Battlestations

by S. M. Stirling

  Unzipping one of the bags, Harvey eased out a plasma gun and checked its charge level. The small needle in the dial set into the stock swung up to the top of the green band. Even on maximum power, he had a hundred shots before he’d have to replace the magazine. He set the firing selector to three-round burst, switched off the safety, and opened the door.

  The smell was overpowering, a rotten, fetid, decaying stench that caused Harvey to double over in a retching spasm that sprayed his lunch across the floor of the container. Struggling to stand up, he dragged his sleeve across his tear-filled eyes, blinking hard to see what was in the room.

  The room was filled with long, narrow tables about chest height, covered with plastic trays filled with rotting compost. Floating in the semi-liquid slime were hundreds of rusty ivory-colored oblongs, bobbing gently up and down in the decaying filth.

  Skulls, Harvey thought. Probably all that’s left of the bodies of the Fleet Marines who owned the gear in the other room.

  Just then one of the skulls floated to the surface of the liquid compost and slowly rotated toward Harvey, a trail of black slime wrapping itself around its forehead. Harvey watched in morbid fascination, at any moment expecting the empty eye sockets to fix him with their hollow stare. The skull slowly turned and then sank back into the ooze. It took Harvey a full minute to realize that the skull didn’t have a face. It couldn’t. It was an egg.

  For some reason, the realization that he was looking at an egg didn’t surprise Harvey in the least. He had come to the hen house to find—

  The high-pitched whining started again, interrupting his thoughts. Rising and falling, it seemed to be calling something, as if it expected an answer.

  Harvey moved forward in the semidarkness, edging his way toward the keening sound. As he moved between the tables he saw the eggs rising and falling to the tempo of the whining sound, almost as if they were children responding to a lullaby. The whining increased, and from the tables Harvey could hear a clicking sound as the eggs tapped against one another.

  And lower, beneath the sound of the whining and the tapping, there was a scratching sound. The sound a cat makes when it is scratching at the door to be let out.

  Crack.

  Harvey spun around at the sound, ready to blast anyone behind him.

  Crack.

  This time it was next to Harvey, and as he continued to back down the aisle he watched the eggs on the table next to him rise and fall, rise and fall, in time to the whining sound that seemed to be filling the room.

  Crack.

  A dark fissure appeared on one of the eggs, a musty red fluid seeping out.

  Crack. Another fissure appeared, and a tiny hand with three opposed digits poked its way through the crack, picking at the shell, trying to get out.

  The crooning stopped, and for a moment the only sound was the tapping and cracking of the eggs. Then a shrill scream exploded behind Harvey. Instantly he spun around and found himself less than three meters from a female Ichton.

  Instinctively Harvey pulled the trigger, and three rounds slammed into the Ichton’s chest, sending it staggering back against the wall. Harvey turned to run and knocked over one of the tables, sending the eggs crashing to the floor in a welter of liquid compost. The female reared on her hind legs, screaming furiously at Harvey, and launched herself at him.

  Diving under a table, Harvey slipped in a gooey mass of compost and Ichton hatchlings and slid into another table. Giving a might heave against the leg of the table he sent it tumbling down, its precious eggs smashing as they hit the floor of the container. The hatchlings squirmed on the floor, squeaking in agony as they tried to burrow into the compost for warmth.

  The female Ichton bent down and moved forward, trying to scoop up as many hatchlings as she could and place them in the compost trays between the still intact eggs. Harvey watched her through the targeting system of his plasma weapon. He could see three closely spaced wounds on her upper thorax, one of which seemed to be suppurating, the result of having partially penetrated the Ichton’s exoskeleton.

  Harvey lay perfectly still, waiting for a clear shot at one of the Ichton’s powerful legs. On the targeting system the room seemed as bright as the cargo decks outside, and Harvey was just squeezing off his shot when he felt something jab into his leg.

  His shot went wide, with only one round even grazing the Ichton’s leg. Looking down as he scuttled closer to the door, Harvey saw a hatchling hanging on to his pants leg, trying to stab him with a shard of eggshell. He scraped it off with his boot, its still-soft exoskeleton popping as he crushed it against the wall.

