The supply vehicle lurched forward before Jon gave the order.
The marines turned around and quickly lined up in rows. Some lay on their armored torsos. Some knelt behind them. The last line stood with weapons ready.
“Old Man,” Jon radioed.
“I’ve got the supply vehicles set up,” the sergeant radioed. “Is your firing line ready?”
“Roger that,” Jon said.
He went up and down the firing lines, inspecting the marines. He nodded at some, praised others and checked to make sure the man he’d shot still had a functional battlesuit.
“I’m sorry, sir,” the marine told him in a small voice.
Jon used an armored glove to clap him on the back. “Show me what you have, Marine. Kill me some alien buggers.”
“Sir, yes, sir,” the marine said his voice much firmer.
Soon, the last Black Anvils hurried to the firing line. The Old Man and the Centurion with their bravest squads ran fast for them. No doubt, the supply vehicles were hammering the approaching spheroids and drones in the other corridor.
Something shook the bulkheads. Maybe that was the supply vehicles detonating.
The last marines reached the firing line. The Old Man clanked near.
“Sir,” he said on the command channel. “Where are the alien tanks?”
“Behind us a ways,” Jon said.
“They’re not ready yet?” the Old Man asked.
“Soon,” Jon said.
The visor stared at Jon. Finally, the sergeant went to the firing line.
Less than five minutes later, a combined spheroid, human-drone assault attacked the firing line. For fifteen minutes, the line devoured munitions, killing altered Neptunians and blasting spheroids. The extent of the alien soldiery started making Jon sick. If they hadn’t deactivated the alien tanks, most of the regiment would be dead by now.
At the end of the fifteen minutes, Jon began to wonder if the firing line would survive. The aliens did not stop pouring at them. This would be a matter of sheer attrition blowing over them in time.
“This is it,” Jon said.
“My men are running low on ammo,” the Centurion said.
“Mine are too,” the Old Man said.
“Tell your marines to use their axes once they’re out of ammo,” Jon said. “We’re not leaving this line until we stop the enemy.”
The sergeants did not respond.
Some of the marines lying on their bellies pitched their weapons aside and unlimbered their axes.
Jon’s gut shriveled. He’d wanted to destroy the alien foe and save the Solar System. But the numbers, the awful numbers—
Shells flew over the firing line from behind, obliterating the next wave-assault of attackers.
Jon turned around along with many of the marines. As soon as they did, the men began cheering. Jon heard the sound reverberating in his helmet, and grew aware that he was cheering as loudly as any of the men.
Five alien tanks had snuck up behind the firing line. Those tanks now added their fire, some with shells and others with tri-barrel lasers.
The endlessness of the alien-modified soldiery proved to be an illusion against the firepower of the tanks. The rays swept away hundreds at a time. Spheroids blew apart in clumps from the shells.
It looked like the regiment was going to survive another enemy assault. Maybe they could still stop the alien invasion of the Solar System.
-17-
The regiment clacked down the corridor on the alien tanks and the last supply vehicle. Many of the marines drifted behind the tanks, held by tether lines, floating in the zero gravity.
The last trick was a risk. There was no doubt about that. Jon decided it was one of those smart gambling bets. Time was running out on their health. The stims and drugs could only keep them going for so long. Yeah, there were some seriously tough marines in the Black Anvils, but even tough men began to wither when they coughed up too much blood.
Gloria calculated that they had traveled two-thirds of the way to the center. That left something like sixteen-plus kilometers to go.
Jon rode on their last supply vehicle. Gloria and Da Vinci were back under its canopy.
The thief had taken apart his miracle weapon. The Neptunian seemed agitated about something by the way his thin fingers kept twitching. He unscrewed a part, used a wire-thin tool, causing a trickle of smoke to rise. The thief stiffened as he stared at the smoke.
Jon closed his eyes in frustration. Had Da Vinci just broken his miracle tool? A few seconds later, Jon looked down again.
