by Bobby Adair
“One down!” Penny’s giddy over her kill as we put kilometers between us and her victim.
“Tarlow,” I remind, looking past my excitement to focus on the business at hand. We’re not the only ship. “Stay busy, buddy. Find me the rest of our fleet.”
He looks away from the small viewing window and goes back to work, glancing around with worried eyes.
“Brice,” I call. “Any damage up there? We took some hits.”
“Two right through the goddamn platoon cabin,” he answers. “Can’t those bastards aim somewhere else?”
“Status?”
“All is good,” he answers. “Nobody hit. “No damage to the gun.”
Phil glances my way. “We took a round through one of the pressurized compartments.”
“Where?”
“I can’t find it. It didn’t damage any system I have sensors on.”
“Brice,” I’m worried about the railgun, “send a few people back to check the rest of the ship. Tell them to be careful. We’ll be pulling some serious g’s to get around for our next run. Phil, find us a target. Tarlow, I need to know where those ships are.” I click over to Hawkins. “I have a question.”
“I’m here to serve.”
I laugh. “Are you taking smartass lessons from Brice?”
“No. It comes naturally.”
“Your two flight crews, can they handle a Trog cruiser?”
“They’re just like ours,” he tells me. “Except the seats are different.”
“If we put one of your crews down on the ship that Jill’s platoons are assaulting, can they fly it?”
“Flying isn’t the problem,” he answers. “Keeping it is.”
“Yeah,” I agree. “See if one crew will volunteer. We’ll take this one step at a time.”
Chapter 51
“Penny,” I make my request, “after we hammer this next ship, try and bring us in close enough to the Trog cruiser Jill is assaulting so I can drop off a flight crew.”
She turns to look at me like I’ve just lost my mind.
I smile in the most reassuring way I can. “If you can do it without opening us up to too much flanking fire.”
Shaking her head, she says, “Will do.” Then she and Phil go to work.
“Tarlow,” I ask for what seems like one too many times. “Where are our other ships? Are they here, yet? What about those two that took out the Trog cruiser just after we got here? I need to know what the hell is going on out there.”
He points at his screen, showing me the surface of the planet as he shakes his head. Four new craters are still blossoming debris into space. “Near as I can tell, our ships came in too fast, deflected off the grav fields of cruisers, and couldn’t pull up. They impacted, here, here, here, and here.”
Shit.
Eight left unaccounted for. I scan the screen.
He points. “See this mass of debris drifting into orbit?”
“I do.” It’s a hundred klicks from the battle and moving slowly away.
“I think one or two ships impacted a cruiser too fast. Blew the hell out of everything.”
Six or seven left.
“I see four circling out for another attack run.” Tarlow points at the screen again. “Two here.” They’re coming around at the top of an arc and will be impacting in another forty-five seconds. “There, that one is just getting away.”
As I watch it accelerate from the swirl of cruisers, railgun fire flares all around and it explodes in a shower of debris.
“One more over there.” Tarlow taps the screen.
It’s moving too slow. “It’s damaged.”
“They’re ignoring it for the moment,” Tarlow replies.
And that looks like the score right there. We’re taking out Trog cruisers, however, we’re losing more ships than we’re knocking out.
I think back to the thousand assault ships I saw standing in the Arizona desert, bleaching and rusting while the desert dust settled over their shoddy hulls. How could we build so many brutal weapons, plenty to destroy the Trog fleet, and then manage them so poorly? How could the SDF piddle about with their hundred and fifty ships, waiting for some perfect moment to attack, until they were caught with their pants down sitting on Callisto?
And now this, Blair has thrown the last of our fleet into an uncoordinated desperate swing for the fences.
It’s no wonder we’re losing this war.
“Jablonsky,” I shout, “tell every surviving ship captain to get the hell out of here. Rendezvous at the Potato.”
“They won’t listen to us.”
“Orders from Blair.” I glance back at her. She won’t meet my eye. “Get over there,” I tell her, pointing to Jablonsky’s station. “Pass the order.”
“What about the ships that are locked in?” asks Penny.
“We’re staying to cover them until they break free.” I look back at Blair. She’s not moving. “Don’t kill the rest of them for nothing. Tell them to break off and retreat.”
She shakes her head. “We may not win today, but we’re not cowards like you.”
“What the hell is wrong with you?” I shout. Really, what the hell is wrong with her? I think she’s come unstuck from reality. “Do you see what’s happening? Are you going to kill all these people for nothing?”
“I called for the retreat,” Jablonsky tells me. “They’re not paying attention.”
“Buckle up,” Penny calls. “Twenty seconds to impact.”
The hull buzzes loudly as our axial gun rips through a stream of rounds.
I see them veer off target, pushed by a well-structured defensive grav field.
Penny triggers another stream that doesn’t hit the bridge of our quarry.
“Hold on for impact!” She shouts as blue blasts so brightly it stuns the bug in my head, nearly blinding me.
Chapter 52
My head is swimming, and I can’t find my balance.
Tarlow pukes inside his helmet.
Blair is screaming and holding on.
Penny is struggling with the ship’s controls.
