“Sorry, XO! The DEGs are offline!” the weapons deck gunnery officer replied.
“Is nothing on this ship fucking working?” Firestorm pursed her lips and exhaled hard through them. “Okay then. Missiles still fucking work, don’t they? Put a nuke in front of that blast wave now!”
“Yes, ma’am!” The gunner turned and worked at her controls, and then Firestorm gritted her teeth and watched as the missile rocketed out in front and twisted and turned as it righted itself on course. The missile tracked across the space between the oncoming debris field and the Madira, and as it did, the entire bridge crew’s anal sphincter pucker factor shot through the ceiling bulkhead.
“Captain on the bridge!” the COB announced as the door opened and General Moore stepped through.
“Talk to me, Firestorm!” Moore nodded to her. Sally was glad to hand over the reins.
“Bridge is yours, General.” She bounced up from his chair. “UM61 Alpha Zero Three exploded and what’s left of her is going to hit us in one minute and forty nine seconds. DEGs are offline, Aux Prop is offline, hell, about all we have is missiles and shields.”
“Understood.” Moore looked at her and then sat down. Sally could tell from the thousand-yard stare he gave her that he was conversing with his legendary AIC. She felt better knowing that the General was on the case.
“STO? Have the other Fleet ships reappeared from their jaunts yet?”
“Yes, sir! Off Starboard by several light seconds.”
Firestorm watched as the General continued to have the thousand-yard stare but at the same time was working commands from his chair console and in his mindview. As he waved his left hand about in front of him it was clear he was having a detailed conversation with at least his AIC if not several others.
“UM61 Alpha Zero Two just went into hyperspace,” the STO reported, but no sooner than she had said it, the supercarrier reappeared on the bow before them. “Woah.”
“Everyone hold the fuck on.” Moore growled. “CO to CHENG! Keep the barrier shields at max on the bow docking moors.”
“Understood, CO!”
“Warning! All hands brace for impact! Warning! All hands brace for impact!”
Firestorm watched in awe as the clone-driven supercarrier gently nudged into the bow of the Madira and began pushing it backwards. As the momentum of the two ships built up, Alpha Two was then able to make very slow steering maneuvers, much like a tugboat pushes a barge up a river. Firestorm thought for a moment that she’d bet the General had seen that happen on the Mississippi River where he was from, or he was just fucking brilliant, or both.
“Damn, sir, I wish I’d thought of that,” Firestorm said. “Do we deactivate the missile?”
“Yes,” Moore replied.
“You heard the man, Gunner Banks. Deactivate the warhead and bring that missile back home,” Firestorm ordered.
“Aye sir.”
“The missile would have worked, XO, but we might have taken on more damage still,” Moore said to her. “And from the looks of it, we don’t need to take on any more damage.” Moore gave her a sincere smile.
“Yes, sir. I’m just glad you were able to get up here in time, sir.”
“XO, as soon as this crisis is over, I want you to rally up the senior officers and advisors and the captains we have left through virtual conference in my conference room. I want to get a complete assessment of what did and didn’t work on our attack wave.”
“Aye, sir.” Firestorm turned to her console and started putting together the list of attendees. Over her shoulder she heard the General’s armor mechanisms rubbing against his chair and assumed he was settling in.
“COB, we need to get our minds right here. How about some of that nasty shit you call coffee? You got any of that secret recipe of yours made?”
“Just so happens, sir . . .”
Chapter 20
February 19, 2407 AD
Alien Planet, Northern Region
Target Star System
700 Light-years from the Sol System
Monday, 6:15 P.M. Ship Standard Time
“Up and at ’em! Quit your goldbricking, Marine! It is time to get up!” The life-sized direct-to-mind virtual image of General Alexander Moore stood in front of Dee shouting at her. “Move it, princess! Get your ass up!”
Dee. Wake up. The skyballs have returned and downloaded. I’ve sent them back out, Bree said in her mind. Her father’s image still stood over her repeating her morning alarm sound.
