The Catalyst

-Chapter 9-


I’ve experienced a number of strange things in my life. Some of these things no one else in human history has ever lived through. But riding a dish-shaped skateboard through space while under fire had to be one of the wildest, even by my standards.
The incoming enemy fire was beam-based, presumably lasers. I could tell that much because the beams were fast and invisible. In a planetary atmosphere a really big, powerful laser beam might be visible, depending on its spectrum and the atmospheric conditions. But in space, you really can’t see a laser beam because there is nothing for the beam to touch. You certainly wouldn’t see a pillar of light, not even if it was left on for a while—which they usually aren’t. Unless you have something for the light to hit and reflect off of, it is essentially invisible. The only way I was able to detect the incoming fire was the visible reaction caused when something was hit. Usually, it was another skateboarder like me.
When one of my marines was hit, he didn’t just explode. He burst into fire, but that didn’t stop his forward momentum. The mass of his body and the skateboard kept moving at significant velocity. Even as they were melted to slag, their momentum carried my dying men toward their target. They looked like meteors, a fireball of bright white followed by a spiraling trail of vapor.
They were nailing one of us about every ten seconds. I counted thirty hits in my field of vision. After that, I stopped counting, because we were almost there. The assault ships that had survived the approach rotated their primary engines around to aim forward and brake. They slowed dramatically, and all around me my men were doing the same.
I’d never been trained on this bizarre flying dish I’d designed. I was ashamed to admit it now, but I’d sat out the beta testing, letting others give me input and making the alterations they suggested. I’d never been much of a skateboarder or a surfer, either.
The worst part was the reversal. I almost screwed it up entirely and made the maneuver while the propulsion system was still active. If I had done it that way, I think I would have been thrown off my tiny, dish-like platform, nano straps or no. I remembered at the last second, however, and managed to switch it off, spin around, and then turn it on again.
Due to my gross lack of competence, I realized I’d taken too long and was coming in too fast. I was passing the others now. When I’d bailed out of the assault ship I’d started off as one of the last of the pack. Now, I was streaking along while they braked around me. I shot through them, and it was only luck that I didn’t collide with some hapless marine who’d done his job right.
I kicked up the power, until my legs were buckling. I had no idea how many Gs I was resisting standing lock-kneed like that. It had to be six, maybe more. I don’t think I could have remained upright without my nanite-empowered musculature and my exoskeletal armor. A normal man just couldn’t have done it. He would have folded up in a heap, probably pitching off the skateboard and going into a deadly spin. At this point, so close to the surface of the massive space station that filled space below me, the flying dish was absolutely required for survival. It was the only method I had to slow myself without a crushing impact.
“Are you all right, sir?” Kwon called on my com-link.
He must have been watching out for me. I don’t know how. I had no idea which marine was which in the capsules that went streaking by all around. My dish went from bucking to shuddering, finally smoothing out as I slowed it enough not to smash me to atoms when I hit the station.
When I had my tiny platform under some kind of control I took the time to answer Kwon. “I’m fine. I just wanted to get ahead of the pack,” I lied.
“You always lead from the front line,” Kwon said, with a scolding note in his voice. “Very dangerous, sir!”
I smiled with half my mouth. He didn’t need to tell me that this time. A moment later, I touched down. It was more like a controlled crash, however. I hit the station sooner than I expected, a jarring blow that caught the edge of my dish. I realized in an instant I wasn’t all the way down to the surface. I’d hit one of those wildly projecting tubes of theirs. I was moving at a pretty good clip, about as fast as a hot-shot jumper with a parachute might dare to land. Hitting the structure set me to spinning, and when I did finally hit the flat surface of the station, I landed on my left shoulder. I bounced back off, regained control of my dish, and then glided down toward the metal skin of the station.
For the first time, I was glad I had one of the heavy battle suits on. I didn’t think I’d broken anything, and I could still operate all my limbs, so I figured I was good to go. Grunting, I climbed off my tiny vehicle and began carrying my dish. I called up to Kwon. “Tell the men to remember to carry their dishes. They might be the only way off this Christmas ornament when we are finished. And tell them to watch out for those big metal wires or tubes, whatever they are.”
“Will do, sir,” Kwon said, relaying my instructions.
I looked up as the rest of them came in. We’d made it—at least, most of us had. I supposed it was partly due to surprise. It must have really freaked out the aliens inside the station. I could imagine them, wondering what these things were the cruiser was firing at them. Should they shoot them down, and thus risk starting a war? Maybe the Macros were only releasing their trash into space. Maybe it was all a big misunderstanding. Fear, hard choices. The answer, of course, was a nightmare. Better than fifteen hundred of my marines had made it through their defenses and now crawled over their hull, where the enemy didn’t appear to have any weaponry.
