Aurora Rising: The Complete Collection (174 page)

“Thanks.” He stuck out a hand as he approached her. “Caleb Marano, Senecan Federation Intelligence, sent on behalf of Earth Alliance Strategic Command to terminate General O’Connell’s offensive by any means necessary.”

She stared at his hand for a beat then headed for the lift. “Captain Brooklyn Harper, Marine Special Operations. You can tell me how such a ridiculous proposition came about
after
we get to your ship and off this death trap.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Noah was chuckling as he rose to his feet from behind a chair.

Caleb cocked an eyebrow. “That was your cover?”

He peered down and ran his palms along his chest. “I’m alive and don’t appear to be shot, so yeah.”

Captain Harper had stopped to activate a control panel, which turned out to be a ship-wide broadcast system. “This is a general evacuation order. Proceed to an operating shuttle or escape pod. Hostilities against this planet and the people on it have ceased, so do
not
shoot your rescuers when they find you. That is all.”

Increasing instability in the framework of the
Akagi
, but no further gunfire, marked their sprint back to the
Siyane
. There was still forward velocity beneath their feet, so the cruiser was still flying, but it was unquestionably a doomed vessel.

Caleb re-opened the hatch, grabbed onto the bottom lip and hoisted himself up before offering Noah a hand. Harper did them the interesting courtesy of coming to attention outside. “Permission to come aboard, sir?”

He gave her a wry smile. “Granted, Captain.” Despite a visibly injured arm and shoulder she climbed up and was inside faster than he could offer assistance.

Noah was easing into his seat when Caleb joined him in the cockpit. “Okay, so how are we going to get off this death trap?”

“Like this.” Caleb fastened his harness, reached over and fired the pulse laser.

As the
Siyane
was canted at a sixty degree downward angle, the laser tore through the floor, the two floors under it, and finally the hull to create a hole to the outside—which they promptly fell through, ricocheting between the jagged edges until they reached open sky. He engaged the impulse engine an entire five seconds before they would’ve crashed to the desert sand four kilometers below.

Noah relaxed in his seat. “That works.”

“Hold one.” Harper appeared in the cockpit. “Swing around so we can see the
Akagi
.”

“Sure.” Caleb arced to port until the cruiser came into view. Fire and dense smoke billowed from numerous cracks and two yawning holes; it listed badly to starboard and down forty or so degrees. Its trajectory would send it crashing into the desert safely away from the city, eventually.

Abruptly the triple impulse engines at the rear of the ship ruptured, sending blue-white flames mushrooming outward to consume the stern of the vessel. The shockwave rolled over them with a shudder, and the
Akagi
plummeted from the sky to crash tail first to the ground.

He looked over his shoulder. “Care to explain?”

The woman grimaced, but it seemed to be related to her arm rather than his question. “My contingency plan. I tried to raise a mutiny, but it failed due to sheer terror of O’Connell on the part of the crew. An engineer I did win over helped me wire the engines to overload on my signal. I didn’t want to use it with a full crew onboard, though I would have if this had gone on much longer. I wanted to give my fellow crewmen one more chance to do the right thing, but you guys saved me the trouble. So what now?”

Caleb held up a finger to silence her as he again contacted his sister.

On the way. How are you doing?

Fine, we’re fine. The air’s getting a bit stuffy and—but we’re fine.

I’ll hurry.

He had vaguely noted Noah filling their new companion in during the conversation, but when he turned to face Noah she had vanished. He glanced over his shoulder to see her circling the cabin, deep in conversation. If he had to guess, on finding herself freed of the communications block she was reporting the details of O’Connell’s actions up the chain of command.

Noah joined him in his glance and muttered under his breath. “I swear, if I wasn’t already in love, I would totally be in love right now.”

“Well it’s a good thing you’re already in love, because she would eat you for breakfast.”

“Agreed.” He nodded sagely and settled back in his seat. “Then Kennedy would eat me for lunch, and I would not survive the event.”

47

SPACE, NORTH-CENTRAL QUADRANT

S
ENECA
S
TELLAR
S
YSTEM

“
I
T’S NOT ENOUGH.”

Rychen’s stare bore into Alex from two meters away. Her mother’s holo lay just outside her peripheral vision, but she felt her virtual stare nonetheless.

“Ms. Solovy, from my perspective we are rather kicking their asses.”

“While I can’t be as optimistic as Admiral Rychen without being on the scene, from here it does appear to be going definably well. A bit more problematic on Romane, but we are holding our own.”

“Holding our own isn’t
enough
, Mom. This is it—our one and only chance. We will never be stronger than we are right now. If the enemy makes it through this battle to fight another day, if it limps away and licks its wounds and returns, on that day we will lose. Forgive me for the momentary arrogance, but I can see
everything
happening everywhere, and I am telling you we may be winning, but as it stands now we will not have victory.”

“Alex, your arrogance has never been momentary—which is fine. What do you suggest we do about it?”

She scanned the large screen behind her. “Get me on one of the superdreadnoughts.”

Rychen nearly choked—on what, she didn’t hazard a guess. “Excuse me?”

