So It Begins (Defending The Future)

by James Chambers

“That is a violation of our standing orders, sir. One man can’t oversee all the critical systems in the event of an attack. So—with all due respect—I am not going to leave Private Mendez out here on his own. He’s only been on station for—”

  “Sergeant: you’re not leaving Private Mendez. He’s leaving you.”

  Oh. Well. That made everything just lovely, then. “On whose order am I losing Mendez, sir?”

  “No one from here, Sergeant: this order actually originated off-base.”

  Mendez half-rose, eyes wide, fearful: Grim waved him down. A “mystery summons” from the rear was every soldier’s dread, since it usually signified bad news from home. But after thirty years in uniform, Grim had seen exceptions to every rule and this might be one of them: he decided to check. “Is he being called in to receive a personal communiqué from stateside?”

  “Doesn’t say, Sergeant. But the order to pull him off the line comes straight from Mars HQ. And he’s got to start back now. Otherwise he won’t make it inside before the hard weather hits.”

  Mendez raised his chin, seemed ready to resist; Grim shook his head at the newbie once, sharply. “Understood, base. Mendez is on his way. Rad Shack Four out.”

  The light that indicated a live carrier signal hadn’t winked out before Mendez launched into his protests. “But, sir—”

  “Mendez!”

  “But, Sarge, this order just isn’t right—”

  Grim was touched. “Listen, Esteban; I’ll be fine out here on my

  ow—”

  “No, no: I mean that my recall order sounds fishy—and besides, it will invalidate the Cochrane’s field test.”

  It made Grim all warm inside to realize that Mendez’s commitment to an experimental weapon was immeasurably greater than whatever (apparently weak) concern he had for the continued well-being of his senior NCO. “Ah. The Cochrane.” That flimsy piece of shit. “Listen: if they were about to invalidate their precious test, they would have told you to leave it behind for me to babysit.”

  “I don’t buy it, Sarge—and no one seems to have clued in the J.G.: by ordering me in, he’ll invalidate the current trial phase. And my recall order doesn’t make any sense, either: whether it’s a family loss notice or not, it should go through the company CO before it gets to me. And leaving you out here on your own? That’s blatantly against standing orders.” Mendez frowned. “There’s too much going wrong or weird at the same time: I’m gonna look into this as soon as I return to base.”

  “Which starts now,” added Grim, snagging and handing the Cochrane up toward him.

  Mendez, distracted, took a moment to realize what Grim was doing: then he shook his head. “No, Sarge: you keep it.”

  I’d rather have a piranha in my pants. But Grim said: “Mendez, as you pointed out, I’m not cleared to—”

  Ever-respectful Mendez interrupted, almost violently. “Sarge: keep the Cochrane. If—well, if anything happens out here, you might need it.”

  Like I need a hole in my vacc suit. “I’m better off with my old—”

  But Mendez had snatched up the weapon Grim was about to mention—an Armalite 6mm caseless. “No, Sarge: I’m taking this one. You keep the Cochrane.”

  “Mendez, you stop this nonsense. I’ve been using that Armalite since—”

  But Mendez smiled an apology as he snugged his helmet, faceplate still up, over his head. “Sarge, the Cochrane is state of the art: liquid propellant, variable munitions and velocity. That makes it extremely versatile, and great—great—in zero-gee. Do you remember everything I told you about it?”

  I hear your endless gushings in my sleep. “Some of it.”

  “Then please: do this for me.” He checked the clock. “Mother of God; I’ve gotta go. Via con Dios, Sarge.”

  “You too.”

  The airlock squealed open, and then complained once more as it was shut.

  Leaving Grim quite alone in Rad Shack Four.

  Forty-two minutes later, the external environment monitor started an almost nasal squawking. Grim pushed himself into a slow drift toward the console, looked at the radiation sensors, inspected the rem numbers on the real-time dosimeter—and blinked. As he reached over to silence the alarms, he kept his eyes on the unprecedented numbers, and settled in to watch their unprecedented rate of increase.

