Safe Harbor

Maria

Delithita was in Ops when the incoming transmission registered on the main communications system. She tracked it quickly, to a point beyond the rifts to the north. "Here we go again," she whispered to Ko'ah, gesturing at the system.

He grunted. "Distress call."

"Bad timing too. Right when we have that IB force incoming. We cannot spare anyone."

"We have to answer it at least."

Del sighed. "Yeah."

She opened a channel.

-----

A persistent beeping in Jehrico's cockpit awakened him. Instantly nausea took him and he vomited, or tried to; his stomach was already empty. "Concussion," he muttered to himself, trying to focus.

The comm system. He had to answer it. He coughed. "Jehrico here. I'm in a bad way, can you help?" He doubled over again, this time controlling his heaving stomach. That left the splitting headache and the broken arm to contemplate.

"This is Fantasma Colony. We're about to come under attack and can spare no vehicles. Can you make it about fifty kilometers?"

He groaned, looked at the status lights on his computer, those few that were still on. "Maybe..." The Basilisk's flexors were a wreck, but the vehicle could limp... "I can go maybe ten kilometers an hour."

"What're you in?"

"A banged-up Basilisk."

There was a long silence. Blackness spun through Jehrico's vision, and he nearly passed out on the console again.

The woman's voice returned a moment later. "Given supplies can you repair your vehicle?"

"Yeah, I think so. My knee joint is destroyed is the problem."

"We can launch a missile with a components package to your location but you will have to retrieve it."

"Yeah, yeah, send it..." So if he were to survive, he would do it on his own. Fair enough.

"It'll be there in twenty minutes. Sorry we can't retrieve you. We'll escort you the last five kilometers though."

"Got it. Out."

Jehrico passed out again, wondering if he would ever awaken.

-----

The thud of a massive object on the ground near his Basilisk jolted him back to consciousness awhile later. A bundle of Shrike missiles, bound with come kind of wire in a cylinder, were embedded in the ground fifty meters away. He fired up the Basilisk's engines, feeling the vehicle's unsteady gait as it limped, dragging its locked leg behind it. The sway made him nauseous again, but he endured it until he was close enough to reach the package.

He checked his suit, thankfully not damaged, and cracked the cockpit, stepping out into the blazing sunlight.

He made his way to the package, and unwrapped the coils of wire binding the six Shrikes together. In the center, there was a cylinder marked with a strange yellow-and-white logo he did not recognize. He popped the end of it off and found an array of metal parts packed in foam, which puffed outward, settling slowly to the baked stone of the surface.

He turned to the Basilisk and reached up to open the knee access panel. Fortunately, the damage, while significant, was rather neat and there was not a lot of melt or blast damage. Several flexor elements were slagged and a control node was destroyed. He unplugged the node and dropped it on the ground, then reached up to work the flexor elements loose. The metallic/ceramic composites were bundles of fiber, much like human muscle in appearance and function. These too he dropped on the ground and kicked aside.

He replaced the flexor elements with the new ones, hoping they were compatible. The new ones were more metallic and shot through with a variety of thin wires and optical elements, unlike any he had seen before. The control node was also different: the original was merely a box with a control screen on it. The new one was a lumpy, organic-looking device with a number of small access ports on it. He plugged it into the main power supply and wedged it into the available space, then inspected it. He stared at it for a few moments before realizing he needed to connect the optical fibers to the access ports. He did this, and the flexors lit up and threw a brief spark.

He returned to the Basilisk and checked his controls. The odd control node was at least functional, though it drew much more power than the original. He set the Basilisk in motion, and quickly realized the new node worked more quickly and efficiently than the old. The other, not entirely functional node in the other leg would not flex fast enough, so he had to limit the power sent to the new knee joint.

This done, he turned to the south, set the Bas at a slow but steady twenty klicks, and proceeded toward the colony his maps said did not exist.

-----

The Cybrid vehicle attacked him half an hour later: a big, fat, ugly monstrosity carrying rather more weapons than he wanted to deal with. His attempt to hide in a crater until the bulbous ball of ugly passed him failed: it came directly at him.

He ducked behind a small ledge of stone, preparing his weapons. He would only have a few seconds to duck and avoid fire, before his damaged Basilisk was cut to pieces by the vehicle's railguns.

