Magnet Omnibus I (Lacuna)

by David Adams

  “Contact. Four bogeys, twelve o’clock low. Break.” My language was deliberate; Bogey meant unidentified contact, whilst bandit meant the radar signal was confirmed hostile. More information came in. “Three fighters and one gunship.”

  Gutterball’s voice filled my headset. “Got ‘em. They’re transmitting Kel-Voran identification codes. Flagging them as allied.”

  The blue dots flickered and became a dark green. Light green was friendly, dark green was allied, blue for unidentified, grey for hazard such as asteroids or debris, yellow for missiles and red for hostiles.

  Normally only the Beijing and Tehran’s fighters were that shade of green. Seeing aliens identified as allies struck me as very odd, especially after what the Toralii had done to Earth. Yet here we were, right about to throw our lot in with the Kel-Voran. Aliens as allies might become a common sight. I should start getting used to it.

  The ships drew closer and closer. Eventually I saw them in my targeting viewer at maximum magnification. They were thin, long and straight, little darts bathed in the golden light of the star, bristling with needle-like protrusions which I presumed to be weapons or sensors. Given the Kel-Voran propensity for violence I guessed the former.

  I heard Shaba speak into my headset. “They’re coming awfully close... they’ll be passing within a kilometre. Should we give them a little more space?”

  “Negative,” said Gutterball, “hold course. We’re authorised to be here and we don’t want to make it look like we have anything to hide.”

  I watched them in my targeting viewfinder as the ships flew past us, seemingly paying us no mind. Soon we had a view of their rear as they moved away.

  “Wonder what that was all about?” I said.

  Nobody had any answers.

  Inside Piggyback

  En-route to the rendezvous

  Deep within Kel-Voran Space

  Boredom was the enemy of soldiers in war. They say that combat is ninety-nine percent mind-numbing boredom and one percent pants-shitting terror. I was inclined to agree. Being a gunner was much worse than a pilot though. Instead of a whole ship, and all it entailed, I was in only charge of a single perspex ball with four guns. With nothing to shoot at the only thing I could do to amuse myself was slowly spin my turret around, looking for enemies that would be seen by the ship’s radar long before I spotted them visually. The giddy disorientation born of being strapped into a gyrating ball got old real quick.

  That left only conversation with the crew. We chatted about politics, drugs, sex, life and the afterlife. Which naturally lead into a discussion about religion. With everyone except me being an Israeli citizen, the attention quickly turned to me.

  “So Mags,” said Gutterball, “You religious or not?”

  I winced, shaking my head. Nobody could see it but it was like smiling when on the telephone. “Nah. My Dad is though. My Mum, not so much. So’s Penny, she’s been an Anglican all her life.”

  Although only Gutterball had asked, suddenly there was a collective ‘Oooooooh!’ through the headset. I’d forgotten that the rest of the crew were listening in.

  Mace spoke up when the noise had quietened down. “Anglican. Cool. How serious is she, man?”

  I flushed, fiddling with the talk key. I didn’t want to tell them the truth.

  “Pretty serious. She goes to church on Sundays and makes me go when I visit. Prayer before meals.” This bit was the kicker. I had to brace myself for the inevitable. “We, uh, haven’t had sex yet.”

  A brief silence followed by raucous laughter. When it died down, Gutterball chortled into my headset. “But,” Gutterball said between laughs, “but Mags, you’ve been dating for, like, four years!”

  Yup, there it was. No one ever said, “Cool! Good on ya!”

  “Dude, dude, oh God. Don’t tell me you haven’t busted a nut in four years.” Gutterball could never be accused of being a prude.

  “Four years almost to the day. Not since Brisbane and that hooker.” Well, that wasn’t entirely true, but it was a story for another time.

  Smoke laughed, almost like sputtering engine into my headset. “Mother fucker. If I hadn’t gotten laid in four years I’d have the worst blue balls. I’d beg the Toralii to shoot my arse. Hey, maybe that’s what happened to Mags!”

  More laughter. Around and around went the turret. “Hey, change of subject, bitches. How’s our guest?”

