by M. D. Cooper
Camaris shrieked. Her thoughts clawed at Lyssa, digging as if she could transport herself into another mind. Lyssa froze her in place as she’d done with Alexander before, and the remaining pieces of the AI went cold, lifeless, duplications of something that once breathed.
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
STELLAR DATE: 01.24.2982 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Sunny Skies, Hedge
REGION: Outer edge of Main Asteroid Belt, InnerSol
Cara scrambled out of the jumpseat and leaped across the corridor for the alcove where her mom’s weapons crate was stored. Wedging her boots against the bulkhead, she slid the rectangular crate free and rotated it over so that it hung flat in the middle of the corridor. She eased the crate to the deck and activated its lock.
With the lid open, she stared at the weapons nestled in protective material. There was an empty slot she realized belonged to the pistol she now wore. The others were filled with a rifle with a strangely wide barrel, several smaller pulse weapons, and a series of grenades.
Cara picked up one of the grenades and turned it in her hand. In the headset, she heard her dad and Harl talk to each other as they looked for whatever was inside the ship. On another channel, Lyssa called back information from the Psion fleet that Fran had started passing to the TSF. It felt strange to be floating in the quiet corridor with battles taking place all around her.
Selecting the rifle, since it looked the most dangerous, Cara hefted it in her hands and turned the weapon over to get a look at it. On the butt was a plate that read, "Gun, High-Velocity HU, Scattering/Focused"
The controls looked similar to the pulse pistol, which might have been a TSF standard. It had velocity settings, with a band marked in red that she assumed would penetrate a ship's hull, and a toggle between single and scatter. In the recession where the rifle had been set were six magazines.
Cara set the rifle down and pulled the magazines from their receptacles. They were heavier than she had expected and weighed down the pockets of her EV suit. She was only able to take five, then realized the rifle was empty and slid the sixth magazine into its feeder assembly.
Turning the rifle in her hands again, she found the safety switch and set it, then slipped the heavy weapon over her shoulder. It was awkward in the zero-g, and she knew it would be even worse once she entered the habitat ring.
Cara closed the weapons crate and rotated it to slide it back into the alcove where it had been stored. Turning back to the ladder, she climbed toward the transition hub, listening as her dad told Harl he’d seen a mech.
Cara stopped, listening. It was a mech back on Larissa that had nearly killed them before. There wasn’t any more talking. They must have been close enough to hear each other.
Pushing herself faster, Cara fought her way up the ladder, getting her helmet and rifle inside the hub airlock before pulling herself inside and sealing the door. Her stomach flipped as the hub-lock slid down to the ring, and gravity took hold, and afterward she had to work twice as hard to climb toward the habitat’s corridor. She was sweating inside the EV suit by the time she reached the access doors.
An alert on the panel said there was vacuum on the other side. Cara stared at it for a second, swallowing the sinking feeling that things were much worse than they had ever been before. She pulled her helmet over her headset and hair, made sure everything was in place, and sealed her suit.
Cara patted the extra magazines on her chest to make sure they hadn’t fallen out, then lifted the scatter rifle in both hands. It was as heavy as Tim, with an awkward center of balance that meant she had to push her left arm out to keep the barrel up.
Hugging the rifle against her body, she tapped the door’s control panel and crouched as it slid open. There was a gust of air past her as the atmosphere in the transition hub rushed out.
“Cara,” Fran said in her headset. “Is that you? Are you still in the jumpseat? Why did the hub door just open?”
“I’m going to help Dad,” Cara said. There wasn’t any point in hiding from Fran at this point.
“Don’t do that, Cara. You’re going to make it even more dangerous.”
“I’ve got a gun. I’m going to help.”
Fran burst into a series of growling curses that bit deeper than Cara had ever experienced. Cara turned down the channel, squeezing the tears that had appeared in her eyes. It wouldn’t do any good to try and wipe her face while wearing gloves…or a helmet, for that matter.
