by M. D. Cooper
The Trisilieds were setting up a crew-served kinetic repeater right outside the facility. It would tear the staircase to shreds, but more importantly, anyone who was on them.
She raced up the stairs to the third level landing as the weapon opened fire, ripping into the stairs, sending stone and plascrete flying into the air. After fifteen seconds of fire, the weapons wound down.
The dust and smoke was still thick in the air as the enemy rushed in full-force, three dozen at least, all firing on the third floor landing.
Ouri and her team scampered back from the edge as the concentrated firepower began to blow holes clear through the landing.
“Well,” Ouri gasped as they fell back into the hall, “at least they can’t take the stairs anymore.”
She floated some probes over the ruined staircase and saw the enemy scaling the wall to get into the second floor corridor. With a grim smile, Ouri dropped a pair of grenades over what remained of the landing and ducked back as the blast sounded, kicking up more dust and debris.
As the room cleared, she could see that the enemy had fallen back once more, and she wondered if any had managed to reach the second level.
A minute later, an explosion in the rear stairwell answered her question.
“Kris, Sammy,” Ouri called out to her two teammates who were inspecting the rear stairwell, “get back up to the control room. Trissies are coming in the back door.”
“Shit! Seriously?” Bill asked. “There goes our way out.”
“OK, Bill,” she said audibly. “It’s just you and me on the crew-served gun now. You keep the ammo coming, and an eye to the back stairwell. They’re gonna hit us from both ends. Lob ’nades down the hall if they bunch up.”
“Yeah, sure,” Bill said breathlessly as sweat poured down his face.
“Hey, Bill,” Ouri grabbed his shoulder. “We’re gonna make it. Brandt is coming, and we’re winning in space. We just have to hold out for a little longer.”
Bill met her eyes and he swallowed before nodding. “Understood, Colonel.”
“Good, now let’s give these asshats hell.”
EXFILTRATE
STELLAR DATE: 04.01.8948 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: OGS Britannica
REGION: Stellar North of Carthage, New Canaan System
“ISF fleet just appeared on scan!” Usef called out as he fired a full clip at the enemy soldiers pouring through the ECC’s entrance. “They’re gonna do it. Full boost!”
Usef scampered around the holotable he was using for cover and prayed that Cargo and Misha managed to get situated before Hank killed the artificial gravity systems. The stomach-twisting feeling of weightlessness hit him a moment before the ship’s engines dumped billions of exajoules into space.
His back slammed into the table and a sharp edge sliced his skin open. Usef staunched the flow of blood with his nano, before peering around the table to see how the enemy soldiers had fared.
With ‘down’ now being the aft end of the ECC, most of enemy soldiers had ‘fallen’ a dozen meters, though many were in armor and weathered the fall without too much trouble.
Still, they were now shooting straight up with little cover—excepting the bodies of no few of their fellow OG crew that had fallen on top of them.
Usef felt a little sorry for the unconscious engineers that had fallen as far as thirty meters to the back of the bay, but the choices were limited. Either fall, or get eaten by the things in the dark layer.
He knew what he would have picked.
Usef saw shots lance down from two other positions as he opened fire on the enemy soldiers once more.
Jamie chuckled.
Cargo barked a laugh.
Several soldiers at the bottom of the bay had surrendered, throwing their weapons down and pulling their helmets as off Misha fired two more shots down on a pocket that was holding out.
Usef shook his head as he fired a focused pulse blast into an unarmored member of the fire response team that was peeking through the ECC’s rear entrance.
Jamie sent an affirmative signal, and a moment later, Joe’s voice boomed over the ship’s address system.
“This is Admiral Joseph Evans of the ISF Daedalus. Your fleet is destroyed, or disabled. You’ve lost this battle. Stand down and prepare to be boarded. If you want to put up a fight, be sure to say hello to the battalion of ISF Marines who are cutting their way through your hull as I speak.”
“He has a way with words, doesn’t he?” Cargo commented.
Misha laughed as the final group of soldiers at the bottom of the bay threw down their weapons and pulled off their helmets. “I really like you ISF guys. You’re a ton of fun!”
“Good thing,” Usef whispered to himself as Iris reactivated the AG systems and he rolled onto his side. “I have a feeling that we’re gonna need it.”
