Damned If You Don't (Chaos of the Covenant Book 5)

by M. R. Forbes

“This isn’t looking good for us, Queenie,” Bastion said.

  “We’re fine,” Abbey replied, watching the enemy ships break apart and come back together, trying to get a better vector on the Faust. “You’re doing great.”

  The Faust shook hard again, a warning light blinking on the control panel.

  “Fine?” Bastion said. “This is not my definition of fine.”

  “How far to the station?” Abbey asked.

  “Forty thousand kilometers,” Ruby replied. “ETA seventy-four seconds.”

  “We aren’t going to survive another seventy-four seconds,” Bastion said, sending the Faust skipping away from a set of ships trying to collide with them. The ships were destroyed a moment later, hit by successive rounds from the cannons.

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” Abbey said. “I haven’t even started helping yet.”

  34

  “Well, whenever you’re ready to jump in, Queenie, I’m sure none of the rest of us would mind.”

  Bastion rolled the Faust away from a dozen of the ships as they altered their vectors to try to ram the star hopper. He adjusted their path again, putting enough pressure on the craft that it shook like it was going to break apart. More of the targets were exploding around them, hit by the waves of plasma fire unleashed by Erlan and Phlenel.

  “It may be worth noting that if we expend too much energy on the targets, we will not have the necessary resources to travel back to the fleet,” Ruby said.

  “Gee, thanks for bringing that up, Ruby,” Bastion said. “How very helpful of you.”

  Abbey breathed in, gathering the Gift, concentrating on her connection to it. She could sense it reaching throughout and across her body, but also into the space beyond, spreading out around the Faust in preparation. Through them, she could almost feel the enemy around them, hundreds and hundreds strong, flowing like water along different attack vectors, spreading like the roots of a tree. She observed the sensation for a few more seconds, absorbing the activity in her subconscious and gaining an understanding of their opponent’s maneuvers. They were trying to surround the Faust, getting ready to launch an assault that Bastion couldn’t wriggle them away from and that Erlan and Phlenel couldn’t break apart with plasma.

  She wasn’t going to let that happen.

  A sweep of her hand and the Gift flowed away from the ship, hitting into one of the lines of enemy craft, pushing back against them and forcing them to go off-course, smashing into one another due to the density of their clusters. An entire line of ships started piling up, crashing one after another and clearing a lane through the mass.

  “Got it,” Bastion said, noticing the new space and adjusting his vectors to get through it.

  Two branches of ships peeled away, stabbing toward them. Plasma bolts started digging in, but they weren’t enough. Abbey changed her attention, sweeping her hand back, slapping at the air inside the Faust while the Gift smacked the vacuum outside, knocking craft into one another in a fresh tangle.

  The Faust shook, more warning tones sounding as they were hit from the rear. Bastion cursed, and Abbey nearly fell over as the ship tumbled end over end, righted a moment later by the pilot.

  “How the frag do I get off this ride?” Benhil said.

  “You haven’t convinced me we aren’t going to die yet, Queenie,” Bastion said.

  “Fraggers,” Abbey cursed, gripping the side of the cockpit to keep herself steady and doubling down on her effort.

  She used her free hand to direct the Gift, sending it forward, bringing it amidst the enemy ships, silently ordering them to attack. The space around the craft lit up in blue flame, millions of tiny fingers that reached out into the horde, a single light touch of massed energy that was almost harmless by itself but caused severe damage as a combined whole. Dozens of enemy craft burned away or fell dark, colliding with even more of the ships and creating a new lane through.

  Bastion didn’t miss a beat, adjusting vectors and sticking to the path, even as the enemy worked to fill it in and block it.

  “They’re still coming,” Ruby reported.

  “How many of those things does this asshole have?” Bastion said.

  Abbey risked a glance to the station. A dark line of ships was still forming from it, though she could see the spaces in the surface where they had been launching from, the outermost edge of the sphere becoming more jagged as they emerged. It didn’t have an infinite supply of the craft, but it had enough.

