The Darkside War (14 page)

22

“You know what I've always wondered?” Boris suddenly broke the silence.

I snapped my eyes open and looked around. The crater was empty. I'd nodded off. I'd needed it. I glanced at the time stamp floating over the visor. I'd been asleep for twenty minutes.

Damn. I could have been killed in my sleep. Melted by one of those explosions from the ship.

“I've always wanted to know what struthiforms think of breakfast burritos,” Boris continued.

“What?” Amira's voice sounded crusty and strained.

“It's the eggs, yeah?” Boris sniffed. “I mean, scrambled eggs. They're giant ostriches, how does that look?”

“Well, like us eating a small mammal, like a pig,” Ken chimed in.

“Veal,” Amira said. “Baby mammal.”

“Hmmm . . .” Boris sounded unsure. “I guess so.”

I opened my mouth to tell them about Shriek, and that the struthiforms were all dying because they couldn't go back to their home world.

But since we didn't know whether we were about to lose ours, why harsh everyone's mellow? “What does it look like out there? They still hunting us?”

Quiet.

“Hello, can you guys hear me?”

“Devlin”—Amira sounded worried—“what have you been doing the last half hour? Sleeping? We've been calling for you.”

“Well . . .” I cleared my throat. “Yes, sorry. I nodded off.” The regular rhythm of the bombing had become constant. A background noise.

“Damn,” Boris said. “You're all ice. You slept through all that? Shit, I'm still vibrating.”

I opened my mouth to reply. To tell them I was so exhausted, I couldn't help it, and that thinking about the dead just on the other side of the ridge was too much.

“They left,” Ken reported. “Ten minutes and nothing has moved near me or Amira. No more explosions. No hunting parties.”

“Could be a trap,” Amira said. “We've been discussing that. Then Boris changed the subject.”

“You were all boring me,” Boris said. “I'm hiding under shuttle debris, and I can't so much as twitch, and you two are just going around and around. Not discussing. Arguing.”

I looked around the crater I'd hidden inside. Nothing.

The debate started up again, Amira assuming that there were at least crickets out hiding away, as still as we were, waiting to get triggered. Ken insisting that he could move around his hiding spot.

I tumbled out onto the dirt and rock. I didn't want to put anyone else at risk, and we couldn't wait here forever. Even­tually, someone had to be the first to put themselves in the crosshairs. If there were any.

My joints protested, but after a few seconds of movement, they warmed and loosened up. It felt good to stand.

Nothing moved but me. The attack I'd been half tensing for didn't come.

I scrabbled up to the rim and bounced off across to the ridge. “I'm out in the open,” I reported. “Nothing coming after me.”

“Shit,” Ken said. “I knew it. I'm—”

“Why don't you two stay where you are,” I interrupted. “Boris, you too. In case the enemy is waiting for more movement.”

“Okay,” they muttered.

I slithered up the rim and looked out over toward the Con­glomerate ship. It hung over the main base again, tentacles down. There was nothing out on the plain between us but newly pockmarked ground.

“Did Efua make it to the mines?” I asked.

“We are here,” Efua said. “We found some air canisters. We think. We're trying to understand how to hook them up to our suits.”

“Can you call out from there?”

“No,” Efua said. “We are still being jammed.”

I looked at the ruins of the base, thinking. “Efua, you said the crickets came and took Commander Zeus away. To the officers' quarters?”

Efua was quiet for a second. “I think so. In that direction, at least.”

Amira jumped in. “Zeus's transponder is there. Whether that means Zeus is there or not, I can't say. I'd need to get closer to verify, grab some higher bandwidth, line-of-sight comms.”

“What about our rank transponders?” I asked quickly, thinking back to Amira's lecture that the tattoos had trackers in them.

“I, obviously, killed them a long time ago,” Amira said, almost as if she were talking to a child. “Or we'd be toothpaste under troll toes.”

Sure. That made sense.

“What are you thinking?” Ken asked.

I looked off in the direction of the launcher. Safety. For now. What would a fighter do here? Hide like a cockroach? Until his air ran out?

Or . . .

Or what?

“Zeus and the other Arvani in their quarters, and the struthiforms, if they're alive, have heavier armor. They're trained for this. They're officers. They know what our options are. They've fought the Conglomerate before. We're untrained recruits. I think we need Zeus back.”

“That sadistic bastard?” Ken asked.

“Captain Calamari is crazy,” Amira agreed. “But Devlin has a point: We could aim that crazy at the Conglomerate bastards.”

Boris laughed. “Captain Calamari? Why didn't I think of that? You even demoted him . . . to an appetizer! We called him Sergeant Suckers. I do have some leftover explosives for getting inside the Arvani quarters.”