  The female continued to busy herself rescuing hatchlings, and seemed to be ignoring Harvey, despite the injury to her leg. Propping himself up into a crouch, Harvey brought his weapon up to his shoulder. Scanning over the female Ichton, he tried to decide where he was the most apt to kill her with his next shot when he heard a faint whining sound behind him.

  Jerking around, Harvey fired in the direction of the sound, just a heartbeat before the second Ichton let loose a blast from its weapon. The three slugs struck the Ichton under the chin, throwing her own aim wildly off. The spray of micro-slugs from her weapon ricocheted off the wall of the container and flew around the inside of the hen house like a swarm of angry hornets. As she fell forward, her lifeless hulk crashed into two more of the tables, smashing more of the eggs onto the floor.

  Leaping to his feet, Harvey dashed to the door, firing over his shoulder in blind panic as he went. Behind him the remaining Ichton screamed as it bounded on in pursuit, apparently oblivious to its wounds. Harvey slipped and fell as he ran past the body bags filled with weapons, sprawling full-length on the floor of the container. The Ichton became tangled in its own legs trying to squeeze through the narrow doorway, giving Harvey barely enough time to scramble to his feet and stumble into the courtyard.

  For a brief moment Harvey considered shooting the Ichton as it came out of the container, but a voice at the kitchen door changed his mind.

  “Harvey!” Frosty shouted. “This way!”

  Bounding to the door, Harvey grabbed Frosty by the arm and dragged her across the kitchen.

  “We’ve gotta get out of here! Which way to the door?” he demanded.

  “Ooo, Harvey,” Frosty cooed. “You’re so forceful!”

  “The door!” Harvey barked. “Where the hell is it?”

  “There.” Frosty pointed to a thick-necked Telluran who stood blocking the door to the Club. “Behind him.”

  “Move it, pygmy!” Harvey yelled, covering the seven-foot-tall tower of muscle that blocked his way.

  “You’re bug meat, pal,” the Telluran said, drawing a slug gun from under his cook’s apron. “You and—”

  Harvey fired twice, the six slugs from his weapon blasting a hole in the Telluran big enough to step through.

  “Come on,” he shouted, dragging Frosty over the smoldering remains of the Telluran. “We’ve—”

  Harvey’s voice was drowned out by Frosty’s scream as the Ichton pushed its way into the kitchen.

  “Go, go, go!” he shouted, pushing Frosty through the door and into the Club. “I’ll cover you!”

  He swung the muzzle of his weapon up and fired three quick bursts from the hip.

  The Ichton slowed slightly in its advance and looked around the kitchen, blinking its honeycombed eyes. Unable to distinguish the exact shapes of Harvey and Frosty, the Ichton sprayed the room with a burst of automatic fire, unleashing a torrent of micro-slugs that ripped through the kitchen like a buzz saw. Harvey dived clear, and rolling behind the bar for cover got off another burst at the Ichton.

  Two of the plasma slugs grazed past the Ichton, but the third slammed into its left front leg, shattering the insectoid’s knee. The Ichton reared up in pain, its finger still on the trigger sending a full-auto burst into the ceiling of the kitchen. Bellowing in agony, the Ichton came forward on three legs, scuttling sideways like a wounded crab.

  Harvey dashed acr
oss the Club and made a dive for the door, rolling onto his shoulder as he hit the floor, coming up with his weapon blazing as the Ichton leaped toward him.

  “This way!” Frosty shouted, holding open the door that led from the container to the cargo deck.

  Firing a burst over his shoulder, Harvey raced out of the con tainer and onto the deck. There, not twenty meters away, was his forklift.

  Harvey sprinted past Frosty as he raced to the forklift. “Go get Security!” he shouted as he climbed into the cabin of his machine.

  Hitting the starter, he swung the forklift around to face the container that had been used as a shuttle for the Club. Running forward, he hit the tractor beam and locked in on the container. He was just about to hoist it aloft when a slug crashed into the frame next to his head.

