Quelling the usual vertigo he got at moments like this, he clamped his primary weapon to the mag-lock anchors on his armor's back and dropped slowly through the hole head-first. The belly of the cargo shuttle was festooned with flush-mounted handholds so he could easily pull himself along the hull, waiting at the edge for the others before making the leap across the gap to the station.
Crusher came next, surprisingly, and moved smoothly across the surface and came to a stop next to Jason. Since his face wasn't visible through the gold-colored visor, Jason just nodded at him. The battlesynths came after and, like everything else they did, it appeared they were showing off. They streamed out of the hatch, diving aggressively down into open space before using their jets to direct their flight and moved in a formation towards the platform.
Jason just shook his head and pulled his legs up under him, pushing off gently to join them. When his feet hit the hull of the station, he activated his mag-locks and anchored to the alloy, waiting for the rest of his team. Half the battlesynths stood on the hull, the other half floated some distance away providing overwatch. Since the routing platform was meant to be able to operate without a crew for decades, even centuries between needing maintenance, the only external surveillance it had were two imagers near each airlock that would record every ship approaching to dock. There were some other magnetic sensors around that detected ships and drones, but nothing that was focused around picking up a humanoid-sized target. At least that's what the specs Jason had obtained said. For all he knew, all their sneaking around was pointless, and the people inside watched their every move.
Once the entire team was out of the shuttle and on the platform, Jason set off across the hull. His relative orientation had changed completely so now, when he looked up, he could see the blue planet the station orbited. He took a moment to look at the beautiful details of the roiling clouds that raced around the planet. After all his time in space, being outside of a ship still made him queasy.
His new armor adjusted the mag-locks so smoothly it was almost like taking a Sunday stroll as he marched up to where his visor had helpfully indicated with a green, rotating crosshairs the place he would make entry. Wasting no time, he waved at 701 and pointed. The battlesynth commander waved two of his own forward to breach the outer hull by using their powerful cutting lasers. Jason held his breath until the first laser pierced all the way through and no puff of air came out. Good…the cavity had been evacuated as he'd hoped.
An outer hull breach was something they'd talked about during planning as a contingency, but they'd not had time to train on it before arriving. Thankfully, the Zeta-Saka had the slick entry portal to make things much easier. It was such a simple, brilliant idea that Jason made a mental note to smack Twingo's blue, bald head for not thinking of it himself. It would have come in handy more than a few dozen times.
Their planning had hit a snag since the consensus among the group was that if the Machine realized the station was a vulnerability, it would have the system under heavy guard. The additional cruiser in the system notwithstanding—which may have actually been there for a pre-scheduled rotation switch with the other ship—the routing station had seemed as exposed as it had during their initial recon. It hadn't occurred to any of them that the Machine might lay a trap within the station because that meant letting them get close to the objective. The only thing Jason could figure was it thought it would just be Omega Force coming and not all the extra help.
The last little bit of alloy was cut through, and the two battlesynths removed the piece of hull. One of them, in a display of raw strength, bent the hull section into thirds, and then slipped it inside the hole rather than tossing it out into space. The Galvetic warriors who had stood around all looked at each other, obviously impressed. Jason made a move to go in first, but 701 grabbed his shoulder and shook his head, pointing at himself, and then the hole.
Jason just shrugged and pointed for him to go ahead. 701 switched to full combat mode, his cannons deploying from his arms, and his eyes burning crimson in the gloomy light. Jason looked at the powerful machine and felt a sharp stab into his heart as he thought of Lucky. Taking the cue from their commander, all the battlesynths switched to combat mode. Seeing so many of them in one place sent a chill down Jason's spine. Even on their home planet of Khepri, that many battlesynths clumped together would have made people nervous. It'd be like a group of two-hundred kiloton tactical nukes standing around shooting the breeze while everyone else held their breath, waiting to see if one, or all, would go off.
