by Jay Allan
Is that it? Do I really believe my best moments are those when I stare back into death’s cold eyes?
She was disturbed by the thought, but she refused to indulge an argument with herself, at least not now. She still had work to do. If she could get the pirates to surrender, Elias and his people wouldn’t have to forcibly board.
And risk getting killed…
“Still no response, Commander.” Berry’s voice was hoarse. The young officer was trying—and failing—to hide her exhaustion.
Wheaton held back a sigh. She couldn’t say she was surprised. Pirates didn’t tend to surrender. They knew what awaited them, and most of them thought dying in battle was preferable to humiliation and public execution. Normally, Wheaton wouldn’t care. She’d be just as happy blowing away another pack of cutthroats and murderers. But this time was different. They needed a prisoner.
She shook her head and leaned down toward the com unit. “Captain Cain,” she said, pushing every bit of formality she could muster into her weary voice, “there is still no response.” She’d become quite informal with her passenger and ally, but now she felt she should put all that aside. Cain was going into danger, and the more he thought like a soldier, the better chance he had of coming back. The thought of distracting him in any way, of being even tangentially responsible for his death or injury, was extremely upsetting to her.
“Very well,” came the sharp reply. There wasn’t a trace of hesitation in Cain’s voice. “We’re going in, Commander.”
“Understood, Captain,” she replied, trying hard to match the crispness of his tone. “Good luck.”
Be careful…and come back in one piece.
* * * * *
Elias Cain stood next to the bulkhead, right at the front of his small team of agents…waiting. He was clad in black, a heavy suit of body armor over his survival suit. There was a carbine in his hands, and a belt slung over his shoulder with extra clips. But he was most conscious of the heavy pistol hanging from his side. The stun gun didn’t have a lot of range, but it was the most important piece of ordnance his boarding party possessed. If he’d wanted the pirates dead, he could have sat back in Zephyr’s wardroom and watched as Jamie Wheaton blasted the helpless vessel to atoms. But he didn’t want them dead, not all of them at least. He needed information. And that meant he needed a prisoner.
He tried to keep his mind focused as he waited for the shuttle to dock with the enemy ship, but he was distracted by something inside, a feeling in his stomach. Fear, tension. He’d been in combat before, when his team had raided various criminal enterprises, but he’d never seen anything like the action his father and brother—and even his mother—had. This would be a real battle, a fight to the death against an enemy that had nothing to lose. A situation far more like war than the police actions he’d experienced before.
“Ribis, as soon as we get in, I want you to take Tiergen, Jalte, and Zimmer. You’ve got one job. Find the reactor and secure the containment equipment. As quickly as you can. The last thing we need is some desperate pirate blowing the magnetic bottle just to take us with him.”
“Yes, sir,” the agent snapped back. He turned and moved back toward the others to relay the command.
Cain knew the enemy reactor was damaged, but his gut was telling him it wasn’t completely scragged…and that meant a loss of containment would be disastrous. He had no idea where the reactor was on the pirate ship, but he knew his people would have to find it or they would all risk destruction. Portable radiation detectors would point his people in the right direction, but without any idea of the ship’s layout, there was no way to be sure how long it would take them to get to the control area. They would just have to do their best. And if they failed, win or lose the battle, it was as likely Elias Cain was leading his men into a nuclear holocaust as anything else. He suspected the pirate captain would destroy his ship as a last act of spite against a force that had defeated him. He wanted to be repelled by such a senseless act of destruction, but he suspected he might take the same action in the pirate’s position. And he knew what Darius would do…
“Everybody else, we have to win this fight, first and foremost, but we also need at least one prisoner. So blast away, but when the enemy fire dies down, hold back until I can assess the situation. If we scrag them all, we will have wasted the entire boarding effort…and any of our comrades who fall will have died for nothing.”
He looked back over the twenty agents of his team, wondering for a moment how many they would face on the pirate ship. By all accounts, the enemy had suffered heavily when they boarded Carlyle…and it was likely they had suffered additional casualties to Wheaton’s laser cannons. There could be just a few survivors…or we could be outnumbered and outgunned. He just didn’t know.
There was a loud noise, the clang of metal on metal. A few seconds later, the com line crackled to life and the voice of the shuttle’s pilot blared from Cain’s headset. “We’re docked, Captain. Just give the word when you’re ready, and we’ll blow the enemy’s outer hull.”
And then we’ll be in combat…
“Alright,” he said onto the main com line, “it’s time. We’re here to get information on a potential plot that affects not only Atlantia, but possibly all Occupied Space. I want every one of you at your absolute best, and I know that’s what I will get.” A short pause. “Lieutenant…you may proceed. Blow the hull.”
He stepped back a meter and waited for the charges to blow…and an instant later the bay shook hard as the carefully-positioned explosives detonated. Then he could hear the mechanism in the shuttle activate, extending the umbilical through the hole in the enemy’s hull and sealing it off from space.
About twenty seconds later, the lieutenant’s voice was back on the com. “You’re good to go, Captain Cain. You should have life support in the enemy ship, but I’d suggest survival gear anyway.”
