Steinbach uttered a sound of terror and threw himself at Rem-9. He wrapped himself around the giant’s right arm. Rem-9 flicked his gripper in annoyance. Steinbach was sent staggering.

  He closed the contacts, releasing the radiation. Alarms sounded, the control board lit up with lurid red and orange warning lights.

  “You’ve killed us,” croaked Steinbach in dismay. On unsteady feet, he headed for the open corridor. the mech followed.

  After a moment’s thought, he handed the General his pistol back. The man no longer had any call to use it on him.

  For an instant, Steinbach eyed the sleek black barrel of the pistol with murderous intent.

  “Fear has stolen your reasoning. You need me to survive, however slim that hope may now be,” the mech told him gently.

  Taking a deep breath, Steinbach ran after him down the corridor, seemingly resigned to his fate. Rem-9 was vaguely glad that he didn’t have to kill the man. Enough humans had died, lately.

  They rejoined with the governor in the corridors. Many of the remaining men were wounded, all of them were breathing hard. The aliens had not let them rest.

  “So, we meet again, General,” said Droad. “For once, we are all on the same side.”

  Steinbach said nothing. He gripped his pistol with both hands and watched the corridor intersections intently.

  As they approached the laser turret, they were ambushed by a force of killbeasts with hand-cannons. The first rank of militiamen went down in a storm of gunfire. Rem-9 got in close with the killbeasts, smashing them down with his grippers. The things sprang back up, bouncing like rubber from the steel deck. Though the aliens’ limbs were broken they fought on savagely. The mech finally snapped the last killbeast’s carapace open across his knee. A sickening crunch sounded and the thing finally sagged down. The ambush had been repelled.

  When they reached the correct side passage, Droad sent the mech Lieutenant into the contaminated regions to get the flitter and bring it back up to the external ports around the laser turret. It was time to abandon the ship after making sure the laser couldn’t be used against the human forces on Garm. There was no more point to staying with the Gladius. She had become a deathtrap, a tomb for men and aliens alike.

  To reach the turret control room they had to cross a maze of catwalks that encircled the huge laser apparatus itself. A flock of culus squadrons attacked them when they were most vulnerable. Two men were knocked from the catwalks and fell screaming to their deaths. The skald fell too, but managed to latch onto the safety webbing. Sarah and Bili pulled him back up.

  Above their heads the coils crackled with vast energy stores. Static lifted their hair and their clothing. Hot breaths of air struck them from the cooling vents.

  “They’re readying the laser to fire,” said Droad in a dead voice.

  No one replied.

  When they reached the control center, they leapt through the smoking hole Jarmo produced with his plasma cannon. There was no hesitation anymore, little caution. Most of them figured themselves as dead, they took what little joy there was left in life from hitting back at the enemy.

  Inside the control center was a Parent, a team of arls working with the controls and two juggers. The three large aliens were crammed into the limited space. Despite their situation, the humans gasped at the ghastly sight of the Parent. Quivering polyps raised sensory organs in alarm at their approach. The two juggers then rushed them, roaring their battle cries. They fought with great physical power and skill, but couldn’t face the combined firepower of the humans. Only Gunther was brought down, killed by a jugger’s teeth that mauled his head.

  It was Sarah who sidestepped the fighting juggers and raced to the Parent. She emptied her pistol and reloaded five times before the monster finally sagged down in death. The arls were coldly blown to fragments by the victorious humans.

  All of them took a moment to catch their breaths and marvel at the grotesque Parent except for the skald. Coming from his habitual spot at the rear of the company, he sprang forward, pushing his way to the laser controls. His pallid limbs swung in great strides, his peculiar, rolling gait more pronounced than ever.

  He attacked the control boards in wild abandon, working levers and clittering at keys feverishly. He hummed an odd tune as he worked, shuffling his feet from side to side. Flecks of saliva formed white dots on his face, sprayed the controls. Warning lights flared into life, a deep rumbling sounded in the equipment, signifying that the laser was refocusing.