  —and bumped into the XM-1 Cochrane’s oddly-vented flash-suppressor, which nudged cheekily against the side of his thigh. Grim scowled at it; okay, so it was cool to look at: a sleek, unipiece design. And, although he had refused to admit it to Mendez, he had read the stats on the weapon. If the hype had any resemblance to the truth, its nannite-reinforced composites made it light and extremely rugged. But it still looked like some flimsy piece of crap out of a sci-fi B-movie of about a hundred years ago.

  But, to hear the brass tell it, looks were apparently deceiving. With the liquid propellant stored separately from the warheads, the bullpup magazine held three times the usual number of rounds. No shell casings meant it was a sealed action, without breech or bolt: the liquid propellant was simply injected into the combustion chamber, making velocity—and therefore recoil—a function of how much was injected at any one time. The same combustion chamber was also used to boost bigger munitions out of the integral, underslung launch-tube. Grim wanted to call that a ‘grenade launcher’ but every time he did, Mendez corrected him: apparently this miracle weapon was capable of launching a variety of other, rather exotic submunitions. The Cochrane could probably turn water into wine, too, given half a chance. Grim sneered down at it: yeah, you look fancy, and the specs look impressive, but you just won’t cut it as a sturdy tool. You look like—and probably are—a kid’s toy, not a real gun: all bells and whistles, but no balls for business.

  The short-range radar emitted a strangled squawk: a partial contact, just at the edge the system’s threshold. It was probably a marginal object that, tumbling, had presented a momentarily bigger cross-section for the radar to bounce off. But the system squawked again, and this time Grim saw what had tweaked it: a faint signature, range established at seven kilometers—no, six. Then the range indicator plummeted to three, jumped up to ten, and finally zeroed out for a recalibration as the whole screen surged brightly for a moment. As it faded back into its normal contrast ratios, Grim looked up at the external weather sensors: a corresponding surge in charged particles was dying down. Which suggested that the contact was probably just an anomaly of how the storm was interacting with the trash, since the blip had appeared to be closing at exactly the same rate as today’s unusually dense sampling of debris.

  The monitor surged again, but this time, remained bright: the sensor’s overload alarm system chirped and an orange warning light glowed on the board. The automatic protection software had activated: in ten seconds, unless overridden, it would yank back the combined sensor/comm mast, sheathing it in a hardened faraday cage until it was safe to peek outside again. Grim watched the countdown ticker erode toward zero—but he reached over quickly when it hit “4” and turned the system off. The program hooted at him, asked him—in bright red block letters—“Do you wish to engage safety override?”

  Did he? Really? Grim rubbed his stubbly chin. Well, of course he didn’t: if he kept the mast extended, there was a reasonable chance that its sensitive electronics would fry, and an equal (indeed, directly proportional) chance that the brass would fry him. That—along with the system SOPs and his situationally-specific standing orders—should have decided the matter. But this situation was not the one envisioned by those standard procedures and standing orders. And that meant that Grim’s capacity to follow them was about to “fluctuate”: that was the term he had used during his first disciplinary hearing twenty-eight years ago, and had been using ever since. And he’d probably get busted a stripe for his trouble. And what for? Was there really—really—any danger? Even if a basketball-sized package of plastique slipped past his metal-obsessed sensors, and headed toward the Big Secret on Eureka, what harm could it do? It
would have to be invisible to radar, which meant no metal, which meant no computer, which meant no terminal guidance: it was—literally and figuratively—a shot in the dark. And with all the EMP activity, there’d be no way to command-detonate such a package, unless some mad scientist had come up with a strange new piezo-electric initiator, or maybe a switch activated by timed biological decay—

  Like iron filings suddenly exposed to a magnet, Grim’s thoughts swiftly collected around the term “biological,” just as the short-range radar let loose a full squawk, and showed the same junk-blip still approaching—but on a slightly altered vector. Grim added the terms and concepts together: Biological. Change of vector. No reliable electric systems.

