by Richard Fox
+I can handle the course adjustments. Just don’t screw anything else up.+
“There we go. Stand by for a data link. Get this to the Crusade, along with the rest of you.”
A download progress bar appeared at the top of his vision and Ely tried to ignore it. He flew over the ring of dead ships, and the Crucible rose over Ceres’ horizon a few seconds later.
“I don’t have plugs. How am I in Armor if I don’t have plugs?” he asked.
+Because you have an augmentation linked to your nervous system through a synapse bridge built into the cocoon. Collar-looking thing. Remember? Aeon engineers are the best, eh?+
“Is your ghost talking to you?”
“He is. Wait, where are you? Who are you?”
“Masha. At your service aboard the Crucible. Which is why I can do…this.”
A wormhole ripped through a pinprick of reality within the great crown of thorns and spread through the inner space.
“Where are we going?” Ely asked.
“They might break into this channel. Can’t say. But you’re going on your own, Ely. Saint Kallen keep you and preserve you.”
“Are you going to be safe?”
“Ha ha ha. No. But I’ll be just fine until you’re away. Your arrival might be a little dicey. Be prepared.”
“Hoffman’s…he’s gone. I barely know who you are, but I don’t want you to die for me either. Can’t you get to a shuttle or—”
“Once upon a time, I would have done anything to save my own skin. Then I stopped by Armor Square when I was in Phoenix for a visit. You ever go there before the Geist desecrated the place? Statues of the Armor that died in that final battle against the Xaros. They fought a battle they knew they’d lose to win what they believed was more valuable than their lives. You know one of their names.”
Ely touched the name stenciled to his Armor.
“I’m not them, not by any stretch. But you, young Mr. Hale, you’ve got something that could turn this war around. It’s not just your name, but the promise that comes with it. Hope’s a weapon, Ely. Wield it well.”
Ely nodded and a cold pit of fear rose in his chest. The jet pack stopped firing and he flew on at a velocity that blurred the ships beneath him.
+We’re on track.+
“To where? Where am I going, Masha?”
“Assume this line is monitored…but it’s not a vacation destination. At least the Crusade’s there.”
Schematics for the FTL engine appeared in Ely’s HUD.
+These are on a surface file on that bit of Qa’Resh you’re carrying. Interesting.+
“Too many people have died for them already,” Ely said. “They’re more important than me. At least they’d better be.”
He flew closer and closer to the wormhole, and the fear grew stronger.
Chapter 20
“Come on, kid.” Masha wiped a tear from her face then touched the box of pills hidden in her bra. The wormhole was open and Ely’s Armor was closing fast.
“We have to!” Masha heard Patrick from Records and Accountability half shout to what remained of the bridge crew. “They’ll kill us if we don’t even try.”
“But she’ll—”
Patrick shot up, brandishing a fire extinguisher over his head. He screeched a war cry and charged at Masha. The rest of the crew were caught flat-footed, but they followed him into battle.
“As you like.” Masha drew the pistol and shot the fire extinguisher. It exploded into foam and mist and threw out a thick fog. Patrick took a nice hunk of shrapnel to the top of the head and pitched forward. He slid across the foam and whacked the side of a console, snapping his neck.
Masha flipped the knife up, caught it at the tip, and hurled it at Janice. It thudded between her ribs.
“Back!” Masha waded into the fog, the pistol held out in front of her. A man slipped and rolled down the stairs. He grabbed the legs of a workstation and stopped a few feet from her. His mouth flopped open and closed as she turned the weapon on him.
“I’m a hundred and seven pounds, but this hunk of metal and propellent is quite the equalizer, ain’t it?” she asked him.
“Get her!” someone shouted. “Get her for the Geist’s sake.”
The man got his feet under him, his face contorted with rage.
Masha pulled the trigger and it clicked empty. “Shit.”
The man lunged at her and she brought the butt of the gun down, whacking the back of his head. He grabbed a handful of her shirt and dragged her down with him. Masha jammed a thumb into his eye and he howled in pain. Both hands went to his eyes and he raised his chin. Masha punched him in the exposed throat, the blow hitting with a satisfying crunch. His screams cut into wet gags as he started choking to death.
