by David Adams
“Don’t you have enough, then? Why did you want this clown?”
She smiled, showing an impressive array of teeth. “Eventually you get tired of the placid, weak ones and you want fighters. From what you’ve told me, this one is a fighter. I am very pleased.”
“Pleased?” I narrowed my eyes. “That motherfucker blew a hole in my commander then his bondsmen, or whatever, tried do away with the rest of us. Our medics are tending to her right now. She’s critical.”
She absently gestured to the prone Kel-Voran and two of the other males stepped over to pick him up. She didn’t even bother looking at me. “Details, details.” She eyed Priscilla as he was carried past her and deposited in amongst the semicircle of guards. “I will inform our ambassadors that your task was completed successfully. I officially grant you safe passage back to the nearest voidwarp location and I pray our next meeting be made as formally anointed allies.”
I gritted my teeth. The last thing I wanted was a next meeting. “I pray for whatever will get me off this pile of dirt the fastest.” To hell with this sandbox.
Finally she turned her attention back to me. More teeth. “Hah. You have spirit. You say what you mean, not what you think I want to hear. That is good. I like you.”
I scrunched up my face. “I hope you’re not planning on marrying me too. Thanks, but no thanks.”
“A shame.” She bowed her head low.
Bobbitt and I had absolutely no idea what to do or say, but Shaba began to raise the loading ramp so we stepped back into the ship. As it closed, I caught a look from the trussed up bastard we’d just roughly deposited onto the desert sands. Sheer contempt and loathing that he held right up until the steel door of the entranceway pressed against the lip and he was out of our sight.
Then there was just the bulkhead of the ship and a faint whine as the engines powered up. I blew out a an exasperated sigh. “What a fucking day.”
There was a low shudder as Piggyback began to ascend, pulling away from the dirt and rocks, and Bobbitt and I turned to walk back to the interior proper.
“You see the way he looked at you?” Bobbitt remarked, taking the turn towards the ship’s main corridor.
“Yeah,” I said, “If he ever gets a divorce, he’ll be coming for me.”
We stepped into the main interior. Blood was still pooled where Gutterball had fallen. I tried not to look at it.
“It’s nice to be famous I guess,” Bobbitt said, “but better you than me.”
“Gee, thanks.”
“By the way,” he said, “You did great today. Nice shooting. You know, we could use a steady ventral gunner. Ever consider a permanent move to the big birds?”
I smiled, but gave a gracious shake of my head. “You know, that’s tempting, but… I think I’ll always be a little bird pilot at heart.” Still, it’s been good.” We moved down the length of the ship and passed Gutterball, pale as death and swathed in bloodied bandages. Ginger was changing her IV. I opened my mouth to say something, but the words died on my lips.
“She’ll be fine.” Bobbit looked less confident than his words. “You’ll see. She’s tough.”
Inside Piggyback
Sol System Blockade
It took us nearly an hour to get away from the planet and arrive at the nearest jump point on the return to our home system. We jumped into the void surrounded by the blockade and this time they reacted to our arrival, turning towards us in unison. Within seconds we were staring down the barrel of an impressive array of weapons. Almost two cruisers worth, enough to destroy a fleet of our tiny ships.
Shaba wisely transmitted the clearance code before we were blown to atoms. We had discussed what to do; Smoke and Ginger had Gutterball stable, for now, but unfortunately the blockade was a tiny outpost with only ten staff and had no real facilities except basic first aid. We were a little bit beyond bandages at this point. Piggyback had a fully stocked medical bay but Gutterball had lost so much blood. We needed more IVs and coagulant packs and wound required surgery to fix. After a quick check to make sure there was nothing the blockade could do for us we tore back to the Sydney as fast as the ship was able to go. Shaba somehow convinced Captain Knight to move our mothership away from its orbit and meet us half way, cutting our transit time in half.
As the Sydney changed from a tiny point ahead of us to a ship, Shaba fired off a chain of red flares, their angry glow casting a pallid light over the underside of the ship and turning the inside of my turret crimson. The signal was for the deck crew, that we had wounded crew and to prepare for an emergency landing.
