Assault Troopers

by Vaughn Heppner

  After three hops, I slid my arm off Dmitri’s shoulders and leaned against a station. I carefully put weight on my right foot. My knee throbbed and I clenched my teeth until the pain lessened to something bearable. I realized N7 talked to me.

  “Say that again,” I said.

  “It is nothing,” he said. “Observe.”

  The screen came online. It showed the colony world, with a close-up on what must have been a surface missile base. Hundreds of launchers smoked and there were craters galore. Smears dotted the desert-scape. I didn’t want to think about those being Lokhars. Space war was brutal. To the dead and injured, maybe every war was.

  “Can you change the scenery to something—?”

  It changed as I spoke. The baroque screen showed the battlejumpers. The Jelk craft approached the colony world. Behind the big vessels followed Starkien beamships. Farther behind floated wrecks: beam- and missile-destroyed hulks drifting in space.

  Out of curiosity, I started counting the destroyed vessels.

  N7 spoke before I finished. “Five battlejumpers destroyed or rendered unnavigable. Eight Starkien beamships are in a similar condition.”

  Beams still flashed out there. N7 managed to widen the view. The guardian fleet still existed, but it had shrunk to about one quarter of its original size. The Lokhars retreated. As they did, they beamed and launched drones or missiles at the battlejumpers. The tigers sped toward us, maybe hoping to use the planet as a shield. Three planetary beams still worked. I couldn’t spot any fighters for either side, nor did any more missiles lift from the planet’s surface.

  As far as I could tell, nothing launched or beamed out of the PDS. We’d rendered it inoperable or at least ineffectual for the moment.

  “Are there more Lokhars flying up here from the surface?” I asked.

  N7 scanned his controls. As he did, the screen showed the planet and then swiveled around as if it was a searching eye looking for spacecraft.

  “There,” N7 said. “I count five vessels. Given their size—approximately nine or ten thousand more Lokhar legionaries are lifting from the surface and coming here.”

  “Those are big ships,” I said.

  “Why don’t the Jelk beam them for us?” Ella asked.

  N7 glanced at the scientist. “We have achieved our purpose: rendering the PDS useless. We are thus expendable. Now might be our last window of opportunity for us to escape.”

  “I’ve been thinking,” I said. “And I have an idea. First, I want to know if there are any more of those teleporting blast-craft in the PDS.”

  “I have already explained to you why your idea of using them is futile,” N7 said.

  “I have a new wrinkle,” I said. “I’m sure you’re going to try to shoot it down, though.”

  “How does one shoot an idea?” N7 asked.

  “It’s an expression,” I said.

  “Yes, of course,” N7 said. “I should have known. What is the idea?”

  “First, are there any more of those teleport-ships here?”

  N7 hesitated, and he didn’t bother looking down at the controls.

  “Okay, there is,” I said.

  The android twisted sharply, staring at me. “I did not say—”

  “Save it,” I said. “You’re an open book to me, android. So lying is futile, if you know what I mean?”

  “I comprehend, yes.”

  “Where are these teleporting vessels?” I asked.

  “You are suicidal,” N7 said, “which explains your fixation on the craft. They cannot help us. The Starkiens will beam them once we appear near the Jelk fleet.”

  “No,” I said. “They won’t.”

  “Your certainty leads me to believe you are badly misinformed.”

  “Where are the craft?” I asked.

  “There are several in a nearby hangar bay,” N7 said. “However, given their location, it means they are inoperative.”

  “No, it means they were in the shop getting fixed when the Jelk fleet appeared. I’m betting we can use one.”

  “Do you not understand—?”

  “Shut up for a minute,” I said. “You’re smart, but you don’t have imagination. You aren’t creative like a man. We pack as many of us as we can in one, right? Then we engage the teleport capability. First, though, we disengage or rip out the antimatter bomb. It can’t help us. Instead of teleporting outside the battlejumper, we’re going to teleport inside it.”

  “Impossible,” N7 said.

  “Because the electromagnetic field will stop us?” I asked.

  “Negative. The shield will not stop such a vessel.”

