by Richard Fox
The short graphs next to the tallest bar vanished.
“So,” Stacey said, “they’re realigning potentially habitable worlds to meet their ideal. Make more room for what’s coming. Now, eliminate data points with species that went extinct prior to Xaros contact and outside the main habitable zone.” All the other data points vanished.
“They won’t put a gate up on a world they can’t colonize, but they will have one around planets with ruins, doesn’t matter what kind of world it was.”
“So what?” Darcy’s hand came away from her chin like it was tossing the words out.
“So the Xaros aren’t hanging around any of these worlds, making babies and living there. They move with a purpose. Who’s going to live on all these habitable worlds the drones are setting up for them? And why are they interested in extinct civilizations?” Stacey asked.
“The accepted theory is that there’s a colonization fleet coming behind the Xaros,” Darcy said.
“OK, but where are they? The Xaros have been in the galaxy for almost a hundred thousand years. There’s a pretty significant buffer from where they were first seen and where they are today. If there’s a colony fleet coming, what’re they waiting for? Bastion, show me worlds with Crucibles and surface activity.”
A buzzer sounded. “No known data entry.”
“The data may be old,” Stacey said, “but so far there’s no one moving into all the prime real estate.”
“They could be waiting until the entire galaxy is theirs—hard to assign motives to a phantom civilization. We can only infer,” Darcy said.
“Bastion, at current rate of advance, how long until the Xaros overrun the entire galaxy?” Stacey asked.
“Three thousand nine hundred and twelve years,” the station replied.
“Let’s assume,” Stacey said, “that you’re right and they won’t get here until they own every star. Maybe they’re about four thousand years away from the spot where they first arrived.” Stacey raised her hands and grasped at the edge of the galaxy where the Xaros were first encountered and pulled it toward her. The galactic display zoomed in to the edge of the star field.
“Now, this math contains a lot of inference, but if there’s a colony fleet coming and it’ll arrive the exact day the galaxy is conquered …,” Stacey said, tracing a line out from the edge of the galaxy and drawing a circle, “they should be somewhere around here.”
“That’s wonderful, Stacey, fine detective work,” Darcy said and Stacey was impressed with how well Bastion put a sarcastic tone to her words. “Too bad we’ll all be long dead before any light or anything on the electromagnetic spectrum from that place can even reach the spy probes or Bastion.”
“We don’t have to see it, Darcy. We just have to detect it. They want lots of room—that’s why they’re rearranging planets. So whatever’s coming should be big, real big, to fill those planets. Right?”
“I think I know where you’re going with this. Gravitons?”
“Gravitons don’t bother with the speed of light. We could do a survey of that part of space and see if there’s a dip in the space-time continuum that would indicate there is a colony fleet coming.” Stacey’s face lit up with excitement.
“Bastion, conduct a—”
“Negative,” the station said. “Resources and computation power for such a project require Qa’Resh approval. The previous eight requests similar to what you desire were denied.”
“What?” Stacey asked. “You mean I’m not the first person to realize this?”
“Correct.”
“Why didn’t you say something?”
“You didn’t ask.”
Darcy’s laugh only made Stacey feel more foolish.
“Who made the previous requests?”
“All requests came from species designation: Toth,” Bastion said.
Darcy’s laugh cut off.
“What?” Stacey asked. “Who are the Toth?”
****
The Marines took cover in the boulders packed into the mountainside. Lowenn, not used to climbing mountains in armor, had to be helped the last few hundred yards up the steep footpath. She sat against a boulder with her visor open, gulping for air. Yarrow checked her over.
“Yarrow, she going to live?” Hale asked him on a private IR channel.
“She’ll be fine in a few minutes. I’ve got her armor pumping electrolytes. Want me to hit her with a tranq, get her nerves under control?” Yarrow asked.