Stepping into the corridor, she stopped to listen. A long scraping sound, followed by the stomp of a pulse weapon led her to the left, past the habitat airlock. Keeping to the inside of the corridor, she struggled to hold the rifle up as she crept.
More scraping sounds filled the air, answered by pulse blasts, and then a flurry of projectiles whizzed past Cara’s head, striking the bulkhead where the corridor curved. She dropped to one knee, ear squeezed to the bulkhead. The projectiles hadn’t penetrated the hull, but they had left a series of smoldering scorch marks in the plas plates.
Forcing herself forward, she moved up past two more ribs in the bulkhead. She saw Harl, and beyond him, her dad in a crouch, firing deliberately on a monster about twenty meters away.
It was a giant spider, with a dull black body and independently moving legs. It jumped back from her dad’s fire, then skittered halfway up the wall, legs digging into the plas. It’s pill-shaped body rotated at the center of the legs, and two blunt weapons barrels fired on the spot in the corridor where her dad had been.
Her father moved with calm precision: firing, moving, firing. The monster was already missing several legs and Cara understood that Harl and her dad were concentrating their fire. But there were too many legs to stop the mech from moving. It held several limbs in the air that flailed ribbons of filament as it tried to grab onto a network junction above that had been revealed behind a torn-down section of plas.
On the TSF channel, she heard Colonel Yarnes reporting that the Sol forces had started their first barrage on the Psion fleet. Fugia acknowledged, then told Yarnes that she hadn’t heard anything from Lyssa, which Cara knew wasn’t true.
She didn’t have to worry about games Fugia might be playing. As she had been listening, Harl had pressed forward, only to get caught in the chest by a stabbing metal leg. The old soldier was thrown backward, skidding to a halt against a bulkhead rib just in front of Cara. She hugged the wall again, not wanting them to see her. Fran was right, if her dad saw her now, it would put his life in danger.
Her dad changed his method of attack and started firing directly on the mech’s body. Several bumps along its center line, which Cara assumed were sensors, dented and burned. The mech paused, then skittered backward.
Cara felt a moment of joy, realizing that her dad knew how to kill the thing. She couldn’t see his face inside his helmet, but she knew his body language as he assessed the mech’s movements and advanced, firing on its body again.
The mech pulled its legs inward, body pressing toward the floor.
Her dad advanced again, still firing. More sensor nodes spat molten metal and dented inward around its body. Cara wondered if it was going to curl up and die like a real spider.
With another step forward, her dad started firing three round bursts into the mech’s body. Behind him, Harl groaned and rolled to his side, shaking his head.
The mech bobbed once, vibrating, then leaped forward, spreading its legs. Its mass filled the corridor as it seemed to rotate like a many-bladed fan. Projectile fire poured from the black body in its center and there was nowhere for her dad to escape.
Rounds struck his upper arms, legs and torso. He continued firing as the thing landed on his chest. He went down flat, then immediately got his elbows underneath him and rolled, fighting to get away.
Cara couldn’t move as she watched her dad
kick at the mech’s legs. For a second, it seemed that he would get free of it, until it moved impossibly fast, its legs pulling it up his body until it had two legs on his shoulders, pushing him into the deck, while another two legs rose above the back of his helmet.
She was screaming. Cara couldn’t hear herself, but her throat was blood-raw. Her gloved fingers moved uselessly on the weapon in her hands, which now seemed like trying to maneuver a tree trunk.
Two of the mech’s legs separated into a series of blades. With rapid thrusts, it jabbed the knives into the back of her dad’s helmet and split the material back like a piece of fruit. Another leg swung around, its end opening into the wiring assembly of ultra-fine filament, and then plunged into the helmet.
Cara couldn’t see what was happening inside the helmet. The mech’s body continued to bob up and down as it worked, anchoring itself in the corridor with rear legs jabbed into the bulkhead.
Harl rose to his knees and lifted his rifle, firing on the mech’s body. Without losing its grip on her dad, the mech rotated and concentrated fire on Harl, but not before he disabled two more legs.
