No one here is a coward; no one runs or panics in the face of the rampaging arachnids. Instead the troops simply fire upward into the exposed torsos while adroitly maneuvering around to avoid the stabbing pincers.
But the battlefield is both crowded and increasingly slick with corpses, limbs and the associated fluids, and the room in which to maneuver rapidly diminishes.
The vigorous swipe of an outstretched limb knocks a soldier to the ground. He swings his weapon up and slices open the exposed belly of the offending Kich—his vision becomes obscured.
Casmir switches his focus to a different soldier in the vicinity, temporarily overriding the man’s freedom of action to locate the one in peril. Behind the prone form, a Kich shoots glass-silk from its spinnerets to fashion a web around the head and body of the fallen man. Casmir allows the approaching soldier to shoot and the spinner is felled, but the man on the ground struggles and fails to break through the web.
It’s happening elsewhere. Casmir borrows the eyes of a pilot of one of the few remaining airborne hovertanks, and from above it soon becomes obvious the Kich are displaying an unexpected ability to work together in a tactical manner. In some instances they deliberately sacrifice themselves so others can gain a better vantage to disable their adversaries.
There are so many. Far more than surveillance indicated. Do only a portion climb the trees on any given day? As ectotherms, their body temperatures are too close to the ambient air temperature to allow for reliable thermal detection, so if many remain below it would not have been apparent to the advance surveillance teams.
The troops carry emergency oxygen supplies inside their suits. If the webbing has not penetrated the outer layers of their armor, they can survive for a time. Perhaps twenty minutes.
But Casmir has no weapon on hand that will break the tough, resilient webbing en masse without liquefying the troops’ armor or pulverizing the bodies it protects.
There are too many.
Dismay creeps into his chest as the battlefield slowly, inexorably turns to glass.
Casmir withdrew as much as possible into his own mind, though the slaughter continued to whisper and scream in the background of his consciousness. He ordered a retreat for those who remained alive, but he’d just lost twelve thousand soldiers.
They could and would be replaced—in many cases with themselves—but he wasn’t going to waste resources throwing them at the enemy again and again. An alternate strategy was required.
Deploying more powerful weapons from a higher altitude risked destroying the trees holding the webs aloft. This outcome did not fulfill his orders and thus was unacceptable.
But he did have at his disposal creatures that were stronger and more savage than the Kich.
10
SIYANE
MILKY WAY SECTOR 53
* * *
YOU LET HIM GO.
Alex rolled her eyes in annoyance and motioned for Caleb to answer Mesme.
Knowing she must be mentally drained after hours of maintaining peak geniality for the benefit of Eren, he obliged her. “Yes. There’s an old human saying: you catch more flies with honey than with vinegar. Any help he might give us if forced into it would be suspect and unreliable. This way, if he helps us it will be because he wants to do it—or possibly because he’s intrigued by the challenge—not because he has no choice.”
I comprehend the meaning of the idiom. But you do recognize the effort it took to arrange the meeting in the first place, yes? You do recognize it may be impossible to locate and persuade another ally who can enable you to acquire what you have explicitly stated your forces will need in order to match the Machim fleets on the field of battle, do you not?
Caleb didn’t search around for the profile of lights; there were times when it was easier to treat Mesme like a disembodied voice. “Of course we recognize it. Thank you for your hard work in both finding a candidate and putting us in a position to reach out to him. We still think this opportunity will pan out and Eren will help us. You’ve been observing us for aeons. You know sometimes these things take time.”
Despite the unsettling way the anarch had regarded Caleb initially—and for too long—he did think in the end they’d won Eren over, at least enough to bring him back for another round of negotiations. The man had left as curious about their origin and motives as they were about his world. He would come back, and hopefully next time not expend quite so much energy watching Caleb as if he were some kind of reviled predator expected to pounce and devour his prey the next instant.
