by Steve Perry
Billie nodded, despite her feelings. He was right, she knew it. She had killed before, both APs and humans. She remembered the pirate who had attacked their ship, and how he would have blown them all out of existence. She didn’t like it, but Wilks was right.
“But if the guns are automatic, why do we have to be here?”
He shrugged. “Like a pilot on a commercial arc ship. In case something goes wrong. A circuit could overload, something could jam, maybe the guns work fine but somebody gets clear of the hopper in an escape pod and keeps coming. We’re backup.”
Billie repressed a sigh. Humans, backing a death-dealing machine. She sometimes wondered if people were any better than the aliens. They were killers, but more like ants or bees. Beast of prey, they hunted to feed, not for sport. And she doubted if they ever planned an ambush of their own kind.
Then again, Billie had no desire to become dinner for the monsters. She had come too close too many times already And people like Spears, like those turncoats on Earth who caught and gave their fellow humans to the aliens, those kind of people were psychotic. Whatever it took to stop them had to be done. She just wished she wasn’t the one who had to do it.
* * *
“General? The hopper is ten klicks out.”
Spears, looking at a computer read, turned toward the pilot. “Keep it on standard approach.”
“Sir.”
The hopper in which they rode smelled musty, the air stale, and while everything worked as it was supposed to work, the little ship felt loggy. Spears could understand that; the backup vessel had been in storage at the air plant for more than a year, parked and sealed, awaiting just such a use as this. The hopper on which they had flown from the base was five kilometers ahead of them now, empty of personnel, being piloted on remote by the man who normally would be flying this vessel. The copilot seated next to him kept the chase hopper on an even path, same altitude, same speed. Not that it was really necessary—this ship had a major advantage over the drone ahead of them; this ship wore a full stealth suit, would be invisible to radar or Doppler, and with the flat-black anodized hull damned near invisible to eyeballing against the dark of space. Still, if the hide-me suit somehow malfunctioned, a lazy radar operator would see a double blip and probably think it was a ghost. Since there weren’t supposed to be any other hoppers the same size away from the base—this one didn’t show on records anywhere, Spears had seen to that—then the operator who might see it, if the stealth gear failed, would not be unduly worried. And if, in this very unlikely scenario, the tech didn’t scramble a code, he would be fed to the aliens when Spears got back. The general had no use for such troops, even if he was the one trying to fool them.
“Five klicks, sir.”
“Steady as she goes, son.” This could all be a waste of his trump, but Spears had learned it was better to be cautious than dead. Time was running down on this planetoid anyway. There were big things in the offing, worlds to conquer, glory to be reaped. Wars to be won.
Spears grinned. And victory begins at home, doesn’t it?
* * *
“Here they come,” Wilks said. “Right down the pipe.”
The tiny green dot on the gunnery radar screen moved toward the center. After a moment, the dot began to pulse, alternating now between green and amber.
TARGET INITIALLY ACQUIRED, flashed across the bottom of the screen.
“It’s a match,” Wilks said.
The alternating dot continued to pulse, then went from green/amber to red.
TARGET CONFIRMED. TO ABORT FIRING YOU MUST ENTER CANCEL CODE.
Wilks glanced at Billie. Shook his head. “All yours,” he said, knowing that the computer wouldn’t understand the comment.
The pulsing dot expanded, became the outline of the hopper. A blue grid appeared on the screen in one corner, then expanded to cover the hopper. A bull’s-eye ring lit in bright green, centered on the hopper.
SIXTY SECONDS TO OPTIMUM FIRING DISTANCE.
A timer began counting down from sixty toward zero.
Wilks watched Billie. She stared at the screen, blinked rapidly. Her breathing speeded up. At fire minus thirty seconds, she said, “Jesus, it’s like watching an execution.”
“Yeah, it is.”
FIFTEEN SECONDS TO OPTIMUM FIRING DISTANCE.
Wilks tapped a control on the external monitor. The tracking cam gave him a star-sprinkled black. “There it is,” he said, as much to himself as Billie. A tiny dot, the running lights barely visible.
