by Ginger Booth
He winced as a shot took a bite out of a container, raining shrapnel on their medic. Liam took the hint and jumped down.
Eli ducked through and immediately claimed the spot facing Kaol, behind the other control rod. Ivett ran screaming to the left across open hard-top, arms clamped to her head. One of the assault team gunned her down so ferociously he nearly chopped her body in half at the midriff. Liam ran to hide behind the botanist
Three-Eight dove through the shield gap just as Liam tossed a blaster across to Kaol. The American grabbed it, took one look, and skated it along to Kaol.
Which was nice, Kaol supposed, squatting for the gun. Another followed it, to land behind him, the sonic weapon. In a split second decision, he handed the laser back to Three-Eight. “Cover me. And get your foot out of there!” He dropped onto his ass to reach for the sonic behind him, as a sudden burning impact hit his other shoulder. His reflexes were too good to worry about the wound, but the projectile’s momentum slowed his reach for his own gun. Thankfully Three-Eight’s started barking.
Kaol’s hand finally closed on a weapon as fragments of pavement exploded around him. He spun around and fired the instant he was sure its aperture cleared Eli. Two goons in black staggered and dropped their rifles, but not the closest one. Three-Eight had rolled to Eli’s side and lay prone, to rain cross-fire on the assailants on Kaol’s side of the gateway.
And that closest goon seized the control rod by Eli’s foot, dammit! Kaol didn’t have a shot. The ESD field electrocuted the attacker. His black-armored form spasmed, limbs flailing wildly. The shield sliced off his foot, then an arm above the elbow, arcing blood as they hurled away. The control rod clattered to the pavement on the attacker’s side of the shield, too far away to anchor its side of the gateway.
Without two rods, the single one still interrupted the field. But the aperture was narrower, and centered on the rod. Which exposed Kaol’s injured flank before he realized it. He toppled in agony as three bullets tore into him. As he rolled out of danger, he quit firing.
Three-Eight noticed his laser no longer hit anyone he aimed at. He was firing into the shield now.
“Got to retrieve that rod!” Kaol screamed, struggling to get his one good foot back under him. Then he’d lunge through. He could open the door to roll back, if only he could reach that rod before the enemy.
And the wolf soldier took his yell for an order. He squat-stepped into the aperture firing as he went. With the other hand he wrenched Kaol’s gun away and shot that, which was far more effective. Without any friendlies in the way, the sonic messed up everyone nearby. They weren’t out of the action, just stunned.
Kaol didn’t get a chance to tell him that. He still tried to lever himself off the ground to get back in the fight. Eli was on his knees now, too, blood pouring from his thigh. The man grimly stared at the waylaid control rod, only an arm’s reach away. But that arm would be amputated the second it crossed the field. “Don’t do it, Eli!”
And the hunter looked up astonished as Three-Eight took to his feet and darted through the abbreviated gap in the field. Had he figured out the hole already? The wolf ducked through a rain of enemy fire to grab the control rod and shove it back toward Eli. A hum and shift in the static told Kaol he’d reopened the wider gateway. The renewed rain of bullets confirmed this, but Kaol lay behind the hole’s edge again. “Hurry, Three-Eight!”
But several bullets in a row caught the wolf, their momentum jerking him around. The sonic gun fell away from the ship, but he held onto the laser. He dropped to the pavement, lying half-in, half-out of the threshold.
Kaol didn’t think about it. He lurched forward to grab one of the man’s arms to haul him in. And he felt two more impacts as Three-Eight desperately scrabbled to get in.
Eli did think about it, and made the hard choice. He picked up his control rod, breaking the circuit. Three-Eight arced his back and screamed a blood-curdling wolf howl as the ESD field chopped off the one leg that still crossed the threshold.
And Kaol’s midsection was back in the line of fire. He took another shot as Porter grabbed the other control rod.
The sound was amazing. The now-restored ESD field hummed lightly, still raising the hairs on Kaol’s arm. The soldiers beyond it still shot bullets at it. In fact, they redoubled their fire in fury trying to find another aperture. But nothing got through. They were safe. They were… There was an awful lot of blood out here.
