by Bobby Adair
And maybe that’s another flaw of the Gray mindset. The mental link they all hold so dear is strong when they’re close together, but weakens severely with distance.
Tarlow whoops, as Phil winces.
I glance over at Tarlow’s screen and see cruisers bump as the formation loses its order with ships trying to get away in every direction.
“It’s like the Spanish armada,” I say.
“What?” Tarlow doesn’t know what I’m talking about, which surprises me.
“When the Spanish armada came to invade England, they anchored one night in a bay, all packed in too close. I don’t remember the details, but when the smaller English fleet attacked, setting them on fire, I think, the Spaniards tried to flee and wound up destroying themselves.”
Tarlow loses interest before I’m halfway through my little history lesson. “Don’t get your hopes up about this bunch, Admiral Nelson. They’re going to get away.” Our ship shudders.
Phil tells us, “That was the first of the Trog railgun rounds deflecting off the grav lens field.” Turning to Penny, he says, we need to start decelerating in about fifteen seconds.”
The ship’s inertial field surges as Penny pulls it into a turn and the familiar zipper bang of our axial gun rips out a long burst. “I’m aiming for that cruiser,” she tells us, “the one that’s throwing up most of those slugs.”
"You’re driving," I say. "Do what you like as long as we make our bombing run."
More Trog rounds deflect.
The hull rings twice with impacts.
“Damage?” I ask.
“Can’t say,” Phil tells me. “Penny, decelerate!”
Chapter 57
I’m thrown against my seat harness, and I call over the open comm. “Any decompression in the ship? Are all systems functional?”
Vague replies come back. Everyone felt the impacts, yet no breach seems to have occurred.
“The angle,” Brice suggests as he checks the forward compartments, “might have saved us. The rounds hit our hull and bounced away.”
And left gouges, I don’t mention, gouges deep enough we might need to repair them. If we’re lucky.
Penny is shooting again.
“Line us up on the vector I just sent to your console,” Phil tells her.
“Got it,” the ship swerves up and to the right. “I need some leeway. Lots of metal in the air.”
“Take as much as you need,” says Phil. “I’ll let you know when we’re crucial.”
Penny smiles. “Yes, bombardier.”
“Holy shit,” hollers Tarlow.
We’re close enough now, I don’t need to look over at Tarlow’s monitor to know what’s going on, I see the visual version on Penny’s screens. The defending Trog cruiser she fired upon is erupting as our rounds tear through its hull. Steel and fiery gases blast into the vacuum. Its grav fields go into chaos, mostly. The ship pushes itself into a flat spin as it tries to lumber away.
Two ships below us bubble jump as we close in, sending grav pulses through the disintegrating formation, causing more cruisers to bump—if bump is the right word for megaton behemoths smashing their hulls into one another. Rings splash the dust on the protoplanet’s surface, expanding with the grav pulses of the ships that just jumped.
Not even a full second later, Phil shouts, “They didn’t go far. They don’t have enough fuel for a long jump!”
“I have them,” Tarlow says, his attention on another of his screens, “A hundred thousand miles out. Another at two hundred.”
Good. Confirmation that what we’re doing here will work.
“Four more are accelerating away at full power,” says Tarlow.
“Some already refueled.” I was hoping the six docked at the base below us were the same six we spotted when we first arrived.
“Unless they’re trying to hide their destination,” says Tarlow, “they’re earthbound.”
They have to be, I realize. The jump from 61 Cygni to earth is a long leg for a Trog cruiser, they don’t have fuel to spare for anything but a direct path. “Let me know when they bubble.”
“Penny,” says Phil, “bring us down on the attack vector.”
I look up to see the protoplanet growing large in front of us, and the structures of the supply base coming into focus with the six docked cruisers looking huge, even compared to the immense base.
“Steady on that course,” says Penny. “Do your work fast, I have railgun slugs coming at us from everywhere.”
Not exactly right—the everywhere bit—but it does feel like it, and the two cruisers firing on us have done nothing but increase their rate. Only our speed and the grav lens has kept us alive, and with the angle between us and the defending cruisers changing, our grav lens is becoming less and less a factor. Those rounds will be able to hit us broadside. To make matters worse, we’ll have to zero out the grav lens power and defensive grav on our flank’s right before we release the nukes, to maintain their ballistic paths toward the target.
“Just a few more seconds,” says Phil. “Keep us lined up. There’s a gap coming in the incoming fire.”
Penny doesn’t respond.
Phil’s whole body tenses as he kills power to the drive array, the grav lens, and deflective fields. He presses the bomb release.
We’re in free-fall. No grav outside the ship, none inside, and no suit grav to compensate for anything. The bomb release has to be smooth with no perturbations.
“Slow us down, Penny!” says Phil. “Easy.”
Penny puts a deft touch on our drive, and I barely feel it.
With all of the ship’s grav systems momentarily off, I can see every mass in the space around us and all the way down to the planet. I see our bombs falling in a perfect, circular formation. Railgun slugs are tearing through space in a storm that makes it seem like there’s no safe place for us to be. The cruisers below us are still trying to get out of our way.
