by Mark Wandrey
“We’re screwed,” he told Jim. “With a set defensible position, they can land everything they want and start lobbing heavy missiles at us until the shields fail.”
Jim considered. The dead Raknar’s arm was cocked across the mecha’s body, so he sat on the charred stump of armor that protruded from it. The others troopers in Hargrave’s platoon all waited and watched. The smell of smashed and burned spiders was...oppressive. Splunk hopped off his shoulder and darted into the mecha, returning a moment later with Jim’s survival pack. He knew what she was after.
“I’m beginning to think you have an idea,” Hargrave said. Jim grinned and patted the dead machine.
“This worked better than I hoped it would.”
“Sure,” Hargrave agreed, “it was impressive...in a masterpiece-of-luck-and-mayhem sort of way.”
“I’ll give you that,” Jim said. “However, with what we learned from this one, I bet we can do better with the other.”
“You must be crazy,” Hargrave said, shaking his head.
“You said it yourself; if we let them continue to occupy that facility they’ll eventually just come and get us.” Hargrave nodded. “So, you have a better idea?” Hargrave just stared. “Right, then. Get me back to the hangar. We have work to do.”
* * * * *
Chapter 36
The best estimate was they had six hours before the enemy had all their equipment in place at the processing facility and were ready to begin their attack. They couldn’t be sure because the dropships were fired on if they got close enough to get a decent view. What they did see was confusing. There weren’t any huge missile launchers going up or massive land cruisers being assembled. An area was cleared and some sort of encompassing energy shields were being installed. They looked like the same kind that protected the city the Cavaliers were now defending, only instead of using them to hold the processing center, they were being set up to surround a much smaller area.
“Whatever it is, it can’t be good,” Hargrave insisted. There also appeared to only be a small contingent of Tortantula there, and they were acting as a garrison unit, not assault. “Damn strange,” he said.
Jim had just enough time to get some nanite treatment for his bumps and bruises, grab a protein bar, and he was back in the hangar. Adayn gave him a brief hug and said he’d been fantastic. He said he felt like he’d been a complete moron.
“My warrior geek,” she laughed and gently touched his face. “Jim, you got into that thing without ever having used it once, went out there against a thousand giant spiders, and kicked their asses. Tell me how that was being a moron?” He looked sheepish and grinned. “Yeah, so shut up and come look at Blue.”
Now only one Raknar took up the hangar, and it somehow looked lonely all by itself. Jim felt a bit sad for killing its companion. The two had stood a silent watch outside a building for untold thousands of years until they were sold to him to pay a debt, and he went and used one as a distraction and wrecked it in the process. It seemed a terrible waste of a piece of history.
Its cockpit was open, looking like a headless gorilla with its chest split open. Adayn walked over toward one of the equipment carts and picked up a computer slate. Jim looked at the thing in amazement, at what they’d been doing. He’d expected them to slap some missiles and such on it, like the other one. What they had done is not what he’d have imagined in his wildest dreams.
“Is that what I think it is?” he asked pointing to the Raknar’s left arm. A team of mechanics were working furiously there with plasma torches and improvised steel attachments. They couldn’t weld to the Raknar’s hybrid armor, so they were attaching it via bands around the arms that locked into previously empty weapons points.
“Yes, it is,” she said with a huge grin.
“Will it work?”
“Oh, absolutely!” She pointed and an overhead crane was cautiously maneuvering another into place on the other arm.
“Holy shit!” Jim gasped as he saw what they were attaching across the chest. “Where did you get those?!”
“We fabricated them.” She pointed at the long object the cranes were lowering. “The problem was the mechanism. We had to do some quick and dirty modifications.”
“We only got those because we signed a contract with the Smithsonian Trustees,” Hargrave said from behind them. “When the federal government defaulted we took a bunch of stuff to keep it safe for history. They’re going to be pissed when they see what you’ve done to ‘em.” Adayn smiled sheepishly. “You honestly think he can employ them?”
“Based on what I saw out there before,” Adayn said, “yes. The mecha has the strength and mobility. The weight of both and the ammo is only about five percent of the total mass. Shouldn’t be an issue. One hell of a kick, but the effect should be devastating.”
“On him or on the enemy?” Hargrave asked. Adayn made a dismissive gesture.
“Let me worry about that. Your team is being rearmed in the next hangar,” she said.
“See you in a couple hours, son,” Hargrave said and clapped Jim on the shoulder before heading out.
“Come on up and look inside,” she said. Jim watched her start up the ladder, enjoying her “Southern exposure.” Halfway up she stopped and looked back at him purposefully. “You enjoying the view?” His face burned red hot. She gave him the most unusual smile and went back to climbing, her hips going back and forth in an almost exaggerated swagger. Wow, he thought and almost slipped off the ladder.
At the top, she perched that cute behind on the edge of the cockpit to allow him to slip past her. As he went by she leaned closer, forcing his arm to slide over her breasts. He shivered visibly.
“Are you trying to drive me nuts?” he asked as he stood in the pilot’s rest.
“Just trying to remind you about what’s waiting afterwards,” she said innocently. “I’d give you a hand job, but everyone is watching.”
