So It Begins (26 page)

  Grim did. The Cochrane identified the ready round in the launcher (the laser-controlled, range-detonated flechette grenade), computed the ballistics (which were pretty clean in free space), and superimposed the firing solution on the current scene: it painted a dim red cone on top of two of the attackers’ vector-projected plots at the time of warhead discharge. Then the image faded, almost blanked out: EMP overload. Damn: moment of truth. Grim snapped the safety off, lined up the weapon until the guidon told him his aimpoint matched the indicated firing solution, and squeezed the trigger—just as the image fuzzed, flickered, and winked off for good.

  For a split second, Grim was sure—again—that the weapon had malfunctioned: the almost imperceptible jolt from the underslung launcher barely tumbled him. But no, he could see the grenade moving briskly downrange. But wait a minute: he could see it? How was that possible? Why was it going so slowly—?

  And then he realized that, in zero-gee, the optimal firing solution was not so much a matter of maximizing accuracy, as it was concerned with minimizing recoil: the munition had been fired with only a tiny bit of force.

  Grim, now moving backward more rapidly, and in a very slow tumble, entertained the brief hope that, because of this minimum downrange bump, he would also remain undetected by the attackers. No such luck: a mere second after he had launched his counterattack, the infiltrators turned toward him, weapons flickering. He twisted his head to keep them under observation: the muzzle flashes were very small, and seemed to occur in short, angry sequences: probably small-caliber weapons, with a maximum three-round burst setting. All common features in zero-gee firearm designs that—ever unsuccessfully—tried to minimize the recoil of conventional rounds. A few self-oxidizing tracers indicated the vector of the fire, which dropped off: having seen that they were wide of their mark, they were no doubt using their own MMUs to correct their tumble before reaiming—

  Almost precisely where Grim had seen the sparkle of their weapons, there was a barely-visible flash, from which extended a small, lateral vapor plume: his flechette grenade. As Grim rolled up slowly toward direct alignment again, he brought the scope up to his eye.

  Seen at the visual equivalent of fifty meters, one of the figures he had targeted was thrashing spasmodically; whether or not he was wounded, it was pretty clear that his suit was vented, probably multiple times. The other figure was a stark contrast: motionless, arms widening slowly, some object—his personal weapon?—had begun to free-float away on a slightly altered vector of its own. The third attacker, who had been at the edge of the area of effect, was also engaged in rapid motions, but these were brisk and methodical, not desperate. Probably one of the missile specialists trying to change over to his personal weapon, realized Grim as he selected the Cochrane’s primary barrel.

  He was approaching the end of his first full 360 degree tumble, briefly wondered if he should use his own MMU to restabilize, then realized that if he did so, he would lose the advantage of getting in another shot before they were ready to respond. But taking that shot would also make his own tumble worse. Mendez had mentioned something about a rear-jet compensator for zero-gee firing stabilization—sort of like a mini-bazooka backblast—but Grim couldn’t recall the details. And since Grim had no time to screw with it, he used what he knew: he spun the propellant dial to the lowest setting—minimum recoil, in case the automatic optimization system has been fried. Then, as he rolled up into correct alignment, he quickly lined up the attacker who had been outside the cone of flechettes, and fired four quick rounds.

  Grim was surprised—and relieved—to find that most of the imparted thrust vectored him directly backward; as he fired, the muzzle brake’s cruciform nozzles selectively vented the weapon’s exhaust to precisely counteract any pitch, yaw, or roll changes to his trajectory. But the Cochrane’s system wasn’t perfect: possibly because Grim had rapped the rounds out so fast, there was still enough off-vector impulse to increase the rate and skew of his tumble.

  As he came around on his first faster, slightly cockeyed rotation, Grim panned the scope across what he estimated had been his target area. At first, he saw nothing—then a faint white plume: he swept back toward that. The plume disappeared briefly, then appeared again, evidently rotating back into view. It was a punctured air-tank, the rapidly venting gases throwing its wearer into an accelerating spin and carrying him on a very divergent trajectory. Judging from the figure’s already muted writhings, he wouldn’t live to see where his new heading took him: Grim guessed that he had hit more than just the backpack unit.

  But now, as Grim continued his own knees-over-nose rotation, he faced two alternatives—neither of which had promising outcomes. Grim could either wait until he completed another somersault, try to access the last target through the Cochrane’s scope (unlikely, given his increasingly erratic tumble) and score some more hits (profoundly unlikely, for the same reason); or, he could let the Cochrane float on its lanyard while he grabbed for his MMU controls to correct his tumble—and thereby allow the other guy to finish getting his personal weapon readied and aimed, and thereby beat Grim to the probably fatal punch. But wait: Mendez had once said, “And here’s the beauty part, Sarge; you can use the Cochrane to correct your tumble—”

  —And then Grim was following his memories of Esteban’s instructions, just as they came to him, word by word—

  “First you set the magazine feed to ‘off’—”

  —Grim did—

  “—so that when you squeeze the trigger, the Cochrane’s muzzle works just like a little rocket. And to counterboost, all you do is reorient yourself—”

  —Grim swung his left arm out, imparting a little spin to his body—

  “—then aim into the vector you need to correct—”

  —Grim aimed down into the direction of his roll and slightly to one side—

  “—and fire.”

  Grim squeezed the trigger, leaned into the light recoil, felt his rotational speed drop, saw that the yaw had almost disappeared. He straightened out the tube, fired two more times. And was almost perfectly stabilized. He threw his left arm back across his body to turn around again—toward the enemy—and brought the weapon up to his right eye.

