The Loss Queen (Approaching Infinity Book 5) Page 4
“This is going to be a bit different from other operations.”
Raus and Vays sat up straight at this.
“We’ve been intercepting civilian transmissions—”
Vays perked up and was about to pose a question, but a withering look from Witchlan stopped him.
“—for the last ten days. Your language packs are ready for review. See that you you’ve finished with them prior to planetfall. The transmissions paint a composite picture of general readiness. We can expect multiple armies prepared for immediate engagement. While this in and of itself is not significant or unique, we have tasked Mr. Scanlan with making use of existing materials and fortifying them with his particular brand mechanical wizardry. General Holson, General Kapler, and General Icsain will be in charge of routing any incoming threat. The Titan Squad is to remain in reserve until or unless they are required. We are guarding our resources and will not spread them unnecessarily. Not now.
“Check your screens for images of several military bodies with names we’ve managed to glean from intercepted communications. Their technology is limited. They are planet-bound. Though they appear to have no machines designed for war, their military model might be somewhat similar to our own.
“General Holson, do you foresee any difficulty in securing our landing for General Scanlan’s fortification efforts?”
Waice raised his eyes, reflexively looking to Holson for his reaction. He was self-conscious immediately and furtively checked for other reactions around the room. No one seemed to find anything amiss with the Minister’s question, which made Waice’s stomach tighten.
Jav stared at the screens below the table glass. “Especially in light of your concerns of the possible existence of a divine being, there is no way to know their capabilities until we engage them. A lack of machines could point to a lack of need for them.”
“That’s not very encouraging.”
“All I can promise, Minister, is that I will kill until they are dead or until I am.”
“Well, that’s something. All you need do is protect General Scanlan and his efforts. Once the fortifications are in place, we are confident that no local power sent against us will be a threat.
“Six hours. Everyone is to be prepared and ready for immediate engagement. That is all.”
10,923.020.1600
Planet 1612 (Loss)
Aurinel Coast
The Palace, lit by a low full moon, whistled through the warm night air as it plummeted. It struck the far east of the city, only several hundred meters from the sandy, white shore to the south. Cracks radiated out, toppling buildings, rending mass transit ways, making sewage systems disgorge their hauls into the sky to rain back down. The city was ruined in an instant but it would be several minutes before everything stopped moving, falling, or breaking. The effect on the sea was somewhat less dramatic. Once the cycle of normally placid waves, reversed for a time, stuttered back to normalcy, thousands of fish and other sea life floated to the surface, dead. But the sough of the surf came essentially unbroken, a traitor’s song that told nothing of what had just assaulted the world.
The sea held some which were much heartier, though, and these began to rally in the moonlight shadow of the alien Vine. Rising and falling with the pulse of the settling tide, sleek, angular shapes skittered upon the water’s surface, never sinking below it. At the forefront, one of these shapes rose to stand to its full height and revealed itself to be an insectoid woman of significant stature, with long, powerful limbs and covered in chitin armor that glistened with beaded water.
SEMILLON
LOSS COMBINED NAVAL DIVISION COMMANDER
She made no sound discernible above that of the waves as she raised one arm, motioning those behind her to fan out and advance. She remained where she was, though, placed both of her plated palms together, and bowed her head as if in prayer.
From the shadow of the Vine, thousands of insectoid men, identical in style but not stature to the woman, spilled out, all striding upon the water’s surface. They came to a stop roughly a hundred meters from the beach after making a wide cordon and took up postures similar to their commander’s. Before every soldier, water began to churn until tentative worm heads of animate water rose. These hesitated briefly, depending on the mastery of the soldier at work, before rising, stretching, launching forth towards the Root Palace. In moments, the night air was filled with seawater missiles, driven and sustained by greater and greater volumes of water, connected always to their source, the sea. The moon shone upon these myriad, heavy contrails and they glittered beautifully. They shot high, arced over the beach and began to converge upon the Palace.
