Contagion

by David Ryker

  I could also barely see my targets. I couldn’t get a lock and so I just did what some of the amateur militias we fought in the oil producing regions did—“spray and pray.”

  Vaguely I saw the school of flying fish scatter, their tan skin blending almost completely with the whited-out view I was getting from my overheated viewscreen. Several seemed to buck and writhe and fall, disappearing almost immediately into the background glow.

  I don’t know how many of them I hit myself and how many my squadron took down. I wasn’t even sure if the missiles were getting through. At this closer range, they might. I just kept firing. The school of flying fish tried to regroup. They had almost made it to the missiles. I only counted four left. But if just one got through, we’d all be radioactive toast.

  “Hull integrity will be compromised in five seconds,” the computer said.

  “What happened to ten?”

  “Ascend immediately.”

  “No can do.”

  We’d almost caught up with the missiles now, the last four flying fish rushing up to meet them. I fired the last of my missiles. We’d closed the gap between us enough that I could clearly see it sail down and hit one of the flying fish, exploding on its flank and making it turn as if it had just taken a right cross to the jaw. It fell, but I was no longer looking. I aimed at the one next to it, saw someone else was already tearing it apart with autocannon fire, and switched to the next one.

  I gave it all three autocannons. Only the nose cannon fired.

  “Turret autocannons disabled due to atmospheric conditions. Hull integrity is compromised. Implosion imminent.”

  I narrowed my eyes to slits, trying to block out the blinding light. Vaguely I saw two shadows ascending for the missiles. I focused on one, hoping someone else would get the other. I could no longer see if I was hitting, the explosions of the autocannon slugs too faint to appear through the brilliant sheen across my viewscreen.

  “Ascend immediately.”

  The flying fish writhed and fell.

  “Ascend immediately.”

  I aimed for the last one and fired.

  “Nose autocannon disabled due to atmospheric conditions. Ascend immediately.”

  “No!”

  The flying fish swooped up, ready to swallow the missile, ready to give its life mindlessly for its creators. The missile would explode and we’d all be vaporized. The other missiles would too. We would fail.

  The flying fish burst apart, a missile hitting it square in the side. I gritted my teeth as the nuke passed right through its debris without going off.

  “Ascend immediately.”

  “Good idea.”

  I pulled out of the dive, the fighter shaking and bucking, my muscles straining to keep hold of the controls. To my left I saw one of my wingmen hurtling toward the planet like a flaming meteor, unable to pull out.

  We rose. The white hot glare on my viewscreen turned to red, then faded out as I reached the upper reaches of the stratosphere.

  I glanced around me and groaned with disappointment. Half my squadron was gone, either consumed by those creatures or burning up in the atmosphere. Far below, several balls of ionized flame hurtled toward the surface. My comrades in arms.

  The missiles were almost to the surface. I put the thrusters on maximum.

  “Damage assessment.”

  “All three autocannons are nonoperational,” the computer replied. “Severe damage to the hull. Self-healing has commenced. It is recommended that you do not engage in combat operations for at least forty minutes.”

  “How can I engage in combat without any weapons?”

  “Unknown.”

  Smart ass.

  A bright light. Then another, followed by a quick succession of flashes.

  “We did it!” one of the pilots cheered.

  I looked on my rear viewscreen. Several mushroom clouds bloomed on the surface. A quick check of the atmospheric pressure showed we were up enough that the shockwave wouldn’t reach us. Cheering rang out across the comm links. I hit my transmit button and joined in.

  And then I took another look at the planetary surface and stopped. One by one, the other cheers died down too.

  We’d taken out only half of the balloons. The others were moving away from the blasts, scudding along the surface of the boiling sea. They were several kilometers away from ground zero. They would get hit by a bit of radiation, but they were well past the danger zone.

  “We’ve given them a hell of a bloody nose,” I said into the silence.

  No one responded.

  I did a quick check of the damage to the other ships. Most had expended all their missiles, and a couple of others had lost their autocannons like I had. I put the disabled ships, including myself, into the center rear of a wedge formation, and the ships with the most munitions left at the point. Those that had only had an autocannon or a couple of missiles left went on the wings.

  “We’re going home, folks, we’re done with this battle.”

  But the battle was not done with us. As we rose out of the upper atmosphere, we could see the sky was alive with energy pulses and missile explosions, and littered with wreckage.

  A Dri’kai battleship was in a decaying orbit, the last of its atmosphere leaking out of great tears in its sides. The Vrimjlen missile battery that had launched the nukes was in pieces. Several smaller ships were also destroyed. The rest of the fleet, including the Nansen, had pulled into a higher orbit and were clustering together for defense against a much reduced fleet of Centaurian fighters.

  Then I saw our ships getting into deep space formation.

  They were getting ready to jump into warp.

  Our fleet was retreating. Without us.

  The Centaurians focused their fire on our ships, trying to take out as many as possible before they jumped to safety. A Subine destroyer took a salvo from one of the whaleships and turned over and over, hemorrhaging atmosphere and debris. The Nansen took another bad hit.

  “Full speed for the Dri’kai battleship,” I ordered my remaining squad. “They can’t afford to wait for us.”

