Angeli (2 page)

Gregori knew the facts; he just didn’t agree history would repeat itself on his watch.

“What about where we shut the pinhole down?” He scorched three more shades, the band of his primary blaster tight and hot around his wrist.

“We did not have to maintain a facade to protect the native culture. A demolition team was employed.”

“Then send a damn demolition squad.” He didn’t offer the recommendation lightly; post-pinhole demolition had unfortunate, and violent, complications. If the rest of the planet survived, wouldn’t the Terran volunteers who’d have to succeed where the Chosen One had failed feel it was worth it?

“Demolition is not approved,” Ship repeated. “Natives are pre-code.”

“Barely.” Terra had more technology and a denser population than any pre-code planet they’d ever encountered. It was unique in a number of ways.

“Negative. Our chance of detection if we continue to remain on Terra is 91.7 percent,” Ship said.

“We can beat those odds.” If they sent a native strike team to destroy the rift soon, the planet would have a shot. The sooner the demolition occurred, the less time the horde would have to carpet the area with shades, daemons, and drones. Unfortunately the drones, in addition to a steady flow of shades, also created a protective force field that required any attacks on the nexus to be manual.

As the Terrans would say, old-style.

It was much easier when the demolition took place before the hatching. Easy enough, in fact, that a single individual with a native genome could accomplish the task undetected. If that individual weren’t a moron.

“It’s too much of a gamble, Captain.” Niko’s voice over the comm line was harsh, understandably so. He was the one with the daemon claw in his skull. Daemons couldn’t identify DNA like shades could, so the Shipborn experienced much closer tangles with the red-skinned fiends. “If we fail, all our people will be lost, too.”

“Disagree,” Gregori said. “For this planet, it’s worth the risk.”

He could swear he heard gears turning as Ship processed. “A demolition squad is not currently available.”

“Why not? There should be one on standby.” Ship had the munitions, and his people could help the demolition squad prepare the natives. What was the problem?

“A team is not available.” Ship’s uninflected tones continued to do nothing to calm Gregori’s rising fury. “Return to base. If you remain, there is a 91.7 percent chance of leviathan awakening.”

When Ship started repeating statistics, it was time to stop arguing. Gregori knew it—and didn’t care. “We can’t leave them defenseless. We told them we were their saviors. Here, of all places, we should bend code.” Rarely had Gregori argued against the code, the Shipborn’s system of ethics and policies. Not that he was code-pure, but he agreed with so much of it.

Until now. Until the code demanded that a thriving, rich planet be left to die because it was pre-code and the pinhole closure maneuver had flopped.

Niko spoke over Ship’s response. “We
should
follow orders. There are procedures in place for this.”

“Procedures in place for our failure, you mean.” Gregori turned to the building where Nikolas was stationed. He couldn’t see the top, but he knew Niko could see him, alone in a tilted, fractured parking lot full of death. “If we don’t fix this, we can kiss lead team status in our unit good-bye.”

The Terrans could kiss everything good-bye, which meant a lot more to Gregori than plum assignments and a larger berth. But Niko did care about status; he had certain aspirations.

“We’ll take it back next time,” Niko replied.

“Won’t be that easy.”

“Why not? We did everything right. Followed the mythos structure. Even with you as Archangel.” Nikolas moved to the edge of the building, arguing with Gregori and killing shades at the same time. “You were…credible. No team could have done better.”

The yellow sun glinted on Niko’s armbands as he took out another entity. He’d campaigned hard for the front-runner position, but it had gone to Gregori. Again.

Before today, there had been good reason for that.

“Did we, Niko? Do everything right?”

Nikolas hesitated, and answered stiffly, choosing terms Ship wouldn’t understand but Gregori would. “If this is about the irregularities—”

“It’s not.” Though it could have been. The rest of the teams’ irregularities with the women had been a point of great contention, concealed from Ship but not from Gregori. “It’s about Alsing.”

Gregori had never liked Terra’s Chosen One. Never understood why Ship had selected him from a billion better choices. While he’d functioned as a figurehead and intermediary with the Terrans, his team had indulged the doomed hero—and themselves—because the assignment had been comparatively simple.

Now it was simply fucked.

