by Barry Kirwan
The four closest ships all fired at the same time, but it wasn’t a plasma weapon. Instead, they sprayed the Duality with a gelatinous material, a mucous substance that tried to bind with the ship’s hull. Jen instinctively pulled away, and Pierre fired at the matter streams. Single beam-fire didn’t work, but he found he could use two intersecting beams to scissor through the mucous streams, choking off their momentum. Yet still enough of it reached the ship, and clung to it. Pierre called up the hull resilience display – those defence systems had gone into overdrive, but it was clear the organic material was eating its way through the hull, one molecular layer at the time. This had to be Qorall’s artistry, it was way above the Nchkani level. Pierre knew Hellera would be seeing this, and they all knew now that this was no siege, the attack had begun in earnest.
Pierre perceived the genius in Darkur’s design of his ship. As the sludge ate through the hull, the ship’s internal fluid metamorphosed, creating more hull material. It couldn’t stop the invasion, but it bought them time. Luckily, or through Jen’s flying, none of the material had latched onto the cockpit area in the arrowhead at the front of the ship.
Jen raced the ship back to the supernova, twenty of the Nchkani ships in hot pursuit. Pierre now saw the sting in the Nchkani strategy. The worms that had already passed them earlier now moved to block their path, creating a wall. The intention was clearly to corral the Duality and destroy it. The Nchkani no doubt preferred to capture and study such a ship, but then they would have to answer to Qorall. Pierre looked at the two screens, the pack of Nchkani ships behind, and a swarm of worms in front. No way out.
But he did notice something: one of the dense molecular clouds, full of heavy metals, was nearby. His display listed the metals, and as he’d suspected, Trancium was amongst them. He had no better idea. “Jen, take us into the cloud!”
Pierre.
He looked across to Jen, but she was still immersed in the neural interface. Besides, the voice saying his name had been inside his head, and had sounded… synthetic. He ignored it, whatever or whoever it was, now was not the time. He checked the hull again. The attacking agent was voracious. They didn’t have much time, and they were beginning to lose power. Abruptly the engines closed down, and the Duality drifted into the cloud. Jen let out a gasp as she was dumped out of immersion; there was nothing more she could do. The Nchkani ships took up positions all around them, readying for the kill. Pierre watched them on the screens.
“This is it,” Jen said.
He noticed movement in the cloud, black on black, hard to make out.
“Pierre, Jen.” This time the voice was clear: Hellera. “Why do you think our ships are fashioned in the shape of a crossbow?”
Before he could think the answer, the screen blurred as the arrowhead containing them bolted out of the cloud, a long shaft of intact and uncontaminated hull behind them. They blazed out of the supernova region at terrific speed.
Pierre and Jen watched the main screen, where they could finally see the big picture, and Hellera’s strategy. Something was happening to the six molecular clouds around the supernova. The Nchkani ships had been fleeing the one where the Duality had foundered, and were now adrift. The screen zoomed in. First, Pierre’s heart sank as he saw the Duality: listless, blistered and corroded, as if attacked by leprosy. The ship was dying. But the Nchkani ships were clearly in trouble themselves. Black sores grew on their hulls, scabs stretching up their spines. Jen voiced what Pierre had already surmised.
“Machines. They were in the cloud, waiting.”
“They’re feeding on the Nchkani ships,” Pierre added. “Hellera used the supernova to create nutrient pools the Machine race couldn’t afford to ignore; they need heavy metals. The clouds were the bait, all along. Kalaran must have sent what was left of the Machines here.”
“Funny, Kalaran and Hellera were working as a team all along,” Jen said.
The Nchkani ships were in disarray, slowly succumbing to the Machines that would assimilate them and discard almost all the organic content as waste. Mucous streams fired at the Machines had little effect, because the Machine assailants were too small to target, until they mushroomed in size on contact with the Nchkani hulls. Pierre realised how like nannites the Machines acted, and felt a strange affinity with them – nannites had been an integral part of him most of his life, courtesy of his father’s genetic engineering experiments on his own son.
