Arcfire of Antiquity, page 25
That was odd. No, it was beyond odd. No one sent her post. She had no one who would send her post. They were all dead, or she hadn’t spoken to them in years. How anyone would even find her was beyond her ability to comprehend.
She grabbed the envelope and considered briefly the idea of flirting with the ensign just to get a rise out of Drakas but found that all the spite and rampant insecurity had been drained from her body.
“You’re dismissed,” she said absently, staring at the address on the front. It was from Sonnra Dragoii. She realized she’d been holding her breath for a considerable amount of time and let out a long exhale. A thousand questions scattered like a disturbed nest of wasps, but she crushed them instantly. There was no going back to that place. That was another life. Another person for all intents and purposes.
Instead of opening the letter, she just slipped it into her back pocket and tried to breathe without looking like she was having to focus on breathing. She darted a preemptive glare in Drakas’ direction, and he went back to pretending to work out.
Just then, sirens blared, and the two bolted for the door, heading toward the mech hangar, well-honed battle instincts thankfully bypassing an awkward moment of emotional honesty.
The two barreled down the main corridor, strobes flashing, bodies merged from secondary shafts into the main flow as mech pilots and crew broke for the briefing rooms and maintenance bays.
“MOUNT NOW. NO BRIEF,” scrolled across Galas’s virtual dashboard.
“No brief?” Drakas panted out, having read the same thing through his own SortieNet interface. “That’s bad.”
“Ya think?” she yelled back. It was meant to come off jokingly but fell way short. She was such a bitch.
Another siren blared over the general alarm and everyone in the corridor dove for the walls, cubbies, pipe stands—anything to brace for impact.
Deep concussive booms rattled through the structure, one after another, and it felt to her like the entire facility was zippered end to end.
“I can’t keep track,” she exclaimed. “That sounded like armory, operations, central plant—”
The whole space dropped to black and agonizing seconds later were infilled with low red light that pulsed in and out. Everyone was up and moving again but at a tentative jog in case they needed to scramble again.
“What could it be? Aerial bombardment? Drop ships?” Drakas asked.
Galas just shook her head as she racked her brain, trying to make sense of the situation. How was this possible? For them to attack the Spires directly, they’d have to had made their way through several of the outlying outposts…
“Elites!” one of the pilots yelled. Lieutenant Barsoon, Galas thought.
“Yeah. He’s right. I saw something thru my drone-net. That makes sense,” another pilot yelled over the din.
Galas agreed. They were the only thing that could slip through undetected and strike at the heart of the Epriot defenses. The Spires for Maker’s sake!
Another boom shuddered through the building, and everyone dove for something to hold onto. A wall of smoke and dust burst through a side corridor into the main one, spilling out in multiple directions and making visibility somehow, even worse.
Galas could hear the exchange of laser and plasma fire. They’re in the hangar! She locked eyes with Drakas, and then as one they pressed off the walls and bolted into the red-gray haze, hustling with hands outstretched, feeling their way as much as anything else until they exited into the hangar and onto a scene of utter mayhem.
A sleek black mech was in the middle of the hangar, sending blistering waves of laser and plasma fire into the contingent of Dragoon and Zulu medium mechs standing lifelessly in their maintenance bays. One closest to the exterior exploded. Beside it was another that had already been obliterated. Galas and Drakas both bolted for their machines. Two more heavy explosions shook the space.
“See you on the other side,” she yelled.
“You first, you crazy bitch!” he yelled, flipping her off as he scurried to his mech just two bays further on.
Galas mounted up and was moving before her weapons systems came online. She exited the bay and started the mech running up the A-runway, deeper into enemy mech’s blind spot. Out of the corner of her eye, she caught Drakas just getting to his rig. Her weapons went green, and she unleashed a barrage of plasma. It hit the enemy mech in the shoulder but splashed harmlessly across an invisible wall of energy.
“Shields! Dammit,” she cursed and started sending a hornet’s nest of micro-missiles meant to tear down just that sort of defense.
The enemy mech spun, its weaponry still unloading in a wild splash of light and mechanical carnage as it chased her sprinting form. She kept up the chase, trying to stay just ahead of his ability to rotate. She cut the angle toward the other mech, intending to go right at him to buy time for the other pilots to get to their machines. But, instead, the enemy mech paused, launched a massive burst of missiles toward the back of the hangar, and then bolted for the wide-open hangar door.
This was some sort of hit-and-run thing. Or sneak in, blow shit up, and run away thing she guessed was a better summation. She fumed. The unrelenting barrage she fired at the enemy mech was still chipping away at his shields. In contrast, every shot he took landed on an unprepared adversary. At least five more mechs were laying in smoldering chunks, and who knew if any of the pilots had been injured or killed in the process.
Galas chased the intruder to the end of the hangar and came sliding to a halt as he launched himself out into the empty air, plummeting between the rock pillars of the other spires barely visible in the misty distance. Repulsors kicked on, and he rose into the illuminated gray.
Galas was rockets bingo. At about the same time, her plasma and laser cannons echoed blaring sirens through her SortieNet as they hit temp overload and cooldown measures engaged—steam gushing in obscuring plumes from her shoulders and forearm nacelles.
