The Queen of Sidonia

by Richard Fox

  A team of four Guardsmen lay dead in front of the door, victims of the war bots.

  Two more Guardsmen ran into the hallway, shields up and pulsers drawn.

  Quinn took careful aim and hit one of the Guardsmen in the ankle as it peeked beyond the edge of his shield. The wounded man screamed in pain and fell. His shield hit the ground and bounced to the side. The war bots perforated his exposed body with shots.

  The second Guardsman fired a burst of pulser rounds that hit one of the war bots in the chest, overloading the armor and sending a single round into the processor core. The war bot fell back on its haunches, sparks flying from the hole in its chest.

  Growling, Quinn stepped between the Guardsman and the other war bot. Pulser rounds bounced harmlessly off Quinn’s body shield. He powered up the disruption field in his blade, its edge glowing red.

  “We’ve got a brave one.” Quinn waggled the blade low, level with his knee.

  The Guardsman, charging behind his raised shield, dropped his pulser and snatched his hilt from his belt. He swung it at Quinn’s neck, the blade still extending as he struck.

  Quinn parried the strike and drove his blade into the Guardsman’s bicep.

  “Pathetic.” He twisted the blade and forced the Guardsman to turn his back to the war bot. The war bot fired a burst into his back, the bullets tearing through the Guardsman’s chest and spattering against his shield.

  Quinn let the Guardsman’s falling body pull his blade free. He tapped the flat of his blade against his shin to shake away the blood and made his way to Francis’s shut door.

  Quinn gave Major Volenz’s body a nudge with his toe, her lifeless eyes staring at the ceiling.

  “Beta, the door,” he said.

  The war bot jammed metal fingers along the edge and opened the door with ease. Quinn heard a frightened shriek and looked through his brother’s room at racks of extravagant clothing and a mess of slates on dressers and nightstands—but he didn’t see his brother.

  Of course, there was really only one place Francis went when he was scared.

  Quinn grabbed the bed frame and hurled it aside.

  Francis lay on the floor, his hands up in front of his face. “Please, I’ll give you whatever you want,” the prince pleaded.

  “And father thought you would’ve made a better king,” Quinn said with a shake of his head.

  “What?”

  Pressing a finger against his jawline, Quinn winced as the nanowires contorting his face into his false visage relaxed and his true countenance revealed itself. Now they looked like brothers.

  “Quinn? Quinn is that you?” Francis said. His eyes widened in hope and he got to his feet, arms held up in surrender

  Quinn raised his pulser up next to his face. “Where is Cosima?”

  “Her room! I left her in her room! Where have you been? I thought you were dead. You-you look good.” Francis laughed nervously.

  “I never liked you.” Quinn shot Francis twice through the heart. The prince fell to his knees, then face-first on the floor. Quinn put two rounds in the back of his head.

  “Alpha, is she dead?” Quinn said to Beta, using the robot’s communications network.

  “Target not acquired.”

  “Damn it.” Quinn tapped his body shield. “Mr. Glint, find her. Kill her. ”

  “I’ll have to abandon the control room,” Glint said. “There’s a counterattack forming in the—”

  “I don’t care. Go! I must attend to my father,” Quinn said.

  ****

  Remi inched the door from the stairwell open. The sound of shouted orders and pulser shots echoed down the hallway. Waving to Cosima, he led her into the hallway. The passage was a wreck of shot-through walls and broken vases. Busts of notables from Sidonia’s history lay on the ground, knocked from their plinths.

  A dead civilian sat against the wall. Blood smeared down from the place he’d been shot and sank to the floor.

  A handful of Guardsmen in full armor, their shields burning at their maximum settings, stood shoulder to shoulder at the end of the hallway, facing off against a war bot, its heavy steps reverberating through the floor.

  Remi held his arm out to stop Cosima. “That’s our way out, but we’d—”

  A cannon shot hit the shield wall and knocked a Guardsman back, as if he’d been kicked by a mule.

  “Hurry! Up!” a short Guardsman shouted over his shoulder. A soldier ran up behind them, a grenade launcher clutched in his hands. He dove forward just as a cannon shot angled over the shield wall and blew a hole in the floor.

