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

by A. R. Knight

  Cool air swirled in the broader space, filling in the quiet gaps as Deepak and Aurora carried the officer towards the bridge’s middle, where several consoles sat at standing height for the admiral. Comms chatter picked up, questions cutting through the bridge carrying hints that the Nautilus wasn’t quite right. A body had been found in the guest quarters, and a security detail had gone missing.

  None of that made Aurora’s nerves spike.

  No, that came when Deepak pushed the officer into the consoles, where the man steadied himself. Deepak drew the pistol he still held from the guards, and pointed it at Aurora.

  “Sorry,” Deepak said, leveling the weapon at her while the officer brushed himself off. “I have too many lives on this ship to throw away for you.”

  “You’re losing them already if you think he’s going to forget what you did back there,” Aurora countered.

  “I don’t need to forget,” Renard stood, leaning on a console for support. “Deepak understands where his career comes from, and who can guarantee it.” He shook his head when Deepak started to speak, and the admiral kept his mouth shut. “If you’ll both stay quiet for a moment, let’s check in and see whether I’ve made a terrible mistake.”

  While the officer turned back to the consoles, splashing up the communications screen and dictating names to contact, Aurora reverted to what she’d done back in the meeting room. Analyze the situation, find weaknesses, and exploit them.

  Deepak’s drawn pistol had attracted eyes, but not the sustained alarm a weapon on the bridge should’ve caused. Aurora saw frowns, saw some head shakes, but most everyone kept themselves down and busy with their jobs. Either Deepak had told them what might be happening, or they’d already decided to join the officer’s team.

  But then, everyone on the bridge was an officer. Not a squaddie dropping into contracts on dangerous worlds. Deepak said he had to save his people’s lives. Maybe he meant this group, maybe he meant these lives.

  “Five people, Aurora,” Deepak said. “That’s all. When he came to the Nautilus and asked us to head after you, what was I supposed to do?”

  “They wouldn’t kill everyone,” Aurora countered.

  Deepak had the pistol, but he hadn’t disarmed Aurora. She couldn’t draw and fire while he had her under gunpoint, but with a distraction or a sudden change, Aurora might be able to pull something off. She’d just need to pay attention.

  “This is a different side of DefenseCorp. I don’t know what they’re capable of,” Deepak said. “I don’t even know how many are on my ship. On this bridge. He threatened me with my crew’s lives, and I believe him.”

  “Then you’re doing exactly what he wants.”

  Deepak half-shook his head, when Renard turned around, a glower dominating his face.

  “Bad news?” Aurora said.

  “Quite,” Renard replied. “Apparently your squad is very capable. You should be proud.”

  “I am.”

  The officer nodded, then held out his hand towards Deepak, “Your weapon, admiral.”

  Deepak hesitated.

  “Don’t make me ask again,” Renard said. “Circumstances are changing. The Nautilus is to be considered a war zone until Sever Squad is dispatched. You will lockdown this bridge and order your soldiers to return to their barracks while my people complete the mission.”

  This time, Deepak didn’t wait. He went past the officer to the consoles, and triggered the lockdown process. Two lights flashed white and red over the bridge doors, and a single shrill alarm let out a shriek. That drew enough attention that Deepak had to tell everyone not to worry, a statement, with the officer aiming the pistol at Aurora, held so little truth to it that she couldn’t suppress a laugh.

  “You think all this is funny?” Renard said. “Because I find it deadly serious.”

  “I’m sure you do,” Aurora said, “and trust me, you’ll still feel that way when we’re stuffing you out an airlock.”

  “No doubt.”

  Deepak followed up the lockdown with a broadcast telling all the soldiers to head back to their barracks to wait for assignments, a ridiculous order but one Aurora knew would be followed. All these people depended on DefenseCorp for their cash, and who would risk that by questioning a command?

  “Now,” Renard continued, “I would like you to do something for me.”

  As if.

  “Please, tell me what it is so I can tell you to go—”

  “Aurora,” Deepak said, cutting back in from the console. “For once, think about the ship. Do what he needs, and you might get out of this alive. All of these people might get out of this alive.”

