The Fleet Book Three: Break Through

by David Drake (ed)

  “There wasn’t much left of the ship the Sabot nailed, sir,” Crocker explained. “Some Khalian protoplasm. And they did find an arm in a uniform that doesn’t match anything in our files to date. Here.” Crocker gesture-muttered, and the picture in the omni blurred.

  “I didn’t think Weasels wore uniforms at all,” Eriksen said carefully. What was he looking at? A jittery hand held something in front of an omni camera. Eriksen couldn’t make it out. Double image?

  A human hand held ... held a human hand, pale with frost, and half of the raggedly torn forearm.

  “Yes, that explains it,” Mown muttered.. “It bothered me that Khalians understood human psychology so perfectly.”

  Admiral Lars Eriksen’s guts felt as though he’d just dropped into sponge space, except that the sinking sensation went on and on.

  ON THE EARTH of the Alliance there were only two means of communications more widespread or efficient than the omni. One was the ageless tradition of gossip, and the other the enlisted men’s grapevine. Both had rattled for over a week that all was not what it seemed with the Fleet admission of the loss of Halley’s comet. For weeks, the Fleet was trapped into defending its own incompetence. Daily, the discomforted brass sent urgent directives to Port demanding something be done to restore their prestige. These in turn, gave rise to some very questionable missions. Surprisingly, one paid off.

  THE BLACK PLASTIC ship nosed up alongside the Khalian frigate—black, so that light-based sensors couldn’t find it, and it couldn’t be detected visually as it drifted in between the ships of the Khalian perimeter; plastic, so that radio-based sensors couldn’t find it. Darts sprang out from its side, darts tipped with synthetic-diamond covering explosive charges. They slammed through the Khalian’s hull, and four explosions mushroomed their heads.

  Inside the black barracuda, winches whined, reeling in line, pulling the two ships close together. Then a metal ring slammed into the Khalian, and current flowed, binding the collar to the Khalian while automatic screws dug into the ship’s skin. A man sprang onto the mesh tunnel that joined the collar to the plastic ship and began slapping explosive gel onto the Khalian’s hull in a widening circle.

  Bound together in an embrace of hatred, the two ships floated in the void. Distant stars gleamed—Khalian ships and Terran ships, twinkling with death as they circled Dead Star 31.

  * * *

  When he was a kid, Corin had wished he’d had a brother. And sometimes he’d wished his father could stay home all the time, like other dads.

  He wished he’d had anything but three older sisters and a younger one, and a mother who screamed at him all the time.

  * * *

  “It’s a chance for a breakthrough,” the captain said. “It’ll only work once—but it only has to. Break through their line, and there’s their home world, right in front of us. We have one chance in a hundred of bringing it off, but it’s worth the risk.” He raked the line of marines with his glare, “Any questions?”

  Silence.

  Then Sergeant Krovvy stepped forward. “Sir!”

  The captain turned back, frowning. “Yes, Sergeant?”

  “If the odds of success are one to a hundred, what’re the odds on coming back alive?”

  The captain grinned like a shark. “How about one in a million?”

  That was when Corin stepped forward.

  The captain turned to him, frowning, “Are you volunteering, or just going crazy?”

  “Volunteering, sir.” Hands to his sides, eyes straight ahead, face wooden.

  “Should I call the medics, or should I ask why?”

  Corin shrugged. “Anything’s better than waiting through a stalemate like this.”

  The captain nodded. “And ... ?”

  Corin grimaced. “I want to find out what the plan is.”

  “And you’ll only learn that by volunteering.” The captain nodded. “Good enough.” He turned back to the other marines. “Anyone else?”

  He looked up and down the long, silent row.

  Sergeant Krovvy cleared his throat and took another step forward.

  The captain’s grin touched his ear lobes. “Two out of fifty! Not bad, not bad at all! But I need a dozen. One more! One more to die for the glory of the Fleet! ... No one? Dismiss!”

  The corporals barked, and the marines marched away.

  “You two.” The captain jerked his head toward the airlock. “Come on.”

  Aboard his courier, he told them the plan.

  Which was great. Now Corin knew it couldn’t work.

  * * *

  Daddy was away. Daddy was always away, and when he was home, he was in his room.

  “I told him you shouldn’t let him keep coming through our yard,” Mommy had yelled at him. “I told you, and told you, but you wouldn’t even ask him to stop!”

  “It’s not that important,” Daddy had mumbled.

  “It is that important! I don’t want some old coot walking through my yard just any time, without even asking! That’s why I went to the lawyer! And do you know what he said? The old man’s got the town council declaring it a right of way! But would you lift a finger to stop him? Oh, no!”

  And Daddy had gone to his room. Daddy always went to his room. And stayed there.

  * * *

  It was a dumb idea, but Corin had known that when he stepped forward, even though he hadn’t heard what it was. But he knew that it couldn’t possibly work, and that even if it did, it would get every last one of them killed. And when he found out what it was, he was sure.

  But it would be worth it just to get this infernal waiting over with, he told himself. It would be worth it.

