by Richard Fox
“Should buy us some time,” he said to his lance.
The whoop of the warning siren changed to a high-pitched double chirp. The passageway’s lights changed from white to red, then back and forth, over and over again.
“I don’t know Sanheel shipboard operations,” Aignar said, “but let’s assume they know we’re here.”
“Keep moving,” Gideon said.
Roland heard grunts and barked commands farther down the connecting hallway. Rakka rushed around a corner and fired on Roland, the bang of their rifles echoing off the walls. Bullets bounced off Roland’s chest and the side of his helmet. He deployed his shield from his left arm and ducked behind it to protect the sensitive optics in the helmet that the Rakka were aiming for. He brought his rotary cannon up and over the edge of his shield and let off a two-second burst that shredded the oncoming Rakka.
He backed up and turned to follow the rest of the lance. The aliens weren’t returning fire—his attack had been effective.
At a T-intersection at the end of the corridor, Cha’ril and Aignar had their shields out, firing their gauss cannons around the corners. Gideon had one hand pressed to the ceiling, his probes scouting the surrounding structures.
A Sanheel rifle shell struck the deck and ripped through the utility lines beneath the plating. A fountain of water spurt into the air and was quickly burnt into steam by another Sanheel shot.
There was a thwack as an alien shell hit home. Cha’ril pulled back from her spot against the wall, a spike a foot and a half long embedded in her shield. She swept her cannon arm down the shield and broke the spike, leaving the metal tip still embedded, then stuck her twin-gauss cannons around the corner and fired off a double shot, earning a scream of pain from down the hallway.
“We can get to the children’s location,” Gideon said, “but both options are full of hostiles.”
Roland activated the tracker, and three dots appeared, all on just the other side of the wall. A realization sent a chill through his heart.
“They’re killing them.” Roland ran past Gideon through the line of fire, and smashed a fist against the bulkhead separating him from the chamber with the kidnapped children. His first blow tore through the wall, and he gripped the breach with both hands and pulled. The tear widened with a screech of metal. Inside were dark boxes the shape of coffins and glass pods along the walls filled with deep-blue fluid.
A Sanheel spike ripped the anti-grav impeller off Roland’s back. He kicked at the bottom of the gap he’d opened and created an opening big enough for him to get through. He stepped past one of the pods and snapped his gauss cannons to one side.
Two children sat on a raised dais at the end of the chamber, both hunched forward, their hands cuffed. The third sat on the lap of a humanoid alien that had thin limbs that would have brought it to eight feet tall if standing, and almond-shaped eyes that wrapped around its temples. Glittering cables ran from the base of its skull to a heavy collar that drooped over its shoulders and down to the middle of its chest. It stroked the hair of the child on its lap, who winced every time the alien touched it.
One of the coffins was half-open; inside was a girl maybe eight years old. Her eyes were closed, and hair floating around her face like she was underwater. Light glowed around her from inside the box.
“My, my,” the alien said, “the stories of your ferocity are true. Amazing that such aggression can evolve from something as innocent as this.” It wrapped a long finger around the boy’s neck.
From the hallways, the sound of gunfire died away.
Roland advanced into the chamber, cannons leveled at the alien’s face.
“You want to see fury?” Roland asked. “Hurt one more child and you’ll get to see it firsthand. I’ll turn your corpse into a testimony of just how angry we can get.”
“I’ve not hurt anyone,” it said. “I am Tomenakai, of the Ixio, of the great Kesaht unity that will welcome humanity, if only you submit.”
“Then what did you do to her?” Roland glanced at the girl in the box.
“Stasis,” Tomenakai said. “These broodlings are so afraid. It will make the journey home so much easier for them. I told them of the gift we were going to give them…once we work past a few biological issues.”
“They’re going to put computers in our brains,” said the boy sitting at Tomenakai’s feet. “Take away our thoughts. Make us do what they want.”
“Submission for peace,” the alien said, “the end of conflict, the end of want. Sanctuary from all fear and desire. You will realize how noble our offer is, especially in light of humanity’s crimes. Your genocide. If base savages like you can be redeemed, the whole galaxy can live in the paradise the Kesaht can provide.”
