So It Begins (25 page)

  Like iron filings suddenly exposed to a magnet, Grim’s thoughts swiftly collected around the term “biological,” just as the short-range radar let loose a full squawk, and showed the same junk-blip still approaching—but on a slightly altered vector. Grim added the terms and concepts together: Biological. Change of vector. No reliable electric systems.

  God damn, it was a live attack; in the midst of this solar typhoon, there were living, breathing saboteurs inbound—

  Grim reached out and tapped the dynamic button that would open the link back to base. Which produced no results. He tapped it again, then harder, then hammered at it. Nothing. He turned to the hardwired auxiliary console to his immediate right, flipped the toggle for the command line: a sudden wall of cat-scratch static prompted him to shut off the volume.

  So: thanks to the weather, communications were out. Which meant he had no way to call for help, or send a warning, and, reciprocally, base would no longer be receiving automated status updates from the rad shacks and therefore would not check to discover why he had failed to retract his sensor/comm mast. He was alone—and only he had the knowledge, and therefore the opportunity, to act.

  Grim leaned back slowly, checked the range: given the one meter/second closure rate, he had about ten minutes to consider the problem, decide on a course of action, and carry it out-—whatever it happened to be.

  Grim turned to his tried-and-true first maxim of planning: know thy enemy—and had to admit that he knew next to nothing about the approaching attackers. So, using what little data he had, could he induce or deduce any tactical intel from it?

  First, given the detection range of Eureka’s main arrays, and the attackers’ rate of approach, they had not been inside any hull—shielded or not—for at least a week. That meant that the attackers had floated in with the junk, using it as a moving smoke screen. And that, in turn, meant that this was a suicide mission: given the wholebody rem dosage the attackers had accrued during that extended approach, this solar storm guaranteed that their death from radiation sickness would be as certain as it would be swift.

  As peculiar as that conclusion seemed, Grim discovered that it was consistent with the pattern of careful and meticulous planning evinced by his opponents. The timing of the attack indicated that it was designed to take advantage of the rising solar activity cycle. Indeed, it had probably been held in readiness for weeks, even months, until solar meteorology indicated the first, turbulent signs of an imminent coronal mass ejection. In the meantime, Eureka’s security forces had been lulled into a slow and inevitable complacency regarding the camouflaging trash flow, ultimately seeing it as just another part of the environment. And in retrospect, Priestley’s absence, and now Mendez’s, had probably been achieved by hacking, bribery, or both.

  Given that level of commitment and preparation, it was probable that the attackers’ equipment was purpose-built for this mission, meaning that from weapons to vacc suits, it was almost entirely non-metallic. However, complete thermal equalization and diffusion was more difficult to achieve in space, and such systems would be further impaired if they had to avoid using any metal components.

  Which meant that the attackers’ thermals that might still be visible: Grim quickly snapped over to the slightly more robust thermal sensors. And there, mixed in with the slowly oncoming stream of trash, was a diffuse, almost invisible thermal bloom above the background, pointing inward like a finger.

  Pointing straight at Rad Shack Four. Grim rechecked, confirmed the vector of approach: although their target was unquestionably the Big Secret being built on Eureka, they were heading straight at him. Why?

  The answer followed the question without delay: because the saboteurs surely knew about the rad shacks, and therefore knew that they needed to eliminate whichever one sat astride or closest to their point of penetration as they crossed through Eureka’s spherical security perimeter. Which meant that Rad Shack Four wasn’t a haven anymore: it was a coffin. Oh, it still protected Grim from the rads, but that wasn’t the biggest danger, now: thinking like the attackers, he somberly concluded that he’d opt to take out the rad shack with something quick and decisive. A high-explosive, armor-piercing missile would be the weapon of choice: it would easily penetrate the shack’s shielding and would bust it open like a pickaxe smashing through the shell of an unsuspecting mollusk.

  Grim returned from his thoughts, facing down into the sensor screen over which he was perched. He placed both of his hands on its wildly-flickering surface: despite the pronounced veins and sturdy wrists, his lightly pebbled and very dark brown skin looked suddenly and incongruously fragile and vulnerable. And Grim felt the accuracy of that perception rise up with the thought: “I’ve got no choice: I’ve got to go out there, too.”

  Which seemed like suicide, on the one hand, because in this storm, EVA ops was the radiological equivalent of going outdoors during a hailstorm of razor blades. But what could he achieve by staying inside? Unable to fight back from within the EMP-crippled rad shack, he could only wait to die.

  Grim rose carefully from the seat, grabbed his helmet, reached for his Armalite—and closed his hand on empty air. Oh. Right. Slowly, he turned to look at the Cochrane. Okay, then: you and me, bitch. And—for your sake—you’d better perform to spec, or you’re going to get very lost in deep space.

  He reached down, picked up the weapon and moved toward the airlock, slaving the rad shack’s shaky sensor feed into his HUD relays as he went.

  Exiting the airlock, Grim controlled the first, transient sense of nausea that always surged up when he went EVA: no up, no down, and the black forever all around him. The stars only made the distance and solitude more absolute. Why so many people—from the earliest astronauts to the current day—were thrilled by “space-walks” was beyond him.

  The distant sun—a small, painfully incandescent nickel—peeked into his helmet, rising up over the lower rim of the faceplate as he manually dogged the hatch and resteadied himself. He had a full MMU on his back, but the less activity and motion he engaged in, the better. Right now, surprise was his only sure advantage, so high-energy maneuvers of any kind were out of the question.