  God damn, it was a live attack; in the midst of this solar typhoon, there were living, breathing saboteurs inbound—

  Grim reached out and tapped the dynamic button that would open the link back to base. Which produced no results. He tapped it again, then harder, then hammered at it. Nothing. He turned to the hardwired auxiliary console to his immediate right, flipped the toggle for the command line: a sudden wall of cat-scratch static prompted him to shut off the volume.

  So: thanks to the weather, communications were out. Which meant he had no way to call for help, or send a warning, and, reciprocally, base would no longer be receiving automated status updates from the rad shacks and therefore would not check to discover why he had failed to retract his sensor/comm mast. He was alone—and only he had the knowledge, and therefore the opportunity, to act.

  Grim leaned back slowly, checked the range: given the one meter/second closure rate, he had about ten minutes to consider the problem, decide on a course of action, and carry it out-—whatever it happened to be.

  Grim turned to his tried-and-true first maxim of planning: know thy enemy—and had to admit that he knew next to nothing about the approaching attackers. So, using what little data he had, could he induce or deduce any tactical intel from it?

  First, given the detection range of Eureka’s main arrays, and the attackers’ rate of approach, they had not been inside any hull—shielded or not—for at least a week. That meant that the attackers had floated in with the junk, using it as a moving smoke screen. And that, in turn, meant that this was a suicide mission: given the wholebody rem dosage the attackers had accrued during that extended approach, this solar storm guaranteed that their death from radiation sickness would be as certain as it would be swift.

  As peculiar as that conclusion seemed, Grim discovered that it was consistent with the pattern of careful and meticulous planning evinced by his opponents. The timing of the attack indicated that it was designed to take advantage of the rising solar activity cycle. Indeed, it had probably been held in readiness for weeks, even months, until solar meteorology indicated the first, turbulent signs of an imminent coronal mass ejection. In the meantime, Eureka’s security forces had been lulled into a slow and inevitable complacency regarding the camouflaging trash flow, ultimately seeing it as just another part of the environment. And in retrospect, Priestley’s absence, and now Mendez’s, had probably been achieved by hacking, bribery, or both.

  Given that level of commitment and preparation, it was probable that the attackers’ equipment was purpose-built for this mission, meaning that from weapons to vacc suits, it was almost entirely non-metallic. However, complete thermal equalization and diffusion was more difficult to achieve in space, and such systems would be further impaired if they had to avoid using any metal components.

  Which meant that the attackers’ thermals that might still be visible: Grim quickly snapped over to the slightly more robust thermal sensors. And there, mixed in with the slowly oncoming stream of trash, was a diffuse, almost invisible thermal bloom above the background, pointing inward like a finger.

  Pointing straight at Rad Shack Four. Grim rechecked, confirmed the vector of approach: although their target was unquestionably the Big Secret being built on Eureka, they were heading straight at him. Why?

  The answer followed the question without delay: because the saboteurs surely knew about the rad shacks, and therefore knew that they needed to eliminate whichever one sat astride or closest to their point of penetration as they crossed through Eureka’s spherical security perimeter. Which meant that Rad Shack Four wasn’t a haven anymore: it was a coffin. Oh, it still protected Grim from the rads, but that wasn’t the biggest danger, now: thinking like the attackers, he somberly concluded that he’d opt to take out the rad shack with something quick and decisive. A high-explosive, armor-piercing missile would be the weapon of choice: it would easily penetrate the shack’s shielding and would bust it open like a pickaxe smashing through the shell of an unsuspecting mollusk.

  Grim returned from his thoughts, facing down into the sensor screen over which he was perched. He placed both of his hands on its wildly-flickering surface: despite the pronounced veins and sturdy wrists, his lightly pebbled and very dark brown skin looked suddenly and incongruously fragile and vulnerable. And Grim felt the accuracy of that perception rise up with the thought: “I’ve got no choice: I’ve got to go out there, too.”

  Which seemed like suicide, on the one hand, because in this storm, EVA ops was the radiological equivalent of going outdoors during a hailstorm of razor blades. But what could he achieve by staying inside? Unable to fight back from within the EMP-crippled rad shack, he could only wait to die.

