The Lost Aria (Earth Song Book 3) Page 35

  “Have the next group fall back right away!” Minu screamed at Var'at as they ran. As they rounded the second corner, the remaining Rasa soldier was already retreating, his partner lay dead back by the Portal. The three of them rounded the final corner and fell in behind the three Rasa soldiers already there. Var'at quickly handed off the beamcaster and got his accelerator rifle ready again. Minu nodded towards the squad sized shield the soldiers had and Var'at reached over to turn it on. Six T'Chillen soldiers slithered around the corner, their speed making Minu gasp. Who would believe a snake could move almost as fast as a running human? “Fire!”

  All five Rasa and Minu opened up together, Minu with the captured T'Chillen compact beamcaster and the Rasa with all their most powerful weapons, four accelerator rifles and one beamcaster. The T'Chillen were staggered by the sheer volume of fire, Minu and the Rasa beamcaster gunner concentrated on one soldier who went down under their combined fire. Momentarily taken off guard the surviving five retreated back under cover.

  It won't last, she thought as she looked over her shoulder. The fighter was gone and she gasped in relief. There was a huge gash in the wall, the result of the massive blast she'd heard a minute ago, and she wondered what cost it came with. What made her do a double take was Bjorn squatting in the middle of the hallway over something and fiddling with a tool kit. “Bjorn, get back!” she yelled. He looked up and upon spotting her he smiled and waved casually before going back to his task. “Damn it, Aaron, are we clear? And what the fuck is Bjorn doing messing with a science experiment in the middle of my combat zone?”

  “Here they come,” Var'at warned. Minu leaned out and let go with the last shots in the compact beamcaster.

  “We're right at the edge,” Aaron told her, “we had to send the second fighter through first. We're here, door open, just waiting on you!”

  “Roger, we'll be there any second, coming in hot as hell!” While she spoke she dropped the beamcaster into a pocket, doing her best to ignore the burn its red hot emitter gave her thigh, and drew both Enforcers, one in each hand. She opened up, firing one gun then the other, over and over again. Normally kinetic weapons had little effect on the more resistant forcefields the T'Chillen used, but the sheer ballistic energy of the Enforcers imparted enough force to stagger the soldiers. If they'd had legs the one she slapped over and over again would probably have been driven to the ground. Instead it just brought the snake to a jerking stop, field glowing red from absorbing the attacks. The furious rate of fire of the Rasa accelerator rifles literally covered them in bright flashes of light, confusing and slowing them down.

  “Time to go,” Minu said and walked backwards, quickly swapping out mags to her final reloads. There were cases of extra ammo in the fighter, if she could get there. The Rasa soldiers skittered past her, all except Var'at who fell in next to her, shoulder to shoulder.

  “We keep finding ourselves in these situations,” he said, his jaw hanging open in their typical laugh.

  “Lucky us,” Minu said. The first T'Chillen head poked around the corner and she double tapped; the impact shattering armor and sending blood flying. Must have knocked out at least one of their fields, she surmised. The injured soldier tried to back around the corner and Var'at unloaded a hundred rounds into it, tearing the head to pieces and scattering blood, bones and brains all over the walls. They reached the midpoint where Bjorn knelt, working and talking to himself. “Whatever you are doing needs to be done,” she said just as a beamcaster bolt flashed past them, her shield glowing slightly from the near miss.

  “Oh, sure, just fine tuning the field-”

  “Screw it!” she almost screamed, fear coming through in her voice and penetrating through to his nano-tech brain.

  “Oh, sure,” he said and started trotting towards the final doorway. Minu and Var'at paced him, both silently willing him to hurry. Whether it was respect of their weapons, or just plain luck, they made the corner with only sporadic uncoordinated fire coming at them. As soon as they were clear the T'Chillen came fast and hard.

  “In the fighter,” Minu yelled, but Bjorn was carefully peeking around the corner as the alien soldiers surged towards them. She tried to pull him away but he slapped her hand back.

