by Tim C Taylor
“Captain, hostile Marines are very close,” Arun said. “Suggest you throw out a skirmish screen. I think they’re about to board.”
Captain Cythien did not immediately reply. At least with any more than a quiet Jotun rumble. She had the preternatural ability to make her silence speak louder than her words.
When her response did come, her Jotun voice sounded hard enough to cut through hull armor. “Thank you, General McEwan,” came the translation. “I am aware of the tactical situation and agree that we will probably be fighting off boarders before this business is completed. I also note that on three occasions in the past thirty minutes, my patrols have encountered enemy Marines within 250 klicks of the Lance.”
Arun shrunk inside his suit. He hadn’t known that.
“If the General can spare the time to apply himself to something useful,” continued the Captain, “the X-Boat pilots will be biting the walls of their scramble shelter, itching to get out into the fight. A motivational speech from the officer who instigated the flight training program could take their minds off their frustration…”
In other words, thought Arun, get the hell off of my command deck!
But he didn’t want to leave CIC. What if he were needed?
An alert tone sounded in Arun’s head, a sound that filled his belly with fire. The modern humans of the Navy and Marines could easily memorize and distinguish the many dozens of different alerts. But there were two that stood head and shoulders above the rest in their ability to shock you into an urgent response. One was the decompression alarm, but it was the other alarm sounding now that chased away Arun’s frustration and kicked him into frantically detaching himself from his acceleration couch.
This was the boarding alert. The enemy were trying to get inside the Lance.
Arun grinned. He felt useful again. A Marine.
“I think I’ll take that tour of the hangar deck now, Captain.”
“Understood,” replied Captain Cythien, mentally waving him away as a distraction to the important business of organizing the defense of her ship in conjunction with the senior onboard Marine commander, Major Majanita.
Arun left Cythien to it, relying on Barney to tell him all he needed to know about the boarding action. He unsnapped his SA-71 carbine from its attachment patch on the base of his acceleration couch, and pushed through the human Marines guarding the main entrance to CIC.
Their chief, Master Sergeant Senna, gave Arun such a glare of disapproval through his helmet visor, that an instinct learned at cadet school sent a shiver of fear through Arun. His steps faltered to a halt.
“Williams, Prinz,” bellowed the Sergeant. “Go with him.”
“No, Master Sergeant,” said Arun. He wasn’t a cadet any longer. He had the measure of this NCO. “Keep your Marines here. Your orders are to protect CIC, not nursemaid me. I’m just a passenger. When I’m on CIC I’m an asset to be protected. When I walk through that hatch I become a Marine defending his position. Do you understand?”
Senna considered for a moment behind a stony expression. “Perfectly, General. Good hunting.”
— Chapter 49 —
Outside of CIC Arun encountered teams of Marines already set up to defend the approaches to the Lance of Freedom’s heart. Marine gun teams readied tripod mounted GX-cannon, Fermi beams, and portable energy shield projectors that were bolted to the deck or mounted in platforms built into the overheads, positions designed right from the light carrier’s initial blueprints to direct defensive fire at each turn in the critical passageways.
The approaches to CIC had been converted into death traps that would be recognizable to the defenders of a medieval castle: burning gels sprayed and ignited from the bulkheads, monofilament spikes ready to spring from the deck, and heavily armored overheads that could retract to release a volley of grenades and railgun darts from waiting Marines before sliding back to form an invisible seal.
The enemy had boarded in strength and were pushing deep into the Lance, but were some way out from these sections. Just as well, because hidden eyes were watching his every move. If they identified him as a foe, he’d be dead in less than a second.
Via BattleNet, Arun reported for duty to the commander of the ship’s complement of Marines, explaining slyly that Captain Cythien had requested he relocate to the X-Boat hangar.
“General, I don’t know what you’re up to,” replied Major Majanita, “but I know I don’t like it. The enemy are headed for propulsion and the bridge. I’ve sent reinforcements to the hangar, but you can help out until then. Majanita out.”
