by M. D. Cooper
Tippin directed several fireteams to follow Tanis’s example and moments later they were rotating incendiary fire to keep the thing guessing where the next assault would come from.
The work became easier as the number of functioning limbs on the creature decreased. After what only turned out to be four minutes from the time the elevator door opened to when the thing dropped, the platoon stood down, every one of them knowing they could have easily died in this encounter, a thought made all the more sobering by the realization that two Marines had died and three others were in no shape to continue on.
Tippin and Williams triaged and adjusted the affected squads, sending a total of eight Marines back to the position three/one held at the entrance.
One/one hauled the horror out of the lift and dropped it in a corner. One/two joined them in the lift and the eight Marines took the ride down into the asteroid to secure the landing below.
Tanis passed on what they had come across to the other platoons and what they had to do to take it down. The responses she received were heartening. No one condemned her for burning the minds—not after they saw the thing and the destruction it had wrought.
She gave the order that company commanders could use their nano for the same action if necessary and she would take the heat.
When the Phobos Accords had been written she couldn’t imagine the intent had been to protect horrors like the one she had destroyed—at least not in the heat of battle when it was killing her Marines.
Tanis nodded, she wasn’t quite ready to speak yet. Instead she monitored the nano she had sent racing ahead of the lift, anxious to see what awaited the Marines when they arrived at the bottom.
“Now I believe in a god,” Tippin said as he stared down at the horror.
“Why is that?” Williams asked.
“Because I know there’s a devil.”
“Not for long.” Tanis felt anger drag her out of perseveration over her actions. “We’re going to go down there and kill him.”
As luck, or perhaps a god, would have it, the Marines only faced light defenses at the bottom of the lift and several minutes later the platoon was working their way through the asteroid itself.
The gravity was lighter here and magnetics in the armor’s boots helped keep them attached to the deck plating. Tanis always found it a bit awkward and ended up turning hers off. When the gravity was too light to hold her down at all she’d switch them back on.
Reports came over the battalion’s combat net of more horrors and other things like them. Only one other platoon had encountered one in tight quarters like the 4th Bravo had. They managed to blow out a wall with explosive rounds and sucked the thing into vacuum. The other encounters all took place in more forgiving surroundings for the Marines and they were able to use flanking and explosives to take the creatures down.
The platoons were all in the asteroid itself at this point, facing an endless stream of new enemies, few as difficult to take down as the multi-human horror, but none easy. The Marines worked their way through the nightmare with stoic determination.
Tanis despaired, doubting they would find any humans to save in the place. Every person, using that term lightly, was a monster and attacked them on sight, never saying a word, though shrieks and moans were common.
By the count Bruno was keeping, they had killed over a thousand of the probable ten-thousand inhabitants of Toro. The 4th Bravo and several other platoons were closing in on what the net showed to be a large, open chamber near the center of the asteroid. Chances were that they would find the other nine-thousand occupants there.
If they had all been turned into monsters this would get very messy.
The platoon moved down a final corridor toward the central chamber, Tanis’s remaining nano, scouting ahead, flew out into the expanse first and began sending back data.
The chamber matched what the net said and was five-hundred meters long and thee hundred wide. Being near the center of Toro there was no gravity here, save for a small pull backwards. It was roughly oval and was full.
They had found the rest of the occupants.
Creatures of all shapes and sizes floated in the space, more than the nine-thousand Tanis’s intel had estimated, there had to be at least twenty-thousand or more. It was hard to be sure because so many creatures consisted of more than one human.
“Welcome,” a voice boomed out, “it is so nice of you to come and join our union.”
Tanis could make out a figure roughly a hundred meters into the chamber. It was drifting closer and the vague outline began to take shape.
It was John Cardid…plus a few other people. His head was present and appeared to be attached to a mass of human bodies with a variety of other heads sticking out his ‘torso’. His arms consisted of additional people and his legs were each made up of two people.
“By order of the Inner Sol Government, I command you to surrender,” Tanis called out.
“Right, because he’s going to do that,” one of the Marines said quietly.
“I have to say it… But I hope he doesn’t. I’d very much like to see this…guy dead,” Tanis replied.
John Cardid had started chuckling as he heard the statement. “I don’t think so, even now my forces are flooding out through paths not on the station’s plan to flank you. You’ll join us or die. Chances are that you’ll join us even if you do die.”
Almost as one, all of the figures on the edges of the space began to push off and, like a slow wave, all of Cardid’s followers moved toward the platoon.
“Platoon…retreat.” Tanis sent the command over the combat net to the entire battalion as well.
The 4th Bravo began to move back up the corridor, keeping an eye out for the flanking forces Cardid had spoken of. Tanis and one/one were moving backward, covering their escape, and one of the Marines planted a few high explosive charges on the walls as they went.
