by Brian Smith
“Get me fire control and weapons ASAP,” Ford ordered.
“Sir?”
“Mr. Gordon, we aren’t going to make it if I have to repeat every order! Someone or something just cut us loose from the tender. If whoever is in control of Marineris decides they can’t take us, they’re going to blow us from here to Neptune! Get. Me. Fire. Control!”
“Aye, aye, sir!”
A few minutes later, Ford was wondering why the boarders hadn’t made it to CDC yet, when Sims tapped him on the shoulder, pointed to his helmet, and gave him a thumbs-up. Ford had forgotten about his suit radio—he unmuted it and found that the piercing squeal of jamming had vanished. He conducted a quick radio check with Sims, and the signal was loud and clear. He told Sims to move around the compartment and get everyone else turned back on and tuned in.
In the meantime, Ford switched circuits and called the reactor room. To his relief, ENS Ferrell answered up. Ford asked for Ferrell’s status.
“We aren’t sure what’s going on, XO,” Ferrell replied. “The reactor spiked and switched off less than a minute after we hard-docked. We’ve been trying to restart, but no joy. There’s fighting of some kind going on forward, as well. We’re sealed off back here—my watchstanders and I are the only ones in here right now. I can’t reach the chief engineer, and he hasn’t made an appearance.”
“He may be dead or cut off from you,” Ford replied. “Listen up—we think the shutdown was the result of a cyberstrike. It sounds crazy, but Marineris is a hostile and is boarding us. Detail someone to execute a manual restart of the aft APU after you disconnect or cut the network hard lines from it. Same thing with the aft electrical-distribution buses and any equipment you need to have operational. Once you restore power, begin working on a main-reactor restart.” Ford paused, feeling grateful that Ferrell, the Electrical/Aerospace Life Support Systems Division Officer, was on watch down there—when it came to restoring ship’s power, Ford knew he was talking to the right man.
“Remember: anything you want to have function needs to be denetworked and rebooted until we get this cyberhack under control. My intention is to undock from Marineris if we haven’t already, restore power, and kill off the boarders. Once we restore fire control, I’m going to cripple or destroy Marineris before she can do the same to us. If we lose contact, work toward those objectives.”
Ford was listening to Ferrell’s acknowledgment when the lights suddenly came back on and CDC seemed to come to life. Sims dived onto his restored console like a madman, working the cyber problem.
“XO, we’ve got visual confirmation from forward that we’ve undocked with the tender. She’s drifting close aboard—it looks like she’s maneuvering to redock.”
Ford climbed up into the captain’s usual battle station, the command CDC console, and strapped into it. One of the ratings gave him a thumbs-up, indicating the network hard lines were disconnected. He began bringing the station to life—its utility was only a fraction of what it had been when fully networked to the ship, but it was better than a dark space with no lights. He began the process of manually inputting the data he had and trying to regain the initiative in this fight.
“Bridge, XO. Do we have RCS control?”
“Combat, bridge, bow units only.”
“Keep us away from her as best you can, Mr. Yoon. Don’t let her redock with us.”
“Santos says ‘Can do!’ XO.”
Ford grinned slightly in spite of himself. “Communications—did you get that message off?” he asked.
“Swinging the dish now, sir—”
The reply was cut off as the ship shuddered and holes suddenly peppered the bulkheads as point-defense cannon fire from Marineris burst through the compartment at close range. Sparks flew as consoles exploded, and Ford felt a brief burst of hurricane-force wind as the compartment’s air suddenly vented to space through several dozen of the small holes. Fortunately, the kinetic force of the small projectiles wasn’t sufficient to ignite the atmosphere in CDC as temperature and pressure spiked downward during the decompression. Anyone not strapped in or magbooted down went flying as well; he caught a glimpse of blood spatters marking the locations of hull breaches where the globules were sucked through. The shredded body of the petty officer manning communications pinwheeled past more slowly; it smashed and rebounded off the bulkhead, then floated lifelessly through the compartment.