  Diving for cover, Harvey threw himself off the forklift and onto the cargo deck. Bone cracked as he hit the ground, and a blinding pain seared up his arm. Struggling to get up, his broken arm dangling at his side, Harvey heard Forsythe’s voice coming from near the entrance of the Club.

  “Harvey, you blew it!” Forsythe was angry, and his voice edged on the hysterical. “You were one of the chosen, amigo, but you blew it. You could have been a survivor, one of the kings. The Ichtons would have let you live, it was part of the deal. But not now, amigo. Not now.”

  A shot rang out and another slug slammed into the forklift. Harvey raised his head above the edge of the cab just enough to see Forsythe moving toward the forklift, a small pistol in his hand.

  Harvey weighed up his chances of surviving where he was and decided that Forsythe would kill him before Frosty returned with Security. He raised his head slightly to see if he could reach his gun where it had fallen on the floor of the forklift’s cab.

  Another shot rang out, and Harvey ducked back down and then half stood up, darting into the forklift to grab his gun.

  Forsythe fired twice, but missed. Crouched next to his machine, Harvey fumbled his weapon to his shoulder and, with his good hand, switched it from “Burst” to “Full Auto.” Moving around the back of the forklift, he took a deep breath, then dashed toward the nearest stack of containers, blindly spraying a burst at Forsythe as he ran.

  It worked. Forsythe flattened himself on the deck as Harvey’s shots passed harmlessly overhead. Recovering, he rolled into a kneeling position and let loose a string of shots in Harvey’s direction.

  The Ichton cautiously stepped out of the shuttle container and onto the cargo deck. She held her shattered foreleg folded up tight against her abdomen, and a thick mustard-yellow fluid continued to ooze from the wound on her thorax. Using the container for cover she cautiously peered around its edge, her multifaceted eyes picking up the patterns on the cargo deck as a mosaic of shapes, colored only by their infrared heat values.

  She could detect some movement in front of her, and the fine fibers in the joints of her elbows tingled to the bark of Forsythe’s pistol. Cocking her head, she tried to decide if the moving heat pattern crouched on the deck in front of her was friendly or not. Unable to decide, she brought up her weapon. The eggs, the hatchlings, had to be protected. The thing in front of her wasn’t an Ichton, wasn’t important to the swarm. She pulled the trigger.

  A thousand plasteel fléchettes spun out of the barrel of the Ichton’s gun, separating from one another until they reached the outer limits of their static charge adhesion and formed a pattern precisely ninety millimeters in diameter. Each fléchette had three stabilizing fins that wound themselves in a spiral the length of the shaft, imparting a 1500 rpm spin to the projectile that turned it into a lethal drill no thicker than a hypodermic needle.

  The first blast caught Forsythe in the back and drove him to the ground. Within three tenths of a second, another two thousand fléchettes bored into the pulped flesh and bounced crazily off the deck, rattling into the stacked containers around the Club. Forsythe’s legs jerked spasmodically against the deck for a few moments and then went still.

  Harvey was frozen in place by the awesome destructive power of the Ichton weapon. Staring at what was left of Forsythe’s body, unable to make his legs obey the command to run, to get the hell as far away as possible from the Ichton, the only thought he had was that he was next—that in a matter of seconds, he’d be reduced to a pile of quivering pulp like Forsythe.

  Fear saved Harvey’s life.

  The Ichton leaned out farther from the container, looking for the enemy that had destroyed the eggs and killed so many hatchlings. Her eyes picked up a mosaic of shapes and colors, but nothing that she could identify at the distance. There was no movement, and the dull orange heat shape ten meters away was identifiable as a machine. Satisfied that there was no living threat in front of it, the Ichton stepped back behind the container to continue looking elsewhere.

  Harvey’s legs came back to life. Running to the forklift, he climbed into the cab and grabbed the tractor beam joystick. Pushing it forward, he began raising the container.

  The wounded Ichton sensed movement behind her and turned and fired wildly into the side of the container, sending a shower of fléchettes ricocheting in all directions. Limping back from the container, she brought her weapon up, ready to fire at the first sign of movement.

  Hunched down in the cab of the forklift, Harvey slowly brought the microphone of his bullhorn to his mouth.

