by T. Y. Carew
A long string of gasses and liquids doodled out behind the freighter as it began to spin aimlessly, pendulously slow towards nothing at all. Before it faded from their cameras’ sights, its hull began to crumple, and when Matt glanced over at Xander, he nodded.
Four Beltine freighters left, and the aliens seemed to realize they stood no chance at running. Instead, the freighters spun towards the Contessa and began lumbering towards the military vessel.
“Uh,” Drew said, stabbing his finger at the monitors up front. “Uhhh. Uh. Uh.”
“Well, that sums it up perfectly,” Tyra said, and snapped the Contessa around, giving Trey a shot at the first ship darting towards them on a suicide run. His first salvo missed, the second skimmed the surface, but the third connected. The other three Beltine had picked up enough speed that this was now no longer a joke for Tyra. “Brother,” she warned.
“I know.”
There was no more need for leading their targets. Trey aimed, and where he fired, Beltine died. Two of the three remaining ships fell in rapid succession, but the third shot towards them, the lasers cutting through its nose. Nothing could have survived that much exposure to space, but the ship itself still came for the Contessa.
“Brace,” Xander shouted, but Tyra was moving with the freighter, twirling as it twirled, matching its unpredictable spin as best she could manage. Matt gasped and even Xander grimaced, both staring at their monitors as Tyra pulled their nose up incrementally, hissing. The freighter’s belly crackled against their shields. This was it, Matt thought, this was how they died, by some stupid derelict ship, and it was so damned bleak and hilarious she couldn’t help a mad laugh. Xander glanced over at her, his knuckles white from gripping his armrests, and then the freighter was away, leaving chunks of its struts in its wake, floating harmlessly away from the Contessa.
Tyra sucked in a lungful of air and bellowed, “I am the greatest pilot alive!” She caught herself, glanced around sheepishly, and cleared her throat. “Ah. All Beltine freighters down, Colonel.”
Drew unhooked his harness, leaned forward, and planted a great big kiss on Tyra’s cheek. She shoved him back into his chair. He sighed happily. “Knew it. Knew it all along. Definitely didn't almost cry. Nope. Nope, nope, nope.”
Matt snickered as Xander opened a line of communication to the Hayward and Everett. “All freighters have been eliminated. Give me a status report.”
The captain of the Hayward said, “Dairos fighters have been dealt with. We’re investigating the area, but it looks like you’re all clear.”
Xander signed off and leaned forward. “Let’s begin the docking procedure. Tyra, find us a spot on that structure where we can breach safely without any potential harm to civilian lives on board. We do not engage with Dr. Cardew’s people unless they fire first. Pick your shots carefully. If there are civilians around, you prioritize their safety. We get who we can back to the ships, and then we set our charges. Everybody suit up and get ready. Matt says there’s an Anassos, and that means we’re in for a fight.”
***
Even in the back of the pack with Dr. Cardew, Simon still involuntarily flinched when the security team breached the hull of the Beltine station. As the Contessa took care of their pesky freighter and fighter problem, they’d docked in one of the freighter ports. The Exemplar's airlock wasn’t made for the strange hive-like material of the honeycomb structure, but Simon’s engineers had anticipated the need to dock to unusually designed alien craft and included a jelly-like molding that could be spread to provide an airtight seal. It held, even as the explosives pierced the Beltine’s hull.
Laser fire greeted the first members of the security team behind portable riot shields to storm through. Dairos underlings took cover around the edges of great masses of machinery breaking down metal, stone, and frozen chunks of liquids for transport. Already terrified, Simon realized the machinery met the bamboo-like floor and wondered if it, like the hive ships, was all some living thing, cannibalized and mechanized by the Beltine for their purposes. The team pushed inwards, their shields blocking most the Beltine attack as their own lasers started firing.
“Watch your aim!” Dr. Cardew belted across the comms equipment as she hunkered down behind a security shield with Simon. “Until we know what’s potentially explosive, be careful.”
