Dry, No Lube Ch. 07b: Armor

"I've thought of a plan," Pixy lied, weakly. "We'll put the exterior shields to full power early. The Armor should sense that, perceive the threat, and move to cover the outside of the hull." She shrugged. "I've just never seen it this bad."

"Yeah." He sniffed. "That's unlikely to work quickly, ma'am."

"I comprehend that, Commander Asshole, but regardless, they'll pull back once the shuttles start thrusting." She was making that up, too, but she reckoned it might be correct. "That will bother the armor, but in any event they'll migrate to the outer hull when they sense planetary defenses. Don't worry."

"Oh, I won't." He nodded sourly to her as he clattered down to his post. "That's your problem."

The rest of the bridge officers filtered in quickly, all primed and most gnawing on bumtabs or even Crystal. The Shielding Officer, in particular, looked like he'd been hitting the stackpipe. She called him over. "I'm going to want full power on the shields right away, Mr Tomasu." He frowned. "We've got a small issue with the organics."

"Oh. Um, okay, ma'am." He blinked in that jerky way Bump could give you, his movements almost strobe-like. "Won't that cause problems with the bombardment?"

"Small problems, yes," she nodded, "but we can tolerate them." She hoped. "Look, it's probably just 3% less power initially, then about 4% during the sustainment phase." She glared at him. "Not that that should affect you at all, Mr Tomasu, because you're the shield officer. Yes?" He swallowed and nodded. "So, you're not the weapons officer? Nor the fire-support officer?" More nods. "Yes, that's what I thought. So just do your job and shut up about the bombardment. I've got it in hand."

"Aye aye, ma'am," he wavered, her irritation penetrating through the haze of his Bump high.

"Go." The ship was awake now. More floodlights showed in the Tunnel now, the Army trooping aboard their placer shuttles as Jatsupa barked out orders for the last dogleg. She'd picked Romario to act as OOD during the placer mission, and both he and the XO worked smoothly to bring the ship around. She pondered her data, watching everything: scopes, Plot, navigation computer, weapons status. She watched peoples' faces, their posture, evaluating their enthusiasm. Everything was calm, eager competence, the fruits of all those successful placer operations.

More lights in the Tunnel. Her implant nudged at her, counting down: twenty-four minutes. "Final dogleg," Jatsupa told Romario, and then the helm orders came crisp and clear.

Pixy stirred, then half-turned to see Laredo by the hatch. "No intel updates, Ms Laredo. No change to the mission as briefed. Go ahead and get your people ready. Reminder: the Q-angle is quite severe. So watch it."

"Aye aye, Captain."

"Give 'em hell, yada yada." She drummed her fingers rapidly across her thigh, thinking it was almost time for Byskop to prep her own ship, too. "Commander Jatsupa?"

"Ma'am?"

"You're going to need to conduct the intial defense, as per the usual mission profile other than the added power requirements for the negative-energy shields. I've already briefed Mr Tomasu."

"Put that in writing for him, ma'am," the XO murmured. "He's high as a kite."

"Right." She rolled her eyes. "I'll be out with my shuttle, getting the organic armor sorted out. I hope it won't take long; I'll be going out right after the Army leaves."

He frowned, but nodded. "Just make sure you get your beacon going. I know you'll be in the tunnel the whole time, but... well, accidents happen, ma'am."

"Laredo won't shoot me," Pixy chuckled.

"Nevertheless." He turned back toward the Plot, his hands behind his back. "Humor me, Captain."

She leaned forward, her sense of unease growing as the target appeared in the scopes. She could hear the commo techs now, in touch with Captain Leeuwen aboard the Angradal, now moving toward the same target. It was a complicated dance, but all three ships knew their business. Pixy stirred. "Guns up. Ten minutes," she announced over the intertubes.

All around the rim of the Tunnel, outboard of where Piper Laredo waited with the Army scouts, her guns waited to begin smacking the surface of the enemy planet. She couldn't see it yet, barreling as they were through lightspace at factor eight, but the star Canidia was visible now as a blurred smudge through the gap in the armor. "Nine minutes," Romario muttered.

"Okay, Commander Jatsupa," Pixy sighed, swinging her chair around, "take charge. I'm going to go into the Tunnel and clean out the organic armor."

He nodded. "Just... watch yourself, ma'am. Tunnel gravity and planet gravity will make your Blue Point tough to calculate."

