Home Front: A Science Fiction Adventure Series (Sever Squad Book 4)

by A. R. Knight

  “This is strange,” Eponi said. “Then again, everything’s strange right now.”

  Sai reached up, tapped his katana’s hilt, “Wonder if I could cut through . . .”

  “You do, and I’m going to stand way over here so when you get gunned down, I can say it wasn’t my idea.”

  Sai pulled his hand away, nodded. There had to be another way on, some way to get those doors open. The demolitionist went right up to them, pounded a few times with his fist. The metal reverbs echoed down the corridor.

  The lights died again. All the white gone, sending everything dark save for emergency reflective squares along the concourse edges.

  “Now look at what you did,” Eponi said.

  Sai didn’t get a chance to put together a comeback. The lights came back on, but shifted into a deep, hot red. If Deepak’s order had prepped the Nautilus for a lockdown, this was the natural follow-up: invasion.

  “Really, Sai, I think we had enough problems,” Eponi said, bringing up her rifle to ready status and splitting seconds turning left, right, and behind to look down the central concourse. “You had to trigger this?”

  “Knocking on the bridge door?” Sai drew his katana. “You think they’re that paranoid?”

  “Someone’s scared,” Eponi replied. “Maybe you did the scaring.”

  “Then maybe I’ll earn it.”

  Going invasion meant those same troops that’d gone into lockdown would get new orders. They’d be reporting to critical points on the ship to ensure the Nautilus stayed in DefenseCorp control. One of those points, naturally, would be the bridge, where two armed people with no identification, no uniforms, currently stood.

  Sai reversed his grip on the katana, then plunged it into the door. The blade struck the metal, sparked, and bounced off. Turned out DefenseCorp put some real strength into the barrier protecting the Nautilus’s most valuable space.

  “That’s not going to work,” Sai said, looking at his katana as if the sword had disappointed him in the most devastating way.

  “Then we run,” Eponi said. “Now.”

  She didn’t wait for Sai, but took off straight down the center concourse. The sooner they put ground between themselves and the bridge, the less likely they were going to get shot by a squad of their own allies.

  “What about Aurora?” Sai said, pounding up behind her as they went by locked administrative rooms. “She’s still in there!”

  “And she’ll stay that way a little longer,” Eponi shot back. “Can’t help her if we’re dead.”

  Though they weren’t going to help their captain by running either. They needed an objective, something that could help them get onto the bridge.

  “We could blow the door,” Sai said. “If we found enough explosives.”

  “Oh yeah, that makes sense.” Eponi snatched looks at the signs they went passed, marking off the ship’s zones with big letters. They were about to leave the bridge’s administrative area and head into the VIP residences. “Bombs on spaceships. I thought you knew how that worked?”

  “Look, trust me,” Sai said. “I can rig it up so that we’ll be just fine.”

  “That tone scares me.”

  “It should.”

  If they were going to get explosives, there was only one place on the Nautilus that’d have’em. The Quartermaster.

  They stopped running at the central lifts, Sai slapping the call button while Eponi kept up her vigilance. The concourse, though, was quiet. Bots would’ve been recalled to their home stations with a lockdown, and any cream team members ought to have gone back to sheltered positions. Soldiers dispatched from the barracks might take a while to get going.

  “The call button’s not working,” Sai said. “I don’t have a wristlet, and the lifts aren’t free anymore. We have to wait for someone.”

  “We might get lucky,” Eponi said, daring to let herself think something in this disaster might go right for once.

  Before a minute passed, with Sai trying to think up another way to the Quartermaster, the lift dinged, the doors opened, and a dozen armed squaddies stared out at them.

  So much for luck.

  Ten

  Post-Op Treatment

  Hotfix. If any word defined DefenseCorp’s attitude towards medical care, Rovo would choose that one. Staple the person together until they could wield a rifle and send’em back out. He’d read over the studies, the analyses back in his prior role, and Rovo saw the raw data stating most DefenseCorp troopers would retire or die before the accumulating effects of rushing someone back to the line took any real toll.

