Refuge

by Glynn Stewart

  “In about thirty seconds, that senior Chosen Mother is about to use this com array to call every General in the Spears she trusts. I don’t think the coup is going to last much longer, but things will work much better if Dancer-In-Darkness and I don’t get killed in this place.”

  “And if we have control of their primary command center, that won’t hurt the counter-coup,” Renaud noted.

  “Not in the slightest,” he agreed. “Are the Marines ready?”

  “Five minutes,” she answered slowly. “If you can give me ten, its better.”

  “I’ll kill the defenses in ten,” Octavio promised. “I don’t know how the ground mess is going to go, but I think it will work better for everyone if we control High Mountain’s air defenses.”

  “Ten minutes, Captain,” Renaud ordered, regardless of her authority to do so. “And if you get your Captainly ass killed down there, I will find a way to make you regret it, clear?!”

  “Understood.”

  Octavio had turned off his translator to focus on his call. Now he turned it back on and walked over to where Dancer-In-Darkness was recording her message. He wasn’t sure where the “pickup field” of the three-dimensional echolocation image covered, so he hung back as he caught the last of her message.

  “…so while it pains me, I have no choice but to declare Chosen Mother Warmest-Waters a traitor and order her arrest,” Dancer proclaimed. “If at all possible, those who have followed her in error or mistake should be spared, but Warmest-Waters must be arrested and detained immediately.

  “Voices-Of-Warfare of the Iron Spears, I task you with restoring order and bringing these criminals to justice. Be gentle where you can, merciful where you can…but this rebellion must end.”

  Dancer paused a moment and looked over at him.

  “I am ready. You?”

  “Send your message, Chosen Mother,” he told her. “I promise my people I’d drop the air defenses in”—he checked his tattoo-comp—“seven minutes and counting.”

  “And the other defenses? My Spears may face fewer losses if we can disable the other automatic systems.”

  “I will do what I can,” he promised. “They’re not as uniformly controlled from here.”

  His computer was still projecting a holographic image of High Mountain and its defenses. If he disabled the sensors with the missile launchers, he’d be as blind as the rebellious Iron Spears.

  He didn’t have much choice. There was a timer ticking down in the corner of the hologram.

  “It’s strange,” Dancer commented. “I can tell you have something in the air there, but my chirps go right through it.”

  “Visual illusion,” he told her. “I can’t understand your chirps, but I can see in far better detail than you can.”

  “Strange,” she repeated. “You can see what is coming?”

  Before he could answer, alerts sparked across the hologram. He ignored Dancer for a few moments as he pulled up the details.

  “Only what could be seen from the command pool,” he told her. “So, right now, I can tell that several battalions of Iron Spears are in the streets that they weren’t expecting. They have flagged them as heading towards the Palace, what I think is another prison…and here.”

  “Exactly where they should be going,” Dancer replied. “I have no confirmations, but I suspect my traitorous sister has the allegiance of less than a third of our generals—and even less of the Spears on the ground.

  “While she could claim to speak for the Mothers, confusion held her in power. Now I have stripped away that covering. She will fall.”

  “Quickly, I hope,” Octavio told her. His counter hit zero, and the worms he’d preloaded fired.

  Icons across the mountain shifted, warnings flaring across the hologram…and then the hologram itself went blank. Closing it down, he rose to his feet and smiled grimly.

  “Aerial defenses are down,” he told her. “The planes above the city have cyberworms aboard that have shut down everything except the autopilot. They can land, but they can’t fight.

  “Sensors are down, and all of the communications that were being relayed through this fortress are down. That won’t slow them down for long, but it should give your people a critical edge.”

  “It should be enough.” Dancer hesitated. “They won’t be here quickly enough to stop whatever traitor Spears are in this building from reaching us. That security door will buy us some time, but…”

  “You have a rifle,” he told her. A new icon appeared on his tattoo-comp, confirming that his location beacon was now linked to incoming shuttlecraft.

