by Ian Douglas
Another explosion, this one quite close. Smith hugged the smoothly rippled surface, then looked up. Moultrie and Sanders had taken a direct hit; what was left of their MAPPs was drifting off into space, an expanding cloud of hot gas.
Shit!
He looked for another Glothr ship . . . but then a group of the cigar-shaped robots appeared above the lip of the crater, just thirty meters from Smith’s position. He swung his weapon about, his MAPP-2 unit flowing like water to both track the targets and to keep him snugged down against the surface. He fired . . . and a half dozen other Marines opened up as well. The Glothr robots, thank the gods of battle, tended to be a bit on the sluggish side, as though they were being controlled under a time lag. In seconds, the entire group, four or five of the machines, had been shot to bits.
But there were so many, many more—all of them, it seemed, headed this way.
“One-Four, this is Castle Rock.” The voice and ID were those of Colonel Jamison.
“This is One-Four. Go ahead!”
“You’re clear to move into the interior, Harry,” Jamison told him. “At your discretion, advance on the Pax and the Concord.”
“It’s about fucking time! Heads up, Marines! We’re going spaceborne!”
The order was answered by a chorus of shouts from Marine throats, a roar of battle cries as twelve hundred Marines rose from cover and dropped into hell. . . .
VFA-96, The Black Demons
Invictus Ring, T+12 MY
1712 hours, TFT
Lieutenant Fred Dahlquist wrestled his Starblade onto the correct vector and punched it, dropping through the gaping crater on the outer rim of the massive alien ring. This, he reflected, was something new, something never covered in the training simulations: piloting a high-performance nanomatrix fighter inside an alien structure.
He had to cut way, way back on his forward velocity as soon as he entered the crater. The normal velocities associated with deep-space combat would have slammed him into the far wall of the interior space in less time than an eye’s blink. Dropping now at a few hundred meters per second, he scanned the surrounding space, a cavern with black walls, unlit and made complicated by structural components—stalactites and stalagmites stretching out into the gulf as if to claw the invading fighters from the sky.
The Black Demons had taken some heavy losses in the past few moments. Dobbs and Martinez were dead, fried by those Glothr flying buildings. Hathaway was dead, caught in a nuclear fireball, the wreckage smeared across the outer surface of the ring. Gregory was missing . . . gone streaker and last seen dropping out of control toward the planet. And Schmitt had been killed earlier, in the tangle with the Tushies in front of the TRGA.
Over a third of the squadron, wiped out just like that.
All around him, Marines were entering the cavern, almost invisible in their light-drinking nanomatrix assault pods . . . not that there was much in the way of visible light in here. His visual feeds were mostly infrared. The six other Black Demons were scattered across the enclosed space, mixed in with the older Velociraptors of the Marines. High-energy proton beams swept up and out from the depths of the pit; Marine MAPPs flared like moths in a flame . . . and died.
“I’ve got a gun position locked!” Connor said. “Zero-one-niner . . . firing!”
Connor’s Starblade loosed a brief stream of high-velocity kinetic-kill rounds, dropping them with deadly accuracy into a pit housing a Glothr energy weapon. Visible light erupted from the pit, along with hurtling fragments.
“Nice shot, Meg!” Caswell yelled.
It had been a good shot, Dahlquist thought, a direct hit from eight kilometers with high deflection and without the benefit of a target lock or smart ordnance. Dahlquist wondered how Connor was holding up, knowing her lover was lost outside. . . .
“Form up, Demons,” the squadron’s CO called. “Tuck it in! Tuck it in!” Mackey had a thing about messy formations. Not that nicely ordered ranks were going to help in here.
But ten kilometers ahead, he could see their goal: the blunt shield-cap noses of two human starships, tucked away among the gantries and derricks of something that might be a shipyard. They were aglow in deep infrared light, and appeared to be nestled close to a pair of the emnigmatic Glothr time-benders.
