by Tim Lebbon
Johnny Mains opened his eyes.
The shaft above him was tall and dark but for the rectangular fire blazing on one wall. Flames floated across the space, then receded again, curled around the opening’s edge, flowing down the walls like melting butter. Fire in zero-G was quite beautiful.
“L-T…” the voice said, and Mains sat up, groaning, feeling pain all across his body. Lieder was propped against the wall just out of reach, and her left arm was twisted at an unnatural angle across her chest. She was breathing short, sharp breaths.
“Gemma,” he said.
“Jesus, no one’s called me that in years,” Lieder said. “You there? You with me?”
“Yeah.” Mains nodded, the action causing pains to flare and die down again. His suit was doping him, applying painkillers to his bloodstream. He wondered what the damage was.
Looking up, he knew that it didn’t matter. All that mattered was that they had to move.
“They’ve gone,” Lieder said. “Sara, Durante, Hari… just gone.”
“Took a few with them.”
“It’s not a few we have to worry about. It’s a few thousand.”
Mains stood, magnetic boots locking on. He reached for the wall and leaned against it. His left leg felt weird, but it had been heavily numbed by his suit. He took two steps toward Lieder and his leg clicked.
“Help me up,” she said. He helped her, and for a moment they leaned against the wall with heads touching through the thin suit masks.
“Come on,” he said. They searched for their weapons. Lieder retrieved her com-rifle, but Mains couldn’t find his. Maybe he’d dropped it above, just as they tumbled through the open elevator doors.
He looked up. Flames still roared, plasma scorching across the elevator shaft with each fresh gust.
They used their knives to force the doors open on this level, then jumped half a yard out of the shaft. It was dark, quiet, and their suits showed no movement nearby.
They also showed what appeared to be a large, open space just twenty yards away and one more level down.
“Another hold?” Lieder asked.
“Let’s see,” Mains said. At the back of his mind was the hope he’d been clinging to, an idea that perhaps this didn’t have to be the end. He and Lieder had survived again, and maybe there was a reason for that. Mains had never been one to believe in fate. Perhaps he’d taken a blow to the head.
“Can you walk?” he asked.
“Fuck you, L-T. You’re the one with a broken leg.”
He looked down and saw that she was right. His left leg twisted at a strange angle, moving oddly with every step he took.
“Oh,” he said.
“Not sure I’m much use to you, though,” she said. “My arm…” The limb was still held across her chest, shoulder pulped and forcing it there.
“Got another one, haven’t you?” he asked.
Lieder grinned and hefted her com-rifle. The grin was more of a wan smile. Mains held out his hand for the rifle.
“I’m a better shot than you, even with one arm,” she said.
“Yeah, okay. True. Come on.”
They moved out, heading into darkness given life through their infrared vision. Movement appeared at the edge of their sensors. They hurried, Mains’s leg starting to hurt even through the numbing and the flow of painkillers. He knew that the suit would balance the requirements—painkilling against mobility and alertness. Soon, the pain would be allowed through so that he could continue to handle himself.
They reached another staircase and drifted down, pulling on handrails, and avoided touching the stairs. Lieder moved past him. She waited at the closed doorway below, rifle at the ready.
Mains touched the handle and nodded to her.
One… two… three…
He opened the door and she slipped through, panning the space beyond with her rifle. Nothing moved. Not in front of them, at least, but behind and above the movements were coming closer, converging on their position.
It was a hangar. Two ships stood on mooring decks, held in place by safety arms. They were half the size of the Navarro, but bristled with weapons.
“Fucking jackpot!” Lieder said, and Mains felt hope rising once again.
“Hurry,” he said. “They’re coming closer. Hurry!” He knew that they were in no position to hold off a wave of Xenomorphs, not now. They were both broken. Lieder’s ammo was probably low, and all he carried was a laser pistol and a couple of plasma grenades. He mourned his old shotgun.
“Fuck you, General Jones,” he muttered. He wondered why the android general wasn’t mocking them anymore. Maybe it didn’t know that they had survived.
They crossed the hangar to the nearest ship, skirting around the other side to where a door stood open. One side of the hangar was an external wall, which he guessed would drop away at a given command. If only they could understand the commands, know how to fly the ship, how to shoot—
We won’t know, he thought. We couldn’t use that weird ship docked at UMF 12, and we won’t be able to use these. But that didn’t matter, because at that moment he saw the first movement across the hangar as doorways burst open. Xenomorphs streamed in. Dozens of them, then scores, large and small and all drifting directly at them, pushing from walls and floor, claws reaching, teeth extruding.
Lieder gave them a burst and several creatures went down, then she was up into the ship and reaching for him, hauling him in after her, playing her light around as she looked for a door control.
“Fuck fuck fuck!” she shouted.
Mains drew his laser pistol, waited, and when the first dark shapes came close enough he shot them down. He fired quickly, carefully, and dropped seven more Xenomorphs before the door slammed closed.
Moments later, the impacts began on the other side.
Low lighting turned on inside the ship.
