by Alan Black
Stone nodded in agreement. He wasn’t sure how much Tuttle guessed about Jay and Peebee’s abilities. “That is my point exactly. Jay and Peebee are classified as pets with only low-level intelligence, but Hyrocanians are classified sentient because they have technology? Frankly, I’ve seen their tech and I’m not convinced it’s theirs. They may have killed and eaten another race, then stole their technology. I mean, we’ve seen their—well I guess we could call them—scientists get excited about a kitchen blender.”
Allie said in agreement, “You’ve been showing me these controls and they are just too simple for a shuttle design this complicated. In fact, on the way up here I looked at one of their gun emplacements. It looked like the thing was added after the fact.”
Stone said as final proof the Hyrocanians may be little more than semi-intelligent thieves, “Look at these light bulbs. They are different sizes and colors. Maybe that means something to their operator, but the other control center I was in was the same jumbled mess, as if the whole thing was just cobbled together, using any bulb from anywhere whenever a light burned out. Grandpa doesn’t run the tightest of civilian ships but he would have a fit at such hodgepodge replacements. Besides, when was the last time either of you ladies actually saw a light bulb burn out? In less than a hundred and fifty years, humans went from burning animal fat to light-to-light transmitters that never fail. Not that humans should be the galactic standard for sentience, but we invent, develop, and improve. We don’t patch things together with duct tape.”
Allie laughed and pointed at the duct tape Stone used to make sure no one pushed the wrong button.
Stone said, “Okay, Allie. Sure, we use duct tape, but it’s only a temporary fix. How long would it take for a human engineer to redesign this console so we didn’t need tape?”
“Probably about five minutes to design and ten minutes to build it from scratch.”
“Well, yeah, if he had a box of scratch to make it from. He would also have each button clearly labeled and the lights would match using LEDs that would never burn out.” As he pointed at the bulbs, his arm brushed against a piece of tape, pulling it loose. Before he could put it back, one of the small piglets slid out of its chair, pressed the tape back down and raced back to settle in with its companion. It glanced up at Tuttle with big expressive eyes that seemed to say, “Yeah? So what?”
Stone looked thoughtful, glancing at Tuttle and back to Allie. “I haven’t met too many species, but I learned at the cadet academy that humans have encountered a half dozen known intelligent species. Intelligence is knowledge and sentience is feelings. By the definition of intelligence, I may have met five species, three of those not even on the list I learned at the academy.” He ticked off on his fingers, “Humans, Hyrocanians, Drascos, and those fellows.” He pointed at the little piglets.
Allie said, “That’s only four, Stone. You said five.”
“Well, I know they aren’t normally counted as an intelligent species, but I was counting marines.”
THIRTY-EIGHT
Stone’s fingers gripped the dual triggers of the massive acid sludge launcher. He glanced nervously at the long belt of ammunition curving around and over his head. He tried to relax his grip and flex his fingers. He failed; succeeding only in gripping the triggers tighter. He continued to struggle to not squeeze them into life.
The gun emplacement was barely below the shuttle’s surface. The whole design called for a single Hyrocanian to risk his life inside the machine spitting out bulbs of acid sludge that would eat through almost anything. The ammunition train was a simple belt fed chain exposing the gunner to any leakage or sludge should a bulb break or snag against any one of a hundred cobbled together twists and turns before dropping the ammo into the gun’s firing chamber.
Lieutenant Hammermill attempted to reassure him the ammunition wouldn’t rupture until after it was fired through the gun barrel and had achieved a higher velocity than generated by the gun. He pointed out the small booster it had to push the bulbs to a higher speed to activate their splatter capability. The bulb held two chemicals, separated by a small membrane. The acid was inert unless both parts were mixed. He laughed as he dropped a bulb to the deck and watched it bounce, trying to prove to Stone the ammunition was safe until fired and well away from the gunner. Still, even he admitted he’d never fired this gun and wasn’t sure how far away the bulb had to travel to avoid any splash back. He told Stone not to shoot at anything that might drip back on them, as a safety precaution. Hammer’s analysis was little comfort. Anyone could see where splashes of acid had eaten away huge chunks of the shuttle deck. The gunner’s chair had been repaired so often its original design was impossible to discern.
