by Bobby Adair
Bird shook his head. “You do your duty, that’s all I’m telling you. I’ll never order a man to give his life for another. Just know, Punjari is important to us.”
At three hours away from Saturn’s moon, we initiate the first jump.
Chapter 28
Our last jump brings us out on the dark side of Jupiter, the side facing deep space. The inner solar system is full of Trogs and Grays, and we’re taking any advantage we can to avoid their notice. Penny slides us into an orbit that’ll intersect with that of the derelict cruiser. The freighter takes up a position in the same orbit a few kilometers off our stern.
“Jablonsky,” I start.
“Already calling,” he tells me, working the comm to connect with the freighter.
I nod, wondering why I even go to the trouble to give Jablonsky orders. He’s always a half-step ahead of me when it comes to his duties. I turn to Phil. “Time to intercept?”
“Ninety minutes,” he answers, “give or take.”
“Tarlow,” I say, “I want you on that radar, looking for anybody who might wander into the neighborhood.”
“Nobody knows the ship is here,” says Penny.
“That’s what makes me nervous,” I respond.
“Complacency kills,” opines Brice.
Penny rolls her eyes.
“An hour and a half to get there,” I say. “Six hours to make the repair.”
Brice laughs.
"And another six," I add, "because nothing goes as planned, and we'll be off to deep space, where we'll be safe."
“Nobody will find us out there,” says Phil.
“Jablonsky,” I say.
“I already told ‘em,” he says, “be ready to go as soon as we arrive. We don’t want to waste time dickin’ around.”
I nod. “Couldn’t have said it better myself.”
Chapter 29
Things don’t go as planned, but they proceed without major incident. We found the cruiser at the prescribed time, just where we expected it to be. After that, things slowed down.
We’re at hour three since coming in alongside the cruiser, and the last of the consoles has just been transferred from the freighter to the bridge. That puts us two hours behind schedule.
“They don’t have experience working in zero-g,” Brice tells me as he stands on the bridge of the Rusty Turd, gazing through one of the small windows. “Light-g down on Iapetus, sure, but zero-g, no.”
“Now that they have the equipment and tools moved over,” I ask, “will they be able to catch up, you think?”
Brice shakes his head. “It’s not just getting over there. It’s handling tools in zero-g. It’s setting your suit grav so it’s strong enough to keep you on the floor, but not so strong it makes it hard to work the tools. We might be here for days.”
“Jablonsky,” I say, “can you link me through to Punjari?”
“The captain of the freighter is going to back off a klick or two,” says Jablonsky. “He just called in with that update.
“Thanks,” I tell him.
“Linking to Punjari now,” he says.
“The freighter is moving out,” confirms Phil.
“Kane?” Punjari’s voice comes over my comm. “Do you see that view?” He sounds like a kid at the zoo. “Do you?”
“Yes,” I answer.
The full, sunny face of Jupiter is below us, filling half the sky with its living, hippie-candle swirls of organic color.
“It’s amazing, right?” says Punjari. He’s not really asking me.
“Doctor,” I say, “I know this stuff is stunning the first few times, but we have a schedule.”
“Oh, don’t worry about us.”
“If we’re spending all our time,” I say, “looking at the big swirly planet…" I figure I'll let him come to the conclusion. It's not my position to scold.
“We’re not wasting our time on sightseeing,” he assures me without the slightest deflation in his enthusiasm. “We were crossing between the ships. We couldn’t help but look.”
“I know,” I say. “How are things going now? Do you have everything you need inside?”
“Yes, yes,” he tells me. “We’re already installing the helm console.”
Brice looks over at me and shrugs. He’s listening in.
“So you’re ahead of schedule?” I ask.
“Don’t focus so much on the schedule,” he tells me. “It was a plan we talked about in the meeting, with estimated times. That’s all. This isn’t a factory floor here. You understand that, right?”
Brice laughs, not over the open comm, just over the bridge comm.