Shaba overshot the landing in her haste and Piggyback came in hot. The landing skids screamed as they dug two jagged grooves through the hanger bay and, rocking wildly near the end, the ship nearly turned over. Before the landing strip was even properly pressurised, Shaba popped the exit to the main hold and Mace, myself, Bobbitt and Ginger ran down the ramp, carrying a deathly pale Gutterball on a stretcher. Smoke held the last of our IVs high, although the bag was almost empty.
We handed her over to the waiting shock-trauma team. I watched with a mix of emotions as they carried her away towards emergency surgery.
Pilot’s Ready Room
TFR Sydney
Orbit of Mars
An hour later
The poker game was just as we left it. The six of us, Bobbitt, Shaba, Mace, Smoke, Ginger and I ambled back into the ready room. Nobody had seen Lion since the briefing and, to be honest, nobody missed him at all. If he was unwilling to show his face around here, that was a good thing as far as I was concerned. Gutterball’s chair was empty. We resumed our seats.
“So, where were we?” I asked, glancing around the table.
“Show cards.”
“Ah, right.” I casually flipped over my hand. “Read ‘em and weep, I guess.”
And so it went around the table, the crew flipping over their cards in turn. Nobody had much of anything. Shaba and Ginger had two pairs, Bobbitt had nothing at all.
“Guess I win,” I said, staring at the large pile of coins that sat untouched in the middle of the table. Nobody made any move towards them. I looked at the hand of cards lying face down next to me, in front of the dealer’s chair. Gutterball’s hand.
“What about hers?” I asked.
“Might as well look,” said Ginger.
I stared at the cards for a moment, then reached forward and flipped them. The Five of Diamonds and the Six of Hearts. A straight; just like I had, but higher order cards. Better than mine.
“Looks like Gutterball won.” It sounded hollow. I eased myself out of my chair, wandering over to the scoreboard, staring at it for a moment. It had already been updated with the kills we’d made on our mission. The crew now had four shared kills on it, three fighters and one gunship, and I’d been credited with two of them. My score was now three.
Nobody said anything so I picked up the digital marker and dragged a line straight through Jane “Gutterball” Rubens. It took me a few seconds to pull the marker off the board. There was a finality to it I wasn’t ready for.
“Don’t worry,” I said, “I put in for leave. I’ll make sure her family gets the money.”
MAGNET SAVES CHRISTMAS
Magnet Saves Christmas
"Mail your packages early so the post office can lose them in time for Christmas."
- Johnny Carson
Magnet Saves Christmas
Orbit of Mars
Sol System
2038 A.D.
PEACE ON EARTH AND GOODWILL to man. That’s what I told myself as fire flickered from the nose of my Wasp, the fighter heating up as it caught the thin Martian atmosphere. The red, crater-strewn planet below me, about half the size of Earth, suddenly loomed very large in my canopy. This normally wouldn’t be a problem, except ships of this class aren’t re-entry-rated.
Did I mention the screaming alarms and frantic, fruitless, yanking of the ejection handle?
I’m Mike Williams, call sign Magnet. I’m
really not having a very good Christmas.
It’s 2038. Humanity has a colony on Mars. A military colony. In orbit, a blockade named Cerberus guarded the jump point out of the Sol system. Supplies, like the December mail delivery I was hauling, were brought in from visiting ships, transported to the blockade, then shipped down to the surface. As spacecraft, fighters like the Wasp maneuvered via an engine called a reactionless drive; they could slow themselves down enough that re-entry wasn’t usually a problem and the friction wouldn’t burn you up.
Unless the reactionless drive cut out, leaving you floating in low Mars orbit, low enough to be pulled down by the planet’s inexorable gravity but traveling fast enough to be burned to a crisp.
“Magnet to Cerberus Blockade. All engines out, reentering the atmosphere. Mayday, mayday, mayday.”
Not that it mattered. There was no way they could get to me in time. But protocol was protocol, and it made me feel good.
