The Catalyst

-Chapter 31-


“Major Sarin?” I called, trying to stay calm. It wasn’t easy, as my plan was so crazy it was all I could do to keep my mind from freezing over. “Jasmine?”
“Colonel?” Sarin finally responded. She sounded a little shook up. “I think we are losing this fight, sir. We can’t stop them.”
“I know,” I said. “Here’s what you are going to do. On my next signal, even if I can’t get out an articulate word, I want you to kill the main engines and fire the braking jets in the nose. Just give one tiny pulse on the jets, enough to brake us by a few hundred klicks per hour.”
“I’m not sure I can control this system that precisely,” she said.
“Try. And whatever you do, don’t change course.”
“Uh, yes sir.”
“Where are they now?” I asked.
“The main Macro force appears to be clustered forward at the nose. They are pausing at each bulkhead, but quickly burning through them.”
I was glad the Macros still believed in simple, lockable gear-based hatches. If they had put in complex combination locks or something, they could have just ordered them to open with a wireless transmission. That wasn’t their style, however. They liked big and basic. They were into primitive functionality wherever they could get away with it. I admired their design. Without all the manual systems, most of this ship would be inoperable after having suffered so much damage. My Jolly Rodger bore the scars of a dozen fights, but she was still flying.
“Colonel Riggs?” Sarin’s voice came into my helmet again.
I was busy kicking at the circular area of cherry-red metal at my feet. It didn’t want to give.
“Colonel?” called Sarin, I could hear the sound of rising panic in her voice. “Kyle?”
“Riggs here,” I responded. As I did I heard a ripping sound—like that of tortured metal nearby.
“They are breaking through, sir. They’ve bypassed your hatches and burned their way through the walls.”
“Got it,” I said. I began burning the spot at my feet again. I figured it only had to be a little bigger around than my shoulders. “Get ready to kill the engines and brake.”
She said something else, but I didn’t catch what it was. I suddenly realized, I wasn’t going to be able to burn through the outer hull. I gave up on drilling, it was just too thick. It wasn’t going to work in time. I ran instead to the nearest airlock.
There was a Macro there, waiting for me. It didn’t know it was waiting for me, of course. It was trying to burn its way into my chamber and burn me down to a charred pile of molecules. It was between me and airlock exit hatch, so I didn’t get fancy. I rushed it, and got in close. I don’t think these Macros were built with that tactic in mind. I supposed they were used to biotics running from them and getting themselves gunned down. Instead, I grappled with it.
Sometimes, something that sounded good at first glance doesn’t turn out the way you planned. This was one of those times. I felt like I’d grappled a backhoe that wanted to go someplace. I was immediately thrown into the air, my legs flying freely. I kept hold of the main gun on its head-section, however.
The side beams went off, stitching air with bolts of energy. One of my feet took a hit. It didn’t really hurt, but my toes felt numb. I suspected some of them were now missing. Nanites rushed to the region, patching my suit and my flesh indiscriminately.
I grabbed onto the big nozzle as it swiveled in my direction. If that thing even grazed me, I knew I was dead. Hanging onto it with both hands, I saw more Macros coming up behind the first one. They looked excited, like ants that smelled dead meat. They weren’t firing yet, perhaps out of some kind of respect for their fellow Macro, but I suspected they would only be able to contain themselves for so long. The moment they lost control they would blast us both.
I was riding the main nozzle now, and it was firing. I thought I must look ridiculous, like a cowboy riding an annoyed elephant by clinging to the trunk. It began to fire off and on, and I got an idea. I twisted, I heaved and I levered, bracing my feet against the Macro’s front head-plate. The nozzle viciously ripped this way and that in my hands, servos whining.
I shook my generator pack off and threw it toward the spot I’d tried to burn through. I aimed the nozzle that way, and the Macro took the bait. It fired at my backpack and the dangling laser projector unit. I wrenched the projector so it missed, but the gouting energy still hit the hull. It took another shot, then another. Suddenly, that section of the hull burned through. The forward section of Jolly Rodger began to depressurize. I felt the tug of escaping gasses, but hung on.
Right about then, the Macros trying to get through behind the first one lost patience. Maybe they thought I was getting away. Maybe it was a group decision, maybe not, but they burned down the one I held onto. A half-dozen beams flared and flashed. The Macro lasted a few seconds, then turned into slag. I crawled away, keeping the twitching machine between me and the others in the corridor behind it. I crept to the hole in the front of the ship and crawled out. I picked up the mine, which was magnetically stuck to the deck plates, on the way out.
