Near an icy, dim planet that had not attracted enough interest from the rest of the galaxy to earn a name, Silo and Garotte were working surveillance. Garotte was an old hand at it, specifically trained for the sort of military missions that result in broken treaties and war crime accusations if they failed, and collapsed governments or economic chaos if they succeeded. Silo was somewhat newer to the role. She was the most recent in a long line of military men and women in the Winters family. Her training was in the area of heavy weapons and demolition, but an overenthusiastic application of those skills had led to a dishonorable discharge. Shortly afterward she joined Garotte’s squad, and not long after that a mission went wrong and she found herself in a Supermax prison for three years. It had been a less than blessed life, which made her decent and courteous attitude all the more impressive.
Theirs wasn’t the most fearsome ship one might encounter. It had started life as the humble Armistice, the spacefaring equivalent of a utility van: middle of the road in terms of speed, seating for eight, and plenty of cargo space. What made it impressive were the add-ons. A few missile modules and some heavy-duty shields made it no slouch in a fight, but the key improvement was a stolen cloaking device that could render it nearly invisible. After its transformation, Garotte had rechristened his ship the Declaration of War, and it had served them well ever since. Currently it kept them hidden in low orbit while they awaited the arrival of their targets.
Like freelancing, espionage was a profession characterized by long periods of inactivity followed by frantic action. Different people found different ways to spend the time. Garotte was buzzing with activity, pulling up transcripts, psychological profiles, and police reports for anyone even remotely involved in the task at hand. Silo split her time between working out, maintaining her weapons, and knitting. She’d started a pink scarf when they’d arrived. When she reached the halfway point without any evidence that anyone was nearby, she spoke up.
“Are we absolutely certain this is the right place?”
“You heard the messages. They intended to do a surface sweep of this planet in hopes of finding ‘a sample’ or some such.”
“I still can’t imagine what they’d want with a planet like this. There’s nothing here.”
“According to the last survey report, which is better than sixty years old, it is a minimally life-sustaining world. ‘Class 7 cold weather flora and fauna’ have been introduced to prepare the environment for future terraforming.”
“What sort of flora and fauna are we talking about?”
He swiped at the ship’s console. “Lichen, assorted grasses, and wild yaks.” A sharp beeping noise burst through the ship’s speakers, and the sensor indicators lit up. “Ah, you see? Just a moment’s more patience would have been enough.”
“Is it them?” she asked.
Garotte looked over the readings. “Three ships, running hot and sputtering like jalopies. Yes, my dear, I would say these are our boys.”
“Neo-Luddites. Honestly, you’d think they’d take the time to get their own ships running smoothly before they set off on a mission.”
“They are a terrorist group dedicated to the death and rebirth of technology as we know it. It shouldn’t come as a surprise that they are more skillful in the death aspect than the rebirth.”
“So be it,” she proclaimed, turning to the wall of the ship, where an assortment of intimidating weapons were secured. After selecting a grenade launcher with rounds the size of soup cans, she clicked in a clip and chambered a round. “Let’s go rescue some yaks then.”
Garotte maneuvered the cloaked ship into a pursuit course, then programmed the autopilot to maintain distance while he and Silo donned an additional layer of protection each. The planet’s surface was well below freezing, and the oxygen levels in the atmosphere were lower than ideal, so breathing masks were called for. By the time the ships they were following were entering the atmosphere, both Garotte and Silo had dressed in heavy parkas. Garotte was armed with a small energy pistol and a ballistic sniper rifle. Silo had her grenade launcher and what she called a shot-pistol, which looked like a flare gun and fired shotgun shells.
“Let’s listen to the chatter. Maybe we can get an idea of what we’re dealing with,” Garotte said.
He activated their recently acquired secure radio. They heard a short burst of digital distortion, then the quick, efficient exchange of military communications.
“Activate Quantum Pattern Sensor. Start with wide sweeps. … Weak signature present near equator. Coordinates follow. … I want a squad on the surface. Full complement of countermeasures. Deploy, wait for ships to reach safe distance, and pinpoint with handheld QPS. Once located, identify acquisition scenarios.”
“Either these are some seriously dangerous yaks, or they are expecting to find something nasty down there,” Silo observed.
“Worse, they are keeping the ships airborne. I don’t like the idea of having to deal with air support,” Garotte added.
“Should one of us stay behind? Maybe we can use the Declaration to ground them.”