Stone looked over his shoulder at Dollish. The spacer didn’t look the least bit nervous at having volunteered to assist. The gun emplacement was designed for a Hyrocanian gunner having four arms. Stone needed a second set of arms to keep the ammo feeder from kinking.
Why had he been so insistent about his being nothing more than a junior ranking naval officer? As the Governor, he’d ordered Major Numos to attack and if possible destroy or at least damage the Hyrocanian mothership. He’d insisted he wasn’t qualified to lead such a large assault. He might fudge his way through running a planet, but not a shooting conflict where people were going to die.
Numos had laughed and pointed out that one of history’s greatest marine heroes was Stephen Decatur. The man was a low ranking naval officer, yet he’d led a tiny group of marines against a well defended fortification on the shores of Tripoli. The major stated in no uncertain terms how Decatur was a marine at heart even if he was navy and how marines down through the centuries counted him as one of their own. Still, the major relented and took command for the attack.
Stone realized if he’d stuck to his role as governor of Allie’s World he would now be safely ensconced in the central command center sitting next to Numos and Allie watching LCDR Butcher maneuver the shuttle from the planet to within striking distance of the Hyrocanian mothership. Allie argued she should pilot the shuttle, but her missing eye damaged her depth perception and much of this attack required a pilot’s visual skills. As a naval officer, Stone claimed his right to choose his own spot at the center point of the attack.
Numos ordered the shuttle to approach the mothership with the top point of the pyramid leading the way. This would allow three sides of the pyramid to train their weapons on the bigger ship. He’d wanted to reconfigure the pyramid into a flat attack platform, blowing the central piece away into the vacuum of space, but they hadn’t figured out how to accomplish the transformation yet.
Stone’s acid sludge gun was at the tip of shuttle’s pyramid point.
He licked his lips, the roof of his mouth was dry. He’d gone into combat before, with only his drascos by his side in a tiny shuttle, much smaller than the one they were currently aboard. He wasn’t alone this time. There were dozens of suited marines at his back led by Hammermill. They’d raided the Hyrocanian armory, but they didn’t know how most of the weapons worked, so they still didn’t have much in the way of expendables. What they did have was more than enough anger for the Hyrocanians. Swords, battle axes, and huge hammers were the order of the day, if boarding the mothership became necessary. Major Numos had dozens of unsuited injured and uninjured military personnel at each gun emplacement they had figured out how to operate and man.
Still, this wasn’t the same as before. The last time Stone had gone up against the Hyrocanians, rationally and logically he hadn’t planned to survive, though he had held onto a smidgeon of hope that someone would pull his fat from the fire. Today, even though he wasn’t alone, there wasn’t anyone coming to their rescue and he had little fat left to burn. This assault would have to succeed or they would die trying. Thousands of fellow military men and women would die if they failed. If they allowed the Hyrocanians to gain a strong foothold in the Allie’s World system, the human death toll could climb into the millions before the military could dig them out. Bric
kman’s Station and the planet below it were a short jump away through hyperspace. That station was located so deep inside human space, they weren’t guarded by the military.
Their biggest gamble in this assault was hoping the Hyrocanians were keeping all their scans fixed on the jump point to Brickman’s Station, ignoring the planet below. The jump point was the direction human warships would enter this system. They didn’t know if the jump point was mined. Maybe there was something in the control panel that would tell them, but Wyznewski’s civilian team hadn’t been able to glean that information in the short time they’d been aboard.
Stone shifted his grip again, staring at the targeting display. The Hyrocanian mothership was no longer a small dot lost among the stars, the huge spacecraft now filled his screen. They were so close he could pick out individual features on the giant egg-shaped ship. He could see the edges of a huge square docking hatch. Their shuttle was pyramid shaped, a tetrahedron. Suddenly, he had a flash from a childhood memory of playing a game involving correctly placing various shaped blocks into odd shaped holes. He’d learned as a toddler that round shapes go in round holes and wondered what kind of idiot species would design an egg-shaped ship with a square docking bay for triangular shuttles.
