The Tyr: Arrival #1 The Tyr Trilogy

by Richard Fox

“Will heal itself in a bit.” Clay looked up at the smoke-filled sky. “Did you…did you really run over me with a tank?”

  “You’re alive, aren’t you? Thank the soldier driving. I was looking for something useful to do while you were fighting that other one…found a tank platoon that needed some more leadership,” Fastal said.

  “I need to get out of this and—”

  “General?” Elsime was sobbing. One hand clutched the king’s crown; the other gripped the royal seal. “He’s….he’s dead. The King is dead!”

  Fastal stood, emotions unfit for a leader clouding his face.

  “Not just him,” the scribe said, “but the marshal, and the Speaker and…” She collapsed to her knees, crying even harder. “I don’t know what to do! I just…I don’t know what to do.” She struck herself in the face with the seal and Fastal grabbed her by the wrists.

  “Stop, stop for a moment.” The general hugged her and looked over the carnage around them. Tanks were parked around the hangar where Menicus had died. Close Guard and soldiers raced about, shouting through the chaos.

  “You stay here with him.” Fastal lifted Elsime’s chin up and looked her in the eyes. “You have the crown. The seal. We have to get them to Prince Riktan…he’s the King now. The evacuation order for the Azure Islands, was it sent?”

  “We couldn’t get a radio signal so the King…he,” she sniffed hard and waved the crown at a burning plane, “he sent a scroll by air, but I don’t know if—”

  “Another problem to solve. Both of you stay here.” Fastal stood, adjusted his pistol belt, and marched toward the King’s hangar, a degree of confidence in his stride.

  “Where are you going?” Clay asked.

  “To take charge!”

  “Why?” Elsime asked quietly. “Why are your people so horrible?”

  “Because,” Clay said as he pushed himself up with stiff arms to sit on his side, “because we can be. Because we want to be…and sometimes because we must be. We aren’t all good, we’re not all evil…you’re just seeing the worst of us right now. I can’t apologize for it. I can just fight it.”

  Elsime nodded slightly, then used the hem of her scribe’s apron to clean soot off the crown.

  Chapter 40

  Garta rubbed sleep out of his eyes, then went back to staring at the darkening horizon as the sun set. It was too early to sleep, but they’d been on duty for over a day straight and his body took the hint of nightfall as a promise to lie down and rest.

  He was outside the Slinger air defense vehicle, standing in a line of bushes that came up to his shoulders. The sparse forest around them didn’t offer much cover and was just thick enough to make a maze of driving into and out of their position.

  The sound of jets in the distance perked his ears up. He looked over at the Sling where Nemsi sat next to the treads, tossing pebbles into a plastic cup.

  “Is Estan awake?” he asked.

  “Course I am,” came from the turret. “Why? We allowed to sleep?”

  “Anything on the wire?” Garta brought his binoculars up and traced a contrail through the sky that ended in a snarl of smoke. He lowered the binoculars for a split second, then put them back to his eyes. “Anything on the wire?” he asked louder.

  “No, all quiet.” Estan pushed against the radar scattering canopy above the turret. “Why? What’s happening?”

  “I think there’s a fight up there,” Garta said. “But if there is one…how come we’re not hearing anything about it? Fly-boys love talking about themselves up there.”

  “Commo line check back to platoon is good,” Estan said. “Want me to tell them we’re under attack? That’ll get the sergeant out here to talk to us real quick.”

  “We’re under attack?” Nemsi stood up and clutched his rifle to his chest.

  “I don’t know for sure. Maybe this is another one of Riktan’s snap inspections and they’re doing some air-to-air exercises, but it looks like something got hit up there,” Garta said.

  There was a sudden rush of air and a blur swept over them. Treetops swayed in the wake and the poles holding up the anti-radar canopy groaned.

  “Hold ’em up! Hold ’em!” Garta ran to the nearest one and braced himself beneath it. The pole shook for a moment, but a strange tremor kept running through it.

  “Shit! Can we start shooting?” Nemsi shouted. “Because I felt threatened!”

