Corvus Ascending

by Dale Sale

  Pela bounced up, grabbed Zia and threw her into another stall. More customers began to scramble. The owner started hitting the looters with a stick.

  Grey was prepping to shift his command to Erebus. It’s unusual to take another man’s command, but I can’t risk keeping Johansson on Terne Station any longer. Meza will just have to swallow his pride. DeWitt can handle things here until I return with that black ship. His comm blinked red. He sighed, “What now!?”

  Ensign Andrew Chang, duty Operations Officer, spoke over the comm. “Captain Grey, a civil disturbance has broken out on Ring 2. Security forces have been dispatched, but this appears to be an organized resistance.”

  Grey said, “Don’t you think you are over reacting? It’s probably just some loudmouths upset over the price of beer and cabbage again.”

  Chang replied, “Sir, we also have an armory breach alarm. Cap rifles and gas grenades have been stolen. This looks like someone knows what they are doing and exactly where to hit us.”

  Grey fumed, That information is senior officer knowledge only. There’s a mole! “Chang, I want the location of all senior officers and their tracking data for the last twelve hours.”

  “Aye, Sir, I can have that to you right away.”

  At least the parts I want you to see. Chang thought.

  The GQ alarm sounded throughout the market. Security began to wade through the crowd, blowing their whistles.

  Zia wrestled Pela under a table. “Time for us to leave.” They slipped through the raging brawl.

  The whistles were Nan’s signal. She tossed three smoke grenades into the crowd from her position on the mezzanine surrounding the bay. Sidra’s miners, positioned around the mezzanine perimeter, opened fire with their capper rifles on the incoming security forces.

  The Brig’s 1MC sounded. “General Quarters, General Quarters, all Hands Respond. Security to Habitat Ring 2, Sector Romeo!”

  “Showtime kid! Form up on me,” said Gus.

  The door hissed open, and a voice shouted, “Johansson, now!”

  Gus grabbed Drake by the arm and ran to the door, “Both of us,” is all he said. Two guards slumped against the passageway bulkhead.

  Lt. Fredrika DeWitt met him. “We don’t have time to argue!”

  “No, we don’t.”

  DeWitt growled, “He better not slow me down.”

  “Faster than you sweet-cheeks,” Drake said.

  Fredrika shot him a deadly look. “Fine!”

  “How does she know I didn’t mean you Gus,” Drake said, elbowing Gus in the ribs. They all ran.

  Back at the market, Security saw their lead rank crumple and quickly fell back to the entrance to wait for back up. Nan tossed off three more smokers and gave the retreat signal.

  When the Security reinforcements arrived, they found a smoky bay with overturned tables and civilians milling through the wreckage.

  Fredrika, Gus, and Drake pounded along the passageways through chaos. Crewman and Security personnel were still rushing to their GQ stations and totally ignoring them. DeWitt stopped at a ladder trunk and yelled, “Climb!”

  Drake grabbed a carabiner line from a rack on the bulkhead.

  “We don’t have time for souvenirs,” Fredrika said.

  Sheridan just shot her a look and took off up the ladder, followed by Gus. Gus was surprised to see the Lieutenant following them. He had assumed they would be on their own. The climbing began to get easier as they headed toward the station axis. Soon the gravity was so weak Drake began to hand over hand along at astounding speed.

  “Keep up el tee.”

  “Careful!” she called.

  Gus breathed heavily and struggled to match speed. “Ma’am I believe he has done this before.”

  Drake soared out of the ladder trunk into an open hangar bay, clipping the carabiner to a fitting as he sailed past. He slipped the line through his fist to stop in the micro gravity. Drake grabbed a flailing Gus and Fredrika as they shot out of the trunk. He released them and they gently bounced against the opposite wall of the hangar bay.

  Gus thought, Now I know how he got those calluses. I can smell his palms burning.

  Drake hauled on his jackline and launched toward the wall, spinning at the last minute to land on his feet and activate mag boots.

  Fredrika remarked, “I see this isn’t your first rodeo, cowboy.”

