Empire: Book 2, The Chronicles of the Invaders (The Chronicles of the Invaders Trilogy) (10 page)

CHAPTER 19

G
alton, trapped on the
Envion
and firmly convinced that he was going to die alone, was relieved to see Paul and the others, once Rizzo had managed to convince him not to shoot as he heard their approach. He also managed to clarify somewhat the situation regarding the
Dendra
: its occupants had not even been given time to disembark before the Nomads appeared, and Commander Morev had ordered that they remain in their craft until it was safe to emerge. In order to ensure that they obeyed, he had sealed all exits from the hangar.

The survivors on board the
Envion
had one advantage over the Nomads: all Military and Diplomatic vessels employed heavy interior shielding designed to repel scans, so the Nomads would be unable to tell how many individuals were still alive on the
Envion
. If the attackers were smart—and the fact that they had, until now, kept their distance from the wounded ship suggested they were both clever and cautious—they would assume that hostile forces remained on the vessel, and any attempt to board it would involve a fight. They would be expecting trouble. They just wouldn’t be able to anticipate the extent of it.

But Paul knew that, even without one docking port disabled, the Nomads would still probably have concentrated their efforts to board on the upper port nearest the stern, because that was not only closest to the hangar bay but also to the secondary control center. With the main cockpit destroyed, all systems would revert to the SCC. From there, anyone remaining alive on board the
Envion
could manage the environmental controls and any functioning weapons. The
Envion
would not belong to the Nomads until the SCC was secured.

Paul watched as Peris opened the armory, for only Illyri were permitted to have unrestricted access to terrestrial weapons.

“You know,” said Peris, “I appear to be the only Illyri left alive on board this ship.”

“And?”

“It would be easy, in the heat of battle, for me to lose my life. If you managed to seize one of those Nomad vessels, you could try to flee.”

Paul held Peris’s gaze.

“I’m not going to kill you, Peris. None of the others will either. And we’re not going to try to escape. The Illyri would never stop hunting us.”

“The Illyri wouldn’t know. There are bodies floating in space. By the time a team comes to investigate what has happened, establishing who died—and how—will be virtually impossible.”

“You sound almost as if you want us to run.”

“I’m trying to think as you would.”

“With respect, you have no idea how I think.”

Their communicators buzzed into life. It was Steven.

“One of the Nomad ships has commenced its approach. It’s heading straight for the upper port, just like you said. ETA: seven minutes.”

“And the other?”

“It’s started circling.”

“It’ll be monitoring our weapons systems,” said Peris. “At the first sign of our heavy cannon or torpedoes powering up, it’ll target us with a blast.”

“That’s why we’ll keep away from the ship’s weapons. Just gather up those guns, and as much ammunition as you can carry.”

Paul hit his communicator again. “Galton, are you in position?”

“Yes, I’m ready.”

Galton was in the SCC. He had one task to carry out as soon as the Nomads were on board, and then he would join the fight.

“Steven, Rizzo?”

Two voices confirmed that they were standing by.

“Remember,” said Paul. “Let them come. We know where they’re headed.”

Because of the damage to the ship, and the sealed-off sections, the Nomads would be forced to turn right when they landed, moving toward the stern. That would suit the Nomads’ purposes anyway, if they wanted to get to the hangars and the SCC. The longest single corridor ran straight toward the stern for almost one hundred meters. That was where the trap would be sprung.

“Thula?” Thula’s task was the most dangerous. His job was to seize the Nomad ship.

“Ready,
Lieutenant
,” came Thula’s voice over the comms link.

Paul thought that he detected just a hint of mockery in Thula’s use of the new rank, but he didn’t take it personally.

“That’s ‘Lieutenant, sir’ to you.”

“I shall try to remember that, Lieutenant
sir
.”

Peris appeared from the armory, loaded down with as much weaponry and ammunition as he could carry. Paul took two shotguns from him, inserted a ten-round magazine into one, and jacked a shell. He added four more magazines, along with a box of .38 rounds for his Colt.

“You sure you’re not planning to start a war?” asked Peris.

He had a sly look in his eyes, and Paul wondered if, after all, Peris did know more of Paul’s thoughts than either of them wanted to admit.

“If I do, you’ll be the first to know.”

“As I’ve already suggested, that’s what worries me.”

