The Weapons of War

by Dan Schiro

  The reactor core ran from ceiling to floor in the middle of the round space, a titanic gray cylinder crackling with cold white static. Across the smooth, perfectly clean floor, Orion saw a slight hiver female clad in blood-spattered leather. She stood amidst more bodies, but these had not been stripped to their pearly marrow. The six men and women wore gray engineering jumpsuits stained with slashes and stabs, and their blood still dripped from the long manacite sword in the hiver’s hand. In her off hand, she held a bulky black box with a control panel on one side and two magnetic plates on the other. She had been reaching out to place the device on the huge cylinder, but then her insect-like wings twitched, and she turned her multi-faceted yellow eyes toward them.

  “Put it down,” Orion shouted across the echoing space. “You don’t have to do it, you could save billions of lives instead of destroying them!” He didn’t think, he simply yelled the most honest words that came into his head.

  The hiver seemed to laugh soundlessly, her tiny, toothy mouth twitching. Then she shook her head, vanished her sword and held up a gauntlet glowing with pulsing, pollen-yellow veins of fresh blood magic.

  “Take her out,” Orion yelled to his team as he sprinted toward the reactor core. “Go, go!”

  Aurelia, Kangor and Bully snapped into action beside him, but they weren’t faster than the hiver’s spell. Light danced at her fingertips, and a tempest-like portal ripped open above the floor. Wriggling insects, some the size of a sparrow and some the size of a dog, flooded out and came at them on buzzing wings and thousands of skittering legs. They slithered forth in a hundred putrid colors with saliva dripping from fangs and slime coating their bodies, as grotesque a representation of life as Orion could imagine. Past the portal, Orion could see the hiver slap the device on the reactor core with another soundless giggle. Then the alien bugs were upon them, and Orion forced his mind into the White Room.

  He called a long bo staff to his hand and dropped into his Blades of a Wheel fighting form, swatting fanged dragonflies from the air and smashing huge scorpions as their club-like stingers struck at him. Bully, dutiful as ever, bristled at his side, snapping up oversized ants that snuck past Orion’s spinning staff and flinging them away. Aurelia went to work with lances of green light that left the cleaved insects sizzling, her voice reciting something in the rolling language of the Green. Kangor crushed insects with foot and fist and bit the heads off huge flying spiders, and slowly the team advanced. But Orion knew it was too slow — through the horde of little beasties, he could see the hiver punching in commands on the bulky device she had affixed to the reactor core. Worse yet, Orion’s spellblade showed no blooming red veins. That meant whatever the alien insects were, they weren’t truly alive, and they couldn’t power the Blade of the Word.

  “Aurelia,” he growled between blows of his staff. “I need a clear path, I need to get to her, now!”

  “Give me a minute to concentrate,” she replied, furious bolts of green blazing forth from her hands, “and maybe I could help you out!”

  “Kangor,” Orion cried, swinging furiously. “Kangor, get to her!” But all he heard was the vycart’s feral roar as he fought his own portion of the insect onslaught.

  With a deep thudding sound, a magnet-propelled grenade hurtled over Orion’s head. A split second later, the floor bucked with the explosion. Orion fell hard on his backside, his ears ringing as hot, wet chunks of bug flesh rained down on him. A steady stream of pulse bolts screamed toward the portal, annihilating wriggling insects as they dropped to the floor and searing hotspots onto Orion’s vision. Then, as suddenly as the assault had begun, it ended, and Orion looked over his shoulder to see Dalaxa with the warmech’s smoking gauntlet guns extended.

  “What the hell are you waiting for?” Her shout sounded faint beneath the ringing in Orion’s ears. He looked back to see the portal closing as the last few insects flopped to the ground dead. “There’s your clear path,” she yelled, gesturing wildly with one colossal arm of the warmech.

  Pushed beyond pain and hesitation by the White Room, Orion was on his feet and running before he could even register the thought. He closed on the reactor core with a handful of long strides and thrust a longsword in between the hiver’s delicate wings. The sword ripped out through her chest, and Orion felt his spellblade sigh with satisfaction as her life force drained into it. As for himself, Orion felt nothing but horror. The display on the bulky box stuck to the reactor core read “program initiated” and showed a slowly filling circle.

