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

by A. R. Knight

  “You ever done this before?” Eponi said as Sai pecked at the consoles, flipping them between engine power, shield strength, weapons.

  “Actually, no.” Sai swiped, found both turrets and split their controls to his screen’s sides. “I literally use the fingers to point and shoot?”

  “You literally do.”

  “This is going to be terrible.” Most gunnery systems gave you handles, a smooth glide to send your barrels pointing where you wanted them. Sai tried aiming right there in the bay, and getting a fixed look at the doorway took multiple swerving swipes. “How could you hit anything like this?”

  “I’ll have you recall what I said a minute ago. If we get into a dogfight, we’re gonna lose,” Eponi said. “If that actually happens, I’ll flip the turrets to automated control till you get back to one. But let’s hope Aurora’s plan sticks and we don’t have you play laser jockey.”

  “I’m good with that.”

  Sai didn’t want to consider going automated. Setting a computer to run the targeting sounded like the best thing, with the fast reflexes, precision calculations, and all that. Instead, turning the shooting over to an AI meant teaching it, in the middle of the fight, whether a target was an enemy or a friend, whether to go for the kill or disable it, how much energy to spend. A complicated nest not worth tackling while someone else shot hot laser into your hull.

  The Prisa floated off the bay’s floor as Eponi activated the engines. The struts retracted as the comm system bubbled with the first outreach from the Nautilus. Eponi glanced at the incoming hail, and when she didn’t answer it, Sai did.

  “Don’t want them to trap us in here, do you?” Sai said.

  “Oh, you’re going to charm them with your smooth talking?” Eponi fired back.

  The officer on the comm system’s other side coughed, a loud one with a single purpose. Sai and Eponi shut up, though she rotated the Prisa so its nose faced the shut bay shield leading into space. The blank metal wall presented the primary barrier to vacuum, supplemented by the commonplace magnetic shielding meant to keep oxygen from blowing out every time a craft came and went.

  “Uh, Prisa, we’re under lockdown at the moment,” the officer on the comm said. “We have to keep the doors shut until the situation returns to normal.”

  “Do you know what the situation is?” Sai asked as Eponi charged up the weapons, sending energy that would be pushed to the Prisa’s engines into the batteries that’d turn it into scalding light. “Because I guarantee it’s not what you think.”

  “I’m not sure what you mean,” the officer replied after a long pause. “The codes are clear. There are dangerous—”

  “And what if the people calling the codes are the dangerous ones?” Another long pause. Sai muted his end, turned to Eponi. “Are you thinking we burn our way out?”

  “I’m thinking we give this guy one chance to save his ship some painful scars.”

  Sai nodded, unmuted himself as the officer finished up some rambling excuse. There were always those, the excuses. Anyone who didn’t want to see could find ways to stay blind.

  “Here’s what you’re going to do,” Sai said, “and you’re going to do this not because it’s in your code list, or because a superior officer told you to. You’re going to follow my directions because a little ship like ours can’t hurt the Nautilus from the outside, but in here? We’re plenty dangerous.”

  Nothing like threatening your former home.

  The officer, apparently unfamiliar with assaults coming from inside his own docking bay, went dark again. Sai gave him two heartbeats, then went back to his turrets.

  “Ready to go?” Sai asked Eponi. “Odds are they’re sending a squad our way.”

  “Oh no,” Eponi replied. “I’m so scared.”

  “I didn’t come here to kill DefenseCorp soldiers, Eponi.”

  “Wish they shared your attitude.” Eponi centered the Prisa on the exit wall. “Fire away.”

  Sai closed the call with the officer, tapped on the console, and watched as the Prisa’s turrets unleashed a jagged green torrent. The lasers superheated and boiled away the metal barrier as Sai directed the cannons to carve out a hole big enough for the Prisa fly through. Inside the craft, beyond the light show, the destruction offered no sound, no smell. Like watching a movie.

  “There’s that squad,” Eponi said, frowning.

  “How can you tell?” Sai continued blasting. The lasers closed in on carving a wide enough gap. “There’s no working cameras left?”

