“You’re saying that you did not bring Raximander here.”
“I think Captain-Pilot Liasa has made that clear,” the serpent man said. “Do you not find this to be the case?”
“Clear as mud,” I said.
“Raximander got here somehow and we are required to investigate the matter.” The Colonel was being very diplomatic. Presumably she feared some sort of legal action by Ishtar Corporation.
“The situation is descending into chaos,” Captain-Mistress Liasa said. “Our simulations show that, if things follow the usual pattern ,within thirty-seven hours the city of Sternheim will be totally beyond redemption. We note that you have taken steps to contain the plague within this area.”
“So far, the situation is under control,” the Colonel said.
“Since it is a state of emergency,” the Weapon Smith captain said, “I am authorized to offer you the services of our house troops should they prove necessary. These will be available at the legal minimum rate should you wish to employ them.”
“I don’t think that it will be necessary,” the Colonel said. “But thank you for the offer.”
“It would seem that we have included the business part of our conversation,” the Weapon Smith captain said. “Can I perhaps offer you refreshments or a tour of our facilities?”
I could tell that she no more expected us to take up on that offer than she expected us to hire her house troops.
It was clear that we had been dismissed. The Colonel did not like it any more than I did but she knew she was not going to get any further at this point in time.
“No. We thank you for your offer of hospitality,” she said. “We need to go now. There is an invasion that needs to be contained.”
We stalked back across the embattled landing field of Sternheim. I could hardly wait to see what new development was about to take place. I strongly suspected that whatever was it wasn’t going to be a good one.
A refugee camp had been set up around our installations. Whatever the local militia leaders might say, a growing percentage of the local population was prepared to look toward the Federal Government for aid. It was hardly surprising.
Even with the militias being armed by the Weapon Ships, we were the best equipped people on the planet. And we were a lot less hostile than their heavily armed neighbors. The Weapon Ship had certainly changed the local balance of power.
Once one side has access to superior weaponry, all of the other participants in the game need to get the same access or be wiped out. It looked like this little confrontation was certainly going to be good for business. Funny, that.
“So what do you think?” the Colonel asked Medico Mark.
He checked his instruments. “Nothing. That I can detect anyway. There was nothing in the air to give away Raximander’s presence. No pheromones. No cellular traces. No bio-markers. That I could detect. But our sensor systems are not perfect. And who knows what the Weapon Ships are capable of. We know in some ways they are ahead of most of our contractors.”
“You’re saying they might have some way of masking the traces if Raximander had been around.”
“They would not even need to be able to do that. We never went inside the ship. They can sterilize the area around their ship as well as we can. Those soldiers were wearing spacetight armor so we might not pick up any traces of infection on them.”
“We could on the captain and the lizard though,” said the Colonel.
“They were wearing protective fields. Those could conceal traces too.”
“There needs to be some form of exchange with the atmosphere so that they can breathe. There would be some leakage.”
Mark nodded, considered things for a moment, and then shook his head. “There might, there might not be. If they had switched them on just before we arrived and then sprayed the area, there might not have been sufficient leakage if their shields’ coverage was set high enough.”
The Colonel fell silent for a moment. I knew she was doing exactly the same as I was, checking the energy readings our suits had recorded in the presence of the Weapon Smiths. The Colonel looked at me then at Mark and said, “Coverage was normal. There would have been enough time for some leakage if there was going to be any.”
“That is somewhat reassuring,” I said. “I would prefer not to have to fight the Smiths and Raximander at the same time.”
The Colonel gave me a snarky smile. “It just means that the emissaries they sent to greet us were not infected. We don’t know what might be going on within their ship.”
“If Raximander had a Weapon Ship under his control we would know all about it by now,” I said. “For one thing he would not be selling weapons to the militias, and for another, Orbital would be engaged in a brawl with something as big as she is right now.”
“I am inclined to agree with you,” said the Colonel. “I just want to consider the possibilities.”
“It’s a pretty scary possibility,” I understated. The Assimilators getting control of a Weapon Ship was right up there with Brood subversion of a StarForce battlestation. It was a nightmare that none of us wanted to consider. That said, the Weapon Ships were probably better protected against such a thing than Orbital and that was saying something.
“You think we should press for a full investigation?” Lopez asked.
“Not now. We’re going to have our hands full with Raximander. Still I don’t like this at all. It’s too much of a coincidence that Raximander and the Weapon Ship show up so close together.”
“Maybe Raximander has been lying dormant,” I said. “Maybe he wants us to think that.”
“Orbital reckons there’s a high probability of that being the case,” said the Colonel.
“You could at least interdict any further weapon sales until this plays out,” said Lopez, showing his naivety.
“Can’t interfere with the right of citizens to bear arms,” I said.
“Can’t restrict trade,” said Ragequit.
“And we’d have to put up with the screams of all the other militias claiming we were directly interfering with the internal politics of Faith, not to mention denying them the ability to defend themselves,” said the Colonel, who had clearly been giving thought to exactly this option.
“So until those clowns start shooting at us with military grade hardware, there’s nothing we can do?” said Lopez.
