Manxome foe john Ringo &

24

"Yes!" Spectre shouted as the conn erupted in cheers.

Repeated strikes by the chaos ball had worn holes in the outer skin of the carrier. Together with the secondaries from the strike on the hangar bay, the outer defenses were long breached.

A lucky strike by the generator had apparently entered one of those holes and dug deeper into the ship. The result was obvious as the carrier dropped acceleration and streamed masses of air and water. Secondary explosions were also evident. If not destroyed, the capital ship was now too sorely wounded to continue the fight. It began decelerating and turned towards the unreality node.

"Tactical, Conn," Spectre said, then raised his voice. "At ease in the conn! We've still got a battle to fight."

"Go, Conn!"

"Figure out the course on that thing," Spectre said. "If it's not deviating, we'll drop some presents along the way and see if we can't take it all the way out. In the meantime, let's retarget the destroyers. We still don't know the status of the Marines on the other ship."

"Okay, we found something."

As the Marines progressed, signs of Dreen presence had been increasing, with more of the greenish Dreen fungus in odd spots in the corridors. Experiments with it had determined that this fungus, at least, did not attack. So as it closed in, they had more or less ignored it.

The newest compartment, though, was something different. It was large and filled with alien equipment as well as huge masses of fungus.

"Yeah," Sergeant Priester said. "But what?"

"I don't know," Staff Sergeant Hinchcliffe said. "But it looks important. Which means we need to grapp it up. That's what Marines do, break things and kill . . . things."

"You're joking," Spectre said.

"No, sir," Captain Zanella replied. "I am not joking, sir. We believe it to be potentially possible. And there are Marines on that ship that need reinforcement."

The Blade had to take a break. Temperatures in the ship were soaring since it had been too long since their last chill. She'd broken off the fight, dropped mines on the path of the retreating carrier then retreated to deep space to consider her options and bleed off some heat.

The Marine CO had requested a meeting and, thinking that it would be about recovering the Marines in the Dreen battlewagon, the CO had moved it to the wardroom. Spectre already had his answer in hand which was that taking out the battlewagon was the number one priority. Recovering the Marines would be nice, but was not the top priority. Taking it all the way out was.

What he had not expected was a request to commit suicide.

"Captain, right now I am in a very tight battle with a very skillful and powerful foe," Spectre replied. "One that is slowly grapping up my ship and my crew. I do not have time to away boarding parties. Even if I thought it would work. Which I don't."

"Sir, it requires that the time window be opened only slightly," the Marine argued. "And one small tweak in the assault program. If those two things occur, we have a bare minimum chance of boarding that vessel. Furthermore, we can carry extra ammunition and supplies. The Marines who made it on-board have so far demonstrated an ability to strike from within, sir. I respectfully state that the rest of us could do even more. We are a weapon, sir. I respectfully request that we be used."

"I will take your request under advisement, Captain," the CO said. "Dismissed."

"Interesting idea," Weaver said.

"If we can't even hit them with torpedoes," Spectre replied, "how are we going to hit them with Marines?"

"I see the hand of First Sergeant Powell in this suggestion," Weaver replied. "With torps, we have to take the time to fire them. That's too much time. Upwards of five seconds, no way to automate it and even if we pre-launch them they're deadly missiles inside the warp bubble. The enemy can track onto them and take them out easily enough. With the Marines, they'll be already at the edge of the warp bubble as we transit. While we're in normal space, firing the ball gun, we just move a little. They'll be outside the effect from the ship, so they won't move. We move away from them, not very far, go back into warp and they're left hanging in space."

"And then the defenses of the ship shoot them down," Spectre said.

"Maybe, sir," Bill said. "Maybe not. Their target discriminators might not see them as a threat. The boards also are surprisingly maneuverable in space and very fast. Personally? I think it's suicide. But that's not a professional opinion. My professional opinion, sir, actually tracks with the captain's. They're a weapon. Use them."

Carrier Unit to Gun Unit. Have sustained critical damage. 40% loss of nutrient, 60% loss of air. Leakage at four hundred cubics per turn. Retreating to warp point.

