Space Cadets (10 page)

Bleeder system

I followed Rick and Captain Wilkomen out of the skin bay. They told me two of my fellow cadets are already onboard, waiting for me. I don’t care about them though. I just want to take a look at the Bleeder planet and see what we’re up against.

When I walked into the command room and saw the monitor, I was disappointed. The alien planet was not on it.

I asked Rick, “Where’s the Bleeder planet?”

“We had to set up on the outskirts of their star system. They’re surrounded by their version of a Kuiper belt. We can blend in back here with the rocks and ice until we’re ready to attack. There are three more warships expected to rendezvous with us in the next two days.”

That sucked. I’d been led to believe we’d be in a fight very soon.

Danny and Becky sidled over and paid their condolences. It was odd because the dead person they were referring to was me. I played along just to be nice. Then they marveled over the kick-ass A.C.E. skin I now owned for life, whatever that meant. The government had probably declared me officially dead.

If I dwelt on it too long I’d start to break down so I asked about the alien ship that the Conquistador had captured over a month ago. “What have you guys discovered about the Bleeder ship and its four occupants?”

The last time I was on the Conquistador I was just a punk kid. Now I was a bonafide hero, decorated as such, so I shouldn’t have been surprised when the captain addressed me personally.

“We were able to trace back its point of origin to this region of space. They tampered with it but they ignored deleting their home planet’s position. That has us worried. That’s why we’re waiting for back-up.”

“Is that all you found?”

“They found some other info but I don’t care about that stuff. I just needed some coordinates to plug in. You can check below decks with the technicians working on it. The bodies are all rotted and stinky but the ship is apparently still revealing minute secrets about its dead occupants.

Techs

Rick warned me not to go down and check with the tech guys. Apparently they’d been shut in with the alien tech and rotting corpses for over a month. It was a self imposed shut in though. These egg heads were so enthralled by each new discovery that they refused to leave in case something else was discovered while they were gone.

What it had done was to make them creepy and physically ruined. Even the women had sweat-matted hair and awful body odor. Luckily I didn’t have a real nose but the mech detected all the odor levels and then transferred the data back to me in a form that was still pretty close to real scent.

I whispered to Rick, “Can you weld my nose shut?”

He said, “I’ll put them each in a headlock and then you run up and shampoo their hair.”

I laughed until one of the bleary eyed techs shot us a dirty look.

He traipsed over to us and said, “I apologize for our hygiene but we’re trying to win a war.”

“Of course,” I said apologetically.

Rick just laughed.

The tech’s nametag said his name was Walter Peterson. Same last name as me. I sure hoped he wasn’t my real dad.

He said, “We don’t have much to tell you about their destination yet. They cooked those circuits so we might never know. But we’re certain they came from this star system. What’s odd is that there is no return course plotted in anywhere. We don’t know where they were going but we know they had no plans to come back.”

“That’s weird.”

“It gets weirder. We were able to glean some info from the ship’s log right before it ran from us. The aliens didn’t make the decision to run; the ship was programmed to flee.”

“Why?”

“I have no idea. The tech is too foreign to get much further than that. But come inside and see what we found.”

We followed him into the spherical craft. He showed us a small room we hadn’t noticed upon first entry and then he pointed up at the ceiling. It just looked like really huge empty racks to me and he confirmed my suspicions with, “Those racks are empty.”

Rick said sarcastically, “Fascinating.”

“We think they were once loaded with weaponry. The chemical and electrical signals we get in here are off the charts. If we can decipher them we can figure out what kind of weapons they’re using.”

“So where are the weapons?”

“I don’t know, but judging by the size of those racks, I’m just glad they’re not here.”

Just then the captain’s voice came over the loudspeakers, faint because we were inside the little alien ship. “All hands to their stations. We’ve come under attack.”

Bleeder warship

Rick and I raced up to the command room. I expected chaos but apparently Captain Wilkomen had a well run ship despite the fact that he was new to the position. On the monitor was a single projectile coming at us at an alarming rate, and behind it was the biggest fucking spaceship I’d ever seen.

The Conquistador fired with all guns and blew the projectile up. We knew from the sheer size of the explosion that we’d be getting rocked by a shockwave from hell and sure enough, we did. The ship’s thrusters worked to keep it facing towards the alien ship which wasn’t that hard considering it filled most of the sky.

Captain Wilkomen said, “Alright troopers, we’ll keep them distracted and you guys get inside that big bastard and give them hell.”

I was about to say,
you can’t be serious
, but Rick grabbed me under the arm and called over my two fellow cadets.

“It’s better that there are only a few of us. They won’t see us coming.”

If I had pants or an ass, I would’ve shit myself.

Danny mumbled, “I don’t know how to fly a skin and neither does Becky.” If he thought that excuse would get him out of this suicide mission he was way wrong.

“Well then I hope you’re quick learners. Let’s go.”

I took another peek at the monitor and saw that two more of our warships were out here with us now. They must have just arrived. Even with three warships, I wasn’t sure what our chances were against that huge thing but three was better than one.

Space Walk

Rick said, “I’ve got Danny, you take Becky, ok?” Then he grabbed Danny around the waist and shot out of the airlock like a cannonball.

I wanted to say something like,
no way
, or,
I can’t do this
, but Becky was standing right next to me and I didn’t want to worry her. I’d only taken a skin out once before but I was already pretty adept at maneuvering it.

I said, “Activate flight controls. Manual control,” and my legs cinched together and I floated a few inches from the deck. I grabbed Becky’s mech around the waist and used my mind to command the unit.

I shot out of the airlock too. It’s not easy to see anything in space but when you’re so far from the nearest star its damn-near impossible. Becky somehow spotted Rick and Danny so I made my way in their direction. They hit the hull hard but Rick used his magnetic boots to get purchase. Danny followed suit right before me and Becky landed a few feet from them.

