Level Up Bitch

by N M Tatum

  He tried to leave the bridge, but the ground shook beneath him, like the ship was shaking its head and telling him that was a very bad idea. Maybe he was just imagining things. He was exhausted; he’d hit his head a few times in the last hour.

  He tried leaving again. The ship shook again, but, this time, he knew what it was.

  Something had hit them. Or rather, had hit the space station where they were currently docked.

  He patched into the station’s cameras and pulled up the external view on Ragnarok’s monitor. He saw nothing but empty space.

  Then it moved, like a shadow in the dark. The mountain. The moving volcano that he saw before.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Words could not describe the anger bubbling behind Sam’s eyes. She’d only just closed them, having dropped onto her bed—her wonderfully soft, cozy bed—when something startled her awake. She was half-conscious when it happened and didn’t much care what it was. She knew only one thing: it was probably Joel’s fault.

  It would be a shame to murder him after everything they’d been through, especially considering how they’d only just escaped death together. But she decided he must die.

  “Joel!” Her recently stitched neck wound protested the force in her voice. “I don’t know what you’re doing, but it’s the last thing you’ll ever do.”

  The floor jerked upright, like someone had pulled the rug out from under her. She slammed onto her back, and everything went black.

  When she woke just seconds later, bright spots danced across the ceiling. She didn’t remember why she was on the floor… She assumed she’d fainted, the result of all the recent blood loss.

  Then the ship jerked again, and she remembered.

  She pressed the button near the head of her bed, activating the general comm channel.

  “What the hell is happening right now?”

  Cody answered, his voice full of urgency. “The station is under attack by that giant space monster you all said I made up. If I were a spiteful person, I would take this moment to say ‘I told you so,’ but I’m too busy prepping the ship to escape from the giant space monster you all said I made up.”

  Another frantic voice cut in over the comm.

  “So, guys?”

  Joel was on the roof of Ragnarok. He’d wanted to tinker with the long-range comm array before they took off so he could be sure he’d get a signal to stream his favorite show while the team was on the mend.

  “Remember how we left the station so fucking pristine you could eat off the floor, which is very uncharacteristic of us? Well, everything is sort of on fire now. Through no fault of our own.”

  “Get inside, now,” Cody said. “We’re getting out of here.”

  Joel jumped down the access hatch, landing in the cargo bay. The engines fired up. Joel fought against the g-force as he made for the bridge. He met with Sam in the corridor outside the cabins.

  “This is all your fault,” she snarled.

  “What did I do?”

  Reggie had already joined Cody on the bridge by the time they arrived.

  “Strap in,” he said. “This is not going to be fun.”

  Ragnarok retracted its landing gear and hovered above the hangar bay door. Cody spun the ship with no attention paid to careful navigation or the effects of the force of the spin on the crew. Joel toppled over his chair before he had the chance to secure himself in it.

  The station rocked around them. A boom echoed through the hangar bay, like a cannon had been fired on the bridge. With the shimmering blue shield of the hangar bay door in front of him, Cody punched the engines, shooting Ragnarok out of the station.

  He breathed with relief when the vastness of space expanded around them. He’d had visions of the station being crushed, and them being squeezed like a tin can in a trash compactor.

  But that relief was short-lived.

  As he brought the ship about, the full scope of the monster attacking the station came into view. He had been questioning whether what he saw before was real, but there was no doubting this. The thing resembled a hulked-out version of a Rapoo, like the thing had grown by one million percent. Its legs dangled like dead tentacles, useless in the vacuum of space. Its teeth, each one glistening like a cluster of stars, were jagged and pressing against each other. The monster’s head came to an odd point, like a peak. There must have been an opening on top, though Cody couldn’t see it, only the smoke trailing from it.

  Joel smacked Cody in the shoulder. “That? You saw that?”

  “Yeah, I told you I did.”

  “And then you totally caved when we said you were just being a whiny, little bitch. You don’t cave when you see that. You make us listen.”