“What do you want, Gregori, absolution?” Niko asked. “There’s always an element of chance on missions. We did the best we could with what we had. It’s over. Let it go.”

Despite his words, Niko hadn’t let it go, either, because he kept shooting, too.

Gregori fell silent except for the hum and sizzle of his blaster. Losing Terra rankled so deeply it was like hot lead in his bones. Terra’s many cultural variations screamed out for the band of fourteen instead of a single male—or just someone less stupid—but Ship had been adamant. Terrans would respond best to winged mentors and a native savior of masculine ilk, and Gregori’s team had been sent to enact Terra’s revelation.

No one argued with Ship. For long. And no one blamed Ship for anything. The responsibility for this fiasco would fall squarely on Gregori and his people.

His teammates blasted shades along with him and Nikolas. Background noise crackled over the comm for a minute before another voice cut through the headset. On Ship, but not Ship.

“Fall back, you fragging fragsters. That’s an order.”

“General,” Gregori said, not surprised Ship had alerted its ranking human to the team’s lack of compliance. “With all due respect—”

“We both know you got no respect in you, soldier,” the man barked. Gregori could practically feel the angry spittle against his cheek. “We’ve been here before. This is how we handle a botched mission.”

“I haven’t been here before.” Gregori’s team had the best stats of any handlers in the unit, maybe in the fleet, which is why their Ship had been sent to this gold mine of a planet.

“Then it’s time you were. As soon as there’s a pinhole on a pre-code planet, it’s a lost cause.”

“Doesn’t have to be.”

“It does because Ship says it does and I say it does and code says it does and the fragging Mother says it does. Now get your pasty white spacer asses back to base in the next ten minutes or consider yourselves civilians.”

“Right away, ser,” Nikolas said. Of course he would—the general was his seed parent. Though many Shipborn spent their childhoods in crèches, Niko, whose egg parent had relinquished parental rights as was standard, had nevertheless been reared by his biological father to follow in his footsteps.

“I’ll be waiting.” General Vorn signed off.

With only Ship left on comm, Gregori switched his attention back to his lieutenant. He risked a lot pursuing this, but if he could convince Niko, the rest of the team would be a lock. “Niko, think. We can’t let the Terrans die. All these women and children. We have to do something.”

By the Mother, everyone had been stunned by Terran fertility when they’d discovered the planet months ago while tracking entity activity in this dimension. And now to lose that?

“They won’t all die. Retrievers are en route.”

“How do you know that? It’s news to me, and I’m in charge.” Ship was seriously jumping the gun if retrievers had already been sent.

“Ah.” Niko cleared his throat. “Standard procedure.”

“No, it’s not. We only confirmed failure a couple minutes ago. What’s going on, Ship?”

When Ship didn’t answer, Niko told him, “What difference does it make what procedure is used as long as we preserve the stock? We have to head for base, Gregori. We can’t let the entities catch us.”

“All of you?” Gregori asked the team. “All of you are giving up?”

Niko was the only one who answered. “Obeying orders isn’t giving up. It’s code.”

“Now you’re code-pure?” Gregori mocked. Terra’s abundance of females had been difficult for the team to resist, despite their mission and their facade as angeli. Yet it was this abundance that made Terra so important to preserve.

Human males, the fleet had in plenty. But there weren’t plenty of human females, not for several generations. How many innocent lives could the retrievers save?

Not enough. Whatever the retrievers did, it could never be enough.

“I’m staying.” Gregori refused to sacrifice Terra and everything it represented to his people so easily. “Gonna try a few things.”

“You’re going rogue?
You?
” Nikolas said. “You’d endanger your own people over this?”

“I didn’t say anything about going rogue. I said I was gonna try a few things. I’ll be careful.” Gregori had no intention of letting a shade absorb his energies and alert a leviathan that a Ship was within range.

The headset crackled. Gregori wasn’t sure if it was static or Nikolas cursing. “You have to come back with us, Gregori. It’s too dangerous.”

“Aw, Niko, I didn’t know you cared.”

The other man did curse this time, heartily. “Ship, request permission to relieve Gregori 1929 CallenMali-son of Team Alpha command.”