  He got his left hand back on the forestock, saw the starfield sweep past in the scope, caught a glimpse of movement—and then spotted a silhouette against the stars, head hunched down as if taking aim. Hail Mary, now. Grim thumb-selected autofire, twisting at the waist to keep the barrel on-target. He saw angry little flickers coming from the silhouette as he fired.

  Even the Cochrane couldn’t keep up with that insane barrage of thrust-generating discharges: Grim tumbled backward, felt a sharp slap to the back of his head as the spinning began. And that slap was probably death’s calling card: the attacker’s first accurate round had hit his helmet—luckily in the tough rear-plating, probably burrowing into the command electronics for his now useless computer and HUD. But the next round would probably hit something that was soft, would puncture, would release air, would leak blood: would kill him.

  But that next round never came.

  After correcting his madcap cartwheels with the MMU, and maneuvering into the solar lee of a little loping rock that dutifully followed the ruined Rad Shack Four in its slow orbit of the distant sun, Grim waited. And waited. And contemplated his probable wholebody rem dose. And waited some more.

  Almost a full hour later, base finally sent a shielded away boat out to nose among the rocks in the vicinity of Rad Shack Four. When it got within 500 meters, Grim toggled his radio, heard the faint hum of the carrier wave under the EMP static, and said, “Hey. Over here.”

  After a moment of silence, there was the inevitable request for the day code, the countersign, and a curt request from a new voice: “Sitrep, Sergeant Grimsby.”

  “Uh—who is this?”

  “Sergeant Grimsby, my name is Darryl Wilder. I’m—”

  “Yes, sir; I know who you are, sir.”

  A pause.

  “Very well. Proceed.”

  As the away boat made its slow approach, Grim proceeded to give the most respectful, thorough, professional, and utterly boring sitrep of his entire career to date. At the end, he even managed to forget about the rads sleeting through his body long enough to ask, “Any idea who was behind this, Mr. Wilder?”

  “No hard evidence yet, but I’d say it was the megacorporations.”

  “Corporate? Why? They afraid you won’t let them sell Big Macs on Alpha Centauri?”

  There was a long pause. “Sergeant, you seem very sure that our construction project at Eureka has something to do with interstellar travel.”

  Oops. “Uh . . . sorry, sir.”

  “Sorry?”

  “Shouldn’t have said that on open channel, sir.”

  “Hmm . . . no, you shouldn’t have: but your conclusion, and your presence of mind, is promising. So, it seems, is the Cochrane.”

  Grim stared as the gun; the approaching bow lights of the away boat glinted off its selector switch: it seemed like a bright, conspiratorial wink. “Yeah, well—it was okay.”

  “`Okay’? Sergeant, from what our first readable scans are showing, it seems like it was the star of the show.”

  “Sure—but, with all due respect, Mr. Wilder, what if the Cochrane hadn’t worked?”

  “Just be glad that it did work, oh Ye of Little Faith,”—Grim’s Grandmama Rayshawne had used that same expression; didn’t sound right coming from a man—“because if you had had your old Armalite-6, you would have had to conduct a full MMU tumble correction after every shot. How many shots do you think you could have taken that way?”

  “Uh—two. Maybe.”

  “Yes, ‘maybe’—with a capital ‘M.’ Either way, two shots would have been two too few: they came at you with four attackers. A conventional zero-gee weapon couldn’t have engaged them all. But the Cochrane could—and did. You were right to have Mendez leave the Cochrane behind, even if it was against regs.”

  “Uh, sir—”

  “Yes?”

  Grimsby paused: the smart thing to do was to take the credit for keeping the Cochrane at the shack. But—maybe because he had just recalled Grandmama Rayshawne belting out “Sweet Bye and Bye” at First Baptist—he said, “Sir, I didn’t think of keeping the weapon at the shack. That was Mendez.” With any luck, that would earn Esteban enough brownie points for his OCS nod, allowing him to become a less-than-typically detestable shave tail—if he lived long enough. But luckily, Mendez had spent a little time coming up through the ranks, knew to listen to sergeants (usually), and so had a better than even chance of dodging both enemy bullets and the tender ministrations of a late-night latrine fragging.

  Wilder was still talking: Grim tuned back in as he was commenting, “Well, you certainly proved that Mendez made the right choice.”

  “Yes, sir, but I did break a few regs.”

  “Well, I’m not your CO, but it seems to me that if they don’t bust you, they’re going to have to decorate you.”

  “Why’s that, sir?”

  “Well, in addition to single-handedly defeating a sabotage attempt on what you will soon know as Project Prometheus, you just gave the Cochrane a field test the likes of which no weapon has ever had—either in terms of what was demanded of it, or how well it performed. And that in the hands of an untrained operator. Back at Eureka, the testing team all look like they stole grins off a Cheshire cat, talking about how no amount of careful planning can beat plain old dumb luck.”

  “Huh: in my case, very dumb.”

  “Suitably self-deprecating, Sergeant, but not very convincing. When you emerge from your debriefing—which they claim will last a week—we should have a talk about your future. How does that sound?”

  That sounded almost as good as the week-long debrief, which mean a soft, solo bed in officer’s country and real chow, instead of the grey walls of the brig he had been expecting to inhabit for the foreseeable future. “That sounds fine, sir.”