  “Shoot at what?” Garta stepped back but kept a hand on the pole as the thrum continued. “Nemsi, you feel that?”

  “Look.” Nemsi pointed up at the nets.

  An eldritch light, like the aurora Garta remembered from the skies of his childhood, played across the upper layer of the nets, casting waving lines onto them.

  “That supposed to happen?” Nemsi set his rifle on top of the vehicle and held out his palms to see the light dance across his skin. The rifle rattled against the metal, then floated up a few inches.

  “Nemsi…secure your weapon,” Garta said quietly.

  “Whoa, what?” Estan had his head out of the turret, handset to one ear. The muzzle of the weapon tilted up and touched the bottom of the netting. An arc of electricity ran down the barrel and hit the wooden stock, blowing it apart and igniting the bullets in the magazine.

  Garta hit the dirt, the ping of bullets ricocheting off trees and rocks all around him.

  “Everyone OK?” he called out.

  “I’m hit! Ah, shit, it stings,” came from the turret.

  Garta took a tentative look over the top and saw Estan pulling himself out with one arm, the other shoulder a deep violet with blood. Garta grabbed handfuls of Estan’s uniform top and dragged him to the ground with as much grace and gentleness as he could.

  “Nemsi! Nemsi, where are you?” Garta ripped open the field-dressing pouch clipped to Estan’s belt and slapped it onto the wound.

  “Sir?” Nemsi was on the ground, doing his best to crawl into his helmet.

  “Can you walk?” Garta asked.

  “Yeah, yeah, ah gods, it hurts.” Estan put his hand over the bandage and grit his teeth.

  “Bullet’s still in him. Take him back to platoon and to the medic,” Garta said, grabbing Nemsi and hauling him to his feet. “You understand?”

  “But I’ll have to leave and—”

  Garta slapped Nemsi on the side of his helmet and shoved him into Estan. “Go! Get moving and tell them…whatever just happened by the light of the dark moon because I don’t know. Now move!” Garta got onto the top of the vehicle, the smell of burnt wood and spent gunpowder all around him, and climbed into the turret.

  He tested the manual controls for the weapons and double-checked that each of the eight heavy machine guns had a chain of bullets loaded up.

  “They never mention shit like this back at training. It’s always duty to our nobles, to the clans and to—”

  He did a double take up through the netting.

  There was a darkness above him, its shape barely visible through the gaps, barely more than a hundred yards away. The fillings in his teeth began to warm up and he took a swig from the canteen Estan had left behind. Sparks snapped on the rim as he brought it to his mouth and he dropped it with a yelp.

  The darkness was still there, somehow hovering overhead, though he didn’t hear the whirl of blades from a helicopter or roar of an engine that would have to be present to keep…whatever it was from falling out of the sky.

  A solid beam of light snapped out from the object and split the sky as a distant explosion rolled over his position.

  “Master Gottal, lord of my caste, witness my deeds…” He pulled the safety lever on either side of the inner turret and heard clacks as rounds settled into the machine guns’ breeches. He turned a wheel and the barrels rose higher and higher.

  Flipping the guard off the firing trigger, he did a few mental calculations, then lowered the angle on his machine guns a bit.

  The dark shape began to slide to one side.

  Garta squeezed the trigger and the
machine guns roared to life, shredding through the nets and sending burning bits of plastic billowing out like leaves off a burning tree. Rounds hit the dark shape—or at least they seemed to—as tracers veered off target at ninety-degree angles before they hit.

  There was a brief flash of light and the shape bucked up.

  Garta stopped firing, the reek of gunpowder and burnt plastic all around him. He spun the manual controls wildly, slewing the turret to line up on the object again as it wobbled through the air like a poorly thrown oblong ball.

  He fired ahead of the object’s path and it passed through a hailstorm of bullets. Sparks bounced off against the hull and the object dropped like a stone. Garta stood up in the turret as it crashed down a hillside ahead of him.

  “Platoon, this is Slinger two,” he said into the handset. “Hostile…burned. I repeat, one hostile burned.”

  No answer.

