by Alex Lamb
‘Understood, Earth Ark Two,’ said Mark, ‘and apologies for the confusion, but you happen to be carrying a hundred thousand sacrificial volunteers I want saved.’
He saw no reason to beat about the bush. The captain should know that he understood exactly what was going on.
There was a short, confused pause from the ark.
‘Captain Ruiz,’ breathed the ark captain. ‘What are you talking about? This ship has a skeleton crew of three. The only passenger on this ship is the bomb, as originally planned. We received no human passengers. Is this some kind of plan update of which we were not informed?’
Mark froze. His cheeks tingled. Maybe the captain was bluffing.
‘Did you say bomb?’ said Zoe. ‘That detail was not in our mission pack.’
‘Yes, of course a bomb!’ the captain cried. ‘A bomb now armed by your manoeuvre. The only sacrificial volunteers here are my team, and we now have three minutes before ignition.’
‘Can you jettison?’ Mark blurted.
‘What are you talking about?’ said the captain. ‘The bomb is our reactor core, as ordered. Tell me – do we have a backup ark? Who is rendezvousing with Ark One? Please tell me we have a dedicated ship for Ark One. Please!’
Mark’s mind fizzed over the awful implications.
‘We’ve been compromised,’ said Zoe quietly. ‘Holy fuck. We’re compromised.’
Mark’s mouth tasted of ashes. The weight of thirty million human lives landed on his conscience.
1.4: ANN
Though there was nothing to see yet, Ann steeled herself for the inevitable fight. Somewhere out there in the dark, thousands of Phote drones were swarming, bearing down on her ship on silent wings of twisted gravity.
‘Estimated time to engagement – four minutes,’ said Urmi. Her voice tightened towards a squeak. ‘Models ramping to battle mode.’
Ann felt that dark, familiar thrill of anticipation and prepared to engage in the one true source of pleasure life had left her: cleaning.
She understood the ironic implications of that image. After one career in military intelligence and a second in frontline combat, that she should gravitate to such a gendered and archaic metaphor amused her. But that’s what it felt like. It felt as if the universe had a vile, infected stain upon it. And her job was to scrub it out. Scrub, scrub, scrub. Time to make everything nice and clean and dead.
She gritted her teeth and kept her hunger in check. Once the urge to clean up took hold of her, it would be insatiable, and they couldn’t afford for the fight to turn bright just yet. There were bystanders at risk.
She breathed deep and edged the Ariel Two away from the ark it sheltered. Then she opened her quantcomm link to its captain.
‘Captain Bach,’ she said, ‘please head directly for the backup insertion site at full thrust. We will remain here to engage the enemy. The moment you see any signs of trouble, flag me immediately.’
‘Is that a good idea, ma’am?’ said Cy. ‘They’ll be sitting ducks.’
‘If they stay near us they’ll get crisped,’ said Ann. ‘Focus on your job, please, Mr Twebo. Let me handle the hellfire. It’s what I do.’
As well as defending its ark, Ann’s nestship doubled as a magnet for enemy drones. The Ariel Two was too large to not be noticed, even when running dark. They’d close on her ship from its mass footprint alone. Ann felt the first wave of munitions almost as soon as she saw them. They impacted against her ship’s metallic skin like myriad tiny insect bites. These days, the Photes had burrowing drones designed to quietly take over a ship’s systems through direct hull incursion. They’d become a standard weapon in the enemy arsenal.
While Ann had a quantum shield that would keep them at bay, she dared not use it with the ark so close. The moment she sealed up, the battle would get hot. Instead, she let the drones drill nasty little holes in her exohull. Fortunately, the Ariel Two had recently been upgraded to include a standing army of eight thousand titan mechs designed for mesohull combat. Ann activated them and felt fragments of her mind rushing into their giant, armoured bodies.
This was the power that had once been Will’s – to be in many places at once. In effect, Ann could become a hierarchically organised mega-mind spanning her entire ship. Compact sketches of her consciousness guided every machine in the hull, filtering their input upwards so that what she herself felt was an ensemble of them all.
She glimpsed herself in a hundred different physical formats as her minions booted. She flexed claws and readied cannons while her mechs slid around the ship’s radioactive interior on magnetic tracks, positioning themselves at every incursion site. Ready to say hello.
