by B. V. Larson
I looked up at the screen. There was the station; it was huge and reddish-brown. It looked like small moon, but was oddly-shaped. Unlike a human structure, this thing was organic-looking in design. It was looped with tubes and swirling flanges. It looked more like a seedpod coated in cobwebs than anything else. I didn’t see any incoming fire on the screen. They must not be firing missiles at us.
A beam of light splashed into the ship then, having breached the thin hull. My visor darkened almost immediately. The intensity of the light gave me an instant headache. I thought for a second that one of my men had flipped off his safety and discharged his projector. I almost shouted a complaint, when I felt an impact against my right shoulder.
Centrifugal force pushed me into the man on my right, just as the guy on my left was being shoved up against me. I could feel the motion now, we were in a spin. My vision returned and my visor brightened. I could see all the men were caught up in the spin, we were doing at least three Gs of lateral force. The upper hull of the ship was gone. A hole had ripped through the nanite skin and I could see the stars whirling by.
“We’ve been hit!” shouted Kwon unnecessarily. “Orders, sir?”
I’d always known that these ships were sitting ducks if the enemy had their act together. The problem was, we couldn’t come in at a high enough velocity—not if we wanted to do anything other than ram the station. We had to slow down when we got in close. I cursed the Macros and their deals. They’d once again thrown away the lives of my men.
The spin slowed down as the ship struggled to control it. The ship was recovering, but I knew Macros tended to fire on a target until it was completely destroyed.
“Everybody out, we’ve got to expect another strike,” I said. “Deploy your skateboards, marines. The free ride is over!”
“What about me, sir?” asked the pilot. I was momentarily surprised to hear her voice—I hadn’t really expected her to survive.
Lieutenant Joelle Marquis. Young, kind of cute, with an accent that turned on Kwon. I hardened my thoughts. I couldn’t worry about saving her butt any more than the rest of us.
“Can you operate your ship, pilot?” I asked. Around me, twenty men scrabbled to escape their panicked nano straps, which clutched at them like the hands of frightened children. Each of them struggled to get out the disks they sat on and exit the craft through the gaping hole in the roof.
“I can fly,” she said.
“We need that big laser to drill into the station. Take it all the way in. Good luck.”
“Thank you, sir.”
I jumped out then, and Kwon followed me. I wondered if he hated me for giving the girl suicidal orders.
I stood on my disk and a rippling sheen of nanites grew out of it, bubbling up my body to finally stop at my neck. I could still see through my helmet visor to navigate. There was a flash behind me. I suspected it was the assault ship, taking another hit.
I couldn’t do anything about it, so I didn’t look back.
-9-
I’ve experienced a number of strange things in my life. Some of these things no one else in human history has ever lived through. But riding a dish-shaped skateboard through space while under fire had to be one of the wildest, even by my standards.
The incoming enemy fire was beam-based, presumably lasers. I could tell that much because the beams were fast and invisible. In a planetary atmosphere a really big, powerful laser beam might be visible, depending on its spectrum and the atmospheric conditions. But in space, you really can’t see a laser beam because there is nothing for the beam to touch. You certainly wouldn’t see a pillar of light, not even if it was left on for a while—which they usually aren’t. Unless you have something for the light to hit and reflect off of, it is essentially invisible. The only way I was able to detect the incoming fire was the visible reaction caused when something was hit. Usually, it was another skateboarder like me.
When one of my marines was hit, he didn’t just explode. He burst into fire, but that didn’t stop his forward momentum. The mass of his body and the skateboard kept moving at significant velocity. Even as they were melted to slag, their momentum carried my dying men toward their target. They looked like meteors, a fireball of bright white followed by a spiraling trail of vapor.
They were nailing one of us about every ten seconds. I counted thirty hits in my field of vision. After that, I stopped counting, because we were almost there. The assault ships that had survived the approach rotated their primary engines around to aim forward and brake. They slowed dramatically, and all around me my men were doing the same.
I’d never been trained on this bizarre flying dish I’d designed. I was ashamed to admit it now, but I’d sat out the beta testing, letting others give me input and making the alterations they suggested. I’d never been much of a skateboarder or a surfer, either.
The worst part was the reversal. I almost screwed it up entirely and made the maneuver while the propulsion system was still active. If I had done it that way, I think I would have been thrown off my tiny, dish-like platform, nano straps or no. I remembered at the last second, however, and managed to switch it off, spin around, and then turn it on again.
Due to my gross lack of competence, I realized I’d taken too long and was coming in too fast. I was passing the others now. When I’d bailed out of the assault ship I’d started off as one of the last of the pack. Now, I was streaking along while they braked around me. I shot through them, and it was only luck that I didn’t collide with some hapless marine who’d done his job right.
I kicked up the power, until my legs were buckling. I had no idea how many Gs I was resisting standing lock-kneed like that. It had to be six, maybe more. I don’t think I could have remained upright without my nanite-empowered musculature and my exoskeletal armor. A normal man just couldn’t have done it. He would have folded up in a heap, probably pitching off the skateboard and going into a deadly spin. At this point, so close to the surface of the massive space station that filled space below me, the flying dish was absolutely required for survival. It was the only method I had to slow myself without a crushing impact.
