Dry, No Lube Ch. 07b: Armor

* * *

Helvidius IX hung there on the monitor in the Lerbal-hazed starfield, with Tirving bearing down at factor seven. Their objective, she saw as she frowned up at the plot, was a G-class planet about 100 million kilometers from Helvidius (the star), and her eyes traced the plot into a simple problem in stellar geometry: her implant whirred hard beside her eye, but she didn't even need its balky circuits for a problem this simple. Her ship had done seven combat placer operations already, with another ten simulated as they'd wandered across the cosmos toward the Bacchanal Arm. She stirred and glanced down at the Army fire-support man. "Submajor Nestilio?" she called. "Did your boss decide how big he wants his fire perimeter to be?"

"I'm waiting on that now, Captain."

"Well, shit," she drawled, "it's not like we're in any rush here." The bridge watch glanced at the plot, then at each other: the Army's perimeter was the last piece of data Pixy needed in order to calculate her attack plan. The ship throbbed around them, sliding endlessly through lightspace, cocked and loaded to wipe out the Helvidius IX station as an example to the rest of the enemy in the area. Pixy did not need to look behind her, through the bottom of her bridge globe and into The Vag, to know how the Army would be flooding into their shuttles, doing their last rehearsals, finalizing their plans... "Let's go, Mr Nestilio," she seethed. Her face still ached a bit where Laredo had gotten that left hook in, but it wasn't too bad.

She'd had much worse.

Nestilio perked his head up after another couple of seconds. "Got it, ma'am. Colonel McMerckx wants a 1400-meter diameter, rotating spread."

"That's tight," Pixy muttered, her implant straining. She looked at the plot and did the math. "Okay. We're coming in from a positive tangent at local dawn, so here's the deal." She took in the location of the objective on the planet's surface, the position of the sun, her mind's eye seeing the terminator creep toward the enemy commo station as those fucking Cathos Vremein sat down for breakfast.

They'd never look up at the rising sun to see the Tirving, if she positioned them correctly.

"Mr Malavongsy?" She turned to face the navigation station. "When we drop out, you'll be turning 1400 mils to starboard, then skating down until you do a burn at... eleven thousand meters?"

"That's low, ma'am."

"Yeah. No shit." She waited for her balky implant to give her the burn velocity, but Malavongsy's brain was faster.

"Fourteen seconds from dropout to retrofire, Captain?" He was tactful enough to phrase it as a question, the little turd.

"Mmph," she grunted, her implant at last wheezing out its answer. "Thirteen-point-six, actually."

"Aye aye, ma'am."

She turned to the tracking station. "Ms Malavongsy? Any sign of Durlindana?"

"No, ma'am." Captain Peet, in Durlindana, was scheduled to begin a separate placer operation on the nighside of the planet ten minutes after Pixy got started. The proximity detectors should pick them up soon.

Pixy paused, sipping extravagantly at a bowl of butter-tea while she waited for the rest of her figures; until she could get herself an upgraded implant, she knew she'd better get all her data before she even opened her mouth. By the time people began sneaking looks her way, she had what she needed. "We'll start McMerckx' rotational pattern at B+14, Commander Jatsupa."

"Ma'am."

She twisted in her chair, ignoring the twinge in her back. "You'll go out as usual, once we retrofire, but bear in mind how tight the pattern is: your Q-angle is only 4.5. So watch it."

Pepper Laredo was back there, already in her flight gear. Thankfully, her tibia had already healed. Eye still looked like shit, though, because she was right: Pixy was good with her feet. But Pixy felt the two of them understood each other now; the pilot would not be going back to the Barracks Barge without authorization. "Aye aye, captain," she muttered savagely. "Permission to begin my preflight," she added, turning to leave.

Pixy nodded, feeling magnanimous. "Of course, Ms Laredo. Good hunting." The fight had been vicious, but necessary. The bitch shouldn't have been fucking the Colonel. She glanced over at the weapons station. "Standard tube spread, Ms Luzhenka." She didn't wait for the acknowledgement. "Minimal shields until B+five minutes, Mr Tomasu, and then go straight to Strength Four."

"Ma'am."

"And make sure the reactive skirting is charged this time," she added, her implant chiming a reminder. "I don't want a repeat of that shit that went down last month." She frowned at her own OAS console, wondering whether she should herd the organic armor a bit closer to the forward gate; a quick shuffle through the intelligence estimates told her nothing had changed, though, in terms of expected enemy activity. The intelligence suggested there'd be a planetary defense they characterized as "robust," but so far the scopes were clear. Even so, she'd keep the bulk of the armor herded above the magazines, amidships. A flutter of her fingers over the console triggered the herding prods that should keep things balanced.

