by John Ringo
Behind the scorpions, the airlock started to disgorge armored orcs, at least a half a dozen. Then a second wave of more orcs with a couple of soft-suited figures, then what could only be Reyes and the Changed elf, the latter looming over all the other figures.
“Lieutenant, this is Berghaus,” the picket said, quietly. “We have a problem.”
“Great,” Herzer muttered, looking up at the thruster assembly. Linda and Geo were up on the vaguely dildo-shaped thruster, removing the Tammen reactionless drive. They were on the starboard side of the ship and the orc force had emerged to port so they probably weren’t going to run across his team. But Captain Van Buskirk’s teams were to port and they’d quickly be in view of the orcs.
“Bus, did you hear what Cruz passed on?” Herzer asked.
“I was listening in,” the lieutenant admitted. “We’re halfway through pulling this Tammen. As soon as they’re done, we’ll head downward on the ship to the yaw thruster and pull that one. I think we have enough time; among other things, we’re in shadow here so we’re harder to see. If they’re getting in view, we’ll give up on this one and boogey out.”
“Works,” Herzer said. “Two guesses where they’re heading.”
“Engineering,” Lieutenant Van Krief said. “Maybe Maintenance.”
“Where are we going to fix these things up?” Cruz asked.
“Life Support,” Herzer replied after a moment’s thought. The crew compartment, Control and Maintenance were on the “top” side of the ship on the first, second and third support rings, respectively. By the same token, EVA, Fuel Control and Life Support were on the “bottom” of the rings. The orcs were, apparently, passing across the top of the ship. Let them get to Engineering. They’d have about another seven hours before they could boost again without hitting the Earth. But at some point, the Tammens would have to be hooked into power. Cross that bridge when they came to it. “We’ll reconstruct the Tammens there, then figure out how to get power to them.”
“Works,” Cruz said. “We’re nearly done, here.”
“Everybody hurry,” Herzer said. “I want to get off the surface before we accidentally stumble on trouble.”
“I see what you mean about finding them,” Reyes admitted.
The six ion cannons for the drive were stacked in two sets of three, suspended over the fusion reactors and reaching up to the ceiling. Each of the drives had four dual-power input points, to first strip the electrons from the raw helium three they used for fuel and the additional three to apply more and more energy to it until the raw protons were blasted out the rear of the ship at a sizeable fraction of the speed of light.
The power supply for the vast undertaking consisted of ranks and ranks of buss bars that were accessed by catwalks. Elevators at the front of the compartment lifted techs, and their gear, up to the higher sections and there were four massive overhead cranes for heavier materials.
The problem was that all the buss bars looked exactly alike. And from the looks of the empty primary power point, the buss bars from there were identical to the individual supply bars.
Reyes walked over to the nearest lattice and considered the connection of the buss bars. They were fitted into clamps and then cranked down into contact with the transfer buss. There were also spare clamps on the transfer buss. Probably the Coalition team had hidden the busses in the maze. But…
“How long?” Reyes mused. “You took about twenty minutes to get here, yes?”
“We went as fast as we could, Great One,” Tur-uck replied.
“I’m sure you did,” Reyes said. “But I also don’t think they had time to hook them up fully. They’re probably just slid into a clamp. Spread out. Look for busses that are loose. You’re sure this is cold, yes?” he asked the engineer.
“Has to be, Great One,” the kobold said with just a hint of disrespect. “There’s nigh leading to it.”
“Spread out,” Reyes repeated, waving at the group. “One Durgar to every catwalk. Pull on every buss bar. Find the loose ones.”
It took about an hour for the teams to remove the four Tammen field generators and move them back to Life Support.
The life support section was mostly pumps and pipes with a narrow open area running down the middle. Herzer had half expected it to be filled with plants, but manual reprocessing of air and water was far more efficient.
Each of the engineers had taken one of the Tammens to modify and Evan estimated about another hour to get them changed to more powerful models. At that point, they could hook them directly to the power output on the fusion reactors and ignore the busses.
“How’s it going?” Herzer asked, strolling over to where Geo had his arms up to the elbows in the tangled cabling of the field generator.
“Just fine,” Geo said, happily. “I’ve got the replicator module in place. We’ll have to set up a neural link for controls, I think. I’d thought Countess Travante would be the obvious choice for using them. Among other things, Mother will have less issue with it if we come anywhere near Earth.”
“Hopefully, that won’t happen,” Herzer said dryly.
“Well, as long as the engines remain off…” Geo said, as the floor began to rumble. “Or not.”
“Not good,” Herzer said, glancing at the timepiece in his helmet. “Not good at all…”
* * *
“No, no, no!” the goblin pilot squeaked as his controls went live again. “No it is not a good time to fire, Master!”
“Shut up,” Reyes said over the communications link. “The engines are working again. Be glad.”
“But, Master…” the goblin said, desperately.
“Just shut up,” Reyes growled. “Or I’ll figure out if I can fly this thing myself! Steer it for an orbit around Earth. Now!”
