A siren screamed, warning that shields were depleted. Then Ethan went evasive in earnest. He eyed the enemy fighter on his six, waiting for his plan to go awry as his Nova was vaporized by a lucky shot. Another laser struck the back end of his fighter with a screech of rending alloy that set his teeth on edge. His port wing went tumbling away behind him, cut free of his Nova's acceleration.
That was it.
Ethan stabbed a button on the engineering display and killed power to all the ship's critical systems at once—all but one, the missile launchers.
He held his breath, anticipating the killing shot, but long seconds slipped by and nothing happened. The TDS and SISS were deactivated, so there was no way to hear laser lock warnings, or the simulated buzz and crackle of near misses, but the complete absence of strobing red light flashing through his canopy told him that the drone on his six had given him up for dead.
Drones were programmed to pursue live targets, not dead ones, and AIs were nothing if not efficient. They wouldn't waste time on an enemy that was already a goner—at least not until all the other live targets were neutralized. As far as they were concerned, that last shot had been a fatal one.
Ethan grinned. He could no longer physically see the wave of enemy fighters racing up in front of him, since visual auto-scaling was a powered system, but he knew they were out there, and getting closer by the second. He primed a pair of torpedoes and waited a few more seconds, until he could see a group of glinting specks come swelling out of the star field. They would race past him at any moment. He waited half a second more... and pulled the trigger. Two Silverstreaks shot out on glittering silver contrails. The drones opened fire instantly, but the torpedoes were too close. Torpedoes exploded in a blinding flash of light. Ethan's cockpit shook violently, and then everything plunged into blackness.
The canopy cracked open with a whirr of hydraulics. Light poured in, and Ethan blinked against the glare. He was surprised to find Magnum waiting for him. The lieutenant had his arms crossed over his chest and a frown pasted on his face. Atta was there, too, smiling and shaking her head.
Somehow Magnum had died before him, but Ethan had been so focused on what he was doing that he hadn't noticed. Then again, the comms had been muted.
"What was the final score?" Ethan asked, trying to look innocent rather than smug.
"I was about to clip the wings on drone number five, but he dropped a shadow mine right on top of me, and I didn't notice till it was too late."
"Oh, I'm sorry," Ethan said, while climbing out of his simulator pod.
"No you're not, you smug kakard."
Ethan came to stand in front of Magnum. He shrugged and allowed the smile he'd been suppressing to blossom. "And my score?"
Magnum's frown deepened, but he said nothing.
Atta was the one who replied: "You got all six in the second wave, plus those first two kills makes eight."
"Nine," Magnum said. "Don't forget he got himself, too."
"Actually, that one counts against you, Ethan, so your final score is seven, but that still beats Magnum's four."
"Not bad," Ethan said, nodding.
Magnum snorted. "You exploited a weakness in the simulation. You think Omnius will be that stupid when he's the one piloting those drones?"
Ethan shook his head. "I'm guessing they weren't firing missiles at us for a reason. They use quantum launchers, right?" Atta nodded. "And these simulators are programmed for the upcoming battle at Avilon, where we're going to have the Eclipser jamming quantum fields."
"Get to the point," Magnum said.
"The point is, Omnius won't be the one piloting those drones; the Eclipser will cut him off, and regular comms, assuming drones even have them, are too slow for remote-piloting, so that stunt I pulled will only have to defeat the on-board intelligence of a drone, which means it might just work in a real engagement."
Atta inclined her head to him. "I'm going to report that tactic to Wing Commander Axel while you two finish your ground simulation."
Ethan nodded and they left the Nova simulator room together. Atta left them at the door to the mech simulators, and Ethan assumed that meant he would be on his own. So much for Atta's plan, he thought.
* * *
Magnum led the way to a pair of mech simulators at the back of the room. Ethan noticed the mech simulators were shaped differently from Nova pods, with arms, legs, and head. Ethan watched Magnum place his palm on one of the simulator's chests, and it opened up like a mechanical flower with an accompanying hiss and whirr of hydraulics. Ethan followed Magnum's lead and waited as his own simulator peeled open. He stepped inside, lining up his legs and arms with the simulator's corresponding parts. Ethan kept still for a few seconds, and the simulator automatically sealed around him.
