Skyline Severant (The Consilience War Book 3)

by Ben Sheffield

  “Pardon?” Nilux asked.

  “Well, I guess now that there's no need for a curfew, they'll let us out, right? Or move us to a civilian hospital at least?”

  There was a long period of silence as Ubra dealt the next hand of cards. She felt like she'd accidently skated over thin ice, or probed a raw wound for some of them.

  “It's not that simple, Zolot,” Nilux said. “This is not a normal hospital, and I really mean that. This place is as abnormal as the people inside it. We cannot discharge ourselves, only the management can. For some people, that happens quickly. Yatz will be out of here soon. Some of us have been here for years.”

  “Years?” Ubra said. “You're joking.”

  “Ubra, I've been here for five years. I wish I were joking.” Nilux said. “Whenever I ask them about it, they tell me that they're still assessing my risk level, and that I'm making it worse by harassing them about it. On and on and on, month after month. I don't think they give shit one about my risk level. I think they want to keep me here.”

  “That doesn't sound like a hospital,” she said. “It sounds like a prison.”

  “You nailed it,” Farholt said. “Various prophets have said that there will be trials and tribulations visited upon the holy. But the devil never comes to you with horns, cloven hooves, and a pitchfork, He comes to you as a carer.”

  All the zest had gone out of the game, what little had been there to begin with. Nobody turned over the first card, nobody wanted to continue the game. There were other cards that they wanted to turn over, and couldn't.

  “So, there's no way out of here, except through them?” she said.

  “Pretty much.”

  “Hell,” she said.

  “No, we're not in hell,” Nilux said. She swept out a hand, knocking the cards from the table in a blizzard of aces, treys, and jacks. “I don’t know if hell exists, but if it does, it would definitely have better games.”

  Assault on Terrus – June 7, 2143, 0800 hours

  Beyond Terrus's gravity well, Orzo Feroce was running out of moves to make.

  They were limited in how much power they could project over millions of kilometers. The attack had been undertaken with such reckless speed and confidence that they were now overextended, and with the Solar Arm not breaking, the situation was finally beginning to deteriorate.

  The vast areas of space that needed to be kept free of space shrapnel, the massive logistic chains supplying ships with fuel and ammunition...there was a lot depending on a very thin thread.

  And now, the thread was about to snap.

  At 0800 and 0830 hours, the first two shoes had fallen. One of the Yakulst bombers they'd been bringing into position over the continent of North America had been gored right in the thorium engine with a railgun slug, and the ship had to be evacuated. Dozens had died from radiation poisoning, and they'd left most of a hemisphere safe from fire. He'd been hoping to just pound away at Terrus's surface, and now his punches would be considerably weaker.

  Then, while he was trying to recover from that, at 0830 a detachment of elite Scimitars had arrived from the Solar Arm colony on Venus. The all-purpose fighting craft had incredible speed and performance metrics, and the ability to cloak themselves with proton screens. They'd struck a critical breaking point in the Exhorder and Hammerhead screen, clearing hundreds of ships from the skies in a matter of minutes. With a hole gutted in his forces, the Solar Arm were regaining control of their gravity well.

  He'd enjoyed the edge for a while, but now the pendulum was swinging back the other way. Only slightly now, but as time passed, it would accelerate into a bone-crushing wrecking ball.

  He had to get out of the way. If only it was that simple.

  “Sir?” his first mate asked, eyes on holographs of the clashing fleets of ships. “This is no longer a stable place to be in. We're the biggest target on their radars, and once they've beaten back the attack, they'll have eyes on us. Eyes and crosshairs.”

  “I realise that,” Orzo said. “How long before I'm in serious danger out here?”

  The first mate couldn't make eye contact, and was suddenly engrossed by something on her computers. “That time was about...uh...twenty minutes ago. I didn't say anything because..”

  “I know, I know,” he said. “You were hoping for a miracle. Or hoping that every single graph and chart on your computer was lying. I'm the same. It's just...I don't want to pull out too soon.”