The security team ignored her warning, firing back indiscriminately into the masses of Dairos. She hissed, and one of her people focused her attention on an Adamanta sensor array, lifting it up and sending it zooming down the bridge and into the fray. It scanned the minerals and ice as the first of the Dairos began to fall to the security team, sending the feedback to a portable device on the woman’s arm. She glanced up at Dr. Cardew and nodded.
“Not like it matters to these primates anyway,” Dr. Cardew muttered. “Still, good to know we’re not going to be blown to bits.”
Laser fire scattered three feet above their heads, hitting the bulkhead of the Exemplar.
Simon grabbed at her arm weakly. “Ammo. Let me have ammo. We did everything you asked, we’re here, we’re in this fight.”
“Let’s get a little cozier a few rooms in before we do that,” Dr. Cardew said, smiling fondly as if she were talking to a favorite child.
The security team drove farther and farther into the port. The Kyraos controlling the Dairos began pushing their mindless drone warriors forward in an attempt to take back the room before it was lost. A dozen of the carapaced fighters bore down on the mercenaries, firing without care as to their own safety. One of the security team leaned out too far to fire back, and a burst of lasers left him missing three fingers and his pistol. He screamed and fell on his rear, scooting back towards the next wave of guards as he held up the blackened ruin of his hand. Someone grabbed him up and forcibly shoved him behind another shield.
Simon watched all this, his stomach rolling. Into Cardew’s ear, he screamed, “This is just one room. How are we going to take the whole facility?”
“Skill, luck, a lot of clips.”
“You are insane. You have lost it.”
Her smile faltered, and she gazed out at the chaos in the port. Three more Dairos fell in rapid succession, and she muttered, “Yes. Maybe. But I will drag humanity across the finish line.”
The shields were taking too much damage but the security team pushed far enough into the room that they could pour fire into the Dairos ranks from behind the cover of heavy machinery. This was not a protracted firefight full of heroism. It was a short, brutal affair, over in just two minutes. The Dairos came, the team killed them. Cardew had picked her people well. Soon, all that was left was one Beltine, scrabbling across the floor for a laser rifle, its legs trailing behind it uselessly. One of the security team darted forward, raised his boot, and finished the alien off with a sickening crunch. Simon didn’t hold back this time, and spit up a long, thin bitter stream behind a chunk of stone twenty feet taller than him. Cardew watched him, that faint smile back on her face.
“Bring them out,” she said into her comm device.
The few guards she’d left on board the Exemplar pushed out the rest of the volunteers for the mission. Some were crying, most looked sick at the violence in the room. Kingston trailed them, looking bored with all of this as he slung a massive laser rifle against his shoulder. Lieutenant Lawrence, her face stoic, raced for Simon and helped him up off his knees. He felt an odd pang of shame for having been sick, but she didn’t mention it as she glared at Dr. Cardew.
“Captain Ramos, divvy up the volunteers. Arm them, but do not give them ammunition until it is strictly necessary. You’ll head one team, I’ll take the other. If you spot an Anassos, I want it alive. You see it, you use the gas grenades and the electric bindings, do you understand?”
Captain Ramos, dressed in a security officer’s armored jumpsuit and hefting a laser rifle, nodded. Quickly, he pointed at half the volunteers and the members of the crew loyal to him and Cardew. “You lot, with me. The rest of you, you follow C
ardew’s orders like they were mine.”
The doctor took in her half of the willing and unwilling alike. Kingston ambled over to her side, pointedly ignoring Simon. Cardew clapped her hands once, her smile disappearing. “Well. Let’s get this done.”
“Let them go back,” Simon begged her. “Please. Let them join the others.”
The room rattled, and Simon fell sideways, crashing hard on his arm. A few people screamed until Kingston raised his rifle up and fired a single blast. The shot didn’t have the effect an old kinetic weapon might, but the hum-hiss still drew every eye in the room and the people quieted.
“If we’re going to do this, we need order, not panic. Step out of line, and we all might die,” Cardew said. “Your choice.” Her smile reappeared. “Pick quickly, though, because we’re going to breach the next room.”
