“Two hits on our forward shields,” Reichert said. “No penetration, no damage. We knocked down his forward shields and got some hits, damage unknown.”
“Change course up two six zero degrees,” Rob ordered. “Port zero two degrees.”
Saber began a long, wide curve upward through space to reverse course and come back at the cutter.
Cameron shook his head. “The cutter is still killing velocity before it’ll be able to accelerate toward the jump point. When we hit him again he’ll be almost at a dead stop. His forward shields aren’t rebuilding. We might have knocked them out.”
Rob tapped his comm controls again. “Scathan warship, your situation is hopeless. Broadcast your surrender, drop your remaining shields, and power down your weapons.”
No response came.
“Listen up, everyone,” Rob told the bridge crew. “I was in a hopeless situation commanding a ship like that and managed to cripple my opponent. Don’t ease up, don’t get overconfident, don’t give him a chance to surprise us. Let’s see how much damage we can do this time.” He called back to Mele again. “If we can do enough damage on this run, I might try a boarding operation so we can capture it. That cutter isn’t much, but he is a warship.”
Twenty minutes later Saber tore past the cutter again, which this time didn’t maneuver to face the attack with its unshielded bow. Instead, Saber was able to target the weaker shields at the stern of the cutter.
“Yes!” Ensign Reichert cried, immediately flinching apologetically as she realized she’d shouted. “His aft shields collapsed,” she continued in calmer tones. “We scored several hits. Estimate he is now at less than twenty-five percent propulsion. Correction, his main propulsion has just failed.”
“Any damage to us?” Rob asked.
“No, sir! He only scored one hit on our shields.”
Unable to maneuver, his shields down, the cutter was helpless. Rob called the enemy warship a third time. “Scathan warship, broadcast your surrender immediately or we will continue our attack.”
What if the cutter didn’t surrender? Rob wondered as he waited for a reply. Order Mele to try to capture the cutter? Or continue to pound the cutter until it either surrendered or was destroyed? With its propulsion badly damaged, getting that cutter back to Glenlyon after it was captured might be very difficult.
His thoughts were interrupted by a report from his engineering watch stander. “Captain, we’re getting fluctuating readings from the cutter’s power core.”
“Is he doing a shutdown?” Rob asked.
“No, sir. It’s jumping up and down as if . . . sir, I know how crazy this sounds but it’s as if someone was trying to control the power core manually rather than using automated systems, overcorrecting each time.”
“The Buccaneer cutters use an obsolete, bug-prone operating system. Scatha was using manual controls on Squall’s power core before we captured her,” Rob said.
“Sir? If that’s what’s going on, they’re losing control and that power core is going to blow real soon!”
“He’s launched his lifeboat!” Cameron called out.
“He’s approaching overload, Captain!”
The image of the Scathan warship on Rob’s display disappeared, replaced by an expanding ball of dust and debris that had once been a human warship. The wave of death engulfed the fleeing lifeboat, tearing it apart, just as if the cutter had been a ship on an ocean dragging its crew down with it as it sank.
A moment of stunned silence on Saber shattered as cheers resounded through the ship.
Rob let them cheer. He’d given the cutter’s crew every chance he could.
And Claymore had been partially avenged.
* * *
• • •
Close to a day later, Saber slid close to the small facility that Scatha had left orbiting Jatayu as a sign of Scatha’s claim to the star. Scatha hadn’t wasted any money on the structure, which consisted of a bunch of various-sized drum-shaped cylinders with rounded edges linked together, the largest big enough to serve as a small warehouse for parts and supplies and the smaller ones plainly intended to serve as living quarters for a small crew.
Mele Darcy stood in the open air lock hatch as Saber came to a halt relative to the facility. The outfit she wore was a toughened survival suit rather than a set of armor designed for use on ships, but in her hands was a pulse rifle as good as anything she’d carried in Franklin’s Marines. With her stood the five newly minted Marines who had seemed best able to handle things after the short period of training so far.
Mele wished she could have had Gunny Moon with her, but he had been needed far more to stay at Glenlyon training the other new Marines.
“Let’s go,” Mele broadcast to her Marines, leaping outward first. The universe spun about her, an infinity of dark with endless stars and galaxies, but her eyes stayed locked on the hatch to the facility. There hadn’t been any replies to demands that the facility surrender, so there was no telling what kind of reception was waiting on the other side of that hatch.
She flew through emptiness, a weapon in her hands, her heart pounding with anticipation and excitement, feeling for those seconds as if she had bought a ticket on the best, scariest ride humanity had ever built.
Mele cushioned her landing with her arms, coming to a gentle halt against the facility. To her left the other five Marines landed, two hard enough that they almost bounced back off into space despite the cling of their gecko gloves.