Peris looked down at his feet. He had discarded his uniform footwear, on Paul’s orders, and was now wearing heavy antigrav boots, just like all the others.

“It’s quite a plan,” said Peris.

“If it works.”

“And if it doesn’t, no one will ever know. Good luck.”

“You too.”

They parted at the main corridor, Paul moving right, Peris heading left. Steven’s voice crackled in Paul’s ear.

“ETA: two minutes.”

“We’ll hear them when they connect,” said Paul. “Radio silence.”

His earpiece went quiet. He ran to take up his position. Rizzo had lowered an overhead ladder for him. He climbed it, pulled it up after
him, and loosely replaced the ceiling panel. Through its grille, he could see the corridor below. The ceiling measured three panels across. Paul moved to the extreme right, leaving Rizzo at the left. When it came to the fight, he didn’t want either of them getting in the other’s way. Paul tossed Rizzo a shotgun and two magazines.

“I’ve never killed an Illyri before,” said Rizzo.

“No?”

“You have, right?”

“Yes.”

“Did you enjoy it?”

“I don’t recall.”

Rizzo laughed.

“Liar,” she said. “But I know I will.”

A metallic sound echoed through the ship, silencing her. It had an ominous tone, like a great door closing, sealing the fates of all those trapped within.

The Nomads had docked.

•  •  •

Thula saw them first. Like the rest, he was hiding in the ceiling, staring down through one of the panels. They were dressed like Nomads, in clothing scavenged from Military, Diplomats, and Civilians alike, their faces concealed by heavily scarred blast masks overwrapped with scarves and turbans, but they moved with the precision of expert soldiers, and their weapons looked clean and well maintained. Perhaps it wasn’t so surprising that they were disciplined—after all, the Nomads numbered Military deserters among their bands, and they might well have entrusted the final capture of the
Envion
to those with training—yet the sight of them communicating silently through hand signals, and moving carefully through the ship, overlapping so that one group—or “stick,” as they had learned to call it in training—provided cover while the next advanced, caused Thula unease. Thula had spent most of his life fighting—hunting and killing both the Illyri invaders and the human predators who roved in gangs through his country, raping and murdering at will. He knew amateurs from pro
fessionals, and he sensed that these intruders were Nomads in name only.

Twelve, thirteen, fourteen: Thula counted them, and waited, but no more emerged from the docking bridge. One of them opened the control panel for the nearest door, cut a pair of the interior wires, and rerouted them through a small black box.

Clever, thought Thula. They were overriding the door systems to ensure that they could not be trapped, just in case there was anyone left alive on board. But Paul had anticipated just such a move. It wouldn’t save them.

Now all but two of them proceeded toward the stern of the ship, with the remaining pair staying behind to guard the dock. How many more on board? Thula wondered. The Nomad vessel was unfamiliar to him, but there would be at least one pilot, and perhaps a copilot too. Four, then, in total. He would have to move fast once the shooting began. The Nomad ship could not be allowed to uncouple if, by any chance, the Nomads managed to get to the SCC. The last thing Paul and the others wanted was to have Nomads holding the SCC and their ship safely orbiting the
Envion
.

Thula slipped the fingers of his left hand through the grille and gripped the metal. In his right hand he held his pistol. A bead of sweat dripped from his brow and trickled down his nose. He caught it on his tongue and tasted its saltiness. It reminded him of the taste of blood. He breathed in deeply, calming himself.

Four.

Four to neutralize.

•  •  •

The Nomads entered the section of corridor that Paul had marked as the killing box. Paul saw them before he heard them, and he was surprised at how quietly they were moving, but he was reassured too. It meant that they were wearing regular boots and not the antigravs with which he had equipped his small force.

Come on, he thought, come on.

The Nomads paused, as though sensing some kind of trap. So far
they had encountered no opposition, and it must have been tempting for them to assume that the
Envion
’s entire crew, along with any Brigade troops, were now dead.

But the Nomads had made no such assumptions. The care they were taking with their approach was proof of that. Paul counted twelve Nomads. Eight were now in the killing box, and four outside it, but Paul wanted them all. Then: a hand raised, the signal to advance given. The first line of four moved forward, the second four covering them, the final four at last entering the box.

Nearly there, nearly there . . .

Another pause. They were now in the box, but Paul needed the last four to move farther away from the doorway.