The thing came over the ledge, and Jehrico swallowed nervously as he fired his EMP cannon. The little blue balls splashed off the shields. He kept firing, straining his already-damaged knee joints to turn past the onrushing behemoth and pass behind it for a few more seconds of safe fire.

The EMPs continued to strike the shields as the vehicle slowly began to turn to bring its weapons to bear on him. He closed his eyes as a blinding flash lit the cockpit up: railgun slugs slamming straight into the cockpit shields. Two more shots and he would be toasted.

He fired again, this time opening up with nanite cannon. The beam of green nanites slammed into the vehicle's leg and bounced before settling to the surface of the metal and beginning to eat their way inside.

He charged the Cybrid, hoping to put it off balance long enough to get off another two shots. He got one: the Cybrid slammed railgun slugs into his top EMP, slicing it clean off.

Another shot and the Cybrid vehicle toppled on its disintegrating leg. He got behind it, and took off at the Bas's top speed of thirty klicks, barely escaping the blinding fireball as the nanites reached the Cybrid's reactor.

That was close, he thought, as he headed south again.

-----

The jolting of weapons fire on his hull awakened him some time later. He looked out the cockpit to see a small vehicle with two heads firing small arms at him. He touched the console, seeing blood on his hands.

The bleeding from his broken arm had started again. Probably the rocking of the damaged vehicle had caused it.

He coughed, feeling blood bubbling in his throat. So he had internal bleeding as well. He wondered if he would survive the trip to the colony, if indeed it were actually there. Perhaps his clouded mind had generated a hallucination--

Best not to ponder such possibilities. Things were bad enough.

With a single EMP left he could hardly even damage the vehicle's shields. In desperation he spun to the right and headed for an outcropping of bedrock at his top speed. The Cybrid followed, firing small autocannon that dinged off his hull's shielding. Eventually, he knew, they would cut through the shields-- and him.

He reached the outcropping and circled it, then as soon as the Cybrid was out of sight he spun the Bas on the good leg and charged toward it.

The Cybrid saw him exactly as he smashed into it. Metal shrieked. The shields sparked once and died... on both vehicles.

Autocannon ripped into his Basilisk's headlamps, exploding them. His nanite cannon cycled and spat two streams at the enemy's head. He pushed his damaged vehicle forward again, grinding metal on metal. He fired again, and the other vehicle exploded.

It felt like he had shoved his way into a furnace. Radiation from the exploding reactor blistered his exposed skin. His eyes shut automatically, fast enough to save his sight, but barely. The skin of his eyelids blistered. The outside of the cockpit melted from the intense heat, somehow remaining intact.

Add radiation burns to the list to present to the doctor when I get there, he thought darkly, backing his vehicle away from the smoldering shell of the Cybrid warform.

-----

Halfway there his Basilisk's other leg gave out. He swore viciously as the Bas automatically came to a dead stop and would not move.

He got out and kicked the thing for lack of anything better to do. This done, he opened the access panel for the lower leg and looked inside.

It was quite a mess. Smoke poured from a burning flexor, the oxygen in the superconductor reacting with the magnesium to generate a burning blue flame underneath the main structural element. With a curse he vented coolant into the chamber, billowing clouds of bright blue gas into the surrounding space, hoping no trace of the toxic and caustic gas penetrated his suit.

The fire went out but the damage was done. The Basilisk was out of commission and there was nothing he could do about it.

He returned to the cockpit, glaring at the readouts. The legs were useless, completely. The engine was fine, ironically, and the reactor fed more power than the vehicle needed. But it wouldn't move.

He looked out and his stomach performed another unpleasant though creative maneuver.

There was a small Cybrid vehicle incoming, a buglike thing with long legs and a tiny, bulbous head.

He aimed at it carefully. It didn't see him, yet, but it would. He would get one shot, and no more.

The vehicle came closer. Four hundred meters. Three hundred. A tiny misstep as it turned to face him--

He fired.

An EMP blast lashed out and struck the vehicle on the upper leg. Two streams of nanites, ejected with considerable kinetic energy, struck the same point in the vehicle's weakened shields, punched through, and latched onto the leg. An instant later the leg locked up, sending the vehicle pinwheeling end-over-end. It tore itself apart on the hard stone, coming to rest nearly at his Basi's feet.

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