701 slipped through the hole, followed closely by two of his troops. A minute later, one of them popped back up and gave them the all-clear, so they all filed into the opening in an orderly manner. The Zeta warrior that carried the breach portal was sent up to the front of the stack along with Jason. His armor's computer began to catalog what the imagers were seeing with the technical schematics he'd obtained, and he noticed a problem right away. The interior of the station was similar to what he should be seeing but not exact. There was also a lot less equipment than should have been there. The access tunnel they were traversing should have been clogged with transmission cables, data buses, coolant lines, and a host of other random things you'd expect to find just stuck where they fit on an installation that had been upgraded a hundred times over its service life.
Instead, the tunnel had just a few cables and fluid pipes clamped to the bulkhead, and they looked like they'd been recently installed. There was also an issue with some of the superstructure they passed. A support brace missing here, a crossbeam added there… It was enough small things adding up that Jason worried the schematics he'd gotten were either out of date or for the wrong damn platform altogether.
The target area Jason had planned to make entry through was still there. It was a thin, single-layer bulkhead near a cable pass-through that would take them into a sizeable equipment bay. The information he'd been given suggested the equipment in that bay was no longer used, part of an obsolete system, but wouldn't be removed until they needed the space. That meant if they accidentally destroyed a couple avionics boxes cutting through the bulkhead, there was less chance of setting off an alarm.
Of course, that assumed the information Jason had been given was right. He was beginning to suspect that wasn't the case.
Jason took his gauntleted hand and traced a circle where he wanted the entry hole cut. 701 nodded and waved to the warrior holding the portal to go ahead and set it up. It took them less than ten minutes to set up the portal and carefully cut away the alloy, leaving a clean ovoid entry into the station interior. Jason poked his hand through and activated the sensors that ringed his wrist, letting the armor build a picture of what was in the room.
Just a disused avionics bay like it was supposed to be.
He took a quick look back at how many troops he had jammed up in the access tunnel and knew he needed to get them aboard and deployed as quickly as possible. They were all extremely vulnerable in there and, by now, the defenders had to know they weren't actually coming through the airlock. After getting oriented, he heaved himself through the portal and crashed onto the deck as he moved onto the active grav-plating. He pulled his primary weapon and quickly cleared the area, checking near the hatch and around the bay, letting his armor's sensors scan for any anti-personnel devices or other nasty surprises. Once Crusher and 701 came in, he activated his helmet's speakers.
"The plans I have in my mission computer aren't exactly what we're seeing right now, but it's close," he said. "Let's get everyone stacked into the corridor outside, and then we can move forward and pull the defenders off your two still in the ship."
"Or we could break com silence and just have them exit the ship and catch up with us," 701 said. "We could more easily dictate the terms of the engagement then."
"Then we'll need to get ourselves arrayed first. We break com silence now, and we could get trapped in here if they're scanning those frequencies."
"Agreed," 701 said. "On your
order?"
"Deploy," Jason said. "Crusher, work with Mazer to get the Zeta's in position, too."
"On it," Crusher said.
Something was tickling the back of his brain, trying to warn him that something just wasn't right. He ignored it and moved out with the rest of his team. The corridor outside wasn't meant for more than a couple techs to be in at a time, so the going was slow trying to move so many bulky bodies through there.
The teams moved quickly, if not quietly, through the dimly-lit interior. More hatches, side-corridors, and equipment alcoves didn't match up with Jason's schematics, and he debated breaking radio silence so he could activate his downlink and talk to Cas about what he saw. He'd not wanted to risk bringing the AI with him since it was at risk if the drone was damaged right now. Cas had been copied so many times and had spent so long in a failing neural implant that Kage was worried that to keep transferring it back and forth would cause irreparable damage.
701 sent small teams of battlesynths aft and down side corridors, clearing the deck they were currently on, while the main force pressed ahead towards the airlock. The station only had three decks, most of its space taken up by large resonator cavities where slip-space pockets were formed in shielded chambers for incoming and outgoing data transmission. The main powerplant, a large fusion reactor, was in a bulbous protuberance off the starboard side, along with a smaller, similar structure that held the fuel.
