by Bobby Adair
Penny kicks me.
I feel like an asshole. “Sorry, Phil. You know I don’t mean anything by it.”
“Maybe if you treat me like you respected me,” he responds, “it would be easier than apologizing after Penny forces you to.”
“Phil,” I’m trying for max sincerity. “I’m sorry. And thank you for saving our lives. In case that didn’t come across earlier.”
“Well not exactly,” Brice corrects. “We mostly saved ourselves. The Potato is right over there.”
Eye rolls. It’s like we’re a family.
I ask, “What’s going on with Blair and our people down there?”
Phil turns to Penny. “I’ll let her tell it. She’s good with the succinct summaries you like.”
I nod a thank you to Phil.
“Blair has nearly a hundred soldiers on sublevel three,” Penny tells me. “They have some automatic weapons, and a cache of industrial explosives.”
“Tarlow,” mutters Brice. “He must have hauled some back down to the control center.”
“That’s where they are,” says Penny, “in some control center, they have the whole level, mostly. It’s contested. The Trogs keep attacking. Our troops push them back but don’t have the strength to press a counter attack. The Trogs aren’t able to make gains, the soldiers can’t escape.”
“The prisoners down on sub nine?” I ask.
“Still there.”
“Trogs?” That’s the unanswered question that’ll have the biggest impact on how I choose to proceed. “Do we have a solid estimate of how many Trogs made it down to the Potato?”
“Altogether,” Penny pauses, because she sees the importance I’m attaching to the number. “Nearly six thousand.”
“Shit.” Brice beats me to the exclamation.
“Shit.” I can’t help but agree with him.
Chapter 46
Time for a poor leadership move. “I’ll be honest with you.” I look around at each of them on the bridge. “I don’t know what to do here.”
“I have an idea for a way to attack,” says Phil.
Being careful with my tone, I raise an open hand to silence him first. “Before we talk about how we’ll fight those Trogs, we need to decide if we should attack at all.”
“If we should?” Phil isn’t sure how to feel about that.
Penny leans back in her chair. “I just assumed.”
“Six thousand,” mutters Brice. He knows what hordes of Trogs can do. “It may be a stalemate down on sub three right now—it won’t last. The Trogs have done this before, pretty much on every installation they’ve taken. If they can overwhelm with numbers, they do. In the narrow halls, like down in the sublevels, they can’t mass and surround our smaller units. The battles drag out, for weeks or months. Attrition is a decisive factor. Supply is, too. Both of those are in the Trogs’ favor. Eventually, Blair will have to watch all hundred of her troops die, or pray the Trogs decide to start taking prisoners again.”
“We have to do something.” Penny straightens up in her chair. “If we don’t, if Blair dies, then we all do, too, right? Her kill switch will trip when her coal-clod heart stops beating, and then we’re all gone.” Penny tries to snap her fingers through her suit. It looks awkward, and if it made a sound, it wouldn’t carry in the vacuum anyway.
“Not necessarily.” Phil slips right into his knowledge-authority voice. He’s about to enlighten us all, and he looks at me to make sure I’m paying close attention. “If we’re out of range of her tactical comm when she dies, the kill switch won’t affect us.”
Penny runs a fast deduction. “So as long as we make a point never to come back here—”
“No,” Phil interrupts. “Once her hydro pack runs dry, and her micro-reactor shuts down, her suit won’t send the signal, ever. The kill-switch problem is solved for all of us.”
I’m tempted by Phil’s suggestion for solving the Blair problem. Luckily my mouth follows my heart more than the logic centers in my brain. “Condemning a hundred soldiers to die is something I can’t do, not on the basis of this one factor. We need to set this idea aside for a moment.”
“How can we set it aside?” asks Brice.
“Not possible,” agrees Penny. “We’re human.”
“Fine.” I sigh. “Do we have a moral obligation to try and save those people down there? Do we have a higher obligation to not throw our lives away on a lost cause? I think those are the most important questions we need to answer. And even if we choose to go in, can it be done? How do we have a chance against six thousand Trogs?”
