by Jacob Holo
“Good,” Kaneda said. “That gives us some time.”
“It may not be much,” Ryu said. “All he has to do is get a robot to the engines.”
“Then we make this lull count,” Kaneda said.
“I also have the ship’s schematics.” Cat distributed the layout and marked a location near the ship’s center. “That’s the TangleNet link. It’s about half a kilometer ahead of our position.”
Ryu pulled up the schematic. “Nice! Looks like we can follow this corridor most of the way to the link. Let’s go.”
“Wait a second,” Kaneda said.
“What is it?”
“Look at the layout,” Kaneda said. “We may have an alternative to a frontal assault. Your navy hit the Errand with two kinetic torpedoes. One of them landed near the ship’s center.”
“So?” Ryu asked.
“It’s an alternate route to the TangleNet link. The torpedo sank so deep, there’s practically no external armor left. You don’t need my thermal lance to get back in. Even your grenades could punch through.”
“Oh, I see,” Cat said. “That way we can skip the bulk of whatever Caesar has in store for us.”
“Precisely,” Kaneda said. “But there’s one problem, namely my armor. If I take that route, Caesar will know.”
Ryu could see where this was going. He didn’t like it, but he had to admit the plan had merit.
“You want to split up,” Ryu said. “You’re going to act as a decoy.”
“We don’t know what forces Caesar has left,” Kaneda said. “This way, you have a good chance of avoiding danger.”
“I don’t know ...”
“I am not debating this, Ryu. You can either follow me straight in or go around.” Kaneda aimed his thermal lance at the next pressure door and melted it down. He marched through the corridor.
“Well?” Cat asked. “Which one is it?”
Ryu watched his brother walk away to what was very likely his death. He knew he should be focusing on the mission, but all he could think about was he had his brother back. After all these years, Kaneda was back and now he was going to lose him again, this time for good.
“Ryu?” Cat asked.
“I know,” he said. “We’re going around. Come on.”
He and Cat turned and sprinted down the corridor, heading to where the Needle had landed. With the ship’s engines disabled and the pressure doors already burned open, it didn’t take the two dragons long to reach the puncture in the ship’s armor. They only stopped once to let a lone gun-spider pass.
At the puncture, they climbed up through the smooth-walled hole. With Caesar no longer in control, the atmosphere had bled out of the section, leaving the interior almost a vacuum.
Ryu crawled onto the Errand’s outer hull, keeping at least three points of contact at all times. The engines were off now, but they could reactivate without warning. The two dragons “climbed” up the hull swiftly but carefully, diverting only to climb around the massive gun turrets in their path. When they cleared the third turret, they could see the torpedo’s impact point which resembled a narrow funnel in the armor.
“Kaneda, what’s your status?” Ryu asked.
“Meeting heavy resistance,” Kaneda said. “The gun-spiders are putting up a tough fight.”
“Ryu,” Matriarch said. “Caesar’s forces have started launching from Europa. The first transport will rendezvous with the Errand in eighteen minutes.”
“Understood.”
“Movement ahead,” Cat said.
“What?” Ryu stopped climbing. He took out his rifle.
Halfway between the two dragons and the torpedo impact, a section of armor sank away.
“What’s that?” Ryu said. He checked the layout. “A shuttle elevator?”
“Something’s coming up.”
“I don’t like this. Back up. Get behind that last turret.”
Cat hurried behind the turret. Ryu rose to a crouch and joined her. He put his back to the turret and extruded a dot-cam tubule around the edge.
The elevator ascended to the surface with a Federacy shuttle latched in place, surrounded by shapes clad in smartskin illusions.
“Gun-spiders?” Cat asked.
“I don’t think so,” Ryu said.
The shapes stepped off the elevator. With data from their movements, his tracker counted about ten crusader thralls and two tank-spiders.
“Shit,” Ryu breathed.
“There’s no way we can take that many,” Cat said.
“I know.” Ryu said. “Kaneda, we have a problem.”
