Husher’s com beeped with an urgent transmission, and Husher answered right away.
It was Major Gamble. “Sir, we’ve run into a problem.”
“What is it, Major?” Husher asked, trying to inject his voice with calm, despite the fact he wasn’t sure they could handle any more problems.
“The Progenitors just destroyed our only shuttle. My marines and I are fine with staying on Zakros and covering the mechs’ escape, but I figured I should let that be your call instead of playing the heroic martyr.”
Thank God. Men like Peter Gamble were way to rare to lose. “I’m sending two gunship shuttles and a squadron of Pythons as escort. No way I’m leaving my marine commander behind, Major.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Husher out.”
He resisted the urge to curse, or to slam his hand against the command seat’s armrest. Instead, he turned toward Ensign Fry and gave the necessary orders in as level a voice as he could manage.
Chapter 33
Gunship Mode
Once Jake’s new pilots got their mechs up and running, they were able to start delivering some serious punishment to the robots outside.
But that wouldn’t last. More Amblers and Ravagers were raining down with every second, and when he saw the shuttle taken out by a few well-placed rockets, Jake realized that getting out of here would require some drastic action.
For starters, they needed to control the terrain better. There wasn’t much in the way of cover, inside the hangar bay—the walls were reinforced steel, but the front was completely open. Yes, they might have closed the doors, but that would have cut off every firing lane and trapped them inside.
We need outside access if we’re going to get out of here.
Gamble had split his platoon in two, with each half taking cover on opposite sides of the open doors. That left the rest of the hangar bay’s floor to the mechs, who Jake had arrayed in a staggered line to fire on the enemy encroaching from outside. The mechs’ staggering allowed easy dodging to the left or right without colliding with a fellow mech pilot.
Even so, it left fifteen mechs with little to do, other than leap over the heads of their fellows to take occasional potshots. That might have been fine, if the new pilots were more proficient with their mechs. But they weren’t.
We have a lot of work to do, and no time to do it.
Jake established contact with one of the mech pilots forced to stay back behind the staggered ranks of MIMAS. The mech’s pilot appeared before him in the dream, a lithe brunette who couldn’t be more than nineteen.
“I’m guessing there’s no rooftop access to this place,” he said. “I didn’t see any as we approached.”
The pilot shook her head. “None that I’ve seen, PO.”
Jake nodded, a little impressed that she’d used his new rank. He shouldn’t have been, but it felt nice to hear it. “If there’s no access, then we’ll make some.”
His arms merged into a single energy cannon, which he directed at the ceiling near the wall. A single blast of blue-white energy left a melted, smoking hole almost three meters wide.
The young pilot’s simulacrum widened her eyes.
Jake leapt into the air, his mech’s lower legs converting to thrusters in a heartbeat, which carried him to the roof. There, he transformed his arms into long, diamond-sharp blades, which he plunged into the corrugated steel at the edge of the hole he’d created.
He tore across the rooftop, his blades dragging behind him in a shower of sparks, cutting twin furrows in the corrugated steel. When he reached the roof’s halfway point, the blades shortened and widened into arms. Both his forefingers became superheated blast torches, which he used to carefully warp the metal. Behind him, the three-meter-wide path he’d cut creaked as it parted from the rest of the roof and groaned to the floor below.
Inspecting his work, he saw that it had come out as he’d intended—a fairly stable path with a gentle incline thanks to its length.
He raised Gamble on a two-wide channel. “Major, I’ve created a way to get to the hangar roof. From what I’m seeing, controlling it is the only way anyone’s getting out of here—you in your shuttle, and us in our mechs. We need a stable launching surface too, and it doesn’t look like we’re retaking the LZ.”
“Good thinking, Price.”
“I’d suggest getting your marines up here, and taking the inactive mechs with you. Getting you back to the Vesta is our main priority. Once that’s done, my pilots and I can use the roof to leave.”
