by Rick Partlow
I closed my visor with a metallic snick, then fired a round from my KE gun into the video screen. It shorted out with a shower of sparks and what was left of it went dark. I started walking again.
“What the hell was all that?” Julie demanded, and if Baker and Grunewald were silent, it was probably only out of respect for her rank. I didn’t stop and she scrambled to keep up in her armored pressure suit. It had to be hot inside that thing, I thought, and a lot hotter with all that steam coming out of her ears. “Why the hell would you show her who we are? Isn’t it part of our standing orders to not reveal who we are, or did I miss a memo?”
“We need an edge,” I told her, unapologetic, the way I sometimes got when my blood was up. “They’ve got a lot more people than we do and we’re running on empty. We needed to get inside their heads and this is the only way I could think to do it.” I shrugged, though she couldn’t have seen it. “Besides, I don’t think Captain Cartimandua is the surrendering type. To take this ship, we’re going to have to go through her.”
“You better know what you’re doing,” she warned, “or I’m going to be called to testify at your court martial.”
“You’re such an optimist,” I said, chuckling. “You really think we’ll survive this for me to get court-martialed.”
I was going to try to smooth things over, say something about being sorry, how I tended to pull a plan out of my ass when I’m under pressure, but at that moment, we passed through the sick bay and up an impossibly-steep, gravity-plate-assisted ramp into the crew quarters. From there, we had to go up another level on the Rube-Goldberg gravity-bending walkways to get to the bridge, but Cartimandua knew that just as well as we did. And she’d apparently had the same thought as Julie about sending all her crewmembers who weren’t manning an essential station to meet us with lasers in hand.
I’d seen a painting once of a charge by Gallic Celts against the Romans, just a loose gaggle of individuals running straight into lines of legionaries, but I’d never thought I’d see it brought to life with Iron Age swords and spears subbed in with laser pistols on board a spaceship. I especially hated having to be the Romans in the scenario, because I’ve always thought they were kind of assholes.
There were dozens of them, concealed at the top of the ramp to the living quarters, waiting until we reached the bottom to charge at us. The only reason I spotted them before they slammed into us was a last second warning from the suit’s thermal sensors, giving me just enough time to sweep Julie behind me.
“Contact, front!” I yelled, bringing around my KE rifle.
And then they were screaming downward, scores of them, each in that stupid checkerboard-pattern uniform. I was being assaulted by a horde of 1980s-era ad executives. Time slowed and every detail stood out in harsh contrast, from long, dangling mustaches to the blue facial tattoos some of them sported, and to the laser pistols they carried.
Just pistols. These weren’t soldiers or Marines, or whatever the equivalent would be for ship-borne troops in the Tevynian military, they were just ship crewman issued sidearms and thrown at us. But there were a hell of a lot of them, and a hell of a lot of those nasty sidearms. By themselves, shots from the laser pistols were almost innocuous, lacking the power to create the ionization lightning effect of the battle rifles. The scorched and charred armor on my chest were the only actual clue I had that was I getting shot at.
I don’t remember pulling the trigger, don’t remember ordering anyone else to fire. It was almost as if I was watching someone else shooting at the horde of Tevynians, a spectator oohing and aahing at the tracerlike dashes of the incendiary rounds as they cut a swath through the oncoming attackers. Uniform jackets sprouted blossoms of fire as the plasma spears chopped through them, and men and women who’d worked themselves into a berserker frenzy only seconds ago were dropped in their tracks by a judicious application of the laws of physics.
If it had been just me, I think the crowd might have overwhelmed me, might have concentrated their fire enough so that even those lower-power pistols would eventually penetrate my armor. But I wasn’t alone. HK M27 carbines stuttered hoarsely, their integral suppressors reducing their report to a smack-crack sound like someone swinging a 2x4 into a brick wall. Julie was behind me, using my armor as cover, sending out one controlled burst after another, showing more small-arms training and discipline than I’d figured a Navy pilot would have. Grunewald had taken a knee and put his shoulder against the far bulkhead, firing his carbine left-handed, sending brass cases ricocheting and scattering around his feet as he sprayed his weapon back and forth, emptying a magazine in seconds and then fumbling at his chest pouches for another.
Baker, for all that he was wounded and the new guy, was thinking clearer than any of us. He’d taken advantage of the lull in the charge our return fire had provided to let his KE gun drop on its gimbal mount and swing the suit’s grenade launcher up to his shoulder. He stepped up beside me and set his feet wide. The discharge of the drum-fed grenade launcher was a chest-deep thump in contrast to the higher-pitched whines and cracks echoing off the bulkheads around us.
The gap between the first round from the grenade launcher firing and the first warhead detonating couldn’t have been more than a second, but it seemed an eternity in the stretched-out perception of time that had taken hold of me, what the experts called tachypsychia. When the first explosions detonated, it made me flinch, throwing a round from my KE gun into the overhead, but I don’t think the charging enemy noticed the difference. Our rifles, even my KE gun, had been scalpels slicing individuals from the mass, but the grenade launcher was a sledgehammer, smashing bloody wedges through them. It was strange, the things that stuck with me from all the chaos and death. Little details like the golden torc wrapped on the necks of some of the crew, twisted metal rings that locked in place. I’d seen them before, on classical statuary and depictions of ancient Celts, though I couldn’t remember what they signified. Not that they would necessarily hold the same meaning for these people. I noticed the torc around one man’s neck because the gold was stained red, by the blood pulsing from his carotid with each heartbeat, the colors shining in preternatural clarity, and I knew I’d see them again in nightmares for years to come.