  “Hey, stop that lunatic!” ordered Droad in alarm. He rushed to the control boards.

  Jarmo and Sarah beat him to it, however. Jarmo grappled with the man, and was immediately surprised with the supple, wiry strength in his skinny limbs. He tried to contain the thrashing, moaning skald. He became concerned that the man would break his bones in his struggles.

  “He’s trying to aim it,” said Sarah, frowning at the controls. “How would he know how to aim a weapon like this?”

  “I don’t know,” grunted Jarmo. He felt more than heard a snapping sound. The skald’s arm had broken, but his struggles to get to the controls didn’t slacken.

  Sarah moved to face him. “What are you trying to do?”

  The skald locked his eyes with hers. She saw a desperate need to communicate there. His lips quivered and worked, his tongue rolled about slackly within his mouth. “Feasting.” he whispered. “The lines of the Feasting.”

  “That’s what he’s been saying all along,” remarked Droad, joining them. “The mech Lieutenant has reached the flitter. He should be here in ten minutes or so. Any idea what he’s going on about?”

  “He was with me in the nest. The Feasting was what the aliens did with us. The Parent and her commanders ate humans and other types of meat. The Feasting appeared to be some kind of ceremonial meal. They did a lot of it.”

  “So what does ‘the lines of the Feasting’ mean?” asked Droad.

  The skald’s struggles had subsided; he stood in Jarmo’s implacable grip, eyes flicking from one of them to another.

  “Perhaps he means the queens,” suggested Jarmo. He loosened his grip a fraction, pitying the man. “Maybe he knows where the Parents are in their nests, and is trying to aim the laser at them.”

  Droad frowned. “But how could he know? They’re all underground.”

  Sarah had been examining the skald’s attempts at focusing the laser. She looked up at the others suddenly. “He’s linked the guidance computer to track radio frequencies. If the Parents utilize a different frequency for command, it would be possible to isolate them and destroy them.”

  The three eyed one another in growing hope. Steinbach had joined them and was now listening intently. “The man’s obviously a lunatic. We should get off the ship while we have the chance,” he told the others. He looked at the skinny skald in contempt. “Nothing should delay our escape. I think we should be heading for the outlying islands in the tropics of Gopus. It will take years for the aliens to reach us there, if they ever do.”

  “We have some time. The radiation is killing the aliens, although they seem to be taking their time in dying, as one might expect,” said Jarmo.

  “Let’s try it,” said Sarah.

  Everyone looked to the Governor. He nodded his head. “Let him go, Jarmo. Just watch that we know what we’re aiming at before we let him pull the trigger.”

  They helped by using Steinbach’s codekeys, much to the General’s disgust. The laser was quickly aligned and focused on an area in the foothills of the polar range.

  “It could be the site of a nest,” Jarmo admitted, reading the scanning reports. “Heavy radio traffic on the alien frequencies.”

  “How many contacts of this special type have the computers isolated?” asked Droad. He had found a source of hot caf somewhere, and looked better than he had in hours.

  “We’ve located twenty, sir.”

  Droad rubbed his chin. “Destroy them all.”

  And so the laser fired. Then they aimed, focused, and fired again.

  #

  “I’ve lost contact with another of my daughters,” said the Parent. She warbled her foodtube in despair. “They must have isolated our voices. They are all going so quickly.”

  “Hush, my love,” comforted the high nife commander at her side. His orbs had sunk deeply within his cusps. It had all been so close. Another week and the world might have been theirs. “You mustn’t speak. They may have yet to detect you.”

  The Parent rattled her tentacles, signifying a negative. She did, however, dampen her transmissions to a bare whisper. “It is too late. If they have any brains at all, and unfortunately it is apparent that they do, they would have discovered us all before beginning to fire.”

  “Then we must flee.”

  Again her tentacles rattled. She caressed his cusps idly, an unheard of familiarity which both exhilarated him sexually and depressed him at the same time. It was clear that she believed the end to be near. “The others have been trying. None have escaped. Their weaponry seems to be effective. Within minutes, all of us will be gone.”

