by Richard Fox
She risked a glance. The ship’s roll had slowed, a single thruster on the port side burning like a star against the rotation.
Durand fired another burst, catching a drone on its flank and sending it spinning out of control. She slammed her control stick to the side and rolled her fighter out of the way of a closing drone, then gunned her engines. She twisted in her cockpit and found Glue still on her wing, the flash of Xaros beams and gauss cannons well behind her.
The glow within the destroyer pulsated with ruby energy.
Durand aimed for the gash across the destroyer’s hull and opened fire. Her gauss rounds kicked up sparks against the hull. Larger hunks blew away as Glue added her fire.
Stalks sprang from the hull and sent lances of energy at the attacking Eagles. Durand banked hard and swept gauss fire across the destroyer’s hull, severing many of the stalks.
“Go high. I’ll go wide. Split their fire,” Durand said. She turned the bank into a complete turn. Her eyes were off the destroyer for less than a second by the time she’d come completely around.
The destroyer shot a beam of energy as wide as a Destrier transport. The flash seared into Durand’s eyes before her visor darkened enough to compensate. The leading edge of the destroyer split open, embers burning across the hull as the cannon fell silent. Durand opened up with her cannon, the rounds ripping the ship apart like it was made of rotted wood.
The destroyer jerked up like it had been kicked and ripped into pieces. The telltale streak of a rail shot tore through the dying Xaros ship. The Condors’ bombers had finally joined the assault.
“Maintain the attack until it’s burnt away to dust,” Durand said. The Dotok brothers flew over her canopy, no worse for wear.
She found the Breitenfeld. Her starboard engines were wrecked, hunks of broken hull trailing away from the damage like blood in water.
“Breitenfeld, this is Gall. Do you read me?” No answer. “Breitenfeld… the sky is clear. Say something. Anything.”
All she heard was static.
CHAPTER 15
Torni flew toward the breach cut into the vault’s outer shell. Drones worked along the edge of the breach and swarmed overhead like flies massing over a decaying animal.
Moving her drone body hadn’t proven difficult. She willed herself in a particular direction and her new vessel responded accordingly. That Minder, a scientist from a culture far more advanced than humanity and that had studied her neurological makeup extensively, managed to put her into a drone that responded so intuitively to her commands should not have been a surprise.
He did this to me on a whim, she thought. I don’t want to know what it’ll be like trying to outfight or outthink one of the Masters.
The Eagles kept their distance from the drones breaking into the vault, and she was grateful. To the pilots, she looked like nothing but another kill mark on the side of their fighters. The drones didn’t react to her presence, and she felt safer around them until the Breitenfeld came back online.
Her old ship was still dead in space, helpless if the Xaros chose to attack.
The drones were a tenacious and brutal enemy. For them to shrug off the loss of the Crucible, and the Breitenfeld’s continued presence, must have meant there was something vitally important to the Xaros inside the vault.
She felt a buzz inside her head as she neared the swarm of drones. Images of the vault’s surface—glimpses into a swirling menagerie of alien gardens, a bridge, abandoned cities—passed through her mind. Torni floated away from the drones and the intrusive thoughts subsided.
That Ibarra egghead could make sense of this. I bet she’d just love to be the one inside a drone instead of me, she thought.
The blanket of drones packed together flew up from the surface, revealing a patch of polished obsidian glass that had been beneath the outer layer of the sphere.
A single drone touched the glass, stalk tips pressing into the material like it was made of sand. The glass vanished like it had never existed. A world of green forests, adobe white cities and a long bridge suspended in air lay within.
The drones poured through the hole. Torni edged closer to the swarm, the buzzing returned to her mind.
Go with them…or stay out here and wait for the ship to come back online? She’d seen the Breitenfeld survive worse damage, but the longer she waited in the open the better chance she had of running afoul of Durand and her squadron.
Images burst across her vision: Marines crouched next to a pillar of light and the very clear image of a helmet-less Standish and Bailey running through a city.