“Not clowns,” said the Colonel. “Citizens.”
“Citizen clowns,” I suggested, as what I thought was an acceptable compromise. The Colonel’s look told me she thought there was only one citizen clown around here and he was wearing my armor.
“Whatever we’re going to call them, there’s nothing we can do,” said Lopez.
“That’s about the size of it,” I said.
“We can get ready,” said the Colonel. “We’re going to have to step up our game. I am sure Raximander is about to step up his.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
I strode through the refugee camp at the spaceport, checking to make sure everything was okay. Neon lights blazed over the refugee camp. Monstrous bipedal Goliath cybermeks patrolled its boundaries. They looked like Evil Dave only five times the size. Warbirds patrolled overhead, running lights marking their position. Sometimes they peeled off and dove into the distance to strike against some target out of sight.
I could hear the booms as their strikes impacted. I could have called up the datafeed to find out what it was if I wanted but my attention was caught by Doctor Olson, crouched down beside a bubble tent. Her attention was on the children she was tending to. A familiar looking old lady was there with two familiar looking kids.
“You want your gun back?” I asked her.
“Kiss my donkey, Fed,” she said.
“I see you found your way to the torture camp. How are you finding it?”
Doctor Olson glared at me. I could not blame her for that. I was just being a smartass. I always am when I am nervous.
“You think I am going to be grate
ful for this?” Granny Schmidt asked. “This is what we pay taxes for.”
“You don’t pay taxes,” I said. “You’re with the church militias. They are exempt.”
“That’s because they put the tithes to better use than the Fed Gov. They look after our people.”
“Doing a great job of it now, aren’t they?”
I don’t know why I was needling her. She was an old woman in a strange place and she was just talking loud to reassure the kids and maybe herself. In her heart, she knew who was doing the protecting. When it comes to arguments I am not a very gracious winner. I also knew who was going to have to take Raximander down, and it would not be her folks.
A Goliath lumbered by once more, two Mastodons following it like attack dogs. The kids looked at it, fascinated as they always are by the big war machines. I know the feeling. I get it myself sometimes.
Doctor Olson took me by the arm and pulled me away. I let her. I had the feeling I would regret sticking around for the rest of this argument.
“You really don’t know when to shut up, do you?” she said.
“Never have. Never will.”
“You have to rub it in. It ever occur to you that’s why your sort will never be accepted around here?”
“Nothing to do with the locals’ prejudices then. It’s all my fault.”
She looked into the distance, exasperation etched all over those fine cheekbones. “You can’t change the way people think overnight.”
“You’re right. We haven’t been able to change the way you people think in centuries, maybe millennia.”
“And that’s what you want, isn’t it?”
“Truthfully, I don’t care. You’re welcome to think whatever you want as long as you don’t shoot at me or your neighbors.”
She stared at the distant lights. “We’ll be doing less of that if your friend Raximander has his way. We’ll all be part of one big hive mind.”
“Raximander still manages to do his fair share of shooting.”
“That’s not what I meant. We’ll be here as bodies but our minds will be gone. We’ll just be part of him.”
“I don’t know if that’s the way it works. He does not seem to think so.”
“It is terrifying, isn’t it? Knowing he’s out there. It is out there is probably a better way of thinking about it. How can you beat something like that? Something that can absorb living things, take all their knowledge, reshape them to its will.”
“You can avoid being infected. You can deploy cybermeks. You can nuke it from orbit if worst comes to worst.”
“That hardly seems like a solution to me.”
“It’s not. It’s the option of last resort.”
There was a note of desperation in her voice as she asked once again, “Why is he here? Why now?”
“I don’t know.”
“I thought the Assimilators were beaten, that StarForce drove them back.” It hadn’t quite gone that way but I did not want to disillusion her. Telling her that humanity had been saved by the Ascendants would not have sat well with her.
“I don’t know if they can be beaten. We don’t know how many progenitors there are. We don’t know where they come from or what they want. Raximander is not invincible though. With enough firepower and cooperation from the locals we can beat him without having to sterilize the planet.”
“Cooperation—that’s going to be the difficult bit, isn’t it? We’re so used to fighting with each other, with jostling for position, for protecting what’s ours and trying to grab what is everybody else’s. I’m not sure we can learn to cooperate quickly enough.”
“It’s amazing what people can learn to do when their lives are on the line.”
She looked back over at granny and the children. She looked at the tired and scared people all around. Some of them were watching us suspiciously. It seemed that not even an Assimilator invasion was enough to justify talking to a Fed. I could see why she was so depressed and said so.
“It wasn’t always like this. We managed to live in peace here once, before the Assimilation and the collapse. We were more tolerant then.”
I found it hard to believe the Aryan Jihad had ever been tolerant but now did not seem like the time to say it.
“It all went wrong when the refugees were sent here. Until ten years ago this world was all Aryan territory. Why did the kaffirs have to be sent here and those Orthodox untermensch?”
“They’re originally from Gideon and Antioch,” I said. “Their worlds were right in the path of the Brood. I should know. I fought Raximander there.”
