by Mierau,John
"They flew through the guts of the monsters and dropped nukes inside them," he murmured close to her. "Steady now, and draw back." His fingers, over hers, pulled the ring steadily backwards. A thin beam arced out of the rifle, but it was still enough to slice several cindered targets cleanly in half. They disintegrated into heaps of ash.
He let go of her hand. She quickly, but carefully eased up on the pressure, and let the circle turn slowly counter-clockwise until she heard the click of what she took to be the safety engaging.
She turned her neck and stared up at Travis. "And then they took control?"
He nodded. "And then they took control," he whispered. He stepped away. Reluctantly, Lou felt... then wondered if it was her reluctance she was feeling.
She coughed, look down at the weapon in her hand. "Am I going to punch through the hull with this thing?"
Travis shook his head, smiled slightly. "Betty's tougher than that. Try not to hit anything but the Boomers, though. Gruber gets pissy about fixing things I break."
She nodded. "How did one human ship take control of an entire system?"
Travis cut chin toward the door and started moving. Lou followed him up the stairs and back into the corridor, headed for Betty's bridge.
"They didn't take control of any of the settlements, not at first. They just promised protection and impartial adjudication. Who was going to argue with their saviors from the Dragons?"
Lou caught a glimpse of light ahead, and saw the doorway marking the end of the hall. "The Guard is a protection racket?"
"It started that way," Travis growled. "The military crew of Zeus found themselves in foreign territory with no way home. They said they were bringing truth, justice and the enlightened human way. They defeated the Dragons and declared themselves an impartial Guard for all that wanted trade and protection under their watch. Then they started seizing ships in free space that didn't follow their rules. They built a powerful fleet to give their protection real teeth. Then they started dispatching ‘advisors’ to settlements that couldn’t say no. No one really had a choice. There are rebel groups all through the system, but no one can stand up against the Guard's firepower."
"Decades," Lou panted, "of no strong opposition, and-"
Travis nodded. "And now they've got their fingers in every pie, squeezing every government. The Guard is worse than the Dragons ever were."
The ceiling exploded. Lou staggered to her knees, both hands on the alien rifle raised over her head against the shower of torn metal, ceramic and electrical sparks.
Something sprang up from the ground, raising itself on massive black tentacles. One of those whipping appendages slammed into Travis. He hit the ground and crumpled, eyes close, face slack.
Lou staggered to her feet, sweat-slick fingers racing for the trigger as the monster roared. Its tentacles smashed dents deep into the corridor walls, and then it was leaping through the air. In slow motion, she saw the long, barbed tentacles, sharp fangs and flying spittle... and then it was on of her.
55
Ben Gruber slammed his free fist against the metal gantry he was strapped to.
The Zeus. Here? The Universe was having a right feast of shits and giggles today,wasn’t it?
“Have you got them!” Travis screamed in his ear.
”Almost in position," Gruber muttered tensely, his gloved hand pushing the composite throttle mounted under his right hand as far forward as it could go. The gantry's engines vibrated through the seat back and the straps holding him down as he maneuvered the long structure out into open space. “Are we sure about this? Slowpokes or not, working plasma drive engines—"
“Got a better plan? Got any plan?"
Ben shook his head. He couldn’t click his heels together and fix the relay the suicidal Haskam VP had taken out along with himself, and very nearly everyone else in the room, if not for the quick thinking of that big security officers, Taggart. It would take hours, maybe days before he could siphon HHL-6’s reactor power through to the Betty’s engines.
The Guard would be on top of them before that.
The Zeus would be on top of them.
“Alright. I can get it done, but I’ll need a couple hands from Six’s crew who know how to work fast under load in vacuum,” he muttered.
“We’ll get you the warm bodies, just as soon as you get our crew!” Then Travis’s voice disappeared with a chime, leaving Ben sitting there, waiting.
Strapped to a piece of metal, telescoping out into open space.
Just as two Boomer ships were about to arrive and vomit out killer Tumbler soldiers, high as a kite on drugs and eager to rip their victims some new ones.
