“I’m the gentle option,” cackled Megami. “You’ll beg for me before the end! And no matter what you do, the end is coming.”
Prometheus alerted Ritter that the carbon bonds in Megami’s battery were seconds from breaking. The red XSeed’s remaining rockets blazed, but Megami was firing maneuvering thrusters to slow his flight. They wouldn’t clear the colony before her capacitor blew and turned all three XSeeds into nuclear bombs.
Ritter scanned the carbyne filaments lashing his combat frame to the wall. Both wires passed over his cockpit. Using his thrusters would just breach it and saw him in half.
“Sorry, Prometheus,” said Ritter. He forced his CF’s right arm forward. The wire didn’t budge, but with continued pressure the magnetic anchor detached, along with his XSeed’s right hand. Ritter cut the second wire with the plasma sword in Prometheus’ left hand, pivoted through the hole Megami had shot in the colony’s side, and pushed the throttle forward.
A second breach yawned in the immense window directly across from the entry hole. Water from the lake covering the glass formed a spike of ice jutting taller than a skyscraper into space.
Ritter aimed for the window, but the colony’s odd gravity threw him off course. A rock wall reared up before him. He maintained speed. Without battery space to absorb the coming blast, he had to trust the XSeed’s armor and ram the wall.
The XSeed crashed into the wall as white light filled Ritter’s rear monitor. Darkness enveloped him.
39
“…respond! I repeat: This is Governor Prem Naryal of the joint Coalition-EGE forces. If you are receiving me, please respond!”
Ritter’s screens winked back to life, bathing him in cool synthetic light. He let out the breath he’d been holding since the EMP from Megami and Sieg’s detonation had knocked Prometheus offline. He ignored Naryal’s staticky transmission and ran a status check.
This can’t be right.
Ritter rechecked the numbers staring at him from the diagnostic and sensor screens. The XSeed had punched through a colony at speed with a nuclear explosion at its back. But all it had to show for the abuse was some moderate armor deformation, two warped thruster nozzles, and a burned out camera.
“Sieg was wrong,” Ritter told himself. “No weapon is scarier than an XSeed!”
“This is Governor Naryal,” the comm repeated. “Do you copy?”
Ritter pressed the talk button. “Corporal Tod Ritter, here. I copy, over.”
Naryal began again due to the brief delay, but she cut her greeting short and addressed Ritter with audible relief. “Browning thought we might reach you on this frequency. What is your ETA to Earth?”
“I don’t know,” said Ritter. “A few days?”
“Specialist Young said you and Darving had proceeded to Byzantium colony to retrieve Li Wen and Sieg Friedlander. Since you are still alive, I assume the four of you are on a shuttle bound for Earth.”
“No,” said Ritter. “I’m alone in an XSeed outside Byzantium. Max took off in a one-man shuttle. Sieg and Megami are dead. I think she killed everyone in the colony before we got here.”
Naryal sighed. “It’s no use.”
“What’s no use?”
“We’d hoped your shuttle was close enough to divert to Metis,” said Naryal. “Our attempt to avert the asteroid strike failed. Metis will impact the mid-Atlantic in two hours.”
“Can’t you try something else?”
“Our last shuttle was destroyed. We’ve captured two Kazoku transports. The crews seem demoralized—practically docile. But even if we could repair the launch facility within two hours, we could not obtain another nuclear device in time.”
The pieces fell into place for Ritter. “Browning told you about the XSeed’s capacitor. You were hoping we could jury-rig it into a bomb.”
“Theoretically, it would have worked,” Naryal said.
“It’s not a theory anymore,” said Ritter. He searched the sky, and his eyes fell upon the mottled bright disc of Earth. Metis stood out as a glaring silver blot on the blue ocean.
“Corporal,” said Naryal, “Major Collins wishes me to relay his orders. You are to hide the XSeed or failing that, destroy it and lie low in L1. Assume a false identity and wait to be contacted. The likely level of devastation on Earth may prolong the wait considerably. If a year passes without further contact and conditions permit, return to Earth and attempt to locate an EGE officer. That is all.”
“No!” Ritter pounded his armrests. “Megami can’t win. Not after we fought so hard. Not after I failed to bring everyone home!” He hung his head.
A plaintive beeping prompted Ritter to raise his eyes. The navigation screen displayed a course Prometheus had plotted to Metis. A faint smile twisted Ritter’s lip even though Metis would crash into the earth long before he arrived.
“You really did choose us over Megami,” Ritter said.
A new message appeared next to the course heading. Transmit Gate code?
“Does that code open the hangar at Metis?” Ritter asked Prometheus. “I trusted you this far. Go ahead.”
Gate code transmitted. TC/D imminent.
