An unknown private channel opened. “Hello, Salchar.” It had a Southern drawl.
“Eddie?”
“The one and only. Now, you know the universal port in your forefinger?” He paused, waiting for me to confirm.
“Yes.”
“Good. Use this to connect to the data terminals in the ship, discover the truth. Me and Resilient will keep you guys covered and make sure the Syndicate and your Sarenmenti officers don’t see what you’re doing.” With that, the channel ended.
I shook my head, clearing it as I focused on just staying alive in the next few minutes.
“Henry, you’re in charge of two platoons. I’ll take over one.” I changed to the general channel as I saw that leaders had been picked. I slotted them into the nets they would need to be in to keep command and control. I didn’t know how well it would go; at this stage, it was adapt or die.
“All right, if someone comes at you with a weapon, put them down. Don’t piss on them—they will kill you. They won’t fight according to our code. Watch out for your teammate, section, squad, and platoon and do your job. We’ll be back before you know it.”
“Ten seconds,” a voice said through our helmets. The shuttle jinked as we burned off speed.
The shuttle rattled dangerously as weapon fire came close enough for a few projected screens to go blank. I gritted my teeth against the forces pushing us around as the shuttle stopped braking and jinking with the clink of magnetic clamps locking to a surface.
“We’re on the hull.” A dull thump sounded. “Entry made!”
“All right, you human bags of scum! Move!” Turek said on our HUDs.
We thumped our harnesses, releasing them as we rushed to the magnetically clamped door, dual air locks still closed as they equalized the pressure.
“Up and at ’em! Come on, I’m getting old here!” I said as a few were slow getting out of their seats. I pulled my cocking handle, letting it go with a satisfying mechanical click as my HUD warned me my weapon was loaded.
I brought it up to my shoulder as the air locks opened. The pressure equaled on either side and pop-up sights appeared on my visor. Without a word, Yasu and I moved forward, her sword ready and her rail gun on her back. A squat, green-looking humanoid peered around the corner ahead of us. I let loose a burst as I advanced; the kinetic forces ripped apart his smaller body. We continued advancing into the larger area to get more people into the ship.
“Team two, move right; three left; rest, split up accordingly,” I said, waiting for the two teams to be on either side.
“You peer around and move down—we’ll go forward,” I told them, getting nods as they confirmed my orders. Beads rang off the roof and ceiling. The enemy had other ideas. We all ducked back behind cover.
“Four and five, go through your respective walls with your plasmid weaponry.” I checked behind myself to see them acting slowly.
“Yasu,” I said with a gesture. In three powerful strokes, she cut a triangle in the bulkhead, kicking the panel through as she went in.
“Clear!” she yelled as the other Mechas followed her sheepishly.
“Keep doing that till you get behind them then shoot them in the ass,” I said to the now chastised group who rushed to the next bulkhead. Henry had his people split into two groups as he used my idea and cut through the deck and the overhead, dispersing people throughout the ship.
“Six and nine team, on me. Two, three—fire down the corridor on my signal. Yasu, we’ll jump across while they cover us.”
“Yes.”
Not wanting to deal with the contempt in that voice, I did the smart thing and went to fighting my own deadly battle.
“Two, three, now.” They fired as Yasu and I jumped across, our Mecha’s legs on full power as we rolled to absorb the impact. “Six, nine—follow!” I called back as I scanned the hallway we were in. Yasu checked the nearest rooms. The other two teams followed quickly, scanning the area around us for anywhere the squat, green men could pop out of.
At that point, our bulkhead cutters had flanked the initial attackers and cut them down as two and three moved up with their reinforcements to clear along the hallway they’d been covering. Every third team followed Yasu and me as we made our way deeper into the ship.
“We need to disable the flight systems in engineering and the weapon systems that’ll stop us from getting off this thing and more reinforcements landing on it. Anything that looks like that, give it a wallop,” I said over the general channel. There were rooms filled with all kinds of alien goods, from technology to simple metals. I quickly found the lines that would feed the fusion generator, deviating from my initial line of approach as we came to a reinforced door.
I placed a charge on it, getting behind a corner. I used the track balls in my fingers to activate it. The door blew inward; a Mecha team was inside before the debris from the door had settled. The green aliens were waiting. The first team through was cut to shreds as hundreds of beads penetrated their Mechas and exploded.
“They have a crew serviced beader,” the team behind them yelled as they pulled back in to cover.
“Shit.” I pulled up a map; everything below us was parts to do with the fusion reactors housed around us. Not something I wanted to cut through.
“Don’t shoot anything in here. Unless I tell you to,” I told my teams as the ceramic firing beader let their presence be known with another few bursts.
I grabbed a stunner grenade, thumbing the activator as I tossed it.
“Ready.” It went off with a muzzled thump and fizzle. “Go!” The lead teams charged their servos, covering the twenty meters in less than a second as they fired point-blank into the five-person group of mixed rifleman and beader group.
“We got them!” one said with childish glee. They think it’s a video game. The speaker was undoubtedly one of the younger Mechas, despite their adult appearance.
“Secure the area,” I detailed to a squad leader as I stepped to an interface, putting in the universal jack.
