Battle On The Marathon

by John Thornton

  “Only inside! We have Jellies approaching from along the outer hull.”

  The display showed that Q-93 was pulling away from Pod 4 and had nearly cleared that modified hanger bay. The Jellies were still on an interception course, and I had nothing in the Raven to fight with. I pounded by fist down on the seat of the chair, for all the good that would do.

  I increased the thrusters and the speed of our escape accelerated. I had poor maneuverability at best, but the Raven was towing Q-93 away from that habitat. However, the Jellies were gaining, as seen on the displays.

  “Engaging the enemy!” Wanagi yelled out.

  “How?” I asked.

  “I can get some shots in as well!” Dietermeyer called.

  “With what?”

  “My energy pistol!” Dietermeyer yelled out. “Plenty of range. Does it matter if a miss hits the Marathon now?”

  “Use the bullpups!” Wanagi barked. “Ballistics will play havoc with the Jellie carapaces.”

  I recalled how Mister Fisher had taught us about using the MDF-14 in vacuum. The bullets would smack hard, but not enough to puncture the carapaces. At first I was about to correct Wanagi, but thinking a bit more on that, I agreed that the bullpup’s bullets might very well drastically alter the approaching Jellie’s flight, just through the blunt impacts and transferred forces.

  “MC223, give me any visuals you can on what is happening with Dietermeyer and Wanagi!”

  A split screen showed feeds from both of their optics. That point-of-view perspective allowed me to see what they were seeing. The muzzles of each one’s bullpups were firing, and the purple glows in the distance were reacting. The bullets were making impacts, and slowing down the approach of the Jellies.

  A white glob emerged from one of the nearest Jellies. It had fired its icy detonation weapon.

  “Hold on!” I commanded, as I kicked on the Raven’s main engines. Being clamped in a makeshift manner onto the repository, the shuttle pulled unevenly. The flightpath I had projected did not materialize, but was rather a slow arc to my left. I watched all the screens and displays, and saw that the white detonation struck a rear part of the repository, perhaps twenty meters away from Wanagi.

  “Thank you, Sergeant! Great flying!” she enthused.

  I never told her it was all an accidental movement, but was thankful she was spared. Our speed was increasing, and I saw the Jellies were not matching our velocity. I was busy using the thrusters to compensate for the uneven pull the main engines caused. There must have been some slack or slippage in the hawsers or something because I could not figure out why the repository was not following a smooth and direct path. Maybe some of the debris was causing some impacts.

  “MC223, plot me a course back to the Jellie ship.”

  “Yes, Sergeant Kalju. Flight characteristics are erratic and the trajectory can only be plotted in general terms. The coupling between the Raven and Q-93 is unstable.”

  “Unstable is an understatement. It is rickety, wobbly, shaky, and wonky! But we have the repository! Connect me to Major Gonzales!”

  “This is Major Gonzales, I see you are bringing the bacon home.”

  “I wish it were bacon, that makes my mouth water,” Dietermeyer interjected. “Recycled food is getting old.”

  “I have a whole lot, maybe months’ worth of stored food,” Lawrence added. “We can have a feast.”

  “I was not aware this was an open link,” Major Gonzales said, but I could hear the smile in her voice. “Sergeant, switch over to a private channel.”

  “Yes, ma’am. Before I talk to the Major, Wanagi, can you get inside here via Dietermeyer’s airlock?”

  “Already heading that way, Sergeant. Thank you again for your flying us out of there.”

  “Major Gonzales, this is Kalju, on a private channel.”

  “Sergeant, well done getting that repository. Samuels and I have been talking to the prisoners here. I think we can stretch the Jellie ship to encompass that entire repository, but I have had to use extreme measures to figure out how to do that. Keep this between us for now. As to the Marathon, the Jellies seem to be swarming on it into Eagles which they are flooding with all the remaining liquids. I am waiting for you and the repository to get here, but as soon as we get those sleepers secured, I am ending all this.”

  I knew what she meant, but swallowed and gulped a few times before I could answer. She did not press me. Finally, I said, “That will mean losing IAM Lenore, as well as all the stored information on the Marathon.”

  “That is correct. Right now, IAM Lenore is functioning at 147% of operational capacity to keep the MC network functioning while you are in flight, as well as preparing the solar mimicry reactors for our solution. I am not sure if Lenore can keep up that pace much longer. The few remaining security and military automacubes have surrounded Lenore’s central memory core and are defending it against Jellie attack. Those defenses are failing.”

  “So, no one else is alive on the Marathon? Nobody, anywhere, no one?”

  “That is what Lenore says. I am sorry to not get you the answers you wanted, and needed,” Major Gonzales replied.

  “Thank you. I think we can merge with the Jellie ship soon. Is that the right term? Merge? Not really docking, is it?”

  “We will call it merging. Bring those 10,000 people home, and then we will talk more.”

  I followed the flight pattern, and when we reached the Jellie ship, I saw that it was glowing a steady and bright purple. I could see no more gaping holes in its sides. Stopping the repository took most of the remaining main engine’s fuel. Thrusters maneuvered it close to the side.

