Suicide Mission
Christopher Stasheff
THE BLACK PLASTIC ship nosed up alongside the Khalian frigate—black, so that light-based sensors couldn’t find it, and it couldn’t be detected visually as it drifted in between the ships of the Khalian perimeter; plastic, so that radio-based sensors couldn’t find it. Darts sprang out from its side, darts tipped with synthetic-diamond covering explosive charges. They slammed through the Khalian’s hull, and four explosions mushroomed their heads.
Inside the black barracuda, winches whined, reeling in line, pulling the two ships close together. Then a metal ring slammed into the Khalian, and current flowed, binding the collar to the Khalian while automatic screws dug into the ship’s skin. A man sprang onto the mesh tunnel that joined the collar to the plastic ship and began slapping explosive gel onto the Khalian’s hull in a widening circle.
Bound together in an embrace of hatred, the two ships floated in the void. Distant stars gleamed—Khalian ships and Terran ships, twinkling with death as they circled Dead Star 31.
When he was a kid, Corin had wished he’d had a brother. And sometimes he’d wished his father could stay home all the time, like other dads.
He wished he’d had anything but three older sisters and a younger one, and a mother who screamed at him all the time.
“It’s a chance for a breakthrough,” the captain said. “It’ll only work once—but it only has to. Break through their line, and there’s their home world, right in front of us. We have one chance in a hundred of bringing it off, but it’s worth the risk.” He raked the line of marines with his glare, “Any questions?”
Silence.
Then Sergeant Krovvy stepped forward. “Sir!”
The captain turned back, frowning. “Yes, Sergeant?”
“If the odds of success are one to a hundred, what’re the odds on coming back alive?”
The captain grinned like a shark. “How about one in a million?”
That was when Corin stepped forward.
The captain turned to him, frowning, “Are you volunteering, or just going crazy?”
“Volunteering, sir.” Hands to his sides, eyes straight ahead, face wooden.
“Should I call the medics, or should I ask why?”
Corin shrugged. “Anything’s better than waiting through a stalemate like this.”
The captain nodded. “And ... ?”
Corin grimaced. “I want to find out what the plan is.”
“And you’ll only learn that by volunteering.” The captain nodded. “Good enough.” He turned back to the other marines. “Anyone else?”
He looked up and down the long, silent row.
Sergeant Krovvy cleared his throat and took another step forward.
The captain’s grin touched his ear lobes. “Two out of fifty! Not bad, not bad at all! But I need a dozen. One more! One more to die for the glory of the Fleet! ... No one? Dismiss!”
The corporals barked, and the marines marched away.
“You two.” The captain jerked his head toward the airlock. “Come on.”
Aboard his courier, he told them the plan.
Which was great. Now Corin knew it couldn’t work.
Daddy was away. Daddy was always away, and when he was home, he was in his room.
“I told him you shouldn’t let him keep coming through our yard,” Mommy had yelled at him. “I told you, and told you, but you wouldn’t even ask him to stop!”
“It’s not that important,” Daddy had mumbled.
“It is that important! I don’t want some old coot walking through my yard just any time, without even asking! That’s why I went to the lawyer! And do you know what he said? The old man’s got the town council declaring it a right of way! But would you lift a finger to stop him? Oh, no!”
And Daddy had gone to his room. Daddy always went to his room. And stayed there.
It was a dumb idea, but Corin had known that when he stepped forward, even though he hadn’t heard what it was. But he knew that it couldn’t possibly work, and that even if it did, it would get every last one of them killed. And when he found out what it was, he was sure.
But it would be worth it just to get this infernal waiting over with, he told himself. It would be worth it.
It was really very simple. Pick out the largest ship in the Khalian horde, find a frigate next to it, board that, and use its guns and torpedoes to shoot the other down. There were rumors the Khalians were using larger ships. Then the Fleet’s dreadnoughts could bull through the gap, swatting lesser ships as they went—and the captured frigate could keep running interference for them, shooting down any other Khalian ships within range. It should be able to do a lot of damage before the other Weasels figured out what was happening and blew it to vapor.
The trick was getting close enough to board a Khalian frigate without the Weasels finding out, by eye or by sensor, and being able to take over so fast that they couldn’t call for help. Which they weren’t apt to do. The Khalian ideal of cooperation being what it was, the Weasels would want to take care of their own interlopers.
Privately, Corin figured the captain’s odds on coming back were a little high.
But that, he realized with surprise, was okay with him. In fact, it was just fine.
“Take out the garbage, Corey,” Mom said. “Don’t be like your father, always putting it off.”
So he took out the garbage and came back in, and she said, “You missed the bathroom wastebaskets. Go do them all.”
He hated the bathroom wastebaskets. Darlene made such a mess out of them, what with her makeup tissues and hair and all.
And when the wastebaskets were done, and dinner was over, she came out screaming, “You didn’t wash it out! Now go out there and take the hose, and wash out that wastebasket!”
It was November, and it was cold and dark, and his hands were blue when he came in.
Except for the long rows of facing seats, the ship was stripped to the hull, and the marines were stripped to raw emotion. They sat, belted in, tense and expectant. The ship rocked, and Corin knew they had fired their grapples. He waited, taut, till he heard the crash of the electromagnetic collar taking hold of the Khalian’s skin. What if it isn’t iron?
Just in case this Khalian’s hull wasn’t ferrous, the electromagnetic ring had borers built in. The grinding noise filled the Fleet ship as the long screws bit into the pirate’s skin.
“Demolition!”
“Here!” And Valius was, as the iris dilated in the side of the barracuda. He leaped through and started slapping plastic onto the Khalian hull, building it out in a widening circle almost to the lip of the circular electromagnet—a shaped charge, strong enough to blow a hole in the side of a spaceship, strong enough to kill anybody who happened to be in the chamber it holed.
Overhead, plastic vaporized in a long, wide trough.
“Stand fast,” the captain ordered. “He can’t depress his cannon any more than that—and you’re already breathing your own tanks.”
The marines were all in pressure armor, of course, breathing bottled air. And by the time the pirates were suited up, the marines would be among them.
The barracuda’s hull vibrated, but the humming of the pump dwindled quickly as it pulled air out of the ship’s interior and into storage tanks.