The Catalyst

-Chapter 12-


I was saved by an elbow in the tube. We hadn’t been able to see it from below, but we did know the tube wasn’t a direct shot to the bottom. Curves appeared everywhere in Centaur architecture. They simply didn’t believe in straight lines.
Slapping at the walls with my gloves, I’d just managed to get myself reoriented so my feet were heading downward instead of my helmet when I hit an elbow-like curve at the bottom. I also landed on something cushy. It was my first Centaur kill in years.
I think I surprised them, jumping into space and free-falling down into their midst. My battle suit helped complete the effect, I think. I’m sure to them I looked like a killer machine in their midst.
They’d been sniping at us, taking turns firing up from this elbow, and then ducking out of sight while we fired back. One of them had popped out for his sniper shot just as I came down on his back with heavy, magnetic boots. I felt the spine snap—I was going pretty fast by the time I reached the bottom. Even with lighter gravity and therefore less acceleration as I fell, I was heavy enough and moving with enough velocity to crush the life out of the alien.
Still standing on the broken centaur’s back, I managed to get my projector around and burned the next shadowy sniper I saw before he figured out what was going on. There were two more, but they fled.
“Look out below!” shouted a voice. I recognized it as Kwon’s and I scrambled out of the way on all fours. Kwon could do to me what I’d done to the first Centaur.
Soon, it was raining marines. Some claimed it to be more fun than the skateboard ride through space, but I knew they were lying. We pressed the surviving Centaurs back, and by the time we’d come out of the tube at the bottom of the elevator shaft, they had run off. I got the feeling they were not regular troops. I figured they were probably militia or local guards of some kind. They didn’t operate as a cohesive unit.
Outside the shaft, we linked up with the rest of my unit as they dropped from above on their flying dishes. I sent out recon units and immediately learned the enemy was gathering in force nearby.
“Why haven’t they hit us, yet?” Kwon asked, coming to stand near.
“I don’t know, really,” I said. “I don’t like it either, but they are aliens. They aren’t responding quite the way humans would, but we can’t expect them to. Maybe we surprised them and they are out of position. Maybe they just don’t have a lot of troops.”
“This looks like a peaceful habitat,” Kwon said. His voice sounded wistful. “Most of it is farmland. There must be thousands of hectares of land here.”
I knew Kwon had been a farmer in his past life, and we’d not seen green, growing things for a long time. I smiled at him faintly. Maybe the big man was homesick.
“Well, whatever the reason, they are giving us a breather,” I said. “Let’s use it.”
I gathered my forces into a line along a ridge that was topped by thick foliage. It didn’t look appetizing, being dark green and leathery with huge leaves that blew about in the breezes. I wondered what the source of the moving air could be, and if the leaves would taste like the giant spinach they resembled.
While my marines organized themselves and took up positions, I climbed into an oversized foxhole my men had dug for me and pulled the communications box into it. Kwon joined me after awhile and watched as I poked at the controls.
“Uh,” Kwon said after a time, “what’s the plan, Colonel?”
“We are appearing to invade this station, just as the Macros expect us to. They are watching, remember. I didn’t like our position on the outer skin. We were too exposed.”
“So, are we going to blow a hole in this balloon and kill it?”
I shook my head. I just couldn’t do it. They weren’t even fighting hard. How could I butcher millions to protect my own? There had to be a better way.
“I want to talk to them,” I said. “I figure they have Nano tech, and that means we should be able to use our own Nano tech to talk to theirs. It shouldn’t even be as hard as talking to the Macros was.”
“Maybe,” Kwon said with a big frown. He was obviously skeptical, but I didn’t take it personally.
I adjusted the communications box to scan for unencrypted transmissions. They were everywhere, showing that the Centaurs were indeed communicating via radio. I wasn’t getting a signal I could focus in on as the right one, however. I didn’t want to interrupt the equivalent of a cell phone call between civilians and try to make a deal with them.
Finally, after about ten minutes of scanning, one firm signal showed itself on the scanner. It sang for less than a minute, blotting out other transmissions.
“That sounds important,” said Lieutenant Marquis. She had edged her way into our position.
I glanced at her, and noted the way she stood quite close to Kwon. I thought Kwon might get lucky after all. She didn’t seem to like being out of his orbit.
“I’m going to try to talk to them on this frequency,” I told them.
