by Richard Fox
“So long as they’re powered down, the shuttle could pass within a few dozen yards of any of those ships without the risk of detection,” Lafayette said.
“Fly through that mess?” Hale said. “The ships are so close to each other that they’re swapping paint.”
“I can do it,” Lafayette said. “With Egan as my copilot, it should be fairly straightforward.”
“Fair enough.” Valdar chopped his hand through the display and it powered down. “Hale’s team will embark once we’re at maximum range for the shuttle. Lieutenant,” Valdar looked at Hale, “my ready room.”
****
Valdar picked up a stack of papers from a leather chair in front of his desk and tossed them onto a little-used bunk. He motioned to the now empty seat and flopped into his own chair, a leather upholstered high back with worn armrests.
“What’s up, Uncle Isaac?” Hale asked as he sat down. The godfather-son pair managed a few moments of private time while one commanded the Breitenfeld and the other the ship’s Marine complement.
“How do you feel about this mission?” Valdar asked.
“It’s…iffy,” Hale said. “I thought we’d find a planet with Mentiq and maybe some orbital defenses. Nothing we couldn’t handle from orbit. Wham, bam, thank you, ma’am. We’re prepped for a ground infiltration and if we can get line of sight on Mentiq, the snipers will take care of him. Now we’ve got a bunch of new variables—none that seem to help us.”
“Should we abort? I can park the ship behind one of the outer planets and wait for the jump engines to recharge,” Valdar said.
Hale leaned back and rubbed his palm against his face. Hale had the perpetual look of exhaustion and pent-up violence Valdar came to know during the last war against the Chinese. That war, not unlike the current conflict with the Xaros, were a few intense battles spaced out over weeks and months as the two sides waged campaigns across the Pacific Ocean.
Valdar looked at his godson and didn’t see the bright-eyed and athletic child he’d watched grow up. Hale’d become a bloodied warrior with the scars to prove it. The Marine’s eyes seemed locked on a distant vista, his body ever alert for the slightest provocation to join battle.
The captain knew this was what Hale wanted when he joined the Marine’s Strike Corps, but deep inside, Valdar wished Hale could go back to the innocent kid that won trophies for swimming competitions up and down California.
“Kren,” Hale said, “the Toth ambassador I dealt with on Europa, he mentioned something called ‘The Belt.’ I wasn’t sure what he was talking about until I saw the video files pulled out of the Naga’s wreck. The Toth home world has a space station that circles the equator. The Toth have more ships than humanity ever had at the peak of the cold war between the Chinese and the Atlantic Union. Even with Ibarra’s proccie tubes and our ship yards going at full speed, the Toth could crush us. We barely won the first time they showed up. They come back with another couple Nagas and what they’ve got in their home system…”
“We have some time. Kren’s expedition isn’t due back for a couple more weeks. They had to hop from system to system with their jump drives to get to Earth. The Crucible got us out here with one jump. I can take us back to Earth, try and come back with more firepower.”
Hale shook his head. “The only reason we took down the Naga was because the Toth got greedy and stupid when they let the Lehi and a bomb inside its shield. There are two Toth dreadnoughts in orbit and we don’t have a way through their shields yet. We try to bring what’s left of Eighth Fleet and the new Twelfth Fleet and we’ve got a slug fight on our hands. Think of the casualties.”
Proccie casualties, Valdar thought. You wouldn’t be at risk.
“What do you think your chances are if I send you to the surface? Think you can get a shot at Mentiq and take him out?” Valdar asked.
“I trained for this kind of mission before the war. Back when the target was some Chinese flag officer vacationing at a Thai cathouse. Dropping on a planet with a long-lost human population and infiltrating into a shielded compound…not the same, but close enough,” Hale shrugged. “Worst comes to worst and you extract my team. The Breitenfeld de-cloaks, tosses a few rail cannon rounds into that mass of ships as a parting gift and we head home. We show Mentiq we know where he lives and we can hurt him. Maybe he’ll take the hint to leave us alone.”
