It’s one thing to open fire on a distant target with an autonomous weapons system. It’s quite another to kill someone face to face.
We pause. He’s got all the advantages: undamaged armor, a more powerful weapon, and superior position. Still, he hesitates.
I don’t.
I turn and fire my pistol directly into his reflective visor, which flares with light, hopefully distracting him as he rises his laser carbine and—
—pain.
Impossible radiance fades into clouds of bruised purple and angry red. Icy cold on half my face that explodes into raging agony from outraged flesh. The shock hammers through me like a physical blow.
Somehow, someway, I don’t drop my weapons. I bring my beam down to burn through the sensitive focusing and emitter lenses of Donner’s carbine, and the hellish burning fire finally stops, but the pain goes on and on.
Donner drops behind the cover of the exo-frame, out of sight and the line of fire…for the moment.
I move; no matter what, I can’t afford to stay in the same place and get ambushed again.
Finally, I have a second to check my augments and see what they’re trying to tell me. I have third degree burns on half my face, and my right eye is…just gone. I’m glad I can’t see what I must look like right now. My vision fades into a blurry purple-black blob on the right from my blind eye. The internal auto-doc is flushing my system with all kinds of painkillers and anti-shock medicines, but I abort its attempts to anesthetize me further. I can’t afford to lose my focus right now.
I pause against the armored hulk and listen. My cameras might have been damaged by all the laser fire, but my audio systems are working just fine. I listen carefully as the ash falls silently around me. It’s hard to tell anything. All the ash and dust muffles sound, and even with amplified hearing, it’s hard to tell if anything is real or just my imagination. If I jump out too soon at a phantom, I’ll probably get shot. If I wait too long and get ambushed, I’ll probably get shot.
Did I hear something?
Wait, there it is again…
My augments map the likely location, right there behind the wreck’s leg. I get ready to fire, and…
I fire my pistol on maximum focus before I even remember doing it. A humanoid shape pulls back in the dazzling glare of my fire, and I duck, and more armor is vaporized off my shoulder in a blast of return fire before I get back in cover. He must be using his laser sidearm, like me.
I pop back out for a few more desperate shots, and we both take more glancing hits on our flight armor. Flight armor is basically equal to Marine scout armor, and a laser pistol isn’t going to breech the armored plates. Still, a lucky shot could hit a joint, or sustained fire on the same spot can ablate enough armor to eventually weaken it.
Time seems to disappear as we maneuver around the wreck, trading potshots back and forth. Neither of us is immune to the other’s fire, but neither of us can get a killing shot in, either. The ash and dust in the air flashes and glows with each shot, further attenuating the power of our beams, and dazzling my already watering remaining eye. I eject the empty power cell from my pistol and reload. Soon enough, in the running gunfight, that cell goes empty as well.
I holster my pistol and draw my atom-edged diamond dagger.
It’s time to finish this.
* * *
I clamber as carefully as possible around the ruined hulk of the exo-frame. I do my best to be silent, but I worry about every little sound or scrape I make as I move carefully from one hiding spot to another. All the ash and dust help muffle the sounds, but movement also throws up clouds of ash, and I’m leaving a clear trail as I go.
I dedicate everything to listening for movement. That’s my best chance, with half my vision gone. Already half the side of my face is a dull, pulsing ache—a warning of the pain to come later, when my internal augments eventually lose the battle with all the damage that I’m taking.
The faintest of sounds is all the warning I get as Eric Donner leaps at me from the top of the wreck, too fast for me to do anything but twist instinctively when he jumps on me. That probably saves my life, as his blade scrapes along my chest plate rather than sinking deep into a vulnerable spot under my arm. I keep rolling as he lashes out with a series of blinding fast slashes, scoring an opaque line across my face plate with one strike.
