by Bobby Adair
Peterson starts scanning for the other cruisers. “They’ve backed off,” she announces.
“I see two over there,” I say.
“Something’s not right with those three,” says Phil. “Their grav fields are down.”
The cruisers at a distance start to fire on us, but with no enthusiasm for it.
Lenox has the ship spun around and she's accelerating for the asteroid's horizon, the shortest line to put us in a safe place, where no cruiser will have a shot at us.
As we pull away from the vessel we rammed, I get a full view, and it looks like the lower half has been mangled by the nuclear blasts. Another of the cruisers in the distance is missing half of its drive array, and a third disabled ship looks nicked up. Beyond that, the black of space has been replaced by a rapidly expanding bubble of blasted rock, plenty of pieces still glowing red. Below, where the base was, there are only craters and rubble.
Lenox pulls the ship down toward the surface and skims close to get us over the horizon, and just like that, we’re safe. So close in, we can’t see any of the Trog cruisers on the other side. The debris plume, though, is large enough to cover half of the sky behind us.
“How soon can we bubble?” I ask.
Lenox is pushing the g’s, and I see the asteroid start to shrink behind us.
“Thirty seconds,” says Phil, “for a safe jump. With the way the controls are at the moment, I wouldn’t want to go sooner than that.”
“Make it so.”
Chapter 27
Four hours and a dozen misdirection-jumps later, we come out at our rendezvous point to see Leroux’s freighter there, waiting, and Chikere's scout ship floating nearby. Silva opens the ship-to-ship to pass along the results of our latest mission, but she stops in mid-sentence and looks over at me.
“What?” I ask.
“I’m receiving an update. The Trog fleet bubbled out an hour ago,” she says.
That gets everyone’s attention.
“No cruisers near earth or the moon?” I confirm.
Silva shakes her head. “Chikere arrived with the news, just ahead of us.”
Phil looks at me with the question in his eyes.
“We go,” I tell him and the others on the bridge. “This is what we’ve been waiting for.”
“Leroux wants to conference,” says Silva. “She says Bird wants to update our plan.”
My temper flares, but I hold it in. We have to attack the moon. "Arrange it," I tell her. "Get Chikere on the line." To Lenox, I say, "Pull us in close to Leroux's ship. We need more nukes and an H refill." I turn to Brice. "Get—"
“I know,” he grumbles, as he goes forward. “Put a fire under their asses. Check the mounting pylons outside and see if any are still there.”
“See how many are too damaged to function,” I tell him, trying to spin it to the positive.
“That’s what I said,” he tells me.
Peterson is the last one I can spare for the moment, “Grab one of the techs up front, go outside, and do an inspection of the hull. I don’t need a full report right now. I just need to know if there’s anything out there that might cause us a problem when we get underway.”
“Any more than the hinky grav switches?” asks Phil. “None of the them have returned to functioning like they did before those nuclear explosions blasted us.”
“They didn’t blast us,” I tell him, like it’s a point worth arguing. “If they did, we wouldn’t be here.” I turn to Silva, looking for an escape from an argument in which I don’t want to engage. “You have Leroux yet?”
“Just a minute, she tells me.”
“We took a lot of damage,” says Phil.
“This is war,” I counter.
“A degraded ship shouldn’t—”
“Phil,” I stop him. “We have to make do. Bottom line simple. That’s it. Work with Peterson, now that we have some down time. Figure out the grav switch problem. Figure out what we can do a quick repair on. Calculate any loss of speed or defensive grav we’ll have.”
Phil manages to pout and glare at me at the same time.
It works. I feel guilty. Using a softer tone, I ask, “How’s Nicky? She seems like she’s getting better.”
Phil shakes his head, caught off guard by my sudden change. “She’ll probably be okay.”
“And the egg?” I ask.
The question strikes Phil deep. “It seems normal. No ill effects that we can identify."
“So we dodged a bullet,” I say. “We didn’t expect to be so close when those nukes blew, but everything turned out okay, right?”
"We don't know about long-term effects," says Phil. "And it's not just the grav effects on Nicky and the ship. What about radiation? For all we know, we've taken a fatal dose, and we'll be dead by this time tomorrow."
“If we’re all dying of radiation sickness,” I ask, “is there anything we can do about it?”
Phil doesn’t answer.
“No,” says Lenox. “Our hair will fall out, and we’ll get an awful case of the bloody shits as our bodies break down.”
Silva grimaces. “That’s disgusting.”
“We all have catheters,” I say. “We won’t even notice.”
“You will,” says Lenox. “At some point—”
“I know,” I tell her. “I get it. None of it matters, though. Like I said, if it’s going to kill us, the damage is done.”
“I have Leroux and Chikere on the line,” says Silva.
I say, “Patch Phil in, as well.”
A moment later, we run through the niceties and Leroux gets down to business. “Bird wants to coordinate the attack on the moon with the beginning of the assault on the battle stations.”
"Why?" I ask, disappointed because I'm still married to the idea that hitting the moon base at the first chance will do the most psychological damage to the Grays.
