A House Divided

by Richard Fox

  Trepidation crept into Masha as the Warsaw came over the horizon and a dust storm billowed in the carrier’s wake. Flying a Destrier nap of the earth was a heart-racing task; how something as big as the Warsaw managed to do so at slightly more elevation was a feat Masha did not want to attempt herself.

  “Evac 3, this is Makarov,” came through a tight-beam IR laser. “Enemy defenses are moving to engage. We’re adjusting pickup.”

  “Warsaw, you’re coming in too fast. The plan was for me to approach from behind and land through the aft bay.”

  “That was the plan. Now you’re going to maneuver for an overtake,” Makarov said.

  Masha caught her breath.

  “That’s a negative, Warsaw. If either of us fouls up our merge vectors, the explosion will be phenomenal,” Masha said.

  “Then don’t screw up. Do it right and we go home. Screw up and kill us all. Or you can stay here.”

  Masha looked at the copilot she’d killed. “Murder and espionage trials are for amateurs,” she said. “Send the telemetry data.”

  Instructions flashed across her HUD.

  “Oh boy…” Masha flipped a switch on her flight stick. “Attention everyone, this is your captain speaking. We are in for a rough landing. I suggest everyone buckle up. Barring that, the more flexible of you should consider sticking your head between your legs and—”

  “Don’t you dare kill me with incompetence,” Medvedev sent through her tooth. “I’m going home to the legion…only if you don’t kill me first.”

  “When you ask so nicely,” Masha sighed and fired the Destrier’s afterburners. The big ship accelerated forward and she banked the craft through waypoints on the HUD. A screen popped up displaying the rearview from her plane and the Warsaw raced up behind her like a leviathan from the deep about to swallow her whole.

  Masha’s jaw clenched as she cut back on the engine power. Her throat went dry as the cavern of the Warsaw’s flight deck crept closer. In theory, she could guide the Destrier into the hangar and land, like taking off in reverse.

  “Almost there,” Masha mumbled.

  A fighter streaked past her nose and Masha shrieked in surprise, yanking back on the control stick. The Destrier lurched up. The aircraft, half in and half out of the hangar, smacked against the ceiling, bounced off and then belly-skid across the flight deck in a shower of sparks.

  Masha killed all power to the engines and braced herself against her seat as a groan of metal on metal filled her ears. The transport tipped to one side and she heard a wing break away. The view in her cockpit swung around and came to a bone-jarring halt.

  A crewman on a catwalk looked at Masha through the glass, his jaw open. Masha gave him a playful wave.

  “I don’t seem to be dead yet,” Medvedev sent.

  “Any landing you can walk away from, right?” Masha unbuckled her seat belts and tossed off her helmet. “Teddy bear, you know where I can hide from the admiral? I doubt she’ll appreciate what I’ve done to her flight deck.”

  “You’re doomed.”

  “And you’re welcome.”

  Corpsmen rushed out of side passageways and pointed into the cockpit. Masha jerked a thumb at Walker and waved fingertips across her throat. She pointed back to the cargo bay and kicked her feet up onto the instrument panel.

  “Sorry, Walker, that’s the game.”

  ****

  Man’fred Vo flipped his Eagle fighter into a barrel roll and dove into a canyon as a storm of antiaircraft fire from the Warsaw blasted overhead. His flight suit tightened against his legs and midsection, keeping blood in his brain as g-forces pressed against his body.

  “Six, what the hell was that?” asked his human flight commander.

  “We can’t fire on the Ibarran ship,” the Dotari pilot said. “What was the problem?”

  “You almost caused a crash when that last Destrier linked up to the carrier.”

  “Almost? I should have flown closer.” Man’fred Vo pulled his Eagle’s nose to the sky and accelerated straight up. The long anti-ship torpedo on his fuselage dragged against his fighter’s maneuverability in atmosphere and he clicked his beak in annoyance. He’d rather take a rail cannon shot on a target like the Warsaw, but it was still in enough atmosphere to throw off the ballistics.

  His wingman, a human that insisted on being called “Nero” while they were in the air—against the Dotari tradition of simply going by their numerical ranking in the squadron—fell in on his wing as Man’fred Vo leveled out, cruising away from the Warsaw.

