by Bobby Adair
“Unstrap from your seat,” Garcia tells Harney and Kane. “Get your helmets off. Organize the men. Have them do the same. Get them out of their seats two or three at a time. I want them moving around so they can acclimate to the low g while we have it.”
Booker says, “After this burn, we’ll do about thirty-three hours of zero g before we kick the engines back on for a deccel once we get close to the moon. Nobody knows what kind of defenses the Grays have up there, but I’d expect them to start taking pot shots at us eventually. You’ll want the men strapped back in once that happens. We wouldn’t want a bunch of bodies bouncing around inside the cabin once Captain Howard decides he’s the Red Baron and starts taking evasive maneuvers.” Booker laughs. “Know what I mean?”
“Just let us know when,” Garcia replies with a grin.
Kane releases his strap and pushes himself out of his seat, turning around and hailing the other sergeants to get the men moving.
Chapter 6
“Wake up.”
Kane jerks to attention and sees Lieutenant Garcia leaning over him. Kane says, “I dozed off.”
“Boredom.” Garcia floats himself back into his seat.
The ship is still in zero g.
Kane looks over his shoulder at the rows of soldiers behind. Some of them are asleep. Others are talking quietly. Some are putting their helmets back on. “Something wrong?”
“We’re almost there.”
Kane looks at the large-faced watch on his wrist. The time confuses him. He tries to piece together when he went to sleep.
“We’re about an hour out.”
“God,” says Kane. “How long did I sleep?”
“As long as you needed.”
Kane shakes his head to knock the cobwebs loose. “I guess.”
Garcia straps himself into his chair. “We’ll start our burn pretty soon.”
Kane checks his belts. Still secure.
“You’ll want to get your helmet back on,” says Garcia.
The helmet is attached to a clip on the seat, just beside the line that feeds his suit oxygen and power from the ship. Kane detaches the helmet, and pulls it deftly over his head, connects the neck ring to his suit and locks it in place, just like he’s done a thousand times in training.
Using the crude controls on his wrist, he runs a diagnostic on the suit’s systems, a habit drilled into him during training. The story the instructors like to tell was that more than one hard-nosed dumbass, “just like you,” skipped the diagnostics and jumped into his exercise, assuming that because he could breathe, everything was fine. The problem is, the empty spaces in the suit hold enough air to sustain a man for a few minutes. So it’s easy to think the air system is running when it’s not.
Once the air in the suit turns toxic with carbon dioxide, the dumbass collapses. The lucky ones passed out close to someone who understood what was happening and knew what to do about it. Most of the dumbasses weren’t lucky. They died or caught a bad case of brain damage.
“For you idiots who don’t know it, brain damage is incurable.” The instructors were never kind.
Early on in lunar assault training, Kane’s unit took a tour of the ward where the Army kept the brain-damaged soldiers who’d made one mistake or another. Most of them looked like they’d been poured into their wheelchairs every morning, only to spend the day fumbling and drooling. The visit made an indelible impression on Kane. He always ran his system diagnostics, and he regularly checked his O2 and CO2 levels whenever he had his helmet on.
Harney, already awake, in his helmet, and strapped into his seat on the other side of Garcia, points out through the cockpit windows. “That’s earth, right?”
“Yep,” says Booker.
Kane is more interested in what Howard is doing. Howard is actively checking his instruments. He’s tense.
“Why are we headed toward earth?” asks Harney.
“We spun the ship ten hours ago,” says Booker, who busies himself with some toggles on the ceiling that cause a bank of monitors to swing down from above. He glances at Howard. “Good to go.”
Howard spins his chair around and orients himself at a set of controls Kane hadn’t paid any attention to before. Now Howard and Booker have their backs to the cockpit windows, using video feeds to fly the ship backward.
Garcia glances at Harney and says, “They pointed the rocket nozzles toward the moon.”
