by Craig Allen
Cody took the floor grate Bodin handed him and set it aside. Inside the exposed weapons bay were two nuclear-tipped torpedoes. Plus, two more nukes were on the port side. The tacs were, of course, gone altogether.
Bodin spoke into his suit comm. “Got it, Gunny.”
“All right, check it,” Sonja said. “My board says they’re nukes, but I want visual confirmation.”
“Yeah, I see a blue stripe, Gunny.” Bodin stepped down into the torpedo bay. “All four are nukes.”
“A tac would do the job, too,” Cody said.
Bodin waved that off. “Yeah, and barbecue our balls before we can get away.”
“And we don’t have any more tacs anyway.” Sonja snorted over the comm. “Besides, you don’t go rabbit hunting with grenades.”
“It’d be fun, though.” Bodin unclipped a latch on the collar enveloping the torpedo. “Good thing the old man on Washington ordered all hoppers have both tacs and nukes.”
Mention of Admiral Rodriguez gave Cody a heavy feeling in his heart. All those people…
Cody nodded toward the torpedoes. “Can’t we just launch these things and run?”
“Naw, they’d blow up before we could get to a safe distance,” Bodin said. “We gotta plant these strategically and then detonate them remotely.”
“The question is where.” Sonja had resumed a course similar to the other hoppers in flight. “This place is huge.”
“And the toads are gonna get suspicious if we don’t land or something,” Bodin said. “We gotta do this fast.”
Cody headed back to the cockpit while Bodin continued inspecting the torpedoes. “How’s the cave mapping going?”
“Just finished.” She pulled up the results on the HUD. A complete layout of the cave appeared before them, dozens of kilometers across. “It’d be more accurate if we could do an active scan.”
Cody sat in the copilot’s seat and examined the map of the cavern. It was huge, but it was just a cavern. Collapsing it would do the job, but they needed to find the best place to guarantee that everything in the tunnel would be either vaporized or crushed under falling debris.
Girders and supports lined the entire ceiling, but four main pylons that stretched up from the ground buttressed the bulk of it in the center. In fact, they were the key to the whole cave. Near the base of the pylons were several Kali vessels in various stages of construction, but near the top was very little.
Bodin entered the cockpit and sat in the seat behind Sonja. “What do you think, Egg?”
Cody did some quick calculations. “If we take out these supports right here in the center, the whole cavern should collapse.”
“And the nukes will probably do enough collateral damage to finish the job.” Bodin snickered. “It’ll be a helluva crater.”
“So all we have to do is detonate the torpedoes remotely,” Cody said.
“Which is a great idea, but we ain’t got permission. Gotta be an officer to do that.” Bodin jabbed a thumb at Sonja. “Like her, one day. Deveau’s codes don’t work. I tried. Deveau was a marine officer, not a naval one.”
“You tried to test whether you could remotely detonate a nuke?” Sonja snorted. “Christ, if the brass finds out, they’re going to shit.”
“Yeah, but I don’t care,” Bodin said. “That means we can only detonate these suckers directly, via the nuke’s access panel.”
Cody mused over the problem while staring at the torpedoes. “Could we set them on a timer somehow?”
“Hey, yeah.” Sonja pulled up a list of the hopper’s supplies, which included coil weapons and fuse grenades. “We could attach them to a viewer, which could then detonate the warheads.”
Bodin rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “We could set the timer to whatever time we wanted then have it detonate the warheads. We’d have to wire the torpedoes together manually, though, which means they all go off or none of them do.”
Sonja watched a passing hopper, which had come closer than any other. “The question is how we get all this into place without raising an alarm.”
Cody wondered that himself. He had accessed the transponder code so they appeared friendly, but he must have been able to do more. He pulled up communications and thumbed through the options.
Sonja leaned closer. “What are you planning?”
“A little misdirection.” Cody dug into the actual transponder code, specifically the proximity data. “We’re going to tell everyone we’re in one place when we’re actually somewhere else. While we’re parked near the supports, the transponder will show us elsewhere.”
