by M. R. Forbes
Aeron exited the loop station in Dome Six with Fox hanging a few meters back, keeping an eye out for potential tails. His new identity had made it easier to cross from the Reclamation Center to the source loop station on Strand Sixteen, but he knew from experience the Judicus Department and CSF would both assume he wasn’t going to sit still. Not when the Judici claimed he had killed Chair LaMont, his wife and no doubt by now his children too.
The thought was a sharp sting to Aeron’s emotions, which time and training had helped him master under most circumstances. Outsiders would think he didn’t love his family, but that wasn’t true.
He just loved humankind more. And there was nothing more important to him than upholding the first vows he had taken. The first promises he had made. They superseded everything else.
He had a new identification chip and a disguise, but he could imagine the Judicus Department right now, desperately running queries against every citizen on Proxima and looking for anomalies. They would figure out if anyone had gone anywhere they didn’t normally go, at a time they didn’t typically go there. They would make assumptions and then connections. Then they would move in. It would take time and wouldn’t let them completely zero in on who he had become, but they would get to his ID sooner or later. They would send someone—an undercover Peace Officer, a Judicus, an MP—to investigate. And if that person tracked him to his precise location, that person would be a casualty of this hidden war.
And then they would know where he had been, and the game would reset.
Aeron wasn’t panicked. He had planned for this. Expected it. There had never been a guarantee it would happen in his lifetime, but he had always known it would happen. The Organization was older than the settlement on Proxima. It had spent years tracking, monitoring, and in some cases stopping the Hunger and the Axon from gaining the upper hand on Earth. Of course, they had never expected the assault that arrived—the meteor shower that had rained a deadly virus and billions of trife down upon the Earth. They were caught unprepared because the Relyeh were caught unprepared. He had never learned how or why, but it didn’t matter. Even with all of his planning, even with all of their gathered intelligence, it was impossible to predict everything. It was impossible to be ready for every possibility.
Aeron walked briskly, keeping his head down and in shadow, and taking on a limping gait so they couldn’t track him by his stride. There were other biometric sensors inside the Proxima Domes, but he knew about all of them, even the ones law enforcement didn’t know. And he knew how to defeat them. It was almost trivial for him to make it across Dome Six to C-District, even walking right beside a patrolling Peace Officer for nearly three blocks while the officer’s comm cautioned him to stay on the lookout for Aeron.
He didn’t enter Ghost’s Tavern from the front, ducking into the split and heading for the rear entrance, leaving Fox behind to act as an ordinary patron and lookout. He remained alert, ensuring the alley was clear before going up next to the hardened faux emergency exit and subtly swiping his new identification chip against it. It was the only chip on the planet that would open this particular door, which was only to be used in this specific circumstance.
The door clunked and swung open just enough for Aeron to get his fingers past it and pull it open the rest of the way. He ducked inside, into a pitch black corridor. The door swung sharply closed behind him.
“Name and rank,” a neutral, flat voice said in the darkness.
“Aeron Haeri. General of the Centurion Space Force. Prime of the Organization. Tenth Chair of the Trust.”
The system was scanning him while he spoke, using another set of sensors he didn’t want to defeat, including vocal recognition.
“What is your prerogative?”
“Protect humankind.”
“Where?”
“Everywhere.”
An LED turned on over his head, revealing the armored corridor with a second blast door a meter away.
“Remove your clothing and produce the package.”
Aeron was already pulling at the street clothes, taking them off and dropping them on the floor. When he was naked, he opened the false skin in his thigh and removed the data chip and key, holding them up. Sensors scanned them too, ensuring their authenticity.
The second door thunked and rotated open. Aeron walked through it and directly into Special Command.
“AH-TEHN-SHUN!” someone barked.
There were over a dozen people in the room, each of them already doing something that Aeron would have said was much more important than stopping the activity to turn to face him, especially since he was naked. His lack of clothes didn’t register across any of their faces, their expressions of serious professionalism holding fast.