“Or we can just get me close enough that I can pop the locks. What are you thinking, Devlin?” Amira asked.

“We take our time. Shadow to shadow. Total sneak mode. If it feels risky, don't move. We have our suits, and we have all day to get there. We're going to converge on it from all points. No rush.” We were going to be good little stealthy cockroaches. “If we get spotted, scatter and hide again. Once inside, kill anything in our way, get the commander and any other Accordance survivors.”

“I like it,” Ken said. “We take the fight back to them.”

“And what about us?” Efua asked.

“Give us twenty-five hours from now. If we go silent, try to get out from the jamming and get a signal back to Tranquility.”

“Good luck,” Efua said.

“You too,” I replied, and began to slither to the nearest rock.

23

Five hours. Five hours of slinking across the fields of gray waste. Five hours of waiting to get caught. Five hours of tension building. The closer we got to the Arvani officers' quarters, the more I felt like something in the back of my neck was going to snap.

“Worse game of red light, green light ever,” Amira said.

One of us would advance, the other watch from a safe position, and the other two would stay hidden.

Foot by foot.

Inch by inch.

We converged on the airlock. Boris bounded up the last few feet, unslinging an arm-sized black claw with four sharp points at the end. The alien welding torch.

“We ready?” I asked.

Boris held up a disk. “I have explosives,” he said happily. Then he awkwardly held up the welding torch.

Amira walked up to the doors. “I already said there's no need.”

“We'll see.” Boris strapped the disk back onto his hip.

Ken stepped forward. “Boris, you and me are in first, we have the guns. Amira, Devlin, come in behind us. Amira: when you're ready.”

I got in place behind Ken.

“On three. One, two, three.” Amira waved a hand and the airlock doors slid up and open. A cloud of wet air puffed out past us.

We slipped in, the outer door closed behind us, and Amira held up a hand. “There's a raptor on the other side,” she said. “Wait a second. He's turning away. And . . . Get ready.”

This was it.

I crouched. Ken pulled the MP9 up tight to his shoulder and Boris held up the torch. The four claw points lit up and glowed white-hot. Energy leapt out from each point and met in the air a foot ahead.

“Anytime,” Boris said.

“Now.” Amira waved her hand and the inner door opened.

Ken jumped into the air. The raptor spun at us, raising a weapon even as Ken arced toward it, firing with quick bursts that did little more than plink off the armor around the raptor's claws. The shielding was too tough.

But Ken had known that going in. He wasn't trying to break the armor. The kinetic energy of each bullet was hitting the raptor's weapon, making it hard to bring the burst of energy to bear on us.

And to give Boris time to close the distance without being carved up.

When Boris struck the raptor, both bodies tumbled end over end. And then he jammed the welding torch up into the raptor's jaw.

The white-hot energy point at the torch's end sizzled and spat as it ate right through the alien's helmet. The inside of the visor filled with steam and heat, then burst open like wet fruit.

Boris shoved the armored corpse off and to the side, jumping up, ready for the next attack.

Nothing.

We stood on metal grating that led down to a very tropical-­looking spit of sand, and beyond that a deep pool. Purple-and-black shrubs cluttered around in transparent tubs, their fronds dropping toward the water.

In other rooms leading off from the main common area, I saw water fountains and tiled wading pools.

“I guess it makes sense the Arvani officers' club would look like a bathhouse,” Boris said. “Are we going to have to go swimming to find the prisoners?”

“No,” Ken said, coming back around a corner. “They're all stacked up along the back of this pool.”

Five Arvani bodies had been ripped right out of their traveling armor.

“Beached squid,” Amira said.

“Yeah.” Their long tentacles were coiled like rope in the sand, which had absorbed enough of their spilled fluids to look somewhat jellied.

“That raptor stacked them up nice and pretty,” I observed.

“Movement!” Ken shouted.

Something rippled in the water of the common pool. We moved along the wall, Ken and Boris taking point again. The light of the torch dazzled against the walls and rippled reflections in the wavelets past the sand.

“Come out slowly, or we shoot!” Ken shouted on the common channel.

A familiar, mechanically translated “voice” responded. “Who are you?” Ignoring Ken's command, the familiar vision of Commander Zeus rose out of the water in full armor.

“Commander, we're survivors. We came to rescue you.”

Zeus paused on the edge of the waterline and swiveled to regard us. The alien instructor took an extra moment to regard Boris's sizzling weapon. “Well, good. We were taken by surprise and with no weapons. My options have been limited. Do you have any plans for what you are going to do next?”

