43 Days to Oblivion

by J. D. Oppenheim

  ……

  Jolo and Katy could see smoke rising up in big black plumes before they even saw the tower. “Mantis must already be hitting the station,” said Katy. There were loud railgun blasts and he could hear a pair of Fed 4-core thrusters being pushed beyond spec—to a place only a pirate Gunboat with the thruster governors ripped out could go. But the other sound worried him. It was a BG cruiser and he didn’t think it was Mantis’s.

  “Stop,” yelled Jolo, just before the hover craft crested the ridge. Katy brought the Scout to a halt, dust flying everywhere. Jolo ran to the edge and stared down into the shallow recess where no one in their right mind would ever have put a listening station. Mantis’s black Cruiser with the blue star was laying on its side on fire, a few blackened crew members strew about the sand. The giant tower, twisted in the middle, lay on the ground nearby, the bottom burned and black. Overhead, Mantis’s Fed gunboat and a BG Cruiser traded cannon fire. The Cruiser was nearly cooked, smoking from both thrusters and looking like it was ready to drop, but Mantis’s boat didn’t look much better. Jolo knew that if the Cruiser took out Mantis then he and Katy would be in grave danger, but he was helpless. He looked at the Colt in his hand. He didn’t even remember reaching for it. He might as well throw rocks at the giant, black alacyte ship. Katy came up to him, out of breath.

  “We should run,” she said.

  But then the black ship faltered and crunched down on the end of the tower and rolled. The Fed boat finished it off with a volley from her rail guns. Mantis set the smoking Fed gunboat down next to the Scout. He emerged, cussing. “Lost Black Beauty!” he screamed, staring down at the smoldering, black pile of metal with the blue star on the side.

  “What about your people?” Katy said. Two charred figures lay next to the smoking mess. Mantis turned to her.

  “I am a pirate, not a monster, my lady,” he said. “Those on the ground ain’t human. They’re my synth-bots. Probably salvageable. Install new logic boards and away we go.”

  “Why’d the Cruiser come?”

  “Don’t know,” said Mantis.

  “How long after you showed up and started blasting the base of the tower did the bad guys show up?”

  “’Bout thirty minutes.” He looked at Jolo. “I didn’t think you were getting involved.”

  “I’m not. But y’all ain’t gonna last if that’s your plan to take out a tower.”

  “We should go before the BG send any more boats down,” said Jolo.

  “Yeah, you go Vargas. We’ll take care of everything,” said Mantis. He spit on the ground and headed back to his ship cursing under his breath, still angry at losing his black ship.

  “What now?” said Katy.

  “You wanna figure this thing out?” said Jolo.

  Jolo and Katy headed north as fast as the little Scout could go, away from the smoke and any possible BG encounters. They passed several towers, and on the fifth they stopped. It was far enough away from Mantis’s disaster but close enough to the Kolar Mountain chain which would give them a place to hide if another big black ship showed up.

  “Why’d the BG come?” said Jolo. “No ships came when we found the drill with Merthon.”

  “We didn’t fire an ion cannon at it,” said Katy.

  “Ok, there’s that.”

  “How about this,” said Katy, “any ship larger than, say, a Scout, comes close with weapons hot and pretty soon you got a Cruiser coming down to rain hell on you.”

  “Okay, let’s test it. You wait here.” Jolo left Katy under a tree at the base of the mountains and sped off in the direction of the tower. Then he drove around it a few times and waited.

  Nothing.

  Then he tapped the already dented nose of the Scout on the front door of the tower. The little warning bot popped out just like last time but Jolo didn’t shoot it. Then he backed the Scout away a good fifty meters and walked around the base of the giant structure. When he stopped and squatted down he could hear it. When he put his hands on the hot sand he could feel it. A subtle, rhythmic vibration. The damn drill. The BG putting holes into this planet so they could blow it up, could remove it from the universe, while the Fed did nothing.

  He waited about fifteen minutes. He laid down in the sand with his hands behind his head and took a nap. But nothing came to get him. No BG boats. No big rolling bots. Not even the little laser bots popped out. So he headed back to the tree.

