Hawk_Hand of the Machine Read online

  “Ah,” Falcon said over the link. “Understood.”

  Eagle motioned then, directly at Hawk. Go, go, he was mouthing as he waved toward the breach. Then he gestured toward himself and silently indicated that he was tied up with something annoying but important.

  Hawk nodded back and lofted into the air again, then zoomed toward the hole in the force field. He didn’t envy Eagle’s position as commander sometimes; having to tend to what the big man usually called “administrative details” surely took a lot of the enjoyment out of their work as Hands.

  Through the breach he flew and soon had caught up with his troops as they advanced slowly against the fortress. Red and green energy blasts—not to mention old-fashioned metal slugs and artillery shells—filled the air, making navigation dangerous, so he dropped down a bit.

  “Over here,” Falcon called a few seconds later, indicating a location along the base of the outer walls where the firefight looked to be particularly intense. “We’re in.”

  Hawk and the troops at his command quickly redeployed in support of Falcon’s attack. They approached the smoking, jagged hole the demolitions expert had blasted in the sheer rock face of the wall. Falcon waved Hawk down.

  “What’ve you got?” Hawk asked, peering into the smoke and not able to make out a great deal. “Who’s in there?” None of the Hands had been happy with the extreme lack of intelligence provided by the locals. The message they had managed to send during the initial invasion had been truncated; either it had been cut off in mid-transmission or disrupted en route. Even now, they didn’t know exactly which alien foe they were facing. “The Rao again, right?”

  Falcon gave him a funny look.

  “We have seen the Rao,” the big man agreed, “and that’s who’s shooting at us now, yeah—but I don’t think they’re not alone in there.”

  Hawk frowned at this.

  “The Dyonari are with them again? Like on Rheinstadt?”

  Instead of replying at first, Falcon brought the ’scope up to his eyes and tried to see through the hole and the smoke.

  “Yeah, I think so,” he muttered noncommittally.

  Hawk turned to face him full-on, now. He could tell something was disturbing the man—and anything that disturbed Falcon was probably going to disturb him, as well.

  “What? Somebody else is in there, too?”

  Falcon snorted, shaking his bald head.

  “I think so, yeah.”

  “Who?”

  “Not sure,” Falcon said. “Just…a funny feeling.”

  Hawk’s frown deepened. This was not like Falcon at all.

  “Then what do you—”

  “Alright, gentlemen,” came a booming voice from behind them. “That’s more than enough speculating.”

  “There he is,” Falcon grunted, turning and offering his commander a jaunty salute. “At last.”

  “Glad you could join us, Agrippa,” Hawk added with a smile.

  “Administrative,” came the quick, unhappy reply. “You know how it is.”

  The big blond man in dark blue strode rapidly across the churned soil, soldiers scrambling to get out of his way as he came. The big quad-blaster was still strapped to his left arm, and he looked anxious to employ it.

  “Not sure who we’re up against, eh?” he asked as he reached them.

  Falcon shrugged.

  “Some Rao, maybe a few Dyonari—maybe in their ‘advisory’ role again, like we’ve seen recently in other spots.”

  “But that may not be all,” Hawk pointed out. “Right?”

  Falcon gave his friend a quick and ugly look, as if silently upbraiding him for raising that point in front of their boss. Then he turned back to Eagle.

  “Not really sure,” he said with a quick shrug. “Just…a sort of strange feeling, is all.”

  Eagle regarded his old friend with surprise.

  “Feelings?” he asked, almost laughing. “From you?”

  Falcon snorted.

  “That’s why I’d just as soon ignore them and press on,” the bald man replied. “Seeing as how I’m not really good with them to begin with.”

  All three men laughed.

  “Fine, then,” Eagle said after a moment, sobering. “Time to charge on in there and find out who we’re facing the easy way.”

  “Or the hard way,” Falcon muttered. Then, louder, “Right—let’s go. Iron Raptors!” he called to the remaining soldiers in gray waiting behind them. “Advance!”

  The three Hands and their support troops charged headlong into the breach.

