the Blitz in 2036. “So what the hell are they doing up there, Howard?”
“This.” Howard waved up a holo, visible-light drone imagery. It showed low-angle, high-resolution images from a skimmer that had flashed across the Red Moon, transmitted images, and then, no doubt, been shot down by the Slugs.
The image showed lumpy, asymmetric, wheelless machines gliding back and forth across a glassy red plain. Atop each machine bulged a leaden sphere. As we watched, one machine plucked off a sphere from its sibling, then replaced it with another.
Howard pointed at the discarded sphere. “Even with extensive shielding, the Pseudocephalopod workers operating this machinery don’t last long.”
Jude said, “Isn’t it obvious? They knew that we were about to destroy them. They took over the Red Moon to stop Silver Bullet.”
Howard shook his head. “The Pseudocephalopod is economical in its actions. It could more easily have stopped Silver Bullet by destroying our ground facilities, or the entire civilization of Bren. Or it could have simply stood off and bombarded the Red Moon with slow Projectiles or with fast Vipers, until it broke the Red Moon into vagrant fragments.”
I frowned. “Howard, you know plenty about what the Slugs aren’t doing. What
“I don’t know. But Silver Bullet is stalled until we stop them from continuing to do it.”
“How do we stop them?”
My Space Force liaison major shook her head. “We can’t win a fleet-against-fleet battle.”
Howard raised his index finger. “But if we stop them from doing whatever they’re doing on the Red Moon’s surface…”
Jude pointed at the holo image, which had cut off after just seconds. “That drone lasted two seconds once it pulled up. Even Scorpions can’t stay close enough long enough to smart-bomb them.”
Howard said, “And saturation bombing would leave the Red Moon useless to us.”
I closed my eyes and rubbed them with my fingers. “Okay. Howard, if we modified a bunch of Scorpions the way you modified yours for Silver Bullet, they could carry more, right?”
He nodded.
“So we could use them to land infantry on the Red Moon. Not just a raiding party. A force that could take the ground and hold it. Then we could keep the Scorpions down there, so they wouldn’t be exposed to fire.”
Ord raised his eyebrows. “Sir, light infantry taking and holding unfamiliar ground when the enemy enjoys air supremacy?”
I pointed at my Space Force liaison. “You can’t whip their fleet. But can you keep their fleet from ganging up on an exposed ground force?”
She frowned. “Maybe.”
“No maybe. Do it.”
There was more stone in the faces around my conference table than on Mount Rushmore. “I’m open to other options. Who’s got some?”
Even Ord looked pale. Nobody said anything.
I slapped my palms against the tabletop. “Tomorrow. Same time. Please present me a plan consistent with this concept for your respective areas of responsibility.”
Chairs pushed back amid thick silence.
“Ladies and gentlemen, this is an opportunity. Please present it to your respective staffs as such, rather than as a problem.” I sounded so optimistic that I almost believed myself.
THIRTY-ONE
THREE WEEKS LATER, I sat in my office at sunrise, in the chair I had occupied the previous night and most of the other nights since I had set my army on this course. Action items choked my calendar flatscreen’s inbox, and paper reports related to the onworld aspects of the operation overflowed a wire basket on my desk corner, like a last-century cartoon.
Jude rapped on my open office door’s jamb, then stepped in without waiting for me to ask him. “You look like crap.” He dropped into a chair across from me, then propped his crossed ankles on the far edge of my desk.
I rubbed my chin. “I’m gonna shave in a minute.”
He eyed the tight-blanketed cot I had staff set up in my office’s corner. “How long since you slept?”
“I take catnaps. Edison took catnaps.”
“ Edison was deaf, too. It didn’t make him better at his job. Ord’s not babysitting you like he should.”
“I’m too old for a babysitter. And Ord’s too old to babysit.”
Jude jerked his thumb at my outer office. “Tell me about it. When I saw him yesterday, he looked like he’d aged ten years in three weeks. You don’t look much better.”
“So make me better. Tell me you’ve got the first modified Scorpion into flyable condition.”
He grinned. “Why do you think I came by?”
I stood, arched my back as I rubbed it with my palms, and groaned.
He grinned again.
I said, “The replacement parts work fine. It’s the original equipment that wakes up slow.”
His grin disappeared, and he stood. “I’ll give you a hand.”
I pushed his hand away. “I’m fine.”
He said, “Come on over to the hangar with me. You need a break. I’ll make it worth your while.”
THIRTY-TWO
A SHAVE, SHOWER, and uniform change later, Jude’s footsteps and mine echoed in the Spook hangar, nearly lost in a din of metal against metal.
The space had become more factory floor than aircraft hangar, with a dozen Scorpions in various stages of conversion, each one’s belly tile floating three feet off the floor. Each giant watermelon seed of a craft, bigger than an old fixed-wing fighter-bomber, got pushed from station to station by two enlisted ratings as easily as if they were rolling an oversized shopping cart.
The only reason Scorpions even had landing gear was so they could be shut down completely to switch out peripheral systems or to conserve peripheral system batteries. Cavorite never got tired.
Jude led me to a shut-down Scorpion resting on landing gear just inside the hangar’s rolled-back main doors.
Modifying a single-seat Scorpion fighter to operate as a Silver Bullet bomber, or as our field-expedient troop carrier, essentially involved cannibalizing another Scorpion, then piggybacking the extra fuselage onto the existing one, with the nose of the cargo-passenger space faired in aft of the original ship’s cockpit. The overall look was not only graceless but indecent.
No paint in existence could withstand the skin temperatures a Scorpion generated while operating in atmosphere. So the nose art, which consisted of two angry eyes and a shark-tooth mouth, was merely temporary chalk. The slogan below the teeth read “The humping cockroaches. Payback is job one.”
Jude helped me negotiate the low-angled access ladder that bridged the Scorpion’s flank, then we dropped through the upturned clamshell canopy into the side-by-side couches for pilot and systems operator.
The rating at the ladder’s base cracked off a salute that Jude returned, then lifted the ladder away.
I turned to Jude. “What are you doing?”
He toggled a switch, the canopy clamped shut, then the visual screens that wallpapered the canopy lit, so that the opaque ceramic seemed transparent. “Taking her out for a spin. You’ll like it.”
“No, I-”
