Hawk_Hand of the Machine Read online

  It has been a very long time, Raven.

  She was frowning now. Why is that?

  A pause, then, Your line was ended and the records were sealed. There has been no new Raven since the days of the Shattering.

  The Shattering. Instantly she knew what it was, understood its significance. Her implanted memories reached far enough toward the present for that much, at least, to be included.

  She felt no great emotion when thinking of the Shattering. Her predecessor had witnessed it—or the beginnings of it, anyway—and had grieved over the fate of the untold trillions and trillions of victims, all dead at the hands of the Adversary. That, she understood, was over and done—and had been done for a very long time, to use the words the voice had used. The Shattering was ancient history.

  No, the emotion that welled up within her now was of a much more personal nature. She felt her heart pounding within her chest as she asked, My line was ended? For what reason? On whose authority?

  I have given you all the information I possess, it replied. Do your own implanted memories tell you nothing?

  Raven bit back an angry retort, closed her eyes, and attempted to calm herself. She thought back—back into the depths of memories that had been downloaded into her; downloaded from the computers in which they had been stored after being extracted from her predecessor.

  I—I cannot make sense of my old memories, she said after several seconds of effort. They are jumbled. And they end very suddenly—as if my predecessor suffered some sort of unexpected and traumatic event.

  The voice said nothing in response.

  Raven considered what she had just learned for a few more seconds. The implanted consciousness obviously could not or would not tell her anything more. The downloaded memories from her predecessor were all but useless, at least so far—though she hoped that meditation and extreme concentration might eventually restore some of them. If she wished to discover what had happened to cause no Ravens to be awakened for centuries, she would have to investigate that for herself.

  Her mind came back to the present. Why was I awakened, then? she asked the inner voice.

  You are needed.

  Why me? Why after so long?

  A pause, then, The situation is dire. Very few Hands still exist. Many of the old bases and installations have been destroyed. Hands that have not been awakened for many years are now being brought to life.

  I see.

  Raven slid her sword back into its scabbard and then looked around, now even more wary of additional enemies.

  What do you want of me?

  Many things, the voice said. False Hands roam this galaxy, pretending to act in the Machine’s name when in fact they merely serve themselves. They must be dealt with. Harshly.

  Raven nodded. Of course. Dealing with genuine Hands that had turned renegade was always one of my prime functions. False Hands should prove a far lesser challenge.

  Additionally, the voice went on, entire armies of humans and aliens have recently begun to cooperate with one another, attacking whole worlds in synchronized actions, and even eliminating a number of Hand creation and storage installations and destroying the ancient genetic matrices. You have just encountered part of one such group.

  This was quite disturbing to her. Entire varieties of Hands—eliminated forever? Their genetic lines destroyed? She shivered at the thought. How many remained? Were there any Falcons out there anymore? Condors? Shrikes? She started to add “Hawks” but then thought better of that particular one.

  And what of Eagle himself?

  Who are these enemies? she asked. What do they want?

  Unknown. The pattern, however, is disturbingly familiar.

  Raven accessed what she could of her stored memories. Fragments of images and sounds flashed through her thoughts, never quite enough to latch onto and fully understand. It all made her head throb painfully.

  Not the Adversary, she thought back at the voice in her mind when she had recovered somewhat. Surely that’s impossible. My implanted memories tell me the ancient enemy was defeated—destroyed—though at catastrophic cost to the entire galaxy.

  Unknown, the voice repeated. But these new events do perfectly match his and his forces’ past behavior, and that fact alone is sufficient to take the greatest precautions. Discovering answers to those questions would also constitute a portion of your duties.

  Very well.

  Beyond all of that, however, your primary duty is to discover why the Machine no longer speaks. Has it been damaged? Has its body been compromised by some enemy force? Has it merely forsaken us all?

  Raven nodded to herself. This was something she very much wondered as well. And, she told herself, if she could get the Machine talking again, she would present it with a very pointed series of questions.

  She wiped her hands together.

  “Alright. Where do you need me to go?” she asked out loud.

  To your ship, to begin with, the voice boomed back. To me.

  “Where are you?”

  The image of a map appeared before her, projected into her mind. The path she should take flashed in red.

  Nodding, she moved into action. Her long legs carried her swiftly along the metal decks and catwalks and up four ladders and two flights of stairs. During the entire time, her breathing scarcely altered its pattern.

  Reaching the top of the chamber, she glanced around and spotted a metal door with a wheel at its center. She approached it carefully, her gloved fingers moving out to touch it.

  “What’s on the other side?” she asked, automatically looking up as if she were addressing some deity.

  Only this ship. I detect no danger.

  She started to turn the wheel.

  The voice cried out in her head then, almost enough to shatter her brain.

  No! No! Danger! They were hidden—cloaked—but now—

  Too late. The heavy door was swinging open.

  Raven instinctively drew her blade as she gazed out at the sight that greeted her.

  Ahead of her stood a veritable army of faceless armored warriors, all clad in black and silver.

  They rushed towards her.

