by Bobby Adair
Mostyn, her voice taut from the strain, says, “These railguns, just ahead. Their barrels look wide enough.”
“Yeah.” No regular pattern exists in the distribution of gun barrel sizes protruding along the crest. Nevertheless, I’ve counted as we’ve been walking to gain an objective idea of how many barrels will suit our purpose, and to help me make the choice of where to start planting our bombs. It looks like we’ll be able to place one bucket snugly inside a railgun once or twice every thirty feet. “We’ll start with those, just ahead.”
“Won’t they just blow out through the barrel?” Mostyn’s question is timid, but valid. “Will the explosions damage anything?”
“Of course,” I tell her, going on to explain my hope, based on no engineering experience at all. “These barrels aren’t built out of thick steel like the ones you see on the seagoing battleships in the old movies. They’re designed to use gravity to push slugs down the long axis. All the support is in the rear.” At least that’s how I remember them from my look at the structures inside when we commandeered the Trog cruiser earlier. “The barrel isn’t designed to contain the lateral pressures of a chemical explosion. Especially not this much chemical.”
“So the gun breaches explode down inside the ship when the TX detonates?” asks Mostyn.
“Yes.” I make it sound certain, although I don’t know I’m right. Nevertheless, I’ve already figured out people like certainty when they’re risking their lives. In fact, I suspect they prefer flawed certainty to faultless ambivalence. They might not admit to it in a discussion of hypotheticals over beers and brats in the backyard, but out in the shit with red-hot railgun slugs tearing through the air at six thousand miles an hour, they’d choose certainty every time.
“Twenty of these charges going off at the same time along this row of guns will do the trick.” I scan back and forth, as I once more evaluate the layout. “The explosions will destroy the breaches on these guns and send a hail of shrapnel through the reactors inside. That’ll kill the ship. With a bit of engineering luck, the detonation will blow this seam wide open. Either way, the ship is dead, no longer a threat to us.”
“Except it’s still full of Trogs,” says Brice, pointing out the flaw in the plan. He’s being a dick, because sometimes, I think it amuses him.
“Maybe we’ll catch them with their pants down again.” Another hope. Whether or not we kill any of their battle legions, we’ll definitely kill all the Trogs unlucky enough to be in the ship’s main hangar at boom time. The air inside will escape. They’ll all suffocate.”
Mostly I’m thinking, ‘One step at a time. Let’s kill the ship, and figure out how to deal with surviving Trogs afterward.’
I stop walking. I’m at the right place, I’m pretty sure, although with the curve of the hull, and me being so small and standing on such a large ship, I realize my perspective might be inaccurate. I don’t say that out loud.
Brice, guessing my dilemma, points up. “You could take off and get a better view.”
“You’re kidding, right?”
He grins. “Of course.”
Halfway down the ship’s length, so close to the bow, to flex my suit’s grav muscles and go zipping through space would surely catch the attention of the Grays on the bridge.
“Find a place for your charges,” I tell them, as I step up next to a railgun barrel and slip my bucket inside. Not a perfect fit, but as close as I’m likely to get. I give the top of my bucket a nudge to slide it down to the bottom of the tube, and watch as it recedes into the darkness inside.
A little to my left, Silva is doing the same.
Brice, Lenox, and Mostyn are piling their buckets together into a large-caliber, ship-killing weapon pretty close to the one Silva is loading.
“That’s a good idea,” I tell them. “Concentrating our explosives over a smaller area will probably work better than spreading them out.”
“Yeah,” says Brice. “I know.” As his tone conveys, I should have understood that he already knew that.
I think maybe he needs a shot of Suit Juice to take the grumpy edge off his fatigue.
Partially down the barrel, my bucket seems to be stuck. I have to use my rifle to tamp it in further. It doesn’t go all the way to the bottom, I don’t think, but there’s no way to push any more. I sigh. Nothing goes as planned, even the little things.
Brice and the others, their explosives planted, are hustling toward the stern. Silva is standing by the railgun tube she loaded, and she’s waiting on me.