The human ships—his brother’s ship—just ahead.
“Objectives in sight!” he called to the others. “Pax and Concord, bearing zero-zero-zero at eight kilometers!”
“Let’s get in there, people,” Mackey said. “The Marines need some cover! Keep it tight, people. . . .”
Place of Cold Dreaming
Invictus Ring
1713 hours, TFT
“Seven-one-cee-eight! The enemy is entering the ring in force!”
“I see it. Try to hold them. We are deploying more of the time-twisters.”
“There may be too many for—”
The transmission cut off with startling abruptness.
Numbers and technology, Seven-one-cee-eight thought, should have been sufficient to pin, overwhelm, and destroy this surprisingly dogged enemy, but it appeared that they possessed a tactical advantage that might well result in the Kin’s defeat. They were fast, their nervous systems functioning several times more quickly and more efficiently than those of the Kin, which meant that their reaction times were faster, their aim surer, their battlefield responses much quicker. The Kin’s robotic servants had been developed to counter the reaction time superiority of many other species within the Sh’daar associative, allowing freer and more accurate communication with faster minds, but even minor differences in reaction times were still serious enough to create a major disadvantage in combat, both ship-to-ship and among troops on the ground or in space.
It connected with one of the other Kin. “Dee-one-three-jay! Bring your twisters forward.”
“That will mean releasing the human ships.”
“If we do not, we will lose the human ships in any case. I want you to attempt to stop the attack through the breach.”
“I am doubtful, Seven-one-cee-eight. There are too many of them.”
“I doubt as well, Dee-one-three-jay. But it is the only chance we have.”
“We swarm together.”
We swarm together. The phrase, a statement of agreement and compliance, was the equivalent of a human’s “yes, sir” or “aye, aye.” When the Kin were in their juvenile phase, they swarmed their world’s ammonia-water seas in the hundreds of billions, minute, translucent polyps possessing only the rudiments of consciousness or sentience. By banding together in vast, cloudy masses aglow with bioluminescence, they defended themselves against the predators of Invictus’s vast and abyssal deeps.
The phrase was also a cultural reminder that no member of the Kin was above another, save as an accident of circumstance; the battle against the human fleet was a communal effort.
And as such, Seven-one-cee-eight was beginning to believe, they may have revealed a critical weakness in the Kin’s defenses. Humans, it had learned during its brief stay on Earth, were often divided and weak, but they could come together under common leadership in a way that was surprisingly strong. Their leaders were trained as leaders, and did not relinquish their role.
Surely, though, that limited the experience of any given leader? In its career, Seven-one-cee-eight had been ship master and crewman, swarm leader and drone. It knew all sides of the social equation, and could sense the thrill of the entire electrical current.
It wondered if that would be enough to defeat these humans, these monsters from the abyss of time and space. . . .
VMFA-77, “Devil Dogs”
4th Regimental Assault Group
Invictus Space, T+12 MY
1714 hours, TFT
Lieutenant Roger Mayhew used his mental link with his AI to bring his Velociraptor around onto a new heading, angling toward the
far end of the vast, dark cavern of the ring interior. Blackness enveloped him, then gave way to the blue and green glows of cool infrared. His fighter gave a shudder as he cut acceleration, and he wondered if the old Velociraptor was up to this.
The Marines had an old and venerable tradition of making do with older equipment—not entirely true in the case of the MAPP-2 units, but definitely for Marine space-air. VMFA-77 had received the SG-101s the year before, but the Marine Corps’ budget hadn’t yet allowed for those strike fighters to be replaced by the much newer and more modern Starblades.
In fact, Velociraptors weren’t that old. They’d only come on-line a couple of years ago, but indisputably, the ’Blades were newer, faster, and more powerful, and military technology was galloping ahead into an alien future faster than any human could keep up.
