Orphan's Triumph

SEVENTY-FOUR

I HAD STUDIED THE SCORPION’S modified weapons console for hours on the flight in. The normal controls to deploy weapons rearward, from the stinger pod, remained unchanged but were useless with no weapons in the pod.

Three simple switches had been added to deploy the Silver Bullet munition. The first was a red one-finger toggle that armed the munition and opened the rear hatch. The second toggle, labeled “Deploy,” ejected the weapon. The third was a removable wedge, shaped like a grip exerciser or an oversized spring clothespin, labeled “Abort.”

I flicked the first switch and armed the munition. Behind me, hydraulics whined as the bay opened and exposed the bomb cluster.

Jeeb whistled, and in the same moment the “threat” buzzer sounded. Up from the planet’s surface, a half-dozen Firewitches hurtled toward me, growing from gnat-size to bird-size in a breath. The threat ’Puter crackled. “Defensive armament unavailable.” The Scorpion’s weapons pod was filled with Silver Bullet, instead of something that could shoot down an onrushing Firewitch.

The ’Puter asked, “Commence auto evasive maneuvers?” Better than me trying to fly the ship.

The first Firewitch rounds flickered up toward me.

I thumbed the “Deploy” toggle before I auto-evaded.

The Scorpion shuddered.

The Silver Bullet munition burst into a swarm of subdividing cluster bombs too small for Slug technology to shoot or chase. Some would drop directly below the deployment point. Others would arc in decaying orbits toward the planet’s surface. In the planet’s stratosphere, each bomb would burst again, into smart bomblets that would rain evenly down on the surface, then count down before they burst, poisoning the only other intelligent species in the known universe.

When the cluster bomb ejected, a bundle of satellites, really just little radio signal relays the size of tennis balls, ejected, too. Up until the bomblets detonated, the abort remote could transmit a signal through them and shut down the whole show. I snatched the abort remote from the console and tucked it in my coverall pocket. “Fat chance!”

Whump.

The first Slug round grazed the Scorpion. On the console, a button the size of a biscuit flashed “Commence auto evasion.”

I pounded the button with my fist, and the Scorpion spiraled down toward the planet, with a half-dozen Fire-witches on its tail. In atmosphere, a Scorpion could out-maneuver portly Firewitches indefinitely.

I said to Jeeb, “We can dodge around the sky until the bomb goes off-”

A purple streak flashed beneath us as a Slug round barely-too barely-missed.

On the overhead display, a new light flashed red. Its label read “Lift impeller slats.”

Great. My tow pilot hadn’t been concerned about dinging this ship’s lift impeller slats, given the needs of the moment. But now, in atmosphere, we could dodge down, but we couldn’t dodge up. We were going to run out of sky.

Six minutes later the Scorpion dodged five hundred feet above a landscape that looked like a neverending green sore, unreeling below us in a blur. Firewitches potshotted us from behind.

The Scorpion juked left, clipped the surface below us, and cartwheeled.