Empire of the Fallen, page 37
She turned to Zasha and silenced the comms chatter in her ears. The alien’s armour was slightly different, and severely charred in parts, but she still recognised him.
‘You came for me…’ she said, eyes welling up with tears. She took two steps forward and grabbed the alien into a hard, exo-powered embrace.
The zhahassi awkwardly returned it. ‘I did,’ he said, and pressed her off so that she was at arm’s length. Above them, the sky buzzed with zhahassi dropships. Gia could see the Hermit scientists in them through the open hold doors. A few of them waved down at her, and she felt her heart swell with pride and emotion.
‘What’s going on?’ she asked. ‘What are those things?’ she pointed to the massive, ark-like ships in the distance.
‘Gia Raman, we do not have much time. The zhahassi Serenity-Five fleet is above. We have engaged with the Imperial strike force. Their fleet is not large, but more kaygryn are coming. Those ships over there are Imperial colony vessels. They mean to take possession of this world.’
‘You came for me,’ Gia said again, dumbly.
‘Yes, Gia Raman. Varren Scarcroft sent me the details of your unit. He asked me to look out for you. I am just pleased that I was able to reach you in time; so many worlds have fallen already. The Demilitarised Zone has not been attacked yet, but I fear it is only a matter of time. Fortunately for my people, we have not had many dealings with the kaygryn. Their vendetta is against you and the provar.’
Gia flinched as another trio of zhahassi fighters screamed overhead. A series of explosions boomed in the distance around the kaygryn ark ships as they came under attack.
‘How did you kill them? Their force shields?’
Zasha made a disgusted grunting sound. ‘We poisoned them,’ he said. ‘Gas. Those with breather masks we burned. It was the only way. Solid and energy shot is stopped by their shields, but incendiary gel can be slow.’
Gia nodded absently, overpowered with emotion. To have sacrificed so much for her, to have brought in an entire fleet to her rescue… She was numb, overwhelmed.
‘What do we do now?’ she asked him. More explosions rumbled like distant thunder. In a few hours, Cicero would be lost entirely.
‘Now we leave,’ Zasha said simply. ‘You have done enough, Gia Raman. Your war is over.’
DOMINO
‘The doctrine of containment is as old as warfare itself. The question is not whether the doctrine is effective—it is—the question is how far you are willing to go to enforce it.’
Oleksander Raduz, Commander of EFFECT (and later Special Reconnaissance Command)
‘What do you mean, retreat?’ Scarcroft asked.
‘Orders from Halo Arch, sir. All UN ships are being told to pull out and protect the Gull Crest. We’re to head to Roma Vega with all speed,’ Petko said.
Scarcroft rubbed his face with two sweat-greased hands. Around him, the command sphere flashed red. Ahead of them, Folhourt burned.
‘If we leave this system now, we’re done for,’ he said, more to himself than his officers.
‘If we stay here, we’re done for too,’ Devaraja said matter-of-factly.
Scarcroft waved her off. ‘Petko, get me Haps. Whatever he says, we will do.’
‘Yes, sir. I—’
The comms officer was cut off as a loud, metallic clang thumped through the Galahad. Artificial force feedback shook them all at their consoles. For a tenth of a second, everyone and everything fell deathly silent.
‘Ah shit, we’re losing power to engines!’ Stellan shouted, his console a mass of flashing blood red.
Proximity and damage alarms suddenly filled the command sphere, each trying to out-yammer the others. FATAL STRUCTURE DAMAGE flashed on and off ahead of Scarcroft, along with dozens of graphics on their main non-FTL drives.
‘What’s going on?!’ Scarcroft roared, painfully aware that every split second they couldn’t randomise their vector was a split second closer to being obliterated.
‘They’ve jammed our engines—’
‘Boarders!’ Devaraja all but screamed.
‘Oh hell, get the marines to see to it!’ Scarcroft snapped. In other circumstances, they would just fire the engines and turn any boarders that weren’t safely ensconced in acceleration nanogel to slush against the bulkhead, but now that their engines had been neutralised, they were going to have to clear the threat manually.