FIVE SECONDS TO OPTIMUM FIRING DISTANCE.
The hydraulics of the guns whined slightly as they moved the weapons, tracking the incoming ship.
OPTIMUM FIRING DISTANCE. COMMENCE FIRING.
The machine guns were recoilless so the vessel around them didn’t shudder, but the weapons vibrated, shaking them as if they had developed a sudden palsy. And the vacuum outside didn’t carry any sound, but some of the hull and air inside did. The reports were muted by the dampers, the noise almost like a thick sheet of canvas being ripped. Every tenth round was a tracer, and the guns fired so rapidly that there seemed to be a continuous line of colorful fire splashing against the incoming hopper. The fire computer had it all figured out: the target’s speed, the gravity, the velocity of the incredibly hard uranium slugs that hammered the hopper. It couldn’t miss.
It didn’t miss.
The hopper’s armor wasn’t enough. The machine-gun fire punched through it. Wilks could see sparks as bullets hit the plating, sparks that blossomed as air from within spewed out and fed the tiny fires.
The tracers raked the ship, found the engine, smashed through and destroyed it. The hopper lost power, tumbled, out of control. Fell in the low gravity, a ruined and discarded toy from the hand of a bored child.
“God,” Billie said.
Wilks watched. No escape pods popped out. It was almost too easy. See you in hell, Spears.
* * *
“Sir, the drone is drawing fire!”
Spears nodded, pleased. “Set your fire control to backwalk the attacking battery.”
“We’ll have to drop the stealth suit to use our targeting systems.”
“That doesn’t matter. We’ve got the drop on them. Punch them out.”
The pilot and copilot hurried to obey.
Got to be Powell behind this, Spears thought. I wouldn’t have guessed that you had the guts, you little no-dick bastard. But if you want to play with the best, you have got to be a lot sharper than a chickenshit ambush, Major. I am going to hand-feed you to the queen myself when I get down.
* * *
The hopper went down, streaming oxy-fed flames that winked out quickly in the vac. The ship hit, bounced high, hit again, shattered, and sent pieces flying. The light gravity let most of the debris sail quite a distance. Those chunks that entered the station’s faux grav fell faster, bounced lower. The tracking cam stayed with the largest section. Wilks didn’t see any bodies but he supposed they were all cocooned into their seats. Just as well. The sight of a ruined human body tumbling across the landscape wasn’t one he particularly wanted to see anyhow.
Adios, General.
SECOND TARGET ACQUIRED, the computer flashed.
OPTIMUM DISTANCE MINUS ONE THOUSAND METERS. COMMENCING FIRE.
Wilks jumped. Stared at the screen. It took a second to register, a second they didn’t have to spare.
“Fuck! Close your helmet! Move! We’ve got to get out of here, now!”
He slapped his own faceplate shut, grabbed Billie’s hand, and jerked her up. They scrambled for the exit. He hit the emergency hatch control, both locks snapped up.
They leapt for the opening as the first slugs began to punch holes in the crawler.
17
Spears watched the hard metal teeth of his machine guns chew the crawler to pieces. He felt a certain satisfaction in knowing he had outsmarted his enemy, had not fallen into the trap. Had not been outsmarted.
The crawler shuddered under the impact
, vibrating, shaking. They were close enough so the combat belly cam picked up the two troopers abandoning the landcraft, running away from the doomed vessel.
“Cut them down,” Spears said. If he’d thought about it longer, he might not have given that order, the new troops always needed unspoiled containers and food, but once an order was given, he was not a man to belay it unless he had good reason. Canceling orders given in the midst of combat reflected badly on a commander; it made him look indecisive. Nor did it matter that these men wouldn’t be around to remember these orders much longer—Spears was not an indecisive man.
The crawler continued its bullet-driven dance, and the two troopers kept sprinting. “Was I unclear in my speech?” Spears said, his voice cool and tight.
“N-no, sir. But the computer is locked on the crawler. I’ll have to reset it for human targets.”