“I doubt it. The Neo-Luddites arm themselves pretty well, and we aren’t equipped to take down three of them. Once we fire, they’ll know we’re here. Things would get tricky after that… I think we should get the authorities involved.”
“We aren’t exactly in a population center, Garotte. Even if we do a top-priority distress call, I don’t imagine we’ll have anyone here inside two hours, and I seriously doubt they’ll be any better armed than we are.”
“Perhaps not, but they’ll be a distraction. They show up, we fire, they fire, the Luddites fire. Chaos ensues. I always fare better with a bit of chaos in the air.”
“So I’ve noticed. Okay, make the call. But let’s try to strike fast and hard when the time comes. I don’t want to lose any friendlies.”
“Agreed.” Garotte cleared his throat and keyed the voice command system of the Declaration. “Voice only secure channel to,” he glanced over a listing of nearby patrol posts, “civilian monitoring post 77872. Command code Alpha Echo Oscar.”
The computer executed a sequence of complex subroutines, which were more than enough to put Garotte on a variety of military watch lists. This was of little concern to him, though. He was already on most of those lists, in some cases under two or three names. The screens of the ship worked their way through the process of forging the appropriate digital watermark, simulating command priority, and all of the other little details that would route his call to the appropriate headset and computer screen.
“CMP local 72,” a woman’s voice announced over the ship’s speakers. “How may I direct your call?”
“I need to speak with your highest-ranking official immediately,” Garotte said. Rather than his dapper British accent, he’d affected the voice and disposition of a harsh Texan.
“I’m sorry, the patrol chief does not speak to… wait. This is the priority 1 channel. How did you get access to this channel?” the woman asked once the conversation had strayed far enough from her usual interaction to break her out of autopilot.
“Look at the transmission credentials, Miss. I’m the reason you have this channel. Now put the PC on.”
“Right away, sir!”
There was the clatter of a dropped headset, then the hushed sounds of distant voices. After a few more muffled sounds, another female voice answered, this one a few years older and a few ranks more disciplined.
“PC LeGette speaking. Please state your authorization.”
“Special Command Agent Busskirk, Teeker Special Forces. Authorization attached.”
After enough time for the commanding officer to review the falsified credentials associated with the transmission, she continued, “What is the situation?”
“Do you have eyes on a pissant dirt-clod called Myer-Delta?”
“Negative. We don’t have the resources to actively monitor every system in our jurisdiction. The Myer system has no high-priority colonies or industries, so we do a monthly sweep.”
“Well, I do have eyes on it, and I don’t like what they’re showin’ me. Looks like we’ve got three assault ships inbound, heavily armed and with bad intentions. They match the description of those favored by a known terrorist group.”
“Can you provide us with visual evidence?”
He plopped down at the controls and pivoted the Declaration until all three approaching ships were within view, then snapped a high resolution still and forwarded it along.
“Those ships don’t look very formidable.”
“We’re talking about Neo-Luddites, Chief. They’ve been known to cart along some pretty heavy weaponry when they have a mind to cause some trouble. I don’t think you want to take your chances on them getting their claws into the planet. If they get a permanent base in the area, your life will get a hell of a lot more interesting.”
“Acknowledged. I’ve got six ships nearby. I’ll order a coordinated sweep. ETA seventy-two minutes.”
“Much obliged, Chief. We’ll have some commandos on the ground. Should be able to give you a little help.”
“Understood. End communication.”
When the connection was closed, Silo shook her head. “You and your accents.”
“What fun is espionage without a little theater? Now, down to business. We’ve got seventy minutes to learn what we can before the fireworks begin.”
The three Neo-Luddite ships crackled and sparked their way along in the high atmosphere. They stayed in formation, sweeping toward the coordinates they had identified. Despite the apparent malfunctions that plagued each ship, one could not help but admire some aspects. First, they looked every bit the way the general public imagined spaceships would look in the future. They weren’t much larger than the Declaration, but they were much sleeker. The sweeping curves of their hulls were studded with flashing lights and seemingly superfluous tubes, wiring, nodes, and other details. They were also loaded with truly bleeding-edge technology. Their weapons hit harder, their shields were more durable, and their sensors were more sensitive than anything available to anyone else. That was a tremendous advantage… when they were functional. Fortunately for Silo, Garotte, and the rest of society, bleeding-edge technology had that name for a reason. Each ship in the Neo-Luddite fleet operated on poorly understood, first-draft machinery with no replacement parts and no owner’s manual. They were trying to conquer society with equipment that was never meant to leave the proving grounds. All things considered, it was impressive that they’d had any success at all.