  Who knew Deepak was such a coward? Aurora hadn’t figured the admiral to have that small a spine.

  “Listen to your admiral,” Renard said.

  “Not my admiral anymore.”

  “I can see why. You clearly lack the discipline to make a good DefenseCorp soldier, but perhaps you can help your squad anyway.” Renard pointed towards the console. “You will issue a broadcast throughout the ship ordering your squad to station outside these doors. Once they arrive, they will knock twice, just like what your friends already did. We shall have a discussion, determine the girl’s location, and end this conflict.”

  In Aurora’s experience, nothing about what the officer just said would come anywhere close to ending the conflict. Sever would smell that trap coming. But giving Aurora the comm would give her power. She couldn’t let that go.

  “You won’t kill my squad?” Aurora asked.

  “Clearly that’s not very easy,” Renard replied, still keeping that pistol level. Not at all like the limp hold in the briefing room. Either Renard had played a weakling, or he’d recovered from the table-flipping. “My mission is the girl. You are nothing.”

  “Fine.” Aurora looked past the officer. “Hey, Deepak. You done over there?”

  The admiral stepped aside, and Renard gave Aurora a path past him towards the comm. She took one step, then another that brought her even with the officer. Her eyes caught Deepak’s, and he must’ve recognized that fire, that determination, because the admiral’s went wide, his head started to shake.

  Too late.

  Aurora went hard left, twisting as she turned to take her body away from the pistol’s aim. Renard didn’t get a shot. The man’s trigger finger wasn’t ready, his mind still thinking he’d won this round. Aurora caught the officer’s wrist, sent a jab into the man’s throat that sent him choking.

  With a hard kick, Aurora sent the officer flying back off the bridge, falling the two meters down to the lower level. As the officer fell, Aurora let her hand slide up the man’s wrist, tearing away the pistol and flipping it into her own grip as the officer crashed into the consoles below. Continuing the motion, Aurora brought the stolen pistol to bear on Deepak while she drew the one still on her belt.

  Evening out the aim to put a weapon on both, though Renard looked like consciousness had fled, Aurora allowed a small grin to kiss her face, “Sorry, Deepak. The opening was there.”

  “Aurora,” Deepak said slow. “Look around.”

  Chairs shifted, a few curses flowed as staffers across the bridge stood from their stations. Several drew pistols of their own, and at least two pulled rifles from beneath their consoles. As Aurora swept her eyes across the bridge, she counted at least a third holding weapons aiming at her or the other crew members.

  “Like I said,” Deepak sighed, “this isn’t just one guy. It’s an infestation.”

  No cover. Nowhere to run.

  “Drop the pistols,” said a rifle-toting woman, climbing up the steps around the bridge’s main platform to its center stage. “I won’t ask again.”

  “Do it, Aurora,” Deepak said. “They’ve been taking over the Nautilus for months. There was nothing I could do.”

  Aurora had been disarmed with a gun to her face twice already today, and a third time made for a maddening experience. She wanted to turn, snap off a blast and take out the one holding the
rifle, then run-and-gun through the bridge to get all the rest.

  That’s what her emotions told her. The part that read the situation with a squad captain’s mind said Aurora wouldn’t live past a few seconds.

  “All this for a girl?” Aurora said, bringing down the pistols.

  “All this for what she is,” Deepak replied. “All this for what you saw on Dynas.”

  “Dynas was a mess. A failure.”

  The woman came up to Aurora, took away the pistols. Others began tending to the officer, who groaned as they pulled him off the desk he’d used as an improvised landing pad. Aurora hoped he still had a few glass shards stuck in him.

  “So you said,” Deepak put a hand on Aurora’s shoulder. “Apparently they see things differently, and they see you as a threat to their plans.”

  “Good.” Aurora looked over at the comm. “Guess I get to make my announcement now?”

  A cough came from below. Renard standing, with help from one of the other turncoats. He offered Aurora a plastic-faced glare as he limped towards the stairs. Aurora couldn’t do much except watch Renard make his slow way around. To make her feel better, Aurora took a long look at the rifle being held in her face, then matched the agent’s eyes holding it, and shook her head long and slow.

