She glanced at the countdown again; less than a minute.
“Open a channel ship-wide,” she told the comms officer.
“Yes ma’am.”
“Soldiers of the Ingumen,” she began. “Today is the last day you will be resistance fighters. In a few short moments, when we engage the forces of the Church over Helicon Prime, you will become heroes. By this time tomorrow you will be hailed as saviours, across the whole breadth of the Empire. None of you fight for glory, but today you will earn it regardless. Because the people we do fight for — the brothers and sisters, parents and children, husbands and wives we have left behind to do this — they will finally know what it is to be free. We do this not for ourselves, but for them — to make all their worlds a better place. To give them a chance to live free from the spectre of kidnap and torture; to wake up in the morning and feel safe. To know that they will not see their loved ones dragged from their homes, accused of sedition simply for the thoughts in their head. We will win this great gift for them with violence and bloodshed; not all of us will live to see the future we are creating. But I know in my heart that if I am called on to make that sacrifice, I will do so willingly. Gladly, even. Because I will know that my life has counted for something — that I have made a difference. And today, together, we will all make that difference; the only one that really counts. We will free our people, whether we die trying or not. And future generations will remember that this was the turning point. That we were the catalysts of change. And they will thank us forever. So Gods be with you, my Ingumend. Remember, there is no fear in the darkness. We are the darkness. The Keepers of the Faith will tremble at our approach; we will make their nightmares come true one last time.”
She looked over at the comm operator, and he nodded.
“Send it out to all the other ships as soon as we are able.”
The young man’s voice cracked as he said, “Yes ma’am.”
Àurea didn’t look at him; she could already feel their eyes on her, the bridge crew staring in adoration at their leader. She’d experienced it before; it was one aspect of this business that made her feel more awkward than a night of cold-blooded murder.
But it had to be done.
She fervently hoped no-one would die on board her ship. She certainly didn’t intend to.
But there were bound to be some casualties amongst her fleet; this was war.
The countdown timer hit zero, and Tenacity shook with the transition to real space.
The viewscreen flickered, and Àurea held her breath. She’d chosen their arrival vector carefully, based on all existing intelligence. She wanted to drop in as close as possible to the planet’s sole surviving Sanctuary-class, and have the Folly blow the thing to hell with the first shot of the battle.
It was a risky manoeuvre, but one which could potentially win them the battle in one fell swoop.
Stars burst into life on the viewscreens, and Àurea studied them intently.
And gasped.
There, not a thousand kilometres in front of them, sat not one but two gigantic black spheres.
Another hung in space above and behind the first pair; at least one more was visible further out. Smaller ships swarmed around and between them, littering the entire region with drive trails.
As the rest of the Tenacity’s sensors came online, the tactical display lit up with warning after warning.
“They knew we were coming,” Àurea breathed.
And it suddenly seemed like she might die today after all.
26
Kyra sat in the pilot’s seat of the shuttle they’d borrowed from the late Captain Eudon, her attention on the flight controls.
On the forward viewscreen, the image of the tomb-moon was growing ever larger. She could already make out Gerian’s laboratory ship, clinging to the barren surface like a tic on a dog. The surrounding space read as empty; no nasty surprises lying in wait, at least as far as she could tell.
Reaching out with the Gift was an exercise in futility; the digital brain of their opponent would be no more likely to show up than a washing machine. The same held true for Loader; though sentient in all ways that mattered, she’d never been able to sense him through the Gift.
Tris, sitting behind her, was fiddling nervously with his knife-stick. The gloves on his new armour were thin enough to let him use the thing properly, but he still wouldn’t stop fidgeting with it. She thought about yelling at him to stop messing before he accidentally stabbed her through the seat, but it wouldn’t help. The kid was scared, plain and simple; she was, too, if she was honest.
In all her decades of combat, from one side of the galaxy to the other, she’d only come across a handful of materials that her Arranozapar couldn’t cut through. That bitch assassin Evie had found one to make her super-heated blades out of, but other than that it had been years since she’d seen her swords glance off something.
It was more than a little unnerving.
Especially as she was now heading directly into battle with a being made entirely out of such material — which essentially meant she was going in unarmed.
What the hell are we going to do to it?
Even Tristan’s Kharash knife had barely scratched the damn thing. The way she saw it, they had one chance, and one chance only; make a big pile of the explosives they were carrying, and get the robot to hang out next to it while they got the hell out of there.
With Loader.
Ha! Whichever way she looked at it, it was bullshit.
Which meant this was a one-way mission.
Still, she’d been running with Kreon for a long time now. She’d seen the old Warden pull off some astounding victories when the chips were down. Some people didn’t really shine until their ass was on fire; Kreon definitely fell into this category. Tris, too, was showing signs of promise under stress. His near-miraculous marksmanship only came to the fore when he was facing certain death; lately he’d developed some odd mental talents too, and then the ability to access at least part of his father’s memories — all under the same fairly specific set of circumstances.
