Dragon Rising

by Ilsa J. Bick

  “We’re ready,” the captain said. “They so much as sneeze and they’ll be picking autocannon slugs out of their teeth.”

  The next set of images flashed in a compartmentalized display on the bridge’s main viewscreen. To the untrained eye, the images were a total whiteout. With her experience, though, Katana could now identify that they were looking down and then skimming over structures. Katana spied a row of low, long metal containers; she saw a flash of green. She pointed. “Trash bins. So that big rectangle’s got to be the mess.” She turned back to Tactical. “Ask them to go back and shoot those bins again.”

  “What are you looking for?” Crawford asked.

  “See the way the snow’s piled on the bins? This storm’s coming in from the west. You can see snowdrifts behind the bins.”

  “So?”

  She shrugged. “Let’s see.” They waited until the flight passed over the base again and the pictures flashed back up on the viewscreen. Katana peered at the ones of the trash bins. “Okay, what’s wrong with this picture?”

  Both Crawford and the captain inspected the picture, looked at another, and then the captain hunched her shoulders. “I don’t see it.”

  “The drift in back. It’s higher than the bin’s cover. That means . . .”

  “It can’t be opened,” Crawford said.

  “Correction,” Katana said. “It hasn’t been opened in weeks. The one constant on a base: People gotta eat, and even if they eat nothing but ration bars, there’s still garbage. If those bins had been in use, someone would’ve had to remove the snow. Otherwise, the lid’s too heavy. And that usually translates into shoveling the snow to either side. But that snow is uniform throughout, with only the front that hasn’t been hit by snow visible.”

  “So no one’s been taking out the trash,” Crawford said.

  “Nobody’s there,” the captain said wonderingly. “No one’s been on this base for weeks, maybe months.”

  “That’s right,” Katana said. “Nobody.”

  Aomori Mountains, Dieron

  She was wrung out and exhausted, and she hadn’t even engaged in true battle yet. She’d slapped her DI to silence, just to save her sanity. She was so hot that it felt as if the waste heat from her reactor was bleeding into the cockpit. Her controls were smeary from a combination of sweat and her blood. She’d wiped her mouth with the back of her hand several times, and while the bleeding hadn’t stopped, it had slowed. Her heart was still battering her chest, the sound thudding into the space between her temples. So she didn’t catch it right away.

  Katanga said, “The rest of those fighters bugged out. Those artillery batteries have stopped firing.”

  “Either they’re out of ammo, or they’re subatomic particles,” Yori said. She faced east. The dam was to her left, and she saw now what she hadn’t before: a high retaining wall added to redirect east the much-diminished flow of the river.

  To her right, she saw that the Avenger had touched down, blocking a natural wide draw that was the only egress out of the canyon and from the base. Its troop bay doors were open, and men spilled out, scurrying to take up assault positions. As she watched, the Firestarter pivoted left, away from her troops, leveled its left arm and belched a fusillade of flame back and forth in a sweeping motion. There was a massive boom, followed by a fireball that merged with secondary explosions as munitions detonated. Debris flew on a pillar of combusted gases to rain in smoking bits of char and mangled, fizzing metal.

  She swiftly reviewed her plan of attack. She would be slow, but the plan was still intact. With the combination of troops, the Avenger, and her ’Mechs, she would bracket the base north and south while her troops already down scourged the perimeter. Positioning her Avenger at the draw meant that any enemy troops left on base who tried to flee would have to get around the DropShip.

  Translation: No way out.

  Then Katanga again: “Would you double-check me on something? I think my thermal imaging is on the fritz. I don’t pick up anything.”

  “What?” Her gaze skipped to her HUD . . . and then she frowned. Cursing softly, she initiated a short-range sensor sweep, her eyes snapping to her secondary viewing screen. She registered their ’Mechs as neutral icons; read their ID via IFF, but she waited in vain to catch even a glimmer of a reactor signature, motion . . . Yori swore again. “How can this be? For God’s sake, we were fired on. We were attacked.”