I roll my eyes. “Of course, Doctor. Is the security team deployed?”
I hear him talking on another comm link, then the voice of the captain in charge of the security detail links into the loop. “Madsen here.” He’s all business. He’s bled, and he’s killed his share of Trogs in Iapetus’s unending subterranean corridors. He’s lost soldiers, too. I like him. More importantly, Brice likes him.
“Madsen,” I ask, “are your troops in place?”
“Per the plan, Sir. Nobody can make it to the bridge unless they come through us.”
And that was the plan. Madsen has shooters each in the three halls that parallel the cruiser’s spines. Those corridors run from the bow of the ship all the way back to the wall that separates the forward section from the rest of the ship. Any Trog or Gray coming to the bridge has to come up one of those halls.
The teams are stationed at the bottom of the three banks of lifts leading to the bridge and officer apartments. Madsen is on the bridge with the balance of his grunts—two men and a woman who’ll act as his reserve, and who’ll kill anything that somehow managed to stay alive in the command sector of the cruiser’s forward section.
“Comms working alright?” I ask, recalling how much trouble my platoons have had communicating inside the cruisers.
“As long as they don’t wander too far,” Madsen tells me, “but they won’t. No point in it. We’re not here to explore.”
He’s right about that. We’ll have plenty of time to do a thorough search of the ship once we ferry it out to deep space.
“The place is dead, right?” asks Tarlow. “That’s what you and Phil did when you came here with the scout ship, right?”
“Yeah,” I tell him. “We’re just being careful.” Back on the link to the cruiser, I say, “Madsen, comm me directly with anything that comes up. Anything.”
“It’s not our first rodeo, Sir.”
Brice chuckles.
“I have something,” says Phil, alarm in his quick words. “Grav signatures.”
Chapter 30
“Two tugs and three Arizona class ships,” Phil tells us, “just popped out of bubble.”
“I have them,” says Tarlow. “Two hundred klicks spinward.”
“They’re coming this way,” says Phil. “Already.”
“They’re in a hurry,” observes Brice.
“Jablonsky?” I ask.
“Alerting the freighter, and Punjari,” he tells me. “Hailing the new arrivals on all frequencies.”
“You hear this?” I ask Madsen.
“Got it, Sir.”
Penny already has the reactor amping up, as she’s spinning us to point our grav lens toward the unexpected ships.
I alert the crew. “Jablonsky, any response from our visitors?”
“Not a peep,” he tells me.
“Are they SDF?” I ask no one in particular. “Miners coming to salvage the ship?”
“No,” says Phil, not guessing, he knows now. “They’re Grays and Trogs.”
“What?” shouts Penny. “In Arizona class ships?”
“You certain, Phil?” I don’t want to believe it.
"Nicky can tell," he says. "I can feel them, too. Three Grays on each bridge." He concentrates for several impatient seconds. "Crew compartments full of Trog soldiers.
”
“And the tugs?” I ask.
Phil looks at me like he’s disappointed. He knows I’m grasping for straws. “Grays and Trogs.”
“Shit!” shouts Tarlow. “Acceleration.”
“One just max gravved toward our freighter,” says Phil.
Penny has us moving.
Phil has the grav lens powered up.
“Get me a target,” I tell him. “Brice—”
“I know.” He’s rushing forward to make sure the ammunition crew is ready to keep our plasma gun full of metal.
“The tugs are going for the cruiser,” says Tarlow.
“Two Arizona class ships are coming at us,” says Phil. “Ramming speeds.”
Penny is blazing toward them as our internal grav fields pulse brilliant blue.
“The freighter!” shouts Tarlow. “Hit!”
I feel, as well as see, the explosion as the attacker’s grav lens pulses through the defender’s deflective field on impact. The freighter flies apart as the Arizona class accelerates through.
Dammit!