Numos had Butcher guide the shuttle off the planet in camouflage mode to slip up behind the mothership at what they assumed was the ship’s back end. They could tell which end was the rear because the ship was headed the other way. No one, no matter how stupid they thought the Hyrocanians were, would imagine the four-armed freaks would orbit Allie’s World in reverse.
Scanning the features on the ship, Stone noticed an open port. He couldn’t believe the port was an engine exhaust, although that was exactly what it looked like. No species could get beyond their own solar system in a spaceship using simple chemical engines requiring exhaust ports. Interstellar engines used a variety of technologies. Their captured shuttle used gravity waves for propulsion in the same manner human engines used spinning liquid metal discs to generate and direct gravity waves. The opening on the mothership had flanges and looked almost exactly like a rocket exhaust port. He couldn’t fathom what a ship this size would exhaust into space—except garbage. So much of everything had use and re-use. He couldn’t see anything exiting the exhaust port, yet it remained open.
Stone swung the barrel of the gun, trying to center it on the open port. The barrel slapped against a wall brace preventing it from swinging around far enough. He hoped when Major Numos gave the order to fire, he would be close enough to splatter acid down the open port, damaging whatever was there. Even if the open port was a garbage chute, the hole was a gap in the ship’s outer hull.
Feeling a vibration beneath his feet, brought back memories of being a midshipman on the Ol’ Toothless during live gunfire exercises. Someone was firing the large shuttle guns and he felt a surge of disappointment. It’d been an irrational hope that Numos would order him to fire first, even though such an order didn’t make sense. The shuttle crawled forward, and even at this pace, it didn’t make sense to shoot delicate bulbs of acid sludge along your own course of travel. He wouldn’t get an order to fire until they were much closer. He was ordered to aim away from the shuttle’s course of travel as a safety precaution.
He saw a glowing tracer arc across his targeting display highlighting the path of their shots, even though he couldn’t see them with the naked eye. Numos was announcing their presence to the Hyrocanians with a pair of air-to-ground missile batteries firing straight down the open port.
Stone spun his barrel back toward the center of his firing perimeter. He watched explosions and saw debris blowing outward from the open port. Whatever was at the bottom of that black pit was being chewed to bits. He was itching for his turn to fire before the Hyrocanians figured out they were under attack and retaliated.
He fixed his eyes on the outline of the huge, square hangar door just off to his right and spun the targeting system in that direction. Spinning the barrel around caused a pinch in the ammunition feed belt. Dollish jumped over to straighten out the kink. The spacer managed to unkink the chain with a long breaker bar, but the kink caused a small pinprick in a bulb and it began leaking sludge. Dollish jumped back away from the drip. They might be safe if only one chemical was leaking, but they would be splashed with acid if the second chemical dripped on it, even from another bulb.
Stone called Major Numos on his dataport. “Sir, we’ve got leaking ammo.”
“Evacuate immediately, Ensign.” Numos said. His voice was calm and sure.
“Sir, I just need to clear enough ammunition through the gun to expel the damaged bulb. Request permission to fire a short burst.”
Numos said, “Permission granted, but if the damaged ammunition leaks into your gun barrel, you get the hell out.”
“Sir—”
“No, Ensign Stone. No arguments. You clear the weapon or clear the compartment. I will not explain to the Emperor how I lost one of his favorite naval ensigns. That would be the end of my career.”
Stone could hear Butcher chuckling in the background. “The Emperor? Hell! We’d all be better off dead than having to explain to that boy’s grandfather how we got him killed.”
Numos laughed back, “Dead seems to be the most likely outcome anyway.”
Stone snorted at the two officer’s gallows humor. It wasn’t the first time he’d heard military men and woman laughing at impending death. He said, “Aye, aye, sir. Firing now.” He squeezed the trigger, centering the targeting reticule on the middle of the hangar bay doors. Squeezing the trigger, he watched the belt jerk and inch forward, throwing acid sludge bulbs into space. Inch by inch he watched the damaged bulb move toward the gun magazine, leaking chemical fluid at each jerking motion. Dollish danced out of the way with the ease of youth. Finally, the damaged bulb dropped into the magazine and raced down the barrel. He blasted another four bulbs after the damaged one, thinking they would scour the gun barrel clean.
