by Rick Partlow
"Who allowed that into my secure perimeter?" the big man demanded, aiming a blunt finger at Tyya-Khin.
"Captain Einarsson," Commander Chiang began, surprise evident in her voice at both his presence and his demeanor. "This is..."
"I'm Major McIntire, DSI," Kara said, stepping between Einarsson and the Tahni. "I just returned from taking your ship back from the Tahni insurgents you let seize it."
Ooh, body blow, Deke said in admiration via neurolink.
"You..." That seemed to stop him in mid-bluster. Einarsson's eyes narrowed, his mouth screwed up in confusion. "You what? You took back the ship? How is that even possible?"
"I boarded it with another DSI officer while you were abandoning it," Kara said, keeping the explanation as simple as possible. "We were trapped when the ship Transitioned out of the system, but we managed to disable the drives with the help of Lieutenant Velazquez."
"Jose's alive?" Chiang asked, face brightening as she turned back to Kara. "Thank God!"
"He's with my agent," Kara told them both, "awaiting transport for themselves and the surviving Tahni infiltrators. I came back here soonest with the leader of the Tahni insurgency," she nodded toward Tyya, "who has discovered he was misled into his actions by the words of a traitor who only wished destruction on the Tahni people. He's prepared to make a statement right now to try to defuse the situation out there."
"Why the hell would I allow the leader of the fucking insurgency to use our equipment to make a statement to the enemy?" The bluster was back now, and Deke thought he felt the fine spray of spittle coming from Einarsson's mouth as his face turned even redder...if that was possible. He waved a hand demonstratively around, probably trying to indicate the Tahni demonstrators outside the base. "It's probably a signal for them to attack!" He turned to the armed Security troops behind him. "Take this Tahni into custody immediately!"
"Belay that order," Kara snapped, staring into the mirrored visor of the lead Security trooper. "I'm the ranking DSI agent onplanet and I'm acting on the direct orders of General Antonin Murdock himself."
And they don't need to know yet that he's dead, Deke added silently.
"As such," Kara went on, her voice flat and hard and brooking no dissent, "the disposition of enemy prisoners of war is my responsibility. You will not interfere with that disposition or you will be brought up on charges." A snarl turned up the corner of her mouth. "And my boyfriend'll kick your ass."
Deke barked a laugh, unable to keep it inside and Einarsson looked as if his head were about to explode from inner pressure.
"Sir," Commander Chiang interjected stridently, raising a hand for attention, "I don't think the insurgents are waiting for a signal from this Tahni to attack."
"How the hell would you know?" Einarsson demanded, taking his pent-up rage out on her.
Before she could form an answer, a blast shook the walls of the Communications center, making the holographic displays flicker. The netdivers blinked confusion, withdrawing from their computer interface at the physical interruption, and the Security troops whipped around with their carbines, searching for a target.
"Because they just breached the perimeter defenses," Chiang spat by way of reply. She turned to the netdivers and technicians, her face screwed up with fear. "Everyone out of here! Get to the Ops Center now!"
Kara shook her head, then turned to Tyya-Khin, who was still standing in the center of the circle of cameras. "We were too late."
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Cal felt the humidity slam into him like a wall as he pushed through the crowd at the exit door of the Communications Center, clearing a space for Pete and Rachel to come through behind him. It was mid-afternoon and the heat trapped between the haze of low-hanging clouds and the merciless fusion-formed surface of the base made simply breathing torture. Even the panicked Fleet personnel racing for the safety of the base's Ops Center seemed to be running in slow motion, though that might have been his heightened perceptions playing tricks on his temporal sense.
The sounds though, those were moving at normal speeds. There were shouts, and some screams---though he couldn't say whether they were screams of pain or simply fear and desperation. There was the thud of feet pounding on pavement, and the whoosh of labored breath and, further in the distance, off to his right at least three hundred or so meters away, the distinctive racket of small arms fire punctuated by the occasional explosion. The Marines would be wading into the fray in their massive battlesuits, but there were only so many Marines and they couldn't be everywhere. If twenty or thirty thousand Tahni combatants wanted in, there just weren't enough Commonwealth forces onplanet to keep them out, not without orbital support.
