“Understood, Lead. Initiating launch sequence,” Deedee replied.
Remo mentally initiated his own launch sequence, and a robotic voice went through a final pre-flight check while the launch tube charged: “Navigation systems online. Weapons online. Engines online—” Thrusters roared as the flight computer tested them, and his virtual cockpit shuddered. “—All systems green. Magnetic catapult initiating.”
Yellow bars of light shone down from the top of the launch tube, growing progressively brighter as the mag boosters charged. Remo kept his eyes fixed between the two glowing red lines below that marked the launch track. The doors at the end of the launch tube opened up with a simulated clanking sound, punctuated by a definitive thud.
“Launching in three, two, one—”
The catapult released.
Remo should have felt the acceleration of the launch driving him into the back of his G-tank, but he felt nothing, a mysterious symptom of the Grays’ inertial dampening technology. The yellow lights of the mag boosters flickered through his virtual cockpit, faster and faster, and then...
An empty black void. He would have seen stars if the harvester were cloaked, but according to Ben the Grays’ cloaking and shielding technology couldn’t be used simultaneously, and right now they needed the harvester’s shields to protect both it and the Liberty from the deadly forces inside the wormhole.
Remo toggled a sensor overlay on his HUD, and the surrounding hull of the harvester appeared as a garish green wireframe of crisscrossing lines—a cylindrical cage. Long wireframe tubes protruded from that cage, connecting to the Liberty like the spokes of a wheel. As Remo watched, those lines began to blur as they raced by in front of him with increasing speed.
His eyes bulged in alarm. The harvester was accelerating through the wormhole. It was dragging the Liberty along with it, but now that they’d left the Liberty’s hull, they weren’t being dragged along anymore.
“Raven Two, come about 90 degrees to starboard and punch it at twenty-five Gs!”
“That’s past regulation limits! We could black out!” Deedee replied.
“We’ll have to risk it,” Remo said as he followed his own orders. Coming about, he set his fighter’s acceleration to twenty-five Gs. This time the acceleration slammed him against his flight chair—in reality his G-tank. His head throbbed painfully with the labored beating of his heart, and his eyes felt like lead sinkers driving into his skull. His field of vision narrowed to two blurry circles surrounded by darkness, as if his eyes really were sinking deeper into his head. Whatever tech the Grays used to buffer the G-forces of acceleration, it wasn’t working for them anymore.
Remo realized he was getting close to blacking out.
The green wire frame stopped racing by them, slowing to a crawl, and then reversing directions as they outpaced the harvester.
“Ease back to eighteen Gs!” Remo ordered. If his voice hadn’t been simulated via his neural implant, he doubted he would have been able to even move his lips to issue that order.
He set his own fighter’s acceleration to eighteen Gs and found that to be just slightly less than the harvester’s. Remo’s head still throbbed, but at least he felt like he could handle the pressure now. He saw Deedee’s fighter go racing out ahead of him, a shadowy black triangle. He checked her acceleration—still twenty-five Gs.
She must have blacked out, he thought.
“Raven Two?” he tried.
No reply.
“Shit,” he muttered. “Liberty Command, this is Raven Lead; Two has blacked out. I need you to kill her engines and give her a shot of epinephrine.”
“Acknowledged,” Ben said.
An alarm tone drew Remo’s attention to his sensors, and a set of four yellow silhouettes came streaking through the hole in the harvester—the yellow color meant neutral for unknown targets, but Remo re-designated them as enemy red and armed his Phantom’s lasers. He selected the first target and noticed that it was disk-shaped. The others were, too.
Flying saucers? he wondered. Definitely Gray ships, which meant they’d be shielded, but they might not have weapons to fire back. Remo fired at the lead saucer. A pair of bright green laser beams flashed to either side of his virtual cockpit. They connected to his target, but they didn’t appear to do any damage.
“Wah-ow! Those epi shots pack a punch,” Deedee said over the comms. “What’d I miss?”