An alarm went off in Ford’s own helmet, showing him a blinking graphic of his right sleeve. His ears popped violently, and he gasped as he looked down and saw the small tear in his suit, which was sending a jet of precious air into the vacuum. The law of primacy took over—this was something he had trained for on a regular basis, ever since his first day of Phase II recruit training on Luna. A full battle suit had more automated functionality and would have helped him out; with nothing but a spacing jumpsuit, though, he was on his own.
His free hand expertly made a grab for a suit patch off his utility belt, and he slapped it over the breach and activated it. Powerful nanobonds worked their technological magic, and he panted for breath as he felt pressure begin building up in his suit again. He had the patch on and bonded even before Sims appeared at his side, ready to help if the XO passed out from hypoxia before he could finish the job.
“I’m good,” Ford rasped. “Stand to your station,” he added, patting Sims on the shoulder before giving him a little shove to move him along in null-g.
“Combat, bridge, we’re taking PDC fire up here,” Yoon reported. “Santos and Sandler are down. I have the conn—” Ford realized Yoon was making his report and giving orders to the others on the bridge at the same time.
“Mr. Yoon, same orders—open the distance between both ships as you are able.”
“Aye, aye, sir. You okay down there, XO?”
“’Tis but a flesh wound,” Ford said faintly, trying to clear his head. He ordered a dose of stims from his endocrine pumps, and that woke him up instantly. He felt a warm trickle of blood running down his arm, but it was barely noticeable. “I’m fine,” he added a moment later, sounding stronger. He noted that his air-bottle indicator was blinking red—it had almost exhausted itself trying to keep his leaking suit pressurized. He was down to about fifteen minutes of air, and then he’d have to stick himself with an emergency respirocyte injector.
“Gordo! How about some fire control?”
“Still offline—I’ve got two gunner’s mates on the net now. They’re trying to manually unship the topside point-defense cannon and get her slewed around. That section still has no power, though—even if they deploy the weapon, they can’t fire it.”
“Tell them they’d better improvise something fast or we’re dead,” Ford replied. “Her reactor compartment is the primary target, followed by her torch bell and then facing weapons. Understood?”
“What about her RCS thrusters?” Gordon asked.
Ford mentally kicked himself. “Right! Reactor, RCS, then torch and weapons. Good thinking.” He turned back to his console, a thousand things running through his mind—not least the niggling worry about when the hatches were going to blow open and a drone swarm was going to jet into the compartment and kill them all. Nobody in here even had a sidearm right now, as far as he could tell. The communications arrays were down—both primary and secondary. Without networking, he couldn’t see how or why, but it was easy enough to guess: the hardware had been shredded by the same fusillade that had just cut through CDC and the bridge. Whoever they are, they don’t want us talking to anyone about it, he thought.
His next thought: Why didn’t they spray the reactor and aux-power units while they were at it? The answer was chilling: Because they want the ship functioning and intact. If all they wanted to do was kill us, they could have done that as we closed for rendezvous. This is an attempted board-and-capture, at least until they decide they can’t grab us intact. Who the hell is it, anyway? Whoever it is, they already took a Class I tender in fighting trim!
Ford was feeling
a bit muddled, and borderline hypoxic. He figured he was using up his air supply faster than intended, so he stuck himself with a respirocyte injector, releasing a cloud of oxygen-carrying nanites into his bloodstream. It helped.
“Work the problem, Jim,” he muttered to himself. “One order at a time. . . . Work the problem.”
***
This is not cyber warfare! If I wanted to fight a bunch of mutant AI zombie synths, I would have joined the Marine Corps! That was the thought that ran through Chief Eckert’s brain as he triggered his particle-beam weapon, burning a hole in what had to be a stolen marine combat suit and sending its occupant reeling back. This was the third time he’d shot the damn thing—he’d already hit the suit and its occupant once in the midsection, once in the leg, and now in the shoulder. Two of those three spots were tough for a suit to self-repair. The lack of air hissing out of the holes when they appeared seemed to indicate the suit hadn’t been pressurized to start with, which meant that its occupant wasn’t human, appearances be damned. Whatever was inside was tough—you could hit it multiple times either with slugs or beams and it’d recover fast and come right back at you.
