Ken MacLeod - Newton's Wake

‘Fuck,’ said Higgins. ‘That’s me encouraged.’

The crowd cheered perfunctorily, shuffled, and dispersed a small way. Self-sufficient in their closed-cycle suits, they didn’t need to forage, but some did, stuffing leaves or seaweed into their integral drexlers for trace elements or interesting flavour combinations, or heating coffee in pans for the sake of the smell rather than the taste. Others checked weapons, stretched limbs, or took blessings. But all the while a minority whose individuals came and went but which gradually grew as a group clustered near the screen beside the gate. It showed the green false colours of night on Eurydice—from the distance that Lucinda saw it, just the triangular spike of the relic and indistinct shapes moving in front of it: not much to go on. By the time half an hour had passed most of the soldiers, by forty-five minutes all of them, were formed up and ready to go. Lucinda and Higgins were assigned to a position that would put them the fortieth and forty-first pair to go through. Not in the vanguard, but no disgrace. The queue of troopers was lined up along the beach, not directly in front of the gate, just in case someone on the other side had the bright idea of putting a shot through. At some point in the battle, it was entirely possible that the enemy would lob a tactical nuke through the gate—which would not only wipe out anyone still on this side of it, but would collapse the wormhole. The attack would be dangerous, but not so dangerous as staying here. It would be a flight to the front.

Still, seeing Ian wave, yell, and go through as one of the second pair gave her a surprise. At least the old reprobate had the courage of his fears.

After that it was a slow jog forward for all of them, like some insane queue with death at the end of it. No time seemed to pass before they were at the front and on the much-trodden ramp. A man squatted, intent on the screen. On the opposite side one of the commandos stood, intent on the troops, perhaps to shove aside—or shove through?—the wavering. She glanced at the soldier on her right, then back at Higgins. A glint of steel teeth behind the visor.

The man at the screen raised a thumb. The commando mouthed ‘Go!’ Through they went, into a darkness broken by distant flashes and diminished somewhat by the crowded Sagittarius stars. Lucinda dived to the left and rolled as soon as she was clear of the hillside cromlech, fetched up in an erosion slippage hollow, and snuggled into mud. There had been a rainstorm recently; she could see clouds clearing to the east. The single moon, Orpheus, was a narrow crescent, low in the west. When nothing happened for a few seconds she peered over the lip. Night-vision cut in instantly. Far too many people were close to her, and more on the way. She levered herself out of the hollow with a foot and a hand, the other hand clutching the rifle, and rolled farther down the hillside moments before Higgins thudded into the place she’d just vacated. She felt hideously exposed. They were well within range of a Webster or a laser rifle, to say nothing of a plasma cannon. In a crouch she ran at a diagonal down the hillside, heading for a low boulder. Already occupied, somebody poking a laser-rifle muzzle around the side of it. She ran on behind them and squelched waist-deep into a bog. That would do. She waded forward and lay face down from the waist up in the heather-like stuff around it. A few seconds later Higgins joined her.

Four and half kilometres away and about two hundred metres downhill, the kilometre-tall relic, glowing faintly in real light, still seemed to loom overhead. The Knights’ starship lay like a shadow, darker than the dark, on the ground beside it. Low small buildings clustered a little way off. Lucinda frowned up the zoom-band on her visor and peered closer at the area around the relic’s base, from which flashes could be seen. Small arms fire, Webster bolts mostly, as Armand’s people or other Eurydiceans challenged the Knights. Lucinda could imagine the fight. The Knights, even in their first surprise, would be fighting back with more than weapons. Their preternaturally fast reflexes could, if not quite dodge a bullet or a bolt, at least anticipate them by the requisite split second.

Kevin’s voice lit the command circuit. ‘Move out,’ he said. ‘Keep on a bearing of twenty-seven degrees east of local mag north. Regroup a kilometre downslope and wait for Macaulay with the sleds and the heavy gun.’

Lucinda and Higgins hauled themselves out of the backward suck of the bog and ran downhill. The rain-wet vegetation washed some of the mud off their legs as they ran. Beside them to left and right other figures scurried, their paths insensibly diverging, then over-correcting and almost running into each other. Keeping to the bearing was harder than it sounded. Time after time she blinked up the virtual compass and found herself straying. It was unavoidable, to get around boulders, scree, and—as they moved farther down the hill—increasingly deep and treacherous bogs. Every patch of what looked like moss had to be treated with circumspection. And then you would trip on a low, sharp stone and hurtle headlong. In the suit it was only a padded jarring, but it was a nuisance and your brain still got bashed about in the skull.

Away ahead, beside the relic, a brighter and more diffuse glow arose.

‘Down,’ said Kevin. They dived. Lucinda raised her head a little and saw the Knights’ starship lift. It climbed a couple of hundred metres and moved about the same distance horizontally, then stopped. A streak of flame shot out from it and passed directly overhead. The whizz, the down-draught, and the afterburn instantly told Lucinda that it was a rocket. An instant later, light flared behind her.

Tac nuke, through the gate!

Before the afterimage had faded from her eyes another line of light flared across her sight, from the ground to the ship. It was the discharge of the same type of weapon as she had, on her first day on Eurydice, watched burn through the search engine. It took no longer to burn through the ship. The vast shape yawed, sideslipped, and buried about a quarter of its length into the hillside. Lucinda pressed her head down with her hands, waiting for the explosion. Nothing happened. When she looked again the upper side of the ship showed a vivid cherry-red dot where the beam had passed through, smoking slightly, but there was no sign or evident prospect of further damage.

Unwillingly, she turned her head to look behind. A gate’s collapse under nuclear or other high-energy weapon attack usually prevented much of a backwash, but in this instance the absolute amount was such that the minuscule fraction of the bomb’s energy that had flashed through had been enough to sear a swathe of hillside hundreds of metres long. Tiny figures on its edges were running about, burning in their suits. One by one they dropped, whether killed by the heat or by the mercy shots that rattled out she couldn’t tell. Backlit by flames, Macaulay’s team with the five sleds and the plasma cannon skimmed down towards her. As the nearest sled glided past she ran up and vaulted on, Higgins close behind. The sleds slowed, picking up more and more of the squad as soldiers leapt from the heather and piled on.

‘How many have we lost?’ Lucinda asked. Kevin’s voice came back:

‘Just under half our total strength. Get on the sleds, spread out, keep moving in. Macaulay, line up on any KE forces you can see and zap them.’

All across the hill, plasma-cannon bolts were coming the other way. Though precisely enough targetted, their overkill was tremendous: over her shoulder Lucinda saw an individual soldier vapourised by a bolt big enough to take out a tank. Flash-dried by the bolts, the previously sodden shrubbery was beginning to burn. Macaulay and the cannon with its crew were on the sled up ahead. It slewed and began a rapid sideways traverse, bolt after bolt singeing the air and all aimed at the same spot. In the few seconds the engagement lasted the other pilots put as much distance as they could between their sleds and Macaulay’s. One sled went down to a responding shot before the plasma fire from the KE forces ceased.