Authors: David Welch
He tore himself from the sight, seconds wasted by his curiosity. He bounded across the ship again, just above the tentacle’s next sweep. A cloud of acid erupted from behind him, spewing into space where he had just been. His imagination filled with notions of what it would have done had it hit him, images of his suit and flesh dissolving.
He landed a few feet from the attacking tentacle and sprinted next to it. Squeezing the trigger, he blasted round after round into the tender flesh of the tentacle. It flailed and writhed as he fired. On fully automatic, his gun burned through the third round clip in seconds. The tentacle bloodied and flailing, he leapt to his left.
Another tentacle struck where he had been, the tip hitting hard. The bulk of the tentacle caught his shoulder as he flew by, sending him into a spin. Disoriented, his view flashed quickly, from empty-space to War-beast, over and over again as he tumbled.
Rex jammed on the magnet’s control, slamming him down against the ship’s shell. He retched, disoriented. The suit sucked the contents of his stomach from his helmet so he didn’t choke, but could do nothing for the smell. Nostrils burning from the stench, he looked up to get his bearings. He was on the dorsal spine of the bioship now.
And a tentacle was looming above him, lined up for a strike.
“Oh shit,” he heard himself say.
It started to flex, moving for him. Then something bright flashed behind it, moving at light speed toward the ship. A large blast of energy slammed into the War-beast, wrenching it several dozen meters through space.
Another blast hit, then a third. The tentacle went limp as the ship shook. Rex’s mind took a moment to recognize what was happening.
Pulse blasts
.
They were
l
arge
pulse blasts, much larger than the
Long Haul
’s little gun. He jerked around. He could feel tears form in his eyes when his mind registered what he saw.
Above him loomed what he had thought impossible. A
Cato
-class destroyer, the fastest ship in the Commonwealth fleet, closed quickly. It let loose with medium pulse cannons, one after another, staggering its shots. Missiles streaked from the long, bulky hull. The tentacles tried to bat them away. They caught the first and then the second; but not the third, fourth, and fifth. The missiles accelerated as they neared the hull, their armor-piercing heads slicing deep into the vessel. The War-beast vibrated violently as explosions gutted its interior. All the destroyer’s pulse cannons, large and small, laid down a withering fire. The bright bursts of energy gouged huge craters in the bioship’s carapace, tearing up chunks of hull and the pink tissue inside, hurling them into space.
Rex laughed maniacally. Crouching low, he turned off his magnets and leapt away. Flying clear, he watched as his countrymen poured on the attack. The War-beast flung a few desperate projectiles at the closing vessel. A few hit, denting the armor. Defensive pulse guns intercepted the rest. A pair of missiles hit the War-beast’s claw-arm, blasting through it. The massive protrusion tumbled off into space.
Rex let go of his gun and put his arms behind his head. He didn’t stop laughing as he drifted off into space.
* * *
He let the fear run over him, through him. The Seers, the few remaining, showed him the Commonwealth ship. The mechanical monstrosity was larger than his own War-beast and in its undamaged state, far more powerful.
The War-beast screamed in agony as it died, blasts of energy searing its flesh. Shrapnel and fire tore at its insides as missiles hit and exploded. There was no fighting, no escaping, no success.
Just failure
.
Blair pulled the tendrils from his eyes and walked from his command pod. He opened Flynn’s and pulled the man from it. Flynn had surrendered to the fear as well, his face covered in tears.
There would be no coming back from this, no recovery for implantation in a new body, not this far from the Hegemony. After all the long centuries of their lives, they faced oblivion.
He pulled Flynn into an embrace and kissed him deeply. It was the last thing he did before fire consumed them both.
* * *
Second screamed, joyous, victorious. She didn’t know why she did it, but she did, the sound bellowing from her lungs and reverberating around her helmet. In front of her, the War-beast came apart, explosions blasting it into a dozen pieces. The jagged chunks shot off in different directions, spewing out clouds of orange-red fluid that froze and glistened in the cold depths.
A massive mechanical vessel, easily five times the size of Rex’s ship, approached them. It slowed as it neared. She’d rarely felt glad to see a machine before, but she couldn’t hold back.
