Authors: S. Andrew Swann
Messiah (12 page)
Three times now, both Kugara and Nickolai had taken the initiative—and she didn’t have the wherewithal to even raise an objection.
Above them, the sky was already gray with smoke, and the sounds of the battle seemed to be closing in on them.
If I continue as I have been, I will get us all killed.
Her knuckles whitened on the shotgun. After inadvertently killing an unarmed woman on the
Prophet’s Voice,
she doubted she would ever be able to make that kind of split-second decision again. Not without second-guessing herself.
Prophet’s Voice,
she doubted she would ever be able to make that kind of split-second decision again. Not without second-guessing herself.
She led them to a mouth of an alley that opened up to a street, across from a block of office buildings that had burned down around the wreckage of a downed troop transport. Through the smoke of the smoldering wreckage, she could see the Wilson militia, only half of whom seemed to be wearing powered armor, making a retreat down the street, away from the main line.
She peeked around the edge of the building and could see flashes of energy weapons burning their way through the smoke. She ducked back around and felt her heart trying to slam its way through her rib cage. She tasted copper in her throat and heard a low growl from the tiger.
Of course, he can smell the fear . . .
It was worse than what she felt during the doomed resistance on Rubai, worse than what she felt on the
Prophet’s Voice.
Prophet’s Voice.
“Okay,” she whispered, reining in the panic. “This is what we have to do.” She checked the shotgun and handed it off to Kugara. “You need to get everyone to the mountains.”
“Me?” Kugara sounded incredulous.
Parvi nodded, solidifying her own decision. “We have two missions here,” she told her. “Mallory wants to make contact with the PSDC.”
“What?” It came from several people at once.
“Whatever you might find in the Dolbrian caverns, the PSDC is the last line of defense this planet has.”
Everyone stared at her, and it was Flynn who spoke up. “Are you crazy, woman? The PSDC has to know what’s going on in orbit; they ain’t jamming their own communications. If they haven’t contacted Mallory and his savior squad, it’s ’cause they have more of a hard-on for running this effing planet.”
“
Everything
we’re doing is a long shot,” Parvi said. “Besides, someone has to open a hole in the line so you can get through.” She looked at Kugara and said, “It’s your show now.”
Everything
we’re doing is a long shot,” Parvi said. “Besides, someone has to open a hole in the line so you can get through.” She looked at Kugara and said, “It’s your show now.”
She glanced back around the corner, and made a dash for the wreckage across the street. As far as anyone saw, she was just an unarmed civilian, so no one targeted her. Behind her, she heard Flynn’s voice say, “Jesus Tap-dancing Christ—” before the sound was washed away by something large and explosive taking out a trio of men in powered armor about fifteen meters away from her.
Even though she had no idea how she was going to open a hole, her heart had calmed, and her breathing had become steadier. She leaped over a crumbling wall and dropped into the ruins of the dead office complex. Twisted metal and broken ferrocrete towered over her, scorched black. She stood on a sliding pile of broken glass, gravel, and rubble that still steamed. The air choked her with black smoke and the smell of burned synthetics. Through watering eyes, she saw the armored side of the downed troop transport, more intact than it should be.
She scrambled toward it and found the side door open. The inside was hazed by white smoke from an invisible electrical fire and lit only by what little sunlight leaked in the open door. It took a moment for her watering eyes to adjust to the dim light and make out the details of the wreckage inside.
Two corpses sprawled across the interior of the wrecked transport. By the door were the remains of someone who’d had his upper body completely sheared away, probably by being half out the door when the transport hit. The other wore a helmet and comm gear that suggested he was the pilot. He was still strapped in a crash harness, and the impact had blown him to the back of the compartment, still attached to his chair.
She stepped over to the half-corpse, skidding on blood and the uneven floor, and relieved it of the sidearm holstered on its hip. The grip was sticky, but she was armed now.
She peered into the depths of the wreck. Underneath the corpse of the pilot, she saw a long box with yellow-and-black warning stripes stenciled down its length.
She had to push the pilot’s chair off of it.
The wreck shook as something nearby exploded. She quickly checked the latches and opened the case. It was better than she had hoped, an AM grenade launcher with half a complement of grenades. It wasn’t terribly common; few people wanted to take ammo into a war zone that would spontaneously detonate if the super-conducting casing lost a charge. It would be safer lugging around a tactical nuke.
But, apparently, the Wilson militia was pulling out all the stops, and she was just lucky that this thing hadn’t detonated during the crash.
She shut the case, found the handle, and dragged it outside.
She could hear the firefight in earnest, closing on her position—and on Kugara and the others. She scrambled, one-handed, up the tallest pile of twisted metal next to the downed transport. She glanced across when she cleared street level, and saw the bloody edge of the retreating militia, a line of powered armor, facing up the street.
Across, in the alley, she saw Kugara at the corner of the building, holding the shotgun braced against the oncoming PSDC force.
That force included a pair of hovertanks flanked by heavily armored infantry. As she watched, one of the tanks belched a blinding pulse of plasma from its cannon, clearing the street of a dozen armored defenders.
Shit!
Parvi shoved the case onto a flat slab of ferrocrete about three stories above the battle, part of one building that hadn’t completely pancaked together. She crawled after it. The space between the floors here was barely enough to open the case, and each time the tanks fired, she heard ominous creaking around her.
She barely had time to plan where she was going to aim as she pulled out the launcher and loaded a surprisingly heavy antimatter round. She didn’t bother zeroing the sights; the tanks were so close that accuracy didn’t much matter. She just raised it, thanked the gods that there was still enough distance that she could aim down and still have the shot clear the rubble below her, and fired.