“That’s a lot of variables,” Valdar said. Absent from his briefings to the crew were Ibarra’s express orders to Valdar that didn’t come from the navy’s chain of command. Valdar had aided a movement of true-born humans attempting to get rid of the procedurals by handing them all over to the Toth, and Ibarra had all the evidence he needed to make sure Valdar was stripped of his command and charged with treason.
Ibarra had told Valdar that the mission to Nibiru wasn’t a suicide mission, not for him and his ship. The mission came with a fail-safe, one Valdar had to deliver to the planet’s surface. If Hale learned of it…
“It’s war. We take risks,” Hale said.
“Then we’ll continue as planned. Get to the surface, kill Mentiq if you can and get out of there. I’ll handle the high ground.” Valdar’s words were resigned. Hale and his brother Jared were the last tangible connection the captain had to his life before the Xaros invasion. Throwing Hale into the fire again felt like the moment he realized his wife and children were dead and gone.
****
The armoire was alive with the snap and hum of power armor as the Marines donned their combat gear.
Standish swung his arms across his chest and pulled his shoulders back, feeling the pseudo-muscle layer beneath the plates adjusting to give him a full range of motion. He squatted low, feeling the suit contract against his thighs and knees. He jumped up and activated the magnetic linings in his boots, which brought him back to the deck like he was connected by an elastic band.
“Pretty sure it works, huh?” Egan asked. “I saw a guy try to cheat his checklist like that and almost cracked his skull against the ceiling when the linings failed.” The communications specialist pressed an armored pouch against his belt; a hum and a click followed as magnetic plating and turnscrews fixed the IR relay kit to his armor.
Standish took a bandolier from an ammo canister and draped high-explosive grenade shells over his chest.
“Well, sergeant,” he said to Egan, “when you’ve got the latest and greatest equipment coming out of Ibarra’s foundries, there’s reason for confidence. The new mag linings made it through QC twelve hours before we jumped out.”
“I thought all the new gear went to the Ranger Regiment and the expeditionary core they’re standing up on Mars,” Egan said.
“It is,” Standish said curtly.
“Then why do we have the new linings…and gauss capacitors for our rifles that are fifty percent more efficient than what we had last week?” Egan asked.
“Gunney?” Standish turned away from Egan and waved at the team’s senior NCO. “We’re going atmo. Should I bring a couple extra thermobaric grenades? You know, for giggles.” Standish tapped the grenade launcher attached to the bottom of his gauss rifle.
Cortaro, who had a checklist in hand as he inspected Rohen’s armor, didn’t bother to look away before answering. “Add another bandolier to your carry sack.”
Standish grabbed the bulging pack attached to the small of his back and looked inside.
“But Sarge, I do that and I’ve got to dump my pogey bait to make room,” Standish said.
“My heart bleeds,” Cortaro said.
“Man…” Standish grabbed a handful of candy bars from his pack and put them in the half-empty ammo can. He ripped the corner off a confection made of chocolate, nougat and nuts and took a bite.
“Not going to let those damn squids eat my stash,” he mumbled. Standish tilted the ammo can to Egan.
“Thanks.” Egan took one out and started eating.
Standish motioned to the pilot’s wings stenciled on Egan’s chest armor. “How’d you ge
t wings as an enlisted Marine? I thought you had to go through OCS before pilot training.”
“Easy, I’m a proccie,” Egan said.
Yarrow, Orozco and Bailey all stopped what they were doing and turned their attention to Egan.
“I came out of the tube knowing how to fly Mules and Destriers. Bet I could handle an Eagle if I had to. I can read and understand Toth too. The planners beneath Camelback Mountain looked at what your team was missing and had me made to order,” Egan said. “I heard the instructors talking about me after I passed my flight quals on Hawaii. They came clean about my background once I asked. Sure made knowing Toth make a lot more sense.”
“You seem awful…” Standish glanced from side to side, “awful OK with being a proccie. Wait, can I say that? Or is ‘proccie’ a that’s-our-word sort of thing?”