  “Shields at twenty percent,” Ruby said.

  The shields were still flaring, the enemy lasers still picking at them. Death by a thousand cuts. Ten-thousand cuts in this case. Abbey let go of the bulkhead and used both hands to help her direct the Gift. A line of flame formed along the port side of the Faust, sweeping back and into one tendril of drones. A second on the starboard side did the same, holding back a sudden incoming swell. The Faust banked and dropped, barely avoiding a third and fourth stream, splitting the difference and narrowly escaping destruction.

  “Thirty-eight seconds to arrival,” Ruby said.

  “We aren’t going to last another thirty-eight seconds like this,” Bastion replied.

  Abbey sent another flare of energy out from the Gift, destroying fifty more of the drones in the process. Another flare. Another. She cut into the swarm, taking huge bites with each release, but getting the sense that it would never be enough.

  “We can’t take much more of this Queenie,” Bastion said a moment later, confirming with his eyes what she could sense through the Gift. “If you’ve got a better trick up your sleeve, I suggest using it.”

  Abbey knocked more of the enemy aside before drawing the Gift back in, surrounding the Faust with it. A tendril of enemy ships reached out for them, hitting the sudden blockade and falling apart in a flare of energy, unable to pierce the shields. Another part of the swarm reached for them, and against was cast back.

  “De-fense!” Bastion shouted, watching the drones being turned aside.

  He thought they were winning again.

  Abbey knew they weren’t.

  The naniates were being destroyed with each impact, thousands of them succumbing to the blows and weakening the overall structure of the wall. She didn’t have a computer readout like the Faust, but she could feel the change in their overall strength through her connection to them. They couldn’t last forever like this.

  She needed another plan. Another way to stem the tide, or they were all going to die, and the galaxy was going to die with them. She glanced at Ruby on her right and Bastion on her left. The synth was calm, unimpressed by their impending demise. The pilot was grinning ear-to-ear, thinking they were safe as they zoomed toward the station.

  Think, damn it.

  “Queenie,” Gant said, his voice nearly as calm as Ruby’s. “They’re unpiloted. Drones. What does that mean to you?”

  She was surprised he had recognized their situation, even without being able to feel the Gift. He had been thinking about a solution and was giving her the answer she was looking for. Losing his intellect? It sure didn’t seem that way.

  “They’re being controlled by a central command system,” she said. “Or they’re part of a mesh network, or they’re using onboard deterministic algorithms.”

  “So we need to figure out which it is.”

  “Right. Do you have a plan for that?”

  “I started scanning for wireless communications as soon as we got here as a matter of course. So, yes I have a plan because I already did it.”

  “The fragging suspense is killing me, Gant,” Abbey said. “Results?”

  “Best guess is that they’ve got onboard directives. The swarm behavior is individually programmed, like a school of fish.”

  “Oh shit,” Bastion said, the Faust shifting as one of the drones broke through the naniate shield. It nearly hit the cockpit, his quick reaction causing it to strike the upper deck instead. The ship vibrated sharply, a loud rending sound making its way through the structure.

  �
��Level one hull breach,” Ruby reported. “Sealing the area.”

  “My bed was up there,” Pik said. “I liked my bed.”

  Bastion’s face had paled again, his smile gone. “We aren’t safe, are we Queenie?”

  “Not yet,” Abbey replied, using the Gift to reseal the gap, buying them a few more seconds.

  “Twenty seconds to target,” Ruby said.

  “I don’t want to die,” Bastion stated.

  “Me neither,” Abbey said. “Give me a second.”

  She reached out with the Gift, the shield losing a small section as the naniates latched onto one of the drones, sticking to the outer hull. It was flowing along with the rest of them, trying to break through the barrier, far enough back that she hoped she could break it in time.

  She sent the Gift below the surface, through the metal hull to the electronic brain. She needed a way to shut them down. Not one at a time. All at once. An override of some kind. But how the frag was she supposed to hack a system she had never encountered before?

