Nine
“Shit, I’m dead,” Lance Corporal Bruno complained.
“Stop bitching and lie down like a good corpse,” Russell told him.
They were taking casualties, but ever since they’d blown up the Snowflake drones, they’d been notional, just the way they were supposed to be. That didn’t mean they could slack off, not now that they knew the Xanadu aliens liked to play for keeps. Russell figured the losers of this exercise weren’t going to make it out of this giant glass sculpture alive.
“Grampa, go see if Bruno’s Alsie is still operational. If it is, it’s yours.”
“Roger that,” the old bastard said, already crawling to the spot where Bruno’s ‘corpse’ lay. The pretend-dead Marine handed him the weapon. “Yeah, it’s still good.”
The enemy pulled back by the time Grampa was ready. It looked like the tangos were trying to regroup, for all the good it would do them.
The Lampreys were trying, he had to give them that, but they’d been screwed almost from the get-go. Their Combat Nests just didn’t have the manpower or firepower to fight a dug-in Marine company. After getting that freebie artillery barrage, the ETs found themselves outgunned and been ground down by mortar fire. Their lasers and missiles were no joke, but not good enough to break through Charlie Company’s lines. The fight was as good as won.
It hadn’t come cheap, though Fifteen casualties so far, nine of those KIAs. Five of those had been real, all killed before the Skipper had figured out what the ETs were doing and taken out their drones. After that, the battle had turned into a non-lethal op, but nobody was taking it lightly. No telling if or when the Snowflakes would send another murder-drone their way.
“They are concentrating for one last push,” Gunnery Sergeant Naismith reported from the OP at the top of the tallest building among the ruins. The assault section leader sounded almost bored.
“Good,” Russell said. “Let’s get this over with.”
The Marine mortars were dropping ordnance on the enemy’s rally point, but they were almost out of bombs and the Lampreys had managed to collect all their area force fields in one spot, a company’s worth now tasked to protect a reinforced platoon, which was all they had left. And as they left the cover of the opposite hill, Russell saw a bunch of the aliens were carrying area force field gennies on their backs. When assembled, those suckers weighed almost as much as the Lampreys themselves. Without powered armor, the tangos wouldn’t be able to drag them very far. On the other hand, they didn’t have long to go, either. About a hundred yards uphill. Maybe they would survive long enough to rake the Marines with point-blank laser fire. That would be bad.
Everybody with who could bear on the charging aliens took them under fire. It was one of those rare times when you got a good look at the enemy. Most firefights, you shot at icons your imp designated, usually tiny figures at three or four hundred meters, or even further out, where even with sight magnification you saw mostly a moving blur. There were exceptions, of course – at Jasper-Five, a lot of the time he’d been killing ETs within spitting distance – but against Starfarers, if you were close enough to see their faces, you were way too close.
The PSF troopers ran forward, firing from the hip, hoping to get close enough to do some damage. They were out of missiles and down to one heavy plasma projector, and their hand lasers weren’t powerful enough to blast the Marines in their prepped positions. Russell watch them advance under fire, bounding on their thick legs, the big toothed tubes they had instead of heads slanted down and their creepy tentacle-eyes coiled tightly against the sides of their necks. It took guts, moving forward into massed fire, even during a simulation, especially one that might turn deadly without warning. Maybe they were tired of the whole thing and just wanted it to be over.
The Lamprey’s overlapping force fields held for sixty meters before they collapsed under the steady downpour of bullets and missiles, leaving the aliens protected only by their personal shields, which were good but nowhere near good enough. After that, it was a massacre. Every single alien died before they made it another twenty meters up the hill. Simulation-died, that is. After it was all over, the casualties just dusted themselves off and headed back to their line of departure. A few minutes later, all the Lampreys were out of sight. They’d surrendered the field.
If this had been a regular FTX, or even actual combat, everybody would be cheering and joking around now that it was over and they’d won. Not this time. They had real casualties, and they had died for nothing. Everyone in Charlie Company was pissed off.
