Zero Star

by Chad Huskins

  “It’s okay,” she whispered, more for her benefit than his. She scratched behind his ears, offering comfort. Again, more for her benefit. “It’s okay. We’re all alone out here.” As soon as she said it, it made her feel uneasy.

  Beyond the High City stretched another vast field of black liquid. Not so vast as the Onyx Fields, but one just as unsettling in its desolation. They passed through a storm. The winds were in excess of two hundred miles per hour, and so they had to ascend high above the cloud line, back into the shining light of Zhirinovsky Prime. Up here, they watched and listened as ancient probes and stations, whose repulsor-like motors miraculously still worked, bounced off of their hull. Perhaps such machines had once been used to control the weather.

  Once beyond the storm, they dipped back down to an altitude of one hundred feet, passing over another sea of sludge, which was a bit more watery than others. LOG called it the Soft Sea, and the island chain that was sprinkled across it was dubbed the Littered Isles.

  The islands were topped by cities, all of which had names too. But these cities were much less impressive than the High City. Hardly any buildings remained, just rubble, and again the highways that had perhaps once connected the many island-cities.

  They made it to the shores of another continent. No oily sludge dominated this time, just twisted rock and endless leagues of basalt and dust and sand. The world had been cracked here, bombarded by something more than nuclear weapons. Something powerful and penetrating, which had broken the crust and mantle, opening a wound that exposed deep veins of magma. More ancient machinery could be seen working at the edge of lavaflows.

  Funnels of dust, stretching from ground to sky, reached gale-force winds and moved slowly, lazily across the surface, almost like a busted vacuum cleaner attempting to clean up after its owners’ mess, but only redistributing the dust and debris.

  They found another city that swelled like a tumorous growth out of the side of a mountain, with buildings made of some sturdy steel. A few of them still had jagged antennas, pointing incriminatingly at the black sky, saying “You did this.” The canopy of clouds responded to the accusation with another arc of lightning.

  On and on it went. Black and endless. The scene was both marvelous and obscene. Beautiful and wrong. Incredible and depressing.

  A chime went off.

  Pritchard barked. He knew what that sound meant. They were coming up on the landing site.

  Moira made preparations for the landing cycle. She circled the mouth of a large cave, one surrounded by mangled steel and a pool of smoking black lava. The ship alighted softly, swaying only slightly as its landing gear searched for equilibrium.

  It took her a minute of conducting diagnostics checks to be sure they had suffered no damage. She glanced out the forward view. The ship’s running lights illuminated the field of desolation between her and the cave. It was a tangled mess of destruction.

  Somewhere inside there, if her source was correct, was the holy chamber of a long dead alien race.

  “All right, Pritch,” she sighed. “Let’s suit up. We’ve got a lot of digging to do.”

  The Vac Hound barked approvingly.

  : Kennit 184c

  No wonder the Knights of Sol died here, Lyokh thought. No one can survive this.

  The campaign continued, even as the death count rose. They pushed, rested, pushed, rested, like that. Up through the levels they went, while outside the hive was continually bombarded by Lord Ishimoto and other large-class ships.

  They had lost two more men. Ruvio was one of them. Lyokh had once again become the de facto leader, to his dismay. But whatever command he gave, his people only nodded curtly, and said, “Yes, doyen.”

  Lyokh had not asked for the honor, but he would not question it now. If it gave them hope, if it gave them faith in their quest, then let them have it. We are all dead anyway, he reasoned. He was still certain that they would not make it out of this. Oblivion awaits.

  They were climbing. Climbing what, they didn’t know. There were no stairs to this place, no stairs as humans understood them, anyway. There were jagged walls and inclined floors punctuated with holes that could be used as handholds. The thick, slippery mucus on each wall had caused the death of one of them, a man named Cullins, who slipped and plummeted into the chasm below. They heard his screams, then nothing else.

  They passed by areas that looked like they had seen battle, hallways stippled with bullet holes; obviously the result of L-130 Fell rifles, but there was no sign of their comrades.

