by Bob Mayer
Leahy rolled the Tesla computer inside. Green Tesla lights flickered alive. The door shut behind her, with a solid thud, and her ears popped as she adjusted to the higher air pressure. This was over a mile in altitude and the interior was kept at a slight over-pressure for sea level.
The tunnel was carved out of the mountain sandstone. She went twenty meters to a three-way junction. Turn left, another ten meters, another three-way junction. Her arm ached from pulling the computer and she felt a moment’s irritation with her grandfather’s obsession with security and mazes.
She immediately chided herself for the blasphemy.
Four intersections and turns later, she arrived at the lab. Wood tables, gear strewn about. Tesla might have been obsessive about some things, but organization wasn’t one of them. She opened the case and put the Tesla computer on a table.
Leahy put her hands on the computer and the surface transformed from black to silver. She accessed her Ethos subtext, taking a look at the latest version of Mrs. Parrish’s Strategy.
At the moment it was aligned with Leahy’s own and she was as satisfied as her former employer.
She was getting ready to contact Turcotte via secure satcom when a door on the other side of the lab swung open. Leahy removed her hands from the Tesla computer and greeted the newcomer: “Hello, Asha. It’s been a while. How are things progressing?”
NEVADA TEST SITE
It took Mickell twenty minutes to update Colonel Rennie on the situation. The New Zealander listened patiently, not interrupting, knowing the value of dissemination of information, which was what the military called an update, because update doesn’t sound sophisticated enough.
Rennie’s first question cut to the largest issue. “The Swarm spaceship. It’s going to kill everyone?”
“That’s the word,” Mickell said. “Apparently it’s some sort of intergalactic parasite. It’s huge; unbelievably huge.”
Rennie looked down. His men were spread along the iron spiral staircase. None were within earshot. “Lots of my troopers have family back home.”
“Soldiers always have family back home,” Mickell said.
“Aye,” Rennie said, “but you’re telling me their families are going to die.”
“We’re all going to die as things stand now,” Mickell said. “I’m not trying to be an asshole, but that’s the reality.”
“I assume my men and I will not have a space on the mothership,” Rennie said.
“I don’t know what the plan is,” Mickell said. “We’ve got to get control of the ship first.”
“How do—“ he paused as his radioman climbed up the stairs.
“Sorry, sir,” the sergeant said. “But thought you might want to know we’re picking up news that India and Pakistan are at war. With nuclear weapons.”
“Ratfuck,” Rennie said. “Anything else?”
“Lots of stuff going on, sir,” the man answered, “but that’s the headline.”
“Thank you,” Rennie said.
The radioman went back to his position, monitoring.
“That’s close to home,” Rennie said. “I know you’re telling me the hard realities. I understand them. You think your mate’s plan, Turcotte’s, will work?”
“It’s our best shot,” Mickell said. “But we’re going to need the mothership. Without it, we have nothing.”
“They’ve got more firepower than us. Apaches, Bradley fighting vehicles and at least two hundred troops.”
“Turcotte said he’d come up with a plan on his way back from Mars.”
“Better be a good one.”
PRIVATE ISLAND, PUGET SOUND
“He lived well,” Nekhbet said as she wandered Vampyr’s palace with Nosferatu. “Nicer than you did on the Skeleton Coast.”
“He was greedy,” Vampyr said, staring at a room littered with stacks of currency. Whoever had been working here had done some plundering.
“Why not be greedy?” Nekhbet said. “Is there something wrong with that?”
“His wealth didn’t do him any good in the end,” Nosferatu pointed out.
“Ah,” Nekhbet said, draping an arm over his shoulder, “that is because Vampyr made the mistake of crossing swords with one who was his superior.”
“I was lucky,” Nosferatu said.
“You were smarter.”
He smiled. “True.” He kissed Nekhbet. “You always say the right things.”
“Not always,” Nekhbet said. “Sometimes—oh, look.”
