The Fleet Book Three: Break Through Read online

  * * *

  Catherine laid down the menu. “You could have let me order first!”

  Corin looked up, startled. “I waited. And you didn’t order, so I went ahead.”

  “And made it look as though I was just waiting to disagree with you. Honestly, Corin, just because we’re living together, doesn’t mean you get to run my life!”

  “I didn’t order for you.”

  “You could have offered. It just so happened that I did want the chicken Kiev, but I couldn’t say that after you had ordered it.”

  “There’s no crime in our liking the same things,” he protested.

  “Look, if you think you’re going to boss me around, you can just forget about this whole relationship!”

  “But I wasn’t trying to boss you around.”

  “Well, just see to it that you don’t.”

  * * *

  Corin finished reloading just as the deck lurched out from under him, and Dunscythe went cartwheeling across the chamber. All Valius could do was hang on for dear life as the gel he’d been applying flipped away off the bulkhead.

  “The Weasel’s taking evasive action!” the captain yelled. “Grab hold!”

  Marines grabbed for handholds wherever they could find them, and Corin grabbed an ankle and pulled himself up enough to grab someone else’s arm, which he used to pull himself up some more. Then he got a hand on the fire-control console and pulled himself to his feet. It was like climbing a mountain with a hundred-pound pack, but he made it, pulling himself up and reaching out to grab the lump of quivering gel.

  Then, suddenly, the bottom of the hill was its top, then its side; the pilot was tumbling to his left, and Corin slammed into the console. Pain seared through his hip, but he kept his holds on both console and explosive. Then he pushed himself away enough to get a foot against the console’s side, and he flipped around enough to grab the T-handle the Weasels used for dogging hatches. He inhaled sharply, stiffening his muscles against the pain in his side, and hauled himself up to slap the lump of plastic onto the bulkhead.

  “That’s it, Private,” the captain’s voice said in his earphones. “Pound it out, now!”

  Corin hit the lump twice before “up” suddenly became “sideways” again, and “down” was under his back. He hung on to the T-handle grimly, jackknifing to get a knee over one bar of it, and went back to pounding the gel.

  “Shape the sides, now,” the captain told him. “Make it a dome.”

  Corin pushed and prodded the material, wondering crazily if he was supposed to be a marine or a sculptor.

  “All right, now back off,” the captain snapped.

  Corin unhooked his knee and let his body swing out at right angles to the bulkhead, hanging by his hands. He checked below, saw empty wall, and let go.

  He dropped like a rock, absorbing the impact with bent knees, and grabbed a stanchion.

  Then the captain hit the button, and the hatch blew in.

  * * *

  “Look, I like Jody, and if I want to go out to lunch with her, I will!”

  “All right, all right!” Corin turned away, raising his hands. “So we don’t have a lunch date. So I’ll see you this evening.”

  “Not ‘this evening.’ I have a sales meeting.”

  “All right. I’ll be here when you come home.” Corin wondered if he really should be. He wondered if he should ever have moved in with her,

  “Oh, that’s right, just load me with the guilt trip!” Ellen stormed. “Poor little Corin, who just can’t stand to be home alone! Not a friend in the world—”

  “That’s enough,” Corin grated.

  “Nowhere nearly enough! Be a man, will you?”

  Corin turned, frowning. “I thought that’s what I was.”

  “You’d never know it at night.” Ellen marched over to the door and yanked it open. “Try to get some rest when you get home, will you? Maybe things will work better.”

  * * *

  “Down” ceased to exist; the explosion had rattled the Weasel pilot enough to make him let upon the acceleration. Either that, or he was bracing for combat ...

  “Get in there!” the captain shouted. He slipped a hand under Dunscythe’s boots and threw the marine like a javelin. He flew through the hole, but he hit the trigger button too soon, and the recoil bounced him back out again. Just in time. Weasel slugs were hailing around the hole in the bulkhead, with the odd one careering through to ricochet among the marines. They took cover fast, but one creamed Dunscythe’s knee on the way. He yelped and pulled himself into a ball as he bounced into a corner.

  “Just two of them left!” the captain shouted. “They can’t hold off seven of us forever.”

  But they could, and he knew it. They had one hell of a defensive position.

  Then the pilot went back to playing games—but this time, he outsmarted himself.

  Suddenly the new hole was “down.” Corin glanced about him, aimed his feet toward the gap, and let go. As he fell, he swung his rifle down to aim right in front of his toes. The Weasel let up on the acceleration, but Corin had a lot of momentum by the time he shot through the hole and hit the trigger, moving the rifle to make a cone.

  Slugs spattered around the pilot’s cabin as the recoil slowed him just enough for a safe landing.

  A safe landing on nothing! Nothing under him at all, nothing but blackness filled with stars. There was a huge hole in the hull with a console in front of it, complete with two Weasels in pressure suits, pointing rifles at him. Them or me, he thought crazily, and swept the stream of bullets toward them.

  A blur swept past him, and a spiderweb spread across the stars at his feet. Of course! It wasn’t a hole, just a huge view port to give the Weasels 270-degree vision. They were still primitives; they still wanted eye contact, in spite of their screens.