“Can’t cause a ‘cave-in’ in zero-g but it can block them and their plasma bolts for a bit.”
Tanis nodded her approval and when they were at a safe distance the Marine detonated the packs. The shockwave rippled past them and back down the corridor; the walls turned into high-speed gravel. Most of it ricocheted around the point of the explosions with a few working up and down the corridor. It wasn’t a moment too soon as fire began to impact the debris cloud.
The platoon picked up the pace, but they were soon slowed down by the flanking forces.
They were able to move, but slowly, fighting for each meter. The Marines were beginning to crack. When a series of spider-looking things crawled out of a tunnel a few began to fire wildly in all directions, screaming.
Williams was there in an instant, shouting them back into control and then calming them. Tanis was impressed with his abilities, but knew they couldn’t last.
The platoon was taking hits, running low on ammunition and close to losing it.
Tanis said as she passed up the data that Angela and Bruno had worked up, over a hundred coordinates that would clear paths ahead of the Marines and hopefully slow down their pursuers.
Tanis barked back.
Tanis suspected he was consulting his packet for a way around the order. There wasn’t one and she knew he would c
omply.
Her expectations were confirmed as a section of the tunnel a hundred meters behind the platoon disappeared in a white-hot flash. The tunnel shook as the rock rapidly expanded and the Marines felt their magnetic boots turn on full as air whipped past them into the vacuum.
Several exceptionally grotesque enemies flew by as the air rushed past, eyes bulging, but still firing at the Marines. Tanis couldn’t believe it and kept moving up the corridor to the platoon’s evac point.
It opened up a few minutes later as another laser blast erupted ahead of the platoon, cutting away a wide opening that led to the surface of the asteroid. The Marines rushed into the space moments later and used their armor’s thrusters to avoid the white-hot walls of the wide shaft. At the top their transport awaited, three/one hanging on the sides, firing at the monsters that seemed not to care that they were dying in the vacuum.
The battalion’s combat net showed that all of the platoons were on their transports; the 4th Bravo, being the furthest in, was the last out.
Looking down, there were dozens of holes on the surface of Toro venting atmosphere, but there were also several small ships taking off from the asteroid itself and the stations surrounding it.
Even though they should be evacuating, all of the ships moved into attack vectors, aiming to take out the Marine transports.
The Marines had all locked down in the transport and Tanis took her seat, watching the external monitors. Below them the holes from the Normandy had almost all stopped venting atmosphere. Suddenly a large crack appeared across the center of Toro, then another appeared laterally.
Because of the increase to Toro’s rotation to create artificial gravity, carbon nano-struts were in place to re-enforce the asteroid. Cardid, however, had not added additional support to compensate for the new tunnels and chambers.
Those changes, in addition to the laser fire burning holes in the role proved to be too much and Toro began to tear itself apart.
In a slow motion dance of destruction, the asteroid tore itself apart, chunks breaking off and swinging out into space, while others smashed into the ring of stations. Explosions blossomed and, by the time the transports were docking on the Arcturus, Toro was no more.
The Marines were silent as the transports docked. They stripped out of their armor with no banter and carefully cleaned the blood and gore from their gear.
Tanis was working with them, cleaning the armor and weapons she had used. There were a thousand other things she should be doing, but she needed the time to collect her thoughts, to try to put together what had just happened into something that made sense.
“Colonel Richards!” a voice called out behind her. Tanis turned to see a squad of MPs standing behind her. One of them, a major named Indras, stepped forward.
“Yes, Major?” Tanis asked.
“I am here to relieve you of command of the 242nd Marine Battalion and place you under arrest.”
Several of the Marines around her turned sharply and bristled, a few reached for their weapons. She may not be a Marine, but apparently going through Toro had made her enough of one for them.
“What is the charge?” Tanis felt like the ship had fallen out from beneath her, yet she didn’t feel alarmed, she didn’t know how to feel anything.
“Violation of the Phobos Accords, violation of the TSF code of conduct, use of weapons of mass destruction against civilians, and other crimes against humanity.”
“There were no civilians and no humanity on Toro,” Williams barked. “On whose orders are you doing this?”
Brennan was with the MPs and shook his head. “I forwarded the feeds, what you did was unconscionable.”
The major’s eyes were hard and unblinking. “On the orders of the president of InnerSol and the joint chiefs. Come with us, Colonel Richards, we are to confine you to quarters.”
Tanis set down the weapon she had been cleaning and followed the major; the other MPs forming a box around her as the Marines hollered and swore at their backs.
