Owen counted the survivors. “Thompson?”
“Didn’t make it,” Roberts replied, his voice quiet.
Damn it, after everything they’d been through trying to get Thompson up to speed, he’d gone down in his first fight. Owen had made a point of trying to help him out. If he hadn’t pushed so hard, maybe the man would have given up or failed out of the training program. Owen felt the weight of that responsibility drop heavily across his shoulders. Was he to blame for Thompson’s death?
No, it wasn’t his fault. He’d liked the man and tried to help him, but it was the Bugs who’d killed him.
Mateo popped his canopy and looked down at Owen. “How many were out there?”
“Just two,” Garul replied.
“At least eight more, then,” Mateo said. “That’s a tough fight.”
“So we need to even the odds a bit more,” Owen said. “There might be something we can do about that.”
He left the doorway and walked over to Pahwel’s fallen Armor, hoping he could find a way to restore power to his own suit back on the Lynx. Another combat-effective Armor unit wouldn’t be enough to make the odds even, but it would sure as hell help.
Twenty-Three
Owen hesitated before coming up on Pahwel’s downed rig. It wasn’t moving. Now that he was closer, he could see the stab wound right in the middle of its torso. A Bug claw must have punched directly through the armor plating. That spot was right about where Pahwel’s chest should have been.
He gritted his teeth, knowing the scene wasn’t going to be pretty, but he had to get into the cockpit anyway. Owen tapped in an override command on the canopy, which opened to his code. It hissed as it raised, revealing Captain Pahwel’s body.
The man’s face was pale, his mouth open in a wide O shape. He looked surprised more than pained, so maybe death had come quickly for him. He was definitely dead. The Bug had stabbed him in the upper chest, probably shredded his heart. There was blood splashed all over the inside of the cockpit.
Owen blanched and turned away, sick to his stomach. He hadn’t liked Pahwel, but he’d never wanted anything like this for the man! It was too much. But still, he needed to see if there was a way to undo whatever the captain had done to his Armor, which meant he needed to get the body out. He turned back and made a face at the thought.
“I’ll help,” Roberts said from beside him.
Owen looked over, surprised. He hadn’t heard the man leave his Armor and come over. Then again, he’d been more focused on what was in front of him. “Thanks.”
Together the two of them gently levered Pahwel free from the wreck. They laid his body out on the engine room deck plates. Roberts reached over and closed Pahwel’s eyes. Owen nodded; that felt like the right thing to do.
He felt a flash of anger at the aliens who’d done this but was able to spot it rising and take a few calming breaths. Being mad wasn’t going to help. A calm, rational mind was needed to get them through this.
Owen went to the cockpit and peered inside. The whole thing was a mess with blood, but it didn’t look like any systems were severely damaged. “I might be able to reboot her.”
“Really? I figured it was toast,” Roberts replied.
“Maybe. Hang on,” Owen said. He flicked a set of switches in the order they’d all memorized. Lights flashed on the console, coming to life. Power hummed through the robot limbs of the Armor, and the screens lit up. “Got it!”
“Good. Now we need to get the hell out of here, right?” Roberts said. “I mean, this mission is a bust. The captain is dead.”
“That leaves Mateo in charge, I think. I mean Sergeant Casiano,” Owen said. He fiddled with the computer controls, trying to figure out how Pahwel had locked him out of his armor. There! He saw the application. Their Armor units all had command overrides. It made sense; they’d literally just walked in from a training exercise. But when Owen tried to reactivate his Armor, the computer asked for a password he didn’t know.
“Damn it, the thing is password protected, and the man who knows the password is dead,” Owen said. He felt the old anger rising again, coupled with fear. He was worried for all of them, but facing off against the Bugs without a suit of Armor around him was a nightmare he didn’t want to repeat. “I can’t get my suit working again.”
But there might be another answer. Pahwel’s suit was working fine. It was gory, sure, but it was functional. Owen winced as he slipped in a patch of blood. This whole thing was gonna leave him with nightmares. He slid his legs down into the suit.