  He struggled out of what remained of the netting and jumped off the vehicle. He was only a few steps into a run when he turned right around and retrieved his rifle from the back of the Slinger before running to a tree on the other side of the clearing.

  The heat in his fillings was gone, as was the constant thrumming he’d felt earlier.

  He went from tree to tree, cover to cover, until he got to the top of a ravine.

  Below was a Compliance Force support tender, a disk-shaped craft the size of his company barracks hall. One third was a crumpled mess. Steam bubbled up from beneath where it had crashed onto a stream, and the hull creaked and moaned as the anti-grav engines malfunctioned, shifting the ship around like it was a beast dying in the woods with an arrow in its back.

  “Whoa…” Garta didn’t understand what he saw, but he was certain it wasn’t some heretic bomber. He looked back at his Sling, then down at the fallen craft. By regulation and training, he was supposed to search for the pilot or crew and take them prisoner.

  He considered the rifle in his hands, then backed away from the edge and ran back to his vehicle.

  Chapter 41

  Hower stood in a holo capture of the hangar where King Menicus lay surrounded by Close Guard. The scientist looked over the King, the bandages across his stomach and the tourniquets on both legs. He flicked a hand over the King and sensor data appeared.

  “Yes, those wounds are fatal,” Hower said. “Tyr aren’t that physiologically different from most humans. The blood loss, body temperature. Did your man intend to go down there and slaughter most of the key members of the kingdom’s ruling apparatus?”

  “The target was Clay,” said a holo of Hulegu, naked from the waist up. The prosthetics of his left arm and shoulder ended in a tangled mess of faux muscles and metal rods. “We didn’t know the indig pooh-bah was there.”

  “My, my,” Zike said, striding through the holo set, his hands clasped behind his back. “My, this does complicate things, doesn’t it? What do the Tyr do in the event of a leadership vacuum? Bidding to take over the tax-collection system? Proxy war games, perhaps?”

  “Simple bloodline. There’s Prince Riktan…who’s in command of one of the kingdom’s army corps,” Hower said. “The King has two younger sisters, but they’re not even of age to—”

  “So nothing that we can influence to keep the Tyr compliant. Is what you’re telling me?” Zike stopped and stood in the center of the projection of the dying Menicus.

  “I’m a xeno-biologist, not a politician,” Hower said. “If you need an expert opinion on that, you should’ve asked the Clays.”

  “Speaking of, did you eliminate him?” Zike asked Hulegu.

  “Things got a little fuzzy before I was extracted.” Hulegu shrugged. “We held off on a saturation bombing to maintain the plausibility that the King’s death was unintentional. Which it was.”

  “I daresay that the time for subtlety is over, yes?” Zike rocked back and forth on his feet. “We should take advantage of the confusion after such an incident. Our munition expenditures will exceed projections, but there are other revenue streams to compensate.”

  “I don’t have enough immune serum for my entire ground force,” Hulegu said. “A battalion at most.”

  “Just be a bit more liberal with the air support outside our first colony,” Zike said. “Spare the hemp-analog fields. There’s some derivative potential there in the health-food market. How long until you can begin operations on the Azure Islands?”

  “Let me hot swap this,” Hulegu raised his arm stump, “and break out the ready company. Three hours to landfall.”

  “Good. See to it.” Zike waved a hand and the holo faded into shrinking pixels.

  “That it, then?” Hower asked. “I can finally go home?”

  “Hmm? No, out of the question. Your insight has proven to be more than value-added. Besides, sending you through the wormhole now would use up resources I need for the colony.”

  “You promised—”

  “When it suits me and no sooner.” Zike looked at him and the corner of his mouth twitched. “And no later. Report to the bridge when the first landings begin. I may need your insight on local carrion species. Nothing like the smell of death and decay to ruin a colonist’s first impression.”

  Zike walked out of the holo chamber and into a passageway, almost running into Argent, who chased after Zike with a slate in her hands.

  Hower clapped his hands twice and a screen appeared in front of him. He tapped at it and the airfield formed around him. He traced a circle on the screen and time shifted around him until Clay was at his feet, synth layer damaged, a look of hatred in his eyes. The fast-approaching tank was a frozen blur.