“If you go in now,” says Leroux, “what’s to stop the Grays from reacting by pulling their fleet back, which they’re sure to do? Even though the hydro plants on Earth are offline, the earth-moon system's value eclipses the sum total of the rest of the solar system.”
“Then why send the fleet out?” I ask.
“The battle stations,” says Leroux. “The Trogs know by now that we have one attack ship. Alone, the Turd II doesn’t stand a chance against the stations.”
“Unless we nuked them, too,” I say. “Not that we’re going to, but they have to know we have that ability by now. They have to know we’re using a weapons system they aren’t familiar with.”
"They're familiar," says Leroux. "They don't use chemical or nuclear weapons, because they're able to achieve similarly scalable effects with high-velocity kinetics."
“Let’s not go down that rat hole,” I argue.
“The moon,” says Leroux. “The Grays don’t think we can do significant damage, or they believe we're afraid to attack the earth-moon system, because of the defenses. Bird believes they sent the fleet out to hunt us down because they think they're safe. Once we run a successful attack on the moon's planetary siege batteries, that illusion bursts, and the Grays have to recall their fleet, maybe all of it. Having sixty cruisers arrayed in defensive positions around the earth and moon when the assault starts could be disastrous for us."
Probing into my thoughts, Phil tells me, “The assault has to be top priority.”
And he’s right. I know he is. I knew it before we started the conversation. I was hoping to find a way to get all I wanted out of this.
“It gives us nearly fifteen hours to do what we can for the ship,” says Phil. “We need the time.”
“Chikere, Leroux,” I ask, “you’re both in agreement with Bird on this?”
“Of course,” says Leroux.
“Did we change our command structure to a democracy?” asks Chikere.
I roll my eyes. All I need is another smart-ass. “I’m just looking for your opinions before I decide what
to do.”
“My opinion,” says Leroux, “is that we should follow Colonel Bird’s orders.”
“I’m with Leroux,” says Chikere, “It’s the smart thing to do.”
“I agree, as well.” I don’t, but it’s the smart play. “See to your ships and crews. Rest now, if you can. In fourteen hours, we’ll do a quick meet up, and then step off on the main assault. Any questions?”
None. We all know our roles.
Chapter 28
Down to five hours before we take off on our moon assault, and I’m standing on the hull, looking at a long scrape where a mounting pylon used to be, and a where a new pylon has been welded in its place. The half-assed look of the new one doesn’t inspire confidence.
“And that’s the deal,” says Brice. “Leroux’s people have been out here for hours trying to get this one and the other to work. It’s not just the metal part you see here on the outside, it’s the grav switches and linkages back to the bridge. All of it. We can mount a nuke and get it to lock in, but they can’t get the release to work.”
“So we won’t be able to drop anything from this armament pylon?” I clarify. “That’s where we’re at?”
Brice nods. “Both of the pylons we lost in ramming the cruiser are offline.”
“And the other four?” I ask.
“They function as well as they did before.”
“So we can drop four on the moon.” I’m disappointed. Dropping the nukes over an area as wide as the planet-killing railguns cover was always going to be a bit of a shotgun approach. Six nukes would have been preferable to the four. “I wish we still had the Rusty Turd.”
“My kingdom for a horse.”
“What?”
Brice shrugs. “Just something I read once. A contraband story from before.”
“And what’s it supposed to mean?”
“I don’t remember,” says Brice. “A king wanted a horse to win a battle, or run away, or something. It was a long time ago.”
“What happened when he got the horse?”
“Like I said, it was a long time ago. I think he died.”
I sigh. “Maybe you should keep your motivational anecdotes to yourself.”
“Why wish for the Rusty Turd?” asks Brice. “Why not wish for the whole fleet we had back at the Arizona shipyard? Why not wish for the magic space ferries to come and save us?”
“Brice, you need some sleep.”
“I’m just saying, wishing is a waste. Don’t turn into a whiner on me.”
“Got it,” I tell him, looking back down at the mounting pylon.
Brice says, “We have five more hours, but I think the time is better spent resting for what’s to come.”
“If they haven’t been able to get them to work yet,” I say. “Let’s not waste the time. We’ll go in with four mounted, and six loaded up inside. If we have to, we’ll make two runs.”
“A second run at the moon might be murder,” says Brice.
“Or it could be a cakewalk, if we bubble in close enough to the first blast zone. You’ve seen how the explosions rattle bugheads.”
Phil climbs out of the open assault door and deftly flies over to land by Brice and me.
“That’s it for me,” says Brice. “I’m going to get some shuteye.”
I turn to Phil. “Where are we at with the grav controls you were looking at?”
“I don’t feel comfortable with them.”
“You’ve tested them?”
“Yes.”
“And?”
“They all work fine,” says Phil. “Now, they do.”
“Isn’t that what we hoped for?”
“Most of the switches were sporadically failing when we arrived here. Some, once in every ten tests, some once out of twenty.”
“I thought you said they were fine.”
“Grav switches are organic in nature,” says Phil. “It’s as if they’re healing from the effects of the blast.”
“I didn’t know they could do that,” I say.
“Me, neither.”
