Spinward Fringe Broadcast 7: Framework (71 page)

It was all the data she needed, her
connection was so revoltingly strong with him that she could feel
where his mind was on her tactical systems with no margin for
error. She moved out from behind cover, kneeling firmly. Alice held
her rifle steady. She took an extra second to make sure her aim was
true.

“You can’t destroy me, Alice,” Gabriel
Meunez said.

“I can try,” Alice replied, pulling her
trigger. Energy rounds burst from Alice’s rifle in a steady stream,
ripping his shoulders and head to flaming pieces. She switched
firing modes to her grenade launcher and let loose with a
rapid-fire arc of incineration grenades hot enough to melt his
framework systems.

Her first grenades were going off as a
soldier’s rounds caught her in the shoulder. The rest of his squad
opened fire, and they were joined by others. Her vacsuit was
finished in seconds, torn apart by hundreds of rounds. When the
first round that struck her in the face burned through to her
cheek, she thought it was the end. And then it was.

“We’re down to three mines, packing our last
six right now,” Frost reported from his tactical station.

Jake looked at the hull status of the
Warlord and nodded, satisfied. The emergencies were handled well
enough. Not as quickly as he would have liked, but their three
decompressions only resulted in four fatalities. More than there
would have been if the ship was completed on the inside, but fewer
than he could have expected. As for the hull, there were dozens of
spots where the ergranian metal had warped and recovered. They only
had two breaches that had to be sealed.

“I just lost a thruster,” Ronin reported.
“Joyboy and I just finished scrapping with a squad, I don’t think
we’ve got another one in us, even with your support, Warlord.”

The three functioning turret guns on the top
of the Warlord and the pair of torpedo launchers they had left were
running full-time. They were down to their last five torpedoes and
Jake signalled the launch room to reload and hold at the ready. The
pair of turrets on the bottom of the ship were abandoned after they
took a direct beam hit from the Leviathan and then seized into
place thanks to an overheated section of hull. Life support systems
were in even worse shape; the crew worked in sealed vacsuits.

“Sunspire, we need to either head down or
get in closer to a big carrier for cover,” Captain Valent asked
through his comm. “We’ve been lucky so far, but that won’t
last.”

“The fighter screen over our sector is
finally thinning out, if you’re going to make a break for it, now’s
the time,” replied Specialist Lehrin. “Good hunting, Warlord.”

“You heard him, Ash, take us down. It’s time
to go somewhere we’re not outclassed,” Captain Valance said. They
turned away from the Sunspire as another beam of light was
refracted away from its hull, and the outer hull was pockmarked by
a stream of heated particles. The Warlord spun and thrust towards
the blue, brown, and green surface of Tamber. A corvette and three
fighters threatened to block them off, firing energy rounds and a
torrent of small energized slug rounds. It was one of the United
Confederation Worlds ships, a new enemy he’d learned to hate in the
last half hour.

“Head straight for ‘em and drop everything
we’ve got on that ship,” Captain Valent said, programming and
launching their missile mines personally. He hoped they would be
the last they’d spend outside of the atmosphere.

Ronin and Joboy’s fighters strafed left and
right above and below the Warlord, unloading their missiles on the
enemy corvette’s fighter screen. Between the pair, it looked like
they were launching dozens of flares at the ships, but Jake knew
they were deadly seeker micro-missiles. One well placed hit could
disable a fighter, three would destroy it, and the number Ronin and
his wingman launched would decimate their enemies if they
struck.

The enemy fighters broke away, heading
towards the atmosphere in hopes of burning the missiles up as they
attempted re-entry. That left the corvette, which was still moving
to block them, or at least damage the Warlord severely on its way
into the atmosphere. The mines burst, spilling their missiles forth
as the Warlord fired her torpedo tubes. “Old weapons,” Captain
Valent said as he watched the hail of fire rain down on the
corvette, “but real firepower.”

The corvette burst in a dozen places as her
hull broke up and the Warlord passed by, leaving the remains to
burn up in the atmosphere behind. Jake checked the status of Minh
and Joyboy and was surprised to see their shields regenerating,
their weapons cooling, and the pilots in fine condition. The only
problem the pair had was their ammunition levels. They were almost
down to only their energy weapons.

