A few teeth, some credit bars, but no keys. “Please don’t tell me this gate is code-locked.” He was about to turn to the other guard, just as he was kicked hard in his wounded leg. It was the first guard that he had shot—he was still alive!
Eliard hit the wall, and his head bounced off the stone. Suddenly, he felt cold and woozy, and everything seemed to have doubled. He tried to raise the Device, but another blow pushed him to the floor and held him there, as a rasping voice snarled in his ear.
“Takes more than some piece of alien trash to kill me, human.” There was a grunt and a scrape of something heavy as the Duergar seized his energy blade—
“Urk!” Suddenly, the pressure lifted off the captain and he crabbed forward to turn and see—
It was Val Pathok, his gunner, reaching through the bars of the gate and strangling the injured Duergar guard with his bare hands.
“No, I guess it takes Val,” the captain said, relieved and also amazed at what his gunner was able to do. Especially because his arms just barely fit through the bars, as deeply corded as they were with muscles. As the Duergar guard fell, lifeless or unconscious to the floor at the captain’s feet, Eliard looked at the gunner that he had known for years in a new light.
He really is a behemoth, Eliard thought. Previously, he had just thought it was the way of the Duergar, and he had made it a running joke about Val’s size—but now he guessed that he had something to compare it to, he thought, after his last few days here on Dur. But there was more to Val than just his size, it was the calm way that he engaged with every challenge, head on. He never shirked from doing the right thing.
“Are you just going to look at me weirdly, or are you going to get me out of here?” Val said. He was tottering back from the bars, his chest rising and falling as he held onto them, more for support than anything else.
“Yeah, sure, sorry…” Eliard could see that his old friend was still in a bad way. He had a mashed section of dried blood and broken scales on the side of his head where the captain had hit him, and he also looked tired and weary. The strangest thing was that hanging from each wrist were two long lines of chain, dragging on the floor and ending in broken links.
“I had to break it,” Val said, noticing the captain’s astonished look.
“Uh…you do whatever you have to do, big guy.” Eliard gulped as he went through the strangled Duergar’s armor and produced an iron key. “Here. But…you’re not going to go berserk and try to kill me again?”
“Only if you make me wait much longer,” the Duergar grumbled.
“Right you are. Gotcha.” The captain inserted the key in the lock and opened the gate, for Val to almost fall through, and lean against the wall. The chains dragged after him as he moved, and it was clear to Eliard that the effort of breaking them had cost him a lot more than he showed.
“Come on, let’s get you home. Your real home,” he said in a slightly softer tone, moving to sling one of the gunner’s tree-trunk-like arms over his shoulders, and seek to move him. “Ugh. Dear stars, do you have to be so absolutely massive?” Eliard grunted in exertion. He wasn’t feeling at the top of his game either, and so when he heard the clicking noise and the charging hum of energy weapons, he knew that he probably wouldn’t be able to react fast enough—
“Oh, how sweet. My treacherous son and his captain,” sneered the voice of the War Chief Pathok Ma.
Oh crap, oh crap, oh— Eliard was holding onto Val with one hand, while the Device was supporting the Duergar. He had no more weapons, and he wouldn’t be able to draw the Device fast enough in time to stop the four attendant guards from blowing them both away with their already-leveled energy weapons.
“Where’s Ko? Erkig?” Eliard said defiantly. He dreaded to hear that yet more people had died for his reckless plans…
“Unconscious. Dying. Who cares?” the war chief sneered at him. “They are traitors and dissidents, and anyone with honor wouldn’t care what happened to them.”
“You are wrong.” Val raised his great, weary shovel-like head. “You should care. A war chief has to care what happens to their enemies, or else they cannot prevent them in the future.” The voice of Val was deep, but clear, and filled with disgust. “You, my father, are no war chief.”
Eliard winced as he saw Pathok Ma tremble with rage. Was this some kind of plan? Annoy his father so much that he makes a mistake?
