The Xenocide Mission Read online

  ‘I know,’ Gilmore muttered.

  ‘I can’t pull the same trick twice.’

  ‘You’ve done what you can.’

  ‘Bill,’ Donna said, more loudly. Perry was standing a short distance away, the proper side of the line. A crowd of marines stood behind him watching in silence. ‘We can stop this,’ Donna said. There was a murmur of assent from the others.

  ‘It’s not our affair,’ Perry muttered. Like many others, he couldn’t take his eyes off what was happening with the pinnace.

  ‘Like hell it’s not! You really want to get back home and tell your girlfriend you let a new xenocide happen? Bill, we outnumber them . . .’

  ‘Lieutenant . . .’

  ‘And we outgun them.’

  ‘Quiet!’ Perry snapped. He glanced at the marines around him. Officers shouldn’t argue in public. ‘Don’t make me . . .’

  Gilmore shut his ears to their bickering. In his mind’s eye he saw the pinnace coasting through space, a red glow appearing on its silver skin; the glow turning to yellow, to white, and then plasma streaming around it as the fields came on and helped it on its way into the heart of the star.

  And then what? His mental gaze drew back a few million miles, a far-off view of the burning ball that gave life to this system. Maybe a slight darkening, a contraction . . . maybe no sign at all. But suddenly, the topmost layer – on the scale of his mind’s eye it would only appear as a thin dusting of gas, but in reality a deadly blast – expanding outwards in all directions. A cocktail of super-searing plasma and hard radiation. The first planet of the system shredded to a burnt cinder in seconds. The occasional XC ship in close orbit; the crew torn apart by the radiation a few seconds before the blast reached them and they disappeared into the infernal glare and heat.

  And then the prime target, Homeworld. The atmosphere rippling and streaming away from the planet, like a puddle of water blown away by a jet of warm air. Again, on this scale, quite innocuous; nothing to suggest the mega-hurricanes down below, tearing away the topmost layers of the planet. The cities razed to nothingness, individual XCs smashed against the hurtling debris and then flashed into vapour.

  The blast carrying on from Homeworld, the atmosphere perhaps returning, the few dazed survivors picking themselves up from an assault a thousand times worse than the one their forebears had perpetrated. The shockwave carrying on, reaching the Dead World . . .

  Which was already dead so it hardly mattered, except for the two lifeforms that might be down there. They would have a fifty-fifty chance, depending on which side of the Dead World they were at the time. A fifty-fifty chance on his son’s life was not acceptable odds.

  Gilmore jerked his head up, snapped out of the reverie. Sand Strong was approaching, a crystal held in one of his graspers. An escort of Rusties surrounded him until he reached the engineer, and the engineer held it cupped in both graspers as he climbed up into the pinnace. No, that crystal was safe. They weren’t going to sabotage the plan that way. Only one other way presented itself. If he stopped to think about it, he knew he would consider it madness, so he didn’t. His heart pounded but otherwise he felt strangely calm.

  ‘Thanks for your help,’ he said. ‘It was really appreciated.’ Then, more loudly so that everyone could hear, ‘No. No, I’m not going to watch this.’

  He strode away and didn’t look back.

  Last minute nerves? Donna thought as Gilmore strode away. I wouldn’t have thought it. She looked back at Perry. His arms were folded, his face was colder and he seemed to be breathing heavily. Enjoy your conscience, Captain, she thought with disgust.

  She turned back to the pinnace. The airlock was sealed, the power leads disconnected. The Rusties and the observers backed away to a safe distance as the engines whined into life. A power trolley rolled up with a Rustie at the controls and hooked onto the pinnace’s front landing wheel, then pushed the little boat backward onto the boat elevator. This is it, this is it . . .

  Perry’s breaths were getting shorter.

  She was still in her armour, the only marine who was. She could pick off the driver of the trolley, she could—

  Perry filled his lungs. ‘Marines will stand to!’ he bellowed. A microsecond’s pause, then the marines leapt for their rifles. ‘Sergeant Cale, Able Platoon will form a barrier in front of the pinnace and prevent anyone from getting near. Secure the remote controls and disable them. Lieutenant McCallum, Charlie Platoon will secure the pinnace, board it and deactivate all systems.’

