by Richard Fox
Lawrence rolled to a stop next to Shannon, bleeding from a gash across his forehead and his nose. Shannon fought to keep her anger in check. She’d found a place for more enhanced interrogation methods during her long career in espionage, but never outright sadism.
“Put him with the rest of the crew,” Fournier said. “Now, where’s our camera man?”
****
The tanks sent a chill down Shannon’s spine. Each held a procedural human being floating in clear liquid, tubes and wires running from their heads and mouths into buzzing machinery at the top of the tank. Thick cables ran from each tank into a massive computer bank attached to the ceiling.
The procedurals were of differing races. Most looked to be in their twenties and thirties, but a few tanks on the edges held men and women that looked like they were on the edge of elderly, while others were barely teenagers.
What the hell is Ibarra doing with them? Shannon asked herself.
She turned her attention back to the large case that two men had lugged into the tank room for her. She unsnapped the latches and flipped the lid over. The bomb was crude by her standards, blocks of mining explosives attached to a detonator with wires. It had to be obvious—those were her orders from Fournier—make it so no one doubts what it is.
What wasn’t obvious were the blocks of denethrite beneath the more mundane explosives. The Ibarra Corporation used denethrite charges to crack asteroids. They were the second-most explosive material mankind possessed, after nuclear weapons. Fournier asked her to build a bomb that would destroy the tanks; Ibarra told her the bomb must take out the entire ship.
“Activate it,” Fournier said. Shannon keyed in a five-digit code that brought the detonator to life; she picked up a hand trigger and gave it to Fournier.
“Flip the cover and press the button three times,” she said. “Hold the last press. Range is good beyond five kilometers.”
Fournier stuffed the trigger into his jacket and tapped his forearm screen.
“Jenkins, break anchor. Take us to the Toth ship as fast as this thing will go. Dump the Mule and the life pods,” Fournier said.
“Sir, wait…” Shannon felt panic grip her heart. This wasn’t the plan. “What’re you doing?”
“Showing Ibarra and the Toth our resolve,” Fournier said.
The Lehi shook beneath Shannon’s feet as the engines powered up. The people in the tanks swayed back and forth, tugging against the tubes and wires attached to their skulls.
“Give me a tight-band IR transmission to Titan,” Fournier said. “Let’s get to the Toth ship without any further issues.”
The cameraman touched his earpiece then counted down from five with his fingers.
“My name is Cebile Fournier. True-born forces have seized the Lehi, the ship where Ibarra and his traitors manufacture their abominations. Their proccies. We are taking this ship, Ibarra’s only source of these things, to the Toth. We will deliver the technology to the aliens to bargain for our planet’s safety and to rid humanity of the cancer spreading from this ship.”
Fournier stepped to the side and held a hand toward the bomb.
“Any attempt to stop us and we will detonate this device. The production tubes and the computer used to create the proccie minds are our only bargaining chip with the Toth. Don’t force me to destroy it.” He nodded slightly and the camera turned away.
“It’s sent,” the cameraman said.
“Good.” Fournier turned to Shannon. “Round up the prisoners and bring them to the cargo bay. I’ll cut another video for the Toth. Tell them we come in peace and bearing gifts. We can deactivate the device once we’re beyond Ibarra’s reach.”
You keep thinking that, Shannon thought.
“Let me check over the device first,” she said. “Make sure Ibarra and his probe aren’t trying to tamper with it.” She waited until Fournier and his hangers-on left the gestation room.
Shannon cracked her tooth.
“I saw,” Ibarra said. “Make this fast. You’re moving out of range.”
“This has gone too far, Marc. Way too far. Let me put an end to this. All I have to do is free a few prisoners and kill the true born on the bridge,” Shannon whispered.
“You have to let this play out, darling. There’s a way out coming—just wait for it. Do you trust me?”
“You’ve asked me that question for fifty years. Of course I do.”
