“Charlie Platoon, prepare for mobile disembark and rapid assault,” said Trace, activating full suit combat settings and hearing the powerplants whine and thump to life about her. Some more drones jetted across their path, grasping assembly segments destined for the far side.
Ensign Yun saw the movement before Trace did. “Fast approach!”
“I see it.” As scan showed deepynines rotating fast to face it — a large ship segment, pushed by multiple drones, burning straight at them. Eruptions of white as the deepynines evaded, then an abrupt twist of vertigo as Hausler flipped AT-7 and slammed full power.
“They’re hitting ‘em!” said Yun, as a camera struggled for focus past Hausler’s burn — a blur of bright flashes, rotary guns flaming and worker drones coming apart. One collided with a deepynine and sent it spinning. But now Hausler’s evasion was taking them away from the armoury sphere.
“Hausler, get us behind that armoury!”
“Trying, they’re locking us!”
“They will not fire on us yet,” said Styx. “They are confused. Head for the armoury, deepynine missiles are no threat.”
“Do it,” Trace confirmed, then another spin and hard burn as Hausler realigned. Trace caught another glimpse on visual, a flood of drysine drones pouring off their ships and straight at the six deepynines like a steel tide. Unarmed against murderous fire they disintegrated by the dozen, filling the cavern with tumbling silver debris. More exploded from missile strikes. Then another missile, inexplicably missing, turned a full arc and blew a deepynine apart.
The remaining five drones turned toward the fleeing AT-7, as though on cue. That was Styx, Trace realised. Taking control of deepynine missiles in flight and using them to kill each other. They knew, and now turned to kill the source.
“Evasive,” said Styx, but drysines were hitting the deepynines before they could fire, some wrecked and half-dead but still holding momentum, grasping their hated enemies with broken steel limbs, some with impacts the force of car-crashes with accumulated velocity. And then the larger deepynines were slashing and cutting with those horrid close-quarter blades for which humans had given hacksaws their name. But the drysines had working tools too, and each cluster tumbled in an accumulating, thrashing ball of steel as more drones crashed in to replace the ones destroyed.
“Alignment!” Hausler advised, and suddenly the rear hold cracked open, seats retracting as only harnesses locked marines in place — AT-7’s civilian design included orbital construction work, and personnel deployments not dissimilar from those marines used. “We are dead on line, marines deploy!”
And those down the back left without ceremony, the entire hold vanishing in white thruster-mist as they jetted out, then the next, then the next, in well practised order. Then it was Trace’s turn and she grabbed Sergeant Kono’s rig as he thrusted first, and Jalawi grabbed hers, a big armoured chain pulling them rapidly into vacuum.
And then she was out, spinning in open space and bringing her Koshaim rapidly to hand, orienting to find the big, dark sphere was indeed right before them and they’d have to brake hard not to slam into it. Already her marines were doing that, fanning wide into groups and formations as they did, many turning back to see the deepynines… but they were gone. In their place came a swarm of silver drysine workers, like a scene from ancient nightmares. Every instinct in Trace’s body screamed at her to command her marines to turn their weapons on them and fire.
“First and Third Squad flank!” she said instead, fixing all attention forward at the sphere. “Second Squad go straight in, Command Squad has your rear. Flankers, watch for reinforcements, kill anything not drysine. If you’re not sure, the drysines will show you.”
Ahead, marines were firing, heavy fire pulverising those entry portals, and the figures emerging there. “Sard,” Jalawi announced. “Sard warriors, they’re inside, don’t let ‘em get set.” As fifty-two armoured marines spread wide across the approach, thrust and muzzle-flashes leaping, picking targets as they came.
“Sard warrior shuttles approaching,” Styx announced calmly. “They are acquiring long range missile lock. They will not succeed.”
“Get us a fix, Styx,” said Trace as her first marines reached the sphere. Second Squad flipped guided grenades through several entry portals, awaited the explosions, then thrusted inside. “AT-7, stay real close. You’re our command and control centre with Styx, stay within our sphere and we’ll protect you.”
“Copy Major.”
