Dragon Guardian, page 2
“Sir? I don’t understand?” Marins’ voice sounded in his sensors as Keel held up the mostly emptied reactor cell box that hadn’t even been connected at all.
“This was a dummy…” Keel managed to say, just as alerts broke across his vision.
WARNING! Multiple Vessels Detected…
Imperium Craft Identified…
Small flares of light burst over the dome of Heka 5b as the Imperium’s battle craft arrived…
2
AMBUSH
“Hennity? Corporal Hennity? You need to get out of there now! I’m sending the dropship to pick you up!”
Commander Orpheus’s voice was a sudden roar in Keel’s sensors as the renegade Marine looked up at the purple and crimson lights flaring over the gray planet.
Keel could see the outlines of the Imperium vessels as they surged through the fire, dropping out of near-light speed. It was an ambush. The Imperial forces had already known they’d be coming for this system and had been lying in wait.
“But, commander, you need to get your people out of there!” Keel looked back at Heka 5b, seeing small flashes of light on the surface as the hidden brigade base woke up.
“They won’t have time to evacuate,” Corporal Marins said in dull horror.
The Imperium vessels were already firing their in-system rockets to take them into Heka’s orbit. Keel guessed they might be able to get a few vessels off the planet in time, but it wouldn’t be enough. This was the regional center of the Orpheus Brigade. There had to be at least a hundred Marines down there.
What do you do in a bad situation? You make the most of it… Some nugget of advice from Keel’s old training swam into his mind.
“The scout ship. We can get back to that. After that…” After that, Keel didn’t know, but he didn’t waste any time turning toward the tiny scout ship they had arrived in and launching himself from the satellite as Marins followed. Keel stretched out his body and fired his back thrusters at full force. An explosion of blue flames ran down his back as his suit threw him forward into the night.
“Waking up Orpheus Scout,” he said, sending the code to the craft that would reactivate its central computer as he and Marins flew as fast as they could.
They hadn’t been able to take any larger vessel, and they had left the craft a considerable distance away, fearing that it would alert the satellite.
“It doesn’t matter what the stars-darken satellite registers now, though, does it?” Keel said, seeing small blinking lights appear in the distance.
WARNING! Enemy vessels detected…
Two small Imperial attack craft were breaking away from the battlegroup and heading in Keel’s direction.
“We’re not going to make it in time!” Marins started to panic.
“Frack!” Keel wished that the Orpheus scout ship was as up-to-date as the vessels that were coming for it. He had connection to its general sensor readings but not its navigation or propulsion. A current Imperial ship-of-the-line scout vessel could be piloted from afar, and even sent on automated missions, but like all of the Orpheus Brigade kit, their tiny ship was out of date and salvaged from a half-dozen previous wars, stolen by the brigade to be used in its efforts to bring down the emperor.
“We can make it!” Keel said, doing his best to hold his body still and offer no resistance to the rocket fire. Their ship was getting closer. Keel could see its crooked, bent prow like a broken bird’s beak, and the two stubby wings that swept up and away from its small steel body.
The lights of the enemy vessels were only growing brighter too as the two advanced fighters streaked over Heka’s surface to intercept the scout ship. These fighters were small, four-winged wedges of dark-blue metal, malevolent in their speed. Keel saw their forward weapons flare with light as they fired missiles at the waiting Orpheus craft.
“No!” Keel shouted. That ship was their only way back to the surface.
‘Brother!’
Out of nowhere, there was a surge of darkness from the planet surface. A large, winged shape shot into the star-filled night as Darkwing raced in between the Imperium fighters and the Orpheus scout. Keel saw twin lights of cerulean fire race up his flanks as he called on his innate field energy, releasing it in a flow of crimson plasma toward the craft and missiles. The dragon’s raging breath caught two missiles in flashes of brilliant light, and the Imperial craft were forced to swing out of the way of the surging fireball.
“Two down! We might make it!” Marins said, pressing to move faster toward their ship.
