“They are here,” Ted said, relaying what the ship’s sensors were telling Plato. The Chariot dusted off and moved into the distance, hovering where they could still see it.
Joseph walked in first with Bundin close behind. The alien’s four eyes missed little as he could look in all directions at the same time. Joseph held up a fist, signaling a halt. They stopped, their weapons aimed into the walkways between buildings. A face appeared from a doorway before them. A woman’s face. She stepped out, unafraid but confused. She looked at the newcomers and called into the building.
“Go around them!” Ted called.
More women. “When we scanned the planet, you said that there was only one location with adult males. Are you telling me that everyone here is female?”
“Yes. I thought that was clear from the statement. There are approximately fifteen thousand women on this planet and a hundred men.”
“So Ten didn’t kill the women as it told those who served on the ships?” Joseph asked over his shoulder as more and more women in utilitarian clothing entered the walkway in front of them.
“Ten exists to provide disinformation as that furthers its goals of mind control.”
Cory sighed and pushed past Bundin and Joseph. They raised their railguns when she was in front of them. Joseph tried to grab her, but it was too late. Dokken trotted at her side.
“We’re here to offer you freedom, save you from this,” Cory said, waving her arm to take in the prison camp.
“What do we need saving from?” the first woman asked.
Cory stopped pointing. “Are you free?”
“We do what we need to do.” The woman looked perplexed. “Where did you come from?”
“Earth, originally, just like you, but we came here by our choice. You don’t realize that you’re being held captive by an artificial intelligence known as Ten.”
“But we have what we need.”
“Men? Companionship? Free choice?”
“Only the best of us are selected for breeding. We are not the best.” The woman seemed convinced by her argument. Others behind her nodded.
“We’re wasting time,” Ted said.
“What if any of you can have children? That’s the way it is out there.” Cory pointed to the sky. “The universe is a wonderful place to explore.”
“Get on with it,” Ted added impatiently.
“We have this thing we need to do, and then we’ll talk some more.”
“Are those men?” another woman asked.
“They are. Joseph and his mate, Petricia.” Cory pointed behind her. “Carrying the box is Ted. And this is Bundin. He’s from Poddern and is my friend, as is the best of us, Dokken, a German Shepherd.”
“But those are men,” the women said, slowly moving forward.
“We may have a problem,” Joseph whispered.
“Just shoo them away,” Ted replied. Joseph fired his railgun in the air. The women shied away from the hypersonic cracks.
“We need to pass. We’ll be back and can talk more. Please, go back into your buildings,” Cory said encouragingly, using her hands to wave them toward the door.
Petricia walked ahead and stood in front of Joseph. “Looks like we’ll have to protect you,” she said casually.
“Can we go?” Ted asked and started to storm ahead. Joseph grabbed his shirt.
“We need to stay back. Remember the ROE, we’re not to kill the people.”
Ted looked miffed. Cory waved for them to follow as she moved ahead once the last of the women had returned through the doorway. When they walked by, they saw the mob in the doorway and at the windows, staring at Joseph and Ted.
It only took the first woman jumping out to energize the group.
“Run!” Cory yelled as she took off for the building that Ted had pointed to earlier.
***
Kimber’s suit lights reflected off the clouds of dust within the crater. Through a forced gap in the bedrock wall, she could make out the darkness beyond. She worked her way over the rock chips and fallen boulders. Once past, the clear air of an artificial tunnel showed it descent deep into the planet.
With five mechs in front and four behind, Terry and Char signaled for them to speed up. Kim started jogging, an easy pace that didn’t pound the ground too much, but Terry could still feel the vibrations. He shook it off. Ten had to know they were coming once the Chariot’s railgun started digging a new tunnel.
“I see movement up ahead,” Kimber reported using the suit’s external speakers.
Terry didn’t reply. Kim was in front. She would do the right thing if there was a human shield. She knew tactics. She knew the rules of the engagement, the ROE. And she knew the mission. Destroy the hardware that carried the entity known as Ten.
A rocket screamed up the tunnel. Kim had no time to react. The warhead hit her in the chest and exploded, filling the area in front of the mechs with fire and smoke.
“Robots,” Kim called from her back while trying to roll over and get back up.
“Open fire!” Terry yelled. Four heavy railguns spit streams of projectiles into the darkness below. The sound of shattering metal and exploding robots suggested the first line of defense was ill-equipped to deal with modern mechanized warriors.
Kimber called for a cease fire, jumped to her feet, and ran forward. The four mechs in front pounded after her. Terry and Char ran after them. Kimber opened fire before she reached the remains of the enemy’s front lines.
The War Axe
Clodagh hadn’t left her station. She’d told a teammate to grab a sandwich and pick one up for her while he was there. He’d been gone a total of thirty seconds, just long enough to get beyond the emergency bulkheads and blocked from returning to engineering.
The first explosion threw her to the deck. She returned to her station, no worse for the wear, and was standing there when artificial gravity was lost. She hung on and continued to access ship systems as she tried to figure out what had happened.
