Stigmata Invicta, page 5
“There’s woodland and fields to the south,” Brother Cleopas says.
“Lead the way.”
Brother Nonnatus sends the drones zooming ahead. Gathering a fly-over 360-degree view of the terrain, charting out a path of least resistance as they rush towards the pickup. “In your Visuals.” Each Knight’s heads-up overlays with the newly calculated path. They shifted towards it, one after the next clearing the last building top as they divert.
Brother Santa Cruz brings up the rear, hearing the grotesque howls behind them. “Those things, they’re those mutated eggs, right? The berserker-things?”
“Roger,” Brother Pio said.
“Yeah, well, they seem like they’re following us dead-to-rights even though we’re cloaked.”
Sister Stella Nessa says, “Thraw nose is exceptional. They track.” She holds up her hands, uncurls her legs enough to see her feet. The wounds of Christ. Their wonderful scent. “Leave me. It may very well be my wounds they smell. I am not worth your lives.”
“Nonsense, Sister. We’ll be okay,” Gonzaga says. He races up the edge of the last building mid-stride and says, “The nun says the Skreeve can follow our scent.”
“Gaining?” Brigid asks, even as his Visuals show a bird’s-eye view of their contacts.
“Constant bearing, decreasing range.” Cleopas says.
A shell hits the street below them, flaring up a plume of fire. In its flickering brilliance, Santa Cruz sees the watery, ephemeral shadow his active camo casts along an exterior wall before him, translucent like a crystalline reflection off a pond’s surface. At the same time, he sees the very solid shadow of a Skreeve right behind his, flash frozen in that flicker as it heaves up to strike him.
He leaps, his KERS launching him. Spins about. Rail gun spiraling around and him, startled to see there are barely three meters between him and the lead Skreeve.
The rail gun blasts, lighting up the rooftop in electric blue. The lead Skreeve evaporates at point blank range, the nearest one behind it devastated as well. It flings off to the side, half-destroyed under the force of impact.
Gonzaga cheers at the sight of it. He hears the nun’s voice, quiet as the wind through grass but deafening as a sun collapsing, “Why do you celebrate? Life is lost.”
The Knight feels deeply chastised at such a simple question. Another explosion brings him to the present. He keeps running.
“Two down,” Santa Cruz says. He fires again, and the two remaining Skreeve dodge. They spread out, clinging low to the surfaces and skittering. The sizzling blue fire line of the rail gun lights a path through the evening air, draftsman-line straight. Santa Cruz reaches the last rooftop and plummets to the field below. Hits the ground hard enough to break a rock he lands on. He rolls, digging his shoulder in hard. Jumps up, keeps running.
“Still got two more on our tails, but they’re not as bold about it now.”
“Good work,” Brigid says. “Two hundred meters and we’re piling in.”
“Such loss,” The nun says. “Such terrible loss.”
Gonzaga turns. Sees the burning town. Even in the firelit shadows he can see Thraw silhouettes running about in the destruction. Rescuing those in the rubble, fighting fires. The cost of it all. Another flash of his terrible childhood. His only half-joking request to kill everyone. “You know anybody around here?”
“Some, yes.”
“Reminds me of home, actually,” Gonzaga said. “Reminds me—” a renewed whistling sings into the air. Then a second, and a third. Then four more.
“Incoming!”
Explosions hit like crashing meteorites on both sides. Trees on fire, blasting over. Dirt and debris catapulted up in titanic bursts. The Knights brace as they charge along, tide after tide of raining detritus crashing around them.
“Worst aim ever,” Cleopas said. “And thank God for that.”
“Thank God and our active camo,” Pio says.
The whizzing sound of engines come sprawling in behind them as new patrol vehicles tumble out of the streets and into the fields. Zinging up on two wheels as they correct their course, the gunners on the backs of the vehicles cocking their guns. Muzzle flashes like fireworks as rounds scream through the night.
“Gonzaga! Get in front!” Brigid says. Gonzaga sends a forceful pulse through his KERS to propel him to the head of the group, putting all the Knights and their armor between Sister Stella Nessa and the gunfire.
“Santa Cruz! Mortars!”
