by Tim C Taylor
P.S. Earth to Legion. If Tawfiq wins here, all of humankinds will be exterminated – even whatever form of human variant Squadron Leader Dock is declared to be. So get your drent together, stop vulleying around, and seize this opportunity I’ve offered you with every limb you’ve got left. Voice of Resistance out.
“Squadron Leader, who is this message from?” asked Admiral Indiya.
Dock glanced at his Phantom’s tactical display while he let the admiral’s message sink in. The stealthed fleet was still coasting on course to intercept Earth. Still silent. Still annoying.
He wasn’t ready to be the one doing the answering. It had been Indiya who had relayed through the Gliesan fast cruiser Dart, and via the mystery shuttle to speak with the man with the impressive display of attitude. And still she hadn’t mentioned Arun.
“This shuttle you talked with,” said Dock. “Are you quite sure it’s genuine?”
“It is. Tawfiq’s personal shuttle from what we can make out. We’re keeping it heavily quarantined, but it doesn’t seem to be carrying plague or bombs, and the techs are making progress in figuring out how we can get through Tawfiq’s barrier. We were speaking in real time via the shuttle with someone who named you personally, Dock. Presumably this person was piloting it remotely because we found no one on board. Who was it?”
“Well, we all know that back in 2701 the New Order snatched Romulus from Lance of Freedom at the same time they took General McEwan. What if other missing personnel from the same time period were also taken by the Hardits? We only know they took Romulus to Earth because Tawfiq chose to reveal that to us, but what has she chosen not to reveal? If I had been snatched and taken to Earth, but subsequently escaped Tawfiq’s clutches, I’d set up resistance cells. I’d be good at it too – I’d give those New Order goons a damned good thrashing.”
“I believe you, Dock. Which is why you would be long dead, captured and your corpse hung up for public display. Either this message is an elaborate deception, or whoever crafted it has remained in the shadows for years, preparing for this moment. As I’ve said before, the Legion is in a losing position – I can’t afford to wait for certainties. The hint that this person knows you personally is too strong to ignore and I’m going to make a working assumption that this familiarity is genuine. I’m looking up fighter personnel who served with you, Dock. Anyone who went MIA within ten years of Romulus… capacity for thinking long term… patience… ability to blend into a variety of social situations… But I’m getting nothing. No one fits the profile.”
“That’s not quite true is it, sir?”
“You think the records are inaccurate?”
“No, sir. I mean that there is one person who fits that profile and you know it.”
“Romulus! I told you never to mention him again.”
“I am merely stating a fact, not an opinion. Romulus does match the profile you described in every respect.”
Even across millions of miles of vacuum, Dock could feel the heat of Indiya’s anger transmitting through his helmet speaker.
“I know you have little love for me, Admiral, but I have fought for the Legion too. In my heart I did so because I was fighting for an ideal, one in which people were no longer executed merely for stating an incontrovertible fact. Both of us were raised under the White Knight tyranny and despite all its victories and sacrifices, the Legion has not yet fully escaped their control. The fight for freedom is not yet won. Are we to endure another tyranny of our own making so soon?”
Dock sensed Indiya’s hot rage flip into an icy chill. “You shame me, Dock. The history of the many Legion races reminds us that those who depose tyranny frequently set themselves up as tyrants anew, and I will not allow the Legion to follow that route. You are correct in everything you just said. The traitor, Romulus, fits the profile. Nonetheless, he cannot possibly be the Voice of the Resistance, and I order you to never again waste my time suggesting that he could be. I would never have you executed for deliberately pissing me off, Squadron Leader, but if you demonstrate such poor judgement as to mention his name just once more, then I’ll make sure you never fly again.”
“I would rather be executed.”
“I know, Dock. I know.”
When she said nothing more, Dock panicked that she would cut the connection. “Please,” he begged. “Arun… is there news?”
Indiya hadn’t mentioned Arun once.