  It was really very simple. Pick out the largest ship in the Khalian horde, find a frigate next to it, board that, and use its guns and torpedoes to shoot the other down. There were rumors the Khalians were using larger ships. Then the Fleet’s dreadnoughts could bull through the gap, swatting lesser ships as they went—and the captured frigate could keep running interference for them, shooting down any other Khalian ships within range. It should be able to do a lot of damage before the other Weasels figured out what was happening and blew it to vapor.

  The trick was getting close enough to board a Khalian frigate without the Weasels finding out, by eye or by sensor, and being able to take over so fast that they couldn’t call for help. Which they weren’t apt to do. The Khalian ideal of cooperation being what it was, the Weasels would want to take care of their own interlopers.

  Privately, Corin figured the captain’s odds on coming back were a little high.

  But that, he realized with surprise, was okay with him. In fact, it was just fine.

  * * *

  “Take out the garbage, Corey,” Mom said. “Don’t be like your father, always putting it off.”

  So he took out the garbage and came back in, and she said, “You missed the bathroom wastebaskets. Go do them all.”

  He hated the bathroom wastebaskets. Darlene made such a mess out of them, what with her makeup tissues and hair and all.

  And when the wastebaskets were done, and dinner was over, she came out screaming, “You didn’t wash it out! Now go out there and take the hose, and wash out that wastebasket!”

  It was November, and it was cold and dark, and his hands were blue when he came in.

  * * *

  Except for the long rows of facing seats, the ship was stripped to the hull, and the marines were stripped to raw emotion. They sat, belted in, tense and expectant. The ship rocked, and Corin knew they had fired their grapples. He waited, taut, till he heard the crash of the electromagnetic collar taking hold of the Khalian’s skin. What if it isn’t iron?

  Just in case this Khalian’s hull wasn’t ferrous, the electromagnetic ring had borers built in. The grinding noise filled the Fleet ship as the long screws bit into the pirat
e’s skin.

  “Demolition!”

  “Here!” And Valius was, as the iris dilated in the side of the barracuda. He leaped through and started slapping plastic onto the Khalian hull, building it out in a widening circle almost to the lip of the circular electromagnet—a shaped charge, strong enough to blow a hole in the side of a spaceship, strong enough to kill anybody who happened to be in the chamber it holed.

  Overhead, plastic vaporized in a long, wide trough.

  “Stand fast,” the captain ordered. “He can’t depress his cannon any more than that—and you’re already breathing your own tanks.”

  The marines were all in pressure armor, of course, breathing bottled air. And by the time the pirates were suited up, the marines would be among them.

  The barracuda’s hull vibrated, but the humming of the pump dwindled quickly as it pulled air out of the ship’s interior and into storage tanks.

  Valius scurried back, a length of wire unreeling between himself and the circle of explosive.

  “Blow!” the captain commanded.

  And it did, incidentally, cutting the feeds for the frigate’s artificial gravity.

  * * *

  Corin. It was a perfectly good boy’s name, his father had told him so. It came from Shakespeare; it was the name of a shepherd or something. But there was a girl in school. She was named Cornelia but everybody called her Corey, so the boys called him Corey, too.

  “Corey, Corey! Tell us all a story!” they’d yell in a mocking singsong.

  And he’d come home with a black eye, still trembling, still angry, and his mother had started screaming, “Do you know who that was? That was your teacher on the phone! She told me she saw you picking a fight out there in the playground! Don’t you ever do that again!”

  And the anger had surged up, and he had shouted, “Mom! He hit me first!”

  “Don’t you dare shout at me!” Crack! The slap caught his face where it still ached from a punch, and she was screaming, “They always hit you first. I know your kind, you always find some way to make them hit you first.”

  “They were making fun of me. They were calling me ‘Corey!’”

  “There’s nothing wrong with that, it’s a perfectly nice name.”

  “It’s not! It’s a girl’s name! I want a boy’s name. Why didn’t you give me a boy’s name!”

  “How dare you speak to your mother that way!”

  This time, he saw the slap coming, and ducked.

  “Oh! You little monster! Don’t you dare try to get out of your punishment!” She grabbed him by the shoulder this time and boxed him on the ear, so his head was ringing with her screams as she slapped him and slapped him again.

  * * *

  They saw their own hull vibrate with the blast, saw the burst of smoke, saw the sudden hole where the explosive had been, saw the mist as the air exhausted from the frigate.

  “In!” The captain’s voice roared from his earphones, and Corin dived through the mesh tunnel and into the Khalian frigate, holding down the trigger button with his thumb, spraying slugs in a cone, all around him. Three of his mates jumped in with him, their cones blending with his. Who cared if the slugs pierced the Khalian’s hull? Who cared if they lost air? They had their helmets on, and they were trying to kill the Khalians, anyway ...

  And they had. The hell with the bullets, too. Three dead Weasels drifted in the nets they used for bunks, half uncurled from sleep; one even had his sidearm in his hand. But little red globes drifted away from their noses and mouths. One had a big globe, as though he were blowing a bubble of death. Explosive decompression had done the marines’ work for them.

