War of Alien Aggression 2 Kamikaze

by A. D. Bloom

  The third bandit jinked and popped to 10 o'clock low. #3 whirled around to blast itself holes in the tightening net, but the holes it made closed up. The first of the fizzlers detonated at 200 meters and didn't phase it. While it bathed in the blue light, it blasted two other incoming torps. Another fizzler winked blue close by, and for just a moment, the alien drone flew perfectly straight like it was stunned and became an easy target. Three more blue flares burned bright around it under 50 meters away and the radiation must have caused some kind of a thruster error then, because the red bandit fired them in opposition so it spun out of control and spiraled down towards the atmo. It looked like a wounded bird falling out of the sky. Seconds later, it seemed to come round and pull up and fly straight again, but then the torpedoes came and lit up blue around it five times fast, frying it with five more heavy doses of X-rays and fast neutrons. It went out of control and fired its particle stream, waving it as it pitched and flipped and twisted in its death throes. After the next two detonations, its engines and guns went dark. While the final, seven fizzlers cooked it, the red bandit didn't even twitch.

  "Gold Coast to Hardway. We've got that souvenir you wanted." It took twenty-two fizzlers detonated practically against its hull, but they had a red bandit and they had it intact just like Harry Cozen wanted.

  They claimed the prize before the gas giant's gravity could. Two minutes after the bandit was secure, Hardway arrived right on schedule. She took her junks into her bays as nervous redsuits jetted out from the carrier inside knuckledragger mechs. Two of them flew out to the dead bandit. Then, as if it was just another longboat with a bum engine, they gripped the 10-meter alien craft in their claws and portaged it into one of the few remaining bays near the ship's already wrecked bow.

  Sixty seconds after the last launch bay door closed, Hardway broke orbit. She accelerated hard and blasted away from the planet, keeping the gas giant between her and the blockade gun. They'd turn around, of course, but not until they'd reached the outer system. Harry Cozen had plans to hurl the carrier at the blockade gun and he needed plenty of room to achieve ramming speed.

  Chapter Eight

  By the time Ram passed through the open airlock doors, most of the junks had already spilled their crews into the passageways. If there had been pressurized atmo to carry their cheers, then the steel bulkheads would have rung, vibrated and sung with them. Since there was only vacuum, the sound of victory roared through transducers in Ram's helmet. It was just one red bandit they'd captured, but taking one of them like this was like counting coup.

  The crowd of pilots and gunners and redsuits on deck 3 moved like a single beast, like a river of laughing victory. As Ram and Dana and Biko and Lapuis got swept up and carried down the passageway towards the tube, Ram saw into Biko's helmet where concern twisted his face. His mind was already on the next battle.

  "Reconfigure the junks for defensive gunnery!" Biko barked into the cheering on comms. He gave orders to Chief Lee next, but there was no reply. Then he shouted over local suit comms at the redsuits he saw around around him. Biko was acting like the Air Group Commander even if he said he didn't want the job.

  The knuckledragger mechs set the red bandit down in the most forward bay, in #16. The rest of the starboard side bays on that module were already damaged. During the pounding Hardway had taken over the last week of hell, the bulkheads and doors had been blasted and torn by near-miss detonations. They'd been slammed with hyper-velocity plasma from the vaporized casings of alien fusion warheads. Most of the doors were already unserviceable, locked open. If that red bandit they brought home suddenly awoke and fired its engines and raked its particle stream across the bays, it wouldn't matter. If, god forbid, its alien reactor detonated like a warhead, then since it happened in the most forward bay, the damage to Hardway would be bad, but it wouldn't derail the plan to ram the blockade gun.

  The most pressing task was making sure it was really dead. Hardway couldn't afford to wait to tear down the alien drone. It just wasn't safe to leave it whole. For all they knew, it was just playing dead.

  Given the chance of something going wrong, Cozen ordered the crew off that deck of the forward launch bay module entirely. Everyone wanted a close up and personal look at one of the alien machines, but Harry Cozen insisted they only risk the people they had to. Chief Horcheese and her redsuits would be the ones to crack the drone open and make sure it never woke up.

