by Rick Partlow
As the aerospacecraft grew closer, I could see that the two cutters were ours: the Dutchman and the Ariel. I wondered if Chang was keeping his promise to let us go or if he was appropriating them to his cause, but I didn't ask him. Talking to him would have just been another temptation to kill him.
What's the play, Cal? Deke asked me over our neurolink.
Just keep cool, I told him. I'm not taking a chance with Rachel and Pete.
Then the cutters were landing, one on either side of the Predecessor ship, while the shuttles touched down further around the perimeter of the pavement. None of their landing jets so much as left a black scorch mark on the surface of whatever it was the pad was made from. I didn't move from my position near the control building as their boarding ramps lowered and Chang's mercenaries disembarked, weapons carried at the ready, eyes on us. They didn't bother to disarm us; at a guess, Chang had told them it wasn't necessary. There'd been about a dozen of them in each of the shuttles and half that in each cutter and most of them arrayed themselves around us, while a few went to the Predecessor ship with Chang.
He stepped up into the craft, and seeing that happen for the first time, I was struck by how unnatural it looked. It seemed like he was sucked up into the thing rather than climbing through the hatch. His mercs were freaked out by it as well and they hesitated to follow until he stuck his head back through and waved for a couple of them to join him.
"Caleb," Trint said quietly from just behind me, "you know they will be coming soon." I glanced back at him, a bit surprised. He hadn't bothered to use his neurolink; he didn't care who heard it. "You know what has to be done."
"I do," I said. "I opened one door, now I have to close another."
"What are you two talking about?" Rachel asked me, keeping her tone conversational and not staring at me in confusion the way I'm sure she wanted to in order to keep from attracting attention. "Who's coming?"
"The Skrela," I told her and I could see her visibly pale.
"What," Pete asked me, trying to imitate Rachel's nonchalance and not quite managing it, "are the Skrela?"
"The ones who put an end to all this," I said, waving a hand around us. "The ones who forced the Predecessors into sealing off the Cluster and abandoning this galaxy."
"Those monster things that Damiani and Jameson paraded out four years ago?" Deke said, his voice going just a touch too loud before he brought it under control. "I thought those were fake, a propaganda ploy!"
"Most unfortunately, they were not," Trint said. "And what is inarguably worse is that, unlike the Predecessors, they are still here."
* * *
Hours ago, on the Predecessor ship:
I stared at the image of the Skrela warrior, flailing about and snapping at whatever sort of invisible field restrained it, its pincer-like jaws chattering ceaselessly. Its lower left side arm, the big one where the plasma gun had been mounted, twitched back and forth tracking targets for a weapon that had long ago been removed. The sight of it made the hair go up on the back of my neck, an atavistic fear that I couldn't put into words.
"Where do they come from?" I asked, looking back at the Predecessor. I felt silly as I did it. By now, I understood that he was just an avatar of the ship's AI, and that all this was happening inside my head, but I couldn't help thinking of it as a physical experience.
"We never knew," the AI told me. "That is, we were able to determine that they came to our galaxy from the direction of Andromeda, but we didn't believe they originated there. They were like a plague; or more aptly, a carefully designed biological weapon. Their ships were automated, but run by systems that grew like a fungus when exposed to the proper raw materials. Just one ship had the capability within it to grow a whole fleet in days if left to itself. The AIs that guided them were basic in nature, seeking signs of technological civilization and aiming at it in an attempt to wipe it from existence."
The image of a Predecessor affected what might have been a human frown, likely for my benefit. "The primary difference between us and them, however, was that we cared about preserving our lives, while they did not show any fear of death whatsoever. They would infest a planet and could only be destroyed by completely sterilizing it, undoing the work that had taken our civilization thousands of years to accomplish. In the end, we tried to save what we could by sealing off what you have come to refer to as The Cluster, then leaving for another galaxy."
"They're gone by now, surely," I said with more hope than certainty. "That was 20,000 years ago."
"We thought they might try to follow us," the AI answered, "but the sensor nets we left in place indicate that most of them self-destructed once they saw that we were gone. It was as if they were a weapon designed to be used against us, specifically."
"Most of them self-destructed?" I repeated. "Most?"
"Yes," he admitted. "A few, especially in systems near the other end of what you call the Northwest Passage, seemed to go into some sort of hibernation. As if they've been waiting for it to open up again."
"So why the hell would you want me to open it?" I asked, staring at him in disbelief.
"I didn't say I wanted you to open the passage," he corrected me. "I said you have to make the decision. The ones who made me did not feel it fair to pen you into a cage permanently. At some point, you have to be the masters of your own destiny."
"If I don't open it," I said, shaking my head, "someone else will come along and make that decision eventually."
"There is another option," the AI said. "You may also choose to shut off your end of the Transition Line to the corridor system." He raised a hand in warning. "But once you do, you will not be able to use it to return."
I blinked. "What? Why couldn't I just instruct your control network to close it behind me?"
