Endless Night (The Guild Wars Book 3)

by Tim C. Taylor

  “Incoming communication request,” announced the co-pilot. “Origin unknown.”

  Grenshal growled. “Put them on.”

  “Is this the Scythe commander?” asked a voice. His pinplants identified it as a Human female.

  “Who are you, merc? You will regret taking this contract.”

  “I am Major Sun of the Spine Patriots. We are not mercs, Zuul, we’re the defense force for the Spine Nebula, and we will destroy you.”

  “You don’t know who you’re dealing with.”

  “You know what? I don’t think you do either, but I suspect I know more about who pays your wages than you do. What I don’t know yet is why. Return to Point Clear and answer our questions. I give you my word as a Patriot officer that you will leave unharmed and be offered safe passage off planet.”

  “Your word is worthless. You Spine Nebula scum have no honor, no dignity. You’re nothing more than savages. Enjoy your victory while you can, Human. You will not live long enough to enjoy it.”

  Grenshal gestured to cut the comm link. “Get me the mothership.”

  “Deltue Actual,” came the reply from the cruiser in orbit.

  “Prepare to transition out-system as soon as we dock,” he told the Deltue’s Cartar commander, Captain Umlk.

  Umlk had an annoying habit of delaying before answering. If she didn’t approve of your actions, she hesitated longer. He pictured her gurgling to her deck crew in their water-flooded bridge. Damned aquatics!

  “Roger that,” replied Umlk eventually. “And Hunter-2?”

  “Won’t be coming back.” Grenshal took a deep breath. He wasn’t precisely sure what he was about to unleash, but the desire for revenge against that disgusting Human was too great. “Activate revenge system.”

  It was a request as much as an order. Most star systems in the nebula had a revenge delivery system for use only in extreme circumstances, such as planetary insurrection against the iron rule of the System, or the Spine scum hiring serious merc opposition. It needed two sets of codes to activate, and Umlk possessed the only other set in the Thananya system.

  “I concur,” said the Cartar with surprising swiftness. “You’ve screwed this up so badly, Grenshal, that we’ve no other choice. Give me your code.”

  Grenshal bit his lip at the aquatic’s arrogance. The blood flowed freely, matting the fur on his muzzle. But still the desire for revenge overcame everything else. “Three…Seven…Delta…Blue…Seven.”

  “Revenge system activated,” reported the Cartar. “Select target.”

  “Point Clear.”

  “Target accepted. Target Acquired. Weapons launch successful. Entropy! Do you even know what we’ve just done, Grenshal?”

  He did not. But he wasn’t about to admit it to the octo-squid. “Enough chatter. Get ready for transition back to Prime Base. Grenshal out.”

  * * * * *

  Chapter Fifty-Seven

  The seas were calm. Thananya was, once again, the perfect undiscovered vacation destination. Only the distant smoke on the horizon rising from the successful assault on Stromsay marred the view through Branco’s binoculars. Though if he put them aside and looked around where he sat on a chair at the harbor front, he would see the corpses of the Scythe attackers chopped into small pieces by the automated defense guns.

  “Hey, Skuilher-Dour. You beat the Scythe. How does it feel to regrow your cojones, my friend?”

  Branco’s Selroth companion ceased his reconfiguration of the auto cannon and answered with a gurgle in his rebreather mask.

  Cross-species idiom was a tricky business at the best of times. Branco didn’t like that gurgle. He had to hope that Skuilher-Dour was still going to reprogram the gun into anti-air mode and not into anti-insulting Human mode.

  “I imagine it feels much as you would if you ever regrew your limbs,” Skuilher-Dour answered. “Especially having long thought such a thing to be impossible. I thank you for your help in regrowing my people’s cojones, as you put it, and I regret I cannot help you in turn.”

  “Oh, I didn’t do much,” Branco replied through gritted teeth. “I just sit on my ass and look through these—” he tapped the binoculars, “—while everyone with the correct number of limbs does the hard work.”

  Skuilher-Dour laughed in the Human way, though it was through the water in his mask. Branco’s translator pendant helpfully supplied a, “ha, ha, ha,” laughter track. “I think there are better things to look at closer to shore,” he said.

