by Richard Fox
The two turned a corner and found the other pair in an intersection a few blocks away. Both looked slightly battered. Cha’ril’s rotary cannon swung off a half-broken mount on her back.
“Any idea where we are?” Santos asked.
“About fifty miles north of the beachhead,” Gideon said. “There’s a dead zone between our forces and a domed city. Hard to know if anyone else from the Ardennes made it down.”
“This signal mean anything to you two?” Aignar shared a telemetry recording across their network. “Picked it up from something moving under power in atmo near us.”
“It’s Toth,” Gideon said. “I remember it from their incursion to Earth.”
“A Toth signal in the middle of a battle? The only thing I think it could be is a search and rescue signal. Not like them,” Cha’ril said.
“It would be for a VIP,” Gideon said. “Our mission to destroy the Last Light is off, our secondary target is any Kesaht leadership. You know where that signal set down?”
“Tracks to a few miles east,” Aignar said.
“Let’s move. See if there’s anything worth killing down here,” Gideon said.
****
Lettow pulled himself up, broken ribs aching. The Marine liaison lay dead at his feet, visor smashed open and wisps of air leaked into the void.
In the holo, he watched his fleet wither under fire from the star fort. His carrier had escaped serious damage, almost like the Kesaht wanted him alive to see his ships die. But in this, he saw an opportunity.
“Conn.” He slapped at the rail. “Conn, transfer maneuver control to me now!”
“Admiral?” An ensign stuck his head up out of his station to gape at the commander.
“Now!”
A new set of controls appeared on the holo tank. Lettow steered the ship at the star fort and redlined the engines. The Ardennes jolted as she accelerated forward. Lettow opened a ship-wide channel.
“All hands, this is Lettow. No time for excuses. All hands abandon ship. I repeat, all hands abandon ship. I’m taking her into the fort and I don’t need any of you with me. Make for the beachhead. I’m ejecting all drop pods and troop torpedoes. It’s been my honor to serve with you all. I’ll buy you time to get to safety. Abandon ship!”
He keyed in an emergency code and launched every pod and torpedo as he promised.
Fire from the star fort cut out.
Ericson appeared in the holo.
“Ardennes, what’s going on? Why are you on a collision course?”
“It’s my fault,” he said. “All my fault. I’ll buy you some time, but you need to—”
Her image scrambled as a bolt from the star fort ripped past the bridge and wrecked his antenna array.
Lettow looked to the bridge. Each station was still manned.
“What part of ‘abandon ship’ didn’t you understand?” he asked.
“You can’t steer her on your own,” his XO said. “We’ll all go down together, sir.”
“As you were, XO.” Lettow winced, realizing he was hurt worse than he thought.
The ship took a hit to the aft, knocking out two of his engines. He righted the ship, still on course for the fort as it grew larger through the forward screens.
A hail came up, one without an identifier.
Lettow smiled and accepted it, the tank and suspended neural system of Overlord Bale appeared before him.
“Human captain…change course. Now! Do so and I will show your survivors some measure of mercy,” Bale said.
The engines sputtered and died as another hit knocked out the ship’s reactors. The ship’s deck went still, but she was still heading straight for the fort.
“Can’t do that,” Lettow said. “This is the Ardennes; we have a motto to uphold. You want to know what it is?”
“Meat, if you do not change course, I will find your children and—”
“Resist, you walking colostomy bag. Resist…and bite!”
****
Bale’s concentration floated in and out. Had he just spoken with an insane human admiral? Why was an Ixio tapping frantically on his tank? And just where did that scum get the nerve to smudge the inlaid gold patterns that he’d designed himself.
His consciousness drifted to an old memory, of being an immature Toth on the home world, devouring a gishdan bird with a broken wing he’d come across in an alley. The taste of raw flesh and hot blood in his teeth had been so exquisite…Then a flood of images of Bale descending from his great ship. Fear at watching the humans eradicate all life on the savior’s planet…
Wait.
Bale snapped back and realized his feeder arm had stabbed into the skull of an Ixio. The alien head was tilted back, mouth gasping as neural energy sapped out of his body and into Bale’s.
