The Catalyst

-Chapter 29-


We’d lost about eighty percent of our laser turrets by the time we got into range a few minutes later. The ship rocked and shuddered with the impact of the enemy beams. At that point, the four Macro assault shuttles blossomed. It looked like they’d come apart into a mass of red dots.
“Did we knock them all out at once?” I asked in amazement.
Major Sarin shook her head and frowned. “We are close enough for a visual, Colonel.”
She dialed up a close-up of the Macro formation. I watched and immediately felt a sinking sensation. The assault ships were not at all what I’d expected. Rather than being single, sleek vessels with solid hulls, they looked like networks of struts covered with systems and filled with Macros. We could actually see the Macros they carried, exposed inside the cage-like ships.
The Macro marines were self-mobile. As I watched in shock, they began lifting off from the framework shuttles they were riding. They flew under individual propulsion away from the skeletal assault ships, resembling a swarm of wasps. They came at us with their blue-white engine trails glaring behind them.
“The shuttles look like one of those trucks that carry cars,” Gorski said.
I nodded in agreement. The enemy ships did resemble truck trailers. They were little more than thick rails with specialized Macros clamping onto them.
“Zoom in on one of the marines if you can,” I said.
Major Sarin fiddled with the controls. I marveled at her precision. She was much better with these touch systems than I was. Soon our visual was tracking a single Macro. It came in jinking and slewing about from side to side. The head rotated with insectile movements and obvious intelligence. The large nozzle in the face was probably some kind of boring laser.
I watched our beams slide past it, drawing lines flickering lines in space. These should have been invisible in the void, but the beams were hitting something... Then I saw the Macro marine had stopped firing its engines. Now it was squirting material around itself. Whatever the stuff was, it looked gaseous. The image of the Macro marine became obscured behind this growing cloud.
“What the heck is that?” I asked.
“Unknown,” Gorski said. “I would guess it’s some kind of aerosol or gel. Its purpose appears to be defensive.”
“Are you telling me it’s squirting out particles to form a shield against laser strikes?” I demanded. “They are making shields against our beams?”
“It would appear so.”
“Why doesn’t it just fly through it?”
“Well—”
“Never mind,” I said, having already thought it through. The enemy Macro wasn’t accelerating anymore. Anything it threw out in front of itself would move away from it in space, as there was no air resistance to push it back. If you were to hang out your driver’s side window and squirt paint forward on Earth, it would naturally fire back and splatter you. But in space there was no air to push back. Anything thrown forward moved forward forever, unless you accelerated into it. These Marcos were braking for their final landing on the Jolly Rodger’s hull, not increasing their speed, so they were able to stay behind their growing, semi-opaque shields of particles.
“Did we get any of them before they sprayed these shields?”
“I’m not sure…” Sarin said, frowning at her interface.
“Gorski? Do a query, get a count.”
I saw a growing cloud of dots moving away from their assault ships, which I now thought of as assault racks. It was about then that I got the first knot in my stomach. They’d surprised us several times already. How many more tricks did they have in store? I’d thought this was going to be easy. They were coming in slowly, and should have been fat targets. I planned to simply let our automatic systems destroy them all. Now, I wasn’t so sure.
“Colonel, I’m still counting sixty-four bogeys,” Gorski said. “We might have gotten one, but….”
“But we didn’t,” I said.
“At least they can’t shoot us through their own shields,” Gorski sai.
I noticed he was right: I hadn’t felt any impacts for a couple of minutes. Suddenly, I had an idea. It was about time I had one, and I hoped it wasn’t too late. “Come about, bring the helm ninety degrees starboard and apply full thrust!”
Startled, my bridge crew worked to do as I asked. The helmsman brainbox extended an extra two arms to accomplish the task. We were grabbing the edge of the table again, and leaning a bit.
“What’s the plan, sir?” Sarin asked.
“If we swing wide, we’ll be able to fire around those sprayed out shields of theirs.”
“What if they have more spray to make a new shield?” Gorski asked.
