by Bobby Adair
“Not that we’ve seen. I think this was just a salvage crew out here. The b-team. These guys could have taken us all out if they’d been better coordinated.”
“Gotcha.”
“Any Grays inside?”
“Not that we’ve seen, but we wouldn’t have. Know what I mean. They don’t tend to get close enough to the fighting that we see ‘em.”
“Makes sense.”
“How many are you bringing with?” he asks.
“Just six of us survived the collision.”
“That’ll have to do, then. What’s your plan?”
“Once we’re inside, we’ll have a way to track the Trogs.”
“How’s that?”
“Phil and the Gray will be able to sense where all the Trogs are. If they’re spread out and trying to find another way to get at you, they'll be divvied up. If we can attack them in small groups, we should be able to win."
“You know that’ll only work once, right?”
“Sure, but a man can hope. I’ll ping you once we’re inside.”
“What about that other ship, the one that rammed yours?" he asks. "Even if we win in here, it'll just kill the cruiser, and we won't have gained anything."
“I’m working on that, but I’ll need you to help us.”
"I don't know how I can give any help considering the situation."
“You can do it,” I tell him. “I’ll explain.”
“What do you have in mind?”
Chapter 41
The Arizona class ship is floating alongside the cruiser, maybe fifty meters off the bow, doing nothing but waiting for the battle inside to resolve. On the bridge, the three Grays have to be directing their Trog lapdogs inside on how best to attack Madsen.
Lenox isn’t moving her arms or legs in the slightest as she sails through the vacuum, doing her best to look like a corpse slowly shedding its heat into space, turning the body inside to ice. Because Phil is good at what he does, her path won’t cause her to collide with the assault ship, but to fly past, very closely, but past. The Grays inside should be able to sense that, and she won’t seem like a danger in any way.
I open a comm loop to Madsen. “Now is the time to attack.”
“Distract, you mean.”
“Don’t risk anyone,” I tell him. “Just make it look like you’re charging out of the targeting bay to kill some Trogs.”
“Done.”
“Good luck.” I cut Madsen and link back to my squad. “We’re good to go.”
I turn my attention to the assault ship, hoping the captain doesn’t pulse his defensive grav to push Lenox away, hoping he doesn’t reposition his ship.
They do nothing, exactly as Phil predicted.
It’s good to have an arrogant enemy.
Lenox is a dozen meters away from the Arizona class ship. Her closest point of approach.
I don’t need to say anything over the comm. She sees it’s time to make her move.
Her suit amps up to full power. She pulses her grav plates to change course, and closes the twelve-meter gap in a few eye blinks. It’s barely enough time for a human to react, let alone a trio of startled decision-committee Grays.
And just as the Grays’ collective consciousness is gelling around a response, Lenox is pushing hard g’s to get away from them, making them rethink their reaction and distracting them from the C4 charge she left attached to the outer airlock door on the side of the bridge.
As soon as she has the bulk of the assault ship between her and the door, she blows it. The door cracks and flies into space. From power-up to detonation, the whole thing didn’t take six seconds, and that was only phase one of the attack.
It wasn’t her job to get inside, just to plant the charge, detonate it, and then to distract the shell-shocked Grays so they wouldn’t notice what was coming next.
What I want them to miss is Silva.
Silva hit the grav on her suit as soon as Lenox blew her charge.
Silva is crossing the gap between us and the Arizona class vessel.
Seconds tick.
The ship’s grav array starts to power up, and it lurches forward. The Grays strobe their defensive grav because now they know Silva is a threat—but they were too slow to react, again. Silva’s already in the airlock, placing her last C4 charge on the inner door.
When she blasts out of the damaged airlock a second later, I know she’s done what she needed to do.
She cuts a hard turn to move out of danger’s way, and the second charge detonates. Steel door parts blast out of the airlock on an expanding plume of interior air. A Gray and a Trog come flying out.
The rest of us are already blazing toward the ship at top speed.
Brice arrives first. He’s through the airlock just as I pass through the outer door, and then the inner.
I'm on the bridge, leveling my railgun and shredding a disoriented Trog on the far side of the room. Brice has already handled the last two Grays.
“Kill those two outside,” I comm to the squad as I check the time on my d-pad. “Twenty-seven seconds,” I tell Brice.
He‘s checking the ship’s internal systems, to see whether any other Trogs or Grays are onboard. “Speed works to our advantage with the Grays,” he says.
I’m heading to the forward sections.
“I think it’s empty,” he tells me.
“Let’s double check, anyway.”
As I race up to the first doorway in the assault ship’s main hall, Brice comes after. I call to Lenox and the others, “Head for the breach at the bow but don’t go in until we get there. Brice and I will follow as soon as we clear the ship.”
“You still want me to pilot that thing?” asks Lenox.
Lenox is a precious asset to take off my assault team, but the ship is way too valuable not to seize. “Yes,” I tell her. “Make sure it’s ready to fly at a moment’s notice.”