Mesme’s tone lost a measure of its fervor. Undeniably. Yet time is one resource we no longer possess in any abundance.
Eager to shake off the disquiet his thoughts had conjured, Caleb went over to where Alex stood and wrapped his arms around her from behind. “We have a little time. Time enough, I think. While we wait to hear from Eren, we can continue pursuing other avenues. I’m interested in doing reconnaissance on several of the Machim ship production facilities. Alex, didn’t you want to try to find out more about how the intergalactic wormhole gateways function?”
The gateway structures dwarfed even the mammoth Katasketousya portals. Three imposing rings generated a stable wormhole some six kilometers in diameter, enabling almost instantaneous travel across and between galaxies. Unsurprisingly, the technology had intrigued her since their first traversal of one of the gateways.
She’d relaxed into him, but her mind seemed elsewhere, and it took her a few seconds to respond. “Yeah…Mesme, what do you know about the Reor slabs?”
Silence lingered.
“Mesme?”
Why do you ask? Data storage is not interesting.
Caleb maneuvered them to face Mesme, as there were also times when honing in on a mark helped to ferret out artifice. “Actually, sometimes data storage is very interesting—for instance, when it’s data that’s important to your enemy. But I don’t think that’s what she means.”
She squeezed his hands in affirmation. “True, and true. Valkyrie and I noticed a couple of unusual mathematical properties in the structure of a slab Eren had, and when I held it, we sensed…an aspect I can’t put a name to. At a minimum, Reor is a fascinating and potentially useful material I want to understand better. But maybe there’s also something more to it?”
Again, silence.
She peered over her shoulder and gave Caleb a look, then disentangled from his arms to wander purposefully through the cabin. “Mesme, is there something about the Reor slabs you’d like to share with us?”
Alexis Solovy, your cleverness and acute persistence is at times as irksome as it is useful. Very well. Travel to the coordinates I am providing to Valkyrie. The answers to your questions are better shown than described.
It was going to take hours to reach the mysterious coordinates Mesme had given them, which were located deep in dead space on the far outer rim of the Tyche galaxy. The void under any definition.
By now the Kat’s—like Alex, he’d quickly adopted the shorthand with some relief—cagey, enigmatic behavior had become all too commonplace, and Caleb had resigned himself to tolerating it most of the time. When they arrived at wherever they were headed, Mesme would reveal its hidden secrets, since it must, but it wouldn’t do so a moment sooner. No reason to get worked up about it until then.
A multitude of crises were elbowing for position in the line of ‘things to get worked up about,’ whether they resided in the space outside the ship, at home in Aurora, or coursing through his own bloodstream. He was endeavoring to choose his battles wisely, and he wasn’t choosing this one.
Instead Caleb leaned against the wall and contemplated Alex.
She stood at the data table studying the images of the Reor slab Valkyrie had captured through her ocular implant. He wouldn’t go so far as to call her ‘worked up’ either—she wasn’t acting anxious or exasperated—but this particular puzzle had definitely caught her fancy.
It warmed his heart to see. The prodigious wonders and myst
eries Amaranthe held was turning out to be just what she needed to smooth out the lingering rough edges of her recovery. Using her mind and imagination to uncover its secrets was so much better than simply flying amongst them—a heady experience inhabiting the ship had given her, but one which didn’t come from within and so was ultimately an empty one.
He believed this, not because it was true—though it felt true—but because she believed it. She was becoming far more self-aware these days, and his observation wasn’t news to either of them. He still took comfort in seeing it reaffirmed by her actions and choices, in witnessing its truth with his own eyes.
Her addiction wasn’t something which could be declared ‘cured,’ packed up in a box and stored away. It would always be with her, and thus with them. But the incredible resilience she’d displayed since severing her connection to the ship…well, if circumstances meant this late, waning phase of recovery was slightly easier than it might have been, dammit, she deserved the break.
It wasn’t all she deserved.