Well if it’s mortal danger he needs, he’s about to get plenty.
As always when she contemplated death, her thoughts turned to Sharki. It seemed like forever since she’d stormed out of the mercenary captain’s room on the Folly. Her room, she corrected herself. She didn’t even know where Sharki was living these days. His private army occupied a hollowed-out asteroid, which he’d managed to make mobile recently. That meant he could be anywhere — his biggest problem would be remembering where he’d parked it.
She wished they could have parted on better terms. It always seemed to end up that way; him trying to convince her to run away with him, and her refusing point-blank and buggering off on some insane mission for Kreon. Perhaps they were doomed from the start. He wanted to keep her safe, to load her up with chores and responsibilities that would force her to stick close to home. Whereas Kyra wanted to travel the stars, kicking ass on a galactic scale. Pretty much exactly like she was doing. Working for Kreon was her dream job, just like commanding the Marauders was Sharki’s.
They were two people who wanted very different things. Well, mostly. A sly smile crossed her face at the memory of him taking what he wanted most of all.
Every time he’d asked her to stay with him, she’d been tempted. Every single time.
But deep down she knew that she’d get bored with such a life. After everything she’d been through with Kreon, escorting dodgy weapons shipments just didn’t hold the allure it once did.
And she’d have told him that years ago, and vanished from his life forever, if she didn’t love him so damned much.
She put their shuttle down in the docking bay, right next to the mining escort the robot had stolen.
“At least it left us air,” she said, dropping the ramp.
They’d all been forced to suit up in the old zero-gee armour Tris had discovered. When Kreon had parked Wayfinder almost a century ago, he�
�d left it with a full inventory. Kyra could imagine the Warden as a younger man, charging around commandeering everything he could lay his mitts on. The armour was old, but functional, and provided much better protection and mobility than those hideous rubber vac-suits.
She followed the others out into the cargo bay, keeping her helmet close in case of sudden decompression. She had no way of knowing if the robot had been here long enough to lay traps for them — or if it even cared enough about them to bother laying traps. Loader had suggested that his captor wouldn’t care what they did; it was quite possible such a powerful being considered himself invulnerable.
And he’s right. Shiny blue bastard.
Tris had his glaive out, and Kreon his staff. None of them were taking any chances.
A faint blood mark stained the deck, and they followed it out into a corridor. A man in a lab coat lay dead there, his injuries suggesting massive blunt-force trauma to the chest.
Like a punch from an indestructible robot.
It was obvious this thing wasn’t too impressed with the humans who’d been experimenting on it. Which was totally understandable. But it didn’t make her feel a whole lot better about their chances.
Skirting the corpse, and the rust-brown stains surrounding it, they pressed on. It was eerie, with the ship so quiet. All the lights were on, the generators humming away in the background, and everything looked normal.
Except for the bodies. They passed two more before Kreon announced they’d reached the lift that would take them to the bottom of the ship.
There was no need to visit the lab, luckily. Kyra wouldn’t have minded making sure Gerian was dead, just for peace of mind, but apparently the killing had been fairly traumatic for Tris. The last thing they needed was him going into one of his fits of depression.
Kids these days, she mused. They just don’t build ‘em like they used to.
The lift doors opened and they crowded inside. ALI had taken the liberty of hacking the ship’s computer, and was now in control of things like doors and elevators.
To make this possible, Kreon had been forced to wear an external transceiver — an older, bulkier version of the one he’d had implanted. Another relic from Wayfinder’s equipment lockers, this had been exclusively synced to ALI, allowing her a permanent presence in the group. What with all the trouble Loader was finding himself in, the lovesick AI was getting manic; she’d refused to let them off the ship without taking her with them.
“Take us all the way down,” Kreon said, addressing the device belted around his waist.
“Confirmed,” ALI chirped back.
At least she sounded cheerful.
It was a short ride to the hangar level, where a ship like this would typically store vehicles and spacecraft for exploration. She was right; in the centre of the vast open space sat a trio of almost comically-rounded pod ships. Obviously built to take a lot of punishment, the entire front of each craft was a thick sheet of transparisteel. They looked capable of carrying five or six people apiece; she wondered briefly if there was any advantage to taking two of them, but splitting up their already depleted team was probably a bad idea.
A circular ramp lowered on the closest pod, and they all piled inside. As ALI raised it behind them and got the engines started, Kyra slipped her helmet on. There was no air where they were going; a shimmery magnetic field over the hole in the deck was all that kept the hangar level pressurised. If the flimsy pod took a hit before they disembarked, she wasn’t going to die of asphyxiation. The others followed suit, and she saw their comm systems go active in her heads-up display.
“Hey, these are pretty sweet outfits,” she said by way of a test.
“I believe I attained them for the bargain price of absolute zero,” the Warden’s grin was savage.
“Absolute zero?” she wondered aloud at his odd choice of phrasing. “You didn’t pay a penny?”