  “Watch, watch!” he cackled. Minu swallowed and peeked around the corner.

  The first T'Chillen was just reaching the machine he'd been working on. She saw the soldier regard it as it slithered in its side to side race. Its HUD apparently declared it harmless. Just before it reached the box, Minu heard a queer sound; a gravitic impeller spinning up. “What did you-” she didn't have to finish the question, the answer was obvious. Sitting in the middle of the floor was one of their spare impellers, and it was screaming to full power.

  The first T'Chillen was grabbed by invisible forces and slammed to the floor with a sickening crunch. As Minu watched she saw the second one in line grabbed by the same widening field. It struggled mightily to pull away but the field wouldn't relent, pulling down and crushing that one against the floor too. The others stopped dead in their tracks and slithered backed, unsure what to do. When the growing field grabbed yet another soldier one of the others made a decision and fired at the impeller. “That's not wise,” Bjorn said.

  The powerful gravity field being generated did strange things to a contained particle accelerator packet, such as the beamcasters fired. The beam splayed, only a portion hitting its target. The impeller jumped, the pitch of the whine changed, and suddenly hull plates gave an ominous groan as the hallway was pulled and bent. “Oh shit,” Minu said as they all heard the telltale whoosh of escaping atmosphere. “Run for it!”

  The T'Chillen cast a few desultory shots at their adversaries before slithering away for their lives. Minu physically dragged Bjorn towards the door of the waiting fighter as the wind turned from a hiss to a roar, and then a scream. It was obvious that his little toy was literally tearing the station apart. Worse, the venting was becoming so bad Minu found herself having to lean into the wind as it tore at her. Her uniform flapped against her skin and her hair whipped back so violently she began to fear it would be torn out by the roots. It took every bit of her will to put one foot in front of the other. Her cybernetic arm had Bjorn's uniform in such a grip that it would tear to shreds before she lost him. The improved muscles in her legs strained and protested against the power of the wind.

  Then it got much worse. The wind began to abate and as she tried to take a breath, it wasn't there. It was almost like sucking on an empty drink bottle, only a trickle of air, and then nothing. Her vision burned and blurred, forcing her to close her eyes for the last steps. Then several pair of hands grabbed her, fingers and claws, and she was hauled into the transport.

  She was afraid to open her eyes as the transport lurched forward and to the new destination. The instant they passed through the Portal, atmosphere rushed back into the craft with a booming crash, tossing everyone around the cabin like rag dolls.

  Minu released Bjorn and fell back, sucking great mouthfuls of crisp, cold air. All around her others were doing the same thing and she heard Aaron cursing over and over. She slowly forced her eyes open, feeling ice crystals tugging at her eyelashes. It took a second to focus, but there appeared to be no damage.

  “Bjorn, you fucking lunatic!” she cried out and rolled to her feet. He was sitting on the floor, laughing like a maniac and slapping his leg.

  “I've always wanted to see if that worked!”

  “You've never tried that before? For goodness sake, why now? We could have all died if that thing didn't work.”

  He looked confused and a little hurt. “Well, there was a small risk it could create a micro singularity...” He got that distant look and took out a tablet to make some notes.

  Minu swallowed and blanched, “a black hole?”

  “Only a small one,” he said absently as he tapped away. “So of course you understand the risk of trying that on even an uninhabited world, considering our precarious situation, it seemed the
right thing to do. You aren't upset, are you?” She was taken aback by his genuine look of concern.

  “God, Bjorn,” she coughed, wiping a spot of blood on her uniform sleeve. The exchange forgotten, he'd walked outside into a very dark rainy night on whatever world it was and was observing the still working Portal. The station still seemed to be there, the room lit by one of their torches floating by. Though intact, the artificial gravity was obviously out.

  “Well, no singularity then,” he said, almost sounding forlorn, and made more notes.

