She reached for the quick-release, her action sending the entire jackscrew-controlled tow hook assembly floating free.
Now significantly lighter, the tug leapt forward like a thoroughbred released from the starting gate. Goblin’s massive fusion drives, now freed from all encumbrances, dodged the approaching vessel with enviable agility.
Katie spun the forward viewscreen to receive the feed from the aft sensors. She mentally braced for the impact between the newcomer and the chunks of asteroid she’d just ejected, but it never came.
The ship, still flying dark, jinked out of the way of the mass of netted rocks, its thrusters firing in a complex series that told Katie whoever was handling that vessel knew what he or she was doing.
The effect on her free-floating cargo was immediate; the velocity imparted to the netted rocks when she’d released them altered abruptly. Katie sighed when she saw that the near-impact had also bestowed a spin to the mass of rubble—one she’d now have to match in order to reacquire her load.
With one last twitch, the ship raced away, its heading now pointed straight at Sierra Twelve.
“Jerks. Ever heard of karma?” Katie addressed the departing spacecraft. “Hope yours ends up biting you in the ass.”
TWO
DAP Helios, GNS Scimitar
Decommissioned mining platform
0.9 AU from Sierra Twelve
Twenty-eight hours earlier….
It was no accident that the mysterious ship that had nearly plowed into Goblin was flying dark. Its frantic pace was due to a surprise encounter with the Alliance Navy, nearly an AU away.
It was a skirmish none aboard the Geminate Navy ship Scimitar had seen coming. Scimitar was a Helios, a fast-action craft crewed by highly skilled pilots equipped to transport the Navy’s special forces teams on covert missions and provide support for their operations.
Today’s mission was routine, a training session pitting the Special Reconnaissance Unit against the 76th Coast Guard Regiment. The 76th was stationed at nearby Heliodor, a habitat orbiting the star originally known as Sirius A.
Scimitar’s crew had just dropped SRU Team Five onto a mining platform that belonged to the Cobalt Mining Consortium. The mining platform had reached the end of its useful life, and Cobalt had decommissioned it six months earlier.
It was scheduled for demolition in the coming year, but in the interim, the Navy had gained Cobalt’s permission to conduct exercises aboard the abandoned structure.
Scimitar was currently holding station, floating silently near the access hatch where Team Five had inserted. Its crew was monitoring nearspace in case the Coast Guard—or ‘coasties,’ as the Navy called them—decided to get clever and sneak a second wave of soldiers aboard to flank Team Five.
None of Scimitar’s crew had any doubts about the outcome of today’s exercise, though some were taking bets on how long it would take the Unit men and women to hand the coasties their ass-whooping and then call for an extraction.
Micah listened in on the team’s combat channel as they geared up, his duties as copilot now relegated to monitoring nearspace through the eyes of the drone swarm he held under his control.
{Paintballs? Are you fucking kidding me, hoss?}
The voice belonged to Lieutenant Thaddeus Severance the Third, Team Five’s second-in-command. A hulking Marine with dark skin and an easy smile, the man had the mind of a brilliant tactician and could give intimidation lessons to an apex predator.
Micah hid a smile at Thad’s outburst. His tone dripped with disgust, making it evident he thought a paintball gun a wussy thing for a Marine to carry.
{Dude. These are coasties. Plus, I spiked it with a little something extra. Get it? Spiked?} Jack Campbell was the team’s intel officer. An experienced hacker, he too was a Marine. He was also the only licensed pilot on Team Five.
That came in handy on the rare occasion the special forces team couldn’t make it to the prearranged extraction point. At those times, Jack had been known to commandeer whatever local skiff he could get his hands on, while the flight crew aboard Scimitar maneuvered the larger Helios as close as they could for the hot exfil.
Now, it seemed Jack had put his hacker skills to use, modifying a child’s toy into an offensive weapon.
