by B. V. Larson
There were precious few of his men left alive, but I didn’t bother to tell him that. I didn’t answer at all. I focused on half-dragging the big man down the mountain. If I hadn’t been from a higher gravity planet, I probably couldn’t have done it at all.
Finally, painfully, we exited the field and I shouted loudly, identifying myself. I didn’t want some yokel to blow my head off after all this work.
When we got back to Major Hendricks, he was all smiles, but that faded when he took stock of Colonel Fletcher’s state of being.
“Hendricks, you’re still in command,” Fletcher said. “I can’t even walk—can barely talk.”
The major nodded unhappily and left us with a medic. He touched my shoulder on the way by. “You’ve earned your reward twice-over in my book, Gorman.”
I nodded and turned back to the colonel. “What can you tell me? About what’s going on up there, at the top of the mountain?”
“Something bad. It’s a junction point that connects to somewhere outside the Conclave. The Tulk are trying to come through to our unlucky planet. They must plan to infest every human and duck on this world.”
“How do we stop them?”
He laughed, but the laugh turned into a coughing fit. “I doubt we can. We’ve got some good weapons, but that’s about it. They have a whole world full of Tulk they can employ. Better tech, too, if this strange sphere is anything to judge by. I think this is why the ducks took this mine to begin with. They needed the radioactives to power their gizmo. They’ve used it to open a pathway to another place.”
That all fit with what I’d seen. Wistfully, I gazed up at the shimmering balloon of force. It looked like it was taking a whole lot of power to maintain. They must be burning through my reward at a breakneck pace.
Colonel Fletcher kept talking, but I was all done listening. At this point, I had only two reasonable options: One, I could run down this godforsaken mountain to New Town, board my ship and take off. Two, I could stick it out with the colonists and keep fighting to get whatever was left of my prize, possibly dying in the attempt.
I knew the right answer. Don’t think I didn’t. Any self-respecting gun runner would blow right out of here without a minute’s regret. Some deals just went bad, that’s all. If Kersen didn’t understand that, well, he didn’t understand the business.
My old self would have run for it, but for some reason, I didn’t have that hard edge in me anymore. The man I’d been before I’d become a half-assed clone wasn’t exactly the same as me. Maybe the knowledge that I wasn’t actually William Gorman had changed me.
Forcing myself back to the here and now, I reminded myself this wasn’t the time for introspection.
“We have to gather up our strength and our balls,” I told Fletcher suddenly. “We have to attack—now.”
Fletcher stopped rattling on and looked at me suddenly. “Now or never, huh?”
“This army is at the breaking point,” I told him. “You know that. But if we withdraw and try to hole-up in New Town…” I shook my head. “They’ll come for us in force.”
Fletcher nodded. He seemed kind of out of it. “We can’t let these freaks finish their work. For all we know, they’ll transport in a real army. Tell Hendricks to contact me.” He said this while lying flat on his back. “I’m glad you’re involved. You’ve got perspective, Gorman. We’re just isolated hicks out here on Baden.”
“You don’t fight like hicks,” I told him. “Your men fight and die like pros.”
This pleased him, and he tried to sit up. But I got him to lie down again after he called Hendricks. Plans proceeded swiftly after that, and less than an hour later we were hiking up to the ghostly edge of that field again.
I sucked in a deep breath, squinched my eyes tightly shut, and pushed for all I was worth against that strange, resilient outer skin. It caused my flesh to tingle and compress for a few moments, then the field buckled, and I stumbled inside.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
We advanced into the field at a steady march. All around me, on both sides, I saw dark figures beyond the edge of the field pressing their way inside. A few of them lost heart and had to be dragged inside by their braver compatriots.
Once we were in, we expected to be greeted with a hailstorm of enemy fire—but we weren’t. Instead, it was quiet. Ghostly.
The lurid redness of the light persisted. We walked forward over muddy land, reaching the camp where we’d left our wounded. It was now abandoned, except for the dead.
