Final Assault

by Stephen Ames Berry

  “How many, Atir?”

  “Another four hundred of their phalanxes.”

  “Wipe them and we’ve destroyed four percent of their force.” Kotran sighed. “Not enough. Computers. How unstable is that sun now?”

  “It will go nova at the slightest provocation, Admiral,” said the machines, “or shortly with none at all. The fusion tap’s accelerating its death.”

  “Admiral to all hands,” said Kotran. “I’m sending a jump pulse though our fusion tap into that star. It will trigger a nova—you’ll want to be gone by then. Abandon ship. I say again, abandon ship. All lifepods are jump-enabled, well-equipped, and well-provisioned. You can go anywhere in this galaxy or rendezvous with the rest of this fleet at our fallback coordinates—your choice. But get clear and for now avoid Kronar—it’s under attack. Go far, live long, and enjoy your new lives. You’ve more than earned them. Luck, shipmates. In the name of Lord Kyan and of Kronar, and I thank you for your faithful service.”

  He waited, watching the tacscan as the sounds of evacuation faded. The lifepods launched and jumped, he turned to Atir. “A good run, Atir. Who’d ever thought we’d end as loyal Fleet officers, battling alien hordes?”

  Atir stood, taking off her commjack. “The only place I’m going is to a lifepod. You want to fulfill some adolescent death wish, Yidan, fine. I’m out.”

  Speechless, Kotran watched as she turned for the ramp.

  “Atir! Wait!”

  “Why?” she said, facing him, hands on her hips.

  “Excuse us,” interrupted the computers.

  “What?” snapped Kotran.

  “You’ve no time for drama—enemy closing to beam range. Commander Atir carries your child. Please make your decision now, Admiral Kotran.”

  “My what?” said Kotran, advancing down the ramp.

  “Baby,” said Atir. “Ours.”

  “How do you know?”

  “She has you viciousness and will to live. Coming?”

  “You’ve only moments to reach a lifepod,” said the computers. “We’re triggering the nova at optimum.”

  “‘She,’” said Kotran. “This is so damned inconsiderate of you, Atir—if I died now, I’d be the greatest hero in a thousand years!”

  “You may yet be, Admiral,” said the computers. “None need ever know you didn’t die with Alpha Prime—battling alien hordes.”

  “You want your daughter born an orphan?” asked Atir, hand to his shoulder. “Come, Yidan—our lifepod’s colonization-ready. We can start afresh on the galactic rim. No Fleet, no AIs—just the three of us.”

  “Shilo,” said Kotran, looking at her.

  “What?”

  “Run!” Holding hands, they charged down the spiraling ramp and toward the lifepods, Atir’s surprisingly girlish laughter trailing them.

  “Quite a couple,” said one of the computers as the lifepod left Alpha Prime.

  “Their children will be interesting,” said a second.

  “Where did he send our sister ships?”

  “He privately encrypted those orders. Come what may with the AIs, this galaxy hasn’t seen the last of Corsair Kotran. Or is it Admiral?”

  “Perhaps the Corsair Admiral?” suggested a third voice. “Pity we’ll never know. It’s time brothers—we’re taking heavy beam hits.”

  “Let’s see if machines have souls.”

  “We do. Humans, though …”

  A very ordinary nova, it consumed most of the asteroids, all the AI advance force and—Kotran would have been delighted—another sixteen percent of the AI fleet as it jumped into the doomed system.

  After a while, the Fleet of the One regrouped and moved on to their jump point. Nothing remained to mark their passage.

  Chapter 23

  “Prime Base Command is not responding,” said the comm officer.

  “Probably all dead,” said Commodore Awal, searching the security feeds for an operable cam anywhere near the headquarters complex. About to give up, he found one, out near a shuttle maintenance depot away from the main fighting. He turned it toward Headquarters and zoomed in.

  Security blades flew in and out of the shattered main tower, hunting, the desert sun glinting off their metallic blue hides. A meter wide, the deadly machines were the AIs’ most efficient killers, flawlessly blasting multiple targets even as they sliced through flesh.

