"Marty, take us in.”
Chapter Forty-Five: Battle in the Orbit of Pluto
MARTY KNEW WHAT I WANTED and angled the Redemption at the start of the haze around Pluto, pouring on the acceleration. That haze swiftly resolved into what it actually was—a cloud of monsters from everyone's nightmares. The Ferals were solid manifestations of the Elder AIs' insanity. They were always functional creatures, but never optimal. They were always nightmarish in one way or another and were never backed by significant intelligence nor displayed advanced tactics. If the AIs' minds were broken and they slumbered, the Ferals were their nightmares. They had spewed forth from the factories on Pluto, been shot into orbit, and then dispersed. Now we mowed them down by the dozens.
The two particle beam turrets on the Redemption fired in short bursts, conserving energy. Each spray of particle beam tore apart a Feral, ending it. Marty saved the plasma cannon for large concentrations or oversized Ferals. One of those looked like a nightmarish cybernetically enhanced blue whale with the head and tentacles of a giant squid, swimming through the void at us rather swiftly. Redemption's main gun cored it, the barrel-sized plasma bolt causing it first to twitch spastically in space and then with the second and third blast ending its unnatural life.
"There are too many of them," Marty complained. "I've heard of target-rich environments, but this is ridiculous. It's going to take us forever to clear this, and they're starting to close in. We just don't have enough guns."
I knew what to do, and Regar did as well from the look he threw me. With a gesture I opened Redemption's front hatch and exposed us all to the vacuum outside. As the cabin had never been pressurized there was no explosive decompression.
"Don't get too far from us, okay?" I said, and then dived through the hatch.
Regar leapt after me.
Metra's armor modifications hadn't really been meant for flying around in open space, but they were up to the job. Pluto was close enough that I could use the gravity plates to push and pull against it, although the effect was rather weakened so far up in orbit. The propulsion units were completely unaffected. I was slow, incredibly slow, compared to the Redemption but way faster than the Ferals, and it showed.
The beam of my Gazer bisected what looked like a long metallic centipede with legs the size of my forearm. It had hundreds of them and crawled through space ineffectively, failing to move but not giving up. Horror after horror died as I slowly flew through the cloud, my gazer firing nearly continuously. I only paused briefly when I moved to find another target.
Regar flew beside me, less gracefully. His armor didn't have built-in flight capabilities, so he had equipped a harness that gave him some maneuverability in a vacuum—not as much as me but enough that he could keep up. He fired his plasma pistol near-continuously, the bright balls of plasma incinerating with two or three shots every Feral that they hit. The Tempest he kept on his back in reserve for something more serious.
Marty circled around us like a hungry shark, beams slicing through the vacuum and destroying Ferals by the dozen. Occasionally the main gun fired, the plasma bolt obliterating a larger, more aggressive Feral swarming to us from farther out. In the blackness of Pluto’s space, only the light from our weapons illuminated the monsters all around us. A continuous stream of Nanite Clusters rushed from their broken corpses toward the Redemption as it passed within two hundred meters. Good, we need as much as we can get.
The three of us moved in a loose formation, scouring the northern hemisphere of Pluto in a line ten kilometers wide. Even with that coverage we were only making a small dent in the haze of monsters orbiting Pluto.
We had been at it for forty-five minutes and I was despairing of our task ever ending when Marty's voice came over our comms.
"Guys, I'm picking up something weird here."
A long, black fish covered in sharp spines surged at me. Gleaming white fins reflected the wan light of the distant sun and our weapons. The fish's toothy mouth yawned open in anticipation as it charged, tailfin somehow pushing against the vacuum to propel it forward. I drilled it directly between the bright red eyes with my Gazer and raked the beam up and down. It twitched and went still.
"What do you mean strange?" I asked.
"I have no idea, it's like there's some interference just ahead. Like the sensors are having some problems, but there's nothing there. Brick, do you see this?" Marty asked.
"I am seeing the same sensor interference, but I do not have an analysis."
"Whatever it is, it can't be good for us. Maybe something cloaked? Light the area up, Marty," I said.
Plasma bolts streamed out as the Redemption's main gun rapid-fired into the problem volume. Particle beams swept the area in random, arcing curves. The few visible Ferals in that space had a very bad time indeed, but nothing stealthy was revealed.
Because of Marty's light show I almost missed it when the fabric of space itself tore. A small rent at first, it grew rapidly. Dull red light poured through from the other side. I immediately recognized the tear in space that should have been impossible here in the embrace of the Connahr field. The tear spasmed, expanding and contracting rapidly.
"What the hell? We're inside the Connahr field. They're not supposed to be able to do that," I protested.
The rift's cycle of contraction and expansion was speeding up. With each cycle the tear was becoming slightly larger.
Marty focused on the tear, pouring fire from the particle beams and the plasma cannon into it. There was no visible change.
"The Connahr field makes it require much more energy, but does not make it impossible. The AIs can force open a portal, although there are few
