Survival Strategy

by Anders Raynor

  Jason used his only functional maneuvering thruster to turn the craft around, then he shot the main one to slow down. The engine howled. A clang shook the fuselage, then another. The dropship hit the ground in a gut-wrenching rumble. Lights flickered and went out.

  Adrian’s visor switched to light-amplification mode. Once the craft stopped and the noises ceased, he deactivated his seatbelts and examined Jason. Blood tricked from the pilot’s mouth. Adrian pulled a medical scanner from the first aid kit and assessed his condition.

  “I detect internal bleeding. Stay still, Jason. I’ll give you a shot, but you mustn’t move.”

  “No…” Jason rocked his head weakly. “Takamori…”

  “I’ll take care of him,” Adrian replied, pulling a transdermal syringe from the first aid kit.

  “You? Against a hitman?”

  That thought made Adrian’s heart race, but he was determined to follow through, as the survival of the colony was at stake. He pressed the syringe against Jason’s neck. What he injected wasn’t a medication, strictly speaking, but a sedative. Adrian knew Jason would never agree to stay in the craft while he confronted Takamori, so putting him asleep was the only way to save his life.

  The sedative worked quickly, and Jason closed his eyes. Adrian grabbed a blaster, a flash grenade, and the bag containing the equipment he’d brought with him. Trying to control his shaking hands, he fumbled in his bag for a miniature biobot. He activated it, opened the dropship’s door, and let it soar, lifted by a thousand flagellar rotors. Adrian had designed it to be invisible even to hyperspectral scanners. It would give him an aerial view of his surroundings.

  The plateau was plunged into a green semi-darkness. Electric arcs crisscrossed the sky. Faint lights danced amid the volcanic fungi, produced by flying creatures the size of moths.

  Adrian spotted Takamori, dressed in full body armor and holding a rifle with a scope.

  Looks like military-grade gear. He must have found it in the dropship.

  With his Wells-9, Adrian felt outgunned. He thought about using the craft’s turrets, but they were offline, and repairs would take too long. He could wait for ASF reinforcements; however, time was not on his side.

  He threw the flash grenade, dashed out of the wreck, and took cover behind a pillar-shaped rock. The blaster rifle thundered, and the bolt missed him by a few centimeters.

  “Darus?” Takamori shouted. “Am I having visions, or is it you? You’re braver than I thought. I recognized you on the Hub, despite your ridiculous goggles.”

  A second bolt exploded against the rock, just above Adrian’s head. Fragments of stone bounced on his helmet. Adrian watched Takamori approaching through his bot.

  “I didn’t know the Earthists hired assassins,” Adrian shouted. He had a plan, but he needed to buy himself more time.

  “Yes, I admit I was a mercenary until I met Israr Multan. He saw potential in me and helped me turn my life around. He saved my soul, and I swore to spend the rest of my life serving the Earthist cause.”

  “Selling illegal weapons, is that how you support the Earthist cause?”

  “No, Darus. I didn’t sell any weapons. I crafted one for a comrade, only for self-defense.”

  “Your comrade used your weapon to assassinate a man.”

  “You’re lying, traitor!”

  Three more bolts smashed against the rock. Adrian’s scanners indicated that the rock wouldn’t resist another salvo.

  “You sold your soul to DeCourt’s regime,” Takamori shouted. “You’re partly responsible for Israr Multan’s death. If you’d joined him, he would be alive. Multan was a great man, a charismatic leader, and a sage. Your regime assassinated him.”

  “I had nothing to do with your leader’s death,” Adrian replied. “I hate DeCourt as much as you do, and if he ordered Multan’s assassination, he’ll face justice.”

  “Ah, justice!” Takamori yelled. “Whose justice? The fall of Vega was a just punishment for our sins. Our society was corrupt—it had to be purified. Now it will be reborn. The Earthist movement did not die with Israr and Adisa Multan. It’s very much alive, and we’ll strike back against the illegitimate president and his regime.”

  Takamori fired again. The rock splintered. Adrian threw himself to the ground.

