The Forsaken Empire (The Endervar War Book 2) (43 page)

The missiles sped forth, slamming into the defending cannons. The tracer fire vanished as the dropships approached. Arendi piloted the starfighter away as she prepared for another perhaps the final pass.

Alysdeon said.

The strike force had made contact. In another collision, the first wave of dropships had struck the enemy’s hull. Each one now latched on like a barnacle, and began to drill. The Destroyer and his robot troopers were ready to enter and pour through the ship. The invasion was under way.

The Destroyer was confident he could take over the vessel. His prior visit to the mother ship had revealed several potential weak points areas that could be hacked and controlled. The objective was to assault and secure the vital sections. With any luck, they could end this battle quickly and compel the Enforcer’s entire apparatus in the region to self-destruct.

Arendi piloted the starfighter, determined to see that happen. She counted to herself. One. Two. Three. Only to repeat the numbers over again. With each passing moment, more dropships were landing and digging into the structure. The Destroyer had prepared an entire battalion to seize the ship. Arendi was close to joining them. The starfighter came around and spotted the scene.

Alysdeon said.

The icons in her eyes lit green. She fired again, holding tight to the controls. The final ordnance loaded and took off. Arendi then watched as the last of the missiles hammered into the mother ship, bludgeoning a new hole in the craft. The emerging gap was wide; save for some debris, the area was open. Arendi then powered the craft onward, certain this was where they would land.

Hang on, she shouted, bracing for the impact. The starfighter then dove into the enemy ship.

***

Arendi made a fist and punched her arm through the offending machine. Her enhanced strength dented the enemy’s armor. The bands at her wrist did the rest. The glove of warped space stretched. The combat drone fell apart into dust. The atomic bonds holding the matter from the metal plating to the computing circuits all unraveled.

The dead machine then drifted away like powder.

Target down, she said.

Over her shoulder were Alysdeon and the downed starfighter. The ship had crashed into a hallway, only to skid and bulldoze through several layers of wall. The Valkyrie was now nearly buried under rubble. The protective shielding had effectively turned it into a wrecking ball. Alysdeon stepped off the ship, feeling the gravity weigh down her boots. Outer space was far behind them, but up ahead was only more gloom. The hallway in front of them tunneled a path, both barren and cold.

She breathed in the oxygen from her environmental mask and then looked at the leftover bits of broken combat drone on the floor. Alysdeon activated her defense systems. The cybernetic armor hardened.

she said.

All around them were darkness and machine metal long stretches of it, seemingly endless. Alysdeon felt the mechanical wires and tubes under her feet. To better see, she let her eyes bathe in the neon scans.

Arendi was also analyzing. Her machine vision was processing the known data. They were near the mother ship’s central lair. The starfighter had overshot its landing and soared past the initial meeting point.

Comms are down, she said, hearing nothing. I don’t like this.

Arendi stared at her surroundings, trying to pinpoint their exact location. The hallway they stood in was both vast and monotonous. For a moment, it felt like a dungeon: the premises were confined and foreboding. Air was almost nonexistent. Only machines and whatever wretchedness could subsist here.

In the corner of her eye, Arendi saw a hint. At the end of the hallway shone something small and glowing. It was faint, like a silver needle awash in night. Then it flew, stabbing through the corridor. The beam weapon struck, nearly invisible. The shot a salvo of ultrafast particles flew wildly down the darkened path.

The surrounding walls, once solid and entrenched, crumbled under the assault. The whole hallway exploded. It roared, resulting in a furious fire of debris.

Arendi felt her entire side burst. She fell over Alysdeon, wanting to protect her. The impact sent them both skidding across the floor. Then the ground itself collapsed.

They tumbled to the deck below another dark and confined area. Ash drizzled over Arendi’s hair and eyes. Her artificial heartbeat raced. Alarms shrieked through her mind.

Damage: significant. Movement compromised. Compensating

Her armor and shielding had both blunted most of the blow, but not all of it. Her right arm had been blown clean off by the kinetic blast. The cybernetic suit was ripped at her shoulder. Trying to stand, she nearly stumbled. Instinctively, she grabbed her right side.

