The Boneyards of Nebula

by Rod Little

  Might be spared.

  “Assuming we can actually shoot down such a missile,” Sam argued. “That's a big IF. I think we really should have brought Bem. His aim is... well, better. He's a computer!”

  “Yeah, well, we didn't bring him. He's on the Starbase. So it's up to you and me, man. We each have a laser. One of us has to hit that bomb, if it gets loose. Only one of us has to succeed.”

  “Dexter said our odds of success are at about 25%. That's low. Right?”

  “Screw Dexter,” Bohai said. “We got this. We do. The only thing I'm worried about is... two.”

  “What?”

  “Lusus has two bombs. If he launches them at the same time, we probably can't stop both.”

  Sam leaned back in his chair and ran his hands through his hair, pulling his bangs from his face. “Look, I'm nervous enough as it is. Don't freak me out. I'm already thinking the worst. Let's assume Lusus isn't that smart. He's evil; not smart.”

  Bohai shrugged. “Hope so.”

  They waited and watched.

  * * *

  On the ground, three well-formed armies advanced toward one compound – the main camp where Lusus and Yota held their command. The Saratu army was the largest and most formidable, marching along the main road to get back their prize. The great spider army paraded up from the southern fields, and the men drove in cars and vehicles of every kind from the north. Two tanks also escorted them, but each only had a few shells remaining.

  “Two hundred men with rifles, not exactly D-day, you know,” Shane said loudly over the noise of the convoy. The jeep bounced along the road. “It's a little pathetic.”

  Camila held strong, not so easily discouraged. “I don't think George Washington had a lot of big cannons on his side, either. But he had moxie. And so do we.”

  “Great. We got moxie. I'll remember that when we get there. Maybe he'll surrender in the presence of my great and powerful Moxie.”

  Camila still wasn't shaken. “Oz had moxie, and he killed the witch. Don't underestimate it.”

  For Shane it was surreal, going into battle again. Last month he thought all this fighting was over for good. Were they going in circles?

  For Camila, it was never going to end any other way but in blood. She knew Lusus, had been his prisoner for many weeks, and she knew his men. War was never going be avoided. He was never going to leave them in peace on Starbase 21, either. And certainly he would never leave any Earthlings alive on Earth. So, to her, this was just the unfolding of what had to come.

  Sometimes war isn't what caused the dirt to block the rabbit hole. It is the dirt that blocks the hole. And the only way out, is to dug into it.

  She couldn't remember who said that, but she remembered every word.

  Not unexpected, the enemy poked its head out to greet their convoy. First: an air strike. The front string of gliders came in low and fast, peppering the war party. Shane's group was prepared with coverings of steel welded to each car. The roof of each vehicle rattled with the sounds of bullets, the pings of a terrible metal hail, but each driver sped on. No real damage yet.

  The compound rose up from the ground, as they drove into range and closed the gap. Shane's party was second to arrive. The Saratu had already gotten there first and now breached the front gate. The swarm plowed through the rebel soldiers like a twister taking down a dusty desert town. Despite heavy fire from the rebel guns, including another RPG blast, the Saratu seemed unstoppable this time. Ravenous, they ripped apart the each soldier they met.

  Blood and bone. Screams from both creatures and men. This began to have a demoralizing effect on Lusus' and Yota's rebels.

  Wisely, one commander drew a line in the compound yard with gasoline and started a fire. His men ignited a wall of flame to keep the Saratu at bay. From their side of the fire, the soldiers could shoot bullets at the creatures; distance was their ally here. The Saratu could only attack at close range, while the rifles could kill from a great distance. This trapped a few of the rebels' own men on the wrong side of the flames, but sacrificing men was never a problem for Lusus. If his conscience existed at all, it did not control him.

  Despite those dozen soldiers trapped and lost on the wrong side of the fire, the wall of red and orange boosted morale among the rest of the rebels. It gave them a safe line, and the rebels yelled out a war cry, a hoorah! For the moment, the Saratu had been stymied.