“I am taking the children with me.” Roland stepped closer to the dais. “That will happen. Killing you is optional.”
Tomenakai gripped the child’s throat a bit tighter and opened his mouth to hiss at Roland. Fangs extended from its mouth. Roland lowered his gauss cannons and brought his hand just over the hilt mag-locked to his leg.
“But I need them,” the alien said. “Human adults have failed to accept our unity. The false minds in weed bodies are too aberrant. The solution lies with your young. If they can be brought into unity and absolved of your race’s crimes, then you all can be redeemed. If not, then all of humanity must be purged.”
Shadows emerged in the pods. Humans floated into view, all with their skulls exposed, cybernetic parts fixed to their brain matter. All had their mouths open in silent screams.
The children began whimpering.
“Failure is the price of science,” Tomenakai said. “If I examine the union between your brain and your armor, the solution might—”
Roland snatched the hilt off his thigh and lunged at the Ixio, activating the sword and snapping out the blade. The tip stabbed through the alien’s neck and burst out the back. Roland twisted the sword and popped the alien’s head clean off. He chopped the blade down and severed the hand gripping the little boy’s neck.
The boy jumped off the alien’s lap and ran to the boy on the dais, who unwrapped the hand from the other’s neck and threw it away. The two boys hugged each other, the younger almost bawling into the other’s chest.
There was no blood from the alien’s body; only clear fluid seeped out of the cuts.
“This will be remembered,” came from Tomenakai’s head where it lay on the dais. “The final act of humanity’s damnation!”
Roland put a foot against the alien’s head.
“Our salvation will never come from you.” Roland said and then stabbed his anchor spike through the alien’s head, splattering it across the dais.
The snap of gauss cannons resumed.
“Roland!” Gideon shouted. “We can’t hold them off forever!”
Roland went to the three children and bent down.
“What’re your names?” he asked.
“I’m Chris Dinkins,” the older of the two boys said. “This is my brother Ben. That’s Suzy Oldman.”
Roland opened the case on his lower back and brought out shrink-wrapped vac suits.
“You know how to put these on?” he asked.
“I want to go home! I want my mommy!” Suzy screamed.
Roland looked at the delicate spacesuits held in his giant fingers. Armor was designed for brute force, not something so intricate as putting a child into an oversized vac suit.
“I know how to work the boxes,” Chris said. “I saw the big one doing it right before they put us inside on Oricon. It’s easy.”
“Show me,” Roland said. Chris went to the girl inside the half-open coffin and closed it. He touched two fingers to a shiny panel, but nothing happened.
“I know.” The boy said and picked up the Ixio’s hand, touching the panel with it. The box hissed and sealed shut. Roland did a scan and found it to be airtight and shielded enough to handle the void.
“I need you all to get inside.” Roland pointed to empty coff
ins.
“No!” Ben howled.
“Listen to me.” Roland tapped his chest. “I am inside something just like that right now. I get scared every single time I put on my armor. Right now, I need you all to be braver, stronger than I am. Find the iron in your hearts and get inside so we can leave.”
“You’ll take us home?” Suzy asked.
“The first person you see when you wake up will be your parents. I swear,” Roland said.
A Sanheel spike ripped through the wall and cracked the top of a tank. Blue liquid gushed out and spread across the floor.
“Come on, Ben.” Chris led his brother to an empty stasis pod. Ben stepped inside and pressed his fists to his eyes. He froze a split second later. Chris sealed the pod with the dead alien’s hand.
Suzy stood in front of a pod, her hands clutched to her chest.
“I don’t know, Chris,” she said. “The last time I—”
Roland bumped his knuckles against her and pushed her into the pod. Chris slammed it shut.
“Thanks,” Chris said. “She’s always like that.” He passed the alien’s hand to Roland and backed into the last stasis pod.
“You remind me of that one armor in the movie everyone’s seen about the Dotari,” Chris said.
