Yet another fine selection from THE ADVENTURES OF GREGORY SAMSON, SPACE EXPLORER:
A FARTHER ORBIT
Two minutes before the buzzer, the Krr popped out of the emptiness like boils on the surface of reality. Ten empty points expanded and broke as slowly as bubbles in pudding, and through each dimensional orifice was thrust a mechanical taproot. There was the smallest pause, as if for breath, and then the Krr ships wriggled into open space and spread out. The process took about as much time as a sharp intake of breath.
“That wasn’t a warp drive,” I said.
--No, the Warps won’t help the Krr--
--Sure sign of good taste--
--The Krr use wormholes through semispace--
--Semispace being the two-dimensional connective tissue of reality--
--It’s fast, faster than a warp, but you’re limited in terms of size--
--The bigger the ship, the more energy you need to open a hole--
I grimaced. “That was awful.”
The semispace holes closed slowly, painfully.
--Careful, Cap’n, you’re going to be using that word a lot--
--Don’t overdo it so early--
The Krr were close to two hundred thousand miles away, but thanks to Cab I saw them as clearly as if I was right next to them. I knew I was out of range, but it didn’t make much of a difference to my gut. Their ships were long, and sharp, like daggers, or stakes. Spear points. A glowing golden ovoid in the back, so overgrown with obsidian thorns it was nearly invisible. Glowing roots to the rear that twisted to control the direction of the ship. And then the rest was brambles, long, questing roots that formed the ship’s shape, twisting in and around and through each other and moved, shifted and reorganized themselves as if unsure, or restless.
A hive, I thought. A true hive. Or an anthill if you cast the thing in black glass and took away the dirt. And the ants were all violent psychopaths. They made me angry, to look at them. They weren’t built right, they didn’t fly right, the roots didn’t even move right on the hull; everything was too jerky. The Krr didn’t just look alien, they felt alien. They felt wrong. They felt like something that needed to be stamped out. They were an affront to logic and sanity.
“They’re different sizes,” I said. The two largest ships were each surrounded by four smaller craft, and their thorns were bigger.
--Those are the hiving ships--
--They get bigger the longer they live--
--The ships, I mean--
“That’s awful…oh, I see what you mean.”
--Right?--
--It’s such a pertinent word--
Roots began to bristle and waver on the surfaces of the eight smaller ships. Cab grunted to himself, approximately.
--Weapons emplacements--
In my eyes, the Krr attack ships took on a certain Christmas-tree affect.
--That’s a lot of guns--
--I hate having to say that--
The Cabernician dropped out of warp in the conventional manner right as the timer in my head clicked zero.
--A conscientious gentleman is a punctual gentleman--
--I’ve got a fix on the seed--
--Let’s roll--
I flexed my fingers and opened my mouth to give the order. The Cabernician was driving the least threatening ship I’d seen so far, a squashed sphere with no corners, propelled by a pair of smaller ovoids at the rear. They oozed crystalline blue smoke, which floated away into space and shattered into nothingness. He wasn’t moving. Neither were the Krr.
“Wait,” I said. “Are they talking to each other?”
--Who gives a shit?--
“I give a shit, Cab, are they talking to each other?”
--Fine, I’ll heat up the grill…--
--If they see us, they’re gonna run--
--Ok, comms are on--
--I don’t think they see us--
My hearing felt better, even though there wasn’t anything to hear. And then there was.
“…nothing out there, dammit, we’ve been through this already.” The Cabernician’s voice was heavily modulated.
“When our scan is complete, thing, we will begin the transfer.” The translation machine, having decided that Krr voices were too terrible to tolerate, compensated for its dumb horror by making the Krr sound like a buttery-voiced movie announcer. In spite of the charm, the animosity and contempt came through clear as a bell. The effect was chilling.
“We’re safe, here, you fools, but the longer we stay the harder this will be to hide. Hurry your machines!” The voice modulator didn’t hide the Cabernician’s petulance, either.
--Be nice if we could figure out who that is--
“See if you can get a look at his license plate,” I said.
--Funny--
“If we lose another seed, thing, we will destroy you and your people,” the Krr said calmly. “There are those among us who still blame you for the loss of the primary.”
“Well, you know, about that,” the Cabernician replied. “We’ve located the primary seed. It’s within your reach, if you’re willing to make a trip.”
