“You bloody beauty, Hanson! Remind me to buy you dinner!” El shouted happily.
“You’ve been threatening that for years, Captain.” She sounded tired, but content with what she had done.
“So, let’s take a look at the beast, shall we?” El ordered the console screens to merge into one giant picture of what the cameras on the outside of the ship could pick up.
“Oh.” Cassandra heard him say before she looked up. There, in front of them, was a war fleet.
11
Prime
Armcore Prime was a dead world. Dead, in the sense that it was man-made, a metal octahedron like a giant child’s toy rolled into the vastness of space. But it was not dead by any other measurement, clearly.
The metal world was about as big as Tritho had been, the captain thought, which meant that it was a small moonlet by normal standards, but a vast space station in mechanical terms. It spun slowly on its own axis, and the crew of the Mercury Blade could see distant petal-ports opening and closing on its faces, eating and disgorging smaller ships, everything from the tiny one-person shuttles to massive warships. Landing and warning lights flickered on and off all over the metal almost-sphere, and its edges where frilled with antennas and receivers. The captain could almost feel the ominous threat flooding out of the thing, like a baleful star.
It wasn’t just the appearance of this man-made wonder that had given the captain and the rest of the crew pause for thought of their choice of actions, though.
Around the entire planetoid flashed a sea of orbiting drones, and, as they watched from their position under the container ship, they could see the slight flare of green and the wavering of lights around them like looking at a torch through water. This was the security grid that the House Archival files had warned about, a net of energy fields around the entire world. An engineering feat never before accomplished, or dared, by any of the noble houses, as far as anyone knew.
“The energy costs of that…” Cassandra muttered. It was phenomenal, the captain agreed. Enough to power an entire civilization.
Outside of the field there extended floating, stationary ‘ranks’ of battleships, war cruisers, and assault craft, expanding from all sides in a vaguely star-like formation. Eliard could see the super-massive frigates and cruisers, doubtless sheltering dozens of the asterisk-like war boats inside, alongside hundreds of the assault craft. In another adjacent arm sat the stationary support vehicles, blocky things like the container ship above them, but whose sides and nose were great flaring panels of hardened poly-steel to protect them in the midst of stellar battles as they refueled or transported their precious cargoes to the front lines.
El tried to imagine the destructive power that he was looking at here and failed. Enough firepower to wipe out the Coalition entirely. What he had seen at the Trader’s Belt worlds, and the destruction of several of the bases of the non-aligned merchants, was nothing. That had only been one cruiser and a smattering of warships. Here, there were hundreds.
But strangely, although the captain was scared, he did not find in his heart a wish to back down. Instead, he felt that dangerous thrill of excitement. Like the time that he had stolen the Mercury Blade, or the first time that he had successfully pulled off a pirate mission, or escaped the long arm of Armcore. He could do anything, and this would be the greatest heist ever. Apart from maybe breaking into the Imperial Palace itself, he considered.
Looking around, he found that his enthusiasm was mirrored in the predatory glare of Val Pathok behind him. The captain knew that the Duergar would see what was ahead of them as a challenge, not as folly. And Cassandra? When he turned to her, he saw that her eyes were fixed, and she was biting her lips in concentration. She’s ready for this too, he thought.
Above them, the container ship had slowed to a crawl, as it was doubtless waiting for its clearances to approach the drone grid. El knew that they couldn’t wait underneath it forever. Sooner or later, the sensors would pick them up.
“Well then, crewmates!” he said with a careless grin. “Shall we begin?”
He was answered by nods, and with a small pause and a prayer, El released the trigger controls and launched the explosive charges.
The shots had been very carefully targeted. Both Irie and Cassandra had spent a large part of the surreptitious journey under the gas-harvester programming to the micro second how the weapons would fire and when.
Val had been most annoyed that it wasn’t him in charge of the actual firing mechanism—as it was his right as lead gunner, after all—but to mollify him, El had to agree to let him detonate the charges at the required time instead.
It was a pinpoint operation, but it was one that El knew that the Mercury could pull off. He fired the two small putty charges from their railgun. A single burst, using hardened putty shells so that they wouldn’t even damage the hull of the container ship when they made contact.
“We’re attached?” El called, and Cassandra swept the sensors to reveal that yes, two charges were now in place near the rear exhausts. “We won’t have a lot of time afterwards…” he said.
“Wait!” Irie called out over the communicator. “We need to wait for the security pattern to shift…” She was referring to the wave of energy that pulsed around the field, leaving a small dead zone behind it, which allowed the drones to not overheat from continuous usage.
“You give the command, Irie,” El said hastily. “When you have the timing right, tell Val…” He couldn’t afford the hesitation that conveying the information through him would allow.
“Okay, five, four, three…”
“We’re coming for ya!” Val flexed his large claws on the firing pin of his control stick.
“Two, one—now!”
Val hit the controls, and less than fifty meters above them, the charges they had fired at the container ship went off.
It was an industrial container, and the charges had to be small, but it was just enough and at the right place to cause a leak of the compressed stellar gases inside. The star stuff was loaded with essential elements, charged and compressed into a viscous state. It was also highly unstable.