The Snowflakes would pay for this.
* * *
“The Americans have held their assigned position and inflicted total losses on the Lhan Arkh, although most of those were only simulated, given the destruction of the Executioner drones,” the Priestess said, summarizing the results.
“Thanks to the Americans’ cheating,” the Hierophant grumbled. “This was not as much fun as it was supposed to be.”
“Round Two will be far more entertaining,” the Priestess assured him. “We’ll use the new creatures I designed. They are truly wonderful.” The Snowflake giggled like a smitten schoolgirl.
“Round Two? How many times do you expect my people to perform for you?” Sec-State asked. “This behavior is…” She hesitated.
The Hierophant sneered at her. “Barbaric? What would you know about barbarism? When your species had yet to tame fire, mine ruled a star empire. You are little better than beasts of burden, a shapeless mass, lacking unique identities except at the crudest level. And before you continue bleating your complaints, remember the Kirosha. You casually trampled those weaker than yourself, so don’t dare judge us for doing the same.”
“If we are to be killed for your pleasure, you might as well get on with it,” the Secretary said, standing up. Her Security Detail formed up around her.
“When we wish you dead, dead you will be,” the Hierophant said. “You entered Xanadu freely and of your own free will, as your mythological monsters are wont to say. The weapons your guards carry cannot harm us. Even if they could, these bodies are mere extensions of our true selves. We each routinely control as many bodies as you have limbs and digits. And each of us wield the power of life and death over all of you. You should keep that in mind before you challenge me again.”
The Seeker of Knowledge’s voice invaded Heather’s eardrums once more.
“Tell your leader to stand down. If the Hierophant grows annoyed enough, this game is at an end, and so are your lives.”
She contacted the Secretary as she took a breath, very likely to launch into an angry tirade.
“Please play along for now, Madame Secretary,” Heather subvocalized. “I have a plan.”
“It’d better be good,” Goftalu replied tersely. Out loud: “So what is in store for us next?”
The Hierophant smiled. “Finally, a pertinent question. The fact that so many warriors on both sides survived may turn out to be for the best. Each team will perform a series of tasks for us. Whoever does best will earn our favor. The winners will be allowed to leave, along with some valuable parting gifts. The losers will endure unspeakable horrors. You will play our game, for as long as we require. Your only options are victory or defeat. A refusal to participate will result in an automatic loss, with all its consequences. Now sit down and try to relax while we discuss today’s game. Round two will commence tomorrow.”
The Secretary of State sat down.
“What are you planning to do, McClintock?” Secretary Goftalu asked Heather privately. “God is my witness, I was about to tell that bastard to go to hell, and damn the consequences. I know he is lying. It is clear that they intend to kill us all, human and Lhan Arkh, no matter what we do. We will not die on our knees.”
Accepting death if captured was SOP since First Contact. If you fell into the hands or tentacles of a polity that did not play by civilized rules, and the Tah-Leen certainly qualified, you assumed you were dead and acted accordingly. The
US did not make deals with hostage-takers. It might negotiate with other good-faith actors, but not with pirates or terrorists. Doing otherwise just invited more kidnappings and raids. The standard response was to mourn the victims and try to exterminate the perpetrators. And it might well come to that in this case. Heather was trying to find an alternative.
“Can’t say anymore on an open channel, Madam Secretary. Op-sec.”
The Seeker of Knowledge would be listening in, of course. She would do her best to keep it in the dark until she could make her move. The alien spy thought Heather was playing his game, but she had a few hidden cards of her own.
Provided she lived long enough to play them, of course.
* * *
How long have I been here?
Lisbeth Zhang had no idea. There had been a couple meal breaks, bathroom breaks, and short periods of fitful sleep, but she had lost track of time anyway. Two days, she thought. Maybe three. Or maybe she’d been there for years and didn’t remember most of it. Ever since she’d been forced to commune with this hideous living-dead thing, her existence had turned into a continuous nightmare, awake or asleep.