Stone hoped the weapon was powerful enough to shoot the bulbs that far. He was surprised when the display showed his stream of bulbs impacting on the hangar door. They didn’t hit the doors with an exploding blast of flame and damage, but much like a water balloon crashing to a deck from a three story drop. The acid didn’t smoke or hiss in the vacuum of space. It looked as if the metal of the ship was shrinking away from each acid strike, pulling away and curling inward. From this distance, it looked like the metal was pitting. Puffs of air and debris blasted outward from the pits.
His shots hit along the far left edge of the hatch, several impacting the ship’s hull itself and some hitting the door. Shifting his aim and ignoring the targeting system that said he was aiming at the center of the doors, he fired a few more bulbs, inched the barrel over, fired a few more, inched the barrel over and fired a stream, hitting the hatch dead center, cratering it open.
“Um, Major Numos,” he said. “I seem to have opened a hole in the mothership. I believe I also cleared the damaged ammo.” He had solved the mystery of why the Hyrocanian’s attacked human ships by dropping acid and coming through anywhere. They weren’t choosing their spots at random, their gunners just couldn’t shoot straight enough to hit what they aimed at. Their targeting system was so far off, any gunner not worried about being killed by his own ammo, wouldn’t be able to hit where his commanders wanted, so they just jumped into the ships wherever the shots breached the hull.
Numos said, “Excellent, Ensign Stone. From here it looks like you hit a shuttle dock. Please expand your breach and try shooting into the hangar. Maybe we can damage their remaining shuttles. Lieutenant Hammermill’s ambush and our compound’s self-destruct destroyed two shuttles. You captured a third one. They have at least four shuttles, since they seem to do things by fours. Let’s take away their ability to shuttle.”
Stone continued listening to Numos, but didn’t wait to let the man finish before firing again. Squeezing the trigger, he sent a stream of bulbs dancing around the edge of the ever
-expanding hole in the hangar hatch. Two circuits expanded the hole into a gaping cavity and he centered his gun, sending a stream of bulbs splashing into the interior. He couldn’t see into the hole.
A pair of projectile tracers appeared on Stone’s display as they crisscrossed into the hole his acid had eaten away. Some of their shots impacted on debris being shredded inside the ship’s hangar deck, blowing bodies and bits of the ship into tiny parts, but most of their shots were impacting elsewhere on the mothership seeking everlasting ammunition glory against something worthwhile.
Dollish shouted, “We have another leaker. Shit! This stuff is mixing with the other stuff. Watch out, Ensign!” The spacer reared back and whacked the ammo belt with his long breaker bar. The acid splashed onto the bar, melting one end. The cook dropped the bar and ran to the far side of the compartment. He stopped and turned, planning on rushing back, whether to return to his duties or to drag Stone out of the way was unclear.
Stone waved him back, watching the dripping chemical, inert by itself, mix with the previous chemical to create the burning sludge. He edged to the side of the gunner seat, while continuing to squeeze the triggers.
Dollish shouted into his dataport. “Corporal Tuttle, help! Code Stupid! Ensign Stone is doing something stupid!”
Stone first heard Tuttle bellow from a nearby gun emplacement, then the sound of heavy suited boots slamming onto the floor at a run. He shook his head in defeat. His worry wasn’t about Tuttle, but the acid that might drip across his shoulders. He hadn’t been splashed by the first leaker and he didn’t want any of the second to get close to him.
With a grin, he pulled a strip of duct tape from his pocket. Wrapping it around the triggers, he jumped out of the way, narrowly escaping the acid splatter. The gun continued to fire. The ammo belt crawled forward inch-by-inch until it dropped ammo into the gun’s chamber hurling bulb after bulb of acid sludge into the Hyrocanian mothership. The leaking bulb splashed chemicals across the gunner’s chair, disappeared into the firing chamber, shot across the ever-shrinking space, and disappeared into the mothership.