I hurry along.
“Five down,” she comms me over a private link, making it pretty obvious she was looking for any way to start a conversation.
“Yeah,” I agree, suddenly at a loss for words that want to come so badly they burst full of nothing syllables. I’ve got nothing to fill a conversation with besides guilt, because the wife I promised myself to, a woman I loathe more than love, is shriveling away in my house back on earth. Worse yet, I’m not even sure how I short-circuited myself away from Silva’s smile and down to the hag wrapped around my wife’s sour soul.
The others are at least a hundred meters ahead of us and moving quickly.
I glance at Silva. “We should run.”
She nods and sprints ahead, tumbles at the grav change, and catches her balance.
“I’ll lead,” I say, “I can see the gravity fluctuations.”
Chapter 35
The distance from the aft drive array to the ship’s midsection, crossing through dozens of polarity changes, and being jerked both up and down by the heavy buckets of TX has taken its toll. We’ve planted fifteen bombs. Four remain and we carry those with us. We’re all bruised and tired, trudging forward to drop off our last load.
We’re silent as we walk, nothing but labored breathing over the comm.
I wonder how Blair and her rebels are faring against the Trogs on the subterranean levels, and I entertain the foundationless hope that Blair has helped the rest of the troops from inside the warehouse to escape. I hope they’re armed. I fantasize they’ve discovered the location where the Trogs have cached their automatic weapons. And I toss in the dream that Blair has organized them into units, eager for the coming fight.
Sadly, daydreams evaporate when luck in the real world changes polarity as quickly as a grav field.
“Trouble!” Lenox shouts over the comm.
I pull my eyes off my shuffling feet, scolding myself for inattentiveness as I scan for the source of the trouble, and I find it. A mob of Trogs is walking up the cruiser’s curved hull from the starboard side. We’re the reason they’re coming.
Brice immediately drops to a knee, levels his weapon, and starts shooting. He’s the only one who can fire his railgun, the only one not carrying a bucket.
Rounds veer up and down through the bands of gravity. Most hit the hull or fly off into space. The few that reach the widening wall of Trogs seem to be absorbed by the mass.
“This is shit!” curses Brice. “All these damn variable fields.”
“We gotta get out of here,” suggests Mostyn, not panicking. She’s run her evaluation of the situation, come to a conclusion, and she wants it heard.
“We have to plant the rest of the TX,” says Lenox, calmly.
All of those thoughts are running through my head already. I have to make a quick choice. Premiere on the list is whether Lenox is wrong, right, or committed blindly to my plan. Will that last hundred and fifty pounds of TX make the difference?
“Lenox, Silva, Mostyn,” I say. “Plant those last buckets. Brice—”
He laughs because he knows what’s coming, if not exactly, then he already has the idea. Brice stops his futile firing and taps furiously on his d-pad. “I’m transferring control of all the detonators to Lenox.”
She’s on her d-pad. “Got it.”
“Plant those explosives,” I command her. “Make your way clear of the ship and then blow ‘em all.”
I set my bucket on the hull. It’s one that’ll
go unutilized.
“Move!” Lenox orders the girls.
Turning to Brice, I say, “Stay on my six. These grav fields will get pretty fucked up once the Grays see we’re airborne.”
I jump into the air and max grav right toward the center of the Trog line, weapon on full auto, a fiery stream of deadly metal blasting out in front of me.
Chapter 36
“Jesus!” shouts Brice. “There must be a thousand of ‘em.”
Seeing the immensity of the mob coming over the curve of the hull, I know Brice is right.
Spears of red sear past us as we fly. Trogs are shooting back. Most of them aren’t, as I realize one of the reasons their preferred weapon is the disruptor. In variable-g, you never know where your railgun slugs will end up.
I veer to the right and claw for altitude, firing down on the Trogs from above, pulling their attention away from Lenox, Silva, and Mostyn, who are trudging along the cruiser’s spine to make it to the location where they’ll put these last bombs.
