Black Shift (The Consilience War Book 1)

by Ben Sheffield

  He was four years away from retirement. Four years from cashing out.

  He was disturbed by Amnon, slightly by how acceptable sudden death for all and sundry was for him. He wondered what was going down on the planet, and was glad he didn't have to find out.

  He heard footsteps on the stairway, around the corner.

  A wolfish smile appeared on Sabrok's face. “We've flushed one of them out. Safeties off.”

  As soon as the human figure came into their line of sight, he and two others opened wide up. They strafed the stairway with a deafening burst of automatic fire.

  By the time they realised it wasn't a marine coming up the stairs, the bullets were hitting home. By the time they realised who it was, he was going down in a welter of blood.

  “Goddamn it,” Sabrok muttered, cordite in his nostrils, letting the smoke clear.

  Enoki Kai’s body had fallen to the bottom of the stairway. His blood was splashed all across the walls like an artistic fresco. His foot twitched. Once.

  Sabrok turned to the remaining men. “Killed by enemy combatants. Unfortunate and unavoidable.”

  “Witnessed,” they chorused. They had a retirement to cash out on, too.

  Andrei heard another high-pitched rattle and thump.

  “Grenade!” He called out. “10' clock!”

  They both ducked behind a Repulsor as the grenade went off. It was a fragmentation charge - an ice-storm of metal shards. The Repulsor shook, but didn’t fail.

  Then he heard two more thumps.

  “Standard timer is three seconds,” he said, as the shield was slammed by more waves of shards. Sparks flew, and the Repulsor started to blink. “But they're customizable. Stay frosty.”

  On the next wave of grenades, Ubra was ready.

  With needle-precise shooting, she sniped away the detonators on the grenades, reducing them to expensive metal slingstones. Andrei darted forward and snatched some. Each one had hundreds of near-invisible metal slivers, packed around half a kilo of ammonium nitrate. If it exploded in his hands, he wouldn’t be killed, he’d be evaporated. It didn’t explode.

  It had been several minutes since Enoki Kai had made an unwise rush up the stairway. Andrei heard the shooting, and could guess his fate.

  The storm of grenades continued tumbling down the stairs. They sighted targets, shot them out of the air, shot them on the ground, and then sighted even more targets before the smoke had cleared. They didn’t stop all of them from exploding, but a great many of them were disabled and captured. The air in the room was growing hot, just from their muzzle flashes.

  I know what this is, thought Andrei. Suppression.

  When two of the guards came down the stairs, he already had one eye on them.

  He fired a straking burst of fire that cut across the masked figures at chest level. It failed to penetrate their armor, and they gained the landing at the foot of the stairs, shooting back. He took cover behind a Repulsor as bullets buzzed past his ear.

  “Small problem here,” he muttered. As bullets pounded his refuge, he started fitting another detonator on the captured frag grenade Soon they’d have all eight or nine guys at the bottom, and they’d go down from sheer numbers.

  Then Ubra popped up from the left, blasting away with a sonic cannon. They were caught at a bad angle, and one was lifted off his feet by the cannon and hurled into a wall. Andrei heard bones break. The other guard pirouetted to engage her …

  …And took his eye off Andrei.

  He pulled the lever on the grenade he’d snatched off the ground, and hurled it.

  It bounced between the guard’s legs, and he had one moment to clap a hand to his head in mock-comic surprise before it dissolved his entire lower body into a Jackson Pollock painting of blood.

  As his head and torso crashed to the ground, Ubra and Rainius came out of cover and directed a withering burst of fire at the figures coming down the stairs. Shots pinged and rebounded like supersonic bees.

  Sabrok’s men fell back before the focused barrage of gunfire. With the landing empty, Ubra strode across the room, and fitted another clip into her Meshuggahtech.

  The guard who’d been knocked down by the sonic cannon reached for her ankles. His face was a mask of red. His uniform was ripped by shards of metal, each one limned by a circlet of red. He touched her ankle, as if pleading for mercy.

  She put a bullet through his head.

  The Doorway – March 18, 2136 - 1300 hours

  The drill struck metal.