  “Flight, vector to one-seven-niner and spin up your missile’s tracking,” said the squadron commander. “Enemy ship’s gaining altitude…and we’ve got rocket pod ignition. Set for hook terminal guidance.”

  The Dotari pilot entered a quick command into his weapon’s panel and dove back toward Mars. Six plumes of light blazed off the Warsaw’s aft as the rocket pods attached to the carrier pushed it beyond the grip of Martian gravity.

  Four Eagles swung back and traced the Ibarran ship’s path from dozens of miles away. The missiles would have the best chance of striking their targets with a wake attack as the interference from the rocket pods was sure to degrade the ship’s point defense tracking. The missiles would hook around the ship’s flanks at the last second, avoiding the immense heat emanating from the rocket pods.

  As Man’fred Vo gripped his control stick, his mind wandered to Cha’ril and their egg, then he refocused on the readings on his HUD. Even with his fighter rattling at top speed, the Warsaw outpaced the Eagles.

  “We’re going to lose the shot,” Nero said.

  “Mark tone,” said the squadron commander. “Angle final vector by sequence and launch on my mark.”

  The Dotari locked his missile on the Warsaw, setting it to swoop up through the ship’s underbelly. He’d never taken out a target this big before. Cha’ril would be so proud.

  “Break, break!” Nero shouted.

  A column of fire slammed through the atmosphere ahead of his fighter. Man’fred Vo banked hard and a wave of superheated air slapped his fighter like a fly caught in a hurricane. Alarms blared through his helmet as Mars tumbled around and around.

  “Cha’ril!”

  ****

  “What the hell was that?” Laran demanded. The fighters that were on the verge of attacking the Warsaw had all gone off-line.

  “Multiple hits on rail battery emplacements,” said her chief of staff as damage icons sprang up around a wide circle on Mars…all the cannons that would have had line of sight on the Warsaw as it broke for the Grinder.

  “From where?” Laran zoomed her holo tank out, looking for an Ibarran ship that must have come through the gate.

  “There’s some ionization,” said the gunnery officer. “It reads like rail cannon strikes.”

  “Not from the Ibarrans, the angle’s impossible…have the artillery ships fire when ready,” Laran said. “That ship isn’t leaving.”

  “General, reverse ballistics coming in.” Her chief of staff tossed a file into the holo tank. The trace on the projectiles that had knocked out the fighters and blasted the ground cannons all came from Mars’ orbit…along the Warsaw’s original course over the planet.

  “Impossible,” Laran said as she pulled the holo’s viewpoint along the route and found spent thruster pods surrounded by bits of debris. She zoomed in. The “debris” were all uniformly shaped into tubes, some burning with heat. She went in closer. Mag coils ran around the tubes.

  “They’re launchers…” Laran went pale. “They seeded launchers behind them when they arrived. Order the artillery ships to break anchor. Evasive maneuvers, now!”

  An alert pinged in the holo tank. The general touched it and her face fell as the ships at anchorage fed damage reports into the system. All were off-line, the long rails of their launchers wrecked by kinetic impact…four of the eight ships destroyed.

  “How many launchers do they have left?” Laran asked as Mount Olympus rumbled with impact. The holo w
avered in ad out.

  “Hail for you, ma’am,” said her chief of staff. “It’s Admiral—”

  “Put it through.” Laran braced her hands against the tank rim and looked up at Makarov.

  “How many do I have left?” Makarov asked. “Enough to crumble Olympus? Just enough to slag your command center? Want to find out?”

  “Doesn’t matter if you kill me.” Laran raised her gaze. “You’ll pay for this. We will hunt you down to the galaxy’s edge and see you all burn for—”

  “The only reason I haven’t atomized you is Saint Kallen,” Makarov said. “Her tomb is there. We will be back for her bones and if we can’t have them, we will take your head. Call off anything else you might have after us. I don’t want to kill anyone else today.”

  The transmission snapped off and Laran hunched forward, her head bowed.

  “Ma’am?” her chief of staff asked.

  Laran raised a hand, held it next to her ear a moment, then set it back on the railing.