“Are you all right, sir?” Kwon called on my com-link.
He must have been watching out for me. I don’t know how. I had no idea which marine was which in the capsules that went streaking by all around. My dish went from bucking to shuddering, finally smoothing out as I slowed it enough not to smash me to atoms when I hit the station.
When I had my tiny platform under some kind of control I took the time to answer Kwon. “I’m fine. I just wanted to get ahead of the pack,” I lied.
“You always lead from the front line,” Kwon said, with a scolding note in his voice. “Very dangerous, sir!”
I smiled with half my mouth. He didn’t need to tell me that this time. A moment later, I touched down. It was more like a controlled crash, however. I hit the station sooner than I expected, a jarring blow that caught the edge of my dish. I realized in an instant I wasn’t all the way down to the surface. I’d hit one of those wildly projecting tubes of theirs. I was moving at a pretty good clip, about as fast as a hot-shot jumper with a parachute might dare to land. Hitting the structure set me to spinning, and when I did finally hit the flat surface of the station, I landed on my left shoulder. I bounced back off, regained control of my dish, and then glided down toward the metal skin of the station.
For the first time, I was glad I had one of the heavy battle suits on. I didn’t think I’d broken anything, and I could still operate all my limbs, so I figured I was good to go. Grunting, I climbed off my tiny vehicle and began carrying my dish. I called up to Kwon. “Tell the men to remember to carry their dishes. They might be the only way off this Christmas ornament when we are finished. And tell them to watch out for those big metal wires or tubes, whatever they are.”
“Will do, sir,” Kwon said, relaying my instructions.
I looked up as the rest of them came in. We’d made it—at least, most of us had. I supp
osed it was partly due to surprise. It must have really freaked out the aliens inside the station. I could imagine them, wondering what these things were the cruiser was firing at them. Should they shoot them down, and thus risk starting a war? Maybe the Macros were only releasing their trash into space. Maybe it was all a big misunderstanding. Fear, hard choices. The answer, of course, was a nightmare. Better than fifteen hundred of my marines had made it through their defenses and now crawled over their hull, where the enemy didn’t appear to have any weaponry.
More men were braking now, coming in nearby. Most of them landed better than I had. They were better-trained and younger. But those who met up with me were all delighted. Word had gotten around quickly: crazy old Riggs had beaten everyone down. I smiled inside my suit, knowing that such moments were great morale-builders—whether they’d started off as screw-ups or not.
By the time I had located a functional assault ship, I had more than thirty marines from Beta Company following me. The ship’s drill was already blazing, making our visors darken to the point of forming blinders in front of our eyes. We kept stumbling forward, relying on our magnetic boots to keep us from accidently tumbling back out into space. Each man still carried his dish, knowing it was his only ticket home.
The big laser on the assault ship flared and flashed. Gouts of white light bloomed as the drilling continued. It was alarming to witness. Fortunately, we didn’t have long to wait. The hull wasn’t more than a few feet thick. A vapor-stream and a gush of fire flowed out of the newly burned hole, quickly surrounding the assault ship and turning it into a torch. The men lurched back, recoiling.
“Looks like she breached. Laser off!” I shouted over my com-link. The pilot cooled the blazing drill, and molten bits of metal cooled and formed orange, floating balls all around us. The station wasn’t big enough to produce significant gravity by itself. Everything was floating.
The gush of vapor continued. We could see it, like a plume of steam. It reached out into space and completely enveloped the assault ship. I frowned in concern as it went on. Didn’t these aliens believe in bulkheads and sectional ship design? Had we just popped this balloon and suffocated a million innocents?
After about a minute, the streaming vapor died down to a trickle. The burnt metal of the breach, which had been glowing hot moments before, had frosted over now. The leeching cold of vacuum had done its work, stilling the molecules.
“I need two scouts,” I said.
Two men came forward. These were wiry men with lighter kits, and I sent them on recon. I could have rigged up a sensor and dropped a pickup down into the breach on a nanite wire, but I didn’t want to screw around. Delays would give the defenders time to organize. Every second counted.
The two scouts slid into the breach and had a look around. They transmitted vids of a large chamber full of organic material. Plants, from the look of it—floating in water that was now freezing solid. Apparently, they had some kind of gravitational control which kept the liquid in its tanks.
I nodded thoughtfully. Maybe we’d invaded their outer farm regions. If their plants operated as ours did via photosynthesis, they would need to be near the surface to collect energy from their star. Possibly, that was why we’d seen such a geyser of vapor. Water, air, relative heat and pressure—it all added up to a blast of steamy air.
“Move, everyone!” I shouted. “Get in there before they blow this section of their station back into space!”
My men surged, and soon it was my turn into the breach. I was very glad my suit was tough and impregnated with a self-repairing nanite layer. The breach was like a hot blade. We got through it, however, and one-by-one we floated inside. I had everyone leave their skateboards magnetically tethered to the external skin of the station. Whoever made it back out could use them to escape. Behind me, more and more marines kept pouring in. We’d only managed four breaches, and two or three hundred marines were going into each one.
