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“What have you got?” I asked. “I can’t see anything except flying junk. Where is their
fleet?”

“I think I have something,” Sandra said. “Down below us—toward Hel.”

Welter and I crawled to her position. We tuned and adjusted our helmet displays to
interpret what was out there. Except in Sandra’s case, human vision was useless when
looking thousands of miles through space. If we’d gone active and used pinging radar,
we could have figured it out faster, but then we’d give ourselves away.

We all peered down toward the planet we’d named Hel. The icy world below was composed
primarily of nickel, iron and frozen ammonia. The planet’s surface was heavily frosted
by cyrovolcanoes that periodically spewed out unpleasant liquids. These events were
dramatic spectacles. Ammonia and methane bubbled up from the planet’s guts when tidal
forces heated up the interior. Once these liquids reached the surface, they quickly
froze into vast crystalline plains.

“Don’t look at the surface,” Sandra said, “it’s orbiting low, between the station
and the planet.”

“What is?” I asked. Then I saw it. “That hulk—that’s huge! It must be a ship, its
metal content—wow, it has to be the dreadnaught. Nothing else could be that size.
It must have half the displacement of this entire station.”

“I agree,” Welter said, “that has to be a dead dreadnaught. It’s a destroyed hulk
now, tumbling in orbit below us. If I had to guess, I would say it’s in decay and
will crash into the surface of Hel after a few more passes.”

“A fitting end for those bastards,” Sandra said with feeling.

“Yes,” I said, frowning fiercely in my helmet. “But what I want to know is: what knocked
out a dreadnaught after we were already on our knees?”

-9-

We spent the next several hours cleaning house. We destroyed around thirty Macro technicians
who were involved in various acts of mischief. They were clearly trying to disable
any defensive systems we might have left, in preparation for some kind of more significant
assault.

What had me worried were the nine or so cruisers that were still out there somewhere.
They’d had enough time to put on the brakes and turn around. We only had a few hours
until the main fleet returned, but those hours were going to be long and uncertain.

“What’s coming next, Colonel?” asked Welter.

“We’ll find out soon enough,” I said with firm confidence. What I didn’t mention was
how
we were going to find out. I figured we’d find out when the Macros bothered to clue
us in on their time schedule of operations. Our tactical situation was beyond grim,
and I was left with a powerful sense of unease. As our own skeletal crew assembled,
the rest of my Marines were increasingly pleased as our numbers grew—but I felt our
forces were pathetic. There were only nine humans plus Marvin left alive on the station.
The Macros had clearly written us off, not even bothering to pretend we were a credible
threat.

“Kyle, I’ve got enough power to operate the primary transmitters now, can’t we just
contact Fleet and let them know we’re still alive?”

I looked at Sandra for a second and shook my head. “Best to stay quiet for now. We’ll
use passive sensors with shielded power. Play dead. When our ships come nosing around,
we’ll signal them then.”

“What if the ships aren’t ours?”

I shrugged and smiled. “Then I suppose we’ll continue to lie low.”

It was bothering everyone, this business of not knowing what had happened. For all
we knew, the Macros had pressed on toward the inner planets. We’d destroyed most of
them, but they still had enough fleet power to do us a lot of damage.

“I’ll tell you what we will do,” I said, looking around the crowd of dirty, dispirited
faces. “Sandra, Marvin and you two, go to the damaged deep-com section, and set up
an antenna. Make sure it isn’t anything the Macros might notice. And for heaven’s
sake don’t transmit anything, not even an acknowledging blip. With luck, we’ll pick
up traffic from Fleet and at least be able to glean data on recent events.”

This idea pleased everyone. At least I’d given them something sensible to do. They
set about immediately and eagerly. We all wanted to know what the hell had happened.

“The rest of you follow Welter,” I said. “Commander, I want you to try to get the
weapons batteries working again, one at a time. Let’s start with the systems disabled
by the original EMP blast. They’re still intact, except for nanites and power. The
Macros never bothered to target most of them during the battle.”

It took hours, but we finally had some pieces rigged up. The heavy beams were all
destroyed, but we managed to get one railgun battery up and ready. The antenna Sandra
and Marvin constructed was built of metal rods like rebar from inside the station,
which gave it the look of a twisted flag of wreckage. It worked well, despite its
trashed appearance.

I’d returned to the bridge, as it was well-protected and wired for command and control
to the entire station. We had some power back, and about half the screens were lit
with a soft bluish glow. The holotank was still dead, however, and most of the screens
were blank because the corresponding camera feeds were down.

Scratchy transmissions came in from Fleet a few hours before our reinforcements were
scheduled to arrive. We listened intently to scraps of voice audio.

“…we’ve got a new force…definitely hostile…”

Everyone stopped working and listened in, except for Marvin, who I could see on a
live monitor. He was out on the skin of the station, exposed to space. He made final
adjustments by tentacle, tuning our makeshift antenna like an old-fashioned set of
rabbit-ears. His skinny arms whipped about outside the station, aiming the antenna
with tiny adjustments, and guiding it to track what must be a moving source of transmission.

“…ship configuration unknown. They have come through the ring and are approaching
the dead station. Relay this to all commanders, we have new contacts…”

The antenna buzzed and warbled incomprehensibly for a time. I finally couldn’t take
it anymore. “Marvin, can you identify the source of those transmissions?”

“I believe they are coming from the destroyer
Berlin
, sir.”

“They’re from the relief task force then?”

“Definitely, sir.”

“Keep working on that signal. Get whatever you can.”

I turned back toward the others on the bridge. Their faces were pale and drawn. I
could hear their thoughts, despite the fact no one spoke. New ships were coming here?
We were practically helpless.

