A ring of explosive bolts fired around the armored cable tethering my father’s mech to the one beside it, severing their connection. My father’s drone threw Vance’s now-limp drone skyward like a shot put, toward the Disrupter’s still-shielded coupler array.
In the same motion he power-leaped in the opposite direction while hurling Vance’s escape pod in front of him, a bare second before ejecting his own. Both of their pods flew out of the frame just before Vance’s mech finally completed its seven-second self-destruct countdown and detonated. Two seconds later, the drone my father had hurled skyward did the exact same thing—a perfectly timed one-two punch. A nearly impossible shot, like a three-pointer from full court with one second on the clock.
But even that amazing bit of timing wasn’t enough. Because just before both mechs would’ve impacted against the Disrupter’s transparent shield, the shield dropped, leaving the dodecahedron unprotected for that narrow three-second window while its massive power core recharged enough to power its defenses back up. It was during this incredibly short sliver of time that both mechs detonated, one after the next.
The first detonation struck the Disrupter’s diamond-hard hull, but its armor appeared to absorb the blast somehow, and the triangular facets of the dodecahedron’s skin lit up molten orange as the energy dissipated across them. Only when the second mech detonated a half-second later did the Disrupter’s weakened armor finally fail, in an explosion that took out the Disrupter itself.
Graham and Shin both broke into applause. I got the feeling they had watched this footage on a regular basis, and that they applauded like this every time. Whoadie, Milo, Debbie, and Chén all applauded, too, but I abstained. I was too busy staring at the screen.
“Can we watch that footage again?” I asked. “At half speed this time?”
Shin nodded and ran it again. Then he ended up running it for us several more times, at everyone’s request. The footage became more impressive, and more unsettling to watch, with each viewing. My father had truly pulled off a one in a million shot. If the Disrupter’s shields had failed a split second earlier or later, his attack would have failed, too. And studying the time counter on the video clip, it looked as if the Disrupter’s shield stayed down a fraction of a second longer than it should have—just long enough for my father to pull off a miracle.
“How many more Disrupters are on their way here right now? Milo asked fearfully. “You left that little detail out of your briefing.”
“Three,” my father said. “There’s one Disruptor accompanying each wave of their invasion force.”
“Three!” Milo repeated. “There’s no way we’ll be able to destroy three Disrupters, one after the other—not with a massive alien shit storm coming down on us!”
My father nodded. “Yes, I’d say that’s a real long shot. But we do have one last card up our sleeves. The Icebreaker.”
“But I thought the Icebreaker mission already failed,” Debbie said. “It was destroyed before the melt-laser even breached the surface of Sobrukai—Europa, I mean.”
“The Icebreaker you escorted last night was destroyed, yes,” my father said. “But we had a contingency plan. We hoped we might be able to destroy the Europans before they launched their armada, but we knew our chance of success was extremely slim. So we constructed a second Icebreaker, which was hidden inside a hollowed out asteroid and placed into orbit around Jupiter, to avoid detection by the Europans. As soon as their armada departed for Earth—leaving Europa unprotected—we launched the Icebreaker. It’s already on its way.”
“When will it get there?”
“It should reach Europa about the same time the second wave of the enemy’s armada reaches Earth.”
“What if we don’t survive the first wave?” Debbie asked.
“Then the Icebreaker won’t make any difference,” Shin said. “But that’s why we have to make sure we do survive! Because then we may finally get our chance to end this war, once and for all.”
I waited for Graham or my father to agree with Shin, but both of them were silent.
“Anyone hungry?” my father asked. He held up his QComm. “I just got word the drones have finished preparing our dinner in the mess hall.”
“Thank God!” Milo shouted, already moving toward the exit. “I was afraid that Cheetoos and Root Beer would be my last meal. Let’s eat!”
Whoadie and Debbie nodded in agreement, as did Chén once he heard the translation.
“I don’t have much of an appetite,” I said. If I was about to die, I wanted the breakfast my mother made for me that morning to be my last meal—not some Salisbury steak dinner reheated in a moon base microwave.
My father nodded, and he and Shin began to lead the others toward the exit. Graham saw me straggling behind and threw an arm around me.
“Trust me, you’ll change your mind once you see the spread up there,” Graham said. “They sent up a special five-course gourmet meal for us on your shuttle.”