Star Force 10: Outcast

by B. V. Larson

  The holotank flashed red as the Lithos began to move.

  “Here we go, people,” I said. “They’ve seen us.”

  -23-

  I watched four fresh Litho squadrons creep toward us on the display.

  “They’re leading us this time,” I said. “Just a bit. Hedging. They haven’t figured out yet that the moon is our goal.”

  “Can I pre-plot a firing solution?” Hansen asked.

  I stared at the holotank until my eyes stung, and I had to blink. Their squadrons were almost in long range of our heaviest two lasers.

  “Do you need much power for maneuvering?” I asked.

  “It’s not possible to answer that, really. Flank speed with full repeller assistance will draw down our capacitors quickly, but the plots say we’ll beat them there if we push hard now. One thing to keep in mind is that the faster we go, the harder we’ll have to brake at the end. We can’t hit those oceans unless we’re moving dead slow.”

  I wanted to pace back and forth on the deck, but in armor, I’d probably break something. “It all depends on what weapons they employ.” Speaking that thought aloud decided it for me. “Start firing at long range. We need to make them commit to their chosen tactic and reveal their plans to us.”

  “Aye, sir. Mains, fire as they range,” Hansen told the beam gunners. Soon, the big lasers thrummed bolts of energy at the nearest fighters, knocking one out right away.

  In response, the Litho fighters shot forward and began evading wildly, buying themselves precious minutes. At the longest range, the seconds or even fractions of seconds it took for sensors to see evading targets and the light of lasers to reach them meant a likely miss. The closer they got, however, the more accurate our fire would be.

  The nearest squadron took a beating. It wasn’t until we’d destroyed twenty of them that the Lithos sprung their ploy on us. The squadron split into two. A group of the ships continued to evade violently like mad hornets but still headed in our direction. The rest of the ships seemed to tear themselves apart, with one chunk of each ship accelerating at breakneck speed toward us while the other portion stopped nearly dead in space and drifted. The sensors identified these threats as a new type of faster, nuclear missile. Because they were leading us and coming in at an angle, the brainbox calculations said they would intercept us if we let them.

  “Target the missiles!” I said. “They’ll hit us first, and if they have nukes, they’ll kill us.”

  Our gunners frantically plied their lasers, the two big mains and the twelve secondaries, and then finally the dozens of point-defense turrets. Unlike in previous engagements, these missiles were not slowly approaching us from behind, providing easy targets. Instead, they were on a head-to-head collision course. They corkscrewed and pinwheeled to dodge our beams, coming closer every second.

  The group of fighters that had split apart from the missile-firing types had moved directly between us and the moon. Maybe they’d figured out that was our goal, even if they didn’t understand it. These enemy craft burst into a cloud of snowflakes, which formed a cloud between us and our goal. They were in position to cut us off, but they were now slow and avoidable.

  “Five…four…” I counted down the strikes as we knocked out incoming missiles. “Down to three...”

  They crossed into nuclear detonation range, and I knew then we were going to get hurt.

  “Two…”

  The world whited out and I was thrown into the side of the holotank. My helmet shattered the glass, but the material would heal itself eventually. In fact, the holotank would probably heal faster than my bleeding forehead. I felt the gravity shift under my feet as stabilizers and repellers strove to compensate for the turbulence of the blast. Half the control boards on the bridge flickered out.

  I shook my head and pulled myself to my feet. The holotank had gone dark, leaving me without situational awareness. I dragged myself over to another console. Sakura, my chief engineer, had been manning this station. She’d been on the bridge checking something—but whatever her mission was she was incapable of finishing it. She was sprawled out on the floor. She must not have told the nanite arms to secure her well enough. Her external monitors said she was still breathing so I didn’t fuss over her. I had no time for her now.

  The console in front of me showed we were still more or less on course for the icy moon. Valiant had taken the proximity blast on her heavily armored nose, and it looked like only one of the enemy nukes had gone off. Maybe the first had cannibalized the second, destroying the atomic warhead before it completed its detonation sequence.

