Date Point: 14y4d AV
The Jitney, high Gao orbit, approaching Shasu
Master Sergeant Harry ‘Rebar’ Vandenberg
It felt good, going into a fight that literally nothing and nobody else in the known universe could handle. It felt…right. Not a lot of people ever really found a place in the big picture, or that overlap spot where their abilities, interests and ambitions united into purpose.
To serve in a unit of nothing but such men was a profound honor.
To go into battle knowing, without doubt, that the enemy was pure evil and that innocent lives rested on the outcome…that was practically a luxury compared to the ambiguous shit that generations of servicemen had endured over the last ninety years.
There was only one thing better than feeling motivated, purposeful and significant—that plus being armed, armored and ready to kick ass. Plus Brotherhood, plus adrenaline, plus, honestly, the sheer geeky cool factor that he got to be a fucking space marine.
…Soldier. One day, history would correct its grievous mistake. But that was for later. Right then, life was pretty goddamn good.
The Net was live with mission chatter. The FIC providing intel, HMS Viceroy and HMS Valiant maneuvering to offer communications support. FIREBREAK-TWO-ONE and his wingmen loitering on an innocuous patrol orbit around the fleet. STAINLESS’ deep voice, interjecting here and there to acknowledge a report or give an update.
The go code.
“FIREBREAK-TWO-ONE, STAINLESS. You are clear to engage at your discretion, weapons free.”
Firebreak of course sounded entirely ice cold and calm, almost bored.
“STAINLESS, FIREBREAK-TWO-ONE. Copy action. Warping to target.”
The net went quiet for about forty seconds.
“Contact. Four bandits. Engaging.” Firebreak still sounded entirely calm. Justifiably so, to judge from the way his next report just five seconds later was: “Splash four bandits, no more contacts….Engaging ground target. Guns.”
“Shellcrack…Good hits. Repeat.”
“FIREBREAK-TWO-TWO, willco. Rifle away.”
“Good hits…PYRAMID, FIREBREAK-TWO-ONE. Target objectives met.”
“Copy. TOURIST-ONE-ONE, PYRAMID…”
To Rebar’s right, Righteous made an amused noise as a safe approach vector was read to their pilot. “Fuckin’ pilots.”
“I’d rather they don’t buy it today, bruv,” Crank piped up from his far side.
“They’re stealin’ all our fun!”
“It’s okay, Righteous,” Rebar told him. “There’s loads more down there I bet.”
“There better fuckin’ be.”
The Gaoians were conspicuously silent, which in a change of nearly apocalyptic proportions, Righteous managed to notice.
“Aww…fuck. I’m a shit person,” he apologized.
Regaari reached over and cuffed him upside the head. He had to jump up to do it, but he managed. “Yup. Cry about it later.”
Spaceborne deployment meant that the Jitney’s crew, even the loadmaster, were all wearing a spacesuit. Weavers had a pressure forcefield, but nobody wanted to rely on just that, which meant that everyone who wasn’t actually gonna jump out of the thing was cozy in a pressure suit and tethered to something sturdy.
Usually, a Loadmaster was good at making themselves heard over engine noise and rushing wind. Shouting through vacuum was a whole extra kind of difficult, though, which was why their orders were a combination of hand signals and radio.
“Jump in three!” he informed them. “We’re gonna come in low and slow, surface gravity is negligible! Should be mostly EVA, but watch for sudden transitions to artificial gravity!”
“That means watch ‘yer reaction mass, Reeb,” Righteous said. “Yer gonna want as much cold gas down there as you can save.”
“I know, I know, don’t waste the gas…” Rebar nodded solemnly. Over-thrusting was his one consistent failing in EVA training, and on a tiny rock like Shasu a strong footfall was enough to impart escape velocity. If he ran his suit thrusters dry, he’d sit out the rest of the mission bored and alone and have to wait for recovery.
They’d experimented with kinetic thrusters on the suit, but that brought a raft of problems. Power storage and waste heat, primarily. A starship could generate nice big shields with a huge surface area for radiation, and had plenty of mass to sink the waste heat into. Spacesuit operators on the other hand could overheat so quickly they got burns. The Gaoians had mostly licked the problem with some sophisticated materials science and microgenerators, which they’d promised to share, but that shit didn’t happen overnight so for now the Mass’s thrusters ran on compressed gas.
Out back of the Weaver, Gao got a fraction smaller as the pilot pulse-warped them to the target. The planet heaved and wheeled out of view through a swooping maneuver, and then quite suddenly there was craggy, dusty rock the color of asphalt sweeping by below.