  I rubbed my hands together. “So it is possible,” I said. “I’ve always thought it was a good idea. I never understood why Kirk—”

  “Theoretically, your idea has merit,” N7 said. “But there are too many imponderables. Firstly, to guess the correct coordinates at precisely the right moment has a nearly zero percent chance of success. You would need your fabled deity’s help in order to do it.”

  “Okay, it’s hard to do,” I said. “I’m getting that. What else could go wrong?”

  “Suppose we could appear inside another ship,” N7 said, “the chances are great that much of our vessel would simply meld with the other’s inner ship structures. Consider it this way. If you teleported into a brick wall, you would die instantly because your body cannot survive in brick.”

  “Okay, some of us will die, but not all, right?”

  “You are a monomaniac and you are insane,” N7 said.

  “Don’t fog the issue,” I said. “This is our single chance to free mankind. It’s a long shot. Well, I’ll take a longshot versus nothing. Or as Dumb and Dumber said, ‘So you’re saying I have a chance.’ Okay, I’m going to take that chance and whoever will volunteer can come.”

  “Count me in,” Rollo said.

  “And I as well,” Ella said.

  “Any more objections, N7?” I asked.

  “Yes,” the android said. “Suppose one puts in precisely the correct coordinates at the right instant of time. The teleporting craft successfully appears inside the battlejumper. Parts of both ships meld together. There is also this to consider. The Lokhar craft started at a stationary position and will still be stationary as it appears in the battlejumper. The Jelk ship has momentum. It is moving. The teleported ship will act as a wrecking ball inside the battlejumper, until enough mass propels the Lokhar vessel to the same velocity as the Jelk craft.”

  I frowned, trying to follow his explanation. “Hmm, it sounds complicated—”

  “The android is essentially correct,” Ella said.

  “So if we can do all this,” I said. “And if we survive the teleporting itself, we might wreck the battlejumper beyond repair?”

  As N7 folded his arms across his chest, keeping his hands over his biceps, he said, “I have repeatedly stated: your plan is impossible.”

  “What can we do to improve our odds?” I asked.

  “Chose a more reasonable plan,” the android said.

  “No,” I said. “I have to get aboard Claath’s vessel.”

  “You cannot rescue Jennifer,” N7 said. “You will have to recognize this limit and make a new plan.”

  “I’m thinking about the freighter codes in Claath’s head,” I said. “I have to get to the little prick. That’s the key to my entire plan. If we leave, just escape through a Lokhar vessel, Claath might decide Earthers are too much trouble. He empties the freighters, killing everyone.”

  “Once you have Claath and his battlejumper, then what?” N7 asked.

  “That’s a big if,” I said, “but that’s the endgame. That’s the goal: getting Claath and his battlejumper. Afterward, we escape.”

  “And the Jelk fleet follows you back to Earth and enacts fierce retribution for what you—a beast—has done,” N7 said.

  “No plan is perfect.”

  N7 shook his head. “You want to save your race. If you attempt a suicidal plan but it cannot save them even
if you succeed, why bother with it in the first place?”

  “He has a point,” Ella said.

  “We don’t go straight back to Earth,” I said.

  “What happens to the freighters?” N7 asked.

  I bared my teeth. This was an impossible situation. But then so had been my position in Antarctica. “We have two choices,” I said, “we take the last humans elsewhere or we clean up our planet.”

  “How do you propose to clean up the bio-terminator?” Ella asked.

  “The aliens gave us the problem,” I said. “So the aliens will have to give us the solution.”

  “Meaning what in reality?” Ella asked.

  “Are there cleansing agents that will render the bio-terminator inert?” I asked the android.

  “I would think so,” N7 said.

  “There you go,” I told Ella. “We find the antidote.”

  “Do we buy it?” Ella asked.

  “Buy it, steal it, whatever we have to do to get the antidote,” I said. “But that’s all moot. We have to get Claath in order to get the freighter codes. I imagine they’re rigged to blow.”

  “A rational thought,” N7 said, agreeing.

