by Mierau,John
Then she smelled something. She looked at the machine that was funneling her ship's power into the Betty's systems. A ring of yellow had started flashing all around the power cable.
Gruber swore and ran behind the machine, slamming it open and plunging his hands inside.
The machine hummed, then stopped. A dozen other machine sounds around Lou faded or ground down. And the lights went out again.
“Now, what!” Travis yelled.
“Now, you listen!” The ghost that wasn’t Ed whispered. “Or…you die!”
50
"Now you listen," a little girl’s voice whispered again in Sam's ear, "or you die!"
Body and soul, he ignored the voice.
The lights flickered on as emergency batteries were tripped, coming back up just enough to let him see the other faces around him.
Life in Farlost wasn't easy, but Sam had never cares much for easy. On board the Betty McKenna, he'd made it work, him the small family he'd built, one sentient at a time.
For months, they'd struggled to fill their stomachs and their engines. The cost of data from the Ery and Martel networks went up on every transmission. The Guard wasn't just putting their boots on the necks of the settlements they "protected" any more, they were pushing out into the Summer and Winter Belts, and the number of ships they were capturing was on the rise.
From the day they set course for the Thorn, the crew of the Betty had felt something breathing behind them, something getting closer.
Life in Farlost hadn't ever been easy, and everyone he knew carried debts that couldn't be repaid, guilt for something they done, or fear they'd used up all the luck alloted then by the Universe.
In the dark hours alone in his cabin, Sam wondered if the snowballing accumulation of trouble dragging him down it was bad karma come home to roost.
Standing there, dead centre of the chaos in the engine room, with his ship dead in space, Sam wondered what he'd done for it all to go so wrong, so many ways.
He wracked his brains to figure out what was left, what trick he'd forgotten about or could invent whole cloth from what the Betty and HHL-6 carried.
If the Universe was marking his last strike, then fine, just so long as he could get everyone else away from the hungry Thorn down below... some other way-any other way! - than in the holds of a Guard ship.
"I can't fix it in time," Gruber whispered, handing over what good parts he could from the first exploded relay for him to fit inside the backup.
Sam pressure fit a long cylinder as his engineer said "the teardown and rebuild will take hours. If the Boomers somehow miss us and fly right by, the rebuild might be drawing power before the Thorn tugs us down and crushes us, but then what? The Guard ship will be right on top of us."
"Before the Guard gets us that ghost ship will! The Thorn's gravity is pulling us off course now our engines are down again, and it changed course right along with us!" Whish farted his panic over the comm channel. "What's it wanna do? Eat us?"
"Forget the wreck and forget the Guard!" Travis shouted to the ceiling. "Let's get our crew back and deal with the Boomers first, how about? How many Boomers, and will the team get here before them?"
"Yes, Cap." Whish reacted to Sam's false anger as he'd hoped, calming and slowing his voice. "It’s a dead heat between the two Boomers still coming and the tram."
"Did you forget about my field already?" Beacham asked, sitting on the floor between the flash-cryo mat with two of his crew-mates inside and the remains of the third cremate who had tried to kill them all.
Gruber roared in pain, his fingers pulling a smoking, deformed cartridge from the relay. He threw it at Beacham, who ducked it with a yelp.
Travis tossed a question at Gruber with his eyes. Gruber shook his head. "No power, no force field. No force field, and the Boomers..." Gruber didn't have to finish.
Sam wanted to scream. One more time, he stuffed it away and wore the face his crew needed to see.
"Are you ready listen, now?? " the little girl voice whispered again in Sam's ear.
Montagne’s Security Officer stepped forward. “You see someone too.” He gestured at an empty space.
Oh yeah, he saw someone.
“Trust what’s coming,” she said again, in that same little girl voice." Let the ancient help you!" That same thin nose and loving eyes hammered at him.
Taggart heard something too, looked right at the spot and talked over... Her. “How's that help us? We got some saving our ass to do right now!”
