When the hour had passed, I contacted the Centaurs. “We are in position,” I said. “This is your last warning, we are about to puncture the sky. Get all your people beneath the land.”
“We are ready. Those that stand upon the hilltops await their deaths resolutely.”
I paused, frowning. Some of them weren’t going to take cover?
“I urge you to order your people to find shelter. We are about to depressurize this chamber.”
“We are a herd, but we have individual honor as well. Some could not withstand the embarrassment of huddling in fear. Some could not say farewell to the sky.”
“Should we wait?” I asked.
“Proceed.”
I licked my lips. I nodded to Kwon and the others. Orders were shouted up and down the line. Every man raised his rifle together. We burned the distant roof, creating an ovoid region of destruction. At first, the structure blackened and hundreds of molten sparks and glowing metallic droplets showered us. Our visors darkened. I had the men halt for ten seconds to cool our projectors, then we fired again, in unison.
It was the fourth combined barrage that did it. The ceiling opened, and it did indeed look like we’d destroyed the sky. Chunks of debris fell, but as we’d calculated, it missed us at our position.
The hazy clouds were sucked out into space first, turning whiter with frost as they went out the hole. The disturbed air flowed and rippled down to us, forming a dozen cyclones. I watched in amazement as these phenomenons touched down all around the central cavity, ripping up plants, buildings…and bodies.
Some of my men were sucked up as well by random whirlwinds. I ordered them to hang onto their skateboards and use thrust to fire through the turbulent hole if they got too close to an edge. One of my biggest worries was that my men would be dashed against the jagged lips of this rupture we’d created. When they got close to the hole, they were to blast their way through the center and win through into open space.
One of the cyclones touched down upon the hill where we’d fought our first battle. Countless brown bodies were lifted up in a swirl of debris. They were all carried up toward the nexus of these spinning vortexes, the hole.
The structure shivered around the lips of the rupture, and it broke open wider. I stared in horror. What if the whole place went down? What if, in the end, I really had served the Macros as a perfect tool of destruction? If this entire station sank down into the planetary atmosphere and was destroyed, would our two people be blood enemies for all eternity?
Even as my fears grew, however, the hole stopped ripping itself larger. The escaping pressure had lessened, and thus applied less force to the lip of the opening. It had stopped expanding.
“Wow,” said Kwon, standing near me on the hill. “So many of them.”
“What?”
“The Centaurs,” he said, pointing toward one of the cyclones. It had paused over the largest population center in the cavity. Calling it a city would have been a misnomer, but it was the closest thing these people had to one. “Magnify your visor. Zoom in on that cyclone-the darkest one,” he said.
I did as he suggested, and my jaw sagged. The cyclone was dark with bodies. Thousands upon thousands of them. I realized with a heavy heart, that the voice at the end of communications line had never said how many of them had chosen death over dishonor. By saying some had decided to stand in the open, the voice at the far side of the com box had perhaps meant half.
I went back to the com box and tried to open the connection to the Centaurs again.
“I didn’t know you were lemmings, dammit!”
They did not answer. Had I killed them all? Had their spokesman chosen death over dishonor? I felt sick.
One of the cyclones swirled close, then closer still. I decided it would be better to head upward now, not to be crushed against the walls or the floor of the chamber. We all mounted our skateboards and rode them into the thin air that was left. We headed upward, hundreds of us, standing on our dishes and gliding closer with alarming speed. I sensed I was caught in a current, as were a hundred others.
I almost blew it-I almost fought the current. I tried to keep my wits about me, but it was difficult. The wind was so powerful, so loud, it was like standing next to roaring train in a tunnel. I recalled the advice given to swimmers in the ocean, when sucked under by a wave. One should go with the flow, let it take you with it.
I took that advice and was swept upward with dizzying, sickening speed. I spun around and around. My dish stayed adhered to my feet via magnets and countless chains of straining nanites. I saw them ripple over my suited body, as if I was wrapped in aluminum foil or dunked in mercury.
Bodies, both living and dead, swept by. Fifty to one of them were Centaurs. Some of them kicked feebly. As I’d said before, they were hard to kill.
Jagged edges of twisted metal filled my vision for a moment, and then I was out into the blackness of space. The planet below was engulfed in darkness. The yellow star, being on the far side of this world, did nothing to illuminate the scene.
I flowed with the rest as the ride died down to a gentle, bumping flow. We steered toward the assault ships on the surface of the structure.
“What now, Colonel?” asked Kwon, now that conversation was possible again.
“We do as we said,” I told him. “Get to the assault ships. Form up around all four of them. I want three companies behind each. Don’t launch until I’ve talked to the Macros.”
When I’d managed to reach Lieutenant Marquis’ assault ship, I looked back toward the rupture. The flow had lessened a great deal now. But still bodies were puffing out of it, like a volcano of death. The surface of the structure rained with Centaurs. Their bodies came floating slowly back down to rest upon it, as it was big enough to have some degree of gravity, and the gravitational fields that made the floor far below us adhere to our feet had some draw even this far away.
I stood there, and it rained death upon me. I’d never seen the like of it, and the sight made my stomach roil. I used the pain of it, the sad horror of it, to deepen my hatred for the Macros.
For I had no doubt that if they had pleasure centers in their metal brains, they were humming with happiness right now.
15
“Macro Command, this is Kyle Riggs.”
Nothing. I fiddled with the touch screen and tried again. “Macro Command, do you read me-”
“Yes.”
“We have completed our mission. We are returning to the invasion ship.”
“The structure still operates.”
“Yes,” I said, my voice threatening to rise into a shout. “But the people inside are dead. Are you happy?”
They didn’t answer. I breathed through my teeth and closed my eyes. I’d put a word like happy into a question. That was two strikes as far as the Macros were concerned.
“We have completed our mission,” I said as evenly as I could. I tried not to think about the geyser of bodies and warm gasses that still shot out of the hole I’d blown into an idyllic sky. “We are returning to the invasion ship.”
“The structure still operates.”
“We do not have any armament to destroy the structure. We are ground forces carrying light arms. We have completed the mission as required.”
They paused again. I wondered if I was going to be required to send this entire station-with any survivors huddling inside-burning and sinking down into the atmosphere of the planet below us. I didn’t think I could do that.
“Return to base.”
That was it. They didn’t tell me ‘good job’, nor did they chortle and giggle at my foolishness. I was a good tool, but they didn’t care about me. A carpenter was more likely to feel love for his hammer. They simply put me away in a drawer or dropped me in the dirt until I was needed again.
I got aboard Lieutenant Marquis’ assault ship and ordered my dish-flying troops to aim themselves at the invasion ship. Everyone was to stay together, not to string out or fool around. The injured were allowed to board the assault ships, but I wanted most of my men free and open to maneuver.