by B. V. Larson
Of all standard Earth armament, I thought morph-rifles were possibly the best. They could be used in a variety of ways, and they hit a lot harder than snap-rifles did.
We must have sent a thousand rounds downrange over the next ten seconds. Gremlins were torn apart, despite all their leaping around and dodging. There just wasn’t anywhere to hide.
The last two must have realized they were as good as dead. They took the plunge, hurling themselves at Toro, who was in a defensive stance. One blade was held high, protecting her head and upper body, while the other was hanging low to cover her legs.
Rushing in from two angles, Toro thrust high and caught one—but the second midget got in low, stabbing his spear-tip into her steel-clad ankles.
She had a seizure—or at least, that’s what it looked like. Moving in random jerks for a few seconds, she toppled onto the floor and died.
“Double check,” I told the heavy squad as we advanced. “I want them all dead. All of them.”
No gremlins hopped back up to their feet to challenge us. We brought in Leeson’s specialists, and the bio people knelt beside every casualty on our side.
“It’s no good,” Carlos told me. “Our troops are all dead.”
“Centurion…” Natasha said, moving up to my side. “I’ve got bad news.”
“What?”
Leeson grabbed her computer from her hands and shoved it at me. That earned him a glare from Natasha, but he seemed immune to such things.
Looking it over, I began to curse.
“That’s right,” Leeson said, “we’ve punctured the cooling jacket. About seven hundred times.”
“It must have been the grav-grenades,” Natasha said. “That’s the only thing I can think of. The density of the debris down here is perfect for shrapnel. These walls—they’re kind of thin, James.”
As she spoke, the chamber slowly filled with a frosty-looking gas. It was a thick, artificial fog, like something made using dry ice.
“Natasha,” I said, “get every tech and light trooper alive to start patching these holes. Leeson, take the rest of Toro’s heavies and sweep the deck. Hunt down the last of these gremlins—but use force-blades. Do NOT puncture the jacket and make it worse.”
“I’ll try,” he said, and he rounded up troops to advance deeper into the ship’s aft section.
“What are you going to do, McGill?” Carlos asked. “Make some gremlin stew?”
“I’m going to call Deech and ask for help.”
“Ouch. When she finds out what you did to her ship, she’s going to be pissed.”
“Stop jawing about it! Grab some patches from Natasha and find one of these pin-prick holes. If that doesn’t work, use your dick!”
Sensing I wasn’t in a happy mood, Carlos scooted away.
After a moment’s hesitation, I made the call to Gold Deck.
-28-
Deech herself didn’t answer. Instead, Winslade intercepted my call.
“What’s your status, McGill?”
“It’s all clear down here, Primus! Just a little mopping up to do. Please send in the damage control teams.”
“All clear or mopping up? Which is it?”
“Does it matter? We need the crew in here right now. Send all those crewmen you’ve been reviving since the initial boarding. I know you’ve been hoarding them in the upper decks.”
Winslade was quiet for a second. I thought I heard him using his tapper.
“We’ve been watching your vid feed when we can,” he said, “but those creatures jammed most of our signals and—oh, good Lord. Are you kidding me, McGill? I’m detecting gas releases, high humidity and radiation—”
“Primus, please listen to me. If you want to see Earth again this century, you’ll send me every repairman you’ve got. Pronto!”
Winslade made a hissing sound with his teeth. “She’ll know. We’ll never—”
“It doesn’t matter! We’re all screwed if you don’t act now!”
I would have said more, but Winslade had closed the channel. I turned back to the aftermath. Sargon came up to me, pointing down the passage toward a closed hatch.
“Centurion? We’ve got most of them. But our sensors indicate there are more behind that hatchway. It’s sealed and booby-trapped.”
“Where does that hatch lead?”
“Aft storage and machine shop.”
“Ignore it,” I told him, “for now. We’ve got to secure the engines and the cooling system. Place four guards here and at every other exit they might be able to breach.”