This was the tricky part. I didn’t even have a rifle any longer. I only had my suit, a knife, a beam pistol and the star-shaped mine I’d grabbed on the way out. The problem was, now that I was out in open space the Macros following me would be able to nail me instantly. Already, they were burning their way out here, popping the welded-shut airlocks and widening the hole I’d burnt through the hull.
My original plan had been simple, if crazy. I was going to get the swarm to fly after me, then toss the mine into the middle of them. I hadn’t expected to survive the experience, but if I killed enough of them, my marines should be able to finish the rest. I realized the problem with my plan was they wouldn’t all come out and fly after me in a convenient, tight mass. The first one that got outside would find me standing there without cover and blast me. End of story.
“Sarin?” I called.
“You’re still alive, sir?” she asked.
I was a little miffed by her tone. But I reminded myself that on her screen, the blip that was me had probably shared a very close proximity to a whole bunch of pissed machines for a long time.
“Yeah,” I said. I crouched and flipped off my magnetics. I began to float away from the cruiser. “Jasmine, it’s been good serving with you,” I told her.
“You too, Kyle.”
The white-hot hole the Macros had drilled through the airlock hatch was spitting sparks of burnt metal. The opening was big enough for a human to walk out of now, but of course it had to get bigger to allow a Macro to pass.
“I want you to hit those brake jets now. Just a puff. Then tell everyone to brace for impact.”
“Impact?”
“Just do it.”
She did it, and the jet-wash nearly incinerated me right there. I hadn’t thought about how near the brake jets might be. I was less than a hundred feet from a blue blast of radiance that had to be as full of protons as it was heat.
As I had hoped, the cruiser fell away behind me. I realized with a shock it was falling away too fast, way too fast. I flipped on the mine in my hand and snapped it toward the ship. The mine flew away, spinning.
“Sarin, that’s too much! Cut the brakes! Give the mains a little goose and turn the nose—down about five degrees.”
“Sir?”
“Do it!”
I watched as my mine dwindled from my sight. Jolly Rodger surged forward and nosed downward a fraction.
Now that the ship wasn’t dominating my region of space, Helios swam into view far below. The Worm planet filled a huge arc of space with its orange-brown deserts and dark murky seas. I could see a Worm mound here and there, looking like mountainous spikes of natural terrain. If I hadn’t been so close to dying, I would have stared at it in awe.
“That should do it,” I said.
“Do what?”
“Grab onto something!” I shouted.
A tremendous flash silently lit the universe around me. I was bathed in radiance—and presumably radiation.
“Cut the engines!” I shouted. “Sarin, brake a bit, you need to slow down so I can—”
But Jolly Rodger didn’t slow down. It barreled right toward me. Suddenly, I wished I’d picked up one of those flying skateboard things. I could use one about now.
In space, there was nothing to push against. When it came to getting places, this was both good and bad. You generally had nothing stopping you—no air resistance, no gravity, no obstacles. But that also meant you couldn’t use those things to help you move. Essentially, the only way to move was to throw things in one direction and therefore be propelled in the opposite direction. I didn’t have much to spare.
“Sorry sir, braking jets are not responding,” Sarin said in my headset.
I quickly saw why. I’d blown the brake-jets off the cruiser. The nose of the ship had no jets left at all. Jolly Rodger grew larger with the black, smoldering maw of it looking like the open mouth of a great shark. I threw my pistol away, then my knife. I had a belt pack, and that went. I might have tried to toss my boots, figuring my feet would have to fend for themselves and the nanites could unfreeze them later, but I ran out of time. Throwing things didn’t generate enough thrust anyway; the ship was going to hit me.
The cruiser swallowed me—ran me over. I went right into the hole in the hull I’d blown open with the star-shaped mine. How fast was it going relative to my own body’s mass? A hundred miles an hour? Two hundred? It mattered, but I had no way of measuring. I did my best to turn around and take the impact feet first. Turning in space isn’t easy. It was like swimming in the air—but with no air.
Everything happened in flashes at the end. The big red sun vanished as the ship’s shadow swept over me. I realized I was inside the ship’s blasted-open maw. The impression of being swallowed was very intense. Shiny, floating bits of destroyed Macros drifted around me. Twisted chunks of hull tapped and slammed into my feet and torso. It was like hitting a mass of glittering, metal confetti. One piece starred my helmet. Then I hit something solid, spun around, and knew no more.