  “And unless those Spears are faster than my worst nightmares, I am going to have Exilium Marines.”

  29

  The Iron Spears were no better at removing Octavio from their systems once they knew he was in them than they had been at stopping him from entering them in the first place. After a few minutes of dueling programs, he locked down the entire fortress’s systems to his control.

  He hadn’t been able to do that before, but the admin trying to lock him out had brought a security protocol online that Octavio had turned against every other user of the system. For the moment, he was in full control of the defenses of the entire city.

  It wasn’t going to last. Entire swathes of the system were being cut off and rebooted. They were going to find leftover worms in there once they were back online, but without his being able to actively influence things, even the Vistans would defeat the software.

  Eventually.

  The bigger problem was that the Spears had managed to localize where he and Dancer were and had stopped caring if they wrecked the fortress. He watched the Chosen Mother wince as a fourth round of explosions tore through the command center.

  “If I’m reading the map correctly, they’re at the entrance to this section,” he told the Vistan. “Given that they’ve blown their way through doors nowhere near us, I think they’re pretty desperate.”

  “Are your people here yet?” she asked.

  “I’ve opened a pathway from the topmost hangar to here—the one we followed—but I’ve killed all of the sensors in the building, and my people won’t risk trying to contact me once they’re on the ground.”

  It was probably safe for them to transmit. Even if the Marines gave away their presence, the locals shouldn’t be able to threaten him. Doctrine said they’d only use encrypted micro-pulses for communication in a combat zone, however, and his tattoo-comp couldn’t read them.

  “I can use this,” Dancer said, hefting the rifle, “but it has been a long time.”

  “That’s about how I feel about this,” he replied, tapping the pistol he was holding. Shaking his head, he hit one final command on his tattoo-comp and closed the hologram.

  “They’re almost certainly rigging up explosives on the door outside,” he told her. “Let’s find some cover. Is anything in here actually bulletproof?”

  “The electronics?” she suggested.

  He nodded and looked at the communications equipment. It wouldn’t survive being used as cover, but it would definitely stop bullets.

  “Help me out here?”

  Together, they managed to topple the largest chunk of the equipment and hide behind it—just in time for the door into the Chosen Mothers’ offices to blow open.

  “Throw down your arms and I will order mercy,” Dancer-In-Darkness shouted. Octavio had a moment of terror, thinking she’d given away their position, before he realized she’d thrown her voice a good four or five meters away.

  Vistan voice boxes were weird as hell to a human.

  The answer to her generous offer, sadly, was gunfire. At least half a dozen rifles opened up on full automatic into the room she’d projected her voice into.

  Dancer popped up, her chirps letting her target clearly as she walked her own automatic fire across the room.

  The Chosen Mother had some aggression to work out, it seemed. Octavio tackled the froglike alien as his glance over the top saw a second
wave of troopers moving in.

  He was fast enough to get her out of the line of fire. He wasn’t fast enough to do it safely, and a bullet hammered into his shoulder. He sprawled backward as fire radiated out from his shoulder.

  “Stay down,” he hissed at Dancer.

  He was bleeding. He didn’t dare look too closely. He didn’t think it was critical, but it was more than a flesh wound. All he was getting from his left shoulder and arm was pain.

  “You fool,” she snapped. “Why?”

  “Because I need you to save your people,” he snapped.

  “They’re coming,” she told him.

  He snarled at the pain as he propped himself up and grabbed the pistol again. It was an awkward shape, but he got his finger on the trigger and pointed it at the door. They were out of the line of fire now. The Spears would have to come into the room to get them.

  Of course, that meant they had no cover once the Spears were in the room.

  “Promise me, Dancer,” he demanded. “Promise me that you’ll get your people on the evac ships. We have a whole planet waiting for you, one where you’ll be safe.”

  He winced again.

  “If you stay here, you’ll all die. Promise me.”

  “We’ll get my people out together, Captain Catalan.”