  The initial shock receding, Minu stepped out into the rain. Though bitterly cold it felt good as she looked around. There was no visible vegetation, the ground covered with almost polished pea gravel as far as they could see under the fighter’s floodlights. She looked back up at the Portal in time to see a T'Chillen body float by, grossly distended from being exposed to vacuum and then crushed by Bjorn's improvised weapon. “Bjorn,” she said to get his attention. The other fighter was a few meters away, the rear door opening and the occupants running over to check on them. “Bjorn!”

  “Uh, what? Oh, yes Minu.”

  “Can that little reaction of yours be controlled?”

  “Well, sure, but it was much more interesting to see the runaway effect, don't you think?” Minu didn't think it was interesting, except the fact that it completely bypassed the T'Chillen's defenses. A mental image appeared of tiny micro-gravitic impellers of this kind used in all sorts of applications set as a sort of landmine, or even tossed as grenades. Now she had her tablet out and was making notes. And that was how Cherise found them, both standing in front of the Portal, T'Chillen corpses floating around and blood pouring from Minu's nose as she typed on her tablet.

  “Oh my god, are you okay?”

  “Huh, what?” they both asked. Ted was right behind her, his face ashen and hands shaking in shock.

  “Shut that down, will you Ted?” she asked as another corpse bumped into the first one. “We don't know if the snakes have any space suits handy, and I don't want to find out.” He took out his control rod and shut it off with a casual flick of the wrist. “Thanks.” Her notes finished she turned around to check on her people. The most seriously injured was one of the Rasa who was being tended to. Cherise came over and put a medical dressing against her face. “What?” she asked and Cherise pulled it back to show how it was drenched in bright red blood. “Oh,” she said and accepted the dressing.

  “You could have died,” her friend said, worry laser etched on her face.

  “We all could have died,” she agreed, “but more importantly we're into the exclusion area around Enigma.” A smile split her face as she looked at them, then at Var'at who was more restrained. She turned serious again. “I'm sorry about your soldier.”

  “It is okay,” he said. The reptilian seemed none the worse for wear and she marveled at their physical resilience. “He died quickly, and doing his job.”

  Minu nodded and put a hand on his shoulder. “So now that we're here, Ted, let me borrow your rod and we'll get to Enigma as fast as possible.”

  Chapter 5

  January 11th, 522 AE

  Undesignated Star System, Galactic Frontier

  The fighter which had gotten stuck was in bad shape. Faced with having to abandon it as the T'Chillen attacked, Aaron whipped together an explosive charge and blasted it clear. As soon as they'd made the first jump past the cold dark raining world to one in midday of a dense deciduous forest Bjorn and Ted set to ascertain the extent of the damage. Aaron assisted them while Cherise used a medkit on Minu. Somehow Bjorn hadn't gotten a scratch.

  “You've got some micro capillary damage to your eyes,” Cherise told her as she manipulated the medical scanner. “Of course I can't give you a nano-treatment.”

  “I know, damn thing can't calibrate to us. But that's one of the reasons we're here.”

  “It's worthwhile for a lot of reasons,” the other girl agreed, “but not worth you getting yourself killed.”

  “It comes with the job, Cherise.” Minu took her face in hand and lifted it to look in her eye. Cherise tried to avoid her gaze for a minute then finally met her eye to eye. Tears were there, barely unshed. “You going to tell me what's wrong?”

  Cherise cautiously looked around, verifying no one was closer than a few meters, then spoke rapidly in a low voice. “What do you want me to say, that I don't care? That it wouldn't bother me if you got yourself blown to bits by some fucking alien? Or would you rather that I just admit that I love you?”

  “You've become like a sister to me, Cherise!”

  The other woman shook her head, the tears starting to flow. “No, you don't understand. I love you, Minu Alma.”

  Minu looked at her for a second as meaning chased comprehension. Eventually the two met in a head on crash in her brain. “You mean like how we've...'been together', that's what you mean?” The tears were pouring now; Cherise nodded her head and let out a little choking squeak. “Oh, baby,” Minu said and took her in her arms. Cherise grabbed her so hard Minu was afraid her ribs would crack.

