by F Stephan
Boris closed the heavy door behind them. It sealed with a loud clank.
Tasha looked around. Safe. This can resist anything up to a nuclear attack. But it was more than that. Inside, she saw a second bunker containing medical equipment. She had seen the equivalent on Adheek during her course of injections. She caught Lelal’s eyes. He nodded in response.
“You used this as a containment area.” The girl was now twitching at her feet. Suddenly, it became clear. She was ill in the picture and she isn’t anymore. “She’s your daughter, isn’t she? You used nanites to cure her. What did she have? You fools! Now, inside. She’s losing it.”
Wordlessly, Boris moved forward to open the inside set of blast doors.
Tasha turned. “Doctor, take care of my scout, please. Your daughter is now under my responsibility. Sir, with me. We may still need your grenade.” Sacha was losing control by the minute, and Tasha assumed he had at least one anti-nanite grenade. Let’s hope we won’t need it.
Lelal walked inside quickly and laid the adolescent on the bed in the middle of the room. She was now shaking violently. Her hand blurred into a claw, her legs became liquid. Tasha was at her side, holding her hand. Lelal opened a kit, retrieved a syringe, and gave it to Tasha. Sacha’s torso was now widening and lengthening, while her hand was now growing fur.
Her father pushed past the bodyguard, shouting, “What are you doing?”
The Marine laid a restraining hand on his shoulder. “Anti-nanite stabilizer. It’s a small shot to help her manage the crisis.”
Tasha pushed the self-injector hard against the girl’s neck. “She needs to clear her head and regain control. How many syringes did you inject? What did you do? Quick!” she demanded.
The father was close to collapsing now, but the force of her tone triggered a near mechanical answer. “She had the phase II injection two months ago. She was recovering, still under containment and monitoring protocols. It was the best we could do.”
Tasha shot a glance at all the equipment gathered around her. As good a replica of a Federation Pilot center as could be obtained here. Boris opened his hand to reveal a standard nanite suppressor grenade. Highly illegal, highly forbidden, but careful.
“She insisted on coming out to rescue you,” he added apologetically.
Tasha was still focused on her patient. The shaking was not subsiding, but the transformation had stopped. She was now part human, part animal. But she wasn’t regaining control. “Phase I injection, last fall? How did she stabilize?”
“Yes, Madam. She was much better. We had not seen her like this in years. But the nanites couldn’t fight the leukemia, and it was winning. She said the tigroids helped her.”
“What? How?”
“We don’t know. But with the second injection, she communicated with them. She asked them to rescue you and bring you to us.”
She used all her energy for us. Pushing these thoughts aside, Tasha closed her eyes, launching her nanites around her, trying to feel for the connection she had had with the beast.
Lelal’s calm voice echoed from afar. “The bombs have either killed them or drawn them too far away. They are not helping her anymore.”
Suddenly, Tasha felt something. Her nanites connected with other nanites, establishing a tenuous link. She heard confusion and wild thoughts. You are Sacha. Tasha projected the image she had of the girl with all her energy, committing her full body and strength to reaching the girl’s consciousness. Listen to my voice. Take back control. This is who you are.
Slowly, so slowly, sanity returned, and the self-image of the girl formed again in her own mind. Tasha continued to push the image to the girl, helping her control her nanites. After an eternity, she collapsed next to her patient, shaking. Distantly, she felt Lelal’s cold metal syringe on her neck. What a wonderful sight we must make.
Wilfried
Space station Acheron, April 4, 2141
The missiles were rushing toward the station at ten gees. Large mushrooms marred the face of the Earth. And Charon was accelerating in a straight line without responding to their hails. Everyone on the bridge was frozen in shock. Then, Wilfried opened a communication channel to the whole station.
“Andrew, Kimi, get back in. As fast as you can. All crew to secure quarters. I repeat all crew to secure quarters.” He turned to Reiner. “Get everyone to safety.”
“What are you going to do? The station doesn’t have a defense grid.”