Gun Unit to Carrier Unit. Report to the Masters that Species 27314 will be destroyed or assimilated within ten cycles. Species 27264 ship will be captured and examined and their home world located. All is in hand . . . Internal alert. Intruders in recycling room four. Locate and terminate. Twenty percent of security units to control center defense stations.

Carrier Unit to Gun Unit. Do you require additional security units?

Negative, intruders are few in number. They will be eliminated or assimilated within a turn. Send this message to the Masters. We are loyal.

We are loyal.

"That grapping thing is roasting."

The largest Dreen structure in the room looked something like a mushroom, one from Alice in Wonderland. Two thermite grenades had been tossed on top of it and had burned their way through and into the floor, setting the pillar of Dreen fungus ablaze.

Cables had been cut, filling the room with goo, and some of the original equipment had been engaged with machine-gun fire, exploding in showers of sparks. In general, the compartment had been seriously grapped up.

"Our work here is done," Staff Sergeant Hinchcliffe said. "And let me just add how proud I am—"

"Dreen!" Nicholson shouted.

Berg dove for cover behind one of the alien machines, a cylinder about ten-feet tall and whose purpose was totally unknown to him, and started pumping rounds into the doorway. The room only had one hatch and Dreen filled it, scrambling over each other to get through the narrow opening.

The Marines hammered the attackers, piling up the dead in the doorway, but as many as they killed, more seemed to be trying to fight through. But it was clear, as thorn-throwers were shot multiple times, that there was more than enough firepower to hold the room.

"Two-Gun, Smith, cease fire," the staff sergeant said. "Two-Gun, you got any grenades left?"

"Four, Staff Sergeant."

"See if you can get any over those guys and into the corridor."

The first grenade Berg threw hit one of the thorn-throwers in the head and landed on the pile of Dreen bodies, detonating more or less harmlessly except for chewing up the pile. The second, through, he managed to slip through the narrow open area at the top of the door. The detonation on the other side sounded less than harmless. Thorn-thrower and dog-demon bodies gushed into the room. The corridor on the far side had to be packed.

"Christ, how many of them are there?" Nicholson asked. "I'm getting low on rounds!"

"Just fire steady and accurate," Hinchcliffe advised. "Just keep firing. But use your rounds carefully. If we can hold them in the doorway we're going to be here a while. If not, we won't care anymore."

"These are all volunteers, First Sergeant?" Captain Zanella said, looking at the group.

"Yes, sir," the first sergeant replied. He did not add that the entire remaining company had volunteered. "Gunnery Sergeant Neely, because it's his platoon. Chief Warrant Officer Miller, because he outranks me. At that point, I had to start picking and choosing."

"I see you're taking the sole survivor from the last mission and our spare armorer," the captain said, looking at Seeley and Lyle. "The rest?"

"Alpha and Bravo team, Second Platoon, sir," the first sergeant said.

"I see eight people," the Marine CO commented, dryly. "And we have nine boards. Whoever is going to use the ninth?"

"That would be me, sir," the first sergeant replied firmly.

"I consider that unwise, First Sergeant," the CO said, then held his hand up to the protest. "But I have to keep in mind the adage that my first company commander told me: Never get between your first sergeant and beer, women or any mission they've set their heart on. Load 'em up, Top."

"We've got five blown-out doors," the first sergeant said as the ship prepared to transition. "Go for the one most forward. There's going to be a lot of fire. Think about whipping around in space while heading for the ship. Get down close to it and they can't fire at you. Then get in the bay. We'll figure out how to get farther in from there."

"Jeff," Miller said over the command freq. "This is purely going to suck, you know that."

"You can feel free to unvolunteer, Chief," the first sergeant replied.

"And let you jarheads call me a wuss?" Miller scoffed. "No joy. See you in hell, snake."

