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

by A. R. Knight

  Between every desk, forming little cubicles, stood silver-steel barriers. Thin and translucent, the cross-shaped constructs dotted the comm center, dividing the space into clusters. As the battlefield took shape, those barriers diluted lasers enough to pass for a shield, and the agents had formed up behind several towards the back wall. Passing through the smoke and staying low, Gregor went from one cluster to the next, approaching the agents from the side.

  He reached the last row without seeing anyone, encountering empty chairs, burned out screens, and little else. Peering around the slat’s corner, Gregor made out hazy outlines in the smoke, the agents fighting against increasingly poor odds. The squaddies had their rifles now, and Lamya’s commands carried over the noise, setting her forces into an entrapping circle.

  Why were the agents continuing to fight if they didn’t have any hope?

  Gregor understood going out in a glorious blaze, flinging every last effort you had into impossible odds. Agents, though, didn’t seem the type. They played in the shadows, shifting allegiances and saying whatever was necessary to keep themselves alive, keep their mission going.

  No way they would keep fighting unless they expected something to change.

  Gregor reeled around, looking back towards the comm center’s entrance and those windowed partitions. The smoke thinned out that way, and through its ashen cloud Gregor saw few squaddies left outside. Everyone streamed in, making their meter-by-meter advance towards the agents.

  Another attack coming from behind would trap them all.

  Best make sure that couldn’t happen.

  Gregor pushed against the cross near him, the barrier shifting as strength it was never meant to withstand shoved it forward. The cross groaned along the smooth floor as Gregor pushed, rotating with the force and having absolutely zero effect on the ongoing shootout.

  But the idea bore out.

  After another laser flurry buzzed across the room, Gregor made a lunging run towards the makeshift barriers the agents had erected. Their crosses served as cover, and Gregor, without a single shot coming his way—it helped that he’d kept his own pistols quiet, not drawing attention—crashed into the left cross. The agents had pulled together four of the things in a loose arc, and Gregor punched in one side.

  Going full strength, his shoulders leading the way, Gregor hit as close to the cross’s center as he could, lifting and pushing the barrier over. The entire thing went up on its side before momentum crashed it onto its top, hitting hard on glass that shattered with a crackling tear.

  Leaving Gregor, without any cover, looking at a whole bunch of angry agents.

  There were some fights you could win by brute force, some fights you could win by being smart. Gregor preferred the former, but now? He tried the latter. He dropped his two pistols, threw his hands up and hoped.

  Across the galaxy, Gregor found honor to be a fickle idea. Most people, be they human or alien or somewhere in between, tended to think of themselves as on the good side. They wanted to do what they thought was right, what would preserve some moral integrity for themselves.

  And shooting an unarmed man, arms raised in surrender, tended to fall outside that window.

  So the agents hesitated, some turning back to their active firefight, the others glancing at their comrades and trying to figure out whether they could take prisoners in this messy crapshoot of a situation.

  That hesitation proved to be all Lamya and Aurora needed.

  Even with some agents breaking back to the engagement, the turn came too late. Squaddies collapsed from all sides, with Aurora herself popping up over a cross and laying down devastating repeater fire. In seconds, ones Gregor spent with his arms raised, his back to the comm center’s wall, and his breath held, the agents were neutralized.

  As the squaddies disarmed the spies, Lamya caught on to Gregor’s notion and posted watches at the comm center’s doors. No reinforcements had shown up yet. Whether they would at all now that the fight had been called, who knew, but chances wouldn’t be taken.

  “Nice play,” Aurora said, giving Gregor a clap on the shoulder as they headed towards Rovo. “Know what saved your ass, though?”

  “No?”

  “Your giant head. Saw that standing up through the smoke and knew you’d be dead in a second if I didn’t do something.”

  “That is the first time my head has been useful.”

  “Congratulations,” Aurora quipped, then drew in a hard breath as she saw Rovo, leaning against the side wall where he’d dragged himself. The rookie looked damn pale, like he’d both seen a ghost while giving blood. “What the hell happened to you?”

