Books One to Three Omnibus (Armada Wars)

by R. Curtis Venture

  Throam bellowed in agony, and without thinking about it he reared backwards, shifting his weight off Castigon. As hurt as he was, Castigon was scrabbling away immediately, and Throam could hear him climbing awkwardly to his feet.

  The smoke was beginning to thin, and Throam launched himself at the vague shadow he saw moving through the veil.

  He hit Castigon full on in the chest, one broad shoulder driving up under his chin, and pushed him back as hard as he could. They both went down again, sliding across the floor.

  “You’re going to pay for every Shard and counterpart you hurt, Castigon.”

  “Fucking rat,” Castigon said. “You’re not going to stop me. Caden is going to wish he died at birth.”

  Throam roared and battered and smashed, right up until the moment the sky fell through the building.

  • • •

  “Caden?”

  Eilentes coughed, her lungs burning with the sour tang of acrid smoke and the sharp, gritty dust that had been thrown up by the splinter. She turned this way and that, unable to see any of the others.

  “Doctor Bel-Ures?”

  She called out again and again, panic taking hold now that silence was returning to the compound.

  There was a cough off to her right, just up ahead, and she ran towards the sound. She skidded to a halt, dropping to her knees, and found a body moving under a thin layer of rubble.

  “What the fuck was that?”

  Eilentes helped Caden sit upright.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “It’s… well, see for yourself.”

  She pointed, and Caden rubbed the dirt from his eyes. His mouth opened when he focused on the splinter, but no words came.

  “I know, right?”

  Eilentes had seen the splinter land with her own two eyes. She could hardly believe the size of it, and struggled to wrap her brain around the manner of its arrival.

  The splinter stared back at them.

  It was monolithic. A dark hull clicked and hissed as heat fled from it, and steam drifted down towards the ground. Its surface seemed to draw the light inside itself.

  “I think we should get away from it,” said Caden. “Whatever it is, it’s bad.”

  “Where’s the doctor?” Eilentes said. She grabbed Caden’s arm, and hauled on it as he climbed to his feet.

  “She was practically next to me.”

  “Help me.”

  The voice was weak, shocked, and they both moved around the splinter in the direction it came from. Bel-Ures was still on the ground.

  “I think I twisted my ankle,” she said.

  Caden and Eilentes helped her up, each taking a side.

  “The Eyes and Ears guy?” Caden asked.

  “I think he’s under that.”

  “Shit,” said Caden. “Didn’t even ask him his name.”

  “Too late for regrets,” said Eilentes. “We have to go.”

  “Second the motion,” said Bel-Ures. She coughed, and spat dirt on the ground.

  “Listen,” said Caden.

  A roar was building in the sky above them, a roar accompanied by a whistling shriek. They looked up and saw white vapour billowing around a dark, slender missile, streaking towards the ground.

  The second splinter hit hundreds of metres away, out beyond the perimeter. It plunged deep into the ground, sending up plumes of soil and smoke, biting into the surface of the planet and sinking until only the top half of it was visible.

  “The shuttle bays,” said Caden.

  They half carried Bel-Ures, ignoring her moans, hurrying as best they could, and reached the end of the row of covered shuttle bays.

  Above them, in the skies of Meccrace Prime, another shrieking roar was growing in volume.

  “This’ll do,” said Eilentes.

  She steered Bel-Ures into the first bay and almost dragged her to the shuttle. She released her grip on the other woman briefly, tapping her access code into the shuttle’s hatch control panel. Caden swore, and she glanced back to see him struggling to take the unexpected weight of the doctor.

  “Just one moment,” she said.

  The hatch popped and hissed open. The roar reached its climax.

  “Okay, let’s get her inside—“

  An almighty crash shook the entire structure, sending spare parts and tools flying from the maintenance racking at the end of the bay. Eilentes stumbled, Bel-Ures falling against her, and she reached out with one arm to steady herself against the ship.

  “Oh my worlds,” said Caden. “That one hit the main building.”

