by Doug Hoffman
“Go, BP-2.”
“We've found a lot of what looks like crew quarters up here and nowhere near enough aliens to fill 'em. It is possible that there are a large number of hostiles somewhere between your position and ours.”
“Roger, BP-2. You have an estimated count?”
“At least company strength, possibly more.”
“Wait one...”
BP-1, Aft Section
“Sergeant Aurora! Take your squad and clear the enclosed structures forward of your position. BP-2 says that there may be a pile of aliens hiding in the tangle.”
“Aye aye, Captain.”
Jennifer turned to the Marines who were manhandling the antimatter eggs out of the fuel bunker. They were working their way through the maze of girders toward the shuttle that was still wedged in the hole it made breaching the alien ship's hull. “Sgt Tuttle, take your fireteam and support first squad. Come on, people. We need to get these antimatter eggs on the shuttle and the shuttle off the ship. ”
“We got three stowed on the shuttle, two more working through the jungle gym and nine still in the storage space. A couple of them don't seem heavy enough so they probably aren't full,” the Tech Sergeant reported.
“Fine, keep the light ones 'till last. But get the full ones loaded ASAP.”
“Yes, Ma'am.”
Alien Crew, Amidships Headed Aft
The Captain watched as the Engineer attached the improvised triggering mechanism to the type three antimatter container they had extracted from the twisted remains of laser battery number seven. A simple timer and some circuitry to override the container's built in safety mechanisms.
“It is ready, Captain,” the Engineer announced, displaying his handiwork. “Depressing this switch will start a 150 second countdown.”
“Why 150 seconds?” the Captain asked.
“It is a standard timer,” the Engineer replied, contracting and releasing his carapace segments, the equivalent of a shrug. “It was the only thing I could find capable of providing the signals necessary to override the container's fail-safes.”
“Very well. Let us rejoin the rest of the crew. I want to move as close to the fuel storage bay as possible, to ensure the detonation of the main cache.”
Exiting the ruined laser battery, the Captain and Engineer joined a crowd of waiting crewmembers. Before the Captain could speak, one of the lieutenants pushed forward with a status report.
“Captain, our main body has advanced to just short of the fuel storage bay and are heavily engaged with the alien demons. Those left as a rear guard report more demons advancing from the control section.”
“Did they say how many?”
“No, Sir. They must have been overrun—I can no longer reach them by communicator.”
“Then time is of the essence. To the aft end of the ship and quickly. We must fight our way as close to the ship's fuel cache as possible.”
BP-1 & BP-2, Inside the Destroyer of Worlds
Lt. Westfield's squad closed on the remaining aliens from the bow of the ship while Capt. Rodriguez and company served as a blocking force, keeping the retreating crew from gaining access to the antimatter storage spaces.
“Well what ever you might want to say about these creatures, they are not cowards,” commented Sgt. Aurora to no one in particular. The aliens had repeatedly charged her squad's position, swarming forward firing projectile weapons at the Marines. Unfortunately for the aliens those weapons were ineffective against the Earthling's armored suits.
“Hey Sarge, looks like they're coming again!”
“It's going to get noisy again, Lads,” called Sgt Tuttle. Since they were fighting in vacuum it was really not going to get noisy, but the Marines of 2nd squad knew what the former SAS operative meant.
Swarming out of holes and hatches in front of the Marines' positions the alien crew made one last, all out effort. More than a hundred of the cold life crustaceans surged toward the twenty eight Marines of BP-1, trying to overwhelm them by shear weight of numbers.
“Captain, I don't think we can hold the fuel bunker and the shuttle at the same time!” Sgt Aurora yelled, loosing another burst from her multi-barreled railgun. She, like all the Marines, was starting to worry about running out of ammo before they ran out of aliens.
“Right,” replied Capt. Rodriguez, emerging from the fuel store. “Shuttle One, take what you have on board and head back to the ship. Now!”
“Aye aye, Ma'am,” Lt. Lawson responded from the flight deck. Almost as the words were uttered the shuttle began to back out of the hole it had made in the hull during the initial attack.
