Thunder & Lightning

by Christopher Nuttall

  And hope they’re not on a suicide mission, he added, in the privacy of his own thoughts. That would be…bad.

  * * *

  Master Sergeant Lee Madison, known as Weapon M to his friends, would have laughed if he had quite dared. He had spent nearly a month in the holding camp the Lunar rebels had constructed on the surface of the moon – a location, they had taken some pains to point out, completely vulnerable to outside fire, as well as requiring spacesuits, compressed air, and a lot of luck to escape. The five thousand people – American, Russian, Chinese and a handful of others – who had refused to swear allegiance to the new lunar government had been put in the camp and left there, until – they had been told – they could be shipped back to Earth. They hadn’t been mistreated, but the camp was boring; there was almost nothing to do, but play games and discuss the Human-Oghaldzon War…and the war that they were certain would be launched against the lunar rebels, once the first war was over.

  It seemed closer to over now…and Madison had been astonished when an emissary approached with the purpose of ending it…in the form of helping a group of rebels to operate the mass driver that had been modified into a weapon and placed near New Jamestown. The aliens had maintained five of their smaller warships near the moon; apparently, he gathered, the lunar rebels were taking out insurance against a human victory in the war. If the human fleet won, they wanted to be on the winning side, a task that would be tricky to pull off at just the right time.

  If they jumped too soon, angry aliens would come boiling down from L1, determined to extract a little revenge; if they jumped too late, the human fleet might want revenge for the earlier betrayal. He had worried that he was being tricked into assisting the aliens, but he had studied the target through the mass driver’s telescope; there was no way that that was a human ship. It was too large, for a start, and the drive unit was just…weird.

  “I have a targeting code,” Sally Garland said. Madison liked her – it was difficult not to like a girl who bounced around with a big smile, real competence, and sheer perkiness – but at the same time, he had to remember that she was pretty much one of his jailors. She might also die with him; USSF doctrine called for immediate suppression of anywhere launching missiles or mass-driven rocks at them, and there was no sign that the aliens disagreed. “They have cleared us to fire ASAP.”

  “Good,” Madison said. Someone with a very atypical sense of humour had designed the firing console; its sole control was a big red button. He turned the key under the panel, hearing a faint click as it locked into position. He held his hand over the button and smiled. “To the last, I grapple with thee; From Hell's heart, I stab at thee; for hate's sake, I spit my last breath at thee…”

  “Get on with it,” Sally snapped.

  Madison hit the button. The mass driver hummed and launched its load up towards the alien craft, circling only a few kilometres above the surface of the moon. He watched through the telescope as the load raced closer, the alien craft having almost no time to react as a hundred kilos of compressed mine tailings struck it amidships, blowing it to pieces and scattering debris towards the moon. He glanced briefly at the interlinked system; the other four spacecraft orbiting the moon had all been disposed of as well, shattering like bugs.

  The Oghaldzon had been driven from the moon.

  * * *

  “They turned on us,” Dataka protested, unable to fully grasp the scale of the disaster. “They just…” It seemed impossible to comprehend, but it had happened.

  “They changed sides,” Takalak said. “War Commander, we must win this battle and seal the Earth off from the universe…or destroy the human race.”

  The Human-Researcher, Oolane, spoke quickly. “You would destroy an entire race?”

  Takalak turned on her. “It’s them or us,” he snapped. “Who do you want to inherit the universe?”

  “War Commander,” Fanaya said, sharply. “You have to see this…”

  The image had already appeared on the display. Dataka saw…and stared, unable to believe his eyes at the impossible sight in front of him. It was just…impossible, but it had happened, somehow. He wanted to whimper, he wanted to end it all, somehow, but…it was just impossible.

  “I don’t believe it,” he said. “How can he be doing that?”