Chapter 42
Though the assault ship’s forward sections turned out to be empty, verifying that fact took longer than expected. Not that I hadn’t imagined each step in the process, I mean, I’ve been inside one of these metal tubes for more than a year. They aren’t that big. In my mind, it all just played out faster than it did in real life. By the time Lenox had the Arizona Class ship sailing off to a safe distance from the cruiser, and Brice and I were at the breach in the bow to meet up with the others, nearly fifteen minutes had passed. Any hope we had of carrying the momentum of our surprise to the battle inside was gone.
As soon as my feet grav tight to the hull outside the breach, I say, “Tell me a story, Phil. Anyone inside waiting for us?”
“The bridge is clear.”
“You’re shittin’ me,” says Brice.
“I haven’t taken a decent shit since they ran the tube up my ass back at the Silverthorne spaceport,” says Phil.
Everybody laughs. We're a happy lot when we're on a roll and we're killing Trogs.
And Grays.
Especially Grays.
“So that’s a no, then?” asks Brice, not in a mood for humor. “You’re not shitting me.”
“No,” answers Phil. “I’m not.”
“In we go,” I tell them, even as I’m off my feet and flying through the gaping tear in the hull, weapon at my shoulder, ready to shred anything with the gall to take a breath.
The bodies of Trogs and Punjari’s engineers float in a red fog of frozen corpuscles. The freshly dead. The desiccated corpses that had been on the bridge are gone. I don’t know whether Punjari’s people stored them inside one of the interior rooms or pitched them into space.
I land on my feet, and grav tight to the floor as the rest of my squad comes in around me. I comm to Madsen, “We have the bridge. You still good down there?”
“We ran up to the door,” he says, “hosed ‘em with railgun fire for as long as we could, given our ammo situation, and then made a show of trying to hold our ground before we retreated
to our original position. Everything go alright out there?”
“We took that Arizona class ship.”
“Captured, not destroyed?”
“It has an extra hole in the hull, but it’s ours. One of my crew is piloting it right now.”
“That’s good news,” says Madsen. “We were getting worried down here. We expected the Trogs to counterattack after that last little play. Haven’t seen one since we retreated.”
“The Trogs have gone to the central bay,” says Phil.
“They’re not going to fight us in the halls?” asks Brice.
“They’re all going?” I ask.
“I’m I hearing that right?” asks Madsen.
“Could they be planning an ambush?” asks Brice.
Phil shakes his head.
“No Trogs playing opossum,” asks Brice, “you know, like we just did outside? Trogs are fast learners.”
“Maybe,” says Phil. “From up here, we can see the Trogs moving. We can detect lots of bodies. We won’t be able to tell if any are alive until we get closer.”
“Maybe they want a face-to-face fight,” suggests Silva. “That whole Samurai-honor thing they do.”
“You could be right about that.” I think it’s something else, though. I’m thinking of the Prolific Man Killer situation. “Maybe they’re giving up because we killed their Gray leadership.”
“Why’s this suddenly a new thing?” asks Peterson. “The war’s been going on for three years. Why are we seeing this now?”
“Because up until now,” says Brice, “We’ve only been losing.”
“Up until now?” whines Phil. “Aren’t we still losing?”
Brice glares at him. “Right here. Right now, we’re winning.”
Phil isn’t having it. “The war—”
I shush him with a raised hand and telepathic nudge.
Telepathic?
I just messaged Phil telepathically.
“You’re getting better,” he wordlessly tells me.
“Let’s get the engineers off the cruiser while we have some breathing room,” I tell everyone. “Madsen, we’ll head your way, and together we’ll escort them out.”
“What about the cruiser?” asks Punjari, on the line now.
“We can reboard after we handle our Trog infestation. Right now, the safe place for you and your people is elsewhere.”
“Or,” suggests Phil, “we could cut our losses and get out of here.”
“We need this cruiser,” I tell him. “Let’s get this show on the road.”
Silva takes the lead and jumps into one of the dormant lift tubes.
Chapter 43
It doesn’t take long once we get moving. Madsen’s people are eager to hook up with my small squad—safety in numbers, or so they say. Punjari’s engineers are plenty pleased to get off the ship, though for most, stepping onto the rusty assault craft, poorly constructed and shoddily repaired, tweaks their anal-retentive sensitivities. It’s a flying bundle of risk, and they know it.
The trepidation for we soldiers comes when we start making our way slowly through the halls toward the cruiser’s vast central bay. Brice and Silva are leading the way, with me and Peterson backing them up. Phil and Nicky are sandwiched in behind us. Madsen’s squad is taking up the rear. Phil is keeping us apprised of the status of every hidden body we encounter, so we’re careful as we approach.
“Where are they now?” I ask.
“At the center of the ship,” he tells me. “Lined up straight across in three ranks, sixty-two of them.”
“What are they doing?”
“Can’t tell. They aren’t moving?”
“Are they standing?”
“No,” he answers.
“Banzai, harakiri, or surrender?” asks Brice.
“Don’t forget attack,” says Silva. “They might have some fight left in them.”
“Let’s just go see what they have in mind,” says Madsen, not up for the fun of speculation.
“Can you contact them?” I ask Phil.
“If you want,” he answers. “Once we’re in the hangar bay where they can see us, it’ll be easier.”
“You think we can swing them over to our side?”