“I’ve got an idea. Go.”
Reiner ran to the bunker at the center of the module, calling to the crew. No one liked the crowded bunkers, but they would be out of his way. Only Wolm remained at his side now.
Wilfried activated his nanites and his hands became cables linking him into the communication network. “Jeanne, I need you to load the cannon.” He had worked with her on the electromagnetic launcher.
“Wilfried, we had prepared food containers. Five are ready for launch now.” He wouldn’t be able to fire more. He linked to the cannon itself, his nanites compensating for the communication lag created by the distance to the moon.
“Andrew and Kimi are safe inside,” said Wolm. “All accounted for and as safe as can be.” If a missile destroyed a module, the station would disintegrate, and no bunker would save them. But a container could have the same impact if he miscalculated. From the moon, to reach the incoming missiles, they would fly close to the station, less than fifty yards. “Impact in thirty minutes.”
Wilfried fired the containers one after another, sending them into space at twenty gees. He deactivated his nanites and raised a projection of the Earth–moon system in front of them.
“Coffee, sir?” asked Wolm. Wilfried laughed. Now we are dead or alive, all depending on my calculations. There’s nothing else to do.
Commander Grayt
European Confederacy, April 4, 2141
Automated cannons bellowed at the braking shuttle. One truck left the base at full speed, the movement caught by the Federation sensors. The Commander activated a switch and Lanakar, a Marine from Adheek, launched himself with a jetpack, assisted by a drone. The truck moved silently through the fog, propelled by an electric battery that leaked no energy, nothing that would allow detection by Earth standard. Unfortunately for him, thought Poiz Grayt, the soldier was not using Earth detectors. He relied on his own nanites spreading throughout the fog. She was watching his feed in a side window in her helmet. Soon, data poured in and she sent him a schematic of the truck from his data dump. A minute later, a bullet from the heavy rifle broke the main axle. A driver erupted from the car, firing blindly in the fog. He went down in an instant.
“Please, remain seated, hands over your head.” The voice was projected from a drone opposite the Marine, speaking in all languages. Three other soldiers exploded out of the car and fired on the small drone. They were shot down as well.
“Check the truck,” ordered Grayt. “I want a small remote-control box into the central console. I am sending you your next target…”
Another Marine, Derol from Baol, tracked soldiers fleeing on foot. This time, thermal imaging was enough to find most of them, and the Marine stunned them from the sky, taking no chances.
“Two are behind you with thermal blankets,” the Commander warned him, and his nanites gave ample warning before they could strike. The Marine stopped for a minute to handcuff them, then he chewed an energy bar.
The Commander continued to update her troops with all targets. She wanted no escapes if she could help it. Some were hiding in the river close by, others were running under the cover of the forest to the west. A group was running to the rocky outcrops farther east. This was her time and her place, and she made sure none escaped.
At the same time, the rest of the team approached the main base. It had been prepared specifically for them, just as many others in many worlds had done. Federation Marines had learned from each of them. Grayt felt cold, detached, ready, analyzing each weapon facing her.
A deluge of fir
e erupted. Thousands of bullets coupled with strong electromagnetic fields, acid rain, toxic gases – nothing had been ignored among all the deadly weapons available on Earth. But the design of the Marines’ armor had been based on Ancient models and could withstand the harshness of space battles or solar flares. It would take a prolonged attack to break them, and Grayt wouldn’t allow for it.
“Cloudy, we need ground cover in front.”
Before the Marines, the shuttle dropped four heavy robots, protecting them from the artillery. The machines were shredded in seconds, but they blasted enough of the barricades to create gaps in the deadly rain. At the rear, Grayt and Deraili launched a counter-attack with their own heavy artillery. Plasma bolts sped toward the base, removing one weapon after the other. Lamre, a stout girl from Dupner, was wounded and brought to the rear by her team mate, Taz, a giant from Alkath. He became the main target for the weapons remaining on the barricade, and Grayt hurried to take them down. With the fire lessening, other Marines joined, speeding up the destruction of the external barricade. But as soon as it fell, new batteries that had been hidden behind rose from the ground and rained death over the soldiers. Taz, who had at last brought Lamre to a safer place, turned back toward the base and saw his friends fall dead before his armor was ripped apart by the incoming fire. Madness overcame the Commander and her troop, and they obliterated the new weapons with combined fire.