Penny slows us even more, and the nukes accelerate under the pull of the protoplanet’s gravity.
She increases power to our drive array.
“Don’t steer away yet,” Phil warns. “Twenty seconds to impact.”
Phil trickles power into the grav lens.
We take a solid railgun hit, and this time I don’t need a status report. Air is rushing out through a new hole.
More rounds deflect off our glazed steel.
Penny drags our speed down even more. “Phil, we can’t keep this up.”
“Just a few more seconds,” he says. “We didn’t come all this way to lose our nerve.”
In that moment, I’m proud of Phil. He’s standing strong in the face of the storm.
The hull rings again.
“Now!” he shouts, as the deflective grav fields power up. “Turn us toward those cruisers so we can utilize the grav lens for defense.”
I feel the ship spin as bright blue at our bow washes out my view of the battle. “The nukes?”
“On track,” Phil answers. “Penny, step on it!”
Our internal inertial field kicks back on as Penny pours amps into our drive array. The Turd accelerates toward our two attackers.
“Oh, no!” shouts Phil.
Chapter 58
Blue grav fields flash and buffet us.
With our grav plates fluxing chaotically and the lens pulsing hard, I can’t make out what’s happening. Not exactly.
Another grav flash shoves our ship to the side as Penny struggles to keep us lined up on a target. She curses loudly and sends a long stream of plasma-fied slugs at one of the cruisers shooting our way.
“They’re bubbling out!” Phil shouts.
“Who?” I ask. “The fleet?” I’m asking about the scattered flock of ships that had been in neat rows when we started our attack run.
“The grav pulse knocked our nukes off their trajectory.” Uncharacteristically, he curses.
“How far?”
Penny has moved on to the next thing. She’s firing and accelerating, an
d turning into the direction of her prey, which has figured out that we’re a lot more lethal than our size would suggest. On her monitor, I see a cruiser’s hull coming apart.
“They’ll miss the planet,” Phil says.
"Miss?" I turn to him, and then glance immediately over Tarlow’s shoulder to see his monitors—it’s the only way I can get a clear picture of all that’s happening through the 360-degree sphere of space around us.
Tarlow points a sickly finger at what looks like six little sticks tumbling across the blackness.
Another cruiser bubbles out.
Tarlow wails over the open comm, and questions flutter in from the crew asking anxiously what’s wrong.
Rage and despair compete for control in my head as I see all hope for our success recede into the void.
I can’t indulge either.
I can’t!
I clench my teeth, reach over and smack the back of Tarlow’s helmet. “Get in the game!”
He’s mortified as he turns wide-eyed to look at me.
“Anyone else shooting at us?”
“I…I…”
“Dammit! Get me an answer.”
Penny is still zeroed in on a target as its defensive fields strobe into disarray. She’s shredding it.
“Pull up,” I tell her. “That one’s finished.”
She swerves hard to the right, she’s already guessed what I want, or read it from my mind, or maybe it’s just coincidence from our shared history and goals. She knows what’s happening around her. I can feel anger radiating through her suit.
And she has an outlet for it.
She brings our axial gun to bear on her next victim, a Trog cruiser making the mistake of maneuvering to keep its port side facing us to fire the maximum number of guns our way.
“That’s the last one shooting," Phil answers for Tarlow, who’s letting his emotions run away with his composure.
“Kill it,” I tell Penny.
She needs no more direction than that, no inspirational words to keep her on task. Phil tweaks our defensive fields, and keeps the grav lens optimized. Up front, I hear the crew over the comm, working frantically to shuttle rounds into the magazines, feeding the beast its fire.
“Tarlow,” I say.
“What?”
“Are you tracking everything?”
“What?”
“Tell me your system is recording. I want to know where every one of those ships goes.” I’m trying to get him back in the game by focusing him on his work.
“I…I…the system maintains a log,” he says.
“You’ll be able—”
“I can’t,” he says, “tell you where those bubble jumping ships went.”
“You have the heading each jumped down? That’s enough.” From the corner of my eye, I see Penny’s target ship starting to erupt.
“Yes,” answers Tarlow.
“Good.” I spin to face him, and take a hard look at his monitors, seeing dozens of cruisers scurrying off, some skimming over the planet’s surface to get away. Some are vectoring toward Cygni Saturn, they don’t know yet what we’ve done to their tanker fleet. Others are maxing grav for deep space, though none of them will go far. They can’t. Their only source of H is on the protoplanet below. They’ll be back.
“What?” asks Tarlow, feeling uncomfortable with my scrutiny.
“What are you looking for?” asks Phil.
“Stay on task,” I tell him. “Kill that cruiser.
“Don’t you worry about this one,” says Penny. “We’ll be done in a moment.”
Chapter 59
I reach over, put a finger on Tarlow’s screen, and tell him, “Get that one’s coordinates and vector. Send it to Phil.”
“I already have it,” says Phil.
Damn mind readers.
“Be nice,” Phil tells me.
"Penny will need an intercept vector."
“Let me finish here,” she says.
