Dry, No Lube Ch. 02: Pixy's Choice

A deathly second, and Lim was frowning down. "Is that okay with the sergeant-major, ma'am?"

"It will be soon," she muttered. "Prelaunch sequence, Mr Amisuul, normal power. None of this Shitfuck bullshit." She grimaced, seeing pain ahead. "Not yet."

"Uh, ma'am?" Amisuul was troubled. "We're not going to reach escape velocity with all the ordnance aboard."

"We're not trying to reach escape velocity, Mr Amisuul," Pixy snapped. "Prelaunch sequence. Normal power. I'll be back." She flew down the ladder into the crew bay Fleet-fashion, sliding down like the ladder was a fire-pole, and used the low gravity to bound toward the exterior hatch in a few long swinging steps. By the time she bounced out the hatch and her boots crunched into the dirt, her plan was made.

She looked around for Sergeant-Major Kong and saw nothing but scurrying Tygons, unwieldy in the low gravity. "Where's Kong?" she demanded of the first soldier she found. He blinked back with those weird yellow eyes they had.

"How the fuck should I know? With the weapons, probably, on the left." The scaly little green Tygon bounded on, her pulse-rifle in hand, and Pixy picked her way across thick, sawlike grass in the fading light from the hatchway. Dawn was coming, but not yet; her lungs coughed, troubled by her first natural air in months.

"Sergeant-major!" she called, and something answered from off to her right, close by. She stumbled through the night. "Where you at, sergeant-major?"

"Lieutenant Pfeiffer?" Old Kong seemed more surprised than angry. "What do you need, ma'am? I'm busy."

"Me too." She took a deep breath. "I'm lifting in five minutes, sergeant-major. Get everyone aboard."

"Fuck you, ma'am." The voice was low and bitter, contemptuous. "I'm not leaving my guys."

"I'm not either," Pixy replied at once, "and I don't have time to argue about it. Get everyone aboard; lift in five." She spun and made her way back toward the light of the hatch, hoping they'd believe her, hoping they'd board, but absolutely certain what she had to do and not all that interested in hearing an argument about it.

Her mind was functioning well, she was relieved to see: a whirling mathematical computer that already had orders ready for her to give Amisuul as she climbed up the ladder to the flight deck. "Anything new on the proximity reading?"

"Same. No change in the closure rate." Amisuul swallowed. "What are we going to do?"

"We're going to do math." She settled into her seat. "Figure out how much fuel we'll need to achieve escape velocity at half our current mass, plus the weight of the platoon."

He stared over at her. "Why?"

She snatched up her abacus. "Because I said so." Then she plunged herself into her own calculations, and by the time she had them ready the sergeant-major was climbing red-faced onto the flight deck.

"I'm in charge here, ma'am, not you." Pixy swung around and opened her mouth to speak, but that was the moment that the tanks to the north came into range. The shuttle quaked as Sergeant Lim opened fire, and Kong's head snapped upward. "What the fuck is he shooting at?"

Pixy sighed. "Neither of us is in charge, sergeant-major. The fucking Flasbards are in charge. We've got armor closing in from the north, a swarm of dismounts closing from the east, and your poor desperate P/E fuckers in between. Are our guys loaded and ready to go?"

"No," he snarled. "They're securing the perimeter as I ordered them to do."

Pixy took a deep breath. "I'm launching in two minutes. I intend to move the shuttle to Cooper and his men, and buy time against the tanks as I do."

Kong shook his head. "No you're not. You'll use too much fuel; the shuttle's too heavy. We won't be able to get back to the ship."

"Yes we will." She raised an eyebrow and nodded over to where Amisuul was powering up the shuttle. "Ninety seconds, sergeant-major. Your men can live or die, but it'd be a pity to leave them here when it's so easy for them to simply come aboard." The sky was lightening outside, and Lim rocked five more rounds northward. Pixy shrugged. "Time's a-wasting."

"Goddamn you, ma'am," Kong spat, and then he ducked back down to organize the withdrawal.

"Is, uh, is this going to work?" Amisuul was frowning.

Pixy shrugged. "Do I ever know?" The decision was made, and she was trembling now with nothing to do for another minute or so. The shuttle was shuddering steadily as Lim blasted away at his distant targets, and now the sky was streaking with desultory return fire. "So, here's the thing," she went on, her voice tightly controlled. "It's going to take full throttle just to get off the ground, and to keep from crashing we'll need constant downward thrust and enough forward velocity to overcome that. So I'll need you to keep an eye on the fuel mixture and play with it."

