The Drift Wars

by James, Brett

  He leaned his head to the side and the rocket turned to follow. He considered steering it down, through the break in the hull, but the Threes might still be out there. Instead he took it straight up, back to where he started.

  — — —

  Peter and the rocket soared up the vaulting room, passing through a halo of fire—the damage of the earlier rockets. Pipes and machinery were torn and mangled. Something important had been destroyed, but Peter had no idea what.

  They flew higher, into the dark. Peter turned on his headlamp, but it was another minute before the ceiling came into view, glinting like steel. He certainly hoped it was.

  He tightened his hands on the rocket’s cone, and just before it struck the ceiling, he flipped his legs up. His timing was off, too early, and he almost fumbled his hold. But the roof was indeed made of steel; his boots locked in place.

  The rocket swung wildly and Peter nearly lost his grip. He jerked the rocket back, keeping the nose from the ceiling, and tucked it under his arm. He knew that if he let it go, it would circle back for him, so he punched the rocket’s stabilizer, an oval bulge at the rear of the housing, pounding it inward. The stabilizer sparked, releasing a puff of smoke. Peter aimed the rocket away and let go.

  The rocket spiraled into the dark and, unable to control itself, exploded against a distant pipe.

  Peter found a ladder welded to the side of a nearby pipe. He grabbed a high rung, released his boot magnets, and flipped right-side up. He climbed to a hatch in the ceiling.

  — — —

  Peter emerged into the glow of the Drift boundary. The hull had been torn away, and he saw the gridwork of rooms outlined by stubby remnants of their walls. Strings of metal twisted into the sky to where four dark shapes—fighterships—hovered overhead. Peter clicked off his helmet light and froze.

  The ships gave no indication that they had seen him. Their trapezoidal windows all faced the middle, as if huddled in conference. Peter waited several minutes and then decided to try for cover.

  He was at the bottom of a crater—the product of some massive explosion. Ahead, high on a wall, an intact hallway led into the base. Peter carefully lowered himself flat and rolled into the channel of a half-destroyed pipe. He shimmied forward.

  Halfway there he had an overpowering urge to look back. Something glinted above the fighterships. A combat suit, Peter thought, his heart sinking. But it was only debris. Linda was still out there. He pressed on, faster.

  The melted ruins curved upward until Peter was climbing. He made slow, decisive movements, easing up the coarse surface. A mangled door blocked the lower half of the hallway. He grabbed the top and flipped over, then peered back. The fighterships hadn’t moved.

  He crawled down the hall until the ships were blocked from view; then he stood and ran.

  — — —

  The hallway was pitch-black; even his low-light sensors registered nothing. He didn’t dare use his headlamp—it would make him a target long before it revealed any—so he turned on his intermittent radar, the lowest-power sensor in his array. The hallway appeared in intervals, bright green pings that slowly melted to black. He was back in the Purple Area, heading toward the center of the base.

  He had hoped to resupply at the armory, but that was behind him in the center of the crater. Once again the Riel had known exactly what to target. It seemed certain they would’ve also destroyed the remaining commandships, but he had to keep looking. He needed a way off the base.

  He continued up the hall and found a general infantry rifle on the floor. The battery had a full charge, and he had two spares on his belt. It wasn’t much, but he was happy to have it.

  The artificial gravity dropped for a moment but kicked back on. The entire base drummed as everything inside it floated, then dropped. The gravity fluctuated steadily, jerking Peter’s guts and making it difficult to walk. He tried to time his steps, to lock his boots to the floor when the gravity dropped, but he had mixed success, like dancing to a tune he didn’t know.

  The gravity stabilized again a few minutes later, just as Peter reached a door at the end of the hall. It was glass, but to his radar it was as opaque as any wall. He ran through his passive sensors, registering nothing. He touched his helmet to the door and listened. Silence.

  He wedged his fingers into the doorjamb and pried it open, the dead motor inside whining in protest. When the door was about a foot open, someone jumped out and tackled him.

