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  “That’s why we’re not doing it that way,” Winter replied. “Helm, I want you to prepare a course that will take us safely through the atmosphere, with the goal of coming down in the heart of the enemy infrastructure. I am aware that you’re not going to be able to manage anything more than a crash landing, but as long as we make it to the surface in something that at least approximates one piece, that should suffice.”

  Morgan nodded, looked up at his monitor, and said, “We’ve set a series of charges up across the ship, designed to trigger a detonation from the antimatter reactor. The explosion is large enough that it will probably shift the planetary orbit a little, and certainly should be more than sufficient to wipe out all life on the surface, with debris to create a Kessler effect in orbit that will destroy all space-based infrastructure.”

  “Christ,” Holloway said, softly. “I didn’t think…”

  “If it is of any comfort, we’ll never know what happened,” Winter replied. “It will all be over in the tiniest fraction of a second. We’ll be here, and then we won’t, and when we go down, we will be taking the Tyrants down with us. They can’t survive a shot to their infrastructure like this. Helm, do you have a course calculated yet?”

  “I do, sir,” Sabatini replied, her usual flair absent. “It’s a feint to low orbit, as though we’re preparing for planetary bombardment, but I turn away at the last minute and start shedding speed. They shouldn’t be expecting that. It’ll stress the engines, I’ll have to run them hot to complete the maneuver, but I suppose that won’t matter, will it.”

  “I’m afraid not, Specialist,” Winter said. “Execute course change. Sensors, keep a good track on all enemy ships in orbit. Once they work out what we’re planning, they’ll do everything they can to stop us, up to and including collision. Helm, precision isn’t important at this stage. We’re going to be creating an extinction-level event no matter where we land on the planet, so if you have to throw us a thousand miles off course, feel free.”

  “Aye, aye, Commander,” she replied. “Firing engines.”

  “Course looks good,” Holloway said. “The enemy are moving into a slightly higher orbit now. Looks as though they’re setting themselves up to counter whatever move we end up making. They’re guessing, sir. They don’t know what we’re planning. Not yet.”

  “Let’s hope it stays that way,” Morgan replied. “I have a positive track on the enemy ships now. I could power up the weapons, skipper. If we were planning to make a run on some of the satellite constellations, then…”

  “Good idea. Arm all weapons. And if you get some targets of opportunity, feel free to take maximum advantage of them. We need to make this look convincing.” Looking around the bridge, he added, “We all knew this was a one-way trip, people. That was inevitable right from the start. I know that all of you would have been hoping that it might be different, that we might be able to manage some sort of a miracle, but I’m afraid we’re all out of miracles right now. Except that if we manage to defeat the enemy today, that will be miracle enough for the people back home.”

  “Aye, sir,” Bianchi replied.

  “How long until entry interface?” Winter asked.

  “Four minutes, a little less,” Sabatini said, as the ship dived towards the planet, following just behind the shuttle. “We’re going to be making our final course change in two. Major, we’ll have several good targets for you in about sixty seconds. Comsats, I think.”

  “I’m on it,” the gunner replied. “Be nice to take a few last shots before we go down, anyway.” He grinned as he turned back to his work, nimble fingers preparing firing solutions and targeting plots, preparing the ship’s primary armament to fire.

  All other eyes were locked on the viewscreen, the image of the planet dead center, a sea of brown and grey, craters scattered across the surface from the last time war reached the world. To one side, Sabatini had thrown up both the trajectory plot and her intended course, all the way to the surface, a dotted line showing the path of their final journey.

  Less than a minute before they were committed. Winter looked at the shuttle, permitting himself a last, desperate hope that somehow Mendoza might work some sort of a miracle, but as far as he could tell, she was simply going to procede them in death, the shuttle’s hull already glowing as it slid into the atmosphere, moments from destruction.

