Destruction, p.1
Destruction, page 1
part #4 of Forgotten Colony Series
Destruction
Forgotten Colony, Book Four
M.R. Forbes
Chapter 1
“Paige, stay here and keep an eye on whatever that is,” Caleb said, marking the incoming lights in the distance on his HUD. It was airborne, a ship of some kind, moving slowly—but not too slowly—toward the Inahri city-ship.
Tentative. That was the right way to describe it. Up until a few minutes ago, coming near this place would have triggered the artificial intelligence protecting it to activate a signal, a quantum waveform that acted like a targeted, ultra-powerful electromagnetic pulse. The ship and everyone on it would have been knocked out of the sky.
But that was a few minutes ago, before the Guardian Intellect had been destroyed, blasted with an odd energy weapon that did not affect organic matter or the wiring that ran through the Guardians’ standard Space Force Marine Advanced Tactical Combat Armor. It only affected the node-to-node systems of the Intellects, the creations of the Axon, a race that was hundreds of thousands of years humanity’s senior and whose technological advancements were all around them.
It was too bad it hadn’t made them any smarter when it came to preparing for war.
They’d had thousands of years to get ready for the coming of the Relyeh, a race of aliens even older than the Axon. The Relyeh had created the trife, the demons that had conquered half the galaxy, including Earth, and who the Axon claimed were expanding at a suddenly increasing rate.
The best they had come up with to deal with the trife was to give humans their own technology to see what kind of toys they could create, and then force them to fight genetically engineered demons until they were deemed superior.
The idea would have been over-the-top ridiculous if Command hadn’t come up with the very same idea when they let Riley Valentine change the navigation computers onboard the Deliverance to bring it here. Here, where the trife infesting Earth had originated. Here, where she was supposed to unleash human-trife super-soldiers with massive healing factors, enabling them to survive almost any encounter.
And here, where the trife weren’t the most dangerous alien they would have to deal with.
Humans were.
Caleb still couldn’t believe how all of this was unfolding, starting with the shitstorm they’d had to fight through before the Deliverance ever left its hangar. Things had only found a way to get worse from there. Valentine was slowly mutating into the same human-trife hybrid she had created. He and his Guardians were stranded on a city-sized starship made by humans with technology given to them by the Axon. Unfortunately, Caleb and his Guardians had no clue how to use it, or even how to get from one part of the city to another.
And the humans, who the Guardian Intellect had named the Inahri? They seemed to be on their way, well aware that something was going on in the city. They had to know and were testing whether or not the Intellect was no longer operational.
And Flores was dead.
Caleb felt it every time he lost a member of his team. Whether he had known them for years or for only minutes. As soon as they fell under his command, they were his responsibility to keep alive. Flores had given herself up to save him, trying so desperately to make up for the worst decision of her life, when she had run from a fight and gotten her squadmates killed. It wasn’t an offense he could forgive her for — only God could do that — but he hoped the courage she showed at the end had helped her find peace in whatever came next.
“Roger, Sergeant,” Paige replied. She moved closer to the transparency in the wall, eyes fixed on the incoming lights. Caleb’s ATCS estimated the range at ten kilometers and their speed at one hundred kph, giving them six minutes to prepare.
Of course, they had more than six minutes. It would take time for the craft to do whatever it came to do, and the city-ship they were standing in was massive. It was possible they could avoid the strangers altogether.
The real question was…should they?
That was the sticking point. Both he and Valentine believed the Inahri were a threat. But they diverged in the second part of the equation. Valentine thought the best way to manage the threat was to attempt to ally with them. He wasn’t sure. There might have been a time when he believed negotiation was the best defense, but the trife had put a dent in that belief, and Valentine’s duplicity had punched a hole straight through. He had expected Hal’s betrayal, but it hadn’t made things any easier.
Still, if the ship wasn’t a drone and there were people on it, he was sure it would be better to confront a smaller group. Then again, how were they supposed to communicate? The Inahri were descendants of humans who had been taken from Earth over ten thousand years earlier, but they had evolved on a different world. There was no way they spoke English.
Too many options, not enough time. And he was wasting it.
“Guardians, let’s go,” he said, breaking back down the long corridor at a run.
He was at least half a minute behind Riley. Was she planning to try to meet with the Inahri? Had she seen the lights coming their way? She didn’t care about the colonists. She had admitted as much. She would gladly turn over the energy unit to get on the Inahri’s good side. She would gladly give up all twenty-six thousand people in the colony for the chance to convince these humans to help free Earth.
He wanted Earth back too, but at what cost? And if the Axon were right about the Relyeh, to what end would winning Earth back from the trife matter? The demons were their front-line soldiers. Their grunts. What kind of damage could their masters do? Even if Riley was right and she got what she wanted from them, would she free Earth only to lose it again, and kill their next best hope of continuing their race?
They ran down the corridor, back to the quantum teleporter. The device was their next challenge. Hal had set it to bring them up here. Caleb had no idea how to use it. None of them did.