“But we’re good now, right?”
“We’re on uncharted ground,” says Phil. “They might all perform fine now. They might fail the next time we bubble jump. There’s no way to know. As much as we need to bomb the moon base, you need to know that it might be the end of us. All of us. We have no way of knowing— ”
“We can’t know everything, Phil.” I snap the words, but I need sleep, and I’m tired of people lining up in front of me with problems that can’t be solved. I don’t need one that’s only imagined. “Look, we blasted off from Earth knowing that the ship might blow up around us— ”
“Let’s be clear about that, Dylan. You knew that, because Blair told you, and you kept it to yourself until after we’d already jumped, until after we had no choice but to move forward. Is that what we’re doing here? Risking everyone’s life on a gamble because you can’t admit to losing?”
“We haven’t lost.”
“We don’t know the ship will work, either, do we?”
“We jumped all the way out here,” I argue. “How many hops, six? Eight? And nothing went wrong.”
“Nothing was accurate. All of our end points were off.”
“But they got better the more we jumped, right?”
Phil huffs. “That’s not the point.”
“We have seven jumps planned between here and Earth,” I say, looking for some middle ground. “If the ship’s controls don’t perform, we’ll abort the attack run on the moon base. Will that work for you?”
“I suppose it’s the best I’m going to get.”
“Not only that,” I tell him, “but you better start squeezing your imagination for how we’re going to take out the moon base if we have to abort our bombing run, because no matter what the outcome is for us, that moon base and all those Grays hiding in the complex beneath it need to die.”
“What about the freighter as a bomber?” wonders Phil.
“You know it can’t produce a defensive grav field that’ll stand up to railgun fire. It wouldn’t last ten seconds over the moon.”
“Maybe the stealth scout.”
“Even if we could work out a mounting system for the nukes,” I say, “they’d be outside the hull, outside the anti-grav field generator that makes it invisible to the Grays. It would be a sitting duck.”
Phil sighs and looks toward the freighter, floating large and powerful, just a hundred meters off our starboard side. “The problem with us practicing our bombing technique on the supply depots is that we’re making the mistake you keep warning us against.”
“Phil, you tell me that when I get stressed, I micromanage. When you’re stressed, you talk in random circles. What are we talking about?”
“We’re doing the same thing over and over,” he says, “and expecting the Grays not to guess what we’re going to do next. We’ve gotten better each time, but so have they.”
How did we not see that?
“Stress,” says Phil. “We’ve been doing this for a long time. We've been through a lot. We've seen most of our friends die, and none of us has taken the time to grieve. We put it aside and push on. Not even on that trip out to 61 Cygni. You were busy falling in love with Silva, and most of the rest of us were getting into our own relationships."
“Phil,” I say, “stick with one thing. I can’t keep up.”
“Band-Aids,” he says. “We’re not fixing anything underneath. We’re just hiding our problems under new emotions.”
I don’t want to spend any more time chasing Phil’s bullshit. “After tomorrow, I’ll have plenty of time to find my way back to normal. So will the rest of us. What’s the status of the ship?”
“That’s it?” asks Phil.
“That’s what?”
“We’re not going to talk about this anymore?”
“Repressed feeling?” I ask. “There’s nothing I can solve tonight. Nothing any of
us can do. Another day under the rug won’t make anything any better or any worse.”
“I disagree.”
“I know.”
“What about the bombing run?” asks Phil. “We’re going to do the same thing, even though the Trogs are there, waiting for us to bubble out just over the horizon? They probably even have their weapons on every base and on the moon trained at the horizon, so they don't have to spend the time re-aiming them."
“We’re back to that?” I growl. “Phil, go get some sleep. You and Nicky both need it.”
“We need to do something different when we attack.”
“You’re probably right,” I say, “but it doesn’t matter. Nothing can penetrate the field generated by our grav lens. It won’t matter if the Grays fired every gun on the moon at us. We’ll slip right through."
“Until they shoot at us broadsides,” says Phil. “How many holes do we have in the ship already? I forget. Is it twenty or thirty? Or is it forty, now?”
“I don’t know. I asked you for the status report. I’m still waiting for it.”
“So that’s the way this is going to be?”
“Phil,” I drag in a long slow breath, trying to dramatize my patience. “We can do something different if you come up with a better idea, okay? Or you can poll the crew. Maybe one of them has a genius insight they haven’t suggested yet. But nobody has, have they?”
Phil glares at me. It's the kind of hateful look two friends can share when they have enough history that one dirty look won’t kill the relationship.
“You’re closer with them than I am,” I say.
“Just Peterson and Lenox,” says Phil. “Bird’s people up front think I’m a freak, and Brice hates me.”
“Brice is just Brice.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Nothing at all. Phil, what are we doing this for, picking at each other? Can’t we just focus on the mission? Can’t we just do that?”
“And the plan?” asks Phil. “We’re just going to go with it?”
“Unless we can think of something before we get there.”
Chapter 29
The hour arrives. I meet with the Leroux and Chikere one last time. The latest report from Blair is that the Trog fleet is still gone, and most of the Grays are still on the moon.