I glance over at her bank of monitors. The cruiser catching all our railgun slugs is coming apart under the onslaught of plasma and debris from its own exploding hull.
“Blow past,” I tell her. “It’s finished.”
She stops firing and accelerates into a turn.
“I’m sending you a heading,” says Phil.
“Got it,” she answers.
“Why this one?” asks Phil, turning
“You’re not reading my mind?” I answer with a question.
“You’re getting better at hiding things,” he says. “What are we doing?”
“How long until we catch it?” I ask.
“Less than seven minutes,” Penny informs me.
“You’re not answering me,” says Phil.
I stoke my courage with a deep breath, as though stating my intentions will solidify the choice into something unbreakable, something that maybe won’t doom us all. “I’m putting the mission first.”
“In less cryptic language?” asks Phil.
“Why this one?” asks Tarlow, finding a new way to vent his anxiety.
“Penny,” I say, “I doubt that ship is armed.” I turn to Phil. “Keep our defenses up, just in case.” Back to Penny, I say, “This ship doesn’t have enough H to jump. It probably can’t even keep its pedal to the metal for much longer.”
“And,” she asks.
“Catch it, but don’t shred it,” I tell her. “Take your time. Blast the drive array. You don’t have to destroy it. Just disable it.”
“We’re going to board?” Tarlow is flirting with hysteria.
Brice comes onto the bridge just as Tarlow finishes. He’s offended by Tarlow’s outburst. "Keep your sissy shit to yourself, Tarlow. If you’re going to whine, cut your out-comm. Listen to the major. Do what he tells you, and shut the fuck up. This isn’t a goddamn democracy up here.” Brice plants his feet in the center of the bridge’s only empty space, he grav locks them in place and reaches up to brace himself with a handhold on the ceiling.
Sergeant Enforcer.
I give him a nod of approval.
To Penny, I say, “Take out the bridge, and then if you can, kill the reactors. We’ll need time to pull this off, so take what you need.”
Chapter 60
It takes nearly twenty minutes to catch the Trog cruiser and disable its vital organs.
Phil, having either pieced it together from wayward thoughts in my head, or having worked through the logic on his own, knows what I’m planning. “We have three more nukes,” he says. “We don’t have to do this.”
Tarlow starts to say something, but Brice shuts him down.
Penny looks over her shoulder at me. “I’m with you, Boss. Whatever you have in mind.”
“Tarlow,” I say, “zoom in on the base and give me a bird’s eye view.”
“Seventeen,” says Phil. “That’s what you’re looking for, right? How many cruisers came back?”
I see them on Tarlow’s screen—not orderly like before—seventeen cruisers seemingly placed randomly in the space above Trinity Base, a few close in, most at a good distance. Down at the docks, vast plumes of hydrogen are spraying into the vacuum and forming icy clouds that seem to cling to the protoplanet’s surface.
Two of the cruisers that were docked and refueling ripped the fueling lines away when they made panicked escapes during our first attack run.
That’s good.
“Why’s that good?” asks Phil.
“They weren’t finished,” I answer. “They won’t have enough H to get to earth, and not enough to go back the way they came.”
“Probably.”
I shrug. “Probably’s better than the alternatives.”
“We still have three nukes,” he says again. “We have trajectories on the other six. We can recapture them.”
“We can,” I agree, “after we finish here.”
“Then we don’t need to do this.”
"The nukes won’t work.” I’ve already reasoned through to my conclusion. "It may seem half the tim
e like Grays and Trogs are stupid, but you know better than anyone they aren’t."
Phil looks at me without responding. Like anyone, he doesn’t like to concede points in a debate.
“They know something is up with the nukes we dropped. They may or may not know what they are, but they know we thought they were dangerous enough that we could just drop them on a ballistic path to kill the base. They lucked out because those bubble-jumping cruisers knocked them off their trajectories. If they see us come back and try the same thing again, and especially if they see us collect those six and bring them along, they’ll know exactly what we intend to do. They’ll defend themselves by bubbling a few cruisers out again and who knows where the nukes will go after that? We need to try something different.”
“A suicide mission?” asks Phil.
“No.”
“If we can’t get home,” says Phil, “what’s the difference?”
“The mission,” I tell him. “We fulfill the mission because earth needs it.” I turn to Penny for confirmation now that some of the gory details are coming to light.
She nods.
“We’re all with you,” says Phil. “However, I think we should find a better way.”
“Do you have a better way?” I ask. “Because right now, this looks like the only way. Sure, we could muddle around the system for a week or a month trying to work out something better, but we don’t know if or when the next Trog fleet is going to show up. We just don’t. What we know now is what we’re facing. We have a way to win right now against these odds. I say we take it.”
Phil glances over at Brice for his help.
Brice shrugs. “Sometimes being a Marine is harder than being a whiney bitch.” He laughs, because sometimes he’s just an asshole.
“Penny,” I say, “come around behind that cruiser and ram this ship up its aft drive array.”
Chapter 61
As I imagined it, the whole thing wouldn’t take more than ten or fifteen minutes—we’d do our crazy shit and skate our way to victory with little more than a few scratches and plenty of time to figure out our next move.