Bale drew a final taste and tossed the corpse aside.
The Risen, all the Risen that weren’t fighting the human invaders, were staring right at him.
“I…I can explain,” Bale said.
“His matrix didn’t activate,” Tomenakai said, backing away from Bale. “His mind is lost. He’s dead. Forever.”
“Maybe…maybe I can’t explain.” Bale glanced at the data globe and saw the carrier Ardennes closing fast on the star fort. “Well, I can still fix this. Kricks, with me! And Tomenakai!”
Bale broadcast a command in Toth-speak and his warriors grabbed the Vishrakath envoy and the Ixio. They were carried out ahead of Bale as the Risen began shouting as their shock at seeing Bale murder one of their own wore off.
The overlord stopped in the doorway and nudged a warrior on the shoulder.
“Kill them all,” Bale said. “I’ll destroy their bodies before they can tell anyone else what happened.”
The warrior snarled a question.
“Yes, of course you can eat their flesh. But wait until they’re dead. They have been useful.” Bale stepped out and the doors locked shut. He heard the screams as his warriors went to work. They didn’t use their energy weapons, he noted as he listened to the massacre—such would foul the meat.
He quickened his pace to his waiting escape pod and sent an order to evacuate the only other valuable person on the star fort.
“Time to leave Kesaht’ka,” he said. “Want something done right? Just have to do it myself…and do it someplace a little bit safer.”
Chapter 10
A new sun burst in the sky, and Gideon’s optics had to dim to compensate. The explosion lasted a few seconds, then faded out almost as quickly as it had appeared. An afterglow permeated through the clouds overhead.
“Something went boom,” Santos said. “The star fort?”
“Likely…maybe we’ve still got a chance to pull this off. If we’ve found the overlord, then Earth can write this disaster off as some kind of a win,” Gideon said.
“If this is winning…I’d hate to see losing.”
Gideon tracked a lump of burning debris the size of a Kesaht tank as it rumbled through the sky over the dead city. Small explosions punctuated its descent, sending off sprays of burning metal and changing its inevitable course to the ground a few degrees with each pop.
His thermal optics caught a heat wedge at the top of a brick wall. The trace continued across the top of more apartment complexes, evidence of a ship that had landed close by.
“Eyes on,” Cha’ril sent through the IR. “Warehouse.”
The building walls flashed in his HUD as the Dotari shared the location.
Wind rushed over Gideon and Santos where they’d taken cover against a wall not far from the warehouse. His audio receptors picked up and isolated a sound that came and went with gusts. It struck him as a warning siren at first…then he realized it was a cry.
A child crying.
“Be aware, might have civilians on the battlefield,” Gideon said.
A pic of the upper half of a Toth drop ship, shaped like a giant jewel, flashed across his HUD.
“Say again,” Aignar sent. “Did you say civilians?”
A new voice came on the wind, one speaking words he couldn’t make out.
“Contact!” Cha’ril sent, and gauss cannons snapped from her position to the west of the Toth lander. “They’re…cloaked!”
“Move out.” Gideon powered up his gauss cannons and charged down the street toward the warehouse. He heard the clang of steel on steel and mortar work shattering as Aignar and Cha’ril fought.
Gideon lowered a shoulder and burst through the warehouse wall and slid to a stop.
A wide ramp had lowered from the ship, and a pair of Toth warriors stood in the rubble of the collapsed roof. One held a human girl in its claws, the other had an arm around the neck of a too tall green woman.
The Toth with the girl held her up as a human shield and slunk toward the one holding the green woman.
“What in the hell—” Santos drew down on the Toth through an open window.
“Our meat!” the Toth hissed. “Not yours. Back. Back or we’ll spoil them both.”
Gideon lowered his gauss cannons to one side and zoomed in on the Toth with the green woman. She was breathing hard, body rigid against her captor. Gideon sent a small charge to his rotary cannon.
“I know how to negotiate with Toth,” he said.
