Farlost: Arrival

by Mierau,John

  Lou smirked. Yeah. Simple.

  "Insertion in ten, nine, eight..." It was Cargo Specialist Barrowman's voice in her ear. She fought the tension ratcheting up in her muscles as the countdown ticked down toward zero.

  She focused on the black square and the red x inside it. They showed where the shaped charges had been rigged up on the outside of the tank.

  "Seven, six, five..."

  Lou heard a harsh gurgle, cut off quickly as static bloomed on the channel. Then, the chime of a radio going offline.

  "Petrie!" Another voice, anger holding other emotions in check. "Petrie, where are you? This is Nishioka on the 'Short Round', report!"

  "Petrie's line snapped under the pressure." Lou recognized specialist Patel's voice, uncharacteristically sombre. "He’s gone, Short Round."

  For one frightening moment, Lou worried Nishioka would pull the two mechs waiting outside to escort them across to the Betty, leaving the command staff of Six to sit there until the two ships made good their escape from the Thorn.

  It was the safest play, but her skin itched at the idea of putting all her faith -and now all her command decisions- in the hands of Captain Travis. She had put all her trust in those new friends, the lives of her and her crew too, but she needed to be there!

  Then Barrowman's voice returned.

  "Countdown resumes from five..."

  Montagne let go of a breath she hadn't known she'd been holding. She was going to promote that tall, bearded bastard next time she saw him.

  "...four..."

  Six bucked harder, transferring all its fury into Montagne and the others, tightly harnessed directly to her side.

  "...three..."

  "Too late to go back to the Cellar?" Beacham squeaked beside her.

  Montagne laughed, not caring how insane she sounded.

  "...two..."

  She kept right on laughing, feeling the drum-beat of the engines and the stresses in her ship's bones beneath her.

  "...one..."

  Small bright lights winked in and out of existence all around what had been a black square painted on the far tank wall.

  Then, too fast for Montagne to really see it, the remains of the square were aflame, and then they were just... gone. A sickly yellow glow filled the space. Quickly, shadows blocked the glow, and two massive shapes filled the new hole.

  Montagne reached down toward the release for the harness. She had her fist ready to slam down, but waited, her teeth chattering into each other like jackhammers. Her vision blurred, the force of the explosion now joining the other powerful impacts hammering her.

  She looked to the side, distracted for a moment by the airlock light at the far end of the tank. The formerly red light was now yellow, as if someone was on the other side, cycling through.

  Madness. Everyone else on Six was tucked into the cellars, strapped down and waiting for this story to write itself. More likely, her soldier's brain assessed, it’s a malfunction, courtesy of Six's current joyride through hell.

  No more time to consider extraneous information. The mechs were shouting on the radio. Montagne's world slowed. Her hyperfocus showed her the bearded Barrowman in the mech closest to her. Flare from the two mechs' back-mounted thrusters glowed off the walls.

  She gave the order. "Go! Go! Go!"

  Montagne slammed the side of her fist into her harness release. The thunder shaking her bones almost trumped her best efforts. She just barely caught one strap of her harness, narrowly avoiding being flung free to tumble out of control.

  On automatic, as she'd rehearsed in her mind since first strapping in, she reached out and grabbed Beacham by the wrist.

  He hadn't had her skill and training, he'd been slower in releasing his harness, which gave Montagne the seconds she'd needed to grab hold of him.

  She looked through his faceplate to see him screaming. She let the grin of satisfaction play on her face as she tugged him closer only to spin him and hurl him away...straight towards Barrowman.

  Barrowman's oversized mech arms and their massive, three-fingered hands caught the scientist easily. His screaming didn't let up.

  There were other voices, other sounds of chaos and people struggling against long odds, both inside the tank and outside, in the closing distance between Six and the Betty.

  Montagne still felt the ship close to tearing itself apart, but now she was smiling and humming.

  At last, no more sitting and waiting! She could act! She could fight!

  She looked around, capturing a snapshot of her crew.

