We climb in. Ishida takes the pod closest to mine. Jacobi teams up beside Ulyanova. The efreitor seems happy to be working alone.
Bueller stands by the root hub.
I’ve fitted my nearly naked body into the bucket seat and watch the laces strap me in. A half helmet swings up from the rear of the pod and cradles the back of my skull. Something buzzes along my spine. Guidance? Nerve induction? I look over at Ishida, but can’t see much—the brightness of the pod’s surface obscures her details.
The pods extend and we are now surrounded by stars, with Lady of Yue below. Box is trailing behind the arc light, but still closing the distance.
“We caught them by surprise when we left NEO. Box has been in a hurry ever since,” Bueller says through comm. “She’s larger and faster, but rising upsun, chasing us, she still hasn’t had time to shed all her sins.”
How does Bueller know that?
And what the hell does it mean?
“We still have the advantage,” Bueller says, but her voice drops a note.
“Box already found you once and clobbered you,” Jacobi says. She sounds right next to me.
“We need five minutes!” Bueller says. “Those sparkles running to the corners of the cube are drive tension distributors. Cut them with your bolts or disruptors and you’ll slow her down, and that’ll give us just what we need… five minutes, maybe, but not a second more.”
I fit my hands into the trigger gloves. I’m in charge of a bolt weapon. I know how they work, in smaller form, on a planet’s surface—but this seems natural enough. My fingers feel the guidance and trigger post and I test it, also natural enough. Another buzz along my spine, this time reaching out to my fingers. The pod swings on its pedestal, and I see, along the gleaming inner surface, a set of reticules and crosshairs move into place. They converge on a corner of Box, then outline several of the tension sparkles, whatever the hell those are.
What if I still have no fucking idea what I’m doing?
Ishida speaks in my left ear. “Three of us will carve out the far corner, with its interior exposed—see those lines?”
“I see the far corner.”
“You will trim the near corner.”
“Harder to see those lines,” I tell her. “Have you done this before?”
“Never in space,” Ishida says. “Follow instinct. Hit what you can, but make it count.”
“If the pyramids ride any higher, if they extend any farther, you can’t help but see the tension lines,” Bueller says over comm.
“Yeah,” I say, starting to feel really ill. Something is dragging us along through the stars like a cat drags a rat. I assume it’s our own ship. We still haven’t finished getting straight with Jesus, right? Worse, we’re newbies manning weapons that are totally vulnerable to being blown wide open, like glass bottles in a shooting gallery.
Then Ishida and Jacobi loose their bolts. I follow those pulsing white dots, watch them carve the far pyramid’s tension lines, watch that sharp black corner of the cube shiver and twist on its extended post….
And then I focus on the lines just visible below my own assigned pyramid, linking it with the main mass of Box.
The reticules align.
Box sends out its own bolts, a firefly mass curving around from the far side, presumably the business end, and traveling twice as fast out to our ship, where they nick another smoking groove in a skirt, then climb up to sizzle one of the pods—
The lone efreitor is surrounded by a ball of plasma. His pod ruptures and bits of him fly out into the darkness, streaming behind like a tiny comet’s tail. We keep firing, Bueller keeps shouting in our ears. We keep cutting spiderweb tension lines.
Then all at once, Lady of Yue really cuts loose, and in our present state, the stars take a horrible spin—and we are no longer effective as gunners or as human beings. I spatter the inside of the pod with the contents of my mostly empty stomach—mixed with blood. My eyes feel as if they’re going to fall out on my cheeks.
But Ishida and Jacobi exchange calm comments, battle discussion—in Japanese. Ulyanova chimes in in Russian. Somehow the tone alone helps me keep it together—that, and another buzz along my spine. We’ve had a definite effect. The corner pyramids are retracting and Box seems to be wobbling. Maybe even getting smaller.
I think Box is falling back—miracle.
The pods retract. Bueller opens them and extracts us one by one, ignoring the smoking ruin of the efreitor’s pod—gathering us up in her arms, wiping us down with her sleeves, then grabbing our damp collars and tugging and shoving us inboard using feet, hands, legs, arms, herding us. Her own face is streaked with tears and spattered with vomit. Maybe ours, maybe hers.
“Did it work?” Jacobi asks, slurring her words.
“Don’t ask,” Bueller says. “Maybe.” She huffs and tugs. Ishida gives me a thumbs-up. I have no idea what the hell just happened, or what we did—whether it was real or just a nightmare. But through the structure, looking out to where Mars had once been, and Box had hovered, I see nothing—
Just a gray smear of stars.
“Move it!” Bueller shouts. “We got four minutes to get you packed away.”
“We’re fucking puppets,” Jacobi says. “We don’t understand any of this!”
Borden helps Bueller marshal us toward the centerline. Jacobi is still fomenting. “The Gurus are so goddamned frightened they’re sending us out here and just pulling strings. How the fuck did that ever happen? Does anybody know what’s going on?”
“Wait until you see Titan,” Bueller says grimly.
Something comes back to me, something Kumar said. That’s what the Gurus like. They like it interesting.
Makes me want to puke all over again.
THE BIG VAMOOSE
More rails slide from above. Bueller is a dozen meters ahead. She tells us to grab and go. The rails take us aft through the soda straws and blue spheres—Bueller’s so-called soccer balls. They still look like grapes to me. Borden is next handle over. Jacobi and Ishida are to my left. All gawk in wonder or worry. As we’re transported aft, we pass the first few triplets of blue spheres. They’re dark, with stripes faintly barber-poling across their surfaces—out of order?
Finally we arrive at spheres that glisten pure blue, no stripes. Bueller swims backward, assessing our nearly naked forms with a practiced eye. She tells us to pay attention and assigns each a number. “Name and rank don’t mean shit. Size, mass, composition are important. We’re balancing our balls.” Not even a grin.
Numbers light up on the corresponding spheres, and our rods and handles pull us up next to our assignments, so awesomely efficient it threatens to bring tears to my eyes. I wonder if this is how the secretary’s heroic son got out to Titan a few years ago. Conveyed in brilliant style, using such sophisticated might and know-how—only to get himself killed. Maybe eaten by one of those insects in the Spook’s tail, or something weirder down on Titan.
Crew Chief quickly opens a plastic box and removes stacks of gray circles, like doilies or lace yarmulkes, each sealed in gel in an envelope of transparent plastic. “Here’s the good stuff,” Bueller says. “I guarantee pleasant dreams.”
The envelopes gleam and squish as she passes them out, one apiece.