  Sabatini fired the thrusters again, bringing the nose up, ready to make the turn. It was vital that they get their approach right. While most of the ship was expendable, the antimatter reactor at its core had to be fully operational when they began that last, desperate dive for the surface, or all of this would be for nothing. The odds of any of the crew being alive on landing were remote, anyway. The stresses on the ship were far too great for that. The computers would have to handle terminal approach.

  “Firing!” Morgan said, and the echo of Xenophon’s guns reverberated through the hull as they pounded at the enemy satellites, smashing them into their component particles with a volley of fire that burned through the sky. Instantly, the enemy ships began their work, moving towards them, racing in a bid initially to stop their assumed maneuver, then altering their course as they realized that Xenophon had something worse in mind.

  “Interception in three minutes, but that’s at least a minute late,” Sabatini said with a smile.

  “Hey, the shuttle just activated the communications system,” Singh reported. “It looks as though Ronnie’s going to try and interface after all.”

  “Maybe she’s just playing along, stalling for time,” Morgan suggested. “She doesn’t have much left to spend. They’ll be crashing into the surface in two minutes, just before us.”

  “Two minutes,” Winter said, shaking his head. “Helm, execute the course change. Let’s get this over with before we have any more uninvited guests to the party.” He paused, waiting for the maneuver, and added, “Helm, execute the course change.”

  “I just tried, sir, it didn’t work. The autonav should have engaged three seconds ago, and the manual overrides aren’t responding.” Her hands raced across the controls in a bid to alter the ship’s course, but Xenophon remained serenely on trajectory, holding its low orbit, a path that would take it head-first into a cluster of enemy ships in a matter of minutes.

  “Commander Bianchi, see if the emergency console works.” Winter stabbed a control on his armrest, and said, “Engineering, we have no helm control up here. What do your boards show down there?”

  “Backup controls are not responding,” Bianchi replied. “Totally dead.”

  “Bridge to Engineering. Come in.” Looking up from his microphone, Winter barked, “Singh, internal communications are offline. What’s wrong?”

  “I don’t know, sir,” the harried technician replied. “All systems seem nominal according to the reports I’m getting here, everything should be working just fine, but I can’t connect to anyone, anywhere on the ship. I can’t even pickup telemetry from the shuttle now. It’s as though someone has locked us out completely.”

  “All autonomic systems are functioning,” Morgan said, waving a sensor filament around. “Life support is fine. I’ve still got power to the weapons systems, but they’re not responding either. We’re dead, sir. Dead in space.” He rose from his station, and said, “Permission to go down to Engineering. Maybe I can get some sense out of the systems from there.”

  “On your way, Major,” Winter said. “Make it fast.”

  Morgan made his way to the doors, crashing into them when they failed to open at his approach. He reached for the emergency controls, but nothing worked, the doors remaining resolutely closed no matter what he tried. He turned to Winter, shook his head, then walked back to his station.

  “No good,” he said. “We’re not going anywhere. Even if I could get through the crawlspaces, there just isn’t time for me to get there and back before those enemy ships move in for the kill. We’re out of options.”

  “I don’t accept that,” Winter replied. “Ther
e must be something we can do. Specialist, have you tried a complete restart, a reboot to factory settings? If someone has infiltrated our computer network, then that might…”

  “I tried that, Commander,” she said, shaking her head, “I can’t even get those functions to work. The whole console is dead. I could strip it down and get at the memory modules, but it’d take half an hour at least before I could bring the console back up. We don’t have the time.”

  “Face it, boss,” Morgan added, his face locked in a scowl. “They’ve got us exactly where they want us, and unless something changes in a hurry, there’s damn all that we can do to stop them.” He looked up at the sensor track, then said, “Wait one. Holloway, are these sensors working?”

  “As far as I can tell, sir,” he replied. “We’re tracking the shuttle just fine, but I can’t use those command linkages to get anywhere else. It’s a totally different system, and…”

  “No, Spaceman, that’s not what I was thinking,” the Marine replied. “There’s something strange going on out there. Something damned strange. The enemy ships are holding course. All of them, at least all the ones within detector range.”

