by Isaac Hooke
“We’re running out of munchkins,” Medeia said.
“Tell me about it,” Jain said. “To the stairwell! Let’s try to keep at least some of our units intact!”
Jain and the others retreated toward the stairwell, with Cranston bringing up the rear several meters behind them.
The door burst open entirely as the huge Ripped Head emerged. It skidded across the carpet, digging in its big claws to keep itself from slamming into the opposite wall, and then pumped its powerful legs, easily switching to a stride. It gained rapidly on the other aliens, and the Space Machinists.
Jain and the others continued to shoot down their pursuers; the big creature trampled the smaller Ripped Heads in its path, and the dying squealed underneath its paws.
“Target the big one!” Jain said.
He aimed at that mouth and fired. A plasma bolt ripped inside, and the creature shrieked. Its thin tongue shot out, and Jain had to amp up his time sense to dodge it.
Meanwhile, Medeia targeted that tongue as it flew past her in slow motion, and she launched a plasma bolt, tearing it off right at the middle.
The Ripped Head screamed even louder.
“Drop your harnesses at the doorway!” Jain said.
Ahead, Gavin rushed into the stairwell door. He removed his entire harness as he did so, dropping it and all of the demolition blocks it contained to the floor.
Jain followed close behind him, likewise releasing his harness and its charges. When he was inside the stairwell, he amped up his servomotor power levels to help him leap up those steps in several quick, bounding hops. Behind him, the rest of the team followed suit after dumping their harnesses.
Cranston dashed through the door; he removed his harness but didn’t drop it. Instead he flung it behind him, out into the hallway, and then hopped up the steps.
Jain had already reached the platform and was leaping up the next flight of steps by then. But he had Cranston’s rear view video feed displayed in the upper right of his vision, and he saw when the huge Ripped Head plowed through the stairwell door, scattering the harnesses the team had placed there. It had Cranston’s harness wrapped around its banded mouth.
If Jain detonated now, there was a good chance Cranston’s robot wouldn’t survive the blast. He was too close.
Sheila would just have to print more later.
Jain issued the detonation.
Cranston’s video feed went black.
“Gee, thanks for that,” Cranston’s disembodied voice said.
Shrapnel slammed into the platform behind Jain, and smoke rushed against the walls, quickly dispersing.
Sheila, who was trailing, peered around the bend to survey their handiwork.
The big alien was lying on the ground. The head had blown off entirely, thanks to the harness Cranston had lodged there. Its underside was also ripped open, with two legs blown off, due to the other charges on the floor. There was a big, charred blast crater in the doorway; through it, Jain could see the floor below.
“We certainly have a propensity toward overkill...” Sheila commented.
More of the smaller Ripped Heads dashed into view, coming from the hallway.
Sheila quickly ducked back around the bend and began hopping up the steps.
The team members fired down at their pursuers as they ascended and picked off those that got too close. The creatures were relentless, though, and kept coming. They yapped like dogs via vocal cords hidden deep in their throats.
The Space Machinists reached the rooftop in their munchkins and piled up the ramp into the transport. Those in the lead, including Jain, paused when they reached the top to continue firing at the stairwell shed, taking down the aliens as they emerged.
“Xander, take us up!” Jain said when Sheila was on the ramp.
The transport became airborne and Sheila pulled herself inside.
The Ripped Heads continued to flow onto the roof; the team members shot down as many as they could. Some dashed underneath and leaped upward, their banded mouths snapping at the transport but missing; they spat acid in midair, and the toxic substance arced just underneath the craft.
Finally, the craft was pulling well away.
“Shut the ramp, Xander,” Jain said.
He sat back in the slot assigned to his unit, and the locking mechanism secured him in place. He slumped.
He switched his viewpoint back to the starship bridge. The others had done the same, and they had looks that could best be described as... shell shocked.
“Am I the only one who had to turn down his emotions for that fight?” Mark said. “I dialed my fear setting right down to zero.”