“Acknowledged.” He flipped the com to the unitwide frequency. “It’s time,” he said, as he pulled the clear hood up and over his face, attaching it to the connectors along the neck of the survival suit. “Full life support gear, everyone.” He could almost feel the collective groan. The survival suits were incredibly uncomfortable, especially with the hoods drawn. But he didn’t care. Uncomfortable was better than dead. A lot better.
“Okay, let’s go…” He took one last look to confirm everyone had their gear in place. Then he put his hand just over the switch to open the hatch. He paused for an instant and turned back toward his people.
“And remember, get me a prisoner!”
* * * * *
Yulich stared down at the weapon in his hand, a small sub-machinegun. There were guns in the locker with greater hitting power, but Black Viper’s captain was after mobility. The corridors and passageways snaking their way through his ship’s lower levels were narrow and crisscrossed with conduits and structural elements. Better to carry something small than to try and navigate down there with a heavy assault rifle.
He stood around the corner from the spot where the enemy’s shuttle had attached itself to Black Viper. He knew every centimeter of his ship, and he figured his people would have a good vantage point here.
He could hear the creaking sounds as the enemy shuttle attached to his ship’s hull. It didn’t sound like a normal breaching tube, which made sense, because he hadn’t expected an Atlantian Patrol ship to carry any assault shuttles. He hadn’t been able to confirm what exactly was out there. The shot that had taken his lasers offline had blown his whole scanner suite to charred rubble as well. The reactor was still running, at about thirty percent output at least, but otherwise, Black Viper was a wreck. She’d served him for ten years, through more raids than he could easily recount, but that was all over now. His ship was doomed.
And us with her…
There was nothing left to do but make the invaders pay for every centimeter of her broken hull. And he intended to do just that…at least as much as he and ten survivors could do before they were wiped o
ut. He guessed a few more of his people were still alive, trapped behind jammed bulkheads or too badly wounded to move. Lars Treven was among those Yulich knew was dead. He’d seen his first mate cut in two by a collapsing girder while they were still on Black Viper’s stricken bridge. The two had served together for a long time, and Treven was one of the few men Yulich had called friend. He hadn’t dealt with the grief yet. He’d pushed it back, refused to let it work its way into the forefront of his mind. And the way things looked, he’d never have to face it. He was likely to join his friend, and very soon.
“Alright, you men, listen and listen good. These bastards could have blown us out of space if they wanted to, but they’re boarding instead. We’ve got something they need, and that means this isn’t over yet.” That was all for show, to work his few remaining fighters into a frenzy. If Ivan Yulich knew one thing for certain it was that this battle was all but over. There was nothing left but to go down fighting…and deny his ship to the enemy.
“We hit them hard as they’re coming out, but then we fall back down the main corridor toward engineering, fighting all the way.”
And then, when it’s really over, I’ll end it. Black Viper is mine and nobody else’s, and I’ll be damned if I’ll let them have her.
He heard a loud clang, and an instant later a door blew out into the corridor…and armed men poured out. They paused for an instant, getting their bearings and locating the defenders before shooting. But by then Yulich’s crew had opened up, raking the corridor with deadly fire.
He saw one of the invaders drop…then another. One of the stricken men lay in the middle of the corridor unmoving. The other was pulled back into the compartment by his retreating comrades.
A loud cheer rose from Yulich’s crew, and he could see out of the corners of his eyes as they pumped their arms into the arm.
Let them go, he thought. Anything to keep their morale up a little longer…
But he knew things would get tougher. He was still thinking that when half a dozen small spheres came bouncing down the corridor.
“Grenades!” one of his men shouted, and then the hallway erupted in blast of smoke and flame.
Chapter 18
Marine Headquarters
Planet Armstrong, Gamma Pavonis III
Earthdate: 2319 AD (34 Years After the Fall)
Catherine Gilson stood next to her office’s outside wall, a single stretch of floor-to-ceiling hyper polycarbonate, offer a sweeping view of the parade grounds twenty meters below. She was watching the recruits run by, organized by platoon, each with its drill sergeant close behind, driving the exhausted trainees forward. They looked a little ragged, but that was to be expected. The new class was only a week into their two-year basic training regimen, a staggeringly difficult program that saw fewer than thirty percent of participants graduate. Most of the rest dropped out, taking the option for a free return trip back to whatever world they had come from. But not all the attrition would come from the quitters. A fair number would die trying to get through the program, she knew. Marine training was designed to produce the best possible fighters, whatever that took…and that sometimes meant putting men and women in dangerous situations. The armor instruction on Armstrong’s moon was particularly dangerous, and there were always fatalities among the second year men and women when they arrived at Jax Base to learn how to move around a frigid near-vacuum in a twenty ton suit of nuclear-powered armor.
Gilson’s mind flashed back, years before…to Camp Puller on Earth, where she had endured the torments of the Marine training program. Back then it had been six years, something she couldn’t imagine now, and it had been heavy in remedial education, with dozens of classes designed to bring its often illiterate trainees up to high standards of educational achievement. The Corps had recruited mostly from Earth’s horrific slums back then, offering a way out of the misery for those who had what it took to become Marines.
