by Bobby Adair
Phil, apparently still not having slept, has our flight plan ready. We’ll bounce through seven bubble jumps, the last bringing us out dangerously close to the moon, all lined up for Lenox to push on a max grav accel right over our targets, dropping our nukes on the pass, followed by a fast bubble out to the other side. Phil has the maneuver planned for us to spend six seconds over the target or in the sights of the railgun batteries. And that’s the only change to our tactic that he and I were able to brainstorm into existence: we’ll do the same damn thing we’ve been doing, but we’ll try and do it even faster.
So, we go with it.
Chapter 30
We pop out of our sixth bubble half a million miles from the moon, much closer than I’d have preferred. We’re at a range from which a Gray might detect us, but Phil isn’t comfortable with making our last jump down to the moon from more than a few light-seconds away.
“Phil?” I ask, as seconds tick by.
He doesn’t answer.
Our bubble jump computer could have made this last break between jumps strobe past, but Phil isn’t letting the computer control everything on this trip. After each jump, he’s been manually checking our position against where the computer said we’d be. So far, so good, but once Phil gets an idea in his head, it takes a long time for his interest to find a new problem to nag.
“Even if a Gray sees us,” says Lenox, “we’ll be there before it figures out what we are.”
“And before it has time to commune with its pod on what to do about it,” adds Silva.
“The assault started seven minutes ago.” Brice’s gaze comes to rest on Phil; Brice wants Phil to know he’s not pleased. “If they’re on schedule.” It’s a rare, double dig. Phil worked through the math on the orbital dynamics that put our assault forces on their intercept paths with the battle stations. If they didn’t arrive on schedule or came down out of sync, it would be Phil’s fault. As for our delay, Brice puts the blame unequivocally on what he saw as Phil’s unreasonably cautious approach. “The war is calling.”
I look at my d-pad to confirm the time. We’re close enough, though I’d have preferred to arrive before the assault started. Now every gunner on the moon will be at the ready, or already shooting, if the Grays figured out that they can pelt the battle stations with their small-caliber railguns and kill off our assault teams before they get inside.
“Won’t work,” says Phil.
“What?” I ask, pissed. “The jump?”
“No, shooting at the battle stations. At max velocity for their small-caliber guns, it’ll take hours for the rounds to cover the distance from the moon to the earth. The troops will all be inside by the time the rounds impact.”
“Phil,” I tell him, “stop reading my thoughts and concentrate on what you need to do.”
“We're ready now," he says, turning to me for the final go.
I don’t hesitate. “Jump.”
The ship flashes bubble blue.
One Mississippi.
Two Mississippi.
Why am I counting?
The blue sizzles out.
“Shit!” cries Lenox. Nothing is showing on her screens but gray lunar rocks.
Before Lenox’s shout fades from the comm, Phil pushes every amp of ship power into the grav lens, just as we impact.
Chapter 31
Steel squeals as it wrenches apart. Vaporizing rock explodes, as the ship’s internal fields lose the fight to compensate with the chaotic forces tearing at us.
Failure blasts, loud and obnoxious, through my head as I realize I’m losing another ship, more people, the last of my friends, and it’s happening too goddamn slowly, because I’m stuck in that slow-motion, adrenaline-rush brain mode where every microsecond seems to stretch to infinity, giving me all the time I need to blame myself for every mistake that put us here.
And I think of Silva, and all that our relationship will never grow into, hating myself over the faith she put in me, for letting her down.
Blackness mercifully washes the painful chaos away and takes my last breath with it.
Chapter 32
It’s the howl of a titan-sized banshee wailing in my ears that tells me how wrong I was.
I’m alive.
Disoriented.
And in pain.
I gasp like I've forgotten to breathe for nearly long enough to kill me.
Blue grav fields spasm in webs across the floor.
Sparks blast around me.
The comm crackles with the cries of the dying.
How many did I kill this time?
