Storming Heaven

Chapter Thirty-One

“This was a dumb idea,” Private Ron Friedman muttered to himself, as the transport floated closer to the trapped Killer starship. “We should have come in with the suits instead.”

“Silence in the ranks,” Sergeant Michael Francis Carey barked, although Ron suspected that he privately agreed. The tiny transport should have been hard for the Killers to locate, let alone kill, but it was a much bigger target than two hundred separate Footsoldiers wearing powered combat armour. “Prepare to debus!”

Another flicker of white light flared off in the distance as the Killer ship shouted its defiance of the human gnats tormenting it. The Defence Force starships were circling, like hyenas circling a wounded lion — not that Ron or anyone else outside the MassMind had seen a lion — and distracting it, nipping in to fire a few bursts of particle beams or energy torpedoes into the hull, before pulling back before it could gore them. The sheer immensity of the starship — and the powerful force fields holding it together — made taking it apart a difficult task. Ron wondered, absently, why the starship commanders hadn’t unleashed their antimatter warheads, or even good old-fashioned nukes, but perhaps they’d decided they wanted a trophy on their wall. Who knew what went through the mind of starship commanders? They enjoyed nice clean ships and clean living, while the Footsoldiers slogged through the metaphorical mud and grime. They probably thought that the Footsoldiers would be able to take the ship as an afterthought — and then they could claim credit for it.

On the other hand, he decided, as the transport ducked low and zoomed through a massive gash in the Killer’s hull, it does beat shepherding refugees around the Community…

“Out, now,” the Sergeant barked. Tubes opened and expelled the Footsoldiers into space, their sensors coming online and rapidly scanning for possible threats. No one expected the Killer mind in command of the vessel to react quickly, but they’d already lost one ship to Footsoldiers and probably wouldn’t want to lose a second. “Form up; section leaders, on me.”

Ron allowed the suit to guide him towards Lieutenant Drake, his section leader, and winced inwardly. His old unit had been a finely-tuned machine, commanded by a Captain most of them had referred to, in private, as the Iron Bitch. The new unit consisted of Footsoldiers from fifty different units that had been scattered by the Killer blitzkrieg and they had barely spent any time training together. He’d looked up the stats on the commanding officers and had been mildly reassured, but it was almost like his first day in a suit, with the entire unit blundering everywhere. It would have made for some comedy in a training camp, yet in combat, it would get people killed.

“Follow me,” Drake ordered, slowly, and glided down towards a wide-open gash further into the hull. The interior of the Killer starship looked torn and melted, as if someone had taken a blowtorch to plastic and metal, yet it still managed to convey a sense of alienness that spooked him, even though he knew that the Killers had been defeated — for the first time, ever. The destruction of a star — and an entire Killer settlement — had been remarkable, but now humans had fought the Killers toe-to-toe and won. Perhaps, he decided, as he glided further into the massive ship, the starship commanders knew what they were doing after all.

The local atmosphere had gone, the suit informed him; they were floating in a pure vacuum, with only a tiny gravity pull drawing them towards the rear of the vessel. The online specs for the Killer starship weren’t that helpful — they all seemed to have different interiors and in any case they’d been thoroughly disrupted by human weapons — but he knew that that was where the Killer stored their black hole. Idly, he wondered what would happen if the Killer starship, black hole and all, was pointed towards the Shiva Hole. Would the two black holes coexist, or would one swallow the other? No one had ever expected the Footsoldiers to be fighting on the edge of a black hole.

He checked his plasma rifle again as they passed through what looked like a battered airlock, into a deeper section of the ship. It was lit up by frequent discharges of energy that seemed to have no apparent cause, unless the Killer starship’s entire power grid was backfiring and on the verge of collapse. There was no way to know for sure until the Technical Faction pulled a research team together and sent them to take possession of the hulk, but Drake’s orders — updating frequently in his HUD — warned them to stay away from the lights. Who knew what they could do to the human Footsoldiers?

Probably nothing, Ron concluded, although he suspected that Drake was right. One particular Footsoldier training exercise had the trainees, totally naked and unarmed, being told to find their way through a particularly innocent-looking compartment in a starship. The careful trainees stayed well away from anything that looked remotely suspicious, the less-cautious ones died in explosions or were trapped in paralysis beams — all simulated, of course. He’d trained in exercises that involved delaying a boarding party for as long as possible and there was no reason why the Killers couldn’t do the same. They might have their own contingency plans…

The gravity pull suddenly increased a thousand-fold, sending the Footsoldiers crashing to the deck. If the suits hadn’t compensated automatically, the entire platoon would have been wiped out, along with the other platoons on their own missions. As it was, red lights flared up over four suit icons, warning of broken limbs and one head injury, even within the suits. Drake halted the platoon long enough to access the damage, before ordering the injured to take sedatives and allow their suits to get them back out of the Killer starship, back to the transport. Two of them protested, claiming that they could still use the suits with broken legs, but Drake sent them back anyway. The remaining Footsoldiers struggled forwards until the gravity field suddenly collapsed again, allowing them to float onwards into the hulk.

