by Joshua James
“This is the X point,” said Orton, who was standing right behind him.
For a second, Lucky wondered how Orton was seeing through his mind’s eye.
Then he realized he was pointing at the image in the ship’s eye, which was still transferring an image from directly in front of the ship.
“This is the hollowed-out space that our spy described,” he said excitedly, turning to Vlad.
Lucky looked between them. “You recognize this place?”
Vlad nodded cautiously. “Perhaps. It does fit the description.”
“Of what?”
“Of their hidden testing location. The reason we couldn’t see what they were up to,” she said. “This is their skunkworks, where they do all their alien outfitting.”
But now it was Orton shaking his head. “But this can’t be it.”
“You just said it was,” Dawson said.
“But if that really is where we are, then we would have to be—”
“Inside the Union home system,” Vlad finished.
Lucky whipped around.
“The Union system? That’s more than three-hundred light years from the outer fringe,” said Jiang dismissively.
“Exactly right.”
Lucky echoed to Rocky, “Holy hell, the Ship wasn’t lying.”
“You thought it was?”
“I—Yeah, I guess I did. Or at least exaggerating.”
“Well, I have more interesting news for you courtesy of our friend the Ship.”
“Do tell.”
“It comes in two flavors. Bad news and worse news.”
“Color me shocked. What’s the bad news?”
“Those destroyers with the fat asses? They all have T’ket’ka in them. Each one of them.”
“You mean each one of these destroyers has one of those antimatter orbs in them, the same ones that we just watched eat a small planet?”
“The very same.”
“That’s just the bad news? What’s the worse news?”
“We’re about to get boarded.”
36
Lead On
“Can you tell the Ship to take us back through the fold?”
“You don’t think I already thought about that? They’ve anchored us already.”
Lucky should have thought about that.
This was a port, after all, so having anchoring beams would be a must. The ion beams would hold the ship in place easily from this close distance.
“Besides, I can’t reach the Ship anymore.”
“What?”
“You heard me. It went dark when the anchoring beams hit. I don’t know if that’s a coincidence or what.”
“No,” echoed Lucky. “They have a huge head start on us with this tech. I’m sure they know exactly how to use it. We have no cards here.”
Rocky switched his mind’s eye view to another locust drone, this one just off the starboard bow, so he could get a better sense of the situation right next to the alien ship.
The ship had come to rest on a large assembly that jutted out from the ore edge of the hollowed-out asteroid.
The long flat platform was more than twice as long as the alien ship and at least five times as wide. Lucky couldn’t see below, but he imaged it was solid ore, a landing platform of sorts left untouched in the excavation work.
At the far end of the platform was a colossal arch, more than twice as wide again as the alien ship. On the outside of the gate was more alien script. Lucky was struck by how much it reminded him of the access points within Happy Giant. And again, he realized it was the script itself telling him that. But as he looked at the arch, he realized what he wasn’t seeing.
He didn’t see what was on the other side. He only saw a flat wall of pitch-black nothingness. Just what he had seen before they transited the Great Corridor, as the Ship had called it.
This was the terminus of the corridor they had just passed through.
On the platform directly in front of the arches, equipment was strewn everywhere.
Scientists in white coats—always white coats!—were running around like a supernova just exploded in their collective minds, their shocked faces looking at the alien ship, pointing and yelling.
Along with artificial gravity, there must have been breathable atmosphere being pumped in.
“I think we now know why the Ship was so unimpressed with the corridor,” Rocky echoed. “It was clearly built by Union scientists using Da’hune technology.”
Lucky took a moment to consider this. The magnitude of what the Union had accomplished here was stunning. Even with access to the amazing technology he had seen in action, this was breathtaking.
He looked again at all the scientist scurrying around the platform before coming back to his senses.
Where there are eggheads in white coats, there are sure to be—
“Here come those soldiers,” said Rocky.
Lucky saw them too, now, Union soldiers pouring onto the platform from walkways that led across the connection with the ore side of the hangar.
“Lock and load, Marines,” said Jiang, beating Lucky to the punch. “We got company.”
He realized the Marines had been watching the stream of soldiers flow onto the platform from the ship’s eye.
They wore standard black Union combat gear, and Lucky had no doubt they were kitted out with the same alien technology that the Marines were already all too familiar with.
Jiang, Dawson, and Nico had their pulse rifles out. They were deploying their drones as well, what few they had left.
“On the plus side, they have eyes,” Rocky offered.
Lucky looked at Orton and Vlad. “Any ideas from the cheap seats?”
Vlad tore her eyes away from the display. “Yes, actually. We got a good look at the layout when we were in the stackshack reading the first team’s progress. There’s a small interior hangar farther forward.”
Orton was shaking his head, but Vlad ignored him.
“We’re being boarded from the bow,” Lucky said, nodding at the divisions of soldiers pouring onto the platform. “I’m not terribly keen on running into them.”
Vlad was adamant. “We can escape that way.”