  The flames licked the air and crackled as the fire ate the wood and trash being thrown down to feed it. The rebels fired their guns. One creature after another fell to its death.

  Finally, relief came for Shane's allies. The spider army arrived.

  The arachnids scaled the stone walls from every side with ease, giving them full entry into the camp from behind the wall of flame. They swarmed down on the soldiers still shooting through the fire. Half of the rebel squad turned to face them; they now had a battle on three fronts.

  Two giant tarantulas began the job of tearing a hole in the wall, so that the Saratu could also enter from the side. Meanwhile, a dozen brown recluse spiders endeavored to douse the flames with their silk. So far, it was having minimal effect. They continued, nonetheless.

  Giant Orb Weavers jumped high into the air and spun silk over the gliders. The enemy ships fell victim once again to a tactic now becoming second-nature to these acrobatic arachnids. The gliders were forced into a fatal dive one at a time. The silk was strong, and – when attached to each glider – was able to force them to either crash into each other or into a hill. Explosions from their impact punctuated the war, one after another, until the sky was emptied.

  Shane and his army arrived at the northern wall. Now that air support had been yanked from their foes, the men began spilling out of their vehicles and lining up along the grassy ridge. Some took cover behind mounds of dirt, others stayed behind the cars. They started shooting over the rampart with whatever weapons they held: shotguns, rifles, AR-15's, even bows and arrow. One man used a slingshot to hurl cherry bombs over the wall.

  Again, the noise attracted unwanted guests.

  “The lizards again!” Jason screamed. “Behind us.”

  Shane turned around. The hill was covered with giant lizards. They hissed wildly and jostled over each other to get down the northern hill. In its excitement, one even lost footing and fell into a roll; its mates slid down the grass after it. They reached the bottom and attacked the humans.

  Trapped again! Shane cursed. Where do they keep coming from!

  The raptors presented a new battle line, storming Shane's convoy from behind, while bullets pinned them down from the front.

  “Dammit!” Shane yelled above the sounds of war. “Won't those things ever die off?” The supply of lizards seemed endless. “We don't have enough men to split up!”

  Shane was forced to divide his team into two squads. Half of his resources needed to turn around and fend off the lizard incursion. This crippled his position in regard to the assault on Lusus. The North would be the weak link. If the rebels discovered that, Shane's group might be routed first.

  Fortunately, help came again from their unusual eight-legged allies.

  A battalion of forty spiders broke out of the trees and circled to the north. They assisted Shane's men in taking down the lizard raid. The reptile bodies would also serve as a post-war meal for the hungry arachnids, later, should they win. For now, the spiders strove to inject the lizards with poison, as many as they could, to kill them and prepare their bodies for later ingestion. Their sharp fangs and spindly legs worked fast.

  Shane, still unnerved by bugs of any kind, shuddered. They were welcomed allies, but he was still freaked out by their presence, and couldn't watch. He turned back to face the compound, lifted his rifle and aimed.

  A bullet hit him.

  He went down, fell hard to the back of the jeep.

  Camila screamed. It was the first time she'd ever done that. She fell back with him, and made sure both of them were tucked behind the steel protective shie
ld. She tried to see where he was hit, but the blood was already soaking his jacket, making it hard to find the entry point. Red spread across the dark green cloth of his shirt. She pulled the jacket off his body, and he winced in pain.

  “Where?” She yelled. “Where did it hit you?”

  But he was losing consciousness and could not answer her. He had hit his head when he fell. She could see no blood on the jeep bed behind his head, but his hair felt damp.

  A man next to her was shot in the throat, and he spiraled off the jeep, into the grass below. She could do nothing to help him.

  “Shane, listen to me!”

  Her hands moved quickly around his body, probing to find the wound. She feared it might be his heart or lungs. Bullets rained on the metal shield at the front of the jeep; their pings mocked her efforts.