Then there was a building, a dark spike of glittering lights a ways off to one side. A snowy white cloud of smoke, ice crystals and condensed air where the Firebirds had presumably torn something open. Brilliant blue-white lights illuminating a landing pad.
The Jitney’s own jump light turned green.
“GO! GO! GO!”
Rebar was eighth out, behind the Aggressors, Costello and two of the Gaoians. This wasn’t like an airborne jump at all, they didn’t drop out of the Jitney at all but instead it kinda left them behind, hanging in its wake. The instant they were all out it lifted its nose and warped away with a barely-visible hint of extreme speed in the thousandth of a second it took for the human eye to register the difference between there and gone.
The surface facility was a class-A wreck. Being strafed twice by Firebirds would do that to a place. One of the buildings north of the landing pads had been torn up, popped like a big metal and concrete balloon, and was still venting atmo.
Their approach vector took them down through the gas plume, and fine ice crystals hissed across Rebar’s visor. The sun was low on the horizon to their left, casting long and impenetrable shadows on the rocky terrain. With no atmosphere to scatter the light, the lit features would have been eye-searingly brilliant if not for the Mass’s visor, while the shadows were completely pitch dark.
It made judging distance tricky, but this was what they trained for.
They avoided the obvious ingress through the cargo hangars. Too easily trapped, and getting too close to the ground here was an invitation to hit a gravity trap of some kind. Maybe a high-G plate to bring them crashing down, or a reverse plate to launch them into orbit, it didn’t matter.
Their formation was a graceful, precise swirl as they applied thrust and made best speed for the target. It was a fine balancing act—too slow and they were sitting ducks, too fast and they might blunder into a hazard.
Murray was on point. Rebar had no idea what he saw or how he saw it, but their Scottish brother was his usual verbose self as his weapon snapped up, he twisted at the waist and opened fire.
“Contact, one o’clock low.”
Sure enough, a red HUD icon highlighted his target. It was eerie watching him shoot and not hearing or seeing anything except his gun pulsing against his shoulder—there wasn’t even any muzzle flash or expelled gas, nor did a gauss weapon expel casings. Without tracer rounds, the gunfire was totally invisible.
Firth, Newman and Blaczynski all piled on the firepower as well and there was a pinkish puff of liberated gases and blood among the buildings.
They needed to get inside before they started taking fire from multiple angles. If a force of biodrones caught them in enfilade then figuring out where the hell they were even shooting from would rob them of precious seconds, and lives.
Motion. That was the key and they all knew it. As soon as the hostile was down their vector changed and they plunged into the concealing gaps between the buildings, angling towards a spot where the FIC’s analysts had found an appropriate point of entry—a thin wall that they could breach and force entry, the outside of which didn’t fall within the field radius of any gravity generator, which meant no nasty surprises.
Sikes had the charge rigged in seconds. No overpressure to worry about in a vacuum, but when the building popped the pressure inside was gonna blow a lot of shrapnel their way, so they stepped aside. Rebar felt the blast through his boots, though it happened in total silence.
Air and debris belched viciously out of the hole, Firth forced his way in at speed with the other Aggressors right behind him, and the gravity came back. Gao standard, so good enough to hold them to the deck and let them work their sheer physical presence rather than puff carefully about.
Their entry was a bunk room. A dozen Gaoian nest-beds in a circular space with a few lockers and a scattering of personal effects, most now strewn all over the floor from the outrushing atmo.
Sure enough, the first gravity trap hit before they were all even in through the breach. The plating switched off entirely, and men who hadn’t trained their reflexes to negotiate a three-dimensional environment in shifting, twisting or vanishing gravity fields would have stumbled or been left floating stranded.
The HEAT, however, knew how to play this game. In a confined space, every wall, the ceiling, the floor, all of it was just a point of contact in a game of smooth parkour. If anything, their progress sped up.
“Long halls,” Rebar reminded Newman. “Variable plating.”
“Rog.”
“Third door right,” Costello added, recalling their planned route. They were making full use of their three-dimensional mobility to avoid the most dangerous areas, and in this case a comparatively thin set of walls would let them make rapid progress toward their goal while avoiding the areas with the deadliest potential.
It was definitely a funhouse, though. They couldn’t go twenty meters without the gravity adjusting in an attempt to trip them up, or at least slow them. In this part of the facility, the gravity plating was the basic stuff that only pulled down—the variable-output stuff was for facilitating cargo transfer and wasn’t necessary outside of major corridors and warehouses—but it could still put out at different levels.
It didn’t slow them.
Their flow was simple: few words, spoken economically; hand gestures; radio taps and brevity codes. Walls were just a speed bump or something to kick off, anything that wasn’t a Brother got serviced the second it was seen.