  The soldier struggled to his knees and flung the grenade launcher to a beckoning Guardsman, who caught it and held it over the shield wall. The launcher thumped, and a crack of thunder shattered windows along the hallway.

  “Get the core!” a Guardsman ordered, and the four ran ahead.

  Remi and Cosima ran down the hallway. The Guardsmen were climbing up a war bot that had fallen against, and mostly through, a wall. A Guardsman jammed his blade in between the armor plates of the chest and pried a gap open. Another stuck his pulser into the opening and fired off his entire magazine at full auto.

  “You get it?” one asked.

  “Give me another one.” Someone tossed a pulser to the Guardsman standing on the war bot’s shoulders, and he fired into the gap again. Something groaned inside the war bot and it went slack.

  “Guardsmen,” Remi said, “I need you with me.”

  “Remi,” the short Guardsman flipped up his visor, a sweaty and exhausted Stolzoff gave him a quick salute. He looked at Cosima and let out a relieved sigh “You’ve got her, thank God.”

  “Help me get her to an evac tunnel,” Remi said.

  “There may not be as many war bots that way, fine.” He turned to the Guardsmen. “Three-sixty on the princess. Jones,” he said to the Guardsman who had been knocked back from the war bot’s round, “you hurt?”

  Jones got to his feet, his arm held tight against his ribs. “No,” he said. He joined the ring of Guardsmen around Cosima and fired up his gauntlet shield.

  Remi, next to Cosima within the circle, tapped the Guardsman in front of him and they hustled forward.

  “Wait, what about me?” the soldier asked as they moved past him.

  “Get the launcher, we may need the EMP again,” Stolzoff said. “Electromagnetic pulse rounds,” he said to Remi, “knocks the big ones down just long enough to disable them. Damn bots are everywhere, more coming through the dome all the time.”

  “What happened?” Remi asked.

  “The control room went off line and the shields came down along with all our communications. Then all hell broke loose as you may have noticed.”

  “There’s a tunnel that leads to Fort Schwehr in the library, you think it’s safe for her there?” Remi asked.

  “Better there than here,” Stolzoff said.

  “Fine, library it is,” Remi said.

  Cosima kept her head down and tucked against Remi as they made their way to the library. The sound of pulser shots and muted explosions reverberated through the palace. Watching a battle on a VR set was a pale reflection of being in an actual battle—every rumble, every window shattered by a stray round, sent Cosima’s body on edge.

  The adrenaline kept her moving, but fear took up root in her heart and refused to budge.

  “There,” Remi said. The double doors to the library, ten foot tall hand-carved oak, had been blown open. One door lay on the ground, smoldering. The other was a mess of splinters still attached by the heavy brass hinges.

  “Stack up,” Stolzoff said. The Guardsmen shifted their formation into a single line, their pulsers aimed between the shields.

  Remi pulled Cosima back and let the Guardsmen take the lead into the library. Remi grabbed the soldier by collar before he could follow the Guardsmen.

  “Stay with us, go in with the EMP if there’s a war bot,” Remi said. The soldier nodded and aimed his grenade launcher down the hallways they’d jus
t come from.

  Stolzoff, at the rear of the stack, said, “Three, two, one…go!”

  The line of Guardsmen snaked into the library, their pulsers firing.

  Remi pulled Cosima close and held his gauntlet shield over her. A pulser round blew through the wall with a puff of masonry. The firing died down, but sporadic shots snapped from within the library like threats from a hostile crowd.

  “Damn it,” Remi said. He pulled away from Cosima and charged into the library.

  Smoke hung high in the two-level repository, shattered glass from the walkways fell to the ground, sounding like a heavy downpour against concrete. One Guardsman lay dead in the entrance, and the rest were behind an overturned bookshelf, trading shots with a group of man-sized war bots holed up in a nook on the second level.

  “Pinned down!” Stolzoff shouted to Remi. A pulser round shattered the back of the bookshelf and exploded in a book, blowing burning pages into the air.

  A shadow glanced across the back wall. Remi looked up and saw two war bots running along the walkway right toward them.

  Before he could shout a warning, the war bots leaped off the walkway and slammed to the ground between him and the Guardsmen. Remi fired his pulser. The round sparked off the war bot’s armor and did little more than get its attention.