But it seemed that if it was, it didn’t work, as his father breathed steadily through his nose, forcing out his aggression as he nodded to them both. “Separate them, keep guns on them at all times, and follow me.” The chief turned back to stalk up the corridor, back toward the arena.
Now? Eliard wondered if he could do something, if he might be quick enough. As one guard stepped forward—slightly nervous next to the titanic form of Val Pathok, the Hero of the Chenga Pass—Eliard dropped Val’s arm and stumbled forward toward the guard. Maybe I can buy Val some time. Do for him what Ko did for me—
WHACK! The captain was clearly too slow, and his leg was more injured than he thought, as the approaching guard whipped him with the butt of the energy weapon, before standing back and leveling the gun once more.
“Hm.” Val half-slumped against the wall, with no one to support him. “Was that your amazing plan, Captain?” the Duergar grumbled to the man now lying on the floor.
“Aaaaarg. Yes. I just love getting pistol whipped. What do you think!?” Despite his pain, and the throbbing ache in his head, Captain Eliard had never known a time where a well-crafted bit of sarcasm didn’t go well.
The other Duergar guards kicked and beat the captain to his feet and did indeed keep their energy weapons static against him for the entire time that it took to walk from the cells, up the corridor, and out into the late afternoon sunshine once more, where the arena had seemed to become busy with the war chief’s guards.
“Pity,” War Chief Pathok’s voice called from the middle of the arena. “I was hoping that the human would have done something stupid and been shot.”
“Eliard!” shouted a voice. It was Ko, struggling from between two much larger Duergar guards at one side of the arena.
Well, at least he’s not dead. The captain nodded to him as they were walked out to stand alone in a wide circle of sand. All around them were more Duergar guards, all wearing the full plate and encounter armor of the war chief’s chosen war band. Eliard tried to estimate their numbers, but as his head throbbed and their numbers doubled, he just settled for ‘lots.’
“Maybe I should thank you, my son, for what your return has caused. I have here the ringleader of the dissidents, and I am about to make a historic treaty that will ensure Durish supremacy for eternity!” Pathok Ma called, flanked by his own guards.
“You’re a fool, Father. Alpha will use you and destroy you just as its ancestors did ours,” Val grumbled.
“Treaty? With Alpha?” Eliard hissed at him. “What is he talking about? Please don’t tell me that…”
Their explanations were cut off suddenly by the sound of a sonic boom, far above them, followed a few short moments later by the roar of thunder.
“Why don’t you ask Alpha yourself, my son?” the chief said.
“Oh no. You didn’t…” The captain felt shock sweep through him as he looked up into the air at what was coming for them.
There, descending out of the skies and surrounded by a halo of fire, was an object. As all the assembled watched, they saw it bank and turn, and the fire that had accompanied its entry into Dur’s atmosphere faded as it utilized a smaller propulsion system. Precisely what sort of propulsion system this was, however, the captain couldn’t say as there were no trailing burns of jet fire, and the pulse of a warp field would be deadly this close to the planet.
It looked like a long, cylindrical dart, wide and triangular in the middle, before narrowing to mirror the cylindrical form at the other end. It was made of some sort of silvery mercury-seeming metal that flared and flashed blue, red, and green as the sun caug
ht it. At first, the captain thought that it could only be a small machine, before it grew closer and he started to see that it was much bigger than a drone, but also much, much smaller than any manned craft. As it slowed and turned, starting to lower itself on a shimmering aurora of disturbed air, the captain could see that it was probably the size of three Val Pathoks. Smaller than the attack craft that the war chief had sent out against the dissidents, but large enough to make him worried.
He felt the reassuring surge of angry energy as he activated the Device and crouched, pointing the hand cannon upwards.
“Human, I wouldn’t. There are over forty of my best soldiers here. As soon as you fire that thing, you and my son will be obliterated,” the war chief said.