“Phil has an idea,” Penny reminds me, sounding irritated because I haven’t yet let him air it. “You should listen.”
I turn to Phil. We all do.
Phil smiles, because he has our attention. “We don’t need to kill six thousand Trogs to win. If we’re going with the theory the Grays are in charge and from everything I’ve heard from Blair, from everything we’ve learned so far, that’s what it looks like to me. So, it’s those six Grays we go after. If we capture them, we can make those legions of Trogs do anything we want.”
“How sure are you about that?” asks Brice.
“Mostly.”
“Brice.” Penny puts a hand on his arm. “You know that’s a crappy question. Phil will never be as sure as you’ll want him to be. You two are both too different to ever come to common ground on that question, whether it’s choosing to attack those Trogs or deciding how much cream to put in your coffee. So don’t be an ass.” She smiles sugar all over the medicine she just fed him.
Brice hushes right up.
I ask, “How certain, then?”
“Mostly,” answers Phil. “More than that. Dylan, we grew up with Grays. I know how they think, at least as much as any human can. I think I understand this thing they have with the Trogs. I believe if we capture those Grays, we’ll win control.”
“Are you willing to bet your life on it?”
“If you choose to believe me,” says Phil, “that’s exactly what I’m doing, right? We’re all in this together.”
I give the information a minute to sink in. I look around at the faces of my bridge crew, of my commandos who’ve been happy to sit silently and spectate. I need to make my choice first. “Those Grays are holed up in a rec room down on sub seven. Does your plan include a way to reach them?”
Phil grins. “It does.”
Chapter 47
We’re strapped into the platoon compartment—me, Brice, Silva, Lenox, and Mostyn—my commando team. Our magazines are full, topped off from the supplies we had the foresight to pilfer from Juji Station before we left earth’s orbit. I’m carrying four grenades and three C4 charges. Each of us is.
Jill’s mining tug is moving into position to support our assault. Her people know the situation. They know their part in the plan. We’re all clear on the objective.
Penny is on the bridge, pushing the ship to a speed Phil guesses will make this whole thing work just right. Jablonsky is on the radio, coordinating with Blair and making sure everything happens by the deadline.
The inertial bubble is glowing blue around us. I can sense the grav field pulse strong in the Rusty Turd’s aft drive array. In a few short minutes, Phil will power up the grav lens, and the main cabin will blaze bright.
“Major Kane,” Jablonsky calls to me.
“Yes?”
“Colonel Blair wants to postpone.”
My God, that woman is going to be the source of all my future stress-induced diseases. “Why?”
“She doesn’t have confidence.”
“In?”
“All of it.”
“Radio her back,” I tell Jablonsky, “and tell her I need some hard specifics and I need them now because we’re on our attack run and we’re not deviating without something more solid then watery bowels.”
A moment passes.
Brice elbows me. “What?”
I roll my eyes. “Fucking Blair.”
He nods. I’ve
explained enough. Looking at the glowing blue waves crawling over the walls he asks, “We still going in?”
I nod.
“Good.”
Jablonsky is back on the comm. “She doesn’t believe we’ll impact in the right place. She doesn’t think we can break through.”
Exasperating. Still, I have time before we ram our target. “Does she know Phil has super-genius grav sense? He’s been out here in the ship scanning the Potato’s interior for two solid days. It’s like he’s been taking an MRI of the colony’s interior structures. He knows that rock better than she knows her face in the mirror. He knows the point on the surface we need to ram. He knows the angle we need to hit to end up where we want to be. Tell her that. Tell her quick.”
I wait.
Thirty seconds pass.
Jablonsky informs me, “She wants Tarlow to consult. He knows the geology of these asteroids. He understands the size of the force it will take to shatter them.”
“Valid point.” Mostly. “Phil can see interior structures in the rock Tarlow can only guess at. It’s a toss-up.”