‘We are dealing with it, Fleet Marshal,’ Commander Wolff’s voice sounded briefly over the narrowband.
‘Good. Stellan, sort out our engines; we’re heading straight for Folhourt. And power to all force shields.’
A chorus of affirmatives answered. Scarcroft gripped the command pulpit railing with trembling hands, and he pulled up a small cloud of VL feeds from inside the Galahad. In the marines’ section, rapid-ejection VR syncs were thumping open and men in naval-grey Mantix were kicking free into the zero-G hold, flechette shotguns up, frantically pulling their way to the kaygryn boarders. Having endured the terrifying, nauseating experience of naval CQC himself, he did not envy them.
‘Where are they coming through?’ Devaraja asked nervously. Scarcroft ignored her. They were no longer attracting fire from the Imperials for fear that they would hit their own boarders, but that was small comfort. The thought of their fragile bodies, completely disassociated from their minds and suspended in nanogel, being dispassionately hacked to pieces by kaygryn marines was enough to make his gorge rise.
Of course, unless they could get their engines up and running, they would simply crash into Folhourt. The ship’s VI gave them a minute of real time.
‘Come on, Stellan,’ Scarcroft murmured, taking in the information from the command sphere. Their position in all three orbit bands was not good. The Imperial fleet was now on the verge of mop-up with the Ascendancy Home Fleet, and Haps’ reserves were not far behind. The number of active UN ships had long since been eclipsed by the number of tumbling, smashed hulks—and that despite a large number of destroyed Imperial vessels. It was a deeply galling state of affairs. When naval historians pored over the records of the conflict in years to come, they would conclude that the wasteful, attritional Battle of Folhourt had not been a strategic masterstroke by the Empire; rather, it had been little more than a numbers game.
Scarcroft’s attention snapped back to the VL feeds as they began flashing with flechette discharges. The kaygryn boarders had come through the Galahad’s vehicle hangar on the underside of the ship, about forty metres from the armoured core. Wolff led a team of fifteen marines, including Captain Roque, into the fray. Already, Scarcroft could see men spiralling backwards, their innards shredded by monofilament-edged flechettes. To watch the clash on a holo with no sound, knowing that it was the same ship, was an odd, unsettling experience.
‘How are we looking, DC?’ he asked Stellan, not taking his eyes from the VL feeds.
‘I can’t…’ was all his damage control officer said. Scarcroft glanced over to see the man’s sweating, pained visage, illuminated red by the console in front of him as lines of code and diagnostics filtered past his eyes.
Scarcroft looked directly ahead of them as Folhourt grew in the command sphere. Right now, the Galahad was heading to the rightmost hemisphere, thousands of kilometres clear of the roiling orange firestorm that would, before long, engulf the rest of the atmosphere and render the planet uninhabitable for decades. He grimaced. Their VI-randomised vector would only have aligned them to Folhourt for less than a few thousandths of a second, and in that exact moment, their engines had been knocked offline. The sheer misfortune of it was staggering.
I will not die because of a bloody crash, he thought, and yet, as he studied the VL feeds, it seemed that the marines’ battle with the kaygryn boarders was becoming an increasingly one-sided affair.
‘Come on,’ he whispered.
All the while, his IHD counted down the seconds to impact.
*
Constance returned to Carrington while Arrengate awoke to news of the Imperial invasion. The people would be unable to reach loved ones on the sync, or conduct business across systems, or even receive intragalactic news, as the curtain of Outer Ring worlds and outer Veigis worlds slowly fell silent. Entire planets’ worth of comms and data would be missing from the net, as obvious and unwelcome as missing teeth. The people of the UN would patch together, from the few remaining news outlets and unofficial datacasts, that UNAF and Fleet forces were pulling back, falling back, and that entire planets were being hung out to dry as the UN’s core worlds were protected. And then they would realise, slowly, terrifyingly, inexorably, that there was nothing that could be done.
