by Chad Huskins
“Right now,” he said, starting to pace, and speaking slowly, “there are no less than twenty-three separate operations going on around Taka-Renault: the Seventh Sol Cohort is preparing a boarding party around Torrence, Task Force Three is inserting nukes on a wounded broodling out in the Oort cloud, Vaultimyr is leading two Isoshi ships in an assault near one of Vesterpul’s moons. Then there’s the constant shuffling of resources from the Takans’ solar cells, the asteroid belts, and the facilities that Pennick’s people have been constructing in quick order throughout the system. I could go on, but you begin to see the complex picture here.
“Desh, Donovan, and myself are the only ones who have been in command from the beginning, we are among the few surviving leaders of an uninterrupted coalition, and we know every ounce of this system, every movement of every major asteroid, and have cultivated relations with the governments of Deirdra, first with the UCP, then with the Kingdom of Evenspire, the Imperalist United Socialists of Mwarhanda, as well as made contact with the failing asteroid-cities in the belts. We’ve established coherent channels of communication, and developed a steady, unbroken command structure. Our coterie has a familiarity to it, a shorthand, a way of interacting that cannot be easily taught to those of you just arriving.”
Kalder essayed a shrug.
“And together, we have managed to destroy not one, but five broodlings, something that has never been done. We have brought defeat to an enemy that has never known it, and Faith 6A shows that we have rallied the people of the Republic like never before. So, General Hyatt, why would you wish to interfere with success? Why fix what is not broken?”
“You would have us disobey a direct order from every major Arm of our government?” Hyatt asked.
Kalder stopped pacing. Looked at him. “General, I’m glad you all arrived here as quickly as you did, but try and understand, you are strangers here. And while your resources and skills were needed, your input was not. In fact, as I has pointed out, we have achieved something no one else has. By coordinating with many xenos, we have successfully destroyed five broodlings so far. It is an unprecedented achievement, something that will surely rally all worlds, human and xenos alike.”
He shook his head.
“I cannot relent now. I cannot. Not in good conscience, I can’t. I won’t.”
General Hyatt shook his head ruefully. “There are few things in the universe as intractable as an old man with the culmination of all his life’s work within reach,” he said. “You’ve envenomed every member of the Senate against you, not even your fellow Restorationists support this madness—they do so publicly, only because of the momentum you’ve created with this fantasy of dismantling the Brood in one big heroic effort, but secretly they plot your demise, old man. Even as you fight for control, they plot.”
Kalder looked at Hyatt. “So long as I have the people, I have the Senate. And I have you, General.” He shook his head. “And I don’t fight for control. Here’s the thing about control: If ever you have to maintain it by force, you’ve already lost it. You’ve been outmaneuvered, General. You all have. Accept it, so we can all move on. The people are mine. Therefore, the Republic is, for the moment, mine. This war is mine. Let us move on.”
The room went silent again.
Hyatt’s face went from puce to blood red, then white. “You want this that badly, don’t you? That you’d push us to one side so that all the glory can be yours when its over.” Then, he spat, “Kalder does not bend! That’s what they say. I don’t know why I thought that would change now, with the fate of our fleets at stake. Why would that bother Kalder the Dreaded, when he has his glory so near?” He snorted. “Kalder the Dreaded! The people named you well. Very well, Dreaded One, let’s hear what you were planning for your next move.”
Without hesitation, Kalder waved a hand to select a message only he could see in his periphery, then sent it to towards the conference table, where the computer picked it up and amplified it in holographic form for all to see. “The Duke of Helmsworth’Lok is a powerful man on Deirdra, apparently. He is marrying his daughter off to someone very soon, and he has been looking for a powerful man worthy of her hand. The Duke himself has an enormous cache of weapons not yet lent to this war, he’s been reserving it the whole time, still of the belief that this was all some elaborate hoax, a means for the UCP to attack their enemies and blame it on some alien power. But now that the UCP has been struck by debris, he’s been more willing to talk. So, I will be marrying his daughter within a few weeks, and…sorry, what’s funny?”