  7: HAWK

  Hawk’s ship streaked through the hyperspace realm of the Above even as he himself dropped into the comfortable pilot’s seat. A holographic image formed in front of the forward window, displaying what the ship had explained to be a tactical overview of the general sector of the galaxy they were very rapidly passing through—or over, or around. The physics of it all didn’t quite make sense to Hawk, but he had other things of greater concern to him at the moment.

  Hawk studied the three-dimensional display intently. He found that while some of the higher scientific concepts yet eluded him, he was beginning to gain a greater sense of his own role, his own place in this galaxy, after long conversations with the ship and his own deep introspection. He found he wasn’t entirely uncomfortable with it.

  Learning came quickly to Hawk. The ship only had to show or tell him something once for him to grasp it in its entirety. Occasionally, the merest mention of a subject had caused Hawk to make an intuitive leap and grasp the full concept. The ship hypothesized that this was because some of the information had managed to be downloaded into his brain, even if it was not immediately available for retrieval. Discussing it with the ship seemed to bring it back to his consciousness with increasing clarity.

  “No enemies in the area?” he asked the ship, though he was fairly confident he was interpreting the display correctly.

  “That is correct.”

  “Then,” Hawk said, “this would appear to be a good opportunity for you to fill me in on more of my history.”

  Silence for several seconds.

  “Ship? Have you no reply?”

  “I am not at all certain that would be the best course for you to take,” the mechanical voice stated.

  “Why not?”

  Nothing.

  “I’d like to know something of the other Hands,” H
awk pressed. “Did we never cooperate with one another?”

  “Certainly there was a time when all the Hands—or most of them, at least—worked together to great effectiveness,” the ship allowed.

  “Do you have records of this? Can you show me?”

  Silence.

  “I order you to show me!”

  “…Very well. I will transmit this memory record to your mind. Stand by.”

  Hawk sat back and closed his eyes. And here is what he saw…

  PART TWO

  Before the Shattering:

  The Seventeenth Millennium

  —

  Rheinstadt

  1: EAGLE

  The gargantuan flagship Talon ripped a hole in the fabric of space-time and deposited itself instantaneously into orbit above the planet Rheinstadt. The warships into whose midst it appeared, their proximity alarms suddenly blaring, scrambled to clear out of the way and allow it a wide berth.

  On the command bridge, like some misplaced god, stood the massive, muscular form of Eagle, supreme commander of the Machine’s Hands. His arms were crossed against his chest and his piercing blue eyes gazed out from beneath a close-cropped covering of pale-blond hair. He wore a skin-tight uniform of metallic blue so dark it was nearly black, with fine red and gold trim along the sleeves and legs. A pair of matching gloves hung from his belt, along with a massive golden sword.

  From the tactical display filling one end of the bridge, Eagle’s eyes flicked over to the man standing to his right. Almost as tall, not quite as muscular but heavier and somehow seemingly even more imposing, this Hand wore red as his predominant color. His nose was blunt and his head was shaved clean.

  “Smooth transition, perfect locationing,” Falcon noted with a slight smile. “The Captain hasn’t lost his touch.”

  Eagle ignored the remark. He had no time for compliments for the ship’s personnel. He expected perfection from each of them, usually got it, and accepted it as the norm. Instead he moved to stand behind the main tactical officer and leaned forward, looming over him, studying the holo displays. “Report,” he barked.

  The tactical officer had been bombarded with data over his Aether connection from the moment the Talon had emerged from the Above and into normal space. He sorted through it rapidly, seeking the pertinent information. “Seventeen ships in orbit,” he reported, not daring to so much as glance back at his commander. “All of military configuration.”

  Eagle nodded. He turned his attention briefly to the array of starships now filling both the tactical display and the sweeping, transparent wall that constituted the forward portion of the bridge. The great blue-white orb of the upper half of a planet occupied the lower half of the view. “And all of them Indonian, yes?”

  The officer accessed the Aether again, just to be certain, even though the tactical readouts that floated above their heads had circled each of the ships in green with identification codes listed alongside.

  “Indonian Empire,” he confirmed. “Every one of them.”

  “I could’ve told you that,” Falcon commented wryly, “since nobody’s shooting at us.”

  “Most of their landers are already down,” the officer continued. “Drop-ships and shuttles. I’m reading their transponder codes on the ground near the center of the major continent.” He paused, parsing through more data as quickly as it came to him. “There’s at least one major action underway on the surface,” he added then, “in the area surrounding the capital city.” He frowned at one particular data string, then nodded in understanding. “Someone has a force field up,” he explained. “Very powerful. Covering the entire city.”

  “Very well.” Eagle stood back, taking in the entirety of the veritable sea of information that currently filled the forward section of the bridge, from holographic visuals to 2-D displays to lines of text and numbers that flowed, snakelike, through the air between the various sections and stations. “And what of the enemy?” the big man demanded at last. “What do we know?”

  “What do we need to know?” Falcon asked, before the officer could respond. “It’s the Rao. Again.” He snorted. “We know how to deal with them.”