  “Long story,” Gregor said, when Rovo shook his head. “He needs to get back to the med bay, but there are too many agents.”

  “We’ll get him there,” Aurora replied. “Find Lamya, have her call for a medic to make sure he’ll pull through.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “I came here for a reason,” Aurora said, nodding towards the workstations, some still undamaged despite the comm center’s smokey ruin. “There’s a message that needs sending.”

  Lamya’s squad did indeed have a medic, and Gregor left Rovo in the soldier’s hands. Aurora took over a workstation, after telling Gregor to get back into the power armor. The suit might be the most powerful weapon on the Nautilus right now, and Sever needed it under their control.

  The hulking suit waited outside the comm center. Gregor accepted the scan, breathed through the snap-hiss adjustments as the suit replaced its Rovo build for a Gregor-sized setup. Getting back inside the power armor felt good, a comforting rush that coupled Gregor’s existing strength with invincibility.

  “Gregor, you in?” Aurora’s voice crackled through the visor.

  “I am.” Gregor wiggled his fingers, watched the metal hands follow his commands. “Ready to go.”

  “Good. You’re going to escort Vana to the bridge by way of the barracks. Pick up a squad or three and go reinforce Deepak.”

  “Reinforce?”

  “I haven’t been able to raise the bridge,” Aurora said, though the zero surprise in her voice had Gregor wondering what she knew that he didn’t. “Renard might still be there, and that’s not good.”

  “Renard?”

  “Vana will fill you in.”

  Gregor saw the woman, vest sporting a few burns from hits, push her way into the concourse and throw Gregor a dry look. Apparently Vana wasn’t all that impressed by the power armor. Her loss.

  “And you?” Gregor said, zapping the message back to Aurora.

  “I’ll be coordinating the resistance.”

  “The resistance?” Gregor asked, as Vana went on by, waving for the Gregor to follow. With one clank after another, he did. “What resistance?”

  “The agents on this ship just declared war on everyone else,” Aurora replied. “We’ve got to find them, stamp them out, and then follow the chain on up.”

  Gregor took several steps to process Aurora’s words. They sounded like a return to normal policy, that Sever was abandoning its mercenary run before it ever began. Gregor had no qualms about bashing the bad guys, but this felt less like a mission and more like Aurora had herself wrapped up in a cause.

  The questions died before Gregor found a way to pose them. Now, on board a ship crawling with hostiles, wasn’t the time to push Aurora. There were enemies to destroy, and for the moment, that would be enough.

  “Aurora tells me you’re the dangerous one,” Vana said as they headed towards the Nautilus center and the barracks waiting there. “A man more likely to punch than pontificate.”

  “Not wrong.”

  “That’s good,” Vana continued. Gregor took a better look at her. The agent carried ammo aplenty for a rifle held in both hands, but she didn’t move like someone expecting fire. More like someone who had a plan, who knew she could accomplish it. “Where we’re going, I’m going to need that strength.”

  “The bridge?”

  “E
ventually,” Vana said, getting to a lift and pressing the call button. “Thing is, there’s a reason Renard wants the Nautilus. Why he moved so many agents here over the years.”

  Gregor stayed quiet. Best to listen when someone starts revealing information. The lift arrived, and Gregor clomped in alongside Vana. She didn’t hit the top level, but instead sent them hurtling back down. Towards the mess hall and the experimental labs.

  “Renard’s not playing this game with one hand,” Vana said, as if describing a particularly dull picture. “Your little girl is a bonus. A surprise. We’re after the real prize.”

  The lift opened, and Vana led Gregor into the lower level concourse.

  “And what is this prize?” Gregor asked.

  “Take a look at yourself,” Vana said, lifting a coy smile Gregor’s way. “You’re wearing an early version. The latest prototype is on this ship somewhere, and we have to get it before Renard does.”

  “Or?”

  “Or he takes it with him, and we’re very, very dead.”

