Rubicon

by Jack McKinney

  The Inorganics had no problem with the cold. In well-ordered columns, the Scrim, Crann, and Odeon had stood their ground in the face of the Karbarrans’ surge; but they were in motion now, an unstoppable army of automatons shuffling through new-fallen snow. Ranks of armored soldiers fell in behind them, humming a traditional Karbarran winter song Lron could hear above the wind and the rhythmical sound of marching feet. He slumped down, exhausted. In the distance, a squad of Shock Troopers was lifting off, streaking in to defrost the Karbarrans’ patch of ground with the warmth of their annihilation disks.

  The Sentinels’ ship was an avenging angel as it dropped down on Optera, spewing the hive-complex barrier shields with all the wrath it could summon. The main gun and in-close weapons systems blasted away relentlessly; but the translucent domes were holding together, absorbing the energy of each individual packet of fire and dispersing it throughout the net. The Sentinels knew enough not to quit, however; on Garuda, Karbarra, Tirol itself, the barrier shields had eventually succumbed to thermal overload. Khyron had once employed a similar tactic against the SDF-1, and the resultant explosion had wiped a small city off the face of the Earth. But the Sentinels were aware that Edwards or the Home Hive living computer wouldn’t allow things to go that far; the brain would lower the shields short of overload and shunt power to Optera’s ground-based defensive systems.

  Rick was confident it wouldn’t even come to that. Not with the brain being taxed on three fronts now. He had asked Lisa to risk a sweep over the top of the complex, to facilitate an insertion of airborne troops in the vicinity of the central hive. The infiltration group would be made up of three Alpha Veritechs, bearing Rick, Janice, Rem, and Jack; Bela, Arla-non, Kami, and Learna; and Baldan, Teal, Gnea, and Karen. At the last moment Lisa had added her own name to the roster.

  The Sentinels were on the ground now, in a kind of hollow formed by a cluster of four slave-domes—comparatively small ones at that—linked to each other and the larger hemispheres beyond by roofed transfer corridors, saddles between the mountaintops that were the hive’s rounded summits. The thin-membraned walls of the tunnels offered the best route into the hive.

  Baldan had his crystalline arms shoved elbow-deep into the rocky ground. Teal was edgy watching him, recalling how Baldan I had died on Praxis, a prisoner of the planet’s tectonic death spasms. Optera’s vibrations were mild in comparison, but Teal was worried just the same.

  The eleven other Sentinels formed a nervous circle around the Spherisians. The air buzzed and crackled with shield energy. Explosions boomed in the distance, strobing light into Optera’s skies; an eerie alpenglow behind the domes.

  “I can feel the source of the energy,” Baldan reported, lifting his arms free. “Teal.”

  She melded her arms with the surface and nodded a moment later, light radiating from her smooth face. “Like the Genesis Pits on Praxis. But this one has seen more recent use.”

  Rick thought about the obscenities Edwards had launched against them in space. “Can you get a location?”

  Teal pulled herself free. “It agrees with the ship’s scans.”

  Rem studied the readout of the direction finder he wore like a backpack radio. “This way,” he said, motioning off to his left. Teal and Baldan agreed.

  Kami and Learna had fixed the location of the Genesis Pit in a similar fashion, trusting to Garudan Sendings to reaffirm the Ark Angel’s initial computer assessments. Designating the location of the Genesis Pit at twelve o’clock, put the brain at four, with the source of Edwards’s initial commo at roughly two-thirty.

  “Jack, Karen: you’re with Baldan and Teal,” Rick said. “The brain is Edwards’s interface with the Invid soldiers and Inorganics. If we can deactive it, we’ve got this thing beat.”

  Jack and Karen nodded, expressions hidden behind the faceshields of their helmets. They began to run through a weapons check with the two Spherisians, while Rick turned to address the Praxian amazons. “Stick with Kami and Learna. For all we know, Edwards is still fabricating soldiers in that Pit. Maybe we can put him out of business.”

  The women thumped their breasts in salute. They were dressed in gladiatorial outfits; high, articulated boots and tight-fitting totem-crested leather helmets. Arla-non and Bela carried naginata and shields; Gnea, a two-handed shortsword and crossbow. Their presence alongside the transpirator-masked Garudans made for a bizarre pairing.