A few minutes of slow cruising toward the coordinates the Neo-Luddites had identified eventually brought them to a stretch of land just on the bright side of the sunrise line. Whereas most of the surface of the planet seemed to be made up of gray stone and white ice, this stretch had a greenish tint to it, implying the attempts to terraform had been at least partially successful. Garotte put a bit of distance between the enemy ships and himself as they plunged into the atmosphere. The cloaking device was theoretically capable of keeping them hidden regardless of the environment, but theory and practice didn’t always see eye to eye. They had stolen it from the Neo-Luddites, after all. Even after a bit of careful maintenance to boost its reliability, it had the nasty habit of stuttering and giving off their position at the worst possible times, particularly when in an atmosphere.
The landscape that revealed itself as they crept closer was hardly idyllic. It looked like the entire planet was one continuous mountain range. Sheer cliffs and rocky slopes spread out as far as the eye could see. What exactly made this slice of frozen wasteland different from the other isolated life-supporting parts wasn’t clear.
“Whatever it is they’re looking for, they’d best get a move on,” Silo said, glancing at the time display on the ship’s console. “There’re only twenty more minutes before our distraction arrives.”
“And despite the fact they are speaking exclusively on their secured line, they have been speaking in vague terms. They’ve used so many variations on the term target, I’m beginning to believe a thesaurus is involved. I fear we may have managed to weed out the inept members of their group. We now face the cream of the crop.”
“Well, that’s a good sign. We’ve got to be near the end, then.”
“Ah-ha! What have we here?” Garotte said.
Emerging through the icy haze was a cliff that had seen better days. Wind and the elements had smoothed away some of the rough edges, but it was still clear the whole side of the mountain had undergone some sort of bombardment. Huge bowl-shaped bites had been gouged out of the cliff face. Five in total, each bowl’s center had the glassy black sheen left behind by high-heat explosions. The cliff stood over the largest stretch of flat land that they’d encountered since their arrival. One ship slowly descended, disturbing a small cluster of yaks with the draft from its thrusters. A group of seven soldiers, each sporting the bizarre armaments and obvious battle scars that were a hallmark of the group, piled out with weapons drawn. Before the last of them had even touched the ground, the ship was ascending again. The squad had a posture of extreme caution.
“They look like they’re expecting something nasty,” Silo said, rolling the barrel of her grenade launcher and tightening the strap.
Garotte frowned. “They’re completely radio silent.”
“Then set down at the edge of the field here. I’ll get close and see what’s got them so edgy. You get back in the air and keep an eye on their air support. I don’t want any surprises.”
“Are you sure, my sweet? These fellows aren’t known for their good judgment. Half of them are using guns that are prone to catastrophic failure. Anything that could give them pause is worthy of a bit of consideration.”
“Which is why I’d rather get to them before they get to it, hon. Now make it snappy.”
“Your wish is my command, my dear.”
He brought the ship within a few meters of the ground and reluctantly popped open the cargo door on the side of the craft. Subfreezing air rushed inside, prompting Silo to bear down and tighten her hood. Once the shock of the sudden cold had passed, she took a step back, then leaped out of the ship. To an outside viewer, her trip through the cloaking shield would have appeared as though a bundled up and heavily armed woman had emerged from a rippling disturbance in the air itself. She struck the ground with a controlled roll and flattened herself against the stubbly grass. With a practiced eye she surveyed her surroundings. The ground was gray with hints of blue. Stout tufts of gray-green grass poked up in clusters all around. She reached inside the sleeve of her parka to a small touch pad. A few quick swipes shifted the color of her parka and snow pants from pure white to slate, and finally to green-gray. A bit more manipulation added a mottled effect, and she was left with an outfit with custom camouflage matched to her surroundings.
“Open com, Garotte,” she stated, briefly holding her finger to the earbud communicator she wore. “How’s my camo, hon?”
“Excellent. I can barely see you, and I know where to look. How are surface conditions?”
“Just about Earth gravity, colder than a gravedigger’s kneecaps, and stinks of manure even through the mask. Next time, you take point.”
“You volunteered, I’ll remind you.”
“Just give me their location.”
“About two klicks, dead ahead. They are in a search pattern, weapons drawn. Six with energy rifles of one type or another. One looks to be holding a scanner and directing the group’s movements. All three ships are retreating to low orbit. Strange tactics, even for Neo-Luddites. They are protecting the ships by forsaking the soldiers, and acting as though a massive force could appear at any moment.”
