Once again, his luck held. They were descending onto the dayside of Atletis. Lower, lower. Down through the clouds. The forests took on texture, and now Colm glimpsed fields in clearings. The moon really was inhabited. “Where’s the river?” Dhjerga said, confused. A stream crossed the fields, a mere silver thread. Cottages huddled around a green square. Chimneys puffed. Hell, Innismon was just a village! Above it, a line of unusually massive trees marched along a high ridge.
Colm made the split second decision to land in the village square. The computer said it was the only place flat enough. He could see people running around, staring up.
Imagine that you’re back at war. Those people down there? They’re Ghosts. Aliens. Not human.
Just like the old days.
Down we go.
The Son Of Saturn speared down out of the sky. It did not produce jets of plasma. It produced a single jet of white-hot flame. In terms of lethality, there wasn’t much difference.
CHAPTER 26
COLM OPENED THE AIRLOCK. A blast of cold wind carried smoke into the crew capsule. The sounds of clanging bells, screams, and neighing horses pierced the murk. He had expected micro-gravity. In fact, he felt about as heavy as he used to on the Unsinkable, which meant this tiny moon had half as much gravity as Earth. How was that even possible? Never mind. “Go, go, go!” Dhjerga was screaming, pushing at his back.
Colm checked the strap of his assault rifle—another handy toy he had had built at the Ilfenjium steelworks—and started down the ladder. He wished he had not followed the Ghosts’ example of changing into his best clothes, including shiny leather boots with slippery soles. Good thing he had his riding gloves on, though. He could feel the hot metal charring their palms. The SOS swayed on its fins. The wind blew the smoke away. Glancing over his shoulder, he saw a ring of flattened, charred, and burning buildings. It looked like a bomb had gone off in the middle of Innismon.
As he neared the ground, bullets pinged off the SOS’s hull. He glanced over his shoulder again. The trees up on the ridge were clanging in the wind. They were spinning. They were not trees. They were mighty wind turbines, painted green. So this was the Magus’s power source: wind power, rather than water power. If only he’d known! He could have destroyed at least some of the turbines with the SOS. Now it was too late.
The turbines had wide trunks like trees, spreading out at the bottom. And now Magistocracy soldiers emerged from among the trunks. One, two, twenty, two hundred ... They formed up and charged down the ridge towards the invaders.
Dhjerga jumped off the ladder above Colm’s head, vanished in mid-air, and reappeared on the ground. Around him, copies of Janz multiplied. They spread out through the wreckage, seeking cover. The squat frog-faced champion of the Terrious family joined them, times a hundred. Each of the rebel soldiers had an assault rifle like Colm’s. The weapon was based on the famous AK design that he remembered Meg carrying in the Kuiper belt. Now, as then, the Ghosts’ bolt-action rifles could not answer the AK’s superior rate of fire. A horizontal metal hail of bullets ploughed into the Magistocracy’s soldiers.
The charge wavered and petered out.
Dhjerga and Linc Terrious breathlessly shouted orders.
The rebel soldiers advanced across fields of cabbages and turnips blanketed with ash, and waded across the stream.
Colm, who had watched the exchange of fire spell-bound, suddenly remembered that he was exposed up here. He crabbed the rest of the way down the ladder, panting. His ears rang. His throat hurt and his eyes watered from the smoke. A boot came down on the same rung as his hand. He wrenched his head back and saw Janz.
“Oi,” he gasped. “You’re meant to stay on board.”
“Lady Terrious thinks the rocket might tip over. She’s coming out, too.”
“It won’t tip over.”
Janz smiled. “Lord Lizp leaves me behind every time. He’s not leaving me behind this time, no.” He jumped off the ladder and ran in search of Dhjerga.
Colm followed them across the fields. He was a pilot, not an infantryman. He had never felt comfortable in ground combat situations. Ahead of him, the rebel army multiplied into a sea of Lizp forest-green and Terrious sky-blue. It lapped up the slope and almost attained the ridge before clashing with a new wave of khaki. The gunfire sputtered out as the soldiers met in a hand-to-hand melee. Now Colm knew why Dhjerga had insisted on putting bayonets on the AKs. The soldiers jabbed and hacked without a sound, the way the Ghosts always had. Now, however, Colm understood the eerily perfect coordination of their wedge attacks and flanking maneuvers. All those soldiers were really just a few men.
