“Do we have visual outside?” I asked.
“Not much, my lord,” one of Pallino’s men answered. “Hull’s torn up pretty bad, a lot of the sensor clusters are gone, and most of hull defense. We’ve got around a dozen turrets though with optics still intact. But that’s it.”
“Patch those through.” Frustrated, I removed my helmet, the better to see the video feeds.
They did, and a dozen more panels blossomed on my display, showing dark windows from various points on the outer hull. But the turrets had limited angles of fire and limited scope. Two were pointed uselessly up toward the arched ceiling. I chewed over the problem a moment, then toggled through my terminal to the proper channel. “Udax, post three of your men on the hull. We need eyes out there.”
The Irchtani centurion obeyed, and I toggled again, broadcasting to every man and Irchtani on the Cielcin vessel. “This is Hadrian Marlowe. All units not currently engaged in disabling the enemy warp drive will converge on the central hold. Repeat. All units not currently engaged in disabling the enemy warp drive will converge on the central hold.” Lights on my terminal’s holography plate indicated that I was heard and understood.
“Incoming!” a high, tremulous voice said. One of Udax’s scouts. Pallino’s men patched the auxilium’s helmet cam through to the bank before me, and I watched through his eyes. The scout had climbed up onto the hull in the dark of the hold, and through the suit’s infrared cameras we both could see distant red shapes hurrying forward on either side of the Merciless where it hung like an egg sac in the center of the hold.
“Right on cue . . .” I murmured, pressing one hand against the wall for support, imagining I could feel the drumbeat of their clawed boots as they drew nearer.
On infrared and at this distance, they looked like a slow procession of candle bearers in the dark, red and small and strangely forlorn. And the white sparks that flew alongside them—those were their nahute, hunting and hungry. I prayed they would not find the scouts where they lurked above.
“There must be hundreds of them.” Pallino had moved to stand beside me. He still wore his helmet, and so I couldn’t see his uplifted patrician face, but I sensed the haggard melancholy in him, lurking beneath the professional resolve. I felt it, too.
“They’re within range,” I said, referring to the ship’s hull defense systems. “Fire at will.”
Pallino punched his chest in salute, then turned, shoulder straps bouncing. “You heard the man, you dogs! Fire!”
Like most Imperial starships, the Merciless had dozens of turrets and gun emplacements on its outer hull designed to repel boarding craft. A last line of defense should the aquilarii fail. We had no aquilarii, and too few men aboard. Standing there, I’d a sudden memory of how we’d been trapped aboard the Schiavona in the Demiurge’s mighty hold. We’d not been able to use the guns then for fear of damaging Kharn’s vessel.
We had no such fear of damaging the Cielcin ship.
The report of distant gunfire groaned through the metal superstructure of the ship like the crack of fireworks at Summerfair. I saw the lightning-flash of muzzle fire though the scout’s helmet cams and clenched my teeth. The oncoming lines of Cielcin scattered, blown apart by the gunfire. Dozens died, cut down by a storm of bullets.
“We can’t keep this up forever,” Pallino said. “They didn’t have much ammunition left. Must have burned through most of it when they were taken.”
I turned away from the holographs and joined Pallino overlooking the tac console. Eight of his men sat there, each manning the controls for two or three turrets. I could see the round counters. 5342. 4893. 5219. 2485. And so on.
It looked like a lot.
It wasn’t.
They fired. The numbers plunged. 4826. 4211. 4755. 2049 . . .
“Tell those bird boys to blood up,” one of the men said. “They’re still coming.”
“Cade to Marlowe! Cade to Marlowe!” The call came through the conduction patch behind my ear.
“Say on.”
“I don’t know what you did, sir, but half their reinforcements cleared out.”
I felt my heart leap in my chest. “You’d best act fast, then. I don’t know how long our luck will hold.” Gunfire filled the silence between words. I watched the Cielcin still swarming on the holograph. Where had they all been until now? Lurking in their own vents? Why hadn’t they put up a fight? Why hadn’t that demon followed us into the hold? Surely it could have come through the larger door that had been closed to us or found another? I was missing something.
