The other two troopers blazed away at the green mass coming through the door. Judging by the number of arms holding guns, there were at least three, maybe four melding together and all trying to ooze through the door at once. They fired pulse weapons into the room, hot orange blasts passing over our heads as we dove to the floor.
The exploding tips sent green goo splashing in every direction, squirting through the doorway like toothpaste, globs flying as the troopers fired on them. Part of the mass was growing arms and hands that grabbed the guns and fired into the room at us.
Fuck, that’s just not fair, I thought.
I drew my pistol and fired along with the troopers, green gunk exploding and splattering over and over again. Suddenly the mass of green withdrew from the doorway like an emerald tide, washing back out to sea.
“They’re withdrawing,” I shouted. “Sound off. Who’s hurt?”
“I’m good,” Poppins said.
“Okay here.” It was the trooper who’d taken up position on the right. The final trooper rushed to Porkins’s side to check on him, but it was no good.
“Damn,” she said. “Just… damn. Sergeant Kolostomy is gonna be pissed.”
She looked young, freckled, like she might have been milking cows on the farm five minutes before they shoved her into a suit of battle armor.
“Hey, listen to me,” I said.
She looked at me, eyes afraid.
“This isn’t over,” I said. “Take his place. Watch the door.”
She hesitated, but only for a second. She swallowed hard, then nodded, and trained her pistol on the doorway and waited. She didn’t look away.
“I’ve got the fleet,” Poppins said suddenly. “They’re moving into the wormhole. I’m going to start overloading the engines now.” She pressed some buttons and moved a lever forward until the hum of the engine grew more high pitched.
“Kolostomy!” she shouted into her comm. “Report.”
“We’re in line for the wormhole,” he said. “ETA five minutes. We’ve got the Coriandon fleet on the scanner, but they haven’t responded yet. Looks like clear sailing.”
“Understood, Sergeant.” To me Poppins said, “The engine’s overloading now. If I’ve timed it right, we should hit the point of no return in four minutes.”
The four longest minutes of my life.
A red light blinked on the control console next to Poppins. An ear-splitting alarm accompanied the blinking light, indicating the impending engine overload.
“That’s the point of no return,” she said anxiously. “If we’re going, then now’s the time.”
I pointed to the trooper with the freckles.
“Check the hall. Now!”
She ran to the doorway, looked out, then back at me.
“Clear.”
“Back to the shuttle,” I shouted. “Run as fast as you can.”
We sprinted from the engine room, hitting the main corridor and running back like bats out of hell. No Coriandons anywhere in sight—which struck me as strange. I keyed my helmet mic.
“Listen up, Sergeant. We’ve rigged the engine blow. Get your people back to the shuttle… now.”
“It’s no good, Sloan.” The pop and rattle small-arms fire in the background almost drowned out Kolostomy’s voice. “They’re swarming us. Even if we could get past the sons of bitches, somebody’s got to stay at the tiller and keep us on course. You people go. We’ve got this.”
That explained the empty corridor. Most of them were assaulting the bridge. There was no time for plan B. No time for profound words.
“Good luck, Sergeant.”
Halfway back to the shuttle they came at us, filling the corridor, shoulder to gelatinous shoulder, blocking our way like a wall of jello.
“Don’t stop,” I yelled. “Keep running as you shoot!” Pistols bucked in our hands as we ran and fired. The exploding tips obliterated the first line of Coriandon. We fired and fired until our pistols clicked empty.
No time to reload.
“Laser cutlasses!” I shouted.
I unclipped the hilt from my utility belt and thumbed the ignition button. The cutlass’s red laser blade blazed to life and I waded into the line of green monsters, swinging with every ounce of strength I had. The glow blade made deep rents everywhere I slashed, the globby alien bodies slicing open like overripe fruit, and gunky alien guts spilling everywhere.
The others joined me on either side, Poppins on the right, the troopers on the left, swinging their own cutlasses, screaming battle rage, the rage of the desperate. I was covered in green slime, but I kept pushing forward, carving any alien that dared come within range.
“Cut a path!” I yelled.
We redoubled our efforts and the Coriandons fell back, high-pitched screams of panicked gurgle erupting with each thrust of my cutlass. Even with the urgency to escape driving me on, some part of me was just too curious. I switched my helmet to channel six for the universal translator.
“The blades of fire burn as do my Aunt Meelgra’s feet.”
“Oh, help us, mighty space turnip!”
Kolostomy had been right about the idioms.
“On me! Let’s move, people. We have to push through now!” I charged for the weakest part of the line. We slashed and bellowed rage. I heard Freckles scream, and she went down under a quivering green pile. Just as Poppins and I broke through the aliens, the last trooper went down.
The words “Turn his human flesh into brown soup!” crackled though the translator.
I didn’t want to know.
I shoved Poppins ahead of me.
“Go! Don’t look back!”
We were up through the hatch fast. I sealed it on our end.
“How much longer?”
“I don’t know.” Poppins’s voice was strained. “Any second.”
We rushed forward, and I took the pilot’s seat. Poppins strapped herself into the copilot’s seat. I didn’t think it possible for her to be any whiter, but she’d gone sickly pale. I guess I couldn’t blame her. She was waiting for an antimatter explosion to go off under our asses any second.