“So we can decelerate,” adds Kane. He paid attention in training when they were explaining all of this. Harney hadn’t.
“I see the other ships,” says Harney, “just like when we left earth.”
Booker looks over his shoulder to see out the window. “Yeah.”
“We’ll be there first?” asks Harney.
Garcia thumbs over his shoulder. “I’m sure there’re plenty out there we can’t see.”
Just then, one of the ships behind them explodes in a spray of silent fire.
“Holy shit!” shouts Harney.
Kane tenses. He comms the platoon. “Helmets. Now!”
Howard glances back to see the fiery explosion dissipate into the void. He looks at the rows of men sitting in front of him now. He focuses on Lieutenant Garcia. “I’m muting you guys now. Going to fleet comm. The Grays are awake. Hold tight. It’s going to get rough.”
Over the platoon comm, Kane orders, “Cinch up those straps. We’re starting evasive maneuvers. Expect to get jerked around a bit.” He looks over at the lieutenant, who is talking with someone, probably their new commander on another of the ships. Harney is on the comm with his squad, talking fast enough so they won’t have time to think about the incoming fire.
Kane switches to the platoon command comm, just him, the other three sergeants, and Garcia. “Keep a close eye on your men. Make sure nobody panics. We’ll be in our own pile of dog shit soon enough. Right now, there’s nothing we can do except relax and trust our pilot to get us there. Clear?”
“Clear,” they respond in near unison.
Kane takes a few slow breaths to maintain his calm. Just like his men, he doesn’t like being under someone else’s control.
Booker leans a little to the left of his monitor bank and catches a glance at Kane before opening a connection. “Howard says I should leave a line open to you three.” He points a finger across the front row. “You know, so you can keep the platoon informed, so they’ll feel better. It doesn’t seem like it, but he’s all touchy-feely that way. Ask questions when you have them, and I’ll answer unless I’m busy flying the ship and saving your life or something.” Booker chuckles.
“Thanks,” says Garcia. “Kane, can you pass along info to the platoon, so we’re not all three talking.”
“Yes, sir.”
Booker says, “We’ve got incoming, and the captain is going to start his crazy pilot shit here, any second. Hope you boys had your Dramamine.”
“Evasive maneuvers!” Kane announces.
The ship’s engine rumbles and the ship pulls hard to the right, but just for a moment.
“Expect more of that,” says Booker.
“Like riding a roller coaster,” says Kane into the platoon comm. He can hear the men. He’s got them turned down to barely audible, but if anything gets out of control he’ll know right away.
“Deccel burn in ten seconds,” says Booker.
Kane relays the information.
Out in the space behind them, another ship explodes.
Two streaks of light slip past, just missing the hull.
“Tracers?” asks Kane.
“Lasers,” Harney tells them, tension in his voice.
“You only see lasers in the movies,” says Garcia.
Harney turns toward Garcia, ready to argue. “There was this experiment my science teacher—”
“You don’t see laser beams in space,” Garcia tells him with enough finality that Harney stops talking.
“They’re shooting some kind of super high
-velocity projectiles,” says Booker. “They’re not tracers. They’re glowing because they’re hot as hell from the acceleration.”
“Railguns?” asks Kane.
“Confirm that,” says Garcia. “It’s coming over the company line now. They’ve got forty or fifty of them mounted on the ship.”
“Shit,” says Harney.
“Their fire rate is slow,” says Garcia. “Like they’re hand-loading them one shot at a time.”
The ship pulls hard, upward this time. Metal groans.
A light streaks past the cockpit windows, close enough to reach out and touch.
Some of the men shout and curse. They all saw it, too.
The ship pulls hard to the right.
“We’re in good hands,” says Booker, reaching over to pat Howard on the shoulder, making a show of it for the enlisted men.
Between the monitors, Kane sees Howard’s face. He’s focused on his monitors, still tense, but determined.
The ship jukes, then swerves into a long arc. The rocket engines stop burning.