The only way to stop one seemed to be to explode it, hit it simultaneously with multiple beams in multiple spots, or hold a particle beam continuously on target long enough to cut the damn thing in two, which was problematic when trying to burn through something like a combat suit—whatever the occupant was, it would generally shoot you back before the job was done.
Eckert had to admit that the weapon he was using was a good one—better than anything he’d trained on, that was for sure. It was a handheld compact, about the size of a small submachine gun, that was a particle beamer and didn’t need a cyclotron pack or a hookup to some external power source to function. It was powerful, too: powerful enough to burn through bulkheads if one didn’t mind running through a whole power pack. He’d picked it up off a dead boarder, and as of now the crew had managed to fight the enemy to a relative standstill.
The explosive decompression was what had done it for them; it blew out almost the entire enemy drone swarm and took a good number of boarders with it as well. The ones that remained were tough and tenacious, but not invincible once the surviving crew members in this section of the ship were able to suit up, grab some weapons, and start shooting back.
A particle beam lanced back down the corridor at them, burning hot against the metal hatch fairing that Eckert was using as cover. He was aware of Chief Hogan taking a knee behind him; after receiving some attention-getting raps on the helmet and some hand signals, Eckert realized it was okay to turn his suit radio back on—the jamming was gone.
“What’s up?” he asked, drawing a bead and shooting the advancing boarder for the fourth time—now in the faceplate. The boarder’s return fire slashed wildly up and away, and Eckert felt a flash of triumph as he sensed a momentary advantage. He shifted slightly and fired again, holding the beam steady as the boarder staggered back.
Chief Hogan joined him, adding fire from one of his contingent’s own navy-issue particle-beam weapons. Hogan was in a full battle suit, wearing a cyclotron pack with a line running from the pack to the stock of the much larger weapon. The boarder’s head seemed to momentarily catch fire and sizzle; the fire didn’t last more than a second in the vacuum, and then there was a now-familiar flash of scorched fluorescent-green-yellow fluid as the synth went limp and floated slowly away from their position. Tiny droplets of the pale green goop moved in a cloud along with the body, rapidly freezing into opaque, peridot-colored pellets of hard ice that reflected the emergency lighting like fireflies.
“Nice shot,” Hogan said.
“You, too. What do you suppose that green shit is?” Eckert asked curiously.
“Don’t know, but it ain’t the first time we’ve seen it. When the brass figures it out, someone’s gonna get fucking nuked. Comms are back up, obviously,” he added. “We got a situation you might be able to help with—they’re trying to restore fire control in CDC—a small group of gunner’s mates is trying to get one of our point-defense cannons back online. CDC says it all has to be denetworked and rebooted before it will work. Not just the gun, but the power buses. . . . Hell, basically everything between either the forward or aft APU and the mount itself that connects them.”
This was something Eckert understood—his bread and butter, so to speak. He was nodding emphatically even before Hogan was done explaining it. “I get it, I get it. . . . I got it,” he added. “Which mount are they working on?”
“Topside. Number one.”
“Okay, I’ll take care of it. Can you hold down the fort here, shipmate?” he asked.
Eckert sensed rather than saw Hogan’s grin under the man’s helmet. “Oh, yeah,” Hogan said. “It was a cinch these assholes were going to head for the reactor room first. It’s just what we did back on 5111 Omega. We’ve got ’em boxed in pretty good now. If we can get the captain something to shoot with, I think we might even win this one.”
“Amen, brother. I’ll work it from the aft APU. I can’t get forward without having to shoot my way past a boatload of these assholes. If you spot any of my guys or gals, send ’em my way. That’ll make this go a lot faster.”
“Will do, buddy. Here comes your covering fire,” Hogan added.
As soon as Eckert started to move, the big chief lowered his muzzle and laid down a devastating barrage in the direction of the threat.
