Marine

by Joshua Dalzelle

  "It looks and feels like any other ConFed city, right up until you notice everyone seems to be really well armed." MG drifted by on his way to the main hatch. "Gravity is coming back up so, unless you want to fall, I'd get your asses to the floor."

  "Apparently, the gangster who runs the faction controlling the planet has some strange ideas about making it look and feel like a respectable, normal world," Jeff said. "Not sure if there's a logical reason for it or if the guy is just a little nuts."

  "Niceen-3—that’s the planet—is the gateway to the Reaches," Murph said. "Everyone who wants in has to go through that system. I'm not sure where I was going with that, it just seemed like it might be related."

  "Good story, Murph." MG rolled his eyes. A moment later, they were all slammed into the deck as the gravity came back up well beyond the normal limits. It was another second before a grinning MG turned it back down to 1-g.

  "Fucking dickhead," Jeff moaned from where he'd come down on the corner of a transit case.

  "I told you to get clear and on the floor."

  "You idiots stop fucking around in there before you break something," Mosler's voice broke in over the intercom. "Stow your gear and get to your stations, we're coming up on mesh-in in a few hours."

  "You're certain about this?" Captain Webb demanded, jabbing a finger at the holographic display in front of him.

  "Yes, sir," Mosler said. "That's the Endurance, or what's left of her."

  They'd meshed-in without incident at the prescribed coordinates and found the Pathfinder-class ship, Endurance, sitting close to where they expected her, but the ship was adrift and the aft section of the hull looked like it had been shredded. The melted edges indicated it had likely been hit with plasma weapons.

  "Power signature is non-existent, and she looks dark on thermal optics. Whatever happened, it happened a while before we got here," Mosler said. "Sully, go ahead and move us in closer so the sensors can get a better look at the damage."

  Jacob's stomach was churning from where he sat at an auxiliary sensor station on the left side of the bridge. He'd been in the military for nearly five years, had seen people die, and on an intellectual level knew there were no safe jobs in space, but all of that was in training, on the ground of Terranovus. As he stared at the spinning hulk of the derelict starship, all the bravado and swagger he'd displayed, bragging about how ready he was for the Fleet, came crashing down around him. Hundreds of humans had lost their lives on that ship, a ship that had been attacked by an alien species. It was so surreal he could almost convince himself it was a dream.

  "Hey! Brown? You okay over there? You look a little green around the gills."

  "Good to go, sir."

  "Keep an eye on the long-range active scanners in case whoever did this is still in the area," Mosler ordered. "Sully will have his hands full avoiding anything big in this debris field, and I'll be focused on the ship itself."

  "I'll be in the SCIF," Webb said. "Command needs to know about this ASAP."

  A SCIF—pronounced skiff—stood for Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility. It was a lot of military jargon that meant it was an isolated room with secure communication and data network access people could discuss sensitive information in. An apparent ambush attack on a Terran warship would most certainly qualify as something sensitive they wouldn't want to broadcast over their standard com array.

  "These are the coordinates for our rendezvous. Someone knew the Endurance would be here," Sully said. "Inside job? Another traitor?"

  "Another?" Jacob asked.

  "Likely she was tracked back from the inner systems by raiders." Mosler shot Sully a warning glare. "How about we focus on not hitting any big chunks of debris and leave the speculation for later?"

  "You got it, boss," Sully said.

  The bridge fell into an uncomfortable silence as the three of them went about their respective tasks. Jacob quickly reconfigured the Corsair's long-range array to continually scan for anything that could possibly be an enemy ship, something he'd only just learned how to do thanks to Captain Mosler's brutal training schedule. As he watched his own terminal, he'd occasionally sneak a peek up at the main display as the wreckage of the Endurance came into better view. The computers automatically took the incoming data from the multispectral imagers and created an enhanced image that showed the ship as it would appear if there were a natural light source nearby.

