Dry, No Lube Ch. 07b: Armor

Fuck.

Drifting inside the Cone, her systems all fried, no comms, no propulsion, no gravity. No power, apparently. No way out. A fourth drone heaved majestically past, but already it, and Tirving, and Jatsupa, were a part of another world for her. Completely unreachable, as if they were in a completely different galaxy.

Physics were a bitch.

Her hand shook as she tried the emergency proximity band. "Mayday," she wavered, unsure whether anyone was close enough to pick up the weak signal. Her darkened flight deck sizzled with the obliviously passing flashes of Tirving's bombardment; already, it was getting cold. The planet, starting to brighten in the dawn, swam past her view with her craft's slow spin. "Mayday."

A voice came back: Lieutenant Horkins, one of Laredo's pilots, sounding concerned. "Hold tight, ma'am. We'll try to come in and get you."

"Fuck that," she spat, the decision already made: all the fighter pilots had been told in no uncertain terms that, with today's operational Q-angle exceeding 4.9, the Cone was no place for them. "Stay the fuck out there. Watch for drones." Already she knew the score: Pixy Pfeiffer had flown too many hours in shuttles to fool herself now. She'd need to abandon ship while the planet's atmosphere ate her shuttle. "Tell the XO to warn the Army I'm coming down in a rescue bag. I should land inside the perimeter."

Horkins said nothing for a long moment: Interceptor pilots, whose job was to fuck around in the transatmospheric zone, knew all about rescue bags. "You're pretty high up, Captain."

"That'll change soon. Physics, Mr Horkins." Pixy's teeth chattered as the coldness of space overcame her passive insulation. She needed to worm into the bag, and there was no time to waste. "Look, you stay well clear of the Cone. I'll be all right," she lied. She shook the headphones off before the pilot could reply, floating up and over the back of her seat in her increasingly untenable cabin.

She'd parachuted down onto a moon once, but that had been from a much lower altitude and with a scanty, half-terraformed atmosphere that offered no real dangers. Now she'd be sucked down by a big planet's full gravity, jostling around in the Heaviside Layer, hoping to come out on the other side uncooked... and even then, there'd still be the impact itself to deal with, the bag's big inflatable bladders hopefully soaking up the crushing force. She wondered what her chance of surviving was.

.02%, was her implant's helpful reply.

Fuck.

But there was no time to think about any of that, none at all, the shuttle shaking apart around her as it headed for the ionization zone. Panting, she fastened herself into the rescue bag, feeling its harsh sterile cocoon all around her, knowing she'd probably die in here.

The auto-destruct began as soon as the bag sealed itself. It wouldn't help anybody to have her charred shuttle smacking into the middle of McMerckx' perimeter. The countdown started.

Death wasn't something a lot of Fleet officers thought about: there were always fellow sailors nearby, and then they all knew they had a clone out there somewhere as long as their brain could be salvaged. Almost nobody died in Fleet, statistically. But Pixy Pfeiffer had lived a career where she'd had to face death more than once already, and if her implant was right? The statistics seemed to have caught up.

And there was no opportunity left to think about any of it. Not anymore. Suddenly, it seemed, she was out of time.

She thought about her ship, but that was Jatsupa's problem now. Her mission, too. She thought about her clones, the original one about ten or fifteen years younger than her, her cochleas already gone; the other one a natural clone about four years old now. Not that it mattered, though. The atmosphere was probably too vicious to leave anything worth salvaging, so both clones would be wasted.

And she thought about Juno, waiting in her quarters with a bowl of butter-tea...

The shuttle came apart abruptly, the walls and decking around her disappearing with a suddenness that she couldn't even process: one moment she was floating in her deflated bag inside the crippled shuttle, the next she was held tightly inside an inflated rescue globe with nothing around her but the flashing strobes of the ship's ordnance all around. There was no sound at all, other than her own shallow, panicky breathing, and as she tipped her head vainly upward for one last look at her beloved, comforting, infinite stars, she couldn't even see any of them through the glare of the barrage.

Unfair, that.

