by B. V. Larson
“We need to find out what the hell is going on,” I said. “Let’s get closer to the outer hull. Where’s the nearest observation portal?”
Welter pulled up his map, I could see it glowing colorfully in reverse on the inside of his helmet. I stood guard while he tapped fingers at virtual controls in the air in front of him.
“I’ve got it. Let’s backtrack about a hundred paces and take a side passage into laser battery three.”
“That one’s knocked out,” Sandra said. “Not just the power, either. Everyone is dead, and the bulkheads have automatically sealed.”
“Sounds just right for taking a look outside,” I said, leading the way.
When we finally convinced the nanite-sealed bulkhead to let us pass we were propelled forward by a surge of escaping gasses at our backs. It was like having a minor hurricane behind you for a few seconds. Sandra was the only one seriously affected, as we were too heavy in our battlesuits to be swept off our feet. She whooped as she lost her footing, tumbled over me, and grabbed my power pack. Her fingers latched on like steel claws. I chuckled as I walked forward into the destroyed gun emplacement. She rode my back like monkey until we resealed the bulkhead and were safely in a quiet vacuum outside the station.
The view was spectacular. To our left the star at the center of the Eden system burned. It was like a very bright full moon at this distance. The frozen planet Hel was visible in the opposite direction. It glowed an ice-blue along the rim of the crater of metal we stood within. The station was still slowly rotating, I realized now. I supposed that with the power gone, the impacts we’d endured had not been compensated for by the automatic stabilizers. The entire station was a slow, tumbling spin.
“This is convenient,” I said. “If we just watch for a while, we’ll probably be treated to a full view of the battleground.”
“We’ll be spotted and burned by then, if there are enemy ships parked out there,” Sandra said.
I had to agree with her. “Let’s move up and take a quick look around. Keep all sensors on passive mode.”
Our suits were miniature spaceships, effectively, and they were equipped with long-range vision enhancement systems. You couldn’t navigate in open space effectively without better sensory support than human eyeballs.
We all crawled up to the jagged rim of the crater that had once been a gun emplacement and peered in various directions. I saw twisted wreckage floating here and there in the immediate area, but it was difficult to pick out much more at greater range. There was so much shrapnel floating along with our station, resembling a swarm of orbiting insects, I couldn’t tell what was going on. Battlefields in open space were nothing like battlefields in an actual planetary grav field. They were so spread out, you had to really look around to see any hostile entities.
“What have you got?” I asked. “I can’t see anything except flying junk. Where is their fleet?”
“I think I have something,” Sandra said. “Down below us—toward Hel.”
Welter and I crawled to her position. We tuned and adjusted our helmet displays to interpret what was out there. Except in Sandra’s case, human vision was useless when looking thousands of miles through space. If we’d gone active and used pinging radar, we could have figured it out faster, but then we’d give ourselves away.
We all peered down toward the planet we’d named Hel. The icy world below was composed primarily of nickel, iron and frozen ammonia. The planet’s surface was heavily frosted by cyrovolcanoes that periodically spewed out unpleasant liquids. These events were dramatic spectacles. Ammonia and methane bubbled up from the planet’s guts when tidal forces heated up the interior. Once these liquids reached the surface, they quickly froze into vast crystalline plains.
“Don’t look at the surface,” Sandra said, “it’s orbiting low, between the station and the planet.”
“What is?” I asked. Then I saw it. “That hulk—that’s huge! It must be a ship, its metal content—wow, it has to be the dreadnaught. Nothing else could be that size. It must have half the displacement of this entire station.”
“I agree,” Welter said, “that has to be a dead dreadnaught. It’s a destroyed hulk now, tumbling in orbit below us. If I had to guess, I would say it’s in decay and will crash into the surface of Hel after a few more passes.”
“A fitting end for those bastards,” Sandra said with feeling.
“Yes,” I said, frowning fiercely in my helmet. “But what I want to know is: what knocked out a dreadnaught after we were already on our knees?”
-9-
We spent the next several hours cleaning house. We destroyed around thirty Macro technicians who were involved in various acts of mischief. They were clearly trying to disable any defensive systems we might have left, in preparation for some kind of more significant assault.
What had me worried were the nine or so cruisers that were still out there somewhere. They’d had enough time to put on the brakes and turn around. We only had a few hours until the main fleet returned, but those hours were going to be long and uncertain.
“What’s coming next, Colonel?” asked Welter.
“We’ll find out soon enough,” I said with firm confidence. What I didn’t mention was how we were going to find out. I figured we’d find out when the Macros bothered to clue us in on their time schedule of operations. Our tactical situation was beyond grim, and I was left with a powerful sense of unease. As our own skeletal crew assembled, the rest of my Marines were increasingly pleased as our numbers grew—but I felt our forces were pathetic. There were only nine humans plus Marvin left alive on the station. The Macros had clearly written us off, not even bothering to pretend we were a credible threat.
“Kyle, I’ve got enough power to operate the primary transmitters now, can’t we just contact Fleet and let them know we’re still alive?”