Chapter 5
His rifle raised halfway, Trey swept in, checking his corner as behind him Xander did the same thing to the left. Dozens of Dairos filled the room at what could best be described as caterpillar-like conveyor belts, if the caterpillars had been turned upside down and thousands upon thousands of legs added to their bodies.
“What the…?” Trey asked.
None of the Dairos paid them any attention whatsoever. From forty or so holes in the wall, they helped guide along small chunks of stone and metal. The legs picked at the materials, dropping dust into long shallow pans and leaving small chunks for the Dairos to pick up and drop into small chutes between them.
“They’re breaking the materials down, cleaning them. This isn’t just a mining operation. They’re refining it here,” Drew said, and rubbed his chin. “I’ll bet that’s why the particulate clouds were so dense around the station. There shouldn’t have been—”
“Now’s not the time for hypotheticals,” Xander said gently, keeping his gun trained on a nearby Dairos.
“Right. Sorry.”
“Question is,” Trey said, slowly picking his way through the room, “is the ship secure here?”
Drew shook his head. “I don’t know, but ask me that about any section of this place and I wouldn’t be able to give you a straight answer. I mean… I guess at least no one’s lobbing shots against the airlock. I’ll take that as a good sign.”
“Boss?” Matt asked. “Do we…?”
Trey glanced over at Xander, knowing what Matt’s unasked question was. Do they kill the Dairos? It would be just as brutal as carving up the unarmed freighters. None of them had felt particularly heroic doing that, but the ships had jeopardized the mission. These Dairos could come alive at any moment, controlled by a Kyraos to attack. So why weren’t they?
“Take up defensive positions,” Xander said quietly. From a sheath, he drew an Adamanta knife. The team took up a firing line behind one of the alien conveyor belts, ready to open up if the Dairos were ordered to stop working and swarm them. Trey watched as his boss focused and threw the knife at one of the Dairos with his mind. The blade sunk deep into its neck and the creature fell, dead without so much as glancing in their direction.
“Save your ammunition. Take them down quickly and with as much mercy as we can give these things,” Xander said.
Trey and Tyra took one half of the room, Matt and Drew the other, and Xander worked his way up the middle. “This will haunt my dreams, brother,” Tyra hissed at Trey.
“I don’t like it either. But I like being alive more,” he said, and began the slow, horrifying work of slaughtering the Dairos. All of them moved swiftly. It was a task they were accustomed to.
Five bodies in, Trey asked the question on his mind. “Drew. Why aren’t they attacking?”
“Best guess? They’re distracted by Cardew’s attack.”
“Maybe not,” Xander said, grimacing as he pulled his knife free from another fallen Dairos. He’d stopped using his mind to push the Adamanta. Trey and the rest of the crew knew it taxed him too hard. “These Dairos aren’t armed, and look at their carapaces. They’re thinner, lighter. These are worker ants to the rest of their troops. Sure, maybe they could take us down in force, but if I had to guess, the Kyraos have already written them off. Might as well keep them working.”
Matt stumbled, and Drew rushed over to help her upright. She waved him away, grimacing. “You’re close, Xander. But that’s not all of it. That Anassos is whispering to me again. And it’s… I don’t know if laughing’s the right word. It’s pushing the idea of laughter at me. It knows what laughter is. It knows… it knows how much this is sickening my soul.”
“Great,” Drew said weakly. “Awesome. Two thumbs up. I get first dibs on punching Simon in his favorite fun bits.”
“I think that honor goes to Matt,” Trey said, plunging his knife into another Dairos.
“We’ll all go at the same time,” Matt muttered, rubbing her forehead.
***
“Where are you, Matt?” Simon muttered to himself. Three Dairos and a hulking behemoth of a Kyraos tore down a long corridor. Cardew, Simon, and their half of the Exemplar’s team were two or three doors starboard of where they’d split from the others, through one more refinery-warehouse and another long corridor identical to this one. He supposed the Beltine probably weren’t much into visual aesthetics.