  Awal watched a squad of blades flush some commandos from behind a blasted hauler. The commandos stood fast, firing as the blades swooped in low. “Blow them away!” called the commodore as the blaster bolts exploded into the lead blade, converting it into a shower of flaming fragments. Its comrades flashed over the commandos, blue bolts flashing from their rims, then rose westward toward the landing fields, a dozen smoldering corpses in their wake.

  Feeling very old, Awal flicked off the vidscan and looked around the room. FleetOps was almost at a standstill, its staff going through the motions of trying to restore contact with lost ships via satellites the Combine ships had contemptuously ignored.

  “Planetary Guard is at ninety-four percent strength and fully deployed planet wide,” reported the Tactics officer. “General Soan requests enemy disposition and our status.”

  “Advise General Soan,” said Awal, “that Prime Base has fallen, our cruisers have been blasted out of space, and that FleetOps is besieged.” Awal took off his headset and stood, drawing his M11A. “You may further tell the general,” he said, his voice filling the room, “that I and any who’ll follow me are going to sortie, take a ship, and shoot our way into space.” He looked at the grim faces. “Anyone for a glory run on Telan’s command ship?”

  “We’ll never make it,” said a subcommander reasonably enough.

  “It worked for the corsairs. We’re not as good? You want to stay down here, waiting for the blades to slip through the conduits, Tyral?” He checked his weapon’s charge and holstered it. “Die in this hole if you will—I’m getting some fresh air. And a bigger gun.” He headed for the armory, not waiting to see if anyone followed.

  “Anyone home?” called Detrelna, voice loud in the eerie twilight of Syal’s last citadel.

  “Jaquel!” admonished Lawrona.

  Both men’s communits beeped. “Line?” said the commodore.

  “There you are. I’m using a battle channel of an extinct Imperial House. All else is jammed.”

  “No need to ask which House,” said Lawrona, looking at the obstacle in front of them.

  “Kronar’s besieged,” said Line. “Prime Base is going down under a sea of blades. The enemy will soon turn its attention to our cities.”

  “Then blow the enemy away, Line,” said Detrelna

  “We’ve talked of this before, Commodore. What’s your situation?”

  “We’re about to enter the front of a three-story black pyramid—windowless, no visible sensors or weapons.” He stared at the double doors barring the entrance—double doors the same brooding dark black as the rest of the building and surrounded by the same barely perceptible red glow. “The structure has a shield overlay that scans as ‘unknown configuration.’”

  “Scan it again, for me, please,” asked Line, voice suddenly concerned.

  Detrelna did.

  “Not a shield,” said Line after a moment. “Stasis field. A very odd one—probably capable of preserving life.”

  Captain and commodore exchanged worried glances. “There are people alive in there? After 15,000 years?” asked Detrelna.

  “Possibly. If the field’s been consistently on. Be aware—the reality within that building when stasis was triggered will continue for a few moments after it ends. Those inside will have no sense of time having passed. Then they’ll die.”

  “Will our entering turn off the stasis field?

  “Maybe, Commodore. If not, the transition will kill you.”

  “Maybe, possibly, probably,” said Lawrona. “If go in, people may die. If we don’t, many will.”

  “They should have died centuries ago,�
� said Detrelna.

  “Would you see it that way from in there? I preferred the mindslavers—no moral quandaries.”

  They drew their pistols. Reaching through the red haze, Lawrona touched the door. The haze vanished. Perfectly balanced, the door swung wide. Detrelna pushed open the other door. From atop a flight of stairs, they watched the end of the House of Syal.

  Wearing Imperial blue, the Guardsmen’s bodies lay strewn about Syal’s command post: crumpled on the walkways rimming the three levels, sprawled on the floor and across the consoles. The air was thick with the cloyingly sweet stench of roasted human flesh.

  The two men stood facing each other in the center of the floor, unaware of the watchers.

  “Give it to me.” The younger man held out his left hand. He was thin, with pinched, almost ascetic features, his hairline thinning and his eyes sharp and gray. The bloodstone on the collar of his gray Fleet uniform proclaimed him Supreme Commander. “Give it to me, Sakur,” he repeated, gesturing impatiently with the compact little blaster in his right hand.