The whole ship rattled as the retrofire went, right on schedule. "Okay, idiots!" she called loudly, her leg shaking with excitement. The objective was huge in front of them. "Let's do this shit." Already the Army scouts were ready in the Vag, all set to cast off and barrel down toward the target as soon as she gave the word; Pixy kept her eyes on the decelerometer, moving steadily now, its numbers fitting the curve perfectly.

"All right," she snapped. The sequence was clear in her mind now, cemented there by the past six placer operations, plus all their rehearsals here and there as they'd crossed the galaxy. Tirving had ironed out all the problems with their procedures, training hard, and now everyone knew their job. "Start the active tracking, Ms Luzhenka."

"Scope's clear, ma'am."

"Yeah. Well, eventually, it'll stop being clear." The Cathos Vremein had a habit of layering their planetary defenses thickly. The bridge shook. "Scouts out!"

The words weren't even out of her mouth before Submajor Nestilio was giving the order, the Army's scout shuttle racing dirtside with Laredo's Tygon Interceptor in tow. Off to the side, Malavongsy pricked her head up. "Ah. I've got Durlindana coming in, ma'am, darkside."

"Good." Every head moved toward the right side of the plot screen, where the other P/E ship would be emerging from lightspace. She appeared with the usual suddenness, decelerator burns already flaring against the blackness of that side of the planet. Her soldiers would be making a night assault, and Tirving would be able to monitor most of it. "Right on schedule."

"Thar she blows," muttered Paston Romario from the commo station. An awkward moment passed among the command group before the XO glanced apprehensively at the captain, then back at Romario.

"What was that, Mr Romario?"

The commo guy twisted in his seat, blinking back at Jatsupa. "Uh. I said, 'thar she blows,' sir."

The XO glanced again at Pixy, who maintained a regal haughtiness as she checked the time before Laredo and the scouts would head out. Jatsupa frowned. "What the fuck does that mean, Mr Romario?"

"Um. It's a cry from old whaling ships? They'd say it when they caught sight of their quarry." The commo officer made a weak, flappy hand gesture. "Like, it's meant to rally the crew and get them motivated to start working."

"What-ing ships?"

"Whaling ships." Romario looked as though he'd rather be somewhere else. "On Old Earth. They'd go hunt whales." When the XO merely stared at him, Romario paled. "Big cetaceans, sir. On Earth."

The XO sighed. "This sounds like some kind of sexual slang, Mr Romario," he said sternly. "And what the fuck is 'Earth?'"

Lieutenant L'amourowicz, on the vanes, glanced over. "Who's blowing whom?"

"No. The whale is blowing," Romario bleated.

"Who's wailing?"

Pixy sighed. "Old Earth is what some planets call Sol III, Commander Jatsupa," she put in calmly. "It's a quaint custom. But I don't know what the fuck anyone would be wailing about," she shrugged, glancing at Romario.

The commo officer was turning red. "I mean, it's just an expression," he sulked, turning back toward his console. "Nothing sexual about it."

"Yeah." The XO nodded. "Perhaps it's best that you just focus on your job, Lieutenant Romario."

"Sir."

Pixy watched as her numbers counted down; Laredo and the scout ship were already invisible within the planet's atmosphere. "Halt retrofire, Mr Malavongsy. We can thrust from here on."

"Aye aye, ma'am." He was watching the numbers too, and had his commands ready: the helmsman guided the great ship to a halt within range of their firing position.

Far below them the planet waited to be torn apart, and now her eyes picked up Lieutenant Laredo racing back up from the surface. "Okay. Interceptors away," she called into the fighter net, the mouth of the Vag scraping beneath her as the fighters left their pylons. "Go ahead and give Colonel McMerckx his warning order, Mr Nestilio."

"Yes ma'am."

"And," she called down to the gun pit, "let me know where the scouts need us to move, ASAP."

"It's just coming in now, Captain." Nestilio was frowning at his ground-plot. "He needs us two kilometers toward the equator."

"Great." She peered at the monitor, orienting herself, then gave the helm orders on her own. "Upper thrusters, banks two and four, five percent power. Eight seconds of burn."

"Aye aye, ma'am."