‘Battle positions,’ she told her crew.
There wasn’t much for her team to do but watch and hold on tight. That wasn’t likely to be fun, but no one had asked them to volunteer.
Ann gently pivoted the Ariel’s immense bulk, thruster-braked and counted down the seconds for the ark to get clear.
‘All right,’ she said brightly. ‘Cleaning time!’
Ann launched a barrage of plasma-shells. The space around the Ariel blazed with pale light, the hundreds of drones sidling up to her standing out as pinpoint shadows. At the same moment, Ann fired up her shield. Half of the burrowing drones died instantly as the entanglement field swept across their bodies, swamping them in coherent iron. The other half found themselves surrounded by robots twenty times their size. They were promptly ripped apart. Each savage dismemberment hit Ann with a flash of satisfaction.
Her mind greedily sucked down the attack pattern of the incoming drones, prepped a response and fired on them all simultaneously. She used the Ariel’s massive g-ray banks running in a classic slice-and-dice pattern, swiping the beams left and right through the enemy ranks to maximise coverage. They died in droves.
So far so good, but the Photes hadn’t brought out any big guns yet. And while she fought, a corner of Ann’s mind watched the ark creeping towards the backup rendezvous where still no carrier awaited to rescue them.
She felt a fresh rush of anger towards Mark. The little shit had never stuck to a mission plan in all the years she’d known him. There always had to be some clever addition of his own to prove that Galatea didn’t own him. She’d hoped that this time, at least, he’d figure out the stakes. It was a miracle Galatea had even given him the job. She should have challenged that choice. One of these days, if they got through this, she was going to push her index finger through Mark’s skull, nice and slow.
Another carrier burst lit up Ann’s sensors from far across the system’s edge.
‘Incoming hail,’ said Cy. ‘It’s another bogey.’
‘Peace and security are but moments away,’ came the Photes’ soothing message. ‘Let us share our love with you.’
‘That’s a burst from somewhere near the Ark Three’s position,’ said Phlox. ‘They must know the plan. They’re on to us.’
‘Of course they’re on to us,’ Ann growled. ‘Have you only just figured that out?’
Light-lag made it impossible for her to know how the rest of the battle was proceeding. It would be hours before they learned. However, it wasn’t hard to guess that things were going pear-shaped system-wide. She had just one ace up her sleeve. That long, ridiculous flight from Earth on conventional acceleration meant she still had a suntap link open. So long as they didn’t warp, they’d never run out of firepower.
The fresh arrival spurred the Photes to higher levels of frenzy. Hundreds more drones dropped stealth and hurled themselves at the Ariel’s quantum shield in an attempt to overload it. Ann scythed them out of existence.
Her ship shook as the space around it became a torrent of boiling plasma. She watched the lurking ark get buffeted by the shock waves with dismay. At this rate, it’d be noticed simply by virtue of being too near the battle’s glare.
She flicked the ark-channel open again.
‘Bach, head back in-system. It’s the one direction the Photes won’t expect you t
o go.’
‘Captain!’ Cy blurted. ‘That’ll take them out of pickup range.’
‘Shut it!’ Ann snapped. ‘I know what I’m doing.’
She turned her attention outwards, looking for the Photurian carrier that had to be hidden somewhere near their entry flash. If she couldn’t defend the ark, she at least wanted to deny the Photes a route out.
‘Urmi, give me a probability map for the nearest carrier’s position,’ she said. ‘Tell me where they’re hiding.’
‘Factoring residual velocity vectors,’ said Urmi. ‘Here it comes.’
A new distribution diagram bloomed in Ann’s tactical overlay. She realigned her g-rays and swept that region of space with her forward sensors on max to watch for light-bounce. Nineteen seconds later, something flickered in the dark.
‘Got the bastard,’ said Ann.
She grouped her fire, ramped it and reduced the carrier to radioactive shrapnel. She grinned as she watched it burn. Still, there’d be a price to pay. If the Photes couldn’t leave with hosts, their next priority would be to knock out her ship. They’d want the ark unguarded for the next attack wave that found it.