The colonials rushed around to check on a dozen friends. None had lived.
Major Hendricks came to me, his face twisted into a mask of rage. “We should have rushed in. We should have come for them—they were slaughtered.”
I didn’t argue. I knew fear had held us all back. I couldn’t blame him on that score—the field was pretty freaky. These men weren’t accustomed to marching into odd, dangerous tricks of physics.
We swept past the camp and the mine. We marched up the slopes of the mountain, which grew ever steeper and more rocky. Near the top, we found alien bodies.
The native ducks lay all over the landscape at the summit. Their corpses were twisted into poses of pain and fright.
“That one moved!” one of the sergeants shouted.
This single statement was enough to trigger a storm of gunfire. Every colonial was on-edge, ready for an ambush. They hosed down the figures that lay strewn over the boulders, hammering the bodies with thousands of hot bolts of burning metal. The rail-guns accelerated small bullets to such speeds that they burned in the atmosphere, creating sprays of blinding, streaking flashes.
“Ceasefire!” Major Hendricks shouted, walking along the line and slapping down muzzles.
It was too late. Most of the natives had been torn apart. How many of them had been alive before we’d shot them? We’ll never know.
Advancing carefully, we noticed the alien ducks had linear tears in their lower bellies—exit wounds where the Tulk had abandoned their hosts.
“They seemed to be in some kind of shock when we found them,” I said, toeing one of the bodies.
“Leave him alone,” Hendricks said. “Even a duck deserves some respect when he’s dead.”
I withdrew my boot, and we marched on. Soon, we noticed traceries in the mud—it was raining now, lightly sprinkling the mountain top. Each raindrop came down hot and sent up a tiny wisp of steam when it hit the ground. The field surrounding us must have brought the droplets nearly to a boiling temperature.
“There, the tubes,” Hendricks said.
We reached the summit. A polyhedron of tubes existed there, just as he’d described. All around the place were nuclear-powered battery packs. They were attached by leads and some strange-looking equipment to the woven tubes.
“I know what this is,” I said, while the others gaped. “It’s a transmitter. The Tulk—they weren’t bringing in an army. They were retreating.”
“To where?”
“The stars. The next cluster over, maybe.”
“The Faustian Chain?”
I shrugged. “I guess. That’s what the Tulk who was riding Colonel Fletcher said.”
We turned our eyes toward the structure of metal tubes. They’d been built by hand, but they were oddly precise in dimension and shape. I got the feeling the ducks, left to their own devices, could never have built such a structure.
“Well?” I asked Hendricks.
“Well what? They escaped us. It’s probably a good thing.”
I pointed to the latticework of tubes, with its bizarre pattern, then the cables that ran to the power packs. “Do you want to fire this thing up again?”
Hendricks looked shocked. “To go through? God only knows what we’d find. We’d probably be mowed down—”
“Nah,” I said. “I wasn’t suggesting a counter-invasion, but there’s still some juice left in these power packs. How about we rig a charge and send it through, giving the Tulk a little surprise?”
Major
Hendricks looked surprised and struck by the idea. “If we did that… we’d be escalating things.”
“They’ve already invaded Baden. We should send a message that it’s a bad idea.”
Jort walked up. He listened to us, and he nodded emphatically. “That’s right. When a dog pisses on your toes, you kick him hard!”
He said this with an alarming ferocity. I wasn’t sure if he was quoting some kind of proverb from his home planet or speaking from personal experience.
Hendricks fussed over it for a time, but at last, he shook his head. “I’m responsible for the entire population of Baden right now. I can’t make such a choice without consulting the elders down in New Town at the very least.”
I nodded in understanding—and I did understand. He wasn’t a free agent. He had his masters.
“All right,” I said. “You want me to dismantle this? It has to be done right—safely.”
“Okay, sure. It’s all yours. Troops, withdraw! Take these power packs back down to town and—”
“Hold it!” I called out, raising a hand. “Don’t touch anything until we deactivate it.”