Micah saw Thad pick up the plastic-handled weapon to examine it more closely. His hands dwarfed the thing. {You integrated a Spike?}
{Yep.} Jack sounded smug. {Tag one of ‘em with a shot, and they’re going to be wearing more than a bright blue spot. You’ll be able to track them anywhere they go.}
{That’s an unfair advantage, Lieutenant.} Lane Reid’s voice sounded as stern and uncompromising as the woman herself. As Team Five’s leader, the captain was about as unreadable as a black hole, and half as approachable.
{Aw, c’mon, Cap, we’re an unfair advantage,} Jack protested. {Besides, it gives us a chance to test out a new piece of gear in a semi real-world application, with none of the risk. How often do we get that?}
{You’re going to add blue paintballs to our arsenal?} Elodie Cyr looked as incredulous as she sounded, one hand wrapped around her sniper’s rifle, the other holding a blue ball between thumb and finger as if it held a deadly contagion.
{This is just a prototype,} Jack assured her. {And no, the end product won’t be embedded in a ball of blue paint.}
Ell grunted but otherwise refused to respond.
Undaunted, Jack continued handing out his modified paintball guns. They joined the team’s standard loadout of carbyne blades, flash-bang grenades, pulse pistols, and flechettes.
By the time they were done, Scimitar had arrived. Rafe, the ship’s captain, floated the Helios gently up to the platform’s maintenance hatch and deployed the umbilical, which would allow the team to egress from the ship into the platform.
Now Micah and the flight crew had nothing but time on their hands as they waited for the drill to conclude.
With the exception of the two teams playing an elaborate game of capture-the-flag, the area should have been abandoned; fifteen minutes into the exercise, a blip caught Micah’s eye.
As Scimitar’s co-pilot, he controlled the swarm of drones that encased the Helios in a protective sphere. A quick mental command sent the tiny vessels into a tight curve, angling back toward the platform itself.
{Contact!} he sang out, sending the feed to Cass, the ship’s flight engineer, to verify. {Two ships, just cresting the top of the platform.}
{You sure they’re not coasties?} Rafe asked.
{Checking,} replied Cass. Then, a beat later, {The cutter says they’re not.}
That sharpened Micah’s attention. The initial blip quickly morphed into a visual of the approaching vessels as Micah’s drones filled in the missing information. He sent it to Scimitar’s forward holoscreens.
That drew a grunt of displeasure from the man seated to Micah’s right. Rafe’s hands danced over his controls, and in the next instant, the slightest tremor shuddered through the ship.
An alert accompanied the action, appearing on Micah’s overlay. It informed him Rafe had just jettisoned the umbilical that tethered them to the platform’s hatch. A second telltale followed the first, this one indicating the airlock had just cycled shut. Scimitar was on the move.
{Noble One, this is Spartan.} Rafe’s voice cut in over Team Five’s combat net. {We have two unidentified ships, armed and assumed hostile. I say again, armed ships, assumed hostile. Breaking away to engage.}
Rafe’s brief comm was met with silence, but that didn’t worry Micah overmuch. If the hostiles’ presence extended to the platform, it was possible they’d made contact and were already engaging.
Micah almost felt sorry for their surprise guests. If there was criminal intent, no team was better equipped to take them out than SRU Team Five.
The Helios drifted silently away, Rafe’s deft hand at the controls seamlessly reconfiguring the ship’s tunable outer layer from a reflectance that matched the platform to one that emulated the
blackness of space.
Scimitar was now effectively a ghost, with full stray-light suppression on all EM bands. The chances of the two unmarked hostiles finding the Shadow Recon ship were next to none, but that didn’t mean its flight crew were going to sit on their hands while a threat lurked nearby.
* * *
Thad had taken a knee and was looking at a pile of rubble through the reticle of his P-SCAR rifle, debating whether he was looking at a trap set by the coasties, when the call from Scimitar came through.
{Noble Two, this is Spartan. Do you copy?}
Thad did a slow visual sweep of the area. He sent a brief, two-click acknowledgment as he slid back toward the concealment provided by the passageway.
{Unable to reach Noble One,} the voice continued. {We have a situation.}
Rafe’s update was delivered in the preternaturally calm voice all Shadow Recon pilots seemed to have, no matter how tense things got. As he listened, Thad turned the news over in his tactician’s mind.
