(No "action" in this one, though the two characters know what's coming...)
Var's breathing got weird again. He wasn't sweating any more. We were beyond that.
"Hey, you," I murmured.
"One sec," he said. He keyed a few more levels of encryption down...
I put my hand on his shoulder. "Up. Now, Take a break."
He scowled. "Ack." When he reluctantly got his ass out of there, I slid behind the bit-wall.
Faint reflection of my face in the plastic, the profound appeal of a worried ghost. Shoving those thoughts aside, I verified the cryp and toggled through the aspects.
No wonder Var was that close to hyperventilating.
It was too much to counter, on too many fronts. If there had been four of us in there... No, even then it would only delay the inevitable.
I sighed.
"Uh-huh," Var said. No dummy.
There was only one thing we could do. It was the absolute last resort, and I would rather have surrendered, almost... if that wasn't even more frightening.
The rest of the crew was compromised.
They were... laughing. Like they were psychotic.
Which they might be. Only Var and I were left, barricaded in the go-deck. The barricades were crumbling. Digital hacksaws.
Whatever we picked up on AC211... they were driving our brodudes crazy. Making 'em laugh.
Var and I had stunned the things with slow-neutron bursts. So we knew what to do, to hold 'em back. We just didn't have the emitters anymore. Offline. Nothing else seemed to work on 'em. We had to get off the deck to fix the emitters, and the tormentors were at all the exits...
The sterilizer was offline, and the radios. We'd been trying to think of something clever for about eighteen t-hours.
They had the junctions sealed off. Any way we ran, we'd hit a wall. The door-codes were getting cracked more and more often...
No happy ending.
I looked at Var. He knew.
"Hell of a rookie run, huh?"
He relaxed a little, mostly in the eyes. That smartass eyes-half-open expression. "You mean this is unusual?"
"Yeah. So - is it ready to go?"
"Is what ready?" I just cocked my head to the side a little, and kept staring at him. "Oh. Yeah. Discrete systems..."
"Ack." The bit-wall flashed pink, then red. I generated thirty more passcodes and lined 'em up. Back to white, on all aspects. It was completely misleading.
"How long?"
I took a couple breaths through my nose before trying to answer calmly. And I still ended up shaking my head as I spoke. "Fifteen minutes, if we're lucky. They'll cut their way in by then."
"Whooo," he groaned.
I was so tired. The last two days had been impossibly long...
Var and I knew how to fight the... beings that were playing with the other 'rats, and it was never going to be known if we didn't catch a break. The thought of them, having the ship to themselves, nav still working, propulsion...
Activating the sterilizer had been the single hardest thing I'd ever done - only to find out they already had it offline. No quick end for any of us.
A ship full of... something, ready to be pointed at a transferport, or a planet.
We had to get the word out. Get far enough away, slam the warning on all bands, throw as many pigeons into the corridor as we could. Recaytrix was infected.
"Dammit," I said. The passcodes were falling. They'd broken the cryp again.
"Move over," he said, nudging me off the seat. His hands flew.
"512-bit?" I frowned.
"Yeah," Var grinned at me, "but there's now... fifty million of 'em."
They could grind through short cryp like it was airless. But the sheer quantity - even assuming they were breaking codes more and more quickly... Say, 10,000 per second -
"They'll outlast the doors," I said approvingly. "Way to be."
He shrugged, pulling hard on a water pouch, which he passed to me. "Fall back on the simple shit."
"Quantity, not quality."
He nodded. "Just like they taught us." His hand went to a sleeve-pocket and stopped. A weird smirk came over his face, and he pulled out... two cigars.
"So it was you," I said, shaking my head. Somebody on my unit had been sneaking smokes in the no-rad tubes ever since the run began. That seemed like fifty years ago...
"Uh-huh. You knew?" He stuck one between his teeth and held the other out to me.
I chuckled, and took it. "Oh, no. I pegged Evanez."
That made him blink. "Really?"
"Really."
He shook his head and made a despairing noise, another-opportunity-lost, and sparked up.
Right after I did, a loud boom shook the deck. He went to the pod, and I checked the bit-wall. No red warnings.
"It's okay," he said, eating smoke.
"So are the aspects," I said thoughtfully. "Suspicious." Almost a million door-codes were cracked already...
"Hinked up good."
"Hinked. Yeah. Well and truly hinked. Show those stubborn tuberats that everything's okay, boys, trust your bit-wall to show you the good news, it ain't gonna lie..."
"Yeah, well," he said, shrugging.
We both looked at the pod.
"I can't believe we're gonna do this," I said.
"Me either."
"Anything else left to grab?"
"Got it all, boss. No room left."
"Huh."
A few more bangs and taps were heard from above our heads. We'd cut the in-ship audio because it was way too creepy. Everywhere, the other guys were laughing. And I mean... they were howling. Full-thrust. I'd never heard a brodude yell laughter before. We knew Jalecks was in the feeder, because of that high-pitched voice of his, whooping. The Cap moved around, but we had his delirious roar memorized...
