No Surrender

by Kevin J. Anderson

  “I’m empty,” Ix Chel sent. “Somebody pick me up!”

  “I’ve got it.” Gort chased the depleted mass. He ordered his spiders to load the metananovirus from a warhead into his flamethrower’s reservoir. He made a strafing run across the surface of Rutog cloud, hosing the metananovirus across its outer membrane.

  The membrane crinkled and shrank, hardening.

  The cloud ship sloughed off the solidified outer layer of itself along with a sacrificial soft layer of still living Rutogs underneath it. The membrane healed over.

  “Gak!” Zack hadn’t meant to yell. The sound just came out of his throat. An ejected Rutog splatted on his bubble canopy. Rows of waving cilia pawed at the clear polymer. Then it froze there, dead.

  Zack could tell that Rittenhouse wanted to call down damnations. Instead Rittenhouse spoke a cold assessment. “We’re spending our lethal weapon to little effect. The missiles are not penetrating deep enough and they’re not disseminating the metananovirus wide enough. We’re committing too concentrated a dose. We are needful of a means to scatter the virus throughout the cloud so the Rutogs can't segregate the infection and excise it.”

  Boxer proposed: “I shall carry virus in to the heart of the largest mass and broadcast it and come out the other side.”

  That proposal promised the highest probability of success.

  It also carried a high risk of machine fatality.

  Boxer knew his duty as the spare.

  The Rutogs took no notice of the human preparations.

  “Mighty accommodating of the enemy to ignore us like this,” Gort observed uneasily.

  Rittenhouse knew what the alien disinterest signified and it wasn’t good. “They’re busy forming a warp. Stop them, Boxer.”

  Rittenhouse sent Boxer on his way. “God speed.”

  Boxer plunged in to a cloud ship. The dense mass impeded his progress. The ship was built for travel in a vacuum, not tunneling. Boxer kept on slogging deeper toward the cloud ship’s core.

  As he neared the center he began shedding nanites. The metananovirus transformed all the gaseous Rutogs they touched into dead solids and the infection spread.

  “Yeah!” someone yelled.

  A crust formed around Boxer.

  The cloud ship contracted. The surface rippled, shriveling with the growing darkness solidifying the cloud core.

  In a single violent heave, the Rutog cloud shattered, vomiting out its collapsing heart.

  The uninfected Rutog shards swarmed together and reformed a protective membrane around them.

  “Shit!” someone cried. That could’ve been any of them.

  “Where’s Boxer?”

  Zack located Boxer's remains in the midst of the ejecta. The ship was entombed in solid dead Rutogs.

  “Boxer! Respond!” Rittenhouse commanded.

  That was a useless thing to say.

  Ix Chel made a burning pass with a flamethrower across the shell of the mass, screeching. It was like trying to put out the Great Chicago Fire with a water pistol. And this was only one cloud ship in this battle group.

  And the enemy was finally showing some mind to strike back. Smaller cloud ships came out to harry the Daggers. Rutogs attached themselves to the Daggers’ hulls. Sounds like drilling whined at Zack’s bulkhead, while the rest of the Rutogs continued their build up for a warp. It was a monumental move for them.

  Rittenhouse told the team, “We need to get to the Intersection first. We need to report what’s not working here.”

  “We have a lot of that particular data!” Gretch said.

  “Form up. Move out,” Rittenhouse ordered.

  On the team’s final warp—the warp that took them at last to the Intersection—Zack braced to be met with a Poseidon bolt.

  But none of the traitorous mobile forts or smart turrets remained at the chokepoint.

  The Intersection stood desolate.

  “Where is everyone?” Ix Chel sounded spooked.

  “Gone through the Intersection to shoot human beings,” Umber guessed.

  Rittenhouse dispatched data darts through the Intersection. It was useless. Those messages would arrive along with the traitor forts five years in the future.

  The darts carried the message you don't ever want to send when you are on a five-year time delay: Invasion imminent.

  6.