  The Rusties and the human observers stood transfixed at the sudden burst of military activity. ‘You can’t—’ Bakan said, before she and the others found themselves surrounded by a wall of armed men and women and herded away from the pinnace.

  Perry stood before her, teeth bared and a deadly glint in his eyes. ‘And one more word from you and I’ll—’

  A crackle of plasma fire behind him and Perry convulsed, then fell into her arms. She staggered under the weight and fell backwards to the deck. Donna had time for one horrified, tragic look at the blackened and smoking pit between his shoulders before Rusties, marines and observers dived for cover as more plasma fire blazed out. And the fight was on.

  ‘Ready, Lieutenant.’

  ‘Good luck, Mr Gilmore,’ said Nguyen.

  Gilmore stood and looked at the outer door of the airlock. He felt his suit tighten around him as the air was pumped out.

  In the ship’s present state of emergency, someone using an airlock would immediately set off a variety of attention-seeking alarms on the flight deck . . . unless there was a sympathetically inclined lieutenant there, operating the system for you.

  The outer door slid aside and Gilmore stepped out into the rich velvet black of space. Suit thrusters carried him away from the ship and into the dark. Only a light second out from SkySpy, half the distance between Earth and its moon, the Shield was still big: a glowing green ball that dominated the sky. SkySpy itself and its attendant XC vessels couldn’t be seen with the naked eye. In the other direction was just deep, bottomless space.

  ‘Mr Gilmore, fighting has broken out on the hangar deck. Do you want to abort?’

  Fighting? Gilmore didn’t know whether to weep or rejoice.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘I’ll keep going. Thanks.’ Fighting could resolve things . . . but he didn’t yet know in which way.

  The thrusters cancelled his outwards movement from the ship and blazed in a different direction. Gilmore moved up the length of Pathfinder , past the hideous gash of the wound in the ship’s side and on up to the boat bay. Thrusters slowed him again and he drew level with the wide, rectangular opening in the ship’s side that was the boat entrance. He moved in and waited.

  ‘Stop this! Hold your fire!’

  Sand Strong was hovering on the edge of the field of fire, hopping up and down with agitation, not daring to get any closer to the fighting. The hangar deck was smoky and plasma trails streaked through the air. A handful of Rusties, including the one that had shot Perry, were holding the marines off. Sand Strong was dangerously exposed as he tried to get one side or the other to lay its weapons down. No-one was shooting at him but no-one was paying him any attention either.

  The armed Rusties were sheltered behind the pinnace and there was no cover between the marines and them. All both sides could do was exchange pot shots whenever someone showed. The marines were handicapped; the Rusties could shoot wherever they wanted, but the marines had to make damn sure they didn’t hit a vulnerable part of the pinnace. An exploding fuel tank within the confines of the hangar deck wouldn’t serve the interests of either side.

  Bill Perry had been killed immediately by the first shot. Donna had compartmentalized her feelings on that, shoved them to one side and to the back of her mind, because now she was in charge.

  Motion behind the pinnace immediately drew marine fire. The power trolley rolled slowly across the deck and plasma blazed off its metal sides. It wasn’t being driven, just pushed by the Rusties sheltering behi
nd it. It was a good choice for impromptu armour. The Rusties that remained behind the pinnace gave it covering fire.

  ‘Get the wheels!’ Donna shouted, which was easier said than done. They were covered by a metal skirt that came almost down to the floor. Donna chose a different strategy; where exactly were they pushing the trolley to?

  Easy; the remote controls, mounted on a panel in the hanger wall. She took aim and fired, and the panel exploded.

  The Rusties didn’t stop. The trolley inched over to stand in front of the remains of the panel. Donna heard the whine of a power drill. They were unscrewing the hull plating beneath the panel, gaining access to the undamaged innards of the controls.

  ‘Both platoons, concentrate fire on the trolley,’ she ordered, and the trolley began to wilt and melt under a concentrated volley.