Nickolai stood behind Kugara, his body an imperfect shield for the three other members of their party. Kugara glanced around the corner and said, “Tanks, they got fucking tanks!” She ducked back around and flattened against the wall as a shot of plasma took out a third of Wilson’s defending line. “I don’t know how she’s going to make us a hole in that. We’re going to have to back up and find another route.”
Nickolai nodded, then froze when he saw something in the wreckage across from them; Parvi climbing up the wreckage, carrying a long case. He concentrated until the print stenciled on the case shot into focus.
“She’s got an AM grenade launcher.”
“She’s got a
what?
” Kugara snapped.
what?
” Kugara snapped.
Plasma washed the remaining defenders away as, above them all, Parvi readied the weapon. Nickolai yelled, “Everyone! Hit the ground now!”
No one argued, and Kugara dove behind him as he dropped. Quick as he was, he was still looking up when the grenade hit. If he had still worn the eyes he was born with, the flash would have blinded him. With the Protean eyes, though, he could see into the intense glare as half a twisted hovertank was blown down the street, gouging pavement as it tumbled like a child’s toy tossed in a fit of rage. The noise was less a sound than an awful pressure on his skull and chest, a rumble felt though the ground that, for a moment, seemed to flow like water.
Then it was over, except for a muffled ringing in his ears and a burning feeling in the leather of his nose.
Behind him, through the ringing in his ears, he heard someone screaming, “My God! My God! What was that?
What was that?
” He thought it might have been Dr. Dörner.
What was that?
” He thought it might have been Dr. Dörner.
Bits of gravel and debris still fell from the sky as he pushed himself up. He walked to the edge of the building and looked around the corner.
The street where the PSDC attackers had been was unrecognizable. A crater extended forty or fifty meters across, and the facades of the buildings on either side had sheared off and collapsed into the hole. Of the PSDC attacking force, the only sign was the turret of the other tank, twisted and wedged upside down on the second floor of one of the faceless buildings. Of the infantry, he saw a gauntlet and a single boot, both over twenty meters from the crater.
“We have our hole!” he called back.
Kugara called back to him, “Where’s Parvi?”
He glanced across the street to look where Parvi had been stationed, but the wreckage had collapsed in on itself. There was no sign of where she had fired the AM grenade.
“She’s gone,” he said.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Sins
“The more control one has, the more control one desires.”
—
The Cynic’s Book of Wisdom
The Cynic’s Book of Wisdom
“Power is not happiness.”
—WILLIAM GODWIN
(1756-1836)
Date: 2526.8.5 (Standard) Earth Orbit-Sol(1756-1836)
The Prophet’s Voice
orbited over a transformed Earth, an Earth populated by Adam’s chosen. One of the few thousand incarnations of Adam stood on the bridge of the
Voice
, receiving the good news of His works. The impressions He received were not as direct as His knowledge of things on the
Voice
; this version of Himself had no direct connection to the surface. But His other selves, and the select ones among His chosen, broadcast their knowledge and their sensations to Him.
orbited over a transformed Earth, an Earth populated by Adam’s chosen. One of the few thousand incarnations of Adam stood on the bridge of the
Voice
, receiving the good news of His works. The impressions He received were not as direct as His knowledge of things on the
Voice
; this version of Himself had no direct connection to the surface. But His other selves, and the select ones among His chosen, broadcast their knowledge and their sensations to Him.
Even here He could see the cities rebuilt into more organic, rounded forms. Adam found the destruction and homogenization of chaotic human architecture almost as comforting as the transformation of humanity itself. Even though there was a long journey ahead of Him, now that man’s cradle had accepted His salvation from the flesh, He knew that the final victory was His.
His creators would not have died in vain. They were the architects of life’s final victory over entropy, over the Abyss. Adam’s chosen would endure for eternity, transcending the Race, transcending Humanity, transcending even the ancient Dolbrians.
In the midst of the remade cities below, His chosen had built massive arrays of tach-receivers and transmitters, massive ears and eyes that saw deeply into the space around Him. Through them, He received news from other worlds that had accepted His word; Khamsin, Occisis, Cynos, Dakota, Haven, Acheron, Ecdemi, Paschal...
He also could hear from the planets that had yet to receive His glory. He could hear the unfortunate chaos and panic that gripped the ignorant in the face of any great change.
But there was something else. Something troubling.
He had not thought of Bakunin since He had defeated His Nemesis, Mosasa. The planet was irrelevant. Even the dim eyes of His resurrected AIs could have seen that the planet would collapse into chaos as soon as Mosasa’s influence was removed. Bakunin couldn’t maintain stability for more than a month without intervention. The planet’s energy would be consumed by civil war and could be safely ignored in favor of planets with fleets and coherent states that might oppose Him.
Even the mass of refugees taching into Bakunin’s system should only contribute to the chaos and confusion. By now, those ships should be cannibalizing themselves over too-limited resources . . .
But now Adam focused His awareness upon what He saw and heard from Bakunin. The refugee fleet, denied the surface of the planet, was not consuming itself as it should. The fragments of data His tach-receivers pulled from the ether told Him that they were, in fact, stratifying, forming organizational structures.
He now realized that the transmission from Khamsin had contaminated the social equation. A small variable that only slightly moved the stable planets of human space caused a major realignment in the shifting sands of Bakunin. It was an oversight He would have to deal with.
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