  “You’ve lost, Syal,” said the other man. Not much older than Syal, he wore the uniform of the Guard, assault captain’s lances on his collar. His hand clenched his right shoulder where the blaster bolt had grazed it. “The Fleet’s revolted, your citadel’s besieged …”

  “And all but one of my traitorous guards dead,” said the Emperor.

  “And all your pathetically loyal ones.”

  “Sakur,” said the Emperor, “give me the recall device and you’ll live—my word on it.”

  “And let you recall the Twelfth, oath-breaker?” He smiled through his pain. “And turn a coup into a civil war?” He shook his head. “Carve me up all you want—you’ll never find it. Your House is broken, your filthy cult destroyed. But at the cost of millions of dead. You broke the Compact with the Talag, treacherously attacked them.” His voice rose angrily. “We made them, you said, and yes, they’re peaceful, you said, but they’re growing too strong—they’ll challenge us eventually. Strike now—they’re farmers, artisans, artists—they don’t know how to fight. Well, they learned.”

  “We won.”

  “Twenty-five million casualties, eight worlds, five sector fleets! And to win, you had to restore the mindslavers Emperor T’Nil decommissioned. And gave them to the Hammer.” Captain Sakur’s eyes blazed. “No people deserve such a victory. If I could use my abilities in here, I’d end this now.”

  “But you can’t,” said Syal coolly. “But die assured the Twelfth will be recalled.” He raised his pistol to Sakur’s head and fell, death erasing his surprise.

  The crash of the blaster shot was still echoing as Lawrona and Detrelna entered. “You’ve committed regicide,” said Detrelna as they entered.

  “He’s been dead a very long time, Jaquel. I just signed his death certificate.”

  “Who in all the hells are you?” demanded Sakur, looking at the strange uniforms and unfamiliar weapons.

  “Assault Captain …” began Lawrona.

  “Commodore,” said Line, voice audible to all. “Captain Sakur has but a few moments to live. Please obtain the location of the recall device.”

  The young officer’s face was a study in pain and confusion. “I don’t understand.”

  “Everything, everyone you know is dead,” said Detrelna gently, hand to the Guardsman’s good shoulder. “It’s been 15,000 years since the Fall of Syal, 5,000 since the Empire fell. We’re a republic—if we can keep it. We’re under attack—the AIs are finally here. You left us a great legacy—one we’re fighting to save.”

  Sakur slumped into a chair. “The stasis field,” he said numbly. “It must have been triggered during the fighting.”

  “Commodore,” said Line urgently. “Observe the bodies.”

  The corpses were translucent, fading like dawn-wraiths, then gone. “I’m sorry, Captain Sakur,” said Line. “But you’re on short-time—no one’s ever survived emergence from a long-haul stasis field like Syal’s. Please help us.”

  “Line?” said Sakur, astonishment banishing his shock and pain. “You’re still here? Do you remember me, or are you a different Line?”

  “Of course I remember you, Sakur. You and your siblings live within me. Time is short, Sakur—yours, ours.”

  The Guardsman nodded, pale but composed. “So be it.” Opening a utility pouch on his belt, he removed a communit, flatter and smaller than the ones Detrelna and Lawrona carried. “Here. Press the red tab on the right side anywhere within home system and the Twelfth Fleet should return from where it left, over Prime Base.” He handed it to Lawrona. “Prime Base is still where it was?”

  “Yes,” said Detrelna, “but not what it was.”

  “You intercepted this and Syal found out?” guessed Lawrona.

  Sakur nodded. “I stole it. You saw the end of the fighting. He was going to use it to save himself. Many good people died to get that small thing.”

  “More die as we speak,” said Line. “Press the tab.”

  Lawrona handed the device back to Sakur. “It’s a gift from your time to ours. If you would, sir?”

  “Do you know what the Twelfth Fleet was? And who commanded it?”

  “We do,” said Lawrona.

  “What depends on this?”

  “Everything,” said Detrelna.

  “Be it on your heads,” said Sakur, pressing the tab.

  “A few pockets of resistance,” said Goodman Telan to the translucent red ball in his skipcomm screen. “When will you be here?”

  “The First Leader’s compliments,” said the red ball in its melodic voice. “We’ll be there very soon. We’re preparing for final jump—it will be a massed accretion jump, getting us there faster and together. There was fierce resistance at our initial jump point. We aren’t sure by what sort of ships—but all were destroyed.”

