Star stuff, p.19
Star Stuff, page 19
Mairead saw the skeletons.
"What the hell happened here?" she said. "Did the damn dinos do all this? They're only animals. They should care about nothing more than eating and mucking. What made them go berserk?"
Ramses inhaled sharply. "Look!"
The Firebirds glided through sheets of rain, emerged into a sunlit field, and saw it.
Mairead lost her breath.
Dinosaurs. Hundreds of them. Maybe thousands. An entire army of alien dinosaurs.
These were not the aerial ones. Here were large land animals, each one the size of a damn T-rex. They were charging, attacking a stone silo from all sides.
Atop the silo, Mairead saw them.
Humans.
"Kill the damn reptiles!" she shouted.
She flew above the beasts and released her bombs.
Dinosaurs exploded below.
Her fellow Firebirds dived and released their own ordnance.
Explosions rocked the valley. Chunks of dinosaurs flew.
The beasts below roared. The valley shook. Hundreds of the reptiles raised their heads and blasted up fire.
Flaming pillars soared like volcano fire.
Mairead yanked her joystick from side to side, swerving around a thousand columns of flame. She flew closer to the ground, firing bullets. Dinosaurs fell, their fire dying. She carved a path through the flaming pillars.
Atop the silo, the last few humans were fighting too. They had cannons, rifles, grenades. Dead dinosaurs were piled up around them.
Mairead didn't understand it. Clearly, the humans had been living here for years. After all, they had built a town, barns, had plowed the fields. What had caused the dinosaurs to go mad, to attack like an army?
And since when did damn animals blow fire?
She had no time to contemplate it further. The beasts below were regrouping. The massive reptiles forgot about the silo now. They were concentrating their fire on the starfighters. A jet slammed into a Firebird, and the pilot screamed. His starfighter plunged down, slammed into several dinos, and exploded. Another starfighter shattered in midair.
The starfighters rose and swooped again and again, exhausting their missiles and bombs, finally firing only bullets. Dinosaur corpses piled up. But more of the animals kept emerging from the jungle, swarming across the valley, and attacking both the silo below and the starfighters above.
"What the hell?" Mairead shouted, dodging another fiery jet.
"Firebug, we have to flee!" Ramses said. "We'll come back with heavy bombers. We'll—"
"By the time we get back, every damn colonist in that silo will be dead!" she shouted.
Mairead rose and dived again, firing bullets. She swerved around another flaming jet. Sparks flew into her shattered cockpit, singing her.
Mairead narrowed her eyes, examining the valley.
The dinosaurs are moving like soldiers, she thought.
But it was impossible. They were dumb animals. Had to be. Mairead had read every report about this planet, knew the wildlife was vicious but mindless.
And yet she saw it now. The dinosaurs were moving in units. Brigades. Battalions. Swarming at the vanguard, protecting the flanks, spraying fire.
There was something vaguely familiar about that.
Mairead gasped.
Memories flooded her.
Two years ago. She had been only a lieutenant. She had attacked a planet overrun with scorpions. She had seen a thousand of the beasts attack a human settlement. The Heirs of Earth had failed to save those humans, and Mairead had never forgotten that defeat. A scar from that day still stretched across her left ribs.
These dinosaurs move like scorpions, she thought.
"They're drones," she whispered.
"What?" Ramses said, flying above her now.
"The dinosaurs!" she shouted. "They're Ra damn drones! The scorpions must have done something to them. They're controlling their brains somehow."
"Firebug, listen to yourself!" Ramses said. "Zombie dinos?"
She ignored him. She spoke into her comm. "All pilots! Surround the valley, face inward, and blast out an EMP attack. Disrupt all signals on every frequency. If there are any radio signals flying here, I want them jammed. If there are any electronics in this valley, I want them fried. Go! Now!"
The Firebirds spread out, flying in rings around the valley.
Mairead turned on her EMP system—a weapon designed to disrupt alien tech. Admiral Emet had insisted on installing these systems on all Firebird fighters. Mairead had always thought them useless, but now she was willing to try.