When the main fleet around Mars had contacted him, he was expecting news of Arun’s madcap scheme to break Tawfiq’s lock on the Earth, not to hear of this Voice of the Resistance managing to pull off the same trick.
“He… he almost held his form,” Indiya replied, trying to keep the choking from her voice. “Typical Arun… just before he crashed, we saw his stupid craft’s descent slow to a walking pace. I don’t know how he did it – he kept us guessing till the end. But the fireball when it crashed…”
“Perhaps when their craft slowed, they bailed out?” Dock offered gently. He didn’t believe his own words, but neither could he make himself believe that Arun was finally dead.
Indiya was crying openly now. Since the day on Beowulf when she’d killed so many with a single press of a button, Dock had never known her to express any feelings other than anger. If her emotional dam wall had been breached, that was a helluva lot of putrid emotions readying to gush out, and a helluva time in the campaign to lose her shit.
“Maybe…” she sobbed. “But Tawfiq put ten megatons of fusion fire into the crash site. He’s not coming back, Dock. Arun’s gone. For so long I’ve…”
Indiya clammed up. For a few seconds, Dock heard her labored breathing, and then she cut the comm link.
Dock ground his jaw in frustration. Slamming his fists on the flight console did no good, so he screamed, filling the cockpit with rage and frustration. No words. Didn’t need them. The horror at the darkest recesses of his existence vomited up from his core, too primal to need words. If Indiya had learned to scream she wouldn’t be going into meltdown. He was about to curse her buttoned-up stupidity, but then he remembered how she’d used her home as a weapon to kill almost everyone she knew. The kid had guts. She’d tried to have him executed more than once, but for some reason he’d never been able to bear her a grudge. His only regret was not to join with Xin Lee when she took off after the Invasion of Athena. There was a commander he could trust.
“Squadron Leader, you okay?”
Dock cleared his throat and remembered where he was. “Indeed, I am, dear Remus. Never better.”
“Sure. It’s just that from outside it looks as if someone’s just remote-triggered a shock stick up your ass.”
“Just communing with the universe, old boy. Letting it know exactly what I think of it. And I tell you, Remus, I am frakking pissed off!”
Knowing it was useless to hail the hidden ships, Dock set his ship to wideband local broadcast. “Hey, you out there! Yes, you – ugly bastards. We know you’re there. Who are you? Answer me!”
“Squadron Leader, I don’t think that’s helping.”
“My friend here wants to believe you’re young aliens with smoothly rounded chests and a weakness for cards and liquor. Is he right?”
“Dock!”
“Or are you Amilxi? Oh, yes. Did you think I’d forgotten you? I’ve always known you bastards were out there somewhere. Answer me! A good man has just died… Arun McEwan was the very best I ever knew. I am not in the mood.”
No reply.
“Let me put it more plainly,” Dock snarled, and freed his missile launchers.
“Squadron Leader, no!”
“Just upping the ante, old boy.”
Dock sent two cotton tails – SPM-32 anti-ship missiles, to use their formal nomenclature – into the center of the anomalous readings that they all assumed contained a hidden fleet.
But if anything was there, it was too well hidden for the cotton tails to lock onto.
The missiles burned a straight path through empty vacuum until their m
ain engines went cold and they coasted through the region of anomaly and out the other side.
“Can you hear me?” he broadcast, as he detonated the cotton tails. “I know who you are, Amilxi!”
Nothing.
He was starting to doubt himself. At no point had the pair of them confirmed anything was out there. But he had achieved one thing – he felt a lot better. Perhaps he should teach Indiya how to loosen that rod up her ass.
“And that, dear Remus,” he said breezily, “is how one rages at the universe.” He flicked off the broadcast and switched to a private encrypted tight beam. “Do you think anyone heard a word of that?”
“No, sir. We’re wasting our time here.”
——
Remus was wrong. Ears, both machine and organic, had been listening to every word they had broadcast.