He was getting away. Galas’s Dragoon was not native, with repulsors big enough to fly and especially not big enough to break orbit. But Delvadr Elites were. She turned the mech back to see what the damage was and caught an olive-drab blur of metal rushing past. Drakas launched out of the hangar, and external boosters lit up.
“Drakas! Don’t do it. Those guys have built-in booster packs. They can fly circles around you,” Galas warned.
“They got Braynam. They got Ceres. Coward sappers!”
“Drakas, you idiot!” she yelled in frustration and ran back to her bay to get her own set of external boosters, but they were a smoldering mess. Everywhere she looked was either charred black or currently burning. People were running around now, grabbing firefighting gear. There was barely a mech in one piece and not a set of boosters that would fit on her Dragoon.
Drakas, you dumb sonofabitch.
She tried to track his signature in her battlespace model, but just as she was able to locate his beacon, it went from blue to gray. Red dots converged on the spot, forming up a contingent of at least seven remaining enemy mechs, and then they all blinked out, presumably initiating stealth mode before exfiltrating to outer orbit.
“Goddammit!” she yelled, slamming the canopy with bare knuckles over and over again until red smears covered the alloy glass and her hand was a hazy fugue of pulsing pain and heat.
It was obvious to her what happened. She didn’t have to go back over the sensor data. Late to the action, he had gone off to get his own piece of the glory. She always knew it would end like this, but she had thought she’d be with him when it happened. Like it was supposed to be.
Nothing worked out like it was supposed to. A dull ache swelled in her chest, but not even that was as intense as it was supposed to be. It was just a big … numbness. Pretty soon, she wouldn’t feel a single thing. Well, that would be a temporary problem. Now she had a promise to fulfill.
Her eyes dropped to her chest where she typically had the DDX in its chest rig. She remembered that her vest was stuffed behind her seat. She hadn’t had time to don her gear before engaging the enemy. She breathed in a heavy, shuddering breath, and then let it out.
Oh, well. It was always going to be like this. A fleeting concern over her comrades. What shape this was going to leave them in with all the loss of life and machinery, and she was just going to add to that deficit because of some archaic ritual? Where was the honor in that?
Wasn’t she just as bound by honor to protect them as she was to witness the passing of her Blademate? Why’d it have to be this difficult? They were supposed to be stuck in some impossible firefight and both go down, guns blazing. Or dismounted, back-to-back, hacking and slashing at the encroaching hordes, so engrossed in the chaos that neither knew who died first, just that they had died together. But this? Him charging off by himself on some ego-fueled mission to avenge their fallen comrades and prove his worth as a soldier? Did the Blademate contract cover valiant stupidity?
Damn you, Drakas. You beautiful, stupid sonofabitch.
Gray smoke was still billowing through the hangar, but now it was mixed with the white of fire retardant and steam. The whole space was a swirling miasma barely distinguishable from the gray mist outside. On top of all of it was the pulsing red strobe of emergency lighting and warning beacons.
It hurt her eyes to look at. Not that it was bright. She just wanted to close her eyes but, when she did, her mind replayed the last images of Drakas flying off into the skies, never to be seen or heard from again. Just a blue dot turned into a gray one.
Her eyes sprang open, and her thoughts drifted to the envelope in her pocket. It couldn’t be anything good. But she was thankful to have something else to think about.
She reached into her pocket, and her hand erupted in crunchy fire, causing her to curse and quickly clutch it to her chest.
I broke my hand. What an idiot.
She reached for the envelope with her good hand and brought it out, ripping the edge off with her teeth and shaking the envelope off the folded, natural fiber parchment inside.
Galas unfolded the paper lamely, thankful for the added difficulty that took her mind off the void inside her. One that she knew was really just obscuring the ignited landfill of emotions inside her.
The letter was in Sonnra’s hand. It was short.
“Dear Cadian, I’m sure you’re busy. That’s why I didn’t write earlier. I just wanted you to stay focused on the fight and not to be preoccupied by things going on planet-side, but … I heard some weird news the other day I couldn’t, in good conscience, ignore. It was about survivors from the last wave. Matko and I had been looking to adopt, and there was an orphanage in Tuune. Well, some of the kids there were from the last wave. And some of those children were from—”
Galas put down the letter, her hand shaking uncontrollably. What was she saying? There’s no way she could be stupid enough to put this to paper. It just wasn’t possible. She sat for long minutes, mind spinning a thousand klicks a minute. This is just not possible.
She picked the letter back up.
“…some of those children were from Kozst, which we both were sure was your village. One of the children was Seraf’s age. I wouldn’t write you about this, but … I saw her picture. She looks like you. And Matko. Actually, she looks more like his mother’s side but…”
Galas stared out the mech’s canopy, out into the void between the towering structures of rock barely visible in the mist. There had to be something that could help her make sense of this situation. Something that could put a name to the din of competing emotion that somehow drowned everything out so thoroughly that she could not identify a single one.
She didn’t feel sadness at losing Drakas. She didn’t feel hatred for the Delvadr or hope she might one day be united with her daughter. She didn’t even feel shame for the cold, brittle, and callous person she’d let herself become. She felt all of it and none of it.