“1st squad, fall back on the AM store. The rest of 2nd squad, reinforce 1st squad. We need to stop these critters before they can get to the remaining antimatter.”
“Aye aye, Captain!”
“BP-2, BP-1. Come in Lt. Westfield.”
“Go, BP-1” came Westfield's voice, clipped by the comm circuit.
“What's your position?”
“We are about 200 meters in front of your position, directly behind the alien swarm.”
“Move to their flanks so you don't take friendly fire. Then give 'em everything you got.”
“Roger that, BP-1.”
“Use your suits' IR vision,” GySgt Washington broadcast over the common frequency. “The ambient temp in here is down around -170 but the sand fleas register -50 or so. Just don't fire at anything hotter, it's one of us.”
“Gotcha, Gunny,” someone replied.
Green streaks from 5mm flechette tracers laced the girder crossed interior, with counterpoint provided by explosions of various sizes: rolling waves of fire from 15mm cannon shells, orange blossoms from 20mm grenades and the even larger flares of the last few breaching missiles.
* * * * *
In the midst of the surging crew, the alien Captain advanced carrying the antimatter bomb in a sling. At first it looked like the massed attack was going to work and give them access to the fuel cache. But then their advance faltered.
“Charge!” the Captain cried, urging his crew on. “Think of your brood-mates! Think of our beautiful, blessed world!”
They surged forward with renewed purpose but again progress soon stalled in the face of withering enemy fire. “It's no good, Captain,” his first lieutenant said plaintively. “The attack is failing, we will not gain the fuel cache.”
“So be it, then.” The Captain reached into the sling holding the AM container and its cobbled up detonator. “This will just have to be close enough.”
He pressed the arming switch and it began its two and a half minute countdown...
* * * * *
In the end it was a slaughter, alien bodies and body parts left drifting about in a grisly Brownian motion of death. The combined firepower of four squads of Marines shredded the mob of aliens, who had bunched up in front of BP-1's blocking positing. Lt. Westfield and Gunny Washington worked their way to the center of the alien formation, looking for possible survivors.
“Strange the way they all crowded together in the center, trying to get to the fuel bunker,” Westfield commented as he nudged bodies aside one foot.
“Yeah,” added Washington, “it was almost like a football team trying to do a quarterback sneak, right up the middle.”
“Apt analogy, Gunny. This one would appear to be the quarterback.” Westfield flipped over a body that had markings on its carapace, perhaps indicators of rank. As the body rolled over the sling containing the makeshift bomb came into sight.
“What's in that sack?” Washington asked.
“It's one of those egg things...” The Lieutenant's blood ran cold, “it's a fucking IED!”
“Bomb!” he transmitted, dropping his weapon and grasping the sling with his left hand. With a mighty leap he jumped from a bracing girder in the direction of the hole Shuttle One had vacated a few minutes earlier.
“BP-1, Peggy Sue. Interrogative type of bomb and its location?”
“The aliens were tryi
ng to get one of those little antimatter eggs into the fuel bunker. The damned thing looked like it was rigged to explode,” Washington broadcast and then, after a moment's hesitation, bounded after his Lieutenant.
It only took a second for Capt. Rodriguez to understand the situation. She used the command broadcast frequency: “Everybody find cover! Get part of the hull between you and the port side.”
Though not understanding the reason for their CO's order, the Marines immediately moved to comply. As they scrambled for cover Westfield swung from girder to girder until he reached the gash the shuttle had made in the alien vessel's four meter thick hull.
Grasping a beam at the edge of the hole with his right hand, Dirk let his body's momentum swing him around. Pivoting around his grip on the beam, his left arm described a wide arc, with the sling containing the bomb extending that arc. Like a Scotsman hurling a hammer, Westfield threw the bomb out of the hole and into space.
After releasing the bomb the Lieutenant grasp the beam with both hands, stopping his forward momentum. Hanging motionless, staring at the empty, star speckled space beyond, Dirk watched as the bomb grew smaller with distance and vanished from his sight.