There was a hissing intake of breath from the Krr that I thought was a little contrived.
“Where is it?” The menace was palpable.
“Earth,” the Cabber said. “It’s in the Solar System, on a quarantined planet inhabited by a primitive sentient race. It’s bonded to a native, and created a sentient computer. It would make a terrible weapon.”
--Jeeze, this shit again--
“He’s sending them to Earth!” I said. All and everything, under threat.
--Fuckin’ asshole, right?--
“Power on! Warp nine! Man the guns!”
The choir of militant voices screamed affirmative in my head, and we wrenched forward, into the warp vector. My body loosened up.
--You know none of the things you said just now meant anything--
--I had to pick it up from context cues--
We dropped out of warp in front of the Cabernician ship, with the Krr fifty thousand miles away. Targeting warnings hummed aggressively in the back of my head. All of space to choose from and Cab drops us in a crossfire.
“Holy shit!” The Cabernician yelled.
“Why did you drop us between them?” I yelped.
“All stations target the Shipkiller and open fire!” The Krr yelled in his Rick Astley voice. “Hivers, launch four, launch four!”
--Well, the seed is right there…--
The Krr opened fire, and I dove out of the way. Fifty thousand miles is about a seventh of a second, for a laser. Just enough time to duck, except in this case ducking meant curving around the back of the Cabernician ship as fast as Cab’s souped-up engines could take me.
--And now the seed is on the other side of the ship--
--Do you have a plan, or are you winging this?--
“Help don’t hinder!” I yelled. The Cabernician’s shields flashed against Krr weaponry, and the ship started to curve away.
“Good lord, watch out, I’m in the way,” the Cabernician yelled.
--Sir, your cover is attempting to uncover you--
I took the turrets from Cab’s control and shot out one of the Cabernician’s engines. His shields took the first fifty rounds without any difficulty, but the next hundred or so were just too much. The shields flickered and died, and the engine exploded. Against all logic, the ship ground to a halt. Laser light danced off the edges as the Krr closed the distance, firing continuously.
“My God, Samson, what are you doing?”
--Hey, this guy knows your name!--
“He’s firing on me, stop, you monsters, help, help me!”
--Ok, so, your cover is no longer moving, but the Krr are still going to blow up the ship and fish the seed out of the wreckage--
--Now what?--
The Cabernician’s surviving engine detached and sped off into the distance.
--There goes the Cabber--
--Shall I shoot him, sir?--
I shook my head.
--But why?--
The Cabernician shields disappeared entirely, and the ship went dark.
“Get rid of everything but the cutting beams and the shields,” I said. “We’re going through. You said this thing was built tough, right?”
--That was a guess--
“Good enough,” I said. “We’re gonna cut our way in ahead of the Krr and snatch the seed.”
--I don’t like this plan--
My imposing metal body unbuilt itself.
--There are four hives preparing to launch from one of the Krr vessels--
--That means this is a bad plan--
“No, it means the Krr had the same idea I did, and we need to hurry.” I pointed at the Cabber’s hull and flicked my mental nubbins. Thick, purple beams thwacked into the mother of pearl surface and burned it away. Above me molten metal splashed off the front of the ship as if sprayed from a hose. Krr weapons weren’t especially powerful, but there were an awful lot of them.
--Launch--
--Tracking two hives above us, two below--
--They’re flanking, they’ll try to hit the ship at the poles relative to our current position and come at us ahead of the seed--
I shouldered my way inside, just before the sealant foam closed the gap. The seed was lit up as a green line diagram in front of me, through a wall. But walls are immaterial when you’re a being of such incredible destructive force that you can’t risk being taken alive. The Krr were coming. It had an awful ring to it, as a sentence. I pointed my arms and cut through the wall.
There was atmosphere, in here, and I could hear the impact of lasers on the outer hull. It sounded like rain. Horrible death rain made out of weaponized energy and hatred. On a hot tin roof.
“What happens if they shoot the seed?” Another wall. Clouds of molten metal and ceramic ash in front of me. The carpet was nice.
--A big explosion--
“How big?”
--A few kilotons?--
I didn’t pause. “That would solve things nicely, wouldn’t it?”