  But then the elevator whirred into life and the pinnace began to lift up to the ceiling. The Rusties who had been sheltering behind it leapt for cover as their protection vanished.

  ‘The elevator! Take the elevator out!’ Sergeant Quinlan yelled.

  But it wouldn’t be enough. Donna could already see that. They still couldn’t shoot at the pinnace, just the metal shaft that was pushing the platform up towards the ceiling. Solid metal, no vulnerable parts, and in about ten seconds the pinnace would be beyond their reach.

  She was still in space armour; she did the only thing she could.

  And there it was. It rose up on the boat elevator into the bay and stopped in front of him. Its landing legs retracted and thrusters fired to move it forwards.

  Gilmore fired his own thrusters. He only had a few seconds here; the pinnace wasn’t going to hang around. He had just long enough to attach a lifeline and get inside the range of its drive field so that when the main drive came on . . .

  Pathfinder suddenly shot away. The pinnace was accelerating with that deceptive grav-drive ease away from its mothership. It had started on its kamikaze mission. It felt wrong, too easy; there should have been a countdown, a fanfare, drama.

  Gilmore began to pull himself in. Get to the handholds, get to the airlock. Then he yelled and almost let go, because there was movement where there should have been none. Someone, something was coming round the side of the boat.

  It was a marine, fully armoured. He peered more closely through the visor.

  ‘What the hell are you doing here?’ he shouted. No response. Their radios were on different frequencies and he couldn’t remember which. So he jabbed a hand at the airlock; Donna nodded and pulled herself after him.

  Inside the pinnace he repressurized and they took their helmets off. The boat was too small for artgrav so they clung to the bulkheads and looked at each other. He repeated the question, just as loudly. ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘Me?’ Her tone blazed with a white-hot anger and he wondered what had pressed her button. Surely not his own quixotic gesture. ‘I had this mad idea of disabling Device Ultimate. Something only a real idiot would do. And since Bill got shot in the back, I had to do it.’

  And that explained the rage. Gilmore had only known one colleague killed in his time, and it hadn’t even been someone he especially liked, but it had been a shipmate and it had left a big, big hole.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said sincerely.

  ‘Right.’ She peered past him. ‘And that’s it, is it?’

  Device Ultimate seemed quite innocuous; a collection of black boxes that almost filled the cabin, linked together with thick, industrial-strength power cables. Here and there a light shone or blinked. There was nothing to suggest it was the most powerful, the most lethal weapon of all time.

  The command unit was easy to find; a small sub-unit with controls covered with Roving glyphs and the data crystal sitting smugly in its port. First Gilmore yanked the crystal out and placed it against the floor. He braced his hands against the ceiling, raised a foot and deliberately crushed it. It exploded under his heel with a most satisfactory crunch and small particles drifted around the cabin.

  ‘Too easy,’ Donna said.

  ‘I know.’ He studied the sub-unit more closely. He wasn’t good at Roving glyphs. There was a display and figures moved across it. They weren’t flashing or showing any other sign of error or alarm. Device Ultimate had downloaded its instructions from the crystal and it was still working.

  Now the shock of her presence had faded away, Gilmore realized it was being replaced by a quite unreasonable anger on his part that someone was intruding on his moment of glory. ‘You can give me a hand,’ he muttered.

  ‘Suits me.’ She stepped forward and looked at the device. ‘What do we do?’

  ‘Unplug it. Everything.’

  ‘Right-o.’ She grabbed one cable, braced and pulled. Nothing. ‘It’s screwed in.’ She took hold of the cable end, where it met the box, in one armoured gauntlet and twisted. ‘It’s not screwed in. Hold on . . .’

  Her armour joints whined as she started to apply the suit’s power to the task. The cable stayed joined to the box.

  ‘I don’t believe it,’ she said. ‘Is there a toolbox?’

  Gilmore was having similar luck with his own cable. ‘Must be, somewhere.’

  ‘It could be back on Pathfinder . . .’ He glared at her. ‘Hey, just pointing it out. I’ll look for it, you turn this thing round.’

  ‘Right,’ Gilmore said, and moved for’ard.