“Up and at ’em! Quit your goldbricking, Marine! It is time to get up!” The life-sized direct-to-mind virtual image of General Alexander Moore stood in front of Dee shouting at her. “Move it, princess! Get your ass up!”
Funny, Bree. Turn off the alarm. Dee scanned about her and after seeing no immediate threats about, she stretched and popped her visor open. Immediately, a timer started and her carbon dioxide blood gas level indicator lit up in her mindview. How long was I out?
A bit more than an hour, Bree replied.
Any more Chiata movement? Dee straightened up against the tree roots she was leaning upright on and bit down on her water tube for a fresh drink. Her hidey-hole underneath the giant mangrove tree had turned out to be a good place for refuge, or at least she had a good vantage point across the river and through the trees. As far as she could tell nothing could sneak up on her without her knowing it.
From the skyballs it would appear that they are still searching for you but only with a very small team of six ground troops. They have no idea where you ended up and we are a good two hundred kilometers from them. Your suit stealth systems must be working. Still, I think it is strange that they do not search with more resources.
Well, that is good news. I wonder if it is really the suit’s stealth or the foliage cover? Dee checked her blue force tracker and there was no change in it. The others stuck on the planet with her were all still in the same place and there were no Fleet ships in the system.
The yellow and green star was almost completely over the horizon and was turning orange. With no external lighting from her suit on it was growing too dark underneath the tree to see more than a couple of decimeters in front of her face. Dee looked out across the river through the trees and could see orange and pink rays barely peeking over the mountains in the distance, casting beautiful hues of color against the sky. In another ten minutes it would be completely dark.
“So the question is, do we just sit tight for the evening or keep moving?” she said quietly. She realized she hadn’t relieved her bladder all day and considered briefly popping out of the suit rather than just doing it in the suit and letting the organogel absorb and recycle it. She’d been in the suit for the better part of a day and would appreciate a moment or two not in it. Common sense prevailed, though.
“The General stayed in one for over a month, guess I can handle a half of a day,” she mumbled to herself and let her bladder go. She concentrated on that task for a few long seconds and sighed with relief as the warm liquid left her body rapidly giving her a quick “pee chill.” She shivered twice due to the laws of thermodynamics and then was done. “That feels better.”
Dee reminisced briefly of survival school as a cadet. For final AEM rating they spent seventy-two hours in the suit on maneuvers. Then in pilot training the escape and evade course required a full week in the suit. Dee had been there and done that and got the rating. That didn’t mean she liked it. Even though the organogel kept a person from itching or chafing or a myriad of other things that would make a person want to touch themselves, there was still an aspect about being a human being whereas an exoskeleton was still a prison of sorts. There were times when feeling your skin unencumbered by super-alloy body armor and integrity fields and barrier fields and gel layers and sealant layers and one’s own body waste materials was much more preferred.
There were many AEMs who preferred sleeping nude, hanging out and relaxing nude, and various other versions of being uncovered by anything. Others were th
e opposite and preferred to always be enclosed in clothing but also in tight spaces. Military psychologists had studied the phenomenon for as long as there had been exosuits and it turned out that there were two groups within the AEMs that were on the extreme sides of the behavioral norm. The first group were the pure nudists and the others were more along the lines of Christian nuns or Muslim women wearing clothing that covered them completely. But those were the extremes. Most of the AEMs fit somewhere in between. Dee was pragmatic. If it was hot and in a safe environment and she didn’t need the gear for whatever reason, it was coming off. If it was cold, she’d put gear on. If she was about to go on a mission where she’d be in a suit for a while she preferred to be unencumbered. And there was a bit of vanity aspect with mecha jocks to show off their superhuman core muscles. Dee’s were indeed that and she was not afraid to show them off. It was a badge of honor in the FM-12 squadrons.