“There’s no reason for them to come here other than to board this station,” I said.
“That means they’ll have to decelerate and come in very close. We have one working
battery, and we need to use it at point-blank range.”

“We need time to put a lot of steel up into space, Colonel,” Welter said. “If we start
firing toward the ring now, we might catch a few of them as they make their approach.”

I shook my head. “We’re blind now, and might not hit anything. We have no active sensor,
pinging away to give us valid targeting data. We’ll have to eyeball it when they make
their final approach.”

“We’ll only get off one or two volleys before they knock us out.”

I took a deep breath and let it out again. “You’re probably right. But at that distance,
we’ll blow holes in their ships if we do hit. It’s better than hitting nothing and
getting smashed by missiles at range.”

After a bit more wrangling, they agreed to my plan for a point-blank ambush. We decided
our time was best spent now trying to get another battery operating. If we could do
enough damage, maybe we could disrupt their plans and continue breathing long enough
for the cavalry to get here.

We worked furiously after that, and by the time the alien ships were flaring their
braking jets in near space, we had a second battery operating. We aimed them both
toward the ring, and waited until their hot exhaust trails left no doubt concerning
their speed, trajectory and mission: They were braking hard, coming in to dock with
our wrecked station.

By my count, there were about twenty-five exhaust flares. Without active sensors and
the holotank, I wasn’t sure exactly what we were facing, but I was sure they were
too small to be dreadnaughts or cruisers.

“Eight thousand miles,” Welter announced.

“Hold your fire,” I ordered.

Everyone was tense and sweating in their suits, including me. I’d been enduring a
tickling sensation on my left eyebrow for the last ten minutes or so. The sensation
was driving me mad, but I didn’t dare open my helmet now.

“Seven thousand out now, decelerating hard.”

We watched as the invading ships flared brighter. Their exhaust plumed into flaring
fireballs at the base of every ship. I wondered if they had gravity repeller drives
at all.

“Six thousand.”

“Marvin, calculate a firing solution for me: At what point will they have less than
a one-second warning before our railgun projectiles reach them?”

“Given their rate of approach and presuming a continued matching rate of deceleration,
I’d say six seconds ago.”

I looked at him sharply. “You’re telling me they are already inside a one-second warning
radius?”

“It’s hard to be precise with presumptive date, but I would say they are down to about
zero point six nine seconds—”

“Welter, fire! Fire everything!”

The station shuddered slightly, as everyone let loose with what little we had. They
were coming in hard and fast, whoever they were. I’d almost blown it, assuming we
had more time.

The battle was a strange one. I felt like a carrier captain in the old days, stuck
with only primitive detection equipment and radio transmissions from direct observers.
It was hard to sit there with one elbow on a broken console clenching my teeth until
my jaws ached.

“I think those are impact explosions. They
must
be. Got one, no three now, Kyle.” The voice was Sandra’s and she sounded excited.
I had her gunning one of the batteries. Everyone was manning something.

I continued listening. Only Welter and I were on the bridge itself to coordinate.

“I got one, down on the lower edge of my field of fire. They are moving now, repositioning.
My shots are going wide at this point.”

I banged my gauntlet on a broken brainbox. It dented in and a puff of dead gray nanite
dust shot up from it.

“Talk to me people, how many do we still have out there? Are they returning fire yet?

“I don’t think so,” said Sergeant Sanchez, my gunner with the most experience of the
survivors. They are just taking it. Seems odd.”

Everything about this situation seemed odd to me. “Sergeant, give me a count please,
between volleys.”

There was a several second wait, which seemed interminable to me. Finally, he reported
back. “We got seven of them, sir. And I think the other battery did about the same.
If I had to guess, I’d say eight vessels got past us.”

“What do you mean
got past you
? Where are they? Have they swung around the station?”

“No sir, they should be reaching the outer hull about now.”

Then I heard booming sounds, impacts that resonated through the station. These weren’t
the loud, smashing sounds of projectiles hitting the station, hammering it. Instead,
they were the sounds of landing craft adhering to the hull.

“Batteries one and two, do you have any targets at this point?”

“No sir. We can’t even see them. They are too low for our turrets.”

“Get out of the battery, then. You’re a target now. Retreat to the inner core of the
station. We’ll fight it out bulkhead-to-bulkhead.”

I waved to Welter and he reluctantly unlimbered his heavy beamer again. I could tell
he preferred Fleet ops. Blasting things at a great distance in space appealed to him,
and he clearly wasn’t happy.

I, on the other hand, was smiling. It would be good to burn some of these invaders
personally. I’d not gotten enough of that particular thrill lately.

We clanked out into the passages and gathered up into a good-sized squad. With Marvin
bringing up the rear, we looked rather formidable. Marvin was in his full battlegear,
and I must say, he looked more the part of the freak than ever. He seemed just as
eager to try out his new body parts as I was to find out what these invaders were
made of.

Marvin still looked something like Marvin: he had several whipping arms and plenty
of cameras. But beyond that, his battle persona was quite different. His head section
had been replaced with a cluster of six heavy-beam weapons, and this lower body now
rested on a sled of gravity repellers. He floated about a foot above the corridor
and anything he ran over that could be crushed down, was crushed down. I made sure
I kept my boots out from under him. With all the extra generators and weaponry, he
was as heavy as a small tank. Above all his new armament, his cameras whipped this
way and that excitedly.

We advanced toward the nearest enemy landing point, which was in the mid-section of
the station. Again, they were going for our power-couplings. I supposed it made sense.
The moment they’d seen we still had some fight left in us, they must have decided
to disarm us by killing the power, rather than destroying the weapons themselves.