  The drones swirled around them, so numerous that space beyond was no longer visible through shrinking gaps. They had adjusted their tactic, no longer trying to stab but instead enveloping them with the intention of squeezing them to nothing.

  “Fifteen seconds,” Ruby said.

  “Queenie?” Bastion said, pleading with her to figure it out.

  She closed her eyes, concentrating on the single drone. The naniates were trying to connect to it, to give her a link to the onboard systems.

  It was taking too damn long.

  “Gant,” Abbey said. “You’ve been studying the Seraphim teleporters. I don’t suppose you found any weaknesses in them that we can try against these things?”

  “Such as?”

  “I don’t know; you’re the fragging super-genius. EMP, RF interference, something.”

  “Hmm, let me think.”

  “You don’t have time to think.”

  Gant growled. “You should have asked me this before we got here.”

  “Because I knew we were going to to get attacked by a hive of killer drones?”

  The drones were condensing, compressing tighter and tighter around them, pushing up against the Gift and pressing against it, forcing Abbey to press back. Her muscles tensed, her body rigid as she forced the Gift to stay intact, to continue fighting against the increasing mass.

  “Ten seconds,” Ruby said.

  “How can you even know that?” Bastion asked. “We can’t see shit past these things.”

  “Come on, Gant,” Abbey said.

  “Vibration,” Gant said. “Try vibration. Resonance.”

  “Try? Do you have something you’re a little more confident in?”

  “Just do it, Queenie.”

  “Imp, bring us to a dead stop.”

  “What?”

  “You heard me.”

  The reverse thrusters fired, vectoring thrusters stabilizing them motionless in space.

  “Either this is going to work, or we’re all going to be crushed into our base atomic components,” Abbey said. Then she pulled the Gift beyond the Faust back in toward it. At the same time, she expelled the naniates from herself, spreading them out along the inner frame of the ship.

  She raised her hands, placing her fingers wide apart, pushing out against the tips with muscles tense, telling the Gift to shake the Faust apart. Resonance. Of course. The crystals in the pool on Azure had been vibrating, creating ripples in the liquid. The Seraphim tech used vibration in some way she didn’t understand, so countering that vibration should disrupt it.

  Should.

  It all happened in an instant. The shell protecting them collapsed inward, the swarm collapsing inward with it. The hull of the Faust started to vibrate, quickly enough that a soft, high-pitched buzz was cast inside.

  The mass of drones hit the surface of the Faust, capturing the vibration as they made contact with it and passed it out to the others as they all collapsed together. The ship creaked and groaned at the increasing pressure against it, and all of the Rejects were silent while they waited for something good to happen.

  Would it? Abbey continued to reach out with the Gift, altering the resonance in rapid succession, creating a dissonance that spread across the Faust and extended into the enemy. There were drones right on top of them, pressing toward the cockpit viewport, and she could see when the glow of life vanished from them, indicating that the system had been knocked offline.

  “Pick my nose and call it breakfast,” Bastion said, watching with her as the field around them started going dark.

  The creaking stopped a moment later.

  “It’s working,” Ruby said.

  They sat in silence, waiting as the vibration crossed from one drone to the next, passed on by contact across the entire fleet. Finally, with one small push Abbey shoved the closest drones away, ejecting them from the surface of the Faust and into their lifeless counterparts. Slowly the field began to open up around them, the dead husks cast off and left to drift in the vacuum. Slowly, the station was revealed once more, sitting massive in front of them, only the smallest portion even visible.

  “You did it,” Bastion said, turning toward her, his face flushing when he saw that she was naked, her shardsuit disseminated to add power to the resonance. He quickly turned his head away.

  “We did it,” Abbey replied, taking a deep breath and bringing the Gift back to her. The shardsuit reassembled, covering her once more. “Nerd, Pudding, nice shooting. Gant, good thinking. Imp, amazing flying.”

  “Thanks, Queenie,” Erlan said.

  “Yeah, thanks,” Bastion said.