  Twenty-Four

  Jump Start

  The shrapnel sounded like steel rain. Eponi winced as the last fighter’s remnants crashed into the Prisa, drifting unshielded and burnt out in the Nautilus’s shadow. Sai’s shots had been true, had incinerated the dagger fighter on its final approach. Those saving bolts had also fried out the Prisa’s power conduits, the little cables sending coiled energy from the Prisa’s batteries to wherever Eponi needed them.

  Right now, Eponi wasn’t all that sure what she needed. Her butt sat planted in the Prisa’s primary pilot chair, and she’d just pried her hands loose from a flight stick grip so tight the muscles had locked in. In front, the Nautilus hung like a metallic moon, dominating the view with its running lights and reflective silver patches. The cruiser seemed frozen, but both it and the Prisa were hurtling along at a high velocity towards somewhere.

  Even without its engines, outer space did nothing to slow the Prisa down.

  And yet, the Nautilus did seem to be creeping ahead. Eponi frowned, leaned closer to the windshield, as if a few centimeters proximity would help her discern relative motion. The lean in didn’t, but the shrapnel wave blowing by around the Prisa, did.

  Any impact, however small, would shave velocity. Any negative push, like the press from Sai’s turrets when they blasted towards the dagger fighter, would kill off milliseconds. Not much, not many, but enough so that the Nautilus would outpace Eponi’s damaged ship. Would, if Eponi couldn’t find a way to get the Prisa moving, leave them stranded in remote space.

  The odds of a pickup out here were too low to play with.

  Eponi would’ve warned Sai about the situation, but the Prisa didn’t have any functioning intercom system anymore. Hell, it didn’t have any functioning systems that weren’t tied to its critical battery back-ups: life support—air recycling, temperature control—would churn away as long as the Prisa held any energy at all.

  So if the Nautilus made it away, Sai and Eponi could die real slow.

  Eponi’s pilot console sat dark, blown out by the first real hit to the Prisa. She’d used the copilot’s one to contact Sai, but that had joined its sister in the great beyond after Sai’s power-sucking shot. The pilot would have to leave the cockpit to save her ship.

  “Fine,” Eponi said as she scooped herself from the seat, her muscles twinging as they were called upon to move a weightless body into the air. “I’d like to see you try and kill me, space.”

  Taunting the interstellar void made Eponi feel better as she took a long look back into the Prisa. Beyond the four-seat cockpit, a short hallway whose floor doubled as the ship’s quick lift opened into the Prisa’s central lounge area. From her vantage point, Eponi could see her newly acquired craft would be stuck in a repair bay for a long, long time.

  The seals on the lockers, spiked by the energy surges, had given way. Random tools, food packets, and Eponi’s rifle drifted around, spending momentum on low-grade crashes with each other. Ruptures along ceiling panels revealed blown sensors and their attendant alarms. Chunkier debris floated in from the Prisa’s right side, where the ship had taken its hardest hit.

  Behind them, the lounge sucked in little lighting, expanding more as a gray cavern than the Prisa’s core.

  Eponi kicked forward, brushing aside debris as she made contact. Much as she’d like to see if Sai still lived, goal number one was getting the Prisa moving again, which meant kicking to its engines and linking them back up with the batteries. In the ship, the engines sat straight back, accessed by going down below the center. The same way to reach the main exit ramp.

  Except everything went real dark once Eponi left behind the cockpit and its starlight show. Without a wristlet or a console, nothing gave Eponi more than a dim reflection. She’d have to navigate by memory, by touch.

  The Prisa played its own disaster concert while Eponi judged her path and kicked off towards the center chamber’s opposite side. The alarms had, mercifully, died with the power surge, but a scattered drum line rang throughout the ship as battered contents bounced around and off each other. Static wisps echoed here and there, intercoms connecting for seconds at a time before cutting out again.

  All complemented by Prisa’s life-support systems and their comforting churn, a low-grade grind whirring throughout the ship.

  Those sounds coupled with the cool, hard metal touching Eponi’s fingertips as she hit the chamber’s far wall, sliding into the descending curl. Using the ceiling above her, close now that Eponi stood beneath the Prisa’s second floor and its crew quarters, Eponi straightened herself out. Felt with her feet to find the steps leading downward.