The rotary gun snapped onto his shoulder and fired a single bullet. The round hit the Toth between the eyes and blew out the back of its skull against the lander. The green woman slipped out of the dead alien’s hold and picked up a rock.
The other Toth hissed and put its claws to the girl’s neck.
Trinia lifted the rock over her head and bashed the Toth in the face. It released the girl and whipped its tail around, catching the Aeon against the forearm. She swung the rock up and hit the Toth in the shoulder, sending it sprawling. She slammed the rock into its skull, crushing it with a snap. She went to her knees and hit the still dead Toth again and again.
Gideon grabbed her by the wrist.
“Think you got it,” he said.
Trinia wiped a hand down her forearm, spreading a sheen of deep purple blood down her bare skin.
“Aunty!” The little girl clambered over the rocks and embraced Trinia. She must have been seven or eight, but looked like a toddler compared to the ten-foot-tall alien.
“Objective secured,” Gideon sent over the IR. “Santos. Perimeter sweep.”
Trinia ran her fingers through the girl’s hair and looked at the insignia on Gideon’s Armor.
“You’re…the other kind. Terran Union?” she asked.
“Gideon. Armor Corps…I don’t know what you are,” he said. “Or why you’ve got a little girl with you.”
“I am Trinia, of…nothing. Nothing really. The Aeon are finished.”
“Aeon…” Gideon said. The name jogged his memory of an incident report involving the Ibarrans and the Cyrgal that Ambassador Ibanez had sent him.
The girl began coughing and buried her face in Trinia’s tunic.
“Sir, the radiation,” Santos said.
“Yes, I can taste it.” Trinia stood, clutching the girl in her arms. “The escape pod was automated. Nothing I or Maggie can use in there. Do you have shelter nearby? You can’t get her into the pods with you; no way to refill your amniosis.”
“You know a lot about my suit,” Gideon said.
Trinia lowered her chin to touch the top of Maggie’s head.
“She’s dying out here. I’ll last a few days longer, but we need to move. They’ll come for the escape pod,” the Aeon said.
Gideon looked over the ship, tempted to stay longer and pull it apart for any useful intelligence. Just how it had broadcast a distress call through the scrambled atmosphere would be useful intelligence. But the longer they stayed in the open, the more radiation poisoning the girl would absorb just by breathing.
Cha’ril and Aignar came to the broken-down wall, both stained with yellow Toth blood.
“Took care of the rest—what the hell,” Aignar said.
“We have a beachhead nearby.” Gideon stepped back and brought out the treads within his leg housings. His legs locked and folded forward to his travel formation. He extended a hand to Trinia.
“Get on. You know where the overlord is?” he asked.
Trinia stepped up onto the armored skirt over the treads and sat against Gideon’s back.
“He’s as far from the fighting as he can be, the coward,” she said.
“Then you can tell me more as we move. Iron Dragoons, roll out.”
****
Gold Beach wasn’t a beach, nor was it gold. But it was the only foothold the Terran Union had on Kesaht’ka. Strike Marines and Rangers had secured what had once been a space port before the nuclear holocaust that ruined the planet. There was ample space for landers, and every drop ship and fighter that escaped the battle in orbit.
Gideon watched as a damaged Destrier transport hovered over a landing zone, wobbling as sputtering engines fought to keep the ship level. The anti-grav cut out and the ship dropped ten feet and belly flopped dangerously close to a pair of shore party sailors. The fuselage broke open and cases of gauss bullets spilled out like candy from a beaten piñata.
A woman with a mechanical brace on her arm rushed out of a field hospital: one of the few intact buildings now adorned with a tarp that had a red cross painted on it.
She adjusted a breathing mask over the bottom of her face.
“I don’t need bullets!” She waved a fist at the crashed transport. “Don’t need any more casualties either. You see the pilots walk away?”
“Not yet,” Gideon said. He zoomed in on her face. “I know you?”
“Masako.” She tapped the back of her head where plugs had once been. “I washed out on Mars. You sound like one of my cadre…that you, Tongea?”
