They held their weapons out in front of them, waiting on the capacitor cycle time, and in thermal, it looked like their ungloved hands were burning. They fired again, and this time, the Chief inhaled sharply on comms as the rays ripped by. One of the crewmen above them danced and jerked from a spread of Parker's darts. In almost the same moment, Tig put one of the red boxes with the Xs in them over each of the other two targets and mimed squeezing the triggers. There was no recoil, only a tingling, a buzzing in the back of his hand from the rapidly pulsing capacitors and the hundred or more flechettes he fired in his one second, screaming burst of unchecked auto fire.

  He never saw the darts, only a vague, streaking glint of a line like a piece of perfectly straight spider's web connecting each of the barrels to the targets he'd hit. The two, remaining Boomslang crewmen momentarily jerked from the impact of the darts before they went limp.

  They drifted until they’d crossed the center aisle completely and bounced off one of the bombs. The Chief sailed past with Tig and Parker still under her arms. "Nice shooting, cherries," the Chief said through grit teeth. "Redsuits get it done." A moment later, her grip loosened, and Tig and Parker floated free.

  "Chief!" He could see the burn hole high in her chest, near her collarbone, leaking purple mud in a string of globules that trailed behind them as they flew. More spurted out with each heartbeat, like a fountain. It got weak before he could clamp his hand over it. The Chief coughed red all over the inside of her helmet as Tig and Parker spun to grab her.

  "Through the subclavian artery and into the lung," Parker said, as coldly as if she’d been talking about some wounded drone they’d been told to fix. Parker clamped her hand down on top of Tig's, trying to help hold the Chief’s blood inside her.

  At the end of the flight down the length of the 80-meter bay, Tig and Parker landed the Chief on the aft bulkhead and got her down to the deck near the fire control consoles. He brought a medkit as fast as he could, but by the time he got the can of sealant to her wound and filled it, her milky, artificial eyes stared open, unfocused. Chief Horcheese was already gone.

  Her face wasn’t contorted, but she looked like she was shouting. Tig closed her mouth.

  "No. She’s not dead," Parker said. "No." Parker’s fists hammered at the Chief’s chest trying to restart her heart until the blood coming off her suit with every blow misted up into little droplets and stippled Parker's helmet so thick with pinprick dots, he was surprised she could still see.

  They set the Chief flat on the deck and straightened out her limbs, but in a few seconds, the prosthetics all began to contract to factory default position like they always did when there was no input. In death, the Chief’s machine limbs posed her like a fetus.

  He wasn’t sure how many seconds passed then before he could take his eyes from Chief Horcheese. "We should call up to Commander Devlin," he said. "He’ll want to know we have control of the bombs and the ordnance bay."

  Parker made for one of the consoles behind him. "Make sure you’re on the deck," she said and turned the artificial gravity back on before he could tell her not to. All of the globules of the Chief’s blood hanging in the air now fell. Halfway down the center aisle, the three, unconscious Boomslang crewmen were still floating inverted, more than 7 meters over the belt-iron-steel deck. They fell, too, impacting with a rapid series of dull thuds and sharp, unnerving cracks.

  Not a lick of emotion showed on Parker's face. "Sorry, boys." She said it without humor or remorse. "That was all my fault."

  Chapter Eighteen

  The damage control teams abandoned attempts to put out the fires that had engulfed the bow, the forward hab and the secondary bays. The forward 20% of the ship burned mostly unchecked now, and Cozen hurled her at the Squidies like a burning lance. Araby and Pont Neuf steamed with her as they broke from the main Privateer force in the only desperate attack that might give them a chance of survival.

  "Be on the spot with those bay doors, Mr. Bergano. Surprise only works once, as a general rule..."

  "Yes, Mr. Cozen."

  While their combined squadrons of torpedo junks launched salvos, the three attack carriers dove into the Squidies’ line. Warspites found their mark and flashed with fission. As the alien ships burned, Hardway and her sister ships dove deeper into the enemy fleet. When all four sides of the primary bays finally looked out on the hull of an enemy ship, Cozen didn’t make any effort to contain his emotions. "Open the bays!" he shouted. "Fire! Fire! Fire! Give them a fucking broadside!"

