Zero Star Read online

  Zero Star

  Chad Huskins

  Published by Nine Dusks Publishing

  Edited by William Fruman

  Cover art by Jack Baker

  Copyright 2017 Chad Huskins

  PUBLISHER’S NOTE: This is a work of fiction. Any similarities between persons living or dead, events, business establishments, or locales is strictly coincidence.

  The scanning, uploading, and uploading of this product via the Internet or any other means without the permission of the author is a crime and is punishable by law. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

  Other books by Chad Huskins:

  Khan in Rasputin’s Shadow (winner of the 2009 Evvy Award for fiction)

  Rook’s Song Series:

  Book I: The Phantom in the Deep

  Book II: The Immortal Game

  The Psycho Series:

  Booki I: Psycho Save Us

  Book II: Psycho Within Us

  Book III: Psycho Redeem Us

  The Sol Ascendancy

  : Kennit 184c

  The fear was that they would not be able to breach the first shield wall. If they could not even do that, then they had only come to this planet to die.

  The shuttle trembled like a virgin on her wedding night. The soldiers all around Lyokh shuffled uneasily, the servos in each armored joint whirring faintly as they did. Beside Lyokh, Durzor gave him a wary look. Lyokh gave his friend a pat on the shoulder, and an encouraging nod. Durzor took a deep breath, let it out, and nodded back.

  He looks ready to die, Lyokh thought. That’s good.

  They could already hear the juddering sounds of explosions and gunfire outside the ship. Felt it in their chests, even through the plate of their STACsuits.

  They were headed for the nest. Lyokh had heard the stories. The Brood and their hive worlds were filled with vast, unending plains of mulched organic matter, twisted and intertwined with untold miles of cables and chitonous walls, lined with arteries so huge they were said to be corridors, trembling with hideous breath and life, and with electrical impulses that carried inimical thoughts throughout the hive-brain, which was said to rest near the planet’s core.

  A hateful world. A tumor that had swallowed all other beauty whole, and most recently crushed the Knights of Sol.

  Somewhere in that labyrinth of quivering muscle and pulsating wires, there was their objective. A woman. A member of royalty, who had fallen victim to the words of the Harbingers. The Queen of Mothers, some called her. She had left open the gates of her mind and allowed the enemy inside. For her depression, and her need to realize some greater purpose in life, she had relinquished all her rights and powers of state, and stepped willingly onto the planet’s surface to join with the Brood.

  Lyokh supposed that, like with most converts, once she was faced with the reality of the dwindling light of Man, the woman began to look for alternatives. The song of the Harbingers must have grown more sonorous with each passing year. It must have seemed like such a logical alternative to the permanent night that comes with death. Lyokh could not understand such feelings. For him, life was all duty and honor, you fought until you died, despite the fact that mankind’s chapter in the universe was soon to close. The Harbingers had that much right, at least: mankind was soon to fail, it was inevitable.

  Lyokh understood that kind of fatalistic thinking, but chose to let it be his fuel, not his undoing. “Hey,” he said to Durzor, whose eyes looked dazed. “We go forward until there is no more forward. That’s who we are. That’s what we do. Right?”

  Durzor nodded. “Right.”

  But focusing on honor and duty did not totally help dispel the thought of what the Queen of Mothers was enduring inside the belly of the Brood’s hive-city…

  Lyokh supposed every Gold Winger around him was thinking the same thing, though you couldn’t tell it by looking at them. All the armored faces in the drop ship looked the same. Stoic, made of kermicite and compristeel, with a slightly glowering look on each helmet, and visors showing intense eyes.

  Each soldier was bunched up against the one in front of him, their L-130 Fell rifles kept in front of them at low-ready. The shuttle shook as its ablative shields impacted with 184c’s atmosphere. Beside Lyokh, Durzor smacked his helmet a few times as he psyched himself up.

  “Hoy up!” shouted Lieutenant Lucerne ahead of him. The roar of the drop ship’s engines made it nearly impossible to hear what he was saying. “Hoy! Two minutes to planetfall! Coming up on LZ! I want clean dispersal, Gold Wing! Command says there’s turrets on north and south ends of the wall, so expect heavy resistance! We should be getting suborbital bombardment from Lord Ishimoto, suppressive fire to get us clear! Understood?”