At a shout from behind me, I glanced back. One of the turret feeds had gone dead.
“Grenade,” the operator said, and stood from his console to join the men guarding the approach to the bridge. I took stock of the round counters again. 4113. 3798. 4233. 1614 . . .
“We’re running dry fast.”
“These are high-caliber rounds,” Pallino snarled. “I don’t know how the bastards are holding up so well.”
“They’re not shielded, are they?” I asked.
Pallino turned his faceless countenance on me. I could almost feel the pressure of his eyes through the ivory mask. “You don’t really think that’s possible, do you?”
“I don’t know, that’s why I’m asking. You saw the Arae demon same as me. If they bought that from the Extrasolarians, surely they might have bought body shields.” Even if they had, it seemed from the cameras that they hadn’t bought enough for all of them. I tramped back toward the holography booth, watched through the Irchtani scout’s eyes for the telltale flicker and shine of shields in the darkness outside.
There!
I let out a wordless hiss of anger. Our enemies had banded together, indeed. Just as Kharn Sagara had dealt with the Cielcin, other elements among the Extras had aligned with the xenobites against us, rebelling against the Empire and the humanity it fought for. And for what? Politics? Not even politics. Profit.
“They’re coming up the gangway!” Udax’s voice rang in my ear.
“Don’t let them board!” I shouted. “Fire at will!”
The Irchtani had taken up positions in the halls just inside the cut-open airlocks, hunkering in side doors and behind the odd strut or pillar that lined the edges of the access corridors, guns raised. Fighting as they were in vacuum, their plasma rifles drew on ammo packs, their rounds the pure pink of hydrogen plasma. Shielded though they were, the superheated plasma was hot enough to cook the first ranks of the Pale in their armor. But the Cielcin kept coming, throwing themselves with suicidal abandon upon the Irchtani defenders.
Pallino spoke from my shoulder once again. “They’ll be eaten alive if they stay there. We weren’t counting on shields.” His affable manner was all gone. The Pallino I knew from the fighting pits with his easy, barking laugh and homely attitude had all melted away, replaced by the soldier he must have been before I’d known him, as if his second youth had wound back the clock for true. “If they move to close quarters they’ll be overrun. We’re outnumbered at least a dozen to one on each of those gangways.”
“We won’t be any better off if they pull back,” I said, covering my mouth with a hand.
“We should have blown the gangways when we had a chance.”
I shook my head. “It wouldn’t have helped. In this gravity they’d just have leaped onto the hull and climbed in through the openings.” But Pallino had touched on an idea all the same. I selected the Irchtani common band on my terminal and said, “Udax, order your men to use grenades!”
The Irchtani did not hesitate. He tossed one himself over the heads of the oncoming Cielcin and down the gangway. A moment later the holograph image flashed red and white, and I heard a distant rumble through the ship and saw black-clad Cielcin hurled over the gangway rail. I allowed myself a small sound of satisfaction as the auxiliaries crowed. The Merciless shook again with small and distant
explosions, loosing dust from joints in the low ceiling, and I watched similar reddish flashes on the holograph panels.
But the Cielcin kept coming. Swarms of their nahute flew in over the attackers’ heads. Some homed in on the Irchtani defenders, rebounded off their shields. Udax and his men opened fire, but for every two they roasted with their plasma burners one slipped past, went hunting up the corridors looking for easier meat.
“They’ll be at those doors in a minute,” I said, meaning the doors of the bridge where our human defenders waited. Our last line of defense.
Pallino made a short gesture with one hand. “Our lads can handle a couple drones.”
“Aye,” I said, “but we’re running out of room fast.”