  Reggie pulled Joel back into his chair. “That doesn’t matter. What do we do about it?”

  “I don’t suppose running away is an option?” Joel asked.

  “If it destroys the station, then we don’t get paid,” Reggie said. “Also, I feel like we kind of covered this with the giant ShimVen, right? The whole moral imperative aspect?”

  “I never bought into that argument,” Joel said. “But whatever. I guess we’re doing this. So…how do we do this?”

  Cody froze a picture of the monster on the monitor so they could study it. “Your guess is as good as mine.”

  Joel moved in close to examine the monster like it was a machine. “What’s the deal with the smokestack?”

  Cody shrugged. “Like I said.”

  Sam stabbed her arm forward, pointing out the window. “What the hell is that?”

  Their eyes followed her finger all the way to the monster. It shook like it had swallowed a planet in the midst of an earthquake. Gradually, bits of it changed color, illuminated from the inside out.

  Fire burst out of the creature’s mouth. A hot wave of destruction, a solar flare that smashed into the side of the station.

  “What the heck is going on?” Reggie asked. “How is it spewing fire?”

  “I have no clue,” Cody answered. “It shouldn’t be possible, but…”

  “How important is it for all of you to be morally upstanding?” Joel looked at his friends, hoping for at least one of them to budge.

  None of them did.

  “Fine. But if we get cooked alive by Bowser over there, that’s squarely on all of you.”

  “We need to draw its fire,” Reggie said. “Before the station gets blasted to bits.”

  “It was designed for close solar orbits,” Cody said. “It can handle the heat. It’s the force of the attack that’s the problem. According to Ragnarok’s readings, that attack was powerful enough to crack an asteroid in half. The station’s got some serious armor, but another couple of hits like that, and the station is toast.”

  “Not making me feel better about the ‘drawing its fire’ plan,” Joel said. He pressed the palms of his hands into his eyes until lights danced across the dark.

  He just wanted to mess with the comm array then binge two seasons of his favorite show. He just wanted to lay in his own filth until his eyes burned from lack of sleep, and maybe fall asleep halfway through a piece of cake, then wake up to the other half still sitting on his chest. He was a simple man who wanted simple things.

  Then, somewhere in those dancing lights, he saw something. An idea. A plan.

  He groaned. “Shit. I know how to kill Bowser.” He pointed to the picture of the monster frozen on the monitor. “This smokestack. That’s how we kill it. Think of him like an engine; he’s churning up fuel inside to create that fire. The combustion creates the fire and excess gases. Those gases are then released through this opening. If that opening was plugged up, the internal pressure would have nowhere to go—it would build until Bowser exploded. Hopefully.”

  Sam shot to her feet. “Sounds good to me. “How do we do it?”

  Joel clenched his jaw. He seemed reluctant to answer. “Follow me.” Then to Cody, he said, “Give us five minutes. I’ll let you know when we’re ready.”

  �
��Ready for what?” Sam asked.

  “Better you don’t know,” Joel told Sam as they left the bridge.

  Reggie clapped Cody on the shoulder. “Guess that just leaves us, Captain. I’ll man the topside turret. You get us close enough that I can get that thing’s attention.”

  Cody was suddenly alone on the bridge, the sole man at the helm. The one responsible for steering them through whatever this floating mountain was about to throw at them.

  He was oddly comfortable with that.

  The plus side to fighting something so massive was that it had limited maneuverability. Like when they’d fought the queen ShimVen, they were able to fly underneath it, close enough to blast it, without the bug being able to see them. He was hoping a similar strategy would work here.

  Ragnarok charged forward like the devastation of its namesake, ready to tear this mountain down. Cody armed the photon torpedoes and fired up the forward gun batteries. That ought to be enough to get that thing’s attention.

  Joel’s voice came over the comm. “I forgot to mention, don’t use up all the torpedoes. We’re going to need them.”