Masha looked up in time to see a kick coming straight at her face. She turned her head aside and the boot clipped her nose and chin. Her attacker landed with his legs spread out and she launched an uppercut to his crotch.
He punched her in the forehead and knocked her to the deck. Then the pain overwhelmed his adrenaline high. He gasped and went down, hands stuffed between his legs.
“Mother. Fucker.” Masha picked up the pistol by the barrel and clubbed the man several times. The fractured skull would be enough to keep him down. She coughed on the extinguisher fog and fumbled at the dead Commissar’s belt. No spare magazine.
Masha flicked the release on the weapon and removed the empty anyway, then made a show of slapping it back inside.
“I’ve got plenty more bullets for the rest of you.” Masha winced as the blows began to register. “Who’s next?”
Two crewmen raised their hands and backed away to the door. She reached into her blouse, took out the pill box, and threw it at them.
“Blue ones. Have a blue one and you’ll feel just fine.” She checked Ely’s location and smiled. He was almost there. She opened a channel to the Armor. “You read me?”
“I’m so lost.”
“I know you are. I know.” Masha leaned against the holo table. “You’re going to make it. I have one request for you. Will you grant one last wish?”
There was a pause.
“OK. I don’t know what I can do for you right now.”
“When you get to the Crusade, you find a colonel named Medvedev. Big, ugly, and painfully stupid man. Tell him…tell him that the time we worked together was the best. I don’t regret a moment of it. And I didn’t take this mission to get away from him. For the Lady. For us all.”
She watched as Ely entered the wormhole, and laughed. She grabbed Terry’s hand and flung it away from the biometric reader. The wormhole collapsed on itself and the holo froze. Masha snapped Terry’s neck and pushed him to one side.
She sat against the table for a few minutes, watching as the thermite in the stylus lost its charge. The door returned to normal and opened.
Shannon was the first through, a pistol in one hand.
Masha waved her hands next to her shoulders playfully. “You again,” she said.
“Have we met?” Shannon bent her elbow to aim at the ceiling and stepped over bodies as she made her way down the steps.
“I’ve met you. Couple times. Of course you don’t remember. They should load you up with your deaths. Might make you better at your job.” Masha ran a hand across her mouth and bit down on a fingernail. A pill slipped between her cheek and gums.
“Where’s the boy?” Shannon asked.
“Maybe I sent him to hell. Why don’t you go look for him?” Masha tongued the pill between her teeth and clenched slightly.
“I don’t have time for this.” Shannon tilted her head slightly. “You’re a professional, aren’t you?”
Masha nodded.
“Then as a professional courtesy, either surrender to interrogation or take that pill I saw you put in your mouth. Sloppy, but understandable given the circumstances.” Shannon stopped several arms’ lengths away and aimed the pistol at Masha’s forehead.
Masha’s jaw quivered.
“What’s wrong?” Shannon raised an eyebrow. “Afraid of death? Your type normally has faith to get through these last few trying seconds.”
“The Saint lives,” Masha said and crunched down on the pill. An acid taste filled her mouth. “The Saint lives!”
Masha’s cheek turned a dirty gray. The blemish spread over her face and her platinum-blonde hair went stark white. She collapsed to the deck and her body crumbled into ash.
Shannon nudged Masha’s body with her foot and a fine powder wafted up.
“Such a shame. I do enjoy breaking professionals.” She holstered her pistol, then waved a hand over the biometric reader.
“What about the survivors, Commissar?” a guard asked from the doorway. The command center had filled with over a dozen of the brutes during her conversation.
“Take them into the hallway and shoot them.” Shannon flipped a hand up and kept her attention on the Crucible’s logs. She ignored the pleading and the gunshots as she scrolled through the data.
“You sent him to Edessa?” she asked Masha’s body. “This is going to be too easy.”
She raised the back of one hand and spoke to the small screen embedded in her skin. “Nakir. I have him. Bring your pets to your corvette and I’ll send you through when the Crucible resets in a few minutes.”
