“I...I know he’s with the Silent Order,” said Cassandra, “but...”
“He used to be an Iron Hand, you dumb bitch!” said Tessa. “He was one of the elite commandos and agents of the Final Consciousness. He was part of the hive mind. The final, ultimate state of human evolution, man and machine fused together to form a single glorious mind, and our dear Captain March was part of it. And he walked away! He betrayed us!” Her pretty face twisted with contempt. “You walked away from the Final Consciousness to join the Kingdom of Calaskar. The backward, regressive, reactionary Kingdom of Calaskar! You were part of a god, Jack March. The Final Consciousness is the ultimate purpose of mankind, our final destiny, and you walked away from it!”
“Maybe I had a better view of the Final Consciousness than you did,” said March, making no effort to hide his own contempt. “Maybe I saw the labor camps, the old and the sick murdered and fed into the protein recycling plants. Maybe I saw the murders and the lies, the endless lies. Maybe I saw the billions butchered for no reason other than petty spite on Martel’s World.” His voice hardened. “And maybe I just saw a stupid, petty girl murder thousands of people for her own advancement. That’s what the Final Consciousness is. That’s what you are.”
“And you’re weak,” said Tessa. “The next state of humanity’s evolution is the Final Consciousness. The unfit and the regressive must be purged, and the Final Consciousness will conquer the universe. Humanity will live forever as one immortal mind. You could have been part of that. You could have lived forever. Instead, you’re going to die here, and I will live forever in your place. I will be raised to the Final Consciousness for your deaths. Perhaps I will even be made an Overseer at once.”
“If you do, you’ll regret it,” said March. “You’ll hear the Final Consciousness inside your head like thunder. It will eat your own thoughts, and you’ll lose yourself. The Final Consciousness will fill your mind and heart, and you won’t know anything else.”
“It sounds glorious,” said Tessa. “And I’m going to experience that firsthand. The next and final stage of human evolution. You’re a fool, and I can prove it.”
“How’s that?” said March.
Tessa smirked. “You shouldn’t have let me talk.”
She took a long step back, her pistol still pointed at March, and as she did, the screen of the phone in her left hand lit up. It had been running a program. She had been talking to buy time for the program on her phone to finish.
March squeezed the trigger, but it was too late. A blast door fell from the ceiling, slamming closed a half-meter behind the hyperdrive cowling. Tessa disappeared behind the blast door, and March’s plasma bolt deflected off the blast door and dissipated into nothingness.
“Shit,” said March.
“What are we going to do?” said Cassandra.
The blast doors leading to the fusion control and thruster control rooms started to slide open.
They rose far slower than the blast door in the hyperdrive room had fallen, but they were opening quickly.
Already March saw the twitching legs and pincers of the macrobes.
“Shit!” said March. “Run!”
He sprinted for the access door, his boots ringing against the deck. Cassandra raced after him. She was falling behind, her breath coming hard and fast. March saw that he was going to reach the door before the macrobes did.
Cassandra was not. She just wasn’t fast enough. She tried, but she hadn’t been a fast runner to begin with, and their exertions on the Alpine had exhausted her.
March cursed, twisted to the side, and seized her with his left arm. Cassandra just had time to yelp in surprise, and then March flung her over his left shoulder. He sprinted as fast as he could. Cassandra wasn’t that heavy, but she was heavy enough to slow him down. Was he going to make it?
March crashed into the door, slapping the control with the side of his gun. It hissed open, and he fell through and into the utility corridor, his right shoulder bouncing off the floor with a surge of pain, Cassandra landing atop him. March twisted to the side and saw a horde of macrobes flooding after them, blue-glowing eyes glaring at him, faces twisted with glee and rage.
The door clanged shut. At once the macrobes started pounding on the door, but it ought to hold for at least a few moments.
“Oh, God,” said Cassandra. “Oh, God. I thought I was dead. If you hadn’t carried me out...”