The HUD glowed to life, and Ethan began familiarizing himself with the controls while the simulation loaded. He found that all the mech's systems were either gesture or voice-activated.
Ethan took a moment to study the HUD while the simulation loaded. Of particular interest was the small rear view and peripheral visual feeds at the top of the HUD. That would certainly help with situational awareness. Now all he had to do is figure out how to activate the mech's weapons...
Then the simulation finished loading, and suddenly he was back on Avilon. Kilometers-high towers soared, colorful glass shining bright in the sun. A cloudless blue sky stretched overhead. Air traffic traced dotted lines against the sky. Vast tracts of green urban parks stretched between the bases of the monolithic towers. Fountains bubbled, trees swayed, and luminous white-robed pedestrians ran in rivers along the footpaths. This was Celesta, the uppermost city of Avilon.
Magnum's voice growled beside his ears: "This time you won't be so lucky."
Then came a ground-shaking boom, followed by people screaming. Ethan turned toward the sound, servos in his suit whirring as his Zephyr-class light assault mech matched and amplified his movements.
A crashing starship had hit the ground nearby, digging a fiery crater in the cityscape. Above and behind the flaming ruins, one of the skyscrapers was also on fire with a chunk bitten out of the side, halfway up. The debris must have nicked it on the way down. As Ethan watched, the tower began leaning precipitously, collapsing on the damaged side. On the ground below, white-robed Celestials ran screaming in all directions.
A torrent of lasers flashed out of the blue sky, booming as they connected with a fuzzy gray shadow overhead, and then that shadow began falling, gushing fire.
Ethan spun around to find Magnum already running away at top speed.
"Get out of there, Ethan!" Atta screamed, proving that she hadn't left him alone, after all.
He ran, jumping over debris and crashing through pristinely-landscaped parks. His armored feet kicked up great chunks of dirt and grass as he ran. The simulator aided his movements the same way a real Zephyr would. He heard and felt more impacts shaking the ground underfoot, but so far nothing catastrophic.
"Better pick up the pace, greeny!" Magnum said.
Ethan risked a glance over his shoulder just in time to see the falling tower briefly blot out the sun.
Then it hit.
A racing gray cloud of bactcrete dust rippled out from the impact, engulfing everything in its path. Then came the belated boom! and a subsequent roar of settling debris that rattled Ethan inside his armor.
The wave of dust and debris hit a split second later, picking them up and launching them through the air. Ethan felt a brief, gut-dropping sensation of falling, followed by the jarring crunch of his landing. He was surprised that the fall actually hurt. Bouncing up and shaking it off, he spun around. Blinded by the swirling dust clouds, he snapped on a sensor overlay to help him see. Up ahead Magnum appeared as a bright green outline.
"You still alive back there?" Magnum asked.
"For now," Ethan croaked, jogging up beside the lieutenant.
"Do a systems check. Wouldn't want you to call foul because your weapons are all jammed."
"That was close," Atta whispered. Ethan noticed that she was speaking to him on a private comms channel. He switched to that channel so that Magnum wouldn't hear what he said next.
"I thought you were going to fight this one for me?"
"Not for you, with you. I'm auditing the battle from the instructor's pod next to yours. I had to wait until Magnum wouldn't see me climb in."
"Hey, Greeny! Look alive! We've got incoming."
Ethan whirled around to see a few dozen red enemy silhouettes advancing on them.
"Get behind cover!" Magnum roared, pulling him down behind a giant boulder in the middle of the park where they stood.
Then lasers screeched out toward them and crunched as they bit off chunks of the rock they were hiding behind. Magnum peeked around the corner and returned fire with gauntlet-mounted ripper cannons. High caliber rounds thumped out, and one of the red outlines vanished from Ethan's HUD. There were still plenty more, approaching fast.