  Ping, ping, ping-ping.

  We have you down.

  She ignored the noises around her. Screams, bullets, growling from lizards somewhere... she could not be sure where. The battle was deafening. It seethed everywhere. Her heart thumped hard in her chest.

  She shrieked: “Help me!”

  No one could hear her; no one to answer. Everyone else was too busy fighting or running or dying.

  There! She found the bullet hole. It was in his side, but nowhere close to his heart. Her fingers found another hole in his back. The bullet had gone all the way through.

  That's good, she thought. That's a start.

  But she had no gauze to stop the bleeding, and the medic van was too far away. She struggled to tear a sleeve off his jacket. The stitching was strong and fought back.

  Then she saw a familiar shape – of sorts. Help arrived in a form she could never have dreamed up in a thousand nights of counting stars.

  A small two-foot spider – she wondered if it was Teak – crawled up the side of the jeep and into the back bed. She stared at him, blood on her hands, as she continued to rip Shane's jean jacket to make a bandage. The spider scurried forward and found the wound. It spun silk faster than the woman's eyes could follow. A strong bandage had been woven over the wound in mere seconds, and now the spider worked to plug up the back wound.

  The bleeding stopped.

  “Thank you,” she said, or attempted to say. But no words came out. It was just an utterance.

  The spider did not wait. He crawled out of the jeep and returned to battle.

  The tide had turned against them, again.

  Chapter 45

  Seven MOABs. Lusus had seven, and he coveted his secret, held it next to him for warmth. He loved that no one knew he possessed seven of the greatest weapons on Earth – greatest, in his view. The enemy would have seen the last two brought in, but they had no way of knowing about the other five.

  I've been planning this forever, for a thousand years and one, he thought. And soon the Earthlings will have no more days to spoil their oceans, no more nights to plot against me. The planet will be mine. And the citizens of Neptune may come here under my rule. My kingdom.

  “After today, Loxtan Vahr will answer to me,” he said to Yota. “If I allow him to live.”

  “And his brother? The others?”

  “They will be dead or washed aside.”

  “Even the boy with the spiders?”

  “I've given up on him. Even he can find solace in death today.”

  Yota raised an eyebrow. Such a passive lack of empathy was strange even for Lusus. But Yota had no misgivings about the man he had aligned himself with, for many years. He had always known his boss was a madman. This suited Yota fine, as long as the rebels had a place in the sun – literally. Unlike his Commander, he had grown to love Earth's sunlight, and would never return to Neptune's moon again. That cold, desolate hell could simply freeze over and lay forgotten, as far as Yota was concerned. Lusus might be motivated purely by his lust for power, but Yota wanted both power and sunlight. He wanted it all.

  “I understand,” was all he said to his Commander's cruel comments.

  “How long?”

  “I believe all of their forces are here,” said Yota. “Their attack is focused solely on us.”

  “And their camps?”

  “They've emptied their military resources. Their entire arsenal is here now. Would you like to ready the first bomb?”

  “Yes. We'll take out that small city they love so much. The one they plan to keep as their home base. It sits close enough to be seen from here. The destruction will hurt them, and display of force will demoralize them into surrender.”

  “Excellent.”

  “Crush them. Crush them now, my friend.”

  Yota stepped to a control panel inside the make-shift headquarters control room, and gave the order to fire the first MOAB. An acknowledgment was received via a computer screen. The men in the bunker below them began the countdown, which displayed in the control room for the command staff to see.

  “Eight, seven, six,” Yota read the digits out loud. “Five, four...” He let it trail off from there.

  The bomb rocketed from its nest and split the sky. In less than one minute, it would decimate the small town where Shane's people were housing their wounded – the new home base for the Earthlings.

  The bomb screamed higher and arced.