The closer they got to the airlock without meeting any resistance, the more uneasy Jason became and the more relaxed his team seemed to be. They took it as a sign they'd successfully picked a target the enemy hadn't thought of and it would be a simple escort mission for Jason to upload the package. But Jason knew the Machine like few others in the quadrant did, and he knew it would not simply overlook such an obvious vulnerability. Even Voq had assumed with over ninety-seven percent certainty that the Machine would be waiting for him here.
"This is the airlock, sir," one of the Zeta's said as they rounded the last turn.
"Break com silence," Jason said over the team channel. "701, have your troops on the other side stand down."
"Acknowledged," 701 said. There was a slight discoloration at one edge of the hatch that showed the two battlesynths on the other side were putting up a good show of trying to get in without destroying the hatch.
"Since it looks like there's no security force and no tech crew, I guess we can get started," Jason said, completely baffled.
"You sound disappointed," Crusher said.
"I thought we had a pretty good idea of what the Machine's responses would be." Jason shook his head. "This really doesn't make a lot of sense. I figured it would recognize this vulnerability and there would be troops stationed on all these platforms for the time being."
"Perhaps it—" Mazer never got to finish his thought as the bulkheads on either side of the main corridor dropped and out poured dozens of ConFed shock troopers and a handful of armed synths. They moved quickly to surround the group but didn't open fire.
"Feel better?" Crusher asked, keeping his hands in front of him.
"Not as much as I thought I would, no," Jason said.
"Combat Unit 701," one of the synths said, walking forward. "This is an unwelcome surprise. I had thought you long dead."
"No more so than to find our own working with the enemy, Acuri," 701 said. "What are your intentions?"
"The Machine wants your human there taken captive. The rest of you are to be handled at my discretion," Acuri said. "Care to convince me you're worth keeping alive?"
29
"They are in trouble."
"Yeah, we are too, if you hadn't noticed," Kage snapped at Cas.
"What's happened?" Doc asked.
"Captain Burke has broken com silence protocols," Cas said. "I am monitoring the team channel. There was a sizable force hidden in the station, and right now, they appear to have the bulk of the captain's forces pinned against the airlock hatch."
The Devil's Fortune ran hard to stay away from the pursuing ConFed cruiser. So far, it had done nothing but give chase, but Kage couldn't shake the feeling he was being herded along and knew it would be too easy for another ship to pop out of slip-space ahead of them where he wouldn't be able to turn away without giving ground to the ship chasing him. He had his rear missile launchers loaded and locked onto the cruiser, but the element of surprise was gone, and taking a shot at such a long distance would just be a waste of munitions he might need later.
"Has he activated the downlink yet?" he asked.
"No," Cas answered. "Only voice coms right now."
"Then all we can do is monitor it and hope we can stay in position to help," Kage said. "If we get boxed in, we'll have to mesh-out and try to approach again from another vector."
"We need to stay in range of the captain's transponder," Cas argued. "Adjustments to the upload may be required, and without a high-bandwidth downlink, that won't be possible."
"If you have some way to get this cruiser off our ass, I'm all ears," Kage snapped. Cas spun around in the air, its multiple sensors taking in all the data from the bridge stations at once.
"I will need access to the missile programming portal Twingo used earlier."
"Are you insane?! I'm not giving you access to—"
"Do it, Kage," Doc said sternly. "We can't run forever, and you're fresh out of ideas. Let the thing take a crack at it. We trusted it before on the Phoenix."
"We trusted a copy of it on the Phoenix and, if you'll all remember, I argued about that too," Kage grumbled but entered the authorization codes to allow Cas direct access to the tactical computers that uploaded each missile with the targeting package and flight profiles they needed before launch.
"I'll also need access to navigation, helm, and defensive systems," Cas said, nestling down into one of the seats and extending a data probe to the terminal.