  “He’s fine.” Gutterball sounded disappointed. “Damn bastard’s just sitting there in his chair, not moving or saying a word. I tried, but he’s not even looking at me. It’s kinda creepy. I tried to talk to him but he completely ignores anything I say. He looks like he’s sweating bullets, though. Keeps looking out the window like he’s expecting something.”

  “Guess he really thinks he’s going off to be enslaved or whatever.”

  “Hey, we don’t know jack about their marriage customs. Maybe he is being enslaved.”

  “Eh, maybe.” I stopped spinning the turret, moving it around the other way now. “We could always keep asking him. It seems like it would be good intel if we could get him to talk. We still don’t know that much about his species.”

  Gutterball tittered dismissively. “Yeah, good luck with that. He doesn’t seem to want to—” Suddenly she was all business. “Radar contact! Weapons tight, all crew move to condition two.”

  I stopped spinning and my eyes flew to my radar screen. Five dark green blobs, coming up from the rear. Heading directly for us.

  The other gunners began calling in and I was last.

  “Magnet, condition two.”

  As Shaba reported I swung my turret around. The fighters were coming in from above the ship. I couldn’t get an angle but it didn’t matter. The targeting radar still showed the fighters as green, allied, and Shaba had ordered us to weapons tight which meant we were only authorised to engage targets that were confirmed hostile. Although their behaviour was certainly disturbing we had no evidence they meant us any harm.

  Yet.

  Silence reigned while our “allies” drew closer and closer. I knew Gutterball had the radio; she was almost certainly talking to them. We had to be missing something. Then she spoke on the internal frequency, her voice tense.

  “Everyone, we got a problem.”

  “Yeah?” asked Shaba.

  “They want our guest.”

  It didn’t make any sense. Those same fighters had flown right past us earlier. Speaking out of turn, I touched my transmit key. “Why?”

  “Fucked if I know. The gunship told me, quite plainly, that they want us to turn him over then, get this, abandon ship.” She laughed a mocking, empty laugh. “They said they’d ‘make sure we were eventually recovered and returned unharmed’.”

  I really did not want to be floating in space two missions in a row. “And you don’t believe them?”

  “Not for one fucking second. My guess is that they’ll waste us the moment we bail out. They have no incentive to give two shits about us and they’ve already shown they can’t be trusted. Besides, we’re witnesses. You don’t just let witnesses go.”

  The fighters were now within effective weapons range, even if the angle wasn’t right. I fiddled with the safety switch, pushing it towards armed then lowering it back down. “Good. So, waste ‘em?”

  There was a slight pause, then the dots on my screen flickered and turned blood red.

  “Waste ‘em. Weapons free, call your targets.”

  I clicked the safety off right as Shaba powered the reactionless drive, throwing the ship to one side. She half-rolled, presenting the ship’s underbelly to one of the fighters and I fired off a short burst. Anticipating this, perhaps, the fighter moved as well. The distance gave him the edge and my shots went wide. I tracked it with my turret, lining up for another shot, but it moved out of my arc.

  “Flip-six in three…” Shaba called her moves for the gunners, so that we knew when to shoot.

  I gripped the cramped sides of my enclosure tightly, the gunnery
crew sounding off. “Ready!”

  “Mark!”

  The ship lurched, turning end over end, until it flipped in the opposite direction and sped up. The turret swung around, spinning freely until I regained the controls. Fighters flashed by my gunsight but there was no hope of hitting them at that speed. Hostile fire streaked past us as we banked, barely missing the end of the ship.

  “Nice move, Shaba.”

  “No it wasn’t!” said Bobbitt, his voice strained. He had his mouth too close to his microphone. “Yeah, hey, I’m fine, thanks for asking! I nearly got my arse shot in half!”

  Shaba laughed at him. “If you’re not hit nobody cares. Suck it up.”

  Despite the flip-six I was disturbed by how little manoeuvring we were doing. My pilot’s instincts were complaining once again. We rolled again. I spun my turret, letting off a stream of fire at a passing fighter. “Man these bastards are quick.”

  “Just line ‘em up and knock ‘em down,” said Shaba. I grit my teeth and swung the turret around like a lunatic, trying to line up the projected course of my rounds with the zig-zagging, erratic path of the hostile Kel-Voran.

