by Mel Odom
“Veug,” Kiwanuka called.
“Something happened, Staff Sergeant,” the computer specialist said. The comm connection was only slightly improved. “I got locked out.”
Kiwanuka studied the lift cage. “That was me. I hit the lift with a degauss grenade.”
“Well, that explains that. The lift system is fried. I can’t help you with access to the bridge anymore.”
“We’ll make our own way from here,” Kiwanuka said. “Sergeant Cipriano, hold your position there. Under no circumstances are those drives to be used.”
“Roger that,” Cipriano said. “Can you get free?”
“Working on it.”
One of the vents that had spewed the poison gas into the lift opened and dropped a half dozen micro-drones about the size of golf balls into the cage. Three of them hit the plasteel floor, bounced up, sprouted wings, and buzzed in an evasive manner toward Kiwanuka, Noojin, and Goldberg. The other three rolled across the floor.
Kiwanuka drew her Birkeland coilgun and shot the lead flying drone. It exploded and the force drove Kiwanuka into the wall behind her. Noojin yanked a degaussing grenade from her ammo rack and threw it into the center of the room. Kiwanuka relaxed her finger on the coilgun’s trigger.
When the degaussing grenade went off, the three drones on the ground stopped in their tracks and the two flying ones dropped and bounced on the floor.
“Good thinking, Noojin,” Kiwanuka said.
“I hoped those things weren’t hardened against an EMP blast. I didn’t know how many of those explosions our armor could handle.” Noojin held another grenade in one hand and her rifle in the other.
Kiwanuka studied the lift cage’s ceiling, which was much closer than it had been. She tiptoed and found she could easily touch it.
“Cipriano said the bridge can separate from the rest of the ship,” Goldberg said. “Do you think if it does, maybe this lift gets jettisoned?”
“So we’d be thrown into space?” Noojin sounded horrified.
Kiwanuka knew she was because the girl hadn’t ever spacewalked. She hadn’t even visited one of the space stations when the opportunity presented itself. She was used to being planetside.
“I don’t want to wait to see.” Kiwanuka aimed her rifle at the ceiling, switched over to laser, and fired concentrated blasts.
The plasteel plating turned cherry-red and silver-gray droplets, along with a frantic cloud of sparks, splashed against her armored arms and the lift floor. Gradually, though, a hole opened up. As soon as the lift cage’s integrity was breached, the bilious fog still in the compartment sucked through the hole.
“There’s no atmosphere on the other side,” Kiwanuka said.
“Does it open to space?” Noojin asked in a flat voice.
“The gas and air in here didn’t evacuate quickly enough to indicate that it leaked out into open space,” Kiwanuka said. “I’m betting we’re still inside the lift shaft.”
When the opening was a little more than three centimeters wide, Kiwanuka stopped firing, lowered her weapon, and stepped back. She tiptoed and pressed her fist against the hole.
“Run a vid line,” she told the armor.
Immediately, the armor extruded a thin fiberoptic cable that snaked through the opening. Vid relayed back to Kiwanuka’s faceshield and showed only the empty shaft above the cage. Satisfied, she retracted the cable.
“We’re good,” Kiwanuka told the others. “We’re still inside the shaft.”
She resumed firing the Roley until she’d cut a crescent a meter in diameter at the ends. She slung the Roley and reached up for the glowing plasteel smile. Hooking her fingers over the edges, she pulled on the ceiling section. The cage roof held and she raised herself up from the floor. She lowered herself to the floor, kicked in the magnetic fields in her boots, and pulled again.
The muffled screech of the plasteel as it bent told her the cage and shaft still held atmosphere. When the opening was wide enough, she pulled herself up and squirmed through. The armor made it a tight fit. Outside the cage, she hunkered down on the lift and held the Roley at the ready.
“Okay,” she told the others. “Let’s go.”
Goldberg and Noojin quickly scrambled through the opening and took up positions as well.