"What?! No way!" Kage shouted.
"Doc?" Cas asked.
"You're asking a lot," Doc said, frowning.
"You realize I'm asking out of courtesy, right? I already have the command overrides for this ship and could do it without any of you being able to stop me. My only concern is assisting Jason. What would be my motivation for harming his crew or the ship I am currently flying on?" Cas asked.
"I really hate this thing," Kage said. "What do you have planned?"
"There is no time—"
"Just do it! Now, before I change my mind."
Cas went to work, simultaneously accessing multiple systems. First, it loaded a specific flight profile into six ship-to-ship missiles in the forward launchers and fired them. The missiles spit out of the tubes, and then drifted lazily in front of the Devil's Fortune, spinning around slowly until they were aimed back towards the ship. Doc, Twingo, and Kage tensed up but said nothing.
Once the missiles were out of the tubes and stable, Cas decreased drive power and started venting drive plasma out of the starboard engines, mimicking a blown injection manifold. As the cruiser closed the gap, Cas fired wildly with the aft cannons. The panicked display was like blood in the water for a hungry shark, and the cruiser fully committed to its charge, opening up with its own forward cannons.
Powerful blasts rocked the Devil as shot after shot from the ConFed warship hammered at the aft shields. The corvette had been thoughtfully outfitted by Saditava Mok with overpowered shield generators, but even they had their limits, and Kage kept an eye on them, ready to take back control if it looked like Cas was about to let them overload.
The cruiser was not very close, opening up with its big guns and obviously lining up for a short-range missile shot once the shield buckled. During this, Cas had slowly changed its own strategy with the aft cannons, both lasers and plasma, from a seeming random, panicked firing to focusing on the prow of the incoming ship. The corvette's guns were nothing to sneer at, and Cas knew the other ship's shields were being taxed heavily, but the ConFed captain had target fixation and wasn't about to let the smaller ship sli
p away because his front shields were heating up.
Just as Kage looked like he was going to intervene, Cas fired the drifting missiles, which were aimed back towards them, and angled over hard to port. The starboard engine suddenly stopped venting plasma and roared to full power even as Cas kept up the withering fire from the aft cannons. The cruiser hesitated just a moment before angling over to pursue…and saw the missiles bearing down on their front, starboard quadrant too late to do anything about it.
Their automated point defense took out the first missile, but the remaining three slipped through. The first hit the weakened shields over the prow. Kage watched as they flared bright, and then failed completely just as the last two missiles slammed home. Both blasted through the hull, the secondary engines firing and pushing them as deep into the ship as possible before the warheads detonated.
The hull of the cruiser seemed to expand and undulate, splitting on the seams as the pressure of the two explosions gutted it. The aft third of the ship was blown clear, spinning off into space as the port engines still ran at full power, but the rest of the vessel had been reduced to debris.
"Holy shit," Kage whispered.
"Initiating damage control protocols for the overheated shield generators and minor plasma scorching on the starboard engine nacelle," Cas said calmly. "Giving the ship back to you."
"Not bad flying," Twingo said, nodding at the drone and turning back to his station to monitor the ship's systems. Kage glared at Cas, waiting for it to gloat, but all the drone did was hover serenely in victory.
"Coming about, heading down to give the captain any backup he needs. Keep monitoring local space in case we have any more visitors," he finally said. "Hopefully, it won't be anything bigger than a combat shuttle since someone used four missiles to take out a single cruiser."
Cas could have argued that the Devil's Fortune carried a complement of thirty-two ship-to-ship missiles for the fore and aft launchers, but it opted to remain silent and let Kage seem petty instead. In truth, it had been a horrible gamble to take with the Legacy still aboard the ship, but if it hadn't stepped in the odds were increasingly tilting to the ConFed cruiser's favor. It was a bigger ship with more fuel and a full crew complement, and the small corvette couldn't run forever.
The Pandora Paradox Page 23
