by James Palmer
“Apparently, they like the taste of uranium very much,” said Hamilton. “Drizda, status report.”
“Almost there, Commander.”
“So are they,” said Kuttner.
“We’ve got the tones, sir,” said Brackett. “Sending now.”
They could hear and feel the Swarm ships pelting into them like rain on a tin roof.
“They’re chewing into us,” said Brackett. “Most decks reporting multiple hull breaches.”
Kuttner muttered something under his breath, flicked a comm circuit on his chair. “Dutton,” this is Captain Kuttner. Prepare to repel boarders.” He looked to Drizda. “Why isn’t your damned lullaby working?”
“Unknown,” said Drizda, rechecking her slate. “It should be making them calm.”
“Maybe calm means chew faster,” said Hudson, but no one appreciated the joke.
“Maybe they can’t hear us,” said Hamilton. “Try everything. Tightbeam, even radio.”
“Radio!” said Brackett. “Why didn’t I think of that?” She tapped her controls. “What frequency, though?”
“I have no idea, said Drizda. “Can you try them all?”
Brackett blew an errant curl out of her eyes. “Yes. I think I can. Hold on.”
“Make haste, please Lieutenant,” said Kuttner. To Hamilton he said, “Now if we can just keep this old rust bucket together long enough for this to work.”
Hamilton nodded. “Hudson, how’s the hatchery holding up?”
“Thirty percent of its mass has been consumed,” said the navigator. “The Razor has managed to dock with it. We can only assume they are offloading the eggs.”
“Gunner Cade, keep firing on the Swarm machines near the hatchery,” said Hamilton. “Try to keep any more from latching on without damaging the facility.”
“Aye, sir. Like shooting ducks in a barrel at this distance. But there sure are a lot of ducks. Sir.”
“Understood. Just do your best.”
Hamilton had no doubts as to Cade’s abilities. He was the finest gunner and weapons engineer he had ever had the privilege to work with. But if Drizda didn’t get her little trick to work, all of their skills would come to naught.
Dutton adjusted the rebreather mask on his face. “Move!” he ordered, and Ellison, Rodriguez, and the others fell in behind him, their weapons held at the ready. They moved quickly but quietly up a narrow passageway. Dutton heard a metallic thud up ahead and raised a fist. Everyone stopped. Beyond the hatch in front of them something moved, and it was their job to make it stop moving. Quietly, he moved to the hatch and shoved it open.
The way was filled with smoke. The acrid tang of burnt wiring assaulted their nostrils even through their masks. The heads up display on Dutton’s tactical helmet cut through the smoke to outline something moving directly toward them.
It was on them in an instant.
Dutton couldn’t believe how fast it could move. It reached down from the damaged deck above, skewering Rodriguez straight through the chest with a long pincer. He screamed, as he was pulled up through the hole the thing had made above them.
Dutton and the others fired up into the hole, oblivious to whether or not they struck their comrade. Dutton knew from that gruesome wound he was dead already.
The alien probe did not engage them again, but retreated somewhere up the corridor above.
“We’ve got to get up there!” said Ellison.
“Belay that, Corporal,” said Dutton. “We’ve got a lot more of these things, and we need to make sure we’ve swept every section.”
“But, Sarge—”
“That’s an order, Ellison. Rodriguez is gone. Now let’s get those mechanical bastards before they get anyone else.”
Ellison stared at Dutton hard, but she fell back in line behind him. Dutton moved ahead, thinking that if he had been just a few seconds slower it would have been him instead of Rodriguez. It should have been him. He pushed such thoughts out of his head and kept moving.
There was a squad of Marines just like them sweeping most levels of the ship, along with the Onslaught’s Navy personnel. He hoped they were having better luck than his squad was.
“Squads, report in,” he said over the common circuit.
“Reid here. We’re moving toward the central rail gun. All clear so far.”
“Donovan,” said a panic-filled voice. “We’re being bombarded up here, sir. They’re everyw—”
Dutton broke into a run, and his squad followed. Donovan and his men should be somewhere up ahead. They ran through an open hatch and rounded a tight corner just in time to see one of the Swarm machines spear Donovan with one of its metal appendages. The Marine hung there limp, his features becoming sunken in, as if the machine were sucking the life out of him, which Dutton supposed it was.