“What’s that?” asks Garcia.
Booker glances at them between his monitors. Kane sees his humor is slipping. “Don’t pass this bit back to your guys. At least I wouldn’t. The first wave is getting shredded.”
Harney mutters something.
“We’re not going straight in,” says Booker. “We’re going to slingshot around the moon and deccel as we come around the other side.”
Garcia nods.
Harney asks, “Why?”
“So we won’t be an easy target,” answers Kane. “If we slow down to landing speed coming directly at the Grays’ ship, the slower we go, the easier we’ll be to hit. If we decelerate behind the moon and slide in over the horizon, we won’t be a target for long.”
Booker laughs. “That’s right. Tell you what, Sergeant, after Howard bites it, you can be my copilot.”
Another projectile flashes light into the cockpit.
More and more glowing projectiles are in the sky.
Garcia says, “For single shot weapons, the Grays are throwing up a lot of ordnance.”
Chapter 7
The black sky is filling with odd, shimmering shapes, the shattered remnants of ships. Some are still venting flaming gases. Others are spreading like poorly wrought fireworks.
The pilot jerks left, and then right again.
Another miss.
The hull sounds like it’s being pelted by hail and chunks of metal big enough to feel through the seat’s frame.
The men in the platoon are straining to keep their brave faces on, but they’re all afraid.
Most are keeping it to themselves.
A few others are starting to lose it. Kane directs their sergeants to mute them off the platoon comm and calm them down. Even Garcia has gone silent, eyes closed, hands gripped tight to his armrests, lips mouthing a silent prayer.
Trying to keep his voice on a level tone, Kane asks Booker, “What’s the story?”
“Busy as hell,” he answers, as he points to one of the large screens.
Howard turns the ship in response.
Kane finds the end of Booker’s humor worrisome. It underscores the impotence he feels being stuck in the rocket, unable to take a shot at those little gray shits in their interstellar cruiser, mercilessly pounding the fleet with their railguns.
He hates them even more now that he realizes his one consoling hope—through his training, the launch, and what might soon be his death—won’t work. If the fleet doesn’t make it through the hailstorm of defensive fire, no nuclear-tipped missiles will either.
No backup plan.
The rapidly shrinking lunar expeditionary force is the earth’s only hope.
“Most of the ships are damaged,” says Booker, seeming to breathe a little easier, all of a sudden.
That doesn’t sound like good news to Kane, so he doesn’t understand.
Booker seems to sense Kane’s misunderstanding and adds, “We’re the lucky ones.”
Seeing so much debris out the windows, Kane silently agrees.
“A few more minutes,” says Booker, “and we’ll be out of the line of fire.”
Howard pulls on the controls and Kane is mashed into his seat as the ship is pummeled again.
Debris from another ship flies past the windows.
Howard curses, losing his cool for the first time.
The ship swings in another direction.
Up. Down.
It barrel-rolls, and Kane is disoriented. He sees the earth. And then the edge of the moon. And then space again.
Heavy thuds pound the hull.
Kane closes his eyes and steels his nerves. It feels like the end. Out of the darkness, in his mind, he hears the gentle thump-thump of the heartbeat of his unborn child. The thought is broken by yet another impact.
But the ship doesn’t come apart. It shudders and veers to the left, long and consistent.
“We’re trying to get an orbital angle,” Booker shouts. “We don’t want to overshoot.”
The rocket engines start to rumble loudly.
“We’re burning to slow down,” shouts Booker over the noise.
Kane feels the g’s again, just like liftoff.
The noise of the rocket engines is all he can hear. His bones rattle so hard it feels like they might jiggle right out of his flesh.
“We made it!” Booker’s shout somehow carries over the noise of the engines.
Chapter 8
It feels like twenty, maybe thirty minutes, burning the rockets to slow down, but Kane sees out the window they’re passing behind the dark side of the moon.
The orbital maneuver is working.