“Explain,” Lucky said.
“There are more alien vessels there. Smaller, more maneuverable. I’m sure your … Rocky, will be able to communicate with them just as she has this ship.”
“Wait,” said Jiang to Lucky. “Why can’t you just have your AI turn us around right now and get out of here?”
Lucky quickly brought them up to speed on the anchoring beam and the sudden silence of the Ship.
“So, we are on our own, now?” asked Jiang.
“Seems so.”
Dawson took his turn to speak up. “Even if we do manage to get back across that fold thing, can’t they just follow us?”
Vlad shook her head.
“Don’t you see this?” she said, nodding at the ship’s eye view. She waved her arms at the scientists scrambling around the platform, gathering equipment that had scattered and blown everywhere. “They didn’t expect anything to come through that fold. I don’t believe they knew something could.”
“That’s quite an assumption,” said Jiang.
“Consider how we found it. We triangulated a signal that was using the downloaded Trojan package to control the miners on that planet.”
“So?”
“So, why would they have all this set up here to send that signal if they were actively using the fold for transport?”
“What are you saying?”
Orton spoke up now. “They controlled them using quantum entanglements,” he said. “That much we could ascertain from the signal.”
“Say again?”
“It activated entangled particles on the other side of the fold. By collapsing the superpositions, they instantaneously changed their—”
Lucky held up his hand. “I don’t need a science lesson. What is your point?”
“The point is tha
t they need incredible amounts of energy and a huge investment to do it,” said Vlad.
“If they could just go through the fold rather than transmit across it, don’t you think they would have?”
Nico spoke up. “Didn’t they do that already, though? Remember how those destroyers came out of nowhere to attack our armada.”
Vlad gave Nico a withering stare, and the kid shut up.
“They were there the whole time. We knew they were there. Why do you think we brought superior firepower?” She looked back at Lucky. “Or at least what we thought was superior.”
Lucky cocked an eyebrow but didn’t disagree. They had underestimated this whole operation from top to bottom. No way to argue that point.
“The sabotage,” Rocky echoed.
“Come again?”
“Even with the alien tech, I don’t know if the Union force we saw could overwhelm our armada. The Empire expected trouble.”
Lucky was following now.
“But someone managed to send the armada to kingdom come before the Union forces even arrived.”
If Lucky was being honest, he’d forgotten about the sabotage. It seemed impossible to believe, but they had bigger issues to deal with. “Okay, so they can’t go through the fold, but we can? They have all this alien tech here. How could they not just do what we just did?”
“Because they have alien tech that they have fused with their own tech. But we didn’t use our tech at all, did we? We used their ancient ship to go through their ancient fold.”
Lucky didn’t mention what the Ship had said about the fold. This wasn’t a Da’hune fold. This was made by Union scientists using Da’hune technology as a template.
But that seemed to support what Vlad was saying. They didn’t know what they had.
“So,” Lucky said, “we need to get to this other hangar stocked with smaller alien ships that haven’t been hit with their docking beam. Then we dive back through the fold before they have a chance to stop us, and we get the hell out of this nightmare and find someone else to give this problem to.”
Vlad nodded.
Lucky looked around at the Marines.
“Easy peasy.”
He reached down and with one arm yanked Malby into the air and slammed him over his shoulder. He felt a stimulant cocktail run through his bloodstream, upping his chemical levels. The boost of strength wasn’t much, but it made Malby feel that much lighter.
He pointed his rifle in Vlad’s face.
“Lead on.”
37
Little Giants
Jiang was on point with Cheeky on her ass, a place he clearly wanted to be.
Nico and Dawson were in back, watching everyone else’s asses.
He felt Malby shift his weight.
“Why the hell am I looking at your ass?” Malby asked.
Lucky jerked up his shoulder and shoved the big lug off backward, sending him flipping over his back.
Malby landed in a sprawling heap.
“Ouch!”
Lucky stretched his arms over his sore shoulders. “Glad you’re awake. Try and actually brace yourself next time a superior tells you to brace yourself.”
“Where the fuck are we?”
Lucky had no interest in bringing the big idiot up to speed. “We’re going on a little field trip. There will be men with guns. You should get yours out.”
“What are you—”
“What did I just say about listening to rank?”
Malby grumbled but pulled his rifle out. “Since when did you decide to act like an officer?”
Lucky flinched. That hurt.
“You are getting a little officer-ish,” noted Rocky. “And since you’re acting like you care now, you should know; they just splashed my two exterior locusts.”
That sobered Lucky up. “They are coming in,” he said. “Where are we on the drone spread?”
Malby had been out cold thirty seconds ago, but he was up to speed now. God bless their AI. “We have a partial defensive spread, but only a half-klick nose to ass.”
“That’s it?”
“That’s it. Or maybe you weren’t around for us getting our ass kicked once already today? We are at 20 percent spread.”
Jiang said, “Can we go offensive with that?”
Malby shrugged.