  She knew exactly the reason for that.

  Raya Yithdras.

  He'd been overoptimistic. Cocky. He'd promised her the world...literally promised her the world. He'd said that with a fleet of fifty thousand he could secure both Terrus and Selene, and pound them into the dust until General Rodensis surrendered.

  Back when Rodensis was in retreat, and Mars captured, that had seemed a reasonable estimate to make.

  Now, he was ashamed of his hubris.

  And also, quite a bit more afraid of the army at his back than the army at his front.

  Raya Yithdras had assumed full and complete control of all the worlds of the solar system from Mars outwards, and already she was remaking them in her image. Many billions now manned the industrial army, producing ships and harvesting ores from the belt. Society had changed overnight, become sinister, and meretricious.

  Old friends had started disappearing.

  The line between a setback and a defeat was blurring.

  His failure here would, at minimum, be a substantial black spot on his record that not all the soap in the world would take away.

  “We're getting inbound contacts coming from the equator,” his first mate said. “About eighty to a hundred of them. We don't know what they're carrying, they're too far away to read their radionic flares, but trust me when I say we need to get out of here now.

  He was about to issue the command, when a huge jolt shook the ship.

  Terror scorched his mind as he felt vibrations pass through the deck.

  It was a Yakulst Capital ship, the utter apex predator of mankind's shipbuilding capabilities. Two kilometers long, a huge wedge of steel that could erase whole continents with batteries of missiles and hold firm against entire fleets. The general rule of Yakulst ships was that if you could feel an explosion, you were very likely in the path of serious firepower and about to die.

  Panic.

  Cries of alarm from the bridge.

  “We’re losing air pressure on the 10th, 11th, 12th deck,” his first mate said. “We’ve sustained critical damage from a penetration blast hole through the topside armor. We’re getting reports that…oh no…”

  Additional explosions rocked the ship. The power shorted out, then flickered back on.

  “It’s these fucking Scimitars,” Commodore Rezer said. “With the particle shielding they sneak right up on you.”

  Wailing klaxons knifed through the gloom, coming from the upper levels.

  The situation was extremely bad.

  Yakulskt topside armor was its weak point. If they were taking sustained volleys of fire from ships that were able, then Rodensis clearly had them right where he wanted them.

  “We need to pull out,” Orzo said, feeling dread he thought he’d never feel inside a million-ton anvil of a capital warship. “Revector our thrust, and get us out of the planet’s gravity well.”

  “Trying,” his captain hammered the controls, trying to get some responsiveness from the giant metal beast. “They’ve crippled one of our thorium engines. Hopefully it’ll come online once the rest of the power does.”

  “Any chance of leak of radiation?”

  “No,” the captain said. “The ships are designed for that eventuality. The cladding is several meters thick, and if the computer would tell us if it was in danger of failing.”

  A computerized voice weaved through the klaxons, adding to the din.

  Containment breach detected near the reactor core. Critical levels of background radiation detected – immediately evacuation required for all personnel.


  Orzo glared daggers at the man. “So, what are our options now? We’ve had one of our engines shot to shit, and the ship’s about to become a radioactive tin can. Any bright ideas?”

  “We need emergency rescue,” he said. “I’ve scrambled our remaining fighters, and we should be able to hot-evac the crew.”

  “With Scimitars hunting around they’re going to get picked off,” Orzo said. “Ships are sitting ducks when bridging.”

  “Yeah, well human bodies are even more vulnerable to radiation, and background levels on the upper floors are now exceeding fifty milliSieverts.”

  Goddamn, we’re fucked.

  We can’t afford to leave, and we can’t afford to stay.

  Orzo slammed his fists against the dashboard. The computer screen flashed out of existence, turning into a cold gray, as if in premonition of his own future.

  Suddenly, they had a blue light. Incoming communication.

  It was from a ship identifying itself as SOL-742-YK.