She'd done the math without the implant, but even as the ship started moving she knew she'd gotten it wrong. "No. Eleven seconds." Fuck. She hated getting that kind of things wrong. "Tell me the minute the scouts have us pinned, Nestilio." She could hear the excitement in her own voice now. The ship was moments away from raining death on the enemy planet. Down below her, the Tunnel was packed with jacked-up soldiers strapped into their placer shuttles, ready to begin the big movement against the little city that glittered below, through shredded clouds.

McMerckx' Fifth Battalion would assault the city in the daytime, while his compadres in Durlindana's Sixth Battalion cut off the enemy's reinforcements in the dark. Neither Pixy nor Captain Peet knew much about any of that, though; they'd stay safely in space, blasting the shit out of whatever they pleased.

Fuck, Pixy thought as she watched the distant Durlindana go into her approach, I love my job.

Down below her, Submajor Nestilio's voice rose with an unusual note of excitement. "Scouts say we're pinned, ma'am."

Pixy's mouth tightened into a pursed line. She peered downrange, making sure her seven Tygon Interceptors were out of the bombardment path; she saw that Laredo had them in a lazy, watchful line off toward the planet's distant Fourth Moon. She slapped the link switch to the gunnery station. "Open fire, Ms Luzhenka."

At once the ship faltered in space, the recoil of every gun at once overwhelming the stationkeeping software for a moment as the dampers handled the dazzling flash of that initial barrage. Below her the Vag clunked with dull, rhythmic throbs as McMerckx took his placer ships out, spiraling them into the Cone to join the scouts on the surface. All at once, everything was out of Pixy's hands: the placer operation was set now, irrevocable, on a course of its own that depended on McMerckx' fighting soldiers and the physics of Pixy's bombardment.

She ran a hand through her hair and summoned Juno through her vox box. "Tea," she snapped, then she was turning toward the planetary plot off to the left: her responsibility now was to call out orders for Laredo's Interceptors and Tomasu's torpedoes. She reminded herself not to fire in the direction of Durlindana, now invisible as her dark organic armor hid her among the starfield, but she'd open up soon enough.

Nothing to do now but drink her tea and wait for the planetary defenses to reply.

Tirving began her roll on schedule, spreading the pain against the Cathos Vremein on the Army's perimeter, as off on the nightside horizon a sudden bursting flash showed where Durlindana was starting her own placer drop. Everything seemed smooth, Laredo flitting hyperactively around looking for targets as her pilots dashed to their cover rotations. Everything was going well, making sense, and Pixy was just about to set her tea down to go take a piss when Submajor Nestilio hailed her from down at his station. "Hey, Captain?"

"Yes?"

He was talking quietly into his mid-beam when she looked at him. "Colonel's reporting there's something new down there. Some sort of flying object, maybe?"

"Crewed?"

Nestilio blinked. "Um, no? I guess it's a pretty sophisticated device..."

Pixy stared for a moment in incomprehension, then rolled her eyes. "No, I mean, does it have a crew?"

"Oh. No. Seems to be a drone."

Pixy flinched. She'd had her share of experiences with Cathos Vremein drones. "Details."

Nestilio listened with a faraway look on his face. "Small. Large rocket packs. Very limited AI, it seems; he says they're easy to take down."

"So? Why do we care, Mr Nestilio?" The ship was alive, pumping out destruction down below from all around them.

"He's saying that every one they're shooting down has been flying in a sweep pattern, straight into the Cone and then ascending rapidly."

"Ascending." Pixy frowned as she tried to conceptualize this with part of her brain while the other part began to wonder why the usual planetary defenses seemed slacker than they'd been lately. "Like, toward us? Up here?"

"As I say, ma'am, they're easy to take down. He's got a platoon on it, full time." The fire-support officer smiled tightly. "He thought you should know, since it's new."

"I comprehend. Tell him thanks, and to keep shooting them down." She pondered while her implant prodded at Nestilio's new information, craving data, making her ask. "How big are these things?"

"Three meters. He says he's been unable to capture one to take a close look at it." He listened some more. "Seem to be fewer of them now, ma'am."

"Cool." On a nagging whim, Pixy leaned over to thumb the link to Pepper Laredo. She cleared her throat. "Laredo? Pfeiffer here. Over."

"Ma'am?"

"The Army's reporting some sort of suspected threat down below, a three-meter... object? Missile? Rocket? Seems to be trying to climb up the Cone."

"Ma'am."

"Just be alert," Pixy advised, feeling a bit lame; intuition had told her to inform the Interceptors, but she had nothing much to tell them. "Maybe... beef up your interior scanning. Over."