  “Unless,” the pilot of the Shockwave put in, “that was all of them. They’ve thrown the kitchen sink to the north and south, which is what we wanted. Maybe that’s why the fighters bugged out.”

  “Because there’s nothing left to defend?” Yori didn’t want to believe it. Why make it so hard to get down if there’s nothing on the base of value? Even more bizarre: Why mount such a fierce resistance beyond the base? There had to be something here to justify the loss of life. No general stained the ground with the blood of her troops if there was nothing to gain.

  Oh, but I can understand that: When the fighter has nothing left, she becomes an engine of death, a kamikaze, destroying the enemy and herself.

  She knew she had that in her. She’d done it, even if only in a sim. Yet even a fighter as able as Julian had not understood why.

  She waved a hand, and her Dragon followed suit, a sweeping gesture that encompassed the base. “There are buildings, there are vehicles, tanks, sleds, there are . . .” She broke off because that’s when she finally noticed it.

  The quiet.

  Yes, she still heard the far-off rumbles and booms of the fight that was going on beyond this base, but that was dying as well, the frequency of explosions and the report of weapons more sporadic.

  As if The Republic’s troops were all dead or out of fire-power. Or gone.

  She jerked right, peering down that wide bowl toward the Avenger. The conflagration started by the Firestarter was still burning. She saw her troops, broken into squads, scurrying between buildings. But she saw no ruby lancets of laser fire, heard no battering of autocannon fire.

  Then the chu-i in command of her infantry cut in: “Shosho, the base appears to be, well . . . deserted. They’re like props on a stage. The buildings, they’re empty.”

  Yori closed her eyes. This can’t be happening. I’ve been tricked into chasing phantoms. “What about those SM1s, and those sleds?”

  A pause. “They’re . . . mock-ups. They’re hollow, like cut-outs.”

  “What the hell?” said the pilot of the Firestarter. His cockpit swiveled, and though she couldn’t see his face, Yori heard the scowl. “What’s going on?”

  His words had barely penetrated before Yori felt the shocks of three terrific explosions, one right after the other, their echoes overlapping, building and gathering. The vibrations and shockwaves shuddered up the legs of her Dragon, rattled her consoles. She looked back toward the Firestarter, thinking that the fire had spread, that another dump had gone up. But she saw only the one fire . . . and then she saw the Firestarter start back, its arms flung wide open in an imitation of the pilot’s surprise.

  And then his voice, hitching now with awe and then maybe understanding: “The dam, the dam!”

  Yori spun left, her damaged right leg chunking a wide furrow from the rock. Then she could only gape in horror—

  At the dam that no longer was. At the ferrocrete barrier between this valley and at all her men, who seemed to melt before her eyes. At the water barreling with the full-throated roar of something only heard in nightmares.

  Yori screamed, “Chu-i! Get your men out, get them out, get them out!”

  Bedlam broke out on the comm channel, voices and shouts and screams overlapping as her men swarmed for the Avenger. What must be trillions of liters of pent-up water and energy roared in an immense cataract, and because she and Katanga were closer, they were hit first.

  Katanga gave a shout, and then Yori lost him as the water whammed her left side. A massive chunk of the dam battered her left leg. Her weight shifted, came down on her damaged
right leg, and then she was flung off her feet, as if the Dragon ’s sixty tons were nothing more substantial than tumble-weed in a tornado. Gasping, she jammed out her right arm to break her fall, but then a fresh gout of water smashed into her back, shoving her completely under the swirling tide. Instinctively, Yori threw her hands up to protect her face even though she could no longer see anything except the foamy, raging water. Her Dragon’s ferroglass crashed against something very hard, and then she was hanging from her couch, saved from falling into her canopy by her harness. Her breath caught in her throat as she waited for the canopy to shatter, the water to rush in and drown her.

  Then her heart slammed back to life, and time started up again. The canopy was intact, and her systems still operational. Alarms wailed in her cockpit, and her helmet was filled with the dying screams of her men. The Avenger might have a few seconds grace, but that water was moving fast, and the ship’s low-slung design meant the troop bay was open. They’d take on water, be submerged within minutes, if they didn’t close up right now and get away! And she had to get upright, she had to get out, and she only had seconds to do it!