The armor was already working to seal the wound. The nanofabrics at the torn-off fringes interlaced over the break and began to weave. Physically, Arendi felt no pain, only a sense of shock. She had no time for pain.

Alysdeon said, scrambling to her feet.

A whole throng of enemy ground-based drones was closing in. They sought to attack and pursue. Arendi ignored the damage to her body and focused. Her scans and the motion trackers outlined the threat. She counted them: eight, twenty. Maybe more, cloaked. The mechanized fighters came, humanoid but faceless in form.

As the enemy approached, dropping down from the hallway above, Alysdeon crouched. The protective force field around her cybernetic suit was still active. The visor across her eyes tuned to register and adapt to stealth movements. She then pulled the swords from her back and ignited them. The two vibrating blades, which throbbed in beams of white, were there to counter. She held the weaponry across her face and leaped.

The armor over her limbs enhanced all her strength. The blades swung and slayed the first of the enemy drones. She saw the apparition. At this range, the cloak failed to fully conceal over the machine. The intense vibrating force then sawed through at the atomic level, cracking away shielding and machine armor, only to spin and strike again. The two swords sliced through the mechanical vein and bone, sending it all toppling down.

One. Two. Then three. The tank like robots broke down, defeated. Alysdeon was moving fast. Faster than the first wave of foes. Her age-old experience, along with the targeting reticles in her sight, were guiding her. She decapitated the fourth drone and then sent another blow into its chest. The machine corpse fell to its knees, headless.

Alysdeon kicked the remains away and glanced at Arendi.

she asked.

Arendi gritted her teeth, too angry to speak. Yes, she thought, watching as the next drone dropped from above. The attacker lunged, firing its main cannon. The hot plasma was about to eject. Arendi dodged and swung with all her machine strength. She kicked the enemy’s head into the wall. She pressed her boot against her foe’s face and flattened it with a forceful stamp. Both the circuitry inside and the aborted plasma shot died down in a fizzle.

I can fight, Arendi said as the dead machine slumped over and hit the floor. She spat out the words angrily.

The scans in Arendi’s mind only fueled her ire. More enemy drones were starting to appear by the moment.

Thirty. Forty. Maybe fifty. A whole squadron had come to annihilate them.

Even from here, hunkered down in this deck below, Arendi could guess the enemy’s strategy. The first wave was to scout and analyze. The second was to bombard. Fusion bombs and grenades might be next. Then the third wave would arrive to finish off and kill. Arendi imagined it and all the death that would result.

No, she thought. Not anymore.

Arendi made a fist with her remaining left hand and squeezed. The armband and the spatial weaponry at her command rose in power. Her machine systems were beginning to calculate. Targets acquired, they declared.

She then removed the safety precautions around the device and let it cascade; the cuff at her wrist crackled and shook.

Stand back, Arendi said as she approached Alysdeon.

The force lifted from her hand, invisible but ready to stretch and bend. The surrounding space began to warp, becoming a zone of destruction. The full might of her spatial shielding then took effect.

Arendi held up her wrist and directed the force into a wide field. It flew toward the machine attackers and consumed them in one rumbling surge. The expanding field peeled it all away and reduced it to gas. Nothing from the combat drones to the hallway walls was spared. Atomic bonds broke apart, undoing the enemy squad right there.

Arendi hollowed it all out and counted. Fifty. Twelve. And then none. The throng of enemy contacts broke down and vanished. A giant hole had taken its place. She then deactivated the weapon and let the field dissipate. The fabric of space contorted and settled back into its normal bounds.

Clear, she said, pulling her arm down. Arendi then opened her left hand and exhaled a breathless sigh.

Alysdeon went ahead, trying to confirm. She was checking the site, initiating every scan. She crossed into the now-open area. There was almost nothing left but a cavernous crater, steeped in colorless smoke.

she said.

Alysdeon ran to the edge of the blast site and leaped. She landed and stepped over what was once a hallway. She flashed her two swords, about to strike.