  Without gravity, Eponi couldn’t walk, so she propelled herself instead. Pushing off the ceiling, her wrists giving Eponi the angle she needed, the Prisa’s pilot ghosted her way down the steps. The descent wrapped, with the cut-out for ramp halfway along. The leftover starlight died here, dwindling to utter black.

  Eponi closed her eyes. Not because the darkness scared her—definitely not—but to focus, to pour her senses into her finger tips, her booted feet, and feel every centimeter as she went. The focus had a second purpose: to try and keep away the gnawing, feasting panic that they’d be stuck out here, left behind by a Nautilus crew that wanted Sever dead.

  Everyone had their own nightmares, and Eponi’s centered pretty square on getting caught in vacuum, on being left to die in space alone. She hated airlocks for that reason, and loved sitting in the pilot’s chair because holding the flight stick gave Eponi some control over her fate. She hadn’t been able to out-fly all four fighters this time, but she’d come damn close, and clinging to that fact kept her going.

  It’d been a heroic effort. Worthy of the best pilots. And the best didn’t give up just because someone clipped them with a lucky shot.

  Eponi found the ramp’s door, its ridged edge a signpost showing a destination not far away. The stairs flattened out into a level curl heading back towards the engines. Easier now to keep kicking forward. She kept her eyes closed, felt a hot whiff in the air as she came closer to where all that energy sat stuck.

  Sai would’ve been useful. He’d come up with the plan to reroute the conduits to fire that last shot. Could probably do the same with the wired mess waiting down here. Eponi hadn’t exactly done much repair work on ship guts—DefenseCorp had paid experts for that kinda thing—so this would be more guessing than a firm play.

  But better to take a shot than die waiting for one.

  When the steady churn washed out the random clanks, Eponi opened her eyes. Still no overhead lighting in the engine room, but various meters and small status screens cast enough yellow, red, and green glows to give a certain festive color to a situation that otherwise looked like disaster. Sai’s power surge hadn’t just blown things up above, but it’d thrown things off down here.

  The Prisa’s engines synced their power right up to the ship’s big batteries, storage slates that charged when the ship landed, or from ca
ptured starlight sucked in by panels all across the Prisa’s surface. From what Eponi could tell, the surge, or the dagger fighter’s shot, had shorted out all but one engine, a single cluster clinging to life.

  Eponi leaned in, read the numbers, the status bars. Tried to run some mental math, a harder task than it should’ve been, but fear and rusted out habits—flight computers tended to handle the numbers—forced Eponi to claw through the equations a few times. Not having a surface to write on, a wristlet to record anything, didn’t help either.

  But, with all those caveats, Eponi figured the single cluster, coupled with the Prisa’s remaining velocity, could keep them within hailing distance of the Nautilus for a while. Except, for the engine to help at all, Eponi would have to flip the Prisa again.

  The maneuvering jets, little things meant to shunt the Prisa one way or another, looked better off than their bigger brothers. Eponi had killed them after flipping the Prisa in the fight, sending their energy to the lasers, to the shields, and that might’ve kept the things alive. Now she had to get power going their way, and doing that meant tangling with the batteries themselves.

  At her feet, the glow illuminated a grated floor. Beneath the oval patchwork sat the batteries, and the raw wires connecting their energy directly to critical sources, like the main engines and the life support systems. At Eponi’s eye level, looking black and burnt out, the Prisa’s primary switchboard sat dead and done. Conduits, thick coated wires, came in from various sections and plugged into the board. Each one had been thoughtfully marked by the Prisa’s prior owners with their purpose.

  “Guess what?” Eponi said as she found the one for the maneuvering jets. “We’re gonna get out of this together. You’ll see.”

  She’d talked to all her karts, too. Given them compliments when they’d pulled off a turn, passed a leader, or kept Eponi alive through yet another tumbling disaster. The words made her feel less alone, more like the ships were her friends.