Birthright: The Complete Trilogy
Page 66
"Why?" I asked him. "Did you take out the two Skrela ships?"
"Yeah, barely," he snapped, waving at his wrecked ship. "But long range sensors show three more in high orbit and something transitioning in out past the gravity well.. We ain't going anywhere in the Dutchman, so we'd better get to cover."
He blinked as if seeing me and the others for the first time. "Jesus, you look like shit, Cal." His eyes flickered to Trint and went even wider. "What the hell happened down here?"
"I guess it doesn't matter who shuts the Transition Line down now," I said morosely, shaking my head and turning back to the control building. "We're all stuck here now, either way."
"What about those drones that attacked us when we entered the system?" Kara said, limping up beside me as I walked slowly but purposefully towards the spherical structure. "We could maybe fly one of those."
"To one of the other planets or moons in this system, maybe," I agreed. "But they're short-range only. They won't get us anywhere near human or Tahni space." I snorted. "Maybe Pete can find a girlfriend back with Yu's villagers."
"God dammit, Mitchell!" Kara fairly screamed at me and I looked back to see her tensed up, her arms up like she wanted to fight me, her face screwed up in rage and pain and desperation. "I don't want to spend the rest of my fucking life here!"
"And you think I do?" I exploded back at her, feeling all the frustration and anger of the last few weeks boiling up inside me and not caring that it wasn't fair to her. "You think I want my family trapped here? You think I ever wanted to be mixed up in this fucking mess to begin with?" I realized I had my hands balled up into fists and was a microsecond away from popping out my talons. I made myself relax, but still felt a cold lump of anger in my gut.
"You're an officer in the military," I told her, my voice quieter but my tone still harsh. "You know what that means...you knew it when you signed up."
Deke stepped up beside her and gently put a hand on her shoulder. She pushed it away and I thought for a moment she was going to yell at him, or even take a swing at him. Instead, she turned and buried her face in his shoulder. Deke put his arms around her, squeezing her to him and whispering in her ear. I tried not to hear it, but I couldn't control my heightened senses.
"It's okay," he told her, stroking her hair. "I'll be here. I love you."
I closed my eyes for a moment, then turned and kept walking. Rachel was beside me, and I felt her right hand slip into my left. She didn't say anything, but I'd known her long enough to know the things that she wasn't saying. I put my right palm against the surface of the control building and the opening appeared again, allowing us to step up and through together.
The images that swirled around us nearly overwhelmed me, even though I'd experienced them earlier, and I felt Rachel pause beside me. I closed my eyes and reached out with my neurolink and suddenly everything around me slowed down and crystallized into meaningful data that I could somehow comprehend all at once. Over a dozen more Skrela spacecraft had entered the system in just the last few minutes, and they were all headed here. Their programming was clear: this installation had to be destroyed before its defenses were raised.
Can the defenses on this planet protect the occupants of the two inhabited moons? I asked the control system AI.
Yes, Caleb Mitchell, the computer told me, managing to sound calm and reassuring even through a neurolink. Each of the worlds in this system is equipped with defensive systems that can be controlled from here.
I felt a weight lift off my shoulders. At least I hadn't condemned all those humans and Rescharr to death by giving in to Cutter's demands. Now I just had to make sure the humans and Tahni in our Cluster were kept safe as well.
What do I need to do to close down the Transition Line back into our Cluster?
* * *
McIntire:
Kara McIntire sobbed into Deke's shoulder and hated herself for it, but couldn't stop. She couldn't remember the last time she'd actually cried. Had it been the day she'd heard about her father's death? She honestly didn't recall much about that day; it was a haze in her memory, better forgotten. She knew she'd felt rage that day, rage and loss and a betrayal, and this day felt no different. A man who she'd considered perhaps her closest friend had betrayed her and left her trapped hundreds of light years from home...
That thought made her stop sobbing, made her laugh cynically.
"What is it, Kara?" Deke asked, noticing the abrupt change.
"I realized," she said quietly into his hair as he continued to hold her, "that I was crying because I could never go home...and how meaningless that word is for me."
"It won't be so bad here," Deke said with a philosophical shrug, rubbing her back. "We can find a nice cave, get a pet dinosaur...maybe cobble together a car with big stone tires..."
She pushed away and punched him in the chest, but found herself laughing as helplessly as she'd been crying.
"How can you keep it together right now?" she asked him, stepping back and wiping her face with her hands. She glanced over to where Pete Mitchell was staring with an expression of forlorn despair at the wreckage of the two cutters, and past him to Trint, who was down on one knee and looking lost and purposeless. "With all this, how come you're not yelling and screaming?" She snorted. "Or crying?" Then she blinked and her eyes widened in realization. "Wait a second...did you say you loved me?"
Deke shrugged and she wanted to hit him again, but then he smiled in a way very unlike his usual shit-eating grin. "Yeah, I did," he admitted.
Kara eyed him suspiciously, feeling irrationally angry for a moment before she caught herself. "You'd better not be fucking with me, Conner," she warned him, "because I am not in the mood for it."
"Quiet," Deke said sharply, eyes narrowing as he grabbed her shoulder.