While he waited for Gamble and the other mechs to join him on the roof, Jake sprinted to the edge, turning his arms into long-barreled energy cannons and peppering the forces below. A full-powered energy blast took an Ambler square in its rounded torso, knocking it backward onto the ground, and another suffered the same fate as it turned to respond to Jake’s presence.
A group of ten Ravagers leapt from the ground in a wide arc that would end with them on the rooftop. Jake sent rapid-fire energy bolts to meet them in midair, neutralizing six of them. The remaining four landed all around him and charged.
He seized one and used it to smash another, both their spindly metal bodies disintegrating in a shower of shrapnel. The other two made it to his legs, scrambling up them to reach his torso and tearing at the metal as they went. He grabbed one and threw it to the ground below, but the second robot refused to stay still, so he impaled it on a spike that protruded suddenly from his abdomen.
More Ravagers were on the way, thirty at least, hurtling through the air. Jake blasted more of them, backing up across the roof, worried that they were about to lose control of it.
Gunfire sounded behind him, picking off half of the Ravagers before they landed on the corrugated surface. Glancing through one of his rear sensors, Jake saw MIMAS mechs pounding across the rooftop to back him up, metal fingers retracted against wrists to let rotary autocannons fire at full bore.
The rooftop was soon cleared of the metal devils, but more and more were coming, some of them from the sky. The Progenitor robots seemed to know that if they could take the corrugated steel surface, they could deny the Vesta forces their evac.
An Ambler clanged to the roof, followed by two more. Jake charged toward the nearest one, arms becoming broadswords. He leapt, transforming his calves into powerful thrusters, and the added momentum caused the blades to punch through his enemy, sending them both hurtling toward the roof’s edge.
Jake formed feet again, adding claws to grip the metal for added purchase. His movement arrested, he spun in place, hurling the Ambler he’d skewered at another one threatening the rooftop. The hulking robot didn’t see it coming, and it was knocked to the ground below. Jake turned just as his new pilots were finishing off the third.
Not bad. The mech dream made a patch of sky flash green, and Jake looked up, engaging his visual sensors’ zoom.
Sixteen Pythons escorted two combat shuttles, closing with their location fast. He wanted to cheer. Instead, he raised his arms toward them, both broadswords becoming energy cannons.
“Price,” Gamble said over a two-way. “What are you doing?”
But Jake couldn’t answer. It took every ounce of concentration to prevent his mech from firing on the approaching craft.
Do it, the mech whispered. You don’t need them. We don’t need anyone. We have the power to stay here and slaughter them all. You know what you have to do.
More robots were crashing to the rooftop—four more Amblers, and a host of at least fifty Ravagers. The MIMAS pilots and marines reacted instantly, and the roof’s sloped metal surface turned into a confused battlefield, with bullets firing in every direction. Grunts of pain came from Jake’s right, where a marine was pumped full of bullets before he collapsed to the deck.
The Ambler that had killed the marine turned toward Jake and opened fire.
Destroy the starfighters. Destroy the shuttles. Only then will we allow you to defend yourself…and defend yourself you will, with might unseen in this
universe.
The Ambler stalked forward, its heavy fire quickly burrowing through Jake’s mech, to where his body was nestled at its center. He could deal with Amblers, but it involved remaining in motion, and putting them down as quickly as possible. Allowing them to attack unchallenged was not a healthy move.
Do it, the mech said, no longer whispering, but shrieking directly into Jake’s consciousness. Do it!
With a roar of animal rage, Jake wrenched himself away from the bead he’d drawn on the incoming fighters, spinning sideways to protect the part of him the Ambler had made vulnerable. Then he fired massive energy bolts at his attacker, blasting it off the roof.
He became a spinning dervish of death. Pairing a broadsword with an energy cannon, he let the mech dream sing to him, and when harmonies aligned, he struck.
Sensing the danger, Ravagers threw themselves at him, but discordant chords alerted him to their proximity and location in space. Without having to look, his blade always followed the right arc, and his shots always found the weakest point.
Ravagers shattered and Amblers staggered back. It took him less than two minutes to clear the rooftop.