THE STAND
STELLAR DATE: 04.01.8948 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Landfall Space/Air Traffic Control Center
REGION: Knossos Island Carthage, New Canaan System
Ouri hauled the crew-served gun up to the first landing in the staircase to the fourth floor. She had hoped to hold the corridor below, but there were just too many enemy soldiers coming up at both ends of the hall. Bill was already up there, having retreated that far after his right leg was burned off from the knee down.
Biofoam covered the wound and he held his rifle ready, a look of grim determination on his face. She gave him a solemn look. They would hold out as long as they could. There was nothing else for it.
Even though they had to run into point-blank kinetic weapons fire, the enemy still came at them. Before long, a dozen bodies lay at the base of the stairs.
They just had to hold out a little
longer. The team upstairs was still taking out enemy assault craft near Landfall and on the other side of Carthage. If the SATC fell, thousands would still die.
The Marines were coming…just had to hold a little bit longer.
Ouri glanced at the ammo box for her gun and then her eyes met Bill’s. It was empty; the fifty rounds on the current string were all that remained.
“When it runs dry, you get up the stairs,” Bill said. “I’ll hold them here as long as I can.”
“Fuck, Bill. No. I’ll stay, you get up there—”
Her words were interrupted by another group of soldiers that dashed into view in the space below them. Ouri opened up with the gun and took them out, though not before a shot tore through her armor below her right breast.
She fell back, catching sight of the last rounds feeding through the railgun as Bill screamed, firing into the enemy soldier below.
Both Bill and the final soldier fell as they exchanged fire, and Ouri pulled herself to Bill’s side, where she let out a small cry. The left half of his skull was missing.
She grabbed his rifle and turned away, laying down prone on the landing, using the crew-served gun for cover. She felt biofoam filling her wound as a new onslaught from the enemy began.
She screamed at the enemy below her, firing the last rounds in both magazines before a blinding light flashed in her mind and she knew no more.
* * * * *
The last of the enemy coming up the rear corridor fell, and Sammy traded a long, weary look with Kris as Amy called out from behind them.
“They’re here! The Marines are here!”
“About fucking time,” Kris said as she fell back against the wall.
When no response came, she stood and looked across the consoles at Amy. “I can’t raise the colonel, can you?”
Amy’s eyes met hers and she shook her head slowly.
Sammy didn’t wait another moment, as she dashed across the control room and out into the hall. She sped down its darkened length—taking a moment to wonder when the power went out—before skidding to a halt and running down the stairs, nearly smashing into the barrel of a Marine’s rifle.
“Easy,” he said softly, and Sammy’s eyes followed his to see the bodies of Bill and Ouri, crumpled and on the landing.
“NO!” Sammy screamed and dropped to her knees. Sobs wracked her body and she felt a hand on her shoulder.
“I’m sorry,” a voice croaked. “If we’d just….”
Sammy looked up to see none other than General Brandt herself standing over Ouri’s body, her helmet on the ground at her feet.
Tears flowed down the hard-bitten Marine’s face as she fell leaned against the wall. “Ouri, I’m so sorry….”
DARK LAYER
STELLAR DATE: 04.01.8948 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: ISS I2
REGION: Stellar North of Carthage, New Canaan System
Tanis reconnected with Admiral Myra, who looked rather put-out at being cut off. “Have you changed your mind?” the Trisilieds commander asked.
“I have not,” Tanis shook her head and let out a long breath as the anger seemed to flow out of her. She just felt tired—tired and anxious for all this to be over. “I know about the Orion Guard ships bearing down on us. They won’t survive this engagement, either. This is your last chance.”
Admiral Myra’s eyes widened and her face blanched. “How…”
Tanis waved her hand dismissively. “We haven’t just been trapped in this system. We know much of what is going on in the Inner Stars, and in Orion space.”
“Nice bluff,” Admiral Myra laughed. “You almost had me for a moment. Very well, if you won’t surrender, and you know about the Orion Guard, then what happens next won’t surprise you.”
This time, it was Admiral Myra who cut the communication.
As though on cue, the Orion Guard fleet appeared. One group, over fifty thousand ships, lay three hundred thousand kilometers north of Carthage, and the other was equidistant below it.
Tanis opened a comm channel with Sabrina.
Light-lag made the reply take several seconds to come back to the I2, but when it did, the message was what Tanis had hoped to hear.
Tanis sent the signal to Fleet Groups 3 and 4, and several seconds later the ships appeared on scan—not across the system guarding the shipyards at the gas giants, but above and below the Orion Guard fleets.