And Kaol passed out on the hardtop.
Terrified, Darren hopped down through the trap lock on his personal grav generator, checking his blaster. He’d never fired at a human being in his eighty-plus years of life. Ninety-plus objective – he’d used the bad old warp to Sanctuary with Sass and Clay, Remi and Corky. They nearly got Zelda and Porter killed that time, too. He shoved the gun into his toolbelt grimly. He’d shoot someone now if he had to. Not that he was a decent shot.
At the bottom, he immediately cut his grav and ducked down the long hallway, the narrow aisle between the containers lengthwise. The shocking gunfire outside echoed though the steel passageway, and he was headed away from the action. No choice. The shield aperture faced dead-on the wide access crossway. Drifting down at 1/6 g, he’d seen how the bastards chewed up his supplies.
He snapped himself out of the webbing and dropped with another quick grav flick. He swallowed and drew his weapon, edging along the far end of the containers. Hold it in both hands to steady your aim, especially if you’re nervous. Darren Markley left nervous behind hours ago. At this point, he dreaded what he’d see as he carefully peeked around the corner.
One hell of a lot of blood, was the initial impression.
He gulped and tried to settle. What could he do here? Only then did he realize his people were completely ignoring the soldiers firing at them. That looked scary, and downright bizarre. Another soldier, amped up on who knows what, screamed defiance and hurled herself shoulder-first onto the ESD field, a meter away from Eli. Darren winced as the woman bounced off and went into convulsions, her armored suit smoking. Goner.
He repented of the rude word immediately, and sent a hope for her soul. Because one of his own might be in the same boat. He jogged over to where Liam knelt, putting pressure on Kaol’s gut. “What can I do?”
The medic glanced down Kaol’s body. “Porter’s getting a tourniquet on Three-Eight. High amputation. Eli’s the only other wounded. Chief, I cannot treat three wounded at once.”
“Understood.” Darren meanwhile completed his head-count. “Ivett?”
“Dead. Kaol’s nanites should heal this, but love of God, he’s lost a lot of blood.”
“Get blood out here? Or him inside?”
“He can’t wait. Bring the lifter. Three-Eight’s not far behind him.”
Darren immediately ran for the grav lifter. Far more adept with that than his gun, he brought it faster than anyone else could, and parked it in the web flap to save time. “Let’s carry him.” He flicked his grav back to 1/6th to take Kaol’s shoulders. His generator field extended to the whole hunter’s body, leaving a light job for Liam with his legs.
The engineer assured him, “I was married to a medic for decades, doc. I can hang blood and dress wounds, give injections. Tell me what to do. Do we take Three-Eight up at the same time?”
Liam made a lightning decision. “No. Get Kaol a bag of blood and IV saline hooked up ASAP. His blood type –”
“I’ll look it up.” Darren was already on his way back to the trapdoor. At the top, the housekeeper Corky’s mouth hung open for an instant. Then she busily cast another emergency airlock bubble for him to exit through.
Screw that. Everyone on the ship wore a breath mask except her. “Cast it on yourself! And get a breath mask on so you can help! Mass casualty coming through!”
“Ohmigod, ohmigod!” But Corky obediently ran to the suit racks, cheeks blown out to show she was holding her breath. She had a breath mask on securely before Darren could slice his way out of the bubble guarding the lo
ck from the foul Earth air.
He steered Kaol and the lifter toward the med bay. “Corky, take down another grav lifter!” There was only one cot. Thrive’s med bay wasn’t big enough to fit two. Kaol was his crewman, and Three-Eight wasn’t.
No. That’s up to Liam, he decided grimly. He left Kaol hovering in the hold while he grabbed IV saline, and hooked that up to him first, to get his blood pressure up. He didn’t bother checking the blood type, because he saw four bags of type O-negative. The first bag was Kaol’s. He’d intended to get a pressure cuff on him next – his ex would have. But it was clear why Liam had been leaning his weight onto the man’s gut. He got out of the doorway and applied pressure. “Hang in there, Kaol. Liam will be up in a minute.”