Gamble approached, R-57 held at the ready. “Price? Did you…did you give in to it? Are you merged with that thing?”
Am I? For a moment, Jake wasn’t sure, and he performed a scan of the entire mech.
“No,” he said. “It almost got me, but I’m still here.”
Gamble nodded, though he still studied Jake uncertainly. All of the marines did, and the MIMAS pilots, too.
Then, another group of Ravagers landed on the roof, giving them other things to worry about.
When the Pythons arrived, they began executing strafing runs on the robots occupying the LZ, which greatly reduced the pressure on both the roof and the mechs still inside the hangar below. One of the shuttles went gunship-mode, joining the fighters in blasting the enemy, but the other touched down, its outer airlock hatch already opening to admit the marines. They poured inside without another word.
Once one shuttle was full, Jake waved it into the sky, then got on a wide channel.
“All right, Oneiri Force. Get to the rooftop and initiate launch. I don’t have time to run through it with you, and I don’t have time to take questions. Just do it right. Go!”
The mechs on the rooftop began to take off, launch thrusters streaming fire and smoke.
A group of Ravagers collided with one MIMAS as it left the rooftop, and five of them managed to stay on it as its rockets carried it upward. Seconds later, the mech exploded, hundreds of meters into the air.
“Ignore that!” Price yelled. “Go, go, go!”
He turned to continue defending the rooftop, which he intended to do until the last MIMAS launched.
Chapter 34
The Power to Stop It
When Eve and Bronson disembarked from the shuttle onto the Eos, Captain Norberg was waiting.
The captain glanced at Bronson, then looked at Eve again. “Is that Bob Bronson?” Norberg said, voice sharp.
“Hello, Katrina,” Bronson said. “How long has it been?”
“Not long enough. What is he doing with you?”
Eve cleared her throat. “Captain Bronson has been helping Invigor Technologies implement lucid tech in ways Darkstream hadn’t yet started on. His knowledge of lucid has proven invaluable to us.” Almost, Eve let her plastered-on smile waver. She was growing tired of this charade, necessary as it was. There really was an Invigor Technologies, and they were fine with her acting as their ambassador, but she wasn’t actually on their payroll. She was an agent with the Galactic Intelligence Bureau, and the president had given her a direct mandate to accelerate the widespread adoption of lucid tech by any means necessary.
“Does Husher know you’re working with Bronson?” Norberg said, eyes narrowed. “I can’t see him agreeing to field test any new tech that he’s had his fingers all over.”
Quinn forced herself to smile wider. “That fact was concealed from Husher, given his temperament. But I’m told you have much stronger loyalty to the IU.” Eve really meant that Norberg was more pliable, but she doubted saying so would help accomplish her objective. She glanced around. “Where will we be meeting, Captain Norberg?”
Norberg sniffed. “There’s a ready room closeby that should suit our purposes. It’s equipped with a large display, in case you have any overlays you’d care to show me.”
“Excellent. Lead on, Captain.”
They trailed Norberg across the flight deck and out into the corridor. Both Norberg’s capital starship and her battle group was stationed in the Dooryard System, the first system along Pirate’s Path. Here, she could protect the evacuation route while remaining in position to answer any threats to the Interstellar Union’s core systems.
While they made their way to the ready room, Norberg remained silent. Eve didn’t bother to attempt any small talk, sensing that it would only irritate the old curmudgeon, and Bronson also seemed perfectly at ease with the awkward silence. Of course, Bronson didn’t seem capable of social discomfort, so that didn’t come as much of a surprise.
Once they entered the ready room, Norberg didn’t wait for them to find seats before beginning the meeting. “It’s going to take some doing to convince me to implement an entirely new technology in the middle of a war,” she said, her voice steely. She reached the front of the room and turned to face them, spreading her feet apart and clasping her hands behind her back, in typical military style. “I’m not Vin Husher, who seems willing to try out anything with half a chance of having some effect. And even he won’t use your tech, according to rumors I’ve heard from other captains.”