Sonja frowned. “They’ll be onto us if they look up and see us planting bombs around the columns.”
Cody considered the point. “We’re pretty far from the cave floor, though. And we can see clearly because of the starlight optics on the HUD and on our suits, but it’s actually dark outside. They probably have night-vision technology as well, but they’d have to have a reason to look in our direction.”
Bodin raised an eyebrow. “I like it, but they’d figure something’s up if there’s gravity waves coming from one place and the transponder signal is coming from somewhere else, wouldn’t they?”
Sonja examined the location mapped out by the sensors. “Looks like they’re using gravity plates to help bolster the supports. That’ll help shield our engines.”
“And we’ll have to use it sparingly,” Cody said. “Make it appear as if we’re patrolling while we plant a torpedo. We can use the hopper’s camo fields to help disguise ourselves. Then we can carefully sync up the fake coordinates with the real ones.”
Sonja smiled. “During the war, I thought you just worked in linguistics trying to decipher the Spican’s neural language.”
“That was one of the things I worked on. The rest I still can’t talk about.” Cody winked at her as he submitted the information into the transponder. “We’re ready to go when you are, Gunny.”
“All right then.” Sonja increased their altitude and put on her gunnery sergeant face. “You guys go dig out the first nuke so we can start the fun.”
~~~
The display in the hopper bay showed the camera views outside. The Kali creatures continued working on the skeletal warship and swarming over other ships in the cavern. None gave any indication they had noticed a group of humans preparing to sabotage their workspace.
Cody and Bodin pulled the fourth, and last, nuke from under the deck. The hopper was hovering near one of the supports by the cave ceiling. The beam was as wide as the hopper and might’ve been able to hold up the roof on its own, but it had help from nearby grav plates.
Cody had managed to ignore the panic running through him. They had a good plan, which had worked for the ten minutes or so they had taken to put the other three missiles in place, but the plan wasn’t perfect. Through the suit’s night vision, Cody could see the toads’ hoppers only a couple kilometers away. If they got spotted, they’d be overwhelmed quickly. Focusing on the work helped, but he wondered how marines fought through their fear to do what needed to be done.
The other three nukes were separated along the two intersecting pylons by about fifty meters. They’d already put the viewer in place, which was connected to a detonator that itself was connected to the three, soon to be four, nukes. A thin wire connected all the torpedoes to the viewer. The last wire from torpedo three was connected to a junction box, which had been programmed to snake the wire down the pylon to the last torpedo’s location until it was within reach.
“This one’s the same as the last one,” Sonja said over the comm. “There’s grav plates everywhere. It’s fucking with the engines.”
“You got it together, Gunny?” Bodin asked.
“Yeah, yeah, don’t worry. I’ve done this three times already.” Sonja mumbled something under her breath as the hopper jolted once then righted itself. “We’re good. Transponder shows us circling several hundred meters away. No reeds here, either.”
“Makes sense,” Cody said. “With
those grav plates, it’s probably too painful for them to get close.”
“Makes our job easier,” Bodin said. “But I wonder why they’d use it out in the open like this when it hurts them.”
Cody hadn’t thought of that. It was a dilemma, and he had no answer for it.
After a moment, the hopper stopped between the beam and the roof. Below them, at the bottom of the cavern hundreds of meters below, was the copy of the Washington.
“All right,” Sonja said. “Let’s do this.”
“Opening the door.” Bodin waved his hand through the controls, and the rear hatch opened. “Get ready, Eggman.”
“Right.” Cody watched as the hatch split open and the ramp unfolded.
The artificial gravity inside the hopper would keep him stable, but he kicked on the magnetic boots in his suit as a safety measure. Outside, the wire connected to the third torpedo clung to the pylon by a small metallic plate. It would connect automatically to the nuke once it was attached to the pylon. If everything went well, they could do it without leaving the hopper, just like the last three times.
“Same place?” Cody asked.
“Yep.” Bodin reached for the torpedo warhead. He peered into the plate on the open side. “Testing the signal, Gunny.”
