Rise of Nimrod Fleet (The Contingency War Book 3) Read online

  He spotted Adra pressed against a pillar with a sentinel bearing down on her. He tried to compose himself and then held out his pistol, struggling to hold his arm steady. His hand wavered as he fired, sending a thin shard of plasma racing past the sentinel, missing by meters. He took another gulp of the thin air and fired again, hitting the far side of the pillar behind which Adra was hidden, causing the sentinel to halt its advance on the Provost and spin around to face him. Lux’s eyes widened as the dread realization that he had now become the target registered in his oxygen-starved brain, and he flung himself to the deck as an electroshock projectile smashed into the balustrade beside him. He felt the charge ripple through the metal decking and surge through his body, sapping him of any strength he had left. Then the sentinel swooped over the balustrade at the far side of the balcony and aimed down at him. Lux closed his eyes, but then heard an explosion and felt the reverberant clatter of something heavy slamming into the decking. He lifted his head and saw the sentinel’s smoldering remains.

  His sudden reprieve from death had given him a burst of energy. He wrestled himself to his feet, hauling himself upright and again rested over the balustrade. He heard a voice shouting, but the pounding of blood in his ears dulled the words. His vision was blurry, but he could make out Adra on the opposite side of the balcony, also slumped over the balustrade, plasma pistol in hand, looking almost as weak as he felt. But once Adra saw him, she immediately forced herself to stand tall, before using her pistol to wave him over.

  “Lux!” Adra shouted, before taking several painful gulps of air and then pointing to the large room to her rear, “Inside!”

  Lux nodded and began to work his way around the rectangular balcony overlooking the main concourse below, while Adra staggered out of sight, into what he presumed to be the base’s command center. The short distance around the balcony should have taken him no more than a minute to traverse, even at a casual strolling pace, but each step felt like he was trudging through thick oil. Finally, he reached the other side of the balcony and lurched towards the door to the command center, when he heard the unmistakable thrum of another sentinel approaching. Raising his pistol, he tried to pinpoint the sound, but his eyes could no longer focus. He staggered backwards and pressed his back against a metal door; he didn’t know where it led or even if the door would open, but it was his only hope of escape. He reached down and as his hand closed around the handle the sentinel rose over the balustrade and bore down on him, hovering barely a body’s length from his face. A raw instinct for survival took hold and Lux threw himself towards the sentinel, hearing the thud of its projectile-thrower engage, but his swift and desperate action had caused the sentinel to miss. He dug his fingers into the gaps between its metal panels and pressed his entire weight down on it, overpowering its thrusters and forcing it to the deck, before pressing the barrel of his pistol flush to its spherical metal shell and firing. There was a flash and Lux was thrown back against the metal wall, electrical sparks biting into his face and neck.

  He tried to stand, but this time his strength failed him completely and he collapsed, eyes growing darker and his body more tired. And then his breathing began to give out. At least I saved my Provost, he thought, at least I won’t die in disgrace… This gave Lux comfort and in that moment he accepted his fate. To die in service of the Hedalt Empire was no dishonor.

  He wavered in and out of consciousness and then he felt himself moving. His eyes focused for a split-second, long enough to see Provost Adra’s hand clutched around his boot, dragging him across the metal deck and inside the command center, before his vision wavered once again and he drifted out of consciousness.

  FOUR

  Commander Sonner paced up and down the bridge of the combat simulator, trying to sort through the mess of thoughts and emotions that were fighting for prescience. She was furious at Taylor for not telling her about his encounter with Provost Adra sooner, anxious to get out into space as quickly as possible to find the reserve base and flight crews, and utterly terrified at the possibility that the Hedalt War Frigate would descend on them at any moment and obliterate them.

  “You should have told me straight away!” Sonner yelled at Taylor, still pacing. This had been the fourth time she’d yelled that at him.

