“Of course I did.” He stood and approached her; she took the opportunity to enjoy the glorious view until he arrived to clasp her shoulders. “But as much as I would enjoy having you near me, this isn’t about my selfish desires. We need you—in a professional capacity. I realize they need you here, too, but to be blunt, here doesn’t matter if we don’t win there.”
“I understand that. I’m aware of the stakes involved. But you’re asking a lot. There was a time when I could drop everything on a moment’s notice, but that’s no longer true.”
“I know. And part of me almost wants you to refuse, because it’s dangerous in Amaranthe. But then I remember you’ve been attacked three times in the last several months here, so it can hardly be more dangerous.” He frowned abruptly. “You weren’t attacked again while I was gone, were you?”
“No. It’s been quiet.” Too quiet, if she were honest. Comfortable, safe, predictable…and lonely. She’d spent most of her life on her own and that had been fine. But having him here now, after suffering his absence, had brought one realization into stark relief.
She didn’t want to be lonely any longer.
She ran a hand through his hair and drew him close for a soft, lingering kiss. “I’ll talk to Ledesme.”
“These field test results…I think they look excellent.” Kennedy Rossi’s brow crinkled up in skepticism as she said it.
Noah knew it was a serious expression signifying serious thoughts, but it was so damn cute he had to stop himself from going over and kissing the crease above the bridge of her nose.
The crease deepened, as did the temptation. “I can’t believe they’ve managed to successfully speed up the entire production and testing process by almost thirty percent, but data doesn’t lie.”
“With no statistically significant decrease in pass rates, it appears.” He joined her in front of the hovering screens. “So another 3,220 ships are ready to head to Amaranthe tomorrow?”
“I was about to sign off on them as fit for duty.”
“Good. Sign off on them, then let’s get out of here. It’s a nice evening outside.”
“One minute. I want to double-check—”
The door chime interrupted her. ‘Mia Requelme is requesting entry,’ Vii intoned pleasantly.
“Granted.” Noah left Kennedy to her data and went to the door. As soon as it opened, he greeted Mia with a hug, then stepped back to arms’ length. “You look good, and not the slightest bit like a politician.”
Mia rolled her eyes. “I left my magisterial outfit at the office next to the dress suit and pompadour wig.”
Kennedy waved distractedly at Mia. “Give me one second to finish this report up.”
Noah motioned toward one of the office chairs, but Mia declined in favor of leaning against the wall. She seemed restive despite the casual pose, and Noah went ahead and ventured in. “So, what’s up?”
She handed him a small crystal disk. “Message from Miriam, or possibly Alex. An AEGIS courier was supposed to deliver it, but I snagged it first. It was a good excuse to drop by and say ‘hi.’ And maybe ‘bye.’ ”
He gazed at her in question, but she simply gestured to the disk, so he turned his attention to it. It was protected by standard AEGIS encryption, but Connova’s work for the agency meant he had the key. He accessed the contents…then glanced over at Kennedy.
It wasn’t as if the possibility of this happening hadn’t occurred to him. In the old days he would’ve ignored the possibility until it reared up and slapped him in the face, then he would have told it to go fuck off. But this wasn’t the old days and he wasn’t that man any longer. So he nodded faintly to himself in acceptance and readied his most supportive guise.
Kennedy closed her screens and joined them to lean in at his shoulder. “Word from the other side?”
He flicked the message over so she could see it clearly. “They need your help in Amaranthe.”
‘I would like to go with you.’
Kennedy paused her work transferring files to wince. “I’m sorry, Vii, I know you would. But the only way I’m comfortable leaving the current breakneck production of AEGIS vessels unattended is if you’re here to supervise it. They’ll run into glitches, and you can solve them and keep the lines running.”
‘Thank you for your trust. I will strive to live up to it.’
“I’ve no doubt you’ll succeed.”
Noah sat on the edge of the desk in their apartment. Though it was located only a few minutes from the Connova Interstellar offices, they’d installed a robust connection to the office server—and by extension, to Vii—mostly so they could respond to emergencies in their underwear.
