It Ain't Over

by Robert M Kerns

  “Okay, team…here’s where we stand, in more ways than one. Srexx had to reboot the control system for the station’s power distribution grid to bring the airlock online, but someone welded or otherwise affixed a large, metal plate over the inner hatch. I asked Srexx if we have any plasma torches or something like that to cut through the metal.”

  “There are cutting torches in the life pods on the flight deck,” someone said over the group channel.

  “Excellent,” Cole said. “Thank you for speaking up. Grab as many people as you need to bring several here. I want to be sure to have backups in case one runs out while we still have a need for it.”

  Cole switched out of the group channel and back to the call with Srexx, saying, “Hey, Srexx?”

  “Yes, Cole; it appears that the life pods—”

  “Forgive me for interrupting you, buddy, but I’ve already sent people to bring cutting torches from those life pods.”

  “Ah. Very good, then.”

  “Srexx, while we’re waiting on those torches, what’s happening in the system? Is Haven in any danger of being discovered?”

  There was a slight pause before Srexx replied, “I do not believe so at this time, Cole. The slave convoy that prompted our accelerated timetable is still on course for the station, and none of the traffic around the station has come close enough to observe the ship with a visual inspection…not that the ship would be easily observed. Still, there is always the chance that some hapless pilot would fly right into our hull without realizing we are here.”

  “If that did indeed happen, what’s the risk to the ship?”

  “Negligible, Cole,” Srexx said. “Based on the construction materials I have observed in use in this system coupled with the disturbing tendency to skip proper maintenance, I predict any craft colliding with us would pop like an egg…as long as it was equivalent to a personnel shuttle in size or smaller.”

  “Heh…let’s hope you’re right.”

  The time passed in companionable silence while Cole and the remaining boarding party waiting for the cutting torches to arrive. Cole was just about to switch over to the group channel and ask what was taking so long when he saw the assembled crowd part like the Red Sea before Moses, permitting a group to approach the airlock with the awaited cutting torches. One member of the party carried four magnetic grips, and Cole smiled at the forethought.

  Cole stepped as far aside as he could to allow his people to work. He watched on in silence as two people attached the grips. Then, they started the process of cutting through the metal plate.

  They went through three cutting torches before a section of the metal plate (sized to match the inner hatch) came free. The same two who had cut through the metal plate with the torches took hold of the grips and pried the plate free. The edges still glowed red as they maneuvered the cut-out into the airlock and leaned it against the bulkhead between the inner and outer hatches.

  Cole moved to look through the new hole and felt like screaming. Someone had turned what should’ve been an access corridor into a storage room. Crates small enough to be man-portable lined the space, and a thin path just wide enough for an unarmored person connected the metal plate that had served as the back ‘wall’ to a jury-rigged hatch nine meters away.

  Checking to ensure his microphone was active and that he was active on the group channel, Cole said, “Okay. I need someone to get in there and do a rough survey of what’s in those crates.”

  “Are we taking plunder, Captain?” some asked, producing some chuckles.

  “I wasn’t planning on it,” Cole replied. “If that stuff isn’t life-critical, like medicinal pharmaceuticals, I’ll lock the two airlock hatches open, and we’ll all troop back to the ship and wait for an explosive decompression to clear the way. We’re not stevedores, dammit.”

  A cursory examination revealed the crates held an assortment of illegal drugs, and Cole sighed, shaking his head.

  “While you’re in there, give that hatch coaming a look-see. Do you think it will hold against decompression?”

  The crewperson already at the far end of the storage space moved closer to the hatch coaming and examined it. After tracing the joins all the way around, the crewperson turned.

  “Captain,” a new voice said across the group channel, “this hatch has to be some of the shoddiest work I’ve ever seen. I doubt it would stand up to a rambunctious toddler, let alone the stresses of explosive decompression.”

  “Roger that. Hold where you are,” Cole said and muted his internal microphone.