The Commander stepped close to the girl, but her gaze settled higher than the beautiful braids Sam knew would fall level with his stomach if he wrapped his aching arms around her. “I see him too,” Lou muttered.
Travis shook his head, looking away. Denying her existence.
“Answers'd be nice, man, why you want us to meet up with that old ship?” Taggart asked the little shape staring at Sam with adoring eyes. “You here to save our bacon? Or do you need us to do that for you?”
“Meet the old shi--? Forget it!” Gruber shouted at Taggart. "We’re not waiting for a thousands of years old hulk to catch up!” Sam could tell that was meant for him as much as Taggart. “You forget we have more than just Boomers inbound?”
"I don't know anything about Farlost except that it is big, bigger than Earth's solar system. So why was that Guard ship here? To launch crazy suicide landing parties at us, ” Montagne asked.
The little girl stepped closer to him, eyes fixed on his, fat tears welling up beneath each wide eye.
Gruber laughed. “Must be here for you. We were runnin’ silent. You jumped out of a cake, party horns blazin’.”
Sam couldn't stop himself from stepping forward. His flesh and blood arm wanted to reach out and hold her. “Sarah?” Travis whispered hoarsely. He hadn’t meant to do that. Hadn’t meant to let the pain leak out onto his face either.
He knew it wasn't his little girl.
He rubbed at his face, scouring away the guilt and pain that had been aged so close to perfection inside him.
Taggart squared off with whoever it was he saw in her place, a calculating look on his face. “You said don't let the lights die. Not the light show, no, ‘don’t let the light die’. You mean you. ‘You’ are the lights.”
Gruber froze in place, staring along with all the other eyes now.
Travis’s daughter ’s face was twisted with fear as it nodded, confirming Taggart's words. "The Guard didn't come for the Arrivals. It came for us."
“I heard you,” Gruber whispered, confirming he saw someone too. “And you had me goin' there for a second, ghosty. Until you said The Guard were hunting you, which they wouldn't because nobody knows how to hurt Lights."
Sam's breath caught. "They can, can't they? They found something, or created something, and they can hurt you now, can't they!"
His daughter, frightened and small, nodded.
Travis snarled, his lips pulling back from his teeth, spittle flying from his mouth.
"Good."
Someone stepped up beside his daughter. Beacham, the physicist. He turned to whatever he saw, raising his hand as if to shush it. “We got your homework assignment. Save your ass. We got it, okay?”
Commander Montagne stared at Sam. “What is it we’re all seeing?”
Travis licked his lips. Nothing came out. She was so beautiful, just the way he remembered her.
The way she looked one hundred years ago. He forced his eyes away. "The lights are Farlost's boogeymen."
Gruber growled more information for her. "Earth had Sirens, beautiful voices that lured sailors, smashed their ships on rocks, or made 'em crazy enough to sail smack into storms.”
“You're sayin' this fake brother I see,” Taggart said waving a hand toward each of them, “and fake whoever it is you see at the same time, it’s here to trap us? But why?
We’re already trapped, aren’t we?”
Gruber cackled. “Lights show up whenever something’ bad’s gonna happen, kid. What�
��s it matter if they’re doin’ it for a reason, or just for shits and giggles? Bad shit happens either way.”
“Not if you get my emitters running!”
Travis shut his eyes tight. It wasn't his daughter. He knew that.
You’re not real. You’re not here.
When he opened his eyes, the empty space was empty again.
Spent, he leaned against the hot side of the ruined machine.
“You wanna make your big black egg? With what juice?” Gruber asked Beacham. “Daisy showed me the power requirements.”
The physicist met Montagne’s eye. Sam saw the challenge in there, saw Beacham' belief that she would find a way.
And felt his own answering twinge of guilt inside. Yeah, it’s his job to pull an ace out of somewhere for his crew, too, but where?
“The pods have been wired in all this time we’ve been docking," Beacham told Montagne. "I programmed them back on Six to hoard whatever power they could. They have to have stored up ten, fifteen minutes of field strength by now. That has to help us somehow, right?”