  “Right,” I said. “We get Claath, the only Jelk I know who even cares about Earth. Then we use his battlejumper to affect our escape.”

  “What about the other battlejumpers and the Starkien beamships?” Ella asked.

  “That’s why we have to do this while the battle still rages,” I said. “The Jelk are clearly winning, but these Lokhars fight until the last man, last tiger. If nothing else, we pretend we’re half destroyed, that Claath’s battlejumper is heavily damaged.”

  “We may not have to pretend,” N7 said.

  “I’m going to do this,” I said. “You others agreed to help me. What about you, N7?”

  “Do I have a choice?” the android asked.

  “That’s an interesting question,” I said. “I’d like to debate it, but we don’t have the time. As you’ve said, the window of opportunity is closing. We have to dive through. I’d like this decision to be of your own free will. We need your expertise. I don’t see who else can fly the teleport ship, if it works, and fly the Jelk battlejumper afterward.”

  “You also need someone to compute the teleportation to perfection,” N7 said. “None of you has the capacity to do so.”

  “You can see then why I need you,” I said.

  “I understand perfectly,” N7 said. “Yet that has no bearing on my desires or goals.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “That is a problem. But it’s the only way you will ever truly be free: if you join us for real. What’s your decision?”

  N7 glanced around the packed room. Bio-suited Earthers watched him, every one of them armed to the teeth.

  “It would appear I would be afforded greater freedoms if I chose to join you of my own free will,” N7 said. “Then again, I cannot expect a reasonable answer out of you now. Your need is too great. I hesitate, but I cannot hesitate any longer. Very well, I agree to join you. It is the only sensible choice.”

  “Watch him,” I told Rollo.

  Rollo nodded.

  Then I smiled through my visor at N7. “Welcome aboard, mate. We’re glad to have you.” I held out my hand, and I half-expected the android to ask me what this signified. Instead, he reached out, and N7 squeezed. I squeezed back, shaking hands on our temporary deal.

  -24-

  Time had become our enemy. Lokhar cargo vessels headed up from the surface, likely carrying more legionaries. The combined Jelk and Starkien fleet neared, demolishing the dwindling Lokhar guardian fleet. Knowing all that, we raced through the shuddering planetary defense station.

  More explosions shook the monstrous edifice. Girders crashed around us and wild flares of light burst into existence. Hard radiation made our bones ache. If we succeeded, we’d have to soak in the healing tanks for some time.

  Luckily, N7 proved himself worth more than his weight in gold. The android had become priceless. He showed us the route we needed, and we burst into the largest hangar bay so far.

  “There,” the android said, pointing. “Those are the teleporting antimatter bomb-ships.”

  They appeared to be giant ball bearings, smooth, with alien Lokhar script all over them like prison tattoos. I looked for the pyramid with the lidless eye symbol, couldn’t find it but saw a kind of 60’s peace sign on one. The ball bearings came in two sizes: one, about a Navy destroyer in mass, and the other like a WWII PT boat.

  I glanced around. Both our legions had taken ghastly casualties, mine having gotten the worst of it. I’d say there were five hundred of us left. Five hundred angry and increasingly worried humans near the end of their tethers.

  I told the other legion assault leader to setup a perimeter defense. Then I climbed into the biggest teleportation bomb-ship with N7, Rollo and Ella.

  “Start talking, N7,” I said. “What do we have to do?”

  “Antimatter bombs are finicky devices,” the android said. “The Lokhars have only recently developed them.”

  “Save the explanations for your memoirs,” I said. “We need to start acting.”

  “Reasonable,” N7 said. “Follow me.”

  We did, with itchy trigger fingers. The android didn’t believe in our quest, and he had science on his side, the odds against this succeeding. I began to wonder if N7 was right. Maybe we’d be better off to try to slip away in a stolen spaceship—race around the planet, using it as a shield as we fled to the nearest jump route.

  An old military maxim came to my rescue. A key to success in battle was to make a decision—good or bad—and to stick with it. Being wishy-washy during a fight led to death or defeat or possibly both.

  “No,” I said.