Arun hurried farther away from CIC, which was located at the heart of the ship, and out to the nearest deployment tube. These were the only places where Arun could let rip with his battlesuit propulsion motors without fatal crashes into ladder wells and bulkheads. He blasted through the tube in a forward direction, then switched course toward the X-Boat hangar beneath the dorsal hull.
“Out the frakking way!” screamed Arun though his suit’s cranked-up external speakers as he shot through the starboard approach to the hangar, scattering an advancing squad of Navy defenders who were bulked in flak armor and handling LPW light personal weapons. He noted their pressurized hoods hung limply down from the back of their necks, meaning the lower levels of the hangar still had air, despite the hangar door being open to space.
Arun emerged into the base of a huge cylinder with its lid open to the void. X-Boats were lined up along a spiraling ledge that ran along the outside of the hangar up toward space. Defenses mounted on the Lance’s outer hull were engaging an attack directed through the hangar. Arun left them to it because Barney was dragging his attention toward the opposite side of the hangar deck where the enemy boarders were about to burst through.
Outer defenses must have taken a heavy toll on the boarders, but the New Empire Marines had managed to bully their way through to the last line of defense: a squad of armed Navy deck crew leavened with a handful of battlesuited Marines. They were only holding out because the deck crew had force projectors of the sort that had once bottled Arun up in the control room of a mining base on Antilles. But the boarders were better equipped, drilling through them with force beams specially designed to counter force shields.
Tac-display said that the commander of the defenses was MPO Lionel Hortez.
Hortez!
Arun’s heart skipped a beat to hear that name. Idiot! The name Hortez was common enough. The Hortez he’d known as a kid was dead, gutted by the Wolves.
Arun wasn’t a tactical genius like Xin, but he knew enough to see the enemy were about to break through. He needed to take control. “Hortez,” he ordered, “get ready on my mark to shift all your force shields to protect your flanks, angled inward. Liu, Sommers” – Arun selected two of the Marines at random – “you’re with me.”
“Who the frakk are you to…” Hortez, halted his rebuke. Luckily the legato voice of the Navy master petty officer sounded nothing like Arun’s former Marine friend. “Ahh, roger that, General.”
His suit motors freed Arun from the deck. He took up a position above the hangar entrance facing down, bracing against the bulkhead with his carbine aimed at the gap that would be left between the force shields. Without needing to be told, Liu and Sommers did the same on Arun’s flanks.
“Let them think you’re giving way,” Arun told Hortez. “Do it now!”
The force shields did more than absorb impacts, they confused the hell out of the enemy Marines’ sensors, otherwise Arun would never have tried this tactic.
The New Empire forces swept through the Navy defenses, following a barrage of grenades by swooping headfirst through the gap in the shields. As they were swiveling around to shoot the Navy defenders from behind, Arun and his two new Marine buddies fired first. At point blank range, even Marine armor couldn’t withstand an accurate burst from an SA-71.
Five boarders fell to Arun, Liu and Sommers, their suited corpses skidding to a halt on the debris–strewn flight deck.
He dipped down so his gun pointed just beneath the top of the hangar entrance and fired a grenade up the passageway. Liu and Sommers understood his intentions and did the same simultaneously. As he maneuvered, Arun glanced at the hangar’s deck-level defenses. They were in bad shape, the last few Navy survivors were still reeling from the enemy grenades. Only two other Marines still bolstering their strength. He began to wonder how best to sell his life dearly in his hopeless last stand when Barney pointed out a pretty frakking big change to the situation.
“Out the way you chodders!” came a massively amplified voice from deeper inside the hangar.
“Do as he says, Hortez,” Arun ordered, and then had the presence of mind to flee up and away from the entrance, flipping around to take in a view of a DS26C shuttle in the last instant before it fired.
The shuttle was such a poorly armed and armored minnow that it would play no part in the battle raging outside in the void. But inside the ship was another matter entirely…
Hypersonic darts from its single heavy railgun flew through the hangar and then through the enemy Marines emerging from the passageway. Arun lost his view for a moment as he was buffeted by the air superheated by the darts. Barney soon stabilized him.
