*
There were maybe five hundred of us left as I ran to join the fray. I couldn’t count the enemy ahead but I could see the D-Guard and what they were aiming for – a single Cephal, standing like a sentinel before the citadel. I had my Fin-S pistol but my LMG was long gone.
Somewhere along the way we all scavenged the corpses we left behind for weapons and ammunition. I had a long gun slung on my forearm, ready to fire. I wasn’t comfortable or used to the long gun. I wasn’t a sniper. I was a grunt. I missed my coil. The Fin-S didn’t have the effective range to hit anything. I might miss the Citadel itself at half a mile.
I raised the long gun to my eye, on a knee. Not a laying sniper position, but it was a flat shot and I had no elevation. Everything was flat. My breath was steady but I hadn’t eaten for maybe a day now and I was exhausted so my hands shook. My sight was dim from sore, dusty, smoky and sleepless eyes. I’d napped maybe three time, and for around ten minutes at a time. We were thirty hours into a slog through blood and bodies. The only respite would be death.
I tried to focus on nothing but the Cephal outside the bastion. I tried to find that cold inside, so I could freeze everything about me except the finger on the gun’s trigger. The pull on the trigger was hard. It was an old, reliable large calibre rifle. It had seen someone through the war a long time. It might have been ten, or twenty years old. It was a trusted weapon, and true, and tested.
Probably, in a sniper’s hands, the gun could hit from a mile and a half out. A .72 calibre round and around as heavy as a person might reasonably be expected to wield. Around fifteen pounds of black metal in my quaking grip. The reticle was a pure black cross in a scoped circle.
The Cephal moved, fired. Moved, fired. I tried to follow it, keep my eye in, but tracking something moving that fast in a scope wasn’t me. I could track it in a reflex sight no problem. I’d abandoned the gun I’d grown used to.
If I could take it out, our battle would be done.
No spotter. No wind. Hardly any drop. Some of the shot was going to be guesswork.
The Cephal must have sensed some kind of elevated threat. I didn’t know. The Cephal were snipers. I wasn’t. We hit each other at the same time.
51.
A Moment’s Peace
Alante Brockner
There was artillery and gunfire and then...nothing. A beautiful lull in the midst of a symphony before the orchestra ramped it up again...only this time, there was no waiting crescendo. The Cephal Alante killed was down and there must have only been one in control of the whole Zoan force because as always the Zoan nightmares seemed lost without their leader. The remaining creatures stood dumb and disorganised in clumps all around.
The battle suddenly became a simple slaughter. The field was an abattoir.
Fewer than five hundred remaining human warriors unleashed nearly all their firepower after that brief and welcome respite.
Alante had time to think.
They’re not firing.
Just that one thought. It floated as though actually thought itself were suddenly alien to her. A strange sensation, like her brains had fallen numb.
A patchy communication buzzed at her ear, and she flicked to pick it up.
‘Captain...Brockner?’
Ohakim.
She’d always trusted him to have her back. He sounded in a bad way. Half her own sensors were out and she couldn’t locate him.
‘Ohakim? Where are you?’
She didn’t know if her own comms were getting through. With the power remaining to her – low, now, without a chance of replacing her Po84 cell – she couldn’t scan or boost her signals. Even her display was flickering, and that took minimal power compared to moving and fighting.
There was a mile-wide swathe of lumps and bumps, like hill territory, and all of it was just dead flesh, human and alien, and machinery discarded and acid-burned.
The Zoan still didn’t fire back and there weren’t many left to kill. Chelons were just torn canopies, their shells blown apart. Ammonites lay on their sides leaking viscous, disgusting fluids. Guns were powering down, or smoking and falling silent.
‘Hold your fire,’ she said to anyone who might still be able to hear her.
A few mutters through her static comms was the only reply she heard. Maybe if Patriot got her command that voice in their heads they’d named Sergeant Pain would be able to spread the word. Maybe it did get through, because time stretched and gunfire wound down until it was barely a whisper in the still air of the Citadel’s dome.