--A few kilotons ain’t much, buddy--
I shoved and stumbled through a wall into a wide, high-ceilinged living room with a wet bar on one end and a loose arrangement of large, daybed-style chairs at the other. There were newspapers on the coffee table, and an ashtray, some cigarettes, a half-drunk mug of coffee, and a big leather bifold wallet. I grabbed it.
“You’re kidding me with this thing, this isn’t translated, this is a leather wallet,” I grumbled. I flipped to the plastic ID container and pulled out the card. It was a Cabernician driver’s license, essentially, and under ‘Name’ it read ‘Phelan Eight,’ and under ‘Occupation’ it read ‘Gardenmaster, Cabernician Shipbuilding Consortium.’ It was a big card. The laser rain drummed on the hull ahead of me.
“Yeah,” I said, “That figures. Cab, can we hold onto this?”
--Gimme--
A little arm popped out of my hip and took Phelan Eight’s driver’s license and wallet and stuffed them in a compartment that built itself out of my hull. I looked like I had a purse stuffed in my pants.
The ship started to come apart as I cut through the next wall, slowly at first. Things started falling off the ceiling. Hot debris rattled off my hull and nipped at my skin, tiny little spark burns that weren’t bad but hinted at worse to come. The ship lurched once, twice, three times, and once more, and after a moment I heard four booms in the same rhythm.
--Shit shit shit there’s the Krr shit we’re dead we’re dead--
I ignored Cab’s fear and punched through another wall. Something exploded in front of me and my leg went numb. I collapsed onto my knee, gasping.
--Whoops, there it is--
--All right let’s get the hell out of here--
“There what is?” I yelled.
--The seed--
--You found the seed--
--You think your leg is numb for no reason?--
--Now let’s get the hell out of here before the Krr find you and also me by default--
“I can’t move my goddam leg!” I heard screaming laughter, and the pitter-patter of a lot of horrible little feet. Cab started building antipersonnel guns on the hull, little things that would hole a skull and not much else.
--Oh, dear, I can’t move my leg--
--The Krr are coming, so let’s sit here with three functional limbs and a goddam spaceship bitching about the one piece of me that doesn’t work--
“Cab, why can’t I move my damn leg?” I said. Several of the little turrets spun in turn and picked off Krr that had been, in life, faster than their siblings. They exploded into burning streamers of organic matter.
--Oh, fuck you--
--This is gonna be awful--
--There, you got me saying it--
--Awful awful awful!--
The Krr broached the doors to either side, and the walls, and the vent above us, and also the floor, at essentially the same instant. They worked well together, and halved the distance to me before I knew what was happening. An immediate wall of sharpened limbs that moved to quickly to be seen.
Shields, I thought. A Krr reached out and broke his clawed hand against my side and reached with terrible, fibrous teeth for my head, and the shield bubbled into existence. It wavered in the burning atmosphere and living debris for a moment, then exploded. The Krr forces splashed and smashed apart and were crushed into the twisted, electrified metal around me, and the shield collapsed.
I yelled, “Shields!”
The energy bubble reappeared, absorbed and supercharged the molten metal and the raw energy and the vaporized meat atmosphere, and exploded again. I felt the concussion of the explosion rebound off the wreckage around me and smash into my head, my shoulders, my knees, my balls, and I fell.
“Shields!” Again. And again. It became a mantra, or one of those action movie edicts that people shout, over and over again, in movies that feature a lot of computer-generated explosions. The decks around me crumpled and smashed outward, and I floated in the now null gravity, inside the broken, collapsing hollow remains of the Cabernicians ship. Cab was grinning inside me, redirecting more and more energy into the shields, making them more powerful, making what I was doing more dangerous.
--Right, sah, once more fer all t’marbles!--
“Shields!” I bellowed, and the shields flickered one more time, overbright and overpowered. The bubble flickered, caught the rubble around us and obliterated the Cabernician ship entirely. The Krr stopped firing just long enough for me to duck behind a large hunk of ex-hull, but they picked up pretty fast once it was apparent that I was still breathing. Energy splashed off the debris around me. Cab rebuilt the armor and guns as hurriedly as he was able, and in a quarter-second I was once again a hulking, surrealist tank-man. It felt good to be big.
--Neat trick with the shields--
--I apologize for doubting you--
--What now?--
I could smell burning hair. My skin felt toasted. Not quite burnt, but I was probably mostly if not entirely hairless.
