Sandra’s thin clothes had been dissolved away to nothing. It looked as if her entire body had been dipped into dirty oil. I assumed she was dead. I felt my eyes sting as I rolled her gently onto her back. Then I saw her eyes-they were open and staring. Those eyes were bright in the oily mess of her face.
She didn’t look at me. She didn’t look at anything. “I can’t move,” she whispered softly.
I’d been frozen by this series of events, but now I kicked myself into action. I didn’t have time to give her a shower or call for a corpsman. I figured I’d strangle Ning and dismantle Marvin later for leaving her-assuming any of us survived the next minutes.
Shoving Sandra into a vacc suit wasn’t an option. I simply didn’t have the time. Instead, I lifted her and dumped her into what had been Carlson’s coffin. He was missing too, but I hardly cared. I put her limp form into the coffin and slammed the lid shut. I grabbed a flying dish and dragged her pod, bumping along behind me. She didn’t have much heat or air in there, but it was better than nothing. We had to get off the ship.
My hope was, as I forced the nearest emergency hatch to blow open and went twisting out into space, that Jolly Rodger would survive the incoming warheads. I’d seen Macro cruisers take a lot of punishment before going down. Unfortunately, Jolly Rodger had already endured a number of beatings.
I accelerated away from the ship, awkwardly hauling Sandra in her coffin with me. I didn’t make it to a safe distance before the missiles hit. Nowhere near. The flash made my visor darken. I worried instantly about Sandra, who didn’t have a visor protecting her. Would she be blinded? I kept flying as directly away from the explosion as I could.
In space, explosions operate differently than those detonated in an atmosphere. There was no shockwave-no wall of air pressure to knock things away. Only the force of the initial blast itself mattered, plus any shrapnel or radiation it might release.
From my point of view the explosion went off under my feet, as I was standing on my dish and flying directly away from the ship. I dared to look down.
Major Welter was still firing the attitude jets, still keeping control of the ship, which rolled under his control to direct the least damaged region of the hull toward the incoming missiles. I knew how hard it was, to manipulate those Macro controls accurately under battle conditions.
Two more hits blossomed under me now. Welter had done it perfectly, putting the ship’s best face toward the warheads. I felt a flash of pride for him and all my men, but it wasn’t enough to save the ship. She’d taken too many shots. The metal of the outer hull was half-slag, brittle and burnt. Jolly Rodger broke up as I watched. Large, spinning fragments of the cruiser whirled away like newborn asteroids. Bits of debris, human, brick and otherwise, floated everywhere.
I slowed, reversed course and began braking my tiny dish. My marines were all around, scattered, dying, calling for help. Some of the bricks went rolling by. I realized we would probably never be able to collect them all.
I checked Sandra then, expecting her to be twisted wreckage or frozen to death by now. She was neither. I shined a suit-light through the frosty lid of her coffin. Her eyes were still wide, still staring. They flicked toward my light and focused there.
I swallowed hard. What the hell had the microbes done to her?
36
It took several precious minutes to get into contact with my people. That chaotic time made up some of the worst moments of my life. It was one thing to have your ship blown up. That was a quick, clean death. No fuss or muss. But this wasn’t pleasant. My people were everywhere, dying. I couldn’t easily talk to them, as our central communications relaying systems were down. I could only talk to them on local radio, which had several miles range, but with a hundreds squawking at once it wasn’t organized or even functional.
I could at least still see the direction we should all head in. The central mass of moving bits were ahead, with a number of blinking beacons flashing blue-white. I headed that way, as did everyone else who could control their direction of flight and we all converged.
Command and control had been broken up. No one was in contact with their unit. No one was organized. We were a horde, not an army. I pulled rank on everyone I met and ordered them to head toward the Macro cruiser, which was itself bearing down on us. Maybe they didn’t see us as a threat. I hoped they weren’t right to discount us.
Even though my marines had abandoned Jolly Rodger, we were still moving toward the enemy ship on the same course our ship had been on. In space, an object keeps moving in one direction at one speed until some kind of interference alters that motion. So although we were now scattered and had become a cloud of tiny vehicles, we were still heading toward the Macro ship.
I couldn’t see the enemy vessel, but calculating the timing, I knew we were getting close. I ordered everyone I saw to brake. Others did as well, all around us. Like a flock of birds, we took our hints from one another’s behavior, and most of us did whatever the majority did.
The cruiser was dark and unlit. It came up at us like a hand swatting flies. My marines who had not started braking slammed into it, a swarm of fleshy meteors. I saw them die, some screaming the last second as they realized their error. Others missed the cruiser and flashed by past it.
The cruiser finally reacted to our presence as we got in close. The belly turret began firing with bright flashes. There was no air to carry the sound of battle. Men and bricks vanished in silent, incandescent plumes.
I maneuvered, almost passing the ship, but managed to land with a heavy double thump upon the hull. Sandra’s coffin was the second thump. Around me, dozens of marines made their final approaches. We even managed to get a few bricks onto the hull and turned on the magnetic clamps. That would let us last a few more hours, I figured.
I didn’t even know how many of my people I’d lost yet. I didn’t want to know. In a way, it didn’t even matter. We had to take this Macro ship, as it was the only thing out here. There were no options, it was do or die.
I dragged Sandra’s coffin to the nearest brick that had managed to clamp onto the Macro hull. Except for turning their gun on us, the Macros had taken no notice of our presence. They really didn’t seem to care that we were here. They had not even deviated from their course. We would fly through the ring to the tri-star system we suspected was Alpha Centauri soon.
Men now clanked over the hull all around me. We were like a mass of bees on a sealed-up hive. There was no easy way in. I struggled to drag Sandra’s box through the airlock. It pumped and hissed. I didn’t look in through the lid, partly because it was turned away from me, and partly because I didn’t want to see what might be inside.
It was only when I got inside the brick that I realized it was a sleeping brick. I huffed in disappointment. We had bunks and air-that was it. I took off my helmet and tasted the stale air. There was nothing else here that was much use other than the water tank. I’d been hoping for a medical brick, or better yet one of our two surviving factories. I could have built something useful to blow through the hull with that.
The few men inside the brick looked as exhausted and hopeless as I did. “Take a break,” I told them. “Then find your unit and form up. We’ve got to take this ship.”
They mumbled acknowledgement, but no one sprang up to follow my orders. I looked inside the medical pod. Sandra’s eyes were finally closed. The digital gauges on the sides indicated she was still alive, however. I slumped over the pod and my sides heaved. I needed a few seconds to think.