The Gaoian biodrones were wearing some kind of powered industrial hardsuit, like the asteroid miners back in Sol. They were tough, designed to handle micrometeorite impacts and other space debris, but slow and cumbersome. A man in EV-MASS or a Whitecrest in his Suit had all of the same advantages and none of the downsides. Each one went flailing in the changing gravity, riddled with gauss rounds. They were obviously trying to hunt the HEAT, but they were sheep trying to hunt a dragon.
The robot drones were more effective. One—little more than a flying fusion scythe with a cloaking device—nearly got Sikes. It would have taken his head off if Butler hadn’t grabbed the back of his suit and yanked, and still would have wreaked havoc if not for Regaari, whose own fusion-clawed right hand knocked it spinning. Dexter shot it before it finished tumbling and then melted back into barely-visible action, his suit’s metamaterial lining almost impossible to pick out against the complex background.
Living space gave way to working space abruptly and obviously. One side of the divide was lined, carpeted and softened. Not luxurious, but clearly a place for recharging after a weary day’s work.
The other side was bare concrete, hard lighting and exposed utilities. No choice here, they had to take the loading corridors to reach the tunnel, but they’d already avoided some of the most defensible positions that might have stymied their assault.
The tunnel, however, was fortified. The enemy had cleared it of cover, or rather they’d piled all the cover up to serve as a barricade and thrown in some shield emitters. The ideal solution would have been to avoid it entirely, but it was exactly in the middle of the one choke point they couldn’t avoid, and it was made doubly sadistic by the fact that while the biodrone defenders were standing comfortably on flat ground, the approach to the barricade had a different gravitational direction.
A barricade they had to climb to assault. Maximum fun.
Firth pulled his head back in sharply as a barrage of small-arms fire made it clear how that assault was likely to go. “Ten. Buncha drones, too.”
Costello nodded, slipped to the front and stuck his rifle with its camera scope around the corner to survey the obstacle for himself. “…Starfall. Hotball.”
Hotball was a brevity code for a tactic they’d developed but never used, and it hinged on their connection to the fleet. Blaczynski nodded, plucked something about the size of a grenade from his webbing, turned it carefully in his hand, yanked the safety pin and hurled it out into the shaft. It arched to their left, falling away toward the end of the tunnel while they all got their asses well back into defilade.
It was a long drop, but the hotball was tough. It was a jump beacon, armed with a camera and a laser designator, and once it had rattled to a stop far below all Blaczynski had to do was settle its crosshairs on his target and hit “fire.”
Several things happened in the space of three seconds. In one smoothly controlled instant, the Farthrow facility opened a temporary exemption for a very specific set of jump codes, and somewhere far away one of the Royal Navy’s destroyers fired a shot.
Spacetime bent, twisted, and a hurtling naval round appeared inside the tunnel aimed precisely at the barricade, which immediately ceased to be a problem. Debris, rubble and bits of splattered biodrone rained down the tunnel, and the lighting went entirely, plunging them into darkness.
Shin chittered appreciatively. “…That worked.”
Costello checked around the corner again then nodded. “Protectors and Snowtops.”
The Protectors were their strongest climbers, by dint of being their strongest everything. ‘Base and ‘Horse were the first round the corner and up into the shaft, ably supported by Irish. It was the work of seconds for them to anchor pitons in the fractured concrete and start climbing.
The Whitecrests didn’t need any such luxuries. Their gecko-gloved suits could stick to the walls and ceiling like the fucking alien, and they swarmed out into the tunnel, vanishing in the dark.
Irish handed Rebar a rope. “Your turn.”
Rebar took it, pulled out the slack, then heaved himself out into the tunnel, which promptly became a shaft the second he was climbing it.
They had three hundred yards to climb to reach the utility tunnel. And from there…
Five klicks.
He sighed, and commenced the long climb.
Date Point: 14y4d AV
Planet Akyawentuo, Unclaimed Space, Near 3Kpc Arm
The Singer
The funny thing about Vemik was that while he found everything interesting, he found some things more interesting than others. And he was so very much a man, too. He looked at the Sky-People tools and saw weapons, steel, hunts and big things. The male eye was always drawn toward Taking-magic.
The Singer saw those things, of course. It was part of her role to see the Taking and embrace it as a man. But she preferred Giving-magic, where she could. It was…subtler. Quieter. Harder to see, but felt more keenly when missed.
And the Humans had a lot of it.