We should head for your ship, Reggie broadcast to him over their neurolinks, running up beside him, concern on his curiously gentle features.
We wouldn't make it to orbit, Cal said flatly. They have surface to air missile batteries all over the city.
Well fuck me then, Reggie said. Anyone else got any bright ideas?
Two Fleet cruisers just Transitioned into the system, Kara told them. Cal knew from his neurolinked connections to them that her and Deke were twenty meters behind them, shepherding Tyya-Khin between them. If we can make it to the Ops center, we can hold out there till they reach orbit.
Another explosion, this one close enough to send everyone around them stumbling off their feet, though Cal was able to keep his balance and fall into a crouch. More heat washed over him, dry and searing, and with it a roiling cloud of black smoke and a rain of falling debris, and he suddenly realized that the Communications center wasn't there anymore. It was a burning, blackened shell now, a hundred meters behind them, and from the damage he could tell that it had been hit by missiles.
The laser defenses are down, he told Reggie, Deke and Kara.
We're fucked, Reggie opined, helping Pete to his feet while Cal hauled Rachel up. Both of them look stunned by the concussion, but otherwise unhurt. Wish I had a gun.
Cal had a gun---he was technically active military at the moment---but it didn't make him feel any better defended against missiles. He found himself agreeing with Reggie about their situation, though. If there was a way out of this, he couldn't see it.
"Come on, let's go," he urged Rachel and Pete, taking Rachel's hand and starting to run again.
He could see the Ops center rising above the other buildings, its walls gleaming only a couple hundred meters away. The guard tower facing the perimeter breach was pouring a steady stream of laser-fire into the approaching crowd, the air crackling and thundering in a cascade of coruscating white and red. Cal couldn't see where the Gatling laser's output was hitting, but it had to be doing a shitload of damage. Enough that the next flight of missiles slammed straight into that guard tower and it disappeared in a column of flame and a sheath of smoke with a concussion he felt deep in his chest.
Cal felt a cold knife sink into his gut and he turned back to Rachel, the helplessness and sorrow plain on his open face. He saw it mirrored in her own expression and she clutched his hand tightly.
He'd often thought he'd die on Tahn-Skyyiah, but he never thought Rachel would.
"What the fuck is that?" Pete blurted.
Cal turned and saw his brother staring up into the sky directly above them, eyes wide, mouth hanging open. Cal frowned, looked up himself into the haze of clouds looming over them. It was glowing green.
* * *
The situation has reached the tipping point, the Predecessor AI said, zooming the image of the Commonwealth base in closer to show the smoking wreckage of a Marine battlesuit, showing two young Tahni males hitting it with wooden sticks as if they'd destroyed it and not someone with a missile launcher. The base will fall within the hour, and when the Commonwealth ships are in range, they will bombard the city from orbit.
Trint watched the mass of armed Tahni moving like a wave across the pavement, saw the handful of them armed with heavy weapons who were arrayed like professionals, obviously the leaders of the group. Part of h
im that he had only recently become aware still existed felt a surge of pride that his people still had the spirit to resist so many years after losing that heartbreaking war. But most of his mind was on his friends, who were only a hundred meters away from the front of that wave of Tahni.
"Pressor beams to their lightest settings," he instructed the AI. "Target the front edges of the Tahni and fire in a fan pattern." He clasped his hands in front of him contemplatively. "And then take us out of the clouds."
* * *
Rachel Mitchell knew she should be running, but all she could do was stare at the oncoming mass of Tahni. Though she knew that, as individuals, they each had families and lives of their own and each had reasons for hating humans, as a group they seemed like monsters. They were monsters who hated her and were going to kill her in particular and she didn't give a shit what their motivations were. She just wanted a gun, a big one, and a nice, safe place to shoot it at the enemy.
She heard Pete saying something but she couldn't make it out over the explosions and screaming and the pounding of feet on pavement. She didn't turn towards him; she couldn't bring herself to look away from the oncoming death, as if it would approach even faster without her watching.
