Hold the Line (Chimera Company Book 5)

by Tim C. Taylor

  “Cocooned.”

  “Say again.”

  “Cocooned, as in pupa. We think it’s a self-repair thing. Either that, or she’s morphing into a space moth.”

  “Let’s hope it’s the former. Phantom, if things go south, jump to JSHC and wait for us there. Shouldn’t be necessary. We’ve turned the tide. We’re…” J’Klin snapped his jaw shut. He’d almost said ‘winning,’ but how could he use that term when the bulk of the Legion Navy was ripping itself apart?

  “It isn’t pretty,” J’Klin continued, “but we’re disabling rogue ships without destroying them and we’re quadrupling security on all ships to watch for the Corrupted as they turn. No ship has been immune. You should adopt the same protocol.”

  “Copy that,” Fitz said, grim thoughts of Bronze uppermost.

  “Oh, one more thing. Steadfast has made open use of our new jump drive. Indiya won’t be pleased to hear that, but it’s vital that she knows. Now leave me to my battle.”

  “We’ll keep the boss safe. Phantom, out.”

  Izza had explained Sybutu’s little crisis of confidence at the hatch. At the time, Fitz had been disappointed in the man, but now he found himself mirroring Sybutu’s doubts as he looped Phantom around and thrust away from the battle. Sitting this one out in safety offended every inch of his soul. But the stakes had grown much bigger than him and the fortunes of his little band of adventurers.

  “Sometimes being a hero means running away from the sound of guns,” Izza said.

  He kissed her, then placed his hand over her heart. “So long as I’m still a hero in there.”

  The corners of her mouth lifted, but he couldn’t call it a smile. They’d both heard the hollowness in his words. The problem was, as much as he desperately wished it weren’t so, being a hero to Izza was no longer enough.

  * * *

  Captain J’Klin

  “Multiple bogeys jumping in system. There are so many and so tightly concentrated that their emergence fields are overlapping. I’ve never seen anything like it. Best guess is between 200 and 500 ships have just appeared.”

  J’Klin tried his best to keep the despair from his face. “Emergence signatures?”

  “Not recognized.”

  “Well, they can’t be Muryani, because the bugs don’t have jump tech. That leaves only one option. Let see what we’re facing.”

  It took a few moments for a visual to resolve into the form of fuzzy blobs bristling with hairs that flicked a flexible aft segment like swimming fish. They were the big siblings of the ship the Legion had dug out of Rho-Torkis, the one Steadfast had fought to a bloody draw at Doloreene.

  The one…Now there were hundreds of the ugly brutes, and that was only the start. They were still streaming out of j-space through an oval portal.

  Ships with Mark I Federation jump tech usually formed their own jump tunnel. Only the most intrepid of pilots, ones blessed with good luck, expert jump calc teams, and a sense of irresponsibility had been known to follow another ship’s tunnel.

  Steadfast’s Mark II engines had allowed a few smaller ships to follow in her jump shadow, but this was on a different scale, a gate held open so an entire fleet could pass through.

  “Comms, signal the capital. Tell them to evacuate the system.”

  He almost laughed. The system was home to sixteen billion citizens. Only a tiny fraction could make it out. Still, he had to warn them. “Get me Phantom at my station,” he added.

  J’Klin activated a privacy shield moments before Fitzwilliam’s face appeared on a viewscreen. He looked surprised to be contacted. Of course, Phantom didn’t have top mil-spec sensors. The man didn’t know what was about to hit them.

  “Fitz, the Andromedans have shown up in force.”

  “Sweet holy mamma’s arse!”

  “My assessment exactly. This isn’t a battle we can win. I’ll try to prove myself wrong, of course, but we’ll fail. Get away to JSHC now. May God grant that we shall meet you there.”

  Fitzwilliam stiffened. “Hold the line, J’Klin. I’ll see you at JSHC. Phantom, out.”