"Yeah." Outside the fighters tumbled around in Laredo's complex defensive scheme. "On it, ma'am. Just... be advised I'm not sending my people into the Cone while you're firing. Over?"

"Right. Out." The fight seemed like it was going well enough, but Nestilio's report had given Pixy a little twinge in her gut. Her leg was bouncing, she noticed, willing it still. She slurped randomly at her tea and tried to relax, to think, to pay attention to why she was feeling so nervous all of a sudden. All around her the bridge watch was on the job, the ship firing rhythmically with Commander Jatsupa keeping everything on track. Smooth.

Too smooth.

She cleared her throat. "Commo!" she called. Romario turned. "Get ahold of Captain Peet over on the Durlindana? Tell him I've got some intelligence to share with him, moderate importance."

"Aye aye, ma'am." Romario glanced absently out through the bridge hull above his station, over to where Durlindana's barrage flared down toward Helvidius IX. He flicked over to his low-beam to make the broadcast, then frowned over at the other ship. "Uh, ma'am? There might be something going on over there..."

* * *

Leith hung high in orbit over the embattled planet, Captain Stellato peering at the plot screen trying to track the operation. Once both P/E ships were fully engaged, he turned to his safety officer and nodded. "Go ahead and bring the shields back down to 20%, Leon. I think we're fine now."

"Aye aye, sir."

At the same moment, Lt McWalesa was peering out from the comms station, frowning. "What the fuck is that?" she muttered.

"What?" Amisuul had just turned to see what she was talking about when he saw it too, a bright shining flare rising like a star through the intermittent code-burst fireworks of the Durlindana's gunfire, the white blazes stark against the planetary nightside. The Tygon felt a sinking sensation in the pit of his belly as the flare rose, deceptively slow with this degree of parallax, then disappeared into the maw of the Durlindana's Vag.

A frozen moment seemed to pass, and then the whole P/E ship seemed to breathe almost, its hull expanding in a shuddering bulge that pushed out the sides in the middle of the tunnel before, slowly, letting them ease back toward their original tube shape. That was all: that brief bulge. No explosion, no cataclysm, no shredded hulling drifting around in a new field of space junk.

But the ship had clearly taken deep, heavy damage, perhaps fatally: her fire ceased at once, all the guns burping out one or two final rounds before they fell silent. The whole vessel suddenly took a slow, thoughtful yaw relative to the planetary surface, and it almost seemed as if the hull took on a slight but growing bend, like a ruptured hard-on.

"Fuck," Captain Stellato muttered, his mouth wide.

* * *

"Fuck," Captain Pfeiffer muttered, her mouth wide. "What... what the hell just happened over there?"

"We're not able to get a good view," fretted Commander Jatsupa, tuning his scopes. "Hold on a sec, ma'am. I'll get something. We could probably see it all from the stern..."

An urgent red light fluttered at Pixy's elbow, demanding and ominous, and she slapped it to hear Lieutenant Laredo's voice, tight and controlled, on the public vox box from the cockpit of her Tygon Interceptor. The pilot was already talking as the speaker burst into life. "O'Slonovich saw the whole thing. Some sort of object rose up through the inside of the Cone and detonated inside the Tunnel, over."

Pixy knew she'd gone pale. Her leg was shaking. Everyone's eyes moved slowly toward the plot, to where Tirving's punishing fire made her own Cone. "What... what was the nature of the object? Beam or solid, over?" Pixy's mind was flitting wildly across possibilities, focusing squarely now on the Army report... drones... three meters... doing low-level sweeps, then arcing upward to ascend...

"Hold on." The bridge waited, with no other choice: the tension felt pudding-thick as Laredo quizzed O'Slonovich, then came back on with her report. "Seems to have been moving slowly enough to be a solid, or a drone. Over."

A drone. A motherfucking drone. Pixy twisted in her seat to call down to Nestilio. Her orders came shrill, almost panicked, but at least they came fast. "Tell McMerckx that we're ceasing fire and withdrawing. He's to secure his perimeter as best he can temporarily. I'll talk to him personally as soon as I get a chance."

"You're... ceasing fire?"

"Tell him!" she snapped, then she was on to the next officer. "All guns cease firing, Commander Jatsupa."

"Aye aye, ma'am." At least the XO didn't gibber in disbelief.

Pixy smacked Laredo's call button again. "Get back here. All fighters. Get inside the Cone and stay there. You're shooting anything coming off-planet that I don't clear personally."

"Uh... should I go over to see about Durlindana, ma'am?" The plot showed that she already had her Interceptors in formation, oriented toward the stricken ship on the nightside.