"This must not happen. If Foundation forces secure the station, there is a strong chance they will learn of the existence of the minnows, perhaps even capture one themselves. I repeat: this must not—this cannot—happen. As far as we know, by the grace of the Fourteen, none but the Enclave has ever captured a live minnow. They are our inspiration. They are our guides. They are ours. And I'll be damned if any fall into Foundation hands in this system while I'm in command."
Whispers broke out among the gathered, and Edin's stomach lurched. What was the commander suggesting?
Master Keeper Granstern gestured for calm, then spoke. "Novrost Jaxan, the advent of a shoal of minnows of this size is a rare occurrence. In time these creatures could aid Karist strike forces on a dozen worlds. What you are advocating--"
"We have five hours," Novrost Jaxan said, making clear the chain-of-command, "before Foundation forces reach striking distance of our position. Current attempts to capture the minnows from outside the station have failed. I am now authorising landing forces to board the facility in a final attempt to secure the minnows. These forces will comprise both Troopers and Keepers to maximise our chances of success."
Edin glanced around, his gaze meeting Arkan's. His friend didn't look half so confident now he'd been informed he'd see action. Most of the other Karist soldiers shifted uneasily too, probably thinking about the uncertain conditions aboard the station. A cybel tank rupture at the heart of the facility had given the Angel minnows a bountiful source of food, but if the leak had eroded the core reactor systems it also implied that the place was awash with radiation. Life-support systems were still intact, but if anybody was aboard they'd kept themselves silent. For the unseasoned Karist Troopers, who until this moment had no doubt imagined they'd do nothing more than polish their carbines on this mission, it must've been a shock.
In contrast, the majority of the Keepers appeared excited. Edin was no exception. The chance to witness and capture an Angel minnow in the wild was an incredible privilege.
"Our window of opportunity is small," Novrost Jaxan continued. "We will evacuate the Destria system in four hours--with or without the minnows. At this time Miller's Station will be scuttled to make certain none of the creatures fall into Epirian hands."
Edin's heart sank, but his moment of despair was short-lived. This is your chance, he told himself. This is your chance to show Master Keeper Granstern your true worth. He clenched his fist, resolved not only that he would number in that boarding party, but that he would return to adulation.
*
Edin's footsteps echoed through the dimly-lit station corridor. Ahead, Arkan's silhouetted form flickered in and out of sight in unison with the broken lights. The reactor node and fuel canister on the underbelly of his pulse carbine glowed a steady magenta like a guiding lantern, the rifle raised and ready to fire.
"I don't like this," Arkan said, his head cocked to one side, keeping his eyes forward. "You know, this could be a Foundation trap."
Upon stationfall the boarding party of sixteen had been split into eight teams of two, each pair comprising one Trooper and one Keeper. Time was at a premium, and a greater part of the stations' kilometres of corridors, gangways, living hubs, and crop fields, could be covered this way. When Edin had been paired with Arkan, the soldier had rolled his eyes, but kept his mouth shut.
Edin had felt the same.
"Elaborate trap," Edin replied. "Why not just attack earlier? Why scramble fighters from Destria prime?"
"Forces our hand into a boarding mission. We're more vulnerable like this. With half of us crawling around this dying wreck, if anything attacks us now, some of us aren't going home. Foundation would do anything to get their hands on some Enclave men."
"Or Angels," Edin added, thinking of Invictus.
Arkan grunted, dismissively. "Yeah, right."
The idea this was a Foundation trap still seemed unlikely, despite Arkan's theories. Maybe Epirian drones or scarecrows, dormant but aware, were hiding in the next transit tunnel or in the long stalks of the crop fields. Maybe they'd rigged the whole station with explosives, ready to remotely detonate.
Maybe, but he didn't think so.
A crackle of pulse fire snapped into the silence, the corridor momentarily lit with a flash of purple-tinted light. Arkan had dropped into a firing position, but Edin could see no enemies among the stark geometries of bulkheads and arches. He threw himself to the floor, anyway. Reaching beneath his robes, he pulled out his pulse pistol, gripped it with two shaking hands. Arkan had shuffled to one side, sheltering behind some crates. Beyond him, nothing moved in the flickering shadows.