Tacnet showed Trace the spheroid armoury’s interiors as Second Squad penetrated — branching zero-G corridors, lots of junctions, open architecture beyond where things spread out. They were shooting now as they went, sard defenders scrambling and out of position — suiting up took time and preparation, which a surprise attack had robbed the defenders of. So where were the sard living quarters? Since nothing in the armoury was pressurised for organic habitation?
“First Squad, someone circle backside to see where these sard are living.” Shouts and terse commands as Jalawi passed that on. Trace hit the sphere beside a bullet-chewed entrance, yanked a mauled sard corpse from her path… and was cut off by Kono and Rolonde going in first, Arime and Kumar guarding her back as she followed them in.
She pursued the shooting ahead, watching the tight coordination on tacnet and listening to sharp commands from sergeants and corporals, broken by bursts of fire. On tacnet, Corporal Riskin of Heavy Squad found the sard habitation module built onto a huge structural support on the rear side of the armoury — a big seed-like thing with life-support modules attached.
Trace did not need to tell them to kill it, and Heavy Squad opened fire with chain guns and autocannon. Barely five seconds later and drysine drones were arriving at speed, burning hard to change course on modular thrusters and slam into the well-holed structure. Riskin yelled his squad to cease-fire, and with a squeal of cutters and construction tools hacksaws ripped into the damaged module in an accumulating, frenzied mob. Even from the corner of her eye on a visor display as she advanced through armoury tunnels, Trace felt a mesmerised horror to see it — the habitat torn to pieces in seconds, then the bodies of struggling sard emerging, some suited and others not, similarly dismembered and sent spinning with the rest.
Trace returned attention to her environment as the corridors gave way to a massive open space, a framework of storage grids, each dividing an equipment bay from its neighbours. Within them, meticulously racked and stowed, were modular weapon systems, thrusters and other things Trace could not identify. It was a hacksaw locker room, with each locker holding everything a drone might need for a variety of different missions. It must have been here when the sard had found Tartarus, Trace thought. With their total control of reprogrammed drysines, they’d thought the armouries too useful to consider the negative possibilities, if the drysines could be freed. The corridors turned into levels, encircling the sphere like the rings of an onion — no walls only layers of racked equipment, now quickly being freed of sard with rapid movement and bursts of precise fire. A last few tried to flee from armoury exits, and were killed by flanking First and Third Squads. Sard were known to retreat, occasionally even to panic and run, but no human had ever seen one surrender.
Fat lot of good it would have done them here, Trace thought as movement behind revealed a crashing, clattering mass of drones following them into the sphere. “Second Squad, Command Squad, move out before we get trampled!”
She hit jets for where tacnet schematic showed corridors would lead to an exit, bouncing off walls in her haste to get clear… but agile drones came rushing past from behind, hauling themselves with precise tugs of multiple legs, guiding and propelling their mass with surprising grace. They darted above and behind the retreating Command Squad marines, intent on their business and with no interest in allied humans. More astonishingly still, other drones on the point of entering hung back while the marines got out, before rushing inside to join their comrades.
Out in the huge cavern, the
space around the armoury was now a cluster of drones, a sensation like being inside an insect hive. Amongst them were dismembered steel limbs and other tumbling debris from the fight, glittering like Deliverance decorations scattered by a strong wind. Nearby, a knot of several drysines tumbled over and over about a common hulk they were busily dismembering — one of the deepynines, Trace saw, from the small remains that were left. This was the war, then. The great deepynine-drysine war — twenty five thousand years ended in the drysines’ favour, and now in this one little corner of the galaxy, very much back on. And it looked as though the genocidal hatred had not diminished one bit.
Missiles were incoming, and Trace hit the jets toward one of the massive steel cross braces, and a secure vantage from which to see. Explosions as the missiles hit supports or spiralled past without direction, Jalawi securing return-lock and marines returning fire with back-launchers. Trace jetted to a halt amidst the cross-beams, and saw in the forest of steel and shadows beyond the shipyard sard shuttles evasive, ducking for cover and firing again. Those missiles were no more effective — Styx was jamming them, but the marines’ fire wasn’t any better.
