by Richard Fox
“Is the net part of the propulsion system?” Calum asked.
Makarov opened a channel. “Scorpion, what’s your read on this?”
Delacroix’s face popped up next to the Abdiel. “The data is fascinating…a bit preliminary for a definitive answer.”
“The separated drone mass comes to nearly a hundred thousand individual drones,” Kidson said. He glanced at a flashing screen. “Video from the Gallipoli.”
A window opened in the holo. The needle of drones broke into thousands of individual drones, all swarming toward the Gallipoli.
Makarov saw the projections for her ships to reach the firing point and the intercept times for the drones. She opened a channel to Parris.
****
Captain Parris reached into his holo table and traced routes with his fingertips. He looked at his XO and shook his head.
“Parris?” Makarov’s full-body holo came up next to him. “We’re looking at the plot and—”
“It’s pointless, ma’am,” he said. “If we turn tail and run, the drones will be all over us before we could expect support from the rest of the fleet. I stay the course and I’ve got a fight on my hands before we hit range on the rings. Damn things are a lot faster than we’d seen before. My guess is they’re combining their Alcubierre fields to get at us that much sooner.”
Makarov’s face betrayed nothing as her holo wavered.
“We’ll take the shot. You have my word, Admiral.”
“Good hunting.” Makarov’s holo vanished.
“Helm,” Parris strapped himself into his command chair, “all ahead full. Guns, I want a full spread of q-shells and flechette rounds on that mass from every ship. Beat them back as long as you can. Save a broadside for the rings as soon as we’re in range.”
“Aye-aye, Skipper,” his tactical officer said from her pod. “The big guns never tire.”
Parris opened a channel to his wing commander. “Raven, you’ve got to pick up the strays that get through the bombardment. Keep them off us as long as you can.”
“Awful lot of drones heading right for us. Sure hope this ain’t a one-way trip,” Raven said.
“Stop hoping and get ready to start shooting.” Parris pressed a button and prepared to address every ship under his command.
“This is Gallipoli actual. We’ve got a fight on our hands. Our mission is to knock a chunk off those rings and get back to the fleet. Make ’em pay, Gallipoli out.”
The rail gun batteries fired, the first ventral battery a split second after the other two, rocking the ship from side to side. Flashes from the other ships’ rail batteries burst like lightning deep within a thundercloud.
The first quadrium shells erupted against the line of approaching drones. Pale blue jagged tendrils of electricity arced through the leading drones, burning some out of existence and knocking thousands more off-line. Flechette rounds followed a split second behind the q-shells. They broke into spikes two meters long and ripped through the disabled drones, impaling several drones before being robbed of their killing momentum.
The bombardment hit the attacking drones like a series of shotgun blasts, blowing hunks out of the giant mass.
The needle broke apart, forming into a giant cloud of drones.
“Guns, adjust cannon fire, wide dispersion across the entire front,” Parris said. “Conn, how long until we’re in range of the rings?”
“Five minutes at current velocity and heading, Skipper,” the ensign at the conn said.
“Combination!” Commander Hudson called out. “Xaros are forming into…looks like one hundred drone constructs, disintegration cannons visible.”
Parris called up the spotter’s feed on his screen. The frigate-sized constructs gathered into a dozen tendrils and accelerated toward the Gallipoli like grasping fingers, single drones darting ahead of the larger ships.
“Flechettes won’t have much of an effect on these larger ships,” the gunnery officer said.
“Load lance shells. Take out the leading constructs.” Parris glanced at the time plot to the firing point. The Xaros would reach him before that—he was certain of it.
His ship’s rail cannons kept firing, launching another salvo every forty seconds. The capacitors blinked with warning. The rate of fire pushed the ship’s systems to the limits and rested on the knife’s edge of permanently damaging the battery core.
Just the way they’d trained.
“Targets engaged!” Raven said. “Got almost fifty drones coming from—” the transmission filled with static and the sound of a gauss cannon rattling the wing commander’s cockpit “—way too many. I’m down three Eagles and—” It cut off in a hiss of static.
