Orphan's Destiny

by Robert Buettner

I didn’t. “So?”

  “Other matter is being sucked in from the opposite side of the displacement at similar velocity. The collision odds of this ship hitting golf-ball-sized debris traveling through the emptiness of space are tiny. At additive speeds faster than light, in the constricted corridor this ship has to transit, the collision odds of two objects—that may have increased masses—are reversed.”

  “Boom!”

  “Big boom.”

  “But we know the Slugs do it. They beat the odds, Howard. They must have radar or something.”

  He shook his head. “Radar—all remote sensing—is based on something reflected back from, or at least something emanating out from, a detectable object. Nothing—not light, not radiation, nothing—reflects back or escapes from a black hole.”

  “But Jeeb’s readouts tell you how the Slugs do it?”

  Howard stared up at the ceiling and squinted. “Broadly speaking, yes. Ever swat a fly?”

  “Sure. I miss them sometimes. They’re quick.”

  “Insects, arachnids even more so, sense future events by means that laboratory experiments have been unable to link with sensory mechanisms tied to measurable physical phenomena.”

  “Spiders have built-in crystal balls?”

  “Precognition. Even if it’s measured in nanoseconds.”

  “This is big news?”

  “Coupled with what we learned about gravity propulsion, it could provide mankind with the key to interstellar travel. We could carry the battle to the Pseudocephalopod. Fight it at arm’s length.”

  “One small obstacle to mankind flying to the stars, Howard. In a week mankind will be history.”

  “Not if you just blow this ship to pieces.”

  “If I could blow this ship to pieces, I would have done it already!”

  Howard’s absentminded professor act amused me most of the time. Not now.

  I pointed at Brumby, who rubbed his eyes, awakened by my yelling. “Brumby doesn’t even have enough fucking explosives to sink a rowboat! I sent Jeeb patrolling because we’re out of ideas, here. In twenty minutes of downloading, what have you done that can help us blow this ship to pieces?”

  Howard paused, then tugged his lip. “Actually, nothing.”

  “Goddammit, Howard. I hijacked a spaceship. I violated every oath an officer can take. I got another spaceship blown up because of my stupidity. Forty-six people died out here in space. I did all that because you said you could figure out how to blow this ship up. But after a fucking lifetime studying fucking extraterrestrials, the best you can tell me is we’re sitting on a fucking fertilizer mountain?” I leaned against the Slug metal bulkhead, arms extended, head down, like I could push the bulkhead away with my palms, and let my anger drain away.

  Brumby cleared sleep from his throat. “Fertilizer, sir? Would that be ammonium nitrate?”

  I sighed and pointed at Howard. “That’s what he told me, Brumby.”

  Howard smacked his forehead. “Of course!”

  Forty-Six

  Howard jumped up and danced, arms waving over his head.

  Brumby blinked furiously. “Oh, baby!”

  My outburst had driven them around the bend, too.

  I turned and faced them. “What?”

  Howard grinned. “N-H-Four, N-O-Three!”

  “Brumby? In English?”

  “Ammonium nitrate makes bombs.”

  “Real bombs?”

  Howard stopped dancing. “In 1947 a ship cargo of ammonium nitrate fertilizer caught fire. The explosion and tidal wave destroyed the port of Texas City and broke windows in Galveston, ten miles away. It raised a mushroom cloud a half mile high. The ship’s anchor weighed a ton and a half. It buried itself ten feet in the ground two miles away.”

  Brumby said, “You mix it with diesel oil.”

  “Brumby, I don’t think starships carry diesel oil.”

  “It doesn’t have to be mixed. It’s stable against impact. You can hit it with a hammer, even shoot it. But heat it above its slow-decomposition point, 393 degrees Fahrenheit”—Brumby raised his arms like a symphony conductor—“and up she goes.”

  “How big a bomb can you make with this stuff?”

  “How much ammonium nitrate you got, sir? Texas City was twenty-three hundred tons.”

  Hair rose on my neck. And my forearms and everywhere else.

  “What do we have to do?”

  Brumby reached for a Thermite stick. “Thermite burns at over two thousand degrees. Stuff Thermite all through the fertilizer pile, at intervals. Light the high-temp fusing. Run like hell.”