“They’re jamming us back,” Trace observed as her scan indicated that. “Rifle fire, aim your shots. Styx, see if you can find out what’s jamming us so we can kill it. How far to the core?”
“Nearly twenty kilometres.” A bright flash erupted from several kilometres away. “My drones in Sector Five have acquired a docked warship, we are employing weapons.” More bright flashes, close-range ship defences engaging. Some fast blurs streaked the dark, and something exploded off a support nearby. Within the Tartarus’s open structure, weapons fire and shrapnel would travel a long way. Things were about to get very messy. “They are regrouping, centring defences about the core.”
“I can see that.” Heavy gunfire ripped in from the shuttles, sparking and ricocheting off supports and slamming holes in the armoury. Marines returned fire, and one shuttle ceased fire and spun. Koshaims would put holes in heavier armour plate than shuttles possessed — using them to engage marines in firefights was very ill-advised. “We need to hit them before they get set. How wide is the uprising?”
“It is nearly universal. We are gaining ships, but in these facilities we cannot manoeuvre them, and will lose them quickly. I have lost all contact with the deepynine queen, all enemy transmissions have gone defensive. Deployment patterns suggest high probability of command presence neither deepynine nor sard.”
“Alo,” said Trace, diverting attention from the fireworks that lit the Tartarus interior before her to consider her tacnet. The scale of it was insane — she was a major, accustomed to a full company command at most. What she saw here required admirals and generals. But even if she had the rank and experience, she had no means of ensuring these troops would obey her command. Besides which, no human commander had ever seen anything like this. “These sard are delaying us, we must advance quickly.”
“My drones have captured multiple armouries about the middle-perimeter. We will have acquired sixty-percent armament in another two-point-five minutes. Anything less will be insufficient for a successful assault.”
“We’ll do a staggered advance,” Trace said sternly. “See this next ring of manufacturing facilities? Armed units must capture that first, units still-to-arm can follow behind. We must expect a deepynine counter-attack from the core and that inner ring gives us better position.”
Trace wondered what she’d do if Styx had other ideas. Tell Corporal Penn to threaten her? If these drones decided to protect their queen from the humans first, Charlie Platoon and Command Squad would last no more than a minute, if that. More explosions and shooting, close and distant — always disconcerting in vacuum as the mind instinctively braced for the huge, crashing noise that never came. A sard shuttle exploded, stubbornly insisting on a shooting-vantage. Heavy ship-fire tore through gantries from somewhere distant — drysine vessels employing main weapons at close range. Drysine drones were swarming from the armoury exits now, armed with their latest attachments — chain guns, launchers, close-range cutters, auto-cannon.
“You are correct. Human marines should act as fire-support, your tactics against deepynines are ineffective.”
Trace might have argued, for pride, but in this environment Styx had a point. “I copy, let’s flank these sard shuttles and move.”
34
Erik pulsed as soon as the shooting started, and Phoenix ripped out of hyperspace abruptly closing on the Tartarus. Scan called coordinates, and Arms shouted for permission to fire, as stationary firebases opened up on picket vessels that were suddenly too busy dodging and defending themselves to worry about Phoenix. One of them broke up on scan, then a firebase vanished, and fire ripped past them from somewhere as Karle and Harris tracked and returned fire on automatic.
“V downrange target!” Karle announced as armscomp highlighted a ship emerging from Tartarus docking along that huge circumference rim. “Confirmed sard warship!”
“Kill it,” Erik confirmed, and Karle fired. Even now the Tartarus was racing up, and Erik hit pulse once more to dump V at crazy close range, and came out tumbling purposely end-over to burn off the remaining V and make their approach evasive at the same time. Return fire ripped by, Phoenix autos detonated some more close-range, then a huge explosion turned an outer portion of Tartarus into a fireball as Karle’s sard target detonated from high-velocity fire.