Prone, Edin felt horribly exposed. Like all apprentice Keepers he'd taken part in basic weapons' handling, but his field experience was zero, and a paralysis gripped him. Even if he did shoot, any shots he'd get off were more likely to land on Arkan than the enemy.
He found his voice. "Arkan! Arkan!"
The trooper still sheltered behind the crate, but he'd shifted into a crouching position, his rifle resting on the crate's top, scanning for the enemy down the holographic sight. Sidestepping across, he left his cover, shuffled forward in a hunched posture, making himself as small a target as possible. As Arkan's silhouette grew smaller, Edin was left with nothing more than the acridic smell of burnt cybel. Damn you, he thought. He crawled on to the crates, his elbows slamming on the hard gridded floor with painful blows. Fearful of attack from behind, he twisted round, rested his back against the stack of crates. The mundane trappings of the station corridor blinked in and out of sight, menacing and unfamiliar despite the fact that only moments ago he'd walked through the section.
His blood felt as cold as icy water.
What am I doing here?
He wished he was a true Keeper, wished he had a terrifying Angel under his command that he could send to fight in his stead. It was a shameful thought, and he knew it straight away. Angels had not been delivered to the Enclave to protect the weak of their number--they'd been delivered as a tool to ensure Ascension could be granted to as many as possible.
Am I worthy to be a Keeper?
He shook away the doubts, steeled himself to advance, when hysterical laughter echoed from ahead. Arkan? The laughter went on. It was Arkan. Still cautious, Edin hustled out from the protection of the crates, trotted on, his gaze snapping between the shadowed alcoves as he caught up with the trooper.
"Arkan?"
"It was a blasted corpse." The soldier's laughter subsided. "I was shooting at a blasted corpse."
Lying in one of the recesses, back against the corridor wall, the man still gripped a piece of piping. He'd bled out, his chest soaked with blood, gunshot wounds puncturing his fatigues.
Edin's adrenalin ebbed, anger and relief replacing his fear. How had Arkan mistaken this dead man for an enemy combatant? Too trigger happy by far, Edin thought, but kept his assessment to himself.
"They must've fought among themselves," he said, instead.
"That'd be my thinking," Arkan replied. "Some point after the cybel engines ruptured, the station inhabitants must've fought over the liferaft places."
Edin checked the time. They only had two hours left.
Twitchy, they trekked on, came to one of the vast crop field units.
Unlike other parts of the station, the power had held, artificial lights criss-crossing the blue skies. Shoulder-high stalks of plants shot arrow up, basking in the heat, and insects buzzed between the heads of the grains. Edin could almost forget where he was.
Arkan brushed through the foliage. "Well, this is a head spin."
Edin's mind drifted back to his earliest years, running through wheat fields. Arkan and himself had been inseparable. "We could be back in Pican."
"We could." Arkan stopped, cocked his head to the sky. "Edin," he said, not looking back, "I'm not proud of how I treated you."
Edin snapped off the head of one of the arrow-straight stalks. "We were kids."
"It carried on longer than it sh
ould."
"Maybe."
Arkan sighed. "The Edge, the infighting it brings, this mission--I'm starting to understand our place in the Arm. The peace that we can bring people, I mean. The promised land that we can lead them to." He turned. "And we have to be united to do that."
"We do." Edin gave his friend a small smile. Forgiveness would take time, but for the first time it felt like a possibility. They'd be alright.
Something rustled in the foliage not far away, and Arkan twisted. "Maybe that's one of those minnows. Come on." He scampered into the undergrowth.
Edin set off after him. "Slow down!"
Arkan didn't listen, disappearing in a swish of foliage. Edin followed but quickly lost track of his friend.
"Arkan?" he called, spinning in a circle, listening.
"Over here."
Edin bundled through a couple more rows of the crop, stopped in his tracks. "Arkan, stay back!"
Mere paces away Arkan crouched beside an Angel juvenile.