  Ram watched them on camera from a maintenance bay in the midships module, where the projectors had been set up to mirror what was happening in bay 16 with ghostly, three-dimensional images. Full scale projections of the ten-meter-long red bandit and the crewmen made it seem as if he were standing there with them, but they were all translucent, like phantoms, like they were already dead.

  The captured alien craft lay on its side like a fallen cactus, its main spikes shooting off in eight directions and smaller ones pointing off in twice again as many. What looked like the vectored exhaust vents of its maneuvering jets were there on the ends of those spikes just like he'd thought. Little ports very much like them dotted the sub-spikes. The red bandit's single, small-bore particle stream accelerator was a stubby cannon not unlike a smaller version of what he'd seen on their warships. It was set midships on the spiny, outer hull.

  The markings didn't show up properly in bright light. Ram took them for letters or whole words made of sharp-edged marks like cuneiform, but scripted with a fluidity by an alien hand and set inside thin-walled, triangular boxes, sometime paired to join sections of 'text'. The lines of the handwritten script went outside the boxes almost every time as if it was expected.

  "Alright," Chief Horcheese said. "Somebody find me a way into this thing. I can see seams and hull plates that probably open, but I've got no way to get inside. Find me a way, people." Evelyn Horcheese had a rare gift. She always made people want to show her their best. Her redsuits began to poke and prod and scan that thing like there was a sack of money inside it.

  The enemy craft had already been bathed in enough x-rays and fast neutrons that she gave the okay to use T-band and active imaging to scan it some more. It was heavily shielded against radiation, of course, and they couldn't see inside more than a few centimeters, but the return gave the redsuits what they needed.

  "There," Kerastopulous said. He pointed to the scanners' screen, to what looked like a threaded bolt, but with long, steep threads requiring only a single rotation to release. It was under the skin of the hull, but even if he could get access to it, there was no shaped or grooved head to twist it with. Eighteen embedded pieces of metal just like it surrounded the plated section above the gun. The Chief's team figured out they were magnetic quickly enough, but you couldn't use a field to unscrew them one at a time.

  She asked, "Did the company engineering teams find anything like this on the alien scout ship from Moriah?" Nobody answered her.

  The redsuits were about to give up on subtlety and drill the bolts out through the skin when Dana told them to look at in infrared. Ram remembered the dim, red lighting they'd seen when they cut their way in and boarded the aliens' scout ship on Moriah. At the time, he'd thought the Squidies just liked dim, red light, but if Dana was right, then it was probably pretty bright for them inside that ship, just not in the part of the spectrum human eyes could see. All the writing on their consoles had seemed faint, too – nearly impossible to read. That's because it didn't really reflect much in the part of the spectrum visible to humans. It stood out plenty in the infrared part of the spectrum, though. That was probably the range the Squidies saw in because once a couple of the engineers pointed infrared imagers at the red bandit and saw the drone like a Squidy maintenance crewman would see it, all over the surface of the hull, broad and faint lines connected the points above each of the eighteen threaded bolts with another point. Some places were marked with a large dot, under which the active scans showed nothing at all.

  Innes was the first one to figure out that they didn't need to make any kin
d of magnetic screwdriver because it had already been built into the panel. At first, when they applied low voltages to one of the 'dots' it didn't do a damn thing, but once they began to cycle between different power frequencies, they got some simultaneous movement on all the bolts with the power tuned to around 30Hz. Five minutes later, when they hit the voltage and frequency of the power just right, all eighteen 'screws' turned one rotation, and a 2.5 meter-square panel lifted off the hull above the alien gun. It floated free.

  "No connections," she said, looking underneath as they lifted the panel away from the hull. "Good. Okay. Wait. What the hell?" The disconnected bundles of internal conduits that had led to the machine's gun appeared to be wrapped and insulated with something organic. "It looks secreted," she said. "The surface is all yellow and waxy." Once they lifted the jungle of connectors out of the way, Horcheese and her team poked and prodded until they found and opened the access panels on the hull that led to inner core of it, where the kettle-drum sized alien reactor sat covered the same, yellow waxy material. It looked like a gargantuan organ. They put their ears to that gigantic heart six different ways to make sure it was no longer beating and then cut it out of the alien bandit. Nothing could power that beastie to life now.