“Face starboard! Get your suit backpacks between you and the explosion.” Capt. Rodriguez broadcast. “If you can see stars out of the breaching hole you are in the line of fire!”
CIC, Peggy Sue
Those monitoring the boarding party from Peggy Sue's Combat Information Center had finally begun to relax when the Marines reported that all of the aliens had been killed or otherwise neutralized. Then the alarmed call of “Bomb!” caused everyone to turn back to the display monitors.
“Bomb? What kind of bomb?” asked Chief Engineer Medina.
“BP-1, Peggy Sue. Interrogative type of bomb and its location?” asked Capt. Curtis. The command crew listened in horror as GySgt Washington reported that the bomb was an antimatter egg somehow rigged to detonate.
“If a type 3 AM container goes off inside the hull it will probably take out the entire boarding party,” Jo Jo said. “Even worse, it could set off the remaining big eggs in the fuel bunker.”
“How many were left in the bunker?”
“The shuttle reported seven eggs on board. That would leave seven or eight still on the hulk. Not as bad as when the Space Mushroom blew, but there won't be anything left of the alien ship but plasma.”
Capt. Curtis calculated in her head. “We are 500 km from the alien ship, we should be OK, even if the main store blows. Get the shuttles and the corvettes well away.” As the navigation officer called for the other ships of the task force to head away from the hulk the Captain issued commands to her crew. “Shields to maximum, Mr. Medina, and set all viewports to opaque...”
Marine Boarding Party, Alien Hulk
At the edge of the hole Washington lunged forward, grabbed Lt. Westfield by the leg and hauled him back from the opening. The two shuffled sideways, away from the hole and then stopped, their backs pressed against the inside of the alien hull.
As the timer ticked down, the dead captain's scuttling charge moved away from his ship at over 100 kph. The storage container held a bit less than a kilogram of antimatter. When it detonated 21 seconds later it was half a kilometer away from the ship's hull. As the freed antimatter annihilated material in the surrounding container it released the energy equivalent of a 20 megaton nuclear bomb.
About 50% of the energy of a matter/antimatter explosion is lost to neutrinos, which do no damage to normal matter and living things. The rest is released as pure energy—mostly photons energetic enough to be well beyond any light visible to humans. After mutual annihilation, any excess matter is irradiated by the torrent of gamma rays resulting in a bright visible flash. The flash, however, is a relatively feeble manifestation of the overall electromagnetic burst.
When a nuclear or AM explosion happens in the vacuum of space its effects are significantly different than such a blast in an atmosphere or in contact with a solid body. First, without material for a shockwave to propagate through, blast effect disappears completely.
Second, thermal radiation also disappears. There is no air for the blast wave to heat and the radiation emitted from the weapon itself is much higher in frequency. That radiation can be more intense without an atmosphere to attenuate it. In fact, the unprotected lethal radius of a multi-megaton blast can extend to hundreds of kilometers.
A shaft of radiation poured through the hull breach, causing everything in its path to flare brightly—aliens, girders and braces alike. A radiant circle was inscribed on the inside of the hull opposite the opening. Fortunately for the Marines they were not in the path of that awful wave of radiation. The combination of the alien ship's four meter thick metal and rock hull and their own armor's shielding protected them from the explosion's EM burst.
Slowly, Marines began reemerging from where they had taken cover before the explosion. Captain Rodriguez pulled up the status of everyone in the boarding party on her helmet's holographic display. By some miracle, it looked like everyone made it. A few readouts were showing a bit of reflected radiation but nothing life threatening. Rodriguez sounded the all clear and several of the Marines drifted down to the opening of the fuel bunker, including Westfield and Washington.
“Thank you for saving my life, Gunny,” Dirk said on suit-to-suit as they neared the front of the bunker.
“Just returning the favor, Lieutenant. If you hadn't chucked that bomb overboard we all would have bought the farm.”
Westfield had not had a chance to report to his CO in person before the bomb diverted their attention. This time he fervently hoped there would be no interruption.