Leaderless, the worms scattered. Hellera’s ship emerged from the centre of the supernova, weapons blazing, carving through worm flesh. But Pierre sensed there was more to come. Hellera’s ship fired six missiles, each one snaking towards a molecular cloud. Then everything happened at once: Hellera’s ship tore out of the system; the supernova collapsed as if being sucked in, pulling the worms towards it. Nchkani ships struggled to break free of the gravitational force but they too slipped backwards. Pierre could barely imagine the energy being condensed, easily enough to create a black hole, or… He suddenly remembered what he’d always wanted to see. He jumped out of his seat.
“Jen, get us out of here!”
She didn’t ask questions, but slipped back into the neural interface and executed emergency thrust. What Pierre witnessed in the aft screen was something he’d always wanted – and dreaded – to see, the birth of a white hole. At first he saw the six micro-stars Hellera had created from the Machine-infested clouds, the heavy metal explosions briefly burning hotter than normal stars; he guessed that was to exterminate the Machines rather than the Nchkani, as the former were tougher to kill. The six stars looked like the points of a diamond, with a white light growing hotter in its centre. Then the white hole expanded until it engulfed the micro-stars. It continued to grow all the way to the outer perimeter where the Nchkani had originally been. He doubted anything survived. With a shock, he realised an entire race, the Nchkani, had probably just been wiped out, maybe two if he included the Xera.
“She used the Machines, then destroyed them,” he said.
Jen shrugged. “Kalarash are ruthless. They have to be that way to stay on top. Just remember Qorall is far worse. Be grateful Hellera’s on our side.”
He hoped Ukrull was aboard Hellera’s vessel. The Tla Beth, too; he knew there weren’t that many of them anymore, and their ships were small, though incredibly powerful. But their base had been destroyed; they would have to find a new home.
Pierre.
There it was again. Jen hadn’t reacted. Only he heard it, inside his head. The Hohash came to life. As far as Pierre could tell, Ukrull was grinning.
“Well played,” Ukrull growled.
Pierre shrugged. “Hellera’s strategy was impeccable, not to mention her timing.”
Ukrull’s snout swung left and right, then he spoke in a quieter growl. “Twice, noise stopped. Hole in your thoughts. What happened?”
Pierre had forgotten Ukrull was monitoring his mind. So, twice, when someone had tried to contact him, Ukrull had not heard it. Somebody, or something, had blocked a Level Fifteen telepath.
“Don’t know,” Pierre said. There was no point lying to Ukrull.
“Later,” Ukrull said, and broke the connection.
Pierre, we need to talk.
“Well,” Jen said, “I have to say I’m pleased to be alive.” She looked at him. “You did well, back there.” She tilted her head. “What was Ukrull referring to?”
“Like I said, I don’t know. Probably nothing.”
Now, Pierre. We are running out of time.
Instead of being exhausted, Jen seemed to have been energised. “I’m going down to see what’s left of our ship. Want to come and explore?” Her voice dipped. “Dimitri would.”
“No, thank you, Jen. I’m going to rest here a while. Why don’t you take the Hohash with you?”
She cast him a quizzical look, but decided it was a good idea. He watched her don a facemask and slip through the waterlock, the Hohash following her.
I’m alone, he thought. Can Ukrull hear me?
No. You know who we are, don’t you?
He hadn’t been sure until that moment.
Yes. The Machine race. The Xera.
We have a proposal for you.
Pierre listened, knowing that the longer he did so, the more concerned Ukrull would be. Eventually, the Ranger, despite the friendship between them, would be compelled to tell Hellera. Then Pierre knew he would find himself on the wrong side of the last remaining Kalarash in the galaxy.
Still, he listened.
It rained on Esperia. Petra stared up through the transparent barrier erected by the Spiders, the protective dome made visible by rivulets chasing down its outer surface. It hardly ever rained on Esperia, but when it did, it was relentless. Several drops collected on her upper lip despite the peaked cap Vasquez had given her. She blew them off, and continued to search the sky. She wasn’t alone. It seemed the whole town of Esperantia was gazing upwards, watching and waiting. But they often glanced in her direction. She recalled what Vasquez had said to her.