  “We need a way to take that thing down that anyone can do, not just a pirate with a gunship,” said Jolo.

  “I been thinking about that,” said Katy, lying under the tree with her hands behind her head. She propped up on both elbows. “Take me to the tower. We’re gonna have to use a light touch.”

  “Light touch?” said Jolo.

  “Watch and marvel.” Katy said, a few minutes later back at the tower. Then she reached into the hover craft’s storage box and pulled out a standard issue Fed energy rifle and six zirkanite charges. Jolo leaned on the Scout and watched Katy do her thing. He decided he could enjoy watching her doing just about anything. She moved gracefully, long legs and nice curves, pony tail catching the soft breeze.

  She looked back at him. “You zonin’ or what?” she said, holding a zirka charge in one hand.

  “Get to it already,” said Jolo.

  “Six charges the rock miners use, available anywhere on Duval, and an energy weapon. We want a way that don’t require any high-tech. Stuff that most boats would have on hand. And who ain’t got zirka and a gun?”

  Katy stepped lightly around to the back of the tower and planted the biggest charge a few meters away from the back door. Then she put the five other charges at the base of the tower. When the charges were set she grabbed the rifle.

  “This is the tricky part,” she said. Jolo just smiled and waved. When she turned to face the tower he stood and pulled out the Colt, took a few steps toward her. He knew what was coming out next.

  Katy fired once at the front door and sure enough, the little warning bot popped out and she knocked it out with one shot, nothing left but a burn mark. And that was the easy part. A few seconds later though, right on cue, both laser bots emerged from either side, both tracking a crazy, high-speed pattern in the air above her, homing in for the kill. Katy opened fire immediately. She got the first one on the fourth shot but the second one proved a little more difficult. It gained altitude, got lost in the clouds, then came in from another angle. On the third pass, it cut a path on the ground near Katy’s foot and Jolo had seen enough. He waited for it to come back and he killed it with one shot.

  “What’d you do that for!” Katy yelled, sweaty and breathing hard.

  “Because I really didn’t come here to watch you get cut in half by a tiny little BG bot. You think I got issues now. That woulda pushed me over the edge,” said Jolo. She looked back at him, and her face, at first screwed up tight in frustration, slowly melted into a grin. Jolo couldn’t help but smile. He had an urge to run to her. But what would I do then? he thought.

  The little round bot had rolled on the ground and bounced off the base of the tower. Katy blew it up with one shot, little bits of burning alacyte on the sand.

  The rear charge took out the big bot. The explosion lifted the giant ball off the ground and it crashed down, shaking the ground under their feet.

  “Let’s go,” said Jolo.

  “What about the tower?” said Katy.

  “You’re plan is good, but needs a little tweaking.” Jolo took them to another tower and had Katy lay the charges again just like the last one. But before she fired the wake up shot at the door, Jolo unveiled his modified plan.

  “The problem is that you’re trying to hit a high-speed moving target. Those little bots’ll cut down half of Duval’s population before any towers fall, so here’s a slight modification.” He jumped out of the Scout, reached into the box and pulled out a magna-hook and some cable. “So now the tower busting parts list reads: six zirka charges, an energy weapon, one manga-hook and some
cable. All readily available. Oh, and a big stick.” Jolo found long metal rod and drove it into the ground near the front door, then put the magna-hook on top and walked back to the hover craft. “Now knock on the door,” he said.

  Katy fired once at the door, then shot the warning bot. The two laser droids jumped out flew around in a wild pattern and then instantly targeted the hook. One got close and Jolo flipped the switch and THONK, the magna-hook jerked it off its trajectory and the little round ball stuck to the hook. The second one came to investigate and it, too, got plastered to the surface of the big electro-magnet. Both lasers were shooting out in odd directions. But it was easy for Katy to destroy them both with the rifle.

  Then the back door started rumbling and the large ball rolled out, but before the legs extended fully it hit the zirca charge and blew up.

  “Why don’t the bots target us?”