{Could they be coasties?}
{They don’t fit the profi—} Thad heard Micah swear as he abruptly cut off, only to come back in the next instant with an update. {Negative, Tango One is now closing on the coastie ship.}
Thad scrubbed the stubble on the side of his face. Well, ain’t that just a fine kettle of fish.
He turned and motioned the two team members on his six to come forward. When they were within range, he reached out to establish an untraceable, peer-to-peer connection.
{We have a new player, not connected to the 76th. Assume active hostiles.}
The woman facing him remained impassive, but the demolitions man crouching beside her lifted a brow, and his gaze slid sideways. {And here you thought this exercise would be boring, Sarge.}
He elbowed the sniper lightly—or would have, had Ell’s hand not whipped out and twisted the man’s arm behind his back.
{Ow, dammit!}
{You were saying, sir?}
Thad buried a smile as he glanced back toward the intersection.
{We need to make contact with the coasties. Let them know we have company, and the exercise is off.}
Ell released Mike’s arm and then shot Thad a considering look. {I can climb overhead, drop behind them and deliver the message.}
Thad nodded. {Go.}
She slung her P-SCAR rifle over her shoulder, crossed on light feet to the bulkhead, and then began her silent ascent. Spars ridged the bulkhead’s surface in regular intervals, making it easy for the sniper to find purchase. The sticky organogel threads lining the palms of her drakeskin suit would enable her to remain there indefinitely.
Halfway up the wall, Ell engaged her suit’s active stealth and faded from sight. Thad’s suit kept track of her, its predictive systems using the team’s connection to track her telemetry, her position showing as a ghostly outline over his HUD.
That part of his plan in place, Thad glanced over at Mike. {Rafe couldn’t raise the captain. Find her and give her a sitrep.}
He brought up a schematic of the platform, and dropped a pin on its control center {We know she was headed here. If she’s not responding, chances are that she, Jack, and Asha have already had a run-in with whoever’s out there badgering Scimitar. Round up any coasties you find along the way.}
Mike nodded. {Yessir.}
Thad squinted at the pile of rubble. {Stay frosty and don’t get yourself caught. In the meantime, I think I’ll do a little tracking myself.}
{Good hunting, LT.} The demolitions man rose and crept silently down the passageway, the platform’s emergency lighting lending an eerie cast to his form before he faded from view.
* * *
Rafe had brought Scimitar around on the same heading as the ship bearing down on the coast guard cutter, kicking thrusters to maximum in order to gain on the unmarked vessel.
{ECM, Lieutenant,} ordered the captain. {Cass, warn the 76th they’re about to have company.}
Micah was already in motion, having anticipated the order for electronic countermeasures. His right hand pushed outward, his left simultaneously curving inward, even as Rafe spoke.
The movements weren’t physical actions; as deeply enmeshed as Micah was with the ship’s SyntheticVision system, they were more of a visual manifestation of his thoughts. They also resulted in immediate motion within the swarm of drones under his command.
{ECM away.}
The drones he recalled with his left hand docked silently with the ship, while the ones released by his right were flushed from several ports along Scimitar’s flank. Clad in the same stealth coating that enveloped the Helios, the drones were nearly impossible to detect.
Micah separated them into two swarms. One went speeding back toward the ship that was skimming across the platform’s surface in its hunt for Scimitar. The other inserted itself between the cutter and the enemy vessel.
{Dazzlers en route, Banshees on hold,} announced Micah.
{Good. Coordinate with the coastie defense grid to avoid crossfire,} Rafe instructed.
The Dazzlers Micah had unleashed were tiny yet powerful tools in the ship’s arsenal. When activated, they emitted strong electronic jamming that would deny targeting information to the enemy. The drones also blocked communication, making it impossible to coordinate an attack—and, in this case, to contact anyone who might be on the platform.
While the Dazzlers were defensive, the drones Micah held in reserve were not. Where the Dazzlers’ purpose was to confuse and confound, the Banshees were built to pack a powerful punch. Their payload of missiles varied by class, and all of them mounted five-centimeter lasers that could deliver pulsed bursts of weapons fire on Micah’s mental command.