Jablonsky passes that message along, and comes back with, “She can’t accept that Penny can drive the ship through a hundred and fifty feet of rock to get down to level seven, and even if she could, the energy of the collision would probably kill everybody on the Potato.”
Dammit!
I’m done. “Tell her she should have listened more carefully when we brought her into the plan. We’re ramming the asteroid from the side. We only have to break through eleven feet of stone to bust into the main corridor running across sub seven. Lastly, tell her it’s too late to back out. Phil is already burning the g’s. The Grays inside the Potato see us coming. Right now they’re surprised and trying to figure out what we’re up to. If we back out, we’ll never have surprise on our side again.” I look at the time on my d-pad. “Impact in thirty seconds. Tell her to prepare her people.”
I comm the bridge crew. “Are we on track?”
“Impact in twenty-five seconds,” Penny assures me.
I pass it along to my squad, and brace in my seat.
Phil powers up the grav lens. The bug in my head protests to the intense field forming up behind my seat.
If the Grays didn’t see us coming before, they do now.
“Ten seconds!” shouts Penny.
Everyone is tense.
I take one more breath.
The cabin bursts in a flash of blinding blue. The ship shudders. My head swims.
Sound!
I hear wind rushing as the blue light fizzles away.
“In!” Penny shouts. “We’re in!”
“On target!” Phil confirms. “Through sub seven, through three—no four—rooms.”
I pop my seat harness free, jump to my feet, and comm the squad, “Time to pay the rent!”
Chapter 48
The outer wall of the main corridor on sub seven is broken open to space, and all the air in the station is flowing through vertical passageways and horizontal halls and decompressing out into the void. Airlock doors on every room are closing automatically. Alarms are blaring over the blast of the wind.
Having broken through eleven feet of outer shell as well as the thick stone walls separating four more rooms before coming to a stop, the ship is lying in a torrential eddy as the station’s atmosphere rushes past the holes behind us. Its backwash is howling like a deep-throated ghost, enormous and wicked.
“Careful,” Phil calls over the comm.
“Are you coded into the local network?” I ask, as I jump through an assault door down to a cracked floor just a few feet below me. My auto grav pulls my feet down and holds me in place against the buffeting wind.
“We’re logged on to the network,” Jablonsky tells me.
I’m glad it still functions.
“That wall to your left,” says Phil. “That’s the one you want.”
“How so?” asks Brice. The plan was to bust in and then rush down the hallway to attack the defending Trogs before they could recover from the impact of the collision and the tornado of decompressing gases.
“We’re a lot farther inside than we planned to be,” Phil rushes through the words. “There’s a dorm on the other side of that wall. On the other side of the dorm is the rec room. Blow two walls, and you’ve found the Grays without having to go through the hall and the bulk of the defending Trogs.”
Assuming the decompression hasn’t blown them all into space.
“You’re a godsend,” Brice tells him.
Aw, the kids are playing nice. I’m all teary-eyed. Not.
Brice is at the wall in two seconds placing a C4 charge, and I’m rushing everyone back into the ship, explaining as we go.
Once inside, I comm Phil, “Can you sense the Grays? Are they still in the rec room?”
“Yes.” He’s certain. “They’re confused. Dazed is a better word. Being so close to a grav lens collision has left them stunned.”
“The ghost Trogs?” I ask. I know there are six in there with the Grays.
“Everyone is down. The only Trogs on this level who are moving are the ones in the hall being blown out into space.”
Brice jumps in through the open assault door, glancing hurriedly at me. “Ready?”
“Everybody brace.” I give Brice a nod.
I hear the explosion and feel the blast through the ship. The wind changes as the dorm decompresses.
“Wait a few seconds,” I tell my squad as they rush for the opening.
Brice is in the assault door, nodding his head with each silent beat he counts. Outside the ship, every manner of furniture, whole and shattered, is furiously blowing past.