“Yes, but why send them here? Blacks, different faiths. The Federal Government must have known what would happen.”
“I wouldn’t count on that. Somebody probably just stuck a pin in a star map.”
“You’re kidding, right?” Her pupils seemed very large as she looked at me. It was dark so that was hardly surprising.
“I wish I was.”
“Ulrich always claimed it was a Federal plot to destabilize us. They put all the refugees down in Sternheim. That’s where all the factories were and most of the jobs.”
“It’s also where the spaceport was.”
“So you don’t think there was a plot.”
“They probably just looked at your tax codes and put you all in the same place. Must have figured all you religious people would get along. Isn’t that what Jesus told you to do?”
“You’re a very cynical man.” She tugged at a strand of her hair, pushed it behind her ear.
“You’re saying I was wrong about Jesus? Maybe there is a part in the Bible saying Shoot your neighbor if his skin color is different or you don’t like his genotype. Maybe it’s the eleventh commandment. I wouldn’t know. I am not a religious scholar.”
Her look was more disappointed than disapproving. She opened her mouth as if she was about to say something.
An incoming message warning scrolled across my line of vision. I held up my hand for silence.
“Raximander is attacking again,” said the Colonel.
“Where?”
“Orthodox territory. There’s a new wrinkle though—take a look.”
A HUD insert appeared, showing drone footage of the assault. It was grayscale through a nightvision camera and a bit grainy where image enhancement software was running. I could see militiamen shooting with Ishtar blasters.
Their attackers were something new. They still looked human. Or at least humanoid. Just. Only it looked as if the skin had been scraped off large chunks of their body and additional muscles and tendons had been grafted on. These were not ordinary corpse warriors. They moved too fast, were way too strong. Close ups showed skeletal claws of sharpened bone emerging from feet and forearms.
I had seen the like before. We called them elites.
They were armed to the teeth with grenades and assault rifles. The Orthodox, with their Ishtarian weapons had the advantage in firepower. Rax’s boys had greater mobility and were better coordinated. As I watched I saw a frontal assault of corpse warriors mowed down, but as it was happening the grafted warriors moved swiftly and silently round the flanks and infiltrated the Orthodox position. Where they did, screams ensued. I guessed the elite’s victims were being torn apart. I’d seen it before.
“What is it?” Doctor Olson asked. “What’s going on?”
“It looks like Raximander’s finally decided to bring his A game,” I said. “I need to go.”
I shouldered my reaper and ran toward the launch area. The shuttles were waiting. On the feed I saw Orthodox position after Orthodox position overrun. Each time it happened, corpse warriors swarmed forward. Some of them picked up the Ishtarian weapons. I had a very bad feeling about that.
I strapped myself in. We hurtled through the night to the scene of Rax’s latest assault.
A dozen robogrunts deployed from the shuttle and hit the ground running. Their objective was the recently lost Orthodox positions. We intended to hit Rax’s lads in the flank and roll t
hem up. Warbirds hurtled overhead, staffing the ground with missiles and the flickering bolts of pulse cannon.
“Ready?” the Colonel asked.
“Yep.” I sprang from the shuttle and raced toward the building. Blaster fire scorched the earth all around me. I threw myself flat, rolled behind a broken wall and looked up. A human figure was firing away at me with an Ishtarian weapon. A shot clipped the field of my armor. I ducked and looked at him through the camera eyes of a drone. Human for sure. Maybe an Orthodox Survivor with a grudge against Feds.
Didn’t he have anything better to do? Surely he must have noticed Raximander’s boys prowling around. One of the robogrunts sighted on him. I authorized the kill and it took his head off.
I raced toward the building again. None of our people were inside, and I wasn’t feeling too charitable to the local militiamen, so I rolled a grenade in through the open door, waited for the flare of white light, white heat, and then went through, ready to shoot.
A few toasted Orthodox corpses glared up at me as I entered. I raced up a set of metal stairs, ducked low and surveyed the room from where I had been shot. An Ishtar blaster lay on the ground. Nearby, minus most of his head, lay a militiaman. Oddly he was wearing the colors of the Aryan Jihad. He seemed kind of out of place here, to say the least.
I checked the room out. The usual. Busted furniture, tinned and dried rations, a corner cleared to be used as a lavatory. Typical burned-out building used as a militia base in this sort of conflict. Nothing new here save the guy’s colors. Had he just claimed them from a corpse, or had some of the Jihad gone over to their old enemies in the teeth of Raximander’s assault?
It was hard to say. I moved on deeper into the building. Bio-sensors picked up traces of Rax’s minions. They had passed this way recently. I heard the sounds of fighting up ahead and pushed on. I caught the sight of red muscle and white bone and knew I was within striking distances. A couple of my robogrunts had caught up with me. I sent them ahead and waited for the rest of the squad to catch up. If there was going to be a fight I wanted as many guns on my side as I could get.
I heard the sound of massive stomping feet. Looking at a broken window I saw a Goliath striding along the street. Its paintwork changed shades in the flickering light of its massive blasters as they fired. More distant explosions shook the ground as the warbirds moved in.