  “I know, I know, I can't help it! One thing led to another, and I didn't want it to, but then when I saw you out there, the air sucking out of that, you barely hanging on and seconds from being blown out into space, and I realized there was no more doubting how I feel. I love you, and have for some time.”

  “Cherise, I don-”

  “No, please, don't say anything. I understand, really.” Cherise pulled back, sniffing and quickly wiping her face with the sleeve of her jet black jumpsuit. Minu noticed for the first time how it complemented her cocoa colored skin. “I didn't want to say anything because I didn't want to put you under any pressure.”

  “I love you too Cherise, I just don't know if it's the same.” They looked deep into each other’s eyes for a long moment, Cherise searching for something in there, something with no name, something with infinite meaning. “I'll have to think about what you've said, okay? Is that good enough for now?”

  “It will have to be.” The two girls embraced again. Across the temporary camp, Aaron, Ted and Bjorn did their best to find something else to look at. Only Var'at watched the two humans with interest, if not comprehension.

  “It's fucked.”

  “Great technical description, Ted; how about some more details?” Minu took the bandage away from her nose and seeing no fresh blood handed it to Cherise to dispose of.

  Ted looked at Minu and scowled, casting a look at the second fighter. “Well, the magnetic control systems we constructed are used to hold the fighter together and allow it to change shape. We basically cut the thing into a thousand pieces, added magnetic fields, shields, etc, and that results in-”

  “Ted, I don't want to build one, I just want to know why it's fucked!”

  “Your boy there blew the crap out of one of the two main structural computers.”

  “Hey,” Aaron said and pointed a menacing finger at the much smaller scientist, “I did what I had to do!”

  “Congratulations, you damn bloody Neanderthal.”

  Aaron took a step towards him and Minu intervened. “Stop it, you two. Okay, so the computer is trashed, what does that mean for function? Can't we just not transform it?”

  “If it were that simple. Without the computer the hull can't properly respond to stresses. Because it isn't a solid construct, more like a child's toy made of blocks, the computer makes adjustments to the containment fields every time you turn quick, or land hard, etc. The other computers will keep it in one piece, but the first time you push it too far, the whole damned thing will just fall apart.”

  “Rather dramatically, too, I suspect!”

  “Thank you Bjorn,” Ted grumbled and Bjorn nodded before going back to his computer. Somehow the gray haired scientist had produced tea in a china tea set and was enjoying some Peninsula green tea as the discussion went on.

  “So as long as we baby it...”

  “Should be fine,” Ted finished. “One hard push,
too fast of a turn, a hard bump...”

  “Boom!” Bjorn illuminated for them, gesturing with both arms and spraying tea around. Several Rasa hissed in indignation and dodged the heavily sugared concoction. Bjorn laughed at his wit and tried to take a sip of his tea, looking down at the empty cup in confusion.

  “Right,” Minu said and looked at the fighter in question. To make it worse, the damned thing looked fine except for some missing paint. She couldn't fault Aaron for his decision, even as he looked at her with a guilty expression. Despite his bluster with Ted, it was apparent that he blamed himself. They were in a bind, and he'd improvised. She probably would have done the same thing. He'd joked a few minutes earlier when explaining to her exactly what he'd done, that he'd wished for a light saber at the time. Minu agreed, and said she'd put Bjorn to inventing a UCT (universal cutting tool) as soon as possible.

  “So we use it for transport only, protect it with the second fighter as much as possible. If we have to, we strip it and blow it.”

  “Gonna be a damned tight fit in the one fighter,” Aaron mumbled.

  “Standing room only,” she agreed. “I'd like to make one more jump before camping,” she told them, “we're only three away from the coordinates for Enigma. If we rest after the next jump we'll be fresh when-” She was cut off as the Portal flashed once. “Ted?”