  Sheridan tipped an imaginary hat in salute, “If there’s one thing we Orbies are better at than the Navy, at its zero G ops. We don’t have the luxury of centrifugal gravity modules.”

  Gus asked, “What’s the plan?”

  Fredrika answered, “Your BUG is over there. The plan was for you to launch and meet up with your ride. But there isn’t room for two.”

  “Don’t worry about me Ma’am,” Drake was rummaging through lockers along the bay wall. “I’ll just hitch along outside.” He displayed an EV suit held at arm’s length, wrinkled his nose, and laughed. “Just my size, fifty extra smelly! Let’s mount up, Gus.”

  Gus balked. “Are you crazy? They are going to be shooting at us out there!”

  “Ah, we do tag alongs all the time. It saves a lot of air lock time when rounding up strays.”

  Gus asked, “What exactly did you do in the Guard?”

  “Extra Vehicular Mate 1st Class.”

  Fredrika shook her head. “EV Mates are crazy!”

  “Why, thank you, Ma’am. I take that as a compliment.” Drake slammed the helmet home and ran his suit checks.

  Gus ran up to the BUG. There was a large box being held tightly between the primary work arms. That wasn’t there when I docked. Oh well, trust the plan.

  Gus called out, “Don’t worry el tee. I’ve trusted Gunner Stanski with my life before; this isn’t the time to doubt her. Now get out of here, we need you to do an emergency depressurization on the bay.” Gus slammed the BUG’s hatch shut. Sheridan clipped himself to the side of the craft and blew her a kiss as he threw his head back in laughter when she glared at him.

  DeWitt stared at them through the bulkhead window as she hit the emergency depressurize locks, a klaxon and strobe begin the countdown warning.

  Gus shouted a quote from an old movie, “Hang on Kid, ‘It’s going to be a bumpy night!’”

  Sheridan said into his comm, “I love twentieth century film, Bette Davis was awesome.”

  Grey burst into the Ops Center shouting, “Ensign, I want this station in immediate lockdown. No one and nothing gets in or out! Operations, status report!”

  “Sir,” Chang said, “the riot has spontaneously stopped and the rioters have scattered, blending into the station populace. Security reports no rioters in custody. The actual physical damage is negligible. However, there was a breach in the brig’s security during the confusion. Some prisoners are missing. The Dockmaster also reports an impounded maintenance BUG performed an emergency launch during the riot.”

  Grey narrowed his eyes and asked, “Who is missing from the Brig?”

  “Prisoners Guster Johansson and Drake Sheridan, Sir.”

  Grey slammed his hand on the console. “I should have known that Johansson was involved in this. A little too convenient that a riot allows him to escape just before he’s transferred. Get me a channel to Erebus.”

  Chang keyed the comm to external and nodded to Grey. “Erebus Flight Control, where is that damn BUG?”

  The Erebus answered: “It is in a maximum burn away from the Station, Captain Grey.”

  Drake Sheridan let out a cowboy whoop as the hangar doors opened, and they shot into the black through a frozen mist of escaping atmosphere. An unsecured box flew out of the hangar with them and hit the front of the BUG.

  Gus flinched. “Shit! Damn station idiots leaving gear adrift!” Gus noticed a button on the forward panel marked HIT ME AFTER ESCAPE and slapped it. A holo of GRANNe popped up.

  “I assume you have now cleared the station, Skipper. Please initiate maximum acceleration on the preset heading.” Gus slammed the thrusters forw
ard and was pinned to his seat as the BUG’s autopilot took control. “You may have noticed the large box fastened to the craft’s bow. When the countdown timer reaches zero, please activate the large shielded switch at your right elbow. This should provide a distraction to allow your escape. Flight is tracking your BUG and we will retrieve you in due course.” The holo winked out.

  Gus keyed the local comms. “You okay out there, kid?”

  “Just enjoying the view,” Drake said. “Thinking of taking a little nap since it sounds like you got everything under control.”

  The display timer was running down fast, under thirty seconds remained. Gus slowed his breathing and paused with his thumb at the switch. As the timer hit zero, he flicked it.

  Nothing happened. He threw the switch several more times to no response. “Hey Kid. Wakey, wakey!”