"Hurry up hurry up hurry up," he repeated under his breath.
Finally, stars and a corner of the damned Thorn appeared around the curving edge of HHL-6, and then the tip of the crane gantry cleared the twenty-odd meter crack of the Betty's cargo bay that the side of the HHL-6, the ship they had glued themselves to, didn't completely fill.
He watched Boomer ship wreckage streak by. It made him grin. The grin faded when he saw a massive Tumbler form hurtle toward one of the many tanks that made up HHL-6. It's gigantic tentacles whipped around, tearing at the vacuum. A roar of warning from a deep voice Ben didn’t know crackled on the open channel. “Raj, incoming!"
Ben could make out two moving glints of metal, two tanks away. He watched them spread out along the curved tank surface, to either side of where the incoming kamikaze Tumbler would land.
Silently cursing the slow speed of the metal gantry he was strapped to, he watched as the Boomer's massive writhing tentacles smashed into the side of Six and quickly ripped open the side. Atmosphere roared out, a white mist quickly freezing into crystals that almost blew the drug-addled Tumbler soldier back into space.
Two tentacles held on, and others whipped around for a fresh hold.
One of the mechanized suits fired a beam that sliced through both tentacles, and then the alien was tumbling away into space.
“I hope the Thorn chokes on ya!” Ben yelled. “Good work, boys!” A buzzing he’d been waiting for sounded in his ear, and he craned his neck around to see the tram appear.
He tapped the screen, tagging the tram. To his left, a long tube rose and centered on the tram, silently launching a missile-like harpoon with a tooth-loosening vibration.
The harpoon hit its mark, and its powerful magnet and sharp grapplers held. Ben pounded a meaty fist into a palm, then tapped to reel in the catch of the day: his crew.
“Three o’clock, Murray!”
Ben looked around. He didn’t know who was talking or where ’three o’clock’ was for them. He had nothing to do but wait there with his ass hanging out in space, for the tram to be reeled into the crane.
He couldn’t start reeling the crane itself back into the bay until the tram cleared the cargo bay walls, otherwise the cable could shear free and the tram would be lost, or smashed on Betty's hull. He tracked the sky for more Tumblers, feeling every inch as vulnerable as he was.
“Our new contestant's on the run!" the deep voice sounded again on the line. "Gruber! He’s heading your way!"
Ben stared up and saw it: two bright points of chemical thruster haloing the Tumbler’s body as it raced toward him.
The tram was still a handful of seconds away from clearing the cargo bay.
The Boomer would be on him before then.
Ben tapped the console in front of him, and the long cylinder mounted to the right of the gantry spun toward the incoming threat. He tapped the screen again, painting the Tumbler as the target, and launched the second harpoon.
The gantry shook again and the harpoon flew, striking the giant sized Tumbler. The impact sent it spinning backwards, pinned it to the side of one of Six’s tanks. It attacked the harpoon, smashing it to pieces.
“A little help here!” Ben screamed to the two mech-suited forms, maybe a kilometer away.
The targeting computer droned information inside his helmet.
Ben looked up and confirmed the tram was now completely clear of the wall.
He pumped a fist, and tapped motors alive to pull the gantry, with him and the tram, back inside the bay.
An explosion sparked on the crane ahead of him-discharge from a beam weapon- and he roared, scared to shit, furious and protective all at once. The Tumbler he’d speared, minus a third of its body, was coming back--and firing back.
By then the tram had crossed into the shadow of the bay. In half a minute, the gantry and the tram would be inside the cargo bay. Ben nodded grimly, the crane was on auto from here. His only job now was to stop the Tumbler.
Ben reached below his seat and pulled out a long, rectangular device. He unclipped his seat harness -still tied to the crane by a safety line at his waist- and let himself float free of the gantry body.
He brought the device up and settled it on his shoulder.
“Okay, Boomer, let’s see you go BOOM!” Ben fired.