March grunted and shoved to his feet. “See why I lift weights?”
Cassandra blinked, burst out laughing, and then lifted her hand to her mouth. “Oh, God. It’s not funny. It’s just...”
“I know, the adrenaline,” said March. A dent appeared in the door. “We have to move.”
Cassandra got to her feet, clutching her phone. “She killed them all.”
“Yeah,” said March, remembering the route that Torrence had pointed out. “You’ve still got the surge regulators?” Cassandra patted the satchel hanging at her hip. “Good. This way.”
He jogged down the access corridor, Cassandra following.
“What are we going to do now?” said Cassandra.
“We have to get to the Tiger before Tessa does,” said March.
“How do you know she’s going to the Tiger?” said Cassandra.
March turned a corner and kept jogging. “Because it will solve all her problems. She has the surge regulators, and she can use them to repair the Tiger’s hyperdrive. She’ll take the ship, the relic, your Eclipse prototype and your research.”
“But you locked the door,” said Cassandra.
March shook his head. “If she gets physical access to the ship, she’ll be able to steal it. If she could bring down the Alpine’s computer, she’ll have something that will let her override Vigil and steal the Tiger.”
“But we’ll be able to hold out here until help comes,” said Cassandra. “We could wait in the banquet room with the others.”
“No,” said March. “If she can take control of the Tiger, she’ll destroy the Alpine.”
“Why?” said Cassandra. “Why would she do that?”
“She was willing to kill everyone on the Alpine,” said March. “Why scruple at blowing up the ship? If she takes my ship and blows up the Alpine, she’ll win everything. She’ll have that alien relic, all your research, and your prototype. If she destroys the Alpine, she kills you and wipes out any remaining knowledge of your research and all evidence of her crimes. She completes her mission, and as an added bonus, she gets to kill me.”
“God,” said Cassandra. “Does your ship have the kind of firepower to destroy the Alpine?”
“It has a capital warship grade railgun mounted on the keel,” said March. “That’s how I took out those Raptors chasing you. If she fires a few tungsten rods into the ship’s fusion reactor, it will breach containment and cause an explosion.”
“Then what are we going to do?” said Cassandra.
“Easy,” said March. “We’re going to stop her.”
“How?” said Cassandra.
“Don’t know yet,” said March. “I’m still working on that part.”
“Did you really used to be an Iron Hand?” said Cassandra.
“Yeah,” said March. He stopped long enough to read the label on an access door, nodded, and kept jogging. “Years and years. Broke away and joined the Silent Order.”
“Suppose that explains how you could punch through a door,” said Cassandra. “And pick me up one-handed.”
“It’s useful sometimes,” said March.
“Do they really want you dead that badly?” said Cassandra.
“And then some,” said March.
He stopped at an access door and read the sign.
“Macrobes?” said March.
“Two of them,” said Cassandra, glancing. “A few meters away. Where does that door go?”
“One of the interior cargo corridors,” said March. “We need to go this way.”
“But that takes us away from the starboard cargo
corridor,” said Cassandra.
“Yeah,” said March. “But if we’re going to beat Tessa to the Tiger, we need to go this way. Stay behind me.”
Before she could react, he slapped the door control, took his pistol in both hands, and stepped through the door.
He entered a broad cargo corridor, wide enough and high enough to allow passage for fully loaded forklifts. Two spider-like macrobes stood a short distance away. Both creatures had been locked in combat, which meant they didn’t realize March was there until he lifted his gun and started shooting. The first macrobe dropped to the deck. The second charged at March, but he had plenty of time to line up his shot.
“Clear!” said March as the second macrobe crumpled.
Cassandra hurried out of the access door. “What are we doing?”
“We’re stealing a ride,” said March.
He ran down the corridor, looking left and right and scrutinizing the signs over the double doors to the cargo bays. Spare furniture, toilet fixtures, carpets, towels...there!