From the exterior of the ship, the view as the battlewagon closed was even more disorienting than watching it on the screens. Miller actually started too soon, slamming into the warp bubble before it opened. The Dreen battlewagon was pouring out a mass of fire. There was no way they were going to survive it all. They were kamikazes without even the benefit of big bombs.

The warp bubble dropping, the ship moving sideways, it all happened too fast for him to comprehend; the human brain was not designed for milliseconds. All he knew was that suddenly he was in free space, looping in and out of more torrents of fire than he had ever seen in his life or ever wanted to see again. He'd once been pinned down by multiple rocket launchers in Mogadishu. This was worse because he didn't even have a concrete trough to hide behind. Not to mention the fact that by comparison, a 20mm antitank rocket was a popgun. Plasma blasts were going by so close the static discharge was frying his radio and one wash even got close enough to raise the temperature in his suit. Given that heat did not propagate through space, that meant it had actually touched him.

Unbelievably, he found himself suddenly about to slam into the Dreen battlewagon. A quick mental flip and he was flying alongside, trying to stay between the still firing guns. There was actually smoke wreathing the death-spewing battlewagon. The entire experience was unreal.

He spotted the damaged hangars, like rows of empty eyeball sockets, and darted down towards them, lining up and finally settling in the evacuated compartment.

"You're two," Powell said from the rear of the compartment.

In the end, they were six. Staff Sergeant Jim Revells, Lance Corporal Eric Hough and Lance Corporal Francisco Cestero never made it. And Sergeant Norman was effectively useless, given that something had ripped off his machine gun.

"Lurch, I figured you for a goner," Powell said as the former armorer finally showed up.

"I was just checking out those guns, Top," Lyle replied. "I want to get my hands on their schematics. They're traversing so fast they have to be on magnetic bearings. I've been trying to get them to switch to magnetic bearings for the Wyverns ever since I first saw the specs."

"Yeah, well, we'll worry about that later," Powell replied. "Let's figure out how to get out of this bay."

"Found a window and a door," Chief Miller said. "And methinks I just saw the silhouette of a dog-demon through the window."

"Lock and load."

"Conn, Tactical, we have a problem."

"Besides the fact that the crew's starting to fall out?" Spectre muttered. The continuous transitions were taking their toll. He'd hoped that the chill-down would help, but being in free-fall had only enhanced the nauseating effects and the disorientation. Crew were beginning to report hallucinations and four crewmen had been tranquilized at this point. He really didn't want to think about what Miss Moon, who had no resistance to free-fall nausea, was going through.

"Go, Tactical."

"The remaining Dreen task-force has disengaged from the Caurorgorngoth and is moving insystem towards the main Hexosehr refugee fleet."

"Maulk," the CO muttered. The Dreen had taken the bait for less than an hour. And the main Hexosehr fleet was slow. They had more than two days' transit to their next jump and even the cumbersome dreadnought would catch them short of it. A few of the faster, lighter vessels might escape, but the main bulk of the remaining Hexosehr population, the millions of scientists, technicians, poets and philosophers wrapped in hibernation sleep, would be blasted into constituent atoms. And with them any hope of humanity adapting their technology to Earth's defense.

"Roger, Tactical," Spectre replied. He was trying like hell not to show that the repeated warps were getting to him. Fighter pilot training was, not surprisingly, helping him again. He'd felt much worse after major furballs. Of course, they rarely lasted this long.

"We continue to harry them," Spectre said. "We took the carrier out. We have Marines onboard the Dreen battlewagon taking the fight to them internally. We will continue the mission. Pilot, lay in a course to intercept Sierra Five." The Dreen cruiser was the closest ship, starting to apparently interpose itself between the small but seemingly invulnerable Blade and the capital ship.

"Course laid in," the pilot said.

"Engage."

The pilot hit the control for warp and there was a loud bang from somewhere to the rear that rang through the ship, following which they immediately lost artificial gravity.

"Okay," Spectre said calmly. "That did not sound good."

"Conn, Engineering." There was a sound of coughing in the background of the sound-powered comm system.

"Go, Eng."