There was a rumble through the Crucible and a thorn broke off from the holo. Even if they reattached the spike immediately, the gate would be useless for hours—or even days—as it repaired itself.
“What?” Shannon kicked the pile of ash that was Masha and a blinking detonator tumbled out of a pocket. Her face contorted in anger, then went placid.
“Well played. Well played indeed.”
Chapter 21
Ely knew nothing but static and a white emptiness that had neither feel nor shape. He emerged from the wormhole over a dusty red world with dark blotches of small oceans. Pinpricks of light lit up the night side and around low orbit.
“Did we make it?” Ely twisted around and saw the Crucible gate behind him. The basalt thorns cracked and crumbled as they shifted against each other. “That looks bad. Is that bad? Wait, where are we?”
+I’m not pinging active sensors until—look alive!+
A crescent-winged ship with a diamond-shaped fuselage zoomed past him. Ely rolled out of reflex and the planet corkscrewed beneath him.
“Was that—was that friendly?” The jet pack vibrated against him as tiny jets of electromagnetic force stabilized him.
+Uhh…I’m not sure. Did it have a Crusader cross on the hull? I remember the Ibarrans liked those.+
“Wait, you’re not part of the Crusade?”
+Terran Armor Corps. Death before dismount.+
“What does that mean…I think it’s coming back.” Ely’s targeting systems locked on to the fighter as it pulled up and flipped over into an Immelmann turn. The wire diagram of his suit pulsed on one forearm, and in a field next to the suit, a rifle diagram blinked red. The suit was unarmed.
+If that’s a hostile, our options are limited.+
A pair of points on the ship glowed red, and the ghost activated the jet pack. Ely surged forward. Bolts streaked past where Ely was a moment ago, and the evidently hostile fighter shot by. It banked around for another attack run.
“Can we outrun it?”
+Ha ha ha. No. There’s a debris field at thirty mark twelve. Head for that and I’ll handle propulsion.+
“Ugh…” The jet pack slammed him to one side as more bolts barely missed him. A target icon appeared over a jagged spot against the planet’s surface and Ely reached for it. The pack accelerated him forward. The ghost jinked him up and down, and side to side as the enemy fighter closed, still firing.
The sudden maneuvers slammed Ely’s hands and feet against the inside of the cocoon. “Think I’m going to puke. Can I even do that?”
+Shut up. This is better than eating one of those bolts. Trust me.+
Ely closed on the destroyed ship, the hull once white but now darkened by flame and damage. A Terran Navy destroyer, he thought, but the paint and the engine configuration were different.
+Orient your feet to the ship and hold on.+
“To what?” Ely kicked his boots forward and the jet pack fired, decelerating him so fast, blood drained from his head. His feet felt like they were swelling.
He hit the ship so hard, his feet dented the armored hull and one leg shot out from under him. His chest bounced off the hull and he managed to grip the edge of a gap in the plating and stop from floating off into space.
The fighter unleashed a torrent of bolts that stitched a line down the ship, leading straight at Ely. He pulled himself across a wide wound in the destroyer and his jet pack boosted him with a quick burst. Ely grabbed a bent section of the ship’s outer frame and stopped. He mag-locked his boots to the hull and ducked as the fighter roared overhead.
+You’re starting to get the hang of this.+
“It’s like…it’s like I am the Armor.”
+So close.+
The fighter flipped its aft over and the engines flared, coming straight back at Ely.
“I’m getting sick of this guy.” Ely tore a hunk of the frame off and readied it like a spear. Targeting systems locked on the enemy and he hurled the yard-long piece into the void. It flipped end over end and struck the fighter just behind the cockpit. The ship angled down as the engines accelerated it forward and straight into the dead destroyer.
The fighter broke apart, blue plasma from the engines smearing into a cloud and vanishing like fog in strong sunlight. Bits skittered by Ely, who looked at his metal hands, then to where the foe met its end.
“Was that me or you?”
+You are the will. I’m fine-tuning. Now what are we going to do about the others?+
Threat icons appeared to one side of Ely’s HUD. He peered around and four more of the crescent-winged fighters were coming right for him. Missiles loosed from the fighters and converged toward him.