  “The rest of us will go after Edwards,” Rick continued, eyeing Janice, Rem, and Lisa. They nodded and lowered their faceshields. Rick gave Lisa one final look and followed suit.

  The three teams moved to the tunnels; there, they set the charges that would gain them access, falling back and waiting for the first detonation.

  Vince felt his forehead bead with sweat.

  “They’re up to ramming speed, sir! We can’t shake them!”

  “Full power to the guns,” Vince told the tech. “Fire at will!”

  Two clamshell troop carriers were dead in space, with the Valivarre floating between the Tokugawa and a third Invid vessel. But of more immediate concern was Edwards’s SDF-7. The cruiser was holed and belching lox-fueled flames, but it was still coming at them, a barracuda with death written all over it. This despite the VT squadrons that were following it in, peppering vulnerable areas with heat-seekers and rifle/cannon fire, and the blowtorching broadside flashes from the Tokugawa’s own turret guns. No Human crew could have been piloting that ship, Vince told himself.

  “It’s no use, sir. The shields are intact. We’re going to take her in the gut.”

  Vince could hear klaxons screaming alerts to the crew. In the amber light of the bridge he sensed that he had already died and gone to hell. A haggard Jean was on-screen off to the left of the command-chair console.

  “The wounded have been moved up to the launch bays, Vince. The shuttles are standing by. You have to give the word!”

  Vince’s brown face paled at the thought. He tried to convince himself that the ship could withstand the collision. They could close off all starboard sections and re-achieve orbit. Wait for the Ark Angel or Valivarre before offloading anyone—

  “Vince!” Jean shouted. “Vince, listen to me!”

  He swung around to the threat board, the eyes of every tech on the bridge glued to him. Edwards’s ship was closing the gap—its bow stuffed with explosives, for all anyone knew. The Tokugawa would split open like a pea pod. Could the shuttles be launched, brought a safe distance away even now?

  “Range is on-screen, sir.”

  Vince took a moment to study the grim readout.

  “Lieutenant … sound abandon ship,” he said quietly.

  CHAPTER

  ELEVEN

  Well I’m a king beet baby, buzzin’ around your hive

  Remark overheard on the VT tactical net during the attack against Optera’s Home Hive, as reported in Le Roy la Paz’s, The Sentinels

  The interior of the multichambered Home Hive was no different than those the Invid had grown on Garuda. The same cellular walls glistening with Flower sap; the stasis bubbles where they met the floor. The same pulsating pinks, purples, and living greens; the instrumentality spheres, neural pathways, and commo junctions the Terrans thought dendritelike in structure. All bathed in the same sourceless crepuscular light. Yes, very much like the farm hives on Garuda, Kami told himself. From what he recalled before the air of the hive had deprived him of his homeworld’s spore-laden atmosphere. The spores that kept Garudans in hin, a reality all their own. Learna would remember more, of course, a member of the rescue party that day. But Kami sensed they were in agreement on one thing: the Sendings were strong here. Emanations of great power and control.

  They had been moving for more than an hour now, through a network of corridors and vaulted rooms, which spoke softly of distant menace. They had had to conceal themselves a while back, when a group of five armored soldiers had raced by and exited through an osmotic gate. But otherwise their recon had been quiet and uneventful. The Prax
ian warriors were out front; Bela, moving warily, had the point position, her spearlike weapon at hand. Learna trailed, linked to Kami in ways that rendered the Sentinels’ communication nets primitive by comparison. He turned and sent to her, soothed to see only fortunate colors in the egg-shaped aura that encompassed her hin-self. But eyes forward again he was brought up short by what he saw in Arla-non’s: there was an incipient blackness there, uncoiling inkline from the Praxian’s navel. Kami hurried to overtake her, Learna padding behind him in a run.

  “Hold,” he told the women through his respirator, aware that he could not command his coat to belie his concern. He saw that Bela was casting a suspicious look at his suddenly ruffled fur.

  “What do your Sendings tell you, hin-warrior?” she demanded.

  “Danger,” Learna said, answering for him and gesturing to a chamber entrance up ahead.