“Roger that,” Sonja said. “Ready when you are.”
Bodin reached for the button and pushed it. Cody tensed. They were just testing to verify the nuke would actually go off when the remote timer hit zero, but pushing any kind of button on a live warhead seemed like a bad idea.
“Test good,” Sonja said. “Drop her.”
“Roger.” Bodin grinned at Cody. “All right, Egg, let’s do this.”
Together, they lifted the warhead. Massive though it was, the actuators in Cody’s suit made the lifting easy. The weight of the torpedo wasn’t what bothered Cody. What made his teeth chatter was holding a thermonuclear torpedo while standing on the edge of a hopper hovering five hundred meters over the bottom of a cave filled with violent animals.
Bodin stepped right up to the edge. “Back her up half a meter, Gunny.”
“Wilco.” The hopper’s engines adjusted, and the hopper inched backward.
“That’s it, Gunny.” Bodin nodded at Cody. “On three. One, two, three.”
Cody heaved his end of the warhead. It sailed out of the hopper and fell quickly in the heavy gravity. The torpedo landed on the beam, the dampeners along the electromagnets reducing the metal-on-metal smack well enough the toads below wouldn’t hear it, but it still made Cody cringe. The torpedo slid a few centimeters and froze in place.
“That’s it.” Bodin gestured for Cody to step off the ramp and back into the hopper. “Connecting the wire.”
Bodin activated the controls in the hopper bay, and the wire sitting on the pylon leaped up and connected to the torpedo. Before, when Bodin had connected the warhead, a light had appeared on the exposed panel on the side of the torpedo. But that didn’t happen.
“Checking.” There was a pause before Sonja spoke again. “Shit. It looks like it’s not connected properly.”
“God damn it.” Bodin leaned partway out of the hopper to peer at the device. “Oh, shit. I see what’s wrong.”
Cody zoomed in on the torpedo with his suit’s visor. The connection on the torpedo’s panel was hanging from the input.
Cody zoomed out. “How’d that happen?”
“No clue,” Bodin said. “Christ, can’t anything go right around here?”
Cody peered outside at the five-hundred-meter drop. He’d made drops from orbit, but he had a parachute back then. They had to get the thing connected, though.
He pulled a tether from the wall and attached it to his suit.
“Egg, what the fuck are you doing?”
“I’m just going to have a look.”
“No.” Sonja’s voice rose. “God damn it, Cody, no!”
Cody stepped off the ramp and onto the beam. His magnetic shoes gripped the beam easily. “No problem, guys.”
“Shit, Egg.” Bodin attached another tether to his suit and stepped out beside Cody. “What do you think you’re doing?”
“We have to fix this,” Cody said. “What else was I supposed to do?”
“Let Bodin do it, that’s what.” Sonja let a sigh that sounded more like a growl. “I do not want to be the only person on this hopper. Both of you get that fixed and get back on board before someone shows up.”
Cody couldn’t quite see the exit from their vantage point, even with his suit’s night vision and magnification. He wondered how long leaving would take—likely a few minutes, depending on how much of a hurry they were in, and with the nukes on a timer, they’d be in a big hurry.
Cody ran his hand along the torpedo and saw the problem at once. “There’s scarring along the side here. Like something burned the torpedo.”
“Ah, shit.” Bodin tilted the torpedo to the side slightly and popped off an outer cowling.
A black scar covered the ceramic metal casing of the torpedo, like a bruise. Cody had seen such markings before. The cause was tremendous heat, like a laser torch or a graser.
“Looks like it shorted the activation panel.” Bodin held up the wire that connected to the torpedo, which came off in his hand. “The thing won’t connect.”
“Bet that happened when the Kali ship grased us at the neutron star,” Sonja said. “I guess the toads did more damage than we thought.”
Cody stared at the burn as if it would go away out of embarrassment. “Why didn’t we see it earlier?”
“When the torpedoes are extracted, a cowling protects the torpedo exterior.” Bodin tapped the piece of ceramic metal in his hand. “That’s this thing. But it stays tucked away while the torpedo is in the tubes. Otherwise, the thing couldn’t launch.”