  Chapter Fifty-Seven: Armageddon, Take Four

  Earth-Moon Lagrange Point One

  They told jokes about the Space Marines, or at least the regular infantry Marines did; Sergeant First Class Gavin Reynolds had heard most of them during his training. Regular infantry claimed that their job was to destroy things overnight, while the Space Marines tended to use diplomacy as much as actually getting out there and getting to grips with the enemy. Accusations of Lack of Moral Fibre from groundpounders were met with charges of crayon-eating jarheads who couldn’t go anywhere but in a straight line, which in turn tended to lead to bar fights and punishment duty for any Marine unlucky enough to be caught by the MPs.

  It made sense, of course; on the ground, Wreckers couldn’t really screw up the Marines that much, while places like the lunar surface were a deadly trap for the unwary…or even Marines who had allowed themselves to fall into the trap of believing that their weapons and equipment made them unbeatable. The Space Marines would prefer to negotiate to a certain point; what was the use of putting down a rebellion on the moon when too much fighting would destroy necessary infrastructure and kill everyone?

  The Space Commandos were something different. Reynolds had started life as Marine, found his way into Force Recon and then been selected to try out for the Space Commandos. He had been delighted; very few from even Force Recon were given an opportunity at the implants and the augmentation…and not all of those survived the experience. Reynolds was SC#91; as far as he knew, there were only ‘somewhere around’ forty to fifty Space Commandos currently in service, at least as of when he had been trapped on board the alien craft. Who knew what had happened to the others?

  Samra had been, at least in part, delighted at the chance to know more about the aliens; Reynolds had been far less delighted. He had chafed under the alien restrictions, knowing that he was on the command ship, knowing that he could break out of the cell at any time… and knowing that if he tried, it would achieve nothing. He would have given anything to be able to detonate the small fusion cell emplaced somewhere within his body, but even if he managed to trigger it, he suspected that the blast wouldn’t be enough to destroy the alien ship. Even if it was, the aliens had come to the solar system with a hundred ships…and he had no idea how many others were still active.

  He forced himself to lie back as the aliens escorted Samra away and then returned to considering his plan. The attack on the fleet had to be serious; they hadn’t panicked like this when the first attacks had commenced, or even when the Russians had struck at their motherships. He liked Samra – his neural implant obligingly responded to his half-serious cue and displayed one of the images it had stored of her naked body – and even, in his way, loved her, but he knew not to take it too seriously. They had been forced together into one room; it could either have ended with them becoming lovers, or deadly enemies who hated each other. He had already scribbled a short note in Arabic for her; all he had to do now was put his plan into action. He was tense, nervous…but his courage had never been in question; all that mattered now was success…or failure.

  The door was locked magnetically; one of his sensors had recorded the exact level of the charge holding it together and prepared an exact electromagnetic counter-charge. He took a long breath – the aliens had sonar, which suggested that already knew all about his augmentations – and triggered the pulse, hearing a click as the door unlocked and then a hiss as it opened. He would have preferred to interface directly with the computers in the spacecraft – and on a human ship, or in a bad movie he would have been able to do just that – but that was impossible; the handful of snippets he had picked up from the alien datanet had been completely incomprehensible. T
he aliens used different technologies at every layer of their networking stack, if they even thought in those terms to begin with. He’d have to rely on his wits and his implants.

  A clicking sound assailed him as he pulled himself through the opening hatch, coming face to rear with a very surprised Oghaldzon, who was spinning around to bring a toy-like weapon to bear. Reynolds didn’t hesitate; he fired a pulse from his hand directly into the Oghaldzon’s head, watching as the alien cartwheeled backwards and slammed into the bulkhead as his brain jangled and collapsed. He didn’t understand how the weapon worked – it was an assassin’s weapon, not something a Marine would normally use - but it was sufficient to kill a human being at close range by disrupting the brain’s electromagnetic fields. He had prayed that it would have a similar effect on the lone Oghaldzon.