Rick’s wrist hinged open and a small pilot light was glowing blue in his hollow forearm. He aimed it at the hull and the flame grew.
Sparks lit up the black but no matter how long he stayed in one spot he just couldn’t cut through the hull. What the hell was this thing made of?

He flipped his wrist shut and said, “Jack, grab Becky again and on the count of three we’ll kick off. Then once we’re fifty feet away, fire a popper at this thing. Try to watch for my signal. Two Poppers have a better chance than just one.”

I nodded, grabbed Becky again and watched him raise one finger, then two, and finally three. I shot away from the hull with Becky in my arms. Rick had Danny just like before. I watched the proximity read-out in my visor tick back to thirty feet and then I glanced at Rick.

Only then did I realize I didn’t have a weapon on me. How idiotic could I be? But then, just in time, I remembered Rick had told me he fitted my skin with an arsenal. I said, “Give Jack his guns,” and my forearms opened up, little guns popping out of each. I had a gun on each shoulder and even though I couldn’t see it, I knew I had a head turret too.

My chest cavity opened and I gingerly reached inside, coming out with a PQ5000. I aimed it at the hull just in time to see Rick’s gun light up. I fired less than a second later.

Both Poppers hit the same spot and exploded at the same time. The shockwave made us tumble away but we regained control pretty easily. I wasn’t sure how to feel when I saw the gaping hole in the hull. It meant we’d succeeded but it also meant we had to go through it.

Contact

One of our fellow warships must not have gotten the memo about us sneaking over because it let loose with its weapons.

Luckily the alien craft was so immense; none of the explosions affected us, or the alien ship for that matter. A single missile shot out of the alien ship and like the one before it, was easily shot down.

That didn’t make any sense to me. This ship was designed to wage war. Guns jutted out of every orifice. Its hull was three times thicker than was necessary for regular space travel. It was designed to withstand explosive impacts from weaponry. So why was it acting so weak? Maybe it was toying with us?

Before I could get lost pondering what it all meant, Rick was waving for me to enter the gaping hole in the ship.

There was some debris floating out of the hole but nothing I recognized. By the time I reached it, there was no push-back from escaping atmosphere which meant it had all been evacuated from the breached compartment.

EMP

There was a single tall door inside the breached compartment. Beside it was a recessed area specifically designed for the lean alien hand to go inside. Maybe it was an identification device to ensure only aliens could get through. Maybe it was just a handle. But there were wires dangling from it and an actual handle, newly installed and primitively welded onto the door itself.

Rick snatched the handle and turned it. The door opened to a tiny airlock that we all barely fit inside. He closed the door and then opened the next one.

The ship was even more alien than the little one we’d already captured.

To our surprise, it was utterly deserted.

I said to Rick, “We need to leave Danny and Becky here. We forgot to get them weapons.”

Rick shook his head. “It was not our job to make sure they had weapons. They’re Marines; they should be able to do that for themselves.”

Becky said defensively, “Hey, we’re only cadets. We’ve never been in combat before.”

Rick said, “Do you think the Bleeders give a shit about that?”

Becky hung her head.

“Just hold this airlock until me and Jack return. It might be our only means of escape.”

The corridor we were standing in went as far as the eye could see to the left and to the right. Before we had to make a decision which way to go, a door just twenty feet from us opened up and these tall, alien mech skins rushed out of it. They moved awkwardly and yet their presence was frightening. Before any of us could react, one of them chucked something cigar shaped at our feet. I watched it open up like a prickly flower and then I felt my consciousness waver, like I might faint. The alien mechs disappeared back inside the doorway.

I turned to Rick and then I saw Danny and Becky’s mech skins fall over.

Rick said, “Fuck. They’re using EMP’s. They killed your friends.”

When your consciousness is inside a mech skin and the mech is destroyed, then so is your consciousness. Danny and Becky still had bodies back at camp but there was no longer a human being to be put back inside them. The human being had been killed by the EMP. Rick and I were spared because of the extra shielding he’d installed.

I yelled out, “You mother fuckers,” and was just about to rush into that room and slaughter every last one of those alien bastards when I heard a human voice call out, “Hey, what did you say?”

Rick said, “What the hell did
you
say? Are you human or a Bleeder with a translator?”

“We’re human. Are you human?”

“Yes.”

Cousins

After several minutes of back and forth, we finally decided they weren’t lying to us. They came out first, hands raised, weapons down.

There were three of them. The guy in the lead came right up to us and asked, “Where the hell did you get those robots from? How are you controlling them?”

Only then did I realize that those guys weren’t running mechs but were wearing armored suits. It was difficult to know how much mech each one had at its disposal. But it hardly mattered. If we’d have fought them, we’d have crushed them pretty easily.

There was a silence as each side tried to figure out what was going on. The lead guy in the weird armor said, “You’re from Earth, aren’t you?”

“So?”

“No, I mean, you came from Earth recently, right?”

“Yes. We came to destroy the Bleeders before they made good on their promise to kill us.”

“Well, we were born on Bleeder. Our ancestors were among the humans abducted from Earth two hundred years ago.”

Rick said, “No way. We assumed you were all long dead.”

“They bred us to experiment on us. That was their biggest mistake.”

Rick interrupted, “Hold on. Let me tell my ship what’s going on so they can stand down.”

The guy said, “Good, because we barely know how to operate this stupid ship.”

Rick said, “Yeah, I could tell.”

I looked down at the empty mech skins at my feet and then I took a step forward and punched the leader in the abdomen. He doubled over in pain.

Rick laughed and said, “You’re doing nothing for relations between our people Jack. I’m sorry your friends died but it was an honest mistake. They thought we were Bleeders.”

I didn’t care about excuses. I felt a little better already.