  Everything unessential had been stripped from the cabin, even the pilot’s seat. He floated at the pilot’s position and looked at the controls.

  ‘Oh,’ he said.

  ‘Oh, don’t say oh,’ said Donna behind him. ‘Oh is a negative word.’ Gilmore didn’t react. She followed his gaze to the pilot’s controls. ‘That hole shouldn’t be there, should it?’

  ‘No,’ Gilmore said quietly. There was a big hole in the desk. A nav computer-interface-shaped hole. Another hole next to it was where the main drive controls should be. ‘They really weren’t leaving it to chance. They gave the pinnace its course, then took out everything that could be used to override it.’ He toggled a switch: it was dead. ‘We can’t even contact Pathfinder.’

  ‘Not that way, no.’ Donna toggled her own armour’s radio. ‘This is McCallum. Sergeant Quinlan, any marine, do you copy?’

  Nothing. She switched to Pathfinder’s main comms frequency and tried again. Still nothing.

  ‘We’re out of range,’ Gilmore said quietly. Suit radios were only meant for short range; they were probably already a couple of light seconds from Pathfinder’s position. They were a small speck of light and air in deep space, very alone.

  ‘So we can’t talk to the ship and we can’t turn round?’ Donna was just as quiet.

  ‘Nope. We’re about as committed as you can get.’ He tried the controls, one more time for luck, then looked up at her. ‘Next stop, the sun.’

  PART III

  Sixteen

  Day Sixteen: 18 June 2153

  The Dead World loomed large in the viewports and on the main display on Chariot of Rightful Justice’s flight deck. Jajing prided herself on the speed with which the ship had got here from Habitat 1, and she gazed fondly at the three males who had made it possible; her three sons, the ship’s sole crew.

  ‘Orbit insertion in five minutes,’ said Second Son. He sounded proud. They all knew they had excelled themselves in following Marshal of Space Barabadar’s orders, promptly and to the letter. Barabadar had sent a priority order from the vicinity of Firegod, that suddenly strangely popular area of space which Jajing knew better than to wonder too much about, and Chariot had responded.

  ‘Approach corridor is confirmed,’ said Third Son.

  ‘Transmit the codes,’ Jajing said.

  ‘Codes transmitted.’

  Essential repeat essential that you enter along the following orbital corridor, Barabadar had said. The orders had been followed by precise co-ordinates – not especially fuel-efficient co-ordinates either – and a series of codes to transmit ahead of them.

  Chariot�
��s crew had worked out what the codes were for long ago, as soon as the Dead World had been close enough for the ship’s scanners to pick up the satellite shield. An elaborate, a most intricate and no doubt extremely expensive defence system. But the codes had shut the system down so that Chariot could approach the Dead World in safety. Jajing could not help wondering, in a small and independent part of her mind which dared think thoughts that the Marshal of Space would rather she did not, what this system was for. She suspected that she was being let into a secret that should not be revealed. Well, her sons could keep quiet, and so could she.

  Jajing looked out at the Dead World and suppressed a shudder. Even twinkling in the sky of Homeworld it was ominous, a bright light that set the senses all on edge. Long ago, centuries before space flight, the Dead World – they had called it that even then, long before the birth of modern astronomy could verify it really was dead – had been an omen of ill will and bad luck. To have it in your birth constellation had been a terrible stigma.

  Those days of superstition were long over and Jajing thanked her battle gods for it, but the instinct remained. And now, to be so close . . .

  ‘My Mother, the satellites are responding to our queries,’ said First Son. ‘We have a record of the fugitive ship and the path that it took.’

  ‘Show me,’ said Jajing, and a representation of the Dead World appeared on her personal display. The satellites were green dots and the path of the intruder was . . .

  ‘That can’t be correct!’ she said. The intruder had swerved all over the sky. She played the scene back from the beginning and now a gold speck approached the green specks. A green speck flared, the gold speck turned red briefly to show the hit. And then it turned, impossibly, and turned and turned again; sometimes taking more hits, sometimes evading them. Finally, it put its nose down and dived straight into the atmosphere.

  ‘So where did it crash?’ she said.