I shout, “Talk to me, Penny, I need to know what’s going on!”
“We rammed it,” Phil explains, seemingly unfazed by the gravity flux and ensuing disorientation. “Their defensive field was too well-structured for our rounds to get through.” He glances at Penny. “We followed your orders.”
“Are we okay?” I ask.
The inertial field starts to settle. The sense of spinning dissipates. Penny accelerates the ship.
“The impact sent us into a crazy tumble,” Phil goes on. “Penny has it under control now.”
“Did we do some damage?” I ask. “Or did we glance off?”
Phil is looking out through the hull, utilizing his fine-tuned grav sense. He nods and smiles. “Destroyed the bridge. Tore a gaping hole through the bow where the bridge used to be. The ship is blasting gas through its forward sections. That cruiser is out of the fight.”
“Do we know where Jill’s ship is?” I ask.
Penny seems to have the ship flying straight enough I can feel the momentum stabilize, however, I can sense a big cruiser coming up right in front of us.
The axial gun rips through several hundred rounds as the ship lurches backward with the momentum transfer.
The cruiser’s hull erupts in fire and blasting metal fragments. Penny’s not aiming. She’s just shooting because the cruiser is unexpectedly there.
More plasma rounds fire, running up the length of the hull as Penny steers our ship away from a collision amidships.
“I have them.” Phil points over our heads. “Back that way, eight klicks.”
I turn and just make out a crude image of a damaged cruiser with three assault ships jammed into its hull.
Penny pulls the ship into a tight turn to line up on the cruiser. “What do you have in mind, Dylan? How do you want me to play this?” Her uncertainty over
this choice is frazzling her.
Before I can answer, the cruiser bursts blinding blue and flashes out of sight.
“Bubble jump!” shouts Phil, as a powerful field shoves our ship off-course, careening toward Ceres’s surface.
As I realize we’re headed for an impact, Penny swings the ship into another high-g turn, straining the inertial bubble past its limits and punching me with an eight-g fist that knocks the wind out of my lungs and the liquids through my rectal tube.
We come out of the turn in time to see three of the big Trog cruisers crashing into one another in the chaos caused by the jumping of Jill’s cruiser.
“What was that?” asks Tarlow, shaking his head to get the puke off the inside of his faceplate.
“We still have atmosphere on the bridge!” I shout at him. “Wipe that shit off. I need you!”
He pops open his faceplate and works at wiping the bile away.
I turn to Phil. “Was that Jill? Or are the Grays still flying that ship?”
“Can’t say.”
“Doesn’t matter, then.” Time to make the best of the situation. “Penny, run straight for the nearest ship’s drive array. Shred it. Phil, taking momentum into consideration, be ready to send Penny to the next closest Trog ship. Target the drive arrays. Let’s pin as many of them here as we can. And keep them too busy worrying about us to pay attention to the others.”
We’re blazing blue in the cabin even before I’m finished.
Phil is rattling something to Penny on their shared comm link. Blair has decided it’s time to interject her mastery of tactical command and she’s babbling crap I’m not listening to. If only I could freeze her suit or cut her comm.
Brice links in. “Everything going okay up there? The ride’s getting pretty rough.”
“We’re stuck in a rat-filled shit pit up here—we’re holding our own,” I answer. “Stay on the command comm to keep your people in the loop. We’re not getting off the ship today unless things really go to hell.”
“Aye, Captain.”
I roll my eyes and smile as I tell him, “Major.”
Brice laughs. He’s always good for that.
The axial gun blazes out three quick bursts, and Penny shouts victoriously.
I glance forward using my bug to see the tail end of a cruiser coming to pieces as we tear through the debris field and cut a hard turn to line up on another victim.
Another cruiser, one with apparently no slugs to fire, makes a jump and sends the local grav fields into momentary chaos.
Penny fights with the control to keep us lined up, and the axial gun rips again. Plasma rounds stream through wiggly ribbons of fluctuating gravity and veer away from their target.
We fired from too far away, but we can pull twenty g’s to move in for the kill. Penny is wringing every amp out of our reactor and grav plates, so we close the distance to our victim in seconds and the axial gun buzzes again.
Another drive array blasts to pieces.
“Hell yeah!” shouts Phil, as he cuts his comm back to Penny and we line up on another target.
Two more ships jump, and one of the remaining cruisers is pushed so far off course it rams the planet below.
While that’s taking the attention of every Gray helmsman in the Trog fleet, we maim another cruiser.
The cruisers with slug loads are onto us and our tricks. They’re filling the sky with glowing rounds, trying to track us, a ship moving at speeds they haven’t seen before, and trying to put their slugs through our hull, not paying enough attention to what lies beyond, mostly other Trog cruisers.
Yet they all have defensive grav fields tuned for just such an assault, so nearly all of the slugs are deflected through the chaos and sent in every which direction.
The sky is turning into a metal grinder.
More ships jump, and our gun is blazing so quickly it barely pauses for new targets. Penny’s shooting at anything that crosses our bow.
“Tarlow!” I holler, “Where are our ships?”
“Hell if I know!” he shouts back.