“Get it open, Giddings,” Mele ordered her one-man hack-and-crack team. As Corporal V. T. “Glitch” Giddings moved next to the hatch’s exterior controls, Mele pushed herself out to arm’s length from the side of the facility, holding on with one hand while her other aimed her rifle at the air lock hatch. That let her both guard against anyone waiting in the air lock and watch the progress of breaking in. This was her first chance to see how Giddings did in an operational setting and to be certain that his nickname referred to the things he could do on purpose to the enemy and not to things he could inadvertently cause in friendly software systems.
Giddings bent to work but almost immediately paused. “Captain, it’s not locked.” He reached for the controls.
“Wait!” Mele ordered. “That’s either very good or very bad. Get to one side of the hatch before you hit the enter command, out of the line of fire from it just in case there’s a booby trap inside. The rest of you brace yourselves.” She pulled herself next to the facility, waiting anxiously as Giddings pressed the enter control.
The hatch swung open with the silent grace of objects moving in the void of space. No explosion followed, but that didn’t mean someone or something might not be waiting. Mele unsnapped a carryall bag from her waist and tossed it into the hatch so it would bounce around and set off any motion-activated traps.
Still nothing. Bracing herself, Mele swung inside.
The air lock was bare of anything except the two control pads. The inner hatch and the small display on it to allow an interior view showed no sign of tampering or sabotage. Mele scanned the inner walls, ceiling, and deck of the air lock carefully, finding nothing. The control for the inner door also wasn’t locked.
She was either dealing with a very good trap or opponents so confident they’d grown careless.
“I’m going through first with Yoshida,” Mele told the others. “If nothing explodes, the rest of you follow.”
“What if something does explode?” Giddings asked.
“Once it stops exploding, follow me anyway. And kill whoever set the explosive as a favor to me.” Mele waved Yoshida into the air lock, knowing that she should send someone else in first, that as senior officer she should sit back and supervise the actions of the others. But this was the first combat action of Glenlyon’s Marines, and she was determined not to establish a precedent of officers holding back while they sent others to do the dirty w
ork.
She held her breath as she hit the cycle command, but nothing happened that wasn’t supposed to. The outer hatch closed, air pressure equalized with the interior, and a green light glowed reassuringly above the inner hatch.
Mele popped the inner hatch, paused to see if anything happened, then leapt out of the air lock, planting herself against the far side of the interior passageway, her rifle held ready as she swung it from side to side, seeking targets. Yoshida jumped out as well, his weapon covering one way down the passage so Mele could keep her weapon pointed in the other.
The external mics on her suit picked up the sigh of air as vent fans circulated atmosphere in this part of the facility but no other noises. Was everyone here asleep? That should be impossible. They would have seen the destruction of the cutter and Saber’s approach afterward.
The air lock finished cycling a second time, and her other four Marines came through. “Yoshida, Lamar, come with me. Gamba, take Giddings and Buckland that way. No shooting unless necessary. Commodore Geary wants some live prisoners.”
The rudimentary heads-up display on her modified armor didn’t show much except the relative positions of her group and the other Marines as they moved in opposite directions down the passageway, weapons at ready. They had no information on the layout of this facility, but in one corner of her helmet display a map filled in as they walked, showing where they’d been.
“Dead end, Captain,” Corporal Gamba called over the comm circuit. “Some kind of office with three desks. No one here. None of the desks are powered up.”
“Got it,” Mele replied. “We’re coming up on something.” She swung the muzzle of her rifle ahead of her as she came around a corner into a small rec room. Off to one side was an even smaller kitchen. Spaced around the walls were three closed doors. “The one on the left is yours, Yoshida. Lamar, take the right one. I’ll handle the middle. All at once on three. One, two, three.”
Three doors slammed open under the force of kicks, and three rifles led the way into three rooms.
Three empty rooms.
“Could they be in the nonpressurized sections?” Lamar asked, her voice puzzled.
“We’ll find out,” Mele said. “Giddings, start breaking into the systems here and find out how many people are on this station. Saber is also going to want to know what parts and supplies are stored here for emergency use.”
A quick check found a secondary air lock, which was locked. As Mele was preparing to head into the nonpressurized sections to search them Giddings called her. “Captain Darcy, there’s nobody here.”
“They abandoned it?”
“No, ma’am. There’s a note, I mean, a physical note, stuck on one of the desks saying the facility caretakers were hauled off to help fill out the crew on one of Scatha’s warships.” Giddings sounded like he was having trouble not laughing. “The note has all the log-on codes written on it for whoever showed up next. I think I’m going to be able to get into their files pretty easily.”
“Congratulations,” Mele said, feeling both foolish at assaulting an abandoned facility and relieved that things had gone so well.
Rob Geary sounded happy at the news. “Scatha had to strip the people out of here so they could fill out the crew on one of their ships? That sounds like they’re overextending themselves.”
“As long as they outnumber us,” Mele pointed out, “that’s not much comfort. But, yeah, if we can knock them onto their heels, they’ll have trouble recovering. Corporal Giddings should be sending you files listing what’s on this station.”
