"Jump complete."
Hammett nodded to Cadet Jessop and waited, managing not to drum his fingers, for reports from the ship's various observers. After five seconds that felt like five years Wilkins looked around and said, "We came in about four hundred thousand K from Earth."
Someone whistled, and Hammett shook his head. For a planet with the kind of traffic Earth got, a million kilometers was generally considered the minimum safe distance.
Well, we didn't hit anything. The rest is details.
He nodded to Jessop and waited for the next report.
"Holy crap!" It was Wilkins who had spoken, and he flushed as Hammett stared at him. "Sir, the aliens are here!" He listened, said "Hang on," and lowered the handset. "The fleet's in a tight orbit around Earth. At least two dozen ships. The aliens are holding off for the moment. He can see four big ships. We're too far away to see any of the little ships." Wilkins lifted the handset. "Okay, go ahead." He listened some more, then lowered the phone. "There are missiles coming up from the surface. They just go past the enemy without detonating. There's no fire coming from the fleet."
Hammett took a deep breath. Every eye on the bridge was on him, and he could see fear on more than a few faces. That was understandable. By the sound of it, the aliens were here in overwhelming force, and Earth and the rest of the Navy were going to be no help at all. The
Alexander
was about to fight its last battle, and everyone on the bridge knew it.
He smiled. It wasn't easy, but he did it. "Great. We've won every single engagement we've ever had with these invaders, and now they've gathered together in a nice, fat, target-rich environment. They've walked all over everything Spacecom could send against them, from Calypso to Deirdre, and now Earth. But they only have one trick. They fry electronic systems. It's all they know how to do." Well, they also had some remarkably versatile ships, and weapons that had cut through the hull of the
Alexander
with terrifying ease. But this was no time to quibble over technicalities.
"We have a ship they can't touch. We have a seasoned crew with direct manual control over every thruster and weapon and system on the ship. Which means they can't touch us. But we've got three rail guns, a dozen laser batteries, three fighters, and a magazine full of missiles, including one last nuke. We can certainly touch them, and by God that's what we're going to do!"
A low cheer went up, surprising him, and for a moment his phony smile became real. He turned to Cartwright. "Ms. Cartwright. Take us in. Point us at the biggest cluster of alien ships you can find and give us plenty of thrust."
She nodded and grabbed a phone, and Hammett sat down, doing his best to look confident and calm. He felt less afraid than he would have expected.
We're going to die today, but it's going to be a hell of a scrap.
Reports trickled in, fragments of the battle reported by distracted cadets at observation windows. "Dozens of little enemy ships. Dozens and dozens!" "Forward rail guns firing." "Missiles launched." "Enemy moving, coming toward us." "Taking fire, evade, evade!"
A missile detonated at close range and Hammett felt a hint of vibration through the soles of his boots as debris rattled against the hull. Several cadets spoke at once, describing the action on every side of the ship. None of it mattered, really. He'd put the
Alexander
in the thick of the fight, and it was all he could do. His crew would fight a hundred small battles now, at the laser batteries, in the missile bay, at the triggers of the rail guns and the controls of the maneuvering thrusters, and in the fighters outside. Hammett could only sit on the bridge, frustrated, a spectator who couldn’t even watch the action directly.
Wilkins said, "A cluster of five ships just came in for a hull attack. The front rail guns blew them apart."
"Sounds like we're giving them quite a beating," Hammett said, not because he believed it but to boost morale. Carruthers gave him a sardonic look, but wisely kept silent.
Then a terrible sound filled the bridge, a metallic scream, the sound of steel plates bending and tearing. The deck shuddered, and Hammett grabbed the arms of his chair. Someone gasped, and Hammett felt a breeze past his nose. He got his helmet on an instant before the entire bridge went dark.
Chaos filled the sky above Earth.
Kasim, light-headed from an endless string of high-speed maneuvers, darted the
Falcon
back and forth through the crowd of enemy ships that swarmed around the
Alexander
. Lasers from the ship's batteries flashed all around him. He was sure they'd hit him by accident at least once, but he hadn't taken serious damage.
Not from friendly fire, at any rate. The
Falcon
was soaking up its share of abuse. All the air was gone, and he could see a twinkle of starlight through two different hull breaches. One of the drones welded to the outside of the ship was down, leaving him only three lasers. He still had all his thrusters, though. The aliens had him outnumbered, but he could out-fly them.
The Earth was a beautiful blue and white disc the size of his hand at arm's length. The Spacecom fleet, such as it was, was scattered through the void between the
Alexander
and Earth. It looked like a floating scrapyard, a vast collection of lifeless ships slowly drifting away from one another. At least they seemed to be disabled, not destroyed. He imagined their helpless crews, staring out the windows, able to do nothing but watch as the
Alexander
fought for their lives.