  There goes that plan. Cody disarmed the torpedoes. The gun batteries should be enough; all he needed to do was poke the thing.

  But where do you fire when attacking a mountain? Did the thing have a weak spot? A sensitive area? How did he know this wouldn’t be like throwing a pebble at a mountain?

  Only one way to find out.

  The forward gun batteries spooled up, whining like a mythical creature building power in its chest. Then they unleashed. The ship rocked like it had been hit by something, the force of the batteries pressing back against Ragnarok’s forward motion. Tiny explosions smashed into the surface of the creature, kicking skin or hair or whatever covered it into the vacuum. But there was no blood. The attack wasn’t strong enough to pierce the thing’s hide. But it was enough to get its attention.

  Bowser turned toward them. With its movement, Cody’s perception of the creature changed. It was given context. The forward section of it shifted, the segmented spine and neck becoming clear, whereas before, it had just seemed to be one big lump of mass.

  Its eyes fluttered, like suns going in and out of eclipse. Cody targeted one of them. No matter how thick its hide, no creature alive could brush off an attack directly to the eyeball.

  The targeting computer acquired a lock on the glowing ball and fired.

  Bowser roared, maybe not in agony, but with at least some irritation. It was a slow-motion act. His mouth opened, like a black hole spawning in the middle of space. He was silent. Everything went silent. Then Cody could almost see the force of Bowser’s voice. It was a present, tangible thing that hit the ship like a chunk of space rock.

  Cody put Ragnarok in a dive, hoping to get under it. The ship rattled as the force of the roar hit the tail end. Ragnarok leveled out, shaken but still together.

  “That wasn’t cool,” Reggie said over comms. “Can you get us in close?”

  “Working on it,” Cody said.

  He pushed the thrusters, rocketing the ship toward Bowser’s underside. The behemoth moved so slowly that its swinging arm looked like a faraway tree blowing in the breeze. Cody banked starboard and put plenty of space between Ragnarok and Bowser’s limb.

  A shadow fell over the ship as they entered the shade cast by Bowser. It was an encompassing darkness, the monster cutting off the light of the stars behind it.

  The muzzle flash from the topside turret cut through that dark.

  Reggie’s wrist screamed as he squeezed the dual triggers of the turret. The nanites had done their work—they’d repaired the bone and tissue and returned functionality to Reggie’s previously mangled appendage—but there was still a deep soreness. Nothing he couldn’t work through, though.

  The top and bottom turrets weren’t the most powerful blasters on the ship, but they were the most agile. The forward batteries could punch a hole in a battlecruiser, but the ship needed to be pointed at its target for them to be effective. However, the turrets had a full three-hundred-and-sixty-degree aiming radius, perfect for attacking single pilot fighters and smaller ships.

  Bowser was not a small ship, but using the turret allowed them to pepper the monster while Cody maneuvered around it.

  They strafed Bowser’s underside. When they came out the other side, Cody pulled up, putting Ragnarok in a tight climb, allowing Reggie to continue strafing Bowser. The perpetual assault seemed to have had the desired effect of drawing the monster’s ire; Bowser roared again, though not as a focused attack. It was an expression of frustration, as if the monster was lashing out at a pesky fly.

  Bowser followed his tantrum with a very real attack. Cody didn’t see the leg coming up from under them until it was almost too late, but the ship’s proximity alarm sounded, giving him a second to evade. He rolled to port, narrowly evading the hit that would have cracked them in two.

  Not content to merely swat the fly away, Bowser followed his miss with another attack. Cody dove and swerved, winding around the limb while Reggie continued to fire.

  They’d successfully managed to get the monster’s attention, but that wasn’t their end goal. They wanted to kill the thing, and, in that, Cody had taken them no closer to victory. The attacks were doing nothing to pierce Bowser’s hide. They were annoying it at best. Sooner or later, Cody’s reflexes would slow, and the monster’s attacks would connect.