Deafened, he leaned against a tree. He smelt the sun-warmed bark, and watched some ants crawl out of a crack. The evergreen foliage reminded him of the noak leaves in his pocket. He pulled out a handful. As he chewed them, the limethion lolloped across the field and crouched at his side. “It is rather loud here,” it said uneasily.
“How did you get down the ladder?”
“Very carefully.”
Colm laughed. “Here, I’ll take that off for you.” He unfastened the limethion’s muzzle, freeing its fearsome jaws. He ate some more noak leaves. Then he saw Dhjerga and Janz kneeling behind a hedge on the far side of the fields.
Janz slumped with his head on Dhjerga’s shoulder. One hand, hanging down, jerked spastically.
“Come on,” Colm said to the limethion. They floundered over the crushed cabbages to Dhjerga and Janz.
Dhjerga’s eyes were wet. “I’ve used him up.” Janz’s eyes showed white under half-closed lids. “He’s dying, the useless piece of shit.”
Colm grabbed Janz and lowered him onto his back on the grass. Horrifyingly, he could see the grass through him.
“I told him not to come!” Dhjerga said. “I should’ve brought someone else.”
Bullets whined over their heads. The rebel advance had bogged down. Now that Dhjerga was no longer throwing new copies of Janz into the fight, the tide would turn at any minute.
“Hmm,” the limethion said, sniffing the air. “Smells good. But I do not want to get bulleted.”
“Copy this guy,” Colm said to Dhjerga. His ears were ringing awfully. He could feel the heat of the SOS’s fuel cells in his belly. They were still close enough to the spaceship to use it as a power source.
Dhjerga glanced indifferently at the limethion. “Want to try?”
“Yes,” the limethion said, licking its lips.
Dhjerga laid one hand on the limethion’s head. With his other hand, he gestured in the direction of the battle.
Nothing happened.
“I can’t copy it.” Dhjerga said angrily. “I suppose it doesn’t work on aliens.” His face crumpled. “We’re finished. The Magus will keep creating soldiers as long as the wind keeps blowing.”
“It’s all about the numbers, aye?” Colm said cynically.
Linc Terrious sprinted across the cabbage field and threw himself down beside them. “Fetch someone else!” he yelled at Dhjerga.
“We’ve no one else as good as Janz,” Dhjerga said.
“You must have! Go and look!”
“I can’t leave him!”
“Then I will!” The terrified young man vanished.
“He won’t be back,” Dhjerga said.
Colm wiped his bloody hands on his trousers. He pulled the mag release lever on his AK and shook five rounds out of the magazine. He began to juggle them. Up and down and round and round they went, glinting. The ringing in his ears thickened into silence.
He saw Meg cleaning the disassembled pieces of her AK clone. She was alone in the main cabin of the Shady Lady. Hadn’t the Shady Lady been destroyed years ago? Perhaps this was only a memory. But Meg’s face …She looked tormented. Her hair slid aside, exposing the pale nape of her neck, as she bent over the neatly laid out gun parts.
He reached out to tap her on the shoulder.
CHAPTER 27
MEG FELT SOMEONE TAP her on the shoulder. It startled her
so much she dropped the grip bolt she was holding. She twisted around, ready to yell at Axel for sneaking up on her like that.
No one there.
She was alone in the cabin of the Shihoka, a space fighter named after Axel’s mother, which had been her home for the last seven months, and would be for eight months more, if not forever.
The fans hummed. The lights flickered.
Meg shivered, feeling cold.
She glanced at the electronic bracelet she wore. It indicated a relaxed, slow pulse, in contrast to her own. She sucked her lips, holding in tears. Then she went back to her pointless, time-killing task.
*
Although the Shihoka’s main cabin resembled the old Shady Lady’s, the aft crewspace was laid out differently. In addition to the cabin where Axel and Meg slept, and the small galley, there was a gun room. This was meant as a place for crew on longer missions to store and maintain their battlesuits and weapons.