Standish…
Torni followed the last of the drones into the vault.
****
Standish pressed against the side of a building, his heart pounding as a drone shot overhead. He looked at the gauss pistol in his hand and rolled his eyes. Bailey had her sniper rifle and a carbine. Egan still had his rifle with him.
“I’ve had nightmares like this,” Standish said. “Facing down the Xaros with a peashooter. Same dream, I’m also late for a test and not wearing any pants.”
“Shut. Up,” Bailey hissed. She drew a grenade from a pouch and passed it to him.
“Any of you have q-rounds?” Standish asked. The quadrium munitions could disable the drones for a few seconds, enough time to get away or put aimed shots on an immobile target.
“One for Bloke.” Bailey shrugged a shoulder, motioning to her sniper rail rifle.
“I have one,” Egan said, “and just enough charge left in my only battery to fire it. I take a single gauss shot and the q-round is about as useful as a butter knife.”
“This day just gets better and better,” Standish said.
A thrum filled the air. A drone was close. Standish tightened his grip on the pistol and tried to swallow though a bone-dry throat. He looked up and saw an open window almost ten feet over his head.
“Think we can get up there?” Standish asked. The thrum pulsed, the vibration making his armor quiver.
“What if the drone’s in there?” Egan asked.
“What if it’s not? We’ll live longer. Boost me up,” Standish said.
Egan set his rifle against the building and braced himself, his empty hands held in a cup against his bent knee. The Marines traded a nod and Standish backed up a few steps. He jogged toward Egan, intent on putting his boot square in the pilot’s grasp. Standish raised a leg into the air…and missed Egan completely when Egan leapt to the side.
Bailey screamed a warning.
Standish’s feet and legs jumbled together and he fell into an undignified heap. He got a knee, twisted around and slammed back to the ground a split second before a Xaros disintegration beam sliced over his head.
Standish thrust his pistol at the drone floating a few feet over the road, its stalk tips pressed together and burning with energy. Standish snapped off two shots and hit a stalk, breaking it in two with a crack. He rolled aside as another ruby red beam cut into the ground he’d just occupied.
He fired wildly as he rolled, the few hits he scored sparking off the drone’s body with little effect.
He heard the snap of gauss weapons and the drone, impacts from the heavier weapons punching the drone back.
Standish activated the grenade and hurled it at the drone. He had a split second to wonder if he’d set the grenade to FRAG, which would do about as much good as his pistol against the drone, or to fire the shaped charge.
The grenade exploded into a cloud of shrapnel, the blast wave knocking Standish flat on his back and slapping his helm against a curb. His body screamed in pain from the small, but burning hot, bits of shrapnel that pierced his arm. He rolled to his side and heard the snap of Egan’s gauss rifle.
His ears ringing, Standish tried to raise his pistol to the drone.
The drone lay in the street, its shell cracked open. The glowing pyrite within darkened, then the entire drone burned away to nothing.
“Frag, Standish?” Bailey asked.
“Something useful right
away…” Standish shook his head quickly, “better than the perfect decision five seconds too late. Ah…something hurts.”
Bailey rushed to him, then froze and backpedaled so fast she fell over.
“What?” Standish asked.
A stalk passed over his eyes and grabbed him around the chest. Standish jerked into the sky as a drone carried him off. Standish saw the city pass beneath him. He struggled and got another stalk around his waist and arms for his trouble.
“Not like this!” He thrashed from side to side. The drone landed on a rooftop and pinned him to the floor.
Standish let out a stream of insults that degenerated into a sob as the drone brought a stalk tip over his face. He always thought he’d meet his death with courage and his eyes open; instead, he squeezed his eyes shut and looked away.
At least Bailey and Egan might get away, he thought.
“Standish.”
He heard his name. Monotone.
“Is that you, God? I’m sorry about everything! I spent the money I stole from the mob on orphans and food kitchens, I swear!”
“Standish. Gott mit uns.”
He opened his eyes. The drone loomed over him, its surface alive with swirls, a stalk tip touching his faceplate.