He trotted off, clanking and jingling in his armor. At least he wasn’t giving me a lecture.
Graves led the relief team through the main hatchway. It was hanging at an odd angle, and the interior of the passage behind it had a spider web of tripwires. They took the easy way out and used grenades to clear it, but that didn’t make me happy. Every blue-white flash made me wince.
“Oh,” Leeson said, chuckling at me. “So now you’re worried about explosions, huh?”
I gave him an angry stare, and he shut up. A moment later I saw him with patches, looking for leaks with an ultraviolet emitter.
“McGill!” Graves boomed as he walked in. “This is a mess!”
“Well sir,” I said, forcing a cheery expression, “you’ve got to break some eggs to make an omelet.”
A crowd of techs, mostly crewmen who’d been killed here by the gremlins in the first place, spread out and started repairing everything they could. They were soon shouting and becoming increasingly agitated as they worked.
“Throughout this battle, McGill,” Graves told me, “I’ve been sweating in the passages outside. We couldn’t track your progress due to the gremlin jamming, but we saw the flashes. You used grenades, didn’t you?”
“Maybe a few… but I saw you use them too when you broke in.”
He looked at me. “The cooling jacket doesn’t extend this far forward. You were fighting right in the middle of the engine compartment. Right up against the core.”
“Yeah… you’re right.”
Walking deeper into the passages with his hands on his hips, he examined the damage. Soon, he was muttering. About a minute later, he was cursing.
Finally, he turned on me. “This is catastrophic! The cooling jacket only has so much liquid in it, McGill. Are you aware of that?”
“Uh… I guess that makes sense. What are we down to?”
“Sixty percent.”
“Still over half-full, huh? Not bad!”
“No. It is bad. This isn’t a fuel tank. The core is already overheating.”
“Can we, um, shut it down? Let the pile cool down for a bit?”
“No,” said another voice. Natasha walked up to join us. “These drives aren’t built to do that kind of thing. They’re always on, always running. Part of the containment field must be kept alive and fully aligned. If it’s switched off completely or knocked out of alignment, we’re screwed. We’d have to rebuild it at a dockyard to get it working again.”
“Um…” I said. “Could you define screwed in this context?”
“Certainly,” she said crossing her arms. “It will either overload and blow up, melt down and blow up, or fuse into a solid block of molten radioactives and never work again.”
“That does sound bad,” I admitted.
“McGill,” Graves said, rejoining the conversation. “You assured us that this wouldn’t happen. You stated you could retake Engineering without disabling the ship.”
“Yeah… I do recall saying something like that.”
“What are we going to do if this ship is marooned halfway to Epsilon Leporis?
“Hold a trial and perm me?”
“That’s an excellent idea. I’ll forward that to Deech.”
Graves turned around and marched away angrily.
“I guess there’s just no satisfying some people,” I commented to Sargon, who’d come down the crowded passage way to talk to me.
“Sir? I don’t th
ink the gremlin jammers have been switched off yet. I’ve been trying to contact you.”
“They probably aren’t. Everyone with two thumbs left is patching holes in the cooling system.”
“Well sir, we’ve got a pack of bio people trying to get past my men. Remember? You left us on guard.”
“You mean at the aft hatch? Into the machine shop?”
“That’s right.”
“Let’s go.”
I followed him back through the ship toward the less wrecked part of the Engineering deck. There, I found a group of gawking troops in armor and a dozen bio people carrying tanks and nozzles.
“What’s up, Centurion?” I asked Thompson, who I’d assumed was in command.
She turned around to stare at me.
Wincing, I showed my teeth for a second. “Sorry. I forgot they took your bars. Specialist Thompson, what can I do for you?”
“At least someone remembers I was an officer once,” she said. “We’ve got orders from Deech, McGill. We’re going in there with knock-out gas. Can your troops provide cover?”
“Uh… I don’t think that’s such a good idea. These little monkeys will tear you apart.”