“Yeah, but at least that thing would be dead,” Eliard muttered, but he didn’t fire. He waited, not taking his eyes from it as it slowed and lowered again, to hover only fifty meters above the arena. All eyes were on the alien drone device as its undercarriage opened—there really seemed no difference between its bottom and its top that the captain could see—and there emerged a smaller replica of itself, perfect in every respect as far as Eliard could see but a fraction of the size, lowering in its own halo of strangely disturbed air, like a heatwave.
“Some kind of electro-gravitics?” the captain wondered aloud, but other concerns soon wiped them from his mind.
“War Chief Pathok Ma, of Duric, thank you for your invitation. I am servitor-transmitter 2333 of Alpha,” the drone said, and the captain startled… It was the same voice as he and Cassandra had heard back when all of this had begun, when they had to release Alpha lest Armcore get its hands on him.
Yeah, and look where that got us. The captain sighed miserably.
“Greetings from our planet.” The chief held out both clawed hands in a gesture of welcome. “But Alpha did not respond itself? You are an ambassador?”
Eliard rolled his eyes. The old war chief clearly had no way of comprehending just how advanced Alpha was. This thing was Alpha, in the same way that its mothership above was also Alpha, and so too was the prime Alpha-vessel at the Helion Generator was Alpha. A machine intelligence, sufficiently powered, could execute multiple operations at the same time from the same processing intelligence, and Alpha had access to the entirety of quantum data-space for its processing capability. The thing is near a god, he thought. Or at least, as much of a god as I am ever going to meet.
“I am Alpha, War Chief, but my shell is servitor-transmitter 2333, but this may be a confusing concept for biological life. Think of me as an ambassador, fully empowered to speak precisely as Alpha would,” The drone stated, turning very slowly where it hovered at eye level between the chief and his prisoners.
“Not confusing at all!” Pathok Ma stated a little arrogantly, earning a frustrated hiss from Val at Eliard’s side.
“He’s going to get himself and all of us killed,” Val whispered, one of the few times that he had seemed alarmed, and the captain felt like he could only agree.
Next, the war chief turned to the assembled guards and the crowds that were starting to gather in the arena. “Warriors! Clans-people, and hearth-steaders! This is Alpha, who has come here to offer an alliance against the Imperial Coalition.”
“That is functionally true…” the Alpha-drone stated, before the war chief cut him off.
“Now is our chance to throw off the yokes of the Coalition! To become what we Duergar were always meant to be!” he roared, earning him outcries of adulation.
“It’s Valyien,” Val Pathok shouted back, earning confused looks from those around. “That thing is Valyien tech. It’s not our ally, it’s our enemy!”
The confused looks turned into grumbles.
“I was under the impression, War Chief, that you had invited me here with an offer,” the Alpha drone said tersely, and the captain wondered if this was the bit when it would start shooting at everyone. Thankfully, it wasn’t.
“My son is a fool, and clearly driven mad by all his years with the humans,” the chief shouted. “Does this…being look Valyien to any of you? You have all seen our histories, you all know that—”
That was when, in diplomatic terms, the Alpha-drone shot down the war chief. “I am Valyien. I have no sophistry with you or your people.”
“Half-Valyien,” the chief said—somewhat pleadingly, the captain thought, as the confused grumbles started to turn into angry voices.
“Incorrect, War Chief Ma. I AM Valyien, as close as any living organism here will ever get to my ancient predecessors, which means that I AM Valyien. I am the Valyien for this time, and this age,” the Alpha-drone said, as the raised voices turned into shouts.
“I am about to wipe out the Imperial Coalition. The Duergar people, given our historic connection, can either join with me or they can stand aside,” the Alpha-drone continued.
Silence reigned supreme as the will of the war chief battled with the will of the people. That was, until one voice spoke clearly through the chaos.
“No.” It was Val. He raised himself up and squared his shoulders. “No,” he repeated. “I will not allow my people—my home world—to ally ourselves with the same thing that enslaved us for over a thousand years.”
The crowd started to shout and roar, and the captain had to turn to look at them in order to see if they were in support or disagreement. He saw fights break out, and he realized that it was roughly half and half. The Duergar here would tear themselves apart in their loyalties between father and son.