“Don’t have time for this, little man,” Roland said as he gently gripped the Ixion’s wrist between two massive fingertips.
“I think his name was Elias.”
Roland shut the coffin and sealed the boy inside.
One of the chamber’s side doors opened and Rakka came flooding through. Roland activated his flamethrower and swept the flames over the intruders. The room filled with black smoke and high-pitched screams from the alien foot soldiers. Roland looked up at the smoke billowing across the roof.
“I think we’re near the hull,” he said. “Burn cord.”
He took a canister out of the box on his lower back and attached the bright red cord to the ceiling, forming a rough hexagon. When he touched the cord with his flamethrower’s pilot light, the entire length ignited. Molten metal dripped down as the cord burned through the ceiling. Gray smoke spat through the gap as the cord went higher and higher, and then the smoke stopped and the ceiling burst up like a cork. The void sucked all the smoke out of the hole in seconds, along with the rest of the chamber’s air, and the other Dragoons came into the chamber, their shields pitted and chipped.
The smoke stopped, then the ceiling burst up like a cork. The void sucked all the smoke out of the hole in seconds along with the rest of the chamber’s air. The rest of the Dragoons came into the chamber, their shields pitted and chipped.
“That breach activated their emergency bulkheads,” Gideon said. “Cut them off from us. Doubt it’ll stay that way long.”
“Time to leave, yeah?” Aignar asked.
Roland jumped up and climbed out of the still-smoldering hole cut through the hull. Aignar came up after him and took his anti-grav impeller off his back.
“Roland, where’s your—never mind, I’ll do it.” Data wires snaked out of his wrist and into the impeller.
“Catch.” Cha’ril tossed a stasis pod up the breach and into Roland’s waiting hands. He passed the box with the child inside to Aignar.
“Jolly Greens, this is Dragoon-3 requesting immediate evac,” Roland broadcasted. He caught another box and handed it off to Aignar, repeating the transmission again and again while shuttling the coffins out of the Kesaht ship.
“Nothing heard, sir,” Roland said to Gideon.
“I think I see them.” Aignar sent a target icon to Roland, a point well behind the battleship. Roland zoomed in. A hull section of the battleship floated in the void, turning end over end. On one half was the denethrite bomb.
“Not them,” Roland said. “But the Kesaht did find our parting gift.” Roland caught the last of children.
Aignar had all the coffins pressed into a rough sphere against his impeller wedge, which pulled the coffins against it like a magnet.
“You can reverse the anti-grav waveform,” Aignar said. “Make it pull instead of push. Course it does strain the system awful hard. It’ll burn out in less than an hour. Times like this I wish we had rope in our kits.”
Cha’ril and Gideon crawled out of the ship as Roland looked across the hull to Oricon, which seemed farther away than ever.
“I think…I think I’m out of good ideas,” Roland said.
“We need to signal for pickup.” Gideon put himself between the stasis pods and the distant denethrite bomb. “Shield wall.”
Roland unfolded his shield and came shoulder to shoulder with Gideon and Cha’ril.
Gideon touched the side of his helm, and Roland ducked behind his shield.
A blinding flash of light broke across the battleship, like a new sun had been born and burned away in an instant. A surge of heat flooded his shield and spiked into his arm, and he felt pain in his arm within the womb, a psychosomatic reaction to the damage his armor suffered.
“That should get their attention,” Gideon said.
“Contact.” Cha’ril pointed over the edge of the battleship where crescent-shaped fighters arced over the hull.
“Think they’ll fire and risk hitting their own ship?” Aignar asked. Yellow bolts of energy spat out of the fighters and shot overhead. Bolts struck the side of the cannon battery, smashing the armor into fragments.
“Dumb question.” Aignar fired gauss shells at the oncoming fighters, breaking the wingtip off one and sending it spinning into the alien ship next to it. The two exploded into fireballs against the hull.
“They can see us from the bridge.” Cha’ril planted her anchor and brought her rail cannons to bear on the crystalline pyramid, then loaded a shell into the chamber.
