Star Destroyers

by Tony Daniel

  He was a National Science Foundation Fellow in paleontology, served as a US Army intelligence officer, prospected for minerals in Alaska and the Sonoran desert, and has been General Counsel of a unit of one of the United States’ largest private multinational companies.

  He lives in Georgia with his family and more bicycles than a grown-up needs. Visit him at www.RobertBuettner.com.

  NOT MADE FOR US

  Christopher Ruocchio

  The boarding party: it may be the toughest military task force of them all. You are headed straight into the enemy’s den, invading his innermost sanctum—all of which you try to accomplish while being all but surrounded by those who want to rip you apart limb from limb. Now imagine having barely opened your eyes from quiet interstellar slumber only to find yourself facing an enemy that looks and acts like a combination of all the nightmares you thought you’d missed while in suspended animation. Well, nobody ever said the plight of the space legionary was going to be easy!

  “I think they thawed out the whole Chiliad,” Larai said at mess. She hadn’t touched her food. The printed beef had gone cold on her tray. That bothered me. Can’t say why, only that Larai usually put away her rations faster than either Soren or me—faster than anyone on the decade—which were crazy, small as she is. Not today. She just sat there, hands on her bald head. Hadn’t spoken the whole meal. Not even touched her coffee.

  Soren don’t usually talk much, so I said, “You sure?”

  She nodded. “Heard one of the medtechs say H-Deck was emptied out. Ninth Century’s out of the ice. Guessing the Tenth’s not far behind.”

  “That mean a big campaign?” I said.

  “That means a fucking big campaign,” Soren put in, setting down his fork.

  Took me half a second to realize he was eying me. “What?”

  “You’ve not had a proper campaign, son.” He had this weird look in his eyes, like he were my da back on Aramis. I was about to respond when a voice came from my right. Gave me such a start I dropped my knife.

  “My money’s on annexation, lads!” I didn’t see the decurion sneak up on us, but there he was: Peter Thailles in his black fatigues. He looked a little older than he had when I’d gone into the ice, making me wonder if he’d run up his clock somehow while we slept. Soren says officers always time-out faster than us groundlings. He noticed I’d dropped my knife and—clapping me on the shoulder all friendly—added, “Sorry, Oh-Four! You frighten that easy? Scarier than me’s coming, you mark my words.”

  I didn’t say anything. I don’t like the decurion much. Probably shouldn’t write that, never know when an officer will root through my things. He’s a decent enough officer. Just don’t like the way he talks to Larai and the other ladies in the decade, but he’s my commander . . . and I guess that’s what I should expect from some black-barred patrician like him. All the ego of a nobile, none of the sting—gives him a real chip on his shoulder. “Reckon it’s Normans,” he said, leaning in over his dinner tray. “Reckon brass picked out another one of their freeholds. We’ll see how long they hold free, eh?”

  “Hopefully good and long,” Soren said, jerking his head at me. “Last annexation I was on took seven years. Weren’t even hard. Those Normans can’t fight for shit.”

  Decurion Thailles narrowed his eyes, “Language, Oh-Six. This isn’t that three-bit whorehouse they raised you in.”

  If Soren didn’t like the decurion talking to him like that, I couldn’t tell. Old bastard grinned lazily at the officer and said, “Were a four-bit whorehouse, sir. Might be they cut you a discount.”

  I had to wait until the others started laughing before I joined in. Even so, I kept my eyes down on my tray and didn’t look the decurion in the face. His eyes freak me. Too blue they are, like a bird’s egg. Ain’t natural. Earth and evolution didn’t mean for men to have eyes like them, but the pats and the nobiles do what they want. Chantry lets them. Ain’t that kind of pride a sin?

  “They told you something they’ve not told us?” Larai asked the officer.

  The decurion, he turned to her—and I still don’t like the look in those eyes of his—and he said, “They’re always telling me things, Oh-Five, but they haven’t said a thing.” He were in the dark much as us, then. That makes sense, right? Captain Vohra’s supposed to give us a talking-to over internal comms, but no one’s heard from her or Commander Kolosov. Shuttles have been going back and forth from the Sword of Malkuth and the Prince Raphael, though. Business as usual. I know it’s been only four days, but am I wrong to want some kind of clue from on high? I’ve heard everything from pirates to Extras to Thailles’s Norman theory. One kid in the Third Century said something about Mericanii war machines like in the old stories, but his centurion gave him extra PT for saying that shit, so I doubt we’re flying into the sort of hell they write operas about.