“What are you doing?” Roberts said. When Owen looked over at him, the man’s face was pale.
“Making use of a functional set of Armor,” Owen said. He buckled the straps into place around himself, trying to ignore that they were all wet with a dead man’s blood. If he could just avoid thinking about it, maybe he could get through this.
“That’s gross, man,” Roberts said.
Owen stopped what he was doing and looked over at Roberts. “You think I don’t know that? I’m doing what needs to be done.”
Garul came over to stand beside Owen. “Is good plan. Your skin too thin to fight Bugs other way. Have courage, young one. We fight soon enough.”
Owen nodded to the Naga and finished his straps. Then he brought the Armor into a sit-up position and maneuvered its legs back under it, using the arms for support. It was a complex series of movements that he hadn’t practiced before, but he knew the principles behind it from their training manuals. After a little experimentation, the Armor was back on its feet.
“All right. I’m up and more or less ready for action. Mateo! What’s the plan?” Owen asked.
The sergeant’s voice came back to him over the radio. “I don’t have one. But McInness, you need to know: we were directed to retake the ship if we could, but to blow it if we couldn’t.”
Owen thought over what he’d just said. “Blow it up? With Naga still on board?”
“With Humans still on board if it came to it,” Mateo replied. “If the Bugs take the bridge, we won’t have a lot of choice.”
“They have won the bridge,” Garul said. “No response there to my calls. If they could reply, they would, which means they are dead.”
Owen thought quickly. They’d won back one of the critical spots only to lose the other one. The enemy had to hold both to win, but so did they. Which meant either they needed to attack or the Bugs did. Whoever was defending would probably have the advantage, and looking around his team Owen figured their side could use every edge it could get. But that left the question of how to lure the Bugs into attacking.
“Mateo, how was Pahwel going to blow the ship?” Owen asked.
“Mini-nuke. Embedded in the back of his Armor,” Mateo said.
“You mean the Armor that I am piloting?” Owen replied.
Shit and double shit — he had a nuke strapped to his back? He almost started undoing the straps holding him in so he could put some distance between himself and the bomb, but stopped. It wasn’t going to do any good anyway. If the weapon was designed to destroy the entire ship, it would kill him whether he was in the Armor when it went off or not.
That was one way they could force the Bugs’ hand. If they threatened to blow the ship up, it would get them to come running. They’d die too, if the ship went up. But how to let them know the Humans were dumb enough to come aboard carrying a bomb? Owen didn’t see a way.
“Garul, can the ship be blown up from down here in the engines? Without the bomb, I mean. Is there a way to overload the engines so they’ll blow?” Owen asked.
“Yes, is a way. Involves same tube your friends hid inside. Seal off, so no heat shunts out, and drives overheat. Big boom,” Garul said. “Are safeties to prevent that, but captain can override them.”
“So we need the Naga captain?” Owen asked. “Where would he be?”
“Here. Is me,” Garul said, pointing to himself.
Owen blinked, surprised. All the talking with Garul and the
Naga had never revealed that this ship was his command. Sure, he’d known the vessel well, but any crew member might have learned the back corridors over time. It hadn’t occurred to him that Garul might be the one in charge of the ship. That meant he should have some say in what they did with it.
“What do you think?” Owen asked. “If we set the ship’s drives to overload, the Bugs would detect that, right?”
“Yes, if they hold the bridge the alerts would sound there,” Garul said. “But they would have to come here to stop the explosion. Ah, I see. Crafty, young one! It might work.”
Mateo walked over, his Armor’s feet thudding against the deck. “What might work?”
“I want to lure the Bugs down here by rigging the ship to blow. They’ll have to respond, or they’ll be blown up along with the ship,” Owen said.
“This is a great plan, except for one thing. There’s another way off this ship, and you’ve left it mostly unguarded,” Mateo said. “We captured the Lynx from the bugs, originally. I’m betting they can figure out how to pilot her if they want. They know our Armor unit got here somehow. They’ll be looking for the ship.”