The remaining Marines fired on the machine, the bullets either bouncing harmlessly off its thick metal skin or disappearing entirely, as the machine absorbed them.
In a few moments Donovan was gone, as his body, armor and all, was taken apart atom by atom. It was the most horrifying thing Dutton had ever seen, and he’d lived through a Draconi attack on a remote colony world in which a raiding party had hauled off women and children to be eaten. He screamed and fired at the machine, but it calmly returned its attentions to digesting the ship’s bulkhead, as if oblivious to their presence.
“Cease fire!” Dutton ordered. He glanced at Donovan’s remaining squad. There were only three of them left, and one of them was bleeding from the right shoulder.
“I’ve got an idea, sir,” said Ellison, reaching for a pouch on her equipment belt. She produced a small shaped charge.
“That thing’ll eat that explosive and keep on going,” said Dutton.
“Not if we attach it to the bulkhead.”
Dutton thought quickly. It wasn’t an outer bulkhead wall. They wouldn’t cause another hull breach, or do much more damage than the machines weren’t causing already. “Do it.”
Ellison carefully placed the charge near a section the Swarm probe was busy disassembling. She primed it and stepped back.
“Move,” said Dutton. “Back this way. Let’s go.”
They had just moved back around the bend through which they had come when there was a loud explosion. Dutton’s ears rang from the concussion. Martin, Donovan’s second, was mouthing something to him. It took a few seconds for Dutton to realize that he was actually speaking.
“All clear, sir,” Dutton heard him say once the ringing in his ears died down. “We got it.”
“Good,” said Dutton, relieved. They couldn’t blow up all of them, but it was something, and proof that those things weren’t invulnerable.
“We’ve got a lot more decks to clear,” said Dutton. “Let’s keep moving.”
They had taken three steps when another Swarm machine drilled through the level above to come down directly in front of them. A metallic tentacle shot out, wrapping itself around Lt. Sullivan’s right leg.
The young Marine cried out in pain. Dutton barely knew him, but he was a tough little grunt. Whatever this thing was doing to him must be excruciating. Dutton fired on the tentacle, severing it, the tip wrapped around the soldier’s leg unfurling and falling to the deck inactive.
“Everybody back!” Dutton shouted, irritated to be losing ground. Ellison and Rodriguez supported the still screaming Sullivan, lowering him to the floor while Dutton inspected his injury. The fabric of his jumpsuit was missing where the thing’s tentacle had absorbed it, and the skin beneath was red and raw, blood welling up. Another few seconds and it would have gotten to the bone.
“Medic!” Dutton shouted.
Sullivan’s armor was even now pumping him with pain-numbing drugs, but the wound needed immediate attention. Someone appeared from the back wearing a diagnostic gauntlet. She had been part of Donovan’s squad. While she tended to the injured man, Dutton peered ahead where the Swarm machine had broken through. It was already gone, drilling down into another level w
here it could no doubt cause even more damage. If something didn’t happen soon, these things were going to take the entire ship apart out from under them, and there wasn’t a damn thing they could do about it.
21 Escape
“You’re insane,” said Leda, her eyes never leaving the barrel of Straker’s weapon. “I’ve heard the old stories too, and if even half of them are true there is nothing that can stop this Chaos Wave, whatever it is. The Progenitors couldn’t even stop it, and they were far more advanced than we are. What makes you think we can?”
Straker uttered cold, hollow laughter. “My dear Lieutenant, what makes you think I intend to stop it? I want to join its holy cause.”
Leda opened her mouth in an O of surprise. She wanted to scream at him, but no words came out.
“Don’t worry,” said the Colonel. “All will be revealed soon. You see, Leda, you were right about me. I have no intention of killing you.” He lowered his weapon. “I still need someone in my inner circle with your special expertise. Otherwise I would have banished you along with that meddler Hamilton.”