“Then stay with it. And no matter what happens, don’t let the Toth get ahold of that ship,” Ibarra said. “Want you—” static overrode his voice “Eric…and sister to me. Don’t—” There was a slick click against her eardrum as the connection ended.
Shannon opened a hidden compartment beneath the bomb and fished out another remote detonator. She slid it into a pocket inside her jacket.
“You’ve never let me down before, Marc,” she muttered. “Sure hope this plan of yours is a doozey.”
****
Lieutenant Jared Hale jumped off the back of a truck onto a dusty road. Doughboys followed his lead, rocking the drone vehicle on its axle with their bulk. The doughboys formed into even ranks on the road shoulder, without a word shared between them. They stood at a modified parade rest, one hand on the small of their back, the other holding a shovel or pick axe.
Bulldozers in the distance crushed through thick vegetation. Robot arms gathered the fallen trees and plants and fed them into industrial processors, turning them into planks of wood or packed blocks of cellulose. All around Jared and his charges, automated machines destroyed a once pristine nature preserve.
Even with the efficiency of twenty-first-century construction techniques, they were moving far too slowly.
Jared raised his forearm screen in front of his face, looked “through” his arm and saw the red overlay where his detail was supposed to be working.
“Indigo,” Jared said, pointing to small red flags in a line through disturbed earth. “Dig a trench. Same depth and width as we did in the last place, you remember?”
“Sir, yes, sir,” The doughboy snapped his oversized shovel into his hands like it was a rifle and jogged toward the flags. The rest of the doughboys followed after him. A truck rumbled past as Jared sent an update to Loa headquarters. The duracrete layers would arrive in two hours, and he’d get an earful from Major Robbins if he was behind schedule.
Mauna Loa, the tallest volcano on Earth, rose through the clouds, a column of steam snaking up from the summit. The R&R center spread from the base of the mountain—where massive steel doors sealed off whatever the Ibarra Corporation had buried within—toward the surrounding Pacific. The center had rows of prefabricated buildings with an attached landing pad boasting twelve new Eagle fighters from the Breitenfeld. He made a mental note to seek out Durand and get more from her about what the Breitenfeld and his brother had been up to these past months.
He might get an hour’s reprieve from the never-ending construction assignments once the trench lines around Loa were complete. He thought the doughboy reassignment to Hawaii would mean more field time with them, not manual labor.
“Jared!” another lieutenant named Douglas called to him from the back of a truck. The young officer jumped off and waved. “You believe this? I just relocated all the Dotok from the Milolli camp to the bunkers and now my bubbas and I are digging ditches out here with you.”
“They don’t complain,” Jared said, nodding his chin at the newly arrived truck.
“I sure as hell will,” Douglas said to Jared. The army officer shouted instructions to the doughboys in the back of the truck and put his hands on his hips. “I thought command shipped us out here to do field tests on the doughboys, see if they can fight. Don’t tell me Ibarra went through all the trouble of building them just to turn them into glorified field hands.”
“Weren’t you here for R&R awhile back?” Jared asked.
“Yeah, just slept a lot and went to the beach,” Douglas said with a shrug. “Nice break from space. Why?”
“Seem o
dd to you that we’re going all out to harden an R&R spot from the Toth?”
“Could you imagine the blow to morale if we lost our only vacation spot?” Douglas chuckled. “But ours is not to reason why. Ours is to do or die. Maybe Robbins—hey! Agate 229! Don’t throw dirt on Onyx 37!” Douglas shook his head at Jared. “And I thought eleven bang-bangs, regular army infantry, were a bunch of knuckle draggers.”
A truck’s breaks squeaked as it stopped next to the work area. A robot arm dropped pallets of armored plates on the side of the road.
Jared shook his head. This was going to be a long day.
CHAPTER 15
“To the Toth, we come in peace, and we come bearing gifts,” Fournier’s broadcast cut to video of a camera going from empty escape-pod bay to empty escape-pod bay.