  The air was fouled by some sort of electromagnetic disturbance, causing their radios to transmit little more than baying static. Here and there, unknown agents of the enemy emerged from the walls, or peeled away from the ground like reanimated corpses from a graveyard. Drones of various sizes and shapes, all of them fought until they were dead, no retreat. Lyokh shouted, “The wall!” and his people followed him. They fought, they rested, they fought, they rested, like that.

  They came to an opening, a massive hole that had been blasted by either a skyrake or a warship, and it provided a window to the outside world. From so high up, they received a commanding view of the full theater of war. They could see the smoke-choked skies, the unhinged mess of combat swirling outside. Troops dashed across the field, led by warhulks and Ravager tanks. Two fast-attack Saber-class surveyors were plunging from the sky, stippling the hive-city’s walls with railguns that fired six-foot-long rounds of depleted-uranium at six percent the speed of light. The surveyors had to activate all their thrusters at full power just to deal with the absurd recoil.

  “Look,” someone said, pointing. “You can see another wave of Novas coming in.” Novas were the massive troop and vehicle carriers favored by the Republic, the same kind that had dropped Lyokh and his battle-brothers and -sisters off.

  They watched in silence as two Novas were blown out of the sky.

  “Let’s not remain too long,” someone else said. “This view is depressing.”

  They rested a moment. Unable to contact any of their brothers or do much else, they watched the war play out as if they were on a picnic, gazing upon an especially beautiful lake.

  Lyokh took the time to study the ceramic scroll he had found. He tried opening it at each end, tried smashing it against the ground. Nothing worked. It would not open.

  “Where are we going, doyen?” asked Meiks, another sergeant like him, who sat beside him cleaning his rifle. In the last couple of hours, the man had proven himself both in combat and in camaraderie. He was a Green Winger, under Captain Mendoza, who had died. Meiks had good humor. Dark, gallows humor, but humor nonetheless.

  “We’re going up,” was all Lyokh said, placing the scroll inside the supply bag. He knew they expected more answers from him, but it was all he had.

  “How far do you think the others have made it? Think they’ve gotten as far as us?”

  “Hard to say.”

  Meiks nodded. He looked out the gaping hole just as another ’rake got blasted out of the sky, and went careening into others, who crashed with it into the hive. “We’re all going to die here, aren’t we?” It was said with a smile and an odd twinkle in his eye.

  “We’re going to fight,” Lyokh said. Before Meiks could ask any more questions, he stood up and walked among the group, patting their backs, checking in to see how they were doing.

  “I’m good, doyen,” said one.

  “Hanging in there, doyen,” said another.

  “Another day in paradise, doyen,” said another.

  While they had the opportunity, Lyokh had the medic summon a small droneship, which swooped down to pick up their wounded. It only took Durzor, who was no longer conscious. Lyokh let his men rest for a minute longer, and watch the battle play out. Armored humans and warhulks ascended the levels of the hive like ants invading another colony. Jellyfish-like drones, which stood more than a hundred feet tall, floated slowly, almost lazily, across the battlefield, plucking soldiers off the ground and tossing them i
nto their gullets like raisins. PI called these types of Brood “harvesters.”

  Lyokh had seen inside one of those harvesters before, had seen the tangled maw of teeth, layers upon layers of masticators that ground both flesh and armor alike, turning it into a mulch, feeding it into the harvester’s mini-fabricators, which transformed organic and inorganic materials into techno-organic creatures, or else more ammunition for the Brood to unleash on their enemies.

  Artillery shells fell on the harvesters, knocking some of them over, but they almost always stood back up.

  A Red Wing survivor named Takirovanen sat away from the others. Alone with his Fell rifle, which he had in sniper configuration, he took advantage of their high vantage point to pick off a few maggots that were swarming Gnasher Wing down below.

  Lyokh stopped him from doing too much. “We’re going to need all the ammo we can get if we want to make it much further, brother.”

  Takirovanen looked at him. The man was the opposite of Meiks, a cold stoic who barely spoke, but who fought just eagerly as anyone in their group. “Yes, doyen,” he said, rising and reloading.