I finally roll back to my feet and try a quick thrust to get some space, but only manage to scratch the front of his armor. Still, he takes a step back, giving me a bit of space, then he kicks up a cloud of dust to cover his next attack. I’m forced back by his blindingly fast flurry of thrusts and slashes that spark across my armor, and fresh pain lets me know he’s nicked me a few times through the weaker joints.
Out of the cloud at last, I can defend myself. If it wasn’t for my face plate, the ash might have totally blinded me. He pulls back, and we both get into a proper fighting stance and slowly circle each other on the ashy plain. I’ve backed us out away from the wreck, so now there’s nothing to hide behind or distract us from our fight.
Donner opens back up with a few exploratory strikes, and I counter, our blades scraping along armored forearms and gauntlets. He circles to the side, trying to get into my blind spot, and launches a savage thrust for my neck that hits my armor instead, then backs away from my slashing counter.
We circle again, each looking for an opening.
His armor shimmers as he activates its adaptive camouflage, but instead of hiding, his armor shifts and swirls with ever-changing fractal patterns and flashing patterns of light and darkness. It’s eye watering and almost impossible to look at. Now, nearly impossible to make out clearly, he launches another series of savage strikes that I defend against clumsily, getting cuts wherever my armor has a weak point, along the inside of my elbows, around my knees, my sides, and abdomen…the only places I manage to defend successfully are my neck and face.
I stagger back, and he sweeps another cloud of dust into the air, then comes at me in the middle of the ash cloud.
We fall to the ash-covered ground and roll, both blindly trying to fight in the gray gloom. I have to go by feel and instinct, stabbing where I think I can get through, hitting armor plate more often than not, and only occasionally striking true into Eric’s armored cybernetic body. His strikes hit home too many times, deep, tearing cuts into my sides, abdomen, and one partly into my neck.
Finally, we roll to a stop, and the dust begins to settle. He’s on top, and we’re grasping each other’s knife hands. I’m bleeding badly from a number of cuts, and my strength is running out. Donner’s almost entirely a cyborg, so he can keep this up for hours, and he’s stronger to begin with.
Slowly, Donner forces his knife blade toward my throat.
* * *
The blade comes closer. I’m easily strong enough to send Donner flying with a throw in this weak gravity, but he’s forcing my arms out and back, levering me into the ground so I can’t move properly. My legs are also locked up by his position. I can’t move, and the blade keeps coming closer.
It stops for some reason.
“You’ve lost,” he whispers. “You were always going to. Saturn can’t be stopped; the transformative singularity can’t be stopped, it’s inevitable. Everything you’ve fought for and sacrificed for has always been in vain, even before you were born.”
“At least I still have my own mind, Eric,” I grunt out, trying to push the blade back. “You? What’s left of you?”
He wavers for an instant, and I manage to push the blade back a few centimeters before he stops it again with the raw power of his artificial limbs. “You could be useful, Commander.” He seems to consider something. “It’s just us out here alone. There’s no one to tell what happened here. Join with us; it’s inevitable anyway. You’re potentially in line for higher command and could be very useful to Saturn. You could rise high with us. Our agents and allies are everywhere and could assist you in your career and rise. With you as our agent in a high position in
Jupiter’s Navy, we could achieve our inevitable victory more quickly. Accept the Saturn virus completely. Let it in, and let it transform you. You will rise high and be on the winning side…”
“No,” I gasp as my muscles seize up from the sustained effort. Somehow, this is what the fight is all about; what it was always about. Saturn, and the virus controlling Eric, aren’t about killing us all, but controlling us all, reshaping us, mind and soul, into something else. But at some point, they need you to acquiesce to it.
“Join Saturn…”
“My soul has worth!” I shout.
Somehow the strength goes out of him for an instant, and I reverse the hold. I twist the grip on his blade to the side, it scrapes uselessly against my chest plate, and I drive mine home into his neck. The diamond-hard atom-edged blade bites deep and hits something vital in his mechanical body.
He gives a cry of pain and collapses into convulsions.
I stand up, panting, as my foe trembles, and then goes still at my feet.