"We're going to be in melee range, soon," Magnum warned. Better arm your energy blades."
"Energy blades?"
Ethan heard Atta sigh meaningfully in his ears. "Make two fists and flex them down. The blades extend from the top of your gauntlets. But watch it! You need to—"
Ethan armed the blades and a pair of swords slid out from his gauntlets, hitting the rock in front of him with a shower of sparks.
"—hold your arms above your head," Atta finished.
Once fully extended, the blades glowed bright blue, shielded to protect the nanometer-fine edges from breaking. Being careful not to accidentally touch Magnum—or himself—with one of the blades, Ethan held his arms up as Atta had suggested. He leaned back against the rock, and steeled himself for what was to come.
Vibrations shuddered through the rock, along with the faint rumble of whirring and clanking footfalls. Magnum took another potshot with ripper fire—thump-thump-thump—and Ethan saw a second red outline vanish from his screens.
The enemy returned fire, and chunks of rock went flying. A pitter-patter of pebbles rained down around them, and Magnum withdrew to reveal that his arm had been reduced to a laser-scorched stump, sheared off at the shoulder.
"Frek it..." Magnum said, panting noisily over the comms as he flexed his smoldering stump in a circular motion. "Looks like you're going to get a chance to make up those kills, greeny."
Ethan grimaced, his eyes fixed on the charred flesh of Magnum's missing arm. This simulation was getting too real for his tastes.
Magnum extended a single energy blade from his remaining arm, and they waited, listening to the vibrations coming through the rock as the stampede drew near. The HUD showed the nearest drone just ten meters away, then two, then—
Ethan leapt up and slashed over his head. A drone went flying by in two pieces, severed wires gushing sparks.
Beside him, Magnum roared and pirouetted, slashing sideways as a drone raced around his side of the boulder. Ethan lashed out on his own side and cut another drone off at the knees. Then the remaining drones swarmed them, firing lasers at point blank range, and using grav guns to push and pull them around. Ethan narrowly missed being bifurcated by Magnum's blade. A stream of lasers glanced off his left arm, blasting off armor plates to expose bare, burned skin. The sudden sting of those laser burns took Ethan's breath away, and he stumbled.
Drones grabbed him and began hammering him with metal fists. His armor dented and crumpled under the strain, and the impacts actually took the wind out of him.
Simulated pain? What the frek?
"That's just 10 percent of the real thing, Ethan!" Atta said. "Don't let it distract you! You're about to win!"
Ethan gritted his teeth and spun in a circle with his arms outstretched. His blades cut through both of the drones busy hammering him, and they fell in a puddle of twitching parts.
"You're up by one!"
Magnum screamed and Ethan saw that a pair of drones had him by his head and legs and they were pulling in opposite directions, determined to rip him apart. Magnum lashed out, cutting off the head of the drone holding his, but it went on pulling. Ethan raced up and punched both his blades straight through the chest of the one that had Magnum's feet; then he slashed up and out, slicing the drone's arms off. Magnum's legs fell with the drone's severed arms, and he dispatched the drone behind him with another slash. Ethan turned in a quick circle to make sure that more drones weren't racing up behind them, but all that remained were twitching parts.
Then something caught his eye. A severed metallic claw clutching a flashing silver sphere.
"Grenade!" Magnum called out. He struggled to get up, but his legs were twisted up under him and clearly broken.
Ethan saw the grenade flashing faster and faster, and he knew it was about to kill them both. He dashed toward it and threw himself on top. The ground heaved under him, and suddenly he felt himself weightless and flying through the air. His torso stung fiercely, cut by a thousand knives. Then his displays went dark and the simulator ceased aiding his movements, becoming a hard shell around him.
Ethan heard a hiss and whirr as the simulator peeled open. Light streamed in, and Ethan stumbled out. He was startled to find his torso stinging with echoes of the pain from his simulated death. His cheeks itched, and he reached up to find them wet with tears.
Beside him, Magnum's pod flayed open and he came limping out, his expression grim. His cheeks were also wet. The lieutenant strode right up to him, and for a moment Ethan was afraid he was going to get another slap of re-spect.