The flames of a blast furnace spasm to life and disappear again in the howl of the wind.
Where am I?
I steady my breathing, force calm through my shaking fingers, over my racing heartbeat. I run through an inventory of my body parts, something I’ve done too many times, of late. Wiggle the fingers and toes. All present and functional.
Sharp pain digging into my shins.
My ankles work. My knees move, a little.
Arms seem to function, but I’m pinned.
I push myself away from a wall that’s right in my face, as I realize I’m still strapped to my chair. But the chair has broken away from the floor, and it’s on top of me. I’m jammed into a corner between the wall and the floor.
I turn on my suit light for steady illumination as I push myself up, unlatch my restraining belts, and look around. Nothing is square. Nothing is where it should be. Up and down can’t agree, or I can’t decipher the mixed mess of what I see with what gravity is telling me is true.
If I had any hope that the Turd II had survived the impact, it disappears. A crack exposing jagged steel shreds is running through the ceiling, from the corner of the bridge over Phil’s nav station, all the way back to the rear bulkhead.
Outside, in the dark of a tunnel, a fire ignites and burns like a tornado before losing its spark and dying out, only to come to life again. I see moon rock, and a million bits of debris blasted by the wind, and it makes zero sense.
How much air, how much H, could my ship hold that it could blow for so long?
My God, how did I survive this?
That’s when I see Nicky, halfway out the tear in the hull, skewered by the sharp metal, one arm flapping in the wind, one arm gone, head smashed open, orange goo spraying into the vacuum. I don’t need to reach out telepathically to know that she’s dead. That’s the moment that I realize the banshee moan that brought me back to consciousness isn’t only the wind outside. It’s Phil, and he sounds like he’s dying.
He's still strapped into his chair, but the supports have bent backward, and he's not moving. He’s only staring up at Nicky, crying out loud, without a thought for shame or pride. His pain is so powerful, it hurts me too.
I look around the bridge. Brice is a few moments behind me in coming back to the world of the living. He’s shaking his head, and trying to get up. Lenox is drooped over the helm controls. Silva is in her chair, but like mine, hers came disconnected from the floor. She’s in a jumble of computers, legs, and chair pieces, piled against the far wall. Blood is spraying into the thinning air.
I fly across the bridge to Silva and start pulling away pieces of junk. In the light g, it’s not difficult. Not physically, anyway. The blood sprays me red as the haze blows past. When I lift the back of Peterson’s chair, I find the source of the bleeding. Peterson has a ghastly wound across her chest. If not for being strapped to the chair, she’d likely be in two pieces. Tossing Peterson unceremoniously to the side, I lift Silva’s chair and turn her around to face me.
She blinks. “I thought we were dead.”
“Are you okay?” I ask, trying to keep my voice on an even keel.
“I think I lost consciousness.”
I toggle her d-pad to life and click to the med function screen.
“I think I’m okay,” she tells me. “You’re covered in blood.”
I wipe a hand
across my face plate to drag the crystallizing corpuscles into a more translucent smear.
“Are you hurt?” she asks, as I read her d-pad. It says she lost consciousness for nearly four minutes. No concussion. No broken bones. No internal injuries. Can I trust it?
“Your suit seems stable,” I say, as I look her up and down. “No leaks.”
“Are you hurt?” she asks.
I unlatch her. “I need to check on the others.” I point to Lenox. “Help me with her, when you can.”
I spin, see that Brice is up and looking around, but his eyes aren’t quite locked into reality. “You okay?” I ask.
"Peaches and pussy," he mutters. "I need a minute."
I jump over to Phil, ignoring his wailing, or trying to. The closer we are, the more his grief is leaking through the bugs in our heads that link us so closely. Tears fill my eyes. His or mine? I can’t tell. I access his d-pad’s med functions as I blink away the annoying saline.