  He glanced down at the alien’s weapon, hefted it, and then realised that it would be useless unless he had two more arms. He broke it instead and swam rapidly along the corridors, following the route he had memorised ever since they had been brought on board the Seeker for Truth. A soft voice at the back of his head suggested trying to find Samra, but it would take far too long and he knew very little about the interior of the alien starship. By now, they had to know that he had killed one of their people; if they were anything like the USSF, they would have sensors inserted in their guards to let others know if they died or went missing.

  He pulled himself along faster and faster, crashing into the new group of Oghaldzon almost before he saw them. The aliens were just as surprised; two of the three lost their grips on the corridor’s "floor" by the force of the impact, while the third swung up his weapon to aim it at Reynolds. It would have been dangerous in a gravity environment; in zero-gravity, it was easy for Reynolds to bring his hand down with all the force of his augmented arms, smashing the dome-like head.

  The fight was short, sharp, and completely uneven. The second Oghaldzon tried to catch on to him with four arms, each weaker than a human arm, but together formidably strong, while the third Oghaldzon kicked him with one of his forelegs, somehow attaching himself to the roof like a Rockrat child. Reynolds struck the third Oghaldzon with a second pulse, cursing the requirement to use too much of his secret weapon, while pulling his arms back and breaking three of the second Oghaldzon’s arms. The alien emitted a horrible keening sound and fell back, drifting down the corridor.

  Rear-echelon mother fucker, Reynolds thought without heat. The aliens would have most of their experienced soldiers down on the planet below. A red beam of laser light flickered between his legs – that would have disappointed Samra if it had been an inch higher, he thought irrelevantly – as a fourth Oghaldzon appeared behind him, either luckier, smarter, or with just more experience than his predecessors.

  Reynolds fired a pulse back and didn’t stop to see if it had worked; the airlock was just ahead of him. The strange compartment was just the same as it had been when they had been brought aboard; he threw himself into it and sent a magnetic pulse into the system. As he had expected, the hatch slid closed, trapping him; everything depended now on the aliens deciding to leave him in the airlock long enough for him to complete the next stage of his plan.

  “Got it,” he muttered, as he checked the outer edge of the airlock. Like human airlocks, it wasn't built as strong as the hull, just in case it had to be blown open. SOP on human spacecraft was always to dock at the airlock unless the damage was great enough to make the effect wasted; it was clear the Oghaldzon agreed. He was tempted to search for a copy of the flight storage module, but that would be pressing his luck; the Oghaldzon wouldn’t leave that anywhere near a human. “Now…”

  The Oghaldzon had left him in the airlock, probably concluding he had trapped himself or that he was about to commit suicide; either way, he doubted they would be too keen on coming after him for a while. In their place, he would have pumped out the air and let him suffocate, but they seemed content to keep their pet human alive, just for the moment. The airlock release was right there; perhaps they expected him to use it…

  He pulled it. It was surprisingly easy, built for a single Oghaldzon hand, not for a human, even one without augmentation. He closed his natural eye as the airlock vented, the magnetic field generated in the soles of his feet keeping him firmly in place, as he walked out of the airlock and onto the surface of the Seeker for Truth. The cold reached out for him, but his implants kept it at bay; he had time enough to do some real damage. The first step was simple; he lifted his arm and transmitted a signal, telling the attackers, whoever they were, that the Seeker for Truth was the command ship.

  A bright light blossomed in the distance, a nuclear detonation, perhaps the grave of a spacecraft. He ignored it and kept walking. It was only a few kilometres to the engines…and by then, the Oghaldzon would have gotten over their shock and sent out their own Space Commandos to kill him. He was quite looking forward to the struggle.

  * * *

  “We’re picking up a signal,” Cindy snapped. “There’s…a human spy, somehow, on one of the alien craft…and he’s identified the flagship for us!”

  “I don’t believe it,” Ellsworth said. The battle wasn't going well; the second line of alien warships were more than holding their own and he was having to grind his way through them, ship by ship. If losses continued at the current rate, he wouldn’t have enough missiles left to take on the motherships. “Can you confirm it?”