"Play with it?"

"Sure. The throttle will be useless, so the mixer will be all we've got. What kind of fuel requirement did you come up with?"

Amisuul checked his abacus. "Uh, quarter of a million liters of LOX and another hundred thousand of betakerosene."

"Let me know if we get within ten percent of that beta reading; that's most of what we'll be burning." She could outgas the excess LOX, she knew, if she got the chance. She shrugged. "We'll move as far east as we can. Sergeant Fraze!" It was a shout over her shoulder. "Tell me when the Tygons are all loaded!"

"Another fifteen seconds, ma'am." He'd caught on to her plan with admirable speed. He peeked in from the hatch. "Should I bother calling Cooper and telling him the plan?"

"If you were him, and you saw the shuttle coming your way, what would you conclude?" She shrugged. "Call if you have the time, but they're running for their lives. They won't be listening. Is Nitz ready to receive casualties?"

"Yeah." He spat out some stim. "They said they're bringing three cranials and a guy with no legs. The rest are walking wounded." He shrugged. "We'll do what we can, ma'am."

"Sure." She sounded the launch alarm. By this time, the distant tanks were starting to figure out the range. "We're going to get annihilated if we stay here any longer. Are they loaded?"

The crew chief bawled a question over his shoulder, and apparently got the answer he wanted. "All set, ma'am."

"Cool." She took a breath, but now she was doing something again, the fear flying away, and she nodded at Amisuul. "Time to go, fuckhead."

"Ma'am." The Tygon licked his lips.

The Mark III shuttle was not designed for any kind of atmospheric flight, but Pixy knew better; enough thrust, and even a brick could fly. She fed power to the thrusters, feeling the ship rise, her hand on the right attitude jets to compensate for whenever Lim fired; she planned to move once she hit twenty precarious feet, balancing on the bottom thrusters. She smiled wryly; their path over the grasslands would be charred for decades. She wondered idly whether there were any houses in their path, but it wouldn't matter soon. "So, remember: tell me when we hit 110,000 liters of betakerosene, then I'll set down no matter where we are."

"Aye aye, ma'am." His eyes were wider than she'd ever seen them. This was not what anyone was paying him for. "I don't think this is going to work, ma'am."

"I don't care at this point," Pixy muttered. The craft rocked hard now whenever Sergeant Lim fired, the heavy turret guns nearly capsizing the whole shuttle. "Lim! Tell me before you shoot," she called over the intertube.

Lim paused, then came back deadpan. "You sound like Corporal Nitz."

"Everyone's a fucking comedian," Pixy groused. The whole ship was vibrating, the planet a mass of flames beneath them. "Are the proximity sensors working?"

Amisuul swallowed and tried to make sense of the scope. "Yeah. Two kilometers."

Pixy raced to control her thoughts, working hard to make sure she sounded coherent. "Mr Amisuul, I don't want to burn Cooper's guys. I need a course that'll clear them." They'd see her coming, obviously, and try to avoid the flamethrowers shooting from beneath the shuttle, but Pixy felt like she needed to swerve anyway.

"Sure." He eyeballed it. "Two degrees north."

"Cool," she muttered. "I'm going to pass them, then set down right on top of the fucking Flasbards."

"Oh," Amisuul said vaguely. "Er, they're in range of my guns now. Should I fire?"

Pixy spared him an exasperated glance. "This is what I was talking about a couple weeks ago. How you need to pick up your duty performance. Common sense, shitwit."

"Sorry." He brought up his targeting sphere, a smaller version of what he was used to aboard the ship, and he licked his lips as he got his bearings. "Firing," he called, and then Pixy had more recoil to contend with, the heavy bolts crossing the 2,000 meters in an eyeblink, smashing Flasbards high into the air. Pixy thought she could see Cooper's little command now, moving back in a pair of exhausted infantry wedges, one fighting while the other ran. She could make out pale faces pointing up at her, mouths wide and black in disbelief. The shuttle rocked again, though whether with incoming or outgoing fire hardly mattered now. "Beta's good."

"Right."

"Ma'am," came Kong's gruff voice from behind her, "should I be doing anything?"

