them.
Even though no longer a grunt, she was still kept in the black about the importance of this mission. Jade, working her magic and charm through the chain of command aboard the Mara, found out bits and pieces of information.
She learned that this Altwhen was particularly volatile, and poised on a strategically-precarious position in the Stream, its entrance point a little too close to Command for comfort.
Prodding further, Jade learned what When this rift had emerged from.
Their When. Their home.
The planet itself had not changed much, the view from orbit suggested. The orbital solar plates still cast their ghostly shadows on the surface, and the immense automated aquaponics facilities still dotted the oceans. From orbit, the planet was pristine.
Surface scans revealed a different picture.
The Enemy had struck. Viciously.
After the massacre of the Judas from which the twins had been rescued, the Black had begun their harvest of the populace of the planet. Grisly reminders of the slaughter above the planet dotted its surface: the shattered remains of Judas and Enemy vessels alike.
There were other signs of Enemy activity.
Flattened cities. Scorched earth. Abandoned upload generators. The veil of the web still in place above some areas of the planet.
The dead Earth.
A newfound rage surged through Sapphire as she looked at the viewscreens. The Enemy had killed her world, consumed its energy, left it a husk floating in space.
In some deep, hidden part of her mind, she had hoped that this was all a nightmare, that her parents were still alive, that these people from the future, these Judas, would take her home to safety, to a world unscathed by this war out of time. She had hoped for so long.
These hopes died.
And from around the moon of Earth, the Enemy armada that had lain in wait, watching, struck down upon the Judas.
(sapphire?)
“What is it?” Exhaustion.
(we’ll be emerging into the stream soon.)
“Mara?”
(yes, sapphire?)
“Are you scared? I mean, are you—”
(yes, ’phire. i’m scared.)
Something was different. Something was wrong.
The twins stood shocked before the viewscreen watching the Enemy horde race toward the Judas when the battle klaxon sounded its despairing wail. They snapped into action, running to their assigned droptroop deployment zone. While they stood in place, bulky combat armor sealed itself around their bodies.
They felt the shift of the deck below them.
Evasive maneuvers.
Anticipation.
And then the floor was gone, and they were thrust into a hostile world of brilliant arcs of light in the terrifying black of space. Down, down into the void, plunging at the spidery forms below them, preparing to board.
The orders came swiftly, a deluge of barked commands as flocks of droptroops swarmed the Enemy.
Hundreds. Thousands. Millions.
Sapphire felt them, the warriors of the Judas, their blind faith, their determination. She felt many cease to exist in the wake of the hellish lights. She hesitated, looked up once more at the Golgotha Mara falling away above her, that island of hope in this blackness. A droptroop’s mission was simple: Maneuver to the surface of an Enemy vessel without getting killed and attempt viral insertion without getting uploaded.
And suddenly all was light and Sapphire was blinded by the purest white brilliance sun hell LIGHT she had ever seen.
Disoriented, she floated helplessly.
“Sapphire to Mara!!”
silence.
“Sapphire to anyone!!”
silence.
((“JADE!!”))
She called out with her mind, but only silence greeted her.
She panicked in the furious whiteness, struggling with the jets on the dropsuit upward to the shadow above her, hoping against hope that it was a Judas, not an Enemy.
An open airlock door, so like a gaping mouth, hung above her. She clambered inside the hatch.
Mara.
She knew something was wrong. Very wrong.
She closed the airlock and the suit faded from her. She entered Mara’s main corridor and ran toward the hub.
“MARA!”
a sound…
(…static?…)
Sapphire stood under the battle chamber elevator, entered the emergency override control code, and waited for the elevator to descend.
The body of the captain descended from the battle chamber, neural interface webs still encompassing his body. Blood was everywhere, pouring from his burst eyes.
“Oh shit. Oh shit. Oh Shit!”
She wrestled the body from the elevator.
She stepped on.
It ascended.
(float-placement dock achieved. we’ve arrived.)
“Good. Let’s get this over with.”
the battle chamber.
Sapphire grimaced at the grisly scene before her and sobbed with desperation. In some part of her mind, she knew that time was running out for the warriors blinded outside, and that she was their only hope.
(…static?…)
Mara.
She had never been in an actual battle chamber, only simulators, but she knew what to expect. The interface webs…
The gauntlets.
With a deep breath, she thrust her hands into the interface gauntlets, and she plunged into an unknown world of the purest light, disorienting.
Voices. Faint voices.
The Judas.
She understood now.
The pilots of the Judas had been flashblinded by the sudden explosion of light, and the phase energy burst had been powerful enough to knock them temporarily from the tethers that bound them to the primary pattern of the Stream. Lost in the innate rapture that was the kill mode of the battle chamber, the pilots had been mentally torn apart by an unknown force. They were all incapacitated, most dead already.
Ready prey for the Enemy.
Sapphire sifted her memory for those vital emergency command codes…
She found them.