  The Ichton thought she detected movement of some sort on the dull orange heat shape. Slowly she rotated her head, hoping to detect some movement on the facets of her eyes. In the upper periphery of her vision she saw the container overhead as if it were some sort of dark rectangular cloud. Around her she saw the smooth green walls of the containers, the dull gray flooring of the cargo deck, and the slowly cooling remains of Forsythe.

  The Ichton concentrated on the dull orange heat shape of the forklift. Inside the container she had left were eggs and hatchlings that needed her, while outside was danger to her brood. Better safe than sorry. She raised her weapon to her shoulder.

  There was a metallic chirruping. The Ichton cocked her head to one side and moved her elbows outward to trap more of the sound. The chirrup came again, this time followed by a low whining sound, much like the lullaby she had crooned to the hatchlings as they struggled to be free of their eggs.

  She made a high-pitched warbling whine, cocking her head and elbows to catch any sound of an answer.

  The chirrup struggled to duplicate the sound, but couldn’t.

  It had to be a hatchling, one that had somehow been dragged or carried out of the nest. If they were to continue to avoid detection, she had to rescue it.

  It chirruped again, and she took a hesitant step forward.

  Harvey watched as the Ichton stepped into the shadow of the container held in the tractor beam of his forklift. He chirruped into the microphone—and then turned off the tractor beam.

  From nearly eight meters up, the sixteen-ton container dropped onto the deck with a deafening bang, crushing the Ichton to a yellow smear.

  Harvey smiled to himself and clipped the microphone back onto the dash of the forklift. Switching on his computer, he accessed the mainframe on Twelve deck and typed in a brief coded message. Then, swinging down from the cab of the forklift, he headed toward the Club. As he passed the spreading pool of mustard-yellow slime that oozed from under the container, he made a popping sound, like someone stepping on a bug. Bending down, he picked up the Ichton’s gun in his good hand and headed back into the Club.

  When Internal Security arrived with Frosty, they found Harvey in the hen house, ankle deep in broken eggshells and rotting compost and dead hatchlings. Security set up a command post in the bar, and while the security officers helped themselves to free drinks and a medic worked on Harvey’s arm, their commander interrogated him.

  “So let me get this straight,” the security commander said. “You were moving an empty container when this guy, er . . .” He turned to one of the security men. “You got a make on the meat pie outside?”

&nbs
p; The security man shook his head.

  “No? Okay.” He turned back to Harvey. “So you saw this guy come running out of here with the Ichton hot on his tail. The Ichton shoots the guy, and you drop the container on the bug. Right?”

  “Yup, amigo. That’s exactly how it went down.” Harvey smiled at his interrogator. “Any more questions?”

  “No, not right now.” The security commander stood up. “You can go. We’ll call you if anything else comes up.”

  “Sorry,” Harvey said, “but I’m not leaving.”

  “What do you mean, you’re not leaving? This is a security matter, and I’m sealing off all of these containers.” He signaled for the two security men at the bar. “You’re going. Understand?”

  “What I understand is that under the Alliance Salvage Laws, these containers were unrecorded enemy possessions. It doesn’t say anywhere that they have to be outside the ship, just not in the memory banks already. Only that mess in the back has any intelligence value. As the sole surviving combatant they are now mine. Even the permits for the bar up on Green will take weeks to revoke.” Harvey held up a printout from the computer in his forklift, mimicking a trumpet as he presented it. “If you’d care to read this, you’ll see that I filed for salvage eleven minutes and twenty-one seconds before you arrived.”

  The security commander snatched the printout from Harvey’s hand. His scowl turned to a frown as he examined the document. It would take months, maybe years to sort this one out and there was a rumor of imminent combat. Legal technicalities weren’t his problem and the Ichtons were dead. And there was no way to guess how the upper command would react to the incident. No use rankling a potential hero, and he might want to come back here when he was off duty. He waved the two approaching security officers off with a shrug.

  “Now, unless you want to start paying for your drinks, I’m going to have to ask you all to leave.” Harvey’s smile was hard enough to cut diamonds. “Okay, amigo?”

  The security man glared at Harvey, tried to smile, then handed back his deed to the containers.