  "It looks like we've found the point of impact," Mosler said. "If you look at the rippling on the hull here, and here"—red indicators lit up on the display pointing to what he was referring to—"you can see this is the point where the shields buckled. The attacker concentrated fire here until they got through."

  "What's in that area on a Pathfinder-class ship?" Jacob asked.

  "Let's see… It looks like a maintenance access corridor runs up against the inner hull, and then behind that are some engineering spaces that have something to do with main power distribution," Mosler read off his display. "Huh. It looks like they knew exactly where to hit. Once main power was down, it would be easy to board her, destroy the ship, grapple onto it for salvage…anything you wanted."

  "This isn't giving me a great feeling," Sully said. "Pathfinder-class ships were some of the first anti-matter powered ships we've sent outside Terran space, but they're still pretty damn new for the specs to be floating around for any random pirate to find."

  "Command is sending a ship out here at full burn," Webb said as he walked back onto the bridge. "Our orders are to maintain position and look over the derelict, but we're not to engage anybody who may come back for it."

  "That's good since anything that would make short work of the Endurance, as appears to be the case, would destroy the Corsair within seconds," Mosler said. "This is not a ship designed to slug it out toe to toe with a capital ship."

  "Command understands that—after I explained it twice—and if we see anybody coming that isn't flying a Terran flag, we're to withdraw and observe, nothing more," Webb assured him.

  Jacob wasn't sure how to feel about Mosler's revelation that the Corsair wasn't really much of a fighter. That didn't bode well for him given that the mission was to fly her into some of the most seedy, dangerous parts of the galaxy. Maybe he'd misunderstood and what Mosler had meant was that the Endurance was an especially tough ship.

  "Jake, call down to your team and let them know to be ready for a possible boarding action," Mosler said. "If we're going to be here for days waiting on a salvage ship, then it might not be a bad idea to poke around over there and see if anything sensitive was taken. At your discretion, of course, sir."

  "That might not be a bad idea at that," Webb mused. "If nothing else, we can have them rig up charges so we can scuttle her completely if someone else comes sniffing around. Brown, I'll take over here. Go down and prep your team."

  "Aye-aye, sir," Jacob said. His orders were a little too vague to know exactly what he was prepping them for, but he'd be damned if he stood there with his thumb in his ass whining about needing direction. Though it had been against his wishes, he was an officer in the Marine Corps, and it wouldn't do to mill about like a lost puppy waiting for someone to point him in the right direction.

  Chapter 8

  "We're ready when you are, sir."

  Jacob's stomach felt like it couldn't make up its mind. It either wanted to climb up into his throat and crowd his larynx or it wanted to escape out his ass and go back into the ship where it was safe and warm. At this point, he was fine with either one, he just wished it would make up its mind. This was no simulator or training exercise. He was standing on the hull of an interstellar starship with four of his men, staring across a gap that, on the sensors, seemed close enough to touch but, in reality, was so far away he couldn't even see the Endurance with his naked eye. The best Sully had been able to do was get them within five kilometers before running into debris large enough that they'd had to raise the combat shields.

  "Copy, EVA Team," Mosler said over th
e channel. "You're clear to depart. The shields will allow you to pass through on the way out, but you're going to feel a bit…disoriented."

  "Can't wait," Jacob ground out. His squad had filed through the Corsair's dorsal hatch until they were all milling about on the hull while Mosler and Webb argued about the best way to get the information they wanted with the relatively short time the Marines had to work with. The air rebreathers would keep them supplied with enough oxygen for days, but the powerpacks on their specialized combat EVA suits would wear down quickly with the long, unassisted flight out and back, as well as the power they would need once they were in the Endurance.

  "The suit's guidance system is slaved to the sensor feed from the Corsair," Murph's voice came in over the team channel. His voice had a definite condescending tone that Jacob didn't appreciate. Jacob was well aware of how the damn suit propulsion worked. "Just execute the formation as you want and our suits will automatically form up around yours."