  “Ready my shuttle,” she said. “I’ll explain this to President Garret myself.”

  ****

  A cry went out through the Grinder’s command center as crew pointed up through the wide view port in the ceiling to Mars. Flashes of exploding ships in orbit and tall plumes of smoke and ash like volcano plumes filled Freeman with dread.

  What am I doing? The Ibarrans didn’t promise any of this, he thought.

  Freeman lifted a thin chain necklace out of his jumpsuit and fished out a sweat-covered key. He opened a panel on the dais and flipped open a clear plastic latch.

  “Hard reboot in three.” He plugged the key in and twisted it hard to one side. All power through the command center shut off and plunged the room into near darkness; only pale starlight and Mars shone through. A moment later, illumination came back.

  “At least the lights work,” Freeman said just before the holo tank sprang back to life around him.

  “Freeman!” Keeper appeared in a holo screen.

  “Oh…it’s you,” he said. Not part of the plan.

  “We got a light-speed message about the Ibarra attack so my information is dated,” Keeper said. “What’s the situation? I can’t open a gate to your station or an exit point anywhere near Mars to send reinforcements.”

  “There’s…I’ve got a quantum scrambler field up,” Freeman said quietly, checking to see that none of the crew were listening too closely to him as they struggled to get their stations working again.

  Fractals shimmered over Keeper’s face. “You what?” she asked, her demeanor stern.

  “Freeman! We’re on final approach to the gate,” Masha sent through his tooth receiver. “We have Salina. She’s safe but she’s injured. Get us home, now!”

  “Opening wormhole now.” Freeman twisted his hand around in the holo tank and pulled up a map of the galaxy. He tapped in a code and the Crucible in the Sagittarius arm pinged.

  “Stop this,” Keeper said. “I don’t know what they promised you, but it’s a lie.”

  “What we do for love, right?” Freeman said as the Grinder’s enormous thorns crisscrossed against each other.

  The Warsaw appeared in the distance, engines burning straight for the Grinder. Panic broke out through the crew as the ship barreled down on them. A wormhole formed in the middle of the Grinder and Freeman looked away from the bright white circle.

  “Remember to activate the timer on the data scrambler to hide our destination before you join us,” Masha sent.

  “Freeman,” Keeper’s face lost all color then snapped back to normal, “you don’t know the Ibarrans like I do. This—”

  The Warsaw roared through the wormhole and vanished.

  “Abandon ship!” Freeman squeezed the data drive still plugged into the control panel and heard a click. A vibration went through his fingers and the final programming Masha gave him went into the system.

  “Sorry, Keeper.” He gave the woman a quick salute. “I’ve someplace else to be.”

  The wormhole collapsed into a point and winked out of existence.

  “What?” Freeman pushed Keeper’s box aside and tried to reactivate the wormhole, but the controls were frozen. “No, no, no! She promised!”

  “Where did they go?” Keeper asked calmly. “Do the right thing.”

  “How am I supposed to—” Freeman’s hands shot to his mouth. The false tooth the spies had given him felt like it was on fire. The quantum dot disintegrated, sending purple smoke pouring out of Freeman’s mouth. He collapsed to the ground and lost feeling in his mouth as the toxins in the smoke entered his lungs.

  Freeman crawled to the edge of the dais and reached out to a horrified crew member for help. With one last, hacking cough, he slumped over and fell off the dais. His flesh went gray and cracked, crumbling into ash within seconds. His clothes settled to the floor like a deflated balloon.

  Chapter 23

  Cha’ril looked down at her bare belly and stroked it. She just started to show this morning and couldn’t wait for Man’fred Vo to see it. The egg growing inside her would be ready in a few more days.

  She cracked a nut in her beak and reached for another. Her mother told her she’d go through a few ravenous days, but the cravings were worse than she’d expected.

  Cha’ril nudged the pillows of her nest bed around, smelling the scent of her joined.

  From across the apartment, a data slate chirped with a call. She looked down at her swollen feet and debated against getting up. She was on medical leave. There was no routine matter worth getting out of bed. Cha’ril put a pillow over an ear and ate another nut.

  There was a banging on the door.

  “By the crystal winds of Takeni,” she said as she sat up awkwardly, her swollen abdomen not helping her.