We all looked at each other. “Rescue you, Commander,” I said. “And find out if it's just this base under attack, or if everything is. We escaped the Conglomerate attack, along with some others. They have headed for the mining launch facility. We were hoping, at the least, you would know where to find better weapons. Or what we should do next.”

“I see.” Zeus rotated around quickly and regarded the dead raptor. “This is the spear tip of a Conglomerate attack force. A special swarm, tasked with gaining ground and holding it secretly. They're mopping up anything left alive now. After that will come other cities on the moon in a rapid sequence, directed from this one. Once consolidated, jamming anything in this moon's orbit, they will use the shadow of your moon's orbit to assemble the attack on your world. They likely feel this is less of a waste than a large fleet attack.”

“So Earth isn't under attack?” Ken asked. He sounded relieved. Much like me. I was slumping forward, a heavy weight sliding right off my back. I hadn't even realized I was holding that fear so tightly.

“No,” Zeus said. “But it will be. If you don't help me. We're going to trigger a self-destruct sequence, maybe take that ship with the base. Together, we can hurt them back. And we're going to send out a distress call that can punch through that jamming.”

Fuck. Yeah. I grinned widely. Boris gave me a thumbs-up.

As we moved, Ken paused. “What about the bodies of the other Arvani?” he asked. “Is there anything we should do for them?”

Zeus snorted. “They were lower order Gaskation. Never the best of warriors. Leave them where they lie.”

I glanced at Amira.

“A bit cold,” she said on the arm's private, encrypted network.

“He's a bastard,” I said. “But he's our bastard now.”

We followed Zeus to the airlock, buoyed and ready to follow orders. And relieved to have someone who knew what was going on to lead us.

24

We all paused in front of the airlock. I took a deep breath. Once more back outside, across the surface in the open.

But Zeus stopped us.

“Down,” he said. “There are tunnels.” Zeus scuttled across the sand to one of the small wading pools. Spiral stairs on the other side led down into dimly lit, gray tunnels carved smoothly out of the lunar rock. How far down had they dug? The gravity plating had to be under us, and there were grates and more subsystems handling air and water systems.

Zeus sped up ahead of us. We were adjusting to being back under the pull of the base's gravity, fine-tuning our suits' movements.

Armor suddenly slammed into armor when Zeus turned a corner. Zeus staggered back into sight, suddenly lit up by a blast of Conglomerate rifle fire as he battled a raptor. Tentacles writhed and slapped around, and then slowed as they wrapped around the alien.

“I can't shoot,” Ken said. “I'll hit them both.”

“Don't,” Zeus snapped.

Then, slowly and inexorably, Zeus started pulling the raptor apart.

It looked like the armor strained, bending and buckling slightly as he pushed it to the limit of its abilities. And then, with a popping sound, the raptor's arms came off, the armored surface revealing the flesh inside in an explosion of bodily fluids.

The raptor fell down, writhing.

Zeus kicked it aside with a tentacle, smearing the floor underneath. The useless Conglomerate energy rifle, now bent into a right angle, lay on the floor next to it. Zeus had a long scorch mark running up a tentacle. “That should be it,” Zeus said. “Keep following me.”

As I stepped over the raptor I paused, looking down at it. The reptilian eyes had clouded over, staring up at the ceiling.

I wondered how intelligent it was. Whether the Conglo­meration had designed it to never question what it was doing, or if it believed that flying through the dark of space to come to my world had some greater purpose.

What did it think as it lay there dying?

+  +  +  +

In the quiet, empty corridors of one of the unused wings, Zeus led us through reinforced locks and into another weapons locker.

A much wider variety of weapons sat on racks here. Sig Sauer P250 handguns. M20 rifles in various configurations, more MP9s, and sturdy Mossburg shotguns.

Since I'd used the submachine gun already, I went for what I knew. Boris lowered his flashlight, staring like a kid in a candy store. “Look at all the RPGs,” he whispered. “We have some Sierra-272s.”

“GR-50.” Ken moved toward a mean, heavy-looking rifle clearly meant for snipers; it was as long as he was tall. “That'll put a dent in some raptor armor.”

Zeus clanked to the side where there was a wall of Accordance energy weapons. He picked up a pair of organic matte-black smoothed rifles, similar to the ones we'd trained with, and what looked like battery magazines for them. One of his other tentacles snagged something that looked similar to the Sierra RPG Boris was hugging.

“Okay, Commander,” Ken said. “What about the comms now?”

Zeus jerked forward. “Commander,” the Arvani mused on the common channel. “I hate that human word.”

A tentacle slammed a battery pack into each of the two rifles, while another tentacle slung the longer weapon onto its back.