“I got this,” Penny tells me before I can give her an order. She fires, and the familiar zip of a hundred plasma rounds tears through the space in front of us. It’s then I realize I’m too slow to react, too focused on the destruction of the freighter. Good thing Penny was doing her job.
She drives the Rusty Turd toward the gap between the two Arizona class ships coming for us. It’s happening so fast, I'm just guessing what she and Phil are up to as they're doing it.
Phil pulses the lens, and then I feel the punch of hard grav from two sides at once, knocking my breath out and filling my eyes with stars. Phil has bumped both of the ships onto unexpected tangents as their powerful grav fields are repelled by ours. Before I can pass an order, our ship is spinning on hard g to reverse direction. Penny lines us up on the vector one of them is following, accelerating after, pushing max-safe grav through our drive array.
In seconds too short for anyone to react, I see the rear drive array of the attacking ships looming large in Penny’s forward facing monitors. She fires the railgun again, ripping through the ship’s grav plates, its reactor, and bridge. Superheated plasma from the reactor, released from its containment, bursts like a star inside the hull. The ship blows apart.
I’m impressed. “Good flying, Penny. Now, get that other bastard.”
Phil is already passing her a heading, and she's pulling our ship into a hard turn.
“They’re surprised,” Phil tells us, talking about the Grays. “We’re too fast for them.”
Penny fires, and she curses. She missed.
She pushes the ship faster.
“Careful,” I tell her. Spitz’s warnings about the probability of self-destruction with increasing reactor output are ringing in my ears. “We don’t want to blow ourselves up.”
“Trust me,” she says.
I leave her to her business. “Tarlow,” I call, glancing back at his monitors. “Do you have the big picture for me?”
“What?” he’s rattled.
“Dammit, Tarlow. Focus!”
“Ah, ah.” He’s playing with his controls as he jabbers, and a picture comes up on his screen.
“Are those the tugs?” I ask.
“Yeah,” he answers. “Yeah. They’ll be on the cruiser in less than a minute.”
“They’re trying to salvage it, themselves?” I guess the most obvious thing.
Penny’s shooting again.
“Cut it off to the left!” Phil calls to her. “They’re going left.”
The ship pulls hard, and Penny rips a long burst of fire out of our gun.
“Yeah,” shouts Phil, getting into the excitement.
Penny shouts, too. “Got ‘em.” She glances back at me with a grin.
“Can they bubble out with those two tugs?” I ask Tarlow. “Or is one enough to push that cruiser?”
“I don’t know if they can—”
“Jesus, Tarlow, give me your best guess. You know that mining equipment better than any of us.”
“They can probably jump with one tug pushing,” he tells me.
To Penny, I ask, “You hear that?”
She’s already guiding the ship back toward the tugs.
“Careful with the shooting,” I tell her. “We don’t want to—”
“I know,” she tells me.
In seconds, I see we’re lining up on the tugs. They’re pulling hard g’s to put the cruiser between us and them.
But they don’t have time. We’re just too ungodly fast, and in seconds, we’re on them. Penny zips in close to one, strafing it with a burst of plasma that has no chance of missing. Metal explodes from the tug as we fly by, and Penny pulls the Rusty Turd into another painful turn to move back around to line up on the other target.
Before I can warn her that the shot she’s lining up for is too dangerous, she rips through two short bursts. The first misses the tug and tears through the empty space below the cruiser’s bow section. The second burst hits the tug aft of its bridge, sending shards of hot metal in all directions. Internal power goes down.
“Oh, hell yes!” says Tarlow, watching our victory unfold on Penny’s screens.
“Where’s that other Arizona class, Tarlow?” I know there’s still one shark in the water. I turn to Phil, silently asking him as well.
“Lost it,” Tarlow tells me, as we close in on the cruiser again, sliding cockeyed through space, the ship moving in one direction but pointed off the axis.
“There!” Phil shouts.
Penny gooses power into our drive array.