  “Our rear shields are getting hit,” Eponi said. “It’s cute, how they think they can break through.”

  “Let’s not give them any more chances than we have to.” Sai pointed at the yawning, orange and black burning hole before them. “Think you can fly through that?”

  “Might leave a scratch, but if it’s what I’ve got to work with?”

  “It is.”

  Eponi goosed the Prisa forward and the ship jumped like a coiled spring unleashed. Sai closed his eyes as the craft rammed right through the damage he’d caused, a few rending shrieks spilling through the inside as Sai’s turret-work proved lackluster.

  But they were outside. In space. Among the stars.

  “You know those repairs are coming outta your accounts,” Eponi said as she swung the Prisa into a long loop over the Nautilus. “New paint isn’t cheap.”

  “We live long enough to get this thing repainted, and I’ll happily pay for it.” Sai flipped his console over to the Prisa’s scanners. Clean and clear. The Nautilus was zipping along in transit. No need for escorts. “How long till they scramble someone after us?”

  “Don’t know, don’t care,” Eponi said, flipping the Prisa so that the Nautilus hung above their heads, like a giant metal moon in a starry sky. “I may not agree with Aurora’s grand plan, but we’re on the rails now.”

  Locked into a mission. How often did that happen? Sever tended to get an objective and find a way to get into a dozen other fights along the way, scrambling through one mess after another before emerging at the end with the prize in hand. That’s how it’d been on Wexer, on Dynas, but here?

  Controlled and pushed down corridors. Now Sai and Eponi had one shot, one path, and if they didn’t execute, there’d be another short-lived, burning star around the Nautilus.

  Aurora had to get this right. Had to. The play was a leap, but Sai hadn’t been able to find a different option. Hadn’t come up with anything beyond hacking their way through a few thousand soldiers to murder Renard, and even if Sai put the katana where it ought to go, they’d never get off that bridge alive.

  So Eponi put them outside that big glass shield. Kicking up faster than the Nautilus to crest the giant craft’s rocky front, head down towards the bridge, then matching the Nautilus’s velocity as Eponi flipped the Prisa around. Without gravity in this deep space disaster, nothing slowed the Prisa, letting the ship get nose-to-glass with the bridge and its thousands staring out at them.

  “Wave,” Eponi said, sending her hand in a slow back and forth.

  They were small. So damn small. The Prisa a speck in front of the Nautilus and its bridge, so large that Sai couldn’t see around. Like confronting the horizon. Like threatening a god.

  “This is insane,” Sai said.

  If Sai felt blown away, like he’d gone far beyond regulations, expectations, Eponi didn’t look the least bit phased. Still waving, with a manic grin plastered across a face, a form that otherwise held a locked-in concentration Sai couldn’t help but envy, Eponi seemed in her element.

  “Oh yeah,” Eponi said, not looking away from the bridge. “This is as crazy as it gets, Sai. I’m loving it.”

  With his hands moving, bringing up the comm and starting a direct hail right to the Nautilus bridge, Sai couldn’t quite identify with Eponi’s emotion. Loving it? His nerves pumped, he swallowed hard, and Sai knew he’d rather slice through a thousand soldiers than go face to face with a ship in space.

  “It’s like kart rac
ing,” Eponi said, apparently oblivious to Sai’s greening gills. “You reach a point where it’s all or nothing. You have to go for it. It’s sounds cheesy, but here we are, man. Here we are, laying it all on the line.”

  “Sure,” Sai said through a dry mouth. “Call’s connecting.”

  “You want to be the messenger?”

  “Okay,” Sai closed his eyes, shut out all those watching pinpricks on the bridge, and tapped open his mic. “Hailing the Nautilus, this is the Prisa with a simple request. If you do not comply, we will ram the bridge.”

  Sai took a breath, kept up the slate face, and with Eponi nodding encouragement, started a war.

  Eighteen

  Friendlies

  The rookie did his job. Gregor didn’t have to pull his rifle’s trigger, didn’t have to advance beyond the doorway’s cover as Rovo used the newfangled power armor, toothless though its weapons might be, to catch and bash in both agents, leaving them unconscious on the concourse floor.

