Chapter 11

REBEL

The rebel base on Gem looked like someone had just taken one of those rust mite nests on Stumble and just tossed an entire chunk of rusted auto onto it. The base itself was a bit like a rust mite nest too: Narrow corridors cut into raw rock, with doors fastened onto the walls and riveted into place in a kind of slapdash workmanlike way. The doors that were open looked in on storerooms filled with rifles, guns, grenades, armor, crates of food, tanks of pre-programmed nanopaste, and other things that barked their information to me with tiny little RFID yaps and yips. It was like walking past rooms full of exigenic puppies, each one trying to tell me how useful and explosive it was.

The corridors themselves were filled with Alliance folks. Humans from dozens of worlds, of every kind of gender and race, most of them dressed in rough homespun that could have only barely been called a uniform. Lots of them were lugging equipment here and there, but others were just rushing to their ready stations. A good chunk of them were wearing crinkly black jumpsuits with helmets that had rubber gas-masks attached to the front. The masks were left to swing to the side, letting them breath easy, and adding a rustly, flappy sound to their jogging.

Meetra served as one great big trashsmasher for me: Everyone got out of their way, though no one saluted. There were a few nods. Lots of people did stop to look at me: A stick of a girl with a threshold blade on the hip and the slightly pruny look of someone fresh from a healing vat.

Let them look.

I was ready for this.

THE TRAP

Meetra and I stepped into a large room dominated by a circular metal table that projected a holographic map of Gem and Gem space. The crazy loop of the fast pass fleet that had been set out to attack the Victrix was still plotted, but even a glance showed that there was no way that they’d be able to interfere in this battle – not without blowing every last bit of reaction mass they had in a suicide rush. It was down to us. Down to me. Down to the plan that Meetra had laid out back on Atom City. I gulped.

It had seemed really fun back there.

The room was packed with the guys and gals and andro and whatever else that had slapped on the black jumpsuits and helmets. They stood at attention, and I picked out Techne among them – though she wasn’t wearing a mask helmet. She flashed me a grin, while Meetra nodded. “At ease,” they said.

“What’s the plan, General?” one of the Alliance soldiers asked – a sleek looking man with electric blue hair and clittery mandibles made of snyth and steel. “We’re going to use the PBCs?”

“Yes,” Meetra said. “But not in the way you expect.”

The voiceless voice of my djinn whispered in my ear. A PBC – a particle beam cannon. A great big energy gun, powered by the base’s concealed fusion reactor and tapped into enough waste heat dumps to let it fire a continual, ship-scouring beam of high energy particles into orbit. Meetra shot me a glance and nodded, indicating it was time for step one. Then they lifted their hand and flicked it at one of the women nestled at the console in the center of the room. The woman nodded and touched several controls. The lights dimmed.

“PBC firing,” she said.

I closed my eyes.

SENSE

I couldn’t see outside the room.

But I knew what was happening – and that knowing became seeing, as if I was looking out of a capture-cam. In full, blistering colors. There was the pale white sweep of Gem’s vast plains, interrupted only by the stark red-black mountain ranges. The sky was a pale pinkish hue now, and the streaks of the Tiamat’s landing had long since blown away, leaving only a few wisps of white here and there. The PBC, though, was one big obvious interruption in the landscape: Rising up and out of the white, a long barrel of matte black and silver. It didn’t even have time to fire: One second it was there, the next there was a flicker of laserlight, the next, the air leading to the PBC immolated. The molecules burst into flames and the shockwave that exploded out from around the PBC made my feet quiver.

The Victrix Imperitata had more guns. Better guns. Better comptech, too.

They had sniffed out the PBC with their telescopes and fired on it with the reflexes of an automaton.

But the guide laser led directly to the Victrix’s belly. Which led me right into her belly. I felt the tech of the ship, buzzing around my perceptions. It was so vast and terrible that it made my knees go weak for a second. How could I even know where to begin with this task, let alone actually do it? But. No. No. I could do this. I clenched my fists and started to dig – following the line of code from the weaponry to the targeting systems. I felt the presence roaring at me just as I reached the targeting arrays – and Thale slammed into me.

