Of course they would be, both of them. It was only logical, and she obeyed logic whenever possible.
Far overhead, Rasu poured into the skies with renewed enthusiasm, turning day to a malevolent dusk. Her mother must have figured out what had happened by now, or at a minimum identified the consequences of it. But she had no way to contact Miriam or anyone else to advise them of the situation. Though the Khokteh used quantum technology for fewer tasks than most Concord members, even their communications network was down, crippling the planetary defense strategy.
They passed the wreckage of two crashed Eidolons in the middle of a street. Caleb slowed. But there were no organic pilots inside to save, so after a beat he sped up again. She assumed all the Eidolons kept backups at an AEGIS facility somewhere, and the Artificials could be restored once the battle was decided.
She chewed on her bottom lip until she drew blood. Despite all the logic in the world that counseled otherwise, she was terrified for Valkyrie. She was terrified for the Siyane. She was terrified for this wonderful, quirky planet and its fierce people, and for the fleets fighting above it. And she’d be damned if she wasn’t going to do everything in her power to save them all from this soulless menace.
A Khokteh fighter exploded less than a hundred meters overhead, and she and Caleb dropped to the open-air vehicle’s floor as debris rained down on them. Her hands covered her head, and his body covered the rest.
The vehicle slowed to a stop of its own accord when it neared the fighter’s flaming debris field, and they gingerly climbed back into their seats. She checked over her vital parts to confirm nothing had speared her skin, then turned to Caleb. Blood streaked across a thickening layer of dirt on his left cheek, and she gently touched a fingertip to it. He winced as she brought the hem of her shirt up and wiped the blood away, revealing a three-centimeter-long cut down his cheekbone. “It’s not deep.”
“Wouldn’t matter if it was.” He straightened his shoulders and retook the controls. “Almost there.”
They dodged rubble from several more downed fighters before rounding the next corner, and her heart dropped through her stomach all the way to her toes.
The Siyane had crashed into an eight-story building mid-spiral, its nose buried in a corner pillar. Half the façade of the building was piled on top of the main body.
She breathed in deliberately and tried to will herself calm. The hull appeared intact, just as she’d logically known it would be. “I can fly it out from under the debris, though it’s sure to be a bumpy take-off. But how are we going to get inside?”
Caleb brought the vehicle to a halt and killed the engine to peer out at the wreckage. “If we can make our way to the third floor of the building, I think we’ll be able to get to the underneath ramp. We might have to dig out the control panel, but then we’ll be able to extend the ramp, hopefully enough to crawl inside.”
They’d dug their way out of worse predicaments…but perhaps not quite so literally. She leapt out of the vehicle, promptly jumped at the sound of a roaring crash in the distance, and fixated on the point where the Siyane’s stern met the building. “Let’s get in there before the rest of the building collapses.”
Caleb’s arm reached down from above for her. “Grab hold.”
She clutched his wrist and he hers; the next second he was hoisting her up through the air. She swung a leg over the jagged outcropping of the building’s third floor, and his other hand wrapped around the waist of her pants and hauled her up the rest of the way.
She sank onto her heels and wiped fresh dust off her face. To the right, the debris-coated but otherwise unmarred hull of the Siyane rested at an angle across the crumbling outer façade. Above them, the tapering stern section vanished into the floor overhead.
Her hands came to her mouth in horror at the sight…and Caleb’s hand came to her jaw. “Focus. We need to get inside.”
“Yes. Inside.”
A thunderous explosion shook the building, sending rubble raining down on them yet again. Less than a meter to their left, a huge chunk of ceiling—or was it flooring?—broke loose and tumbled through a hole to the ground below. The Siyane shifted a few centimeters.
“Soon. We need to get inside soon.”
“Yes, we do.” Her thoughts raced in a thousand directions, but she couldn’t dwell on what was happening in the skies and streets outside the building, never mind in orbit above the planet. Focus.