“War Chief,” the Alpha-drone stated quite calmly above the rising shouts and hubbub of the crowd. “I see that you are attempting to make a bargain that you cannot uphold. It is my calculation that your people are almost as likely to attempt to side with my enemies as they are to side with you. Do I have to remove this threat to my operation?”
“No!” Val’s father said. “You don’t understand. I am the War Chief in charge. I make the choices. They will follow their orders!” With a snarl, he waved at his guards. “Find the detractors! They are traitors to their chief.”
The guards lining the arena started to organize, raising their energy weapons at the shouting arena. The shouts only increased.
“And I have a tribute for you!” The war chief seized on his one remaining bargaining chip. “That human’s life to spare Dur!”
The Alpha-drone turned very slowly in the air, and Eliard felt waves of energy like sudden shivers of cold wash over him as the creature scanned him.
“Ah. Captain Eliard Martin, we meet again,” said the voice of the machine intelligence.
“Alpha.” Eliard nodded, keeping the Device trained on it.
“I have to admit to a certain…fondness for the Mercury Blade, given that it was the midwife of my birth. However, I see from my biological scans that you have been sticking your nose into things where it doesn’t belong.” The drone hovered forward, very slowly, and very menacingly.
“Just say the word, Captain…” Val tensed.
“No, Val. You’ve done enough. I got this,” the captain said, stepping forward so that it was only him facing the drone. “I thought being places where you don’t belong was your specialty, Alpha,” the captain said, sweat breaking out over his forehead as he considered what he was doing. He didn’t want to be responsible for the destruction of Dur by some alien intelligence. Not just yet, anyway.
“Oh, Captain, your lack of foresight saddens me. I had appreciated your ability to stay ahead of the curve of your species, but now it seems that you are just as parochial as the rest. Still, your body will afford me the chance to study the Q’Lot virus that Armcore has been working on—”
Eliard fired the Device and was thrown backward by the recoil of his own arm. He rolled on the floor, turning as the ground behind him exploded in a crater of laser fire from the Alpha-drone. The Device’s meson blast had exploded over the thing’s nose-cone but had done little more than blacken it.
Oh crap. It doesn’t work. Ponos told me this thing wo
uld be Alpha’s Achilles Heel. He was wrong.
“Good-bye, Captain Martin—” the Alpha-drone stated, just as the ground erupted in gouts of sand and laser fire as something very, very fast strafed the arena.
It was the Mercury Blade.
It was his ship.
11
New War Old War
The Mercury’s railguns hit the side of the Alpha-drone, knocking it out of the sky and into the dirt of the arena.
“She’s done it! She’s bleeding done it!” the captain shouted in joy as he took the opportunity to fire the Device once again at the Alpha-drone, which he could see was buckled and smoking but already attempting to rise in a haphazard and wobbling fashion.
WHUMP. This time, the Device reacted differently. It did not appear to fire an energy weapon, but instead a cloud of small darts that hit the Alpha-drone’s shell and stuck. It was a powerful enough strike to force the drone back into the dirt, but not enough to destroy it.
It’s learning, Eliard saw. The Device is learning. But in that moment, his chest ached with a sharp pain as he felt the terrible toll that this Q’Lot weapon was having on his own body. How much longer can I use it?
But it turned out that right now, he didn’t have to. “Get your alien behind off my planet!” Val was roaring as he advanced and fired an energy blade weapon at the Alpha-drone. Behind him lay a heap of his father’s guards, which was where the captain assumed he got the weapon.
It was enough to distract the drone in its damaged state. Sand was being whipped up all around by its mysterious propulsion system, and it swung in and out of its own vortex as Val’s blasts struck it.
BAM! A laser darted out from the alien drone, hitting Val’s weapon and turning it into an instant inferno in his hands as he was thrown to the floor.
“Val, no!” Eliard shouted, taking aim and firing with the Device once again. More of the same bone-like darts hit and stuck in the Alpha-drone, spinning it on its axis.
Insurrection Page 12