His arms were draped loosely at his waist, his left shoulder resting on the wall. He kept the casual pose while he lifted his right hand a few centimeters and wriggled his fingers in a manner that was quickly becoming second nature.
The hem of her tank drifted up to the middle of her back.
“That tickles….” Her gazed darted to him as she realized what he was doing. The corners of her mouth curled up. “Are you bored?”
“Not at all.” Provided line-of-sight to the front of her tank when she shifted toward him, he made sure it slid upward to join the rest of the material and tease her ribcage. He added the pressure of air beneath her forearms—only a little, enough to make his request clear but not so much as to force her arms upward. Let her acquiesce to the request if she was so inclined.
It seemed she was. What had been a mild stirring flared into wanton need when she raised her arms to allow him to slide her tank up and over her head from across the room. He paid no more attention to the tank, and it dropped unceremoniously to the floor beside her.
A pleased sigh escaped his lips.
“You like the view?”
He nodded slowly, unashamedly transfixed. “I really, really do.”
She shifted around farther to lean back on the table and lick her lips, sending a rush of heat through his body to flush his skin. “Anything else interesting you can do with this power of yours?”
A flick of his wrist and the top of her shorts nudged down to cling to her hipbones.
Her jaw dropped in mock indignation, and her hands moved to hold them in place. “I’m sorry, are you asking for these shorts to come off?”
“I really, really am.”
“Come take them off yourself, then.” In a flash she had bolted for the staircase and fled downstairs.
He laughed aloud, tugged his shirt off and tossed it onto the couch, and chased after her.
11
URSA MAJOR I ARX
MILKY WAY SECTOR 64
* * *
EREN RENTED A ROOM AT a cheap hostel in the bowels of the Ursa Major I Arx for the night. He needed to hole up somewhere for a few hours. Clear his head. Figure out what had just happened and what he ought to do about it.
He collapsed on the narrow bed and threw an arm over his eyes. He should already be on the way to Nephelai to meet Cosime and pick up the explosives, then he should get to lifting a ship from the Sector 23 Terminal Hub and see to taking out the Exobiology Research Lab. He had all the information he needed to complete the mission, and with the explosives and a pilfered ship he’d have all the tools.
Whatever this other madness was or was not, it could wait. It should wait.
After a couple of seconds he moved around to try to find a more comfortable position…until he accepted the futility of the endeavor on account of the bed being as cheap as the room and settled for winding his hands behind his head.
He was considering tossing the angst and instead closing his eyes for a nap when a chill passed over his skin and the dim light in the room faded to gloom.
“You need to assist them.”
He sat up and peered into the darkness, searching for the offending umbra. “Hello, Miaon. Assist who?”
A darker than black shape by the door detached itself from the wall to slink across the room; the rented unit was tiny, so it didn’t have far to travel. “The individuals you were recently in the company of.”
Eren fumbled for the bedside light panel. “How do you know who I was with? You weren’t on the ship. I would have noticed. It would have been…darker.”
The Yinhe didn’t lurk in the shadows—they were the shadows. Ghostly, solitary and secretive, they were among the stranger sentient creatures in Amaranthe. Their population was small, and no one ever saw more than one at the same time; this had led some to speculate there was in actuality only a single Yinhe. He doubted this was the case, but he had to concede it was possible; if there was only one Yinhe, Miaon was it.
Rumor had it the Directorate spent years trying to Eradicate the species, only to fail miserably when they were unable to find or keep a hold of the shadows. Target one with a weapon—any weapon—and it promptly evaporated, reappearing halfway across a galaxy. If the Yinhe had a homeworld it had never been located to be destroyed.
Eventually, the Directorate had admitted they were few in number and didn’t seem to be rising up to pose a threat to its power. It declared the Yinhe an Accepted Species and proceeded to ignore them. The Directorate denied this version of events in the strongest terms, of course, but it had all the hallmarks of truth.