  — — —

  Peter swung the butt of his rifle. It connected with a dull thud and his attacker fell away, landing on the floor. Peter raised the gun like a bat, retreating a step and waiting.

  His radar pinged; a small man lay facedown on the floor. Peter waited several more pings, but the man didn’t move. He flipped him over with his foot. The man’s chest was hollowed out. Peter recoiled, startled.

  His radar pinged and he looked to the open doorway. The room was filled to chest level. His radar pinged and he saw an arm sticking out from the pile. Then a foot. This was the central hub. Twenty minutes ago the room had been full of screaming people. Now it was dead calm.

  — — —

  Peter steeled himself and stepped to the doorway. A long second passed before his radar pinged. The room was a slaughterhouse, heaped with mangled corpses. Most were decapitated.

  He looked up at the opening in the ceiling. There was no sign of the Typhons. His instinct told him to wait, but he knew that was more fear than strategy. The death in the room unnerved him, but he had to keep moving.

  He forced the door and bodies spilled around his legs. He stepped onto them, balancing on the wobbling flesh, and started into the room.

  Now that he knew what to look for, the thirteenth section was obvious: a longer section of wall between two doorways. He crept around the room, holding the wall for balance. He kept his eyes up, not to watch for Riel but to avoid what was underfoot.

  Halfway around the room, he heard a muffled cry.

  — — —

  He froze. The sound was gone, but he was sure he had heard it. He worked backward, probing the corpses with his foot. The noise came again. Peter felt a chill of recognition. He dug through the bodies, tossing them aside. She was at the bottom.

  The radar painted Linda’s face in green and black, her movements separated into one-second intervals. She looked in his direction—at the noise of something that she couldn’t see—terrified. Then she was trying to pull free of the corpses, to escape. A crescent-shaped wound spanned her chest, the shape of a Typhon’s fingernail. Peter slipped his helmet off and whispered, “It’s okay.”

  “Peter?” Linda asked the dark, hope leaking into her voice. “Is that you?”

  “It’s me,” he said, forgetting for a moment that he wasn’t. He pointed his helmet at the floor and turned on the spot, creating a puddle of light. He slipped his glove off and stroked the familiar cheek. Her skin was cold. His fingers left long dents, like she was made of wax.

  “Oh, Peter,” she said. “It was awful. Just awful…”

  “Shhhh,” he said. “It’s over now. You’re safe.” He looked down, but her badge was smeared with blood. Does it matter? he wondered.

  “Hold me,” Linda said. Peter pulled her to him, gently pressing her body to his stiff suit. She rested her head on his bare neck, her breath rasping in his ear. Peter knew she was in pain, knew there was no way to save her. He laid the rifle softly on the floor and slid his hand down to his boot, drawing a long knife.

  “It’s okay, Linda,” Peter whispered, running his fingers through her hair while his gloved hand raised the knife to the back of her neck, where the spinal cord meets the brain. A clean cut and she’ll never feel it, he assured himself. The nerves will be severed instantly. His heart pounded, the knife trembled.

  Peter pulled Linda to him,
kissing her, losing himself. She responded, weak but sincere.

  He wanted to lift her up, to take her with him, but she wasn’t the one. All the Lindas might look the same, but they weren’t.

  He pulled away and smiled warmly at the Linda in his arms. Then he gripped her head and drove the knife in. The blade sliced through her neck, its point clinking against his collar.

  Linda threw her head back and gasped. She tried to speak, but her larynx was severed. Then the shock passed and she was calm. She looked into Peter’s eyes, nodded, and laid her head back on his neck. Her breath slowly tapered off.

  — — —

  Once he was sure Linda was dead, he lowered her gently to the floor and stood up. He put on his helmet and glove, leaving the knife. He stumbled through the room, shoving bodies out of his way as he walked to the long section of wall. He couldn’t see a door, but he knew where it was. He kicked the wall repeatedly, angry, mindless of the noise. The door’s outline appeared as it bent inward. He kicked until it collapsed. The hallway on the other side was small; he had to duck to fit.

