MacAdams hesitated. It almost felt like he didn't have to answer, like the drugs might be thinning. Then the words poured out of him after all, just like water spilling over the top of a dam. "Don't think they care so much about me. But they want whatever Rohan's got. They'll go wherever we ask them to."
"Then there might well be some asking in your future."
"So you can entrap them."
"Obviously. They may represent the only true threat to our work on the surface. Once their interference is neutralized, the remaining nations will go on warring with each other until they have nothing left to fight back with. Ah, this reminds me. Are you aware of any other groups or movements presently working to oppose us?"
Again, MacAdams was able to hesitate. He could feel a lie right there, ready to be spoken out loud: he could send them on a wild goose chase, make them waste resources planning to deal with fake rebellions. But it wasn't quite there yet. The water inside him was still creeping up to the lip of the dam.
"Nope," he said, before the delay could get obvious. "None that I know of. DS has only been effective because they were preparing for something like this for decades. Might be other groups out there, but if so, you're talking about outfits that are going to be less than a week old."
"I am almost sorry to hear that. I had hoped to have a little more fun before we progressed into the cleanup phase." Enspach lifted his device, tapping more notes into it. "Well, Mr. MacAdams, I believe that will be all for now. But don't fear, we still have more use for you. Once I proceed with the formality of securing authorization from my superiors, I will require you to get in touch with Dark Solutions to arrange a rendezvous."
"Okay." Carefully, MacAdams stretched out his left hand, careful not to press against his shackle, and extended his four intact fingers and the stump of the fifth. "Just like Nine-Fingered Tristan."
Enspach didn't look up from his work on his device. "Who?"
"Tristan. From the Boga."
"The Boga. Ah yes, the holy book. Can't say I've ever done more than skim it."
"That's a disgrace. What you got in that book represents everything we've learned to value as a people. A thousand years of our collective culture, wisdom, and experience, and you think you're too good for it?"
"Why not? It wouldn't be healthy for us all to follow the same path." Enspach glanced up, smiling. "Did you have a point?"
"Yeah. But if you don't know Tristan, I might have to back up further. Tell me you at least know Frodo."
"Frodo. The small one who saves the realm from darkness."
"It was Frodo's job to take the One Ring, the ring of evil, and throw it into the volcano in Mordor. The problem was that the ring corrupted him along the way. By the time he got to the volcano, he wanted to keep the ring for himself. He would have left with it—except his jealous companion bit Frodo's finger off, taking the ring along with it. The companion grabbed up the ring, but the little bastard was so happy about it he started dancing and tripped into the volcano. Well, he melted, and so did the ring, ending the dark one's rule.
"Much later on, there was Tristan. Before the Panhandler hit, she was an average girl. A good student. Good parents. Was on track for a nice, normal life. Then the plague came. Took her parents. Somehow, it spared both her and her younger brother, but later, when the chaos spread, her brother got snatched up.
"Tristan was imprisoned, too—by King Dashing himself—but she fought her way loose and went to go find her brother. If you look into it, you'll find there's actually a few different stories about what exactly happened on her journey. But the one in the Boga, and the one I believe, is that the trail took her to a city in the desert, and then it went cold.
"Tristan asked everyone left in town if they'd seen her brother. No dice. Not sure what to do next, and with winter closing in, she hiked around the hills outside town to resupply. Most of the place had been picked clean by scavengers, but in a forest a couple thousand feet up from the desert floor, she found a cabin. Fully stocked with food and firewood. A creek less than a hundred feet from the back door. As she was walking around the site to make sure it was abandoned, a dog trotted out from the trees to beg for food.
"She settled in. It was hard work, but it was good. Without really thinking about what she was doing, she started to expand the garden for more planting in the spring. And to put up a smokehouse for the deer she figured she'd learn to hunt. Winter came and went. She hiked down into town to see if there were any new rumors about where her brother had been taken, but nobody'd heard anything new. So Tristan went back up to her cabin to get back to work planting the garden.