  A Yakulst-class capital ship from the Solar Arm.

  It was General Rodensis.

  Orzo gestured at the controls in mute fury. “Well, put him through.”

  The captain hit the button, still casting anxious eyes at the rising Sievert count. With the baffling destroyed or disintegrated by the attack, radiation would quickly penetrate the remaining floors of the Yakulst. They needed evacuation now.

  If Rodensis wanted to offer terms, he hoped Orzo didn’t take long to decide.

  A voice that was ninety percent gravel and ten percent vocal cords spoke through their speakers. “This is commanding General Orzo Feroce of the Reformation Confederacy, I take it?”

  Orzo spoke. “Yes, it is.”

  “Your position is untenable. We advanced under the cover of particle shields, and gored a nice tight hole through your fleet. Now the icepick rests against your heart.”

  “I don’t surrender,” Orzo said.

  “I did not ask for your surrender.”

  Orzo’s crew around him groaned.

  All of them were feeling sick, all of them were imagining that the sickness was from the radiation leeching through the ceiling, burning their skin like irradiated rain.

  “What?”

  “We are aware of the political structure of the Reformation Confederacy. It doesn’t have one. It is effectively a military dictatorship, controlled by Raya Yithdras. She has no doubt received word that your fleet is being defeated, and is already planning your replacement. Why would I accept your surrender? That advantages me not at all. Your fleet is streaming away, your commanders have lost all confidence in you, and our containment net around the planet is restored. We hold all the cards, and you none of them. What do we gain by not just blowing you out of the sky?”

  Orzo looked around at the crew, hoping one of them would supply the bright idea that let them draw breath.

  They said nothing. In the end, he knew that the answer was staring him in the face.

  “If you let me go, I can give you information,” he said.

  “What sort of information?”

  His captain pulled at his sleeve. “Captain, we need to evacuate the ship now. This is utterly dangerous.”

  He received a hard slap to the face.

  “I don’t know!” shouted Orzo. “Information! Isn’t that one of the goals of war? To understand your enemy as you understand yourself, that you might thrive in a hundred battles? I have access to a full set of Yithdras’s files. All our internal records, all our strategic assessments, all of Black Shift’s library. Let me out of here, and they’re yours. I can transmit them through the datalink.”

  There was a pause at the other end. “Black Shift’s library, you say?”

  His captain winced. “There’s no time…”

  “Yes. Its financials, its research documents, and its library of saved memories.”

  There was an uncomfortable buzzing sensation in his teeth now, something that he tried to convince himself was all in his mind and failed. It would get worse and worse. Soon, he would put a bullet through his mouth just to make it stop.

  “I accept your terms. Once I receive these files, you will have twenty minutes to evacuate your ship and escape. I will not harm you.”

  Nausea began to grip his stomach as he accessed Black Shift’s libraries. Soon, he was transmitting all of Emil Gokla’s secrets to the man on the other ship. He moved with blind haste, praying to survive, praying to live to see another day.

  Some doomsday cultist I turned out to be.

  Interlude

  Arrakhia Mountain Facility – June 8, 2143, 0800 hours

  The Arrakhia mountain hospital was only accessible by a single train line. At first, this had been an awkward inconvenience. Now, it was the hospital's one feature.

  The world was interconnected: a maze of nodes and access points. Every system was exposed, every route stood open to attack, both in the digital domain and the real world. Secrecy and privacy had become a fantastic dream.

  But in Arrakhia, that dream had come true.

  The mountains were capped a thin layer of iridium, rendering it a blind spot for satellite overpasses. Their sheer bulk was a shield that could survive a MOAB attack. The computer systems were thoroughly airgapped, protected from the outside world by virtue of the fact that they did not interact with it whatsoever.

  Kilometers protected the facility. No matter whether you wanted in through the roof, through the trian tunnel, from the ground below, the math did not change. Kilometers on every side. And they would resist you, for every micrometer of their thickness.