At Norberg’s self-importance, Eve’s smile almost returned, but she checked it. The woman captained a supercarrier—thousands of crewmembers, marines, and Python pilots. On top of that, she was responsible for keeping safe the civilian city at the center of her starship. By custom, this woman was owed a lot of respect, even if Eve didn’t personally think she deserved all of it.
“Captain Husher did in fact implement lucid,” Eve said, “and it took him just a few hours to incorporate it with his existing systems. Since then we’ve smoothed out the process even more, and it should go even quicker for the Eos.”
“Husher’s Nav officer also experienced what amounted to a grand mal seizure because of your tech. The Vesta was immobilized until they could bring their secondary Nav officer into the CIC and have him operate in the traditional way. I hope you weren’t planning to withhold that information from me, Ms. Quinn.”
“Of course not,” Eve said, though she would have withheld it if she thought she could get away with it. “We’re here to fully inform you about the risks and all of the benefits that come with implementing our product. But before we continue, I should tell you two things that will preempt a lot of unnecessary discussion. First, we’ve ironed out the bug that led to the unfortunate incident with Captain Husher’s Nav officer. And second, the admiralty has issued a fleetwide order to implement lucid tech, starting with the capital starships.”
Norberg frowned. “And yet, Husher still won’t do it. Will he?”
Bronson stirred beside Eve. “Husher is following in the footsteps of his old mentor, Leonard Keyes. He’s bucking Command for now, but he’ll pay for it, just like Keyes did.”
Resisting the urge to glare at Bronson, Eve said, “We’ve been assured that Captain Husher will be allowed to think he’s waging a successful rebellion until the war’s end, at which point the IU intends to bring the full force of the law down on him. His rebellion is meaningless, and it will not serve him well in the long run.”
Nodding slowly, Norberg fell silent for a time. At last, she said, “It seems I don’t have much of a choice when it comes to this technology.” She cleared her throat. “Among the rumors I’ve heard about your company is that you have a close relationship with the Interstellar Union. Are you close enough to know whether they consider these sweeping new policies a
success?”
“Which policies are you referring to?” Eve said, cocking her head to the side.
“You know which policies,” Norberg shot back, scowling. “The drastic redistribution of wealth. Seizing all private ships. It’s causing no end of unrest in Attis.” Attis was the city at the heart of Eos.
“Well, I’m not a politician,” Eve said. “But if I were in your position, I would remind the people of Attis that the galaxy is in crisis. No one is happy, least of all the IU, but they’re only doing what is necessary.”
“There are many who would disagree about what’s necessary,” Norberg said.
“Do they have the power to stop it?”
“Likely not.”
“Then I wouldn’t worry too much about it, Captain Norberg.”
Back on the shuttle, strapped into her crash seat and waiting for the pilot to take them out, Eve noticed Bronson studying her. “You look pleased with yourself,” he said.
“Why wouldn’t I be? I’m signing up capital starship captains faster than anyone expected.” Tomorrow, Invigor’s technicians would arrive on the Eos, and within hours the supercarrier would be fully outfitted with lucid. “Once the power of lucid becomes accepted across the fleet, it will spill over into the public at large. When it does, people won’t want to wear those clunky headsets for very long. They’ll want implants, just as the public in Steele did. And we’ll be ready to sell them.”
“Complete with backdoors for the IU to spy on users.”
“Of course.” Eve tilted her head to the side. “You’re not sour because we’re stealing your idea, are you? Come on, Bronson. It isn’t like Darkstream is using it anymore. Darkstream is dead.”
His face remained impassive, but Eve had learned to tell when Bronson was smoldering internally.
That lifted her mood even more.
Chapter 35
Unmatched
“Certainty is gone,” Husher told the officers he’d gathered together in the Vesta’s main conference room. “We don’t even have a coherent battle plan. And safety was never truly ours in the first place. But for seventeen years, we did have peace. The galaxy hasn’t been thrown into chaos like this since the Second Galactic War. Everyone is panicking. Flailing. This is what dying looks like.”
Ixan Legacy Box Set Page 61