The mech lurched to one side, fumbling to anchor itself again. The leg in the helmet continued to make fine movements.
Cara found her voice. Her breathing hammered in her ears as she looked down at the rifle in her hands. With shaking fingers, she shifted the toggle from scatter to focus and set the velocity at maximum. Moving carefully, afraid she might drop the rifle in her fear, she pulled it to her shoulder and stepped around the bulkhead rib. The mech swam in her sights at first, until she took a breath, focused, and squeezed the trigger.
A flaming slug tore through four of the mech’s side-rear legs and burned into the plas panel behind it. The mech sank, rotating its legs to adjust and support its body.
Feeling more confident, Cara edged further out, aimed and fired.
The mech dodged this time and the second slug tore a long wound in the corridor wall, metal turning to slag under the plas.
You’re going to shoot a hole in the hull.
Did it matter? There wasn’t any atmosphere anyway. It wasn’t like she could send the monster out into space.
Harl struggled to raise his rifle again. Cara controlled her thoughts and raised her weapon, aiming for the mech’s body this time.
Fugia’s voice in her headset distracted her: “I just lost Lyssa. What happened? She just sent a status update.”
Cara’s eyes went wide. She looked at the mech again, realizing what it was doing, the whole purpose of this attack.
They weren’t going after the ship. Psion wanted Lyssa.
Renewed rage flooded her. She jerked the weapon up, squeezing the trigger before she had even aimed properly. Two shots hammered the mech, knocking it backward and pulling her dad with it. The motion pulled his helmet up, showing his faceplate.
Cara saw her dad’s eyes, blue and sad. For a second, she thought he was looking at her, and then she realized he stared past her, lifeless.
Cara screamed as her face went numb, not wanting to believe he was gone. The world constricted to a point. She couldn’t feel the rifle in her hands.
Breathe, Cara, she heard him remind her so many times. Breathe and think.
Cara found the rifle’s grip and the trigger well, pulling the weapon back tight into her shoulder. She drew in a long breath and forced herself to focus, meeting her dad’s blue eyes again as she sighted on the shipkiller.
She fired again, and again. The first round hit the mech center of mass, and the second struck the wall a meter behind it, tearing a hole in the hull.
There was no sound as the breach tore outward and widened, opening a hole full of darkness behind the mech. It skittered to grab onto the deck, legs sliding, pulling her dad’s body with it. The leg that had been buried in his helmet came free, and in the mass of translucent filament, she saw the silver lattice and tiny capsule-shaped seed that was Lyssa. Droplets of her dad’s blood misted and evaporated.
Harl gripped the nearest bulkhead rib as a blast of remaining atmosphere seemed to seize the both of them. Cara grabbed at the bulkhead, but it slipped out of her gloves. She hung in the center of the corridor, falling toward the mech as it tried to hang onto the hull. The centrifugal force of the spinning habitat ring threatened to throw them all into space.
Someone caught Cara from behind. She twisted, pulling the rifle close to her body, to find Xander holding onto her utility harness. He was fixed to the deck with magboots, and she berated herself for not having activated her own. They never had to use them in the habitat ring.
Xander’s smile was gone. He looked at her calmly, his hair floating in the vacuum.
With a single motion, he tossed her behind him. Cara tumbled. She hung onto the rifle with one hand and scrambled at the wall with the other, finally catching a rib near the airlock. She looked back at the tear in the hull to see Xander sending Harl back toward her. He rotated, grabbing onto another bulkhead rib past Cara. His suit was covered in tears and his faceplate was fogged. She would need to help get him into the airlock.
Cara couldn’t look away from the mech. It was still scrambling at the deck, gouging at the plas as its body threatened to fly away, holding Lyssa’s lattice in front of it like a prize.
Xander walked slowly up to the mech. It fired soundlessly at him and Cara thought he took several rounds in his chest and legs. The purple-suited AI didn’t pause. He calmly reached out and tore the arm holding Lyssa free of the mech’s body.
