One of the things he discovered, and told no one else, was that under certain very precise conditions, the americium reactor on the Wyvern could be forced to do things other than engage in controlled reaction. It was a very “hot” reactor, the radioactive material very pure and very finely packed. It was, in fact, right on the edge of being a nuclear bomb, rather than a nuclear reactor.
And in certain circumstances it could be forced to change its mind.
The term is “sub-critical reaction.” The bomb was below the yield of any weapon in the nuclear inventory. Only a very little bit of the americium could be forced to enter unrestricted chain reaction. But a very little bit of nuclear explosion is a lot of explosion.
“Whoa!” the XO said as the converted barracks blossomed up and outwards. “What the grapp caused that?”
“Command, Tactical. We just got a nuclear spike from the location of the palace.”
“I’m pretty sure we didn’t issue any special munitions down there,” the CO said. “We didn’t issue any special munitions, right?”
“I’m sure we would have noticed, sir,” the XO said.
“Mac, you there?” the CO said. “Talk to me, Mac.”
“Sort of!” Captain MacDonald said.
The narrow tunnel had blossomed out into some seriously unnarrow tunnels. And the big beetle that had been in the courtyard had reoccupied them when it felt its armor getting singed by lasers.
Now the Marines surrounded it, pouring fire into the thing. Which its armor was shrugging off.
“Aaah!” Corporal Bailey screamed as one of the thing’s claws caught him and flung him across the thirty meter wide room. He slammed into the wall and slid to the ground, his armor limp.
“Check fire!” Top shouted. “Holland! Wave at it!”
The Marine lifted both his hands and cut in his external circuit.
“Yo! Ugly! Over here!”
The massive beetle spun in place and considered the Marine for just a moment.
That was all the time that Top needed. He dropped to his wheels and slid under the beetle’s rump, then pointed his Gatling upwards and opened fire.
The beetle jumped up at least ten feet, then landed, spinning again, stamping inward to try to kill its tormentor.
But the first sergeant wasn’t having any of that. He stood up abruptly and jumped himself, bringing the Gatling down as he entered the blown-open cavity and grabbed the sides.
He swept the inside of the beast until he felt its knees buckle and drop. At that point he was trapped inside the beast but he had pretty good spatial awareness.
“Top!” Holland screamed. “Top! Are you okay?”
“Just peachy, Holland,” the first sergeant said, blasting out the mouthparts of the beetle and crawling out. “Kind of a strange day, I’ll admit. You?”
“How are we going to get them out of there?” the XO asked.
“Hmmm…” the CO said. “We still got that hole in the bottom of the ship or have we patched it, yet?”
“There’s a team getting ready to put a patch on now, sir,” the XO said.
“Tell ’em to hold up.”
“Yeah, Top, I think I’d call this a strange day,” Holland said as he tied the fast-rope around his Wyvern.
“Welcome to the Space Marines,” Top said, holding out his arms.
“Everyone in place?” Captain MacDonald asked. “Right. Vorpal Blade, you can lift at any time.”
The remaining Marines and one SF staff sergeant lifted off the beetle’s shell and upwards into the light, dangling from the bottom of the ship.
“We lost a lot of people,” Holland said, looking back at the smoking hole where the barracks used to be.
“Could be worse,” Top said as they STABOed eastwards. “Could have been us.”
32
“Okay, we’re out of here,” the CO said as soon as Weaver entered the compartment. “These things track in on electromagnetism. We’re just a big attraction to them. Wherever we go, they’ll follow.”
One by one the groups had been picked up as the Vorpal Blade scoured the area of surfaced Demons. Weaver, Miller and Miss Moon had been plucked out of a running gunfight; Dr. Robertson had been pulled off the roof of a building. The ship had then lifted to hover at ten thousand feet while the meeting took place. The agenda was obvious. Everybody living was aboard and it was time to leave.
“Sir,” the XO said uncomfortably. “I agree that we need to leave. However, we’ve got major damage throughout the ship. We’re not exactly air-worthy at the moment.”
“Then the Marines go in their bunks and we run like hell,” the CO said.
“Very well, sir,” the XO replied, nodding. “It’s only about eighteen hours to Earth. But we’re definitely not seaworthy. We’re going to have to land out at Dreamland.”
“Sir, if you’ll give me a moment,” Dr. Robertson said.
“Doctor, I appreciate your input—”
“This may be important,” the biologist said. “Runner?”
“Sir, I think everyone has noticed this hill,” he said, keying up a map of the local area.
“Yes, Master Sergeant,” Spectre said, holding onto his patience.
“I believe it is the source of the Demons,” the master sergeant said. “At least locally.”
“Say again,” the CO said.
“We were picking up odd seismic activity, sir,” Runner said, walking to the computer screen. “It was coming from the direction of this hill. The hill looks like a basolith, a granitic extrusion. But it has no secondary indicators of being one. There should be more granite around and there’s not. Then we were getting those seismic readings, moving towards us and the city. I couldn’t figure out what they were. Dr. Beach did, just before he died.”
“Tunneling,” Weaver said.
“Yes, sir,” Runner said, shaking his head. “It sounded sort of like mining, but not exactly, so I didn’t pick it up. But it was these things heading for us and the city.”
“They started coming out because of the electrical experiments the Cheerick scientists were conducting,” Miss Moon said. “When we got here it just moved up the date of the first attack.”
“Why are they attacking electricity?” the XO said. “And why not one of those boards?”
“Unknown, sir,” Weaver said, leaning forward and looking at the screen. “Captain, we’re beat up and need repairs. If we can stop these things, at the source, we can get those repairs, here, and save these people.”
“Commander Weaver, we’ve got, what? Ten marines left?” the CO said, exasperated. “And you want to send a forlorn hope?”
“No, sir, I want to lead a forlorn hope,” Weaver said. “I want to know what is under that mountain. And I want to have a culture to come back to. The boards take the weight of armor. We can drop from right here and take out that facility. Enter one of the tunnels, put an ardune warhead in it and that’s all she wrote.”
“You want a special weapon,” the CO said wonderingly.
“I was thinking one of the torps, sir,” Bill said. “Actually, I was thinking two; one for backup. There’s a way to adjust them to be selective yield. We can do this, sir. Now that we know the source of the Demons.”
“Captain, Tactical. We’ve got some boards coming up from the ground.”
“I don’t know why we’re even talking about this,” the CO said.
“We’ve got eighteen Marines shooters, sir,” MacDonald said, turning back from a quiet conversation with the first sergeant. “We are, of course, at your disposal.”