  “No,” Orion whispered. He let the dead hiver slide off his sword as the others rushed to his side. A quick glance told him that despite the scratches and bite marks, his friends and dog wouldn’t bleed to death before Darkwell initiated and compressed them into a singularity. “Don’t worry,” he told them, “I’ll figure this out.”

  Dalaxa popped the warmech’s bubble open and clambered out, rushing past him to inspect the device attached to the reactor core’s main cylinder. “No, no,” she gasped as she looked at the filling circle on the display and the data points scrolling next to it. “We’re too late, too late!”

  Orion raised his spellblade gauntlet, its silver surface glowing with red veins. “Dalaxa, I can do this,” he said, gently pulling her back. “I just need a second to focus…”

  Kangor nodded. “Orion’s demon metal has done this work before.” His hide had hardened to a rocky carapace wherever it had been stung, bit or scratched, clusters of undifferentiated cells rushing to repair the damage. “He once turned an atomic warhead to lead before my very eyes.”

  “Exactly,” Aurelia said, dabbing at a long claw mark running down her arm. “Something similar should suffice. Turn it to stone. Or perhaps gold, that would be artful.”

  “You don’t understand,” Dalaxa wailed as she spun on them. “It’s already happening, and it’s not happening in this box.” She pointed a trembling finger back at the device. “This box just kicks off the process in the reactor core, creating a modulated gravity bubble around the target mass. Once the gravity field starts oscillating, it doesn’t matter if you pull the plug — the artificial field will still collapse.”

  Orion cocked an eyebrow. “Meaning…?”

  “This whole ship is the bomb!” she said, throwing up her hands.

  Orion hesitated. He was confident he had absorbed enough life force to render the magnetically attached device inert or perhaps even the whole cylinder, but he doubted he could disperse a gravimetric phenomenon encompassing the entire power-plant ship. “How long do we have?”

  Dalaxa shrugged her thin shoulders. “Darkwell takes time to spin up, but…” She glanced back at the display. “20 minutes? A half hour, if we’re lucky?”

  “Okay, okay,” he whispered, his mind racing. The device would detonate and the singularity would kick a hole through space-time, that much seemed certain. But did it have to happen in the middle of the Collective Fleet? “An interface,” Orion snapped, his head swiveling. “I need a ship interface!”

  They dashed for the far wall of the room and the array of control terminals there. Orion pulled his datacube from his smartcloak and quickly flipped it in the air, shouting commands as fast as his mouth could move. “Access nearest interface and upload virus Echo-6. Run program Battering Ram on all firewalls and subroutine Ransack on anti-malware defenses.”

  “What are you doing?” Dalaxa asked as the holographic interface flashed with static-fuzzed warning symbols. “Are you trying to take control of the ship? From engineering? With a datacube?”

  “This is no regular cube,” Orion hissed as the brass-plated datacube hummed. “I slapped on a half-dozen illegal mods, and Zo added a few government skeleton keys.” He felt sweat beading on his brow as the warning symbols glitched and resolved. “Come on, come on…” After seconds that felt like hours, the hologram finally changed from warning red to active green and flashed the words, “Emergency Navigation Con
trol Granted.”

  “You did it?” Dalaxa gasped. “You cocky, crazy ass — you actually did it?”

  “Not yet,” Orion said through gritted teeth. Speaking to his datacube again, he said, “Set course for the ether route, ion engines at full, and engage manacite drive at the earliest access point.”

  More torturous seconds passed, and then the green hologram lit up with the words “Course Initiated.” Aurelia cackled with a short cheer, Kangor slapped him on the back and Dalaxa heaved a heavy breath. Even Bully woofed with a note of celebration.

  “Well done,” said Aurelia, hooking a thumb over her shoulder. “Now’s the part where we run, correct?”

  “I’m afraid it’s not that simple,” Orion said, glancing at Dalaxa and seeing the fear return to her pink eyes as she did the math and came to the same conclusion. “This freighter is going to be in the ether in a matter of minutes… and Darkwell is going to do its thing a matter of minutes later.” He gave a slight shrug. “It took us over an hour to wind our way here from our docking point.”