Ships logs, maps, personnel files, and any other information I found I copied into my internal storage and uploaded blueprints to my squad of the ship. We had bare plans from before but this would make taking the ship much easier. It was a hauler with a full load. The dishes that were essential to projecting a wormhole were damaged, meaning the ship could only run away with main thrusters. Which the ship we were on was doing.
I checked—engineering hadn’t locked their stations. I used the manual override and cut the power to the engines and then took power away from the defense systems on the ship. The dull vibrations of weapon systems stopped as alarms sounded across the ship.
“Engines and defense arrays are offline. You should have an overlay of the ship on your HUDs now. I’m linking in sensors showing enemy presence on the ship.” I left a bug to wirelessly update us.
I changed to the squad commander I’d put in charge of creating defenses. “Hold here with a half-squad. I’m taking the rest.”
“Yes, Commander.” He detailed who were to stay; the others grouped around me.
“We’re going to the command center.” They nodded as I traced the path on my HUD. Two teams pushed before me.
“What are you doing?” I asked angrily.
“Keeping your ass safe, Commander.”
“What’s your name?”
“Jeremiah.”
“You’ve got balls, Jeremiah.” I grinned despite myself as I hit the man on the back. “Lead on then, Jeremiah.”
We left the relative safety of the engineering deck, following my route to the command center. We found the odd fighter as we quickly worked our way to the blast doors of the freighter’s command deck.
“Yasu, do you have a charge?”
She quickly moved to the blast door that separated us from the ship’s command center. She pulled one from a Mecha, double stacking it with hers before she stuck them to the door. They expanded so that they were on the edges of the door.
We
pulled back and I found myself at the front of the stack as Yasu blew the door without warning. I rushed through the door, turning and clearing the left side of the command center. Yasu turned to clear the right.
A plasmid sword came up from behind a terminal, cutting the barrel of my rail gun. I rolled forward into where the sword had come from, drawing my pistol and pulling my sword free in a shower of sparks as it cut through another terminal and into the attacker who had cut my rail gun in two. As he fell, another attacker brought up a shotgun. Without thinking, I shot him in the leg with my pistol, causing him to slip as I put another two rounds in his chest.
Enraged by the death of their comrades, more of the squat, green aliens rushed from the depressed command deck, firing wildly and attacking my Mechas with their plasmid melee weapons.
The Mechas behind me waited, unable to move on because I was blocking the way and me unable to move because of the aliens.
“Widen the door!” I yelled.
I fired my pistol, killing four before it was empty. I threw it at the nearest alien only a meter away, making it flinch. I brought my sword down and cut it in two.
More swarmed Yasu and me as we used our bigger stature and strength to dispatch them with savage blows, survival overcoming finesse.
Finally there were no more of them and we advanced into the room. The widened blast door poured out Mechas, who flooded the room.
“Secure the stations. You four keep an eye on the blast door.”
Quickly they rushed to obey, casting quick glances at the alien hardware in the room.
I was mentally and physically drained; my stomach ached from the half healed wound. I moved to lean against the captain’s chair; being built for the aliens we’d killed, it wouldn’t fit me and my Mecha. I looked at the purple and green colored command center. It was so alien yet it looked like a bridge on any one of the science fiction movies or television shows we had back on Earth.
I looked away from the bridge, studying the armrest. There you are, you little sucker. I found a universal jack in the side of it. I pulled my fingertip off again and allowed my Mecha to drain it of information, parsing it out to Yasu this time, my storage mostly full.
“Why am I downloading things?” She came closer, eyeing me warily.
“We’re the first people to leave Earth into an unknown universe and we’re attacking ships we don’t even understand the basics of. We need information. If humans are going to come out onto the galactic level, we need to know the dangers we face and how to best combat them.”
“Why would anyone attack Earth? We’re under the PDF’s protection,” someone who had overheard our conversation asked.
If I was still in command when we were done, there were going to be a few extra lessons on rank.
“You know how terrorist organizations act when someone disrupts their plans? They attack the people who disrupted it; it was like the Americans and Al Qaeda. The Americans stopped supplying them weapons to fight off the Russians and Al Qaeda attacked them for not doing as they said, trying to make an example of the United States. Plus the PDF don’t seem all that worried about our lives, do they? Best if we look out after ourselves first.” I turned now fully to the questioner, the room listening.
“Unlike back then, we can’t fight these people—we don’t even understand the basics of wormhole jumping. We don’t have ships or weapons on Earth to defend against, say, a terrorist paying Earth a visit and dropping a few KEWs on our heads, killing all life on Earth and making it inhabitable by humans.”
“KEWs?”
“Kinetic energy weapons.” Still seeing they didn’t get it, I leaned forward to better explain it. Pain exploded from my stomach. I grimaced and leaned back.
“It’s basically a very large and heavy mass that is accelerated until it hits a target. It imparts all of its gathered energy on the target. One KEW was the asteroid that killed all the dinosaurs and put Earth into an ice age. That one wasn’t even artificially accelerated.”