  They did a check of their ammo hoppers before getting underway again, everyone falling in line behind Lyokh, who, despite having full ammo, walked with his field sword in hand. It seemed to help morale, the men seeing him carrying it, since they had all honored him for his use with it. Such a simple symbol could be a potent thing.

  The deeper they went, the more they found the hive to be a warren of pitfalls, cliffs, blind alleys and dead ends, just as PI’s maps suggested. And those maps appeared to be wrong more often than not. Perhaps the Brood regularly changed these tunnels, reshaping them according to some unknowable scheme.

  Still, the maps sufficed enough to give them the gist, and wherever they found their paths blocked, they made their own doors, with grenades and warhulks and the hacking of blades.

  They encountered a twenty-foot-tall creature made of jagged spikes, with no discernible head, and with arcs of lightning crackling off the tips of each pointed tip. They fought it for ten miserable minutes, lost Draznik to a powerful electrical discharge that overwhelmed his warhulk’s capacitors and cooked him inside it like an oven. They finally overcame it. Not long afterward, they came across a nest of the maggots, slaughtered them, and moved on. They were ambushed by a nanite cloud, which could turn organic and inorganic matter to mulch within seconds. Their armor defended them long enough for one of the warhulks to discharge an EMP. It was too late for Breshdt, though, who died screaming, his helmet and face merged into one unrecognizable mess.

  They fought and rested, fought and rested, like that.

  They began finding stragglers. Soldiers from other wings. Mere survivors, usually loners, never any full units. Their numbers were up to fifteen now. Everyone exchanged quick stories of how they got here, and what had happened to the others. Lyokh’s group shared the story of what had happened inside the chamber. Some of them showed the footage they had recorded from their own helmet cams. After that, the newcomers also took to calling Lyokh doyen.

  He said nothing to invite this honor, only nodded when it was given. He led them, despite one of the newcomers outranking him. In here, inside this hive, ranks that had been bestowed in a saner world did not appear to matter. It was strange, but what held water in here was the merit of the individual, the ability to survive the madness, and the fervent clutch of the will to persevere.

  Twice they stumbled upon deserters, first a man and then a woman, who had both fled out of cowardice, their minds ruined by the furnace of war. Lyokh extended each of them the hand of fellowship, despite what they had done. Their shell-shocked faces looked at him diffidently, and perhaps with some awe. And when they heard the others calling him doyen, and heard the story of how he had faced the Brood with naught but his sword, it seemed to rally them. They held their rifles with a bit more surety, and marched with a semblance of purpose.

  Then, one of the men cracked and started weeping in shock. Others looked at him, tried to embolden him. It slowed them down. Lyokh saw the grief threatening unit cohesion.

  “What is your name?” Lyokh asked him, once he had him alone.

  “Eu…Eulekk…”

  “You know, Eulekk, I had a drill sergeant a long time ago who was a real inspiration, and a hard ass. He told us, ‘If you want to survive a fight, you have to learn to enjoy getting hit.’ It’s a change of mindset, different than what other people experience when they get hit.” Lyokh touched his head. “It starts up here.” He touched his chest. “But then it gets resolved in here.”

  Lyokh knelt beside the weeping man, whose febrile mind threatened to overtake him.

  “When things look tough, and it looks like death is near, that’s you have to get vicious. I’m talking about foaming-at-the-mouth vicious. Don’t get upset with death. Get mad at it. Take the unfairness of it, and bottle it up deep inside, where you keep all the other unfairnesses of your life. And when you need it…let it explode out of you, like a fucking bomb.”

  The man wiped his eyes, and looked up at Lyokh blearily.

  “Now, hoy up, and let’s kill these bastards.”

  Lyokh led them on unerringly. As they moved, he told them about the tactics that had worked for him with the octopus-things, and invited each of them to share stories of how they had made it this far, and what they had learned. Only two or three had any real insight on how to kill the myriad drones, the others seemed to have survived by a mixture of luck and following orders. The exchange of information helped them, though, Lyokh was sure, for the next five encounters went smoothly. With him directing their attack, they only lost one man in the first encounter, and saw no more even injured in the following four.

