Authors: Tony Gonzales
“Water,” Mack said, offering a container.
“Drink.”
As the plasma arc in front of the Panther’s shields dissipated, scratchy radio transmissions began coming in.
“—day, this is Longbow Five,”
the radio screamed.
“We’re not going to make it to the surface.
The intel was fucked; there’s too much AA—”
Warnings sounded off in the cockpit; they were being tracked by powerful radars on the surface.
“Korvin!”
Jonas shouted.
“Can you do something about these radar sites?”
From hundreds of kilometers away, Core Freedom was taking shape ahead; blocks of light were forming crisp boundaries against the black terrain.
Rising toward the sky like a massive altar, the backlit ground terminus of the space elevator dominated the view.
The sky was filled with the streaks of missile exhausts; fiery spots on the ground far below marked where Longbows Four and Five had been shot out of the sky.
“Working on it,” Korvin said.
“Mobile SAMs are taking them down.
Get low, Jonas; use the terminus as cover!
They won’t risk hitting it!”
“Mack, Gable, hold on!”
Jonas shouted.
Braking the craft’s descent just enough for the fluidic surface control systems to catch air, Jonas engaged the Vectorex engines and put the craft in a steep dive, angling directly for the elevator base.
Gable felt herself lift up against the harness again as Mack howled in delight; her vision was turning red, as negative G’s forced blood from her lower extremities to her head.
“—strike in five seconds,” she heard Korvin say.
They were much closer to the ground now, and the terminus towered ahead like a mountain.
“Pull your visors down,” Jonas warned.
Mack leaned back and slapped gently at her helmet; the tinted shield folded down over her eyes just in time, as four brilliant streaks illuminated the landscape ahead.
* * *
“IMPACTS,” MILES DECLARED,
monitoring the flight path of Longbow One as it streaked past the elevator terminus and veered to northwest.
“Direct hits, no more fixed radars, but lots of mobile frequencies.”
“Way more than we thought there’d be,” Blake grumbled.
“Copy, Miles; we’re following the flight plan,” Jonas said.
“Who’s with us down here?”
“No one,” Miles said, sneaking a glance at Blake.
“Longbows Three through Five are gone; Two crash-landed, but no one’s answering.
We have eyes on the wreck; if we see movement, we’ll inform.”
“Damn,” Jonas muttered.
“Guess we’re doing this on our own then.”
“Three minutes until those fighters are in range,” Blake warned, tracking the angry red blob diving at them from the direction of the battle above them.
“Odd, they’re not blink-warping to us—”
“Ah, wait a minute,” Miles interrupted.
“Korvin, can you verify all Stackfire batteries were destroyed?”
“Confirmed,” Korvin said.
“Core Freedom has no antiship capabilities remaining.”
Miles was no longer brimming with confidence.
“What’s wrong?”
Blake asked.
“Umm, can you get eyes on that southwestern grid,” he said, leaning back and resting his hands on his head.
“Two-two-five, primary mission objective.”
It took a second longer for him to answer than usual.
“Oh, man,” Korvin said.
Checking his displays for the fifth time, Miles was staring at the location where the CRU farm was supposed to be.
“Blake?”
he asked.
“Do you see this?”
Her face turned pale.
“I don’t believe it,” she said.
“Let Mordu know.”
“Command, this is the
Morse,
” Miles said.
“The CRU farm is gone; repeat, the primary objective is vaporized; over.”
“Wha— Say again, Miles?”
Jonas said.
“What do you mean,
‘gone’
?
Did we hit it?”
“Negative,” Korvin said.
“None of my rounds landed anywhere near there.”
Mordu’s voice came through on the radio, and he sounded anything but his usual flippant self.
“Are you absolutely certain?”
he asked.
“Yes, sir,” Korvin answered.
“The objective is a glass crater.
Damage is consistent with a large beam weapon strike.
The Amarrians must have hit it themselves.
Couldn’t even begin to explain why.”
“Then the mission is over,” Mordu said.
“Return to HQ immediately.”
“No!”
Jonas protested.
“We’ve come all this way.
We have to try!”
“Try
what
, Jonas?”
Mordu growled.
“We’re losing this fight, and there’s nothing to gain by staying in it!”
“Vince could be alive!”
Jonas shouted.
“We don’t know where he was when the beam hit!”
“You don’t know where he is right
now,
which is all that matters,” Mordu said, and then paused briefly.
“You know what?
Go ahead and look for him, because our fleet can’t withdraw without getting killed anyway.
You may as well join in.”
* * *
CROUCHING LOW AGAINST THE
Katmai as it raced across the steppes, Vince blinked ghost images away as his eyes readjusted to darkness following the latest orbital strikes.
Two had set off massive fireballs and secondary explosions; he guessed that these were the remaining Stackfire batteries.
Even while speeding at two hundred kilometers per hour, his hyper-enhanced awareness remained fixated on the details of the land: Wild grasses and silt parted behind the bike as it raced, and swarms of bioluminescence insects streaked by like a meteor shower.
His fascination was shattered as a fighter scorched overhead, so impossibly low that there was no question it was following him.
The swept-wing craft veered upward far in front of him, then turned abruptly, as a stream of flares and reflective foil canisters erupted behind it; a missile contrail appeared soon after from the direction of the colony.