* * *
Kaneda listened to Ryu’s suggestion. He blasted apart another pressure door and marched through the wreckage. A gun-spider peeked around the corner and sprayed him with explosive rounds. The shots impacted his shield, deepening the crack running down the center. The gun-spider skittered away before he could return fire.
“Understood,” Kaneda said grimly. “I’ll do what I can.”
“We don’t have much time,” Ryu said. “Reinforcements are sixteen minutes away.”
“Then let’s finish this,” Kaneda said. The artificial musculature in his left leg threw several warnings over his vision. He switched off the damaged strands and increased power to the functional ones. A few steps later, the pressure warning in his right arm showed up again. The auto-sealant had run dry. Kaneda muted the warning and continued down the utility corridor.
Halfway to the next bend, he received a message from Admiral Piller’s SolarNet account. He was about to block the contact, but decided not to. Matching wits with a quantum mind was never smart, but they were running out of options.
If I can give Ryu the extra time he needs ...
Kaneda opened the link. “What do you want?”
“My, my. What is taking you so long?” the Caesar said through the Piller-thrall.
“You still insist on speaking through your slave,” Kaneda said.
“My slave?” Caesar asked. “Is that what you think Piller is? Slave is too generous a term. He is a tool, just like you are. In fact, he quite enjoys his role! And so will you, when I’m done.”
Kaneda blasted through another door, kicked the glowing edges aside, and ducked through.
“Don’t worry,” Caesar said. “I’m not going to kill you. I’m going to take you alive and reshape your mind. You will be as loyal to me as Piller. And do not fret. You will enjoy your new role. I am not one to cast aside such a valuable pawn.”
“You haven’t defeated me yet,” Kaneda said.
“Oh, please. Let’s be honest here. You can’t win. The three of you will not stop this ship, and my reinforcements grow closer by the second.”
“You sound so confident,” Kaneda said. He turned a corner and came under fire from two gun-spiders. Automatic weapons pounded his shield. He fired the thermal lance into one gun-spider and raked the beam across the other. They floated off the floor in several pieces.
In his overlay, the shield flashed red. The crack had made it all the way to the bottom, leaving his forearm as the only thing holding it together.
“I admit you put up a good fight. Matriarch’s ability to place the Needle so close surprised me. Otherwise I would have retained a stronger force here. But I am not as weak as you might think, and you are all alone right now.”
“You think so?” Kaneda asked. “I could have a whole team of dragons following me in and you’d never know it.”
“Please, don’t insult us both. You were never good at bluffing. The two dragons are moving across the ship’s exterior and you are pressing forward as their decoy.”
Kaneda turned down the last corridor. The TangleNet link and its nav beacon blinked directly ahead, stored within five concentric layers of spherical armor shells. The corridor widened to a small room in front of the first security door. Several stacks of unlabeled crates were lashed to the floor.
Kaneda walked into the room and stopped. His tracker detected something approaching from behind
, though it couldn’t identify what. He spun around and aimed his weapon down the corridor.
“I will admit it’s been fun,” Caesar said. “You have been an amusing pawn. But now our game comes to an end. Goodbye, Kaneda. I’ll see you on the operating table.”
Kaneda backed up to the security door. Intangible shapes moved into the corridor he’d passed through, dashing from cover to cover. His tracker pieced the clues together, generating four large humanoid outlines. It estimated a few more further away.
Kaneda fired down the corridor. The beam missed the closest crusader thrall. Two of them sprayed the room with vari-shells. An incinerator splashed against his shield, setting it on fire. Two depleted-uranium slugs punched through and cracked his chest armor.
Kaneda dashed behind a stack of crates and fired around it. He struck the lead crusader thrall in the neck. The beam vaporized its head, most of the torso, and flung its severed arms to either side. Its hips and legs went down, mindlessly kicking.
More incoming vari-shells tore into the crates Kaneda ducked behind. Glittering electronics and packing foam flew into the air. Kaneda kept moving, charging across the room to a second crate pile. He fired again, cutting into a power distribution panel the next thrall had used for cover. Sparks poured out of the panel before its circuit breakers kicked in. The beam clipped the thrall in the shoulder, crippling its smartskin illusion.
