-1—

Day 752: Sub-sergeant Mule and Sergeant Chen sweated in a workout room aboard Mothership Slovakia.

Like a caged rat, Mule ran on a circular wheel. He had short hair, hard eyes and harder muscles. Indications of a ruthless fighting mentality showed in his demeanor. He was the squad’s sniper and scout. Today, he sweated as the odometer clicked onto six kilometers.

Chen performed curls, using an excessive amount of cable resistance. The Marine’s biceps swelled with blood. He had wide, flat features and possessed enormous strength. After finishing the set, the sergeant mopped his face with a towel.

“Have you heard the latest?” Chen was privy to more information than most. He went into officer country at times, which was on a different part of the mothership.

“Earth news?” Mule asked.

“Yeah, right,” Chen said sarcastically. “I have Task Force 7 news. Are you interested?”

They were part of Task Force 7: two Engels-class strike cruisers and a Trotsky-class mothership. They headed for a cyborg-occupied planetoid named Tyche. It was in the Oort Cloud and they had already taken two years travel time to reach this far. That made this the longest combat mission in human history.

There had been a monstrous, destructive war in the Solar System until Marten Kluge had ended it by using the sunbeam. Thousands of near-Sun mirrors had fed a gigantic focusing lens that fired a massive, annihilating ray. Because of Kluge, the newly-forged Alliance had won, but still mopped up stubborn cyborg strongholds throughout the system.

Task Force 7 had a singular and dangerous assignment to perform in the distant Oort Cloud. They were going because the sunbeam couldn’t reach past Pluto.

“Any time you’re ready to talk,” Mule said, as he continued to run on the wheel.

Mule was a strange one even for a Marine. His passion ran deep, to the very fibers of his soul. During the war, the cyborgs had killed or converted everyone on Mars, an entire civilization. Mule’s people were gone, including his wife, kids and parents. Mule had survived because he’d been a Martian secret service agent once. He’d protected a Martian diplomat on Earth. That had ended with his planet’s death. He’d joined the Alliance Space Marines because he wanted one thing: to hunt cyborgs, and especially, to kill them. Doing so wouldn’t bring back the dead, but it would dampen the fires that raged in his heart.

“I don’t know when Command intends telling the rest of the Marines,” Chen was saying. “So you’ll have to keep this quiet for now.”

Mule nodded.

Chen hesitated, maybe reconsidering. He glanced into various corners of the workout chamber, as if searching for eavesdroppers.

Mule waited. He was patient.

Finally, in a low voice, Chen said, “Strike Cruiser Ashurbanipal has left the flotilla.”

“What?”

“Crazy, isn’t it?”

A cold anger tightened Mule’s features. These were elite crews and the best Marines. The Alliance didn’t have many ships left. Everyone knew that sending three warships all the way to Tyche had caused bitter debates among the leadership. Now one crew had broken and mutinied?

“Is this information reliable?” Mule asked.

“Command fears to tell the boys,” Chen said. “But they’ll have to say something soon before word leaks out and starts a panic.”

With his thoughts in turmoil, Mule began to sprint on the wheel. He was the lone Martian among the Earthers who made up Slovakia’s Marines and crew. The Earthborn practiced different customs than he did and sometimes he rubbed the others the wrong way.

His physique highlighted much of that difference. He was lean like all Martians—lean as they used to be. Despite his muscles, his ribs showed, making him seem like a starvation victim.

Most of the Earthborn Marines took synthetic, performance-enhancing drugs that changed the body. One was called Dense, a muscle-building aid considerably more powerful than old-fashioned steroids. Another was Quake, which speeded neural impulses, making the user faster, if more irritable. The worst sin in Mule’s view was the posthypnotic hate-conditioning given to the Marines. Because of the enforced emotion, he feared his fellow warriors would act too rashly in combat and unnecessarily get themselves killed before completing the task of destroying the enemy.

Mule hated the enemy too, but his was a cold and lethal thing guided by intellect. He would do anything to kill cyborgs, but he intended on staying alive a long time so he could destroy more of the foul melds.

The wheel’s odometer clicked onto seven kilometers. Mule slowed down and he noticed a droplet of sweat floating before him. He picked up a towel and wiped himself down. He didn’t want more sweat to detach from his skin, float around the chamber and clog the recyclers.

“When did Ashurbanipal mutiny?” Mule asked.

“Five days ago,” Chen said. “The ringleaders contacted our captain and told him this was a suicide mission. We learned three days ago that the mutineers killed Ashurbanipal’s captain and his Marine guards. But they began braking five days ago. They’re already hundreds of thousands of kilometers behind us.”

“Didn’t Belisarius attack Ashurbanipal?” Mule asked.

“They couldn’t risk it,” Chen said. “The ringleaders knew what they were doing and had every missile and gun radar-locked on Belisarius. If the other strike cruiser would have attempted battle, the best we could have hoped for would have been mutual annihilation.”

“They were supposed to be an elite crew,” Mule said. “Ashurbanipal was our best ship.”

“The odds are getting longer, that’s for sure.”

Mule’s stomach tightened. This had happened five days ago. Five days… Slovakia hadn’t begun braking maneuvers yet. That meant they were still heading toward Tyche. Would Captain Han suddenly quit and decide to turn around?

“This is a disaster,” Mule said.

“Agreed,” Chen said. “We need Ashurbanipal’s firepower to tackle the cyborgs.”

“What?” Mule asked. “Oh. Right, you’re right, we need more firepower.”

Chen stared at him and finally shook his head. “You’re worried this will jeopardize our mission and that we’ll go home. You’re not really thinking about what this means: that we’re lacking a badly needed warship.”

“Do you want to turn back?” Mule asked.

“When I’m in the right mood in my bunk and thinking clearly, yeah, then I realize I’d love to go back home. This is a suicide mission. The rest of the time the hate-conditioning takes hold and all I can think about is crushing cyborg skulls.”

“You don’t own your hate,” Mule said.

“What?”

Your hate owns you. For maybe the first time since heading to Tyche, Mule felt sorry for his brother in arms.

“As long as we have surprise we’ll be okay,” Mule said.

“Keep telling yourself that,” Chen said. “Maybe you’ll actually believe it.”

Mule continued running. The Marines exercised for hours every day. Otherwise, the extended weightlessness would leech their strength and stamina and leave them too weak to destroy the cyborgs.

The reason for the task force had come from the last Neptunian humans alive—scientists on Tyche. A scientist on the Oort Cloud planetoid had sent a distress signal. It had been one word long, a scream of, “Cyborgs!”

Mule had heard a recording of the message; they all had. He’d heard the terror in the man’s voice and it had sent his heart pounding. He’d envisioned his wife and children screaming like that when the cyborgs had invaded their underground city on Mars. Just like on Mars, the cyborgs had slaughtered or converted every human living in the Neptune gravitational system, including the various moons and space habitats.

Mule had seen gruesome videos of what happened to men and women caught by cyborgs. It was brutal, sick and irreversible. To a cyborg, a human was a meat-sack of valuable body-parts.

The cyborgs, or melds, had it down to a science, an assembly-line horror. They used skin-peelers to pull away the outer epidermis and fine-tuned saws to tease off the muscles of a captured human. It was the spine and the brain that counted to the cyborgs, and the eyes and other hard-to-manufacture parts. The melds married human material to machines as if it were cloth, making synthetic demons, more cyborgs. His wife and children—

Mule shook his head.

One word screamed from the scientist on Tyche, from one of the few survivors of Neptunian civilization. Mule had heard a recording of the short message. The first time, he recalled staring at the speakers, waiting for more. There had been heavy breathing, a background explosion, an intake of air from a living being and then hard static. “Cyborgs!” had been the only and last word to transmit from the science station on Tyche concerning the subject of melds.

Because of the stellar distance, the one-word message sent by laser beam had almost been a year old by the time Marten Kluge received it.

Over two years ago, Slovakia and two strike cruisers had peeled away from the Alliance Armada headed for the Jupiter gravitational system. Humanity was on the offensive, hunting the cyborgs. With Kluge sunbeaming anything that moved in space, the armada could concentrate on each meld-controlled Jupiter moon and habitat. If the cyborgs proved too stubborn in a particular place, the sunbeam sliced and diced the moon into tiny chunks. Io at Jupiter was already gone, as was Triton in the Neptune system.

Task Force 7 had built up sufficient velocity and over a year ago, each ship had shut off its fusion drive. The ships were coasting the rest of the way to Tyche, cloaked in silence and stealth. The idea was to surprise the cyborgs.

“You’re certain we’re continuing the mission?” Mule asked.

“If we were going to stop,” Chen said, “the captain would have already begun to brake.”

Mule’s stomach began to loosen.

Not only did Marten Kluge possess the sunbeam, but also the giant interferometer that swept the Solar System searching for stealthy cyborg ships. If that wasn’t enough, the Alliance had deployed over a hundred drones throughout the Outer Planets to watch for secretive cyborg stealth craft, for the hated Lurkers. That was the cyborg signature: to sneak in close and attack out of the darkness.

Despite the drone surveillance and the giant interferometer, at least one Lurker had reached Tyche. Because of that, the rulers of the Solar System feared for the future. Task Force 7 was the answer, and despite losing one-third of the flotilla to mutiny, it looked as if it would continue to be.

-2—

Day 993: Two hundred and forty-one days after learning about Ashurbanipal’s defection, Mule rested his forehead against the plexiglass of a ship observatory. He raised his hands, pressing his fingertips and palms against the cold plastic.

The giant star Sirius ahead of Slovakia had become the brightest object in space. This far out, the Sun was only the third-brightest star. Alpha Centauri off below the ecliptic and to the side had become the second brightest.

Task Force 7 traveled in the Oort Cloud, the great halo of objects around the Solar System. Tyche was an anomaly here, a freak. The dirty little ice balls making up the halo were comet-like things, floating or orbiting in the most frozen reaches of the Solar System, varying from 2,000 to 200,000 AUs from the Sun.

The Oort Cloud was the last frontier, the final place under the influence of Sol’s gravity.

These distances meant that once Task Force 7 reached fifty thousand AUs, they would be one-quarter of the way to Proxima Centauri, the nearest star to Sol.

It means we’re all alone out here, with no one to help us.

Tyche orbited about 56,000 AUs from Earth, almost a light-year away. One light-year was a little over 62,000 AUs.

Mule often came to the observatory to think about his dead wife and children. He still desperately missed them. He was alone now, a mote of breathing life burning for vengeance. He wanted to mouth, “I love you,” to his departed wife. Today, he couldn’t do it. She was gone, and so far away on Mars, so far…

Unable to bear the ache of loneliness, he turned to go. The simple act of turning his head saved his eyesight. A blinding flash lit up the observation deck and cast Mule’s shadow against the far wall.

Instinctively, he threw himself onto the floor, surging to the hatch, slithering through and shutting it behind him.

Klaxons began to wail with loud and piercing noises. Did it signal a cyborg attack on the task force?

Ship speakers crackled into life. Through them, a man cleared his throat. “This is Captain Han speaking. Every crewmember and Marine will immediately report to his quarters. I say again, report to your quarters. This is no drill, report to your quarters at once.”

Mule grabbed a float-rail, pulling himself along the steel corridor. Other Marines around him did likewise. His heart hammered and he found himself short of breath. We can’t be anywhere near Tyche yet. What just happened?

From within his quarters, Mule heard the captain’s explanation several hours later. Over loudspeakers, Han assured the crew that no enemy drone or missile had struck them. Sabotage from within Strike Cruiser Belisarius had caused that vessel’s destruction.

Chen sneered at that. Mule silently agreed with the Marine’s sentiment, finding the news hard to believe. Command was covering up something.

During the next few days, Marines talked about Belisarius’s faulty fusion core. The men had known about it beforehand, even though Command had tried to keep it a secret. Keeping anything quiet was hard to do when they were all alone out here. Maybe the faulty core had finally ruptured and gone critical. Whatever the case, everyone aboard the strike cruiser was dead and gone.

Through the process of elimination, Mothership Slovakia had become the sole vessel of Task Force 7. There wasn’t any question of turning back, not in the chain of command’s minds. Mule heard Marines whispering the idea to each other, but nothing came of it; certainly no mutiny brewed.

Perhaps as bad—although Captain Han didn’t mention it—the cyborgs on Tyche might have detected the blast. If the melds had seen it, they might know someone was approaching their base. The Alliance mothership was still months away from Tyche and extremely small in stellar terms, less than a pinprick. It was very possible the cyborgs hadn’t noticed the explosion and still had no idea of the coming attack.

Mule lay on his cot thinking about it. His knowledge of combat tactics had matured from his late-night studying. Space battle was quite different from secret service details.

He’d come to realize that the right way to conduct this assault would have been with battleships, heavy cruisers and dropships. The battleships and heavy cruisers would fight their way past enemy missiles, lasers and gun tubes. A battleship’s giant particle shields would absorb damage while the long-range beams took out the enemy’s offensive weaponry. Then, and only then, would armored dropships bring Marines near, racing down to gain a foothold on the surface.

Instead, Task Force 7 had a mothership, which they dare not risk to enemy fire. If Slovakia exploded like Belisarius, they had no way back home. Would Kluge send a badly needed cruiser for Marines stranded on Tyche? That would mean the warship would be out of action for six years. The conflict back home was still too bitter to detach a cruiser for six long years just for the sake of a few men.

How many cyborgs were on Tyche anyway? How heavy were their defenses? Did they have missile launch pits? Did the melds possess laser batteries or proton beams?

Mule had no idea. No one did, but he figured he would find out in another few months.

***

Day 1089: Mule played Fist Ball against Hayes, one of his squad-mates. They stood in a centrifugal chamber, each man wearing padded gloves.

“Nine to two,” Hayes said.

The high-pitched whine of the churning centrifugal chamber changed suddenly, slowing.

“Wait a minute,” Mule said.

Hayes looked up. He was big and beefy with the customary wide Marine features. “Who’s doing that?”

“I am,” Chen said over a loudspeaker.

Mule and Hayes traded glances.

Soon, the chamber stopped rotating and everything became weightless. The hatch opened and Chen beckoned them outside.

“What’s up, Sarge?” Hayes asked, pulling himself into the corridor.

Chen pointed at a wall speaker.

“I hope I have everyone’s attention,” Captain Han’s voice said from it.

“It’s a ship-wide message,” Chen said. “I thought you’d want to hear it.”

Mule’s spine tingled. Mothership Slovakia was eight days from Tyche and due to begin braking maneuvers in six. Perhaps they would finally get some answers.

From the speaker, Captain Han cleared his throat. “Crew, Space Marines, I have solemn news to report. We have spotted five enemy missiles headed our way. They originated from a region between Tyche and us. At present velocities, the missiles are seven days out. We must assume the possibility that they will increase acceleration and shorten the time to contact with us.”

“It wasn’t supposed to work like that,” Hayes complained. “We’ve spent three painful years sneaking up on them. Damn that faulty fusion core.”

Mule nodded. The cyborgs must have seen the blast after all.

“Space Marines,” the captain said. “You will report to the hanger bays in twenty minutes, as there has been a change in operational plans. That is all.”

***

Mule sat with a couple hundred Marines packed onto Hanger Deck C. Around him squatted bruisers with thick necks, bristling hair and bulging triceps. Most had aggressive-looking tattoos of predatory animals or harsh sayings printed in block letters, and every one of them wore green tee shirts that showed their ripped bodies.

His fellow Marines squatted or sat, cracking their knuckles, scratching itches and watching the briefing officer with their hate-shining eyes. Mention cyborgs and these warriors started snarling. Several pumped meaty fists into the air. Others shouted vicious slogans laced with curses and mayhem-filled promises.

The tall briefing officer with his hologram clicker grinned back at the Marines, but Mule could feel the man’s discomfort. The officer twitched too much and he checked his chronometer far too often. That was the wrong way to act here.

Mule understood the Navy slug’s discomfort. It must be like standing in a cage with man-eating tigers watching him. The Marines hungrily absorbed his words, their thick necks craning, showing the muscles and the heavy veins. The battle-lust shining on their faces caused some to inch closer to the officer.

The reason for the posthypnotic conditioning was clear to Mule. Hate the enemy so you didn’t fear him. If you feared, you hesitated, and hesitating against a meld was certain death. Cyborgs fought with insectile speed. To see one fully, you had to wait until it stopped or moved with exaggerated slowness. And they were strong as well. Cyborgs had graphite-powered bones, synthetic muscles and armored bodies. They could punch through bulkheads and rip a man in two. Even with injections of Dense and an accelerated weightlifting schedule, a man was no match in strength, nor would he ever be as fast as a cyborg. Marines had to rely on teamwork, discipline and firepower to beat their cybernetic enemies.

With the click of his thumb, the briefing officer changed the holo image.

A round object appeared in the air. It was a holo image of Tyche. Two thousand and fifty-three kilometers in diameter, it was a rocky planetoid with lots of methane ice on the surface. There had been an ancient theory that suggested Tyche would prove to be a gas giant in the Oort Cloud. The theory had been wrong.

“The captain has used the ship’s telescopes,” the Navy slug told them. “So far, he has been unable to find any Lurkers. We have, however, found this.”

The briefing officer clicked his device and a new holo image appeared. It showed a vast exhaust port many tens of kilometers wide for a drive engine. The thing was built into the planetoid, a gargantuan construct. The Neptunians might have built it, but it seemed more likely the cyborgs had done so.

Throughout the war, the cyborgs had used several operational strategies. One of their favorite had been raining asteroids on targeted planets or moons. To achieve the proper velocity with their billion-ton missiles, the cyborgs had built mammoth fusion engines into their asteroids. If they had also built the port, there must be more cyborgs here than expected.

“We’re uncertain what the cyborgs hope to achieve with such a monstrous moving planetoid,” the briefing officer said. “Some of our scientists believe the melds will conform to their normal strategies. That means they will attempt to turn the planetoid into a huge invasion platform, perhaps to take out the sunbeam. Tyche is far enough out to build up a high velocity before the sunbeam could strike it with annihilating power. Still, much of Tyche is composed of methane ice, and the sunbeam could quickly burn it down to the core. We suspect most of the cyborg habitats are buried in the ice. Such a burn-off would destroy the living quarters.

“Other scientists disagree with the majority view. The cyborgs are rational and logical, they say. The melds have lost the war and have no desire to die in an illogical blaze of glory. But if they aren’t building Tyche as an attack platform, to gather their last soldiers in one final assault, what are they doing? A minority group of scientists believes the planetoid could act as a giant generational vessel, able to support hundreds of thousands of individuals as it crossed interstellar space to a new star system. That would mean the cyborgs are escaping our system, perhaps to begin the war anew in some distant future.

“The truth is that we don’t know what they plan to do with the planetoid,” the briefing officer continued. “Whatever their objective, we’re here to stop them. In several hours, the captain will launch the assault torpedoes. We’re doing that before the cyborg missiles reach this mothership. There are two good reasons for that. One, if Slovakia is destroyed, you Marines will still be able to complete the mission. Two, without the torpedoes attached to the mothership, Slovakia will be more maneuverable and more likely to survive the enemy attack. Are there any questions before I begin the tactical objectives?”

Surprisingly, there were none. Like Mule, the Marines were ready to fight.

The briefing officer nodded, clicked the device and began to outline objectives.

-3—

Launch hour arrived. Slovakia was six days out from Tyche. Eight days if one counted the hard braking that needed to occur for the mothership to land on the planetoid.

While thinking about it, Mule donned his powered armor. Five cyborg missiles accelerated for Slovakia. The mothership bored in toward Tyche. Those missiles hadn’t lifted from the icy surface. According to the briefing officer, they had been drifting in space like proximity mines.

Whether the five missiles had radar-alerted fuses or cyborg fingers pushing buttons didn’t matter. The five big missiles had announced their presence by the long fusion tails reaching far behind them, by accelerating at the mothership.

The enemy missiles homed in on Slovakia. Therefore it was time to launch the Marines before the next cyborg move announced itself.

There were many possible ways to place troops onto a planetoid surface. The cyborgs liked using black-ice coated projectiles, making them nearly radar-invisible and teleoptic-proof. A more common way was by using dropships to deploy suited Marines, or by simply landing on the surface in shuttles and disembarking. Slovakia’s captain had ordered use of torpedoes.

Mule and his squad-mates donned powered armor. These represented the latest development in Marine hardware, very similar to the best Highborn suits.

The battlesuit’s exoskeleton amplified a wearer’s strength, while biphase carbide plates with shock-absorbing padding protected the Marine inside. Its helmet had an integral sensor visor and holographic HUD. Computers assisted with targeting and other functions. The suit was airtight and pressurized for vacuum.

These battlesuits also had chameleon systems to change color to match the background. As a further advantage, the chameleon systems dampened heat and infrared signatures.

Each of them carried gyroc smart rifles. The rifle fired a .75 caliber, spin-stabilized rocket. Against cyborgs, they used Armor Piercing Exploding, APEX, rounds. The smart rounds were actually tiny guided missiles, able to make course corrections to stay on target. Each squad also had a heavy weapon, a tripod-mounted flamer. It fired superhot plasma, a short-range blast that killed whatever it hit, with no exceptions.

“How many days are we going to be in the torpedoes again?” Hayes asked Chen.

“Load up with plenty of vids and other entertainment,” Chen said. “It will be at least six days before we touch down.”

Mule wore a slick-suit inside the powered armor. It helped keep him at a comfortable temperature.

His squad had five Marines, including their leader, Sergeant Chen. Mule was the squad sniper and scout. His suit was faster and not quite as heavily armored as the others’ were. His chameleon systems were much more extensive, though, so his battlesuit ended up weighing the same as the others.

Early on, armorers had individually fitted each suit to the wearer. Six or more days inside one of these meant it was going to get rank and scratchy. There were stims, Quake and slowdown drugs in the suit’s integral med-kit. There was extra ammo, replacement battery packs and recyclers. It made for a bulky load.

Now an armorer helped Mule secure his helmet. His breath bounced back against his face, causing a momentary feeling of claustrophobia. To break his funk, Mule began testing systems, turning on each of the suit’s computers in sequence. Ten minutes later, he confirmed everything was in order. So did the others of their squad.

“Follow me,” a Navy lieutenant said.

The man had just come from officer country. He wore the new Navy blues of the Alliance Fleet. Mule felt like an overfed gorilla as he clanked after the lieutenant. He dwarfed the man, and if he wanted, Mule could have twisted the lieutenant in two.

Just like a cyborg could do to us.

His suit’s motors were set on ultra-low power and they moved through a narrow steel corridor. The lieutenant opened a hatch, and Mule’s gut crawled with emotions.

The squad had often practiced outside Slovakia’s hull, in space. The mothership even towed a gunnery cage, and Mule had used it many times to drill. This was different. This might be the last time he ever walked the corridors of Slovakia.

The lieutenant pushed through the hatch and floated down a flexible tube. Mule switched off magnetic power to his boots, pushed and floated after the man. He could see the stars outside, and by peering just right, he saw their destination—a Phoenix assault torpedo.

The core of the mothership was rather small, as such things went. It contained life-support and crew quarters. Everything else was outside Slovakia. On racks, it carried the Phoenix torpedoes and Electron drones. The mothership lacked the particle shields—asteroid-like rock—that battleships and strike cruisers kept in front of them. Instead, Slovakia depended on keeping its distance from the fight and if needed, spraying lead-laced gels and prismatic crystals before it.

Mule didn’t know how gels or crystals were going to stop the five missiles. The captain would have to use the laser or fire antimissile rockets. But those were big missiles headed this way, each one a quarter the size of Slovakia. Who knew what defensive systems each enemy missile possessed?

The mothership was like a giant spider web, with the egg sac in the center, the life-support areas. Instead of cocooned flies and other bugs, the web held torpedoes and drone missiles.

The lieutenant opened another hatch. He then led them into their torpedo, a small, cramped chamber.

“It’s cold in here,” the lieutenant said.

Mule’s outer suit sensors picked up his words. The sensors also told him it was forty-one degrees in the chamber.

The Phoenix had a big bulbous head. Most of that was plate armor and ECM equipment. The rest held crew space and firing tubes.

Mule watched as the lieutenant began to open smaller hatches. The hatches were embedded on a bulkhead in a half-moon arrangement. The hatches led to five pod beds.

“In you go,” the lieutenant announced in much too cheery a voice.

For a moment, none of the Marines moved.

Mule found that interesting. Even with hate-conditioning—

“The sooner you go in,” the lieutenant told them, “the sooner you’ll get to kill cyborgs.”

“Right,” Chen said. “Hop in, boys.”

Four Marines pushed headfirst into four different pod hatches. Above each hatch was stenciled a name.

“Sub-sergeant,” the lieutenant said to Mule. “Don’t you want to kill cyborgs?”

The Navy slug peered at him with a smirk on his narrow face. Of course, he was using the conditioning, trying to hurry them along through bloodlust.

Mule had never trusted the hate-conditioning. As a scout and sniper, he didn’t have the posthypnotic commands embedded in him. He feared the conditioning would make the others too rash in battle. Even less, he didn’t like this Navy officer using the conditioning against his friends. A man should own his hate, not have it foisted upon him.

“How about I shove you into my hole?” Mule asked.

The Navy officer blinked rapidly, with surprise.

Mule lifted his arms and took a step toward the man. It brought a smile to his lips, because the manipulative slug flinched away. The lieutenant actually blanched white when his back hit the bulkhead.

“Don’t you want to kill cyborgs?” Mule asked.

The lieutenant opened his mouth, but he didn’t seem able to speak.

“We’ve traveled three years to do this,” Mule said. “The least you can do is give us a little respect.”

The Navy slug nodded, and he wasn’t smirking anymore. In fact, he was frightened, maybe getting ready to crap his nice clean pants.

Mule shrugged, causing his exoskeleton motor to purr with power.

“Have a good life, sir,” Mule said. Then he, too, went headfirst into his hatch. It became dark and he heard a clang. The lieutenant must have closed his hatch first.

The five hatches led to five pod beds. Each of the beds would cocoon the person in it. At the right time, the torpedo would fire each Marine through its nosecone in a special insertion pod toward Tyche’s surface. The torpedo was like a flying shotgun and the Marine pods were the shells.

Mule found his pod, lay in it and began hooking cables to the outer ports in the suit. The cables would supply him with food, air and warmth, and dispose of his wastes. He made himself comfortable and opened comm-channels with the others.

“Are you in, Sub-sergeant?” Chen asked.

“Tight as a bug,” Mule said.

“It’s about time we got started,” the sergeant said.

It took some time, but finally Mule heard faint, metallic clangs. Those must be the locks that held the torpedo onto its rack releasing. Afterward came a tumbling motion, which told Mule the cables holding the Phoenix had detached. They were on their own now, adrift in space.

Because of what the briefing officer had told them, Mule a good idea of the game plan. Slovakia would detach almost all of its torpedoes and drones. Actually, it detached all the Phoenix torpedoes and kept several drones behind.

Several of the torpedoes would act as decoys. The mothership had carried extras in case some malfunctioned before the battle date. The idea was to drop off each torpedo and expel it farther away from the mothership in a lateral direction, using magnetic impulse. In layman’s terms, Slovakia magnetically repelled each torpedo and drone away from it at a varying angle.

Once the mothership braked, the many torpedoes and drones would continue at the original velocity. They would all seemingly leap ahead of Slovakia, but they would do so without giving themselves away through fusion-burn signatures.

Those would come later, days later, when the torpedoes and drones approached Tyche. For now, the captain hoped to work his silent torpedoes and drones as close to Tyche’s surface as he could.

Inside the torpedo, Mule took a deep breath and tried to control his shakes. That he had them at all was a surprise. He wanted to attack, wanted to kill. So why did he shake?

“I’m going to watch a movie,” Chen said. “I suggest the rest of you try to relax.”

I don’t get this. Why am I shaking? The cyborgs had spotted Slovakia too far out. Maybe his subconscious mind was worried about that. Maybe it thought the pod would become his coffin. Did the posthypnotic conditioning in the others actually have a real use?

“How are you feeling, Sarge?” Mule asked.

“You know what?” Chen said. “I’m excited. Yeah, I’m anxious to rip some cyborgs heads off their torsos.”

“You can hardly wait?”

“Yeah,” Chen said. “It’s like a game of Fist-Ball, a championship match. I’m ready. We’re all ready. Are you ready, Mule?”

“I live for danger.”

The others chuckled at his words.

“The cyborgs are probably pissing oil right now,” Chen said. “We’re the Space Marines. We’re the best there is. We have the latest tech and we’re full of Quake. If I could feel sorry for them freaks, I would. Instead, I’m going to enjoy shooting their eyes out. They shine orange, I hear. Did you ever hear that?”

“Yeah,” Mule said. He thought about the cyborg who had stared at his wife and kids.

“The pupils are colored orange cause of the circuits in their skull,” Chen said. “Thinking about that makes me want to puke. I hate them, Mule. I want to stomp them like the bugs they are.”

“Good.”

It went on like that for a long time. Eventually, Mule cut the link with Chen and the others, still pumping themselves up. He brought up the torpedo’s outer cameras and watched the stars. They were alone in the night, headed for Tyche, waiting to blast out of the nosecone and begin the pod assault. He could hardly wait, and he found that the shakes had stopped.

-4—

Day 1094: Mule awoke with a shout as a klaxon rang in his ears.

“What’s going on?” Chen asked through the commlink.

Mule squeezed his eyes shut, and with delicate patience, he eased his right arm out of the battlesuit’s sleeve. He managed to work his hand under the collar and use his index finger to rub his itchy eyes.

“Mule, do you hear me?”

“Loud and clear, Sarge,” Mule said. “What’s up?”

“Do you hear the klaxon?”

“Sure.”

They’d been in the Phoenix for five days already. Slovakia had braked hard and expelled a lead-laced gel cloud in front of it. That screened the vessel from the torpedoes and likely, from the cyborgs—unless the melds had put secret drones far afield that looked from behind Slovakia. Sometime during the five days, the cyborg missiles had increased gravities, coming at the mothership faster, as their fusion tails streaked for many kilometers behind them.

“Here it is,” Chen said through the comm, “I was looking for the switch.” The klaxon stopped.

Easing his right arm back into the battlesuit’s sleeve, Mule turned on his computer. He had a few talents other than strict mayhem. Before he became a Marine, even before his Martian secret service days, Mule had been a hacker.

He’d had three years to think about the mission, three years to crawl around the mothership, poking here and there. He’d hacked into the main computer and written new programs for his battlesuit, giving himself some tricky options. Now he brought up an unauthorized image on his HUD. From signals emitting from the torpedoes and drones, he built a holo image of the overall situation.

The planetoid’s edge showed, as did the many tiny blips approaching it. Tyche neared or they neared Tyche. It was the same difference.

“Our torpedo is going to brake soon,” Chen said over the commlink. “Are you boys ready?”

The others signaled yes.

“Mule, what about you?” Chen asked.

“Give me a minute.”

“Did you hear that we’re going to brake?”

“I got that,” Mule said. “Now wait a sec.”

“What aren’t you telling me?”

Mule snapped orders to his suit computer. Something strange was going on out there. An Alliance drone—a tiny green blip on his HUD—blinked with a dull gray color. Then so did another drone.

“Speak to me, Mule. That’s an order.”

Mule cursed softly under his breath.

“What’s happening?” Chen asked.

“The cyborgs are using—” Mule winced as another drone went inert. “The cyborgs are doing something to our forward drones. I wonder if they’ve hacked into the control software.”

“How do you know what’s going on?”

Mule told him about his self-written programs.

“You can see the big picture?” Chen asked, with wonder in his voice.

The green blinking drones—a swarm of them—burst into motive life. On Mule’s HUD, they showed little flickering tails. This meant that in real time long blue fusion exhausts grew behind them as they began to accelerate.

Once again, their torpedo’s klaxon began to blare.

“It’s an emergency!” Chen shouted to the others. “Get set. We’re going to move.”

As Sergeant Chen finished his sentence, the Phoenix’s engine ignited.

Mule watched his HUD. Instead of flying faster at Tyche or slowing down, their torpedo slewed “upward” as if heading toward the planetoid’s North Pole.

“I don’t think we’re slowing down,” Chen said.

Slowing down had been the operational plan. If the torpedo moved at its original velocity and fired the Marine pods like bullets, each fighter would hit the surface hard enough to obliterate the powered armor shells. They had to slow down first so they could make softer landings. Ergo, the Phoenix needed to brake. For combat purposes—at least usually—the later they slowed down the better. Braking used the engines, blasting at full power. The exhaust heat easily registered on enemy sensor systems, making them targets.

“We’re not braking just yet,” Mule said. He told them what he knew so far.

“So what’s happening?” Chen asked.

Mule was fiddling with his computer, activating more of his custom software.

The burn didn’t last long for the Phoenix. Before the engine shut off, the torpedo’s main computer readjusted their flight path, aiming at their former destination point once more.

“Mule, what are you hiding from us?” Chen asked.

“I’m not hiding anything, I don’t know myself yet. I’m trying to figure out why this happened. My guess is the cyborgs used an invisible projectile against the drones. Our torpedo moved to avoid any other invisible projectiles sent at us.”

“Invisible?”

“Unseen by our side’s optics,” Mule said.

He figured the captain didn’t want to use active radar just yet. Once the captain used the ship’s radar, he lit up the mothership like a beacon. Yet if the cyborgs already knew where Slovakia was, why not use radar? Something else was going on that Mule didn’t comprehend.

Ninety minutes later, the captain spoke to them. The old man spoke to all the Marines in the many torpedoes. He used a relayed broadcast, and he no doubt emitted it from a drone well away from the mothership.

Mule heard the message in his headphones in his helmet. They all must have.

“This is Captain Han of Slovakia speaking. Each of your torpedoes just made a slight course shift. The reason is simple. The cyborgs fired black-ice projectiles at our forward drones. We believed they used steel sabots to magnetically accelerate the projectiles with railguns, as that’s how we do it. The melds must have done it behind a gel cloud. We observed explosions in the gel cloud two days ago, but until now had no idea what they were. Those explosions must have opened holes for the black-ice projectiles.

“Drones lead the assault for just such a reason,” the captain said. “The cyborg projectiles hit several of our drones, smashing enough internal gear to render them inoperative. It means the cyborgs must have used optics to spot the majority of you after launch.”

Mule could have already told him that, as it was obvious.

“I don’t want you men to worry,” the captain said. “The drones have already begun to accelerate at Tyche. Soon, your torpedoes will begin to brake.”

The captain cleared his throat. “Gentlemen, it has been my pleasure to bring you this far. We haven’t found any of these black-ice projectiles aimed at Slovakia, but we must presume that many are flying at us. Our gel cloud might deflect some of them enough to throw them off course, but the mothership is in danger nonetheless. Since each of your torpedoes must be on cyborg screens, the tactical AI has decided on a new Marine landing strategy.”

Mule felt a surge of fear squeeze his spine. That didn’t sound good.

There was a longer pause this time. “We had hoped to bring the Phoenixes nearer the planetoid before we had them brake,” the captain said. “That’s not going to happen now.”

“Is he talking about a change in the battle plan?” one of the Marines asked.

“Shut up!” Chen snapped. “Listen to the captain.”

“There is an emergency release code in each of your torpedoes,” the captain was saying. “This mission, you will not launch through the firing tubes as planned, nor will you insert onto the planetoid in your pods. Instead, you will crawl out of the hatches you first entered. You will find emergency hoses inside the compartment and an escape hatch from the torpedo. Listen closely, gentlemen. This could be a tricky and unorthodox operation.”

“Sir, tell them about the braking,” an officer said over the commlink. “They need to allow their craft to brake before they attempt any of this.”

“I hope you men heard that,” the captain said. “First, each torpedo will lower its velocity through a swift but intense braking schedule. That means you’re going to be in space longer than we had anticipated. You may be alive and heading for Tyche even after Slovakia is—”

“Sir!” an officer interrupted.

“Gentlemen,” the captain raised his voice to override his officer as he continued addressing the Marines. “You will attach the life-support and waste hoses to your battlesuits. Then you will use the escape hatch and uncoil the lines as far as they will go. That’s a hundred meters in most cases, and for a few of you, it will be two hundred meters. You will float outside the torpedo in space.”

“What?” Hayes asked. “That’s crazy. We’ve never practiced for that.”

Mule shook his head. Marine landing insertions were always in pods fired from torpedoes. It sounded as if they were going to free-fall their way down. The captain and his tac-team must be really worried to try a stunt like this.

“The next part of the journey is going to last several days longer than we’d first planned,” the captain said. “The torpedo’s AI will alert you once it is ready to accelerate at the planetoid. It will do that just before impact. You must detach before the torpedo accelerates its final time. The torpedo will proceed down to Tyche ahead of you and, we hope, destroy cyborg infrastructure. None of you is going to land in a pod, but rather through free-fall. Each of you will also have a higher insertion velocity than we had originally anticipated. The main AI suggests that the depth of the methane ice will sufficiently break your falls so…so most of you will survive a crash landing.”

“Is he kidding?” Hayes muttered. “He must be kidding.”

“Shut up!” Chen snarled.

“This is a desperate situation, gentlemen. We’ve always known the cyborgs were cunning. They love deception and stealth attacks above all else. But you are the Alliance Space Marines. You must land and destroy every cyborg, or destroy the life-support cubicles and the planetoid’s motive power. You cannot let the cyborgs use Tyche for whatever evil purpose it has been modified to perform.”

Several Marines growled agreement.

“I’m going offline soon,” the captain said. “After I do, the tech advisor is going to switch to the command channel and speak to the sergeants. He has a few technical aspects about the mission you’ll each need to know. I would wish you gentlemen luck, but I know you don’t need it. You’re the toughest fighting force in history. And you will kick these cyborgs to death. Do you hear me?”

The growls in Mule’s ears grew in volume.

“Kill the cyborgs, Marines. Kill the cyborgs!”

***

Two hundred and nineteen minutes later, the Phoenix rotated so its engine port aimed at Tyche. The torpedo braked for seventy-eight minutes, reducing their velocity.

“The cyborgs are definitely going to see that,” Chen said.

Mule didn’t respond. He was too busy watching his HUD. Slovakia burst sideways through its own gel cloud, accelerating away from the enemy. The captain was playing by new rules. The black-ice projectiles had changed the game.

Mule shook his head. The new game meant the mothership was simply another decoy.

As Slovakia shut off its engine, a laser beam appeared from the ship. The laser speared toward Tyche at some distant target.

“We’re rotating,” Chen said.

The deceleration aboard the torpedo had quit. The torpedo must be aligning itself back on target.

The minutes ticked by, and Slovakia’s laser stopped beaming. Mule wondered what the ship had been firing at. A new gel cloud began to form before it, sprayed from outer gel tanks. The mothership couldn’t keep flying through its gel cloud and hope to have some sort of protection left later. None of that would matter, however, if the captain didn’t stop the five missiles.

If the captain or the AI is smart, Mule thought, he should put a gel cloud behind them, too. Maybe the captain had already done that.

“It’s time to move out,” Chen said.

Mule unhooked his tubes, checked his suit and detached the buckles. He crawled and knocked on the hatch with an armored boot.

A Marine opened the hatch and helped him out.

“Open up your helmets,” Chen told them.

Mule found the side control and pressed it. The visor eased open like a Cyclops’ eye. Cold, metallic-tasting air seeped past his face and down his neck.

He peered at his squad-mates. Everyone had a heavy growth of beard.

Hayes had bloodshot eyes, and every time he glanced somewhere, the man’s eyes rolled as if they were loose in his head.

“Are you feeling okay?” Mule asked him.

Hayes muttered a litany of profanities and described in detail what he was going to do with his fist to the cyborgs.

After Hayes finished speaking, Chen spoke for several minutes. Soon, he had everyone nodding.

They helped each other open the battlesuits and climb out.

Mule practiced isometric exercises. It felt good to be out of the suit and in the chamber’s chilly air. Then he scratched everywhere. Others arm-wrestled or practiced zero-G moves on each other. Due to their open suits, the chamber smelled worse than a locker room.

Finally, they shook hands all around and slapped each other on the shoulders. One by one, they climbed back into their suits and checked each other’s locks.

“Mule and I will use the two-hundred-meter hoses,” Chen said.

Mule hooked up his hoses.

When everyone signaled they were ready, Chen pulled a lever and blew open the emergency hatch. Its metal plate flew off into space, tumbling end over end before disappearing into the distance. There came a momentary tug as the air rushed out. Mule didn’t move, though, as he’d anchored himself with his magnetized boots.

Finally, the Marines demagnetized and jumped out of the hatch. They drifted to the ends of their lines, according to the new plan.

Before, the torpedo’s battle computer would have figured out trajectories and a hundred other little problems for them. It would have launched them perfectly at the surface in their insertion pods. Now their velocity was low enough…maybe, to survive a free-fall landing on the ice. Now they were outside the torpedo so if the cyborgs destroyed the delivery vehicle, some of them might survive its destruction and land on the surface to wreak vengeance against the melds.

-5—

Day 1095: Space war had its own rules. It was a giant game of hide-and-seek. The stellar void was vast, making it nearly impossible to see a cold dark object, particularly if it was composed of radar-resistant material like black ice.

Hide from radar, hide from optic sight and keep one’s thermal signature down to nothing if possible, those were key techniques. From the very beginning, the cyborgs possessed better sensors and better stealth material.

Humans liked protection, armor. Their best battleships had thick, asteroid-like particle shields, matter hundreds of meters thick. The genetically-engineered Highborn had developed collapsium armor of densely packed atoms. Here in the Oort Cloud, ordinary humans possessed none of those advantages.

As Mule drifted in space, tethered to the Phoenix, he did some computing. Either the Neptunians when they’d been alive, or the cyborgs, had built a massive exhaust port onto Tyche. That implied vast, planetoid-sized engines. That in turn implied more than one or two Lurkers: more like twenty of the stealth vessels. If Tyche swarmed with melds, two thousand Marines wouldn’t have much of a chance. In fact, if that were the reality—thousands of cyborgs—maybe the melds would attempt to capture rather than to kill them.

Capture would be worse than death. The cyborgs were a nightmare, but their leaders were worse. A Web-Mind was a cyborg times one thousand. Humanity had been fighting them long enough now to know the worst. The melds teased brain mass from involuntary donors, from prisoners of war. They spread out and wired the brains onto flats, inserted control circuitry into the tissues and submerged it all into computing gel, which they put into bio domes. The combined brain masses made the Web-Mind into a strange intellect with an inconceivable IQ.

If the cyborgs captured him and tore him down for his brain…would he live the rest of his days in soundless horror, part of a vast, living, pulsating Web-Mind?

Thinking about it enraged Mule. Maybe others would open their visor one last time and choke on nothing, on vacuum. He had a different plan. He was going to make the Web-Minds fear him. If he could, he would make it to one of the brain domes. Then he’d shoot the domes one by one, telling them about his wife, about his children and about Mars. Afterward, he’d watch the brains quiver in terror as those around them died one by one.

The minutes merged into hours, and Mule focused on the space battle going around him. It proved interesting for a while, watching through his illegal HUD feed.

The captain’s next big move was a sudden and very powerful nuclear explosion in the path of the enemy missiles.

Almost by accident, Mule caught a bit of the info, the explosion. He switched the imaging on his HUD to get a better idea of what was going on. The five cyborg missiles zeroed in on the mothership—well, on the spreading gel cloud many hundreds of thousands of kilometers ahead of them. The missiles didn’t bunch together, but came one at a time in a staggered formation.

After several seconds of scanning the situation, Mule understood what must have happened. Days ago, the captain must have used the mothership’s sole railgun. Behind the gel cloud, he’d shot steel-skinned sabot rounds. The railgun accelerated the sabots and then the round shed its metallic skin. The inner kernels were polymer mines: dark, radar-resistant and optically difficult to detect. Each mine would have secretly burst through the gel cloud and continued to fly on an intercept pattern toward the approaching missiles, or rather, where the missiles would be at a projected intercept time.

As Mule scanned the data, he realized a proximity mine had just exploded—a powerful thermonuclear weapon. It created a mighty EMP near the approaching missiles.

Grinning so hard it made his mouth hurt, Mule ran analyses on the enemy missiles. According to the readings, the EMP had taken out three of them.

The last two missiles accelerated, closing in on the gel cloud.

A small explosion occurred in the lead-laced cloud. It was certainly a Slovakia-engineered event. The explosion punched a hole through the gels, creating a window, an opening. Through the window speared the mothership’s lone laser. The beam washed the nosecone of the front missile, and seconds later, the cyborg warhead detonated.

Then came another small explosion in the gel cloud, creating a new window. The laser speared out of it. But it was too late. The last cyborg missile—a big thing one quarter the size of Slovakia—had already spewed a cloud of prismatic crystals.

Those crystals were a laser defensive layer. Each crystal reflected light. When a laser attempted to burn through—as Slovakia’s beam tried now—each crystal stole and diffused some of the laser’s strength. The beam turned crystals into slag-material and began devouring the sludge through heat. A burn-through took time, depending on a P-Cloud’s thickness and the intensity of the laser.

Likely, Captain Han knew he didn’t have the time because the prismatic cloud was too thick. The beam snapped off, and the cyborg missile continued boring in.

The critical event in the drama occurred soon thereafter. The cyborg missile entered the lead-laced cloud. As the missile did that, many hundreds of kilometers away, the mothership plowed out of the cloud, with its fusion engine engaged.

It told Mule the captain had been waiting for just that event. While hidden behind the cloud, Han must have maneuvered the mothership away from the enemy missile. Captain Han tried to pull a fast one.

The cyborg missile detonated. Mule didn’t witness the thermonuclear explosion, but his computer could tell because of the reaction of the gel cloud. The lead lacing in the cloud helped dampen some of the blast and radiation, but not all and maybe not enough.

Several minutes later, Captain Han came online. “We survived, but many of us have taken deadly dosages of gamma rays. We’re not sure how long we can last, but we’ll put the mothership on autopilot in case we all succumb to the radiation.”

The captain coughed. It sounded bad. He must have taken a heavy dosage, and if he had, how much had the rest of the bridge crew taken?

The Marine squad outside the torpedo continued on the collision course with the planetoid, now with a possibly dying mothership behind them. Tyche loomed before them. Out here in the Oort Cloud, it was almost absolute zero, so cold that methane froze hard. The planetoid had a high albedo due to the surface ice.

As the remaining Alliance drones neared Tyche ahead of the torpedoes, the cyborgs must have detonated a proximity mine of their own. On his HUD, Mule witnessed a thermonuclear EMP. The blast took out most of the remaining drones. Three survived the explosion. Two of them were X-ray shooting missiles. These sprouted metal rods on their nosecones and detonated their own nuclear cores.

The gamma and X-rays advanced ahead of the blast destruction. Rods in the nosecone focused the rays at whatever the drone radar had discovered. Those gamma and X-rays beamed onto Tyche’s surface. Fractions of a second later, the nuclear fireball destroyed the rods and the rest of the drone.

The final drone, a hardened missile, dove onto the surface and exploded just as it touched.

On his HUD, Mule saw a bloom of fire. The warhead exploded on the methane ice, causing vast crackling on the surface.

“The missiles are softening up the enemy for us!” Chen shouted.

Mule wanted to cheer. But instead he kept wondering about the best way to land in free-fall. How far should he bend his knees? It was too bad he didn’t have a suit thruster. If he’d been in his pod and ejected from the torpedo as planned, he wouldn’t have to worry about any of this. The free-fall landing changed the procedures.

After a half day more of travel time, the Marines finally neared Tyche, their comm chatter constant now. They used comm lasers directly toward each other so the cyborgs couldn’t pick up the talk. Enemy black-ice projectiles hit the lead torpedoes, destroying many but sparing the men on the lines. Luckily, theirs was one of the last struck.

“Detach, detach, detach!” Chen shouted as they neared their target.

“That’s not going to give us enough separation,” Mule said.

“What are you talking about?”

“If we’re only one hundred meters away from a destroyed torpedo, we’ll still be in range of flying shrapnel from the impact explosion. If we hope to survive, we have to be farther away from our ride.”

“Talk to me, Mule,” Chen said. “Give me a suggestion.”

Mule was already reeling himself down to the torpedo. “We have to reach the hull, detach the hoses and jump as hard as we can. We need distance from our torpedo and the jumping will give us that.”

Through his headphones, Mule heard the roars of dying and outraged Marines ahead of him.

“You heard Mule,” Chen told the others of their squad. “Let’s hurry.” The sergeant began contacting other torpedoes, telling them the same thing.

Mule hauled as fast as he could. How much time did they have? He saw his squad-mates reaching the torpedo. Detached hoses sprayed air and mist as the Marines let them go. Then, one after another, his fellow squad-mates jumped. Hayes and Sumo first magnetically walked to the downward side of the torpedo, and jumped in that direction.

Mule yanked on his hoses so he drifted down. He magnetized his boots and soon clanged against the hull. Chen landed nearby, having done the same thing.

“This is a crazy way to make a surface landing,” Chen said.

“Love the Corps or get out,” Mule said.

“Semper fi,” Chen said.

Mule leaped. Chen leaped, too. Their detached hoses flapped and twisted like snakes.

Tyche loomed huge before them, getting bigger by the minute.

“Look at it!” Hayes said.

Mule looked down in time to see the torpedo’s nosecone crumple. Something ripped it open. Then the Phoenix began to tumble, spinning faster as it approached the planetoid.

“We wouldn’t have survived that,” Chen said. “You saved our lives, Mule.”

The others sent him thanks too.

The minutes ticked down, and there were more shouts on the headphones, more dying Marines.

“Sand!” a Marine sergeant shouted over the comm. “The cyborgs are shooting high velocity clouds of sand at us. It’s ripping through seams and breaking faceplates.”

“Position yourselves feet-first at the planet,” Mule said. “Use your cameras to angle it right and run a gyro program on your computers to help keep you on target.”

He did exactly as he suggested, and he used guide-jets to help position himself. Tyche filled his world, his camera vision. He saw lights on the surface and something bloomed into existence. Was that a nuclear fireball? Was it a sand-cannon blasting at them?

Minutes went by. He heard something odd then, and he felt waves of pressure against the bottom of his feet.

What the—

Mule realized it must be sand, varying thicknesses of it.

Sumo bought it because he tilted his head forward and took it right in the faceplate, a big gust without realizing it. Granules cracked his visor and vacuum did the rest.

“We’re down to four,” Chen said.

Marine chatter grew continuous. Men swore savagely at the cyborgs and promised direst vengeance.

“Just let us get down!” a sergeant roared. “We’re Marines, and we’re here to kick your guts straight through to your butts, you metal heads!”

Mule worked his guide-jets, trying to align himself perfectly and to keep himself that way. How many on their side had survived so far? How many Marines would survive planet-fall? The mothership had launched two thousand men.

Although Mule checked his space program HUD, he failed to spot any igniting engines. It seemed the cyborgs had destroyed all the torpedoes. By the comm chatter, Mule figured there must be one third of the men left. Maybe there were six hundred and fifty Marines to conquer this last planetoid. Probably it was even less, maybe four hundred or three hundred and fifty Marines.

Tyche in his vision grew until it blocked all the stars. Now Mule plunged down toward the planet.

“I’m going to kill you cyborgs!” Chen roared. “I’m going rip off your heads and piss down your necks!”

“Concentrate on landing,” Mule reminded him.

“What?”

“You have to land intact before you can kill anyone.”

“Right,” Chen said. “Yeah, that’s good advice. Hey, you goons, this is it. You’d better land straight on your feet and get the servos ready. If any of you apes fails me now I’m going make you wish you were dead.”

“We will be dead then, Sarge,” Hayes said.

“Just do what I say, and no back talk.”

“Sure, Sarge,” Hayes said.

Mule concentrated, and he wondered if this was going to break his legs.

“Luck, Marine,” Chen said.

Mule nodded. He was through talking. The surface rushed at him, and concern beat though him like a heartbeat. He found himself breathing harshly. The icy methane rushed nearer and nearer.

Mule roared, and he bent slightly at the knees. Would his servos hold? Was the captain still alive or was Slovakia a drifting ghost ship in the Oort Cloud? He didn’t have any more time to wonder. The icy surface rushed up, and Mule slammed against it.

It felt as if the soles of his feet were shoved up against his chin. Servos whined. Battlesuit metal screeched and he heard blasting noises and crackling ice.

No. That didn’t make sense. Vacuum couldn’t carry noise. Maybe the ice touching his suit could. Wait a minute…this little planetoid had a negligible atmosphere, a touch of nitrogen. Could that carry the sound?

Mule plunged through the methane ice. It was a white blur on his HUD. The suit servos whined, and he felt himself slowing, slower and then he came to a stop. He blinked several times, breathing deeply. He had stopped moving. He had landed. He was alive.

He almost opened communications with Chen. Caution stilled the impulse. He didn’t want the cyborgs to triangulate open communications and pinpoint their locations.

Mule swallowed a lump down his throat. First flexing his fingers, he thrust his metal-protected hands into the ice and began to climb out of the gopher-like hole his plunge down from space had made. It was time to find the others and decide on their nearest objective.

-6—

Day 1096: Mule found Sergeant Chen first. The Marine’s landing into the ice had sent out jagged lines of crackling methane around the hole. The sergeant pushed his head and shoulders out of the impact-created tunnel, staring up at Mule with his black faceplate, watching him.

A moment later, Chen climbed onto the surface. The gorilla in his battlesuit looked around at the bleak world. Afterward, Chen clumped beside Mule and turned on the link-line between their two suits. It was extremely short-range communication, meaning they could talk without any cyborgs listening in.

“Did you find any of the others?” Chen asked.

“Not yet.”

“We got to start looking.”

Mule scanned the barren icescape with his sensors. The visor gathered ambient starlight and gave him a simulated HUD. Tyche’s surface wasn’t smooth, but had ripples in it. That implied something in times past had made the methane into sludge or liquid so it could freeze in this manner. Did Tyche have cryovolcanoes as Triton did?

Several minutes later, Mule spotted another of their squad climbing out of a hole with the obligatory crack lines spreading outward. It was Hayes. He lived, although one of his left leg servos sparked. Hayes told them he could hear it whine.

“That can’t be good,” Hayes added over the link-line.

Silently, Mule agreed. Marines needed mobility in order to employ their best tactics, and that went quadruple against cyborgs. If the servo gave out or limited Hayes’s mobility—this Hell-world would devour any mistakes or missteps.

Ten minutes later, Mule spotted the last hole. Like theirs, the tunnel slanted and didn’t go straight down. He shined a light down the hole but couldn’t see anything moving. He was the scout, so he crawled into the tunnel and found a dead Marine at the bottom. It was Red, and his neck was broken. Mule took what he could off the battlesuit. Unfortunately, he would have needed a machine shop to pry off Red’s servos and put a good one into Hayes’s injured suit.

We made it, or three of us did. I wonder how many other Marines are down.

At the moment, they had three fighters, four gyroc rifles, one plasma flamer and many extra APEX rounds. What they didn’t have was an endless air supply.

“We need to find the cyborgs pronto,” Chen said. “They breathe air, don’t they?”

“Last I heard,” Mule said.

“Which way do we go, sniper?”

Mule ran another program and slowly turned in a circle. He raised an arm. “That way; we head in Tyche’s north.”

“What are you reading?”

“Oxygen traces.”

“Let’s get moving,” Chen said. “We need to get near the oxygen traces and fix our location of attack. What do you say, sniper? Do we move together or are you going to see what’s there first?”

That was a good question. Mule gave it several seconds thought. “Let’s stick together for now. We need to find others before we do any attacking.”

“Hey,” Hayes said, “I’m picking up a voice. It’s weak, though.”

“What direction?” Chen asked.

“Behind us,” Hayes said, “that way.” The gorilla with the sparking left knee-joint raised an arm and pointed.

“I think you’re right,” Chen told Mule. “We need numbers and firepower before we hit the cyborgs.”

Mule grunted, and they headed across the barren world to see if other Marines had made it alive onto the surface.

***

Two hours and five more Marines later, the icescape had turned surreal with cracks or vents in the ice. Some of the vents billowed nitrogen and methane vapor a kilometer or more into the air. Occasionally vents spurted nitrogen or methane liquid. What a crazy place this was out here at the end of nowhere. Welcome to the Oort Cloud, Mule thought.

The vents and vapors told Mule that Tyche had a heat source somewhere within the planetoid. The extent of the cryogeysers meant it had to be a greater source than mere radioactive decay. Could Tyche have a molten core like Earth? That seemed preposterous. Before its destruction, Triton in the Neptune gravitational system had been heated by friction, the tidal forces that pulled and pushed the moon as it orbited the gas giant. There couldn’t be any tidal forces out here because there was no gravity source to cause them.

What had the Neptunian scientists been doing out here anyway? They had been capitalists, meaning that something like a distant Oort Cloud science station would have needed to turn a profit sooner rather than later. Was there something more to Tyche that they didn’t know about?

Mule spied a distant flicker of motion. He used extreme magnification. “Get down,” he shouted, “and don’t move!”

He sprawled onto on the ice, hoping his chameleon systems hid him from the enemy. The others did likewise, big men in heavy battlesuits trying to blend in.

“What’s wrong?” Chen asked through the link-line.

“Check HUD three-nine-nine,” Mule whispered. “Use extreme magnification.”

“What is that?” Chen asked. “It can’t be indigenous life, but it is moving.”

In Mule’s opinion, the unknown contact was flying above the surface, just above the ice, maybe by a few meters.

“Okay,” he said, scanning the computer analysis on his HUD. “I’m picking up some readings. It’s metallic and hot.”

“Radioactive?” Chen asked.

“No—hot, heat exhaust,” Mule said.

“The cyborgs have a skimmer?”

“Whatever you want to call it,” Mule said. “Skimmer sounds good.”

“They’re headed here?” Chen asked.

“Yup.”

Sergeant Chen rolled onto his back so he stared up at the stars. He held the position for a short time until he faced the approaching enemy again.