“Warp path!” I yelped. My debris shield was heating up pretty fast. “Warp! Path!”
--Yeah yeah--
--Fifteen seconds--
“Faster warp path!” I yelled. Hull plating was glowing red. In a few seconds I was going to be out of places to hide.
--Fourteen seconds--
--Thirteen--
I didn’t say anything coherent, but I made a noise and feinted a hundred miles over, then shot as hard as I could in the opposite direction. For one, maybe two glorious seconds, the Krr were firing a thousand miles behind me. I crowed and turned towards them as they found their aim. My shields lit up with distorted energy and fried space and the stars disappeared. All I heard was the sound of a drop of water on a hot stove, multiplied a billion fold.
--Shield failure in four seconds--
--You wanna tell me what you’ve got in mind?--
I steered for the smallest enemy ship and squeezed the triggers in my head, and weaponized energy roared out of me. I couldn’t see the Krr ship, but I knew my aim was true. The guns knew, at least, and I didn’t question them. I picked up speed.
--Gonna ram a Krr ship, huh?--
--I’m gonna put my imaginary finger on the ol’ imaginary self-destruct button--
--Just in case--
--And just in case we die because of this tactic--
--This was a really bad idea and you’re an asshole for trying--
I smiled maniacally and shouted so I wouldn’t scream. My shields broke, disappeared in a slow instant in which the wavering surface ahead of me buckled inward like a collapsing dome. Something bright and hot and breathtaking stung my shoulder, and then we hit the Krr ship.
I didn’t see a thing. We were inside the Krr ship for a grand total of point zero one seconds, and I was half convinced that we were about to die. So, I blinked, and I didn’t see anything. Sue me. My shoulder bubbled and hissed, so hot it went through cold, and numb, and right back into hot. It hurt, but I was too distracted to feel it clearly.
Alien or not, horror or not, diabolical hell-beasts that would have been ground out of creation by any halfway decent god or not, the Krr still weren’t immune to surprise. Cab and I punched through the smallest ship like a cannonball through a sail into five glorious seconds of peace and quiet. Cab dinged a happy hello to the Warp, and then there was a tug on my sternum. The stars started to move, and we were away.
Two minutes before the buzzer, the Krr popped out of the emptiness like boils on the surface of reality. Ten empty points expanded and broke as slowly as bubbles in pudding, and through each dimensional orifice was thrust a mechanical taproot. There was the smallest pause, as if for breath, and then the Krr ships wriggled into open space and spread out. The process took about as much time as a sharp intake of breath.
“That wasn’t a warp drive,” I said.
--No, the Warps won’t help the Krr--
--Sure sign of good taste--
--The Krr use wormholes through semispace--
--Semispace being the two-dimensional connective tissue of reality--
--It’s fast, faster than a warp, but you’re limited in terms of size--
--The bigger the ship, the more energy you need to open a hole--
I grimaced. “That was awful.”
The semispace holes closed slowly, painfully.
--Careful, Cap’n, you’re going to be using that word a lot--
--Don’t overdo it so early--
The Krr were close to two hundred thousand miles away, but thanks to Cab I saw them as clearly as if I was right next to them. I knew I was out of range, but it didn’t make much of a difference to my gut. Their ships were long, and sharp, like daggers, or stakes. Spear points. A glowing golden ovoid in the back, so overgrown with obsidian thorns it was nearly invisible. Glowing roots to the rear that twisted to control the direction of the ship. And then the rest was brambles, long, questing roots that formed the ship’s shape, twisting in and around and through each other and moved, shifted and reorganized themselves as if unsure, or restless.
A hive, I thought. A true hive. Or an anthill if you cast the thing in black glass and took away the dirt. And the ants were all violent psychopaths. They made me angry, to look at them. They weren’t built right, they didn’t fly right, the roots didn’t even move right on the hull; everything was too jerky. The Krr didn’t just look alien, they felt alien. They felt wrong. They felt like something that needed to be stamped out. They were an affront to logic and sanity.
“They’re different sizes,” I said. The two largest ships were each surrounded by four smaller craft, and their thorns were bigger.
--Those are the hiving ships--
--They get bigger the longer they live--
--The ships, I mean--
“That’s awful…oh, I see what you mean.”
--Right?--
--It’s such a pertinent word--
Roots began to bristle and waver on the surfaces of the eight smaller ships. Cab grunted to himself, approximately.