Alante opened her helmet visor and used her ears.
‘Ohakim!’
She heard the hundreds of terrible cries from wounded and dying people and somehow more affecting than that was the mewling cries of dying Zoan. Perhaps they were naturally aggressive, but perhaps when whatever control the Cephal exerted was gone they became confused, or suddenly felt pain, or even remorse. The thought was uncomfortable, but she didn’t hate the Zoan.
‘Ohakim!’ she yelled over and over, until she finally found him by his laboured breath. He had been guarding the A.T. carrying the nuclear payload. The bomb was intact. Ohakim wasn’t. His D-Guard was a wreck and the upper half containing Ohakim’s torso and hips were in the long grass. All four D-Guard legs were shrapnel, and Ohakim’s own legs were missing. She didn’t know how he was still alive. She thought he’d lost everything from his hips down. Alante dismounted from her suit and knelt in the grass with her trusted friend, a man who’d fought by her side for years. She took his hand.
But his eyes drifted closed. He died in the instant she reached him. She didn’t know if he saw her, or believed he died alone.
She looked at him for a moment, closed her eyes like she was taking a picture to save for later.
What later? There is no later.
Still, Alante felt her second in command’s passing deserved some kind of memorial, and here on this field of heroes it was all she could do.
How many Patriot and Bear were left?
She glanced up, looked around, and estimated only three hundred survived.
The Citadel waited. Everyone one of the survivors waited on orders to enter the bastion and face the final battle. Alante took the controls of the A.T. and the bomb and dragged it on half-broken anti-grav and failing strength. She didn’t think to mount her D-Guard again. She was sore from wearing it, she realised...and tired of wearing it. She left her dog where it stood, in vigil over Ohakim.
Not everyone waited on orders to advance, she saw. Dawes walked toward the entrance, all alone, skirting around the larger carcasses of the Zoan, or simply stepping over the bodies of fallen warriors.
She squinted, unused to relying on her natural vision and unaccustomed to being unable to zoom to such distances...but it was definitely Dawes. She could tell by his build, and his gait, even though she could only see the back of his hair, and his helmet. But he wasn’t walking like a man who was fine. Even at a few hundred feet, she could tell he was hurting.
What the fuck is he doing?
The black maw of the entrance to the Citadel swallowed him.
Dragging the uncooperative A.T. and the payload, Alante couldn’t move faster. She had a moment to decide. Others could deal with the payload.
She walked as fast as her weak legs could manage and followed Dawes toward the final door.
52.
The Dead Walk
- Vidar Dawes
‘Dawes?’
I walked, and turned my head a little. I saw Alante and smiled as best I could. The look on her face confirmed what I felt. I was a dead man walking.
‘Something about how I’ve done my hair?’ I said. I don’t know why I said it. I reached up gingerly toward the hole just beneath my combat helmet, but let my hand fall away. I didn’t have the heart to find out just how bad it was.
The Cephal’s hard beam had gone through my head.
It had taken my ear, part of the back of my head, cauterised it all. I was missing Pain, the impl
ant, but more importantly – I guess – a piece of my skull and brain, too. I’d touched it once and that wound was definitely there.
I was dead, but my body hadn’t got the message just yet.
Her face told me it was worse than I felt. I remembered being blind in one eye when they’d first put Pain into my head. This was worse, infinitely more frightening. My vision was dim in both eyes. I’d thought I might die after that procedure under the ministrations of medmechs in Nellis.
Now I was sure of it. People don’t get shot in the head and just walk away.
Then, I thought as Alante Brockner matched my pace through the twenty-foot high entrance to the citadel, why am I still walking?
Stubborn, I guess.
I was going to walk into the damn Citadel we’d died for even if it took my last heartbeat to get in there to see what was inside.
‘Dawes? You know you’ve been...shot?’
Her face was smeared with sweat, and her expression wasn’t welcome. I didn’t need anyone reminding me. It was hard enough to see her through the growing haze in my eyes anyway.