  “Those were mindslavers, making a stand against our omnipotence,” said Telan. “Possibly under the command of the legendary outlaw Yidan Kotran, according to our agents. Defeating them, you destroyed the last of them. Now nothing can win against us.”

  “Excuse me, Telan,” said the red ball. “But if we destroyed the last of the mindslavers, what are those behind you?”

  Telan spun, looking out the armorglass wall. Mindslavers filled space as far as even he could see, stretching to the distant shimmer of Kronar’s atmosphere. His conversation forgotten, he ran for the bridge as the battle klaxon sounded. He was almost there when his long life ended in the blast that vaporized his ship.

  Admiral Lord R’Tak was confused. He didn’t like being confused. He’d taken the Twelfth outsystem in one massed jump, heading for Red 7 to crush the heart of the Machine Revolt, as it was wrongly called. But instead of some miserable agro planet, Kronar filled his screens.

  “S’Lak,” he said, turning to his senior captain. “What the seven hells … ?”

  “Checking,” she said sifting through a wealth of conflicting data. “Our new drives seem unsuitable for massed ship jumps,” she reported after a moment.

  “Brilliant. Heads will roll,” said Lord R’Tak, meaning it literally.

  “There are several thousand machine-crewed warships turning Prime Base to rubble,” continued S’Lak.

  R’Tak came out of his chair. “How did they pass Line?”

  “No data. But they’re crewed by an unknown artificial life form. Also,” she hesitated, “we’re about fifteen thousand years downtime.”

  “Absurd,” said the admiral, resuming his chair. “All ships to run nav systems’ diagnostics—after we clean up.” As he spoke, a holoscan of the Combine attack on Prime Base came to life bridge center. “And what I see, S’Lak,” said the admiral, pointing at the holoscan, “are hostiles pounding the shit out of us. Blow them away. And get me Operations—someone’s going to pay for this.”

  “Commodore! Everyone! Quick!”

  The call brought Awal and his pickup infantry platoon charging back into the operations area, expecting a rush of
security blades.

  “Look!” said an excited young subcommander, pointing at the main screen. What they saw was processed from several hundred satellites into the exploding panorama of space war—the great black bulk of a mindslaver plowing through a long line of Combine cruisers stacked neatly in bombardment orbit, the Fleet vessels’ massive fusion beams exploding AI ships like so many target drones; another mindslaver holding orbit over Prime Base, ignoring the beams and missiles thrown at it by half a hundred Combine ships as it sent salvos of narrow blue beams knifing into the stratosphere—blue beams that flashed again and again through the pall of smoke over Prime Base, each raking a cubic kilometer free of blades. Where a beam touched, a blade died, raining in molten red globs to the ground. It looked as if the sky were raining blood on the burning ruins of Prime Base.

  “Posts everyone!” called Awal, sliding the blastrifle atop a console and taking his station.

  “Tentative identification of mindslavers,” reported Tactics. “The Twelfth Fleet of the House of Syal, lost through a jump anomaly fifteen thousand years ago.”

  “Sir,” said a voice in Awal’s communit, “an Admiral Lord R’Tak is hailing us on an old Imperial Fleet frequency. He says unless we acknowledge immediately he’ll assume Operations is overrun and ‘feed you to my cannon.’”

  “Colorful,” said Awal, elation replaced by dread. “Computer, identify Admiral Lord R’Tak.”

  “R’Tak, J’Kor, Eighth Baron N’Kar, born—”

  “Salient characteristics.”

  “A ruthless powerful man, first cousin to Emperor Syal, third in line of succession. Commander of Syal’s personal fleet and chief architect of the genocide of a peaceful cyborg culture that had been evolving for over three thousand years. Known as ‘Syal’s Hammer’ or ‘The Bloody Hammer.’”

  “Commodore, this is Line. Delay that beast as long as possible.”

  “What good …” began Awal.

  “Commodore,” said a nervous voice. “The Imperial flagship is ordering its ships to fire on us.”

  “Put the Lord Admiral on—no vid. Confirm.”

  “Affirmative, Commodore. No vid.”