  “Pick my nose and call it breakfast?” Gant said. “That’s disgusting.”

  “You never heard that expression before, freak-monkey?” Bastion replied.

  “No. I think you just made it up, and the fact that it’s the first thing that came to your mind is a little disturbing.”

  “I didn’t make it up,” Bastion said defensively. “It’s an expression. Seriously. Just because you never heard it before doesn’t make it not so.”

  “I’ve never heard it either,” Benhil said.

  “Me neither,” Pik said.

  “Shut up, all of you,” Bastion said.

  “I never heard that expression,” Abbey said. “It is kind of gross.”

  “Maybe if you were a dropship pilot you would have heard it before. We use it all the time.”

  “I call bullshit,” Benhil said.

  “Seconded,” Erlan said.

  “Thirded,” Pik said.

  “Whatever,” Bastion replied. “Frag you all. Anyway, it looks like we beat the defenses.”

  “Not to interrupt this enriching conversation with bad news,” Uriel said. “But I doubt that was all there is.”

  “Why do you say that?” Abbey asked.

  “It didn’t matter while we were fighting to survive, but do you know what you’re looking at, Queenie?” he asked.

  “A Seraphim space station of some kind,” Abbey replied.

  Uriel laughed. “Space station? No, Queenie. That’s the Shardship.”

  35

  “What?” Jequn said.

  “How do you know?” Abbey asked.

  “I’m old,” Uriel replied, as though that would settle it. “So this is where it’s been hiding all of this time? Amazing.”

  “You’re sure this is the Shardship?” Abbey said. “The Focus is on there somewhere?”

  “I’m certain,” Uriel said. “Now I understand why the Charmeine config didn’t want to share. Do you know what it means to have control over the Shardship and the Focus?”

  Abbey stared at the sphere with a new fascination. “Yes. I do.”

  It would give them control over the most powerful weapon in the galaxy. The one weapon that had single-handedly beat back the Nephilim in the past.

  “Wait,” Bastion said. “This Keeper guy is on the Shardship?”

  “It would seem that way,” Uriel s
aid.

  “You don’t know?” Abbey asked.

  “Yeah, I thought you were old and wise?” Pik said.

  “No one knows the full truth of these things anymore,” Uriel replied. “All I have are bits and pieces. That’s the Shardship; I’d stake my bank account on it. Whether or not the Keeper is on it? Charmeine sent you here to find him, so this must be where he is.”

  “Imp, get us moving again,” Abbey said. “See if you can find somewhere for us to land.”

  “Aye, Queenie,” Bastion said, adjusting the throttle and getting the Faust moving toward the Shardship.

  “Cherub, Uriel, I want to know everything that you know about the Shardship.”

  “It isn’t much, Queenie,” Jequn replied. “You know it is the ship that traveled through the Gate from Elysium to this universe, carrying the Shard and fifty-thousand Seraphim. You know that it was hidden after Lucifer’s betrayal to keep the Nephilim from gaining control over it and the focus. You also know the location is a closely held secret, passed down by the Seraphim across the millennia to protect it. Besides my parents, there are only three others who know it is out here, and their identities are secret.”

  “Is there anything you know about it that I don’t?” Abbey asked.

  “The Archchancellors used to make regular visits here,” Uriel said. “They came to replenish their supply of Blood from the Focus, and to pay homage to the Shard. They came alone, to keep the secret. I heard they stopped visiting about eight thousand years ago.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe the well ran dry?”

  “The Focus is still active,” Jequn said. “We can still channel through the Seedships.”

  “Then I don’t know,” Uriel replied. “Maybe they thought it was too dangerous? That the Nephilim would follow them?”

  “Or maybe they lost the ability to get past the defenses?” Gant suggested. “We can ask false Charmeine the next time we see her.”

  “So this place has been abandoned for eight thousand years?” Bastion asked.

  “Yes,” Uriel replied.

  “Hmm. Is it just me that has a bad feeling about this?”