When a flare of emerald light obscured the approaching horde, Rachel flinched, sure it was the signature of some weapon aimed at her, and that it would be the last thing she ever saw. Instead, the light played over the crowd in a sweeping arc and where it touched, dust billowed up and the Tahni were smashed to the ground as if by a giant hand. Rachel froze, staring in awe as rows after row of Tahni slumped, some first going to their knees and some just falling face-first, like the gravity beneath them had suddenly increased.
It took her a long moment to realize that the sounds of battle had disappeared. There was no gunfire, no explosions, and no more drumbeat of pounding feet. Only the groans and curses of hundreds upon hundreds of Tahni---and a few human Marines caught up in the crowd---who were pinned to the pavement.
"Oh my God," Cal murmured, and this time she could hear him because of the disappearance of the background noise. She looked over and saw him staring upward towards the source of the greenish light.
Descending out of the low-hanging clouds was a Predecessor starship. It could be nothing else, despite the fact that it was shaped differently from the ones she'd seen in the Northwest Passage. It showed no sign of propulsion, no jets or rocket exhaust, no lifting surfaces along the dull gray twisting of its unmarked length. It floated as if by magic, a seed pod floating on the breeze, surrounded by a faint glow of the same green tint as the fan-shaped beam that originated from its nose. In seconds, the beam faded away and the bodies on the ground began to move as the pressure of the weapon disappeared.
Silence fell over the base, the push of a cosmic pause button that halted everyone in their tracks and bottled the shouts and orders and screams up, and Rachel felt as if she were in a dream. Then the ship spoke.
"Return to your homes," it said in Tahni, the words echoing across the fusion-form pavement, not painfully loud and yet seeming to emanate from everywhere at once. "Lay down your weapons and return to your homes immediately. If you attempt any further violence, more aggressive measures will be used to stop you and many of you will be injured. Go home now."
The voice switched to English and seemed to focus itself more on the Ops center. "Do not attempt to interfere with the withdrawal of the Tahni forces from your base. Force will be used to ensure their safe passage. See to your wounded. No further attacks against you will be permitted."
The tone was flat, the timbre deep and sonorous, but the lack of the active voice in the language was curious to her. It was almost as if it was a computer speaking.
"Maybe it is," she whispered to herself.
"What the fuck is going on?" Deke said softly, his pistol held loosely at his side as if he'd forgotten it was there. He was standing next to Tyya-Khin, who was also staring at the spaceship in awe and confusion.
"Is it..." Kara began, then her mouth closed abruptly as if she didn't want to let the idea escape. Her lips worked as she forced the idea out anyway. "Could it be...Robert?"
"How's that possible?" Cal wondered, eyes narrowing as he looked between her and the Predecessor ship. "How could he get back after the Transition line was destroyed?"
"Is that thing a fucking Predecessor?" Reggie asked, his voice up an octave. He was still staring up at the ship, face pale with shock. "That's not quite what they look like though, right? Is that what that is?"
"It's a Predecessor ship, I think," Cal confirmed a bit doubtfully. "I mean, the shape is different than before, but that green glow and the anti-gravity propulsion system is definitely Predecessor tech. I have no idea who or what is flying it though."
Rachel's mouth went dry as the ship began to descend even lower, seeming so very, very large to her; she could tell already it was bigger than the Predecessor ship she'd boarded on the Resscharr moon in the Northwest Passage corridor system, more than twice as long. Large enough to crush them all, even if it didn't have weapons so advanced they may as well have been magic. But it stopped about fifty meters over them, throwing a monstrous shadow over the dozens of humans staring dumbly up at it.
A small, black circle opened up in the bottom of the oddly twisted shape near the center and a figure emerged from it, floating slowly downward via the gravity control technology the Predecessor had mastered tens of thousands of years before. At first, she expected it to be one of the Predecessors, or their descendants the Resscharr, but she could see immediately that it wasn't. The body was thicker than the Resscharr, more humanoid in proportion, and the legs weren't bent digitigrade.
