COMBAT SALVAGE 2165

by A. D. Bloom

  With all the speed they'd built up, the Lancers ripped past the fighter and junk squadrons still coming around to chase the last Squidy warship. Jordo coaxed more acceleration out of his Bitzer as he pulled ahead of Paladin and the rest of his squadron. He couldn’t lift his chest to breathe at all now, but it didn’t matter. He'd get there before he passed out.

  He shot past the capital ships and carriers and veered around the dense debris clouds from the haulers. Then, he was so close to that last Squidy ship that when its bay doors opened and a squadron of red bandits launched out of it, he almost rammed them. Jordo and Paladin jinked wildly and dove through the enemy fighter formation, trying to take as many targets as they could before the alien aces could recover. The 140mm cannon shook his cockpit hard enough that the three alien aces he scrapped on that pass blurred in front of him.

  The battlegroup's combined railguns finally found the Squidies' pocket carrier, and Jordo ripped past the burning wreck with Paladin and rest of the Lancers close behind. They rolled in on the trio of alien aces already lining up to draw their razor-thin, small-bore particle streams across Fat Anne. They planned to slice the breaching ship’s ring or cut her reactor stack in two.

  The Squidies were fixed on their targets and never saw it coming. Jordo’s shells stitched a line across the aliens' three-plane formation along with Paladin’s, flashing up and down the alien hulls where their shells impacted, blasting and melting armor, destroying the thing inside, that disgusting knot of hose-like limbs and ribbon-thin body the aliens called a pilot. The two they hit veered off course for a fraction of a second before they spun and their shell-torn power plants cooked off.

  Nine red bandits remained, but by the time the alien aces recovered and spun on their thrusters to put the breaching ship back in their sights again, the 99th Weasels and the 55th Hellcats and nearly every fighter in three carriers’ air groups were on them. There was nowhere for the aliens to fly that wasn’t stitched tight with hellfire. Even the gunnery junks got some, and when all the blossoms from all the HE range-det shells and all the alien reactor dets had faded, the Squidies’ fighters were gone, and it was over.

  The convoy steamed on. The aliens had massed everything they could at Algol and thrown it at them. They’d targeted the breaching ship Fat Anne and given their best shot, but she was unscathed. Her fragile, wonder wheel hull was intact and there wasn’t anything between the battlegroup now and the transit to the next system but clear skies on radar, LiDAR and IR. They’d won Algol.

  The cheers went up on most of the comms channels, and the pilots from three air groups were still cheering when, on the far side of the battlegroup, the other breaching ship, SCS Tipperary, rocketed jets of blue fire out the emergency vents on her axle-shaped main hull. A moment later, she jettisoned a reactor core. It streaked across 5Ks of vacuum, riding a column of fire before it cooked off like a low-yield fission warhead.

  The breaching ship, Tipperary fell dark as she began to turn off angle and tumble in her line of travel. There were more no enemies in sight...not on radar or IR or LiDAR. Everyone asked what happened and none of them knew. Now, all the voices that had called out on victory on comms had the same mix of defeat and astonishment when they said the only thing they knew for sure: "Tipperary is down. The breaching ship is down."

  5

  Tig’s crew used explosives to put out the fire in bay 39. Or Raleigh did, anyway. As usual, Tig watched while Raleigh got to do everything. Raleigh was the one that got to huck the charges off the back of a knuckledragger mech-suit passing the open bay door. He even insisted on detonating them himself so he could whoop as all the molten steel shot out into the vacuum from the rippling shock waves.

  Tig and Parker’s duty shift ended, and after he went out the airlocks, he made straight for the primary bays. Out in the passageway, he strode fast for the interdeck tube before he even took his helmet off. He wended his way between the junk crews and pilots hoping that if Parker was following him, she’d lose sight of him and give up. Parker didn't. She called out to him over local comms. He almost broke into a run trying to make it to the lift before she caught up.

  "Hey! Where the hell are you going? You come off a sixteen-hour duty shift and bolt without a word?" He flipped the latches at his neck and lifted his helmet off so he couldn’t hear her yelling in his ear. She lifted her helmet off, too and shouted down the passageway after him. "Hey!"