I looked at Sandra for a second and shook my head. “Best to stay quiet for now. We’ll use passive sensors with shielded power. Play dead. When our ships come nosing around, we’ll signal them then.”
“What if the ships aren’t ours?”
I shrugged and smiled. “Then I suppose we’ll continue to lie low.”
It was bothering everyone, this business of not knowing what had happened. For all we knew, the Macros had pressed on toward the inner planets. We’d destroyed most of them, but they still had enough fleet power to do us a lot of damage.
“I’ll tell you what we will do,” I said, looking around the crowd of dirty, dispirited faces. “Sandra, Marvin and you two, go to the damaged deep-com section, and set up an antenna. Make sure it isn’t anything the Macros might notice. And for heaven’s sake don’t transmit anything, not even an acknowledging blip. With luck, we’ll pick up traffic from Fleet and at least be able to glean data on recent events.”
This idea pleased everyone. At least I’d given them something sensible to do. They set about immediately and eagerly. We all wanted to know what the hell had happened.
“The rest of you follow Welter,” I said. “Commander, I want you to try to get the weapons batteries working again, one at a time. Let’s start with the systems disabled by the original EMP blast. They’re still intact, except for nanites and power. The Macros never bothered to target most of them during the battle.”
It took hours, but we finally had some pieces rigged up. The heavy beams were all destroyed, but we managed to get one railgun battery up and ready. The antenna Sandra and Marvin constructed was built of metal rods like rebar from inside the station, which gave it the look of a twisted flag of wreckage. It worked well, despite its trashed appearance.
I’d returned to the bridge, as it was well-protected and wired for command and control to the entire station. We had some power back, and about half the screens were lit with a soft bluish glow. The holotank was still dead, however, and most of the screens were blank because the corresponding camera feeds were down.
Scratchy transmissions came in from Fleet a few hours before our reinforcement
s were scheduled to arrive. We listened intently to scraps of voice audio.
“…we’ve got a new force…definitely hostile…”
Everyone stopped working and listened in, except for Marvin, who I could see on a live monitor. He was out on the skin of the station, exposed to space. He made final adjustments by tentacle, tuning our makeshift antenna like an old-fashioned set of rabbit-ears. His skinny arms whipped about outside the station, aiming the antenna with tiny adjustments, and guiding it to track what must be a moving source of transmission.
“…ship configuration unknown. They have come through the ring and are approaching the dead station. Relay this to all commanders, we have new contacts…”
The antenna buzzed and warbled incomprehensibly for a time. I finally couldn’t take it anymore. “Marvin, can you identify the source of those transmissions?”
“I believe they are coming from the destroyer Berlin, sir.”
“They’re from the relief task force then?”
“Definitely, sir.”
“Keep working on that signal. Get whatever you can.”
I turned back toward the others on the bridge. Their faces were pale and drawn. I could hear their thoughts, despite the fact no one spoke. New ships were coming here? We were practically helpless.
“There’s no reason for them to come here other than to board this station,” I said. “That means they’ll have to decelerate and come in very close. We have one working battery, and we need to use it at point-blank range.”
“We need time to put a lot of steel up into space, Colonel,” Welter said. “If we start firing toward the ring now, we might catch a few of them as they make their approach.”
I shook my head. “We’re blind now, and might not hit anything. We have no active sensor, pinging away to give us valid targeting data. We’ll have to eyeball it when they make their final approach.”
“We’ll only get off one or two volleys before they knock us out.”
I took a deep breath and let it out again. “You’re probably right. But at that distance, we’ll blow holes in their ships if we do hit. It’s better than hitting nothing and getting smashed by missiles at range.”
After a bit more wrangling, they agreed to my plan for a point-blank ambush. We decided our time was best spent now trying to get another battery operating. If we could do enough damage, maybe we could disrupt their plans and continue breathing long enough for the cavalry to get here.
We worked furiously after that, and by the time the alien ships were flaring their braking jets in near space, we had a second battery operating. We aimed them both toward the ring, and waited until their hot exhaust trails left no doubt concerning their speed, trajectory and mission: They were braking hard, coming in to dock with our wrecked station.
By my count, there were about twenty-five exhaust flares. Without active sensors and the holotank, I wasn’t sure exactly what we were facing, but I was sure they were too small to be dreadnaughts or cruisers.
“Eight thousand miles,” Welter announced.
“Hold your fire,” I ordered.
Everyone was tense and sweating in their suits, including me. I’d been enduring a tickling sensation on my left eyebrow for the last ten minutes or so. The sensation was driving me mad, but I didn’t dare open my helmet now.
“Seven thousand out now, decelerating hard.”
We watched as the invading ships flared brighter. Their exhaust plumed into flaring fireballs at the base of every ship. I wondered if they had gravity repeller drives at all.
“Six thousand.”
“Marvin, calculate a firing solution for me: At what point will they have less than a one-second warning before our railgun projectiles reach them?”
“Given their rate of approach and presuming a continued matching rate of deceleration, I’d say six seconds ago.”
I looked at him sharply. “You’re telling me they are already inside a one-second warning radius?”