As it continued to descend, Rachel saw with an increasing sense of disbelief that the figure was a Tahni male, his garments grey and black but in the traditional Tahni pattern of broad, winding strips and his hair cut into the Mohawk and braid of a warrior. When he was about five meters above them, she could see that it was Trint.
* * *
Trint patted Rachel Mitchell's shoulder awkwardly as she threw her arms around his neck, sobbing. He'd become accustomed to the strange manners of humans over the years, but Andre Damiani had never been much of a hugger.
"Trint," Caleb said, hand grasping his tightly, what Trint interpreted as joy, disbelief and a great relief playing out across his plain, open face, "how the hell did you get here?"
The Tahni cyborg indicated the ship still hovering above them with a toss of his head. "A forgotten Predecessor research project that the computer dug up for me. I couldn't explain to you with any coherence how it works, but it doesn't use the Transition lines."
In truth, he had a fair handle on how the ship worked, but sharing that information would have raised questions he didn't wish to answer. The Commonwealth government and its inhabitants would be better off, he decided, not exposing themselves to what lie beyond the Cluster.
"That was some damned nice timing," Deke Conner commented, shaking his head. Trint thought his demeanor was one of mixed relief and disbelief, if he was any judge of human behavior.
"You've been back for a while," Kara McIntire deduced, her eyes uncomfortably shrewd and knowing.
"A few weeks," Trint confirmed, though he didn't look at her. "I wanted to seek you out immediately," he said to Rachel and Cal, "but an audit of the news from your Instell ComSats showed me what was happening here, and I felt that I should observe for a time before revealing myself."
The Commonwealth ships have reached orbit, the computer informed him. They are taking up firing positions and have targeted the city. Do you wish me to patch you into their communications?
Not yet, Trint replied. A demonstration will be necessary.
"I didn't intervene at first," Trint explained, "because I had hoped your people and mine could bring this to a peaceful resolution."
"We still can," Rachel insisted, pulling away from him and looking between him and the other Tahni among them, a younger male with the loo
k of intelligence and determination in his features, though they were clouded with confusion at the moment. "Tyya-Khin is willing to try to work with us to convince his people..."
"Who are you?" Tyya-Khin asked him, finally speaking, as if he'd only just regained the ability. "Where did you come from?"
"He won't have the chance, I'm afraid," Trint told Rachel, ignoring the questions for now. "Your warships are in orbit, and they are preparing to bombard the city."
"Dammit," Kara spat, eyes turning upward towards the sky reflexively. "That dickhead Einarsson must have gotten to them." Her eyes lost focus for a moment. "I can't get through with the Communications center blasted. I have to get to Ops and try to use their gear..."
"Please stay calm," Trint warned them. "None of you are in any danger."
And the sky began to fall.
* * *
Cal had been on the receiving end of orbital bombardments before, back during the war, both from the Tahni and once from his own Fleet, so he knew what to expect. When it began, it still scared the shit out of him. Streaks of light pierced the afternoon sky, like a meteor shower in daylight, trailing plumes of fire and breaking the sound barrier with thunderous echoes that rumbled back and forth between the city and the base. There were dozens of them, each a nickel-iron slug the size of a groundcar, launched by the cruisers' Gauss cannons at hypersonic velocity. They were pushing a wave of ionized air in front of them and when they struck, it would be with a wall of incandescent plasma that would do as much damage as the pure impact alone; the whole city would be leveled.
But they never struck. A faint green glow enveloped the city at an altitude of a few hundred meters, spreading out from the Predecessor starship like an umbrella of gravitic force. When the artificial meteors struck the glowing layer, they disintegrated with flares of liberated energy that spread across the shield in a hemisphere of orange fire. He knew the heat from the kinetic energy should still come through even if the projectiles were stopped, should ionize the air beneath it and still wipe out huge sections of city. But it didn't. It flared back into the atmosphere, dissipating and diffusing harmlessly. Even the lower hanging clouds were unaffected by it, as if it were a holographic projection.