"We just had a catastrophic failure of the neutrino generator. We're down. We also have a fire but we're getting that under control."

"We're not all that far from the Dreen task-force, Eng," the CO said. "Getting up is rather important."

"Understood, Conn," the Eng replied. "We've got our rolls of duct tape out already."

"Very funny, Eng," the CO said. "How long?"

"When I have the slightest clue I'll tell you, Conn."

"Weaver," the CO said. "Get your happy ass down there and find out what's wrong."

"Roger," Weaver said, unhooking his belt and grabbing a stanchion. He shook his head and swallowed, far more affected by microgravity than normal. His head was swimming and he could barely figure out where the hatch out of the conn was. The repeated warps were seriously grapping with him. "On my way."

"Grapp," Weaver muttered as he pulled himself into the engineering spaces. He wasn't, by any stretch, the only visitor. It seemed like half the mechanics in the ship were in the room, some floating around waiting for orders but most dealing with the mess. Most of them still had the helmets down on their space suits, indicating just how bad the fire had been. Bill could smell the stench of melted plastics and ozone still, despite the recyclers being on at max.

The problem was immediately apparent. The neutrino generator, an electrically charged Looking Glass boson held in a magnetic field, had blown a gasket. The LGB charging and confinement system was in pieces that were floating all over engineering and one of the nuke techs who manned the room was being given some rough and ready first aid for a piece of shrapnel from the controller.

"What do you mean we don't have a spare?" the Eng shouted just as Weaver entered the compartment.

"I mean there's no spare, sir," LPO Macelhenie said, slowly and carefully. He was more or less upside down and had his helmet flipped back and his feet hooked around a pipe. "There was no anticipation that the controller would blow. It's practically solid state."

"It's not designed for repeated cycling, though," Weaver said. "Chither. We ran it through a thousand cycles in tests but not this fast and we've done way more than a thousand cycles, all told, on it since installation. It should have been pulled and replaced before the cruise. It's solid state, but it takes a massive electrical load to generate the neutrinos. Probably it just overheated and blew up like a transformer that's been under too much stress for too long."

"So what do we do about it?" the Eng asked, trying to stay upright with a hand clamped to the back of a chair. "I've seen the schematics on it but I can't really make heads or tails of how it works. And without the neutrino generator we are dead in space for the foreseeable future."

"I'm aware of that," Weaver said, frowning. "Tchar?"

"Human tech." Tchar shrugged. He was more or less in midair, and also more or less upside down. "I'm thinking. No use of duct tape comes to mind."

"There's the power input system," Bill said, trying to think through the haze that the repeated warps had made of his brain. "Then the connections to the magnets. We've got dozens of magnets that can be used for stabilization. The power inputs to the LGB itself, but they have to be modulated. It was probably the modulator that overheated. We need a high power but small transformer, a modulator, an analog to digital converter—"

"A computer," Miriam said from the back of the room. She was tucked into a ball in an upper corner, clearly trying to stay out of the way. For once, she didn't appear to be minding microgravity.

"The power supply won't take it," Bill pointed out. "We're talking about nearly a thousand amps."

"It will last for a while," Miriam pointed out. "Replace it when it starts to wear. We've got dozens of computers in the science offices. And parts for them."

"No, a computer at best uses a ten amp power supply. The breakers and fuses on it will go out in milliseconds. It won't work, trust me, I've blown them up before. Hmm . . ." Weaver shook his spinning head.

"We could use a computer with an A to D card to drive the modulation though, but what would we modulate?"

"A CD player," Miriam replied. "It uses the same algorithms. We may have to do a manual adjustment but the controls are in the player, too, so that's easy enough. Make a case from number thirty-two piping; there's a four-foot section in the machine shop. From there it's just a matter of enough duct tape."

"That's a great idea, Miriam, but I still think it to be too small." Weaver shook his head again. The spinning just got worse. "Uhg . . . hey, Tchar's lazy Susan works just like the CD players do."

"You mean the thing he put together for the gamma ray Morse code thingy?" Miriam asked.