“We should have brought one of those stingrays with us,” said Dawson.
“Didn’t the other Marines bring battle platforms?” asked Cheeky over his shoulder.
“Your comrades did not enter the ship,” said Vlad. “They set up at the ship’s base.”
“Contacts!” yelled Malby.
“Where?” Lucky yelled, as the Marines tensed.
“Straight ahead,” he said, eyes glazed over as the tech specialist worked with his AI.
“How many?”
“A whole hell of a lot, a little less than a klick out,” he said. Then he shrugged. “I’d say five minutes if we go straight at ‘em.”
“Tighten up, and double-time it,” demanded Lucky. “Malby, draw ’em in for max cover. Keep eyes forward, though.”
The group moved off at a trot.
Lucky fell back next to Nico. “Remember what I said earlier about not being a hero?”
Nico nodded.
“Good. Don’t be a hero.”
Jiang said, “Lucky, I get your life credo and all. But some of us are here because we want to be.”
“Yeah, we all wanted to be here once,” Malby said.
Jiang shook her head. “Malby, you’re conscripted. Don’t tell me you want to be here.”
“Beats prison,” he said. Then he thought about what he was saying. “Or it used to.” He shook his head. “Anyway, don’t give me crap. You’re a conscript, too, right?”
She shook her head again. “No, my brother was, the little jackass thief. I followed him in. To keep an eye on him.”
Malby nodded in understanding. “When my sister got into an all-girls school, I tried to follow her in, too.”
Nico chuckled.
Jiang didn’t seem to hear.
“How long, Malby?” Lucky huffed, finally starting to feel the effects of the trot.
“Four minutes.”
Jiang didn’t look winded at all. Again, she was absently rubbing the chain around her neck.
He’d seen that fossilized fang that hung from it before. He knew it.
“Rocky?” Damn it, he wished he didn’t get his freezer burned so much.
Then something clicked in the useless caverns of his shitty memory.
Yes, he did recognize it! The tooth was from a tannierian devil. He used to have one just like. They were rare. Really rare.
He thought back to her words from earlier. ‘My brother worships the ground you walk on.’
I knew her brother, he realized. I gave that to her brother.
This close connection to Jiang hit him like a pulse to the gut.
“I’m thinking,” said Dawson. He was staring straight ahead, pumping his legs.
Lucky hadn’t even realized he was listening. He was still coming to terms with his revelation about Jiang’s brother. He suddenly felt like he needed urgently to talk to her about it, but Dawson plunged ahead.
“Running hasn’t helped me. It hasn’t helped my little girl.”
He didn’t seem like the running type to Lucky.
He turned with that lanky smile. “I’ll just hang close to our lucky charm here.”
“I’m a lot of things,” Lucky said. “But I’m no lucky charm.”
“That’s not what I hear,” said Vlad. The scientist was easily keeping pace.
Orton was huffing along beside her despite having no gear to carry.
“Oh so lucky,” said Rocky.
“Three minutes,” shouted Malby.
Lucky yelled at Vlad, “How close are these ships of yours?”
As he said it, the corridor broadened.
“We’re here.”
The group stopped to survey the space.
It looked almost identical to the one they had been in. Smaller was a relative term. It was still more than a half-klick wide and just as tall. It had fewer pathways leading into it, which was a plus. One wall harbored the same alien script and set of matching arches. The access points. Unlike the earlier ones, the bands here were shifted in a different formation from the rest of the ore wall. They were detached and separate.
But the real tactical advantage was what was inside. It was full of big, featureless blocks of rock. The blocks were thrown around and jumbled, many on their sides.
Lucky spotted one that was flipped over. The underside had an array of pins that connected to a central disk.
It dawned on Lucky that these were the ships Vlad was talking about. And in that context, and knowing the composition of Happy Giant, it made sense. They shared the same exterior of overlocking sheets of banded gray ore. Arched openings were set into the side of each one.
But they were still massive. The entire party could fit into one with plenty of space to spare.
“Those are your idea of small, maneuverable ships?” yelled Malby as the group ran across the open hangar.
“No!” yelled Vlad, breathing easily. “But they were to the builders of this ship. And they were only interested in fold passage.”
It made sense. Happy Giant was a single-purpose vehicle, and so were these. Everything here was entirely devoted to transit with the Da’hune through the Great Corridor.
No wonder the Ship was pissy about getting left behind.
“Also,” she said, “small is relative. We believe the aliens were at least three times our size.”
That tracked with the oversized nature of Happy Giant. It was also a very sobering thought in light of the conversation with the Ship in transit.
“Two minutes!” yelled Malby.
“Move!” bellowed Lucky.
If this all went to hell, they needed to settle into cover. And he already knew it was going to go to hell.
“You picking anything up, Rocky?”
“Negative.”
That’s what Lucky had been afraid of.
This plan was doomed.
38
Leaving
“How are our readings, Malby?”
Malby looked curiously at Lucky. “Come again?”
“You getting any interference?”