“Carry on,” Aeron said, causing most of them to break and turn back to what they were doing.
“Sir.”
Aeron turned to his left. An older woman approached, holding a perfectly folded and stacked suit.
“Thank you, Briar,” Aeron said, reaching out to take it. He let his eyes cross over the room.
It wasn’t a large room and was stuffed with workstations and displays, both static monitors and three-dimensional holograms, leaving only small channels for the techs to move around in , often having to turn sideways to pass one another. A column of servers sat in one corner and a backup reactor in another, while a rack of plasma rifles adorned the wall on the left.
The techs were poring over streams of data coming in from every source imaginable. They were hacked into Judici channels, Centurion Space Force channels, Trust channels, Law Enforcement and of course public comms. They had data coming in from sensors scattered across nearby space—covering both secret Organization deployments and official CSF equipment.
“Briar, can you retrieve my ion blaster and microspear from the hallway?” Aeron asked, grabbing the perfectly folded underwear from the top of the clothes stack and pulling them on.
“Of course, sir,” she replied, moving to comply.
Aeron was buttoning a crisp white shirt when she returned with the weapons. He finished buttoning before he took the blaster from her, sliding it into a holster provided with the clothes.
“I assume this is the microspear?” she asked, holding out the short, thin weapon.
“It is,” he replied, accepting it. “A convenient tool. I’m grateful to Sheriff Duke for providing it.”
“I’m sorry about Kirin,” Briar said.
“So am I,” Aeron replied.
“These bastards have no souls.”
“I don’t know about that. We were all made for a purpose, and there’s a purpose to the actions we all take. This is conflict, but it isn’t personal. When you make it personal, you become emotional, and when you become emotional, you become reckless and make mistakes.”
“Yes, sir,” Briar said.
Aeron unfolded the suit jacket and slid it on, buttoning it too. The outfit was dark tech, a special weave of spidersteel and Axon alloy that would withstand small arms fire easily and could hold up against both plasma and lasers for a short time.
“Lawson,” Aeron called out, getting the lead techs attention. Lawson was another older man, bald and wrinkled but fit. He wore a simple black suit beneath a dark coat.
“Yes, Prime?” Lawson said.
“We know the Relyeh have infiltrated Proxima. They have a portal on the planet, aboard one of our fifteen ships. We need to figure out which one has that portal.”
“Sir, it’s risky to send units to every ship,” Lawson said. “We’ll be stretched too thin to enable our secondary directives with confidence.”
“I know. I don’t want to run manual searches just yet. Query the ship’s datastores, see if you can find a record of a portal being brought on board. It should be logged in somewhere.”
“Someone should have stumbled across it before now, you mean,” Lawson said. “Every centimeter of every ship has been searched over the years, I’m sure.”
“Not necessarily. If something was
smuggled on board, they could have plated over the compartment. Everything was assembled in such a hurry it’s easy to miss differences in the schematics against the actual layout.”
“Yes, sir. I’ll put Carlisle on it.”
“Sir!” Briar said, returning from her station. She had a fearful look on her face, pale and wide-eyed.
“What is it?” Aeron said, remaining calm.
“Outer perimeter stream readings just registered an anomaly.”
“Just now?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Pull the readings to the map and project it.”
“Yes, sir.”
Briar went to one of the terminals and activated the Command Center’s primary projector, launching a three-dimensional hologram of the space above their heads. Proxima was on the left side of the projection, while the anomaly at the outer marker appeared as a red spot on the right.
“Whatever it is, it’s big,” Briar said.
“Velocity?”
“Point eight lightspeed.”
The outer perimeter was ten light hours away, and the sensor data was streamed through light emitting repeaters from their position to Proxima. That meant the information they were getting was already ten hours old, and if the anomaly was moving at eighty percent of that, then it was likely only a few light-hours distant from the planet.
“Do we have a model yet?”
