“Works for me, sir,” replied Night.
“Hey, I’ve got a question,” said Master Chief Ryan O’Leary. “Did we ever find out if our new lasers would penetrate the hull of a ship?”
“Umm...” Calvin thought about it. “I passed your question up the chain of command. The special projects people were supposed to do some tests to find out, but I’m not sure if they ever did.”
“Great,” replied Master Chief, “so we don’t know if we’re going to put holes in the side of our new friends’ ship every time we fire?”
“I can’t imagine they’re strong enough to go through in a single shot,” said Calvin. “Probably not even in two shots. They’d probably go through a bulkhead in a couple of shots, but the main hull? No, I think we’re OK. The big ship-borne lasers don’t always go through in one shot. I think we’re OK to fire the lasers at will. If you find yourself damaging the ship too much, dial it back a little. We don’t know what kind of armor the lizards will have, either.”
“Two minutes,” Faith commed. “The Mrowry said to do as you see best. There won’t be anyone to meet you at the front of the ship, but there are airlocks that you can use. The ship’s commanding officer said to let you know that the lizards are holding the front of the ship.”
“That’s just the way I like it,” replied Night. “A target rich environment. Space Force, let’s get some!”
“Gluck ab!” the troopers chorused in the platoon’s battle cry.
There was a bump as the shuttle’s pilot, Lieutenant Steven ‘Not Me’ Jackson brought the shuttle into contact with the ship. “Sorry ‘bout the bump,” he commed, “All of the automatic systems are out, and I had to do it the old fashioned way.”
“Ground Force, let’s go!” yelled Master Sergeant Aaron ‘Top’ Smith. “What are you waiting for, an engraved invitation?”
The Ground Force stood up behind Calvin, ready to go out the door.
Calvin watched as the shuttle crewman attached the docking collar to the ship. Through the boarding tube, Calvin could see several of the Mrowry waiting in a large open area. They were all about six feet tall and had some sort of combat suit on, but had their helmets off. As he looked at the felinoids, he realized that he was going to be the person that made first contact with an advanced race. Again.
Any excitement at that thought was dashed as he entered the Mrowry ship, and all six of the felinoids leveled their rifles at him. He slowly put his hands in the air and said, “Is this how you always greet people that you request assistance from?”
“When we don’t know them, and they might be trying to take advantage of us,” answered one of the Mrowry, “yes.” He looked Calvin up and down. “Unfortunately, we have learned the hard way recently that no one can be trusted in these times.”
“What’s going on?” asked Night from behind him.
“I’m not sure,” Calvin replied. “Stand by.” To the Mrowry he said, “Well, you invited us here, and we came like you asked. If you don’t want us here, we will leave.”
“The timing of your arrival is suspect,” one of the other Mrowry noted, “just in time to finish us off. How do we know that you are not in league with the lizards?”
“Aside from the fact that we just blew up two of their shuttles?” asked Calvin. “I don’t know, but I’d be happy to show you if you’d just get out of our way. They killed a lot of my men on our last voyage, and I would like to return the favor.” Calvin shrugged, emphasizing it so that it could be seen with the suit on. “Or we can leave. Your choice.”
The Mrowry who had initially spoken brought his rifle back into a carrying position. “I truly hope you are here to help,” he said, “because we need it. We are doomed without your assistance. Thank you for coming.” At some unspoken signal, all of the rest of the troops brought their rifles back to a carry position as well.
Calvin came the rest of the way into the bay and motioned the rest of the squad to enter. “We’re good, Night,” he commed, “go get ‘em. We’ll meet you in the middle.” He took off his helmet and said to the one that seemed to be in charge, “I’m Lieutenant Commander Shawn Hobbs from the Terran Spaceship Vella Gulf. How can we help?”