An explosion near the rear of the ship, not far from where she worked. Shrapnel had penetrated some of the ship’s systems. Repair bots had already been dispatched and were reconnecting power flow conduits and fiber optics.
She moved to the next issue. Would it happen again?
Sensors were still operational. Sensor data didn’t show anything until the last nanosecond before the explosion.
A mine.
“Not again,” she groaned. She studied the data. The mine appeared. From nowhere. A stealthed mine?
“Ankh, this is Clodagh. Are you there?”
The Crenellian didn’t answer. She checked the comm circuit and verified that it was intact.
“Captain San Marino, this is Lieutenant Shortall. It appears that we hit a mine.” She hoped that her report went through. No response. She wondered if she were the only one left alive.
“Save the ship first. Are we in a minefield?” she asked. “Smedley?”
The AI didn’t answer. She checked the circuits, and they appeared to be fine. “Maybe I’m the only one who’s dead, and I don’t know it. I guess we’ll have to do it the hard way.”
She looked at the data before and after the appearance of the mine. Baselined the numbers from static space in this area, then compared the three. She found a stream of numbers that showed a slight difference. She focused solely on that data, triangulated the locations based on raw reports from multiple sensors outside the War Axe, and built a map.
“We’re in the middle of a minefield,” she told her screen. One mine was close. She activated thrusters on both port and starboard sides of the ship to hold the position. The thruster pushed the mine away. It floated a few hundred meters before coming to a stop.
“You’re not in fixed locations. That could make it easier to get out of here. You’re not very close together either. No wonder we didn’t hit anything coming in. Only after we slowed down did we become a target,” she said aloud as she started plotting a course through the minefield and into space.
; CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Home World, Drop Ships 3 and 4
Christina ran down the ramp and followed the mechs as they entered the compound. Gray buildings, brown dirt, green grass, and blue sky. No decorations or artwork of any type appeared on or around the buildings.
“This could be the saddest place I’ve ever seen,” Christina mumbled. The mechs maneuvered toward their target, four pairs of two using a leapfrog tactical movement, one prepared to fire as the other moved to the next covered firing position. Then the first ran in front. Christina moved behind the mechs, staying behind cover when she could. The JDS was in her hand, but hung loosely at her side.
“The buildings are filled with people,” Fleeter reported from the front.
“Are they armed? Are we walking into an ambush?”
“No, ma’am.”
Christina walked into the open. “Come on out with your hands up!” she shouted. “COME ON!”
The doors opened slowly and sleepy faces appeared. They were surprised by the mechs but didn’t seem afraid. They accepted them matter-of-factly. Christina walked to the front. “Who are you?”
A number of the women muttered names, but none of it made any sense. It wasn’t the question that Christina needed to ask. “Where are the computers?”
“The what?” one woman replied. The vacant looks told Christina all she needed to know.
“Power signature up ahead, right where Ted told us it would be,” Fleeter reported.
“We need to go up there and do this thing. Then we’ll come back for you,” Christina told them.
“You’re beautiful,” one of the women said. “What are those things?”
“Weapons? Do you mean our weapons?” Christina held up the pistol and the woman nodded.
The colonel smiled at them. “I should be happy that you don’t know what weapons are. Too many use them to control others. Yet, there are entities like Ten who exploits the power of the mind to oppress people like you. You were stolen from your homes, long ago, brought here, and then separated from half of your people. Ten’s time has come. When this day is done, much of the world will be in flames. Hopefully, we’re still standing and will take you to your men, where you can decide for yourselves what you want to do.”
“But we weren’t selected for breeding.”
“No one gets to select that for you. We believe it’s your choice who you want to partner with and what you want to do after that. If you want to partner at all, that is.” Christina looked at the empty space next to her and shrugged.
“Can we come along?”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Christina told them. “It could turn ugly. Stay here, stay safe, and we’ll be back for you.”
“And then what? Should we go about our duties?”
The colonel wasn’t sure what those were and didn’t want to ask. “No. Go back to your rooms and wait. Keep your heads down. If it looks like all hell is breaking loose, run that way.” Christina pointed toward the shuttles where K’Thrall and Slicker were on guard.
Don’t freak out if a bunch of women come running your way. Go into the shuttle and close the hatch. Why don’t you do that now. We have no indication of an external threat to the ship.
Roger, K’Thrall replied. He swirled his arm in the air, and the four warriors entered and sealed the shuttles.
“Back inside with you,” Christina told the women. She tomahawked an arm toward the building with the energy signature. Fleeter stepped off with her team in tow. Christina took her position behind them, and the other four mechs brought up the rear.
“Knock, knock, Ten. Can we come in? No? We’ll leave this big bucket of fuck you out here on the porch…” she said to herself.
Home World, Drop Ships 5 and 6
The darkness greeted Capples as he jogged from the back of the drop ship. On this part of Home World, it was the middle of the night. The mechs were uninhibited by darkness. They formed up as they walked toward the compound. A massive wire fence greeted them. With a grab and a kick, Cap tore out an entire section. He cast it aside and walked into the compound. He thrust his fist over his head. Freeze.