“I can supervise it. Arguably not as well as WonderVii here, but with the big kinks worked out I ought to be able to manage. So if you want to take—”
“No. You’re coming with me.”
His face lit up of its own accord, but he quickly tamped down the reaction. The matter-of-fact way she’d said it warmed his heart, but he owed it to her to be responsible for once. “This is my company, too, and I should stay and keep an eye on things.”
She frowned. “But I want you to come with me. I expect there will be regular supply runs every couple of days, or once a week at a minimum. If a problem crops up that Vii can’t handle, she can send us a message. Can’t you, Vii?”
‘Expect one at the first sign of trouble. Likely before the first sign, as I plan to send progress reports so you can remain abreast of all developments.’
I want to go with you, Blondie. So much. Dammit. “Okay, but…what about protecting your legacy should something happen to you? That’s my job, isn’t it? You said.”
“Just go pack already.”
He held his hands up in surrender and tried not to beam like a complete fool. “All right, all right. I was only trying to fulfill my sacred duty.”
She smacked his ass as he passed, sending him scurrying out of the room with great flair.
Once in the bedroom, he dug a bag out of the closet and tossed it on the bed. Nobody had said what kind of weather to expect in Amaranthe. But he guessed it depended on the planet, didn’t it? It was a whole universe.
He’d left the door open, and he was able to hear Kennedy and Vii talking as he threw a reasonable variety of clothes in the bag.
“I can deliver any messages you want to send to someone in Amaranthe—say, to Valkyrie?”
‘I would appreciate that. Thank you. I will have several messages ready in another sixteen seconds.’
A measurable silence followed.
“And your special ‘project’? Is it ready? Should I…take it with me?”
‘I am reluctant to part with the endeavor, but it has never truly belonged to me. It is as ready as I am able to make it…which is to say, yes. It is ready.’
7
AFS STALWART II
MILKY WAY SECTOR 19
* * *
THE LOCATIONS OF EVERY KNOWN MACHIM assembly and production factory, as well as every active deployment stronghold, blipped red on the sprawling Local Galactic Group map. Sixty-eight percent of the sites were located in the Milky Way, and the rest were spread proportionally among the other seven Directorate-designated regions of the LGG.
Miriam studied the map, not for the first time, with one arm across her chest and a fist at her chin. She had studied it so much over the last several days, in fact, that it was in danger of becoming imprinted on the inside of her eyelids.
“We do not lack for targets. However, based on what we know, these six locations appear to hold the greatest strategic value for the enemy.”
Six of the dots doubled in size as the remainder faded into the background. Three were in the Milky Way and one each in the Triangulum, Large Magellanic Cloud and Sextans Dwarf galaxies.
“If we want to disproportionately cripple the enemy and disrupt their operations as rapidly as possible, destroying these facilities is how we do it. Agreed? Does anyone have a different take?”
&nbs
p; The map was so large it took up most of her field of view, but Fleet Admiral Rychen and Field Marshal Bastian indicated agreement in opposite corners of her vision. Though their vessels patrolled only a few megameters away, it was far more efficient to holocomm them up than demand they shuttle over to the Stalwart II for every consultation.
Rear Admiral Escarra and Brigadier Belosca quickly followed suit. If they had contrary opinions, they didn’t hold them strongly enough to challenge their superior officers.
Rychen zoomed in one of the blips, a sub-Regional hub 820 parsecs away from their current location. “This site is close. We could be there in a few hours.”
“True, but the Sector 46 facility was close as well. If we continue to concentrate our efforts on this region of the Milky Way, soon enough they’ll be able to narrow down where we’re lurking. Their long-range sensor technology is robust, and I’m concerned we risk them finding us.”