My nerves exploded with heat and I couldn’t tell if it was pleasure or if it was pain to feel him again. His claws pressed to my aetheric shoulders and I felt him hesitating – a fractional hesitation. He could have flushed me out of the Victrix’s system. But that single catch of the breath. That pause. The feeling of his electronic lips, hovering near my ears. The press of his virtual claws. It was a feeling so distinct, so different from our time together – both in the dream and in reality – that it took my breath away.

Then the need of the mission drove me forward.

I grabbed the targeting array and I shredded the code. I didn’t just delete the programs. I ripped them into pieces and then jammed the pieces into all the wrong holes. Now Thale reacted. His claws dug in and I felt his presence shoving me out of the Victrix.

But I was grinning as I fell to my knees, gasping heavily. The soldiers were all gaping at me. Meetra helped me to my feet and offered me a small nanospray. I took it, blinking. They pointed at my nose. I sniffed and realized that was why I was tasting blood. That was why my head hurt.

Right.

BRIEFING

“Lady Venn just blinded the Victrix,” Meetra said, their voice carrying through the room. “Without their targeting arrays, their firing solutions can’t get better than a kilometer in resolution. While they will glass a planet if they have too, the Hegemony prefers to handle situations like this through controlled shows of force. Without the ability to surgically target our installations from orbit, they will move to the second strategy preferred by the Hegemony for planetary submission.”

The holographic map changed to show the terrain around the main Alliance base and showed the Victrix coming down. The holographic Victrix used its agrav emitters to slow its descent to a stately crawl, then settled down, belly first onto the ground. The mental image made me want to giggle – a five kilometer long sundiver, laying down in the desert like some big lazy dragon. It seemed utterly absurd. But Techne had pointed out that if a gravity field could keep a ship intact under high-G acceleration for days and days and days, it could easily handle landing on something as piddling as a planet’s gravity well.

“Once it’s down, it will disembark the Hegemonic army,” Meetra said. “This class of worldkiller carries ten thousand troops with five thousand assorted support craft, five thousand tanks, five thousand self propelled artillery units...”

“What the hell are we gonna do against a Hegemonic army?” One of the soldiers spoke up. She was a tough, short looking girl who was maybe as broad as she was tall and all muscle. Her jaw was nearly rectangular. “It’ll be slower than being bombed from orbit, but not by much.”

Meetra’s smile was deadly. “We’re not letting the Victrix land. Each of you is a certified multirole combatant.” They grinned. “And the best kept secret of Gem is our trump card.”

The holotable shifted and projected a new image.

The soldiers all started grinning too.

TRUMP CARD

The Alliance’s trump card was a canted triangle, maybe thirty feet long. The center of the triangle had a small bump that concealed the cockpit – while the back had the four jet turbine engines. The belly was covered with missiles, while the front had a pair of linked, semi-turreted depleted uranium slug throwers that could put out enough ammo to shred armored walkers from two miles out. They were called the XD-908.

“Gem, before the warplagues, was gearing up for a global war,” Meetra said, gesturing to the XD-908, which rotated slowly in the holographic field. “We found two caches of vac-sealed XD-908s, almost a hundred of them in total, and have been prepping them in concealed launch caves in this very base. When the Hegemony enters the atmosphere, we attack. The goal will be to knock out at least three of the Victrix’s agrav emitters.” They cracked their knuckles as the holographic table switched to showing the Victrix – pointing out where the agrav emitters were. “Any less and the Victrix will be able to effect a soft landing, even if it she won’t fly again. We need it to crash, then we need to shoot the bastards while they’re down.”

The Alliance soldiers – the Alliance pilots – grinned.

“What about their point defense?” Mandible Guy asked.

Meetra glanced at me. I sighed, then finished firing the nano-spray up my nose. I sniffed, wriggled my nose a bit, then said: “Can’t knock them out. Their big guns are linked to the targeting array, but most of that ship’s hardened against my, uh, talents.” I shrugged. “I’m honestly lucky to have taken out their array.”

Meetra nodded. “Then we’ll at least have one advantage: They’ll be firing like this is the Great War again: By eye, with mechanical assistance. That should give us an edge.”

The pilots nodded. No more questions came. “Dismissed,” Meetra said. “And Christ go with you.”

