“Complete surface destruction. Total atmosphere loss.”
“But you—”
“Don’t worry, Pierce. I’ve saved some specimens.”
“And the enemy?”
“The worldships left orbit after a few months. They sent a few expeditionary forces to the surface and obviously didn’t like what they found.”
“Are you sure?”
“We’ve been tracking them for years now.”
“And where are they?”
“Since they didn’t find anything down here, they’re on their way after you.”
“Great.”
Maire grinned. Pierce noticed for the first time that the lines around her eyes were no longer there. She looked younger. “You’ll be fine. They’ll never find you.”
“Easy for you to say.”
“Even if they do, you’ll have a vessel full of the strongest warriors to meet them.”
“I’d better get to work.”
“That’s the
spirit to the eternal void of night. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, silver to silver.” Tallis nodded and Pierce’s coffin was ejected from the hangar. The soldiers saluted in unison, stood at attention. Tallis walked down the line, scrutinizing his troops.
“Uncle is gone. I’m your Commander now.” He paused in front of Hunter. “I choose Windham as my second.” He continued down the line. “We all knew the day would come that the last vestiges of home would fade away. From now on, we’re on our own. We’ll continue on target and fulfill our mission objectives. We owe it to Uncle to succeed. We owe it to Mother to succeed.
“Let’s get to work. We need to fix this boat and get back on the road as soon as possible. They found us, they killed our Uncle. Let’s find their home.”
He nodded toward Windham. Hunter cleared his throat.
“Okay. Damage control teams sweep the decks. We took a lot of phase flak below. We have slithers to repair, hull damage, a
breach in the primary phase flux generator. Decks one through ten are flooding.”
“Shit.” Another volley rocked the Archimedes. Pierce held tightly to the arms of his chair as internal gravity compensated. “Lock decks and attempt to drain.”
“Arch is hemorrhaging from below. We won’t be able to reach Light X until—”
“Launch slithers and lancets.”
“Done.”
“Do they have fighters?”
“Not many.” The angel looked over tactical monitors, holograph displays. “Earth orbital defenses must have taken out most of them.”
“Three worldships on scope?”
“Three, yes. Pipeline has closed. Our boys are closing in.”
“Good…Good.” Pierce spun his chair to the comm panel, waved his hand before the display. Hundreds of slithers in fireworks formations dove at the enemy spheres, engaging the enemy fighters in orbit. Brilliant arcs of phase fire erupted from both sides. “Command to Tallis: We need attachment of catalyst tethers on those globes ASAP.”
The display split in half, revealing Tallis in the cockpit of his slither and giving Pierce a Tallis-eye-view of the action. “Understood. Attack One moving in for the kill.”
Pierce watched as ten of his slithers detached from the main firework and dove at the center enemy sphere. A swarm of enemy fighters immediately broke from combat to engage the Tallis squad.
“Watch it, boys. They’re on to you.”
“We see them.” Tallis threw his slither into a spiraling descent, phase licking out in all directions, tearing enemy fighters into light and boiling phase sludge. His squad followed suit, their vessels spinning off into an intricate, disorienting dance, weapons fire intersecting and diverging with startling precision, vessels flying through a grid of light that shredded the enemy fighters. Almost fifteen years of training had honed Pierce’s children into a brutal weapon of war.
“We’re clear. Moving in for tether placement.” His fighters moved in tight and close, swimming as a single organism to avoid fire from the worldship surface. One of Tallis’s men was clipped by phase fire, flew out of alignment, colliding with another friendly vessel. The squad moved quickly to compensate, reform. The surface fire intensified. Two more friendlies flared from existence.
“Windham to Tallis: Do you want Attack Two to cover you?”
Tallis raged in his cockpit. “We can do it ourselves, thanks.” More fire from below. Tallis flipped the tether control cover open to reveal the command pad encoded to his genetic signature. “Almost there.”
Pierce watched with dismay as the enemy fighters broke off their combat and converged on the central worldship. Attack One would never withstand the assault.
“Pierce to Attack One: You okay down there, son?”
“It’s getting a little hot.”
Hot was an understatement. Tallis was losing his men too quickly for the descent.
“Attacks Two and Three move to cover. We need that tether in place. Solid.”
“Copy.” Hunter’s squad dove through enemy fire, tearing them apart with light and silence. He could see Tallis and three others below, so close to the surface that their afterburners were leaving contrails in the residual atmosphere of the metal planet. He spun to look at the other, smaller worldships. They appeared dead in the aether. Waiting?
“Let’s make a hole.” Brendan’s voice was cocky over the comm channel. “Launching atomic.”
“Too close—You’re too close! Launch the tether and get out of there!”
“I know what I’m fucking doing!” but Hunter knew that Brendan did not. He was showing off for his troops. His troops were dying behind him, however.
Hunter watched Tallis swoop in toward the surface, dropping the atomic. The weapon itself was invisible, but the damage it did was not. The worldship surface rippled out as black became white, metal became plasma. Tallis’s slither began to spin, but this time out of control. Two more of his squad were consumed. Enemy fighters regrouped.
“Fucking hell.” Hunter was furious at the showboating. “Are you okay?”
Tallis was silent on the comm, but Hunter could see that his vessel was intact, just spinning out of orbit.
“Pierce to Tallis: What’s your situation?”
Static and silence. Pierce could see the vessel, but wondered if Tallis himself was intact in the cockpit.
“Tallis please respond.” Nothing. He turned to an angel. “Lifesigns?”
“He’s alive. Unconscious. Must have gotten banged around in the shockwaves.”
Five enemy fighters were closing on Tallis’s position.
“Eject him.”
“Yes, sir.” The angel’s too-white hand waved over the display and Pierce saw Brendan’s cockpit pod rocket away from his vessel, which was quickly consumed in enemy fire.
“Pierce to Windham: Take your squad in for tether attachment. Use the hole Tallis made.”
“Copy.”
So the pretentious bastard had been useful after all. Hunter signaled to his squad and dove for the atomic scar rent into the worldship mantle. He flipped the tether control panel open, firmly shoved his hand against the pad. The genetic sampling was painless. The pad withdrew to reveal a handle. Hunter grabbed it, let the onboard systems plot the target from his visuals.
He gunned the engine and flew into the atomic impact crater. The worldship was a monster, the edges of the crater dozens of fortified decks. Hunter noticed with a morbid fascination the tiny figures even now being sucked into the vacuum of space by the dozens. Hundreds. Thousands? The crater’s periphery was a ring of fire as the