"Fire!" she cried.
She blasted out EMP pulses from her starfighter.
Around the valley, the other Firebirds bathed the valley with electromagnetic radiation.
It was harmless to flesh. But it was devastating to electronics.
For a moment, nothing happened.
The starfighters kept flying, pounding the valley with pulse after pulse.
And then the dinosaurs fell.
Wave after wave of them collapsed.
Soon the valley was covered with dead aliens.
Mairead exhaled in relief. She landed her Firebird by the silo, crushing a dead dinosaur's tail. She climbed out of the cockpit and leaped onto the grass.
The dead reptiles spread around her. From down here, they seemed even larger. Most were larger than her starfighter. There were various species. Some were carnivores with massive toothy jaws. Others were herbivores, and they were even larger, lying across the valley like beached whales.
Mairead approached one of the dead dinos. She frowned.
"What the hell?"
There was an electronic device lodged into the dino's head. It looked like a spark plug. The round tip crackled, glowing blue. Mairead grabbed the device, placed her foot against the lizard's carcass, and tugged back with all her strength.
The implant came free with a spurt of blood. Cables stretched out from it, running through the wound and into the dinosaur's head. Mairead spent a while fishing out the cables. It felt like pulling out a damn tapeworm. The cables finally came free, tips sparking.
The other starfighters landed in the field, and their pilots emerged. Ramses approached her.
"What the devil is that?" the tall man said.
Mairead stared at the bloody implant and dangling cables. "Scorpion tech. The scorpions were controlling them."
She couldn't supress a shudder. The Skra-Shen, the giant scorpions from deep space, were the greatest enemies humanity faced. Mairead had fought dozens of alien species. None were as vicious as the scorpions.
Ramses stroked his pointy beard. "Damn. I can't believe this."
Mairead raised an eyebrow. "Why not? You know the scorpions are a technological species. If they can build starships, they can build crude mind-jacks."
"Not that," Ramses said. "I mean: I can't believe you were right about something."
She punched him. "Oh, shut the hell—"
Suddenly she stepped back, inhaling sharply. She drew her pistol.
Ramses frowned. "What?"
"I just realized something," she whispered. "If the scorpions controlled the dinos, that means—"
Before she could complete her sentence, the ground cracked open. And the beast emerged.
A creature of claws. Of pincers larger enough to slice a man in half.
A Skra-Shen.
A scorpion.
It was smaller than the dinos—the size of a horse rather than a whale. But here was the species that had conquered half the galaxy, that was hunting humans everywhere. It was deadlier than a hundred dinosaurs.
Mairead opened fire, screaming.
Her other pilots drew their own pistols. Bullets peppered the scorpion.
It kept running, claws tearing up dirt and dead dinosaurs. The shots ricocheted off the scorpion's exoskeleton, doing it no harm. The scorpion raised its stinger and shot a jet of venom. A pilot screamed and fell, clutching at his face, his skin melting.
Mairead turned and ran.
The scorpion leaped among the pilots, clawing, tearing them apart. Their bullets slammed into it again and again, doing nothing.
Mairead leaped into her Firebird and kick-started the engines.
"Hey, arsehole!" she shouted over her shoulder at the scorpion. "I'm going to bomb you from the air!"
She was out of missiles. She was out of bombs.
Luckily, the scorpion didn't know that.
The beast left the pilots and bounded across the valley toward her.
The scorpion leaped toward the starfighter, pincers opening wide.
Mairead switched on the afterburner.
Searing streams of white-hot inferno blazed over the creature.
She kept the starfighter on the ground, engines blazing, the fire washing across the alien. The exoskeleton melted. The soft flesh inside boiled. By the time Mairead powered down, there was nothing left of the scorpion but shards of shell and ashes.
Mairead stepped out of her Firebird and spat onto the smoldering remains.
"Arsehole," she said.
The colonists finally emerged from their silo. They were only about thirty, Mairead saw, and her heart sank. The message had said there were fifty.
The colonists approached the surviving pilots, embraced them, and some even fell to their knees and wept.