  Their nuke had been relatively dirty. I noticed our radiation meters were all showing red. Anyone not nanotized would have taken a lethal dose, but all the humans aboard had been treated. I wondered about Hoon and how much he could take. Then I remembered that water was pretty good shielding material and hoped he was huddling in his cabin.

  Hansen’s bald head had a gash across it, but he was still in the game. Stoically, he wiped his eyes and fought the controls until the ship stopped pitching and yawing. Once I saw he was on the job, I stopped worrying about the piloting and checked for new threats.

  “Here come the snowflakes,” I rasped, my throat suddenly hurting. I think the helmet ring around my neck had been smashed into my larynx when I hit the holotank, but if that was my only significant injury, I was in good shape. “The nuke blast slowed us down, and it was perfectly timed to avoid killing the snowflakes.”

  “Another squadron is closing, staying in their fighter form,” Hansen said. “It’s a one-two-three punch.”

  Hansen was right. They’d set up a relatively sophisticated attack—missiles, snowflakes, and more fighters with lasers following behind. “Gunners, prepare to switch targets,” I ordered. “Knock out those flakes before they reach the hull.”

  Half our secondary turrets had been knocked out. The mains were still operating at full capacity as they were heavily armored.

  “Hansen, spin the ship around its axis,” I said. “Make it hard for them to latch on.”

  “That’s going to ruin our gunnery,” he replied but initiated the maneuver anyway.

  I guess he was starting to trust my tactical intuitions. I didn’t mind his objections as long as he followed my orders immediately.

  “We can’t shoot down more than a fraction of them before they get here,” I told him, “but they’re coming too fast to really match speeds. They’re going to get one chance each to land on us, and I want the hull to look like a mad merry-go-round, knocking them off.”

  “Kwon here,” the marine broke in. “Permission to exit the hull, sir?”

  “Not yet, Kwon,” I said. “We’re spinning. I don’t want to throw marines off into space with the snowflakes.”

  “Sir,” he said with a voice full of eagerness, “Give us a chance. We can handle a spin. We’ll lock double safety lines and fight from the airlocks if we have to, but we need to get them on the hull, before they get in.”

  “All right, Kwon,” I said, “but this time keep at least half your people in reserve for interior defense, with cutters ready. Kill any intruders and seal off any breaches. And remember, we’re coming in for a water landing at the end of this.”

  “Yes sir! We’re on our way.”

  I shook my head with a grim smile. I’d drawn an ace when fate had dealt me Kwon as my chief of marines.

  With the holotank knocked out and the ship spinning, the sensors had trouble keeping the viewscreens stable. To stave off motion sickness, I had to stop watching them. Hansen, like most pilots, didn’t seem to have a problem with it, and it looked like he was flying by instruments anyway. One crewman wasn’t so fortunate and retched onto the floor, which I knew the ship would soon absorb and recycle. Not the most pleasant of thoughts, but with nanites, everything could be reprocessed, given time.

  “Here they come,” Hansen muttered.

  “Everyone button up your suits,” I called over the all-hands channel.

&nbs
p; Impacts shuddered throughout the ship as snowflakes struck us. Our overloaded stabilizers leaked kinetic energy, and I belatedly slammed my visor shut and told the bridge restraint system to grab me with its tentacles. I brought up a systems schematic and found scattered damage, but nothing critical until one of the empty forward water tanks lost pressure. The brainbox sealed it off, but I figured I knew what it meant.

  “Kwon, we have a breach in tank three. Send a team.”

  “On it,” he replied.

  I hated just sitting here giving orders; I’d much rather go charging into the hand-to-hand fight, but right now I was the only Academy-trained officer aboard. The warrants weren’t trained to command a ship; they were specialists. Most of them were older and set in their ways. I didn’t want to be too arrogant, but I believed I was irreplaceable right now. Maybe later, if we were still lost in this seemingly endless series of rings and planets, I could promote the best noncoms or warrants to Ensign. I guess at that point I’d have to promote myself.