Dead?
A quick system query to his augments tells me he’s still alive, but his motor systems are offline from a severed primary communications trunk.
I take off his helmet and ready my knife for a two-handed thrust that should go through his eye, into his brain, and end this once and for all. I take a deep breath and…
…do nothing.
I can’t do it. It’s one thing to kill a man in combat, but I’m not an executioner. When the fleet finally gets here, he’ll be under arrest. He’ll still pay for all of this. I think he’s been paying for it for a while now, with that Saturn thing in his brain.
The task force should be overhead soon…
A low, deep roar echoes through the gray waste. It’s answered by another, and then another. Soon, the air is echoing with the terrible cries. I know that sound…Venusian Dragons.
* * *
The dragons come out of the clouds of ash as dim gray predatory shapes that gain color and solidity as they approach. Four of the huge beasts are heading my way, while others circle overhead. They’re not alone. Venusians in shining, laser-resistant battle armor ride atop them, armed with laser lances, while the dragons themselves have gleaming battle armor over their blue scales.
I stand and hold my almost useless knife.
At least I’ll go down fighting.
The four land in huge clouds of dust and ash kicked up by their wings. The huge beasts rumble and stalk forward with the effortless predatory grace of big cats.
“Lower your weapon,” the lead rider transmits.
“Make me,” I send back, and I stand between them and Eric.
The nearest dragon, a big, scarred brute, hisses at me.
The rider shrugs and sends, “Do you require medical aid?”
“What?”
“You and your companion appear injured. Shall I call for medical aid?”
“Oh…” Are they taking me prisoner and actually following the rules for that? Or is this something else? “Um…”
Thunder roars though the air, some kind of aircraft approaching. Probably the transports ready to take me captive.
The three-winged craft are briefly visible in the gray haze before their thrusters kick up even more clouds of gray. They land, and then the towering shapes walk toward me…
Angels!
Sparky’s voice comes to me, “Lieutenant Greensport, reporting in.”
“Sparky, we need medical evac for ourselves and the AI cores of our frames…and Lieutenant Donner is under arrest. Make sure he’s guarded at all times.”
“There’s already a transport on the way, sir.”
“What’s our status? And what’s the situation with…them?” I incline my head toward the waiting dragons.
“We’ve got one dead and two others seriously injured, sir. They lucked out and managed to eject mostly safely. The rest of us kept the enemy busy so they couldn’t go after our downed men.
“About the dragons.” He pauses, and his exo-frame glances at a nearby dragon, which looks back with a calm, predatory gaze. “As soon as the fighting broke out here, House Dragon made some kind of agreement with the Unicorns and our task force to concentrate on whatever it was the Phoenixes and Saturn were doing. Missiles, drones, Angels, Harpy fighters, everything dropped on them there. Right about now, the task force’s main guns are hitting the place.”
Great, so Venusian politics just shifted again, this time in our favor—for the moment. That could change again at any second. The faster we’re off of this dammed planet, the better.
Some message comes to the Venusian dragon riders, and, with an echoing cry, they take wing and fly off south.
With my hands shaking, I finally sheathe the knife I forgot I was still holding.
I can hear the distant rumble of the approaching transports.
At last, finally…
My knees seem to shudder for a moment. Is even the weak gravity of this small world too much now? No. I take a deep breath and stand steady. As long as I’m in sight of the Venusians, I won’t show any weakness. I’ll make sure I walk onto that transport under my own power.
* * *
I don’t let them knock me out as the medical transport lifts off. Sure, there’s a bunch of tubes of blood and medicines going into me, and my augments are synched up with the transport’s auto-doc, but I want to retain my own volition, at least for a few more minutes.
I want to see with my own eyes what happens next, to make sure.
They packed up Talon’s AI core for transport, and he’s still functional inside the armored shell. I had to know he made it out OK and wouldn’t let them lift off with me until I’d seen it with my own eyes.