She pointed at a large mural on the wall of a ballroom. It depicted the Giza Plateau during the First Age of Egypt when the Airlia ruled, just after the Atlantean Civil War; it was fifty-five hundred years before Khufu would build the Great Pyramid. The plateau was graced by a large black Sphinx, three hundred feet long, resting inside a depression carved into the stone. It had red eyes that glittered and guarded the entrance to the Roads of Rostau.
Thousands of humans were supplicating around the depression. On top of the head of the Sphinx were two wooden X’s. Strapped to the Xs were two figures. Another figure was held to the side by some priests.
“Is that--” Nekhbet was pointing at those figures and couldn’t finish the question.
“Yes. That’s you. And Chatha and Lilith on the crosses.” He sighed. “This is what Vampyr and I saw after we escaped the Roads. You were captured along with them. Do you remember?”
Nekhbet frowned. “Chatha and Lilith.” She squeezed her eyes shut. “That is a memory I wish had been washed away with the others. Why are the painful ones the easiest to recall? They were bound to those crosses with wet leather. They died slowly, terribly, as the leather dried and crushed their limbs. I remember hearing their bones cracking. Their screams.” She turned from the mural. “Lilith. She was Vampyr’s sister?”
“She was,” Nosferatu said. “Come.” He took her hand and drew her away from the mural.
They reached the tunnel leading to the breached vault. The door, acid burn through the center, was wide open.
“Vampyr lusted for power,” Nosferatu said. He indicated the console. “Launch control for nuclear missiles spread around the island.” The black cases on the table. “Tactical nuclear warheads. But the centerpiece, as we feared, is missing.”
“And that is?” Nekhbet asked.
“Mrs. Parrish named her project appropriately,” Nosferatu said. “The Danse Macabre. The Dance of Death. You slept through the Black Death. The humans, who remember little, do remember that. It almost wiped them out. It was let loose by one of the Shadows, I forget which. The Danse was the way the humans portrayed the inevitability of death. It takes everyone, eventually.”
“Even us,” Nekhbet said, and it wasn’t a question.
“Even us,” Nosferatu repeated. “Even the Airlia.”
“The Swarm?”
Nosferatu shrugged. “I imagine. All that lives must die. Even the universe.”
Nekhbet shivered. “So morbid. What is this Danse Macabre of Vampyr? How could it be worse than these weapons?”
Nosferatu indicated where the BioCube had been. “Vampyr gathered the worst biological weapons humans could concoct. The three most deadly. So dangerous, their makers destroyed them. But Vampyr got samples. American, Russian and Japanese. I imagine some of whatever the Mission was making before it was destroyed played a role. Each one with ninety-nine percent lethality; all capable of being spread by air. That makes them extraordinarily dangerous as opposed to viruses that requires more difficult vectors.”
“You knew he was doing this?”
“Of course,” Nosferatu said. “As he knew everything I was doing. And the Watchers watched. A pretty dance over the ages. Now we are at the last dance.”
“Why would he want this?” Nekhbet asked.
“That is why I told you the story of when he was Vlad the Impaler.”
“He was crazy,” Nekhbet said.
“The loss of his sister was hard on him,” Nosferatu said. “And—“ he stopped.
&nb
sp; “And what?” Nekhbet demanded.
“Living as long as Vampyr did takes a toll on the mind.”
Surprisingly, Nekhbet smiled. “And as long as you have, correct my love?”
Nosferatu nodded. “Yes.”
“So I am not the only crazy one here.”
Nosferatu also smiled. “No, you are not.”
“Why are we here?” Nekhbet asked. “If you feared this Danse thing was already missing?”
“This is the last place it was, so it’s the first place to look to find it.”
Nekhbet puzzled over that one for a second. “Doesn’t this Leahy have access to Mrs. Parrish’s Strategy or whatever?”
“Yes. But she says she can’t get a fix on the BioCube they’re contained in. Apparently Mrs. Parrish is hiding it from herself. The ultimate protection.”