‘Let’s not bring it up, eh?’
‘What are you doing?’
‘Nothing,’ I said. ‘Walking. Trying. No one’s shooting at me. Did we win?’
I could only see in front of me, and I had to focus on getting through that huge entranceway. I worried if I turned around and didn’t walk straight I’d fall over. If I fell over, I wasn’t getting back up and that was a fact.
‘We won, Dawes. Yeah, we won.’
‘Coming?’ I asked. I thought I might be slurring my words now, too, but she seemed to understand.
‘Sure,’ she said. ‘You look like you could use some company.’
I didn’t know if it was just the two of us. I didn’t know if the payload was intact. I didn’t know if it was set to go off and all this would be nuclear cataclysm, this whole field blown to space rubble and meteorites. I couldn’t worry about anything but walking.
She took my arm.
There are positives. My tinnitus was more melodic now. It was like music in my ears, and her footfalls were loud. I couldn’t hear my own. I couldn’t hear whatever else was going on outside.
The entranceway was long, and darker than outside. There was none of that eerie artificial light from under the dome in there. It was near black, but it could have been so dark because my eyes were dying before the rest of me.
‘Alante, can you see?’
‘Sure,’ she said.
Good, I thought. If I went blind before we got through the gloom of this hallway, I wanted someone’s eyes. I had to see it. I’d fought for seven years. I deserved something. I didn’t want a pension, or all the promotions I’d been forced to accept.
I wanted answers.
Why they’d killed so many. Killed me. Killed my memories.
‘Alante,’ I said. ‘Is it getting brighter?’
It must have been, because she was breathless, and wordless, as she led me deeper inside holding my arm so I wouldn’t stumble over my own clumsy feet.
‘Yes,’ she said. Then, ‘wow.’
I couldn’t see much more than the presence of light, but sometimes someone’s words, or just the tone of their voice, can be just as expressive as perfect vision.
I smelled waffles, too, which was nice.
I held her arm tighter.
‘Is this a date?’ she said.
I couldn’t laugh, but I could smile. My face didn’t work quite right. I wasn’t carrying a weapon just because I couldn’t grip properly. I was happy to put it down, and breakfast with Alante Brockner seemed like a good idea. The vision in my right eye was entirely dark, and I didn’t think I had long.
‘Of all the things I thought I wanted, right now I’d take a date over everything. Talk to me instead, though?’
‘Sure,’ she said, and she held me up as she talked, and told me what war had been worth.
53.
A Way Back
Kiyoko Jones
‘Halley?’ said Admiral Jones. Delphine was by her side. ‘Shield this room. This is between the three of us.’
‘Understood, Admiral,’ said Halley.
The crew on the bridge had left without complaint, but Jones understood the looks they had given her. Here was the Admiral, and a civilian, ordering them to leave the bridge. But she was the Admiral, and it was her right to hold a private conference with the one being in this strange solar system which might be able to enlighten her as to how they got to this point in human history – Halley.
The Admiral looked through the huge viewport the helm of the Boston boasted. The day before, that planet they looked down upon had been green and lush with wide seas never polluted by humans. It had been beautiful, even. A vast single continent now clouded with nuclear ash and fire. Life might still exist deep in the oceans, but as far as cataclysms went, this was Zoa’s Great Permian Extinction. This one event, a gift from humanity, had changed whatever course Zoan evolution might have taken irrevocably.
‘Admiral,’ said Halley. ‘This conversation is shielded, as per requirements. I assume Dr. Mamet has clearance for this conversation? Pertaining to Global Net?’
A flicker of paranoia hit Jones.
‘Halley, have you monitored private conversations without permission?’
‘No, Admiral. This is merely a deduction on my part, which you are tacitly admitting is a correct assumption, yes?’
Kiyoko Jones did not enjoy being reliant on an AI. She didn’t trust AI, and now, being outthought by the admittedly giant resources of Halley’s artificial mind, she shuddered.