I also needed to see them pack up Eric Donner and his frame’s AI core, Sammy. Both are incredibly dangerous, and until I see them under guard by Marines, my duty isn’t done. I almost feel sorry for Eric…almost. I know what torture the Saturn virus can do to someone, and he got it worse than I did. Still, I also know at some point, you have to choose to give in to it before it can take over. I didn’t, and he did. Somehow, someway, after all that torture, he decided to give up everything he was and believed in. That’s hard to ignore, however much he suffered. He also should have immediately opened up with the medical staff who were reviving him, given some kind of signal, instead of purposely deceiving them from the start and creating a whole web of lies that eventually bound him more tightly to Saturn than even the virus code did.
Looking back, I wonder if he was trying to warn me earlier, to tell me somehow. If he had, then there would be fewer of us dead and fewer injured, and we might even have succeeded in our attack run. What I can’t forgive is, he attacked his own when he launched that sneak attack on us. It still burns. In the end, I think he realized, too late, that he’d gone over the moral event-horizon. His hesitation in the fight between us is unlike him; he’s the better pilot and fighter of the two of us. Some part of him was fighting what he was doing, giving me a chance. Maybe there’s something left of the original good man still in there, somewhere, and maybe God will forgive him someday…but I don’t see how I ever can.
The transport finally lifts off in a cloud of dust. I can see through the exterior cameras piped through to my augments, and there’s a wall screen for anyone who isn’t hooked up. I’m strapped into a medical bed like living cargo, and it hurts to turn my head to look with all these bandages, so I let the images flow through my augmentation.
We rise through a featureless gray smog for a while, then we break through. Above the rolling ash clouds is another cloud deck of light gray, nearly indistinguishable from the ash clouds below. It looks like it’s getting ready to rain and finally wash all that filth out of the air. We pass through the light pearl cloud deck with some minor turbulence, and we’re up and out into the crystal clear, clean blue sky again.
I aim one of the cameras at the middle of the objective everyone’s been fighting over. It’s currently ablaze, glowing like a sea of orange fire
, and sending up towering plumes of smoke. The atmosphere glows in streaks as high-energy beams lance down from orbit to strike at things hidden by all the smoke and fire down there. Glowing streaks of missiles flash down to detonate in fierce blue plasma explosions. Angels, drones, and Venusian Harpies fly overhead, unleashing destruction below.
What are they fighting? What could be so bad that it got Houses Unicorn and Dragon to join up with our fleet to hammer it? I’d like to think the Venusians finally realized the Saturnine Union was their real enemy all along, but I don’t think that’s it. Something down there scared everyone so badly, all the past grudges and feuds and power struggles seemed like nothing compared to it.
I wonder if I’ll ever know what it was.
We leave the atmosphere and are finally up in the star-lit realm of space.
I’m going home at last.
I’ll just stay awake a little longer…just enough to…
* * * * *
Epilogue
The Callisto is returning home to Jupiter, and this time, most of us are going back with it.
Here in my cabin, all is quiet, except for the drone of the engines. I’ve got time to think now…maybe too much time.
Everyone’s been trying to cheer me up as I heal, in their own ways. My crew held a huge party as soon as I could go. I also got my new call-sign, “Salamander,” which sounds cool, until one realizes it’s based on the humiliating “Salamander Guy” meme videos now playing all over the solar system. Some kinds of fame I could do without.
I’m on light duty; the docs will let me walk around as long as I keep my augments sending them medical data, but they won’t let me do anything more strenuous than data-work. Honestly, I didn’t take that much damage, I’m all patched up and everything…mostly. Sure, they had to get my heart going again after we docked with the host carrier, but some new blood vessels and blood, and now I’m fine. I’ll need to have half my face replaced and get an implant for my missing eye—until then, I’ve got a pirate eyepatch. So everyone’s treating me like I’m wounded, and I can’t get any flight time that isn’t in a simulator.
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