  "Thanks, Sergeant," Jacob bit off his initial sarcastic response. He was the outsider here and an untested and newly minted second lieutenant. His team was right to be skeptical, and nothing Murph said had been openly disrespectful or a challenge to his authority. Instead of making an ass of himself, Jacob used his neural implants to scroll through the different formations he could use for the five-man flight and picked the one that had him on point and the rest of the team tucked in and sheltered behind him.

  "Everybody ready?" he asked. "In three…two…one…launching."

  He gave the command through the neural implant and felt his suit's thrusters light off, pushing him off the hull and towards the spot the sensors said the Endurance was. After a quick check that the others were tucking in behind him as they were supposed to, he concentrated on the tumbling chunks of debris the sensors said were along their flightpath.

  They were able to cover the first three kilometers without encountering any obstacles before the suit reversed thrust and began decelerating him and veering him over towards the aft section of the derelict. It was once they were locked onto their intended landing site that the first major issue came up. While Jacob was concentrating on the spot near the largest hull breach where they'd make entry, he wasn't monitoring the erratically tumbling debris surrounding the cruiser.

  Two of the larger chunks of alloy collided with one another, sending the smaller of the two spinning towards the incoming formation of Marines. As soon as the computer on the Corsair recalculated the new trajectories it sounded an alert in their helmets and highlighted the danger on their visor's projected display. Jacob couldn't quite make out the new threat but the new course and speed numbers didn't lie: it was going to intercept them before they would get to the ship if he didn't do something fast. He fought down his panic as he looked at the jagged piece of the Endurance's hull on the sensor feed. His men had the same information available and there wasn't a peep on the open channel as they waited for Jacob to do something. Their discipline in the face of something this dangerous was intimidating to the recent Academy grad.

  "Break formation!" he ordered, unable to think of anything else to do. "Murph and Jeff go above, Taylor and MG follow me under. Do whatever it takes to dodge the debris, and then land on the hull wherever you can." There was a relieved chorus of affirmatives, and on his display, he could see the squad break up as they all fired their thrusters and accelerated off their flightpath to get clear of the debris. Jacob went to follow, but his suit was still locked onto the same course, slowing him down so that he'd be on a direct collision course with the tumbling chunk of hull plating.

  "Brown, you need to change course immediately!" Mosler's voice broke in over the com.

  "LT, hit the red spot on the left side of your breastplate," MG said over the squad channel. "You're still slaved to the automated guidance." Jacob didn't answer, just started slapping at his chest trying to find the button that would cut his connection to the pre-programmed flightpath that was about to kill him.

  "What a stupid fucking system," he griped as he saw the icon for the telemetry feed to the Corsair wink out and he had full control of his suit's thrusters again. He saw that the delay had screwed him out of going under it as he'd originally planned as it was angling down and quartering towards him. He didn't have time to try and angle away smoothly as the rest of the squad had done, so he rotated his body perpendicular to his flightpath and commanded the forward thrusters to maximum.

  It felt like he shot up and away like a bullet, but his momentum was still carrying him forward towards the Endurance and the obstacle as he tried to get up above it. Up and down were relative and not technically accurate when talking about moving in space, but it helped the novice visualize what he wanted to do so he could send the proper commands to his suit.

  The suit's computer updated his trajectory, and he could see the green line of his predicted flightpath shift upward…and still put him on course for hitting the obstacle. There was no time left. He subvocalized the command string to override the suit's safeties and pushed the thrusters to their maximum output, ignoring the power draw and nozzle temperature warnings scrolling across the bottom of his display. The blast from his thrusters was so powerful, he was slammed down into his harness and his breath came in short, shallow gasps from the g-loading. He vaguely heard someone shouting at him over the com but the audio was distorted and weak.

  "Just a bit more," he grunted, watching the course plot change and was just about to kill his thrusters when everything went dark in his helmet. "Oh, shit."

  Now, really fighting down the panic, Jacob took a second to do absolutely nothing, afraid that yet another rash move on his part would be the last he made. Without power, the faceplate began to fog up, and he could feel the cold trying to get in now that the heaters were off. He was also now on an uncontrolled, ballistic trajectory without any way to call back to the Corsair to let them know he needed rescue.