"What?" she exploded, yanking away from him. "What did you..."
"Listen!" he insisted, abruptly serious, pointing out into the starlit night. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Trint's head go up, his ear cocked to the side. "Something's coming!"
* * *
Mitchell:
I saw the eddies and currents of gravity interwoven in the spacetime between the singularities, turned into something my senses could interpret by the interface with the alien computer. All it would take was a directive to the sentient machine to nudge one closer to the other and collapse the fragile gravimetic relationship that was a Transition Line. I knew I had to do it, that to wait was to unleash a scourge on my home and the homes of all the humans in the Commonwealth, yet still I hesitated.
"We'll never be able to go home," I said aloud, and as my consciousness withdrew slightly from the image my headcomp was showing me, I felt Rachel's hand on my shoulder.
"Everyone I care about is here," she said quietly. "That makes this home."
"Okay then," I said, dipping back into the virtual reality inside my head.
Caleb Mitchell, the computer said to me, showing concern, there is a large spacecraft heading for this location at high speed. Its sensor signature does not match that of the Skrela discs.
I felt a chill run up my back, realizing exactly what that could mean.
Show me.
* * *
McIntire:
Kara gaped at the approaching starship in disbelief. It was a sleek, silver wedge burning towards them on jets of superheated air...and it was human. Specifically, it was the latest model Attack Command cutter; larger and faster and more powerful than the older missile ships like the Dutchman, it also had a larger fuel supply and extended range...
"Is that...?" Deke trailed off and she thought his voice sounded wary as much as hopeful.
"That's not one of the disc ships," Pete declared, squinting to see the thing against the night sky without the benefit of the enhanced vision the others had.
"Someone needs to tell Cal!" Kara exclaimed, starting to run back towards the control center. She stopped when she saw Mitchell and his wife already emerging from an opening in the sphere,
their eyes fixed on the human ship.
"Who the hell is that?" Deke wondered aloud, shaking his head.
"I already know who it is," Cal said. "What I want to know is how."
Kara frowned at him, but didn't bother to ask what he meant; they'd all know soon enough.
The cutter was descending on pillars of fire, coming down on the paved surface fifty meters from the wreckage of the Ariel, its landing jets pelting them with loose bits of soil and vegetation. Their ear-splitting whine died gradually away and the hot blast diminished into a warm breeze and then ceased. The main boarding ramp extended from the belly of the ship with the smooth rasp of new machinery right off the line, not the angrier groan of a ship that had seen action and been repaired over and over.
Light streamed out onto the pad, throwing the shadow of a single figure in its wake. The man who stepped down the ramp wasn't tall or muscular or imposing in any tangible way. Even his uniform jacket made him look more like a headmaster at a military school. He had close-cropped brown hair, a blandly normal face and soft, liquid eyes that would have seemed at home on a poet or an artist. But General Antonin Murdock, known to friends and enemies alike as "the Bulldog," was neither of those.
He also, apparently, wasn't dead.
"There are enemy ships inbound," he informed them in his schoolteacher's voice, as matter-of-factly as if he were relaying a weather forecast. "We should go."
* * *
Mitchell:
"Chang said he killed you!" Deke blurted. I could tell the Bulldog made him uncomfortable; I knew the feeling. I should have felt relieved, but instead I felt suspicious.
"He tried," Murdock commented drily, the slight twitch at the corner of his mouth as close as I'd seen him come to a smile...or a sneer, perhaps. "Fortunately, Mr. Chang didn't know me as well as he imagined."
Did any of us? I wondered.
"Talk about it later," Pete urged, waving the rest of us forward as he took a step towards the ramp. "Let's get the hell out of here!"
"I still have to stay," I insisted. "The gate has to be closed from this end."
"We have to stay," Rachel reminded me softly, squeezing my hand.
"Caleb," Trint spoke, pushing himself to his feet. He shuffled over to Rachel and I with difficulty, the bare metal of his left foot scraping against the pavement and bringing up a shower of sparks. He stopped in front of me, putting his right hand on my shoulder and looking me in the eye. "Are you my friend?"
I looked into eyes assembled in a lab, at torn and burned flesh grown in a vat, at the bare metal showing through that was fabricated by Tahni machines...and saw a soul more human than most men I'd known.
"You know I am, Trint," I said, choking up slightly on the words.
"Then let me do this," he said, his voice rough and slightly slurred. That Skrela had done some serious damage to him.
"Trint..." I tried to argue with him, but he raised a palm to interrupt.
"Whether you agree with it or not," he said, "my honor requires it." He jerked his head towards Murdock. "Go with them, and let me do this for my friends."
I knew he was right and I hated myself for knowing it. I felt a lurch in my stomach and had trouble swallowing.
"We are out of time," General Murdock declared. "This ship is leaving now, whoever is on board." I glanced back and saw him walking back up the ramp, pausing partway up to look back expectantly.
"Do not worry, Caleb," Trint said, affecting a smile that looked even more hideous than usual given the half-burned state of his face. "I will protect the humans and the Rescharr left here, just as you would."
