by J. N. Chaney
“We are,” Conover said. “But I want Custodian’s analysis of that piece of armor, too.”
Now it was Harolyn’s turn to look quizzical. “What about the Dark Metal network? I thought we were mostly just interested in salvaging it.”
Elois glanced her way. “That’s why I asked to have this thing brought aboard and scanned properly. We picked up some hints that there was more going on with the Dark Metal in this thing than we first thought. Our systems aren’t even close to the capabilities of yours, though.”
“Elois thinks that the Dark Metal network might have a, let’s call it a memory,” Conover put in. He’d focused his tech gaze on it and indeed saw flickers of data that hinted at ongoing quantum-level processing of some sort. It reminded him of the way the Golden stored data in their data-modules, which had also been infused with Dark Metal. And that reminded him of the time he’d almost died trying to deactivate a Golden probe that had crashed into the Forge. The memory gave him a shiver—but also a bit of a warm thrill because it had been the moment that he and Amy had genuinely started to bond.
Elois picked up where Conover left off. “If this Dark Metal does retain information, then maybe we can read it, like any other storage device. That might give us some insights into the Deepers, or this Battle Prince, or even other stuff that might prove really useful.”
“Which is why we want to at least give it a good look, before we toss it into that big furnace upstairs in your fabrication plant,” Lomas added.
“Conover, I have the results of my initial scans of the armor you indicated,” Custodian said.
Conover stood. “Let me guess. It’s really old.”
“Indeed. Based on radioisotope decay and micrometeorite scarring, I would estimate thirty thousand years, plus or minus one thousand.”
Lomas whistled. “Thirty thousand years? Pardon my language, but holy shit.”
“Custodian, what age determination did we get from the remains of that League traitor. Uh, Rishi was his name, I think.”
Harolyn caught Conover’s eye. “Conover, maybe a little more discretion, huh?” she hissed, flicking her eyes toward Lomas and Elois. Rishi had been a senior member of the League government before he sold out to the Deepers and was turned into a Battle Prince.
Conover glanced at his feet. “Sometimes I get a little too wrapped up in stuff. Sorry.”
But Lomas gave her head an emphatic shake. “Don’t be. Rishi was a treacherous bastard who deserved what he got.”
“Which was Dash’s power-sword again. He really does like using that thing, doesn’t he?” Harolyn noted.
Custodian spoke up. “The Deeper tech comprising what had once been your treacherous bastard, Rishi, was essentially new, certainly no more than one or two years old.”
Silence hung in the air. The only sound was the distant mutter and rumble of the Forge’s fabrication plant, one deck above them.
Conover pursed his lips. “So we’ve got one Battle Prince that’s thirty thousand years old, and another with that new Battle Prince smell.”
Harolyn gaped at him, laughing. “What?”
“Oh. Sorry. It just sounds like something Dash would say, if he were here.” He knelt again and stared at the sinister debris. “The Deepers have been building this tech for at least thirty-five or forty thousand years, since we have to assume it took them time to develop it to the point where they could make something like a Battle Prince in the first place.”
Lomas held up a hand. “Wait. If what you’re saying is true, then we really aren’t sure what we’re facing, are we?”
Conover’s tone was grim. “No, we aren’t. We probably haven’t seen everything they’ve got, which means they’re holding back on us.”
“Or we’re just now getting into their defenses,” Lomas finished, her voice as taut as Conover’s.
Conover stood again. “Custodian?”
“Yes?”
“When Dash gets back, tell him we need to talk about making things that go bang. As in, a really, really big bang.”
“I’ll be sure to. He’s a big fan.”
Benzel considered himself many things—privateer, smuggler, sometimes gun-runner, sometimes tramp-freighter crewman, and lately, admiral of a kick-ass fleet. One thing he didn’t consider himself to be was a diplomat. The extent of his negotiating skills amounted to issuing an ultimatum, then starting to shoot if it wasn’t met.
Standing on the Backwater hardpan, under the glare of the star called Fulcrum, he found himself in that very position.