“How could you be afraid?” Cranston said. “That was kind of fun. It was like playing a video game. We know we can’t die.”
“An expensive video game,” Jain said. “Sheila, I want you to print up some replacements. But this time, let’s aim for standard human size. We’ll reserve them for away missions only, considering they won’t fit the passageways of our vessels.”
Jain sat back. “So. What do we make of these things?”
Medeia folded her hands in front of her at her station. “I think they’re terraforming the moon.”
“How so?” Jain asked.
“Well, I was right that they’re responsible for emitting the gases,” Medeia said. “At least the bigger ones.”
“I don’t buy it,” Mark said. “I mean, sure, some of the creatures are emitting strange gases. But there aren’t enough of them to make a difference.”
“Now, maybe,” Medeia said. “But you don’t know what their reproductive rate is. If they’re bioweapons, they’ll be programmed to reproduce extremely rapidly. We’re talking on the level of rabbits, and then some. They’re like unchecked micro machines... without anything restraining their numbers, they’ll keep multiplying until they swarm across the moon. The growth will be exponential. If we don’t do anything to stop their growth, and return here in a hundred years, the planet’s atmosphere will be completely different.”
“Why would the aliens want to terraform this world?” Gavin said. “They could have picked any other planet or moon in this system. Why this one. What makes it so special?”
“Well, obviously, we already determined that it was a suitable candidate for a colony,” Medeia said. “So, there’s that. The aliens might have similar criteria.”
“Or maybe they simply want to teach humanity a lesson,” Cranston said. “That this is their territory, their world now. And this is their way of saying: don’t come back here, a-holes.”
Jain considered Cranston’s words. “Don’t come back here? We’ll see about that.”
“Oh, I love his tone,” Sheila said. “So restrained. His words barely above a whisper. He sounds completely and thoroughly pissed.”
“As he should be,” Cranston said.
“We’re going to bombard the place from orbit?” Gavin asked Jain hopefully.
“Good guess,” Jain said. “We’re the ones who are going to be teaching a lesson here.”
“It could backfire,” Medeia said. “We might only make them madder.”
“Good,” Jain said. “Xander, did any of the remaining transports and probes detect any anomalies or signs of human life?”
“No to human life, but yes to anomalies,” Xander said. “Two other buildings had blast doors that deployed when the dome failed. The enclosing metal was pockmarked with breaches, similar to the first contaminated building we encountered, however no abnormal atmospheric emissions were recorded emanating from either building. But there were emissions detected from three other mid-rise towers nearby: the lower windows of those buildings were smashed, and the concentrations of nitrogen, methane, and butane emanating from within matched up with those arising from the contaminated apartment complex.”
“All right,” Jain said. “Recall the transports and probes and assume planetary assault formation. We’re going to raze that colony. I want you to highlight the four contaminated buildin
gs on our maps, Xander. We’ll concentrate our attacks there, first, and work our way outward, to destroy any lingering bioweapons that escape the initial attack. I want nothing alive down there. We engage as soon as the transports return. Oh, and Sheila, get to work on those new combat robots.”
“It’ll be about a week,” Sheila said. “Unless I drop everything.”
“A week it is,” Jain said.
The remaining transports and probes docked with their respective ships, and the surface assault began. The Space Machinists concentrated their fire on the four main buildings. Jain fired his barracuda in rapid succession at each one—the first bolt tore a hole through the geodesic dome, while the following bolts smashed into the targeted structures underneath. Meanwhile the other members of the fleet released their raptor lasers so that in moments all that was left of the buildings were blast craters surrounded by melted glass and metal.
Mark unleashed a few black holes at strategic locations across the city and let them run until they became a bit too big, at which point he dispersed them. Those holes sucked in everything around them, asphalt, buildings, and even parts of the geodesic dome, cratering entire neighborhoods.