  Zack squared his ship John Henry in front of the Intersection and stared at its purple-blue-black surface. He said, "Nothing goes through the Intersection without a tracer. Everything that comes back through the Intersection comes back to a date five years after it left."

  Ix Chel followed where he was going. "You're thinking the tracers are causing the five year gap on the return leg."

  “That is what I’m thinking,” Zack said.

  Rittenhouse asked the Dagger ships to weigh in on the possibility of a connection between the time differential and the tracers.

  All the pilots joined in the expected chorus as the ships answered: "Insufficient data."

  Rittenhouse stripped the tracer off a data dart and prepared to send it through the Intersection. He loaded into the data dart the warning of imminent invasion and advised the Citadel not to automatically fire at everything that came through without a tracer. He advised that a human look at the target before firing.

  Gretch’s voice sounded flat. “You’re sending a dart without a tracer to tell them not to shoot something that doesn’t have a tracer. You know they’re just going to obliterate the messenger.”

  “I have a need to take the shot,” Rittenhouse said. “Now.”

  He included a message in the dart requesting that the receiver acknowledge immediately via return dart.

  He shot the data dart through the Intersection.

  No acknowledgment came back.

  Exasperated Gretchly noises sounded over the com. "They didn’t acknowledge because they haven’t got the message yet. Is there any semi-solid reason in the universe to think tracers are the reason for the time lag?"

  Zack answered that. "My Dad came back the same year as he left. He wasn't carrying his tracer. His tracer is still here."

  "That doesn't prove a connection between tracers and the time differential," Gretch said.

  "No,” Zack said. “But I want to try to repeat the experiment."

  "Without a tracer?” Ix Chel said, alarmed. “Don’t. Brother, you’ll be shot in the gate."

  Zack ignored her. "John Henry!”

  “John Henry, aye.”

  “Boxer sent AC Cade through the Intersection without a tracer. Autodefense should have shot him. True?"

  "Negative. Not true.” John Henry responded. “Autofire should not have engaged. An SOS has precedence over all automatic signals."

  Between the missing tracer's mandate to shoot and the SOS imperative of don't shoot, the balance fell to don't shoot.

  "They held their fire," Zack said. "As sure as I'm standing here, I know they held their fire."

  The Daggers circled the wagons.

  Zack instructed one of his ship’s spiders to pull his tracer. It didn’t hurt, but Zack tasted blood. He cleaned off the tracer and gave it over to Rittenhouse. He also gave AC Cade's tracer to Rittenhouse.

  Zack pulled his life bag out of its compartment. He told his ship, "John Henry, stay with the squadron."

  "You are going home without me?" John Henry asked.

  "Yes."

  "I feel naked," John Henry said.

  "John Henry, you can't feel anything."

  Rittenhouse stood by with his back against a partition, his arms crossed, one ankle crossed over the other, observing. He spoke at last. “Now, I’m aware that I am just the one in command here, but I was wondering if you could do the kindness of informing me in which craft you intend to travel through the Intersection, sir?"

  "I want John Henry to send me home the exact same way Boxer sent AC Cade. In a medical bag, without a tracer, and signaling SOS. You know how to do that, John Henry?"

  "Ay
e. I do," said the ship John Henry. He had Boxer’s records.

  “Someone needs to get the word across,” Zack told Rittenhouse. “Now.”

  Rittenhouse wagged his head side to side. “Carry on.”

  Morris Umber packed data in a bombproof capsule for Zack to carry with him. “In case your SOS isn't enough to keep all the guns of the Citadel from firing on a helpless medical bag, they still need to get the message.”

  Zack tried to give the capsule back. “I don't want to do anything different from how Boxer sent AC home.”

  John Henry advised, "Boxer sent complete records home with AC Cade."

  Rittenhouse pushed himself off the bulk to stand straight up. “Did he, now? Did he? Zack, did you hear that? That means someone over there already knows what happened to your Team Seven.”

  Zack accepted the data capsule from Umber.

  Rittenhouse told him, “Someone’s not going to be happy to see you, sir.”

  “That could be,” Zack said. Bring him, Zack thought. I want to break his face.