“You’re the CIC, Petra, our Commander-in-Chief. This is a Military Op, the population is under imminent threat, and need to see their President out there. But you must stay out of the fray. If you enter it, then no one is in charge, and we’re lost. I need to be here to manage the aerial situation and organise our ground troops, but you are the eyes and ears on the scene. Stay close to the battle, but don’t be drawn into it. If things go bad, I’ll be there before the end.”
A raindrop entered her eye, making her blink. The barrier didn’t stop all of the rain; she had no way of asking the Spiders how it worked, but guessed it had some basic intelligence. It made sense; such a shield could be used for an extended period – a siege – in which case it would be useful to allow rain to pass through while keeping out enemies and biological agents.
She glanced at the four Spiders standing behind her. They looked soggy, but otherwise unperturbed. In their midst was Blake, locked inside a grey metal body glove that came all the way up to his eyes. He could stand, but was otherwise immobilised. He was still golden; they had no idea if the medical procedure had truly worked, and until now had no way of testing it. Blake was potentially an antigen, a catalyst to trigger a reversal of the Orb virus that had already turned trillions of aliens into Qorall’s minions. The Ngank surgeon had said that if it did work – and there were no guarantees it would – then it would activate on physical contact with a recoded individual, and would work faster than the original recoding, because the individual – like Blake – would be fighting it from the inside. But Blake was still golden, and was still infectious. She felt the device in her pocket that would release him from his bonds, noting that the nearest people – a trio of Youngbloods – were a good ten metres away, and returned to observing the sky.
Vasquez called on her wristcom. “Thirty seconds.”
Loud cracks made her flinch: sonic booms, but she couldn’t see the Mannekhi Javelin ships. Xenic called them Dropships; released from their Mother-ship just before entering Transpace. They’d fallen like needles navigating their way through the Shrell-field, and would barely slow as they entered the atmosphere, and would pound into the ground. More difficult to shoot down that way. The recoded Mannekhi inside would be in deep stasis, encased in inertia-dampening gel, but would emerge very shortly after landing, to invade the town.
More cracks stretched into scraping noises that grated in her ears, and then she heard shouts from behind. “There!” At first she couldn’t see them, but then narrow glints of silver caught her eye. She counted: four, five… then all seven. The shield darkened, as if polarised, dampening light and sound. Yellow blotches erupted on its surface, accompanied by dull booms as the Javelins fired on the town. She heard children’s’ screams in the background, quickly hushed. The Spiders didn’t move. The shield continued to darken, until Esperantia was plunged into night, fireworks billowing all around them. The ground shook, and Petra wondered how deep the shield penetrated Esperia’s surface.
She could barely make out the Javelins amidst the bombardment. But then a bright object, like a comet, grew in size. She braced herself. One of them was going to try and break through the shield. The impact was like a sonic boom, and made her clamp her hands over her ears. The shield lightened, revealing the awful carnage of a ship flattened into an amorphous slime of blood and metal. A second later there was an earthquake as the six other ships slammed into the area outside the shield, knocking Petra off her feet. The shield became transparent again as rock and soil spurted high into the air, then rained back down. As Vasquez had predicted, the ships had landed in the valley just south of Esperantia, the closest one a few hundred metres from her position. The open landscape favoured a large ground force. She recalled that Blake had once told her that decisive battles in wars often came down to infantry. Break the infantry, win the war. But how could you defeat an invading force you could not afford to touch?
She got to her feet and noticed that the shield had stopped letting the rain through. Blake remained standing, his eyes looking toward where two of the ships had struck home.
Vasquez called her. “Now, Petra.”