“Understood. I’ll stay on my toes.”
She set off toward the squad. There was an art to moving swiftly yet silently while carrying enough weaponry to level a small building. Though stealth was not her specialty, Silo was light enough on her feet to give herself a better than average chance at escaping notice in most situations. Of course in most situations she didn’t have to contend with small herds of grazing animals scattered across the field of engagement. The relative abundance of grass on this stretch of land must have attracted creatures from kilometers around, because they became more and more numerous as she approached the cliff. She crept by, giving each gathering of yaks a wide berth. The beasts had been the only creatures on the planet for generations and had no reason to fear a human. Most just watched with vague disinterest as she hustled past. One did not. It was directly ahead of her and simply stared without blinking or moving as she approached. When she circled around to the side to avoid it, it did not turn to watch her, and when she caught a glimpse of the side of the beast she understood why.
“Good lord…” she whispered.
For lack of a better word, the animal had been disassembled. The hide along its left side had been cut and peeled back, revealing bones and musculature. Pieces of the animal were missing—a rib here, a strip of muscle there, and swatches of skin all over—but the cuts around the missing pieces were clean and precise. It looked like something from a high-level biology class. The rest of the beast had been left to freeze in place.
“Open com, Garotte,” Silo whispered.
“Voice low, my dear. If they have sonic sensors, you are in range of them,” he said.
“Are you sure there aren’t any other people on this planet?”
“The Declaration’s sensors don’t show anything but you, the Luddites, and the livestock. Why?”
“Because I’ve got a yak here that looks like it had a run-in with a taxidermist with a short attention span. Cauterized cuts, the works.”
“A curiosity for another time, Silo. They’ve made a sharp shift to your left and are moving with purpose. They may have found something.”
“Roger that,” she said, trying to put the disturbing sight out of her mind and resuming her careful jog. “Any indication of their destination?”
“There is a rift along the cliff face. It runs about a third of the way up the cliff and forms a sort of cave.”
“I see it.”
“If what they are looking for is hidden, and I certainly do not see anything worth finding in the open, then it is inside that cave.”
“I’ll buy that. I’ll move to intercept.”
“ETA is fifteen minutes. If a firefight starts before then, things could get interesting.”
“Guns making things interesting,” she mused, pulling her sidearm from the holster and ensuring it was ready to fire. “Imagine that.”
She moved in a crouching run, trying to minimize any visible motion. The grass offered little to no cover. The enemy was only a dozen meters away, practically at the mouth of the cavern. If they so much as turned in her direction they would see her, and there was no hope of her beating them to the cave. Thinking quickly, she snatched a stone from the ground. There was a gathering of yaks to the right of the Luddites. She hefted the stone. If she tossed it just on the near side of the yaks, she could startle them and distract the soldiers.
Throwing with accuracy was one of the many simple things that changed dramatically with the rise if interplanetary travel. In the old days, when Earth was the only place one was likely to do any throwing, throwing reasonably well was like riding a bike—learned once and remembered forever. Once planets with subtle gravitational differences became common destinations, a game of catch became much more complicated. As was the case with all soldiers with demolition training, Silo had been taught to judge trajectories as part of her basic training. If someone might be asked to throw a live grenade, it was helpful to be confident they would be able to hit their target. It took a keen ability to estimate weight and distance. She did a bit of mental arithmetic, then gave the stone a low underhanded toss.
Basic training had been a long time ago.
Rather than falling short of the gathering of yaks, the stone struck one hard on the flank. The cluster of beasts went sailing right past startled and deep into panic, which was just as contagious among yaks as it would have been among humans. The air filled with maddened bellows, and the scattered herd exploded into motion. The Neo-Luddite soldiers, not the most mentally stable group to begin with, instantly plunged into disorder and confusion. They screamed orders at one another and began firing indiscriminately at the frantic animals.
After a half second of praying that Garotte hadn’t been watching quite so intently at that particular moment, Silo took advantage of the now extremely effective diversion and hurried to the mouth of the cave. A small portion of her mind suggested that there was probably something inside that was worthy of the paranoia and caution the Neo-Luddites were displaying. The rest of her mind fixated on the fact that regardless of what was inside, if it were to fall into the hands of the Neo-Luddites it would become exponentially more dangerous. She locked her eyes on the cavern opening. Sliding once and rolling twice to avoid being trampled, she was only a few strides away when the Neo-Luddites noticed her.