The final overlap: the second four advanced, the last four followed on.

They were in.

“Now!” said Paul, activating his communicator, and they all heard him.

Thula, by the dock.

Steven and Peris, at one end of the killing box.

Rizzo, by Paul’s side, at the other.

Galton, seated in the small secondary control room, hunched over the main console.

And the Nomads: they heard him too, for their own communicators were scanning all frequencies, alert to any transmissions from inside the ship. They were already preparing for the attack, their responses honed by years of training, as Galton whispered a small prayer and hit a switch.

And the
Envion
’s artificial gravity ceased functioning.

•  •  •

When the shooting was over, Paul would think of it less as an ambush than a slaughter. It didn’t matter that the Nomads would almost certainly have murdered them without a second thought. It didn’t matter that men and women whom he had known as friends, rivals, and comrades-in-arms had been left floating dead in space by the actions of these intruders. What he and the others visited on the Nomads was a massacre, pure and simple.

But that was after. For now, all Paul thought about was killing.

Killing.

Surviving.

Avenging.

As soon as the artificial gravity system was deactivated, the Nomads found themselves floating in the corridor, bumping against one another and the hull, upside down and back to front. Two had already lost their weapons when the grilles were pulled back from the ceiling and four figures in full body armor landed heavily on the floor, two at each end of the corridor, their antigrav boots attaching them magnetically to the floor panels.

The firing began. Paul felt the recoil as the first explosive round left his shotgun, a sphere of smoke expanding from the barrel. It should have bounced him back at a speed of about one meter per second, but the boots kept him anchored, and instead it was only his upper body that responded to the firing of the shotgun, and he had anticipated it. The blast hit the torso of the nearest Nomad, and globules of Illyri blood floated like bubbles from the wound. Paul jacked another round and fired again, this time hitting a Nomad in the right leg. He was aware of the noise of other guns firing, the injuries that they inflicted blossoming like great red flowers, scattering dark petals. One of the Nomads began shooting random pulses from his weapon, but the first struck the ceiling, and the next hit one of his own comrades, and then he was dead and he shot no more.

Paul had stopped thinking. There was only shooting—shooting, and killing.

And he was very good at both.

CHAPTER 20

T
hula’s job was to get past the two guards, enter the dock, and secure the Nomad vessel. Once inside the ship, he would be unable to use his shotgun: the risk of damaging vital equipment was too great, and they needed the ship intact. He would also have to move fast, for the boarding party of Nomads would undoubtedly be monitoring any communications on the
Envion
, and when Paul gave the order to attack, the Nomads would hear it, along with those at whom it was directed.

For that reason, Thula was already moving when the order came. Instead of lifting the ceiling grille, he had merely to drop it, for he had removed it earlier and was holding it in place until the time came to act. He shot the first guard just as the Nomad’s feet left the ground. The second Nomad found himself upside down but face-to-face with Thula as he died. Thula could see his own reflection in the Nomad’s blast mask before his gun spoke and the image was lost in a flash of fire and smoke.

As soon as he dropped down, Thula dispensed with his antigrav boots. He would be able to move faster without them, and speed would determine his success or failure. He pushed one of the floating bodies aside, bubbles of blood breaking on his skin, and pulled himself into the docking bridge. It was a circular tunnel, at the end of which he could see the open door of the Nomad vessel.

The Nomad ship was at a disadvantage. Once another vessel docked with a Military ship, the Military systems overrode its own. This was to ensure that all dock doors were sealed before a linked ship disengaged, as the last thing any ship’s commander wanted was to have his
crew sucked out of an airlock door because someone had unmoored a docked vessel incorrectly. Only by reaching the secondary control room could the Nomads unlock their vessel, so even if the Nomad crew had tried to flee upon hearing Paul’s order, and the firing that followed, they could not have done so. Thula had them.

He was halfway along the bridge when a Nomad appeared at the door of his vessel. He too was floating, but had found a handle to which to cling. The Nomad was wearing a helmet but no body armor, and had a pulse pistol in his hand. He raised it to fire, but his reactions were too slow. By the time the pistol was aimed, Thula’s bullet was already buried in the Nomad’s chest.

