by M. D. Cooper
The pair stepped out of the airlock, using their armor’s positional thrusters to move them away from the Grace O’Malley before separating and activating their main jets.
As they approached, Sera reveled in the view, taking in the details of the station with her own eyes, amazed at both how similar and how different it was from Terran construction.
If the spokes connecting each ring to the spindle were straight, then at a glance, it might pass for any other station in the galaxy, but the closer she got, the more small details stood out. One of them was that there was very little external decoration, or…anything. Most of the surfaces were smooth and utilitarian. A part of this was the near-total lack of windows. It made the station look more like an orbital bunker.
Then again, if this system served as some sort of last-ditch refuge before the exodus, maybe there was a reason behind that decision.
As she pondered the possibilities, the station grew ever-larger until it spanned her vision. Dead ahead lay the top of the spindle, the airlock Jen had spotted located below a forest of comm antennas and dishes.
Jen’s silvery laugh filled their minds.
Sera giggled as she slowed her approach, bringing her delta-v down to ten meters per second before she hit the station, boots maglocking her into place as she walked to the airlock.
Sera shook her head.
Jason commented.
Sera said as she waited for her nanodrones to get through the airlock’s seals.
Jason laughed.
Jen giggled.
Jason sent a mental laugh and signaled affirmation, boosting toward the airlock as Jen attempted to open the airlock.
At first, nothing happened, but then Sera felt a rasping shudder in the station’s hull, following which, the airlock door ground its way half open.
Sera nodded as she flicked another passel of nano through the airlock—which was big enough to hold two dozen armored humans—and onto the inner door’s control panel. While Jen set to work breaching the second door, she slid out of view, content to let the machines work while she stayed out of automated weapons fire.
Jason hit the station hull boots-first on the far side of the lock, giving Sera a serious nod as he moved into position.
The inner door slid open with only mild protest, a deep thud sounding in the airlock as the station’s atmosphere slammed into the grav shield covering the outer door.
A laugh on her lips, Sera jumped down into the airlock, the station’s a-grav systems pulling her down to the deck at a quarter-g.
I wonder if this is low power, or if they really do like low-g? she mused while moving through the airlock and into the passage beyond.
Unlike the corridors on the crater base, these were octagon in shape, matching the doors, something that Sera appreciated, as the incongruity on the base had been subtly bothersome.
The passage was only sixty meters long, and Sera reached the end in a minute, groaning as she saw that it led to another deep shaft.
Her response was cut off by a beam flashing up the shaft and clipping her left shoulder.
“Shit!” she shouted aloud, falling back from the edge of the shaft and releasing a fresh nanocloud to investigate.
Sera holstered her sidearm and unslung her A7-SCR. Unlike the multifunctional weapons that others favored, the SCR was all railgun all the time. It was capable of kicking one-gram pellets up to thirty kilometers per second—enough to punch through any mobile armor.
Sera pulled up the view of the shaft from her nanocloud, and jumped to the edge, letting off three shots before backpedaling and narrowly escaping a barrage of return fire.
A moment later, Jason reached the edge of the shaft, firing several shots before getting hit in the thigh
and moving to a new spot before firing again.
Sera followed suit, positioning herself to keep Jason on her right, moving toward the location Jen had mentioned before the attack. She’d only taken three steps when the first of the bots came over the edge.
Rather than taking stock and firing at her, the thing leapt through the air, slamming into her and knocking her against a bundle of conduit.
“You piece of shit!” Sera shouted inside the confines of her helmet as the bot wrapped its legs around her, pinning her arms and knocking her to the deck.
Her rifle fell from her hand, and she reached for her thigh, stretching out her fingers to draw her lightwand.
She could hear the sound of his weapons firing, as well as the arachnid bots’ beams and rails going off.
Struggling against the crushing embrace of the machine trying to kill her, she triggered her lightwand’s release, and it fell into her hand. Sera activated the blade, carefully twisting her wrist to cut into one of the drone’s legs and not hers.
The thing shivered as the electron beam sliced through its limb, loosening its deathgrip enough for Sera to cut another.
Two more slices, and she was free, the drone skittering back on its four remaining legs. It paused, then lunged again, only to meet a pair of rounds from Sera’s railgun.
