Winter World (The Long Winter #1)(102)

On the screen, I watch as fleet reports come in, text scrolling. Damage reports. Ordnance deployments.

Then, all of a sudden, they stop.

There’s a window in the upper right that lists the status of every ship in the fleet. The text that reads Sparta Two goes from white to gray. Offline. Sparta Three does the same. Sparta Four. All the way down to Sparta Eight. Every one of them goes dormant. They’re gone. The ships are disabled, maybe torn to pieces. Crews dead.

I realize there’s a figure still left in the bridge with me.

Emma.

“Get off the ship,” I whisper.

She shakes her head. Tears well in her eyes.

“I’m not going anywhere.”

More debris hits the ship, rocking it. Emma and I brace ourselves. Our tethers hold to the main conference table, the lines pulling as we’re tossed around, the vibration like a stringed concert instrument, a deep ominous note foreshadowing our end.

But the bridge is still here. I’m amazed.

And I know we won’t survive another strike.

Notifications flash on the screen:

Engineering module separated.



Navigation module separated.



Cargo bay separated.



Med bay separated.



Crew quarters separated.





“Emma,” I say over the comm, “please.”

She doesn’t respond. She floats closer to me in the bridge.

“We’re going to finish this together.”

The viewscreen is still white with the aftermath of the nuclear blasts. I can’t see what the strikes accomplished. But I know there’s more debris coming, objects launched before.

A new message flashes on the screen.

Weapons online.





Oscar has done it.

“Leo! Fire rail guns at the last known intersection of the radial arms and the main body. Two rounds to each arm. Then fire all three nuclear warheads toward the incoming kinetic objects. Have them detonate one hundred miles from our position. Space them equally to maximize plasma disintegration of the inbound objects.”

The ship rumbles as the rail guns fire. The three nuclear missiles depart the ship with a whoosh.

But we’re too late. Another wave of debris hits the ship. The message I’ve dreaded, that signals our end, appears on the screen.

BRIDGE ATMOSPHERE DECOMPRESSION





Emma and I are both jerked back toward a gaping hole in the side of the bridge module. Loose articles rush past us. Then silence. Stillness. Detritus floats past me, like trash blown in the wind in slow motion. I’m panting from the exertion, my heavy breathing the only sound I hear.

I look down. My tether held. That might be the only thing that saved me.

The screen still works. That’s the good news. The electronics for the bridge are self-contained and shielded. All the modules are shielded against nuclear radiation. But with a gaping hole in the bridge, I don’t know how Emma and I will survive when those nukes we just fired go off.

The breach in the hull is to the rear of us—away from Ceres. We must have been hit with shrapnel from another module being shredded. That’s good. It means we won’t be directly exposed to the nuclear blast.

On screen, in one of the cameras connected to the bridge, I spot which module was destroyed: weapons control. Oscar. The module is in pieces. I can’t see Oscar’s body, but I know he’s out there somewhere, along with the other debris.

I spot movement in the debris, and a glimmer of hope swells inside of me: could he have survived?

It’s not Oscar’s form that’s moving though. It’s something oblong and metallic, with short arms, like a centipede in space. Why didn’t I think of it before? What the harvester launched—not all of it was raw material from the planet. Some of the pieces must’ve been rovers and smart bombs that were stored in the arms. They’ll search the debris for survivors and kill anyone left alive. Will that be my fate? Emma’s fate?

We’re trapped out here. I’m certain of that.

The screen goes white once again. Still tethered to the conference table, I reach out and grab Emma’s hand. She squeezes tight. We brace and wait. I feel a tear fall from my right eye. Not for myself, but for Oscar. He was the best friend I ever had. Whatever is left of him after weapons control broke apart, will be disintegrated in the plasma blast of the nuclear warhead.

Light beams in through the narrow hole at the back of the bridge.

I close my eyes, but the flash is too strong; it seeps into the darkness. My vision is spotty when I open my eyes once more.

The fleet is gone. Sparta One is in pieces. As far as I know the only piece left with any power is the one Emma and I are in right now. We have no shipboard weapons, only the small fleet of attack drones disguised as asteroids. I held them back for just this purpose. I hope they’re enough to finish this.

The drones can’t transmit. They can’t scan. They can’t even acquire a target. They can only read directives from the comm patches on one of the ships of the Spartan fleet. The bridge module has three comm patches. I hope they still work. And I hope the drones are watching.

“Leo, send message to attack drone fleet: their target is the large object on the planet. Center mass.”

A beep over my comm tells me that Leo is online and that he’s relayed the message.