All she knew was that she was making progress, and that she couldn’t stop. And, more importantly, that she didn’t want to stop.
Everything would be worth it if she could make the bastards pay.
* * *
Two days earlier, after she’d been lured away from the party:
“What is it?”
“An artifact from a bygone era,” the Scholar said. He was still wearing Pappy Boyington’s face and a Marine uniform. Lisbeth still hated him for it.
What ‘it’ looked like was some sort of sculpture depicting a gigantic non-human creature lying on a slab. There was something that looked like a spine and a rib cage, topped by a skull, vaguely humanoid but with an oversized brain case, a third eye socket, and a relatively diminutive jaw. There were no arms and legs, and the partial skeleton was huge, easily thirty feet long; the skull accounted for about a fourth of its length. The bones – or bone-shaped structures – were painted or made of some substance with a gleaming black finish, smooth enough that Lisbeth could see her reflection on their surface as she approached the massive artifact. Right below the rib cage was something clearly artificial: a twenty-foot long teardrop-shaped object, the same color as the bones, with no visible seams or openings. It looked as if the skeleton or skeleton-shaped portion had been fused to the teardrop structure; the spinal column ran down its length like a grotesque dorsal fin.
“These are the remains of a Pathfinder,” the Scholar explained. “A member of an ancient species that mastered secrets of warp space. Towards the end their Path Masters no longer needed ships to travel between the stars, but transit and emerge from warp at will.”
“That’s impossible.” Lisbeth said.
“To the likes of you, or even us Tah-Leen at their peak, yes. But the Pathfinders changed their bodies and minds for the task, abandoning their old selves and becoming something more. Eventually, their wisdom allowed them to Transcend. A few hundred of them remained behind, however. The Warp Marauders of Kraxan found their hidden burial grounds, where those renegade Path Masters slept away the eons. Using forbidden technologies, the Kraxans transformed the sleepers into entities trapped between life and death. The Path Masters’ power, combined with their own abilities to withstand the rigors of warp travel, enabled the Marauders to build an empire that lasted ten thousand years, until the nascent Peacekeepers drove them to extinction.
“What you see here, Major Zhang, is a Marauder Corpse-Ship. One fashioned out of the body of a Path Master.”
“Okay, let me see if I’m keeping all those pretentious names straight,” Lisbeth said. “You have the Pathfinders, who did all kinds of nifty warp stuff. Then the Marauders made ships out of the Pathfinders’ bones. And who are the Peacekeepers again?”
“Another name lost to Starfarer history, representing a brief but glorious time when most civilizations in the galaxy united to preserve law and order. The Peacekeepers were what the Galactic Imperium wishes it could become. But eventually those paragons fell before a new group of upstarts, including my own Community of the Unique.
“Among the spoils we won during their downfall was this relic: a vessel that makes your vaunted warp fighters seem as crude and primitive as stone-tipped spears. This living corpse once was an invincible engine of destruction that spread terror among the stars.”
All this talk about undead ships was creeping Lisbeth out. She hid her feelings from the pompous ass, though.
“Very impressive,” she said, trying to sound bored. “Are you looking to sell it?”
“Even if I were willing to part with such a priceless artifact, you would not get much use out of it. It has been disabled, for one: its power and weapon systems were lost long before the True Individuals found it. For another, it can only be controlled by a Master of the Seventh Circle, as the Pathfinders and Marauders measured such things. And it is very old. This relic has lain in this chamber for a hundred millennia. I am the only one who knows it even exists. That is, until I brought you here.”
And two can keep a secret if one is dead. Doesn’t bode well for me.
“As ancient and broken as it is, it is not dead,” the Scholar continued. “Go ahead, touch it and find out for yourself.”
She noticed the Tah-Leen was keeping his distance from the massive figure and the slab on which it rested. Whatever this was, he seemed to be wary of it. Maybe even afraid.