Da Vinci had turned away from the partly unassembled miracle device. The thief hunched over his panel. He tapped, read, and tapped some more, repeating the process several times. The Neptunian seemed absorbed in whatever he was pondering. Finally, in apparent excitement, Da Vinci turned to the mentalist.
Gloria listened to him, and afterward, it seemed as if they argued. Da Vinci gestured wildly, throwing his narrow hands into the air. Jon couldn’t hear what she was saying, but it looked like she was holding her ground.
Jon felt exhausted, not so much physically or even mentally, but spiritually. He didn’t want to make any more command decisions. He didn’t want to shoot any more marines. He didn’t want to force frightened men to stand and fight to their deaths. Forcing his will over the men had drained something critical out of Jon.
It was good to just sit here and let the kilometers slip past. Soon, he thought, dreading the idea, he would have to psyche himself up again. He would have to use his will, forcing the men to obey his commands. Every time someone argued with him, he felt a little more of his psychic strength draining away.
His landline channel opened. He looked down through the canopy. Gloria and Da Vinci were staring up at him.
“He found another unique signal,” the mentalist said, jerking a thumb at the Neptunian.
“Yeah?” asked Jon.
“I think you should send someone to investigate it,” Gloria said.
“Is his wonder-weapon broken?” Jon asked.
Gloria seemed to search his eyes, even though he knew she couldn’t see them through his silver-colored visor.
“Broken might be too strong of a word,” she finally said. “The device is momentarily disassembled.”
“I can see that. Why did he do it?”
“Something is wrong with it,” she admitted.
Jon could feel some of his hope seep away. “Are you suggesting there’s another horror chamber nearby? We can go there and murder more humans?”
“This is war, Jon.”
“I know what it is, Mentalist. You don’t have to tell me.”
“Maybe I do,” Gloria said. “You’re tired. You can’t listen to your exhaustion any more than you can listen to your fears. That’s something your colonel would have said.”
Jon looked away, scowling. He was the captain. He led the regiment, what remained of it anyway. It had been more like a battalion for some time already. The point was that the Black Anvils were his responsibility. He’d fought for the right to lead them. That, therefore, was what he’d do until an alien shot him.
“Right,” Jon said. “It’s time for some fun. You ready to go, Da Vinci?”
“I’ve done enough,” the Neptunian said in a sulky voice. “Why can’t she go for a change? Why do I have to take all the risks?”
Jon was too weary to argue further. “Fine,” he said. “Gloria, are you ready?”
She raised her eyebrows at him. A moment later, she nodded. “Certainly,” she said. “Give me a few seconds to don my suit and come out.”
Jon called up Stark and told the sergeant to get his commandos ready. They had another side mission.
“You’re sure about this?” Stark asked.
Jon wasn’t sure. He wanted to rub his aching head. For a moment, in his mind’s eye, he seemed to see a man. Jon couldn’t quite recognize him, but the man was trying to tell him something. A fog or mist was too thick for him to see or hear t
he man’s words. Was the colonel trying to tell him something?
“Captain?” asked Stark. “Are you still on the channel?”
“I’m here,” Jon said wearily. “Are you ready?”
“But… Yes, sir,” Stark said. “I’ll meet you in five minutes.”
-18-
The coughing from radiation sickness began to irritate Jon, his own as well as Stark’s and the mentalist’s. Everyone was tired. Everyone had become cranky.
The commando team moved slowly through Brezhnev-sized corridors. Such small corridors were strange for the alien vessel. Was that a warning sign? Were they all too tired and dull to understand such warnings?
Jon hadn’t realized how much weaker he’d become until he felt himself sliding off an alien tank.
It was strange watching the others float along instead of walking with a magnetized tread. The truth was that they’d grown too weary to walk everywhere. Floating was much easier. The only problem was drifting off, their minds wandering as they floated through the maze of an alien vessel.