Hyatt had let loose a noise that was somewhere between laughter and incredulity. “Are…are you serious? You’re talking about marriage at a time like this?”
“I told you the situation here is fluid, General, and understood only by the people who have been here the longest. The Duke of Helmsworth’Lok is a key figure in Deirdran politics, and if we can gain his support, we would have access to far more stores of nuclear weapons, stealth sats with laser capabilities, and even plasma torpedoes.”
“And his daughter wishes to marry you?”
“He wishes to marry his duchy to someone powerful in order to bring his House glory. He’s a proud man, who sees opportunity even at this, the possible end of his whole world. I suppose leading a fleet of humans and xenos has convinced him that I’m a worthy candidate. Whatever the case, it is something I’m willing to do if it gains us even the slightest edge.”
“This is what you’ve been politicking this whole time? A fucking marriage?”
“Partially, yes. It’s but a fraction of what we’ve been up to before you arrived, General. As for all intrasystem battle arrangements, I typically leave those in Captain Desh’s capable hands. Captain, if you please?”
Desh took to the front of the room. “I’ve spoken with the Chief Defender-General of UCP’s armed forces, and they’ve agreed to update their ships’ systems to allow us to coordinate with them using COR,” he said. “It’ll all link back to here, to Lord Ishimoto’s military fire-control computer, allowing us to focus our firepower like never before. Our computers are not compatible at all with Faedyan or Isoshi tech, of course, but they have agreed to accommodate in a series of operations that will concentrate all our power effeciently. If you would all now please open the strategy proposals my XO sent to you earlier, we can go over them point by point…”
THEY LANDED ON a five-mile-wide platform, one covered with more of the towering, octagonal buildings with skins that pulsated with energy. The platform had many tiers, crisscrossing fleshy wires and poles, like scaffolding, with small drones zipping up and down them on myriad and unknown tasks of maintenance and repair. One of them, a drone the size of a fist, spat some kind of acidic resin at one of the Knights, the acid hissing and sizzling as it burned through his armor, then through his flesh, killing him. An Aravatar warhulk was first to reach it, stomped it into pus, then waved for the others to move up.
The platform was crawling with the enemy, though at present only the EyeSpys detected them from the air. Fingers or red lightning crept out from the scaffolding-like structures, and a thin mist swirled around everything, every joint, every metallic support structure. The ground beneath them heaved like a beast taking in a breath.
“Ravagers to the fore with the assault units! First Battalion, squad-column!” Lyokh screamed, watching the Novas land and deploy what support vehicles they had left. “Warhulks to the flanks along with tactical units! Get me some Mantises up those walls, I want high vantage points for cover fire! Paupau, cover our ass!”
“I copy, doyen,” said Meiks.
“Copy,” said Paupau.
“And be ready for the gravity to shut off again. They may try to use that tactic again to throw us off.”
The Mantises were sent forth by their drone specialists, who networked to form a sensor net for the area. The Mantises climbed up on a tall, thin structure that flanked the giant red orb, and immediately they began picking clawcraft out of the air as they tried to
approach. The wyrms, now free of their extra load, took flight again, along with the Novas, and began sweeping the skies above the Knights of Sol to give them a chance.
“Give me a waypoint on that entrance, Ziir!”
A second later, the waypoint appeared on his map. A facility, about two stories tall, stood directly beneath the Giant Sphere.
“This is my…my best guess, doyen,” said Ziir. He sounded weak, and gave off a liquid-filled cough. “It’s…it’s giving off a strong…magnetic field, and it’s surrounding the Giant Sphere.” He coughed again. Checking Ziir’s vitals, Lyokh discovered he’d been hit somewhere in his abdomen.