The scene was a violent mess. A handful of the Navy defenders had survived the enemy attack and scrambled away from the shuttle’s fusillade. Not many, though. From the corridor came the sounds of falling debris, the vibration from the pumps shifting fire-retardant foam, and the far-off sound of a decompression alarm. The beast of a railgun had punched through the hangar approach, through the frames behind and pierced the outer hull. The knowledge that warship armor was not designed to deflect kinetic assault coming from the inside had been a nugget of irrelevant trivia until now.
“Cease fire!”
“Ceasing fire, aye.”
The exchange came over local BattleNet. Arun didn’t recognize the speaker. Didn’t need to; he swooped down into the ruined hangar entrance, tailed by Liu and Sommers.
“Deputy?” said the voice of the pilot. Come to think of it, he sounded familiar, with the clipped speech of a Marine who had cross-trained as a pilot. “Where’s the boss?”
Arun touched down on the deck. He couldn’t see anyone to shoot at. More importantly, neither could Barney.
“Sorry, Flight Marine,” came the reply to the pilot. Barney identified the local commander as Petty Officer Coombes. “MPO Hortez… The Boss… He was leading the defense and didn’t make it. You did well. Plenty of time for you to fix the damage you wreaked on my hangar entrance when we’ve won this battle. Now dump the shuttle on the deck and get back to the scramble shelter. There’s a company of Marines on their way to support us. ETA 50 seconds. You need to get back under cover so you can pilot your X-Boat and pay the bastards back for what they did to the Boss.”
Arun left Coombes talking to the shuttle pilot and cautiously advanced up the passageway. The defensive positions here were ruined. Maybe they were in better shape farther along? Behind him he was aware of the DS26C touching down on the deck.
Suddenly Barney screamed red warnings over his visor. Arun dove at the deck. “Down!” he screamed.
Streaks of fire flew overhead, racing unerringly along the corridor and into the hangar. Missiles!
Their motors churned the air so violently that even with his battlesuit’s blast protection, it still felt as if breaching charges had blasted through his lungs.
Damn! Fighting in an atmosphere is the worst.
That was Arun’s last lucid thought for a while. His brain grew too big for his skull. The outside world was a crude smoke painting that soon swirled into incoherence.
A deeply laid brain process felt itself being hauled on by Barney. Training and survival instincts allied with the AI to lift Arun to his feet and run. He would recover from the missiles screaming overhead, but not if he didn’t get out of the way of whoever followed up the missiles.
Arun came to on the run. He found himself headed for the burning wreckage of the shuttle, which had clearly taken the brunt of the missiles’ sting. For once, the tactical update fed him good news. A squad of Legion Marines had swarmed through the hangar and were already pushing back hard against the enemy.
Following Arun’s unspoken wishes, Barney peered through the cockpit of the downed shuttle and produced a false image of the interior with the flames cut out. The pilot was slumped against the flight console… and was wearing a Marine battlesuit. The suit had dropped out of BattleNet, but if it was still functioning, then it would protect the wearer against more extreme temperatures than a burning shuttle.
Arun dropped his carbine. Immediately he felt vulnerable, naked, a lesser person. But fires and guns did not mix safely. Spare grenades and ammo bulbs followed his SA-71 onto the deck, and then Arun pushed against the flames and into the burning shuttle. Three steps inside and the floor gave way, dropping Arun up to his waist in shattered deck plating.
Barney lifted him up and floated them over to the pilot, carrying out the barely conscious Marine like a predatory insect holding onto its lunch.
The hangar was secure for now, so Arun set down the pilot a safe distance from the shuttle and set Barney to perform a medical diagnosis by interrogating the pilot’s suit.
The pilot’s helmet visor was opaque. Arun brushed away the worst of the soot from the pilot’s suit and read his name: S. Feg.