  The agent’s puzzled look warmed Aurora’s heart. Hopefully the agent would think something was wrong with her rifle, or even the way the agent held it.

  As Renard reached them, several loud knocks came from the sealed bridge doors, drawing Aurora’s eyes and everyone else’s. One man from below said two armed civilians stood outside.

  “Don’t approach those doors,” Renard croaked, his voice a mess after Aurora’s strike. “They are hostile, and will be dealt with once we are ready. As for this one, I’ve changed my mind. Take her to the airlock and shove her outside.”

  Twelve

  Old Friends

  Two against ten didn’t make for good odds. Especially when those ten squaddies had their vests on, rifles ready, and looked like they wanted nothing more than to rumble with an invading force. Sai and Eponi, armed and unarmored, were not an invading force. They weren’t even an invading duo.

  They were just unlucky.

  “Sai?” said a voice near the front as the troops raised their rifles and the Sever two lowered theirs. “What’re you doing here?”

  The squaddie’s commander, a graying, strung-out man who’d been blitzed by a thousand battles and kept coming back for more, emerged from his group with one eye squinting. Jarret Jones, or JJ to the ones he hadn’t cared to melt with his rifle, had made a name among DefenseCorp officers as a rank-and-file guy.

  JJ liked the mud. He’d stay in it all his life.

  “Long story, commander,” Sai said. “Could say we’re dealing with a problem.”

  “That problem have anything to do with the alarm?” JJ said, then noticed the arms up on his squad. “Beacon squad, fan out. Check the corridor and hold the path to the bridge. These two aren’t the enemy.”

  Beacon, a bigger group than Sever and one designated for missions that needed more boots on the ground, took JJ’s words as gospel and went to it. For a second, Sai felt like he was a rock placed square in a river’s rushing path as the troops washed from the lift and headed towards the bridge.

  “Tell me I’m not making a mistake with that order,” JJ said, hands flat against his waist, looking up at Sai. “Then keep on talking, because last I heard, you’d bit it on a mission I had no rights to look at.”

  “You know this guy?” Eponi broke in, eyes flicking back between Sai and JJ.

  “First officer I served under with DC,” Sai said. “And a damn good one.”

  “That why you left?” JJ sounded like he needed a cigar. “Beacon too good for you?”

  “Beacon didn’t pay enough to feed my kids,” Sai countered. “Nothing to do with you.”

  JJ nodded, eyes glimmering as he ran them over Sai and Eponi’s arms, “Here’s the deal. You two are going to walk to the bridge with me. Beacon’s been tasked with making sure we hold it back from any of these jokers attacking our ship. You tell me your story on the way, and make sure to include why you’re holding that sword in civilian clothes.”

  There were people in DC that Sai wouldn’t trust with the truth. Ones that would take whatever Sai spilled and find a way to turn it into more cash for themselves, or a possible promotion, or just to nail a deserter. Sai, though, had shared the trenches with JJ. Had ridden alongside the commander into the plasma rebellion on Condor Three. Had put down an insurrection from the native species on Reader Four.

  You don’t survive engagements like those without learning a lot about the man beside you.

  With Eponi following behind and offering occasional commentary, largely about how much work she’d have to do repairing and cleaning the Prisa, Sai described the attacks that’d happened since Sever had found their way back aboard the Nautilus.

  “So you’re telling me our agents, DC agents, are after your squad,” JJ mused as they went down the red flashing concourse. Ahead, Beacon, broken into trios, checked and cleared closed meeting rooms with sharp shouts. “Before you get to the why, I don’t want to know.”

  “You don’t want to know?”

  JJ’s eyes flashed forward and he gave the smallest nod towards the squaddies in front, “You keep your place in a company like this by not getting above your pay grade. All these boys and girls are looking to me to keep’em safe, Sai. I’m not going to do that by learning the thing that’s getting targets on your back.”

  “But we didn’t try to learn it either,” Sai said. “DefenseCorp sent us to Dynas, JJ. It wasn’t like we had a choice.”