The fight was going badly. There had to be more than a hundred of the little alien ships, constantly regrouping and breaking apart. From time to time a cluster would race in and try to burn through the hull of the
Alexander
. Kasim had tried firing on one such cluster. His lasers had made no impact, dispersing against some sort of energy shield.
Once he saw the
Alexander
spin on her axis and fire a missile which obliterated a cluster of at least a dozen ships. Another cluster was blown apart by rail gun rounds. The
Falcon
and the shuttles had destroyed several of the smallest craft, and more had been demolished by laser fire from the
Alexander
.
A hopeless number of ships remained, though.
A gleam of pale silver caught his eye, and he turned the
Falcon
toward it. It was a shuttle, he didn't know which one, and it was in trouble. The entire back end was a twisted, burning mess. The main engines were gone, and the shuttle was flying backward, relying on the reverse thrusters in the drones. Half a dozen enemy craft harassed the shuttle, diving in to scorch the hull and then zipping away.
Kasim charged into the fray, aware that he was leading his own entourage of enemy ships. Still, he had to do something. Before he could reach the scene of the dogfight, however, the shuttle accelerated hard and raced away. It flew backward, edging slightly to port as the pilot gave a gentle squirt on a maneuvering thruster in the nose. Kasim saw what was going to happen and gave a shout, a wordless cry of fury and horror.
Eight or nine enemy ships had come together in a cluster, and they were sweeping toward the hull of the
Alexander
. The shuttle, steering with a skill that would have been hard enough to believe had it been undamaged and moving forward, smashed directly into the cluster.
Kasim arrived a moment later, lasers blasting, cutting into the component ships as they broke away. It was too late for the shuttle, though. He watched the remains of the brave little ship tumble sideways, scrape against the hull of the
Alexander
, and then spin away into the void.
An instant later Kasim was past the site of the battle and involved in a fresh fight for his life with several more of the small craft. There wasn't time to wonder which of his friends had died. There wasn't time to wonder if any hope remained, with yet another weapon gone from the pitifully small arsenal that remained to the
Alexander
.
To humanity.
An unfamiliar lump on the hull of the
Alexander
caught his eye. It was an alien craft the size of a shuttle, and it was pressed to a jagged tear in the hull plates just aft of the shuttle bay. He didn't know what the alien ship was doing, but it couldn't possibly be good. He brought the
Falcon
around in a dizzying turn and raced in, firing.
Holes appeared in the enemy craft, and chunks of metal came loose and spun away. As he raced past he saw the ship break loose from the
Alexander
, nearly hitting the
Falcon
as it fell away. Kasim flew in a twisting path around the
Alexander
, wondering what that alien ship had been doing. What was happening aboard the
Alexander
?
Metal clicked against metal, and the door to Velasco's cell swung open. She lifted a hand to shield her eyes as she waited for them to adjust, then swung her legs to the floor and sat up. "Exercise time already?"
There was no response. Her doorway stood empty. She stood, stretched, and stepped out of the tiny cell. Her two fellow prisoners, a pair of irredeemable thugs if ever she'd seen one, stood in their own doorways, squinting.
A petite Asian woman stood at the entrance to the brig. She wore a vac suit with the faceplate retracted, exposing only a narrow slice of her face. "We're in battle," she said. "I gather it's not going well. The officers are ordering everyone into vac suits, but I think they forgot about you. I thought I'd better let you out, give you some kind of a chance if we get a hull breach." She stepped out of the doorway, vanishing from sight.
Velasco looked at the two goons, got blank stares in reply, and strode to a locker with a vac helmet logo stencilled on it. She grabbed herself a suit and pulled it on, relieved to see it had no markings to identify her as a prisoner. When she pulled the helmet on she felt an immediate sense of relief. She was largely anonymous now. She could move through the corridors without the crew recognizing her shame.
When she moved toward the exit one of the goons put a hand on her shoulder, grabbing the fabric of her suit. He started to speak, some kind of threat or demand she supposed. He never quite got an entire word out. Velasco's martial arts training was years behind her, but she found she still remembered a few things. She locked her left hand around the man's wrist, leaned back to pull his arm straight, and slammed her right hand against the outside of his elbow. He let out a howl of pain and she stepped around him and left the brig.
She realized she had no destination. She walked briskly away from the brig, wanting to be as far as possible from that awful little cell. The ship had to be at Earth, she supposed. She'd be back in a cell soon enough. For a few minutes, though, she was going to enjoy being free.
When she came to a staircase she started to climb. Some instinct was drawing her to the bridge, she realized.
To hell with that.