More men were braking now, coming in nearby. Most of them landed better than I had. They were better-trained and younger. But those who met up with me were all delighted. Word had gotten around quickly: crazy old Riggs had beaten everyone down. I smiled inside my suit, knowing that such moments were great morale-builders—whether they’d started off as screw-ups or not.
By the time I had located a functional assault ship, I had more than thirty marines from Beta Company following me. The ship’s drill was already blazing, making our visors darken to the point of forming blinders in front of our eyes. We kept stumbling forward, relying on our magnetic boots to keep us from accidently tumbling back out into space. Each man still carried his dish, knowing it was his only ticket home.
The big laser on the assault ship flared and flashed. Gouts of white light bloomed as the drilling continued. It was alarming to witness. Fortunately, we didn’t have long to wait. The hull wasn’t more than a few feet thick. A vapor-stream and a gush of fire flowed out of the newly burned hole, quickly surrounding the assault ship and turning it into a torch. The men lurched back, recoiling.
“Looks like she breached. Laser off!” I shouted over my com-link. The pilot cooled the blazing drill, and molten bits of metal cooled and formed orange, floating balls all around us. The station wasn’t big enough to produce significant gravity by itself. Everything was floating.
The gush of vapor continued. We could see it, like a plume of steam. It reached out into space and completely enveloped the assault ship. I frowned in concern as it went on. Didn’t these aliens believe in bulkheads and sectional ship design? Had we just popped this balloon and suffocated a million innocents?
After about a minute, the streaming vapor died down to a trickle. The burnt metal of the breach, which had been glowing hot moments before, had frosted over now. The leeching cold of vacuum had done its work, stilling the molecules.
“I need two scouts,” I said.
Two men came forward. These were wiry men with lighter kits, and I sent them on recon. I could have rigged up a sensor and dropped a pickup down into the breach on a nanite wire, but I didn’t want to screw around. Delays would give the defenders time to organize. Every second counted.
The two scouts slid into the breach and had a look around. They transmitted vids of a large chamber full of organic material. Plants, from the look of it—floating in water that was now freezing solid. Apparently, they had some kind of gravitational control which kept the liquid in its tanks.
I nodded thoughtfully. Maybe we’d invaded their outer farm regions. If their plants operated as ours did via photosynthesis, they would need to be near the surface to collect energy from their star. Possibly, that was why we’d seen such a geyser of vapor. Water, air, relative heat and pressure—it all added up to a blast of steamy air.
“Move, everyone!” I shouted. “Get in there before they blow this section of their station back into space!”
My men surged, and soon it was my turn into the breach. I was very glad my suit was tough and impregnated with a self-repairing nanite layer. The breach was like a hot blade. We got through it, however, and one-by-one we floated inside. I had everyone leave their skateboards magnetically tethered to the external skin of the station. Whoever made it back out could use them to escape. Behind me, more and more marines kept pouring in. We’d only managed four breaches, and two or three hundred marines were going into each one.
“Sir?” boomed a familiar voice.
I turned and saw Kwon. I wasn’t surprised to see him, it was one out of four he’d end up here, and I knew he’d try to follow me if he could. I was surprised however, to see who he had with him.
“Lieutenant Marquis?” I asked.
“Yes sir. Glad to be here, sir,” she said. The woman was of normal height, but she looked like a kid standing next to Kwon. A shapely kid.
“You thought Joelle was dead, didn’t you?” asked Kwon. “I caught her.”
“You caught her?” I asked.
“Pretty much,” Lieutenant Marquis confirmed.
“I had one of those two-man skateboards,” Kwon said. “You know, the ones made for carrying heavier equipment. Anyway, I saw the ship blow up, and I knew she didn’t have time to get onto a dish, if she had lived. So, I watched for her and caught her when she went by.”
I stared. We’d built a slightly larger unit for some marines, most of them were used by medics to help carry their extra loads. In Kwon’s case, he was an extra load all by himself. I narrowed my eyes, finding a flaw in his story. “She should have been thrown out at an angle, or at least be heading toward the station at a lower velocity than you were.”
Kwon shrugged. “Yeah. I braked some and found her.”
“Risky, Kwon,” I said. I looked at Lieutenant Marquis. “Sounds like you owe him a drink.”
She nodded. “It’s a date.”
I turned away, shaking my head. “Well, you’re both alive in any case. Pull out your pistol, Lieutenant. You are assigned to scout duty.”
Kwon didn’t complain, and neither did Lieutenant Marquis. I directed her into a corridor. There were at least twenty tubes leading out of this hydroponic garden, and I wanted all of them explored before we moved. So far, we hadn’t made contact with any enemy aliens.
But that was about to change.