  The war bot’s torso swung around on its hip gimbal. Its carbine sent a burst of rounds into Remi’s shield, and dense spider webs burst across it, their momentum carrying through like hammer blows.

  Remi swung his shield into the carbine, knocking the muzzle to the side. The war bot struck out with a backhanded strike that would have crushed Remi’s skull if it connected. The tips of its metal fingers missed Remi’s forehead by a hair’s breadth.

  Remi grabbed his sword hilt and activated it. The blade extended as he thrust it at the war bot, the telescoping sword imbedding into the armor. The distortion field flared to life, and the war bot jerked as if it were having a seizure and collapsed to the ground.

  Remi raised his sword and slashed at the other war bot, snapping its neck and knocking it over.

  A pulser round snapped past his face. The war bots across the library had taken interest in him at last. Remi dove for the overturned bookshelf and slid over loose sheets of paper torn out of mangled books.

  “Thanks,” Stolzoff said, “but we’re still pretty screwed.” A bullet hit the bookshelf and sent splinters through the air.

  “Maybe if we—”

  An explosion thundered through the library, and the incoming fire ceased.

  Remi glanced over the bookshelf and saw a flaming mess where the war bots had been firing at them.

  Cosima ran over and knelt next to him. “I was getting worried and had an idea,” she said.

  The soldier stood in the doorway, smoke rising from the barrel of his grenade launcher.

  “I had one regular grenade left,” the soldier said. “Worked pretty well didn’t—” He choked. Blood spilled from the corners of his mouth and the soldier rose into the air, his toes scraping against the floor.

  Remi grabbed Cosima by the arm and jerked her against the bookcase. The soldier flew to the side and Remi thrust his shield over Cosima.

  A thin line ran against the shield and slid off the side, chipping the marble floor where an invisible blade tip struck. Remi struck out with his sword and hit nothing.

  “Shoot! Shoot!” Stolzoff and the two remaining Guardsmen fired wildly around the room. Bullets ricocheted off walls and careened off Remi’s shield still protecting Cosima.

  The Guardsmen’s pulsers clicked empty, and they slammed fresh magazines into the handles.

  “Did we get it?” one asked.

  The Guardsman crashed to the ground, crushed by an invisible weight. A bloody blade tip slashed from the crushed guard and tore across the chest of the second, who fell back with a grunt, a rent across his uniform.

  Stolzoff fired his pulser on full auto, stitching a line of shots across Glint’s thighs. His stealth field wavered; light bent and pulsed across his frail form.

  Glint lunged and impaled Stolzoff’s chest with a blade.

  Stolzoff dropped his pulser and grabbed Glint’s arm. Glint tried to flick Stolzoff away, but the colonel’s grip held.

  “Bastard,” Stolzoff said through bloody teeth.

  Remi struck, severing the sword arm impaling Stolzoff.

  Glint emitted an electric squeal. His stealth field failed revealing a rail-thin body, his face nothing but two eye holes on a white ceramic mask.

  Remi parried a clumsy stab from Glint and stabbed him in the chest. Grabbing his hilt with both hands and ripping the blade up, Remi split Glint in half from his sternum to the top of his head.

  “Stolzoff?” Remi went to the colonel, lying on his side, still clutching Glint’s severed arm. Stolzoff didn’t respond to Remi’s touch, his eyes quiet and unfocused. The other Guardsmen lay still.

  He turned around and saw Cosima, her hands over her mouth and tears flowing.

  “Oh my god, they’re dead,” she said.

  “And you’re not. Hurry.” Remi turned her away from the bodies and hustled her toward a nook at the far end of the library.

  The entire room trembled from a distant explosion. Books shook free of their shelves and clattered to the ground. The sounds of a running gun battle echoed through the library, the sound growing closer.

  Remi came to the end of the room. Instead of a bookshelf tucked into the corner, there was a red ceramic vase on top of a thin wooden table. Remi tossed the vase aside, then the table. He pawed at the wall and found a hidden control panel beneath a holo screen. The holo image snapped off, and his fingers ran across the screen.

  “Here we go.” He was about to key in the code when the slate exploded.