“You’re optimistic,” he tells me.
“What would we do with them?” asks Brice. “How do we trust them?”
“How did we trust Klingon Pete?” I ask.
“We didn’t,” he says. “You did.”
The airlock doors at the end of the long spinal hall don’t open at the press of the button. No power in the ship. We open them manually. Phil reminds us to seal it up tightly behind us. The bulk of the ship still holds atmosphere. Not breathable, as it's been suffocating Trogs for over a year, but under normal pressure. We leak it into the airlock through the manual valve, and once the pressure equalizes, Silva opens the door to the hangar bay. Outside, the enormous ship is dwarfed by Jupiter's immensity and the infinite void of space. Inside, with only Trog machinery supporting the railguns and the reactors spread out over a kilometer, the ship’s interior is wondrously vast.
Brice and Silva are out the door first, checking the flanks for ambushers as the rest of us hurry out. We have our weapons pointed out at our sectors, ready to blast anything into bloody shreds. There’s nothing, nothing moving under its own power, anyway. In the zero-g, bodies drift, frozen, some in suits, others not. Railgun slugs hang here and there in the air. Even a huge ball of water is suspended a hundred meters away from us, high overhead, near the axis of the cruiser. Nothing but surface tension holds it together. Why it’s there, none of us takes a moment to ask. We have deadlier things to think about.
“Let’s get moving,” I tell them.
We take flight as a dirty, orange flock, all drifting sternward.
We know where we’re going, yet we’re careful. Phil and Nicky probe for any sign of life, our early warning system for ambushes.
Once the three ranks of Trogs come into view, speculation ends. They’ve bound their legs bent, calves to hamstrings, and they’ve skewered themselves with their disruptors.
“We won,” says Brice, though his tone belies his mood. Whether for vengeance or catharsis, he needed to fire his gun and spill some blood.
Chapter 44
All went smoothly after we found the ranks of dead Trogs. Without the time or troops to search the entire ship, we returned to the forward section, secured the bridge and the access corridors, and invited Punjari and his engineers to re-board and finish their work.
Twelve hours later, both the cruiser and the captured assault ship freed themselves from Jupiter’s gravitational pull and set an indirect course to the predetermined rendezvous point eight light hours above the solar plane. Far enough out of the way no Gray would see us. So far away from anything, no squadron of enemy cruisers would happen upon us.
Now that journey is almost over, and I’m sitting in the captain’s chair on the bridge, dead-tired, with only the suit juice jitters keeping me awake through the boredom of jump after jump after jump.
Into a silence that might have been running for an hour or more, Phil makes an announcement. “Nicky is pregnant.”
I’m too frazzle-worn to gawk at him. “Three words in, and this is already the weirdest conversation I’ve ever had.”
“Don’t be an ass.”
Brice gets up from the seat on the back wall of the bridge. I didn’t realize he was awake. He makes for the door leading to the central hallway, not wanting any part of the coming conversation.
I check my d-pad. It says just Phil and me are on the comm link, though I learned long ago what an unreliable piece of crap it is. Just us. I open a link to Brice. “I know we eyeballed everything before we left, but do you mind putting together an inventory of our supplies. Grab someone to help.”
Brice gives me a nod.
Peterson unstraps herself from the couch at the back of the bridge, and follows Brice wit
h all the enthusiasm of a teenager escaping the boredom of after-school suspension.
“How long left on this jump?” asks Lenox.
“Eight minutes,” Phil tells her. He’s tired of the drudgery. He got used to the computerized navigational system Spitz installed on the Turd for us.
“What are you guys talking about?” she asks.
“How do you know I’m talking to Dylan?” asks Phil.
“I can see your mouth moving.”
I tell them both, “I’m not saying anything.”
Phil gives it up. “Nicky is gestating.”
“Gestating?” Lenox looks perplexed. “Nicky is going to have a baby?”
“Well,” says Phil. “Not like a baby. You know how Grays are, with that egg thing.”
“I don’t think gestation is the right word,” says Lenox.
“Does it matter?” asks Phil.
She says, “You two, didn’t…”
“To be honest,” I jump in, “that was my first question.”
“Why,” asks Phil, “can’t I have a mature conversation with you, Dylan?”
“I think it’s a legit question.”
Silva giggles. “Did you and Nicky, you know…?”
I take another look at my d-pad and rap it a few times with my fist. Damn thing.
“Grays are asexual,” says Phil. “You guys know that, right?”
“Is everyone on this comm loop?” I ask. “I thought this UN equipment was supposed to be better than that shit they gave us back on earth.”
“They don’t have sex,” continues Phil. “The one or two Grays in each pod with the least status spontaneously start to produce eggs when they reach physical maturity. Because I’m the alpha in our pod, that makes Nicky the egg-bearer.”
“So every Gray is a clone of the parent?” asks Lenox. “How do they evolve?”
“Grays don’t have DNA like humans do,” says Phil, “but they do have free-floating molecules in their bodies that control their development.”
“But they had to evolve,” I say as I give up on my d-pad and settle into my chair, “which means they still have to be evolving right now, but slowly, right? Asexual species evolve slowly, right?
