It was an unnamed world. Why Orak craved it so was not apparent. It was composed of strange minerals of no trade value, had no outposts or history of being settled, and on its surface was neither flora nor fauna. Only an ocean beneath the honeycombed crust showed any promise of sustaining life. And yet, no sooner than Vala and her forces landed on it, seeking only a place to expand their sensor range from, a horde of Ulro appeared and they were instantly besieged. He hovered above a mountain range, visible even from a distance of several miles. A bright red beacon, his wings moved as banners to signal his baleful troops.
“Three hundred dead,” Black Fountain announced.
Vala stood on the gangplank of the human flagship. They dedicated it to her after she led four sorties to repel Orak’s cavalry, saving their entire front from being flanked and winning them the time to become properly entrenched.
“Your jumpships are too small for pitched battles, ma’am,” said the vessel’s captain, a short and wiry woman of two-hundred and eighteen years named Connie. “Take me and mine into your service, or else we’re off.”
Vala had smiled, seeing fondly the forge their own pilots were drawn from.
Black Fountain led the fifth sortie, giving the auxiliary artillery divisions time to aim their heavy guns.
“And the enemy?” Vala asked.
“Thousands,” Black Fountain answered.
“Good.” When the guns had thundered, so had her heart. “We can’t waste life. Especially not against an enemy such as this.” She waved her friend up the gangplank and into the ship, convening with the human commanders in the CIC.
A topographic map hovered above the center console. Orak was sending his horde in a crescent to engulf them, with small groups nipping at their heels to keep them busy.
General Stevens, the highest-ranking mortal, pointing to several weak points his scouts had found.
“They have highly explosive munitions stored here, here and here. They’re constructing protective barriers, but of we fire on them within the next thirteen minutes…”
“Do it,” said Vala, seeing the precious guns being built nearby the volatile stores.
“They had no choice,” said Black Fountain, pointing to the difficult terrain the enemy artillary had to be transported over. It was no wonder the warheads arrived first.
“They’re in a hurry to mount their assault,” Vala noted. “That’s good news for us. Hopefully they’ll keep making mistakes.”
She heard the guns thunder outside, then saw the blips on the map fade away. “Well struck, General.”
Stevens smiled. “Thank you, Ma’am.”
“We have to find a way to break their formation. Fountain, this pincer move they’re attempting, do we break off the tips of their claws? Or do we drive a wedge down the center?”
He studied the map for a moment, counting the numbers of troops and noting the types of weaponry deployed in each position. “Center. We will charge while the terrans hold the line here.”
She looked at the map. There were three Archeus knights. One in the center, and one on either side. “We’ll barrage the Archeus Knight here first,” she pointed to the knight in the middle. “General Stevens, order all guns to aim at this knight.”
She pondered the map a moment longer. “Do you think they’re really getting their orders from this hologram of Orak?”
“Yes,” said Black Fountain. “The wing movements might be a display, but that is how he is watching and driving his force.”
“Excuse me ma’am,” said Stevens, “I could send a team to disable it, if we could only find where it’s emitting from.”
She nodded. “See to it. Fountain, muster all Harbingers and ready them for the charge. We rush in half an hour. I’ll call for the strike then.”
Black Fountain and General Stevens both nodded and went about their orders. Vala marked their rally point with a holo flare and stood in wait, taking stock of the field. She saw troops funneling through trenches dug along the prongs of their formation.
Two explosions caught her eye. They were well above her, flowering in white smoke that hid in the foggy sky. The light bouncing off the small green moon etched the bursts as they curved towards Vala. She sent a wave of energy outward, detonating the first row of warheads, then launched a scatter pack of countermeasures from her backpack to take care of the rest. When the rockets kept coming her way, she jumped behind the steep hill where the Harbingers were gathering.
Black Fountain had done his work quickly, giving her time to issue contingency orders and give a brief speech about sending Ulro a message. Then they were off, charging at a measured speed so they could aim their weapons and pick off priority targets as they ran. Vala cheered as she saw snipers and artillery operators being picked off, and a greater cheer rose when their own long guns stagged the Archeus at the end of their charge. The other two were moving to support their fallen comrade, and Vala called for the armored divisions to sweep across the field and slow them down. The humans performed exceptionaly, cutting a swath across either side of the field and peppering the legs of both knights with armor piercing shells while their foot blanketed their ground support with incendiary rounds.