  “Major Gonzales, what do I do now?” I asked.

  “Hold steady at that spot. We will be extending the Jellie ship momentarily.”

  “Safe voyage, humans!” IAM Lenore’s voice came through my helmet’s speakers.

  I watched on the displays as the Jellie ship quivered and glowed more brightly. It then seemed to snap, or lurch, or jump. At that exact moment, a nearly blinding flash from that horrible purple light struck my eyes. It was just a mere meter in front of me, and cast purplish shadows all about me. I was so startled I sneezed, and globes of snot ran down my face. I instinctively reached up, but then caught myself as the combat armor’s interior recycling system wicked away the mucus to be divided into liquids and organics which I would later be offered as my suits nourishments of water and food.

  I tried to focus, but the light was painful. The cockpit displays and screens were black, and only after my optics adjusted several different times could I make out exactly what was happening. The readings I got from the popup display inside my helmet made no sense.

  My eyes were watering and I blinked rapidly trying to clear them and make sense of my surroundings. The popup displays in my helmet were unreadable due to the afterimages in my eyes. Everything was blurry. The pilot’s seat was beneath me, but the roof of that shuttle was gone. The entire top of the Raven had been sheered away at a bizarre angle. The purple sidewall of the Jellie ship was just a meter or so over my head. Like slicing a cheese with a sharp knife, the exterior of the Jellie ship had cut right through the permalloy of the Raven, leaving me sitting in the lower half of a ruined shuttle. I could reach out and tap the wall of the Jellie ship in all its ugly, glowing glory. Nothing in the shuttle was functioning, but there I sat, strapped into the seat.

  “Kalju! Kalju?” Major Gonzales yelled out.

  “Yikes! What in all the universe just happened? Is the repository safe?” I mumbled out. I wanted so badly to rub my eyes, but the armor prevented that. Blinking was all I could do.

  Major Gonzales swore a long while, using many graphic and anatomically impossible phrases. That surprised me almost as much as what the Jellie ship did. Then she coherently said, “Sorry! There was a miscalculation regarding shape and size. My connections show your combat armor is intact, mercifully. Can you get out of that wreck and down to the repository? Oh, and yes, the repository is safe. I
t was fully encompassed. The shuttle was not fully appraised and estimated by the alien sensors here. That mistake will not happen again.”

  “Because we do not have any other shuttles,” I mumbled, as I tried to get the restraints unhooked.

  “There is that, too. We engulfed the repository with room to spare, but this crazy alien tech, just did not register the shuttle as part of the repository. Get out of there and down into the repository,” Major Gonzales’ voice was getting back to her typical calm and confident self. No more swearing.

  “What about IAM Lenore? Are we blocked because of the Jellie ship’s hull?”

  “No.”

  “What then?” A creeping realization was coming to me, but I did not want to accept it.

  I looked around, the afterimages were fading, but my eyes smarted. I set the filters on my optics to block all the purple glow of the Jellie materials. That shifted my situational perception to more shades of grays, yellows, and sepia tones, but those colors did not make my eyes hurt. The hatch of the shuttle was only two-thirds in existence, but I moved over to that. I was not sure what I expected to find outside of that hatch, be it the repository or vacuum, I knew my combat armor would protect me. The hatch would not move, so I used the vibration saws built into my gloves to sever its hinges. The gaskets and seals then slipped apart, and that partial hatch door tumbled sideways and down.

  “I have gravity in here,” I said, not knowing what else to report. I had been too stunned to recognize that I was no longer in zero gravity. “Is it in alignment for the repository?”

  “Kalju, just work your way to that repository’s airlock,” Major Gonzales replied. “Dietermeyer is standing there. Look for his infrared light. Shift your optics to that spectrum.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Going to infrared altered my perceptions, again, but I knew which direction to move. The repository looked and felt like the permalloy it was, but somewhat overhead and to the side of me, at a weird angle was that wall of the Jellie ship. The intervening space was a sort-of limbo area between what had been the exterior of the repository and what was now the Jellie ship’s new exterior wall. My helmet light reflected back from the Jellie wall, but with the optical filters on, I was unaware of what color everything actually was.

  “Major? What have you done with the Marathon?” I asked. “I am not reading anything at all from IAM Lenore. I got a message, but it was odd. What is going on?”

  “I took care of it, Kalju. Just get yourself inside. Do I need to send Dietermeyer out to get you?” There was no sarcasm in her words, but there was gentle concern.

  “No ma’am. I am making it. I can do this.”

  Climbing hand over hand, and finding footholds, I made it to the spot where Dietermeyer was standing. He looked like he was standing on the sidewall at about a thirty-degree angle. It was strange.

  “Sergeant, watch out for the gravity gradient. Weird stuff in this Jellie ship,” Dietermeyer called out.

  I slipped through the alteration of gravity vectors, what he had called a gravity gradient, and it gave me the memory of the GAGS and somehow of Mister Fisher and how he had moved from one level to another of the Raven Academy. Thinking of that place made me turn around and look at the shuttle I had named Raven. It was a wreck, and I was shocked I had survived being inside that. A large section of the front and roof of that shuttle was just gone, while the Jellie wall abutted against it.