Nothing good would come from showing up there. She would head for her cabin, she decided. Someone else probably had the room now. Well, no matter. Whoever it was, they'd be on duty. She'd wash her face, stretch out on the bunk, enjoy a bit of privacy in a room so big she couldn't touch all four walls at once.
In truth, her cabin wasn't all that much bigger than her cell in the brig. The door didn't lock from the inside, though, and that made all the difference.
She reached the next deck, moved down a corridor, and rounded a corner. Three people were coming down the corridor toward her. The suits made them anonymous. There were no rank markings. Even civilians wore Navy suits aboard the
Alexander
.
Even prisoners did.
Still, something in the way they carried themselves told her they were military, and the youthful look on what she could see of their faces said they had to be cadets. Their posture as they saw her reinforced that impression. They hesitated, wondering if she was an officer or a crewman. Everyone but the civilians outranked the cadets.
I'll hurry past them before they recognize me,
Velasco decided.
I'll pretend I'm in a hurry.
She quickened her pace.
She was three meters from the nearest cadet when the deck lurched and she stumbled to her knees.
She had her faceplate down before she even knew she was thinking about it. She got to her feet, panicked tugging at her brain. She was hyperventilating, and she wondered if the oxygen in her suit was flowing. It should have come on automatically when the visor came down, but …
Another face stared into her own, a cadet, wide-eyed and terrified. For a moment the cadet's fear fed on her own, and Velasco felt panic like a dark void looming in front of her, threatening to pull her in. She had a brief image of herself in a screaming fit on the deck plates in front of three cadets.
It would be career suicide.
It was a ridiculous thought – she might very well be executed for mutiny, after all – but it jerked her out of her spiral of growing panic. Clear thought returned, and she stretched out a fingertip, tapping the cadet's faceplate to be sure it was down.
A second cadet was screaming, hands clenched in the air in front of her, and Velasco took her by the shoulders and gave her a hard shake. It was a girl, impossibly young, with a fringe of blonde hair showing above wide blue eyes. She stared at Velasco, her lips moving silently. She seemed to be unhurt, and Velasco let go of her, turning to the third cadet.
It was a young woman, with the look of someone who'd been in the grip of panic a moment before, but had been startled out of it by the sight of someone shaking her friend. She gave Velasco a sheepish look that changed to startlement.
So you recognize me. Well, I'll be embarrassed later. Right now I'm busy.
She stepped around the cadet.
A hand clutched her arm.
Velasco turned to see three earnest young faces gazing at her. With the suit radios fried it was impossible to communicate, but she could read those expressions easily enough. They were terrified. They didn't know what to do.
Velasco sighed. "I'm not the kind of officer you're looking for." She gestured around her, and the cadets looked where she pointed, as if they could understand. "I don't know how ships function! I can't tell you what to do. What do I know about space battles?"
The cadets continued to stare at her.
On the other hand, I know about things like laser batteries. I was helping with the crew schedules before the mutiny, after all. I wonder if those batteries are being manned. We should have backup people, just in case. No one can use the telephones if the ship has lost air.
"Come with me," she said. They couldn't hear her, of course, but she made a beckoning gesture. She headed back toward the staircase, and the cadets trouped along behind her.
She was almost to the staircase when the bulkhead beside her bulged inward and the metal began to tear. Velasco scrambled backward, and a couple of metal spikes, each one as long as her arm, burst through the bulkhead at chest height. Two more spikes came through at knee height. Then the spikes spread apart, and ripped a hole in the bulkhead.
A moment later, something came through.
Velasco didn't see any details. She whirled and ran, the three cadets in front of her. They reached a corner, and Velasco glanced back.
The creature behind her had the volume of a large human being, but it was utterly inhuman. There were six limbs, each ending in a meter-long metal spike. It skittered down the corridor, making good time, the limbs moving so quickly it was hard to make out details. There was no head, just a compact metallic torso where those awful limbs came together.
It galloped down the corridor toward her, using all six limbs for propulsion.
Velasco shrieked and raced after the cadets.
They ran into four more crew. For a moment the corridor was a jumble of bodies, people pushing each other away, Velasco and the cadets trying to force their way through while the other crew tried to look past them to see what they were running from. Then all of them were in flight, Velasco trying to run with the others pressed close on either side. Her foot hit someone's ankle and both of them fell, and when she rose to her knees there was a man with a gun in front of her.
His faceplate was down, but something in his posture made her sure it was Crabtree. He stood with his legs apart, relaxed and confident, a pistol in a two-handed grip. The others pressed past him on both sides and he waited for them to get out of the way. Velasco stayed on her knees, skidding sideways and putting her back against a bulkhead.