  Going to sleep. Hope there’s more answers tomorrow.

  There’s this moment, right after I seal the helmet on but before the cams come on, where it’s completely dark and mostly quiet. You can hear everyone else kitting out: seals hissing in place, laughter, the grind of straps tightening, someone swearing at their tunic for not draping right; but you can’t really hear straight. You’re alone. Then the suit comes online, puts up a set of readouts in the peripheral: heart rate, blood pressure, charge levels on plasma burner and phase disruptor, communications channels with my triad, my decade, and up and up to Captain Vohra on the command line. Then the vision flips on, filling the inside of the helmet with a flattened-out version of the world. How they do it I don’t know. Chantry swears there ain’t no demons in the suit thinking for us, and they’d know, but the helmet’s visor sifts out a lot of the crap: shadows, tricks of the light, that sort.

  That moment—when I stop looking at the world with the eyes my mother gave me and start looking at the screen the Empire tells me to use—that’s when it changes. I ain’t me no more, or not just me. I’m them. I’m Empire.

  The ten of us piled into our shuttle, pressed tight together, pauldrons grating as we get jostled by the thrusters firing. “Shields at full charge!” the decurion called from the back of the shuttle, behind his three triads. “Oh-One, you and yours start shooting the minute you’re over the lip! You heard the captain, there are no friendlies on the other side of that door. Second and Third, fan left and right, secure a position near the shuttle—we may need to make egress fast.” I wasn’t looking at him—barely heard him through the blood hammering in my damn ears—but he must have turned to the pilot officer in back because he said, “You keep the engines warm, boy, and keep an eye out for anything coming at you down the hull. No idea what sort of hull defense they’re fielding, but if you get jumpy, you scream.”

  Thailles kept talking, but I don’t remember much of it. I was staring at the door. Perfect round, it was, and wide enough to fit three legionnaires shoulder to shoulder. When it opened, I had no idea what would be on the other side. Laser cutters on the outside could make a door just anywhere, cut through anything short of highmatter or the long-chain diamond they use on some warships. Our shuttle would clamp onto the outer hull like a burr don’t come off, cut its way in without causing a leak. This was the sort of thing you think about when they scoop you up in the levies—or when they got you in the signing center like me. You think about seizing Mandari trade ships operating in Imperial space without papers, about putting down rebellious lords with as little loss of life as possible, about reclaiming stations captured by the Extras or bringing some colonists into the light of the Empire.

  Something hit the ship then, or nearly did. Maybe it bucked our shields. I lurched sidelong into Larai, who shoved me straight again. Funny how little you hear things, just by the sounds pushed into the hull. Shrike shuttles are small, fast, ugly things not meant for the sky. Outside, they look like cigars, or like one of the sword handles the Imperial knights carry around—only bristling with little engines. They’re fast. Damn fast. Suppression fields cut most of the inertial bu
cking, but someone out there was firing on us, and that changed things faster than the field could track, rattling us in our armor. Don’t remember much else of the approach. Don’t even know how long it was. I was watching the clock in the corner of my suit’s visual field, but the numbers wouldn’t stick. Only thing I remember’s my breathing. I was sealed in my suit, sealed in that shuttle. It was all I could hear outside the groaning of the ship. I was breathing like I’d been at wind sprints, or sparring for a good hour. I looked back, past the three soldiers behind me and Thailles to where the pilot officer sat in his chair. Unlike the rest of us, I could see his face through his visor. He was gritting his teeth.

  Then it went real quiet, and Soren said, “We close to the hull? Inside their line of fire?”

  “Stow it, Oh-Six!”

  “Wish we could get a look at the thing,” I said.

  “You wouldn’t see shit anyhow,” Larai said.

  “I said stow it!”