“I found them floating in space. With their previous owners dead inside them.”
“Oh, yurgh! You could have saved that piece of information.”
“Fear not. I had them thoroughly disinfected.”
“Still, eww! Do you know what killed the guys that wore them?”
“Indeed.” The interior light of the helmet made the Warden’s eyes gleam. “I did. But I was careful to do it in such a way so as not to damage the suits. Hence the need for a thorough clean.”
Kyra decided not to ask him to elaborate.
After dropping through the hatch in the ship’s outer hull, the pod descended through a smooth stone passageway. It had the look of a shaft bored with some kind of plasma torch, only one of unimaginable proportions.
As they dropped further, ALI reorientated the pod to face ‘down’. There was no longer any gravity outside, and the tiny vehicle wasn’t powerful enough to create its own. Kyra’s boots had locked onto the deck automatically; she was really starting to like these suits.
In fact, if I survive this trip, I might just commandeer one of my own. It’d look pretty sweet sprayed pink.
The smooth tunnel came to an end, opening out into a cavern so vast she couldn’t see the end of it. Even though both Tris and Kreon had described their experience in here, her mind reeled in shock as she peered through the curving canopy. Vast racks, like something out of a machine shop but on mega-steroids, graced the chamber on all sides. If they were attached to the walls or floor she couldn’t tell, neither of those being in sight. The gigantic metal frames bore odd carvings, and each sported a number of massive, glass-topped mechanical boxes.
Sarcophagi, according to Kreon.
And inside were the deactivated bodies of Loader’s entire species.
More of them than she could count.
“At least he got the lights on,” Tris mumbled.
Kyra couldn’t tear herself away from the view outside, and was glad she wasn’t seeing it in the dark. “They’re definitely in here then,” she said.
“I am triangulating Loader’s position,” ALI informed them. “He is approximately twelve kilometres below you, in the centre of the chamber.”
“Can you put us on a course to intercept, but circle around to come at them from behind?” All traces of humour had drained from Kreon’s voice. Having to defer politely to the program that had seized control of his beloved ship was clearly not agreeing with him.
“Certainly.” At the other end of the spectrum, the AI sounded like she was enjoying this. And maybe she was, Kyra mused — after all, she was in no danger of being killed by these robots. Maybe if they all woke up, they would see her as a kindred spirit?
Threading its way through several of the gigantic racks, the pod passed close enough for Kyra to study the technology. It was like nothing she’d ever seen; at once too slick and too jagged. What she’d taken for carvings could be sockets or ports, but the rectangular objects were too alien for her to diagnose.
“Shit! This tech is seriously advanced,” she said, noticing Kreon making the same observations.
“Their technology is not the issue,” the Warden reminded her. “We need only find a way to compromise their structural integrity.”
“What about the little gadget that Àurea gave you?”
“The Erresonador?” Kreon opened a hatch in his thigh armour and produced the miniature golden cone. Looking at it gave Kyra a chill; last time she’d stared down the pointy end of one, Tris lay dying behind her with a hole in his chest.
“You think it can do anything?”
“In theory. It produces and manipulates sound waves of differing frequencies. According to legend, they were used back on Earth for all manner of tasks. Both Homeguard and Atalia were constructed using them. Unfortunately that was over ten-thousand years ago, and the previous owners neglected to leave a manual.”
“My glaive left a mark on the robot,” Tris said.
“And my staff is able to divert it somewhat,” Kreon added. “Which leaves you without any useful weapons.”
Kyra bristled at that, b
ut there was no point denying it.
“So your task will be the most difficult,” he continued. “Whilst Tristan and I attempt to engage the robot, you must rescue Loader in any way you can.”
“Got it. You fight, I grab and run.”
“And what do we do with the explosives?” Tris asked. The kid was getting nervous again.
Kreon clapped him on the shoulder. “We do what we do best. We improvise.”
Kyra cracked her knuckles in preparation. The sound was particularly loud in the enclosed space. She’d rather have left them to do the burglary, while she let rip at the robot with everything she had. Unfortunately, she’d tried that once already, and it hadn’t gotten her very far.
“We are approaching Loader’s location,” ALI announced, her volume lowered as though she was trying to whisper.
“Any scanners on this thing?” Kyra asked her. “What do the instruments tell us?”
“We are registering two power signatures directly ahead; one stronger by an order of magnitude.”
Kyra raised an eyebrow. “Sounds like our guys.”
Staring straight ahead through the canopy, she could make out a wide platform suspended in mid-air. Cables stretched to the nearest racks, tethering it in place.
“Land there,” Kreon commanded.
Not that there was anywhere else to land, Kyra’s inner cynic pointed out. Not unless they fancied a seriously long spacewalk.
The pod crept in cautiously, ALI having taken Kreon’s instructions to heart. There would be no hiding their arrival, not from a being as advanced as the one they were hunting, but it was nice that she was trying.
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