As Jain’s energy weapon overheated, he switched to his raptors. The team had to wait for the weapons to recharge, but the ships moved systematically between targets, destroying the city neighborhood by neighborhood, so that in two hours’ time there was nothing left of the colony but rubble.
“Let’s see what the aliens think of that,” Jain said.
“A rift just opened sunward,” Xander announced.
“Is it the aliens?” Jain asked. “Have their reinforcements finally arrived?”
“No,” Xander said. “I’m detecting a fleet of twenty Piranha and Dominator class vessels.”
“So, the space navy has finally arrived,” Jain said.
“Finally, a friendly face…” Sheila commented.
“Friendly?” Cranston said. “Uh, don’t count on it. Things are going to look mighty suspicious here. By ‘cleansing’ the colony, as it were, we just razed the only evidence of alien inhabitation. When the incoming fleet sees what we’ve done, they’re going to think we’ve gone AWOL and lost our refurbished minds.”
“We’ll show them all the recordings we’ve made,” Sheila said. “We’ll prove to them that the colony was already lost.”
“Recordings can be faked,” Medeia said. “They might believe ours are. If they haven’t yet encountered the alien starship, it might be very difficult to convince them of our side of the story. Consider for a moment... what is easier to believe, that a colony was destroyed by malfunctioning Mind Refurbs, or by the aliens those Mind Refurbs claim attacked them, aliens currently nowhere to be found?”
“I see your point.” Sheila glanced at Jain. “Should we run?”
“Not until we at least try to have a dialog with them,” Jain said.
“You do have to wonder what took them so long,” Sheila said. “You’d think they would’ve sent reinforcements a lot sooner.”
“You would,” Jain said. “Except if the destruction here was recent, say in the past month, it could take up to thirty days for the fleet to send a task group to investigate why the Greeks stopped communicating. Hell, we were gone for more than three months, and Earth didn’t send anyone to check on us.”
“Perhaps the space navy was occupied elsewhere,” Medeia said. “A spike in tensions with the Link or some other alien species. Who knows, maybe all this time they’ve been dealing with the very same vessel that attacked us.”
“Well, hopefully we’ll learn everything soon enough,” Jain said.
A half hour later Xander announced: “I’m receiving a message. Would you like me to play it back?”
“Go ahead,” Jain said.
A holographic image of a man in a uniform appeared before Jain. He stood with a casual confidence, his dark hands held calmly behind his back. And while the man’s bearing might seem calm and poised, Jain’s machine side readily interpreted the tense micro expressions flickering across that face.
“This is Admiral Quinn Tagan, of the Mind Refurb Battle Group Heracles, Second Task Force, Seventh Fleet,” the hologram said. “You have a lot of explaining to do.”
19
Jain recorded a brief summary of the events that had led up to that point, and with the transmission he included the video logs of the fleet’s every encounter with the aliens, from the starship battles to the skirmish with the alien bioweapons on the Ablativus colony.
The incoming fleet didn’t answer but continued to approach the moon.
“I don’t think they believe us,” Gavin said. “We’re not going to stay here and let them capture us, are we?”
Jain glanced at Sheila. “It’s been nine hours since our last jump.”
Sheila nodded. “We need another three before we can jump again.”
“There’s no way we can shorten that time frame?” Jain pressed.
“Sadly, no,” Sheila said.
“The Mind Refurb fleet will be here in two…” Medeia said.
“If we leave orbit, we can buy some time,” Gavin said. “Head away from them, and then jump three hours from now.”
Xander shook his head. “No. Their Piranhas will still intercept us fifteen minutes before we’re ready to jump.” Piranhas were the fastest ships in the space navy. And since the Space Machinists were only as fast as their slowest ship—in this case the Daktor—Xander’s calculation was unfortunately correct.
“But that’s only fifteen minutes we have to fend them off,” Gavin said. “Versus a full hour if we just sit here and wait for them.”
“If we run, it’ll look even worse,” Sheila said. “Even though we’ve done nothing wrong.”