No bleeding. No punctures. Consciousness lost for two and half minutes. I move on to his stim screen and see that he’s never taken advantage of his suit’s performance-enhancing drugs. I punch a button and pump a max dose of suit juice into his veins.
“Phil.” I rap on the side of his helmet. “Phil!”
He looks through me, as if I’m invisible. He’s reaching out with his grav sense and his telepathic connection to Nicky. And slowly, his eyes turn from utter pain to mania. “What…what did you do?”
“Phil,” I say, “hate me now or hate me later. I’ll accept it, but right now, I need to you find a way to put all this shit aside. I need your help. The people still alive on this ship need you. Help me save them.”
“I’ll never forgive you.” Phil shoves me away with strength I didn’t know he possessed.
When I bump the back wall of the bridge, I use my suit grav to bring myself to a stop.
“He’s pissed,” says Brice.
I point at Nicky’s flapping body. “He hurts.”
“Pain and anger,” he says. “Same emotion. Different dicks.”
“Good God,” I say. “Are you okay?” I reach out and take his arm, getting no resistance from him. I access his med functions, and get nothing of use.
“I got the wind knocked out of me,” says Brice.
I grab his helmet by the sides to steady his face in front of mine as I examine his face and eyes. “You seem kind of loopy.”
“I think I bumped my head.”
“Stay here,” I tell him, as I turn to the others. Silva is with Lenox now, accessing her d-pad, looking into her face plate, talking, but on a different comm link. I open up my comm on all channels, find the one she’s on, and ask, “Is Lenox okay?”
“Seems to be,” says Silva.
“I’m all right,” says Lenox. “What happened?”
I look up at the tear in the hull. Atmosphere is still howling past. “We hit the moon. Probably. I think we breached the tunnel system.”
“You wanna check on the nuke techs, up front?” asks Silva.
“Yeah,” I tell her. She seems to have more of her wits about her than anyone else on the bridge. “Make sure everyone gears up. With every ounce of ammo they carry. I think we’re getting ready to step into some shit.”
“We already stepped in it.” She smiles past her pained eyes. “Go check on the people up front. I’ve got this.”
Chapter 33
I cut out the bridge crew, so that I’m only linked with Silva. I push my way past a metal plate to get out of the bridge and into the central hall.
“Stay in contact,” says Silva.
“Will do,” I tell her, as I look down the length of the hall and see nothing but sparks and fire. “Get Phil or Lenox to cut power going forward. Broken power cables are sparking hydrogen as it mixes with air coming out of the tunnel system.”
“I think we’re in one of the moon’s tunnels,” she says.
“I think.”
“Can you get to the platoon compartment?” she asks.
“Not this way. Not until we kill the fire.”
“On it,” she tells me.
I work my way forward, trying to gauge the heat of the fire, thinking about making a run through it, wondering if H burns hotter than my suit can resist. But what would I be running to? Is the whole front section of the ship engulfed in a hydrogen-fueled inferno?
“Just a moment,” says Silva.
I peek through a doorway into a room now filled with H tanks, looking for another hull breach, one wide enough for me to shimmy through.
“It’s a wonder the reactor is still online,” says Silva. “Given the damage.”
“Yeah. Is Phil calming down?”
“He’s working at his console,” says Silva. “He’s still sobbing, though, and muttering.”
“He and Nicky were closer than humans can get,” I say. “They’re wired tight, like a single organism with two bodies. It has to hurt.”
“Closer than us?” asks Silva.
“Closer?” I’m not sure how to respond. She’s barely talked to me in days.
“I’m sorry,” she says.
“You’ve got nothing to be sorry for.” The lights in the hall go dark. The shower of sparks from the broken power lines ceases. The fire still burns. “The metal up there is still hot enough to ignite the H,” I tell her. I need to come back to the bridge and see if I can get out through the airlock. “Tell Phil to override the controls, if they still have that atmospheric equalization bug.”
“Will do.”
I make my way up the angled deck, and pull hard on a broken sheet of metal to squeeze my way back to the bridge.