“I will… try,” the goblin said, engaging one of the forward thrusters. If he could just point the ship so that the engine vector pushed it out of the gravitational envelope of the planet ahead, they might all survive…
“Megan, Courtney,” Herzer said, striding down the corridor to where the majority of the team was resting. “Find a console you can hack into the navigational system. I don’t think you can control from here, but you should be able to find nav data. Try to figure out why in the hell Reyes just kicked on the engines. According to Joie, if we fired during this window we’d crash. I really hope she was wrong.”
“I’ll help,” Josten said. “Get me the data and I can figure out where we’re going.”
“Master, if you please,” the goblin pilot whined, crawling on his hands and knees to where Reyes was established back in his station chair.
“What now?” Reyes asked, balefully. “The engines are back on.”
“Yes, Master,” the pilot said, carefully. “I beg you, let me turn them off. It is not the time for them to be on.”
“Canna do it,” Gomblick said from Engineering. “He had me lock out the controls. They’re on until we shut them off manually.”
“Then we should leave the ship, Master,” the pilot said, reaching out a hand and waving it by Reyes’ leg. “Quickly.”
“Why?” Reyes asked, frowning.
“We are on course to crash into the planet in six hours, Master.”
“WHAT?”
“The engines are on a manual burn,” Josten said about fifteen minutes later. “It looks like whoever is piloting this thing is trying to avoid a degrading orbit, but I don’t think he can unless the engines get shut down. In fact, if they keep thrusting like this for another… fourteen minutes, there’s not a chance in hell. There isn’t enough power in this ship to prevent it from crashing into the planet. If they just keep thrusting and maneuvering as they are right now, we’re going to enter the planet’s atmosphere in about six hours.”
“Is that what they wanted?” Megan asked. “To crash it into Earth? Surely they’re not that stupid!”
“I don’t know,” Herzer replied, grimacing. “But we’re well and truly screwed. The shuttles are going
to return full of Blood Lords so getting us off of this thing is going to be tough. And I don’t know about getting the fuel off. I don’t know about getting us off!”
“We are so totally screwed,” Josten sighed.
“TURN THEM OFF!”
“I canna,” Gomblick said, angrily. “You had me lock them out, ye ken? Gotta go back to Engineering and turn them off manually. We’re halfway down the ship. Be twenty minutes before I could get there.”
“In… five minutes it will not matter, Master,” the goblin said. “After that we will not have enough thrust to avoid capture.”
Reyes’ eyes widened and he shook his head angrily.
“When we approach Earth, we can teleport out,” he said after a moment.
“Not with the teleport block in place,” Tragack pointed out. It was the first thing he’d said during the entire mission.
“Then we have to get the teleport block down,” Reyes replied, angrily. “Find that bitch Travante. She’s the Key-holder and the Key.”
“Move, move, move,” Herzer said, keeping one hand clamped on the handhold of the Tammen and the other on his safety line. “Carefully.”
“Herzer, this is Evan,” the engineer said. “There’s an orc picket outside Engineering.”
“Cruz,” Herzer replied. “Take them down. Fast.”
“The Tammens might be able to steer us out of a retrograde orbit,” Geo said. He was carrying the other end of the Tammen and trying to keep in step with the larger Blood Lord commander. “If we get the engines shut down and get them in place in time. It will take a few minutes to get the neural net synced to the councilwoman, though.”
“Ask me for anything but time,” Herzer muttered. “Cruz? How’s it coming?”
“Great One!” Sharkack called over the communicator. “The humans are attacking the starboard airlock! Durgast is dead and they are cutting through the airlock doors!”
Reyes opened his mouth and then shut it.
“Great One, if I may,” Tur-uck said, diffidently. “They are probably going to try to turn the engines off. That may be for the best.”
“I was thinking the same thing,” Reyes replied. “Sharkack, pull out of Engineering to port. Just let them have it.”
“Yes, Great One,” the Durgar replied in a puzzled tone.
“They won’t know how many orcs we left behind,” Reyes said, getting to his feet, his eyes distant in thought. “Which means they’ll have brought all their fighters. Which means that the councilwoman, whom they also have to protect, will be with them.”
“Yes, Great One,” Tur-uck said, grinning fiercely. “We attack?”
“We attack,” Reyes said. “Now.”
“Herzer.”
“Go, Sesheshet,” Herzer replied. It had taken twenty minutes to cut through the airlock doors, venting the engineering spaces in the process, but when they got into the vast space, the orcs had left.
“What looks like the entire remaining force just exited Control, headed for Engineering,” the private stated. “I can see Reyes and that elf-thing with them.”
“Got it,” Herzer said. “Hold your position and stay out of sight.”
“Will do.”
“Evan?” Herzer asked. “How long?”
The engines had been shut down again and the Tammens were being attached to the primary power feeds from the reactors. The field generators could extract the electrons directly from the power leads, shunting them through two fields to convert the power into zero point particle reactionless drive fields.
Theoretically.
“Just about there,” Evan said. “We’re initializing the neural feed now. Mistress Travante?”
Megan was sitting in a station chair, her eyes closed, but she waved a hand.
“I can see the power,” she whispered. “Boy, that’s a lot of power.”