No sooner had I said this than I heard the cough of plasma fire from the hall outside and the muffled shout of an officer through the walls. They’d gotten one. On the holographs, I saw one of the Irchtani defenders gored by a Cielcin drone, the flying serpent’s metal fangs boring deep. His pointed helm scored the wall as he fell writhing, and his screeching was a horror to witness. To my astonishment one of the other Irchtani broke off his assault a moment, clamped his fellow down with a clawed foot, and fired twice with his plasma burner. He shot his own brother through the head first to end his suffering and shot again through his chest, destroying the steel serpent where it burrowed, thus avenging his fallen companion.
“Black Earth!” Pallino swore.
I felt it, too, and stood a little straighter. “Noyn jitat,” I said softly. Our xenobite had not so much as hesitated, and even as I watched it turned back to the fighting and threw one of its grenades.
But the Cielcin kept coming. My knuckles were doubtless white beneath their gloves where I clutched the rail. “They’re not even slowing down,” I said.
Then a message came over the officer’s channel to mine and Pallino’s comm. “C3 to Chiliarch, we are closing in on your location from the starboard side.”
“About bloody time,” Pallino grumbled, then turned his head to answer. “Doran! How many men have you got?”
“Nearly the whole century, sir,” replied Doran, the third centurion. “Oro’s right behind.”
I felt as though a heavy yoke were lifted from my shoulders when I heard that. We had nearly two hundred men coming, more than enough to break the Cielcin from the rear. I held one hand to my face, watching the screens before me. The Merciless shook again, though if it was from the Irchtani grenades or from the Tamerlane shelling the far end of that massive vessel it was impossible to tell. I checked the tac console for the ammo count on the hull defense guns.
2746. 2158. 3160. 0567 . . .
I was running through a mental checklist, trying to cover all my corners. The sound of plasma fire from the hall outside distracted me, and glancing at the screens I saw another pair of nahute fall to splinters. Our door guard was holding at least. Siran stood there with perhaps twenty men perfectly composed. If it came to it I would go and join her. If the Cielcin really were shielded as it seemed, my sword would be indispensable in the final defense of our lives. Doran and Oro could not come fast enough. Our Irchtani scouts were still watching from the hull. They hadn’t moved, were keeping eyes on all approaches, and through those eyes I saw the horde: black-clad, white-crowned, with swords like shards of bone flashing in the gloom and glare of gunfire. Each flash revealed them closer, tighter.
“Udax! Blow the gangways if you can,” I said. “Leave the rear one open each side. See if that bottlenecks them.” The rear airlocks would put the Cielcin as far from the bridge as possible, give us more time and ship to work with. “Prepare to fall back! Seal the inner airlocks in case any of them try to climb in.”
“Are you sure?” the Irchtani centurion asked.
“Damn your eyes!” I did not have time for the young xenobite’s rebellious streak. “Those are your orders, soldier!”
As I spoke a trio of Cielcin burst onto the ship from the gangway, and Udax charged forward, slammed the muzzle of his plasma burner against the chest of one and fired. It sailed backward, body crashing into its approaching fellows even as Udax’s brethren advanced with bayonets.
Cade’s voice crackled over the line. “Marlowe, we’re through! We’re trying to work out how to vent the AM reservoir, but they’ve closed us in.”
“Can you hold?”
The centurion’s reply was a moment coming. “I . . . think so, lordship. My lads have welded the doors behind us. But there’s something with them. Something big. Reckon it might be that demon that came for your lot. They must have figured out what we’re up to.”
Demons above and below . . . I thought. There was a real chance—a very real chance—that Cade and his men would never leave that fuel control room. “How many are outside?”
“I don’t know, sir,” Cade answered. “Close to a hundred when we won through. Probably more now.” The line went quiet a moment. “Do you think it’s that demon? The same one?”
I did not say what I was thinking. That I hoped it was, because if it wasn’t that meant there were more than one of the creatures. There had been more than a dozen tanks in the research base on Arae. The seeds of a new army. A new kind of soldier.
“I hope not,” I said. “But do what you have to do. Keep me apprised.”
“Aye, sir.”
Pallino was watching me as I broke off the call. He’d heard it all on the officer’s band, and gave a little nod. “We’re not much better off here.”
