Beating the Odds

"Where's the first wave? What happened?"

"Calm down, kid. We all know what happened."

"Hope they got the job done."

"They're dead. They're all dead!"

The voice comms between ships in the cloud of improvised fighters were interrupted by a hail from the Reyll battleship that watched over them. An old woman's voice called out to the panicked pilots.

"It is done. Sedgewick Station's defense batteries are in chaos. Second wave, fall in and pull out!"

There was a moment of silence after Demonslayer spoke, and the first few fighters gathered for the second wave.

Inside Sedgewick Station, a semi-circle of troopers in powered armor aimed their cannon at the ship that just made an unauthorized landing at the air-docks. The commander turned on his suit's public address system and his amplified voice echoed in the hangar.

"COME OUT NOW WITH YOUR HANDS UP!"

A hatch opened beneath the skull-like armored carapace that covered the front compartment of the illegally parked star-ship. Peter and Jinx approached the soldiers, who lowered their weapons.

Peter waved casually at the troopers. "Arsenal, reporting for duty. Take us to the nearest civil defense base! The next wave is coming any moment now!"

Jinx tried to keep Peter between her and the soldiers. She peeked out from behind him as they were led away to the nearest base.

Half of the remaining fighters began their burn down the gravity well towards Sedgewick Station. Bob-Luke was nervous as the small ships crossed over the lowest point of their orbits and the space station rose suddenly over the horizon of the bombed-out planet beneath them.

The defensive batteries on the distant space station began to strobe erratically. A few of the lead fighters exploded violently, sending debris back down the gravity well and into the path of the oncoming fighters. Bob-Luke pulsed the lateral thrusters to avoid a large fragment of one of his comrades' engine pods. He realized that he was hyperventilating, and did his best to calm himself as he approached Sedgewick Station.

It was time to start decelerating, to prepare to land on Sedgewick Station and seek a conduit that would take him and his bug bombs to the core of the vast space station.

The command bunker was lit with red emergency lights. As Peter and Jinx entered the room, a few soldiers looked up from their screens and stared for a moment before returning to their monitors. The commanding officer walked towards Peter and saluted.

"What's the situation, soldier?"

Peter almost didn't let him finish the question. "We think they will attempt to fire a cobalt bomb at the bio-reactor in the middle of Big Rock. Their goal is to contaminate our supply of air and water, and force an evacuation of the Station."

The officer squinted. "So we can expect another wave, and they'll try to land." He paused for a fraction of a second, and turned to the soldiers working the monitors. "Tell the defensive batteries to concentrate fire on ships approaching landing areas or external structures."

Jinx spoke up. "I can remotely detonate the bombs. We can destroy the fighters before they get the chance to come too close, but we need some time to get the right equipment."

The commander gave Jinx an odd look. "Yeah. You guys go work on that."

Jinx seemed uncomfortable. She grabbed Peter's arm, and they teleported out of the cramped bunker into an open marketplace. Peter needed a second to get his bearings. "So, what do we need?"

Jinx narrowed her eyes. "A commerce terminal. Let's go."

She strode off towards a stand selling live snacks, and Peter followed.

Bob-Luke gunned his engines, decelerating rapidly. He had spotted a landing zone. Three of his comrades streaked ahead of him, and were cut down by the gunner protecting the private loading dock on Promenade Five, Sedgewick Station's largest shopping mall. Bob-Luke locked on to the gun emplacement, punched in a four-digit arming code, and fired one of his two missiles.

Dodging debris, he tried to match his vector to the station. Radiation alarms in his cockpit triggered as he passed through the plume of cobalt-contaminated dust rising from the former site of the defense battery. He needed an opening, and he needed it fast. The external door nearest the gun site was open a crack. He ignored the radiation alarms and slipped through the gap into the evacuated loading dock.

He cursed as his fighter suddenly jerked, caught in the acceleration field between a pair of gravity modulation plates. He was inside. He caught his breath, and silenced the radiation alarms. The pressure door to the stock room was directly ahead of him. He closed his eyes and gunned the engine.

The emergency balloons inflated a fraction of a second after he punched through the airlock. Employees scattered, flinging boxes of shoes and knocking over racks of clothing as Bob-Luke guided his fighter towards the store-front. Some future employee of the cycle hit the alarms.

