by B. V. Larson
-14-
Talking the Centaurs through the next part of my plan went more easily than I would have thought. I’d told them I wanted to puncture their sky, and I told them why. They understood and agreed grudgingly. They only had one sticking point: they didn’t like the idea of huddling in their underground passages and tubes all around the station.
“We do not creep beneath the earth,” they informed me huffily. “It is not our way. The Herd stands and faces death bravely.”
“And that is our way as well,” I said gently. “But we also know it is sometimes best to trick an enemy, to appear weak, when really, we are strong.”
“Trickery is not the goal of an honorable Herd.”
I grunted. That gambit had failed. I was trying to get them to hunker down and hide in every tube, storage chamber and food processing chamber that encircled the central cavity of the station. The place was huge, and should hold them all at least temporarily. Then, I could blow a hole in their roof, depressurize the central chamber and return to the Macro ships claiming victory.
They had understood the necessity of making it appear we had won the day to the Macros—although they weren’t happy with anyone believing they’d lost a fight. But they really had trouble with hiding in dark, enclosed spaces. I began to believe they had a visceral fear of such places. It added up: they hadn’t rushed into the tubes and outer chambers to fight us, but had waited until we were out in their open environment. No wonder they’d built these structures so insanely large. A spacefaring race that suffered from claustrophobia was at a definite disadvantage.
“But if you do not hide when the central cavity depressurizes, you will all die,” I pointed out in a reasonable tone.
“Honor is worth a thousand deaths.”
“Is it worth a million?”
“Yes.”
My head itched inside my helmet, and I wanted to take it off and throw it at the Centaurs. After that, I would have a really good, satisfying scratch. I left it on in the end, suffering the tickle of sweat on my scalp and nose.
“Pointless defeat is dishonorable,” I told them. “If you die when the cold vacuum comes into your hollow world, you will have provided the machines with fresh amusements.”
I touched upon the area of being laughed at purposefully. Apparently, nothing pissed off a herd of Centaurs more than the thought the other side believed they were foolish.
“We are insulted! Our rivers will be swollen with the tears of our enemies!”
I shrugged, not knowing what they meant exactly, but understanding the tone: I had pushed their button. I decided it was time for a little pause on my side of this conversation.
Neither side spoke for nearly a minute. By the end, I was weakening and reaching for the talk button.
“There is dishonor and death on every path,” they said. “We will take the trail which defeats our laughing enemies.”
They said this last with bitterness. I almost felt for them, sensing this was a painful decision for the herds. It was hard not to be impressed by a people willing to die en masse for their own arcane sense of honor.
“You have one hour to secure your bodies in airtight chambers,” I said, not wanting to give them a chance to back out or complain about details. “After that, we will empty the sky. Then, we will lead the way as we have agreed. We will strike the first blow, taking the Macro ships as we return to them in apparent triumph.”
“We are impressed and sickened that you dishonor yourselves this way to strike at our mutual enemy.”
That statement made me mildly angry. The Centaurs didn’t believe trickery was acceptable in warfare. They wanted a stand-up fight without deception of any kind. Anything less was disgusting to them. The implication was that we were disgusting creatures. Since we were willing to debase ourselves to win, the Centaurs were only making deals with us out of necessity.
I quickly got over my irritation with them and I ordered my men to set up a massive barrage of fire. We destroyed every bush and low-built structure in the vicinity to make it look like a pitched battle was going on. We advanced into the region we were firing into, and slowly marched to the point the Macros had identified as a weak spot. We stood underneath it, still putting on a good display of fire. I knew the Macros were watching this structure with sensors. From outside, the leaks of radiation would give the appearance of further combat.
When the hour had passed, I contacted the Centaurs. “We are in position,” I said. “This is your last warning, we are about to puncture the sky. Get all your people beneath the land.”
“We are ready. Those that stand upon the hilltops await their deaths resolutely.”
I paused, frowning. Some of them weren’t going to take cover?
“I urge you to order your people to find shelter. We are about to depressurize this chamber.”
“We are a herd, but we have individual honor as well. Some could not withstand the embarrassment of huddling in fear. Some could not say farewell to the sky.”
“Should we wait?” I asked.
“Proceed.”
I licked my lips. I nodded to Kwon and the others. Orders were shouted up and down the line. Every man raised his rifle together. We burned the distant roof, creating an ovoid region of destruction. At first, the structure blackened and hundreds of molten sparks and glowing metallic droplets showered us. Our visors darkened. I had the men halt for ten seconds to cool our projectors, then we fired again, in unison.
It was the fourth combined barrage that did it. The ceiling opened, and it did indeed look like we’d destroyed the sky. Chunks of debris fell, but as we’d calculated, it missed us at our position.
The hazy clouds were sucked out into space first, turning whiter with frost as they went out the hole. The disturbed air flowed and rippled down to us, forming a dozen cyclones. I watched in amazement as these phenomenons touched down all around the central cavity, ripping up plants, buildings…and bodies.