  He snorted. He could hear the footsteps, which meant that Dancer could definitely hear them.

  “Sure, let’s plan for—”

  HISS-CRACK.

  The Marines had brought pulse guns. Why the hell had they brought pulse guns?!

  Multiple rounds of focused plasma cracked through the air, and he could hear both the sound of Vistan weaponry and the sharper noise of human hypervelocity firearms.

  Then silence.

  “Sir?” a voice called. “This is Sergeant Potts. Are you there?”

  He tried to rise and fell backward. He’d lost a lot of blood.

  “Can you understand me?” Dancer-In-Darkness asked loudly. “Your Captain is here but injured. I don’t know your anatomy, but I think it might be bad.”

  Octavio realized that was an understatement right before he passed out.

  30

  Sings-Over-Darkened-Waters had retreated to her private office. The First-Among-Singers had long before mastered enough emotional control to keep her echolocation chirps from not showing too much, but the last few hours had strained her control to the breaking point.

  And it was over.

  “Will Captain Catalan be all right?” she asked the human currently commanding Scorpion. Sings did not know Renaud well, but then, she didn’t know Catalan all that well.

  “He will be,” Renaud promised. “I will make sure of it. There is nowhere else in the system better equipped to handle his injuries.”

  There was probably nowhere else in the system that could handle an injured human.

  “Your losses were light?” the Star-Choir’s commander asked.

  “We didn’t lose anyone from the second wave,” Renaud told her. “They understood just what kind of tech deficit they were facing when they shot down Major Summerfield’s ship. Our pilot could have evaded or destroyed a dozen of their missiles.

  “So they launched a hundred.” The human female shook her head. “No chance of survivors. Nothing even left to bury.”

  “We will find what we can,” Sings promised. “I will make certain of it. If I can make certain of anything in the Iron Peaks.” She shivered. “We still do not know what will come of this.”

  “Well, right now, my people are in control of their primary command center, and we’re not giving it back,” Renaud replied. “If your Guardian-Star-Choir has some ground troops or personnel you can spare to help us run it, that would help us out, but Iron Peaks doesn’t get that base back. Not after shooting down our shuttle and the Shining Spears’ planes.”

  There would be consequences for that. Another Great Mother would have called for blood for blood. Sings hoped that Sleeps-In-Sunlight was better than that.

  “Beyond that, however, what happens with the Iron Peaks is up to your people,” Renaud concluded. “Captain Catalan made his pitch and got imprisoned and shot for it. We’re not barring anyone from the evacuation ships, but I will be damned if we spend one more iota of effort on saving the Iron Peaks.”

  Sings-Over-Darkened-Waters bowed her head.

  “I understand. I will make sure of it. No one will be left behind, Commander Aisha Renaud. I will not let this violence be in vain.”

  “That’s on you,” Renaud said. “Good luck…but my ability to care about your people’s rogue assholes is far more limited than my Captain’s.”

  “I understand,” Sings repeated. “It seems I have some old enemies to speak to before the day is done.”

  Duty called in all of its munificent forms, and Sings-Over-Darkened-Waters spent over an hour dealing with the aftermath of the battle. What few ground troops the Star-Choirs possessed—mostly internal enforcers and security for space stations, really—were loaded onto shuttles and sent down to reinforce the Marines.

  Then she got the request she’d been expecting and stepped back into her office to speak with the Great Mother who technically wasn’t her ruler.

  Of course, the Shining Mother now ruled the entire planet outside the Iron Peaks. There was no real question who the ruler of the Vistan people was—or that the Guardian-Star-Choirs answered to her.

  “Shining Mother,” Sings greeted Sleeps-In-Sunlight. “How may the Star-Choirs serve?”

  “I need you to intercede as a neutral party,” the younger female told her. “I need Star-Choir transportation to High Mountain in the morning—and I need you to speak to Dancer-In-Darkness and the other Chosen Mothers.

  “After all of this mess, they will hear me speak.”