The fully visible thrall dove to the other side of the corridor and fired. Vari-shells blew the crates off the floor and sent them spinning around the room. Explosive shells and heavy kinetic sabots tore into his shield. A spider web of cracks expanded from the center. Chunks of it broke away with each impact.
Kaneda cut the thrall in half before it reached cover. Its legs tumbled away, but the thrall’s upper half grabbed hold of the grating on the floor and swung its Gatling gun around. It and two other thralls kept firing.
Kaneda dodged out of their line of sight. He put his back against the wall next to the corridor’s entrance. Vari-shells blasted pieces off the corner, but a thick support beam running through the wall proved too tough to penetrate.
The legless crusader thrall maintained a steady stream of fire while five or six fully functional thralls moved forward. The constant suppressing fire kept Kaneda pinned out of sight. With the crates demolished and choking the room with debris, he had nowhere else to hide.
Armor subsystem faults scrolled down Kaneda’s vision. He ignored them and readied his grenades. He was about to try ricocheting them down the corridor when the barrage stopped.
Behind him, the security door slid open. A crusader thrall stepped out and aimed a thermal lance at his back.
Kaneda had only a split second to dodge. He dove to the side, keeping clear of the corridor, and brought his own lance around.
The thrall fired at close range. Its beam vaporized a path through the crate wreckage and glanced off Kaneda’s shoulder. His cracked armor disintegrated down to the final layer. Inside, his skin crisped and blackened.
Kaneda sucked in a breath through clenched teeth and returned fire, but the crusader thrall rushed him and the beam went wide. The thrall collided into his shield and smashed him against the wall. He tried to bring his thermal lance around, but the thrall held his wrist tight.
The high speed contact caused the thrall’s illusion to disengage. Viter stared at him with a blank expression and only one eye. His lips parted, but no sound came out.
The Viter-thrall squeezed its gauntlet, crumpling Kaneda’s wrist armor. It twisted its grip and pulled. The flesh around Kaneda’s wrist stretched and tore.
“Damn you,” Kaneda breathed.
With a final twist, the Viter-thrall ripped his hand off, which still held his thermal lance. Painkillers automatically injected into his bloodstream, and his wound clotted at an accelerated pace. Only a trickle of blood floated away from the limb before the flow cut off.
“Damn you, Caesar!” Kaneda’s scream carried all his pain and fury. He jettisoned his shield, which pushed the Viter-thrall away, then slammed a kick into the thrall’s stomach.
The Viter-thrall staggered back. Kaneda rushed forward and tackled him. They crashed against the floor and slid across. Kaneda pressed a knee against the thrall’s chest, grabbed one of its arms and ripped it off. He stuck his wrist launcher in the thrall’s face and fired. The grenade pulped Viter’s head. Kaneda shoved his arm down what was left of the thrall’s throat and fired two more times.
The thrall’s armor bulged and went slack. Kaneda pulled it off the ground and threw it away. Gore and smoke flowed out of cracks in the thrall’s armor. He reached for a weapon, any weapon, but stopped when he realized the other crusader thralls were in the room.
Five intact crusader thralls and half of the sixth aimed their Gatling guns at him. The barrels spun at full speed, ready to fire at a moment’s notice.
“That was very amusing!” Caesar said. “You are such a spirited fighter. To the bitter end, is it? But now it is time for you to serve me without question, as you always should have.”
One of the thralls stepped forward. It pushed Viter’s distended armor aside and reached for him.
Kaneda checked Ryu and Cat’s position on his overlay.
“I will never serve you,” he said. “Now, Ryu!”
A turbo-devastator struck the crusader thrall closest to the corridor and blew it apart. Three grenades pounded the second thrall, blowing off an arm, its head, and punching a hole in its chest.
Ryu loaded his fourth and last turbo-devastator. Cat emptied a full clip of shatterbacks into the cluster of thralls.