  Even as she spoke these fateful words, the roof of the nest rumbled. Distant explosions rocked the stronghold. The surface was under bombardment of some kind.

  Trees, earth and stones were vaporized by the first pulses of the laser. It continued to fire, blasting an ever widening wound in the earth nearly as big around as the nest itself. A fountain of superheated gas and molten plasma rose up. Gouts of radiation were released, bombarding the Imperial warriors that rushed to defend the nest.

  “The Imperium is defeated.”

  The nife commander knew sadness. He sidled close to the Parent, feeling the thrill of her touch. “We must meld during the last moments.”

  She agreed. As he mounted her throne for a final time, he reflected that this pod had been expunged, but that the Imperium must have had other survivors. The Imperium would go on elsewhere.

  As they reached their moments of ecstasy, the roof of the chamber vanished and their bodies were melted to glowing slag along with the birthing throne they perched upon.

  #

  As the threat of the Imperium diminished, Fryx regained some of his sanity. It became possible again to threaten and coerce him. Garth lunged forward, ravenous for power inside his own body. His ambitions knew no bounds, he wanted nothing less than for Fryx to abandon his skull.

  The battle raged for several minutes after the last Parent had been located and destroyed by the laser.

  #

  “What’s wrong with him, Mom?” asked Bili. A concerned group ringed the skald, who lay on the steel deck of the redundant bridge, writhing and flailing in a pool of his own blood and mucus. An amazing amount of fluid was coming from his nostrils. The others looked on, at a loss as to what to do.

  “He’s having some kind of fit. Maybe we should try to restrain him, to keep him from hurting himself,” said Sarah. She felt a pang of guilt, but couldn’t bring herself to take hold of the skald. He was too alien; his demeanor during their acquaintance had never made him into a comrade.

  The skald went from bad to worse. His nostrils flared grotesquely, and an incredible lump of translucent fleshy material seemed to be squeezing out of the absurdly small orifice.

  “His brains are leaking out!” declared Bili with certainty.

  No one contradicted him. When the spiny mass was half-way out of his body, Steinbach pulled a hand-cannon out and knelt beside the thrashing man. He placed the barrel against the man’s temple. “It’s clearly some kind of alien trick. He’s infested with some kind of parasite. I told you the aliens wouldn’t be so easily bested. We must kill him,” he looked up to Jarmo and Droad for support.

  The Governor appeared indecisive.

  “We can’t take any chances!” shouted Steinbach. “We must stop this new horror.”

  “Wait!” said Sarah, putting a hand on Steinbach’s shoulder. “I know what it is.”

  She proceeded to explain about the jellyfish creature that the aliens had shown them in the nest. “It’s called a Tulk. The aliens feared it.”

  Against Steinbach’s loud protests, they decided to spare the skald. The Tulk was captured and placed in a plastic bag for safekeeping. Bili poked and prodded at the quivering form with a pencil until his mother shooed him away.

  They did what they could for the skald, who seemed to be in a state of shock. Carrying the man and the Tulk who had ridden inside of him, they boarded the flitter and left the Gladius.

  Epilogue

  Droad sat on the verandah of Fort Zimmerman. His fist was placed against his chin, supporting it. His face was loose, his eyes distant. The final weeks of the alien invasion had gone well. Robbed of reinforcements and command control, the aliens had lost much of their effectiveness. As well, they had learned that the fighting varieties of aliens had exceedingly short life spans, often times they showed signs of old age in the first month of life. Without the constant supply of new offspring, the Imperium had been doomed.

  He watched as fireworks went off in the central compound. Already repairs to the fort had begun. There were no longer any contenders for his rule, at least not for now. The people of Garm seemed sick of anarchy, and showed an uncharacteristic zeal for work on defense projects.

  “What are you moping about?” Sarah asked him, coming up and putting a soft hand on his shoulder. “We’ve saved the world, let’s celebrate!”