I hit the thrusters, and the shuttle slowly pulled away ahead of the freighter.
Come on, you hunk of shit. Faster… faster!
I ordered the computer to remove all safety buffers and redlined the engines. The wormhole loomed large in the forward view screen.
The shuttle’s engines roared and shuddered, the whole ship shaking. Warning lights flared bright across the control console.
“Bring up the rear view,” I told Poppins.
She tapped at her keyboard, and a picture-in-picture display sprang up in the corner of the forward view screen, showing us the Coriandon freighter growing smaller behind us.
“The Coriandon fleet is responding,” Poppins said, looking at the scanners.
“Can they get here in time to block us?”
“No.”
“Then fuck ’em.”
My eyes were locked on the freighter behind us. I realized I’d been holding my breath, forced myself to let it out. We’d enter the wormhole in seconds.
“Oh, no.”
I frowned at Poppins. “What is it?”
“It’s been too long,” she said. “The freighter’s engines should have overheated by now.”
“Could the Coriandon engineers have reversed the overload somehow?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “I thought we were past the point of no return.”
“But you don’t know for sure.”
“It’s alien technology, okay? Damn it, I did my best. This is why we should have stayed on board. We could have made sure.”
She was right.
Damn her, she was right.
“Well, what the hell do we do now?”
“Shut up,” I said. “I’m thinking.”
We were upon the wormhole. No time to ponder. I grabbed the throttle, ready to turn the ship around. “We’re going back.”
“What?”
/> “If that fleet gets through the wormhole, we’re screwed. We’ve got to go back and—”
The rear-view display flared blinding white. I shut my eyes and turned away. A split second later the shockwave hit us, slamming the ship, and throwing us against our restraining belts, carrying us along. The shuttle tumbled and threatened to rattle apart. Sparks danced across the console as systems overloaded. The displays winked out and the cockpit filled with smoke.
Poppins was screaming, but I could barely hear her over the blaring alarms and the groan of metal.
And then we were in the wormhole, swallowed by gray silence.
THIRTY-THREE
Poppins hung limp against her restraining straps. Blood dripped down one ear.
I coughed. A thick layer of smoke hung in the cockpit.
“Vent,” I said.
Nothing happened. The computer was offline. Emergency systems kept the life support going, but for all intents and purposes we were dead in space.
At least we’d come through the wormhole.
Poppins stirred and groaned.
“Vent.”
“I tried that already.”
“Did we do it?” she asked. “Is the wormhole closed?”
“I don’t know.”
She tapped at the computer, trying to bring up the scanners.
“Everything’s dead,” I told her. “Almost everything. Shockwave hit us hard.”
“I’m tapping into the reserve batteries,” she said. “Give me a second.”
I waited. A drink would have been nice.
Poppins sighed, flopped back into her chair, relieved laughter bubbling out of her.
“It’s gone. The wormhole collapsed in on itself. It worked.”
The radio crackled. Static then a voice.
“Shuttle, this is the Pride of Nuremberg. Anyone left alive over there?”
I laughed, too. “Nice to see you again, Pride of Nuremberg. If you can arrange a tow for us, we’d love to report to Admiral Ashcroft that we’ve just killed a wormhole.”
* * *
They towed the bludgeoned shuttle to the battle hulk’s hangar bay.
The gangplank went down and Poppins and I emerged into a roar of applause. Crew and officers from all over the ship had turned out to crowd the hangar bay and cheer our triumphant return. I took it all in with a grain of salt, remembering Kolostomy and the other troopers we’d left behind.
Poppins clearly had little experience of being the center of attention. Her smile was an odd mix of pleasure, irritation, and bashfulness. People patted us on the back, shouting “good job” and other pleasantries.
The crowd parted as the admiral headed straight for us. When he reached us he pumped Poppins’s hand, then mine, grinning from ear to ear.
“You crafty son of a bitch, Sloan,” he shouted over the din. “Part of me thought that plan didn’t have a snowball’s chance on Mercury, and I wouldn’t have bet a single credit any of you would have made it back alive.”
“More of us should have,” I growled.
“Don’t let it get to you,” Ashcroft said. “You either, Poppins. Only so many miracles you can work. We’ll mourn the dead later, and make the enemy pay for each and every one of them.”
He leaned in close to talk into my ear. “You hurt? You need to see the doc or anything?”
“I’m okay,” I said.
“Good. I need to see you in the briefing room in an hour. We’ll let the crew have their feel-good moment for now. Good for morale, but the worst is yet to come.”
“Yeah. I know,” I said.
* * *
I had an hour. I showered, and was pretty sure I could spend the rest of my life in there. I stumbled out and got dressed—somebody had put a fresh laundered jumpsuit in my quarters. Fresh underwear. Fresh socks.
The door chimed.
“Come in.”
The door slid open, and she rushed in, threw her arms around me and kissed me hard. She clung to me, desperate, the kiss going on so long I thought it was my new life. I put my arms around her and drew her close, feeling her slim body against mine.