  I knew that fighting in a ship with gunners was different than fighting in a fighter. In a smaller Wasp, the pilot had to align the nose to the enemy to fire their guns. In the larger Broadsword, however, the main thing was to keep the ship steady so the gunners could shoot. But we still had to move; too; if we remained perfectly still we would be shot to ribbons.

  “Dodge and weave on the Y axis. Mark.”

  I felt the ship lurch, a defensive manouver, as the hostile gunship opened up. We moved but not enough; a half-dozen bright white balls of light smashed into our hull with the hiss of dissipating armour and scream of tearing metal. The sound was awfully close.

  “Missiles away.” Shaba’s quiet, confident voice was welcome. I needed some calm. “Fox two, fox two. Open wide, arseholes.”

  Twin yellow dots appeared on my radar screen as two of our missiles flew from their racks, banking and streaming towards the hostile gunship. The vessel ceased fire and broke to the side to avoid them, the first of our missiles veering wide and streaking off towards the void. The second tracked home with deadly efficiency, catching the gunship on the aft and exploding. Flame poured from the rear of the ship as it vented atmosphere and spun helplessly in space, debris and white gas spewing from the gaping hole in its hull.

  An early victory, but despite its firepower the gunship didn’t seem to be the main threat. The fighters were still whizzing around us, redoubling their attack, their shots burning off layer after layer of our ablative armour.

  I fired off another short burst, the rounds flying off into nothing as the Kel-Voran dodged. “Don’t Broadswords have nukes on-board? Why don’t we scatter the fighters with one of those?”

  Gutterball’s voice came back to me. “Strike Broadswords have nukes, not SAR Broadswords.”

  The ship jerked as Shaba tried to avoid another wave of fire.

  “Damn. Why the hell did we bring doctors, anyway? A nuke would have been nice.” Bitch, bitch. I tried to line up a Kel-Voran fighter as it zoomed silently past my turret, a ripple of its energy fire missing me by metres. “Maybe we should look into that.”

  “Maybe we shouldn’t. Haven’t you ever heard of danger-fucking-close?”

  Right. Some part of me knew we would be way too close for nukes. I wasn’t used to fighting in nuke-equipped craft. At this range, even if we had such a device, we’d be well within the blast radius of our own weapon.

  The Kel-Voranians whizzed around our ship, firing ineffectually, and I didn’t have time to think of a snippy comeback. “Whatever. Fortunately these guys can’t shoot for shit. Shaba, you must be shaking them pretty good.”

  Mace grunted. “Hey new guy, less talky, more kill-y.”

  “More kill-y?” I shot off another burst, the tracers streaking past one of the fighter’s cockpits, the closest I’d gotten to a strike yet. “I would have thought there would at least be a grammar test before anyone would let you climb into one of these things and just start blowing shit up with—”

  Kel-Voran fire ripped into the underside of Piggyback. I heard the snap-hiss of ablative armour as it dissipated the focused energy blast in a cloud of vaporised metal. When it cleared, my gun sight hovered square over the hull of an enemy fighter. I fired another short burst, scoring hits on the fighter’s port side. It immediately began venting atmosphere and listed upward. Twinkling explosions traced my next burst across its underside and the ship broke in half, consumed in a bright flash of light as the rounds struck some vital, volatile component.

  “Magnet?” asked Gutterball, “You still alive down there?”

  I risked a look at the hull near my turret. The incoming fire had gone straight through the hull plating but missed my enclosure by approximately three centimetres. Any further over and I’d be sucking down vacuum. “I’m fine. He missed the turret by the length of Bobbitt’s dick. Scratch one though.”

  “Good,” she answered, “Now. Less talky, more kill-y.”

  I wisely shut up, spinning the turret around to the starboard side, trying to follow one of the remaining fighters. It flew in low, arced up and fired again. I lined up a retaliatory burst, catching it on the port side. It overshot, up and over, out of my arc.

  I heard Mace in my headset. “Scratch one. It looked damaged. Bobbitt, did you wing it?”

