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We sailed onward through space, heading toward Earth. I felt like I was riding an extinction-event asteroid—like the one that was supposed to have killed off the dinosaurs.
It occurred to me that slamming this rock into Earth would pretty much wipe out humanity. My people were so fragile, living out on the surface of an exposed scrap of dirt under an open sky, hurtling through nothingness. The whole thing was crazy. I’m not sure if anyone other than a few Cold War presidents ever felt the kind power I had in my hands today.
As we rolled closer, I kept expecting a new storm of missiles to rise up. Or an entirely new fleet. Hell, they could have at least put up a projected fleet of illusions.
But they didn’t. We got closer and closer, and I became uncertain of my next move. If they had nothing, Crow would have called and tried to talk me down, at least. They were up to something down there, I could feel it.
As we had days to go before reaching orbit over Earth, and nothing with obviously deadly intent was coming at us right now, I decided to head over to check on our wounded. That would give me the opportunity to talk to Dr. Kate Swanson—a significant bonus.
I found a surprisingly large pile of new bricks in the area. Miklos had said something about trusting Phobos now and transferring more personnel from the transports into the interior of the big ship, but I hadn’t quite understood the scale he was considering.
There had to be something like four hundred bricks now, stacked three or four stories high. Each was about the size of a railroad car and self-contained. We’d been using these simple systems since we’d first ventured into space in the belly of a Macro transport. The design had stuck because it was easy to produce and worked very well.
With magnets at every corner, the bricks operated optimally on a metal surface. We didn’t have a high ferrous content on the inner hull of Phobos, so we’d had to make do. Each brick was nailed down with nanite spikes. These were barbed and sunk into each corner of every floor-level brick. The upper ones, when we stacked them up, used their magnetics to clamp onto one another.
The nanite spikes were pretty cool, actually. The best thing about them was that you didn’t have to hammer them in. You just put the point where you wanted to drive it in, and the nanites sort of ate their way down to an optimal depth. At that point, they shot out flanges—barbs, really—and hardened into a single mass of metal.
I reached an impressive stack of twenty or so bricks with the painted-on designation MEDICAL. I passed through the airlock and found there was a bustling office inside.
A nurse began to challenge me with a huffy tone, but her attitude changed when she realized who I was.
“Ah…Colonel? Can I help you, sir?”
“Yes,” I said. “I understand Dr. Swanson was stationed here. Could you direct me to her office?”
This seemed to fluster the nurse. I wasn’t quite sure why, but she turned a new shade of pink. I suspected she’d heard rumors about Kate and I, and was shocked to be in the middle of things.
“I’ve got a locator right here,” she said.
I raised my hand, interrupting her. “No, don’t buzz her. Just tell me where she is.”
She stared at me for a half-second then regained her composure. “Yes sir. Brick Seventeen, Medical One.”
I left before she could ask the questions I knew she was burning to unload on me. All of us had com-links, of course. They served to pinpoint a person as well as provide instant, selective communication. But I’d wanted to surprise her. Walking in on a woman, I’d learned over time, was very effective when you wanted to get a strong reaction. Right now, I was the hero of the hour, and I wanted to collect some laurels while the collecting was good.
I found Brick Seventeen after wandering around for a few minutes. I grumbled about the organization of this non-building. It was a snarl of tubes, ladders and airlocks. The whole time I was wondering if the nurse had already spilled the beans by calling Kate and telling her I was on the way. There were any number of sneaky ways to do this, and that nurse had looked capable in that department to me.
When I finally found her, I wasn’t surprised to see she was working on seriously injured marines. We’d taken our share of losses during our battle with the cyborgs. In many ways, those creepy monsters were the most effective thing the Imperials had hit us with yet.
“Colonel,” she said, flashing me a smile. She finished up with her patient, who was going through a four-limb regrowth, and turned her attention to me.
We smiled at one another for a minute.
“I suppose you’re expecting a hero’s welcome,” she said.
“Sounds good to me.”
She hugged me then, and gave me a kiss on the neck. The reaction from the PFC on the bed was comical. He lit up and grinned behind her back. He would have clapped if he could have. But his hands were only worms of flesh in plastic baggies full of brown stuff and nanites.