  Zack asked his ship, who was staying behind, "So what really are the chances of this going way down south in a hand basket, John Henry?" He expected the ship to say insufficient data.

  John Henry replied, "I am not Vegas."

  Zack let John Henry's spiders pack him into the medical sac for deployment.

  Gort Neuman paced the yurt with thumping footfalls, snarling and criticizing every move. John Henry’s spiders were doing everything precisely the same as Boxer had done for AC Cade, including the life support.

  Zack looked up from his cocoon at Gort’s lumpy hovering face. “You know, Gort, outside you’re all sour and crusty. No one sees inside you. They don’t see deep down how sour and crusty you really are.”

  Gort's face got wrinkly and none too firm. Gort spun away and snarled at the ship John Henry. "Get him the hell out of here."

  The Dagger ships broke camp.

  The ship John Henry gave the life bag a push, watched it vanish, then hovered there in the face of the Intersection like a dog waiting for his master to come home. It should have been a short wait.

  It wasn’t.

  Rittenhouse, Umber, Parras, Neuman, and Gretch in their Dagger ships stood by the Intersection, waiting for an answer to come through from the other side, any second now, even while the Rutogs in their vast planetary legions approached, lurching across space warp by massive warp. The enemy’s estimated time of arrival could be days. It could be hours. It could be the next heart beat.

  The arrival of a reply from human space should have been immediate.

  Minutes crawled into an hour. Two hours. Three. Fourteen.

  “He should be there,” Gort said.

  “Or he’s dead,” said Gretch.

  “Do you think they killed Zack?”

  “Beginning to look like it.”

  “Even if he’s dead, how long can it take to unpack the data?”

  The pilots were fighting down an impulse to move, to jump through that Intersection. But they would come out five years too late. So they waited.

  “Team Seven came here decades ago,” Gretch said.

  “Am I meant to recognize some significance attendant to that fact?” Rittenhouse asked.

  “Yeah,” Gretch said. “Why don't we go through this hole carrying Team Seven's tracers instead of ours? We should get back in no time at all.”

  “Or we could arrive before we left.” Gort suggested.

  “No,” said Morris Umber. “More likely we could hang up in the Intersection forever.”

  “I don’t like that idea,” Gretch said.

  Rittenhouse said, "Let's say you do go through carrying Dagger Team Seven’s tracers, and that you do arrive in current time. Those aren’t valid tracers. Someone went through a lot trouble to make those men not exist anymore. I am of a belief that they’ll kill you in the gate as imposters."

  "We're tough to kill," Gort said.

  “I do not wish to test the limits of your toughness quite that thoroughly, sir.”

  They fell silent, all looking toward the quiet Intersection, expecting the cavalry to charge through any second.

  Ix Chel broke the silence this time. “Why aren't they sending anything? A reply? A data dart. Anything.”

  Rittenhouse gave a low snarl then blew up. "Stuff this. John Henry!"

  Zack’s ship acknowledged, "John Henry, aye."

  "John Henry, give me your tracer. You are going through the Intersection for a quick recon on the other side."

  “Aye, sir.”

  John Henry's spiders dislodged the ship's onboard tracer and surrendered it to Lt. Rittenhouse’ ship Sherry. Sherry also collected all of John Henry's data darts, because those carried tracers too.

  “John Henry.”

  “John Henry, aye.”

  Rittenhouse instructed, “On my mark, you will pass through the Intersection. The instant you are on the other side you will broadcast all messages in your cache in a single burst then immediately reverse and report to me.”

  Even the ship could hear the unspoken if you're still alive on the end of that.

  "Aye, aye," said the ship John Henry.

  Rittenhouse added, “Bulk up your shields to maximum. Move fast. Keep your soft spots away from the towers. Don’t be gone for more than five seconds. Less is acceptable.”

  “Lieutenant?” Gort said. “You sound like my mama.”

  Rittenhouse snarled.

  "Via con Dios, compadre," Ix Chel Parras told the ship John Henry.