“So he was framed all along,” she said. “And the raids. The murdered scientists. That was all you.”
Straker bowed slightly. “Guilty as charged.”
“Then why send Hamilton and I out to investigate?”
Straker shrugged. “I knew that due to the nature of your assignment you would get wind of what I was up to sooner or later,” he said. “And Hamilton was so smarmy and cock-sure, I thought sending him in harm’s way would knock him down a peg or two. If both of you got killed by my Marines in the process, well, it would look like two soldiers getting it in the line of duty. But when you both came back I decided I could use someone with your talents and resourcefulness—and that I’d better put Hamilton as far from me as I possibly could.” He looked down at the floor. “It was working out great until Hamilton and that old fool Kuttner disobeyed orders and stumbled onto the Swarm entering League space.”
That’s it, Leda thought. Keep him talking. Leda moved her right hand behind her along the dais that held the damaged alien probe in its magnetic grip. Straker was distracted as he recounted his tale, his gun now pointed at the floor. It was now or never.
Leda took a step forward and kicked out with her left leg, knocking Straker’s weapon from his grip. It fell to the floor behind him and went skittering under a worktable. Straker mumbled an epithet and swung his fist at her, but she was already gone, standing beside the dais that held the alien probe suspended in its magnetic field.
“On second thought,” Straker grumbled, “maybe I will kill you after all.” He lunged toward her.
Leda slapped a button on the dais, and the magnetic field collapsed, the large, heavy probe teetering over and falling right onto Straker, pinning him to the ground. Leda drew her weapon and aimed it at his head.
“You…should know,” said Straker under the probe’s weight. “When that field…is deactivated…without going through necessary…protocols…an alarm is triggered.”
Leda stood there. Was he bluffing? She couldn’t be sure. Silo Six had alarms for its alarms. Even now a squad of MPs could be descending on her. She couldn’t afford to take the chance.
And she couldn’t kill Straker either. He wasn’t working alone, and the authorities can’t question a dead man.
Leda’s eyes darted around the room, her mind weighing her options. There was only one expedient course.
Lt. Leda Niles holstered her gun and ran.
“We could have…worked together,” Straker croaked behind her as he began shifting the enormous weight off his chest. She heard a heavy, metallic thud as he rolled it off of him. “Now you’re dead,” Straker called. “You hear me? You’re dead. All of you!”
Leda had to find someone in authority, someone she could trust. But not here. There was no one else currently on base who outranked Straker.
“Hamilton,” she breathed as she exited the elevator at the surface. She skirted round toward the rear of the building and darted through the maze of service structures and storage pods, while the sound of booted feet marched toward Silo Six. She had to reach the Artra system.
Leda paused long enough to watch a ship taking off on plumes of flame. Others stood nearby in various stages of pre-launch. Everyone was headed for the Artra system, where a new war with the Draconi was brewing. A war she knew Commander Noah Hamilton was desperately trying to stop.
Whether she got off this rock alive or not depended on what she did in the next few minutes.
“I’m coming, Noah,” she whispered, and ran toward the barracks.
22 Swarm Song
“We’ve got it, Captain,” said Drizda. “Transmitting frequency now.”
“On speakers,” said Hamilton. “Broadcast it throughout the ship as well.”
Lt. Brackett touched a series of buttons, and a grouping of ethereal notes filled the air. It was completely alien, yet wholly beautiful, the notes lilting, haunting. Hamilton didn’t know what they were saying, but there was a definite feeling there. Of something. He hoped it resonated with the Swarm as much as it was with him.
At first there was no reaction. The Swarm kept up their programmed attack. The hatchery was almost gone, but the Draconi ship had signaled that they had successfully offloaded the eggs and were retreating with them to the Q-gate, vowing that they would send reinforcements to assist the Onslaught. Hamilton had little doubt that they would be too late.
But then the Swarm’s behavior changed. They halted their activities and just sat wherever they were, quietly, as if listening. Drizda tapped on her slate.
“It’s working,” she said. “The Swarm has fallen into some kind of rest mode.”