“Listen close,” Chen said. “We’re splitting up into two-man teams so they can’t kill us with a single missile or skimmer cannon, laser, whatever that thing has, and we have to try to ambush it. If you’re out of link-line range, maintain comm silence. Try to use the cryogeysers for cover. Mule, you’re coming with me. Hayes, I’ll carry the flamer for now.”

Soon, Chen and Mule loped across the ice, staying close together. They used low-gravity jumps, almost an extended glide, to cover ground fast. Mule’s boots crunched against ice each time he landed to take another bound.

“They’re sure to see us,” Mule said.

“I’m counting on the melds having motion detectors,” Chen said.

“That’s means we’re making ourselves bait.”

“Never ask your men to do something you’re not willing to do yourself,” Chen said. “This looks like a good spot. Get down and set up your rifle.”

They landed behind an icy protrusion that was layered like a smooth wedding cake. It told Mule this must have come from a cryovolcano that had spewed liquid methane.

“What makes this planetoid so hot?” Mule asked.

“Concentrate, Marine. It’s firefight time.”

Mule watched the distant object. It had gotten larger-looking and was moving faster than he’d realized. He readied his gyroc rifle. The APEX rounds could take down a cyborg in body armor. It should be able to punch through the hull of a skimmer.

Time dragged as he waited. Cryogeysers continued to blow vapor, although it wasn’t continuous. He looked around. The four fire-teams had gone to ground and the skimmer loomed larger yet.

“Too bad we don’t have heavy lasers,” Mule said.

“Does the skimmer have a canopy, an enclosed compartment?” Chen asked.

“No. It’s an open-air craft.”

“Can you count the occupants?” Chen asked.

“Crap!” Mule shouted. “They’re firing missiles.”

A streak pulled away from the skimmer and moved above the ice. It split in two. No, no, there must have been two missiles to begin with. One zeroed in on them. The other missile presumably headed for another team.

“Keep your rifle aimed at the skimmer,” Chen said. The sergeant lay behind the tripod flamer. With a flip of his gloved finger, he activated the heavy weapon.

“It must be a homing missile,” Mule said. “They’ve locked onto our signatures. Should we split up to confuse it?”’

“I said sit tight,” Chen snarled, “and shut up. Let me concentrate.”

Mule licked his lips. The skimmer kept coming, but the two missiles came faster. They were sleek things, only a little bigger than a Marine in his battlesuit. Like Earth-side cruise missiles, they skimmed just over the surface, minutely changing course as they zeroed in on their target.

“Here it comes!” Mule shouted.

As if he was on the firing range, Sergeant Chen pressed the flamer button. For a second, Mule knew it was hopeless. Landing impact must have jarred something loose in the flamer. The superheated plasma weapon took careful calibrations to work right, and—

An orange globule of plasma discharged from the flamer. The superheated substance actually seemed to wobble as it flew into the dark atmosphere. The plasma expanded as it traveled, and the missile plowed into the superheated orange glow.

“Shove yourself against the ice!” Chen shouted.

Mule had already thrown himself onto the ground. The missile explosion clicked on his sensors. The practically nonexistent atmosphere wasn’t dense enough to carry the sound or the blast waves of the explosion powerfully enough to affect them.

Mule breathed a sigh of relief. The warhead was explosive but not nuclear. He breathed two more times and figured his suit was intact, without breaches.

He lifted his head and realigned the rifle. The skimmer was closer.

“They’re launching another one,” Mule said.

The missile dropped from the undercarriage and streaked ahead of the skimmer. The missile had their names written on it, as it zoomed straight at their position.

Chen swore as the flamer began to recharge. It only had seven charges left, but none of those would build up fast enough to help them.

“Let’s split up,” Chen said.

“But the missile will just follow—”

“Do as I tell you!” Chen roared. He activated the flamer and took a flying leap away to the left, leaving the flamer behind.

Mule scrambled to his feet and bounded with low-gravity leaps to his right. He clutched his rifle, and he expected to see the missile swerve to track him or Chen. Either way, he would miss the Sarge—

The missile slammed against the heat-building flamer where it sat alone on the ice, exploding. Mule saw it through his HUD using his rearward-aimed sensors.

Right, right, the sergeant had activated the flamer, making it hot. The missile must have homed in on it.

More explosions occurred beside vaporous geyser vents. The explosions came from other, striking missiles. How many did the skimmer carry?

Mule raised his rifle, and he snapped off five shots, quick firing at the approaching skimmer. The armor-piercing explosive rounds were smart. They wouldn’t swerve around corners, but like the missiles a moment ago, they could make course corrections.

Were the other Marines firing? He hoped so. Mule took one more shot, jumped away and skidded across the ice on his belly, sliding for a hundred meters and behind another icy protrusion.

“Yeah!” a Marine shouted over the comm. It sounded like Hayes.

Mule swiveled on his torso and climbed up the ice wall. He cranked up the magnification to get a better look. The open-car skimmer had bullet holes and crumpled metal in the main body. Sparks showered in places. The skimmer wobbled from side to side and something red blew up inside it. Mule grinned. Gyrocs had hit all right.

Three cyborgs appeared in the cockpit. Two leaped overboard, one on either side of the craft. The last tried to bail out of the back, but didn’t move fast enough. Before it got out, the skimmer nose-dived and plowed into ice. That crumpled the square-like body and sent showers of icy shards into the air. There wasn’t a last movie explosion devouring the vehicle, but that thing looked wrecked.

The cyborg that went down with the skimmer survived the impact. Those bastards were hard to kill.

The meld stood slowly amidst the wreckage. It must be shaken up. That was something, at least. They didn’t die easily, but it was possible to make one woozy. Before Mule could think about it too much, his gyroc rounds slammed into its body-armor, causing the cyborg to jerk and sway like a puppet. After that, the thing actually brought up a weapon. Mule could see severed power cables glowing orange inside its shattered body and yet still it attempted to fight. Then more of his rounds smashed its head, killing the thing as it slammed down against the wreckage.

“Communications silence isn’t going to help us now,” Chen said over the open comm-channel. “Count off and see how many of us are left.”

They had Hayes, Chen, Ross and Mule, half of the eight who had begun the firefight with the skimmer. The cyborg missiles had borne bitter fruit. Now four Marines had to face off against two cyborgs—except a piece of luck finally touched their side. Because Chen used the open comm, three other Marines answered.

“This is Sub-sergeant Bogdan of Omega Squad. Give me your position.”

Chen told him.

“We’re five kilometers away,” Bogdan said.

“Listen up, Marines,” Chen said. “We’re falling back to buy time until Bogdan gets here. But you’d better hurry, Sub-sergeant, or we won’t be alive.”

“We’re coming as fast as we can,” Bogdan said.

Mule didn’t think pulling back was a good idea because exposing himself to cyborgs sounded foolish. He stayed where he was, and he clicked on a private comm-line to Chen. Before he could say anything, Mule saw two pulse lasers wash Ross’s battlesuit as the Marine tried to jump away.

Ross landed, with his feet slipping out from under him. Was he in pain? He scrambled back onto his feet and leaped again, avoided another pulse and rolled into an ice crevice where vented vapors billowed.

“I’m hit,” Ross said. “I’m leaking air.”

“That’s bad luck,” Mule whispered. Without air—

“I’m sorry to hear that, Space Marine,” Chen said. “You’ve just volunteered to be the decoy. I wish it could be some other way, but now you have to get up and jump again. We’ll fix their positions and avenge you.”

Mule knew Chen was right. If Ross leaked air, he wouldn’t last long. In fact, the oxygen leak would make him easy to spot.

Ross spoke up. “Semper fi, Marines, you apes remember me.” He leaped out of the crevice, sailing high toward the cyborgs. It was a good idea. They would have been expecting a low, gliding leap, not a high parabolic jump.

From up there in the atmosphere, Ross told them. “I see one.” The Marine got off a shot. Then heavy pulses hit him, lighting him up. Something sizzled in the battlesuit. Ross roared in pain, got off a second gyroc shot and then cyborg laser pulses caused the Earther to gurgle as he choked on his own blood.

Mule lay on his torso and zeroed in on an enemy location. He snapped off three rounds. The rocket motors burned brightly as they flew at the enemy. The penetrators hit ice, but no cyborgs. The melds were fast. They fired and scooted each time, never staying still.

“I hate these things,” Hayes snarled.

“Mule, look to your left,” Chen shouted.

Mule swiveled, and rolled. A laser pulse struck the ice beside him, sending up methane vapor. He jumped low so his battlesuit headed toward a depression that would hide him from cyborg view. Another pulse came. The laser bolt skimmed ice and caught the edge of his suit just as he rolled into the crevice.

Heat washed against Mule’s right leg. It felt like needles stabbing into his thigh. The suit’s air-conditioning unit hummed, trying to cool him.

Hayes leaped toward a new position, twisted, fired and yelled “Sarge,” and received two direct hits, two more and a final finishing shot that must have burnt his circuitry and probably his liver and other organs. Methane vapors hid his battlesuit as the heated metal landed and sank into the ice.

Meanwhile, Mule was low-gravity gliding. He was good at this.

“Get down,” Chen said. “You’re in the direct line of fire.”

Mule barely reached an outcropping of protection. Pulses struck at precisely that moment. One missed. The other hit, washing him with heat.

Inside the battlesuit, blisters appeared on Mule’s back. The lasers heated up his armor so there was a fused spot. The pain knocked the breath out of him. For a second, Mule expected the worst, a suit breach. It didn’t happen, but his rear sensors burned out. There would be no looking back now with HUD imaging unless he turned his head toward what he wanted to see.

“I hit one,” Chen said. “It’s still moving, but I slowed it down. They were concentrating on you.”

Mule found himself short of breath and thirsty like he couldn’t believe. He refused to gulp water, though. He didn’t know how long his battlesuit supply was supposed to last. He would sip later once he regained clear thinking and could ration his drinks, his precious water supply.

The hurt cyborg kept popping up, firing at Chen and then at Mule. They used their gyroc rounds against it and even blasted through the ice to try to finish the sneaky thing. Even hurt, the meld was too good for that, too fast and clever for their smart rounds. What the cyborg did, however, was fix their attention on it.

“It’s baiting us,” Mule said.

“What?” Chen asked. “Where’s the undamaged meld?”

“Behind you!” one of Bogdan’s three reinforcing Marines said.

Mule whirled around and a touch of envy and admiration filled him. The cyborg leaped faster and lower than he would ever be able to. The thing fired at him from a distance, and the round would have hit if Mule hadn’t received the second of warning. He dropped into a crevice, a ready-made trench.

“It’s between us,” Chen said. “We’ll cut it to ribbons now.”

The sergeant was wrong. The cyborg was fast and wickedly clever. It took out two of the new Marines before one of Mule’s APEX rounds knocked it off its feet.

“Shoot it!” Chen roared. “Kill it before it gets back up.”

They were almost too slow. Three Marines on their bellies, from three different points on the compass fired in unison and only one round hit the meld. Fortunately, that shot proved vital, knocking the cyborg down again, this time to its stomach.

Mule stood up in his trench and fired three APEX shells. He saw the rocket contrails in the darkness. The super-hardened penetrators pierced the meld’s body armor and killed it finally, for good.

“Where’s the injured cyborg?” Mule asked.

They scanned the dark icescape, but found no sign of it.

“That can’t be good,” Bogdan said.

There were three of them, three Marines out of eleven. For the heavy cost of eight dead, they’d managed to destroy two cyborgs.

“Let’s check the skimmer,” Chen said. “Maybe we can use something on it.”

“Are you kidding?” Mule said. “We have to find the cyborg before we try to salvage anything.”

“Are you frightened, Martian?” Bogdan asked. Bogdan and Mule had never gotten along.

“Yeah, I’m quivering,” Mule said.

“Listen, scrub—”

“Stow it,” Chen said. “We’re Marines. We stick together in the face of the enemy.”

Bogdan remained silent. So did Mule.

The three of them neared until they were fifty meters from each other. Slowly, warily, keeping an eye out for the other cyborg—

“It’s by the skimmer,” Mule said. “Do you see it? The thing is crawling to the vehicle.”

Mule raised his rifle and fired several shells. One slammed into the cyborg, but it managed to reach the skimmer nonetheless. There, the cyborg must have done something, because the remains of the skimmer exploded, sending wreckage and presumably cyborg body parts into the air.

“There’s your dangerous meld,” Bogdan sneered. “It was so frightened it suicided on us.”

“Let’s get link-lined,” Mule said. “We’re not under combat conditions anymore and shouldn’t give ourselves away any more than we have too.”

Chen kept his faceplate aimed at the destroyed skimmer and the suicidal meld. Finally, he faced them, and nodded.

Does Bogdan even realize the cyborg screwed us? Mule decided not to worry about it. As long as the sub-sergeant kept his gun aimed at the cyborgs, that’s all that mattered.

-7—

The three Marines moved through the surreal icescape. It was dark, and geyser vents blew more frequently. A vaporous fog thicker than the negligible atmosphere drifted in places. Elsewhere, explosions and blooms of light appeared. Other Marines fought in the distance, some over one hundred kilometers away. There were snatches of words at times on open comm-channels. Then the voices went offline.

Mule studied some nearby vapors. What made the substance hot enough to spew? He had become more curious about that, not less.

“Do you still read the oxygen signatures?” Chen asked Mule through the link-line.

“Sure do, Sarge.”

“How far away are they?”

“Another eleven kilometers,” Mule said.

“We should speed up,” Bogdan suggested.

“The cyborgs must have motion sensors near anything important,” Mule replied. “Speeding up is a bad idea.”

Bogdan turned toward him. Before the sub-sergeant could comment, a strangely emotionless voice spoke through their headphones.

“Your mission is futile.”

“What?” Chen asked. “Mule, did you say that?”

“No.”

“Well I didn’t say it,” Bogdan replied. “So it must have been the Martian.”

The three of them spoke through the link-lines, staying off any comm-channel.

The emotionless voice spoke again. “I have come to understand that each of you was forced into attacking us. It is pitiful to consider the effort you’ve taken arriving here in the Oort Cloud. It is pitiful because your mission is beyond useless.”

“Who is that?” Chen asked. “Who do you think is speaking to us?”

“I think it’s a cyborg,” Mule said.

“What?”

“I just used my analyzer,” Mule said. “The voice is synthetic.”

“Circle up!” Chen shouted.

They did, Mule lifting his rifle and scanning the geyser-spewing terrain. “I don’t see anything near,” he said. “I’m going to extreme magnification.”

“Good idea,” Chen said. “I’m doing the same thing.”

As they scanned while back-to-back, they slowly swiveled their helmeted heads.

“I don’t see anything unusual,” Bogdan said.

Chen grunted agreement, adding, “Where are they? I don’t see them anywhere.”

“Maybe the cyborg doesn’t see us either,” Mule said. “Maybe this is an open broadcast.”

“So why would cyborgs start talking to their enemies?”

“Maybe it’s trying to get inside our heads,” Mule said. “Or it could be trying to get us to talk.”

“I ain’t afraid of them,” Bogdan said.

“Stay off the comm,” Chen said.

“I got that,” Bogdan said. “I’m just saying I ain’t afraid of it.”

Mule continued searching. He examined the dirty ice. Did it have particles of dust in it, dirt, what? He scanned upward in case the melds used more skimmers or a space object near Tyche.

Obscured slightly by the faint nitrogen atmosphere and the occasional vapors from the geysers, some of the stars twinkled. The sight was so unexpected and shocking that it put an ache of homesickness in Mule’s heart. He’d seen stars twinkle on Mars and later on Earth.

“The vast majority of your fellow Marines died in the futile attack,” the emotionless voice told them. “I have already captured eighteen of your survivors. Three have decided to cooperate with me and talk.”

“The thing’s a filthy liar,” Bogdan hissed.

“It’s trying to work us,” Mule said. “It’s trying to get you angry so you do something stupid.”

Bogdan turned toward him. “Listen to me, scrub.”

“Shut up, Sub-sergeant,” Chen said.

“Me?” Bogdan asked. “Look, the Martian’s—”

“You will obey orders,” Chen said, loudly.

Bogdan took his time answering. Finally, he nodded his helmet.

“Sub-sergeant,” Chen said, “do you think the cyborg knows we’re here, our exact location?”

Mule had been wondering about that. “Wait a minute…it said ‘I’ before. That implies individuality. Cyborgs are hive creatures. This is definitely an ‘it’ talking to us. It must be a Web-Mind.”

“It’s a freak,” Bogdan muttered, with loathing.

“If you haven’t already,” the emotionless voice told them, “turn on your video sensors and observe the situation.”

Mule hesitated. Why was a Web-Mind speaking to them? It wasn’t for any good reason. The thing had a plan to screw them. Did it think they were stupid enough to talk with it so the creature could pinpoint their location?

Curiosity overcame Mule’s caution. He thrust his chin against a sense-pad in his helmet, and he observed the video broadcast on his HUD.

He saw a naked, straining, powerfully muscled man strapped to a chair. The sight put a chill in Mule’s heart. Cyborgs stood around the man. Computer panels and bio-equipment showed against a wall.

“That’s Scar,” Bogdan whispered in horror.

Mule recognized the man’s pitted features. This wasn’t just a vain boast then. Cyborgs had already captured Marines. His stomach twisted with revulsion. What were they doing to Scar? Why had they stripped him naked?

Mule switched his scrutiny from Scar to the cyborgs. The melds had human faces, each different to prove the things came from various people. But each cyborg wore its face like a mask in a lifeless, robotic manner. The eyes were so obviously artificial and the teeth silvery titanium that they were like demons with strange metal bodies. Some of the lights on the wall shined against their integral armor, reflecting brightly.

Scar struggled, with his big muscles bulging, but there was no working free for him. Sweat slicked his skin. Scar had his faults. The man also used to have a wife in England Sector. She’d died during the war. Scar had missed her badly.

Perhaps realizing this was the end, Scar looked up and roared at the cyborgs. Mule couldn’t hear any words or sound. He just saw the corporal’s horror, and it made Mule think of his wife and children.

Bogdan kept cursing, smacking his gloves hands together. Mule wouldn’t be surprised if Bogdan went insane with fury and did something utterly rash.

On the HUD, a cyborg stretched out a metallic arm before Scar, showing the man a long steel needle with a weird, greenish-yellow solution with golden flecks floating in it. Scar shook his head. If a human had shown his captive a needle like that, there would have been gloating in the man’s face. The cyborg’s features showed nothing, which made the gesture even more chilling.

The cyborg plunged the needle into Scar’s thick neck, squeezing the solution into the man. The Marine stiffened and he began to thrash, and he bellowed anew at the cyborgs, spraying salvia as he shouted silently. It didn’t matter. The three cyborgs waited like traffic lights for the drug to take effect.

Soon, sound was added to Mule’s video feed. It startled him. Then an unseen, emotionless speaker asked the corporal questions about the combat mission. Slack-faced now and slump-shouldered, Scar answered the questions one after another in a dull monotone.

“We came aboard the mothership Slovakia,” Scar said in a slur, with salvia drooling from his mouth.

“The bastards,” Bogdan whispered.

Mule closed his eyes. This was just so wrong. The Web-Mind had dehumanized Scar. The entire concept of cyborgs was dehumanizing to a frightful degree. How could people do this to each other? What was wrong with the human race that would allow some to create cyborgs?

Feeling as if he’d run forever, Mule opened his eyes and he continued to watch and listen.

“Tell me about hate-conditioning,” the hidden speaker said.

In a halting manner, Scar did so. Occasionally, it appeared as if intelligence flickered in the corporal’s eyes. He tried to stop speaking then, and agony of the soul welled within his orbs. Soon, thankfully, the eyes dulled again to the automaton the drug had made him.

“This is interesting, Marines,” the emotionless speaker said. “Your masters have programmed you just as I do to my cyborgs.”

Mule knew then that this was a Web-Mind speaking to them, one of the alien multi-minds. He hated it with desperate loathing.

“Your masters think of you as pawns, just as I think of my soldier units. Observe, please, your coming fate.”

Two cyborgs dragged Scar to a table. They thrust him onto it and cinched straps into place. They put his head onto a skull-shaped cavity in the table. Saws levered down near his skull and began to whirl. One saw touched skull-bone and carefully cut and worked it open to expose his brain.

“No,” Bogdan said. “They can’t do this.”

“Sarge,” Mule said, “we can’t watch this. The Web-Mind is trying to—”

“You metal freaks!” a Marine roared on an open line.

“Who is that?” Chen asked. “Who spoke? The idiot is using open communications.”

For a second, Mule thought it was Bogdan. Then he realized the voice was wrong. “It must be someone from a different combat group.”

“We know where you are!” the Marine shouted. “We’re coming to get you!”

Mule flicked off the video and scanned the horizon. He saw it almost right away: an orange contrail highlighting a missile. This one was bigger than those fired from the skimmer earlier.

“Look,” Mule said through the link-line. “The Web-Mind is responding to the boast. We were right. It must have done this to engage the hate-conditioning.”

The missile was an easy twenty kilometers to their left. It rose higher and ignited into a nuclear fireball. Static hit the ether and the Marine yelling at the video cyborgs no longer broadcast his threats. Likely he and his group were dead. Scratch yet more Marines.

The three of them hit the ice and crawled behind rocky protrusions.

“What the heck is happening?” Chen asked. “Has everyone gone crazy?”

“Sarge,” Mule said. “The Web-Mind figured out our weakness.”

“What’s that?”

“The hate-conditioning.”

“Do you have any idea where the missile came from?” Bogdan asked Mule.

The shock of Scar’s death seemed to have changed the sub-sergeant. “Sure,” Mule said, “it came from where we’re headed, about eleven kilometers away. At least the missile tells us we’re headed toward the right place.”

“The way I see it,” Chen said, “the cyborgs figured out—”

“The Web-Mind did this,” Mule said. “The Web-Mind runs the cyborgs. It’s the devil we have to destroy.”

“Agreed,” Bogdan said.

“You’re right, Mule,” Chen said. There was iron in his voice. “The nuke shows the Web-Mind must have decided on trickery because it’s afraid of us.”

“It’d better be afraid,” Bogdan whispered.

“Listen, you’ve both seen what’s in store for us if they capture us,” Chen said. “There’s no going back, just forward. We don’t even know whether our ship is still up there. Okay. That’s life. But for what those freaks did to our brothers, I say we make them pay ten thousand times.”

“Make them pay,” Bogdan said.

They couldn’t make the cyborgs pay, but Mule didn’t tell them that. There was only one creature they could make pay, and that was the Web-Mind.

“Let’s go,” Mule said.

***

Mule decided the Web-Mind didn’t have long-range motion sensors, because if it did, it would have already been over for them. The Web-Mind must have used its horror tactic because some of Slovakia’s missiles must have hit nerve centers.

Mule thought back to what he remembered about the original attack. One missile had hit the surface and another two had blasted vital areas—hopefully—with hard gamma and X-rays.

With their powered armor, the three Marines leaped low and long like Olympic broad jumpers. If they jumped too high, they would be a while coming down again. It wasn’t like maneuvering on an asteroid, which could get tricky. Mule was better at this than the others were because he was a Martian, used to lower gravity.

The image of the needle stabbing Scar…Mule yearned to kill the Web-Mind and destroy every cyborg here. Had the melds done that to his wife, to his kids? The idea pulsed in his mind, creating rage. He worked to harness the anger. He would get vengeance, but he would use his head and use every tactic he could to win. If they solely replied on their emotions and charged ahead like the nuked Marines had done—

With an effort of will, he wrenched his thoughts onto a new track. He couldn’t keep thinking about his lost wife and children. He needed to concentrate, to think.

If the cyborgs had slipped a Lurker out here, what did that mean? Movement to the Oort Cloud was a big commitment for the cyborgs, just like it was for the Alliance. Lurkers were stealth troopships. How many Lurkers could the cyborgs have moved without anyone detecting them?

That was the first problem.

The second problem was different. Was Tyche an attack platform against the sunbeam, or was it the getaway vehicle to a new star system? If it was the attack platform, it seemed clear more cyborgs would have to join up later. Once Tyche neared the planets, the last cyborg spaceships would probably emerge to fight with it. But if the melds meant to slip away from the Solar System, wouldn’t they need DNA to grow or clone more humans in order to harvest brains, eyes and spines? They would need advanced tech and enough of it to create a machine society in the new star system. Each of those items took cargo space in the Lurkers used to reach here.

He wondered about Lurkers and cargo spaces because of the Web-Mind’s action of tormenting a prisoner to make Marines belligerent. It wasn’t a common cyborg tactic.

More blooms appeared far in the distance. Were those yet more nuclear explosions? It told him other Marines still fought the cyborgs. The battle continued to rage as each group attempted to complete its tactical mission.

As Mule watched for more bloom or signs of battle, he noticed a cryovolcano. First vapor billowed out of a low hill or volcano. Then semi-liquid methane gushed out of the vent together with chunks of ice. The flow slid across the surface, expanding and radiating methane vapors. On Earth, the substance would have been scalding lava. Here, the substance was heated relative to the intensely cold planetoid. There were also cryogeyser vents nearby. The number had been increasing as they advanced on the cyborg structures.

Some of the vapor condensed higher up and drizzled down, creating a methane fog.

The cryovolcano sparked Mule’s thoughts, particularly about Neptunians. Once, they had been the Solar System’s premier capitalists.

Mule waved his arms until Bogdan and Chen noticed. They landed and turned around. He pointed at the bubbling cryovolcano until Chen nodded.

Mule jumped toward the vent until he landed a hundred meters from it. Some of the semi-liquid methane had already begun to harden into ice. He walked over and through that, cracking methane. As he neared the opening, he witnessed the sludge oozing past his legs. It resembled lava on Earth, except this stuff was cold to him, not hot. He dubbed it “cryomagma” in his own mind.

Wading ankle and then calf deep, he made it to the vent and peered at the cryomagma. It was slushy, icy sludge. How far did that stuff go down?

Thoughtfully, he jumped back to the others. They had moved closer to the cryovolcano. Each of them now used the link-line.

“What are you doing?” Chen asked.

“Have you noticed the geysers?” Mule asked.

“What about them?”

Mule pointed at the cryovolcano. “That’s a new development. Instead of vapor, it erupted with cryomagma.”

“So?”

“So, it should make you think.”

“It does,” Chen said. “I think you’re wasting time. Our air supply will last another ten hours—fifteen if we lie down and do nothing.”

“The capitalist Neptunians were brilliant innovators,” Mule said. “They took big risks to make big profits. So why did they send scientists into the Oort Cloud and why to Tyche?”

“You tell me,” Chen said.

Mule indicated the cryovolcano. “Something is hot around here, relative to this cold place. On Triton, tidal forces cause the heat. If there was a moon circling Tyche, we’d have seen it aboard Slovakia. But there are no moons here. Nothing is orbiting the planetoid to cause tidal forces inside it. That means friction can’t be making Tyche hot. Instead, I think the planetoid has a hot core just like Earth has, for some weird reason.”

Bogdan muttered obscenities, adding, “What’s your point?”

“The Neptunians built structures on Tyche because there must have been profits to make, plenty of them.”

“How do profits help cyborgs?” Chen asked.

“They don’t,” Mule said. “You were right earlier. We’re running out of air and we need a way to get close to the cyborgs without any motion sensors tracking us. Once the melds see us, we’ll likely get a missile lobbed our way.”

“I’ve been seeing explosions all around us,” Chen said. “Well, in the distance anyway.”

“We don’t have any other choice but to attack head-on,” Bogdan said. “Our mission calls for—”

“Wrong!” Mule said. “We do have choices, and the cryovolcano shows me how we can achieve tactical surprise and beat this thing.”

“Start talking,” Chen said. “Quit wasting our time about Neptunians.”

“We’ve seen the geysers become more numerous,” Mule said. “That means there must be a growing cryomagma-chamber below us.”

“What’s that?” Chen asked.

“It’s where all the icy slush seethes before it comes bubbling to the surface.”

“What’s cryomagma?” Chen asked.

Mule pointed at the slushy semi-liquid methane. “That stuff is. We climb into the cryovolcano and work our way to the magma-chamber. That one won’t be hot with lava because this isn’t Earth, but freezing Tyche. My guess is the geysers and cryovolcanoes keep getting more numerous as we approach the cyborg station. That’s because the magma-chamber is underneath us.”

“Go underground?” Bogdan said. “You’re saying we sneak up on them underground?”

“It’s even better than that,” Mule said. “Once we’re close enough, we pop up to another volcano or vent and take a look around.”

The two Marines traded glances.

“Mule,” Chen said, “if this works, you’re a genius.”

-8—

The battlesuits weighed more than the methane liquid and cryomagma. The men sank, and sank, and the link-lines between Mule and the others was cut off. They’d probably have to be right beside each other for the link-lines to work down here.

Mule kept sinking, struck ice and deflected, skidded off more ice and kept heading down. He realized there was no way the three of them would land in the same spot. He was on his own down here underground.

A new concern struck as he kept sinking. How far down could he go? The liquid methane pressure would build up the deeper he sank.

It was dark around him, and he continued to descend like a coin tossed into a swimming pool. How deep did this chamber go anyway? The volume of cryomagma in here was incredible.

His outer armor casing began to creak. The pressure was building. This wasn’t a deep-sea suit, but a battlesuit for regular conditions. Would his rifle work after this?

He chinned on his echo gear, ultrasound sonar. The suit sonar could send out ultrasound waves like a dolphin or whale on Earth. The computer would analyze the return bounce and show him on the HUD where he moved.

A red light winked. Damn. A feeling of despair bit him then. The sonar gear was damaged. One of the cyborg laser pulses earlier must have burned out a critical component. He instructed his computer to run diagnostics and attempt repairs or to reroute if it could.

The sonar waves would be short range down here in this cryomagma. He couldn’t afford to wait for the others to find him. He had to move toward the cyborg structures, using an internal navigation system heading.

He heard his rad detector clicking. It told him he neared radioactive material. After all this, will I die of radiation poisoning?

He checked his dose counter. Hmm, the suit would protect him for a while, at least. He ran some analysis on the readings. It was just as he thought. This was natural material. Uranium, thorium…what if the planetoid had massive loads of fissionable material? That might be worth the mining effort, especially if the Neptunians had been able to set up an automated system.

Despite his predicament, Mule shook his head ruefully. Had he stumbled onto the Neptunian secret? Had the capitalists come out here for one of the greatest supplies of radioactive ores in the Solar System?

As his boots finally settled against something solid, he wondered if that’s what the cyborgs would use as fuel. Given enough fissionable material, they might actually get this world moving. But they would need absolutely massive engines in order to do that.

Three Lurkers seemed to Mule like the outside limit the melds could sneak past the watchful Alliance. It didn’t make sense that only three Lurkers could have brought enough equipment to make such gargantuan engines.

Mule waited to settle fully and then pressed down with the sole of his boot. His foot didn’t slide out from under him, so likely this wasn’t ice but rock. He lifted the boot and slammed it down. It didn’t quite work out that way, though. The semi-liquid made it a slow-motion stomp. Still, nothing bad happened.

Am I on the bottom of the methane lake then?

He craned his faceplate upward, but saw nothing. He didn’t bother turning on the outer helmet lamp. The metal casing continued to creak because of the depth pressure, but he hadn’t sprung any leaks yet.

He didn’t want to start walking, though, because he worried about landing on an edge or a step. If he walked over the edge or step, he might sink into an even deeper pit. Then where would he be?

No. Get started. You don’t have much air left and that means you don’t have any time left for hesitating.

Mule began wading through the cryomagma. He used the internal navigation system to head in the correct direction. Three times, he had to work his way around a methane iceberg. He walked, waded and resolutely continued on the mission.

An hour fled, two and finally three. The computer kept automatic track of the distance he had gone, calculating by his steps. He’d gone thirteen kilometers already, which meant he’d passed the cyborg structures.

I have to get up, but first I need a rock wall to climb.

He waded another fifteen minutes and realized he could spend the rest of his life down here, which wouldn’t be long now.

A green light winked then in his faceplate and the computer informed it had made repairs. He finally had sonar again.

He began to ping objects, in particular ice and semi-frozen methane. The sonar had greater range than he would have expected down here. Once the computer configured for that, Mule spotted two man-sized metallic objects. The objects had to be Chen and Bogdan. The objects moved, and were half a kilometer away. He studied them more carefully. The two were higher than he was, much higher.

A rock wall. They must be climbing the chamber wall.

Fixing on their location, seeing it was nearer the cyborg structures, Mule began wading back the way he’d come. He kept the sonar on; it gave him sight. He found a way through an icy blockage. He also began to study the chamber walls. Here, they were exceptionally thin.

Yeah, of course: behind the magma-chamber must be other empty chambers, or corridors, thorium mining tunnels or maybe even shafts for Tyche’s engines. He didn’t know for certain, but it seemed logical.

Wouldn’t it be dangerous having cryomagma chambers so near such shafts? It would depend, Mule decided, on what was or wasn’t in the echo-empty chambers.

Mule studied the two climbers and fixed the location on an internal map. Then he shut off the sonar. It was doubtful the cyborgs above had heard the short-distance sonar, but who knew what sort of listening posts they had below ground.

Taking another careful sip of his remaining water, Mule ate a concentrate. He was tired. Despite all the practice on the gravity-wheels and in the gunner tank aboard Slovakia, he didn’t have the same stamina he’d had on Earth. Floating in space for three years had taken its toll.

He pushed himself, wanting to get back with Chen and Bogdan. It was so lonely by himself on this planetoid of brain-stealing cyborgs. Did the men see him coming on their sonars? Or had they turned theirs off? If they’d used sonar earlier, Chen would have tried to catch him. He’d moved steadily throughout the magma-chamber, however. Likely, he’d given them a hard chase before Chen would have written him off.

It seemed to take forever, but Mule finally reached the wall the others were climbing. He began to climb, too. It was the only way out; either that, or he’d have to break through the wall between chambers, and flow out with the magma as it entered the empty places.

He’d didn’t have much air left. Soon, he wouldn’t be able to employ careful tactics. He’d have to charge straight at the cyborg structure, hoping it possessed more air.

Using his exoskeleton-reinforced strength, he dug his fingers into rock and kicked his booted toes in for purchase. He climbed. Once, a current caught him. He felt the sluggish magma move all around him, trying to drag him off the wall. Was there an eruption coming?

The gloved fingers of his left hand slipped out of the rock. No! I can’t afford this! Mule silently howled in his mind. He shoved the hand back, powering his armor to push.

Meter by meter he crawled up, and slowly the current ebbed away. After hours of swimming, wading in the cryomagma netherworld, Mule crawled onto a shelf of sorts and squeezed his battlesuit out of a geyser vent.

He flopped onto surface ice and looked up. The stars were glorious. He laughed, the sounds echoing in his helmet. When he stopped, he crawled onto rocky ground and lay there panting.

A warning beep told him that another hour of air had been used up. That sobered him. He brought up his gyroc rifle and tried to clean it. He didn’t know if it would work. If it didn’t, that would leave him with pulse grenades and a vibrio-knife for hand-to-hand combat.

I have to be the reinforcement for Chen and Bogdan.

Mule spotted the two crawling toward low domed buildings. One dome was cracked and dark. Another had completely crumpled inward.

We must have done that; Captain Han’s missiles hurt them.

It was good to know they’d damaged the cyborgs at least a little bit. One dome looked intact. Is that where the cyborgs had played their demonic games on the captured Marines?

Mule debated options. By their crawling speed, it seemed as if the two would have taken fifteen minutes to reach their present positions near the dome. If he crawled, it would take him too long to catch up. Because of his lack of air, he needed to leap fast. Did the cyborgs have motion sensors around here? If he began leaping, he might give the two Marines away.

Mule took out his rifle, lay down on the ice and set his HUD at extreme magnification. He’d start moving once the two men reached the dome. If they had a chance of sneaking near undetected, he was going to give it to them.

He realized this was the back side of the dome. At least, it was the back side in relation to their original vector against it. They had used the magma-chamber to go under the domes and come up on the other side. Was that an advantage?

Mule studied the wrecked domes and the good one. He didn’t spy movement or sensors.

Just as he was about to look away, he saw a cyborg. It moved from the crumpled dome to the intact one.

He glanced at the two men. Their angle was wrong and they couldn’t see the meld. It would seem the meld couldn’t see them either because there was a cliff between it and the two Marines.

Mule couldn’t warn them without giving away their positions. Instead, he aimed the rifle and rapid-fired. As the gyroc rockets ignited and began their flight at the enemy, Mule waited until they were halfway there. Then he got up and began to leap toward the vile cyborgs.

Mule expected the meld to whirl around before darting out of sight. It didn’t. Instead, the meld dragged its left leg. It seemed sluggish and slow. At the last moment, it turned and must have registered the shells zooming at it, and then seen Mule. The thing lifted its laser pulse rifle.

Mule sailed through Tyche’s weak atmosphere, willing himself to land and go to ground.

The creature raised its weapon, tracked him—then the first gyroc shell slammed against the cyborg’s chest-plate. The second and third shells hit, exploding. The meld blew backward, its suit and body ruptured. Inner circuits began sparking.

Something was definitely wrong with the cyborg. That wasn’t how they normally reacted. Usually they were much harder to kill.

Chen and Bogdan finally saw Mule. They stared from their prone positions.

Mule continued taking giant strides for the intact dome. As he neared, the two men climbed to their feet. Mule pointed at the dome. Because the cyborg had moved so slowly, he figured this must be their moment of opportunity. If something was wrong with the cyborgs, they needed to attack this instant. Mule swung his right arm and pointed, emphatically indicating the dome again.

Chen and Bogdan jumped and joined him: three Marines out of two thousand. None of them could use the close-channel. Their link-lines must have been damaged down in the cryo-chamber just like his. There was comm cackle on the open Marine band. It meant others still fought, but far away from here. In their powered armor, the three Marines leaped toward what looked like an intact hatch leading into the one good dome.

Mule’s oxygen levels would soon be in the red. The grueling wade in the cryomagma had eaten up more of his reserves than it should have. He could tear out the hatch or he could try to open it without damage. Would cyborgs be waiting inside for them? Could the melds pry him out of his tin suit, drug him or steal his brain?

Chen landed beside him and put a gloved hand on Mule’s shoulder. The sergeant’s gorilla-suit gave him a nod. They were still maintaining comm silence.

Mule opened the hatch.

They stepped in, closed it and cycled air into the chamber.

Mule’s guts crawled with anticipation. He gripped his gyroc.

The other two clutched theirs. Bogdan opened the inner hatch and stepped in. Laser pulses washed the front of his suit. Bogdan staggered. More pulses struck.

With a giant leap, Mule flew past the red-glowing armor and skidded on his chest-plate. He snapped off shots. The APEX rounds hardly ignited their rocket motors before slamming into cyborgs and exploding. Heat washed against Mule. Blisters rose on his skin and his air-conditioner hummed. He kept firing, as did the others.

Abruptly it was over, with hazy smoke drifting in the large dome. Suddenly, the smoke swirled and headed toward a rupture in the dome. Klaxons blared. Mule could barely hear it in his helmet.

Chen took several quick strides, picked up a metal plate and slapped it against the rupture, caused by a penetrator round ripping a hole through to Tyche’s paltry atmosphere.

Climbing to his feet, Mule warily looked around. Three cyborgs lay in shattered pieces around them. It was amazing only one APEX round had ruptured the dome’s skin.

The chamber was large with hatches leading to what seemed like other rooms or cubicles. There was crated equipment stacked everywhere, and a control panel. This looked like a storage chamber, or the cyborgs had used it as one.

Chen hurried to Bogdan.

Mule spun around to look. The sub-sergeant’s armor still glowed red and the Marine didn’t move, but lay face down.

Chen’s visor cracked open. The growth of beard, haggard skin and bloodshot eyes made the sergeant looked old and worn.

Mule did the same with his own faceplate. He wrinkled his nose at the burnt electric odors and other, more nauseating stenches. But he could breathe the stuff. He was alive and they’d found an air source.

“Let’s get his helmet off,” Chen said. The sergeant’s voice sounded subdued in this strange dome with the dead cyborgs.

“I don’t get it,” Mule said, as he moved to Bogdan. “How did we outgun three cyborgs?”

“How did you kill the one outside? I don’t know, but I’ll tell you what I think.”

Mule knelt beside Bogdan and unsnapped the emergency releases. With exoskeleton power, he popped off the helmet and wished he hadn’t. Bogdan smelled like charred meat, and his features were crispy and shriveled. The lasers must have shorted battlesuit circuits and cooked the Marine like a lobster in a pot. He’d never liked Bogdan, but the man had deserved better than this.

“Damn,” Chen said. “We lost a good man.”

“At least Bogdan won’t have to worry about them using his brain,” Mule said.

Chen lifted his head as rage washed across his haggard features. “I want to kill them, Mule. I want to slaughter the lot of them.”

“If the rest of the cyborgs fight as poorly as these three did,” Mule said, “maybe we have a chance.”

“I wouldn’t count on it.”

Mule raised an eyebrow.

“It was your stupid stunt that likely saved our lives,” Chen said.

“You mean the magma-chamber?” Mule asked.

“I know you noticed the destroyed domes,” Chen said. “Slovakia’s drones pumped gamma and X-rays at these places. Some of the radiation must have hit some of the cyborgs. They’re part machine and part man. I imagine the machine parts can take plenty of radiation, but not so much with the bio parts.”

“You think radiation poisoning made them slow?” Mule asked.

“I bet the dosages would have killed us even in our suits. I think the X-rays and gamma rays were killing these cyborgs, but it was taking time. By going down and taking a swim in ice lava and with your stunt of going off on your own… Where were you going, by the way? Why didn’t you stick with us?”

“My sonar gear malfunctioned for a time. I think one of the laser burns did it.”

Chen nodded. “I thought it was something like that.”

“We’d better refill our air tanks and figure out our next step,” Mule said. “The Web-Mind must know we made it here. It might send healthy melds after us to finish the job.”

“I’ll look for a compressor,” Chen said. “You get me a schematic of his base. I think you’re right about the Web-Mind’s plan. But I also suspect we have a few minutes grace. The trouble is, I’m beginning to believe we don’t have many Marines left. Maybe we’re all that’s left to defeat the Web-Mind and rescue our captured buddies.”

Mule doubted any of the captured Marines were still alive. That wasn’t the point, though. He’d made it to an air source. Now he was going to practice genocide on the Web-Mind and figure out a way to destroy every cyborg on this icy planetoid. He wanted vengeance and he wanted it today.

-9—

The panel wasn’t complicated, and thirty minutes searching computer files brought up plenty of schematics and a layout of the situation. In fact, Mule believed he could piece out the situation both for the original, Neptunian plan and what the cyborgs, or the Web-Mind, intended on doing.

As he read and looked at maps, Mule’s perception shifted. He quit thinking of the original scientists as Neptunians but as the Ice Hauler Cartel. That’s who had been out here: cartel people or cartel employees.

He knew a little basic history. Rich individuals—cartel barons, for want of a better term—ran the icer organization. Correction, they had run the cartel. All those Neptunians, rich or poor, were either dead or converted into cyborgs now. Just like his wife and kids, and like all of Mars. Much of the Neptune system, or the people rather, had lived in ice-shielded habitats. Ice made an excellent insulator. The Neptunians had developed weird ice, a stronger form of ice for space construction.

The Ice Cartel had been into more than just ice, but that had been its origin. According to what Mule read, it was clear to him his guess had been right earlier: Tyche was extremely rich in fissionable ores. It had been a bonanza except for one particular. The planetoid had been much too far away from Neptune. With slow ion drives and robotic systems, it might not have been a problem. Instead of doing it that way, though—with ion-drive ore haulers and automated mining systems—the cartel had decided to bring Tyche to Neptune. Mule bet there had been other reasons for doing that, but one key reason would have been to bring the world of fissionable ores to Neptune to protect it and to keep it close under cartel guns.

The various schematics Mule brought up showed pre-and post-cyborg occupation construction. That answered one of Mule’s biggest questions. How had the cyborgs bought enough equipment to build world-moving engines? They hadn’t. The cartel had already shipped out those engines and had begun to install them.

By the size of pre-cyborg mines—the various sites, domes, tunnels and weapon systems—it seemed some cartel people might also have considered leaving the Solar System. Not so long ago, it looked as if nothing was going to stop the melds from conquering and converting everyone in the Solar system. In that case, Tyche would have been a humanity-filled ark. Now it was the cyborgs’ turn to feel the squeeze of extinction and wish to get away. Either that or they would use the planetoid as a last ditch assault weapon against the sunbeam. The odds seemed too long to win against the sunbeam, though. It had already obliterated moons as big as this Oort Cloud planetoid.

Tyche would have been more than an intergalactic ark in the making. The planetoid would have been a bonanza for the arriving cyborgs. With all the people here—it looked like several thousand had been living in pre-cyborg times—the melds could have harvested that many more meat-sacks for brains, spines and eggs and sperm. The Ice Hauler Cartel had paved the way for future cyborgs to haunt humanity into interstellar space.

“What do you have for me, Mule?” Chen asked.

They’d popped their shells. The battlesuits stood near outlets, soaking up juice and with refilled air tanks. The sergeant had been fixing faulty suit systems, at least those that he could.

Mule looked up from the panel. “It looks like Captain Han hit them pretty good,” he said. “One of the X-ray missiles struck this place, which is a prime storage area. There are more storage areas below us in underground caverns. There’s also an access tunnel leading to the main engine tunnels deeper in the rock.”

“How does that help us finish the mission?” Chen asked.

“I found what must be a skimmer park,” Mule said. “It’s twenty kilometers from here.”

“Skimmers will help us finish the Web-Mind and rescue our comrades?” Chen asked. “I don’t see how.”

Mule shook his head. “I’d forget about rescues missions, Sarge. Those men are already dead or wish they were. The skimmers are what we need.”

“Tell me how.”

“Tyche’s gravity is pathetically low. We could rig a skimmer easily enough to fly out to Slovakia. Well, we could get an initial boost off-world and drift the rest of the way to the mothership.”

Chen stared at him. “This is a suicide mission. So forget about getting home again. We’re here to kill the Web-Mind and nothing else.”

“Exactly,” Mule said.

Chen frowned. “So how come you’re talking about flying back to Slovakia?”

“You didn’t let me finish. We don’t know where the Web-Mind is. But my guess is that it’s near the main engines. That strikes me as the safest place on or in the planetoid, and we know Web-Minds value personal safety above all else.”

“Can we use the access tunnel to reach the engine area and reach the Web-Mind?”

“It’s possible the access tunnel goes there,” Mule said, “but I doubt two lone Marines can fight past the defending cyborgs.”

“Our battlesuits are charged and ready. We have plenty of air and maybe more of those cyborgs are sick from radiation poisoning.”

“That’s too many ifs,” Mule said. “I’m not interested in heroics or tough-guy fighting, I’m interesting in winning and defeating the enemy—killing them.”

Chen blinked several times, and lines furrowed in his forehead. “I don’t see it that way.”

“It’s because you’re too conditioned to think things through. You want to charge in a suicidal attack when there’s a better way to do this that brings us victory.”

“Listen to me—”

“No, you listen,” Mule said. “Two cyborgs wiped out eight Marines earlier. Who knows how many melds are left? Suppose one hundred melds are blocking our way. Can you honestly say that you can handle another hundred cyborgs?”

Chen’s stubborn looked remained, but eventually he shook his head.

“I know how to kill, annihilate and destroy the Web-Mind.”

“Tell me,” Chen said in a ragged voice. “I’m listening.”

Mule brought up a schematic. “Do you see the access tunnel’s connection to the main engine tunnels?”

“Yeah,” Chen said, “so what?”

“So we breach the magma-chamber.” Mule tapped the schematic. “The access tunnel here is well below the magma-chamber. That means cryomagma—liquid methane—will run down the tunnel and possibly fills the engine area.”

“Possibly?” Chen asked.

Mule silently berated himself for a bad choice of words.

“I’m only interested in certainties,” Chen told him.

“I’m ahead of you, Sergeant. The Web-Mind will know an emergency when it’s given one. I’m betting it summons all its cyborgs to stem the tide, so to speak, to stop the cryomagma flow from reaching the planetary engines.”

“That saves the Web-Mind.” Chen shook his head. “I want to kill it.”

“Like I said, after we breach the magma-chamber, we head twenty kilometers away to the skimmer park. We each take one, each of them loaded with missiles. We figure out how to get them into space, fly around to the exhaust port and launch every missile we have into it. Maybe the cyborgs even have a few nuclear-tipped missiles stored at the park. It seems a likely enough place to store a few. The nuclear missiles will wreck the engines.”

Chen scanned the schematics and glanced at Mule. “I’m with you as far as destroying the planetary engines. But none of your plan satisfies my need to kill the bastard of a Web-Mind.”

“Sarge, if you hated someone bad enough, would you rather kill him and put him out of his misery, or would you rather lock him in a room where he had to suffer for fifty years in torment, knowing you put him there? If we destroy the planetary engines, there’s nowhere for the Web-Mind to go. It’s doomed.”

Slowly, an evil smile spread across Chen’s features. “Keep talking about torment.”

***

In times past, miners had drilled the access tunnel through Tyche’s indigenous rock. Moving through it sent the rad detector in Mule’s battlesuit clicking like crazy. Either this was a thorium mine tunnel or it used to be.

Ahead of Mule, Chen loomed larger than normal as he carried explosives. Mule recalled a history lesson from his school days and a picture he’d seen of a Roman legionary burdened with excessive gear. The caption had been about one of Marius’s “mules.”

Mule’s teacher back then had lectured about the ancient time and about the Roman commander named Marius, a precursor of Julius Caesar. Marius had reformed Rome’s legions, letting poorer citizens become legionaries. Until then, only citizens of means had been allowed in the heavy infantry.

Marius hadn’t invented or originated the new system as much as codified what had been happening for some time. People had called his legionaries “Marius’s mules” because he had done away with some of the mule allowances per certain number of soldiers. It meant each trooper carried more of his own supplies instead of shifting it onto the beast of burden. On the march, the legionaries had been loaded down like mules, and had thereby earned the nickname.

Mule also carried explosives picked up in the cyborg structure. The two of them had enough to bring down this tunnel. They maintained comm silence, as they had been doing for some time. The link-lines were still inoperable.

Finally, Mule pointed at a spot. Chen nodded. They began using powered fists, slamming into the rock wall, punching holes deeper and deeper until they couldn’t reach any farther. Only then did they stuff a hole with explosives.

Soon, dirt drifted in the tunnel so their helmet lamps washed through hazy air. They kept hammering until the Web-Mind must have decided it was time for another show-and-tell message.

“Space Marines,” the emotionless voice said. “You have captured a single intact dome. It will not help you in your futile attempt to defeat me. You will end in the same situation as all your comrades in arms.”

Video came to back up the boast.

Mule switched on his HUD. He saw drugged Marines on conveyers. One or two men twitched as they moved along a cyborg converter.

“No!” Chen said, switching on his comm. “Your abomination will not stand. You’re a dead thing, Web-Mind. We’re going to drown you.”

“Ah, this is interesting.” The emotionless voice almost seemed to gloat. “Another of the lice speaks?” the Web-Mind asked.

Mule motioned to Chen, wanting him to stop talking. The sergeant stood straight, glaring down the access tunnel toward the bigger tunnels that led to the planetary engines. Chen held explosives in his gloved hands, but seemed to have forgotten about blowing up the wall.

“I’m going to kill you, freak!” Chen shouted.

“How will you do that in the access tunnel?” the Web-Mind asked. “Yes, I now know where you are, mad-thing. You must travel to attack me, and you will never reach this far.”

“You’re wrong,” Chen said. He threw down his explosives.

“Sergeant Chen!” Mule said through his comm.

“Yet another one of you lice lives?” the Web-Mind asked. “I’m surprised. But this anomaly will not last long. Even now, the situation is being rectified.”

Chen roared with inarticulate rage.

“Sergeant, I’ve found a flamer,” Mule said. “But it’s too heavy for me.”

Chen whirled around.

“We could use a flamer to kill the Web-Mind,” Mule said.

“Yes,” Chen said thickly. “Get it.”

“I need help carrying it,” Mule said over the comm.

“I will help you,” the Web-Mind mocked—“onto a conveyer as I convert you into another of my melds.”

“I want that flamer now!” Chen shouted.

Mule ran up the access tunnel toward the surface. He glanced back and saw that Chen followed him.

“You flee from me?” the Web-Mind asked. “It doesn’t matter any longer, now that I know where you’re hiding. I’m sending cyborgs to bring you to me.”

“Where did you find a flamer?” Chen said, beginning to sound suspicious.

Mule figured he didn’t have any more time to delay, as the sergeant had become too suspicious. “Get ready, Sarge.”

“Ready for what?” Chen shouted.

With a remote switch, Mule ignited the explosives in the rock wall behind them. A brilliant light glowed and the tunnel, the walls, trembled as rocks and dirt rained.

“Run!” Mule shouted. “We have to get out of here before the cryomagma flows up to us and washes us down the tunnel.”

The shaking worsened. It threw Mule off his feet. He got up and glided up the access tunnel, using his battlesuit at full power. He didn’t dare look back because he needed to concentrate on moving. The shaking, the falling rocks hitting his battlesuit: this was like Hell.

“I’m going to kill you, Martian!” Chen raved. “You’ve blocked my route to the Web-Mind.”

Mule didn’t use the open comm anymore. He didn’t want the Web-Mind to know what was in store for it. He finally glanced back, and he saw cryomagma flowing and gushing deeper into the tunnel. If the Web-Mind had sent cyborgs up the tunnels after them, the melds were about to receive the nastiest surprise of their lives.

-10—

Mule knew that one part of his plan must have worked. His battlesuit’s batteries slowly and relentlessly drained as he glided in fantastic leaps across the planetoid’s surface. He raced across Tyche, struggling to reach the skimmer park in time.

The amount of explosions in the distance had lessened. How many Marines still survived on this rock? The desire to find and join others was a powerful emotion. Wanting to kill the Web-Mind was an even greater desire.

This time the landscape lacked cryogeyser eruptions. They didn’t spew vapor into the atmosphere. They didn’t fume because the cryomagma flowed into the tunnels, draining the gargantuan chamber below the surface. Was there enough volume to drown the planetary engines and kill the Web-Mind? Mule very much doubted that. Surely, however, there would be enough magma to keep the cyborgs busy trying to stem the gushing tide.

Sergeant Chen had stopped broadcasting threats some time ago. He, too, made one powered-armor leap after another. It would have been easy enough for Chen to raise his gyroc and kill Mule. That he didn’t, told Mule the sergeant had regained at least a modicum of control over his emotions.

“I have decided on a new torture for you two,” the Web-Mind said. It had been silent since the magma-chamber rupture. “Ah…you have no words for me now. How very wise of you, if cowardly, Marines. You two are different from the rest. You know how to fear. Your masters must have forgotten to condition you for me.”

Don’t answer, Sarge, Mule thought to himself. Don’t let the devil play with your mind.

“Fear me,” the Web-Mind boasted. “Run away because you realize I am your moral superior.”

Mule heard a sound in his headphones. It told him Chen had just switched on his commlink.

“We’re not running away!” Chen shouted. “We’re going to destroy you.”

“Indeed,” the Web-Mind said.

“Sarge,” Mule said. “It’s trying to use you. Don’t talk to it.”

Over the commlink, Mule heard Chen grinding his teeth.

“Two cowardly Marines,” the Web-Mind said. “Admit the truth, at least. You flee from me.”

“Nice try, cyborg,” Mule said. “You think you’re so smart, so wise, but we’re ensuring your extinction, the death of your entire species.”

“You do this by running away?” the Web-Mind asked. “That is a novel tactic indeed.”

“Do you think you can trick us into telling you our plan?” Mule asked. “That shows me how desperate you are. I hope you’re enjoying your magma bath.”

“You are doomed,” the Web-Mind said, and it sounded angry.

“You’re all talk,” Mule said.

“Yes, just talk,” the Web-Mind said. “Enjoy my present, gnats.”

Mule looked back over his shoulder. He saw a missile approaching. It streaked across the horizon for them.

“Sarge,” Mule said.

“I see it,” Chen said. “Yeah, I see it, Martian. It used my transmission to zero in on us. It played me for a fool.” Each of them made another bound. “No,” Chen said. “It isn’t going to win that easily. Goodbye, Sub-sergeant, I hope you kill the thing for the two of us.”

Mule wanted to shout at Chen to stay with him. But he knew there was no tricking the missile away from them. One of them had to die. Mule couldn’t volunteer, because he didn’t think Chen would be able to complete the mission.

Sergeant Chen veered sharply left, and he spoke on the comm. “We screwed with you, and we’re going to see you become a pile of smoking ash.”

Mule knew what Chen was doing. The sergeant split up, and he talked on the comm, trying to get the missile to track him. If it was nuclear, it wasn’t going to matter much.

Hardening his heart to the task, Mule turned off his commlink and shouted incoherently. He leaped hard and far, stretching his bounds, trying to give himself distance. The sergeant did likewise. Neither could keep up this kind of traveling for long.

On the comm, Chen berated the Web-Mind. He laughed at it. He raved and explained exactly what he was going do with each brain.

“You have sealed your fate,” the Web-Mind said.

“Good luck, Mule,” Chen said. They were the last words the sergeant spoke.

The missile fell, streaking downward and reached ground level, exploding its tactical nuclear warhead.

The radiation detector clicked wildly. Mule’s visor dampened the flash and he continued to leap for the skimmer park. He’d survived the tactical missile, for now. Who knew if he’d taken too many rads? If he made it back to Slovakia in time, he could get treatment, but first, he’d have to climb into a skimmer and get back into space. Then he had a Web-Mind to kill.

***

Sub-sergeant Mule made it to the skimmer park; what was left of it anyway. The hanger was ruined, with several skimmers mere piles of junk. He found an underground garage. There, he refilled his battlesuit’s breathing tanks one more time.

He checked a working base computer and found the supplies he needed. That included a missile pod for a cargo skimmer. In the pod were three Hornet antimissiles. The real gold mine was a Zeno nuclear-tipped missile.