  “Can’t deny, that felt pretty good,” Rovo said. “Even better, since the rest of me feels like garbage.”

  “Yes,” Gregor replied. “Bashing helps the soul.”

  “Never thought about it that way, but you might be on to something.”

  Whether or not Gregor’s philosophies would stick, though, wasn’t the moment’s question. To the right, the experimental concourse continued towards the Nautilus bow, presenting rooms that could offer up weapons, equipment, or some clue as to what’s going on here. Leftward lay the mess hall, more barracks rooms, and eventually the engines.

  Without a wristlet and a working ID, they didn’t have a good way to use the lifts. Gregor eyed an agent’s body, wondering if he could use the man’s limp bones and the wristlet attached to them as a key, but the small computer had gone dark. Locked up like the others.

  “So do we have a plan now?” Rovo asked as Gregor confirmed both bodies couldn’t be used. “I thought we were going back to the docking bays?”

  “Hard to do that without a wristlet,” Gregor said. “Do you hear anything?”

  Rovo still had that Bug, the little device stuck in the rookie’s ear. Gregor couldn’t see the rookie listening to it without the power armor, read any expression, but when the giant metal arms shrugged, that provided answer enough.

  “If they’re talking, I’m not catching it,” Rovo said. “Think we’re still on our own.”

  “Then we make for the barracks.” Gregor played the risks against each other. “We might find someone we know, or someone we can convince to get a lift for us.”

  Rovo didn’t object, and the two stomped off in the red light towards the mess hall. Gregor’s back itched without his hammer’s familiar weight, and he didn’t like the rifle’s grip in hands without power armor gauntlets. Seeing Rovo clank ahead struck Gregor as strange, a reversal of positions. The rookie ought to be the one hiding behind Gregor’s armored legs.

  But missions made a mockery of the usual, and this mission, so far, had left normal so far behind that Gregor couldn’t hold to it anymore.

  “How’d I do back there?” Rovo said as they went past the ready rooms for the labs behind them. Lockers stacked with protective suits, all locked with red-glowing panels. “The suit’s saying I didn’t take a single real hit. Figure that’s not too bad, right?”

  “Why are you asking me?”

  “Because you’re the basher on this crew. I don’t do much up close and personal work. Did I get the feet moving right? How about the feint and jab move on the first one?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Rovo quit it after that. Gregor punched away a frown, leaving the usual impassive frame. He wasn’t the rookie’s instructor. Hell, the rookie wasn’t even a rookie anymore. After Dynas and Wexer, Rovo had seen and done enough to earn his status as a full-fledged squaddie with Sever. The kid would have to take his own feedback, learn his own lessons.

  That’s what Gregor had done. From his first deployment to his last, Gregor had taken stock of every thrown punch, every hammer swing, and looked at how he could hit it harder, faster the next time around. So far, it’d worked.

  “Hey,” Rovo said as they neared the mess hall. “I’m catching something on the Bug.”

  Gregor took another look behind, confirmed no other agents, no other squads were sneaking up on them. The mess hall was locked down like every other chamber, but with Rovo’s power armor, they could punch right through when they needed to move.

  “From who?”

  “Uh,” Rovo said. “Not who I expected.”

  “Not an answer.”

  “Right,” Rovo said. “It’s from Kaia. She’s saying they’ve landed on their new home.”

  Implications shrouded those words, but Gregor pushed them away, focused on the more important question, “Are you certain?”

  “Definitely,” Rovo said. “The message is a few days old, which would match up with when they left Wexer. Just caught up with me now. Means they didn’t go all that far, either.”

  “I am not surprised.”

  Kashmal, Kaia’s father and the dubious man that’d called Sever in for a rescue to Dynas and its swampy schemes, didn’t have much cash when they’d landed on Wexer and split off. He’d planned to sell secrets from Dynas to float them over till Kashmal found another, less deadly, job. Gregor didn’t know what it took to pawn off data about body-altering viruses, but he could guess it wasn’t all that easy.