***
“What was that?” Ford asked suddenly. “I didn’t catch that.”
“Well, I don’t know about that. . . .” Gordon mumbled incredulously to himself. “Shit! Sims . . . !”
“Gordon! What did he say?” Ford repeated, raising his voice slightly. “Who was that?”
“That was Seaman Parnell. He said Chief Brandenburg and a few others got some of our own combat drones switched on but they turned on our guys as soon as they came online. They’re junked now, but it was pure mayhem in there for a bit—the chief’s dead and Parnell is the only one left alive in that space.”
“Sims!” Ford shouted, his voice rising in alarm.
Their cyber/intel tech was cursing a blue streak at his station. “This damn cyberhack is into everything!” he said. “Whoever took over Marineris got access to her cryptography as well. Nothing is secure, sir! Encryption is compromised across the board and it’s like we’re fucking fighting ourselves here! I was just about to bring the ship’s AI back online. . . .”
“Don’t do that!”
“Better not!” both Ford and Gordon cried simultaneously.
“Well, no shit!” Sims retorted angrily, his military bearing falling temporarily by the wayside. “Mr. Gordon, you’d better pass on to everyone on the net not to reactivate anything with any sort of AI built in. Every friggin’ system on board is going to have to be isolated and code purged before it can be brought back online.”
“Relaying now,” Gordon replied, and he began making calls on the radio. Without networking, everything had to be done manually and took ten times as long. It was infuriating to people who were used to passing information shipwide with a virtual snap of their fingers.
Ford continued listening to reports coming in on audio only. His fingers danced over his console, entering data manually and slowly building a picture of what they were dealing with. He couldn’t even send the information to his snoopers—no network. All he had were the console and the radios. Fear mixed with raw, fighting fury gnawed at the pit of this stomach as he worked to clear away the fog of war.
Essentially, the ship was divided into three sections right now. They had control of the forward and aft thirds of the ship; it was the middle portion, mostly portside and spreading out from the main gangway, that was contested. Only the aft third of the ship was under pressure—either they had manually closed the hatches down there before the decompression or the hatches had been sealed beforehand. Ensuring closed hatchways in the engineering section was a personal habit particular to their
chief engineer, and it might have saved some lives today. Several forward compartments had remained pressurized after their undocking since his GQ order had reached those spots the fastest. Most of those were breached and in vacuum now due to enemy fire; he still didn’t know if anything forward of the bridge was still under pressure. The middle third of the ship had suffered the brunt of the decompression, at least those compartments not sealed beforehand. Ideally, the order would be to depressurize the entire ship right now, but with power distribution as spotty as it was, it couldn’t be given.
Reports on the midship fighting were confused, but Chief Hogan had rallied everyone he could find down there, getting them into battle suits and breaking out the small arms to repel boarders. Ford could only imagine the chaos and confusion that had initially reigned, but things were starting to settle down now. Hogan knew the ship and understood what the enemy was trying to accomplish; as the chief had reported, he was starting to contain the fight and box in what was left of the boarding party.
The only problem Ford foresaw now was the victors’ becoming victimized by their own success. If it looked like the boarding action was going to fail, Marineris could simply stand off and finish them, and nobody would ever know. Whoever had taken control of the tender could repeat this attack on another navy ship, potentially even many times.
“Chief Eckert, are you on the net?” Ford sent.
“Here, sir.”
“How close are you to getting that mount active?”
“I need about ten more minutes, sir.”
“Understood. Chief Hogan, this is the XO.”
“Go ahead, sir.”
“Chief, I need you to—“ Ford stopped suddenly, thinking about what Sims had told them about everything being compromised. Were the enemy listening in on him right now? He thought about sending a runner with verbal instructions, but it would probably take longer for someone to get to him than it mattered—provided they could get to him at all. If the enemy were listening, then the enemy already knew enough to screw him over. No choice but to chance it, he decided. “Chief, I need you to fall back a bit—give a little ground, let them think they’re making progress. Can you do that without losing the fight?”