"Relax, Edin," Arkan said, oblivious to the danger.
Juveniles were the intermediate--and in some ways, the deadliest--stage of an Angel's transformation from minnow to adult. No longer form-locked like the minnows, juveniles were equipped with the morphing abilities of the adults, but lacked their restraint, and the annals of Keeper history brimmed with tales of foolish apprentice Keepers who'd underestimated their aggression and suffered grave injuries from the barbs of their charges. Because minnows seldom had access to concentrated sources of cybel over extended periods, juveniles were rarely sighted in the wild. The fact this specimen had managed to undergo the transformation in a matter of days spoke volumes as to its especial rapacious nature. It must've defended its cybel spoils from its siblings ferociously. Edin raised his hand, slowly, "Arkan--"
Arkan scratched the pulsing juvenile under a fold of its thorax, the creature's tentacles undulating with pleasure. Its gravitic nodes were bloated with raw cybel energy, a tenuous web of blood-coloured light under the thick carapace of the sides of its thorax. It must've gorged itself nearly insensate. It would feel drowsy, relaxed, vulnerable.
As the tip of one of its billowing tentacles morphed into a barb, a cold horror crept over Edin. The dead man hadn't been peppered with gunshot wounds as they'd carelessly inferred. He'd suffered a violent, unstoppable assault. Smoothly, save for the uncontrollable tremor in his arm that made his hand shake, Edin reached for the right side of his equipment belt--
"By the Fourteen," Arkan said, twisting his head, "they're magnific--"
His words stopped dead; he must've caught the fear in Edin's eyes.
The blow came faster than the naked eye could see, but Arkan's eyes went wide, and he stared disbelievingly at the slashed crack in his breastplate. The juvenile's barbed tentacle writhed hypnotically, while a thin line of scarlet blood ran down Arkan's snow white plate. He'd live--provided he didn't suffer the next real blows--
Edin flung the shield net.
The net didn't trap the juvenile, but the expanding EM field deflected the creature's killer blow enough so that it shaved through Arkan's pauldron rather than piercing his heart. Without thinking, Edin charged forward, grabbing a commune reactor from his belt, before pinning the lower half of the juvenile under the shield net. He fumbled off the cap and waved the small disc of purple red energy aloft like a man brandishing a distress flare, and the juvenile's hungry tentacles followed the glowing receptacle in lockstep. Very slowly, he lowered the disc towards the creature's maw, before easing himself off. Shaking, he killed the shield net. Then, as if he was doing nothing more than throwing a blanket down for a picnic, he cast the net over the juvenile's entirety.
The Angel's flailing ceased a short time later.
Arkan rolled away, came to rest on his back, staring into space.
Edin did likewise.
A long time later, when both their breaths had returned to their resting cadence, Edin spoke. "Well, thanks for coming along and keeping me safe."
Arkan snorted. "That's why we Troopers are here." He broke into maniacal laughter interspersed with small cries of pain. Edin joined in. Staring up at the blue sky not unlike that found on their birth world, the two men laughed, unhinged and unhampered, overjoyed to be alive.
One day Edin would be a Keeper.
MOON DESERT
★
by LIZ WILLIAMS
Sometimes life strips you of everything you hold dear: your home, your family, your entire world. Can a person go on living in such circumstances? Or is it necessary to bury everything, seek rebirth? On Chote, what must the "doc" do to survive?
WHAT HAPPENS when you try to outrun darkness, only to find that the darkness is closer than you think?
I'd come to Chote like so many others, running from what was happening. I suppose I thought I might outlive it – that was in the time when I didn't want to face how fast it was spreading. Sheer denial. I knew that damn well: it had been happening for a thousand years, after all. You might as well deny your own breath or the sky over your head. But apocalypse had taken much from me: my home, my wife, my parents. My planet. The whole world of Affain, breaking silently apart, after that tell-tale purple glow in the heavens. Numbly, I'd watched it from a port window, surrounded by people who felt the same, though none of us wept or spoke. What would be the point? Everything had gone down into lavender flame and neon light, a chasm from what had been before. As one, we turned our faces away and tried to look into the future. We did not ask, then, what it could possibly bring.