The hunter was too far gone to hear him. He was so coated in blood Darren couldn’t even tell where it was all coming from. But the left leg looked especially slick. He leaned his elbow on the pressure pad to free his hands. He fished a bungee cord out of his toolbelt and worked that onto the top of Kaol’s thigh as a tourniquet.
He had business downstairs, he realized. The ESD field was a whole lot stronger off the pavement. If someone thought to ram it with a jet or truck right now – or worse, a high-voltage power conduit – they’d succeed at getting through. And if they let water touch the fuel pellets, they’d all explode into a massive crater.
He needed to check the containers for damage. And close the door flaps, both of them. No, he could order Porter and Zelda to do it? No, not the fuel check, he decided grimly. For that, he’d trusted no one but Thrive’s chief engineer – himself. Sass would have ordered the same.
Corky returned to him out of breath. “Liam says I do what you’re doing, because I suck at grav lifters. What do I do?”
Darren huffed a surprised laugh, and showed her. He paused the extra second to look her in the eye. “Good job, Corky. Reliable woman.”
She nodded, grateful and determined.
He grabbed a painkiller syringe, ran to the trapdoor, made sure the grav lifter wasn’t on the way up, and dropped, with the minimum grav flick to prevent breaking his legs. That webbing was practically a trampoline, but he bent his knees on the way down to dampen the bouncing. And he ran out the short way, vaulting down the final meter.
As he’d suspected, Liam and company learned the hard way why Darren had left the grav lifter in the flap door, not through it. The surface was a tight fit. The engineer quickly attached his generator to Two-Eight, set him to 1/6th g, the grav lifter the same, then tilted it 30 degrees so it wouldn’t get stuck. In seconds, the whole makeshift elevator gurney was through, with patient aboard. He leveled it, then retrieved his grav generator. Liam assured him he could take it from there.
And then there was Eli and the equipment. “The pain bad?” he said sympathetically. “This should help.” He applied the hypo to Eli’s bloody leg.
The botanist breathed deep in relief, and dropped his rigid shoulders, though he still held tight to the leg, his face above the mask ridged with agony. “The equipment.”
Back up the trapdoor he went, this time with the presence of mind to grab a couple more grav generators. The away team left theirs behind, since it was technology the Earthlings didn’t seem to use. And he brought down a third lifter, laden with a sheaf of tarps and space bungees.
He didn’t let them get stuck in the webbing this time. He got them past that hurdle, with Eli and all the equipment comfortably aboard. “Zelda, take him. Porter, I need a spare pair of hands.”
“Aye, sar!” They chorused.
He grasped Eli’s hand. “You’ll be alright. You’re last because you’re in the best shape.”
“I feel so lucky,” the botanist agreed.
Darren chuckled. “Go.” Zelda nodded.
“Porter. Make sure no equipment is on the tarmac. Go out that way and seal the flap.” He pointed down the long narrow aisle he’d used to come out the end of the containers. “I need to check fuel integrity in the boxes.”
A brief once-over was enough to clear the four boxes on the far side from the firefight. They came through unscathed. The doors on two of the exposed-side boxes showed black marks from something glancing on them, but no holes. He opened those doors to confirm, then opened all four doors of the array. In space, it was different, but here the easiest way to see if the container was breached was to see daylight on the inside.
And indeed he did on the two bottom containers of the array. He squatted on the webbing to see down. Yup, those were fuel pellets below.
Darren Markley was no amateur. Before he even rose, he asked himself how else there could be loose fuel, that he hadn’t seen yet. All projectiles came from thataway. No, there could also be ricochet damage. He pivoted and considered the far-side boxes again, then shifted to check their long walls. He spotted a dent, and a projectile below. No fuel pellets. He rose to inspect that container. Soy printer stock. No risk.