  "Bay 3, primary!" he barked over his shoulder. Maybe that would shut her up. "I’ll meet you in the mess."

  "Why?" She caught up with him in front of the lift.

  "I just gotta get to bay 3, primary is all," he said as he stepped on the lift at the last second. She followed just before the railgunner who’d got on the lift first hit the lever and sent them down towards the carrier's spine.

  She squinted at him. Parker was too smart. She was already figuring it out. "Bay 3 is the bay the Chief’s salvage junk is launching from," she said. "The one that’s going to try and save the breaching ship... Tipperary."

  "How’d you know about it?"

  "Same as you," she said. "Devon can’t shut his scuttlebutt-slingin' pie hole."

  When the lift shot out the bottom of the tube, Tig thought his vision tweaked out for a moment from all the space to his left and right. From where he was, in the hollow, tensegrity spine of the ship, he could see some 250 meters through the struts looking towards the bow and nearly 700 meters looking towards the stern.

  In the spine, he didn’t have to wait more than ten seconds for a mover. That’s what they called it in places like the spine when a lift moved horizontally, but it was really the same piece of equipment they called a lift when it was going up and down inside a tube. When it arrived, he pushed his way past of a pair of greensuit glow-peckers to get on first and didn’t wait for anyone else. He gripped the lever and sent the mover away from the platform and down its track before anyone else could get on. The reactor tenders shouted profanities at him, but another mover would rise up out the port in the bulkhead for them in ten or fifteen seconds.

  He thought he’d got away from Parker until she yelled his name from behind him. She sounded too close. He only got half way turned to look behind him before she landed. She hit the deck of the mover after making what must have been a ten-meter jump from the platform. It was a hell of a jump even in Hardway’s .3 gees, but she couldn’t stick the landing. She slammed into Tig hard. He thought maybe it was harder than she had to.

  "Don’t you try to ditch me, Tig Meester." She pushed herself up and off of Tig and stood. "I’m the only friend you’ve got on this ship."

  "I thought you said you didn’t even like me."

  "I don’t," she said as she helped him up.

  As the mover shot down its track in the spine, Tig shifted the lever back to slow the platform gradually so she wouldn’t notice. Then, he waited until she let go of the rail, and then he pushed the mover’s lever forward to speed up quickly, producing about .2 gees worth of acceleration inertia. That was all it took to knock you on your ass if you weren’t ready for it.

  Parker fell backwards, on her big butt, and Tig grabbed her legs and used the momentum to roll her over, under the mover’s railing, and out of the mover. She fell a meter onto the smooth track with her helmet bouncing beside her. He looked back once more to see if she was okay and she gave him the finger.

  With Launch Bay 3’s doors closed there wasn’t much extra space for the modified 50-meter junk, Audacity. Her name was painted on the orange and white striped cockpit module that jutted out the bow, offset on the starboard side of the tensegrity frame onto which everything aboard a Staas Company junk was mounted. That frame was one, big hard-point for modules or ordnance.

  Audacity had been configured for salvage ops. They’d swapped out the gunnery module slung under the frame for what looked like an expanded armored personnel and gear compartment. Tig thought they’d redesigned the landing gear until he realized what were folded up under the main module we
ren’t feet. They were long, metal, almost insectile arms with which to grip - four of them. Tig had seen junks with this rig at Sagan get pressed into service when there just weren’t enough real tugboats to service the haulers and barges.

  A fat, reinforced and arching spine protruded on top where the arms for the jumbo maneuvering thruster nacelles had been mounted. They rotated fore and aft as the redsuit crew assigned to do the pre-flight checked them out like every other system.

  The one turret that remained on top swiveled with a whine, faintly audible behind the chatter and clanking in the bay. Tig looked for Horcheese. He saw salty red suits everywhere in that bay, but none of them was her.

  He found her at the aft of the boat, squeezed between the main engines, talking to Harry Cozen and a pilot in a black exosuit without markings...no rank...no insignia. The bug-eyed flight helmet under her arm said Burn over the visor. While a crew led service carts past them, Tig waited, not much more than five meters off, trying to stay out of the way against the bulkhead and not look like he was listening.