When I had it set up, I keyed the microphone in my suit and announced myself. “This is Colonel Kyle Riggs,” I said, as if they should know who I was. “We have invaded your habitat, but we oppose the Macros. Please respond.”
Nothing came back for a while. Kwon waved to me. I could tell just looking at him it wasn’t good news.
“Talk to me,” I said.
“Large numbers of the enemy seem to be approaching,” he said. “Everyone on the ridge is reporting sightings.”
Great, I thought. Had my signal served to trigger their attack? I started scanning again, but then a reply came in.
“Apologies of the Herd,” said the communications box. I had it set for automatic translation into English. I wasn’t overly pleased with the results. “The Herd Honor of our ancestors lies broken.”
“We wish to discuss peace,” I said. “Do not attack.”
“The challenge has been made. It must be answered. Herd Honor must be recaptured.”
That was all they said. I frowned at the communications box and tapped at the control screen.
“That didn’t sound good,” Lieutenant Marquis said.
“Sir,” Kwon said, lowering himself into a crouch. He had been communicating with his recon units. “They’re coming.”
I didn’t have to ask what he meant. I heaved a sigh. I opened a general channel. “Fire at any armed combatant that comes near the line,” I said.
Laser flashes burned the atmosphere almost immediately. I moved to the ridge on my belly and looked downslope. The land was dark with running Centaurs. There were thousands of them, all in a mass. They came on like a wave of furred flesh. Most didn’t even have laser packs, but those that did fired as they came. The rest had their horn-blades. When they got in close, I knew they would fight savagely with them, cutting open my men and their suits.
“Fire at will!” I shouted over the rising roar of their hooves. “Shoot anything that comes at you!”
Every marine on the line opened up. Many of the Centaurs staggered, blinded, burned or both. Smoke rose in a blue plume. We were cooking them as they came.
But thousands more charged behind the first. There was no attempt made to flank us, or to sneak up upon us. They came in a single, charging mass. I looked down at them, and was immediately reminded of a vast herd of animals sweeping over an African plain. They churned up the slope, leaping over the bodies of the fallen. All along the ridge we were taking casualties too as their beams lanced into us. Were they using their own people as a shield for their soldiers?
A moment later they hit our line, and it was chaos. Furred bodies, flashing horns and kicking hooves filled my vision. My men killed with their projectors and their knives, often with one in each hand. In turn, they were knocked down, gored and trampled. Piles of bodies blocked the charging herd in places and they had to go around. My line broke in a dozen spots, and the enemy sailed over my men’s heads with majestic leaps.
“We’ve been overrun!” I shouted. “Fall back in squads, maintain covering fire. Regroup at the tubes if they press us that far back.”
I couldn’t believe it, but we’d been swamped with Centaurs. The enemy was nothing if not brave. They cared little for tactics or their own lives. They just wanted to get to us, to shoot and gore us. They were wild, frenzied. We fought with desperation. I could tell we were many times more organized, but they outnumbered us by twenty to one. I felt like a Roman Centurion facing a raving horde of barbarians.
Two of them came at me at one point. I saw the rolling eyes, the flared nostrils. I let my projector dangle from the cord and slashed at one with my knife. His snout came apart, my nanotized strength and the unnatural sharpness of my blade putting me at an unfair advantage. The Centaur simply lowered his horn-blades and tried to thrust them into me. My battle suit stopped the blades. He had to be mad with pain and rage. Blood gouted everywhere. It was reddish, but darker than the blood of earth creatures. It was like blood that had been dried into a black-red jelly. I used my fist to smash him down to the ground, stopping his blind, furious attack.
The second one came for me then, and my left hand took hold of the horn blades. I lifted him up as if I lifted a rabbit by the ears. My suit surged with relentless power. His hooves kicked out at me, starring my helmet and giving me sore ribs. I gutted him with my knife, which was now free of the first one. I looked at my gloves where I’d grabbed those bladed horns. The blood leaking from them was a lighter red blood. He’d managed to open up my glove.
I heard hissing of released pressure and felt the tickling nanites going to work. They would seal my wound and my suit, I knew.
More came, and the fighting went on. We killed them until we stood atop a mountain of kicking, smoking meat. They killed us as well, here and there.
Suddenly, at some unknown signal, they all turned and ran at once. They flowed over their dead with tremendous agility. My men called after them, cursing and firing into the mass of bodies.
