by B. V. Larson
“What about the lead ship?” Gorski asked. “The one dead ahead?”
I clapped him on the shoulder. “If we are still alive, we’ll take it out. Or Crow’s fleet will.”
He blinked and nodded, dazed. The implications of what I’d said were sinking in. This was a desperate play. We were attacking an enemy force three times our size, with surprise as our only advantage. It was a suicide mission, but we couldn’t let them bomb Earth indiscriminately while we sat here waiting for the perfect moment.
“Colonel!” Major Sarin shouted suddenly. “The Macros are opening their tubes.”
“Macro Command orders us to fire on the first target,” Marvin said.
“What? Are we even in range yet?”
“It’s not optimal, but the missiles should reach,” Gorski said.
“Open tubes!” I ordered.
My only thought was: What the hell was happening? But I knew enough not to blurt that out in front of my crew. When the Macros had bombed Earth in the past, they’d fired when they were directly over the target to effect maximum damage.
“They are firing a barrage against Lisbon, sir,” Major Sarin said in a dead tone of voice.
I stared at her for a second. “Gorski, fire all our drones. Take out those missiles before they reach Europe.”
“Firing sir.”
“Why the hell are they unloading so early?” I asked no one in particular.
Sandra tapped at the big metal situation table. I followed her gaze. I saw then what she was pointing out. A swarm of slivers had appeared over Europe. Earth was firing back. I understood then: the Earth governments had been busy building ship-killer missiles to attack cruisers exactly like ours. Who could blame them? They’d seen China pay a grim price for using theirs, but it was all they could do. It was the only effective armament they had. The Macros had fired early because they wanted to make sure Earth cities were knocked out even if their ships were taken down.
“Gorski,” I said. “This is it. Put our turret on the ship to the north and knock out those engines.”
“But sir—” he objected.
“Let’s stick to the plan,” I said. “Kwon, prepare to sally.”
Kwon acknowledged. Gorski gritted his teeth and pressed control points in rapid succession. The ship quivered under my feet as missiles, drones and cannon rounds all fired at once. We were unloading all the armament we’d prepared.
Gorski couldn’t miss. We were in very close range, firing on an unsuspecting enemy. His cannon had been locked onto the target for some time now. The first shot flew toward the unsuspecting target, hammering the engines. The rear section of the ship to our north blossomed incandescently.
“Drop the nanite shell over the launch bay,” I said. “Kwon, take half your marines to each of the flank ships. Plant your bombs and fly away.”
“Will do, Colonel!” Kwon shouted into my helmet.
I wondered if it was the last time I’d ever hear his voice.
“Missiles away,” Gorski said. His voice cracked with tension. “The ship to our south is slowing down, sir. She’s turning into the fire. We can’t hit the engines now.”
I saw a red spray of pulses strafe our metallic green bead on the big board. No one needed to explain to me what was happening this time. Rippling fire struck all over the ship. Major Sarin was knocked off her feet, but Sandra helped her up. For a crazy moment, I felt glad those two would at least die cooperating.
Another shower of red sparks came from the point Macro. They were all turning their guns on us, but still firing their missiles toward Earth’s cities. My eyes ran over a dozen indicators and I knew we didn’t have long. We didn’t have any time at all.
I looked around the bridge. Welter was tapping his alien boards like a crazed video-game player. His nimble hands flashed from spot to spot, touching an oblong area of color with his left and rotating a virtual circle with a single fingertip of his right. He wasn’t wearing gloves, and I hoped it wouldn’t cost him his life. Gorski worked the complex turret controls, still firing. He was blasting at the point ship now, he’d changed targets without asking. But it was a good call. If all of them had damaged engines, they wouldn’t be able to run from Kwon’s demolition men. If Kwon failed, Crow’s Fleet should be able to finish them before they ate Europe.