Still in the rear, the heavy weapons specialist dials in a lock on the front three vehicles. Along his upper back, a mount containing the artillery pops several shells into the air. Eight meters over their heads, the shells ignite their primary charges, cut spiraling paths towards the rumbling vehicles.
As the Knights came to a wooded portion of their trek, the vehicles behind them light up with jets of fiery explosions. Tires fly off, one pitches forward and its nose shovels a rut into the soil. It flips, hurling occupants headlong and unprotected at furious speeds. Another vehicle abruptly banks and the tires dig into the ground, flipping it on the long side. Striking the ground so hard everything breaks.
But through their wreckage, four more vehicles appear out of nowhere. Gunners loosing volley after volley of chasing gunfire. A new pack of Skreeve comes galloping as well.
“I got more,” Santa Cruz says.
“More what?”
“Bad guys. But, I got more mortars as well. We’re good.”
“Doubt it,” Nonnatus says. The drones show him far-ranging views. Larger vehicles including aerial ones as well as troop transports are busting through town in their direction. “We got a lot of company in route. A lot. We need to lift off.”
“Thirty meters.”
Santa Cruz sets off a second motor volley. A new line of fresh explosions behind them. As the Knights cross through a thicket of trees, there the dropship waits, hovering a meter off the ground.
“None too soon,” Brigid says. The Knights pile in on both sides, Santa Cruz taking position to start firing. The dropship’s vertical take-off and landing wings rotate. Already warm for emergency maneuvers, the dropship revs with a high-pitched whine and blasts upwards. The whole thing thrusts into the sky. Sizzling blue lines appear as Santa Cruz lays down suppressing fire from above. Small rounds plink and ricochet off the dropship’s armor. Vehicle gunners bring their weapons to bear, but they fair no better.
“Airborne contact,” Pio says. Points out the open starboard side door to heavily armed helicopter closing in.
“That looks much newer and better than those jalopy vehicles they’re driving down below,” Gonzaga says.
“Intel said they were trying to buy better stuff,” Brigid says. “I guess they did.” He turns to the controls. “This thing is armed, correct?”
Nonnatus grunts and leans over him. Pulls up an automated defense screen. “Telson rockets, sir.” He activates the system, watches it target the incoming gunship.
The gunship opens fire, spraying white hot rounds in their direction. The dropship banks, fires off two rockets. The gunship releases a volley of fire at them. One rocket explodes. The second twirls out of the way and down. Swoops up at a hard angle and catches the gunship under its chin. The gunship explodes, the tail-end tilting violently down and then falling, trailing flames.
“We gotta get out of here before a few more of those show up,” Cleopas says. “Though, judging by how cold it’s getting in here, the air is getting too thin to support the rotors.”
“Shut the doors before we freeze out the nun.” Brigid says. They do.
Gonzaga turns his back to the Knights and Santa Cruz catches Sister Stella Nessa’s eye. “If you ask the Commander, he’ll tell you about he got in serious trouble in the academy when he saddled one of those rockets, magboot-ed to it and rode it.”
The Knights laugh and half of it is the immediate release of the tension from the fight. Brigid leans over to her. “I did not.” He turns to Santa Cruz, says, “You’ve got to stop telling people that.”
The dropship continues to ascend into the heavens above the stifled planet. On the ground below, the forces of the Arithraw regime roar in frustration, beam communications off world.
Threat Realized
Breaching the outer atmosphere, Brother Cleopas squints as he looks at the awe-inspiring outline of the planet Arithraw. As they change angle while rising, it is as if daybreak is befalling them. The sun’s light strikes along the planet’s outer delineation, peeling back the darkness from both ends of the horizon in tandem with that brilliant source of light in the middle, revealing the vast majesty of God’s creation in such dramatic fashion it can only be attributed to a deity.
“Oh, how glorious,” Sister Stella Nessa says. Their universal translators do a good job of capturing her love. Her joy bubbles over. “Such splendor only our Creator can give us. No being on these planets could ever make something so vast, so flawlessly in harmony, so tuned to perfection. Imagine, this ongoing ocean of stars and planets and life, all the product of His love. All of it within His glorious hands. How can we not love Him in return?”