The truth hit her hard, overwhelming any logic in her fractured mind. They were gone. The Masters were
gone
. They couldn’t reach her, not here, not across the galaxy. A great weight lifted from her. Her joy led to a cascade of tears. She wouldn’t die, forever or for a moment. They wouldn’t take her brain and return her to what she’d been. No more Masters, no more rape, no more second.
Only
Second
.
“Thank you…” she heard herself saying, not fully understanding why. “Thank you, thank you, thank you…”
* * *
He sat with his back against the wall. Chakrika lay against him, holding little Quintus. His arms wrapped around them both. She rested her head against his, the warm weight of her body soothing his nerves. He kissed the top of her head.
“I love you,” Lucius whispered, for the tenth time since locking himself in the medical bay.
“I love you too,” she replied. “I really wish we’d gotten to, uh,
be
together.”
“We are together now,” he spoke. “It is enough.”
Chakrika smiled, a single tear running down her cheek.
“You would’ve been the first man who didn’t have to pay,” she said wistfully.
“It is all right,” he spoke, running his thumb over his son’s tiny hands. Quintus’s fingers closed around the thumb instinctively, clutching it with tiny muscles.
“You mean more to me than any woman I have taken to my bed,” Lucius spoke.
“Even—”
“Yes,” Lucius answered firmly. “More than any of them.”
She cuddled further against him.
“Do you think Jake made it?” she asked.
“I do,” Lucius replied.
“How can you know—”
“
We are being hailed
,” the computer spoke.
Lucius moved a hand to one of the pistols. He brought it against his chest. Chakrika looked at it, then met Lucius’s gaze. More tears streamed from her eyes.
“Should we just…”
Lucius looked at the gun, then at the woman in his arms and his tiny little son. His heart rebelled against the thought of what he had to do.
“
It is a Commonwealth vessel
,” the computer spoke. “
It is asking if we require assistance.
”
Lucius dropped the gun to the floor, struggling to breathe as relief washed over him.
“Yes!” Chakrika screamed ecstatically. “Yes! Tell them to come help us! Tell them to hurry!”
Lucius slumped back against the wall. Chakrika squeezed Lucius to her chest, bouncing him excitedly. She turned and barraged him with a dozen kisses.
“We made it, Lucius. We’re here!” she cried. “We’re safe!”
* * *
He’d been floating for forty minutes when the boxy gray shuttle approached. It was a tiny thing, about a third the size of
Long Haul
, too small to even have gravatic generators. Slowing as it approached, a segmented metal arm extended from its side. It grasped him by the shoulder and pulled him into the side airlock.
The airlock door’s slid shut and quickly repressurized. A green light by the door flashed. Rex popped off his helmet.
The air in the shuttle was only marginally better than what had been in his tanks, but it felt magnificent anyway, especially with the vomit stench gone. He took two deep breaths just for the joy of filling his lungs. The inner door slid open with a
hiss
.
He floated into the shuttle’s main compartment. Directly in front of him were three armed men, two of which were looking right at him.
“Adams, sir. Ensign, FTC
Vespasian
,” a blond-haired fellow said, drifting over and saluting. The man froze in that pose, staring uncertainly at Rex’s prosthetic eye. Rex cocked his head quizzically, breaking the man’s glare. Adams shuffled awkwardly, or as awkwardly as a person
can
shuffle in zero-G. Rex relented and weakly returned the salute.
“
Vespasian
? That’s Ishimura’s command,” Rex said with a smile.
“When we received the signal, the Captain saw your name and charged in,” Adams informed him. “Lucky for you we were on maneuvers with the System Guard, not too far from here. Cap didn’t exactly know what the hell it was you’d brought with you.”
“Didn’t stop him from blowing the shit out of it,”said Rex with a stupid grin. “Ishi always did leap before he looked.”
Adams nodded, looking nervously to his left. There the third member of the shuttle crew had an assault rifle, aimed at a large robotic figure taking up half of the cabin.
“Jake. Ya’ made it?” Rex asked.
“Sure did,” Jake replied with a mock-salute. “Could you tell your guys I’m not going to kill them?”
“You can put your gun down, soldier,” Rex spoke.
The man looked at Adams, uncertain. Adams waved him down.