The groan of overstressed metal echoed throughout the cockpit. I released the ejection handle. It wasn’t doing anything anyway. Hold it together, old girl, hold it together...
It wasn’t really an old girl. My last ship had been blown up by the Toralii, and this one was new. But saying “brand-new piece of metal I barely know” didn’t have the same ring to it.
The flames grew around the nose. The external temperature sensor showed 800 degrees Celsius, and there was an uncomfortably warm wave emanating from the canopy’s perspex. It was away from the friction-generated hot spots, fortunately, but already I could feel the heat through my space suit. The internal temperature couldn’t get too high, or it wouldn’t matter if the ship survived or not. I’d cook inside her like a lobster in its shell.
My ships sensors displayed a flood of information, almost all of it irrelevant. The carbon dioxide content of the atmosphere. Zulu time. Radiation levels. Nothing that would prevent my little ship from splattering into the surface at hypersonic speeds, assuming it wasn’t torn into hunks of scorched debris by then.
I pushed the lateral thruster pedals, trying to fishtail my fighter to increase its surface area to slow down. A spike in the outside temperature reminded me that the increased friction came at a cost. I leveled out, unwilling to stress my airframe any further. At the speed I was traveling, entry through the Martian atmosphere to the frozen, rocky ground below would take about nine minutes. I had less than that to find a solution.
I tried the ejection handle again. Nothing. I gave that up. I was riding this ship all the way down, one way or the other, and that was that.
The surface temperature stopped climbing. The worst was over in terms of the heat. I saw the rubber dials and plastic switches inside my cockpit sag as the internal temperature continued to climb. I was slowing down. My ship had reached terminal velocity in the upper atmosphere.
I powered the entire ship down completely, and my instrument panel went dark. Now there was no sound at all except the faint, faraway roar of the atmosphere dragging against my ship, the soundtrack to my descent a white noise generator.
I started everything back up again and light returned to my cockpit again, along with the shrieking of alarms. Most of the warning lights returned; some didn’t. I remembered the engineers’ creed: If it doesn’t work, try turning it off and on again. The flight system, the most important system, took longer than the rest.
The flames began to subside, but the surface of Mars was now frighteningly close. Without the reactionless drive, my sleek, thin fighter was a falling lump of metal, gracelessly rushing to plant itself within the dusty Martian sands.
The flight system came back, and I gingerly touched the throttle. A harsh, metal-on-metal sound reverberated through the cockpit, and the ship jerked as though alive. It spun over onto its back and the ground became the sky. A thin trail of smoke led from the upper atmosphere down to my ship, a finger through the sky pointing directly at my sorry arse.
A sudden flash inside the cockpit was followed by an explosion of brilliant sparks. My heart leapt into my throat. In the highly oxygenated environment of the spaceship canopy, literally strapped into the ejection seat, fire was every aviator’s fear.
Smoke filled the cockpit. I punched the internal extinguisher, causing a spray of white foam to splatter over everything, including my visor. I fumbled with my glove, pushing it up, clearing my vision. The smoke stung my eyes, but I squinted through it.
It was all or nothing now. I had to act or I’d go straight in. I kicked out with my foot to the rudder pedal, and mercifully the ship responded. I opened the throttle, angling the nose of the ship up, powering through the howling air.
It barely seemed to be enough. The ship was moving at four thousand kilometers an hour. A slight course adjustment would not be enough. Risking another episode of “engine completely broken,” I floored the throttle and tried to climb away.
The control stick shuddered in my hands. My vector barely changed. The red sand rushed up to meet me. I adjusted my angle of attack, trying to climb away as soon as possible.
A colossal cloud of dust billowed below me as my ship’s sonic boom slammed into the ground, and, missing the surface by about fifty meters, my fighter roared back into the Martian sky.
I throttled back to half and let my battered craft rest as I slowly gained altitude. My radar lit up with the incoming SAR craft.
“You’re too late,” I said over the long-range radio. “I’m dead.”