“Let’s go somewhere,” I said.
Kate led me to a cubical in the aft end of Brick Seventeen. It was her office. It was cramped and full of boxes, but she’d only just moved in.
“It isn’t much,” she said.
“It’s the work that counts.”
She beamed at me. I honestly had never seen that look in her eyes before. She wasn’t maintaining an aloof, professional attitude today. In fact, she looked positively hot.
Kate and I had a strange thing going on. Since Sandra’s death, she’d made it clear on a number of occasions she was interested in me. There just hadn’t been time for us to get together, however. We were very busy people.
We just stood there and looked at each other for another second or two, smiling. I could see her tongue in her mouth, pressing against her teeth. What did that mean?
“To hell with it,” I mumbled, and grabbed her.
She melted. I felt relief. Sometimes when I pull that move, it ends up going badly. Not this time. She embraced me and we got busy.
We’d been making out for a good five minutes when my com-link started buzzing.
I almost turned it off. I swear I almost did.
Kate pulled away. “You’ve got to answer that.”
I heaved a sigh, retrieved my headset and checked the incoming channel.
“Riggs here. What is it, Captain Sarin?”
In the back of my mind I was thinking the woman might have bugged me. Could she be checking my location? Was she wondering what I might be doing in a tight office in Medical, Brick Seventeen and decided to interrupt? I wouldn’t put it past Jasmine, who’d had a thing going with me for years.
“Colonel, sorry to interrupt, but we have contacts.”
“What kind of contacts?”
“We don’t exactly know, sir. At first, we thought it was a shower of ice chunks. Something like a broken-up comet. We’re passing Pluto, after all.”
“Ice chunks? I’m envisioning platoons of cyborgs in frosty shells. Shoot them down. Don’t let anything get to the hull.”
“We’ve been firing on them, but shooting at ice with lasers isn’t easy. Almost all of our defensive turrets were taken out during the last action. We haven’t had time to replace them.”
“Pull in the fleet. Have our ships shoot them down for us.”
“Working on that, sir. I just thought I should report the situation.”
Kate was walking out the door by then. I grabbed her for one last kiss. Then she slipped away. I left Brick Seventeen and growled in frustration. There had been very little in the way of feminine companionship for old Riggs, lately.
Little did I know that that was about to change—everything was. I contacted Jasmine as I hurried back toward the bridge.
“Have you identified the incoming objects?”
“We can confirm they aren’t cyborgs, Colonel. They don’t look dangerous at all. Little or no metallic content, shape and size random and apparently natural. But there are so many, and a number have already rained down on Phobos over the last several minutes. I thought you should be alerted. I think we should send out a patrol on the outer hull to investigate.”
“Do it,” I said. “Destroy every one you can. We should have started building our defenses back up faster. We’ve been too busy, I guess. I’ll be right there.”
I didn’t even make it to the bridge before I knew something was wrong. First, a series of booming sounds rumbled overhead like distant thunder. As a long-term veteran, I lowered my faceplate and tuned in to tactical chat.
“Something on the roof,” said a voice, reporting in.
I frowned. The “roof” was the term my marines had begun using when talking about the outer shell of Phobos.
I contacted Captain Sarin. At the same time, I urged my suit into a lumbering run which amounted to a series of awkward leaps in low gravity.
“Talk to me, Jasmine,” I said. “What’s going on outside?”
“We don’t see anything, Colonel. Nothing’s confirmed. Just chunks of ice impacting with the hull.”
“Are there cyborgs in those ice chunks? Are they landing near a particular area, like the main shaft?”
“No sir. Random distribution. Really, the phenomena looks natural.”
“Yeah, it might be. But just to be sure, I want you to send out some surface teams to find those ice-balls and recon them—and do it yesterday.”
“Already done, sir.”
That was the Captain Sarin I knew. She was always on the ball. I could trust her to follow an order and still think for herself on the fly.
I got no further with my bouncing journey from the bricks to the makeshift bridge before a huge series of explosions shook the ship. I didn’t think anything as large as this vessel could be rattled, but these bombs were big.