  The darkness down inside the bays erupted with plasma and flame as all the warspite torpedoes placed there lit and fired their engines. Hundred-meter geysers of fire shot from each bay before 25 warspite torpedoes ripped out of each of them. Over 300 torpedoes launched from Hardway’s now melted bays. In four directions, they crossed the meager space between the carrier and the Squidy ships and detonated against the enemy hulls.

  The windows of the bridge turned opaque, but the flaring, strobing flashes from the tactical projections showed Dana that Araby and Pont Neuf had launched as well. After that stunt, the three attack carriers barely had three functional launch bays between them, but together, they'd unleashed almost 1200 torpedoes in that one, surprise salvo. Launched so close, the Squidies defensive guns didn’t have time to cut them from the black before the swarm of warspites found them.

  The hulls of the Squidy warships on all sides of them vaped away and their decks filled with firestorms. The vertical hulls of the Squidies’ warships fell backwards with the blasts like bodies in a crowd. They cracked and jetted flame before they cooked off on all bearings.

  "Brace for impact!" Dana saw the hull fragment from the ruined warship tumbling at them in the instant before it hit and there was nothing she could do. It struck the command tower and slammed the bridge's diamond-pane window so hard that fragments of it shot across the bridge like shrapnel. When she looked again, there was a gaping hole in the starboard forward quarter of the bridge two-meters wide. There was nothing between them and the vacuum.

  "That's why we wear exosuits," Cozen said as he tore off a strip of patching from his kit and applied it to a trio of small tears in his suit. "Only flesh wounds," he said.

  "Where's Bergano?"

  Cozen turned in the command chair to look behind him and paused before he spoke. "Mr. Bergano was hit by a piece of debris. He did not survive. His console is destroyed. I'm taking over from here."

  "We destroyed fifteen ships with that salvo," Biko said. "And disabled a handful more." Squidy warships broke up and cooked off all around the three carriers. "Pont Neuf and Araby can claim 16 and 13 apiece." One glance at the tactical projections over the bridge was all it took to see they’d just delivered a massive blow to the Squidy fleet. The Squidies still had their dreadnought, but the Privateers and the two, remaining UN battle-cruisers weren’t outnumbered anymore.

  Harry Cozen let them cheer on comms until the carriers had steamed clear of the debris field. That's when the remaining Squidies on the other side of their formation opened up with their particle streams like a legion of long-distance archers. "Evasive maneuvers if you please, Ms. Sellis."

  The salvo from the dreadnought hulled the carrier through the primary bays. They spilled molten metal into space like Hardway’s blood.

  They’d just halved the enemy fleet, but if the aliens’ dreadnought was still out there, they would lose this battle no matter what they did. Nothing had ever penetrated that armor. Even if it was the only ship the Squidies had left, that would be enough to turn every Privateer and UN ship to hot gas and scrap. After it killed them, it would breach space and head for Earth.

  The script that would put Hardway on a collision course with the alien dreadnought to ram her at maximum speed was already written. It was just three taps away on Dana's console.

  Alien warheads making for the carriers cooked off under defensive fire all around them. The ones that detonated too close slammed the twisted hull and shook the bridge.

  "Anytime, now, Mr. Devlin," Cozen said, "Anytime you’re ready."

  *****

  Burn looked for the Boomslang through the canopy of her fighter and was glad she couldn't see it. That ship will stay near enough to leverage the chaos and distraction we create, she thought, but not so close as to get entangled in it.

  The thirteen, remaining fighters maintained a tight formation, wordless as the Squidies’ moldy pea of a homeworld moon grew larger ahead of them in front of the ruddy gas giant. It was a lurid blemish hanging right over the nose of Burn’s fighter. That's where they evolved, she thought. And that's where they still live, under the surface in nests like some boneless cross between ants and sulfur-stinking squids.

  Four F-223s and nine F-151s from the Hardway Air Group were all that remained of the 96 that had broken through the lines to make sure Boomslang arrived at her target. Their orders said to assault the Command and Control station, but they’d never destroy it. It was just a distraction for Boomslang. Pooch and Jordo knew that. Burn knew that. The rest had no idea.