Some of my men were sucked up as well by random whirlwinds. I ordered them to hang onto their skateboards and use thrust to fire through the turbulent hole if they got too close to an edge. One of my biggest worries was that my men would be dashed against the jagged lips of this rupture we’d created. When they got close to the hole, they were to blast their way through the center and win through into open space.
One of the cyclones touched down upon the hill where we’d fought our first battle. Countless brown bodies were lifted up in a swirl of debris. They were all carried up toward the nexus of these spinning vortexes, the hole.
The structure shivered around the lips of the rupture, and it broke open wider. I stared in horror. What if the whole place went down? What if, in the end, I really had served the Macros as a perfect tool of destruction? If this entire station sank down into the planetary atmosphere and was destroyed, would our two people be blood enemies for all eternity?
Even as my fears grew, however, the hole stopped ripping itself larger. The escaping pressure had lessened, and thus applied less force to the lip of the opening. It had stopped expanding.
“Wow,” said Kwon, standing near me on the hill. “So many of them.”
“What?”
“The Centaurs,” he said, pointing toward one of the cyclones. It had paused over the largest population center in the cavity. Calling it a city would have been a misnomer, but it was the closest thing these people had to one. “Magnify your visor. Zoom in on that cyclone—the darkest one,” he said.
I did as he suggested, and my jaw sagged. The cyclone was dark with bodies. Thousands upon thousands of them. I realized with a heavy heart, that the voice at the end of communications line had never said how many of them had chosen death over dishonor. By saying some had decided to stand in the open, the voice at the far side of the com box had perhaps meant half.
I went back to the com box and tried to open the connection to the Centaurs again.
“I didn’t know you were lemmings, dammit!”
They did no
t answer. Had I killed them all? Had their spokesman chosen death over dishonor? I felt sick.
One of the cyclones swirled close, then closer still. I decided it would be better to head upward now, not to be crushed against the walls or the floor of the chamber. We all mounted our skateboards and rode them into the thin air that was left. We headed upward, hundreds of us, standing on our dishes and gliding closer with alarming speed. I sensed I was caught in a current, as were a hundred others.
I almost blew it—I almost fought the current. I tried to keep my wits about me, but it was difficult. The wind was so powerful, so loud, it was like standing next to roaring train in a tunnel. I recalled the advice given to swimmers in the ocean, when sucked under by a wave. One should go with the flow, let it take you with it.
I took that advice and was swept upward with dizzying, sickening speed. I spun around and around. My dish stayed adhered to my feet via magnets and countless chains of straining nanites. I saw them ripple over my suited body, as if I was wrapped in aluminum foil or dunked in mercury.
Bodies, both living and dead, swept by. Fifty to one of them were Centaurs. Some of them kicked feebly. As I’d said before, they were hard to kill.
Jagged edges of twisted metal filled my vision for a moment, and then I was out into the blackness of space. The planet below was engulfed in darkness. The yellow star, being on the far side of this world, did nothing to illuminate the scene.
I flowed with the rest as the ride died down to a gentle, bumping flow. We steered toward the assault ships on the surface of the structure.
“What now, Colonel?” asked Kwon, now that conversation was possible again.
“We do as we said,” I told him. “Get to the assault ships. Form up around all four of them. I want three companies behind each. Don’t launch until I’ve talked to the Macros.”
When I’d managed to reach Lieutenant Marquis’ assault ship, I looked back toward the rupture. The flow had lessened a great deal now. But still bodies were puffing out of it, like a volcano of death. The surface of the structure rained with Centaurs. Their bodies came floating slowly back down to rest upon it, as it was big enough to have some degree of gravity, and the gravitational fields that made the floor far below us adhere to our feet had some draw even this far away.
I stood there, and it rained death upon me. I’d never seen the like of it, and the sight made my stomach roil. I used the pain of it, the sad horror of it, to deepen my hatred for the Macros.
For I had no doubt that if they had pleasure centers in their metal brains, they were humming with happiness right now.
-15-
“Macro Command, this is Kyle Riggs.”
Nothing. I fiddled with the touch screen and tried again. “Macro Command, do you read me—”
“Yes.”
“We have completed our mission. We are returning to the invasion ship.”
“The structure still operates.”
“Yes,” I said, my voice threatening to rise into a shout. “But the people inside are dead. Are you happy?”
They didn’t answer. I breathed through my teeth and closed my eyes. I’d put a word like happy into a question. That was two strikes as far as the Macros were concerned.
“We have completed our mission,” I said as evenly as I could. I tried not to think about the geyser of bodies and warm gasses that still shot out of the hole I’d blown into an idyllic sky. “We are returning to the invasion ship.”
“The structure still operates.”
“We do not have any armament to destroy the structure. We are ground forces carrying light arms. We have completed the mission as required.”
They paused again. I wondered if I was going to be required to send this entire station—with any survivors huddling inside—burning and sinking down into the atmosphere of the planet below us. I didn’t think I could do that.
“Return to base.”
That was it. They didn’t tell me ‘good job’, nor did they chortle and giggle at my foolishness. I was a good tool, but they didn’t care about me. A carpenter was more likely to feel love for his hammer. They simply put me away in a drawer or dropped me in the dirt until I was needed again.