No luck, he thought bitterly, as he slashed at a small drone that resembled the octopus-things he’d dealt with in the Kennit sepulcher. A single stroke hewed it in half. He looked up at the Giant Sphere (as the computer had labeled it) and was in awe for a brief second. It looked like glowing lava trapped inside an invisible sphere, probably some magnetic field, and limned with a strange blue haze that grew more distinct the longer you looked at it. It stood two miles high, a sphere of trapped energy, of untold power and yield, hovering a mile above the ground…
“Incoming, doyen!” Ziir screamed in his ear, and gave another blood-filled cough. “Coming from Sector four-one-eight, one block up! Various drones, some armed transports we’ve never seen before—”
Before Ziir could even finish, the first wave slammed into the forward guard a hundred yards up. They came crawling over the side of the platform, and out from behind smaller buildings around the Giant Sphere. The Ravagers were the first to be hit by the crushing wave, and if not for their extendable legs, they would have been flipped over. The air waved with each concussive shot from the Ravagers, their exploding rounds sending pieces of drones into the sky, or tumbling off the platform and into the misty darkness below. Laserfire from centipiedes sliced through their numbers, immolating six or seven men in mid-run. Warhulks raced forward with plasma-shield walls, which they flung to the ground, where the thick compristeel sheets sprouted their prongs, dug into the ground, and expanded their half-spheres of translucent plasma shields.
The warhulks continued forward, their PBCs igniting whole swaths of the enemy, and their triple-barreled gatling guns blatting. The air waved with the spent heat of their firepower, and the world shook with each concussive blast.
Lyokh found cover behind a plasma-shield wall that a warhulk dropped right in front of him, and knelt, looking over his HUD to check their resources. They were down almost fifty percent of their fighting power. So many had died in the journey to the power source, shot out of the sky, or else unable to connect to their helix and plummeted somewhere far off, dead or lost forever.
“Second Battalion, squad-line formation! Morkovikson, give me a phalanx, modified for medic support!”
“Copy, doyen,” said Takirovanen.
“We hear you, Sir Captain,” called Morkovikson, a barrage of gunfire audible over his transmission.
Lyokh peeked over the top of his shield wall, and saw that First Battalion was doing its job pretty well, but there were stragglers forcing their way through, more of the four-armed, bipedal creatures rushing forward, along with a few of the centipedes.
“Hoy up, second wave coming in!” Lyokh shouted.
He stood up, and took two steps back away from his cover, ready to receive the first drones as they leapt over the shield walls. The four-armed thing’s arms were each wielding a weapon, firing superheated beams that splashed off his STACsuit’s weaker plasma shield. He rushed the thing, hacking two of its limbs off within a blink, then shoulder-barged it, slamming it against the shield wall. Its remaining limb’s fingers extended and made themselves into sharp points, slashing at him. Lyokh teep-kicked it in its chest, pushing it away and himself backwards, making space, then shuffle-stepped to one side to evade its attack, allowing it to overextend itself, then plunged his plasmetic blade into its chest, and ripped it out in a spray of guts and fleshy wires.
No sooner had the drone dropped dead than six more bipeds leapt at him. Lyokh hewed one in half, decapitated the second, and was mauled by the last four, who brought him struggling to the ground. For a moment, he thought this was it, his time had come, but then four quick shots from a Mantis somewhere above tore into them, the magnetically propulsed rounds exploding them, but never touching Lyokh.
He stabbed his sword into the ground, forced himself back onto his feet, and cast around for the next enemy.
Suddenly, a shadow fell over all of them, and Lyokh’s gaze was wrenched upward. But it was only Prophet. The starship had passed in front of the sun, and they were in its umbra. The starship was progressing towards them, under the support of Zanus den Uta and Malphos, and while those two concentrated fire on all flying craft, Prophet brought the full might of its own point-defense cannons raining down on the streets where the enemy hordes were coming from.
Lyokh checked his suit’s internal atmosphere. Still leaking out. Not looking good in the long term. He cast his worry to the side as he progressed through the battlefield, moving from one shield wall to the next, cutting down a biped drone and assisting two other swordsmen spill a centipede’s guts.
“The wall!” one of them screamed, charging behind Lyokh.
He found Tsuyoshi in all of this mess. Dead. Impaled by the bladed arm of the same biped drone he’d killed. He rushed past Morkovikson, who, along with a dozen med bots and the hundred or so remaining contrite brothers, were using their phalanx in conjunction with Heeten’s Heroes to pull the wounded away from the frontline, even as Prophet’s guns suppressed the hordes at the head of every street where they manifested.