  Ron Taggart, tasked with escorting Stan Renic, had already reached Barrowman's mech and was strapping Renic onto one of the the harnesses on the oversized mechanized suit specially mounted on either side under the mechs' massive arms, just for this operation. She watched him slam the belts into place and reach his own arms into the second harness bolted there.

  She swung her head over to the other mech which had flown through the hole and crunched its feet into the inner tank wall to anchor itself: Arnel Villanueva was flying towards that one's massive arms, one hand outstretched toward it, his other hand fisted in one of the straps on the back of Nav Officer Okoro's spacesuit.

  The ship shuddered even harder around her, and all but two of Lou's fingers again slipped free of the harness. She set her mouth, satisfied none of her crew had been left behind, and tugged hard to bring her feet in to the wall of the tank beneath her harness.

  She kicked off, hurtling fast and hard for the center mass of Barrowman's mech.

  The impact blacked out the edges of her vision. She shrugged into the harness jury-rigged on the mech's side, and with trembling fingers she slammed the belts closed. She felt the belts automatically tighten. They tightened the air right out of her lungs.

  She kicked her feet, got one strapped in the belts of another, empty harness. She would be glad for the fact the mechs had conscientiously bolted more harnesses into place than was necessary, if it didn't increase her sudden claustrophobic panic.

  The harness was too tight. She couldn't breath.

  Someone else's voice sounded off on the radio but she couldn't make sense of it. She stared to the side, trying to focus her vision on one still point on the mech suit she was strapped to, but a fresh assault pounded her aching body.

  The world spun as the mech poured on the thrusters. Sickly-yellow, black, sickly-yellow, then black again strobed her eyes, but everything was out of focus.

  The straps had robbed her of too much oxygen. Her body had taken too much of a beating. The vista her eyes could not believe robbed her of her senses.

  Her mind was dull. Her body trapped. Her adrenaline rush suddenly gone.

  An impossible giant below her, spiky and angry, reached up to swallow her and her kind whole.

  A small speck nearby, shaped like a bloated metal man like the one carrying her. She knew what it was, or could know, if only her mind could stop reeling, her lungs could take one deep breath.

  She looked up, instinct telling her that was her destination.

  A gray, pock-marked ship lay ahead, above. In fewer seconds than seemed possible she disappeared inside a gaping black mouth.

  Red light strobed in the mouth. Then a crack of bright light far inside.

  She was hurtling toward that crack.

  Through the crack.

  A sooty-covered monster (a spacesuit, her oxygen starved brain reminded her) slammed its hands into her middle, and then she was floating free.

  Loud sounds in her ears. Whoops and screams, punctuated by static.

  Another suit appeared, talking to her. Words, she knew. What they meant, she didn't. There were sparkles in the narrowing channel of her vision. Pretty sparkles.

  The face behind the glass in front of her frowned, said more words and pounded her chest.

  She gasped, and was surprised to find that air could again fill her lungs.

  Vision and reason flooded back, along with pain. The Betty. She was on the Betty!

  "Yo
u alright, missy?" A hoarse, older voice. The words were sarcastic, the concern behind them real. She nodded, and reached out to grab the arm. Pump it.

  Then the man holding he pushed her through a square of bright light. As she crossed over, crushing weight returned, and Lou fell forward onto Rose Okoro, who cried out.

  Gravity! she realized, as things began to go dark again.

  She breathed harder, begging the world not to go away. She breathed too hard, and the light dimmed faster.

  Blur, mysterious words, sounds, surrounded her.

  “Montagne, we’ve got you! Seven warm bodies, all safe, and we’ve got the power line! We’re already drawing power, Commander!”

  What? Seven? There was something wrong with that, she knew, but for the life of her she couldn't think what.

  She looked up into the helmet, lit from within. She saw the pretty, scarred face of Captain Travis.

  “You're a shitty driver,” she mumbled. “Hitting all the bumps. I’ll drive next time…” the world went black.

  THE HAIL MARY

  44

  She’d never seen something evil before.

