REBEL
The rebel base on Gem looked like someone had just taken one of those rust mite nests on Stumble and just tossed an entire chunk of rusted auto onto it. The base itself was a bit like a rust mite nest too: Narrow corridors cut into raw rock, with doors fastened onto the walls and riveted into place in a kind of slapdash workmanlike way. The doors that were open looked in on storerooms filled with rifles, guns, grenades, armor, crates of food, tanks of pre-programmed nanopaste, and other things that barked their information to me with tiny little RFID yaps and yips. It was like walking past rooms full of exigenic puppies, each one trying to tell me how useful and explosive it was.
The corridors themselves were filled with Alliance folks. Humans from dozens of worlds, of every kind of gender and race, most of them dressed in rough homespun that could have only barely been called a uniform. Lots of them were lugging equipment here and there, but others were just rushing to their ready stations. A good chunk of them were wearing crinkly black jumpsuits with helmets that had rubber gas-masks attached to the front. The masks were left to swing to the side, letting them breath easy, and adding a rustly, flappy sound to their jogging.
Meetra served as one great big trashsmasher for me: Everyone got out of their way, though no one saluted. There were a few nods. Lots of people did stop to look at me: A stick of a girl with a threshold blade on the hip and the slightly pruny look of someone fresh from a healing vat.
Let them look.
I was ready for this.
THE TRAP
Meetra and I stepped into a large room dominated by a circular metal table that projected a holographic map of Gem and Gem space. The crazy loop of the fast pass fleet that had been set out to attack the Victrix was still plotted, but even a glance showed that there was no way that they'd be able to interfere in this battle -- not without blowing every last bit of reaction mass they had in a suicide rush. It was down to us. Down to me. Down to the plan that Meetra had laid out back on Atom City. I gulped.
It had seemed really fun back there.
The room was packed with the guys and gals and andro and whatever else that had slapped on the black jumpsuits and helmets. They stood at attention, and I picked out Techne among them -- though she wasn't wearing a mask helmet. She flashed me a grin, while Meetra nodded. "At ease," they said.
"What's the plan, General?" one of the Alliance soldiers asked -- a sleek looking man with electric blue hair and clittery mandibles made of snyth and steel. "We're going to use the PBCs?"
"Yes," Meetra said. "But not in the way you expect."
The voiceless voice of my djinn whispered in my ear. A PBC -- a particle beam cannon. A great big energy gun, powered by the base's concealed fusion reactor and tapped into enough waste heat dumps to let it fire a continual, ship-scouring beam of high energy particles into orbit. Meetra shot me a glance and nodded, indicating it was time for step one. Then they lifted their hand and flicked it at one of the women nestled at the console in the center of the room. The woman nodded and touched several controls. The lights dimmed.
"PBC firing," she said.
I closed my eyes.
SENSE
I couldn't see outside the room.
But I knew what was happening -- and that knowing
became
seeing, as if I was looking out of a capture-cam. In full, blistering colors. There was the pale white sweep of Gem's vast plains, interrupted only by the stark red-black mountain ranges. The sky was a pale pinkish hue now, and the streaks of the
Tiamat's
landing had long since blown away, leaving only a few wisps of white here and there. The PBC, though, was one big obvious interruption in the landscape: Rising up and out of the white, a long barrel of matte black and silver. It didn't even have time to fire: One second it was there, the next there was a flicker of laserlight, the next, the air leading to the PBC immolated. The molecules burst into flames and the shockwave that exploded out from around the PBC made my feet quiver.
The Victrix Imperitata had more guns. Better guns. Better comptech, too.
They had sniffed out the PBC with their telescopes and fired on it with the reflexes of an automaton.
But the guide laser led directly to the Victrix's belly. Which led
me
right into her belly. I felt the tech of the ship, buzzing around my perceptions. It was so vast and terrible that it made my knees go weak for a second. How could I even know where to
begin
with this task, let alone actually do it? But. No. No. I could do this. I clenched my fists and started to dig -- following the line of code from the weaponry to the targeting systems. I felt the presence roaring at me just as I reached the targeting arrays -- and Thale slammed into me.
My nerves exploded with heat and I couldn't tell if it was pleasure or if it was pain to feel him again. His claws pressed to my aetheric shoulders and I felt him hesitating -- a fractional hesitation. He could have flushed me out of the Victrix's system. But that single catch of the breath. That pause. The feeling of his electronic lips, hovering near my ears. The press of his virtual claws. It was a feeling so distinct, so different from our time together -- both in the dream and in reality -- that it took my breath away.
Then the need of the mission drove me forward.
I grabbed the targeting array and I shredded the code. I didn't just delete the programs. I ripped them into pieces and then jammed the pieces into all the wrong holes. Now Thale reacted. His claws dug in and I felt his presence shoving me out of the Victrix.