“Ramp up to eighteen Gs—slowly! And target those saucers! They’re trying to board the Liberty.” Remo switched over to hydra missiles and highlighted three of the four targets. He pulled the trigger.
Krshhhh! Two simulated white contrails appeared as the hydras streaked out. They split into a dozen smaller warheads and went spiraling in toward their target, looking like the mythical many-headed snake for which they were named.
Three explosions flashed in quick succession and the saucers exploded, their shields no match for thermonuclear warheads.
“That got ‘em!” Remo crowed.
“Hey, leave some for me,” Deedee complained.
“I did. One bandit left. He’s all yours.”
“Fire in the hole!”
Remo watched another hydra missile go streaking across the void. It split into six spiraling shards and then collided with the remaining saucer, ripping it apart. Remo watched for more saucer-shaped silhouettes to come racing through the hole in the harvester. “Command, any reply from the Grays?” he asked.
“Nothing yet... we’ll keep you posted, Raven Lead. Keep us clear for as long as you can.”
“Roger,” Remo replied just as another group of saucers came streaking in. “Contact! A dozen bandits coming through!”
“I see them!” Deedee replied. “Marking targets...”
“Don’t let them board us,” Ben warned.
Remo marked the six targets that weren’t already flagged by Deedee and fired another pair of hydra missiles at them.
Krsshhh! The missiles split into a dozen smaller shards once more. They reached their targets in seconds, and explosions pocked the void with fire.
More saucers streamed in. “Ten more—” Remo said. “Scratch that! They’re still coming through.” Saucers poured in by the dozens.
“There’s too many of them!” Deedee said.
“Keep firing!” Remo snapped, marking targets and firing missiles as fast as he could.
Krsshhh! Krshhh....!
Green lasers snapped out from the Liberty, hitting saucers and eliciting flashes of light from their shields, but no explosions.
In a matter of seconds Remo was out of hydra missiles, and the saucers were still coming through.
Remo toggled all of his fighter’s cannons and missiles for simultaneous fire and selected an unmarked target. He pulled the trigger once, twice... three times, illuminating the saucer in the simulated green light of his lasers, but still nothing happened.
“That’s it,” Deedee said. “I’m out. Switching to lasers.”
“Don’t bother,” Remo said, stabbing the trigger for the fourth time to no avail. “Their shields are too strong. Command, we’re overrun. You’re about to have company in there.”
“Understood,” Ben replied. “I’ll seal the bulkheads and try to slow them down, but you’d better get back on board and suit up. We’ll need your help to hold them off.”
“Roger that. Raven Two, on me. It’s time to pack it in.”
Deedee didn’t acknowledge the order. He checked his sensors and found her drifting along, neither firing on or disengaging from the enemy.
“Deedee?” he tried.
Still no reply. He was about request another epi shot for her when he noticed her Phantom was flying right in front of the hole in the harvester, getting blasted with radiation from the wormhole. It must have fried her comms—probably her control systems, too.
“Fuck!” Remo roared. “Command, Raven Two is lights out. She got a blast of radiation from the wormhole. Please advise.” His mind raced through rescue options.
He could dock his fighter with hers and tow her in for a landing, but then he’d get the same dose of radiation that had left Deedee drifting.
“There’s nothing you can do for her,” Ben replied. “Get back to the ship and help us fend off the boarders.”
“Screw you, kid!”
“Think about it, Remo—if she got hit with enough radiation to fry her controls, then she’s already a goner.”
Remo ground his teeth. He stared at Deedee’s fighter for a long moment, warring with himself, trying to come up with another way. Any way at all.
But Ben was right. “Goodbye, Deedee,” he whispered, and banked away from her, heading back to the Liberty. He sailed past the ship’s rotating rings to the core section where the stationary hangar bays were located. Remo saw red the whole way. Maybe he couldn’t save Deedee, but he could still avenge her death.
CHAPTER 31
“Still no answer to our distress call?” Catalina asked.