“Adayn!” he gasped, and she giggled. “Maybe just show me what you wanted...hey, this thing is still covered in goop!”
Inside the cockpit the strange mold/slime was still everywhere. The places where it had overflowed out of the control panels were cleaned up now, but it was still in little puddles within crevasses and in depressions next to each system panel. There were even places where it looked like gauges were missing, and there was just a glass window full of slime! Most was a bluish hue, but other colors were present as well. How could the machine even run with that stuff? He’d be electrocuted.
“That’s what I wanted to show you,” she said and reached out a finger to dip it in the crud. “This stuff is a lot more complicated than we thought. Did you know it’s superconductive?”
“Jesus,” he said, “that makes it even more dangerous!”
“Yeah, except sometimes it’s the perfect insulator. It’s also able to move. We tested it, and the stuff responds to electrical stimulus. It appears to have qualities of a plant, and an animal as well! Jim, this might sound crazy, but I think this stuff is part of the Raknar.”
“You’re right,” Jim agreed, “that sounds crazy.”
“Ha ha,” she said. “Look, Green was modified by someone before. All the goop was gone and they’d installed artificial interfaces with the operating system.”
“Yeah, that’s why I could operate it at all.”
“No, it was never intended to work that way.” She opened a panel. Inside it looked like a science experiment. There were some obviously high tech electronic components, and there were also what looked like old fashioned vacuum tubes, only they were full of the slime. All of them were different colors and some glowed or bubbled. There were tubes that pulsed full of the slime and what looked like a slowly moving waterfall of it in the back of the panel.
“Okay,” Jim said as the Raknar rocked from the assembly work outside, “say I believe you and this electroslime is what makes the damned thing work. How much power does it consume?”
“Oh, more than Green did,” she said, referring t
o the dead Raknar lying out in the field of combat.
“Great, so I only get five minutes of battle? Adayn, I must get this thing ten miles, and still be able to move and fight! How am I supposed to do that on batteries that only last five minutes?”
“Blue here doesn’t have those kinds of batteries at all,” she explained. “The batteries in Green were added by the same people who modified the operating interface.”
“You aren’t exactly filling me with confidence,” he complained.
“Humor me?” she asked, and he nodded. “You don’t need the batteries, because this one has main power.” She held out her slate to him and it had an image of the lower chest open and inside was a compact fusion power plant. A long whistle passed his lips. Except it looked black and cold.
“It’s offline,” he pointed out.
“Yeah,” she said, “tanks empty, no F11. I don’t think it’s been operative for thousands of years.”
“So, what good does it do us if it’s ancient, out of hydrogen and F11?”
“Well, there are a few million gallons of F11 a couple hundred yards over that way,” she said and hooked a thumb toward one of the nearby F11 storage bunkers, “and we’re going to try and do a hot start of the fusion core.”
“I seem to recall a hot start is dangerous.”
“Extremely,” she agreed.
“And this reactor hasn’t been run since humanity was learning to use math?”
“About,” she said.
“And if it fails during startup?”
“BOOM!” she said and mimicked a massive explosion with her hands. Down on the ground technicians were wheeling in a reel of superconducting cables that would feed immense power into the Raknar’s fusion core to jump-start its long dead heart. As the magnetic containment field constricted the hydrogen to unthinkable density, fusion would initiate in a self-sustaining reaction. The magnetic containment vessel would be surrounded by F11 gas, controlling and dampening the reaction. This operation was usually done slowly over many hours, sneaking up on that initial fusion reaction. It caused less strain on the containment field.
A hot start didn’t take the careful road. You dumped fuel into the core and shoved. The results would be a fusion reaction in seconds, instead of hours. However, if the magnetic containment couldn’t take the massive energy flare as the core started fusing, that fusion reaction would escape. It never happened during normal startup, systems would detect any abnormality and stop the startup. But in a hot start, it all happened in a headlong rush of events as fuel was force-fed into the reaction chamber. If something went wrong, it would not be the magnitude of a fusion bomb, exactly, but there would be enough material for a sizeable explosion.
Jim swallowed hard as he looked down. The fusion reactor would be about three yards down, about as heavily armored as he was in the cockpit. A tiny sun, just under his feet. It was both frightening and exhilarating at the same time. So much danger and so much power. Terawatts of power at his disposal. She looked at him expectantly.
“It’s kind of a shame we didn’t salvage some of the MinSha energy batteries,” Jim said. “We could have mounted one of them on this thing!”
It was four hours after their victory against the Tortantula before everything was ready. The CASPers were all rearmed and repaired. Only five had been lost in the crazy battle, and there were no deaths amongst his men. So far, he’d been incredibly lucky after their losses in space. The work on Blue was finished, as well. Jim had dubbed it Dash, and took the now somewhat less-than-vintage little pony from his personal gear and hung it from a strap in the cockpit. The toy was battered and dirty, but the tail was still a brightly colored rainbow. Splunk returned from one of her explorations of the inside of the Raknar to look at the pony hanging there.