But I was grinning as I fell to my knees, gasping heavily. The soldiers were all gaping at me. Meetra helped me to my feet and offered me a small nanospray. I took it, blinking. They pointed at my nose. I sniffed and realized
that
was why I was tasting blood. That was why my head hurt.
Right.
BRIEFING
"Lady Venn just blinded the Victrix," Meetra said, their voice carrying through the room. "Without their targeting arrays, their firing solutions can't get better than a kilometer in resolution. While they will glass a planet if they have too, the Hegemony prefers to handle situations like this through controlled shows of force. Without the ability to surgically target our installations from orbit, they will move to the second strategy preferred by the Hegemony for planetary submission."
The holographic map changed to show the terrain around the main Alliance base and showed the Victrix coming down. The holographic Victrix used its agrav emitters to slow its descent to a stately crawl, then settled down, belly first onto the ground. The mental image made me want to giggle -- a five kilometer long sundiver, laying down in the desert like some big lazy dragon. It seemed utterly absurd. But Techne had pointed out that if a gravity field could keep a ship intact under high-G acceleration for days and days and days, it could
easily
handle landing on something as piddling as a planet's gravity well.
"Once it's down, it will disembark the Hegemonic army," Meetra said. "This class of worldkiller carries ten thousand troops with five thousand assorted support craft, five thousand tanks, five thousand self propelled artillery units..."
"What the hell are we gonna do against a Hegemonic army?" One of the soldiers spoke up. She was a tough, short looking girl who was maybe as broad as she was tall and all muscle. Her jaw was nearly rectangular. "It'll be slower than being bombed from orbit, but not by much."
Meetra's smile was deadly. "We're not letting the Victrix land. Each of you is a certified multirole combatant." They grinned. "And the best kept secret of Gem is our trump card."
The holotable shifted and projected a new image.
The soldiers all started grinning too.
TRUMP CARD
The Alliance's trump card was a canted triangle, maybe thirty feet long. The center of the triangle had a small bump that concealed the cockpit -- while the back had the four jet turbine engines. The belly was covered with missiles, while the front had a pair of linked, semi-turreted depleted uranium slug throwers that could put out enough ammo to shred armored walkers from two miles out. They were called the XD-908.
"Gem, before the warplagues, was gearing up for a global war," Meetra said, gesturing to the XD-908, which rotated slowly in the holographic field. "We found two caches of vac-sealed XD-908s, almost a hundred of them in total, and have been prepping them in concealed launch caves in this very base. When the Hegemony enters the atmosphere, we attack. The goal will be to knock out at least three of the Victrix's agrav emitters." They cracked their knuckles as the holographic table switched to showing the Victrix -- pointing out where the agrav emitters were. "Any less and the Victrix will be able to effect a soft landing, even if it she won't fly again. We need it to crash, then we need to shoot the bastards while they're down."
The Alliance soldiers -- the Alliance
pilots --
grinned.
"What about their point defense?" Mandible Guy asked.
Meetra glanced at me. I sighed, then finished firing the nano-spray up my nose. I sniffed, wriggled my nose a bit, then said: "Can't knock them out. Their big guns are linked to the targeting array, but most of that ship's hardened against my, uh, talents." I shrugged. "I'm honestly lucky to have taken out their array."
Meetra nodded. "Then we'll at least have one advantage: They'll be firing like this is the Great War again: By eye, with mechanical assistance. That should give us an edge."
The pilots nodded. No more questions came. "Dismissed," Meetra said. "And Christ go with you."
The pilots jogged towards the exit, their grins wolfish and eager. How many kicks had the Hegemony planted in the guts of how many worlds? How many of them had waited
decades
to get this chance? Techne ran past, giving me a grin and a wink -- and a need buzzed in me. I had to be there. I had to. I looked at Meetra, then drew myself up.
"Permission to join the flights, General," I said, my voice tight.
"Ven, you're a scavenger from a planet whose last plane flew almost a thousand years ago," Meetra said, their voice quiet.
I ducked my head, then turned. I glared at the holographic image of the Victrix until it had shifted back to the XD. The plane rotated before me and I tried to center myself. But as I reached in for my talent, all I could remember was the electric feeling of Thale's claws digging into my virtual back. My eyes closed and I took Thale and I put him aside. But I couldn't. He was
on
that ship. He was going to be behind one of those guns. Aiming the guns at us. Shooting us down. Shooting me. My throat felt dry...and my hands tightened even more. I opened my eyes and forced myself to touch my talent. And my djinn, sluggish and snappish, responded.
Knowledge about the XD exploded in my head. Where controls were. How to fly. How to shoot. How to kill. How to