WARNING!
Keel, however, saw the flash as the two remaining missiles swerved, making it out of the way of the dragon’s breath.
“Damn it, no!”
Keel saw the weapons overshoot the scout craft. They twitched and turned in their flight path, re-calibrating their target computers for the next available target.
“Marins, move!” Keel shouted.
The missiles started to curve back toward them.
Even at full thrusters, there was no way that a Marine could outrun a missile. Keel kicked out, spinning wildly to one side as he snatched his heavy plasma blaster from where it was locked to his side. In one smooth movement, he started firing at the missiles.
It was a desperate move. Keel didn’t really expect to hit them, but he did hope to distract them.
Imperial missiles, like all of the latest Imperium technology, were intelligently controlled in part, with highly adaptive targeting computers. Keel had spent a career firing them at the enemies of the Imperium. He knew that if their primary targets were lost, they would select the next-most dangerous. Right now, that would be Keel and the dragon.
“Darkwing, fly!” Keel bellowed as the missiles broke their paths, one turning almost a full circle back toward the dragon while the other shot toward the Marines.
Keel continued to spin wildly as he fired his heavy blaster, turning in place and kicking himself away from Marins and their ship.
“Sir! What are you doing!?” Marins shouted. He was almost to the scout.
He can make it.
“Just go!” Keel demanded, throwing his arms forward as he gave up on firing at the approaching missile and instead reserved all his power for his thrusters.
WARNING!
He could feel his suit starting to vibrate under the extreme pressure he was asking of it. His vision was starting to flash with warning orange lights as his suit registered how near the missile was.
There was no way he could out-fly it.
There was no way…
Keel suddenly jackknifed, bending his body forward as he thrust out his arms to either side. He changed course, hoping to throw the missile.
WARNING!
A heartbeat later, the missile chasing him exploded as it thought it had reached its target.
‘Brother!’
Keel heard Darkwing’s roar as white light engulfed him, and all of his sensors glitched into a high-pitched whine. He shouldn’t be able to feel pain. His body was made of metal and circuitry. He had no pain receptors, and yet he still had a human mind that expected certain things.
Shock and burning agony engulfed him but were silenced an instant later as Darkwing wrapped his consciousness around Keel’s mind. In a flash, Keel was no longer aware of his pain, or his suit’s alarms, but was carried in the comforting blackness of a dragon’s heart.
“Darkwing! Am I alive? How bad is it? I need to get back to Marins!” Keel said quickly, struggling to tear himself away from the dragon’s hold.
‘Fool of a human! You do not sacrifice yourself for others. You live to fight for them!’
Darkwing had a reptilian’s view of morality.
“Darkwing, how badly am I damaged?”
‘You would be a lot worse off without me!’ the dragon hissed, abruptly withdrawing from his mind so that Keel’s senses had space to come rushing back to him.
WARNING! Critical Error... Thrusters.
WARNING! Critical Error... Main Reactor Unit
Initiating Reserve Power Unit…
Keel’s vision was filled with orange from all the alarms and warnings. The missile hadn’t struck him. It had self-detonated when it sensed his course change and sensed that was as close as it was going to get. Keel floundered, waving his arms and legs to see that at least everything was still where it should be. His back plate had taken most of the damage.
His thrusters were destroyed, and his general suit protection was down by at least a third.
“Marins? Orpheus, come in!” Keel cried out, but his comms were down as well.
No. That means I’m stuck out here. He felt a moment of panic engulf him. If he had no propulsion, he couldn’t get back. His main reactor was down, meaning that he was on reserve power, which would be about sixteen or seventeen hours at best.
He fought his suit to turn himself in flight, looking back to the iron gray orb of Heka 5b and the battle unfolding there. The Imperium vessels were three large, shovel-headed warships. They weren’t the largest in the Imperial fleet, but they were powerful enough to demolish entire habitats if they so chose. These three ships were joined by a host of smaller fighter craft, just like the ones that had fired on Marins and Keel.