  “We’re too far away and I juiced up the hook before I put it on top so the bots would have a heat sig. They know it ain’t human, but will want to check it out.”

  “That’s good. Now for part two,” said Katy.

  She told Jolo to stand back and then she set off the base charges. The ground shoot under their feet and the whole tower creaked and leaned forward slightly, but still stood tall, everything covered in dust. Then she and Jolo jumped back into the Scout.

  Hover craft are designed to stay half a meter off the surface, but can gain about thirty meters of altitude if you push it. Katy grabbed the magna-hook they used for the bots, then gained as much height as she could and threw the hook at the tower.

  “This is gonna be fun,” she said, gently bringing the little boat down to the surface then heading away from the tower, alacyte cable feeding out. “Gotta have about 80 meters or so of cable so the whole thing don’t come down on top of us.” She slowed down as the line went taught and gunned the little craft. It instantly gained altitude again as it fought to tip the big tower. The little thrusters whined and the tower creaked and groaned, and finally they felt something give a little as the top of the tower lurched in their direction. Suddenly the Scout shot off as the whole tower slowly fell towards them. The force holding the boat back was gone. Katy pushed the Scout as hard as she could to make sure they were out of the way. The big tower shook the ground unlike anything Jolo had ever felt. It was worse than when the Jessica fell between the ravine.

  Katy brought the Scout to a stop, the air full of sand like a bomb had gone off. Once the dust settled, the giant tower was laying on its side in the orange earth.

  They went back to the base and stared down at the drill, still spinning.

  “Wait,” said Katy. And a few moments later it slowed to a stop. “The fuel cells are stored in the tower itself. When it falls, the connection is severed and no power equals no drill.”

  “That’s smart,” said Jolo. “The drill would be tough to kill without a shot from an ion cannon.”

  They retreated back to a secluded spot at the base of the mountain and stared off towards the tower, laying there like a fallen tree. After a few hours no BG boats had come to investigate, so they headed straight home and Jolo got on the pirate net and soon everyone knew how to take down a listening station. Within hours, towers started to fall all over Duval.

  The Score

  On Duval

  30 days left

  Each day on Duval towers went up and towers fell. George kept score. It was a messy, maddening calculation because he had to rely on secondhand, word-of-mouth data from the pirate net. So George would preface each update with “These numbers have a 17% error margin.” How he came up with these numbers, Jolo had no idea. But at the end of each day, George got on the network and gave a brief report that the locals called The Score. It was like a game and everyone expected to win. Jolo watched all of this with little optimism. The most recent update had the BG tower number at 973 and the dead towers at 78. But for the locals, each tower that fell was a triumph and there was hope in the air.

  Jolo, Katy, Marco and George stood around the 3D computer image of Duval in the library. George had the dead towers as a red dot on the surface and the working ones in green. Jolo just shook his head. “Too much green,” he said.

  “Give it time,” said Marco.

  “That’s exactly what we don’t have.”

  “Out in Amisk 200 people actually pulled down a tower after blowing the base because they didn’t have a ship. People are coming together,” said Katy.

  “Yes, but it took too long,” said George. “I only have a week of data, and the first few days were slow as people figured out how to implement your tower busting plan, but if I extrapolate out I fear we are not going to hit 47%. The BG need about 1382 total towers to hit saturation, so we need to take down 650 towers. Our current output is about 9 per day, so at current rate we’ll only take out about half of what we need.”

  “Let’s go,” said Jolo, his arm around Katy. “Use this time to get people off this rock.”

  “I’m heading up the early evacuation,” said Marco. “There’s a big boat coming for Bertha’s kids and other boats coming daily to get people off to safer places. But I worry about food and water. It’s easy to say let’s run to Tichel, but once you get there who’s land do you dump them onto? Not to mention most of these people here came as refugees from another place. Most don’t want to leave.”

  “You want me to divert a freighter full of Fed rations?” said Jolo. “I’ve never taken a whole ship, but I think we could pull it off if I had my full crew.”