  * * *

  The first warning alerted Sam and Bohai to the rapidly increasing energy build-up below them, but they didn't understand it fully until they saw a visual on the their display screens. It speared out of a pillow of smoke and roared toward them.

  “That's a missile, a bomb,” Sam said. “When can we shoot it down? Now? Now?”

  “Wait, wait..” said Bohai. His voice was calm, but sweat trickled down his face. “Not yet. The debris will hurt too many of own people. It has to be farther out.”

  The missile rose in the sky almost to the height of their ship itself hidden inside the clouds. Only when it began to arc and sweep north, did the boys put their fingers on the triggers. The missile gathered speed and became an arrow cutting through the air.

  Sam fired his laser. It missed. He fired again, and the missile streaked forward, unhindered.

  Now, finally, Bohai fired and hit the MOAB, but not directly. The beam bounced off its tail and changed the bomb's trajectory. The missile fought to correct itself, and continued toward the small town. It would still hit on or close to its target.

  Again both Sam and Bohai fired their lasers. Even with direct hits, the bomb did not explode. It veered off course, then corrected itself again. The lasers could not force it to detonate early.

  Without time to think or explain, Bohai sped the ship forward and dove toward the bomb. He got in front of it and directly below it, then raised the ship. The Praihawk carried the bomb up into the air.

  It exploded.

  The force of the mid-air explosion drove the ship straight into the ground, half a mile from its intended target. The ship hit the soil with such force that its nose became buried deep in the earth. Debris scattered across the landscape. No doubt there would be casualties in the area, but hopefully only minor wounds – if those watching had taken cover. The decimation of their town, at least, had been avoided.

  Both pilots had been knocked to the floor. Bruised, but unbroken, they scrambled back into their seats and checked the ship's status.

  The ship had sustained damage, but its shields had protected it and prevented it from behind destroyed. It was buried in the dirt, but they had successfully thwarted the first bomb.

  All systems went dark for two seconds. Then a few modules sparked back on. The power supply module now transferred all resources to repairing the damaged systems. This meant it would not be able to fly again this hour. Perhaps not for several hours. In fact, Bohai could not get it loose from the earth. They were stuck.

  “We'll be up again in two hours,” Bohai said. He knew it might take longer. He was reading the diagnostic display, and it didn't look good. He tapped a screen button with a finger. The main screen sparked back to life. “For now, we're groun
ded, man.”

  “He has another,” Sam said fretfully. “He has another big bomb.”

  “Nothing we can do about that,” said Bohai. “We can only hope he waits at least a few hours before sending it up. Otherwise...”

  The sensors registered another head signature, bigger than before. It was too big to be one missile.

  Bohai leaned into the scanner screen. “He's gonna fire it now. And I think...”

  “You think what?”

  Bohai's face paled. “I think he has more of them. Not just two. I think he has more than two bombs.”

  * * *

  Camila and Stu carried Shane back to the first aid tent. They had watched the bomb explode in the distance, and the ship's cruel plummet into the earth. Both were discouraging developments, for many reasons. They didn't know if Sam and Bohai were alive, and they didn't think they could stop a second MOAB bomb.

  Men and women wounded by shrapnel, bullets and bomb debris, began to flood the medical tent in greater numbers.

  Jason stuck his head through the flap. “Is he okay?”

  “I... I think so.”

  “We have a new problem.”

  “What now?” Camila asked.

  Stu came into the tent with Jason.

  “He's got a couple more bombs,” said Jason. “I don't know how many, but at least a few. Sam sent us a message. He can't get the ship up, not yet, but they're okay. And they spotted a cluster of MOABs in the enemy camp.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Evacuate,” Stu said. “Send word to the others to get out of our headquarters and all the towns we set up. Get everyone into the hills.”

  “Is there time?” Jason asked.

  “Maybe yes. Maybe no.” Stu bit down on a toothpick. “Just tell them to move. I don't think we're gonna break through today. This whole mission has turned south quicker than a burned biscuit.”