“Those ifreet are tough,” said Ramses. He was close beside her, hurling his radiance in condensed, grenade-like form. “Kzinti take almost as much to bring down.”
As if on cue, a squadron of ifreet closed in on them rapidly. Black Fountain called two Harbingers to break off with him and deal with the ifreet. He lifted the first one over his head with all four arms and ripped it in half. A mixture of cables and flesh dangled from its severed torso, and its blood dumped out, purple and oily.
The enemy was quick to see the danger posed by their forward attack. As she’d hoped, the furthest prongs of their pincers broke off to come behind the Harbingers. She watched them in her PIP, seeing them firing on the unguarded rear of the tanks. The human infantry engaged them, but in mid quarters the ifreet outclassed them. She felt sorry in advance for their losses, but her guilt was replaced by excitement when she saw the hologram of Orak flicker. It cut in and out for an instant, then was completely gone.
Without their god to order them, the ifreet and Anunnaki made much more conservative maneuvres. Vala responded by ordering bold charges and elaborate feints, pressing the enemy back en masse while luring small groups away from support. By the time the Harbingers engaged the enemy’s front line, the pincer formation had been neatly dismantled. She opted for her submachine gun for the skirmish, saving her rifle for cleanup in the mountains later. By evening, the entire valley was theirs, and the one surviving Archeus fled alone in a damaged frigate. Vala noted the irony of the central knight being the one to make it out alive.
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The troops lept well that night. Vala let all the humans sleep while the Harbingers exchanged watch shifts, and the following day she toured the printed cells where they kept their prisoners. The Anunnaki were destroyed, while the ifreet were probed for information.
She found herself most intrigued when visiting the morgue. There a sumber of Sentinel corpsman were dissection slain ifreet.
“They’re natively organic,” said S-44 Moriah, one of the Sentinels. “The cybernetic overhaul seems to be a means of adapting them to our space.”
“If I were in the general’s place,” said Vala, “I’d be planning a strike behind their lines. Could studying these implants gain us insight into the physics of Ulro?”
“Some,” Moriah answered. “We can learn from what they’re protecting against.”
“Excellent. Keep me informed.”
From there she went to the human barracks where she and Black Fountain thanked as many human soldiers in person as they had time for.
“They don’t want to shake my hand, of course,” Ramses lamented at the mess.
“You look boring,” Black Fountain explained while his feeder head gorged.
Ramses gave a compound nod and shrug. “Next to you, everyone looks boring.”
“It was rather adorable to watch,” Vala said. “They came to him in fours.”
Black Fountain chuckled.
They slept well, trusting their competent human counterparts to keep the camp safe, and when Vala woke there was a stir at the foothills of the mountains. She donned her full battle dress, then went to see what the commotion was over.
“Colonel,” said Ephrastus, captain of Harbinger Four.
“Good morning, Captain. What’s all the buzz about?”
“Best you see, Colonel.”
He led her to a cave entrance. It was small at its opening, but quickly spread into a large cavern with a sheer drop. There were crystal formations serving as stairs at the edge of the chasm, and at the bottom, on a vast, translucent floor, four rods of some unknown alloy laid on massive tarps. The rods were twelve meters long, each with a crook on one end. They showed no signs of being powered, but each emitted a constant hum.
“Do you recommend studying them here or trying to move them?” she asked.
Ephrastus called his second, the Phoenician, and asked her. Vala knew the Pheonician to be a genius when it came to studying unknown technologies.
“Best do it here,” the tall and lanky woman said.
“See to it,” Vala ordered.
Outside, work began on constructing the sensor tower and comm relay. Every printer was working, and human and Harbinger alike hurriedly assembled them. By evening, the work was almost halfway done. Vala decided on short watches so that as many as possible could enjoy fellowship during the evening meal. She looked fondly at the blue and red streaks in the turquoise night sky, thankful for the constant vigil of their non-rad pilots.
Black Fountain had a crowd of humans around him while he ate. He made a spectacle of himself; catching fruit thrown at him with his hunting head, then tossing it to his feeder head to eat, and all the while his thinking head reciting the works of Halavir, one of his peoples’ revered poets.