“Do so.”
“Sir.”
The pilot’s hands fluttered. The machine guns whined on their hydraulic gyros, began to alter their aim.
Too late. The fleeing pair achieved the safety of the station, disappearing from view.
“Sorry, sir.”
“Never mind. The crawler is dead, that was the primary threat. Hose down the other craft on the apron.”
“Sir—?”
“Destroy them. We don’t want to get shot in the back and we do want the only operating vehicles out here.”
The pilot nodded. “Yes, sir.”
One of the rules of combat was to do your enemy enough damage so he couldn’t recover in time to damage you. Spears had control of the airspace and he intended to keep it. And while Powell might think he had the station buttoned up, there were ways inside that he didn’t know about. A wise officer never let himself be caught without an entrance or an exit. Powell was not wise. Spears was.
* * *
Billie’s breath came hard, the suit’s tanks hadn’t been designed to supply so much oxygen so quickly. But they were inside, and safe. For now.
Wilks was already halfway out of his climate suit, rushing toward a com mounted on the lock wall. He slapped the com.
“This is Wilks. We’ve got a fubar here, Powell. Spears sent in a decoy hopper. He’s taken out our crawler, we’re in the South Lock. Billie, what’s going on out there?”
Billie moved to the lock, triggered the observation cam next to it. The little holoproj lit up. Dust puffed up in little spurts around the various vessels sitting on the ground. An occasional spark glittered on the craft, and as she watched, one of the hoppers canted wildly to one side, the support struts suddenly collapsed.
Billie turned back toward Wilks. “They’re shooting up all the hoppers and crawlers,” she said.
“You get that?” Wilks said into the com.
Powell’s voice when it came through the speaker was nervous: “God. What are we going to do? He could peel open the station like a banana!”
“He won’t,” Wilks said. “He doesn’t want to risk damaging the aliens. But he’ll have an attack plan figured out. We underestimated him. If he knew enough to give us a decoy to shoot at, he’ll know a way in we aren’t expecting. Get whatever troops you can trust with weapons armed, fast, get a combat opchan working and cover every lock. And get anybody who might be loyal to Spears into a secured area PDQ.”
Powell said, “That won’t be easy, we can’t be sure—”
“Listen, Major, we damn well can be sure that if somebody opens a door and lets Spears in we will be in very deep shit. Don’t take any chances. If there is any doubt about a trooper’s loyalty to you, put him behind a thick door.”
“All right. I understand.”
“I’ll meet you in Command Center in five minutes.”
Wilks turned to Billie. “The general is knocking out our ability to fight him in the air, or escape on the surface. He’ll be occupied with that for a while. Come on.”
“Where are we going?”
“Powell can issue the orders but he isn’t a combat soldier. He is going to need somebody he can trust telling him what to do. I fucked up once, we can’t afford to let that happen again.”
“How bad is it?” she asked.
“It could be worse. We’ve got the high ground. Spears can spend all his troops at one spot and we’ve got to cover every entrance, so we’ll be thin, but he’s got to come in through a lock and we can watch all of them. As long as it’s our troops on the doors, we should be able to keep him out. Powell will be scrambling the entrance codes and putting the station on full alert, soon as he gets the general’s men dogged down. Odds are still in our favor, though I should have had Powell set this all up before we tried to pot Spears. I thought sure we could knock him down. I guess that’s why he’s a general and I’m a sergeant. Come on.”
They ran.
* * *
“Status?” Spears said. His blood was up, he felt like a hunter tracking dangerous prey. There was some risk, to be sure, but no doubt that he would win in the end. Whatever the cost.
“Sir, all of the exterior landcraft and aircraft have been immobilized. All engines appear to be dysfunctional, power mains knocked out.”
Spears nodded. “Good.” Of course, there were the starships inside the base, but nobody was going to use those for flitting around on the planetoid’s surface. And if Powell planned to run in the star transports, he had a big surprise coming. Spears had never bothered locking the crawlers and hoppers into his personal keycode—there wasn’t anywhere to run to on the planetoid—but the offworld vessels wouldn’t lift a centimeter unless he okayed it. No, Powell and his little band of insurrectionists weren’t going anywhere. They were bottled up in the station and while they might think they had the edge, they were also mistaken about that.