The shaft ran another thirty meters to the bridge. Kiwanuka suspected there would be other sec measures in place.
“We go slowly,” Kiwanuka said. She created magnetic fields in her boots and left glove, then leaned into the shaft wall and climbed toward the bridge.
She’d only covered ten meters of the distance when a massive impact rocked Kequaem’s Needle. She slammed herself against the shaft wall and held on to ride out the resulting shudders.
Goldberg cursed as she fell from the wall toward the lift roof below. Her descent slowed abruptly and she lightly bounced against the lift before she flailed out with her empty hand to magnetically secure a hold in the now-weightless environment.
Noojin clung to the wall and her heart rate spiked. “We lost gravity.”
Kiwanuka knew that because her suit was already telling her that. For a moment she thought maybe Kequaem’s Needle’s bridge section had torn free from the rest of the ship, but there had been no flare of explosions to blow it free.
“Cipriano,” she called over the comm.
“We’re good, Staff Sergeant,” Cipriano replied.
“Where did the gravity go?” Kiwanuka asked.
“No idea. It felt like we got hit by something.”
Before the man’s words faded away, a large plasteel shard ripped through the shaft. The atmosphere vented out into space in a rush. Kiwanuka stared at the eight-meter-long shard and struggled to fathom where it had come from.
With all the space stations and orbital traffic passing through Makaum’s gravity well, Kequaem’s Needle shook repeatedly as she was struck several more times. Then the shaft spun in a lazy circle and shuddered again as it was struck by another wave.
Kiwanuka clung to the wall and rode out the impacts. Debris was something to be expected. Accidents happened. The corps didn’t always report them.
Especially if they were one of the corp-sponsored smuggling runs.
“Staff Sergeant Kiwanuka,” a man said over the comm. He had a definite accent, one that Kiwanuka wasn’t immediately familiar with, but it was soft and carried intensity. “I am Sytver Morlortai, captain of this ship. At this point, I have two choices: strand you and your people here in space while I separate the bridge from the rest of my ship, or negotiate an accord. I would rather not leave my two crewmen in your hands, and I feel certain you would want to ensure the survival of your own people.”
“I’ve got one mission,” Kiwanuka said, “and that’s to bring you back to Fort York. I’d like to do that with you still alive and breathing so you can admit to your crimes, but that’s your call.”
Another onslaught hammered the ship. Tremors quivered through the wall Kiwanuka held on to.
“If you want to live, Staff Sergeant,” Morlortai said, “we need to agree to put our individual goals aside for a time.”
“Not acceptable. We didn’t come here to lose this fight.”
“I didn’t come here to lose my ship or my crew. If we had more time, I think I could win this skirmish. However, we don’t.”
Another wave of impacts shook the ship.
Kiwanuka considered the possibility that the events taking place around her, even the shard, though that was a stretch, was purely theater. That didn’t seem logical, and Morlortai’s history, what there was of it, suggested he was more direct in his actions.
Still, she had a job to do. She slung her rifle and used both hands to climb the wall. She wasn’t sure what she was going to do when she reached the bridge hatch, but she still carried shaped B+8 charges that would open just about anything Morlortai’s ship had to offer.
Noojin and Goldberg climbed slowly after her.
“I have time,” Kiwanuka said.
&nb
sp; “The Phrenorian Empire has launched a surprise attack on every space station and ship orbiting Makaum,” Morlortai said flatly. “Those people weren’t prepared for that. All those impacts you’re feeling are from debris from those space stations and vessels.”
A chill twisted sharply in Kiwanuka’s stomach. “The Phrenorians wouldn’t do that.” She placed a hand farther up the wall and continued climbing.
“There was no one here to stop them,” Morlortai said. “Let me connect you to our external drones.”
“He doesn’t need to do that, Staff Sergeant,” Veug said. “I’m in those systems. I can—” The computer specialist cursed immediately. “Staff Sergeant—”
Whatever Veug said was lost as Kiwanuka stared at the images that played against her faceshield.