“I tend to agree with Sheila on this,” Jain said. “Besides, if they’re going to attack us, the moon affords some tactical advantages. We can use it as a shield against their long-range lasers, whereas if we have to fight them in open space, they’ll be able to line up shots from thousands of kilometers away.”
“I’ve been reviewing the footage recorded on the thermal sensors when the vessels first appeared,” Cranston said. “I think they have cloaked ships with them.”
“You’re sure?” Jain asked.
“It’s hard to say, because the ships are so close together, and so far,” Cranston said. “But I did detect stronger thermal signatures emanating from the left and right sides of their heat cluster. So, if I had to guess, I’d say they had at least two cloaked ships with them. If not more. Classes unknown.”
“One of the cloaked ships is probably a rift ship,” Sheila commented. She glanced at Jain. “It would make sense, in case they needed to jump out to summon reinforcements. They’d want to keep it cloaked, because it’s one of the most valuable ships. Plus, if its classification is top secret, like I mentioned before, they’d want to keep its status on the down-low.”
“But they have to wait twelve hours to use it again, right?” Mark asked.
“Not necessarily,” Sheila replied. “I suspect they used a rift gate or another rift ship to get here, leaving this one in reserve and ready to go.”
“How come the rest of them aren’t cloaked?” Medeia said.
“We haven’t reverse-engineered the tech yet, as far as I know,” Sheila said. “We’re using devices captured from our skirmishes against other Link races. Why do you think you’re the only one with a cloaking device among us? Or why all of us have different alien weapons? If we could reverse engineer it, we’d all have black holes, energy cannons, force fields, and cloaking devices.”
“But we’ve reverse engineered rift technology, to a degree,” Medeia said. “And yet we don’t all have rift creation abilities.”
“As a warship, you wouldn’t want to,” Sheila said. “Because of the extra reactor load, a rift ship can carry few weapons, if any. Plus, the ship has to be small enough to fit its own rifts, which means it can’t store too much propellant in bulky reserve
compartments. Did you notice that as the Daktor closed with the rift to penetrate, the spacetime tear got smaller and smaller? If the Daktor was any larger, the ship wouldn’t have made it.”
“So did we decide whether we were going to stay, or attempt to flee?” Gavin asked.
“I mentioned I’d prefer to stay, already,” Jain replied.
Gavin seemed about to contest him, but then lowered his gaze.
“I’m with you,” Cranston said.
“We all are,” Medeia agreed.
“Okay,” Jain said. “I’m tempted to assume a defensive formation. But I don’t want to provoke them.”
“I think they’ll understand our caution…” Medeia commented.
Sheila looked at Jain. “You really think this is going to end in a fight, don’t you?”
“I hope it doesn’t, believe me,” Jain said. “But I have to take precautions, in case it does. If they do attack, they’ll want to cut off our only chance at escape by destroying the Daktor. So we have to protect that ship at all costs. Sheila, in relation to the incoming fleet, I want the Wheelbarrow in front of the Daktor. You’ll use your energy shield to protect it from attack.
“Gavin, I want the Hippogriff to protect the Wheelbarrow in turn. Use the force field generated by your drones as necessary, and try to stay far enough away from her that you can still employ your shockwave defense. Mark, get the Grunt in front of Medeia. Mask her thermal signature so she can cloak the Arcane. Medeia, once you’ve cloaked, reposition and stay near the Daktor. Take down any ships that attempt an offensive flyby. Mark and myself have the most powerful offensive weapons, so we’ll stay in the vanguard. Cranston, you’ll stay between us, and use the Forebode’s micro machines to eliminate any nukes or other missiles they send our way.”
The team members began to assume their respective defensive positions, all save Medeia, who waited for the Grunt to mask the Arcane. Then she cloaked and repositioned near the Daktor as ordered.
At the hour-and-a-half mark, Xander announced: “They’re within realtime communications range. The lag will only be between three to five seconds.”