  That was Dina’s overriding thought as she stared out the Toad’s cracked canopy at the barbell shape of the Boomer ship.

  Only kilometers away, and magnified even closer on the Toad’s screens, the two circular sections on either end of the long bar were more hexagonal; the bar a bit thicker than a dumbbell, but it was still a good analogy, she thought.

  Except for the bristling sensors, antennae and thicker protrusions which looked plenty menacing to Dina, although nothing fired or flared or pulsed out to turn her into meat sauce.

  She remembered the vids she’d seen, and realized there was no reason for the Boomer to possess ship to ship weapons. It was the ship to ship weapon. She looked over the closest of the two sides of the barbell design.

  No windows, no obvious weak spots. Just a dark, reflective surface, with the occasional glow of light that seemed to coincide with a change in velocity or direction. No puff of gas like from the Toad’s thrusters. Plenty of little glittering puffs from what she figured was atmosphere escaping.

  Wavering, damaged and bleeding air, it was still coming. Slow, course correcting constantly, but it was coming.

  And jesus, it looked angry.

  “I get it now,” she muttered aloud. The thing was a devil, come to drag them down to whatever passed to hell in these places.

  “I’m sorry, Pilot Rodriguez.” That deep voice, the Betty’s lobster First Officer’s voice, sounded so sad.

  For her.

  She almost laughed: First Officer Doug and everyone on that tram she’d been trying to ferry back to Six and the Betty were all as screwed as she was, but it’s first words were for her.

  “Not your fault,” she said. “There’s assholes all over.”

  Mechanical laughter from Salix’s voice box filled the line. Even carved by a machine, it sounded defeated to Dina’s ears.

  She shook her head.

  No way. We’re not cooked! “So how do we fight?”

  “Can’t fight, once they’re tentacles grab you! Can’t fight!” one of the Tumblers squawked.

  Dina growled. “Well they’re faster than us, even dinged up, you can see that! So they’re going to get their tentacles on us. So what do we do?”

  Static answered her.

  “At least tell me what we’re up against!” Newark, Posk, you said they’re like you, right?”

  “Bigger!” Parroted one of the tumblers. “Us, but bigger, and stronger!”

  “And meaner!” Said the other. She hoped she lived long enough to tell them apart.

  “Warrior class,” Salix continued. “Born twice as big, with tentacles reaching twice as long.”

  “I’ve seen warrior tumblers crush ships hard enough with their tentacles to vent atmosphere,” Doug told her. “Boomer tumblers will be full of drugs to keep them aggressive and attacking even as the rads and vacuum of space eat away at them.”

  “Once they get to us, we’re done,” Sal summed up.

  “Not giving up yet, if that’s okay with you.” Dina growled.

  “We’ll fight, we won’t let them take us!” said the deeper tumbler voice. Posk, Dina guessed.

  “You’ve got thrust enough to make it back to The Betty, human,” Salix said. “The Boomer’s damaged. We’ll try and buy you—”

  “Screw you, chia pet!” Dina yelled, riding an anger fueled by the fact he’d caught her out: she’d been thinking exactly the same thing.

  Not that she’d throw anyone to the wolves. What good would running do anyway, if there were more of those Boomer things coming?

  “You couldn’t get away carrying us,” Douglas told her, truthfully, “and we can’t get away at all, so just go. At least it’s a chance. We’ll get a few kicks in, trust us.”

  “Just quit it with that ‘walk away’ shit and let me think!”

  Proximity alarms chimed. Displayed on a rear cam, the Boomer ship was forty clicks out. Even damaged and flying wobbly, it would be on them in minutes.

  Looking over the image, Dina wasn’t impressed. Ship’s not much but a mouth to drop soldiers, she muttered. A cracked and broken mouth. She saw missiles mounted in clusters around either end of its dumbbell shape.

  Why wasn’t it just vaporizing-no, Dina remembered, they didn’t want to destroy her and her new friends, they wanted to take control of their ships.

  That gave her maneuvering room.

