by Richard Fox
“Button up and get him to the Midway,” Makarov said. She swung her body toward the cruiser and accelerated, the propellant box pulling hard against her shoulder.
“Ma’am? Where are you going?” Calum called after her.
She landed on the Warsaw a minute later next to a charred hunk of armor and five surprised sailors.
“Everyone alright?” Makarov asked.
“No injuries, ma’am,” said a petty officer with the name “Tibbins” stenciled to her suit.
Makarov looked over the damaged armor and found a melted lump of metal that had once been a plasma torch.
“You were running the torches at their highest setting, weren’t you?” Makarov asked.
Tibbins locked her heels together as best she could and stood up straight. “Yes, ma’am. I ordered Warren and Liu to violate the safety regs. We were behind schedule and the faster we could—” Tibbins stopped as Makarov raised a hand.
“Where are your safety lines? Three points of fixed contact are required for all EVA work details,” Makarov said. “And where is the alert team on Dutchman duty?”
“We weren’t…issued any, ma’am,” Tibbins said. “We haven’t had a Dutchman team on deck since last night. Personnel shortage, I heard.”
Makarov felt bile rise in her throat.
“Tibbins, get your crew to sick bay and have them looked over.” Makarov touched the screen on her forearm and opened a channel to the soon-to-be former captain of the Warsaw. “Captain LaRoche. This is Admiral Makarov. I will see you, your chief of the ship and your XO in the ship’s wardroom in ten minutes.”
****
Corporal Brannock kept his back to a bulkhead as more Mules and Destrier transports landed on the Midway’s cavernous flight deck. The shuttles leapfrogged over each other with the coordination of a ballet, and Brannock kept his fingers crossed that the automated landing systems kept up the good work.
He’d helped clean up the wreckage from an ALS malfunction on the Warsaw after the Battle of the Crucible. A shiver went down his spine as the memory came back to him.
“They say who we’re picking up?” said Lance Corporal Derringer, the other Marine who’d been shanghaied into this task with Brannock.
Brannock shrugged. “‘Personnel augmentees’ is all I got from First Sergeant. Pick up, get them to berthing and report back for the next ‘hey you’ detail.”
“I thought this was some babysitting mission. Why the hell do we need so many warm bodies on the ship? Showers are a hassle. Can’t even eat in the mess hall because we can’t find a seat. Now we need more bubbas? I thought the company was already at full strength,” Derringer said.
“You think too much for a lance corporal, you know that?” Brannock checked the time on his forearm screen and sighed. “Hurry up and wait. Hurry up and wait.”
Derringer scooted closer to Brannock and did his best to whisper over the constant roar of engines.
“I heard from my buddy on the Dallas that we’re going through the Crucible. That could take us…anywhere. You hear about all the crazy stuff the Breitenfeld does when they go through?” Derringer asked.
“No, and neither have you,” Brannock said. “The Breitenfeld’s always on black ops missions. I heard the crew is nothing but proccie cyborgs, like that one Karigole that Admiral Garret is always walking around with.”
“I heard they were all true born, handpicked by Ibarra before the war to be some kind of elite crew,” Derringer said.
Brannock’s forearm screen beeped.
“Here we go…pad ninety-four.” Brannock pointed to their left and made his way down the line of shuttles, dodging around cargo sleds and packs of loaded-down Marines coming off the flight line.
Brannock saluted a tired-looking Marine lieutenant as he descended from the Mule parked on pad ninety-four. Brannock glanced at the name stenciled on the lieutenant’s void suit: Hale.
“You’re with Alpha Company, 19th Regiment?” Jared Hale asked.
“Roger, sir. You’re assigned to us?” Brannock asked. His company had plenty of new second lieutenants and more than its usual allotment of first lieutenants. He dreaded the answer, sure that his company was about to have more chefs in the kitchen than it really needed. But this lieutenant…he had that faraway stare of someone who’d been in more than one battle. Having him around might help the less experienced officers.
“Not me, my boys,” Jared said, turning his head to the open cargo bay. “Indigo! Fall out.”