{Any guesses as to who our friends out there might be?} the mental voice of Scimitar’s gunner tickled Micah’s ear as he watched her target the tangos. The twin large-bore, RAU-19 railguns under Dana’s control tracked the vessels the ship’s IFF had identified as ‘Foe’.
{My credit’s on pirates,} Cass volunteered. {It’s no secret this platform’s being decommissioned. Makes a perfect hideout—or a place to offload goods.}
Dana scoffed. {Well, we know one thing for sure. Whoever they are, they don’t have the brains God gave a gnat. Who’d be dumb enough to go up against a Shadow Recon ship?}
{Let’s find out.} At Rafe’s words, a highlight appeared on Micah’s overlay. In the next instant, Rafe enlarged the image until the ‘SS’ icon emblazoned on the ship’s ventral fin could be clearly seen.
Micah unleashed a few choice words. {Aw, that’s just great. Don’t waste your time trying to persuade them to surrender. Those secessionists would rather die than give in.}
Rafe grunted his agreement. {Better warn the team.}
A beat later, his voice came over the combat net. {Noble, this is Spartan. Tangos are SS. I say again, tangos are SS. Assume you have company, over.}
{Copy, Spartan.} Thad’s voice sounded gruff, as if he were already in the thick of battle. His next words confirmed Micah’s suspicions. {Engaging.}
The SS in the logo stood for ‘Secede Sirius’. They were a separatist group that had been trying unsuccessfully for more than a century to persuade the citizens of the Sirius binary system to secede from the Geminate Alliance.
Highly nationalistic, the group’s chief complaint was the imbalance of power between the two star systems of Procyon and Sirius. Their platform promised to rectify that.
The organization regularly attempted to place themselves on ballots. Sometimes it worked; most times, it didn’t. They’d been around so long, few took them seriously.
That had recently changed. The SS, as they now called themselves, was under new management—one willing to use violence to make its point.
Rafe sent the Helios breaking north of the stellar plane, giving them a clear shot as the ship entered weapons range.
{Free to engage,} he said, {but try for disabling shots if you can.}
Micah heard Dana’s reply as if from a distance. The merge he shared wit
h the ship rendered the cockpit invisible, transmuting his perception into a different reality altogether. It was as if he floated freely in the black, his view unimpeded by something as mundane as bulkhead and hull.
Over comms, he heard Cass coordinating with the coastie defense grid, updating them in real-time of Scimitar’s intentions.
Scimitar surged forward. The next few minutes passed by in a blur, yet held that quality of time slowing that so often happened when senses were acute.
Although Scimitar was invisible to EM scans, Dana’s railgun fire easily marked the Helios’ location. The SS vessel returned fire, and Rafe slewed to port, tracer rounds from the enemy ship flashing by.
Micah swiveled his head to follow the other spacecraft as it began evasive maneuvers, the reticle of his Banshee’s targeting app locking onto the enemy ship with smooth precision. With a thought, the drone under his command spat out a series of two-second bursts, pulsed light from its five-centimeter laser hitting the seam where the fusion drive met its powerplant.
The Banshee’s initial assault weakened the area just enough that the follow-up missile Micah unleashed punched through the outer hull, severing its drive train. The other craft disintegrated instantly.
Even as the debris field expanded, Rafe was already banking Scimitar into a tight curve.
{What part of disabling shots did you not understand, Lieutenant?}
{That ship shouldn’t have blown like it did.} Micah spared a swift glance at the man seated to his right. {It’s almost as if they had some sort of dead-man’s switch wired in to ensure no prisoners were taken.}
{Survivors?} Rafe barked the question at Cass as the ship carved an arc that took them below the plane of the system, neatly avoiding the debris field.
Out of the corner of his eye, Micah saw the crew chief shake her head. {It must have been remotely piloted, I’m not reading any biological material in the field at all.}
{Huh. Anyone else think this was a bit too easy?} Dana spoke into the silence.
Chiral Justice: A Hard Science Fiction Technothriller (The Biogenesis War Book 3) Page 35