“Cockpit,” Mains said. He and Lieder helped each other up and they bumped through to the small cockpit. Beyond, the shadows were alive. Writhing, twisting, dancing, the whole of the hangar was filled with Xenomorphs. There must have been hundreds of them out there, maybe more.
The first of them launched at the small ship’s windows, bouncing from the diamond-hard glass. More thudding came from the doors behind them.
“How long will this hold?” Mains asked.
“Dunno. Look.” Lieder stood at the small control pillar and touched some of the controls. Nothing happened.
“What do you think?” Mains asked.
“Looks… different from the ship we were on at UMF 12. More human. Gimme a minute.”
“I’m checking out the weapons hold,” Mains said. “You figure out how to fly this baby, and we’ll take off and nuke the fuck out of Othello.”
“I like your thinking, L-T.”
“That all you like about me?”
She threw him a strange look. Sad, wistful. Mains turned away because he could feel the same expression on his own face. We’re not getting out of this, he thought. We both know it. We both know this is the end.
He moved toward the back of the ship, still holding the laser pistol. The impacts were coming from all around now as Xenomorphs clung onto the hull and thumped against it, butting, biting, scratching. The idea of them breaking in was ridiculous—this ship was an attack craft built for deep space travel, very probably with warp capabilities. Still, if they kept bashing like that, for hours or days…
The weapons hold was small and compact, and filled with canisters, charge-bulbs, and an array of fist-sized objects that could only be nukes.
Mains touched one, almost feeling its potential coiled within.
He turned to rush back to the cockpit and Lieder was there, pressing into him and reaching back to close the door behind her. They were crushed into the weapons hold.
“What?” he asked. She looked terrified.
“They cracked the viewing window,” she said. “They’re killing each other, using acid to melt through the crack. They’ll be inside in
moments.” She looked past him and down at the nukes.
“What do you think?” Mains asked.
Lieder shoved the com-rifle at him, pushed past, and picked up one of the nukes. She left it in the air before her, gently turning it this way and that.
“I think I can hot-wire this,” she said, “but I’ve only got one good hand. You’ll have to hold it for me.”
As they worked together, neither of them spoke of what they were doing. The future was seconds long, minutes, an hour, but they didn’t discuss what existed, or did not exist, beyond that. Mains had confronted death many times, and considered it many more. It had never held fear for him, and now he found himself strangely at peace with the potential.
Gone in a flash, not screaming and melting, torn apart, agonized.
“This is so shit,” Lieder said.
“No, it isn’t,” Mains said.
Something was inside the ship. Their movement sensors were overwhelmed. A Xenomorph started butting against the door, the impacts shaking the entire bulkhead wall.
“We don’t have long,” Mains said.
“I know,” Lieder said. “I think I’m done.” She leaned back and Mains looked down at the object in his hands. Its guts were out, wires and filament, virtual connections splayed like a living thing’s innards. At its heart, the small globe of matter that could cause such destruction.
“Really?” he asked.
“This,” she said, touching a small glass sphere. “One crack, three seconds, then… I think it’ll set off all eight nukes.”
“All of them?”
“Think so.”
“One would be enough.”
“No such thing as overkill with these things.”
Every word they spoke was interrupted by the smashing sounds from outside. The air itself reverberated, hurting their heads.
Mains reached behind his ear and disconnected the comsuit’s mask, pulling it from his face. Lieder did the same.
“You’re quite a soldier,” he said.
“Christ, Johnny,” she said, leaning in to kiss him. He felt her hand stroke the back of his, feeling for the device he still held. The smell of her breath, the touch of her lips, the sensation of skin on skin made him feel so human.
The glass sphere cracked between her fingers.
“Wait—” he said.
“We’ve got long enough,” she said.
And she kissed him again.
22
GERARD MARSHALL
Charon Station, Sol System
November 2692 AD
“Try again,” Gerard Marshall said.
The computer tried again. It seemed to him that it paused, just for a moment, as if irked at being questioned. But that was impossible. It was only a computer, not an AI.
“No contact made,” the computer reported.
Marshall swilled his third glass of whiskey and stared at the empty holo frame. “Try again.”
A pause.
A blank screen.
“Still no contact with the Pixie,” the computer said. “I’ve tried a range of sub-space frequencies.”
“Is our equipment all serviceable?”
“Of course.”
“Check it.”
Another pause. Marshall was certain the computer was growing impatient with him. Or maybe it was him projecting his own impatience and concern.
“Confirmed,” the computer said. “All systems are fully functioning. The sub-space transmitter is online and all in the green. Everything is working as it should.”
Marshall took a drink. “Maybe it’s the tech,” he said. “It’s cutting edge. New, expensive. Expensive stuff always goes wrong.”
“It’s not the tech,” the computer said. “The Pixie is not receiving the message. Even if the crew did not wish to reply, indicators would show that the message was being received.”
Marshall stood and paced his suite. He knew what he had to do, but wanted a little more time before doing it.
“Sir, I think you should accept the possibility that the Pixie is lost.”
Marshall stood at the wide window and sighed. Outside he could see part of Charon Station’s north docking arm, and the two big ships currently docked there. One was a Darkstar resupply vessel, almost the size of the station itself. The other was a Spaceborne frigate.