  “A-HOO!” they shouted.

  “Warhulks! As soon as we touch down, get out in front of us! Suppression fire until we reach cover! You copy?”

  “Copy!” came the collective response of the twenty mech pilots standing at the back of the drop ship.

  “All right! Safeties off!”

  It started from the back of the hold and moved towards the front. Each soldier checked his rifle. With a look to their HUD screens, they eye-flicked their safeties off. The person at the back of the line patted the shoulder of the person in front of him, and the ritual traveled up the line, each soldier signaling to the next their readiness. Lyokh received his pat, and patted Egleston’s shoulder in front of him.

  All of Gold Wing was weapons live.

  “Don’t you give them an inch!” Lucerne cried. “They’ve got the Queen of Mothers in there! She may have surrendered herself willingly but we’ve been charged with getting her out, so that’s what we’re going to do! You hear me?”

  “A-HOO!” shouted Lyokh and his people.

  The Nova banked hard to port, and all of them reached overhead to touch the stabilizing bars. A huge round of something panged off the hull. Lyokh heard an explosion farther back in the drop ship. Alarms went off. On his heads-up display, he saw two soldiers’ vitals flatline. With an eye-flick, he switched off the alarm.

  Oblivion awaits, he thought.

  The shuttle banked hard one last time, extended its landing struts, and slammed onto the planet’s surface. Wavered. Settled down. The red light flashed overhead.

  “Hoy up, Gold Wing! Here we go!” shouted Lucerne. “Break the wall, boys! Push for it! Always push! Never stop!”

  “A-HOO!” they responded.

  Lyokh thumped his chest with his fist once, as did everyone. Somewhere, they heard an explosion. There came the unmistakable scream as a drop ship plummeted from the air.

  The light overhead turned green.

  The ramp ahead of Lieutenant Lucerne unfolded, and he got no more than two steps before he exploded into red paste. His helmet, with his head still inside it, smacked off of Egleston’s arm and bounced off of Lyokh’s shoulder. No one hesitated. They ran through the pink mist of blood that filled the air, raced down the ramp and stepped onto the surface of the alien world. Judun, the man who had been next in line behind the lieutenant, died a second later, sawed in half by a barrage of gunfire that turned most of him to pulp. Now Egleston led the charge, with Lyokh close behind.

  So much for the suppression fire from orbit, Lyokh thought, sensing he was about to die, even preparing for it. He was used to this. It had long ago become easier to accept he was already dead. It made it easier.

  Their booted feet thundered collectively across a ground saturated by a slippery black sludge, pus-filled growths giving off electrical discharges, and random puddles of steaming ammonia. They ran headlong into a hellscape, beginning with squad-column formation, then quickly spreading out into squad-line formation for maximum firepower aimed directly ahead.

  Above them was a blackened sky, tinged by t
he orange light of a desperate sun. A sun that had long stood witness to the downfall of whatever civilization the Brood had overrun here.

  Breaking the wall was all that mattered; the wall of the towering artery right in front of them, which was covered by the turrets that had annihilated two of them already. Turrets made of twisted, bone-like material, coated in pulsating veins the size of a man’s arm and firing magnetic rounds the size of his fist.

  Where was that bombardment? Where was Lord Ishimoto?

  Egleston made it to the first bit of cover, which was a compristeel shield wall with a built-in plasma shield emitter. The compristeel walls had been dropped from orbit, burrowing into the sludgy surface like a tick and spreading their spiky roots. The plasma shield emitters activated as soon as soldiers found their cover. They had all trained their dispersals to near perfection. The drop ship pilot had trained in sims to learn how to deal with the planet’s rough atmo, and had known how far away to land, so as to position the soldiers in such a way that it took no more than ten steps to reach first cover. All around the hive, for miles and miles around, Nova drop ships would be touching down, spilling out a hundred soldiers each, all screaming for the wall.