It would be damned nice, Mayhew thought, if the Corps could just once in a while deploy with truly frontline and first-rate gear, something that wouldn’t be obsolete a few months later. Velocicrappers. That was the nickname for the SG-101s within the Marine strike squadrons that flew them.
He wondered what would be replacing Starblades . . . and how much longer they would remain cutting edge.
“Green One,” he called, “Green Seven. I’ve got a lock on one of the Guard ships. The Pax, I think.”
“Copy that, Seven,” Captain Larson, the Devil Dogs’ skipper, replied. “Move in as close as you can.”
“Roj.” He cut his forward velocity to nearly nothing, switched off his gravitic drive, and let the weak local gravity drag him deeper into the black, vertical canyon at a few meters per second. The Pax was nestled in among a forest of gantries and structural supports, almost inaccessible. She didn’t appear damaged at all, but there was no sign of life, no wink of navigation strobes, no indication of onboard power, no open communications channels.
“There’s the other one over there,” Lieutenant Kathryn Bixby, Green Five, said. “Wait . . . what’s that moving next to the Pax?”
Mayhew saw the movement in the same moment: a silver cylinder, pointed at both ends and tucked away in the gantries and derricks directly alongside the Pax.
“Stay clear of that thing!” Mayhew warned. “It’s a Glothr time-bender!”
“There’s another one!” Lieutenant Ramirez called. “Next to the Concord!”
“I think,” Mayhew said, “that they’re bringing out the big guns.”
VFA-96, The Black Demons
Invictus surface, T+12 MY
1715 hours, TFT
Gregory didn’t remember much of his passage through to the Invictan surface. His AI had taken over what remained of his fighter’s maneuvering systems, but there wasn’t enough power left over to let him see what was going on. Encased in blackness, he’d crouched within the embrace of his Starblade’s cockpit, straining to breathe against the crushing pressure of deceleration. The fighter’s gravitic drive boosted the ship and its pilot in free fall, permitting accelerations of tens of thousands of gravities, but the small impellers used as an auxiliary drive did not. As the Starblade dropped toward Invictus, the straining impellers applied more and more thrust, reaching ten Gs and bringing Gregory to the ragged edge of unconsciousness.
The impellers failed, and for a stomach-wrenching moment, Gregory was again in free fall, dropping through emptiness.
The Starblade stuck the surface at an oblique angle, guided by the AI to come in almost parallel to the surface. He felt the shock of impact . . . another moment of free fall . . . another jolt . . . and then he was tumbling over and over, slamming against one side of the pilot capsule and then the other until at long, long last, he came to a shuddering halt.
He was down.
“AI!” he called. “Can you get me a visual feed?”
There was no response, and he remained in blackness. He wondered if the Starblade, all of its systems, was completely dead.
He still had his in-head icons up and running, however. He triggered the icon that would begin the reboot process, hoping to bring his fighter’s AI back to life.
Without it, he was dead.
1/4 Marines
4th Regimental Assault Group, 1st MARDIV
Invictus Space, T+12 MY
1717 hours, TFT
It had been a long time, Major Smith decided, since the Marines had taken part in an old-fashioned over-the-top charge. Black MAPP units were flowing down the internal walls of the crater in a cloud, accelerating into the depths, as Glothr fire snapped and flared from farther down inside the depths. Ahead, Smith could see the Marine fighters tangling with a couple of Glothr ships. . . .
No—not just ships! Those two shapes were the alien time-warping units, like the one that had originally immobilized the Concord on board the first Glothr ship they’d encountered back at Sol. Whether it was an independent warship or a piece of machinery—a weapon mounted here inside the ring—was unknown. What was known was that the things were extremely dangerous. . . .
“Open up on those two big targets,” Smith ordered his Marines. “Don’t let them deploy!”
Particle beams and laser fire snapped across the dwindling last few kilometers. The Marines were sharply limited in the weapons they could use in these close confines. Nuke shipkillers would destroy their surroundings as well as the targets, might damage the two imprisoned High Guard vessels as well—and probably kill any Marines in proximity.