  Returning my full attention to the battle, I continued directing marines to hull breaches as I noted them. Some crew got caught in depressurized compartments near the hull, unable to defend themselves against the monsters before the reinforcing marines came. Snowflakes grabbed crewmen and marines alike when they could and tore them up. Our battle armor turned out to be like tinfoil to them if they got their appendages into us. While slow, their strength was inexorable. Fortunately the cutters worked well for close-in defense.

  A panicked cry came over my battlesuit comm. “Sir, sir, this is Corporal Lopez. The SMAJ is down, and we’re cut off!”

  I checked, and he was right. Sergeant Major Kwon’s icon flashed yellow on my HUD. Lopez and two others had holed up in one of the laser turrets. Two of the big twenty-foot snowflakes had flanked them and were even now ripping through the surrounding armor. In a moment, they would be squashing the marines like metal cockroaches.

  “You’ve got the watch, Hansen!” I yelled as I pounded off the bridge, tearing a chunk out of the doorway as I went barreling through in three tons of powered armor. “Valiant,” I called, “I need an opening above me to the next deck. Do it now. Then open all the doors between me and Kwon.”

  Over my head, smart metal thinned then spread apart. Objects dropped onto me as I rose on repellers. Books, a hand mirror, and even a pair of shoes fell into my upraised faceplate. I’d come through into someone’s quarters but had no time for delicacy. I charged through the open door then bolted to the starboard side of the ship where the nearest snowflake shook and made grinding sounds with every movement. I raised my cutter as I charged. I’d just begun to shove it forward in scissors mode when the crystal arm whipped around and pinned me against the bulkhead.

  How did these things see me coming? I’d yet to identify their sensory organs—if I had, I would have cut them out as an opening move.

  The cutter in my gauntlets whined as it twisted out of alignment, and then one blade disintegrated as it tore itself to bits with its own belt. I shut that off, roaring with effort as I tried to bench-press a twenty-ton monster.

  Instead of shoving it away from me, I pushed myself through the bulkhead behind me, because that was the weakest of the three involved objects—me, the Litho, and the wall. I fell awkwardly to the floor on the far side of the interior wall, then used the power of my legs to somersault backward and roll to my feet.

  I could see the Litho had lost me for the moment and the hole I’d made in the bulkhead was trying to close itself. I used my HUD to pinpoint the marines I was trying to reach and punched my way through the wall.

  We were inside the mechanical room beneath a laser turret. I could see the servomechanisms that rotated the laser, and I made sure I didn’t damage them as I pressed myself inside.

  Lopez was there as was another man. They slashed at the snowflake that was trying to tear its way into the turret to get them. They stood over a fallen, legless battlesuit that was noticeably larger than the norm.

  Legs could regrow, so I wasn’t worried about that. I widened the hole and addressed Lopez, who looked at me in surprise.

  “Corporal!” I shouted. “Help me drag Kwon out of here. We’re falling back!”

  Stepping through, I readied myself in case the Litho I’d been dueling followed me through the bulkheads.

  The corporal grabbed Kwon with me, and his comrade covered our retreat. The last man out was too slow, and the point of the monster’s crystal appendage stabbed downward into his body, spitting him like a man spearing a fish. Blood sprayed, and I saw the HUD icon wink out as his life signs faded.

  Leaping forward, Lopez carried Kwon through the hole I’d made. I’d taken a moment to take hold of Kwon’s cutter. I used it to chop off the Litho’s arm, then exited the turret. “Lopez, get Kwon to a med bay.”

  I followed them as they withdrew along the same route I’d advanced. When they were clear, I turned around and made for another knot of marines who were converging on the two big Lithos.

  My HUD said that these invaders were the last to have made it into the ship. Two of the marines lost limbs during the fight that followed, but no one died as we made a concerted assault on first one invader and then the other. As soon as I was sure the ship was clear, I withdrew to the bridge and let Gunnery Sergeant Taksin, the next marine noncom in line, take over.