  “Where’s our support?” Egleston cried, touching his hand to his wrist gauntlet, trying to reach someone in Lord Ishimoto. “This is Gold Wing Leader! Requesting to know where the f—”

  Balls of blue energy shot overhead, exploding in midair, creating a temporary vacuum that sucked soldiers into the sky by the dozens, sending them spinning around and around until they disappeared into a warp bubble, where they were crushed to bloody pulp.

  No wonder the Knights of Sol perished, Lyokh thought. We’re all doomed.

  An instant later, he checked his own fear, and then tossed it away entirely.

  Lyokh pressed his back against the wall and listened to rounds smacking into the energy shield. Peeking over his cover, he tried to see the enemy’s wall through the clouds of dust and ash that regularly swept across the planet’s surface, ash that had been ejected from countless foundries.

  Beyond that dust, appearing like a phantom city from a children’s book of ghost stories, there were glimpses of the wall, and the vast nest that lay beyond it. The hive looked like a tabletop massif, a mountain that began abruptly a hundred yards ahead, its peak pushing into the sky, with aspirations towards the stars. It was a huge, knotted, black-and-red mass of smoking, quivering material, probably ten thousand feet high, and almost as wide. Hard to say where a hive began and where it ended.

  The whole thing heaved, like it was breathing, and on occasion it belched out steam to help with this illusion. The wall that protected the city was like all the others on Kennit 184c, built of some unidentified synthetic cocktail, chiton and flesh and steel, standing a quarter of a mile high, with mounted turrets that spat continuously, without need of reloading. Primacy Intel suggested the Brood devoured every natural resource available, even from deep beneath the planet’s mantle, constantly flooding their forges and producing matériel as need.

  The enemy’s turrets continued hammering on their plasma shields, with enough rate-of-fire that some of the rounds were getting through, and those smacked against the compristeel walls and shattered. From the back of their unit, two massive Dagonite warhulks lifted their missile launchers and assaulted the turrets, laying down suppression fire for the platoon.

  Once most of the turrets were out of commission, Egleston screamed, “Move up!” He gave several directional chops of his hand, all of which sent waypoints to their HUDs, telling them where to go.

  They progressed in groups of five, from one invisible bubble of plasma energy to the next. They were doing just fine, losing not another man, until the drones showed up.

  “Incoming!” cried Egleston, who had sidled up to the next wall beside Lyokh.

  Everyone saw it on their HUD. Here they came, pouring out of the wall like maggots from a festering wound. A horde of white, chittering globules, each one ten feet high, rolling across the ground with an occasional random appendage shooting out of its side to help it change course.

  Lyokh moved in a crouch and with soft knees, taking his time aiming at the oncoming creatures. It was hard to miss with a Fell rifle, for it was filled with gyrators that vibrated, suggesting which way he ought to turn his rifle to acquire the target. Auto-targeting was never wrong. He squeezed the trigger, letting out short, controlled bursts and ripping the maggots in half. Their sides popped like blisters, and they spilt a milky-white pus as they fell to one side, going through spasmodic throes.

  “The wall!” Egleston screamed. “The w—”

  Suddenly, a turret that Lyokh had thought destroyed erupted to life again. In an instant, Egleston’s head was punched off his shoulders. His body kept moving forward, staggering drunkenly, his fingers still depressing the trigger and the weapon switching off each time he lased a friendly, then switching back on once his walking corpse was aimed at an enemy again. Auto-targeting made sure Egleston’s decapitated body never missed. Emergency systems in his STACsuit detected that Egleston might be injured, or dead, and so the servos had activated, the spine of his armor shot erect, and he was kept upright, moving forward like a wandering spirit, the armor in search of a medic. Egleston was still firing, still fighting.

  Though his head is cut off, he should not die, thought Lyokh, recalling briefly a stanza from an old poem about samurai. Training took over. Repetition bred into muscle memory. Fuse that kind of regimented training with modern tech, and it was possible to live on throughout the battle.

  Egleston’s headless body kept moving forward, kept firing, a spirit cursed to fight on this battlefield forever. Or at least until his suit’s battery runs out. But Egleston was dead, which left Lyokh in charge.