Mule used a lifter and hurried the cargo skimmer to the surface. He had no idea how long it would take the Web-Mind to realize one of them still lived. A single missile to the skimmer park would end his chance at completing the mission.

He couldn’t think about all the dead Marines. For all he knew he was the last human alive on this rock.

The cargo skimmer was bigger than the car used to attack them earlier. It was more like a tugboat. This must have been a Neptunian vehicle first, as it had many systems made for humans. It had an enclosed pilot space and unused gear that Mule soon reactivated. He emptied the payload area of everything he did not need and dragged in extra fuel pods.

After forty minutes hard work, he was ready. He engaged the engine, skimmed over the icy surface and began building up velocity.

“One of you is still alive?” the Web-Mind asked. It must have sensed the moving skimmer.

As the cargo hauler raced across the frozen surface, Mule pressed a switch, which activated a lone missile launcher back at the skimmer park. A missile like the ones once fired at him from a cyborg-controlled skimmer lofted from the park and headed in the direction of the Web-Mind. He hoped the missile kept the thing busy for a while.

“You are a clever one,” the Web-Mind broadcast. “But it will not help you.”

We’ll see about that, Mule thought. Driving for escape velocity, he increased speed, and then pulled up, aiming the cargo skimmer at the stars. As he gained enough speed, he saw an explosion in the distance.

You’re welcome, freak.

As he had hoped, Mule flew the skimmer off Tyche, as the sole Marine of his group left. Chen, Bogdan, Ross, Hayes: they were all dead or wishing they were.

I’ll see what I can do you for guys.

Mule glanced back and saw the planetoid loom, filling his view. He kept accelerating. The skimmer reached only a pitiful speed compared to what Slovakia had achieved to fly out here into the Oort Cloud, but at least the vehicle was getting him off the surface.

It was hard to believe he’d been lost in a magma-chamber not so very long ago. Inside his powered armor, Mule shook his head and blessed its makers, then turned his attention back to flying. It was time to concentrate and watch the skimmer controls. He would have three years to relax if he could do this right.

Within his armor, he used his chin to press battlesuit controls and inject himself with stims. Ah…the drugs felt good, and they revived him.

There came a bloom down on the surface, which might have been a launching missile. Mule watched the skimmer’s radar panel. His fears materialized. The Web-Mind had sent a present after him.

Mule shut off acceleration. He’d made it into space and now coasted. Using attitude jets, he brought the stolen antimissile pod into position, locked on, and launched one of the Hornets. It zoomed planetward at the upward-accelerating missile.

Mule spun the skimmer and soon accelerated away once more.

A bright splash on the radar screen showed him the Hornet had destroyed the enemy missile. Score another one for him.

A second bloom from the surface showed him that the Web-Mind wasn’t finished yet. Mule knocked down that missile, too, leaving him one Hornet. It would probably come down to who had more weapons: the Web-Mind or him.

Nothing happened for a time, and Mule could see Tyche now as a ball in space. He turned to travel around it, heading for the planetoid’s engine exhaust, the kilometers-wide port.

At least the Web-Mind would never strap him in a chair and torment him. Cyborgs—manmade aliens—what a vile thing for scientists to invent. He wished he could line up every scientist who had helped create cyborgs. He wished he could line up every politician who had thought making Web-Minds was a clever idea. Once they were lined up, he would walk down the row, blowing each one away. They all deserved death and worse for what they’d done. Mars was dead. The Neptune gravitational system was gone. The entire Solar System still rocked from the worst war in history.

I’m going to end it out here in the Oort Cloud. It’s just you and me, Web-Mind.

Mule’s palms grew sweaty as the giant exhaust port came into view. He didn’t wait. He didn’t believe he had the time. He armed his single nuclear missile…but then hesitated.

The Web-Mind must have antimissiles, too. The port would be the perfect place to install them.

Pressing controls, Mule fired his conventional missiles first, one at a time. As each descended for the planetoid’s engine exhaust port, antimissiles reached for them. Each of his missiles exploded long before getting to the port.

Despite the seeming futility of it, Mule aimed the skimmer at the exhaust port and dove toward the huge target. A missile rose for him.

Mule locked on and fired his last antimissile. Seconds ticked by and there was a bloom, a hit. The last Hornet had taken out the enemy projectile.

He launched the Zeno—the nuclear-tipped missile. Afterward, he turned the skimmer at maximum, enduring the high Gs. The hope he would kill the freak elated him.

“Hey, Web-Mind,” Mule said over the comm.

“Base creature. Your trickery will not help you.”

Mule watched his panel. Antimissiles rose from the port. He watched in sick despair. But the antimissiles zoomed past the Zeno, and headed toward him.

Why hadn’t the Web-Mind’s antimissiles destroyed his Zeno? Mule tried to check his own Zeno’s readings. He found the missile broadcast heavy ECM, scrambling his sensors.

Finally, something has gone my way. It was a good feeling, at least while it lasted. Apparently none of the antimissiles had hit the nuke because they couldn’t find it. The Zeno’s electronic countermeasures had proved themselves too powerful for the antimissiles to achieve lock-on.

Mule didn’t think the chasing antimissiles had the range to reach him now either. He felt good again, elated, and then he thought about his wife and children. How had they felt at the end?

Mule turned on the comm. “Hey, Web-Mind,” he said. “I bet I know the safest place on the planetoid. Well, should I say in Tyche? If I were a Web-Mind, which I’m not, I would hide by the planetary engines. That’s the logical place, isn’t it?”

“Self-destruct the Zeno,” the Web-Mind told him.

“Say again. I couldn’t get your last transmission.”

“Abort the Zeno and I will return your fellow Marines to you.”

“Can you give me a video image of them? I want to make sure they’re all right.”

“You must abort the missile now, Space Marine. If you do not…”

“I’m waiting for your boast, your threat,” Mule said. “Aren’t you going to tell me what a gnat I am?”

“You lack the hate-conditioning. Your voice patterns betray you.”

“I’m not a pawn,” Mule said, “if that’s what you mean. I have free will. I’m a man, the one who’s going to destroy you.”

“You do not understand the crime against intelligence you are committing. You are nothing but an evolutionary dead end.”

“What does evolution have to do with you?” Mule asked. “Scientists cobbled you together in their craziest moment of hubris. You’re a foolish experiment gone wrong. I’m merely fixing things.”

“Human, abort the missile now or—”

Mule watched the Zeno missile enter the kilometers-wide exhaust port. Seconds later, a blinding nuclear explosion blew plasma and debris out the opening.

“Web-Mind,” Mule said. “Maybe you’re right. I’m ready to bargain.”

Static was all Mule got. Had he killed the Web-Mind? He wasn’t sure. He didn’t plan to go back to check. It was time to see if his cargo skimmer could reach out far enough to escape Tyche’s gravity. Afterward, he would try to find and reach Slovakia.

***

Day 1139: Several AUs from Tyche, an emaciated, hollowed-eyed Mule lifted off an icy Oort Cloud comet in Mothership Slovakia.

The mass tanks were full of fuel, skimmed from the comet’s icy surface. Everyone in the mothership but him had died from radiation poisoning. Mule had found many of the dead at their posts, including Captain Han. Others had been curled in pain in their rooms on their cots.

He’d floated the dead into a storage chamber. Moving them while alone had been a harrowing experience.

Mule didn’t know if every cyborg was destroyed on Tyche, but it seemed the Web-Mind must be. He had wrecked the engines, at least, so they weren’t going anywhere. He had tried contacting surviving Marines there, but hadn’t found any.

Mule didn’t talk, not to himself, or the dead, or even to the ship’s AI. He moved like an automaton on the mothership’s bridge.

He was alive. He headed home for the inner Solar System. It would take three years to get there. He had nightmares every time he closed his eyes. He felt so alone.

But after eating his fill and taking a shower, he began to move normally again. Finally, he began speaking with the AI, making friends. It helped him send a message to Earth, to Marten Kluge, to report that the Space Marines had neutralized the cyborg menace at Tyche. Humanity could rest easy for now because brave men had given their lives in the line of duty.

After sending the message, Mule sat in the captain’s chair on the bridge, staring at Sol. From this far away, it was the third brightest star after Sirius and Alpha Centauri. It was his destination, well, the Inner Planets. Mule wondered what awaited him at the end of the voyage. Then he closed his eyes, thinking once more about his lost people, his vanished wife and children. On their graves he vowed that if there were more cyborgs left, he was going to find them—and annihilate every one.

The End

Novels from the DOOM STAR Series by Vaughn Heppner

Star Soldier

BioWeapon

Battle Pod

Cyborg Assault

Planet Wrecker

Star Fortress

First Conquest

(Book #1 of the Stellar Conquest series)

by

David VanDyke

Prologue

Inbound toward Meme Empire system Gliese 370, thirty-six light years from Earth.

Ink-dark and cold, robot recon drone R-35 hurtled through the interstellar void. As stealthy as Earthtech could make it, the tiny ship soaked up electromagnetics and analyzed them, seeking specific conditions, certain parameters to meet as it approached the target star system at more than nine-tenths lightspeed. Just before entry it slowed to .6C with a short, brutal fusion burn; unfortunately its fate took an ill, unlikely turn.

Directly ahead a Meme Sentry waited. Itself as black as the human-built intruder, it detected the incoming drone’s impact on the standing wave of hot shocked plasma at the boundary of the stellar wind bubble, an anomaly sufficient to breach sensor thresholds. The semi-intelligent Sentry broadcast an alert, launched its available hypervelocity missile and immediately began gestating another.

R-35 had no defenses, but its rudimentary self-preservation programming initiated maximum threat protocols, beginning semi-random evasive maneuvers to delay its destruction. Using the time to dump its memory, it uploaded all data to its transmitter and broadcast an encrypted signal burst.

Thus it took the Meme missile more than one minute and forty seconds to chase R-35 down, ensuring the robot’s partial mission success. Drones R-05, R-15 and R-25 collected the transmitted data, relayed it via comm laser to the approaching EarthFleet dreadnought Conquest, and cruised silently inward.

With this tiny opening salvo, humanity’s first stellar conquest began.

Chapter 1

The Meme designated SystemLord brooded long in his containment tank aboard the great guardian-ship Monitor.

SystemLord called himself “he” in his own mind because of his long association with the lower races, where the males were almost always the warriors. Unlike many Meme, he felt kin to the savages and Underlings.

SystemLord considered himself a warrior. One day, when he grew tired of ruling, he would join the Underlings in their sensory abandon, to kill with his own hand, to take females and produce progeny by sexual reproduction.

But not today.

At present he occupied himself with contemplating the concept of the personal name. By tradition Meme only took names upon Blending with another sentient creature. Until then, the amoeba-like bags of intelligent molecules carried mere designations based on function. Only upon absorbing and subsuming another thinking being would one of the True Race select a sobriquet, to trade space-dwelling status for the sensory pleasures of planetary existence.

He also ruminated on the basis of his own race’s name of Meme, which meant simply ideas conveyed, imitated and replicated.

SystemLord wondered whether the Meme had been too long bound by tradition. A suitably impressive name might be useful, delineating him from all others also called SystemLord, but to do so would invite conflict. After all, named beings simply did not command systems.

His thoughts then turned to the concept of taboo and iconoclast.

A communication pulse, filtered through the hierarchy of his Sentries, was routed to his main vision screen. Hemispherical, concave, the display perfectly surrounded the enormous eyeball that was a semi-permanent part of SystemLord’s body. The Meme ceased to brood as he studied the Sentry’s brief engagement, drawing certain conclusions.

First, the destroyed object was artificial, having revealed itself by maneuvering and transmitting. It was therefore by definition hostile. Because the concept of alliance or coexistence simply did not exist in Meme society, any non-Meme technology represented an enemy.

SystemLord shuddered as he remembered Species 447, which had resisted absorption for thousands of cycles, and had scoured many Meme systems clear of sentient life as it struggled to remain wild. Those creatures had required a race-wide effort to crush. Blending with their defeated, biologically lobotomized remnants had been sweet indeed.

Second, the object’s extrapolated line of approach originated within five degrees of the savage Species 666, so-called Human planet, which had proved itself resistant to absorption. Probability dictated it had come from there. Why any species would defy the Meme and their empire escaped SystemLord, but lower sentients were wild, unpredictable, and insane.

Third, these Humans were vicious but lacked the proper military mindset. Any commander worth his electrolytes would have ensured the probe die inert, failing to confirm its very artificiality to its enemy. Had it done so, the automated Sentry system might have mistaken the device as a mere unidentified floating object, never to be reported.

But clearly Humans were fools, for now SystemLord knew they were coming.

***

“Wake them up.” Craggy, intense, and pale, Admiral Henrich J. Absen sat stiffly in his crash chair, feeling it respond perfectly to every shift. Never comfortable with the adapted enemy biotech it used, he had to force himself not to fidget. Looking confident in the Chair was important to any ship’s commander.

“Aye aye, sir,” replied the BioMed officer on bridge duty. The man spoke aloud into the comm for protocol’s sake, though he could have transmitted his words via link implant. “BioMed, this is the bridge, skipper says, wake them up.”

Skipper. The word felt right as it echoed through Absen’s head. He was a full Admiral now, three-star rank in EarthFleet’s Commonwealth-derived naval structure, but he had declined to choose a flag captain to skipper the EFS dreadnought Conquest. Arrogant, some called him, but as the Fleet’s most experienced and decorated commander – surviving commander – he had that leeway. We beat the Meme every time, he thought, but oh, the cost. Good friends gone forever.

Glancing around his bridge he felt nothing but pride at his hand-picked crew. Survivors of several brutal alien assaults on Earth’s solar system, those that remained now meshed smoothly. Or they had, more than forty years of coldsleep stasis ago. They themselves were only a few days woken.

“Intel, does Analysis have a situation report on Earth system yet?” Absen knew the question uppermost on everyone’s mind: Is my home still there?

The intel officer on watch, Ensign Kristine Johnstone, replied, “Yes sir, just came through now.”

“Push to all stations,” Absen ordered.

Those bridge crew not fully engaged in vital tasks avidly read the short extract on their screens:

SITREP EXECSUM: SOLAR SYSTEM SECURE AS OF DATE 2079/05/25. MEME TASK FORCE DETECTED INBOUND EARTH ETA APPROXIMATELY THIRTY-ONE (~31) YEARS (DATE 2110/?/?). ASSESSED STRENGTH IN EXCESS OF SIXTY-FOUR (64) DESTROYERS. MILITARY-INDUSTRIAL PROJECTIONS ESTIMATE FORTY-THREE (43) PERCENT PROBABILITY EARTHFLEET DEFENSE SUCCESS.

A detailed report full of annexes followed, but for most, the summary was enough. As the ugly truth sunk in a hush fell over the bridge. Conquest and the task force she represented were thirty-six light-years from home. Because nothing known exceeded lightspeed, information from Earth was by definition thirty-six years old.

The bridge readouts showed the 9th of April,2115 AD: therefore the Meme fleet had already struck five years ago, sometime in the year 2110. Everyone at home might be dead, or lobotomized and absorbed by Meme.

Sixty-four Destroyers, Absen thought in quiet horror. Sixty-four ships as puissant as his own dreadnought Conquest, the best EarthFleet could produce. The best forty years ago, he reminded himself. Four more decades of development must have produced powerful ships indeed.

He sincerely hoped so.

“Schedule an All-Hands in eighteen hours,” Absen ordered. “But since I know that the scuttlebutt will get there first, let me just say this to everyone. Nothing has changed for us here. Earth is either still free, or it isn’t, and nothing we do will change that. We accepted this mission when we left home forty years ago. We are here in the Gliese 370 system to make Earth’s first conquest. Humanity can’t sit at home and absorb ever-increasing assaults from an empire spanning unknown hundreds of worlds. Our only hope is to attack, conquer and expand.”

The Intel ensign glanced at the CyberComm station where her uncle Commander Rick Johnstone sat, eyes unfocused. Kristine normally expected that look when Rick was deep in his link, but he was unplugged, so the look on his face made her believe he was thinking of their home and family back in South Africa. The Johnstone-Marquez clan had made their tearful goodbyes long ago.

A long queue of personal messages waited in storage of course, but she knew they would be anticlimactic compared to that simple paragraph about Earth. To stave off her fears, Kris turned back to her board and forced herself to work.

***

Sergeant Major Jill “Reaper” Repeth, EarthFleet Marine Corps, gasped as the slimy tracheal tube withdrew and she began to breathe on her own again. Lifting her hands to rub her face, she carefully opened her eyes for the first time in what must be nearly forty years. Lighting glowed dim and no klaxons wailed, no strobes flashed, so Conquest must be on schedule nearing her destination.

Repeth felt the living coffin, another product of adapted enemy biotech, loosen on her lower body, and she winced when the catheter probe withdrew, though the discomfort was largely psychosomatic. With hair cut short and entirely naked, she was birthed anew into a world of incipient but suspended sound and fury. She welcomed it; after nearly sixty years of military service – plus the forty in stasis – she still looked forward eagerly to righteous battle. Neither guilt nor moral ambiguity troubled her thoughts of killing aliens hell-bent on genocide.

Sixty years. She’d never expected to serve for that long, but the Eden Plague virus conferred immortality and rapid healing, so such spans were commonplace. Turning down promotion from the enlisted ranks was a bit odd, but she relished her reputation for eccentricity. She’d been offered her choice of warrant or commission many times, but had always refused, preferring to stay where she was most comfortable – top enlisted Marine in a front-line combat unit with occasional detours back into special operations.

Stumbling for the female showers in the deliberately heavy gravity –1.4 G that matched the target planet Afrana – she was grateful for the protocol that decanted key leaders in order of rank. Presumably Colonel Stallers and the rest of the battalion officers were already awake ahead of her. She nodded and mumbled greetings at several other women making the same unsteady walk while cursing the gravity drag.

Under hot water she soaped and sluiced, scrubbing remnants of bio-gel out of her ears, and then gingerly tested her wetware. As far as she could tell, her laminated bones and polymer-enhanced musculature had come through without a hitch. As the water rained down she stared at the twin tattoos on her inner forearms, exquisite representations of her namesake, Grim Reapers with upraised scythes, ready to harvest her alien enemies. Holding up her hands, she extended her claws in sequence to their full two centimeters, starting with the thumbs.

The pain of the ferrocrystal knives slicing through her skin from beneath was familiar, comforting.

Like the anachronistic bayonet, she seldom used her claws in combat, but they’d come in handy for covert missions. Earth’s governments had only united under Chairman Daniel Markis after the first Meme Destroyer had made it clear that humanity must stand together or die. A few fanatics always survived on the fringes, bombing and killing, afraid of Big Brother. She understood their sentiments, but still she’d hunted them down as murderers. Sometimes survival comes before principles, she thought.

Thoughts of survival threw her mind back to her last view of that fragile blue marble hanging in space, and all the hopes and dreams of its inhabitants. Leaving behind everyone there was hard, and once again she crammed down the gentler part of her humanity, coating her soul in armor akin to that she wore in combat. Only one crack remained in that lamination, a necessary one to let in her husband, Commander Rick Johnstone.

Having him along kept her human.

Still, the time for softness was past. Now she knew mother hen Conquest and the chicks she would hatch had simple missions: kill any Meme craft in the Gliese 370 system, destroy all resistance from the Blends they called Hippos on the world they’d named Afrana, and then begin the long process of colonization.

Repeth touched her palm to the locker she had closed forty years ago and it hissed open, revealing her carefully-packed kit. Once dressed in crisp utilities she felt like a Marine again. Starched eight-point settled carefully on her head – an affectation from her wet-navy days – she went in search of coffee, information and her commander, in that order. Once she found the first, the second and third would surely be nearby.

Nor was she wrong. Senior NCO and officer wardrooms were separate only in name, delineated by a line on the floor. As large as Conquest was, until the surge of crew dispersed to their own ships she would be packed to the gunwales with people and gear, and some of the usual traditions had become, by necessity, a bit flexible. In fact it was only because ninety percent of the crew and Marines aboard were still undergoing revival that everything still seemed empty, except for here in the mess.

Drawing a steaming cup of lifer-juice, she nodded at Colonel Stallers sitting with his company commanders – including her own, infantry Major Joseph “Bull” ben Tauros. A hulking brute of a man, he was the only one that seemed completely normal without hair; the cue-ball was his usual look.

Bull caught her eye and lifted his cup.

She raised hers back in greeting, but doubted his held coffee. Probably it contained some of that high-protein mix that made the man far too flatulent for the enclosed spaces of a ship.

Crossing the floor, Repeth spotted Tran Pham “Spooky” Nguyen sitting alone in a corner. Usually the slim Vietnamese highlander was easy to overlook, except that today she saw he wore the blinding white high-collared uniform of a Naval Steward. She’d given up surprise at Spooky’s changes of uniform; he’d long ago passed into legend within the covert services of Earth. At one point he’d been one of the most powerful men ruling Australia, but had surrendered his status and prestige for the role of what he liked to call a “facilitator.”

“Hey, Spooky. Nice look.” She sat down, knocked her coffee cup against his tea mug. “You playing bodyguard this trip?”

“Thank you, Jill. Of course, a Steward’s role extends beyond personal protection of the Admiral.” His accent was precise, perfect upper-class English, an affectation adopted so long ago that it was unshakeable.

She noticed he didn’t exactly answer her question, a common occurrence with Spooky. “And your role extends far indeed.” She chuckled. “Anything specific, or you just keeping an eye on things?” And I refuse to ask why you even came on this mission, she thought. You’ve always done exactly as you pleased and somehow you get away with it. Probably because you’re…well, just so damn spooky.

He’d gotten the nickname long ago, before the aliens salted Earth with the Demon Plagues. His brothers in arms remarked on how spooky he was when moving unseen in any environment. Later enhancements – combat nano in the blood, cybernetic implants like Repeth’s, and his dedication to the philosophy of Dadirri – had only enhanced his legend.

“As you say, keeping an eye on things.” Spooky’s eyes roamed the room, searching, she knew, for anything out of place.

She watched him for a moment more, bemused. “Good to see you on the job. Look me up sometime soon. I see Bull waving at me.” Repeth stood up, bowed slightly to her old instructor, and walked over as her Bravo company commander left Colonel Stallers’ table to sit at a different one nearby.

“Good decade, Smaj,” Bull greeted her.

She accepted the familiar corruption of “Sergeant Major” with good graces, knowing such nicknames built trust and camaraderie. “Good freakin’ four decades, Bull, but it feels like I only slept for a week.” Repeth sat down across from him and reached over to tilt his cup toward her with one nailbitten finger. “Ugh. Can’t believe you’re still drinking that dreck. I should space it.”

Bull pulled the protein shake back protectively. “Don’t you dare. I used all my personal allowance on this stuff. Can’t stay big on Navy food.”

“Who cares if you stay big? Your wetware provides most of your actual strength. Besides, it gives you gas like a sick hound.”

“I like to be big. You think this huge noggin would look good on a skinny body like yours?” The Israeli major reached up to palm his scalp like a basketball.

Repeth held up her hands. “All right. So what’s the word?”

“Word is, All-Hands at 1500 hours. Word is, Earth got hit five years ago by sixty-four Destroyers. We don’t even know if anyone’s left.” Bull slurped more of his shake, pensive.

Repeth pursed her lips and put on a stoic front. “Can’t help that. We knew when we left it was long years of travelling at best, a one-way trip at worst.”

“We might be all that’s left of the human race.” He hid a fleeting expression of deep concern.

She leaned over to pound her index finger on the tabletop in front of the big young Marine officer. “Listen, sir, I know you’ve never seen the elephant, but you’re, what, twenty-eight not counting sleep time? I’ve spent longer than that in active combat. I’ve spoon-fed green eltees and I’ve made and I’ve broke company commanders like you. But I’ve seen you over the past few months – before the forty years – hell, you know what I mean – and I know you’ve got what it takes. So just do your job the best you know how and have faith in ol’ mother Reaper.” Unconsciously Repeth patted her left breast pocket where her ancient leather-bound small-print Bible rested.

Bull’s mouth quirked up in a smile at her gesture. He reached up to his neckline to reveal a heavy ferrocrystal Star of David medallion on a chain. “I got faith, Smaj. But Moshe Dayan said faith and bullets’ll get you farther than faith alone.”

Repeth laughed. “Amen to that, my bulky brother. Pass the Lord and praise the ammunition.” She clapped him on the shoulder, a sensation like slapping wood. “I see the Bravo platoon sergeants are up. Suggest you finish that glop and start doing some officer stuff. Find your lieutenants, tell them mommy and daddy will make everything all right.”

Bull rose with her, draining his no-drip plastic cup and folding it into a cargo pocket. “Yeah, lieutenants. Making simple shit hard since Christ was a corporal.”

Repeth tsk-stk’d good-naturedly at his irreverence.

Bull grinned. “You don’t like the way I talk, Smaj, that’s your cross to bear.”

“Why do I feel like you set me up for that line?” With a rueful snort she put the coffee mug in the rack and went to see to her awakening troops.

Chapter 2

R-05, R-15 and R-25 continued inward toward the K-type orange dwarf star. In the slightly less than forty years since they were launched from Conquest, they had moved outward along curving paths, to then approach Gliese 370 at slightly convergent angles. Though spread millions of kilometers apart, each had long ago carefully aimed itself at a point very near the star itself.

These three crossed the stellar wind bubble without incident, undetected. At more than .6C their transit through the star system required approximately ten hours. During this time they greedily collected data, pinpointing Meme spacecraft, orbital structures and ground installations.

Electromagnetic emanations from all forms of technology within the Meme complex were shockingly faint. EarthFleet intelligence believed that the Meme Empire deliberately hid its emissions to minimize the warning any target civilizations might receive. Had humans picked up signals from other worlds from the dawn of the radio age, history might have been far different. Once the Meme invasion spurred humanity into space, careful searches found the faint traces.

Much closer now, the robot probes collected petabytes of data, inspecting every anomaly, every planetary surface, every moon, and as many of the asteroids as possible. One flew within a light-second of HD85512b, the planet dubbed Afrana, greedily sponging up intelligence.

Independent of each other, never coordinating to stymie detection, each then sent a heavily-encrypted comm-burst of coherent light toward Conquest just before the probes decelerated on approach to the system’s sun.

Meme scientific installations detected the fusion drive flares but, as predicted, dismissed them as coronal anomalies, well within the random variation limits of the star itself. The probes each made one brutally quick and close partial orbit of the star, decelerating all the way, intending to emerge on paths that would drift them into position to continue intelligence collection as long as possible.

R-15 never emerged from the far side of the star, having encountered a fluke solar flare that burned it to a cinder. R-05 and R-25 noted the fact and continued their missions, floating at speed unlikely to trip enemy detection grids.

No longer protected by enormous velocity, each probe might be able to transmit its collected data once only, thereafter at risk from Meme automated systems defenses. Had the robots been sentient this might have disturbed them, but true AI had always failed or gone mad, leaving tasks such as this to mere computers. The alternative, downloading human engrams into silicon CPUs, would have been murderously cruel.

Even so, that thing had been considered, then rejected as unnecessary. Thus the robots fulfilled their assignments with machine determination, and awaited their masters’ arrival.

***

SystemLord released his instructions throughout his Sentry network and ordered his enormous ship Monitor to its intermediate stage of wakefulness. Soon the great animal would grow hungry, so it nudged the half-asleep leviathan toward the comet-line that girded the star system like a one-row orchard of ripe fruit trees.

One kilometer-wide ball made of water ice and useful elements vanished into the vast maw of the Meme-directed spheroid, then SystemLord turned Monitor in toward the orange dwarf star. Its shape changed from a lumpy ball to that of a disc, spreading surface area perpendicular to the solar radiation, becoming a vast collector of energy to process the water it had consumed. H2 and O2 were split, processed and stored separately: isotopes of hydrogen for fusion, and pure oxygen to sustain the living tissues.

On the way Monitor gulped two smaller asteroids, materials to be processed into ships and weapons with which to eradicate the Human disease that was certainly on its way. Within itself it began the gestation processes that would ultimately birth destruction for its enemies.

***

The 1500-hours All-Hands approached rapidly as the BioMed staff hustled to get everyone decanted and on their feet in time. As the active complement of task force Conquest numbered over fifty thousand, some of the last ones ended up listening to Admiral Absen’s address in the locker rooms, but most clustered around screens in their designated wardrooms and messes, sat in filled auditoriums, crowded into conference rooms or stood on the flight decks of assault carriers.

“Attention on deck!” Fifty thousand pair of boots snapped together in unison as Absen entered the main amphitheatre, and Master Helmsman Otis Okuda imagined he could feel them all through Conquest’s deckplates.

“Take your seats,” came next and he was happy to sit. Okuda understood the need for artificial gravity to be set high but disliked it nonetheless. His was the realm of trackless space, of piloting starships through the implanted wetware in his brain, not clomping around with his boots in the mud. Coal-black skin glistened with sweat at the unaccustomed effort.

“Good morning Conquest, and welcome to the year 2115,” Absen began, prompting a murmur of amusement from the audience. “A few of you have been out of stasis during the trip, but for the vast majority, you have been asleep since 2075. And as most of you already know, a powerful Meme fleet was due to hit Earth in 2110. But ladies and gentlemen, as I told those near me when I found out, there’s nothing we can do about it. Word of the outcome won’t reach us here for thirty-one years.”

“If EarthFleet won, some of us might eventually return to Earth, but even then it will be a different solar system. Those you know might be alive, but after a hundred years of separation, they won’t be the same people you knew.”

Absen swept the room with his pale sky-colored eyes, and cameras transmitted his craggy intensity throughout the ship. “And if we lost, then we might be the last true humans in existence. So just as I told you forty years ago when we started, I tell you again in all sincerity: Conquest is your world, and the people here are your family, your clan, your tribe, and your nation. If we do not conquer here, there is no retreat, no surrender. If we do not conquer here, we do not have the means to run. If we do not conquer here, humanity dies.”

Pausing to let that sink in, he turned to his officers. “Ladies and gentlemen,” Absen concluded, looking pointedly at his watch, “we are two weeks out.”

***

Master Helmsman Okuda settled comfortably into the sunken pit of the helm station, surrounded by holodisplays. The 4D screens were nearly superfluous as long as his linked wetware functioned, but like the manual controls in a computer-directed airliner they comforted him. Besides, regulations required them, and no one ever died from too many redundant systems. He reached up to his medusa, slotting retractable plugs into the interface sockets in his skull. Soon he resembled the mechanism’s namesake, his shaven pate a nest of snakelike wires.

Initiating the link opened his mind to a whole new universe. Godlike, he flew in the center of nothingness, perceiving the universe in all directions overlaid on his cockpit. He smelled the interstellar winds, tasted hydrogen atoms as the magnetic scoops swept them into fuel collectors, heard the radio sirens of pulsars and quasars and stars of every kind – Put out my hand and touched the face of God.

Magee’s High Flight stood enshrined in the heart of every Helmsman.

Actually, his sense of touch stayed deliberately unaltered, essential for grounding a linked Helmsman in the real world. Hands resting on the complex suite of manual controls, he touched them lightly like a pianist. Though his nerves now transmitted impulses with the speed of fiber optics, nothing had ever really improved on the sensitivity of those ten digits short of direct computer control. Okuda had that option; he could turn any and all functions over to one of Conquest’s supercomputers, and he often did. But ultimately, piloting had to come down to one Helmsman.

Or woman. He thought of his wife Celia deLille, Master Helmsman of the assault carrier Temasek, and the few days they would have together before Conquest initiated separation into its component ships. When it did, the massive mothership would spawn a fleet, and opportunities for visits would be rare. No doubt all those with lovers and spouses aboard – an unusually high percentage, since procreative ability was one criteria for the mission – were thinking the same thing: what will sex be like after forty years in stasis?

After his watch ended, Okuda found out it was still almost as good as piloting a starship.

***

“I am Sergeant Major Repeth,” she said in an amplified voice as she stood in front of Bravo Company, a reinforced unit of more than three hundred enlisted Marines. They stood on the flight deck of the assault carrier Temasek, which was still attached like a remora to Conquest. Troops lined up in eight platoons of about forty each. Bull ben Tauros and the other officers were deliberately absent.

“Those of you who have served with me know I like to be called by my first name. Swede,” she asked, turning to her rawboned First Platoon Sergeant, “tell these diggers what my first name is.”

“Last time I heard, forty years ago,” Master Sergeant Gunderson drawled, “it was SERGEANT MAJOR.” This elicited a few muffled chuckles from the newest Marines.

“How right you are.” She walked down the line in front of the platoons, glorying in the precise ranks of relaxed, well-trained troops. “Now some of you may have heard of some stunts I pulled in my younger days. I’m an old and crotchety woman now,” she said, drawing some laughter, as the Eden Plague kept everyone fit and youthful in body, “and I have no interest in showing you how tough I am. Back in the day, a woman had to prove herself to a bunch of stupid macho kids. Any more, I just let my record speak for itself. I’ve killed more squids and blobs than you greenies got boogers in your noses, and I still ain’t got my fill.”

“Besides,” she smiled nastily, “I know the lot of you young studs and studettes have the latest upgrades. You have laminated bones, cynbernetic nerves and muscles, nanite speed and strength and the Eden Plague to heal you up after you break yourselves. This task force was given the best of Earth’s limited resources. So I’m not going to let you waste it on dominance games. I will say this once and once only.” She swept the ranks with machinegun eyes. “Do not test me. I would rather cull this herd of troublemakers now than let one stinking shitbird among you besmirch Bravo Company’s good name.” She scanned up and down the ranks, searching for any smirks, any hint of attitude or challenge, determined to make her example right away, as she always did.

This time she found nothing. This time, she thought, they know it’s as real as it gets. Fear of death doth wonderfully concentrate the mind.

Repeth’s smile became genuine, almost warm, lighting up her thin bony triathlete’s face. “But for those of you who give me one hundred percent, I will back you to the hilt, and so will your NCOs. If you have a problem, you bring it to your them and they will bring it to me. You do not bring your problems to officers, unless you mistakenly think the problem is me, which is proof positive you are hallucinating, at which time you will be sent to BioMed for psych-eval. Am I clear?”

Three hundred throats roared as one. “Clear, Sergeant Major!”

“Now I have spoken with your platoon sergeants and they will speak with your squad leaders and they in turn will speak with you. With this double-sized company there will be no jumping chain of command for any issue short of life or death. We have about nine days to get ready before we climb into the couches. The training schedule is posted, and I expect nothing less than your best. The only easy day was yesterday.” She saw Gunderson motion with his eyes off to her right and she turned to see Bull and his gaggle of lieutenant Platoon Leaders.

“Company: Tench-hut!” She marched precisely to the center front of the formation and turned it over to Major ben Tauros with a perfect salute that nevertheless managed to convey both eagerness and that certain worldly confidence common to all senior noncommissioned officers. The fact that her commander overtopped her by a full head and eight kilos somehow did nothing to diminish her presence as she marched to her position to listen to Bull’s first pep talk.

Yeah, it’s good to be back in charge of warriors.

Chapter 3

Five days out, Absen thought as Breakup time approached. Five days to live or die. His youthful appearance, product of the Eden Plague, belied his old soul. He had aged a hundred years when Kathleen and his children died in nuclear fire, and no amount of bodily rejuvenation could really make him young. He’d put the thought of another relationship on hold for the years he fought humanity’s war, and now he found himself again wondering if that had been a mistake.

Plenty of time if we win here. It will take decades for the Meme to react, to shift forces to try to retake Gliese 370, and in that time we’ll be making babies. That prospect was so much easier with orders to back it up – when he had a reason, an objective: another generation of humans to replace losses and to carry on the fight, to go with the ready-made factories that would build more factories that would build ships and weapons to defend the new civilization.

Thence to conquer.

If we win. That’s on my shoulders.

“One minute until first stage separation,” Master Helmsman Okuda intoned quietly. He skimmed his screens, turning left and right to take in all of them, seeing nothing of concern except a few yellow lights in the later sequences.

“Initiate on the T-zero mark, Chief. Don’t wait for my word.” Absen had long since passed a need for the melodrama of giving history-making orders.

“Three, two, one, mark,” the computer’s voice said. Throughout Conquest the same voice spoke, synchronizing thought and action.

Those deep inside the great sphere continued about their business, secure in the knowledge that their parts would begin hours from now. Those on Conquest’s skin hovered hands over control boards and monitored automated sequences over their links, preparing for the moment when the ship became a fleet.

Each of thirty-seven war vessels fit into a vast puzzle-box five kilometers across: assault carriers, missile frigates and beam cruisers, and the massive railgun-equipped battleships. These latter were the first to detach, four enormous wedge-shaped ships layered thick with armor, heavy with billions of steel balls to be flung at the enemy by magnetic accelerators – railguns – the size of skyscrapers.

These drifted forward, maintaining their precombat role as Conquest’s defense against objects that might be in their path. All maneuvers now were performed with exaggerated slowness and care, until the huge ships gained enough separation.

The cruisers split next, from Conquest’s sides, eight midsized pyramidal vessels equipped with beam weapons – lasers, grasers, masers and charged particle beam emitters – an abundance of fusion power plants, and little else. Armored most heavily in front, they depended on standoff distance and computer control to put their energies on targets and avoid those of the enemy. The cruisers fell in flanking the battleships, knowing that a relativistic strike from a chunk of rock as small as a baseball could wreak havoc on the smaller ships to come.

Conquest’s onion continued to peel, this time from the rear as sixteen missile frigates fell away as one, then cleaved apart with gentle pushes of their thrusters, each a double-pointed obelisk with pyramidal ends and four flat sides. Nuclear-tipped missiles in hundred-count disposable launcher boxes clamped to the vessels’ skins.

Now shrunken by three-fourths, Conquest paused in its systematic dismantlement for many hours as the twenty-nine now-distinct warships tested systems, eliminated problems, performed final maintenance, and established their own routines. Each now had its own captain, its own set of Helmsmen and bridge officers, and its own destiny.

Absen watched the ballet from his bridge, eyes bright but saying little as the sequence unfolded. A good commander knew when to stay out of the way, and at this point, everything was going according to instructions.

A good commander also knew no battle plan survives contact with the enemy.

Chapter 4

Monitor gulped asteroids and birthed warships as SystemLord mustered his forces. That commander vivified and placed a pure Meme aboard each newborn vessel, warrior-bred mitoses cloned from his own memory cells, possessing battle skills and little else. Adolescent in outlook, many years would pass before any of them matured enough to be a threat to his dominance – by which time, one way or another, most of them would be dead.

Again SystemLord speculated on the foolishness of the Humans, though as a wise and canny warrior he refused to underestimate them.

On one pod it seemed they had telegraphed their intentions with the probe.

On the other pod, he considered the possibility that there was no attacking force: that the probe was merely a lone information-gathering device directed at this system. Perhaps the enemy had sent tiny drones to many systems. Perhaps a Human fleet waited in interstellar space for information, and would choose a different target when it saw how prepared his system was.

Such would be a worthy enemy strategy, SystemLord thought. It would be clever and efficient, forcing the Empire to expend vast amounts of materiel to prepare to hold many systems while the enemy attacked only one. This observation highlighted a principle that even the animalistic Humans could comprehend: in warfare, the attacker had the advantage of choosing time and place and circumstance, while the defender must wait, ever vigilant. This was doubly true in space combat, where speed was life, where unmoving things died.

That was why the Empire made it a policy of attacking, overwhelming and absorbing any threat.

The old Meme longed to take Monitor to assault the Human homeworld, but the Elders were still considering his suggestion. SystemLord believed that if they had immediately sent all Monitors within thirty light-years, and joined with all available roving Destroyers, the threat would have been ended already.

But tradition also said every Meme system would have its Monitor, to guard and fortify its planetary components, the wealth of the Empire – and keep the Underlings in line. Taboo and tradition, he mused. We are trapped in chains of our own making.

Monitor had shrunk by almost half its own weight, shedding billions of tons as it first gestated dozens of frigates and cruisers rather than the usual millions of hypervelocity missiles. This strategy ran counter to standard doctrine, which was founded on the belief that a single large ship would always defeat an equal mass of smaller ships.

However, SystemLord had studied long on the old memories of Species 447 and the new ones of Human Species 666, and had made, for a Meme, an extraordinary intuitive leap.

He had realized that inorganic constructs, what Humans called machines, changed the usual equations. Where one living predator would easily dominate two of half its size, it was often true that two smaller machines could destroy one larger one.

Only Blends - Underlings and Purelings - built such machines. Having given up their Meme to use solid bodies with fixed structure and members, they needed such tools to overcome their disabilities. But SystemLord realized, in contravention to his culture, that in some circumstances the machine strategy was superior, if not the machines themselves.

A Human would say he thought to fight fire with fire. Thus SystemLord set the many smaller ships to grazing on interplanetary detritus, instructing their commanders to make themselves fat with raw materials, fuel and weapons.

Ordinary Meme doctrine was that of efficiency – living ships that could fire weapons, fight and run away to heal and return again.

Contrarily, the Humans with their machines seemed to commit total effort to each battle, expending munitions at many times the rate Meme would in hopes of swamping their enemies’ ships with overwhelming numbers and varying attacks. In this case, where the aliens could not resupply, SystemLord was willing to pick and choose from traditional and enemy doctrines, in hopes of synthesizing something new.

Accordingly, the Meme commander burned the resources of his star system with profligate rapidity as he thought, better to be prepared than to be made a fool – especially a dead fool.

***

Absen finally really felt like an admiral. Whereas before he commanded one composite ship, now he had charge of twenty-nine, which meant twenty-eight captains to deal with. Additionally, eight more assault carriers remained to be launched. Each AC held an inordinate number of human beings for its size: a Marine battalion of two thousand or so troops, plus an aerospace fighter wing of four hundred fifty and a ship’s crew of about a hundred, all in ships with light armor and naught else but defensive systems. Forty percent of my people, he thought, and likely to take the heaviest casualties. But then, the ground forces always do.

Whereas the rest of the ships were there to control the high ground of space, these eight were there to take and hold things and places. Right now their objectives were rather murky. Eight reinforced battalions couldn’t hold a planet in the face of determined resistance, but the Hippos’ world had orbital facilities and a moon half the size of Earth’s. While Absen doubted he would ever again pull off anything as dramatic as ship-to-ship boarding, he was sure the ACs would get a workout somewhere, if only because he believed in using every tool to win.

Because ultimately, when this battle was over, they had to put down boots and roots, build something permanent, and prepare for the inevitable counterattack.

Or perhaps, Absen toyed with a proscribed idea, we should strike and move on. Because despite my declaration of “do or die,” if this system is too tough, I’d rather sail on through and go elsewhere. Better the Flying Dutchmen of space than the last hurrah of a dead race.

If only we knew what had happened at home.

Bridge crew murmured about him, speaking in clipped tones, passing orders and information. He exchanged glances with his imperturbable Chief of the Boat Timmons, an archaic position that the man maintained by refusing to go anywhere but Absen’s side. Though the COB looked younger and fitter than he used to, he still had an air of gravitas that his ever-present coffee mug of lifer-juice did nothing to dispel. Timmons nodded back, touched a control on his console.

Klaxons whooped throughout the ship, calling all hands to General Quarters. Tension aboard spiked as men and women scrambled to pull on suits and helmets, then jogged along the decks through the wide passageways. Their gear grew suddenly less heavy as the grav plating reset to one-half G, the better to perform their duties. Once damage control parties had reported ready, the COB touched another key and the no-notice drill ended.

“Two minutes seventeen seconds,” he announced, checking an old-fashioned digital stopwatch from his pocket. “Not bad.”

“Let’s get it under two minutes, COB,” Absen replied.

“Aye aye, sir.” He picked up his mug and took a sip. “I’ll give them five minutes to get halfway undressed and then call one again.”

“You’re a bad man, COB,” Absen grinned.

“Far worse than you know, sir,” he chuckled. Five minutes passed, then ten, while he sipped and played with his board.

Crafty old bastard knew he’d be overheard and someone would pass on the scuttlebutt through their link, Absen thought. Now they’re all sweating in their suits, ready to go and wondering what’s going on.

Ninety-five minutes later he watched as Timmons called another drill. Absen laughed to himself. That’ll teach them to try to outfox the fox.

Two hours later the Admiral gave up his watch to Commander Yvgenia Zylstra, content to crawl into his bunk and catch up on some sleep. He knew that his role now was to make the big decisions when the time came. Tomorrow he would spend the day reviewing the finalized intelligence and op-plans, before he gave the order to start shooting for real.

***

Absen awoke seven hours later with that feeling again. Irritation flared in his breast, but he sure as hell wasn’t going to give the man the satisfaction of seeing it. Without opening his eyes he cleared his throat and said, “Hello, Spooky.”

“Greetings, Admiral. I trust all is well with your world?” The covert operative sat comfortably in the armchair in the corner, farthest from the comm-panel light by Absen’s bunk and thus a mere outline in the deep darkness.

“You know, this sneaking in was a lot more impressive before you adopted cover as a Steward and got the codes for the door. Now it’s just disrespectful.” Absen sat up, flipping on the overhead light, stripping the Vietnamese highlander of his shadows, and nearly blinding himself on the blued and buttoned Steward garb.

Spooky blinked, shrugged. “Would it impress you more if I told you I don’t have the current codes, and that Tobias is standing outside gnashing his teeth wondering how I got by him – again?”

Absen waved a hand in surrender. “Yes, I suppose it would. All right, you’ve had your fun. What do you want this time?”

“I want to make a suggestion.”

“What would that be?”

Spooky leaned forward to put his palms on his knees. “Don’t strike the planet too hard.”

Absen nodded. “Well, not so hard we destroy the ecosystem. We do need to colonize. Why?”

“Because the best way to destroy an enemy is make him your friend.”

“And you think the Hippos will be our friends?”

Spooky nodded slowly. “It seems possible. Are they not slaves to the Meme?”

“Look, Nguyen, I’ve read a hundred reports on this issue and nobody agrees. What are they? Meme with Hippo bodies? Hippos cloaked in Meme biology? Slaves to their empire? We don’t know their exact relationship.”

“I simply advise keeping our options open. They can’t be allies if they are bombed back to the Stone Age.”

Absen sighed. “They can’t hurt us, either…but point taken. I’ll think about it.”

Spooky folded his hands across his flat belly and gazed down at his interlaced digits. “I’d also like to have your permission to assemble a team.”

“For?”

“I’m not sure.” He looked suddenly uncertain, and rubbed the tips of his thumbs together. “I just have an…intuition, that it might be needed.”

“If you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail.”

Spooky laughed dryly. “You think because I’m a covert operative, I am manufacturing a covert operation?”

“Just raising the possibility.”

“Wouldn’t you like to be ready if an opportunity presents itself? Use every tool, I’ve heard you say.”

“All right. As long as it doesn’t disrupt other tools by doing it. You’re saying you haven’t already got a team? If you could get assigned to this task force without my knowledge, why not some more spooky fellows? Ah…” Absen smiled. “You weren’t assigned, were you. You stowed away again.” He sat back to fold his arms on his chest with rare delight. “And now you need my help.”

“I do.” Spooky quirked an eyebrow. “I think I’ve earned it over the years.”

“Of course you have, old man. I just like seeing you squirm a bit.” Absen clapped, then rubbed his hands theatrically. “All right, let’s say the answer is yes. How many and who? I get the feeling you don’t just want a squad of jarheads to back you up.”

“You are correct, sir. And I have a feeling I will need special operators, not line troops. But it doesn’t need to be right away. I don’t want to disrupt things…until I have to.”

“Uh oh.” Absen stood up and grabbed a towel. “Since we’re swapping feelings, I have a feeling I’m not going to like the roster. So rather than hash this out right now, I’m going to take a shower and you’re going to give me your choices so I can think about it, and get lost in the meantime.”

“Fair enough.” Spooky stood up and bowed mockingly. “The list is under your pillow.” With that parting shot he walked out of the Admiral’s capacious quarters.

Absen followed him to the door, watching as he left. “Oh, come on!” he heard Tobias cry as the Chief Steward glared at the little man gliding past him again with a wink. I think the score is thirty-seven to two in Spooky’s favor, though I’m not so sure he didn’t let Tobias catch him deliberately once or twice, just to throw the man a bone.

***

The Admiral’s private shower was a good place to think. The more he mulled over Spooky’s words, the more they made sense to him. Maybe there aren’t enough people here willing to speak truth to power. That means Nguyen is all the more valuable for that trait. Am I too arrogant after all?

One short walk later Absen took his seat in his command conference room, overflowing with targeters, planners and analysts. They ticked through dozens of slides detailing the specifics of the fleet’s initial strikes, and his eyes began to roll back after the first hour no matter how he tried to hurry the process. They snapped open as the next presentation showed the hot, blue-green, Earthlike world they’d named Afrana.

By the third slide he’d heard enough. “So, Colonel Dunlap,” Absen asked the targeting officer levelly, “you appear to have planned a genocide.”

The man shifted uncomfortably next to the big screen. “Estimates are for no more than ninety-four percent casualties on the Hippo planet, sir.”

“Ah.” Absen steepled his fingers. “And if this was a human enemy, would you consider that number within the bounds of morality?” The room had fallen silent as the staff watched the interplay.

“Um, perhaps not, sir.” Wisely, the man waited rather than argue – after all, he was merely the spokesman for a planning team.

“What will be the impact on the ecosystem of this proposed strike? I will eventually have to put a million colonists somewhere. I think they deserve a decent place to live.”

More confidently Dunlap responded, “The planet is already a bit warm for human habitation. The actions will throw up enough debris to cool the planet and eventually increase the habitable zone.”

“Eventually when?”

“Ah…twenty to thirty years.”

Absen tapped his fingertips together. “Look, Dunlap, I am sure your plan is a perfect military solution, but there is a bigger picture here. Aside from the morality of wiping out enemy civilians that pose us no threat, aside from the wisdom of damaging the planet during the most critical colonization period, has anyone thought to ask about how we are going to live with these Hippos later?”

“But sir,” broke in Colonel Stallers, “they are just Meme in different form. They are the enemy.”

Absen responded, “And a wise man recently reminded me the best way to destroy an enemy is to make him your friend. If there’s one thing I’ve learned in the history of human warfare it’s the value of holding out a hand to a defeated foe. So let me be clear: I want plans that demolish and destroy all enemy military capability, even associated industrial capability. I want them smashed flat, but I will not countenance genocide. Dunlap, get your team working on something less extreme, that kills fewer civilian Hippos and allows us to immediately start the colonization. And Campbell,” he turned to his aide, “draft a memo explaining my policy on the difference between pure Meme and Hippos.”

“Yes, sir. Ah…what is the difference?”

“I’ll tell you when I’m sure myself.” The Admiral rubbed his eyes and stood up to stretch. “Let’s take five and get on with the next presentation.”

Chapter 5

Flight Lieutenant Vincent “Vango” Markis turned when he felt the clasp on his shoulder. “Rick!” He returned Rick Johnstone’s grip with one hand, holding up his towel with the other. “Let me get dressed and we can catch up.” Vango quickly pulled on his flight suit, or “bag,” and followed the CyberComm officer out of the locker room.

“Been a crazy few days,” Rick said to his friend as they walked down a corridor, squeezing past myriad bodies hurrying hither and yon. “I wanted to stop by before separation. Once the carriers break off, there won’t be any more visiting.”

“Shouldn’t you be spending this time with your Sergeant Major wife, then?”

“She’s busy right now.”

“Hey, I always wanted to ask you, why she didn’t take your name?”

“Well…her family got nuked in Los Angeles back on Infection Day. She offered, but…I didn’t want her to be the last Repeth. Besides, her reputation is more important to her than she admits.”

“That’s…really nice, man.”

“Thanks.”

“And by really nice, I mean, you’re such a pussy.” Vango put up his arms to block a casual left hook and snickered.

“Speaking of the P word…believe me, as soon as she’s off duty you won’t see me.”

“I hear you. If I had a wife like that, I wouldn’t keep her waiting either,” Vango said.

“Does that relate to her attractiveness or her fierce punctuality?” This time Rick’s jab connected to Vango’s shoulder.

“Umm…no comment?”

Laughing, they turned in to the wardroom, a big space on a populous and officer-heavy ship like this assault carrier. Marine officers were a relative few, but the Aerospace Forces pilots and their partner Weapons Systems Officers, or “wizzos,” made up for them, and the room was filled with swaggering bags.

“Vango!” came a cry. Skipping toward them was a stocky raven-haired woman with an ethereally beautiful face, almost as if someone had stuck the wrong head on her torso.

“Helen!” Vango hugged her and turned to Rick. “Rick, this is my wizzo, Sub-Lieu Troya Portland. Helen, this is Commander Rick Johnstone.”

“Helen?” Rick asked, then answered his own question with a snap of his fingers. “Helen of Troy.”

“Got it in one, Commander wirehead. V told me all about you. Like an uncle?”

“Like one, yeah,” Rick answered. “I’m only twelve years older than he is, but I’ve known him since he was born. We lived across the street from each other most of our childhood.”

Helen looked at the two of them. “So Rick, what was it like growing up with the son of the leader of the whole planet?”

“Give it a rest, Helen,” Vango scolded. “We’re forty years from home and we might never see them again. The Admiral is our boss now and the closest relation I have to him is Uncle Rick here, who’s a bridge officer on Conquest. I volunteered for this mission because I wanted to get away from Dad’s shadow, not live in it.”

“Okay, boss. Mister Rick Sir, I see you wear a ring. Mean anything?” Her face dimpled lasciviously as she ran her tongue over her upper lip.

Rick laughed uncomfortably. “Uh, hey, Vango told me you were gay…”

“And she is,” Vango interrupted. “She enjoys using that face to make men squirm. Just like her namesake.”

Helen responded, “Be glad I am, V, or Daniela would have something to worry about.”

Vango rolled his eyes. “Now I have something to worry about. How’d they ever allow you on this mission, anyway?”

“Because I got no problem with breeding, flyboy, I just don’t like the injector all you guys want to use on me. I’ll raise my quota of bambinos when the time comes. Until then, I’m going to have my fun.” With that, she flounced off to throw her arms around a petite blonde with pilot’s wings on her flat chest.

“Damn, she’s so right, too. With Dannie and all the rest of the colonists staying in coldsleep, looks like no fun for Yours Truly.” Vango shrugged, poured himself tea from the machine against the wall. He motioned for them to sit down out of the press.

“Too bad they can’t wake your wife up.” Rick got a cup of juice and sat.

“Naw, that would just be a distraction, and if I did it everyone else would want to, and where would we cram thousands of civilians? Better they stay where they are…stacked like slabs of meat in tubes.”

“Don’t sweat it too much, Van. They’re deep inside Conquest and if we lose her…well, we’ve lost the fleet. That’s why she’s armored like a battleship and armed like a squadron.”

They drank in thoughtful silence for a moment before Rick reached into his pocket. “Got something for ya.” He slid a pinkie-drive over, with a memory wafer smaller than its plug.

“Software?”

“Finished updating it this morning. I submitted it to the Combat Cyber team for evaluation, but you know they won’t approve it without more testing than we have time for.”

Vango rubbed the drive between his thumb and forefinger. “Is it solid?”

“My friend, it is solid. I did most of it during my waking duty year. It’s based on proven quasi-AI heuristic algorithms. It will give you a variable boost in automated response depending on how much time you give it to learn. Pretty soon it will be flying your ship better than you do, and it will help Helen fight your StormCrow better than ever. But she’ll probably never notice – everything will just work smoother and faster.”

“Oh, she’ll notice. What she’ll make of it, I don’t know.” Vango put the drive in a pocket and zipped it shut. “What if it glitches?”

“Then pull it out. It runs from the drive, only loads a minimum presence. Reboot if it gives you any trouble after that. Relax, buddy,” Rick said clapping Vango on his shoulder. “If this works, Cyber will have its test.”

“And if it doesn’t, we’ll both be in deep kimchi, except I’ll be merely dead. Remember,” he said darkly, “buddy’s only half a word.”

“And speaking of the other half…” Rick checked his watch. “I have to go meet my own.”

“Lucky dog. I should have married military. I bet she makes you do it in cadence. Hut, two, three, four!”

“You’ll never know.” They clasped hands and Rick hurried off with a definite sense of purpose.

***

Master Helmsman Okuda watched Admiral Absen take The Chair. They nodded to each other, old comrades in arms, and the bald pilot sent out the ready pulse that ensured computer synchronization of all twenty-nine ships. Under control of Okuda’s and Conquest’s central brain, the minuet began. All the war vessels rolled to bring their weapons suites to bear on their first targets, still light-days away.

“Railguns firing,” Commander Ford at the Weapons station called, more to fill the silence than convey information. Everyone could read their screens and 4D displays to observe the first phase.

Four battleships, second in size only to Conquest herself, fed gigawatts of electricity to their Dahlgren Behemoth RL-40s, then poured many millions of one-kilogram steel spheres into their hoppers. One after another, thousands per second, induction rails snatched streams of shot and threw them forward at almost ten percent of lightspeed relative.

They might have gone even faster but the kinetic energy on the ammunition, added to the fleet’s speed, pushed their velocity well into relativistic territory, approaching ninety-nine percent of light. Each metal ball now contained almost as much momentum as Einstein’s physics would allow. Where one struck, it would punch a hole in a mountain, and if that mountain managed to stop its travel, it would convert that incredible force into heat and pressure like a tiny nuclear weapon, lacking only the hard radiation.

Bridge screens showed plotted lines radiating forward toward the Gliese 370 system, each a hyphen aimed at a known target: asteroids and comets, orbital defense satellites, bases on moons, planetary installations.

Movable targets such as satellites would probably survive; if the Hippos or their Meme masters had any sense at all they would issue small course changes at random that would cause these ultra-long-range shots to miss by kilometers, unguided as they were. For anything that could maneuver, it would be sheerest luck to hit. But railgun ammo was cheap, and more could eventually be manufactured from iron-rich asteroids. With enough ammo firing at enough targets, serendipity might take its course.

At least they had these known targets, provided by their dying robot probe, an unsung machine hero.