  The banging intensified.

  She trilled in Dotari, climbed out of the nest and almost waddled to the door. She looked through the peephole: two Dotari officers and a human, all in uniform.

  The data slate kept ringing and Cha’ril chided herself for not dealing with that first.

  Gripping the handle, she hesitated. Man’fred Vo was on ready-alert duty. Why would anyone come here for him? She half opened the door when a sudden sickness hit her stomach.

  “Third armor Cha’ril?” the human officer asked.

  “I am…not ready for guests,” she said.

  “We must discuss your rank,” said one of the Dotari in their own language.

  Cha’ril backed away from the door, her mind reeling.

  The two Dotari came in then linked their arms at the elbow. She knew this from plays from her childhood, an old Dotari military tradition.

  “No. It can’t be,” Cha’ril said.

  The data slate kept ringing and the human officer cut away.

  “Man’fred Vo is missing,” one said in Dotari. “His fighter was lost pursuing an Ibarran vessel off Mars. It was…many hours ago.”

  “The chance of his survival is low,” the other added.

  Cha’ril sat on the edge of the nest, hands to her belly.

  “I don’t know what you’re saying,” the human whispered into the slate pressed to his ear. “English please…Cha’ril? Not now. I—you do speak English. That’s not polite…fine, and you don’t know my mother.”

  Cha’ril opened her beak to speak, but nothing came out.

  The human brought the slate over to his Dotari companions.

  “Which button’s for video? I can’t read it.”

  One of the Dotari tapped the screen. The human frowned as the image changed, then he handed the slate over to Cha’ril, who didn’t move.

  “My star?” Man’fred Vo asked. He was in a dust-caked flight suit with a flight deck visible behind him.

  “That’s what he used to call me,” Cha’ril said absently.

  “My star, look at me.” Man’fred Vo shook the slate he was using for the call.

  Cha’ril snatched the device out of the human’s hand. “Joined? You’re alive?”

>   “Of course I’m alive. How else am I going to call you? S&R picked me up and I’m…I don’t know where I am. Some base that’s not Olympus. I needed to call before the rankers showed up and—”

  Cha’ril flipped the screen around and let Man’fred Vo see the pair of Dotari. One of the officers pulled a slate from his pocket and hissed at a text message.

  “We’re sorry,” the other said. “We’ll leave.”

  “You’re not hurt?” Cha’ril asked as her apartment door shut.

  “A little banged up. Nothing serious.”

  “You are dead!” Cha’ril snapped. “Do you know what I just went through?”

  “Is it worse than being ejected from a burning Eagle and bouncing across Mars?”

  Cha’ril’s eyes widened and a series of chirps started in the back of her throat.

  “Of course it was!” Man’fred Vo said. “I’ll be back to Olympus as soon as I can. There’s something of a situation going on.” He looked to one side. “I have to go.”

  “You get back here so I can kill you,” Cha’ril said. “I love you.”

  “I love you too.” The slate went to the home screen.

  She swiped a claw tip down from the top of the screen and read through alert messages.

  “Roland was in the middle of all this. I’m sure of it.” She called Aignar, but there was no answer.

  Chapter 24

  The central dome, made up of ruby-colored crystals that glinted sporadically, rose slightly above the next line of Qa’Resh buildings. The space over the dome wavered like air over a fire and Gideon wondered just what kind of ancient alien technomancy was at work.

  “Clear to move,” Pak said from across the street on the lance’s tight-beam IR. Gideon rushed across, his audio receptors turned up to gauge the sound of his footfalls as he ran. The atmosphere was pure nitrogen and thick enough to convey sound. That the local atmosphere didn’t match the rest of Nunavik was an observation he’d leave to Pathfinders and scientists to ponder.

  Gideon stopped against a building adjacent to the dome structure and made his way down the wall. The dome had iris doors all around the outside and Gideon hesitated. He remembered searching through the Qa’Resh facility for Aignar and Roland, a frantic dash through portal doors that followed no rhyme or reason to where they went next until he found them both…found their suits at least. Roland’s had been cut open, the womb inside missing. Aignar’s armor had been cut to pieces, the soldier inside left behind.