  Gnea held her crossbow at ready. She glanced down the corridor. “We can fall back.”

  Learna nodded, then froze. “No!”

  Kami heard the urgent whisperings of an ally at the same moment, a flutter of invisible wings above his head. “Quickly,” he barked, moving off ahead of everyone. Learna and Gnea placed command-detonated mines against the corridor walls before joining the others.

  The chamber air was thick with warnings, and there were voices coming from one of two smaller corridors that emptied into the circular room. Humanoid voices, Terran ones. And there were more coming from the corridor behind them. The five Sentinels found cover amid a copse of power-feed cables, stretched floor to geodesic ceiling like sheathed ligaments.

  The Earthers, four of Edwards’s contingent, were jostling one another and laughing as they approached the junction. Learna blew the mines and leveled them, leaving one of them wounded, screaming, grabbing at the space where a leg had been. Gnea sent him on his way with a well-placed arrow. But by now the voices of the second group had changed tone, and a moment later Wolverine fire was erupting from the mouth of the corridor. The Sentinels returned fire and upped the ante with grenades. Kami was glad to see that the Praxians had drawn their Badger assault pistols.

  Three Ghost Riders, hands to their mouths and rifles ablaze, followed an outpouring of smoke from the corridor and took up positions behind a horizontal bundle of neuron cables on the opposite side the chamber. Bela clipped one of them on the way in, and Kami dropped another. Arla-non scampered forward to fix the third Earther in her sights.

  Kami was too late to stop her, death’s light-embracing color already suffusing the Praxian’s aura.

  Bela screamed as her mother went down, seared across her midsection.

  A dirk with a foot-long blade flew from Gnea’s hand.

  * * *

  “We’ve been here before, I’m telling ya,” Jack said, the helmet faceshield raised.

  Karen raised her own shield. “And I’m telling you, you just think we’ve been here.”

  Jack scowled at her and swung on Baldan and Teal. “What about it, you guys—are we or are we not going ’round in circles.”

  “Not circles, surely,” Baldan answered him calmly.

  “Squares, then. Rectangles, polygons, what the hell’s the difference? We’re still ending up right where we started.”

  Teal squatted down to touch the floor. “We’re so close.”

  “But how can that be, Teal?” Karen gestured to the walls of the cul-de-sac they had wandered into—or returned to, if anyone was bothering to take Jack’s claims seriously. “I don’t see anything that looks like an opening. The brain chamber’s got to be huge, doesn’t it?”

  Baldan nodded. “If we can judge by what the Invid left elsewhere. I also feel the Genesis Pit strongly—vibrations similar to those my namesake read in Praxis.”

  “Your father,” Teal corrected him.

  “But it was you who shaped me.”

  “Yes, but—”

  “Can we just save all this family business for some other time?” Jack interrupted. He pressed his hands to the end wall and pushed, then moved a few feet to his left and moved again. “There’s gotta be a way out … Check out the other walls.”

  Karen showed the Spherisians a tolerant smile and moved to one of the sidewalls. “Better humor him. He can be imposs—”

  “What’d I tell you?!” Jack shouted behind her.

  She turned and found to her amazement that his random palpations had opened a pitch-black triangular doorway in the end wall.

  “See, all we have to do is step through.”

  “I don’t know, Jack,” Karen told him, hoping to encourage that slight waver of trepidation she had detected in his voice. “Looks awfully dark in there.”

  Jack trained a stubby flashlight on the opening: the blackness on the other side seemed to swallow the light.

  “It’s impenetrable,” Teal commented.

  Baldan cautiously eased his hands into the darkness, to no apparent ill effect. “Yes,” he said. “The brain is below us.”

  Jack threw everyone a knowing look and swaggered toward the opening, hands on his hips. Turning his back to the door, he said, “Now all we have to do is decide who goes first.”

  Jack saw all three of them go wide-eyed, and read it as a testament to his dauntless courage. But then he hadn’t seen the pair of hands that were reaching out for him. He managed a short, contemptuous snicker before whatever it was that was attached to those hands grabbed him by the neck and dragged him into the void.