Shit, he was right. Owen tried to figure out a way around the problem, but there didn’t seem to be one. That left driving through it as the best option. “We’ll bounce Lynx out into space. She can fly along at a safe distance, maybe lend some support if there ends up being a way. Mateo, are you the only one with us who can fly Lynx?”
Mateo nodded. “Yup. Which is gonna leave one of you guys in command here. Roberts, this is your squad, right?”
“Shit and double shit. Yes, it is, but I’m no officer,” Roberts said. “Give it to McInness. I’ll follow him.”
“Done,” Mateo said. “Get me safe to the ship, and then good luck with the rest of it. I have a feeling you’ll need it.”
Twenty-Four
The Armor squad moved out, what was left of it. McInness wanted to lead the way, but Kowal wasn’t having it.
“You put your best on point. I’m our best pilot, unless anyone wants to argue with me about that?” Kowal said.
No one did. She took the lead. Roberts and Hernandez followed, then Sergeant Casiano in the middle and McInness at the rear. Owen hadn’t wanted to stay back so far, but Mateo said that until he was airborne he was still in charge. Owen held his tongue and took the place in line he’d been ordered to.
They were moving fast but staying alert. While the Kkiktchikut might all be in the bridge, they might not. Surely by now they knew that the ones they’d left behind in the engine room were dead. They’d send someone to check things out. A scout, maybe, or a scouting party even. If they rounded the corner and smacked into a few Bugs, none of the Armor units might survive.
But they made it to the Lynx without any contact. Mateo used his Armor to command the door to drop and strode aboard while the rest of the team covered him. Then Mateo turned back to the others.
“You can come, too. We can just set the bomb in Pahwel’s Armor on a timer and jet. It’ll take out the Bugs,” Mateo said.
It was a good idea. Owen could see the appeal. The thought of facing down an unknown number of vicious enemies in close quarters combat was terrifying. But there was one flaw with Mateo’s plan.
“How many Naga are still on this ship, fighting in small pockets here and there?” Owen asked quietly. The crew complement of a Naga battlecruiser was large. There should be a hundred or more Naga on board, but they hadn’t seen that many bodies. Not even close. There still might be more alive out there.
Mateo climbed out of his Armor and looked up at Owen like he was crazy. “Of everyone here, you were the last one I thought would object to putting Human lives over Naga ones. It’s not like we’re doing anything Pahwel wouldn’t have done anyway.”
“The bomb was meant as a last resort. Otherwise, we’d have just jumped in, dropped the bomb, and jumped out,” Owen said. “Our mission priorities haven’t changed. But it’s a fair point. I’m staying, but I won’t force anyone else to stick around. You guys can leave with Sergeant Casiano if you want.”
“And miss all the fun? No way,” Kowal drawled. “Besides, I need to add a few more Bugs to my Armor. Gonna draw a bug for each one I kill.”
“You’re going to look like a Dalmatian in no time,” Owen said. “Thanks.”
“I’m in,” Hernandez said. “Team above all.”
“Me too, of course. The team above all,” Roberts said.
Mateo looked from one of them to the next and hung his head. “I wish I could stay with you all. But…”
“You can’t. Go, Mateo. Get the ship out of here. You’re the only one who can. We’ve got this,” Owen said.
The sergeant nodded. “Good luck.”
Then he closed the hatch. A minute later there was a whining noise as the engines spun up and the Lynx lifted gently from the deck.
“We probably want to back up a lot,” Roberts pointed out.
“Yeah. Let’s move, folks,” Owen said.
They backtracked to the doorway they’d come in through and waited there. A brilliant beam of light shot from the nose of the ship, stabbing into the fabric of the universe and ripping it apart. From that point, a swirling nebula of light appeared. The Lynx shot forward into the wormhole and vanished. Mateo was gone, taking with him the only way Owen and his team could escape the Naga ship. But on the plus side, it was also the only way the Bugs could get away, too.