Right on cue, a dozen Phote harvester ships shaped like monstrous bacteriophages uncloaked and fired up quantum shields of their own. Their hulls’ integuments ran like wax, coating and transforming them into flickering ovals of bright silver. Ann knew those wouldn’t be normal shields. They’d be cyclers. Each ship had about a one per cent chance of hitting phase with the Ariel’s shield and sliding through as if it wasn’t there. Once inside, they’d detonate, trashing everything inside.
Ann glared at the oncoming ships and warmed her primary boser for some serious pyrotechnics. In the back of her head, it occurred to her that whatever happened out here, the Earth already belonged to the Photes. The sheer scale of the attack had seen to that. There was no going back. If it came to it, Ann knew she’d have to execute the Earth’s population herself rather than let them fall into enemy hands.
‘Not again,’ she muttered. ‘Come on, Mark, you bastard. Just get here. Please.’
1.5: MARK
Mark’s mouth went dry as he realised just how well his enemy had played him. They’d used his urgency to save lives against him and tweaked the report he’d received just enough to send him chasing after a bomb. He’d undoubtedly spared the lives of thousands of Phote horrors the bomb had been meant for, as well as jeopardising Zoe’s and his own.
But how had the Photes done it? The report he’d received had come directly from the diplomat on Ann’s team, who Ann had personally screened. And Photes didn’t get past Andromeda Ng-Ludik. They just didn’t. Her whole body was one giant Phote-detecting machine.
Mark reopened the channel to the time-bomb ark nestled beside the Gulliver within the Kraken’s whirling warp-envelope.
‘Ark Two, this is Captain Ruiz,’ he said. ‘Your data has been factored into our battle plan. Please prepare your engines for immediate departure. Direct your ship at the closest available exit vector and commence a full burn. Do not spare the juice. We’re going to drop you off hot.’
‘What?’ came the reply. Nobody started their engines inside a warp-envelope. Not unless they wanted to have a very nasty accident.
‘I said, get ready to leave!’ said Mark. ‘Start boosting now!’
‘You’re crazy,’ she told him. ‘We’ll hit the envelope field and detonate.’
‘If you don’t, you’ll detonate anyway!’ Mark yelled. ‘So go!’
After another two seconds’ hesitation, the ark powered up and hurled itself at the delicate interior wall of the Kraken’s enclosure. Mark dropped warp with seconds to spare, threw all his awareness into the embership’s processors and slowed the spin on his warp-fronds as much as he could without tangling them.
The ark ripped between the hurtling jump-ropes. Fragments of broken warp-frond spun out into the dark, venting plasma as the ark sped past them into the empty space beyond. Mark avoided a full cable breach by a few scant metres.
‘What about the crew?’ said Zoe.
‘What about them?’ Mark snapped. ‘They haven’t exactly left us a rescue option. Unless you think that evac-ark has lifeboat tubes.’
They both knew it didn’t. Lifeboat facilities made ships too easy to invade. These days, nobody had them.
Mark ramped the power and went superlight as the seconds to ark-detonation slid to zero. He left just before it hit so never got to see it explode. Instead, the ark appeared to freeze. Then, as the embership gathered warp, the view from behind showed a wavering image of his own departure reversed. Mark felt sick anyway. He didn’t need visual evidence to know what had happened.
Worse than making the mistake was the knowledge that in dumping the ark between insertion sites, he’d made it obvious to everyone in the system where he was headed. He could only hope that it would take so long for the light from the blast to reach the other Phote ships that it wouldn’t make a difference.
He dived around the outer depths of the home system, scraping the upper edge of the Kraken’s operational limits all the way. With a grim eye, he watched the stability indicators from envelope-control quiver into the red.
‘You’re going to break this ship before we get there,’ Zoe warned.
Mark didn’t reply. He wished for the thousandth time that emberships weren’t so hopeless at in-system travel. Carriers were supposed to show up at the perimeter of a system, do their business and leave. The filthy flow of ions generated by a star made travel within a heliopause slow and miserable. Only an idiot tried taking a carrier to multiple points around the same star. Somehow, Mark found himself needing to do it all the time.