“Railgun strikes away, all weapons ceasing,” Ford called after almost an hour of continuous fire. More than a billion rounds, a third of the battleships’ ammo, had been expended, and their electrical capacitors showed empty. The enormous ships nudged themselves closer together, magnetic sweep-fields and two-hundred-meter-thick ferrocrystal armor shielding the task force from the possibility of a random micrometeorite strike at .9C.

“Mister Okuda, are the carriers ready?” Absen asked.

“Yes, sir.”

“Then you may initiate separation.”

The assault carriers, eight thick wheels with dozens of spokelike launch bays aimed outward, unstacked themselves like coins from the back end of Conquest, and immediately began to spin up. Separating in three dimensions like flying discs thrown into the air, they used gyros and thrusters to form a cone behind the dreadnought.

Finally revealed, the shining teardrop of Conquest herself displayed a cluster of fusion drive engines grouped at the center of the fat end of her chocolate-kiss shape. Fully three thousand meters across, she was the largest vessel EarthFleet had ever constructed, discounting the fortified movable asteroids in the home system that could only loosely be termed ships.

Armed and armored to the limits of humanity’s technology, she was theoretically superior to the monster Destroyers the Meme had been sending against the homeworld for decades. A testimony to faith and risk, she was the first of her class, her keel laid down in space in 2069, completed five years later by the gargantuan shipyards of Ceres.

Yet her missiles, her railguns, and her beam weapons remained silent. She was the heart of Task Force Conquest, and as such would withhold her full potency until they came to grips with the enemy, because deep within her structure rested the hope of humanity: over one million colonists, their coldsleep tubes stacked like cells in a beehive, layered with grav plates and robot maintainers.

“Missiles next,” Ford recited. Computer feeds projected simulations of the launch. Intuition might imply such missiles should be fired later and nearer, but in vacuum the guided weapons had nearly unlimited range, constrained only by fuel to maneuver to their targets at the end.

Thousands of phallic objects vomited forth from the disposable box launchers on the frigates, oriented themselves toward the fore using gyroscopes, and fired short bursts of their fusion engines. These tiny suicidal robots slowly followed the railgun streams and did not overtake them. Instead, they maneuvered carefully into a spreading swarm.

Before they entered the Gliese 370 system they would decelerate like descending rockets, for if they did not, they would flash through the area so quickly that even computer control could not maneuver them against targets. Once slowed below .3C, they would cross the stellar wind bubble and begin hunting even while continuing to decelerate. Since everything in the system was hostile, each target engaged would be introduced to a high-yield thermonuclear shaped charge and its bomb-pumped gamma-ray lasers.

“All missiles away.”

Sixteen missile frigates jettisoned their box launchers as single-pilot grabships seized them, shoving the empty cubes forward and away from the fleet, random objects to confound the enemy. The tiny tugs drew forth fresh hundred-round boxes from Conquest’s capacious bays, carefully maneuvering them onto the naked frigates until they were again clothed in weaponry.

“Recalling small craft. Making all secure for deceleration.” Grabships raced back to their docking cradles and the crew of the fleet took their stations, preparing for the long uncomfortable fall ahead. Several minutes later Okuda nodded. “All ships report ready.”

Absen made a casual chopping motion with his hand, as if to emphasize his next order. “Master Helm, you may maneuver the fleet.” I’ve waited as long as I could, he thought, and now when we light these fusion drives we will be announcing our presence with no chance of hiding.

For the first time Okuda reached out with his mind, using fleet comms and his command override codes to control the gyros, engines and thrusters of all thirty-seven warships in one synchronous waltz.

The dance began from the rear, with the lightest of touches on the thrusters from the assault carriers. They fell farther and farther behind, drifting apart even as their engine output ramped up, facing forward. This way they would enter the system last.

Missile frigates came next, fragile and inversely draped vessels little more than maneuvering systems for their box launchers, wearing their weapons like bizarre cubic jewels. They had no need to flip end for end; this design sported one equally powerful engine at each tip, and from their forward extremes fusion fire flared, following the carriers as if falling upward. Their saving grace in Absen’s eyes was their number and their small crews of fewer than twenty people, yet he knew many of their young captains personally and recognized that numbers never told the whole story.

Now it was Conquest’s turn. Ponderously the great teardrop rolled, and the six fusion engines that ringed its axis began to glow. Gently the dreadnought decelerated away from its charges, and Absen couldn’t help feeling like he was abandoning the others. Even after decades in space, the vast separations that fighting doctrine mandated made him feel a lack of control. He consoled himself with the thought that he had one quarter of the fleet’s firepower under his own thumb.

On the other hand, he had all four quarters of its responsibility.

Eight beam cruisers, stubby pyramids covered with raised armor patterns protecting their projectors, now turned over to point their broad bases forward and light off their engines, gently drawing away and to the sides. The computer displays showed them as if they rose from below. Absen remembered the rule of thumb of space warfare, a paraphrase of the visionary writer O. S. Card: The enemy’s direction is down. It meant, roughly, to always visualize falling upon the enemy from above. Do that and everything becomes clear.

The cruisers took position around Conquest in a ring twenty kilometers across and spreading.

Lastly the four battleships rolled their wedges to point drives forward, or down. These took stations in front of a point offset from the center. Slowly and in coordination Okuda increased the whole fleet’s thrust.

As the engine forces rose, grav plates placed strategically throughout all the ships ensured that their crews and more delicate machinery were not smashed flat. Eventually the fleet decelerated at over seventy-five gravities, though crew in their bio-gel conformal couches never felt more than five. The Eden Plague virus, the nanites in their bloodstreams, and their cybernetic augmentation kept them alive, healthy, and useful.

Even so, four such days waxed tedious. The fleet decelerated hard for seven hours at a stretch, then reduced burn for an hour to do maintenance and provide relief, and then did it again and again until their velocity had been reduced to less than a tenth of C. By this time the squadron spread out and slowed intermittently, randomly, and violently, to throw off any long-range Meme weapons launched against them.

The whole affair, despite all planning and preparation, cost several dozen lives. A few grav plates failed under the tremendous strain, turning human bodies and structures into smears on the armored deck plates. One frigate’s missile box ripped loose and cartwheeled down the length of the ship, taking two more cubes with it. External fittings on all ships failed randomly under the heavy strain – communications dishes, sensors, optics, antennas – and ripped loose, to add to the cloud of debris, stripped ions, and relativistic helium that preceded the fleet.

Despite these minor losses the force held together and retained its combat effectiveness as planned. When it reached its final cruising speed, it would cross the edge of the system loaded for bear.

Chapter 6

SystemLord ingested the information that his Sentries had detected fusion flares inbound. Wave-shift analysis showed an initial speed of almost nine-tenths light, and the great organic computational brains of Monitor told a troubling tale: depending on how much velocity the enemy was willing to retain, they could enter the system in a very short time indeed.

The commander brought Monitor to full wakefulness; at such a high state of readiness it became a bit high-strung, like a male animal eager for a fight over females. He also issued orders to its spaceborne progeny, in a similar excited state, mitigated only by the materials in their guts, still gestating their full complement of weaponry.

Some of these deadly organic devices also stretched the limits of taboo. Nanobiological weapons were by nature impossible to control; the Meme had long discouraged the gestation of anything that, should it get loose, might damage their own creatures. Yet in this case the risk of contamination was less than the risk of annihilation, and so SystemLord ordered the machine-eating bacteria heretofore only authorized for use in Human space loaded into all missiles.

While bioweapons were not unusual, this experimental version of the ravenous monocells had no failsafes. If it got loose inside a Meme ship it would seek to eat every non-organic element it detected – and unlike previous bacteria, these were engineered to be very hard to kill, even for Meme. Because living ships nevertheless built inorganic structures as their bones and armor, vessels so exposed would rapidly become useless as the disease ate their skeletons and turned them to helpless mush.

Once activated, the phages were ticking time bombs of cellular slime.

SystemLord also alerted the Underlings, those who had passed from purity in order to exploit the rich environments of planets and sub-planets. He ordered them to increase the maneuver of their orbital and sub-planetary bases in expectation of imminent attack.

For all of the Meme commander’s preparations he could not account for one simple fact: though the enemy ships were decelerating so as not to flash uselessly through the system, over one billion railgun balls were not.

In fact the steel streams, now varying widely with inevitable spread, entered the system only seconds after the light of the fleet’s deceleration itself, having been fired before the EarthFleet ships began their burns. Hardly had the instructions gone out than SystemLord began to receive evidence of his mistake.

Ten million clusters of one hundred steel spheres each swept through the system like scourges of a god, and it was only the vastness of space and the preliminary maneuvers of targets that allowed anything to survive at all.

Most things that could not maneuver died.

First to be struck were hundreds of Sentry posts affixed to asteroids. With no engines of any kind, these eyes and ears of the Meme star system simply vaporized as their rocks were pulverized in eyeblinks. One moment the nearest of them transmitted their updates; the next, they had been rendered unto dust. Shattering explosions marched across the solar system over the next eight hours as every one of the outposts were wiped out.

SystemLord and Monitor only realized what was happening when those Sentry posts beyond his position began to disappear; everything was being destroyed nearly at lightspeed, and not even radio could give sufficient warning to take action. The blasts of railgun shot were the flyswatters, and Meme installations the flies.

Clusters also targeted every other asteroid of significant size, over three hundred thousand of them. Those containing Meme installations that had maneuvered, stayed safe. Those that had not, disappeared in the same destructive sweep. The millions of clusters of relativistic grapeshot rolled across the system and obliterated everything that remained in their way.

Larger groups had targeted planets and moons, out of an abundance of caution and capability. EarthFleet had no way of knowing whether some of these were inhabited but it was cheap and easy to lay a cluster onto each smaller planet, moon or planetoid.

Though the steel storm scourged the system’s immobile pieces, when it reached the Underling planet it was only minimally successful. Most of the artificial satellites had been moved to different orbits days ago, and had continued to vary their positions at random intervals for just such an attack. Thus over ninety-eight percent of the orbital installations survived the railgun blast.

The target planet’s single moon was more fortunate; the EarthFleet attack struck its tide-locked outer side on the analytical presumption that military and observer installations would face away from the planet. However, except for a few telescopes and communication repeaters, all of the vital facilities survived on its inside facing, turned perpetually toward the world below.

Unbeknownst to the Humans perhaps, SystemLord thought with some small satisfaction, the moon structures were not crewed by normal Underlings but by Purelings, cloned Underling bodies whose blank brains easily accepted the loyal Meme mitoses cleaved from the pure race. Such programmed warriors would fight and die with perfect obedience, insuring the superficially similar Underlings on the planet could never upset the natural order of things.

The commander wondered to himself to what use those installations would be put, as it observed with cold rage a ferrous sleet of over one million spheres impacting the atmosphere of the planet itself.

Such small objects vaporized in the upper atmosphere, creating spectacular and dangerous effects of heat and shock, but not true devastation to the billions of Underlings and savages below. Had the individual shot massed even ten kilos each, they would have denuded half the planet of higher life.

But this group had apparently been optimized to spare the population. The shockwave knocked Underling aircraft out of the sky, blew down delicate structures such as communications dishes and towers, and shattered the economy of half the world, but caused surprisingly few casualties, except at certain military sites.

SystemLord’s initial reaction was one of grief and outrage: the Underlings, while not pure Meme, were nevertheless citizens of the Empire and deserving of life and his protection. Once he recognized the Humans’ strategy, however, he grudgingly accorded them credit for cunning. To the hybrids and natives on the planet the attack might seem merciful, to spare their civilians.

Despite his losses, he believed he still had sufficient resources. His mobile Sentry network remained intact. The score of cruisers and two score of frigates he had ordered gestated would be his pods of destruction. Those ships and Monitor itself had escaped all damage from the attack, so SystemLord still possessed over ninety percent of his military power.

However, most easy consumables had been demolished; if the battle lasted too long, his ships might run out of ready food and water, or spend undue amounts of time chasing crumbs of matter. He began to ponder a strategy to mitigate this problem.

***

Probe R-05 observed the results of the EarthFleet’s salvo with a computer’s dispassion. It gathered its data and stored it, waiting to fulfill its purpose. As the enormous number of missed projectiles exited the system on the opposite side, this condition tripped a protocol. That subroutine ordered it to power up all of its capacitors, to direct its powerful laser communicator to the decelerating Conquest, and then to commit radio suicide.

Self-murder by Meme was an appropriate description, for within one minute a roving Sentry detected its broadcast. While its complete load of data flashed by laser toward the approaching Earth fleet, the robot drone broadcast an abbreviated version in all directions via radio, and it was this that the living defender of the system homed on.

The probe emitted for almost three minutes before an organic projectile blew it to flinders; plenty of time for thousands of incoming EarthFleet missiles to receive vital situation updates before carrying out their kamikaze missions.

***

“Sir, I have an initial INTSUM coming through.” Ensign Kris Johnstone brought the short, rough intelligence summary up on the main display. She was alone at the Intel board this watch, as most of her function was merely to relay information from the analysis teams in Conquest’s belly. “The header says it’s synthesized from the R-05 update we received thirty-five minutes ago. Intel says they will have most of the detail in the 0600,” referring to the first briefing of the day. “Orange icons are new hostiles, sir.”

Pictures blossomed in the holotank, with hundreds of colored markers and icons showing positions of friendlies, enemies, and natural bodies in the Gliese 370 system. Absen remarked, “So it looks like, what, two dozen cruisers and thirty-some frigates. Tough, but with those numbers, we win.” He did not have to manufacture confidence: he was telling the flat truth. If the enemy ships were similar to the classes encountered in the Sol system, his thirty-seven ships, with their hundreds of fighters, thousands of drones and missiles, and eight Marine battalions, were more than a match for their foes – not even counting the dreadnought Conquest herself.

“Looks like they are completely disorganized,” he mused. “Anyone know why?”

Silence reigned until Kris hesitantly spoke up. “Sir…they might be feeding.”

“Of course,” Absen agreed, “Good catch. We’re days out, so they are stocking up on raw materials and gestating weapons. They must be chasing down the remnants of the asteroids and comets our railgun strike broke up. Nice to see those had some effect.” He pointed at a flashing icon lurking behind the scattered enemy, back near the orange dwarf star itself. “What’s that?”

“It’s tagged as an unknown ship type, sir. It’s too close to the star to get much detail but…great…these…” Kris rattled to a halt, a dazed expression on her face.

“What is it, Ensign?” Absen snapped.

Scoggins from Sensors started to move toward the Intel console but Ford at Weapons beat her to it, to look over Kristine’s shoulder. “It’s a ship all right, a hulking big one, skipper. The readout says over one hundred billion tons.”

Absen stood up to stare at the holotank, as if by doing so he could wrest forth its secrets. “That’s heavier than this whole task force. More than ten times the mass of a Destroyer. How big is it?”

“Ah…” Ford punched an icon, then another. The Ensign’s fingers danced over the touchscreen and brought up the details, turning to look up at the Commander, who read it. “It varies its configuration but as a rough sphere, about six kilometers across.”

“Damn. One of the reasons we chose this system was because we’d detected traces that its garrison of Destroyers had left. What the hell is this thing then?”

“Some kind of system guardian I bet, sir,” answered Ford, turning his habitually scowling face toward the Admiral. “A mobile fortress.”

“Then why isn’t it near the planet?” Absen asked. “Why isn’t it hiding? That would be a nasty thing to have lurk behind its moon and jump out at us.”

“Perhaps it is gathering energy from the star,” Okuda’s bass voice interjected. “And if I were a Meme, that’s where I would put my admiral. Just like we do, the biggest, most survivable ship will hold the brains.”

“No doubt. And he’s giving us a choice – come after him, or come after the planet. Standard space control doctrine would suggest we take him out before we move against the planet, but if we do that, we’ll lose ships, maybe the very ships we will need in the assault. If we go for the planet we let him choose the time and manner to fight. If we split our forces we risk defeat in detail, especially if he surprises us with something.” Absen stroked his chin. “Ensign Johnstone, inform Intel I want them to tease out everything they can on this Guardian. That’s what we’ll call it.”

Chapter 7

While not so vast a swarm as the billion railgun spheres, twenty thousand enemy fusion drives still struck fear into SystemLord’s complex molecules. Academically he knew this wave might be no more dangerous than the unexpected kinetic attack, but now he began to wonder just what else the Humans had prepared, and it worried him deep in his life code.

Even so, he was thankful that he had an accurate count of their missiles and a rough prediction of their targets. Crossing the system boundary at less than one third of light speed, the weapons would take scant hours to reach vital installations. The Meme commander transmitted instructions to his flotilla to gestate countermeasures specific to this type of attack: myriads of simple interceptor midges.

These tiny seekers were given just enough brain to sense, close with and attack the enemy weapons. They could be sown in their paths and be activated at the right time, like mines. Frigates and cruisers began to spew forth these countermeasures like fish laying eggs. Soon, hundreds of thousands of midges took their places, blind sacrificial defenders of the Empire.

This strategy met with moderate success; more than ninety percent of the Human weapons were destroyed as they approached but that still left over a thousand missiles to home in on targets of opportunity. Seven newly-born cruisers and thirteen frigates perished in nuclear fire, a number that would barely be replaced by the time the enemy ships arrived. SystemLord shed futile molecular curses that Monitor absorbed, exciting the great ship further. He sent the beast questing after additional ice and ore. I need more ships, the Meme commander raged.

SystemLord watched as the remainder of the missiles searched for and found the Underlings’ orbital and planetary defense installations, obliterating most of them. Through his mobile Sentry network he watched as the hybrids desperately defended themselves, destroying many incoming weapons, but they simply were not equipped to handle hundreds of attackers at high speeds. Physics could not be overcome by the technologies available, and thus the planet he was supposed to protect was stripped almost bare of defenses.

Only the great Weapon on the inner face of the Underling planet’s moon remained untouched, even undiscovered, for its Meme controllers’ orders had not included firing on missiles that targeted others. Thus they had stood silent as the orbitals below died to the enemy missiles.

SystemLord cursed himself yet again for not issuing general directives to engage any threat, but accepted the advantage his mistake had unwittingly preserved: the Humans probably did not know of the vast underground complex and its destructive engine originally intended to crush any Underling rebellion.

The longer that place remained hidden the better, for once the enemy fleet had given up its incredible speed, had slowed to enter and possess the system, it would also give up the vast kinetic energy necessary for such devastating strikes. The Humans would have to close to natural weapon ranges and fight their way in, and if SystemLord guided his forces correctly, the Weapon could turn the tide of battle.

***

Admiral Absen eyed the bridge displays with his chin in his hand. Task Force Conquest had crossed into the Gliese 370 system sixteen hours ago at approximately .1C. Under Master Helm Okuda’s guiding hand he watched the ships decelerate intermittently and randomly. Combined with lateral maneuvers, he hoped this dodging would allow them to close with the enemy unscathed.

At the present rate it would take almost one hundred hours to reach Afrana. We have to threaten what they value, Absen thought, to bring them to battle. The worst thing that could happen would be enemy ships dancing out of reach, conducting long-range attacks, and harassing the colonization. We have to decisively cleanse the system of enemy. With the Meme’s living ships, give them enough time and the threat will grow back again like weeds.

“Conn: Bogeys, multiple bogeys,” Commander Scoggins on the primary Sensors console abruptly called. “Inbound small hypers, count one hundred sixty-six. Stealthed drone launchers. Marking.”

Soft bleeping alarms highlighted flashing red icons on the main 4D holotank. To Absen it seemed as if a swarm of red bees had appeared out of nothing to interpenetrate the task force. “Counterfire on automatic,” he heard Commander Ford at Weapons report. The admiral growled, “Comms, sound Battle Stations. All ships prep damage control parties.”

Rick Johnstone had already conveyed the alert to the fleet on his own initiative.

Forty-eight massive primary lasers, half the cruisers’ complements, flashed out and plucked the same number of enemy sentry drones from space. In keeping with Meme doctrine those had not maneuvered but had let the launch of their own missiles push them aside in hopes of dodging any return fire and returning to stealth status while gestating new missiles.

Using primary lasers against such small targets was like using sledgehammers to swat flies, but in this case the sledgehammer could be spread wide, encompassing enough space to catch the little flies before they slipped away. Another forty-eight beams fired while the others recharged, destroying almost thirty more Sentries.

By this time missiles spat from launchers on all ships, one at each remaining enemy Sentry. These easily closed with and destroyed all but three of the rest, which slipped away into the black.

Neither of these weapon systems bothered with the inbound hypervelocity missiles themselves; evading at hundreds of gravities, they simply could not be intercepted at long range. The lightspeed delay itself made it impossible to hit them as they flew their serpentine courses, jinking in all directions as to make even lasers miss. As they got closer to their targets, the task force’s multilayered integrated missile defense system came into play.

First came the laser drones, scattered by the hundreds in a cloud throughout the fleet. Inevitably some of the hypers crossed paths with these tiny pickets and their lightspeed weapons, and were damaged or destroyed; a few missiles turned to attack the little EarthFleet shiplets, annihilating themselves in the process.

“One hundred twenty-eight still inbound,” Scoggins intoned. The bridge crew stared at the approaching red icons – just the first shower of darts that presaged the storm to come.

Next came short-range charged particle beams, deliberately focused wide to catch the jinking hypers. These weapons generated enormous electrical energies that penetrated the living missiles they hit, scrambling their nervous systems and destroying their brains, causing them to tumble harmlessly off course.

“Forty-six…forty-three…” Scoggins counted down the tally as the impact clocks descended toward zero. At nine seconds out she called, “Thirty-eight got past the CBPs. Everyone’s on their own.”

Finally, electromagnetic shotguns on the surface of targeted ships engaged incoming projectiles at point-blank range, spewing forth millions of tiny tetrahedrons that shredded the enemy missiles. So great were the energies of these broken hypers that they still struck their targets, but instead of impacting in tight, deadly punches, they splattered themselves against EarthFleet armor and did not penetrate.

Even so, a few of the missiles dodged all attempts at interception and bore in to draw their first human blood.

One struck the massive forward armor of the battleship Bukavu, penetrating almost a meter before its energies dissipated, a bare pinprick. Two more impacted Conquest herself with no more effect. Five found forward faces of beam cruisers as they turned their glaces outward, achieving nothing. Three flew into the missile boxes of frigates, destroying swaths of weapons but sparing lives.

Despite all efforts one smashed itself through the thin plating of the assault carrier Giessen and entered one of its four service decks at thousands of meters per second. Kinetic energy equal to many tons of explosives spewed debris across the hangar, cutting down crew chiefs, technicians and Marines alike, and destroying the eight StormCrow fighters resting there. Fires went out almost immediately as automatic systems sealed the flight deck off from the rest of the ship, leaving it and its grisly contents in vacuum.

As the word came in, Absen knew the Giessen’s dead were the first in a long litany of casualties sure to come. He cursed himself for assuming attacks would come from the front, where the fleet’s long-range sensors reported enemy warships and the Guardian. It had been a clever ruse to maneuver the stealthy little drones into their path like mines, and he had no doubt the Meme commander aboard that enormous ship would have more surprises.

He thanked the powers that be that hypers this small never held atomic warheads. A nuke would have taken out the Giessen.

***

Vango Markis ran through his preflight checklist as the numbers on his opticals counted down. The digits seemed to float in front of him but that was only an illusion caused by the direct feed to his optic nerve. When they hit five minutes the shiplink enabled and his consciousness expanded.

It was almost orgasmic, this rush of virtual sensation. He could hear the multilevel chatter of other preflights, could feel the thrum and pulse of his StormCrow Weaver, of idling fusion engines; he could see in all directions around him, he could taste and smell the healthy readiness of the weapons and systems.

Dangerously immersive, every Crow jock longed for this seductive state of being; to be fully integrated into a powerful, deadly machine. Perhaps only the Helmsmen who piloted starships shared this sensation. Even a wizzo in the back seat experienced only a fraction of it. In this place and time his legs were engines, his arms were wings, his hands were drones, his fingers railguns and lasers, and his eyes…once they got into space his eyes would see the universe.

For now, all he saw was a short narrow tube lined with rails. Weaver floated millimeters from the electromagnetic conduits, straining to be loosed. Vango felt the tug of the outward spin of the assault carrier; even if Temasek lost all power and grav, the fighter would fall outward and away from the mother ship, ready to fight.

As the numbers reached zero Weaver accelerated gently, sliding smoothly until suddenly he was free and in open space. Around him he saw the rest of the sortie of one hundred StormCrows, half of Temasek’s complement, deployed now to counter any more. Out and ready to deal with anything the Meme threw at them, they extended the sensor reach of the fleet – and frankly shifted two hundred people off of each crowded carrier. The other seven ACs would be launching their sorties as well.

“I love this moment,” Vango said over the internal comm. “Free at last.”

“I know what you mean,” Helen responded. “What’s our assignment?”

“Weren’t you listening in the briefing?”

“Not really. Too busy being sick.”

“Sick?” Consternation was evident in his voice.

She laughed. “Yeah, Stymey brewed up some cheap hooch somehow. I was glad to link in and not feel my body.”

“Dammit Helen, we’re going into combat and you’re hung over?”

She laughed wickedly, and then he got it. “You’re jerking my chain.”

“As hard as I can. You’re such a straight arrow, Markis. I’m as sober as you are, more’s the pity.”

Vango scowled. “You know that’s why I use my handle. To make them all forget I’m the son of Earth’s Chairman.”

“Not everyone cares…but I get it.”

“Update coming in anyway…” He examined the data burst as they drifted, then confirmed their orders. “Here we go, I got the coordinates. Looks like we just patrol quietly until we see something.”

“Right. Running weapons diagnostic sequence.” He could feel her pushing electrons around, as he had secondary access to all of the ship’s armament. “All in the green.”

“Good to hear.” He rotated Weaver, then tapped the fusion engine. Other Crows around did the same, spreading out in all directions to take their places between the big ships. “Let’s see those little SOBs try to sneak in now with eight hundred of us waiting.” His statement reeked of bravado, he knew, because eight hundred fighters were swallowed in the vastness of interstellar space.

Even so, the ship he wore was more than just a short-range weapons platform. Though small for a spaceship, it was over fifty meters long, a sleek cylinder with four stubby wings that had nothing to do with flying and everything to do with weapons, sensors and maneuvering thrusters. Each stub sported a laser, a turreted railgun and a rotary missile launcher for short-range use. Tucked behind each lurked a shielded port from which feather drones could be ejected and recovered.

Weaver’s main armament filled its nose: a large microwave laser, designed to cook the internal biology of their living enemies. Where normal lasers flash-heated the enemy skin with optical frequencies and thus could sometimes be reflected away, the electromagnetic beams of a maser required different defenses. EarthFleet’s varying weapon suites were designed to force the Meme to play Rochambeau with their countermeasures.

On the other hand EarthFleet heavy warships relied on a brute-force approach for their defenses: ferrocrystal armor layered with reflectives, superconductors and ablatives. Each successive skin countered different types of weapons, usually taking several hits before it failed. The enemy hyperkinetic missiles were the most dangerous exception, delivering so much energy that massive hardened thickness was the only real proof.

A StormCrow was far too small to be armored that way, and so relied on speed and agility to survive. Still, Vango knew, they were there to support the fleet, not vice-versa; their role was to skirmish, to hit and run, to pick off weapons and take the easy shots. Let those battleships slug it out with railgun-shot swarms heavier than my entire fighter, he thought. We’re here to sting and sting again.

“Datalink is up,” Helen called unnecessarily – he knew it as soon as she did. As the narrowband comms found Weaver, the fighter was integrated into the aerospace control network and his senses expanded even further.

Vango unsealed his suit for a moment to reach inside and withdraw the tiny drive Rick had given him. No time like the present, he thought, and, I hope you don’t get us killed, ol’ buddy. But he trusted his friend and cyber-warfare expert, and out here he figured they could use all the help they could get. Slipping it into a data slot, he told it to boot.

“Let’s –” he started to say.

“Bogey, danger close –” Helen yelped, and Vango’s attention suddenly narrowed to a pinpoint as he felt something appear nearby, a mere hundred kilometers away and drifting closer. “Where the hell did that come from?” she stuttered. “It wasn’t there before!”

“Don’t talk, engage it!” he said as he launched the Crow’s feathers. These tiny drones had no weapons but were full of active sensors. If something wanted to home in on a radar or lidar, it would hit the squawking drones and not the silent StormCrow.

“Already on it,” she said, and he felt the wing weapons firing at the bogey.

Looking closer, he realized the target was stealth-black and cold, and even the hammering of the feathers’ actives didn’t show very much. How had they even seen it? No way he could have…but he hadn’t seen it. Helen had noticed it first, then he had felt it…

Suddenly the thing blazed with fusion light, turning to leap toward Weaver at hundreds of gravities. Vango’s reactions were even faster, lighting his own fusion drive to dodge sideways and forward, turning toward the enemy in the age-old tactic of the fighter pilot – get inside the opponent’s turn radius and thus his decision curve.

Fortunately this enemy wasn’t as maneuverable as a hyper. As it flashed within a kilometer he could finally see it, lit up brightly in the glare of the defensive lasers. His link told him it was a Meme sentry. Must have been one of the ones that got away. It was lying doggo and as soon as we lit it up, it tried to suicide. It must be out of missiles.

“Ahhhh!” Vango wasn’t sure if it was him or Helen screaming over the link as he twisted his metal body out of the way of the oncoming drone. He could feel his wizzo pummeling it with laser energy and railgun ammo, one-gram ball bearings. The sentry staggered and tumbled, flashing past as its fusion drive died.

Helen fired a chase missile that quickly caught up with it and blew it to kingdom come.

“Save those,” Vango barked. “Remember, there is no resupply. Next time just let me line up the maser and fry it.”

“Sure,” she sulked. “You get all the fun.”

“Cheer up, you did a fine job for your first real engagement,” he praised. “Nobody can call you ‘cherry’ anymore.” Vango sent a query through the network. “Looks like we got the first fighter kill of this battle.”

“Okay, old man. How many does that make for you?”

“Forty-nine combat sorties, third confirmed kill. Meme don’t use small craft enough to rack up many.”

“Maybe you’ll be an ace before this is done.” Helen adjusted her weapons suite. “How did we see that thing?”

“What do you mean?” Vango asked casually. He already had a suspicion.

“One minute it wasn’t there, then suddenly it was…like I could smell it. I’m reviewing the record and I can’t pinpoint anything concrete…just that I suddenly knew it was there before Weaver’s systems detected it.”

“Yeah, me too. Must have been something intuitive. That’s why human minds will always be in the fight.”

Helen snorted in disbelief. “That’s a crock. It must have been something concrete, like it passed between us and a bright star and we both noticed it.”

“Maybe it was my angel,” he laughed.

“Your what?”

“My angel. I’ve always felt I had one looking out for me.”

“You mean…like something supernatural? Double crock. The natural world is all there is.”

Vango fired the thrusters briefly, then fired them again, performing a barrel-roll in space. “Look all around us. Look at the grandeur that is Creation. Do you really think this came about by accident?”

“Oh, I am so not going to have this discussion. At least not here, and sober.”

His wizzo sounded uncomfortable, so Vango relented. “Just telling you what I believe. But angel or intuition or lucky break, we got the thing before it could do any more damage.”

They were quiet for a few minutes, running through their checklists and watching their sectors. “I still think there’s something funny going on,” Helen muttered.

Because of the link, Vango could hear her no matter how quietly she spoke. Crews who worked together a long time claimed they started to read each others’ thoughts that way. There were a surprising number of marriages that resulted from fighter pairings, and even more longtime friendships. He wondered to himself if he should say anything…then decided that this was the best time to do it, after they’d just dodged a bullet and won a victory.

Vango cleared his throat. “Helen…Troya…”

“Uh oh, you just used my real name…”

“Yeah. I just wanted to tell you something I should have told you earlier.”

“What? Come on, spit it out, angel boy.”

“Well, you know Commander Johnstone – Rick – is a CyberComm expert. Actually, he’s more than an expert, he’s a bloody software genius. He kind of hides it so he can stay on the Bridge instead of stuck in some geek cell deep inside the ship, but he’s as good as they come.”

“So?”

“So…he gave me some upgraded software to try out.”

“Ty out…here, now? In combat? Jesus Christ, you could have gotten us killed!” She sounded furious.

“Yeah, well, would you mind not taking the Lord’s name in vain like that?”

“Don’t change the subject, you religious turd,” Helen snarled. “It’s fine to risk your own life, but not mine too.”

“Yes, but it worked. I’m thinking it was the new software that allowed us to see and smell the sentry. And when you were fighting, didn’t it feel like everything was easier, faster?”

She choked back a reply to try to think without passion. “Yes, now that you mention it, it did.”

“So, there you go.” He sounded smug.

“There you go what? This isn’t about whether it was good software, it’s about you and me being a team. I know this is my first combat mission but we’ve been training together for six real months. It’s my ass out here too. So are we?”

“A team?” He sighed. “Yeah. I’m sorry, I should have told you.”

“Yes you should.” Helen kept a sulky silence for as long as she could, then said with a grin in her voice, “I about crapped my pants when that thing showed up, though!” She started laughing uproariously.

He laughed too, sharing her giddiness at surviving their first real combat together.

***

Sub-Lieutenant Horton at the BioMed station called, “Admiral, I have an odd report. Assault carrier Giessen says they are having problems with a bioweapon released by the missile that hit them.”

“Counteragents?” Plagues were nothing new. The Meme routinely added them to their missiles and the damage control parties deployed decontamination chemicals, counterphages and nanobots to control them.

“They say nothing’s working, sir. They’ve tried everything, even radioactives, chemical fuels, hydraulic fluid…this stuff just keeps eating plastic and metal. The only thing that’s slowed it down is flame, or vacuum. They’re requesting help.”

Absen cursed. “And that damned puppy Captain Bailey is only just telling us about it? It’s been how many hours since the missile hit him?” I’ll have that fool in the brig – if we survive this. “Start shifting Marines to other carriers, and get all of BioMed working on a counteragent, tell them I said this is maximum effort. There are more than two thousand people on that ship.” He deliberately did not think about what would happen if they did not get the infection under control. “And point out to them that if they don’t find something, Conquest could be next hit. That ought to motivate them.”

Turning back to the screen he examined his fleet formation. The irony of their continuing deceleration and jinking meant that their ETA never got any closer. As they approached Afrana they moved slower and slower, extending their time, much as if a ground car kept braking the nearer it got to its destination.

Absen felt better with the StormCrows out on rotating patrol. The stealthy drones lying in wait had already shown him his error, and he tried never to make the same mistake twice.

He’d also complicated his own situation by shattering hundreds of thousands of asteroids with the railgun barrage; now there were tens if not hundreds of millions of pebbles in the fleet’s way. The lighter ships had lined up at a distance behind as the heavy ones swept forward, clawing debris out of their way with their magnetic scoops, defensive lasers or smashing it aside with their armor.

The StormCrows just had to take their chances.

They’d already lost two to rock strikes, though their crews had survived. Price of doing business. Absen needed them and their feather drones to see. Right now those were hammering the ether with their radar and lidar, to allow others to collect the reflected electromagnetics.

They’d fended off one more smaller attempt to ambush the task force; the little Meme sentries did not seem smart enough or well-directed enough to go after his most vulnerable ships – the assault carriers and frigates.

“Sir, I have coordinated fusion flares,” the Sensors officer on watch said, throwing the computer simulation up into the main holotank. “Order of battle matching says it’s sixteen cruisers and thirty-five frigates, maneuvering into our path at slow speed. Intercept looks like about…nineteen hours at these velocities.”

“Keep an eye on them, you know how fast that can change. Major Parnell,” he turned to the Aerospace Forces Helmsman in the cockpit, “keep a running plot of minimum-time intercept assuming maximum Meme effort. I want to know the soonest they can hit us at all times.”

“Yes, sir. Running the numbers now.” A moment later she fed her data into the holotank, adding symbols, colors and numbers, suppressing others. “Right now minimum intercept time is thirty-four minutes ten seconds – that number there.” A row of digits pulsed.

“Raise our readiness state as that number falls. When we’re under ten minutes, call for Primary Watch.” Absen liked to have his best people on the bridge when battle was likely. “How long to the planet?”

“With current deceleration profiles, twenty-two hours to cross the orbit of Afrana.”

“So they might be planning to engage us three hours from the planet, and fight us as we approach. Makes sense, we’ll have to slow down a lot or fly on past. How many orbital platforms do they have left?”

“Just three, sir, that the nukes didn’t get,” Sensors responded. “They look to be hybrid mechanicals, sir, like the intel briefing showed us. We’ve never seen anything exactly like them, but we got a rough idea of their firepower from the fight with our missiles. They’re about battleship level.”

“That’s assuming they don’t have something we haven’t seen yet. And they could have bigger weapons because they don’t need to waste space on engines, heavy gravplates, bulky supplies…any number of things only a starship needs.” If I were the enemy commander, I’d try to induce a running fight to sucker us within range of those orbitals, and bring up that Guardian ship behind the planet. That would be the schwerpunkt, the point of decisive battle, at the planet.

“The Guardian is moving up, sir,” Sensors called. “It’s on an intercept burn to join the others, but later and back a bit.”

“Makes sense. He’ll use his warships to screen and his big ship to anchor his fleet – just like we are.” Absen stroked his chin. “Comms, bring everyone to ready state two. Five minute drill. Weapons, what’s your estimation of a missile and railgun strike on the remaining orbitals?”

The Weapons watch officer brought up a graphic. “It would take a significant amount of expendables to finish them off from this distance. The closer we get, the harder it is for them to dodge. I’d advise against it, sir.”

“All right.” Absen rubbed his chin. “Tell the battleships to start a slow rolling fire of railgun single shots every few minutes, and keep it up. That will force the orbitals to keep adjusting, burning fuel. And maybe we’ll get lucky. In fact, tell them to start laying slow fire on all the enemy ships including the Guardian. Might as well use cheap ammo to keep them from resting…we still have two billion rounds.”

“Aye aye, sir.” Weapons touched a control. “Firing will begin in two minutes.”

Absen stood up to stretch, shooting COB Timmons a significant look. “Parnell, initiate a no-notice drill for the auxiliary bridge to take over function in,” he looked at his watch, “seven seconds.”

The helmsman nodded and closed his eyes, and seven seconds later the bridge’s consoles all went dark.

“Take a break, everyone. Get up and stretch. Let them run the fleet for a while.” Absen had to make sure Zylstra and his other two command officers had some time in The Chair for real. “I’ll be in my quarters. Call me if you need me.”

Chapter 8

SystemLord consider his enemy’s approach, one globular fleet defined mostly by the size of its fusion flares. His Sentries had scanned many up close before dying, but with the long range and the missile launches, even Monitor’s great brain lost track of which was which.

No matter. Nothing he could imagine could stand up to his battle plan. A glow of pride warmed his molecules and he had to force himself not to daydream about the accolades he would be awarded. I have been too long brooding, he thought, and am prone to count progeny before they gestate. No, I must hope for the best but prepare for the worst.

First he would do the expected, for the Humans’ benefit, to lull them into foolish complacency. Light harassing strikes, keeping his weapons topped off. Then, when the time came, a ploy to prompt a reaction leading to another ploy, then another.

Sending a molecular packet to his subordinate, called Communicator, he waited patiently, watching the steady approach of the enemy fleet. As his smaller ships were faster – except Monitor – he always had the initiative and option to attack or run. I will assemble more force, he thought. Task the Underlings to assist their betters… another break with tradition.

“Where is the response?” SystemLord asked, irritation tingeing the taste of his words.

“The Underlings claim they have discovered a debilitating error in their stingships’ machine code, making launch impossible.”

“Unlikely and curiously timed.” The SystemLord seethed with anger.

“Shall I communicate threats or promises?” Communicator asked.

“Yes…tell them if they do not launch their stingships to support, the Weapon will obliterate their associated clan centers.” SystemLord heaved his liquid bulk half out of his pool to place extra eyes into hemiscreens, the Meme equivalent of a malevolent stare at the orbitals. An inordinate amount of time passed before Communicator relayed the reply.

“SystemLord, the Underlings say that if they launch the stingships, the machine code flaw will be sure to spread to their primary armament, and they will not be able to target the enemy.” The taste of Communicator’s bio-words conveyed profound unease. “They further state that if forced to take offensive action with this ‘flaw’ unresolved, they cannot guarantee their weapons would not…would not…”

“Vomit it forth, subordinate!”

“…would not accidentally target ships of the Empire.” Communicator quivered and came near to voluntary dissolution from even contemplating such treason.

“No. This I do not believe. Psychological analysis indicates they are centuries from rebellion. I have been a benevolent ruler, ensuring their prosperity and welfare. It is an empty threat.” He hoped it was true, and was aware that he tasted less sure than he wished. “Besides, how could they communicate with the Humans? Our counter-rebellion agents have reported no attempts to learn enemy lingua code. You have detected no electromagnetic transmissions?”

“Correct, SystemLord. None.”

“Even Underlings would not be so foolish as to believe the Humans would be better masters than I have been. They may display mercy now, but were they to drive us off, they would take the planet for their own. Why throw off a benevolent master for an unknown alien?”

Communicator maintained the smell of polite silence, but thought to itself how SystemLord seemed to be trying to convince its own self of hopeful but low-probability theories.

SystemLord continued musing. “In the end it will matter little. Merely by existing the orbitals threaten the Humans and soak up their attention and weaponry. Our own resources, and the Weapon, will be enough.”

Communicator wisely said nothing.

***

When Absen’s intercom buzzed he was out of his rack and walking to the bridge before he was fully awake. Buttoning his jumpsuit, he took over The Chair from the officer of the deck. “Report,” he snapped as he motioned for Master Chief Timmons to pass him a cup of coffee.

“They just crossed the ten-minute potential, skipper,” Parnell told him. “We are about six hours from effective range.” He meant that, though they were six hours from battle at current speeds, if the enemy lunged to maximum acceleration they could attack within ten minutes. The outgoing helmsman began to unplug from the medusa above her head. Master Helmsman Okuda helped, deftly pulling out plugs and jacking them into his own crown even before sitting down to take over.

Ten minutes to six hours. That’s our window of uncertainty, Absen thought. Rule of thumb for effective weapons range was one million kilometers, though actual engagement ranges varied wildly – as the railgun strike from beyond the system demonstrated. At one million kilometers, about three light-seconds, it became possible to achieve consistent hits on a mobile enemy with beam weapons, using computer prediction and barrage tactics.

Missiles could be launched from much farther, but at their lower velocity they tended to take heavy losses fighting their way in to their targets. If they flew faster, then they couldn’t guide on mobile targets well enough. Meme used hypers because they were made of little but a seeker brain and a fusion engine, and could be gestated to replenish. Absen’s task force had no such luxury; after the initial relativistic volley, each irreplaceable missile must be judiciously used to maximum effect, in concert with other weapons.

Railgun ranges were even closer. Where a laser took about three seconds to go one million klicks, a railgun round took more than thirty. That much lag meant only pure luck would allow a hit on a moving target. Thus the only way to bring a faster enemy like Meme ships to battle was to surprise them, or force them to defend something they valued.

The bridge crew observed as the main holotank showed the enemy moving his cruisers into positions directly into their way, while the frigates spread out in a ring and advanced up the sides.

“Those frigates are going to scoot around our flanks, try to get in behind us,” Absen said. “Pass orders to bring the carriers to the center and link their defensive grids. Layer them with StormCrows and be ready to mass sortie from the ready bays. Close everyone up a bit. Helm, bring Conquest back behind the carrier group, we’ll cover them.” As much as he hated to put the dreadnought in the rear, the million colonists and the threat from the frigates made it the right move.

“Five-minute potential, sir,” called Sensors.

Absen nodded. “Right, sound general quarters.” Klaxons wailed as the fleet put all hands on deck and in suits. Bridge crew pulled their own suits out of the lockers and helped each other into them, Absen and Timmons included.

Fifteen tense minutes passed before computer alarms beeped softly. Scoggins at Sensors called, “Conn: Sensors, all bogeys except the Guardian show fusion burn inbound. Doppler reads maximum acceleration toward us. Four minutes thirty actual.”

“Battle stations.” Throughout the fleet men and women made final preparations, sealing their faceplates, tightening harnesses, checking and rechecking gear. Massive generators ramped up to five percent over rated capacity as ship weapons extended through firing ports, muzzles questing.

A minute went by before Scoggins spoke again. “Conn: Sensors. I have missile launch.”

Approximately seventy red icons blinked in the tank, half from the Meme cruisers front and half from the wide ring of frigates working their way around the task force. “Analysis says heavy hypers, sir.”

She meant hypervelocity missiles the size of ICBMs, perhaps twenty meters long. Accelerating at hundreds of Gs, they would strike with devastating effect.

Ford grunted in agreement. “All enemy ships are reversing course.”

“That’s not many missiles. This is just harassment,” Absen commented, “hoping to get lucky. Skirmishing.”

Absen watched as the frigates and cruisers pulled back from their lunge, having imparted extra velocity to their hypers. “They’re going to re-gestate what they just fired so they’re fully loaded later,” he mused.

“Three minutes.”

“Begin long-range engagement of inbounds,” Absen ordered. “Helm, I want you to bring the whole task force to a hard retrograde antispinward, keeping formation.”

Okuda nodded, his mind deep in the link. Fusion engines flared in the void and the bridge crew felt the G forces build as the grav plates struggled to compensate.

“Weapons, pass the word to concentrate beam fire on the side we are moving toward. I want to buy some time, stretch out the engagement.” The worst thing we can do is let them coordinate their missiles into one overwhelming wave.

“Aye aye, sir,” Ford responded.

At the CyberComm station, Rick Johnstone glanced at his niece Kristine manning the auxiliary Intel board and smiled encouragingly.

For her part Kris’s mouth was dry in the canned suit air and she felt like she was going to vomit. Through the link she addressed her uncle. What do I do?

Do your job, Rick responded. Keep your eyes and mind open. Do what Intel does best: try to identify any surprises the enemy has.

Kris nodded, turning back to her consoles and opening her mind to the link’s virtual space, where she could see the battle in detail, swooping her point of view anywhere in the system. Of course, the simulation was only as good as the data they had. She tore her attention away from the wave of incoming death – nothing she could do about that – and ranged farther forward, examining Afrana and its moon, and the three Hippo stations still in orbit. As she got closer they became fuzzier with the lack of detailed information, and she logged a request for another full scan as they came closer.

Rick watched Kris retreat into the link sim and turned his mind to the decision he’d been wrestling with all day. CyberComm’s automated ECM systems were functioning at maximum, hammering the incoming missiles with feedback loops and commands in known Meme code, but nothing was working. He knew Conquest’s supercomputers were already chewing on the enemy encryption but that could take days to years. The fleet needed an edge and he had it in the palm of his hand: his new software protocol.

Vango and Helen had reported a significant increase in StormCrow sensory and fighting effectiveness, on the order of more than forty percent. Translated to the current assault, that meant more inbound missiles destroyed and fewer that would strike ships and kill people. Balance untested code with potential lives saved…he made his decision, and sent the unauthorized software update to all fighters over their datalinks.

“Two minutes,” Scoggins called. “Sixty-three remaining.”

Through the layered defenses the hyper wave continued its penetration, and the number fell slowly, too slowly. In the holotank its formation looked like half an old-fashioned key, a ring around the fleet with a cylinder of extra missiles from the front. Task force Conquest powered toward the relative right rear of the ring even while falling fast insystem, thinning that side of the threats and lengthening the time it would take for the others to arrive.

“One minute. Fifty-five hypers remain.”

Absen ordered, “Helm, begin evasive maneuvering at your discretion. Comms, pass all weapons free.”

Each ship reoriented itself, trading coordination for defense. The four great battleships lined up their wedges on the nearest missiles and spat cones of railgun balls, their Behemoth RL-40s launching thousands of rounds per second in hopes of a lucky hit. The eight beam cruisers jinked left and right, widening and coordinating the focus of their primary lasers and powering up their secondaries. The missile frigates launched defensive missiles that would maneuver in front of the inbounds, spreading monofilament catcher nets to slice the living hypers like spaceborne food processors.

Individually none of these tactics granted high probabilities of success, but taken together with the laser drones and close-in weapons, all but eighteen enemy missiles died.

Absen watched in grim concentration as those left closed with his ships, and he felt the varying pressures as Okuda maneuvered Conquest like a mother bear protecting her cubs, the assault carriers. In the holotank he saw the battleships ignored – clever bastards – as they headed for his lighter ships.

Two struck the cruisers Georgetown and Sydney, tearing holes in their armor and spewing deadly slime that immediately began eating metal and plastic within. Damage control parties fought back with experimental nanites, flame and cold vacuum, and slowly brought the creeping destruction under control.

Five targeted his missile frigates, which employed a further tactic of defense. Ten seconds from impact they blew the explosive bolts on their missile boxes and ceased maneuvering. Now each ship became thirteen targets – twelve boxes and the spindle that was the vessel – and four hypers took out nothing more than disposable cubes full of weapons.

The fifth drove straight through the center of a frigate, snapping it in half and leaving each end spinning wildly in the void, falling away from the rest of the fleet. “Send two grabships after those!” Absen barked, knowing that there could easily be survivors. “Cover them with Crows.”

One unlucky – or perhaps heroic - StormCrow actually collided with a hyper, destroying both in the process but saving untold lives by its double sacrifice. Seven more – an amazing number considering their incredible velocity – fell to the two-man fighters, which twisted and spun like mad hornets in their quests to sting the sharklike missiles. Conquest herself plucked two out of the black as she maneuvered madly among her charges.

One final hyper bore in, aiming itself at the Temasek. Still in virtual space, Rick Johnstone watched helplessly as the deadly weapon lined up on the ship that bore his wife. Jill…oh God please help!

Perhaps He did.

The assault carrier Giessen, already stricken and gutted by the earlier missile’s Meme phage contamination, blossomed with ejected escape pods, then accelerated at flank speed into the path of the missile. That struck amidships and, like a bullet through a spinning glass top, shattered the ship into a hundred fragments. Nothing could have survived that, Absen thought with brief pain. I guess I won’t have to put Captain Bailey in the brig after all. In fact I’ll have to give him a posthumous medal…gladly. He saved his crew and Temasek.

Absen stared at the main holotank for a moment, searching for new threats, but it seemed the Meme were content to wait. “Comm, send to the fleet in my name: well done everyone. We lost two ships, which still means we’re far ahead on points – and only a few casualties. Fleet to remain at battle stations. One way or another it will all be over in a few hours.”

The Admiral was not often so wrong.

***

Absen ran his eyes over the fleet’s deployment for the hundredth time and could find nothing to improve. In a layered sphere ten thousand kilometers across, his most vulnerable ships at the center, there was no better compromise between dispersion and mutual support. This arrangement of ships interpenetrated a cloud of StormCrows and their feathers, laser drones, armed tugs and grabships and even shuttles.

He’d made the decision to launch nearly all the small craft because he believed EarthFleet had a decided superiority in fighters, drones and defensive missiles. If and when the Meme committed to battle, their usual tactics were to launch a steady stream of hypers on offense, and only expend their full living load when they were ready to run, to withdraw to eat and refuel, rearm and re-gestate. Absen had no reason to think this enemy commander would be different, especially one without experience fighting humans. The small craft would help pick off those hypers, and also ensure that losing another AC wouldn’t mean losing two thousand people at once.

Conquest’s bridge crew watched the enemy ships closely as they maneuvered. Alien frigates now formed a loose concave hemisphere, slowly closing to two million kilometers range from behind. Cruisers waited in a similar, tighter formation at about five million and closing, with the planet and the Guardian about five million klicks behind that – perhaps half an hour to close engagement, if they did not maneuver. Given the ungodly accelerations the Meme ships were capable of – roughly four times the human ships’ limits – the tactical initiative was theirs.

“Conn: Sensors. The Guardian is breaking orbit, moving toward us.” Its icon blinked, starting a slow trend forward. “Cruisers are falling back slightly and concentrating around it.”

The holotank computer predicted the Meme movement would result in a bullseye pattern with the Guardian at the center and two rings of cruisers, like a target facing Conquest. “Weapons,” Absen ordered, “launch the defensive spread.”

“Weapons aye.” Commander Ford touched a key and sent the preprogrammed instruction to the missile frigates. Fifteen hundred interceptor missiles launched and threaded their way through the fleet under careful positive control until they took up positions in the lead.

“Prep the offensive and the rear spread and stand by.”

“Spreads prepped.”

Absen waited, watching as the enemy held position, allowing the task force ever closer. When they reached two million kilometers, about seven light-seconds, he ordered, “Railguns execute.”

Four battleships and, finally, Conquest herself opened fire with their Behemoth accelerators. Millions of steel balls sprayed forward at maximum rate, continuous streams with so much kinetic energy that the ships were obliged to use their engines to hold position against the pressure of the reaction mass. Silent and fast, these shotgun blasts were aimed at five specific target sets.

First was the Guardian itself. More than half of the ammunition traveled in a cloud arranged in hope that at least some of them struck the enemy’s flagship. Three more groups aimed at the remaining Hippo orbitals. The final set, from Conquest herself, laid small bursts on all of the almost forty frigates to the sides and rear, and kept firing, small defensive blasts designed to force the small enemy vessels to dodge or be hurt.

Silently the task force cruised forward. The railgun blasts would take sixty to seventy seconds to reach their ship targets, much longer for the orbitals – and Absen was determined to do nothing to spook the enemy into dodging. Railgun fire was almost undetectable, after all, since little showed but a bit of electrical activity and the steel spheres themselves.

Nothing to see here, he crooned to himself. Just stupid humans cruising blithely forward into your trap.

The impact countdown on the Guardian passed sixty, then seventy seconds, then the seven or so seconds for light to travel back to their sensors – and the bridge officers watched as nothing seemed to happen at all to their enormous nemesis. “No detectable effect,” Scoggins called, and frustrated sighs escaped their throats.

“Remember, that thing is much bigger than Conquest,” Absen reassured them. “It will be able to take a lot of punishment. This is just the long-range jabbing. Stick to the plan.”

Ford whooped unexpectedly, and an icon in the ring of enemy frigates flashed yellow. “Got one, sir! It’s damaged, falling back.”

“Good shooting. Keep it up, we want them to stay back as far as possible.” Absen observed the main enemy formation range closing. “Looks like they’re drifting toward us. Once we’re within a million klicks, start the focused beam barrage.”

“Aye, sir –”

Ford broke off in mid-response as Scoggins overrode him. “Missile launch! I have oh shit massive missile launch, one, two thousand, three thousand, five –”

The bridge crew sat there stunned for a full second, all except Master Helmsman Okuda who, linked to the computers as he was, initiated all emergency protocols in the Admiral’s name. Through the babble that followed he closed his eyes and, as fast as thought, seized control of the fleet with a flash priority override.

Absen watched as his missile frigates and Conquest vomited forth their entire ready loads of guided weapons, contingency-programmed for just such an extreme eventuality. They’ve never done anything like this before went through the admiral’s mind, and then, oh, this is really going to hurt.

The defensive missiles already in place shot forward like lancers to meet the enemy hypers – a mixture of classes ranging in size from a hundred kilos upward, all powered by those incredible living fusion engines. In such a target-rich environment they could not fail to pick off hundreds, but that still left thousands.

“Helm, fleet acceleration full!” This counterintuitive move was actually beneficial, as the enemy missiles gained energy faster than the EarthFleet ships – thus, a closer engagement was less lethal, like a shorter boxer stepping inside the reach of a longer-limbed opponent.

Preprogrammed, the rear missile wave spread out to the sides and rear to engage the frigates now falling back after their missile launch. Another rolled forward behind the original defensive spread. Both of these groups were offensive missiles, armed with seekers and nuclear warheads designed to kill ships. Nevertheless they could be made into a blunt, field-expedient shield.

Commander Ford overrode their usual control by missile officers aboard the launching ships, and triggered a computer protocol that sent the nukes into a barrage pattern to interdict as many of the incoming hypers as possible, based on their spatial density. No matter how fast they went, the enemy missiles could not outrun waves of enhanced neutron radiation sleeting through space, along with the accompanying EMP and their bomb-pumped gamma-ray laser modules.

By this tactic EarthFleet gave up the offensive entirely, but if ever there was a time to do so, this was it. They’ve fired their entire load, Absen thought, and now, they have to run. Clever bastard, he saluted his opponent commander. I might have done it in his place. The enemy had sent his best weapons all in at once, to overload and do as much damage as possible, then withdraw to replenish, maintaining his “fleet in being” and daring Conquest to assault the planet with the threat still out there.

This is always our difficulty: they are so much faster than we are.

Incoming thousands of hypers became hundreds as fire raged across the heavens, every human weapon operating at full capacity. EarthFleet’s four broad-shouldered battleships threw themselves in front of the largest clusters, daring the missiles to strike them like jousting armored knights of space – and so they did. Hyper after hyper slammed at incredible velocity into the massive ships, whose sole purpose was to dish out and absorb as much punishment as possible.

Final defensive fire – miniature nuclear weapons detonated like reactive armor – blazed along their lengths, scouring their own skin clean of irreplaceable fittings, installations and equipment – but better that than the death of ships. Even so, dozens of heavy hypers bore in at velocities approaching half the speed of light, and even hundreds of meters of ferrocrystal laminate must at some point yield to physics.

Battleship Nanjing shuddered and bucked, spewing wreckage but cresting the wave of death like a broaching whale, losing half her railguns. Flensburg, by some twist of fate or expertise, accepted her pounding with stately grace and very few casualties. York absorbed a beating equal to her sisters before an unlucky strike reached deep inside to wipe out her command bridge, leaving her in the hands of auxiliary control, still fightable.

Hypervelocity missiles hammered brave Bukavu as bullets butcher a bull. She staggered, every weapon blazing, every system streaming frantic energies as she sought to avoid her fate. Yet as a light bulb burns brightest before its demise, so the great battleship fell under an impossible storm of predatory alien weapons.

A collective groan and many curses echoed across Conquest’s bridge. Absen felt like he’d been punched in the gut, grinding his teeth. It’s far from over.