--Weapons emplacements--
In my eyes, the Krr attack ships took on a certain Christmas-tree affect.
--That’s a lot of guns--
--I hate having to say that--
The Cabernician dropped out of warp in the conventional manner right as the timer in my head clicked zero.
--A conscientious gentleman is a punctual gentleman--
--I’ve got a fix on the seed--
--Let’s roll--
I flexed my fingers and opened my mouth to give the order. The Cabernician was driving the least threatening ship I’d seen so far, a squashed sphere with no corners, propelled by a pair of smaller ovoids at the rear. They oozed crystalline blue smoke, which floated away into space and shattered into nothingness. He wasn’t moving. Neither were the Krr.
“Wait,” I said. “Are they talking to each other?”
--Who gives a shit?--
“I give a shit, Cab, are they talking to each other?”
--Fine, I’ll heat up the grill…--
--If they see us, they’re gonna run--
--Ok, comms are on--
--I don’t think they see us--
My hearing felt better, even though there wasn’t anything to hear. And then there was.
“…nothing out there, dammit, we’ve been through this already.” The Cabernician’s voice was heavily modulated.
“When our scan is complete, thing, we will begin the transfer.” The translation machine, having decided that Krr voices were too terrible to tolerate, compensated for its dumb horror by making the Krr sound like a buttery-voiced movie announcer. In spite of the charm, the animosity and contempt came through clear as a bell. The effect was chilling.
“We’re safe, here, you fools, but the longer we stay the harder this will be to hide. Hurry your machines!” The voice modulator didn’t hide the Cabernician’s petulance, either.
--Be nice if we could figure out who that is--
“See if you can get a look at his license plate,” I said.
--Funny--
“If we lose another seed, thing, we will destroy you and your people,” the Krr said calmly. “There are those among us who still blame you for the loss of the primary.”
“Well, you know, about that,” the Cabernician replied. “We’ve located the primary seed. It’s within your reach, if you’re willing to make a trip.”
There was a hissing intake of breath from the Krr that I thought was a little contrived.
“Where is it?” The menace was palpable.
“Earth,” the Cabber said. “It’s in the Solar System, on a quarantined planet inhabited by a primitive sentient race. It’s bonded to a native, and created a sentient computer. It would make a terrible weapon.”
--Jeeze, this shit again--
“He’s sending them to Earth!” I said. All and everything, under threat.
--Fuckin’ asshole, right?--
“Power on! Warp nine! Man the guns!”
The choir of militant voices screamed affirmative in my head, and we wrenched forward, into the warp vector. My body loosened up.
--You know none of the things you said just now meant anything--
--I had to pick it up from context cues--
We dropped out of warp in front of the Cabernician ship, with the Krr fifty thousand miles away. Targeting warnings hummed aggressively in the back of my head. All of space to choose from and Cab drops us in a crossfire.
“Holy shit!” The Cabernician yelled.
“Why did you drop us between them?” I yelped.
“All stations target the Shipkiller and open fire!” The Krr yelled in his Rick Astley voice. “Hivers, launch four, launch four!”
--Well, the seed is right there…--
The Krr opened fire, and I dove out of the way. Fifty thousand miles is about a seventh of a second, for a laser. Just enough time to duck, except in this case ducking meant curving around the back of the Cabernician ship as fast as Cab’s souped-up engines could take me.
--And now the seed is on the other side of the ship--
--Do you have a plan, or are you winging this?--
“Help don’t hinder!” I yelled. The Cabernician’s shields flashed against Krr weaponry, and the ship started to curve away.
“Good lord, watch out, I’m in the way,” the Cabernician yelled.
--Sir, your cover is attempting to uncover you--
I took the turrets from Cab’s control and shot out one of the Cabernician’s engines. His shields took the first fifty rounds without any difficulty, but the next hundred or so were just too much. The shields flickered and died, and the engine exploded. Against all logic, the ship ground to a halt. Laser light danced off the edges as the Krr closed the distance, firing continuously.
“My God, Samson, what are you doing?”
--Hey, this guy knows your name!--
“He’s firing on me, stop, you monsters, help, help me!”
--Ok, so, your cover is no longer moving, but the Krr are still going to blow up the ship and fish the seed out of the wreckage--
--Now what?--
The Cabernician’s surviving engine detached and sped off into the distance.