She crawled across the floor to the point where she was able to stretch up and touch the sloping hull of the Siyane above them. Her finger ran along the tiny seam marking where the ramp separated from the body of the ship. Next, she looked behind her and considered the angle and where the frame began to narrow, then to the right until the frame disappeared beneath the floor at their feet.
She stretched out until she was flat on her back and felt along the adiamene to the point where small breaks in the building’s floor created a small additional gap. “I found the edge of the control panel, but I can’t get to the activation button. I need to dig it out. Plasma blade?” She extended her left hand behind her, and Caleb dropped the hilt of his blade into her palm. If the ship shifted again, it could crush her between the hull and the flooring. Caleb wisely didn’t implore her to let him take the risk, though he probably badly wanted to do so.
After maneuvering around to get a better angle, she activated the blade and started slicing through the stone blocking her access. Fragments of stone crumbled into dust…just a little more…there!
She deactivated the blade, handed it back to him, and wiggled her fingers into the tiny crevice she’d created. A press of her thumb on an invisible button, and the panel lit up in subtle silver light.
She exhaled in relief. At a minimum, the basic electrical systems remained functional.
“Good job.”
“Not finished yet.” She had to jam her pointer finger against a ragged slice of flooring to reach the rest of the control panel, and her finger slipped twice, but finally she got the access code entered.
The ramp detached from the ship’s body with a rumble of displaced stone, and an opening began to appear. Caleb grabbed her by the shoulders and dragged her away from the hull. “In case the floor gives way.”
She rose to her knees beside him, and they watched as the ramp pushed persistently upon the stone. The floor began to break up from the force applied; the gap increased another five centimeters, then stopped. The hydraulics groaned audibly, and the ramp jerked against its cage, but it refused to budge any farther.
Caleb unlatched his Daemon from his belt and urged her back. “I’ll shoot out the material that’s blocking it—very carefully. If the flooring falls out from beneath us, dive for the edge and grab hold of it.”
“Got it.” She crouched on the balls of her feet and prepped herself to move.
Caleb fired, and a small section of the stone evaporated into dust, freeing the ramp to open another eight centimeters—then everything came apart at once. The ramp snapped fully open, knocking the floor out from underneath it. The Siyane plummeted a full meter, and the remains of the wall to their right collapsed.
The floor beneath their feet held, but only barely. Caleb reached out for her. “We jump, now!”
She didn’t even have time to think about it. Her legs moved in unison with his and they leapt through the air to land on the extended ramp. The ship fell another two meters, and she slid half off the ramp—Caleb grabbed her foot and held on tight, then began reeling her back in.
She wanted to laugh, but the air was now so thick with dust that she could hardly breathe. Together they crawled up the incline and into the engineering well, all the way to the ladder.
She was home.
But she wasn’t safe yet. No one was. She started to hit the button to retract the ramp, but Caleb stopped her. “Let’s do it from the cockpit, once we’re ready to take off. Moving it again could destabilize the rest of the structure.”
“Good point.” Coughs racked
her chest as she climbed up the ladder, popped open the hatch to the lower level and sucked in fresh, unsullied air.
The floor jerked roughly several times as they vaulted up the circular staircase to the main cabin and sprinted into the cockpit.
Inside, everything was so quiet. Empty of life, without so much as a sliver of Valkyrie’s consciousness present. Focus.
They strapped in tight, and her eyes shifted to the viewport. From their elevated view, they could now see a much wider expanse of skies clotted with Rasu, explosions and toppled buildings. One block over, blood ran freely through the street, from corpse to corpse.
They had to end this.
She’d flown the Siyane minus Valkyrie a few weeks ago at Namino, before handing over the controls to Morgan, and it hadn’t been an issue. Way back after she’d head-butted the Amaranthe portal in the Mosaic to disastrous results, she’d rewired the Siyane’s critical functions so they operated without the assistance of Valkyrie’s circuitry.