Crabtree fired several times, the pistol eerily silent. Velasco turned and saw the creature, maybe a dozen steps behind her, bring its limbs up to protect itself. Sparks flew as bullets ricocheted from the steel arms, and a hole appeared in the bulkhead beside the creature. Crabtree lowered the pistol, grabbed Velasco by the hand, and hauled her to her feet.
And they ran.
Ahead of them the crowd of running crew parted to flow around an imposing figure standing in the center of the corridor. It was Hammett, in a vac suit decorated with shoulder stripes and his name stenciled across the chest. She couldn't think of a single thing he could do – he was just one man, after all, and not even armed – but she felt a surge of completely unjustified confidence. She darted around him and paused.
For a moment Hammett and Crabtree stood there, shoulder to shoulder, looking indomitable, indestructible. Crabtree brought the gun up and fired several times, slowing the invader for a moment as it brought its arms up to shield itself. Then both men turned, pushing her, and she wheeled and ran.
The corridor ahead was jammed with bodies now. Someone had fallen, and she almost stepped over the sprawled legs and kept going. She felt a strange sense of responsibility for her three cadets, though she had no idea if this was one of them. She grabbed the figure by both wrists and heaved the person upright. Crabtree was there beside her, helping, and the three of them started to run.
That was when she noticed that Hammett was gone. Her stomach lurched. That rotten bastard!
Ahead of her the corridor turned, and she saw crew coming back around the corner, then milling uncertainly. This was the corridor that ran past her cabin, and she suddenly knew what had happened. There was an emergency pressure door just around that corner. It must have slammed shut when the hull was breached.
They were trapped.
The creature advanced, slowing when it saw they were no longer retreating.
It's worried
, Velasco realized. Not that it needed to be. She remembered how those steel arms had torn open a bulkhead. They would do the same things to vac suits, and the bodies inside.
A hatch slid open just behind the creature, and Hammett stepped out. In his hand he held a glittering silver sword with a jewel set in the hilt. It was just about the most unexpected sight Velasco could have imagined, and she shook her head, wondering if she was getting enough oxygen.
Hammett charged the creature. It didn't turn, just shifted its limbs, but the change in posture made it seem as if it was facing the other way. It stood on four limbs and brought two more limbs up to meet Hammett's charge.
Hammett slashed, the creature blocked with a steel arm, and Velasco saw sparks fly. Then he lunged, the sword stretched out, and a steel spike stretched for his wrist. Hammett seemed to stumble, his hand dropping away from the hilt of the sword. He felt to one knee and clutched the back of his hand.
The sword, though, was jammed in the creature's body.
Crabtree moved forward. He hadn't fired yet; Hammett would have been in his line of fire. Now he stepped in close, looming over the creature and aiming downward. Hammett scrambled back out of the way, and Crabtree fired twice.
This time, the creature made no attempt to block the shots. It drew in all six limbs and lifted its torso high. The sword rose with it, the hilt wobbling like a baton in the hands of a parade leader. Then the creature went slack and limp.
Hammett stood, hesitated a moment, then stepped in close. He planted a foot against the creature's body, grabbed the sword in both hands, and pulled it free. Blood darkened the blade, and he made a whipping motion with the sword. Red-brown blood, so dark it was almost black, splashed against the bulkhead and deck.
A dark shape moved behind him, and Velasco pointed, shouting a warning he couldn't hear. Hammett turned as another creature came skittering down the corridor toward him. Hammett and Crabtree advanced together, and the creature charged. It wasn't fast, no quicker than a brisk jog for a human, and Hammett lunged to meet it. Crabtree had his gun levelled, but he didn't fire. Hammett's sword hit the alien's steel arms once, twice, three times. He skipped sideways as a steel spike stabbed for his shin. Then he lunged, feinted, waited for a limb to come across in a block, and he struck.
The creature's limbs flailed, sweeping Hammett's legs out from under him. He rose, unhurt, and pulled his sword free. The creature seemed to be dead, but he stabbed it one more time. Then he and Crabtree continued down the corridor, weapons at the ready. They reached the corner, peeked around, then turned and vanished from sight.
Velasco put her hands on her hips. "Well, what the hell do I do now?"
Crewmen hurried past, busy on errands of their own. In a moment she found herself alone with her three cadets. "I wish I could just talk to you guys."
They stared at her, waiting.
"All right, come on. Let's see if we can make ourselves useful."
They descended three decks, and she led the cadets forward. A figure in a vac suit sat at the controls of the center laser battery, firing almost continuously as the gun tracked back and forth. Velasco touched a cadet on the arm and held up a hand, palm out.
Stay
. The cadet nodded her understanding and Velasco led the others away.
She couldn't reach the portside laser battery. A pressure door blocked the way. Some compartments still had air, then. She turned back, the cadets tagging along behind her like ducklings.