Ten were down, then twenty, a tipping point where the fanatical zeal of those left could no longer overcome the blood and the smoke and the screams and the fear. More of them fell as they tried to fall back, more still when they turned and ran. I let off the trigger, but Baker kept firing, the concussion from the grenades vibrating my suit with each explosion. He wasn’t satisfied with a retreat—he didn’t stop until they’d scattered, most hiding in the crew quarters, sealing the hatches behind them.
It was only then that I checked myself, making sure none of the hand lasers had been what pilots like Julie would have called a Golden BB, scoring a hit at just the right place. My armor looked like the world’s most persistent sadist had been putting cigarettes out on it, but otherwise, I was good.
“Anybody hit?”
Julie and Grunewald were both getting to their feet, but I noticed a ragged, smoking hole in the right chest of Chief Grunewald’s armored pressure suit.
“I’m okay,” he insisted, waving me away. He staggered a step and caught himself on the bulkhead, still holding his carbine. “It hurts, but I ain’t bleeding and I can still breathe, so I guess that means it’s just a burn. Thank God for the micro-meteor armor.”
“Thank God they didn’t have rifles,” I added. “Top up your tanks and follow me.”
I checked the load on my rifle and saw that the drum was close to empty. I pulled out the drum and tossed it aside, retrieving a reload and sliding it into place. It was my last drum of incendiary ammo, and after it was gone, all I had left was a partial load of penetrators.
I gritted my teeth and watched where I stepped as I made my way past the enemy dead. It was impossible to avoid treading through the blood, but I really didn’t want to step on a body, and there were way too man
y bodies.
“Doesn’t seem fair,” Chief Grunewald mused, glancing down at the torn corpse of a female crewmember.
I thought about pointing out to him that we weren’t the ones who made the decision to throw a bunch of lightly-armed sailors into a gunfight with walking tanks, instead I repeated what Jambo had told me once, just before we triggered an ambush in Venezuela.
“Fair fights,” I said, “are for suckers.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
“I guess they aren’t very hospitable,” Julie said, staring at the blast shield.
We hadn’t encountered any more of the crew between quarters and the bridge, and I wasn’t sure if it was because there weren’t any left to pull off their stations or, I figured, defending engineering. I felt guilty not being there.
“Are you sure we can get through that shit?” Baker asked.
The shield was probably a solid yard thick, constructed of the same material as the hull and no, there was no way in hell we were going to get through it, not even if we had one of the plasma guns or twenty kilos of C4. Man, I still would like to have twenty kilos of C4, though.
I found the security panel in exactly the same place as on the Truthseeker. It would have been incredibly inconvenient if the Tevynians had actually done something smart and moved it.
Why would they? It’s not as if the Helta would ever try to force a boarding.
“Let’s find out.”
I scrolled through the menu on my wrist display and brought up the link to my comm unit. The security system operated on a fairly basic RF signal, which I thought was a little primitive for a race that could travel faster than light, but Joon-Pah told me there’d never been any reason to come up with something better.
Just one more thing about the Helta that doesn’t make sense. I’ll add it to the list.
“Pops,” I called over suit comms. I wasn’t sure if the signal would penetrate inside the ship, but I had to try. “Pops, do you read?”
The answer was staticky and barely audible, but it came through.
“Barely,” Pops said. “Are you in position?”
“Just about to put the code in,” I told him. “What about you?”
“I’m looking at engineering on the drone camera. Gotta be at least twenty soldiers in there waiting for us.”
I frowned.
“That count seems low.”
“It does, and I’m worried they might have sent the rest after you.”
“We’ll have to take that chance,” I said grimly. “Get ready. I’m opening this door in thirty seconds. You hit them when I give the word.”
I brought up the override sequence and told the comm unit to start the handshake sequence with the security system.
“You.”
My eyes snapped up to the flat panel beside the blast shield, where Captain Cartimandua’s face watched with disapproval.
“You are of us,” she said, the words an accusation, a judgment, even translated from Helta. “How can you betray your own kind? Were you to ally with us rather than those Helta monstrosities, we could rule this galaxy together in months!”
“You’re really a bunch of fucking idiots,” I told her, counting down in my head. “Why the hell would you want to rule the galaxy? There are plenty of habitable planets, more than you’d need in ten thousand years, plenty of resources for everyone. You’re wasting time and money and lives trying to take something you don’t even need.”
“You talk like the Helta and their pets in the Alliance,” she scoffed. “They know not the commandments of the Elders. Their decrees have been made and we mere mortals do not question them! When they return, they will punish those who have ignored their laws, and you most of all, for you are their chosen!”
“Lady, unless you surrender in the next ten seconds, you won’t be around to see what happens to us.”