The pilots jogged towards the exit, their grins wolfish and eager. How many kicks had the Hegemony planted in the guts of how many worlds? How many of them had waited decades to get this chance? Techne ran past, giving me a grin and a wink – and a need buzzed in me. I had to be there. I had to. I looked at Meetra, then drew myself up.

“Permission to join the flights, General,” I said, my voice tight.

“Ven, you’re a scavenger from a planet whose last plane flew almost a thousand years ago,” Meetra said, their voice quiet.

I ducked my head, then turned. I glared at the holographic image of the Victrix until it had shifted back to the XD. The plane rotated before me and I tried to center myself. But as I reached in for my talent, all I could remember was the electric feeling of Thale’s claws digging into my virtual back. My eyes closed and I took Thale and I put him aside. But I couldn’t. He was on that ship. He was going to be behind one of those guns. Aiming the guns at us. Shooting us down. Shooting me. My throat felt dry ... and my hands tightened even more. I opened my eyes and forced myself to touch my talent. And my djinn, sluggish and snappish, responded.

Knowledge about the XD exploded in my head. Where controls were. How to fly. How to shoot. How to kill. How to die. It was the sense memories of who knows how many pilots, unfurling into my brain and fusing to my neurons. I didn’t know how the Machines knew about them – the sensations were ghostly and ephemeral. They lasted only long enough to impart their knowledge, and to leave a clammy aftertaste on my tongue. I had the ghost memory of what it felt, to have scorching flames from an exploding fuel tank rush along my forearms. Of the sudden, sharp snap of a missile prox-detting next to my cockpit. Of the red wash that came from spinning out.

But when the sensations had faded, I looked at Meetra and grinned.

“I’ve been flying these things longer than you’ve been alive,” I said.

Meetra’s eyes widened ever so slightly. They whispered, very softly. “Have I ever mentioned that Liminal Knights are quite scary?”

I gulped and tried to look non-threatening.

KICKING TIRES

The concealed hanger of the Alliance made the earlier chaos of the base look like sedate calm. Techs of every sort swarmed over every XD. Nano was daubed liberally on parts and machinery that had been old when Stumble had been green, and new components were being fabricated from a half-broken river of mana that sat at the end of the room. Drones buzzed by overhead, carrying heavy crates of depleted uranium slugs and dartlike missiles. Meetra had given me a communicator, which was only half needed, and a pilot suit, which was threaded with enough comptech to make me feel downright decadent. Once I’d felt all the ways the pilot suit would help keep my blood from going where it shouldn’t, I got a lot happier about being decadent.

“Hey, S-Squad,” I said into the communicator. “Got room for one more?”

“Venn?” Techne’s voice cracked in my ear.

I came to where S-squad was being prepped. The squad leader was the mandibled man from earlier. The others were closer to the Hegemonic baseline – but their steely gaze made it clear they were just as invested as anyone else. Techne was already seated in her cockpit, flicking switches. I grinned. “I didn’t know you could fly,” I said.

“I know for a fact you can’t,” she said – then gaped as I slapped the palm of the squad leader, grabbed onto the edge of one of the unoccupied XDs and swung myself in. I settled down and began to check it over.

“Fuel checks are a-okay, targeting is out of alignment.” I touched a few controls. “Are we in line with the physical market, sir?”

The mandibled man blinked at me. Then he grinned. “Fuck, I want to fly with a Liminal Knight. The callsign is Snap, and I want you in the center of the formation.”

“Aye aye,” I called out.

“That’s wetnavy!” he called over his shoulder as he hurried to his XD.

PREP

My hands didn’t shake during the prep. I had no time for it. The XD was loaded with fifteen missiles on each wing, all of them capable of being independently targeted and aimed, as well as being fused for proximity detonation or contact detonation. Five of the warheads were low yield thermoberic, meaning they’d toast half an acre. Not so great against the armored skin of the worldkiller. The next five were shaped shrapnel charges. The idea was they’d get within a half a mile of the enemy plane then explode at them like a shotgun charge. Real nasty.

But the last five were what we’d need for the Worldkiller: Five nuclear powered X-ray laser warheads. They’d set off a tiny fission bomb, which would power a single shot chemical laser. At point blank rang, they could lase at the one gigajoule range. Even a sundiver’s armor couldn’t take that. Especially since it wasn’t actually one lasing rod per nuke. It was actually eight, angled so they all hit the same point at the same fucking time.