“OK…OK. This is happening. I don’t know what it is, but it’s happening.” He tried to wiggle and the stalks around him tightened.
“It’s me. Torni.” The stalk tip vibrated with the words.
“Sergeant Torni is dead. If this is a Xaros trick, you dickheads have a lot to learn. Just get it over with!”
“You stole food from a corrupt aid group and gave it to starving refugees on Bali. You hotwired a truck in Phoenix and got us away from the drones. You and I broke Elias out of the hospital…Kallen brought him back. You are a good Marine, Standish. Take care of everyone for me.” Standish’s fear subsided as he heard Torni’s last words to him on Takeni.
“Sarge? I saw your body in the photos Hale showed us. How the hell…I mean, you’re a drone?”
“It’s…complicated.”
“You don’t say. You want to—” He squirmed and the stalks loosened. He scrambled to his feet. He reached a hand to the drone’s body and touched its surface. He snapped his hand back. “Not liking that. Not at all.”
He pointed a finger at the drone. “Who was I with when you and Hale caught me liberating parts from the boneyard?”
The stalk tip reached to his face. Standish reeled back a step. The tip bobbed up and down.
“Oh, right.” He let the tip touch his faceplate.
“I was with Gunney Cortaro, not Hale. You were with MacDougall and the two of you were stealing,” Torni said.
The crack of gauss cannons sounded in the distance. Standish went to the low wall surrounding the roof and peered over the edge.
“That’s the Iron Hearts. Got to be,” he said. He looked over his shoulder to Torni, her stalks rising and falling from the ground like a waiting spider. “This is going to be tricky.”
****
Hale stepped onto the edge of the bridge and looked down. The great highways snaked from city to distant city. The inner surface of the great cylinder must have been a few miles away.
Are they still falling? he thought. He had lost three of his Marines in seconds. Guilt weighed down on his shoulders as shame burned in his chest for failing to join them in death.
“Sir?” Yarrow asked from behind him.
Hale stepped back.
“Orozco’s got one hell of a concussion,” the corpsman said. “He’s awake, but disoriented. I’ve got him on rimbusal to prevent any blood clots. He should be battle ready in a couple more hours, but he’ll need treatment back on the ship before he’s a hundred percent.”
“And Cortaro?”
“His right tibia is broken. I adjusted his armor to provide a splint. He’s angry rather than in pain over the injury. Keeps mumbling in Spanish. The only word I can pick out is ‘Steuben.’”
Hale nodded, then looked back over the edge.
“Sir, you think they’re…”
“They’re not on the IR. No beacon from their armor. No way to recover them. We’re going to drive on.” Hale left Yarrow at the edge and went to the platform and joined Malal and Stacey.
White streams of light surrounded Malal. Rivulets snaked out of the streams and poured into a glowing ball of light the size of a fist in front of Malal. The ancient being’s eyes were closed, hand held out to his side.
Stacey leaned against the platform’s walled edge, tugging at her lip.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
“Is this going to be worth it? I have a hard time seeing how whatever trivia your pet monster needs is worth the lives of my Marines,” Hale said.
Stacey tucked her hands beneath her arms. “What do you think is at stake here, Ken? We’re not trying to push back another Chinese advance on Perth or liberate Berlin from Islamists. Plenty of Marines died for that. This is to save every last man, woman and child on Earth, and the last remaining intelligent species in the rest of the galaxy. Don’t tell me they don’t matter to you. I know what you went through to save the Dotok and the Karigole.”
“We have the Crucible on Ceres. We have the proccies. Why do we need…” he waved a hand at Malal.
“It’s not enough. We could hollow out Ceres and fill it full of proccie tubes, cannibalize the asteroid belt to build ships, and the Xaros will still overwhelm us. They can bring an entire galaxy full of drones to bear through their jump-gate network. We can buy time, maybe beat the force that’s certainly on the way from Barnard’s Star, but the next wave…they’ll bring so many drones we could practically walk from star to star on their backs.”