The icon for Raven’s Eagle flashed amber. Damaged.
“Constructs entering range, enemy cannons readying to fire,” Hudson said.
“Conn! Evasive maneuvers!”
The ensign flipped a plastic cover off a series of four yellow buttons and pressed one. Thrusters bolted to the dorsal frame, all with their own independent power systems, flared to life and pressed the Gallipoli down.
The recoil from the sudden acceleration slammed Parris against his restraints. Scarlet lances of energy snapped over the ship’s bow. The thrusters cut out and Parris settled back into his seat.
“Conn?” he asked.
“We can still make the firing point, and I think I lost a filling,” the ensign said.
“Sir, the Cabo took several direct hits. I’m not getting anything from her or the crew,” Hudson said.
A coherent beam of energy struck the ship’s starboard side. It cut across the aegis plating like a surgeon’s laser, gyrating the ship beneath Parris. The beam cut out, leaving a smoking furrow in its wake.
“Damage report,” the captain said.
“Minor damage to decks seven through twelve…primary lift to the flight deck off-line,” Hudson said.
A smile came to Parris’s face. The aegis armor worked as advertised. Ships hit by Xaros beams of that magnitude had been gutted like a fish during the Battle for the Crucible.
At least we have a ghost of a chance now, he thought.
A drone cut across his bridge, an Eagle blazing gauss rounds hot on its tail.
Drones landed on the ship’s hull. Ruby beams stabbed into the aegis plating, slowly cutting through the armor.
“Get the gunships on those boarders, now!” Parris ordered.
“The Xaros constructs are reforming,” Hudson said. “They’re…fusing into a single mass, sir.”
“Tell the Ancona to continue their mission. Get fire on those rings. Helm, adjust course for the new construct. Ramming speed,” Parris said.
The bridge went silent. An out-of-control Eagle slammed into the ship and broke into an expanding cloud of debris.
“Ramming speed, aye, Captain,” the ensign said.
The ship veered to the side. Parris got a glimpse of the rest of his task force, their point defense turrets raging against dozens of drones swarming over them. The new construct came into view: the hundred drone ships fit like bricks on a wall as they merged into a vessel several times the size of the Midway.
The Gallipoli’s rail batteries flashed, scoring solid hits on the merging Xaros. Red light burned against the seams of the construct. Blisters of disintegrating drones broke out across the surface.
“Get video of this back to Makarov,” Parris said. “Hitting them while they’re merging might be a vulnerability.”
The construct ripped apart like a desiccated ear of corn. The Gallipoli hit the fragments as they broke off, shattering them into burning embers.
“Conn, break off ramming speed and return us to our original course,” the captain said.
A fragment twice as long as his ship twisted into a spiral…one end pointing toward the Gallipoli. Another hunk smoothed into a long dart and slid into the spiral. The dart shot through and crossed the void to the human ship in the blink of an eye.
It speared through the strike carrier and sh
attered her keel. The ship ripped into two halves that slammed into each other. Wrecked batteries dumped their stored energy and scorched the ship black. The remains of the Gallipoli spun through the void.
****
Makarov kept her head up, watching as the Gallipoli died. Data from the rest of Parris’s task force kept coming in. They were holding their own against the drones swarming their hulls, but it wouldn’t last much longer.
The icon for the Cabo blinked red. The captain reported boarders in his engine room and the ship exploded a few seconds later.
“Admiral, the fragments…” Calum zoomed in on what remained of the giant construct. The jagged remains broke apart and reformed into drones. The new drones made straight for the besieged ships.
Makarov slammed a fist against the side of the holo table. She’d sent them on this mission, and now she was helpless while they were torn apart.
The frigate Ancona broke from the pack, engines burning well beyond their safety tolerances.
“What’s she doing?” Kidson asked.
“Taking a shot,” Makarov said. Tiny icons broke from the Ancona, lance shells closing on Abaddon’s rings.