Zzzzap.

Once I was sure all my missiles were good, I checked the fuel, checked the air feed to my piloting mask, then checked my coms by pinging everyone. Then, closing my eyes, I thought to Techne.

You watch your back out there, Techne, I thought.

If you get your ass killed, Venn, I am going to kill you. I opened my eyes to glance at her and Techne shot me a little grin. Her eyes whirred and she gave me a thumbs up. I nodded, then reached up, tugging the cockpit down. It locked into place and several techs came by to check the ship over. One nodded, then slapped the edge of the cockpit twice and then thrust their hand that way. I looked, and saw the other planes were taxing.

“Take off by squads,” the voice of CIC spoke in my ear.

TAKE FLIGHT

A-Squad hit the skies first. They screamed into the atmosphere like banshees, their jet engines leaving behind rippling heatwaves as they shot into the air. B-Squad followed, then C, then D. It was a long line until S was finally up at the rack. And by the time we had taxi’d into position, I could see the Victrix. It was entering the atmosphere at a stately, steady pace – slow enough that it didn’t scorch the air or leave behind a contrail. But the eddies in the atmosphere it created with its sheer bulk made the clouds that were up there roil and twist. Lightning arced along the skin of the ship, created by the interplay of energies from agrav emitters and the static charge of the atmosphere.

It was just as terrible looking as when it had first come into the skies above Stumble.

God.

It felt so long now. I’d walked a bare fraction of the Chain – not even a fourth – but it still felt like I could never come back to Stumble. And if I did ... what would I even do there?

The moment of awareness – that singular instant where I knew that time existed, that there was a past and a future, that there was more than the immediate now – passed as streaks shot from the sides of the vast Victrix cargo holds. My eyes widened and I heard CIC’s calm, collected voice in my ear.

“Target lock – IFF identifies them as areojet fighters. Repeat, the Hegemony has launched fighters.”

“Shit,” I whispered.

In this day and age, areospace fighters were a relic. Something used by people trapped in a single world – since anyone in the skies could knock them down like they were gnats. But the Hegemony, it seemed, could over-prepare like the best of them. And their obsessive preparation had included tucking a few squads of areospace fighters into the hold of their warship. I counted twelve, twenty, thirty – but then Snap said: “S-Squad, on me.”

And he hit the air.

I slammed down on the acceleration – pulled back on the stick – and the memory of a thousand ghosts guided me into the heavens.

IMPASSE

For a few glorious seconds, I could admire it.

Chevron after chevron of Alliance fighters – streaking through the air, formed into their neat, five man squads, their squads formed into wings. And ahead of us, the chevrons of Hegemony fighters. As we got closer, I could see that I was half right: They weren’t jets like ours. They were ramdrive space superiority fighters. They had been made to work in space, with air being a mere afterthought. But they still bristled with close in weapons: Nose mounted cannon, turreted lasers.

My targeting laser picked enemies with a thought.

doooDEEE.

Target lock.

“Birds away!”

I rippled every single shrapnel missile I had, targeting anything that wasn’t being painted by my fellow pilots. The missiles joined a fleet of missiles, streaking towards the Hegemony fighters. Their lasers winked on, and several missiles blew, but atmospheres made laserfire less than they could have wished. But then the missiles started to slew and whirl and dart off course. My targeting computer filled with static and I heard cries of alarm from the rest of my pilots. Then, past the Hegemony, past the exploding wall of misfiring missiles, I saw two sleek ships emerging from the Victrix. One was a Hegemony corvette, the same stealth ship that had carried Thale to Atom City.

The other was Thale’s sphere ship. But it had been reformatted, turned into a silver dart, with two out-thrust wings that were tipped with some kind of energy emitter.

I glared at them – then reached out with my senses. I felt the targeting computers and the communication grid of the Hegemony. I grabbed it into a fist – my fingers tightening – then pulled backwards. I felt them snapping and I snarled over the communications: “Our targeting computers are out. But so are theirs!”

“Switch to cannons.”

“Arming guns!”

“Closing for-”

“Setting missiles to dumbfire!”

“Watch your six!”

We caught up with our missiles.