“Keep the antigravity fields on full,” Drake ordered. No one argued. After the Killer had wiped out a third of the platoon, no one felt like taking chances. They could counter that trick, but what else did the Killers have up its sleeve? Ron accessed the reports from the first two penetrations of Killer starships and scowled. The captured starship had also deployed automatons to face the human intruders. “Keep an eye out for other threats…”

“Yes, sir,” Ron said, with the others. It was an unnecessary warning. Everyone was jumpy after the gravity field had fluctuated around their position. It was more worrying to realise that the sensor drones they’d deployed hadn’t reported any shifts in the local gravity near them — the implications were easy to understand. The Killer knew where they were. It would be easier penetrating a human starship. If they’d boarded a human ship, they could have used the suit AI to hack into the human computer network and take it over, but no one knew how to do that — yet — with a Killer system. He snorted to himself. The Technical Faction would probably figure out the answer tomorrow, after it was useless. “Standing by…”

A motion caught the suit’s sensors as they pushed further down into the next section; a pair of automatons were working on a piece of machinery, trying — he guessed — to repair it. There was nothing humanoid about the Killer machines; they looked more like giant octopuses, or perhaps spiders. They moved and flexed from form to form as they worked on their task. He covered them automatically with his plasma rifle, but they ignored him, concentrating on their work.

“Sir?” He asked. “Should I kill them?”

Drake didn’t hesitate. “Kill them,” he ordered. “Now.”

Ron squeezed the trigger and shot a pulse of superheated plasma into the first Killer automaton, which exploded and melted down into a mass of useless metal. The second automaton turned and looked at him — he was sure it was looking, even though he could see no eyes — and he was suddenly convinced that it was aware of his presence. It wasn’t a good feeling. He shifted his targeting, took aim, and fired a second shot. The automation exploded into fiery debris.

“Like shooting fish in a barrel,” another Private said. “You the man, Ron.”

“Quite,” Drake agreed. He led them off down the long corridor towards the rear of the ship, which was still a dozen kilometres away. The suits could get them there in bare minutes, if it were a straight run, which it wasn’t. At least they’d located the command centre of the Killer starship. “Come on.”

Ron took point as they moved further into the ship, but they saw only a handful of automatons at a distance, and they moved out of the way before they were shot. Miss one and you miss the whole fucking lot, he thought, as he lowered the plasma rifle; the target had vanished into a cranny and there was no point in chasing it. The Killers were definitely aware of their presence now, he decided, and they had to know where they would go. They weren’t picking their way through cracks in the hull any longer, but running down corridors the Killers would know better than the human intruders. It didn’t strike him as a wise idea, but a quick check revealed that they didn’t have anything heavy enough to burn through the walls. The Killers might not have used their indestructible — formerly indestructible — hull material to line the interiors of their ships, an oversight that they might have come to regret, but whatever it was, it was tough.

“We’ll have to figure out a way to produce handheld implosion bolt guns,” he said, finally. “We’ll need to be more random if we keep breaking into these ships.”

“True,” Drake said. They entered a long corridor with mirrored walls. Ron caught sight of his own reflection — a man wearing a massive black suit of armour — and smiled to himself. A moment later, he stopped smiling. The wall was changing in front of his eyes, shifting like water. Drake noticed a second later. “Stand at the ready…”

The wall seemed to shimmer, just a few meters from their position, and an automaton appeared, coming right out of the wall. It turned to face the Footsoldiers and extended a set of weapons. Ron shot it instinctively, only to see the plasma pulse vanish in the flare of a forcefield. He shot it again and again as the automaton advanced, finally overloading the force shield and destroying the automaton.

“Fall back,” Drake ordered, as other automatons appeared from the walls, their weapons already raised and ready. There were dozens of different designs now, some of them almost humanoid, all deadly. None of them seemed to carry energy weapons, for a reason that made sense to Killer minds and no sense to a human, but it hardly mattered. They could tear the entire team apart. “Fall…”

“The way back is blocked,” one of the Privates snapped. They were all firing now, trying to cut down the automatons before they could reach the suits and tear them apart. The report from Captain Kelsey had made it clear. The Killers could break through the suits with ease. “We’re trapped.”

“As you were,” Drake roared. “Ron; grenades, front and centre.”

“Aye, sir,” Ron said, activating his grenade launcher and firing a spread of grenades down the corridor. They exploded a second later — the suit protected them from the effects — and tore hundreds of automatons to shreds. Others advanced a moment later to take their places. He threw a second spread and watched as the newcomers died, only to be replaced moments later. “Sir…”

“Forward,” Drake snapped. “Leap!”