I gave a little shrug. “We have Oro and Doran on the way, at least.” I check the round counters on the tactical displays again. 2165. 1583. 2586. 0037 . . . I sucked in a deep breath. “But you’re right.”
“Should we wave the Tamerlane for backup?” Pallino asked. “Call in another cohort?”
I watched the Irchtani retreating down the halls. They’d blown four of the six gangways and were hurrying toward the inner airlocks. The answer was yes, but . . . “Valka, what’s your situation aboard?”
She replied almost instantly, and the sound of her bright voice was a relief in that dark place. “Still holding. A few of their ships got through, but they’ve been isolated.”
“Good. Good . . . we need reinforcements. Can Crim spare the men?” As security chief, Crim would be leading the defensive action within the Tamerlane itself. “Half a cohort at least?”
“I’ll find out.”
A brief silence floated in after her words, and beneath its thumb I watched the monitors and saw it: black-armored and pale-faced, a white sword in one hand, a dangling nahute in another. The first Cielcin fighter had gotten aboard the Merciless through one of the abandoned airlocks. More of its fellows followed, scuttling through the open hole like spiders. Only a few. Perhaps my strategy had worked, perhaps the rest had diverted to the other airlocks.
Cade’s voice broke again over the line. “My lord, they’re breaking through! We’re running out of time!”
I swore, rounded impotently where I stood, looking for Cade’s view on the monitors. Only too late I remembered that I did not have it; I had only the Merciless’s internal cameras and a few of the nearby soldiers’ personal views. “Is there anything you can do?”
The centurion was a moment replying, and when his voice came it was hesitant. Strained. “If we blow the coolant tanks on fuel containment it might force them to vent the AM supply, but we’re trapped in here with no back door.”
An iron lump formed in my throat. There was little difference between a Cielcin warp drive and one of our own, in principle. They both relied on massive antimatter reservoirs to generate the space-folding effect required for faster-than-light travel, both required enormous tanks of supercooled liquid helium to power the electromagnets that kept the volatile fuel suspended in vacuum and safe. If they blew the tanks—and that was assuming the Cielcin had no backups, which they surely did—that supercooled gas would fl
ood the ship around it. If the blast didn’t kill Cade and his men, the freeze certainly would.
I did not ask if they could escape. Cade had already ruled that out, and I would not insult him by asking. “They must have emergency backups,” I said. Every one of our ships had banks of graphene batteries for just such emergencies. What the Cielcin might use, I had no idea.
“I’m not sure, lord,” Cade said. “Could try and bypass it completely. Breach fuel containment. The whole reservoir’s built to drop out through the bottom of the ship if there’s damage to the Dewar bottle. It could work . . .” His voice trailed off, leaving the rest of his thought unsaid: Or it could blow the entire ship out of the sky.
Valka’s voice chimed in, “Hadrian, if they blow the coolant tank in there, ’twill damage the Dewar bottle anyway, breach fuel containment.” Valka had been a ship’s captain once, and it had been Valka who’d thought of using the Schiavona’s own fuel quench to fight the Cielcin aboard the Demiurge.
A strange mixture of emotions warred in me. Relief, because if what Valka said was true, Cade and his men had no cause to sacrifice themselves. Frustration, because if what Valka said was true, there was nothing Cade or anyone could do to compromise the Cielcin fuel supply. Fury, because whatever happened, my men had gone between the hammer and the anvil to no purpose. If only we’d had more time. Presently I spoke. “Are you sure?”
“Of course I’m sure,” Valka snapped. “I’ve done nothing but pore over Cielcin artifacts and writing for the last seventy years. I know how those ships work. This is why you should have brought me!” I was glad her words came over our private line. It would not have done for Cade or the others to hear her words, though I supposed Lorian and anyone on the bridge might have done.
I felt a knot form in the pit of my stomach, and after a moment swallowed the iron lump in my throat. “I know. I know,” I said. “So there’s nothing Cade can do?”
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