“What’s—”
Time contracted to a single point. Ritter traveled for days in an instant, staving off hunger, thirst, and exhaustion to stay on course for the point in space where Metis had been and still was. He floated above the earth and surveyed the destruction wrought by kilometer-high tsunamis.
A chain of causality stronger than carbyne pulled him back into linear time at the moment Prometheus sent the Gate code. This time the A.I. fired its ejector seat before launching from Byzantium for Earth. Ritter cast his eyes upward as his chair fell away from the XSeed. The white combat frame vanished, burning its image into his retinas.
Just like Max’s shuttle.
A brilliant glow called Ritter’s attention earthward. A brighter light shone amid the silver star of Metis, which still hung in space over the Atlantic. Ritter watched in awe until a blinding flash forced his eyes shut.
A moment passed during which Ritter’s awareness shrank to the sound of his own rapid breathing. He opened his eyes. In place of the iron bullet aimed at the ocean’s heart, a cloud of glittering sparks expanded in orbit.
Ritter’s spirit felt as weightless as his body. “I didn’t bring everyone home,” he sighed, “but there’s a home to go back to.”
40
Irenae Zend glided down a steel-clad corridor deep within the manufacturing asteroid Astraea. The quiet of the residential block sharply contrasted with the furious activity preceding Metis’ launch and the chaos following its destruction. Hallways that had teemed with soldiers, technicians, and administrators a week ago now lay empty. Even the Kazoku had abandoned their base in the colonies, except for Irenae and a small cadre of her most dedicated staff.
Loyalty transcends death, Irenae recalled, fighting back disappointment at her brethren’s faithlessness. Megami was dead, but the Sentinel would live on as long as mankind existed.
The door to Irenae’s stateroom hissed open as she approached and automatically closed after her. Recessed lighting kindled to a mellow glow. She passed through a front room appointed as befit the fourteen year-old daughter of a high Coalition official and an industrial heiress, paying the trappings of luxury no mind.
In the more simply furnished bedroom, Irenae removed the velvet cord securing her ponytail and tossed her ash brown hair. She was unfastening the gold buttons of her garnet-colored pea coat when she noticed a package sitting on her faux mahogany dresser.
“Hello,” she called out to the dimly lit room. “Is someone there?”
There was no answer—not that she’d expected one. Whoever had delivered the package was long gone, and an investigation would prove fruitless.
Irenae threw her coat on the bed and approached the brick-sized cardboard box as if it were a loaded gun. She gingerly picked it up and found it had less heft than expected, even for the low-gravity environment. She held her bre
ath and opened the unmarked box.
A syringe pen filled with blood red liquid lay on a bed of cotton within.
Irenae wondered if the awe that came over her as she reverently lifted the syringe from the box echoed primitive man’s religious ecstasies. She set the question aside and plunged the needle into her arm.
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COMBAT FRAME XSEED: COALITION YEAR 40
Combat Frame XSeed Book 2
Arthur
The boy hurried up the slope, scrambling over fallen logs and mossy boulders. The thinning, pine-seasoned air didn’t slow him. He’d long since gotten used to high altitude, even though he was only six.
He mostly thought of himself as the boy, because that was what the Captain usually called him. Sometimes, though, the Captain called him Tom. The boy never dared call the stern, graying man anything but Captain. He didn’t know if the Captain was his father, though in the secret corners of his heart he doubted it.
Still, the Captain was the only grownup the boy had ever known, as far as he could remember. The shaggy-haired but always clean-shaven man gave the boy much of what fathers in books always gave: shelter, instruction, food—a bowl of plain rice porridge for breakfast and rice with beans in the evening, with whatever meat the boy could catch for himself.
It was a hunt for the latter that had set the boy on his current path. He’d sighted a young rabbit behind the cabin and had given chase. The animal led him up and up the mountain, until the trees ended and the bald peak loomed above.
A quick search—the boy could take in many details at a glance—showed no sign of the rabbit. He abandoned the hunt and continued upward, drawn by the lofty spectacle of the peak.
Minutes later, the boy reached the top. He stood on the summit as chill winds whipped his sturdy homemade clothes and looked out over the plains stretching from the foothills. A pair of vast shadowed circles punched into the uniform green and yellow grid below marked two of the places where the Socs had started the Long Winter and the Starving Years by throwing rocks at the earth.
Socs aren’t human. He heard the Captain’s low yet iron-hard voice as if the old man stood behind him, but he resisted the urge to look over his shoulder. They’re insects that swarm over the earth and make it like their colonies. You can’t reason with them. Never forget.
Alone on his windswept perch, a new thought occurred to the boy. The Socs had killed many people while turning what had been called Colorado in the FMAS—and the United States before that—into North American Mountain Region 7. What if two of those murdered people, or the millions of dead from around the world, had been his parents?