Galas swung the rock chunk at the end of her grappling line through a swath of psych bugs, clearing them from the raised bridge leading to the teleport hub. She’d lost the other one a way back. Her shoulders tensed as she grabbed the still swinging line with both hands and whipped it around and let go down the bridgeway behind, crushing bug after bug in a line of gore. She couldn’t keep this up, but the bug horde just kept coming. She had no missiles, only plasma, and her right-hand cannon was wide open, venting steam, useless.
She started sprinting again, sure she would just seize up any moment.
“Right side, Galas.” Raphael, too, sounded as though he was growing weary from pointing out new threats if that were even possible.
She looked. Two psych-hoppers had mounted the stone border on the side of the bridge a looked ready to take flight. She sprinted at them, and retracted the machine head of the grappling line, effectively discarding that weapon for the speed she’d need to make it to the finish line.
Drawing close now, she slid on her backside just as they leaped, giving her an unobstructed view of their underbelly. Great shot, but close, much too close. Her plasma cannon lit up the creatures just as Galas felt an invisible impact to her skull. Her face was numb as she slid up onto her feet and kept running.
The battlespace model was a red wave behind her.
“Raph, assist full. Just keep me running,” she managed out as she swallowed hard to avoid blowing chunks into the close canopy of her helmet.
The hub was just ahead. There was one hopper. She fired the grappling line and dove, plasma blade forward as she collided with the creature, too stunned to do anything after being impaled, and then jerked directly toward its intended prey.
She couldn’t see for the bug juice covering her face shield, but she managed to find the door. Just in time. Pounding and scrabbling claws assaulted her audio inputs. Whatever. She was just happy that there was a door. Maybe it was because she was always going to temples that she didn’t think too much about it. None of them had doors. The hub did. That was good. Now, where were the controls?
Galas’s flight suit was drenched through and through when she exited the portal and stepped out into the midday sun of the temple courtyard. In fact, it looked more like a ceremonial plaza. She didn’t care what it was. She was so tired she could cry. Her arms and legs were lead, and it was everything she could do to just keep moving forward.
Streaks of fire fell from the heavens, all at a very specific angle. Most very, very far away. Some closer. Drop ships entering the atmosphere, she realized. Also in the sky, fading in the atmospheric haze, were dark shapes, impossibly huge and outlined on the side closest to the sun, in brilliant white: Thune-made mega carriers. The final push of the Delvadr invasion was in full swing. The noose tightening.
She looked down at the plasma cannon on her right arm. It closed, apparently done overheating. Nice timing. She remembered her grappling line and replaced the broken head. Anything else? Oh, yeah. Me. No help for that, she thought through a haze of exhaustion.
She looked up as she dragged one foot, and then the other, forward. Before her, just a few hundred meters below the hillside temple grounds, on the jungle floor, a different sort of chaos ensued. She blinked in confusion.
The mantid ground contingent was still trying to clear the temporary airfield and make good on their escape, but someone or something had other ideas. Galas’s jaw dropped open as she recognized the garishly painted Dragoon-class Deathhound mech that was now pulverizing and, in turn, being pulverized by the MZ forces. She looked around for more of the Deathhounds, but there were none to be seen. She scanned the battlespace and came to the same conclusion. That was baffling. Just the one.
Just then, a new feed populated in her HUD. It came from one of her lost drones. Maybe her luck had changed. A surprised, foxlike face stared into the camera, and Galas did a double-take. Oh my god, she thought, Jinnbo’s alive!
Tears of joy rather than exhaustion flowed down her face. She had to get to him, but she had to activate the Arcfire, and then she had to put down that son of a bitch who stole Betsy. And then … after all that, she would sleep. But not before she actually, physically, hugged that troublesome little alien monkey-bat-fox-thing. Wow, what a weird day!
Galas stumbled toward the center of the temple, pulling the stone artifact from a storage compartment on her torso as she went. Something caught her attention as she did.
Out over the mayhem, a little above where she stood now, a heavily smoking mantid gunship was moving quickly in her direction. Trailing smoke and bobbing drunkenly, she was sure it was just damaged and looking for a place to put down. Her mind, however, went back to the gunship she’d seen in Xiocic after her HALO jump out of the commandeered shuttle. It’d been looking for her, she was certain.
Given the chaos of the battle below, it seemed unlikely she’d been spotted and that they were actually trying to finish their mission, but xenos were, by definition, alien. They had different minds, different cultures, and values. It was impossible to say. All she knew was she needed to initiate the Arcfire sequence, and every second she waited, more people would die.
The SortieNet started vectoring escape and attack lines. Reinvigorated, kind of, Galas pushed harder toward the temple, leaping tangled knots of tendril-like roots, bashing through smaller trees growing up through the cracks in the stone block of the plaza. The gunship was growing closer, but the temple was just ahead. Just then, something caught her foot, and she went tumbling. Hitting the ground and rolling with the momentum, she came up to her feet empty-handed. What the hell was that? And then her heart sank. “Raph! Where’s the artifact?”
