XANDER BRINDLE
The Shana Rei and the black robots attacked Ulio Station.
From the control deck of the Central Offices, Darwin Felliwell stared at the blossoming dark nebula and the emerging robot warships. “What do we do?”
OK turned from the screen with all of Maria Ulio’s coded account numbers and directed his attention out at the shadow cloud. “Based on its similarity to other incidents on record, that appears to be a manifestation of the Shana Rei.”
As the angular robot warships streaked in toward the station, Terry said, “Those ships look a lot larger than the ones the robots used before.”
“Great, more good news,” Xander said.
The Station Manager spluttered. “But … why would anyone want to attack Ulio? We’re not a military site, just a repair yard and flea market.”
Xander’s first instinct was to bolt. “No time for those questions right now. At Plumas, the Shana Rei and the Klikiss robots trounced a full battle group of Solar Navy warliners and CDF battleships. We don’t have a chance.”
A Roamer cargo freighter circling Ulio Station in search of a docking spot shifted course away from the unfolding shadow cloud. Two robot warships spotted the retreating vessel and went in pursuit. The enemy engines were far superior to the lumbering freighter’s, and the robots strafed the ship, chopping it to pieces.
Then all the robot attackers closed in on Ulio.
“Sound an evacuation!” Felliwell said. “All functional ships to depart as soon as possible.” Alarms hammered through the Central Offices. Small ships detached from their docks and accelerated in all directions like fuzz from a chaff-flower in the wind. Felliwell groaned. “Even if all the spaceworthy ships can escape, we have more than a thousand permanent residents, and half our ships are decommissioned and permanently parked. They’ll never fly again.”
“Back to the Verne,” Terry said to Xander. He clutched the compy’s shoulder and adjusted his antigrav belt. “But I can’t exactly move fast, even in an emergency.”
OK said, “Will we be retrieving Maria Ulio’s stockpile of tangible assets, sirs?”
Xander knew they were abandoning enough wealth to buy a whole planet and maybe even a second one for a vacation home. “We don’t have time. I’m getting you out of here now, Terry.”
Shana Rei hexagonal ships emerged from the shadow cloud, spreading a hurricane of chaos, pouring entropy into the universe. In the Central Offices control screens fuzzed with a parade of unreliable images and scrambled data. All of Maria’s accounts vanished as the screens went dark, but Xander couldn’t worry about that.
“Anybody who can hitch a ride on a departing ship had better get aboard,” Xander said. He was just worried that he and Terry wouldn’t manage to make it back to the Verne before the enemy laid waste to the station. “Come on, we’ve got a long way to go.”
Several ships attempting to escape caught the edge of the shadow cloud; they reeled in erratic courses, their technology scrambled. Their running lights flickered and died, and they hung dead in space, their systems offline.
Workers in the Central Offices bolted for the door, bounding along in the low gravity. The smartest ones made their way straight for any viable ship that could get away. Some rushed to retrieve family members, while others headed to their quarters to grab valued possessions before they fled.
Xander thought one last time of all Maria Ulio’s scattered accounts not yet transferred over to Terry, but he decided he didn’t care. The Verne was on the other side of the station. “OK, how fast can you run?”
“My maximum speed is what humans would call a ‘brisk walk.’”
Xander knew that wouldn’t be fast enough.
Terry said, “We could take a lift down to zero-G levels, where I can move a lot faster. It would save us time.”
The first robot ships bombarded the Ulio hub. The central Ildiran warliner was struck, and shock waves rocked the former command nucleus.
Grabbing onto a bulkhead to steady himself, Xander mentally reviewed the structure of Ulio Station. “We’ll cut off a lot of distance if we go beneath the star balcony bar. Once we take that shortcut, we’re home free.”
“Pull me, Xander—I’ll crank up my antigrav belt,” Terry said. “You can run faster than OK.”
“I will do my best to keep up,” the compy said.
Xander grabbed his partner by the wrist and sprinted to the lift, which was already crowded with departing personnel. Felliwell kept yelling into the intercom, “This is not a time to hunker down and wait! If Ulio survives, you can all come back. If it doesn’t, you’ll be glad you left.”
OK barely made it into the packed lift before the door sealed and the platform descended at normal speed, which seemed maddeningly slow. The station workers were desperate. The lift shuddered as an explosion ripped through another part of the old warliner’s hull. Finally, the lift stopped at the first floor and disgorged its occupants, who bolted in all directions. Everyone seemed to have a plan.
Xander grabbed Terry’s arm again. “To the star balcony—we’ll cut straight across.” He launched himself out, pulling the weightless young man behind him. Terry’s motionless legs extended like a tail, and he held on, keeping himself from squirming so as not to knock Xander off balance. The compy scuttled along after them, moving more quickly than Xander expected. “Don’t fall behind, OK.” He didn’t want to lose his faithful compy, but Terry was far more important to him.
The star balcony and observation lounge looked like a disaster area; drinks were spilled, briefcases, garments, and food scattered around. Virtually everyone had evacuated, but one older man sat on a barstool nursing a drink and staring up at the transparent dome as the drama played overhead. The star balcony patrons had seen the danger as soon as the shadow cloud appeared; the intelligent ones had bolted for their ships even before Felliwell announced the evacuation.
The old man on the barstool gave them a polite nod and continued to stare up at the dome as they darted across the observation lounge. “Aren’t you leaving?” Xander shouted over the clatter of alarms.
“Nope.” The man nursed his drink. “I’ve got as much chance of being blown up out there as in here—and this place has century-old Scotch that the bartender conveniently left unattended.” He took another sip of his drink, rolled it around in his mouth, and kept watching overhead.