“No, she’s held up better than I thought she would. Keep an eye on her,” Hale said and closed the channel. He tapped Bailey and Torni on their shoulders. “Let’s get up on the ridge and take a look at what’s over there.”
“Finally. I’ve already got a perch picked out.” Bailey moved along the mountainside and climbed around the white boulders. Hale and Torni followed behind her.
Bailey unslung her rifle and reassembled the rail gun in seconds. She gave the buttstock a quick pat then slithered up to a pair of boulders on the mountain crest. She tucked a battery pack against the side of the boulder and ran a cable into the weapon. She tucked the sniper rifle against her shoulder and looked into the scope.
The feed from her weapon went onto Hale’s visor and he saw the capital. Four pairs of stepped pyramids, each cut with staircases leading to the flat apex, ran along a center line, two pairs on either side of a massive pyramid dead center of the city. The massive pyramid was alabaster white with milky hues covering the sides. Hale squeezed his eyes shut and looked again. He could have sworn he saw some of the colors changing from subtle shades of ivory and eggshell to marble and pearl.
The feed zoomed in to smaller buildings, two- and three-story stone structures laid out haphazardly on either side of the pyramids. There didn’t seem to be any roads in the city other than the one on either side of the great white pyramid and between the stepped pyramids.
Bailey’s head popped up from the scope, then went back down.
“What the hell was that?” she asked.
“I didn’t see anything,” Torni said. “Is it Xaros?”
“Ain’t Xaros, that’s for sure.” Bailey said. Hale zoomed away from the stone building and tried to find what had Bailey’s attention.
“Bailey, send it to me,” Hale said.
His feed zoomed in on a gap between stone buildings. There, clinging to the side of a building, was what looked like a giant salamander. It was almost six feet long from stubby tail to the pointed end of its head. It wore a tight blue body glove that stopped midway down its calves and arms; bare scales over its six-fingered clawed hands and feet were a ruddy black. The feed zoomed in on its head; yellow eyes twitched independently of each other. A half mask covered its upper snout leaving its jaw free to snap at insects buzzing around it, and wire ran from the sides of the mask and into its body glove.
The creature climbed up the stone building, peeked its head over the roof, and then darted into an open window.
“Was that a local?” Bailey asked.
“It had a breathing mask on. Something native wouldn’t need that,” Torni said.
Bailey tensed. “Sir, this just got weirder. Look.”
Hale’s feed panned to the stairs on a stepped pyramid. A reptilian centaur walked up the long staircase, its clawed legs similar to the alien he saw on the stone house. Its upper torso hinged up from the front pair of legs, its arms little different from the legs carrying it up the stairs. The alien wore pale blue armor, which shifted of its own accord so as not to hinder the alien’s movements. A long weapon that looked like vines twisted into the shape of a rifle was slung diagonally across its back. The head was larger than the other one, wider and crested with a bright red fan. It wore the same breathing mask as the others.
“Must be an officer, look at all that shiny,” Bailey said.
Two of the smaller aliens scampered toward the larger one. With a wave of the larger alien’s claws, the others bolted away.
Hale considered his options. Once, just once, he wished a
mission would go as planned and as expected.
“Steuben, Lowenn, any idea what these things are?” Hale asked. He sent pics from his feed history to them both with a few swipes against his forearm display.
“Well,” Lowenn said, “they’re definitely not Shanishol. Given—”
Steuben sprang from his seat next to her and charged up the mountainside with more speed and determination than a human armor suit charging into battle. The Karigole bounded off boulders and stopped his advance just short of Bailey. He crawled next to the sniper, the claws on his fingertips distended more than double their normal length and dug into the earth.
Steuben spoke in his native tongue, guttural words Hale didn’t understand.
“Steuben? Something you care to share?” Hale asked.
“They are the Toth. Betrayers, traitors and murderers.” Steuben’s hand gripped a rock and squeezed. The rock trembled then burst apart. “We should have known they’d come. A race of carrion feeders couldn’t resist this.”