  We hammered into the side of the ship, and I had to hold to a loop on the ceiling to keep from falling on my face and knocking Oh-One into the door. Something high-pitched whirred like a metal demon in front, and I thought of little teeth chewing on whatever it was we’d clamped onto. I know that ain’t right, but I can’t shake it. I was shaking then, even though I didn’t know. I was so scared. Like I said, that door could open on anything. Anything. I imagined Extrasolarian mutants all metal and slime, or Jaddian janissaries in bright silk and those mirrored masks of theirs. Maybe I was picturing monsters like the ones the lords keep for sport, or pirates like I used to play at as a kid on Aramis. And that were just the shit I’d heard of. I tried to tell myself I were ready for it, trained for it. It didn’t matter. Back at camp on Orden they said you forget everything you learn the minute the shit hits.

  I did.

  The whirring stopped, the door opened. Just inside, the walls of the ship glowed like old coals where the Shrike had cut in, and all was dark beyond. Not that it mattered. Helmet cameras compensated for the low light inside, boosted visuals with infrared and sonic mapping. Everything looked gray, and there wasn’t much to look at.

  “Blackened Earth!” said Oh-One, leading the way in.

  “The hell sort of ship is this?” Larai said.

  Soren were praying, muttering under his breath just soft enough I couldn’t make out the words. Someone told him to stop, and he did, turning left to look down along the hall. Everything looked green and granular. I kept my plasma burner down, arms straight, waiting.

  The gravity felt off. Lighter. I didn’t like that. Heavier’s easier to deal with than light; suit’s exoskeleton kicks in. Low grav means less control.

  Thailles jumped down out of the Shrike. I could make him out in the light of the shuttle door, taller than the rest of us and with the two red dashes on the blank white plane of his visor above the right cheek to mark his rank. The left side of his visor was painted in, black with a yellow bird on in profile—his house’s seal. The way he hefted his burner rifle, he looked downright terrifying, red cloak drifting in the micrograv. He oversaw deployment of the mapping drones—which went spinning off into the dark—and said, “Oh-Six, take yours down and right, I want to know what we’re dealing with.”

  Soren gestured understanding and we went off down the hall, if you could call it that. The walls were like cave walls, and the floor was uneven and rolling, like we’d come into an asteroid someone’d dug out. My foot splashed in something.

  “What kind of ship is this?” Larai asked, repeating the question from earlier. She shined the light off her plasma burner up at the ceiling . . . highlighting where huge pipes were bracketed to the stone. “There’re no lights.”

  “Mining rig, maybe?” Soren put in, turning back to look at us. “You seen any doors?”

  “No, sir,” I said.

  “You don’t have to sir me, boyo.” I could hear the grin in his words. “Stay sha—!”

  I remember seeing him standing there, lit by the backscatter off Larai’s and my plasma burners and green in my suit’s viewfinder. Then I blinked and he was gone, knocked flat on his ass by something that came flying unseen out of the dark. Whatever it was banged off his shield, making the energy curtain momentarily visible, casting faint lights up the stone walls. I flinched away. Larai surged forward, weapon raised. Fumbling with the controls on my vambrace, waving my weapon round like an idiot, I dialed my suit lights all the way up to give her something to see by, ready with cover fire. Soren was a good two meters back from where we stood, struggling to his feet. For a second, I couldn’t find whatever it was that had hit him, but Larai swore all kinds of fierce and moved off to his left.

  “What the hell is going on?” Thailles’s voice rattled in my ears. “Oh-Four? Oh-Four!”

  “Something hit Oh-Six, sir!” I kept looking, weapon up, careful to keep Larai out of my line of fire. Spotted movement in the dark, turned toward it. I panicked, squeezed off a shot, plasma burner coughing violet light. “Contact! Contact!” The thing were small, and I must have missed, cause it came tearing into the light and straight at me, forgetting about Soren. It were a snake, a flying snake about as long as my forearm and just as big around. I saw its teeth flash in my face—and then I were flying, knocked off my feet just like Soren. Plasma light flashed and my head rang when I smashed into the wall. Larai stood above me, offering a hand. I took it.

  “What in nuclear hell was that?” Soren asked, sounding a little worse for wear.