  In other words, churn and burn.

  Yet, lying under a light anesthesia as bots and doctors did their work, Rovo appreciated the rapid fashion in which the drugs nuked his pain, the healing gels sloughed off and replaced the burned skin, and the surgeons with their hand-held lasers, excised and rebuilt his charred lungs.

  “You’ll be weaker for a week or so. I’d recommend rest during that time,” one of the doctors explained, his voice filtering in clouded and dreamy to Rovo’s consciousness. “By then, your body should have itself back to working order. Not a hundred percent, mind, and I’d strongly advise against taking another unprotected hit to your breathables, but you’ll be able to return to field duty.”

  Rovo would’ve said something in reply, would’ve mustered the strength to thank the surgeons for their efforts, but the line between his brain and his mouth had gone missing.

  “If you’re trying to talk, don’t worry. You should get your voice back soon. We’ll be keeping you here for the next day to make sure everything’s going right. You’ll be back in the barracks tomorrow, which I’m sure you’re excited to hear,” the surgeon said, Rovo catching a grin’s ends in the man’s cheeks.

  Barracks that had no room for Rovo. The med bay staff would figure out who he was eventually. Did a potential criminal deserve the same treatment as an active duty DC soldier?

  That question lingered as the providers wrapped up, the human members dwindling until only bots hovered over Rovo’s body. They finished sewing Rovo up, and when the last vitals check came back green, the bed shuddered as a nursing bot attached his stretcher to its link and rolled him away.

  The whole operation had taken less than thirty minutes from start to finish. With a simple stim, Rovo could be thrown into combat now, though he might regret it later. An efficient procedure meant to keep soldiers taking and giving laser beams as much as possible.

  The nurse bot took Rovo to the second level, one away from the center and the med bay’s most critical patients. The ride went smooth, supernaturally so, as was anything done by bots. No hesitations, no questions, no concerns by Rovo’s caretaker, not even when a face that looked like it’d gone over to the day’s bad side caught up to the bed.

  “Tell me you’re Rovo,” the man said, the bitterness that comes with being wronged lacing his voice. The man’s uniform, that crimson and black stripes, gave reasons why that might be. “Don’t lie, now, because I’m good at catching those out.”

  Rovo blinked. His throat scratched now, and his hands and legs twinged with nervous potential, but odds were the man didn’t know that. If Rovo had to pick a side of the intelligence spectrum for the guy, he’d lean towards the idea the man had been recruited for throwing punches.

  “That’ll work,” the man said, “if you can’t talk. Blink it. One for yes, two for no.”

  Rovo blinked.

  “Now we’re rolling,” the man continued as the nurse bot found Rovo’s room and wheeled him in. “Listen carefully now, because I’m not gonna want to repeat this. Don’t have the time.”

  Little stings punctuated the man’s words as the nurse bot attached various IVs to Rovo’s arms. Monitors around the room lit up with numbers Rovo couldn’t parse, but the various greens, reds, and yellows suggested the rookie wasn’t quite at health’s pinnacle.

  Yet.

  “Here’s the thing,” the man sat on the end of Rovo’s bed, cradling a pi
stol in his lap. “I’ve heard tell that you’re the one that might have the answer we’re looking for. You know what I mean?”

  Rovo blinked twice.

  “Figured you wouldn’t. You grunt types never were quick to pick up on what’s been happening under your feet this whole time.” The man gestured towards Rovo with his pistol. “Always so focused on fightin’ you missed what you were really fighting for.”

  Rovo didn’t blink, didn’t do anything except test out the nerves to his fingers, his toes. The IV flushed Rovo warm, but the tingling ends told Rovo he could move, could do something if it came to that.

  Although, Rovo really, really didn’t want to get shot again. Once today was enough.

  “You’re here because we need to know some things,” the man dropped into a speechifying tone, as if Rovo were a student and the man a wise teacher. “There’s a little girl we’re out to find. I’m forgetting her name just now but I believe you know who I’m talking about.”