The showers of sparks on the big board were flying in every direction. Our engines would have blown already, but they were behind us, as we were the rear ship in the formation and the enemy ships were all in front of us. The hull took a dreadful pounding. The entire ship was being hammered on every side.
“Abandon ship,” I ordered, hitting the emergency override channel. Every helmet in range rang with my command. I knew my words were being repeated and broadcast by the communication center as well. Earth could hear it too, on the open channels. I didn’t care. At least this way, they would all know who we were. Macro Command couldn’t possibly hate us any more than they already did, and Earth’s defenders might figure out which ship to avoid firing upon.
“This is Colonel Kyle Riggs,” I said. “All hands, abandon ship!”
Everything went white shortly after I spoke those words. My visor turned opaque, and I couldn’t see anything. Something smacked me down, then picked me back up and threw me the length of the engine room. My suit kept the explosion from killing me outright, but I knew that this must be what it was like to die inside a doomed starship.
I stayed conscious. I blamed my new-fangled helmet. The world was full of pain and twisted sensations. I was hurt, busted-up inside. Parts of me were numb—my right leg from the hip down and my left shoulder. Other parts screamed with pain. One of my eyes was quite possibly missing. I couldn’t see anything with my left eye.
I howled in my helmet, unable to do anything else. Something had me again, something that pulled hard. I looked around and saw a thin arm wrapped around my midsection. I turned my head—flashes of purple light went off in my skull as I did so.
It was Sandra. She had me tucked under her arm and was carrying me out of the ship. I blinked in confusion. One of her arms was missing. How could that be? The nanites glistened in the wound. I could see them in the fabric too as they worked to close the gap in her suit. She shouldn’t even be conscious, I thought, but here she was, carrying me through the ship like a sack of potatoes with her one remaining arm.
I looked back behind me. Something strange was flying after me down the corridor. It took me a second to recognize Marvin. He was following us.
“What are you doing, Marvin?” I asked.
“Following you,” he said.
“What for?”
“You must survive to fulfill your commitments.”
It took me a dazed second to realize he was talking about his homemade spaceship fantasy. I would have laughed if I wasn’t nearly dead. “Go back and rescue everyone you can. Get them out of the ship. Then we’ll talk about building your dream body.”
He did a U-turn and sped away. Sandra paused and pressed her faceplate against mine.
“You’re awake,” she said.
“Yeah,” I said. “I wish I wasn’t. Get us out of here.”
“My suit radio is broken,” she said.
“I figured.”
“I’m firing the airlock bolts now,” she said. “I need you to use your good hand to clamp my suit closed. The nanites haven’t sealed it completely yet.”
I frowned. Several things about her statement concerned me. One worry was her use of the phrase your good hand—which indicated I had a bad one. I quickly figured my left side was the bad one, because it didn’t move when my nerves sent signals to it to do so. I reached up with my right to grasp the dangling scraps of cloth around her stump. Another major worry was the implication she was about to launch us into space. Her flapping suit made this a bad idea.
“This won’t hold,” I said. “I can’t make a good enough seal.”
“Hold on,” she said.
Hearing her words, my first thought
was she had meant to wait a second while she fixed the situation, but she didn’t mean that at all. She meant literally: hold on.
The air in the lock gushed out, and we gushed out with it into space. Sandra and I twirled out into a freezing void. We tumbled, but my suit jets automatically fired, steadying us. I grabbed up a handful of Sandra’s suit material and held onto it for all I was worth. It was like a cinched bag in my hand. We weren’t in a good position to touch helmets again, so I couldn’t hear her if she was talking. She pointed downward.
I hurt my neck in order to take a look. There was quite a drama playing out down there. Three ships were left in the fight. The fourth one, the Macro ship that had been to our north, was floating scrap. Our own ship was trailing fire and explosions. The cannon was still blazing, however. I figured the sparks along our hull were due to the continuous, hammering impacts from the enemy cannons. Tiny figures swam away in every direction out of my ship. I craned my neck around, and after my vision cleared, I saw my marines swarming over both the Macro vessels, setting their charges.
