out from Yale, all hell broke loose. At the time, I was in the ship’s head relieving myself. The ship was under heavy deceleration—but when you have to go, you have to go.
Operating a ship’s elimination system when under several Gs of force can be a difficult operation by itself, as anyone who’s done it can tell you. Things went from bad to worse, however, when the ship’s klaxons went off and the vessel heeled-over, engaging its automatic evasion routines. I cursed and found myself sliding on my back across the chamber. Fortunately, spilled wastes were quickly removed by the smart metal floor.
When I managed to get out of the head, I struggled up the corridor to the bridge. I was slammed from one side to the other as the ship rocked and lurched. The inertial stabilizers were off-line due to power requirements. The engines were burning at full throttle to keep us from crashing into those deep, blue oceans, and the rest of the power went to the weapons systems.
I crawled into the command center and found a crash seat to strap into. It wasn’t the one I was assigned to, but that was just too bad for whatever staffer I’d displaced. I managed to connect to the Fleet command channel and listened to the chatter long enough to figure out what was going on. We were under attack.
“This is Riggs,” I said, trying to sound calm. “Give me counts and ranges. What have we got incoming right now?”
“Missiles sir. No ships, just missiles. About two thousand of them.”
My mind glazed over. I didn’t have to do the math. We were at close range, and we didn’t have enough time to lock-on and shoot down that many missiles—not if Crustacean missiles were as good as Macro missiles at finding their targets. They were going to hurt us, and hurt us badly.
“It was all a trick, Kyle,” Sandra said on a private line to my helmet. “Those bastards. We’ll lose half the fleet. Fire everything we have back at them. We can at least hurt them this time.”
My mind had come out of shock and was now racing. I couldn’t believe it. These vicious Lobsters had done it twice in a row. I’d not underestimate them again—if I ever got another opportunity.
“Stop decelerating!” I roared. “I want every pilot to plot an individual course. Bring your noses around and accelerate toward Yale, but do it at an angle. I want you all to miss the moon, naturally. But slowing down will just make us easier targets. We need to do a fly-by as fast as we can, giving them as little opportunity to shoot us down as possible.”
Within twenty seconds, the pilot of Lazaro had followed my orders. The results were gut-wrenching. A normal human without nanite-hardened organs would have passed out, or quite possibly died. For us marines, however, there was no such simple relief. We lived, remained conscious, and suffered. It felt as if someone had a firm grip on my intestines and was hell-bent on unraveling them.
The point-defense systems were firing now, on full automatic.
“Vacc-suits, everyone!” I shouted over the command channel. “Assume your vessel will lose pressure before this is over. I want zero casualties from decompression.”
It was all up to a few thousand brainboxes now. The missiles would be hitting their first targets within eight minutes. I’d been watching the counters displayed on the big wall-screens. I’d learned to count again by this time. We weren’t going to get them all. Some of my ships were about to be destroyed. The only question was whether or not any of us would make it home.
As I got over my initial shock, the emotion that followed wasn’t fear, it was rage. None of this made any sense. Why would the Crustaceans do something like this? Sure, they didn’t like us. But going to the trouble of draining their own world, of damaging their own habitat, just to make this ruse convincing? I couldn’t fathom that kind of dedication to deceit.
I tried to think, but it was difficult to do anything other than
Operating a ship’s elimination system when under several Gs of force can be a difficult operation by itself, as anyone who’s done it can tell you. Things went from bad to worse, however, when the ship’s klaxons went off and the vessel heeled-over, engaging its automatic evasion routines. I cursed and found myself sliding on my back across the chamber. Fortunately, spilled wastes were quickly removed by the smart metal floor.
When I managed to get out of the head, I struggled up the corridor to the bridge. I was slammed from one side to the other as the ship rocked and lurched. The inertial stabilizers were off-line due to power requirements. The engines were burning at full throttle to keep us from crashing into those deep, blue oceans, and the rest of the power went to the weapons systems.
I crawled into the command center and found a crash seat to strap into. It wasn’t the one I was assigned to, but that was just too bad for whatever staffer I’d displaced. I managed to connect to the Fleet command channel and listened to the chatter long enough to figure out what was going on. We were under attack.
“This is Riggs,” I said, trying to sound calm. “Give me counts and ranges. What have we got incoming right now?”
“Missiles sir. No ships, just missiles. About two thousand of them.”
My mind glazed over. I didn’t have to do the math. We were at close range, and we didn’t have enough time to lock-on and shoot down that many missiles—not if Crustacean missiles were as good as Macro missiles at finding their targets. They were going to hurt us, and hurt us badly.
“It was all a trick, Kyle,” Sandra said on a private line to my helmet. “Those bastards. We’ll lose half the fleet. Fire everything we have back at them. We can at least hurt them this time.”
My mind had come out of shock and was now racing. I couldn’t believe it. These vicious Lobsters had done it twice in a row. I’d not underestimate them again—if I ever got another opportunity.
“Stop decelerating!” I roared. “I want every pilot to plot an individual course. Bring your noses around and accelerate toward Yale, but do it at an angle. I want you all to miss the moon, naturally. But slowing down will just make us easier targets. We need to do a fly-by as fast as we can, giving them as little opportunity to shoot us down as possible.”
Within twenty seconds, the pilot of Lazaro had followed my orders. The results were gut-wrenching. A normal human without nanite-hardened organs would have passed out, or quite possibly died. For us marines, however, there was no such simple relief. We lived, remained conscious, and suffered. It felt as if someone had a firm grip on my intestines and was hell-bent on unraveling them.
The point-defense systems were firing now, on full automatic.
“Vacc-suits, everyone!” I shouted over the command channel. “Assume your vessel will lose pressure before this is over. I want zero casualties from decompression.”
It was all up to a few thousand brainboxes now. The missiles would be hitting their first targets within eight minutes. I’d been watching the counters displayed on the big wall-screens. I’d learned to count again by this time. We weren’t going to get them all. Some of my ships were about to be destroyed. The only question was whether or not any of us would make it home.
As I got over my initial shock, the emotion that followed wasn’t fear, it was rage. None of this made any sense. Why would the Crustaceans do something like this? Sure, they didn’t like us. But going to the trouble of draining their own world, of damaging their own habitat, just to make this ruse convincing? I couldn’t fathom that kind of dedication to deceit.
I tried to think, but it was difficult to do anything other than
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