  “What’s up, Bosun?”

  “Whatever that thing on the bow was supposed to do, it didn’t. That love tap we got when we blasted out must have knocked something loose. I need you to boogie up there and check it out. Cutting the throttle to half.”

  In the Terne Station Ops Center, “Captain, the BUG is still accelerating.”

  Grey turned his head and spoke off screen, “Erebus Tactical, launch your ready squad. Stop that BUG, maximum force is authorized, but I would prefer the pilot alive.”

  The Erebus Tac Officer responded crisply over the comm, “Aye, Terne Station.”

  Ensign Chang studied his Ops console and said, “Captain, the Erebus is launching a squad to intercept the BUG.”

  An automated voice came out of the BUG console, “Warning! Weapons lock detected!”

  Gus glanced at the displays. “Hey Kid, you might want to hurry, there is a lock on us.”

  “Of course, there is. Maybe I should have stayed in the brig after all.” The EV Mate pulled hand over hand against the diminished thrust, carefully testing each grip before releasing. He quickly inspected the device as he reached it.

  “There is a control cable knocked off. I’ll try to reattach it,” said Drake as he grasped the cable.

  “Hey be careful let me disarm…” Gus was cutoff by a shudder throughout the BUG.

  The front of the box had blown off, and a probe was coasting away. A small glow could be seen at the probe’s stern.

  “Oh shit! Hang on Kid, That things going to light off!”

  Just as Drake raised his arm to try to shield himself, a giant black umbrella shape unfurled from the box and wrapped around the entire BUG. The blast from the probe harmlessly played down the sides in a fiery rain.

  Drake began to whoop deliriously. “Cutting it a little close that time, Skipper.”

  “Initiating second automatic burn sequence in 5, 4, 3,” the automated voice stated.

  “Kid, it doesn’t look like Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride is over yet, hang on,” Gus said. The little craft rotated just as the voice announced ignition.

  Gus was slammed into the seat at three G’s. Drake disappeared from the front screen. This feels like more of HAM’s work. What the hell did you do to hotrod this thing! Gus wondered. “Hang on, Kid!” Gus screamed. The thrust cutoff after 30 more seconds and they were in free fall. “You still with me out there, Sheridan?” keyed Johannsson.

  “Just got the wind knocked out of me a little. I’m okay. Still clipped in.”

  Gus checked all the BUG displays. I guess I know what hiding under a blanket means now. The black umbrella that had unfolded from the front of the BUG now covered the entire craft and blacked out the view ports. Gus keyed his comm. “I think this cover is the same stuff that my ship is made of. It makes us pretty much invisible to sensors. The downside is, we can’t see out of it. Can you peek out and give me some visual?”

  “Sure thing, Boss.” Gus watched Drake crawl over the forward ports toward the stern. “OK, I’m at the edge now.”

  He could see the decoy that had fired away from the BUG accelerating away with its running lights blinking. “The decoy is headed away from us.”

  “Johansson, this is the cruiser Erebus; we know you are in that BUG. If you don’t return to the station immediately, we will fire on you!” an ominous voice said over the comms.

  “Erebus is turning, but I can’t tell if they bought it,” Sheridan said over a secure link.

  “We just sit tight. The BUG is operating on an autopilot program. We just play a little ‘Run Silent, Run Deep.’”

  Sheridan laughed, “Hey another old Earth movie reference I got!

  “Oh, Hey Boss, the Erebus has changed course toward us.”

  “Do you think they spotted us?”

  “Umm, no, a squad of interceptors is chasing the decoy. It looks like we are just on Erebus’s flight path. Let me run some things through my suit’s trajectory calculator, standby. Crap!”

  Gus waited impatiently. “What ya got?”

  Drake answered, “Their flight path will intersect us in five minutes. Can you maneuver?”

  Gus checked the flight board. “If I fire thrusters, they are going to spot us for sure. You got any ideas?”

  “Well, we could do a Spin Cycle.”

  “A what?”