  * * * * *

  Chapter Fifty-Seven: Kreyenish “Squids” Zee

  JSHC, Tej System

  At the sound of someone approaching the building’s entrance, half the defenders in its lobby shouldered their blasters and prepared to sell their lives dearly.

  But it was only their Militia organizer, Corporal Orseolo. Accompanied by his entourage of three killers on loan from the local chapter of the Smugglers Guild, Orseolo was making his last check before the assault came in.

  “Man’s lucky to be alive,” Zaydok said. “He’s at more risk from his own levy troops than from the enemy.”

  Squids said nothing, unable to connect with Zaydok’s sense of humor. She’d seen the size of the invasion fleet, and they’d both had visions of the distant past and seen what the enemy had been capable of thousands of years ago. She wasn’t betting on the Andromedans forgetting how to fight over the intervening years.

  Whatever the risk from the hastily assembled levy troops, it was nothing compared to what was coming for them through space.

  Orseolo laughed it off. “Good to see you’re alert, Blockhouse Epsilon. Stay frosty, and trust in your training. Support each other because you’re a team. Aim before you fire, and pay close attention to your charge pack indicator. If you’re below 20 percent, shout ‘charge low’ and trust the resupply protocol to operate. Finally, whatever our differences beforehand, none of that matters now. We have no choice. We fight together, we die together, we win together. Liberty or death!”

  “Liberty or death!” most of the levy shouted back, some of them more reluctant than others. The team on the upper floor heard the Militia cry from the lobby and gave their own rousing cheer a few seconds later.

  Oh, what the hell, thought Squids and joined in with her enemy’s cry. “Liberty or death!” For good measure, she thumped the concierge desk she was using as cover.

  Orseolo gave her a nod, a smile creasing his grim Zhoogene features, then he was off to his command post on the roof of Blockhouse Delta, what had previously been the Aurora Nights Hotel before JSHC had been placed on an invasion footing.

  Blockhouse Epsilon—formerly Chellant Hab 3—was where she and Zaydok shared a room. If they survived what was coming, they could shower afterwards.

  She heard a titter behind her. The sound was an all-too-familiar irritation.

  “If you got something to say, Zaydok—”

  “Me? There’s nothing left to be said. Liberty or death? I have to admit, Squids, I never foresaw the day you’d join the Militia.”

  “I haven’t. This is a citizen defense levy. The Militia has trained and coordinated us, but that’s all.”

  “No need to get your tentacles in a knot. Nothing you do could compare with witnessing the Legion join the Militia.”

  He had a point. The Legion was primarily responsible for the defense of the system. Some of their forces had gone off to join Indiya in what was either a last-ditch attempt to save the people of the Federation from destruction, or a coup that would set Indiya up as dictator. Probably both.

  The legionaries who remained had turned on themselves. Rumors said less than five percent of Legion personnel had turned out to be Andromedan sleeper agents, but they’d been placed in positions of responsibility that allowed them to wreak devastation before being taken out.

  The sleepers were still awakening. The hero who prevented a ship’s reactor core from being sabotaged might wake up the next day as one of them and finish the job himself.

  Even more than the deaths and damage to equipment, the Legion’s trust in itself had been shattered. Legion units had been broken up, and their personnel placed under Militia command, carefully watched. Zaydok was right. The Legion had joined the Militia. You couldn’t make that kind of shit up.

  A boarding pod thudded into the space station’s hull. Her heart raced. She felt suddenly trapped. She was trapped. Another pod struc
k home. Then a hail lashed the orbital, far too many to count the impacts. The noise was briefly deafening, the silence that followed more terrifying still.

  She glanced behind at Zaydok, taken aback by how much she needed him to be there. He felt exactly the same about her. He’d never spoken of it, but increasingly, she could read his thoughts, as he could hers.

  “I can’t believe we didn’t run,” he whispered.

  Once again, they were in agreement. Unlike everyone else in Blockhouse Delta, the two of them had seen this coming. So why hadn’t they run?

  * * *

  Adony Zaydok

  The invaders cannoned through the lobby, to be met by a screaming volley of blaster bolts.