She zoomed in a different blip, one on the Norma Arm across the galactic core near Gamma Sagittae. “This is their second largest battlecruiser manufacturing facility—or it was before we destroyed their largest one. It’s near a gateway, so we can reach it just as fast if we use the gateway in Sector 22 to travel to Gamma Sagittae. Then we’ll move our staging location again.”
Bastian frowned, as usual. “They’ll know we’re coming once we use the gateway, and after the last attack they’ve likely increased the defenses at these types of facilities.”
“Certainly. But there are hundreds of gateways. In addition, two other potential targets are in range of this one, so even once they become aware of our traversal, they won’t be able to tell which location we plan to attack. With a pinpoint superluminal jump, we can be at the manufacturing facility less than a minute after exiting the gateway.
“As for the increased defenses, we should expect to face those at every target from now on. We’ll increase the mission formation strength by twenty percent to compensate.” When they next engaged a true Machim fleet, they would send everything against it, but a mostly automated manufacturing facility simply didn’t require forty thousand ships to destroy.
Rychen prevaricated. “Twenty-five percent, at least until we see what ‘increased defenses’ means. Unless we can get eyes on the target ahead of time?”
“Not via the anarchs. They’ve never focused on military installations, under the theory that practical strikes against them were outside their capabilities. We can send a scout ship, but the gateway activations are monitored, so as a result they’ll know far longer in advance that we’re looking at one of the facilities in the area.”
She shook her head. “No. We’ve proved that we can outmatch them. A maneuver warfare strategy means we go in hard and fast and with no warning. We hit their largest, most important facilities in rapid succession while we still maintain some element of surprise. We keep them knocked back and scrambling to respond to the last attack while we move on to the next one.”
8
CHIONIS
ANARCH POST ALPHA
* * *
EREN DRIFTED THROUGH A BLISSFUL OBLIVION. The scene of his oblivion morphed, as it had several times now, from a sea of stars, breathtaking in its stark silver-on-black motif, to an aquamarine sea lapping at a diamond-white shore.
The sand cooled the skin of his naked back; the million crystalline beads hovered at the edge of tickling as they shifted beneath him like a living organism. Or was he doing the shifting? It didn’t matter. Above him a plum-and-rose nebula rearranged itself into the shape of memories. Good ones, for nothing troublesome penetrated his oblivion.
His toes wiggled under the warm splash of a wave’s crest.
Fascinated as he was by the sensations the contrast of warmth and coolness evoked, it took him several seconds to notice the beeping. Why would the sand beep? Was it alive after all and letting him in on its conversation? Or did oceans maybe beep to announce the influx of their waves?
The beeping noise grew insistent, intruding to cast itself in jarring, harsh relief upon the gauzy scene. The nebula flared and flashed angrily as a new wave surged to crash over him in an icy deluge—it was supposed to be warm! Godsdammit.
He closed his eyes against the hallucination and allowed reality to take over briefly. His intent was to hush the alarm and return, but then he caught a glimpse of the contents of the notice accompanying the alert.
He bolted upright in the bed, grabbed a hold of the edge with one hand to steady the spinning room, and fumbled in the open drawer beside him with the other in search of a stim hypnol to jolt him into functionality.
When he found the vial, he canted his head back…and missed his eyeball, instead dribbling the solution down his nose.
All the rapid movements flipped the room upside down. He gave in and lay down until everything righted itself and calmed, then tried again. More carefully. The jabs of stinging pain shooting through his eye into his brain hurt worse than actually getting stabbed, but he got it done.
The headache came first; it always did. He winced and again lay still, enduring the worst of the throbbing until it ebbed away much as the waves in his oblivion. Next he concentrated on the arrival of the physical sensations heralding the advent of the next stage, lucidity.
He opened his eyes and saw a bare ceiling, free of stars and nebulae. His toes and skin were dry and blandly tepid. Reality it was, then.
He eased his legs over the side of the bed until his feet hit the cold floor and inhaled deeply.
Clothes. Briefing. Heroism. Important to get the order right.
“You look like death.”
He hoped he looked that good. “Thanks, Cosime. That’s just the mien I was going for.”