“I am Lieutenant Rrower,” the Mrowry said. “I am in charge of our security forces. The problem that we have is that we had so many casualties in the space battle with the lizards that we’ve had to use some of our engineers as soldiers to fight the lizards that boarded us. We don’t have enough people to both hold off the lizards and fix the engines at the same time. Using everyone that is able-bodied, we have just enough men and women to stalemate the lizards that made it onto the ship. If we pull anyone back, they start advancing again. We’ve got to get the motors fixed or we are going to be drawn into the star. If you can take over for some of the engineers that are currently on the front line of the battle, that will let them go back to fixing the damage the lizards caused.”
“No problem,” replied Calvin. “Just take us to where we need to go. If you can give us schematics of the ship, that would help us as well. My other squad is going to go to the front of the ship and hit them from behind.”
“Just a second,” Lieutenant Rrower said. His eyes went unfocused for a few seconds as he communicated with someone. He refocused on Calvin and asked, “Did you hear that?”
“No,” replied Calvin. “Whatever was said, I missed it.”
“No offense, but can I take it from the age of your ship that your implants are similarly outdated?” asked the felinoid. “It never occurred to me to ask, but do you even have implants?”
“We do have implants,” answered Calvin, “but honestly, I don’t have any idea where they are in relation to galactic standards. I know that the Psiclopes were getting some types of tech upgrades for a period, but I don’t know if that applied to implant technology.” Calvin noticed that the Mrowry made a face when the Psiclopes were mentioned, but wasn’t familiar enough with the felinoids to know what it meant.
“I am going to have my computer try to contact you via implant,” said Rrower.
A communications window opened in Calvin’s mind, displaying a cartoonish picture of a tiger’s paw. In the middle of the paw was a mouth that moved in time with the transmission. “Lieutenant Commander Hobbs,” said the paw, “this is the artificial intelligence for the Emperor’s Paw. I have spoken with the AI onboard your Vella Gulf and believe this to be the right communications protocol. Are you receiving and understanding me?”
“I am,” replied Calvin, “do you have some schematics for me?”
“I do,” answered the paw. It changed into the picture of a paw holding a roll of blueprints. “You will understand, of course, if some of the more sensitive information is left off.” The paw set the blueprints down and pretended to erase something from one of them.
“I understand,” said Calvin with a smile at the AI’s antics. “As long as it shows the floor plans where we will be fighting, that is all that I am worried about. Will you be sending it to all of my soldiers or just me?”
“It will go to everyone,” replied the AI.
“Thanks,” replied Calvin. Switching to the platoon network, he commed, “Ship schematics inbound from the ship’s AI. The ship is named the Emperor’s Paw, and the AI uses that as its name.”
“Paw, Lieutenant Commander Hobbs,” Calvin commed, “can you mark friendly and enemy positions on the schematics, and keep it updated as the battle continues?”
“I will do what I can,” replied the AI. “To say that I have a lot that I’m currently managing is an understatement. I also sustained a lot of damage before the Ssselipsssiss came aboard, and they are systematically destroying my sensors as they move around.”
“Do what you can,” replied Calvin, “and we’ll have them out of here in no time. By the way, please call me Calvin; everyone else does.”
As the rest of the squad came onto the ship, the Mrowry all jumped back in surprise as Staff Sergeant Dantone stomped aboard. Although he was mov
ing a little better, and his actions were a little more fluid, he did not look like something that you would want to trust in combat. “Sorry,” said Rrower. “I didn’t know that there were any civilizations that used robots for mobile combat.”
“He is not a robot,” replied Calvin. “He is a cyborg that hasn’t quite finished the conversion process.”
“How long...ummm...how long has it been since it was converted?” asked Rrower, obviously a little worried.
“You do realize that I’m standing in front of you and can hear you, right?” asked Staff Sergeant Dantone. “I am functional, and that’s all that matters. Put me somewhere in a blocking position. I’ll do my job.”
“Good enough for you?” asked Calvin.
“Um...OK,” replied Rrower, not sounding any more confident in the cyborg. He paused and then said, “On second thought, I know just the place for him.”
“Good,” said Calvin. He looked at Top. “Ready to go?”
“Yes, sir,” Top replied. “Ready to kick some lizard ass!”