  He landed bending his knees to take up the impact against the solidity of the panoramic port that lay between him and the rest of the universe. He looked up to aim, just in time to see the Weasels go cartwheeling away in streamers of red from holes in their suits. He glanced up and saw two marine rifles poking through the hole in the bulkhead with helmeted heads behind them.

  Then he realized there was pain in his rib cage, swelling and swelling until it engulfed him, till all the world was a sheet of bright pain that darkened, and was gone ...

  * * *

  “But he’s my father, for crying out loud!”

  “But I want to go see Swan Lake.”

  “Well, if you’d just told me you had tickets for it, I could have—”

  “What, am I supposed to report every little thing to you? Are you going to try to keep tabs on every little move I make?”

  “Well, no, but I thought you were going to be out late again tonight, and—”

  “And you could go slinking off to whimper all about me to your father!” Ellen sighed and shook her head. “Honestly, Corin! You’ve got to grow up and get away from him some day.”

  “I’m pretty far now! I only see him when he’s in town, and that’s only once or twice a year.”

  “Real solid citizen, isn’t he?” Her lip curled. “Can’t even hold a job in one town.”

  “He’s a salesman!”

  “Yes, and after forty years at it, he still can’t make sales manager. You shouldn’t ever talk with that loser!”

  The rage surged up, but so did the shame—and with it came the sharp awareness that he shouldn’t pick on a woman. So he just stood there, growing pale and rigid.

  “Look,” she said, “if you know I’m right, just say so.”

  Corin turned on his heel and slammed out of the apartment.

  He went back the next day, packed his clothes in one suitcase and his books and knickknacks in another, and walked out. There was nothing left that mattered; he could buy a new computer easily enoug
h, and he wouldn’t miss any of the little presents she had given him.

  All that was left was two months’ rent on the lease. He sent it in a single check and didn’t tell her his new address.

  * * *

  The pain was back, but it was dull, remote. Corin found his oxy intake in his mouth; he spat it out and cranked his eyelids open.

  The captain’s face grinned down at him.

  Corin squeezed his eyes shut.

  “Back on duty, mister,” the captain said cheerfully. “I patched your suit ... and you, too.”

  “Set my ... ribs?” Corin opened his eyes again.

  “Taped them. It’ll hold you till we’re through here.”

  Corin looked down and saw a wide band around the abdomen of his suit. “What happened to the pain?”

  “An anesthetic.” The captain’s grin widened. “Plus five shots of adrenaline.”

  Just then, it bit. Suddenly, the mental fog cleared, and Corin felt fine, just fine, if feeling like a current was flowing through you was ‘fine.’ “I don’t need that much, Captain.”

  “So pay it back when the battle’s over.” The captain jerked his head toward the console. “For now, get over, there. Your buddies are having a great time blasting blips, but you’re the only one who talks Weasel.”

  Corin felt the elation begin. He grinned, set his feet under him, and pushed off.

  He grabbed the center of the console and swung himself down to stand behind Kank and Lisle. The screen was alive with green blips and red blips, and the two marines were each moving a set of cross hairs around the field, pressing trigger buttons and leaving bright spreading pools of yellow wherever they touched a green blip.

  The com grid chattered crazily in Weasel.

  “That’s for me,” Corin said.

  Kank looked up, irritated, then reluctantly moved aside to make room for him. Corin swung himself down onto the odd contour that served as a Weasel chair.

  The chattering went on.

  Corin could just make it out; it translated roughly as, “What the hell is wrong with you, Frigate Thirteen?” He pressed the mike patch and shrilled back, “Control system malfunction. Beware! Move clear! Directional control system malfunction! Fire control system malfunction!”

  On the right-hand side of the screen, a larger blip was appearing, and in the view port, a disk was swelling as Lisle nudged his joystick—the Khalian cruiser, such as it was. Corin realized he couldn’t have been out for more than a few minutes. If he could just stall the Weasels for a little longer ...

  “Sheer off! Sheer off!” the Weasels were chanting frantically.

  “Control system malfunction!” Corin yammered back, watching Lisle center his cross hairs on the biggest blip. “We have lost steering capacity! Acceleration is locked at full thrust! We are attempting to regain control! Stand by!”

  “Cease firing!” the Weasels answered in a manic gibber.

  “We cannot,” Corin answered, and Lisle hit the button on his joystick. Corin went on, “Guns are locked at full fire. We are trying to cut the circuit, but it will not respond.”

  The laser beam was on its way, lancing out at the speed of light toward the cruiser, invisible where there was no atmosphere, no dust. Corin locked his sights onto the cruiser too, and hit his button, staring at the expanding disk of the cruiser, hoping, hoping ...

  The next Weasel phrase translated roughly as, “They are mad, or their ship is!” And another gibber answered, “They must be destroyed.”

  Then light blossomed on the side of the cruiser.

  * * *

  “But you were so right!” Corin stormed, turning away from Nancy. “Everything was perfect while we were dating! You were so beautiful, and the music wrapped us up, and the two of us were all there was, just the dancing and your eyes—”

  “Stop it!” she screamed. “Do you know what you’re doing to me? Stop it!”