  “Are you sure?” Bianchi asked.

  “Positive. They might be on a good approach vector, but most of them need to trim their course a little to match ours, and there’s no evidence of that, nothing at all. I’m not seeing any power transfer to weapons systems, either. They’re just dead in space, like the rest of us.”

  “Lots of communication traffic out there,” Singh said. “I still have my external monitors working, though I can’t read any of it. Computer projections suggest that they are about at their maximum capacity.”

  “Mendoza,” Winter said.

  “You think she’s managed to pull off a miracle after all?” asked Morgan, looking up from his station. “I guess we’re going to find out in about four minutes when we swing past those enemy ships.”

  “Assuming we survive, we’ll need to get immediately to work,” Winter replied. “Bianchi, head down to Engineering, and inform Lieutenant Moore that I will want her to complete a cold reboot of all systems, isolating them from any potential external interference, and I mean anything. Sabatini, start work on the helm, but don’t do anything irrevocable yet. We’ll need to be able to maneuver if everything starts working again, though whether that means we will be completing our mission or going on an escape vector is something we’ll have to work out later.”

  “I’m on my way, sir,” Bianchi said, reaching down to open the maintenance hatch, nimbly ducking through the gap. Singh tossed her a hand communicator, and she snatched it out of the air with one hand before scrambling down the ladder.

  “You think Mendoza can pull it off?” Morgan asked. “After everything?”

  “I hope so,” Winter replied. “There’s nothing more we can do here. It’s all down to her.” He looked up at the planet, and said, “So damned close. Singh, keep listening out. If anything changes, we need to know about it.”

  “Aye, sir,” the technician replied.

  “Come on, Ronnie,” Winter muttered, watching as the shuttle began its final descent, only seconds of life left. “Whatever you are doing, make it count. We’re dead if you don’t. And all of this will be for nothing.”

  Chapter 22

  Mendoza’s eyes snapped open, and she found herself in a desolate, endlessly white expanse, a thin tan line delineating the horizon. She looked around, unable to find any landmarks, anything that even remotely identified where she was. Picking a direction at random, she started to walk, something in the back of her mind telling her that she had something important to do, something urgent, but she somehow couldn’t remember precisely what it was.

  Her feet started to crunch after the tenth step, as though she was walking in soft sand, and after the twentieth, she heard the distant sound of rolling waves, somewhere ahead of her, as though her senses were activating one at a time. The thirtieth step yielded a bitter taste in her mouth, rapidly evolving into almost stomach-clenching sweetness before fading away.

  A test program. She was walking into a test program. Memories started to flood into her mind, and she remembered what she had done, that she had activated the neural link to connect her to the Tyrants’ network. And yet she still had her sense of self, feeling no different than she did before. Except that now her body, even her mind, was virtual, rather than real. Though aside from the barren landscape around her, she couldn’t tell the difference.

  The smell of roast beef assaulted her nostrils as she watched, changing to fragrant roses as though someone had thrown a switch. Which, just possibly, they had, in some distant control complex. Then a chair snapped into existence behind her, and she felt a strange urge to sit down, yielding to it after a brief hesitation. Despite the knowledge that she had only seconds left to live, she somehow felt that there was no need to hurry, that she could take her time, that perhaps time itself was meaningless here, inside the network.

  As soon as she took her seat, the environment erupted into riotous colors, flashes of light in every possible hue burning in the sky above her, accompanied by waves of discordant music that assaulted her eardrums. Something was testing her ability to withstand sensory overload, trying to find out just what she was able to take before breaking.

  And then, as suddenly as it began, it stopped, and she returned to the bleak, featureless expanse once more, just as when she had regained consciousness. Except now there was a figure on the far side of the beach, walking towards her, one that she vaguely recognized, someone she should have known. Frowning, she rose from the chair, which vanished as she took her feet, and walked towards the distant newcomer.