“Stop right there!” cried a female voice among the enemy soldiers.
The squad member took aim and fired, sending a bright orange blob of energy lancing through the air. Her attack was just barely off target, hissing past Silo and biting into the cliff beside the cave opening. Silo slid inside and sprang back to her feet to brace against the wall and ready her weapons. Before a second enemy shot could be fired, the Neo-Luddite with the scanner pushed her weapon down and barked an order at her.
“Cease fire,” he commanded. “The target is inside that cave. If we cause a collapse, it will be difficult to retrieve.” The scanner-carrying soldier, apparently the commanding officer, addressed Silo: “I don’t know who you are, but you are in extreme danger.”
“No fooling?” Silo replied, heavy grenade launcher in one hand and sidearm in the other.
“You are not prepared to deal with the mechanism or mechanisms in that cave.”
“I’ve got a full magazine of high explosives. I think I’m pretty well prepared, hon,” she assured him. With a flick of her thumb, she activated the flashlight attached to her sidearm and shifted it to shine deep into the cavern.
At a glance, the cave appeared to be empty. There were no crates, power cables, or other obvious signs of a weapon cache or a mechanism. The gravelly floor had been disturbed in a way that suggested footsteps, but they were far too irregular to be human. Her eye caught some minor motion at the very edge of the flashlight’s reach. Whatever it was, it was partially hidden behind an outcropping of the cave wall, and from what she could see of it, it was shaggy and black like the yaks.
“Don’t tell me I risked my life to keep them from finding a yak that decided to get out of the wind,” she muttered to herself.
“Conventional weapons will not be enough to destroy that threat,” the soldier insisted.
The communicator gave a low tone in Silo’s ear.
“What is your status?” Garotte asked, his transmission somewhat distorted.
“I’m alive and having a nice little chat with our friends while standing between them and whatever it is they think they came to get. How about you?”
#
“Things have taken a turn, my dear,” Garotte explained from within the Declaration. “The ground troops have spread the alert. The air support has started doing active sensor sweeps of the area. Considering the number of times we’ve foiled them with this cloaking device in the past, it’s reasonable to assume that—” He pulled hard at the controls, maneuvering the ship out of the path of an unguided missile. “Yes, I would say they’ve acquired some of those meson sensors that can detect the cloak.”
“Well, you know the drill,” she advised over the ship’s communicator. “Just keep moving. They can’t see you and they can’t target you. They just know roughly where you are.”
The three ships began to spread and pivot, each now turned in the same direction. They were kilometers apart, but at their present distance he could keep them all in view. Garotte turned on the reverse thrusters, easing backward. His heart pounded in his ears. One of the shortcomings of the prototype cloaking shield, aside from the fact that at least one type of sensor could indeed detect its presence, was that it took the place of a defensive shield. Because of the power necessary to run it, and the interference it caused with standard shielding, either you were invisible or you were protected, not both. The Declaration had decent armor, but one solid hit from a ship’s blaster would be enough to cause major damage, and a missile hit would reduce his vessel to a cloud of smoking debris.
Garotte switched on the targeting computer and got a missile lock on each of the ships. Unlike him, they had their shields up already and would be able to shrug off one or two direct hits. The instant he fired, they would know precisely where he was. His eyes darted to the time indicator. Still ten minutes before the authorities arrived.
“Well,” he said quietly, as though the enemy ships might hear him otherwise, “it is an estimated time of arrival. They could be early.”
The enemy ships continued slowly shifting. Suddenly the stolen communicator activated.
“Break radio silence and transmit meson strength readings. Prepare to triangulate source of cloaking field,” one Neo-Luddite ship ordered.
“Oh, lovely. It seems we’ve found the Neo-Luddite honors class.” He activated the communication channel to Silo. “Silo, my dear, things are about to become unpleasantly exciting up here.”
“Well, don’t get shot down, sweetie. You’re my ride home.”
“I shall endeavor to oblige.” He flipped off the channel and sighed. “Ah well. When all else fails, start shooting.”