  Taking a deep breath, Cole spent ten seconds blistering the inside of his armor’s helmet with kind of profanity even the most dedicated enthusiast would avoid. Frustration lessened, Cole reactivated his internal microphone and placed a call to the bridge.

  “Bridge, Sasha here.”

  “Sasha, I need some able-bodied souls to serve as impromptu stevedores. Someone thought it a good idea to weld a plate over the inner hatch of the airlock and convert the airlock’s access corridor to a storage space. The hatch coaming they installed to control access won’t stand up to my preferred method of cleaning the space, so we’re going to move everything over to the ship and eject it to space later.”

  “Wait…you mean you’re not even into the station yet?”

  “Nope. The way this mission has gone so far, I wouldn’t be surprised to find half the Aurelian Marines on the other side of that coaming…when we finally make it through sometime next year.”

  Cole thought he heard some restrained giggles but chose to be the bigger man.

  Sasha replied, her tone saturated with mirth, “Oh, Cole…I shouldn’t laugh, but it’s difficult, so difficult. I’ll get you some extra bodies soonest. What are we moving?”

  “Illegal drugs.”

  This time, Sasha wasn’t the only person howling with laughter over the comms call.

  They spent thirty-five minutes moving the crates out of the improvised compartment, and the longer they spent, the more Cole seethed in silence inside his armor. All he wanted to do was rescue some slaves who he hoped to hire. It shouldn’t be that difficult. At long last, though, the way was clear to enter the station.

  Cole approached the hatch that he hoped would be the final barrier between him and his goal, and he couldn’t keep from smiling as he took a closer look at it. In fact, he felt like cheering. It was a manual hatch! No keypads, no locking mechanism…nothing like that. Just a gear-driven hatch operated by a circular hand crank on the hatch coaming.

  Grasping the handle with the right hand of the armor, Cole began working the crank and watching the hatch edge its way open with every revolution of the handle. Cole activated the armor’s external microphone as the hatch opened wider to find out if there was anything to hear from whatever lay beyond.

  The first thing Cole noticed was that the hatch appeared to be silent. While there was a slight whine of powered servos as he operated the crank, overall, there wasn’t much noise from the hatch itself. Then, he heard it.

  “What do you mean ‘you don’t know?’ You’re the engineer on this hunk of metal. Don’t you dare stand there and tell me you have no idea why all the lights are on down here now.” The voice was a male tenor with a slight nasal tone.

  “Look,” another voice said, this one on the deeper end of tenor, “just because I’m the best engineer you have doesn’t mean I’m an actual engineer. I don’t even have command codes to the engineering systems. Why are you so wound up about the lights anyway? They’re just lights. So what if they came on after all these years?”

  “You’re a damned fool, you know that?” Nasal Voice said. “It’s not just the lights on this level. Whatever reset the lights also powered up the hatch on the space we’ve been using for an armory on this deck. We have three hundred people coming here for an auction over the next twelve hours, and our extra guards can’t even access their weapons! Whatever the hell this is…you need to fix it.”

  Just then, the hatch reached the poi
nt where it was open the widest, and as Cole cranked the hatch through its last few degrees of opening, the mechanism—either the hinges, some gears…something—filled the air with the kind of high-pitched squeal only metal grinding against metal can produce.

  “What the hell was that?” Nasal Voice said, his words carrying across the now eerily quiet space.

  Two people stepped around a corner in the corridor nine meters in front of Cole. They were a mismatched pair. The one closest the bulkhead was a tall man and rail thin. The other came up to his associate’s chin, and he bore the musculature of someone who spent his days doing heavy, manual labor.

  “Where the hell did they come from?” the tall man—who Cole now identified as Nasal Voice—almost shouted. “Quick! Alert everyone we have intruders. They must be here to steal the slaves!”

  That’s when Cole realized none of his people had weapons.

  Cole charged through the open hatch putting the combined power of the armor’s servos, his composite weight (Cole plus armor), and his momentum into a left hook aimed at Nasal Voice’s right cheek, just in front of his ear. Nasal Voice ducked at the last second, bringing the armor’s fist into contact with his skull just behind the temple.