  “Whatever you’re working on,” Cody said to Joel, “You’d better work on it faster.”

  “Going as quick as I can,” Joel answered.

  Sam’s fingers were a flurry of movement. Once Joel had shown her what to do, she carried out the task with all the haste she could manage and left quality control to him. Joel bounced between the workbench where Sam was busy building the charges, and the space he’d occupied near the FTL drive.

  He moved quickly, but surely. A trip, a slip, a cramp in his pinky toe might have meant instant death for all of them. What he was attempting was pure madness. But then again, pure madness and absolute genius were often confused.

  The tube running from the FTL drive to the metal drum was lined with an element only found in certain meteors. He’d bought some with their Rapoo teeth money after they’d bought Ragnarok. He didn’t know much about working with FTL drives, but he knew the basics. And basic FTL principle number one was that the fuel used in the drive was volatile and hot enough to melt through just about anything. Only a handful of magnetic containment systems were resistant enough to contain it.

  This made sucking on one end of the tube while the other was sitting in a tank full of FTL fuel the dumbest thing Joel had ever done. Drop by drop, the fuel dripped into the metal drum. Joel tapped the side and stuck his ear to it to get a sense of how full it was.

  Full enough.

  He hoisted the drum onto the dolly and wheeled it over to Sam’s workstation. The squeaking wheels of the dolly drove Peppy nuts. He loped alongside Joel, thinking the noise was a signal that it was time to play.

  Joel snapped at his pet through clenched teeth. “Peppy, sit, before you kill us all.”

  Peppy whimpered as he laid down against the wall.

  Sam looked at Joel from the corner of her eye, her hands not slowing in their work. “Is this stuff really that dangerous?”

  “If a drop of it fell on the floor, it would probably melt through it. If a jar of it smashed on the floor, the entire ship would explode.”

  “And we’re flying around with a tank of this stuff?”

  Joel pushed the drum to the edge of the work table. He took one of the devices Sam had built and held it below the spout near the bottom of the drum.

  “Traveling faster than light requires a massive amount of energy. Partly it comes from a reaction, but there is a bit that is intrinsic within a single fuel. Distilling all that energy down into a liquid is a volatile process that produces a volatile liquid. But FTL engines have been all but perfected at this point. They’re totally safe.
You know, unless someone goes poking around in them and sucks the fuel out.”

  He sucked in a breath and held it as he turned the nozzle on the spout. The fuel dripped out at a slow and steady pace into the device Sam had built.

  The square piece of tech somewhat resembled a toaster in shape and size. It was a simple device, lined with the same element that lined the FTL drive, and featured a detonator and a trigger. It was so simple that Sam could put them together from Joel’s instructions and not even realize what she was building.

  “Wait…is that a bomb?” She stopped working, her fingers suddenly unable to continue. “Am I building bombs right now?”

  Joel scoffed. “Don’t act like you’ve never built a bomb before.”

  “Never out of FTL fuel.”

  Joel closed the spout on the drum. He closed and latched the lid on the bomb and set it on the table. “Glad I could be your first.”

  “Will this bomb go off if I puke on it?”

  Joel continued the process with the rest of the bombs, twelve in all. Lined up, they looked terrifyingly beautiful. The most destruction capability he’d ever produced in such a short amount of time.

  “We’re set,” Joel said to the bridge. “Get us over that smokestack.”

  “That might be a problem,” Cody answered.

  He’d leveled off near the opening after his climb, but the heat was so intense, he’d been forced to withdraw. Then Bowser had forced them back further with a swing of his arm. Now, far enough away that Bowser could get Ragnarok in his sights, the monster did just that.

  He started to glow, illuminated from the inside out like a jack-o-lantern. His mouth opened, but it was not a black hole being born now, it was a supernova.

  “Everybody, brace!” Cody yelled.

  The fire burst from Bowser’s mouth. It looked like someone had taken a pin and poked a hole in the sun, causing all the energy inside to come spilling out.