“Anything happen since you checked your gun five minutes ago?”
Gabe turned to eye Peter Price’s dopey smile. The man was trying to joke with him, that seemed clear. Problem was, Gabe had no interest in building up camaraderie with this man.
“I’d better get a higher rank than you,” he said instead.
“I’m sure you will,” Price said, his expression unchanged.
Turning to refocus on his patrols, Gabe continued his trip around the site’s perimeter. Generally, he didn’t bother making friends with any of the people he worked with, and the only people with whom he had any interest in establishing a rapport were those under his command. Since he had no one under his command, he didn’t want to establish a rapport with anyone.
Something on the horizon caught his eye, and he froze, squinting until he felt sure of what he was seeing.
Then, he raised his assault rifle to sight down the barrel.
Price fell in beside him, his own rifle wavering uncertainly.
“Raise your gun, Price.”
“That…that Quatro is chasing that guy on the bike, right?”
“That guy is Mario Laudano. Darkstream considers him a valuable asset. And yes, that is an alien in pursuit.”
“But they’re friendly. They submitted to us…”
“Clearly that was a ruse, now wasn’t it? There may even be more of them coming.”
Still, Price hesitated.
“Raise that gun, Price!”
That did it. Price raised his rifle to his face.
“Now, shoot!”
The Quatro was chasing Laudano at an angle oblique to their position, allowing them to fire on the alien without hitting the man.
Their bullets barely seemed to affect the beast. After several rounds, it did acquire a limp, but that didn’t seem to slow it by very much.
“We need backup!” Gabe shouted as he lowered his rifle to run forward, chasing the man and alien while glancing over his shoulder at the tree line—to see whether more of the things were emerging to attack.
Nothing, so far.
He turned back to the sound of increased gunfire. More soldiers had joined Gabe and Price in shooting the beast, and their bullets finally appeared to have an effect.
The alien stumbled, falling to the ground with a crash that was muffled by thick grass. Seconds later, it rose again, staggering after Laudano before falling once more.
Soldiers converged on the alien’s position, continuing their firing.
When Gabe arrived, he found the Quatro covered in its own blood, its royal purple coat mostly stained red.
Miraculously, it still lived, its flank rising and falling with labored respiration.
“Wow,” Gabe said. “These things are almost impossible to kill.”
Laudano sat astride his hoverbike, sweat gleaming on his forehead.
“You all saw this thing try to run me down,” Laudano called to the gathered men and women. “I was scouting the nearby terrain under Bronson’s orders when it attacked me. I was lucky to keep my seat and get away!”
“They’re crafty, then,” Bronson himself said, as he emerged from the staircase that led to the underground facility. “They pretended to be peaceful, but now they strike the moment one of us is vulnerable.”
“Not that crafty,” Gabe put in. “They could have used the element of surprise to hit us with greater numbers than this.”
“I don’t think this one expected me to escape,” Laudano said. “It probably figured it could pick me off while I was alone, maybe whittle down our numbers by doing the same to whoever came looking for me. Well, you lot thwarted its plan. Good work.”
A cheer rose up from the gathered soldiers at their own success.
Gabe just smiled.
Looks like this planet won’t be half as boring as I thought.
Chapter 6
Full Retreat
Gabe was happy enough with the ranks Darkstream had assigned everyone.
“Seaman” was about all he would be if he’d stayed with the UHF back in the Milky Way, especially considering he’d have likely procrastinated the advancement exams as long as they’d let him.
Besides, if he’d stayed back there, he’d be making half what he was now…and he wouldn’t be making history.
Yeah. That’s the order I want to put that in.
The most important thing about the ranks they received was that Peter Price had gotten Seaman Apprentice—below Gabe. If Gabe had gotten the same rank, he would have kicked up shit.
And if he’d ended up ranking below Price, he would have quit on the spot.
Yeah, right, a voice said—a voice that sounded kind of like his mother.
“You got me, Mom,” he muttered. “I wouldn’t quit.”
“What did you just say?” Price asked, from where he marched alongside Gabe.
“Nothing. Keep your eyes on the horizon, Seaman Apprentice, and tell me if you see anything that might be a threat. Just so you know, tree stumps don’t count as threats, except to scrubs as clumsy as you.”
They’d quickly discovered that the resource-collecting robots, which everyone had taken to calling Gatherers, always took the same paths back and forth between wherever they were mining and the deposit sites.
As a result, those paths were well-worn, the grass trampled, the dirt hard-packed. Sometimes, the soldiers even stumbled across the dried-out husks of trees that the machines had snapped off to clear the way.
That surprised Gabe. Turns out those things have more fight in them than you’d think.
Bronson had done Darkstream the favor of ordering the crew of his orbiting destroyer to deploy the ship’s supply of surveillance satellites, providing everyone with grainy photos of the planet’s terrain. From those photos, you could just make out the light-gray specks of other deposit sites. Those were basically everywhere, and Gabe and Price were headed to one of them now, along with an entire platoon commanded by Chief Petty Officer Tessa Notaras.