“Come on…” She opened and closed her hands into fists as the shells crossed the last few hundred meters…and missed. Xaros destroyer analogues closed on the Ancona. Damage icons popped up next to the Ancona as disintegration beams hit home.
New rail cannon tracks appeared, and the Ancona vanished from the plot, replaced by a yellow and black emblem. The Ancona was gone, but she got off one final salvo. The shells streaked toward the rings, and hit.
A cheer went up through the bridge. Makarov stayed silent and zoomed in on the point of impact. The shells knocked a hunk off the rings, exposing glowing pyrite within. The open wound grew bright, then pulsated from abyss black to burning bright.
“Lost the Reno…and the Utica,” her XO said.
“I want every scrap of data we can get from Abaddon and what happened to that merging construct when the Gallipoli hit it. Send everything to Earth as it comes in. Maintain ready alert. Tell the captains I will have them on holo conference in forty-five minutes,” Makarov said.
“Search and rescue, Admiral?” Calum asked.
Drones swarmed around the dead ships.
“No, there’s nothing to recover. I’ll be in my ready room.”
CHAPTER 7
Dotok women hurried their children into idling Mules, their engines kicking up a dirty haze on the mesa. Wind whipped through the air. Loose bits of cloth on the Dotok snapped like pennants.
Torni and Minder watched the evacuation play out. Torni remembered the tug of wind at her hair, the pungent smell of body odor and fear from the Dotok. She couldn’t feel those sensations viewing the simulation, but her mind tried to fill in the blanks of what she should have felt.
“Why are we here?” she asked Minder. “I’ve been through this before. I know how it ends.” She turned to the other side of the mesa just as Yarrow dragged the badly wounded Hale and Bailey into view.
“An amendment for my report to the Masters. Your actions here are difficult for the Xaros to comprehend. I hope to explane it better,” Minder said.
The dirty and armor-clad Torni that had less than a half hour to live lifted a Dotok boy into the air and placed him in the waiting arms of his mother.
“Ask,” Torni said.
“You are warrior caste. Your government spent significant amounts of time and resources training you in combat and communications. Replacing you, particularly after the reduction in Earth’s population, would be difficult,” Minder said.
“There wasn’t a deep bench of other Marines to take my place after your drones killed everyone, you mean.”
Torni watched as she dragged Hale into a Mule.
“Why did you sacrifice yourself for children?” Minder waved his hand through the air and stopped the simulation. He walked up a ramp and leaned over to examine a Dotok baby, swaddled against its mother’s breast. “Look at it. It is useless in its current state. Completely dependent on others for survival. An obvious liability.”
“The child is defenseless. I joined the Marines to defend the weak, those in need,” Torni said. “You see a liability. I see the future. That child may grow up to be a great leader. A scientist who discovers a breakthrough that changes the lives of everyone.”
“You gave up your spot and handed over your air tanks. Perhaps a half-dozen Dotok were saved. Tell me, would you have stayed behind for one child?” Minder walked over to a group of Dotok men herding wives and children up a different Mule.
“Yes,” Torni said.
“What about this one?” Minder pointed to Nil’jo, the elderly First and leader of the refugees. Torni hesitated.
“Interesting.” Minder walked around Nil’jo, looking him up and down. “This one had obvious value. A leader. Presumably educated. Capable. You jump at the chance to die for a mewling lump of flesh that might not even survive to adulthood, but have to consider whether or not to die for this one.”
“You sound like the Dotok. Their society classified each person by their worth, not their potential,” Torni said.
“And when confronted with choosing to adhere to their culture or give in to these…nurturing instincts, the Dotok followed your lead.” Minder rubbed his chin. “This behavior is counterintuitive to survival of the species. Curious.”
“How is it with the Xaros?” Torni asked.
“Our castes are absolute. The Masters lead. I obey. We left the lower tiers to annihilation after the event. There was no discussion or debate.” Minder went to Torni’s frozen form. “I do not know how I can even communicate this concept of yours to the Masters.”