  Forty minutes and three levels up into St. Julian later, an out-of-breath Hawk had managed to fight his way back over to an equally exhausted Falcon. They held one end of a broad, open courtyard tiled with orange cobblestones. The orange stones were nearly invisible, however; a seeming ocean of dead Rao soldiers in matte green body armor littered the floor all around.

  “Seven of the Firewings are down,” Hawk informed his comrade, “but they say they’ve secured the next section ahead. If we can eliminate the rest of the resistance here—”

  “I’m working on it,” Falcon replied, almost angrily. “I’d like to get to the top before Eagle catches up with us again.” He motioned at the nearest Iron Raptor to his left. “Get them moving, Sergeant,” he barked. “The Rao are tough, but nowhere near tough enough to stop one of our advances.”

  The sergeant nodded and saluted, but then hesitated.

  “What is it?” Falcon growled.

  “I—I don’t think it’s the Rao up there, sir,” he reported nervously. “At least, they’re not fighting like Rao.”

  “Who are they fighting like, Sergeant?” Hawk asked, before Falcon could.

  The man never got to answer.

  From just ahead and to the left, a section of wall along the courtyard’s edge exploded outward, sending shards of rock and concrete flying. Immediately through the resulting hole charged a veritable army.

  And it wasn’t the Rao.

  “Are you kidding?” Falcon shouted. “What are they doing here?”

  A wave of black surged across the open courtyard.

  “Skrazzi!” Hawk shouted. “Fall back! Get into cover!”

  The Iron Raptors who had advanced into the courtyard were caught flat-footed by the attack. Those near the rear did manage to turn and effect what might charitably be called a strategic realignment into cover. Those at the front had no choice but to face the nightmare horde of alien attackers and fight for their lives.

  The Skrazzi, eight feet of insectoid death incarnate with their scythe-blade left arms and organic disintegrator cannon right arms, slashed their way through the Iron Raptor division with hardly a pause.

  Hawk opened fire with his pistol, scarcely a pause between shots as he instinctively aimed for the most vulnerable points in the big bugs’ chitinous armor covering. Beside him, Falcon too laid into the black creatures, mowing down the front of the advancing wave.

  As the last of the Iron Raptors leapt over the barricades and into cover, another big shape bounded out, moving in the opposite direction—headed directly into the tide of alien warriors.

  “ATTACK!”

  It was Eagle, of course. His eyes were fiery; the quad-blaster on his left arm blazed away while his massive golden sword sang a song of death as it sliced into the enemy’s ranks.

  The Skrazzi, shocked at this unexpected turn of events, faltered in their charge.

  Seeing this, the Iron Raptors rallied and surged forward, opening fire with everything they had.

  Hawk and Falcon leapt from cover and attacked as well, meanwhile calling up the reserve forces from behind them. It seemed that the Battle of St. Julian was fully joined now, and might well be decided in this single engagement.

  An hour later, the Iron Raptors had reached the summit of the fortress and the last of the alien defenders had been rooted out of cover.

  Hawk had halted about fifty meters up the final, curving, cobblestoned pathway that led to a sort of stee
pled temple at the apex of the complex. He was hunched over, breathing heavily, his pistol nearly depleted. Falcon stood nearby, directing his men to check the last few possible hiding places in the ancient brown stonework around them. Eagle had continued onward and upward, to the top, driving the last of the resistance forces before him.

  Then the call they had always dreaded came to them.

  “Eagle is down,” one of the Raptors called over the Aether connection. “Repeat—Eagle is down!”

  Hawk and Falcon instantly forgot everything else and charged up the narrow street toward the temple.

  When they reached the summit, they found several Raptors, their helmets removed, standing over the fallen commander. A medic knelt beside him, administering something with an injector.

  “What happened to him?” Hawk demanded, shoving through the ring of Raptors.

  Falcon moved in quickly beside him and knelt, relieved at once to see the blond man was alive and awake.

  “Ran into someone—something—unexpected, boys,” Eagle managed to say.