Probably with good reason, but there was no turning back now. This would have been a good time for one of her warp-induced hunches, but none were forthcoming, and she’d learned that trying to make them happen didn’t work. Lisbeth gingerly walked towards the reclining slab. Most of the huge skeleton-ship was out of her reach unless she tried climbing up the slab, but the spine reached all the way to the end of the capsule; its tip came to an end a few inches off the floor. She placed a hand on it, half-expecting to burst into flames or experience some other lethal input.
The metallic surface was warm to the touch, sort of like plutonium is supposed to feel, not that she’d ever handled any. A few seconds went by before she sensed something she recognized immediately. By the time she’d become qualified to fly a War Eagle, Lisbeth had developed the ability to feel the presence of her fellow fighter pilots, warp navigators and other similarly-gifted – or cursed – individuals.
She was sensing just such a presence from somewhere inside the skeleton-thing.
It wasn’t quite the same. For one, the ‘signal,’ if you wanted to call it that, was much fainter than anything else she’d picked up with her newfound senses. It also had a different texture or flavor or whatever; they needed to come up with a whole new vocabulary to describe the new things she and other Warp Adepts were discovering.
Except they aren’t new things at all. I’m touching something that is older than the human race. The Marauders could do everything we humans can, and more.
That wasn’t exactly news – there’d been legends about such ‘demons’ and ‘witches’ among Starfarers long before humans had entered the stage with their fancy abilities – but it was humbling to come into direct contact with one of those legends. That thought was followed by the realization that the term ‘living dead’ hadn’t been a metaphor: whatever was inside the Corpse-Ship wasn’t a machine, not even one of the so-called ‘true AI’ systems that were able to simulate all kinds of things but never managed to develop actual consciousness without breaking down. Whatever this was, it had once been a sophont before something terrible had been done to it. Its consciousness was trapped inside its dead body.
“This is wrong,” she said, stepping back and rubbing her hands together. She wanted to wash them thoroughly. The whole thing left her feeling unclean, disgusted. “Forget wrong. This is utterly fucked up.”
“I am a student of history,” the Scholar said. “The one thing that remains a constant is this: all sophonts
are quite capable of the most unspeakable atrocities. I no longer concern myself with matter of morality. That way lie madness and despair.”
“How long as it been like that?”
“Approximately half a million years, using your quaint measurement units of time. Although I do not think it experiences duration in the same way you or I do, except when in contact with a temporal being like yourself. One could say your touch awakened it, briefly. It should enter its normal vegetative state soon enough. And remain in it until you contact it again.”
“Why the hell would I do that?”
“Because it suits my purposes. You aren’t a Seventh Circle Master, or any sort of Path Master for that matter, but your affinity to warp space may allow you to access the Corpse-Ship’s records. When you do, you will find a very special device, a weapon the Warp Marauders of Kraxan used to dispose of the most well-defended targets. You will then use that weapon at my behest.”
Shit.
“You want me to kill someone for you,” Lisbeth said. “Another Tah-Leen.”
“A number of them, as a matter of fact. The High Priestess and the Seeker of Knowledge, for starters. They represent a faction that must be neutralized so that mine may prevail. With those two and a few of their followers out of the way, I will be able to manipulate the Hierophant, who is a fool, in every expression of his individuality, for my own purposes. For far too long, those cowards have forced us to languish in this bejeweled prison, instead of extending our reach beyond it. I aim to change all of that.”
“Why do you need me?”
“Yours is the only species still living that might be able to use it. Even before our downfall, the Community of the Unique had no special connection to warp space; this artifact was beyond our abilities. Now, of course, we cannot use the most ordinary transluminal drive. After the Fall, the Elders condemned us to remain here and stripped us of the ability to travel between stars. We cannot leave. To enter warp space means death to us. That is our greatest, most shameful secret.”
Advance to Contact (Warp Marine Corps Book 3) Page 17