“I believe we got the lot of them, Captain,” he said, floating up to Capt. Rodriguez. “We should probably make a second pass to make sure we didn't miss any hostiles but it looked like all those that didn't get caught when the inhabited spaces decompressed went with the captain on his suicide charge aft.”
“Yeah, I don't think any got past us either, but we need to double check before they send over any scientists or swabbies,” she replied.
“Aye aye, Ma'am,” he replied, then turned to go rejoin his unit. Jennifer reached out and placed an armored gauntlet on his shoulder.
“About that bomb, Lieutenant,” she said, as he turned back to face her. Jennifer looked him steadily in the eyes. “Good job, Dirk. Damned good job.”
As Rodriguez turned and floated back inside the fuel bunker, Westfield thought to himself, that is the first time she has ever called me Dirk and not Reggie. I may have finally gotten myself off of Jennifer Rodriguez's shit list.
Chapter 4
Jesse's Place, Farside
The main atrium at Farside Base was a large open area, replete with flowering plants, growing palm trees and even a water fall. Known as the Atrium to base residents, its designers thought that having a place that mimicked nature would be good for morale. What was probably better for morale was the presence of several restaurants and bars around the landscaped cavern's periphery.
The main bar was located on the second level balcony, just off the base administrative offices. It was always crowded with workers, military personnel and civilians. Though it was inexpensive and served all manner of libation, Ludmilla had given up on drinking there. She was just too recognizable and always attracted a continuous stream of supplicants hoping to bend the chief administrator's ear.
Instead, Ludmilla and her close friends had taken to drinking at a much smaller bar, a place that was wedged in behind the foliage near the water fall. The bar was named Jesse's Place, after Jesse Lowe, the proprietress. Jesse had been “recruited” by some of Peggy Sue's officers when they were in the Caribbean to pick up a few former SEALs. The SEALs, old friends of Senior Chief Hank Zackly, were happy to join the ship's company but insisted on bringing the bartender from their favorite hangout. They claimed it was for her safety and Captain Jack, who had a soft spot for island cooking, accepted her as a new member of the cr
ew.
Jesse proved to be not just a great cook and bartender, but an able crewmember, helping to destroy several enemy ships as the Peggy Sue fought her way out of the Sirius system. Though she was a bonafide combat veteran, Jesse was really not the military type and had opted to stay at Farside when Task Force Alpha sailed. With backing from TK Parker she was able to open her secluded little bar off the main atrium where she served island style hors d'oeuvres and potent drinks.
The house specialty was a mysterious concoction named a Fantasy, a mixture of spices, tropical fruit juices and 151 proof rum. Rumor had it that several hallucinogenic herbs helped add to its potency but Jesse refused to divulge the ingredients. The station administration took a libertarian attitude toward off-duty intoxicants—as long as you showed up sober, could do your job and were not endangering others you could pick your poison.
“Well hello, Miss Ludmilla,” Jesse called from behind the bar as Ludmilla entered. “I haven't seen you in nearly a week. I begin to tink you don' like me no more.” The last comment was delivered with a wide smile that showed several gold teeth and dimples on each cheek.
“Oh Jesse, you know that is not true,” Ludmilla smiled back. “I have just been too busy to get out.”
“Den you be workin' too hard,” the bartender replied.
Ludmilla took a seat at the bar, which was topped with a beautiful piece of natural mahogany. On previous visits she sat at a table with friends but tonight there was no one else in the place and it didn't feel right to sit alone, forcing Jesse to come to her. Glancing around Ludmilla noticed that there was a small green lizard clinging to one of the poles that ran from the bar top to the ceiling.
At first she dismissed the little reptile as inanimate decoration—there were no wild animals running loose on Farside Base. Then she noticed one of the creature's turret like eyes move.
“Is that little lizard alive?” she asked, as Jesse delivered a highball glass filled with ice. The big Jamaican woman then produced a large glass jug from beneath the bar containing a cloudy amber liquid that could have been mistaken for apple cider.