Faster he moved, until he was at the door. This was the most dangerous moment, the point at which all might be lost. But Thula was ready: he slipped the small grenade from his pocket, armed it, and threw it inside. It floated almost daintily into the cockpit of the Nomad vessel, spinning in the air. Thula turned his face away, closed his eyes, and used his arms to cover his ears.

Seconds later the flash-bang grenade exploded, temporarily blinding and deafening anyone inside the Nomad cockpit without damaging its equipment. Thula’s own ears were ringing as he propelled himself backward through the doorway, a blade in his hand. He saw only one Nomad, his body lodged behind the pilot’s chair. Thula advanced on him, and the Nomad moved, launching himself upward, a pulser in his hand. He fired. The shot missed Thula, but he could feel the vibration of the pulse as it passed his left ear. The charge must have been set low, for Thula heard no explosion behind him from the missed shot. A pulser on full charge might have torn a hole in the hull: like Thula, the Nomad did not want to risk damaging the ship.

Thula was on him before he could fire a second shot. He knocked the Nomad’s weapon away, and the two of them twisted and fought in the narrow confines of the cockpit, like dancers engaged in a series of movements that could only have one end. The initial advantage was with Thula, for he had a blade, but the Nomad fought hard. Thula would have preferred to take him alive for interrogation, but the Nomad was intent on killing his opponent. Thula could see it in
his eyes, and feel it in the force of the kicks that the Nomad aimed at him while their hands were locked together. The Nomad was immensely strong, his skin a deep gold, the flesh at his neck scarred and burned. Even with the blade, Thula felt himself losing his advantage. He was as tall and strong as many ordinary Illyri, but this, he knew, was a trained fighter. Close up, and hand to hand, an Illyri like this one would beat him.

There was one chance, and Thula took it on instinct. He released his grip on the knife, and let it float off. Instinctively, the Nomad reached for it. As he did so, Thula pushed himself away. The Nomad caught the knife by the blade and prepared to use it, but by then Thula had the Illyri’s pulser. His finger was already pulling the trigger when he realized that the pulser would be DNA locked. It could not be fired at an Illyri.

Thula was dead.

But Thula did not die. The pulser fired, and the pulse struck the Nomad full in the chest, destroying his internal organs. Great bubbles of blood burst from his mouth and floated into the air.

And Thula watched in surprise as the Nomad’s life left him.

•  •  •

The secondary command deck was like a nightmare vision of a slaughterhouse. Bodies floated, bumping gently against the hull and one another, globules of blood from the dead coming together and then separating like amoebae, their biological identities seeming to combine even as their empty shells spun in uneasy orbits.

“Galton,” said Paul.

“I hear you.”

“Restore gravity.”

“Restoring gravity.”

The bodies fell, and blood rained upon the deck.

•  •  •

Steven ran as soon as Paul gave the order to restore gravity, sealing the bulkhead doors as he went, leaving the carnage behind. Steven
had fought the Illyri back on Earth, killing Securitats during the final bitter defense of Dundearg Castle, but it had been different then, almost like a computer game. He had fired, and targets had dropped, the blood largely invisible to him. But the trap they had sprung on the Nomads . . . Steven had never seen so much blood, and the whole scene was rendered more awful, more macabre, by the floating bodies. Yet he had been excited during the fight, pumped by blood lust, and had felt little fear.

But there was more killing to be done.

Within minutes he was at the docking port, stepping over the bodies of the Nomads Thula had killed. He sealed the final door.

“Galton,” he said. “Stand by for release.”

“Standing by.”

Steven reached the door of the Nomad vessel just as Thula was dragging out the second of the dead pilots, the one with whom he had fought hand to hand.

“You okay?” asked Steven.

“I think so. But I killed him with a pulse,” said Thula.

“How? All pulsers are supposed to be locked.”

Thula showed Steven the weapon.

“I’ve never seen one like that before,” said Steven. “It’s sleeker, more modern.”

“Then wait until you see their ship.”

Steven entered the cockpit and took in the shining consoles, the gleaming instrumentation. This vessel was more advanced, and better equipped, than even the newest of the Military craft that he had flown. The only Nomads that the Brigade had ever encountered before flew rust buckets, kept functioning with cannibalized parts. They could only dream of acquiring vessels like this one.

“What the hell is this?” said Steven.