  “Quickly,” said Eilentes. “Let’s get her inside.”

  “Throam…” said Caden.

  “Now!” Eilentes was shouting. “We have to leave or we’ll be crushed.”

  Caden’s head snapped back towards her. He looked at Bel-Ures’ pained face, and seemed to come back to the moment.

  “Right. Come on then.”

  Between them, they managed to get her up the ramp and strap her down safely in the rear compartment.

  Caden headed back towards the ramp.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Going back for him,” said Caden.

  “Don’t,” she said. “There’s no time.”

  “He wouldn’t leave me to die here.”

  “It’s his job.”

  He looked at her as though she had just called him the worst names imaginable, and began to turn away. She grabbed his arm and pulled as hard as she could.

  “Elm. It’s his job.”

  “Let go of me.”

  “You can’t go back. We have to leave.”

  “It came down on the building. For fuck’s sake Euryce, he could be dead.”

  “Exactly.”

  She felt the resistance in his arm soften, and he stared at her emptily.

  “That’s exactly right.”

  For the first time since she had met Elm Caden, she saw him look broken. His eyes told her more in that moment than Rendir Throam’s voice ever had done.

  Caden clicked his link.

  “Throam. Throam?”

  The silence yawned at him.

  Outside, somewhere nearby, the shrieking roar was building up again.

  “THROAM!”

  “I’m here.”

  “You’re alive! Oh my worlds, you’re alive. Where are you?”

  “Still inside. Place is a mess. I’m sorry, Elm — I lost him. I lost him.”

  “Never mind that cunt. Can you get to us?”

  “Everything is fucked up, Elm. I can’t see a way out.”

  “I’m coming to get you.”

  “No, don’t come for me. I’m not going to make it out in time. You need to get off the surface.”

  “Listen to him Caden,” said Eilentes.

  “Don’t give me that fatalistic crap,” said Caden. “Get out here, now.”

  “Elm, you’re going to have to leave me.”

  The roar outside tore through the sky, and another splinter hit the building. The south corner sheared away, glass and stone spraying out in a violent cascade.

  “Throam? You okay? Throam!”

  Coughing came over the link. “Just fell through another floor.”

  “Don’t you die on me now,” Caden shouted. “Just get here. We’re not going to leave without you, you hear me?”

  Eilentes grabbed for Caden’s arm again, but it was too late. He was already headed down the ramp. She jogged after him, back down into the bay, rounded the corner, and stopped dead.

  “This is new,” said Caden.

  The splinter in the compound exhaled.

  It was more than the steam that still evaporated from the warm surface. More than the black smoke that oozed from the burning residues on the hull. It was a thick, white, roiling fog, venting from inside the splinter itself, billowing down to the ground and rolling out in all directions, engulfing everything in the compound.

  “What is it?” Eilentes said.

  “Something to avoid. Back! Back to the shut
tle.”

  They hurried back to the bay, ran up the ramp, and Eilentes slapped the control to seal the ship.

  “Throam, you still with me brother?”

  “Still with you. Power’s out. It’s dark in here.”

  Eilentes climbed through the access port to the cockpit, and started to run pre-flight. Green lights welcomed her; Eyes and Ears kept their shuttles in good condition.

  She could still hear Caden talking, still hear Throam over the open channel.

  “I… I’m sorry for the things I said to you before. You didn’t deserve them. Not all of them.”

  “You were right. Tell Euryce I’m sorry. Ashamed. And you… I was a being child.”

  “No, Ren. Please listen. I have to tell you—“

  “Get out of here, you idiot.”

  “I meant what I said, Ren. You’re the most reliable person I ever met.”

  Eilentes hit the engine cycler, and through the deck she felt the thrum of the power relays stacking their charge.

  “And you’re the best counterpart I ever worked with. You really are.”

  “Just saying that.”

  “I’m not, Ren. There’s a reason I stuck with you for ten Solars. You must have known that’s unusual.”

  “Are you still here?”

