War of Alien Aggression 5 Cozen's War (16 page)

"AMTS 3rd Class
Tig Meester," Ram said. "Get down to the ordnance bay. I’ve got a job I need done and only a redsuit can do it."
 

Chapter Twenty
 

Over the next hour, the surface of the Squidies' moon glowed behind
Boomslang
while she held station ten kilometers off the surface of the mysterious vessel in their path. The seemingly endless expanse of that uncanny thing in front of them remained near vertical in the canopy as if they were plummeting down to the surface of an unlikely little world and about to smash right into it.

"That ship has broken at least two laws of known physics since it arrived," Ram said. "And if your console is correct, it has no measurable mass."

"I don't like it," Max said. "We offed an entire species just before that thing showed up. That can't be a coincidence. It's here to punish us. I just know it."

"If that thing wanted us dead, then we'd already be dead," said Medoc. "Mr. Cozen will know what to do when he gets here."

Harry Cozen arrived in a
Hardway
longboat flown by Asa Biko. Ram saw him in the cockpit with Dana as he pulled the longboat alongside
Boomslang
close enough for Ram to read the worry in his eyes.
 

"
The longboat is transmitting something," Medoc said. He jabbed at the console and they heard it, like a thousand rising and falling whistling and buzzing sounds like flies in their ears. "That’s Squidy. He’s transmitting in Squidy."
 

"
No," Ram said. "It’s different. Listen." It
was
different. What happened next wasn’t proof of that, but Medoc took it that way.
 

"
Guess you’re right." A three-hundred-meter, circular section of the dusty surface in front of them shifted and appeared to blur briefly from the dust thrown off it. "They're opening up."
 

The entire panel withdrew. That outer hull was thin enough that as soon as the massive hatch had withdrawn only a few meters, it began to slide to the side. At first, all they could see of the inside was an inky crescent. It waxed like a fast-growing, moon-shaped void as the massive hatch withdrew until finally, a three-hundred-meter, circular void hovered in front of them like a pupil. "According to the arrays, there's literally nothing in there.
Boomslang
can't sense anything at all beyond that threshold."
 

"
Cozen’s going in," Ram said. The longboat was making for the inky blackness. "Follow him." He half expected to have to draw his sidearm again, but Medoc and Max didn’t hesitate. They took the
Boomslang
in close on Cozen’s heels.
 

"
He’ll cross the threshold in…5...4...3..." The longboat dove into the impenetrable blackness like a crane diving into a lake. The darkness swallowed the longboat without so much as a ripple, and once
Boomslang’s
cockpit dipped into that void, the darkness became a tangible thing that ate all light around him inside the ship's cockpit and he couldn’t see anything at all. He couldn't tell if his own eyes were open or closed and his heart forgot to beat until, half-a-second later,
Boomslang’s
pointed nose emerged into bright and blinding light, as if they were flying at a small sun.
 

The 119-kilometer sphere was mostly hollow, lined with the velvet blackness they'd seen as they entered. At its center was what appeared to be a ball of gas in a sustained fusion reaction like a star, but only a few kilometers across, not nearly large enough to initiate fusion under the pressure of its own, natural gravity.

Multiple, free-orbiting and concentric rings had been constructed around the pygmy star five-kilometers-thick. They rotated around it in their own planes, but as the two, comparatively tiny, ships entered, the great rings began to shift and rotate around the center to form a single ecliptic plane.

The nine outermost rings lifted themselves higher than the others as Cozen flew over the first of them. "Where is he going?"

"
There." Medoc pointed to the third ring, now rising higher than the other nine to float alone.
 

"What is that?" Asa Biko looked to be circling a spot near a structure on the center-facing side of the third ring. It was shaped like a step pyramid some 450 meters at its base and it appeared to be growing out of the dull, gold surface of the ring itself.

The longboat began to set down. "Land next to them," Ram said. "And you two, put your helmets on. We’re going outside. You'll stay with the ship, but after we're gone, I want you to move your unconscious crewmen to the longboat. Just in case."

Medoc nodded at that. "Very good, Mr. Devlin."

He landed between the longboat and the step pyramid so Harry Cozen had to walk past them. Once the airlock lowered itself from the bottom of the hull and rotated open, Cozen was only a few meters away with Asa Biko and Dana Sellis walking after him in the blinding light.

"
Mister Devlin," Harry Cozen said on local comms. "Welcome to the negotiations. You’ve earned your place in this historic moment. All of you have. Thanks to you, it’s not a matter of debate how dangerous we are as a species. No; not anymore. We’ve quite proved it. My congratulations to you all. Medoc, Max." He nodded at the pilots. "
All
of you did a brilliant job. You too, Tig Meester. I see you there, coming out the aft airlock." They were all speechless. And Cozen appeared jubilant.
 

Ram said, "What is this ship we’re inside, Mr. Cozen. Where
are
we and what is that thing?" He pointed to the step pyramid still, somehow, rising from the ring over 50 meters off. The steps were low enough for human legs to climb.

"That?" Cozen began walking towards it again over the rough gold surface of the ring. "That is…"
 

"You don’t know."
 

"W
e’ll know when we get to the top."
 

Ram said, "The top? Why?
How do you know that?"
 

"Well, b
loody
look
at it you fool! Is astronautical engineering the only thing they teach at Staas Academy now? It’s a Ziggurat, Mr. Devlin. It’s the architectural expression of
hierarchy
. Clearly whatever we want is at the
top
."
 