“We’re dry! We’re dry!” shouts a voice over the comm.
“Who’s that?” I ask.
“Benson, the gunner,” the man answers.
“We’re out of slugs?” I’m frustrated. The damn thing is turning out to be a seriously lethal weapon.
“Not a one left,” he answers excitedly.
“Shit.”
Phil gathers his adrenaline-soaked wits the quickest. “We should go.”
Penny swerves hard to avoid a flurry of railgun slugs.
More cruisers make the jump to light speed, and the rest start strobing out of sight.
Guns from down on the surface start to light up the sky with their fire.
“Tarlow,” I ask, “is anybody still here?”
“I can’t tell anything from anything.” He’s frustrated by the kaleidoscope of deadly metal represented by the dots on his screen. He mutters, “We’re going to be killed.”
I keep my frustration to myself as I scan across the bridge and see the eyes looking back at me.
“We can ram them,” Phil tells me. “But you know that’s risky. We’ll probably survive, or we might incur enough damage that we can’t get away.”
I know he’s right.
We’re better off coming back later when we have a full load of ammunition, when we have a few more ships equipped like this one. “Tarlow, you have ten seconds to scan the area as thoroughly as you can and get me a full picture of the aftermath. Penny, max grav us out of here and bubble jump as soon as you feel safe.”
Chapter 53
Our first jump seems to last forever, though it only runs for seven or eight minutes, landing us a billion miles perpendicular to the plane of solar rotation. Each of us is quiet when we come out of bubble. We’re all thinking about what just happened, trying to count a score out of the chaos.
“The Potato?” Phil asks, as the vast emptiness settles in. We’re farther than any of us has ever been from the realm of our world.
I shake my head. “Not yet.”
Blair unbuckles herself and starts in about something.
“Brice,” I comm, “send a few people up here and get Blair off my bridge.”
It only takes a few moments for Brice to enter with Lenox and Silva in tow.
Looking at them, I ask, “Would you put her in the room with the Gray and stay there to keep an eye on her?”
“Will do,” Lenox tells me.
Silva smiles, and over a private comm tells me, “Good job, sir.”
I smile back. Dammit. Just six more months to get past the heebie jeebies over her age.
Brice stays put. “I notice we’re not jumping. Where are we?”
I point him to one of the small bridge windows. “A billion miles from nowhere.”
“We’re doing a lot of that lately,” he laughs. “What are you going to do with Blair?”
“I don’t know. I just want her out of my sight.”
“What’s the plan?” Penny asks. “We can stay as long as you like, but sitting here doesn’t achieve anything.”
I pat her on the back. “You did a good job, Penny. I look around the bridge. All of you did. Even you, Tarlow.”
He snorts, and I slap him on the back to let him know I really do appreciate the effort. “Tarlow, I need to know the score.”
“That’s crass,” he sneers, speckles of vomitus still splattered on his faceplate. “This isn’t a game.” He doesn’t yet appreciate my sincerity.
“Let me know how many ships we destroyed or disabled. Not just us, our whole fleet. I need to know how many of ours got away. And if you can, I need jump vectors.”
“Why?” Phil asks. “If they don’t go back to the Potato, does it matter where they went?”
I start to tell him I’ll round them up and give them hope to push on, then I stop. I see his point. “You think they’ll desert?”
I glance at Penny and Brice.
“After that fiasco,” asks Brice, “wouldn’t you?”
Is our conviction so frail?
Or am I expecting too much of people with more than a mild interest in self-preservation?
“What about Jill’s ship?” I ask, looking at Phil. “She and the other two that rammed that Trog cruiser. They were lodged inside when it jumped.”
“You want to go after them?” asks Penny, disbelief huge under her tone. “She’s our friend too, but…” Her voice trails to nothing. She believes Jill is dead, or at least chasing her is futile.
“Why would they jump?” I ask. “The Grays didn’t have anything to gain by it.”
“You mean, you don’t know what they had to gain,” Phil corrects.
He’s right. “Do you have any ideas?”
Phil shakes his head.
“It only makes sense,” I say, “if they were hoping to go somewhere where they could find help. The battle was too intense for them to get assistance from any of the cruisers nearby.”
“Or,” Brice counters, “Jill and all the others are dead, and the cruiser’s captain knew he could do nothing to help in the battle, so he bubble jumped to safety. They could be headed to any of a dozen Trog resupply bases and who knows how many we don’t know about. They could be anywhere right now, filling their holds, cleaning the bodies out, and trying to unjam those assault ships from the holes in their hull.”
They haven’t been gone long enough for anything like that to happen, still, I take Brice’s point. That could be their goal. “What about jumping back to their home world?” I ask, as I look around to let them in on my latest speculation. “Could they go back and take three copies of our grav lens with them? What happens when they come back here with ships equipped with those?”
Phil’s thinking and scratching his lips as he puts together a thought. “I don’t think so.”
“Elaborate,” I request.
“You know as well as anybody how finicky jumping can be. With all that unbalanced mass and structural damage, I just don’t know.”
“Yeah,” I argue, “but we saw them jump. Finicky isn’t a problem.”