Already there were expanding orbs of white fire on the surface of the planet as the Imperium began their bombardment. Keel saw the smaller, fat disks of brigade craft attempting to flee into space as missiles strafed all around them. A small cloud of missiles struck the rear of one of the bridge craft, which swerved out of the way with plumes of escaping plasma fire trailing it.
“No!” Keel cried out, watching the struck craft try to swerve out of the way of its fellows as it began to flip on its side. “Sula!” he breathed. The recorder—the human archivist who was supposed to be his guide and confidant—was down there. She could be on that very vessel.
Was he alone now?
‘Never alone!’
The massive shadow of Darkwing’s body suddenly appeared before him. This time, it was the real shadow of his body and not his mental form. Keel saw acres of thick, black and midnight blue scales flash before him, and he instinctively thrust his arms forward as talons as wide as his forearms closed around him and pulled him up.
Keel swung his body, grabbing onto the dragon’s black foot-spur as he climbed the dragon’s leg, pulling himself up hand over hand as he found purchase in the overlapping contours of the dragon’s scales. Darkwing was turning, flaring his wings as Keel reached the dragon’s shoulder. He grabbed onto Darkwing’s saddle by the metal grab-hoops and swung his legs into place.
The saddle was a thickened piece of composite graphene materials and metal plates sitting at the base of the space reptile’s neck, with wide metal bars that Keel could pull to indicate the direction of travel. In reality, Keel and Darkwing shared the same mind and moved as one creature.
A sense of rightness washed over Keel as he settled in his seat. He was where he was supposed to be. He was part of one thing, and together, they were angry.
“The brigade. They’ll never make it out of system,” Keel said.
Darkwing was already turning back to the planet, and lines of blue and purple field energy were erupting from the tip of his tail to race toward his shoulders as he summoned that innate energy. He roared in savage fury as he threw himself toward the enemy.
3
EVACUATION
Heka 5b, Planet-side
“The cores! Get the cores!” Recorder Sula shouted as she ran through the exploding, shaking bay of the Orpheus base under the surface of Heka 5b.
This loading hall was vast with vaulted iron girders supporting what looked to be an underground hangar. Blocked-off archways along the walls led to what Sula had been told were old mine workings when Heka 5b had been one of the many planetoids stripped of any usable materials and discarded like so many in the Outer Systems were.
This had made it perfect as one of the many secretive bases of the renegade Orpheus Brigade, but now it seemed that the Imperium had found them anyway.
“Cradles and ammunition first!” one of the Orpheus Marines barked back at her, the only biological on the entire base.
Orpheus Marines ran back and forth from the loading bays in their outdated combat suits, each one a human consciousness downloaded into a now-creaking, massive war suit. They were relics from forgotten campaigns and liberated by Commander Orpheus, freed from their lives of eternal war to instead attempt to liberate the other souls trapped in the House of Records.
“The cores are what the Imperium is after! I promise you!” Sula shouted, pointing to one side of the room where three long, shining, silver sarcophagi sat. Although their metals at first appeared normal, any longer glance revealed a shining, cerulean surface when looked at from different angles. It was unlike any metal that Sula had ever seen before, and it could only have come from the alien Jaali.
Those silver cores had been what was keeping the Jaali jump-ship operational and somehow super-positioned in two places at once, forming a living bridge between the Milky Way and Andromeda.
And now the emperor has a whole heap of a dead alien jump-ship, and he’s going to want a way to power it up.
“I don’t care about your cores. If we don’t get the cradles loaded then we won’t have any Orpheus Marines intact to fight for your damn alien tech!” the Marine—some kind of lieutenant, Sula guessed—shouted, turning to order that the next range of tall, square metal frames laden with pipes, wires, and blinking machines be loaded onto the next ramp.
Sula grabbed onto the railing that separated her gantry from the hanger floor and hissed in frustration. She knew the lieutenant, or whoever he was, had a point, but it didn’t stop her rising panic.