"You should be shutting up." Ninety more seconds, tops; she was gazing down at the infantry now, at a small and energetic figure running around, screaming, pointing, looking nothing like the broad-chested Cooper. "I think they're stopping." The sergeant-major lunged forward and peered out, staring.

"Yeah. They're forming a perimeter." He sounded relieved, but with Amisuul blowing great swathes of Flasbards apart with every surging blast of his guns, he should. She felt his hand, huge on her shoulder, trembling with suppressed excitement. "Ma'am, how are we going to lift?" He was hissing, nervous, and she realized he already knew the answer and didn't want her to confirm it. She made sure she was hovering steadily, cast a glance at Amisuul's betakerosene gauge, and spared Kong a full, even look.

"Sergeant-major," she said, her voice under harsh control, "go make sure all your people are strapped in. Tight."

"Fuck," he bit out, but he gripped her shoulder once, fiercely, and then he was gone. Pixy stared back down to where the infantry were stopped at last, the energetic little figure dancing around, positioning people. Small arms fire started to crackle up at the shuttle now, but the armor was designed for orbital buffeting; anything short of a phased pulse-launcher was as useless as a thrown pebble. Lim had stopped firing, the tanks at last out of range.

"Fuel?"

Amisuul was grinning into his target globe now, raining ordnance down at the fleeing enemy. He paused and checked. " Shit. Still almost 200k." He flashed a grin. "We're good."

"Okay." Pixy's throat was bone-dry, sounding hoarse. "I'm going to do an oblique landing, straight into that crowd over there." She pointed to the retreating Flasbards, getting the maneuver straight in her mind, mentally rehearsing the moves. "Hard-landing alarm."

She waited until the whooping chimes tinkled through the shuttle, and then slipped hard to the right and opened her thruster vents, the fire wild now as the shuttle plowed toward the ground, and all she saw now when she looked past Amisuul were flaming, desperate Flasbards disappearing under the shadow of her spacecraft. She ignored it; she couldn't hear the screams, after all, and they were the enemy. The shuttle came to rest with a softer jolt than she'd expected, and Pixy was ready with the orders. "Engine shutdown. Angle your guns to starboard." She threw a few switches, then it was time for the intertube. "Fraze! Hatch check and open! Get Cooper aboard." Up, then, to the turret. "Lim! Range?"

"4.7 kilometers." She heard through the microphone as he cleared his throat. "They've halted. They know what's coming. They know our FPF burns everything for four klicks."

"Does it." Pixy was still certain she'd made the right decision, but it wasn't worth worrying about now. She'd done her homework yesterday; she knew it would take fifteen minutes to jettison all the space-based munitions, but the tanks wouldn't wait that long before they figured out what was going on.

There was a quicker way to get rid of the space-based munitions, after all.

She smelled sweat and burned metal now as the infantrymen clambered aboard, shouts and gasps and sobs rising through the hatch. She brooded, watching as the Flasbards burned to death in their dozens, wanting the order to come from the Army even though she'd made it inevitable anyway. The voice at the top of the ladder wasn't the one she hoped for, but after seeing the moving figure forming that perimeter it was the one she'd expected. "Lieutenant Pfeiffer."

Pixy swiveled her chair and put on a grim smile. "Lieutenant Mozz." The fierce little woman stood swaying in the hatchway, dripping sweat and blood, hard-bitten and bitter as ever. "I take it you're in charge."

"Cooper's gone." She brushed her hair out of her eyes and licked her lips. "Mostly, anyway; we got some of his brain." She glared hard at the two Fleet officers. "I suppose you need a Shitfuck order."

"Well... in a way." Pixy stared hard at Mozz, waiting.

"Tanks are moving again, ma'am." Sergeant Lim sounded detached from up above. "They'll be in range in... ninety seconds? Less?" He let off two rounds, and the shuttle lurched.

"Proximity sensor's back up." Amisuul was still studying his globe, but what he was seeing was further out. "More armor, I think." He squinted. "Fuck. Missile launchers."

Pixy let that hang in the air. She was prepared to activate the FPF herself, but there were still a few seconds. "Lieutenant?"

There were many theories about using space-based FPFs offensively.

Mozz looked dazed. Her eyes traveled to the FPF buttons, shining blue and green on the panel. "Wait for us to get strapped in, ma'am," she said unhappily, "and then go ahead. Shitfuck."