  The deep, calming breaths he took in those few seconds cleared his head a bit, and he was able to focus and remember his training. He reached up to his chest plate, found the recessed switch he was looking for, and twisted it all the way clockwise. When it hit the end of its rotation, he was greeted with a blast of air from the helmet vents, and he could immediately tell his heaters were back on now that emergency power had been activated. He now had air and heat for the next ninety minutes, and he could feel his anxiety ebb away as he began troubleshooting his problems in order of importance.

  He booted up the computer off the emergency battery and began a diagnostic. It told him that his main power cell had been knocked offline due to a thermal event that caused it to shut down for safety reasons. It prompted him to do a power system reset, which he did, and then told him that main power would be available in thirty seconds. As he waited, he tried to do the math as to how much time had elapsed before he shut his suit down. The chunk of starship hull that had been about to pancake him had to have passed by already, right?

  "—respond! Lieutenant Brown, this is the Corsair…do you require assistance?"

  The shouted words blaring through his headset suddenly startled him. Before he could answer the frantic call, the rest of his systems came online and his holographic display popped up, showing just how far off course he'd drifted.

  "This is Brown, I'm fine," he keyed the open channel. "Had a main power failure while trying to dodge the errant obstacle, but it looks like everything is coming back up okay. I have one forward thrust nozzle that is inoperable, and my power is down to forty-six percent, but suit integrity is one hundred and my sensors and guidance are all green."

  "Are you still mission capable?"

  Jacob couldn't tell who was talking to him but assumed it was Mosler. He checked his position, power levels, and where the Endurance was relative to his current course and did the math. He was exhausted after the adrenaline shock of the near-miss and suit failure, but throwing in the towel and asking for a pickup wouldn't do much to earn the respect of the four Marines he was expec
ted to lead.

  "I'm good to go, Corsair," he answered, putting as much confidence into his voice as he could muster. "I'm heading back to the Endurance now."

  "We're on the hull and waiting by the breach, LT. You want us to go ahead and make entry?" Murph asked over the team channel.

  "Negative, Sergeant. Wait for me."

  "Copy, sir."

  The flight back to the Endurance took longer than he expected, but within forty minutes he saw the cruiser's hull looming out of the darkness. When approaching something like a starship while wearing only a pressure suit, one was almost dumbstruck at just how massive they were. The Endurance wasn't considered a large ship by the Navy, but her bulk made him feel small and insignificant as he bent his knees and flared for a landing.

  The moment his feet touched, the mag-locks in his boots activated, holding him fast while he shut down his thrusters. He wasn't even inside the damn ship yet and he already felt like he'd been put through the wringer.

  "Brown is on the hull," he checked in on the open channel. "Making way to the entry point now. Standby."

  "This is creepy," MG said. "None of the lifeboats were launched, but I don't see any bodies."

  "There's no evidence of weapons fire either," Murph said. "I don't think they were boarded. If they were, they didn't put up much of a fight."

  Jacob had relinquished point duties and put MG in the lead since he said he was familiar with the Pathfinder-class layout. They were looking for any signs that might explain what happened to the Endurance, but their primary mission was to get to the engineering spaces and make sure her CO, Captain Swank, had activated the failsafes before they lost the ship. It was a critical enough task that the ill-equipped Scout Fleet squad had been sent over in case someone came back for the cruiser before the Fleet's salvage ships arrived.

  The going was slow since most of the emergency pressure hatches were still closed and locked. It required that MG get into an access panel beside the hatch and manually decouple the locking mechanism before they could shove the hatch back into the recess. Every time they'd stop to open one, the team would brace themselves in preparation for the explosive decompression of a still-sealed chamber, but halfway into the ship, they'd not found a single compartment that still had atmosphere. They'd also still not found a single crewmember or any evidence of a fight between the crew and boarders.