  “Don’t know what you’re talking about, Skuilher-Dour, my fishy friend. But I have a job to do.”

  Skuilher-Dour pushed Branco’s binoculars down. “There’s nothing coming,” he said. “Even if there were, it would come beneath the water so these—” he took away the binocs, “—are pointless.”

  He placed two webbed hands over the sides of Branco’s head and guided his Human friend’s gaze to the small motorboat investigating the wrecked sub floating near the jetty.

  Sun was leaning over the side of the boat, shouting orders through the open hatch to the team inside. Captain Jenkins, meanwhile, sat near the bow, watching the proceedings while providing booming commentary. There was a redness to the end of the old man’s nose, and a hand went to a pocket of his scarred greatcoat and brought something up to his lips.

  “What exactly am I looking at?” Branco frowned. He hadn’t figured Selroth out yet. His experience with them was limited, but despite their inability to breathe air, they struck him as one of the most humanlike of the many alien races he’d encountered.

  “Do you really have to ask? You lack your legs. Did you lose your rutting fringe, too?”

  Branco shook his head, and then wondered what that gesture meant to a Selroth. “I’m not getting it, Skuilher-Dour. Translation problem.”

  “I mean did you lose your…cojones. Your mating logistics. You should stop feeling sorry for yourself and appreciate what you have earned, my air-sucking friend.”

  The fish-humanoid made a good point. Branco took a moment to appreciate the view. Sun was wearing a borrowed pair of children’s stretch pants and a sleeveless top emblazoned with the logo of a Point Clear competitive fishing club. Though she would feel ten times better wearing her Mk 8 CASPer waiting for her back on Midnight Sun, Branco had to admit she looked mighty fine in her temporary fighting attire.

  But he had a job to do, whatever Skuilher-Dour might say. He grabbed back his binoculars and returned to scanning the horizon.

  His friend made a cooing noise Branco had never heard in a Selroth before. His translator pendant offered nothing. “You don’t seem to appreciate Major Sun,” he pressed. “If you don’t, give way to someone who will.”

  Branco dropped the binoculars and stared into the liquid amber of the Selroth’s eyes. “Are you shitting me? Do you have a thing for my girlfriend? For a Human?”

  The Selroth nodded. “I do. And if you weren’t incapacitated, I would challenge you for her.”

  Several strong emotions fought for supremacy in Branco’s heart. He settled on incredulity. “Damn! Who knew?”

  “Like others of your kind, you call me a fish man. That is inaccurate and stupid. My people are not derived from fish, but from land-dwelling humanoids very similar to you who found the wisdom to return to the bosom of the seas. We are more mermen than fish-humanoids, and, yes, Major Sun is a magnificent woman in so many ways. I will not undermine you, Saisho Branco, but if you take her for granted, I shall pledge my troth to her.”

  Branco shook his head. “Damned galaxy never ceases to amaze me.”

  Skuilher-Dour blew bubbles in his rebreather mask. “Don’t tell me you haven’t been eyeing up the females of my kind. I’ve seen you.”

  Branco bit his lip, but it wasn’t enough to keep him from laughing. He’d almost spilled into mirth at “pledging troth.” Now he laughed until the tears ran freely. Eyeing up the hot Selroth girls? Until he’d started re-engaging with his pinplants, he’d had no idea whether individual Selroth were male
or female, or something else.

  He calmed a little and contemplated the best way to phrase, “No offence, Skuilher-Dour, but I’d rather wrestle an Oogar than get naked with one of your kind.”

  The Selroth’s gurgling grew louder. “My dear Branco. Promise me we shall stay friends. It gives me enormous amusement to wind you up. You are very easy to manipulate for entertainment purposes.”

  The sky cracked. But it wasn’t with thunder.

  “Though I was not entirely making it up when I said your mate is very intriguing.”

  “Be quiet.”

  “Don’t be like that. It’s true. I look at the major and sometimes I wonder—”

  “Shut up and look skyward!”

