War Against the White Knights (20 page)

The New Empire commander had built fortifications to besiege the Imperial citadel – Indiya had seen the murky long-range observation images through the orange-tinted clouds that cloaked the moon – but the commander had now built an outward-facing fortification: a line of contravallation.

And if the White Knights of the New Empire had failed to break through into the Imperial citadel after decades of siege, how was her Legion to break this much larger barrier?

This was what Tawfiq had gloated over. What had she meant about a key?

“What is your progress on that signals intercept?” she asked the leader of the decryption team, Petty Officer Andyal.

“Still deciphering, Admiral. It’s early days yet.”

“Not good enough. I need answers now. Petty Officer Andyal, as of this moment you are the most important person in the entire fleet. You ask for whatever support you need, whatever minds you need to consult with, whatever equipment. Ask me and it shall be yours. Do you understand?”

“Yes, Admiral.” Andyal’s voice tailed away, hopefully because she was already thinking of how to ramp up her team’s capability. It spoke well of her, but if she couldn’t handle this, Indiya would swiftly replace her.

“Contact me when you’re ready to beg,” said Tawfiq, and then cut the comm link that Indiya had forgotten was still live.

Moments later, the Hardit fleet vanished.

Indiya tensed as she coordinated the movement of the Legion warships into a single defensive formation, expecting Hardit missiles to streak their way at every moment.

But they were unhampered by the Hardits, and she suspected that Tawfiq had other plans for the monkeys’ warfleet.

There would come a reckoning between human and Hardit, and Indiya prayed she would survive long enough to see that day.

But that day of reckoning was not now.

Indiya raised the Decryption Team. “Petty Officer Andyal, when will you get me my message?”

Indiya’s shoulders ached.

All she was doing was pushing herself along the deployment tube on the way back to her quarters after another conference to deal with the fallout from the disappearance of the White Knight homeworld, and the appearance, and subsequent disappearance, of a Hardit fleet that could dance around their sensor systems without so much as a blip.

Everything ached. All of the time. And her body had lived outside of cryo for only forty-one years. She knew her problem was fatigue. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d smiled or relaxed, hadn’t really experienced any downtime since she seized command of
Beowulf
in the mutiny that had birthed the Human Legion decades ago.

Her insides twisted when the thought of the mutiny reminded her of the venerable Jotun officer who had made it possible from the confines of her life support chair: the Reserve Captain.

The old Jotun was still there, still alive in the compartment within the
Vengeance of Saesh
she had made her own, a place to sustain her until the end.

Despite the zero-g, the years suddenly hung heavily over Indiya. In the forty-eight hours since Athena had vanished, her entire command seemed to have aged. She could even see it in the nonhuman personnel. The conquest of the Imperial capital was to have been the climax to the Legion’s war of liberation. Everything had built to this peak. But now… Now what?

The New Empire faction wasn’t hiding behind the physical barrier, or even an energy-draining shield such as protected the X-Boats. The Emperor’s scientists had tried to explain, but it was beyond Indiya’s understanding. For all intents and purposes, the region around Athena was no longer in this universe. That was all that mattered. Nothing she could smash, or melt, or pierce with a Fermi Lance.

And worst of all, the shoals of captured asteroids and comets in high orbit around Athena now made sense. Between them, they were composed of enough raw materials to supply food, drink, and the materials of war for generations.

Arun had gambled everything on a quick victory. The Legion didn’t have generations. With the bulk of their forces banging their head against this impenetrable barrier, the star systems they had fought and died to liberate were now falling to New Empire reconquest. Even the Emperor, still secure inside his Citadel, talked ominously of the Legion having failed to meet its commitments. Indiya was sure the Emperor would be marshalling the still-significant forces of the Old Empire, picking his moment to declare his alliance with the Legion void and seeking to conquer the worlds they had liberated.

It felt as if the bulkheads were closing in to crush the last rearguard of hope from her body. At times like this, she would normally turn to Arun. Just talking through the matters of the day allowed her to drink at the well spring of his belief, and refresh her spirits. After being shot so many times, Arun wasn’t going to give moral support to anybody for a very long time. She was on her own.