  “Will you stop yo-yoing up and down the damn deck? You’ll wear it out,” Taylor replied. During the short period of time that Sonner had berated him, his mood had gone from sheepish to apologetic to utterly fed up at being scolded like a wayward teenager who had just been caught smoking. “I know I should have told you sooner, but I didn’t. I’ve told you now, so can we move on from this part, please?”

  Sonner stopped and glared at him, “Which part is that, Captain?” she asked, still in scolding mode. “The part where you possess a simulant like some sort of demon, or the part where you have a slanging match with a Hedalt Military Provost and basically put a target on our backs?”

  “The part where you stop talking to me like damn child!” snapped Taylor.

  There was silence for a moment, and they glowered at each other with matching intensity. It was Sonner that again finally broke the impasse; she took a deep breath and managed to speak the next sentence without it sounding like an assault, “So tell me again what this Provost Adra said.”

  Taylor also lowered his hackles; it was easier for him to tame his anger, since he didn’t feel the physical side-effects, such as an accelerated heart-rate or the feeling that one’s blood is boiling over. He thought about the encounter again and realized he’d only told Sonner about when he spoke with Provost Adra, and hadn’t started right at the beginning, from the first moment he had appeared on the bridge. “She talked about a signal anomaly in the CoreNet,” Taylor began. “They were going to run some sort of signal purge.”

  “Right, you’ve mentioned this purge before,” said Sonner, “They believed your incursions into the CoreNet were just some unexplained signal anomaly that needed to be eradicated, right?”

  “Yes, except this time she told her lieutenant, the one she called Adjutant Lux, to hold off,” Taylor went on. “She said she believed something was there; that something being me.”

  “They specifically talked about the anomaly as being a Hunter simulant?” asked Sonner, and Taylor nodded. “But why? What reason had she to suspect that?”

  “I don’t know, but she was talking as if she was the one who created simulants. She mentioned me, Casey, Blake and Satomi specifically,” replied Taylor, searching his memory to remember. His body may have been entirely synthetic, but his brain was human and as prone to forgetfulness as any other. “And she said that Earth had always belonged to the ‘Hedaltus race’ too.”

  “Always belonged to them?” Sonner repeated, her face scrunched into a frown. “Why the hell would she say that?”

  Taylor shrugged, “I don’t have any answers, I’m afraid.” Then before Sonner could flick out her claws again, he added, “But, I got the distinct impression that she had already figured out I was the anomaly even before I spoke up. Either way, she definitely knows we’re out here, and is looking for us.”

  “Damn it,” said Sonner, rubbing the back of her neck, “If that’s the case then she could have been following our trail for some time.”

  Taylor scrunched up his nose. There was more he hadn’t told her yet.

  “What now?” said Sonner, “Don’t tell me... you gave them our address and asked them to pop over for coffee?”

  “She riled me,” said Taylor, turning slightly sheepish again, “said I was worthless and made in a laboratory...”

  “And...?” said Sonner, eyebrows raised as high as they could go.

  “And I may have mentioned something about how they should leave Earth while they still had the chance,” Taylor said, rushing through the sentence in the hope Sonner wouldn’t quite catch it all. She did.

  Sonner threw up her arms, “Great, so you basically confirmed that more humans survived and that we’re planning to fight back. Why do
n’t you just shoot me here and get it over with!”

  “I’m sorry, but that damn Provost really got my goat,” Taylor exclaimed. “She said I was more the enemy of human beings than the Hedalt are, and...” he hesitated, realizing how dumb what he was about to say next sounded, “and she called me, or the original Taylor anyway, an... imbecile.”

  Sonner almost laughed out loud, “Hell’s teeth, Taylor, did no-one ever tell you about sticks and stones?”

  “I know, I know,” said Taylor backing down, “Like I said, she riled me. If I could have moved, I would have shoved my simulant fist down her throat.”

  Sonner shook her head and then let out an exasperated sigh. There was no point staying mad, at Taylor or the situation. It was what is was, and they just had to deal with it and move forwards. “You know, maybe it’s a good thing,” said Sonner, trying to sound more upbeat.