Three deft commands dropped the cloak, fired a salvo of rockets, and raised the shields. There was only enough reaction time for the enemy ships to make a single decision before the rockets struck. Two chose to make evasive maneuvers and avoid a direct hit. The third chose to return fire, releasing a trio of missiles. Garotte wrestled with the Declaration, trying to get the less than nimble ship clear of the counterattack and queue up another volley of missiles. All three of his own attacks hit their targets—glancing blows for the defensive-minded ones and a direct hit for the aggressor. The ordnance ripping through the sky toward him behaved erratically, as was typically the case for Neo-Luddite weaponry. One went spiraling off and detonated harmlessly. The other two tracked his ship despite his best efforts, slamming into his shields ferociously. Their combined impact knocked him off course and collapsed his shields. Shrapnel peppered Garotte’s hull as he righted the ship’s path and surveyed the enemies. The ship that had received a direct hit was still intact, but just barely. One of the thrusters had deactivated, leaving the ship at the mercy of the other one, which was causing it to corkscrew wildly.
“Unit 1 to Unit 5. Stabilize and return to the surface to prepare ground troops for extraction,” the secure radio squawked.
“Silo, you’ll have a ship coming your way shortly. Not in the best of shape,” Garotte alerted. His console blared a warning of another missile lock. “I might be down shortly after, in similar condition.”
With his primary shield inactive, all that remained was the cloak. He switched it on and directed the Declaration lower into the atmosphere. The missiles thankfully lost their lock, and he was given a brief moment to weigh his options. It didn’t take long, because fighting would expose him to a counterattack, which would kill him, and retreating would strand Silo on the surface, which would kill her. The only acceptable choice was to play hard to get and pray the strike force on its way was on schedule.
#
“You boys might want to take a look overhead,” Silo called out from within the cave. “See those fireworks? My escort is punching holes in yours right now. If I were you, I’d be thinking about surrender.”
“How heavily armed are you?” the enemy officer asked.
“Keep pushing me and you’ll find out.”
“You have no idea the danger you are putting us all in by taking high-powered technology into the proximity of a Gen-Mech.”
“A Gen-Mech? Is that what we’re calling it?” Silo asked, shining the flashlight back again. The shaggy form had moved somewhat. Not enough to give her a clear view of what it was, but enough to give a clear indication that it wasn’t a yak. It had the same matted hair, but the limbs seemed too long and too thin. She couldn’t spot the creature’s head either, and the whole form seemed a good deal more vertical than a bovine ought to be. It was precisely enough information to make the fact that she had to turn her back on it profoundly unsettling. “If it’s so dangerous, it seems like I’d do the human race a big favor by collapsing this whole cavern. I’ll certainly do that if you keep fanning out for a coordinated strike.”
“No!” the commanding officer urged. “I’ve already told you, you won’t be able to destroy it. Only we can ensure that it is captured and properly utilized.”
“For what?”
“For illustrating to the technologically stagnant and complacent shepherds of society that…”
Silo grumbled to herself and quietly opened communications. “Garotte, status.”
“Quite busy, but still breathing,” he replied, a chorus of creaks and rattles ringing out in the background. “Yourself?”
“Likewise, but that could change in a hurry. They came looking for something called a Gen-Mech. It is a weapon of some kind. And there’s something in the cave with me that definitely isn’t a yak.”
“That doesn’t narrow it down much, my dear, and I haven’t got the mind to spare for riddles.”
“I’m just telling you what I know. I’m going to need an extraction soon.”
An impact shuddered the ship. “It may be wise for you to seek out your own extraction vehicle.”
“Easy there, big boy. Where’s that famous confidence of yours?”
“I think I feel it leaking down my leg.” Another metallic rattle and burst of warning sounds filtered through the connection. “Pardon me for a moment. This requires my full attention.”
The connection closed. Silo peered out of the mouth of the cave and spotted the ailing but still functional ship that had been sent to extract the soldiers. “This just keeps getting better.”
“… from the ashes and rubble of the merely sufficient, technologies that will usher us into a new era will arise!” the commanding officer continued, having never stopped his explanation of their agenda. “And in that glorious—wait.” The commander looked down to the urgently beeping scanner. “Deploy a counter measure, it is on the move!”
Silo turned and shined the light again. The mysterious form was gone from its previous position. Then two sounds occurred in rapid succession. The first was a scrabbling noise along the high, sloping wall of the cave. She shifted her flashlight up and spotted the shaggy, gangly form crawling along the craggy wall surface with slow but sure motions. Before she could take in any more details, the second sound managed to push the sight from her mind. It was a distinctive metallic clink, the sound of a grenade striking the gravel of the cave.
