We’re back with a new addition to The Hungry Stars. In this chapter, the (attempted) escape from Nibiru is still on its way. An escape is usually easier when you have an APC and your opponents don’t. And they aren’t willing (yet) to just hit you with a rocket, but ‘easier’ is relative. There’s still a whole lot of ground between the cloning facility and the starport for our heroines, while in orbit, their getaway ride has problems of her own. Phantom-1 has crashed the party and the League alpha-cruiser is definitely not going to pull its punches like its comrades on the ground. Lakhesis has been marked for death, and if Phantom-1 can’t get the job done, there’s going to be someone else who will…
In the excerpt below, we see the lengths the League is prepared to go to, weaponizing (as they see it) their foe’s ignorance. If you consider yourself a moral person and you believe an action could kill innocent people, you wouldn’t do it, would you?
Of course not. But if you truly and honestly don’t believe anyone would actually die and you didn’t want the other person to do that action… well, that gives you a lever to pull, doesn’t it?
For the full chapter as well as the rest of the story, check out the links above and hope you enjoy!
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Without warning, the sedan heeled across the middle line separating the six-laned highway, heading towards the fugitive’s escape vehicle. Grace didn’t have time to avoid it and the smaller vehicle crashed into the APC head-on. The carrier’s chassis was meant to survive smashing through reinforced gates, barricades, buildings and resist anti-armour weaponry. The car wasn’t. It went under the larger vehicle’s wheels, crushed like an aluminum can. The carrier bucked only a little, like a sports car hitting a speed bump.
“What was that?” Allyria shouted.
Grace didn’t answer, her knuckles white on the wheel. In the seconds before the sedan had rammed them, she’d caught a glimpse through its windshield. Its driver, blank-faced and void of expression… and his wife and daughter screaming in terror.
It didn’t even bother to keep them from knowing what was happening. More worker drones to be expended. Up ahead, she saw more civilian vehicles pull onto the road, heading right for her. The wordless ultimatum couldn’t have been more clear. Stop or kill more innocent people.
She wanted to. She almost did. Her foot almost pushed down on the brakeThat image of the woman and her child had already burned itself into her brain. Whatever nightmare intelligence had laired in this system, it would keep throwing bodies at them until it had them… and it would just make the dead over again. The copies wouldn’t even remember what had happened.
They’re not people, she told herself as she gunned the engine. The next willing suicide pulled across the median, coming straight at her. They’re not people. Just drones.
She avoided that one, but not the third. Just like the first time, the APC rose up slightly as it crushed the driver’s side of that car under its reinforced tires and kept going. The police cars flowed around the wreck. None of them stopped.
“What’s happening?” Lydia demanded. “Talk to us, Proctor!”
The Rhine was red with human blood.
Grace swallowed. “Nothing!” she told them, trying to avoid the fourth car. But a fifth was crossing an intersection to come at them. “It was nothing.” She couldn’t dodge them all. “Just…” she shook. It bucked only a little… like a sports car hitting a speed bump. “Just speed bumps.”
~
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