  The first hall ended at another, with curving glass walls that glowed a dim orange. He cupped his hands and looked out, expecting to see the Drift, but it was something else.

  The hallway spiraled upward like a giant spring. In the center was a power core, a massive, pill-shaped object suspended in space by thick wires. It was the same power core as on any ship, but a thousand times bigger. Its shell was cracked, the tail of a missile sticking out of the billowing fire.

  He didn’t know whether the core would explode, but he didn’t want to be around if it did. He sprinted past a large sign, not catching a word of it, and the hall straightened out.

  A portable terminal lay on the floor, discarded. He picked it up and scrolled through; it was unintelligible. A deep rumble shook the floor. Peter dropped the terminal and continued.

  The hallway grew dimmer and a low mist covered the floor, swirling around his feet. He slowed his pace, feeling with each step, but the back of his neck itched. He looked back, searching the dark fog, but saw nothing. He turned and ran.

  He moved faster than his radar could see, chased by the echoes of his own footsteps. He rounded a corner and saw a blue light. He dropped to a crouch and raised the rifle. Nothing moved. He killed the radar, allowed his eyes to adjust, and saw the frosted window in a door.

  Peter knew he should keep moving, but something was working on this otherwise dead base. He had to find out what.

  Peter was so conditioned to automatic doors that it took him a moment to realize this one had a handle. He shifted the rifle to one hand, stretching his fingers around the stock to the trigger, then eased the handle down and pressed his shoulder to the door. It sprung open and he leaped inside.

  Eyes glared at Peter from his left and right, high and low. Tall racks covered both walls, their shelves lined with disembodied heads. A thousand steel needles perforated each head, leaving only the face exposed, and each needle was wired to a flat metal box at the base of their necks. Peter waved the gun around, but they didn’t flinch. They were all dead, their faces bloodless, frozen in some final moment of horror.

  The only movement was on the far side of the room, where bubbles trickled up the edges of a glowing blue tank. Another head floated inside the tank, eyes closed, gently bobbing in the water. The needles stopped halfway across the skull, as if unfinished.

  Peter crept forward, his gun pointed at the tank but his eyes shifting to each face he passed. Some of them were familiar.

  Three feet from the tank, the head opened its eyes and began to scream.

  Peter jumped back and leveled the rifle. The noise grew more frantic—not screams, but some coarse, unintelligible language. And the sound wasn’t actually coming from the head—its face was frozen, its mouth gaping lifelessly—but from a speaker at the base of the tank.

  “Hold it there, marine,” the tank ordered, suddenly intelligible. “Secure that weapon.”

  Peter lowered the gun to his waist, keeping his aim.

  It was an older man’s head, with thin, white hair and a meticulously cropped beard. Its skin was pale and smooth, like plastic. Only the eyes moved, following the gun’s barrel.

  “My apologies,” the tank continued. “I expected you to speak Sakazuarian.” The eyes squinted at Peter. “Is that you, General Garvey?”

  “Yes,” Peter said, but then corrected himself. “No, Sergeant Garvey.”

  “Oh,” the tank said with sudden disdain. “The other Garvey.”

  “Yes.”

  “Yes, sir,” the tank said. “I’m Captain Nicholai Andić. Now stand down.”

  “Yes, sir,” Peter said, letting the rifle droop.

  “You’ve never seen a navy man in the flesh before, have you?”

  “You’re…?”

  “The navy, yes. What’s left of it,” Andić glanced at the inanimate heads. “Now give me a status report, sergeant.”

  “Sir?”

  “What is happening out there? With the battle?”

  The question was absurd. “There is no battle, sir,” Peter said finally. “It’s over.”

  “Ah,” the captain replied. He was still for a moment. “And the technicians?”

  “Dead.”

  “No,” Andić said. “That’s not possible.”

  “I saw them myself. Back in the hub.”

  “Not them,” the tank said, relieved. “Those are your technicians. Mine are human—Originals, as you call them.”