  They looked down from his face to his muscled torso and saw the wound then, to his lower chest. It wasn’t pretty.

  “I’ll be alright,” the blond man added weakly. “You should see the other guys.”

  “What did this?” Hawk asked, astonished that anything could ever harm their seemingly invincible commander.

  A Raptor trooper caught Hawk’s attention and motioned to the side. Two alien creatures lay there. Hawk and Falcon both stood and frowned at what they saw.

  One was a Dyonari, resplendent in blue glass-like armor but also apparently dead. A long, golden spear that still shimmered with unearthly energies lay just beyond the strange being’s fingertips.

  “I knew it,” Falcon breathed. “The Dyonari again.” He cursed.

  To the Dyonari’s right, in a black heap, was a second alien—one that both Hawk and Falcon had first taken to be a Skrazzi. But, as they moved closer and inspected more carefully, they realized it was nothing like a Skrazzi. This other creature was swathed in black robes of some strange, roughly textured material—but, beneath the cloth, the creature was a strange and eerie conglomeration of pale organic and silvery-gray mechanical parts. In place of its head, a distorted metal skull-face leered at them.

  “What is that thing, sir?” the nearest Iron Raptor asked Hawk.

  “By the great Machine,” Hawk could only gasp.

  “You have to be kidding,” Falcon added.

  Hawk realized with a start that the ground all around them was covered in a thin and melting layer of ice.

  “It’s the stinking Phaedrons,” Falcon was saying, practically spitting the word. “What’s one of them doing here?”

  “They’re psychics,” Hawk added, his mouth twisting in distaste. He gazed over at Falcon. “There’s the source of your ‘bad feelings,’ I think. Psychic residue from this guy.”

  Falcon nodded slowly.

  “I’ll bet you’re right. He was probably blanketing the whole fortress with a wave of fear, to cause us to hesitate—to fight scared.”

  They both moved back over to Eagle, who was being moved onto a floating stretcher unit.

  “I’ll be back in form in no time, gentlemen,” the commander told them with as much of a smile as he could generate. “In the meantime, you need to wrap things up here and get our forces back up into orbit, quickly.”

  “What’s happening?” Hawk asked. “Where do we have to be?”

  “That’s what all the chatter was, at the start of the battle. I received a message from the Machine. We’re ordered to the planet Scandana at once.” He grunted as the stretcher unit lifted him up into the air and hovered there while the medic adjusted various controls on a side panel. “It seems that Lord Merlion may be a traitor—a serious traitor. We’ve been ordered to capture him—or eliminate him altogether. And anyone else there who gets in our way.”

  Hawk’s eyes widened. That wasn’t the typical order the Machine sent them. Far from it.

  “Whatever the guy’s doing must be pretty serious,” Falcon said then, obviously thinking thoughts similar to Hawk’s.

  Eagle shrugged—an action that caused him to wince in pain.

  “Not sure,” he said. “We’ll discuss it further back aboard the Talon.”

  Hawk and Falcon nodded and the medic led the floating stretcher bearing Eagle away down the winding roadway. A shuttle was already swooping down to pick them up.

  “I’ll tidy up here,” Falcon told Hawk as they watched Eagle’s stretcher disappear around the curve. “You get the pick-up site organized.”

  “Will do,” Hawk said. Then, as Falcon strode purposefully away and began to bark new orders to the men, Hawk paused. He thought he’d heard a sound from behind him. He turned and saw to some surprise that the Dyonari warrior was not entirely dead—it was raising its long, narrow head and looking at him.

  “Human,” came a croaking sound that was all that remained of its voice.

  Hawk approached carefully. He knelt down beside the alien.

  “What?”

  “Your time…is nearly done,” it breathed.

  “Yeah, yeah—I’ve heard that from every other alien in the galaxy. Don’t really need to hear it from you.”

  “Not an opinion,” the creature stated firmly in its weak voice. “A fact. A new power has come to this galaxy. Its victory is at hand.”

  “A new power,” Hawk repeated. “Right. And who might that be?”