“Captain,” Stark practically shouted at him on the command channel. “Are you all right, sir?”
“I feel like crap, Sergeant.”
“Take a stim.”
“My mind’s cloudy enough.”
“It’s even worse when you feel too weak. Take a stim, sir. You’ll feel better for it.”
“Sergeant, I would like you to kindly keep to your own affairs and I will—”
“Jon!” It was Gloria.
“Huh?” he asked.
“Do what the sergeant says,” the mentalist told him. “Take the stim. You need the strength.”
“Why not,” he finally said. He pressed a switch, and the medikit hissed yet another stim-shot into his bloodstream.
Soon enough, the cooling sensation gave him more energy. It was funny. This time his mind didn’t feel as cloudy. His nose twitched, and his throat felt itchy, and he had a burning need to grab his gun and just start firing—
Jon squeezed his eyelids tightly together. He had to get hold of himself. The regiment relied upon him. If he failed, he’d have let down Colonel Graham.
Jon breathed deeply, pushed off a bulkhead—
“Captain,” Stark said. “We’re back here.”
As a bulkhead loomed before him, Jon shifted and magnetized his feet. He stopped himself, and nearly pulled a hamstring doing it. Finally, though, he turned around.
The others were floating before a hatch. Gloria had her tablet in front of the hatch, testing something.
“Right,” Jon said, feeling slightly foolish. He pushed off, and jerked to a halt. “I’ll turn off the boot magnets this time,” he told himself.
He jumped again, sailing toward them, determined to get his thoughts in order before he reached them. A feeling of shame had begun to make him feel ridiculous.
“There, Sergeant,” Gloria said.
“Stand back,” Stark growled. He raised a heavy tube. It glowed hot. He pushed the end of the tube against the spot Gloria indicated, which quickly grew hot. In moments, metal drifted off in clumps.
One of the commandos grabbed Jon, yanking him out of the way of a floating, jiggling metal globule.
“If that touches your suit,” Gloria said, “it will melt right through. The shock would probably kill you.”
The shame bit deeper in Jon. What was wrong with him? It felt as if his mind was shutting down.
Jon struggled to comprehend. Instead, his understanding of their actions grew dimmer and dimmer. He opened his mouth several times, wanting to ask them what they thought they were doing. He was the captain here. He was in charge.
The fog in his mind lifted briefly. He realized the commando team was in a long corridor. This one had hatches along the sides with a round porthole in each. Jon pulled away from a commando, peering into the porthole darkness. He chinned the on-switch for his helmet lamp, looking again. The sight shocked him.
A humanoid skeleton lay on an upright pad inside the chamber. Some kind of flickering energy field surrounded the skeleton.
“What’s going on?” Jon said. He got angry when none of them answered him. It finally dawned on him that he’d forgotten to turn on the comm channel.
“Mentalist,” Jon said.
“Yes, Captain,” she answered.
“What do you think you’re doing?”
“Following the signal, sir,” she said. “Da Vinci lent me his tablet.”
“What’s with the skeletons?”
“Aliens, I presume,” she said reasonably.
For some reason, the reasonableness made Jon mad. That fired up his adrenaline, which seemed to dissipate the fog around his mind.
“What’s wrong with me?” he asked Gloria on a secure channel.
“You’re dead tired,” she said.
“It’s more than that,” he said. “Am I dying?”
“There is that,” she said. “Yes. We’re all on timers. Yours seems to be shorting out sooner than some of ours.”
That hit him harder than he’d expected. This was a suicide mission. Still, knowing he was dying—
“Is this from radiation poisoning?” he asked.
“That’s part of it. I think there’s something else too. I’ve begun to wonder, though… Jon, your battlesuit indicators don’t lie. You don’t have much longer to live. Would you like to take a risk?”
He didn’t even think about it. “Yes.”
“It’s a big risk,” she warned.
“I don’t care.”
“You’re going to have to authorize Stark to obey me for a little while.”