  Then, Ram saw Horcheese bend in for a close look at something set under the first panel they'd removed in the middle of the fighter drone. She momentarily jerked up and down with what looked like a shiver. She pushed off the hull with her fingertips and backed away. "Everyone off. Back away nice and slow. That's an order." All her crewmen looked up at her through their visors.

  "Are you serious, Chief? We're just getti-"

  "Shut the hell up and get away from it, Innes."

  Innes and the others pushed off until they hovered a few meters away. "Further," the Chief said. "Ram? You there?"

  "I'm on the line," Ram said.

  "I want a squad of Staas Security in here," she said. "Now."

  "What is it, Chief?"

  "It could be nothing. I mean... looking at this thing, it's hard to be sure exactly what I'm looking at."

  "What do you see?"

  "It looks like a field coil. It looks like an artificial gravity producing inertial negation system. If I'm right."

  "It's alien. How can you tell?"

  "A field coil is a field coil. Its shape is determined by physics. A rudder is a rudder and a sail is a sail if you get my meaning. If you know what a field coil looks like, then it's not to hard to spot one when you see one."

  "And..."

  "And if I'm right, then this field coil is part of a system used to dampen the extreme inertial gees generated during exo-atmospheric combat flight maneuvers. Only a living pilot would need that."

  "But powering a system like that would take a reactor the size of a small warship."

  "What can I say? Their version is better than ours." Staas Security arrived with their MA-48s and surrounded the alien hull as Horcheese continued. "No matter how they power it, Mr. Devlin, only fragile, living things need an inertial negation system. This isn't a fighter drone like the Dingoes. I think there's an alien pilot inside it, Mr. Cozen. And considering how we brought this thing down, I think there's a good chance that pilot is still alive."

  The Chief's team floated out to the edges of the bay while nervous company guards kept their rifles ready. They didn't know where exactly to aim them until the Chief pointed. "Under the next panel. There, in the top third of the craft. That section's got extra shielding and armor," she said. "Mr. Devlin, we're going to need you for this. You'll be able to tell us if it's still alive."

  Ram went to bay 16 and found them all waiting for him. The last panel protecting what she took for the cockpit was held in place by 72 more bolts. "I think Innes found the actual door on the other side. Too late now," she said. "We're going in through the back." Innes gave the panel some juice, and the turning bolts lifted the assembly away from the rest of the craft. She called over three more redsuits, and they slid their gloved fingers under the edges with her. The engineers lifted the last panel a few centimeters at first, and then, not feeling any resistance, Innes nodded to the Chief.

  Horcheese said, "On my 'bingo', you four hold on to the panel and push off the hull and go straight up so the rifles have a clear shot. You all got it?" They nodded. "3...2...1...Bingo."

  The four crewmen shot straight up with the panel, and in a tenth of a second, Ram recognized the alien body curled and coiled up in its cockpit like a nest of stocking snakes. It had stuffed itself into an ovoid chamber less than a meter on its longest side. They were 3.5 meters tall when you stretched out all those freakish limbs, but they didn't have bones so they folded over on themselves and twisted up and fit in small places with alarming ease.

  "Squidy piece of alien shite." Ram's suit told him who said it, but he let it go. It was the kind of hate they all had in them for the thing that killed their friends.

  The alien pilot wore a suit like the unarmored alien exosuits Ram saw on Moriah and even with the extra layers, its wound-up and unmoving limbs were so thin and queer that it looked like hoses and sack stuffed in the garden shed.

  "Well, Mr. Devlin?" Cozen said. "Is it alive?"

  Ram pushed off. He floated up and over it to where he could look down and examine the alien pilot without getting in the line of fire. The head and the nubby undersized helmet was half buried under the rest of it. The lights were off inside and he was glad he couldn't see anything. "Doesn't look like anything ruptured its suit..."