‘Let’s hope we haven’t also been lied to about what’s at the Ark One site,’ said Zoe.
Mark grimaced.
‘Battle-modelling SAPs are online,’ she said. ‘Scanning our insertion point.’
The Gulliver’s bank of strategic intelligences filtered the shreds of light leaking through the envelope and used them to construct a picture of what waited ahead. It wasn’t pretty. With the timescales compressed by their approach, the flashes of combat blurred into a crazed strobing of immense explosions.
‘At least we know someone’s there,’ said Mark.
‘Someone who’s nuking things,’ said Zoe. ‘It’s Ann all right.’
Mark felt a stab of bitterness. Even if they saved everyone, Ann would never let him forget this. It’d be one more thing for them to fight about.
He dropped warp at the rendezvous site.
‘Go!’ he yelled. ‘Fire!’
Zoe ejected the remainder of their attack drones while he desperately swept local space for signs of their cargo. There was no ark nearby, though the Ariel Two was uncloaked and obvious, engaged in a firefight with a huge irradiated cloud of enemy ships and munitions. Neither ship was in their allocated position, though that was hardly surprising. The situation was badly out of control.
He grabbed the audio channel.
‘Ark One, this is Mark Ruiz,’ he said. ‘Prepare for immediate pickup. As soon as we have your location we will cover your approach.’
Ann’s reply was a stream of invective over open audio.
Then, as Mark watched, Ark One maxed out its tap-torches and headed straight for him, revealing its location for all to see in its urgency to escape. Several hundred Phote drones pivoted to converge.
Mark groaned. The ark was dangerously far away, in the worst of all possible directions. It’d be touch and go whether it reached the carrier’s waiting arms before the Photes got them.
‘On it,’ said Zoe. She slewed their fleet of drones around, creating a shield for the ark’s approach. ‘Commencing soft assault,’ she added.
‘Good luck with that,’ Mark muttered. These days, Photurian security was almost uncrackable.
‘Got to be worth a try,’ said Zoe. ‘We have to do something.’
‘Fair point,’ said Mark. ‘How about this?’
&nb
sp; He realigned the Kraken’s envelope and tried to nudge closer to the ark on bursts of ember-warp. It was like trying to tease a kayak through rapids with a jet engine.
He’d barely started before six Phote gunships flashed into local space, no doubt drawn by Mark’s exploding signpost. They immediately took on the Ariel Two, pinning it and spreading its fire. A fresh cloud of drones splayed out across space, aiming to block Mark’s escape vectors.
Mark fought down a sickly surge of panic. This wasn’t a rescue, it was a disaster. Earthers be damned. They’d be lucky if any of them got out alive.
1.6: ANN
By the time Mark finally appeared, the Ariel Two was struggling. Eight harvesters had made suicide dives against her shields. Ann had skewered five of them with boser blasts. The other three made impact before imploding. While they hadn’t dented her ship, the wear on her power-management systems was getting scary.
A nestship’s shield worked by holding the atoms of the exohull in a state of quantum agitation. Their nuclei temporarily materialised in the way of any attempted attack, effectively cladding the ship in neutronium armour. It was a furiously unlikely state for matter in the first place, and one only made possible by borrowed Transcended technology.
Forcing two such quantum-ensembles with conflicting phases into direct contact made the machinery unhappy, it turned out. Sprays of molecular iron accelerated to near-light-speed kept shearing off from the contact points like rail-gun slugs.
With her tap-link to Sol still intact, Ann wasn’t going to run out of power any time soon. But her shield generators could still give out as they struggled to do more with less material. Their shrieking already filled the hull.
Ann felt a moment of profound relief when she saw the gamma-burst of Mark’s arrival, followed by a surge of apoplectic rage.
‘At last!’ she roared into the audio channel. ‘Where in Gal’s name have you been? How many people have to die for you to get out of bed, you fucking asshole!’
Ann’s tirade was choked off by the need to move quickly. Mark had brought company. Lots of it. Phote gunships burst onto the scene and started firing bosers of their own, straining her weakened shield. All through the mesohull, power-couplings the size of apartment blocks started blowing out. The screaming and rumbling of dying machinery was so loud through the cabin walls that she could barely think.