  Eagle shot him a look of barely-contained patience.

  “We take nothing for granted, as you well know,” he stated firmly. Turning back to the tactical officer, he asked, “Who erected the force field over the city? Is it Indonian or Rao?”

  The officer manipulated controls and images flowed across the holographic display, pulled in from various transmission sources in low orbit and on the ground. Everyone on the bridge paused to stare at them and study them.

  “It would appear,” came a new voice from off to one side, “that the Rao have already captured the city and set the field up themselves, to hold what they gained.”

  Hawk stepped through the double sliding doors and onto the main deck of the bridge. His vivid blue and red uniform flashed as he moved into the bright lighting of the rear section. Falcon glanced back at him with a slight frown while Eagle ignored him entirely.

  As the display images zoomed in, Hawk’s impressions were confirmed. The alien Rao in their modular metallic armor had overrun the capital city and activated a gigantic force field over the entirety of it. Sometime afterward, military forces of the Indonian Empire—the human government to whom this planet at least nominally belonged—had arrived from space and laid siege to it. Thus far, they had been unable to pierce the bubble. Meanwhile, from the look of it, Rao forces outside the field were engaged in extremely violent and bloody actions against the Indonians.

  Eagle took it all in very quickly, his finely-tuned tactical mind working through possibilities. Then he nodded once. “Very well. Signal the drop-ships. Firewing and Iron Raptor units first.”

  The tactical officer acknowledged the order and touched a series of lighted squares on the panel before him, even as he transmitted a series of codes via the Aether connection. In response, all along the exterior of the vast, cylindrical Talon, assault pods began disengaging and rocketing away, quickly forming up into a mass wave as they cleared the immediate vicinity of the big ship. Moments later, their small rear engines firing, they tumbled down toward the surface of Rheinstadt.

  “First two units are away,” the tactical officer announced, turning to regard his commander.

  “So what are we waiting for?” asked Hawk, starting toward the doorway.

  Falcon laughed, shaking his head at the younger Hand.

  Eagle turned to face him now, finally. He regarded the younger Hand circumspectly. “You seriously wish to go down with the assault teams?” he asked.

  “You don’t?” Hawk shot back. He frowned at his commander. “Have we grown that lazy?”

  “He makes a good point,” Falcon stated. “I think I’ll join him.”

  Falcon started forward. Hawk turned toward the door. Eagle raised a hand.

  “Wait.”

  Both men halted instantly. They knew Eagle afforded them a remarkable degree of familiarity with him, but his authority remained absolute, within the bounds of the Machine’s orders that ran before all their business.

  “I haven’t given either of you permission to go anywhere,” the big commander noted, his voice very low but filled with power.

  His expression now dour, Falcon stood with his hands clasped behind his back, waiting. He’d known his commander just long enough to be completely uncertain as to how the big man might react.

  Hawk merely grinned back at the blond giant. “You don’t want us getting soft, do you?” he asked, a twinkle in his eye.

  Eagle glared at the smaller man for a long moment, then inhaled deeply and exhaled slowly. “No,” he said. “No, I do not.” He moved forward himself now, striding past the other two Hands and towards the doorway. “Though I’m not entirely certain that killing a few Rao qualifies even as a meaningful training exercise.”

  Hawk and Falcon followed along in their godlike commander’s wake as he exited the bridge. Moments later, the three of them
had boarded a heavily-armored shuttle and were blasting down towards the planet’s surface. Even as they departed the Talon, the first wave of assault pods were impacting the surface of Rheinstadt and the assault troops of the Firewing and Iron Raptor units were emerging, weapons blazing. The startled and surprised Rao defenders who were positioned outside the force field dome, caught utterly flat-footed, struggled to recover and mount a defense.

  By the time the three Hands took the field, scarcely a one of them was left alive.

  2: FALCON

  Falcon, the brutish demolitions expert of the three Hands present, completed his work and signaled to the others. Fifty meters away, standing atop a jagged outcropping of rock, Eagle gave the go-sign. Falcon nodded back and then sent a mental signal via the Aether to activate all the detonators simultaneously.

  The resulting series of explosions shook the very foundations of the planet Rheinstadt.

  Minutes earlier, remote-guided borers digging their way through miles of bedrock had deposited the last of the explosive devices deep under the capital city, locating them in prime positions to knock out the generators powering the Rao force field. It had been a simple enough operation, as Falcon had expected it would be. The Rao could be extremely tough and resourceful when dealing with standard military forces, but they simply couldn’t match the tactical abilities, the technology, or the sheer ruthlessness of the Hands of the Machine and their legions.

  The great, green-glowing Rao force hemisphere, some twenty miles in diameter, that entirely covered the planetary capital shifted abruptly from green to red, then slowly faded to muddy amber, then disappeared entirely. With it gone, the massive fortress complex that dominated the city’s skyline stood revealed for the first time. Members of the Firewings and Iron Raptors gazed up at the dark edifice in wonder.