"It is a final decision for your whole race, and that of the Tahni. It can't be made without consequences to the one who chooses. That is what my makers decided was wisdom in this matter." He reached out both hands and took mine in what seemed like some gesture of his culture rather than one he'd gleaned from my memory. His hands felt warm and leathery, despite the fact that I knew that they were virtual and not physical. "Choose carefully, Caleb Mitchell."
* * *
Trint:
Watching Robert Chang natter about like a brain-damaged pup over his newest toy without stepping in and killing him was, perhaps, one of the hardest things Trint had ever done. Even serving as an errand boy for Andre Damiani had been easier since the man had possessed an innate will to power that made him admirable in some abstract way, if still evil and narcissistic. Chang was less human than Trint, an alien cyborg born in a vat. Trint wondered again how he commanded his mercenaries without having their respect.
Because he promises them alien technology and immortality, he answered his own question. As if death were something to be so greatly feared or the continuation of one's own existence so greatly prized. Was it not more honorable to lay down one's life for others who were worthy of the sacrifice?
"I know what you are thinking," he said quietly to Caleb, "and you are not going to do it."
"I made the choice," Caleb said, his face set in what Trint had come to know as the "stubborn farmer" expression. "I have to be the one to make it right."
Trint stared the man in the eye with a glare that had made hardened Tahni warriors flee in terror and transmitted to the Canaanite's neurolink.
You will not throw your life away, Caleb Mitchell. Even if I did not owe you a life-debt, I would not allow you to do this thing to her.
Their argument was interrupted by Chang's return. While his men boarded the Predecessor ship or filed back onto the shuttles, he walked toward them with the satisfied strut of a teenager who'd just lost his virginity and wanted the world to know it.
"Everything is completely satisfactory," he declared, "and I am gratified to say we will be taking our leave of you now."
"What about Rachel and Pete?" Caleb demanded, a vein pulsing in his forehead as he vi
sibly fought for control.
"I've reprogrammed the nanites remotely," Chang told him. "They're set to self-destruct just as soon as my neurolink is out of communications range." He smirked at his own cleverness for just a moment before seeming to turn serious. "I know you won't forgive this, Captain Mitchell, but I hope someday you at least understand. This place," he waved a hand and Trint thought he must mean the whole of human and Tahni space, "isn't for someone like me. I'm the first of a new species, in a way, and I need room to spread my wings." He cocked his head thoughtfully. "It's not just for my benefit either...I know myself, Captain. If I stayed stuck here with the rest of you, I would wind up doing..." He sighed. "Bad things. It's for the best that I be as far away from all of you as possible when that happens."
Cal Mitchell's eyes narrowed for a moment, his mouth a hard line, but eventually he nodded sharply.
"Works for me," he said.
"Robert," Kara said, hesitance in her voice, eyes flitting up briefly as if she didn't want to look at him. "There are things out there that not even the Predecessors could beat. They'll kill you."
"Then they'll kill me," Chang replied with a casual shrug. "It won't be the first time."
He turned and walked over to board the Predecessor ship. The shuttles' engines were powering up before he disappeared inside, and as the hatch faded mysteriously into the hull, both of the landing craft began lifting on shimmering columns of superheated air. They moved slowly forward as the vectored exhaust nozzles shifted from vertical takeoff to horizontal thrust, and then shot away as the pilots fed more power to the jets.
The Predecessor ship rose leisurely from the ground as if by magic, slowly as if it had all the time in the world, a faint green glow surrounding it. One moment it was hovering twenty meters above the ground, and the next it was gone, without a sound. Trint didn't have the need to blink, but he could have believed that it had disappeared in an eyeblink.
"Deke, Trint, get the cutters ready to go," Caleb Mitchell said, taking a step toward the control building.
"No," Trint said flatly, moving to block his way.
It was a disconcerting feeling facing down Caleb Mitchell. Trint was a good ten centimeters taller and twenty kilograms heavier than the Canaanite, yet somehow he felt intimidated by the human in a way he never had with even the other Glory Boy commandos he'd met. There was a stolid certitude to him that reminded Trint of the inevitability of death.
"Trint," Cal said softly, probably so as not to alarm his wife and brother, "I am not going to set the Skrela loose on the Cluster. Those ships can grow a fleet in days with the right raw materials...if just one gets through, it could mean extinction for the humans and Tahni back home. I have to shut down the Transition line and I have to do it from here."
"The Transition line has to be destroyed," Trint agreed, "but I will be the one to do it. The ship spoke to me as well as you, and so did the AI in the control building. Do not tell me you were not aware of this."
"What's going on, Cal?" Rachel asked, coming up beside him.
"The one who uses the control building to close down the Transition line to this system from the Cluster must do it from this side of the jump point," Trint explained before Caleb could answer, and could see the man wince as Rachel's eyes went wide with realization.
"It's got to be done," Cal insisted, a note of pleading in his voice that Trint had never heard him use with anyone else. It was interesting how what the humans referred to as "love" could make them so dependent on the feelings of another. Tahni pair-bonding was less emotional, more practical in nature.
"If you're staying here," Rachel insisted with a mirror image of the stubborn farmer visage of her husband, "then so am I."