“I like your attitude,” said Lieutenant Rrower. “I think we’ll get along fine.”
“Lead on,” said Calvin.
Shuttle 02, Ross 248 System, August 24, 2020
“Five seconds to docking,” commed the WSO, Lieutenant Faith Ibori. “The ship says to be ready for anything; its sensors are out in this section.”
Night looked through the window as the shuttle crewman secured the docking collar. He quickly withdrew his head from the window. “Squad, we just landed in Lizard Central. There are at least three lizards in the area outside of the entrance. I don’t think they saw me. None of them appeared to have armor on. Hopefully, they are expecting the reinforcements that our fighters blew up and will think that we’re them. We’re going to get one chance to break in here; let’s make it a good one.”
“I’m going to go in first,” continued Night. “I’ll go in low. Wraith, you go left. Master Chief, you go right. Everyone else pile in after the three of us. Check your targets; I don’t want anyone shooting me in the back with the new lasers. Make sure all enemy combatants are dead, I don’t want any of them playing dead and hitting us from behind.”
“Ready, sir,” said the shuttle crewman at the docking collar. He moved out of the way. Night stood just outside the view of the door and asked, “Ready?”
A chorus of “Gluck ab!” answered his question, as well as several other, more profane, indications of eagerness. “Here we go then. One...two...THREE!” Night slammed the door open and dove through the three foot tube. As he started his dive through the door, the thought came to him that the ship’s gravity might not be working due to the battle damage the ship had sustained. If so; he was going to go flying right past the lizards. Not good.
As he crashed to the floor in front of two of the seven feet tall lizards, he realized that the gravity was working, and also that the lizards seemed a lot bigger up close. Night didn’t know anything about lizard expressions, but he had their looks pegged as ‘confusion’ as they looked down at the unexpected Terran soldier lying in their midst. The moment of indecision was all he needed. Before he had even come to rest, he had shot one of them through the head and was tracking to the other. It started to rear back in alarm but never completed the motion. Two blasts from his laser rifle killed it; the extra shot from Master Chief that hit it was overkill. Night quickly got up in time to see Wraith standing over a third lizard. She pointed the rifle at its head as it flipped around and fired once. It went still.
“Look out, suh!” commed Corporal Sanders. Night dove to the side, and Sanders fired three shots past him, killing a fourth lizard that had been coming into the room.
“We’re in,” Night commed Calvin. “Four hostiles down. No friendly casualties.”
“Good,” Calvin replied. “Hit ‘em hard. Hit ‘em fast!”
“Let’s go kill some lizards,” said Night to his squad, indicating the route of travel on the map that the Paw had sent. He looked down at the last lizard and shot it once more through the head. “Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds,” he said as he stepped over it.
* * * * *
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Mrowry Ship Emperor’s Paw Aft, Ross 248 System, August 24, 2020
“If you can hold this passageway,” said Lieutenant Rrower, watching several of his men firing down a corridor at a large number of lizards, “that will allow a couple more engineers to go back to work on fixing the engines.” The lizards were slowly moving down the corridor, leapfrogging each other. Half would fire while the other half tried to move up to the next doorway or cross passage. It was costing them dearly in casualties, but they were slowly getting closer and closer to a breakthrough.
“No problem,” said Staff Sergeant Dantone. “If you need defense, call a cyborg. I’ve got just the thing for this.” He pulled off his right hand and attached it to a peg on his side. Reaching behind his head, he took an attachment that looked like it had a number of barrels and placed it onto the end of his right arm. With a click, it snapped into place. “Ready to rock and roll,” he said.
Dantone walked up as far as he could without exposing himself to the laser fire. As he went past Calvin, the officer noticed a large box on his back that he hadn’t seen before. Dantone reached behind him and pulled a metal band from the bottom of the box, which he linked into the attachment on his right arm. “Hi guys,” he said to the felinoids. “Cover me.” Something started whirring. With a start, Calvin realized he had heard that sound before. It was the sound a mini-gun made as it cycled up to ready status. His gun hand couldn’t be a mini-gun, though, thought Calvin. The barrels were way too big.