A dozen massive soldiers rose from their seats and stomped down the ramp. Each was almost six and a half feet tall with mottled skin in shades of green and brown. They carried simple-looking rifles with oversized triggers and handgrips to match their bodies. Each had a sledgehammer slung over their shoulder. None spoke a word as they stepped off the ramp and formed a row with parade-ground precision.
“These are…are…” Brannock’s mouth kept working, but no words came out.
“Doughboys, that’s right,” Jared said. “Bio-constructs. They’ll respond to simple commands and will protect you against any nonhuman threat. Just think of them as military working dogs, just with guns and a bit smarter than your average German shepherd. Don’t piss them off.” He cocked a thumb at the nearest doughboy, one with scars covering his face. “I saw Indigo here crush a Toth warrior’s skull with his bare hands.”
“Toth…enemy,” Indigo said, his voice a rumble of boulders.
Jared turned to Indigo.
“You and your squad have done very good, Indigo,” Jared said, speaking a bit slower. “I am very proud of you.”
“Good,” the doughboys repeated the word and nodded vigorously.
“You’re going to go with Corporal Brannock and you’ll do what he tells you to. Understand?” Jared asked.
There was a pause before Indigo said, “Sir…leave?”
“Yes, that’s right. Corporal Brannock, he’s your sir now.”
“Sir no leave,” Indigo said forcefully.
“Orders.” Jared held up a finger and Indigo pouted. “You are all good soldiers. You have a new mission. Fight enemies!”
The doughboys nodded and repeated Jared’s last two words.
“I have to go. I’m sorry, boys. I really am.” Jared slapped Indigo on the shoulder.
Indigo shot an arm around Jared and pulled him into a bear hug.
“Too tight! Too tight!” Jared wheezed and Indigo let him go. Jared straightened out his vac suit and gave Brannock a look.
“I’ll take good care of them, sir,” the corporal said.
Jared nodded and went back into the Mule.
“Squad,” Brannock said and the doughboys snapped to attention. “Follow me.”
CHAPTER 3
Valdar gripped the armrests of his captain’s chair and fought to keep his bearings as a cascade of white light assaulted his eyes. Every time the Breitenfeld went through a wormhole, the experience varied. Jumps into the Crucible were brief, almost pleasant, but jumps from the Xaros gate into the far reaches of space were almost torture.
The oppressive light vanished suddenly. Valdar looked up and saw a wall of distant stars beyond his ship.
“Damage report. Is the cloak active?” Valdar asked.
“All decks reporting in…” said Ericcson, the ship’s XO. “Nothing significant to report.”
“Cloak is active,” Commander Levin said. “Battery power holding steady, for once. Looks like the Akkadian engineers really did fix the energy leak.”
“Maintain silent running. Have the deck and turret spotters searching for the vault. We’ll weigh anchor once we have a bearing,” Valdar said. He unbuckled his safety harness and took to the walkway running behind each of the bridge’s workstations. He stopped at the front of the bridge and passed his gaze over the thin band of stars before him. Below the ship lay a vast abyss, punctuated by a few pinpricks of light, lost stars cast into the darkness.
“Geller,” Valdar said to the ship’s navigator. “How fa
r to the nearest star?”
“There’s a shallow gravity well eight light-years away,” the young ensign said. “The margin of error is pretty high with passive sensors. Must be a rogue star. After that…nothing for hundreds of light-years.”
“Which was the point,” Malal said. He and Stacey Ibarra stood next to the holo table at the rear of the bridge. Unlike the rest of the crew in their combat-rated vac suits, Malal wore nothing but simple coveralls. “Deep space is uneventful. Safe. I leave my vault next to a star and I’ve got to worry about supernovas, stellar drift, and all manner of mundane concerns. And that rogue star is six light-years away. I accounted for its passing. My vault is secure, I assure you.”
Valdar wasn’t entirely sure how Malal managed to access the IR network to speak. The Breitenfeld was under combat conditions, the atmosphere drained to mitigate the risk of fire and decompression damage.
“Where is it, Malal?” Valdar asked.