Light flared from all sides of the business end of the launcher, and a mesh cargo storage net raced towards the Tumbler.
Ben waited, a grim smile tugging on his lips. The launcher was a throwback to the Betty’s days as a mining vessel, engineered to quickly snare loose ores and regolith before they caused trouble inside the bay.
The net reached the Tumbler. Stopped by its mass, heavy discs spaced evenly around the net’s edges now wound around behind the creature.
The original design called for heavy magnets to secure the disks together. The contact fuses and thick lathering of high explosives on top of the magnets were Ben’s own private recipe.
The Tumbler exploded into too many pieces to count.
Ben whooped out his victory.
Too soon.
“Murray, there!” called the higher voice he'd heard moments before.
Ben caught a flash of motion back on the tram. Another of the Boomer Tumblers had landed on the top of the tram and was smashing its massive tentacles over the side, against the glass, to get to the beings inside.
Ben screamed wordlessly. He tugged back down on the line towards his seat. He had to get the spare charges for the net gun before--
From the hull of 6, another brilliant flare of light lit up the dark of the bay.
A cluster of tentacles tumbled free of the Boomer. Not enough of them, though. The Tumbler hand fallen over the side but kept smashing at the window until cracks spiderwebbed across it. Ben knew his friends on 6’s hull wouldn’t risk another shot, with the crew on the tram now in line of sight with the monster that was after them.
The Tumbler was blown almost free when the tram’s atmosphere blew through the ruined window, but still it skittered back to the window and started wedging its mass through the jagged hole, slicing itself open for the chance to kill.
Ben reached out again for the spare charges. He snagged one but the motion was too fast, and he slammed the side of his face against the chair. He spun, momentarily dazed.
“It’s still after the tram!” screamed a voice. “Dammit, Murray where are you!"
Ben shook off the stars in his vision and finally rammed the net charge into the barrel of his launcher. He craned is neck and saw the Tumbler halfway inside the tram, now. That meant it was too late to try to blow it off with an explosive charge! He could kill everybody on board.
He let go of the barrel and tugged himself down to the gantry, still vibrating as it returned to its mooring in the side wall of the bay. He unclipped his safety line, pulled both legs down onto the metal frame and pushed off, skimming inches above the scaffolding towards the tram.
“Get out of there, you bastard!” he screamed.
He’d tear the thing apart with his bare hands if he had to.
The Boomer was still only halfway inside the tram. A flash filled the other windows and the Tumbler was pushed back against the glassless window. The frame buckled, but the Tumbler kept its mass inside.
Ben saw Doug braced against the far window, a shock tube in its top hands, and snarled vicious approval. The shock tube was a means of directing explosive charges in mining—or scavenging, which was what the tram had been sent to that hulk orbiting the Thorn for in the first place, before everything had gone to hell. Made a great weapon if you were close enough too.
Adrenaline made Ben tremble. The Boomer was more than close enough.
The tram was racing nearer, but Ben was still seconds away and could only watch as the thing stabbed across the inside of the tram with its tentacles. He saw Salix and Newark making a wall with their bodies around a human woman in the far corner.
The tentacles didn’t reach! The monster was stuck in the expanded frame of the tram window, Ben saw...but even as he realized that, parts of the frame were tearing away. It would be free soon.
He reached the tram and bounced off the wall like a billiard ball , trusting physics to redirect him across to the airlock in the middle of the craft.
He snaked two fingers on the grab-bar to the side of the airlock before he bounced away again, and hit the button to cycle the airlock open. It spun open, and he overrode the inner airlock too, pleading with the universe to let him be in time to help his people.
Silence inside his suit. Garbled noise on the radio, voices he thought belonged to ‘Raj' and ‘Murray', exchanging words and screams along with other voices doing battle with the Boomers.
The inner door finally opened—and Ben saw the Tumbler still wriggling in the window.
Only now, two mech suits were slicing through what was left of it like Christmas Turkey.