Semillon opened her eyes, which shone with uncanny light.
When they were within fifty meters of striking, the head of every worm-stream erupted with purple flame, like faulty fuses of archaic bombs, but though the flames popped and sputtered, they burned ever more furiously until, on impact, they detonated with ear-splitting force.
The combined fusillade shook the Palace, setting it ablaze with purple fire. Shredded and burning Vine fiber rained down from ruptured blisters up and down the Palace’s south-facing side.
• • •
Scanlan, stood at a monitoring station in the close operations bridge of Gran Mal. Checking readings from another station, he pushed a glowing red plunger in the middle of the low roof. “Minister of Affairs, Witchlan,” Scanlan said.
“Go ahead,” Witchlan’s voice echoed from a speaker.
“Gran Mal is even now clearing the Gran Bay doors. I will be able to begin on schedule.”
“Are you not concerned about follow-up attacks from the sea?”
“No sir. Please engage the Prisma Shield. Form a perimeter around the Palace, just wide enough to include Gran Mal at its proposed location.”
“Very well, Mr. Scanlan. How shall we set it?”
“Filter for high concentrations of potassium.”
“Potassium?”
“Yes, Minister. Nothing greater than one-kilogram masses should be allowed to pass through.”
“Primitive. Effective. Genius. Thank you, Mr. Scanlan.”
“Yes, Minister. Scanlan out.”
Scanlan shifted to stand before the forward view screen, which heaved with each of Gran Mal’s steps. The gyroscopic functions prevented the bridge from experiencing any movement, gross or subtle, but the exterior cameras told the truth. Flaming debris trailed down from above, but was of no concern to Scanlan or Gran Mal. The rest of the Shades were mobilizing as Scanlan was. He had no doubt of their victory in taking the city and, ultimately, the planet.
• • •
Gran Mal, a mechanized beast covered in golden scales and a great faceted carapace eighty meters in diameter, lumbered through the Gran Bay doors on four squat pillar legs. Behind it followed the other Grans: Gran Mid, a one-hundred-meter-long skeletal snake with Jav Holson, Dark with the Kaiser Bones, riding upon its brow; Gran Pham, an elephant thirty meters tall at the forward shoulder, half as wide as it was tall, with tusks shod with gleaming steel and Raus Kapler, also Dark, directing it from its forehead; Gran Lej, a humanoid figure, standing thirty-five meters tall, composed of, and squirming with, constituent wooden dolls—puppets—which separated to form Icsain’s army, but which now held him snugly within a writhing, walking hive.
“Icsain,” Jav said through his Artifact. “Engage the naval contingent.”
There was no reply, but Icsain turned Gran Lej south, stepped over the Palace courtyard wall, still rising from the ground, and made for the beach.
Gran Mid and Gran Pham flanked Gran Mal and continued on from where the giant turtle stopped once it cleared what would become the main gates of the courtyard wall.
It took less than two minutes to raise the Prisma Shield, which was roughly the time it took for the navy to prepare its second volley. Confident of his analysis and the efficacy of the Prisma Shield, Scanlan ignored the incoming worm-streams, and walked the narrow corridors w
ithin Gran Mal to the observation platform located at the Gran’s center. Above him, an iris gate spiraled open and the ten-meter-in-diameter platform rose up through the hole created in the central facet of Gran Mal’s shell. From this vantage point, at his control podium, he could continue to monitor his surroundings for other, more physical and immediate threats, but reading none at the moment, he began his work.
The worm-streams reached the Prisma Shield then and passed harmlessly through it, but the chunks of pure potassium did not. Pressed against the Shield by the streaming water, the potassium began to flare with purple fire until exploding fantastically upon the Shield. The vast quantities of hydrogen produced during the reaction burned and burned until gone, but did so in midair against the Shield which could not be damaged by such.