He checked his sensors. Infrared showed a great number of people, all of them horizontal in their beds. Cap signaled for quiet and they began moving, deliberately, heel to toe, walking without making noise.
They walked through the outer compound without waking the sleeping, reaching a great wall beyond which an inner area was secured.
Cap used his heads-up display to establish the tactical plan. Two mechs faced outward, covering the others. Two moved forward to breach the building. The other four spread out and took cover, preparing to rush in when the way was clear.
The breaching team studied their data showing the power emanating from the building, the infrared and ultraviolet signatures, metals within the structure. Praeter nodded to his teammate. There was no handle.
He didn’t need one. He reared back and used the power of the suit to kick the door open.
***
Kimber blasted the robots until no power remained within their metal bodies. She kicked them from her path as she strode through, stopping briefly to recalibrate her sensors. The tunnel led ever deeper.
“I think that was the first line of defense,” Kimber told them.
“A soft unit would have been decimated by the first blast,” Terry replied. He walked past the position. “Like the Maginot Line and as effective.”
The defenses erected to protect the Allies against a resurgent Germany. They hadn’t worked because technology had changed. Man’s ability to wage war had improved too quickly for the peace-minded to keep up.
Terry didn’t think Ten was peaceful, only complacent. How long had it been since any challenge was mounted to the AI’s supremacy? Had it been challenged?
“Take care,” he needlessly told Kimber. She continued downward, four mechs close behind. Their five sets of sensors actively engaged in seeking the next obstacle.
Char closed her eyes and looked for the draw of Etheric power. She couldn’t find anything in the gray mists below them. “Nothing.”
“Nothing at all?”
“No life of any sort,” she replied.
“Are we in the right place?” Terry started to worry that they weren’t. Which meant that someone else was. He wondered who he had ordered into harm’s way.
The War Axe
Micky flailed within the holographic screens. The data scrolled by inconsistently, the controls worked haphazardly, and he couldn’t be sure that the ship wasn’t dead.
The overhead speaker crackled. “Gravity will be online in a few moments. If anyone is still alive, please prepare yourselves.”
The captain dropped the holo screens and waited. On the third deep breath, gravity was restored. He unbuckled himself and climbed into the captain’s chair. He tapped the screen for ship-wide broadcast.
“All hands, this is the captain. Submit your damage reports verbally. Engines first. Commander Suresha.”
Silence greeted his request.
“Is anyone available from engineering?”
“Clodagh here, sir. We hit a mine. Despite the immediate effect, the damage was not too bad. Automated repair bots are bringing the systems back one by one. We should be functional shortly.”
“We’re in a minefield?” Micky blurted, groaning and grabbing his head. “How come we didn’t see them?”
“They are shielded, but we have a way to see them. Now, that is. Transferring the updated info to the bridge.”
The front screen came back to life and showed the War Axe along with pinpoints of light that represented the mines. They were far enough apart that it seemed almost like a ship would have to go out of its way to hit one.
“Thanks, Clodagh. Good work. Do you know if Suresha is alive?”
“I don’t. The emergency bulkheads engaged and locked me in. I’ve been too busy to explore the adjacent sections, but I can do that now that gravity is restored.”
/> “Continue what you’re doing, Lieutenant. I need this ship to function. We have people on the planet and a hostile fleet behind us. We’re sitting ducks.”
“Clodagh out,” she replied and went back to work digging through the systems to ensure the bots restored things in the right order.
Micky went through his departments. Mac and Blagun answered readily. They were up to their asses in alligators trying to repair the damage. Oscar was nowhere to be found.
“Ankh, can you tell me what happened to Smedley? Ankh?” Micky couldn’t access anything from the combat information center. “Can anyone get to the CIC?”
The bridge door opened and Clifton hurried through. “I can’t express how much that sucked,” he said as he hurried back to the helm. He was in his underwear.
Micky couldn’t speak as he watched the absurdity before him.
“Don’t ask,” Clifton requested and started working the systems, looking at the information on the main screen and plotting alternate flight routes to avoid the mines.
“This is Private Gefelton. I think a team of us can get to the CIC from the hangar bay.”
“On your way, Private. Let me know when you’ve arrived.”
The team from Ramses’ Chariot
The enhanced humans easily outpaced the women. Joseph thought it was funny to be chased by a mob of women, just until it wasn’t. He understood that much more clearly what the werewolves had gone through on Sheri’s Pride.
“I shall hold them up,” Bundin offered.
“You can’t shoot them,” Cory said while controlling her pace and breathing.
“I shall not hold them up,” Bundin corrected and continued running.
Ted reached the building and waited. In the distance, the frigate rose into the air, using its entire sensor suite to examine the building and relay the information to Plato and Ted.
The others slowed and then stopped in the open area before the two-story concrete structure.
“There is no color here,” Joseph said as if on an afternoon stroll. He tensed as he raised his railgun. Pounding feet carried a flood of women from the path behind them. Cory put her arms out, yelling for them to stop. Dokken showed his fangs and barked furiously, darting at the women. The front row came to a halt and the others slowly filled in the space behind them.
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