I got aboard Lieutenant Marquis’ assault ship and ordered my dish-flying troops to aim themselves at the invasion ship. Everyone was to stay together, not to string out or fool around. The injured were allowed to board the assault ships, but I wanted most of my men free and open to maneuver.
We took off and headed toward home—such as it was. I wondered if the Macros had any idea what I intended. I certainly hoped not.
The first few thousand miles went smoothly. I still hadn’t told my troops anything about a planned rebellion. There hadn’t been time, and I hadn’t wanted to leak anything on an open channel.
As the curvature of the planet swept by underneath us, I marveled at its austere beauty. The mountains rose up so high they seemed like spikes. The ice dominated the upper and lower quarters of the planet, making the polar icecaps huge. Nowhere on this cool world was completely free of ice and snow. All the way down to the equator the top of every glacier-carved mountain was crusted in white.
It was the last thousand miles to the invasion ship when things went badly. We were forced to turn around then, to brake and slow our approach. We were moving at high speed and would be smashed like bugs against the hull if we didn’t slow down.
The Macros picked that moment to act. Maybe they’d overheard us plotting, even though I had been careful to use scrambled channels for every communication. Maybe they’d planned it this way all along, intending to destroy us in an effort to keep the peace with the Centaurs. Another possibility was they had decided we were a failed experiment and it was time to dump the Petri dish into the sink. I’m not sure why they turned their guns on us—but they did.
The cruiser gave us the first hint of what was coming. It rotated itself onto its back, in respect to the planet we all orbited. The big belly cannon poked upward now and swiveled in our direction. The dark, ugly snout of it brightened as it prepared to fire. Fortunately, my people were watching the ship carefully. They shouted the alarm, and everyone took whatever evasive action they could. I gave the go signal, and I knew the marines left in the bricks in the invasion ship’s hold were moving.
My original plan had been to order the assault ships to veer off at the last moment, targeting the cruiser instead of the yawning hold doors on the invasion ship. We needed the drilling lasers on the assault ships to burn their way through the cruiser’s hull. We felt confident we could take out the small crew of the invasion ship without too much trouble, but the cruiser was another matter. It was a real warship, and we knew next to nothing about its crew, internal layout or armament. The good news was that it was close to the invasion ship it was escorting, less than two miles distant.
The big cannon flared and gouted brilliant light. I had thought I might talk Macro Command out of this, but when the belly cannon fired, I knew the game was up.
One of my four surviving assault ships bloomed into a fireball. There wasn’t even a ship there anymore. Nothing could have survived.
“All marines, this is your commander, Colonel Riggs,” I shouted into my com-link, broadcasting and overriding everyone’s helmet audio input. “We’ve all been thinking about a change of direction, and apparently the Macros have been too. They are firing on us, and you are hereby ordered to destroy every Macro you can.”
I quickly worked my com system to link me up with the surviving assault ship pilots. I could see the muzzle of the cruiser’s big cannon glowing brighter again. In seconds, it would fire again. I could tell no amount of jinking and dodging would suffice. “Pilots, I’m ordering you all to abandon your ships. Everyone must grab a dish and bail out. I don’t care if they are on life support, put a helmet on them and push them out the back door!”
I followed my own orders then, grabbing an unconscious marine by the boots and dragging him after me. IV bags rattled and floppe
d behind him. We fell out of the rear doors as they spread open and allowed us to drift into space. Others fell with me. I saw Kwon dragging an extra dish behind him. No doubt, he intended to give it to Lieutenant Marquis after she bailed out.
My visor darkened to an opaque state as the belly cannon fired upon us. My visor’s efforts were insufficient. Light leaked in, so bright it gave me afterimages and an instant headache. Just as my vision returned, vapor washed over me and I heard a roaring sound. I realized our assault ship must have been the second on the target list. It had been blown to atoms.
Spinning and disoriented, I almost lost my dish. Only the emergency magnetics in my boots and the nanite tethers kept me from being fired out into space on a random trajectory. The marine I’d dragged out with me wasn’t in easy reach. I had to let him go, figuring we could try to pick him up later—if we survived.
I zoomed in with my visor on the cruiser. The gun was prepping again. I knew it would take out all four of my assault ships. I had only a few tricks left.
I gained control of my spin and had the dish under my feet and operating again. I applied thrust, braking so I wouldn’t smash into the invasion ship. “All assault companies,” I said, trying to sound calm. “Redirect yourselves toward the cruiser. Troops aboard the invasion ship, injured or not, start taking out the Macro crew. Work your way to the control center, you will find it located near the engines, behind the hold.”
I was flooded with bleeping contact requests. I ignored them all. Everyone had problems, but we all had only minutes left in which to live, and they would have to solve them on their own. I opened a direct channel to Major Kurt Welter, who had flown the rescue mission to pick up my lost marines back at the ring. He had the last assault ship, and it was sitting in the hold of the invasion ship.
“Major Welter?”
“Sir?”
“I need your attention, Major.”
“They are coming into the hold, sir. The spidery-types—their marines. We are in a firefight right on top of our own bricks.”