“I don’t care,” Egan said. “Sure is a lot easier than calling someone a ‘procedurally generated human being’ every single time. I thought Western civilization got over that politically correct crap decades ago.”
Standish and the other true-born Marines looked at Yarrow.
“Hell, it don’t make no difference to me,” Yarrow said. “Proccie’s fine.”
“Wait a minute,” Orozco took an oversized magazine for his Gustav and tapped it against his bare head. “Why didn’t they just make a whole new team of Marines perfect for this mission? Each of them the reincarnation of Chesty Puller, General Mattis and Gunnery Sergeant Hartman, seems better than sending the lot of us to Nibiru.”
“Training,” Cortaro said. He tapped his fingers against Bailey’s shoulder and the Marine stood up straight, her arms to the side as Cortaro inspected her armor. “We, with the exception of Rohen and Egan, have been together for a long time. We’re a team and any team will be better than a group of individuals lumped together, no matter how good those individuals are.” He spun a finger around and Bailey turned her back to him. “Ibarra’s tubes can pump out proccies that know each other and remember training for years on end, but that takes a long time. Admiral Makarov and her Eighth Fleet are like that. Now Ibarra’s churning out proccies one at a time, sending them to new units where they’ll learn to be a team the old-fashioned way: training.”
“Where’d you hear all that, Gunney?” Standish asked.
“You’re not the only one with contacts.” Cortaro pulled a canister off Bailey’s back and shook his head. “This filter’s at thirty percent. Get a new one.” He slapped her on the shoulder and returned the bad filter to her.
“That why we’ve spent every waking moment on the range or doing drills since I came aboard?” Rohen asked. “I thought we were going at it a bit hard, considering your and Hale’s reputation.”
“And what reputation is that?” Orozco asked.
“After everything you did on Earth, the Crucible, Anthalas…I doubt any of you’d ever have to pay for a drink at a bar ever again,” Rohen said.
“Which bars are you talking about?” Bailey asked.
“Don’t mistake an intense desire to not be eaten or killed as something special.” Standish looked at Egan, Torni’s replacement. “Not all of us made it home.”
“Or in one piece,” Cortaro flexed the muscles in his cybernetic foot and calf. The clone replacement for the limb he lost on Anthalas would have to wait until after this mission. “All right, big mouth,” Cortaro said, pointing at Standish, “let’s see if you remembered to double-check your auxiliary air lines for once.”
****
Hale, clad in his armor and with his rifle attached to his back, walked off a lift and onto the Breitenfeld’s flight deck. He found most of his Marines and Steuben standing behind the yellow and black chevrons running along the perimeter of the deck, demarking where one could watch flight operations safely.
Only Yarrow was on the flight deck, almost empty of craft but for a few Mules and a pair of ready-alert Eagles toward the stern of the deck. Yarrow held both hands out in front of him, pawing at the air as he meandered around the deck.
“Sir,” Cortaro said as Hale stopped next to him.
“What the heck is he doing?” Hale asked.
Bailey and Standish fought a laugh and stifled all but restrained sniggers.
“He is looking for the cloaked Mule,” Steuben said.
Standish bit the knuckles on his armored gauntlet as a tear fell from the corner of his eye.
“Hey, Gunney,” Yarrow called out. “I don’t think it’s in spot 2-4.”
“I said 3-4!” Cortaro waved Yarrow farther down the flight deck. The medic gave a thumbs-up and moved away, a hand held up in front of his face like he was walking through a dark room.
“So this is…Earth humor?” Steuben asked.
“How long has this been going on?” Hale asked.
“Ten minutes,” Bailey said, her shoulders jerking from stifled laughter.
“It started before I got here,” Cortaro mumbled.
“Preflight checks are complete. Ready to go,” Egan said, his voice coming through the IR receiver in Hale’s earpiece. “And what the hell is Yarrow doing? Lafayette’s in the cockpit with me and he thinks it’s some kind of war dance.”
“He’s looking for the Mule,” Hale said. “Flash the running lights.”
Egan burst into laughter and Hale cut the channel.