Lyokh shuffled out of the way of a wounded but not yet dead centipede, which hove itself back to its many feet and spat beams from its single green eye. He tore into it, and was joined by those following him, as well as Paupau, who ran screaming at it madly, wielding a sword in one hand and a pulser in the other. “Hahahaaaaaa! Paupau!”
Suddenly, there came a loud roar, one that might’ve deafened everyone if not for their helmets’ sound dampeners. An enormous rolling ball, easily standing twenty feet tall and spitting shards that ripped through the Ravagers’ hulls, came up over the horde of drones and completely flattened a dozen of First Battalion. An Untamak warhulk rushed forward with its huge grapplers, slamming into the vehicle and stopping it in its tracks. Before the massive drone could find a way around, two Dagonites blasted it from the sides, emptying whole clips and spending the power of their shoulder-mounted PBCs to tear it apart.
While this was going on, Lyokh ran another biped through, then stomped its face, smashing it to be sure. As he ripped his blade from its chest, he looked up at a shuttle descending from Prophet. When it landed, he was both glad and shocked to see the High Priestess rushing out, wearing a slighty oversized e-suit, and leading all fifty of the soldiers she’d brought from the Vastill Privateer Marine Consortium. The VPMC were not the most experienced, nor the toughest Lyokh had seen, but their armor rivaled Republican STACsuits, and their rifles were as dangerous as Fells and pulsers.
The High Priestess jogged over to him, bounding awkwardly in .7 g, and halted even more awkwardly in front of him. “Do we have a point of ingress determined yet?” she asked.
Lyokh nodded, and pointed towards the facility a mile ahead. Zane started to say something, but her words were lost when a massive explosion happened overhead. They looked up, and saw Zanus den Uta coming apart about a mile up, and falling slowly away from them, crashing into the side of the Giant Sphere. The entire starship evaporated as soon as it touched the invisible field surrounding the bottled-up energy.
Even farther above that, Lyokh saw what looked like the Marie-Anne Wang of Task Force Three orbiting the Watchtower in three separate chunks—lost in his own battle, he had missed her destruction. The Watchtower itself had finally stopped growing, but was repairing itself in places where the worldship’s particle beams had sheared whole chunks of it off.
> “We need to get moving,” Lyokh said to those around him. Over a broader channel, he said, “Meiks! Tsuyoshi’s dead! You’re Knight Companion now, and I need you to keep me apprised of any important tactical info I might miss.”
For perhaps the first time ever, Meiks spoke without any hint of humor. “I won’t let you down, doyen.”
“Morkovikson, attend only those that are salvageable. I hate myself for saying it, but leave the ones that need more critical care, let them keep what weapons they have and hold off as many of those bastards as they can. We’re going into the facility marked on the map. ’Vanen, it looks like you’ve got the most resources remaining, so take your Second Battalion and lead the way.”
“Copy that, doyen.”
Zane took a step towards Lyokh, her face glowing blue in her helmet lamp, and she spoke to him on a private channel. “We will take the lead.”
Lyokh shook his head. “I trust my people with—”
“I didn’t say we have tactical command, Sir Captain, I just said we’re taking the lead. What could it harm you to let us be meat shields? And besides, you’ve seen my power firsthand, you know what I can do.”
Lyokh looked her up and down. “You have the weapon with you? The one you used at the Dexannonhold?”
“I am the weapon,” she said.
For a moment, he questioned that, but then figured that the woman spoke enough truth on one topic. If she wants to be a human meat shield, who am I to stop her now? “Ziir, send a message up to the fleet, let them know our progress.”
No response.
“Ziir?”
“Sergeant Ziir is dead, Sir Captain,” Morkovikson’s voice informed him.
Lyokh checked the SIGINT man’s vitals. Flatlined. He nodded solemnly to himself. “Who else have I got on SIGINT?”
A woman’s voice said, “Sergeant Lerwin here, sir.”
