Gavin Smith - Veteran

‘Morag?’ Pagan said.

I tried to force down the pain, ignore it and busy myself with other things. Tried not to think that this would be the last time I saw her. I couldn’t help but glance over at Morag as she struggled to get into the Mamluk. She looked like a pale and frightened little girl. I felt I was sending her to her death, though in reality I was doing that to everyone.

‘Morag’s going to be doing her own thing,’ I said.

‘I’ll split with you when we reach the Teeth.’ She sounded both scared and strangely sure of herself.

I looked over at Rannu, expecting an objection from him, insistence that he accompanied her, but he said nothing. I think I was jealous of his confidence in her, his faith? Enough thinking. I finally managed to wriggle into the control slippers and gloves. I was lying down on the padding as the four interface plugs slipped into the ports on the back of my neck. Information from the Mamluk’s systems appeared on my internal visual display. The front panel slid shut over me as the head lowered and clicked into place. I didn’t get the rush and feeling of power I had in the Wraith over the Atlantic. This time I felt like I’d been locked into a cell only slightly bigger than my own body. Still I’d decided to take Mudge’s advice. A mournful-sounding saxophone started up, music piped directly into my ears, as I shut down all nonessential systems on my mech.

The bomb bay was effectively a large airlock. The internal door closed and locked and the bomb bay depressurised before the two enormous external doors opened. Craning the Mamluk’s neck, I could see blackness punctuated with pinpricks of starlight below me. We seemed to tumble out. We had to get out quickly because the Spear was zipped up, everything retracted to present the smallest possible scanner signature, and the open doors disrupted that.

I was free-floating now just beneath – or above, depending on your perspective – the Spear. Gregor was last out. A tentacle snaked out of the darkness of the bomb bay and gripped the edge of the hatch, then another joined it and another. Others whipped out, reaching for us as Gregor pulled himself out of the spacecraft. We all knew he was going to be towing us but even so I flinched as a tentacle wrapped around the midriff of my mech. The pale-blue light of his propulsion system seemed to burn slightly brighter as we moved away from the relative safety of the ship towards the Teeth. Even though I knew both the mech and my inertial undersuit were heated, I felt cold. I tried to tell myself it was just the psychology of EVA.

First it seemed to take for ever – the Teeth never seemed to be getting closer – and then all of a sudden we were there and they filled our vision. Much of the Teeth was uninhabited but the coordinates we were heading for were densely populated by Them. Fear and awe warred within me. The larger asteroids were in pretty static orbits, despite the binary nature of the star system. However the aliens had joined many of them together, strands and structures of what I guess were the aliens themselves ran between the huge rocks. It wasn’t like human construction – no inelegant metal or concrete scarring the rocks. They weren’t even structures; there were no delineated roles for the growths. They were habitats and production centres and defences all in one. They were alive, growing, taking raw materials from the rock and energy from their pale stars. If anything these growths were Them; what we saw on Dog 4 and on the other battlefields in the colonies were just Their weapons. I tried to think of a comparison, something to help me understand Them as we approached the Teeth. They were like a latticework of coral suspended between huge floating mountains.

Because of our relative spatial perceptions, although we were approaching it seemed like we were staying still and the Teeth were getting bigger and bigger. The closer we got the easier it was to make out the cordon of ships from Their fleet. We could even see new ones growing out of the alien matter. In the alien coral I began to make out the energy matrices and cancerous-looking growths of various weapon systems. Closer still and I could make out smaller craft, Their equivalent of long-range raiders and fighters, then EVA-equipped Walkers and finally what we’d always thought of as Them, the Berserks, though they were really just another weapon system.

There were other humanoid Them-forms here. Ones we’d never seen before, which presumably performed some niche task in their space-going ecology.

This was insane. There were so many of Them crawling like termites over Their complex structures. Why couldn’t They see us? Of course we were tiny little specks against a backdrop of infinity, using some very sophisticated stealth technology and prayers not to get noticed. Also if humanity had never tried a penetration this foolish before, and I wasn’t aware we had, then They wouldn’t have learnt to look for something like this.

Several of the manoeuvring mechanisms on Gregor’s battle form glowed brighter as he changed position. He angled towards a sparsely populated gap between several of the rocks, though I could see lattice growths on them that suggested sensors. We trailed behind him, a tentacle wrapped around each of us, two around Balor’s Dog Soldier mech. It reminded me of a spider’s web with multiple flies caught in it.

Vertigo threatened to overtake me, breaking through the narcotic haze of Mudge’s drugs, as we flew silently into the gap between three of the huge asteroids. I was having problems coping with the sheer scale of the landscape. Above and beneath us I could see Them moving through space, Their propulsion systems glowing pale blue as well. Many of Their forms were unrecognisable to me, serving purposes I could only guess at. To my left I saw something that looked insectile crawl across Them-growth, picking at it with mandibles and manipulators, presumably some kind of maintenance creature. It ignored us as we floated past, the music going a long way towards helping keep me calm.

As we rounded one of the bigger asteroids that formed the outer perimeter, the light that emanated from deeper within the Teeth almost acted like a sunrise effect. In the distance I could make out spires reminiscent of the vision that Ambassador had given me as I’d slept next to Morag. Except these spires weren’t multi-hued, they were black, pale bioluminescence providing illumination. The spires grew out of four huge planetoid-sized asteroids, all of them pointing inwards like a jagged maw. Thick strands of the coral material formed a web connecting the four asteroids. Between the spires huge tentacles moved, performing tasks I could only guess at. It was beautiful and sinister, and the more I thought about it the more I was sure that it was so far removed from me that I didn’t belong here.

Gregor took us in close to a smaller asteroid with no visible growth on it. Tiny molecular hooks mounted on pads adhered to the Mamluks’ fingers and feet attached us to the rock as Gregor’s tentacles slid off us. We formed a quick and impromptu defensive perimeter. I superimposed the coordinates that Gregor had provided over the view in front of me. The pod was hopefully just on the outskirts of the maw-like city. The area was crawling with Them.

Without doing an active scan that would have given away our position I reckoned that our destination was about twelve miles way. I plotted the course I would have chosen, the path of least resistance, as a matter of course, my training kicking in. As it was, it was Gregor’s call. Using hand signals the huge hybrid pointed out the course he wanted to take, which initially seemed to agree with mine, and then indicated that he wanted to head off. We all signalled the affirmative and Gregor pushed himself off the rock.