  “The code is a current one,” Cindy said. “It’s a very high-spec code; if we didn’t have some other black-op elements out here, I doubt we would have recognised it. That proves nothing, of course; I could forward it to Earth to see if they know anything?”

  “Do so,” Ellsworth said, leaning forward. The moon changing sides had surprised the Oghaldzon, he guessed; four of their ships had been rushed out of the second force to intercept the Lightning Roasted Lemur and the Ferret on Crack, both of which had then made the sensible move of altering course again, skimming the gravity well of Earth with the obvious intent of slingshotting back to the Belt. He didn’t begrudge them that; they had served their purpose and carried out the deception mission with considerable skill. “Show me the suspected flagship?”

  The display changed. Ellsworth studied it with a critical eye; there was nothing too suspicious about the location of the alien flagship. It was one of the largest craft, using its point defences and missiles to join the fight, but definitely hanging back from the main force. He scowled; it was a plausible candidate for the alien flagship, damn it! Targeting it would extract a little revenge for the loss of Admiral Waikoloa and the Enterprise, but what if it was a deception? There was no reason why the Oghaldzon couldn’t be as sneaky as humans, was there?

  “I have a response from America,” Cindy said, her voice sharp. “They’re claiming that the code is from a person known to be on board the alien craft, a Space Commando that they sent to the Welcome Fleet. And – get this – they’re claiming that he can survive for an hour in space without a suit!”

  “Lucky bastard,” Ellsworth said. “If I’d known that was possible, I would have suggested that we add it to the price for helping to crew the fleet.”

  He looked down at the display, rapidly tapping up orders. “I want a third of our remaining ships to concentrate on targeting the alien flagship,” he said. “The remainder are to cover that attack by targeting the closest alien warships and their point defence systems.”

  His teeth clenched. Whatever else happened, the aliens would not forget this day.

  * * *

  Samra almost cried out as she saw the incredible picture, a chilling reminder of how she had escaped the destruction of the Neil Armstrong and the remainder of the Welcome Fleet. Reynolds – her Reynolds, the man who had become her lover – was striding over the hull of the Seeker for Truth, naked, without a care in the world. The bridge was deathly silent; Samra guessed that whatever technologies had made Reynolds the man he was had never occurred to the Oghaldzon.

  The alie
n leader looked at her. “How is he doing that?”

  “I have no idea,” Samra said, honestly. Her arms hurt from being firmly pinned behind her and she was grimly aware that she was likely to break bones if the Seeker for Truth had to make some sudden manoeuvres, but she still managed to look as proud as she could. Her mother had been able to manage a look that had silenced the tongues of telemarketers; she drew on all that experience to present herself to the alien. He probably hadn’t even noticed. “He survived an exposure to vacuum before…”

  The image was changing. “They have dispatched a repair drone to kill him,” Oolane said, softly. Samra would have sold her soul, at that moment, to understand what the aliens were clicking away to each other. Ibis – just like a devil – didn’t appear to tempt her with such an offer. “What is he doing out there?”

  “I don’t know,” Samra said. She would have tried to hug the alien if she could. “Can’t you stop them from killing him?”

  “He is a dangerous fanatic,” Takalak snapped. Samra was starting to really dislike him; the alien had a bad case of humanity. The image changed again; Reynolds was lifting his hand towards the camera, sending the image flickering before it returned to normal. “He is also armed with a focused electromagnetic neuroscrambler. He is too dangerous…”

  “No,” Samra screamed, too late. The display showed Reynolds’ glowing red…and then disintegrating into pieces as the laser beam tore through him. “What have you done?”

  She tried to kick Takalak, but the alien was well out of her reach; she wanted to break the bonds and hurt him, avenging her lover. She tried to control herself, all too aware of the tears drifting off her face and floating across the room; she hoped, with a vengeful fury that both surprised and terrified her, that one of them would drift into a console and cause a feedback reaction that would destroy the ship. Cold logic suggested that wouldn’t happen; if the aliens were prepared to have sperm cells drifting around, a few tears wouldn’t harm the equipment.