by B. V. Larson
Hansen bolted Valiant into the cleared area with Greyhound right alongside. The dust and gases buffeted us.
“Marvin,” I called, “are you going to be all right?” The yacht’s hull wasn’t nearly as thick as the battlecruiser’s.
“I have made modifications to this ship that should allow me a high probability of survival,” he replied. It shouldn’t have surprise me that Marvin would take good care of himself. I wondered what these “modifications” he had made were. The thought made me shudder. Then again, if it helped us survive, I knew I shouldn't worry about it too much. I did hope though, that he hadn’t cannibalized all the food and beer. Military rations or even worse, bulk factory foodstuffs would get old quick.
Hansen piloted us through the hole and dove toward the planet’s inner surface thousands of miles below. I could see most of the snowflakes were now behind us, forming up like a mob of preschoolers chasing a soccer ball.
Shooting stray snowflakes to clear the way, Hansen launched the first digging missile, which blasted straight for the weak spot on the surface at high speed. Everyone watched it on the display with anticipation.
The missile leaped forward, with Hansen following close behind. Our gunners targeted snowflakes to keep the nuke’s path open, for we had to brake and stay back to let our missiles do their job of drilling through, without getting caught in the blasts. We also had to worry about the millions of snowflakes following us in a huge dark mass. The timing would be very tricky.
The nuke went off with a tremendous explosion on the surface, and our sensors dimmed automatically. By that time the second and third missiles were on their way, but now we couldn’t help by shooting snowflakes. The visual and radioactive overload made our targeting too difficult. Less than a thousand miles above the surface and falling fast, nose down, we were committed. We couldn’t even see directly whether the nukes were boring their way through or not.
“Slow down as much as possible,” I told Hansen. “Fire a nuke backward to keep them off our asses if you have to, but we need to know we have a chance of making it through before we fly into that tunnel.”
“Yes, sir,” Hansen replied, grimly clutching his controls. The man had been yanking and banking for over an hour. Sweat poured from his face and down into his suit. I knew from experience that the stress of piloting was different from hard physical activity. Nanite treatments made people faster and tougher, but didn’t do much to help hold a high level of mental concentration.
I watched as he followed orders, firing a missile backward to blow up behind us, temporarily driving the mob back, destroying tens of thousands of snowflakes.
Nuke after nuke went into the hole on the surface at carefully timed intervals. Dust and gas belched out of the tunnel.
“It’s not going fast enough,” I said. “Some of the snowflakes are going to catch us. We can’t afford to use many more nukes and be sure we can still blast through this shell.”
Hansen didn’t answer. Piloting took all his concentration.
“Adrienne,” I called on the com-link. She was working below in the production chambers. “Get the factory to modify the marine tactical grenades. I need a few extra nuclear charges. Just cheap quick ones like the drones—a booster, a warhead and a fuse.”
“On it, Captain Riggs,” she replied, sending a shiver through my veins. Captain Riggs. That did have a nice ring to it, even if it was just a courtesy. Still, if something was repeated often enough people would come to believe it. The crew needed to believe in me and my ability to get them home.
“Hansen, have your controllers start launching the new cheap missiles the second they’re ready in order to keep us clear of snowflakes. Save the good ones for the drilling.” Soon I saw a measured series of explosions taking place behind us, blasting the forefront of the mob and dispersing it for a minute or two at a time.
The millions out there kept coming though, and some slipped through.
The moment I had feared finally approached. We couldn’t go forward into a tunnel full of nuclear bombs and shockwaves. We couldn’t go sideways because we had to keep launching our missiles directly down the hole, and we needed a straight line of sight for the guidance signal. We couldn’t back up because a million Lithos were on our butts, and we couldn’t burn the hundreds of stray snowflakes that were coming at us from every other direction.
“Kwon,” I said, “Get your marines out onto the hull with the heaviest beam weapons you can carry. Keep a good lookout and when a snowflake latches onto us, try to kill it or cut it away. I have no idea what they’ll do to the hull, but it can’t be good.”
“Riggs’ Pigs will get it done,” Kwon replied eagerly, and I chuckled. There weren’t many traditions in a service as young as Star Force, but everyone knew the name of my father’s marines, and the crusty old noncom had carried it here so far from home. Little things like that could be big morale boosters or could even make the difference between winning and losing against a tough enemy. Anyway, I knew this kind of close combat was what Kwon lived for.
Everyone on the bridge was fully and desperately engaged now. Hansen was piloting the ship, gunners and missile controllers directed their weapons, and I oversaw it all. I was sure the rest of the crew was busy too—or if not yet, they would be soon.
I felt the first snowflake strike us.
The jolt wasn’t big, but it was sharp—like a rock hitting a metal door. Then came two more impacts in rapid succession. The ship shook and everyone on the bridge eyed the hulls for buckling and their consoles for flashing red indicators.
The snowflakes continued to fall—about one every ten seconds. On the viewscreens, I could see marines firing their lasers by teams, burning the star-like points off the snowflakes. As Hansen kept the ship moving, every one of the living rocks that lost its grip flew off into space, but unless we also killed their repellers, they just came right back.