“Something tells me they aren’t going to help us find Omnium and how the Shanishol died,” Hale said.
“The Toth.” Steuben said the name with derision. “They were once the lynchpin to the entire Alliance. With the Alliance’s technology and their numbers they could have been the grand army that turned the Xaros back. But they turned on us all, tried to capture a Qa’Resh, and raided worlds that once depended on them for protection. All to feed their overlord’s addictions. They ….” Steuben tapped a closed fist against his chest. “The Qa’Resh did something I don’t understand—they kept them from using their stolen jump drives. There’s been no contact with the Toth for a century. Now they are here.”
“Are they hostile?” Hale asked.
“We must kill them. All of them,” Steuben said.
“Steuben, I’m not going to start a war between Earth and these Toth if I don’t have to.”
The skin on Steuben’s face rippled with color. “You don’t understand, Hale. The Toth look at all other sentient species as fodder for their overlords. They will kill all of us without hesitation.”
“Then we’ll do our best to avoid them. Remember why we’re here. The codex. The Omnium. Not to pick a fight with every new civilization we come across.”
“Hale, if they detect us ….”
“I’m guessing they’re here for the same reasons we are. They know the Xaros are here. I’m willing to bet they’re doing their best to not be noticed too. If we have to shoot Toth in the face we will. We’re Marines, Steuben, not sheep. Now let’s get down there before that storm rolls in.”
CHAPTER 8
From where she stood on the roof of the apartment building, the night skyline of Phoenix wasn’t as Shannon Martel remembered it. She’d stood atop this same building many nights and looked out to see skyscrapers and the rolling dome of the Veteran’s Memorial Coliseum, all lit against the desert sky. She used to count the delivery drone running lights as they ran from fulfillment centers or neighborhood 3D printing maker factories to the millions of homes in the city.
Now, what remained of the city stood against the night sky like tombstones, silent and cold. The Xaros vivisection had touched few of the city’s skyscrapers, leaving empty buildings rotting away from exposure and neglect.
Every person in the Ibarra fleet that planned on settling the moons of Saturn found themselves rebuilding the city of Phoenix and living in and around the utility grid that survived around Euskal Tower, the center of Marc Ibarra’s once vast financial empire and where he’d hidden humanity’s one alien ally during the Xaros occupation.
Martel spotted a robot crew laying a new solar-collecting roadway to the empty city center, the forward edge of reclamation efforts. Most survivors lived in tent cities until the construction crews could renovate homes for a more permanent housing solution.
The irony didn’t escape her. With all the room in the world to live, most of humanity still lived right on top of each other. The sanitation conditions were better than the mega-slums had been in Beijing and New Delhi, but the amount of personal space was about the same. The rehydrated extruded plant-matter meals weren’t the best, but they’d have to make do until the robot farms along the Salt River were up and running.
Most of the company executives that were with the fleet had apartments around Euskal Tower, making it easier for Marc Ibarra to summon them at all hours of the day and night. These apartments were repaired and renovated first, which didn’t sit well with the average would-have-been colonist, but the executives were putting in twenty-hour days to get the city back up and running, to build Titan station and to repair the space fleet. It wasn’t as if they could spend many nights in their old rooms anyway. Martel was one such executive. She’d feigned exhaustion to get away from work for a few hours, but sleep wasn’t part of her plans for the evening.
Martel glanced at her Ubi and kept waiting. She was early, like always. The clean desert air helped her focus, rationalize what she was asked to do. She thought the days of carrying out Marc Ibarra’s dirty work had ended once the Xaros wiped out the vast majority of humanity, but he’d sent her a target packet a few hours ago with a termination order.
She’d killed for him before: The occasional corporate employee that tried to sell trade secrets to their rivals or foreign spies. Government officials that didn’t have the courtesy to stay bought after Ibarra had paid the demanded bribes. Nothing she hadn’t done for years when she’d worked for the American CIA.