Axel and Meg were midway through a longer journey than the designers had ever anticipated. When they left the Betelgeuse system, the gun room had been entirely filled with extra food and supplies. Slowly, they’d used up the stacks of stuff nearest the door. Now the empty half of the room served as a nursery. A single battlesuit stood by the door, like a metal sentinel.
Axel sat in the nursing chair, sewing. He had cut up his spare flight suit and was using the material to make tiny t-shirts and shorts. He enjoyed this activity more than he would have expected to. At least he was doing something useful, as opposed to endlessly breaking down and reassembling a gun, or running unneeded checks on the Shihoka’s weapons systems.
On the table next to Axel, Nicky slept peacefully in his cot. The cot was actually a gun locker, cut loose from the wall, turned on its back, and strapped to the table. Axel paused in his sewing and tucked a blanket over the chubby three-month-old. It felt kind of cold in here.
A shadow fell across the baby.
Axel looked up.
Darkness engulfed the far end of the gun room, resisting the weak overhead lights. Crates and fabric bags of supplies, stacked to the ceiling, bulged out of this shifting, living pool of dark. Two blue glints shone in it, high up. The darkness itself cast a shadow, and the shadow was the shape of a man.
Axel dropped his sewing and moved between the shadow and the cot. It did not occur to him to call Meg, or to grab Nicky and flee the room. They were on a spaceship, in the zero-gravity field, halfway between Betelgeuse and Sol. There was nowhere to flee to. Without taking his eyes off the shadow, he slapped his palm on the biometric reader of the locker behind the cot. This was still a gun room, after all. He reached into the locker and grabbed a combi. He pointed it at the bulging, shivering darkness.
“It’s me,” came a whisper.
Colm? Axel said angrily: “Stop scaring the baby.” Stop scaring ME.
“Can you see me?” At the bottom of the shadow, the light reflected on something brown. It looked like a leather boot.
“Kind of,” Axel said.
“Meg couldn’t see me.”
“Maybe it’s too bright in there.”
“Maybe.” Colm chuckled, an eerie hoarse sound, and the shadow shivered like something solid. “Why are you sewing in the dark?”
“Don’t want to wake the baby.”
“The baby …” Colm breathed. The shadow swayed and toppled forward. It moved past Axel and leaned over the cot.
Nicky’s forehead wrinkled. His tiny rosebud lips parted. He was thinking about crying.
Axel put down his combi and snatched Nicky up, blanket and all. He did this partly because his new mission in life was to keep Nicky safe, and also because he was now sure that he did not want Meg bursting in here, and if Nicky started crying, she might.
Held in Axel’s strong arms, Nicky relaxed and slipped back into peaceful sleep.
The shadow started laughing. It really was Colm. “Axel, what the mortal fuck are you doing with a baby?”
“He’s mine.” Axel paused. “And Meg’s.”
“Are you serious?”
Axel smiled. “Yup.”
“Well, congratulations.” The shadow settled against the wall, rising and falling. Its oscillations hurt Axel’s eyes. “He’s a cute wee fellow. What’s his name?”
“Nicholas. Nicky. We named him after Meg’s father,” Axel said, thinking: Thank God I didn’t let her name him after you. A glimpse of riding boots, a shadow, a pair of gleaming blue eyes ... Was this what had become of Colm? When they saw him in the pharmacy on the Unsinkable, he’d at least looked like himself. “Are you a Ghost?” Axel blurted.
“No!”
“What are you doing here?”
“I’m not here.”
“Then where are you?”
“A long way away.”
“What do you want?”
“You.”
*
“You want me,” Axel repeated, keeping his voice low so as not to wake Nicky. “Is this some kind of sick joke?”
“I was going to ask Meg. But it doesn’t seem right, if she’s a new mother, with the baby to look after …”
In fact, Axel handled most of the baby care. He knew that Meg loved Nicky—she obsessed endlessly about his health, whether he was hitting his growth metrics, if they should be giving him vitamin D supplements—but she never wanted to spend any time with him, apart from breastfeeding. She would have put him on formula, if they had any. Meanwhile, Axel would’ve been happy to breastfeed the baby, if he had breasts. He patted Nicky’s back. “Again, Colm, what do you want?”