“Malal’s getting some sort of super weapon for us to use then?”
“No, we’re getting another chance. There’s an object beyond the galactic edge, immense, greater than anything that’s ever been seen even by Malal’s standards. That should be where we can find the Xaros leadership. Killing drones just doesn’t matter. We hit them where they live and it’ll make an impact.”
“You said ‘should.’ You don’t know for sure? All this trouble for a maybe?”
“My grandfather wrestled with uncertainty for six decades after the probe made contact with him. The only way humanity would survive is if he took a chance on the plan he and the probe came up with. Letting the cat out of the bag might have united the planet, put up a bigger fleet against the Xaros maniple. You saw the vids. You saw how many drones came for Earth, but it wouldn’t have mattered.”
Hale looked over the edge to Yarrow as he tended to the wounded.
“What about the proccies? Why didn’t he sound the warning sooner, used everything the probe knew to make more ships and make crews with the proccie tech. He made Eighth Fleet in months. What could he have done in six decades?”
Stacey pressed her fingertips against her cheek.
“It took time, a long time, to create the process. Humans had millions of years to evolve. Cracking the process to get a fully grown body in nine days and implanting a consciousness wasn’t something the probe showed up knowing how to do. We had to…well, it doesn’t matter.”
“And what does Malal get out of all this? I’ve seen what he’s capable of.”
“Malal gets…what Malal wants. I can’t speak to the details of the arrangement.”
Hale’s cheeks flushed with anger.
“It’s the proccies, isn’t it? Ibarra’s growing them as fast as he can as an offering to Malal, isn’t he? He was willing to hand them all over to the Toth. Don’t tell me it’ll be any different when it’s time to feed that beast.”
Stacey frowned.
“What are you talking about? We were never going to give the Toth a damned thing but a kick in the ass.”
“Don’t bullshit me. I was the ambassador on Europa. I got the order to sign the treaty with the Toth. Every last proccie, to include the man down there who carried Malal off Anthalas, and all the tech
used to make them was going to be handed over in Luna orbit.” Hale’s gauntlets creaked as his hands tightened into fists. “I told the Toth to kiss my ass and that’s when the Naga showed up over my head and the fighting began.”
Stacey shook her head.
“No, Ken. I was there. Your job was to stall, keep the Toth away from Earth until Eighth Fleet was ready to fight. We were never going to give up the proccies, no matter what Bastion wanted. Who told you to sign the treaty?”
“Everything from Earth came through…Uncle Isaac.” Hale’s chin dropped to his chest. He pointed a finger at Stacey. “If you’re telling me…that Ibarra and Admiral Garret were never going to sign that treaty, then why did Captain Valdar tell me otherwise?”
“You’ll have to ask him yourself,” Stacey said. “Assuming we ever get out of here.”
CHAPTER 16
A deckhand in a lifter trudged across the flight deck. The forklift pincers on each arm opened and he lifted the remains of an Eagle off the ground. He carried the wreck—crisscrossed with scars from Xaros beams, the bottom crushed from too hard a landing—to an open hatch on the side of the flight deck. He dropped the remains into the hatch and a horrible screeching sound emanated as a compactor crushed the Eagle.
“That’s a pleasant sound,” Brannock said to Derringer. The two Marines, both clad in their power armor, watched the Eagle’s final moments from the opposite side of the flight line.
“Is it me,” Derringer looked up and down the flight line where crews scrambled over fighters and bombers, swapping out battery packs and reloading ammunition, “or are there a lot fewer ships than I remember?”
“Fly boys got it the worst,” Brannock said. “I heard First Sergeant and the CO talking. Something like forty percent of all the pilots are missing or dead.”
“Damn…you think we’ll get put on turret duty?”
“Hell if I know. It’s war, Lance Corporal. We’re going to get jerked around from one unrelated task to another unrelated task until the chain of command tells us to squat and hold for new orders. Just stay focused on the task at hand,” Brannock said.