The incoming wave, though much diminished, swept with still-terrifying speed down on the beam cruisers, and two of those eight willingly embraced their fate, soon to spin broken and useless though the void. Hundreds of escape pods drifted, beacons flashing, for the busy grabships and tugs to retrieve.

Missile frigates, bereft of ammunition, did as before, releasing their weapon boxes, becoming slippery spindles among the many possible enemy targets. Only three perished as confused Meme sharks ate dozens of empty missile cubes.

Now came Conquest’s turn to suffer. As a mother hen gathers her chicks in the hailstorm, spreading her feathers to accept the impacts for her brood’s sake, so the dreadnought brought the assault carriers in beneath her great teardrop shape. She kept them so close the ships could have reattached themselves had they time and inclination. Instead, she uncomplainingly bore the brunt of alien indignity for their sake.

One after another hypers tore into the dreadnought as she twisted and turned. Master Helmsman Okuda performed a virtual ballet, the great ship responding to his every thought and touch. With a born pilot’s instinct he pirouetted to present a new and pristine piece of armor to every incoming insult, in case it should win through the blast of final-fire nukes, electromagnetic shotguns, lasers and masers and grasers and charged particle beams by the dozen. On Conquest’s surface plasma clouds dervish-danced, vapors of nuclear explosions and the remnants of weapons.

Vango and Helen in their Crow, mere tens of kilometers distant as they threw themselves at the incoming evils, yet marveled as they witnessed unseeable colors through virtual eyes. From their perspective Conquest endured at the center of a tornado, within a cyclone of the energies of bursting alien fusion engines, ravening thermonuclear weapons and lancing beams.

Ranks of StormCrows surrounded their own ships, packed tightly as could be – only hundreds of meters from each other in some cases – forming a phalanx, a gauntlet to preserve their meager military homes and their steadfast maintenance crews aboard the assault carriers.

Nineteen fighters died to the enemy, thirty-eight courageous jocks who would never see Afrana or the new colony. Yet they saved many lives, and in the brutal calculus of war, preserved more fighting ability of the fleet than their murder of Crows had sacrificed.

Shock-mounted and gimbaled, still the bridge of Conquest shook and rang with vibrations, rolling gongs of sonics transmitted through her skeleton under the ball-peen strikes of hypervelocity missiles. Though nothing penetrated her mountainous slabs of armor, some died simply from transmissional rupture as metal and carbon-fiber flexed to take the strain. Mere human flesh, no matter how bolstered, was simply not made to take such pounding.

When the storm cleared, those who survived sailed proud.

There’s nothing so melancholy as a battle won, Absen recited to himself as he witnessed the aftermath, unless it’s a battle lost. He took a deep breath in concert with those throughout his wounded task force, amazed that the entire engagement had taken mere minutes. “Can we catch them?” he asked into the air, and Okuda answered him as expected.

“No, sir. They fired their missiles and lightened their loads. Now they’re running as fast as they can.”

“The Guardian too?”

“Yes, sir. It and the cruiser screen are withdrawing toward the planet.”

“Did we get those orbitals?”

“No, sir,” Scoggins answered. “Looks like they are continually maneuvering to avoid just such a strike.

Absen hissed though his teeth in frustration, then barked orders. “We just took a pounding with very little to show. Make sure we get all the escape pods and lifeboats recovered. Try to put rescued crews onto like ships so they have deeper rosters. Bring those with wounds too severe for Eden Plague capacity to Conquest’s infirmary. Get the missile frigates re-boxed. Hop to it, people, we have maybe half an hour before we’re in range of those orbitals and whatever’s on the back side of the moon, not to mention the planet. Those won’t be able to run, but neither will we.”

Murmurs of acknowledgement from the various stations filled the bridge as the officers passed words, coordinating the damage control as best they could.

The admiral stroked his chin and spoke into the air, as he found airing his thoughts helped him think, and maintained his people’s confidence. “On the other hand, they just expended their long-range firepower. If their fleet wants to defend the planet they will have to come in close and slug it out with their fusion beams, and we’ll win that fight.” EarthFleet weapons ruled the middle ranges and were even more effective at the short. “Pass my respects to all ships and tell them ‘Well done, that was the worst of it’.”

Absen did not mean to lie.

Chapter 9

SystemLord relaxed somewhat as he observed the Underlings lack of active rebellion. When he had destroyed the Humans, he would punish the devolved Blends for their crimes. Until then merely ignoring them would have to be sufficient.

Tasting reports from Monitor’s many analytical sub-brains, he concluded that the enemy had lost several ships to his hypervelocity missiles, and had used a great deal of ordnance. Without the ability to gestate new weapons, he knew that every expenditure the Humans made brought them closer to destruction. As long as the Empire’s fleet did not take excessive losses, steady pressure and threat remained the most efficient course.

I will force them to react to me, entice them to chase me, lure them after me, he thought with almost-poetic flavors of communication. Then I will strike with the Weapon.

Monitor calmed with its master’s good cheer. Communicator, on the other hand, remained skeptical.

***

“What? Are they insane?” Veins stood out on Sergeant Major Repeth’s forehead as her blood pressure rose. She shook the printout at Bull ben Tauros in frustration, then spun it onto his tiny desk. “How can they pull me off my assignment now? I’m this company’s senior NCO, I’m mama ass-kicker and name-taker. We just went through a hell of waiting and I’ve lost people before we even fought. We may be hours from a ground assault.”

Her company commander straightened the flimsy and sighed. “This comes all the way from the top. Signed by the Admiral.”

“Screw the Admiral. This has to be personal. I turned the key that launched the missiles that killed his family ninety years ago and he’s never forgiven me for it. So now he’s cutting my legs out from under me the only way he knows how.”

“Come on, Smaj, think straight. If that were true he’d never have woken you up. And from his reputation he’s too much of a professional to screw over the line troops. Replacing you will measurably hurt combat effectiveness. Do you really think he’d do it if it wasn’t really important?”

Repeth kicked the inside of the door in frustration, her cyber-enhanced strength leaving a distinct dent. “Maybe not.” She mused for a moment. “I smell a rat, a Vietnamese rat. That’s the only way this makes sense.”

“What?” Bull ran his hand over his fat bald pate. “What does that mean?”

“You ever hear of Spooky Nguyen?”

“Yeah,” he replied. “He’s a phantom to scare recruits and children. ‘Eat your vegetables and do your pushups or Spooky will get you’. What about it?”

“He’s here. I saw him in the wardroom.”

“What, he’s real? You know him?” Bull looked at Repeth in awe. “And he’s here on this ship?”

“Probably not on Temasek, no, I saw him on Conquest before the breakup. Now I wish I never had. He’s the only one with enough pull to do this, the only one who could convince Absen to change things around at the last minute. Damn!” She cursed in frustration.

“Look, it says you have to report in sixty-five minutes with full kit. Swede Gunderson will take over as First Spear. We’ll be fine. You’ve got to do it, there’s no point in raging. We’ll keep your place warm for you.” Bull stood up, held out his hand. “It’s been an honor. Now get your ass in gear and drive on.”

“Bollocks.” Then she relented, slamming her sinewy palm into his callused paw with a sigh. “All right. Semper Fi, brother. God bless you, and I’ll see you on the other side.”

“You too, sister,” Bull echoed under his breath as he watched her march resolutely down the passageway. “Adonai, ‘tatzilenu mi-kaf kol oyev v’orev v’listim v’hayot ra’ot ba-derekh, u-mi-kol minei pur’aniyot ha-mitrag’shot la-vo la-olam.” Lord rescue us from the hand of every foe and ambush along the way, and from all evils that gather to come to Earth.

***

The Marine assault sled doubled as a shuttle when needed, and the familiar interior calmed Repeth somewhat as she looked over Flight Warrant Sunner Lockerbie’s shoulder. The Aerospace Force pilot eased the twelve-man personnel carrier into Conquest’s docking clamps and then unplugged her link as the computer took over the sequence. She stood up and hugged her sister in arms one more time. “Been a while, Jill. So good to see you.”

“Just lucky, I guess. I didn’t even know you were here, Sunny.” Jill released the other woman and shouldered her combat pack. She was already clad in full armor, and heavily armed. With combat only hours away she felt better with everything on. Assuming I get to go.

“Somebody’s gotta drive for you lunatic jarheads. You don’t think they’d trust a Marine with a pilot’s link, do you?”

Jill laughed, knowing full well there were plenty of Marines with wings. “You’re still the best stick and rudder I know, Lock.”

“Comes from starting in ground vehicles. Remember Fredericksburg?” She laughed. “Don’t worry, I’ll take good care of Bravo Company. Airlock’s open.” Lockerbie pointed.

“Damn. All right. Good hunting.” Jill threw her arms around her friend once more and then turned to enter Conquest, then stopped once more. “Can you wait for me? I might need to come back.”

“Sure. With that priority code you got, I can do anything.” Lockerbie waved goodbye again.

Five minutes later Repeth stomped into the designated conference room and slung her combat pack hard at Spooky. “What the hell kind of stunt is this, Spooks? You pulled me off a combat assignment on the eve of battle? It better be good or I’m marching right back to my company, orders or no orders.”

The small man caught the object and set it down on the deck. “Very dramatic, Jill, but I don’t need this you.”

“Don’t need what you? What me? What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

Spooky’s dark eyes narrowed. “I don’t need Jill here. I don’t even need Sergeant Major Repeth. I need Reaper.”

“Fine, here she is.” She snapped a frustrated punch at his shoulder, throwing her full strength into it. Spooky could have avoided it easily, she knew, but instead just stood there and took it. Her fist could have broken a railroad tie, ferrocrystal laminate bones powered by cybernetics and nano; in this case it split his uniform and skin, leaving a baseball-sized bleeding purple knot with four distinct oozing lines where her knuckles had struck.

Rocking back on one leg, he looked down impassively at the wound, then back to her. “Good. Save some of that for the enemy.”

She blinked and lowered her eyes, cooling slightly. “Oh, I will, just not in your company. I’m done with all the covert crap. I did it because I had to and I was good at it, but it is not me. I volunteered for TF Conquest to get away from it. And frankly, from you.” She paced up and down the deck in the small room, breathing deeply. “And here you are again.”

“Just hear me out,” Spooky replied, ignoring the swollen wound as his Eden Plague and nano began to heal it. “We have a mission. It could be critical to humanity. I need a special operator, not a compassionate woman or a tough leader of troops. I need that focus you had when you hunted down the Professor all those years ago, when you were looking for Rick.” He leaned on his hands on the tabletop. “I need Reaper.”

“Not convinced. Why didn’t you tell me this days ago? I know you’re a calculating son of a bitch and you know this is not how spec ops is done. This last-minute stuff gets people killed.”

“Because I only just got information I needed. I had to make a choice: take a standard combat team that would probably fail, or assemble one that might succeed.”

“Succeed at what?” Repeth turned again to confront her old teacher.

“You can’t just trust me?” Spooky raised an eyebrow.

“I haven’t seen you in ten waking years plus forty sleeping and now you just want me to take you on faith?”

“Yes, just like you told Bull. Have faith, you said. So have faith in me. If not, have faith in that God you say you believe in.” He stared at her as she stared back, and she slowly allowed herself to smile.

“I do trust you. You’ve never let me down. Along with my husband Rick and a handful of brothers and sisters in arms, you’re one of the few. But you just ripped me away from my people, my brothers and sisters in arms. You know what that means to me. So trusting you isn’t enough. I need to know what the mission is, and why you need me, of all the choices you have.”

“Here’s part of the why, right here.” Spooky made a come in gesture and another entered the room.

Repeth realized he must have been waiting for the tension to subside before coming in. “What the hell is he doing here?” She pointed an accusing finger at the nondescript young man of medium height and build, with dark hair and strangely indeterminate racial markers. “I thought this was a human-only mission.”

“At least you didn’t call me it,” the man replied. “I’m here because it was thought a Blend might be needed.”

“I hate the way you talk, Ezekiel Denham,” Repeth responded bitterly. “It was thought. Always hiding the responsibility. Who thought? You’d think that a hundred years after the Eden Plague improved humanity we’d at least stop bullshitting our own kind.”

“Chairman Daniel Markis thought,” Spooky interjected.

“Is that supposed to impress me, dropping the name of Earth’s ruler?” Repeth snarled. “Remember, I married his best friend’s son, and I’ve poured Scotch with the man. Ezekiel’s one of these half-Meme, and they’ve had their own agenda ever since the first Destroyer came.”

“One quarter, really. Miss Repeth,” Ezekiel began –

“Oh, you can call me Reaper,” she hissed at him with cold narrowed eyes. Slowly she slid her sleeves back to expose her tattoos.

He shrugged, glancing at the death ink. “Very well, Reaper. The part of me that is Meme is no different from your Eden Plague or your nanites or your cybernetics – it extends my capabilities but does not make me unhuman. People must adapt to survive. I am just differently adapted.”

“How do we know you won’t betray us to the Meme as soon as you can?”

A shrug again and a sigh. “You want a logical reason besides loyalty? Besides my faithful years of clandestine service? Besides the fact that my father and mother saved humanity at least two distinct times? Here’s one: because they would look down on me with the same bigotry you do. To Meme, Blends are impure, fit only to be confined to planets, to work in their manufactories and hold their territories inside inconvenient gravity wells. The Hippos on Afrana that we are all supposed to hate and kill? Those Blends are second-class citizens of the Meme Empire. The un-Blended indigenous Hippos are nothing but slaves. The Meme run a brutal, hierarchical society where biology determines place.” He leaned forward, spearing Reaper with his eyes. “Is that how you want humans to act too? Should we imitate our enemy? Shall I kowtow to you just because I am different? Am I the new wog, the new darkie here?”

Her throat turned suddenly dry and her eyes hot with embarrassment. “We become what we hate,” she whispered. “All right, I apologize. If Spooky vouches for you…” Doesn’t mean I won’t watch you close.

“I do so vouch,” Spooky confidently capped her condition. “I’ve worked with Ezekiel before. In fact, I worked with his human father and his Blended mother. And you’ve worked with Senior Steward Schaeffer,” he went on as another man, slim with a thin red-blonde beard, came through the door as if on cue.

“Shades!” Repeth’s mood lifted as she clasped hands with the steward.

“Reap,” he responded warmly, taking off his trademark shooting glasses. “Not sure why I’m here but at least they chose the best.”

“Not they,” Repeth said. “Him.” She pointed at Spooky.

“Nguyen? The new steward? He’s coming along?” The other three chuckled, and Shades looked confused. “What am I missing?”

“Remember that ninja that saved our asses on Orion?”

“Yeah. Oh…him?”

“The same.”

Shades laughed uneasily. “I guess I should thank you, then.”

Spooky inclined his head and smiled thinly. “You should.”

Repeth asked, “Spooky, are there any more?”

“No, just us,” he answered.

“We few, we happy few, we band of brothers,” Shades quoted suddenly with a rueful smile.

Ezekiel replied with a flourish, “If we are marked to die, we are enough, to do our country loss; and if to live, the fewer men, the greater share of honor.”

“God’s will, I pray thee wish not one man more,” continued Shades. “Henry V, act four, scene three.”

“Well said,” smiled Spooky, wintry. “So shall we happy few get our arses in gear? We may have only a few hours to prepare. Here’s the brief.” He tapped a control on the console and the inevitable operational order appeared on the screen. Running through the plan overview took less than ten minutes.

Once they were done Repeth addressed Spooky with a square of her shoulders. “Look,” she said, “I’m flattered you wanted me, and I’ve listened, but I still don’t believe you need me for this plan. You don’t even need Shades. You and Ezekiel could do it – or even him alone.” Her eyes narrowed. “What’s your game here?”

“Dadirri.”

“Don’t give me that Zen bullshit, I’m not buying it today.” She leaned close to him to breathe faint words in his ear, too quiet for even the others’ enhanced hearing. “I know about you. I’ve known for a while, and I don’t care. I’ll keep your secrets, but you don’t need me right now. My people do. Give this one up, and don’t get in my way.” She pointedly pulled her sleeves down then stepped back, searching his face for reaction.

Spooky showed none at all for a moment, gave her a cock-headed nod of accession.

Knowing he’d get over it, she said, “Thanks again for the invite, and I wish you all good luck and good hunting, but I’m out.” Shouldering her combat pack, Sergeant Major Jill Repeth, EarthFleet Marine Corps, marched back to exactly where she was supposed to be.

***

“Interesting, I see the three orbitals are staying on the other side of the planet,” Absen remarked as Scoggins reordered the main holotank, cleaning up the visuals and moving secondary symbology off to side screens. “Must be using a lot of fuel, fighting gravity.”

“It’s one way to not get hit by the railgun strikes,” Commander Ford said with his usual grumbling tone. “Computer predicts they’ll unmask about the same time we close in on the planet and moon. The fleet will probably throw whatever hypers they have at us about the same time to take advantage of synergy.”

“It shouldn’t matter,” objected Commander Scoggins, carrying on their usual disagreements on almost every subject. “We still have them at a disadvantage in combat power.”

“As long as the ammo holds out, and assuming their fleet doesn’t close,” Ford said darkly. “Why shouldn’t they? It’s their best chance to fight us on even terms.”

“That’s not the way Meme think,” she argued. “To them, a ship or even a missile is a living thing that they value.”

“Not like you mean. They can’t value a missile that they gestated yesterday and send off to die tomorrow. You’re anthromorphizing.”

Scoggins opened her mouth to continue when Absen interjected, “You two bicker like a married couple. Perhaps you should consider making it official when this is done.” That will shut them up.

“Besides, I think the Meme commander is perfectly willing to sacrifice his ships if,” the admiral shook an emphasizing finger, “if it’s in his interest. In fact, I think he’s more willing to sacrifice life than we are. And don’t forget, he has his back to the wall too. Whatever passes for judgment among the Meme will fall on him like a ton of bricks if he loses this system. From what little we know of them, they don’t reward failure: he might as well die trying to win, I should think. Or at least sacrifice all his troops while escaping in a fast probe.”

They knew a Meme could survive in a ship as tiny as a hyper for decades, uncatchable as it fled across interstellar space.

“Back to the matter at hand,” Absen waved at the holotank. “How are we doing for missiles?”

Ford responded, “About thirty thousand left all told, skipper. The twelve remaining frigates can hold approximately fourteen thousand. Conquest can launch twelve hundred per salvo with a four-minute reload time.”

“Railgun ammo?”

“About one point two billion rounds, with a few hundred a minute more being manufactured from asteroidal materials we’re sweeping up in our magnetic scoops. That’s about forty minutes of continuous fire.”

“Damn. And the longer this takes the more hypers they can gestate. All right, here’s the plan. Keep up the railgun harassing fire on all targets, preserve ammo. We’re going to accelerate at full to close and reduce the enemy’s recovery time. Maintain a defensive missile spread between us and their main body. Scoggins, where’s that last robot drone?”

“R-25 should be about here, sir, though it’s staying stealthy so I can’t be certain.” She caused a tiny dot to flash in the tank.

“Does it have a view of the back side of Afrana’s moon?”

“Yes, sir, from long range.”

“All right. Use it up, we need the data.”

“Aye aye, sir.” Scoggins sent the coded signal.

Sixty million kilometers and two hundred seconds away, R-25 took its last look at existence, updated all of its files, and sent its dying data burst. This time there was no need to hide nor run, so it stayed steady, the better to beam every scrap of information to its human masters. It repeated its transmission until, eight minutes later, a small hyper ushered it from the realm of matter into that of dispersed energy.

“Tell Intel as soon as the data comes in I want to know what they see on that moon, the orbitals and any remaining military installations on the planet. In the meantime, lay two hundred missiles to come in low over the moon’s horizon and target anything artificial – maximum spread, no fratricide. Lead them with a dozen recon drones. What’s our range now?”

“Just over one point two million klicks to the moon, sir. The planet is another three hundred thousand farther away.” Scoggins brought up a section of the holotank to show how the fleet’s course would take them past the moon, then between it and the planet.”

Absen stroked his chin, his cagey submariner’s instincts – for he had started out long ago as a sub captain – kicking in. “I don’t like going between the moon and the planet. Look at their main fleet.” He stood up and walked to the edge of the holographic display, to reach inside its projection. “It’s just holding position where a direct path will draw us in. Does it seem to anyone else like they are begging us to go there?” He looked around at his officers. “Come on, honest opinions people. Second-guess me.”

Ford cleared his throat. “It’s also the best tactical position for them regardless. They can dodge behind the planet or the moon, whip around using their gravity wells, come at us from the side. And as we already know, they could have some surprise on the orbitals, so it strengthens their hand.”

“And,” broke in Scoggins, “there might be something on the back side of the moon. What if there are heavy weapons there? No starship can mount anything as large as a ground-based installation.”

“Yes…” Absen paced up and down on the deck, feeling the grav plates straining to compensate for the fleet’s acceleration. Stupid to be standing up when an electrical fluctuation in the artificial gravity generators could kill me, he thought with amusement. But I’m tired of sitting in that damned bio-gel chair. “So is there any advantage to boring straight in?”

“We maintain a steady stream of railgun rounds going along our path,” Ford replied. “That keeps them dodging. We can hold our defensive missile spread in front of us more easily. Everything is more predictable for our fire-control computers.”

Absen pounded gently on a rail. “Predictable…yes. We’ve been predictable, when in space combat with an uncertain enemy, to be predictable is to lose. Their commander did something unpredictable and hurt us badly. He took out six ships and forced us to burn up a third of our remaining missiles.”

He reached inside the holotank to draw a path with his finger. “What if we angled over here – away from the moon, and go past on the other side of the planet. That will allow us to see the back side of the moon as we go past, still well within beam and railgun range, but a lot farther from whatever surprise he has waiting on the other side. We also will have a finite time in their sights, then the planet gets between us.”

“What if there’s no surprise, sir?” asked Johnstone from CyberComm.

“Then we call it a recon in force, and come back around.”

Okuda said doubtfully, “Skipper, we will have a lot of velocity to burn off before we can come back, since we’re accelerating right now. If we don’t head directly toward their main fleet and that Guardian, they can just keep dodging behind the planet or moon. Everything that draws out this fight serves them. In fact,” the Helmsman caused a glowing track to appear in the holotank, “this is our optimum path for what you propose. It would take over four hours to get back even under maximum burn. That’s four more hours for them to gestate missiles, and four more hours of using fuel.”

“Intel, is that data ready yet? Show me something.”

“Raw feed is coming in, sir, just a few minutes,” Kris Johnstone replied, distractedly tapping keys. She reached to plug a wire into a socket near her ear, and Absen let her work. Commander Rick Johnstone at CyberComm plugged in as well and soon they were colluding to build a coherent display.

Five minutes later half the main holotank blanked, then showed Afrana’s moon. It grew rapidly as if they approached at warp speed, then rotated to show the area of interest, the side turned inward toward the planet.

“Not much there,” mused Ford.

“Some kind of installation, though,” Scoggins replied. “Looks like spaceport facilities – fusion blast pads all look the same after hard use.”

“Yeah…” Ford agreed, trailing off as his eyes roved over the holo.

Scoggins looked at him in surprise and suspicion at his agreement, then examined the holo as well. She stepped up next to him, reaching out a hand. “What are these?”

“Mountains?”

“Yes, lots of mountains and hills but these look too regular to be natural.”

“Excavated material, dumped in long mounds?”

“I bet they are,” commented Absen. “Intel, get Engineering started on analysis. But what about weapons?”

“No weapons,” Ford stated positively. “At least, nothing I can see that indicates any. They could be well-hidden, but what’s the point of camouflaging something on an airless moon that only looks at the planet? There’s this big flat round space in the middle, covered with dust. And what’s that?” He pointed at three torpedo shapes at the end of the massive mounds.

“Cruisers. Feeding on that material, I bet,” responded Scoggins. “Probably rotating them down there to fill up on food.”

“Just one more reason not to divert, sir,” Ford argued, turning toward Absen. “We’d just be letting them replenish.”

“I understand your arguments, Commander, but we can handle a few more hypers. What we might not be able to handle is some kind of surprise from that moon. Intel, get all the analysts working on this. They have fifteen minutes to load a report, no matter how raw.” Absen stood staring at the moon, stroking his nose with a forefinger.

Fifteen minutes later the moon’s hemisphere blossomed with hasty markers, circles and arrows, flashing shapes of different colors. They were scattered across the thousands of square kilometers but a cluster in the center drew Absen’s eye. “What’s that?” he asked, turning to the young Intel watchstander.

“Uh, mostly a bunch of anomalies by the landing pads. Some buried heat sources, marks of surface engineering…and those excavation mounds.”

“How big are those mounds?”

A scale grid appeared over the area. “About thirty klicks long, two wide, one high…”

“That’s a hell of a lot of material to dig out. I don’t like it. There has to be something there, maybe under that circle of dirt. All right, Helm, on my mark bring the fleet to a new course, here,” he traced a line away from the moon, toward the other side of the planet, “and keep our distance from that installation. Once we’re on track, start decelerating to come behind the planet as low as we can, use some of that gravity and whip us around. Maybe we’ll catch them napping, or at least they won’t expect it – and maybe we can use the planet somehow…” Not sure how, yet, but any variables I introduce will discomfit the enemy.

Absen went on, “Ford, keep those defensive missiles between us and the enemy, and get that offensive sortie going in over the moon’s horizon. I want to see what we can stir up. Once you’ve done that, program a coordinated alpha strike, including our biggest nukes.”

“Alpha strike, skipper? Everything?”

“Everything offensive, Ford.”

“We’ll be down to our final missiles in the tubes. No more reloads.”

“I know. You can always redirect the missiles you launch, but I want everything we have heading for that moon base on my command.”

“Got it, sir.”

“Skipper,” Master Helm Okuda called, “we’re passing the million klick mark. Beginning long-range beam weapon fire.” The remaining six cruisers fired converging shots at the edge of the moon as the back side unmasked, throwing explosions up as the electromagnetic energies flash-heated the dirt. Blasts marched across the surface, destroying every anomaly Intel had identified, reaching slowly toward the unknown installation lurking over the horizon.

“Helm, maneuver in mark plus ten. Everyone strap in. Mark.” Absen and the rest of the bridge crew threw themselves back into their bio-gel chairs and strapped back in. On the mark, Conquest and the fleet turned smoothly as planned, aiming for an outer tangent of the planet, skating away from the moon. Distance to the moon descended to eight hundred thousand kilometers before slowly creeping upward again.

“Launch the alpha strike to arrive as soon as the installation unmasks,” Absen called.

Chapter 10

SystemLord kept four eyes in his hemiscreens and a pseudopod in continuous chemical link with Monitor as he watched the enemy through his living ship’s senses. He damned the Humans for suspecting the existence of the Weapon; and he cursed himself for not using his Sentries to search for their spy drones. Expending them in the initial close-range trap had been a mistake, he now saw, but all war was risk.

No matter, they are prisoners of momentum now, he thought. They cannot alter course fast enough to avoid being targeted, and there is nowhere to run except, possibly, behind the planet. When the Weapon destroys most of them, the Underlings will see the inevitable and take action with their orbitals.

***

“Conn: Sensors. All bogeys accelerating!” Scoggins wiped the main holotank of the moon’s image, replacing it with the fleet display. Flashing red icons with short virtual tails showing their direction of movement began to crawl forward. “They’re coming out to fight!”

“Helm, get us onto as tight a tangent to the planet as you can, I want to shave it close. Ford, shift all the long-range beam fire to pick off some cruisers, before the alpha-strike.”

Okuda nodded, too busy to speak. The fleet all lined up and pumped full fusion thrust to the side, driving each ship, from the largest to the smallest, onto a course that would skim the planet’s atmosphere on the side opposite the moon.

With his expanded senses the helmsman experienced the enemy closing in from all sides, but mostly from what would look in a holotank view like the left front as the fleet skimmed to the right. To the left the virtual eye of the unknown moon anomaly flashed redly with a computer overlay, and between it and the planet, that double-ringed bullseye of cruisers. The enormous Guardian occupied the center and hung slightly back.

It was now a race to see whether the main enemy fleet could get to within fusion beam range – the point-blank of perhaps a thousand kilometers – before Conquest and her flock got past the point of intersection and behind the planet. Of course, the enemy could easily follow them around, using brute acceleration to force themselves into their wakes, then overtake.

“One enemy cruiser destroyed,” Ford called, then: “Initiating alpha strike.” Missiles blossomed from the frigates, and Conquest’s launchers opened their quadropartitioned outer doors, enormous slabs of armor shifting like puzzle boxes, for just long enough to release salvos before closing. The bridge crew could hear the groans of their ship’s structure as acceleration came off for a moment as the weapons cleared, then resumed. Gravplates whined as they transferred loads to compensate for the crushing forces.

Three remaining battleships and Conquest began continuous railgun fire, near-solid streams of hundreds of thousands of high-tech cannonballs per second, all aimed to blanket the unknown installation. Okuda skillfully adjusted for their enormous propelling forces, his fingers and his mind playing battle-music across the pipe organs of fusion thrusters.

Twenty-eight seconds after the last shots left the rails, Ford shifted the beams of the task force cruisers off of their enemy counterparts and onto the moon base. Coherent electromagnetics very nearly caught up with the solid ammo before both struck home, and directly behind came the first wave of heavy nukes.

Staring at the holotank, an almost realtime feed from near-space sensors, Admiral Absen thought at first the alpha strike had obliterated ten thousand square kilometers of moon surface, so great was the energy suddenly streaming from its location. Shining like a laser bonfire it blazed forth, represented on the 4D tank as a dome of red light.

“What the hell is that?” he barked.

“Full-spectrum coherent EM pulse in the exawatt range, continuous duration,” Scoggins gasped.

“Shift targeting, continuous fire on that location!” Absen yelled, something he seldom did, but the implications of a laser of such magnitude had overridden his calm.

“Shifting!” Ford called.

The dome of burning light reached out in a hemisphere as an almost-solid wave, defeated only by its exponential dispersion in three dimensions – every time it doubled in radius it dropped roughly fourteen-fold in power. This still allowed it to utterly vaporize anything within one hundred kilometers, imparting temperatures greater than a star’s corona to anything it touched. It kept pumping vast energies into the void, creating in essence a dome of destruction through which nothing could pass, not even other electromagnetics.

Yet this was a defensive use, to preserve whatever enormous engine lurked beneath the moon’s surface from the continuous impact of human weapons. Ford intuited this right away and spread out the strikes so they dribbled in, forcing the thing to remain as a barrier. His newborn greatest fear was that the projector would have time to focus offensively. Rough calculations showed such a beam could reach out far past the million-kilometer mark with devastating power.

Thus he ignored the chaos around him and any distracting commands in favor of diving into his link – which frankly he hated, no matter how useful – and fencing with this thing, thrusts and parries measured in milliseconds. Time after time he could see it begin to narrow its focus, only to re-broaden to catch the incoming human missiles that Ford now tried to bring in from every side, one at a time but with no gaps. The three-second lightspeed delay felt infinite and he could not react, only stack attack upon attack in patterns that he hoped would suppress the ravening beam.

Angrily he observed a detachment of six enemy cruisers that swept in from the side to bolster the defense of their moon base. These interdicted enough of Ford’s missiles to allow the ground-based beam to focus and lash out at its narrowest for a full second.

Three seconds later the beam cruiser Midas ceased to exist. All of the Meme weapon’s enormous power struck an area the size of a dinner plate, and the armor in its path converted from dense crystalline molecules to free relativistic particles within a nanosecond. This jet bored a hole through the ship and exited the other side, while the heat dump and plasma wave flashed immediately throughout the entire ship. A thermonuclear weapon detonated at the center of the vessel would have wreaked less havoc, and moments later the remains of the kilometer-deep cruiser expanded on the outside of a sun-hot teardrop-shaped wave of compressed debris.

Commander Ford cursed through those seconds as, eyes steaming with rage, he redoubled his efforts to lay all available weaponry on the hated installation, knowing full well he could do no more than keep it bottled.

With cleverness borne of desperation he targeted nukes onto the moon just outside the thing’s destructive radius, blasting mountains of debris into the moon’s faint atmosphere. Perhaps the detritus will diffuse the laser, he thought, or the ground shock damage it. One idea later he began to throw nuke after nuke into the same hole at the edge, waiting only long enough between blasts for the fireball to disperse before sending another deeper, as if trying to drill though the planet’s crust from an angle.

Which he was.

The squadron of enemy cruisers shifted – too soon, too soon! – to stop his ploy, picking off his missiles with their close-range fusion beams set wide. Despite all his efforts, the gargantuan laser licked out again and touched the battleship Nanjing, and that great city’s namesake also vanished in a brief and newborn sun. Ford pounded his console in frustration.

A curtain fell then across his awareness, distinct, rapid but inevitable. The weapons officer realized Conquest and her escorts had passed behind Afrana, thus shielding the task force with the only thing that could withstand such a weapon – thousands of kilometers of planetary mantle.

Unfortunately this brought them within close range of the Hippo orbitals lurking on the other side of the planet. EarthFleet weapons strained to reorient, in some cases a full 180 degrees, to try and fail to lock on and fire at the huge fortresses as they flashed through near-planet space.

The holotank told the brutal story. For eight full seconds the fleet was caught flatfooted, sailing point-blank under the menacing guns of three Hippo battlewagons… which did nothing.

“Hold fire!” Absen yelled as realization hit him. “All ships hold fire! The Hippos are staying neutral!”

Surprised murmurs of assent and relief swept the bridge.

So that moon laser was their surprise, the Admiral thought as he snapped out orders. And probably the Hippos were supposed to close the trap. It should have worked. That Meme commander is one smart bastard. A shudder went through him from the adrenaline of this near-death experience, feeling in his bones how close it had been.

Chapter 11

SystemLord sprayed a molecular howl of frustration as he watched the Underling orbitals let the Humans fly by without firing. Efficient and effective, his plan had drawn the enemy into a trap…and it had failed to close. He had been sure the battle stations would engage when the enemy fired upon them, and once they saw how certain the Empire was to triumph.

But the enemy had not fired on the orbitals. Confusion reigned briefly in the Meme commander’s mind. Had the Underlings and the Humans somehow established communication? Yet this was impossible, according to his clandestine monitoring-creatures on and around the planet.

No matter. The Weapon had killed two more of their capital ships, and the Underlings had only delayed the inevitable. SystemLord’s ships now had enough time to gestate nearly half of their maximum missile capacity, as the enemy was speeding away at thousands of kilometers per second. He remained in possession of the planet and the Weapon, and his fleet was still powerful.

***

“Helm,” Absen called as the fleet exited planetary near-space, “do everything you can to keep the planet between us and the moon. Ford, fantastic work, you saved all of us. Scoggins, keep some drones far enough out so we can see beyond the planet. Commander Johnstone, is there any chance you can hack into their signals?” Like you’ve done in the past…come on, Rick, give me another miracle.

“I’ve been trying, sir. No luck.” Rick closed his eyes again and immersed himself in the world of electronic warfare.

“Okuda, how long do we have before we are under that gun again?”

The Helmsman responded, “I can keep us shielded by the planet and moving away indefinitely, assuming their fleet doesn’t chase us. We’re like a bunch of hunters hiding behind one single tree, though, and falling back. The farther away we get, the harder it will be.”

The admiral looked at the holotank, observing that the enemy fleet was not following. It appeared to be regrouping around the planet. “Can anyone tell me what the effective range on that thing is? How far away do we have to be before it can’t hurt us?” Absen waited as silence fell across the bridge, his officers running their calculations.

Scoggins spoke first. “I’d say at ten million klicks it will be no more powerful than a cruiser beam at point-blank. At twelve million it won’t light a cigarette. That’s about forty minutes travel from now.”

“And that thing can defend itself against almost anything,” Ford ground out.

“Anything it can see,” Absen responded. “We just have to maneuver outside its range and come in behind its arc of fire.”

“Already on it, skipper.” Okuda relaxed slightly and opened his eyes to blink at his admiral. “We’re headed for Gliese 370.”

“The star?”

“Yes, sir. We’ll swing around it at about six hours from now, slingshot using the gravity well and come back at them from an angle behind the moon. It’s a lot safer than reversing course out here in the open…skipper, we do need to recover all of our small craft right away.”

Absen nodded. “Because they won’t be able to take the heat and radiation.”

“Yes, sir. With your permission, we’ll be cutting it as fine as possible, taking a heavy rad dose. Eden Plague should be able to handle it but we may have a few casualties.”

“Right.” Absen looked toward Horton at BioMed. “Make sure you pass all of that to the medical folks. Prep everyone for heat and radiation. Comms, sound secure from general quarters and maximum rest protocols. Primary Watch, go off in ten minutes and everyone get a few hours sleep. Turn it all over to the auxiliary bridge with the tertiary watch standing. No arguments.” He took a deep breath, let it out and stood up to pace. “They sprung their trap and we dodged it. Now we know about it. Intel, I need all the analysts working on this thing. I need a way to beat it. And what in the hell is it there for anyway?”

“I think I know, sir,” came a new voice from the main hatchway as it swung open. Everyone turned to look as an unknown civilian entered the bridge. Chief Steward Tobias, ever watchful, leaped from his acceleration niche to point his sidearm at the intruder.

Behind the civilian followed Spooky Nguyen, with Shades Schaeffer trailing. The Vietnamese motioned to Tobias to lower his weapon, and the new man went on, “Sorry to startle everyone. I’m Ezekiel Denham, and yes, I’m a Blend.”

“I know what you are,” grated Absen. “What do you want?”

“He wants to explain what’s going on, sir. I think you should listen to him,” Shades said.

“You think. What about you, Nguyen?”

Spooky bowed slightly and nodded in silent acknowledgement. Behind him Shades removed his trademark tinted glasses and shrugged with a wry smile.

Absen returned the smile, but it failed to reach his eyes. “It really worries me when you’re all in agreement. It means either you’re right – or very, very wrong. Let’s let these fine officers get some rest. You three come to my quarters.” He stood up and exited by his private door, and they followed one by one under Tobias’ watchful eye.

Once in his spacious private office he waved them all to seats. “All right. We have ten to twelve hours before we have to fight again, so let’s hear it – but keep it brief. We all need some rest. Denham, you first. You said you know why it’s there.”

“Yes, sir,” Ezekiel said with folded hands. “It is a terror weapon to keep the Blends in line.”

Absen sat back in his own chair and absorbed that statement. “So you’re saying that without something like that, the Meme might have a rebellion on their hands?”

“Yes, sir. Bits of molecular memory handed down to me by my Blended mother – remember, I’m really only one quarter Meme – combined with what we recovered from some of the enemy ships indicates those who Blend with ‘lower beings’ tend to identify with their new race. This is exacerbated by the bigotry and prejudice of the pure Meme.”

Absen waved a hand as if fanning away smoke. “I’ve heard all these theories.”

“Theories perhaps - but don’t you see, sir – it lines up perfectly with this weapon. If it was built to defend the planet it would be facing outward, or they would have made two to cover the whole sphere of fire. If they had, they could have picked off many of our ships as we fell straight toward it. You’re a tactician, sir, look at it from their point of view. Where would you put it if it was to secure the world below from alien – from human – invasion?”

Absen nodded slowly, reaching over to his desk drawer and pulling out a carton of cigarillos. He took one and lit it while he pondered, then pushed the box across his desk at Spooky, who passed it around after putting one in his mouth. Soon the room filled with fragrant smoke, an Admiral’s luxury.

“It makes sense,” he finally said. “But so what?” I can see some implications, but I want to hear it from you.

“It means, sir, that if we get rid of that thing, I think the Hippos of the planet will gladly join us – especially if I am the ambassador. They should see me as one of them, in a sense. Tell me, did the orbitals fire on us?”

“No. They had us dead to rights and they held fire.”

“That proves it then! They want us to win. Ask your analysts and I bet you’ll see.”

The admiral steepled his fingers and stared at his hands. “Let’s say you’re right. What do you propose?”

Ezekiel turned to Spooky, who put down his smoke and stood up to pace. “I suggest,” he said, “that we engage the enemy fleet to cover a ground assault on the moon base with the Marines. It’s the only way to get close enough. Come in beyond the horizon, deploy where the laser can’t reach us, dig them out. There have to be tunnels. If we can’t find any, we’ll just bore in from the sides.”

“That’s going to be expensive. We’ll have to send all the Marines to have a chance, and that’s all we’ll have – one chance.”

Spooky’s mouth twitched and he shrugged. “If we take that base, we control the planet and a lot of the space around. We have the stronger fleet, barring any more surprises. The positions will be reversed. If we own the mega-laser and get it functioning, they will have to deal with it – and we will also have the ultimate bargaining position with the Hippos.” He flicked a glance at Ezekiel.

“What, after all this nice-nice,” Absen said with a sweep of his hand, “you don’t trust our potential allies?”

Spooky picked up his cigarillo and dragged, his eyes narrowing over the curl of smoke. “Admiral, I don’t trust anyone.”

“Of course.” Absen blew a smoke ring. “All right. Let’s say we do it your way. What about your team and your mission?”

“Why Admiral,” Spooky replied, waving at his two comrades, “we are the team, and the mission. You don’t think the Hippos will parlay over a commlink, do you?”

Absen shook his head in resignation. “I suppose not. What happened to Sergeant Major Repeth?”

Spooky’s nostrils flared as he took a calming breath. “She declined my offer.”

“I thought she might.” Absen smiled without humor. “Can’t have it all your way, Nguyen.”

“I’ll quote that back to you sometime, Admiral.”

“You do that,” he responded roughly. “Now brief me on your intended mission.”

***

Ezekiel laid a hand against the softly thrumming hide of Steadfast Roger, his personal corvette. Part of the vibration was from Conquest herself, but part was the quiver of Roger’s living processes. Open, he said via molecular transfer from his fingertips, and a doorway irised to let the three men in.

“So this is a Meme ship?” Shades said, zipping his glasses into a breast pocket in the dim light. The room was blank-walled and organic, containing nothing but three sarcophagi that sprouted from the floor.

“More or less,” Ezekiel responded. “He’s descended from the original Meme scoutship that came to Earth in the early twenty-first century. We Blends made some improvements using Earthtech, and he’s adapted for human use.”

“I notice you say ‘he’. Is the ship conscious?”

Ezekiel nodded. “Absolutely, and he grows slowly more intelligent over time. Right now he is perhaps as bright as a rather stupid dog. Eventually he should attain intelligence similar to a dolphin, perhaps even more.”

“I guess we’re lucky one Meme decided to help humanity.”

Ezekiel bowed his head reverently. “Raphael, he who blended with my mother Sofia Ilona, saved Earth by his defection from the enemy. If we have time as our colony grows, I intend to write a biography.”

“Sounds fascinating,” Spooky broke in, “but we must launch soon. The longer we wait, the longer it will take to reach our destination.”

“All right. Remove all clothing and get in the cocoons.” Ezekiel demonstrated by stripping to the buff and hopping into one. Spooky climbed nimbly into the second biotech construct, feeling it conform to his naked body. Beside him, Shades did the same. Living cowls rolled around their heads like bizarre parka hoods before sealing the three men in. They all felt the questing probes of biomechanical plugs slotting into their cranial connectors.

Ready? Ezekiel asked through his link. The other two answered affirmative, and a moment later the cocoons vanished from their consciousness. All three stepped into a comfortably-appointed cockpit, rather old-fashioned and steam-age-themed, brass and wood as in a Jules Verne story. Transition to virtual space had been smooth, and now the three seemed to stand looking out a large window into space.

In the real world tubes extruded, filling all of their body cavities, a distinctly unpleasant sensation that they were glad to avoid. The conduits to their mouths and nose pulsed and abruptly ran with liquid, and soon their lungs filled with oxygenated fluid, necessary to keep them from collapsing under the heavy Gs to come.

Out their virtual window they saw an artificial representation of the battlespace, with Afrana, its moon, and the enemy and friendly fleets represented for convenience in ridiculous proximity. Ezekiel reached out his hand to move a round-knobbed lever and their ship shot forward, mimicking its real actions. “We’re outside Conquest now.”

“Why don’t you just show what space really looks like?” asked Shades.

“Because there’d be little to see,” Ezekiel answered. “This simulated picture is better than the real thing, believe me.” He moved more levers forward and they accelerated away from the Earth fleet, diving toward the back edge of the planet. Some of the acceleration sensation leaked over and the VR bridge wobbled.

“Are you sure they won’t see us?”

“Our initial burn was one among many in the midst of our fleet, so the Meme won’t notice. Once that ends, we will be on a ballistic course until we near the planet, so we are nearly undetectable. Once we reach the planet, Steadfast Roger will mimic a Meme signature as we maneuver.”

“So that means yes.” Shades crossed his arms in amusement.

“Yes that means no, they won’t see us, I believe. Sorry, just proud of my ride.” Ezekiel caressed the console. “He and I have been a lot of places together.”

“Weird to think we’re inside a living ship.”

“All right, enough small talk,” interjected Spooky mildly. “Let’s go over the plan again.”

“Don’t you ever relax?” Shades asked.

“He does,” interjected Ezekiel, “at least once per decade whether he needs it or not. And he’s right. We’ll be in planetary space in an hour.”

***

Task Force Conquest cruised planetward now, having swung around this system’s sun in a punishing arc, under continual thrust. By brute force Master Helmsman Okuda had dragged them through a tight half-orbit to arrive at Afrana well out of the moonbased laser’s arc.

“What do you think?” Chief of the Boat Timmons stood beside the admiral’s chair as they both stared at the holotank. His question was less about eliciting information than about getting his commander to talk. Absen had been brooding silent for the last hour, and it was making the bridge watch nervous.

I think I’m starting to wonder if we can pull this off, Absen wanted to say. Instead, he cleared his throat. “I think it will work.” He deliberately strengthened his voice. “It’s a good plan. The analysts are to be commended. I assume everyone is ready to execute?” Affirmative noises from his officers helped him feel the confidence he tried to project. “Then sound Battle Stations and you are free to begin sequence by computer mark.” From now on everything was machine-sequenced and timed. Only if something unexpected occurred would the fleet need orders.

“Small craft launching,” Okuda said. “Defense missiles launching.” After long minutes he went on, “Fleet defense posture at maximum. Altering course.”

Now the sweating began. Absen raised the cooling on his suit and watched the holotank as the two parts of his little fleet separated.

All the warships began to diverge from the small craft to gain an angle tangent to the laser base, where they stabilized out of its arc, and inbound. If they did not maneuver, they would skim the surface of the moon above the enemy installation.

But that was not the plan.

The small craft they had launched – more than seven hundred surviving StormCrows, one thousand Marine assault sleds, and a cloud of pinnaces and support boats – floated stealthily forward under silent running procedures, left behind by the fleet. At these distances they were invisible, and would stay that way until they lit their fusion engines for inevitable deceleration.

Ford at Weapons spoke. “Railgun barrage initiating. Nuclear missiles barrage initiating. Blinding barrage initiating.”

Absen hoped the blinding barrage – all of his beam weapons in wide-spectrum mode, aimed at the main enemy fleet – would disrupt and confuse the enemy sensors with a storm of electromagnetics. More particularly, he watched the holotank as the computer icons for thirty missiles trailed a cloud of ten million railgun shot.

Timing was the thing.

“Enemy fleet moving forward,” Scoggins called, and it was so. The Guardian and its cruisers slowly maneuvered up to take positions between the planet and the moon – firmly in the center of the base laser’s zone of control. A faint cone of red showed the computer’s projection of that deadly space, and it appeared as if the fleet headed right for it.

“Decelerating,” Okuda said on the mark, and Conquest thrummed with the powerful forces now slowing it to avoid that fate. Throughout the fleet all of the warships were doing the same.

Far ahead, the railgun cloud and the missiles approached the edge of the enemy base, as if sneaking up on a hilltop. To the Meme it would appear the missiles were coming in under the radar intending to strike on a nap-of-the-earth trajectory, in hopes of detonating as close to the base as possible.

I’d take that, Absen thought, but it’s not the real plan.

Rising from the surface, the six Meme cruisers defending the base moved to meet the missiles, and on cue two EarthFleet beam cruisers shifted their dazzling rays to blast them with electromagnetics. While far too weak to do direct damage, this tactic was more than sufficient to degrade the enemy sensors.

Taking positions directly in the missiles’ paths – by far the most effective way to line up on the fast-moving weapons – the Meme cruisers waited, confident that they could handle a mere thirty projectiles. Of course, they did not know about the swarm of steel death precisely ten seconds ahead of the missiles.

They might have recognized their fate for just a split second, as Absen could have sworn they lit their fusion engines and tried to run – but it was futile. Ten million railgun rounds, a shotgun blast worthy of Zeus, flensed the six ships to hamburger. Most of the spheres traveled onward.

A cheer went up from the bridge crew, and Absen allowed himself a smile. “Well done, Mister Ford. A superb trap.”

“Base laser firing, defensive mode,” noted Scoggins. “Shot and missiles impacting.”

Above the moon’s surface the laser converted some thousands of round shot into ferrous gas as they flew into the quasi-solid dome of light. However, most of their number slammed into the edge of the installation, just outside of its reaching blaze. They plowed up millions of tons of surface material, gouging a bite out of the perfect bowl its heat had polished, and briefly obscured the site.

Into this inferno plunged thirty undamaged thermonuclear missiles, carefully spaced to avoid fratricide. One after another their blasts bored underground, ripping through the moon’s crust a kilometer at a time, tunneling under the surface. Commander Ford had precisely predicted this phase, and his calculations did not err. In the end a shaft one kilometer wide and thirty long angled downward, aiming toward a place beneath where the laser must be.

Chapter 12

SystemLord’s consternation at losing six cruisers to the Human commander’s cunning trap turned to relief as he saw the failure of the enemy nuclear missiles to destroy the Weapon. A valiant and clever effort, he silently saluted, but I have you now.

Monitor’s brains synthesized data from its senses and displayed it visually on hemiscreens. They showed the Human fleet aiming for the edge of the moon base with obvious intention to finish the job. Should that force reach its beam range, it could probably bore the rest of the way through the surface and begin to damage the installation.

Therefore, this was the time to close with the enemy.

Not without finesse, of course. SystemLord ordered Monitor and his cruisers to remain behind the invisible line in space that marked the farthest traverse of the Weapon. Geometry, like physics, had no mercy; as both fleets approached the base, they must inevitably converge, and this would force the Humans within his weapon range…or they must break off.

Either case should bring victory.

***

“Laser still firing?” asked Absen.

“No, sir, it switched off after the last missile blew.”

“Any chance we got it with the nukes?”

Scoggins shook her head. “I don’t think so, skipper. The surface radius of the laser dome is about forty klicks. The nukes wouldn’t have reached it with blast or radiation, and if this base is as tough as their ships, ground shock won’t have done it either.”

“Fair enough,” Absen responded. “The plan is still on track.”

“Their fleet is moving to get between us and the base, sir,” Ford said, pointing at the holotank while Scoggins was distracted with her analysis.

“As expected. Mister Okuda, just make damn sure we stay out of that thing’s arc.”

“Yes, sir. We are decelerating along roughly the same path as the railgun blast and the missiles, as if we are also going to attack the base from the edge.” Okuda touched a control and their pathway appeared in the tank, showing the enemy coming in from the front side on a converging course.

Scoggins cried, “Conn, Sensors, I have missile launch! Approximately eight hundred.”

“Acknowledged. Stick to the plan.” Absen white-knuckled the arms of his chair, with no orders to give and no way to further influence the battle – as long as the enemy did as expected. The lack of StormCrows is going to hurt, he thought, but at least the hypers won’t have very long to get up speed. Without explosive warheads, the enemy missiles were most effective at long range, after gathering all the velocity they could.

In holotank view, the task force closed up as planned. With no small craft to fill the gaps and pick off missiles, it was imperative to tighten their formation, maximizing mutual support. In fact, they packed themselves in far tighter than doctrine advised, but doctrine had never envisioned a fleet of twenty-seven warships under acceleration absorbing a heavy missile strike with no fighters. Only the hundreds of tiny laser drones would assist, but as these could not maneuver with the fleet they would only be useful for a few seconds after launch, until the hard-driven ships would draw away.

This tight deployment allowed Absen some measure of absolution for what he was about to do, for this was the last cast of the dice, and thus he could afford to trade ship hulls for lives. He watched as his remaining twelve missile frigates, empty of weapons and crew, and under computer control, placed themselves deliberately in the path of the heaviest hyper groups and released their hollowed box launchers. One hundred and fifty-six distinct targets absorbed an equal number of missiles, giving their mechanical all in hopes of preserving the rest.

“Nukes!” Scoggins suddenly cried. “I have nuclear detonations among the frigates and boxes!”

“Damn. I should have thought of that,” groused Ford. “With these hypers launched so close and slow, they could afford to put some nuclear warheads on them.”

“Can you tell which are which?”

“Too late, sir –” …and Ford was right, the incoming wave was only seconds away.

Rick Johnstone listened at the CyberComm station, much of his mind in the link and watching virtually. Most never knew what he did for them but he constantly facilitated computer projections and analyses, pulling information from Intel in anticipation, tweaking certain weapons to make them more effective – in short, he was the unseen grease in the gears. Much of the time what he did went beyond regulations, and he often stepped on others’ authority, always sub rosa. He’d never told them, though he thought Absen suspected.

In this case it took him and the chips in his head only a fraction of a second to identify the nuke-equipped hypers, from the slight differences in their signatures, and override the priorities on the fleet’s integrated defense system. Now, whenever the automatics made a choice, the defense beams, electromagnetic shotguns, antimissile-missiles and laser drones targeted the deadliest threat.

When the hyper storm was over, one more beam cruiser and two assault carriers – along with all of the frigates – were broken, and the remaining ships survived varying levels of further damage. Only the battleship Flensburg, by now with a reputation as a divinely lucky ship, had lost nary a crewman, neither from its original complement nor from those it had rescued from its sisters.

“Conn: Sensors, bogeys closing, sir.”

Absen could see the projected tracks of the Guardian and the remaining seventeen enemy cruisers accelerating to intercept them. Now the calculus reversed: the Meme fusion weapons, powerful as they were, had much shorter reach. Threatening the moon base was forcing the enemy to charge into EarthFleet’s optimum ranges.

Absen ordered, “Helm, adjust course toward the landing force. When they get spotted, the enemy will probably lunge at them. Begin harassing fire with railguns and keep the beams spread to dazzle. Let’s seem weaker than we are.” He kept his eyes on the holotank, where the hundreds of StormCrows and assault sleds showed as a cluster of icons. “When do they start their decel?”

“Coming up right now, sir,” Ford responded. A pause. “There’s the burn.”

Scoggins joined in, “Assault force decelerating. Enemy is reacting…sir, their frigates behind us just went to maximum toward the assault force. Main fleet is still on intercept with us.”

Absen snapped, “Tell the fighters to go after the frigates to cover the landing. Ford, use Conquest’s weapons and support them from long range.”

Ford did so, concentrating the dreadnought’s beam weapons to focus their entire output on the lead frigate. Under that electromagnetic pounding, it sheered off and dove away wounded, perhaps dying.

StormCrow fusion engines flared full as they clawed their way backward, thrusting toward the flanking Meme frigates. Soon twoscore fighters englobed every enemy frigate, diving and swooping, stinging with their masers and tiny close-in weapon suites like swarms of killer bees.

***

“Yeehah!” Vango hollered as he stitched his maser along the skin of an enemy frigate, leaving trails of bubbling flesh. The microwave laser, frequency-optimized to heat water just like a microwave oven, instantly turned all H2O in its path to steam, bursting cells a meter deep.

Consciousness expanding as never before, he and Helen became an integrated being, a flying creature with death in its eyes and killing joy in its wings. Skidding sideways to avoid a collision, they clawed Weaver around and fired again as soon as their weapon recharged even while flying backward. The maser, like an old-fashioned fighter gun, aimed by moving the whole ship, but nothing said the ship had to be going forward.

Vango-Helen watched admiringly as one of their squadron-mates made a close flyby, turning to shoot sideways as momentum took them past. Admiration turned to grief and rage as a close-in fusion beam blossomed from a sudden sphincter in the frigate’s hide, washing across the Crow with deadly effect. Melted remains spun onward in a ballistic course, barely recognizable as a fighter. Son of a bitch! Neither was sure which of them spoke in the link.

By then Weaver had come back around. Lining up carefully, they dropped a targeting lock onto an ugly wound on the frigate’s side and fired again. That’s the way to take these bastards down, Vango thought. Keep hitting them where it hurts, don’t let them heal. He thought he saw a shudder of pain ripple through the enemy as they flashed along the length of the ship, under continuous acceleration.

Near space filled with tiny projectiles as Helen strafed secondary weapons fire into the enemy at point-blank range. “Engine!” she screamed through the link and Weaver yawed sideways, gouging a bubbling trench in the enemy skin with her fusion drive. Then they were past.

In response the frigate ignited its own, much larger, drive engine. The edge of the stacked-plasma propulsion wave, a makeshift weapon, caught the StormCrow and flung her end for end like a twirled baton.

Within the link, Vango fought to keep away from the torch of the enemy drive as it swung ponderously, a blunt instrument no less deadly for its unwieldiness. Lighting his engine in precise spurts, he both reduced their rate of tumble and kept Weaver out of the plasma fire until they were far enough away, amazing even himself. That software again, he thought. Thank you, Rick.

“Damn, we lost two whole wingpods to that thing,” Helen swore. “Everything in three and four is melted to slag.”

“At least that’s all we lost,” Vango responded. “It could have been a lot worse.”

“I hate your cheery attitude, you know that, don’t you?” she groused.

“How can you complain? Did you ever feel so alive?” Weaver stable once more, he looked for the nearest enemy frigate, checked his fuel supply – just under half – and lined up for another run.

“You’re just happy because you got the biggest gun,” Helen grumbled.

“Not touching that line,” he snorted. “Get ready, here we go again.”

***

Absen watched the holotank, as each time a frigate died its Crows swarmed and pecked at others, chewing up still more of them. Enemy warships clawed frantically through the flock, murdering as they went, but only three won free to race for the Marine landing force.