The suit on the far side cut through to the heart of the boomer, and Ben watched with joy as the exoskeleton finally sagged. The other suit blasted its jets backwards, away from the window, and the twitching Boomer went with it, disappearing.
Ben’s knees fought against the gravity in the tram as he raced across, whooping loud and grabbing the mech suit in a tight hug.
“I don’t know who you are, but I”m gonna kiss you soon as I get you out of that suit!"
The oblong faceplate’s reflective coating faded away, and Ben saw a tall man with a beard and a red and black plaid shirt staring back at him. “Murray Barrowman,” the man rumbled.
Well now, Ben thought. A lumberjack in a space suit. There's a surprise.
“Ben Gruber,” he rumbled right back. “Don’t go anywhere! I want to check on my people, then I need you and your man out there to help me move something. Something big."
“Nice to meet you, Engineer!” The other suit was crawling feet first through the window. “Raj Patel,” the man panted. He fell abruptly forward into a heap on the tram floor. “Jesus, there’s gravity in here? Oh my aching everything!"
Murray said “Those buggers are tough!” as he helped Raj up. The new arrival straightened, shrugging his muscles experimentally, then surprised Ben by moving right to business. “What are we moving?"
Before Ben could answer, Salix was there, cracking his forearm against Ben’s shoulders. Ben almost weeped on the open radio circuit to see the shrub in one piece. He turned and grabbed onto one of Newark’s tentacles, animating one of several insulated sleeves built into the Tumbler’s round spacesuit.
Doug raised one of the suit protrusions for the graspers extending from his mandibles in greeting, but otherwise was all business himself, helping the injured human female who'd saved the tram from the first Boomer attack to cross to the airlock.
“Dina!” Raj called, and raced around Ben to her side. Murray joined him, and both men started patting down Dina’s suit, a hilarious and high-speed version of a buddy suit-check. She weakly protested, swatted Raj’s hands away, then wordlessly submitted to the hugs that followed.
Ben crossed to the tram’s equipment locker to grab a propulsion pack to strap into.
The lights at the top of the Betty’s cargo bay were already streaming into the tram’s open airlock as he clicked the pack into place.
“Awright, enough grabass!” Ben barked. "Get your asses inside Betty. You t
oo, lady,” he growled at Dina when she tried to straighten, obviously game for more action and just as obviously barely on her feet. He stepped to her side. “Thanks for showing us how it’s done,” he said, respect in his voice.
Doug stepped close and gave what sounded to his kind like a whisper. "I'll see you safely aboard, pilot."
Newark bounced lovingly and painfully off Ben's shin and squawked pretty much the same thing. Ben cocked an eyebrow in surprise as Newark tangled a tentacle around Dina Rodriguez's arm.
She was family now.
The pilot sagged. Ben thought he could see exactly when she accepted that her part was done.
“Where are you taking Raj and Murray,” she asked weakly, but possessively, and a cough she tried to stifle broke through.
"Blame your guy, Beacham. He’s got another plan. Better hope he's all he's cracked up to be," Ben said curtly, but he remembered the big black egg that had protected Six on its explosive arrival and more than half believed the physicist was equal to his press.
He spooled up the loose safety line still clipped to his side and tossed it over to Doug. “Go!"
They got each other strung together and went out through the airlock, half hauling, half floating up to the airlock at the top of the cargo bay into the Betty.
“How are you fixed for propulsion?” Ben asked, already halfway out the airlock, this time easing out of the gravity.
“Miles and miles,” Barrowman said, his voice calm, collected. The big guy was right on Gruber' tail.
“Tanks more than half full," the little one, Patel, said.
“Ok, keep up,” Ben said, and floated out, goosing his thrusters.
“What’s the job?” Patel asked.
Ben looked back, saw them following and laid on more speed. “Avoid anything with tentacles and follow me all the way aft. I”ll tell you on the way."
Barrowman and Patel were good: they used their fuel sparingly, flew in close formation and responding with skill to match his course up through the narrow space between the wall and the tank of HHL-6.