Kaneda smashed his shoulder against the thrall closest to him. They went down, swinging and grabbing. Kaneda wedged himself between the thrall and its Gatling gun. He established a contact link with the weapon and sent his command override. The thrall tried to fire the gun but couldn’t.
Kaneda swung it around to face the other thralls and cut loose. Vari-shells exploded amongst the thralls. High explosives, mini-needlers, kinetic sabots, and depleted-uranium slugs each added their own unique brand of destruction. The whole room blazed from incinerator gel.
Ryu fired his last turbo-devastator and blasted another thrall completely apart. Kaneda wrestled with the thrall on his back. He ripped its arm free, shoved it away and hosed it down with its own Gatling gun. Only a gutted, flaming corpse was left when he let off the trigger.
Kaneda looked around. The last thrall was dead.
“What is this?” Caesar shouted. “What’s going on? They’re outside the hull! They’re not in the ship! How can they be in the ship?”
“You guessed wrong,” Kaneda said. He walked over to Viter’s armor.
“No! That’s impossible! All the indicators were correct! They weren’t with you! I can see signs of them on the hull!”
“Of course you can,” Kaneda said. He disengaged the Viter-thrall’s thermal lance from its cables and connected the weapon to his power pack.
“They would have defended you if they were inside!”
“That’s exactly right,” Kaneda said. He burned through the first security door and kicked the molten edges aside. A short walkway spanned the gap to the next concentric armor sphere and its security door.
“Hurry,” Ryu said. “We don’t have much time before those tank-spiders get back inside.”
“No!” Caesar said. “Stop! Don’t go in there!”
“Are you afraid, Caesar?” Kaneda asked. He burned a hole in the next door and forced his way through. His armor blistered when he touched the hot metal.
“This is impossible!” Caesar said.
“Tell me, are you afraid?” Kaneda blasted through the third door and fourth door. “I will find you, Caesar! I will find you, and I will kill you!”
He burned his way through the fifth and final door. Inside the innermost sphere, Kaneda found a three-story tall monolith covered with small yellow cylinders. Thick data cables ran out of the monolith and disappeared through the sp
here’s bottom. The Piller-thrall stood next to the monolith wearing a Federacy pressure suit. It aimed a pistol at Kaneda.
“You—” the Piller-thrall began to say.
Kaneda shot him in the stomach with the thermal lance at maximum yield. The beam incinerated the thrall’s chest. Its limbs and head shot off and splattered against the walls.
Ryu hurried in. “Cat, get in here. This is definitely a TangleNet hub. There must be thousands of connections here.”
“On it! I just finished trapping the corridor,” Cat said. She backed into the room, stuck one last grenade into the cooling security door and turned around. “Wow. That’s a lot of links.”
“Can you disable it?” Ryu asked.
“I’ll try,” Cat said. “Watch my back.”
Ryu and Kaneda took positions at either side of the entrance.
“Check where all those data cables come into the hub,” Ryu said.
“Right. I see it,” Cat said. She knelt down and splayed her hacking glove over the cable ports. “Now, let’s see what we can do with this.”
“You okay, Kaneda?” Ryu asked.
“I’ll be fine until the painkillers wear off,” Kaneda said. New data began trickling onto his overlay. First, clusters of status information populated the ship’s layout. Then indicators lit up for every thrall and robot on the ship.
“That’s all that’s left?” Ryu asked. “Just the tank-spiders and thralls outside the hull and a few gun-spiders inside?”
“I think so,” Cat said.
“They’re coming down the shuttle elevator,” Kaneda said.
“We’ll see about that,” Cat said. “And ... I have control of the elevator. Ha! Back up you go. Those robots can stay on the ship’s hull for now.”
“Nice,” Ryu said.
“Ship weapons are disabled ... and let’s see ... Ah. There are the link protocols. Well, it definitely looks like he’s controlling all the robots from here. There. I’ve disabled the links.”
“What about those robots flying up from the surface?” Ryu asked. “Even without new orders they could pose a problem.”
“Not for much longer,” Cat said. She expanded the channel. “Hey, any navy ships nearby? This is black dragon. We could use a hand here.”