But maybe, she thought wildly as her bag accelerated, she wouldn't die after all: everyone said your life flashed before your eyes before you went, and she wasn't seeing anything from her past... oh. Wait. There it was, her favorite. The memory of that first spaceflight. Cold moonlight in her face. Three Bumped-up girls on an orbital joyride over Aries IX, with the entire cosmos surrounding them. Pixy, her mind dazzled by peace, and tranquility, and possibility, and awe...

That's as far as her life got before the ionization layer smacked her unconscious, the universe moving placidly on around her as her bag's ablative shielding caught fire. Physics gripped her and hauled her down, streaking toward the infantry fight on the uncaring surface of Canidia Prime.

* * *

Sergeant Collins hadn't been happy to take his patrol over to the western edge of the battalion perimeter. Everyone had seen the rescue bag smack the surface like a fucking meteor, taking a higher bounce than anyone had ever seen before; whatever unfortunate sap was strapped inside there was undoubtedly dead. Probably a fighter pilot, Collins reflected, which was too bad: it was common knowledge that Crazy Jack was nailing one of them, a real hottie, and the Colonel would be pretty pissed if she was the one in the bag.

His men fanned out behind him as they neared the scorched rock near where they'd seen the thing come to rest, everybody moving cautiously this close to the perimeter; it was far, far from a secure spacehead, and as the dawn cracked the sky over on the horizon the pace of the firing picked up over where Third Platoon held its portion of the line, off to the left. "This is stupid, sergeant," Corporal Wix muttered.

"Shut the fuck up." His hands tightened on the burst-rifle. He didn't like this mission already: an ad-hoc patrol to go grab some Fleet corpse did not appeal to him, but Major Jarry had been insistent that they head out right away. Maybe the thing in the bag was Crazy Jack's fuckbuddy, after all. "Spread out. I think we're close."

The squad moved through an eerie silence punctuated by the snap of Cathos Vremein rounds whupping past, and also by the distant booming of the Tirving's projectiles blasting the earth. "Got it, sergeant!" called one of the privates, off to the right, and within two minutes Collins had his perimeter set up.

"Okay, Wix. Get that bag open," he ordered, nodding down at the smoking remains at the bottom of the crater. "Doc! Get your shit ready." The medic had brought along a full haemo-sack along with all the other crap she had to carry, and Sergeant Collins did not envy her the weight. "Five minutes, people! I want to be on the way back in five fucking minutes!"

Wix was kneeling at the base of the crater, slashing the gel bag open as Collins leaned down to watch. "Anything?"

"Hard to tell." The corporal stood up, wiping his hands on his pants. "I can't get a pulse, but it's not like I'm really trying. Look how fucked up she is." He gestured helplessly. "Her legs... I mean, look at that shit."

"She's pretty cute, though." The two soldiers stared silently at the Fleet officer. "She looks familiar."

"I was gonna say. That's not the Captain, is it?" Wix had met her once, briefly, at an awards ceremony after he'd gotten his arm blown off. The woman in the rescue bag sorta looked like her, but it was tough to tell with all the damage.

"Of the Tirving? No way." Collins spat out some tobacco. "Why would the ship's captain be in a fucking rescue bag on this fucking rock? Think, man!"

"Just saying," Wix shrugged. He nodded to himself. "I'd fuck her."

"Oh, totally." The medic bustled up with her sack, yawning.

"You ready for me, sergeant?" She looked curiously down into the smouldering wreckage. "Think it's worth breaking out the Portable Surgeon? I mean, she's not alive, is she?"

"Major wanted a full medical workup. So." Collins glanced pointedly at his chrono. "Make it fast, Doc. I want to get us back in time for lunch."

"This should be quick," the medic chuckled. "There's not much I can do. Look at those legs."

"Oh, I'm looking, all right," Wix leered.

"Shut up, you fucking necrophiliac." Collins nodded. "Get to work, Doc."

The medic rolled her eyes. Typical. It wasn't enough that they were marooned on this fucked-up planet, getting shot at for nothing; now, they wanted her to bag up some Fleet corpse who'd made the mistake of falling out of the sky. They got you coming, and going, the medic reflected to herself as she knelt by the slashed rescue bag.

She just knew none of the infantrymen would help her carry this one back to the CP, either. She was getting fucked today, good and hard, she thought savagely as she felt for a pulse.

Dry. No lube.

* * *

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