  Falling bombs and missiles still fell, strobing the digging site with light, again and again, their sound massive, deadening, and oppressive.

  But suddenly, none of that mattered.

  A metallic shaft jutted from the purple rock. Zelity cleared away some surrounding dirt, and Mykor exited his Sphere, clambered down to the hole, and put his hands around it.

  A snapped off drillbit. To the eye, it was nothing more than dead metal.

  Pulses were running through it, deep within Caitanya-9.

  Whatever was on the other side of that metal was alive.

  Konotouri Delta – March 18, 2136 - 1300 hours

  Ubra and Andrei were planning their next move, when more grenades started bouncing down the hallway.

  “Ubra! Get on those!”

  She opened fire, nailed three of them on the ground. Another two, she shot out of the air like clay pidgeons. They exploded in showers of sparks and electronics.

  The last one detonated.

  They hid behind the Repulsor, expecting another flurry of metal shards to slam uselessly into their cover…but there was only a gaseous whoosh. Soft. Almost soporific. A mephitic green cloud was spewing from the grenade, rising like a djinni who would grant no wishes.

  Andrei understood. “Shit. They’re using poison gas.”

  It swirled upwards in plumes, filling the prison sector at a horrifying speed.

  They activated the closed respiration setting on their helmets, and started scrambling for oxygen tanks. As they fitted them on, they heard more grenades tumble down the stairs, behind their turned backs.

  If they’re frag charges, we’re right out here in the open, thought Andrei’s subconscious in a relaxed tone more appropriate for fly fishing than certain death.

  There was no explosion, no whipping hail of steel. Just more hissing gas.

  Slow certain death.

  Behind the gas masks, the prison compound was tainted an even paler shade of gray. Up ahead were the rising thunderheads of poison gas, spreading like little green spores.

  “Do we have any way of gaining the stairwell?” Andrei said, strapping an oxygen bottle to his hip, and fitting the tube to a valve on his helmet. “We can’t stay here long.”

  Ubra wracked her brains. “Beyond the flight of stairs, there’s an open door, and then a landing that spreads out in a T-pattern. If you want to get to the elevators, you need to take another set of stairs and then cross a few hundred yards of exposed ground. If there were even two guards, it’d be dangerous. If there’s four or more, it’s almost impossible.”

  “And there’s, like, six or seven.”

  “It’s a fucking prison, boss man. You’re not supposed to be able to break out.”

  The gas had filled half of the compound. The first wisps of it touched his suit, turning it an ominous green as the nanomesh detected toxic compounds in the air.

  If it got into his eyes, he he’d claw them from his head to stop the burning.

  If it got into his lungs, they’d liquefy from the inside out.

  “This isn’t good.”

  “Hard to see the silver lining.”

  They retreated further and further from the spreading miasma. Over the hissing, they heard a metallic clunk from the ceiling.

  The air conditioning had just been shut off.

  The Doorway – March 18, 2136 - 1350 hours

  The digging went on apace. Now that they’d found the shaft, they only needed one hole: straight down. As one machine ov
erheated, it was detached, dragged away by teams of Spheres, and another put its place. The downshaft now slanted nearly a hundred meters into the earth, and still the drill revealed more of its length.

  No sensitive instruments were required to detect the pulse now. The metal shaft now visibly shook and reverberated, like an appendage from within Caitanya-9.

  “Has anyone decoded the pulses yet?” Emeth asked. He’d left his Sphere, and had to speak audibly.

  “Golestani thought they were a countdown in base-12.” Mykor said. “If he was right and not just seeing shapes in clouds, we should know soon.”

  “The bombing’s stopped.” Zelity observed.

  It was true. The silvery canopy guarding them was no longer being blasted.

  “So what are they cooking up for us?”

  “Never mind,” Mykor said. ”Don’t talk, dig. What they’re doing is outside our control. Immaterial.”

  “Uh, father?” It was Zandra’s voice. She and a few others had stayed outside after their ill-fated harassment of the oncoming army. Now, they served a different purpose: Mykor’s eyes.