  She tapped screens, dragged course plots, weighed odds. Then, before she could second guess herself or piss her pants, she poured on the aft thrusters.

  “Running ain’t this chica’s thing,” she said, looking out the window for one more glimpse of the tram. Her fingers felt for the arm controls, gently releasing both of their grips on the tram. “Was nice to meet you, boys!”

  She killed the circuit before they could answer. The tram was already five hundred meters away, thanks to her giving it that last goose. She looked down to her screens as she swivelled the ship, and her eyes widened. The Boomer was closer than she thought.

  Bright glows flared, like some science fiction version of propulsion, and the meter count on the screen showing her the ship dropped below a thousand—and kept right on plummeting.

  The Boomer ship sniffed at her with some active scan that made another alarm bell blare. Dina slapped the audibles off and stared at the cracked ship leaking some kind of atmosphere.

  Half a kilometer off, now.

  It’s trajectory shifted. Vectored on Dina and the Toad, not the tram.

  Yeah. Dina smiled and goosed her little ship forward.

  Several more silent alarms flashed on her screens. Starting to look like a dance club in here, she thought. Her mind flashed back to a wooden dance floor beneath palm trees, and her tall, handsome doctor spinning her. She remembered a sweet merengue backbeat and the smell of his aftershave, then shook her head free of the memory.

  She was beginning a different dance now. And it was one she was gonna to lead.

  She reached a far screen and tapped a little musical note icon, selected a playlist.

  Congas, cabasa and cowbell began to fill the cockpit.

  Dina’s smile widened. Even when she was about to get her ass kicked, Dina loved this part.

  When she was a little kid in the neighbourhood, she came home from school with bloody noses every other week. Not because she was mean, but she could be. Not because she liked to hurt people, which she didn’t…most of the time.

  Because nothing made Dina’s blood boil like a bully.

  Dina’s head started to nod in time with the latin music quickly picking up speed in her helmet, as she articulated the Toad’s mechanical arms forward, pincers wide. One arm had an electron beam mounted on the side. The other, a precision laser cutter.

  She fired them both up.

  She grinned, remembering that time in LA she watched two drunk assholes jousting with flagpoles on ten speed bik
es in the parking lot outside a liquor store. Loser bought.

  “You’re buying, assholes,” she snarled, and turned up the juice to both cutting implements on her robot arms.

  The proximity alarms sounded off over the music in her helmet. Shit, they where like axes in her head.

  She cranked her music louder.

  The Boomer ship came on, straight and fast.

  Flying by eyeball now, Dina waited until it was close enough, then nimbly flipped the Toad around ‘above’ the Boomer, and fired her up afts again, matching its course. The whine from the Toad’s ass end made her teeth rattle.

  She grinned a feral grin .

  Under a hundred meters. Eighty. Sixty.

  The Boomer was venting so much air, Dina wondered what was left for the Boomers to breathe inside! And something was sparking on its far side.

  Forty meters.

  Only one of what looked like a bank of thrusters was still functioning. It was only moving so fast because of leftover thrust from it’s last nuke love tap.

  Twenty meters. Ten.

  And then Dina was on it.

  No death rays reached out to torch her as she dug the Toad’s left arm into the Boomer’s rippled, warped hull.

  More glittering crystals of frozen atmosphere smashed into the Toad’s already cracked cockpit window. Dina didn’t even flinch.

  Then, dozens of black and pink tentacles where writhing through the crack. Then they were pushing their way around the crevices beneath Dina’s other robot hand.

  She dimly realized the stars were streaking sideways behind her attacker, and she knew the ship below her had lost attitude control. It was dying.

  She helped it along, stabbing her right hand inside, and igniting the cutting tools.

  The atmosphere inside caught fire. The tentacles reaching outwards were engulfed in flame.

  Dina’s face craned forward, wincing to see the Boomer’s hull through the orange and blue flames licking out. She sang a few lines of the song, her shoulders bobbing along with her head as she pierced another hole with the claw. The gooey center of another Tumbler dripped away, sucked free of her claw and the ship.