The Dry Earth (Book 2): The Nexus

by Orion, W. J.

  The bursts smashed against the energy shields, dissipating into harmless coronas of light, though several of the humans were terrified to the point of near catatonia. Michelle dropped down, covering her head, and Knox tipped over on her crutches, smashing into the hard floor of the platform. Bernie flinched too, diving to the feet of the closest Galon security guard to take cover.

  At her immediate side she watched as the previously fierce and defiant judge scrambled to the protective side of the shield-bearing Dwen.

  She, her uncle, and Trader Joe stood out in the open, bolts of blue death raining down from the tiny crab attack chassis that closed in to destroy them. Yasmine didn’t wait any longer, and she opened fire with her pistol.

  Held in both of her hands the pistol felt huge but manageable. Her confidence was in place. Her body calm, her mind kicked into a new stratum of ability as she reached out with all her senses. Time seemed to dilate as the adrenaline kept pumping, and all the chaotic movement in the fight didn’t feel quite so out of control. Terrifying, yes, but not without a solution. The chaos felt like home.

  She aimed like her uncle had taught her but didn’t quite wait until the sights were perfect. She squeezed off two of Trader Joe’s special rounds and watched as the first sailed high and wide, impacting the wall with a smudge of ineffectual green fire. Before the second shot, in a fraction of a second that felt like a casual moment at the range to her, she adjusted her aim lower, traced the shrimp chassis she wanted to shoot, and let loose the second round with a squeeze on the trigger.

  The bullet struck her target in the back, just in front of the barrel firing plasma bolts down at her. The green substance that Trader Joe made the bullets out of worked their magic, and the obsidian, insectoid shrimp exploded in a green fireball. In the back of her imagination she could almost see the tiny glowing squids frying in the detonation, cartwheeling down in a morbid shower of spent power.

  Her peripheral vision already pulled her body towards another shrimp, and she allowed her newfound instincts to guide her. She pivoted her aim skyward then fired twice. One of the two bullets struck again, incinerating a shrimp. She pivoted a third time, and two bullets later that shrimp exploded into a shower of blue sparks and hot, black armor fragments.

  At her side her uncle’s machinegun ripped and tore into the air, painting the walls with a hail of bullets that tore into the enemy. Where she’d found precision he found savagery, and both of them were effective. Around them the Galon guards aimed their giant pistols upward and fired them from the safe cover their energy shields provided. Each of their long, triangular pistols fired over and over, each shot sounding more like a hammer smashed on an anvil than a laser blast or a bullet being fired. Yasmine didn’t know what their guns shot, but when they hit a shrimp, they annihilated it. Explosions filled the air above the group.

  The assault on them at the bottom of the barrel went from a dire threat of defeat to a standing moment of victory in scant seconds. Black crab shells piled up knee deep in every direction. When the last of the smoking, burning wreckage landed in the elevator Yasmine took a deep breath to steady herself.

  I didn’t need to do that. I’m already calm. I never even got amped. I’m in the zone.

  “The big ones will come next,” Dwen said as it triggered the holographic controls to make the elevator rise once more. “Shoot like that again, humans, and we have a good chance of surviving this.”

  “Everyone okay?” she asked her friends. They all called out their safety. All but Trader Joe. She looked over to him and her mouth opened in shock.

  Rather than standing, the Beru’dawn’s animated body floated a foot off the deck of the elevator. Arms spread wide, making his body into the shape of an arrow, the hat-wearing, goggle-disguised entity levitated in place, transfixed in the air, suspended by unseen forces.

  “You ok, buddy?” her uncle asked the alien as the sounds of plasma fire and Galon pistols rang out on the other side of the open door above.

  “I… am… yes,” he stammered. His head seemed to come free then, and he looked towards Yasmine. “What did you just do?” he asked her.

  “Shot some shrimp,” she said as she dropped the magazine of her pistol and loaded a full one in. “Why?”