Ely made for the rent in the destroyer, but the missiles were closing far too fast. He wasn’t going to make it.
He went prone and held on to the ship for dear life. The missiles suddenly arced straight up and raced toward blinking points overhead. The missiles exploded into brief sunbursts and stillness returned to the void.
It lasted for a heartbeat, then tight lines of blue bolts tore just over the ship toward the enemy fighters. New fighters with forward-swept wings soared past Ely and engaged the enemy. There was a brief dogfight as the new arrivals slashed through the enemy formation, blowing up one in the tilt. The swept-wing fighters dropped small canisters in their wake, which unleashed small, short-range missiles that took out the rest of the threats.
Footage from Ely’s optics played back, and one of the new ships had a red Crusader cross on its black wing.
+That’s them,+ the ghost said. +The Ibarra Crusade. Never thought I’d be so happy to see Shrike fighters.+
A Shrike stopped over Ely and flipped over. Ely looked up at the pilot looking down at him. He was in a battered helmet, and air hoses and cables attached to the sides and into the ejection seat. A direct IR comm channel opened.
“What the hell are you doing here?” the pilot asked.
Ely gave a brief wave. “Uhh…hi? I’m Ely Hale and I’m supposed to—”
“By the Iron Heart, are you a kid? In Armor?” The pilot put a hand to his face. “Wait, did you say ‘Hale’?”
“Of the Terra Nova Hales. I’ve got something for Stacey Ibarra.” He tapped the back of his helm.
“Right.” The pilot nodded. “You’re in a red sector out here. I’m sending you coordinates to a spot dirtside. Get there fast because the front’s—shit.”
The Shrike flew away with a green streak of plasma from the engines.
+Got the spot.+
“Why’d he—oh, that’s why.” Ely crouched as a gray Geist pyramid ship materialized in the distance. The edges lit up with silver and the lower poi
nt swung toward the destroyer. “Ghost? Ghost, what’s happening?”
+Move. Move!+
Energy sliced down the pyramid’s sides and joined at the tip. A solid beam lashed out and struck the destroyer, slicing it in half and blowing it to pieces. Ely went flying off, his boots still locked to the length of hull ejected by the explosion. Debris smacked against his suit and his jet pack tugged away from him.
The prow of the ship, burning with a silver flame, hurtled at him.
Ely unlocked his hold and jumped away. The jet pack came to life and sent him spiraling at the planet as one of the main thrusters malfunctioned.
“Ghost!” Ely thumped against the inside of his cocoon and tried to brace himself against the sides, but his hands kept slipping off, thanks to the thick liquid. “Ghost, do something!”
+I’d eject it, but we need to land in one piece!+
The malfunctioning thruster cut off and Ely’s descent turned into a wide circle toward the planet. The jet pack deactivated as Ely felt the tug of atmosphere against his suit.
He made out thin clouds and a meandering river below, the dark of night not far from a single point that appeared on his HUD. He focused on it and his optics magnified a massive city that ran along one bank.
Air glowed red around Ely as the descent continued.
“Ghost, does this thing have a heat shield?”
+Your jet pack does. Need you to orient the pack dirtside and—+
Ely rolled and lost control, spinning like a loose wheel going downhill.
+Killing me here.+
The jet pack shuddered with micro pulses and the world stopped spinning. Ely looked “up” at his boots, which were alive with sputtering flames. The jet pack pulsed and a half shell of electromagnetic force formed around him, dissipating the heat of reentry.
+Don’t move until I tell you. Now that we’ve got a moment, why the hell did the Crusade send you—a kid with no training and no clue—to synch with me? How old are you?+
“Seventeen by bio, I think. Maybe eighteen? Have we passed July yet? Do you think I asked for this? I was in Terra Nova with my family, minding our own business, when we got put in the middle of a war and it ended with me hurt and carrying two parts of a Qa’Resh probe in my skull. Then I wake up in Phoenix and there are evil Dotari and weird clone ladies and—and Hoffman put me in this suit so I could get away from Earth, but if I burn to a crisp right now, it’s all for nothing, huh? Now how about you tell me who or what you are?”