Andyal from the Decryption team pinged a request.

A flutter of hope caught in her heart.

“Indiya here.”

“Admiral, we’ve done it. We’ve decrypted the message.”

“Then why haven’t you sent me the text?”

“It’s not so simple.” At the sound of Andyal’s bitterness, the expectation in Indiya’s heart died. “The information in the message was deliberately obtuse,” continued Andyal, “as if they were making us work hard just for the hell of it. It boils down to three items. Firstly, the Hardits claim that the barrier effect around Athena is powered by Euphrates, and secondly they say they know how to switch off the control mechanism that is buried inside the gas giant. The final piece of information is a location, a point above the plane of the ecliptic and approximately thirty light minutes from here. We can see a small object there, artificial in nature, and about the size of a human hand. We cannot tell more without getting closer.”

“It could be a bomb,” said Indiya. “The Hardits hate us.”

“The feeling is mutual, Admiral. But if this were a bomb, why place it so far from our fleet?”

Indiya brought her senior staff officer into the loop. “Hood, link Andyal’s team with the tech team already tasked with investigating whether Euphrates could be the source of our barrier. Looks like it is. I want you to run this team and resource it with whatever you need.”

There was a pause while Hood considered his orders. “Acknowledged, Admiral. Andyal has outlined the situation. Do I have your authority to investigate this mysterious device?”

Indiya tried to answer. The word she wanted was ‘yes’, but it wouldn’t come from her throat.

“Admiral?”

The ache in her bones lifted, her muscles fueling with fire in response to a threat she didn’t yet understand. Even with her mind, she couldn’t form the words to alert Andyal.

Indiya was not entirely human. Augmentations centered on the nano-factories and hormonal effectors beneath the palms of her hands now responded to automated threat-response programs. Her body had been invaded at the nano-level before, knew how to fight back. Legions of tiny defenders mustered at her implants and deployed along her bloodstream.

But they found no invaders to take on, and the medical diagnostics reported no toxins, nothing out of the ordinary except her own body’s response to this phantom attack.

“Admiral, are you okay?”

Whatever was happening to her was beyond her understanding.

She fell – tumbled through the deck and into darkness. A tiny voice of reason screamed that it was impossible for her to fall in zero-gravity, but her body ignored this caution, and she flung her arms wide as she descended through nothingness until she became aware of a new, gossamer-thin reality that thickened rapidly into a cavity, scooped from a mass of swirling mist in orange, reds and browns.

Her descent stopped. This egg-shaped hole was her destination.

“Who are you? And why have you brought me here?”

“We are the Night Hummer.”

Of course. They had been quiet for too long.

“You mean you are the Hummer individual aboard
Holy Retribution
?”

“No, Admiral Indiya. We are the Hummers. Not all of our people, but many and in combination. We need to speak with you, but you secure us in charged cages and keep us far away. Only by combining our wills are we able to communicate with you in this coarse manner. We apologize for our inefficiency.”

“So this is all taking place in my head?”

“Correct.”

“In the physical universe I am still in Deployment Tube Gamma and in a healthy and stable state.”

“Correct. Subjective time is running faster in this virtual place.”

“Good. Now that’s sorted, why the fuck have you wixering chodders kidnapped me in my own mind? You are not exactly loved by the Legion. If Admiral Kreippil got wind of this, he would throw every last one of you into the sun. Explain yourselves.”

“We have your answer. We know Euphrates.”

“The gas giant? Do we need the Hardits at all? Can you turn off the shield around Athena?”

“You ask too many questions. Ask only one at a time.”

“Don’t tell me we’re back to this. We trained you how to communicate in our speech decades ago.”

“We are many. Most of us in our shared mind have never been aboard one of your ships.”

Even in this virtual existence, Indiya blinked, startled at this information. “Where are you?”

“In many locations. Most of us are located inside Euphrates.”

“Inside? You can live inside a gas giant?”

“Correct. Euphrates is our home. As Earth is your home, Euphrates is ours.”

