She paused.
The auto-guns spooled up to critical levels out beyond the security door our own guns were trained on. Smoke drifted through cracks around the installation of the tight security door. Then gun one went down.
“Thirty seconds on gun two,” the Seeker announced over comm. Apparently her operating systems could take control of local devices and hardware. She was in communication with the guns. Monarchs can do that stuff, or so I’ve been told.
She looked back at me. We were crouched on the right flank. The Kid was near us. I checked my elements. Everyone was set up for interlocking fire with the two Pigs on both flanks.
We’d do what we could.
“That’s all you can do?” I whispered to myself as I made eye contact with Hauser. He smiled grimly and gave me a thumbs-up.
“What?” she asked, snatched away from her narrative. I could tell she was talking as much to hear it as to put the pieces together. Or maybe she knew our chances weren’t good, and she was downloading on me. A virus? An SOS?
It was hard to tell which.
“Nothing,” I said. “This is it now. Tell me. I don’t care about lost starships or whatever Monarch games the better half wants to play. I just need to get Reaper through this. Tell me what’s so important about what we came here for. What you’re here to get if we survive the next two minutes.”
“Fifteen seconds,” said Hauser, whose onboard clock had managed to sync the calc to weapons dry on both guns.
At ten he began to count down our doom.
“Freedom,” she said breathlessly. Nervous. Worried. But steel and fire in her resolve. She was a Monarch after all. The best of us, that was what the constant media whispered in our ears, day and night. Our heroes. Our benevolent providers. Our avengers. “Real freedom for everyone who wants it.”
But she definitely could have been Strange Company. She was dumb enough not to quit when the night was dark and the odds were real bad.
“The operating file for the device is still deep inside the ship’s secure memory banks. The deep storage systems that were designed to regulate against the unintended effect of time travel.”
We were under five.
“The pure data. Uncorrupted.”
I stabilized my Bastard and set up my sight picture to dispense death. Front sight forward now, Orion.
The last gun ran dry and instantly the monkeys were beating at the doors with tools. And something larger, large, something very large in fact, was coming up the walkway we’d used to access the Node. It sounded titanic compared to the monkey-lings scrabbling to break in here.
“And what is it?” I said. My voice calm. The storm imminent. “What is this device that does freedom for all of us?”
“It’s the last chance at that freedom. It’ll destroy the entire mem-currency system the Monarchs control everyone with. It’s the weapon that ends the Monarchs two thousand years from now. Gave rise to the Simia who rule the future. Those things out there are the Simia. They came back with the ship as far as I can tell. From the future. Ten thousand years from now. I’m trawling the science logs as fast as I can. This was all site-restricted to the Monarchs with the highest of clearances. In the future of the galaxy, the Simia, they rule absolutely. What’s left of us are the animals. No Monarchs. No humanity. Just animals hunted to extinction. The crew of the Enterprise recovered the data and the device that destroyed Monarch culture from the Doomsday Vault on Cygni Nine. It’s a Monarch updating time capsule where even we don’t play with the truth. It’s where we hide all the secrets, including the truth. We protect it with all our lies.”
The giant thing outside began to rip the door from its hinges. Whatever it was, it was coming through soon.
“And if it destroyed the Monarchs. Humanity… then why do you want it now?”
“Because, Orion…” The door began to groan as it was pulled from its frame. Rending metal screeched. Massive hinges screamed. “Freedom is our only hope to prevent what happens. That weapon, the Deletion Drive, it will, in time, collapse the Monarchs’ rule and allow humanity a chance to get ready to meet the Simia with some shot at winning this time. Releasing the device now, two thousand years ahead of schedule… gives us a chance, Sergeant. We need that chance. Because the Monarchs… they would rather try other means. Means that allow them to remain in control. Even if the chances aren’t good. Even if it means the eradication of humanity.”
Chapter Forty-Six
The giant behemoth that opened up the vault doors to the Node was the largest ape I’d ever seen. Technically speaking, I hadn’t seen a lot of apes. None before today. But today… I’d seen a lot of them. And this thing was easily twice as large as the ape the captain had killed atop the rock with his Hardballer shot to the head. Blowing its brains out all over rock and sky. Their war leader for the assault to wipe us out in the canyon.
“Get it on!” I shouted as Reaper opened fire. As the thing heaved the door aside and swept a great gargantuan paw in at us. Dead monkeys and one of the auto-gun sentries came flying in right at us.
Both Pigs drew bright lines of sudden automatic fire across the thing’s broad chest.
Nothing. It didn’t seem to mind 7.62 moving at twenty-four-hundred feet per second.
It roared and pounded its chest. Lowering its jaw-heavy skull and baring its immense fangs at us as it roared death right into