Black robot ships closed in on a fully loaded Confederation passenger vessel that was trying to flee. They blew it to pieces.
Three smaller Roamer vessels—Xander recognized the markings of clan Christensen—joined up and used their defensive weapons. The Christensen jazers weren’t overly powerful, but the pilots managed to damage one of the robot ships, which careened off course. Glowing exhaust burned out of the robot’s damaged engine, and the enemy ship spun, plunging toward the star balcony hemisphere.
“Run!” Xander shouted to the old man, who didn’t even move. Xander clamped a tight grip on Terry’s wrist. “OK, hold on to Terry’s ankle, and I’ll pull you both.” With all the strength in his legs, Xander bounded across the open observation lounge, with Terry behind him and the compy clinging to his ankle like a bizarre balloon train.
They reached the opposite side of the star balcony just as the damaged robot ship smashed into the dome, exploding. With the decompression blast, the air inside the bar erupted outward. Xander reached the hatch to the passageway and dove through so that the shock wave from the explosion slapped them farther down the corridor. Automatic fail-safes slammed the emergency bulkhead doors shut behind them in time to prevent the loss of all the atmosphere in the outer corridor.
Outside, Xander breathed hard. Terry was wide-eyed. OK let go of Terry’s legs and dropped back to the deck, where his feet clamped on. “This is a hazardous place. We should leave as soon as possible.”
“Good idea, OK,” Terry said. “Down one more deck and we’ll be weightless. Then I can really move fast.”
They reached a hatch with a ladder leading to the deck below. “OK, help Terry down, then both of you set out ahead. Full speed. Terry, you move faster than I do in zero G, and I need you to fire up the Verne’s engines the moment you get there. I’ll be right behind you.”
“Sure thing,” Terry said as the compy pulled him down the ladder. “It’s my turn to save your ass.”
“You’re right about that. I’ve been keeping track. And if you see any strays who need rescuing on the way, get them aboard!”
As Xander slid down the metal ladder, he saw that Terry was letting himself drop blindly. As soon as he reached the next deck, weightlessness changed his momentum, and he snagged a bar to right himself. “Grab my antigrav belt, OK, and hold on tight.”
“I do not wish to slow you down, Terry Handon.”
“Then don’t argue.”
As soon as OK clamped his hand in place, Terry launched off with the little compy in tow. He yelled back over his shoulder, “Better hurry, Xander!”
By the time Xander reached the bottom of the ladder on the zero-G deck, Terry had propelled himself ahead, grabbing on to wall rungs, yanking himself along, building up speed. He shot forward like a projectile out of a cannon. This was Terry’s element. He had worked at Ulio for years without gravity, where his paralyzed legs were no hindrance. Now he glided like a porpoise, and Xander tried to keep up.
When Terry paused, making sure he didn’t fall too far behind, Xander yelled, “Just get the damn ship started, I’m only a few seconds behind you!”
He realized that his nose was bleeding, possibly a concussion from the star balcony explosion. Small droplets of blood drifted in the air near his face. Half the lights in the empty corridor were off, and as Xander pulled himself along, one section of the antigravity generators failed, and he crashed flat onto the deck. A few drops of blood pattered down on his face, but he picked himself up and bounded forward; after ten meters he was suddenly in weightlessness again. He flailed, disoriented, drifting against the wall until he grabbed a handhold to right himself. He caught two breaths, then streaked after Terry again.
The Verne had a good docking spot close into the hub. Many of the outer vessels had already been destroyed by the robot attacks. He saw parts of Ulio Station in flames, evacuating ships careening into each other, their courses scrambled by Shana Rei entropy.
Another huge explosion rocked the corridor. Far behind him, Xander heard emergency bulkheads slamming shut. Ulio’s hub was being ripped apart in the concentrated blasts, but there were no other scrambling evacuees in here with them.
Up ahead was the access to the holding area where the Verne had docked. His heart leaped when he saw OK standing on the boarding ramp. “Terry Handon is already in the cockpit. He warns that he will not wait for you, but I do not believe him.”
“He won’t need to—I’m here!” Xander didn’t slow as he rocketed forward, knocking the compy backward into the ship with him. “Go, Terry! Go.”
The hatch sealed behind them, and the Verne detached from the docking port, its engines already up to speed. The Verne looped up and away from the docking hub into a madness of explosions and fleeing ships, Klikiss robot vessels, and deadly Shana Rei hex ships that loomed there, damaging space itself.
As he watched the robot warships pummeling Ulio Station, Xander was furious and stunned. The black attack vessels destroyed the Central Offices, tore apart the decommissioned Ildiran warliners and the CDF Mantas that formed the station backbone.
“I’d say your inheritance is irretrievable now, Terry,” Xander said.
“Not my priority at the moment.” Terry dodged debris from a wrecked tanker. Xander took his place, manning the defensive weapons and looking for his opportunity.
Countless ships had been in spacedock for repair at Ulio, and Xander doubted that even a tenth of the inhabitants had gotten to evacuation ships. Of those, maybe half had been destroyed as they fled. On their way out, he spotted the large array of ekti-X tanks left as a strategic reserve for Ulio. Nobody was going to need the reserves now.
“Where am I headed?” Terry said, as he dodged an incoming black robot ship, swooping under it as the enemy roared overhead, opening fire, but missing them. He warmed up the Verne’s stardrive.
“How about away from here as fast as possible.” Xander opened fire on the nearest target.
“Sounds like a fine idea.”