"I know. But I'm sure I'll be fine," she nodded, rising, "and I'm not planning to leave the Tunnel." She raised her voice. "XO has the ship!" she called to the bridge. She nodded at everyone as she strode off through the hatch and past her office. She waved jauntily at the gunners mounting the No. 3 Gun on the upper battery, just now putting their targeting harnesses on and sealing themselves in. "Give 'em hell, guys!" she called.

"Aye aye, ma'am." The chief, clearly with more important things to do than chat with the captain, gave her a smile anyway as she passed. Pixy whistled as she walked, the decks below her thrumming with Army activity at the docking pylons, and she sent a note to Juno to have some butter-tea waiting when she got back aboard.

She'd only ever watched these placer operations from the bridge; it was quite different actually being inside the Tunnel, at the controls of her shuttle, racing through her flight-up sequence. It reminded her of that demonstration above Headquarters Planet, from the Lavatine. She enjoyed the multicolored warning lights, the bustle of the scoutships, the flare of Laredo's Interceptor as the darkside of the planet loomed abruptly before them. A glance aft showed her the organic armor building up back there, piled up behind the Barracks Barge, a really shocking amount: she felt a sense of foreboding cross her fluttery stomach, but there was nothing to do now but wait for the Army to clear the Vag and then zip back there to start herding the Armor.

Everything shook now as Jatsupa decelerated the ship, and Pixy's mind was just thinking it was time to order the scouts out when the XO gave them the green light. Good. He knew his shit. The shuttle, with Laredo tagging along, was a dwindling point of drive-light against the dark and silent planet, receding as if blasted out of the Tunnel by one of the batteries on the rim.

And then? There was nothing to do but wait, the Army's shuttles all powered up now around her.

She was dialed into the bridge's Command Band, so she heard the helm orders as the P/E ship thrust here and there in the dark, drifty gloom of the planet's Heaviside Layer, centering itself over the scout's position far below. She wiped some sweat off her brow and checked her chrono: over on the dayside, she knew, the other two ships would be closely in tandem, their own scouts down, with Tygon Interceptors zipping to and fro.

This was that last brief gasp of tension before the firepower went, the delicious spannungsbogen moment when all was ready but nothing was decided, the last time anyone could do anything to stop what was coming... but nobody wanted to, and with a last whine from the directional thrusters the great ship pinned itself at last above the objective, staring down into Canidia Prime's mesosphere, before Leodmannsegge turned all the lights green.

They flashed five times, quickly, before they stayed on, and with a rattling whoosh the Interceptors swung out and peeled away into space. All around her the shuttles detached, already formed and ready, their crews well-practiced in placer runs: they followed Colonel McMerckx' lead shuttle out into the darkness just as Jatsupa's batteries opened up with their astonishing energy release.

Pixy was already powering up, all finished with her sightseeing as she cleared the space around her and moved gingerly down into the Tunnel. "Pfeiffer's moving," she called over the Band to Leodmannsegge, thrusting around to move along the top of the Barracks to face down her recalcitrant Armor.

"Copy." He sounded relaxed, as well he should now that his shuttle tunnel was cleared out. "Looks like the Armor is already advancing, ma'am."

"Fuck." She could see he was right as she cruised down, her herding probe out and ready. Her brain was working rapidly even as her eyes swept upward to follow the curving rim of the stern, where the Armor was oozing steadily over the aft docking pylons: there was no way, no fucking way, she was going to be able to clear all this shit out of here.

Why was it insisting on coming into the Tunnel?

She smacked the commo key. "Exterior shields at full power," she grated. She knew that would affect the barrage out of the bow, but it couldn't be helped. "And keep the fighters close-in."

"Aye aye, ma'am." Jatsupa almost sounded bored.

She hesitated, not liking to admit failure over the Command Band, but she knew she had to. "I doubt I'll be able to get the Armor out, honestly. I'm not sure why it's doing this. It's going to coat the whole Vag." Something nagged at her then, almost a sense of deja-vu, but she tried to shake it off as she went to herd the nearest viscous grey mass.

Behind her the forward rim crackled with strobing light as her fire plunged down; all around her, the automatic magazines fed more and more solids toward the hungry guns. Leith would be waiting, she knew, headed toward a rendezvous she'd established off Canidia XII's moon, ready to load them back up.