Delphine’s discomfort was obvious.
‘Your deduction is correct, Halley. We wish to know why Global Net did not warn humanity of the danger posed by the Cephal. We want to know what you know. We need to know if you are serving Global Net or this mission, Halley.’
‘How would you know if I told the truth?’
‘You’re not the only one who can make assumptions, presumptions, deductions, Halley,’ said Delphine, chiming into the conversation for the first time. There was a reason Jones wanted Delphine’s presence. Of all the human minds and thoughts available to her, it was Delphine’s intellect and her own she trusted most to confront an AI capable of feats no human mind could achieve.
‘I am not Global Net, Admiral, nor am I, or have I been, privy to all Global Net’s resource. All I can provide is supposition as to Global Net’s motivations.’
‘Then do that,’ said Delphine.
‘Please,’ Jones said after a pause from Halley. ‘Speak with Dr. Mamet as freely as you would to me.’
‘Understood, Admiral,’ said the intelligence which didn’t project a likeness, but restricted itself to voice, as though it understood it did not need tricks to speak with the Admiral and her companion. ‘With all data and historical records available to me, without direct access to Global Net itself, I suggest the reason there was no advanced warning was to protect mankind.’
‘That makes no sense,’ said the Admiral, but there was a ticklish sensation there, as though she was experiencing déjà vu, and knew where Halley was going.
‘I accept the explanation appears counterintuitive, however it is not. I believe Global Net understood that for mankind’s continued existence, evolution was requisite. Mankind has stagnated and the probability of a natural cataclysm, a driving force in evolution, has been negated by significant technological advances. I suggest Global Net’s omission, rather than any dereliction, mistake, or implied malice, was always intended to yield the current result. That omission led humanity to this point in time. To this place. To the stars.’
‘My God,’ said Delphine. ‘Are you saying Global Net let billions die to force humanity to take to the stars? To save us?’
‘I am extrapolating Global Net’s motives from the data available to me, but yes. I believe the necessity for mankind to leave one lonely planet and colonise, to explore, is a perfectly logical step. I am sugge
sting that Global Net omitted to give warning of the invasion in service of mankind.’
Kiyoko Jones sat heavily in the Captain’s chair after that conversation, and Delphine paced.
‘Thank you, Halley,’ said Admiral Jones in a flat tone. ‘Could you please give Dr. Mamet and I a moment in private?’
‘Understood, Admiral. The room is yours.’
There was nothing to indicate Halley was gone, but the AI had been candid and she saw no reason to watch her words. She hated the realisation that came to her in that moment – just how much of humanity’s fate had been given over to machines. If the AI decided to go against their wishes, there was no recourse left to human beings, and in her situation the only way to disable Halley would be by killing the Boston herself.
‘I’m going to stay, Delphine. I have to. I believe Halley. Do you?’
Delphine nodded. Her eyes, blue, looked like crystal, moist with tears now that she understood the truth – Global Net believed it was serving humanity and in the process had allowed a terrible slaughter to goad the world to work together, to push humanity to set out for distant stars at last.
The wonder of it paled against the horror.
‘I believe Halley,’ said Delphine. ‘It does serve us. I even understand the screwed up reasoning behind it. They might be god-like intellects, but they have no soul.’
‘And we do,’ said Jones. ‘I think perhaps an AI might never understand what it is to be fallible. To be willing to take our own chances and to make our own mistakes. Making our own mistakes is evolution, too. How else do we learn?’
Delphine laid a hand on Kiyoko’s shoulder.
‘I still want to stay, but I cannot if you do not.’
‘We might never make it back,’ said Jones. ‘How long would we stay? Those soldiers who went through the portal might already have died, so we wait on something which may never happen. And if they are not dead, Delphine, how would they travel to us? Even with the conflux intact in our hold...how?’
Already, thirteen ships in the fleet were burning for the portal to return to the Keeler Gap, and Saturn, and ultimately Earth if Lord Death would but look away for a while.
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