At the other end of Promenade Five, a security guard driving a cart grumbled as he saw his call light flash. He grabbed his communicator, and his supervisor began screaming at him. It took him a second to realize that this was not a reprimand -- this was an emergency. A grin broke out on his face, as he realized that his time had come.

Long ago, he had saved a division head's nephew from a T-room encounter gone bad. In exchange for his discretion, he had been permitted to carry military-grade weaponry in case of grand theft or terrorist attack. He unlocked the gun box beneath the seat of his security cart, and gazed on his arsenal of weaponry -- a plasma assault rifle, a shoulder-fired rail-gun, a selection of 40mm shells.

It was time to lay his life on the line.

Peter and Jinx stood at the live snacks stand. Jinx took a bite of her mouse-in-a-bun and casually flipped over the commerce terminal to examine its card slot. Her eyes widened, and she poked Peter in the ribs with her elbow.

"What?"

Jinx swallowed. "It doesn't have a slot."

Peter looked irritated. "What?"

The man behind the stand grinned. "Everybody does certificate validation on-line. That's what the metro-net is for! Only hicks in the sticks use smart-cards!"

Peter rubbed his forehead. "Oh, crap."

Bob-Luke's fighter blasted through the storefront, scattering dresses and handbags into the main concourse. His vessel plowed through a stand selling sunglasses as it gained speed and hurtled through the shopping mall.

Bob-Luke goosed his engines and struggled to keep his fighter flying straight and level as it accelerated past the speed of sound. Behind him, he left a whirlwind of shattered storefronts, pieces of incautious and unlucky shoppers, and fragments of consumer products. He had covered slightly more than half the length of the concourse, and would be out of the mall in a matter of seconds.

The security guard's heart pounded as faced down the storm of death approaching him. He shouldered his rail-gun and fired a shot into the center of the maelstrom. The shell burst milliseconds later, releasing a cloud of flechettes.

The bow-shock from Bob-Luke's fighter caught them and they tumbled harmlessly into his slipstream. The security guard did not even have time to finish his curse as the shock wave pounded him into red paste and shattered the entrance doors leading to the parking lot.

Jinx and Peter had spent the last moments futilely attempting to find a commerce terminal that would take a smart card for certificate validation. Every newspaper stand, snack bar, and sidewalk musician on Sedgewick Station seemed to be using the metropolitan networks to do their transaction processing. Peter was exasperated as Jinx poked him in the arm.

"Maybe drugs are the answer."

Peter, nervous and irritated, snapped at Jinx. "What?!"

"See that kid on the corner -- the twitchy little punk trying to look cool?"

Peter became a little more thoughtful. "Yeah. Why?"

"He's nervous because he has a pocket full of shrooms and thinks you're going to bust him. I think he just bought them."

Peter looked at Jinx, and then at the kid, who broke into a panicked run. "Got it."

A moment later, Peter grabbed the young man by the lapels of his leather jacket and lifted him up to look him straight in the eyes. Jinx stifled a giggle as Peter growled, "Take me to your dealer!"

Bob-Luke blasted through the toll air-locks leading to the evacuated Number Ten Freeway, and continued his mad dash to the center of Big Rock. Commuters stuck in the chronic traffic jams flipped him off as he streaked past their bubbles of air and warmth.

Bob-Luke didn't notice. His eyes were focused straight ahead, and his reflexes were razor-sharp. He knew now that he was the one, and like a mantra, the phrase "I am Number Seven" ran through his mind. He grinned like a maniac.

Peter and Jinx re-materialized in the civil defense command center. On the big screen, the alarms caused by Bob-Luke's trail of destruction were the focus of attention. A chaos of voices tried to arrange a squad of troopers in hard-suits to erect a road-block.

Peter and Jinx approached a comms console, and were intercepted by a systems administrator. He looked at the offline commerce terminal, covered in psychedelic stickers, with manifest horror. "No. No, I'm not letting you plug that thing into my equipment. Do you know where it's been?"

Jinx looked at him with a cold fire in his eyes, and pulled his gaze into hers. In a deep voice, she muttered "Mind crush". The administrator slumped to the floor, and she turned to Peter. "I think you'd better stop that kid. He's getting close to the target."

Peter looked at the screen, and then at Jinx. "Can I trust you?"

She smiled. "No, not really. But I'll do what I said I'll do."