  Using the external handholds, he towed himself back down into the shadow, and then around behind the rad shack, placing its mass between himself and the approach vector of the saboteurs. Once there, he checked the rad shack’s sensor feed in his helmet: not good. Whether it was the sensors failing or the EMP interference, the data skipped sideways, winked out, came back, fizzled, cohered, leaned, then straightened and remained momentarily, quaveringly, readable—before it commenced its weird free-form dance all over again. But in that brief moment of clarity, Grim had seen the oncoming blip—except that it was larger now, shaped like a lumpy, mostly collapsed quatrefoil. There were
four
of them? Maybe it was just another sensor glitch—

  But it probably wasn’t, because it made perfect sense. It was just the right number: one heavy weapons expert, a backup expert who was probably carrying the missiles they planned to use on the Big Secret, and then two heavies. The heavies’ specialty would be in EVA weaponplay—which, given the way that conventional firearm recoil sent you tumbling ass-over-ankles in zero-gee, was not a common or easily acquired skill. The heavies would provide cover for the other two, distract and/or neutralize responding defense forces, maintain situational awareness. The guys with the missiles would be monomaniacally focused on their equipment and their target.

  In another minute they would reach the 2000-meter mark, which is where Grim estimated they might consider eliminating the rad shack. Meaning it was time to get a little distance from it. Grim placed both feet against the hull of the rad shack. He reached down to the handhold on either side of him, achieving a position akin to being frozen in the “squat” phase of a squat thrust. Then he simultaneously released the hand holds and pushed as hard as he could with his legs.

  As he shot quickly away from the rad shack, he checked the HUD to see if there was any reaction from the blips; no new course changes were evident—and then the whole display went black. Great. Either the signal was lost or the system was fried; either way, it was all on him, now.

  Which meant it was time to confront the Cochrane and its insanely diverse ammo bag. Clips of penetrators, expanders, non-lethals—those were pretty self-explanatory. Pulling up the top flap on the segmented grenade pouch, Grim laid a finger on an HE round, considered its use as a flare, rejected the tactic: Eureka’s own sensors would be pulled in, but the explosion would surely alert the attackers to his presence. Instead, Grim selected two range-detonated flechette rounds, loaded them, and reasoned he should give the targeting system a quick check before trusting his life to it. He turned it on, and raised the integrated sighting scope to his right eye—

  And held his breath. Whatever computer was silently working in the recesses of the Cochrane was apparently laboring overtime: multiple moving objects were quickly located optically, ranged and vector assessed by a laser ping, and a guidon indicated how to reposition the gun to acquire the target. Damned impressive—but still just a toy, Grim reminded himself.

  He revised that opinion when the Cochrane flashed a new guidon into existence in what seemed like open space and indicated a cluster of four objects—which Grim still couldn’t see—closing at .97 meters per second at 2100 meters range. Sweet Jesus: unprompted, the Cochrane had found the attack force.
Well, well,
Grim thought, smiling at the gun,
you’ve earned your continued existence—bitch.

  The targeting display flickered, then reasserted: the electromagnetic soup was already getting to the Cochrane’s electronics. Grim switched off the power, and brought the scope back up to his eye.

  Even through the faceplate, the unassisted sight-picture in the unusually wide eyepiece was still viable—and at maximum magnification, the plain old mechanical scope was already picking out dark blotches moving across and occluding the background starfield just where the targeting system had detected the intruders. Grim grunted in satisfaction: gotcha. He settled in to watch them, calculating that they would make their move within the minute, if his conjectures were correct. And so far, they had been—except for one unsolved tactical variable: where was the ship from which the attackers had deployed, and how had it stayed both out of sight and out of the trash stream?

  Grim glanced sideways at the scattered, tumbling bits of irregular blackness and greyness that were the trash stream—and suddenly he knew the answer: the attackers’ “ship” was floating past him right now. Their ship was now part of the junk. Sure: each of them had been sealed and launched in a self-disassembling pod. It had had a hull of composites and plastics, rudimentary thrust, life support, comestibles, and was set on a ballistic course, so it required no guidance. When the attackers neared the range at which Eureka’s arrays might pick them out, they—figuratively speaking—pulled their ripcords and let the pods fall, or rather, float, to pieces around them. That way, they could probably have approached to within about 300 kilometers before getting into their vacc suits and preparing for—

  The attack began with a sudden burst of vapor, centered on a bright flash which bloomed and then arced out from the midst of the attackers: a rocket, speeding toward the rad shack. Grim flinched away as a blinding flash coronaed up from the far side of the boxy module, knocking it into a slow tumble as papers and pulped electronic parts vomited out of the huge, jagged rupture in its side.

  Time to return the favor. Grim reactivated the targeting system, leaned into the Cochrane’s sights again, ready to fire—but was surprised to see a question mark glowing on the right margin of the display overlay, underscored with the legend “0G opt?” Grim wanted to spit: goddamn, was this weapon busted already? Goddamned tinkertoy piece of sh—

  Oh, no, wait: Mendez had told him about this. The weapon sensed strong changes in ballistic conditions—such as gravity—and would ask if you wanted an optimum solution. So: “0G opt?” was obviously offering him an optimal firing solution for zero gee. Well, that seemed like a good idea: he edged his thumb up to the “accept” button behind the handgrip, pressed it. The query blinked away.

  Grim focused on the four attackers again: they were still clustered, and at 1400 meters range. He reasoned he might get two of them with the flechette grenade. But how to access the launcher?

  The needed information arose as chapter and verse from Mendez’s endless worship of the Cochrane: “You’ve got three settings, Sarge: main weapon, launcher, or integrated. Just adjust this dial down here—”