FORTY
Dramorper
Southwest of Makaum City
0529 Hours Zulu Time
“. . . identify . . . respond . . .”
The transmission coming through the translator unit wired into the Phrenorian communications system sounded jerky and distant. Sage assumed that was because the software struggled to make sense of the Phrenorian clicks, whistles, and hisses that carried over the broadcast as well as to keep everything in real time.
“Man, that language sucks.” Escobedo wrapped her arms around herself and shivered even though she still had blood and tissue on her armor and hadn’t batted an eye. “I’ve never heard anything like it. Puts me on edge every time.”
“Good for you that you’re not gonna be part of a diplomatic mission,” Culpepper said. “All you have to do out here is shoot the Phrenorians you meet. Keeps it simple.”
“I heard the Sting-Tails didn’t even have an audible language until a trade ship landed on their planet a thousand years ago and introduced them to the idea that they weren’t alone in the universe,” Corrigan said. “Once they had that, they captured some of the traders, tortured them, and figured out how to build starships. They realized they had to create this language to talk to each other over comm, so these clicks, whistles, and hisses are all a secondary language.”
“How did they talk to each other before that?” Escobedo asked.
“I heard they exuded pheromones and just smelled each other,” Corrigan answered.
“Like dogs?
“Maybe.”
“Ick.”
Sage didn’t know if the story was true, and he didn’t care. Who the Phrenorians had been in the beginning weren’t who he was dealing with now.
“Pipe down,” Sage ordered.
He’d allowed the soldiers to let off steam because they’d needed the brief downtime and they told stories when they were together. But the submersible was only minutes away from the mission’s primary transition point. They were back to business.
The soldiers fell silent at once and checked their gear and weapons again. That was another thing they did automatically after it had been drilled into them.
Pingasa tapped a small keyboard beside him. “I’m sending the Phrenorians a return message that states we had engine trouble. To explain any possible lateness on our part. I told them one of the small jasulild went through an engine and damaged our communications array.”
“You learned that in the time it took to get here?” Corrigan looked impressed.
“No,” Pingasa said. “I searched through the log entries Lieutenant Murad located for mention of something similar that was in an aud file. Seven months ago, a similar event occurred. I copied and pasted that to send.”
He waved a hand at the monitors above him that showed nearly a dozen jasulild pacing the submersible on all sides. Escobedo’s shock treatments had kept Snaggletooth at bay, but the other sea monsters insisted on accompanying the Phrenorian boats.
“Those jasulild should help sell that story,” Pingasa said. “But I predict those things are going to be problems as well.”
“I don’t,” Culpepper said. “When this boat blows, the concussive waves coming off it will scramble their brains for a time. If it doesn’t outright kill them on the spot.” He looked around the group and grinned ghoulishly. “Gives you more reason to swim quickly, boys and girls. You don’t want to be around Snaggletooth or any of the others that come through those explosions. They’ll feel like they’re coming off a three-day bender.”
Sage hoped Culpepper was right about the window regarding the jasulild. Tension built within him as time passed.
“Why haven’t the Phrenorians responded?” Escobedo asked.
“It takes a moment for the translation software to do its job,” Pingasa said. Sweat trickled down his forehead despite the climate-controlled atmosphere. “Should be any second now.”
“Or maybe they’ve already put a torpedo in the river with our names on it,” Culpepper suggested.
The comm crackled again.
“—understood—problems—waiting—repairs—combat now—”
“Combat now?” Escobedo repeated. She hovered, poised over her weapons board.
Sage watched the radar and sonar monitors as the red lines swept Dramorper’s vicinity out to a half-klick. The distance would give Escobedo an instant to trigger a defensive response.
Everyone waited a beat, then Murad said, “Since we’re not being fired upon, I’m going to take that as us passing muster.”
“Why don’t they just check with the other boat?” Corrigan asked.
The other soldiers in her immediate vicinity glared at her like she was on the edge of jinxing the luck they were having.