Strange tall metal pots that could keep water or stew hot from dawn to sunset. Little blue-green pouches that could be kneaded to get as hot as a comfortable fireside and warm the hands. Food that cooked itself without fire, tiny white stones that swirled away to nothing in water and made it safe to drink…
And such songs! Now that Jooyun was in something like a good mood again she was spying on him. While the men of the People napped through the height of the day, he had sat against a Ketta and was holding a strange black stone in his hand that sang for him.
There were no drums in that song, and the voice singing it was both strong and gentle but there was so much more to it than just one voice. Sounds she couldn’t describe that flowed around and under and over its singer’s voice, lifting and answering and changing the song. The notes were clear, pure and held level, and made interesting patterns of sound with one another.
♫—wish upon a star, and wake up where the clouds are far behind me…Where troubles melt—♪
She couldn’t resist. If she shared a flaw with Vemik, it was relentless curiosity and a song like that needed to be heard well. She dropped down from her tree and moved to join him.
The song stopped as she approached, and Jooyun put the rock that had been making it away in his pocket. “Hi, Singer.”
He sounded…tired. Not in any physical way that she could tell, Humans seemed to just work and work and work, much longer than any of the People would before sleeping to restore their strength. But he had a tired soul for the moment.
“I heard singing,” she explained, and coiled her tail beneath her to sit on it. Jooyun smiled softly and nodded.
“Eva Cassidy,” he said.
“…Means…?”
“That’s her name. Or, was. She died before I was born.”
“A singer with a name? And how do you hear her if she died?”
Jooyun smiled. “Not that kind of singer. Humans don’t just sing for the gods, sometimes we sing for ourselves, or for fun, or…lots of reasons. I sing, too.”
“You do?”
He nodded.
“And…how do you hear her? Is it like your radio?”
“A little. Some of the same magic is used. It can remember sounds like our tablets can remember words.” He seemed to remember something. “Actually, one day I was hoping to have it remember your songs.”
There was a strange idea. To have her voice, her words and her songs remembered by a rock, for other Humans and maybe Gao like Daar and other Sky-People to hear. The Singer certainly had no idea what the gods would think of it.
Then again, it was never easy to tell what pleased or angered the gods anyway. The old Singer wouldn’t have been much help in this situation either—her best advice had always been to not try and guess at godly wants, just dance and sing in whatever way she found pleasing and hope that it would be acceptable.
“…Can I hear more?”
Jooyun smiled and took the song-stone from his pocket again. They listened to another song about falling leaves, then he touched the stone a few times and had it play a different singer. A man.
“Eric Clapton,” Jooyun explained. “His son died at only a hand of years old, and…he made this song.”
Just hearing it was a gift. A painful gift that touched an ache in her soul that had never quite gone away, but it was the good kind of pain. The kind that was only felt for being lucky enough to have had somebody precious to lose.
“…Your people make good songs,” she admitted as she dried her eyes once it was over. “I’m…sad to hear that your people lose children too. I thought…with your magic, maybe…”
“We can do a lot,” Jooyun sighed and put the song-stone away. “Maybe we’ll have magic like that one day, but I doubt it. We don’t lose many, these days, and the ones we do…There may not be enough magic in the world.”
“I’m glad. If we get even a little of that giving-magic from meeting your people…”
Jooyun nodded. “It pained me to hear about your child,” he said.
“Thank you. …Is it true your grandfather lived to two times as old as Yan is now?”
“It is. I just wish I’d been there to say goodbye…”
He was interrupted. The black ‘radio’ on his shoulder crackled and a voice that had been far too long in coming back spoke from it.
“Net, Misfit. We’re back, boys. Didja miss us?”
The Singer had never seen delight so pure as the expression that spread across Jooyun’s face. His hands, normally so quick and nimble with their thin but clever fingers, fumbled and shook as he grabbed at his radio.
“Al?!”
“Yeah-huh, playboy. Just flew in from Cimbrean and boy are my arms tired!”
Jooyun made an explosive sound through that nose thing of his and laughed. He was on the verge of tears, Singer realized.
Shyow’s voice chimed in as well. “Are you okay, bǎobèi?”
“I’m…a lot better now.”
“That makes three of us…beginning descent. See you in twenty minutes, okay?”
“I’ll be waiting.”
Jooyun scrambled to his feet, grinning wildly. His sheer joy was overwhelming, and to her surprise he actually hugged her, lifted her up, spun her around and set her back on her feet again.
It was quite the reminder that humans weren’t weak at all. It wasn’t one of Yan’s bone-crushing hugs, but Jooyun was no weakling.
He cleared his throat after stepping back. “…Sorry.”
“Why?” The Singer trilled. “Jooyun, you saved my life, the lives of my Tribe, of all the People maybe. I should hug you!” She smiled at him. “It’s good to see you happy again.”