The war machine was there at the precipice. The giant drone, a tall contraption three meters tall, had been effectively cut down, partially vaporized. It fidgeted, half-dead and shaking, on the floor. The whole front surface was maimed beyond recognition. Its armor, along with an arm and leg, had been shredded.

Arendi joined Alysdeon and studied the drone. The mechanical organs sat open and attempted to self-repair. The attacker’s main weapon a two-ton particle beam cannon had fallen to the side. The heavy barrel lay on the floor. The war machine reached for it. The enemy sought to land one more blow. To continue the war, slavishly. The contraption’s remaining hand scrambled to find that instrument of destruction.

Not today, Arendi said solemnly.

Alysdeon then sent her sword into the machine and sliced.

Chapter 45

They fought toe-to-toe across the new battlefield. Clashes erupted throughout the mother ship; the Destroyer stabbed, while the Enforcer countered and evaded. From hallway to room even to the computing infrastructure the two forces fought, relentless.

The brawls were tight and intense, like urban warfare, but inside the belly of a ten-mile craft. The Destroyer’s army advanced, toiling through close-quarters combat in ambush after ambush. Drone killed drone as dozens and then hundreds of machine fighters died, trying to secure the vital points. It felt pyrrhic and inefficient, but the Destroyer was glad to expend. The enemy was falling back. He was winning. His armies on the ground outnumbered the foe and overran through the Enforcer’s vessel, taking it over piece by piece.

I’m close, he said, reestablishing the communication link. Reading you now.

The Destroyer met with Arendi and Alysdeon. He found them, not long after their initial descent. His scans had isolated their location inside a trench. A squadron of his machine troopers now marched through the area, on course to invade the vessel’s inner lair.

His holographic self materialized as the repair bots hurriedly went to work. The clutter of machines hovered, blitzing to complete the impromptu transplant.

Arendi flinched, trying to ignore the procedure. She concentrated on their priorities.

What’s our status? she asked.

The fighting around them had subsided, but the ground beneath them still shook, as though a round of explosions were going off in the distance.

We’ve begun securing access, the Destroyer said. But enemy resistance remains an issue.

He looked at Arendi and saw her wounds. Her right arm was among the casualties. The repair bots, however, sought to provide a new one. A mechanical limb came into place and attached. The gears at the bicep sank into Arendi’s shoulder. Alysdeon stood next to her, watching as the surgery neared completion. She held on to the two swords in her hands, still alert and on guard.

she said.

The sporadic combat continued to escalate. The trench around them trembled again. At this rate, enemy tactics involving scorched earth and any type of obliteration might be next.

Not to worry, the Destroyer said with a crooked smirk. For once, I’m here to try to save something.

He crossed his arms, glancing at the darkened chambers around them. There may have been little to see, but his forces were fighting to salvage and protect the vessel. Of course, he had been forced to blow a giant hole into the mother ship first.

Main power is almost ours, he reported. But the Enforcer still has control over the auxiliaries. He’s begun sectioning off the ship, trying to fortify himself. He isn’t ready to abandon his vessel yet.

In the face of their siege, the enemy was retreating deeper into the mother ship’s interiors. Whatever combat drones the Enforcer had left were setting up blockades and choke points to prevent any intrusion. Arendi knew what that meant.

Then we’ll just have to break through, she said.

The mechanical arm installed. Arendi’s mind began the sync. She gazed down at the new limb at her command. It was undeniably robotic, without any human skin. The fingers, tendons, and muscles were all constructed of cold metal. And the size was off nearly four times the mass of the old one. Arendi opened the sharpened fingers and gripped. The heavy fist felt ready to bludgeon and claw. She pounded the hand into her smaller left palm.

Excellent, the Destroyer said.

The neighboring area remained airless, but the Destroyer chuckled a deep laugh through the comm. He was keen on keeping up the pace. His forces were already preparing to attack the mother ship’s central computing core. The intention was to seize drone command. The key to controlling the Enforcer’s ground troops and space-based ships would be there. Indeed, he was close. One of his strike teams was in another section of the vessel, almost at the target site.