  Horcheese couldn’t see him, but Harry Cozen could. He glanced at Tig once or twice. Looking back at the old man was uncomfortable, like staring down a needle close too your eye. Cozen didn’t lower his voice when he saw Tig, not even when it was obvious that he was, indeed, listening.

  Cozen said, "Burn will be the officer in charge. She holds the rank of Commander in the Staas Privateers."

  "You’re a fighter pilot," the Chief said. "You run the flight school."

  "Ancient history. Now, I just fly. And today," she said, "I’m flying your junk."

  "I’m going to tell you both flat out," Cozen said. "We don’t know how bad the damage to Tipperary is. The ship and her crew don’t respond. We don’t even know if they’re alive."

  Horcheese said, "You know that none of us redsuits have ever worked on one of those ships. The full specs of the breaching ships are classified." Cozen nodded like he knew that. "It’s no great secret those particle emitters are reverse-engineered alien tech and our experts barely get it. I know you want to hear optimism, Mr. Cozen, but there's a better than even chance that breaching ship is down for the count. Tipperary is probably beyond repair without replacing half her critical systems. That wasn't meant to be done in the field."

  "It gets better," Cozen said. "You won’t be able to requisition replacement parts because the spare parts for the breaching ships were all on board Luxor when the Squidies blew her up." Horcheese looked at Cozen then with her eyebrows raised so high that Tig could almost hear her incredulity. Cozen said, "We need that beaching ship operational, Chief. The battlegroup only has one left and we’re a long way from our rendezvous with Admiral Ming. If we lose our last breaching ship, then we’ll be stuck in whatever star system we’re in when it happens. The offensive will be over and there won't be much to stop Squidy from flooding into Sol from Sirius."

  "Why can’t you cover us while we repair her?"

  "You’ll be getting one gunnery junk and a single UNS destroyer for cover, the Duer. She’s got four tubes and a dozen warspites on board."

  "I’d feel better if w-"

  Cozen cut her off. "If we slow down and stay while you work on Tipperary, then we won’t be able to rendezvous with Admiral Ming’s task force in time to reinforce him as planned. Neither we nor Ming have the firepower to make the drive through the defenses in the Squidies home systems alone."

  "You’re gambling, Mr. Cozen. If you think we can repair that ship with what we’ve got, you should know that bet is a real longshot."

  "That’s right. It's a gamble, Horcheese. I’m betting on you and your redsuits. And I know what I’m asking. Board Tipperary. Repair my breaching ship. Bring her to me, Chief."

  "If we’re successful," Burn said, "How are we supposed to catch up with the battlegroup and the convoy?"

  "You can’t. But if that ship can breach space, then I want you to transit from here and rendezvous with us at Mizar. We’ll be snaking a course through that sector to disguise our intentions and draw the enemy away before we will double back on our way to rendezvous with Admiral Ming at Beta Tauri. By the time we steam through Mizar the second time, it should be thinly defended. Your orders are to open the Algol-Mizar transit and rejoin the convoy as we traverse that system in 22 hours time."

  "What if she can’t be repaired?"

  "If she can’t breach space, then you power up her reactors and her gravity and you tuck her safely down in the atmo of the second planet, where the Squidies hid their task force before the last assault. A convoy might risk passage through Algol in two days to reinforce us. Lay low until then if she won’t breach space, but I can’t stress strongly enough how much we need that ship."

  "I’m going to the cockpit," Burn said. "Thanks for the suicide mission, Harry."

  Tig didn't think anyone called him Harry. If she was out of line, Cozen only grunted as she walked away. Then, Tig flashed with mild alarm when the old man nodded his chin in Tig’s direction and pointed him out to Chief Horcheese who now turned to see him standing there for the first time. He wished he could walk away, but his feet wouldn't move.

  "What is it, cherry?"

  "You’re going to repair Tipperary," Tig said. His voice sounded too excited and made him want to wince. "You have to take me with you."

  She didn’t look amused. "Why would I do that? You’re three days out of training."