A crackle of communication came from the console. The voice spoke Illyri, but Steven wasn’t wearing his helmet with its inbuilt translator. Unlike Paul he wasn’t yet adept enough at the language to be able to understand all that was being said. Still, it didn’t take a genius to catch the drift of it. Someone on the other Nomad vessel was
anxious to know what was happening. If a response wasn’t received soon, there was a chance that the other ship might cut its losses and run or, worse, correctly conclude that the raiding party had failed in its mission and start opening fire.

Thula stepped into the cockpit.

“Can you fly it?” he asked Steven.

“I don’t have to fly it. I just have to turn it and shoot.”

“Well, can you do that?”

“I don’t know. We’ll soon find out, won’t we?”

Steven took the pilot’s seat and hit the button that activated the neural net. All Illyri ships had one, just in case of damage to an embedded Chip. The net, which resembled a white skullcap, flipped up and came to rest on Steven’s head. It was unsecured, which was fortunate. Otherwise, Steven would have been forced to hack into the weapons system, and they didn’t have time for that.

“Galton?”

“Ready.”

“Okay, we’re closing the cockpit door. On my count: three, two, one. Release!”

In the secondary control center, Galton made a final check of the doors to make sure all were fully sealed, then powered down the locking mechanism that bound the Nomad craft to the
Envion
. The vessel lurched away, and Steven took the controls. His first touch was too heavy and it turned so sharply that Thula was thrown to the floor.

“If we live, I’m going to kick your ass for that,” he told Steven.

“Do you want to fly it?”

“I could do a better job.”

Steven ignored him and called up a full display from the neural net. It appeared on the cockpit window. The movements of his pupils brought him into the weapons systems just as the second Nomad vessel appeared in the distance. It was moving slowly, circling the
Envion
, its crew uncertain how to react to the sudden undocking of the raiding ship. They were still attempting to communicate with it, but even with the neural net in place, Steven was no wiser about what exactly was being said. Like Illyri Chips, neural nets needed to be uploaded
with languages for the translation tool to function, and most Illyri ships didn’t bother with an Illyri upload, for obvious reasons. Only equipment used by Brigade fighters and the other conquered races, like the Agrons or the Galateans, was programmed with an Illyri language upload.

“It won’t be long before they figure out what’s happening,” said Thula, taking the copilot’s chair and belting himself in, just to be safe.

Steven was taking in his ship’s armaments: forward, side, and rear cannon, and forty-eight torpedoes, the launchers at either side of the cockpit. The Nomad vessel might have been built to brave wormholes, but it was first and foremost an instrument of war.

“I think they’ve already figured it out,” said Steven.

The second Nomad ship was turning in their direction so that it would present a smaller target while enabling the aiming of its massive forward cannon. But Steven, apart from some minute adjustments to the controls, allowed their ship simply to drift.

“Come on,” he whispered. “Come on . . .”

The Nomad ship was a glowing silhouette on his lens, shrinking into itself as it turned. They would still be uncertain, Steven reasoned, wondering if, by any chance, some of the raiding party had survived and managed to free the ship; wondering if they were injured, or their communication system was down; wondering if what was clearly a very expensive craft could somehow be saved . . .

If, if, if.

“Now!” said Steven.

He hit the ship’s thrusters. It accelerated so suddenly that he was pressed back into his seat, and he heard Thula shout a prayer to some unnamed god. Steven brought them parallel to the other ship, so their port sides were facing each other, and then turned swiftly to port himself. The maneuver took the Nomad by surprise, suddenly exposing its entire length to Steven’s cannon. Steven didn’t even wait until he was fully in position before he started firing. His first shots went wide of the Nomad’s stern, but the next barrage tore into it, ripping through its hull as Steven came perpendicular to it. Now the Nomad was returning fire, but the damage it had already incurred meant that it was
shooting wildly while Steven was entirely focused. He allowed his ship to continue turning to port, and as the Nomad’s cockpit came into his sights he fired two torpedoes. He and Thula watched as they homed in on the Nomad, and struck home.

The bow of the Nomad disintegrated, the stern separating and becoming almost vertical. Steven saw shapes amid the debris.

Bodies. More bodies.

And then the Nomad’s engines exploded, and the ship was just a memory.

“For our friends,” he said.

“For our friends,” echoed Thula.

Steven hit the thrusters, and they headed back to the
Envion
.