Then the shadow told him about a distant moon, the Ghosts’ homeworld, and an even smaller moon that orbited it— “I think it’s artificial; it’s got half a G of gravity and it’s covered with trees. It shouldn’t exist—” and the shadow that brooded under its surface, plotting the destruction of humanity. “They call him the Magus. Don’t laugh, Axel, but they say he’s thousands of years old. He’s very strong.”
“OK,” Axel said. “Okayyy ….”
“But we’re stronger than he is. I know we are. Us. The Fleet. The Marines.”
Axel was not a Marine anymore. He backed towards the door.
“Will you hear me out? You’re a better warrior than any fucking Ghost.”
“Even when I was a Marine, all I ever did was get good people killed.”
“On this operation, the only people getting killed would be yourself.”
Axel’s hip bumped into the table. He stumbled and recovered his balance, too late. Nicky’s face reddened and he started to bawl. The electronic monitor bracelet on the tiny, kicking ankle went wild. “Shush. Shush, shush,” Axel said, making a silly face at Nicky—which was pointless, as his eyes were tightly closed.
“You won’t have to leave the wean for even a minute,” Colm pleaded. “You’ll still be here. You might just feel a bit under the weather for a while …”
Meg’s voice came faintly through the door. “Is Nicky OK?”
“Fine,” Axel yelled. Lowering his voice, he gritted, “Go away, Colm!” He reached behind him and locked the door. He could not have Meg seeing this.
A second later, she tried to open the door, and couldn’t. “What the fuck, Axel?”
“If you won’t help, I’ll have to ask her,” Colm said.
Axel’s blood ran cold. He believed everything Colm was saying. That was the trouble. “You’re an asshole, Mackenzie.”
“Thank you,” Colm said faintly. “I try.”
Axel kissed Nicky on the forehead and laid him in his cot, still yelling his head off. “What do I have to do?”
*
Three minutes later, Axel opened the door of the gun room. Meg, who had been banging frantically on it, reeled back from the warlike monster that walked out: a Marine in a battlesuit, holding a loaded combi in one gauntlet.
“Pick him up,” Axel said through his suit’s external speaker, gesturing at the screaming baby. “I’m gonna have to stay like this for a while.”
CHAPTER 28
THE AIR AROUND THE Son of Saturn shimmered. Battlesuited Marines pounded through the ruins of the village, spreading out with Fleet-trained tactical savvy. Their visors were down, hiding their faces, but Colm knew that every one of them was Axel—one of the best Marines in the whole damn Human Republic.
He grinned for joy to see them, but he felt the esthesia warmth in his belly fading. He was rapidly draining the fuel cells in the rocket, which ran on hydrogen and oxygen. He could replenish the LH2 with Dhjerga’s help, but he couldn’t think of any workaround for the LOX that did not involve running the condenser and evaporator for hours. He couldn’t do that in the middle of a battle. He needed to capture a new power source.
Staying in the cover of the hedge he yelled, “The wind turbines!” He pointed up the hill.
There were two thousand Magistocracy soldiers in the way.
The Marines crashed into them like bullets going through paper targets.
Dhjerga shouted, “Never thought I’d be glad to see those guys.”
“It’s one of my friends,” Colm said. “Well, about a hundred of him. A company of Marines is a match for ten thousand Ghosts.” An old Corps saying. Until they run out of ammo … But these Marines came with their own, endless supply.
As they ran uphill, some of the Marines stopped to give Colm the extra item he’d asked Axel for: a blister pack of tropodolfin. He lined the packs up on the grass, gloating over them. Finally. No more horrible bitter noak leaves. He popped a single pill out with his thumbnail and crunched it. Artificial sweetness filled his mouth, and energy filled his veins. At long last, he’d be able to go home! But he couldn’t leave the Marines on their own just yet, after he’d fetched them here. He stood up to cheer them on.
Lady Terrious ran across the cabbage field and pulled him down behind the hedge before he could get shot. “You are a mage, after all,” she said. Then she kicked Dhjerga, who was sitting on the ground next to Janz’s body. “Go. This was your rebellion. You started it. Go and finish it.”
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