Slayman Feg? Of course! How could he have forgotten that voice? He cast his mind back years to the time when he and Springer were on Beowulf running for their lives, to the episode when Arun had observed in furious impotence as Slayman Feg and his Black Squad buddies had tormented Indiya and her augmented friends.
Arun had taken personal interest in Feg’s trial. Like most of the Marines who had mutinied, Feg and the other survivors of Black Squad had been exonerated. Puja Narciso and the other medical experts had testified that the Free Corps rebels had been so confused by prolonged exposure to mind control drugs that they were not responsible for their actions.
Arun’s head understood, but his heart could never forget.
Barney reported that Feg’s link to his AI had fried, but Barney had accessed the suit’s medical functions and stabilized the pilot. The best thing to do was leave him for the medics.
I want to see his face.
Barney complied, clearing Feg’s visor to let Arun look upon a face that was a little harder but essentially unchanged from the veck who had threatened Indiya and the other ship rats. Did he still hate this guy?
Feg’s eyes flickered open, and half-focused on Arun.
“General?”
“No. Right now, I’m just Marine McEwan.”
“I’m sorry.”
So you damned well should be. Arun frowned. This is no time to wallow in the crimes of the past. “You were wounded defending your position,” he told Feg. “You saved our asses. What is there to be sorry about?”
“Because my bird won’t fly without me.” Feg grabbed Arun’s lapel, and half-lifted himself up. “General,” he pleaded, “we’re gonna need every X-Boat we can get out there.” The wounded Flight Marine fell back against the deck, his eyes staring unfocused at the overhead hangar door open to space high above their heads. “I’ve let us down. Again.”
Arun didn’t think he could ever lose his enmity for Slayman Feg, but he did manage to chase his dislike into a barely used part of his mind and slam the door on it. In its place, a familiar sense of being caught in the jaws of destiny clamped around Arun. “Feg!” He shook the pilot’s shoulders. “Feg, come back to me. Which bird is yours?”
“A… a Mustang. X47- Alpha.”
Another squad of Legion Marines arrived, fanning out around the hangar. Most were clamping tripod-mounted weapons to the deck – another attack by stealthed enemy Marines could come at any time. There were medics in the g
roup too, racing to the fallen. One pushed Arun away from Feg.
“You’re in good hands now,” Arun told the fallen Marine pilot. “So’s your Mustang. I’ll fly her myself.”
Arun retrieved his carbine and ammo, wiping off the fire-retardant foam coating them from the damage control team extinguishing the fire in the downed shuttle.
He was halfway to the pilots’ scramble shelter, built into the side of the hangar underneath the Flight Control Room, when Lance of Freedom’s captain came onto the general comm channel.
“More hostile Marines are inbound for the X-Boat hangar. They’ve taken the bridge already and are fighting for the propulsion deck. All X-Boat crews. Scramble! Scramble! Scramble! This is it, everyone. This is where we win this battle.”
The new Hangar Boss, PO Coombes, gave his own more localized interpretation. “You heard the Captain. This is where we earn our keep. Anyone not directly involved in flight ops, grab your gun and defend the pilots at all costs. Defensive Pattern Gamma.”
Arun glanced overhead at the Flight Control Room, where Barney said Coombes was located. From the outside the Flight Room was an armored embrasure overhanging the flight deck thirty meters up.
“Non-essential includes me,” said Coombes. “Any boss whose team can’t run things in his absence isn’t worth squit in my book.”
A heavy-duty hatch opened, and a figure floated out. It had to be Coombes. He was only ship-rat small, but he was armed, armored, and obviously equipped with a maneuver harness because he was zipping around in the air with a skill that could almost rival a Marine’s. Ten other Navy defenders emerged, with less-assured aerial skills, before the door thudded shut.
“General, I could do with your help,” said Coombes.
“I’m more use as a pilot.”
Coombes spoke as his team shot up high into the hangar’s upper reaches. “We’ll see about that. We’ve got to clear the launch route first. We have hostiles coming in from space through the hangar door.”