  One…

  Zaydok listened to them stream in. What manner of creature were they? He could hear, but he couldn’t see from his hiding place behind the front desk.

  Two…

  The defenders also screamed, not the words of a battle cry, but primal screams of rage and fear.

  Three…

  Shrieks of pain, too.

  “Now!” he shouted.

  The four fighters behind the desk stood and poured bolts into the creatures crowding into the hotel. The hideous, malformed things went down in droves.

  They were half-finished humanoids. Those outside were running in on four legs, then standing to make their assault with the bone spikes projecting from their forearms. They were naked. No hair. No genitals. For them, the only purpose in life was to kill.

  Three of them jumped over the desk. Zaydok, Squids, and a woman called Freya shot them as they came over. The one who’d gone for Zaydok fell against him. He pushed it off, surprised at how light it was.

  Clarissa, the other fighter behind the desk, froze in horror as another invader leaped for her. At the last moment, she squeezed the trigger on the blaster. The bolt went wide, flying across the room into the opposite wall. The Andromedan slashed with its wicked wrist spike, opening Clarissa up from throat to lower sternum, spilling her over the reception floor.

  Zaydok turned to fire at the creature, but Squids got there first, then she screamed as another invader flew at her. She blocked its slash with her blaster’s stock, but it had wrapped its legs around her hips and wouldn’t be easily dislodged. It pushed against her, trying to bite her like a vampire.

  Zaydok drew a bead on the creature, but he couldn’t risk firing for fear of killing Squids. He slammed the butt of his blaster down onto the side of the thing’s neck. Its head lolled. Squids tried pushing it off, but it was still clamped on too tightly.

  Zaydok drew his knife and slit its throat. Its limbs released. The result was messy, but Squids was out of danger. When they readied to fire into the melee, they found the enemy retreating. They put bolts through the last of them, who were jumping out through the shattered front window.

  “We did it!” Freya shouted, disbelief in her voice. She looked at Clarissa’s ruined corpse and added in a hollow tone, “We won.”

  The viewscreen flashed an alarm, the device they’d set up to link the fighters in the reception with the team on the upper floor. A terrified man yelled into the feed, “They’re coming up the walls. Through the windows. Help us!”

  “The Militia man said we were to stay put,” a voice among the ground floor defenders pointed out.

  “Corporal Orseolo was right,” Zaydok said. He pointed out the man who’d spoken. “I want you and two others to cover the stairs leading down from the upper floors. The rest of you, follow the protocol we were given. Medics, do your jobs. Everyone else, guard the front entrance. The attack we beat back might be the first wave of several. Freya, you’re with me and Squids.”

  “Where are you going?” Freya asked.

  “We’re going to clean the walls,” Squids said. “Come on.”

  She took the lead, jogging through the lobby and out into a District Metz under attack. The sounds of battle were everywhere, the invaders swarming all the blockhouses. The crump of heavy weapons fire reached them from out to spinward, but she couldn’t see anything beyond the local battles.

  They hurried around the rear of the blockhouse to find the surviving aliens from the first assault crawling up the wall like a plague of oversized insects. The windows on the second and third floors had been shuttered with hardened metal plates. The enemy went for the upper floor windows, which had been left open as firing ports.

  The defenders were shooting down, but the angle was difficult. An alien slashed through one of the windows, killing its defenders.

  “From the bottom up,” Squids said.

  The three of them opened fire at the climbing invaders, starting with the ones closer to the ground. They methodically cleaned the walls, which was made easier by the attackers’ reluctance to go any direction but forward. Several stared down at the trio firing from the ground, then they climbed faster. Zaydok saw flashes of blaster fire lighting the rooms through the breached windows. Many of the enemy must have gotten through.

  In a little over a minute, they’d shot all the invaders off the wall. They spent a few moments inspecting the heap of bodies, finishing off any who showed signs of life.

  “We’re secure,” a Zhoogene called down to them from an upper window, giving a thumbs up. “We only lost five,” he said, sounding happy about that.