  Lie, or not? For all the man’s words, he still sounded roughed up. Looked a little that way, now that Rovo caught a better look, propped up on the bed’s angled headrest. As if the man had taken a punch or two. Risking a frustrated blasting didn’t seem worth it if the man already had the right information.

  Rovo blinked once.

  “Good man, good man,” the interrogator leaned towards Rovo. “Between you and me, the name’s Conyers. Figured I’d make things fair, seeing as I know yours.” Conyers scratched at his nose, looked outside the room into med bay’s the neon-splashed dark. “The next part of this session, and it’s the big one, is the girl’s whereabouts. You have’em?”

  Rovo blinked twice.

  Conyers nodded, “Suspected as much. They threw Zaydi after you two because she’s an eraser, and they wouldn’t have done that if you’d been clear you knew where the girl was. Unfortunately, that means we’re not on great terms anymore.”

  The agent, assassin, Rovo wasn’t entirely sure what to call Conyers, held the pistol vertical in front of his face and sighed. Rovo tried blinking once. Then twice. Conyers, though, wasn’t looking.

  Conyers leveled the pistol at Rovo’s face in a slow motion. Shifted a finger to the trigger.

  Now or never.

  Rovo tried to move, tried to explode up from the bed, and found his legs flopping, found his arms able to twitch up enough to earn a Conyers laugh.

  “My friend, it’s going to take you longer than that to spring back,” Conyers said. “Don’t worry though, cause if I miss, they’ll just patch you back up. Best place to get shot in the entire ship, right here.”

  Again the pistol leveled out, that black barrel looking Rovo right in the face.

  With Zaydi, the attack had been quick. An instinctual contest to survive that prevented any real introspection until afterward. No life flashing in front of Rovo’s eyes back there, and here? Rovo didn’t have the time for it.

  He kept trying to push his muscles to move, and the nerves responded, saying they were trying with all they had, but the muscles missed the motivation. No chance. Rovo closed his eyes, took in one more sanitized breath and savored the medical scent as it went down to his burned lungs.

  Conyers didn’t fire.

  Rovo cracked an eye. The man still had the pistol aimed at his head, but Conyers flicked his eyes around, kept quiet. Waiting, or looking for something.

  “On top!” came a voice from outside, bruised and lined with a Casparian’s misty tinge.

  Conyers took his eyes up to the room’s ceiling, brought the pistol with the look. A bang rippled through the room, shaking Rovo’s bed and sending the IV bags swinging. Was the Nautilus under attack? Had one of the nurse bots gone rogue seeing the pistol and come to Rovo’s defense?

  The second bang came with a crack, came with the room’s thin ceiling fracturing and falling. Conyers fired, the shot fizzling into the collapsing ceiling.

  Sparking an entrance.

  Gregor rode the rubble down, landing on Conyers, on Rovo, and tilting the bed up and sending all three men piling together at its base.

  Rovo tumbled, feeling the IVs yank free, and rolled over Gregor to land on the room’s floor. Right in the doorway, with his head past one side and his feet past the other. Gregor struggled with Conyers, both delivering punches to each other as they tangled with the bed, the sheets, and the ceiling pieces.

  His hands and legs coming back to life, Rovo turned, watched the struggle, and noticed Conyers’s pistol had slide near Rovo’s head. If he could reach it, then maybe . . .

  “Give it up, you monster,” said the Casparian, stepping over Rovo’s prone form and holding another pistol at Gregor. “You stop fighting now and we won’t kill your friend.”

  Gregor delivered another good socking to Conyers, then stopped, giving the Casparian the dead-eyed look of a warrior who knew his next victim. Rovo kept trying to reach for the pistol. Conyers pushed himself a meter away to the room’s side wall, wheezing through some battered breaths.

  “You won’t kill my friend because you will not get the chance,” Gregor said.

  “Bold words,” the Casparian replied. “Conyers, who’s the one that knows the girl? It’s not him, right?”

  Rovo twitched. A centimeter more. His left arm had itself cocked now. Just had to raise the shoulder and he’d have the pistol.