Gilson’s strategies had been somewhat similar, opening the door to a Marine career to all citizens of former Alliance worlds, many of which had fallen on hard times after the Fall…and had suffered again during the Second Incursion. They weren’t the hellholes Earth’s Cog-peasants had endured, but a few of them were close. A career in the Marines meant a chance at an education, and to be part of an organization with a storied history and high standards of excellence. But the Corps demanded much in return, far more than most could give.
That pitch had lost some of its appeal with the growth of the mercenary companies. They too offered an escape from poor worlds and dismal lives. And they held out the promise of riches, the profits of a life spent at war for gain. Gilson liked to imagine the allure of the Marines would appeal more to those she really wanted to recruit…but then she remembered herself the day she’d gotten off the train at Camp Puller, young, angry, there only because the alternative was so much worse.
How would I have responded to a recruiter for the Wildcats or the Lightnings? Not to mention the famous Black Eagles? Am I just lying to myself if I say I would have walked through the gates of Puller? Turned down enlistment bonuses and promises of riches to be won?
She put the thought out of her mind, mostly because she suspected she wouldn’t like the answer. Besides, despite the competition, the Marines hadn’t had too much trouble filling their meager quotas. The Corps she led was the slimmest shadow of what it had been at its peak, and it had survived only because she, and a band of old officers like her, had refused to let it die. And service with the Corps carried one benefit the mercenary companies couldn’t match—Armstrong citizenship upon retirement, a chance to live on a prosperous world that enjoyed a wide array of constitutionally-protected freedoms. And, however much the Corps had shrunk, it still held much of its reputation…and Armstrong was a peaceful world as a result, a place few would even contemplate attacking.
She turned and walked back toward her desk. The Corps was indeed smaller than it had been, but its Commandant’s workload seemed as deep as ever. She had pages of reports to go through, as many of them dealing with Armstrong’s civil government as with the Corps itself. The planet had been a small, unimportant colony when the Marines moved their operations there after the colonial rebellions. The Corps had been vastly larger then, and it had virtually taken over the entire planet. Later, it fought one of the great battles in its history there, when thousands of Marines struggled under Erik Cain defending it from the Shadow Legions. From that moment on, Armstrong belonged to the Corps, in every way that mattered.
Gilson was effectively Armstrong’s head of state as well as the Corps’ senior officer, though it was a bit more complicated than that. There was a civilian Assembly as well, and a Speaker who presided over that body. In theory, the two branches shared equal power, and they had to agree on all major decisions. In practice, the Assembly, half of its members Marine and naval veterans, did whatever Gilson wanted, rubberstamping anything she sent their way. Armstrong was the Marines’ planet, through and through, most of its industry dependent on the Corps’ technology, which Gilson had freely licensed to promote economic growth. Armstrong’s industrial output was exported to a hundred other worlds, and even the purest civilians couldn’t argue with the way the planet had been governed.
Gilson sat down at her desk, making another effort to focus on her work. But she still couldn’t concentrate. She read a sentence, maybe two…and then her mind wandered back to the same subject. Finally, she slapped her hand down on the desk in frustration.
Why would she leave without speaking to me? It’s not like her. What could have made her behave so impulsively?
Sarah Cain was one of Gilson’s few true friends, a veteran with a service record almost as long as the Commandant’s. They saw each other frequently, had a regular weekly lunch together. Sarah was the Corps’ unofficial second-in-command, one of the very few remaining veterans who had seen service in all four of mankind’s wars of the last sixty years. The two had known each other for all that time, and they had served tog
ether on many campaigns.
But something was wrong now. Gilson knew Sarah had gotten a mysterious visitor…and that she had disappeared immediately after. But that was all she knew. And that had her very worried.
Gilson’s first reaction had been to fear some sort of abduction…but then she realized that simply wasn’t possible. No one could have gotten into the Marine hospital with enough force to subdue her and all those around her. Sarah was a surgeon, but she was also a Marine, and that meant she would never yield without one hell of a fight. Even if someone had managed to subdue her without raising a general alarm, they could never have escaped unnoticed. Or gotten offworld. Any unauthorized vessel lifting off would have been detected and intercepted. Armstrong space was well-defended. The small remnant of the fleet had come under the Corps’ control when Augustus Garret had finally retired and gone back to his family’s home on Terra Nova. It was a small armada, but one perfectly capable of observing every ship leaving or approaching Armstrong orbit.
Some private vessels had left over the past few days, but nothing out of the ordinary. Unless Sarah had commandeered one of them. But why would she want to slip away? What could have come up that would cause her to leave, keeping her reason a secret? It didn’t make any sense. But Gilson couldn’t stop herself from trying to figure it out.
Where did you go, old friend? And why?
* * * * *
“Thank you for seeing me without an appointment, General.”
“It is my pleasure, Admiral Campbell. It has been a long time…since just after the Second Incursion if I remember correctly.” Gilson gestured toward two small chairs sitting in front of the window wall.
Campbell nodded, waiting for Gilson to sit before he did. “Yes, your memory is impeccable.” His voice became somber. “I believe it was at Erik Cain’s memorial service.”