Without another word, he walked into the middle of the passageway and turned toward the lizards. Laser beams immediately began playing off of him. “That tickles,” he said as he began firing.
“What in the hell...” asked Rrower as a line of shells exploded down the right side of the passageway, shredding it.
“Oops, sorry,” said Dantone, “didn’t have time to sight it in.” He made an adjustment, and this time the shells walked into the closest group of lizards on the right. Whatever armor they had wasn’t able to stop what Dantone was firing, and they all fell backward. Some of them in several pieces. “That’s better,” Dantone said. He changed his aim point, and the closest group on the left was blown apart.
He began walking down the passageway so that he could get a better angle on the lizards that were further away. “Here lizzie, lizzie, lizzie,” he called. Incoming fire had fallen off noticeably, and the remaining lizards didn’t show any further inclination to move forward. Before he could drive them any further back, a loud snap was heard, and he came to a stop.
“Dammit,” Dantone said. “Something just popped in my leg. Gimme a second.” He started dragging himself back to the intersection with his good leg. “Shit,” he added. “It’s broken, and I can only move backward. I can hold this corridor for you, but I can’t advance any further.”
“What the hell does that thing fire?” asked Rrower.
“It’s an older version of the Hooolong pulse rifle,” said Dantone. Even with the tinny sound, Calvin could still hear pride in his voice. “It fires 20 millimeter explosive-tipped caseless standard light armor piercing rounds. Why?”
The Mrowry shook his head. “That was impressive,” he said. “Aside for the ones that went into the wall, anyway.”
A couple more laser beams came from the lizard end of the passageway, and Dantone fired another couple of seconds, sending over 100 more rounds down the corridor. The lizard fire ceased.
“I think he’s got it,” said Calvin. “Any idea how many lizards there are on the ship?”
“We don’t know for sure,” replied the Mrowry, “but we think there were four shuttle loads that came over before you blew up their shuttles. If they were fully loaded there could be almost 800 onboard, but it doesn’t seem like we’ve been fighting that many. If they had 800, they woul
d have overwhelmed us. I don’t think they have more than about 200 onboard.”
“Yeah, we saw their ship,” said Calvin, “and it was pretty messed up. They were probably just scraping up whatever they could and sending it over as fast as they could get a platoon or company’s worth together.”
“Our records show that class of ship should only have about 150 marines onboard,” Rrower added, “so if they have 200 over here, they’re sending their sailors as well. They won’t be as good in a fight as the marines.”
Calvin knew that was true, having been a sailor himself until recently. “We can do this one of two ways,” Calvin said. “We can either take them head on or try to get around them and hit them from behind. Are they only on this deck or have they spread out?”
“They’ve spread out and are on all of the decks,” answered the Mrowry.
“Well, are there any maintenance spaces that we can use to get around them?” suggested Calvin, looking at the ship’s floor plan. It had eight main decks. The first deck was at the top of the ship, with a ladder up to the superstructure and bridge from the center of it. Decks two through eight were numbered sequentially down from it. “How about any crawl spaces in the ceilings or under the floors? If there are, we need to use them before the lizards find them and use them against us.”
“No, not that I can think of,” answered Rrower.
“How about tankage?” inquired Calvin. “Water tanks? Fuel tanks?”
“That is a great idea!” commed Rrower. “There is a water tank on the seventh deck. Are those suits waterproof? We could go in one end of it and come out the other end behind their lines.”
“Perfect!” replied Calvin, “That’s exactly what I was looking for. Let’s go!”
Mrowry Ship Emperor’s Paw Forward, Ross 248 System, August 24, 2020
“Lieutenant Train,” commed Wraith, who was the point person on the first deck, “I just looked into a room, and there’s a lizard holding some type of dagger or knife to the throat of a Mrowry that is strapped to a chair. I don’t know anything about lizard body language, but I get the feeling that the lizard is angry, and the conversation is about to end violently.”
When the Gods Aren't Gods: Book Two of The Theogony Page 26