I focused a camera on one of the bigger ones and watched what it did. Its arms curved inward like a six-limbed starfish, and I realized that the snowflakes all had six appendages. That seemed more evidence that the Pandas had some hand in creating them. Once the arms touched the hull, they grabbed onto anything they could—struts, sensors, weapons, safety rings—and began to rip and tear like a clawed hand scrabbling at skin. Our armor was tough, but I could see that if we gave these things enough time, they would chew their way in like diamond-tipped drills.
Kwon’s huge figure leaped past my camera, leading several battlesuits up close to the nearest snowflake. It didn’t seem to have any defense or even awareness, and Kwon had obviously figured this out because he clomped over in his magnetic boots. At point-blank range he began cutting arms off the thing like a construction worker.
“Riggs, check the tank,” Hansen barked, and I looked up to see a flashing alert in yellow: an unknown contact in the holotank. Whatever it was, it was big and had risen, or launched perhaps, from a kind of mountaintop off to the side about a hundred miles.
Or rather, I realized after a closer examination, the thing was the mountaintop and all. It moved toward us as if the entire monolith had lifted off and now flew within the enclosed space of the inside-out planet. If it had been more potato-shaped, I would have called it a powered asteroid, but it had remained conical like a rounded pyramid. Zooming in, I could see alien structures; jaggedly beautiful crystals that reminded me of geological formations in places like Death Valley. These were more regular, though. Purposeful, I would say—like the structures on a military spaceship.
“Oh, shit,” I breathed. “I think that’s a real Litho ship. It’s too regular to be natural, and…” I fiddled with the sensor readings, “it’s got a massive repeller signature.”
“Fall back, fall back!” I heard Kwon yell on the general channel.
On the screen displaying the hull of the ship, I saw a marine being pulled apart by one of the snowflakes. Up close, the thing looked more like a six-armed octopus than a starfish. Its tentacles had sped up, and aft
er tossing the bits of battlesuit away, it started to scramble after another. I realized with a sick feeling that the Lithos were now aware of the marine counterattack and something had instructed them to go after my men.
Kwon and his men beamed the monster down, but more were landing all the time; and I saw we’d already lost three of our precious marines. Soon, instead of surrounding and destroying the snowflakes, the troops were huddling against the airlocks and fighting to hold the snowflakes at bay.
“How long?” I asked Hansen.
“Ninety more seconds,” he said.
“We may not have ninety more seconds. Can we move in closer to the breach?”
“I’ll try.”
Valiant descended farther, frantically defending herself with cheap nukes and overheating lasers. The marines clung to the hull holding off the enemy, but they couldn’t last forever.
“Captain Riggs,” came Marvin’s voice, “the snowflakes are receiving signals from the Litho ships. Their level of cognition is improving and they’re becoming more aggressive. Using the magnetic shield will block the signals, and I believe they’ll go back into their previous mode.”
Ships? There must be more around I hadn’t seen. More bad news. Also, if we turned on the shields, our lasers couldn’t fire effectively. Then I had an idea.
“Hansen, turn on the starboard secondary shield and have the starboard lasers stop firing. Kwon, fight your way over to the starboard side of the ship. The starfish will get stupid on that side, so clear them fast and dirty. Then we’ll switch sides.”
I don’t know if it was Hansen or one of the other bridge crew, but I saw my orders being carried out and soon the starboard side had been cleared. I was just about to tell them to reverse field when Hansen shouted: “We’re ready to enter the tunnel!”
“Kwon, get everyone back inside, now! We’re moving and it’s going to get hot out there.” Turning back to Hansen, I said, “As soon as the marines are back in, punch it. That Litho ship is almost here.”
I wasn’t sure what to call it. The ship was bigger than a battleship, but outsized and crudely formed. I recalled a saying I’d heard somewhere: “Quantity has a quality all its own.” The Lithos certainly had quantity.
“The Litho ship is firing missiles,” I heard from someone. Looking at the holotank, I saw about forty big, slow spikes like broken stalactites accelerating toward us.
The spikes were being propelled by something that created exhaust plumes. Chemical rockets? It occurred to me that if the Lithos could make guided chemical rockets, they could probably make gas-powered lasers.
“Come on, Kwon, we have to go!” I yelled.
“We’re in, sir!” he replied, and Hansen shoved the throttles forward without being told.
Valiant slewed from side to side, Hansen snarling and shouting profanity. “We’re horribly unbalanced. Tons of snowflakes are stuck on the port side.”
I could see he was right. Some had been knocked free by the acceleration, but most of them were digging in with the razor-sharp tips of their crystal claws and holding on.
“Will the explosions scrape them off?” I asked.
“I can try,” Hansen said as he entered the blast zone near the surface, completely obscured from normal view by dust and debris. We flew on radar, aiming for the tunnel mouth. As we entered it, the ship rattled and shuddered from the gases and shrapnel forced out by the nuclear explosions. It seemed as if we flew into the mouth of a massive shotgun while it was firing, trusting our armor and piloting skills to keep us from taking a big rock on the nose.