The sequence of events that followed involved no conscious thought whatsoever. Instinct and training took direct control of her body. She sprinted from the mouth of the cave, putting as much distance between herself and the grenade as she could when she passed, for fear of a proximity trigger. She continued at a full run, noting the positions of the enemy soldiers and the enemy ship, which was maneuvering for a landing. She then swept the field for something that might provide cover. An unpleasant but adequate opportunity presented itself in the form of one of the yaks that had been felled by the panic shooting. Silo dove over it and curled up in expectation of a deafening blast. None came. Instead there was a crackling pop, like the spark of a blown capacitor. When a loud noise finally did come, it was the sound of the ship suddenly dropping the last few meters and grinding slowly in a circle as all but one thruster shut down.
Confusion was quickly swept away by realization. “An EMP grenade?” Silo cried.
She looked to her grenade launcher to find it unresponsive. From the sound of the fruitless clicking and frantic whispering from the Neo-Luddites, as well as the malfunctioning of the ship, the EMP grenade had been overpowering enough to knock out the electronics for a fairly massive radius. The crunch of boots signaled the soldiers approaching her position.
When they were near enough to be a threat, Silo jumped to her feet. “All right, everyone. I want you to put your weapons on the ground and kick them over here!”
“We may all be unarmed, but you’re still outnumbered. You drop your weapon.”
“Oh?” Silo remarked. She pulled one of the spare launcher rounds from her belt and gave the casing a half twist. It slid open and she pulled free a tab. “I guess no one ever taught you to manually prime a grenade launcher round. Now, weapons down.”
The troops held their ground for a moment, then reluctantly complied. Dressed in cold weather gear similar to Silo’s, their uniforms included mirrored goggles. They also wore respirators to counter the low oxygen.
“Masks off, too,” Silo said.
Again, they complied.
“Good. This won’t hurt a bit.” She heaved the grenade. The soldiers scattered, but when the grenade struck the ground it released a plume of yellow gas. She held her own respirator tight to her face until the gas cleared. When it did, the soldiers were unconscious. She explained to the unconscious mound of enemies, “A good soldier always brings a couple tranq rounds, just in case.”
Silo turned her attention to the ship. It was still grinding in a circle. From the looks of the frustrated hammering of the pilot, the designers of this particular piece of bleeding-edge technology hadn’t gotten around to installing a manual door release.
“You might want to back away, hon!” she called out.
The pilot, who was the only soldier inside the ship, couldn’t hear a word she said, but when the window of the ship revealed her priming another round, he scrambled back. She threw the grenade. After the two practice throws she’d had, this one was right on target, blasting out the ship’s window. While the pilot was still recovering from the shock and flying debris, she sent her final tranquilizer round through the opening, putting the pilot to sleep.
“Open com, Garotte… Garotte…? Radio is still down.” With no way to know how Garotte was managing, she tried to set her mind to the tasks at hand: prepping the soldiers for pickup, keeping an eye out for whatever that thing in the cave was, and hoping for the best.
#
Garotte had been getting along surprisingly well, considering the “plan” he’d been able to devise. The defensive shields were taking their sweet time reactivating. Given enough time the twin ships would be able to coordinate and locate him, and any attack he might heave in their direction that didn’t take out both ships would give away his location to the remaining one. As long as all roads led to discovery, no sense waiting for it. He’d flicked off the cloak, revealing himself, then flicked it back on and quickly changed direction. This had brought a volley of attacks that lost their lock and missed him. For the last few minutes, he’d repeated the process, teasing them into wasting ammunition, but now they seemed reluctant to fire.
“Come on… come on, I know you want to,” he muttered to himself.
Again he flicked the cloak off and on. The fact that neither ship had attempted to fire anything but missiles at him so far suggested that either they didn’t have any blasters, they weren’t working, or the pilots were smart enough to hold back until they had a better opportunity. Missiles could redirect and delivered a bigger bang, after all. Thus far he’d coaxed them into locking missiles and firing five times. Each time he flicked the cloak back on, he barely dodged the now unguided missiles. The detonations were sometimes a bit close for comfort, but the ship was relatively undamaged. Now they weren’t taking the bait. That meant that they were either out of missiles or, again, wily enough to convince him of such. He glanced at the clock. The ETA had come and gone. Help was late, or it wasn’t coming at all.
“Open com, Silo.” Only silence. He gave the order again, forcefully and deliberately. “Open. Com. Silo. Jessica, if you are there, answer.” Again nothing.