"Thank you," they said, tears falling. "Thank you, Heirs of Earth."
Mairead looked around her. She had thought this planet beautiful from above. Now she saw desolation. Crashed starfighters. The bodies of friends. Plumes of smoke rose, and the stench of death filled her nostrils.
Mairead lowered her head.
Earth is real, she thought. It must be real. Because I cannot believe in a galaxy where all planets are places of despair. I must believe. That we have a good home. That we will someday return.
She pulled out her comm and hailed the fleet. Soon a transport vessel glided down to the valley, and the refugees climbed in. The shuttle rose, flanked by starfighters, taking the refugees up to the main Inheritor fleet.
But Mairead stayed on the planet. The shuttle had brought her a replacement cockpit canopy. She would need a few hours to work, to repair her ship.
To her surprise, Ramses remained planetside with her.
"Don't you have any girls to woo up in the fleet?" Mairead said. She stood on a ladder, leaning over her cockpit, working with a wrench.
"Undoubtedly," he said. "But somebody needs to guard your ass down here while you work."
She leaned into the cockpit, reaching for a screw. "Yeah, well, keep your eyes off my arse while I work."
"Please," Ramses said. "There are much more pleasant things to look at down here. Rotting dinosaur corpses, for one."
She turned from the cockpit to flip him the bird.
Ramses opened his pack. He pulled out a silver, filigreed dallah with a long spout.
"Firebug, take a coffee break with me," he said. "I'm brewing a batch of the finest Egyptian beans, seasoned with cardamom. The drink of the gods."
She scoffed. "Coffee is for sissies. I drink Scotch."
"Mairead," he said, voice softer now. "Join me."
She gazed into his eyes, silent for a moment. She put down her wrench, climbed off the ladder, and sat beside him.
He brewed the coffee, which he served in small porcelain cups. The drink was very dark, thick, and bitter. And, Mairead had to admit, it was heavenly. As they sipped, the corpses lay around them, smoldering, and ash rained from the sky. For a long time, they drank in silence.
"Mairead," Ramses finally said. "Are you all right?"
Mairead cursed the damn tears that flowed down her cheeks. "No," she whispered.
Ramses put down his cup. Mairead tossed her own aside and embraced him, clinging to him desperately, crushing him in her arms. Her tears flowed. Ramses wrapped his arms around her and stroked her long red hair.
"None of this is right," he said softly. "I know. But we have to believe. That Earth is out there. That we'll see her again. That we'll bring everyone home."
Mairead sniffed. "I believe. Earth is real. We'll find her someday. We'll fly there together through blue skies over green hills. We'll see all the places from the legends. The rolling oceans. The soaring mountains. The highlands of Scotland."
"The golden desert of Egypt," Ramses said, "and the glory of the pyramids."
"Home," Mairead whispered. "That's why we fight, isn't it? For home."
"For home," he agreed. "Now let me help you with your cockpit. You're a damn fine pilot, Firebug, but a horrible mechanic."
Normally she would have punched him. Today she laughed.
They fixed her cockpit. They soared back into space, flying their Firebirds. They rejoined the Heirs of Earth, humanity's only fleet. A group of twenty warships. A handful of starfighters. A few cargo hulls. That was it. A humble fleet, far from home. The last remnants of humanity's ancient glory. A group of refugees, their homeworld lost in shadows.
With bursts of light, the starships ignited their warp drives. They blasted into the distance, seeking a mythical star and a lost home.
* * *
The other stories in this anthology are all science fiction. But here is a fantasy story for you. You met Erry earlier in this anthology; she appeared in the story "The Girl in the Fire." Here is a story exploring her background. This story appears in the universe of Requiem, in which I've written over twenty novels.
* * *
OF SAND AND STARLIGHT
"You shite-guzzling, pig-shagging stains of codpiece juice!" Erry swung her stick, eyes burning with tears. "Get the Abyss off my beach, or I'll slice off your lying heads and shove 'em up your fat, flea-infested arses!"
The women stared at her for a moment, then burst out laughing. A cruel laughter. A taunting laughter. The laughter Erry had been hearing all her life.