“I am not a commander, I am not a member of a
human
fighting force. Your ranks are irrelevant to me. I am Cal Riata, a master of the schooling force. And, you idiot of an ape, there is no self-destruct sequence. You will not be calling anyone for help.”

Zeus raised the pair of rifles at us.

“What?” Ken said, not moving.

“What building has a self-destruct sequence? Has your home ever had one? Have you ever heard of one of your Navy ships having one?”

All of us, lined up in front of him, being yelled at, shifting from foot to foot: I had a strange sense of déjà vu pass through me in a shiver.

Zeus wasn't done ranting at us. And we all instinctively said nothing. “Or are your military forces genuinely stupid enough to feature an actual sequence that could destroy a fighting asset? That you would believe such a thing existed, that would allow one person to blow up this base, indicates your lesser ability to reason. Now, drop those weapons. Or die standing where you are.”

I hadn't even gotten a chance to pick one up yet. Everyone else dropped theirs. I stared at Zeus, my stomach feeling like I was falling as my heart raced.

“You're Conglomerate?” Amira asked. “After all those lectures about how dangerous they are?”

“No. No. I'm Cal Riata,” Zeus said, moving forward to flick the weapons on the ground away from us with a tentacle tip. “Proud Cal Riata. One of the finest of the Arvani, sent all the way to this backward system to do the scutwork that's beneath my kind. We Cal Riata lead schools of warships. We rain ruin upon our enemies. But I am here, to be overwhelmed fighting the Conglomeration in rear guard action? No. Not me. And not other Cal Riata who have been forced into positions like this. We are not inclined to be on the losing side.”

I had led them into this. I'd decided not to run to the mines. Why had they listened to me? And the others! “Efua,” I said on our arm's channel quickly. “Efua. Zeus betrayed us. He's Conglomerate. And he knows about you. Hide, get away. You probably don't have much time.”

I wanted to throw up in my helmet. This was bad.

“Shit,” Efua said, her voice brittle. “Shit. How long do we have? We're pretty deep inside here.”

“You're on the losing side,” Zeus continued. “They didn't tell you that, but the Accordance has slowly been watching planet after planet fall to the Conglomeration.”

Amira answered Efua. “Not long. There are crickets headed your way. I wish I could tell you more. . . . I'm having trouble sneaking around the network. There's something actively blocking me. I think the Conglomeration has taken over the local networks and has counterintrusion coming online. And some of it is really good, it's blocking me out. I'm sorry.”

“So now you kill us?” Ken asked.

“Maybe,” Zeus said. “You survived. That shows
some
basic innate intelligence and survival instinct. More than I would have suspected from a bunch of air-breathers. So, quit running around underfoot, messing up plans that took many years to carefully craft, and make something of yourselves. Be rulers. The Conglomeration will need humans to help rule. It could be you.”

“And what will you rule?” I asked.

“The Pacific Ocean.” Zeus's dinner-plate eyes swiveled to lock onto me. “From the turquoise sandy shallows I will frolic in to the true depths that are my right. The depths my ancestors were chased out of by other Arvani a long, long time ago. What do you want? A state? A small country to rule together? This is the moment where you could have it.”

I thought about the acting president, staggering around with his rheumy, alcoholic eyes. “The Conglomeration butchered defenseless recruits,” I said.

“Soldiers die in war. It was going to happen, sooner or later,” Zeus said. “You were never going to all live through this war. Now, I will take you to answer some questions about the rest of your group, and where they are. You will decide what currents to follow from there. Walk forward now. I'll guide you to where you need to be.”

“He could have killed us by now,” Boris said. “They want something specific out of us.”

“Whatever it is, don't give it to them,” Ken said. “Maybe they'll eventually get it out of us, but the longer that takes, the more likely the others get out of the mine.”

“Zeus already knows they're in the mines around the launcher,” I pointed out. “We told him. There are crickets headed that way. What else could they want? We
gave
them the information they need.”

We followed our captor in silence for a moment.

“Plans,” Amira said.

“What plans?” Ken asked.

“Zeus said we were upsetting long-laid plans. What plans were there? Plans to take Tranquility and the rest of the moon. They're not sure if we warned anyone or not.”

I thought about it. “It could be.”

“We might trigger them into attacking earlier,” Amira said. “And we haven't actually warned anyone yet. And Efua and her . . . team . . . are going to get attacked.”

She'd laid it all out. We'd really fucked this up.

I'd really fucked it up.

“I'm sorry,” I told the team. If I could have hung my head visibly, I would have.