Her hands were balled into fists and her feet were set wide, as if she expected to fight someone, even if she didn't know who. Trint felt an urge to stomp his foot in acclamation, similar to the way he'd seen humans applauding. There was a fire in that female, a warrior spirit that he had always admired.
Caleb's mouth worked and it seemed to Trint as if he was desperately trying and failing to come up with some argument that might sway her
Before he could say anything else, Deke ran forward, his face dark with concern.
"Guys," he said, "I've been connecting to the Dutchman...we have multiple bogies inbound, less than a hundred klicks out!"
"Shit!" Cal spat, eyes going to the horizon, tensing as if he were about to run. "You got to get in the air, Deke..."
"Got it!" Deke was already sprinting for the open boarding ramp of the Dutchman with Kara following close behind him.
"Come on," Cal urged the others, taking a step towards the Ariel, only fifty meters away.
Before he could take another, the cutter's front end vanished in a flare of white that outshone the sun and a concussive wave of heat that knocked all of them off their feet. Even Trint tumbled backwards, buffeted by the shockwave, and he could see as he hit the ground that the others were being sent sprawling head over heels.
He heard a roaring in his ears as he forced himself up off his back, ignoring the breathtaking heat, and he wondered if his hearing had been damaged by the blast... But then he saw the Dutchman rising on columns of fire, Deke Conner virtually jerking her into the air in sheer desperation. Coming in low, less than a kilometer away, was a disc-shaped craft that glowed white in the darkening sky.
They were too late. The Skrela had come.
Chapter Twenty Four
Mitchell:
My back hit the pavement hard enough that I couldn't breathe, but I didn't need to in the short-term. I ignored that and the minor flashburns on my face and exposed right hand and flipped forward to my feet, trying to find Pete and Rachel. My vision was still filled with the flashes of glaring afterimages, and thermal was useless as well with the white-hot wreckage of the Ariel washing everything out, so I used my augmented hearing and picked out their heartbeats instead.
I found them pretty quickly and sprinted over to them. They'd been a good twenty five meters farther away from the Ariel than me and from what I could tell they were both basically okay. I knelt down by Rachel and felt for broken bones, hearing her gasping for air---the concussion from the blast had knocked it out of her.
"It's okay," I wheezed, finally able to get a breath myself. "You're okay." I grabbed her arm and Pete's and yanked them to their feet. "But we have to move!"
The control building. We had to get inside it, get the defenses reactivated. My vision was clearing and I locked onto the globular structure, not worrying about Pete or Rachel's comfort as I jerked them along as fast as I could drag them. There was a Skrela ship coming in; I couldn't see it yet but I knew it was there, and I knew we had to get inside.
Get down!
I heard the voice in my head and instinctively followed its instructions even before I realized it had been Trint broadcasting to my neurolink. I pulled Rachel and Pete down and covered them with my body, squeezing my eyes shut before I felt the wash of intense heat coming from in front of us, a thundercrack of superheated air following close on its heels.
When I opened my eyes and looked up, I could finally see it. It was a disc shape, glowing faintly against the purple sunset, and looming a few hundred meters away. It had to be at least fifty meters in diameter, hovering in mid-air with no visible propulsion system; and yet I had the sense that it was using a different method than the Predecessor ships did. There was a crackling in the air still, a static electricity, and smoke was pouring up from a section of the pavement about forty meters ahead of us, between us and the control building. Only Trint's warning had saved us from the blast, but I knew nothing could save us from the shot that was coming.
Then the roar of turbines filled the air and I knew without looking that it was the Dutchman coming in from behind us. A flash of artificial lightning split the sky and the blinding spear of a proton beam lashed out at the disc, striking it dead center. The blast seemed to shred only meters from the disc, spreading around its p
erimeter in tracks of scintillating blue fire, but the spacecraft shuddered with sudden instability.
Before it could recover, Deke fired again and this time the strike penetrated whatever sort of electromagnetic shielding the disc was using. A globe of blue and white flame enveloped one side of the disc and it immediately began to lose altitude, skewing downward to our left and then plowing into the soil a hundred meters from the edge of the paved platform with an explosion of brown and green.
I expected to feel the concussion of the crash through the ground, but the pavement---whatever it was made of---apparently insulated against it. I eased off of Rachel and Pete, rising to my feet and helping them up, and was finally able to get a look at them. Rachel still wore one of the suits of Reflex armor, and it had protected her completely where it covered her; but she had a scrape along her jawline and I could see a slight flashburn on the back of her neck. Pete was a bit worse for wear, with blackened spots on his light armor and a swatch of his hair burned away on the right side of his head.
"Now what?" Pete demanded with a numb sense of outrage, looking at me with pleading eyes. He was a good kid...no, I corrected myself, a good man...but we were all pretty near the frayed end of our rope.
"We have to get inside the sphere," I said, "and get this place's automatic defenses reactivated."
Cal, I heard Deke over my neurolink even before I had finished my answer to Pete, there are two more of those things coming in. I'm going to intercept.
Go, I told him. We'll be okay.
"Caleb," Trint called, and I turned to see him standing as still as a statue, as if we all hadn't almost been fried twice by an alien death ray, pointing out towards the crashed disc.