  “You always looked out for me, always had my back, and I never wanted to believe you would actually die to keep me alive.”

  This time there was no retort. Eilentes realised her hand was hovering expectantly over the launch controls.

  “You do the things I can’t do, Ren. You’re… you’re like the parts of me that are missing.”

  She tapped the launch tile, and the shuttle lifted gently from the ground. She nosed it out of the bay.

  “I will find you,” said Caden. “I will. I’ll find you Ren, because—”

  “Don’t…” said Throam.

  “—because nothing in this universe can stop me loving you.”

  As the shuttle lifted from the surface, climbing steadily away from the pierced planet, Euryce Eilentes wondered how it was that she had never found such words to say.

  “Elm, I—”

  The channel dropped out.

  — 20 —

  Fear the Deep

  Thande was thrown from her chair and landed heavily on the deck. She got up immediately, reseated herself, and yelled at Tactical.

  “Full salvo: target Gamma. Don’t stop until it blows.”

  Disputer unleashed the full fury of her forward weapons on her chosen target, battering the thick casing of a dreadship’s engine mount with her munitions.

  The dreadship’s response was equally furious.

  The carrier reeled under a hail of slugs, her C-MADS turrets almost overwhelmed by the incoming fire. Missiles wove around her streaming countermeasures, coming dangerously close to penetrating the flak curtain.

  “Captain, we’re losing coverage.”

  “Has it blown yet? I don’t think it has.”

  The battle map swarmed with data points, the remains of the Eighth Fleet launching everything they had against their designated targets. The lone dreadship was thousands of kilometres from its nearest neighbour, and the Imperial ships harried it with only the strength of numbers on their side.

  “Picking up new contacts,” said COMOP. “Imperial transponders confirmed. Wait… Viskr transponders also detected. Captain, I think these are enemy reinforcements.”

  “Show me.”

  COMOP updated the battle map, and Thande stared at the flaring wormholes that the dreadships had ripped into the Meccrace system earlier on. Dozens of new indicators were spreading out from them.

  “Just as Santani told us. Mark those contacts as hostile, and share that information to our ships,” she said. “According to the intel Santani provided from Woe Tantalum, those vessels should be a pushover.”

  “Target Gamma is destroyed,” Tactical said. “Orders?”

  “Switch to target Epsilon.”

  Thande allowed herself a momentary surge of triumph, then buried the emotion before it could trap her in the treacherous grip of hope.

  “Helm; those wormholes. Can you get a navigational fix from them while they’re wide open?”

  “One moment, Captain… yes, somewhere in the Deep Shadows. Can’t get enough pulsar locks for a specific fix, I’m afraid.”

  “So, they’re coming from the Deep,” Thande murmured.

  “Message Tochi Actual: target Theta destroyed. They’re also moving on.”

  “Enemy ship is losing altitude,” said Tactical. “It’s working.”

  “And it’s killing us to make it work,” said Thande. “COMOP, time to range on the newcomers?”

  “Eight minutes, give or take.”

  “Any word on our reinforcements?”

  “Nothing so far.”

  “If they don’t get here soon, there won’t be anyone left to reinforce.”

  “They’re flashing us again,” said Tactical. “Focusing their lasers on our palettes. I can’t target the engine mounts at this range, not without a sensor fix.”

  “They’ll move on, Tactical,” said Thande. “They only have so many lasers. Try and knock some of them out.”

  “Yes Ma’am,” said Tactical. She pointed as many of the ship’s gauss guns as she could in the general direction of the dreadship, and fired them off repeatedly.

  “Captain, Tochi is reporting uncontained fires throughout their engineering section. They’re withdrawing from the fight.”

  “Are they able to pick up refugees?”

  “I’m asking the question.”

  Thande felt her heart sink as she watched Leave Tochi Untouched flee from the angry dreadship’s defensive barrage. The battleship had brought a hell of a lot of guns to the fight, and it pained her to lose them now.

  “The Beckoning Horizon is going down,” said Tactical. “They’re entering the atmosphere, uncontrolled.”