“Remus? Can that really be Remus?” queried a voice hidden within the void nearby.
“You know what we were told. I don’t like it any more than either of you, but we must proceed with the plan no matter what. Who are these Amilxi, though? They were not part of the briefing.”
“I encountered them once, many years ago. The Amilx are another mystery in a galaxy of strangeness, but not one that concerns us here. Let them think we are the Amilx, then. Ignore them.”
“But their stance is becoming aggressive.”
“Relax, Captain. I know this Dock. He is overly emotional, in love with dramatic gestures. His firing missiles our way is like you roaring in frustration at prey that escaped your claws. We should not activate our defenses for fear of these two little craft.”
“Are you sure? These little warboats pull such high gees that by rights their crew should be smeared to bloody paste.”
“Am I sure? What a ridiculous thing to ask! War is not a place for comfortable certainties and it is a war we are about to enter. Nonetheless, the correct action is to stick with our current bearing and stealth stance.”
“Your judgement is compromised. I saw you flinch when you heard the name of the other pilot. Nonetheless, I concur. Captain, signal the fleet. We keep those Legion boats under observation, but I will personally decapitate any officer who compromises full stealth protocols without my direct order.”
“Yes, Field Marshal.”
“It’s been a long journey, and everything we’ve done has led us to here and now. All those fallen warriors gave their lives so we could carry out this task. In their name, we will retain discipline and we will see this through to the very end. All fleet captains – initiate final weapons checks. We are twenty hours from Earth. We need to be ready.”
“Field Marshal, the comm cube… I think it’s activating.”
“You think! Your words are inadequate. Is it active or not?”
“Unknown, sir. But it is generating a faint power field that was not there before. Given the circumstances, I thought–”
“Bring it to me… Hello. Hello, do you copy? Who are you? Speak now!”
— Chapter 67 —
Ten minutes earlier…
Arun steadied his arm against the violent shaking of the plummeting aircraft and stretched out a hand toward Springer, only to find that she had already reached out to him. But they were too far away to touch.
He shuffled against his seat restraints to get closer and was rewarded by a tentative brush of his fingertips against hers.
Out of the corner of his eye he saw the Hotchelpis emerge through a bank of clouds. The ground was close enough to make out distant lines of trees and roads.
“Springer…” he began, testing the word for hidden dangers – but the secret of her name could hurt no one now.
Arun gasped as he was suddenly stretched into impossible dimensions. It was a sensation few people had ever felt, but he knew it well. Being caught in the backwash of an X-Boat accelerating out a hangar was just like this. All the frenetic heat and thunderous noise of an X-Boat’s engines was violent enough, but that was only a fraction of the furious energy unleashed in the Klein-Manifold Region – energy so strong that even humans could feel it as a twist to the guts in the regular dimensions of space-time.
There, at the front of the upper deck where the metal walkway descended to the main deck – it was as if an X-Boat engine was in full throttle right there inside this captured craft.
“What is it?” Springer shouted above the roar of their descent.
A slit appeared in the air at the top of the walkway.
“Dunno,” Arun shouted back. “A chance?” Maybe this was a portal – an escape hatch – but if he needed to get through that rip, he was not only pushed hard against the back of his seat, he was pinned there by his harness. “Unstrap yourself,” he shouted at Springer.
Arun didn’t get the chance to follow his own advice.
The slit in front of them suddenly widened onto an oval and a figure appeared.
She was human and of the Marine branch of humankind. Young – maybe twenty – and wearing the kind of loose fatigues festooned with pockets and pouches that you might wear aboard a starship. And those deep brown eyes were more than beautiful… they looked powerfully familiar, though Arun was certain he’d never seen this person before in his life.
The oval rip disappeared and this inexplicable woman who’d been hanging there like an immortal goddess was suddenly a mortal girl standing on the upper deck of an aircraft about to crash. It seemed that whatever weird drent was happening here, the laws of physics were back in operation.