The Grays can’t see the ship.
The men in the platoon are feeling their confidence return. They’re joking, and talking about getting even.
Kane links in and tells his men, “Get yourselves ready, boys. The worst is past. We’ll have our turn soon enough.”
“Gonna stomp on a little gray fucker’s head,” jokes Harney. Some of the men laugh.
“We’re about fifteen minutes out,” Kane tells them. “We’ll land two or three clicks out and go in on foot.”
“How many ships made it through?” asks Harney.
“Don’t worry about that,” Kane replies. “You make sure your giggle-girls are ready to fight.”
“Hey,” says Harney, “nobody in my squad’s a giggle-girl.”
“Nobody but you,” laughs Garcia. He opens a private comm link between Kane and Booker. “I can’t raise anyone on the tactical link. I think the booster antenna on the hull was broken off in the descent. Can you guys raise the other ships?”
Booker talks quietly, even though he’s on the comm link. “Just between us, we’re not getting contact with anyone either.”
“What does that mean?” asks Garcia.
“It could mean we’re behind the moon and it’s blocking line-of-sight transmission.” He points to his screen. “I don’t see anyone in front of us. He glances back through the windows. “You guys see anyone else out there?”
“No,” answers Kane.
“Don’t tell me we’re the only ones that made it,” says Garcia.
“Can’t say,” Booker tells him. “Maybe we’re the only ones who took this maneuver around the moon, and the rest of them are on the other side giving the Grays what-for. Maybe we’ll be late to the party.”
Kane doesn’t like that idea. In fact, he almost likes it less than the helpless feeling he had when they were under fire and other ships were being blown to pieces. Like every soldier in the cramped cabin, he’s ready to kill the murdering little gray monsters.
Chapter 9
The ship spins one last time. Having shed its excess speed with the power of the engines, it can move in the moon’s light gravity with its maneuver thrusters.
Now skimming the surface, a few hundred feet up, moving slowly, How
ard is having trouble keeping the ship moving in a straight line. He’s talking to Booker in a private conversation.
Kane gets that the damage to the ship is making it hard to fly. Red and yellow streaks are coming off the moon from somewhere over the horizon. The Grays are still shooting. The sky is so full of debris, it’s impossible to tell what the aliens are shooting at.
That makes Kane anxious. Too many good men are dying.
Howard only needs to coax the ship a little closer.
“We need to move this thing along,” Garcia tells Booker, echoing Kane’s thoughts. “Get us some speed. Lose the caution.”
“Caution?” Booker shoots Garcia a harsh look and the laugh that follows is anything but happy. “You’re lucky you’re not outside pushing this thing right now. The main engines are still good, but maneuvering thrusters aren’t working worth a damn.”
“Go faster, then,” Garcia tells him, not backing down.
Booker grits his teeth, takes a second to respond calmly and says, “If we put on too much speed, we’ll overshoot and probably fly right over the damn ship at point-blank range. That won’t end well.” He closes out Garcia’s request with, “We’re doing the best we can.”
“We’re just anxious to get into the fight,” says Kane. “Know what I mean?”
Booker nods.
In a more peaceful tone, Garcia asks, “What’s the plan, then?”
Booker says, “We can’t get a fix on how far that Gray ship is over the horizon. I think we’re close. Our plan is to fly at this altitude—we’ll speed up if we can—and as soon as we spot the Grays, we’ll drop down below their line of sight. The horizon will keep them from shooting at us.”
“How far will we be?” asks Garcia.
“Not to go all scientist on you,” says Booker, “but standing flat-footed on the moon, you can see maybe a couple kilometers to the horizon. At this altitude, maybe we’ll see ‘em fifty kilometers out. It’ll give us a chance to sneak in close. Maybe two or three clicks.”
Garcia seems satisfied with the answer. “You and Howard should come with us.” His eyes scan across the ship’s control panels. “I don’t think the ship is going to get us back to earth.”
