Gunboat
Page 23
“Here’s the news,” said Warden. “A short spacewalk, forced entry to an enemy vessel, maximum sabotage within said vessel, then steal a shuttle and escape.” He paused to look around. “Questions?”
“We’ll need a pilot,” said someone at the back of the crowd, “and can it be anyone but Ten?”
“I think that’s where I come in,” said Sub Lieutenant Corn as she floated into the hall. She was wearing power armour and carrying a magnetic grapple. “Someone lend me a gun?”
Ten passed her a massive combat shotgun. “Not a gun, never a gun. It’s a weapon. You’re an engineer, you should know better. You see any Deathless, you shoot them. No hesitation. Got it?” he said, not waiting for an answer before he took a replacement weapon from a nearby rack.
Ten turned back to the rest of the troop. “Outside of an exercise, have any of you ever done a ship to ship assault with exo-suits before?”
Nobody responded in the affirmative, and Ten sighed.
“Here’s a top tip. Under no account should you miss the target spaceship. If you do, you are in space. You will not stop going. Ever. In a modern suit, air and water are recycled efficiently. You will die of starvation, which is pretty unpleasant. Secondly, do you all know the procedure to follow if you do miss?” he asked.
Again, nobody seemed to have an idea. Ten mimed placing a gun under his chin.
“You place your rifle like this, and you pull the trigger firmly.”
“Tomsk will be alongside in twenty minutes or less,” said Cohen as he pushed his way into the engineering department. Cohen nodded at the console Mantle and Mueller had rigged for their aborted attempt at opening a wormhole using the hyperspace engine. “Is that thing still working?”
“We haven’t dismantled it, if that’s what you mean,” said Mantle, “but it didn’t work, remember?” Then she narrowed his eyes as she realised the implications of his question. “You want to use it to destroy the ship?”
“Got it in one,” said Cohen, positioning himself in front of the console. Then he looked up at Mantle. “Well?”
She raised her eyebrows, then gave a quick nod. “We didn’t fix the damage, or the flaw,” she said, “so if you activate the system, it’ll go critical in a few minutes, then explode. Goodbye, Ascendant.”
“What?” asked Cohen, looking up from the console.
“The emergency cut-off lever needs to be reset, down in the engine bay, or it won’t start up.”
“Seriously?” said Cohen, incredulous. “I thought you’d fixed all that stuff.”
“Why would you think that?” snapped Mantle. “You saw the work schedules. Did you think we were sneaking back to do a bit more instead of sleeping?”
“Right, fine,” said Cohen. “Here’s the plan. You make sure everything’s working up here, while I go down and sort out the emergency cut-off. Once you’re happy, get to Palmerston. I’ll trigger the sequence remotely then join you in the main bay. Got it?”
Mantle nodded slowly. “That should work.”
“Good,” said Cohen. “Keep your HUD on. I’ll ping you when I’m done.”
“You remember the way?” she asked as he headed for the door.
“Yeah, no problem. Should be easier without the gravity.”
Except it wasn’t, not really. Where he could have run, he had to pull himself along the corridor and bounce off the walls, continually correcting his course. And where he could have dropped, he had to climb instead. Even squeezing through the narrow crawl space was made more difficult.
“Nothing’s ever bloody easy,” he muttered as he heaved himself out into the engine bay. At least he didn’t have to contend with a ten-metre drop to the floor this time. He pushed off from the wall and floated across the bay to land neatly by the cut-off lever.
“Fingers crossed,” muttered Cohen as he heaved on the lever, pulling it back into the ‘on’ position.
But when he finally reached engineering, Mantle was still there, in front of the console where he’d left her ten minutes before.
“Why are you still here?” Cohen snapped angrily. “Get to Palmerston, now!”
“The remote trigger isn’t going to work,” she snapped back, “not unless you’re here so I can rig it.”
“Right, so I’m here now. Patch the controls through to my HUD,” said Cohen.
“Working on it,” she muttered, fiddling with the console. “See anything?”
“A big red button just popped into my HUD,” said Cohen. “Is that it?”
“No, it’s the in-flight entertainment system,” Mantle snarled. “Of course that’s it! You’ll have about ten minutes from activating the trigger to detonation.”
“Good. What’s the safe distance?”
“Safe? From an exploding starship? I have no bloody idea,” shouted Mantle, “but at least a hundred kilometres.”
“Got it,” said Cohen. “Now go, and make sure Palmerston’s ready to leave as soon as I arrive.”
She stared at him for a moment, suddenly suspicious, then she nodded and pushed her way to the door, disappearing quickly into the corridor.
Cohen sat for thirty seconds or so, listening sadly to the great ship’s last moments.
“That’s enough moping around,” he muttered, shaking his head as if to free himself of his melancholy. Then he heaved himself around and opened the engineering store, searching quickly in the dim red light until he found the engineering environmental suit and accessories he was looking for.