I smiled and listened as my men signaled each other. The plan was working—sort of. They were destroying them all. As I watched, they laid bombs on their hulls and sprang away like fleas jumping off a dying dog. We were the swarm plaguing them, now.
I turned my head back toward Sandra. She was watching the scene with me. It was silent, colorful and terrifying all at once. My fingers were still holding the cloth of her suit together. I knew if the nanites were in close proximity, they were more likely to meet and chain up into an airtight surface. Apparently, they had made a good enough seal, because she was still alive. We’d spun around to watch the battle, and I was able to twist enough to click my faceplate against hers.
“What happened to your other arm?” I asked.
“It hurts,” she said.
“Hurts? I’ve got some bad news…”
“It will be fine.”
“You should have listened. You should have kept your battle suit on.”
“Don’t start with me, Kyle,” she said. “My arm will be fine.”
“It’s been blown clean off, girl!” I shouted. “It’s about to burn up in that dying ship.”
Our old cruiser was sagging now, flying upside down like a dead goldfish. The top of it ran with streaks of fire and thick vapors as it scudded against the mesosphere, the layer of Earth’s atmosphere where most meteors burned up. The friction would soon melt the hull to slag. I was sorry to see it go down.
“No it isn’t,” she said, rummaging in her utility pack.
Sandra grunted and pulled something into view. It was a stiff, feminine arm. “See, here it is. Frozen solid, but with some hard-working nanites and microbial-loving, it will work again. You’ll see. I’ll give you a massage with this by Christmas.”
“Microbials?” I asked. “I thought we left them all on Jolly Rodger.”
“I’ve still got some inside—trust me.”
I didn’t know what to say. Maybe she could reattach her limb. I turned back to watch the battle. Things had taken a welcome turn. Earth’s missiles took out one of the last two cruisers and finally, at the very last, Crow’s Fleet showed up and made a production of destroying the last limping Macro ship. I figured Crow would award himself a medal for saving the day.
Something flipped off inside my brain then, and I blacked out.
-51-
I awoke looking at Sandra. I couldn’t even recall passing out, or being taken down dirtside. The familiar tug of real gravity felt good on my bones—most of them. Some were irritated, having been broken in several places. I groaned, and Sandra smiled.
She looked hot to me, even with one arm missing. I realized with a feeling of disconnection that she really was smiling. It had to be the microbes and nanites working on her injuries. Most people aren’t happy after they have a limb ripped off and nearly die. What I wasn’t sure of is how much those tiny creatures had affected her mind as well as her body.
“You’re awake,” she said.
“Where are we?” I asked.
“Back home on Andros Island. This is the hospital inside Fort Pierre. Don’t you recognize it?”
“Tell me I fell in the shower and the aliens were all a bad dream.”
Sandra shook her head. “I wish they were. We won at least—you do remember that, don’t you?”
“Yes. Tell me about my crew, did everyone make it?”
She shook her head. “Welter got out. Sloan got out.”
“Sloan always gets out,” I commented. “What about Jasmine?” I asked.
Her eyes half-closed and pursed her lips into a tight, pissed expression.
“Okay, okay,” I said. “I mean Major Sarin.”
“She made it, but she was banged up a bit. She says Marvin carried her off the ship as it went down into the atmosphere. And Kwon has some new scars, but he’s still a marine.”
“That’s great news,” I said.
“Gorski can’t be found,” she continued, frowning. “I think he manned his gun until the end.”
“Gorski didn’t make it?” I asked, shaking my head. “He was a good man. I’ll name a ship or a base after him.”
“Really, we didn’t lose too many considering the cruiser went down,” Sandra said. “Most of the unit was out jumping on Macro ships in those new suits of yours.”
“How about you?” I asked.
Sandra lifted her stump of an arm for me to examine. I could see a dangling tendon and mercury-like metal.