Vala saw Ephrastus and his team, all except for the Phoenician.
“Colonel,” he said when she approached. He set his food tray on a table nearby and started a salute, which she interrupted.
“At ease, Ephra. Where’s your brilliant engineer?”
“Niche? She’s still under the mountain.”
“You told her about the victory feast, right?”
“Yes ma’am. But she’s having more fun studying those tuning forks than she’d ever have at something like this.”
“Not one for crowds?”
Ephrastus shook his head and smiled. “She’s not one for socializing at all.”
“Like many engineers. Well, I’m gratefulf or her efforts. And all your team, Captain.”
“Colonel.”
She made her rounds, thanking human and Harbinger alike, spending a little extra time with Connie. When she felt she’d been present enough she set out for the mountain, crossing the plane swiftly and just above the ground. Her aura trailed blue behind her.
She landed soundlessly and called to Niche when she stood at the verge of the chasm. The girl looked up, nodded, then looked back down. Vala, rested and fed, spread her aura into a cushion beneath her feet and drifted down.
“Colonel,” said the Pheonician.
“Major.”
The rods were humming at alternating octaves. There was a strange constancy to the sounds, and they at all times were on the verge of a perfect harmony.
“Ephra called them tuning forks.”
Niche held an instrument Vala didn’t recognize. It was two hand lengths long, with a traditional screen and an emitter that distorted the air in a thin jet. She held it over one of the rods.
“The sound keeps adjusting on its own,” said Niche.
“What are you doing, exactly?”
“I’m trying to quiet them. This isn’t exactly a safe area for unknown exo devices to activate. We’ve no idea what they’re for.”
“You mean, this whole time you’ve been down here...”
“I hate parties, ma’am. Thank you for having a victory feast, though. It was very gracious. But yes, I’ve been working. Somewhat urgently, as a matter of fact. Uhm, Colonel.”
“Can I help?”
“I don’t know. The power these devices have stored is staggering. Warn people, maybe?”
The sounds had shifted and the harmony felt closer. As it did, the rods all began to shine. One red, one white, one gold, and one was engulfed in shadow.
“Colonel...”
“And you?”
The Phoenician shook her head, then looked to a crate where she’d set her plate of food and her skullfort. Vala grabbed the girl’s skullfort and fit it over her head, then tried to issue an emergency evac order over her comms. Her vam spat static. Vala ran to the chasm and climbed the crystalline stairs as quickly as she could, using her radiance to vault herself up a half dozen steps at a time. She heard a scream behind her when she reached the cave mouth, and a sudden, massive glow of light from behind kept her from turning back. She threw all her strength into her aura and flew like a missile across the field, shouting orders to evacuate with her considerable battle voice.
Everyone responded as quickly as they could, but they were too late. The light showed first, beaming three colors brilliantly against a confined dark ray. Then came the mountain, landing behind, around and ahead of Vala. She felt pride amid her fear when she saw her Harbingers using their radiance to protect the humans while they fled for cover. The structures they had built were heavily damaged from the earthen rain, but it seemed the soldiers were mostly safe. Vala felt a shower of small rocks approaching her, so she dodged, then doged again, then doged again, but the blast was too espansive and a boulder struck her back, sending her sprawling. She landed on her back and saw the four rods rising into the sky. They rotated when they stopped their ascent, flattening out and rotating as their harmony reached perfection. There was a blinding flash that left the sky brighter than day. The sound grew painful to hear. Her ears were flooded with the noise, and, beautiful as the harmony was, it caused her intense pain. She could see the looks of agony on the faces of the humans. Some bled out of their ears. With a thunderclap, the rods flew in each of the cardinal directions, then turned to focus on a common point on the planet’s ecliptic.
The sound faded, and beams of light replaced the beams of sound. Harbingers and especially sturdy humans were helping the seriously hurt to their feet. Vala turned back to the mountains to see a great gash blasted open where the cave mouth had been. She was ordering a nearby group of Harbingers to search for Niche when the sound of machinery deafened all other noise. Where the staves shot their oscillations, a metal tower rose from the farthest distance Vala’s radiant eyes could see. It rose, shedding mountains and water and forests, till the horizon was cut down the middle by its silhouette.