“We had to jump in beyond the detection capabilities of the Xaros, if they’re here,” Stacey said. “We should have come in far enough away that they’d think the wormhole was nothing but a random fluctuation in the fabric of space-time.”
“She’s right, sir,” Geller said. “The dimensional shift would be little more than—” Valdar banged a fist against the railing. “I’ll stop talking. I should know better than to…spotters have something!”
“Send it to the holo table.” Valdar strode across the bridge and got to the edge of the high-walled table as an image materialized.
It wasn’t the sphere-within-spheres of Malal’s vault. It was a crown of thorns nearly a mile in diameter. A Xaros Crucible.
“What were you saying about your vault being secure?” Valdar asked.
“Impossible,” Malal hissed.
“I have a tendency to believe my own eyes, and I don’t see your vault,” Valdar said.
“You spoke of other security measures,” Stacey said to Malal.
Malal reached into the holo tank and rotated the image around.
“If I could access but a fraction of my true capabilities…” Malal gave Stacey a sideways glance.
“Never,” she said.
“Then you filter out all electromagnetic radiation coming from the area around the Crucible but from this frequency.” Malal rattled off a series of numbers as Stacey tapped the touch screen on her forearm.
Color sapped away from the holo, leaving the Crucible the color of ash. The vault appeared for a split second, several times the size of the Crucible, the internal spheres spinning in different directions from the other layers. The vault vanished with a blink.
“Another protective measure,” Malal said. “If the vault detects anything on an intercept course, it cloaks. Undetectable but for a few moments at a shifting frequency only I know.”
“And yet…” Valdar pointed to the Crucible. “How do we know the Xaros haven’t cleaned the place out?”
“Because I spent thousands of years undisturbed by the drones when they came to Anthalas. The Xaros preserve; they do not explore. The presence of the Crucible is of little consequence. You have a cloaked transport ship. That will get us to my vault without alerting the Xaros,” Malal said.
“We’re not seeing any drones,” Stacey said. “So the Crucible should be on standby. The Xaros are nothing if not resource conscious. It shouldn’t detect us while cloaked, but if they start an active scan, they’ll see us in a heartbeat…This Crucible is a lot smaller than the others we’ve encountered. Odd.”
“So we can get in and out without a fight?” Valdar asked.
“So long as we’re sneaky about it,” Stacey said. “The guard dog is asleep. Stay quiet and you can get past. Make noise and we’ve got a problem.”
****
Hale grabbed his gauss rifle from a rack and swung it over his shoulder. Magnets snapped the rifle into place. He filled a bandolier with anti-armor grenades and snapped magazines full of cobalt-coated tungsten bullets onto his utility belt.
“Sir,” Yarrow said from behind him, “Gunney Cortaro sent me up to ask you if we should bring a spare set of suit breakers for the Iron Hearts.” The corpsman’s matte-black armor seemed to mute the colors of the arms room around the young Marine. The new and improved (and supposedly disintegration-beam-resistant) armor was less bulky, while boasting longer battery life and improved augmented strength for the wearer. Hale had decided to curb his enthusiasm until the armor proved itself in the field.
“Yes, grab another set,” Hale said. “Better to have it and not need it than need it and not have it. Why’d he send you?” Hale glanced at his forearm screen and found Cortaro, and the rest of his squad, were off-line.
“Gunney’s got the team doing some…corrective training.”
Hale suppressed a smile. The snide comments and lack of focus from some of the Marines during the mission briefing had Cortaro red-faced with repressed anger. Cortaro was a believer in alternate disciplinary measures: an extra hour of intense physical training in lieu of written counseling statements had a much more profound effect on a Marine’s behavior. Hale understood that he led the team. Cortaro ran it.
“Yarrow,” Hale said, “is this mission with Malal going to be an issue for you?”
Yarrow pressed his lips into a thin line. “Thing is, sir, I barely remember any of it. I remember us on that floating pedestal where Malal’s orb was…then just a few flashes of memory until we were on the Breitenfeld in the middle of all that gray. I see Malal and part of me…” Yarrow tapped his knuckles to his chest.
“Fear?”