“Not too much altitude,” Brice admonishes, as we pick up speed. “Or they’ll fire the ship’s guns at us.”
The cruiser’s gunners have no chance of hitting us at this range with the speed we’re moving, yet he’s right. If the gunners open their breeches to load their weapons, they’ll find the explosives. I angle back toward the mob and see several black forms spring out of the mass and fly toward us. “Ghost Trogs!”
“Shit.” Brice is looking. “Where?”
I point.
I cut a hard turn and angle for an empty swath of hull, well behind the advancing horde.
We cross a grav boundary, and I feel a punch that knocks the breath out of me. The grav is suddenly intense. I compensate as I shout a warning to Brice.
He hits the boundary and tumbles out of control.
It has to be four g’s, at least.
Below me, as I careen toward the hull, I see Trogs falling over. The ratcheting grav field is fucking with them, too. At least there’s that.
I hit the hull and roll. Trogs are all around me, on their knees and on their backs, reeling from the g.
Brice smashes down on a Trog, rolls, and springs up on wobbly knees, weapon firing.
The grav starts to ease and I bounce to my feet, leveling my weapon, pulling the trigger to clear a path in front of me. “This way,” I shout, as I do my best to run.
The Trogs outside the field, ten meters away, are rushing toward us, stumbling as they encounter the change.
I amp up my grav again and take off. Good damn thing for us most Trogs like to keep their feet on the ground.
“Where’d those ghost Trogs go?” asks Brice urgently.
I glance at the black above us and see nothing. My bug can’t find their mass. My grav sense is overwhelmed by the rapidly changing fields. I feel like I’m in a dark room with somebody strobing a flashlight into my eyes.
I spin to aim my weapon at the Trogs closing in around Brice, and fire at a handful from the side. “Get off the ground, Brice!”
He jumps as he works the grav control on his data pad. He’s mobility-handicapped relative to me because he doesn’t have a bug.
“This way!” I shout.
Brice flies toward me, and I’m heading for another empty space on the hull.
“Ghost!” he warns.
Instinctively, I tuck my head and roll as I go into a dive. A black blur with a bright blue blade soars past me, scaring a load into my suit’s recycler.
“I never saw him.” My mouth is on autopilot with out-loud thoughts.
“We need to get down,” shouts Brice.
Looking back at the mob of Trogs, I see we’re at least thirty meters past them and they’re turning to come our way. Safe enough.
Brice is already angling for the hull, and his legs are starting to run even though he’s not down yet.
I’m scanning and flying backwards, looking for the second ghost.
My feet touch down, and I spray a wide arc of slugs that veer toward the deck as the g fluxes again.
“Damn those Grays!” grunts Brice, as he flips his suit back to auto grav so he can concentrate on defending himself rather than managing grav changes.
His railgun spews out a stream of hot slugs.
To my right, I see the ghost Trog who’d just missed me with his blade. He’s charging on foot.
I jump to my feet and sprint toward him, railgun blazing as I close the gap.
My rounds go up, down, and wide, but they pound his deflectors and knock him off balance. He falls as I cross the last few meters.
While he’s trying to bring his disruptor around to cut through my neck, I push the barrel of my railgun under his outstretched arm, well inside his defensive grav, and send a handful of rounds through his suit, exploding out his back in a puff of shattered bone and blood.
No time to revel in my ghost Trog kill, I spin to see Brice swinging his disruptor in a fight with the other ghost, a towering, thick one, a giant among Trogs. “Get out!” I shout. “Get out of there!”
Brice ducks under the ghost Trog’s blade, and jumps as his free hand moves to his d-pad’s grav controls.
I jump too, and max grav directly at the ghost whose attention follows Brice into the air above his head.
At the last breath, I switch my power to defensive grav and smash bodily into the Trog.
He flies into a line of his simpleton brothers, and I angle up, slowing and spinning as I bring my weapon to bear, spraying the whole mess of them from above with un-aimed rounds, hoping for a hit.
“This way,” shouts Brice.
