Time Siege (5 page)

“Hound Three here. I have movement in hangar grid nine!” There was a scream, and then static.

“All Co-op converge on nine.” Kuo pulled up the map of the area in her AI module and located grid nine. She launched herself north to the edge of the space port and landed in front of a large hangar with massive double doors. She powered on her exo and created a thick white trunk. Using it as a bludgeon, she slammed it against one of the doors and knocked it off its hinges.

A barrage of small-arms fire struck her shield, sparking the electrified white sphere protecting her. She expanded the field and flew into the hangar, the white-bluish tint of her exo illuminating the room. She saw a dozen figures slinking back into the shadows. Hot red flashes of energy beams, mixed with antique projectile weapons, bounced against her shield.

Kuo focused on one of the energy streams coming from behind a stack of containers. She shot the trunk—as thick as she was tall—straight into the source of the weapon fire. The resulting impact exploded containers and bodies into the air and knocked over a portion of the wall.

Ocean water rushed in from the outside, sweeping savages, water, and rubble across the room. Another cluster of shots hit her from the right, and she swung the trunk down, killing her assailant instantly. The rest of the savages had seen enough and tried to flee. Kuo punched several with the trunk, easily breaking bones and crushing skulls.

She extended the trunk until it covered the length of the room and then swept it in a full circle. The remaining walls collapsed, and the entire building fell on top of everyone inside. A moment later, Kuo shot back up into the air and watched as the savages fled.

By this time, the plodding monitors had arrived, swarming around the stragglers who hadn't been quick enough to escape. The ones still trying were cut down by the Valta troopers guarding the perimeter. The entire area around the destroyed building was reduced to a chaotic melee.

Kuo chose not to engage any further. Her exo wasn't designed for precision, and the savages were too intermingled with the monitors to safely target. Her relationship with Director Young was strained as it was. She would rather not have to add friendly fire to his list of grievances.

She saw a small mass of the savages waist-deep in the brown ocean, retreating into a building on the far side of the field. “Save a few to interrogate,” she broadcasted, and launched toward them, covering the hundred meters within a second. She landed on the roof of the building and shot a trunk straight down. Tweaking the current of her exo, she wrapped the entire building in her field and electrocuted all the living things inside. Her levels dropped precariously from that maneuver, but not enough for her to care. These savages had killed a Valta operative. In her eyes, this was unforgivable.

“Find Hound Three's body,” she ordered as she headed back to where the bulk of the monitors were rounding up the survivors.

The monitors had captured forty savages and killed about three times that number. Her own casualties numbered twelve monitors and the hound.

“This is Hound Two,” a voice crackled. “You should see this, Senior Securitate.”

“On my way.” A few minutes later, Kuo arrived at the hangar to see scattered collie components littering the floor. The savages had been busy. It looked like they had been building a ship of sorts. That must be what set off that alert that attracted her hounds. Were they trying to escape by air even with a Valta blockade over the region? She found her answer when the hound led her to a stack of discarded parts off to the side.

She scoffed; of course. They were after collie stealth modules. This information fell in line with the recent reports of the savages ambushing only the monitor patrols. That must mean they'd succeeded in scavenging a working mod. Kuo suppressed her irritation. This complicated things. It also posed new questions. What did the savages intend to do with a stealth ship? Surely they wouldn't be able to ferry their entire tribe away without being caught. Where were they going, then? Did the fugitive and the temporal anomaly plan to escape on their own and abandon the savages? Possible, but unlikely. By all indications, the anomaly was rather attached to the tribe.

Kuo waited for the rest of her forces on the ground to complete their survey of the space port. There was entirely too much ground to cover and too few forces to do the job. Chances were, much of the evidence had already washed away with the tide. All they had to show for the night's work were three dozen prisoners who ended up not even being who they were after.

This tribe that had been hiding the anomaly had been incredibly resourceful in keeping their movements a secret. In the past six months, even while the Co-op had rounded up thousands of these savages to question, only a handful—less than five confirmed—had been Elfreth. In every single case, these savages had chewed a poisonous weed that killed them before Kuo's people could torture them for the truth. In fact, the only reason they knew that three of the five were Elfreth was because they found the weed on their corpses after the fact.

Ewa landed next to her a short while later. “The grounds are cleared, Senior. At this point, we believe the targeted tribe has escaped our blockade through the skypaths.”

Kuo pulled up the map of the region on her AI module. “The land south of here, called the Long Island, is mostly flooded and uninhabitable. If they continue down the skypath, it banks west toward…”

“… the Mist Isle,” Ewa finished.

Kuo gritted her teeth. If that was the case, and the savages were able to reach the island, then her project had just become exponentially more difficult. She hardly had enough personnel as it was. If the Co-op had to open a new front onto the Mist Isle, then she would need to double, possibly triple her current resources.

“Prep a Valkyrie,” she ordered.

“Yes, Senior. Destination?”

“Chicago. We'll need more monitors. Many more, and if that fool Young denies me, I'm going to skin him alive. While I'm gone, recanvass this region. I want around-the-clock sorties sent south and westward originating from this location.”

Ewa hesitated. “South to the ocean. How far west? Our Valkyrie rotations are already near capacity.”

“All the way to the Mist Isle.”

 

FIVE

T
HE
W
RECK

The two monsters met in the heart of a debris field littered with centuries of twisted wrecks deep inside the Ship Graveyard. James stared through the
Frankenstein
's small window slit as it pulled closer to the corpse of the famed and briefly-feared
CP Godzilla
. The monstrosity was so large, James lost sight of the stars. A few minutes later, the collie entered one of the huge tears on the
Godzilla
's body and proceeded through a dark tunnel deeper into its bowels.