  “I’ve nothing to be pleased about.”

  “Well, I certainly do. My son and I are alive and well. Bili’s new regrown arm is looking very good indeed. You’ve even given me a commission in the Militia. Why not look at the bright side of things?”

  “I’ve managed to lose nearly half the civilian population of Garm in the first two weeks of my rule. What kind of accomplishment is that?”

  “Ah, but you’ve saved the other half. That’s what you’ve got to be happy about. Better yet, you’ve halted an alien assault that could have carried on into the Nexus itself. You’ve held back perhaps the greatest threat humans have ever faced since we left Earth.”

  “But have we won the war, or just a battle?” asked Droad. “There’s so much we don’t yet know about the universe.”

  Sarah frowned, having no answer for that. Both of them gazed up at the stars with disquiet.

  End of MECH 1: The Parent

  BONUS EXCERPT:

  MECH 2: The Savant

  (Imperium Series)

  “Anyone who has declared someone else to be an idiot, a bad apple, is annoyed when it turns out in the end that he isn't.” - Friedrich Nietzsche

  One

  Soon after the defeat of the alien invasion of Garm, Planetary Governor Lucas Droad resigned his post. He left the shaken people of Garm, with fully half their population lost in the struggle, to fend for themselves. Or at least, those were the terms his political rivals used to describe his retreat.

  One brooding night in his apartment soon after his farewell holo-vid speech, a sensor began musically warbling, indicating there was someone waiting at his door.

  “Open,” he said, and the door obeyed.

  Sarah Engstrom stood there, looking concerned and angry at the same time.

  “Come in and have a drink with me,” said Droad, indicating a chair. He smiled easily, his glass of crimson hork-leave wine having already been drained and refilled twice.

  She stood in the doorway. He thought at any moment she might put her hands on her hips and scold him. Instead, she took his invitation and sat in the offered chair. He filled a glass for her and she stared at him.

  “Well?” she demanded.

  “Well what?”

  “Why are you abandoning Garm?”

  He laughed bitterly. “Most seem to think I’m doing the planet a favor.”

  She waved away his words and political opponents with a fluttering of fingers. “We need you. We need to rebuild.”

  He nodded and sighed. “I can see how it might look from your point of view. But I’m not leaving in shame. I simply think I can do more good elsewhere.”

  She shot down her drink, which made him smile with half his mouth. Whatever else she was—beautiful, capable and good in bed—she was able to put down a drink the way only a true spacer could.

  She crossed her arms and leaned back, frowning at him. “This hasn’t got anything do to with me, does it? With us?”

  He looked startled. “Why, no.... Ah, I see—”

  “You see what?” she interrupted.

  “Well, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to lead you on—about us. I hadn’t meant to initiate anything permanent.”

  She looked, if anything, more angry than before. She stared at him with eyes half-closed in annoyance.

  He sighed and spread out his hands. He had never been good with women. Giving orders, getting laid, political maneuvering, these were all natural for him. But any kind of relationship with serious feeling involved had always fallen on its face. It was one of the reasons he had taken this undesirable post and shipped out to Garm in the first place.

  “Look, I—” he began, but she cut him off again.

  “Just shut up. You pulled us all together. You saved my life and the lives of a million others. Don’t you see you are a hero here? These people need you to help them through the recovery. They need you to rebuild this colony into what it could be, not the corrupt mess that it once was. Without a strong hand, they will all slide back into their natural paths.”

  Droad heaved a sigh. “You’ve found a sore point for me. An appeal I can’t ignore. If it is any consolation, I think you are right. I could do a lot of good here on Garm.”

  It was her turn to look baffled. “Then why? Why leave us?”

  Droad stood up and walked over to a cabinet. It was locked and made of brushed stainless steel. She watched as he worked on a lockpad. He typed in a large number of characters.

  “I’ll show you something. I shouldn’t, but maybe I owe you this much. Don’t spread it around, however.”