  Harry Cozen ground the words out in Ram's ear. "Is it alive, Mr. Devlin?"

  "I don't know."

  "Shoot it," Cozen said.

  Ram drew his sidearm.

  "You're management, Mr, Devlin. Order one of the Staas Security Guards to use the under-barrel laser on his MA-48."

  At least a third of them had the jitters. Ram saw how the muzzles of their rifles shook. He waved over the guard that looked calmest and pointed at the alien. "Hit it with the laser. Shoot a limb."

  "It's all limbs."

  "Then you can't miss." It hadn't moved a millimeter, but as the guard brought the rifle to his shoulder and aimed, the alien looked less like a pile of hoses and more like wound-up springs.

  It uncoiled itself in all directions and popped up out of its cockpit fast, whipping Ram across the chest and sending him spinning up towards the ceiling of the bay. One limb whipped out and knocked the Staas Guard's rifle aside. Another pointed at the line of rifles around it and at the end of that wormy appendage was what Ram now recognized as an alien hand maser.

  Ram and all the guards fired at the same time. 12.7mm osmium alloy sabot from the top-barrel railguns on the MA-48s ripped into it and jerked it like a puppet and drove its freakish body upwards while flashes scintillated off the burning places where the lasers bored in. No matter how many holes they shot and burned through its center body mass, whether through will or as a function its alien physiology, the alien pilot was still capable of one last act before it died. Spinning in the air, spewing blue blood and gas from a dozen holes, it aimed and discharged its weapon.

  The Staas Guards in the cone of fire flared and burned their dying poses on Ram's retinas before his helmet shuttered. Milliseconds later, when he could see again, three of them burned on the deck. Their suits were charred, but Ram looked inside and all he could see was flame and cinder and ash.

  The rifles had put 16 holes in the alien pilot's torso and two through its visor. Its body came to rest 6 meters up the far bulkhead with all its uncoiled limbs spread wide, hanging in zero-gee. The fluids it had leaked on the way there followed it and splashed off the belt-iron steel.

  *****

  Ram wanted to bag it first, but Cozen ordered them to take the dead Squidy to Doc Ibora out in the open so the crew could see it. It was a terrible idea. He had to have known what would happen.

  The engineers duck-patched the holes in its alien suit so it wouldn't leak, but they had to use so much tape to keep its mud in that i
t looked like a wrapped mummy.

  Ram and the Staas Guards floated the 3.5 meter alien corpse and all its endless limbs down Hardway's spine. They went slowly at first so that everyone could finally get a look at the enemy, but before they even got halfway to the command tower, crewmen and pilots began to dive from the spine's struts and launch themselves at the dead alien.

  They came down feet first. Half the guards didn't see it coming and got knocked aside. The other half tried to fend off the crew, but it happened too fast. Too many attacked at once. The redsuits and pilots and gunners that got through stomped the body and kicked it until their own wild motions threw them spinning and someone else took their place.

  The dead alien's vine-like appendages got entangled with the men and women kicking it. Ram feared they'd tear them off howl like apes. Some would have called it atavistic and primitive like it was some lost savagery surfacing, but it was just hate. It was all the hate they carried for the alien things that killed their brothers and sisters. Today, it was more powerful than they were.

  Crewman and even junior lieutenants jumped in from above to stomp the bizarre alien corpse and for every man that landed on it and every blow to fall, pale blue, alien blood squirted and spattered everywhere in zero-gee. Turquoise globules spun off its ill-patched wounds in every direction.

  Doc Ibora said humans couldn't get Squidy diseases and Squidies couldn't get ours. Ram hoped he was right because there was no way to decontaminate the ship and the crew now, not without flooding the spine with plasma.

  The Staas Guards did their best to keep the crew off the body. They earned their pay. They drew their truncheons and cracked ribs, but they were so outnumbered they couldn't keep order without using their rifles.

  "Let them have the alien, Mr. Devlin." It was Cozen in his ear on a private channel. "We're not getting that corpse back until they're done with it." Of course he'd been watching.