoto’s seat had drifted halfway to the ground, the Lander started to right itself. Kyoto had hoped the Manti would’ve been out of action long enough for her to set down, but no such luck.
She’d managed to keep hold of the handblaster during ejection, and now she flicked the power switch on and aimed the weapon at the Bugger’s mouth parts. Even after years of studying dead and captured Manti, Galactic Stargate Authority R&D had only the most basic understanding of how the Buggers’ anatomy worked. But they knew the mouth was the least armored portion of a Manti and therefore—the theory went—was the most vulnerable.
Kyoto fired. A thin ruby-colored beam stabbed forth from the blaster’s muzzle and struck the Lander right in the middle of its wet crimson maw.
“Bull’s-eye!” Kyoto shouted.
Thick green bubbled forth from the Bugger’s mouth, and the Manti fell onto its side and thrashed its legs.
Kyoto glanced down at the ground. Ten meters to touchdown, she estimated. She kept her gaze fixed on the Manti and listened to the soft hum as the handblaster recharged. If the goddamned Bugger would just stay down for a few more seconds…
But faster than she would have thought possible, given the creature’s condition, the Manti rolled onto its feet and scuttled over to the discarded canopy. It snatched up the plasteel component with its foreclaws and then—as if eager to give Kyoto a taste of her own medicine—hurled the canopy straight at her head.
Lightning-quick, Kyoto released the seat restraints and jumped. As she fell toward the ground, the canopy slammed into the ejection seat and sent it tumbling end over end through the air. Given that Mars’s gravity was only 38 percent Earth norm, Kyoto had no trouble landing on her feet without injury. But the Lander was already scrabbling toward her, moving somewhat wobbly due to its wounds, but moving nonetheless. The handblaster had a full charge again, and Kyoto intended to use it. She leveled the weapon at the Manti and started to pull the trigger.
But before she could fire, the Manti lashed out with a foreclaw and knocked the blaster from her hand. Kyoto turned and leaped as the Lander brought its other claw around to strike. Again, the Martian gravity proved her ally. Her jump propelled her well beyond the Manti’s reach, but before her feet came down once more on the rocky orange ground, the Bugger was moving again.
Kyoto’s personal comlink chirped.
“I’m still here, Mei. I can’t risk using the Defender’s missiles because the explosion might injure you along with the Manti.”
Kyoto landed and jumped again. The Manti continued after her.
“But if you can get the Lander in front of the ship…”
“Acknowledged. Stand by.” This time when Kyoto landed, she rolled to bleed off the momentum and came up on her feet. She started running toward the Defender’s prow, and the Manti, of course, followed like the good little human-eating alien that it was. Once she was in position, she turned and waited for the Lander to catch up. She had to time this just right. If she moved too early, the Lander might take to the air. If she moved too late… She didn’t want to think about that.
As the Manti lurched toward her, ichor-smeared mouth open wide, eager to begin absorbing her genetic material, Kyoto h
ad to force herself to stand her ground.
Closer… closer… “Now, Memory!”
Kyoto jumped away from the ship as hard as she could just as the Lander made a grab for her, bringing it in front of the Defender’s pulse cannon. Energy erupted from the weapon and wreathed the Manti in deadly blue-white light.
The Lander shrieked in agony, and its body exploded from inside out. When Kyoto landed six meters away, she ducked down and covered her head. Sizzling chunks of Manti organs and charred bits of carapace pattered down on her. When the grisly rain was finished, she stood and turned her head to examine her green-slicked back.
“So much for your nice clean dress uniform,” Memory said.
Kyoto laughed. “It was too tight, anyway.” She turned back to look over the battlefield. One missile crawler was left, as well as two tanks, one of which was trundling toward her. But all the Buggers had been fragged. It was over.
For now.
CHAPTER
NINE
“One hundred and seventeen thousand dead throughout the Colonies.” Detroit Adams’s voice was devoid of emotion as he said this, but Kyoto could see the grief and shock in his eyes. The general was holding on and doing his job, but it was taking a supreme effort. She knew just how he felt.
“That’s an approximate count, of course,” Mudo added. “The final toll is likely to be much higher.”
Everyone seated around the table in the GSA Control briefing room turned to stare at Mudo. Not only was the tone of his voice normal, it verged on pleasant, even happy.
Janeesh Glasgow scowled. “You sound almost glad the Manti attacked.”
“Not at all,” Mudo responded. “But if I allow my personal feelings to intrude upon this meeting, I won’t be able to bring the full force of my mind to bear on the problem at hand. The most important thing I can do for the Solar Colonies right now—indeed, that any of us can do—is to think as dispassionately as possible.”