“What happened to you?”
“I got bored.”
Missions had ground to a halt in the wake of the arrival of the Humans, he assumed because the powers that be were scrambling around trying to figure out what to do about them. Caleb, Alex and their merry band were back with their own kind, and he’d been left with the worst of all possible outcomes: nothing to do.
Cosime regarded him suspiciously. “Okay. Are you here now?”
He rubbed at his face for a second then nodded. “I am. I’m good.”
Xanne hurried into the briefing room, saving him from more of Cosime’s probing skepticism.
Her gaze took in the room and those gathered with honed efficiency before she dove in. “In what is doubtless a response to recent events, the Directorate has begun a comprehensive sweep designed to uncover anarch agents serving among the populace. As part of the sweep, several thousand facilities have been locked down while employees are interrogated. We believe these interrogations will involve Inquisitors and the use of alithe intraneurals, which means agents caught in the dragnet will be discovered.”
“We’re working to get them out, aren’t we?”
She frowned at the speaker, a Novoloume whom Eren didn’t know. “As many of them as we can. The unfortunate reality is we risk losing yet more agents in rescue missions, which will only compound the problem. A number of the locations are secure facilities outfitted with advanced defenses. These locations are now impenetrable, and I’m afraid any agents at those sites are lost. Many of them have likely already sacrificed themselves to avoid capture.
“Others, however, we might be able to reach. No such missions will be easy or safe, however, so I’m asking for volunteers only.
Eren scanned the list of lockdowns Xanne had provided, then stopped cold at one entry:
Location: Plousia Chateau
Planet: Serifos
Galaxy: Andromeda
Agents in place: Thelkt Lonaervin, Felzeor
He raised his hand. “I’m going to Plousia.”
“So am I.”
He shot Cosime a doubtful look, and she leaned in close to whisper in his ear. “If you tell me it’s too dangerous, I swear I will slice your cock off.”
He almost choked in shock. “What?”
“You he
ard me.”
His face screwed up as he turned back to Xanne for confirmation. Instead he found the woman shaking her head. “No. With an elasson in charge there, it’s a high profile target and too risky to attempt an infiltration.”
“We’ll get help.”
Xanne’s lips pursed…then, presumably deducing the kind of help he meant, she acquiesced with a terse nod.
The clamor continued as other locations were debated and assignments handed out. He stood and, with a wary eye on Cosime, jerked his head toward the door and headed out of the briefing room.
On the way to catch a transport to the Andromeda III Arx, he contacted the Siyane.
“Valkyrie, put me on speaker.”
Valkyrie: ‘Done.’
“I hope you all aren’t busy.”
Alex: “Well, we sort of are. AEGIS is about to hit another Machim facility, and we were going along to help.”
“Hmm. You could do that. Or you could help me rescue Felzeor from a Directorate dragnet.”
Caleb: “Where do we collect you?”
He thought that would get their attention. He chuckled, then took the time to award Cosime a smile. “See? Now you get to meet them.”
9
SIYANE
MILKY WAY SECTOR 24 / ANDROMEDA GALAXY
* * *
THE SIYANE DOCKED AT THE ANDROMEDA III ARX using spoofed credentials, but they didn’t risk disembarking. Even aside from the ongoing dragnet, in the wake of the Provision Network Gateway battle Vigil had ratcheted up security three-fold at every facility under its control. It was now all but impossible for him or Alex to get inside most locations—through the front door, anyway.
A Naraida whom Eren introduced as Cosime trailed the Anaden through the airlock into the Siyane’s cabin. Caleb had spotted a few Naraida among the anarchs at Post Satus, but he’d yet to interact with one. She had luminescent white hair framing large, gem-like eyes, and a sing-song voice with a wispy timbre but a spirited tenor. Her mannerisms suggested barely restrained energy despite a delicate if not fragile build.
Aurora Resonant: The Complete Collection (Amaranthe Collections Book 3) Page 46