"You're a good man, Trint," I told him, taking his hand in mine and shaking it. "It's been an honor to have you as my friend."
"Thank you," Rachel said, pulling the big cyborg into a hug that seemed to surprise him.
He patted her gently on the back. "Be well, my Rachel."
I took Rachel's hand and pulled her with me to the ship's boarding ramp. The others were already ahead of us, Pete waiting about halfway up. He waved a goodbye to Trint, then fell in beside us. I wanted badly to look back, but I didn't. We walked into the harsh, antiseptic light of the military ship and the ramp hissed closed behind us.
Chapter Twenty Six
McIntire:
Kara dropped into the empty copilot's seat in the cutter's cockpit and felt a numb, dreamlike haze of unreality settle around her as she watched Murdock methodically prep the ship for takeoff. Deke had settled into the navigation and weapons console just behind them and she saw him throwing her a wink as he strapped into the padded acceleration couch.
"You followed us here," she said to Murdock , her voice barely audible over the scream of the belly jets. She was pushed down into her seat as the cutter shot away from the ground at maximum thrust, then back when the main drives cut in.
"I was following Robert Chang," he corrected, not looking at her, his attention fixed on the readouts at the pilot's station. "Your arrival was not part of the plan."
"I suppose contacting me would have been too big of a risk," she murmured.
"You know it would have been, Major," he agreed, a hint of reproof in his tone. "Operational security trumps our personal feelings. I shouldn't need to tell you that."
"The contact from Belial," Deke spoke up, leaning forward in his seat to address Murdock. "The one Chang tricked into getting you to El Dorado..."
Murdock glanced around at him, curiosity on his schoolmaster's face. "Yes, what about her?"
"Was she on the ship that Chang destroyed?"
There was nothing accusatory in Deke's tone, but Kara could see the slight tilt of his head, the almost-imperceptible narrowing of his eyes. She wondered if Murdock noticed and decided that was a stupid question.
"Unfortunately she was," the General replied. His voice wasn't exactly cold...it never was.
"Sorry to hear that," Deke said, settling back in his chair.
Kara smiled at him; she didn't want to, but she couldn't help it. She forced a neutral expression and turned back to Murdock.
"Are the Skrela ships coming after us, sir?"
Murdock passed his hand over a control and a holographic tactical display emerged from projectors at her station, showing her the sensor readouts. She could see the Skrela discs glowing white in the projection, three of them flying low over the river valley behind them.
"They seem to be focused on the Predecessor structure," he commented clinically.
"It's a control building for a series of artificial singularities," she told him. "That's why Trint had to stay: he's using it to shut down the Transition Line back to the Cluster after we leave."
"I gathered that," Murdock said. A hiss that might have been a sigh escaped his pressed-together lips. "It's regrettable that the opportunity was lost, but discretion was the proper course of action, given the threat."
There was a change in the tone of the engines as they left the atmosphere and began burning metallic hydrogen for propulsion, and gradually the force pressing them into their seats became the only thing holding them down.
"If Trint is going to do something about the Skrela," Deke commented, gesturing towards the tactical display, "he'd better do it soon."
Kara looked where he'd pointed and saw the icons representing the alien ships only kilometers away from the control station. They'd be there in seconds.
* * *
Trint:
The sound of scraping metal followed Trint as his left foot dragged over the pavement, wearing on his nerves. He felt an uncomfortable tingling at the burned edges of his flesh, as close as he ever came to real pain, and he knew somewhere beyond the readouts and the internal sensors that he could not recover from these injuries. His mechanical parts would keep moving for years, until his power packs ran down, but the organic portions of his brain couldn't survive without the support of his biological organs, and those were damaged beyond repair.
He had hours, perhaps. He hoped it would be long enough.
He touched the surface of the control building; there was warmth beneath his right palm and then there was nothing as the door opened to him. As he stepped up, grateful for the anti-gravity boost the door gave him, he felt the touch of the Predecessor AI once more. Chang had said it would only communicate with a good man; the thought amused him.
Activate the planetary defenses on all occupied worlds in this system, he instructed.
The system is activated, N'lyn-Trint-yar, the computer responded. It used his full name, a name given to him by the Imperial Guard at his inception and never spoken again.
He could see the approaching Skrela spacecraft as if he was standing in the sky with them, saw the tight triangular formation they kept to. For a long moment, nothing happened and he began to wonder if the system was still online after all these millennia. No sooner had the thought passed through his mind than a green tendril of light radiated upward from the pavement beneath the control center and intercepted the oncoming formation.
The three ships seemed to hesitate in mid-air, shuddering as the white glow that had surrounded them sputtered and faded. As the last of the white aura sparked and faded, the discs appeared to shrink and then crumple like waste paper before disintegrating in a flash of fusing atoms that lit up the sky for tens of kilometers around.
Trint's consciousness shifted immediately to an orbital view of the Rescharr moon, where three more of the Skrela discs were descending over the largest city. This time, the green energy beam shot out from an unseen satellite in orbit around the gas giant and a second sun flared to life briefly. He wondered if the Rescharr remnants would understand what had happened, or connect it with the strangers who had flown away in the Predecessor ship.