The nearside boxes were a different story. He jumped down from the webbing and studied the damage to the containers where they’d been used as a shooting gallery. And yes, the top layer containers had munching damage along their bottom edges, and peppered with shot a good meter in from the inner end.
Why the hell did anyone treat good equipment like this? What, was Earth so obscenely rich they had nothing better to do than waste money on throw-away munitions and vehicles? But he knew enough Earth history to know the answer to that one. This planet was insane, and obscene. Hard to imagine how someone like Sass came from this perverted culture.
He turned and shot the middle finger at the assault troops, still scheming their rotten hearts out beyond the shield.
“Lot of fuel pellets on the ground,” Porter murmured. He showed Darren both of the control rods, which got left behind on the ground while they were so intent on saving their wounded.
Darren pocketed them and declined to comment. “Fetch some brooms and dustpans. If Zelda and Corky are free, more hands would be welcome.” Porter preceded him levering himself up onto the net, and offered a hand up. “Reminder. Water hits the pellets, they burn. Chain reaction, big boom.”
“Sass covers that in orientation,” Porter reminded him with an easy smile. “And monthly. And you repeat it when we help you bring in fuel. Every time.”
“It bears repeating,” Darren growled. “Go. Hurry.”
They took over an hour to police the fuel and poor tortured containers, and rig tarps to capture any spillage. But he only needed bottom tarps, and to sweep clean the pavement, before he took a break to raise the ship and strengthen the shields. Finishing the job was harder off the ground. But nothing less than complete confidence would suffice.
Ben was probably going mental in the meantime waiting for word. But Ben could wait. Spilled fuel couldn’t.
40
The original warp drive, the star drive, the location of the ‘first shell’ colony worlds, the workhorse JO-3 asteroid mining ship, nanites – all were accomplished by Ganymede.
The President of Russia, Alexei Alexeyevich Voronin, was not pleased. This was the understatement of the year. The talking heads arrayed on his wall knew this, and looked suitably grim.
“Comrades, what I wanted was to learn everything possible about that ship, and from its people. This…fiasco…is not what I asked for. Grubov.” He placed the general who ordered the assault on Thrive into the center of the screen.
“Mr. President. I deemed an assault necessary to neutralize the ship’s threat and render it safe for study.”
“What threat?” Voronin probed.
“Sir! It shot down –”
“It fired in self-defense.”
“It’s a superior hostile vessel!”
“It’s an old-fashioned spaceship for blowing up asteroids, in order to mine them for metals. Is such a vessel tougher than a jet plane? Seems reasonable. But threat? Or opportunity? That is what I need to know!”
The general puffed his chest and changed the subject. “We correctly surmised
that they would lower their shields –”
“You did nothing correctly,” Voronin noted.
“Yes, sir. We did learn that they used a particular device to open an aperture in their electrostatic field –”
“Yes, what did you learn about that? Lupinski.” Voronin flicked Grubov to the right-hand column and dragged the Polish Lupinski front and center, twice as large, on the hot seat.
“Sir, my scientists were not included in the assault. From video recordings, the newcomers use control rods. And one soldier almost acquired one. But he encountered the field and died. And the intruders retrieved their device under heavy fire. Clearly it was important to them.”
Voronin glared at him. “I watched the video. What did you learn about the device?”
“It needs to be in physical contact with the shields to operate. Effective radius is as small as my hand.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning there is nothing to read from a video, or my instruments at a distance. I asked for an observer to be included on the assault. My request was denied.”
“You live, Lupinski. Barely.” His face flicked back to its previous position rather than the gutter of disgrace.
“Sir, I was able to characterize the ship’s shields.” This was Ostrovsky, Yuri Industrievich, the scientist who brought the president the initial news of the one-ship invasion.
“Yes? Tell me.”
“They use ESD shields – electrostatic discharge. Very old, simple technology, used to protect spaceships. Ah, you understand the danger of collision when traveling at say, four thousand kilometers per second?”
“Sounds catastrophic.”
“Yes, sir. That’s what this shield is for.”