Ben considered that with a frown. Benevolence had taken the Avilon to a separate rendezvous in case they were followed, and without Ch-va-la to act as their envoy and translator, there was a chance that the Grays waiting at the Liberty’s rendezvous didn’t even understand the distress call they’d sent.
“They’ve cut through the first bulkhead,” Ben noted, watching on holo displays as one of the glowing green barriers between them and the nearest enemy boarding party vanished.
“Already?” Jessica asked. “How many bulkheads are left?”
“Ten, and one floor. They’ll have to climb up one of the elevator shafts,” he replied. This was a disaster. If the Grays didn’t come to their rescue soon, everything would be lost. Ben shook his head and activated the comms.
“Remo, this is Liberty Command, come in please.”
Remo’s voice crackled through the bridge a moment later. “I read you, Command.”
“There’s approximately—” Ben glanced at one of the other holo displays in front of him. “—a hundred life signs detected on board, but there could be more. They’re cloaking just as fast as they come aboard.”
“A hundred to one. Sounds like fair odds to me,” Remo said. “Anything else I should worry about?”
“Not yet. We haven’t detected any more ships coming through, so I don’t think they’re expecting us to be able to fight off this group.”
“I hope they like disappointment then,” Remo replied.
“Good luck,” Ben added just as another bulkhead between them and the enemy boarders disappeared.
Ben grimaced. A hundred Grays against Remo and Catalina. He realized that if it came to it, he might have to run and hide until help arrived. He glanced at the nearest air duct and saw that it was just about the right size for him. Maybe big enough for the Grays, too, but they’d have to know he was in there before they could follow him. Jessica saw him looking at the air duct and she nodded, as if she had read his mind. But she didn’t have to read his mind to know that they were about to be overrun.
* * *
Remo had to negotiate the Liberty’s core in zero-G, pulling himself down the corridors with the ship’s handrails. He found an armory and hurried to suit up. When he was done, he cast about looking for one of the sonar packs Ben had distributed earlier. He found a suspicious looking locker and clomped over to it, the suit’s magnetic boots keeping him rooted to the deck despite the lack of gravity in the core.
He opened the locker and found a dozen sonar packs waiting there for him. He grabbed one and strapped it across his chest, taking a moment to link his suit to the device.
Pling. A wave of green light raced out, revealing the armory to be empty. Looking for anything else that might help him fight off the boarders, he spied a mini-gun and a rack full of plasma grenades. The grenades were more likely to get him killed than the enemy, but the mini-gun on the other hand...
He clomped over to it, and picked up the weapon. He had to hold it in both hands to keep it steady, and it felt heavy even in spite of the suit’s enhanced strength.
His comms crackled with an update from Ben. “Five bulkheads left. Whatever you’re doing, Remo, you’d better hurry.”
“Roger that,” he replied, and set off at a run.
By the time he reached the nearest elevator running up from the core to the ring decks, he was gasping for air. The mini-gun must have weighed a hundred pounds.
“Three bulkheads left,” Ben warned.
“On my way up now,” he said. Remo mentally selected deck 2-Command from the control panel inside the elevator. The doors slid shut, and the elevator raced upward from the ship’s core. Even that acceleration was negated by the Grays’ inertial dampening tech.
The elevator doors opened and Remo hefted his mini-gun in readiness. Pling. A wave of light raced down the corridor, but no diminutive green-shaded aliens appeared. Remo ran out. He asked Ben how to get to the bridge.
“Down to the end and hang a left,” Ben replied.
Remo ran to the end of the corridor and down the next one, once again enjoying the effects of gravity. His boots echoed loudly as he ran—clank, clank, clank...
“Right,” Ben said.
He turned another corner, racing by the officers’ mess.
“Next right,” Ben said. “Be careful. That corridor is on a straight line to the bridge. That’s where they’ve been cutting through the bulkheads.”
Remo skidded to a stop and engaged silent running. “Now you tell me!” he whispered, hoping he wasn’t already too late.
Pling. Another wave of green light washed down to the end of the corridor. It reached the T at the end... and rippled over no less than twenty Grays. One of them stepped toward him.