There was a small rod implanted in the floor beside the platform; it had to be the controls. Caleb came to a stop in front of it, with Washington and Dante flanking him and Kiaan hanging behind them. He reached for the rod, only to have it begin emitting a soft light that formed into a hologram. It had strange symbols on it, clearly an alphabet of some kind, but he had no idea how to read it.
“I wonder if this thing comes with a manual?” Dante said.
“We wouldn’t be able to read that either,” Caleb replied.
“I wonder where the power is coming from if this place doesn’t have its energy unit.”
“Backup batteries, maybe,” Caleb guessed. “Do you think they have emergency stairs?”
Washington tapped him on the shoulder and pointed toward one of the other exits.
“Okay, but don’t go too far.”
The big Marine gave him a thumbs-up and dashed down the corridor on the left, vanishing within seconds.
“When in doubt, start mashing buttons, I guess?” Dante said.
“That could be dangerous. We could wind up teleporting ourselves to the trash incinerator or something.”
They spent the next minute puzzling over the controls. Caleb checked his HUD a few times, watching the lights continue their approach through the camera on Paige’s helmet and the mark on the shared tactical grid. The vessel had become more defined, and he could make out the sleek shape behind the lights. It was large enough to carry at least four humans if it was occupied at all.
And it would be there in four minutes.
Washington reappeared from the left branch, going ahead of them and rushing down that path.
“Sergeant Card,” Kiaan said. “Do you mind if I take a closer look?”
“Do you have an idea?” Caleb said, moving out of the way.
“I’m just studying the symbols. There’s a pattern to them. And look.” He pointed to one set of symbols. “Those look like numbers to me. They say math is the universal language.”
“Algorithms,” Caleb said. “The Axon communicate completely in math. Maybe the Inahri do too?”
“It’s possible. These symbols are heavier. I don’t know if I’m reading them right, but my guess would be we’re on Deck Sixty-one. What do you think, sir?”
“Given the height from the base, I’d say that’s probably about right. Give or take.”
“So all we need to do is find Deck One, right?” Dante said.
“I hope so, Colonel.”
“Please, call me Sheriff Dante, or just Sam. Colonel was Governor Stone’s mockery. The Marshals were a joke. I’m sorry, Kiaan. He sent us out here to die, and you don’t deserve that.”
“We aren’t dead yet, Sheriff,” Kiaan said.
“That’s the spirit,” Caleb said. Washington returned from the forward corridor, swinging around to the right side. “Wash, anything?” He shook his head on the way past.
“I guess they don’t have emergency stairs,” Dante said. “When you have something like an energy unit, you probably never expect the power to go out.”
“Or they have something like it, and we just don’t know where to look,” Caleb said, glancing at his HUD again. Three minutes.
Kiaan continued studying the hologram. He put his hand up to it and swiped to the right. The symbols moved with the motion.
“The digit symbols aren’t changing,” he said. “I think that means this would be lateral movement through the ship. Same deck, different teleporter.”
“Logical,” Dante said.
Kiaan swiped down.
“The numbers are increasing,” Caleb said, starting to get a feel for the symbols.
“Other way,” Kiian replied, s miling sheepishly. He ran his hand the other direction, and the numbers started going down.
Washington came back from the corridor. He had a panicked look on his face, and he started waving frantically toward the teleporter.
“Wash?” Caleb said. A bolt of energy sizzled past the other Marine, hitting the ceiling across the room. What the hell? “Paige, we need to go. Now!”
“Roger,” Paige replied.
“Get on the teleporter,” Caleb said, looking back the way Washington had come. He didn’t see anything yet, but another flash of light preceded a second bolt, which missed Kiaan by centimeters. “Paige, hurry!”
He looked back at the holographic controls. They had figured out how to work the settings, but how the hell were they supposed to activate the device? He tried to remember what Hal had done, but it all happened so fast. Damn it.
Paige reached the room at the same time the enemy came out of the shadows and into view. Caleb wasn’t sure whether or not to be pleased their attacker wasn’t human. It was similar to the Basic Intellect whose capsule Hal had claimed, except it was more metallic, and its movements more stiff. A robot of some kind?
It fired at them, forcing Washington to pull Kiaan to the floor of the platform. Paige and Dante got down too.
Caleb looked back at the hologram. Swiping changed the target. So to activate it…
He slapped his hand through it. A white light appeared at the top of the teleporter, suggesting it was active. Of course, it would give the user time to board.
He glanced at the Guardians, and then back at the robot.
“Stay on the teleporter,” he said, moving away.
“What are you doing?” Dante asked.
“We have a gun that’s effective against Intellects. I want one that’s effective against everything else.”
Dante tried to protest, but the bottom of the teleporter flashed, and then the Guardians were gone.
Chapter 2
Caleb moved to the corner of the room, out of the attacker’s line of sight. He pressed his back against the bulkhead, listening. His ATCS had the enemy on his tactical, and he was able to monitor its movement toward him. It had slowed a little, suddenly cautious. It knew he had stayed behind, and it wasn’t sure why.
He was dismayed but not surprised to see he had lost the link with the rest of the Guardians’ combat network. They were too far away to get a signal through the alien alloy.