“Gideon. Tongea’s…not here.”
“I’d love to catch up,” she said, “but casualties keep coming in.”
“Wait. The girl.”
“The child’s stable. Resting. Seems happy to be around regular old humans, not frigging Valkyries like—”
Trinia ducked out of the door.
“I don’t have wings or a spear,” the Aeon said.
“And I’ll be leaving.” Masako hunched slightly and darted back into the field hospital.
Trinia squinted at the sunset and looked over the chaos of the space port.
“I have information you can use,” Trinia said. “Who’s in charge down here?”
“Follow me.” Gideon waved her forward and the two walked down a row of cargo containers and ad hoc maintenance stations where pilots tried to instruct Strike Marines and anyone else nearby on how to rearm and refuel their fighters.
The Armor and Aeon garnered a number of doubletakes as they went by.
“Why did the Ibarrans want you on Ouranos?” Gideon asked.
“I spent many hundreds of years working with Qa’resh technology on Bastion. She wanted my expertise. She’d located what I thought was just a myth: a derelict Qa’resh ship left over from the time they ruled this galaxy.”
“And if she doesn’t have you?” he asked.
“Hard to say. She’s more capable than I give her credit for. But her Armor abandoned me to the Toth…I wish they’d have killed me instead. Bale put me to work, forced me to make slave soldiers for him. I kept the work slow, but there was some progress.”
“The Kesaht want you. The Ibarrans want you. What do you want?”
Trinia stopped in her tracks.
“You…you’re asking that?”
Gideon’s head snapped up as a Kesaht crescent fighter broke through the clouds. It trailed smoke from a wing and wobbled as it angled toward a cargo ship on the runway. Gideon raised his gauss cannons and loaded a pair of shells.
An Eagle fighter roared out of the clouds and fired a burst from the chain gun under its nose. The crescent ship broke in half, and the two parts spun out of control as they fell. One half landed on an empty forklift, smashing it to pieces. The other hit the transport and it burs
t into flames.
“You need to think worst-case scenario,” Gideon said. “Our fleet’s barely holding the orbitals above us. We don’t control the Crucible. Our situation…is in doubt.”
“We’re not hopeless. Not yet,” Trinia said. “A few hours ago, I was Bale’s prisoner. Working just hard enough to keep that monster from eating Maggie. This is a step up. Believe me.”
“There.” Gideon pointed to a dilapidated building surrounded by Rangers and two lances of Armor. Antennae and satellite dishes had been set up along the roof edge.
“Uh, sir?” A Ranger with a skull face mask pointed at Trinia as they approached the headquarters. “She’s…cleared?”
“She kills Toth. She’s fine.” Gideon continued without breaking his stride.
Inside, holo tables were set up along the walls of what had been a spacecraft maintenance bay. The Armor Corps commander, General Laran, stood in the middle, speaking with a Ranger colonel and a Strike Marine general. A map of the beachhead and the surrounding city projected out of Laran’s helm.
“Our patrols along the outer perimeter have had limited contact with enemy ground troops,” the Ranger said. “Hit-and-run attacks.”
“What’s this, Gideon?” Laran asked, pointing a finger at Trinia.
“I was a Kesaht prisoner until just recently,” the Aeon said. “You have time to mince words? Be polite? I didn’t think so. I will help you so long as you promise to get Maggie back to human space and reunite her with any family you can find. Fair? Yes. Fair.”
She looked over the map for a moment.
“I understand your symbols. You must take Hegemony City if you want to defeat the Kesaht. You know their Risen?” she asked.
“There were broadcasts a few hours ago,” Laran said. “A good number of Risen died, one right after the other. We think we took out most of their military leadership with a lucky strike. The enemy’s response has been uncoordinated and slow ever since that happened.”
“Then you must act quickly.” Trinia touched the domed city on the map. “A Risen’s consciousness returns to Hegemony after they’re killed. The cloning and reanimation center is beneath the step pyramid at the center of the city. Destroy it and they’re mortal again. They’ll fear death…and it’ll weaken Bale’s control over them.”
