Hellfire: Mechanized Warfare on a Galactic Scale (Metal Legion Book 3)

by CH Gideon

  “How long did it take for your people to withdraw from the Illumination League after learning the truth about Jemmin?” Xi asked.

  “The decision was made in twenty-two of your days,” Deep Currents replied matter-of-factly, causing Xi’s eyes to bulge in alarm.

  “That’s just… I… That’s insane,” she stammered. “How… I mean, you’re individuals, right? Surely some among you wanted to stay in the League?”

  “Our affiliation with the Illumination League was a point of much debate from the beginning,” Deep Currents explained. “You must understand, Captain Xi Bao, that our species differs from yours in significant ways. Yours is a hunter-gatherer species, adapted to roam vast territories in search of resources. The universe has therefore sculpted you into risk-takers and adventurers, investigators and problem-solvers. You are physically weak and fragile compared to many of the organisms you coexist with, but your intellect and ruthlessness make you ideal apex predators. We Vorr were originally a prey species which, through a combination of evolutionary adaptation and fortuitous geological events, narrowly survived environmental changes in our home waters that eliminated all of the species that preyed upon us.”

  “It wasn’t too long ago,” Xi smirked, “that human scientists thought the only possible path to higher intelligence was one traveled solely by predators.”

  “A quaint sentiment.” The Vorr’s auto-translator issued a light laugh. “And a predictably narrowminded one. Had your species been granted another two or three hundred of your standard years to develop, you would have reached the stars on much firmer philosophical and technological footing than you currently possess. However, it was clear to us from the moment we learned of your species that humanity would play a key role in the affairs of this galaxy.”

  Xi cocked her head curiously. “What makes you say that?”

  “Yours is a remarkably determined and adaptable species, Captain Xi Bao,” Deep Currents said approvingly. “While you are physically frail and intellectually limited at least on an individual level, your capacities to individually sub-specialize and collectively coordinate is unlike anything we have observed in the cosmos. The Jem’un were the closest example we Vorr have encountered to humans in terms of individual adaptability.”

  “I don’t know,” Xi said skeptically. “The Zeen are awfully adaptable.”

  The Vorr laughed again, but this time the sound seemed to come at Xi’s expense. “The Zeen are the opposite of adaptable, Captain Xi Bao. At least thirty-seven distinctive Zeen subspecies comprise what you probably refer to as ‘Zeen society,’ but none of them is capable of exceeding its base design. To succeed in complex tasks requires enormous coordinative effort between disparate and dissimilar Zeen subspecies. That Zeen succeed at this is a testament not to their adaptability but to their exceptional degree of individual specialization, including the specialization of what we call their ‘coordinator caste.’ Humans, however, have little difficulty switching roles even in the middle of complex projects. Some of this is due to your lower-than-average intelligence for a starfaring species,” it said blithely, causing Xi to go red with irritation as the Vorr continued, “but most is because of your hunter-gatherer roots. We suspect Jemmin recognized the danger you pose to its plans and elevated you earlier than would have otherwise occurred.”

  “You know,” Xi said as respectfully as she could manage, “it’s considered impolite in human society to impugn someone’s intellect, let alone an entire group of people. Some human societies have actually written laws against it.” She did not add, however, that no such laws were found in the Terran Republic. Only in Sol could you find such thought control systems.

  “It is therefore fortunate for me,” Deep Currents said in an unmistakable mocking drawl, “that we are in Vorr territory, not Terran.”

  A smile crept across Xi’s lips. “You were fucking with me?”

  “I would not…”

  Vorr trailed off mid-sentence before its auto-translated voice adopted a much more serious tone, and its next three words made Xi briefly go numb from the chin down.

  “It has begun.”

  “Captain,” called DC03’s pilot, Jake Galvis, “I just lost the wormhole’s telemetry feed.”

  Xi’s knees suddenly felt weak, but she stood from her couch and moved to the cockpit. “Go through the realignment protocols,” she ordered.