“It’s hard to be precise with presumptive date, but I would say they are down to about zero point six nine seconds—”
“Welter, fire! Fire everything!”
The station shuddered slightly, as everyone let loose with what little we had. They were coming in hard and fast, whoever they were. I’d almost blown it, assuming we had more time.
The battle was a strange one. I felt like a carrier captain in the old days, stuck with only primitive detection equipment and radio transmissions from direct observers. It was hard to sit there with one elbow on a broken console clenching my teeth until my jaws ached.
“I think those are impact explosions. They must be. Got one, no three now, Kyle.” The voice was Sandra’s and she sounded excited. I had her gunning one of the batteries. Everyone was manning something.
I continued listening. Only Welter and I were on the bridge itself to coordinate.
“I got one, down on the lower edge of my field of fire. They are moving now, repositioning. My shots are going wide at this point.”
I banged my gauntlet on a broken brainbox. It dented in and a puff of dead gray nanite dust shot up from it.
“Talk to me people, how many do we still have out there? Are they returning fire yet?
“I don’t think so,” said Sergeant Sanchez, my gunner with the most experience of the survivors. They are just taking it. Seems odd.”
Everything about this situation seemed odd to me. “Sergeant, give me a count please, between volleys.”
There was a several second wait, which seemed interminable to me. Finally, he reported back. “We got seven of them, sir. And I think the other battery did about the same. If I had to guess, I’d say eight vessels got past us.”
“What do you mean got past you? Where are they? Have they swung around the station?”
“No sir, they should be reaching the outer hull about now.”
Then I heard booming sounds, impacts that resonated through the station. These weren’t the loud, smashing sounds of projectiles hitting the station, hammering it. Instead, they were the sounds of landing craft adhering to the hull.
“Batteries one and two, do you have any targets at this point?”
“No sir. We can’t even see them. They are too low for our turrets.”
“Get out of the battery, then. You’re a target now. Retreat to the inner core of the station. We’ll fight it out bulkhead-to-bulkhead.”
I waved to Welter and he reluctantly unlimbered his heavy beamer again. I could tell he preferred Fleet ops. Blasting things at a great distance in space appealed to him, and he clearly wasn’t happy.
I, on the other hand, was smiling. It would be good to burn some of these invaders personally. I’d not gotten enough of that particular thrill lately.
We clanked out into the passages and gathered up into a good-sized squad. With Marvin bringing up the rear, we looked rather formidable. Marvin was in his full battlegear, and I must say, he looked more the part of the freak than ever. He seemed just as eager to try out his new body parts as I was to find out what these invaders were made of.
Marvin still looked something like Marvin: he had several whipping arms and plenty of cameras. But beyond that, his battle persona was quite different. His head section had been replaced with a cluster of six heavy-beam weapons, and this lower body now rested on a sled of gravity repellers. He floated about a foot above the corridor and anything he ran over that could be crushed down, was crushed down. I made sure I kept my boots out from under him. With all the extra generators and weaponry, he was as heavy as a small tank. Above all his new armament, his cameras whipped this way and that excitedly.
We advanced toward the nearest enemy landing point, which was in the mid-section of the station. Again, they were going for our power-couplings. I supposed it made sense. The moment they’d seen we still had some fight left in us, they must have decided to disarm us by killing the power, rather than destroying the weapons themselves.
The enemy had paid a grim price to take this st
ation, and I meant to make them pay even more. We came around a corner as a group in a rush. This was one of the central passages, wide enough for heavy equipment to be transported. It was a cylindrical shape about twenty feet in diameter. My marines filled one end of this pipe, and we began beaming the moment we saw the throng ahead of us.
I wasn’t sure who was more surprised: the Lobsters or us. Because that’s who it was, a company of perhaps fifty Lobsters dressed up in water-filled suits and crawling all over the passageway. Their shape was unmistakable, and when our lasers cut into those suits, they released a gush of steam which quickly turned to frost in the depressurized passageway.
They returned fire in a disorganized fashion. I’m not sure who had trained them, but I was pretty sure some of those troops shot their own kind in the butt in the confusion. Still, with their greater numbers, we were pressed back out of the passageway into a side chute. We left two of our members dead and floating, including Sergeant Sanchez.
“We’ll wait here, and ambush them when they come around the corner,” I told my panting squad.
Sandra put away her light beamer and pulled out two combat knives. I glanced at her and nodded. She gave me a fierce grin. She knew our odds weren’t good, but that part of her that was different now was enjoying the fight. We touched helmets and whispered our love to each other off the com-link.
Suddenly, there was a rush of dark metal over our heads. Sandra and I were shoved down brutally. Whatever had run us over, it was big. When it had passed by, we came up stiff and sore, with our weapons raised.
Ahead in the main passage, beams flared and gases were released explosively. We crept forward and eyed the scene with our guns in front of us.
I saw something big down there, plowing into the Lobster troops. I figured out what it was in an instant and glanced over my shoulder to confirm my suspicions. Yes, Marvin was no longer guarding our rear.
“Crazy robot,” Sandra said. “Do you think he’ll survive his charge?”