“Sir, the Lehi will be within range of our gauss emplacements in minutes,” Utrecht said. “It’s a civilian ship. One hit from the rail guns will turn them into dust, but our point-defense guns could put a couple holes in them. Take out their engines.”
The Breitenfeld anchored a few dozen kilometers away from the Crucible, far from the rest of Eighth Fleet in orbit around Luna, and not far from the course the Lehi was on to the Toth battleship.
Valdar rubbed his thumb against his fingers, debating. Disabling the Lehi would be easy, but doing so would destroy the procedural lines and a fight with the Toth would be assured. If he did nothing, the Toth might leave the system with the proccies and never darken Earth’s doorstep again. If he ordered the ship destroyed, with Fournier on it, he could cover up his involvement with the man and his group.
A few days ago, this decision would have been simple. Now, with the Toth betrayal on Europa and his ship scarred by battle, he couldn’t make up his mind.
“Sir? What should I do?” Utrecht asked.
Valdar slammed a fist against his armrest.
“Guns, I want you to—”
“Captain, priority message from Admiral Makarov,” Erdahl said. “She’s ordering us to stand down.”
Saving her own kind, Valdar thought.
“You heard her,” Valdar said. “Orient our gauss and rail emplacements away from the Lehi. Don’t want anyone getting nervous and doing something stupid.”
“Toth vessel is reducing speed and vectoring away from Earth,” Ericsson said. “Naga and the Lehi are on an intercept course.”
“Looks like the Toth are interested in Fournier’s offer,” Valdar said.
The Lehi skirted through the Breitenfeld’s range.
Obeying Makarov’s order was the right thing to do, the only thing to do without an apparent mutiny, but deep inside his heart he felt like he’d make a terrible mistake.
****
Shannon stood in the cargo bay with Fournier and the leaders of the assault. Dozens of the Lehi’s crew and workers were on their knees at the edge of the cargo bay, hands bound behind their backs and hoods over their heads. Some whimpered in fear; others begged their captors, pleading that they were “just following orders” or that Ibarra somehow forced them to work the proccie lines. Shannon didn’t hate them as their loyalty wavered; denouncing Ibarra might save them. Silent stoicism offered them no chance of living to see another day.
The doughboys were still in the cargo bay, now pressed into a corner and under command of a single armed true born. Even without their weapons, the hulking constructs looked formidable.
The view of the star-studded void lurched to the side.
“Toth tractor beam has us,” came over the loudspeakers.
One of the traitor Marines activated his gauss carbine.
“No need for that,” Fournier said. “Put your weapons away, all of them. We will welcome the Toth aboard, show our good faith.”
Shannon tugged at her jacket and covered the pistol on her hip.
The star field vanished as the Lehi entered the uneven hull of the Naga, and blood-colored shoals came down around the ship like a curtain. Panicked whispers darted around the cargo bay as the true born grasped just how big the Naga had to be if it could fit a cargo ship like the Lehi inside it.
“Maybe this wasn’t a good idea,” someone said.
Fournier snapped his head to the side, searching for the offender.
Light grew beyond the upper edge of the open cargo bay. An open section of the Toth hull slid into view, and Shannon saw clawed feet milling around as the Lehi rose higher. Toth warriors and menials, all armed with weapons that looked like metallic vines twisted into the shape of rifles, let loose sibilant warnings as the two open bays came level with each other.
Shannon’s heart leapt into her throat as she came face-to-face with the Toth. The warriors were almost half again as tall as her, a feral intelligence gleaming from their eyes as they looked over the humans. All of them took quick breaths through their snouts, trying to get the human’s scent. Their three pairs of limbs looked nearly identical to each other, as if the rear and mid-arms could carry a weapon as easily as the upper arms. Metallic bolts and screws attached skull caps to the warriors, and wires ran directly into flattened ears and ridged bones around deep-set eyes.
The four armed menials scurried around the Toth deck, ducking between the warrior’s legs and scuttling over their hindquarters without notice from the larger species.
The Lehi jerked to a halt, nearly flush with the Toth cargo bay.