Peter thought for a moment, then rushed out the door to intercept Bob-Luke.

Demonslayer watched the ships return from the second wave, and with a silent gesture, gave the order to assemble a third wave. The possibility of success flickered on the edges of her perception, and she began to iterate through the stations of her master plan. She realized with a start that her information was incomplete. Her mind reached out.

Jinx was alone in a room filled with soldiers occupied with organizing the defense of Sedgewick Station. Next to her lay an unconscious system administrator, and before her was an open panel. As she reached out to grab a signal cable to a nearby transmitter, she noticed that the voices suddenly stopped, and that her arm was no longer moving.

A voice called to her in this moment of grotesquely dilated time. She smelled incense and heard the whirring of cooling fans.

"Very good, Number Six. You are in their nerve center."

The silence of the technicians behind her irritated Jinx. She plugged the transmission cable into the gaudily decorated commerce terminal. Her mind covered the action with a superficial layer of indignation.

"I see you've deigned to contact me personally. Don't forget your ablutions afterward, you self-righteous old--"

A voice began to enunciate a word behind her. She was relieved to feel some of the passage of time. The connection locked into place, and her hand moved slowly and deliberately towards her jacket pocket.

"You were one of us. You knew their ways and found the means to enact our plan. You are a part of the whole--"

"I've got a hole you can--"

"Spare me your juvenile provocations. We're on the same side, it says so in your contract."

Her hand moved so slowly. More morphemes dribbled out of mouths behind her at a maddeningly slow rate.

Demonslayer continued her mental intrusion. "Think of it. A perfect moment of chaos, and we can win. We'll be winners."

The smart card was in her hand. She looked away from it quickly before its significance entered her stream of consciousness.

Deep inside Jinx's mind, near the boundary between this world and eternity, something growled. Jinx's waking self briefly blinked out of existence, and it's voice boomed across the psychic link joining her with Demonslayer.

"LIFE IS NOT A GAME, YOU ARROGANT OLD BITCH."

Demonslayer's mind recoiled, and Jinx felt her perception of time return to normal. She inserted the smart card and double-checked her connections.

Near the center of Big Rock, Bob-Luke felt like his nerves were singing. The voice in his head had become a chorus. He knew he was the one, and that all the terrible long nights on the streets surrounding the East Pole had a meaning, and that meaning was the bomb that would force the Corporation to abandon its headquarters, all the Corporate big-wigs would get to see how it feels, and--

His thoughts were interrupted by an invisible wall. His fighter skidded along the bottom of the evacuated Freeway, and he wondered if he was dead yet. His canopy was cracked, and the air was leaking out, and something was walking towards him.

It pointed at him, there was a flash of light, and then Bob-Luke was dead.

Peter walked to the shattered star-fighter and looked at the missile beneath the buckled left front canard. He grasped the warhead, and the pins holding it onto the propulsion unit released. He held the bomb in his hand and examined it for a moment.

In the command center, Jinx's usual self looked up from her work. Her mind sent a last message through the fading mental link to Demonslayer. "...and as for our contract -- I resign!"

She typed in the PIN -- zero, eight, one, five.

The third wave was skimming over the atmosphere of the home world, on their way to render Sedgewick Station uninhabitable.

Peter saw a warning light blink on the spherical physics package. For a panicked millisecond, he cursed not knowing where he could get rid of the bomb.

Jinx pressed OK.

Debris and radioactive cobalt rained down into the ash-colored skies of a ruined world.

Peter thought for a moment, and the light went out.

On the bridge of the Reyll warship, Demonslayer was suddenly, unnaturally awake. She bolted up from her captain's chair, and stormed off to her quarters, bellowing.

Behind the warship, the Nightstalker emerged from hyperspace. A ventral airlock opened, and Thresher adjusted his position before firing a tether at the battleship. He reeled it in, pulling himself closer to the nearest airlock on the Reyll warship.

Peter poked his head into the command center, and casually tossed a metal ball to Jinx, who reflexively caught it. She started as soon as she realized that it was the physics package from Bob-Luke's last bug bomb.

He smiled at her. "Nice catch."

Jinx laughed nervously.

He gestured over his shoulder. "I've got to go. We've found Demonslayer's ship."

"Be careful." The words slipped out of Jinx before she knew what she was saying. Peter had already left.