  They encountered five more stragglers, three from White Wing, two from Devastator Wing. One of them was dying from a nanite infection, barely clutching to one of his brothers. Lyokh exchanged words quickly with their de facto leader, shared what he and his group had learned, and once again found himself at the lead. Not long after, they found a group of ten, then a group of seven, then a lone woman, named Heeten, who piloted a warhulk that was coated in the flesh of her dead commander.

  Heeten’s warhulk was a modified Mark IV, Dagonite Series, with upgraded batteries and firmware. It was taller than most mechs, about fourteen feet, more top-heavy and nimble. She could grapple with it, while firing the shoulder-mounted particle-beam cannon, or PBC. The thing also had a detailed sensor package, with a transparent screen suited for natural-user interfacing, or NUI.

  Lyokh liked Heeten instantly. She did not speak much, and when she did, it was with mechanical terseness, but if you looked through the massive holopaned plasteel window of her warhulk, you would see the light from her controls flickering across her face, and she was always smiling gamely. He also liked that she didn’t call him “sir” or even “doyen.” Whenever he gave an order, Heeten would always say, “You got it, handsome.”

  Within a few hours, their group’s numbers had swelled to thirty-two. Lyokh and his core group were at the head, always pushing forward.

  Some of the newcomers asked why everyone called Lyokh doyen. After seeing him run screaming into battle with his sword, slashing limbs and strangling things with his bare hands, they all called him that. All except Heeten, of course. The group became emboldened by each encounter. The chatter amongst them became more positive. Lyokh even thought he heard laughter once or twice, usually stirred up by Meiks.

  Battle hysteria, he had once heard Lieutenant Lucerne call it. Lyokh had heard the stories, but until now had never experienced it. But this was it, he was sure. Something was in the air, some frenetic force of camaraderie, a trick of human psychology that came with the mélange of fear, death, despair, hope, and the total surrender of oneself to all of those things. A stew of mankind’s highs and lows, crystallized in a moment, personified in Sergeant Aejon Lyokh and the death squad he now led.

  Who would have guessed?

  They found no mor
e survivors. It started to become clear that they, and they alone, had penetrated these levels of the hive. But that did not frighten them. Indeed, it only heightened their excitement, for now there was this unspoken belief that they were chosen, that they were among the last of all humans in the universe, that they had been selected to be here, now, achieving the summit of a Brood hive and smashing barriers no one else had ever seen.

  “The wall!” they screamed, laughing madly as they attacked the next batch of enemies. “The wall!”

  “For you, handsome!” Heeten cried as her Mark IV ploughed ahead.

  They formed a loose command coterie, centered around Lyokh, who came to believe that, should he ask all of them to fling themselves into the next chasm they came to, half of them would do it, and the other half would strongly consider it. The other leaders were Meiks, a woman named LeBeau, Takirovanen, and Heeten.

  “How long do we keep going before we decide to turn back?” asked LeBeau at one point when they were panting up a steep slope.

  “We don’t turn back,” Lyokh said. “We move until we’re dead.”

  “Right.”

  “You mean we’re not in hell already?” Meiks chuckled. “Shit, I was hoping to find my first ex-wife down here.”

  Lyokh ignored the joke, and looked back at the rest of their hodgepodge group. “I reckon we ought to break the group up into four units. Each of you take command of one. Watch them, see if they need anything, even if it’s just a pat on the back. Make a list of our supplies and ammo, what we have and what we don’t. If anyone looks too shell-shocked to fight, make them into a mule, have them carry supplies for others, and give their spare ammo to the others. If they can’t fight, they’ll be support.”

  “Yes, doyen,” said LeBeau.

  “Yes, doyen,” said Meiks.

  “Yes, doyen,” said Takirovanen.

  “You got it, handsome,” said Heeten, steadfast as always, and striding past them in her warhulk.

  They came upon a score of dead bodies. All human. Most of them had been turned to mincemeat, not much left besides scraps of armor, a mop of entrails, and a few spare utility packs. They scavenged what they could, and moved on.