“…Thank you.” He picked up his axe and slid it into the pouch on his hip. “We should go get ready for them to land.”
The other humans were already bustling when they reached the landing place, making sure that it was clear and people knew to stay back. Vemik was excitedly bouncing around being Helpful, which mostly involved getting in the way. The Singer grabbed him and guided him to one side so that Walsh and Jooyun could do whatever it was that actually needed doing.
“They know what they’re doing, Sky-Thinker,” she chided him. He nodded apologetically and, with effort, managed to restrain himself.
Unimpeded, the humans got their work done quickly and well, and Jooyun decided to rejoin her. He gave Vemik a friendly playful shove and sat down heavily next to him on the ground. Vemik retaliated and had Jooyun tangled up in a couple of breaths.
Whatever further boyish play might have ensued was abandoned when the sky cracked with the double-thunder of an arriving starship. It was strange how naturally that word came to mind and fell off the tongue, considering that the Singer had only learned it within the last moon cycle. To think that she had become familiar with something so…otherworldly.
She would never become familiar with the way it hung in the air, though. It sounded like unimaginable power, floated in all the ways that something so big and solid should not, and touched down in the clearing with Shyow’s usual grace and delicacy. Shyow didn’t wave this time—instead, she vanished back into the ship’s body with haste, as though she couldn’t be out of it fast enough. The Singer could hardly blame her.
They didn’t have to wait long at all for the side of the ship to open up and the two human women slid down the ladder, turned, and Jooyun collided into them.
To the Singer’s left, Daniel Hurt cleared his throat and looked away, though he was smiling. Jooyun, Awisun and Shyow sank to their knees in each other’s arms, holding on tight in a private circle of relieved love.
The Singer steered Vemik away as well, and gave the three their reunion. It lasted some time.
Eventually they helped each other to their feet and noticed the rest of the world again, starting with Yan, who had rolled back into the village with a Werne bull over his shoulders upon hearing Misfit arrive and was grinning toothily to see them.
“Hungry?” He asked casually.
Shyow beamed at him. “I should show you what I can do with Werne sometime,” she said. “Sky-cooking. There’s a whole art to it!”
Yan trilled softly, dropped the Werne, and gave her a respectful but fond hug. “It is good to see you. The help you went for arrived just when we needed it.”
“[Brought the rain three meters in front of our noses…]” Hoeff said in English, then glanced at the People and corrected himself. “[…Faces. It was epic.]”
“Ep-ick.” Vemik tried the word out. “Means what?”
“[Dude. That moment when the Abrogators got smacked down? That’s what epic means.]” Hoeff grinned. “[You did good, guys. Cavalry arrived in the nick of time. We’da been overrun without you.]”
Shyow nodded and smiled at him. “[That makes me feel better…sitting around like that was hard.]”
“I bet.” Coombes agreed, returning to the People’s words. “But Chimp’s right. We owe you. We all do.”
“I’m just glad everybody’s okay.”
The mood became quieter. People looked away, Vemik sagged, Yan sighed. Shyow blinked at them.
“…Everyone is okay, right?” She looked around at them, then up at Jooyun. “Right?”
Awisun, however, was looking around, and her growing frown deepened.
“…Vemet,” she said. “He’s not here.”
“…Yeah. We gave him to the sky a couple days ago.” Jooyun put an arm around Shyow’s shoulders. “And a few others.”
“Oh…”
It was a small, sad noise. Less like a cry of grief than…in a respectful way, it was a childish sound, a whimper of loss. Shyow’s happy expression fell apart and she leaned into Jooyun’s side.
Yan was having none of it. “He died well. A warrior protecting his tribe,” he said firmly. “I will miss him, but we are alive and we will make his life important by living.”
Shyow nodded, and Awisun rubbed her back. “We were told everybody was fine,” she explained. “They never mentioned…”
“We’re alive,” Walsh said, echoing Yan’s words. “It could have been worse.”
“Well..there’s just one thing left to do, then,” Shyow said, recovering her poise.
“What?”
“We have…a powerful tool. A protection we can put up in the sky to stop the enemy from ever coming back.”
“You brought a [Football?]” Coombes asked.
“Yeah. AEC wants it deployed with Ten’gewek [witnesses] ASAP.”
“Football.” Yan tasted the word. “That…tastes like a small word for big magic.”
“It’s a very small word,” Allison agreed. “A joke. I can give you the big words if you want?”
“…Football will do. Witnesses means what?”
Jooyun chuckled and rubbed his chin. “Yan, my friend,” he said, “It means that we need to take some of you above the sky.”