Constance had never experienced the feeling of pure terror, of unbridled, animal fear as unopposed naval forces cruised through orbit high above, free and willing to nuke entire cities of civilians. She had never expected to either; she was the President of the UN, after all. Now, for the first time, those first few tendrils of fear were creeping through her system, a low pulse of adrenaline eating away at her guts like acid from a burst stomach.
There is still hope. While Lyra and Yano are still alive, there is still hope.
She knew the people of the UN would be looking to her to give an address, to tell them all what the strategy was. She knew that her secure inbox would be teeming with messages from other heads of state—the Old Colonies, the zhahassi, the quorl, the golgron; they all had as much to lose as she did.
‘But there’s nothing,’ she said aloud, her breath a flurry of steam in the frigid, early morning air. The gravel of Carrington’s driveway crunched beneath her feet, and Mantix-clad guards with Mantix-clad Alsatians milled about like it was just another day. ‘Nothing to be done but wait.’
She entered the house through the front door and walked through the corridors aimlessly, vaguely aware of her IHD inbox filling with hundreds of messages as she had predicted. Instead of going to the drawing room overlooking the sea, this time she went upstairs to the library. Inside it was silent, and smelled that wonderful, enticing smell of old hard copy. A row of high-set windows allowed in the wan, grey morning light. Dust motes floated in the still, quiet air. She felt as though she were standing on the beach in the minutes before a tsunami hit, when the tide had withdrawn improbable kilometres into the distance.
‘You lied to me.’
Constance half screamed as the man’s voice penetrated the still air. Immediately, the thump of boots sounded on the stairs outside as guards detected the spike of fear from her IHD.
Bill Pitt was sitting at the far end of the room, on a low mezzanine. A hard copy of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam was open in his right hand.
Constance whirled around as the door opened. ‘Ma’am, is everything all right?’ the guard asked.
‘Yes, yes everything is fine,’ Constance said, her heart thumping so hard she could hear the valves slamming open and closed.
The guard lingered a moment. He had clocked Pitt on the far side of the room. ‘Are you su—’
‘Yes, I’m sure, please leave and make sure we’re not disturbed,’ Constance snapped.
The guard nodded once and pulled the door closed behind him.
She took a deep breath and turned back to Pitt. ‘What do you mean, I lied to you?’ she asked as patiently as a dinner guest desperate to leave at the end of an overlong evening.
Pitt closed the old volume carefully and replaced it on the shelf. Constance noticed for the first time that he was wearing Mantix—without a helmet—and was armed. The old wooden floor creaked under the weight of the exoskeleton.
‘I asked you about the genocide of kaygryn in the Outer Ring. Many millions of civilians killed by UN terror weapons. You told me you didn’t know about it. That was a lie; ergo, you lied to me.’
Constance felt a wave of vertigo wash through her. This isn’t happening. Not now.
‘Bill, I—’
‘You had Foster and White assassinated, didn’t you?’ Pitt said. His voice and gaze were level.
Constance felt her cheeks flush, as if someone had draped a hot towel over her face. ‘I did not order them to be killed!’ she snapped. ‘That is not true. On my life, that is not true.’
Pitt was unmoved by her sincerity. ‘But you did give the order for them to be removed.’
Constance looked around the room. Her gaze settled on Pitt’s gun. Eventually, she said, ‘They were going to try and remove me from office.’ Her voice was quiet, but there was no remorse in it. ‘I couldn’t let them remove me and undo my policies—our policies—before the Empire invaded. I had to do it. They would have destroyed everything we worked to achieve.’
Pitt’s hands balled into fists. His jaw muscles clenched. ‘And the kaygryn?’
‘Oh, for goodness’ sake,’ she said, waving a hand derisively. ‘Of course I gave that order. Every kaygryn living in this galaxy is another soldier to join the ranks of the Empire. It is us against them, and I chose us. End of story. Try and find anyone who disagrees with me.’
‘I disagree with you!’ Pitt roared, thumping his chest with such force that Constance took a step backwards. ‘Andrea, I supported you when you made peace with the provar. I supported your policies of protecting the Ascendancy. But for Christ’s sake! Genocide?! Abducting generals and politicians and having them killed—’
‘I never ordered them to be killed!’