Scanlan chuckled to himself. His fingers danced over the panel before him, locking targets for dye-marker missiles, which began firing from various ports around the rim of Gran Mal’s shell even as he typed. He finished the key sequencing, allowed the missiles to continue firing as programed, and addressed the first of the markers along the rising courtyard wall to the south. He rotated the monocle over his right eye left then right then left again and fired the Clockwork Beam.
Cogs and gears erupted instantly, working together to create more and more complex machine structures, which took root within the fresh Vine fiber to integrate and grow with it and ultimately to reinforce it. He repeated this, firing at several dye-marked points along the still-budding wall, moving from south to west to north. Before he’d finished with these, though, something caught his eye.
Dark shapes were bounding through the ruins of the city from the west. Scanlan half-questioned his vision at first as the shapes were only visible briefly while in the air. He trained his eyes upon one figure in particular and saw that it was another variety of insectoid soldier. These were jumping twenty to thirty meters high, over broken buildings and overturned mass transit vehicles, but seemed to disappear on landing. Even with his enhanced sight, he found it difficult to track them on the ground.
“Mr. Holson,” Scanlan said through his Artifact, “I do believe that wave two is about to begin.”
“And three and four,” Jav replied. “I see them. There are two discrete air forces behind the jumpers.
“I have already begun 1st Perimeter preparations outside the courtyard wall. I don’t need to remind you of the importance of these installations. . .”
“No, Scanlan, you don’t,” Jav replied. Then to everyone, he said, “I’ll take the ground forces. Raus, you take the advanced air contingent. We’ll deal with the second after they’ve arrived.”
Jav urged Gran Mid forward and together they sped past Raus upon Gran Pham. Jav scanned ahead and located two major depositories of human skeletal remains, one below ground, the other conveniently stored above, the bones being the sole occupants of what must have been a storage facility. The pits of his skull eye-sockets shone with dim, sickly light and a high-pitched keening filled the air. Within moments, the storage facility was spilling its contents from nearly every broken window. The skeletons clambered down the walls, some fell, but hit the ground unbroken and essentially unaffected by the fall. In their hands were pole swords culled together from elements leeched from surrounding materials. The Kaiser Bones imposed the structure upon the elements just as they provided the motivating force to animate the skeletons. As long as Jav willed them to, they would continue, following his commands even outside of his presence. From the cemetery, too, skeletons clawed their way up through packed earth.
All of the skeletons moved west, filling the streets and the ways uncluttered by debris to create a net that might catch the jumpers. Given the jumpers’ mobility, Jav kept several layers of his skeleton troops back in anticipation of the forward wave of his troops being overshot. It took only moments before the first engagement. It was fast, resulting in a skeleton dashed to pieces. The second engagement, lasted longer as the jumper happened into a group of three skeletons. The first of them, again, was reduced to bone shrapnel. The other two, however, put their pole swords to quick and efficient use, stabbing the jumper in the lower back from the right and in the neck from the left almost simultaneously.
Within minutes, there were skirmishes all over the west end of the city. The jumpers were covered in shiny black chitinous armor, with thighs overly developed—to facilitate their jumping—and lower legs little more than shafts of bone from the knee down to clawed feet. They had wings at their backs which so far seemed useless. Though their general outline was humanoid, it was unclear whether they were truly man or insect or some hybrid. Their faces were their least human feature, with mouthparts that moved and vibrated in an alien fashion. Their legs were a tremendous asset, providing incredible locomotion as well as a primary offensive weapon. As the first interactions showed, one on on one, they easily outclassed Jav’s skeleton troops, but they could be overwhelmed by numbers.
