That was why Diana had brought them. Because she knew they would go on fighting till long after everyone else was dead; even if they were the only ones left in the wreck of a crumbling castle.
The
Excalibur
ploughed on before the Last Standing, still striking out with every gun at its command. The whole ship was lit up like a great metal Christmas tree as fires burned, guns fired, and shields flared over and over, deflecting deadly energies. There were jagged holes in the outer hull where the shields had failed, and atmosphere boiled out into the vacuum, carrying broken and mostly unmoving bodies with it. They floated near their ship, as though afraid to go far into the dark on their own. But still the
Excalibur
pressed forward, forcing a path through the hell of endless firepower, right into the face of the enemy.
Captain Cross appeared on the viewscreen in the great Hall of the Last Standing. Several of the bridge workstations had exploded, leaving their crew dead at their posts, still strapped into their chairs. People ran back and forth, trying to put out new fires, yelling information and orders to one another. Alarm sirens rang with shrill insistence, and half the bridge was lit only with the dull red glow of emergency lighting. Half the ship seemed to be trying to contact the bridge with damage reports or new losses, but no one had the time to listen. Captain Cross leaned forward, his face and shoulders filling the viewscreen as he glared at the unmoved Diana Vertue.
“For God’s sake, Vertue! Whatever you’re going to do, do it now! Shields are going down all over my ship. We’re taking serious damage. Outer and inner hulls have been breached. We’re not going to last much longer!”
“Hold your course, Captain,” said Diana. “I’m not close enough yet.”
A vicious explosion rocked the
Excalibur’s
bridge. Dead and injured crewmen were thrown through the air. Fresh fires broke out on all sides. All the light snapped off for a moment, plunging the bridge into a darkness broken only by the raging fires. Dark figures milled aimlessly, crying out. Emergency lighting came back slowly, almost reluctantly. There were dead men and women all over the bridge now, and blood spattered the walls and pooled on the floor. Less than half the workstations were now manned by the living. Captain Cross swayed unsteadily in his command chair. He’d taken a glancing blow to the head from some piece of flying debris, and blood ran thickly down one side of his dark face. He turned around in his seat, blinking hard as he tried to stay focused.
“Talk to me, someone! What the hell just hit us?”
His second in command came lurching forward out of the thickening black smoke, one side of his uniform blackened and charred. “Main shields are down all over the ship, Captain. Inner shields are mostly still holding. Energy beams are getting through everywhere. We’ve taken direct hits in sections Alpha and Beta ... there are outer and inner hull breaches ... Hell, Captain; one whole side of the ship’s been ripped open! We’ve shut all the airtight doors, but we’re still losing atmosphere. And heat, and gravity. God knows what the crew losses are.”
“Concentrate all power to the forward shields,” Cross said quietly. “Shut down all power to the damaged sections.”
“But sir; there are still survivors in those sections! We’re still getting comm traffic out of them!”
“It doesn’t matter! Redirect the power!” He looked back at Diana. “My people are dying for you, Vertue. My ship is dying. Tell me this is all for something real, and not just some damned esper theory.”
“Hold your course, Captain,” Diana said steadily. “We’re almost there. It will all be over soon. One way or another. And if I’m wrong, I’ll die with you.”
She broke off the connection, and switched the viewscreen back to the main battle. Shub’s fleet spread out before her, but still not quite close enough.
The Last Standing’s weapons were still blasting holes in the huge fleet, but with only one ship left to protect the castle, it was coming under increasingly intense fire. Its shields were pierced again and again by concentrated firepower. Bit by bit, the Shub fleet whittled away at the castle. The elegant stone towers went first, leveled floor by floor, blasted to atoms by Shub disrupter cannon. The outer walls took hit after hit, still somehow holding together, sustained by ancient tech and forgotten miracles. But as the Last Standing edged remorselessly closer to the Shub fleet, holes began to appear in the castle’s outer defenses. The walls went down, here and there, and whole rooms and passages were devastated by ravening energies, their contents boiling out into the unforgiving cold of space. People were blown out into the vacuum on brief storms of escaping air, sometimes accompanied by flailing humanoid drones. The Shub fleet was blowing great chunks out of the Last Standing, and slowly the great old castle grew smaller and less mighty. Some of the guns were still firing, but many were silent.