“Oh, get over yourself,” Amira snapped. “We could have walked away from your plan to come in here and rescue this fucker at any time. It made sense. We rolled with it. You aren't some tragic leader we followed blindly to our deaths. Our eyes were open. We just got screwed by this asshole.”

Boris clicked over to the common frequency. “So, you think the Conglomeration is better than the Accordance?” He sounded thoughtful.

“By the depths, no,” Zeus said. “The Conglomeration is going to strip your species down to its usable genetic core, and then rebuild you into some tool that serves it best. It's a horrific thing. I have made the best of it.”

“So the Conglomeration honors agreements?” Boris asked.

“Boris: What are you asking?” Ken snapped.

“What do we know about these invaders?” Boris asked us on the arm's private channel. “We can be second-class people in the Arvani's Accordance, or we can be lesser peoples within the Conglomeration. Either way, Earth is ruled by another alien race. Maybe we should hear their offer out. Maybe—”

“We know the Conglomeration kills unarmed recruits,” I said coldly. “The Accordance, for as much as we hate them, at least follows a rule system. They're conquerors, but they leave us alive and intact once we surrender.”

“We don't know what the Conglomeration really is, because all we get is what the Accordance told us,” Boris said. “The one thing we do know for sure is that the Accordance is their enemy, and the Accordance rules Earth with a fist.”

“The Accordance lifted billions out of war and poverty,” Ken hissed. “They—”

Boris interrupted, “You say that because your grand­fathers and great-grandfathers helped that fist, Ken, and you were handed spoils for helping the victors. They built you entire cities and industries in mere months. You didn't grow up watching the Thames run red with blood. . . .”

“Yeah, and why did people in my part of the world need those things so desperately that they would work with aliens, Boris?” Ken shouted. “Because your ancestors were not fucking helping us catch up, after they'd gone so far on our very backs, with
our
resources.”

“Divide and conquer,” I said softly, breaking in with a soft voice. “And maybe the Conglomeration will do it again, and Londoners will get the keys to the new civil administration. The easiest way to keep a population subjugated is to have them angry with each other. Or . . . maybe everything every creature has ever said about the Conglomeration is right. I know the struthiform, Shriek, seemed honest enough. I think, maybe the Conglomeration's worse.”

A moment's quiet.

“Maybe,” Boris agreed. “But I think, to be honest, after the Conglomeration gets what it wants, there won't be a deal. I think we're dead.”

“I think you're right,” I said.

We trudged on past the ridges of bulkheads and through corridors.

“We're going to have to try and run, or fight him,” Ken said. “I refuse to die without fighting.”

I'd been thinking. Trying to imagine how I wanted to die. And I knew I agreed with him. I was terrified. But I wanted to do
something
. I didn't want to walk.

But I could see the appeal. Every minute placidly following Zeus meant another minute alive. And the back of my brain wanted life. It saw every minute of continuing life doing this as part of a chain that might mean more life. It was a groove, and I was following it.

How did I want to die? Fighting? Or delaying for every last minute? A placid participant? I wasn't going to try for glory, because it was likely that no one was ever going to know how I died.

But I didn't want to die stupidly. If I was going to try one last thing, let it be clever. Let it be . . .

I put out my right hand and let the tips of my armored fingers tap the bulkhead of another door. “Amira?” I tried not to look up. “Amira, we're passing bulkheads. I know you're cut out, but can you override them?”

She leaned back slightly, then stopped herself. “Shit,” she said. “This wing wasn't damaged, so the bulkheads haven't shut automatically. It's too dangerous to open myself up while trying to get into the Accordance network to try to trigger them.”

My heart sank. “You can't even try?”

“There's something prowling around it, hunting. I don't know for sure, but I suspect I'll end up a vegetable if I'm not careful.”

“Fuck.” I clenched a fist. “Is it the ghost? Is that what it is?”

“Maybe. Damn it. There's something familiar about the presence, like it's not Accordance, but I'm feeling like if I had time and the situation was different, I could pick apart the code and find something I've seen before. I don't know, maybe the Accordance stole technology from them and I'm seeing resonances there. But, never mind that . . . ,” Amira said thoughtfully. “Maybe I have a way around needing to get into the network.”

“We don't have many bulkhead doors left before we're out to the training grounds,” I said.

“Shut up. Just a second. I can't get in, but maybe I can trick one locally.”

We turned the last bend. The bay doors leading to the training grounds were just a couple hundred feet ahead in the widening corridor.

Amira grunted. “I can shine a laser at the air sensors,” she said. “Convince them that everything went to shit. Drop the door. We have to time it just right. We all have to hang back, just a little, but not so much that Captain Calamari here notices.”