  Dietermeyer and I used the airlock and entered the repository. While it was cycling, I realized that the Jellie ship’s gravity was oriented in alignment with that repository. Wanagi and Lawrence were waiting inside the repository.

  “Major Gonzales? What happened to the Marathon?” I asked again.

  “I will make an announcement in a few minutes,” Major Gonzales replied. “Sergeant Kalju, will you please make sure you are not injured, and then meet me at my location. Samuels, stay with me. Everyone else, move toward the repository. Start inventorying all our supplies, and triple check the mechanical status of the repository.”

  The airlock opened to a part of the repository which was about fifteen meters tall and roughly one hundred meters long. I switched my optics back to normal view and saw that the Marathon’s lighting was working in the repository. I was so glad to see normal light. I noted crates and crates of supplies piled neatly along one side of the aisle. As I walked down that aisle I glanced at the rows and rows and stacks and stacks of suspended animation cocoons. And that was only the one aisle of Q-93. Each cocoon held one sleeper, and I knew I had helped to save them all. The rectangular end caps were lit in a soft amber glow. That indicated they were functioning within standard operating parameters. I was too tired, and worried to consider running diagnostics beyond my cursory visual inspection. I hurried down that aisle, and found where the repository’s main doors had been. They were now sealed.

  “Major Gonzales, how do I get to you? Is it safe to open the main doors? The Jellie ship was in vacuum.”

  “Yes. We have used the compressed atmosphere we brought along to re-pressurize the Jellie ship’s epicenter ring—we will need to redefine better names for our new ship to avoid confusion—but the repository is latched onto that, so you can come in. The main doors, and both side entrances are safe to operate as regular pressure doors. The left-hand door and that far-left aisle is filled with Lawrence’s handiwork. He found crates and crates of food supplies, and other things. I think he grabbed everything that he could carry, and some things that he cut loose from the old habitat. Anyway, the Jellie ship does not have bulkheads, as we think of them. Just proceed into the main ring, and you should find Samuels and me. We are at the very center, where the translator is located.”

  “Major, what did you do?” I asked.

  “Sergeant, report as ordered, and we will do some brainstorming,” Major Gonzales stated firmly through a private channel.

  As I passed out of the repository, I again felt the alienness of the Jellie ship. The walls were not permalloy, but were irregular and not smooth. My mind could not fathom how those walls could shift and move like they did. That deep inside the Jellie ship the structure was no longer glowing brilliantly, but was a dull but luminescent purple. I really hate purple now. I moved along, and several other soldiers were walking past me heading for the repository. They gave me gestures of appreciation, and camaraderie, but I still wanted answers. IAM Lenore was not showing up on any of my equipment, even though the other three AIs were. I briefly considered consulting one of the MC AIs, but then thought I would just talk to the Major.

  Doorways, or thresholds were more oblongs, or ovals than rectangles like on the Marathon. I passed into that place which surrounded where the last of the Jellies had been trapped in that inner chamber. The equipment which we had set up to speak with them had been modified and enhanced. A workbench had been installed against the wall, as well as a chair which must have been brought from the repository. Samuels was seated at the workbench, busy at some kind of efforts with the conservation slate which was the main part of the translator. Several other holes had been punched in the wall, and additional cables led from the equipment up and into those holes in the wall. Permalloy patching had been hastily done around those cables. That was not Samuel’s usual precision style, and I wondered about how emergent that work had been.

  “Sergeant Kalju, you have asked about the Marathon. Before I tell the rest of the Bilokos—I should now call them our flight crew—I wanted to tell you personally,” Major Gonzales said. Then she turned to Samuels. “The air in here is fit to breath, right?”

  “Yes, Major. Adequate pressure, gas blend, and temperature, for us. It will stink. With the equipment in the repository, as well as all the compressed air we released, us gas-breathers will be fine in here. It will take many days to re-pressurize the rest of this Jellie boat, if we want to. Yes, ma’am, there will be a stench, but I am setting up the filters in Q-93 to remove that smell as well. It will take time for it to all be re-filtered. Pinnate,
Kelly, and Boro did a good job moving the dead Jellies out before we expanded the perimeter. I think we got rid of most of the dead Jellies, but body parts might be littered about. They do stink!”

  “That is part of what I need to tell Kalju about as well,” Major Gonzales pulled her helmet off, shutting down the communication links. She also unhooked her gloves and hooked them onto her combat armor. Her face was set. She shook out her hair, and yawned. “Open up Sergeant, you too Samuels.”

  I removed my helmet, as did Samuels. It felt like an eternity since I had seen someone face-to-face without the optics in the way. Lacey, my sister, came to mind. A few tears dribbled down my cheeks.

  Major Gonzales walked over and touched my face with her hand. “You asked about the Marathon, and I will tell the crew most of what we will talk about here. Just before Samuels and I got the Jellie ship’s perimeter hull to expand, which again should have not cut through your shuttle—sorry about that—I sent the final orders to IAM Lenore. Overloading the remaining solar mimicry reactors, along with opening all the gangways allowed for complete….”