She cocked her head from side to side, ears up with curiosity as she took its full measure. She’d seen his collection more than once. A different pony sat on his desk back in Karma station. She’d never really had anything to say about them before.
“Pony, good...
“Dash?” Jim asked and pointed at the toy. “Oh, she’s a wild child, kinda like you. But she doesn’t shy away from a fight. She’s been my mascot ever since I put on the uniform.” He looked at the little Fae and shrugged. “I can’t entirely explain,” he told her.
“Dash, good...
“We’re getting ready for start-up,” Adayn yelled below.
“Clear the room,” he ordered.
“It’s better if we’re here,” she complained.
“Bullshit. You can do this remotely. The only one who needs to be here is me.” There was a chirp behind him. “Oh, and Splunk. Now get,” he said, “that’s an order.” She wasn’t happy, but she went. A minute later she was on his radio as he finished plugging in his suit. The improvised inputs to this Raknar’s sensors seemed even more Mickey-Mouse than they had in Green.
“We’re set,” she said, “the elSha say power is at our disposal.” The little reptilians had been willing to give them the 250 gallons of F11 the Raknar needed to have a full charge, even though the gas was worth half a million credits. Clearly what they stood to lose was substantially greater. He surveyed the human computer readouts in his head, sent via the interpretive programs that looked at alien displays and bubbling tubes. Fuck, what a monstrosity.
“Everything looks good here,” he said, for the set of a Frankenstein film, he added in his head.
“Okay,” Adayn said, “startup in 5...4...” Splunk hopped down and through the floor hatch. “3...2...1...engage!”
A jet of super-compressed pure hydrogen was injected into the core at the same time as gigawatts of power surged into the Raknar’s long cold reactor, creating a geometrically perfect sphere around the hydrogen, and squeezing. A tiny discontinuity in the containment field allowed a constant stream of additional fuel to be injected as the field compressed. With nowhere for the hydrogen atoms to go, they were crushed closer, and closer, and closer, until, with a brilliant flash of energy release, they began to fuse.
All this happened in the span of two panic-filled seconds. That and a slight discontinuity in the containment field that, by all practical reasoning, should have failed and blown the mighty war machine and a third of the city to hell and gone. Only it didn’t. Something caught it, and corrected the imbalance in a microsecond. The only result was a little gasp, and a sigh from Adayn.
“What?” Jim asked as the mecha began to vibrate and thrum with power.
“Nothing,” she said as she scanned a thousand readouts repeatedly. “For a second I thought...”
“What?” he demanded again, fearful he was about to become disassociated atoms.
“It must have been a transient reading,” she explained. Jim felt small hands and Splunk came racing up his leg and side, landing back on her perch. “The reactor is reaching normal operating temperatures,” Adayn continued. “We have clean, stable fusion. It worked.” Jim breathed for the first time since she said engage.
All around him alien displays and electroslime pulsed and glowed with power. The ancient machine, inactive for untold centuries, was returned to life. Techs were running in, scrambling up the gantry in front of him, and removing the cables and fuel feeds that remained attached. The computer feed in his pinplants said he had several megawatts of idling power at his disposal. The power plant was operating at about two percent. He activated his radio.
“Hargrave, you ready?”
> “Fuck no,” the second in command of the Cavaliers grumbled. “But we’re going anyway!”
“You’re goddamned right we are,” Jim said, then switched channels to Adayn. “Clear. I’m going out.”
“See you soon,” she said as the huge hangar doors swung wide.
* * * * *
Chapter 37
Galrath had decided he was going to be there personally to witness the Acquirers’ Guild putting an end to Wathayat’s little venture on Chimsa. Besides, since Project K was his brainchild, it was only right that he be there to see it brought out of the shadows. And still, the humans were there.
He’d watched from a guild cruiser in orbit as the humans snuck up on and mauled the MinSha special assault company he’d sent to take the depot city brimming with F11. They’d fled with their tails between their legs, so he’d sent in the elite company of Tortantula. More than enough of the ten-legged psychopaths to finish off the disorganized and ill-equipped human mercs. Instead the humans trundled out an actual working Raknar! Where in entropy had they found that thing?
Of course, the truth was, there were hundreds of them lying around the galaxy. Many in museums or as corporate and guild doorstops. He’d even seen a few that could walk, and that’s about it. But no, Cartwright’s Cavaliers had one that could fight! And there was nothing the Tortantula liked more than an insanely violent and destructive fight to the death. Challenge accepted. Of course, the 100-foot-tall mechanical slaughter machine ground them to sticky green-hued goo.
He had convinced the remaining MinSha to intervene with an assault tank, after a sizeable credit transfer to their account. The Raknar took it out, too, but not until after the tank finished the Raknar. At least that was out of the way, so he could now land his Project K transport, although he didn’t risk landing too close to the city where the F11 was stored. The humans still had assets, and their defense of the city was impressive. He had to find out who built those defenses; it might be worth contracting with that company in the future, once the Acquirers controlled the F11 trade. The remainder of the devastated Tortantula company, as well as a unit of his fellow Besquith, were deployed to defend the perimeter around the processing complex until the moment was right.