“We can’t hold this many,” I tell him.
My God, I’m a deductive genius when it comes to the obvious!
“Of course we can’t!” He angles toward the hull again, trying to move us another forty meters farther from the disorganized mob of Trogs.
He touches down, spins, and raises his rifle, ready to fight.
A second later, I plant my feet on the hull beside him, and start shooting as I comm the squad. “Lenox, we’re pushing our luck here.”
“Thirty more seconds,” she tells me, “then get your ass out of there.”
Chapter 37
The sky fills with fireflies of red zipping past us, some near, most far, railgun slugs fired by Trogs angry for having missed their chance to kill us when we were down among them.
Thirty seconds?
I didn’t count the ticks.
Brice and me both empty our magazines and take off. With only disruptors left and no explosives, we have no defense against so many Trogs and only our lives to trade for a delay.
All we can do is try to keep their attention and hope a ghost Trog doesn’t catch us. We’re heading away from the Trog cruiser, back toward the asteroid where we picked up Lenox and the others.
“Silva, Mostyn, Lenox,” I call. I hear only static.
“Lenox,” calls Brice as the grav fields shrink to null around us.
No response for him either.
The mob of Trogs runs across the hull, looking every bit like an aquatic invertebrate preying on a fish.
I accelerate toward the asteroid’s horizon, searching the surface as I fly, hoping to see the others.
“The ship’s turning,” says Brice.
I glance back to see the massive cruiser slowly rotate, bringing one of its spines of railguns to bear, but not the one we planted our explosives in. “Follow me!” I veer hard to the right.
Brice is close behind.
A volley of huge railgun slugs streaks past us and explodes on the asteroid’s surface.
“That’s overkill!” shouts Brice, like he’s being treated unfairly. A bit uncharacteristic for him.
“I’d say they were pretty pissed about us being on their ship.” I turn again, going up this time.
Railgun rounds start to pour out of the ship.
“Over the horizon!” shouts Brice. “We need the asteroid between us and them.”
“Max grav!
” I shout back. “As fast as you can go.”
“I hope you’re off the ship!” That catches my attention. It’s Lenox on the comm.
I look back at the cruiser as I accelerate, not an entirely smart thing given how fast I’m moving with the asteroid below me and debris in the sky everywhere. I’m rewarded for my carelessness. The upper spine of the ship erupts in fire and shrapnel as railguns mounted there fly apart.
“Our TX!” I shout at Brice.
He turns to see.
All along the gun spine, the cruiser splits open, and the rent in the hull stretches wide as hunks of bent metal small and large blast into the vacuum. For a second, I can see clearly into the giant ship. Trogs inside are looking up at empty, black space, their death.
The cruiser lurches.
Another explosion rocks it.
Bodies and railgun slugs pour out through the gaping wound.
The grav fields flicker on and off, overlap, and stress the hull in places where it’s now weak.
A huge section along one side of the tear caves in and is then pushed back out by escaping gases.
The ship starts to spin and bend.
Trogs that had been on the surface of the hull, the ones trying to kill us, are running in every direction. Some are making the most uncomfortable choice for a Trog and going airborne, leaping for the nearest asteroids.
Cracks spider-web across the hull and spread wide. Lights flicker. The grav fields go from chaotic to frenetic.
“This is going to get fucked up out here!” shouts Brice. The sky is filling with high-speed jetsam. It’s impacting the asteroid below us, and flying past into deep space.
The grav fields near the center of the cruiser, where our bombs did the most damage, flash brilliant blue. I feel the sting all through the bug’s tentacles in my brain as the ship rips apart—half rocketing away from us, two other massive hunks coming our way.
“Shit!” I over-grav my plates and burn for the asteroid’s far side.
Brice sees the same situation as I do and does his best to keep up.
In moments, I’m down close to the surface on the backside, and I’m reversing my field to avoid a crushing impact. Thankfully, the familiar pop of frying plates doesn’t sound. I’ve gambled again with my personal orange terrarium, and I’m alive.