"She told herself she was more likely to find her brother by working out of a stable home base than by traipsing across the country and getting shot on an empty road somewhere. She might have stayed at the cabin for years. Except one night, she heard the dog outside yelping. Like it was scared. Like it was in pain. She grabbed her shotgun and ran out into the darkness. The dog gave one last yelp and went quiet.
"Tristan could see it now, lying in the leaves. As she ran toward it, one of the trees seemed to uproot itself and scrabble toward her. It wasn't a tree, you see. It was a Swimmer. The Swimmer ripped the shotgun from her hands, then knocked her to the forest floor. A claw snapped toward her face. She put up her hand and the claw cut her finger clean off. That was when she knew that she would die.
"The Swimmer lashed at her with its limbs. Ripped at her with its claws. Then a shadow launched in from the side: the bloodied dog, biting down on the tentacle. The invader was distracted for just long enough for Tristan to pick up her shotgun, take aim, and put both barrels through the Swimmer's skull.
"The next day, she buried the dog. She burned the Swimmer. She gave herself a few days to heal up. Then she packed up and struck north. Three days and two towns later, she got a lead. She headed all the way north, into another desert, and found her brother right as he was about to be initiated into the local cult. She brought him away. She saved him."
MacAdams turned his left hand in its restraint, considering it. "See, she'd let herself get scared. Decided it was best to lock herself up where she couldn't get hurt and wait for things to come to her. But there is no such place. And sometimes when you get hurt, or lose a part of yourself, you don't become weaker. You become more pure. The path is revealed to you."
Enspach didn't do anything to hide his amused smirk. "Do you believe today's events have revealed a new path to you?"
"Listen to this and you tell me. In the first part of the Boga, there were nine kings. The dark one gave them nine rings, corrupting them into wraiths. In the latter half of the Boga, there were nine heroes. Walt the Walking Man, Raina the Queen in the North, Georgia the Queen in the South. Tristan the Hermit and weird ol' Ness and Sebastian, the alien savior. Mauser the Thinker, Otto the old warrior who helped bring down the first ship, and Mia, the Flower of Culture.
"Then you have Frodo. And Tristan. Nine fingers each. I never used to buy much into this stuff. Wasn't the type. But too much has happened. I've been given too many chances to think it's just coincidence. When you cut off my finger, and that was supposed to scare me, that's when I knew for sure."
"Yes? Knew what?"
"That it doesn't end here. That my work still ain't done."
Enspach's smile faded, something flickering in the black pits of his eyes. "Are you planning to kill me?"
"Yes."
"How do you imagine you're going to do that?"
"Haven't figured that out yet," MacAdams said. Rohan smirked and started to turn away. MacAdams put on a thoughtful look. "But I imagine it'd go something like this."
He surged forward from the waist, the restraints falling away from his wrists—he'd sawed through them with one of the big buttons from his pants, which he'd plucked off on his trip to the bathroom, hidden in his mouth, and then spent long hours honing against the arm of his chair.
Until it was sharp enough to cut through the rubbery substance binding his hands
.
His feet were still held fast. If he missed his lunge, he was dead. Enspach seemed to lose control of his own feet, tripping over himself as he pulled away. The man collapsed toward the ground. Before he could fall out of range, MacAdams reached out with his full wingspan and yanked Enspach toward him.
He lifted the button. It was far and away the worst knife he had ever wielded—really more of a razor than a knife, and not one he would shave with—but you used what you had. He pinched down on the thick, unsharpened edge and slashed the blade across Enspach's throat.
The man's eyes went wide. A ragged slit opened along the path of the button. Yet rather than blood, all that spilled from the wound was thick black foam.
11
The carrier died in a supernova, the blast so bright Rada's screen had to darken itself or risk burning out—and likely taking Rada's eyes along with it.
She jumped from her chair and punched her arms above her head. "Target down! The target is down!"