Grace poked her head next to James and made a face at the hundreds of protruding jagged metal edges pointing at them like teeth.

“Impressive, isn't it?” he said.

“An impressive waste, you mean,” she scoffed. “I bet this stupidity was the idea of some politician with a Napoleon complex.”

“What's a Napoleon?”

Grace looked him up and down, and smirked.

The
Godzilla
, named after some mythical monster in human lore, was the largest ship ever built. Commissioned during the height of the Core Conflicts, it was the Core Planets' solution to bringing an end to the devastating war that had dragged on for nearly fifty years, taking a billion lives. It was supposed to be a ship so powerful and imposing that no faction would dare wage war against them ever again. Its design and silhouette were echoed like that of a monster or demon from the old Greek legends. It was heralded as the ship to end all wars.

The
Godzilla
's supremacy in space had lasted a full half battle. During its first and only fight, the Outer Rim fleet realized that it was literally impossible to miss hitting the gigantic ship. They focused their fire on certain critical areas and, like a human being, once the ship's internal organs failed, the rest of the whole soon followed. The damage in certain critical systems cascaded to others and, as the battle wore on, the
Godzilla
became a crippled sow, too injured to fight effectively, yet too large to retreat. The original builders were right about one thing; it did usher in a new era of peace, though not the way they had imagined.

The war ended six months later once news of the
Godzilla
's destruction reached the rest of the solar system. The resources consumed to build the behemoth had bankrupted the Core Planets, not only in terms of raw materials and manpower but also of spirit and resolve.

Now, almost two hundred years later in 2512, the corpse of the
Godzilla
had found a second life. The ship was so large that, even destroyed, most of its body was still intact. Nestled deep inside the Ship Graveyard, where no government or corporation ruled, it had become a haven for pirates, smugglers, and factions who wished to stay outside of corporate and planetary laws. Dozens of small thriving colonies now lived inside its body in isolated compartments that could still sustain environments.

James noted several large menacing guns trained on them as they passed. He had been here a few times, though never on ChronoCom work. The Wreck Colonies, as they were known, had formed a loose coalition government and forbade any time salvaging on the
Godzilla
. James could understand why. The ecosystem of the Wreck Colonies was at the mercy of a slowly-decaying ship constantly being bombarded by debris and the corpses of other ships. Any small ripple in the chronostream could be devastating to
Godzilla
's current occupants.

“To the hideous-looking vessel,” a voice drawled over the comm, “We found five separate ship signatures on you: three from ChronoCom, one from Valta, and one from Europa Planetary. All of them are disallowed here at Bulk's Head, or the rest of the Wreck, for that matter. You're either lost or you suck at masking your shit. In any case, prepare to get blown out into space for being stupid. Goodbye.”

James rushed to the console and slammed a fist on the comm button. “Bulk's Head, this is the independent Earth vessel
Frankenstein
. We do not belong to any of those entities. Ship signatures are from cannibalized vessel parts. Please verify and do not shoot. We are here on business.”

There was a long pause. James fixated on the antiship cannons trailing them as the seconds ticked by. At this range, one blast would blow them into dust. Hell, with the way the ship was welded together, a hard kick to the hull would probably knock a few panels loose.

Minutes ticked by as the collie hovered right in front of a cannon's muzzle. They waited to see if it'd charge up and incinerate them to cosmic ash. James wiped the sweat off his brow. He had his exo powered all the way up, ready to shield Grace for an escape, but he doubted that'd do much good. He looked over at Grace, who by this time had gotten bored staring at the big gun and had gone to the storage bin to get a snack. The old woman had already cheated death once. What did she care about another brush with it?

Finally, after James was almost sure they were going to just get blown up, the voice came back. “You guys got the scratch for payment?”

“We do,” James replied.

“Good. You're in Dock Wu. As a precaution because of your multibanned signatures, we're going to search you. Exit your”—there was a chuckle—“craft with your hands up, register your weapons and bands, and declare your cargo. If you don't plan to do any of the above, save us the hassle by telling us now so we can blast you. Otherwise, you'll just piss us off and it'll just get worse. By the way, have your bribes ready. There'll be five of us.”

“Loud and clear,” James said, releasing the bands on his wrist and laying them out on the bench.

A blue light flashed in the darkness, followed by another farther down the tunnel and another after curving around the bend. James steered the unwieldy collie after the lights, letting the trail of blue beacons guide them through the maze. Along the way, he noticed several more hidden cannons locked in on their ship. This maze was the first of the Bulk's Head colony's defenses. There were many stories about corporation police chasing pirates into the maze, only to get lost and never come out again.

After a dozen twists and turns, they finally reached what looked like a dead end. James turned the collie to the right and floated into an expansive cargo hold. A large bay door on the left wall halfway down the room swung inward, and a beam of light flooded them from the opening.

James moved the lumbering
Frankenstein
into the space. Once parked, he waited for the door to close and for the yellow light to turn blue, indicating recompression of the room. He signaled for Grace to follow him as he opened the hatch and stepped outside. He inhaled, noting how much of a struggle it was to take a full breath. He had forgotten how difficult it was to breathe in some of these artificial atmospheres, which often had only a fraction of Earth's oxygen levels. Grace was having an especially difficult time catching her breath as her nearly hundred-year-old body struggled to acclimate to the environment.

They waited at the base of the
Frankenstein
's ramp, hands raised behind their heads. A group of men in patchwork clothing, looking more likely to rob them than anything, rushed in with guns raised. They moved in an organized fashion as three of them kept watch over James and Grace while the other two searched the collie. The three men roughed up James, pushing him around while patting down his clothing and rummaging through his pockets. They gave Grace decidedly lighter treatment when she shot them a stern look. The former High Scion had an uncanny ability to sometimes put people—even thugs—on their best behavior.