Gabe could tell that Bob Bronson was doing everything he could to make himself useful to the company, or at least to appear useful. Bringing his own destroyer was a great starting point, not to mention convincing a battle group’s worth of UHF ships to accompany Darkstream to another galaxy.
But the man clearly didn’t believe in resting on his laurels. He’d been scrambling to remain relevant ever since, even though the board had already given him command of the entire planetside operation.
It had been Bronson that had come up with the name “Eresos” for this world. Apparently it had been a Grecian village back on Old Earth, before that planet’s Degradation.
Whatever. The name had a suitably science fiction-y sound to it, and that was enough to pass for a suitable planet name nowadays, in Gabe’s experience. If you went far enough back into humanity’s past, you found words sufficiently alien that it seemed right to slap them on whatever you found in space.
Tessa raised her right fist in what Gabe recognized as the signal for “halt.”
“What is it, Chief?” Price asked.
“Shut up,” Gabe hissed. “Silence is the whole point of using hand signals, idiot.”
Price’s cheeks went scarlet.
Notaras appeared to be peering into the woods, her head cocked to the right, as though she’d heard something.
Then, Gabe heard it too: something was approaching through the forest.
Something big.
What had started as a distant rustling soon became the sound of branches snapping, which turned into a very large something crashing through the forest.
Gradually, it dawned on Gabe that those weren’t branches being snapped: they were whole trees, getting cracked off as whatever approached stampeded toward the Darkstream platoon.
He caught his first glimpse of it, above the treetops: it was a robot, whose surface resembled that of the Gatherers. The main difference was that this thing was many, many times bigger.
“Fall back!” Notaras yelled. �
��Fall back and fire!”
They’d been marching in column formation, and there was no time to get into a better one. Even their present formation began to crumble as the soldiers retreated, peppering the metal abomination, which was coming more fully into view.
It fired back—with a pair of rockets. One exploded several meters in front of the soldiers, bathing the front ranks in flame, and the next connected directly with the woman in the very front.
The explosion vaporized her instantly, and it tossed the nearby soldiers through the air like blocks knocked apart by an angry child.
A wave of heat hit Gabe full in the face, and he raised his arm to protect himself, continuing to fire blindly in the colossus’ general direction.
But the bullets were having no discernible effect.
“Forget shooting,” Notaras said. “Full retreat!”
Chapter 7
Mobile Command Unit
Darkstream’s board had done Bronson the kindness of sending down a mobile command unit from orbit, which featured a fold-down bunk in the rear. It wasn’t much, but it was a hell of a lot more comfortable than what the rest of the company soldiers had to put up with.
Bronson accepted every little perk the Darkstream board bestowed upon him without qualm. After he’d handed Steele over to Keyes, it had quickly become clear that it had been the right move.
No one said anything about feeling glad the old CEO was gone, of course, and there was even talk of naming this star system after him. But Bronson was pretty sure all of that was for show, to cover up how much the board had resented Steele’s authoritarian approach to running the company.
There was also the fact that giving Steele to Keyes had meant that the rest of Darkstream had gotten to leave the Milky Way without facing charges of any kind.
That had helped smooth things over.
Either way, Bronson now found himself in command of the most important campaign the company currently had underway. They’d not only allowed him to retain his old rank of lieutenant commander; they’d bumped him up one, to commander, as a gesture of their appreciation. That wasn’t in line with UHF protocol at all, but then, he wasn’t in the UHF anymore, was he?
“Sir,” Laudano said over a two-way channel, his voice cutting through Bronson’s thoughts. Unlike him, Laudano had been bumped down a rank, and his irritation with that fact was usually bubbling just below the surface of everything he said.
“What is it, Laudano?”
“Notaras just returned with her platoon. They ran into some sort of giant mech, as far as I can tell from the ravings of one of her soldiers. It tore the platoon apart pretty good.”
“Casualties?”
“Four dead and seven injured.”
“Send Notaras into my office.”
“Yes, sir.”
Bronson settled into a plush office chair—the only seat available in here. Soon, a knock came on the command unit’s door.
“Come in.”
Notaras entered, coming to attention near the door and saluting. Noting her pale skin and the way her hand wavered near her temple, Bronson waited a few seconds before he said, “At ease,” allowing her to lower the hand.
“Sir, we were attacked by a mech. Bigger than seems possible. It towered over a lot of the trees, and it hit us with rockets.”
“How many dead?” Bronson asked, his voice grim. Laudano had already told him, but he knew that having Notaras say it would knock her even farther off-balance.
“Four, sir. And seven injured.”
Slowly, Bronson shook his head. “We can’t afford to keep losing people, Chief. These were good people—hard workers. Not to mention, we’re kind of short on trained soldiers. We can turn accountants into soldiers if we need to, but I don’t think the result will be very beneficial to anyone.”