  Burn flew in next to Lancer 1-1. She couldn’t see his eyes, but she could tell by the angle of his helmet he was staring ahead at the aliens’ moon and the guns that would open up on them in very short order. Paladin and Dirty were still with him. Burn never saw when they lost Holdup and Gusher. She never saw what had happened when they lost most of the 96 they’d set out with.

  "Lancer 1-1," she said "I know this outing is officially your party, but…"

  "So don’t start pulling rank," he told her.

  "I just want to say something…" The silence on comms beckoned for her to fill it, but she couldn't get the words out. Burn had trained 10 of the 12 other pilots flying around her. Along with the dark responsibility she felt that gave her, there was also pride, shining pride. She was proud of them. Other units would have mutinied and demanded to be put up against the bulkhead and shot instead of climbing in those cockpits and going out again and again when they saw what it meant...50% casualties...70%... sometimes worse. But not these pilots.

  Paladin said. "Don’t you go saying any stupid shit like what I heard you talking about with Jordo."

  "And don't say you’re sorry you got us all into this," Pooch said. "Like it was some trick. I’m a goddamn volunteer."

  "And don’t," Dirty said. "Don’t you dare make a big speech like this is some special mission...some special day. Every time I climb into the cockpit, I tell myself I’m already dead. The only thing different about today is you’re going with us."

  "Burn," Jordo said. "What my pilots are trying to say to you is..."

  "Next stop is hell, Burn," Paladin said, "and every one of us is proud to have you flying there with us."

  *****

  Boomslang held only 20,000Ks off the fighters’ port side, but once the orbital guns around the homeworld moon opened up, even that seemed too close.

  The fighters jinked and rolled out of the way easily, dodging the massive, laggard beams at long range. Those guns were made to hull carriers and battleships. From the cockpit of Boomslang, it looked easy for the hyper-maneuverable fighters to avoid being hit, but as they closed fast on their path through the inner rings of the Squidies’ defense, smaller batteries opened up, crisscrossing the black.

  "Good god," Medoc said when he saw a lensed stream wave at them with a 2K-wide plane of hyper-accelerated nuclei that chased them like a ghostly wall. "They’re lensing the orbital guns into fan-shaped streams..trying to swat the fighters…"

  They were ungodly wide and the five-second burst made them nearly impossible to avoid, but they were faint compared to the dense streams the small batteries stabbed out with. One of the broad, swatting beams caught a pair of Bitzers. Their hulls lit up as they passed through it, sparking and spitting from all the heavy nuclei pitting the hull and kicking up ejecta. The kinetic energy knocked them like houseflies and once their course became a predictable tumble, even for a second, it was easy for the fast-moving, small batteries to pierce them from six sides at once till their reactors cooked off in merciful flashes. They lit the backsides of the remaining fighters, already 1000Ks deeper in on their mad drive through the defenses around the Squidies homeworld moon.

  Ram said, "Is anyone looking at us...pointing an active array, maybe?"

  Max in the copilot’s seat shook his head. "All eyes are on the last fighters."

  "Any enemy fighters we have to watch out for?"

  He shook his head. "They were all at the front...at the battle."

  While the Squidies guns wove the skies over their ugly, homeworld moon solid with hateful streams, the last ten fighters of the Hardway Air Group drew a line ahead of them through the enemy fire. They left fading plasma trails from their engines that spiraled around the rapier streams and teased the big guns with switchbacks.

  "There goes another," Medoc said. "And another." A double flash lit up the Squidy battlestation they ripped past when a Sky Jack and a Bitzer got hit. As Boomslang slipped through the Squidies' orbital batteries, the enemy gunners finally caught the last interceptors of the Hardway Air Group in a web of fire so tight not even a hummingbird could have gotten through.

  The last living Lancers, Hellcats, Weasels, and the 38th Special Delivery Squadron all sounded off one final time with their reactors. Each of them cooked off brilliant and bright under the enemy fire, lighting up the night side of the Squidies' tiny moon.