  Cole heard a ghastly CRACK! at the moment of impact, and Nasal Voice’s head snapped toward his left shoulder hard. Nasal Voice collapsed to the decking and slid less than a meter, his head continuing to lay at an odd angle.

  Double-checking his mic and active channel, Cole said, “Damn. Somebody check this guy for life-signs! There’s another running to sound an alarm. Set up a perimeter while you’re at it, and begin a cautious recon of this deck.”

  Cole turned down the cross-corridor from which the two men had come and turned the corner and used his implant to tune the armor’s sensors to humanoid life-signs. He disregarded the large cluster of life-signs behind him and focused on the one life-sign moving away from him. He sped up to a slow jog, his heavy steps sounding like jackhammers striking an anvil.

  Turning the corner, Cole saw the man running to what looked like an access or comms panel at an intersection ahead, and Cole sped up to catch him before he reached it. The man darted a glance over his shoulder, and his eyes widened as he looked at Cole sprinting up the corridor behind him…well, as much as heavy armor can sprint. He turned his head back to his direction of travel and reached for the comms panel. Cole drew back his left arm again and timed his punch so that the fist of his armor’s left hand struck the comms panel just as his arm reached full extension. The running man jerked back from the comms panel as it exploded in a shower of sparks, and Cole’s momentum carried him into the man’s back before he could stop, knocking the man flat.

  Cole extricated the left hand of his arm from the wreck of the comms panel and leaned down to grasp the man’s clothes, then lifted the man to his feet. Comms call averted and prisoner in tow, Cole turned and pushed the man back the way they had come until he rendezvoused with his boarding party.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  The man Cole pushed along froze when he saw his associate lying on the decking. One of the boarding party knelt beside him and looked up as Cole approached.

  “Captain, you hit this guy pretty hard, caved in his skull pretty good, and I think his neck’s broken, too. I don’t think he’s coming back from that.”

  “Okay,” Cole said, sighing. “Take his shirt, and rip it into strips. Use the strips to tie this guy’s hands behind him.” Cole activated his external speakers, making sure the armor’s systems would use the false voice Srexx had programmed for him. “You have a name, slaver?”

  Wixil moved to the corpse and used the claws on her armor to cut the shirt away from its torso. Then, she and Yeleth began cutting the strips.

  “I ain’t no slaver,” the man said, “but my name’s Endo…Endo Stanley.”

  “Do you want to live, Endo Stanley?” Cole asked.

  “Now, what the hell kind of question is that? Of course I want to live.”

  “Good. You’re going to take us to the armory your buddy was talking about, and then, you’re going to take us to the slaves.”

  “Shit,” Endo scoffed, “you must have a death wish. Do you have any idea how many people are between you and the slaves?”

  Now, Yeleth took two strips of cloth and pulled Endo’s hands behind his back. She used both strips to bind his wrists, taking extra care to ensure the knots were as tight as she could make them.

  “Do I look like I care? My boarding party and I are armored, and as soon as we raid your armory, we’ll be armed. Do—”

  “You’re not even armed?” Endo erupted into laughter. “What kind of dumbass charges in to steal slaves without any weapons?”

  Cole resisted the urge to growl and said, “Did I need a weapon to handle your buddy there?”

  Cole’s question ripped the humor right out of Endo. “No,” he said, “I guess you didn’t.”

  “Now…about that armory,” Cole said.

  “It’s back near the comms panel you ruined. Come on; I’ll show you.”

  Endo stepped around Cole and led them back to a hatch four meters down the corridor from the comms panel Cole punched. The cross-corridor where the comms panel was turned out to be one of the bulkheads making the space occupied by the armory. When they arrived, Cole saw that the hatch controls were lit up, and the read-out indicated the hatch was locked.

  Cole deactivated the armor’s external speakers and switched from the group channel to his call with Srexx, saying, “Srexx? You still with me?”

  “Of course, Cole. What do you need?”