Her mind automatically ticked through the necessary extra steps involved, followed by the correct order of events given their rather precarious situation. As soon as she fired up the pulse detonation engine, what remained of the building holding them in the air was going to disintegrate from the force it created. They’d survive a crash to the ground below, but she’d prefer to avoid it if at all possible. There was a half-intact building directly in front of them, so simply accelerating away wasn’t an option. A Rasu vessel was gleefully firing into ground troops to their left—also not an option. But the street remained open to their right for a few hundred meters.
So engage the engines, lift up and out, then hard right. Don’t mind the jostling.
She stared at Caleb a little wide-eyed. “Ready?”
He smiled gamely at her, like this was no big thing. “Ready.”
She set the ramp to retract and engaged the pulse detonation engine—and the entire world roared in protest. Large chunks of stone rained down on the hull, sending the ship jerking violently beneath her hands, and she yanked it up a microsecond before they slammed into the ground. Then the building in front of them consumed the viewport, and she swerved to the right and banked up into the air until they were safely above the buildings.
Gods, the Rasu were everywhere. But it was still a battle at least, as on closer inspection AEGIS, Machim and Novoloume attack craft nearly equaled the Rasu in number. Missiles and lasers shot in every direction, and the remaining structures took as much collateral damage as direct hits.
Caleb exhaled harshly. “I didn’t bring it up before—one goal at a time—but now that we’re here, how exactly are we planning to locate the quantum block?”
“Um…the old-fashioned way? We know what one looks like. And it can’t be very large or very far away, if only because they haven’t had time to do more to build it up. They’d have wanted to make certain they took out the Rift Bubble as quickly as possible. So we fly around the battlefield and search for it.”
“Can we stealth?”
She cringed. “Sort of. Again, the old-fashioned way. The wiring for the old, pre-Kat-tech stealth is still in place, so we merely need to reactivate it. And maybe plug one or two modules in.” She grimaced apologetically. “Fancy another dive into the engineering well?”
He huffed a ragged laugh. “It’s my fourth favorite place to be.”
Caleb climbed down the ladder into the engineering well, then wasted no time removing the protective panel from the length of wall that held the various field generators. He set the panel to the side and sat cross-legged in front of the opening.
A maze of photal fibers connecting modules of multiple sizes and functions greeted him, and he shook his head wryly. He’d never accuse Alex of being a hoarder—their home was unfailingly spotless and orderly—but when it came to the Siyane, she’d always been loath to get rid of anything. And in fairness to her, this was the second time in a month that they’d found themselves retasking or calling into service old components. If she’d trashed the He3 LEN reactor when they replaced it with a Zero Drive, what remained of the Ourankeli might not be alive today.
He pressed a fingertip to the human-friendly input pad and…crap, no eVi. He settled for studying the somewhat less-human-friendly directional flow diagram the control panel displayed, matching the flows to the cables and modules arrayed in front of him.
Aha! The old stealth drive module sat braced in the bottom-right corner of the space, its connectors wound neatly behind it.
The ship’s systems had become more streamlined with each wave of technological advances, so there were plenty of available hook points to reconnect it into the power distribution system. Normally, Valkyrie would have handled things from here, but that wasn’t an option right now, so he stepped carefully but quickly through the setup procedure.
Green lights across the board. No eVi meant no pulsing; he hit the ship comm. “Everything’s reconnected. Test out the stealth and make certain I’ve set it up correctly.”
“As if. Yep, the HUD says it’s functional. Get back up here and let’s go hunting.”
He replaced the panel and headed up the ladder. Hunting, indeed.
7
* * *
SIYANE
Ireltse
Every kilometer they flew over added to the leaden sensation gnawing away at Alex’s gut. The Rasu had obviously planned for this eventuality, and since taking out the Rift Bubble, they were wasting no time in wreaking as much destruction as possible as swiftly as feasible. From their vantage in the Siyane, it was obvious the Rasu moved in organized tactical units, disabling the infrastructure block by block and responding promptly to attacks by Concord forces.