I shot him a dark look. “Let’s hope they don’t, Captain. Have you got any ideas?”
“No,” he said, shaking his head. “But there is one more positive factor: these Macros might not have the fuel or the engine power to keep up with us.”
“We’ll call that ‘prayer number two’,” I said, only half-joking.
On the screen, my fan of fire turned as the helm turned and we accelerated in a new direction. We were still sliding sideways toward the Macro swarm, but moving angularly out to the side as well. They turned with us, following us on an intercept course. I didn’t do the math, but it looked like they were going to catch up with us.
My gambit managed to nail a few of them. Three confirmed kills, in fact. The rest of them turned and squirted more shields between us. They were closing in fast.
“It was worth a try,” Gorski said.
I called Kwon. “They are almost on top of us,” I told him. “Looks like the hull will be crawling with tin spiders soon.”
“Yes sir!” Kwon responded happily.
I recalled the stories he’d told me about his sister and how he’d joined up to fight machines. Today he was going to get his chance.
The first one landed about thirty seconds afterward. I heard it clank down upon the hull. It sounded like a brick docking with a steel deck, turning on its metal clamps. It was a solid, ringing sound. Everyone in the engine room looked at the ceiling.
“Turn back into the mass of them. Maybe the turrets will take a few out as they land.”
The ship heeled back into the storming enemy. A dozen more clanking sounds came—growing slowly in number at first then turning into a clattering shower. I was reminded of the slow build of popping sounds popcorn made in the microwave. It built and built then finally slowed to nothing as the last of the roving machines landed on my ship and began crawling around, looking for an entrance. Soon, they decided to make their own.
“We’ve got a breach, sir!” a voice squawked. “Deck four is depressurizing!”
“Fall back to the bulkheads,” ordered Kwon in my headset. “Keep firing as they come. If you can stand your ground for two minutes I’ll have a full company at your position.”
I stepped from foot-to-foot and waved impatiently at Sarin, indicating the external view on our screen. It was still depicting the Helios system. “Switch this off. Give me internal schematics.”
The ship showed up in outline. It was fuzzy in spots, as it wasn’t a perfect mapping. We hadn’t had time to do more than plant a dozen sensors around the vessel. I stared at the numerous red dots crawling over the cruiser. Our ship looked like a dog with a disease. This was the hardest part of command for me, listening to a fight nearby and waiting it out.
“They are in the breach sir! They are pushing us back!”
I didn’t recognize the marine’s voice, but he sounded young. It was probably one of the lieutenants. I jerked my head toward the exit. I didn’t even have a pack on. “Everyone except for the core bridge crew will suit up. Arm yourselves with a generator and projector.”
Startled, a half-dozen staffers hustled to put on generator packs and cradling projectors. I joined them, sealing myself into my battle suit. There was a row of packs against the aft wall. I took a heavy pack as the gravity was light and I wanted killing power when I pressed the firing stud. I soon had a rifle in my hand and it felt good.
“We have four breaches now, Colonel,” Kwon buzzed in my helmet. “Most of them are hitting the big hole we used to board the ship.”
Naturally, I thought. That would be the easiest point of access. The hole was big and there weren’t any welded-shut doors to drill through. He didn’t have to tell me where the other four points of entry were. They were attacking in their classic diamond-formation. They would penetrate at four compass points and converge. I had to wonder what ROM circuit in their heads made them do that.
Then I remembered Sandra. Her comatose body was in the medical brick very close to the breached area. I heard Kwon’s breathing; he’d left his transmitter keyed open. He sounded stressed. The distinctive sound of sizzling laser bolts went off in my helmet.
“Sarin, take the bridge,” I said, heading for the door. “I’m taking a reserve company to the main breach. We can’t let them take our bricks.”
I hit the exit at a run. Assisted by my suit’s exoskeleton, my nanite-injections, low-gravity and good old-fashioned adrenalin, each stride took me several yards across the deck plates. I left my surprised bridge crew behind. I could feel their staring eyes on my back, but I didn’t care.