  All that water, it’s going to rise fast, that’s what the Blues counted on, drowning us before we can get out!

  Pushing back her fear, trying to block out the roar of the water hooshing over and all around, she wrestled her ’Mech to a kneeling position, and then she got a knee up, the left. “Come on,” she urged, jamming her throttle forward. “Come on, come . . .”

  The water pounded, tried to drive her down, and the titanium-steel bones of her Dragon groaned, strained as she fought to push to her feet. Another wallop smacked against her right side, and she gasped, heart in her throat as she lurched forward in an awkward stumble. Her cockpit BAMMED against something unyielding—and then she realized that the water had been so powerful, she’d been thrown against the base of the canyon’s western wall. And that’s when she remembered.

  Ledges! If I can just get my head above the water, even for a second . . .

  She couldn’t see much other than rocks and water, but if she could get a handhold! She wrestled her joystick, and her intentions were transformed into movement as her Dragon’s right arm rose, the hand open, reaching, reaching . . . She felt a jolt as the metal came in contact with something solid, and she jammed the hand controls down, locking the Dragon’s hand actuators in place. The hand closed over something solid—and held.

  No more time, go, go! Grimacing, she pulled herself up. She felt the Dragon push back the water even as the water shoved it left, trying to force her off her feet. She knew if she fell again, she would not get up.

  “Please, please, please!” By now, she’d screened out everything, all the alarms—but there were no more shouts, none, they were all dead—and focused on hauling her ’Mech as upright as she could. She had no idea if she were succeeding, no way of judging which way was up except that there was rock beneath her ’Mech, rock in her hand, debris pummeling her Dragon, and water trying to sweep her from her feet, trying to destroy her.

  And then she broke the surface. It happened so fast, so unexpectedly that she was stunned. Water, roiling and black with churned earth and rock, swirled and broke over her canopy, and then she saw that she was looking up. There was open sky, and yes! There they were, those ledges. Maybe . . . !

  Then, before she could think about it anymore, she reached down with both hands and yanked back on her ejection handlebar as hard as she could. Her canopy blew away with a sharp series of bangs as the explosive bolts detonated. She felt the jolt as the connections to her neurohelmet instantly detached, the tug at her vest as her coolant lines separated, and then everything blurred as her couch shot up and away.

  She looked back only once and for a brief instant at the water pouring into the open cockpit of her ’Mech that was still, miraculously, clutching rock and on its feet. The other ’Mechs and the Avenger were gone.

  And then she jerked back, saw the ledge rushing at her face, wondered—too late—at its depth. In the next few seconds, her parachute would deploy, and she would either be able to guide herself to the ledge . . .

  Or her body would burst like a blood balloon. Or she’d bounce back into the water and drown.

  Or . . .

  64

  Chimeisho -class JumpShip East Wind

  Dieron nadir jump point

  1 January 3137

  Just past midnight

  “That EM pulse is ten minutes old, and I’m still not getting the correct identification code,” Comm warned. She was young, just the far side of twenty-four. Yet when she twisted to look down at her captain, standing behind his command chair some ten meters below her station, she backed her warning with a firm and unwavering gaze. “I’d say from the pulse’s rate of decay, they’ll be through in two more minutes, max.”

  The captain nodded up at her. “Then let them come.” He craned his head around his right shoulder toward Tactical, who sat strapped into a seat level with the command chair. “Weapons status?”

  “Lasers show ready, Tai-sa,” Tactical replied. When he snapped his gaze from the console to his captain, the movement sent tiny shimmering orbs of sweat expanding in a slow-motion halo. “Delta Squadron reports they are at optimum distance to intercept.”

  “No one twitches until I say so,” the captain said. “Understood?”

  Tactical wet his lips. “All stations report battle ready and . . .” He broke off at the warble of an alarm. “Here they come, Captain, here it comes!”