  Through his binoculars, Branco tracked lines of fire high in the sky—dozens of them. At first, he thought they were missiles, but they lacked engine plumes. They were dropping through the atmosphere like meteorites except there were too many. Too parallel. Too tight a formation…

  Too aimed…

  “Shit!” said Skuilher-Dour. “What in the godpit of Alundel are they?”

  “Orbital bombardment,” Branco said. Then he screamed at the top of his lungs. “Orbital bombardment!”

  An eerie silence fell over the harbor for a few seconds. Everyone looked up at the approaching doom.

  Branco closed his eyes, embraced the searing pain, and activated his pinplants.

  Identify incoming objects, he thought at them.

  Kinetic harpoons. Target: your location. Advisory warning: flee. Estimated time to impact: 217 seconds.

  “Evacuate the town!” Branco shouted. “Into the water. Get away. Get away! Incoming!”

  “Put your arms around me,” said Skuilher-Dour.

  He crouched in front of Branco and boosted him into a piggyback. The alien sprinted for the water and was still picking up speed as he put his webbed hands before him and dove into the sea.

  The Selroth swam so fast that Branco was breathing bubbles and foaming water, desperately trying to lift his head into clean air. Skuilher-Dour tore through the water like a torpedo, aimed at Sun’s boat.

  They hit its side with a wet thud. Spluttering, Branco felt himself simultaneously lifted by webbed hands and pulled by child-sized ones with an inhumanly strong grip.

  He found himself coughing up water, popped onto his back on the boat, looking up at Sun.

  “Kinetic torpedoes,” Skuilher-Dour bellowed. “Let’s move out.”

  “We rescue who we can first,” Sun insisted.

  Jenkins stood with one foot on the gunwale and shouted into the floating submersible alongside. “Evacuate now! We’re under bombardment. Water breathers, take one air sucker with you. No, wait—First four air breathers are with us on the boat.” The Patriots understood; there were more air- than water-breathers in the sub.

  A few seconds later, the hatch was bracketed by two Cartar and a Selroth who, between them, threw two Humans, a Zuul, and a Zuparti into the boat before putting further air breathers onto their backs and swimming for it.

  The boat revved its engines and sped away.

  In the final seconds, the streaks of fire plummeting through the air appeared to separate a little as they struck the little city.

  It was the fist of God pounding His vengeance upon the land, unspeakable violence that made the ground tremble in submission.

  Only one torpedo struck the water, pulsing waves that tossed the boat around like a toy.

  Eventually, the waves settled, and the seas and the land calmed. But underneath the dust cloud, the ruins of Point Clear burned.

  He’d seen destruction before—he’d wrought some himself—but there was something different about orbital bombardment that chilled him to his core. Kinetic harpoons were nothing more than long poles of superhard material. Once launched, there was no defense against them but the deepest reinforced bunkers. Shields were useless. Anti-missile defenses were inadequate. No point defense could protect them. You stood no chance.

  The only defense was to take out the launch vehicle before the weapons were deployed.

  His face purple with anger, Jenkins rounded on Sun and flashed his wrist slate at her. “Use your pins to connect me with this comm node. It’s time to deploy the Patriot space navy.”

  * * * * *

  Chapter Fifty-Eight

  Deltue Bridge, in Orbit above Thananya

  The kinetic strike was spectacular, even viewed through the Tri-V column affixed to her command post. The harpoons striking home against the Spiners’ little seaport were clearly visible from space.

  The Deltue was in low orbit, 600 miles high, well above the legal 10-mile limit for any form of bombardment. This was seriously illegal. Even within the remote region of the Spine Nebula, it might attract the attention of Peacemakers. But Captain Umlk’s ship hadn’t launched the bombardment. She didn’t even know where the missiles had come from. It wasn’t as if she commanded a warship. Deltue was an old bucket-of-bolts freighter on the outside. The inside had many upgrades that gave her bite and armor, but her designation as a cruiser was a marketing exaggeration more than a statement of military capability.

  Orbital bombardment, though…it was a heady, taboo thrill. She wanted to launch again.