“Ford, retarget those three frigates, I want them dead!” Absen pounded his gloved fist on his chair as he watched the three vessels – small compared to his capital ships, but still dozens of times larger than the landing craft and a thousand times as deadly.

Ford’s fingers played across his controls, physical and virtual, issuing instructions to the targeting computer that really aimed Conquest’s lasers – for nothing else was precise enough. Unbeknownst to him, Rick Johnstone’s mind brushed feathers of thought through the system, refining computer plots using his virtual intuition. Between the two of them their lasers destroyed the first frigate, the second – then the third was among the landing craft.

“I can’t get it, they’re too close!” Ford yelled in frustration, then cried in shock as somehow his command to cease fire went ignored. “What the hell? We’re still firing!”

Concentrating on the final frigate even as it threaded among landing craft slashing helpless assault sleds out of space, Conquest’s entire energy output channeled itself through her beam generators, cooking the enemy ship, along with one of the cargo pinnaces and an assault sled.

“I have no idea how that happened!” Ford cried, pounding on his console. “We killed our own people!”

A string of sailor’s profanity ended only when Admiral Absen brutally overrode him, “Get a grip on yourself, Ford. You destroyed the last frigate. You had to, or it would have eaten more of our ships and Marines. Two boats were a small price to pay.” The admiral glared at the weapons officer a moment more before sweeping his eyes across the bridge. “It had to be done.” They all have to believe it, or lose their souls.

At CyberComm, Rick ran his hand across his board below his bowed head, wiping a few stray droplets from the glass and shaking his head to clear his vision. I had to do it, he thought to himself through hot tears of agony. That’s what the Admiral said. I had to do it, God forgive me, and don’t let it be Jill.

Reaching out slowly with his mind, he intended to wipe the record of his interference – of overriding the weapons to keep them on target despite the cost – before letting the idea lapse. If I erased the evidence, I would be admitting it was wrong. At best it was an ugly necessity. At worst, I usurped command authority – but there was no time to ask permission. I’ll just have to let the admiral judge me, and take whatever punishment he gives.

Ford called, “Sir, two dozen hypers…targeted at the landing. Must be all they have left right now. And their remaining ships coming toward us. Effective range in one minute ten seconds.”

Absen replied, “Helm, move Conquest to try to pick some of those hypers off; Ford, get on that. They probably have nuclear warheads. Rick, tell those Crows to haul ass back to cover the landing and try to intercept those hypers. Warn the assault craft. Keep the battleships and cruisers harassing their fleet, if they’re healing damage they can’t be gestating more hypers. And now that there’s nothing sneaking up on us, send the assault carriers behind the moon, they’re a useless liability in a ship-to-ship fight. Tell them to go EMCON and rig for silent running.”

Acknowledgements echoed around the bridge as the Admiral examined his shrunken combat command on the monitor. Mighty battleships Flensburg and York remained, cruisers Georgetown, Sydney, Kolkata and Oslo – and Conquest herself. Seven combat ships, his toughest, best – and luckiest – against sixteen cruisers and one superdreadnought. Absen imagined the fusion beams on that ship, a ship that dwarfed Conquest like a watermelon dwarfed an apple, and he shuddered.

“Opening fire,” Ford called as the two fleets closed to within a million kilometers.

“Stick to the plan, Mister Ford,” Absen said calmly.

“Beams firing. Launching the warheads.”

One specially-configured railgun on each ship launched larger shot, spreading in a pattern to widely disperse and overlap the enemy’s predicted course. These projectiles were massive, in the neighborhood of one ton apiece, big enough to be easily detected by the Meme, therefore easy enough to dodge. At the same time, beam cruisers burned holes in the enemy ships, forcing several to fall back behind the Guardian to heal.

Now the two remaining battleships’ primary railguns, coordinated with those of Conquest, released streams of steel balls by the millions, chased by gravplates into the hoppers, flowing down the feed tubes, and spat toward the enemy. Each round shot would take about thirty seconds to travel this distance, catching up and passing outside the large, slow shot just before those arrived.

Absen knew the enemy could also detect those streams at these ranges, as densely packed as they were. Like great lines of machinegun bullets, the twisting strings of railgun shot forced the enemy to dodge, or be badly hurt.

Dodge, that is, into the path of the special weapons.

Most of those projectiles were simply what they looked like – balls of high-quality chromium steel laced with a matrix of ferrocrystal for strength. Perhaps one out of a hundred was something else entirely.

Fusion beams lashed out from the Meme, some picking dozens of the heavy balls out of space at a time, some washing across clusters of thousands or even millions of ordinary rail shot, turning the metal briefly to gas before it cooled to fine molecular dust. With a quarter of a billion steel spheres to engage, however, the Meme simply could not destroy them all.

“Come on, you sons of bitches. Come to papa…” Ford chanted as he caressed his console. “Now!” His finger mashed down on a large, somewhat anachronistic red button.

Three seconds later two hundred neutron-enhanced nuclear mines, hidden among the thousands of large railgun shot, detonated in a rough globe that surrounded and interpenetrated the enemy fleet. When the EMP faded and the sensors cleared, only five enemy cruisers appeared to be alive but limping away. The rest drifted crippled through the void or were destroyed outright.

All the bridge crew cheered until Absen waved a calming hand. “Good job. As I said, stick to the plan. But it’s not over yet. Reverse course and keep firing. Hold them at range as long as you can.”

The Guardian, shrugging aside the deadly blasts with seeming indifference, still thrust forward at its maximum acceleration, intent on bringing its massive close-range weapons into play. Absen did not need to know their exact specifications to believe they would be devastating. Conquest was built to go head to head with a Meme Destroyer – a ship of a size equal to her own – and win every time, but this thing…he had not known fear for himself in some time, but now he felt as if death itself approached.

Worse even than death was failure, and he resolved, as always, that was unthinkable. At least a million human lives depended on him and his valiant crews.

“The landing is down, sir,” Scoggins called, bringing Absen’s mind back to the greater battle. “They are all in the tunnel and the StormCrows killed off all the hypers.”

“Then our job is to duel with this thing as long as we can, and buy them time.”

***

Battle armor is almost as good as a crash couch, Sergeant Major Repeth lied to herself as the G forces squeezed her like toothpaste in a tube. Active link feeds from the assault sled’s sensors gave her a sense of place: one of hundreds of boats streaming down the kilometer-wide tube leading underground.

Under full decel she could feel her eyes sinking in her sockets as Eden Plague and combat nano struggled to repair cellular damage. Gravity waves roiled her inner ear as the minimal gravplates struggled to keep the Gs within human tolerances.

Just barely.

At least they’re not shooting at us yet, she thought as the forces moderated and Lockerbie put them on the surface of the tunnel in what could only be describe as a controlled crash. Drop-ramps slammed down front and back, venting residual air in a swirl of oxygen snow.

Repeth stood up, hefting her PRG-45 and checking its action before yelling over the squadcomm link, “All right, everyone up and get off my sled! This ain’t a ruttin’ dayroom you sodding diggers. You got two choices: kick alien ass or chew bubblegum, but you ain’t been issued no stinkin’ bubblegum, so unless you want my petite size eight where the sun don’t shine you will un-ass this vehicle and get to it! GO GO GO!”

Nine out of ten of the troops inside did just that, but one remained hunched over, suited arms wrapped around his armored knees. “Holsinger!” Repeth yelled, stomping over to shake him. “Get the hell up and moving.”

The man just stayed there shaking, so she linked in to his suit and overrode his comms so she could hear him sobbing, blubbering. Snatching his weapon, she unbuckled him then placed a booted foot on his shoulder, shoving him sideways to tumble down the ramp. As soon as his battlesuited body rolled beyond the sled’s gravplates he bounced off the ground, to settle again slowly in the 0.1 G.

Cursing at him, she slung her own weapon and grabbed his suit’s tow handle, setting him effortlessly on his feet. Projecting her words into his suit, she whipped him with her voice. “Holsinger, pull your head out of your ass and get moving. Your squad is already a hundred meters ahead of you. Are you going to let them down?”

More blubbering was all she heard. Dammit, she told herself, every once in a while a newbie can’t hack it. Most are brave, but some are just cowards. Calling up the location of the medical sleds, she hauled the worthless troop through lines of Marines debarking from their craft until she found the one she was looking for. Throwing Holsinger roughly at the corpsmen there, she then stripped him of his back-rack and weapon, tossing it down near an empty sled for a better man to use.

Hurrying after her troops, Repeth soon came to Bravo Company’s assembly area and informed the sergeant that her squad would be a man down. Squadcomm HUD showed her where Bull was, standing on top of a combat crawler, surveying the situation. Jumping lightly up, she clapped him on the shoulder. “Sorry, boss. Had to deal with a troop issue.”

Bull grunted and pointed at the ragged thousand-meter-high wall in front of them at half a klick’s distance, where the heavy transports disgorged the division’s six remaining laser bores. “Seismics say it’s only eight hundred meters to the nearest tunnel. They should be through in two minutes.

The bores, enormous lasers on squat crawlers, disembarked ponderously from their carriers, then wheeled around in unison. Their carriers took off on minimum thrusters, clearing the area to the rear. Moments later the Marines’ visors dimmed to almost nothing as the blazing beams began to chew into rock and soil.

At first there was no sound, only some trembling felt through boots as debris blasted backward to fall slowly to the ground, but as the tunnel filled with released gasses the Marines began to hear the rumbling hisses and pops of disintegrating materials. Within the predicted two minutes the lasers winked out, to reposition themselves and do it all over again. Soon twelve glassy tunnels, each twenty meters wide, stretched forward into the underground.

Side by side the Marine armored vehicles lined up to enter: heavy tanks each with a railgun in its turret and four smaller lasers facing the cardinal points. There weren’t many of them –Marines were mostly battlesuited infantry – but there were enough to assign a pair to each tunnel.

Of course, eight hundred meters was very close range for heavy weapons. So, over the heads of the tanks the laser bores adjusted to narrow beam and raised their beams to become support weapons. Repeth and Bull watched as they fired pulses every few seconds down the rapidly-cooling tubes, just to suppress whatever was at the other end.

“Okay, here we go,” Bull said as the initiation order came over the command net. “Bravo Company, you know the drill, assault muster as briefed.” He watched as each line platoon took its place then broke into squads. Below him his heavy-weapons platoon picked up their two semi-portable beamers, squat crew-served lasers attached by heavy cables to fusion generators. Eight Marines carried each awkward two-part load with practiced ease in the low gravity: after all, they had trained in 1.4G for the planet below.

Rumbling forward over the fused tunnel floors, the heavy tanks kicked up fantails of scree with their biting metal treads. As soon as they disappeared into the tubes, Bravo Company Marines streamed into the leftmost tunnel behind them.

“This feels like a deathtrap,” Repeth said to Bull privately as they jogged. “We haven’t a clue what they have waiting for us. Sure wish we could just send a missile ahead and nuke the crap out of them.”

“What, you wanna live forever?”

“Yeah, I was hoping.”

“You heard all the briefings, Smaj. We’re Marines, we’re here to assault and hold this thing. Too useful to just blow up.”

“Teach your grandmother. Just wishing.” Another almost-invisible laser bolt flashed by, briefly igniting the flying dust over their heads, then the tunnel shook with concussion. Up ahead, one of the heavy tanks skewed sideways and burned, its main turret blown off and dangling by power cables. Flames blazed up, then snuffed as they used up all the oxygen leaking from the crew cabin.

“Scheisse,” Bull cursed without heat. “First platoon, get up there and support that remaining heavy. Anyone see what got it?” A rush of armored troops covered the hundred yards at a bounding glide, the low gravity more of a hindrance than a help. Taking positions on each side, they began firing intermittently down the tunnel at unseen targets.

“Some kind of rocket, sir.”

Bull ordered, “Keep suppressive fire forward. Start popping some grenades at them, they should have almost no arc. Only four hundred meters to go.” He and Repeth moved forward next to the two semi-portables, half the company in front and half behind. Soon they could see sparkles beyond their own troops, though whether those were enemy muzzle flashes or friendly impacts there was no way to be sure.

Incoming streaked over their heads then, to detonate against the ceiling behind them. Their instinct was to duck, but their battlesuits were proof against flying debris. Falling rock was another story. Screams and curses came over the platoon net, and Bull snapped to Repeth, “Go see to that. I’ll keep pushing.”

“Roger.” Hurrying back, she grabbed Marines and turned them around in the direction of the rockfall that half-blocked the tunnel behind them. “Bravo Company, this is Sergeant Major Repeth. Everyone near this cave-in start digging our people out!” she ordered, then, “You too, Lieutenant, if you please, sir, get your people working!”

The green officer looked torn between supporting the attack and doing what she said, so she switched to a private channel and went on, “Sir, do what I say or your people will never forgive you, and neither will I. We have to clear the tunnel, we have to get our people out from under the rock.”

“Right, Sergeant Major,” he responded shakily, turning toward the mound of rubble. “All right Third Platoon, you heard the sergeant major, start putting those fancy augmentations to use!”

Marines swarmed over the mountain of rock, picking up and throwing hundred-kilo stones with cybernetic strength, digging loose dirt and gravel with their hands, and soon began pulling armored figures out. Repeth, now certain the rescue effort was well in hand, slapped the Third Platoon lieutenant on the helmet to get his attention. “Sir, you take charge here please, I’m going forward. I suggest you clear a path along the edges and direct the rest of the company to hustle by you and support the assault. Once you’re sure you have everyone, you’re the reserve.”

“Got it. Good hunting, Reaper.”

“You got it…Safari, is it?”

“Sarfati. Close enough, I’ll take it.” He grinned through his faceplate. “Thanks.”

“That’s your new handle then, butterbar sir.” Slapping his armored shoulder, she bounded off at full speed after Bull.

Coming upon the second heavy tank, she could see most of its treads blown off but its gun was still operational. Unfortunately the Marine infantry had swept past, so it had no targets in the narrow corridor. Its crew was already outside the vehicle breaking track to effect repairs.

Hopeless, she thought to herself as she jogged past the immobilized vehicle. No time. Ships are dying up there. Ahead she could see the tunnel exit, with one squad holding in place, weapons ready but not firing. “Swede,” she called, recognizing the stripes and name Gunderson painted on the back of his armor, “what we got?”

“Boss said to hold until the rest of the company gets here. He took First and Second Platoons and the semis down that tunnel.” Swede pointed to the leftmost of three ten-meter wide tunnels exiting the large room their position overlooked.

Cautiously Repeth approached the lip of the tunnel in which they stood, ten meters up from the floor. The laser bores had dropped a large mass of rockslide against the back of the stadium-sized chamber, crushing some kind of machinery beneath it. Above and across, two smaller tunnels showed above the rubble.

“There!” she said, then shoved Swede sideways. They fell slowly as impacts pocked puffs of rock-shrapnel off the floor. “Tunnels, ten o’clock high!”

The rest of the squad lit up both tunnel entrances with their PRGs, portable railguns that fired heavy ferrocrystal BBs at breathtaking velocities. Thousands of rounds funneled crashing into the openings and the enemy fire stopped immediately in a cloud of rock shrapnel.

“Have we even seen the enemy?” Repeth asked.

“Neg. That was the first fire we took,” Swede replied as they bounded to their feet. Looking back the way they had come, he pointed. “Here they are.”

Repeth turned to see a double line of Marines approaching fast, so she said to Swede, “Go follow Bull. I’ll direct traffic here.” As soon as he and his squad had jumped down to the floor, she held up her hands to slow the approaching troops and tell them what to do.

***

“All right, we’ve gotten the landing force there, now they’re on their own,” Absen declared. “And so are we. Leave one wing of Crows there to cover the Marines, the rest to rendezvous with us. Any that can’t fight, return to the carriers.”

“Aye, sir,” Commander Johnstone responded, passing the orders.

“Sir,” Okuda spoke up, “the Guardian is still accelerating faster than we can fall back. They will catch us behind the moon.”

“No, we need to stay in view of the planet,” Absen replied. “Keep off to the side, don’t let it eclipse our view.”

Okuda opened his eyes and turned to stare at the Admiral, who stared back imperturbably. The helmsman’s eyes seemed to ask, what is it you’re not telling me? Absen shook his head imperceptibly, and Okuda closed his eyes again. Turning back to his cockpit he plunged back into his virtual senses.

“Crossing six hundred thousand klicks,” Ford called. “I think we’re getting more standard railgun hits, but only because their fusion beams are picking off all of the specials.”

“How’s the ammo holding out?”

Ford shook his head. “We’re using a lot, flinging it at them at long range like this. Most of it is missing, and I have to keep the pattern spread or the Guardian will just dodge the whole thing. It’s a tradeoff between concentrated damage and hit probability.”

“I didn’t ask for a tactical analysis, Ford. Tell me how long can we keep up our fire.”

Ford dipped his head. “At this rate we’ll run out of railgun shot well before he catches us. Perhaps ten minutes.”

“Cut it back to harassing fire, then. Keep tossing a few large rounds, force him to destroy them, but save the nukes.”

Fifteen long minutes went by as the Guardian chased them and they held their range open, pecking away at the giant sphere. Coming on inexorably, it seemed like a force of nature instead of warship.

***

Your job is not to fight, Jill, Repeth reminded herself. Your job is to lead, direct and support. That’s why she waved platoon after platoon past her and into the tunnels, until finally Third Platoon, Safari in the lead, jogged up to her.

“Echo Company is three hundred meters back, by the tank,” Safari explained. “Major Choi insists on getting the rest of the armor past the disabled heavy before his infantry deploys.”

Her first instinct to go back and browbeat the cautious company commander into moving lost out to her duty to Bravo Company and her own people. “All right. I sent Fourth, Fifth and Sixth platoon through that center tunnel, Seven and Eight to the right. They are meeting light resistance and pushing forward into a large underground complex. I can’t get through to Bull with First and Second, so I respectfully suggest we haul ass up and find out what’s going on. Sir.”

“Yes, mother,” Safari quipped. “THIRD PLATOON, FOLLOW ME!” Forty Marines did just that, in two loose lines, leaping lightly to the floor ten meter below then bounding forward into the tunnel. Automated stabilization programs fired tiny bursts of suit jets to keep them upright and moving correctly, but even so more than one of the diggers – the green troops – managed to bounce himself off the ceiling.

Repeth brought up the rear, sending her squadcomm ultra-wideband ranging ahead, querying on the command net. Finding nothing, she tried First platoon’s freq, then Second.

Bingo.

Gabbles of combat came though in broken pieces, sounds of a firefight. “Third platoon, I hear Second in a furball up ahead, look sharp.”

A moment later something slammed her sideways, driving her into the starboard tunnel wall. Zero-G reflexes took over as she turned off her stabilizer and flipped upside down in midair, kicked off the ceiling, then rotated back upright. Something big…

Out of a steampunk nightmare reared a boring machine, rotating cones covered with carbon teeth tearing at the tunnel walls. It had thrown her across the room with a spray of rock and now ground forward into the other side of the tube, crossing as if to create a perpendicular access. A few seconds only and it was through, spitting gravel and dust behind it.

On its heels came armored Hippos, enormous beings three meters tall weighing a ton each carrying weapons to match. She found herself all alone behind the mass pushing into the tunnel as the enemy turned to follow Third Platoon. “THIRD, AMBUSH REAR!” she screamed across her squadcomm, but it was too late.

Pulses of plasma from the Hippo’s huge guns ripped apart the rear ranks of Third platoon. In response Repeth detached all eight grenades from their niches in her armor and used her link to set them for command detonation even as she pitched them in a group under the enemy’s feet.

Only one creature was looking her way; the Hippo unit had obviously had some form of observation that allowed them to time their ambush to when the Marines had gone past, and did not expect resistance from her direction. Perhaps, also, they underestimated the humans for their size, so much smaller than they and not to be taken seriously.

Repeth changed their minds.

Snatching her PRG up again she drilled the Hippo as it swung its weapon in her direction. On full auto a one-second burst sent over one hundred ferrocrystal BBs in a tiny reproduction of the battleships’ railguns, different only in its scale. At 50,000 meters per second each one-gram projectile penetrated her target’s armor and, after slowing inside flesh, ricocheted around inside the creature. It collapsed boneless on the ground, but not before a bolt of green plasma bounced off the tunnel wall and washed over her in a wave of heat.

Sending the command to detonate, she leaped backward and curled into a ball. Shockwave sent her rolling for a hundred meters down the tunnel before she could skid to a halt. Her HUD showed the Hippos knocked down like bowling pins but several were still firing and, except for the one she had railgunned, none seemed dead.

Tough bastards, she told herself, just as briefed. So much for them coming in on our side.

Then the pain hit her.

She felt as if her entire body had been steam-cooked – and perhaps it had. Dead epidermis ripped loose all over and sent debilitating agony though her nervous system. Gasping, she sent an order through her suit link to give her a double dose of painkiller and stims, and then tried to keep still. I’ll heal, just need time, she told herself. Automated systems pumped nutrient solution into her veins to give her Eden Plague something to work with.

Repeth’s grenades had nevertheless given Third Platoon a chance to recover, and now thousands of stray BBs came her way as her comrades fired at the Hippos. “Fire low! Skip your rounds!” she yelled on the platoon push. “I’m still back here!” Hugging the ground, she hoped they understood. As long as the tiny spheres struck the floor, then a wall or two, her armor could probably keep her safe.

Green plasma flashed her direction as more Hippos poured through the hole in the side wall. Too damned many. They are cutting us off, she thought. They’ll roll us up if that bastard Choi doesn’t get here soon. Low-crawling backward with her suit jets holding her to the floor was a nightmare of pain and torture, but soon she scrambled around a bend in the corridor and tried to make contact with Echo Company. Finally she got ahold of Major Choi on the command freq. “Echo One, this is Bravo November One, Bravo Company is cut off by a Hippo counterattack, we need you to push up and relieve!”

Choi replied, “We are having difficulty getting our tanks down the slope, you will just have to hold.” With that he cut the connection.

Swearing a blue streak, Repeth used her suit jets to blast herself down the corridor, using all her zero-G skill to avoid slamming against the walls and ceiling, the pain finally dulling. Bursting out of the tunnel mouth into the open space where they had paused before, she saw confusion reigned as a couple of hundred Marines set to moving rubble, apparently trying to build a ramp for the two heavy tanks to crawl down.

In normal gravity that would have been insane, but on this small moon it could probably be done, barely – but her people were dying back there. Switching coded frequencies she addressed her counterpart in Echo Company, Sergeant Major Charlie McCoy. “Charlie, this is Jill, I got three platoons getting wacked by Hippos up there in the left tunnel, we have to get the infantry up to relieve them! There’s no time for these tanks!”

“Roger, Jill, I’ll handle it.”

Repeth switched to the brigade net, a bold but necessary move, as Bravo Company had been on the southernmost tunnel and had been attacked from the south, being hit first. “Brigade TOC any station this is Two Bravo November One with flash traffic. Hippo digging machines attacking from the south, have already intersected friendly tunnels and Hippos are counterattacking in at least company strength. Repeth out.” No time for more, that will have to do.

A moment later two line platoons with Echo company’s semi-portables scrambled down the slope toward her. She didn’t speak, just waved them to follow and began moving with all deliberate speed back toward the firefight, hoping there was someone there to rescue.

Coming upon the tunnel break she found nothing but several dead Hippos and two dozen fallen Marines farther along. It looked as if most of Third Platoon had been wiped out. She rolled one broken command-armored figure over, already knowing what she would see. Safari. Nothing has a shorter lifespan than a butterbar in his first battle, she thought, God rest his soul.

Flashes and shocks rippled from up ahead while the borrowed Echo Company troops caught up. Repeth said to their lieutenant on the local freq, “Suggest you leave one man at this intersection and when the rest of Echo comes up, send a probe each direction. You might catch some Hippos napping, or kill that digging machine. The rest, let’s get going.”

Pushing herself to her limits – not of strength or endurance, but of balance – she bounded down the low tunnel, skidding and using suit jets profligately, leaving the others behind. Suit air showed less than half now, but she knew she could always recharge off a dead Marine’s armor, so she ignored the risk.

Five hundred meters and several turns later she saw the flashes of the Hippos’ green-plasma weapons. Stopping short, she eased her head around the bend in the tunnel to see a mass of enemy firing in the other direction, perhaps thirty to forty deployed in a wide spot. Two of them faced her way, but did not seem to see her.

It appeared the enemy was bottlenecked in front of a narrow place, with brisk Marine fire coming at them through the small opening perhaps two Hippos wide. One alien edged up to try to fire its weapon around the lip of the circular entrance but was cut down by a bright orange laser flash.

They have one semi-portable still functioning, she thought. That’s the only thing that can do wholesale damage to these monsters. Peering back, she called, “Get up here, we can take them in the rear! Form on me!” Repeth pulsed her suit marker lights once to show them where she was in the dark, for the battle HUD overlay skipped and shuddered in these tunnels.

It seemed ages but was probably only thirty seconds before almost one hundred Marines lined up in a very old-fashioned, almost Napoleonic line formation. “All right, like a door, people, like a parade ground right wheel. The two semis are the hinge on the right; crews will take ten steps forward and emplace. Everyone else keep your dress, I don’t want any fratricide, and just like the days of old, don’t fire until you are lined up nicely, I will give the order.” Everyone followed her instructions now as in the heat of battle no one cared that she was not in command, in fact not even part of their unit.

Somehow, Sergeants Major just seemed to get obedience.

“Forward, HARCH!” As one the line moved, keeping admirable discipline except for a few diggers that their fellows had to grab and haul back from charging. Ten steps later the semi-portables slammed to ground.

Green fire sprouted from the two Hippos on rear-guard first, cutting down five or six Marines as they played their plasma weapons across the line. “FIRE!” Repeth ordered as the rest of the enemy about-faced and began to draw beads.

Fourscore personal railguns and two semi-portable laser cannon turned a disciplined enemy formation into a pile of meat in less than three seconds. “Cease fire, cease fire!” Repeth called. Walking among the fallen foe, she kicked plasma guns away from their hands and looked for any still alive.

One of the Hippos reared up suddenly and she blasted it herself, joined by a line of bright orange from the semi. “All right, change of plan. Finish off the wounded,” she called. “They’re too damn big to take prisoner and it looks like they are not going to give up.” Against the Admiral’s policy, but these nonhuman sons of bitches had shown no sign of surrendering or rebelling against their Meme masters. It wouldn’t be the first time she’d face a court of inquiry for her actions. Sometimes the battlefield didn’t square with policy.

Pushing past the messy pile, she hailed through the bottleneck. “It’s all clear here; who’s back there? Bull?”

The hulking figure that stepped out could be only one man, with that garish Star of David painted on his oversized armor like a Jewish bull’s-eye. “Thanks, Reaper. Good to see you. Now let’s go finish this gefickende job.”

***

Absen stroked his chin with a gloved finger as his diminished fleet’s Parthian shots continued without effect. “Status report on the landing?”

“They’ve broken through into the underground complex and are driving back heavy resistance. Casualties are high, but General MacAdam says victory is inevitable,” Rick relayed confidently.

That’s what I said about the fleet action too, Absen thought to himself. Now I have to make it true.

“Skipper, the Guardian is turning…it’s heading toward the landing!”

“What’s the range from the orbitals to the Guardian?”

“Eight hundred thousand klicks and extending,” Scoggins answered. “Why, sir?”

Absen ignored the question. “Helm, reverse course on my mark, straight toward that bloody bastard. Just keep us away from the moon laser’s arc of fire. Ford, I want a phased barrage with all our remaining offensive missiles and all the railgun fire you can give me – including specials. We throw everything we have at him, empty the stores. Time it to strike all at once, missiles to converge from as many directions as possible, right about when we get within one hundred K of him.”

“Aye aye, sir.” Ford turned back to his board, unable to suppress the look of naked desperation he exchanged with Scoggins, who smiled reassuringly in return. Taking a deep breath, he fed in the Admiral’s instructions.

In the holotank the Earth fleet seemed to slow in its retreat, then move back at the Guardian, which described a slowly-increasing arc toward the moon. Red lines and icons sprouted from Conquest and her task force as the computer projected the ships and weapons’ paths. Railgun fire streamed to intercept, while clouds of missiles fired by Conquest’s launchers first spread outward, then converged, their plots intersecting at the Meme supercapital ship.

Dozens of enemy fusion beams licked out to pluck the human weapons out of space, but there were thousands of targets for the Guardian to fend off, even discounting the millions of railgun shot. As the range closed, more and more EarthFleet weapons struck the massive vessel, only to be absorbed, ignored.

On the main optical screen Absen saw the enemy ship change course back toward his fleet. “Good…we’re pulling him off the landing.” Abruptly a hole grew in the center of the Guardian, a swelling eye that opened where none had been before. “Helm, Conquest only, full reverse!” It was a horrifying order, a true commander’s decision made on intuition and instinct. Falling back for a moment, the dreadnought pushed away even as its six escorts bore forward like an honor guard, placing them squarely in the monster’s sights.

Suddenly the bridge saw battleship York’s fusion drive ignited to flank speed at the same time a handful of escape pods and ejectable modules shot forth from her doomed body. “What the hell is she doing?” Absen asked.

The only one on the bridge who knew refused to answer. In his virtual space, Rick Johnstone had foreseen the doom of the battleship as soon as he had calculated the aim of the Guardian’s superprimary fusion beam, and had used his stolen command codes to force the ejection of all possible occupied lifeboats. Simultaneously he had caused York to sprint directly at her enemy, ensuring the monster would focus on the battleship and nothing else.

At least I saved a few, damn me to hell, he thought. And maybe its armor will hold.

From the Meme ship’s eye jetted a fusion beam greater than any they had ever seen, ten times at least as powerful as any Destroyer had created – though not so incredible as the moonbase laser. It reached out and, like a blowtorch to a wax candle, struck York with a blazing belch of fused plasma hotter than a thousand suns.

For perhaps ten seconds her thick armor, the best EarthFleet technology could produce, held. Sloughing away in chunks and scales, soon enough even that stupendous shield gave way, and the rest of the ship and its remaining crew ignited as one, vaporized, and vanished.

Yet again, lucky Flensburg dodged her bullet, sailing on as the inferno extinguished and the Guardian’s deathly eye closed once more.

“Full forward!” Absen clamped down on his spiritual agony, knowing that the million colonists in his dreadnought’s womb must be protected, even to the sacrifice of the rest of his ships. Now trailing behind her screen of four cruisers and one lone battleship, Conquest continued flinging every weapon at her command.

“There’s no way we can stand up to that fusion beam, so we have to get in close and kill that ship – or at least, destroy the weapon,” Absen told the bridge crew as he watched. “Aim everything at its center so if that eye opens again we jam everything we have into it.”

“Approaching the hundred K mark. The Crows have joined us. Our multi-weapon convergence in three…two…one…mark.”

At least a dozen nuclear missiles reached the Guardian and a double handful of new suns briefly blazed against its skin, joined a moment later by two more of the special rounds. Great chunks of the enemy ship vaporized in the blasts, and holes hundred of meters wide and deep left ulcers on living flesh. Radiation and bomb-pumped grasers reached deep into the living moonlet, destroying quadrillions of cells of the organic machinery that sustained the beast. Railgun rounds tore into it and the fleet’s beam weapons burned holes in it.

It’s not enough. Admiral Absen and his officers watched in horror as the thing came on still, swelling on their screens and absorbing everything they could throw at it with utter indifference.

“All missiles and specials expended,” Ford spoke into the silence. “We’re empty. Railgun ammo below one percent. We do have the StormCrows now.” The holotank showed a cloud of five reduced wings, almost four hundred of the fighters, passing Conquest on course for their nemesis.

They know what’s at stake too, Absen thought. They didn’t even need orders. But they’re mosquitoes attacking an elephant. No, a dinosaur.

And then the eye opened again.

Straight into that maw the tiny task force poured all of its remaining energy weapons, hoping to at least force it to close, to stop that one vomiting surge of energy from visiting death upon another human ship.

It was not to be.

Again the torch blazed, a firework not of celebration but of doom, and the cruiser Georgetown was annihilated, made nothing.

As that terrible ship-sized weapon port closed, beginning its inevitable recharging, dozens of secondary fusion beams licked out to wash over the four brave ships, but this they could resist. Again and again the blasts touched; again and again the human vessels buttoned up firing ports and turned their armored shoulders to the enemy, and thus won through to continue savaging the Guardian.

Yet it was still not enough.

Zombielike, Admiral Henrich James Absen committed himself to the inevitable: he would have to sacrifice some, perhaps all of his command, using the only weapons remaining to him.

“Helm, tell our ships to enable automated engagement and flank speed, ramming procedure. Have every navcomp set fusion drive overload protocols to detonate on contact. Then abandon all ships. We’ll pick survivors up later. Tell them…tell them all: Godspeed and well done, Conquest fights on.”

***

Afrana swelled on Steadfast Roger’s virtual screen, growing by the minute until it filled the windshield. Ezekiel manipulated anachronistic knobs and turned large metal rheostats, meaningless representations of the exact instructions he gave to his stealthy ship.

Earthlike, the planet glowed green-blue beneath them, with less water but smaller land masses broken into dozens of large islands. Cyclonic weather systems raged across its face, and its ice caps were small.

“Hot world,” mused Shades.

“Yes, it averages ten degrees C higher than Earth, but the hippos like it even hotter, keeping to the equatorial regions. Unadapted humans would have to live poleward of the tropics,” Ezekiel responded. “At least the atmosphere is Earthlike. A moment…” Manipulating controls further, the view swung sideward even as the men felt G forces leak through.

Long minutes later he went on, “Okay, we’re in a fast elliptical orbit. Our deceleration burn is sure to be noticed. Now it gets dicey; we know the Meme do use bio-radio and bio-lasers to communicate and exchange data, but we’ve never caught them simply using an identity code. They do have several different electromagnetic beams aimed at us, trying to establish encrypted comms.” Ezekiel turned to Spooky. “Plan A or B?”

“Plan A, as we agreed,” the slim man said, smoothing his virtual moustache. “Maintain silence. We can always transmit an open Meme signal if they target us with a weapon.”

“As you wish. We should approach the orbital in about nine minutes.” Behind the virtual planet they could see a small yellow circle, a symbol of its location fast approaching its side. Moments later its eclipse ended as its leading edge cleared the planet. Like a speeding sun the spherical fortress rose and raced toward them in VR space, though in reality it was Steadfast Roger that overtook the space station.

“Now it gets interesting.” Their approach slowed perceptibly and the VR environment trembled. “Fast decel,” Ezekiel explained. “We’re completely visible as an unknown Meme ship coming in at emergency speeds. If these Hippos are anything like humans, they won’t risk firing on the superior race…yet.”

The three men exchanged glances, then returned their attention to the picture in front of them until the enormous orbital defense station loomed huge. Second only in size to the Guardian, it measured four or five kilometers across, larger than Conquest. Shades grabbed a brass rail as they maneuvered to the side, and Ezekiel shot him an amused glance. “Your body is in a cocoon. You don’t need to brace your virtual presence.”

“It makes me feel better,” he said defensively.

Growing larger and larger, the station filled the screen. It didn’t seem so different from some of the defense fortresses back in Earth’s solar system. Unlike the Meme ships, this one looked distinctly machinelike, with metal fixtures, radar arrays, lasers and missiles recognizable on its surface. Disturbingly, a number of these weapons systems tracked them as they moved closer.

“If they haven’t fired by now, they won’t,” Ezekiel said with a confidence he did not entirely feel. “See, I’m riding an unencrypted guide beam that smells like welcome.” Tapping a glass button, he highlighted the opening toward which they glided.

“Into the belly of the beast…” Shares misquoted.

“Indeed.” Spooky reached into the air and plucked a cigar from nothingness, took a deep drag, and made it vanish once more.

“Nice trick, that,” Shades remarked.

“Hmm. I have more,” he responded distantly as he stared at the tunnel they approached. “Put us back in our coffins, please.”

“See you momentarily,” Ezekiel responded as the VR space faded about them.

Both men woke up spitting fluid as their lungs cleared, and watched as the cocoons melded into the floor and left them lying naked upon it. Spooky was the first to move, rolling to his feet and reaching for his skinsuit and lightweight armor.

Shades copied his actions. “I still wish we were taking our sidearms,” he grumbled.

“Shall you fight a whole station full of five-hundred-kilo Hippos? If they really want to kill us our only chance is to escape in Steadfast Roger. Besides, we are taking weapons.” Spooky tossed Shades straight-bladed sword. “As briefed, their warriors wear edges weapons as a mark of status, but our best chance is Ezekiel talking to them. If that doesn’t work…just try to disarm then and force a parlay. Speak of the devil…”

The two men watched as Ezekiel’s cocoon split and deposited him on the floor, absorbing into the substance of the bio-ship. The Blend rolled lithely to his feet and dressed himself in an elegant saffron robe, as Intel reported befit a high-status Hippo official.

Shades and Spooky checked each other over, then turned to Ezekiel for approval, who nodded. “Remember, you’re an honor guard. Let them make the first move.” Touching a wall to open the iris, he said, “Showtime.” Flanked by the two human warriors the Blend strode forward five steps and stopped.

Heat immediately struck them like a wet sauna, but the smell was more disconcerting: a barnyard and a pigsty rolled into one. Facing them, an honor guard of sixteen armed Hippo troops at rigid attention formed a V shape. Within its concave angle knelt a figure whose yellow robes almost matched Ezekiel’s.

Aptly named, the creatures’ gray skins and wide mouths resembled Earthly hippos, but they bore hands with four surprisingly delicate digits – each still far larger than those of a human – and stood upright, completely bipedal.

For almost a full second the tableau held its shape. Then all hell broke loose.

Clawing for weapons, the enormous Hippo warriors scattered in a dozen directions, clearly unnerved by the alien creatures appearing unexpected before them. Some advanced with naked blades; some pointed shiny ceremonial handguns that must still be functional. In the center, the official sat stunned on his haunches.

Spooky was already moving, Shades fractionally slower. With cybernetically-enhanced strength and nanobot-driven speed they struck with their swords, stabbing in a precise whirlwind that within three seconds left sixteen Hippo weapon-hands clutched, injured, in their sixteen opposites. Implements of destruction clattered on the floor unused.

One Hippo warrior, braver than the rest, reached again for his oversized pistol with his uninjured paw, until Shades leaped a half-dozen meters to place his blade at the offender’s throat.

“Kaja!” the Hippo official cried, raising a fist high. That one stared at Ezekiel in front of him, a comparatively tiny figure ripe for crushing. Its other arm reached slowly out toward the yellow-robed human.

Ezekiel reached as well, and they touched fingers.

Eyes on Hippo and man fluttered, then closed. Both seemed to relax, and their hands clasped for a long full minute, then released. Ezekiel stepped back and bowed, the Hippo climbing to his feet and then gravely doing the same. They stood upright in unison, and from the creature a coughing hiss came forth, an alien sound that nevertheless suggested an immensely pleased chuckle.

Turning around, he spoke a rapid series of syllables, and the embarrassed warriors carefully retrieved and put away their weapons, pairing up to expertly apply combat dressings from pouches on their harnesses.

The Hippo leader waved the humans forward, and Ezekiel explained, “Urkoch and I have reached an agreement. He will present us to this station’s military commander and guarantee us safe passage no matter what the outcome.”

“Could he be lying?” Shades asked.

“It’s very difficult to lie while exchanging chemical communication. They use the same Meme bio-language I do, so I am almost certain he’s being truthful.”

“Almost?”

Ezekiel shrugged. “I’m betting my life.”

“Good enough,” Spooky interrupted, eyes full of urgency. “Our people are fighting a battle out there, now get moving!”

They moved.

Hurrying through the station at a human trot to keep up with the aliens’ long-limbed strides, it was not long before they were ushered into the presence of a large, uniformed Hippo of immense gravitas, many ornaments decorating his harness. Standing behind a large desk, his beady eyes displayed searching intelligence, but his hands remained locked behind his back, away from his ceremonial dagger, unlike the guards, who had to restrain themselves from reaching for their weapons.

The commander barked, and reluctantly his soldiers withdrew from the room, though they left the door open. Urkoch the official briefly touched hands with the military officer. After a moment that one made a brusque inward-waving gesture at Ezekiel, as if to say, come here.

Fearlessly the Blend clasped hands with the Hippo, leaving the human fighters carefully watching the banished guards crowding the doorway. Teeth-grinding moments later they broke the touch-conversation, and Ezekiel turned to his comrades with a frown. “The General says he and his fellow officers will only change sides if the Eye of Terror – the moon laser – is inoperable. Once it is, he will take action, but not before.”

“Agreed,” replied Spooky. “Urge him to talk to his other commanders to make sure there is no misunderstanding.”

“He already has,” Ezekiel said. “The General said the Seekoi – the Hippos – have hoped and planned for this day ever since they learned of our first defense of Earth almost a hundred years ago – as they hope and plan and despair every time a new species is found and…absorbed, I think is the best translation.”

“Then they do want to rebel!” Shades exclaimed, grabbing and shaking Ezekiel’s saffron sleeve with excitement.

Spooky smiled inscrutably and blinked, bringing two fingers to his lips in an odd motion, almost as if kissing their tips, before dropping it back again. “Sorry, VR confusion,” he remarked, then reaching inside a pocket, he drew forth a packet of cigarillos and a silver-chased lighter. “Smoke?” he asked as the aliens stared at him in incomprehension. “No?” He lit one, then demonstrated by drawing in a lungful, holding out the pack..

The General laughed and reached delicately for the rolled tobacco. Dwarfed in his hand, he held a tube to his lips as Spooky gravely lit it, then drew in a puff. He coughed and laughed then, a deep raspy thing, before turning away to touch his desk. A large projection screen rolled down on one wall and a moment later they saw an iconic representation of the battle going on around the planet, their orbital defense station at its center. Then he sat down, motioning to the others to do the same.

“Hurry up and wait,” Shades muttered helplessly. “Even in an alien army, it’s always the same.”

“At least the smoking lamp is lit,” Ezekiel said, reaching for the pack.

“You people are lunatics,” Shades replied angrily.

“What else can we do?” Spooky asked, putting his hands behind his back. “The die is cast. Our message is delivered. We are in the hands of the gods.”

Shades nodded his head slowly. “If the gods are Hippos.”

Chapter 13

SystemLord felt the pleasure molecules of triumph wash through his body, but kept himself under rigid control. Anticipation was not reality and more than one fool of his compatriots had snatched defeat from the jaws of victory in the war against Species 447 so long ago. Those memories echoed in his protoplasm, still accessible from his honored ancestors.

Admittedly his attempt to stop the ground-force landing near the Weapon had failed, but even if the enemy seized the facility, its use was impossible without molecular codes that only pure Meme could generate. If worse came to worst, once he dealt with the enemy fleet he would simply destroy the installation: Weapon and enemy ground forces and all. Its loss would be painful but as long as Monitor lived, he could control the Underlings, the planet, and the system.

Even the costliest victory was better than defeat.

Two of seven enemy capital ships had been destroyed with Monitor’s main fusor, and he could see the Humans, finally understanding the futility of fighting, trying to escape in their puny life-craft. He left them alone; they could be captured and enslaved at leisure. Perhaps he would spawn some progeny to Blend with them, after resequencing their life codes to eliminate their sentience. Yes: his own personal Human Underlings to serve him, living trophies to his victory.

Musings dissolved as one of his Watchers alerted him to the strange behavior of the enemy before him. “SystemLord,” that subordinate said, “the four remaining smaller ships are accelerating on collision courses with us!”

“How long until primary fusor capacity?” he asked.

“Too long. They will strike us before it recharges.”

“Can we avoid them?”

“No, Lord. Even these sluggish human ships can maneuver more nimbly than Monitor.”

“Then use all the secondary fusors on the closest enemy. Suspend main fusor recharge.” SystemLord instructed Monitor to prepare itself for great pain and emergency healing. In response, the faithful animal began to thicken its skin and muster millions more squidlike patch cells, mindless creatures whose only function was to close wounds.

“We will be damaged, but will survive,” the Meme commander announced to all his subordinates, broadcasting also to the Underlings. He thought to again order them to fire on the enemy but deemed the effort pointless. If they feigned inability and ignored him yet again, nothing would be gained and they might become further emboldened. If they intended to help fight, they would have done so by now. In either case, they would be punished in good time.

For now, he watched the first enemy cruiser bore in.

***

“The gnats say it’s that way,” Bull said, pointing down one of the myriad of intersecting tunnels. “Energy readings are off the charts. Ah, they just killed one. That confirms it. Follow me.”

Grabbing his elbow, Repeth spun him around. “Sir,” she hissed on the private channel, “let your Marines do their jobs. You’re the company commander, not the point scout.”

Bull yanked his arm out of her grip and opened his mouth, staring down at her angrily through his armored faceplate. Her eyes blazed back at him from below and the protest died in his throat. Think, you dumb ox, her expression seemed to say, and he took a deep breath and forced himself to listen to her advice. “Right you are,” he said mildly, then ordered, “Scouts out.”

Watching as the lead squads detailed two Marines forward, he checked their link status to make sure they had good feeds from the fist-sized gnat drones scouting around them. His command HUD was more capable than a line Marine’s, so he could see what any one of them was seeing – which just reinforced his Sergeant Major’s coolheaded counsel.

“All right, standard deployment behind the scouts. Keep spread out.” Watching as a full platoon filed into the tunnel, Bull turned to those bearing the three semi-portable laser cannons he had left. “Heavy weapons next.”

“Nobody behind us.” Repeth grabbed an ultra-wideband repeater off a nearby Marine’s back-rack – every troop had one filled with easily-accessible devices, ammo and special weapons – and activated its sticky side. Leaping high in the low gravity, she slapped it against the tunnel ceiling at the last corner they had turned, ensuring comms to the rear.

“Good thinking. All right you maggots, you wanna live forever?” Bull grabbed a corner of the first semi, hefting a quarter of its thousand-kilo mass with ease as he and three others lifted and set off at double time behind the line platoon. The crews of the other company’s two semis and the remnants of Bravo company’s marines followed immediately.

Repeth shook her head good-naturedly. Gotta flex those muscles, she chuckled to herself. Turning to the last platoon leader she said, “Lieutenant, bring your platoon in behind me, and watch those sides and rear. Turn seismic sensors to maximum, and if you get something, tell me. They have boring machines and they like to sneak in behind us.” With that she followed the heavy weapons.

Dialing in a picture from one of the scouts, she could see the woman ease toward a sharp corner with a vertical jamb and smoothed floor rather than the rough cut of the ones they occupied. Like a VR game the view slid leftward to reveal a short length of well-lit and polished corridor with two Hippos standing fifty meters down it. Beyond them a heavy armored door squatted, looking solid as a bank vault. .

Bull watched the same picture as the view pulled back and showed the scout popping another gnat off her partner’s back-rack. Activating it, she launched it up to fly on tiny gas jets down the tunnel. It made it about halfway down before one of the guards spotted it and blasted it with his plasma rifle. A wash of green swept past as the scout withdrew.

“Only two,” she reported unnecessarily. “Easy take.”

Too easy, Bull thought. “Scouts, put two rockets on the doors. Keep in good cover, just shoot and scoot. Sergeant Kelle, get four or five guys to start chucking grenades down that corridor with variable fuses. Use some smoke, too. That looks too much like a gauntlet to me.” Who knows what sneaky surprises they got – stealthware, mines, ambush ports?

By this time the ragtag unit had closed up and Bull could see the two scouts as the rest lined the corridor hard against the walls. Prepping rockets, they leaned out low and high and fired them one-handed, jumping back before they even impacted.

Clouds of debris filled the tunnel and drifted back to the scouts. Four Marines ran up and rapidly rolled frag, shock and smoke grenades around the corner like left-handed bowlers. Small bursts blew more dust and explosion gasses around, creating a brief artificial atmosphere that obscured all vision.

Bull ordered, “Semis, move up and emplace before that smoke goes away, three across. As soon as you can, light up the walls, floor and ceiling. Strip everything off the whole surface. Someone launch another gnat and send it right down the middle.”

Right down the middle it went, surrounded by the red-orange beams of the heavy lasers as they peeled the walls, floor and ceiling. Abruptly it vanished in a blast that came from the floor. “Hah! I knew it,” exulted Bull. “Send another one! Keep sending them, and a couple more in ground mode to crawl on the floor.”

Five more gnats gave their all before the sixth found the armored door with its tiny sonar. Scanning all around showed the remains of the two Hippos, and the door barely damaged. “As soon as you’ve stripped the walls, give me a concentrated drill on the left lower corner of the door,” Bull told the lasers. “Pull that drone back but keep it focused so we can see the impact spot.”

A moment later the three semis aimed their beams at the indicated place, questing for coordination as the gunners watched through the gnat’s infrared sensors. “It’s breaking through!” one of them cried after ten seconds of drilling.

“Cut upward together,” Bull ordered. “You may have to burn around the entire circumference, but I want that way opened. Keep aiming at the outside of the door; the rock it’s anchored in is probably weaker than the door itself.”

“Aye, sir,” the gunners responded in unison. A long moment later they had cut all the way up, over, and down, and the massive barrier seemed to teeter.

“Two more rockets near the top – knock it down!” Bull called. “Semis keep firing, widen your beams.”

Two marines launched the explosive missiles over the heads of the semi-portable gunners and with a ponderous crash, the thing fell to the floor and the dust blew back at them with a rush of wind. “Atmosphere behind it is venting our way!” Repeth called.

Immediately the heavy lasers stabbed through the clear space the door had occupied, but not before something came back at them.

A creature out of nightmare, it resembled a chromed spider, filling the five-meter-wide corridor with skittering legs. Reflected light seared the walls in a blaze as the gunners focused on it, but its reflective surface simply turned the beams aside without difficulty.

“War drone!” Repeth yelled from behind. “Rockets and railguns!”

Too late. The monster belched plasma, incinerating one gun crew in a blanket of verdant flame. The two remaining crews dove back around the corner, abandoning their machines as others prepped rockets. Wind whistled around them as the base’s atmosphere continued to vent through their ingress tunnel.

“Back up, back up!” Repeth hollered, knowing that to try to fight the drone in its own tunnel was suicide. She pointed emphatically at a spot on the ground well back from the bend. “Line up HERE and engage it all together when it comes around the corner.” Roughly she thrust Marines into position, some prone, some kneeling, some standing: a phalanx of handheld weapons she hoped would be enough. Maybe we should have waited for those heavy tanks after all… She cursed as she saw Bull take a place in the line. “Hell…” she muttered, and got ready to jump.

Around the corner barreled the spider, met by a wall of anti-armor rockets. Most of them flashed right by, between its thin silver legs or over, but several struck its round abdomen and exploded. It staggered, but rose again, just in time to meet a hail of thousands of hard-driven railgun bullets. Leaping in the light gravity, Repeth added to the mix, firing over their heads before the burst pushed her backward and she drifted to the ground.

“Keep hitting it!” Bull called over his squadcomm, then as it began to advance against the sleet he snatched an antitank mine off of a nearby back-rack and dropped his PRG. “Cover me!”

Charging forward with the square cased charge in both hands he dodged the monster’s reaching legs. Plasma hot enough to crisp him struck off-target, splashing from a wall and deflecting into the end of the firing line. Three Marines fell with grievous burns, to be dragged back by their comrades.

An inarticulate battle-scream ripped from his throat as he raised the mine overhead to stick it against the thing’s torso. Railgun rounds ricocheted off the walls as the firing line avoided hitting their commander, covering him with rock chips as he rolled forward past the spider.

“Fire in the hole!” Bull called from out of sight, waited a beat, and then sent the detonation signal. Shockwave slammed the Marines down the tunnel in a jumble of flailing limbs, but their armor and their bodies were built to take that kind of pounding and they quickly picked themselves back up. Nothing but wreckage remained of the war drone.

“Get up there,” ordered Repeth “You diggers gonna let your commander fight them all himself?” That got them moving in a rush to support Bull. When they rounded the corner they found him righting one of the remaining semi-portables.

“Pick this up, and me on it. We go in firing, now,” he said, swinging himself into the gunner’s seat. Never made to be used this way, even so eight Marines grabbed the hardpoints of the laser and attached fusion generator and, like palanquin slaves of some ancient warlord, carried the whole arrangement forward at the double time.

“Holy crap,” Repeth muttered, then, “get up there with him!” She hustled Marines up, shoving them along indiscriminately as Bull charged in his high-tech Marine-borne chariot, snapping off shots to his front.

This mob burst through the entryway, fighting the wind of the atmosphere still pumping against them. Air resistance slackened as they made it into the huge open space beyond, and Bull could see from his perch the explosions and skating orange laser beams of EarthFleet units attacking in other parts of the room, mingled with the green flashes of enemy plasma weapons.

In front of him loomed an enormous piece of complex machinery that thrummed with power. No idea what that is, but I bet it’s part of the moon laser, so… “Ground me, now!” Immediately upon setting down he pressed the firing stud. Red-orange light licked out, mostly invisible now that most of the dust had been blown down the corridors, but his aim point glowed red, then white, to melt through the casing. Whatever he was hitting was not armored, and was not made to stand up to a heavy weapon like this.

“Spread out and engage!” Repeth ordered, waving her arms left and right to emphasize her words. Marines moved forward to cover Bull on the semi, firing across the whole arc of the enormous, machinery-filled room. “Target the ones along the walls,” she said, plying her own PRG.

Hippos and war drones defended other openings along the edges of the huge amphitheater, stymieing Marine assaults even as theirs had been, until concentrated fire from her ragtag band killed the Hippos at the nearest armored door and began to pick at the nearest war drone. With the pressure off, the Marines in that tunnel charged forward and barraged the spider with rockets, allowing them to maneuver two more heavy lasers into the room.

But rockets and lasers couldn’t stop the spider drones before and they didn’t now, as the creature surged forward and cooked two nearby Marines with its plasma weapon, then skittered sideways and speared two more with pointed blades on its leg tips. Everyone in that platoon opened up on it with their railguns and it staggered backward, but clearly this advantage was only temporary.

Screw me sideways, I’m gonna be a hero again, Repeth snarled to herself as she bounded toward the hapless platoon. Several of her Marines followed out of sheer instinct and loyalty, but she was far ahead of them as her jets assisted her in a long leap across the open space. Snatching a mine from a back-rack, she crouched and sidled forward, looking for an opening.

Suddenly something knocked her flat. “Sorry, Sergeant Major,” a voice said – Sergeant Kelle, she thought – as the figure snatched the mine from her hands.

“Bloody –” her curses cut off as the man jetted forward to land atop the recovering war drone, slapping the twenty-kilo rectangle against its bulbous body. His leap to escape aborted abruptly as a spider-leg reversed and speared him, dangling him quivering in the air like a pig on a pitchfork. Then the mine detonated, knocking everyone within twenty meters to the ground.

Pieces of Marine and spider rained down on the rest as a collective gasp went up, but Repeth was already moving toward the stunned troops. “Get moving, wake up, don’t just stand there gawping, pick a target and attack something else! Lieutenant,” she screamed hoarsely, “one of my people just gave his life for us, so get these diggers moving and make it count. Now you know how to kill them.”

Staggering among them she cajoled and shoved the punch-drunk Marines into some semblance of discipline, aided by their platoon leader. In reasonably good order they turned and charged along the wall toward the next cluster of aliens. Repeth fell to one knee as fatigue caught up with her.

Abruptly the lights went out, accompanied by a sound like ten spoons in a sink disposal. Her HUD automatically brought up low-light vision and she sagged to the floor as she saw all the war drones freeze in place. Broadcast power, she thought, or maybe their remote control failed. Bull must have burned through to the generator.

The Hippos fought on, but without their spider machines they were meat for the Marines. None of them surrendered, not even when Bull ben Tauros, trailing a jumbled mix of every Marine he could scrape up, broke into the moon laser control center and captured three pure Meme in their teacup-shaped control chairs.

Repeth watched it on her HUD, content to lay there gasping and let him have all the fun.

***

Each of the bridge crew made his or her peace with whatever they believed during the long moments four emptied capital ships sped toward the Guardian. They watched as first one, then the final two computer-controlled beam cruisers, blunt kilometer-wide missiles with all guns blazing, slammed into the enemy moonlet like golf balls striking a melon, and then blew their fusion engines.

Gaps appeared along the edges of the enemy behemoth, flaming bites that burned and vomited debris the size of buildings as it rotated the damaged sections away, healing even as they watched on the optical screens.

“It’s not going to be enough,” mumbled Scoggins.

“Yes it will. You’ll see,” growled Commander Ford in a low, intense voice.

“Sir,” Commander Johnstone spoke, “General MacAdam reports on all channels that they have disabled the laser and will soon mop up resistance on the moon.”

Absen responded, “Excellent news. Too bad they couldn’t have seized control of it in working order.”

Ford shook his head in cynical negation. “Real life is never that easy, sir,” he declared, pulling on his outer gloves. “We’ll see how they do when Flensburg hits them. She’s eight times the mass of the cruisers.”

“We have to assume the worst,” the admiral replied. “Mister Okuda, make sure we have enough separation from Flensburg .” He licked his lips, took a breath, and committed them. “…and as soon as she’s blown her engines, I want you to shove us straight down that stinking thing’s throat.”

“Sir?” Not only the helmsman, but all the rest of the bridge officers turned to stare at their Admiral.

“We aren’t going to self-destruct – not with all the colonists we have. But maybe, just maybe, a collision with Conquest will be enough. We’re big enough and going fast enough to do a hell of a lot of damage just with kinetic energy, all our weapons firing from inside its guts, and our six fusion drives burning. Maybe it’ll choke on us and die.”

“I don’t think we’ll survive that impact, sir,” Okuda said distinctly. “Even if we spin and go in drive-first, sealed inside our crash couches, in suits and with overloaded gravplates…”

“You don’t think?”

“The computer says perhaps five percent of the crew will live through it.”

“And the colonists in their cocoons?”

“A moment.” He ran the numbers. “Ninety-five percent. That’s fifty thousand deaths.”