Gregori’s fists clenched. Would Ship grant Nikolas’s request? Handlers did go rogue on occasion, but not on planets destined to be swarmed. It put Ship at risk in a way standard defection didn’t. “I guess that’s one way to gain a captaincy, Niko.”

No one spoke for a long moment, at least not where Gregori was included in the transmission.

“We can force you to return to base,” Nikolas threatened.

“You’d fight me?” Gregori stopped firing at shades. It was one thing for his team to follow Ship’s orders or the general’s orders. It was another for them to take it upon themselves to force the decision on him. Disruption of free will was technically against code. “You can try.”

The hiss of entities grew louder and louder, and the white glow of Niko’s force field increased like a tiny nova. “If Ship commands it, we can find you anywhere you go.”

“If Ship won’t bend code to train a native strike force to save this planet, it’s not going to use planetwide sensors.” Terran science would be able to detect those, which would hardly jibe with the angeli mythos.

“You’re a traitor to your people.”

“What about the Terran people?”

Gregori noticed the others power up their force fields, too, preparing for something. He hoped it wasn’t mutiny.

“Preservation of Ship at all costs,” Niko said gruffly. “It’s the first of all codes. We’re out.”

“If I avoid getting eaten, what the frag does preservation of…,” Gregori began, but his teammates were already in the air. Their wing packs hummed as they jetted away like shooting stars, leaving him alone to face the maelstrom.

He could go. He wouldn’t have to watch this planet be consumed if he enrolled in counseling, pleading post-traumatic stress. He’d be demoted to a population Ship temporarily, but he wouldn’t have to watch Terra die, inch by inch and soul by soul.

Or he could stay. Go down, as the Terrans said, with the ship. Their Ship.

But fail? That he couldn’t do.

So he was staying. Because this time, this planet, was different. All these humans. All these children. Gregori’s future had been cinched the moment Adam Alsing hadn’t stopped the hatching. While he couldn’t imagine what had gone wrong with the Chosen One’s idiot-proof mission, the fact was, something had.

Anger infused Gregori with motivation. Too bad it couldn’t power his blaster. Whatever he did, he couldn’t remain here forever. Soon, enough begetter drones would arrive, with their force field and their kill zone. The entities would converge on him, drawn to the only sentient in the vicinity.

Presumably. Who knew if any Terrans with their videophones had remained behind to capture the apocalypse and post it on their Internet? Or, more likely, to prove the apocalypse was fake. Terra was worth preserving, by the Mother was it worth preserving, but that didn’t make some of the people less annoying.

And he’d thought the Glaviris had been foolhardy.

Well, they had, but unlike the Terrans, their Chosen One had come through.

The breeze shifted, and the shades scented him. A portion oozed in his direction across buckled pavement. Hundreds now, but thousands to come. Thousands upon thousands. From the nexus, from the begetters, from Terra’s hell. Slow-moving, implacable, and unstoppable without the proper technology.

Technology he had. For now.

Gregori expanded his wings to relocate to a stronger tactical position. Every shade he picked off was one that couldn’t drain a Terran. Or him. With skillful flaps, he rose swiftly to the tower where Niko had been stationed. Wind buffeted his force field.

He backstroked, hovering, before landing on the building with a
thunk
. His knees bent to absorb the shock.

The tableau before him was almost overwhelming. The pinhole area roiled with shades pouring through. Black, black, and more black. The begetters that had arrived were giant, red-gashed ovoids. Not enough to form the defensive force field yet, but it wouldn’t be long. The entities parted, and Gregori glimpsed the pinhole, gleaming with dark energy.

Antimatter. Staring at it too long was like staring at a sun in reverse. No tears, because it sucked the moisture from his eyes and disrupted his ability to focus.

As the Chosen One had too frequently said…fuck this shit.

He checked the levels on his blaster band. Nine-tenths. No daemons yet, just drones and shades. Soul eaters. He could hear their death squalls, and that pleased him. He deserved some small reward for the sacrifice he might eventually make.

Mother knew he’d had little enough pleasure in his life.

He just had to be careful not to let any of his comrades stop him. He just had to be careful not to get himself eaten until his people and his Ship were far, far away.