I looked up, fogging my faceplate. I didn’t bother shouting for Jasmine’s attention. As she was on deck under the bridge dome, I knew she had more than enough to do without spoon-feeding me information over a com-link.
Instead of running and hopping, I stared upward. I thought I’d—yes, there was a crack up there. A black jagged line in the endless smooth expanse of the upper dome. It hadn’t been there a moment before.
The crack expanded and lengthened. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. All my life I’d figured that when the time came and I saw a disaster in the making before my very eyes, I would be the smart guy. I’d pick up and run, or save someone else.
But like every other sap who can’t comprehend his own doom, I watched it come with my mouth hanging open.
“Jasmine, the roof is rupturing! We have a breach! I repeat, we have—”
That was as far as I got before the winds began to howl. The noise wound up quickly into a long, low, roaring sound.
The entire vast chamber was depressurizing. I could see it, and I could feel it even through my heavy armor.
“Seal the bridge! Seal everything!”
I have no idea if they were listening to me on the buzzing command channel, but I couldn’t help but shout the instructions anyway.
Behind me, back in the shanty town of scattered metal bricks, a funnel cloud had begun to spiral. I knew I was seeing a tornado—but this tornado was upside down. The dark silvery point of it grew like a twisting finger from the crack in the ceiling, and the broad funnel touched the collection of bricks we’d placed in piles around the shaft.
I reversed my course. I watched as shapes—people and crawlers—were sucked up into the hole in the ceiling.
I wasn’t worried about being carried away myself. My heavy armor had grav boots and magnetics that were more than enough to keep me planted on the deck. But many of my people weren’t in armor. It was uncomfortable and usually only issued to marines.
I screamed myself hoarse as I ran, but I doubt anyone could make out what I was saying. The inverted tornado was like a freight train of noise. It screamed and rattled everything like a continuous hail of bombs.
I was angry and stunned at the same time. Those ice chunks…if the pattern of distribution had been random, how had they managed to get one perfectly placed where it could rupture the hull?
When I reached the bricks, it was pretty much over. The atmosphere we’d painstakingly pumped into Phobos had all been sucked away into the void.
It was strangely silent now. Without air to carry sound, all I could hear was my own footsteps and breathing.
I helped a few people who were lying like broken dolls here and there on the landscape. They couldn’t breathe, of course. But if I got them into a medical brick and connected them up to life support quickly enough, they could be revived.
I pushed my way through the airlock of Brick Seventeen. I popped my faceplate and shouted for Kate. A nurse appeared, looking upset.
“What have you got?” she asked, taking the man from my arms.
She was a thin woman, but strong enough to carry him like a baby. She probably could have carried me in my armor as well, if she had to. I’d long ago insisted that all my personnel be nanotized, even Fleet people.
“Broken clavicle, looks like. I found him wrapped around the base of a brick on the first tier. Hey, do you know where Dr. Swanson is?”
She glanced back up at me, giving me an odd look. At that point, I recognized her. She was the same nurse who’d first given me a hard time about locating Kate. She knew I had a thing going with her.
The expression on her face wasn’t a good one. It was the face people wore when had to tell you they’d found cancer—lots of it.
“She went out Colonel—I actually thought she might be with you. Maybe she wanted to watch you leave, or something… You didn’t see her, did you?”
I turned around without a word and went outside.
I didn’t bother to shout Kate’s name as there was no air to carry the sound. I walked around checking every brick, helping people with the rescues. I should have gone back to the bridge, I knew that, but I felt like I had to find her.
We never did. We didn’t even find her com-link. Probably, when she’d been carried off by the funnel to the crack in the ceiling, she’d smashed it on something. Without the com-link, there was no trace.
Finding a body floating in the Oort cloud is pretty much impossible. We retrieved a few of them, but we were flying away laterally from the breach, under acceleration. Kate’s corpse was back there floating in space, somewhere in our wake. I knew this, and it bothered me.
“Well Jack,” I said to no one as I headed back to the bridge with dampened spirits. “You got me again. But maybe it’ll be my turn next.”