The ship turned gracefully back toward him and blasted by again, now followed by the missile.
Whatever it was that had drawn the Federation to Pike’s Landing had also given them reason to bombard it.
It occurred to him they were here for him—for the Templars.
Like the assassin, they had had numerous opportunities to kill him.
But they hadn’t—which in turn gave him hope that there was a way off this world.
Then he could find Gable Dietrich.
Core Freedom had four spaceports: three for commercial transports, and a large industrial port where the Paladins serviced their own fleet of Vex gunships and its larger “Starlifter” cousin.
The latter was his only option if he wanted to get off the planet and actually warp … somewhere.
A station, perhaps another planet.
He didn’t know.
But anywhere was better than here.
As the colony perimeter appeared on the horizon, his body alerted him to danger:
>BIOSYS ALERT<
>BODY TEMP 41 C, BP 95/65<
>ELEVATED RECOVERY MODE<
>SYSDIAG: VASCULAR NANITE SUPPLY DEPLETED TO CRITICAL LEVELS.<
>RECOMMENDED ACTION: MANUALLY CLOSE OPEN DEFECTS.
REPLENISH NANITE SUPPLY ASAP.<
There were holes in him—injuries he didn’t even know he had.
Nanotechnology was keeping him alive.
Replenishing the microscopic machines clotting his wounds was paramount: He wouldn’t make it much farther without them.
The supply he needed was on the colony, assuming it wasn’t destroyed.
Getting to it would be difficult, perhaps even impossible.
But there was no other way.
A searing hot
vssssh
sound snapped over his head, followed by another shot way off the mark.
Several Paladins were guarding a breach in the damaged fortifications ahead; they were firing at him from an elevated position.
The Katmai was already pushing its top speed, and the fastest way into the colony was directly through them.
Vince kicked the compression jets to maximum output, and the bike rose more than a meter off the ground.
At this speed, its battery would be depleted shortly, so there was only one chance to get through—and hopefully, there wouldn’t be more troops immediately behind them.
The Katmai was armed with a 12mm antipersonnel phase cannon; with a flip of a switch, the bike’s targeting system started picking up Vince’s eye movements.
The turret began to swivel as he moved his eyes around; the weapon system lit up after a moment, indicating it was ready to fire, just as three more beams reached out ahead of him.
Holding his gaze on his targets, he slowed the bike abruptly and squeezed the trigger; the bike jolted as the turret spit chunks of plasma at the Paladins from a range of one hundred meters.
As the rounds impacted the concrete barriers and exploded, he turned the bike and accelerated, following his own shots directly toward them.
From twenty-five meters away, Vince pulled the trigger again, but the weapon jammed.
Begging the Katmai for one last burst of acceleration, he pointed the nose at his targets and gunned the throttle just as both Paladins began recovering their aim.
The Katmai bolted forward; he power-slid the bike horizontally into both soldiers.
Letting go of the handles an instant before the point of impact, he slid a short distance on his hip and tumbled once before coming to rest.
There was no time to check himself for more damage, let alone to see whether the Paladins were dead or not.
As the engine fluttered to a halt, he sprinted toward a building, checking just once to see if he was being followed.
For now, there was no one else around.
But they would come looking for him soon enough.
He knew he would never reach the spaceport without some serious firepower.
Fortunately, he knew exactly where to find it.
* * *
MORDU COULD ONLY DO SO MUCH
to thwart the merciless Imperial counterattack.
The battlefield was a massive cube in space that began 145 kilometers over the surface of Pike’s Landing and went all the way up to the space elevator platform nineteen hundred kilometers above.
On the bottom side of the cube were the
Morse
and the Federation Navy elements shadowing it; a thousand kilometers across from them, Imperial warships were pounding the remnants of a Republic fleet that the Federation task force was attempting to protect.
The entire upper portion of the cube was where the main Imperial and Republic fleets were slugging it out.
Mordu’s fleet was stuck squarely in between them, trapped in a powerful warp-drive-inhibitor field.
Beam after beam struck the Wyvern, reaching deeper into the shields protecting Mordu and his crew of thousands.
He considered the possibility that his hatred of the Amarr Empire was actually envy.
Their faith afforded them an aura of invincibility.
If not for the Joves, they might have become the most powerful empire in the history of civilization.
As it was, the Amarr were not only fending off three navies right now, but winning.
Mordu had done his fair share of mercenary work both for and against the Gallente Federation.
This was an opportunity to make amends.
“Attention Federation Navy Nyx commander,” Mordu said.
“This is Muryia Mordu of the Legion.
This is quite a predicament, yes?”
The Nyx supercarrier was under fire from several Apocalypse-class battleships.
Its fighters were chewing through them one by one; for now it was holding its own.
But if the main fleet that Mordu was currently tied up with broke off to assist, that Nyx would have much bigger problems to contend with.
“Commander Mordu, this is Admiral Elijah Freeman,” the reply came.
“State your intentions or stay off this channel.”
“My intent is to form an alliance,” Mordu said.
“Coordinating our efforts would be advantageous.”
“Commander, your fleet is harboring a Federation traitor,” the voice said.
“I’m not inclined to cooperate.”
“You must be referring to Korvin Lears,” Mordu said.
“He’s one of the finest officers I’ve ever met.
Sounds to me like he had good reason to disobey orders.”