“The shockwaves are tearing a lot of them off,” Hansen said with satisfaction. “But we’re losing sensors and some of the laser barrels from the turrets.”
“We can fix those later,” I yelled over the sound of the screaming artificial winds. “Just keep us going forward. It’s our only chance to survive. We have to break through!”
The last two missiles had been launched in front of us and the gravitic reading said the bottom of the tunnel—what was really the outside of the sphere—was only a few hundred feet thick. The first nuke actually did it, breaking a hole through to the other side. Suddenly the outside pressure dropped and the noise and turbulence evaporated to almost nothing. The second missile sailed into empty space without detonating.
A cheer went up as Valiant shot through the hole, momentarily leaving Greyhound behind.
“How’re you doing, Marvin?” I asked as I tried to bring up an optical view of the yacht. All the rear-facing optics seemed to be offline and I couldn’t get a visual.
“I have survived with moderate damage to my ship. It will need repairs.”
“When we can,” I replied with relief.
Too soon, I realized we weren’t out of the woods as the Litho missiles exited the hole behind us, still accelerating. Those didn’t concern me too much, as these seemed even slower than the Panda missiles had been.
What had me worried was the massive, quarter-mile wide prow of the Litho mountain-ship. I watched as it nosed its way through the breach and followed us out into open space.
-17-
“Retarget that last missile on the Litho ship,” I ordered, referring to the drilling warhead that had flown through and not exploded. No reason to waste it.
Moments later I watched it go arcing toward the huge flying rock that followed us. The Litho behemoth was at least a mile long and shaped like an unshelled brazil nut, or maybe a rough obelisk. I didn’t expect the missile to hit—after all, the enemy had to have some kind of shielding—but I figured the attack would provide us information on their defensive capabilities.
“Light them up with our main lasers as the missile makes its final approach,” I said. “Let’s see what they counter with.”
The dot in the holotank that represented our lone missile converged with the much larger red contact. When the two had almost come together, our main laser batteries began humming and rumbling. These familiar sounds indicated the gas chambers were being filled, ignited, and recycled. At this long range, we were really taking pot shots. It wasn’t like we could miss with a target that size, but they landed with weakened impact due to the spreading of the beam at that range, reducing their effect.
Chunks of crystalline structure floated away from the hulking hull, but there was always more rock. Zooming the optics up close, I eyed their ship in detail. What looked like beam weapons of some sort crusted the side that was we could see. If they were in fact, weapons, they were huge, the size of skyscrapers jutting out like cannons. I hoped their power did not match their size.
When our lone missile came within a dozen miles of the Litho ship, we knew the huge spikes they were aiming toward us were indeed weapons. The “cannons” finally shot our lone missile. They did so almost lazily. The power of their weapons didn't seem to be much greater than our own, despite their bulk. Our sensors showed it was a cruder form of the Panda’s antiproton weapons, further supporting my theory of their origins. It took them several shots to hit and destroy the missile, so their targeting wasn’t that good either.
The best news was the big ship was slow. We were losing it, drawing further away with every passing minute. Satisfied that we were no longer in immediate danger of destruction, I ordered my bridge people to stand down and I turned my attention to our new environment.
We’d been in this star system for some time, but as we’d been encapsulated inside the Lithos spherical trap, this was the first chance we’d had to look around. As I had deduced, the hollow planet behind us was situated several AU out from a hot white star. If it had been a true planet, it would have been third in line from the star just as Earth was back home.
The abundant radiation pouring off the star wasn’t comparable, however. This system burned hotter and brighter than Sol did back home. Four more planets were detected and displayed on our screens over the next half hour, making seven altogether. The closest-in two worlds were sun-blasted and dead. The hollow world we’d just escaped from
was similar in size and surface composition to Mars—but much hotter. The next world in line, planet four, turned out to be an airless rock with small ice caps. The remaining three worlds were gas giants.
Out of all of them the only interesting planet was the sixth. It was the largest and appeared to be a beautiful green-banded world with a hydrogen-methane atmosphere. None of the planets in the system were what humans would have called life-bearing worlds though, given the existence of aliens like the Blues and the Lithos, that definition had been expanded. The gas giants also sported many moons, some of which looked to be somewhat more Earthlike and habitable by biotics.
I turned my attention away from them for the moment and swung the optics toward the central star again. The closest two planets to the center, One and Two, showed some kind of activity. Their surfaces were too hot to get any good readings from infrared, and there wasn’t much electrical power; but the radiation plotters showed the planets were crawling with…something.
Something that I suspected had taken notice of us.
“Looks like more Litho ships,” Adrienne said as red icons popped into existence in the holotank. She’d come back to the bridge and now stood watching the data I’d been perusing.
“I agree,” I said. “They’re lifting off the rocky inner planets.”
Dozens of markers had now appeared. They rose into space from the two airless worlds, all of them representing enormous ships similar to the one chasing us.
“This whole system is infested with Lithos,” Adrienne said.
I glanced at her, not sure if the quaver in her voice was indicative of fear or disgust. Maybe it was a little of both. Either way, she didn’t seem to be in a diplomatic frame of mind toward our newest alien hosts.