  “No, Jolo. I’d like you and Katy to go to Arkas on the other side and show everyone how to take down a tower. We need to take down double our current amount. Some of our people have been killed by the tower laser bots and some folks out in the desert learn faster if they can see it.”

  ……

  Katy piloted the Argossy to Arkos so Jolo almost had his whole crew. George stayed at Marco’s to keep the count and the nightly updates going. They brought the Scout along, safely tucked into the Argossy’s main hold, the place normally reserved for large freighter boxes. Jolo had Katy plot a course along the Kolar chain and they kept low and stayed clear of trouble. They flew right past the tower they’d taken down a few days ago and the ground around it was undisturbed. Jolo watched each standing tower pass and every one he saw he imagined the shite drill boring a hole into Duval. He couldn’t help but feel helpless and frustrated. The crew felt the same: Koba’s face was sour and defeated and Greeley was agitated.

  After about the twentieth tower though, Jolo couldn’t stand it anymore and nearly ordered Katy to stop and for Koba to unleash the ion cannons, but he knew that would bring attention to his position and just make things worse. Katy was right, the soft touch seemed to be working. Just too slowly. The BG had to know the towers were non-functioning, but unless the station had been attacked by a big ship, the BG probably didn’t yet know they’d been sabotaged.

  The night before, Jolo, Katy, George and Marco had sat around trying to figure out a faster way to kill a tower. All sorts of ideas were tossed about: ramming them with the Argossy, burning, blasting, bombing, and all sorts of other, more exotic methods were discussed, one involving missiles launched from orbit. But that would’ve required a Fed Cruiser at least, and the only Fed ships the pirates had were stolen Gunboats, none of which had long-range missiles.

  In the end they decided Jolo and Katy’s method using Duval tech was best. And the hope was that better technique with the magna-hooks and proper placement of zirka charges would save lives and increase productivity. Katy and Jolo would give demos. They figured that the number of tower busters would increase daily until every able-bodied dirt maggot on Duval was knocking them down. Marco and Katy were the only ones bolstered by their discussion. Jolo and George were skeptical.

  The Argossy set down 50 kilometers outside of Arkos. Koba and Hurley waited with the comm open as Jolo and Katy sped off to the rendezvous point in the Scout. It was early morning and the sky was clear and sti
ll full of stars. They brought ten rifles, ten magna-hooks and as many zirka charges as the Scout could carry to hand out to would-be tower busters. Anyone with a small ship could juice up the hooks and if they knew where to place the charges, could take down a tower.

  There were fifty or so people at the tower Jolo had picked for the demo. About half were pirates, a few of Mantis’s people (all carried some sort of energy weapon), some dirt farmers (rags for clothes), a few rock slingers (plenty of muscle), and a smattering of women and children (no shoes). They were all thin and gangly, the kids especially looked in need of a bath and a solid week of Fed ration packs. There were only small boats near the tower, as Jolo had instructed. But the moment they arrived Jolo ordered all but one boat to remain, an ancient single-seater Ravi8 with a rear coupler that Jolo figured the farmer used to pull water harvester tanks and earth movers. It was the smallest and least-capable boat which would require excellent charge placement and a good test to prove you could take down a tower with low-tech equipment.

  Jolo jumped out of the Scout and everyone followed him. One of the skinny, barefoot kids came and held his hand. Jolo stood on a rock near the tower and stared down at this motley group of people. The pirate contingent stood tall, looking confident and well-fed, but the others, dirty and wide-eyed, hung on Jolo’s every word, his every movement. He started to launch into the demo, but stopped and looked over at Katy and she knew what he was thinking. “We got enough?” he said. And she nodded yes, and so they started handing out Seafood Deluxe #3 Mealpacks. Some of the older folks refused to eat it when they saw the Federation markings on the package, but once everyone started to dig in, they couldn’t refuse. “Thanks to our Federation brothers for this fine breakfast,” said Jolo. These people were no more than an afterthought to the Federation, thought Jolo. Most had escaped from BG work crews, or had somehow survived a year on a prison planet, got released, then were refused entry to a core planet, or were hiding from the Fed for some infraction large or small.