Garotte’s face became stern. His muscles tightened and his finger hovered over the launch button for his own missiles. If he was interpreting the situation correctly, these men were no longer armed. If he fired, he would be firing on a defenseless enemy.
“Open broadcast channel. Attention Neo-Luddite ships,” he said. His voice was controlled, but only through great effort. He watched his sensors closely. There was no missile lock and no sign of any blasters warming up on either ship. Technically the radio broadcast was detectable and targetable, but past experience had revealed that the cloak obscured its source enough to make it a mediocre targeting aid at best. It was a measured risk. “I get the distinct impression that you are no longer armed. I happen to have a few missiles left. Strategic withdrawal would, at this point, be advisable. Consider that a friendly pointer on proper military tactics.” His voice became more sinister. “And if my agent on the surface is not answering because she has been killed, consider your retreat a temporary reprieve.”
In response one of the enemy ships fired a burst of plasma shots that missed the stationary and unshielded Declaration by an amount so small it could only have been deliberate. He flicked the cloak back on.
“Ah, undetectable blaster heat signatures. I imagine you are rather proud of that.”
“You will land on the planet’s surface, and you will relinquish the modular cloak, or you will be destroyed,” the lead ship ordered.
“I’m afraid not, gentlemen. I stole the cloak quite fairly from one of your ships. It isn’t my fault you couldn’t keep the other ones intact. And need I remind you that I am the one issuing the ultimatum?”
“I repeat, relinquish the cloak or be destroyed. You are not in a position to make demands.”
A tone from the Declaration’s console indicated six ships entering the system. Garotte smiled. “It seems that I am.”
“Attention,” came an announcement on all frequencies. “You are in a restricted area. Power down your weapons and propulsion systems, and you will be towed to a processing facility for questioning.”
“Have fun with the police,” Garotte said. “And here’s a little something to remember me by.”
He unleashed another pair of rockets and darted down toward the planet’s surface while the enemy ships scrambled to avoid them.
#
On the surface, Silo had managed to shut down the rotating ship and tie up the Neo-Luddite soldiers. She’d also stripped them of their weapons and equipment and had begun doing the same to the ship when the Declaration appeared over the field. Garotte set the ship down, scattering the yaks who had come to investigate, and opened the main door.
“Did no one ever tell you that it is exceedingly rude not to answer your radio hails?” he asked, stepping out to survey the damage.
“These yahoos decided to chuck an EMP grenade. A pretty hefty one, too,” she explained, brushing her hand on her parka. She put one hand on her hip and tipped her head to the side with a smirk. “Garotte, were you worried about me?”
“Oh yes, I was beside myself with woe,” he said. “I was already deciding what personal effects I would use to decorate my altar to you.”
“You can’t fool me, you big softy,” she said, punching him in the arm. She then tugged aside her respirator and pulled him in for a peck on the cheek. “That’s very sweet of you.”
“Yes,” he said, clearing his throat, “well. The cavalry has arrived, so I would recommend we depart as soon as we are able.”
“You’ll get no argument from me. Let’s load up the weapons from these guys. This is the scanner they were looking at, too. Hopefully it didn’t get completely wrecked by the EM pulse.”
“Any indication of what they were looking for?”
“They were yammering about something called a Gen-Mech. There was something in that cave, maybe it was what they were looking for, but it didn’t look like any weapon I’ve ever seen. Right now I’m just happy I don’t have to go back in there.” She heaved the confiscated items into the ship’s cargo area. “If you want to interrogate one of them, the commander is the one in the middle.” She pointed to the row of restrained Neo-Luddites laid out on the ground.
“I’ve never been impressed by the reliability of interrogations. We’ve got the scanner. That will do for now. The authorities can handle the rest. What exactly did you mean about the contents of the cave?”
“See for yourself.”
She escorted him to the cave’s mouth. There, half-hidden in shadow, was a creature. It was hairy, with four long, spindly limbs and two smaller ones, each tipped in angular, boney pinchers. It had a configuration of anatomy that Garotte had never seen before, and it was lightly twitching.
“What do you think it is?” Silo asked.
“I don’t know…” He turned to the Declaration, where the radio was receiving messages from the security force in orbit. They’d made quick work of the Neo-Luddite ships and were preparing to investigate the surface. “I’m not comfortable taking it with us without knowing more about it. We’ll leave it for the authorities.”
The pair climbed into the Declaration and lifted off, switching on their cloaking device.
“One thing’s for sure,” Silo said, “these cops are about to find a lot more than they bargained for.”