  As he reloaded, Corin stared at the dead, floating Khalians, and thought, These were the easy ones.

  * * *

  The other boys had found out about the old folk song and jeered after him all over the playground, but he didn’t dare fight, or Mom would scream at him. His little sister, Snookie, had heard them and started singing it as soon as they came in the door.

  “Wake up, wake up, darlin’ Corey! What makes you sleep so sound?”

  “Shut up,” he snapped at her.

  “I don’t have to shut up. This is my house, too, you know.” And she turned away, singing. “Now, the first time I saw darlin’ Corey, she was sitting by the sea ...”

  “Shut up!”

  “Why should she shut up?” Mom jumped on it even as she came into the room, glaring. “You don’t give orders here, Corey. She can sing whatever she likes, in this house. And don’t you dare try and stop her!”

  So he had to swallow his anger and turn away, and after a while, Mom had tired of hearing the song and sent them out to play. It was catch, and she hadn’t brought the glove up in time, and the ball had hit her cheek, and, with a sick sinking in his stomach, Corin had realized what Mom was going to do to him when Snookie ran in screaming—

  Unless he could make Snookie laugh it off.

  So he shrieked in horror, “Snookie!” and dashed over. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it. Did it hurt?”

  She was still a moment. Then she laughed a little, blinked away the forming tears, and chuckled, managing a brave little smile. “Naw, it was just rubber.”

  And they had gone back to playing catch, Corin with the sickening knowledge that he had caved in, capitulated, chickened out and before he was even challenged.

  * * *

  Corin glanced about the chamber, seeing the circular holes at fore and aft, either end—hatches, blocked now by steel plates. The Khalians didn’t waste money on anything inessential, but they had every safety feature in the book. Valius had placed his charge where the fo’c’sle was, to make sure they took out any crew who were off duty. It had worked; they had taken three out of six or seven—but as soon as the pressure had dropped, bulkheads had sealed off the fo’c’sle from the rest of the ship to limit loss of air and Khalians. Now the rest of the Weasels had both.

  “Jakes and Boblatch, aft!” the captain barked. “Valius, make room for ’em.”

  Valius slapped a shaped charge on the aft bulkhead.

  “But, Captain,” Jakes objected, “there won’t be anyone there.”

  “If there isn’t, you can come join us fore. If there is, you can join us after he’s dead. Blow it, Valius.”

  The bulkhead blew; air blasted out. Jakes and Boblatch dove through into the galley.

  “The rest of you come fore.” The captain turned. “That charge ready, Valius?”

  “Uh ... it is now, Captain.”

  “Blow it,” the captain commanded.

  Smoke erupted in the hatchway, awesome in its silence.

  “Don’t just stand there gaping,” the captain bellowed. “Now!”

  Sergeant Krovvy hit the trigger button as he pushed himself through the hatch—and his head exploded.

  Corin stared at the expanding globe of red and gray, his stomach heaving.

  * * *

  “You were supposed to make the sale!” the sales manager. “We don’t keep you here just so you can walk around looking important!”

  “I—I’m sorry.” Corin lifted his chin and set his jaw, but he could feel his shoulders slumping. “He even had me chalking up the measurements, and then he just said that—”

  “I heard what he said! I heard what he said to me! That you’re an arrogant little twit who shouldn’t even be working in the stockroom!”

  “All I said was that he should wear the cuffs a little higher ...”

  “If they want advice, they’ll go to a couturier! You’re just here to sell the clothes, understand?”

  “But, look! If he got ’em chalked up wrong, he’d be a dissatisfied customer!”

  “Don’t argue with me!” the sales manager bellowed.

  “I’m not arguing, I’m trying to explain—”

  “Don’t.
” The boss’s eyes narrowed. “Explain it to Welfare. You’re fired.”

  * * *

  Corin’s mouth opened in a scream as he dove through the hatch, landing flat on his belly, slugs chattering out of his gun, the recoil kicking him back. But his heels butted against the bulkhead as two Khalians trained their own slug throwers on him. A ricochet smashed into the barrel of his rifle, stinging his hands as it wrenched the weapon away, but Lurkstein shot through to join him, as did Danvel and Parlan, their weapons shuddering. The Weasels had to split their attention, while Corin could pull his rifle back, check it, and aim his stream of bullets sweeping across one Khalian, then the other. Danvel’s body bucked, gouting redness, but the Weasels flipped backward, almost jackknifing. They were probably screaming, but they were wearing pressure helmets, and the atmosphere was gone, and they had a different com frequency from Corin’s. Then Lurkstein’s and Parlan’s slugs caught them, and their bodies spasmed in a grim dance of death, but they wouldn’t be screaming any more.

  Then Morton and Dunscythe were in, racing past what was left of Krovvy, and Valius was slapping a charge on the forward bulkhead across the room, and suddenly, the cabin seemed to be filled with Fleet marines.

  The captain was pulling Corin up by the arm. “Hurt, mister?” the voice demanded in his earphones.

  “No, sir,” Corin gasped, giving his head a shake. “I should be, but I’m not.”