  He turned back to look at her—eyes red and swollen, tangled hair hiding half of her pudgy face, bathrobe a little too far open, showing just a glimpse that was supposed to be tantalizing but was flat now, and sagging.

  “Your friends would be my friends, you said.” He moved back toward her. “And my friends would be your friends.”

  “If you think I’d be seen in public with that bunch of superannuated sociopaths—”

  “All right, so we won’t! Do you realize how long it’s been since I’ve even talked with Sean or David?”

  “Aw, poor little boy! Not a friend in the world!”

  He reddened. “Not yours, certainly.”

  “You don’t think I’d let them see me like ... this!”

  “Why not?” he flared. “You let me see you like this.”

  “But you’re my husband!”

  “So I deserve less than your friends?”

  “You should be ashamed to let my friends see what you’ve turned me into.”

  “Oh, so I made you drink like a fish? I made you quit going to the health spa?”

  “Yes! And I just can’t face them now.”

  “I won’t ask you to,” he sighed, turning away. “But I did want to take you out again. We used to have such a good time.”

  “While you still had a job, sure,” she snapped. “And you asked me to give up mine ...”

  “I didn’t ask you to!”

  “You did.” Her lips thinned. “I distinctly remember you sitting there on the sofa nibbling my ear and saying, ‘Give it up, honey. I’ll take care of us both.’ ”

  “I didn’t! We were sitting there on the sofa, all right, and I was nibbling your ear, but you were saying, ‘Look, now that you’ve got such a good job, I don’t really need to keep working, do I?’ And I said—”

  “I did not! How dare you accuse me of lying! Just because you couldn’t keep your ‘good job.’ ”

  “Look, the company went broke!”

  “I should have realized you’d choose a loser!”

  He looked up slowly, eyes narrowing. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  She gave him an acid smile. “It takes one to know one.”

  He was beside her in a single stride, fists clenched, eyes glaring.

  She flinched back, hands upraised. “Go ahead, hit me! I don’t care!”

  He almost did, just because she had said she didn’t care. But he caught himself in time and stormed out the door.

  He always did that. He always wound up doing that, somehow, whenever they had a fight—always going out the door.

  Some time, about two hours later, he came out of a morose alcoholic fog to look up and see a sign that said JOIN THE FLEET! with a picture of a marine in front of a spaceship.

  He looked around and realized that it was the only lighted shop window left on the street; even the bar down the block had turned off its sign.

  So he went in—just to get warm, he told himself. It was the only warmth in sight.

  He never went back. He’d never even been within five light-years of Earth since then. But his paycheck went to her every month, and his letters went out every time they touched a Fleet base. She never answered them, though—until he received the letter from her lawyer with the divorce papers.

  * * *

  The beam didn’t show in space, but its impact did. And Corin was one with the two sets of cross hairs: one with the particle beams that were burning through to the cruiser’s control systems, and one with the torpedoes that sped toward it with warheads of nuclear death. He could finally kill everything in sight with a clear conscience—ships, Weasels, Khalians, bosses, lovers, wife, sister, mother! But Corin could see the sudden snowlike hail of blips that were torpedoes, moving outward from a dozen Khalian destroyers like hate and the consuming hunger that women called love, and coming finally to destroy him, as he had always known they would, to purge him in the fire o
f annihilation, but too slowly this time, too slowly ...

  Then the largest blip on the screen turned yellow, and in the view port, the expanding disk mushroomed, swelling in a moment to double its diameter. The five shots of adrenaline had Corin at threshold anyway, teetering on the edge, and the sight of that fiery blossom blew him over into the sheer, blinding ecstasy of fulfillment, the fulfillment of destruction. As he saw Lisle’s cross hairs traversing downward to the swarm of torpedoes. and as he moved his own joystick to follow, he knew they couldn’t ever get them all, knew that even if they did, they couldn’t stop the lasers that must even now be burning through the hull to crisp them all.

  He hoped a torpedo would make it first.

  Then one did; its warhead blew up in their power plant, converting their fusion-generator into an H-bomb and, in the instant of life left to him in the midst of the nuclear flame, the consciousness that had been Corin knew it had all been worth it.

  THE OMNI SCREEN was filled with a close-up of the disemboweled horse. Panning back, the scene encompassed a number of similarly treated humans. The effect had been carefully calculated to enrage the estimated two billion Earth citizens who were watching the special Fleet omnicast. The scene faded slowly, lingering just a bit too long, a move calculated to make the omni-conditioned audience even more uncomfortable. The crisply uniformed figure that rose in its stead was as reassuring as the earlier scene had been alarming. His craggy good looks and measured tones inspired almost instant confidence. The crossed-ships emblem of a pilot glinted below a line of decorations. Such a hero would not let you down, or lie.

  “Never before has the Alliance faced so vicious an enemy,” the Fleet officer explained for those too numb to have understood the earlier atrocity shots. “One with so little regard for sentient life.”