  “Running through them now,” he said grimly. “But I’m not getting anything. The gate’s still there, but the linkage is down.” The courier’s long-range visual feed focused on the giant ring of the wormhole gate. The circular structure looked precisely as it had a few minutes earlier, but where the dark event horizon should have been, a serene backdrop of stars was now clearly visible. The pilot’s eyes widened in horror. “Stars… Stars? I’ve never seen stars on the other side of a gate.”

  Xi turned to Deep Currents. “How long?”

  “The answer to that question is complicated,” the Vorr replied. “The Zeen are closely monitoring the situation, but it is possible Jemmin has only shut down the human gates. If that is the case, it could take them several hours to learn about the event. If, however, Jemmin has shut down all Nexus-linked gates—”

  A brilliant flash of light flooded the cockpit, interrupting Deep Currents mid-sentence and causing Xi to shield her eyes with her hand. Warning alarms went off throughout DC03’s interior as sensor feeds populated with new data, and as Xi lowered her hand, she turned her focus to those feeds.

  “It would seem,” Deep Currents mused while Xi’s eyes went wide at what she saw on the feeds, “that Jemmin deactivated all Nexus-linked gates. This should work to our advantage.”

  She wanted to dispute that statement, but her eyes were glued to the feeds.

  “Captain?” The pilot’s voice was shaky and faint. “What the hell is that?”

  As Xi looked out the viewing portal, her eyes snagged on the spherical object which had not been there a minute earlier. To the naked eye, it almost looked like a grey soccer ball. Covered in hexagonal lines just detailed enough to make out, no natural phenomenon had crafted the sphere’s appearance.

  Her eyes snapped back down to the sensor feeds and remained fixed on the most alarming factor in the displayed data: its sheer size.

  Measuring over five hundred kilometers in diameter, the moon-sized structure was equally dazzling and terrifying. But looking at it now, it made perfect sense to Xi’s mind that the Zeen would construct such a mobile, self-contained world.

  Their homeworld had been destroyed when Jem’un gravity cannon technology destabilized their parent star, incinerating the cradle of Zeen civilization in an unnatural nova. Now that Xi knew it was technically possible to build moon-sized structures like the one looming before her, it was natural to her mind that the Zeen would choose to live aboard them instead of being bound to a planet that might get annihilated like their first homeworld had been.

  One of the most fundamental facets of intelligence was the ability to learn from past mistakes or catastrophes. The Zeen had done that on the largest scale imaginable.

  “That,” Xi said after finally coming to terms with the scope of what they were looking at, “is our ride.”

  The pilot gave her a look that bordered incredulity and horror. “You can’t be serious. Do you have any idea how much energy it would take to move that thing around?”

  “I don’t think that thing moves through space,” Xi said pointedly.

  “A space-folding drive?” Galvis’ brow rose incredulously. “Do you have any idea how much power—”

  “No,” Xi interrupted, “and neither do you, but it’s obvious that the Zeen found a hack around Mr. Einstein’s seminal work.”

  “Not the Zeen,” Deep Currents chided. “The Jem’un. This technology is their legacy. But Mr. Galvis is correct: the energy consumed by each use of this system is enormous. It has taken the Zeen four thousand of your years to harvest and store sufficient fuel to power this system, and they have gr
aciously agreed to use a considerable fraction of that energy in humanity’s defense.”

  That last bit brought Xi’s mind back to the task at hand. She turned to the pilot and urged, “Let’s find out where they want us to park.”

  Galvis shook his head warily before gently firing the courier’s engines and flying toward the massive vessel.

  Two hours later, the DC03 was on final approach to the titanic structure. To call it a ship or a vehicle was inaccurate since it had no external thrust systems. For all intents and purposes, it was an inert moon comprised of nickel and iron. In fact, that appeared to be precisely what it was: an extensively hollowed-out moon.

  The DC03 drifted silently down a twenty-meter-wide, perfectly cylindrical shaft tunneled twenty degrees off perpendicular from the moon’s surface. After half a kilometer’s journey down the shaft, the craft emerged into a cavern. A glowing blue hexagon appeared on the far side of the cavern, and Galvis deftly maneuvered the courier ship toward it.