Captain Valent gripped the edge of his
armrests, wishing they could enter the atmosphere faster. He
scanned the area ahead and below.

Port Rush City proper had been decimated and
was overrun by framework soldiers. He narrowed his scan and linked
up to the Sunspire’s readings only to discover tens of thousands of
the regenerating soldiers. Many of them were on their way towards
the shanty port, where some ships showed signs that there were
still crews aboard, trying to power them up. Human survivors took
shelter wherever they could.

“Finn, is the Big Surprise ready?” he
asked.

“Yes, but in this atmosphere we’re talking
about an effective radius of seventy three kilometres.”

“We’re hitting Port Rush, it’s lost,” Jake
said, looking at the number of troop pods the Order had in the
city; there were ninety eight. “It’s the only thing that will make
all those frameworks human enough to kill.”

“Aye, it’s ready. I’m climbing down to set
the target,” Finn replied. After a moment he asked: “So, framework
systems can be fried by an EMP?”

“I’m betting that one powerful enough would
do the trick. We’ll be blasting all their gear out of commission if
I’m wrong.”

“Not bad, either way,” Finn said.

“Drop it behind the Spaceport in relation to
our camp, that ought to keep the blast away from our settlement
down there.”

“They’ll have about nine klicks buffer
zone,” Frost said, looking at his tactical screen.

“Good enough,” Jake said. “Kadri, warn-“

“Warning the Triton settlement it’s coming
on an encrypted channel,” Kadri said. “We have a tactical update
from them and a scout named Alice.”

“Alice?” Jake said, immediately putting the
thought that it could somehow be his daughter out of his mind. It
wasn’t possible; he’d watched her pass away. Jason’s message told
him she was alive somehow, but he guarded against hope.

Her location was marked on the tactical map
of the surface. Alice had been gunned down near a large, octagonal
escape ship. Her Freeground issue command and control unit reported
that her injuries were beyond lethal - they were malicious. The
structure she’d scanned was five levels deep, and had dug until it
had high banks of earth all around it. He checked the scan of the
Leviathan and saw a void in the side of the ship that matched.
There were several other voids the same shape, but the record from
her command and control unit reported that she’d seen Lister Hampon
there, and killed Gabriel Meunez with prejudice.

The Warlord rocked as an anti-air burst
struck the left side of the ship. “Take us down low, Ashley,” Jake
said.

“Look ahead for anti-air and obstructions,
and highlight them on my view,” Ashley told her navigator as she
guided the Warlord into a spinning, weaving dive towards the
fresh-water ocean near Port Rush. She manoeuvred the Warlord so
close to the water that the engines threw a violent wake of liquid
and steam behind it.

Ronin and Joyboy flew in formation just
ahead. They were joined by several Triton fighters as they crossed
over onto the shore. “My scans are showing anti-air turrets on top
of some of the drop pods behind the city wall,” Ronin reported.
“I’m getting set to drop my last seekers on a few, marking other
targets.”

“I see it, Ronin,” answered Slick. “Stay
low, keep your flight paths jagged as we approach, time to test our
inertial dampeners.”

Ashley piloted the ship only metres away
from the tops of buildings and wrecked ships. The steam and water
wake transformed into one of fire and dust. She didn’t avoid the
enemy troops on the ground either, but made sure she was close
enough to cause chaos and death as they passed. The Uriel and
Ramiel fighters rained down energy and slug fire as they passed
over enemy encampments. They passed the tall wall dividing the Port
Rush shanty port from Port Rush City proper. “Fighters, get clear
after your first run. Your ships won’t repel an EMP this powerful,”
said Captain Valent.

The fighters zigged and zagged abruptly from
left to right, testing the tolerances of their ships and pushing
beyond normal gravitational force tolerances without killing their
pilots thanks to inertial dampener systems. The ships fired dozens
of small missiles that screamed towards the drop pods and exploded.
The squadron hit nine targets and peeled off.