The bridge erupted in claps and cheers, which Captain Kuttner stifled with a wave of his hand. “We’re not out of the woods just yet,” he said. He was still waiting for the other shoe to drop.
“Drizda,” said Hamilton. “Can the Swarm machines that chewed their way on board be safely handled?”
“Unknown,” said the Dragon scientist. “They seem to be docile enough at the moment, but I’m not even sure what these Progenitor tones are doing to them.”
“What are you getting at?” said Kuttner.
“I’d like to hang onto one of them for study,” said Hamilton. “It might reveal a way to defeat them for good.”
“I’m no engineer,” said Drizda. “But I’d love to tear one apart, see how it works. There is much we could learn.”
Kuttner worked his jaw. “Fine. I’ll have a squad of Marines snag one and bring it to one of the repair bays. Keep transmitting that signal.”
“I’ve got it on repeat, sir,” Brackett assured him.
Kuttner sat back in his chair and exhaled a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. They just might get out of this after all.
“All decks reporting the Swarm probes are shutting down,” said Brackett.
“The probes outside the ship are doing the same, sir,” said Hudson. “Their power levels are flat-lining. It’s like they’re going inert.”
“Looks like we’ve finally caught a break,” said Hamilton. “Good work, Drizda.”
The Draconi scientist nodded, her eyes never leaving her data slate.
Hamilton thought he could hear a strange muffled thud coming from somewhere amidships.
“Sir,” said Brackett. “We’ve lost communications, both broadcast tightbeam and onboard comms.”
“What happened?” said Kuttner.
“Computer reports an explosion in the communications room.”
Hamilton and Kuttner exchanged wary glances. They both knew what that meant.
“Text message a fire crew,” said Kuttner. “Get it tamped down.”
“Fire suppression systems activated,” said Brackett. “Looks like the fire is out, but I’m texting an emergency crew now.”
“Sir,” said Hudson. “The probes are waking up. They’re starting to tear through the ship again.”
&
nbsp; “Tell those marines to look alive,” said Kuttner. Text a warning to their slates. I want them to know this is not over.”
Hamilton got up and went to Brackett’s workstation. “Is there anything you can do to get our comms back online?”
Brackett shook her head. “No, sir. Everything was controlled out of that room. My console is just a relay station. We’re stone deaf.”
“Without our tightbeam transmitter we can’t pacify the probes,” added Drizda.
“I know,” said Hamilton. “I know.”
“I might know a way.”
Kuttner spun around. Gunner Cade was looking at him and the captain from his workstation.
“What is it, Gunner?” asked Kuttner.
“We can rig up an electromagnetic pulse. Use the magnets in the rail gun to fry the probes infesting the ship, and any who get too close to us out there.” Cade jerked a thumb at the viewer.
“Won’t that fry everything else, Lieutenant?” asked Hamilton.
“A few minor systems, sure,” said Cade. “But everything else is pretty heavily shielded because of the magnets. We’ll reboot the main computer as soon as the pulse has passed. We should be fine.”
“Should be?” asked Hamilton.
Kuttner held up a hand. “Do it, Mr. Cade. The way I see it we don’t have any better options. How soon can you be ready?”
“It’ll take me about ten minutes to set it up.”
“Go,” said Kuttner.
The young man jumped from his seat and exited the command deck.
“Do you really think this is a good idea, sir?” said Hamilton. “We’ll lose power, life support…”
“I don’t like it any better than you do, Commander,” said Kuttner. “But Cade is one hell of a weapons engineer. If he says we’ll be all right, we’ll be all right.”
“Of course, sir,” said Hamilton. He had seen Cade’s prowess, especially since this whole conflict began. He was just worried that they were burning through their stockpile of dumb luck at an enormous rate.
The wait was excruciating, especially since they had lost contact with the marines who were facing the swarm probes head on. Finally, Cade reappeared, sweat and grease staining his brow. A coil of wires was thrown over one shoulder. Without a word he went to his workstation and dived head first beneath it. In seconds he had a panel off and was halfway inside the control console, manipulating a glowing tangle of fiber optic wiring. At last he emerged. “Ready,” he said, panting.