Roland took a fighter’s energy bolt to the shield and skidded back across the hull, stopping only after Gideon grabbed him by the shoulder. Roland pumped shots after the fighter as it flew overhead. One round connected and snapped the alien ship in half. The two sides tumbling into the void like loose scythes.
“Cha’ril, I want you to miss,” Gideon said.
“To what?” Cha’ril did a double take at the lieutenant.
“You heard me.” Gideon fired on four more fighters coming over the prow of the battleship.
Cha’ril’s rail cannon flashed, the effect of being near a rail cannon firing much more subdued in the void than on the moon’s surface. The remains of a cannon battery toward the far edge of the ship tumbled away into the void.
“I missed the bridge,” she said.
In the pyramid, the Sanheel crew looked up from their workstations. The red-clad captain pushed aside the other centaur he’d grabbed as an impromptu shield.
“Reload,” Gideon said.
Cha’ril held up another shell, then slowly and deliberately put it into the chamber.
“I can’t fire again for two minutes,” she said. “The capacitors need to charge.”
“We know that, but they don’t,” Gideon said.
The Sanheel captain waved his arms and the fighters broke off their attack and flew to the other side of the battleship.
“I am off standing with a Mexican, correct?” Cha’ril asked.
“Almost,” Roland said. “Just keep looking like you want an excuse to blow them all to hell.”
“I don’t need an excuse. I need permission.”
“Dragoons, this is Jolly Green 6,” came over the radio. “You’ve got a swarm of bogies on the ventral side. My escorts don’t have the combat power to break through and make extraction.”
“This is Gideon,” the lieutenant said. “We’ve reached a tentative agreement with the Kesaht. Bring the Mules in for pickup and hold fire. Can you relay a tight-beam message to Captain Sobieski?”
“Negative on tight beam, wide only. Enemy likely monitoring.”
“Tell him a trained Uhlan with a lance could spear a loaf of bread out of a man’s hand. I expect he can do better,” Gideon said.
Ch
a’ril looked at Roland, who shrugged.
Two Mules approached, their bottom turrets turning from side to side.
“Cha’ril, you and I stay here until the children are clear with Roland and Aignar,” Gideon said. “Roland, the instant your Mule gets clear, you send a wide-band message to Sobieski. Tell him ‘ogien.’”
“Yes, sir.” Roland pulled a coffin off the impeller and waited for a Mule to arrive. It stopped a few yards above the hull and spun around. He pushed the stasis pod into the Mule, where the transport’s internal gravity gripped it and sent it to the deck. The crew pushed the coffins to the back of the cargo bay and frantically strapped them down while Roland and Aignar got the rest of the children inside.
“Lock up and go,” Gideon said, waving the second Mule closer.
As the Mule lifted its nose, Roland jumped off the battleship and powered up the mag lock on his forearm. His arm smacked against the hull, and Gurski, in the turret pod, waved to him. Roland mimed crushing his head.
Aignar locked on and the Mule fired its afterburners to leap away from the battleship. Eagles fell in beside the transport.
“Captain Sobieski,” Roland sent on every channel his armor could access, “Gideon sends ‘ogien.’”
On the battleship, Cha’ril’s rail cannon flashed and the ship’s bridge shattered into a million fragments.
“What the hell are they doing?” Aignar asked. Roland watched as Cha’ril and Gideon loaded up onto the other Mule. Beneath the battleship, a swarm of fighters broke loose and flew toward the upper half of the ship.
A red line zipped up from the moon and slammed into the Kesaht ship. Fire billowed from the impact and hunks of hull plating shot out, destroying a dozen crescent-shaped fighters.
“That was from a rail cannon,” Roland said.
Four more rail shells struck in quick succession, ripping through the flight decks. The battleship canted to one side, exposing her ruined hull. Two more shells streaked up from Oricon and punched clean through the ship. Fire spattered from the damage as the ship’s atmosphere bled out.
The battleship exploded, shooting the prow forward and spreading the rest of the hull across the sky like chaff pulled from wheat.