PANDEMONIUM

Two Hegemony fighters flew straight past me and I grabbed onto the stick and twisted. My wings groaned as I threaded between two streams of railgun fire, then let the fighters try and bank around. I swung my nose around – and swept cannonfire along one of the Hegemony fighters. The depleted uranium slugs stitched their way from matte black engine to nose and I released the trigger, my fighter sweeping past the exploding fireball that had been the Hegemonic pilot.

I risked a glance and saw that one of my wingmates, S-2, was threading their plane back and forth, trying to evade the Hegemonic fighter behind them. I slammed down the areobrake, cut the engines. My wings caught the air and for a second, I slewed through the atmosphere. The enemy ship flew right past my nose and I blew his wing off. He started to spiral out of the sky and I kicked the engines back on, the jets groaning as they tried to restart.

I nearly stalled – but the XD wasn’t a primitive jet. It was the last, cutting edge of what jet tech could do.

Alerts squealed and some of my wing started to explode into puffs of smoke. Lasers were burning me. I twisted the stick and felt my head mashing back against the headrest. The smoke puffs skittered from wing to fuselage to wing to fuselage, leaving behind streaks and puffs of ablative armor. I alternated my movements, jinking wildly, but the computer-aimed laser turret was able to keep up with me. There was only so much time before they burned through and hit something vital.

“Need help!” I snarled.

“I’m there!” Techne’s voice bloomed in my ear.

I craned my head up and saw the bastard who had been lasing me crumple and explode. Techne wiggled her wings as she shot by.

I got a breather then. I swept my gaze around – hearing the panicky shouts of Alliance pilots and the battle language of the Hegemony, buzzing through my senses. The Victrix was slowing its descent, and firing into the furball with a fraction of it’s point defense weapons. The tracers they used streaked the air with orange and white, and the misses threaded along the ground – sending up miniature dust storms as they struck the white surface of Gem.

Alliance XD planes burst apart as Hegemonic lasers found fuel pods, or as Hegemonic railguns tore them to shreds. Hegemonic fighters flew in ungainly circles towards the ground, their intakes or their outtakes shot to shit by depleted uranium slugs. Flack and chaff and distraction flares hissed through the air, while the Victrix continued to lumber, slowly, towards the ground.

“This is A-Squad!” A voice spoke, sounding grim. “We’re making a pass on the first agrav generator.”

I nodded. “S-5, I’m coming in to assist.”

THE FIRST PASS

A-Squad streaked out of the furball. This was not obvious to anyone at first – the furball was a wild, confused mess of planes and shells. But after a few seconds, their course was clear as fuck, and the Hegemonic point defense began to rake the air ahead of them.

A2 took a hit directly to the cockpit and crumpled.

But I was there a second later.

I swept my nose along the hull of the Hegemonic worldkiller, ripple firing my thermoberics.

The missiles were in dumbfire mode, barely better than rockets.

Didn’t matter.

They hit the side of the ship and flared a white so bright it was almost blue. When the heat wave was gone and the smoke was whisked away by the winds, I could see that they hadn’t even scratched the hull. But they had melted the barrels of dozens of PD guns into slag. But to avoid the other PD guns, A-Squad, the surviving A-squad at least, had to thread their planes close to the skin of the ship. Then PD guns began to swing towards me. Bullets and tracers filled the air and I banked hard and away. I nearly blacked out.

But when my eyes cleared, I could see two squads of Hegemonic fighters trying to break away from the furball. I shot at them – and from behind, other Alliance fighters shot at them. The squad broke apart.

And then A-squad’s leader barked. “X-rays in the air!”

The thermoberics were brighter, but that was because all the energy from the nukes was focused at one of the agrav emitters.

The eight beams was barely visible – it was more like just seeing the sky itself streak. The beams overlapped into a single sear, and their contact point exploded outwards with a spray of smoke and molten metal. And then the agrav emitter went up. The explosion rippled along the edge of the ship and the Victrix shuddered like it was a human being who had just been flicked real hard in the temple. I felt the wash of communications from it- calls and cries from the entire ship.

I grinned.

And then the entire Hegemonic fighter-group disengaged at once.