  “Hoy up, Gold Wing!” he screamed, moving through the field of dwindling maggots. “Move up in a shallow wedge! Take that wall! Take it! Hulks, get up here! Break that wall! Break it down!”

  The voices of half a hundred mech pilots roared in his ear as they rushed forward, unleashing rippling salvos of rockets and shells at the wall. Missiles hissed in the air, detonating in concussive waves. Sound suppressors in his helmet protected Lyokh from losing consciousness. Shockwaves knocked him back a few steps, and rippled across the ground in concentric rings. The giant wall burst, then began hemorrhaging black viscous fluid. Arcs of lightning lanced out from the wound and traveled up the wall as wires were severed.

  “The wall! Get through it!” he cried. “The wall!”

  They rushed through. Voices crackled in Lyokh’s ear. Radio chatter. He thought he heard something coming in from High Command. Seconds later, there came the thumping they had been waiting for. Suborbital guns pounding the ground. Lord Ishimoto had finally awoken.

  Now they bring the support.

  Lyokh would think about finding whoever had mucked up the order later, if he survived, but for now he was just happy having Lord Ishimoto on their side.

  Ahead of them, more maggots came rolling out. Lyokh took aim and let fly. Star-shaped muzzle flashes erupted from his Fell rifle as thousands of tracer rounds snaked across the battlefield, ripping into the oncoming horde.

  The enemy kept coming, unabated.

  He squeezed his trigger until his Fell was spent. He didn’t have time to reload. He let the rifle dangle by its strap as he transitioned to the pulser holstered to his side. He quickly discovered that the pistol only did well if he fired into the joints of the limbs supporting the drones. He knocked two of them over, making them easier targets for his brothers bringing up the rear.

  “The wall!” he shouted. It was all he had time to articulate. “The wall!”

  Ammo spent again, he reholstered the pulser and unsheathed the field sword on his back. Its runes of blessing glowed to life as he gripped the hilt double-handed, twisting the top and bottom in opposite directions to activate its power core. The blas-diamond coils glowed blue, crackling with energy as the plasmetic edge burned to life.<
br />
  He rushed forward, hacking at the maggots’ limbs, shoulder-barging them and knocking them over. He dialed up the power on his STACsuit, which would drain his battery faster, but gave him the strength to push these things around. And he kept pushing, ripping through their sides with his blade as he made for the wall, the wall, the wall. All that mattered was the wall.

  Now here came more drones, different types, moving in clusters, each one of indescribable shape, amorphous, expanding and reshaping their twisted bodies as they threw themselves against the human enemy with savage enmity.

  “Gold Wing! To me!” Lyokh shouted, slashing through one of them.

  Near him, Egleston’s dead body was still staggering around. His rifle had gone dry, but he plunged ahead anyway, disappearing in a maelstrom of dust and violence.

  A soldier ran ahead of Lyokh, and half his torso was blown off as blood spattered across Lyokh’s helmet. “To me!” The enemy’s bullets strafed the ground, kicking up large geysers of sludge that splashed across his visor, his arms, his legs. The ground hemorrhaged a dark-green liquid that he slipped in. “To me!” He staggered over the body of a dead soldier. “To me! The wall! To me!” He slashed at another maggot, spilled its milky-white pus onto his chest. He slipped on something else, the servos in his armor’s knee joints adjusted, corrected his balance, stood him back up. He kept going. “To me!” Dust and ash and pink mist obscured everything. “To me! The wall! TO MEEEEE!”

  Warhulks trudged forward, ripping the drones in half with heavy Kubar rounds and stomping them beneath their steel feet.

  Overhead, squadrons of skyrakes streaked through the air. Doubtless, they had been deployed from the belly of Lord Ishimoto. The ’rakes were moving to the mid-level of the hive, which was now firing at the hosts of human vessels. The ’rakes were all drones, they went on bombing raids, and the hive unleashed its clouds of nanite saboterus that descended on the squadrons. Plasma cannons fired from the hive’s upper levels began swatting the ’rakes like flies. Lord Ishimoto answered by sending down another hard pummeling of plasma bombs.