The shrapnel from the cracked asteroid flew onward in a widening cone, disintegrating six Lurker interceptors while others darted through the spray unharmed. An instant later, the shotgun blast of rock plowed through Rada's people. A chunk twice the size of the Silence flashed past her front camera. The warning systems warbled—a micrometeor had punched through her hull, leaving a pea-sized hole at both entry and exit. The repair bots were already patching it up.
The rocks reduced three of her ships to smears of gas. Then the shrapnel was past them, and cheers were roaring out from the comm, and the Lurker's heavy fighters that had been pursuing them were scattering as well, yet three of them were hit and destroyed by the expanding mass before it was done.
The last of the rocks raced free of the battle and shrank into the darkness. Rada went to size up the situation on tactical, then swayed in shock.
"Both targets are down." Her lips were numb and she nearly stumbled over the words. "Repeat, both carriers are down!"
She hadn't seen what had destroyed it, but the same cone-shaped hole had been carved through the other side of the fighting as it had through hers. Drawing up a second longer-range tactical display showed a dispersed jumble of broken rock shooting away from the scene.
Rada opened her comm. "Time to get the hell out of here. Full burn dead ahead!"
She pushed the Silence into the red. Her two squadrons accelerated beside her—or what was left of them, anyway; between the initial contact with the enemy and the running of the gauntlet toward the carrier, they'd lost a full quarter of their ships.
"We have achieved our primary objective," Admiral Vance said through the fleet-wide comm. "But I will not congratulate you until you have completed your next task: getting out of here with your ships and skins intact. Begin a full and immediate withdrawal. Do not engage further unless you have no other choice. Let's get moving."
Rada's neck burned; she'd forgotten all about that whole "chain of command" thing. Behind them, the interceptors were already regrouping. The heavy fighters, too. During the battle, the Lurkers had kept a significant number of fighters and nearly all of their bigger ships out on the fringes, but they were all swinging about now.
And giving chase.
Admiral Vance appeared on her screen. "Give me some insight, Pence. Those carriers were supposed to be the cornerstone of the Lurker invasion. It was my understanding that if we destroyed them, the enemy would be so rattled and distraught that they would break off the engagement immediately."
"After how they acted on Earth, that was my best guess. Maybe they understand they've lost their last hope and now the only thing they've got left is revenge."
The admiral nodded soberly. "Let's hope so."
"Why would we hope that? Sir?"
"Because the alternative is that this was another setup."
Rada's blood settled in her veins like frigid mud. "Yes, sir. There is a chance."
"Then we'd better get our people out of danger before we're caught in the enemy's latest snare." He signed off.
A laser gleamed from the foremost heavy fighter, spearing the rearmost of Second Squadron.
"Evasives!" Rada yanked the Silence's control sticks, pulling it into a wild spiral, jinking out of it at random.
The ships around her exacted maneuvers of their own, each one unique. Another laser blazed harmlessly past. Yet the maneuvers were slowing their forward progress. Rada closed her eyes. They now had the choice of running full steam ahead and getting slowly picked off by lasers or continuing to evade the beams and eventually being overtaken by the entire fleet.
Her comm pinged. Mat-Nalin appeared on screen. He didn't look so tired anymore. In fact, his beaming, ruddy face looked like he wasn't planning to sleep until the local equivalent of dawn.
"Rada!" He laughed his booming, pot-clanking laugh. "We blew those fat sons of bitches away! What did you think of Ol' Bess?"
"Ol' Bess?"
"What's the matter? Did a chunk of it hit you between the ears?"
"The asteroid? Why wasn't its orbit on any of our charts?"
Mat-Nalin gazed at her. "Because it wasn't there until earlier today. Wasn't moving a quarter as fast, either."
"No way. How in blackest Mordor did you get a rock that big going that fast?"
"It's a little trick we whipped up involving artificial gravity and those Motion Arrestors of yours."
"How did you know how to do that? We've only had the MAs for a few months!"