“I resented you,” she tells me. “When I chose to stay, I’m not sure I was a hundred percent on board with it, even though I thought I was.”
“Don’t worry about it,” I tell her.
“That’s why I stopped talking to you,” she tells me, as I step up to the bridge. She comes over and wraps me in a tight hug. “We’ll get out of this. And if we don’t, I won’t hate you for it.”
“Thanks,” I tell her. “Thanks for standing by me.”
I pull away, turn to the airlock door, and swing it open.
“I love you,” she says.
“I love you, too,” I tell her as I step inside. And then I laugh. “Not very romantic, is it?”
“No,” she answers, “but it’ll do. Be safe.”
I step through to the outer door and push it open. Wind is still blowing past the hull, but it’s diminishing. I make a guess that I can stand in it and I step into darkness.
Above me, through a giant hole in the rock, I see the sparkly blackness of outer space. I’m standing in a gap between the Turd II’s hull and a curving wall that was obviously hewn with tools, confirming what I suspected: we’ve crashed into one of the moon’s tunnels.
What are the odds?
Setting my suit to autograv, I clamber over loose rock, not wanting to fly, with the wind swirling and gusting, mixing with hydrogen and still flashing to fire above me.
“Can you hear me?” asks Silva.
“I’ve still got you,” I tell her, as I make my way past the wreckage of our drive array. I can see down the hall in one direction. It’s wide, and lit in the distance. The floor where it isn’t covered with impact debris is smooth, and wide enough for a few lanes of traffic. We’re definitely in one of the transit tunnels. How far from the moon’s main batteries?
Turning to move up the starboard side of the Turd II, I walk wide around the flashing flames, which are mostly overhead, anyway. “Silva?”
“Yeah?”
“The front half of the ship is gone.”
Chapter 34
“No front of the ship means no nukes,” says Silva. Despite everything around us, she’s thinking of the mission. The Gray leadership has to die. The planet-killing batteries need to be vaporized. The Earth needs hope before it rebels. We have to succeed.
>
“The rest of the ship can’t be far,” I say.
“We hit pretty hard,” says Silva. “I don’t know how fast we were going, but it could be a hundred miles away, for all we know.”
I look up and down the length of tunnel and can see maybe a half mile, in total. “It’s not down here, that’s for sure. See if you can get the ship-to-ship up. We need to contact Bird.”
“What should I tell him?”
That we failed?
No. Not yet.
“Give it to him straight.”
“Will do.”
“I’m going up top.” I don’t wait for a reply. I punch my suit grav and fly out with the remains of the atmosphere escaping into space.
For a few seconds, I feel free. I’ve got a disruptor on my back, a pistol on my hip, a railgun in my hands, a full ammo load, four fragmentation grenades, and two C4 charges. Nostalgia bites me with year-old memories of war when it seemed simpler, when all I had to do was kill Trogs with the weapons in my hands and lead my troops to do the same.
At a hundred meters up, I’m looking in the wrong direction. The moon batteries are firing, and red-hot railgun rounds are streaking off in every direction, filling the sky, no doubt aimed at every piece of space junk big enough for a human to hide behind. A dozen kilometers away, a small fleet of grav lifts is accelerating toward the Earth. They’re carrying Trog reinforcements for the fight underway on the battle stations. If everything worked out, our troops landed on every one of them.
I hope they’re winning.
Spinning around, I search the landscape and quickly spot a cloud of moon dust dirtying the black void with glittery whites and grays. Beneath the cloud, a rocky crest is cratered from a fresh impact, the front half of my ship.
“Silva, I’ve spotted the crash site. I’m going to it.”
“Where?”
“A kilometer or two. I’ll be out of comm range in a few moments. As soon as the rest of you are ready, come to the surface. Fly up ten or twenty meters. You’ll see the dust cloud over the horizon. If the nukes survived the crash, that’s where they’ll be.”