“We’re already receiving them. We’ll take off most of the fuel cells and all of the emergency spares stockpiled here. What was that quote about feeding off the enemy?”
“I’m glad you were paying attention, sir. Speaking of feeding off the enemy, we’ll empty out the pantry here, too, and the stocks of emergency rations,” Mele said. “They don’t have anything fancy, though. Just a bunch of past-their-expiration-date Earth Fleet rations. Scatha isn’t wasting money on tasty treats for the troops.”
“I’ll have some sailors over there in a few minutes to start hauling stuff off. You can bring your Marines back as soon as you’re done.”
“Yes, sir.” Mele headed for the other side of the facility, where Giddings was seated at one of the workstations as he downloaded every file in the system. Corporal Gamba and Private Buckland were busy searching every drawer and cabinet and nook in the room for anything else of interest. “Any surprises?”
“No, Captain,” Giddings said. “No secret war plans or anything like that. I did find the records of traffic through the system. There were a couple of other warships here, but they jumped out before we arrived.”
“Jumped for where?” Mele demanded, suddenly tense at the thought that the enemy might have launched an attack on Glenlyon at the same time as Saber was heading for Jatayu.
“Way over there,” Giddings said, worried by the tone of her voice. “Not anywhere close to where we came in.”
Mele squinted at the display. “I think that’s the jump point to Kosatka. We’ll let the space squids confirm that. What else is in there?”
“Operating procedures. Maintenance requirements. Communications logs. Not much personal stuff like music or vids or books, though. That’s kind of strange.”
“Scatha doesn’t like its people using official equipment for personal entertainment,” Mele said. “We learned that from the stuff we captured a few years ago. What’s this file?”
“Pictures. Not too many. I guess having a few pictures was okay with Scatha.” Giddings brought up a series of photos. A young man in a chair. An older woman standing by a wall. A child playing outside. The sort of pictures that could have been taken anywhere humanity had settled so far. “Do you think the crew from this facility were on that ship that blew up?” he asked.
“Maybe,” Mele said.
“Why the hell did they do it, Captain?” Buckland asked. “Why start a war?”
“Because someone wanted something that other people had, and people like the crew on this facility were willing to do anything they were told to do.” Mele shook her head at the pictures of people who might never know what had happened to whoever had once valued those photos. “If I buy a one-way ticket into the dark, it’s going to be while I’m fighting to protect people and things I care about. It’s not going to be because some powerful scumbag wants more power and people to push around. How about you guys?”
“It’s been a job,” Corporal Gamba admitted. “Jobs could be hard to come by where I came from. But after a while it became . . . what’s that word? A profession. Like, a special job. I stuck with the unit when we came out here because Glenlyon looked like a place that just wanted to defend itself. And I can do something to help. There’re worse ways to buy that ticket, I guess.”
“A lot worse ways,” Mele said. “We’re going to focus on buying tickets for Scatha’s people, though. While you guys finish up here, I’m going to lead the other three in a careful sweep of the rest of the place for anything that might be hidden. Let me know when you’re done.”
None of them found anything else worth taking. The only other real trace of any of the former occupants was some obscene graffiti scratched by a tool in an unobtrusive spot. “Nice,” Lamar commented in a flat voice.
“Captain?” Yoshida said. “What do we do when those space squids give us a hard time about capturing an empty facility?”
Mele’s answering smile was thin and hard. “Tell them we led the way inside, and we’ll do the same when there are a hundred weapons pointed at us.”
* * *
• • •
Rob Geary wondered why he felt a little guilty to be plundering the Scathan facility’s small store of emergency supplies. One of the advantages of everybody’s using surplus warships from the same sources was that for the moment everyone was able to use t
he same fuel cells and spares. But he still felt better when Saber’s supply officer reported with a straight face that the enemy supplies had been “requisitioned in accordance with applicable regulations and procedures.” That sounded a lot better than “looting.”
He knew that his concerns were particularly absurd given what was about to happen to the Scathan orbital facility.
“Senior Chief Daniello requests permission to send the detonation command,” Vicki Shen told Rob.
“Are we outside the blast radius?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Just where did Senior Chief Daniello acquire the knowledge of how to rig fuel cells to detonate?”
“I didn’t ask, Captain,” Shen replied.
“That’s probably wise. Permission granted to detonate,” Rob said.
A few seconds later the remaining fuel cells at the Scathan orbital facility expended all of their energy at once, blowing the facility into dust and fragments that would continue to orbit the star named Jatayu for ages to come.
“I need a meeting with you and Captain Darcy,” Rob told Shen, his eyes on his display where the jump point back to Glenlyon beckoned.
But another jump point kept drawing his attention as well.
He was supposed to take Saber home now.
Doing what he was thinking instead would be insanely risky.
Or would it?
CHAPTER 5
A ship the size of Saber didn’t have conference rooms. Rob’s cabin felt a little crowded with only two people in it. Three people didn’t leave much room for moving around.
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