  “What was that?” Ella asked.

  “Just thinking aloud,” I said.

  Rollo turned around and gave me a stare. I gave him the thumbs up.

  The teleporting bomb-ship had narrow, curving corridors. They seemed to go on and on like a maze. Finally, N7 led us into a large area.

  “That,” he said, “is the antimatter bomb. It needs to be removed.”

  The mass was welded into the center of the chamber, a heap of cores, tubes and cubes.

  “Leave that to me,” I said. “The rest of you stay with N7. Find the control chamber and start computing.”

  They left. I raced back and gathered one of my maniples. Together, we broke pieces and smashed the thing loose, risking detonation. It didn’t. Assault troopers shuffled out of the chamber, each carrying heavy parts. Altogether, it took us ten minutes to clear the bomb-ship of the antimatter device.

  “The Lokhar reinforcements have landed on the PDS,” Assault Leader Smith-Bell told me through a comm channel. “It’s only a matter of time before they find out where we’re hiding.”

  “Have you located our other legion?” I asked.

  “Nothing,” the assault leader said. “I think they’re all dead.”

  “What about Saurian legions?” I asked.

  “Also nothing,” he said. “We’re alone in this thing, alone with the tigers.”

  His words struck me hard. The assault leader had a deep commander’s voice. I felt terribly alone. There were three planetary defense stations in the Sigma Draconis system. We were in one of them. If the Jelk took off, we’d be tiger lunch.

  “Keep me posted,” I said.

  “Roger,” the assault leader replied.

  I turned to the firstman of the maniple. “Do you have things under control?”

  “Yes, sir,” he said.

  I hurried through a different hatch, heading deeper into the bomb-ship. “Rollo, how are things going, and where are you?”

  He gave me directions until I popped through another hatch and found the troopers circling N7. The android’s fingers blurred over controls. He kept looking up at a small screen. I turned around, spying it. The screen centered on a single approaching Jelk battlejumper.

  “What’s the sc
ore?” I asked.

  N7 looked at me. Several heartbeats passed before he said, “Oh, I understand the reference. Give me five more minutes.”

  “Make it three,” I said. With that, I rushed back through the curving corridors. I began shouting orders through the comm channels. About half of the troopers had already filed aboard the bomb-ship.

  The assault leader came online. “Are you ready?” he asked me.

  “It’s go time,” I said. “Leave everything and join us.”

  “The tigers know where we are.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” I said. “We’re leaving.”

  “No, old son,” the assault leader said in his deep voice. “I don’t trust that piece of tiger technology. I’m keeping a few of the boys with me who feel likewise.”

  “Assault Leader,” I said. “There’s no time for heroics—”

  “I’m sorry, old boy, but I wouldn’t call it heroics. The tigers are coming, and this is our chance to free Earth, to save humanity.”

  The truth was I needed somebody to guard our rear. If the tigers made it into the hangar bay before we teleported away, humanity was toast.

  “Are you sure about this?” I asked.

  “Who’s sure about anything?” he asked. “I’m sick of licking the Jelk’s hand, and these tigers have killed too many fine lads. I say sod these bastards and the horses they rode in on. I’m staying and I’m killing these oversized aliens.”

  “Good luck, Assault Leader—God bless you,” I added.

  “You make me a promise, old boy. You promise me to free the Earth from the alien heel and you make sure we come out on top.”

  I swallowed. “I’m not sure I can.”

  “Promise me. Do this thing. You’re our last hope, Creed. You succeed no matter what it costs you.”

  Those were damning words. I didn’t want to promise, because this was all a crazy long shot anyway. My favorite moment in the movie Matrix was where the agents first captured Neo. They threatened him as Neo sat in the chair listening. Finally, Neo looked at them and said, “First, I’m going to give you the finger.” Then he proceeded to flip them off.

  That’s what I was doing here. I was giving these aliens the finger. I was a man, not a beast, and I’d live my last moments fighting the universe for the noble cause of human survival. Now the assault leader wanted to place a heavy burden on me, demanding I succeed no matter what?