  Remi swung his shield around and stepped in front of Cosima.

  Quinn, his smoking pulser in hand, stood in the center of the library. “I don’t think so.” He advanced toward them, his weapon leveled at Remi.

  Remi fired two shots, put both bounced off Quinn’s body shield and didn’t even break his stride. He aimed carefully and blew Quinn’s pulser out of his hand. The body shield flared as the pistol went flying.

  “Clever.” Quinn drew his blade and stopped ten feet from Cosima and Remi.

  Remi passed her his pulser and drew his blade.

  “Wait for an opening,” he whispered to her.

  “I remember you, Mr. Remi,” Quinn said. “Remember your dogged devotion to Vincent, and I see you’ve found someone else to latch on to.” Quinn raised his blade and looked down the edge at Cosima and Remi.

  “Quinn, this is all your doing,” Remi said.

  “Naturally, I found a few backers who didn’t want to lose the Gaia system, and they gave me the resources to make sure it never happened. A palace coup just before the treaty is signed, tragic…and convenient,” Quinn said. “Now, let’s not waste any more time posturing. She has to die, Remi. You don’t. Step aside and I’ll see you have a place in my new kingdom.”

  Remi didn’t move.

  “Step. Aside.”

  “Cosima,” Remi said, his body tensing and his eyes locked on Quinn. “You get that door open and you run. No matter what you hear or see, you don’t stop running.”

  “Paul, don’t do this,” she said.

  “Listen to the girl,” Quinn said. “Trade her life for yours.”

  Remi stepped away from Cosima, his blade held high behind his shield.

  “Never.”

  Quinn lunged. His blade tip corkscrewed in the air and struck at Remi’s face as fast as a cobra’s strike. Remi ducked behind his shield, and the edge crackled against the distortion field on Quinn’s blade. Quinn snapped a kick out that hit Remi in the shin, knocking the foot out from under him.

  Remi rolled into the fall and felt a breeze as Quinn’s blade snapped past his neck. Remi made a blind strike as he got to his feet. His blade connected with something, and the smell of ozone burned into the air.
>
  Quinn growled, blood trickling from a cut across the back of his hand. He rushed Remi, knocking his blade aside and slamming him against a wall of books. Leather-bound novels rained down, some catching fire as they hit Quinn’s shield.

  Quinn swung a hook into Remi’s jaw, staggering the Guardsman. The deposed prince grabbed him by the hair and pulled him away from the bookshelf to get momentum before he slammed Remi into the wooden shelf frames.

  A pulser round hit Quinn’s shield over the temple, just hard enough to knock him off balance. A second round tweaked his nose and a third flashed over his eye. Cosima, the pulser in her hand, stood with her feet braced as if she were at the range. Another shot hit over his chin and cocked his head to the side.

  “Stop that!” Quinn yelled at her.

  Remi’s fist plowed into Quinn’s stomach, and he hunched over, his grip on Remi’s hair lost. Remi’s sword flicked out and raked across Quinn’s shoulder. The prince’s shield flared, deflecting the blow. He sliced across Quinn’s throat, earning another flash from the shield.

  Quinn stabbed at Remi, aiming his sword point up and into Remi’s stomach. Remi’s shield turned the strike, and Quinn rode the momentum and brought his blade over his head. He but both hands on the hilt and chopped down on Remi.

  Remi got his shield up and blocked the blow. His energy shield coalesced, cracks striking out like lighting across the bottom of storm clouds.

  Quinn raised his blade again and brought it down with a cry.

  Remi’s shield shattered, and Quinn’s weakened blow cut into Remi’s exposed arm.

  Remi groaned in pain and backed away from Quinn, blood flowing freely down his arm. He flipped the grip on his sword and swung the blade across Quinn’s stomach. The body shield still held, but Remi finally saw what he’d been looking for as Quinn’s shield strained against Remi’s assault.

  Ley lines of energy ran to and from the pin on Quinn’s lapel—Remi finally found Quinn’s emitter.

  Quinn grabbed Remi by his service sash and hurled him at Cosima. Remi’s head bounced off the carpet, and he saw stars dance in front of his eyes. He grabbed his sword and looked up at Cosima, still holding the empty pulser.