“Sir?” boomed a familiar voice.
I turned and saw Kwon. I wasn’t surprised to see him, it was one out of four he’d end up here, and I knew he’d try to follow me if he could. I was surprised however, to see who he had with him.
“Lieutenant Marquis?” I asked.
“Yes sir. Glad to be here, sir,” she said. The woman was of normal height, but she looked like a kid standing next to Kwon. A shapely kid.
“You thought Joelle was dead, didn’t you?” asked Kwon. “I caught her.”
“You caught her?” I asked.
“Pretty much,” Lieutenant Marquis confirmed.
“I had one of those two-man skateboards,” Kwon said. “You know, the ones made for carrying heavier equipment. Anyway, I saw the ship blow up, and I knew she didn’t have time to get onto a dish, if she had lived. So, I watched for her and caught her when she went by.”
I stared. We’d built a slightly larger unit for some marines, most of them were used by medics to help carry their extra loads. In Kwon’s case, he was an extra load all by himself. I narrowed my eyes, finding a flaw in his story. “She should have been thrown out at an angle, or at least be heading toward the station at a lower velocity than you were.”
Kwon shrugged. “Yeah. I braked some and found her.”
“Risky, Kwon,” I said. I looked at Lieutenant Marquis. “Sounds like you owe him a drink.”
She nodded. “It’s a date.”
I turned away, shaking my head. “Well, you’re both alive in any case. Pull out your pistol, Lieutenant. You are assigned to scout duty.”
Kwon didn’t complain, and neither did Lieutenant Marquis. I directed her into a corridor. There were at least twenty tubes leading out of this hydroponic garden, and I wanted all of them explored before we moved. So far, we hadn’t made contact with any enemy aliens.
But that was about to change.
-10-
For me, it was something of a shock when the first charge came. I’d fought with this enemy before, but it had been a long, long time.
The aliens stood about four feet tall and had four hooves. They had hands after a fashion, each with three opposing digits. Their hands looked like tripods of thumbs. On top of their heads they had blade-shaped horns that thrust up like a set of antlers.
Unlike the Centaurs I’d fought aboard the Alamos when I’d first been taken prisoner so very long ago, these aliens were not caught in their bare, cinnamon-brown fur. They had suits on and they carried guns.
Four of them came galloping after one of my scouts out of a high flying tube and chased him into our midst. The aliens gunned my scout down, reducing his legs to smoking stumps. Their weapons appeared to be beam-based, similar to our own. I saw with shock of alarm they were very much like our own. They had backpacks that obviously contained reactors and beam projectors in their stubby hands. Thick cables ran back to the packs, just as our projectors were connected to our own packs. After they burned my scout down, they hardly had time to look up before my own men opened up on them and returned the favor.
“Well, there won’t be any questioning that group,” I said sourly. I couldn’t be too upset, however. After watching them murder one of our marines, I couldn’t expect my people to be full of mercy and waving flags of truce.
“They have our weapons, sir,” Kwon said, marveling at the steaming carcasses.
“Yeah. Because the Nanos gave them the same tech they gave us.”
Kwon didn’t reply. I suspected he was confused by all this. I gave him my surefire cure for confusion: I ordered him to mount an advance through the tunnel these Centaurs had come from to secure it.
“Don’t shoot everything you see, men,” I said. “We’re not here to exterminate them, as far as I know.”
That brought me to the next, unpleasant task. I needed to talk to Macro Command. As far as I was concerned, we’d achieved our objectives. We had penetrated the enemy structure as promised. Calling it captured might be a stretch, but maybe the Macros wouldn’t know any better.
I took up one of
the communications boxes I’d loaded on each assault ship and connected it to a strand of nanites that led to the surface of the station. “Macro Command, this is Kyle Riggs reporting.”
Dead air. It was nice to be appreciated.
“Macro Command, we have achieved our objectives. We will now move back to our ships.”
“Mission Incomplete.”
“We’ve penetrated the enemy satellite. We’ve killed all the defenders that have attacked us. Our mission is complete.”
“Mission Incomplete.”
“Define requirements to complete this mission,” I asked, hoping against hope they didn’t want us to slaughter a million-odd Centaur civilians. I wasn’t even sure we could do it, given that their weaponry was as good as ours.
“Capture the enemy structure.”
I figured maybe we had another of our little ‘misunderstandings’ going. “What part of the structure would mark this structure as captured?” I asked.
“Interrogatives are not permitted—”
“Ignore that request, damn it,” I said, realizing I’d accidentally asked a question. From down the tube where I’d sent my marines, I could see flashes of light and shouts over the com-link channels. We’d engaged with another patrol, I suspected. It looked like these troops were firing back.
“Give me a destination point which I must reach to capture this structure,” I said in a commanding tone.
There was a hesitation. “There are several such points.”
“Specify the nearest.”
“Drive propulsion centers for orbital suspension are located less than one mile inside the central cavity.”
I blinked. The engines for orbital suspension?
“Give me another destination point,” I asked, but I was already beginning to get a funny feeling….
“The thinnest point of the hull which would allow the venting of the central cavity into space is six miles distant, on the portion of the structure closest to the planetary surface.”