  “Bad luck, then,” JJ said. “Point being, sounds like you’re in a tricky spot. You know I’ve got no love for the sneaks, Sai. Nobody here does, but they’ve been infesting our ship like stellar rats lately. It’s either we work with’em, or we find a knife in our necks.”

  Sai could get that. Aurora had mentioned the same philosophy to Sai plenty of times. Keep the squad alive above all else, a responsibility that fell on the commander more than any individual soldier. Except, sometimes, keeping the squad alive meant doing more than what sat immediately in front of you.

  Back in the missions-for-money days, Sai had embraced the DefenseCorp mold and kept to his lines. Sever offered harder missions for more money, but otherwise kept things the same: you trained with your squadmates, healed up while in transit, then dropped into a few days of hellish combat before repeating. There hadn’t been any reason to look beyond the current objective, no need to think about DefenseCorp’s bigger machinations.

  “That’s not going to work anymore, JJ,” Sai said. “Whether you want to believe it or not, DefenseCorp’s changing.”

  “Is it now? Because you happen to be on the outside?”

  “Yeah,” Sai said. “Because I can actually see it now.”

  “Enlighten me,” JJ said. “If you can do it without getting me killed.”

  “DC wants you to be better soldiers, but they don’t want to do it with equipment,” Sai said. “They want to change you, turn you into biological weapons instead of mechanical ones.”

  JJ laughed, “You just read a book or something? The Raider project ended a long time ago.”

  Sai’d heard about those, the original super soldier gone far awry. All the maniacal violence, none of the control. Hard to tell if Dynas aimed at something similar, but Helix and DefenseCorp definitely wanted to play with their force’s genetic code.

  “Don’t know about that,” Sai said. “Can’t tell you much more without spoiling your ignorance, but I’m starting to think DC’s preparing to make a play that’ll change everything.”

  “And when it does, I’ll react to it,” JJ said. “Till then, how about you two stick with me and we’ll get this whole thing sorted out with the admiral?”

  JJ asked it like a question, but the real meaning hung in the sentence’s shadow: former squadmat
e or no, if Sai tried to break away, he’d meet with a laser to the back.

  They reached the bridge’s sealed door, several squaddies forming up around JJ while Beacon’s other members continued clearing rooms down the other concourse to the left and right. JJ told Sai and Eponi to sit in the intersection’s center, and to keep their rifles down, while he went to the comm panel outside the bridge and tapped his wristlet to it.

  “So is your buddy going to bail us out?” Eponi said. “Because from the way he was talking, it sounds like he might bleed DC crimson.”

  “He’s a good man,” Sai replied. “But I’d keep your trigger finger twitchy.”

  “Oh great. Because look at these odds. I should’ve stayed on the Prisa.”

  Sai didn’t have much to say to that. Didn’t have time to say much either, because when JJ stepped away from the panel and his quiet conversation, the bridge doors shuddered, then slid open as the lockdown disengaged.

  Aurora stood in the doorway’s middle, two crimson-and-black-striped agents behind her with pistols ready. Limping around them came an officer Sai didn’t recognize until Eponi hissed that the face came from the video they’d seen on Dynas: plastic and, as Gregor put it, masking a whole lotta fear.

  The admiral kept his distance. Deepak stood a ways back into the bridge, talking to some of the staffers. His voice kept things measured, the words saying Deepak was more concerned about the Nautilus’s system status and its current direction than the hostage taking happening right outside his bridge.

  JJ knew Aurora, maybe not as well as he knew Sai, but the squad commanders all had their own events, their own meet-ups to keep the ship’s officers in harmony. Sai wanted, hoped, to see an outburst from JJ, but the stolid commander kept quiet. Stepped back near Sai and Eponi and judged the situation with his granite passivity.

  “Commander Jones,” the limping officer said. “I don’t believe we’ve ever met? The name’s Renard Phyce.”

  JJ took the offered hand, pumped it once, let it go, “Can’t say I’ve seen you around, sir. Mind filling us in on what’s happening here? That’s a fine squad captain you have at gunpoint.”