how the takeover of the invasion ship was going. “Major Sarin?”
There was no answer. I frowned. There could have been a lot of reasons why she wasn’t answering, including because she was busy fighting for her life. It could be so loud, she couldn’t hear her headset. Or, she could be dead with a Macro marine squatting over her cooling corpse. I didn’t know which it was, but I didn’t like the list of possibilities.
“Sandra?” I called on our private channel. “Lieutenant, are you there?”
More nothing.
I tried to put it out of my mind. They were dead or alive and I couldn’t help them right now, except by doing my own job right. I concentrated on the task at hand. Kwon had figured out what I had in mind by this time, and was already working on the reactor controls.
“How will we get out of range quickly enough when it goes off?” he asked.
I pointed to the dish that still dangled, attached by a stubborn nanite strap to the dead marine. The sight made me appreciate the nanites a bit more, they were loyal little things, clinging to masters long after there was no hope. I knew that after my men had died, frequently we were surprised upon opening up their body bags. The flesh inside was recomposed and perfect, almost as if they’d never died but instead slept in their airless vinyl shrouds. The nanites had repaired their bodies faithfully, even though they were dead and could not be brought back.
Kwon looked at the dish dubiously. It was banged up, with several big dents in the curvature of it. I waved him toward the reactor. “Rig up the trigger. I’ll test this thing.”
“How will it carry both of us?” he asked.
“We only have to go a few hundred feet. Once we are around the cruiser hull, we will be safe from the blast.”
“We hope,” Kwon said.
“Yeah.”
We worked quietly after that. This part of the drill we knew well. Ever since I’d let Wilson kill himself by overloading his suit reactor and bring down the first Macro dome back on Earth, I’d had them build in timers and codes to do this sort of thing in a more organized fashion.
“It should work,” Kwon announced.
“Good enough,” I said. I had the thrust working on the dish. It was a little unstable, but I figured it only had to fly us away from this spot. There was more than enough push to move our combined weights out of here quickly.
I eyed the dish. There was no chance we could both stand on it. I threw myself over the dish on my belly and grunted. “Climb on. We are going to have to be friendly.”
“Let me go on the bottom,” Kwon said.
I looked at him. He was easily twice my weight. Under acceleration, and in order not to be top-heavy, he was right. We would be more stable if he were the base of this marine pyramid. I rolled off the dish and waved him forward. “Hurry. Start the timer and do it.”
“I already did,” Kwon said as he grunted past me.
“What? Go then, go, go, GO!” I shouted as I threw myself onto his back.
The dish rose up and shoved at my gut. My legs dangled, as did Kwon’s. The dish shuddered and bucked, wanting to go into a spin. Kwon fought the controls. I felt like a chimp clinging to my mother. If I hadn’t had nanite strength in my fingers and exoskeletal strength in my gloves, I could never have held on.
I looked back then, and saw right away we were screwed. We were too high. We were never going to make it. The belly turret rolled around quickly, the muzzle glowing white. It was going to take us out, or the explosion was going to do it. Both sources of death were in a race to finish us.
“Down, dammit, down, hug the deck!” I shouted.
“Yeah, yeah!” Kwon grunted.
I was the ultimate backseat driver. My gloves clutched Kwon’s shoulders. Hunks of Kwon’s suit and the thick meat beneath were crushed by my hands, but he didn’t complain. Kwon flipped us over and applied more thrust. A second later, we were going downward. We were in an inverted dive. We skimmed over the cruiser’s hull. The rough metal surface was five feet from my visor, three feet, two feet-inches.
Flash. The world vanished. There was no way the visor could catch up, I should have dialed down the transparency, but I hadn’t. Blinded, I felt myself go into a spin as the shockwave hit us. I knew right then what it was like to be a buzzing fly swatted out of the air by vengeful man’s palm.
I lost my grip on Kwon. I wasn’t sure what had hit us, and I could barely think coherently. A fist closed on my suit after a while, grabbing me and yanking me to a halt. I wasn’t sure who it was, but I reached up and wrapped my own two hands around that fist. Then I knew. That fist was big. It had to be Kwon.
17
“Can you hear me, Colonel?” Kwon asked.
I wasn’t sure, but I didn’t think it was the first time he’d asked that question. “Yeah,” I said. “I’m all right.”
Kwon chuckled. “If you lie too much, you go to hell. Your mamma taught you that, right sir?”
“Yeah she did,” I said. “The old lady was right. I think I’m headed that way.”
“Can you see me?”
“No. Where are you?”
“About two inches from your face.”
I reached up, and felt his visor. He was pressing it against mine so we could talk in the vacuum. “Oh, yeah. It’s dark.”
Kwon fiddled with something on my helmet. “Your visor is transparent. There is plenty light. I think you forgot to blackout your visor.”
I thought about it. I seemed to recall something then. “Blinded,” I said. “The nanites will fix it. What hit us? Was that the cannon?”
“No,” Kwon said. “That little pop was the reactor blowing. The turret is gone.”
“What did you set the timer to?”
I could sense Kwon shrugging, even though I couldn’t see him. “I don’t know. I didn’t set it to anything. I just turned it on.”
Great, I thought. What was the default timer setting? Forty-five seconds, if my memory served. Kwon was many things, but he wasn’t a genius. I groaned aloud. “Remind me to bust you down to sergeant again after this campaign,” I said.
“Fine with me, Colonel,” he said.
I snorted, knowing it probably was fine with him. Kwon was not an ambitious man. His only true drive was the destruction of the machines. He didn’t care about much else. No wonder we got along so well.
“What’s the status of the invasion?” I asked, suddenly alarmed. “What’s going on?”
“No word from the invasion ship. They blew a hole in the hull though, and our last assault ship flew over here and started drilling.”
“Major Welter’s ship?” I asked, trying to get my mind working again at full speed. “Good. Take me over there fast. My eyes are itching, the nanites are on overdrive. I should get some sight back soon.”
Kwon took my hand in his big paw. When I told him to take me fast, he didn’t argue, he just did it. My feet bumped and skipped over the cruiser’s hull. I stumbled behind him like a toddler being dragged through a grocery store by a pissed-off mom. I sensed heat and saw flashes of light ahead.
“Is that the laser drill?” I asked.
“Yeah. You can see something now, huh?”
“They’ll know we are coming through. Get everyone down and ready to fire when we breach the hull.”
Kwon shouted orders. Marines I couldn’t see ringed the spot and readied their rifles.
“Major Welter?” I shouted over the local com-link.