“Building,” Briar said. She paused for a few seconds. “Done.”
“Zoom in on it.”
The computers had taken the sensor data and used it to create a model of the anomaly’s most likely appearance. Aeron already knew what the object was, but it still took him back to see it.
“Mother of...” Briar said beside him, her voice trailing off.
Aeron stared at the Relyeh warship. It was a lot larger and more menacing in appearance than the initial sensor data had guessed, but that wasn’t what concerned him.
The warship had slowed considerably, altering its initial course for Earth and closing on Proxima instead.
“Son of a bitch,” he whispered. He didn’t know why the Relyeh had altered targets, and he should have. The lack of advanced intel annoyed him. “Reposition the satellites. We need to find that thing right now.”
“Sir, if we override CSF satellites, they’ll know we’re hacked into the system.”
“If we don’t we’ll be dead before we know what hit us,” Aeron replied. “Do it. Now.”
“Yes, sir.”
Briar passed the order to the correct tech, leaning over their shoulder as they typed in commands. “Calibrating,” she said.
Aeron stood stiff and straight, his eyes on the projection. Why had the Relyeh ship slowed? Why had it decided to attack Proxima first? Had the Hunger changed their mind about targets, or was this always their intent? Did they know the Organization was watching their approach? If so, then how? He hated to think there was a crack in the Organization’s foundation. That someone might have sold themselves to the Relyeh. But wherever people were involved, so was the potential for error.
“Scanning,” Briar said. “Standby.”
Aeron’s heart rate picked up slightly but remained much calmer than the rest of the techs in the room, judging by the fear etched into their features. Nerves wouldn’t help him guide the Organization through this situation. Nerves would only get people killed.
“Locked. Here we go, sir.”
The projection changed, the view zooming in from the outer security perimeter to space outside Proxima. As suspected, the Relyeh warship was closing on their planet, though it had slowed even further, to less than one-tenth light speed.
There was a reason for the diminished velocity.
“What the hell?” Briar said. “Are the readings wrong?”
Aeron’s jaw tightened instinctively. The sensor readings weren’t wrong.
The single Relyeh warship was launching smaller ships—hundreds of them.
The enemy was coming.
42
Hayden
“What the hell was that?” Hayden said.
He stood on the back of the APC, facing the convoy to the north, still making its way past the tree-trunk legs of the goliaths who had saved them before nearly damning them, their simple minds attracting them to the movement of the vehicles below.
That was before the single xaxkluth had appeared out of nowhere, gliding into the street and leaping through the center of the convoy to steal the goliaths’ attention. There was something strange about that xaxkluth. Something off. It moved awkwardly, using only half its tentacles for locomotion while the others writhed as though they too were confused. The two goliaths nearby had decided it was a more worthy target and had turned to pursue it as if they were dogs chasing a wayward ball. Together, they rushed away from the street and the convoy.
For the first time since Hayden had returned to Sanisco, the path was clear. With the xaxkluth gone, it was tempting to stop the convoy and return to the pyramid. To abort their escape and stay to rebuild. But the rest of the city was in ruins. All of the work they had done to build up the settlement had been undone, and the survivors were so few in number they could never put it back the way it was.
He had to accept the truth. Sanisco was a dream turned into a nightmare, and then murdered with Natalia and the girls. The best chance the survivors had was to leave. The best chance he had was to save them, kill the Axon responsible and move on.
“Perhaps it sustained damage to its neural cortex,” Max offered, also watching the scene unfold. “Hahaha. Haha.”
The ground shuddered as the goliaths moved away, the vibrations reminding Hayden they weren’t out of this yet. If the giants caught the xaxkluth too quickly, they could come back.
“Hicks,” Hayden said. “Lead us out of here. Full speed ahead.”
“Roger, Sheriff,” Hicks replied. “Sheriff…”
“What is it?”
“It’s Colonel Card. He’s sick again, I think.”