  “You… you paired with me. Without my starting it. Almost against my will. You took some of my latent abilities and used them,” he said, his voice clearly not believing the message it gave.

  “I what?”

  “You used my psychic powers to amplify your senses. You dilated time in your own mind to act faster and with a steadied nervous system. You drew upon their energies to fuel yourself. This is… never. Not ever.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I wasn’t trying to; I don’t even know how to.”

  The sounds of battle in the corridors above grew as the elevator reached the point where it could ascend no further. The melted door lodged in the wall prevented any further climb.

  “Don’t apologize,” Trader Joe said. “Double down.” He laughed like someone who’d figured out the ending of the movie they were watching before it came. “I see it all now. I see the energy of this.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?” her uncle asked Trey as he reloaded another belt of ammo into his machine gun.

  “The Beru’dawn believe in a kind of cosmic chance. The chaos of indeterminate fate. Part of our… faith. I believe we will change the world. I thought we would do it as allies, but I was wrong.”

  “You are my friend,” Yaz said. “You are my ally. Nothing will change that.”

  “No, Yasmine. You changed that. I am not just your ally now,” Trader Joe said as his feet lowered to the floor. “I believe I am your weapon.”

  “This day could not get much more interesting,” Dwen said.

  “Challenge accepted,” Yasmine said.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Heroes and Villains

  As Dwen and company made their way to the powerlift, Benno the Irib’dirari swam through the air with his thousands of hair-like appendages. Faster than a human could run he glided down the center of the halls departing from the new species assessment hangar region and heading to the area of staff transportation. There he could ascend to the station’s control center.

  Almost never used, the area of the Nexus where they had met had empty halls and a coating of dust. As he shot down the tall, rectangular passages he stirred the collection of dust, kicking up a cloud in his wake.

  He worried.

  War is upon us. There will be such devastation. Entire planets will fall. I must tell my family as soon as I can to head to deeper depths where the crab weapons are less effective. Perhaps I can see to it they are picked up and transported off world. A distant system far from any chance of a crab attack. If there are any of those left.

  He halted his forward movement beside a smooth black access panel. He slid through the air and brushed one side of his soft, wavy surface against the mirror-smooth panel. He used his tens of thousands of prehensile cilia to activate the controls at a rate that would’ve bewildered most sentient beings. A flood of tactical information came to him and, using all of the tiny little brains managing his limbs, he sorted it, digested it, and issued out instructions to various staff and systems across the massive space station. He worked in concert with his Irib’dirari team already on the flight deck, making sure their defenses were up and running and that emergency services were prepared to help once the real fighting broke out.

  Satisfied that the station was safe and ready for the crab response if there was one, he triggered a portal to open on the ceiling a bit ahead and departed at full speed. He got to the hole in the smooth tunnel’s ceiling and went upwards, losing little speed in his change of direction. His kind excelled at aerial acrobatics.

  Up through the secret (and much smaller) ventilation and electrical access tunnels designed for his species, he was able to move without having to follow the labyrinthine passages and additional layers of security
made for the less agile floor-walkers. Up two floors, up ten floors, then down a lengthy passage made to run along humming and crackling energy conduits, then up two more floors, then ten. Benno reached a sealed portal and had to stop to open it. As he pressed his body against the surface it flashed in a series of pulses with each burst of illumination aligning with a blaring emergency alarm that shook the structure of the station.

  That’s an all-hands security alarm, he thought. Spies already informed them. Benno used the access panel to tap into cameras at the origination of the alarm.

  Crabs exiting the Ravager. He had been too slow or they had been tipped off far earlier than they could’ve prepared for.

  To defend against the armored walkers that the crabs rode in, all of the docks their ships could visit the Nexus with were designed to prevent anything larger than a human loaf of bread from disembarking. Tiny water portals linked their massive ships to the massive station. Several of the tiny tubes allowed for massive numbers of their small squid-entities to come and go into the water habitats but prevented even their smallest chassis from visiting the station.