Still, the Concord ground and aerial units were fighting to hold the ground they’d won. And while she had no visibility to what was occurring in orbit, she speculated that Concord continued to put up a valiant fight, if only because since they’d been in the air, new Rasu contingents descending from above had slowed to a trickle. The respite couldn’t come at a better time.
A thick line of Rasu near the ground on the northeast horizon caught her attention. They battled primarily Anaden hovertanks, while higher in the air, Rasu fighter craft fought to keep Concord ships at bay. The line wasn’t advancing toward the city, though. “Interesting. They seem to be protecting something over there, don’t they?”
Caleb leaned forward, closer to the viewport. His eyes scanned the surrounding area, then returned to the cluster of Rasu. “Yes, they do. Slip around the side.”
She veered toward what at first glance appeared to be the outer edge of the Rasu line, only to find the line was actually a circle. “There is no side. I’m going to have to try to sneak through the fighting.”
He didn’t argue—there wasn’t another option—and she eased into the fracas. Lasers lit the sky in all directions; a hit wouldn’t damage the Siyane, but she nonetheless tried to dodge and weave around the fire. It was instinctual.
The hull shuddered from a glancing blow of friendly fire. And again. She groaned.
“At any given second, there is barely two meters of clear space between the shots. No one could make it through here clean.”
Her lips twitched. “Valkyrie could.”
“She’ll be fine.”
“I know.” She accelerated toward a narrow gap in the Rasu defensive line, flipped the Siyane ninety degrees to squeeze through—and was on the inside of the circle. A satisfied smile grew on her expression. “Oh, look. A quantum block.”
The tower was tiny compared to the one the Rasu had constructed on Namino, rising a scant twenty or so meters into the air, but the violet firestorm powering it was unmistakable.
She checked the radar. Nothing but Rasu for almost a kilometer in every direction. Surely they’d be able to see through the Siyane’s archaic stealth field if they decided to glance her way, but their efforts were focused on keeping ships out, and she was already in.
“No time to waste. Firing negative e
nergy missiles.”
The instant the missiles were away, she rose high in the air to escape the nasty blast radius that was about to materialize.
All four missiles impacted on target. The module atop the tower shattered and collapsed, tearing into the power generator until it disintegrated as well. Four missiles might have been overkill.
She immediately restarted her eVi as she cut a path away from the Rasu fortification and headed for the Rift Bubble site. Valkyrie?
Only silence answered, and her heart plummeted all over again. Even if Valkyrie wasn’t in the ship, she should be somewhere. Frantically trying to reestablish a connection to Alex from her hardware on Akeso or Earth or Sagan… somewhere. But there was nothing.
Her eVi finished loading, and a deluge of messages poured in. She ignored them.
Mesme, will the Rift Bubble automatically reactivate once a quantum block is removed?
Yes. I have been called back here due to the disruption, and I can confirm it is again operational.
Next she accessed the mission channel.
Alexis Solovy Marano (Siyane)(Ireltse Mission Channel): “All ships, the quantum block is down and the Rift Bubble is once again up.”
Then a private pulse.
Mom, kindly send everything you have to the surface. We can’t let the Rasu construct another quantum block down here.
Are you okay?
We’re all fine. Except Valkyrie…I don’t know. Dispatch a protective detail to the location I’m sending you with a mission profile to keep the Rasu far away from the Rift Bubble. Then I think you work out from there, destroying every Rasu you encounter in a widening perimeter.
Oh, you’re a military tactician now?
Very funny, but it’s not the first time. Just throw everything you’ve got at them?
That I can manage.
She’d been hunched up over the controls with the virtual HUD surrounding her since they’d taken flight; now she sank lower in the chair and looked at Caleb. “Reinforcements are on the way.”
All Our Tomorrows Page 5