If they could survive this placer. And her mind told her that depended on her, the fucking captain, getting this goddamn organic armor back outside, where it could do some good against the Cathos Vremein defenses. She worked doggedly, shoving back big wads of the stuff, but all around her it kept slipping in.

Coating the Vag.

She was beginning to have a thought, a scary one. She keyed her implant desperately, trying to dredge up everything she'd learned about the OAS, specifically that inconclusive research about how sentient it was. It occurred to her in a flash of insight that the ship, and thus the armor, had been able to see some of what happened to the poor Durlindana.

Did it know there was a threat in the Tunnel? Could it be trying to protect the Vag?

She hesitated, her hand hovering above the commo key, but suddenly she heard Submajor Nestilio's lazy tones over the Band. "Heavy losses below. We're not sure what we can do against drones."

She heard Jatsupa's sharp reply just as she was about to say it herself. "Drones? They're already seeing drones down there?" Pixy, still focused on the armor, cast a glance at the chrono: just ten minutes the Army had been down on the objective.

Fuck.

She looked out her viewport, wide-eyed, the armor coming in its endless flow. She twisted in her seat, craning around to see the bombardment still pulsing behind her, squinting to catch the twinkle of an oncoming drone.

Fuck.

She started to panic a little, her knee shaking. What should she do? This was a painfully fluid operation, a hundred variables chasing themselves through her mind... and if there was nothing she could do to control the OAS, shouldn't she be on the bridge?

Fuck.

Her hand went back to the commo key, on the point of telling Jatsupa she was coming back, but then she looked above her and realized the armor had already swallowed up her docking pylon. The mass was moving very fast now, implacable. Coating the Vag. And that's when Pixy decided what was happening, her sluggish implant be damned. She smacked the key. "XO? Take a memo?" She focused on steering then, bringing her shuttle around. Her mind had cleared, the decisions made.

"I'm a little busy up here, ma'am." The forward rim of the Tunnel swung into view, the bombardment still volleying out in dazzling flashes; as expected, she saw, the last of the pylons was getting covered.

She had noplace to dock, but that was less important now than getting the word out. "The OAS is entering the Tunnel to protect against the drones. If you can, let the other P/E ships know." She nodded to herself, thinking of McMerckx' desperate perimeter below: the Cathos Vremein were not stupid. They knew their drone attack would work, if they could get past the infantry, so their countermeasures were to increase the number of drones or decrease the number of infantry.

So? Infantrymen were dying.

She gave up on docking in the Tunnel. She guessed now that the Armor would recede on its own once the drone threat went away. She peered forward through the strangely smoothed contours of the Vag, trying to figure out whether it would be safe to back out of the ship and come around to try one of the dorsal hatches. And that's when she saw it.

Like a miniature star, rising up the Cone. That's how Captain Stellato had described what they'd seen coming to take out the Durlindana, and Pixy saw the same thing coming for her own ship now: a bright flash in the center of the beaten Cone, growing brighter by the second as it rose straight toward her, and suddenly there was no time to make any more decisions. She rammed the power bar forward, darting along the Tunnel without any hesitation.

Her voice into the Command Band was tight, controlled. "Fighters to the Cone. I need a close-in scan for rising drones," she snapped, her shuttle beginning to yaw as dueling gravity started to take hold; zero-G could reach far into the Tunnel in some circumstances. She stared hard now at that glowing drone coming up at her, her shuttle zooming to meet it. "Shoot the fuckers down through the barrage."

"Numerous drones detected in the Cone," Nestilio agreed, his voice metallic. "At least three, altitudes variable."

Fuck!

She cleared the forward rim, curbing her speed and fighting to stay stationary in the churning gravity that threatened to rip the shuttle apart. Her eyes grew wide as she stared all around her at the flashing of her own bombardment, the colors overwhelming her; she struggled to keep focused on the drone coming toward her. The lights stung her eyes and softened her brain, even as the clashing gravities started messing with her guts; she threw up at once, even before her thrusters had cleared the rim. "Pfeiffer," she rasped into the Band, "clearing the forward gate."