* * *
Years later we pulled away from one another, breathless. She wiped tears from her eyes.
“They told me you weren’t coming back,” Cindy said. “They said you and the rest were sacrificing yourselves.”
“We were supposed to,” I said. “As usual, I fucked it up.”
She laughed and sniffed and wiped away more tears.
“When you went away I… I don’t know. I felt lost.” She turned away. “I sound stupid.”
I took her chin in my hand and turned her back toward me, her eyes huge and hopeful and filled with tears.
“It’s not stupid,” I said.
I kissed her, gently this time, my lips barely brushing hers, and I felt her tremble in my arms.
“It’s not over, is it?” she asked.
“No.”
“You might die tomorrow.”
“We might all die,” I said.
She looked up at me, a request so plain and basic in her face, I felt my knees go weak.
“I have to speak with the admiral.”
“I know,” she said. “Can I wait here?”
“Yes.”
I kissed her again and left before I could say something to ruin it.
* * *
No 3-D display this time. We simply sat around the briefing table, and Admiral Ashcroft laid it on the line.
“If the other fleet arrives, we’re pretty much fucked.”
It was me and a few other senior officers. Poppins was there, too, looking like she might crap her pants at any moment. Still, her part in swiping the Coriandon freighter and collapsing the wormhole had earned her a seat at the adult table.
“We have Poppins and Sloan to thank for closing the wormhole and preventing those ships from joining the fray,” Ashcroft continued, “but intelligence reports that the second fleet is much bigger than we anticipated. They’re coming through the further wormhole, and if they arrive to join the Coriandon forces already bearing down on Mars, there’s no scenario in which we can reasonably expect to be victorious. In short, we’re seven hours from Mars, and the other Coriandon fleet is nine hours away.”
“Two hours difference,” I said. “That’s a pretty narrow window for winning a war.”
“I know,” the admiral said, “but we’ve gotten word to our people on Mars, and they know we’re coming. They’re going to attack with everything they’ve got, and we’re going to come in full steam from the other direction. We’ll catch the Coriandon fuckheads in the middle. If we can win before the other fleet arrives, then they might figure it’s not worth the effort, and turn back.
“It’s our only shot.”
There was muttering around the table, but finally everyone agreed.
“The plan is simple and straightforward,” Ashcroft said, “and there’s one thing that might tip things to our advantage.” He nodded. “Go ahead, Poppins.”
Poppins gestured toward the middle of the table, and a 3-D display blipped to life, rotating slowly so we could all see it from every angle. It was some kind of enormous spaceship—of Coriandon design by the look of it. The diagnostic information scrolling below it told me the ship was at least three times the size of the battle hulk.
“One of these will likely be leading the enemy fleet,” Poppins said. “We call them class five ships, but roughly translated, the Coriandons call them…” She briefly consulted the notes on her tablet. “…the biggest turd in the bowl. Oh. That’s not very nice.”
“Fucking alien idioms,” Ashcroft said. “Never mind, Poppins. Carry on.”
“Coriandon ship captains aren’t independent thinkers like Reich captains,” Poppins said. “A single central commander—located aboard the class five ship—will almost certainly direct the entire attack. Eliminating the class five and the central commander should disrupt their strategies enough to make them withdraw.”
&nb
sp; “Can the battle hulk take on the class five?” I asked Ashcroft.
“No chance,” the admiral said. “Even if we weren’t completely banged up, toe-to-toe with a beast like that just isn’t an option. I’ll be leading the rest of the fleet against the other ships. It should be a fair match with the class five out of the way.”
I could see where this was going.
“Why do I think getting the class five out of the way is the tricky part?” I said.
“Tricky, yes, but there’s a way,” Poppins said. “About a year ago, some of our operatives on New Bohemia got close to a class five and took some detailed readings. They also smuggled out some schematics. New Bohemia is right on the edge of Coriandon space, and they’ve been warning us for nearly a decade a Coriandon invasion was imminent.”
“So did this detailed examination of the schematics reveal any weakness in the class five?” I said. Unless the answer was yes, we were screwed.
“It did,” Poppins said. “The class five is so big and so well defended that the Coriandons don’t consider a single, one-manned fighter to be a threat.” Poppins gestured at the 3-D display again. It spun and rotated, zooming in on a round opening on the bottom of the hull nearly all the way aft. It was about forty feet wide and appeared to spiral open and closed, giving it a vaguely sphincter-like look.
“Examining the schematics indicates that Coriandon technology is highly advanced in almost every area except one,” Poppins explained. “Plumbing.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Plumbing?”
Poppins gestured again, drawing a line from the sphincter along the belly of the ship to the center. “A single zip ship can fly along this waste disposal tunnel, fire a timed torpedo at the central flushing station, and get out again before it detonates. The chain reaction will simultaneously back up every toilet on the class five. Our engineers are confident the vessel won’t be able to stand up to that kind of stress. All the pipes will burst nearly at once and they’ll be neck deep in their own yuck.”
I frowned. Something about the plan didn’t ring true, and anything that simple seemed doomed to failure. What sort of morons would fail to guard such an obvious weakness? Yet the more I thought about it, the more the idea grew on me.
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