  Ram whispered his thanks so softly even Medoc didn't hear him.

  "We made it," Medoc said. "The Squidies haven't seen us and Boomslang is almost in position to drop the bombs. Sixty seconds."

  "Devlin to Meester, standby to drop one, repeat, a single gravity bomb. Standby."

  "Acknowledged, Mr. Devlin. One bomb." Tig Meester’s voice almost cracked with the stress when he said it. "We’re ready down here."

  "Too many died to get us here," Medoc said. "Those cherries of yours in the ordnance bay better not screw this up."

  *****

  It had been child’s play for Tig and Parker to separate out bomb number 1’s fire control trigger from the rest and put it on its own conceptual circuit. That way, it could be dropped singly, separate from its 87 brothers and sisters. Now, the two cherries sat at the aft launch consoles, strapped in while warnings blinked overhead in the air. The bombs up and down the bay all looked ready to fly somehow, he thought, like under that thick, dark hull they knew it was time.

  "Fifteen seconds," Commander Devlin said in their helmets. "Open the hatches."

  That was Tig’s job, and he reached forward to select hatch 01 only, but Parker’s hand shot out of nowhere and gripped his wrist. He looked at her over the barrels of the gun built into the back of her glove. "I’m sorry, Tig. Don’t make me shoot you."

  He didn’t understand, and when he started to reach for the console again, she let go of his hand raised up the gun. "I’ll do it," she said.

  "W...why?" And as he lost half a heartbeat wondering, she reached down to the console and selected the original firing program that would now launch all but one of the bombs. "Parker…why?" Eighty-seven hatches all opened and the atmo rushed out hard and fast making them strain at the straps on the chairs. Then it was like the deck had fallen away in 87 places under the 5-meter bombs, and they could see the surface of the Squidies’ homeworld moon rushing past close, too large below. It was mustard and acid yellow and blue green like the algae that marine had said the Squidies ate. Ugly clouds swirled near volcanoes. He looked from the alien world back to her, pleading with his eyes.

  "I’ll do it," she said. "Don’t move."

  Devlin’s voiced boomed in their helmets. "What the hell is going on down there?"

  Parker said, "Bombs away. Bombs away."

  Eighty-seven gravity bombs launched together, falling out the open hatches and shrinking against the alien landscape below. They still looked like giant idols and Easter Island statues until they fired up their thrusters and hurled themselves screaming at the surface of the tiny moon. Any Squidy down there could have looked up and seen them falling like hateful stars.

  Tig realized Ram Devlin was screaming bloody hell in his ear and threatening to shoot them both. He reduced the volume as he turned to Parker. The bay was fully depressurized now. She was unstrapping herself from the chair next to him, not even watching the bombs as they fell.

  "Parker...why?"

  She stood up. "I’m sorry, Tig."

  "But you…You were on our side…and…the Chief…" The Chief's blood was still all over both of them, frozen now, pink and frosty stains.

  "Tig...I’m sorry." He looked at her then and saw someone he’d never known until that moment. Surprise and confusion and betrayal twisted his face. He’d always blame himself for letting her see that in his eyes because she misunderstood. It was the last thing she saw before she ran the ten meters to the open hatches before he could stop her.

  "Parker! Parker! No!"

  She fell silently, without a peep on comms, arms out, feet together, light glinting off her crown. Her body shrank over the yellow hills and pthalo valleys of the aliens’ homeworld moon until she was a speck. Then, she was gone.

  He finally heard Commander Devlin shouting. "Close the hatches! Close the goddamn hatches, Meester! Close them! Detonation in ten seconds!"

  Chapter Nineteen

  The eighty-seven gravity bombs entered the atmosphere of the aliens’ homeworld moon at a steep angle. Friction with the thin, upper reaches produced only a pale plasma, but in seconds, their engines had propelled them deeper, down into the oxygen and sulfur rich lower atmo. In the last seconds of their descent, they appeared sheathed in a cold sulfur flame that burned in persistent trails behind them, eighty-seven streaks of hellfire against the cyan lowlands and the yellow, volcanic hills.