  Rick shot another one through the heart and kept right on running. There were at least a dozen more behind them, zomboid voices calling out Rick and Lisa’s names between rounds of fire.

  They had literally walked out of the walls. Rick, Lisa, Rem, and Janice had been in some kind of laboratory at the time, a place of vats and conveyor-belt analogues, giant spools of clear tubing and stacks of what could have been long-necked funnels. Lisa suggested it might have been the mess hall kitchen, which elicited a disgusting sound from Rick. Janice, imaged over to android mode, was just about to sample some of the goop adhering to the side of one of the vats when the soldiers appeared.

  Literally walking out of the walls. Seven-foot-tall bipedal mutants with blasters built into their forearms, and two heads attached to tentaclelike stalks that emerged from their chests. Nightmare creations, even without the added horror of those heads wearing Roy Fokker’s face.

  “Rick,” one of them droned, “little brother.”

  Lisa blew her breakfast, right into one of the vats.

  Then all at once the things were firing at them. It took Rick a good fifteen seconds to get past his terror, but once he got started, it was all Lisa could do to drag him away. It was nothing short of miraculous that all of them hadn’t been taken down by the Fokker mutants’ first volley. But Rick was saving his thanks for later, and wanted to see every last one of the things atomized—as much as Lisa had wanted to see that Pincer leader destroyed.

  He did, however, have the presence of mind to question why Edwards was once again singling him out. Did it go back to the rivalry between Roy and Edwards during the Global Civil War? Had Edwards somehow identified Rick with all that unresolved dogfighting? He recalled that Edwards had fallen in with Senator Russo’s United Earth Defense Council after the war, and was one of those in favor of using the Grand Cannon against the Zentraedi. So perhaps there was something here that Edwards had never worked through—a hatred for anything connected with the SDF-1. After all, hadn’t he deliberately resigned his commission with the Robbotech Defense Force to ally himself with the fledgling Army of the Southern Cross—Field Marshal Leonard, Lazlo Zand, Senator Moran, and that ratpack?

  Minmei was the only other possibility, Rick told himself, even while squeezing off another burst against the mutants. But Edwards apparently had her now, so why all this?

  Rounding a turn in the corridor, Rick stopped short in front of one of the pedastaled communication spheres.

  Edwards was probably watching them right now!

  Rick sl
ammed his fist against what he took to be a control panel. “Come on, Edwards!” he shouted to the sphere. “Show yourself!” When nothing appeared, he punched the sphere itself; throttled the neck of the pedestal, kicked at its bubbled base.

  “Show yourself!”

  Rick caught a glimpse of Lisa’s worried look as she rushed past him, and put two short bursts into the face of the sphere before hurrying to catch up.

  Outside, the Ark Angel was still hammering away at the hives, the overloaded barrier shields no longer translucent but frazzled now and bleeding thermal energy into the surrounding terrain. So much so that the Karbarrans had been revived.

  Snow was falling in huge wet flakes, but the ground itself was as warm as toast. Some of the Inorganics and Shock Troopers wore carpets of slush on heads and shoulders, but that was about as close as the stuff got to Optera’s suddenly superheated surface. The battlefield had become a patch of yin-yang weirdness: a summer blizzard.

  But Death paid little mind to any of this; he continued his sweeps across the field, scythe reaping what it could of Invid and Karbarran alike.

  Lron, Crysta, and Dardo were back on their feet, leading the charge once more, odors of singed fur and burnt flesh hanging in the vernal air. Perhaps as many as one hundred of their contingent had been killed with three times that number wounded, but the Karbarrans as a species had an instinctual way with such things—a way of meeting death head on and disempowering it. So, resigned to their losses and renewed by a thaw as artificial as the frost that preceded it, they attacked. And this time they had the Ark Angel’s Veritech squadrons to back them up.

  Most of the Alphas had reconfigured to Battloid mode. They stalked the Inorganics like fearless hunters, rifle/cannons seeking out marauding groups of Hellcats who had sliced their way through the Karbarran ranks, ursine blood glistening from the razor-sharp edges of their shoulder horns. Elsewhere, amid swirling snow turned green with spilled and airborne nutrient, Human and Invid mecha grappled for control of the sky.