“You saw all those restaurants and bars on the commercial promenade,” said March. He hit the door control. The cargo doors began to slide open. “A ship this size will go through a lot of cheap liquor, and pallets of liquor are extremely heavy. Which means...”
The doors slid open, revealing a cargo bay filled with pallets of boxed wine.
And sitting in front of the pallets was a forklift.
As March had expected, it was an impressive forklift, the best work from Royal Calaskaran Motors. The body had been painted safety-yellow, and the black cab was enclosed in a grill of metalwork. The twin tines jutted from the front of the forklift like two massive black spears.
“You know how to drive a forklift?” said March, hurrying towards the machine.
“I don’t even know how to drive,” said Cassandra.
He glanced at her in surprise as he pulled open the cab door.
Cassandra shrugged. “I always took public transit back in Sonari City.”
“Get in,” said March, as he dropped into the driver’s seat. Fortunately, the previous operator had left the keys in the ignition. Forklift theft probably had not been a major concern aboard the Alpine. Cassandra closed the cab door and squeezed in between the driver’s seat and the mesh of the cab wall. The electric motor started with a whir, the dashboard lighting up. The capacitors were at two-thirds charge yet. Likely one of the cargo handlers had been in the middle of bringing more cheap wine up to the shopping promenade when Tessa had destroyed the resonator coils.
“Is this really necessary?” said Cassandra as March backed the forklift up, the machine giving off a steady beeping.
“Yes,” said March, turning the tines to face the far cargo bay door. From the way that Tessa had been rummaging through those cabinets in the hyperdrive room, he suspected she had other caches secured throughout the ship, most likely caches containing powerful weapons.
“But forklifts aren’t that fast,” said Cassandra. “Are they?”
“Not when they’re fully loaded,” said March. He eased the vehicle forward, the heavy tires rumbling against the deck. The doors slid open, revealing another corridor lined with the double doors to more cargo bays. “But they’ve got powerful engines.” He turned the corner, heading for the stern. “This is the fastest way we’re likely to find to the Tiger’s airlock.”
With that, he pushed the accelerator, and Cassandra let out a startled yelp as the forklift surged forward. The speedometer only went up to forty, and soon March had the needle hovering at that number. Cassandra clung to the mesh with one hand, eyes wide and wild.
“Keep your hands in the cab!” said March. “If I take a corner too sharply you might lose them.”
Cassandra grabbed onto the back of his seat instead. The forklift shot forward, the electric motor whirring louder and louder. March glanced at the numbers and labels on the cargo doors as he passed by them, noting his location. Just a little further…
There!
He cut the accelerator and tapped the brakes, and the forklift skidded to a halt. Cassandra cursed and grabbed the seat for balance, and March put the forklift into an unwieldy turn, spinning the tines towards a cargo bay door. He pushed the vehicle forward, and they rolled into another cargo bay, this one stacked high with pallets holding boxed bed linens. March drove to the cargo door on the far side, and it hissed open at the forklift’s approach.
He turned right again, and the forklift rolled into the starboard cargo corridor where he and Cassandra had first arrived on the Alpine. March pushed the accelerator to the floor again, wondering if they had beaten Tessa to the Tiger. She would have had a clear path from the engine room, especially with the macrobes chasing March and Cassandra. Had the forklift made up the difference?
The engine whir grew louder.
“There she is!” said Cassandra.
A hundred meters away March saw the airlock leading to the Tiger.
Tessa was already there.
She had abandoned the white uniform of a Royal Calaskaran Starlines steward, and instead wore a form-fitting suit of gray scout armor. March wondered how the hell she had smuggled that aboard the Alpine. Likely she had used the help of other Machinist agents or sympathizers aboard the ship, men and women she had sacrificed without a qualm. The scout armor wouldn’t be as powerful or deadly as the powered armor the Royal Marines wore into battle, but it would make her faster, stronger, and give her a measure of protection from weapons fire.