  “Originals? Out here?” Peter asked. It seemed incredible, but so did everything about this room.

  “They’ve probably left by now.”

  “They have ships?”

  “Genius,” the captain muttered, then fell motionless.

  Peter waited for any sign of life. “Hello?” he said, tapping the tank.

  The head glared at Peter’s hand. “I’m not a fish, sergeant,” he barked.

  “Sorry, sir.” Peter had meant tapping the tank, but the captain took it the wrong way.

  “Sorry?” the tank boomed. “At least I know what I am.”

  “Sir?” Peter asked, wondering why he was still talking to this thing, much less kowtowing to it.

  “Forget it. What’s your interest in ships?” the captain asked.

  “I just—” Peter started.

  “Don’t lie.”

  “We have to get out of here.”

  “By which, you’re not including me.”

  “No, sir,” Peter said. “Linda.”

  “Ah,” Andić said. “Of course.”

  “It’s not like—”

  “I’m not jealous,” the captain said. “These wires are far more complex than that interface port on your neck. I’ve got complete sensory input, you know. And full access to the libraries. Any memory I want. Any.”

  Enough, Peter thought, starting to the door.

  “Where would you go, anyway?” Andić called after him.

  Peter kept walking.

  “Because there is a ship…”

  Peter stopped, turned. Andić’s blank face seemed to smile.

  “Maybe we can come to an arrangement,” he said.

  “You want to come,” Peter said.

  “No. That would be impossible. Besides, you don’t need me. Human ships are designed to be piloted by humans.”

  “Then what?”

  “The batteries on this tank are fully charged. They’ll last a week, maybe longer.” The captain’s eyes dropped to a red switch at the base of the tank.

  “Oh,” Peter said.

  “Please,” Andić said. “You’ll only be expediting the inevitable.”

  “And you’ll tell me where to find the ship?”

  “To find it, and how to fly it. This section has its own docks, for humans only.�
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  Peter nodded, walking back to the tank.

  — — —

  Peter jogged along the low-ceilinged hall, keeping his head down and his legs bent. He took the third hallway on his left, then the next one on his right. He chanted Captain Andić’s directions under his breath so he wouldn’t forget.

  “There will be an autopilot,” the captain had said. “But it will be in Sakazuarian.” He taught Peter the symbols for the Livable Territories, verbally guiding Peter’s finger as he drew them out in the air. Peter wasn’t sure he got the symbols right and quickly forgot most of them anyway, but Andić’s final advice stuck in his mind—that if he did find Linda, he should just shoot her, then turn the gun on himself.

  “It’s not worth the struggle,” he said. “Just sleep it out like the rest of us.”

  Peter rounded a corner and saw a single dock jutting out into space. It was the same octagonal glass hallway that the marines used, but smaller and with only one walkway. Portals lined either side to couple with ships, but as far as Peter could see, there were none.

  He pried the doors open and stepped inside.

  — — —

  The giant Riel battlecruiser floated serenely overhead, backlit against the orange Drift boundary. It was fully visible now, twice as long as the base was wide. Gleaming steel fighterships patrolled through the detritus, which were mostly fragments of the base. The fighterships moved at a lazy pace; the battle was long over.

  Peter waited at the door as a squadron flew past; then he started down the hallway deliberately, as if he belonged there. He even put a wobble in his gait, aping that of the short-legged Gyrine. It could work, he thought. From a distance.

  He looked up at the battlecruiser. It was large beyond imagination. How had the United Forces ever hoped to defeat such a thing? He could see now that the war had been doomed from the start.

  Peter saw the ship parked outside, coupled to a door at the very end of the hall. It was as sharp as a missile and flat white like the armor worn by the Threes. For a second he feared it was a Riel ship, but then he saw the winged UF logo on the side.

  A squadron of fighterships curved around the base, heading toward him. Peter tried to remain calm, but every step was an eternity. He wanted to dash to the ship, to fly away.