  “Ready to fire on my mark!” The captain turned his fierce gaze toward his viewscreen. At the first EM burp, they’d immediately retracted their solar sail and repositioned the ship to face the jump point head-on, bringing their forward ER lasers to bear. Now he saw the point where the unknown JumpShip was winking into existence: how the space gathered, bunched, puckered, then reddened to a bloody smear . . .

  Here it comes. Without realizing it, the captain held his breath. He raised his right hand, ready to give the order, and convention be damned! If these were Blues, and they fired on him, well, he’d show them some heat! Here it comes . . .

  Space twisted, convulsed and then ripped a seam from which rocketed out . . .

  The captain’s breath left his lungs in an exhalation of horror and disbelief. Someone somewhere let out a muffled cry, something between a moan and a scream. But the captain didn’t turn around. Couldn’t tear his eyes away.

  “Oh, dear God,” he said. “It can’t be.”

  January 3137

  Theodore’s WarShip was barely recognizable. The gnarled hulk was twisted along its axis, like the business end of a corkscrew, but then telescoped back upon and within itself, as if the ship had accelerated, passing through some kind of wringer before striking an inflexible barrier head-on. Portions of the ship’s armor were simply gone, as if the ship had been skinned, and places where chunks of the hull had blown out revealed a tangle of bulkheads and structural supports. No portion of the ship had escaped unscathed, and what remained of its decks was gutted, riddled and pockmarked with scorched blast craters like the irregular holes in a slice of Swiss cheese. Others looked as if they’d been transformed into runny, molten red-hot lava that, once cooled, solidified into a congealed, amorphous lump.

  Astonishingly, the only portion of the ship Katana did recognize was the thimble-shaped field-initiator that looked remarkably intact—as if whatever had mangled the ship intentionally spared that section.

  And sent the ship back here to make sure we saw it.

  “And the computer-activated jump drive was the only functional system?” Katana asked. It had taken her eight days to reach the jump point, even pulling max gs. When the news first crackled over her command channel, her immediate impulse was to launch a rescue mission. She hadn’t, though squelching the impulse had taken all her will. Instead, she’d mentally prepared herself for the worst. Now, looking at the wreck that had hurtled through ten days ago, the worst she’d imagined wasn’t bad enou
gh. “I can’t even tell where the bridge is.”

  “It’s been pushed to the opposite side. You can’t see it from this angle,” the captain said. He looked gray, as if he hadn’t slept in years. “Frankly, I’m amazed that the drive functioned at all. With all this damage, you’d think that would knock out the drive core altogether. As it was, the core developed a helium leak within fifteen minutes after the ship reappeared. It’s dead now, and the fusion drive’s completely hydrogen-depleted. I had repair crews rig external thrusters to keep her from drifting, then got my people working her around the clock.”

  “Escape pods?”

  The captain’s chief engineer, a reedy man in a rumpled green jumpsuit said, “I thought they’d been jettisoned, but then I found two still in their bays. Their condition . . .” He faltered and then cleared his throat. “That’s when I began to suspect. The pods weren’t really intact. They’d fused to their ejection bays. No way to get in, so we had to torch our way through. Same thing inside as out . . . it’s as if the ship liquefied or stretched for a few seconds then quickly solidified. So then I started to get the idea that the ship hadn’t been blown apart so much as . . . well, rearranged. The ship’s all here, Tai-shu , most of it anyway.”

  All there? Katana’s lips were numb. Her head felt like the inside of a helium balloon. What kind of weapon could generate that amount of power? “What about the ’Mechs? What about the crew? Did they . . . ?” Katana caught the quick glance the engineer shot at his captain, and her dread blossomed like a black rose. “Where’s the crew?”

  The engineer was ashen. “The ’Mechs are all there, still tethered to their umbilicals, but they’re in the same shape as the rest of the ship. It’s like whatever happened was all at once and went through all sections and desks like some sort of, I don’t know, propagation wave. Waves pick up debris, churn the sand as depth decreases. The shallower the water, the more the underlying seabed is disturbed, so that what was four meters from shore moves to within half a meter or is carried out in suspension when the wave recedes. That’s what this is like.”