“Copy that, Magnet. Aborting SAR. Commiserations on your untimely demise. Why didn’t you punch out? We assumed you were unconscious.”
I climbed away from the Martian surface, a slight vibration in the lateral stabilizer pedals. “Two reasons,” I answered. “I pulled the handle, but the ejection system didn’t fire. Secondly, I’m hauling the December mail shipment. Would Santa ever abandon his sleigh?”
There was a slight pause on the other end of the line. “Wait, the December shipment?”
I shrugged, twisting around in my seat, trying to spot the cargo box. There was foam everywhere. “That’s what they told me. Mail for the personnel at the station.”
“Hah, Santa is real. He’s really, really real.”
I laughed and cut the transmission. The adrenaline slowly left my system, leaving my hands with a slight tremor. Not trusting the autopilot, though, I manually guided my craft the last few hundred kilometers to the colony site. I extended the landing struts, coming down fairly hard, bouncing as my ship skipped off the Martian dirt, skidded to one side, and finally came to rest just in front of the underground hangar system.
After a quick check to see that my suit wasn’t holed, I undid the straps holding me into the ejection seat and popped off the hatch. The air rushed out of the cockpit and dissipated. Mars’s gravity was over half of Earth’s, so when I pulled myself over the lip of the cockpit I nearly fell forward and face planted. My foot found the ladder down and I climbed down, breathing an audible sigh of relief against my helmet’s clear perspex when my thick boot hit the dirt.
Well, that was unnecessarily complex. I moved toward the aft of the Wasp, prying open the small cargo hold behind the cockpit, my thick gloves grasping the plastic handles and yanking the crate back. It was snagged. I tugged it harder and it broke apart. Dozens of tiny yellow parcels fell over me, followed by the sound of a deafening explosion.
The cockpit canopy blew free of the ship, the ejection seat following immediately after. The exhaust from the rockets knocked me onto my back and blew up a huge cloud of rusty, iron-rich Martian dust. My helmet hit the ground and I could see the sky, a little black dot with an exhaust trail leading from the cockpit to the sky.
Then the seat began to fall. I stared up at it, flat on my back, watching through the red dust cloud as the black dot grew, dropping straight down toward my head. I rolled onto my side and scrambled out of the way as it smashed into the dirt.
I stumbled back to my feet as the dust began to settle. I stared at the mangled remains of the seat as it lay amongs
t dozens of yellow sealed parcels, the contents of the mail shipment. Some were blackened and scorched, the paper parcels partially burned away, revealing colorful wrapping beneath. Stunned, I picked up as many parcels as I could find, then stuffed them back into the busted crate.
I looked into the cargo hold. A hole the size of a penny had been blown through the cargo hold into the rear of the cockpit. The wall wasn’t reinforced, a thin sheet of aluminum, and it hadn’t taken much force to go through. Smaller pieces of shrapnel had penetrated the outer shell of the compartment and, judging by the thin wisps of smoke trailing from the fingernail-sized holes, into the engine compartment as well.
The damage would have affected the ejection system along with flight control. Several packages were shredded beyond repair, but I couldn’t muster the effort to sort the good from the bad. That was the colonists’ job.
I reached forward, a gloved hand searching for the source of the explosion. I followed the scorch marks back to one of the packages. It was a remote-controlled helicopter, still in its original wrapper, but the batteries had ruptured, probably due to the pressure differential, and ignited, blowing the hole in the ship’s unarmored insides. Batteries contained a huge amount of energy but, under normal operation, released it slowly. When something went wrong and it came out all at once, it was more powerful than a hand grenade, or a haphazardly placed C4 charge.
Normally, something like this wouldn’t happen. Batteries flew on spaceships and aircraft all the time. Someone got really, really unlucky.
Well, damn. Looks like the Grinch won this one.
I slid the damaged crate from the cargo compartment and, grunting softly, propped it against my hip. The one-way glass of the flight control center loomed over the dusty, frozen ground. I imagined their confusion as I lugged the scorched, holed box across the rubble-strewn ground toward the airlock, stopping to pick up anything that fell out.