Jason fired a string of kinetics at the last drone atop the shaft before kicking it over the edge.
Sera planted another passel of nano on the access panel, which was tucked behind one of the pipes, and turned to see Jason standing at the edge of the shaft, taking sporadic shots before moving to new positions at random.
Sera fed nano through the door’s seams, checking the room beyond for any signs of hostiles, glad to see nothing more than a small sea of consoles in the same configuration as the control room in the crater facility.
Sera had been thinking escape, but getting into a control room with no other way out wasn’t really the right sort of egress. She was about to suggest that they bail, when Jen spoke up.
At the AI’s words, the door slid open, and Sera rushed into the room, stopping at the console.
A part of the console lit up on Sera’s HUD, and she slapped her palm onto it, releasing nano before spinning to cover Jason, who had just backed into the room.
Jason shot back.
More drones came up over the edge, swarming toward the room, taking care with their shots.
More and more bots flowed up out of the shaft, finally filling the doorway, obstructing the view. Every time they took one out, another replaced it.
Despite near-continuous fire, a bot got past, skittering toward Sera, only to fall to her railfire when it was within two meters of her. Another got in a second later, jumping for Jason, who wrestled with it, his powered armor tearing off three of its limbs before he tossed it against the bulkhead, blowing a hole through it center-mass.
Those small distractions were all it took for the dam to break, and the bots to swarm into the room.
Jason backpedaled, sliding over consoles while staying low.
Sera had no answer as she fired wildly at the bots in view, unable to do anything about those who stayed low for fear of destroying the consoles.
Her back hit the bulkhead on the far side of the room, Jason reaching her side a moment later.
The bots were only one row of consoles from the two humans, weapons ready for when they passed beyond the equipment they were made to protect.
Sera pulled out a grenade and glanced at Jason to see that he was already holding two. They nodded, drew their arms back, then stopped, staring in wonder as the Sig defense drones ceased their inexorable advance.
For a moment, no one moved, frozen in a tableau of raw fury, ready to unleash destruction.
Then, without any indication of hostility, the drones turned and exited the room, pausing to gather their fallen and drag them back out.
Jason and Sera rose, watching them disappear over the shaft’s lip, taking with them all evidence that they were ever present—other than the damage to the bulkheads.
Sera snorted and punched him on the shoulder.
Sera spun toward the center of the room, where the holoprojector was descending.
Sera blew out a long brea
th, shaking her head in disbelief.
Jason dusted off his hands.
Sera pursed her lips, not exactly pleased by the news.
CHAPTER 48 - TANGEL
STELLAR DATE: Unknown
LOCATION: Starkiller
REGION: Unknown
Tangel completed her analysis of galactic drift and turned to Finaeus, waiting for him to complete his assessment. It took longer than she expected, but she realized it was because he was checking and re-checking the data.
“You don’t need to keep at it,” she said gently. “If you got just over a million years, you’re right.”
The look he gave her was filled with a mixture of fear and pain. “A million years….”
“Yeah, it’s a lot. I guess that’s what we get for trying to make a transgalactic jump through a gate that’s about to cross over an SMBH’s event horizon.”
He snorted, shaking his head. “You have such a way with words.”
She gave him a half-smile. “Well, we’re lucky that you and I are currently sitting in the only starship capable of reverse time travel.”
“You know it takes a specialized gate, too, right?”
Tangel nodded. “I do, but you’re the man who made that specialized gate.”
“With Earnest. We compartmentalized the knowledge and processes so neither of us could recreate the technology on our own—though, based on the fact that it worked and I know how the end result functioned, I could extrapolate some of the details.”
“Don’t forget that you have me,” she said. “I’m no slouch, you know.”
Finaeus fixed her with a level stare. “Can you just conjure up matter from nothing? Because last I checked—which was three minutes ago—we’re in the interstellar void. We’re going to have to scoop a lot of dust to build a gate—not to mention produce the antimatter to power it.”
Tangel sighed. “Yeah, I get that. So, where to? Caldwell 17 is two hundred and fifty thousand light years away, and Andromeda is four-ten.”