  He said, "You don’t have anybody with experience on these systems. Nobody on any of the crews has worked on those before, I mean. If you’re talking about making something work and you don’t know exactly what it is, then I’m your guy. Unconventional rigs are my specialty. Now, I've never been on a breaching ship, but I know 90% of the parts its made of backwards and forwards because they’re on other hulls. If it flies, I’ve ripped it, stripped it, modded it, and sold it."

  "You talk like a docks chopper," Horcheese said. "Rip it, strip it, sell it."

  "I’m no hack job. I mostly worked on record breaking custom rigs for, ya’ know, anonymous buyers. I’m from Staten Island City, Space City USA."

  "Cherries stay in the bay, slick," she said, "Where’s your supervising 03 at?" Cozen winked at him then. Once Tig accepted that it wasn’t some hallucination, it seemed like Harry Cozen was actually goading him on, encouraging him to push his luck. What Tig was about to say would probably have him scrubbing glow-pecker latrines for a very long time. But he said it.

  "Chief Horcheese, you’ve got me in a bay shadowing F-151 and QF-111 maintenance with Raleigh. That’s a waste. I can fix 151s and 111s blindfolded. I can do a lot more than that. Way more. I can make anything run and if it runs, I can make it run faster."

  "Just today, Raleigh said you’re the shiniest cherry he’s ever had to burn in. He said if he left you alone with a QF-111, he’d find you pleasuring yourself with your pecker in the barrel of a 140 mike-mike."

  "Raleigh’s just saying that because I make him look bad. Bottom line is: I can fix the parts of that breaching ship that your crews haven’t worked before."

  Horcheese scrutinized him with those queer, milky white, artificial eyes and he suddenly wondered if she could see thermal and see his blood flow and know how hot he was right now under his skin. "Astronautics Maintenance Technical Specialist Meester," she said. "You will now take three steps back and get the fuck out. You will not bother me again."

  On the second backwards step, Harry Cozen opened his mouth. "Take him."

  "What? Mr. Cozen, I have to object to th-"

  "He’s lucky," Cozen said.

  "Really? How do you know that?" He was surprised to hear Horcheese ask the question like people being lucky was a real thing. Now, they both stared at him together, scrutinizing him, looking for god knows what and Tig wished he’d never come to Bay 3. Harry Cozen’s gaze was sharp like broken glass and Horcheese’s stare had a weight to it that made it hard to breathe. Tig tried not to visibly squirm. "He doesn’t look lucky to me," Horcheese said.

&n
bsp; "I take a brief, but very close look at everyone who comes aboard this ship," Cozen said, "where they came from, who they are, what they are. I knew what Tig Meester was right away, the minute I put my eye on him." Cozen now seemed to purposefully bore into the spot between Tig’s eyes with his stare. "The simple fact that he’s still alive says he’s lucky. As well as skill, getting Tipperary repaired and back with the convoy will require luck, Chief. So AMTS 3rd class Tig Meester goes on Audacity with you."

  "But…"

  "Is he not a fully qualified Astronautics Maintenance Technical Specialist?"

  "He’s an ought-six alright, but he’s too cherry for this. He’s just three days out of training."

  Harry Cozen said, "Everyone has a first day, Chief." And then he walked away, leaving Tig standing in front of a clearly displeased Chief.

  "What’s your COS?" she said, pinching the spot between her eyes while squinting them shut.

  "Astronautics MSys Specialist. M-17-06-03"

  "Mechanical Systems… Who’s your assigned ESys partner?"

  "I am." The voice came from over his right shoulder, and Tig whipped his head around so fast that pain shot through his neck. Parker stood two steps behind him, off on his right side about sixty degrees like she was his wingman. He had no idea how long she’d been lurking there. "I’m AMTS Meester’s ESys Specialist," she said. "I’m his assigned partner."

  "Then, you’re going with him," Horcheese said, and a fresh wave of fire shot up Tig’s body under his skin.

  "But that’s… But… no!" He could feel Parker behind him trying to burn a hole through the back of his head with her eyes. He tried not to look at her while Horcheese waited to see if he’d say anything else.