  The Nexus’s defenses in that regard were proving to be insufficient.

  The crab cruiser had some kind of internal breaching system that aligned with its small docking tubes. The video feed showed two instances where the cruiser had used some kind of massive drill to bore through the hull of their own vessel, and through the side of the Nexus, piercing the exterior of the station. The giant drill mechanism somehow retracted into the cruiser, leaving behind a hollow tube and creating an entrance large enough for the crab combat chassis to pass through. As their habitat vented water into space around the rough edges, biomechanical monsters surged inward, one after another.

  The unique purple and black armor of the crab’s Collective elite chassis pushed onto the sacred ground of the Nexus. They walked through the dwindling water of their previous home away from home and split into two groups: one headed upward to the control center, and one headed more or less inward, trying to make towards the center of the station.

  Are they headed to the court? The powerlifts? The grand market? Doesn’t matter. Benno triggered a station-wide lockdown of all sensitive doorways and powerlifts. He used a special code on the lockdown to ensure only specific Irib’diriari and Galon that he trusted could activate the locked portals and elevators. If they want to siege my home then they’ll have to fight for every piece they wish to step upon.

  He then triggered a series of heavy-plasma resistant barriers that shut off the exit of the chassis that hadn’t yet entered the Nexus’s interior. Benno activated the dock’s lockdown system. His people who worked in flight control called locking a ship down against its wishes a “hard park.” Massive steel doors and panels actuated down on all sides of the Ravager cruiser, pinning it into place. Electromagnetic pulse emitters aimed at the ship as well, ready to fry its electronics, and potentially its crew, if the ship moved or powered on weapons. If the crab vessel attempted to leave its hard park, it’d tear its hull apart and destroy its engines. He hailed flight control.

  “Scramble the alert squadron of fighters and have them converge on Ravager. Bring all other defenses to high alert. The crabs are openly hostile. Expect severe fighting and loss of life. I will be there momentarily to shut down wormhole transit.”

  Good. Now, I must get to the main control center and enter my override code for the portals. Then we will have this under control for the moment.

  Benno drifted from the panel and shot away towards the nerve center of the galactic hub. The speed at which the impending war would break out would be decided in short minutes. If he locked the wormholes down in time and prevented anyone from getting messages to crab ships elsewhere, the Triumvirate and the member races of the Nexus could dictate the next steps.

  He was no more than two minutes away from flight control.

  [TRANSLATED FROM SOUTHERN DIALECT MULGOROD]

  Titan’s Horn received a scrambled message labeled for Vice Apex Madrap only. The diligent communications officer on the bridge of the Mulgorod Warship which was docked at the Nexus passed the message along to the battlegroup commander without delay.

  Vice Apex Madrap was in his lavish, wood-trimmed quarters when the message arrived on his data slate. Lounging on a seat made of exported Wardonda wood and lined with sub-desert fox fur, he reached to his standing desk and picked the thin device up. He authenticated with a scan of his eyes and the encrypted text message appeared.

  We are laying siege to the Nexus. You are to fire salvos at the hard park that the station has Ravager locked in so that we may launch shuttles, then proceed to the Perenall System to join our Harvester fleet. Provide escort and inform them of the situation. Instruct them to eradicate the planet they just harvested, and all other planets in that system, with Globe-Killer bombs. End message.

  “For the Empire,” Madrap whispered, then got to his feet. He went to the nearby closet to put his uniform and horn cap insignia on. He spoke into his slate as he went. “Titan’s Horn, please rouse Lieutenants Indara and Wash with the message, ‘Leaves turning in the wind.’ Helm, bring us to a static orbit above the crab docking facility. Weapons, arm the forward batteries and prepare for Lieutenant Wash to arrive. This is not a drill.”

  “Yes sir,” several staff responded to him.