  “It is?” replied Taylor. He failed to see how any of what he’d told her was good.

  “It means at least we know,” Sonner went on, “It means we need...” she stopped and corrected herself, “It means I need to stop procrastinating and get us back out there. We need crews for our ships, and we need them fast.”

  At that moment Taylor understood something about Sonner that he’d overlooked. Her prickly demeanor was a defense mechanism, a way to shield her emotions from the sheer magnitude of the responsibility she had taken on. But there were times when she’d lift the visor on the helm of her suit of armor and let others see her more fragile human side, as she had done at that moment.

  “Look, you’re not procrastinating,” said Taylor, speaking as softly as his simulant vocal processor would allow. “Before, we had nothing to lose and everything to gain; we had no choice but to just roll the dice and hope for the best. But now, it’s different. Now we actually have a chance of pulling this off.”

  “And it scares the hell out of me,” admitted Sonner. But then, out of the blue, she smiled at Taylor, “You know, for a robot, you can be quite empathic.”

  “I’m actually a cyborg,” said Taylor, returning the smile, “at least, I think that’s what I am. And, you’re welcome.”

  “I wish we knew why they hated us so damn much,” said Sonner.

  Taylor thought back to what Provost Adra had said about Earth always having belonged to the ‘Hedaltus race’ and that it was theirs by right.

  “You told me once that there was a suggestion the Hedalt had been to Earth, a long time ago,” said Taylor, recalling the conversation he’d had with Sonner not long after his initial awakening on the Contingency base. “Maybe they think they planted a stake in the ground back then?”

  “Well, their claim is void,” said Sonner, and Taylor could see that her armor was returning, piece by piece. “And it’s about time we made them understand that.”

  Taylor nodded. It was time for them to roll the dice again. “I’ll assemble the others in the briefing room. Let’s go and find the crews for those shiny new Nimrods out there, and then kick those steel-skinned claim-jumpers off our land.”

  FIVE

  The hangar was a throng of activity, with cranes moving crates of supplies and ammunition, Nimrod engines being powered up and tested, and engineers bustling around, working on a dozen different jobs in preparation for getting the fleet space-worthy. Spread across the three functional hangars the engineers had gathered all ninety-nine of the Nimrod-class cruisers that comprised the Nimrod Fleet. The hundredth ship, Taylor and Sonner had already sacrificed on the surface of the planet around which the moon containing the Contingency base orbited. It was a red herring intended to throw the Hedalt off their scent, should they ever stumble upon the system, as Taylor had before he was awakened. At that time, they had no reason to suspect the Hedalt were searching for the Contingency base, or even suspected its existence, but Taylor’s experiences had changed everything. They now knew for sure that at least one high-ranking Hedalt officer was actively looking for them.

  He stepped further into the hangar, away from the double doors that opened into the pilot’s ready room and briefing area, where he and the others would soon discuss the next stages of their plan to get the fleet operational, and observed with deep admiration the indomitable spirit of the engineers. Despite losing Earth and their homes and families, and despite waking up three hundred years later to learn that the Contingency had never even begun, they were undeterred. It was nothing short of awe-inspiring and Taylor was frankly astonished at the radical change the base had undergone since the first time he had entered it. Back then it was a ghost town, dead for centuries, with all but one of its hibernating crew still alive – the equally indomitable Sarah Sonner. But the Contingency base wasn’t the only thing that had undergone a radical shift since he had first entered the lava tube, then still under the control of the Hedalt programming, and still believing himself to be human. Since his awakening Taylor had grown comfortable in his new synthetic skin, and the more he accepted who and what he was, the more distant Earth seemed to feel. One day, he’d need to figure out where he belonged, but today was not that day.