As silence fell over the base, a communication jamming started, and the soldiers lost contact with one another. It didn’t matter. Grayt had known it would happen from the start. At a silent gesture, two teams moved to the side, taking out the outer perimeter, each in its own quadrant. Grayt had marked three other buildings on the maps, and a team moved toward each of them. Grayt and the Sergeant remained at the back as a support force, surveyed the grounds for the jam emitter. The base was big, a klick in width, with empty open hangars and a few buildings. Deraili pointed to an indiscriminate box at the other side of the compound, a klick away. Grayt launched a grenade, using her nanite-enhanced strength.
There was a small detonation. Radio returned, but before Grayt could check on the teams, two buildings collapsed. “Blue and yellow, report to me. Red, get out for now.”
She ran to one building, Deraili rushing to the other. In seconds, the structures collapsed below the surface and hot lava began pouring into the gaping holes. Grayt launched a rope into the middle, but only silence answered their rescue attempt. Four other Marines were encased in the now cooling lava. Their suits could withstand almost anything, but couldn’t fight the intense heat. Four comrades were now dead.
Lanakar and Derol returned from their chase. Grayt pointed out the last building. “I want the four of you inside. Tiel and Vaol, you take point. Lanakar and Derol, cover them. Cloudy, I want the shuttle above in case of trouble.”
Four Marines crossed to the last building, biding their time to check each room carefully. The main floor was empty, but they found a hidden entrance to stairs leading below.
“Scanners?” asked Grayt. An image appeared, blurred at first. Metal shielding. How sweet! She tweaked the settings of the scanners and tutted loudly. Massive weapons that would concentrate all their fire on the point soldier covered the stairs.
“All out. Cloudy, raze ground level.”
Five minutes later, four mines detonated behind the massive automated guns below. The soldiers dropped from above and dismantled them with no gunshots fired.
They found the elevator in a recess below the stairs. They blew up the door and dropped to the lower levels. A warning blinked and the Sergeant ordered, before she could, “Rebreather now.” The air was subtly poisonous and Grayt admired, for an instant, the precision of the person who had laid this trap. Her Marines were now a klick below Earth in an old bunker. Cyber viruses attacked their radio network and Tiel dropped dead, killed by his own armor. Grayt cursed and launched herself into the hole, hacking back against the viruses and freeing her soldiers. Only five remained now.
Two airlocks later, she reached the command center of the base. They immobilized the remaining occupants, who were military officers for the most part. A geek wired into a console lay dead upon it, a victim of her counterattack. In one corner, they had the surprise of meeting Susanna Loewre, her drones filming the entire fight. She was screaming, too, apparently not having expected their success.
Wilfried
Space station Acheron, April 4, 2141
Nashiz was red with controlled anger. On the video feed, Wilfried could see children all around him, and the Envoy spoke only in short sentences. From what Wilfried understood, he had stayed with the youngest throughout the attacks, soothing their fears.
“And the computer was coming here. Another location, eh?” He paused for thought. Wilfrid had to admit that, once he had seen through their deception, he was fast. “No, too exposed. The Chief is bringing it to her in the Atlantic. You… you got Elisabeth Evans to prepare a launch for you.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Why wasn’t I informed of the deception?”
Andrew stepped in, still half-dressed for space expedition. “Envoy, there’s a traitor in our organization, with access to all strategic information. We knew our communications were tapped. We just found out where and when moments ago. Our backup antenna had been rigged to transmit signals back to a hidden satellite in the graveyard orbit.”
“And I found something even stranger,” added Kimi, showing a brown metal box.