She used the translation flashlight device to ask the Spiders to open a hole in the shield for thirty seconds, long enough for four tactical groups to sprint outside and engage the enemy before they emerged from their ships. Two skimmers powered up behind her. She raised her hand until one of the Spiders flashed back in the affirmative, then she dropped it. The skimmers zipped past, one carrying three Youngbloods, the other a trio of Vasquez’ militia, both teams loaded with heavy ordnance. The rush of wind from their wake blew her hat off. She let it go. Twenty seconds later another two skimmers dashed past – they had been stationed in the middle of town, just in case. She was relieved that Brandt wasn’t among the Youngbloods, reminding herself that his size would have worked against him for this type of hit-and-run mission, as the skimmers were mainly designed to carry two people, not three.
The buzz of the engines powering the four teams towards the ships keened and then diminished. She turned back to the Spiders, and they raised the shield. Along with others, she approached the inner edge of the barrier. She stared through the rain coursing down its protective skin. Brandt arrived next to her, panting from having sprinted across town. She resisted the urge to embrace him, or even reach for his hand.
Craters smoked from where the two closest Dropships had landed, and through a viewer she saw the skimmers race towards them. Go faster. The Youngbloods arrived first, two of them crash-rolling off the skimmer, deadly packages clutched to their chests, while the driver slewed the skimmer to a halt. The first two ran to the crater and leapt over the edge. Seconds later they re-emerged and dashed back to the skimmer.
Nothing happened, and the Youngbloods waited.
She zoomed in on the second skimmer, crewed by Vasquez’ militia, as it headed to the next crater. Before they arrived, Mannekhi burst out of the pit like angered ants from an anthill, armed and firing. The militia returned fire but were cut down.
She swung to the left and then to the right to see the third and fourth skimmer meet similar circumstances, in the latter case the skimmer was able to turn around in time. The Youngbloods still waited, despite a growing number of Mannekhi emerging from the other Dropships.
As she realised what they intended, she spoke to Brandt, trying to keep her voice steady.
“Tell them to come back.”
“It was their choice, Petra.”
She knew there was no point in further discussion, and put the viewer to her eyes again. The Youngbloods had booby-trapped the Dropship to explode as soon as its hatches opened. The Mannekhi inside knew that, but could afford to wait for reinforcements. She switched to the last remaining skimmer, racing back towards sanctuary. She judged the distance. They would make it. Then she noticed some kind of weapon emerging from one of the far craters, shaped like a cannon.
Vasquez came on line. “Petra, don’t drop the shield. We
don’t know what that cannon does.”
“They’re your men, they can get back here in time.” She could just make out their faces.
“They understood the risks. You put me in charge of tactical ops for a reason.”
She watched them. The militia men might understand the risks and sacrifice with their heads, but they looked terrified. She turned to the Spiders, and used the flashcoder.
“Petra, what are you doing?” Brandt asked.
She didn’t answer. She turned back to the last skimmer, raising her hand. But the skimmer changed course. She could see one of them touch an earpiece, and shout something to the other two. Dammit, Vasquez! The skimmer raced back towards the advancing horde, firing as they went. She saw one picked off, then another, rolling to a stop on the sandy ground. The driver, hunched behind his protective windshield, accelerated toward the advancing Mannekhi.
The front line of Mannekhi soldiers suddenly split, like a golden sea opening, leaving a passage in front of the skimmer. She didn’t understand why until she caught sight of the cannon, which now had a direct line of fire at the skimmer. A long corridor of shimmering air lanced forth from the cannon, and enveloped both skimmer and the driver. The driver must have detonated the ordnance, because the corridor became a conduit of fire, stretching all the way to the shield. Flames bounced off a point just in front of where Petra stood, though there was no sensation of heat. The corridor vanished, leaving no trace of the skimmer or its driver.
Not a single Mannekhi had been killed.
“They were brave men, as brave as our Youngbloods,” Brandt said.
She touched his hand, and zoomed in on the three remaining Youngbloods who had moved away from the crater into the horde’s path. Each Genner warrior stood with arms outstretched, holding two daggers.
“What the hell are they doing?” she asked. “They’ll be shot to pieces.”
But they weren’t.
“It’s a Mannekhi fighting ritual,” Brandt said.
“But they’re Qorall’s minions now.”