Decades ago, Ibarra had found her in Baja California, disillusioned and drinking herself to death. He’d offered her a chance to put her skills to use protecting his dream for humanity. A humanity where science and technology and one’s willingness to work hard and smart would determine success, not the lottery of birth or allegiance to the right political theory. He’d lied to her, hadn’t told her that he was engineering humanity’s survival from the impending Xaros invasion. After she’d returned to Phoenix after the Battle of the Crucible, she’d looked back and seen how her actions shaped that destiny.
Marc Ibarra, or whatever his intelligence inside that probe was now, had called her and tried to apologize for lying to her, but she’d forgiven him before he could finish explaining. She would have done the same thing in his position, and she had a long career of lying to subordinates for their own good while she’d been in the CIA.
Regardless, Martel thought her days of killing in service of Ibarra’s plan were over, until a few hours ago.
A delivery drone flew up the side of the building and set a tote bag against the roof, then buzzed away. Inside the bag, Martel found a prescription bottle of pills with her target’s name on it, a bottle of store-bought alcohol, an unlabeled hypospray and a gauss pistol. Everything she’d need.
She got into the elevator and hit the button for her target’s floor. Living in the same building certainly made this mission easier, and Ibarra would take care of the camera footage as he always did.
Martel leaned close to the glass on the side of the elevator, examining her face. Ever since she’d come back from the fleet, something seemed off. She’d had the best plastic surgery and rejuvenation treatments Ibarra could afford while she worked for him—a woman in her nineties couldn’t run around assassinating people otherwise—but there was something different about her face. She still had the same half-Korean half-Caucasian features, exotic and hard to quantify, but her jawline was tighter, her nose a bit flatter than she remembered.
Must be something to do with the time jump, she thought. Not that anyone had mentioned the physiological effects of missing nearly three decades of time. She’d have it set just right once Phoenix had recovered to the point where elective plastic surgery was available again. She chuckled. She’d probably have natural wrinkles by then.
The display above the elevator door closed in on her target’s floor. She reached into the bag and wrapped her hand around the gauss pistol’s grip. She felt the weapon chamber a round as it responded to her p
alm print. The door opened and revealed an empty hallway.
“Lock all doors and freeze this elevator,” Martel said. The building’s automated controls were slaved to her voice, which would make this assignment easier than usual. No chance or worry of someone seeing her at this odd hour. She heard deadbolts click shut on apartment doors as she walked down the hallway.
“Kill the lights.” Martel tapped at her left temple and the night-vision lenses within her eyes activated to compensate for the now dark hallway. It wouldn’t do to have light spill into the target’s apartment while she was sleeping. Martel stopped at apartment 437 and pulled out her pistol. She opened the door with her toe and waited, listening for any sound that her target was awake or moving around.
She heard nothing and went in, closing the door behind her, but not all the way. The click of a door latch had been enough to alert people in the past. The apartment was a one-bedroom affair meant for overworked and lonely executives. A few hundred square feet of upscale housing with an unused kitchen, a couch used more as a spot to leave jackets and briefcases than for relaxing in front of a television projection, a single bathroom and one bedroom with a closed door.
Martel tested the closed door and found it unlocked. She swung it open slowly, keeping her muzzle flush with the door.
Her target was in bed. The woman’s breathing was deep and regular, exactly what Martel expected from a sleeper. Martel kept the pistol trained on her target as she crept toward her. She set the tote down and pulled out the hypospray. She pressed a button on the back of the nozzle and waited to hear a slight click telling her the deadly contents were active.
Martel reached her arm over the bed and hovered the hypospray over the woman’s neck. The hypospray ticked, and Martel pressed it against the exposed flesh. There was a hiss, and Martel leaned back and dropped the hypospray into the bag. She took out the alcohol, unsnapped the lid and poured a little bit of the amber liquid on the floor and on the bed, then set it on the nightstand.