“St-op!” it said in stuttering English. “W-ee j-ust w-ant to t-alk.”
Remo stopped. “All right,” he said, making his tone as agreeable as he could.
“W-hair is t-ee c-oor?” the alien asked, de-cloaking before Remo’s eyes, naked as usual. Ugly bastard, Remo thought.
“You mean where is the core?” he asked, as he marked targets on his HUD.
“N-oh. Wa-air, is t-ee c-urr?” the Gray asked again, this time enunciating more slowly.
“Oh, I get it. Where is the cure,” Remo said, nodding.
The alien cocked its head, obviously waiting for the answer. Remo pulled the trigger of the mini-gun and tracking rounds screamed out in arcing golden streams. The one who’d stepped out to address him exploded in a spray of black blood. The others standing cloaked behind him collapsed one on top of another, falling like dominoes.
A brief wave of heat washed through his suit as a few of those aliens brought their weapons to bear. They weren’t nearly fast enough.
But the next group was. He saw giant green heads and slender arms appear, poking around both sides of the corridor, and another wave of heat went coursing through him as he marked the next batch of targets and sprayed them with tracking rounds.
He felt his skin blister, and his armor began to smoke. He must have picked off another two dozen targets before the mini-gun abruptly stopped firing, answering subsequent pulls of the trigger with a sullen click.
“Shit,” he muttered as the Grays pressed their advantage and boiled down the corridor toward him in a seething mass of bobbing green heads. Remo toggled his rockets and fired. Krsshhh... bang!
Green-shaded aliens exploded and debris rained down with meaty splats, but the enemy just kept coming, mindlessly focusing their fire.
Every nerve ending in his body erupted in a fiery burst of agony. Remo turned to run, but his suit seized up as the joints melted. His mouth opened in a soundless scream as flames leapt up from his armor. He saw orange, then red—and then nothing at all.
Remo felt himself fall, but didn’t hear his armor clatter to the deck—all he could hear was the sizzling roar of the flames.
Darkness beckoned, promising an end to the searing pain. Here I come, Deedee, he thought as a wave of numbness swept him away.
CHAPTER 32
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“They’re coming through!” Catalina yelled. Her entire body trembled, rattling around inside her exosuit. This was it; it all came down to her. Remo was dead. Desiree was dead. Commander Johnson, Councilor Markov... Alexander. They were all dead.
She gritted her teeth and took aim. Her targeting reticles hovered over the entrance. The doors began to glow molten orange.
“Take cover!” Catalina warned.
No reply. She heard a banging noise, followed by something clattering to the deck. Catalina turned to look, wondering what Ben and Jessica were doing. She was just in time to see Ben climbing into a nearby air duct, standing on Jessica’s shoulders to reach. From inside the duct he turned around and pulled Jessica up. She must have weighed all of twenty-five pounds in the Liberty’s simulated Martian gravity. She climbed inside the duct and disappeared.
Ben’s eyes met Catalina’s, and she shook her head. “Where are you going?” she demanded, her heart thudding urgently in her chest.
Hold them off as long as you can, he said, his voice coming to her through her thoughts.
“You’re just going to leave me here?”
I’m sorry, Ben replied as he disappeared inside the air duct.
Catalina gaped at him and Jessica, unable to believe what had just happened. The doors to the bridge burst open in a fiery hail of molten metal, drawing her attention back to the fore. Catalina thought rockets. To her surprise her exosuit understood that command, and they slid up out of the suit’s shoulders. Then she thought—fire!
Krsshhh!
A rocket jetted out from her right shoulder on a thin trail of smoke and disappeared through a hole in the doors.
Boom! The deck shook with the explosion and a ball of fire and debris came roiling through the opening toward her.
Catalina peered through the smoke. Pling. Dozens of cloaked Grays came leaping over a mound of bodies to get to her. She fired again, but she missed, and the rocket streaked over their heads.
They were through the doors, rushing toward her en masse. She fired once more, this time at point blank range.
New Frontiers- The Complete Series Page 88