“I…sir, I had no idea these things were even out there. It’s the first time we’ve encountered one of them. Presumably they’re too small to see using the satellites, but—”
“Ignorance isn’t really an excuse, soldier. That’s why the UHF drilled preparedness and situational awareness into us during training, long before Darkstream ever hired us. You, of all people, should know that.”
“Yes, sir. I don’t know what to say.”
Bronson sighed. “We need to give the soldiers their spirit back. Give them a clear target to focus on.” He leaned forward, and his chair squeaked softly beneath him. “There’s a way you can help with that.”
“I’ll do whatever you need me to.”
“That’s good. Because my order may seem unusual to you at first, not to mention dangerous. I need you to find that big mech again, and I need you to lure it to the entrance of a system of caves we discovered yesterday morning. It’s where the Quatro in this area appear to reside.”
Notaras paused, her head tilting slightly to the side. “L-lure it, sir? Why is that necessary?”
“I need the soldiers to believe with every fiber of their beings that the giant mech is guarding the Quatro. I need them to believe that the Quatro control that thing, along with the Gatherers.”
“So…they don’t control them, sir?”
Bronson cleared his throat. “Our current intel indicates they don’t.”
“Who does, then?”
“We have no idea. Someone far more advanced than those beasts, though. That seems clear.”
“And you want me to help you trick the soldiers under me? You want me to help you fabricate a lie? I’m not sure I’m comfortable with that, sir.”
Nodding, Bronson said, “I’m not comfortable with it either. But I’m even less comfortable with more soldiers dying because we didn’t sell them this fiction. There’s obviously something going on, here, Notaras. The situation is far from stable, meaning it’s in our best interest to consolidate our position as fast as we can. That means expanding all over this region, and seizing all of its resources for ourselves—not leaving it for a species that recently attacked us.”
“One of them attacked us.”
“They’ve shown aggression toward us, Notaras. That’s good enough for me.”
“Sir…this goes against my better judgment.”
“Fair enough, but I wouldn’t be too quick to trust your judgment, Notaras. Isn’t that the same judgment that led to an Ixan getting access to the master control for every wormhole generator on every UHF ship, back in the Milky Way? The same judgment that led to over seven hundred thousand deaths?”
Notaras’ head sunk so low, Bronson wondered whether it would fall off.
To be fair, the Ixan she’d allowed passage into Darkstream headquarters had been the company’s Chief Science Officer, and she was hardly to blame for his betrayal.
Of course, Bronson had no interest in being fair to her.
“All right, sir,” Notaras said at last. “I’ll do it. If you think it’s for the best, I’ll complete this mission.”
“Of course you will. I knew I could count on you, Notaras. Now, here’s how we’re going to time this…”
Chapter 8
The Greater Good
Tessa wept as she left the command unit, which increased her shame. She cried only a single tear, and it rolled down her cheek to fall to the trampled grass that now surrounded the deposit site for two hundred meters in every direction.
From what she’d heard, Darkstream would soon be authorizing workers to come planetside and start felling more trees, in order to allow for better defense around the site.
This place will probably end up being this planet’s first permanent settlement.
She’d already started hearing names kicked around for the settlement, among them “Beginning,” “Spark,” and “Ingress.”
Slowly, she shook her head as she walked toward the soldier in charge of dispensing hoverbikes, where she would check one out, on Bronson’s orders.
The way her thoughts were jumping from topic to topic…
I’m trying to distract myself.
That had been
the case since before leaving the Milky Way: a constant game of mental acrobatics, necessary simply to get through the day.
The thought-contortions she’d needed to perform, over and over again, just to escape the conclusion that all those deaths had been her fault…
But Bronson had just smacked her over the head with it. And it had caused her resolve to crumble.
But if I can prevent further deaths…
She shook her head again, knowing there would never be atonement for what she’d done.
After signing out a hoverbike from the petty officer in charge of them, she hopped onto it and gunned its engine across the flattened grass without hesitation.
The landscape blew by her—leafless trees, tall grass, and hilly terrain, all passing in a blur as she accelerated to the vehicle’s top speed.
Her aim wasn’t to endanger herself, necessarily, but if she ended up accidentally crashing and killing herself, she doubted her last thought would be regret over her death.
It took her less than a half hour to reach the site where the giant mech had attacked her platoon, and from there, she simply followed the wide swath of felled trees and trampled undergrowth.
The metal dome of the mech’s head soon caught her eye over the treetops, and she could tell it was just ahead of the next turn. She took that as a cue to stop and remove her com from her waist.
“Sir, I’ve located the mech. Do you read my location?”
“I read it,” came Bronson’s reply. “I’ll be nearing the cave mouth with three platoons at my back within the hour. Follow it for ten minutes more, then start to lure it.”
“Yes, sir.”
She ended the transmission and drew a deep breath. Everything inside was screaming at her about how wrong this was.
But it’s for the greater good. The Quatro have proven themselves dangerous and crafty. The soldiers need to see them as such.
Steeling herself, she gunned the hoverbike’s engines once more, until the full mech was in view. That done, she raised her pistol and opened fire on its back.
Onslaught Page 3