  “Stop it,” Hower hissed. “Stop helping them. You can’t…wait. If you’re here, then where are Sarah and Michael? They don’t deserve to die because of your guilty conscience. Hmm…”

  He swiped across the holo panel and a globe of the planet coalesced in front of him.

  Chapter 42

  Camacho awoke with a gasp as freezing air filled his lungs. Hacking and struggling against the metal braces squeezing his upper arms and knees, his breath frosted against the glass tube encasing him.

  The adrenaline of breaking out of cryo would only last a few more seconds, he knew. The drag of withdrawal was already clouding his mind and radiating out from his stomach as nausea and pain.

  “Unit eight-charlie, you ready to work?” Solanus’s voice began and ended with a click from cheap speakers.

  “Fix…fix me already!” Camacho’s teeth chattered, but not from the cold.

  A syringe popped out from the side of his bracer and jabbed into his neck. Relief came a few heartbeats later and his brain flooded with just enough serotonin to stop his mind from itching.

  “Congrats, you’ve been promoted to squad leader. Comes with a few extra additives to your drip,” Solanus said.

  “What…what happened to Top G?” Camacho’s teeth ached as more of the drug took hold.

  “Had his last ride during reanimation. Didn’t quite earn out. Shame, eh? System’s got you on 9cc’s of Rex…this’ll be your sixth employment and that makes you eligible for an upgrade on top of your promotion. You want it?” Solanus asked.

  “Yes. Yes!”

  The needle jabbed him again and a dull bliss filled him.

  “Enjoy the glow. Just know the come-down gets a bit worse with each up-bump. Get your shit on.”

  The tube encasing him rotated in time with the bracers and left him standing on a small step inside his cryo pod. His threadbare orange shorts chafed his skin as he stumbled out onto a catwalk overlooking a canyon of stacked rows of cryopods, the upper layers still holding their human cargo.

  There was a groan next to him. A chubby man, his body covered in a sheen of sweat, was on his knees, hands gripping the bars. He banged one side of his head against one bar, then the other side against another.

  “Move.” Camacho nudged the man with his foot. “The sooner you get in your gear, the sooner you’re on the drip.”

  “They’re not giving
me enough,” the man said with a raspy voice.

  “You get enough kills, they’ll up your dose. You don’t get shit for bitching about it.” Camacho stepped over him and joined a shambling line of fellow soldiers moving down the walkway. Most had crude tattoos on their exposed upper bodies, but others had scar tissue brands.

  Shuffling past open pods, he eyed the stenciled codes, counting down until he got to CCI-37—the shut pod. Through a clear pane, Camacho saw a dead man, his face gaunt and eyes rolled back in his head. Small tally marks scarred his entire forehead.

  Camacho tapped two fingers to his lips and held them up in salute to the corpse as he passed.

  He went around a corner and into a large hangar, where squat platforms moved bulky suits of armor to numbered boxes painted on the floor. Camacho and the rest of the crowd waited behind a faded red line. The robots moving the suits didn’t much care if they ran over anyone as they delivered their cargo.

  Men and women sniffed hard and rubbed their eyes and noses, looking at the armor as if awaiting a feast following a long fast.

  “Anyone know where we are?” someone asked.

  “Not Caliph space; loadout’s all wrong.”

  “Shit…this an indig sweep?”

  “What’s the matter, Kay-Kay? You thought there’d be rape for dinner?”

  There were a few strained chuckles.

  Camacho scanned the suits, each with hunched shoulders and open down a center line for whoever would don the armor. Most were daubed in crude sigils, while others had fetishes of bones and metal dangling from the arms and chest plates.

  His eyes locked on one with a rune matching the tattoos on both his arms.

  A green light flashed on the ceiling and a siren blared as the last mobile platform stopped in place.

  The soldiers ran forward like a starting gun had fired. Camacho shoulder-checked a woman off her feet when she tried to cut in front of him and she went face-first into a leg of a suit. A hand caught him by the ankle and he fell forward, turning the fall into a forward roll. He lost his footing in an oil slick, but struggled back into his sprint.