The Warlord’s remaining beam turret cut
across several enemy encampments and fired at a few anti-air
positions as they swept past the tops of broken skyscrapers. The
port building came into view, and Ashley dove for it.

Anti-air cannons struck the bottom of the
hull along with small-arms fire, taxing their shields heavily,
draining them to three percent before Ashley pulled up and had the
ship in the perfect position to drop their payload. “Drop it,
Finn!” Captain Valent ordered.

“It’s away!” announced Finn.

The Big Surprise, a collection of energy
storage devices wrapped around an old, massive electromagnetic
bomb, dropped from its hiding place, behind emergency access doors.
An alarm sounded, alerting Ashley to a large change in mass, and
Jake silenced it, knowing that she was aware of the shift and would
adjust.

One of the main thruster pods was struck by
heavy anti-air energy fire without the protection of shields. The
twin thruster overheated and shut down instead of exploding. Ashley
and her navigator were busy frantically compensating as she guided
the ship one handed.

The sound of the inertial dampeners
straining to compensate for Ashley forcing the Warlords remaining
three twin thruster pods to full maximum tolerances filled the
bridge with an ominous hum. In seconds they were over water, and
the tactical readouts on the bridge marked the entire city and
mountain behind it as being struck by a massive electromagnetic
pulse. Captain Valent focused in on the Triton encampment and was
relieved to see that they were untouched. Only a tiny fraction of
the shanty port beyond the wall of Port City Proper was
affected.

“Marking our next target,” Captain Valent
said, highlighting the crater made by the Leviathan’s escape ship.
He couldn’t help but watch as the green dot designating Alice’s
corpse failed to move from its resting place near the edge of the
crater. “Stephanie, get all your marines ready. We’re storming that
underground complex,” Captain Valent ordered through his comm.

“There are a lot of troops down there,”
Frost said. “We’ve got two mines ready, they could drop, burst,
then carpet bomb the area.”

Captain Valent stared at the green dot on
the map. It couldn’t be her, but there was a feeling, an irrational
hope that he couldn’t shut down.

“Taking small arms fire, a couple of small
surface-to-air hits, but nothing big,” Frost announced. “Coming up
on the target.”

Jake took a deep breath and said: “Mark
their mustering point and any exposed systems as targets, I’ll drop
with our marines while the ground’s still hot.” He was starting to
stand and leave the bridge when the green dot moved.

* * *

“Sometimes we have to leave a life behind to
save another,” Jason Everin said. Alice was standing beside him in
a port café. The transparent wall they stood beside overlooked the
freshwater ocean on Tamber. “You won’t understand how important
this is for a long time, Alice, but I need to ask that you do that
for your father, Jacob. His journey will be difficult, and you’re
the only one who can help him remain alive inside.”

“Alive inside,” Alice said. “That’s hard,
that’s heavy.”

Medium-sized haulers, gunships, and fighters
flew by, and Alice could see many landing platforms moving in and
out of the centre of the structure they were standing in. “Where is
this? When did this happen?”

“This hasn’t come to be yet,” Jason Everin
said. “I’m engaging a part of your brain as it’s being rebuilt. I’m
reaching out to you in my near future, and we’re building this
memory together with the Victory Machine.”

“So I’m regenerating, remembering this thing
that just got plopped into my head while all my bits are being
rebuilt, but you had to make a future call to bring all this
together.”

Jason Everin smiled. He was wearing the
uniform of an intelligence trainee, and he looked as he did on the
First Light, younger and quick to smile. “I’m going to tell you
something that you have to remember for the rest of your life, and
that could be a very long time.”

“Lay it on me, I’ve got a great memory when
it works,” Alice said.

“Your father will always love you more than
anyone, and no matter how dark the circumstances, a reminder the
you’re his daughter will always lighten his burden. You’re going to
get into trouble, he’s going to be infuriating sometimes, but he
will always love you. Your life resembles his in more ways than you
know, and his, yours. I’m not talking about your origin as an
artificial intelligence, or as a woman before now, or his time as
Jonas. Your current incarnations are different, and they will be
filled with adventure and terror. You will save him by loving him
in return.”