  Across the command deck, the signals commander waved a tentacle in consternation at whatever she was hearing.

  Were Peacemakers here already? No, it couldn’t be.

  Her comm chimed, but it wasn’t the signals officer.

  “Umlk, it’s Grenshal. Hunter-1 is safely docked. Time to get out of here.”

  “Just the one strike?” Umlk queried. “We’ve already broken Galactic Union law by commanding an orbital strike. Our crime would be no more severe if we struck again and gave these Spiners a harsher reminder of who their betters are.”

  “One strike is a weapon of fear,” replied the Zuul. “More would make them weapons of war. Though, I wonder—”

  Umlk’s comm buzzed with an urgent incoming message alert. The signals officer was waving all his limbs at her. “Wait one, Grenshal.”

  “Four frigates have detached from Orbital Station Atchen,” the signals officer informed her. “They are en route to escort us to the stargate.”

  Umlk shook her limbs violently, but she couldn’t shake sense into the message. “Frigates? What frigates?”

  “They’re telling me they were activated by a…revenge system? I don’t know what that means, but they are transmitting IFF codes that identify them as friendlies.”

  “Now hear this,” Umlk announced to her bridge crew. “Our exit will be escorted by four frigates. Tactical, assume they are friendly, but I want weapons free and firing solutions on them in case they are not. We don’t trust them until we are safely in hyperspace.”

  She re-established the link to the Zuul commander still inside his dropship in the hold. “It seems we’ve picked up an escort.”

  “Good,” said Grenshal, who, as ever, seemed unable to take much interest in developments that weren’t dirtside. “How soon before we leave orbit?”

  Umlk examined the live updates while Helm calculated a revised course that would allow the escorts to give them maximum protection. “A few minutes.”

  “Then we have time to make one more launch strike,” said Grenshal. “Do you concur?”

  “I do.” The Cartar shivered in excitement. “State target.”

  Grenshal supplied fresh coordinates…

  * * * * *

  Chapter Fifty-Nine

  Bazenn Sea, a Mile off Point Clear

  “What do you mean we don’t know?” thundered Jenkins.

  The face of Commander Gadzo in Jenkins’ wrist slate retained its composure as he weathered his captain’s anger. “We have freighters, scows, and scavenger ships,” Gadzo responded. “Our proud Patriot Navy possesses no real warships. On the Unlikely Regret, we could well have the best sensors in the fleet, but they’re not nearly enough. We’re scanning all orbits and the principal moons, but we have no
idea where that orbital bombardment came from. That’s the problem. It’s not like a missile launch with a fat thermal launch signature. With the right equipment, you could make an accurate launch with nothing more than a short puff of compressed air.”

  Damn! If they didn’t fix this quickly, the Scythe could bombard the planet into submission. How could you say no to an enemy who could strike anywhere at any time and with absolute impunity? All the bastards had to do was press a button, and several minutes’ later their target would be destroyed. This wasn’t the kind of negotiation Jenkins relished.

  Although he had considered the Spine his home for a long time, he’d nonetheless traded outside, too. He was used to planets with orbital defense sensors, merc or government system defense forces, and proper warships. Those could have sniffed out the source of the bombardment, but military grade sensors were expensive, and here in the nebula they would attract unwelcome attention.

  Gadzo is right, damnit. Which meant none of the other ships would be able to find the harpoons either. He couldn’t see a way out of this.

  Gadzo’s eyes glanced over. The first mate of the Unlikely Regret didn’t have pinplants, but he did have an earpiece and whatever message was coming through them was making his face pinch in dismay.

  “Fresh strike, Skipper. We can see point of entry to the atmosphere. The launch could have come from anywhere. Could be coming from deep space for all we know.”

  “Target?” The captain’s question was barely audible over his grinding teeth.

  “I’m calling it Stromsay Island,” said Gadzo.

  It made sense. The Scythe was the kind of organization who preferred a scorched earth approach, killing any survivors of their base in preference to leaving evidence pointing back to them. They were probably hoping to catch the attackers looting the base too, but the Patriot assault force was already regrouping at another one of the atolls.