  I rubbed my chin. “How long can the fuse be?”

  Brumby picked up the det-cord reel and peeled off lengths he measured by arm spans, like a tailor. Then he counted the Thermite sticks. “Allowing for some fuses to be longer since you gotta light them first, then run and light the others, ten minutes, tops.”

  I frowned. “It took me almost an hour to climb out of that pit.”

  Brumby pointed at Jeeb. “Let the ’bot do the work, sir. He can fly away.”

  Millions of Jeeb’s mass-market cousins had been vacuuming floors, pruning shrubs, and painting walls since the turn of the century. Jeeb could fly like an eagle, crack codes, translate every known human dialect in real time, and track every soldier in an infantry division, but his current appendages and programming were adapted for locomotion, self-maintenance, sensing, and data assimilation. I shook my head. “Jeeb can’t even light a match, Brumby. Much less dig holes and plant bombs.”

  Howard asked, “Can’t we just chuck ’em down there? Like throwing dynamite sticks?”

  Brumby shook his head. “You can drop a lit match on paper and not burn it. The heat’s gotta be confined.” He waved his hand over the few Thermite sticks. “And it’s not like we have spares to practice with.”

  Cold settled in my gut. Knowing the right thing didn’t make it easier to do it. “So we have to go down there and set this bomb off. And we won’t be able to get away.”

  We stared at one another.

  Brumby raised his hand. “I’ll do it, sir. I’m the logical one to work with the charges and det cord.”

  I shook my head. “Commanding officer’s prerogative, Brumby. I can light a match with the best of ’em.”

  Howard said, “Look, this whole thing was my idea. I can do it.”

  Brumby said, “Maybe we all stay and do it, then.”

  Howard got to his feet and paced. “No. Somebody needs to get the drive-system information back. If the bomb works, we win this battle. If we also bring back that information, humanity might win the war.”

  Brumby gathered up the Thermite sticks and stuffed them in his minipack. “Send the ’bot back.”

  I grabbed for the pack, but Brumby jerked it out of my reach. I said, “Mimi won’t know to come get just Jeeb. Besides, there’s no sense you two getting yourselves killed, too.”

  Unless I pulled rank, this had the makings of a three-way brawl for the privilege of getting onself blown to smithereens. Not to mention a philosophical debate over the nature of heroism and sacrifice.

  In the breast pocket inside my armor, Jeeb’s holo-cube link vibrated against my chest. I paused and looked over at him.

  Jeeb was facing up the blocked passage, pogo-ing up and down on all six legs and whistling audibly.

  The passage wall where he had pointed himself began to glow, a ring on the metal as big as the end of a tanker truck, first red, then orange, then white-hot.

  Forty-Seven

  I looked from the wall to Howard to Brumby. “Looks like the Slugs brought their own version of Thermite.” I pointed up the passage, past the impending Slug breach point, where Mimi would dock the V-Star. “Howard, you go. Jeeb, too. Now. Before the Slugs burn through.”

  The wall ring was white from top to bottom now. A molten lump oozed, fell to the passage deck, and sputtered.

  “Brumby, you and I’ll plant the Thermite.”

  Howard said, “Jason
—”

  I pointed at Jeeb. “Take care of him.”

  “You got it.”

  Jeeb hovered, wings extended.

  Molten metal slid down the passage-wall face in rivulets.

  Howard turned and jogged past the Slug breach point, ducking away from sparks.

  I turned to see Brumby already stepping through the open hatch into the incubation chamber. I ran after him as a gong and hiss announced the fall of the molten-edged passage-wall cutout.

  A second later, a mag-rifle round ricocheted off the bulkhead just above the open hatch I ran for.

  I dove through the hatch, rolled to my feet, and followed Brumby down the spiraling catwalk, his headlight and mine bouncing zigzag in the darkness as we ran.

  A bumblebee whirred past my ear, then another.

  I switched my optics to passive infrared and looked up. Hundreds of feet above us, purple Slug infrared searchlight beams crisscrossed, hunting for us. Rail-rifle rounds rained down, more random than aimed. The Slugs couldn’t see our visible light beams and their own lights didn’t reach far enough to pick us out, infrared. They moved slowly through a space that was as dark for them as for us. We had a three-minute start, I guessed.