  The hitman was only about fifty meters away. “We don’t need you, Judas. You never intended to honor your promise to lead us to Earth. In fact, you didn’t intend to resurrect mankind at all. We’re all your unwanted children. Deep down, you despise us.”

  “That’s a lie! You don’t get to judge me, murderer.” Adrian fired.

  His bolt hit a rock looking like a petrified baobab, a couple of meters from Takamori.

  The hitman laughed. “Your accuracy is impressive. Is that all you can do?”

  A swarm of glowing creatures rushed out of the rock with furious buzzing and charged Takamori. The rock was in fact a nest built around a geothermal vent by the Nean equivalent of bees. The temperature inside the nest was at least fifty degrees Celsius, and the “bees” wouldn’t remain active for long in the cold. They would return to their nest within a minute, but that would give Adrian enough time to reach the nearest patch of woodland and take cover.

  He sprinted, struggling against high gravity. Everything weighed twenty percent more on Neo, and he felt the difference.

  The creatures enveloped Takamori like a glowing cloud. They were powerless to do any damage to his armor, but that didn’t stop them from trying.

  Once the creatures were gone, Takamori shouted, “I admit I didn’t see that coming, Darus. But you just bought yourself a stay of execution, nothing more.”

  Adrian fired again in Takamori’s direction.

  “C’mon, coward!” the hitman yelled. “Stop hiding and face me like a man.”

  “Come and get me!”

  Adrian took refuge behind a large tree-like organism and pulled a device looking like a remote control. When Takamori entered the woods, Adrian pointed it at him and activated the device.

  At first nothing happened.

  Takamori was only twenty meters away when something thrust out of the ground in a geyser of rocks and dust. It looked like a two-meter-long chainsaw blade. It slashed Takamori’s armor and sent him flying against a rock.

  That was just one of the three limbs of the predator attacking him. The creature was morphologically similar to a triskele, but bigger, each of its limbs the size of an adult human. They sported a row of barbs secreting a corrosive liquid.

  Takamori shot the predator before it could strike again, and the beast collapsed on the ground, shrieking and writhing in pain.

  More creatures pounced on Takamori. One of them snatched his rifle, and another one lashed at his legs. He dodged and rolled on the ground, but couldn’t get away from the fight.

  The blade of a plasma dagger blazed in the night. Takamori used it to cut off predator’s limbs, but there were more and more of them crawling toward him. He retreated, slashing the air around him, but soon a precipice cut his retreat.

  “Give me a name, and I’ll let you live,” Adrian told him. “Who is that comrade of yours to whom you gave the needler?”

  “Go to hell!” was Takamori’s answer.

  “See this little device I’m pointing at you? It emits an infrasound that makes you a target for the predators. They won’t stop until they shred you to pieces. You want me to turn it off?”

  A stone crumbled under Takamori’s foot, and he flailed his arms to retain balance. Three predators chose that instant to attack. Takamori slashed two of them, but the third coiled a limb abound his arm. Several others joined the melee, overwhelming him, and pinning him to the ground. He screamed as one of the limbs cut through his visor. The poisonous barbs were now sliding back and forth a centimeter away from his face.

  “The substance they secrete is toxic to humans,” Adrian said. “It causes burns at first, then excruciating pain as it makes its way into bloodstream. Once it reaches your lungs,
you’re dead.”

  “Filthy coward!” Takamori cried, still struggling.

  “Give me the name!”

  “I won’t! My comrades will avenge me. Shana Multan won’t let this stand!”

  Adrian had heard that name. She was the adoptive daughter of Israr Multan, and apparently the new leader of the Earthists.

  He pressed another button on his device, and the predators let go of Takamori. They crawled away from him, back into their underground lairs.

  “Why are you calling me a coward?” Adrian asked. “That was a fair duel; your weapons skills against my knowledge of xenobiology. We’re both masters in our discipline, and your only mistake was overconfidence. Let it be a lesson to you—nerds can fight back.”

  He set his blaster on stun and shot Takamori in the face.

  15

  Masterplan

  Riley was furious when she learned that Adrian and Jason had decided to go after the hitman on their own. She went to the hospital in Base Alpha where Jason was treated and expressed her disappointment to him in no uncertain terms.