She weeps at the beauty of the star-bound space before them. Her primary hands clasped together at her chin. The Rosary woven between her fingers. Her secondary hands clasped as well, just below the others. So captured by the breathtaking visage her old eyes must be struggling to see.
Brother Gonzaga can feel her vibrate in the ring basket. Trembling in awe. Her own world, spreading out underneath them like a majestic tapestry. Her sun, which she has seen for nearing two hundred of her years only under the firmament of Arithraw, now naked and beaming before her.
“In my young days when I reached maturity, I laid many eggs. Me, and the females of my lowly caste, we were kept in stables on government grounds. They took the eggs as I laid them. I assume they were fertilized by the soldiers, though I do not know. Many probably became Skreeve. I am from the northern regions, and they like our physiological build from there to make the Skreeve. But I don’t know.”
She looks pitiful, but lovely, as though she has decided to remember her misfortunes as opportunities to offer up in sacrifice. To love in any way she can. “I imagine any males that came from me are long since passed. Maybe some are with our Lord now. I pray so much for that to be true. And to think, those that chose His love, they get to see this with their perfected eyes. Indeed, the entire universe from the atoms to the biggest galaxies. Oh, how beautiful it is right now to us in our fallen nature, and we see so dimly.”
Sister Stella Nessa smiles again and closes her eyes. Settles her forehead on her wounded hands and prays.
“Why do you pray for them after they treat you like that? Two hundred years of that kind of abuse and you still feel something for them?” Gonzaga asks quietly. His fellow Knights can see he’s not asking to feed his rage, but rather his heart needs the answer. “I would think after a single incident, I’d... I don’t know. Never forgive them.”
“You wear His mark,” the nun says. Gonzaga looks down to the crucifix molded into his armor. “Forget that He is God and He commands forgiveness. We all want to be forgiven, yes?”
“Yes, sure. We need it.”
“Did you offer your blood and your very life for those that have hurt you?”
“No.”
She smiles. “But we try to be like Him. If we do not, we should never forgive, nor expect to be forgiven. And if we need to be forgiven...”
Brother Santa Cruz turns from the nun and his brother. Eyeballs the expanse of space. Sees a cluster of foreign objects. “No way,” he mutters. “Those can’t all be missiles.”
“What do you mean?” Commander Brigid asks. He puts one eye on Sister Stella Nessa. Concern draws a scowl over his face. “What do you see?”
“There’s a fleet coming from the far side of the planet. All firing at once.”
“Show me,” Brigid says to Santa Cruz and he steps over to the window. In the starlit expanse of black space, a thousand unnaturally colored dots stand between them and the obvious silhouettes of a star fleet. Growing from twinkling pinpoints and stretching out in the lanky streams of propulsion exhaust as the projectiles draw nearer, Brigid groans. “They are all missiles.”
Far off, clusters of munitions with glowing aft ends rocket towards them. The thin, needle-like missiles spin around each other as if they are alive and swarming; patterns developed on the fly by their coordinated onboard offensive systems to aid against being tracked and shot down.
At the dropship’s console, the three-dimensional RADAR system flashes red. Brother Pio motions along the touch screen and expands an information box. He double taps it, eyes flicking up and down the text. “Confirmed. Scans indicate the ships are Darvian in origin. Next system over. That intel Brother Nonnatus talked about was right. The Thraw must have used their resources to buy a better fleet than they could engineer for themselves.”
“Resources,” Brigid says with disgust. “They sold enough of their people as slaves and test subjects to buy a better fleet,” Brigid says.
“And they’re coming right for us,” Santa Cruz says, looking between the incoming fire on one side and the approaching St. Joshua on the other. “I see one mothership. Maybe three fast attacks. I also see a bomber or two.”
“We could try and maneuver out of way of the fire,” Nonnatus shrugs. “We’ve got time to dodge it all.”
“Yeah, but not the attack ships. That’ll be worse. We’ll be overwhelmed. We’ve got to dock, throw up shields and counter-defenses and punch it towards the wormhole gate.”