  Dalaxa nodded. “A fitting death for me, I suppose.” Cloudy tears welled in her eyes. “Killed by my own weapon.”

  “A good death,” Kangor said as he laid a huge hand on her shoulder. “Stopping your weapon from killing so many others.”

  “I said it’s not that simple,” Orion said with a smirk. “I didn’t say we were doomed.” He held up his spellblade gauntlet again, its living metal pulsing with the mute hiver’s fresh blood magic.

  “Oh good,” Aurelia said with a sharp clap of her hands. “Because I had no intention of dying today.”

  “Or ever, right old lady?” Orion chuckled and held out his hands. “Everyone link up.”

  They did, and even Bully seemed to understand as he leaned his heavy frame into Orion’s leg. He thought for a moment, wondering how far one life force could take them, and then he picked the word. “Teleport.”

  A blaze of white light surrounded them. The next moment, Orion and the others blinked their eyes clear in the main cabin of his Prodigal Star. While the others laughed, sighed or barked, relieved and amazed at once, Orion leaped into the captain’s chair. His dropship was still attached to the power freighter as the larger ship rocketed away from the Collective Fleet, out into the star-speckled blackness toward the invisible ribbon of the ether route. Quickly, he jabbed in a few commands on the control dash in front of him.

  “Brace yourselves,” he warned the others as the Prodigal Star’s boarding mechanism disengaged and they tumbled away from the out-of-control freighter. They spun for a disorienting moment, and then Orion engaged the ion engine and used a touch of thrust to steady them. On the main viewscreen, the Equitable Beamer sped away for a few more seconds before vanishing into the ether route with a pale pastel flash.

  For a tense moment, Orion braced himself for a devastating implosion of space that never came. Then he realized that once the freighter had entered the ether route, it would be accelerated to a speed that would take it light years in minutes, putting it in deep interstellar space when it detonated. “I think… I think we did it,” he breathed. “I think we saved the Collective Fleet.”

  “We did it,” Dalaxa said, slouching in the ops station chair. “Let’s just hope we didn’t destroy the ether route network while we were at it.”

  Chapter 17

  Orion didn’t really understand the damage caused by the singularity bomb, not until he and his crew made it back to Zovaco Ralli’s redecorated office on the Maker Rings. Orion, Dalaxa, Aurelia and Kangor sat in armchairs around Zovaco’s wooden desk while Zovaco and Mervyn explained. It turned out that the toll was not as heavy as Dalaxa had feared, and a million times worse than Orion could have ever imagined.

  “So, while we can’t exactly determine the physics of what happened,” Zovaco said as he folded his hands on his desk, “we can confirm that that particular line of the ether route network has gone dark.”

  “Gone dark?” Orion repeated, his mouth hanging agape. “As in… gone?”

  Zovaco nodded, his three-eyed gaze falling to the desk. “Along with everyone traveling it at the time.”

  Orion felt like he had been punched in the gut. Dalaxa gasped beside him. “How many?” she asked, a hand to her mouth.

  “We’re still trying to get an exact count of missing ships and their crews.” Zovaco’s mouth tightened, and still he did not meet their eyes. “Estimates are in the tens of thousands.”

  Orion fell back in his chair. What had he been thinking would happen when he sent the weaponized power freighter into the ether route? He had to admit that he hadn’t thought past getting Project Darkwell far away from the Collective Fleet before it collapsed into an inescapable gravity. “Tens of thousands,” Orion muttered as he rubbed his hands over his face.

  “The loss goes beyond the immediate tragedy,” said Mervyn, sitting in a chair beside Zovaco with his apish hands folded atop his cane. “That particular route was the shortest path between the Collective Fleet, the Maker Rings and Konnexus. The detours take a few hours’ trip and turn it into a multi-day journey. That’s going to impact trade, tourism, migration patterns…” Trailing off, he shook his head.

  “And how fast the SpaceCorps armada can travel between those ports,” Zovaco said with a nod.