Absen steeled himself. “So with a crew of five thousand or so, there will be over two hundred people left aboard to fly the ship. Some of them will be on this bridge or the auxiliary bridge, because they are well-protected areas with the best gravplates. With a hundred people and the automated systems, and the enemy all dead, we can still colonize this world.” He stared coldly back at his officers. “This is what we signed up for, people. The Ultimate Liability Clause. Anyone who doesn’t like those odds can run for an escape pod right now.” The admiral looked deliberately at the holotank. “You have about two minutes.”

No one moved.

Commander Ford cleared his throat and spoke for the rest when he said, “To hell with that, sir. We’re with you.” The rest nodded soberly.

Absen sat back and folded his hand, eyes hooded. “Then pass my orders, and make sure the computers know what to do if we’re unconscious.”

“Already done, sir.” Johnstone smiled wanly.

“Good man. Now everyone button up.”

As they moved to seal suits and enclose themselves in their crash couches, Scoggins suddenly bolted to her feet, staring at the holotank. “Sir – look!”

Like the machines they were, the linked display computers faithfully depicted reality. In this case that odd reality consisted of three lines reaching out from the forgotten Hippo orbitals, intersecting the Meme superdreadnought from the rear.

“What is that? Are they firing on it?” Absen stood up convulsively to put his face almost inside the space the holographic projection occupied.

“Affirmative, sir. Some kind of charged particle weapon. It’s…sir, the Guardian is turning away!” Scoggins brought up a realtime optical image of the enemy ship to fill the main flatscreen, where they watched it ponderously wheel.

As it rotated, great bubbling valleys of inflamed tissue came into view, burn scars a testimony to the destruction wrought by the battleship-sized orbitals’ primary weapons. A bilious glow formed a nimbus around their enemy and then, a few seconds later, all activity from the Guardian ceased. Then, so did the particle beams.

“They could have fired those at us any time,” Ford breathed in wonder. “They could have killed us and won. Why did they attack their own ship?”

Scoggins whooped, leaping to hug Ford and kiss him full on the lips. “You idiot, don’t you remember the planning meeting? Didn’t you read the Admiral’s memo? He was right! The Hippos are rebelling against the Meme! They held off on attacking us, hoping for a chance like this! Once they saw the moonbase laser was disabled, they took their shot – at the Guardian!” She kissed him again, and this time he returned the lip-lock with mounting enthusiasm.

“All right you two, that’s enough, back to your posts,” the admiral said without rancor. “We’re not done. Get the Crows and grabships working on retrieving the escape pods. Tell the computers to shut down lucky Flensburg’s self-destruct and rejoin us, I want her back in action post-haste. Cease all weapons fire but keep solutions locked on that thing. Get analysts started on deep scanning, I want to know whether it’s dead, dying, or just knocked out. Remember, their ships are alive and have tremendous regenerative capability.” Absen took a deep breath and let it out. “Fun’s over, people. Now the hard work begins.”

Epilogue

SystemLord, much reduced in sized, brooded inside the tiny escape drone. As large – or as small – as a missile, it held his concentrated essence in far too little protoplasm to feel comfortable. As he departed the system under high acceleration, he decided after all that he would not take a personal name. After this ignominy, it would be the height of foolishness to distinguish himself from all of the other SystemLords in the Empire.

Not that he would retain his title once he reported in. He’d be lucky to be a ship commander.

This will be a long trip, he thought. I don’t really think I’ll mind.

***

Formations of Hippos stood honor guard alongside the thinned ranks of surviving Marines. Once Admiral Absen – briefed by Ezekiel Denham – explained the difference between planetary Underlings and moonbased Purelings, the human warrior force took to their new allies with surprising ease. It helped immensely that the Underlings helped hunt down and ruthlessly exterminate all Purelings in the moon base with the enthusiasm of Mongols slaughtering Russian peasants.

Overhead, the massive Weapon was briefly turned to a gentler use. Emitting at a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of its power, it lit the ceiling of the enormous main chamber with a warm yellow light. One hundred thousand newly-awoken civilians sat in hastily-cut rock bleachers overlooking the ranks of Marines and EarthFleet personnel.

Thunder rolled at a signal from Admiral Absen in the reviewing stand, and slowly, to the measure dirge of bagpipes and Bodhran drums, one hundred separate lines of coffins emerged from the tunnels to the right. Over the next hour more than nineteen thousand boxes, draped with Earth’s banners, were set down before them in neat rows by their comrades. Many contained nothing more than a token DNA sample from BioMed records, or some object of remembrance, yet to their brothers and sister in arms every one of them held the sacred remains of EarthFleet’s finest.

I wish I could have the whole million civilians here to see this, Henrich Absen thought. I’ll have to settle for mandating everyone watch the video in full 4D sensurround when they wake up. They need to understand the price we paid for their lives, and their freedom, and never forget. Never forget, and be ready…because this is only our first conquest.

Because for damn sure it’s not over.

The End

Novels from the PLAGUE WARS Series by David VanDyke

Eden Plague

Demon Plagues

Reaper Plague

The Orion Plague

Army of One

(A Star Force Series Novella)

by

B. V. Larson

Author’s Note: For those fans of the Star Force Series, the events in this novella occur concurrently with CONQUEST, the fourth book of the series.

The first thing you will notice is that this story is not from the point of view of Kyle Riggs (but it is very much part of the Star Force story). That’s because I originally wrote this piece to fill in behind-the-scenes information concerning key events that were occurring on Earth without the knowledge of Riggs. I was never able to fit this part of the story into the series itself, as the Star Force books are written entirely in the first person, and Riggs can’t be everywhere at once.

If you haven’t yet read through book four of the series, there might be some minor spoilers for you here…

-BVL

-1—

Several weeks before the machines returned to Earth, an interview for a very special job was carefully arranged. Two men met one another in a hotel room that was supposedly neutral ground. One of them was a professional assassin, and the other was a self-important suit who worked for the newly reimagined CIA.

Outside the seventh floor window, Arlington, Virginia, was spread out in all its brick-and-mortar glory. The southwest corner of the Pentagon building could be easily seen across the Potomac.

The assassin, referred to by members of the community only as “Bjorn”, was not in a sightseeing mood. He was all business.

His interviewer from the Agency seemed to sense this, but he also seemed not to care. The case agent was a typical example of his breed: white, male, balding and overconfident. He had told Bjorn his cover name at the start of the interview, but Bjorn had already forgotten it because he had no interest in filling his mind with vague aliases.

“So…your name is Bjorn?” the suit asked, reading from the screen of his tablet. “Doesn’t that mean ‘bear’ in Swedish, or something? That’s about as euro of a name as you can get, and you don’t look like you come from Europe.” The interviewer looked up at Bjorn and smiled, enjoying his own joke.

Bjorn stared back at him flatly, until the interviewer cleared his throat. Bjorn realized in surprise that he already wanted to kill this man, which had to be some kind of a record. In most cases, it took hours for him to dislike another man enough to want to put a bullet in him. He wondered what year it would be when a half-black guy didn’t have to listen to any jokes.

Finally, Bjorn spoke: “I guess my heritage is what you might call ‘mixed’,” he said. He didn’t add the words “you asshole” but he felt like it.

The suit chuckled. “You do have a sketchy past,” he went on, “Delta originally, then off the grid. We have a dozen hits attributed to you, but without any real pattern. You appear in a town—and then someone dies in an interesting way that same night. We know that you’re effective, but what are your core beliefs?”

The question brought a flicker of amusement to Bjorn’s face, but not to his eyes. What kind of mercenary worried about core beliefs? In Bjorn’s opinion, the interviewer was a fool. But he was a fool who must be dealt with. Bjorn had been out of work for nearly a year now, and his accounts were running dry. In this country, whether aliens were invading from the skies or not, this man and a thousand suit-wearing fools like him held the purse strings for all freelance hitmen.

“I have no beliefs,” Bjorn said. “At least, none that reach longer than my arm.”

The suit frowned slightly and flicked at his tablet some more. “What about the machines from the stars? You must have an opinion about the aliens?”

Bjorn shrugged. “I don’t.”

The interviewer stared for a second, then leaned forward. “We know more about you than what you’ve listed on your resume. For instance, we know you’ve been on a Nano ship.”

For the first time, Bjorn was surprised. He hadn’t thought it was possible for this man to surprise him, but he’d managed it. He felt his mind kicking into an entirely new gear. Up until this moment, he’d been almost bored with the interview. But now, he was on guard.

“What else do you know?” Bjorn asked.

The interviewer sat back and smiled broadly, happy to have gotten a response. Bjorn felt his dislike for the agent intensify. This, then, was the source of the man’s inner confidence. Usually, when suits met with freelance killers they were at least nervous. But this fellow had been overconfident from the start. That could only mean he felt he had this particular vicious dog under control. Bjorn didn’t like the implications.

His eyes drifted around the room. Peepholes? Could there be a squad in body armor on the other side of these walls, ready to pounce? He’d checked out the hotel in advance hours ago. It was standard procedure for him, but possibly he’d missed something.

Finally, his traveling eyes landed on the window and the view of the gray river outside. There were plenty of places to hide a camera and a microphone in this city. It was one of the most camera-filled regions in the world.

The interviewer watched his reactions with interest. “In answer to your question,” he said, “we know all about your relationship with the Nano ships. One of them took you aboard on the night of the initial invasion. You passed all the tests for obvious reasons. But, among all the humans ever to have done so, you alone were determined to escape the ship. You weren’t swayed by its offers of power, and you were able to escape its defensive systems, everything meant to keep you aboard.”

Bjorn didn’t say anything. His face was a mask of stone. He knew every word the interviewer spoke was true, but in case the other was fishing for details and confirmation, he was determined not to respond. He didn’t want to give this smug pig anything he didn’t already have.

The interviewer looked at him, eyebrows arched expectantly. He still wore that confident smile. “Nothing about this story rings a bell?” he asked. “Is there anything you might want to add?”

“In my business, one does not give out information unnecessarily.”

“Right,” the agent said, nodding. “I get that. But unfortunately, it is necessary. You see, we didn’t call you here to hire you for a hit. We have plenty of people who can do that. You’re much more interesting to us than your typical thug. You have a ship out there that loves you, and you would make it very happy simply by climbing back aboard her. You know that, don’t you? Once in a Nano ship, you could rejoin Star Force and then you could…tell us about it.”

Bjorn now understood the agency’s motivation. They wanted his ship. They wanted a free introduction into Star Force. But he also knew that his old ship had found another commander and no longer served him. He couldn’t call it or contact it. He wouldn’t want to if he could. He thought about explaining all this to the interviewer, but rejected the idea. He decided to go with a simpler way out.

“I’m not a spy,” he said. “Get an intel guy.”

The interviewer shook his head. “Due to certain…misunderstandings, the Star Force people are paranoid. They only offer membership to people they trust. They trust people in Nano ships, who are almost all amateurs. We really need you, and no one else can do this job.”

Bjorn stood up suddenly. The interviewer stiffened at his unexpected movement.

“I’ll do it,” Bjorn said. “Put a hundred thousand in the drop-box and I’ll infiltrate Star Force.”

The interviewer took a deep breath and smiled. His confident exterior returned in full force. “Excellent,” he said. “There are a few more formalities, however. If you’ll just sit down a moment longer, please?”

Bjorn stood there for several seconds, considering. He had no intention of spying on Star Force for this fool. It wasn’t his kind of work. He liked to keep things clean and simple. Not long-term commitments. No choosing sides. He did his hits the night he arrived in a given town, just as the man had described, and then he vanished again. By morning, he liked to be on a plane bound for another continent.

The agent frowned at him and seemed slightly exasperated. “There’s a lot of money riding on your next move. Don’t you think a hundred K is worth a few more minutes?”

Bjorn had already decided to skip picking up the money, although he needed it. He just wanted to get out of this room. When a deal went sour, his standard operating procedure was to agree to whatever they wanted and leave the country. That was usually a good way to escape a meeting like this. Once he was out of the reach of whoever he’d been dealing with, he could vanish. Usually they were upset, but not so upset that they would try to burn him.

He was very good at vanishing. Southern Spain, Indonesia—those were perfect places to go when a man wanted to vanish quickly. But this meeting wasn’t going as planned. Realizing he was going to have to keep playing this game for a while longer, he reluctantly sat down again.

The interviewer pulled a briefcase up onto the small circular hotel table between them. He opened it and a moment later placed a pair of wrist straps on the cherry veneer tabletop.

“No lie-detectors,” Bjorn said.

The interviewer sighed. “We have to do it. Just for purposes of protocol. I apologize.”

Bjorn frowned. He stared at the unit, then at the man. He made a hard decision. As his first escape plan wasn’t working, he decided to proceed with Plan B.

“All right,” he told the agent. “But could we close the curtains first?”

“Why?”

“I don’t like being on camera.”

The agent snorted. “You know there are no cameras in here. You did a sweep hours ago.”

Bjorn gestured toward the window. The interviewer pursed his lips in annoyance.

“This city is full of cameras,” Bjorn said. “They’re everywhere, and I’m sure a few of them are focused on these windows right now.”

“All right,” the agent said. “Just to put you at ease.”

The agent got up and drew the curtains. They were the blackout shades designed to block out sunlight and let a jet-lagged salesman sleep in if he wanted to. The two men were suddenly cast into gloom. The interviewer pulled a chain that dangled down from a hanging lamp over the cherry-veneer table. A circle of yellowy light illuminated them both.

“Happy now?”

“Ecstatic.”

Bjorn allowed the man to affix the padded cuffs to his thick wrists. He frowned throughout the process. Tiny metal sensors pressed against his skin.

“Now, first question: are we in Arlington, Virginia?”

“Yes.”

“Did you eat breakfast this morning in the hotel?”

“No.”

“Very good. Have you undergone nanite-injections, administered by your ship?”

Bjorn stared.

“Well?”

“I’m not going to answer that.”

“Not even if it means losing this job?”

“I don’t care.”

The interviewer made a note on his tablet. He seemed irritated. “All right, it isn’t necessary that you reply to that one. Let me ask another: have you been aboard a Nano ship?”

“Yes.”

“Did you take the alien tests and survive them all?”

“Yes.”

“Very good…” he said, doing some more tapping.

Bjorn wondered what the agent got out of this process. The man seemed to be enjoying himself. He wondered if the man had a psychological complex that caused him to feel pleasure when he had the upper hand on a killer. He liked to hold the tiger’s leash. Bjorn’s frown deepened the more he thought about it.

“You’re scowling,” the agent said. “Are you ready for the next question?”

“Stop wasting time.”

“All right. Next question: Do you plan to overthrow the U. S. Government?”

“What? No.”

“Do you associate with people who do wish to overthrow the U. S. Government?”

“No.”

“Hmm,” the interviewer said, frowning. “Do you wish to elaborate on that one?”

“No.”

The questions went on, but at the end, the interviewer was left chewing his lip. He heaved a sigh.

“I’m sorry, Bjorn, but this isn’t going the way I’d planned. If you have something to hide, you should do a better job of it. You’re a pro, after all.”

Bjorn frowned. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“One of the questions—you lied. The machine registered a distinct response pattern.”

“Then it’s broken.”

“I don’t think so.”

Bjorn stood up again. “In that case, I’m sorry to disappoint you. I’m not a suitable candidate, as I said. I’ll be going now.”

“Just a minute,” said the interviewer. “You’re always in such a hurry to leave! I have an idea. Just take this pill, please.”

The agent pushed a capsule full of greenish liquid across the desk toward Bjorn, who made no move to pick it up. It looked like pain medication.

“I don’t think so,” Bjorn said.

“Look, it’s the only way. I’m authorized to bump up the offer to make it worth your while. We’ll give you five hundred thousand today. And then an additional five hundred thousand when you submit your first intel report on Star Force.”

Bjorn was surprised by the amount, but he still didn’t reach out for the pill on the table between them. “What is it?”

“It’s a knock-out pill. I have to give it to you before taking you in. You must understand, you’re an assassin full of nanites who has just failed a loyalty polygraph. I have to take you in and have the experts figure out what the problem is. We want you working for us at all costs—but there are formalities. The suits will want you to come clean.”

Bjorn’s lips twitched upward for a moment. “You’re a suit.”

“Right, well—I meant the suits who are higher up the food chain that I am.”

Bjorn picked up the pill. He looked at it suspiciously. Then he looked at the interviewer.

“You’re sure you want me to do this?”

The overconfident smile came back, but this time Bjorn could see an edge to it. The agent was nervous underneath.

The man was wise to be uncertain.

Bjorn lunged. He grabbed the interviewer with his left hand, clutching a wad of cloth over his chest. His hands found a lump there, in the breast pocket. He squeezed, and the object inside the man’s front jacket pocket crunched in his incredibly powerful grip. He ripped it out and wires came free like the guts of a fish. He dropped the recording device on the table between them. It was completely destroyed.

The interviewer then made two mistakes: first, he went for the pistol under his arm, and second, he opened his mouth to yell. Both moves were understandable, but they sealed his fate. If he’d remained perfectly motionless, he might have survived the encounter. But Bjorn had been injected with nanites a year ago, and they had transformed him from simply a smooth, highly-competent assassin into a true machine of death.

Bjorn’s hands moved with such blurring speed and irresistible power that before the interviewer could make a coherent sound, it was all over. Bjorn snatched away the pistol and shoved the green capsule into the agent’s open mouth.

He followed up by clamping the man’s mouth shut with one large hand. The interviewer’s eyes rolled in terror. He ignored Bjorn’s other hand, which held the gun. Both his hands and all his attention were on the fingers that held his mouth closed. He strained, but he could not remove Bjorn’s grip.

The interviewer began kicking and flailing. The blows didn’t bother Bjorn much. There was no power in them. It was like being struck by an angry child.

“What are you so worried about?” Bjorn asked. “It’s just a knock-out pill, right?”

The interviewer whined and gurgled, but could not speak.

“Did you swallow it?” Bjorn asked him.

The man tried to scream something at him through his shut mouth. Sounds came out of his nostrils, something like “let go” but Bjorn could not be sure. Reluctantly, he removed his hand from the agent’s mouth.

The man immediately spat out the pill. Bjorn’s reflexes were as superb as his strength. He snatched it from the air and held it up again.

The interviewer’s eyes were focused on the pill and nothing else.

“You’re more afraid of this little pill than you are of me,” Bjorn observed curiously. “Why?”

“They’re coming. You have to know that. You broke the signal when you—”

Bjorn lost interest in the man’s threats. He popped the pill back into the agent’s mouth again and this time when he slammed his jaws shut, he made sure the teeth closed on the capsule. The pill was crushed between two sets of wet molars.

The man howled and spat. He reached up with hands like claws toward Bjorn’s throat, but was easily pushed away.

“What is in that pill?” Bjorn asked, letting him go. “You might as well tell me now that you’ve taken it.”

The interviewer attempted to speak, but failed. He began foaming pink flecks that first appeared at the corners of his mouth, then spread across his swelling lips. His eyes were huge and ringed with white.

“You killed me,” he gasped. “They said you would kill me.”

“You killed yourself with your overconfidence,” Bjorn told him. “Did you really think I was going to just swallow a pill and commit suicide on the spot?”

The agent slid out of his chair and down onto all fours. He sagged down, dying. His eyes stayed open, but the strange foam still flowed. It made a dark stain around his mouth on the Berber carpet. Bjorn frowned and checked agent’s pulse. It was thready for a moment, then stopped.

“Fast-acting,” he muttered. He didn’t like it. He took a moment to wash his hands in the tiny bathroom. It could be some kind of contact poison.

On the way out of the room, he took the agent’s computer tablet with him. He didn’t head for the elevators or the stairs. Those easy paths would be blocked.

Instead, he crossed the hallway to the room opposite. He’d identified it earlier as an escape route, just in case. He straight-armed the door. The lock popped and a small sliver of broken wood fell out of the doorframe. He stepped inside and forced the broken door closed behind him.

Then he stepped into the middle of the dark room, scooted the bed aside and began to tear up the carpet.

His hands were like steel claws, which made the task easy for him. It was almost like unwrapping a Christmas present. Once through the thin layer of carpet, he pulled up the subfloor. This was the tricky part, as the nails squeaked and the plywood crackled.

He paused in his activities to head into the bathroom. He turned on all the faucets and the bathroom fan for cover noise, then he went back to work.

In less than two minutes, he heard men running down the hall and shouting. But by that time, he had dug his way down to the room below. He took the time to slide the bed over the hole he’d made in the room above before dropping down onto into the next room. Once there, he began digging again, tearing his way through the floor down into yet another hotel room.

He’d scouted this escape route over an hour ago, simply by making sure the rooms were unoccupied. He’d once heard of a lab experiment which had placed a monkey in a room with thirteen possible exits. A group of scientists had sat around, watching carefully to see which exit the monkey figured out and used to escape. The monkey had reportedly used the fourteenth exit—the one no one had thought of.

Bjorn liked to think of himself in that way, as the man who could do the unexpected. Many people believed that the key to being a successful killer lay in the method of execution. They studied the murder itself. But he knew better. Killing was relatively easy. Escaping the scene afterward—now that was the critical part where most assassins failed.

Soon he stood on the fifth floor, rather than the seventh. He was also on the opposite side of the building, on the side that faced south, away from the Pentagon. Bjorn was a paranoid man, but he didn’t think that they would put a team on him so large they’d watch both sides of the building. Probably they were in the hotel lobby, covering all the exits and waiting. They might have stationed a man on the roof too—a man with a high-powered rifle.

He took a moment to check out the tablet he’d stolen from the dead agent. He tapped at the screen and found the questions he’d been asked and answers he’d given. There actually were questions that he’d failed. Apparently, he did have plans to overthrow the government. This seemed amusing to him, but troubling as well. He felt as if he ought to know his own internal thoughts on such issues.

He also found the name of the man who was in charge of this recruiting op. It was none other than General Robert Kerr. Bjorn had heard of him, but had never dealt with him directly.

After briefly skimming the information, he smashed the tablet thoroughly. They might be tracking it somehow. Then he opened the hotel room window and stepped out onto the balcony. Without hesitation he jumped off.

On this side of the hotel, the lower section of the building thrust outward three floors down. He landed hard, leaving two footprints in the crushed stucco, but walked away uninjured. A thirty-foot drop wasn’t a big deal for a nanotized man. He hadn’t wanted to try this from fifty feet, which was why he’d dug his way down two floors first.

Bjorn crossed the roof, dropped into an alley twenty feet below, and walked nonchalantly into the city streets. Once there, he was in his element. He vanished into the crowds like a shadow blending into dusk.

-2-

“What do you mean ‘the subject has successfully employed delaying tactics’?” General Kerr demanded loudly. He was a naturally loud man with a southern twang that accented his colorful speech patterns. “You’re telling me you lost him, right? What about the sniper? Is he as blind as the rest of your team?”

“No, sir—I mean, he never had a shot.”

“Doesn’t matter, I’m sure. He probably couldn’t hit a bull in the butt with a bass fiddle. You tell him that for me. You got that, Randy?”

“Bull…butt…yes, sir.”

Kerr stabbed at the smartphone screen repeatedly until it disconnected the call. Somehow, these new phones resisted taking directions if you went at them too vigorously. He found the experience very unsatisfying. In his youth, he’d enjoyed slamming phones down into receivers. Now he wasn’t even given that small joy when his underlings screwed the pooch.

He continued tapping at the phone when he had his breathing under control. It was time to call in some favors.

“Randy? This is Kerr again.”

“I’m sorry sir, I haven’t had time to—”

“I know you haven’t had time to—”

“It’s been less than a minute, General.”

“I don’t care about that, listen—”

“I’m calling them—I mean I’m going to call them, but—”

“Shut up, man!” shouted Kerr in sudden fury. “I said I don’t care. I’m giving you new orders. I know where this killer is going.”

“You do?”

“That’s right.”

“Where, sir?”

“Well, I’ll tell you if you will shut up for one damned second.”

Kerr waited until the other man had remained silent for several seconds.

“That’s better,” he said. “Bjorn is heading for Star Force. That’s right, Andros Island. Get down there and look for him.”

There was more buzzing in his ear. Kerr rolled his eyes and massaged his temples. Why couldn’t people just do as they were told without asking questions? He missed the real military sometimes. The United States was in a real war after all, a war against aliens and internal dissidents at the same time. If he’d been placed in charge of a correspondingly real military operation he would be able to order a questioning, simpering man shot. General George Washington had put down his share of mutineers in his time, and what was good enough for old George was good enough for General Kerr.

At the very least, Kerr figured he should have had the power to demote the man on the spot. He had neither of these powers as an intel ops-runner, and he didn’t like it. This business of running a spook patrol to keep a lid on Kyle Riggs and his happy band of pirates was getting on his last nerve.

Kerr pulled the phone from his ear and cheek and waggled it in the air. He waited until it stopped making sounds, indicating Randy had stopped speaking. He had no interest in anything the man was saying, he just wanted it to come to an end. Finally, it did.

He put the phone back to his head and growled into it. “All right, I’ve heard enough whining. You don’t need to know how I know. You’re just going to act on the intel and not ask any more stupid questions. Now, get down there to the Florida Keys and start looking for your target before he ships out.”

Randy finally stopped prattling and hung up. General Kerr walked to the window of his Pentagon office and stared across the Potomac. There, in plain sight, stood the hotel where this character who called himself “Bjorn” had given them the slip. The man was a natural talent at both killing and escaping. These were two critical skills for any assassin to have. And there was no longer any doubt in anyone’s mind that he was nanotized.

Kerr wanted this man on the team so badly he could crush Randy’s windpipe for failing. It was such an opportunity, and the team had pissed it right down their collective spook legs.

“He was right there!” Kerr shouted aloud. “Sitting within arm’s reach, and now he’s gone. The perfect mole…and they let him slip away.”

He shook his head and lamented the loss. Bjorn was probably going to have to be put down now. He’d smelled the trap and fled. Randy’s team had done the worst thing possible: they’d put him on his guard. He’d gone rogue, and like a stray dog that had been smacked around, he would never trust the bad man’s feeding hand again.

When they caught up with Bjorn the next time, Kerr figured he wasn’t going to let Randy’s team play amateur hour twice in a row.

“This time, things will be handled my way,” he said to no one.

*

The vast arrowhead-shaped warships of the Macros had returned to the Solar System. They were a cold race of gigantic machines. Whatever they lacked in flexibility and intellect they more than made up for in bulk and implacability.

The enemy fleet was gathering over Venus, massing up for their inevitable charge at Earth. Bjorn watched the news reports with mild interest as he traveled southward. Either the robots would kill everyone, or they wouldn’t. He didn’t think there was much he could do about it either way, so he tried not to think about it.

Apparently he was the only person on Earth who wasn’t riveted by the reports. There was nothing else to talk about planet-wide. Every news station was running the story, and the fact there was very little actual information to report didn’t stop them from covering it around the clock.

Bjorn had more immediate worries. He had to get out of the region, and he had to do it fast. After a bit of work on his laptop, using public wireless systems in coffee shops, he boarded a military transport in Norfolk. The big plane was deafeningly loud inside, but it was bound for Florida and it was cheap.

Arranging military transport wasn’t as tricky as it sounded, at least not for him. U. S. military personnel often took jump-seat rides all over the world almost for free. The only hitch was that he was no longer technically a member of the military. Fortunately, he had plenty of false documentation from past work. The hardest part had been getting together a cover story for his trip. Things had never been the same after the South American Campaign. In the days after the destruction of an entire continent, security had tightened worldwide. There had never been any reports of alien infiltration, but everyone was looking over their shoulders anyway.

That’s where Bjorn’s specialized training came into play. He was a man trained to use a host country’s infrastructure against itself. Every security protocol ever built followed rules, and strict adherence to those rules over time caused a certain degree of blindness in the people who followed them. They became more concerned with the rules themselves than what they were actually trying to protect.

Bjorn had found that most security people tended to pay the least attention to what was right in front of them. In their minds, they had marked such things as safe and uninteresting. They were scanning for the unexpected. Since they expected him to try to sneak out of the country, he knew they would be watching every transportation hub. Therefore, the safest spot was to place himself right under their noses. By getting into a military transport with false orders inserted into their own computer files and a fake ID, he could have managed to have himself shipped anywhere around the globe.

Again, his destination was chosen to be unexpected. He would travel to Florida, right into the heart of the current action. The subtropical state had been turned into a militarized region over the last several years as Star Force grew in the islands to the south and enemy ships had battled with Earth’s fleets in the skies there more than once.

Bjorn employed one of his more useful IDs, that of Specialist Edwin Serkin. A nonexistent reservist with unusual skills, Serkin’s backstory always included reactivation and assignment for duty in whatever remote location Bjorn wanted to go.

Today, Specialist Edwin Serkin flew to Key West Naval Air Station. He was urgently needed there for vague reasons. In the military, vague orders were rarely questioned by those who reviewed them and passed them on. It was assumed the imaginary Serkin was working on a secret project—God knew there were enough of those around these days in Florida.

Bjorn deplaned and blinked in the bright tropical sun. By the time he made it out of the plane and onto the tarmac, his skin was already prickling under the assault of the tropical humidity. He could feel the heat sinking into him. Sweat sprouted quickly in response. He told himself he would just have to get used to it—he planned to be here for a long time.

He’d deplaned and passed the initial checkpoint without a problem. He’d almost made it to the guard post in fact before anything went awry.

Fortunately, he spotted the spotter first. There was a man at the gate who didn’t belong there. The chain-link fences, razor wire and checkout station were all expected and in place, but the man in the navy blazer, his tie flapping in the breeze—he was all wrong.

First of all, most people on the base were in uniform, or at least had crew-cuts and a noticeable military bearing. This man was different. He leaned against the guard post with an insolent, bored stance. He had the look of someone who’d been stationed there for far longer than he’d expected to be, and he was disgusted by the duty. But he was still alert. He examined every passenger as they exited the transport with keen eyes, lifting his black sunglasses when someone interesting approached.

Bjorn had positioned himself at the rear of the group automatically. He stepped aside long before he reached the front of the line.

The guard at the gate was busy looking down at IDs as he checked each one against a roster. Security was tighter than it had been in the old days, but usually, these routines gave Bjorn no trouble. It was the man with the flapping tie he was worried about. He was looking for a face, and Bjorn had a pretty good idea who he was hoping to find.

With precise, quick steps, Bjorn walked around to the far side of the guard post and vaulted the ten-foot tall chain link fence. He did this with a single smooth motion, bounding into the air impossibly high. He paused only long enough to place his hand into the wire at the top. He caught himself with this single outstretched hand and redirected his angle of travel downward. He landed on his feet with a thump. Behind him, the razor wire rattled and droplets of his blood glinted in the sun.

Bjorn fell into step with the others on the far side, who glanced at him and frowned. No one challenged him, fortunately for them. They were all too busy meeting relatives and digging out their keys. The welcoming parking lot was dead ahead and everyone had their eyes on it.

At a steady, almost nonchalant pace, the group headed for their waiting cars. Bjorn slung his bag over his neck. Blood still ran from his injured hand, dribbling down onto the sidewalk. He stepped out over the grass, not wanting to leave a visible trail.

He’d made it halfway to the parking lot before anyone caught on. He heard a distant shout behind him: “That’s him!”

He didn’t bother to look back. He didn’t concern himself with how he’d been spotted. Perhaps someone had witnessed his leap and reported it. Perhaps the man at the checkpoint had missed Edward Serkin. Possibly, the man with the flapping tie had done a count and come up with a discrepancy.

It didn’t matter. What mattered now was that the race was on, and Bjorn meant to win it.

He reached out to the man in front of him, a soldier with his arm around a young woman who’d doubtlessly come to pick him up.

Bjorn squeezed, snapping the man’s collarbone in less than a second. The young soldier fell to his knees, gasping. The woman knelt with him, asking him what was wrong.

“I don’t know,” he said. “Something hit me. I might be shot.”

The girl shouted something about a “shooter”, and that was just gravy. Everyone who’d initially gathered around the stricken man now began backing away. A fair number of them began trotting for the parking lot, while others milled around the spot in confusion, trying to aid the couple.

Bjorn joined those flowing toward the cars. He reached the edge of the parking lot when the spook from the guard post broke past the crowd around the couple. The diversion hadn’t fooled him.

Bjorn took a moment to glance back and saw the man in the blazer had two armed guardsmen in tow. The original plan had been to take a cab or a bus to town. That wasn’t going to work for him now.

He reached the line of sun-silvered cars and ducked among them. Pounding feet followed. They weren’t shooting yet, but that was only a matter of time.

Bjorn crouched behind a car until they were close. One second before they arrived, he sprang over the hood of the car. He attacked the guards before they could lift their rifles to their shoulders.

The first man was dropped by a high kick to the face. Jaw broken, the man crumpled.

The second soldier was more alert and had time to get off a single shot. The rifle cracked and Bjorn took the bullet in his right thigh. The guard had aimed low to disable him. That had been a mistake.

Bjorn threw his bag at him and the guard didn’t even bother to duck. That was his second mistake. The bag had a large metal object in it, and it hit the guard with such force it knocked him down. A second later Bjorn was on him.

“Always shoot to kill,” he told him before he put him to sleep with a blurring fist.

The agent finally joined the fight. He stepped up behind Bjorn. He had his gun aimed at Bjorn’s head as Bjorn turned to face him.

“Freeze right there, you son of a bitch,” the agent said. “I’ve got orders to bring you in alive, but I’ll forget them if you don’t cooperate.”

Bjorn moved with careful slowness so as not to startle the man. He took a deep breath and straightened his clothing. He knew he didn’t have long. Soon, the entire base would go into shut-down mode and he’d be in it deep then.

“You did well,” he told the agent calmly. “But not well enough. You should have shot me at range.”

“Put your hands on your head,” the agent ordered. He began fumbling inside his jacket pocket nervously with one hand.

Bjorn didn’t move. He gauged the distance between himself and the agent. It was only about ten feet.

“I’m full of magic metal,” he told the agent. “I can kill you—even if you hit me with every round, you’ll still die. You have five seconds to decide what you’re going to do.”

“Shut up,” snarled the other man. He finally pulled his shaking hands out of his blazer. He threw a pair of handcuffs on the tarmac at Bjorn’s feet. “Get on your knees and put those on.”

The left side of Bjorn’s mouth flickered up into a brief half-smile. He shook his head slowly.

“Three seconds left,” he said.

“You’re crazy!” the agent shouted. “You can’t get away. There will be five hundred men hunting you down. This island isn’t—”

“One second left—your last one. Have you made your decision, government man?”

A long moment passed. The agent’s hands shook so much he could hardly hold his gun. He kept looking down at the fallen guardsmen with flickering eyes. Neither of them was moving. To him, they looked dead. Only Bjorn knew better. They’d both recover with prompt medical care.

Finally, the agent lowered his weapon. Bjorn walked forward and plucked the gun out of the man’s nerveless fingers.

“Right move,” Bjorn told him. “Now, tell this to General Kerr: Tell him not to keep fucking with me, or I will return the favor. I just want to be left alone. It’s all up to him.”

He left the agent standing on the hot pavement, staring after him.

-3—

Bjorn’s leg was hurting and enough blood had run down into his shoes to make them squelchy. His nanites were already working hard on the spot, making it itch as much as it burned as they knitted his flesh back together as fast as they could. They’d already closed the skin and stopped the bleeding. In an hour or less, they would push the bullet out and the itching would fade.

The gunplay actually served to make it easier to get off the base undetected. When traveling and even when on duty, most military personnel on American bases were unarmed. It was an absurd rule, but it was useful to Bjorn: it made them all run like hens when guns started blazing nearby.

The parking lot was full of people scrambling to get into their cars and escape the area. Many were the family members of arriving airmen.

Bjorn contrived to create a panicked look on his face. It didn’t come naturally to him, but he’d practiced the expression in front of mirrors. He requested a ride, saying he’d been hit. He was quickly picked up and whisked away by a young family of three. The woman in the car fussed, handing him tissues and baby wipes. The man drove with a worried eye in the rearview mirror, studying Bjorn. The baby itself, sitting in a car seat, stared at the stranger as if he were fascinating.

Bjorn couldn’t help but smile at the kid. “You’ve got it made,” he told the child in a whisper. “Just don’t sign any papers when you grow up.”

“You’re here because of the aliens, aren’t you?” the wife asked Bjorn suddenly.

He looked at her. “I guess you could say that.”

“Do you know anything? Are they coming here? What will they do?”

“Monica, stop,” said her husband. “If he knows anything, he can’t tell us.”

“They’re coming right here,” she said. She kept her eyes on Bjorn. “Star Force is only a hundred miles off. That will bring the war home to us. How could it not? I have a right to know if we’re all going to die.”

Bjorn looked at her for a moment, then looked at the kid in the car seat. The baby hadn’t cried yet. He’d just stared at Bjorn with quiet intensity the entire time.

“I honestly don’t know what they’re going to do,” he told the young mother. “I don’t think anybody does. But the military will do all that it can, I’m sure of that.”

She turned away and crossed her arms. “That’s not good enough. We’re all dead or we’re all fine. There’s nothing we can do. I hate it.”

The rest of the short trip to town was taken in silence. Even the kid stayed quiet.

Bjorn let them drive him to the nearest hospital, where they began asking questions. He waved them off, thanked them, and headed through the emergency doors. He limped and held one hand to his knee, even though it was no longer bothering him much. The man’s wife wanted to follow, but her husband held her back.

“He’ll be all right.”

Bjorn smiled. Some men had the right instincts when they met him. They knew they should stay away. He wasn’t a large man, but he’d been told he had the face of a pit bull. There was something in his eyes that gave other men pause.

After talking to the nurse, it was a simple matter to be placed in the waiting area. Anything less than a life-threatening injury never impressed emergency rooms. The system loved waiting rooms, and it loved to place you there and forget about you—preferably for hours.

His leg was feeling much better. The nanites had formed a dark gray knot under the new layer of skin now. They’d sealed the wound and encapsulated the bullet with flesh and a fine coat of metal. Next, they would work and work, pressing the dark bullet out of his flesh. The injury had only earned him a disinterested glance from the admitting nurse, nothing more.

Bjorn headed for the waiting room, but didn’t stop there. He kept right on walking through it and out the door. The nurses and patients barely noticed. They were all staring at the TVs stationed in every high corner. The TVs displayed the huge Macro Fleet sailing silently through the void toward Earth. They’d fired missiles which flew in a mass ahead of the fleet and Star Force was in full battle-mode, preparing to stop them. No one had time to look for a missing patient who’d probably just stepped out for a smoke.

He was barely limping by the time he reached the parking lot. The nice couple that had given him a ride to the hospital had wisely disappeared. He followed their example and vanished into the city streets of downtown Key West.

There wasn’t much traffic of any kind. The tourist shops were empty and many of them were closed. Everyone was watching the skies nervously.

*

For Bjorn, renting a boat turned out to be harder than flying down here on a military transport had been. The trouble was no one on the docks really wanted to rent anything to him. They had either closed up shop, or were saving their boats for their families in case they had to run. Everyone in Key West knew that Star Force was based nearby on Andros Island, and that was only about a hundred and fifty miles away. Far too close for comfort.

If history were to be repeated, the machines would take an interest in that Island. They might bomb it, or land on it—who knew? People talked about radiation and tidal waves. The tourist traffic had dried up to a trickle already, and the locals had hung “gone fishing” signs in half the windows in town.

This last detail helped Bjorn narrow down his search. He walked the docks, found a suitable boat and crept aboard, lying on the deck under some tarps. He waited until nightfall, dozing.

When midnight came and went, the sole watchman was riveted to the tiny TV in his booth. Bjorn came up to the window, intending to knock the man unconscious. Instead, he frowned and found himself watching the report over the man’s shoulder.

The Macros were almost here, and the barrage of missiles they’d fired at Earth was getting close. This was a definite sign they hadn’t come to sign a free-trade deal.

No one said where the missiles were heading, but Bjorn had a pretty good idea. He turned and looked due east, there Andros lay. What the hell was that madman Riggs doing out there now?

He left the guardsman in the booth, without the heart to injure him. Quietly, he stole the crappy, peeled-paint scow he’d been hiding aboard and floated gently away. He kept the running lights off and slipped away into the night. The watchman, if he’d heard anything, never stirred from his television. Bjorn couldn’t blame him for that. It looked like the world was ending, and ground zero was going to be right about here.

It was enough to make him wish he’d chosen a different destination, but his plan was still clear in his head: he wanted to get into the middle of the confusion and vanish. Already, that strategy had paid off dividends. If he’d stayed up in D. C. or gone to one of his usual hiding spots on the globe using traditional transportation, he probably would have been captured or killed by now. As it was, they’d managed to put a bullet into his leg. He hoped the distractions of the coming war would be enough to hide him without killing him outright.

During the day, Bjorn had collected a fair amount of supplies. It was easy to do—no one was guarding anything. Half the population had fled the Keys and the other half were huddling in their homes. The Macros were more frightening than any hurricane that had ever threatened these shores.

There were nearly two thousand islands down here, not even counting the ones farther out around Andros, which was technically part of the Bahamas. Many of them were very small and most were uninhabited. There were only about eighty thousand year-round residents in any case. With so much of the population having fled the region, Bjorn estimated there were only about ten people left per island, tops.

That was what had made the Keys his destination. He’d always liked tropical beaches, who didn’t? He’d come down here to escape his problems in a very real way. Unlike everyone else, he wasn’t running to avoid the robots from space—he wanted to avoid the governments of Earth. Most especially, he wanted to avoid General Kerr and his minions.

When a man had little money and few resources, a deserted tropical island was as good a place as any to seek refuge and, more importantly, solitude. The stolen boat was small, slow and decrepit. But it was seaworthy, had a low profile and was propelled by a quiet, burbling engine. For Bjorn’s purposes, it was the perfect getaway vehicle.

Star Force had claimed all of the big slices of land out to the east, but off the shores of the main Keys were many smaller ones. He located several, scouted them, but rejected them all. There was one thing he needed above all else: a good supply of fresh water.

On the fourth island, he found what he was looking for. Three huts that had been there for the better part of a century. They were primitive, and open to the elements. There were hammocks, a dock and little else. Most importantly, there was a drum half-full of water, and a catch-basin system to run more rainwater into the drum.

Bjorn tapped at it, listening to the echo approvingly. There had to be a hundred gallons, maybe more. He unloaded the boat and set up camp. Within hours, he had a fire going in a pit so the light couldn’t be seen from the mainland. He toasted up his dinner, which consisted of cheese, sausage and some fresh vegetables. He knew he’d have to forage soon, but for now, he was going to eat well.

The small island was interesting to him. He wondered about its history. The buildings were colorful and had probably housed generations of poor people years ago. Squatters had lived in places like this in the old days. But now, rich people bought these islands and came to anchor their houseboats at the docks.

One would think people with a million or two to blow on a small island would build a mansion on it, but that was no longer possible. There were so many environmental laws and building codes that it was almost impossible to build new structures on an island down here. They could only patch up what had been built in the past.

And so, his tiny island served him well as a hiding place and as a museum from simpler times. The peacefulness of the spot belied the nervousness of the people on the main island.

Bjorn tried to forget about them and the coming aliens—surprisingly, he managed it. The island was peaceful and almost magical in that regard. It was as if the cares of the world could all be forgotten here.

He enjoyed his newfound peace for a short time, and every hour was precious to him.

-4—

The next day on the island was peaceful and sublime. Bjorn hadn’t experienced anything like this in a long, long time. As he gazed out to sea, watching the birds spiral and the waves slap against the foliage-covered shores, he wondered why he hadn’t done this in the past.

He quickly came up with ways to keep a low profile. He waited until the sun set out over the Gulf of Mexico to begin cooking in a fire pit. The deep pit hid the light of the flames and the darkness hid the smoke. He’d caught fish during the day with his lightning-fast hands, and when they were cooked to crispy perfection he ate them ravenously. He added fruit to his diet which he’d gathered while swimming to neighboring islands to scout them and make sure they were uninhabited. To supplement the meal, he added a single can of pinto beans from the stash of canned goods he’d found on the boat.

About an hour after the sun had set over the Gulf of Mexico, Bjorn noticed odd flashes of light in the opposite direction, to the east. The Florida Keys marked the boundary between the Gulf and the Atlantic. Gazing eastward, he knew he must be seeing activity over the home of Star Force, as Andros Island was due east of his position.

Although he’d long made it a point not to concern himself with political events, even he was interested in a battle with aliens occurring so close he could see it with his own eyes.

He watched until things seemed to quiet, and then went back to the business of keeping his location a secret. Just after midnight, the moon dipped under the horizon. He took this occasion to ditch the boat he’d used to get here. The bigger islands were less than a quarter mile away, and there were other dark islets closer than that. He didn’t really need the boat any longer. Like all nanotized people, he was an excellent swimmer.

He didn’t want to leave the boat docked at the island because it was stolen and it was a clear sign to anyone passing near that the island was inhabited. He had to get rid of it, but scuttling the boat wasn’t a realistic option. The waters here were shallow and he wanted the evidence far away from him. If he sank the thing just offshore, he knew passersby might well notice the wreck twenty feet down on the sandy bottom.

Instead, he cut her loose when the night was at its darkest and let her drift out to sea. There was a northerly current in the area, and it took the craft away slowly. He watched it fade to the northeast until it was indistinguishable from the black ocean and the slate-gray sky.

It was then that he took the occasion to look upward. He frowned, uncertain as to what he was seeing.

Blue streaks of glowing light were up there—dozens of them. They had an elongated look, like jets of blue gas. They were moving—moving fast.

“What the hell…?” he asked the parrots and the waves. The birds had fallen silent, as had the insects.

His bafflement slid away and became something more personal: fear. He knew what he had to be seeing…the machines had arrived at last.

More blue trails flared into existence out to the west, streaking downward with alarming speed. He realized they must be coming down below the cloud layer, flying into the atmosphere from orbit and slowing as they entered the thickest layers of Earth’s sky. There had to be fifty—no, more kept appearing. There were hundreds of them! He knew the Macros had huge ships, bigger than anything Earth had. Could they really have so many? Could they be flying them directly at Andros Island, the base of Star Force, with such reckless speed? Earth’s ships seemed pathetic in comparison. A motley collection of stolen vessels and homebrewed ships with half-baked designs. He’d seen them online. The biggest of them was no more than a tenth the size of the enemy cruisers. If he was seeing hundreds of enemy ships streaking toward Earth, everything was surely lost.

Bjorn’s eyes searched the sky, looking for anything else of interest. Where were the Star Force ships? Where were Earth’s fleets, as tiny as they might be? Try as he might, he couldn’t see another fleet.

Then a shocking series of events followed. Near at hand, less than a mile from his position, a blossoming white light lit up the night. He crouched and stared out to the open sea. There, illuminated briefly by the missile it had just fired, was what had to be a submarine. He hadn’t seen it out there at all until it had launched a missile.

The weapon streaked into the sky, and Bjorn’s eyes followed it. His mouth hung open. More missiles rose up after the first. The light was shocking in the dim night and the roar was deafening. Most of the launches came from miles away out to the east, presumably from other subs in the distance.

Bjorn couldn’t believe his misfortune. The subs would probably attract return fire. He was in the middle of a battle, and if his hunch was right, those blue streaks bearing down out of space were missiles as well. He was standing far too close to ground zero for comfort.

He looked this way and that, seeking shelter. There was precious little to be had, and precious little time to seek it. He crossed the three cabins off his list immediately. Any serious blast would destroy them. There were no cellars under any of the buildings, either.

As he saw it, he had very few options. He could dive into the ocean and swim downward, but that might mean certain death. He had no idea how long he might have to wait, holding his breath down there. The exchange appeared to be minutes away, but it was hard to be sure. He could drown waiting for it, or possibly be forced to surface just as the warheads went off.

Just as bad, the water might not save him anyway. When the shockwaves rolled out over the ocean, they would kill every fish in the water, crushing their brains inside their skulls and rupturing their eyes…

His eyes swept the island, which was no more than two hundred feet long in total. The scene, once as tranquil and perfect as he’d ever laid eyes upon, was now lit up with glaring lights that bloomed overhead, filtering down through the rustling palms. From his position, it looked as if the grand finale of a fireworks display had been set off directly above the island.

There were only two structures on the island other than the three cabins. One was the water catch-basin system. The other was the outhouse.

Bjorn’s eyes fixated on this last. It had to be.

Never having been a squeamish man nor one who was fraught with indecision, he sprinted to the outhouse door and ripped it half off the hinges. He tore the cracked wooden seat away. The hole exposed beneath was as black as a tomb.

He vaulted inside, feet first. He landed with surprisingly little squelching about a dozen feet down. He’d only used the thing a few times. The bottom was slick with brine and tainted with waste water. It stank, but he hardly cared now.

Bjorn crouched down there less than a minute before the world cracked open outside and a brilliant light more intense than anything he’d ever seen shone down through the opening. It was a pure white, like that produced by an arc-welder. He wondered if he would be burned by this burst of energy, which was like a thousand suns.

Strangely, there was no sound at first, just that shock of white light. Then the illumination changed and faded to a lurid roiling red. Still, there was no sound.

Bjorn had studied such things. He’d worked for enough governments and taken field courses in survival under every conceivable situation. This one was not one of the better ones, as he recalled. The blasts had to have been thermonuclear to cause such a bright, distant flash. It had to be a fusion bomb—an H-bomb. He knew it was far from over. The worst was yet to come.

Light travels much faster than sound. That’s why the flash seemed silent at first. The megatons of force released initially sent out massive pulses of light and particle radiation, which was soon followed up by a concussive blast wave of high-pressure air. Depending on how close the strike was, he was either in for a rough time or instantaneous death. He wasn’t quite sure which was preferable and had no idea if the nanites in his body could repair cellular damage from radiation burns.

Fortunately he didn’t have long to wait. More bursting flares of light appeared in the hole above. There were so many he could not count them. Some were dimmer than others, indicating they were far off. Others appeared to be close and blindingly bright. They all left purple afterimages on his retina, but he found he didn’t want to close his eyes. He wanted to die with them open.

When the first shockwave hit the island, he was surprised by the suddenness of it. The calm night went from relative silence to a deafening howl of wind in less than a second. Trees went down, and the outhouse over his head was blown clear off the island and tumbled over the water toward the mainland. It lifted up into the air where it twirled and crashed. He could hear it flying end over end and breaking into pieces.

He crouched at the bottom of his stinking hole and placed his palms flat over his ears and opened his mouth. Putting his fingers into his ears would have been a mistake; he’d learned that when dealing with artillery blasts. With a tight seal in the ear canal, the air pressure difference could pop a man’s eardrums.

The flashes and the blasts went on for more than a minute. The bursts seemed to be high up in the atmosphere, fortunately for him. There were no tidal waves or fireballs hitting him directly. He had time to wonder what the clouds of radioactive isotopes would do, and where on the Earth they would fall and settle at last.

When the barrage was over at last, he climbed up onto the surface of the island again. Many of the trees were damaged, but none of them were on fire. Of the three cabins on the island, only one was left standing.

Bjorn walked to the sea and stood in the ankle deep water. The night had become still again, as suddenly as it had been disrupted. The tremendous explosions had ceased.

He waded around the island, noting the water was warmer than it had been. Something thumped against his leg, and he crouched to examine it. The corpse of a yellow jack floated in the waves. He picked up the fish and examined it. He wasn’t sure what had killed the creature, but he was sure these were good to eat. He circled the island twice, wading out and scooping with his hands. Within twenty minutes, he had seven of the fish on the shore. A small school must have been swimming by his island when the war in the heavens had reached down and struck them dead.

He toasted one up in the fire pit and ate it, sitting on the fallen trunk of a snapped-off palm. Radioactive or not, the meat was fresh and good.

-5—

Most men would have fled the island after experiencing Armageddon in the middle of the night. The stress and worry would have gotten to them. They would have been too nervous to fall sleep again, or at least too busy watching the skies, waiting for the spacecraft in the heavens above to drop the second proverbial shoe.

But if Bjorn was anything, he was unusual. He didn’t worry about the war overly much. He knew it was being fought nearby, but that didn’t change his decision to ride it out right here on his forgotten little scrap of land. In fact, he reasoned that he’d just become considerably more uninteresting to those who had been searching for him.

He decided to stay put. He arrived at this decision with characteristically sound logic: First, he thought it was unlikely there would be another missile strike that would come closer than the one that he’d just ridden out. In case there was one coming, in the morning he would dig a superior bunker in the middle of the island, shoring it up with wood from the fallen trees and collapsed cabins. Second, this island had now become a haven that was very unlikely to be invaded by the spooks who were seeking him. Even if they had been scouring the Keys, they now had bigger things to worry about.

Bjorn came to the conclusion that the nuclear exchange he’d witnessed in the night had furthered his goals. All he wanted was to be left alone, to be left out of this fight. And who in their right minds would come out here after him now?

But Bjorn was wrong about his seclusion having been enhanced. Two quiet days passed, and then visitors arrived on what he was already coming to think of as his island.

They came just after dawn. The night had been a colorful one, as the skies overhead had given him another distant light show. Apparently, the Macro cruisers had finally arrived, having followed their shower of missiles to Earth. They’d parked themselves near Andros Island. Bjorn wasn’t sure if they were bombarding Star Force or not, but there were flashes of light in the distance to the east, and occasionally aircraft cruised overhead. The planes were particularly annoying, as they were military craft and the ban on sonic booms had been lifted in this region. The pilots seemed to enjoy creating thunder in the skies as their planes broke the sound barrier.

It was just after dawn when Bjorn’s eyes snapped open. For a split-second, he wondered what had awakened him—then he heard it: the unmistakable buzzing of an outboard motor.

He launched himself to his feet and headed for the only section of the island where the foliage was still dense and green. He crouched there in the shade of mangroves and palms, looking out to sea with intense eyes.

There were four of them. Regular Marines, U. S. personnel. He narrowed his eyes, and read what he could from their behavior.

They didn’t look like they were planning an assault. They had stripped down to their tee shirts and dog tags. They kept their helmets on, and their rifles slung, but they were merely talking, rather than grim-faced and determined. When they came onto the island with splashing boots, they were looking around but did not appear concerned for their safety.

Bjorn read the situation, and figured that if they were looking for him, they didn’t actually expect to find him. Perhaps they’d been checking countless islands for days. Or possibly they didn’t know he existed and were pursuing some other kind of mission.

He decided to remain hidden and see what they would do. From the green gloom of his foliage, he watched as they unfolded some kind of transceiver and buried it, with an antenna sticking up, in the middle of the island. Then they turned and went back to their boat.

This was too much. He didn’t want this thing on his island. He would have to leave, and he’d already spent too much time arranging this place to his liking.

When none of them were looking, he sprinted down the sandy strip of land that served as a western shore. When he was about twenty feet from their craft, where they laughed and talked and pointed out to sea, discussing their next move, Bjorn hailed them. He had his pistol tucked in his waistband at the small of his back.

“Hey!” he shouted. “What are you guys doing on my land?”

The startled marines fell silent. They all turned together, staring at him in surprise.

“Sorry, sir,” one said. He had a corporal’s stripes on his shirt, which he hastened to shrug on. “Sorry. We didn’t know anyone was on this rock.”

“No problem,” Bjorn said, pasting on a smile. “Could you tell me what you’re doing, or is it top secret?”

The men glanced at one another. The corporal shrugged and walked up the shore to meet Bjorn, who was already calculating his next move.

Bjorn had never gotten along terribly well with regular troops, and he was distrustful of them now. He went over in his mind, as the corporal approached, just how he could kill the man in the most efficient manner possible. Really, the first man wasn’t the problem. He was certain he could strike him dead or at least unconscious with a single blow.

It was the rest of the team that concerned him. They had rifles on their backs, and he was pretty sure he couldn’t spring into their midst and put them all down before they managed to get off a few rounds. In most cases, a single gunshot wound would not stop Bjorn, but a lucky shot to the head might do just that.

Even if they didn’t kill him, they could injure him seriously. Recovery could take days. Bjorn wasn’t interested in enduring that unless it was absolutely necessary. He also knew that once he got rid of this team another would come after them trying to figure out the disappearance.

Military people could be like a trail of ants: once you squished one the rest went crazy and they never stopped coming at you.

Accordingly he didn’t draw his gun, or crush the corporal’s windpipe. Instead, he stood there motionless, forcing himself to smile.

“You okay, man?” the corporal asked. “You look…burned.”

Bjorn blinked, then nodded. “Yeah, I probably do. I was out here a few nights ago when the sky lit up.”

“Holy shit!” the marine said with real feeling. “You should get to a hospital or something.”

“I will soon,” Bjorn promised. “But could you tell me what kind of device you placed in the middle of my island? It’s not some kind of mine, is it?”

Bjorn knew what a mine looked like, and he knew this wasn’t one, but he figured the marine would be more forthcoming if he was reassuring a civilian.

“No, no,” said the corporal. “It’s not dangerous. It’s a sensory device. It’s a magnetometer, actually. If anything big and metal comes near, it will warn us.”

Bjorn frowned. “Big? Metal? Like what, a ship?”

“Not that big. You couldn’t get a deep draft ship close to this island anyway. It’s too shallow. No, we’re detecting machines—you know, robots. Hey, listen, if you want a ride back to the main island, we can take you now. We have orders to pick up civvies in need.”

Bjorn shook his head. “Thanks, but I’m all right.”

The corporal clearly didn’t believe him, but he shrugged and turned to go. “Suit yourself, it’s your funeral. I think everyone has the right to choose how and where they go out. Just ignore the sensor box. It won’t go off and send out a signal unless a very large piece of metal comes close.”

“How big and how close?”

“Uh, something the size of a pickup would have to be within a hundred yards or less.”

“I see.”

“Oh, and one more thing, sir.”

“What?”

“If one of those machines does come here, you should start swimming. The sensor will alert the Air Force. This island will be lit up a few minutes later.”

“Thanks for the warning.”

“No problem. Luck.”

Bjorn watched them leave. They glanced back frequently and talked among themselves, laughing. He had no doubt they were making jokes at his expense. To them, he was a crazy hermit on an island who wouldn’t leave.