“You know this…uhm,
man
?” Adams asked.
“That’s Jake,” Rex replied simply.
“Is he—is he human?” Adams asked tentatively, looking uneasily at the cyborg.
“Mostly,” Rex replied.
“The important bits are,” Jake said with a laugh.
“So you know him, sir?” Adams asked.
“Know him and vouch for him. That guy saved our lives,” Rex said, moving to a seat against the wall. “And much as I’d love to explain everything in graphic detail, I’m kinda concerned about my ship.”
“They’re docking with the
Vespasian
. Rescue teams should be onboard,” Adams spoke.
“It would be better if I was there. Some of my crew are, well,
unusual
.”
Adams glanced uneasily at Jake.
“Don’t look at me,” Jake replied with a grin. “I’m the normal one.”
Now what?
-First words spoken on Mars by a human being
Troezen wasn’t welcoming by most people’s standards—well,
this
part wasn’t at least. Closer to the southern pole than the equator, Fort Eblis sat in the midst of a vast, cold prairie. Rolling hills, covered in waist-high grass, stretched around them in every direction. Brisk temperatures, in the low-fifties, were interrupted by strong gusts of wind that sent the grass rippling in great waves. The sun loomed large above, but it did little to warm the emptiness around him.
But to Lucius it remained heaven. He watched wildlife mill about in the distance. Many of the species were familiar. He’d hunted many as a noble in the empire. Bison bunched in a large herd on a nearby hill, several thousand grazing the long grass. Scattered groups of elk seemed to orbit around them. Around a creek at the base of the hills, scraggly trees rose to resist the wind. Fallow deer darted in and out from cover.
Other species looked familiar, but he couldn’t place them. He lifted his wrist to see the watch-console Rex had ‘appropriated’ from the base and flipped through images of animals. A particularly large deer, crowned with a gargantuan set of antlers, grazed alone on a hill-top to his left. It was either an Irish Elk or a Stag-Moose. According to the computer, both were extinct species from Earth’s past, recreated through genetic engineering. He squinted to get a better look.
“Hey, there’s freakin’ elephants over there,” Jake observed. The man was standing, but had the relaxed tone-of-voice usually reserved for a person in a hammock. Lucius looked from his lawn-chair. True to the cyborg’s word, a trio of mammoths tore up vast bales of grass and stuffed them into their mouths.
“Magnificent…” Lucius whispered.
“You see that?” Chakrika said nearby, in a high-pitched voice. She held up an indifferent Quintus, turning his head so he could see the mammoths. Quintus’s eyes weren’t up to focusing at that distance yet, but that didn’t deter Chaki.
She walked over to Lucius, plopping down in the empty lawn-chair beside his. He turned from the console and took his son from her. Quintus shook his fists energetically and settled into the crook of his father’s arm.
“They didn’t like you?” Chakrika asked.
Lucius shook his head. He was only ten minutes out of a six-hour-long “informal meeting” with the External Intelligence Division and bet he’d have to sit through a few more.
“I am uncertain. One seemed to
want
to like me, provided I told him everything I knew about Imperial naval doctrine. The other seemed to wish I
was
a spy sent from the empire so he could gut me alive,” Lucius explained.
She squeezed his forearm reassuringly.
“You should have made up a story,” Chakrika chided gently.
“I am no liar,” he replied. “Even when I should be.”
She laid her head against his shoulder. Jake shifted to his left.
“Hey, look, there’s
grass
over there,” the cyborg said and conveniently walked away. He whistled as he wandered off.
“Assuming I’m not gutted by Rex’s countrymen…”
“What is it?” Chakrika asked, sitting up to face him.
“I want to marry you,” Lucius declared.
She smiled softly and returned her head to his shoulder. She cleared her throat dramatically and put on her best fake, British-sounding accent.
“Assuming you are not gutted alive, I accept,” she declared.
He rolled his eyes at her dialect.
“I do not have a ring,” he spoke suddenly. “I have not planned this out yet, but—”
“A ring?” she asked. “Is that your tradition?”
He relaxed back into his seat, hugging Quintus closer.
“I got all worried for nothing,” he said. “What, exactly, do your people require of a potential husband?”