Sam stood up straight again. That was something. Now, how could he use it?
“Daisy, how long until their pilots bolt down that emitter?”
“The Short Round is mounting it now.”
“Can we raise and lower the Field," he asked Beacham, "just when we need it?”
Beacham shook his head. “It’ll take most of the reserves just to form the sphere, then it will last ten or fifteen minutes, max.”
Gruber growled, shoulders tensing like he wanted to throw something at the red-skinned physicist. Sam reached out and waved Gruber to keep working. He did.
Sam gave Beacham a weak smile. “Okay, we’ll raise it right before the first Boomer hits. Maybe get to see what Boomer guts look like splattered on your force field."
“And what do we do when the second Boomer attacks?” Gruber asked, his voice low.
“Keep working, Ben,” Sam said calmly.
“Wait.” He thought back to when he’d first seen HHL-6 surrounded by it’s black bubble. “You changed it,” he whispered, thinking things through.
“Took almost all our energy to open it enough to contact you,” Lou said.
“We had to tear it down and rebuild it with holes for radio and visible spectrum," Beacham said. "I have to rebuild each field from scratch, can't just dial each spectrum ip and down. Yet," he added, confidently.
Sam asked what was to him the most obvious question. “Can you can deploy it in smaller segments?”
"I've created fields in hemisphere before, and I have models for smaller fields. It'd be cheaper to protect vehicles from atmospheric friction in re-entry with a field instead of tiles." Beacham cocked his head. “Why? You think if we ask the space aliens to attack us only on one side they'll oblige?”
It couldn’t be that easy, Travis told himself. “You could, say, make a narrow cone of force instead of a sphere?”
Beacham looked at him. “Yeah, but why? What the hell good would a cone do?”
Montagne clapped her hands together and beamed at Sam, chuckling with delight.
Beacham stared at his Commander, then back to Sam. “Any time you want to let me in on the joke is fine with me!”
“We don’t use the Light Show as a shield,” Montagne purred, dangerously. “We use it to make a spear."
Sam stepped forward, matching her delicious, dangerous grin. “Or two?”
Beacham’s eyes widened as he caught on. "Oh!" He rubbed his knuckles on his chin. “Depending on shape and volume, we've got energy for four or five smaller forms. Six maybe, if we plan it right. I won’t be able to aim it on the fly, though, we'd need to know where to project the, uh, spears in advance. ”
“So,” Montagne said, drawing the word out in a slow and calculating tone. “We need a way to make Boomers go where we want them to go.”
She met Sam’s eyes and his stomach dropped. He knew what she meant, and he hated it. She was right, though. There was no other way.
Beacham was lost again. “How are you gonna make those Boomer things go where you want them to?”
Sam and Montagne said the word together.
“Bait.”
51
Dina groaned, resisting her return to consciousness until she heard the deep sounds of alien voices.
With a rush, the past few days filled her head and she jerked awake.
Doug the bug eyed monster and Salix the walking hedge were near the long observation window across from her. Clos e enough for her to see with her naked eye was the long stack of tanks that was Six, docked alongside the space shuttle on steroids that was the Betty.
Dina saw the countdown projected on the window, guessing it to be the docking countdown.
"It has to be this way, Doug. I'm sorry I can't-"
Salix's entire body shook, and loudly rustled. It sounded to Dina like a child blowing a raspberry.
Doug's booming voice joined the sarcastic sound. "You scared up a chance, Cap. It is hard to believe you managed that much."
The voice on the line came back a moment later, an edge of emotion not quite suppressed. "Good luck. Keep this line open. We'll see you soon."
A chime on the line, and the background noise from the other side fell away.
Something curled around Dina's leg. She looked down with a start, and saw the smaller Tumbler, Newark, had coiled a dozen tentacles around her leg and calf.
Her body cycled quickly through surprise, revulsion, and claustrophobia.
Before she could jerk her leg, though, She felt another tentacle curl around her hand. Softly, not hard. She knew she could easily pull away. Then she heard the sound Newark was making.