“Put us down at these coordinates,” Spears said. He rattled off the grid numbers. Without asking why, the pilot obeyed. There was a blind spot just east of the North Lock, a corridor not much wider than twenty meters that led right to the fusion plant’s heat sinks. The big aluminum and ceramic plates could be used to radiate excess warmth away from the station, did there happen to be an overload the environmental pipes couldn’t handle. A careful platoon could march along that no-cam corridor to the sinks, then duck the security scanners and go in either direction. Nobody would see them approach a lock; nobody would know company was coming until they knocked on the door. True, the doors would all be scramble-secured and guarded, if Powell had any brains at all, but Spears had an answer for that.
Another big surprise for the mutineers.
No, there wasn’t any doubt as to the victory. The main thing now was to do it clean, by the numbers. A hundred years from now they would be teaching tactics based on scenarios that Spears created. Might as well begin dazzling the future now.
* * *
Powell looked as if he were about to try to climb a wall, Billie thought, watching the man pace. His hands shook, he was pale, sweat beaded at his hairline and on his upper lip. There were a dozen carbines side by side on a table in the room, with boxes of magazines stacked next to them. While Wilks went to talk to Powell, Billie moved toward the weapons. Whatever happened, she wasn’t going to be standing by helplessly.
A trooper with a carbine slung across his chest and held ready started to swing his weapon around as Billie approached.
“Wilks,” Billie said.
Wilks turned away from Powell. “Let her have one,” he said to the trooper.
The man didn’t even glance at Powell for confirmation. He knew who was in charge, whatever the ranks involved. He nodded.
Billie picked up a carbine, racked the action, checked it over—the gun was empty—then pulled a magazine from an open box and loaded it into the piece. She took three more hundred-round AP mags from the box and put them into her pockets, one under her belt. With four hundred shots, she could theoretically kill a whole lot of things, if they didn’t get her first. She slung the weapon over her shoulder. She felt a little better, now that she was armed.
&
nbsp; Wilks and Powell went back and forth; it was easy to see that Powell was scared shitless. He was a man of peace, Wilks had told her, should have been a preacher or a medic and not a soldier. Civilized men didn’t make very good warriors.
Billie moved to a wall-mounted com. Told the routing computer to connect her with Mitch.
“Bueller here.”
There was no visual, Billie didn’t know if that was on purpose or not, but he obviously couldn’t see her.
“Mitch,” she said.
“Billie. You okay?”
“I’m with Wilks in the Command Center,” she said. “We’re fine.”
“I saw you escape from the crawler,” he said. “I was worried about you.”
“No problem. What are you doing there?”
“I’m going to stay in Environment Control until we are certain of a stable situation. If Spears or his troops get inside, I might be able to do some good here, shut down air or heating or lights and slow them up some. I wouldn’t do much good on the line.”
Billie nodded, realized he couldn’t see that, said, “I understand.” And she did. Wilks had told her that the APs designed for the run to the aliens’ homeworld were crack marines, able to outshoot, outrun, and outfight ordinary men in virtually every combat scenario. The problem was that Mitch’s conditioning, Asimov’s Modified Laws, wouldn’t allow him to kill humans. Unless he was certain a wound wouldn’t do that, he couldn’t shoot a man, even though he could put a bullet into one virtually anywhere he chose at combat ranges. A man might bleed to death from a shattered foot, after all, and androids weren’t allowed to risk that. Except, of course, for those who had been built without the Laws inculcated into them. Which was supposed to be impossible, though Billie knew better. Most of the pirates who’d attacked them on that fucked-up mission had been such androids, able to kill.
“Listen, Mitch, when this is all over, we need to sit down and talk. I haven’t been treating you very well, I don’t understand everything about it, but I want to do better.”