In public, she mostly wore sporty clothing or her duty clothes. While her modesty profile was right down the middle of the normal average for Marines, her performance as one was in the top one percentile. That was part of the reason why her mecha jock handle was Apple1. Her flight instructor had discovered on many different occasions that the apple hadn’t fallen very from the Alexander Moore tree. Median psychological profile or not, she would have loved to get the hell out of the suit rather than peeing on herself even if it meant standing naked in downtown New Tharsis.
Deanna peeled back her right gauntlet just long enough to rub the sleepiness from her eyes. Then she redeployed the armored glove and used Mark I eyeballs to scan the local area for any motion or signs of trouble. She saw none. She then brought up infrared, radio, microwave, ultraviolet, and particles, and as far as she could tell there were a few small heat signatures indicative of small animals scurrying about, but there was nothing scary at least within three hundred meters of where she sat. She also noted that all the quantum membrane sensors were still dead.
She rolled over to her hands and knees and crawled through her makeshift door and out from underneath the giant tree. Rising to her feet, she rolled her shoulders back a few times and rocked her neck from side to side, generally stretching herself awake.
What now? She thought. Have a look around maybe?
Perhaps we continue to move south along the river and continue to push closer to the Maniacs? Bree suggested. But, before you decide, I think we should discuss the findings from the skyballs. I have had time to analyze the imagery data and it is interesting.
Oh, by all means, let’s hear it. Dee rested her left hand against her HVAR on her chest and took comfort noting that it was completely full of rounds. She cautiously took steps through the underbrush toward the edge of the water. Keep sensors open for any not-so-nice local pets.
Roger that. Bree almost laughed. So, there is Chiata air traffic here. In the last hour two different vessels traveled slightly south of here and to the west about thirty klicks. It looks like one flew in to a location and then immediately a second one left the same location and returned along the same path as the previous. And I don’t mean roughly the same path. I mean they flew the exact same path to within centimeters of variation up, down, left, and right. And the fact that they swapped out positions, well, I think that suggests a shift change. As far as the skyballs could tell there were only three Chiata in the incoming vessel and two in the one leaving.
What are they doing?
There is some sort of ruin there. The skyball lingered long enough to see that two of the aliens stood sentry while the third entered the construct, Bree explained and put the image of the ruin up in her mindview. The image was a reconstructed three-dimensional model of the actual construction. As far as I can tell, other than your search party, there are no other Chiata in this region of the planet. That is very odd.
Damn right it is. And the Chiata are interested in this ruin. We need to know why. Dee thought about that for a second and asked herself what her father would do. Then she thought about it a little more and realized he’d go over there and kill all of the alien motherfuckers he could. Then she wondered what DeathRay would do, but she knew his standing generic plan was to go in there in kill all those motherfuckers. Perhaps more finesse was required, she thought, which led her to thinking of Penzington. Nancy, the superspy, would handle things differently. While she might very well go over there and kill all those motherfuckers, she’d probably observe them first and figure out just what in the hell they were up to. Then she’d kill the shit out of them. Dee liked that approach.
Dee? Bree prodded. What are you thinking?
Plot me a path of least resistance to the ruins. We’re gonna go and check them out.
Roger that. Then the map appeared in her mindview with a route highlighted. The place was downriver a bit and then to the west through the jungle on the other side of the river. It was not all the way over to the middle tributary of the river, but it was closer to it than it was to the branch of the river she was on. Dee paused and zoomed in on the path Bree had laid out for her, not sure just where she wanted to cross the river. In the suit it didn’t really matter, but she knew she didn’t want to get wrapped up in a swift overbearing current again.
Bring up the river and do a current analysis. Or, is there a stretch that would be within jumping width? From the looks of it Dee could tell that the river was moving very swiftly where she was, but perhaps not so swiftly that she would have trouble managing it. She wasn’t quite sure and was hesitant to test it.
Roger that, Dee. You could jump it down about ten klicks from here, but that would put you further off path. The current isn’t so bad here that you couldn’t cross and maintain control with the strength of the suit and the jumpboots. The bottom of the river here appears to be bedrock in the barge channel so you would have a solid surface beneath you if you jumped to there. Outside the channel is mostly mud. I’d steer clear of that. If you jumped just right you’d cover more than half the distance across anyway and land perfectly at the edge of the channel. I calculate you could then do a big jump and the underwater trajectory would bring you down just a few meters short of the bank on the other side. You would get some mud on you, but you wouldn’t get stuck.