“How long will that take you?”
I shrugged. “Give me an hour.”
Hendricks needed no further coaching. He turned around his company of troops and withdrew. Soon, they were distant struggling forms hurrying down the side of the mountain.
Jort was left alone with me on the mountaintop. “Captain… this is not good. The Tulk could come back any minute. Maybe they’ll—”
“Yeah, yeah, shut up and grab those leads. Hook them to the bottom of each metal strut—like this.”
He watched me attach the leads, then still watched me as I pushed a single power pack into the middle of the web-work of tubes.
“Uh… what are you doing that for?”
I ignored him, rigging the pack to my rifle. The battery inside would receive the entire jolt of energy at once. I twisted the knob on the pack all the way up, causing the rifle to overcharge.
“What the hell?” Jort called out.
“Hurry! Power up every one of the other packs.”
“How much?”
“Turn them all the way up! Go, go!”
We ran around to the eight power packs, turning each one to full. I got the feeling, by the way the web-work of tubes lit and ran with sparks, that we were doing it wrong. That we had no idea how to activate the field and make it do its magic.
About thirty seconds later, Jort and I were running down the hillside for our lives. Behind us, a lurid red glow grew again. It was a fire within a vast chamber, the flame that had been lit by the Tulk initially as they exited Baden.
We barely reached the outer skin of the bubble when the reaction reached its climax. I felt myself being lifted off my feet. I was pulled backward, thrown high by the collapsing bubble, which was sucked into a tiny void within a few seconds.
Tossed in a spin, I landed hard on the muddy slopes. Groaning and reaching for my neck, I heard a vast ripping sound behind me. Looking back and upslope, I saw the field collapse upon itself. It looked like an exploding volcano—except in reverse.
The bubble, many of the trees, and the latticework of tubes were all drawn together into a single white point. That point flared bright, then vanished.
The mountain was quiet and dark again. Climbing painfully to my feet, I found Major Hendricks standing over me. He was glowering. His hands were on his hips in disapproval.
“Did you just fuck up everything?”
“I did my best, Major. By the way, do you have an extra rifle handy? I lost mine.”
Full of anger and curses, he turned and stalked off. I felt the situation was a clear example of ingratitude on his part. After all, I’d solved his problem.
No more Tulk were going to invade Baden anytime soon.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
After gathering all the power cells they could, the colonial forces withdrew down the mountain. With nearly a third of them wounded or killed, the tattered army was victorious, but no one felt too happy about it. For the most part, we were all bone-tired.
Reaching New Town at dusk two days after we’d left, we were heartened by the civilians. They came out to bring everyone food and drink. Soon, a colonist girl with hair like spun gold came to hold my hand. She smiled, and I found myself smiling as well.
“Did you really go into that red globe of light?” she asked me, wide-eyed. “That’s what they told me.”
“Yes Miss, I really did. I led the way, in fact.”
She wrinkled her nose. “You’re a braggart.”
“Never!”
She smiled again, kissed me, and pressed a beer bottle into my hand. Then she ran off. I touched the spot on my bristly cheek. It cooled quickly in the wind.
Bemused, I considered heading to the downtown bars, but couldn’t quite do it. I wanted to check up on my ship first. A runner’s ship always came before everything else. She was your family, your livelihood—everything.
I was unsurprised to find Sosa was still aboard Royal Fortune. She’d only left for supplies when she had to. If I’d been gone six months, I wondered if she’d still be here when I got back, sourly looking down the ramp with her arms crossed.
“Is Jort still alive?” she asked.
“He sure is—and I’m fine too, thank you. No permanent injuries or traumas I can’t overcome.”
She smiled faintly. “Have you got the payment?”
I pointed to the heavy lead-lined cylinder that followed me on a gravity-sled. It had a booster on it, or I wouldn’t have been able to budge the thing. “Six kilos of refined plutonium. The market value in the Conclave is more than Kersen was promised.”