Diana Vertue could feel the castle dying about her. The floor shuddered under her feet now with each new explosion, and it seemed to her the lights were growing dimmer. She’d shut down the alarm sirens. She knew how much trouble they were in. She called up a map of the castle, and it appeared floating on the air before her. Dark areas showed which parts of the Last Standing had been destroyed. Most of the areas were dark now, surrounding a shrinking central core. Diana opened a comm channel to Jack Random and Ruby Journey.
“You’ve done all you can. Let the fire computers take over your weapons. I need you here in the Hall with me.”
We don’t have time to hold your hand, Vertue,
Ruby said coldly.
In case you hadn’t noticed, we’re getting our ass kicked good and proper.
“Get back here, to the hall,” said Diana. “Do it now. It’s almost time to spring my trap, and I’m going to need both of you as backup.”
Ruby screamed. It was as much anger and surprise as pain and shock, but her cry was drowned out almost immediately by the larger roar of a continuing series of explosions. Random and Diana both yelled her name, but there was no response.
Jack Random ran through the shaking corridors of the Last Standing, desperation driving him on. Dust was falling steadily from the ceiling like a fine mist, and the walls of the corridors sometimes bowed inward under impossible pressures. When he finally reached Ruby’s fire station, he was drenched in sweat and gasping for air, and his head felt far away. The door to her room had been blown off its hinges, and air was rushing into the room past him. He held on to the shattered door frame with both hands as he looked into the room. A Shub energy blast had smashed a hole right through the stone wall and shattered the fire controls. The room was a wreck, and all the air and everything loose in the room was being sucked out the jagged hole. Including Ruby.
She was spread-eagled across the hole, hanging desperately on by precarious white-knuckled hands. Her face was blue, and she gasped for air as it whistled past her. Random lurched into the room, hanging on to the wall, fighting the air as it tried to tear him away and sweep him off his feet. Ruby was trying to yell something to him, but there was no way he could hear her over the roar of escaping air. The lights were flickering now, and the dark of open space showed clearly beyond the broken wall. Random inched his way toward her, handhold by handhold, afraid to move too quickly and be swept away, but more afraid of getting there too late. Ruby’s numbing fingers suddenly lost their grip on one edge of the hole, and she was sucked out through the hole, out into space, hanging on by her last handhold.
Random howled her name, and released his holds, letting the rushing air propel him toward the hole. He twisted in midair at the last moment, and hit the wall beside the hole feet-first. The stonework gave under his weight, but still held together. Random crouched down, his knees banging against his chest, and grabbed Ruby by the wrist. His chest heaved, his lungs straining to drag in some air. He straightened up through sheer willpower, and slowly walked away along the wall, pulling Ruby after him. The pressure of the rushing air kept him from falling, even as it strove to tear Ruby out of his grasp. He slogged on, step by step, feeling his heart pounding dangerously in his chest, and blood pounding in his head. It seemed ages since he’d been able to take a proper breath. He couldn’t spare the time or the concentration to look back at Ruby, and see how she was doing, or even if she was still alive, but he could still feel her wrist in his hand, and that was all that mattered.
A lifetime later, he reached the open doorway, and pulled himself and Ruby out into the corridor. They fell to the floor in a heap as gravity reasserted its hold, and for a moment all Random could do was lie there and gasp down the thicker air in the corridor. When his lungs finally allowed him to think of something else, he turned and looked at Ruby. She lay on her back on the floor, gulping down air. Blood trickled from her nose and ears, but her gaze was clear. She flashed Random an unsteady smile, and he realized he still had her wrist in a deathlike grip. He let go, clambered painfully to his feet, and then stood still as Ruby used him as a support to pull herself up onto her feet. They stood together for a while, supporting each other, leaning against the wall by the open door. Air was still rushing into the wrecked room, but neither of them felt up to doing anything about it.
“Tell you what,” Random said hoarsely. “Let’s go join Diana in the Hall.”