Pixy nodded. "Two minutes." The tanks would be firing by then, though at extreme range. "Get down, Sergeant Lim," Pixy called. "Set your guns for automatic on a ten-second delay, then get secured."

"Yes ma'am."

The two minutes passed slowly, Pixy hunched over and trembling the entire time, feeling like she was going to vomit all over her boots. The first tank round struck at Lim's predicted ninety seconds, bouncing off the armor with a sharp ringing noise, but then Sergeant Fraze was on the intertube. "All set, Lieutenant."

Pixy recovered, sitting up and strapping herself mechanically in. "Cool," she muttered, and then with one harsh, neutral glance into Amisuul's eyes, Pixy Pfeiffer reached deliberately out and slapped the blue button.

* * *

Ruin, red flowing ruin, the ground outside turning to asphalt and then glass, with shuttle welds cracking and rivets popping everywhere on the flight deck. A deafening rumble, suddenly lessened, a silent scream from Amisuul, and then... nothing.

That's how Pixy woke up now most nights, sweating in her bunk, unable to comprehend how she'd survived. How any of them had survived, really; the Shitfuck had been so much more powerful than she'd calculated, even with her faith that the abacus had bridged the wobbly line between theoretical physics and the real world.

They'd stumbled from the charred shuttle in shock, all of them in G-suits against the breaches in the hull, with Pixy throwing controls out of blind habit. It was unexpectedly difficult to fly while deaf, and even worse when nobody else aboard could hear anything either, but at least the backup systems had functioned well enough to let her get them lined up with the docking ring. Then she'd waited, slumped over the control yoke, watching space pass out the cracked viewport, until a hand on her shoulder had roused her; and that was good, because she'd known there was no way in hell her depleted wits would have been able to get from the docking ring to the Main Bay.

Captain Reye said something she couldn't hear, but his hands lifting her out of the chair were clear enough; Chief della Sera guided her gently down the ladder off the flight deck while Reye, suited, took the seat to transfer the shuttle to the Bay himself. For a moment Pixy was confused; why not just jettison the damn thing and forget about it?

But no: engineers and techs would want to take a good look at it now. It was not a daily occurrence, a shuttle surviving a space-based FPF under atmosphere and still managing to lift.

Dr January had none of the equipment needed to properly calibrate the implants, so Klonmyre had learned to keep her voice down after Pixy woke up. It would take forty days for the cloned cochleas to be ready, and Fleet had graciously offered to grow them for free; they did that sometimes, when you'd done something really great. On top of that, Pixy had caught sight of a medal pinned to her pillow when she'd awoken, the silver cross with the red ribbon.

The same one she already had.

But there were rumors the Army wanted to give her something too, and Captain Nyhre had been very solicitous despite the unfortunate accident that had befallen his two terraformers. None of that mattered to Klonmyre, though. "You need to quit doing this shit," she said again. It felt like she'd been saying that hourly, if not more often, since Pixy had made her shaky return to duty. Now they were half a day from the Basin, and she hadn't stopped. "You don't get to keep fucking around with your life, ma'am."

"I disagree," Pixy replied loftily, still too loud. "Where else is the fun in life?" And Klonmyre had given her a very grown-up glare in response, but dwelling on the past was not Pixy Pfeiffer's way. Except in the night, when she woke up to the dreams of the silver rain of cracking welds and realized they were only memories. "I need to break up the monotony. There's nothing all that exciting about being Acting First Officer aboard a GP service vessel."

But even that was ending, her replacement already waiting at the Basin. Along with a deal involving a half-dozen fluid adapters Reye said he needed, in return for a quarter-ton of dried fruit cocktail and a dose of oral stimulation. And if that sounded like a bad deal, that was because Amisuul had set it up with the Dawlish just before they'd launched, his last foray as acting supply officer. And, with him in even worse shape than she was, she was already getting herself prepared; all you could hope for at times like this was that the Dawlish had a supply officer who could give reasonably competent oral.

Though Amisuul had been cagey about whether she'd be giving or receiving. But she'd figure it out.

* * *

When the Army sent down a survey mission much later, fast and secret, they found nothing but a molten-rock crater and a few pulverized traces of carbon-based DNA. A large puddle of fused metal, jumbled with ceramic armor and the fragments of the tank guns, was found 4,645 meters north of the center of the crater. The primary radiation counter jumped off the scale even months after the event.

A report recommended that space-based FPF was not advisable on the ground. Common sense backed this up.