“Shit,” said the girl, and fell through the air, her head aiming like a rocket for the bulkhead behind Arun.
He caught her and held her tightly to him. Safe.
Safe? She’d picked a strange destination for safety – just moments away from crashing. But he sensed that X-Boat backwash again – and immediately the doomed craft slowed.
Slowed? If she were responsible for that then she was in no hurry to explain. Instead, she looked into his face, her expression a bewildering mismatch of exhilaration, supreme confidence, and nervousness. And the way she hid her stare behind lowered eyebrows told him it was he – Arun McEwan – who was chilling her confidence.
Then the moment was gone, and she gave him a simple smile. “Hello,” she said, as casually as if dropping by for a friendly mug of coffee while they were waiting to crash.
“Oww!” Arun yelped, snapping his fingers away from a dinner plate sized disc strapped to her back; it was too hot to touch. The woman herself must be shielded because she showed no signs of discomfort.
The woman shrugged. “Useful piece of kit,” she said. “It’s a–” Sudden panic stole her words.
“It’s okay,” Arun assured her, “I know what it is.”
She bit her lip, the endearing embarrassment of a youth who hadn’t yet mastered life as much as she’d thought. “Sorry to go all of a wobble on you. It’s just… this moment.” She laughed. “I’ve imagined it my entire life, and I always pictured myself acting so cool but… I guess some things you can never prepare for.”
Yeah. Arun got that. He was getting ready to die when this woman burst out of midair and fell into his arms. She’d stopped them crashing too, or so he guessed. That device on her back – he bet it was a momentum dump, ripped out of an X-Boat, shrunk to a portable version, and currently slowing their headlong plummet into the unhurried descent of a snowflake that would kiss that ground, but only when it was good and ready. Even for Arun, encountering that kind of tech was pretty weird, but the thing he was most unprepared for were those eyes.
It was as if one half of his youth was hanging with her arms around his neck.
“Identify yourself,” challenged Aelingir, who was dangling, feet toward the ground, from the top of the upper deck, holding on with three hands, while her fourth aimed her pistol at the girl’s head.
“Easy,” Springer told the Jotun. “I think I know who she is.”
Arun didn’t, but his subconscious must have had a fair guess, because he found his mouth saying, “Your mo
ther sent you, didn’t she?”
The girl nodded. “Mother says she’s happy to rescue your dumb ass once again, Dad. Anyone who wants off this doomed ship needs to be within two meters of me. The teleport is locked onto my signal. I can’t keep us from crashing much longer. Do it now!”
Deep down, Arun had known. The moment he saw her, he’d known this was his daughter, but… Dad… That word… his head was spinning.
Somewhere in the distance, Aelingir gave the order to abandon ship. She called on the girl to hurry up because the aircraft’s fuel was about to blow any moment. Friendly fingers clustered around, but Arun had space in his mind only for one person.
“What’s your name?”
“Grace.”
“That’s a beautiful name. Tell me, Grace, what do we need to do to prepare for…?”
He hesitated. Despite all he’d just witnessed, the word wouldn’t come easily to his lips. No one in the galaxy possessed that technology.
But he’d seen even more impossible things in his lifetime. And now it looked like he was going to discover a few more.
“Teleport,” he whispered, but he’d left it too late – the doomed Hotchelpis had already disappeared. He was jerked through the air and tumbled in a confusing mix of warm bodies. There was nothing confusing, though, about the weight of the giant Jotun who fell on top of him and crushed the air from his lungs.
Fortunately, the Jotun scrambled off him and he was left gasping on top of a glowing octagonal dais in a starship compartment. Springer was dazed but okay. So were the rest of his crew. Grace had bounded away to join her crew. They were mostly humans of the pixie-like Navy branch of the species, though there were Gliesans too and what looked like a security detail of six Littoranes in combat armor, guns trained on the jumble of bodies teleported from the stricken craft.