• • •
Icsain piloted Gran Lej onto the beach where the giant promptly dispersed into thousands of figures of synthetic wood, physical copies of Icsain himself. Icsain had been carved from a tree similar in species to the Viscain Emperor. He was highly polished. His head and major joints were ovoid or spherical shapes, which provided him with perfect articulation. The smooth surface of his face, completely featureless, was an ever-moving grain pattern that was as expressive as it was mesmerizing. He used the Relic Cords, the Artifact given to him by the Emperor, to control his myriad puppet soldiers. Now they spread along the water line to create a barrier for Semillon’s encroaching troops. The insect troops upon the water were uniformly thin and long of limb, like humanoid water striders. A clicking noise, echoing strangely off the water, passed back and forth between them for some time before Icsain registered it as language—code. Their intent was clear enough: if they couldn’t attack the Palace from the water, they would do so in person. The arrival of Icsain and his troops merely expedited engagement.
Individual worm-streams shot forth, targeting puppet troops. The streams ignited just before impact as they had done the times previous and obliterated several of Icsain’s troops. He sighed mentally at this. Though his assignment was perhaps important in the grand scheme of things, he found it exceedingly tiresome. He could afford to lose a great many troops in a prolonged exchange, but wanted to be finished with this chore as soon as possible. The communications he was picking up did prove to be useful in this regard. He was able to identify Semillon, their commander, and isolate her by the sound of her particular clicks. Once he’d done this, he sent a freed Relic Cord, one of thousands of spectral tentacles issuing from their source housed within his back, out over the waves to touch Semillon with its leaf-shaped end.
• • •
Semillon saw nothing approaching her so did not know to try to avoid the enslaving touch of the Cord. Once contact was made, she instantly felt sick, like she’d been infected with a kind of rotting malaise that sapped her will, that made her do things she absolutely did not want to do. She felt nauseated and greasy within her Totem’s embrace. All the power it provided her felt corrupted and as if it had been turned against her, making her a prisoner in its shell. She tried to resist the urge to summon the deadly potassium, but she could not. All she could do was watch as the volumes of the terrible metal materialized beneath each and every one of her troops instead of within the water-spears they were directing towards the wooden men on the beach.
She didn’t want to watch the results of her summoning and tried to avert her eyes, but she felt her neck straighten, her eyes turn to focus on one particular wooden man, one who somehow filled her with inexplicable dread. She knew that this one was in control of all the others and realized almost at once that he was in total control of her as well.
“Look,” She felt she heard him say in an unreal whisper that vibrated her spine to produce a semblance of sound.
And she did look as the water erupted with a succession of raucous purple e
xplosions. She was very good at her job—even when she didn’t want to do it—accounting for all of her troops. Once the last of the water—and its bloody contents—had rained back down, she found herself staring once again at the wooden man. She wondered now how she could possibly have mistaken him for any of the others; he was so much more. In a hiccup of lucidity, she recognized this thought as alien, not her own, but it didn’t matter.
She felt herself go through the summoning process once again, for a volume that taxed her ability and sickened her with its proximity. She would fair no differently than her own troops, but in this she found a variety of solace.
• • •
The sky over the city was filling with buzzing black figures—humanoid flies that held their hands together to fire streams of machine-gun projectiles. On strafing runs, they could reduce Jav’s skeletons to dust and fragments, but Jav ignored them for the most part. For those that drew too close, to him, he employed Approaching Infinity, or AI, to snatch them from the air and break their necks with his bare hands. He was preoccupied with finding the leader of the jumpers—cricket men, he’d decided—who seemed to be responsible for dispatching more and more skeleton troops, creating an ever-growing blind spot in the pseudo-sensory net the skeletons provided.
Raus was not idle throughout the flies’ advance. He’d scanned the entire city for resources—corpses whose decayed flesh he could animate via his Artifact, the Resurrection Bolts—but found very little available. He would have to make his own troops. Even though he couldn’t reach them physically, the flies were vulnerable in the air. After a full minute of concentration, Raus filled the sky with bolts of raining lightning. This accomplished his two goals: eliminate the first wave of air power, and create troops of his own. The lightning swept down, striking hundreds of the flies, some burning to useless cinders, but most simply falling like lazy, smoking meteorites, only to rise again on possibly broken legs after impact, and shamble forth in search of Raus’s designated targets, in this case other surviving flies or the jumping crickets.