I see what they’ve both already spotted—the third Arizona class ship just pulled a hard arc around from the other side of the cruiser. They used the cruiser’s mass to hide themselves as they came back for us.
Shit!
They’re racing toward us with their grav lens powered up, aimed at our port midsection. We’re accelerating, yet the fractions of a second aren’t enough time. I don’t need Phil to tell me or Tarlow to show me.
The impact knocks me senseless.
Chapter 31
Nobody wins every time.
Nobody wins every time.
The words repeat themselves in my head until I realize my body is spinning so fast my blood is pooling in my feet and skull, making my eyes feel like they’re about to burst.
Holy crap.
I compensate with suit grav to stabilize my motion. I’m floating free, careening really, in a cloud of debris—the remains of the Rusty Turd.
Double holy crap.
The Trog cruiser is racing toward the horizon and powering to a higher orbit, only that doesn’t make any sense at all. It’s still a big, dead beast. Sure, the dots of a hundred Trog warriors are crawling across its hull, but—
I shake my head to pull my senses together.
The cruiser is going nowhere. It’s following a long, slow orbit around the gas giant. I’m moving rapidly away from it. I’m falling. I don't need to know the details of the equations, but I have enough of an intuition about orbital mechanics to know that the collision with the Arizona class ship not only obliterated the Rusty Turd, but arrested whatever orbital momentum we had. Now me and all the pieces of my ship are falling toward Jupiter. We’re on a trajectory toward the atmosphere.
And that means burning up.
“Dammit, Dylan.” It seems like a good time to shout at myself, to push all the fuzzies out of my head and get back in the game before I turn into a shooting star across Jupiter’s cloudy stratosphere.
“Dylan! Dylan!” It’s Penny, and she’s in trouble.
I comm back, “Where are you?”
“We took a hit,” she tells me.
I know. I’m looking around for her. I see half of my ship’s drive array spinning slowly but falling fast. I see plates, broken and whole, a lump of wreckage that is probably my reactor, every shape of rusty metal debris I can imagine,
and a body strapped into a seat. I grav toward it, knowing from the familiar shape of the chair, it’s Tarlow, and then I realize I'm still strapped into my chair, too. I unbuckle to free myself of its weight, and as I do, part of Jablonsky passes by, his head and most of his upper torso, and one arm. The vacuum is sucking the fluids out of his chest and blowing a cloud of frozen red corpuscles all around him.
Losing the Rusty Turd is one thing. Losing my crew—
I want to scream a new kind of rage. Loss. Failure. Defeat.
How many are dead?
I have to ignore Jablonsky.
That’s war. That’s just war.
Dammit.
I don’t have any seconds to spare for indulging unproductive emotions.
I grav on toward Tarlow.
At ten meters, I see I’ve wasted the effort. The inside of his faceplate is covered with red jelly—him. In the chaos of the crash, a grav field got the best of him, mashing him inside his suit.
“Penny,” I call, as I open the comm to my entire crew. A rush of panicked voices tells me many are alive, but they’re in peril.
“Get that door open,” Brice tells them.
“Brice?” I call, “Where are you?”
“Busy here,” he calls back. “Blow it!” I hear him order.
“Yes, Sarge,” says Silva.
I spot the Rusty Turd, at least the forward two-thirds of it, spinning far below me, moving much slower than I am. The Arizona class ship must have struck us just aft of the bridge. Most of the crew was in the forward section, and they're trapped. Penny is alive, somewhere. Jablonsky and Tarlow are dead. I can't find Phil.
And Tarlow was sitting in a chair not three feet behind me.
What did Brice tell us about the randomness of war, the luck of staying alive?
“I need some help,” says Penny, her voice shaky.
“I don’t know where you are,” I tell her.
“Still in my seat,” she tells me. “The forward section of the bridge is crushed around me. I can’t get free.”
I start scanning the wreckage strewn through space. “Pulse your suit grav if you can.”