“I haven’t had time to reattach it yet,” she said.
“Do you still have it?”
“Yeah, it’s on ice.”
I reflected to myself that Sandra had become one tough girl. She hardly seemed to be flustered by a lost arm. Maybe it was all the nanites and the microbes. Or maybe it was a side-effect of having died multiple times already.
“Won’t it rot or something?” I asked. “Go get it reattached.”
“I plan to take it into one of the medical rooms when you recover,” she said.
“Just do it now,” I told her. “I’m fine.”
“Liar,” she said.
She kissed me and I waved her away with the hand that still worked. She left and I closed my eyes and gritted my teeth in pain. They had an I. V. hooked up to my good arm, but it didn’t seem to be doing any good.
“Knock, knock!” said a gruff voice at the door.
I turned and winced. I thought maybe I had a cracked vertebra in my neck. It really hurt. I hoped the nanites were up to the repair job they obviously had to do on me.
Crow smiled hugely as he walked in. I wondered if he would try to suffocate me with my pillow.
“There you are, mate!” he called loudly. “About time you rejoined the party.”
Crow looked meaty as usual. He had more white hair than the last time I’d seen him. His blue eyes glowed at me around his hawk-nose. He grinned and showed me teeth that were big, white and square.
“Glad to be back,” I said. “Are there any more Macros in sight?”
Crow shook his head. “My ships finished the last of them.”
I stared at him for a minute. We had a long and rocky history. I was still somewhat angry he had not joined the fight against the Macros earlier. I had kept hoping he would engage, so I could hit them when they were focused on Star Force ships. But he had waited until my cruiser went down.
I told myself he hadn’t struck because he had known he would have lost every ship he had against four Macro cruisers. Still, it somehow seemed wrong to me he would allow them to carpet bomb Europe. We were supposed to stop the enemy from killing civilians, or die trying. What else were we doing in these uniforms?
I knew Crow, however, and understood him. He wasn’t the type to sacrifice for others. He would help, but he wouldn’t die for a lost cause. I supposed a man had to work with the allies he had, sometimes.
I smiled at last and reached for his hand with my good one. “Thanks for joining the fi
ght when you did,” I said, taking the high road.
He shook my hand, but looked slightly troubled. At last, he nodded. “I didn’t know it was you, Kyle. You understand that, don’t you?”
“Yeah,” I said. “We didn’t give anything away in our Macro disguise. Hell, even the Macros bought it.”
Crow grinned then with his big teeth showing. “I just had to come see the hero,” he said. “Oh, and there’s one more visitor waiting in the hall. I would have kicked him out, but Sandra vouched for him.”
“Yeah?”
Crow walked to the door and waved Marvin in. The robot didn’t look too good. His propulsion dish was stuttering. His nanite arms were twitching, and he could barely hold onto his dish.
“This is the weirdest pet robot you’ve ever dragged home, Riggs,” Crow said, eyeing Marvin in disdain. “You sure you know what you’re doing, mate?”
I looked Marvin over. One of his cameras was dead and dragged behind him on the floor. A second camera moved normally, but the lens was cracked and I doubted he could see much.
“No,” I told Crow. “I rarely know what I’m doing.”
Crow left after giving me a lengthy report concerning our defenses. He was building masses of mines now, suspiciously similar in design to the ones I’d used on the Macros. He would deploy them at both the rings place float masses of them in orbit over Venus. Hopefully, the next Macro expedition would be wiped out.
“Set up the biggest minefield at Venus,” I told him.
“Why?”
“Because last time they assembled a large fleet, it came in piece by piece from that direction. I think that’s where their main strength lies.”
He agreed, and went off to prepare. We’d won a battle, but the second war with the Macros had just begun. I only wished I knew if we were Rome or Carthage in this series of conflicts. I thought we seemed a lot more like Carthage than Rome, but I hoped not, because things hadn’t turned out so well for them.