But at last, at least, we made landfall. A lot of ships didn't. When one door closes, another opens – it's an old saying, I was once told. These days, however, all our doors are slamming shut. Mine led to Chote, a world I'd never even heard of, not far from the Thusia system. A small barren ball, we were told as we huddled in the cargo deck of the rescue ship, mainly desert like the better-known Zycanthus itself. Not much there – a scattering of tribes, from very early days, and a few mining operations in the foothills before the desert's reach. They needed medics; I would be popular.
"Aw, you'll like it, doc," one of the crew said to me, without malice. He examined something he'd picked out of his teeth, more closely than it warranted. "Young fella like you – plenty of opportunity. Got any specialisations?"
"I'm – a general medic." Specialisations? There hadn't been time. I'd not long completed my training when – that – had happened. I thought of it as 'that.' Before that, and after that. I think I was trying to make it smaller. I don't know whether I succeeded.
"Best kind," the crew member said. "You don't want fancy stuff, not where we're going."
"You've been there before, I take it?"
"Regular run for me. There are a couple of bars I don't mind." He spat. "They say the nomad girls are beautiful, but I've never even seen one. Maybe you'll have more luck."
I didn't say that a woman would have to be truly desperate to consider this man. I mumbled something noncommittal and he lurched away, but he'd been affable enough. And I had a name among the crew, an identity: "doc." It gave me something to hide behind, however flimsy.
*
As soon as I set foot on Chote – literally out of the door of the ship as it rattled and banged to the dusty ground – it was in a state of emergency. The spaceport was chaos. I suppose I'd expected some degree of organisation, but the ship lurched down through a boiling orange cloud, landed heavily, and through the porthole I could see other craft landing similarly, taking off again as soon as they'd discharged a fleeing crowd. A tough world, I knew: survival of the fittest, maybe. We'd all been given the briefing on the ship. I'd be all right – a doctor, a professional. Someone seemly. But this place was far from seemly now. People were running everywhere, shouting, hauling their meagre possessions behind them and for the first time I fully understood what I really was: not a doctor, but a refugee. And there was no emergency: this was normal.
I had become one of the Broken. And I felt broken right then
.
At the edge of the spaceport, barely visible through the churning, choking dust, I glimpsed an APV: a Prowler. SecDef were here. It wasn't a warzone, though – or perhaps everywhere was.
With others, I was herded into a shoveller, as they called the trucks that carried the refugees to their new lives. I didn't say much – too busy trying to get my bearings, take it all in. We were unloaded like a consignment of rats to a big hangar on the edge of what passed for a town, given a pallet bed in a dorm and a set of instructions. I was to report in the next day, I was told.
"To the hospital?"
The man at the dorm looked at me as though I was mad. "What hospital?"
After that, things got – well, not easier, but more familiar. I was at least used to medical routines: they don't vary that much from place to place, humans being humans and modifications being learnable. The nominal spaceport medic, who looked as underwhelmed by me as he did by everything else, set me up with a shed, some old fashioned medical equipment, and told me to get on with it.
"The bar's over there, by the way. You'll need it." He must be pretty familiar with it himself, I thought, given the state of his breath.
The pace varied, sometimes slow and reasonably mundane, sometimes high speed whenever we hit a crisis, which was often. The universe is a damn dangerous place even without apocalypse bearing down on it, and Chote was no exception. The mines beyond the townships, from which they were trying to extract a variety of minerals, were tunnelled through fragile, friable rock and earth. Collapses and landslides were frequent, with resulting casualties. Some of the latter even made it into the surgery.
One such of these occurred towards the end of my shift. I was just about to go off duty. I can't say it mattered a great deal – what, after all, did I have to look forward to that evening except another night of fitful sleep or drinking? And I was trying to keep a lid on the latter. There are few circumstances which can't be made worse by an addiction.
Tales from the Edge: Escalation: A Maelstrom's Edge Collection Page 20