The force was enough to shake the mech loose from the deck. Its legs flailed, and then it disappeared out the rent in the hull. As the monstrosity fell away, Cara realized with horror it was dragging her dad with it, and then he was gone, and Xander had turned to walk back toward her, the mech arm holding Lyssa nestled against his chest.
The world blotted out for a second. Cara experienced everything going white. Had she closed her eyelids? She wanted to shut everything out. She wanted everything to go back to the way it had been before, at Kalyke or even before that.
But the world didn’t disappear. She opened her eyes to find Xander standing in front of her, an expression of endless sadness on his face, so different from the usual smile.
Cara looked around, taking in the hole in the hull, and Harl who was bent over against the bulkhead.
The world wasn’t going to go away. They had to get Harl to safety. They had to help Lyssa.
Cara had to take a deep breath and think of all the steps, just like her dad had taught her.
She had to start moving, focusing on what was in front of her, moving one step at a time.
The last step would be to cry.
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
STELLAR DATE: 01.24.2982 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: TSF Fast Transport K8-712-AA0
REGION: Outer edge of Main Asteroid Belt, InnerSol
The solar plane map hung in the middle of the transport’s cabin, projected by a holodisplay meant for team briefings. The TSF soldiers on either side watched silently as Sol forces fired on the Psion fleet. The static icons depicting friendly forces around Ceres flickered, and a swarm of smaller fireflies arced out in a path that would take nearly fifteen minutes to reach the Psion position. It was infuriating to watch and the tension in the space was palpable. Anyone cracking a joke was elbowed in the ribs. They all seemed to know they were watching history in the making as humanity fought back against its first universal existential enemy.
Brit clenched her jaw, gaze fixed on the holodisplay. She had been fuming since the launch, angry with herself for letting Cara get away from her, worried about what was going to happen, helpless that all she could do was sit and watch.
At some point, Tim had reached for her hand, and now leaned his head on her shoulder. Em sat across Tim’s lap, head on Brit’s thigh. Across the cabin, Petral gave her an understanding smile and leaned her head back, her hands drifting in front of her as she studied something coming over her Link.
Ev
ery so often, Yarnes came out to explain what they were seeing in the holodisplay, as tiny green shapes denoting the Weapon Born fighter craft buzzed through the Psion fleet. The scan updated so slowly that if any Psion ships had been destroyed, it was hard to tell from one minute to another when the holodisplay updated. Everything moved closer together, converging on Ceres, but if any ships were no longer there it was impossible to tell.
Yarnes enacted a zero-g version of pacing by rotating back and forth from the co-pilot’s station to the crew section, lost in his Link for minutes at a time before staring at the holodisplay. Despite the slow updates, Lyssa’s Weapon Born were having a noticeable impact as Psion closed on Ceres.
“Mom,” Tim asked. “When are we going home?”
Brit patted his hand. “Not for a while, Tim. Once this is finished, we’ll know if we can go back to Sunny Skies or if we’ll be going to High Terra.”
“But what about Cara and Dad?”
“We’ll meet up with them later,” Brit said. “It’s not hard, you’ll see.”
“It takes so long,” he said. “Once you’re apart, it’s hard to find each other again.”
“I found you, didn’t I?”
He looked up at her but didn’t answer.
Next to Petral, Starl laughed suddenly. When he noticed Brit watching him, he said, “Privateers, already trying to pick through the debris left by the AI’s ships. They got chewed up in a heartbeat. Lyssa’s fighters are holding their own against a real enemy, seeing how fast Psion cut up those pirates.”
Brit didn’t see how such a small group of AIs thought they could ultimately stand against all of humanity. Fishbone was an apt name for their ships, because the human craft coming for their bones would be like ants to a carcass: too many to deny.
The soldiers cheered as the first volley of allied missiles started hitting the Psion armada’s flank. A few ships went out on the next scan update, and the enemy had apparently adjusted their deployment, still harried by the flickering Weapon Born.