Twenty-eight of 'em, all manic. Deranged, somehow. We had no vid, so we couldn't see 'em.
If we didn't get the pod off in time, it looked like that number would go up to thirty. Or much higher, if we didn't get a warning to the nearest transferport somehow. At least the pod had a good megarray...
"Let's go," Var said, like a man with places to be.
I was seeing the end of my career, no matter what. No future. And I was, what, five years older than him?
"Yeah," I sighed.
He opened the pod door. I stole a last look at the bit-wall - red symbols bleeding across every aspect now, eighteen million door-codes blown...
"Shouldn't have looked," I said, turning around. "Hey!"
He stopped moving, in the middle of the door. Turned his head, with that smartass expression of his -
"Cigar." Still between his teeth. I held mine, but I wasn't the one halfway inside the pod.
"Respectfully... boss..."
"Yeah?"
He faced me, and folded his arms. "This could be my last smoke. Right?"
I opened my mouth. He was breaking at least three regs. But... we were just barely getting out with our skins intact, and it had taken a night of brilliant work that I never would have expected from him. Or from me. There was no explosion risk. It was a reg I'd broken myself, in transferport, with a easygoing tuberattess. Real exhausting night, that was. A fun memory. In this very pod.
Scowling, I waved him in. Var whooped softly. I gave up and held onto my own cigar.
As the latches closed, I rechecked the seal and Var woke up the systems. The soft glow from the pod's bit-walls fought with the smoke...
I saw the pigeons were ready to throw, all forty of 'em, but until we got away from the ship they'd only be drawn back in. Local gravity. The megarray was a better bet. Get the word out -
"All set. Let's rig up," Var said. As we did, I watched him. His eyes were bright. Adrenaline burn. He tugged on his crashrig to test it, and looked over to see if I was set. And he leered...
I had to laugh. It was all too preposterous.
"Yeah!" he shouted, nodding as much as the head-straps would allow. I whistled back. "Give the order, sir."
I scanned the bit-wall one more time. "It's a go!"
His thumb pounded the trigger. Loud slams, and the sheer rush of blood as the rigs caught us...
The ship, getting smaller. Yay, I thought tiredly, out of the frying pan.
"All aspects look good," he yelled, "Real good."
"Ack. Don't get the megarray out yet."
Var nodded, puffing hard on his cigar.
I stared at Recaytrix. Something bothered me. Then I looked over at Var - and he was studying a propulsion aspect like there was gonna be a test on it. So I stared out the view-port.
The ship wasn't getting smaller anymore.
I had an terrible idea.
"Aw, no," Var moaned.
"Botch the attitude -"
"No good..." He punched buttons. "Oh - shit. Nothing!"
"Is it hinked?"
"No." His fist slammed against the side of the bit-wall. "Dammit!"
"Magweb?"
"Ack that. How the hell did they g-"
"Utility hatch. They probably had it ready and waiting." I grabbed my input console and cut the engines... dumped the pitch and fired 'em up again, full-reaction. We slammed hard to ninety, and then straight down. But we didn't slip the beam. Var looked from the viewport to the bit-wall and back again.
We were still being reeled back in.
"Throw the pigeons," I said hollowly.
"We're not far enough away," he growled.
"Do it anyway."
He looked disgusted, thought it over... and nodded. His fingers moved over his console, and we heard a dull click. "Pigeons away."
I watched three of them fly directly into the ship's hull.
Megarray signals wouldn't make it out, either. Not a chance. The mass of the ship would suck all that beamed energy right back in.
We were heading right back into the bay on the go-deck. Short haul. We loosened our crashrigs, slowly, and looked at each other.
I wanted so badly to find something useful to say. Uplifting. The best I could do was, "You've done amazing stuff on this run, Var."
"I really liked working with you... boss."
"Recip. And this, I gotta say, is a damn good cigar."
He nodded, and eventually grinned. We got a few more puffs in.
"Impact. In five," Var said calmly, as if it was a part of his daily vocabulary.
"Good 'rat," I answered. He was composed. We both were. As ready as we could be. If there was still a way we could fight - maybe turn the tables and get the magweb down, scramble back into the pod - I knew he was as ready as I was.
We pounded against the docking bay, lunging forward in our rigs. But we recovered right away - all that training - and peeled 'em off. I headed for a toolbox and grabbed the biggest wrenches we had, and handed one to Var. All of the real weapons were on the ship. The pod didn't even have a sterilizer, and I had mixed feelings about that...
I had a last pull or two, and stepped on my cigar to snuff it. Var kept his between his teeth. In the low light it made him look like a Defense Detail poster or something. Ready for action...
The pod door started to uncycle.
20oct2001