  “What?”

  “I just thought I’d patrol the shield, and I’m glad I did. There’s men there, digging a tunnel.”

  “Damn it, we’re being undermined. Can you tell me roughly where they’re digging into?”

  There was no need for Zandra to relay this information. The ground bulged, and then Solar Arm forces burst through in a spray of gravel.

  Immediately, all kinds of hell broke loose inside the dome. Zelity watched in shock as dozens of strange metallic spiderlike creatures clambered through the hole, a mass of flailing legs and guns. He caught sight of one: each spider creature had a human, controlling it from inside a capsule.

  They opened fire on everything in sight, strafing the entire digging site with six-barrelled chainguns. From the outside, the explosions had sounded huge but muffled – somewhat obfuscated.

  Up close, the stentorian roar of the chainguns instantly made the war real.

  Zelity’s sphere was caught with a heavy blast and was hurled backwards. Pain ripped through him as his Sphere communicated substantial damage. He returned fire, lashing back with spasms of light. He tore one of the eight legs off the spiderlike machine, but it clambered on, shooting indiscriminately.

  “Control them, and bottleneck them at the tunnel! And get a cordon around the machine!” Mykor roared, firing off light, exploding two Spidermechas as they clambered out of the hole.

  Instantly, he was enveloped in the fire of six chainguns. They drilled at him relentlessly, batting him around like a ball with their explosive rounds, until at last, the Sphere flashed out, crashing to the ground.

  “Shit, he’s gone.” Zelity said, dodging and weaving to avoid incendiary bullets. There was no time to check whether Mykor was dead or alive.

  The Spidermechas swarmed all around the dome, using their mobility and speed to avoid hits while laying down brutal vectors of suppressing fire. Time and time again, Zelity was caught in sweeps of explosive rounds, until his Sphere started communicating to him that it was now critically damaged.

  With a berserk rage, he threw himself at a pack of Spidermechas.

  They swung their chainguns into position. Balls of light thrummed out at near point blank range. The leading Spidermecha got off two rounds before one directly struck its canopy, blowing it into a shower of epoxyglass. The eight mighty metal legs collapsed. The remaining two fired at him, scoring him with direct hits, but his next round blasted away two legs, his third round rebounded off a canopy, hurling the spidermech away, and the fourth scored a direct strike and killed the remaining Spidermecha.

  He righted his dying Sphere and tried to assess the situation.

  The Defiant were falling like flies. The spidermechas swarmed their targets in overwhelming numbers, shooting them repeatedly until their armor failed.

  By his count, ten of the defending Spheres were destroyed or disabled, in addition to perhaps twenty or thirty Spidermechas. But more were still pouring through the hole.

  The mathematics were bad and getting worse.

  Can anyone hear me? It was Mykor’s voice. A gentle glow pulsed from the wrecked Sphere near the hole. Incredibly, he’d survived the destruction of his craft.

  Explosive rounds whipped over Zelity’s head. He turned around, and returned fire. A lucky shot obliterated the menace. “Shit, we thought we’d lost you.”

  “You don’t get away from me that easily. To be clear: my orders are to keep digging for the Doorway, even if I die. Confirm?”

  “Confirm.” Zelity fired off three shots, and watched as another Spidermecha vanished in a ball of flame.

  He stayed mobile, picking off targets and dropping to avoid hurricanes of retaliatory fire. The explosive bullets sizzled overhead, mere inches from striking his Sphere. “Hey, I don’t think we’re in a position to put forward any brilliant strategic ploys or master plans, okay? We’ve got a full time job just keeping ourselves alive out here.”

  “Is this is a bad time to mention that we still need to keep digging, even now?” Mykor asked.

  Another string of explosions blasted holes in the sand on each side of his Sphere.

  “Yes. I am afraid it is.”

  Caitanya-9 – March 18, 2136 - 1370 hours

  Zandra flew and strafed, firing relentlessly. She and the three surviving Spheres of her company had trashed four manned combat craft, and scores of drones.

  At the start, she was incensed that Mykor had denied her the protection of the Vanitar shield.

