Debris slammed into her back, sending her sprawling painfully across the dark slick of simmering fluids. Several caution icons splashed amber, but her suit integrity held. She forced herself up onto her knees, wincing at the pain. When she twisted around, the corridor was blocked by a pile of rubble.
‘Are you okay?’ Jessika asked.
‘Just about. I stopped them. And, Jessika, I got it. I killed the bastard that shot Alik.’
‘All right. We’ve put a pressure balloon on Cal’s arm. It should hold. You need to get back here.’
‘Yeah. On my way.’
It took an effort, but she managed to get up onto her feet. She swayed around – although maybe it was the corridor wobbling around her. She couldn’t be sure.
Chunks of rock rolled down the pile blocking the corridor. ‘Huh?’ She blinked, trying to understand what she was seeing. More rock was rolling down, pushed out of the scree by dark worms.
‘Oh, Mother Mary.’
The worm shapes fell out of the holes they’d made and started slithering along the ground; more started to wriggle though behind them. There must have been hundreds of the things. She’d seen them enough times on feeds from Earth’s cities right after their shields collapsed. Capturesnakes.
Kandara turned and ran.
Dellian’s Squad
Enclave
Dellian was doing his best not to let his worry show. Body posture easy; he was in his armour, clamped into the troop carrier’s rack, an immobile nonhuman metallic statue. Nobody could read anything from that. Voice, though . . . that might be a giveaway. So he only talked to the squad in short, emotionless sentences. Because no one will be able to tell anything from that. Right?
It had all been going according to plan. Arrival in the enclave star system. Flying through the gateway. Deploying the troop carrier. That was when the weird crap began. They lost comms with the Morgan and the rest of the armada, except for other troop carriers, and even that contact was intermittent.
Then Yirella contacted the troop carrier and ordered them back into the Morgan, where they’d be safe. Delight at hearing her voice, knowing she was okay, was immediately blunted by the rest of the tactical situation. The Olyix had done something to the enclave, creating temporal havoc within the armada. Resolution ships had come pouring through the gateway to devastate the helpless corpus warships. And worst of all, Tilliana and Ellici were in the clinic. They were okay, Yirella assured the squad, but needed treatment. She was taking over tactical.
Another reason Dellian was glad he was inside his suit: He knew he’d be swapping perturbed glances with the rest of the squad. Yirella was brilliant, and frighteningly determined, but maybe not the best to be directing them under pressure. And pressure didn’t come any greater than this.
The whole squad cheered when Ainsley destroyed the power rings, killing the enclave, but Dellian’s command channel showed him the terrible price that victory came with. He didn’t share it with the squad; he couldn’t allow them to be distracted when they arrived at an arkship.
Yirella ordered the troop ships to launch again. Then came the truly crazy news, which he immediately dismissed as an Olyix trap – and a nasty one, too.
‘The Saints are dead,’ he told her over the secure channel.
‘Our analysis of the message gives it a seventy per cent probability of being genuine. It was Saint Kandara.’
‘The Olyix have had ten thousand years to put a perfect fake together.’
‘But why bother?’ she argued. ‘We’re here. We’re going to put our squads into the arkship. If it’s a fake message, we’ll know right away.’
‘Yeah, when the arkship explodes and takes all of us out with it.’
‘Again, what’s the point, Del? They must know we’re going to win this part of the campaign. We will take the arkships. And they’d know we’d be sceptical of any message, especially one that cuts off. All that’s going to do is make you even more alert and cautious when you get on board the Salvation of Life.’
‘When I get on board?’
‘I can assign that hangar to someone else.’
He gritted his teeth in dismay. He’d lived with that image of the Avenging Heretic dying in a flaring nuclear hell for too long. It was his reality. This news was opening up old wounds, and the worry that he was setting himself up for an emotional fall. But if there’s a chance, however tiny . . .
‘Thanks,’ he said. ‘I appreciate that.’
‘You’re welcome. Stand by.’
The Morgan altered its trajectory slightly, curving around to match orbits with the source of the brief message. The arkship in polar orbit that was supposed to be the Salvation of Life did match the parameters of every record from old Earth. Not that it was much different from any of the other arkships and Welcome ships encircling the gas giant.
The armada battle cruisers flew on ahead to attack the Deliverance ships that were clustered protectively along the polar orbit. Dellian watched the clashes. They seemed so irrelevant – small flashes of bright white light, as if the last twinkles were flaring their way to death. It seemed remote, somehow. The troop carrier’s sensors were providing him with an excellent image of the planet’s gargantuan magnetic bow wave. In contrast to the carnage the armada was inflicting, he found them utterly beautiful, shining like multiple halo wings as the world circled endlessly through this strange realm.
‘The defence ships have been cleared,’ Yirella told him. ‘You’re go for entry.’
The troop carrier accelerated in towards the massive cylinder of rock, bringing back too many memories. Small explosions were blooming all across the rock as the attack cruisers destroyed the Salvation of Life’s defence systems. Now that they were close, there were patterns in the rock – strata lines and small craters that corresponded to the old records. The jagged rim where the rear quarter had been separated to reveal the wormhole terminus was an exact match.
‘They couldn’t fake that, could they?’ he asked.
‘Theoretically yes,’ Yirella said.