CRACKING A FEW EGGS
STELLAR DATE: 3241792 / 08.17.4163 (Adjusted Gregorian)
LOCATION: GSS Excelsior
REGION: LHS 1565, 27.0 AU from stellar primary
20:52 hours to asteroid group
Tanis ended the story with a small choke as she remembered the Marines calling after the MPs, their commanders just barely stopping a mutiny on the Arcturus. She looked up at Joe to see tears in his eyes; he reached out and wiped one from hers.
They didn’t speak as they embraced for several minutes, Tanis found herself sobbing as emotion she had bottled up for so long came crashing out.
After she had regained control of herself, Joe spoke. “But it wasn’t that bad, they didn’t discharge you or imprison you.”
Tanis nodded. “Once they watched the full sensory vids and the investigators sifted through the ruins they realized that I had made the right call. Cardid was planning an all-out assault on several habitats and would have killed millions. It was only because we caught him by surprise that we were able to stop them. He had more powerful defenses, but they weren’t online because he didn’t want Toro to be targeted before he launched his assaults.
“So I didn’t lose my commission in the end, I got a slap on the wrist for violating Phobos and knocked down to an LCO.”
“And you got the media lambasting you.”
Tanis nodded, the tears welling up in her eyes again. “That was the hardest part. Pretty much everyone I knew shut me out, including my husband.”
“You were married?” Joe was a little shocked.
“Yeah, his name was Peter, I married him when I was fifty-five, I know, a little early for marriage, but I thought we were in love.”
“I guess he didn’t take Toro too well,” Joe said.
Tanis shook her head ruefully. “He didn’t care about what I did on Toro. He always got off on me being the tough girl who kicked ass and took names. He divorced me because he didn’t want the career damage that being married to me would—” Tanis’s voice broke and she took a moment to regain her composure “—that being married to me would cause,” she managed to finish.
Joe wrapped his arms around her and held her for several minutes as she cried softly.
“Thanks… I haven’t spoken of him since the day he left me, I didn’t expect it to turn me into more of a mess than talking about Toro did.”
“So I guess he’s not the type of ex we have to say nice things about. We can call him super-douche.”
Tanis snorted a laugh. “Total ass-hat. The guy left me with nothing, I was unhireable and had to stay in the TSF, which I pretty much hated at that time for betraying me. I put in for colony the day after he filed for divorce.” A fire was back in Tanis’s eyes as thought about the day.
Joe shook his head slowly. “I’m sorry it went down like it did, you certainly didn’t deserve the raw deal you got. I have to admit, though, I didn’t learn about Toro until you joined the Intrepid’s crew. There was all sorts of scuttlebutt about how you got on the roster.”
“Really?” Tanis asked. “How did you not hear about Toro? I blew up an entire station. It was practically the only thing in the news cycle for weeks.”
“I was on a mission when it went down. I had heard people talk about the Toro disaster a bit, but even after you came onboard I didn’t look into it—I wanted to form my own opinions of you, not be poisoned by someone else’s.”
“I’m glad you didn’t, ‘Killed twenty-thousand people’ is a hard first-impression to lose. The redacted mission report isn’t much better. Thank starlight that the captain and Anderson had access to the classified version or they would never have let me aboard.” Tanis cast Joe a thoughtful eye. “What sort of mission wer
e you on that you didn’t hear about Toro, though?”
“Remember Makemake?” Joe asked.
“Remember? It was the thing that took my name out of the news.” Tanis saw the pained look in Joe’s eye and her expression turned to one of concern. “I’m sorry, that was cold. It must have been a really raw deal for you guys.”
Joe nodded. “I didn’t file mine the next day, it was a bit later. I was at Makemake—”
Troy interrupted.
Joe looked at Tanis and nodded. “Play it,” he said.
Captain Andrew’s face filled the holo.
“Excelsior, good to hear you are still out there and apparently on your planned vector. I’m sure you noticed we aren’t where we’re supposed to be. We had a bit of a run in with a rather unfriendly solar flare.”
Joe glanced at Tanis, he looked concerned, but the captain’s voice hadn’t betrayed anything one way or the other.
“We’re still not certain if it was going to happen anyway, or if our magnetic resonance caused the flare, but either way the sunspot erupted. We had thirty-five seconds’ notice and Bob put everything our engines had into getting us clear, which we did, but just barely. The flare took out a lot of exterior electronics, destroyed some of the structural arcs, melted off the housing on the main port engine. There were some severe x-ray bursts, but with the ES shielding already focused on the port side, we didn’t receive any lethal doses, though everyone is getting treatments. There were some gamma ray bursts, which can mess with stasis fields, so we’ve got teams checking everyone in stasis, which will be a bit of a task.”
The captain paused and Tanis and Joe looked at one another. This would be where the other shoe dropped.
“With our last moment burst and the engine damage, we came out of the slingshot at a different than planned trajectory. We don’t have the fuel to correct, so you’re going to have to meet us somewhere along our current path.