  The Dyonari inhaled and exhaled slowly; its breathing was extremely ragged and blue-green fluid ran from the corners of its mouth.

  “One… who can unify… unify all of us,” it said. “Unify…all life…in this galaxy.”

  “And who might that be?” Hawk asked, finding none of this remotely believable.

  “One…who is…from… outside.”

  “Outside?” Hawk frowned down at the dying alien. “Outside of what? The galaxy?”

  “The universe,” the Dyonari replied.

  Hawk could only frown at that.

  “The walls…of this reality… have grown thin in places,” the Dyonari continued, its voice very faint now. “He has come through… from beyond.”

  “And just who is ‘he?’”

  “He is the master,” the Dyonari said, its voice almost inaudible now. “And he will be your adversary. He brings a new order to this galaxy. An order that is beautiful…” The voice faded out there at the end. Then it surged back, stronger, as much a coughing fit as a set of words—though Hawk could make out what it was saying clearly enough.

  “…and terrible.”

  The alien’s head slumped to the side.

  Hawk stood. He had no idea what to make of this.

  He looked around and saw Falcon gazing back at him, puzzled.

  “Was that guy still alive?” the bald man called to him.

  “For a few seconds, yeah,” Hawk answered.

  “What did he say? Anything interesting?”

  Hawk hesitated.

  “Maybe. We can talk about it later.”

  Falcon looked at him strangely.

  “Okay, then,” he said. “That’s fine.”

  Falcon turned back to the men.

  “Hey,” Hawk called back to him.

  “Yeah?” Falcon answered, looking back again. “What?”

  Hawk frowned. He looked around at the dead enemy bodies all around—at Skrazzi and Rao and even a Dyonari and a Phaedron. All here together.

  He thought about the word the dying Dyonari had used. He whispered it.

  “Unified.”

  “What?” Falcon repeated.

  “Nothing,” Hawk called back, waving him off. “Later.”

  Falcon snorted and went back to work.

  Deeply troubled now, Hawk slowly made his way back down the slope. As he went, he saw the shuttles from the Talon swooping down to pick them up. He increased his pace.

  No time to worry about aliens and their strange and inexpli
cable activities now, he told himself. There’s too much to be done.

  Even so, a very disturbing series of thoughts now wormed their way through his mind, and he wouldn’t sleep well again from that moment until their arrival in orbit around Scandana.

  Awake.

  Hawk sat up in the uncomfortable bed that had been prepared for him by Condor’s troops and looked around, remembering where he was. And who he was.

  Not the man whose memories I just recalled, he told himself. That was a different person. A different Hawk. Not me.

  The door chimed again, and he realized that was what had woken him up.

  “Sir?” came a voice over a hidden speaker. “Your presence is requested for dinner.”

  Hawk climbed out of bed and rubbed at his eyes, then crossed the room and signaled for the door to open. The gray panel slid aside to reveal half a dozen soldiers in uniforms the same shade of brown as Condor’s uniform.

  Hawk took in the sight of the armed men and frowned.

  “I don’t suppose,” he asked them, “I have time for a quick shower, maybe?”

  PART SEVEN

  After the Shattering:

  The Nineteenth Millennium

  1: FALCON

  The buzzing sound wormed its way into Falcon’s head and pulled him out of a most enjoyable dream. He had driven the bad guys out of the village and saved the people from a hideous alien invasion force, and the maidens of the town were about to reward him with their ample—

  Oh, come on!

  He sat up, eyes open, the buzzing sound echoing within his little room.

  “Alright, alright—I’m awake,” he shouted, and the buzzing ceased.

  Climbing to his feet, he shuffled into the washroom and remained there an inordinately long time, enjoying the shower and other amenities he’d had to do without for some time now.

  At last a knocking at the outer door reached him and he switched off the water. Stepping out into the room, he pulled his red and blue uniform on—it instantly sloughed the water away from his skin, filtered it, and absorbed it into hidden reservoirs for possible later use. Then he motioned and the door slid open.