Nekhbet sniffed. “It stinks in here. Acids and death. There were a number of blood trails outside. Who knows? Maybe someone’s alive? Or we can find something on the bodies?”
“Do you want to find the BioCube or blood?” Nosferatu asked.
“Why can’t I have both?”
“Why not,” Nosferatu agreed. He picked up one of the tac nukes.
“Why are you taking that?” Nekhbet asked.
“Just in case.”
Nekhbet nodded. “Always good to be ready.”
Nosferatu led the way out. Just before they got to the open front doors, he put the tac nuke down. They both slipped their sunglasses on and pulled their hoods up.
Nekhbet looked behind them at the large entryway. “Why would Vampyr leave all this for someone to find and use?”
“To nurse his anger,” Nosferatu said. “It was what kept him going through the ages. Hatred.”
“And what kept you going?” Nekhbet asked.
“You.”
CYDONIA, MARS
“Move!” Nyx snapped, after almost tripping over the dog for the third time.
Labby barely budged.
They were two hundred meters below the control center. Three black metal poles, made of the same material as the hull of the mothership, held the ruby sphere in the center of an open space. It was a red, multifaceted sphere, five meters in diameter. Its glow was dim, indicating the base was drawing little power from a source powerful to energize a mothership into FTLT.
She went to a console on the platform that extended around the open space. Tapped the surface, revealing high rune writing and hexagonal command panels.
Nyx accessed the destruct program and followed the steps. At step number four the ceiling above the sphere rumbled open for the first time in millennia, exposing a shaft leading to the surface. The console indicated the surface hatch was still secure.
Nyx laughed, a bit manically. If the upper hatch hadn’t been, she’d be spaced right now. Just like Yerz.
That brought her to an abrupt halt. She didn’t need regress to feel and remember those moments. Her grief in the months after, combined with the obsessive research she’d done on spacing, had almost caused her leader to ‘retire’ her’. Instead she’d been forced to take medication, until she managed, outwardly at least, to appear stable.
Her own attempts at spacing had always stopped short of zero oxygen and were done inside the relative warmth of the command center. True spacing?
Yerz had been well trained as a warrior. He’d known, his friends had known, what was going to happen. Every warrior was required during training to open their helmets for five seconds while in space. Despite their training, and the constant admonitions of the cadre, a few trainees forgot the first rule: do not try to hold your breath before opening. Expel all. A handful panicked and held their breath; they would never become warriors because they were dead: the air they were holding had immediately ruptured their lungs.
Those who had expelled didn’t rupture their lungs and didn’t lose consciousness for a little bit. She knew Yerz and the others hadn’t, because they’d continue to gesture after taking their helmets off, surviving off what was in their blood stream. But there was more to spacing than breathing. Within 10 seconds the skin on their heads, then spreading through the body, began to swell as the water in it started to vaporize without the suit’s pressure. The tongue began to boil if the mouth was open.
Finally, by 15 seconds, an interminable amount of time as Nyx had watched, blessed unconsciousness. Some of them might have still been alive for two minutes, but not much longer than that as the oxygen was gone from their blood. The motionless bodies had floated in front of the mothership, slowly freezing as their suits gave up their warmth.
And they would be there, floating in space forever. Frozen corpses. Fleet would never recover the bodies of traitors to the race.
Labby barked, jarring Nyx out of her awful memory.
“Shut up,” Nyx mumbled, trying to figure out where she was and what she was doing. A flashback from regress. It was known to happen. More powerful than an ordinary memory, but not induced by regress nanites. Too much use of the drug could start blurring an addict’s sense of reality and time.
Nyx looked at the console. The next command was blinking, waiting for her touch. She tapped in the authorization. Two of the three rods holding the ruby sphere in place disconnected with echoing clicks. The rods pulled back, leaving only a single one holding the power source. That rod slid upward, via a slot in the wall, taking the ruby sphere with it.