I took off my helmet and looked at them. “Earth needs to know how to defend herself and it’s up to us to find out how to give humanity those tools. If we don’t, then Earth, and possibly our race, is susceptible to elimination.
“People, don’t kid yourselves. We’re the ones keeping the enemies at our gates at bay and the ones to make sure the human race keeps living on, even if Earth itself isn’t there.”
This sobered everyone in the room. My eyes had wandered, finding the main view screens. It showed the ship in the middle of the other two massive ships that made up its convoy and the ten ships of the Planetary Defense Force’s fleet.
“You two, see what you can get out of the sensor arrays.” I pointed to a group near a computer bank.
They slung their rifles as they dropped into the lower sections, their implants allowing them to read the information on the screens.
Yasu moved so she was scanning the one doorway that led into the command center. She’s nothing, if not vigilant.
“All right, you two are with me. The rest of you, link up with second platoon and see if you can be of any use.”
They found the other Mechas on their HUDs easily before they walked out, checking for threats.
I brought up the captain’s logs on a small screen built into the armrest of his chair. As I read, my mask became more rigid as underneath I warred with emotion. Confusion, panic, guilt, and finally anger filled me as I hoped the log to be a lie, checking it against the other logs of the crew.
“Fucking aliens,” I said, my voice cold as I shut the view screen off with a fist through it. Everyone in the room jumped a bit and looked at me. I waved for them to continue their work as I looked at the main view screens, brooding.
“Can one of you try to connect me with the other ships in the convoy?” I said to the squad left with me.
“I can try, Commander.” A woman raised her hand.
I waved her to the communications station, not trusting myself to say more than absolutely necessary. After a few painful minutes, she finally got a connection.
“We have a connection to the second vessel, with a Rick.”
“Patch him through.” I turned to the screen and tried to look as if I wasn’t supporting myself on the chair.
“Rick, good to see you,” I said as the man appeared, sitting on top of, rather than in, his own captain’s chair, his armor pockmarked from some kind of shrapnel.
“Commander.” He straightened in his seat.
“Wish you’d all stop that, but we have something more important. You jacked into the ship yet?”
A look came over his face.
“Of course you did. Now, did you get all of the logs?”
“Not yet.”
“Well, get them, read them and post them on the forums.”
“Sure...” He trailed off, not certain what a bunch of logs would be useful for.
“Commander.”
He set to work putting his port into the chair as I looked at the woman in the communications seat who’d spoken.
“We’ve got contact, Iron Bok Soo he says he’s called.” She looked confused.
“Got to go, Rick,” I said, feeling as if my guts were in a vise.
“Understood, boss. I’ll get back to you as soon as possible when I’m done.”
“Good luck.”
Rick was replaced by an angry-looking, heavily muscled man—even visible underneath his Mecha—who leaned forward. His look of anger was replaced with a grin.
“Salchar! That’s you, isn’t it!”
“You better believe it, Bok Soo.” I grinned. Seeing the first member of Mecha Tail in months was a wave of relief. “I see you’re more mobile.”
“Yeah, first time in the med bay and, voila, my legs work again,” he said with a pleased grin.
I returned it, happy he’d finally gotten the mobility back he’d been missing for so long.
“Paid for it with an added five years on my contract,” he growled.
“That’s only until the end of the war and then five years,” I said lightly. It does make a perfect cover for never letting us go.
“Have fun training? I heard about your rules.”
“Apparently a lot of people did,” I said dryly.
He laughed at this. “We spent more time drinking soju than training,” he reminded me with a grin in his voice.
“Yeah, but you all didn’t seem to have the earth-shattering headache after!” I complained as he grinned. “Have you seen the rest of MT?”
“Nope, only damned Stone Warrior.” I saw Yasu’s head move minutely to listen better. “You?”
“None other than you, but may I introduce my wife,” I said with a flourish.
“I’m guarding the door.” Her icy tone made it apparent she didn’t want to be introduced.
Bok Soo’s eyes went wide. “That’s not who I think it is!?” He let out a belly laugh, slapping the armrest into uselessness with his servo-assisted hands.
“Omo, this is daebak! You married the Blade Mistress!!” he said as I glared at him, trying to silence his laughing as I noticed a stiff movement of her head.
“Shut up, Bok Soo,” I muttered.
“Ah, Salchar, you should meet my own Young Eun Hee!” A Mecha beside him punched him in the armored shoulder.
“Why, my cherry blossom,” he said, looking completely unabashed.
“Good luck, Eun Hee.” I bowed my head to her slightly.
“Good to meet my husband’s hyung,” she replied, bowing her head deeper than I had in a sign of respect.
“Hey, I’m older than him!”
“When have you ever acted that way?” she retorted, hotly turning on Bok Soo.
I could see the twinkle in her eye, belying any malicious intent. My eyebrow rose skeptically and a grin appeared on my face.
“Well...” He grinned back at her, unable to stay serious.
I remembered where I was and the limited time we might have. “Use the universal jack in your forefinger.”
“Found that one when I pulled the finger off one time.”
“You always were good at taking things apart.” We grinned at each other. “Okay, so use it to jack into the command chair, should be on your left.”
Free Fleet Box Set 1 Page 17