“Weapons,” a warrior croaked, “surrender or die.”
“We will comply,” Fournier said loudly, placing his hands over his head. The rest of the true born followed suit and looked up at a camera blister on the ceiling. The force field on the Lehi dissipated.
Toth menials scuttled aboard, their claws scraping against the deck. A menial made straight for Shannon. She stepped back, her atavistic fear of reptiles and snakes overwhelming her composure. The menial snapped its jaws at her and plucked the pistol away.
“Enemy?” a low voice said from behind her. She turned around and saw a doughboy with his fists balled in front of his chest.
“No! Shut up, you idiot.” The minder took a truncheon from his belt and rapped the doughboy across the knuckle. The doughboy growled, then lowered his hands.
Menials, their arms loaded with human weapons, walked back to the Naga on their hind legs. A smaller menial with smoother scales grabbed the edge of a captive’s hood and lifted it up, giving the woman under the hood a face-to-face look at the creature. She cried out in horror.
The menial gave off a tss-tss-tss sound like laughter. It never saw the warrior that stomped on it from behind, crushing its spine with an audible pop. The warrior grasped the menial with the same limb that crushed it. The small creature’s arms flailed wildly, its legs hanging limply as the warrior held it over the gap between the two ships and let it go.
The menial bounced between the two hulls like a pinball as it fell away.
Ibarra, I could really use that exit right about now, she thought.
A warrior with gold pins embedded into its chest scales stomped against the deck twice.
“Thoth na Stix!”
The menials faced the large doors leading into the Toth cargo bay and prostrated themselves.
The doors opened, and an elite with crystalline plates arrayed against its tank like armor strode into the cargo bay. Warriors averted their gaze and cleared a path from the elite to the edge of the cargo bay.
As it strode toward Shannon, the disembodied nervous system in a gilded tank filled her with dread. Shannon suddenly wished Ibarra had told her about the probe decades ago so that she could have told him to get rid of it so that humanity might never have had to come face-to-face with monsters like this.
“Which of you is Fournier?” the elite asked, its voice frightfully perfect.
“I am.” Fournier raised a hand from behind his head. “And who do I have the honor of addressing?”
“Stix of Tellani Corporation,” the elite said.
“You’re not the same Toth we’ve seen before,” Fournier said. He
lowered his hands to his side. “I hope we can reach an agreement with you.”
Stix floated in his tank, nerves loose and dangling.
“What is the meaning of this?” a claw arm pointed at the kneeling prisoners.
“Most are procedurals and yours to take,” Fournier said. He unhooded one man, Lawrence. The administrator tucked his chin against his chest, refusing to look at the elite. “This one is involved with the production. He will answer your questions.”
“Everything for their production is on this ship?” Stix asked.
“And nowhere else,” Fournier said.
Stix’s feeder arm snaked out of the housing beneath his tank, its tip caked in red blood. When the spike tip popped open, Shannon backed away, her eyes glued to the writhing dendrites.
The arm rose into the air and stabbed into the skull of a hooded prisoner. Her shrill screams ended within seconds. The corpse slid from the tendrils that had invaded her skull and fell to the floor.
“Yes…” Stix said. “Yes, these are exquisite. A false mind in a weed body. Their taste is different but sublime.” Stix bobbed up and down in the tank, the light within darkening to a deep purple.
“These are the only ones that know how to operate the equipment. I’m sure they can have more for you in a few—”
The feeder arm slammed into Lawrence’s skull and pulled him into the air. He twisted around, his eyes rolling back in their sockets, mouth agape. His hands quivered madly before his entire body went slack.
Stix tossed the corpse aside like it was a piece of garbage.
“Stix,” Fournier raised his hands in front of him and tried to back away, “pace yourself. There are plenty more where they came from.”
“Ha-wai-eee,” Stix said. A claw arm clamped down on Fournier’s shoulder and pulled him toward Stix. “What of the facility on Hawaii? There are more tubes there. Many, many tubes.”