  As he brought the sleek courier vessel near to the thirty-meter-wide hexagon, a series of docking arms reached out and clanged against the hull as they grappled with it.

  Xi and Galvis had already donned their pressurized suits, and in her gloved hand Xi held the key to making a successful introduction to this world of Zeen.

  “We’re locked down,” Galvis grumbled. “We aren’t going anywhere without their permission.”

  “Come.” Deep Currents’ egg pod pivoted on its track-mounted base and drove toward the airlock. “They are waiting.”

  There was so little gravity that Xi felt weightless as she and Galvis made their way to the airlock. The inner door cycled open, and the trio moved into a cramped compartment that began to depressurize as soon as the door shut behind them.

  “Why did they jump here?” Galvis asked as the air was bled out of the airlock, causing Xi’s suit to expand around her like a human-shaped balloon. “Why not jump directly to the rendezvous?”

  “This is the first time Zeen have used the Jem’un FTL system,” Deep Currents explained over the local comm link. “They refused to employ it without first making a test passage to confirm their satisfaction with the system. We agreed to provide them with a star system of little tactical value to use as their first destination, so they came here. They are using this system twice in humanity’s aid: once to reach the rendezvous system, and again to propel you to your objective,” the Vorr said severely as the outer door finally chimed that it was ready to open. “The significant cost of this gesture made by Zeen on your behalf must not be ignored.”

  “It won’t be,” Xi promised as Galvis opened the door by inputting his command codes, causing the outer airlock door to open. Beyond that door was a membranous tube, not unlike the soft docking tubes used by Terrans during transfers from one ship to another without the benefit of a hard dock.

  And while there were faint suggestions that the tube was at least somewhat organic, it was far less so than Xi had expected after facing Zeen warriors on Shiva’s Wrath. Those vehicles had looked like living things, because that was precisely what they were. But this docking collar was artificial, and to Xi’s surprise, Deep Currents’ egg-shaped pod detached from its lower track-mounted chassis and drifted up with a gentle burst of gas.

  Xi and Galvis followed, and soon they were gently floating up the thirty-meter-long tube behind the Vorr pod.

  “I thought you’d want to stay with your ship,” Xi quipped.

  “And miss this?” Galvis scoffed. “You don’t get to pilot one of Mr. Durgan’s couriers by being weak-kneed, Captain Xi. I’d rather eat a bullet than miss the chance to be part of whatever’s about to happen here.”

  They came to the end of the tube, which gently curved toward a membranous airlock. The first membrane closed like a sphincter as soon as they were through, and they passed a second, then a third, then a fourth, all of which sequentially closed behind them.

  The redundant airlock tube opened into a thirty-meter-wide cylindrical chamber, which the Vorr illuminated with her pod’s external lights. What Xi saw there in the soft greenish glow was absolutely breathtaking.

  And more than a little intimidating.

  Lining the entire inner surface of the chamber, which stretched far beyond the meager illumination provided by Deep Currents’ pod-lights, were Zeen “insectaurs” precisely like the one she had fought on Shiva’s Wrath. They were packed so closely together that they seemed to be touching on all sides, and though they lacked eyes or discernible external sensor organs, she felt the weight of their regard surrounding her as she emerged into the chamber.

  And there were thousands of them.

  She knew that a Terran Marine in power armor would have no trouble taking one of the things out in a heads-up fight. Or two. Or possibly even five of them. But there were thousands of Zeen insectaurs here.

  And this is just the welcoming committee, Xi thought in awe as she gently bumped into Deep Currents’ egg pod. It was only then that she realized the shaft was vertical to the planet’s surface, which meant that they were no longer drifting but falling.

  Fortunately, the Vorr’s egg pod had sufficient handholds for both Xi and Galvis to grab, and Deep Currents’ thrusters slowed their descent to a manageable degree as the moon’s light gravity pulled them toward the shaft’s floor.

  The airlock above them disappeared into the murky darkness, leaving them surrounded by Zeen insectaurs as they descended.