The cradles were essential for every Marine, whether renegade or Imperial. They repaired and re-powered them between active duty. They were the portable workshops that kept the Marines of both sides of the battle operational.
“Not that many Marines are going to survive to use them at this rate,” Sula murmured as the ceiling again shook as bombs pounded the surface.
ALERT! Evacuate All Units...
ALERT! Reserve Teams to Gun Batteries…
Orpheus’s cold, metallic boom sounded through the air as the orders were given, and tramping feet sounded behind Sula as she saw a contingent of some of the oldest of the brigade marching into the hangar, but they didn’t head toward the loading bays. Instead, they turned in the opposite direction, toward the lifts that led up to the gun batteries.
“They’ll die…” Sula muttered as she looked after them.
“They will!” This was the much quieter but much closer real voice of Commander Orpheus right behind her.
Sula jumped, spinning around. “Commander! The cores…”
“I’m on it. You’re with me, recorder.” The commander didn’t even stop as he marched past the woman, expecting her to follow as he started clattering down the stairs.
Sula blinked, shook her head, and ran to catch up.
“Commander?” Sula asked, but Orpheus ignored her. He just shouted as the ancient Marines stopped and turned in eerie unison to fall into a perfect salute.
Sula’s eyes ran over their aged battle suits. Some favored Orpheus’s own smaller, barrel-shaped ‘walking tank’ suit design with virtually no head, while others looked like rusted human warriors with their torsos perfectly sculpted the human form.
How old were some of these warriors? How many battles had they seen? Sula shuddered. The only thing that was the same about all of them, Orpheus and Keel included, was the white glare of their inhuman eyes.
A flash of guilt ran through her. How many minds did I download into Marine bodies?
“Marines, brothers and sisters,” Orpheus said quickly, holding their eyes in turn. “You are tasked with getting to the gun batteries. We’re already losing souls up there, and you are the reinforcements. You will provide cover while we complete the evacuation, understood?” His voice was deep and resonant but layered with an electric glitch, as almost every trace of human tone had been stripped from it a long time ago.
“SIR! YES, SIR!” the Marines shouted at once.
“Then I salute you and congratulate you, who are about to gratefully enter into death!” Orpheus raised a heavy fist and thumped his breastplate.
Sula had seen them perform this ritual before, but never up close. The Orpheus Marines, the ones who had been liberated from the House of Records, appeared to relish the opportunity of final liberation. They fought back against the emperor for how their minds had been imprisoned in these metal bodies, and for the innumerable acts that they had been forced to commit, but they also relished death when it finally came.
Orpheus nodded, and the contingent of aging Marines turned as one and jogged to the stairs that led them up to the gun emplacements.
Sula stood for a moment, awed and shocked by what they were about to do, even as the roof shook time and again. “They’re going to all die, aren’t they? No evacuation for them?” she whispered, wondering how she felt about that. Sad. Angry.
“Every mission with the Orpheus Brigade is voluntary, and I can only offer them one thing—to die with dignity and bravery,” Orpheus said, his tone low for a moment before a particularly loud bang overhead shook even him. “Come! You and I will be guarding the cores. You are right. The emperor wants them, and we need to make sure he cannot get them.” He turned, indicating another contingent of Orpheus Marines, only six of them this time, who were at the silver tubes. Two Marines carried each tube toward one of the slowly opening bulkhead doors.
“Where are we going?” Sula asked as some of the support beams fell to the floor with a shower of sparks from the wire-rigged lights.
“Get moving! We’ve lost battery one! Get those engines fired up!” Orpheus bellowed at some of the racing Marines as they ran past them.
The dark blue bulkhead doors before them moved slowly and judderingly. Sula had never seen them open before. She had been certain that they were sealed shut by the ex-mine workers. As they opened, they revealed a dark tunnel many times the height of Sula and even Orpheus, but with only enough room for three or four of them to walk abreast.