Their combined three thousand ships were laughably outnumbered by the Orion Guard, but that wouldn’t matter. If all went well, they wouldn’t even fire a shot—at least not the sort of shot that the Guard ships expected.
The timing needed to be precise, and once the orders were confirmed across the fleet, Tanis set the countdown.
Then, she held her breath.
Despite her words of certainty to Finaeus, she really had no idea if this would work. Bob and Earnest were very certain they could close the rifts after they made them–not one hundred percent, but very.
Tanis would take it. If they were wrong, then this war would end with all their deaths and that would be enough for her.
The count hovering above the holotank ran down to zero, and specialized graviton beams lanced out from every one of Joe’s and Sanderson’s ship into positions around the enemy fleets. Space-time began to warp and darkness blotted out the light of Canaan Prime.
The blackness opened up all around the Trisilieds and Orion Guard ships, and then the things came boiling out into space.
Optical sensors couldn’t see them, but the creatures—if they could be called that—created silhouettes on other spectra that made them visible to scan. They were elongated and amorphous. Some were only a few hundred meters long, and others over a hundred kilometers.
Tendrils of darkness rippled out from the things and wrapped around the enemy ships, cutting through shields and hulls alike. Scan couldn’t even make a guess as to what the creatures we made of, but Earnest had told Tanis that he believed it was a combination of exotic forms of matter and energy that had never been seen in the natural physical universe.
Tanis wondered if the things had been constructed by the ascended AIs in the Core, or if those AIs had found the things and moved them around humanity’s stars to keep them in check.
“Shit,” Sera whispered. “They’re obliterating the ships.”
Tanis nodded. “That’s the plan.”
Not all of the enemy ships were being destroyed. Some were boosting away, fleeing the rifts to the dark layer as fast as they could, but many were not fast enough.
One massive dreadnaught, almost a rival for the I2 in mass, raced toward the ISF ships and it looked as though it would escape the creatures, when one of the hundred-kilometer things appeared to leap across space and completely envelop the ship.
“OK,” Tanis said. “That’s getting a bit too close. Time to close it up.”
Tanis watched as Bob activated one of the I2’s sensor grids to emit a signal that drove the creature back toward the rifts, leaving the twisted wreck of the carrier in its wake. She passed a command to the fleets, and all the ships followed suit, pushing the things back into the rift—many of which dragged the ships of the Orion and Trisilieds fleets along with them.
As the creatures and their prey disappeared back into the dark layer—followed by the ISF ships disabling their beams that held the rifts open—Tanis surveyed t
he battlespace.
Of the hundred thousand Orion ships, only two thousand remained intact, though ten times that number were scattered around Carthage, twisted and ruined. She saw that Admiral Myra’s flagship was still present and hailed the enemy commander.
It took half a minute before Myra’s visage appeared on the holotank. Her hair was disheveled, and her cheeks were streaked with tears. Wide, staring eyes gazed out at Tanis as her mouth worked soundlessly.
“How…” she finally managed to ask.
To which Tanis only replied, “Surrender.”
Myra’s eyes fell and she nodded slowly. “I yield.”
GENERAL’S DECEPTION
STELLAR DATE: 04.02.8948 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: OGS Similcarum
REGION: 120AU from Canaan Prime, New Canaan System
General Garza felt as though the deck had dropped out from under him as he watched the destruction of the Orion Guard fleet, followed by the surrender of the remaining Trisilieds ships.
So many lives lost in such a short time. He had sent in what should have been an overwhelming force—even with the Hegemony ships attacking hours ahead of schedule, even with the Canners possessing picobombs, it should have been an easy win.
There was still some chance that the Trisilieds ground forces could capture someone significant and force a surrender, but the odds of that were astronomically low.
It was far more likely that his ship would be detected as it drifted beyond the system’s heliopause.
“Helm, set a course for the Transcend’s jump gate. Let’s make use of it before the Canners retake it.”
He didn’t wait for a response before leaving the bridge and retreating to his cabin.
Garza had to admit that Tanis Richards’s use of the dark layer creatures was a brilliant tactic. One which had been tried before—though not successfully, as far as he knew.
In every instance he was aware of, the creatures were not so easily sent back into the dark layer. In one case, they never were; a star had died as a result, and an ever-growing region of space around it was interdicted.