Worse were the two black shapes squatting next to her. At first, March thought they were miniature macrobes, but then he recognized the defense drones for what they were. They looked like metal spiders the size of large dogs, with low-slung plasma cannons mounted in their bodies. Tessa must have smuggled them onto the ship with her scout armor.
March spun the wheel and sent the forklift hurtling towards Tessa.
She heard the motor and her head snapped around, and even from a distance, March saw her blue eyes go wide. Tessa scrambled to the side, yanking a helmet over her head, and shouted a command. Both black drones turned, rotating their plasma cannons to face the charging forklift. The drones spread out as Tessa backed away, making it impossible for March to hit all three of them at once.
“Brace yourself!” he shouted, and he yanked a lever next to the steering wheel.
The tines lowered with a pneumatic hiss and then started spraying sparks as they rasped against the deck.
March jerked the wheel and ran over the defense drone on the left. One of the tines sheared through its legs and March felt the thud as the drone’s body rolled beneath the forklift and was crushed under the wheels.
Both Tessa and the remaining defense drone fired. Tessa had her plasma pistol in hand, and her bolt punched through the forklift’s back rear wheel. The drone’s far more powerful plasma bolt drilled through the back of the forklift and hit the engine. The electric whine became a ragged metallic scream, and all the lights on the dashboard went red. March slammed on the brakes and sent the forklift spinning around in a skid, putting himself between Cassandra and Tessa.
“Down!” said March, and he kicked open the door on the left-hand side of the cab. Cassandra wrenched open the door on the right side and all but fell through it. Tessa and the remaining drone hurried towards March, and Tessa fired. The plasma bolt burned through the mesh of the cab, and droplets of molten metal spattered across March’s left arm.
He yanked one of the grenades from his bandoleer, flung it through the opened door in Tessa’s general direction, and threw himself out the right-hand door after Cassandra.
“Stay down!” said March.
The grenade detonated with a roar.
The explosion was strong enough that the forklift rocked back on two wheels, and for an instant March feared it would tip over and crush them. But the heavy vehicle fell back on all four wheels with a clang, and something black and jagged tumbled past it.
The defense drone. The explosion hadn’t dest
royed it.
The spidery drone regained its balance, and it whipped its cylindrical body around to face them. March fired at it, and his hasty shot tore a chunk of armor from its side. He threw himself to the side as the drone fired. Its plasma cannon dug another smoking crater into the side of the battered forklift, and March threw himself back to his feet.
Before the drone could fire again, March closed with it, seized one of the legs in his left hand, and heaved with all his cybernetic strength. He swung the drone around, his entire body straining with its weight, and slammed the robot against the floor. The drone landed on its back, its legs scrabbling as it tried to flip itself over, and March pumped three shots into its belly. His third shot struck something important, and the drone jerked and went limp, the metal legs clanging against the floor.
March whirled just as Tessa leaped into sight, her pistol leveled at him. The power of her armor let her jump higher and faster than otherwise possible, and her leap carried her past the wrecked forklift. She fired, but the motion of her jump caused her to miscalculate, and her shot sizzled past March and blew a chunk from the deck. March fired and his bolt caught her in the chest, but the shot dissipated against the harsh flash of a low-level radiation shield.
Two more plasma bolts struck Tessa, knocking her back. March saw that Cassandra had drawn her pistol, the weapon clutched in her left hand. Tessa whirled and jumped back, soaring over the wrecked forklift, and March ducked behind it.
He peered around the back of the forklift and saw that Tessa had moved five or six meters back, gun held ready. That was bad. The radiation shield that her armor generated could probably take two or three more hits, and the armor itself could take at least one direct hit before the plasma bolts could reach her flesh.
It would take only one plasma bolt to kill March.
He needed to think of something clever right now.
“March!” said Tessa. “Maybe it’s time for you to surrender.” The speakers in her helmet filtered her voice, adding a metallic edge to it.
“Why?” said March. “Your position is worse than mine.”
Silent Order: Eclipse Hand Page 16