Spotlights on a Mule almost thirty yards from Yarrow blinked on and off. Yarrow stopped stumbling around, looked at the Mule, then to the Marines, then back to the Mule.
“Aww…fuck you guys!” Yarrow stomped across the deck to the Mule.
Hale bit his lip to stop from smiling as his Marines broke down. Standish fell to the ground, on the verge of hyperventilating as he laughed.
“I don’t understand this,” Steuben said.
“I got it—” Bailey wheezed, “I got it on video.”
“All right, that’s enough.” Hale nudged Standish with his foot. “Time to saddle up.”
Standish got back to his feet. “Sir, I haven’t laughed that hard since I had Yarrow asking the ship’s foundry for a box of grid squares.”
“You know if you get hit he’s the one with all the pain meds,” Hale said.
Standish stopped laughing.
CHAPTER 5
Darkness. Stacey’s world beyond the small sled was nothing but absolute darkness. Her trips back and forth from Bastion to the Crucible orbiting Earth were little different, though spending hours waiting in an infinite white void compared to the abyss she was in now felt like splitting hairs. Both purgatories were long, dull affairs.
Getting an audience with the Qa’Resh hadn’t been easy. The enigmatic hosts of the Alliance preferred to remain at arm’s length from the ambassadors for all but official business. But when she asked to question the entity recovered from Anthalas, she’d been granted permission almost immediately.
Naturally, like all things with the Qa’Resh, the security measures felt like an unnecessary chore. She’d get to the entity, but she’d have to go alone and she wouldn’t know where its holding cell really was. The Qa’Resh lived within the upper atmosphere of a gas giant on a giant floating city…if the entity wasn’t kept there, the planet had plenty of space for a cell.
Stacey paced two steps along the sled, spun in place, and took two steps to the other end. She hadn’t tried to count the hours since she’d boarded the sled and her entire universe shrank to little more than what she could reach beyond her fingertips.
A bag slung over her shoulder flapped against her hip. Inside was the only physical object ever recovered from the Xaros, aside from the Crucible near Earth. The object gave her chills just thinking about it, even if it was just a re-creation.
According to Pa’lon, the long-serving Dotok ambassador who’d become her mentor, security hadn’t been this strong when he first joined the Alliance. But after the Toth betrayed the Alliance and killed a Qa’Resh during a kidnapping attempt, things had changed radically.
At least I don’t have to use the restroom, she
thought.
“I mean, do they even have bathrooms in this prison? Could you imagine how complicated that would be? Having to accommodate hundreds of other races—I’m talking to myself.” Stacey patted her fingers against her cheeks and stretched her arms out behind her back. She closed her eyes and swung her arms in front of her chest—and hit something hard and rough.
She opened her eyes and saw a dark rock wall in front of her, the surface black and pitted like it was made from solidified lava. She turned around and found she was in a small cavern, her on one end and a giant orb of shifting bronze metal on the other.
Intricate patterns played out across the orb’s surface: shifting fractal swirls dancing between blooms of dark checkerboards. The orb glowed from within, the only source of light in the cave.
Stacey swallowed hard and felt a tinge of fear spread through her chest.
“It can’t perceive you,” a voice said.
Stacey seized up and snapped her head around to look for the source of the words.
A disembodied head of a middle-aged woman with long braided hair hung in the air next to Stacey, looking at the orb. The Qa’Resh never appeared in their true form—crystalline entities the size of a two-story house—but always in the form Stacey saw now. There were at least three distinct humanlike guises, the braided woman being the one Stacey had the most contact with.
“It can’t perceive you, yet,” the Qa’Resh said. “Are you ready?”
“Shouldn’t there be some sort of…barrier? This thing isn’t exactly friendly,” Stacey said. She ran her hands over her simple tunic and pants, smoothing out what few wrinkles had crept into the white fabric.
“You are safe. You have our word.”
“Fair enough. Let’s start.” Stacey walked to the orb, her back straight and shoulders square. Her posture likely meant nothing to the orb, but it made her feel better.