  I followed Larai over to the smoking remains of what she’d shot, keeping my weapon—God and Emperor, I’d been useless—trained on the damn thing.

  “It’s a machine!” Larai said, nudging it with her boot, “Look!” She made a warding gesture with her free hand. Protection against evil.

  Crouching, I looked. It weren’t teeth at the business end of the snake, but bits like on the end of a drill. I swore, and said, “Imagine what that’d do, if it got past your armor.”

  Thailles came in over the comms, and Soren explained. “Oh-Four and me got knocked the hell down, sir. Some kind of drone . . .”

  “You ever seen something like this?” I asked Larai, looking up from where I was crouched over the thing.

  She shook her head. “No.”

  “Think it’s Extras? They use all sorts of crazy-ass machines, right? Evil shit? Shit Chantry burns you for?”

  “Could be.” She straightened, checking the safety on her burner. “Never been up against them.” She took a second, keyed up her own suit lights to match mine. Up ahead, one of the pipes was venting steam into the hall. Somewhere behind, I heard a thud banging through the wall and knew another Shrike cutter had grappled the hull and that somewhere another decade was on their way in. I could see the map of the ship taking shape in my suit’s display, threads linking up like spider webs as the other decades deployed their drones.

  “Best get moving,” Soren said, “want to find a door or something.”

  Something screamed.

  Earth and Emperor preserve me. The sound of it . . . like metal tearing ice.

  I didn’t want to be a soldier. Didn’t want to leave Aramis. I done it for Minah. For the boy. I didn’t want to be there. I wanted to throw down my gun and run back for the ship, hide there with the pilot officer until it were over.

  They came out of the fog, and I still don’t quite believe it. The stars ain’t had anything like them around when I gone under. The worlds changed while I been froze . . . got . . . monsters in them now. And we got sent in to fight them without a word of warning.

  At first I thought they was men. They had arms and legs like men. Walked like them. But as they got closer and got into the light, I saw they wasn’t like us at all. They were tall. Taller than Thailles. And the arms stretched to their knees. And their faces—if they were faces—were like our visors. Smooth. White. With eyes big as my fist, black as space. No nose, no ears, but a mess of horns like on some devil from up on the Chantry walls.

  I staggere
d back, mind locked up like I was some kind of idiot. Didn’t even see the knife in its damn fist until it was on me. I couldn’t think. I just froze, figured I was dead already.

  “Carax! Down!”

  My name got through to me. Not sure if it were Soren or Larai what said it. I fell into the wall and a shot flew past me, going wide as the thing lurched toward me. It stopped, pulled something from its waist, and threw it. One of those drone things. I heard someone cry out, tried to make myself aim, tried to control my breathing. I raised my burner and fired, hit the thing in the shoulder, but that didn’t hardly seem to slow it down.

  There were more of the things then, three or four coming out of the fog down the hall. Loping, doglike, only on two legs. Another shot went past. In the shaking lights off our suits, I saw teeth like broken glass snarling. It didn’t go down. It didn’t go down.

  A huge hand grabbed me by the neck and pushed me up the wall. It squeezed, but the suit underlayment hardened and wouldn’t let it choke me. I could feel the fingers tighten. I panicked, dropped my gun and tried to pull its fingers off me. They were like steel. And the face . . . Earth and Emperor, the face. I seen statues of Death in Chantry, all skull with empty eyes. Up close it were like that, like someone forgot to finish it, but poured white wax over a skeleton and called it done. Horns snarled above those huge eyes, curved back in a crown. We was nearly eye to eye, only there weren’t nothing in its face, no light like a man has, no fire like a woman. Just empty. Flat. Like my da’s eyes had been when I seen him dead as a boy.

  That made me think of my boy and Minah, and I remembered my knife. I pulled it from my belt and brought it up under the monster’s arm. Must have found something, because it hissed and dropped me. I fell like a bunch of sticks, slipped down the wall. Damn ankle went out from under me, and I think I yelled. Don’t know what happened to the creature. Soren came out of nowhere, holding his burner out, one-handed, the other pressed to his side. The old man fired, shouted, “On your feet!”