He shrugged, bulging his reddened cheeks. "Do you know what we do for fun out here? We sit around drinking homebrew and talking about what we can do if Earth or a corporation tries to step on us. Who knows where any one idea comes from?"
"Let me guess. You have no intention of telling me the specifics of how you guys did this."
He donned a blinkered face that was an obvious put-on. "Why, I'm just a humble fellow who understands the virtues of making friends with smart people. I wouldn't have the first idea how to get a rock up to speed like that."
"I'm sure. Answer me this much. Can you do it again?"
"We've already pulverized their precious carriers into ash. What are you looking to do, smash the ashes into atoms?"
"I'm looking to get the Lurkers off us before they kill us all."
"We can give you one more strike. Or two, if you don't mind if they're smaller."
"Give us two. We have to make the Lurkers think we can keep doing this until we destroy them all."
Mat-Nalin's eyes grew dark. "There's more to it, ma'am. If you want a blast pattern big enough to hit any of the Tubes, we're going to have to set off the rock in front of your people, too. And the problem with rocks is that rocks ain't so smart. They hit whatever's in their way."
"If we don't do this, we're all dead. Get it moving."
"Right. Put yourself on this course, then. And when the rocks start falling, you better start praying."
A flight path appeared on screen. She passed it along to Vance, along with her plan. "This is the only idea I've got, sir. It means that some of our people will die."
The admiral's eyes tightened. "In wartime, that is what leadership always means. We will proceed with the plan."
Rada relayed it to the two squadrons she'd somehow found herself in charge of. As they continued their evasive maneuvers, they spread out subtly. A file came in from Vance's ship: they'd run a hasty sim experimenting with various ship arrangements to attempt to minimize losses. Rada's people rearranged themselves accordingly.
Lasers pecked at them from behind. Less than Rada feared—she was growing more and more convinced that they were powered by a depletable resource, or perhaps that the weapon system degraded with each use—but it was enough to force her team to continue to juke and dive, losing headway as the aliens crept up on them.
A Belter hodgepodge craft was lanced through the engines, tumbling apart in a puff of flame. A convoy of Lurker corvettes edged past the heavy fighters, just a few minutes out from effective range. Missile batteries bristle
d from their hulls.
Tactical lit up like the final stage of a video game. A new asteroid had appeared as if from nowhere, just a third the size of the first but traveling with just as much speed.
"Incoming!"
Given how much screeching the tactical display was doing, Rada's warning was about as necessary as a man pointing out that the sun was rising. Her ships were already scattering to the four winds. Picking up on what was coming, the Lurkers broke course as hard as they could.
The hurtling asteroid was consumed by blinding white light. The light dwindled, revealing thousands of hunks of rock spreading apart in a tornado of debris. Rada hadn't yet cleared the kill zone as the first shards whisked past her. Tactical bleated like a lost goat who can smell the wolves. Her ninth wing blinked off from her display, along with a pair of ships from Second Squadron.
The storm of stone sailed past and Rada straightened out, taking advantage of the Lurkers' all-out flight from the asteroid shower to gain a little ground. The pulverized rock ripped into the fleeing Lurkers, obliterating two handfuls of interceptors and heavy fighters along with a bulky support ship that had reached them just in time to get annihilated.
And then the storm was past them, too. The enemy recohered, giving chase like nothing had happened.
Rada messaged Mat-Nalin. He didn't look so cheery anymore.
She motioned toward her screens, which was pointless, since he couldn't see them. "You said you have another rock?"
"Want us to give it a heave?"
"Immediately."
He nodded and moved from his seat, reappearing on screen a few seconds later. "It's on its way. And it's the last one we've got. If this one don't scare them off, you're on your own."
"Thanks for the reminder. Otherwise, my imminent death might have slipped my mind."
It had also slipped her mind to resume juking. She set the Silence to automatic maneuvers. A fraction of a second later, a red bolt snapped past her bow. The Lurkers were closing on them again.
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