The Dairos hit the shields of the guards in front hard, rocking them back and sending one man sprawling. The same poor man who’d lost three of his fingers earlier to laser fire now marched forward, yelling incoherently as he lifted the pistol in his good hand, firing, firing, firing. Two of the Dairos went down before the big Kyraos lifted his laser rifle calmly and blew a hole through the man’s chest. This time, he hadn’t been so lucky. Simon closed his eyes and whimpered involuntarily.
Kingston grunted, coming truly awake maybe for the first time since Simon hired him. His rifle rose to his shoulder, and he fired two quick shots, bringing down the remaining Dairos before flicking the end of his barrel in the direction of the Kyraos. The Beltine beat him to the first shot, winging the big man with a blast of laser across his hip. Kingston flinched but barely even shifted to acknowledge the shot. Three blasts in quick succession hit the Kyraos, the first in its shoulder, the second in its neck, killing it, and the third in its guts as it fell.
Grimacing, Kingston glanced down at his hip. The laser fire had only scorched the meat. He’d live. Too bad, Simon thought.
Lieutenant Lawrence stormed forward and started to kneel to pick up the fallen man’s clip out of his laser pistol, but one of the guards grabbed her by the hair and jerked her back upright.
“Not yet,” Cardew said absently. “We could all still probably make it back to the Exemplar. I’m not desperate enough to risk you vaporizing my brain.” She tapped away at her personal device and asked, “Ramos? Still with us?”
After a moment, the voice crackled on her device. The interference was starting to play hell with their devices the farther and farther they got from each other. “I’m here. Got some …eavy …stance.” Got some heavy resistance, Simon thought. “… o sign of …nassos.” No sign of the Anassos.
“What about Xander’s people?”
“…omms from somewh… earby.” Comms from somewhere nearby?
“Kill them if you see them. They’re expendable.”
Simon sucked in a breath. No, no, no. Whatever anger he felt towards Matt about the way she’d ended things with him, he wasn’t going to let that happen. He rushed forward past Kingston and grabbed Cardew’s personal device from her. The big man started forward, reaching to grab him, but Simon twisted away, quickly opening up the comms to everyone within range of the device. “Matt! They’re coming for—”
Kingston’s second grab at him didn’t miss, and Simon was spun right into a massive right fist. His nose wasn’t so much crushed as pulped, and he hit the floor staring wide-eyed at the ceiling, all the breath gone as the pain washed over him.
“Never did like you much,” Kingston muttered. Lieutenant Lawrence rushed him, but Kingston turned, his rifle in his free arm coming d
own to her chest. “Don’t.”
“I’d listen,” Dr. Cardew said as one of her people handed her back her device. “That is a very big gun.”
Another prisoner, this one a Lentarin techie, helped Simon to his feet as blood gushed down his face. He stepped forward on rubber legs and reached a hand out to Lieutenant Lawrence. “It’s okay,” he said, but through the blood streaming down his lips and the broken nose, it sounded like he had a cold. “Okay,” he repeated.
She nodded tentatively, raised her hands, palms out, and stepped backwards. “Let me at least clean him up,” she said to Dr. Cardew.
“All right, you have three minutes. Let’s check our clips, people, and prepare for the next breach.”
Avery pulled Simon away. One of the civilians had been tasked with carrying a medkit, and she searched through it for a swatch of cloth. As he tilted his head back, she jammed the cloth up in there, wincing when he gasped in pain. “Sorry. It’s the best I can do for now.”
Simon’s chin dropped back down, and he laid a hand on her shoulder. “You did plenty.”
“Yes, I did,” she murmured, and stepped in close. For a moment, he thought the lieutenant meant to kiss him, but instead she slipped something out from the long sleeve of her jumpsuit. A clip. “From your bodyguard’s belt,” Lawrence whispered so quietly he could barely hear her. “I was a bit of a… ah… free spirit when I was a teen. Learned to take a few things without people knowing it.”
Simon glanced over her shoulder at Kingston, who glared in their general direction. His attention shifted back to Lieutenant Lawrence and he couldn’t help a smile. “Save it. When there’s confusion—”