  "See you in a few seconds, John Henry," Morris Umber said.

  John Henry would be able to detect their false cheer. They thought John Henry was going to die.

  Lieutenant Rittenhouse sent John Henry through the Intersection on a short countdown.

  John Henry didn't come back.

  7.

  Five Dagger ships waited before the two-dimensional Intersection.

  The ships’ chronometers ticked off twenty-four hour intervals. The Rutogs’ arrival had to be imminent. By now the Dagger pilots wanted them to show.

  The Dagger pilots' coms were open. No one was talking. They'd gone quiet hours ago.

  "I know where we are,” Umber said into the long silence.

  "We're in front of the Intersection in Rutog space," Ix Chel said.

  "We're a couple parsecs and one flat hole from home," said Gretch.

  “We’re in the Sirius system,” Umber said.

  “On the other side of the Intersection, maybe, yeah, we know that. But on this side, in case you haven't noticed, we're not even in the Milky Way anymore. If fact there aren’t any galaxies at all. You’ve been staring at the hole too long, Umber.”

  “They're out there,” Umber said. “All the other galaxies. We can't detect them because they're on the other side of the event horizon."

  “Event—!” Gretch sputtered and couldn’t finish.

  "What event horizon?" Ix Chel said for Gretch.

  "The edge of the universe,” Umber said. “The universe is expanding."

  “Which universe?”

  "The universe. The only one. It's expanding faster than light. The galaxies are out there. They're moving away faster than the speed of light so we can't detect them at all. The expansion is carrying off the evidence.”

  “And just what put that notion into your head?” Rittenhouse asked.

  “Because this is what home will look like a couple trillion years from now. I think the universe is twisted round on itself. This is the Milky Way. This is the Sirius star system. The landmarks for the Intersection in normal space are Sirius A and Sirius B.”

  “That’s the first sensible sentence you’ve put together for a while, sir. You might should stop now.”

  Gretch said, “I think I would notice Sirius A or B if they were here. There aren't any normal white stars on this side anywhere.”

  “These two black dead suns right here? Those are Sirius A and B.”

  There was no starlight
on this side to see by. Only the sensors showed the two, planet-sized, burned out suns.

  “This is our far future,” Umber said.

  “I don't like it.”

  “Neither do the Rutog. It's their present.”

  The pilots fell silent again.

  Gort broke next. He roared at the Intersection from which no messages came. “What the hell are they doing!”

  “They're calling a meeting,” Ix Chel cried at her canopy. “They're drinking tea!

  "Zack didn't make it,” Gretch said. “Let's go home. Skip to the last chapter. We can see what the war looks like in five years. We won't notice the time passing.”

  “I'm not going back with any ammo left.” Gretch said.

  "I don't have any ammo," said Gort.

  "Neither do I," said Ix Chel.

  “In that case, you can go tell the Spartans,” Rittenhouse said.

  Instinct told the Daggers to stay together as team. Instinct didn't serve here. They weren’t here to survive. They were here to give the United States and the rest of humanity the best possible chance of surviving.

  “Gort. Ix. Take all the tracers and all the records.”

  Gort and Ix Chel, taking the normal route home, should arrive five years from when the team had left normal space.

  “I hope there’s still something there to see,” Gort said.

  The journey from their own point of view would take an instant so Gort and Ix Chel gave their provisions to the three who stayed behind to keep them eating and breathing for a while longer.

  “Lieutenant? Don’t die if you don’t need to,” Ix Chel said.

  Rittenhouse gave a grunt.

  Gort and Ix Chel disappeared through the Intersection, bound for five years in the future.

  Rittenhouse, Umber, and Gretch turned their backs to the Intersection. They didn’t have tracers, so they couldn’t back up. They could only stand between advancing Rutog hordes and the doorway to home.

  ***

  Zack Cade sat in an isolation cell, bright white and featureless. He got up. Paced the four paces that the space allowed, then sat. They'd taken his chronometer. He'd lost track of time. But there had been a lot of it.

  An automaton took his statement—again—then left him alone. The lights stayed on.