Ron mentally kicked himself for forgetting, just before he leapt into the air, using the suit’s muscles to propel him up and over the Killer automatons. The others followed him seconds later, laying down covering fire as they double-timed it down the corridor, running down towards the Killer control centre. The Killer had to have prepared a nastier surprise, Ron decided. Nothing else could explain why the Killer had allowed them to keep moving forward. Another automaton advanced and he blew it away quickly, before firing off yet another spread of grenades. The Killer mind controlling the automatons simply couldn’t react fast enough, yet there was something terrible in their implacable advance, as if they knew that the humans would stumble and fall. It won’t be long, they seemed to say, before you are ours…

“Sir…!”

The despairing cry faded as Ron turned, just in time to see one of the suit’s cracking open under an assault from one of the automatons. He blew it away at once, but it was too late for the Footsoldier — Ron couldn’t even remember his name. They should have been closer than brothers, but there hadn’t been time to get to know one another before they’d been sent on their crazy mission. The red icons told of his final struggle for life… and his defeat. The suit was too damaged even to preserve the body.

“Leave him,” Drake ordered, grimly. Ron opened his mouth to protest — the Footsoldiers never left their own behind, never — but there was no choice. The advancing automatons would have them all if they stopped to recover the body. “Come on.”

They ran further into the Killer starship, allowing the suit’s augmentation to drive them forward faster than the automatons could move. The Killers reacted in their cold style, sending more automatons to confront them, or twisting the local gravity field — although now they had the antigravity fields on permanently, it prevented them from being caught and trapped by the sudden changes. The walls seemed to shimmer and glow around them; one Footsoldier was killed, somehow, by a grey cloud that somehow enveloped him and tore him apart. Ron decided, after a moment, that they had to be rogue nanites, but if the Killers could do that safely, why didn’t they wipe out the entire team?

“The command centre is just down here,” Drake snapped. Ron nodded. The deep interior of the Killer starship appeared to be identical to the other examined ships, something to be grateful for. If they had had to search for it, he had a nasty feeling that the automatons would catch them before they could find it and somehow capture the Killer. It dawned on him, suddenly, that they had no way of talking to the Killer, let alone convincing it to surrender. They did have the drill for dealing with humanoid races — which had never been tested in the field — but would the Killers understand?

Damn it, he thought, as the five remaining Footsoldiers crossed through the plain — taking care to stay away from the walls — and into the command centre. This whole mission was badly planned from the start.

The command centre looked identical to the one the previous missions had located — and utterly alien. A glowing sphere sat in the centre of the room, filled with strange pearly light and biological compounds; they now knew that that was the Killer. Strong columns, also glowing with light, linked it into the remainder of the ship, but how strong was its link to the interior? Did it know that there were humans in its ship, or did it merely consider the Footsoldiers to be unthinking automatons like its own devices? It might not even have realised that humans existed independently of their technology.

He looked over at Drake. “Now what?”

Drake lifted his plasma cannon and took aim at the sphere. “Can you hear me?”

There was no response, apart from the arrival of hundreds of automatons at each of the entrances to the command centre. They were trapped. Ron looked at them and powered up his weapons for a final stand. Drake was bluffing, he knew; whatever the sphere was made from, it would easily resist the plasma fire when he tried to kill it. Only nanites had penetrated the last sphere and killed the alien monster…

“They’re advancing,” Charlie snapped. The Footsoldier opened fire savagely on the automatons, but they just kept advancing, pushing the humans up against the sphere. A moment later, Charlie and one other died, torn apart by the advancing metal creatures. Their suits could no longer protect them.

Drake opened fire, desperately. The plasma blasts ricocheted off the sphere and spun around the room. He turned and opened fire on the automatons, launching grenades and other weapons into their throng, trying to take as many of them out as possible. Ron had a different idea. There was no longer any point in trying to communicate. He activated his nanotech cutting tool — a monofilament blade — and started to dig into the sphere…

The tool broke. The Killers knew what had killed the previous Killer and had adapted. They’d somehow proofed their stronghold against nanotechnology. There was no way to kill the alien. And if they couldn’t kill the alien, they couldn’t kill the ship.

“Oh, you son of a bitch,” Ron breathed, shaking his head. Drake’s final cry broke his trance. His commanding officer had done as well as could be expected, and yet he was dead, killed by a dumb automaton. It would be his turn soon enough. There was no hope of escape, yet there was one weapon left to use. “You suck so very much.”

He powered up the suit’s autodestruct, clung onto the sphere as hard as he could, and triggered the sequence. The explosion shattered the sphere and, too late, the Killer starship became dark and lifeless. The automatons stopped their motions and collapsed onto the deck. The final act of the starship was to cap the black hole and prevent it from breaking loose and destroying the entire ship.

The Battle of Shiva was over.