  “I’m standing at Hatch Seven-Dash-Four-Two-Two. The controls say it’s locked. Can the station computer see the hatch controls?”

  “One moment…”

  Five seconds later, the read-out on the hatch controls changed from ‘Locked’ to ‘Open,’ and the hatch slid back into the bulkhead as the space’s lights activated.

  “Thank you, Srexx,” Cole said, as members of the boarding party moved around him and Endo to enter the armory.

  “Of course, Cole; you are welcome.”

  Cole switched back to the group channel just in time to hear someone say, “Holy shit! There’s a fusion bomb in here!”

  Cole blinked. What? Over the group channel, he said, “Confirm last. Did you say there’s a fusion bomb?”

  “Aye, Captain…if the crate markings are right, it’s a five-megaton fusion bomb.”

  “Well, we’re not going to let them keep it,” Cole replied. “Anyone see any cargo handling equipment in this mess?”

  “There are six pallet sleds lined up against the back bulkhead, right next to this bomb. They’re rated for five thousand kilograms each. There are two racks of laser rifles, charge packs, and their charging stations. I’ve seen crates with grenades, more laser rifles and charge packs, laser pistols and their charge packs, and many crates of slug-throwers.”

  “Okay,” Cole said. “Everyone, arm up. Get yourselves a laser rifle with five charge packs plus one loaded and a laser pistol with two charge packs plus one loaded.”

  “Look here, Captain,” another crewman said. “There’s a crate over here with two armor-portable rotary cannons and another crate with five-thousand-round ammo packs.”

  The modern rotary cannon was an evolution of the ancient mini-guns in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Unlike its ancient forebears that relied on gunpowder as a propellant, the rotary cannon was a gauss rifle with six barrels rotated. As each barrel spun into place, a magnetic-reactive projectile slipped into the chamber, and magnetic fields powered by the vehicle that served as its mount (or Cole’s armor in this case) accelerated the projectile to a speed over three thousand meters per second, becoming so hot from friction with the air that the projectiles glowed like old-fashioned tracer rounds. Most militaries used the modern rotary cannon as an anti-vehicle or anti-aircraft weapon.

  Inside his armor, Cole grinned. “Yeah…I’ll take one of those. You guys think y
ou can get one of those ammo packs secured to the backplate of my armor?”

  “If it has the standard hardpoints, we can, Captain,” a crewman said.

  A crewman moved over to help the one already at the create with the ammo packs, and together, they lifted one out and carried it toward Cole. Cole turned slowly in place and felt the pack slide into place and lock. A new box appeared in his HUD, containing the text, ‘5000 Rounds Remaining.’ A box appeared below that with flashing text, ‘No Compatible Weapons System.’

  “Captain, you’re going to have to retrieve one of these rotary cannons yourself, sir, but I will connect it to the ammo pack once you have it.”

  “Someone take charge of Endo. We don’t need him running off,” Cole said as he moved over to the crate with the two rotary cannons. He leaned forward just far enough to grasp the rotary cannon and lift it out of the crates. A crewman moved to his side and connected the feed mechanism to the ammo pack.

  Connecting the rotary cannon to the ammo pack apparently powered it up as well, because the text in the second new box in Cole’s HUD changed to ‘Rotary Cannon Online’ just as an aiming reticle appeared. Cole shifted the rotary cannon from side to side and watched the reticle move as well. Cole grinned inside his armor and resisted the urge to quote the opening line of an ancient rock song by a group called Black Sabbath.

  “Okay, Captain, we’re armed up,” a crewman said. “These suits are very cool. The laser pistol and charge packs just adhere to it somehow. It’s kind of nice not to worry about needing a tactical harness.”

  Cole realized he’d been going the entire operation without knowing who was with him from the crew. He accessed his implant and navigated through the menus until he found a control that would show him the name of the person as they spoke on the group channel.

  “Yeah,” Cole said, “Srexx does good work.”

  Cole accessed his implant and switched over to the call with Srexx, saying, “Srexx, I’m tired of switching between calls. I’m going to merge this call into the group channel.”