Time, Smith noticed, seemed to be slowing to a crawl, and he wondered if the effect was due to the alien temporal weapons or if it was simply a subjective effect of intense and deadly combat.
Chapter Twenty-two
7 August, 2425
USNS/HGF Concord
Invictis Ring, T+12 MY
1718 hours, TFT
From Terrance Dahlquist’s perspective, Concord had been captured barely an instant ago. The High Guard ship had been accelerating out from Invictus, pushing c hard on her way back to rejoin the task force at the TRGA cylinder, when a Glothr time-bending ship had come up through the starbow of weirdly twisted space ahead of the ship—ahead, since one of the illusions of near-c travel made objects coming from behind appear to be ahead and to one side. Dahlquist had had just enough time to scream a warning through the ship’s intercom: “Brace for collision!”
And then . . . nothing.
He took a deep breath. He’d been panting with the exertion, the stress, the raw fear . . . and now Concord was someplace else entirely. His data feeds showed that she was no longer accelerating, no longer moving close to the speed of light, that the ship, in fact, was now inside some sort of immense hanger or orbital facility.
The inrush of new data was staggering, a torrent, a waterfall of information about the ship and surrounding space. Dahlquist scanned the ship’s surroundings, startled to see that Concord now appeared to be motionless in a space dock of some sort, surrounded by scaffolding and the tiny, hovering shapes of Glothr robots. A flash dazzled his in-head eye, and he realized that wherever they were, they were in the eye of a fiercely raging battle. A Glothr ship, sleek and sharply pointed on both ends, was sliding clear of the dock and away from the Concord. That, he decided, was why the passage of time had resumed for the captured ship; the mechanisms that had slowed time for the Concord and the Pax were now moving away, and taking their time-slowing fields with them.
In the distance, human fighters, both Starblades and Velociraptors, were approaching, together with a large number of troops in MAPP-2 assault pods. The battle was savage and unrelenting: Dahlquist watched as Marines were picked off; fighters were picked off; torrents of particle-beam and laser fire were directed against the alien time benders.
Dahlquist had no way of knowing how much time had passed since Concord had been captured, since every computer, AI, and timekeeping device on board the ship had been frozen in time with the ship itself. It could be hours later . . . or centuries.
. . .
No, not centuries. Fighter designs changed so rapidly that if centuries had passed since Concord’s capture, the fighters out there would be unrecognizable. The Marines on board the Marne, he remembered, still used ’Raptors. The chances were excellent that those fighters out there were part of America’s TF-1.
Hell, one of those Starblades might well be Fred’s.
Hard on the heels of that revelation came another. They’d come for them! Specifically, Admiral Gray had brought the whole task force into . . . whatever this alien place was to find the Concord and Pax and rescue them.
And that single fact put a different spin on things for Dahlquist.
Sure, human warriors operated under a sacred ethos, one that said that you never left your own behind . . . but sometimes—more often than not, perhaps—there was simply no way to honor that promise.
Which made it damned special when your own did come back for you.
Gregory
VFA-96, The Black Demons
Invictus surface, T+12 MY
1725 hours, TFT
Gregory felt the hull of his crippled Starblade give a shudder. It was cooling fast, and he didn’t have much time left.
He’d finally been able to reboot his AI, and then get an exterior view, the image revealed on an in-head window. Not that it helped much. The landscape outside was black and frigid, with rocks made of water-ice and the galaxy hanging above one horizon, cold, beautiful, and remote. The temperature, according to his feed, was just twenty degrees Kelvin. The heat remaining in his Starblade was leaching out into the ice at a horrific rate; his life support system was struggling to keep up, but it wouldn’t be long, Gregory knew, before the system would die.
And then so would he.
His Starblade was sending out an automated distress signal, but there was very little power behind it. He doubted that any SAR vehicles off the America would be able to pick it up. His communications were out as well. Again, no power.