“Careful with it,” Evan replied.
“It’s… raw,” Megan said, carefully. “It’s just… there. I’m not sure how to even manipulate it. Mother usually does most of the work. This is just… lots and lots of power.”
“Whoa!” Cruz said as he leaned sideways. It was as if the gravity in the room had suddenly shifted and he spread his feet to fight the disorientation. Sergeant Rubenstein lifted up off the ground and drifted forward, then just as abruptly dropped to the deck, swearing.
“Sorry,” Megan said, her eyes still closed. “I’m trying to sort of… grab the ship. And there’s not much feedback. I’m looking for something solid to grab onto, trying to find the structural members. It’s… weird.”
“Figure it out quickly, darling,” Herzer replied, calmly. “We’ve got company coming. Blood Lords, assemble at the blown door. We’ll hold them, there, until Megan gets control of the power. Team Cruz, then Van Krief, then Van Buskirk, then mine.”
“If it gets down to you, Layne and Yetta, it’s going to be ugly,” Van Buskirk said, quietly. “Any ideas what to do about the elf?”
“I do,” Nicole said, nodding. “Evan, Paul, I could use some help.”
“They’re going to be waiting for us at the door,” Reyes said as they approached the cut-out airlock. “Tragack, you go first. Clear out the resistance. Then a wave of scorpions, then Sharkack’s group then Tur-uck’s. I’ll go last.”
“Yes, Master,” the elf said, his stride widening to pass through the struggling orcs. When he got to the door, which was “down” from his perspective, he leaned over and looked through. On the far side of the second door a line of armored figures was waiting. They were standing in gravity, looking sideways from his perspective.
He reached down to grab the cut-away frame, intending to swing through both doors and into the line, and his hand clamped on the exposed copper power cable that had been laid around the inside of the door.
Nicole and Evan had cut away the top of the insulator and glued the lead to the inside of the frame, so the exposed copper was in direct contact with the underside of the Dark One’s metal gauntlet. The lead carried the full force of the internal power fusion generator, some ten megawatts, and the electricity coursed into the Dark One’s body through his armor. The internal suit insulation gave some resistance, but not much, and the Dark One let out an unheard howl of pain as his suit electronics fried and the internal materials began to burn around him. The coursing power had caused his hand to clamp and his muscles to jerk irregularly, yanking his boots loose from their magnetic hold, but there was no way he could let go of the door edge.
From Reyes’ perspective, the elf had simply frozen in place, floating away from the ship with his hand clamped on the door, but some of the nearer orcs began to apparently dance a jig as residual power spread onto the surface of the ship.
“Tragack?” Reyes said, stopping.
“Yi, yi, yi, yi!” Sharkack said, his communicator popping and squealing.
“What is happening?” Reyes shouted, holding his place.
“Breaker blew,” Evan said as the internal lights went off.
“Dark One’s still there,” Cruz said switching on his suit light, then shook his head as the huge armored figure’s hand released its deathhold on the door frame and drifted away. “Cancel. Elf’s done.”
“The main is well and truly fried,” Linda said, from the breaker panel. “It’ll take us a while to get power back on.”
“Still a bunch of orcs out there,” Cruz said as heads began to appear in the opening. “Die or drop time.”
“Herzer, this is Joie,” the pilot said. “You know the ship is wildly off course, right?”
“Stand by, Joie,” Herzer replied. “Evan, how far can Megan be from the power generators?”
“Oh, anywhere on this end of the ship,” Evan replied.
“Drop what you’re doing,” Herzer said. “Lieutenant Van Krief, pull your team back and head for the far side of Engineering and exit to port. Take the councilwoman and all the techs with you. This has just become a delaying action. Joie, how long to docking?”
“Ten, tw
elve minutes,” Joie said. “Herzer, the ship is headed for Earth on a degrading orbit. More like right smack dab at Earth at very high velocity. And it’s rotated so the main engines are pointed down. Not that they’ll stop it or anything.”
“We know,” Herzer said, gently prying the entirely introspective Megan out of her chair. “Just get docked. We have company and I’d appreciate some help.”
“Go!” Sharkack called as the first Durgar clambered into the airlock. “Get the humans!”
Reyes could see that they were headed towards Earth, now, since the ship had somehow gotten rotated with the engines down. He guessed that the pilot had done it in a desperate attempt to avoid a crash.
But they were getting close enough he had to wonder if he could connect to the New Destiny power systems. If he could, this fight would be over fast.
“Mother, are you out there?”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Ferdous Dhanapal thoroughly enjoyed fighting orcs. He’d liked fighting before the Fall, competing in boxing and martial arts but only if the pain circuits were dialed down. He just enjoyed beating the hell out of a tough opponent.
And these orcs weren’t exactly easy. The full suit of armor made them clumsy, but with their long halberds pushed forward, it was hard to get down to the suit. He’d flicked a magnet at them, fending off the halberds with his light buckler, but the suits weren’t magnetic.
He blocked one of the halberds up with the buckler and ducked under it, pushing another to the side and pinning two of the orcs against the back wall.