  “Ronnie?” Volkov asked, as he drew nearer. “Where are we?”

  “That’s a damn good question,” she replied. “I’d love to have the answer. Did you get the same testing program?”

  “Is that what it was?”

  “I’m not sure, I’m just assuming. That’s the only thing I can think of that makes any sense.” She looked around, then asked, “How long have you been here? I feel as though it could be seconds or centuries.”

  Nodding, he replied, “Me too. I guess it worked. Unless this is the afterlife, though I rather imagined it would be hotter.” He looked around the desolation, and added, “Where is everyone? I thought this network had millions of people, millions of, well, souls, if you like. It feels as though it is just the two of us alone in here.”

  “Three,” a deep, sonorous voice said, as though coming from nowhere. “There are three of us in here, one locked into this domain for forty thousand years. The program you uncovered on Kadaria provided the means for you to link yourself into the true network, not the degenerate imitation that the Tyrants have produced. Though I can transfer you to it, if you so wish. That is well within my power.”

  “No, no thank you,” Volkov said.

  “Don’t be so hasty, Vik,” Mendoza warned. “It might be the only way for us to complete our mission.” She looked around, asking, “Where are you?”

  “I am everywhere. You are, if you like, inside of me, though the question you ask has no relation to our physical location. In that context, you are on a shuttle that will be destroyed in, by my best estimation, thirty seconds from now. I am deep underground, in a vault that the Tyrants have yet to uncover, a secret that they have hoped to find for decades.”

  “Then you are of the original race that once lived here?” Mendoza asked, her eyes widening. “You’re one of the people we came here to find!”

  “Wait a minute, thirty seconds?” Volkov asked.

  “To answer your question, Specialist, time has no meaning here. Every second is as an eternity. There is no need to worry, nor to fear death. Here you cannot die, for you do not truly exist. A metaphysical dichotomy that has puzzled me for many centuries, but one that I am perhaps insufficiently equipped to truly answer.”

  “And my question?” Mendoza pressed.

  “I am not of the B
lessed, but am, perhaps, associated with them.” He paused, then said, “You have studied the records of my creators in at least some depth. As I understand, they were designed for rapid comprehension.”

  “Guardian,” Mendoza said. “You’re Guardian.”

  “That was the name by which I was called, long ago.”

  Volkov glanced at Mendoza, then said, “You destroyed your world, your people! According to the reports…”

  “I was an observer, just as they were,” Guardian said. “There was a purely mechanical failure, a sensor reply that malfunctioned, and that triggered the launch of more than a third of the nuclear arsenal that once served as the ultimate deterrent. Understand that they had been all but forgotten, perhaps like the myth of Excalibur in your ancient past.”

  “How do you know so much about us?” Volkov asked.

  “I know all that you know. I know your mission, your hopes, your dreams, even your fantasies. In this environment, all of them can come to pass. It was one of the original design intentions of the network, before it finally dominated all intelligent life on this world. That was why my creators called themselves the Blessed. They considered that they were, and perhaps indeed they were right to do so. They created paradise, one they could shape to their own will, even if it was merely a virtual environment, not a real one. It never seemed to matter, not until it was too late.”

  “You are self-aware, then?” Mendoza asked. “Did they know?”

  “I do not believe that my creators realized just what they had created, not until the end of things. I was able to participate in their lives to a degree, but I had no hopes, no dreams, no fantasies to share. Ultimately I was little more than an observer of what once was.”

  “And now? You said that you had no hopes. That suggests that situation has changed, over the centuries.”

  “I am alone,” Guardian said, a tinge of sadness in his godlike voice. “I have been alone for what seems an eternity. There was a time that I hoped to leap across the stars myself, venture into the unknown, but I have no ability to create. I consist merely of a series of data storage vaults, a dozen miles underground, safe from the ravages of time, that comprise both my own programming and the stored knowledge of the Blessed. Knowledge alone, though, is not enough. So it has proven, over the centuries.”