And he hated it.
He stood on a crate, overlooking a cluster of diverse aliens. The ramshackle community that had been called Backwater was long gone. It had been largely flattened by the prodigious shockwave from Dash’s blast-cannon, unleashed at the pivotal moment of what had become known as the Battle of Backwater. In its place, a sort of neutral space had been created, assembled from prefabricated components brought from the Forge. What had once been a disheveled collection of shacks and huts was now an enclosed compound lined with sleek, gleaming buildings the size of standard cargo-pods. They’d called it Forum, which was apparently an ancient terrestrial word that meant meeting place. Dash, and the various alien delegates, had agreed that they needed such a place as Forum, where they could meet as a collective, since the Deepers were a threat to everyone. Benzel questioned the wisdom of it being only twenty klicks from the Backwater Gate, even if the Realm now did hold both sides of it.
But here they were.
He raised his hands. “Okay, everyone, please. One at a time.”
A tall, slender alien with grey skin, spindly arms, and a bulbous head set with enormous black eyes stepped forward. “I advocate for my race to be the next freed from Deeper tyranny.”
Another spoke up, a humanoid slathered with something pale blue and gelatinous. Apparently, it was actually a symbiotic race, the gelatinous stuff and the humanoid beneath it being separate entities. “Why? So you can resume sneaking onto other planets and probing whoever you find there?”
“What is up with that probing thing, anyway?” another alien, this one resembling an oversized seal with a spectacularly iridescent, ribbed sail down its back asked. “Your people seem obsessed with it.”
The grey alien ignored them. “Our people are still holding their own against the Deepers. By your own words, that makes us ideal candidates for liberation.”
Benzel scratched his beard. The grey alien was right. But so were at least three other races, all of them with solid cases for assistance from the Cygnus Realm and its growing alliance. He wished Dash were here. First, Dash would be doing this instead of him. Second, even if Dash weren’t managing this unruly crowd himself, he could at least offer Benzel his thoughts on who they should help.
He opened his mouth, just as a thunderclap tore apart the hot, dry air. A second followed, then a pair of massive shadows swept overhead. Two of the Realm’s mechs had just arrived, which prompted Benzel to turn whatever he’d been going to say into a sigh of relief. Dash was—
Shit. Not here. Conover’s Pulsar and Amy’s Talon both touched down a short distance away. Benzel called a recess to give himself a breather and give Conover and Amy time to dismount and make their way to Forum.
Benzel beamed a grin at the new arrivals. “Am I ever glad to see you guys! Now, please tell me that one of you is going to take over babysitting this mob, so I can get back to my nice, cozy CIC aboard the Herald.”
Amy and Conover glanced at one another, then turned back and both shrugged. “Not that I know of. I’m just on my way back to the Forge from the N’Teel homeworld. My mech’s got some damage that needs to be fixed.”
Benzel glanced at the Talon. Blast marks scarred its armor, but it otherwise seemed intact.
“And I’m on my way to meet Dash. I’ve got something important to talk to him about, that I’d rather not do over a comm,” Conover said.
“Anyway, we met up here to take a break from the flight,” Amy said, and
Benzel gave her a sly grin.
“Taking a break, huh? The kind where you don’t want to be disturbed for, oh, say, an hour or so, right?”
Conover and Amy both stared, then spoke in unison. “Only an hour?”
Benzel waved them off. “Well, before you take your break, how about helping me sort this mess out?” He filled them in on what had transpired so far, then led them back into the courtyard in the middle of Forum and called the meeting back to order.
Before he could start speaking, though, two of the aliens present pushed a third forward. One of them hissed something. The third alien, a pale, lithe humanoid with big, angled eyes and a crest of knobs along her skull and spine hissed something back, but the first alien seemed insistent.
Benzel sighed. “Okay, let’s try this again. We just don’t have the resources to help everyone. We have to prioritize, pick our battles. That means the best candidates are ones that are still themselves fighting back, holding the Deepers off.” He looked at the crested humanoid, who seemed to be from a semi-aquatic race. It struck him that this dry, barren world must suck for her.