  “No, Magnet did.” Bobbit sounded sour about it too.

  Glancing down at my radar I saw the last Kel-Voran fighter turn and bug out, streaking across space away from our ship. This wasn’t a victory, though. I knew that if they got away, he’d be back and with more of his mates. We’d barely fought off the four of them; I doubted we could handle any more.

  I swung my turret around, aligning my guns to the fleeing craft, and a quick burst blew it to debris before it flew out of range.

  Shaba came over the headset first, breaking the silence we all needed to figure out how to breathe again. “Nice shooting, Magnet. First day on the job and you get two and a half kills. Who the fuck needs Lion, anyway?”

  Everyone laughed, and I held onto the talk key until it died down. “Hey Gutterball, you see that shot?”

  No answer. “Gutterball, Magnet. You okay up there?”

  Again, no answer. I fiddled with the straps holding me in my chair, reaching for the release clasp. “Hang on, I’ll go see what’s wrong.” I squirmed out of the ventral gunner’s seat and twisted around, grabbing for the hatchway handle. Three turns and it was unlocked. I popped the hatch open with a metallic groan and the faint hiss of a pressure differential.

  I raised my head through and found myself directly down the barrel of Gutterball’s Beretta.

  The Kel-Voran’s hand shifted and, instinctively, I knew he was going to shoot.

  Fortunately a pilot’s instincts are pretty sharp. I dropped the hatch and the metal slammed down on the gun with a clank. It discharged, a deafening crack-roar as the pistol in the cramped, insulated turret. The pressure blew off my headset. A bright flame leapt from the barrel, the heat burning my ear and lighting up the highly oxygenated enclosure. I gave a manly shriek of pain.

  The gun slipped back out of the hatchway as I jammed it closed, then gingerly felt around my ear.

  Apart from a loud ringing, and tenderness and pain in the surrounding tissue, it seemed okay. First aid would have to come later. I had to go back out though. Cautiously I cracked open the hatchway an inch to see. The Kel-Voran was gone. My instincts wanted me to shout out to the others, but the turrets were heavily armoured, and essentially soundproofed. There was no way I could get to them that way. Instead, I cupped a hand over my throbbing ear and ducked back into the turret, reaching down with one hand to pick up the singed but intact headset, putting it over my head. Fortunately it was wireless.

  “Shaba? Shaba, lock the cockpit. It’s the Kel-Voran. He’s loose. He tried to shoot me.”

  I was relieved when s
he answered right away. “Cockpit’s already sealed as part of condition two. You serious? Priscilla tried to shoot you?”

  I’d honestly forgotten what the Kel-Voran’s real name was. Priscilla would do. I reached out to retrieve grabbed my sidearm from the top of the console. With one hand I awkwardly loaded the magazine by bracing it against the seat and, taking my hand away from my ear, racked back the slide. “Yeah.”

  “Shit,” said Mace, “I didn’t bring my sidearm. Damn turrets are cramped enough as it is.”

  “Me either,” said Bobbitt, “Where’d he get a gun? Did he bring it on-board with him?”

  I gritted my teeth, rubbing at my burned ear through the headset. “No, he’s got Gutterball’s. Thankfully I have mine.”

  “Did you plug him?”

  “No, it happened too fast. I hurt his hand with the hatchway though. He’s gotta be somewhere, this ship ain’t that big.”

  “Wait,” said Shaba, “Someone just tried to open the cockpit.”

  “Well at least we know where he is.”

  “What about Smoke and Ginger?” asked Bobbitt.

  “I don’t know,” answered Shaba, “They’re in the hold and they’re not in coms. If they followed procedure, their section should be sealed too.”

  “Right. Mace, Bobbitt, you two gun-less muppets stay where you are. I’ll go see if I can find him.” I creaked open the hatch again, but all seemed quiet. Slowly, slowly I brought it up until it was completely open. I climbed out and into the main hull of the spacecraft.

  “This is like a bad horror movie.” I stepped forward, my pistol resting comfortably in both hands as I made my way towards the front of the ship. “Gutterball? You there?”

  No answer. I moved forward to the commander’s section, my gun leading the way.