Brigid looks to the approaching St. Joshua and back to the incoming fire. All the Knights know they can’t dock to the St. Joshua or any Eidolon-class stealth cruiser with its shields raised. Taps his comm link with the ship. “St. Joshua, you guys see the incoming?”
Their shared receivers chirp. “Affirmative. AI defenses are set to respond. TPAs are warming up. Give ‘em two more seconds. We’re maneuvering now to receive you port side. T minus ten seconds. Stay on board until the outer hatch seals. It’ll be close. Really close.”
“Close?” Cleopas asks with a raised eyebrow. “Lord willing, I can handle close.”
“I hope the Lord only wills close,” Gonzaga says. “I don’t want anything more.”
The St. Joshua’s Terminal Point Autocannons come on target and unleash a barrage of 20mm rounds. The cloud of incoming missiles begins to scatter—auto defensive maneuvers—but here and there explosions light up in tight spirals of flame before vaporizing in the coolness of space.
Brigid turns and regards the approaching fire. “We’re going dock and at least one of those missiles is going to hit. I hope they get the hatch sealed in time.”
“If they don’t?”
“I don’t want to imagine.”
In a single continuous motion, the St. Joshua swells alongside the Knights, portside bay hatch open. Swallows the dropship without having to reposition. At the same time the St. Joshua fires a hail of proximity mines towards the coming forces. The TPAs continue their million-kilometer-per-hour gatling gun chatter. In turn, now in range, the fast attack ships open fire as they begin twirling in wild evasive maneuvers.
The first of the two receiving bollards clicks into place on the dropship’s anchoring points and the hull of ship comes alive with Thraw blaster fire.
“Hang on!” Brigid shouts as all at once everything shudders violently. Pounding sounds of blaster fire pummel from every direction, like hammers on thin steel. The first missile strikes. Then the second. Explosions outside the St. Joshua indicate that at least some of the other missiles were shredded by the hull-mounted turrets. The second bollard moves to connect as a third missile hits. The bollard misses, crashing into the dropship exterior.
The dropship leans heavily out of position and stresses the first bollard too hard. It snaps. Despite the lack of gravity inside the bay—fully exposed to space—the ship twists and rolls. Clatters with a wallop onto the deck of the bay, canted off to its starboard side as blaster fire rains down through the open bay hatch. Riddling the interior bulkheads.
The exterior hatch lowers, gets two meters from sealing when the first Thraw ship rams its nose into the space. Wedging between the hatch lip and decking, it squeals to a near-instant halt. The impact is tremendous. Shudders through the St. Joshua, and even though the thraw ship wasn’t traveling at full speed, it is enough.
The second and then a third fast attack do the same wedging plunge and the hatch exerts against them to no avail. Their wreckage successfully keeps the bay of the St. Joshua open, and Thraw begin to crawl out against the outgoing rush of the bay’s atmosphere.
“They’re inside!” Cleopas shouts as he swings open the dropship door, gun raised. The retained atmosphere inside the dropship condenses and whisks out into the bay, now a vacuum. Cleopas starts firing. One hand on the dropship’s frame to hold himself steady in the gravityless chamber, the other working his gun. Invading Thraw start dropping from the fight. Return fire is sporadic but with every passing second, another enemy gun is added to the fight.
“How are they surviving the void?” Pio shouts.
“Who cares? They’re in here! Help push them out into space!” Gonzaga shoves down low to the deck, returning fire. Behind him, Sister Stella Nessa says something like, “Thraw biology is capable of—” but the firefight drowns her out. She collapses back into a small ball, serene with her glorious wounds and the Rosary.
Brigid readies his own gun, and he kicks off the opposing wall, floats to the door. “Mind the vacuum! Fall out in formation and get to the main passageway. We’ll choke them there!”
The docking bay in full alarm mode. Lights cut. Red emergency beacons snap to life, shading everything with the LED quality of blood and spilling shadows everywhere their poor light cannot reach. Emergency klaxons ring a thousand strikes a moment, drowning out the exterior sounds. The snap of gunfire is consumed by the alarms, reduced to pockmarks of muzzle flash. The bay’s HVAC system cuts off now that the exterior hatch is jammed open. No sense in wasting the ship’s recycled atmosphere with a leak into space.