"Get outta here!" she shouted. The tears were now flowing down her cheeks, and she snarled like a wild animal. Perhaps that's all she was now. A wild animal roaming the beaches, feral and hungry. "I'm gonna crack open your skulls and piss in 'em!"
Clouds hid the moon. Only the candles burning inside the rotting houses on the boardwalk lit the beach. Driftwood littered the sand, and when Erry took a step forward, a dead fish squished beneath her bare foot. This whole city was a corpse washed onto the shore. This whole damn place was a maggoty hive of filth, a wart on the backside of a wretched empire.
The women laughed again, surrounding Erry. All but one. This one stood a couple paces back, eyes simmering with hatred. This one's teeth were bared, and her hand clutched a rusty knife. A heavyset, dark-haired woman with scabby knuckles. Getya. The baker's wife.
"Move aside." Getya stepped forward between her companions, raising her blade. "I'm going to gut this whore myself."
Erry growled, spinning from side to side, brandishing her branch. They said she looked like a boy, her body small, her dark hair cropped short, but Erry was an adult already, if you counted the years. For eighteen winters, she had scavenged upon this beach, rummaging in the trash, eating dead fish, fighting off her enemies with sticks and stones. An adult, yes, yet still so small, standing five feet only on tiptoes, her limbs no thicker than the stick she wielded. Years of hunger had left her small, but they had given her strength, kept the fire inside her burning.
These women around her—jackals, all of them—were a dozen years older, a dozen inches taller. But Erry knew she could face them, kill them if she had to. And if they beat her bloody? Well, she had been beaten bloody too many times to count and survived. And if they killed her? Well, perhaps that would be even sweeter than cracking their skulls.
"I'm no whore." She spat on the Getya's feet. "Take that back or the next time I spit, it'll be onto your maggoty corpse."
Getya pointed her blade. "You are one! You are! You— you bedded him. My husband. For money. You're nothing but a dock rat whore! Just like your mother."
Erry sucked in breath through clenched teeth.
Dock rat.
Whore.
The rage, the pain, the nightmares flared through her. Whore? No. Her mother had been a whore. Her mother had been a goddamn whore who slit her goddamn wrists, leaving Erry alone on this beach.
I'll bed men for food. For shelter in a storm. For companionship on a dark, moonless night when the nightmares fill me. But never for money. Never.
She stepped even closer to Getya, arms shaking, branch raised, teeth grinding. She stood only an inch away from the taller, older woman. Erry barely reached Getya's shoulders, and her branch was no match for the woman's blade, but she refused to back down. She tilted back her head and glared into Getya's eyes.
"Yes," Erry hissed. "Yes, Getya. Your husband took me into his bed. He took off my clothes. And I bedded him. But not for money. You know what he gave me?" A chaotic smile twisted her lips. "Honey cakes. The same honey cakes you baked him. And oh— they were delicious, Getya." Erry licked her lips. "Nice and warm and puffy. You baked them for him, and I ate them all up while he thrust into me."
Getya's eyes flooded, and for a moment Erry thought the woman would collapse into sobs. But then Getya roared and lashed her knife.
Erry leaped back, swinging her stick.
The blade blazed across Erry's arm, ripping through her stained rags, cutting her skin. Blood sprayed. Before Erry could even register the pain, her branch slammed into Getya's head with a crack.
The branch shattered.
Getya howled, blood gushing from her head.
The other women leaped forward.
And Erry fought them. Her branch was shattered, and she weighed barely ninety pounds soaking wet, but she fought them. With teeth. With nails. With the desperation inside her, the pain of a dock rat, her sailor father gone across the sea, her whore of a mother dead, her belly aching with hunger, her heart burning with her rage. As the fists slammed into her head, she kept standing. Kept fighting. As the kicks drove into her belly, she refused to fall. She kicked them back. She roared with her pain as they beat her. Roared for her father leaving them, leaving Erry's mother to slit her wrists in the alley, leaving Erry to a slow death of starvation and beatings and sand and blood in a rotten carcass of a town.