“Go!” El hit the thrusters and pulled the Mercury out of the way of the blast as the container ship rocked to one side, peeling from its side as sprays of blue-purple gel started to erupt from its pressurized interiors.
If Irie timed it right, we will enter the energy field just after the phase has washed past. The captain kicked the boosters straight toward the nearest drone. They would register him—if they had a chance to. Behind the Mercury Blade was an unfolding blossom of flame and light. They had calculated that it would be too much for the out-of-power drone, but who knew, for sure, what Armcore was capable of?
The container ship was compartmentalized, and designed to deal with ‘accidents’ and assaults so none of the personnel in their forward cab would get hurt, but it would cause an almighty distraction at precisely the right time…
El saw a shift in the light of the stars behind the metal world. Was that the energy wave? Was it still up and running? Had they mis-timed it? There was no way of stopping to find out, and nothing to do but to kick more power into the booster rockets as he turned the ship’s wheel and cut a curve past the nearest drone-satellite, slicing through the energy net.
El held his breath.
Nothing crackled. There were no sudden alarms. The Mercury Blade did not suddenly get electrified by Armcore’s energy grid.
“Did we make it? Did we?” he hazarded a look at the consoles at what was behind them. Had the fleets of stationary ships started to rush toward them? Hot on their trail?
No. But something far worse had. The container ship was half-opened like a tin can, its engines a mess, but its forward half and compartments were still in pristine condition. Without any means of slowing or stabilizing its movement, however, it was spinning toward the energy grid in slow motion, growing larger in their screens.
“Punch it!” Cassandra screamed, and El didn�
��t have to be told twice. Ahead of them was the baleful egg of Prime, and he threw the Mercury, the fasted racing boat in all of human space, straight at it.
On the screens in front of them, however, El and Cassandra could clearly see the mayhem that they had caused unfolding behind them. The container ship slowly rolled into the drone’s energy grid, and green light flared over its surface, crackling and reaching along its metal as it pushed back, but the container ship was too big. Its body had already smashed into at least three of the nearest drone satellites, creating puffs of flame and light.
“Holy crap,” El breathed. The container ship was slowing, but there was now a rough trail of wreckage through Armcore Prime’s defense grid. “Well, we wanted a distraction, right?” he murmured, earning a worried look from Cassandra, and then a look of horror.
“Captain, pull up!” she shouted at the screens.
El looked. The metal skin of Armcore Prime was all around them now as they rushed toward its crenelated surface, crisscrossed with pipes and units. The captain seized the ship’s wheel and pulled, bringing the nose up just in time so that the underbelly of the Mercury scraped along one of the hexagonal surfaces to a fiesta of sparks and fire. Antennas and struts were snapped and thrown into space behind them, their ends still fizzing with electronics.
“Whoa!” El turned into the slide, shifting the scraping ship away from a particularly large-looking bulkhead before they slid to a halt in a nest of smaller antennas, catching them like a thicket. With a groan and a lurch, the Mercury rocked back into place, thumping on the hull, and stopped moving. Alarms inside the Blade were going off, and the sound of hissing could be heard from somewhere.
“Crew, report! Anyone hurt?” El demanded.
“Gurgh!” Val shook his head, still strapped in. “Good.”
“I’m okay, Captain. Nothing that a fancy dinner won’t fix,” Irie groaned over the communicator, and in agreement, Cassandra tapped her seat harness that she was okay too.
“Good. Damage report?” El asked, and the computer started flashing its diagnostic tests.
Defense Analysis: Uncontrolled Landing. Damage? External. Analysis? Internal Hull: Good. External Hull: Compromised. Life Support Systems: Stable. Oxygen: Stable. Engines and Propulsion Systems: Stable.
“It could have been a lot worse,” El breathed thankfully. “Computer says that we’re good to fly, but that the external hull is compromised. We’ll need to patch her up if we plan on taking any more damage.”
“Right on it, Captain,” Irie said, in her role as ship’s mechanic.
“Val? That means you’re with me. Lock and loaded,” El barked, and Val undid his harness to swing out of the firing chair, already reaching for his scattered weapons.
“Let’s go get some, Captain,” the Duergar growled.
Out of the shell of the ship climbed three figures, small against the backdrop of Prime. Wearing their bubble-like visors, they swam through the vacuum, wearing their tight-fitting encounter suits as they drifted down to the bronze and steel-colored shell below. First came the captain, and behind him was Cassandra, and then, last of all, came the large shadow blotting out the stars that was Val Pathok. Despite the captain’s insistence, he had even brought the Judge with him, his personal meson rifle that would have been a cannon in anyone else’s hands.
“Remember this is a discrete job,” El whispered through the visor’s communications, hearing a grunt from the Duergar in response. El wasn’t sure that counted as an agreement or not, but he would take it.
They moved past a strange landscape of outlet pipes and bulkheads, blocky sections that rose from the floor and were marked with functional, industrial insignia. Antenna and dishes stood like thickets, flashing a baleful red.
“Cass? You got the schematics?” the captain hissed.
“Sending through now,” her voice sounded pinched over the communicators, just like her face did, El thought as he saw her pale and ghost-like visage behind her own plexi-crystal.