  I’d just opened my faceplate to look at the holotank when Hansen said, “Braking in five seconds,” over the general address system. “Prepare for turnover.” As soon as he counted down, he rotated the ship to put the big engines in back for maximum deceleration. That brought up our final deadly problem.

  “The fighters are catching up,” I said.

  “I have to fly the ship,” said Hansen, his eyes fixed on his instruments.

  I realized he was fully occupied. “Understood,” I said, then let him be. Calling the gunnery stations, I said, “Fire at will at your nearest targets.”

  I noticed that Sakura’s body was no longer sprawled on the floor of the bridge. I switched to the engineering channel and contacted her. “Sakura, are you alive? How are you doing?”

  “I’m awake and back at my post, sir. Effecting damage control.”

  “Good,” I said with relief. “Can you perform your duties, or are you still injured?”

  “The nanites were very effective, sir.”

  I blinked and frowned. “Why were you on bridge when that strike came in?”

  There was a moment of quiet, then: “I was looking for an entry in the software installation logs.”

  Thinking about that, I almost let it pass. I had plenty of other things to worry about. But I still wasn’t sure why my Engineer hadn’t been in Engineering during a critical phase of the battle. What she’d said had brought back thoughts of how this entire fiasco had started. Could it be she’d made headway in that investigation?

  “An entry?” I asked. “Are you talking about the change that activated the ring and flung us out here into unknown hostile space?”

  “Yes. You asked me to investigate.”

  “Well, what did you find?”

  “Nothing of significance, unfortunately. The server maintaining the logs was damaged during the attack.”

  Her story was a little vague and odd, but then so was Sakura herself. “All right,” I said. “Give me a report on your damage control efforts.”

  “We’re sealing off breaches, Captain, but we won’t have a smooth hull for days. We’d better land pretty gently or we’ll burst some internal bulkheads and hatches from the impact and pressure.”

  “We’ll try. Anything you need?”

  “More people,” she said without hesitation.

  “I can get you that,” I said, then switched channels. “Gunny Taksin. Get to Sakura in engineering. Your marines are now on damage control. We’ve got about seventeen minutes before we land, and we need as many of those breaches patched as possible.”

  “Will do, sir,” he said. “Taksin out.”

&
nbsp; I contacted Adrienne next. “Adrienne, how are you and the scientists doing?”

  “We’re fine, Cody,” she returned, sounding calm. “We’d like to do something to help.”

  She’d called me Cody, I realized. I felt pleased, forgetting momentarily that using my first name in a combat zone was an inappropriate familiarity from a subordinate. Right now, I didn’t care about the rules.

  “If the crew asks for help,” I told her, “do whatever they need. If you go wandering around you’ll probably just slow them down. Unless you have an idea? I’m open to suggestions.”

  “We can run the factory directly and free up Sakura,” she said.

  I imagined them feeding broken pieces of machinery into the maw and frantically remanufacturing spare parts or constructive nanites. They could do that kind of work.

  “Good idea,” I said. “Do it. Just stick to what you know, Adrienne, and you’ll do fine.”

  “Thanks. Turnbull out.”

  It was only after she’d closed the channel that I realized I’d called her by her first name as well, and she hadn’t objected. The exchange had formed a strange little moment of intimacy in the middle of a serious situation, and my morale was strangely buoyed by the exchange.

  I didn’t care if it was against regulations. She’d called me Cody, and I felt charged with energy.

  Energy.

  Valiant shuddered again as a Litho laser tapped at us from long range, and I slapped my helmeted forehead.

  “Cease fire, all weapons switch to standby,” I said, checking my board for the control subroutine I wanted. When I found it and made sure all the lasers were silent, I powered up the shield.

  Immediately the shuddering ceased as the magnetic field absorbed and dispersed the enemy lasers.

  “We don’t have to shoot them down,” I said. “They aren’t going to catch us. All we have to do is avoid any more damage, and we’ll be home free.” I wasn’t entirely sure I was telling the truth, but what else could I say?