  “That’s what we call it in the Guard,” Drake said. “You Navy types would say, ‘momentum exchange tether.’ We use it to boost stuff to higher speed on the cheap. Hanging an EV Mate out there is cheaper and more reliable than a remote release.”

  “Okay, now I know you are crazy! As if escaping from the station strapped outside of a BUG wasn’t proof enough.”

  “Nah, I did it all the time. That’s why I get vac pay. Okay, so it’s not an approved maneuver. Sometimes we cut corners a little to save time. Here’s how it works, you use the BUG’s gyros to get some rotation going, then I pay out my tether so that I’m swinging around our common center of rotation. At the right time, I release the tether and slingshot away. We exchange a little momentum and you are nudged out of the Erebus flight path.”

  “Yeah, but what about you sailing off into Void?”

  “Easy, I just start squawking SOS and Erebus picks me up. You slip away while they are distracted. I just tell them that you forced me to come and ejected me as a distraction.”

  Gus asked, “Do you think they will really believe that?”

  Sheridan laughed. “There isn’t really a reason that they shouldn’t, we didn’t know each other before today and only a crazy man would willingly blow himself into space.”

  “We’ve already established that you are crazy,” Gus said.

  “Fair enough,” Drake said. “I’m also hoping that your lawyer friend can get me out after they stick me back in the brig.”

  “Okay, nothing to lose. Once you clear the blanket, I’m going to lose comms with you. Good Luck cowboy!” Gus thought, Hope they actually do come for you. “You better have a strong stomach kid, I’m going to need to spin you up pretty fast.”

  Sheridan laughed. “Do your worst, old man.”

  Gus began to rotate the BUG and saw the tether tighten as the centripetal force began to build. Drake fed out his tether the full 500 meters. Hang on cowboy I’m only shooting for three rpm but that’s really gonna be a helluva ride for you, Gus thought.

  Out in space, Sheridan furiously tracked his eyes and blinked to use the suit heads-up-display to calculate his speed. Erebus was looming larger by the second.

  Aww shit must be close to five Gs on me. Not going to be conscious long at this rate if I don’t punch out fast. Here goes nothing.

  He hit his tether release and the tremendous apparent force on his body vanished as he sailed off. He looked back toward the BUG, but it had disappeared under the umbrella screen once again. The HUD indicated he was sailing away from the BUG at over 570 kph. He glanced at the interceptors running hot for the decoy. A line of tracers stitched out from the lead craft toward the decoy.

  Damn, these guys are playing for keeps.

  On Terne Station, Ensign Chang narrated as he zoomed the display screen view, “The BUG is igno
ring hails and has increased acceleration. Firing warning shots.” Grey gripped his command chair so tightly it groaned as the veins stood out on his neck. “Still no response from the BUG. Firing a disabling burst.” A burst of tracers stitched a line toward its tiny target. A flare erupted and faded. “Captain, the target appears to have been destroyed.”

  “Well, fuck!” spat Grey. “Get a team out there to search the area. I want confirmation.”

  “Erebus, SOS, do you copy, I really need help,” Sheridan broadcast on the distress channel. “That bastard kidnapped me and pitched me into space.”

  A calm voice answered, “This is Erebus, we copy your distress call and will send someone to pick you up. Hang on, buddy. You’re lucky, we swatted that BUG right after you ejected.”

  Sheridan laughed to himself. “Thanks! I’ll be waiting. Not like I’ve got a lot of other options right now.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  Captain Harrison Grey sat in the conference room looking bored. I can’t believe after all these centuries ‘Death by Powerpoint’ is still a thing, he thought.

  The Chief of Station Security was droning on about how, despite inadequate funding and personnel shortages, his officers had handled the recent riot quickly and efficiently with little damage and no injuries. He conveniently avoided any mention of the missing weapons from the armory and the escaped prisoners.

  “Skip to the riot CCTV video, Chief!” Grey said. Typical CYA Governance bureaucrat.

  “Umm, yes Captain, let me just bring that up.” The Chief fumbled with his tablet until his assistant rescued him. The slim young brunette deftly took the reader and queued the footage. Her uniform marked her as a Marine liaison assigned to Station Security. “My assistant will continue,” the Chief finally said.