The boy reflexively fought the urge to cry, but hot moisture stung his cheeks. The icy wind blowing off the farm grids below scoured his tears away.
Catching sight of an angular rock’s shadow gave the boy a start. He’d woken up that morning to find the Captain gone and a note with his cold porridge saying only: “Back at noon.” The shadow said he had only ten minutes to reach the cabin before the Captain returned. The boy was not forbidden to explore the wooded hills unsupervised; quite the opposite. But he knew the note’s double meaning from hard experience.
The boy barreled down the mountain, scratching his limbs and face on sharp branches and nearly falling twice. Only the certain knowledge that no one would come for him if he broke a leg or his back kept him on his feet.
At last he reached the almost invisible cleft in a grassy hillside that led into the small, bowl-shaped valley where the cabin stood. The boy ran, threading his way between the pines as his lungs sucked in cool air and forced it out hot. He half-stumbled up front steps made from cut logs, and his heart froze when he saw the Captain standing two meters inside the door with his left hand behind his back.
The boy started to speak. “I’m—”
With a horizontal motion of his right hand, the Captain signaled him to silence. The boy heard mewling, much like the sounds his prey made before the kill, coming from two sources inside the cabin.
“You’re lonely here,” the Captain said. “I know that loneliness well.” His left hand emerged from behind his back, holding a black puppy by the scruff of the neck. The little dog whined pitifully.
Of course, the Captain was right. The boy’s yearning for the companionship he’d never known almost made him rush to the dog despite himself. Hope welled in his heart, but he knew enough to question it. “For me?”
“If,” the Captain said. He finished by pulling a gray .38 caliber revolver from the side pocket of his brown felt coat.
Terror rooted the boy to the steps, but the Captain inclined his head toward the dog. “For him,” the old man said. He nodded to his left. “Or for her.”
The boy crept up the last step and through the cabin door. A blond woman in a blue jumpsuit sat tied to a stout oak chair. The cloth gag in her mouth muffled her pleas.
The Captain held out the gun, grip-first.
“Do I have to?” asked the boy.
“No,” the Captain said. “You always have a choice—between action and inaction, strength and weakness; fighting and surrender. And as always, those you care for will pay the price if you choose wrong.”
The boy took the gun. It felt heavy in his small hands, but not unfamiliar. The woman’s mewling turned to frantic squeals.
“I’ve never killed a person,” said the boy.
“She’s not a person,” the Captain said. “She’s a Soc.”
The boy stared down the gun’s sights at his target. She looked like a person, with her wide blue eyes and tear-streaked face. He remembered crying on the mountaintop. Because he was alone. Because of Socs like her.
He exhaled and pressed the trigger. The gun thundered, and the woman’s head snapped back. He smelled blood. The Captain took the gun and handed him the dog. Its plump furry body snuggled into the crook of his arm, but the connection was gone. The boy felt nothing.
The Captain stooped down and spoke to the boy. “The way you are now—the thinking without feeling when you kill animals and burn them; when you killed that Soc—you must not be that way with the dog. Soon you’ll be sent among normal people, and you mustn’t be that way with most of them.”
“I understand,” said the boy. “I think.”
The Captain scratched behind the dog’s ear. “To him, and to most people, you will be Tom—Thomas Dormio. To the Socs, you will be Arthur Wake.”
Arthur nodded. The puppy squirmed in his arms, and Tom hugged it to his chest. Its tiny heart beat beside his, and the connection returned.
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Acknowledgements
Heartfelt thanks to:
Ben
Ian
Jeff H.
JJ
Nick A.
RanbaRal
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Nathan Housley
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About Brian Niemeier
Brian Niemeier is a John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer finalist. His second book, Souldancer, won the first ever Dragon Award for Best Horror Novel. Its sequel, The Secret Kings was voted a Dragon Award finalist the following year.
He chose to pursue a writing career despite formal training in history and theology. His journey toward publication began at the behest of his long-suffering gaming group, who tactfully pointed out that he seemed to enjoy telling stories more than planning and adju
dicating games.
Visit Brian at http://www.brianniemeier.com/
Follow @BrianNiemeier on Twitter.
Honest reviews are vital to helping others make informed reading decisions. Please consider leaving a review of this book on Amazon.
Copyright
Copyright ©2019 by Brian Niemeier
Cover art copyright ©2019 by Todd Everhart
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and events are either fictional or used fictitiously. All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced, transmitted, or used in any form or manner whatsoever without permission in writing from Brian Niemeier, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Table of Contents
About Combat Frame XSeed
Principal Characters
Glossary
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
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Acknowledgements
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