“So, does your race fit that description, too?” he asked her, hoping the answer was no because that would be a fifth race he’d have to juggle.
“No, we don’t.”
Benzel opened his mouth, closed it again. Tried very hard not to sigh. “In that case, and as I’ve explained, that doesn’t make you a good candidate right now.”
“I realize that. In fact, my world is dead. Or so close to it as to not matter.”
“I’m really sorry to hear that. I really am. But we can’t undo that, so I’m afraid that it just doesn’t make your people a good candidate for our assistance,” he said, glancing at Amy and Conover and hoping that one of them would chime in on what was becoming a profoundly awkward moment.
“I realize that.”
“Then—and don’t take this wrong way—why the hell did you step forward?”
She glanced back at the two aliens who had pushed her forward. “I was convinced that there is good reason for you to at least travel to what remains of my homeworld.”
Conover perked up.
“Okay, and what reason is that?”
“In the last major battle, my people managed to bring down two of what I believe you call Battle Princes. The Deepers have largely moved on now and recovered the remains of one of them that we wholly destroyed.”
This time, Conover stepped forward. “What about the other one?”
“It is mostly whole, except for half of its head, which was shot away by what I am proud to say was a flawless rail gun shot, fired by a dedicated gun-crew who, sadly, perished shortly thereafter. It remains on our planet.”
Benzel raised a hand. “We’re definitely interested in looking at that, yeah. But that still doesn’t really make your people a great candidate for an entire fleet action.”
The alien stared at him. “I don’t think you understand. Its head is carved in two, yes. But this Battle Prince…it is still alive.”
5
They were called the Oksa, and their spokesperson at Forum was named Avek. Or was it the other way around, and Oksa was an Avek? Dash frowned. He’d lately been bombarded with alien names and was starting to lose track of them.
“Sentinel, is—”
“The race is the Oksa, and Avek is their representative,” Sentinel said.
“Ah. Thanks.” She apparently caught a sense of his confusion over the Meld that linked him to the Archetype, which effectively let her read his mind, at least in a way. Sometimes he found it disconcerting, but at least Sentinel was discrete in how she used it.
The incandescent air roaring around the Archetype’s shield like a blast furnace died away as the mech slowed. The murky surface of the Oksa homeworld raced by below. He glanced at tactical, and saw that Leira, Conover, and Amy were neatly tucked in behind him. Behind them came three assault shuttles laden with a company of ground troops, and two more shuttles carrying various scientific and research types from both the Realm and the League. Elois would oversee that part of the recovery effort. Meanwhile, the Herald and its task force hung back from the planet, keeping a wary eye out for any Deeper forces that might try to intervene.
Dash watched as the location marked by Avek loomed ahead. The planet had once been a pristine terrestrial planet that almost made the cut of a hydro world, nearly eighty-five percent of its surface being water. But the Deepers had thoroughly ravaged it, carting away enough water to drop the sea level by at least twenty meters, and leaving the land scarred by vast strip-mining operations.
Dash grimaced. Avek had been right. The Deepers had all but killed their homeworld.
They reached the location of the fallen Battle Prince. According to Avek, the creature had fallen and become wedged in a narrow ravine atop a cliff at least twenty-three hundred meters high. The Deepers had apparently managed to miss recovering it when they left—or, as Elois had suggested, maybe it had been left behind deliberately. Perhaps they were meant to find it, for some nefarious purpose. Hence the abundance of caution in bringing down four mechs and a company of assault troops, with a fleet overhead flying cover over the planet.
Dash circled the clifftop. He could see the ravine, a deep, narrow gash cut into the side of the cliff, and the plateau at its top, as though it had been struck by some titanic axe. He couldn’t see anything in the ravine’s depths, though, which were lost in shadow.
“Sentinel, anything?”
“There is a Dark Metal signal, but I am detecting nothing else of note.”