The sight of these ships should have made him feel safe.
“I’d like to speak to General Bassett,” Marshall said.
“Connecting.”
The holo screen chimed, then faded in with a blue glow. Bassett appeared, standing at a complex wall display with his hands behind his back. The connection established, he turned.
“Hello, General,” Marshall said.
“Gerard.” Bassett walked close to the screen. Behind him, the display was constantly changing, different constellations fading in and out, red lines and green spots appearing and disappearing like so many births and deaths. “I assume you’re calling to inform me about the Pixie.”
Marshall tried to hold back his surprise. Bassett smiled.
“Come on, Marshall. Let’s not pretend.”
“It’s not certain that it’s lost,” Marshall said.
“No, but I think we have to assume that’s the case,” Bassett said. He looked tired. Marshall had never seen him rattled, not even when his own son had been killed. At the time they’d believed the incident was connected with the Yautja incursion, but now it seemed likely that the saboteurs were somehow in league with the true aggressors. The Rage. There had been no contact or communication with them yet. Only violence, destruction, and death.
Marshall guessed that the General was hardly sleeping.
“It’s a minor setback,” Marshall said. “Palant might have been our link to the Yautja, but I believe the peace treaty will stand.”
“Maybe, maybe not. The Yautja don’t concern me anymore.”
“At all?”
Bassett shook his head. The screen behind him changed once again, displaying a vast network of points and curved lines that looked like a chaos of spider webs.
“So what’s the latest?” Marshall asked. “Barclay will be in touch again later today, and we’ll need to update him together.”
“As if he doesn’t know everything already,” Bassett said. “As if you don’t.”
Marshall was shocked by the General’s unusual outburst. He was usually the face of professionalism. He really was tired.
“Paul, contrary to what you believe, I don’t have eyes and ears everywhere. That’s why I’m here, on this station, with you. I’d much rather have a planet underfoot, but I’m here so I can be close. I’m the conduit for communicating military matters to the Thirteen. If I knew everything that was happening, I wouldn’t need to ask you—and I suspect you’re the only person who has the complete picture.”
“You’re trying to flatter me, Gerard?” the General asked, and he actually smiled. That was rare. It made him look more exhausted than ever.
“So tell me,” Marshall said.
“Come to my suite,” Bassett said. He nodded at Gerard’s hand. “I’ve some single malt. Better than that piss.”
* * *
Fifteen minutes later Marshall had been escorted through the bustling war room and into General Bassett’s suite. Bassett already had two glasses poured, and he handed one to Marshall before nodding at the big screen. It was still cycling through images—maps, schematics, graphs, other representations of events that Marshall could hardly decipher. He watched the General watching the screen, wondering how one man could bear such a weight.
“How bad is it?” Marshall asked.
Bassett raised an eyebrow.
“Come on, Paul. You didn’t ask me up here to share your precious single malt because of my sparkling personality.”
“Okay, Gerard. It’s bad.” He waved a hand and the huge screen faded to gray. “We’ve lost nineteen dropholes across the Gamma quadrant.”
“Nineteen? Christ.”
&nbs
p; “We suspect a dozen more might also have fallen to them. We’ve lost contact, so we have to assume the worst.”
“Only the Gamma quadrant?”
“For now, yes. We’re taking them on wherever we can, but like I’ve said before, their technology is ahead of ours. Their ships have defensive shields, and when they land—on space stations or habitat—the Xenomorph hordes are overwhelming.”
“What about the Fiennes ships?”
“We’ve taken out a couple, but at great cost. They have escorts.”
“And your forces have retrieved nothing useful from the ships they’ve hit?”
Bassett looked sidelong at Marshall. “Generally, if you nuke a ship traveling at a hundred million miles per hour, there’s not much left.”
“So the dropholes,” Marshall said.
“They could be jumping deeper and deeper into the Sphere. Some dropholes have reported ships dropping in and then rapidly disappearing. Others report nothing. Some dropholes much deeper into the Sphere have fallen silent.”
“It’s a true invasion,” Marshall said. He was stunned. Until now, the conflict had seemed contained, a skirmish across a wide sector of the Outer Rim, only just bleeding into the Sphere. Maybe he hadn’t wanted to allow himself to believe.
“Which will be repelled,” Bassett said. “During every contact we learn something more. We’re gathering intelligence.”
“Yet if it all goes bad…” Marshall said. He’d mentioned before about shutting down selected dropholes. Bassett’s reaction had been one of shock, and that was understandable. The Thirteen had the ability to remotely shut down dropholes from several points throughout the Sol System and beyond, but the process was destructive. Once a hole was closed, the chance of opening it again remotely was small. It would take travel to that drophole location and a full overhaul of systems, and that would take years.
“No,” Bassett said. “You know you can’t do that. Shut down all six hundred Gamma quadrant dropholes and you doom everyone out there to die a cold, lonely death. You’d set the Sphere back centuries, stranding people hundreds of light years apart with only ships to travel between those points. The Human Sphere now is a coherent whole, even though it is huge. We’re one civilization spread over this portion of the galaxy. Shut down the dropholes and you turn one civilization into hundreds.”