“Some. But fear is just a physiological reaction to stress. My body getting ready for fight or flight. I don’t let it control me. I’ve tried putting the whole thing behind me. Dealing with being a fake person that’s only a few months old has been more of an issue than something I barely remember.”
“You’re not fake, Yarrow. Not to me, not to the team.” Hale slapped the corpsman on the shoulder and motioned to the exit. “Let’s get to the flight deck before Gunney beats the others into paste.”
CHAPTER 4
The Midway’s command bridge was a near riot of activity as sailors and officers went through the ship’s final prep before it weighed anchor from orbit around Ceres. The ship’s captain and XO called out terse commands to the sailors manning each work pod while the admiral commanding the entirety of Eighth Fleet had her attention on the holo table to the rear of the bridge.
Admiral Makarov, clad in her armored vac suit and with her helmet under the crook of her arm, conferred with Admiral Garret next to the table as wire diagrams and stats for each of her fleet’s ships floated up through the holo table.
“Are you ready, Makarov?” Garret asked.
“My fleet is back to full strength, we’re loaded to bear with quadrium munitions and my ships have the new aegis armor. I’m ready to charge the gates of hell. Escorting a mine-laying task force doesn’t exactly scratch the same itch,” Makarov said.
“I’m not sending you into deep space to pick a fight. Drop your mines, gather what intelligence you can on what’s coming out of Barnard’s Star and get back here. I want your ships on the line when the Xaros arrive,” Garret said. “The longer we have to get ready, the better.”
Makarov’s cheek twitched as she tried and failed to smile. Makarov didn’t care for Garret’s veiled statements. Eighth Fleet’s mission was to slow down the Xaros, nothing more. The return of her fleet was a secondary concern.
She’d seen the projections. If the Xaros held to form, they would arrive in five years. Every month she could delay their foe would mean more ships, orbital emplacements, fighters and troops ready to defend the solar system. If she lost her fleet to hold off the Xaros for more than a month, the battlefield math favored the loss.
To Makarov, every fight was winnable and she and her fleet were anything but sacrificial lambs. They were Dragon Slayers.
Her hand tapped a control screen and twelve nearly identical ships appe
ared in the tank. Long, unarmed objects that looked like giant round shields ran along the hull inside giant racks.
“Task Force Scorpion will carry the day,” she said. “Their graviton mines will slow the Xaros and my guns will make sure fewer ever reach Earth.”
“I’m sending a good portion of the entire fleet with you, Makarov,” Garret said. “Come back quick just in case the Toth feel like coming back for more punishment.”
“I thought they were in chaos after the Breitenfeld killed the leader, Mentiq,” she said.
“From what we’ve gleaned through other Bastion races that have contact with the Toth, their whole species is as fucked up as a football bat, but one overlord is consolidating power. We didn’t plan on them coming for us the first time. I’d rather have you back just in case.”
“We could use another Naga for parts.” Makarov nodded her head quickly.
“Don’t go picking a fight…but if you find out how well the Manticore-class frigates do in the field, I won’t complane.” The supreme commander of Earth’s forces stepped away from the table and extended a hand to Makarov.
“Good luck,” Garret said.
“God helps those who help themselves, but we will pray to keep the powder dry.” She shook his hand. A team of heavily armed Rangers and a pair of Doughboys escorted Garret off the bridge.
Makarov sighed in relief once the other admiral was gone. She hated sharing the command deck with anyone. She wasn’t sure if the foible was meshed into her personality by whatever process Ibarra used to grow her mind in the proccie tube, or if Garret was just an overwhelming bore.
“Calum,” she rapped her knuckles against the holo tank, “are we ready to weigh anchor?”
“Aye, aye, Admiral. All ships report green across the board. Ready for your word,” Calum said.
Makarov sat in her command chair and strapped herself in. The rest of her staff followed suit.
“Signal the Crucible to prepare the wormhole. All ships set for zero atmo conditions and burn on my mark.” She slipped her helmet on and readied the fleet-wide channel. With the press of a button, the microphone in her helmet connected to every single IR speaker in the fleet. Every sailor, embarked Marine and doughboy could hear her.