  I caught up with Brumby at the wide spot on the walkway where I had found the larval Slug. He stood bent over, hands on knees, panting, the minipack of Thermite sticks and det cord slung across his armor. An entrenching tool, for digging in the charges, dangled from his belt.

  “We have to rappel down from here, Brumby.”

  He looked up, swiveling his light to catch my face. “Yes, sir.”

  I glanced back above. Up the spiral walkway, the Slugs had stopped wasting ammunition, but their light beams still swung to and fro, searching.

  “Look, Brumby. There’s maybe a dozen of them up there. We can see them with our headlights before they can see us. They can’t handle any GI one on one and our armor’s better than theirs. There’s no need for two of us to stay here and plant the charges. You fight your way out.” I held out my hand toward his minipack. “Give.”

  “Sir? Seems to me the general’s better qualified to fight Slugs and I’m better qualified to plant charges.”

  He straightened, but made no move to hand over the pack.

  I lifted the climbing rope coils over my helmet. “Brumby, this is the Army, not a debate club. Give me the pack.”

  A Slug beam swept purple across the chamber wall, just above our heads.

  Brumby shook his head, light wagging in the dark. “What’s at home for me, sir? Jail? A VA bunk? I’ll go making a difference, thank you very much.”

  The fact that Brumby’s analysis was right didn’t make it right for me to let him plant the charges. The stupid thing about leadership is that leaders have to do stupid things. “Brumby, I order you to hand over those charges.”

  Spang! A Slug round thudded into the deck a foot from us.

  Brumby hooked a thumb in his minipack strap as he looked me in the eye. “Yes, sir. You know the last thing I would do as long as I live is disobey an order.”

  And then Brumby stepped backward into thin air and fell serenely into the dark.

  Forty-Eight

  I stared into darkness, the space before me empty.

  The wet thud as Brumby fell into gelatinous Slug larva and ammonium-nitrate soup echoed across the vast chamber.

  Slug lights jerked and arrowed, closer now. Slug shots spattered the walkway.

  “Son of a bitch!” Brumby’s voice rasped over the Whispercom.

  “Brumby? You okay?”

  “Nothing broken, sir.”

  I swallowed back tears. “Brumby, what you just did—”

  “With respect, sir. It’s done. What the general needs to do now is keep the Slugs off my butt so I can get my digging done down here.”

  I turned back and headed up the walkway as the first Slug infrared beam swung across my armor. A three-round burst from my gun sent the light and its owner toppling into the pit.

  One sighted GI against a squad of blind Slugs is hardly a fair fight. Twenty minutes later, I stepped back into the passage that led back to Mimi, Howard, Jeeb, and, perhaps, home.

  “Brumby?”

  “Just dug in the last charge, sir. Should be a great finish. I’m gonna light the first fuse now. Ten minutes, sir. You take care.”

  I drew a breath and my lip quivered. In ten minutes, Brumby could have gotten back to the walkway, but he would still be a half hour from rescue. “You, too, Brumby.”

  As I came abreast of the Slugs’ breach in the passage wall, ten squirmed forward from their passage, firing. I snatched up the cut-metal wall section for a shield, knelt behind it, and gun-fought them until the last one dropped. I used up the last M-60 ammunition and left the gun behind with a pang.

  If I was going to keep the Slugs away from Brumby, the best way was to blow this passage shut with the remaining Megatex, then set up shop back at the breach point, where we had bottlenecked the Slugs before. As I ran to our breach point, I heard the charge I had set crump the passage closed. I chinned my radio to Command Net. “Mimi? Howard? Over.”

  If Howard had made it, my ride would be long gone, racing to beat the blast upon which the future of the human race depended.

  I tried squad net. That would just reach Howard, who probably didn’t have his radio on and wouldn’t know how to answer it, anyway.

  Nothing.

  A Slug wave surged at me. I dropped Slugs with M-20 flechette until I ran out. My ammo pouches were bare. Three more surged forward. I drew Ord’s .45 and hit all three, but one got off a round that whacked my thigh. But for my armor, it would have torn my leg off.