  The train tracks could be blocked with the flick of a switch. An internal water reserve meant they were self-sufficient, almost to armageddon. An incredibly obtrusive security system meant no unauthorised personnel made it in. They were safe from attacks both chemical and biological.

  The only thing that could destroy them was the thing that destroyed everything, in the end. Internal rot.

  A mighty oak tree can resist many blows from an axe, but not if it's decaying to pulp from the inside out. The Solar Arm could defund the project in a heartbeat. But thus far, they hadn't. It was too useful.

  Things could happen there that might be politically damaging if they reached the outside world. The dull brutalist slate could hold many secrets. A whole mountain's worth.

  And it could be a final stronghold, a final place to hide if everything fell apart on the outside. A global pandemic. A nuclear armageddon.

  Arrakhia mountain wasn't the first place you'd choose to live, but it might be the last.

  “Do you have time?”

  “Of course, General. I always have time.”

  Vadim Gokla gestured expansively at a seat in his office, and General Sybar Rodensis sat down.

  It was a surprise visit from the man who commanded the entire armed forces of the Solar Arm. Vadim’s awe was tempered by the fact that not much of the Solar Arm was left, and it was completely unclear if anyone was capable of controlling it.

  The office was brightly lit. Every dog-eared bit of paper and loose paperclip cast a sharp shadow against the countertop. There were very few computer-based systems at Arrakhia Medical Center. Its high priority work made it a prime target for EMP blasts, Vadim enjoyed remaining a luddite even while forging forward on the frontiers of the human mind.

  Rodensis was a thick block of compressed muscle. He’d been chosen by Sarkoth Amnon to fill the vacancy left by General Sakharov’s disappearance, and now he was attempting to fill yet another disappearance – the vanished Prime Mininster.

  It was becoming a joke among the Solar Arm brass, that if you left your seat unattended for too long you would find Sybar Rodensis sitting there.

  “We hear so many rumors under the mountains,” Vadim said, pouring the general some water. “It’s been a week from hell for you, I’m sure.”

  Rodensis laughed, a hearty sound that had too much of madness in it to relax Vadim. “Of course it hasn’t! All of
our dreams have come true. Caitanya-9 is no longer a threat. The Reformation Confederacy has dashed itself to pieces on our defences. And Sarkoth Amnon still hasn’t shown his face. I thank him for that, if he still lives. Honestly, his poor decisions were an albatross around our necks.”

  Vadim was shocked by the general’s frankness. “Well, I’ll do you a favour and deny you ever said that.”

  “Listen,” Rodensis said, “the whole reason the Reformation Confederacy formed was that Raya Yithdras thought Sarkoth Amnon was insane, and wanted him removed from office. If he’s dead, what reason do they have to continue fighting? Oh, they’ll cobble together some flimsy excuse for not running a white flag up the flagpole, but will their own men believe their lies? This sort of this must be demoralising and disheartening, and all of that leaves us in a stronger tactical position by the day. But let’s not talk of that. You have some information of interest to me, yes?”

  “We do,” Vadim said, composing himself. He was intimidated by the general, and not just because of Rodensis’s gung-ho personality complex. It was also because of his own family history.

  He was related to Emil Gokla. This fact hung over his head like a thundercloud, and now subtly coloured every single encounter he had with the Solar Arm’s governance.

  He could imagine the things going through Sybar’s mind right now, as they sat on opposite ends of a table. Were you friends with your great grandfather? Did he ever share any of his political ideas with you? Do you know anything about this rumoured death cult? How involved was he in the events precipitating the war? For that matter, how involved were you? And to cut to the question at the heart of all, how much can we trust you? Are you a spy?

  None of this had come up in days gone by, when Emil was first a brilliant inventor and then a reclusive eccentric. But after Sarkoth Amnon’s disappearance, his personal communications had been exhaustively studied. Had been raked over for clues.

  They’d found some very suspicious messages from Emil Gokla, that either Sarkoth had forgotten to delete or had deliberately left on there.