  In response, he only smiled and said, “So you do care about me.”

  Riley had to summon all her self-control to stifle a yell. “You’re impossible! Darus is a civilian, but you? You’re a senior officer, for star’s sake. Don’t you have any respect for military protocol?”

  “This wasn’t a military op,” Jason pointed out, still smiling at her. “I just helped Adrian test his scanner.”

  “So why did you approach the suspect?”

  Jason twitched his nose. “Okay, I admit that was a bit rash. But I couldn’t let him get away.”

  “You knew the guy was a bionic,” Riley scolded him. “He could’ve smashed your ribcage with a single punch. You were lucky to be alive, but instead of seeking medical attention, you went after him, and you brought our top scientist with you. Did you request permission to pursue the suspect? Did you request backup?”

  “There was no time for any of that. And I told Adrian to stay on the Hub, but he insisted on coming.”

  Riley narrowed her eyes. “Maybe you think you can get away with such acts of disobedience, especially now that you’re celebrated as the hero of the Battle of Chloris. But I know a punishment fit for such recklessness. You obviously have psychological issues, maybe even a death wish. In such cases, ASF mandates counseling sessions.”

  Jason’s smile finally evaporated. “C’mon, Riley, you wouldn’t do that to me.”

  “Watch me.” She turned around and marched out.

  “Nice to see you too!” Jason shouted to her back. “Come again any time, don’t be a stranger.”

  She didn’t have to go far. She found Talia in her office, typing a report on her terminal. Riley shared her concerns about Jason, striving to keep her voice even.

  “I think you’re right,” Talia said. “Jason has been through a lot during the last year. His adoptive father was killed in front of him, his planet has been invaded, he lost comrades to the war, and almost died at the Battle of Chloris. Yet he’s still itching for action. He craves danger—it’s in his nature.”

  “Would you counsel him?”

  “If need be, though I have no formal training in psychology or counseling. But his desire for action might be satisfied sooner than you think. I heard that Winsley plans to send Battlegroup Vega on an important mission. Jason has almost recovered and will be part of it.”

  Riley had mixed feelings about this, but decided not to share them.

  Duty called her back to the Remembrance, so she said goodbye to Talia, left the hospital, and took a shuttle to her ship.

  Hunt summoned her to a briefing as soon as she arrived. Only a handful of people were in attendance as the briefing was reserved for senior officers with the rank of commander or above.

  Admiral Winsley ran the meeting. His hologram stood in the middle of the room next to Adrian’s. Adrian had the highest security clearance, and Winsley trusted him unconditionally.

  “Winning wars is not always about superior numbers and firepower,” the admiral started. “To liberate our worlds, we don’t need to achieve overall superiority. We must achieve local superiority. We must lure Biozi fleets away from Sector Vega. For that, we’ll engineer a second Retroforming.”

  Winsley paused to let this sink in. No one dared to peep a word, maybe because that announcement took all senior officers by surprise.

  “Yes, our scientists are working on a retrovirus that will revert another species genosimilated by the Biozi to its original form,” he continued. “Dr. Darus, you have the floor.”

  Adrian cleared his throat and pointed at a holo-screen displaying a pale sphere. “I give you Nifelheim, a world I named after one of the Nine Worlds of Norse mythology, the homeland of cold, mist, and darkness. This planet was home to a species I call the Jotnar, before the Taar’kuun genosimilated them.”

  The screen showed a mountain blanketed in snow. A creature stepped out of the fog, brought to life by 3D animation. Riley imagined how terrifying it would be to bump into such a being on that icy world at night.

  The Jotnar evoked a demon from ancient folklore. He had a massive head with a flat triangular top. Each edge ended with a horn shaped like a dagger curved upward. His face sported four eyes and, in place of a nose, a bony structure that looked vaguely like a beak. White hair covered his body, except the upper part of the face and the triangular bone on his head. His muscular arms ended with a thumb and two long fingers armed with claws.

  “The Jotnar were giants,” Adrian resumed. “Their average height was about three and a half meters. The Taar’kuun pretend that the Jotnar went extinct, but I analyzed DNA from Taar’kuun troopers and determined that a quarter of them descended from the Jotnar. Genosimilators had to reduce their size to about two meters, but the descendants of the Jotnar still possess exceptional strength and resilience.”