A small part of him wondered if the aliens might have used Da Vinci’s stolen device to get to her. But if he was dying—
“Sergeant,” Jon said.
“Captain.”
“I want you to listen to the mentalist. She has an idea. I’m going to be the test rat.”
“What’s that mean?” asked Stark.
“Don’t ask so many questions, First Sergeant. Help her do this. I’m starting to feel…off again. Do you understand?”
Jon never heard the answer, as he took that moment to pass out.
-19-
He was so damned cold that he started shivering like crazy. He’d never been so cold, and the air was so thin. He coughed. He tried to rub his arms—
That’s when he realized that someone had taken him captive. He couldn’t move his arms, his legs or his head—someone had bolted it into place.
Aliens!
He remembered the rods screwed into the people’s heads. Was someone doing that to him?
Tears threatened to leak out, but he couldn’t let them. He would not cry. He would not give the cybernetic invaders the satisfaction.
As he thought that, it occurred to him that he wasn’t cold anymore. Was that odd? The air was still thin—
Agony lanced through him. He felt his muscles stretching to the limit. Involuntarily, his back arched like a bow. The agony continued to course through him. His muscles began to twitch wildly.
“Hold him down!” a woman shouted.
He recognized the voice, but couldn’t place her. Had he taken the woman to bed? He needed—
The agony increased. Worse, voices, strange, alien voices babbled in his head. They yammered as if asking questions. He wished they would shut up. He tried to yell back at them—
The voices increased. It became a torrent of speech. He understood nothing. Then, new sensations hit. He looked up and saw two suns in the sky. There should only be one sun. Wait just a minute. The sky was pink, not blue like Earth’s. Two suns in a pink sky? Was this an alien planet?
Fear paralyzed his thoughts. The whole time, the yammering voices kept haunting him. Scenes flashed before him. Bizarre box cities exploded and burned. Bat-winged aircraft flew against a monstrous thing high in the pink stratosphere. Beams rayed down, torching the earth. People ran screaming—
Jon did a double take. He’d never seen people like that.
They were big suckers with light green skin, green eyes and green—
The head on top of the cubic pyramid—was this some kind of alien history recording? The likelihood of that began to fascinate him. He wanted to know more, because if he knew more, he might learn enough to defeat the alien invaders of…of…
“Jon.”
The voice came from far away, farther even than the limit of the pink sky.
“Jon, you’re in the grip of a mind tap. I think it reversed on you. I’m going to have to tear you free. But you have to come back into your mind.”
What did that even mean? It sounded like mentalist gobbledygook. He’d heard the term mind-tap before. What did it mean, though?
His fear intensified. Aliens were trying to suck out his memories. He had to fight that. Yet, the voice had told him to come back.
He wasn’t sure how one was supposed to do that. Concentration! It was like chess. He’d played that a few times in police detention. There was the king, the queen—
He began to shiver. He felt cold again.
“Jon?” the mentalist shouted. She was much closer than before.
“Yeah?” he whispered.
“Now,” the woman said. “Do it now. I don’t know how much longer I can keep his awareness here.”
Wild pain, pain like fire in his heart caused Jon to open his eyes. He was in a strange room with weird machines aimed at him. He lay on a pallet, with straps holding him down. Worse, he lay naked on the table, with Gloria standing nearby seeing everything.
The pain finally subsided, though. He noticed several battlesuits watching him from the background.
“Jon,” Gloria said from in her spacesuit.
He felt so weary. “Yes?” he asked in a small voice.
“Release him,” she said. “It should be okay now.”
A hulking battlesuit approached. That had to be Sergeant Stark. Carefully, almost tenderly, the massive gloves plucked at the restraints, removing them one by one.
“Do you think you can climb back into your suit?” Gloria asked.
“I’ll give it my best shot,” Jon said. “What happened? How did you know how to use this equipment?”
Cybership Page 22