‘These are the actions of a tyrant! A bloodthirsty tyrant!’
Rage surged through Constance’s system, as hot and bright as a sun. ‘Oh, fuck you, Bill! Fuck you, you goddamned coward! The UN needed someone who would make the tough decisions. I did what I did for the good of humankind. So, really, fuck you if you’re not happy with my methods. You can tell it to the kaygryn when they arrive here, which if Ellisburg is to be believed, will be this goddamn evening!’
Spittle flew from her lips. Pitt stood still, his nostrils flared, breathing heavily. Eventually, he said, ‘Andrea, there is facing the end with honour and courage, and there is facing it like rats in an alleyway. You have sullied what little good grace we had left. We have treated the kaygryn of this galaxy abysmally in the last five decades. Ever since we learned we were stronger and smarter than them, which was about two hours after Contact, they’ve been little more than a bargaining chip. We have let the Ascendancy massacre them for years. Now the Empire is here—in what will go down as the greatest twist of irony in the history of the galaxy—and rather than conduct ourselves like a worthy adversary, we’ve just handed them millions more reasons to wipe us out alongside the provar!’
There was a pause. The air felt heavy. The smell of books was pervasive, and Constance wanted nothing more than to be alone in the silence.
‘Bill,’ she said softly, trying a different tack in her increasing desperation. She took a step forward. Her heart was thumping hard. ‘We’re friends. You’re my best friend—hell, my only friend. I haven’t changed; I’m still the same person I’ve always been. I’ve just… I’ve just had to make difficult decisions. Awful decisions.’
What can I do? she thought, her mind racing. Seduce him? Cry? Have him killed? Seduction was as useful a tool as professional assassins, in the right circumstances, and she didn’t rate the chances of the Carrington guards against Pitt the decorated SPECWAR operative. As for crying—she hadn’t shed a tear in as long as she could remember.
‘Andrea, for God’s sake,’ Pitt said, recoiling from her outstretched hand. ‘What is that? What are you doing?’
She felt herself blushing. ‘Nothing,’ she snapped, snatching her hand back. So much for that, then. ‘Bill, what do you want from me?’ she asked resignedly, massaging her temples. ‘Tell me, right now. Tell me what you want.’
‘I want you to resign!’ Pitt bit off each word through clenched teeth. ‘I want you to go to the Assembly, announce your formal resignation, and I want you to tell everyone what you’ve done. I want the last thing you do as president to be to face a war crimes tribunal. And if that tribunal decides that you should die, then I want you to face your execution with honour as penance for the millions of lives you have taken.’
Constance looked baffled for a second, truly baffled, before she choked out a trill of incredulous laughter. ‘You can’t be serious,’ she said.
‘I am deadly serious,’ Pitt said.
A thought suddenly struck Constance. ‘You were working with them, weren’t you? You were working with Alexander White and the others. How long have you been planning this? How long have you been working against me?’
‘Andrea, you—’
‘Answer me!’ she shouted.
Pitt blinked a few times with the force of it. It took him a few seconds to rally.
He actually thinks he is doing the right thing, Constance thought, baffled.
‘Yes, I have been working with Foster, and Adrian, and Fiona and Ellisburg, and yes, I spoke to Lex White,’ Pitt said, clearly wrestling with what was, in strict terms, a betrayal.
‘And Lex White is a bleeding heart liberal is he?’ Constance snapped. ‘He is happy just leaving the kaygryn to their own devices?’
Pitt faltered for a moment. ‘Damn it, he wasn’t going to massacre millions of non-combatants!’
‘Oh, wake up!’ Constance mocked. ‘Wake up, you idiot! White would have fed you any old shit to see me out of the presidency. Christ, Bill, you are a first-rate soldier, but you are the lousiest politician I have ever come across. I wish you would stop sticking your useless oar in. You don’t have the stomach for this. I think you should leave.’