Nyx watched, still haunted by the regress after-memory of Yerz’s sacrifice. She’d watched broadcasts from Earth, where human monks of a particular sect had immolated themselves as a protest against a war. Yerz and his fellow warriors had done the same in a similarly horrible fashion.
Nevertheless, as the monks’ actions on Earth had not stopped the war, Yerz’s actions had not stopped anything. Even the shuttle Nyx was aboard had continued on its journey, offloading the rest of the passengers. She’d been removed from the craft by her destination mothership’s Kortad and sedated. They were in FTLT toward this solar system before she’d been brought back to consciousness.
Labby barked once more, as if doing the computer’s business.
“Shut up,” Nyx said in a firmer voice. The dog tucked its tail between its legs and dropped its head, making her feel guilty. It wasn’t the creature’s fault she was reliving the worst moment of her life.
She looked up. The sphere was still moving.
Nyx shut the lower door, sealing the shaft.
“Come,” Nyx said. She led the dog to the lift and they took it to the command center. By the time they arrived, the outer shield door was opening, a puff of air escaping.
The top of the ruby sphere appeared. The attachment rod levered it upward and locked in place.
“All set for the end,” Nyx said.
A half-dozen alerts were blinking on various consoles. It seemed some subsystems were objecting to current events. Nyx gave a bitter laugh. The machines were having more trouble reconciling to their demise than she.
She did a quick check and one indicator caught her attention.
The msats had spotted a spaceship departing Earth orbit. She zeroed in on the craft and it was something she’d seen before: the Fynbar was coming back.
Which raised an interesting conundrum, depending on its arrival relative to the Swarm’s. Nyx sat down and began crunching the numbers, given the data available. Without the Sentinels and only limited surface array, she couldn’t be sure of the Swarm scouts ships arrival time. Also, the lead scout ships were in the asteroid belt, which presented background clutter.
The Battle Core was much easier. It was entering the asteroid belt, still slowing.
The Fynbar would get here at least 36 hours before the Core. The scout ships were a more iffy proposition.
Would the computer detonate the ruby sphere with the arrival of the human ship? Or would it want to wait for the scout ships? Or the Core? It wasn’t clear if the Core would stop at Mars. Nyx had no doubt the Swarm had already scanned the system and was well aware Earth
was the planet to reap.
She wondered why the Fynbar was returning, and as soon as she wondered it, she knew the answer. It was on the surface. They were going to try to power up the mothership and escape.
Nyx walked over to the display showing the ruby sphere.
So much power.
She remained there, contemplating it, thinking so deeply she didn’t even notice Labby lay down next to her.
EN ROUTE TO MARS
Yakov was staring at the body in the regeneration tube.
Turcotte slid out of the pilot’s seat and joined him. “A ruble for your thoughts, my friend?”
“A ruble is not worth much right now, is it?” Yakov rubbed his beard. “So if Mrs. Parrish has her husband’s essence uploaded into a ka she can bring him back to life in this body?”
“That’s the theory,” Turcotte said. “Duncan and her husband did it for millennia. But, as you saw, she didn’t recommend it. Her husband’s ka was destroyed at the battle of Camlann. And she took hers into Mars.”
“A form of immortality,” Yakov said. “What was offered with the Grail. Also what many religions offer. Life beyond death.”
“Getting philosophical?” Turcotte asked.
“Nothing else to do until we get to Mars,” Yakov said. “Honestly, I’d rather be here than back on Earth.”
Turcotte nodded. “Yeah. I don’t understand people. Even after all my deployments and seeing the worst of people. I also saw some of the best. But it looks like the worst are winning out.”
“In Russia we take that for granted. It is why we could live with Stalin. With Putin. Yet the people still have spirit, My mama for instance—“ he was interrupted by the buzz of the flexpad. “Parrish or Leahy? Wish to wager?”
“I got nothing left to wager,” Turcotte said.
“Ah, you have all the lumber industry in North America.”
“Lucky me.” Turcotte hit the little green button.
Leahy’s face appeared. Her backdrop appeared the same as at Colorado Springs.