She nodded. “Let’s take off then, before these hicks change their minds.”
Glancing back toward town, I squinted into the dying gleams of the sunset. “I’ll go to town and find Jort.”
“We should fly,” she said with a sharp note to her voice.
I looked back at her, and I saw something in her face I didn’t like. She was considering ditching Jort—possibly me as well. Was that because Kersen’s payment had finally reached the hold? I suspected that it was.
With a quick smile, I covered my thoughts.
“Hey, it’s been a tough road. Let’s stow the radioactives and go into town. I’ll buy you a drink, and we’ll drag Jort home with us when we find him.”
Her eyes darted over the cylinder, me and the town. I could tell she was indecisive. After a few more minutes of urging, I finally got her to agree.
We walked together into the thronged streets.
“The people here no longer live in fear,” she said. “You did a good job. What was it like—up there on the mountain?”
I told her the story. I told her about the Tulk, the projection equipment—everything. By the time I’d finished, we’d both had three drinks and moved on to a second bar.
Sosa stared into the depths of her beer. She was disturbed by my tale. “If I hadn’t seen that big balloon of light last night, I wouldn’t have believed you. An alien invasion—that’s crazy.”
“They came from outside the cluster, too. I’m pretty sure about that.”
“From the Faustian Chain?”
“Yes, I believe so.”
We both looked out the window. The neighboring cluster of stars known as the Faustian Chain had been colonized by Earth around a century ago. From our perspective, it was little more than a cotton-ball in the sky. In astronomical terms, the cluster was close by, but flying there would take a fast ship more than a decade. To my knowledge, the Conclave had no slip-gates that went that far. They probably wouldn’t be building a new link soon, either.
“The Chain must be overrun with these creatures,” Sosa said. “The Tulk are a threat to the entire Conclave.”
“That’s probably true. If they’re invading our outlying planets like Baden, they’re probably invading others on the fringe as well.”
“But why?”
>
I shrugged. “Basic tactics. How do you conquer a distant enemy? First, you must have a foothold. A base to operate from. Then you expand from that base.”
“Is Baden Colony their first base, or one of many?”
My beer glass went up and came down empty. “I don’t know. All I do is run illegal guns. I transport the weapons these people need to defend themselves.”
“If they wanted something else, would you smuggle that too?”
I thought over her question. “I don’t know. Most things colonists can get for themselves, or trade for them with other neighboring worlds. Only guns are restricted. The Conclave doesn’t want the outer planets to be well-armed.”
“These fools should have called for marines, for model-K soldiers from Prospero, maybe. They didn’t have to buy illegal guns and die by the thousands. Not when an invasion is underway.”
I shook my head. “I’ve seen this sort of thing before. All kinds of criminal worlds exist. Tyranny, slavery, genocide—it’s all out there. The Conclave citizens dream quietly in the center of the cluster, sheltered and ignorant, while they let the fringe worlds fend for themselves.”
“These Tulk, though—they have to be considered a threat to every human world.”
“Maybe,” I admitted. “I don’t know what the Conclave will think of the news when the local governor reports in.”
We had another drink, then moved on down the street. In the fourth bar, we found Jort at last.
He sat at a table with a girl on his knee. Two men sat across from him. The men were big colonial boys, and they were both arm-wrestling Jort at the same time.
Roaring and grunting, the three strove together. The colonials even stood up, cheating—but they couldn’t lever Jort’s arm down to the table.
At last, he threw them both to the floor. They got up good-naturedly and clapped him on the back. Everyone was drunk, laughing and having a good time.
“We’ve got to get back to the ship—we’ve got to go home,” Sosa reminded me.
Damn. I’d hoped she would get drunk and lighten up a bit, but I could see that wasn’t going to happen. I could tell Sosa was worried every rube on Baden wanted to reach into our stash and lift it from us.