Okay, that is what we’ll—Dee started to think a reply, but then something grabbed her by the leg and yanked her off her feet. Her face hit the ground and whatever had her drug her backwards several meters, causing her open helmet to dig into the ground and sling dirt and leaves into her face. A thorny vine zipped across her face like a saw blade, cutting deep into her nose, barely missing her left eye and causing her to wince in pain. Then whatever had her put an enormous pressure on her right leg at the shin and tossed her into the air upside down. Suit diagnostic alarms started lighting up in her mindview.
“What the fuck!” she shouted. As she rolled over in the air she could see something beneath her in the waning light of the now almost completely set star. There was barely a silhouette of the creature that had her and all she could tell was that the thing was very large.
There’s nothing on most sensors and optical can barely perceive it! Bree said urgently in her mind. All I can tell is that it is much larger than a hovertank!
What the fuck is it? Dee reached for her HVAR as she fell but the alien creature leaped upward and opened its mouth. Dee could see an orifice of teeth like something out of a bad monster movie, and to top that off, there were four large mandibles spread out more than twice her height. In an instant the darkening canopy vanished and the sounds and pressure of large teeth biting against her suit armor became overwhelming. Suit alarms continued to flash in her mindview.
Dee slung her elbows about as best she could, trying to get her left hand around her rifle. As she continued to punch, grab, kick and wildly squirm for her life she could feel teeth or bone crushing against the super-hard alloys of her suit armor with intense pressure.
Visor! she thought and the visor activated, covering her face, and the suit pressurized, making it even stronge
r. Organogel rushed in about her face to clean out the dirt and blood. Suit self-healing protocols were initiated.
The tunnel of inward-pointed teeth continued to drag her downward into the gullet of the creature, and at one point she thought she felt something solid to kick her jumpboots against. Not knowing when that opportunity would arise again, she did just that. The jumpboots hit briefly against what was most likely a ribcage or sternum within the beast, and Dee released the thrusters. When she did, the creature let out an earsplitting sound and spat her up. As she almost cleared the creature’s grasp, it chomped back down on her midsection with its mandibles and dragged her back downward into its throat with a long snaking tongue or tentacle—it was hard to tell what it was in the poor lighting and flurry of action. Dee continued to kick and squirm and could feel the creature, making larger movements now. She grabbed frantically for a handhold or anything to rip out, but found no purchase. The wild bouncing movements threw her about inside the creature and with each bounce it seemed to squeeze her even tighter. The wild jarring movements told Dee that the creature must have been running.
The teeth lining the creature’s bony throat continued to work like barbs against Dee’s suit making screeching and scratching stone-against-metal sounds. The teeth hung onto her left gauntlet hasp and crunched and sawed back and forth, trapping Dee’s hand.
“This fucking thing has teeth all the way out its ass!” she exclaimed while managing to squirm her right hand free and finally grasp the M-blaster on her right thigh. She pulled the weapon upward as best she could and as soon as it cleared the built-in holster something wrapped around her hand, constricting it from further movement and pulling at her downward into the creature’s stomach. It was almost as if the thing knew she was going for a weapon.
Her right hand was quickly bound to her leg and her blaster in such a way that if she squeezed the trigger she was going to hit herself as well. And with her suit’s shields down, that was something she was hoping to avoid. The suit diagnostic window continued to complain. The three-dimensional image of the suit popped up in her mindview showing warning lights and damaged systems all around it. There were extreme pressure differentials where the creature’s teeth clamped down on her. Some of the pressure readings were on the order of three and four hundred atmospheres, and mechanisms and plates on her suit were starting to fail.
Kill Before Dying (Tau Ceti Agenda Book 5) Page 19