  “Didn’t Deepak want to know where Kaia was?” Rovo asked, standing stock still in the power armor. “Wasn’t that his whole play?”

  “Aurora thought we could tell them the freighter name,” Gregor said. “DefenseCorp could track them from there. Perhaps you could offer them something better.”

  “Yeah, except we have an issue.”

  “We do?”

  “The Bug’s not exactly hooked into interstellar satellites. It pokes into relays when it gets close, scans the waves. It caught this message because the Nautilus found it first. My tag is still tied to this ship.”

  Tags. Set yourself up anywhere in the galaxy with a working satellite connection and your identity would proliferate across the stars, telling everywhere within humanity’s reach precisely where you could be found. Any satellite that catches a message with an unknown tag would broadcast it out to any satellite in range, pinging data around the galaxy like a dog hunting for its owner. For Sever, Nautilus had been their longtime home. Gregor hadn’t even thought about resetting his, not that he’d get many messages.

  His parents missives had stopped coming years ago.

  “You said this is an issue?” Gregor asked.

  “Deepak wants to know Kaia’s location, right?” Rovo said, the questions sounding a little ridiculous coming from inside that big suit. “That was our whole lifeline here? Well, that message to me came through the Nautilus. Anyone paying attention to their incoming catches might see it.”

  “Encrypted?”

  “Sure, but on a ship infested with agents?” Rovo turned back towards the mess hall doors and started towards them again. “How long do you think that’ll last?”

  “The bridge, then?”

  “Not if we can help it.” Rovo centered the armor on the mess hall doors, crouched into a charging stance. “The comm center will have, like, a tenth as many people. We can get the message there and delete it. If we’re lucky, the bridge won’t have noticed it. If we’re not, then you’ll get to do a lot of smashing before we die.”

  Always a silver lining.

  “Lead the way, rookie,” Gregor said, taking cover on the mess hall door’s right side.

  “Oh, I’m leading.” Rovo kicked off, sending the armor into a shoulder charge at the big concourse-spanning doors.

  The suit’s kinetic boosters did their work, blitzing the suit into and through the doors with a hard, rending bang. Torn metal shrieked and snapped as Rovo plunged in, sending up sparks. Gregor followed quick, raising the rifle as he came, bathed in the concourse’s re
d warning lights.

  Gregor had been ready for a reception. If a squad, agents or otherwise, wasn’t going to head into the weapons lab after them, then waiting to slay the Sever members under the mess hall’s crowded cover made sense.

  Overturned tables made makeshift barriers, their chromed tops shining back at Gregor. The red lights played havoc with the mess hall’s artwork, turning the designs into horror show outlines made all the more ominous by the rifle barrels pointing their way. At a glance, looking behind Rovo’s raised arms, Gregor counted more than two dozen. At least a couple squads sent here.

  Should take that as a point of pride: DefenseCorp rated Rovo and Gregor high enough to require this much resistance. Not bad.

  Without any cover for themselves, there wasn’t a fight to be had here. Gregor followed Rovo’s lead and dropped the rifle, raised his hands. Waited for the squads to decide a kill order made more sense than playing nice.

  Instead, a firebrand woman in the brighter blaze red uniform given to frontline bulwark squads, those who took the hard first drops into thick fighting to hold positions at all costs, rose from cover. With her rifle raised and pointed, she advanced to the mess hall’s middle, closing with Rovo, her boots clacking on the metal floor, their traction tech sticking her with every step.

  “Keep those arms up,” the woman said as she closed. “I see them dip a centimeter, we’re turning you both to ash.”

  “Good to see you, Lamya,” Gregor said. “Too bad this isn’t a simulation, or I would call your bluff.”

  Lamya didn’t seem to share Gregor’s opinion. Aside from the quickest flicker his direction, she kept her concentration on Rovo, “Eject from the suit, soldier. I don’t know where you found that thing, but it won’t hold up when we start shooting.”

  “Don’t follow her orders,” Gregor said, making a bet. Hoping it would pay off. “Lamya, we’re not here for you.”