No, Sage reminded himself. Not luck. We’ve got a lot of skilled people on this mission. He didn’t want to forget that, and he wanted to bring them all home.
He also knew that a post like the fortress, a place with no real duties, would bring out the worst in a soldier. When a soldier had nothing to do, that soldier usually worked really hard to do nothing. Comm checks became perfunctory so whoever was on duty could get back to whatever diversion the soldier was doing before the interruption.
Phrenorian warriors had the same weaknesses when it came to downtime.
“They won’t contact the other boat,” Pingasa said. “This is the lead submersible. Therefore we are the only ones they will talk to. They expect us to keep the second boat in line like a mother hen with a chick.”
He trimmed the planes, charged and depleted the ballast tanks, and adjusted their approach to the base. Sage had picked up enough of the boat steering to know that. He’d watched Pingasa and learned from the tutorial his HUD had walked him through. Redundancy helped keep a unit moving forward even at the worst of times.
The distance to their chosen delivery point was less than a thousand meters and falling rapidly.
Murad linked Sage in on a commlink to Command.
Colonel Halladay answered the call immediately.
“We’re coming up on the three-minute mark, Colonel,” Murad said. “Is this op still a go?”
“You’re still a go, Lieutenant,” Halladay said. “The jumpcopters are standing by for your fallback once you’re clear. Be advised that we’re tracking four Phrenorian aerial troopships that are closing in on your location. My guess is Zhoh is making his move to retrieve those war machines. You know what we’re up against. If they get their hands on them, things will go a lot harder for us.”
Sage knew that Charlie Company couldn’t hold against the firepower inside the fortress. If they failed here, there would be nothing to keep the Phrenorians from rolling over the Terran military and taking the planet in a matter of hours.
They needed to move.
Now.
“Copy that.” Murad cleared comm and looked up at Sage. “Get them out of here, Master Sergeant. Hopefully I’ll see you soon.”
“Roger that, sir.”
Murad smiled and it almost looked genuine and fearless. “We’ll see if Corporal Culpepper lives up to his reputation.”
“I’ve got it on Sergeant Kiwanuka’s authority,” Sage replied, and shook the man’s han
d. He turned and called the soldiers to him as the time counted down inside his HUD.
They double-timed to the middle of the submersible and used the airlocks on either side of the corridor to evacuate the vessel.
Sage’s armor shifted to neutral buoyancy immediately when he floated into the river. The sluggish current carried him along slowly.
Suit integrity optimum, the near-AI told him.
“Copy that,” Sage said to himself as he swam away from Dramorper. The armor’s speed and strength allowed him to navigate the current easily and he swam toward the other submersible. He got caught for a moment in the turbulence created by the boat’s plasma propulsion engines, then broke free of it.
The HUD showed the other soldiers swimming with him, all of them vectoring in on the ping from the second submersible they had captured. There was enough light streaming through the river for him to see the boat powering nearer, but he tracked it primarily by the sonic signal it was giving off.
“Sergeant Jahup,” Sage called over the comm. “Knock, knock.”
“We have you, Master Sergeant.” Jahup’s voice was flat and dry.
“Copy that.” Sage reached an interception point with the submersible and hung motionless as it approached. He amplified his vision and his HUD reduced everything to green. Since the human eye could more easily make out different shades of green, the details became sharper.
Prior to setting sail, Jahup’s crew had spot-welded plasteel cargo nets onto the boat’s port side. He and his soldiers were already in place, holding on to the nets as the submersible glided through the water.
Sage pinged Jahup’s suit, locked on it, and swam over to join the younger man clinging to the net.
Jahup lay flat against the submersible so he streamlined through the water. Sage did the same, but he turned so he could face Jahup. He switched to a private frequency.
“Are you ready for this?” Sage asked.
“Yes.” His voice was strong. “The worst thing has been the trip underwater.”
“Worse than the trip we took along the bottom of the Tekyl River to get to Cheapdock?” Sage asked.