Nashiz was now bright red. “You’ve duped me? A low-level tech and a Pilot with no status dared dupe an Envoy from Alkath?”
Chief Iakoubi appeared at Wilfried’s side. “No, Envoy. I asked this of Commander Grayt. The President and the Pilot agreed to help me in this. We haven’t been able to find those traitors for months. They had to strike back at us in the open. Your commander is out to get them.”
Nashiz blurted, “But why dupe me? I know next to no one on this planet.”
“Sir, you’re the focus of the Federation. You’re constantly scrutinized. If we’d burdened you with a lie, it’d have been apparent to their data analysts.”
The Envoy wasn’t happy, but could understand their logic. Slowly, he calmed down. “And now, what do you make of President Anaru? What of the civilian casualties? What of this valley?”
Wilfried winced. These were the very questions he had dreaded ever since the Chief had suggested this plan. All civilians in the compound and in the valley had been saved. The Geneva area had been neutral for ages, and for the first time, war had come calling at its door. The place was scorched, all buildings and vegetation turned to ashes. And amidst this ruin, the body of the President waited with the Federation Marines who had stood by him as he sent the last group of civilians toward safety.
Nashiz added in a low voice, tears suddenly rolling down his cheeks, “Was all this worth such a destruction? The death of such a man?” The children were looking at him, feeling his sadness, and a few came to surround him and hold his hand.
Wilfried stared back at him, the same question stuck in his own throat.
Boris
Siberia, April 4, 2141
Boris couldn’t breathe as the Marine turned from the bed where she had laid the Pilot opposite his own daughter. Both seemed peaceful.
“Are they…” His voice trailed off.
The Federation bodyguard answered with his strange accent. “Dead? No. Deadly tired, maybe. Sir, we need to talk. Please, we need your wife and your friend with us. Could our scout be put under deep sleep while we talk?” The Marine seemed a giant in the room.
Boris called in Russian through the base’s network. A few minutes later, Igor and Maritschka joined them, both looking apprehensive.
“You all know the sentence for illegal nanite injection?” The stern voice was quiet, despite her words. Can we overpower her? “You also know the Federation will never stop tracking you if you flee?”
Maritschka collapsed in his arms, weeping, mumbling. “
We were…”
“Doctor, you were trying to save her. You are a life-giver and I respect that. And sirs, you have been careful. Were it not otherwise, we wouldn’t discuss it. But… and there is a but… your life on this planet is forfeit.”
Boris’s mind was racing. The little Marine could kill all of them in seconds.
“I do. I was the one who organized. My wife and friends only helped me,” he answered with all the assurance he could muster. Don’t know if it changes anything for them. “Will you take care of her? Will she survive?”
“I’m no doctor, sir. But from what I’ve seen, if she survives this crisis after a phase II injection, she will live. Maybe go on to be a Pilot.”
Hope came back. At least he wouldn’t have done this for nothing.
“Now, as I said, your life here is over. No one can do what you did and escape the Federation.”
Igor and Boris straightened, facing her, while Maritschka’s sobbing ebbed as the news of her daughter’s survival sank in. Her voice came as a murmur. “You promise she will survive? Her leukemia?”
“I cannot promise, Madam. But I believe she stands a fair chance. However, she will be under a special medical surveillance all her life. She will owe a great deal of work to the Federation. But I am confident she will live and see more of the universe than I ever did.”
“Then you can kill me now. I’ve done my job.” Maritschka was now standing upright, facing the Marine. Boris felt so proud of her.
“You know, I don’t enjoy killing. I’m here to protect. The Federation Marine has a special section for people whose past may need to be forgotten but who show concern for others. This section doesn’t allow for psychopaths or mindless killers. And a Pilot needs her parents and friends if she is to achieve her capacity.”
Igor’s laugh broke the tension. “They’ve got a bloody Légion Étrangère.” The French Corps had survived under different European governments, engaged, like all Elite corps, in the recurring conflict.