  “Disturbing,” Kangor grunted, his first words since he had sat. “We should not put it past the Mad Thinker to lay plans within plans.”

  Still clutching at his high forehead, Orion barely heard them. “Tens of thousands…”

  “Aren’t we missing the point?” Aurelia scoffed. “Orion’s quick thinking saved the Fleet, saved billions of lives.” She went to the liquor cabinet and grabbed a stay-cold bottle of Stardust Gin. Returning to her seat, she took a healthy swig and handed the bottle to Orion. “Call me a pragmatist, but my math says we won this one.”

  “We did,” Zovaco said, exhaling a long breath. “And you should be proud of that, Orion.” He seemed to hesitate, opening his thin lips to speak and closing them again.

  Orion forced the shaking bottle in his hand to be still and swallowed a long drink of expensive briophyte gin. He took a moment while the biting liquor made its way to his belly, warming him and calming him. “Why do I feel like there’s something more?”

  “Frankly, son,” said Mervyn with a sigh, “it’s a PR nightmare.”

  “PR?” Kangor growled, his voice low as he took the bottle from Orion. “We are fighting a war.”

  Zovaco nodded. “And public relations are an important part of every war.”

  “What are you getting at?” Orion asked, swallowing hard.

  “We tried to brush your involvement under the rug,” Mervyn said. “But the Collective Fleet had a thousand eyes recording when you disconnected your dropship and shoved the freighter off into the ether route. The AlphaOmega logo on your hull has been plastered all over the datasphere in the hours since.”

  “People are angry, Orion,” Zovaco said, pausing to take a deep breath. “They can’t see past the lives lost, at least not right now. It’s not fair, but someone has to at least… appear to face consequences. Someone high-profile,” he added, his thin face drawn into a deep frown. “And everyone knows you were there...”

  Orion shook his head. “So…?”

  Mervyn sighed. “What he’s trying to tell you, son, is that you’re the scapegoat.” He dropped his head and tapped his cane on the stone floor. “Your part in this fight is done, Orion. You’re done chasing Typhus the Mad Thinker, and you’re done with government contracts, at least for the foreseeable future.” The old kingmaker looked up and met Orion’s eye. “We’ll also have to ground your ship and restrict your travel to the Maker Rings. Once the Department of Interstellar Travel has had a chance to investigate the destruction of the route, we’ll see.” He winced as if in pain. “I’m sorry, son, but we can’t be affiliated with you righ
t now.”

  “What?” Orion whispered, jaw jutting forward. Hot rage bloomed to replace the sick, cold feeling in Orion’s chest. “What?! You’re… you’re blaming this on me? How could you… how can you… you can’t do that!”

  “This is temporary, Orion,” Zovaco pled, raising his four-fingered hands. “Confidence in Union leadership has to be maintained, especially now.” He took a deep breath to compose himself, blinking his triad of eyes in unison. “And right now, the public is beginning to doubt the Union can protect them. A singular figure for them to focus their anxieties on will provide distraction.” He clasped his hands together and looked at Orion intensely. “I’m so sorry Orion. You must believe that. But I’m trying to prevent riots in the street. Think of the greater good.”

  The words hung between them in icy silence for a few seconds. Then Aurelia stood with a shake of her head. “The pettiness of lesser carbons never ceases to amaze me.”

  “Dishonorable,” seethed Kangor, fangs bared as he rose from his seat. “Appalling!”

  “Make it me,” Dalaxa said, her pink eyes wide as she leaned forward. “Sacrifice me to the public instead.” Placing the bottle of gin on Zovaco’s desk, she laid a hand on her own chest. “I’m the one who built these weapons, I’m the one who deserves the blame.”

  Mervyn scoffed and tapped his cane. “That would only make matters worse.”

  “Yes,” said Zovaco with a nod, “It would be… best… not to reveal the Union’s black science division. If people understood the magnitude of the weapons loose out there, it would only make the panic worse.”

  Orion shook his head bitterly. “This is cold.”

  “It has to be,” Zovaco murmured, a flicker of regret tightening his mouth. “We are at war,” he said with a glance up at Kangor.