“Might as well,” said Ruby, in a voice so harsh it could barely be understood. “Maybe we can be some use there.”
Still leaning heavily on each other, they headed for the great Hall.
Alone in the great Hall of the Last Standing, Diana Vertue stood before the viewscreen showing the Shub fleet, and wondered if she’d have to carry out her plan alone after all. There’d been no report of Random or Ruby since he’d gone running off to save her. The castle map had shown that area to be almost entirely black, but she didn’t believe they were dead. She felt sure she would have known, if they were. But even without the backing of the two Maze minds, she would still go ahead, alone, if she had to. It was too late for anything else.
Am I really sure about this?
she thought slowly, as though she had all the time in the world. No,
I’m
not sure.
It is just a theory. One last throw of the dice, betting my Humanity against the cold logic of the rogue Als. But when it’s the only bet you’ve got, you might as well bet big.
By the time Random and Ruby joined Diana, dust was falling in steady streams from the ceiling, and the floor was shaking like it was afraid. The walls groaned, as though the weight of centuries was finally too much for them. The sound of explosions and destruction drew closer as the outer layers of the castle were blasted away. Random and Ruby staggered into the main hall, still leaning on each other. Diana studied them dispassionately.
“Welcome. You look like shit.”
“And you’ve got sticky-out ears,” snapped Ruby. “Never mind the compliments; what’s our current situation?”
Diana gestured at the viewscreen floating before her. Random took in the vast armada of nightmare metal shapes, and swore tiredly.
“If we get any closer, we’ll be able to lean out of a window and hit them with a stick. And it might come to that, if the castle keeps cracking up. We’ve lost most of our weapons stations, and the shields aren’t stopping shit anymore.” Random shook his head slowly. “I hate to think what Owen’s going to say when he sees what we’ve done to his Family legacy.”
“Any chance this dump has escape pods?” said Ruby.
“None at all,” said Diana. “And even if we could rig something up, I wouldn’t recommend it. Shub would be bound to pick them up. And I don’t know about you, but I have absolutely no wish to spend what’s left of my life in a Shub vivisection ward.”
“God, you’re a cheerful soul,” said Ruby. “I knew there was a reason why we never let you hang around with us.”
“Let’s try and concentrate on the matter at hand,” said Random. “How much closer to the Shub fleet do we have to get, Diana?”
“We’re almost there,” said Diana.
“Almost where?” snapped Ruby.
“Where we need to be. I had to be right here, right in the face of the Shub ships, so that when I finally did make contact, they wouldn’t be able to shake us off.”
“What kind of contact are we talking about here?” said Random carefully. “Don’t you think it’s about time you let us in on your battle plan?”
“Yes, Jack, Ruby. It is time. I’m going to make direct mental contact with the rogue AIs of Shub, and use the power of your augmented minds to maintain the contact, no matter how hard they try to break away. Then the Mater Mundi gestalt will use that connection as a stepping stone to force their own mental bond with the AIs. And then ... it’s our Humanity versus the AIs’ logic. A clash of two completely opposing thought processes, from which only one can emerge triumphant. I’m betting on us. We always said our minds were superior to mere machines; this is our chance to prove it.”
“And that’s your plan,” said Random.
“Yes,” said Diana.
“Oh shit,” said Random. “We’re all going to die.”
“That’s it?”
said Ruby incredulously. “We came all this way, put our lives on the line, got the whole damn castle shot out from under us; just for
that?”
“Yes,” said Diana Vertue calmly. “We never could hope to beat Shub on the physical plane. We’re outnumbered and outgunned. That just leaves the psionic plane; the mental battlefield. And Shub has never met anything like you or me or the Mater Mundi.”
“I don’t know whether to puke or have a screaming shit fit,” said Ruby. “She really is psycho. We put all our faith in a madwoman.”
“No, hold on. She may just have something,” said Random. “There is a link we can use. The rogue AIs had a definite presence in the undermind. That could be their Achilles’ heel; as long as we can both access the undermind, they can’t keep us out. And a mental attack would be the one thing they haven’t anticipated. They know nothing of telepathy. I say go for it.”