But in his mind, they were all lucky to be alive.

-6—

Bjorn spent the next hour or so tinkering with the device. He managed to alter its function rather easily, as it wasn’t built with any kind of failsafe. He set it up to beep when it detected something, but not to send out a radio signal. It still had its transponder active, of course, so anyone monitoring it wouldn’t know he had tampered with it. The device would appear to be functioning normally, but wouldn’t transmit its warning when the time came.

When the sun was beginning to set and he was in the middle of cooking up the last of his blast-killed yellow jacks for dinner, he heard a familiar sound: again, it was the buzzing of an outboard motor.

He threw sand into the fire and left the fish sizzling in the dark. He hoped he would have time to eat it later.

The boat circled the island twice while a spotlight played over the dark trees. Bjorn lay in the sand on his belly. He felt a few bugs crawl over his back and sweating arms; one prodded him over the kidneys with what felt like a needle, but he ignored it. Only his eyes moved, following the boat. It looked like the same one that had visited the first time.

In his right hand, he held his 9mm tightly. He was thinking hard. Had he tripped some kind of failsafe on the device by accident? He didn’t think so, but it was hard to be sure. He was a capable tech, but not a wizard.

No. It was far more likely they’d reported the strange black man who’d weathered a series of atomic blasts on a tiny offshore island. A man who hadn’t been interested in returning to the mainland despite his burns. Once they’d made the report, someone had put two and two together and sent them back out here to pick him up. Just maybe, they’d found their mystery man from the airport incident.

One would think that in the excitement of a pitched battle, these troops would have something better to do. But Bjorn knew better. Whoever wanted him, they wanted him badly. He was special. He was a single nanotized man in the midst of billions of normal people. Possibly, he was the only nanotized man on the planet who wasn’t a loyal member of Star Force.

Bjorn counted heads in the boat. There were six this time, instead of four. They’d come wearing their full kits as well, and their rifles were in their hands rather than slung over their backs.

He believed he could kill them all and survive, but it would be somewhat iffy. They were trained men on alert. They weren’t going to cut him a break this time. They were going to come in with their weapons hot, and all he had was a pistol with fifteen rounds in the magazine.

He still thought he could do it, so he didn’t flee. He waited, hugging the sand and moving nothing other than his eyes as they warily circled the island in their boat. He could have slid down into the small bunker he’d dug against future bombings, but then he wouldn’t have been able to see them as easily. Really, his bunker was just a dug out hole shored up with timbers. There were a few side tunnels, but he hadn’t built it for a siege. He’d only planned to use it as a bomb shelter. In a fight, it would be nothing more than a trap. They’d toss in grenades and it would all be over.

Finally, the team stopped circling and landed their boat. They didn’t drop an anchor, but jumped into the shallow water, boot splashing. Four of them came ashore while two others stayed with their tiny patrol craft. The motor had dropped down from a whine to a burbling sound.

“Hey man? Are you still here?” a voice called out.

Bjorn frowned. He thought he recognized the voice. Could it be the same corporal he’d talked to earlier?

Distrustful, he stayed down and quiet.

“I think he’s gone,” said one of the men.

“That’s bad. Stay alert. Eyes open, team.”

They advanced as a group to the center of the island where they’d buried their device. They checked it and seemed interested in nothing else. They whispered together and gazed out to sea in every direction at once. They were nervous.

Bjorn began to realize that these men weren’t looking for him. They weren’t searching the island or calling out to him. They were only interested in their sensor.

“You sure it tripped off? Could be a false alarm. There was just one blip and then nothing.”

“Could be a false alarm. That’s why they sent us instead of leveling the island.”

Bjorn stood up silently and stepped forward. None of the marines saw him for a moment. He stood looming over them in the shadow of a banana tree.

“What’s wrong, gentlemen?” he asked softly.

They startled and lurched around, aiming their rifles in his direction. A flashlight played over his face.

“It’s cool, he lives here,” the corporal said.

“You live here?”

The corporal stood up and approached. He eyed Bjorn’s pistol and his bearing. “It’s pretty clear you’re former military,” he said to Bjorn. “Am I right?”

“Yes.”

“That’s cool. But maybe you could help us out. We got a blip from here about an hour after we left. Did you see anything—anything unusual?”

“Like what?”

The corporal cleared his throat and looked at the others. “Like a big machine.”

“Like a robot?”

“Yeah.”

Bjorn shook his head slowly. But now, his eyes were gazing out at the sea. Like the rest of them, he wondered what might be out there.

“This thing you placed on my island—it was built to detect robots right?”

“Right?”

“Or was it built to attract them?”

The corporal shrugged. “Really, I have no idea. I set them up, turn them on, and leave them on little crappy islands like this. No offense.”

“None taken.”

The corporal looked him over. “Your blisters look better.”

“I heal fast,” Bjorn said. “Listen, if the device checks out—”

He got no further. There was an odd sound out in the water. It was a thumping sound. They turned as a group toward the boat. The two men they’d left stationed there were sitting against the gunwales, quietly waiting. The engine still burbled.

The group relaxed, but then another sound came. This time, there was no way to discount it, no way to assume it was the boat nudging up against a hidden rock. A crack rent the air, a sound like that of splitting metal.

As they all watched in shock, the boat heaved up and flipped over. The men sitting inside went flying. One fell into the sea while the other slapped down on the narrow beach.

Bjorn was the first to react. He scrambled forward, his pistol in his hand. He was knee-deep in the water before the marines behind him had taken more than two steps and raised their rifles.

Flashlights played over the scene. There was a chorus of shouts and curses. Bjorn shushed them and knelt to check the man on the beach.

“Neck’s broken,” he said.

The rest of the team fell silent. They spread out and held their guns to their shoulders, aiming this way and that. But there was nothing to shoot at.

The overturned boat’s engine died, leaving them all in a deathly silence.

“What the hell was it?” the corporal asked him, standing at his side.

“I would suspect it was the machine that tripped the sensor. Or one of them, anyway.”

“One of them?”

“Haven’t you watched the news?” Bjorn asked. “Macros don’t usually work alone.”

The kid’s eyes were wide and terrified. His breathing came in gasps. In contrast, Bjorn felt remarkably calm. He looked out into the water, trying to see any sign of the second marine who had stayed with the boat. But he didn’t spot a thing. The waves just kept peacefully lapping on the beach, as if nothing at all were wrong.

-7—

Bjorn crouched on the beach while the others swept the island. He didn’t seek the thing they all suspected was here, instead he listened to the environment carefully.

The troops around him spread out, gun stocks held to their shoulders, aiming their weapons everywhere they looked. They weren’t shouting and screaming, which impressed Bjorn. When they spoke, it was in urgent whispers.

“It’s in the water. Has to be.”

“Anyone see it?”

“Negative.”

“Is Spinelli really dead?”

“Yeah, he’s gone. Both of them are gone.”

While the others circled and searched, Bjorn stood as if frozen. Instead of looking for the machine, he listened for it. He tried to tune out the marines, their comments and the squelch of their boots on the sand. His mind sifted through the sounds for anything unusual.

When he heard a rustling behind him, he turned instantly. But it was just one of the privates, moving into the island’s interior. Palm fronds rattled over the marine’s back as he pressed through them.

Bjorn relaxed a fraction—and that’s when the machine made its move.

He realized as it came out of the trees that it must have come up on the far side of the island to make its second attack. When he saw it looming out of darkness, he brought up his pistol, but didn’t bother to fire.

The machine rushed out of the bushes into the middle of the island, quickly advancing on the private who’d strayed from the rest of the group. It was about as big as a pickup truck—with a king cab. All metal, it was shaped like a headless grasshopper with twin blades mounted where its mouth should have been. Bjorn could hear its grinding gears and whining motors. The thing was loud when it was up close.

The targeted marine knew he was screwed in his final seconds. Shouting hoarsely, he lifted his rifle and unloaded a magazine into the oncoming monster. He fired his weapon in full-automatic mode, but it didn’t seem to matter. Sparks flew from the front plates of the Macro and at least one of the bulbous electronic eyes popped like a light bulb, but it didn’t slow its charge.

Five-foot long curved blades like twin scimitars swept up and made a pincher motion. Bjorn hadn’t known Macros had blades. The shears reminded him of a stained gardening tool. They scissored together with a rasping clack and snipped the marine in half. It was an awful sound, and as the shears met one another in the middle of the man’s flesh, a series of small thumping sounds began. It was the sound of the man’s body emptying out. Blood splashed out over the sands transforming the beach into dark clumps of earth.

The rest of the team was in the action by now. They all fired at the monster, lashing it with bullets. The Macro paused for a moment, then moved determinedly as if making a decision.

Bjorn thought he knew what it was thinking: these guns aren’t damaging me. This doesn’t hurt. I don’t think I need to run.

Possibly, firing on the monster was their greatest error. The machine had been circumspect previously, uncertain as to what kind of danger it faced. Now that they’d done their worst, it had lost all respect for the group. Probably, it had had a mission with orders to stay undetected. Now that stealth was out of the question and running wasn’t necessary, it decided to keep on killing.

It advanced with a decisive lurch toward the next man, who shouted incoherently and reloaded his rifle. He fumbled and dropped the magazine. When he stooped to pick it up, the machine moved in.

Bjorn knew what he had to do. He had to vanish. He was good at vanishing, which was more than just the art of running away from danger. The key was to know when it was time to disappear.

He’d always been gifted with a precise sense of timing in these matters. Once, in his youth, he’d fallen in with a street gang. The leader of the group had gotten the bright idea of knocking off an all-night liquor store. But something had gone wrong. The old man behind the counter had pulled a gun, and bullets had begun to fly.

Before the old guy even had his piece out, Bjorn had already hit the door. He’d seen the steel in the man’s eyes. The owner hadn’t been afraid of the robbers—he’d been pissed. That had been enough for Bjorn. He was the only one of the group to get away, and he’d never tried his hand at robbery again.

This moment was very similar. The machine had decided to kill its assailants, and had coldly calculated that its odds of success were high. Bjorn knew with crystal clarity that this was the moment when he should turn and run. It was the perfect time to vanish.

He almost did it. He could see himself in his mind’s eye, diving into the water and swimming away. He’d probably make it halfway to the main island before the machine caught all the marines and killed them. They were already splitting up, backing away. They would do their best to stay alive. But there was nowhere to go for a normal man. They couldn’t swim fast enough to outrun this nightmare of heartless metal, and it had already sunk their boat. In less than a minute, they would all be dead.

But Bjorn didn’t turn and run. Instead, he advanced and circled the machine. Internally, he wondered what he could do against it. He’d never met another human being who had been nanotized as he had. It had been years, therefore, since he’d met a man he wasn’t certain he could defeat.

The question in his mind now was: could he kill this raging machine?

The Macro was only a small one. It was one of the units the Star Force people derisively referred to as workers or grasshoppers. Up close, Bjorn thought the machine resembled a metallic ant.

He worked his way around to its flank before it seemed to take notice of him. The marines were more interesting, as they were blasting away ineffectively at its thick metal hull.

The leader of the marines was a staff sergeant. He became the machine’s next victim. He was shouting something, backing away and firing in short, controlled bursts. It seemed he was intent on blowing off all the sensory bulbs on the monster. Bjorn didn’t think that would work, but he had to give the noncom credit; it was worth a try.

Bjorn paused to drop his gun. If automatic fire wasn’t doing any damage, a pistol wasn’t going to do the trick. He exchanged the gun for a combat knife drawn from the belt of a dead man—or rather from the lower half of him. The belt itself was circling nothing at all now, and had been sheared into leather strips in any case.

He held the knife underhand and charged in. He didn’t roar a battle cry or say anything. He didn’t want to distract the machine from the men it was stalking.

The machine finally caught up with the retreating staff sergeant. The man ducked, but it didn’t save him. The sweeping blades neatly sliced off his head. His helmet popped into the air and splashed down in the warm foamy waves.

Despite its attention being riveted firmly on the fallen sergeant, who it chopped to shreds with a series of pecking motions reminiscent of a bird of prey, the machine noticed when Bjorn got close.

It whirled in his direction when he made his final leap toward it. Those deadly blades spread wide, but they snipped the air too low. Bjorn had launched himself a good fifteen feet into the air, and landed neatly on its back.

The machine didn’t have small arms with which to reach Bjorn up there. But it did have kicking legs, which caused the hull to buck and convulse under him. The blades opened and closed spasmodically, shearing away a nearby palm trunk.

Bjorn hung on while the machine thrashed about. Doing anything else would surely mean his death. Fronds and brush lashed his back and the machines inner mechanisms were deafeningly loud.

“You’re a crazy mother!” he heard a remaining marine shout.

Privately, Bjorn had to agree with the man’s assessment. He employed the combat knife now, stabbing it into the machine’s back. The armor was too thick, however, and the point only sparked and scraped. He knew that if he thrust it too hard, it would snap the blade. He had to find a weak spot. He stabbed at the joints, but they were tougher than the hull, being dinner plate-sized, rotating disks of steel.

Then he found one of the ruined sensory bulbs. There was a hole in the machine’s skin there, about as big around as a soup can. Bjorn stabbed into the hole and felt live current jolt his fingers. It would be ironic, he thought, if he electrocuted himself while trying to dig into this thing.

But he kept going. He gouged and stabbed with the knife, widening the hole somewhat. Then he punched his hand inside up to the elbow and pulled out a handful of wires.

The wires were live, and uninsulated. He’d heard that about these machines. They weren’t serviced by humans and so didn’t need to worry about safety in their designs. Bare wires were common inside their chassis. They only insulated one wire from the next when needed to provide smooth operation.

Gritting his teeth against biting shocks, he ripped loose what he could reach. But the effect on the machine was negligible.

Deciding at last that the man on its back was unreachable, the Macro stopped spinning around and lurching like dog with a tape on its back. Instead, it advanced again on the nearest marine.

“Get off that thing!” a soldier shouted at Bjorn. As the machine advanced, the man was backing steadily toward the shoreline. “I can’t get a shot with you riding that thing!”

“Shooting it isn’t having any effect,” Bjorn shouted back. “Give me a weapon. I need to get into this thing’s guts.”

“I warned you,” the marine said. “Duck!”

Then he opened fire. Bjorn hugged the back of the machine while a hail of bullets struck the Macro’s nosecone. He couldn’t blame the man, as he might have done the same. Sparks flew, lighting up the night with orange fire.

The monster wasn’t deterred. The marine ran out of ammo and continued to step backward until he splashed into the water. The water deepened quickly and he was forced to swim. That was the end for him. He was plucked from the waves and torn apart before he could escape.

Ignoring Bjorn completely, the Macro now turned and headed toward the other end of the island. It wasn’t immediately clear what it was doing. To Bjorn, it appeared the island was empty.

“You see me, don’t you, you metal fuck?” shouted a voice.

Bjorn could see the machine’s target now. It was the corporal he’d first met earlier that same day. Looking around, Bjorn realized the two of them were the last living men on the island.

The corporal was hiding inside Bjorn’s bunker. The dugout was too small for the Macro, maybe there was a chance.

But a moment later they both learned this machine could dig. Its front legs became a blur. Sand and gravel sprayed out behind it all the way to the sea.

Bjorn reached deeper still into its guts through the hole in its hull and began ripping again, trying to find something vital. A horrible pain lanced up from his hand a moment later.

“My finger, damn!” he roared.

He yanked, and then yanked harder, but his hand was stuck. Probably, he’d been pinched by a gear inside the thing. He was in agony and getting nowhere. He gave a final, wrenching pull and his hand came out of the machine.

It took him a second to realize his right ring finger was missing. It was just gone. He’d left it somewhere inside the machine. The pain was intense.

-8-

“It’s digging me out,” shouted the corporal in the hole. “I’m out of ammo and I can’t get past it.”

“Have you got a grenade?” Bjorn demanded.

“What? Yeah—good idea. Better than being torn apart.”

“No, don’t pull the pin. Just toss it up here to me.”

The marine threw a small round object up out of the hole. Bjorn had to leap from the machine’s back to catch it. He snatched it out of the air with his good hand, then turned back around.

The machine, which had been totally ignoring Bjorn for a full minute now, suddenly whirled. The pincher-blades opened wide, and Bjorn realized he’d made a mistake. He’d taken its lack of interest as a sign he could survive leaving its back—but he’d been wrong.

The only thing that saved him over the next second and a half was sheer speed. Bjorn took a flying leap backward, out of the path of the snapping shears. He landed on his shoulder, rolled, and came up in a crouch. The machine charged closer for the kill. It seemed more eager than ever before. Perhaps Bjorn had been irritating it with his stabbing and clinging. Either that, or the machine had marked him down as long overdue for death.

Bjorn could tell as he backed from the monster that it wasn’t going to allow him to ride on its hull again. He’d ridden it for over a minute, and the fun was over. The Macro held its blades higher, and whenever he moved, it lifted them immediately, as if planning to snap him in half if he tried another flying leap.

Bjorn was impressed. The machine had learned to counter his tactic after seeing it only once. It wasn’t a dumb toaster—it was smart. That made it all the more dangerous and terrifying. For the first time since he’d engaged with the machine, he began to doubt his ability to defeat it. The thought came to him as a shock. He’d felt challenged before in combat, but never outmatched. At least, not since the old man in the liquor store had looked at him with steely eyes.

He kept backing up, using whatever trees he could to hide behind. The machine pressed forward relentlessly, snapping off thin trunks and scuttling around thick ones. Bjorn was running out of island. Soon, his hind foot would slip into the water and that would be the end of him.

The corporal he’d left hiding in the hole entered the fight then. He’d found some ammo somewhere and fired a steady series of single shots at the Macro’s back. The bullets whined and spanged from the hull, but the Macro took no notice. It didn’t whirl to charge at its tormenter. It stayed on target, determined to kill the man who’d evaded it for so long.

Bjorn was further impressed by the machine’s behavior. An animal would have been distracted—but this thing was smarter than a dog or a bull. It wasn’t like a man, either. It was like—a machine.

His foot slipped. He’d reached the far end of the island. His instinct was to dive into the water and swim for it. He was faster than an Olympic swimmer, and could hold his breath for ten minutes if necessary. The nanites could chemically break down the carbon dioxide in his blood, releasing the oxygen again. But that effect was of limited duration and could only be used in emergencies.

But he decided against that play. Running wasn’t easy when facing a monster like this. If he tried it, the machine would either catch him as it had the last marine who’d gone for a swim, or it would turn and finish the corporal who was still behind it, trying to get its attention, trying to help out. Bjorn wasn’t going to let the kid die as a decoy.

Summoning all his speed, Bjorn made his play. He knew he might well die, but at least it would be a clean death, one met fighting, rather than running.

He pulled the pin on the grenade.

A second passed while he dodged this way and that. The blades sawed at the air, spread wide the way an ant warrior might spread its mandibles, seeking something to crush. The shears rasped over his head as he ducked under them.

He held the grenade in his left hand, and stuck his right hand up in the air, higher than the rest of his body.

The machine took the bait. It lunged and sliced off his hand at the wrist. The blades clacked together and gore sprayed Bjorn’s cheek. He tasted his own blood as it ran into his mouth and dimmed the vision of his right eye.

This was the moment he’d been waiting for. The machine had its deadly jaws shut. It would take a fraction of a second to open them again. During this moment, he could move freely.

Scrambling to his feet, Bjorn threw himself to the machine’s side, and rammed the grenade into the hole in its hull, the same hole he’d been gouging at with his knife minutes earlier.

The grenade went in and vanished. Then, he dove to get away.

The Macro didn’t cooperate, however. It turned, blades opening like jaws. It couldn’t get Bjorn into the blades, he was too close, but it did manage to smash the curved outside of the shears into his back.

Bjorn was thrown onto the sand face first. He scrambled to get back to his feet, but his missing hand failed him. He levered against the stump, driving it into the sand and feeling the grit sting his laid-open flesh.

He could sense the machine looming over him, coming in for the kill. Then there was a shocking thud. The grenade had finally gone off.

The machine thrashed for a few seconds more, snapping at nothing spasmodically. Bjorn scrambled away from it.

Finally, its motors stopped whirring, and it crashed down, dead.

Bjorn sat up, sides heaving. He circled the machine warily. The corporal came up behind him, aiming his rifle at the dead machine.

“Is it really dead?” he asked.

“Yeah, I think so.”

“That was some crazy shit. You’re my hero.”

Bjorn chuckled. He sat down on the sand and cradled his stump. The sand had caked up on the exposed flesh, but it was still bleeding a bit. He knew the nanites in his body were rushing to the scene, forming a net to keep his blood in his veins like platelets forming a scab—but faster.

“Oh, jeez!” said the marine, throwing himself down on his knees. “I didn’t see you lost your hand. Wow, crap. Let me get a tourniquet on that.”

“No,” said Bjorn. “Just go find my hand.”

The corporal looked at him for a second, as if he were insane.

“You’re in shock. You aren’t thinking straight.”

“Look, do you want to help me or not?”

“Yeah, of course. I already radioed this in. A chopper should be coming out soon.”

Bjorn closed his eyes and shook his head. “That’s not helping me. Just get my damned hand, will you?”

“Yeah, sure man.”

The corporal went off down the beach, and came back less than a minute later with the sandy, blood-caked hand in his helmet.

“Could you give me your canteen?” Bjorn asked.

Wordlessly, the corporal gave him the canteen and the helmet with the hand in it.

“I’ve never seen moves like those,” the corporal said while he watched Bjorn wash off the hand in the helmet. “Jeez, man…I got to wear that, you know?”

Bjorn used the helmet as a washbasin, cleaning the sand from his hand and his stump. When he was through, he handed it back to the corporal, who looked disgusted.

“Go wash it out in the ocean,” he told him.

When the corporal’s back was turned, he pressed the severed hand onto his wrist again. He held it there, applying steady, firm pressure.

“Uh,” said the corporal, returning a minute later. “You know, I don’t think that’s going to work. I think you need a surgeon to sew it up. And fast. The chopper will be here in a fifteen minutes.”

Bjorn read the man’s nametag. “Listen,” he said, “Robertson?”

“Yeah?”

“I’m not going to be here when that chopper gets here. You understand?”

Robertson stared at him. His mouth hung open. Finally, he closed it and nodded.

“I get it,” he said. “You’re Star Force, aren’t you?”

“What makes you say that?”

The corporal snorted and shook his head. “Just a guess. It’s either that, or you’re some kind of circus act.”

Bjorn looked troubled.

“Hey!” the corporal said. “It’s cool, man. I don’t care if you’re an astronaut, or a spy, or a deserter, or what. I’m not telling anyone about you. I think you guys are the best.”

“Why’s that?”

The corporal gestured back toward the steaming hulk of the machine. “Because you go up against these machines every day. You probably knew it was coming here, didn’t you?”

“Maybe…”

“That’s what I thought,” Robertson said excitedly. “You guys sacrifice everything just to protect the rest of us. Hell, you’re barely human now.”

Bjorn awarded him with a thin smile. “You’re welcome.”

“What about your hand?” Robertson asked in real concern. “That’s a nasty wound.”

“It was a clean cut. The nanites can reattach my hand. I’ll be able to move it again soon, and it will feel pretty normal in a day or so.”

“You still have a missing a finger.”

Bjorn got to his feet with a grunt and took a deep breath. A normal man would be in shock. But the nanites had a cure for almost any physical malady a man could experience. They only had trouble solving psychological problems. He went to the Macro and reached inside with his good hand. He dug around in there, but couldn’t find the finger.

“You’re trying to find the missing finger, aren’t you?” Robertson asked in amazement.

“No, I dropped my car keys in here.”

The corporal stared at him for a moment, then gave a single wild bark of laughter. Bjorn could see he was feeling unstable. It was natural enough after what he’d been through.

“That’s really funny,” the corporal said. He didn’t look like he was happy. He looked like he was about to be sick. “I’m not feeling so good.”

“Was that your first real firefight?”

“Yeah.”

“Lay down,” Bjorn advised. “You’re just coming down and have a lot of chemicals in your bloodstream. It’s a mild form of shock. Give it a minute and you’ll be fine.”

Following his advice, Robertson laid on his back on the blood-clotted sand. The waves lapped up, almost reaching him, but not quite. His eyes stared upward at the clouds overhead.

“I’m messed up inside,” he said. “All these dead guys—I knew them. I don’t know how you can make jokes in the middle of this nightmare.”

Bjorn looked at him for a moment. He wasn’t exactly a kid; he was probably about twenty and growing up fast.

“Practice,” Bjorn told him, answering the kid’s question at last.

Robertson perked up after a few minutes, but he stayed lying there on his back. Bjorn was feeling worse rather than better. His hand had begun to reattach itself, and the pain was intense. The skin of his arm and his hand had already sealed over. A livid red ring of swollen scar tissue circled his wrist. The nanites were working overtime, but Bjorn knew his hand was barely hanging there. If he slapped it a good one it would probably fall off again.

“I’ve got to splint and wrap this,” he said.

He got up wearily and roamed the island. After a minute or so of fruitless searching, Robertson showed up at his side.

“Take a break,” the corporal said. “I bet our med kit spilled out of the skiff we came in on.”

He waded out into the surf and rummaged in the wreckage of his patrol boat. After a few minutes, he came back to shore with a dripping plastic case. The box was olive green and had a small red cross printed on it.

Robertson knelt beside Bjorn and went to work on him.

“Freaky,” he said as he eyed the healing wound. “I can see little metal flecks in there. It looks like somebody threw glitter on your arm.”

He cut two branches for splints, then began to wrap the whole wrist in gauze and tape.

“Okay,” Robertson said. “So you’re a Star Force hero. That’s cool. But I’m guessing you were military before. What made you quit national service and go up against the aliens? Did they burn your hometown or something?”

“They picked me up.”

Robertson paused and stared at him wide-eyed. “You mean you’re a pilot? You are one of the originals? I can’t believe it. I thought they were all carried off into space by the Nano ships. Except for Riggs, that is.”

“Don’t believe everything the news tells you.”

“I don’t. Believe me, I don’t. But…wow. What the hell are you doing here on this scrap of dirt them—I mean, if you don’t mind my asking.”

Bjorn shook his head. The kid was getting on his nerves, but somehow he felt compelled to answer. How had he gotten to this point in his life? He’d started off in the regular service, gone on into special forces units—then somehow he’d lost his way. It had been a long time ago.

“Sometimes,” he said, “you start off all ‘oorah’, but if you get involved with the Washington people it can become…confused. After my enlistment was up, I found I had become something different from what I’d intended.”

Robertson looked at him blankly. Bjorn could tell the kid had no idea what he was talking about. For some reason, he decided to explain further.

“You know how you felt after you watched your friends die on this scrap of dirt? How sick you felt?”

The corporal nodded.

“That’s how the world felt when they met up with the aliens. The world governments have all gone a little crazy, in my opinion. I think it was a form of shock. They got paranoid and they’ve done things no one could be proud of.”

“Like what?”’

“Like sending me in to do dirty jobs. To clean up enemies—real or imagined enemies.”

Robertson looked at him with narrowed eyes. He was beginning to catch on.

“So…you did things you’re not proud of, is that it?”

“Yeah. I’ve been a bad boy. And I signed up to be a good guy. Finally, I dumped them all and went independent. After a few years of this, I guess the suits decided to reel me back in. But I’m not going back in. Not alive, anyway. Now you know why I’m on this tiny chunk of land in the middle of a war zone.”

“Shock,” Robertson said thoughtfully. “I never thought of it that way. The whole world is sick and puking. I think you’re right about that. All the cameras, the drones. They are in every city now, watching people. You can’t take a piss in a forest without it being logged in a database somewhere.”

“Not out here,” Bjorn told him, making a sweeping gesture with his good arm. “That’s why I came.”

When the field dressing was finished, Bjorn thanked the corporal and headed toward the leafy end of the island. He’d heard a helicopter coming. The sound was unmistakable.

The corporal shielded his eyes against the tropical sun and looked for it. Bjorn took a last look at the kid, but didn’t say goodbye. It was better that way.

When the flying machine made its approach a few minutes later, Robertson looked around in confusion, but Bjorn was gone.

He’d vanished.

-9—

Bjorn watched the island for a day, but no one came, so he went back to his vacation spot and tried to settle in. It was difficult. Although he was able to enjoy a few nights of peace after battling his first Macro, things just didn’t feel the same. The encounter with the kid corporal and the Macro had put everything into a new light.

For a long time now, Bjorn had been an independent operator. He was his own man, and he answered to no one once a mission was finished. He’d liked that part of the job, and always, in-between contracts, he’d found a spot like this to sit quietly and enjoy life.

But now, he felt bad about just sitting here. It was obvious the regular military couldn’t hope to deal with these aliens. Just one machine would have easily wiped out a trained team of regular troops. It was disturbing. Bjorn knew that if he hadn’t been here to help, they all would have died. It’d been a long time since he’d thought of himself as a hero of any form.

So he was troubled, but he didn’t know what to do about it. Usually, when bothered by some detail of life—like a man’s dying face—he would go to a vacation spot like this one and slowly forget. He’d soak up the sun and let his bad thoughts fade away. Today, it wasn’t working, and he wasn’t sure why not.

He knew he couldn’t stay on the island forever. Someone was too likely to come looking for him now, if the Macros in the sky didn’t end the world for everyone. They were busy for the moment with bigger problems, that he could understand. But he wouldn’t be forgotten forever. Eventually, his tiny island would be investigated.

He considered leaving, but didn’t know where else to go. He was out of money, and all his supplies were on the island. Despite the fact he’d had a few bad experiences here, he still liked the quiet hours. Sure, he knew the marines might come looking for him. But if the kid had reported him, they would at least have a good impression to start with.

He didn’t trust that the kid wouldn’t talk. Defeating a Macro in close combat made quite a story and his superiors would want to know how they’d managed to defeat the machine with only small arms. The corporal might mean well, but the temptation to brag would be intense. But even if he did keep quiet, if his commanders sensed any twisting of the facts with a dead patrol to answer for, they would lean on him. They would debrief him until he confessed everything. You didn’t just wander back to camp after having lost everyone in your unit and explain it all away with a shrug.

If he did tell them about the nanotized nut he’d met out here on this rock, they’d probably want to come out here to see the magic man who had ridden a Macro like a bronco for themselves. Figuring he had at least until morning, he dug into his supplies and found a small bottle of vodka. Somehow it had never leaked a drop despite all the explosions and giant robots.

After pouring a few drops onto the crusty circular scar around his wrist and rubbing it in, he drank the rest straight. The alcohol burned in his throat and on his wounds, and he liked both sensations. He lifted his right hand to examine it. For nearly a day, his fingers had remained blue and wouldn’t operate properly, but the hand had stayed attached to his wrist. The second day the tingling had begun in those fingers, feeling as if he’d left his hand folded under his body overnight, cutting off the circulation. He hated that tingling, but at least he still had a hand. Today it was working well, almost fully healed. He thought that perhaps in time he would figure out a way to regrow the missing digit.

That night he slept restlessly. There had been more fighting out over the ocean to the east. Sometimes, he thought he saw hulking ships appear in the distance, silhouetted by explosions. They had to be close or huge to be visible. Perhaps it was both.

Expecting things to worsen, he continued to eye the sky until it became overcast and began to rain. It was almost a relief. Now, if a missile did zoom close and end his life, he at least wouldn’t have time to even acknowledge it.

But still, he kept looking around whenever he heard an unusual sound. Each time the stray noise turned out to be a surging wave slapping the beach or a rustling palm dropping a frond. Twice, a sea bird landed nearby and foraged on the shore until he tossed a stone at it and it flapped off, squawking. He was so tired in the early hours of the next day he almost didn’t care if another marine patrol came out here and caught him.

When the rains stopped, he ate the cold remains of his last yellow jack and finished his last drops of vodka. Then he found the cleanest stretch of dry bare sand left on the island and stretched out on it. He passed out until dawn the next day.

*

When the dawn light came, it was pink at first, then deep blue. Sunlight filtered through cloud cover and a stiff breeze came up, making every leaf on the island rattle and flap.

Bjorn yawned and stretched. He ate sparingly and flexed his hand experimentally every few minutes. It wasn’t perfect, but it was operating again. It itched and burned abominably. The skin was red and puffed up. He could see metal in there—dark, blue-gray streaks that pulsed like veins but he which he knew weren’t full of blood. They were veins in between his skin and his muscle tissue. Veins of nanites.

His right hand felt odd, and not just because it was missing a finger. It was almost entirely without tactile feeling, but he could move it. He squeezed and flexed the surviving fingers, watching them tremble as he sent them commands. He supposed he should be glad he couldn’t feel more, as the pain would have been worse.

As he watched, tiny granules of sand were pressed out of his skin around the laceration which circled his wrist. The nanites were cleaning up, locating sand granules inside his arm which his poor washing efforts had missed. One at a time, the tiny machines forced these foreign objects out of his body. After each sand grain was pushed out, feeling like a slow-stabbing needle in reverse, a trickle of blood ran from the spot. These leaks were quickly tended to by more invisibly small machines.

As he watched this strange, alien process, wincing now and then, he thought about what the corporal had said: You sacrificed everything—hell, you’re barely human now…

Bjorn had to agree. He was no longer entirely human, he was part machine. Maybe that was why he didn’t want to live among humans anymore, to play by their rules. He didn’t hate them, but he did feel distant from them. They were like relatives from his childhood. People he recalled fondly, but who had grown apart from.

The day started in that slow, lazy fashion that so many hot days begin in the tropics. But at about ten a. m. that all changed.

It was Saturday, and out over the ocean to the east a battle began. It was so high up and so huge in scope, spanning many miles of land, sea, air and space that it was visible from his tiny island. Although he didn’t know it then, the final conflict for Andros Island between Star Force and the Macros had begun, and it would later come to be called the Saturday Assault.

High atmospheric bursts of fusion weapons were visible for a tremendous distance. In the past, when the militaries of Earth had seen fit to test such things, they’d done so far out at sea or in the depths of uninhabited deserts. Many people had seen the fission bombs go off in the early days of testing, but relatively few had witnessed H-bombs, fusion weapons thousands of times as powerful as the original bombs dropped on Japan to end World War Two.

Now, for a second time in a few days, Bjorn was treated to a display of modern weaponry being released by two combatants with no restrictions. As the day wore on, what had been a few sparks and thunder-like sounds out over the ocean to the east had drifted closer and become more dramatic.

Missiles sailed overhead from land-based locations in the U. S. They roared toward Andros and detonated in airbursts that made Bjorn lift his hands to cover his eyes. The fighting went on for long hours. Before it was over, Bjorn saw what could only be strikes to the north—they had to be hitting the mainland. He stared that way long after the flashes had dimmed from the initial white glare to a glowing, rising, lurid red.

So huge! Like new suns lit upon the surface of the Earth. The strikes must be massive, at least twenty megatons—or maybe a hundred. He couldn’t tell, but they lingered, sending fallout upward in a rising cloud. Up and up, columns of smoke and fire rose into the sky and set the clouds alight. The machines must have wiped out Florida’s greatest urban center, and who knew what else. Miami had to be gone.

Bjorn scrambled to his shelter, which now seemed pitiful. It wasn’t deep enough, and it wasn’t even airtight. Still, he did what he could. He drove new tunnels and shored up spots with sticks of driftwood. All the while he worked, he knew there was little point to it. If a warhead that powerful went off on top of Key West he’d be vaporized in an mercifully short instant, whether he was sitting in his pathetically shallow tunnels or not.

The battle quieted during the night, and he wondered who had won. He supposed if he saw a hundred machines marching up out of the sea around him in the morning he’d figure it out fast enough.

At dawn on the following day, he awakened again. There was a burning smell in the air, like that of a forest fire. He couldn’t see flame, but maybe it was just ash and smoke from the distant destruction. The winds were blowing from the northeast.

“I bet it’s hard to sleep much past dawn,” said someone nearby. There was a southern twang to the man’s voice.

Bjorn vaulted to his feet. He’d been lounging one second, wondering what he was going to eat for breakfast, and the next he was standing in a crouch. His hands both operated properly now, and his pistol was in his right hand as if having appeared there by magic. His fingers still tingled and itched, but they operated well enough.

“When I used to go camping as a kid,” the stranger continued conversationally, “and during patrols in the bush, we never slept after the sun came up.”

A man stood nearby on the beach, on the eastern side of Bjorn’s tiny island. With the dawning sun at his back, Bjorn couldn’t make out the face. He couldn’t see how the man had gotten here, either.

“Who are you?” he demanded.

“You’re a hard man to find, did you know that? And even harder to kill, apparently. I’m impressed. Very impressed.”

Bjorn stepped to his right, walking sideways. He never took his eyes off the intruder. Every muscle was tense, every cord stood out on his bare arms and back.

He could see the invader better now as the sun was no longer at his back. He was wearing military fatigues, and there were stars on his collar—a general’s stars.

“My, my,” said the general. “You move like some kind of werewolf, boy. Did you know that? Have you gone feral on us, hiding out here on this lump of dirt?”

“Answer my question or I’ll kill you where you stand,” Bjorn said. “Who are you?”

“I’m known as General Kerr. Maybe you’ve heard of me. I’ve been wrestling with Star Force and these effing aliens since the get-go.”

Bjorn peered at him. As a rule, he made an effort not to keep up with current events. But the name did ring a bell. “You work with Riggs, right?” he asked the stranger. “You’re some kind of government suit in a man’s uniform.”

“Heh,” said Kerr, nodding. “That sounds about right. Now, let’s talk about you, shall we? You’re Bjorn Gaines, a half-black deserter who’s gone into business for himself. A freelance contractor who the spook-patrol up in Washington likes to call up when someone needs to be removed from the landscape. A hitman, in other words. Do I have the right man?”

“I just want to be left alone,” Bjorn said. “Why can’t you people get that through your heads?”

Kerr snorted with amusement. He pointed over his shoulder to the north with a lazy finger. “Did you check out the lightshow yesterday? Do you have any idea what happened?”

“Nuclear strikes. A lot of them. Mostly airbursts, from the look of it.”

“Yeah, mostly. But not all. Miami is gone. Three million people and counting. The machines snuck a few in there when they realized they weren’t going to get to land their warheads on Andros Island, see? They’re smart that way. The missiles, I mean. They’re each flown by an angry robot, and if it’s clear they can’t take out their original target, they look for another one to suicide on. Any fat target of opportunity will do.”

Bjorn thought about it. He hadn’t known that. But after what he’d seen firsthand when dealing with the Macro on his island, he knew the machines were smart and very willing to sacrifice themselves to get a job done.

“That’s great,” he told the intruder. “I’m so glad you could come by and give me a personal update, General. But now, I’m afraid this interview is at an end.”

He turned away from Kerr and walked to the water’s edge.

“Think it’s going to be that easy, do you?” Kerr asked from behind him. “You can’t leave this island—not now. See that rock about six hundred yards off to your right? And the smaller one—just a pile of sand and bird crap, really—off to your left? I’ve got sharpshooters out there. They have their weapons trained on your skull, and these boys don’t miss. Trust me on that point.”

“I do,” said Bjorn. His eyes swept to both the small landmasses in the distance. Kerr could be telling the truth. There could very well be snipers out there. That would explain the brass balls he had to come and talk to a killer alone and personally.

Bjorn turned around slowly to face the general. “What do you want?”

“Ah,” chuckled Kerr. “Finally, at long last, the question that I want to hear! I want you to get involved, boy. That’s all! I want you to serve your government for a change, not just the highest bidder.”

“You want me to do a hit?”

“Exactly.”

“Who?”

Kerr’s face darkened with sudden feeling. He pointed out to the north again. “I want you to destroy the cocksucker who did that,” he said.

Bjorn looked confused. “You want me to kill Macros?”

“No, I’m talking about a certain Star Force commander.”

“Kyle Riggs?”

Kerr’s face shifted again, from dark rage to an easy smile. “That’s right.”

Bjorn nodded in sudden understanding. “That’s what you wanted all along, isn’t it? Since the interview in D. C. You want Riggs dead.”

“Lots of people do. I took my number a long time ago, and now it’s my turn to take a shot at him. And you’re the weapon I’ve chosen for the job. You’re the best.”

Bjorn shook his head. “I don’t know about that. There’s always someone better.”

“Nope. There’s no one better,” Kerr ticked off a series of facts on his fingers: “You’re nanotized, Delta-trained, non-Star Force, an accomplished independent assassin, and you have no easily located records… In short, you’re one of a kind on this planet, Gaines. What do you say?”

Bjorn stared at the general for several long seconds. “I think you’re right, General. I think I should get back into the game.”

“Excellent! Let me call in my transport. We’ll have you back in Washington in two hours.”

“What? No, that’s not what I meant. I’m not going to work with you.”

Kerr looked pissed for a moment, then he sucked in a breath through his nostrils and nodded. “All right. I respect a man who sticks to his principles. But, it is a pity.”

The older man reached for something on his belt, and for once Bjorn didn’t move fast enough. He was too surprised and the general seemed to be moving very nonchalantly. With almost a negligent, lazy motion, he lifted a grenade in his hand.

Before Bjorn could grab Kerr’s wrist, the man had pulled out the pin.

-10—

Bjorn was fast. All nanotized men were, but he’d been fast before he’d been injected with tiny robots. Now, he was a shocking blur when he moved.

He knew he didn’t have much time. He wasn’t sure if Kerr was insane and suicidal, or if the grenade was just a feint, or maybe even a signal for the snipers to begin shooting. He had a plan by this time, however, and he put it into motion.

First, he swatted the grenade from the man’s hand. There was a crackling sound of bones snapping. He ignored this and the howl that came out of the general a split second later.

Gathering himself, he sprang into the water. Gripped in both his hands, held tightly by his fatigues, was General Kerr. He’d leapt while holding onto the man, and now they were both flying toward the water together.

Something snapped nearby, causing a white spot to appear on a tree trunk. Well, thought Bjorn, at least I know the snipers are real.

The two men landed what seemed like an eternity later in the water. Bjorn made no effort to come down feet first. He fell on his right shoulder, which plunged into the water. General Kerr was pulled down after him.

The old man was game, Bjorn had to say that for him. Before they’d splashed into the sea together, he’d managed to get a knife out. Bjorn was forced to squeeze his wrist until he dropped it in the salt water.

They sank together into the water, with Kerr on top and Bjorn below. Bjorn pulled the older man down with his greater weight. Nanotized people were denser than normal humans. They were excellent swimmers, but they didn’t float in water. It had something to do with having several pounds of metal in your body.

A muffled popping sound told Bjorn the grenade had gone off back on the surface. Somewhere on his abused island there was a new scorch mark.

The general’s eyes were wide in shock and bubbles streamed from his mouth. He kneed Bjorn, who had both his wrists clamped, but Bjorn didn’t care. His balls were almost as tough as the rest of him, courtesy of the nanites.

They sank to the sandy bottom. Bjorn knew that if he surfaced, the snipers would pop his head like a melon.

Kerr’s struggles grew weaker. Bjorn knew he was drowning. Kerr hadn’t had a chance to take a deep breath before this unexpected dive.

Bjorn watched him for several more seconds before finally letting him go. In his heart, he wanted to kill this man. But he didn’t feel he had that option. The reason was simple: if he killed Kerr, he’d never be able to work in the U.S. again, and their intel people would put him on every burn list they could. Messing with Kerr was one thing, killing him was another, even if the cocky old bastard richly deserved it.

Kerr kicked away from him and staggered out of sea back onto the beach. Bjorn watched his legs churn in the water. The general wasn’t fleeing in fear. There seemed not to be any urgency in his movements, just pain.

After a few steps, Kerr stopped and turned around. He stood there in about a foot of seawater, with his dark bootlaces floating in the waves. Bjorn stayed underwater to avoid the snipers. He watched, but the general just stood there on the shoreline, waiting.

Bjorn became curious. He found a spot between several rocks and stuck his head up between them. He made sure the snipers didn’t have a shot.

“Why don’t you just fuck off?” he shouted at Kerr. “I think you must realize by now there’s no way I’m going to do what you want.”

Kerr was holding his wrist. Some of his fingers didn’t look right. His face was full of pain, but there was plenty of determination there, too.

“Just tell me why you won’t do it? Riggs has screwed up again and again. He’s a tinplated dictator with delusions of grandeur. Millions just died yesterday due to his decisions. Why won’t you help out your planet—your species?”

Bjorn saw a plume of green smoke rising from the island behind Kerr. He realized what the grenade was that Kerr had deployed. It was a smoker.

“That was the signal to take me out, wasn’t it?” Bjorn asked. “If I won’t serve you, I have to die, is that it?”

“That’s about the size of it, chief. We’ve been watching you since you killed that Macro with your bare hands. I could have ordered you shot at any time.”

“You think that kind of argument is going to get me to serve you?”

“You can still come in,” Kerr said. “I’ll call all this off right now. All you have to do is say yes. There’s no other way off this island for you, not in a scenario where you’re still breathing. And there’s not going to be anywhere else for you to run on this world, either. Your days of disappearing on us are over, because even if you do manage it, we’ll be waiting when you show your nose again. My boys are everywhere. One of them will be waiting while you buy a glace in Italy, or bask on the beach in Manila.”

Bjorn swallowed. One of his favorite spots on Earth was indeed the beaches of the Philippines. He hesitated a second, then nodded.

“All right,” he said. “I’ll do it.”

“Just like that?”

“Yeah. Just like that. Your powers of persuasion are admirable.”

Kerr chuckled and whooped. “Boy, you did give me a scare!” he shouted, shaking his head and laughing aloud. “I thought you’d gone right over the cliff. They warned me about you, Gaines.”

“Who did?”

“The pysch boys. They said you were unstable.”

“Did they?”

“Yeah, but I told them that crazy came with the territory. There’s never been a pro hitman with a head full of normal brains in the history of man. Anyway, I’m glad you came to your senses.”

“How are we going to do this?” Bjorn asked.

“What? Oh, you mean the snipers. Hold on.”

Kerr produced a second smoker, and this one poured out red vapor moments later.

“Green for kill, red for stand down?”

“More like green for go, red for stop.”

“Got it.”

Bjorn carefully crawled up onto the land again. No more bullets came. He eyed the sea and the neighboring islands critically.

“My bird is on the way,” Kerr told him. “We’ve got less than five minutes.”

“I don’t hear it.”

“Of course not. How do you think I got to your island without you knowing I was coming?”

Bjorn had been close enough to stealth helicopters in the past to know what they sounded like. They weren’t really silent. He knew Star Force had control over gravity somehow and had vehicles that could fly silently. It was alien technology that he was all too familiar with. When the Nano ships had come from the stars on that fateful night and picked him up out of bed, they hadn’t made a sound. Now he knew that the pentagon had similar tech.

“Mind if I get my things?” he asked.

“You’ve got things?”

“Just one bag.”

“All right. But don’t pull any more bullshit. There are guns on you. Even if you go to the far side of this dirtball and jump in, they’re waiting for you on the mainland too.”

“No bullshit.”

Bjorn walked to his shelter. It was really more of a ditch than anything else. He didn’t pick up any luggage, or weapons. Instead, he slithered down into the hole he’d dug and disappeared.

-11—

When the Macro had trapped the corporal down here, Bjorn had seen his makeshift bunker had a critical flaw: there was only one way in or out. He’d decided then to add a new exit. He’d dug it at night, in the depths of this muddy little hole.

As a kid he’d learned that foxes always dug two exits from their holes. The animals knew that a hole with only one way out was as much of a trap as it was a safe haven. Understanding the wisdom of this instinct, Bjorn had scratched twenty feet of earth and sand out of the way until he met with seawater.

Since he didn’t have any timber to keep the hole from filling back in, he was having a hard time making use of the escape tunnel now. He scratched at the wet sand, swimming in it like a mole. It was only his hard, claw-like hands, great strength, and the ability to hold his breath for prolonged periods that allowed him to slip away into the sea.

When he did reach open water, his lungs had already begun to burn. Far above him, he could see a shadow moving over the water. That had to be the ghostly airship, hunting for him. It was just as silent as Kerr said it was. When it passed directly overhead, he could see it press at the water, dishing it away. But it wasn’t causing much turbulence. It reminded him of the Nano ship that had once caught him and kept him trapped inside. Those ships used gravity repellors, alien systems that pushed away gravitational forces the way the opposite poles of two magnets repelled one another. To him, this technology seemed similar.

Swimming away from the islands on the very bottom of the sea, he kept going downslope into the darkening water. He never looked back. He didn’t care to know if they had subs or frogmen after him. He just kept going, deeper and deeper until the water became gloomy and clouded.

Six minutes after his last breath, he found a kelp bed. He dove into it and used it for cover like a man running in tall grass.

After about ten full minutes, he knew he was running out of air. Even the nanites couldn’t keep his cells going much longer. He turned upward and scooped powerfully.

He came up much too fast. He worried the rapid changes in pressure might damage his body, but he also knew that nanites swam inside him even as he swam in the ocean. They would repair the damage in time.

When he surfaced briefly, gasping, he only let himself have five or six breaths before diving down again into the cool depths. During that time, he had the vague suspicion that the airship—or whatever it was—was still there. Perhaps a sniper hung out the side, scanning the water for his head. He didn’t want to let them get a shot, so he dove again.

He swam at right angles to his original course. When he came up again, gasping and desperate for air, it was only few minutes later. He scanned the skies quickly, even as he sucked lungful after lungful of deep breaths. His oxygen-starved cells burned throughout his body and his vision slowly brightened.

He spotted something resembling a helicopter to the south. The airship was strange in configuration. It hovered low over an island made of black rocks stained with white guano. A man with a long-barreled rifle was lifted up into the craft.

Bjorn knew what that meant. They were retrieving their snipers to give them a better firing position in the air. He was hard to see from an island, just popping up like a seal from time to time to catch a breath, hidden among the waves. From the air, he would be easier to spot.

The craft was sleek, and black and had no blades whirling above it. No wonder it had been so quiet. He thought immediately that he’d been right—it wasn’t a helicopter at all. It was an example of alien technology built by humans.

Of everything that had happened today, this development worried him the most. He knew what a modern gunship could do, but this thing was an unknown. If they had employed alien tech for propulsion, why not for sensory equipment and weaponry?

He dove deep again, not wanting to wait until the sniper was harnessed in and targeting him. He turned east again and swam for a long time.

How long he stayed under this time he was never sure afterward. When he did finally come up, his vision had failed him. He’d gone blind. Possibly, the nanites were rationing the oxygen in his bloodstream, directing it to the most critical sections of his body. Since he was underwater, he needed his muscles and his heart and his brain the most in order to survive. Perhaps the tiny machines had decided vision was overrated and had switched that part of his body off.

When he surfaced at last, he popped into the open air like a balloon that had been released underwater. He gasped and choked. Only then did he realize he couldn’t hear anything. He could barely feel the water that pressed against him and the wind that cooled his head.

He didn’t care. He just lay on his back, trying to float and breathe in great sucking gasps. He did this for almost a minute before his vision returned. He was a sitting duck during this time, and he decided that if he survived the next few minutes he wouldn’t stay down so long again.

When his eyes began reporting to his brain again, and his ears could hear and his skin could feel the water and the breezes, he looked around. There it was, north of him this time, skimming over the waves. It was about fifty feet above the water and there was a gunman in a harness leaning out of both sides of the craft. A long-barreled weapon poked out from the sides of the craft in each sniper’s hands. They’d picked up the men and were doing sweeps, searching for him.

He dove again. This time, he didn’t go for as long as he could. He thought he’d been very near death the last time. And if he repeated that feat and lived, he’d still be blind and deaf when he surfaced. He figured it would be better to surface sooner and be vulnerable for a shorter amount of time.

Following a pattern of about seven to ten minute dives followed by thirty seconds of desperate gasping and looking around, he traveled eastward. At first, he switched course randomly to the north or south every other time. He didn’t think they would guess he was heading out to sea. It seemed far more rational for a thinking man to stay close to shore or to try to sneak onto another island. But that wasn’t Bjorn’s plan.

Each dive took him farther from land and farther from the men who were searching for him. Over the next several hours, he kept up a killing pace.

Finally, after dozens of dives, he came up to a darkened world. For a moment he thought he’d stayed under too long and the nanites had decided to dim his vision again. But then he noticed the sun was going down, causing the sea to turn magenta and blood red. He dared to stay on the surface long enough to have a good look around. He scanned every horizon and the skies overhead.

The sea was empty. He couldn’t even see land. He smiled, because he knew that he’d vanished yet again.

A fish nibbled the bloody scratches on his leg, reminding him to get moving again. He turned away from the sun, which was dipping down to touch the horizon in the west. He planned to swim like this, underwater most of the time like a tiny, human submarine, until he reached his final destination. He figured that if he kept going at a steady pace for a day or two, due east, he’d reach land again.

During the day, he used the sun to direct him, but at night it was harder. The stars were enough when the skies were clear, but often it was overcast. Sometimes he was forced to paddle idly for hours, unsure of his heading. The currents were a problem as well. He had to work hard to keep on an even course.

On the morning of the third day he began to worry. The water was quite warm and he wasn’t overly-tired yet, but he was getting very hungry. He tried, but found it difficult to catch passing fish. Even though he was fast, this far from land the fish were less common and they didn’t generally like to come close to a thrashing man. The water impeded his arms, and the fish he did touch slipped away.

He decided he had to do something or he might starve. For all he knew, he had missed his goal and was headed to Africa.

He took out his combat knife, moving with great care lest he drop it in the ocean, which was thousands of feet deep here. The knife was his only weapon. He used it to open a vein, then began thrashing around, creating a pink froth. The nanites quickly close the vein, but that was expected. He waited patiently.

After twenty minutes he decided he’d failed, so he cut himself again—and then again ten minutes after that.

Finally, on the eighth try, something bit him. Fortunately, it wasn’t a huge chunk of flesh that it took from his calf, but it did hurt. He drove his knife into the fish repeatedly, and soon the devil gave up its life for his. He hauled it up into the daylight, and saw it was a good-sized tiger shark, about seven feet in length. He chewed the shark meat raw, having no better options. The flesh was thick and disgusting, but it was nourishing. After he’d eaten his fill, he left the carcass floating in the water and swam away quickly, worried that more sharks were on the way to join in on the fun.

He swam onward whenever he could see the stars or the sun. He rested when he had to. One time, he saw a ship skimming by. He kept low and made no attempt to hail them. The ship steamed safely away. He had no idea if anyone was looking for him, and it occurred to him that the ocean was the ultimate place for a man to hide on this world. It was vast, empty, and incredibly difficult to search. Finding a lone man who did not want to be found out here was almost impossible. There was no better place to hide—it was the ultimate wilderness.

On the next day he began to get tired, but he was determined to keep going. He had little choice. It was early in the afternoon of…Friday? He wasn’t entirely sure anymore. It rained later that day, and he caught every drop he could in his open mouth, swallowing greedily. Saltwater had been gluing up his guts for days, dehydrating him. The nanites had sensed toxic levels of saline and done their best to correct his blood chemistry, but he knew there had to limits even to their magic.

Later that same day, he spotted land. He wasn’t sure what he was looking at. He didn’t know the currents in this part of the world, and his navigation may have been off. For all he knew, he was looking at Cuba.

He decided the fun was over for him no matter where he was. He’d had enough of the sea. He wasn’t a fish, and it was time to set his feet on dry land again.

Long before he made landfall, he knew he’d reached the island that had been his destination all along. It was the laser turrets that gave it away. They were large and deadly-looking. They swiveled ceaselessly, scanning everything in range that moved and many things that didn’t.

When he came up on the beach he moved slowly, but the turrets sensed him anyway. Two of them, about a mile off in either direction, swung and directed their projectors at him.

He froze, heart pounding. He was an invader, after all. God only knew what the Star Force people had programmed into these things.

But after about twenty seconds, the two turrets turned away and went back to scanning again. Bjorn moved forward onto the beach in relief. At least they weren’t going to fry him immediately after that long, long swim.

He sat down because it felt great to do so. He’d never kept his body moving for so long without any real rest. He passed out on the dry sand and slept the sleep of exhaustion.

When he awakened some hours later he made his way down the endless strip of beach, looking for human habitation. He found destruction instead. Many of the laser turrets had been knocked out. They were burnt, sitting in puddles of crusty glass. Huge beams must have come down from the Macro ships and destroyed them.

Eventually, he found a Star Force patrol. They were full of questions, and he explained he was a new volunteer, a recruit who had been caught up in the battle and lost at sea. He didn’t have a unit yet—he hadn’t gotten that far.

The men could see he’d been to Hell and back. They all had. He could see it in their eyes. They let him into their strange flying vehicle and carried him back to base.

“What’s your name again, recruit?”

“Gaines,” he said. “Private Gaines. At least, that’s what I’m here to become.”

“You picked a hell of a time to join up, Gaines.”

“I know.”

Gaines realized in surprise that he respected these men. They were not only like him, they were quite possibly more deadly than he was. They had futuristic weapons and body armor. They also possessed his speed, strength and endurance.

Most of all, they were doing something that needed doing. Kerr’s speech hadn’t fallen entirely on deaf ears. Gaines had agreed with much of what the general had said. The world was dying, and it was time for all fighting men to choose sides.

But he hadn’t wanted to join Kerr’s side. He didn’t want to be a tool, a disposable instrument used to strike at a political enemy. He wanted to be something new, something respectable. A soldier, maybe a marine—not just a killer without a cause.

Right then, right there, looking at the marines around him with their dented, burned armor and unsmiling faces, he knew he’d made the right decision. He’d swam two hundred miles or more, and it hadn’t been a mistake. He was going to join Star Force. He felt that he belonged here with these men. They could do what he could do—what no one else on Earth could do. What’s more, it was something that had to be done. The machines from the stars had to be destroyed.

He smiled a real smile at that moment, the first one that had crossed his face in a long, long time.

His days of vanishing were over.

The End

From the Authors: Thanks Reader! We hope you enjoyed PLANETARY ASSAULT. If you liked the stories and want to see more, please put up some stars and a review to support the book. Let new readers know what’s in store for them!

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