In her head Morgan called her ‘bat-shit cracked’ and Devon hooted and Mia mumbled something about how she and Caleb truly were meant for one another. She ignored them all except for Valkyrie’s sentiment of support.

“Get me on one of the superdreadnoughts. Valkyrie says we can access the interior through one of the empty swarmer docks. We’ve been studying the pure Metigen code I copied non-stop, and we think if given direct access we can corrupt their operating code. Though they’re not a hive mind in the technical sense, the SDs are constantly communicating and cooperating—you’ve seen it happen. Our signal interference broadcasts are hampering them but not stopping them.”

She met Rychen’s gaze full-on. She had discerned hours ago that her mother trusted his battlefield judgment; if she could convince him, her mother would fall in line. “I can slow their shield and weapon reaction time. I can confuse their formations and maneuvers. Hell, I may even be able to get them to shoot at or crash into each other. I can insert errors into their code which will recursively degrade their programming until it’s nothing but gibberish. I can give us a victory, today and for all future days.”

The man regarded her silently for a long stretch, and she conceded that had she been a subordinate officer she would likely have melted to her knees under the weight of the scrutiny. Then he exhaled with a dry laugh. “Miriam, you didn’t tell me she was as crazy as her father.”

“An oversight on my part. She is easily as crazy as her father. Alex, this is insane.”

“Of course it is—but it’s also necessary.”

Rychen examined his own semi-circle of screens. “How do you propose we ‘get you on one of the superdreadnoughts’?”

Emboldened, she charged ahead before her mother could lodge a renewed protest. “Obviously I’ll need a spacesuit with propulsion. I can hitch a ride on a reconnaissance craft or a fighter to a somewhat close point, then get myself the rest of the way.”

“Recon craft, no question—if a fighter flew slow enough to carry you, it and you would get blown out of the sky. Say this works. How do you get back?”

She shrugged gamely. “Same way? I’ll propel myself off the SD, and hopefully I can get picked up before being speared by a stray laser or stray debris?”

“For heaven’s sake, Alex. You do not need to do this. We’ll find another way.”

“You’ve had to say that to me a lot these last few days, Mom, and I appreciate it. I mean it. But I need to do what is required in the circumstances.”
I deeply want to do this.

Miriam’s looked taken aback. “Exactly how much did your alien friend show you?”

“What?”

“It doesn’t matter.” Her mother sighed, displaying a frustration Alex had come to recognize as entirely her fault. “Christopher? Can you make it work?”
Oh, so
she
could call him Christopher?

He grimaced at the tactical map. “I’ll do my damnedest. If handled very,
very
carefully, it should be doable. I can’t protect her—” his eyes shot to her “—I can’t protect you inside. And we have no idea what’s inside.”

She smiled enigmatically, and his expression wavered in a way which made her think perhaps she had frightened him a little. “There’s nothing inside—definitely nothing living, and I’d be willing to bet there’s nothing but metal and photal conduits and quantum orbs. They will not have accounted for the possibility of boarding by the enemy.”

“You’re so certain of that, are you?”

“I am. It is impossible for me to understate the magnitude of their hubris.”

“Admiral Solovy, do you authorize the mission?”

Her mother’s voice was quiet, but not cold. “She doesn’t need my authorization…she never has. But yes, let the record state I authorized the mission.”

“Thank you. I—we—can do this.”

Rychen threw his hands in the air. “All right. Get to the flight deck. I’ll recall a recon ship and send someone down with a powered suit.”

Alex watched the reconnaissance ship pilot closely as he showed her how to attach and detach herself to the grapple on the hull and secure the magnetic pad so she wouldn’t be jostled into a lump of broken bones during the trip. Finally he shot her a skeptical look, shook his head and departed for the cockpit, leaving her lying on her stomach against the upper hull of the small ship.

Valkyrie, do you remember several years ago when you asked me what it was like to be in space?

Of course I do.

I think you and I are both about to find out.

I always suspected we would.

She chuckled lightly. The sound echoed around in her helmet and faded away.
Did you now….

The ship’s engines engaged to boost it off the deck, and she hurriedly quadruple-checked the magnetic seal. They exited the open bay door and surged forward into space.

The multiple layers of metal and glass encasing the dreadnought really did insulate one from the scope of what was occurring just outside the hull. The fires were brighter. The explosions were closer and so extremely larger. Chaos.

No, Alex. This is not chaos. I have seen humans act in chaos, running in hysteria without direction or intent. But this is humans acting with purpose and using their tools to effect that purpose. This is machines acting in furtherance of their purpose. It is violence on a scale rarely seen, but it is not chaos.

Consider me properly rebuked, Valkyrie. Now pay attention because I’m going to flip over onto my back.

Oh?….ohhhhhh.

Alex cackled in delight, as much at Valkyrie’s reaction as at the scene consuming them. They soared through the ongoing combat, sturdy metal beneath her back but space spread out for 210° around her.

Yes, there was violence. There was death. But there was also such beauty, such heroism and grace and wonder.

She gasped as a swarmer exploded less than a hundred meters from her—but they were past the debris before it reached them, and before she could stir up a good panic.