  It did not take long for us to get noticed. A formation of Centaurian fighters pursued, but were far enough back that their long-range fire was easy to dodge. The nearest whaleship sent a broadside in our direction, taking out one of our guys. We took evasive action and kept on going.

  The Centaurians didn’t focus much hate on us, eager as they were to destroy our main ships before they jumped to warp and safety.

  But as we approached the fleet, catching up to the main ships, we got into the line of fire.

  We banked and swerved, energy pulses streaking across our patch of the sky. General R’kk’kar’s flagship slowed, maneuvering into the rear position of the fleet and providing us covering fire. We could see the fighter bay doors open.

  “Fly in as fast as you dare,” I ordered. “I’ll take the rear.”

  A commander should be the last soldier to get out of danger. General R’kk’kar obviously felt the same way.

  I got to the rear as we stretched out in an approach formation, going by twos, and shot toward the battleship. One of the lead Shadow Fighters took a direct hit from an energy pulse, veered off course, and crashed into the side of the battleship. His wingman made it in, braking hard at the last second and landing in a trail of sparks in the atmosphere inside. Then the next two got in, and the next two.

  “Dri’kai battleship. I am the last. Once I get in you can—”

  An energy pulse streaked by, missing me by less than a meter. The readouts went black, my controls jammed. I was dead in space.

  But I was still flying at top speed for the battleship.

  I watched in terror as my ship drifted a bit up, the hangar moving down and out of view. I was going to slam right into the side of the ship.

  The battleship hit its thrusters, moving up and away. The hangar came into view again. The thrusters fired a second time, increasing the speed the ship as it moved away from me.
>
  I flew straight into the fighter bay, way too fast …

  … and everything went black.

  27

  I woke up in Medical. As usual.

  There was one difference, though. Dr. Stark wasn’t hovering over me like some grumpy guardian angel. In fact, no one was paying attention to me at all.

  The medical staff were all too damn busy.

  Painfully I turned my head. Only my left eye would open. The right one didn’t seem to respond.

  One eye was enough to see how badly off we were.

  I lay in a long row of beds, all filled with the wounded and the dying. Other rows held more suffering. The brightest young men and women of Earth lay bloody, torn, and mutilated.

  Medical personnel were rushing back and forth across a floor stained with blood, making injections, attending wounds that had soaked their bandages, applying nanite packs. I did not see Dr. Stark. No doubt he was in one of the operating theaters attending a critical case.

  I turned onto my back again, letting out a groan. My whole body was a shell of pain. My right leg and arm wouldn’t move, my right eye couldn’t open. One by one, I checked movement on the fingers and toes of my left side. I could move all of them except the two smallest fingers on my left hand, which were in a splint. It also hurt to breathe.

  It hurt to be alive.

  I let out another groan that mingled with the other groans that rose in a chorus from the vast Medical wing. Our groans were cut with an occasional scream, and the low conversation of the medical personnel as they hurried about their duties. They looked exhausted, with bloodshot eyes ringed with black. I couldn’t tell how long I had been unconscious, but I knew however long it was, they had been frantically busy that entire time.

  I lay there, encased in pain, my mind floating from the painkillers that didn’t quite take it all away. For a time I dozed, images of my past flickering through my mind’s eye—the Greenhouse Museum, my sister, the little Italian cafe where Leo Franzetti had his morning coffee and where the air was rich with smells of an old country that no longer existed. And then my vision filled with Foyle standing by my bedside looking down at me. He looked hungry, calculating, like a wolf that’s just found an unwanted baby left out to die in the wilderness.

  I hoped that was a dream. My mind cast away and found other images, more comfortable images of childhood in my tower block, when I was still young enough and naïve enough to think everything would turn out all right.

  At last I awoke. It was quieter in the Medical wing now, the patients sedated, but the medical personnel no less busy. Qiang stood by my bed.

  “Hey,” I whispered. I noticed one of my front teeth was missing.

  “Hey.”

  “What’s going on?”

  “You had a bad crash, but you’ll live,” he said. No grinning, no joking. Not even Qiang could crack a smile in this place.

  “Will I get better?”

  His eyes flicked away for a second before meeting mine again. “I haven’t had a chance to talk with anyone. They’re all too busy. Dr. Stark has been in the operating theater for eighteen hours straight, sucking stims and saving lives. All the surgeons are.”

  “Can you look at my medical records?”

  “Yeah, I’m acting commander of security. I have access.”

  “Congratulations on your promotion. Now tell me how I’m doing.”

  “Right.” He let out a sigh and tapped away at a touchpad. He found the file, his eyes widened a bit, and then he read, “Multiple fractures to the right arm, hand, leg, and foot. Two broken fingers in the left hand, punctured right eye—”

  “What!”

  “It’s fixable. They have you scheduled for an operation on a list titled ‘Second Priority.’”

  I let out a gust of air in relief. I’d get my sight back. It didn’t even matter that my eye was considered “Second Priority.” I supposed “First Priority” was for people who were dying, so I couldn’t exactly complain.

  “All right,” I said. “What else?”

  “Bunch of cracked ribs, concussion, bruises all over, but at least your heart is fine.”