“That’ll do nicely,” he murmured, squeezing himself into the suit. As he fastened the helmet and triggered the diagnostic suite, a message appeared in his HUD.
There was a pause, then,
There was another pause, then Palmerston joined the conference.
sent White from Palmerston’s bridge.
There was a pause, then,
Tough, thought Cohen, shaking his head, sometimes these things don’t go the way we hope.
28
“That’s it,” said Midshipman Shepherd from the comms desk on Palmerston. “Docking is complete, Target One is now locked to Ascendant.”
“Very good, Mr Shepherd,” said Lieutenant White from the command chair on Palmerston’s small bridge. “And what’s our status?”
“Crowded, sir,” said Midshipman Parks from the navigation desk. “Every room is pretty much full. Palmerston doesn’t have enough acceleration couches for everyone, not even close, so it might be a bit uncomfortable.”
That was an understatement. Without an acceleration couch to support the body, any high-G manoeuvres were likely to cause injuries amongst the passengers. Fatalities were not impossible, especially if anyone was caught by surprise.
“Can’t be helped,” muttered White. “It’s not like we can leave anyon
e behind.”
“Target One’s assault team has cracked the doors, sir. They’re entering Ascendant now,” said Shepherd.
“Let’s see the action, Mr Shepherd,” said White.
“Aye, sir,” said Shepherd, pushing the feed from Ascendant’s internal cameras to Palmerston’s main display. The bridge team watched in silence as a Deathless assault force floated onto Ascendant and began to make their way along the corridors. They were wearing standard Deathless power armour and carrying a selection of low calibre arms suitable for combat aboard ship.
“That’s our signal, Ms Robinson,” said White grimly. “Open the main doors, let’s get out of here while we still can.”
“Aye, sir,” said Robinson, “triggering Ascendant’s starboard doors now.”
“Plot a course to get us outside but keep us hidden beneath Ascendant for now, Ms Parks,” said White, leaning forward slightly as he watched the tactical view update. Half the main display now showed the inside of Ascendant’s main bay with the starboard doors sliding gently open. Beyond, only the stars could be seen.
“Slowly does it, Ms Robinson. Just put us on the outside for now.”
“Aye, sir, taking us forward on attitudinal thrusters only.” The view shifted as Palmerston nudged forward, turning slightly before heading slowly through the doors. Behind them, the bulk of Ascendant rose up, dwarfing the gunboat and curving away out of sight.
“Let’s bring the weapons online, Ms Elson,” said White, “and sound the warning klaxon.”
“Aye, sir,” said Elson, triggering the klaxon. It blared – three loud blasts – then fell silent. Nobody made a sound as Palmerston turned slowly under the gentle puffs from the attitudinal thrusters.
On the main display, the view switched as Shepherd worked the cameras, following the Deathless assault team.
“Is that the admiral?” asked Elson as a figure in more ornate armour with obvious, if unrecognised, rank markings floated past a camera.
Then a proximity warning cut through the quiet and the view from inside Ascendant vanished. An external view flashed up on the screen in its place and there, in the centre of the display and highlighted with a glowing red ring, was Target Two, Tomsk’s troop carrier.
“Well that’s less than ideal,” muttered White to himself. He watched the screen for a few seconds, then made a decision. “Can’t leave her sitting there like that.”
“Spin us around, Ms Robinson. Point us towards Target Two, five degrees above her current plane, then take us in,” said White. “Let’s see if we can bag another of these Deathless bastards.”
Cohen whistled as he made his way to the bridge. He’d collected a sack of supplies as he passed the armoury, and now he was busy mining his own ship.
“The indignity of the thing,” he murmured to himself, pressing another strip of high explosive into the joint on the inside of the hull. He added a detonator, keyed it to his HUD, then flicked across to check the progress of the Deathless assault team.
Slow and cautious, unlike their previous attacks, he observed, but that suited his purpose. He pressed on, hoping that he’d remembered how this was done, then he pushed away from the wall to admire his handy work.
“Sloppy,” he muttered, “very sloppy, but it’ll have to do.”
He added one more charge – larger, and in a new area – then pushed his way to a chair on the far side of the bridge, pulled up the feed of the camera that watched the corridor outside and settled down to wait.
But not for long, as it turned out. The Deathless, having established that the ship was empty, moved more rapidly, taking the most direct route from the airlock to the bridge. There were about thirty of them, all told, and one had insignia across his armour that suggested high rank.
“Welcome aboard, Admiral Tomsk,” whispered Cohen, grinning from within his own suit.
As the first of the Deathless troopers reached the bridge door, Cohen checked the icons in his HUD and ran through his plan again. Simple, straightforward and very, very risky.
A message popped suddenly into his HUD from Palmerston.