  “Tochi is now on rescue detail,” said COMOP. “They’re under half-power, but it should be enough.”

  “Enemy vessel has stopped firing on them. Looks like they’re only targeting active threats.”

  “Great,” said Thande. “The more ships we lose, the more ordnance comes our way.”

  “Afraid so, Ma’am,” said Tactical.

  “The gate’s active,” said Helm. “New wormhole forming, aft one-ten degrees.”

  “Identify?”

  “Stand by… looks like it’s ours.”

  “Confirmed,” said COMOP. “It’s the rest of the Fifth Fleet, Captain. And it looks like some of the First are with them.”

  Thande wanted very much to jump for joy.

  “Message Fearless Actual, Captain. It’s a holographic transmission.”

  “Open the channel, COMOP.”

  Thande’s holo blinked up a new pane, and Admiral Kalabi’s face replaced the systems report Thande had been keeping an eye on. The captain had never been so glad to see the other woman in her life.

  “Admiral, we’re very pleased you could make it.”

  “Captain Thande,” said Kalabi. “What’s the situation?”

  “Incursion, Admiral. The enemy ships in the atmosphere are attacking the planet; we don’t know exactly how, or even why. They have an allied fleet comprising Imperial and Viskr ships which are under their control. My COMOP is sending you the transponder idents now. We believe their support will be uncoordinated and tactically inept.”

  Kalabi got straight to the point. “Who is leading the response?”

  “The Dawn’s Early Light went down, Admiral.”

  “I see. Then I am taking command of our forces for this fight.”

  “Thank you, Ma’am. Our current objective is to try and take down the large unknown vessel closest to us. We’re hitting its primary engine mounts.”

  “Stand by,” said Kalabi. She leaned to one side and exchanged quick words with her Tactical officer. “Pull back from your target, and engage the enemy reinforcements. We
’ll take care of this one.”

  “Admiral?”

  “We’re fitted with the prototype ‘rift’ weapon system. Now seems like an ideal opportunity to battle-test it.”

  “Rift?”

  Kalabi smiled. “It’ll make sense when you see it in action.”

  “There is one more thing, Admiral,” said Thande.

  “What is that?”

  “When the enemy first arrived, there was a wave of mutinies aboard all our ships. I think the enemy somehow has control over some of our people. You might have the same experience.”

  Kalabi’s eyebrows raised. “How will I be able to identify them?”

  “You won’t,” said Thande. “Not until they start killing people and sabotaging the ship. Secure your vital systems now.”

  • • •

  The shuttle streaked through the atmosphere of Meccrace Prime, headed away from the vast dreadship which hung pendulously in the sky behind them. Occasionally, briefly, the hull vibrated sharply with the turbulent detonations of nearby anti-drop ordnance.

  Caden stared at Bel-Ures, a storm brewing behind his face. The resentment burned in his chest, hot and acidic. A month, a Solar, a lifetime ago, he would have squashed it down and soldiered on. But now… now he let it rage inside him.

  Her eyes met his, and he knew in that moment that she understood.

  “This is not my fault,” she said.

  “You and everyone else on Herros,” Caden said. “Somehow, you helped this happen. I know it.”

  “You don’t know anything about it.”

  “I know enough. I know you built weapons the enemy just had to have. Weapons that can kill a world, along with every man, woman and child on it.”

  Bel-Ures smiled, as if someone had told a joke that had soared over the Shard’s head.

  “Have you ever killed a child? With your own two hands?”

  “Of course I haven’t,” he said.

  “No, of course you haven’t. But you’ve still killed children, haven’t you? Because of the work you do. Now… do you think that I have ever killed a child, with my own two hands?”

  Caden was unimpressed with the equivocation.

  “You’re giving the Empire the means to infect entire planets. That’s very different to what I do. It raises much bigger ethical questions.”

  “If you think it’s just the scale of it that’s the issue, maybe you shouldn’t be trying to lecture me on ethics.”