  Grim rose carefully from the seat, grabbed his helmet, reached for his Armalite—and closed his hand on empty air. Oh. Right. Slowly, he turned to look at the Cochrane. Okay, then: you and me, bitch. And—for your sake—you’d better perform to spec, or you’re going to get very lost in deep space.

  He reached down, picked up the weapon and moved toward the airlock, slaving the rad shack’s shaky sensor feed into his HUD relays as he went.

  Exiting the airlock, Grim controlled the first, transient sense of nausea that always surged up when he went EVA: no up, no down, and the black forever all around him. The stars only made the distance and solitude more absolute. Why so many people—from the earliest astronauts to the current day—were thrilled by “space-walks” was beyond him.

  The distant sun—a small, painfully incandescent nickel—peeked into his helmet, rising up over the lower rim of the faceplate as he manually dogged the hatch and resteadied himself. He had a full MMU on his back, but the less activity and motion he engaged in, the better. Right now, surprise was his only sure advantage, so high-energy maneuvers of any kind were out of the question.

  Using the external handholds, he towed himself back down into the shadow, and then around behind the rad shack, placing its mass between himself and the approach vector of the saboteurs. Once there, he checked the rad shack’s sensor feed in his helmet: not good. Whether it was the sensors failing or the EMP interference, the data skipped sideways, winked out, came back, fizzled, cohered, leaned, then straightened and remained momentarily, quaveringly, readable—before it commenced its weird free-form dance all over again. But in that brief moment of clarity, Grim had seen the oncoming blip—except that it was larger now, shaped like a lumpy, mostly collapsed quatrefoil. There were four of them? Maybe it was just another sensor glitch—

  But it probably wasn’t, because it made perfect sense. It was just the right number: one heavy weapons expert, a backup expert who was probably carrying the missiles they planned to use on the Big Secret, and then two heavies. The heavies’ specialty would be in EVA weaponplay—which, given the way that conventional firearm recoil sent you tumbling ass-over-ankles in zero-gee, was not a common or easily acquired skill. The heavies would provide cover for the other two, distract and/or neutralize responding defense forces, maintain situational awareness. The guys with the missiles would be monomaniacally focused on their equipment and their target.

  In another minute they would reach the 2000-meter mark, which is where Grim estimated they might consider eliminating the rad shack. Meaning it was time to get a little distance from it. Grim placed bot
h feet against the hull of the rad shack. He reached down to the handhold on either side of him, achieving a position akin to being frozen in the “squat” phase of a squat thrust. Then he simultaneously released the hand holds and pushed as hard as he could with his legs.

  As he shot quickly away from the rad shack, he checked the HUD to see if there was any reaction from the blips; no new course changes were evident—and then the whole display went black. Great. Either the signal was lost or the system was fried; either way, it was all on him, now.

  Which meant it was time to confront the Cochrane and its insanely diverse ammo bag. Clips of penetrators, expanders, non-lethals—those were pretty self-explanatory. Pulling up the top flap on the segmented grenade pouch, Grim laid a finger on an HE round, considered its use as a flare, rejected the tactic: Eureka’s own sensors would be pulled in, but the explosion would surely alert the attackers to his presence. Instead, Grim selected two range-detonated flechette rounds, loaded them, and reasoned he should give the targeting system a quick check before trusting his life to it. He turned it on, and raised the integrated sighting scope to his right eye—

  And held his breath. Whatever computer was silently working in the recesses of the Cochrane was apparently laboring overtime: multiple moving objects were quickly located optically, ranged and vector assessed by a laser ping, and a guidon indicated how to reposition the gun to acquire the target. Damned impressive—but still just a toy, Grim reminded himself.

  He revised that opinion when the Cochrane flashed a new guidon into existence in what seemed like open space and indicated a cluster of four objects—which Grim still couldn’t see—closing at .97 meters per second at 2100 meters range. Sweet Jesus: unprompted, the Cochrane had found the attack force. Well, well, Grim thought, smiling at the gun, you’ve earned your continued existence—bitch.

  The targeting display flickered, then reasserted: the electromagnetic soup was already getting to the Cochrane’s electronics. Grim switched off the power, and brought the scope back up to his eye.