Despite its insubstantiality, Miaon engineered sound wave vibrations in the air to craft a wispy, tremulous voice. “No, I was not on the Siyane—but the fact I know its moniker should appease your doubts as to my veracity. Now I am here, and I am telling you that you need to assist Mnemosyne and its companions.”
Eren groaned and collapsed back on the bed. “You’re the mutual acquaintance. You’re the one who told the Kat where I’d be. Dammit, Miaon, how could you spy on the anarchs for those cowards? Now I have to report you.”
“I am not a spy. I am a tenuous thread who hopes to one day grow into a bridge. The anarchs presume the Katasketousya to be sycophants to the Directorate. The Katasketousya presume the anarchs to be bloodthirsty terrorists. You each seek and strive toward the same goal, yet you cannot even acknowledge one another, much less work together in furtherance of this mutual goal.”
Eren opened his mouth, scathing retort at the ready. But interacting with the Kat earlier had called into question many of his beliefs and assumptions about the ethereal beings. It was one of the puzzles he’d planned to spend the next several hours contemplating.
He settled for keeping the pressure on Miaon. “Then why not simply go to Xanne or one of the other anarch supervisors and tell them what the Kats are allegedly doing?”
“They would no more believe me than the Katasketousya would believe me if I proclaimed to them the anarchs were not merely terrorists and in fact wanted nothing so much as a free peace. Trust comes from actions, not words.”
“Not ‘merely’ terrorists?”
“You alone are responsible for a striking volume of destruction, Eren asi-Idoni, as well as more than a few lives lost. And you are not the only one.”
Eren swung his legs off the bed and grabbed his jacket from the floor where he’d discarded it; the longer the Yinhe stayed, the colder the room became. “Fine, I don’t deny it. But…dammit, Miaon! I still have to report this. You know how desperately we rely on secrecy for our survival. We can’t have a spy running—or ghosting—around telling others about our plans and missions, even a well-meaning one.”
“Do as you must. It will not matter soon in any event.”
“What does that mean?” A question he was asking too often lately.
“I impart to you again: you need to assist them. If you do not, they and their allies will fail in their endeavor. They will fall, a
nd with them so too will the anarchs fall.”
Now he stood. For all the Yinhe’s creepiness, he’d always believed Miaon to be a moral creature, by some measure or another. But now he wasn’t so certain. “Is that a threat?”
“It is a truth, one beyond my ability to alter. Nothing greater and nothing lesser. The Katasketousya have a word for this moment: ‘kairos.’ We teeter on the cusp, but the cusp of what remains to be seen.”
“Could you be any more evasive?”
“Help them, Eren, and watch the universe turn your way. Nos libertatem somnia.”
He knew when Miaon had departed from the abrupt brightness flooding the room and the relative warmth returning to his skin. With a sigh he sank onto the bed again and stared at the ceiling.
He’d just gotten guilt-tripped by a bloody shadow. At this rate there was probably an Efkam out in the hall waiting to totter after him warbling ‘Shame on you!’ when he tried to leave.
Did none of them realize what these people were asking of him?
“Well, Eren, you did want a proper rebellion, one you could die for in a flamboyant blaze of glory. Repeatedly and often. Ever think maybe you ought to be more careful what you wish for?”
12
ONEIROI NEBULA
TYCHE GALAXY
LGG REGION IV
* * *
‘EXITING SUPERLUMINAL IN TEN SECONDS.’
Alex looked up from the couch in surprise. She was lying on her stomach studying some details of the intergalactic population and commercial concentration map. While she could rely on Valkyrie to store and retrieve the infinite number of tidbits of Amaranthe trivia, she did actually need to know the framework and major players in the Anaden empire, not to mention where things were situated.
She checked their location. “We’re still almost a hundred parsecs from the coordinates Mesme provided. Is something wrong?”
Aurora Resonant: The Complete Collection (Amaranthe Collections Book 3) Page 9