"Yeah, that thing. Would it work?"

"I can make it work!" Miriam agreed. "And that would solve our transformer problem too! But we'd need two of them, one for the modulator and one for the transformer. Drat."

"Always a two for one value at Triple A Plus Industrial Warehouse Online!" Weaver said, mocking Tchar. "He has two of them.

"Why are you the only one whose brain is working?" Bill asked. "Mine's fragged from the warps. In the past you would have been curled up in a ball somewhere."

"I don't know," Miriam said, shrugging. "I'm not bothered by whatever's getting you guys. Maybe because I'm a girl. Maybe because I'm weird. But that's not getting us fixed."

"Agreed," Bill said. "Eng, you up with this?"

"Not . . . really," the ship's engineer admitted. "My brain's sort of melting, too. I don't think I can even recall the design, much less figure out what Miss Moon's talking about."

"Miriam, what do you need?" Bill asked.

"Red and Sub Dude," Miriam replied. "And about thirty minutes."

"We're in range of the Dreen fighters," Bill pointed out.

"That does not help me think, Commander Weaver," Miriam said, straightening her legs and bounding off the bulkhead towards the main hatch. "Just leave me to it and don't tell me if we're about to get blown up, okay?"

"The neutrino generator blew out," Bill said, strapping himself back into the astro chair. "Just blew the grapp all over engineering. Miss Moon's figured out a fix. She's on it."

"What do I even bring you guys along for?" Spectre said tiredly, then straightened. "I mean, she cleans, she paints and now she's fixing my busted-up engine. I bet she can even figure out where we are if I need it."

"Right now I wish you'd left me on Earth, sir," Bill admitted.

"Conn, Tactical."

"Go."

"A flight of Dreen fighters has just broken away from the task force. They're on a course to intercept ours. They'll be in range in twenty minutes."

"Seriously wish you'd left me on Earth."

"How long on those repairs?" the CO asked.

"Miss Moon said thirty minutes," Bill replied.

"Tell her to hurry up!"

"Do you really think that will help, sir?" Bill asked.

"Belay that order," Spectre growled. "XO, prepare to launch torpedoes. I want a full spread. Maximum thrust for five minutes, then shut down. See if they can get in range of the fighters before the fighters get in range of us."

Bill did the math and didn't reply. The answer was "no way in hell."

"There is no way in hell we're getting out of here alive," Berg said over the leadership freq.

"Aware of that, Two-Gun," Staff Sergeant Hinchcliffe replied. "Just keep firing until you're out. Then use your pistols."

"There's an alternate plan, Staff Sergeant," Berg said. Covering the door was so automatic he wasn't having any trouble carrying on the conversation. It was just a matter of firing as conservatively as possible. They'd long before switched to single fire, alternating to full auto only when the Dreen made it into the room.

Nicholson was down, not dead but his gun was sheared away from a thorn and another had punctured his armor. He said he was hanging in there, but his vitals looked lousy. Priester had clocked out on ammo, twice, so Hinchcliffe pulled him back to "security." The sergeant was a good shot but God he used ammo like there was no tomorrow. Since its inception, the Marine Corps had stressed accuracy. Among other reasons, they often operated on very thin supply lines. When you were on thin supply, using the bare minimum ammo to kill your enemies and win the battle was a good thing. How Priester had not picked that up in his years in the Corps, Berg couldn't figure out.

He, Smith and Staff Sergeant Hinchcliffe were covering the door, killing Dreen dog-demons and thorn-throwers that seemed to be an endless stream. It was simply a question of what ran out first, Dreen or their ammo.

"What's your alternate, Two-Gun?" the staff sergeant asked.

"There's a way to overload the reactors in these suits," Berg said. "An SF sergeant did it on the last mission and some of us tinkered with it until we figured out how he did it. It's not a big nuke, but it's big enough to take out this compartment and everything around it."

"Let's save that for absolute last ditch," Hinchcliffe replied after a moment's thought. "But you'd better tell me the details in case you're not the last guy in the compartment."