Тим Пауэрс - Free Stories 2018

Dee rolled to the side grabbing the tendril with her left hand. Before she could raise her rifle. the little alien beetle jumped from its perch on her shoulder in a blur and penetrated the Chiata infantryman’s faceplate. The Chiata immediately began to flail at its helmet and writhe on the floor. It quickly went limp. In a blur, the beetle was back on Dee’s shoulder.

“Damn good boy, Skippy!”

That’s six, she thought.

Technically you have five. Skippy got the last one, Bree corrected.

Okay then, if that’s how you’re gonna play it. Dee rolled to her feet in full sprint toward the ladderwell, bringing the hypervelocity automatic rifle up and firing the hypersonic rounds in the direction of what she could only assume were porcupines put in place to guard the entrance that led up to the bridge of the ship.

“Team B, keep pressing and cover my backside. I’m pushing up to the bridge deck!” She bounced her jumpboots against the deck and covered the thirty meters across the chasm to the entrance. The last two ships they had taken had a freight elevator there. Dee wondered if this was an older model, or if the aliens just hadn’t gotten around to putting in the elevator yet. At any rate, there were stairs instead of an elevator.

“Apple1, you’re out of your mecha. You should wait for us!” Monopoly suggested.

“No time, Monopoly! The longer we wait to take the bridge the more pilots outside in the ball are getting hammered!” Dee looked at the rest of Team B in her mindview and realized that she was a good hundred meters laterally from them and more than a deck up. She’d have to get on them about dragging their asses later if they survived. “Move your asses and get up here!”

Dee! What are you doing? her father’s mindvoice rang in her head.

I’m taking this fucking ship, sir! she replied. Now’s not a good time for a father daughter chat.

You’re spread out too thin from your team. You should wait.

I owe Davy and Nancy five more dead Chiata.

You can get them another day. You are overrun and out of your mecha—now snap back to the ship!

With all due respect, sir, I don’t second guess you in the middle of a big battleship fight! And I’m kinda busy right now.

I could order you, Dee.

Then either do it or get out of my head. I’m in the thick of the shit right now!

Dee, I uh, damnit—then, that’s an order .

What’s that, Daddy? General? Did you say something? Something must have happened to the connection, ’cause I can’t hear you. Bree get him back…

You know short of a damping field, jamming the QM connection is impossible.

Daddy, are you there…?

For shit’s sake, Dee! General Moore said, sounding even more frustrated with her.

Dee dropped, rolled, and bounced up with her back slammed against a bulkhead as alien plasma fire pitted the metal above her throwing green and white hot sparks into her visor. She flinched slightly, but kept her calm. The two alien porcupines in the entrance had her pinned down and she couldn’t press further without a better plan.

They’ve got me pinned down, Bree. Suggestions?

Wait for backup.

Any other suggestions?

What would DeathRay or your father do? Bree asked rhetorically.

DeathRay would go in there and kill those motherfuckers.

And your father?

He’d break a bunch a shit, blow stuff up, and kill those motherfuckers.

Deanna Moore, Apple1-that-didn’t-fall-far-from-the-tree, what are you going to do?

Right!

“Okay Skippy, I could use a diversion.” She patted the little beetle bot on the back with her armored hand. Instantly the alien bug shot from her shoulder like a missile, but it moved so swiftly it was almost imperceptible. “Damn!”

The beetle bot slammed into the leg of the porcupine on the left, then came out the back side and crawled up the mecha toward the cockpit. The Chiata within it must have panicked. Tendrils darted out curved back inward and started jabbing at itself. The second porcupine turned as if it was expressing the Chiata version of “what the fuck?”

“Good boy!” She bounded from her cover position on full auto with her rifle. The armor-piercing railgun rounds vaporized into the alien’s shields causing them to flicker. She continued the charge until the shields fritzed out and the rounds started punching into the mecha’s armor plating.

The alien fired a tendril outward at Dee but she was expecting it. She slipped slightly sideways and grabbed the tendril in her right hand, then yanked with all her suit’s might. The mecha was far too heavy for an armored suit to pull down, but the pull sling-shotted Dee forward into the torso of the Chiata pilot. As she made contact, she extended the blade from her left hand—through the already weakened armor and into the alien creature inside. More of the green glowing blood sprayed onto her suit as the mecha slumped over backwards with her momentum. She rolled forward and back around firing her rifle into the already wrything alien next to it to finish it off. Skippy blurred back onto its perch on her armored shoulder.

“Great job, buddy,” she said affectionately to the alien robot.

I’m counting that one! That’s seven, Davy.

Bree didn’t respond.

Three bounces with her jumpboots and she was at the upper deck level just outside the topside dome that was the bridge of the alien ship. They had to know she was coming. But if past experience held true there shouldn’t be any mecha in the bridge. Dee had taken on multiple Chiata infantry by herself before and won. Well, kind of. She had killed all the aliens but had ended up paralyzed for a significant part of the day.

Dee pulled up the Red Force tracker screen in her mindview and could see three red dots on the other side of the bulkhead and through the hatch into the large transparent dome that was the Chiata megaship’s bridge.

“Just three of them. Not so bad.” She looked at the hatch controls and wasn’t exactly sure what her next play was going to be.

Bree, can you hack the door, or do I blow it? she thought.

I’m having no luck handshaking with it, Dee. I think this is an old school kind of entry.

So much for surprise, huh?

Yes.

“Skippy, you got any ideas?” she said jokingly and then was shocked when the beetle jumped from her shoulder and attached itself to the control panel for the doorway. “What the… ?”

The alien beetle bot’s multiple legs seemed to phase in and out of reality and passed through the control panel cover and into the innards of the circuitry underneath. A couple of seconds passed, and then suddenly Dee felt as if she had been told to get ready. A vision of the door sliding open popped into her mind.

“Got it, Skippy. Go!” She nodded as she opened the grenade launcher tubes on her back. The tubes rose over each shoulder and she brought her blade and rifle up to ready. The door slid open.

Thwoomp, thwoomp, thwoomp. The grenade tubes sounded as she let three of them go into the room. She ducked back behind the hatch and let them detonate. Immediately following the three explosions Dee dropped low and dove into the room in a roll. Green bolts of alien plasma fire zipped through the air just above her head—where her torso would have been had she been standing in the doorway.

The inside of the dome room was like being inside a small basketball arena. It was at least twenty meters across and again that high to the ceiling. There were alien consoles and screens spread about the room with multiple stations, but there were only three Chiata manning them. Outside Dee could see Colonel Delilah “Jawbone” Strong’s mecha squadron, the Maniacs, mixing it up with the alien porcupines in one hell of a furball.