  Fortunately, the shaft was not endless, and at its bottom was a flat circular patch of floor with a single insectaur waiting in the center. During the entire descent, Xi kept one hand firmly on Deep Currents’ pod while the other clutched what could very well be humanity’s only lifeline.

  Beside that insectaur was a chassis not dissimilar to the one Deep Currents had employed aboard the DC03, but this one seemed more refined and robust.

  Xi and Galvis let go of the pod three meters above the floor to drop and gently land while Deep Currents’ pod slid smoothly into its new receptacle. The Vorr’s track-driven undercarriage sprang to life, and as it did so, Xi eyed the Zeen standing before them.

  It seemed identical to the rest, but its isolation beneath the tower of its fellows clinging to the shaft above made clear it was indeed different.

  Deep Currents’ comm came to life with an auto-translated voice like the one Xi remembered from Shiva’s Wrath, and she realized the Vorr would act as translator for this exchange.

  “You Terran,” came the voice, using the same simplistic, broken verbiage as its predecessor.

  “Yes,” Xi replied, stepping forward, “I’m Terran. You’re Zeen,” she continued before gesturing to Deep Currents’ pod. “That is Vorr.”

  “Vorr brave,” the Zeen said, repeating the words of the insectaur Xi had communicated with on Shiva’s Wrath. “Vorr food. Brave food not symmetrical. Vorr help Zeen. Vorr help Terran. Vorr ask Zeen help Terran. Terran brave?”

  “Yes.” Xi nodded with conviction. “Terrans are brave. And Terrans are not food.”

  “Terran symmetrical with Jemmin?” Zeen asked.

  “No.” Xi shook her head firmly. “Terrans are not symmetrical with Jemmin.”

  “Jemmin infect Terran,” the Zeen said, causing Xi’s already strained nerves to tighten further. “Jemmin infect everything. Terran Jemmin food. Zeen take Jemmin food. Zeen eat Terran.”

  “No!” Xi blurted in objection, dearly wishing she had brought a sidearm since it looked like she might be forced to defend herself in yet another “diplomatic” exchange. “We will never be food to the Jemmin. We want to stop the Jemmin.”

  “Empty words. Need proof,” Zeen challenged. “Bad food still food. Stupid food still food. Obedient food still food. Jemmin need food. Jemmin trick food. Jemmin make food obedient. Terran obedient food.”

  “You want proof?” Xi snapped, stepping forward and producing the shell-like device given to her by the Zeen she had met on Shiva’s Wrath. “This is all the proof I’ve got, and
if it’s not enough? Eat me!” she snapped, fully aware of the double entendre.

  The Zeen stepped forward, extending its delicate pincers to pluck the item from her fingers. It silently took the thing and tucked it into a crease in its torso’s armor plates. Xi suspected the device carried some kind of data record that would take the Zeen some time to peruse, but it took it less than three seconds for it to step back and splay its limbs in a gesture identical to the one she had seen back on Shiva’s Wrath.

  “Terran brave. Terran not food,” the Zeen intoned as the mass of insectaurs lining the shaft overhead rippled with movement. “Terran not symmetrical with Jemmin. Vorr help Zeen. Zeen help Vorr. Vorr help Terran. Zeen help Terran. Vorr, Zeen, and Terran symmetrical.”

  At that last bit, a great, glowing triangle appeared on the floor beneath their feet. Spanning nearly the entire thirty-meter-wide floor of the shaft, one side of the triangle was a faint bluish hue. As Xi looked around, she realized the Vorr’s pod-lights were no longer green but had adopted the same blue as that line of the triangle. It seemed the Vorr, a race of ocean-dwellers, would be represented by the color blue.

  Another side was a fiery red, and this was the color Xi suddenly saw emanate from the shaft above her. The Zeen insectaurs themselves seemed to glow, and together they created a column of smoldering red that stretched far beyond Xi’s sight. The Zeen color was to be red, and it was one humanity had long associated with wrath and vengeance.

  The third side was a throbbing pale white, which she assumed represented the relative fragility of humanity. It was perhaps also suggestive of humanity’s fading purity in the face of Jemmin interference, but the truth was that Xi had never been good at discerning the messages in metaphors.