  Another silence followed. Everyone realized what that meant. A virus that could retroform the Jotnar would throw the Taar’kuun Galactic State into chaos.

  “What do we know about the culture of the Jotnar?” Hunt asked.

  “Very little,” Adrian replied. “I studied a few specimens preserved in ice, so I know quite a bit about Jotnar biology, as well as their genetic structure, but it doesn’t tell us much about their society. Their brains were smaller than ours; however, that doesn’t necessarily mean they were less intelligent than us. They never developed any organized society, and their technology was similar to Stone Age humans.”

  “Were they predators?” Captain O’Neil asked. “Were they aggressive?”

  Adrian nodded. “I think so. The Jotnar ate only meat and were very fit physically. All the frozen specimens I studied bore scars and other traces of injuries, some of them inflicted by crude weapons. The Jotnar were skilled hunters and fierce warriors. No wonder the Biozi made soldiers out of them.”

  “The Jotnar project, as we named it, is critical to our long-term survival,” Winsley said. “First, we must develop the Jotnar retrovirus, weaponize it, and deploy it on Nifelheim, where a billion Taar’kuun descending from the Jotnar live. Once the Jotnar retroforming begins, the TGS will be forced to move their armada to that sector, and we’ll strike against their forces in Sector Vega. Any questions so far?”

  “How long will it take to develop and weaponize that retrovirus?” O’Neil asked.

  “Our geno-architects are working on it, and that’s the reason I convened this meeting,” Winsley replied. “After the Battle of Olympica, the Alliance relocated its top scientists to Minos Station, a secret facility on an uninhabited planet. Its location is our most closely guarded secret. We’ve lost contact with that facility, and the last transmission received indicates there was some serious incident. Battlegroup Vega, your mission is to reach Minos Station, ensure the safety of its personnel, and recover the research data. I can’t overstate how important it is. Not without reluctance, I agreed to let Dr. Darus join the mission. His safety is in your ha
nds.”

  *****

  Preparations for the mission would take an hour. After the briefing, Hunt dismissed his officers, except Riley. Winsley’s and Adrian’s holograms remained, and another one appeared—Kwan Kor’s.

  “I’ll update you on the status of the murder investigation,” Kor croaked. “We captured the man who provided the murder weapon. His name is Haru Takamori. He worked as an inventory manager on the ASC Jamnagar, but he used to be a hitman. He confessed to the following. Two years ago, a crime lord hired him to murder Israr Multan, who was residing on Deneb Algenubi D at that time. Multan was the wealthiest man on the planet, always protected by a security detail. To get close, Takamori infiltrated his organization. Somehow Multan discovered that Takamori was an assassin, but instead of killing him, he converted him to Earthism.”

  “This is consistent with what Takamori told me,” Adrian said. “But why was he employed as an inventory manager? Was it just a cover?”

  Kor gave a curt nod. “I think Multan kept Takamori as his secret weapon. No one would suspect an accountant of being a professional killer. When the Biozi attacked, Multan boarded his personal ship together with his closest followers and fled Deneb. Takamori journeyed with him.”

  “Did Takamori reveal to whom he sold the needler?” Riley asked.

  Kor turned to her. “Negative. He’s fanatically loyal to the Earthists and their leader, Shana Multan. She’s Israr Multan’s adoptive daughter. During the attack on the Capitol, when Adisa Multan took the president and his cabinet hostage, Shana remained on the Jamnagar. After Adisa’s death, she took over as the Earthist leader.”

  Winsley gave Kor a stern look. “Colonel, I don’t want you to use your barbaric interrogation methods on the suspect. He’s a citizen of the Alliance, so treat him in accordance with the law. Understood?”

  Kor glared back at the admiral. “With all due respect, I report directly to President DeCourt, not to you.”

  “You’re walking a thin line, colonel,” Winsley warned. “Don’t forget that I’m not only Head of the ASF, but also the Secretary of Defense. One wrong move, and I’ll use my authority to throw you in the jug.”