“I’m going to get in close,” Erik told them as deceleration-V eased off, and he tumbled them beam-on for the gunners to get a view. Harris obliged by killing a docked sard freighter, its back breaking in high-mass slow motion. “The outer pickets won’t be able to shoot without hitting Tartarus.”
“Massive manoeuvres!” Shahaim said tersely, staring at the same combat scan that he did, a mass of swirling, evading ships as the pickets tried to avoid getting killed by their own firebases. “Operations approaching mark!”
“Operations stand by!” Erik told his shuttles, seeing nav tag the optimal release point as he corkscrewed their way in. Incoming fire came up from Tartarus, light and possibly no more than heavy infantry weapons. Harris pasted their locations with Phoenix’s close range armaments, and whole swathes of Tartarus steel cross-braces erupted in fiery bursts that killed anyone or anything not in armoured cover across several square kilometres.
“I’m getting a feed from Styx!” Shilu announced. “I’ve got marine tacnet, they’re all still there!” Erik felt wave of relief, but no great surprise — Styx and Trace were dropping the pretence and resuming combat communications. “They’re in a big furball at grid A-15, and we’ve got…” Shilu had to gasp to take it in, and Erik resisted the temptation to glance at marine tacnet, something the Captain had drilled into him he never had time for, “…we’ve got Tartarus-wide uprising, I’m reading thousands of drones on the move! They’re getting armed and they’re taking over docked drysine shipping!”
“Operations mark in five!” Shahaim announced. “Good luck girls.”
“You betcha,” said Jersey. “Tiffy, stick on my wing.” And Operations showed them gone as the countdown reached zero, disconnected and racing toward the Tartarus’s fast-approaching surface tail-first and thrusters blazing.
Styx would be coordinating all of that, Erik realised. Trace retained command of Phoenix marines, but she had no facility to command anything on this scale, and the drones would not listen to her anyway. And so the balance of power shifted once more, terrifyingly… and yet they had no choice. An uprising of this scale was the only way they were going to get what they wanted and get out alive, and yet Styx now had exactly what Kaspowitz and others had argued she’d get — a drysine army, weapons and even warships. If she turned on Trace and Phoenix, they’d all be dead very quickly.
But then again, if Styx had simply wanted resources to restart the drysine race and then vanish into the void, she had all of that now… but was still here, and apparently fighting, or commanding all her newly acquired
forces to fight. So whatever she was after, immediate escape was not it.
* * *
‘Hekgarh’, Tif’s people called it. The hunter’s fear. Humans knew only one kind of fear, but kuhsi knew many. Too often in her life, Tif had known ‘muhkgarh’, the quarry’s fear. It came from helplessness, and was sometimes called ‘the woman’s fear’. ‘Muhkgarh’ was the fear of things you could not control. It was the fear of a game animal in the tall grass, the fear of a wife in violation of her husband’s command, the fear of a passenger in a burning aeroplane.
Tif had known muhkgarh when she’d run from her family estate in the Heshog Highlands as a youngster, to the great plain city of Regath. Her family had tried to kill her by the old laws of clan-right, but Lord Kharghesh’s agencies had stopped them, and punished several. Those were the new laws, Lord Kharghesh and his supporters’ invention, to give a new role to women in all the nation of Koth. Inspired, Tif had applied to an academy, and been accepted on aptitude.
There, for the first time, she’d learned hekgarh, the hunter’s fear. Hekgarh was the fear of warriors in battle, of hunters stalking their prey, of talented practitioners employing their skills in a dangerous field. The kuhsi doctors described it as a difference of adrenal glands, stimulating different portions of the brain. Many insisted that hekgarh was medically unknown to women, and claimed ‘science’ that proved it. But strapped tight into her cockpit on approach to a fight far crazier than Tif had ever imagined, she knew those old kuhsi doctors were frauds. She felt fear, yet unlike that fear of her youth, it did not make her wish to flee. Phoenix was her clan now, and in Phoenix’s fight she would charge, slash and kill her enemies. This hunter’s fear was an intensity unlike anything she’d known, and if only to spite her blood father, she could not think of any place she would rather be.
Drysine Legacy (The Spiral Wars Book 2) Page 45