“Cease fire!” I ordered.
Kwon struggled to his feet behind me. He had a hole in between the plates of his battle suit, where his hip joined his torso. Blood ran down to his boots from the spot where he’d been gored. “Cease fire!” he roared, echoing my command with greater volume.
The laser shots died down and soon stopped altogether.
I looked at Kwon as he dug among the bodies, picking them up and throwing them out of our foxhole. I stared at the earthen walls of the defensive position. It hadn’t worked as intended. In fact, due to the enemy tactics, it was possibly worse than standing in the open. When they massed on you, a man had to be in an open area to fight properly, not caught in a ditch that restricted movement and buried you in their dead.
Kwon still ignored his wound and threw one carcass after another out of the foxhole.
“Captain?” I asked. “Are you all right?”
“Fine sir,” he said tightly.
Then I saw him tugging at something more gently. I suspected what it was. Lieutenant Joelle Marquis’ hand. None of my marines had a hand that small. It had to be the pilot.
Finally catching on, I helped him free her from the quivering mass of dead. We soon had her out of the pile of bodies and lying in an open field of dirt. There was no grass, nor any foliage left anymore. It had all been trampled down to dust, beaten by ten thousand hooves.
Looking at her, I figured Kwon would have to get himself a new date. We removed her helmet, knowing the air here was breathable, if not permanently safe. We shot her with extra nanites and had a corpsman work on her with a plastic pump. It wasn’t looking good. She’d sustained broken bones and her lungs didn’t want to work on their own. I knew if her brain had been too badly damaged, she wouldn’t recover.
I took the time to dig out the communications box. It was dented and encrusted in dirt and blood. It still worked after I flipped it on and off again several times.
“This is Kyle Riggs,” I broadcast to the aliens, hoping they were listening. What was the wording they had used? “Herd Honor has been restored—no, recaptured.”
They didn’t say anything for awhile. I wondered if the first wave had just been a taste-test. Maybe the next rush would be the real thing, and instead of twenty-odd thousand we would be hit by half a million raging Centaurs.
“Herd Honor rides the wind again,” said a voice finally.
I had no idea what that meant, but I figured now was the time to go with it. “We are not machines,” I said. “We bleed as you do.”
“You claim Herd Honor?”
I hesitated, trying to think clearly. The Centaurs were a people who had a herd mentality. They weren’t like us. They thought in terms of large groups. They had their own code of honor, that much was clear. I had no idea as to the details, however. I decided to take a neutral stance. “We are a Herd,” I said. “We have Honor. And we hate the machines.”
“You serve the machines. You broke their word for them, and thus have no Honor.”
I thought hard. I looked over to Kwon, who was on his knees over Lieutenant Marquis. The corpsman was going through the motions, but she wasn’t moving. Nobody looked happy.
“We breathe as you do,” I said. “We fight as you do. We bleed as you do.”
“We have taken your measure. We know we can defeat you with our thousands.”
I looked down at the rolling hills ahead. They appeared to be empty, but I knew they were out there, beyond our vision, massing up into a new herd. They would overrun us again, and even if we broke their next wave, they would send another. Eventually, we would be overwhelmed and the last of us would be dragged down and torn apart by these raging beasts.
I looked upward then, toward the roof of the habitat. It was painted sky blue, I realized for the first time. Maybe that was why this structure was not a rotating cylinder. They could have produced an environment with more land that way, but they would have been denied this lovely illusion of a pale blue sky.
We could blow a hole in their sky I knew, just as the Macros had suggested. Very few of the enemy we’d seen had been wearing vacc suits. They would be sucked out into space and suffocated. Victory lay in that direction, and it would only take minutes to achieve. The problem was, it would be a victory for the Macros, not for the biotics.
“We could open your structure to space,” I said. “You would all die.”
“All things die. The grass will grow greener with our passing.”
Great, I thought. These guys glorified death as well. A natural idea for a herd species, I had to figure.
I smiled suddenly. I thought I had it. Sometimes, deception could be a good thing for everyone. “You do not understand. We do not serve the Macros. We escaped them. We came to your structure to escape. We seek sanctuary, not bloodshed. We are ambassadors from another world.”
The pause was long, but not too long. Maybe they felt the seeds of hope right then, the hope that all living beings felt when given an alternative in the face of doom.
“You are not machines. You have fought with Honor. We will listen.”