Soft keening.
She remembered Posk tearing her free from the Boomer's tentacles.
She remembered Posk holding the Boomer on the ruin of the Toad as she sent it hurtling away from the Tram.
She remembered Posk giving its life, for her and the others.
She understood the keening and instinctively she wound her hand a few more times around the tentacle.
The tumbleweed like exoskeleton shuddered, and the cobwebby center moved closer to Dina's face.
The keening dropped a little in intensity as a snout emerged and nudged Dina's face. She saw the softness of the skin around the mouth, belying the threat of the fangs inside that closed mouth. She understood how exposed Newark had made itself with the gesture, like a dog rolling on its back.
Something grew tight in her chest, with a passing flash of the Boomer's fangs closing in on her. Then a lolling pink tongue appeared in Newark's mouth, and more tentacles tangled with the hand she'd wound closer to the alien.
Every tentacle squeezed again.
"You saved us. Posk saved you. Welcome."
Dina gave a weak smile, too. "Welcome," she said, and looked up at Salix as the plant thew a blanket around her, too.
"Told you we could beat it," she said, resisting the urge to cough as her deep breath caused pain in her ribs to flare.
Salix cracked one branchy forearm against his thigh, emitting a loud sharp crack, then a second and third.
Laughter? She wondered. "You're one tough human," Salix's voice box said.
"We're almost there," Doug called from the window. She looked past Salix to see Six and the Betty filling almost the entire view port. "The Boomers are coming in close behind,"he finished in a flat tone.
More Boomers? Dina felt the terror wind up again in her gut. "What's happening?" she asked.
"Betty's going fishing," Doug called from where his massive space-suited form knelt at a window. He pointed above Dina.
She craned her neck up to the other window, this one facing away from the Betty, and saw the crosshairs someone had programmed to display on the window.
Inside the cross-hair Dina saw a dumbbell shape, quickly growing larger. Quickly closing the distance.
Two more Boomers were closing in on the tram.
"Betty's going
fishing," Doug rumbled again. "And we're the bait."
52
Lou caught Beacham with a grunt. He straightened, one hand against the wall of the long corridor, and his helmet bobbed as he nodded his thanks inside it.
“How much farther,” he panted, shoulders heaving.
"Come on, let's go!" Travis shouted ahead.
Lou thumped his arm. “We’ll get there when we get there. Do I have to turn this spaceship around, Beacham?"
….Don’t let the lights die!….
All three of them jerked to a stop, looking around.
There was no one else in the corridor.
“Did that just happen?” Beacham squeaked. “You heard it too, the thing about the lights?"
Travis was turning around in a circle. “I heard it, but I don’t see any..."
Daisy’s voice, calm and measured, soothed Lou’s ear. “I detect no life signs in your vicinity."
Lou pushed on Beacham’s back. “We keep moving. We do what we said."
The scientist straightened, but not without a weary groan. “When, do you think, the universe will get tired of messing with us?"
She patted the back of his space suit. “You can do this, right?"
“Break down twelve years of work making force fields and repurpose it to make stabby fields?” Beacham nodded. “In the bag. Ten minutes, tops, especially with Daisy checking my math.” He took a deep shuddering breath. “If I don’t die first."
She grinned a little and thumped the back of his left shoulder -the one that wasn’t bleeding- to reassure him and get him moving down the corridor towards the Betty’s fore-section. “We’re still here, Beacham.”
“Some of us are,” Beacham said quietly over the channel, but relented and kept walking.
Lou thought about that. Between the gut-punch of losing HHL-6's first commander and her mentor, Ed Dwyer to the insanity of Burkov, she’d lost dozens of crew already. Not to mention being stranded with the survivors in another solar system, the location of which Six's onboard computers hadn’t cracked.
At least, they hadn't cracked it before her resident genius had uploaded a computer virus, written by an alien plant, to take control of her ship and help it plan a suicidal, high speed docking maneuver with its own ship.