As soon as it settles to the floor, Brice is out again.
“Go!” I shout at my team.
We’re all out in a flash.
I point to the wall Brice just blasted a hole in. “Here, line up here. Backs to the wall. Remember your assignment.”
Brice is already through the hole, running to the next wall, and placing a charge. That’s the wall between the dorm and the main rec room.
Silva, Lenox, Mostyn and me throw our backs against the already-breached wall and grav tight.
“As soon as the decompression wave settles,” I tell them. “Rush in. Kill the Trogs. Capture the Grays.”
“Placing the charge,” Brice tells us, panting from the sprint. “You can feel the grav all the way in here.” He’s talking about the rec room gravity. According to Tarlow, it’s the only room in the station with full-time, simulated earth g.
We wait.
Seconds pass. They feel like minutes.
Brice pops out through the breach and takes his spot against the wall beside me. “Ready?”
It’s a warning, not a question. He pushes the big red dot.
The explosion rocks us again.
Pieces of rock come through the breach first, followed by pool furniture and truckloads of water from the pool, turning into mist as it converts from liquid to gas in near-zero pressure. All of it washes past us, spreading into our room, flowing over the Rusty Turd, and blasting out through the fractured walls behind.
A ghost Trog sails past us, unconscious, and smashes against the bow of our ship. Lenox fires a dozen rounds into him before his body is carried by the wind into the next room.
The howl settles down.
Decompression complete.
I jump through the breach, Brice on my heels, racing across the chaotic dorm, toward the hole in the far wall. Silva and Lenox start the search of the jumbled dorm. Mostyn stands in the breach, defensive grav set at the max, making sure no Gray escapes past her. Everybody following the plan.
Chapter 49
“Ghost down,” calls Silva. She’s the first to score a kill, not counting the Trog who flew out with the decompressing air and pool water.
“Gray!” shouts Lenox. “Two! I have them.”
The rec room is impossibly huge with an empty swimming pool taking up nearly half
the floor space and sport courts taking up the rest. The light glowing down from above looks like sunlight. The gravity feels like home. It seems impossible, given that it’s been burrowed from the heart of an asteroid a billion miles from earth.
I’m scanning the pool area doing the quick, simple math—four Grays and four ghost Trogs unaccounted for.
“The rest are in the rec room,” Phil assures over the comm.
“Alive?” I ask.
“The Grays are,” he answers.
Brice finds a ghost Trog on its hands and knees near a wall in a jumble of deck chairs. A long burst from his railgun kills it.
Three Trogs left. “Can you tell where the others are?” I ask Phil, as I run to the edge of the pool and see two Grays and a ghost Trog lying in the bottom near the drain. The Grays are moving like they’re sick. The Trog is sitting up and raising his head to look at me. I jump into the pool, grabbing my disruptor off my back as I fly. I can’t risk killing the Grays with deflected railgun slugs.
The Trog tenses at the last second as his senses clarify enough for him to understand what’s happening. Too late, though. My disruptor splits his helmet. Into the comm, I announce, “Two Grays in the bottom of the pool.” I kill my auto grav and go airborne, shooting up near the thirty-foot ceiling.
Railgun rounds spray across the width of the rec room, coming from the hole we just blew in the wall, all the way to the far corner. It’s Silva shooting.
She’s peppering an ebony Trog who’s raising his railgun as Silva’s rounds deflect in every direction. Brice fires diagonally across the room, and I add my gun to the onslaught. The Trog falls as the rounds penetrate and then shred him in a puff of red and gore.
I’m scanning.
“Another Gray,” calls Brice, pulling one by the foot out from beneath a large upturned shelf.
“The last one is heading for the door!” shouts Phil.
God, I envy his grav sense.
I turn toward the main door and spot the Gray, immediately pouring on the g to accelerate after him and catch him before he pogos his way through.
A blur materializes from my right.
“Trog!” shouts Silva, and the air lights up with red railgun rounds.