“Women and children first,” Torni said.
“I might as well try to tell them that humans believe the color blue tastes like the number nine.”
“That makes no sense.”
“Exactly. Tell me, how many Marines would your officer have traded for a single baby?”
Torni looked into a Mule. Lieutenant Hale lay on a bench in a puddle of his own blood, his skin pale. Yarrow pressed a heat suture against a long gash on Hale’s arm with one hand and attached a bag of IV fluid to Hale’s armor with the other.
“That’s…”
“Would he have landed all of these Mules, packed with civilians, next to a lone child and put everyone at risk to rescue it?”
“No, not if the Mules were at capacity.”
“He could abandon his own spot.” Minder shook his head. “You hesitate. The answer is unsure. At some point in the human decision-making cycle, there is a limit to what you will sacrifice. This lieutenant would not sacrifice a hundred human warriors for one life, would he? No. But he would fight to the last man to save a city, correct?”
“Correct. We manned the walls of New Abhaile against the banshees and your drones.”
Minder snapped his fingers and the simulation ended. Takeni, the Dotok, and her frozen self all fell apart like they were made of grains of sand—sand that splashed against the ground and faded away, leaving Torni and Minder on a white plane with no shadows or end in sight.
“My task is impossible,” Minder said. “If there was a single value to place on a life, some quantifiable variable, I might explane this to the Masters.”
“I could speak to them,” Torni said.
“No!” Minder snapped at her. “You will never pollute their existence with your presence—” Minder clamped his mouth shut.
“‘Pollution’? Then why are you wasting so much time trying to understand us?”
“I am sorry, Torni. I still harbor old prejudices. We suppressed the evolution of other intelligent species in our home galaxy. The Masters believed any interaction with the impure would distract from our great purpose,” Minder said.
“What about the red one? The General. We’ve met.” Torni crossed her arms.
“He is a manifestation of the drones’ programming, not a Master. I have work to
do, excuse me.” Minder flicked his fingers and put Torni’s consciousness in stasis, his laboratory replacing the blank simulation in a smear of light.
Photonic copies of Torni’s mind floated atop pedestals, radiating away from his workstation in concentric circles. Lying to Torni about the General and the Xaros was necessary; previous iterations of her mind refused to cooperate once she deduced the truth—that the Xaros would annihilate all intelligent life in the galaxy without remorse or hesitation.
Dangling the hope that she could sway the Xaros Masters away from total xenocide proved to be effective in eliciting her cooperation.
Hope. The concept was alien to Minder. That the humans were so dependent on it made his work even more difficult. Minder stepped back from his workstation as the urge to add to his already lengthy report faded away.
Keeper had no interest in learning more about the humans. Minder would be erased as soon as Torni outlived her usefulness. The General had already launched an assault on Earth; humanity’s extinction was all but assured. Completing the report was his duty, his purpose…and it would be the last thing he ever did.
CHAPTER 8
Malal stepped up to a three-story-high door embedded in a wall so tall the top was lost in the haze. He pressed fingertips to the door and ripples spread from his touch.
“Why are the doors so…big?” Bailey asked.
“You think my true form is like yours?” Malal asked.
“What do you really look like? The big-ass orb we found on Anthalas?”
Malal’s head twisted completely around to stare at Bailey. “You truly wish to know?”
Bailey shook her head and stepped back.
The doors slid open to reveal a short tunnel with pitch-black sides leading to a circular room, the walls covered with glass cylinders full of gray fog. Some glinted with specks of light; others had raging storms of multicolored lightning. A raised circular platform took up the center of the room.
“Here we are.” Malal strode into the room.
Hale followed, his weapon ready against his shoulder. He cut around the corner into the lab, sweeping his muzzle around…and behind the door. The entrance was nothing more than a paper-thin slice of reality. He circled the door, and it vanished completely. He ducked his head round the side and found he could look into the doorway back to the orchard they’d come from.