  That last bit did not come out as a joke, but almost with a sense of wonder.

  “Really?”

  “Yeah. I mean, it’s still got its problems, but you didn’t have a heart attack when you crashed. I nearly had one when I saw you hit the back of the hangar, though.”

  “Must be that medicine the fighter gave me.”

  Qiang nodded. “I looked through the images they took of you when they brought you in. No, I’m not going to show them to you so don’t ask. It’s real ugly. Your back looked like a pin cushion. That fighter must have been jabbing you every five minutes.”

  “They tell you how long I’ll take to recover?”

  “Like I said, they haven’t told me shit and the medical records don’t give an estimate.”

  “All right,” I said and nodded, immediately regretting the movement as pain lanced through my skull and down my spine. “Give me a status report.”

  “Mitch, you need to rest. You can’t—”

  “Give me the fucking status report,” I growled. I was rarely sharp with him, but I wasn’t in the mood to be coddled, or refused.

  “It’s bad. We’re in warp and retreating to a rendezvous where some other ships from farther in the Orion Arm are due to join us. Casualty reports are still coming in, but all the species lost ships, and many of the ones we still have got badly damaged. Drones are nearly down to zero for everyone, although those of course can be replaced. We also lost nearly half our fighters, including the Shadow Fighters. Those that made it back have self-healed.”

  “Already?”

  “You’ve been out eighteen hours.”

  “Oh.”

  Qiang went on. “Closer to home, the Nansen took two big hits that compromised the hull and led to a loss of atmosphere on a couple of decks. We’ve lost thirty-eight crew, including five human fighter pilots, and one hundred and fifteen wounded, some severely.”

  My eyes widened. “Wait. That’s a third of the crew.”

  Qiang nodded grimly. “Barakat is with the commander right now figuring out what colonists we can wake up to help.”

  “How did the Centaurians come out?”

  “So so. We managed to nuke half of those balloon things. That must have hurt them, although of course we have no idea how much. We also killed a bunch of those clam fighters and got some pretty hard hits on two of their four whaleships.”

  “I remember a formation of enemy fighters following us into the stratosphere. They weren’t there when we came out.”

  “Foyle’s squadron got them just before heading back to the ships.”

  “So he’s alive?”

  “Yeah, and he’s got his hero status back. You should see the video, Mitch. He’s an ace. He was taking out Centaurian fighters left and right. He even strafed one of the whaleships.”

  I supposed I should have been happy. Any hit against the enemy fleet was a good thing. But all I felt was morose, and a bit jealous.

  “So what’s the overall assessment? How badly have we slowed them down?”

  “Not sure.”

  “I guess Valeria is working on that,” I muttered.

  Something changed in Qiang’s face.

  “What?” I asked.

  “Mitch, you—”

  “What!”

  “She’s among the wounded.”

  I tried to get up. Qiang pushed me back down. It didn’t take much effort. I wasn’t even sure I could have made it to a sitting position, let alone my feet.

  “How bad is she? I need to see her.”

  “You can’t. She’s being operated on. One of those big hits sent shrapnel through the main science center. From what I hear she sustained some bad internal injuries. Several of her people died, and the whole place almost depressurized before Iliescu managed to seal it off. As it was, the rescue crews couldn’t get to them for half an hour. She lost a
lot of blood.”

  “Will she die?” My voice came out small, like a child’s.

  Qiang shook his head. “I don’t know. Everyone is too busy in there to talk to me. I’ll tell you as soon as I know anything. I promise.”

  I lay back, hurting more than ever before.

  “I’ve got to go now, Mitch. I wish I could stay but there are a million things to do.”

  “And you’re the right man to do them,” I said, and meant it. “I’ll get back on the job as soon as I can.”

  “Right. See you soon.” He didn’t sound convinced.

  A Medbot came along the row, scanning each of the patients. It must have sensed something wrong with me because a minute later a nurse showed up.

  “You know anything about Valeria Sanchez?” I asked.

  “She’s being operated on,” the woman said without looking up from her touchscreen. She looked dead on her feet. “I’m giving you an extra injection of nanites in your side. Try not to move too much. You have a bit of internal bleeding. Nothing to worry about.”

  “I’m worried about Dr. Sanchez. That’s what I’m worried about. How is she?”

  “She’s still in surgery. Try to stay still.”

  “But I need to—”

  She placed a palm on my chest. She did it gently, but with a poised force that told me she wasn’t in the mood to take any shit. “You need to rest. She’s in good hands. Dr. Stark is operating on her personally.”

  “Good. That motherfucker never gives up.”

  The nurse raised an eyebrow. “Excuse me?”

  “Um, nothing. Tell me as soon as you hear something. Please.”

  “I will.”

  She left. I lay there in misery for a time. To my surprise, the painkillers tugged me back into sleep.

  When I awoke I looked around. I guessed it was still night. Many of the patients were asleep. Others tossed and turned, moaning. A couple of beds nearby were empty. They hadn’t been empty before.

  Crap.

  It still hurt to move my neck. I didn’t try to sit up.

  Dr. Stark stood consulting with another surgeon a few meters away.

  “How is she?” I called over.