"
Why?"
 

"Because…" Cozen wrought all the sarcasm he could from the gravel of his voice. "
The top is closest to god.
" He winked and then pointed at the light at the center of the uncanny ship, floating directly above them, like a noontime sun. "At the top of that Ziggurat is the future of our species," Cozen said, "a future we've worked hard to secure."
 

She took the sidearm from Ram’s holster before he could stop her. Dana stepped back with the Honma & Voss
Itar
and leveled it at Harry Cozen. "You know what this gun can do," she said. She glanced at Medoc and Max. "I could cut
all
of you down in a single stroke so don’t try to stop me." Her gloved left hand turned the ring on the left side of the weapon. She changed the user regulated discharge rate to maximum.

"
Careful, Dana, I think you ju-"
 

"
I know what I’m doing, Ram."
 

"
What exactly
are
you doing, Ms. Sellis?" The H&V
Itar
had been made as a terror weapon, but it hadn’t had any effect on Cozen yet.
 

She said, "
I’m getting answers, Mr. Cozen. We’re not going up there until I get them."
 

Cozen sighed then "What is it you want me to tell you, Lt. Commander. You already have your answers. You’ve always had them. From the very first day of the war you’ve had them. You know how
Mohegan
died and you knew who really attacked who first because you were there. You were there and you saw all the evidence for yourself. You're no fool. You already made your choice about what we did. You made it back on Moriah. Don't question it now."

He’d all but told her it was true, but she needed to hear it. "
Mohegan
…" she almost couldn’t get the name out. "You were the one to sabotage
Mohegan
and murder the first ten casualties of the war, not the enemy. The crew of that junk died because of something you did, not the Squidies. And on Moriah… you faked the attack on us the same way. You set us up to board that ship and murder the Squidies inside."
 

"
Gaining us invaluable technologies," Cozen added, "including interstellar travel. It was a bold gambit, I think, and it’s worked out quite well. Thank you for your support, Ms. Sellis."
 

"
I wouldn’t if I’d kn-"
 

"
You knew the truth and you’ve known it all along." She shook her head no. "Yes," he said. "You have. You know it’s true because I’m not clever enough to fool you entirely even if I wanted to. It was important that I brought a crew like yours that first day of the war, that first battle on Moriah. Others might have questioned me for all the loose ends in the narrative, but not your crew. Not you, Ms. Sellis. Not
Hardway
. You all knew and you’ve all been with me from the start. Your loyalty and your trust have been integral to the success of this war."
 

"
No." She shook her head inside her helmet. "No." And then, she raised the gaping muzzle of the H&V
Itar
just the fraction of a centimeter that told Ram she’d put the red dot between the two green dots and rested the little, glowing constellation across the middle of Harry Cozen’s face. She was now preparing to bore a hole through the middle of him and out the back.
 

"You’re not going to shoot me," Cozen said. "I wish you would, though. You think I
enjoy
being who I am? I’d welcome non-existence with profound relief. But I’ve got a job to do. For you. And Mr. Devlin, and all the people that think I’m a monster. They’re right. I am. But you won’t shoot me for the same reason I don’t put a bullet in my own head. I'm
your
monster and Humanity needs me. It needs me to do what good people like you and Devlin can’t conceive of. Mr. Devlin understands this. He knew. And he helped me." Cozen saw the shock on her face. "Ah... I see he never told you. I'm surprised."
 

She looked Ram's way then and he almost couldn't look back at her.

"
That’s right, Mr. Devlin knew as well. He had no proof, but he knew, just like you did. And
he
didn’t kill me.
He
helped me because he knows Humanity needs me. Asa Biko knew as well. He wanted to kill me
after
the war because he thought we wouldn’t need a monster like me after that, but he's wrong. You'll need me and you always will."
 

"
No," she said, "we don’t. There’s plenty of monsters to take your place now." Her nostrils flared.
 

"This bluff is pointless. Y
ou’re a good woman. You don’t murder people. You’re not like me."
 

It looked as if she was raising the muzzle of the gun to spare him, and he opened his mouth to say something more, but as soon as he did, she held the trigger down on the Honma & Voss and sliced the 5cm, x-ray beam across him like a fiery sword. It hit him in the crook, between his shoulder and his neck. She slashed down across his chest, and through clouds of steam and vaporizing suit and meat, Ram saw the beam exit his body at his right hip, leaving Harry Cozen in two, smoking pieces that fell to the golden surface of the ring together. He thrashed briefly against the golden metal surface of the ring in a steaming puddle.

Inside his helmet, Harry Cozen's face looked surprised. It was the only time Ram could ever recall seeing him wear that expression. When he was still, Dana Sellis held the gun out without a word and blinked as Ram took it from her.

*****

Ram, Biko, and Dana climbed step by step to the top of the Ziggurat, closer to the light above them, where Cozen had said Humanity’s future lay. At the top, the three of them stood on a square less than ten-meters wide, featureless, made of the same, rough golden metal as the rest of the structure and the 40-kilometer-wide ring from which it had risen.

"There’s nothing here but our shadows," Biko said.

Ram looked down at his shadow, and then up into the light above them, up at the ball of nuclear fusion at the center of the ship. "It's alive. This isn't a ship," Ram said. "This isn't a ship. It's more like a...suit. It's a giant exosuit."