“Not if they’re unconscious.”
I looked at her gear and shrugged. “All right. Go for it. But they have pressure suits of their own, you know. There’s no reason to think they won’t be wearing their nasty little helmets.”
“We’ve got a plan for that. The techs built it for us.”
She showed me a device with a bulbous tip and a thin shaft of metal. “Just open up the hatch a few centimeters. We’ll do the rest.”
I nodded to Sargon’s men, and I stood back a bit, watching curiously. Sargon looked at me for a moment then hastened to stand at my side—at a safe distance.
The hatch creaked open. Thompson took her lollipop thing and tossed it into the crack. Her team followed by shoving in hoses. We could hear a hissing sound as she spun the valves open on the tanks.
Once this part of the deck had been repressurized, we could see a wisp of gas coming back in through the crack.
“Did you ever…?” Sargon asked as he watched Thompson work.
“Nah,” I said. “She hates me.”
“That’s never stopped you before. Mind you, she’s kind of on the thin side.”
“Hold on—whoa!” I said in alarm.
I’d caught sight of a small hand, holding Thompson’s metal lollipop. It eased the object back through the crack at the bottom, and dropped it on our side again with a tiny clicking sound.
One, two… that’s as many steps as I managed. I had my arms extended, my visor slammed shut—but I was too late.
The lollipop thing was a mini-grenade. It grabbed up tiny particles of broken glass, grit, even water droplets from condensation. Hurling these outward in a blue-white flash, they pierced the pressure suits of every bio on Thompson’s team.
Then the gas began to flow back onto our side in earnest. How were they doing that? I didn’t know, but I was certain these gremlins were the trickiest people I’d ever had the misfortune of encountering.
Thompson dropped first. I’m not sure why. Maybe it was because she was closer to the hatchway than the rest of them. Maybe the gas was lighter than air, and since she was standing instead of crouching, she got a snoot-full first.
Whatever the case, the gremlins had managed to reverse the flow of the gas and send it right back into the passage with us. One of Sargon’s heavies hit the deck a moment later.
I was alarmed, thinking that somehow this stuff could penetrate armor, but then I saw he’d stupidly had his visor up.
That left me, Sargon, and two other heavies at the hatchway.
Sargon advanced, growling. He had his morph-rifle unslung and ready. I could tell he was planning to wipe the gremlins out once and for all.
Putting my hand on his rifle, I pushed it down to aim at the deck. “Thompson said she was following Deech’s orders. I’m in enough trouble already.”
“You want I should go in there with a butterfly net?”
“Hmm,” I said, kneeling and searching Thompson’s pockets. I found two more lollipop things.
Standing again, I threw open the hatch, tossed them into the midst of the scattering gremlins, and waited to the count of three.
At the last moment, I figured the gremlins might have figured out they were in trouble. They came bouncing at us in a knot. There must have been at least ten of them.
Still, I didn’t let my men fire. Instead, I opened up the knock-out gas and watched it hiss, creating a cloud.
The tiny bombs went off, and the gremlins had their suits shot-through with holes. They fell a moment later into tiny heaps all over the deck.
“Nice!” Sargon said. “I would like to have killed them myself. I still could…”
“Nope,” I said.
“Just one, sir? My boots are wide, and I could have an accident. Who could blame me? I hate these things.”
Shaking my head, I set the local vents to exhaust. The air was quickly sucked out of the chamber. The sleeping forms quivered, choking. Before they could suffocate I closed the vents again.
“Get a bucket or something,” I said. “I’m taking these up to Deech personally.”
In the end, it took five buckets. The gremlins were a pretty good size.
Carrying a load of buckets with outstretched arms, I marched down the passages and right out of Engineering. I moved fast in case the little friggers sleeping in their buckets stared to wake up. Before they did, I made my way to Gold Deck.
‘Shocked looks’ only begins to describe what I received when I brought my prizes to Deech’s office. Many a noncom would have stopped me if I hadn’t insisted I was following the tribune’s direct orders.