  “Shoot him,” Conyers said. “He’s an ass.”

  “Not what I asked,” the Casparian said. “I know he’s an ass. What I want to know is whether we’ll be in trouble if he winds up dead.”

  Another twitch. His fingers had the grip.

  “We won’t.” Conyers heaved into a coughing fit, speaking into the gaps. “He knows nothing.”

  “Good.”

  The Casparian went for the trigger, and Rovo fired. His shot went low, missing everything except the sheets crumpled at his bed’s end, which took the laser’s hot energy and burst into blue-orange flame. The Casparian startled, Gregor didn’t.

  Casparians as a species are light things, held together more by ethereal goo than bones. When Gregor delivered one of his trademark haymakers, his fist almost passed right on through the Casparian like a fist through jelly.

  Almost.

  The alien flew back through the doorway, its feet kicking Rovo as it flew by. The thing didn’t even manage a shout. A one-hit KO that would’ve drawn a cheer from Rovo if his mouth could manage it. Gregor turned to Conyers, the sheets now really going and sending up smoke, signaling alarms from the bay. Med bots, security personnel, anyone around would be here fast.

  “Next time,” Gregor said, then pushed the bed onto Conyers, trapping the man. “Rovo, time to go.”

  Rovo would’ve nodded, but instead he held on tight to the pistol while Gregor picked him up, left the room, and ran for the med bay’s exit ramp. Not exactly following his doctor’s orders, but Rovo was alive, and sometimes, that was enough.

  Eleven

  Infestation

  The briefing began exactly on time, while Aurora still had the lab-spun breakfast burrito in her mouth. The other DefenseCorp officers tended to be slapdash with their timings, particularly when it came to Sever. The squad would get dropped into the disaster's middle with simple, dangerous objectives. They didn't need the care and tending other squads, other fleets required.

  But Deepak always chained himself to the clock.

  Aurora suppressed a smile as Deepak went into the next assignment, a clearing house contract on a junkyard world its owners wanted cleansed before listing up for sale. Enough people didn't want to budge, enough bots had gone feral with corrupted programming, that DefenseCorp had been brought in to clear it out.

  Sever would, of course, be sent into the teeth. An enclave filled with disgruntled dissidents, with weapons manufactured from scraps left after the planet's strip-mining.

  As Deepak laid down the routes, he threw a wink Aurora's way, then planted Sever Squad square in the back. Reserve duty, a low stakes, low reward position that prom
ised time spent watching the fighting from afar. Not what Aurora had signed up for, not the role that'd fill her accounts with bounty cash DefenseCorp award for performance.

  Sever's captain, next to her, huffed under his breath, and Aurora could only agree. Deepak saw her look, took a big gulp in the middle of the briefing, and when it concluded, when Deepak hung around to talk, Aurora didn't.

  The bridge proved to be a bad idea. Deepak and Aurora escorted the grumbling officer through the big double-doorway into the Nautilus’s shining space. A giant curved bubble carved into the asteroid’s side, the bridge glitzed with its sweeping space view. Like so many ships, the bridge shot forward its floor, with descending sides giving space for thousands of officers and engineers to handle all the minute-to-minute work required for the Nautilus to stay flying.

  At the bridge’s very front, the helm loomed large. Two pilots worked in sync to keep the Nautilus moving, their screen arrays blending into the glass bubble, with data projecting up and onto the transparent barrier. Energy levels, course corrections, and who knew what else flew across their view.

  Spreading away from the central split Aurora and the others walked on, the bridge fell away in staggered levels arranged by their importance to the admiral. Communications came first, its mezzanine-like design flowing out. Below that, levels dedicated to various systems transitioned to mission-specific sections meant to handle incoming questions and requests from in-action squads.

  Sever probably had one of these while they were on Dynas, not that Aurora had a way to contact the Nautilus for most of that mission.

  Few eyes turned to regard the incoming trio, and those that did made the quick decision not to play a part, returning to their tasks without a shout, a question, or any concern.