  It looked like the first attack on Blockhouse Epsilon was over, but they could hear the other strongholds still in the throes of battle.

  “We should help them,” Freya said.

  Zaydok and Squids looked at each other, something that still freaked him out with those surplus eyes on tentacles.

  The Militia had been very clear in their simple training. The citizens were to fortify themselves in blockhouses and leave the rest of the fighting to the Militia. If mobs roamed the station, they would get in the way, and then they would get killed.

  “We’ve done our job for the moment,” Squids told Freya. “We report back to the corporal and follow his orders. I have to go back inside, anyway; my charge pack is empty. Don’t tell Orseolo, but I’ve been firing blanks since we got out here.”

  “Don’t worry, dear,” Freya said. “I’ll get you fixed.”

  Zaydok hid his smile. Squids might be a rebel, but her fire discipline had been as good as any professional. It seemed she had a heart after all.

  * * * * *

  Chapter Fifty-Eight: Kreyenish “Squids” Zee

  Zaydok considered the dead Andromedan lying on the carpet of the room they shared. “What are we supposed to do, eat it? Maybe we should sit on its cooling body while we hold hands?”

  Squids shook her head in a flurry of tentacles. “How should I know?”

  Once they’d beaten off the initial attack on the blockhouse, and the adrenaline had started to fade, they’d both felt a shiver connecting them with these invaders. Their mutant abilities had come on in leaps and bounds since arriving at JSHC. They were like muscles whose existence they hadn’t previously suspected but were now training every day.

  This tingle…They knew it meant something. The question was, what?

  Corporal Orseolo had given the all-clear, and the other survivors of District Metz were busy celebrating the fact that, against all expectations, they’d lived through the experience. She and Zaydok, meanwhile, had dragged one of the creatures into their room and locked the door.

  “I know you were joking,” Squids told him, “but sitting on it is as good an idea as anything. There’s no harm in trying.”

  They rolled the creature over so they weren’t staring at the fatal wound blasted out of its guts, then they sat astride it, holding hands. With eyes closed, they quickly moved into the mind-blending state.

  She’d come to think of this as an additional sense of being, one that had always been there at right angles to conventional reality. Now that she was aware of it, she had a degree of control. In this orthogonal version of their hotel room, the alien’s essence remained strong beyond death.

  Slowly, taking ca
re not to force the pace too hard, she and Zaydok descended into that essence.

  “Hey!”

  Rough hands shook her shoulders, wrenching her free of her connection with the Andromedan.

  She blinked and was back in the room. The door had been blasted open, and uniformed Militia squeezed in. She recognized their block commander, but he was no longer in charge.

  A Militia lieutenant pushed to the front. “Corporal Orseolo here says you talked about the assault before the invasion fleet arrived.”

  Was the officer making an accusation, or stating a fact?

  She decided to play dumb. Unfortunately, Zaydok, being naturally dumb, blurted out the truth. “Yes. We did.”

  “How did you know?”

  “We’re mutants.”

  She gave him a pained look.

  “I see.” The officer shook her head. “A week ago, I’d have said you were crazy, fit only for spacing. But now…” She sighed. “You make perfect sense. I presume you were part of the Lady Indiya’s group of…specialist auxiliaries.”

  The Lady Indiya? Sounds like the big boss was currently in favor. “We still are,” Squids told the lieutenant, determined to wrench control of the narrative from the ill-educated Zaydok. “We’re still learning what we can do. Sometimes we can see events from the past. The people who built the ring, for example. Maybe why they left. We stayed here to learn more about the ring.”

  “Why didn’t you tell us?”

  She shrugged. “You just told us you wouldn’t have listened. Besides, we only learned that we’re mutants a few weeks ago. It’s a dangerous identity to make public.”

  “Fair enough. Okay, I’m not saying I believe in your psychic magics, but I think you yourselves believe it.”

  The officer communicated over comms with her superior, then her troopers placed a holo-disc on the floor, and they were joined by the projection of a senior officer.