And so it was that, through a cloud of addled thoughts and sketchy implant advice, amid the stink of vomit, Pixy Pfeiffer pointed her shuttle desperately toward the oncoming drone with no clear plan and, most definitely, no solid idea what would happen to her. The Command Band squawked meaningless syllables at her as she fought to control the bucking craft, steering toward the brightly flaring drone closing fast, and all of a sudden it was on her: she twisted the control bar desperately aside, her shuttle screeching into a yaw as thrusterfire scalded her viewport and a loud clang shook the shuttle.

Pixy blinked, vaguely surprised that she was alive, straining to orient herself as she gazed wildly out through the ceaseless blazes of Jatsupa's bombardment. The drone had struck her obliquely and then gone caroming off into space, its blazing light receding as rapidly as it had grown in the Cone, until with a silent flash it detonated well clear of her ship's Blue Point.

"Shit!" someone was yammering on the Command Band, until she caught Jatsupa's severe voice overriding all the traffic. "Silence on the band. Captain? Are you there?"

She scrabbled for the commo key. "I'm here," she managed, her puke stringy against the microphone. She cleared her sour throat. "I'm here! So, clearly those drones are not directly fuzed," she babbled, the connections making themselves clear in her mind. "I think it's on an altitude setting."

"Agreed." Her eyes caught scrambling shapes through the transparent hull on the bridge, her XO leaning against the forward port. "I'll cease firing so you can get around to the external docking pylon."

"The fuck you will," she snapped, her senses finally clearing, "you'll keep up the barrage. Get the Interceptors in close and watch for more drones."

"Captain..."

"It's an order. Follow it." She swept her hand off the key and focused on her controls, bringing the shuttle painfully under control through the tangled gravitational nausea in her gut. Already the corner of her eye had spotted another blaze of thrust coming hard up along the Cone, with a more distant one behind, and through a sense of determination she felt despair creep in: they'd keep sending them. They'd keep pushing drones up the Cone until one of them got through, and then?

She'd find out whether the Armor had been right to migrate inside the Vag.

Pixy wrenched her shuttle back toward the planet, the Army's weapons twinkling below like fireflies on the surface. Goddamn! She was much lower than she'd realized, but that second drone was coming and she had it now, positioning her shuttle to straddle its path. She wasn't sure how many she could deflect before her little craft took too much damage for her to control, but that wasn't something she was thinking about. All she knew was that she had to try to keep those things away from her ship.

The Band stirred again, Jatsupa, sounding troubled. "Ma'am..."

"Shut up." Pixy drove the power bar forward, meeting the next drone, and in another blast of exhaust it clunked hard off the bottom of the shuttle, where the plus-ups were clustered, driving the shuttle into a spin near the edge of the Cone even as the second drone flapped impotently off into space.

She turned in the seat, more vomit rising, knowing now how she needed to steer in order to take on the third drone. Crazy Jack had been right, so many weeks ago: limited AI, not too hard to kill. She grinned, laughing to herself. Out of the corner of her eye she caught three of Laredo's Tygon Interceptors bearing down, but they weren't going to get here in time; she nodded, focused at last, and threw the levers to get her battered shuttle to grips with the oncoming drone.

And... nothing happened.

She threw the Reserve switch, bringing up the emergency power, and tried again... nothing. So, her heart sinking, she slid her eyes to the panel with the warning lights, over at the copilot's station, and she didn't even need to lean closer to see that she had no more undercarriage. When the second drone had careened off into the void, it had taken all her plus-ups with it.

Fuck.

Powerless, she watched as the third drone swept toward her in an arc that was almost graceful. She was about to key the comms again to tell the ship to brace for impact, but Jatsupa was already making that announcement in her ears. They knew what was coming. And so Pixy, feeling the gravity give up as her body rose out of the seat against her harness, had to watch helplessly as the drone glided smartly up the Cone and disappeared into the Tirving's gaping maw.

The explosion, confined in the Vag and meant to blow the ship apart, sent her shuttle flipping end-over-end into the planet's ionosphere. Drifting now, spinning in a slow circle, Pixy blinked up through her cracked viewport and, with a sense of wonder, realized two things: one, the OAS had soaked up the drone's force with no trouble at all, Tirving still under command and in one piece, her guns still firing gamely. And two?

She was in serious trouble suddenly.

Her shuttle was silent now. The warning lights had all flickered off, the controls all dead; her head was filled with nothing but static from the Command Band. She was shocked, looking up, at how far away her ship already was. She hit the Reserve switch again: nothing.