Merde! How much about the Hummers do we still not understand?
“Then you can switch off the barrier, allow us to reach Athena?”

“Incorrect. We cannot disable the barrier generator. The details of its programming were not shared with us. We can, however, insert the new code you have been given.”

“Yeah, and that’s kind of bothering me. The Hardit commander, Tawfiq, talked of Night Hummer advisers, and claims to have the knowledge to turn off the barrier. If I’m talking to a collective of all the Hummers in the vicinity, am I talking to Tawfiq’s adviser?”

“We are many, but we are not one. Even within the mind of a single individual there exist warring factions. We are not one.”

Mader zagh! Why had she not foreseen this? The Hummers had seemed so single-minded that even Arun, with all his suspicions, had never asked which faction of Hummers he had pledged to support. She decided that was a question for later. For now, she needed a plan of action. “So we get the code from Tawfiq, which I’m guessing has been supplied to her by your Hummer rivals, and then we fly you down to Euphrates where you will reprogram the machine generating the barrier. Have I missed anything?”

“You are correct. However, you misunderstand the nature of the barrier controller. I see in your head that you imagine a control panel with status lights and buttons. That is not the nature of the controller.”

Indiya shrugged. “I only imagine what is familiar to me. I assume the tech is more advanced than a lever on a control panel.”

“The tech, as you call it, is highly advanced, yes, but it is not mechanical in nature. The controller is organic, a wonder of the galaxy. The barrier control system is a Night Hummer, one of our kind so large that its cognitive functions are stretched far beyond the ability to retain consciousness. To re-program the controller we must merge part of our bodies with this, the largest of our kind.”

“Just how big is this… Controller?”

“The controller encircles the planet. You now know that this gas giant is the homeworld of our people. Admiral, my people
are
the homeworld. Euphrates is alive.”

The mental connection snapped, and Indiya flung her arms out once more as she fell through impossible trajectories and back into the zero-gravity of Deployment Tube Delta. She discovered her hands safely gripping the bulkhead handrail.

“Admiral?”

“Hood, I’m okay.”

“No, sir. You are not okay. You blanked out for about five seconds. I have medics and a security team on their way.”

“Let them come to reassure all of us as to my status. I haven’t been attacked, though. I’ve been in communication.”

“With whom, Admiral?” Hood sounded concerned and skeptical. He had a right to be.

“I think… With Euphrates. I know that won’t put your mind at rest, but I’ll explain later. Now, stop fussing over me and get the team over to that location the monkeys sent us.”

“On their way, Admiral. I’ve sent a flight of X-Boats. We’ll be there within half an hour.”

Good
, thought Indiya.
That gives me just enough time to see someone first.

“Arun. Arun?” Indiya whispered insistently, conscious of the disapproving medic behind her.

Did Arun’s eyes just flutter? It was difficult to tell through the window of his recovery pod. The sight of him inside that thing clawed at her guts. His body was festooned with enough cables and tubes to make a wetware geek’s dream, but the chief medical officer would not permit her to send the hormonal signal down one of those tubes to force him to wake.

She called his name, a little louder. She didn’t have much time. Floating there inside the pod filled with orange-tinted recovery gel, how much of her voice could he actually hear?

“Arun, it’s Indiya. Your purple-haired ship rat.”

There was no mistake this time. He opened bloodshot eyes and slowly brought her into focus.

“I’ve missed you, Arun. More than I thought possible.”

He gave a feeble smile. “Steady. If it’s my body you’re after, I have to warn you that Xin can get jealous.”

Indiya fought to keep the tears at bay. She used to tease him, long ago, that his clipped Marine speech pattern made him sound like a machine. Now he was unable to speak with his mouth at all, conversing using the same thought-to-speech technology nonhumans used to talked with her. At least he retained a grim sense of humor.

She accessed his medical summary. The bodies of Marines were designed to withstand a terrible pounding, and then knit themselves back together to experience the trauma all over again. But even Marines had a limit, and Tawfiq’s low-velocity pistol rounds had taken Arun beyond his.