“OK folks. Win or lose, the worst case scenario we blow the ship and all die, taking the Bugs with them. Earth will be safe no matter what happens now,” Owen said. “That means this next fight is going to be about something very near and dear to all of our hearts: survival.”
Nobody spoke much during the trip back to the engine room. Between watching for potential attackers and wondering whether they would survive the next few hours, they all had a lot on their place. Even Kowal wasn’t giving her usual stream of sarcastic remarks. Owen checked out the bomb controls while they walked. They were simple enough, and there hadn’t been time for Pahwel to set a password protecting them. Or maybe there was no password precisely so that if he went down, someone else could still get the job done.
Either way, it meant system access was available for him. He checked it over. The bomb was big enough that if it went off near the engines, he was confident it would blow the entire ship to atoms. Owen hesitated, thinking, and then set the bomb to go off in two hours. That would be enough time to know one way or the other how this was going to go down. If they all died in the fight, there was still a chance the Bugs wouldn’t think to check their bodies for explosives.
A grim thought, but the Kkiktchikut had to be stopped, no matter the cost.
Owen thought too about what Mateo had said, that he was surprised Owen of all people would value Naga life. It had come to a shock for him as well, to be fair, but the words still stung. When had he started thinking of Naga as people, not monsters? He wasn’t sure precisely when he changed. It was probably sometime during his interactions with Garul. The Naga captain was honest, brave, and smart. He was everything Owen thought a warrior should aspire toward. It was an honor fighting alongside him.
How could such a person still be a monster? He couldn’t be. Seeing the Naga as they truly were dispelled his prejudice more rapidly than anything else Owen could have imagined.
They made it back to the engine room without incident. Garul and the other Naga were there. From the looks of it, they were preparing to defend the place with tooth and nail, probably literally so if they had to. They’d cut up chunks of the deck and welded them into fortifications, blocking all the easy avenues of approach and barring ventilation shafts. There’d be no sneaking in the same way Owen and Garul had. The Kkiktchikut would have to come straight at them or not at all.
“Engines are set into overload,” Garul said as Owen and his team entered the engine room. More Naga slid mounds of debris to block the path they’d just come through. Others were busy welding sp
ikes to the floor, ceiling, and walls. The Bugs could crawl along almost any surface, so they prepared every surface.
“How long do we have?” Owen asked.
“I am not good with Earth time,” Garul said. “Less than one of your hours. More than half that.”
“They’ll be coming soon, then, if they want to stop the ship from going up,” Owen said.
Garul chuckled, showing all his teeth in a predator’s smile. “Oh, I expect they are already on their way.”
Twenty-Five
One of the Naga banged on Owen’s chest plate, hissing something unintelligible at him. It turned out the Naga were awesome at construction. Already, they’d fortified the engine room and the area around it better than he would have imagined possible in the short time they had. On top of that, one of them had taken it upon himself to weld a new plate onto Owen’s Armor to cover up the gaping hole where a Bug claw had stabbed in and killed Captain Pahwel.
It wasn’t a perfect patch, and if the original plating hadn’t survived a direct strike Owen doubted this makeshift thing would fare any better. But he felt more secure without a gaping hole right in front of his midsection. It might be purely psychological, but it made him breathe easier anyway.
If he could have swapped Armor with Mateo, he would have. The bomb was implanted in Pahwel’s Armor. It wasn’t going to do them any good to send the weapon away with Lynx. He was stuck with the damaged suit.
To make matters worse, it was starting to stink inside the Armor. Owen managed to wipe off some of the blood, but he wondered if the Armor would ever get truly clean again. It was rank inside the now-closed compartment and growing worse.
Well, soon he’d have bigger things to worry about than the smell. The Bugs should be on their way, Garul said. He seemed confident they’d detect the engine overload and come down in force to prevent it. Owen could only hope the Naga was right.
Clad in Steel Page 12