  “And if they refuse?” Sings-Over-Darkened Waters asked. “They remain an independent nation.”

  “One torn by war and attempting to abandon their own people to their deaths,” Sleeps-In-Sunlight said harshly. “If the Chosen Mothers will not meet with me, then I will say what I must say in the streets of High Mountain. But I will visit the city and I will plead for the future of its people.

  “I do not think they can stop me, and I don’t really expect them to try…but I would prefer to be welcomed than tolerated,” she noted. “That is far more likely if you speak to them on my behalf than if I reach out to them through normal channels.”

  “They do still have some air defenses,” Sings pointed out. “And they are an independent nation still.”

  “They let Catalan get shot,” Sleeps replied. “My sympathy for their concerns is limited, and I don’t fear their weapons.”

  There were disadvantages, Sings-Over-Darkened-Waters supposed, to having a Great Mother with the will and charisma to lead a world by force of personality. Sometimes, the people trying to keep her alive and in power had to bow to the will of the Mother they served.

  “I will see what I can do,” she finally promised. “So long as you promise to be careful.”

  “Careful would negate my purpose, Sings-Over-Darkened-Waters,” Sleeps-In-Sunlight noted. “I will save these people along with the rest. Too many of our kin are dead. I will not leave the people of the Iron Peaks to suffer.

  “And if I must risk the ire of their half-broken government to save them, so be it.”

  Sings-Over-Darkened-Waters was studying the door to her command pool, trying to figure out a plan for reaching out to the Chosen Mothers of Iron Peak, when her com officer opened the door.

  “First-Among-Singers,” the young male greeted her, taken aback as he took the full sound blast of a Vistan examining something in detail.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  “Voice-Of-The-Chosen Dancer-In-Darkness has made contact,” he said slowly. “She wishes to speak with you.”

  That certainly made Sings’s day easier.

  “Connect her immediately,” she ordered.

  “As you will.”

  The young offi
cer withdrew, and Sings turned her attention back to the transmission console. It would take the Voice-Novice roughly fifteen seconds to reach his console and connect the call.

  That was more than enough time for Sings to take her seat and face the speaker/receiver combination that would create her echolocation image for Dancer-In-Darkness.

  It was far from enough time for her to be ready for the call, but that was life. The image of the Iron Peaks’ Chosen Mother appeared in a series of artificial chirps.

  Dancer-In-Darkness was a rarity: a Vistan older than Sings who was also busily involved in the day-to-day life of a country. Most Vistans, especially females, who reached their age retreated into the protected domes of the Clan spawning pools, to help protect and raise the next generation of the family.

  “Sings-Over-Darkened-Waters, First-Among-Singers of the Star-Choir and the voice we chose to lead the guardians of our world, I owe you an apology,” Dancer-In-Darkness said calmly. “You have served your duty with honor and skill in the face of an impossible and unanticipated task.

  “My fellow Chosen Mothers denied this and cast darkness on your actions and character. We were wrong, and I apologize for our choices.”

  “Your apology is appreciated,” Sings replied. “I need to speak with you on matters, Chosen Mother, but I suspect you called me for more urgent aid.”

  “I did.” Dancer bowed her head. “The violence in the city of High Mountain has spread across my nation. Things will shortly be under control, but we have many injured, often in places where we do not have hospitals or sufficient capacity to treat them.

  “I would request that the Star-Choirs send us shuttles and doctors, that we reduce the losses from this damn foolishness.”

  “Do you speak for the Chosen Mothers in this?” Sings asked slowly. “Your fellows have been unwilling to accept our help in the past.”

  “I am the Voice-Of-The-Chosen,” Dancer-In-Darkness replied. “I speak for what remains. Half of our number are dead, murdered by the traitor Warmest-Waters to secure her power. Only those she believed she could corrupt—or whose corruption would be beyond value, like myself—were spared. Of the living, a third or more were already her creatures. The rest are being treated as we speak.