“Forget it, then,” Sonja said. “We’ll make do with three.”
“Hang on.” Bodin examined the interior. “Let me give it some elbow grease.”
Bodin struggled with the wire for a couple of moments, making Cody wince. Pulling and tugging on a nuke didn’t seem like a good idea.
“Think I got it,” he said.
“Good work, Sergeant,” Sonja said. “Now get your ass back onboard, and we’ll start the timer.”
“Roger that.” Bodin started to climb back on board, putting his hand on a side of the massive support beam that stuck out of the ceiling, connecting with the one under his feet. As he touched the metal, a light flickered.
“What was that?” Cody said as a holoconsole materialized on the support beam. “That’s a comm terminal.”
“Oh, shit,” Sonja said. “Did we set off an alarm?”
“Doesn’t look like it here. And nobody’s stirring below us, that I can see.” Bodin stepped away from the torpedo access panel and ran his hand over it. “Shit. It’s connected to the topside. Some kind of broadcast beacon.”
“Interesting.” Cody carefully scooted up the wide pylon to Bodin. “I bet this is how they communicate with the outside world. They couldn’t possibly get a signal through the heavy ores in the ground otherwise.”
“Let’s see if Deveau can still help us out.” Bodin tapped the holocontrols before him, entering what Cody assumed were Deveau’s access codes, and in seconds, a green light appeared. “Hey, it worked.” He whistled. “There’s a shit ton here.”
“What is it?” Cody asked.
“See for yourself.”
Cody’s suit noted an incoming connection, and he accepted it. A battery of information scrolled through. So much was there that he couldn’t make heads or tails of it.
“Log files, I think,” Cody said. “Most of it doesn’t make sense, though.”
“Worry about it later.” Sonja’s voice rose in pitch a little. “Download it into the hopper for safe keeping. We’ll check it out later. Get back on board so we can start these goddamn timers.”
“Moving the files.” Cody copied the information to the hopper’s system. “We’re done here.”
“Yeah,” Bodin said. “Get back on board. I’ll follow.”
Cody headed back down the pylon toward the torpedo then took the small but deadly step from the pylon onto the hopper. “I’m on board. Your turn, Bodin, before—”
Bright light filled Cody’s vision. For a split second, he was convinced the toads had caught them and started firing, but the creatures remained where they were, surprisingly enough.
“God damn it.” Bodin grumbled something else, which Cody couldn’t understand. “Can’t we have some good luck for a change?”
Cody leaned out of the hopper as much as he dared, to see Bodin staring up the pylon toward the roof. “What happened?”
“Bodin,” Sonja said. “I’m not getting a response from our detonator.”
“Yeah, and I can see why.” Bodin pointed toward the transmitter a few dozen meters farther up the pylon.
Smoke poured out of the receiver and drifted across the cavern ceiling.
“That smoke makes electronics stop working.” Bodin pounded his fist against the pylon, making almost no noise. “Shit, I’ll have to check it out.”
“Christ, Sergeant,” Sonja said. “Be careful.”
“Too late for that.”
Bodin scurried up the pylon quickly, thanks to the magnets in his boots and the actuators in his suit’s joints. Sonja maneuvered the hopper to keep pace with him while Cody kept an eye on the ground below him. So far, no one stirred, and if anything approached on gravimetrics, Sonja would let out a shout. He watched Bodin climb. They had to get out quickly before they were caught.
In half a minute, Bodin was next to the receiver. “Well, I got bad news and good news. But the good news ain’t all that good.”
“Talk to me, Sergeant,” Sonja said.
“Gunny, the viewer we’re using as a timing mechanism and receiver is dead. We’ll need a new one.” Bodin waved his hand over it to clear the smoke. “The detonator, however, is working fine.”
“Meaning someone could detonate the nukes from here,” Cody said.
“And then get smoked in the blink of an eye.” Bodin picked up the box. “I’d rather rig another viewer.”