--There goes the Cabber--
--Shall I shoot him, sir?--
I shook my head.
--But why?--
The Cabernician shields disappeared entirely, and the ship went dark.
“Get rid of everything but the cutting beams and the shields,” I said. “We’re going through. You said this thing was built tough, right?”
--That was a guess--
“Good enough,” I said. “We’re gonna cut our way in ahead of the Krr and snatch the seed.”
--I don’t like this plan--
My imposing metal body unbuilt itself.
--There are four hives preparing to launch from one of the Krr vessels--
--That means this is a bad plan--
“No, it means the Krr had the same idea I did, and we need to hurry.” I pointed at the Cabber’s hull and flicked my mental nubbins. Thick, purple beams thwacked into the mother of pearl surface and burned it away. Above me molten metal splashed off the front of the ship as if sprayed from a hose. Krr weapons weren’t especially powerful, but there were an awful lot of them.
--Launch--
--Tracking two hives above us, two below--
--They’re flanking, they’ll try to hit the ship at the poles relative to our current position and come at us ahead of the seed--
I shouldered my way inside, just before the sealant foam closed the gap. The seed was lit up as a green line diagram in front of me, through a wall. But walls are immaterial when you’re a being of such incredible destructive force that you can’t risk being taken alive. The Krr were coming. It had an awful ring to it, as a sentence. I pointed my arms and cut through the wall.
There was atmosphere, in here, and I could hear the impact of lasers on the outer hull. It sounded like rain. Horrible death rain made out of weaponized energy and hatred. On a hot tin roof.
“What happens if they shoot the seed?” Another wall. Clouds of molten metal and ceramic ash in front of me. The carpet was nice.
--A big explosion--
“How big?”
--A few kilotons?--
I didn’t pause. “That would solve things nicely, wouldn’t it?”
--A few kilotons ain’t much, buddy--
I shoved and stumbled through a wall into a wide, high-ceilinged living room with a wet bar on one end and a loose arrangement of large, daybed-style chairs at the other. There were newspapers on the coffee table, and an ashtray, some cigarettes, a half-drunk mug of coffee, and a big leather bifold wallet. I grabbed it.
“You’re kidding me with this thing, this isn’t translated, this is a leather wallet,” I grumbled. I flipped to the plastic ID container and pulled out the card. It was a Cabernician driver’s license, essentially, and under ‘Name’ it read ‘Phelan Eight,’ and under ‘Occupation’ it read ‘Gardenmaster, Cabernician Shipbuilding Consortium.’ It was a big card. The laser rain drummed on the hull ahead of me.
“Yeah,” I said, “That figures. Cab, can we hold onto this?”
--Gimme--
A little arm popped out of my hip and took Phelan Eight’s driver’s license and wallet and stuffed them in a compartment that built itself out of my hull. I looked like I had a purse stuffed in my pants.
The ship started to come apart as I cut through the next wall, slowly at first. Things started falling off the ceiling. Hot debris rattled off my hull and nipped at my skin, tiny little spark burns that weren’t bad but hinted at worse to come. The ship lurched once, twice, three times, and once more, and after a moment I heard four booms in the same rhythm.
--Shit shit shit there’s the Krr shit we’re dead we’re dead--
I ignored Cab’s fear and punched through another wall. Something exploded in front of me and my leg went numb. I collapsed onto my knee, gasping.
--Whoops, there it is--
--All right let’s get the hell out of here--
“There what is?” I yelled.
--The seed--
--You found the seed--
--You think your leg is numb for no reason?--
--Now let’s get the hell out of here before the Krr find you and also me by default--
“I can’t move my goddam leg!” I heard screaming laughter, and the pitter-patter of a lot of horrible little feet. Cab started building antipersonnel guns on the hull, little things that would hole a skull and not much else.
--Oh, dear, I can’t move my leg--
--The Krr are coming, so let’s sit here with three functional limbs and a goddam spaceship bitching about the one piece of me that doesn’t work--
“Cab, why can’t I move my damn leg?” I said. Several of the little turrets spun in turn and picked off Krr that had been, in life, faster than their siblings. They exploded into burning streamers of organic matter.