  He turned to go back inside the ready room, but then something caught Taylor’s keen simulant eyes. There were groove marks in the deck plating about ten meters from where he stood. He wandered over to investigate, crouching to run his hand along the damaged area, which was also slightly melted, before he suddenly realized what the marks were. This is where Sonner shot at me, he thought to himself. This is where I fell from the stack of containers and hit my head. This was where I became awake! It was strange to think back on it. At the time, he’d seen Sarah Sonner as a kind of monster, a beast that the Hedalt had invented and tricked his simulant mind into seeing instead of a woman, as a way to make it easier for his mind to hunt and kill humans. No-one would think twice about killing a monster; children had been brought up on stories about slaying demons and ghouls for thousands of years. But the reality was quite different to these fairy tales. The truth was that he had been the real monster – a synthetic predator with a laboratory-grown, cybernetically-enhanced human brain, which had been programmed to kill.

  He searched his memory, trying to remember those events again, but it was surprisingly difficult to recall them clearly, despite how recently they had all occurred. In his memory, the monster had been firing beams of purple energy at him from a plasma rifle, but the damage to the deck was consistent with standard Earth Fleet explosive-tipped rounds, not the Hedalt’s more sophisticated energy weapons. He remembered back to when Sonner had first confronted him about what he was, in a room not far from where he stood now, and explained as best she could about all of the lies he’d have to face up to. It seem like a century ago; distant memories that didn’t even seem like his own. He could remember what that earlier version of himself had seen and done, as if he’d seen it in a mission report, but he couldn’t remember being him. He couldn’t remember being anything other than what he was now.

  “Whatcha lookin’ at, Cap?” came the cheery voice of Casey Valera.

  Taylor drew his fingers across the marks one last time and then stood up. “This is where I fell. This is the place where I first became me.”

  Casey looked at the marks on the deck and then into Taylor’s silver eyes, which were somehow still able to convey the sadness that had been expressed through the words he’d spoken. At moments like these, Casey thought that ‘simulant’ seemed like such an unkind and inaccurate description. There was nothing simulated about their feelings.

  “This is where you lost your crew, isn’t it?” asked Casey, and the question seemed to take Taylor by surprise. “You don’t have to talk about it, if you don’t want to.”

  “No, it’s okay,” said Taylor, “it’s just that I hadn’t really thought about it lately, what with everything else that’s happened, including finding you.”

  “It’s okay to feel sad about it, Captain,” Casey went on, her voice sympathetic yet still somehow cheerful. “Finding me doesn’t mean you have to forget about
her. The other Casey, I mean.”

  Taylor smiled and looked at his pilot. She’d changed her hair slightly, pinning it away from her face, and she now wore a bright purple top underneath her Earth Fleet-issue shirt, which had three buttons undone, rather than the two that his other Casey would leave. On her feet she’d managed to find a matching pair of purple canvas shoes with thick white soles, though where she had got them from Taylor had no idea, and thought it better not to ask. But the most striking addition to her outfit was a necklace, made from what looked like a simple bootlace. Delicately attached to the center, tied in place at either end of the bow-like wrapper, was the mint that Taylor had found down the back of the pilot’s chair and placed in Casey’s jacket pocket, before she was awakened for the first time. He shook his head gently and smiled. He didn’t know why, but this Casey felt more real to him than the memory of the one he’d lost. But then his smiled faded; he worried that the more time that passed, the less he would remember of any of them. He needed to find Blake and Satomi soon, before their memories became so distant that it would be like meeting strangers.

  “You okay, Cap?” asked Casey, wondering where Taylor’s thoughts had wandered to.

  “I’m fine, Casey,” Taylor answered, managing to resume a weak smile, “I was just thinking how glad I am that I found you.” Then he understood something that had not occurred to him before, but that was obvious now that he was talking with Casey — the real, living Casey Valera. “You know, in a way, the other Casey — all the others, in fact — they were never really my crew. I stopped being that Taylor Ray right here,” he pointed to the scorched deck plating that separated them. “You’re my crew, Casey. And when we find and wake up Blake and Satomi, they’ll be our crew too.”

  “Aww, stop it Cap, you’ll make me cry!” said Casey, cocking her head a little to the side. Then she frowned, clearly a put-on gesture, and added, “wait a second, are we even able to cry?”