Cohen stared at the message, then he flicked through his HUD until he found a feed from Palmerston’s viewpoint. He watched for a few seconds as Palmerston manoeuvred to engage Target Two, then he pushed the feed to the last working part of Ascendant’s main display and resumed his wait.
The door opened and the first of the Deathless assault team floated onto the bridge. There was a ripple of excitement when they noticed him, but nothing more. They were quick and confident, clearly familiar with zero-G work. In moments, the room was filled with enemy soldiers, all pointing their weapons at him.
One last figure floated onto the bridge before the door closed. Even allowing for his more cumbersome, or at least more ornately decorated, armour, Admiral Tomsk was clearly less nimble in zero-G. He pulled himself across the bridge, looked around, glanced at the main display, then saw Cohen sitting in the corner and came to a halt, holding uncomfortably to a handle on the ceiling.
“You are Cohen?” said Tomsk. “I had not expected to find your ship so bereft of crew. Where are they?”
Cohen read the translation and steeled himself for the endgame.
“They were keen to meet you, Admiral, but I’m afraid I had to send them away.”
“Away?” asked Tomsk, immediately suspicious. “What do you mean ‘away’?”
“Let me ask you something, sir,” said Cohen, ignoring Tomsk’s question. “Does your government know what you’re doing out here? Do they know you’re working as a low-rate privateer, that your ships are attacking the Valkyr’s facilities and stealing their resources?”
Tomsk said nothing, and Cohen couldn’t see his face through the Deathless admiral’s opaque helmet.
“What else have you got up to, Admiral? Do you still follow orders, or are you operating entirely outside the Koschite command structure?”
“My actions are of no concern to a war criminal like yourself, Cohen. You should be more worried about your own fate, now that you are to experience justice for the crimes you have committed.”
“Allegedly,” corrected Cohen.
“What?”
“The phrase is ‘allegedly committed’, Admiral. Unless you’ve already decided I’m guilty, of course, but then the concept of justice wouldn’t have much meaning, would it?”
“You will have plenty of time to learn the meaning of ‘justice’, Cohen, and what it means to lose.”
“To lose, Admiral? I’m sorry, but that’s not on my list of things to do today,” said Cohen, putting into his tone all the insolence he could muster. He stretched in his chair, careful not to push himself free, and grinned as the Deathless troopers adjusted their positions to keep their weapons pointed at him.
“Would you like to join me for today’s entertainment?” asked Cohen, raising a finger to point to the main display. “I think you might find it diverting.”
29
“A spacewalk,” muttered Warden as he floated across the void. “Daft idea.”
He gave Fletcher an extra few seconds to get clear of the assault tether before detaching himself. He glanced over his shoulder at Ascendant, a hundred metres away along the taut line that extended from a winch next to the airlock hatch. Ahead of him, separated from the personnel by a few metres with a safety stop, was a simple drone to pull the line out and keep it taught.
This equipment was normally used to inspect the outside of a ship. The drone pulled a spacewalk tether taut and allowed anyone in an exo-suit to go directly along its length, which saved a lot of human guesswork and skill with suit thrusters.
Fletcher was ten metres out in free space, heading toward Tomsk’s flagship, at the rear of a line of power armoured Marine and Navy personnel. He’d
been concerned about Sub Lieutenant Corn coming on the mission, but her engineering and flight experience meant that this portion of the mission profile was at least something she was familiar with. She probably had more practice in this environment than any of the Marines.
He checked his angle of approach, gently engaged his thrusters to check they were pushing him in the correct direction, then disengaged from the tether. Warden gently floated after Fletcher. The drone registered his exit and after a few seconds, started its return to the capsule by the airlock that it lived in. He was on his own.
Around him, the stars of the Milky Way provided a beautiful backdrop to this dangerous stunt. Untethered spacewalks were dangerous at the best of times, but as the prelude to a combat assault it was near suicidal. The view would be something to be thankful for, if it weren’t spoiled by Tomsk’s enormous flagship. There was nowhere better to see the stars than from the cold hard vacuum of space.
Ahead of him, the first of group had reached the enemy ship, and the rest were steadily catching up. Everything was going remarkably well, but he couldn’t stop glancing at the railguns that festooned the ship. They were intended to deal with assault craft and torpedoes, but they’d do a person in an exo-suit a serious power of no good. Even the Marine Commando suits weren’t going to resist shipboard weapon fire.
“Fletcher, are you drifting?” he asked, suddenly concerned. Everyone ahead of him was in a straight line, like a series of fence posts. Fletcher was out of synch with everyone else.
She didn’t respond. “Fletcher? Fletcher, respond. Are you okay?” Warden demanded.
He gave his thrusters a short extra burst. Gently does it, he thought. Remember your training. Panicked bursts send you far off course, really quickly.
“Is there a problem, Captain Warden?” asked Sub Lieutenant Corn.
“Fletcher is drifting off course and not responding.”
“Roger that. Checking.”
“Negative, Corn. I’m following.”