  Madrap donned his officer’s uniform and slipped the ruby-red, gem-encrusted rings onto his two horns to denote his Vice Apex rank. He grabbed his belt and sidearm from the locker near his bedding and put them on. He drew open the chamber of the weapon and ensured that it was loaded.

  His slate dinged with a voice message.

  “Vice Apex, it is Lt. Indara,” the speaker said.

  “The time for action is upon us. Get to the helm and relieve the duty officer. Bring your sidearm. Wash will be assuming control of the weapons. We’re to fire on the Ravager to free it from a hard park, then pass through the Perenall wormhole to join the Harvester fleet there.”

  “We do not have full crew support for this,” Indara said.

  “Nor do we need it. Execute anyone who hesitates to follow your orders. Do not worry; the bulk of the crew on Titan’s Horn is more loyal to me than the mixed races of the Mulgorod Coalition. You won’t have much resistance, and once they are told how handsomely we will all be paid, they will fall into line or they will fall into an air lock and get vented.”

  “What of Vilnius and Decadra? They won’t sit idle in dock while we move to war.”

  “I’ll handle our sister ships. Go to the helm. Do your job,” Madrap said and ended the call. “Communications, hail the Captains of Vilnius and Decadra with an emergency message.” Several seconds later Madrap saw the two calls connect with red light indicators on his slate screen. He cleared his throat and spoke. “Captains, we are moving to potentially engage the docked crab Ravager cruiser in hard park. Please set course for the portals and head home to our system to bolster their defense in the event that this is a coordinated strike by the Empire. We will join you shortly.”

  “Yes sir,” the captain of Vilnius said.

  “You don’t need support here?” the captain of Decadra asked. “We can easily reinforce our home system with one battleship.”

  “I gave an order. We don’t need three battleships to handle a single crab cruiser already locked down. Leave immediately. Any crew you have on shore leave we’ll police up when we are finished.”

  “Yes sir.”

  Madrap ended the calls and departed his quarters. He had a betrayal to consummate, a union to solidify, and a war to start.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  You Always Go Full Cyborg

  Powerful crashes of energy weapon impacts tore apart the world just a couple stories above Yasmine and her friends. Underneath the unique and unforgettable sound of crab weaponry firing she could hear the relatively faint sound of the metallic bangs from the Galon weaponry. Burst after burst rattled out, going in both directions through the eleva
tor exit they approached.

  “Eleven Collective Elite chassis,” Dwen informed them. “Guardians of the most critical crab colonies in the Collective. Deadly warriors.” It reloaded its two pistols as the elevator slid upwards. “We must destroy them as we make our way through the main floor of the grand market to the public lifts.”

  “What’s the market?” Yaz asked, still trying to wrap her head around the idea that she’d hijacked Trader Joe’s brain and powers a few moments earlier.

  “A mall,” Trey said. “At least, sort of like one. Thousands of stores and restaurants from retailers all across the known worlds. Open courts, a few small forests. It’s massive. Size of fifty human football fields at least. Mezzanine levels on all sides like you’re walking at the bottom of a canyon but where the walls are just more floors filled with stores.”

  “Sounds like soccer mom paradise,” her uncle said, hefting his machine gun. “Point me at the crabs.”

  “Discharge your shield batteries,” Dwen instructed the other Galon.

  The other three aliens stepped to the center of the elevator and pulled small cables from the side of the oval devices on their armor that they triggered their shields with. Dwen provided cover to them using his energy shield as they used one of their long arms to reach down and plug the cords into hidden receptacles in the elevator’s central podium. A hum of electricity filled the air and Yasmine felt the hairs on her arms stand on edge.

  “What’re you doing?” she asked.

  “These energy shields are a new technology for us. This was their first application in active battle. They absorb the plasma energy and then store it in batteries. If we don’t discharge the captured energy, the shield generators could overload and blow up in our next engagement,” Dwen explained as it held its shield and weapons up towards the elevator entrance just yards away now.