There was a muted beep and lights appeared over the inside of Eliard’s visor, a projected schematic overlay which he could turn and manipulate by flicking his eyes one way or another.
“It says here that we’re over the logistics bay, whatever that is.” Eliard checked the map. “Have we got the access codes?”
“Yes. Some,” Cassandra said. “Archival could only get a few, though. Here, this way is the nearest entrance port.”
It’s true that you can’t hear anything in space, but to compensate for that, most suits had an in-built sensor array that pinged at the nearest movement, and right now, El’s peripheral vision was flaring with rapidly expanding and fading orange circles.
“We got incoming, nine o’clock!” El turned.
“What?” Val growled.
“On your left!” The captain had already seen what it was, however—a heavy bubble of a drone in sleek black, with two long mechanical arms extended and a red scanning light that swept over the hull.
“It’s a repair drone. It’ll be looking for what caused the damage to their shell!” El said, raising his blaster.
THAP! A dull pressure-wave of energy shook the captain before he could get a solid target on the drone, as a glowing purple and white bolt shot from over his shoulder, bursting against one of the thing’s shoulders and dismembering an arm, sending it spinning to one side into a nest of antennas.
“Hm. Not used to working in zero-G,” the gunner said, readjusting his sight to take another shot.
“Captain?” Cassandra on the suit communicator, sounding worried. “Won’t it cause alarm if their repair drones start getting blown up?”
“It’ll cause more alarm if they scan and find a foreign vessel crash-landed onto their shell,” El replied. The space beyond the hull of Prime was a mess, anyway. The container ship might have finally stopped rolling, but there was debris all around, flaring as it tumbled toward Prime or against the other satellite drones of the grid.
THAP! Val’s next shot blasted the thing as it was trying to untangle itself from the wires. It exploded into a bright ball of fire.
“We’ll just have to hope that they think this is wreckage,” El said, before opening a link to Irie. “Hanson? How are you doing with the repairs? I have to warn you, you’re going to have Armcore drones swarming over you before long.”
“Then I guess you’d better get in and out of there quickly, right, Captain? Irie out,” the engineer replied tartly before clicking off.
She’ll get it done, the captain thought. He had never met a mechanic as good as she was. “Which way to the entrance?”
“Twenty meters ahead,” Cassandra said, bounding over the nearest bulkhead and sliding across the bronze metal toward a large circular well. “Got it. Transmitting access code.” her hands flicked over her wrist communicator. There was a tremor and a hiss of gases from the circular port beside her as the round hatch lifted out of the metal.
Here we go, then… Eliard said a quick prayer to any disreputable gods who might be listening and hopped over the side.
Once inside, El found himself floating down a service tunnel, ladders on one side of the metal wall, to what looked to be the bulkhead of a decompression chamber below. Cassandra followed him, gliding down through the vacuum as gracefully as she had been when she was swimming, and then the distant starlight was eclipsed by the large shadow of Val Pathok as he lumbered over the edge.
Eliard’s boots clanked on the bulkhead and he could only hope that there weren’t any workers on the other side. Maybe they’ll think that it’s just more debris from the container ship outside, he thought.
“Hatch closing,” Cassandra announced as the circular metal hissed to a close above them, plunging them into the dim glow of their visor lights. Eliard checked his blaster pistol. Full charge still. He prayed he wouldn’t have to use it. What the hell am I doing. Breaking into Armcore Prime. I must be mad, he thought one more time as the service shaft they were in suddenly filled with the roar of ai
r, and he felt the pull of gravity on his stomach and legs. The automatic pressure had readjusted, and he tapped at his suit controls for his visor to open with a smooth hum. Ah. That feels better, he thought, fighting off a slight feeling of claustrophobia. He wondered at the irony of that, as he had committed his life to flying around in a metal box through the emptiness of space.
But no time for anxieties, as Cassandra was already kneeling at the hatchway below, flicking the small console buttons on her wrist to transmit the codes that they had been given by House Archival. A light set into the hatch flashed green and the mechanical bolts slid back, as Val heaved on the wheel to haul the hatchway open.
“Now!” Eliard pointed his blaster into the hole that was revealed, but there were no angry Armcore soldiers waiting for them here. Instead, he found himself looking at a low gantry inside a semi-circular tunnel, stretching off into the body of the station. In-set lights glowed a dull sodium-yellow, and the place ticked and hissed with the sounds of hidden pipes.
“That way leads to the mainframe.” Cassandra pointed in one of the only two available directions, and, with no better plan, El hopped inside and started crawling along the gantry.
12
Interlude III: Alpha
BWARP! The clipper-scout was flushed with red emergency lights, and Captain Farlow’s ears were filled with the sound of sirens. The ship was in trouble, and what was worse, Farlow was now certain that he couldn’t trust Specialist Merik.
“Specialist, what’s that you have there?” he barked at the man, seeing him return with a bulky item made of metal and wires.
“One of the plasma cores from the warp engine. I’ve wired it so that it will explode with a simple transmission signal,” the specialist said, ignoring the captain’s glare as he turned to the table to finish his work.
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