What he got instead was a bone-grinding hug.
"You saved my life," Magnum croaked.
"I—"
Atta climbed out of her instructor's pod, drawing their attention. Magnum withdrew from their embrace, his eyes narrowing as he glanced from Atta to Ethan and back again.
"I thought you left," he said.
Atta shook her head. "I decided to audit and give Ethan a few pointers."
Magnum turned back to him and gave a grudging nod. "Welcome to the Rictans."
"I won?" Ethan asked, turning to Atta.
"No... final count was five for Magnum, and four for you. That's counting the negative one you acquired by killing yourself again."
"But you're not counting the plus one he gets for saving me."
"You were incapacitated, so it doesn't count."
Magnum snorted. "Sure it does. I left the sim alive thanks to him. Any recovery team could have picked me up and put me back together again. He lost one asset to save another. That means we both scored five. A tie. Put that together with his victory in the last sim, and he's the clear winner. Come on, Commander, it's time to give you a real welcome to the squadron," Magnum said, wrapping an arm around his shoulders to guide him toward the door.
Ethan noticed that Magnum was still limping. "Are you okay?"
"Phantom pain. Residuals from all the nerve stimulation."
"That's why our cheeks were wet when we came out," Ethan said, wiping a tear away with one hand and looking at it suspiciously.
"No shame in that," Magnum said. "Eyes watering is just a reflex."
"That was only 10 percent of the real thing?" Ethan asked, casting a glance over his shoulder to Atta.
She nodded. "But in a real battle you two would have been auto-dosed with painkillers, so the pain was comparable to what you would actually feel."
"But why the frek would you simulate pain?"
"You stopped for two full seconds when your arm got burned. That kind of hesitation can get you killed. If we're conditioned to the pain from sims, then by the time we get into a real fight we don't even flinch."
"All those fake deaths make for some interesting nightmares," Magnum said. "Not sure why the brain likes to relive trauma, but there you have it."
"No guts, no glory," Atta said.
"No guts, no glory," Magnum agreed.
Ethan grunted at that. He wondered how many guts were about to be spilled on Avilon with no glory to show f
or it. The Union was heading for disaster. Therius knew they couldn't win, and his plan was to threaten Omnius with their own extinction. Ethan traded glances with Atta on their way down the corridor from the simulator rooms. He could see by the hollow behind her eyes that she was worrying about the same thing.
Something had to be done before it was too late.
Chapter 31
Atta gazed down on the glossy black, egg-shaped capsule. It was big enough to fit a full-grown Gor, armor and all. Beside her stood Torv, and beside him, was General Raka of the Second Battalion.
"This is going with the Second Battalion to the surface?" Atta asked Raka.
The Gor nodded once and spoke quickly in a sibilant stream of hisses. Atta's translator supplied the gist of what he said a moment later.
"Yess," Raka replied. "We do not know what it isss, but Admiral Therius says it is important that we find a safe place for it and defend it."
Atta didn't need the translator, since she was receptive to Gor telepathy, but she had to wear one to get used to it. At Avilon the Eclipser would block the Gors' telepathy along with all other forms of quantum communications.
"We also have one of these," Atta said.
"What iss it?" Torv asked.
"I'm afraid to say until I know more. I need to talk to the other battalions first. How soon can the other generals meet with me?"
Torv closed his eyes. After a few moments of silence, he replied telepathically. "I speak with them. They meet with you now."
Atta nodded. "Good. Let's go."
* * *
Rictan Squadron grudgingly accepted Ethan's leadership after hearing how he'd thrown himself on a grenade to save Magnum, but that didn't mean he'd earned his place among them yet. He'd quickly realized that Magnum's shoes weren't the ones he had to fill. The Rictans made frequent references to someone they called The Sergeant, or Mr. C.
Ethan had been tempted to ask about that, but the Rictans only had six members rather than the usual eight for ground squads. That meant they'd lost two men along the way, their sergeant obviously being one of them.
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