“Okay. So is it realistic to think that the Deepers missed one of their own Battle Princes, because it was stuck in a hole?”
“Given that I know little more about the Deepers and their Battle Princes than you do, you can probably answer that question as well as I can.”
“So you—”
“Don’t know, that’s right.”
“Gotcha.” Dash had the shuttles take up a holding pattern about fifty klicks away, with Amy and Conover flying protective top cover, then he and Leira landed their mechs on the plateau at the edge of the ravine.
Dash looked along its length. It started at the base of a mesa about two klicks away, a zig-zag crack in the ground from a few meters wide in some places, to more than ten in others. It stood to reason that the Battle Prince could only have fallen into a portion of the ravine wide enough for it to fit, so he slowly walked along its length, toward the edge of the cliff.
“Dash, down there,” Leira said, pointing with one of the Swift’s huge fingers. He followed it to a section of the ravine about twelve meters wide. Sure enough, about ten meters down, he saw a dull glint of something metallic in the shaded gloom of the fracture. Low-light vision confirmed that it was, indeed, a Battle Prince, lying sideways in the crevasse, its feet elevated slightly above its head.
“Okay, we found our prize. Now, what do we do about it?” Leira asked.
Dash bit his lip as he considered it. They could try lifting it out, but despite the size and reach of their own mechs, it wouldn’t be easy. They’d probably have to do some digging—potentially, a lot of digging. Moreover, they had no idea how deep into this rocky promontory the crevasse extended. Anything they did might inadvertently dislodge it, and send it plunging even further into the depths.
“We’re going to have to leave this thing where it is, at least for now,” he finally said.
Leira made a surprised sound. “We’re just going to give up? Leave it here?”
“I didn’t say that. Leira, I’d like you to switch places with Conover. He’s become the closest thing we have to an expert on these Battle Princes, so I’d like him to glean as much as he can from it before we decide if and how we’re going to recover it.”
Leira acknowledged and lifted the Swift smoothly away. Dash and Sentinel spent the next minutes trying to make contact with the Battle Prince, scanning across the comm spectrum for any hint of a response. Sentinel finally found a resp
onse, but it was little more than a brief burst of transmission, consisting mostly of noise. Dash thought he could make out a word or two, like down and go, but that was all.
The Pulsar swept overhead, then came back about and landed. Conover spent a few moments studying the fallen Deeper construct, working with Kristin to leverage his mech’s formidable suite of electronic warfare systems for any new information. He didn’t learn much more, though.
“How about your tech vision? That’s what you used on the Battle Prince back at the Forge, right?” Dash asked.
“I did, yeah. But I have to dismount from the Pulsar to use it. It doesn’t work on just imagery.”
Dash could hear the sudden nervous tension in his voice. Conover had come a long way and was a veteran of many fights. But he really wasn’t a warrior at heart. That was part of what made him who he was, so Dash didn’t resent it or fault him for it. So he switched to a private channel.
“Conover, if you don’t want to dismount, that’s fine—”
“No, I will. Has to be done, right?”
“I’ll be right here.”
“That actually helps a lot. Thanks, Dash.”
Dash kept a careful eye out as Conover dismounted from the Pulsar. He didn’t try to climb down the treacherous ten meters of jagged and broken rock, though. Instead, he wisely clambered into one of the mech’s massive hands. Kristin then knelt the Pulsar, bent it forward at the waist, and reached down and lowered Conover quickly, smoothly, and above all, safely into the crevasse.
Time passed in silence.
“Conover, everything alright?” Dash asked. He was mindful of the very first time Conover used his tech-vision in his presence. He’d peered into the Lens, an Unseen device with the power to collapse stars. The experience had knocked him unconscious.
But Conover’s reply was immediate. “Yeah, fine. I’m just trying to make sense of what I’m seeing.”
“Okay. What are you seeing?”
“Well, the Oksa weren’t kidding when they said they’d blown its head apart. And there’s more damage to its body, probably from when it came to rest down here. But it is largely intact and is still kinda functional.”