--Oh, fuck you--
--This is gonna be awful--
--There, you got me saying it--
--Awful awful awful!--
The Krr broached the doors to either side, and the walls, and the vent above us, and also the floor, at essentially the same instant. They worked well together, and halved the distance to me before I knew what was happening. An immediate wall of sharpened limbs that moved to quickly to be seen.
Shields, I thought. A Krr reached out and broke his clawed hand against my side and reached with terrible, fibrous teeth for my head, and the shield bubbled into existence. It wavered in the burning atmosphere and living debris for a moment, then exploded. The Krr forces splashed and smashed apart and were crushed into the twisted, electrified metal around me, and the shield collapsed.
I yelled, “Shields!”
The energy bubble reappeared, absorbed and supercharged the molten metal and the raw energy and the vaporized meat atmosphere, and exploded again. I felt the concussion of the explosion rebound off the wreckage around me and smash into my head, my shoulders, my knees, my balls, and I fell.
“Shields!” Again. And again. It became a mantra, or one of those action movie edicts that people shout, over and over again, in movies that feature a lot of computer-generated explosions. The decks around me crumpled and smashed outward, and I floated in the now null gravity, inside the broken, collapsing hollow remains of the Cabernicians ship. Cab was grinning inside me, redirecting more and more energy into the shields, making them more powerful, making what I was doing more dangerous.
--Right, sah, once more fer all t’marbles!--
“Shields!” I bellowed, and the shields flickered one more time, overbright and overpowered. The bubble flickered, caught the rubble around us and obliterated the Cabernician ship entirely. The Krr stopped firing just long enough for me to duck behind a large hunk of ex-hull, but they picked up pretty fast once it was apparent that I was still breathing. Energy splashed off the debris around me. Cab rebuilt the armor and guns as hurriedly as he was able, and in a quarter-second I was once again a hulking, surrealist tank-man. It felt good to be big.
--Neat trick with the shields--
--I apologize for doubting you--
--What now?--
I could smell burning hair. My skin felt toasted. Not quite burnt, but I was probably mostly if not entirely hairless.
“Warp path!” I yelped. My debris shield was heating up pretty fast. “Warp! Path!”
--Yeah yeah--
--Fifteen seconds--
“Faster warp path!” I yelled. Hull plating was glowing red. In a few seconds I was going to be out of places to hide.
--Fourteen seconds--
--Thirteen--
I didn’t say anything coherent, but I made a noise and feinted a hundred miles over, then shot as hard as I could in the opposite direction. For one, maybe two glorious seconds, the Krr were firing a thousand miles behind me. I crowed and turned towards them as they found their aim. My shields lit up with distorted energy and fried space and the stars disappeared. All I heard was the sound of a drop of water on a hot stove, multiplied a billion fold.
--Shield failure in four seconds--
--You wanna tell me what you’ve got in mind?--
I steered for the smallest enemy ship and squeezed the triggers in my head, and weaponized energy roared out of me. I couldn’t see the Krr ship, but I knew my aim was true. The guns knew, at least, and I didn’t question them. I picked up speed.
--Gonna ram a Krr ship, huh?--
--I’m gonna put my imaginary finger on the ol’ imaginary self-destruct button--
--Just in case--
--And just in case we die because of this tactic--
--This was a really bad idea and you’re an asshole for trying--
I smiled maniacally and shouted so I wouldn’t scream. My shields broke, disappeared in a slow instant in which the wavering surface ahead of me buckled inward like a collapsing dome. Something bright and hot and breathtaking stung my shoulder, and then we hit the Krr ship.
I didn’t see a thing. We were inside the Krr ship for a grand total of point zero one seconds, and I was half convinced that we were about to die. So, I blinked, and I didn’t see anything. Sue me. My shoulder bubbled and hissed, so hot it went through cold, and numb, and right back into hot. It hurt, but I was too distracted to feel it clearly.
Alien or not, horror or not, diabolical hell-beasts that would have been ground out of creation by any halfway decent god or not, the Krr still weren’t immune to surprise. Cab and I punched through the smallest ship like a cannonball through a sail into five glorious seconds of peace and quiet. Cab dinged a happy hello to the Warp, and then there was a tug on my sternum. The stars started to move, and we were away.
All content ©2014-2017 Benjamin Mumford-Zisk
Even the silver.
Don't steal anything.
Even the silver.
Don't steal anything.
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