“Damn it,” Hayden cursed under his breath. “Pozz. I’ll be right there.” He tapped his badge to connect to the deputy driving the APC. “Veraz, get me closer to the tank.”
“Roger, Sheriff,” Veraz replied. The APC accelerated as Hayden holstered his guns and walked the vehicle from back to front with Max right behind him. The damaged walls of the outer perimeter went by on either side of the convoy, while the ground calmed as they put distance between themselves and the goliaths.
Hayden stepped onto the wedge-shaped front of the APC, looking down through the small opening in the metal armor and the hardened transparency beneath to Deputy Veraz. The deputy glanced up at Hayden, momentarily surprised. Hayden waved to the deputy before looking back up at the rear of the tank. Then he took three quick steps and jumped, his leap carrying him far enough to latch onto the top edge of the tank’s roof. His augments dug into the armor, producing enough grip for him to easily pull himself up. He crouched low as he made his way to the top hatch.
“Hicks, I’m on the roof,” Hayden said. “Open the hatch.”
“You’re on the roof?” Hicks replied, surprised. “Roger, Sheriff.”
The lock on the hatch thunked clear, and Hayden grabbed it and lifted it on its hinges. Max joined him as he turned to climb into the vehicle, effortlessly leaping from one roof to the next.
“Show-off,” Hayden said, looking up at the Intellect.
“Confirmation,” Max replied. “Hahaha. Haha.”
Shaking his head, Hayden dropped into the tank. There wasn’t a lot of wasted space inside, with the pilot’s seat slightly forward in front of the gunner’s station, and a small compartment toward the rear where nine civilians had packed together for the ride out. Caleb was sitting up against the bulkhead next to Hayden’s feet. The Marine’s face was pale, his short hair soaked with sweat.
He glanced up at Hayden with bloodshot eyes. “Sheriff.”
“Colonel Card,” Hayden said. “What happened?”
“I made a xa
xkluth dance,” Caleb replied. “What’d you think?”
“That was you?”
“Affirmative,” Caleb said. “You’re welcome.”
Hayden smiled, relieved to know the xaxkluth’s awkwardness was Caleb’s doing. “Thank you.”
Caleb smiled back. “I’ve got something else you might appreciate, Sheriff. A name.”
“What kind of name?”
“I think it’s the name of the Relyeh that’s controlling the xaxkluth.”
“I thought Nyarlath was controlling them?”
“They belong to her, and the overall orders are likely flowing through her from Vyte. But even Nyarlath would have trouble keeping thousands of them in sync on her own. She has agents on the ground here. Generals, if you will.”
“Makes sense. And you got our general’s name?”
“I think so. Does the name Hanson ring any bells?”
Hayden froze, looking down at Caleb. Hanson was the asshole Bryant claimed had been in charge of the Wheat. The same asshole that was still in cold storage on board the Parabellum.
“I see it does,” Caleb said.
“That place where you saved my team and me,” Hayden said. “It belonged to him.”
He paused, thinking it through. He should have realized sooner. The Axon, Krake had disguised itself as the farmer Josias and sent Hayden and the Rangers on a wild goose chase to rescue Josias’ wife. He’d succeeded in luring him away from Sanisco while the Axon killed Natalia and took the interlink. But the Wheat hadn’t been a simple diversion. It had been a trap, one that would have closed on him if Nathan and Caleb hadn’t intervened.
“I should have realized,” Caleb said, nearly mirroring Hayden’s thoughts. “Those were reapers we killed.”
“That’s what Bryant called them. You’re familiar with them?”
Caleb nodded. “Yeah. Doctor Valentine created them by merging trife and human genes and enhancing them somehow. Nasty bastards. We’ve had so little time…” He trailed off.
“Card, you okay?” Hayden asked.
Caleb raised his hand. “Help me up?”
Hayden took it, pulling Caleb to his feet. “What’s your thought, Colonel?”