  I rounded the last bend, limping. The yellow plastic plug that sealed the six-foot-diameter breach point remained in place. That proved nothing. The docking procedure left it in place, whether Mimi had rescued Howard and Jeeb or not.

  I drew up to the breach point, panting, rested my shoulder against its pillow, and read my ’puter.

  If Brumby did his job, he and I had five minutes to live. And if Howard and Jeeb had done theirs, the human race might have forever.

  I glanced down at the deck plates and my heart skipped.

  Forty-Nine

  I knelt and picked up a square of paper a bit bigger than an old postage stamp, but nothing else.

  I smiled. The paper was a Howard Hibble nicotine-gum wrapper. He and Jeeb had made it this far, in fact had paused long enough for Howard to have a chew. If Slugs had caught up with them, there would be spent brass on the deck, if not blood or a body. Howard when cornered became a wildcat with 20-200 vision. He wouldn’t have gone down without firing a shot.

  So they had made it.

  I popped the magazine out of the pistol butt, awkwardly, since I had to do it three-fingered. Then I reached for a fresh magazine and found nothing. I tried Brumby on squad net and got nothing, which I expected, considering the interference between us.

  Debris from the earlier fighting still littered the little chamber where we had entered this ship and begun this battle. The Semtex canister we had left behind was gone. Slugs weren’t stupid. Without ammunition, the best I could do to delay any Slugs that tried to get to Brumby was barricade the passage. I dragged debris and flung up a ratty barrier.

  I slumped, and slid down the plastic plug until I sat on the deck plates, sprawled my legs and rested my head against the plug’s cushion. I turned the .45 to hold the barrel in my good hand, to tomahawk Slugs with the gun butt. Why I bothered, I didn’t know. The Slugs and I would be tiny bits of interplanetary flotsam in four minutes. Or not, in which case, with odds of one hundred thousand to one against me, I wouldn’t last long anyway.

  It had, all things considered, been a fine twenty-five years. I had known my parents, though not for so long as I would have liked. I had grown up. I had known good people. The best, in fact. I had experienced the one great love of my life, albeit for just 616 days. Oh, and, depending on which version of history one
read, I had saved the world.

  My ’puter beeped. Three minutes.

  They say contemplation of death comes in phases: denial, anger, some other stuff, then, finally, acceptance.

  A mile beneath me was Brumby, too, taking the opportunity to accept his death?

  Maybe that was the thing I had been luckiest about, compared to the other orphans I had known. It is a soldier’s destiny to die young and unexpectedly. They may die for noble causes. They may die for others’ hubris or stupidity. But it is rarely a soldier’s destiny to have the time to accept his death.

  That, I supposed, was the thing that would stand clear to me for what remained of my life.

  “—stand clear.”

  My own thoughts echoed in my helmet. In my last moments, I had begun talking to myself.

  “Jason? Come in. There’s no time to dock this thing.” Mimi squawked inside my helmet. “I’m just gonna poke the docking bridge through the plug. Stand clear, then dive in through the bridge hatch fast. ’Cause I gotta reverse out in fifteen seconds.”

  Across the chamber, my debris barrier fell.

  Slugs boiled through, so thick I couldn’t count them.

  I scrambled to my feet and spun around.

  The plug bulged inward, like a giant, yellow bubblegum bubble.

  Blam!

  The explosion as Mimi stung the docking bridge through the breach hurled the plastic plug and me, somersaulting like a crimson bowling ball, twenty feet back down the passage. Slugs scattered like tenpins.

  “Jason, I hope you heard me. ’Cause if you’re not inside that bridge when I pull out, explosive decompression will shoot you into space like a watermelon seed.”

  I kicked the plug off me like blankets on Christmas morning and scrambled to my knees.

  Slugs swarmed around me. I pounded one, pistol-whipped another, and wondered why I hadn’t been shot a dozen times already.

  Slugs ignored me as they surged around and past, headed toward Brumby and our makeshift bomb. They ignored me because I couldn’t kill their invasion. But they had figured out that Brumby could.

  The bridge hatch beckoned, twenty feet away.