“I hope this wasn’t my worst idea today,” he said to himself. He didn’t think it was possible. Not after he had let it slip that the Deliverance had an energy unit on board. That was probably the worst mistake he had made in his entire career.
He stayed at the corner, waiting for the robot. He heard its slow footsteps. Then he heard a soft clink. A small round device rolled into the room.
There was never anything good about anything rolled into a room by an enemy. Caleb turned away from it, covering his helmeted head with his armored replacement arm as the ball detonated in a blindingly bright flash of light. His filters were too slow to adjust, leaving white splotches flashing in front of his eyes.
He heard the robot coming at him again and turned toward it, trying to gauge its rate of approach. He swung his arm out in a tight clothesline that caught the bot directly across its blank face. The clash of metal meeting metal echoed across the room as the robot skidded off its feet, onto its back.
Blinking rapidly to get his bearings, Caleb caught the movement of the bot’s servo-powered arm and dove away just in time to avoid a blast from the weapon it carried. Then the robot paused the attack to get back on its feet.
He followed the grid on his tactical, using a small corner of his vision to guide him. He threw himself at the robot, shoving his shoulder into it. They clanged together again, the force pushing the machine sideways and into the wall.
He grabbed the robot’s gun with his human hand, trying to skew the robot’s aim.
Instead, the robot used it to yank him sideways, turning the weapon to shoot him in the chest.
Caleb reacted instinctively, snapping his replacement hand down on the robot’s arm and forcing the gun groundward. It fired into the floor, and Caleb drew his arm back to throw it forward, punching the bot hard in the head. The blow was enough to break its neck, but not enough to stop it.
The robot kicked him in the leg, trying to take his feet out from under him. Caleb moved with the blow, planting his weight on his other foot and stepping to the side, closer to the bulkhead. The weapon fired past him, again barely missing him. He took the robot’s arm in his replacement hand, using all the strength of the synthetic limb to force the machine’s arm up and back toward its chest.
The robot punched Caleb with its other hand, the blow powerful enough to strain his ribs through his SOS. It hit him again and again. Caleb winced under the pain of the blows, but stayed focused on getting the weapon turned away from himself. He was stronger overall than the bot was. All he needed, now that his eyes had begun to clear, was time to take it down.
He finally maneuvered the bot’s arm in position and then quickly dropped his human hand, putting his finger over the robot’s finger on the trigger. As he struggled to force the trigger down, the robot continued to pummel him in the side. but he wasn’t about to give in. He stayed with it, shoving the machine back into the wall.
“I’m so damn sick of fake people,” he grunted, giving one last push. The weapon went off, the bolt firing directly into the machine’s chest. It burned deep, finally cutting through something important in the tin man’s innards and shutting it down. It tilted forward and Caleb stepped aside, letting it fall directly onto its face.
Caleb knelt beside it, grabbing the weapon and pulling it away. It bore some similarity to the P-50, though it was more of a carbine than a rifle, with a shorter stock and a small square muzzle. He would have thought the alien weapons would be more exotic but then again, how many ways could you make a practical gun? It was about functionality, not form.
He ambled back to the teleporter controls, reactivating the platform. His ATCS flashed, and he saw there was another target incoming. He checked the time. The unidentified craft should have arrived a minute ago. Was it the Inahri?
Armed or not, he wasn’t sticking around to find out. He tapped the hologram to activate it and climbed onto the platform. The teleporter blinked, and he was somewhere else.
The Guardians were still there, waiting for him.
“Caleb,” Dante said, rushing to him as he stumbled off the platform. She wrapped her arm around his waist, helping to hold him up.
“Got it,” he said, showing them the weapon.
“Are you hurt?” Dante asked.
“A broken rib, maybe,” he replied. “I’ll live.”
“The alien craft should have landed by now,” Paige said.
“I know. I think they were already on Deck Sixty-one.”
“Through the teleporter?”
“Not the one we used. But maybe using it locks it out? I can only imagine what would happen if two teleporters tried to go to the same place at the same time.”
“Ewww,” Paige said.
“Exactly.”
“That was a stupid thing to do, Sergeant,” Dante said.
“Probably. But we can’t run around in here without being able to defend ourselves. I think that bot proved it.” Caleb looked around. He could see they were in a much smaller room with only one exit. “Where are we?”
“We don’t know yet,” Dante said. “We were waiting for you.”
“Not where we came in. Kiaan, do you think you can get this thing set to the entrance?”
Kiaan made a face. “Probably not, sir.”
“It’s okay. As long as we’re on the right deck, we should be able to find our way out.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Wash, you should take this. You’re the best shot we have.” Washington shook his head and pointed at Paige. Caleb turned back to her. “How’d you get so good? Metro didn’t have any loaded guns up to a few days ago.”
“Games,” she replied. “And a natural talent, I guess.”
“Good enough.” He handed her the weapon. “Don’t shoot unless I give the order.”
“Yes, sir.”
Caleb activated the hologram for the teleporter, keeping it lit and hopefully locked out. “I’m not sure how much time this buys us, but something is better than nothing. Let’s move.”