SECOND PASS

The fighters shot towards A-squad. They didn’t care if they got shot down by the surviving Alliance fighters – they streaked towards the agrav emitters that ringed the back of the Victrix’ hull. Their railgun slugs hissed through the air and A-squad crumpled into fireballs. I winced – and then saw that there was a bare fraction of Alliance fighters left. Every squad, it looked like, had been winnowed and hewed and slashed. And I could see that in the sudden gaps left by the Hegemonic forces, the damage dealers were the corvette and Thale’s silvery ship.

“This is S-squad, form up on me,” Snap’s voice came through my com. I saw Techne and I saw two other S-Squad planes soaring to meet Snap. I joined in, and we formed up, the lot of us heading for the Victrix. The Hegemonic fighters were using their VTOL engines to bank around the agrav emitters, and the point defense guns that were left started to fill the air with streaks of weapons fire.

“We’re not getting through that,” Techne muttered.

“We have to try,” Snap said. “Fire support, we need fire support.”

Several other still intact squads of Alliance fighters started to fly high, trying to get above the Victrix. I took a moment to glance at the ground and bit my lip. The Victrix’s slow decent was bringing her closer and closer to the invisible line where her crash wouldn’t be damaging enough to put her out of the fight.

Cannonfire started to lance through the air. A sudden hole appeared in the enemy formation – stitched out by the gunfire from our fellow pilots. I hit the afterburners and slammed back into my seat, pressed down by the muffling weight of my on bones. I gritted my teeth as Hegemonic fighters tried to keep pace with us. Snap’s plane drew ahead of mine and he flew so close to the skin of the Victrix that I was shocked he didn’t throw up sparks.

“I’ve got a laser lock on my tail!” Techne shouted.

I looked back.

Thale’s ship was right behind us, the silvery hull shifting its shape to contour to the atmosphere just so. It made it move like quicksilver, and I saw the emitters on the wings line up with Techne’s plane. Techne jinked – but then one of her wings sheered off with a spray of metal and plastic.

“Techne!” I shouted.

Her plane whirred and whirred and whirred, tumbling through the air. But then an explosion at the cockpit set my heart plunging. Then ... soaring. A narrow rectangle of white fabric bust into the air – and I saw the slender, black suited figure of Techne, holding onto the straps of her parachute. But then all I had time to focus on was the murderous assault of Thale’s ship. The emitters on the wings kept doing firing – what I had no idea. They tore S3 and S4 into pieces.

“Snap! Pull off!” I shouted.

“Missile’s away!” He shouted.

He banked – but not away. He twisted to get his plane between Thale’s and the missle.

The invisible impact smashed his plane in half. The fireball of his igniting fuel tanks roared outwards and Thale’s ship shot through, leaving behind black contrails of smoke.

The missile detonated.

Eight X-ray lasers smashed into the agrav emitter. This time, the Victirx didn’t simply shudder. It heeled hard to the side, dragging its nose through the air. I could almost hear the groaning, stressing sound of its thousands upon thousands of tons of weight, straining against the agrav fields that was now dangerously unstable. But then point defense fire began to lash the air around my jet. I pulled up and away, hearing the rattling and cracking sounds of impacts, bouncing and jouncing off my armor. And then...

Target lock.

Thale was on my tail.

CHASE

My eyes closed.

One moment ... there was a distance between me and the plane.

The next.

I was my plane. My arms were swept backwards and I felt every caress of the wind on my bare skin. The adjustments I made were the same minute adjustments I’d make while swimming, while running, while balancing. They were deeper than thought, more complete than understanding. They were instinct.

I rolled onto my belly as whatever Thale was using as a weapon shot past my nose. He hadn’t even been trying to hit me. Just heard me away from the fight. I flew on my back, craning my head down. He was soaring behind me – a silvery presence. I saw the shape he was in shifting, his mind merging with the tech of his plane. And at that moment, the world around me seemed to fade. I could see him, sprinting after me, his face set. Determined. But he had ducked his head forward. I could only see his jaw.

I couldn’t see his eyes.

I looked forward and saw that we easily two miles away from the main fight. I thrust my arms forward and put on another bust of speed, angling towards the mountain range that thrust from the desert – bloody teeth, waiting to gnash on anyone who got too close. As I flew forward, I felt the flicker of laserlight as Thale ran his targeting lock on my body. It lingered on the swell of my breasts, skimmed along my belly, caressed my thighs. I shivered and felt an excited bloom between my thighs. Disgust and anger and lust and love warred inside of me.