  Now, she was almost relieved. At least she had room to move.

  She flew circles around the glowing Vanitar shield, catching glimpse of the chaos within. In the floating fortress, she’d once seen an artefact that had come from Terrus, mankind’s ancestral home. It was a snowglobe.

  I know what a globe is, but what’s snow? She’d asked once.

  Most of the Defiant had come to the planet from Terrus. She was an exception: a child who had never known anything except Caitanya-9. She’d refused to believe that the white flurries were just cold water. They looked nothing alike.

  Sometimes, the world works subtely, she was told. Observe how the Skyfortress can be raised or lowered in the sky, and the higher it gets, the cooler it gets. But can you think of the moment when the temperature goes from hot to cold? There isn’t one. But other times, the world works through sharp lines. For a flying device to break the sound barrier, it must be specifically designed to resist a sharp and sudden shock. An ill-devised plane will break up at the exact moment it exceeds the speed of sound. Water and ice are like that. One moment you have water, the next you have ice. One moment you have rain, the next you have snow.

  She hadn’t thought much of it, but she’d liked the snowglobe. Liked how you could shake it, and watch a small blizzard.

  Now she stood before the massive Vanitar Shield, and it looked exactly like a snowglobe. Except instead of snow, it was filled with fire.

  Barely visible through opaqueness was a veritable storm of hurtling metal carcasses, fireballs, Spheres, Spidermechas, dust, and debris.

  Amnon’s forces were tunnelling inside. And there was every sign Mykor would be overrun.

  My father can’t win, she thought, not with concern so much as self interest. And if I’m allied with him, neither can I.

  She and the remainder of her command flew in closer, braving the wrath of the railguns that were mounted on a nearby escarpment. She ran interference on the column of spider-like machines marching through the tunnel.

  Fwoom fwoom fwoom fwoom – she pulsed bursts of light at the unsuspecting Spidermechas, shooting as fast as she could. Caught by surprise, three were annihilated before they even knew she was there.

  The rest of the line turned and fired. Zandra swooped down low, letting the storm of gunfire blitz overhead.

  Then, the remaining two Spheres came in from the opposite direction, firing once more.

&nb
sp; The Spidermechas were once again caught out of position, and were hit badly. As they turned to face the new threat, Zandra appeared back on the right like a deranged jack in the box, blasting away at them.

  Over a dozen Spidermechas were trashed before they could co-ordinate an effective counterattack from both sides. Swarms of drones buzzed by, disrupting Zandra and he comrades until they had to pull back.

  “Go around. Take the other side.”

  They sped around the huge fireglobe. The din of battle passed easily through the wall of the Vanitar shield, as did the flashes of small arms and explosives.

  And you thought you’d be safe in there, father, she thought.

  The Vanitar Shield was ringed with men, tanks, and equipment. She found a spot where the Solar Arm was digging an additional tunnel.

  Bad. Mykor will be overrun if too many get in there.

  She and her friends blazed away, wiping out three spidermechas preparing to enter the tunnel. Zandra was suddenly struck by an idea. “Fire at the ground above the hole,” she ordered. “I’ll keep them distracted.”

  Bemused, the Spheres split up, and began raining bursts of light on the ground inwards from the tunnel. They struck again and again, until the hard rock of Caitanya-9 was a purple melange of smoking craters.

  Large numbers of drones flew directly at them, attempting suicidal kamikaze attacks. Zandra nailed four or five of them, then the others crashed in, sending her two comrades hurtling away…

  …only to return, and continue firing at the ground.

  Zandra moved and fought, sometimes shooting drones, sometimes taking out spidermechas. She entered a state of flow, the way she often had in training exercises, where everything abstracted into an enormous game that had victory and defeat but not life or death. Emotionless, her brain was a winnowed husk, dealing death through reptilian spasms.

  The air-rending surge of a railgun blasted one of her friends to pieces. She hardly noticed.

  Finally, she abandoned shooting at moving targets and just kept firing at the ground over and over, striking at what her instincts told her were critical load bearing points.