Not having a free hand, I used my boot on the door. After the third kick, she opened the door irritably.
Whatever comment she’d had in mind faded away when she saw me and my buckets.
“What are you doing, Centurion?” Deech demanded.
“Specialist Thompson asked me to bring these gremlins to you personally, sir.”
She looked into the nearest bucket and wrinkled her nose. “Take these nasty beasts to Blue Deck. They’ve set up an enclosure.”
“Uh… all right. But they do know these guys are tricky, right? They’re people, not animals. Smart people.”
“The personnel on Blue Deck have been briefed.”
Turning away, I began to march off, but Deech called me back.
“Thank you for following my orders in this instance, McGill,” she said. “All your superior officers assured me you would slaughter these creatures, defying my instructions.”
“I’d never do that, sir. Jealous stories about my rebellious nature have always been overblown by my detractors.”
“I see…” she said. “You did get the job done again, didn’t you? First, the assault on the enemy ship, then the Engine Deck, and now this… It defies logic that persons like Winslade would complain about you so much.”
“Makes no sense at all.”
“Very well, dismissed. I thought I saw one of your charges twitch. You’d better hurry.”
Alarmed at the idea of being turned into a tree by a pack of gremlins, I rushed to Blue Deck. The bio people had me deposit them all into a holding cell for people who’d been classified as “bad grows” and thanked me.
After that, I returned to Engineering. Before I reached the blown-wide hatch, I met up with Specialist Thompson coming the other way.
“What’d you do with my specimens, McGill?” Thompson demanded. “If you jettisoned all of them, so help me—”
“Hold on,” I said, “have you forgotten I outrank you now?”
She looked startled. She was rubbing her face and her neck. The knockout gas had clearly taken its toll.
“I… I’m sorry, sir. What happened to the gremlins?”
“I tried to give them to Deech, but she sent me down to Blue Deck with the
m.”
“Oh…” Thompson said. “Thanks… How did you catch them in the end?”
I explained, and she looked sheepish. “I should have been on guard. I feel foolish.”
“It’s all right,” I said. “If no one knows you’re a fool, then you aren’t one. Not really.”
She seemed amused by this philosophy, but she didn’t argue with it.
Deciding it was about time I checked on my unit, I moved to push past her, but she put a gentle hand on my arm.
“I’ve treated you unfairly,” she said. “For years. I apologize, McGill, for what that’s worth.”
“Why, thank you, Specialist.”
My eyes tracked her as she made her way down the hall. She was skinny, just as Sargon had said, but she was kind of cute anyway. Better than that, her attitude had improved drastically. It might have been the lingering effects of the gas, but she seemed nicer today than she’d ever been.
Something—call it bad genetics—made me walk a few steps after her and call out: “Hey!”
She turned, her face quizzical.
“Uh… I know we’re not both officers and all, but since you were one once…”
“What are you trying to say, Centurion?” she asked quietly.
“Just that I could use a little company tonight at dinner—if you don’t have other plans.”
It was as weak a pick-up line as I’d ever delivered. First off, I knew better than to build an “out” into my request. That’s like a car salesman telling his customer they should probably go across the street and check out those better cars on the competing lot before they put their money down. Right off, I wanted to kick myself—but the line was already out there, and Specialist Thompson was looking at me with her head cocked oddly to one side.
Slowly, not saying anything, she walked up to me and put her hands on her hips.
“Are you seriously hitting on me?” she asked. “I mean—don’t you know that you and I have the worst of bad blood between us? I spent months grinding my teeth about you and your antics—”
“You’re right,” I said, putting up a hand in a stopping gesture. “My mistake. Don’t know what came over me. Sometimes, we just can’t forgive and forget.”
Turning around, I walked the other way. I made a big effort not to look angry or to walk angry. Instead, I looked as disinterested and unconcerned as possible.