She smiled, more scorn and antipathy in the expression than any my ex-wife had shown me even at the most bitter moments of our breakup.
“You mean your force that is heading for our engineering?” she asked.
An image I recognized as coming from a video pickup in the passage outside engineering replaced her face on the screen, looking down over Pops’ shoulder at the rest of the team as they stacked up just before the intersection leading to engineering’s open hatch.
“I’m sure they think they can take our security force,” Cartimandua went on, “waiting for them oh so openly, so obviously….”
A block of solid ice settled in my gut and I knew exactly where those missing troops were.
“Pops!” I yelled into the communications pickup. “It’s a trap! They’re coming behind you!”
And they were. The view on the screen split, the second camera showing a force nearly as big as the one sheltered in engineering pouring out of what had been a sealed hatch. And in the lead, rolling on a single-ball caster, mounted on a motorized gimbal, was a plasma gun, set up as it was meant to be used, as a portable, crew-served weapon.
“Now!” I warned Baker, and hit the security override.
Nothing happened for a half a second and I a horrifying moment thinking it didn’t work, but then the emergency blast barrier began rumbling up and Baker fired off the concussion grenade prepped in his launcher. A chorus of kettle drums rumbled in the confines of the bridge, even as the door ground its way into the overhead.
The blast barrier had retracted almost far enough for us to duck through, and I was crouched on one knee, Julie behind me, using my armor as a shield against any return fire from inside. I was so totally focused on the inside of the bridge, I didn’t notice the gunfire coming from behind me until I heard Julie grunt and felt just a slight wash of heat across the back of my left leg, hearing now the snap-crackle of laser pistols.
It was, I knew immediately, the remnants of the crew who had attacked us earlier, probably ordered by the captain to hit us from the rear before we could breach the bridge. Julie was returning fire already, before I even swung my gun around, her carbine stuttering short bursts despite the nasty, scorched puncture in the armor over her left thigh.
“Contact, rear!” I yelled. “Julie, get inside! Baker, you and Grunewald hold them off!”
The blast shield was about five feet off the deck, which sounds like a lot unless you’re wearing armor that makes you nearly seven feet tall and weighs six hundred pounds, and I threw myself under it, sliding on one knee. I wasn’t sure what I expected to find, but deserted stations and empty chairs wasn’t one of the possibilities I’d imagined.
I blinked, scanning 360 degrees on thermal, sonic, infrared and finding not a damned thing.
“Where the hell are they?” Julie demanded.
Two of the berserkers from the crew made it past Baker and Grunewald into the compartment, interrupting our confusion with something a bit more straightforward. Julie put one of them down with a three-round burst through his chest, following him with the muzzle of her carbine as he fell to a knee, his laser pistol dropping from nerveless fingers, finishing him off with a coup de grace to the head. I took out the other with a single incendiary round, then stepped around him, adding my fire to that of Baker and Grunewald at the breach.
“Get to the helm controls!” I told Julie, not looking back. “Get this thing moving!”
The Tevynians had no armor and light weapons, and Baker still had his grenade launcher deployed, but he’d switched the load to concussion grenades for the assault on the bridge, to avoid damage to the controls. The flash-bangs were doing their job, disorienting the Tevynians with blinding light and percussive detonations, but the rate of fire on the launcher was slow, and there was a minimum arming distance for the warheads to arm. Most of the enemy had already closed inside that distance and Baker resorted to firing a couple of rounds straight into the enemy sailors before they were on top of him and he was forced to drop the weapon and wade into the crowd, swinging.
Grunewald was out of ammo. I was trying to focus on the attackers, spraying incen
diary rounds like my M900 was a garden hose, but in the corner of my helmet’s field of view, I noticed him patting at his ammo pouches, the magazine well of his weapon yawning empty.
“Fall back, Grunewald!” I yelled, wishing he’d been smart enough to do it on his own.
I was a second too late. The pressure suits he and Julie were wearing were made of a thick, Kevlar weave with ceramic plates reinforcing everything that didn’t have to bend with their body. Not enough to stop a Helta or Tevynian laser rifle, but good enough for the handguns we were facing at the moment. The helmet faceplate, not so much.
Grunewald crumpled like a marionette with his strings cut, a classic central nervous system hit. Instinct and training made me want to check on him, to grab him and haul him out of the line of fire, but the enemy hadn’t stopped coming, and I had to protect Julie and the mission. I could feel him, though, feel the presence of his body behind me, a lead weight dragging at my shoulders with the promise of future anguish.
I pushed him and the guilt I already felt away from my thoughts and made the Tevynians pay. One of them tried to dash past me while I was shooting two others and I smashed his face in with a backhand, the amplified force of the swing slamming him to the ground on his back.
“Julie!” I yelled, as though I was shouting through the air and not over the radio. “Can you switch off the gravity?”
“Got it!” she said.
“Pops!” I yelled. “Lock your magnetic boots down now! Everyone!” Then to Julie again. “Turn it off!”
I barely had time to hit the control, feeling the heels of my armored boots anchor themselves to the deck when the artificial gravity cut out and my stomach turned a backflip. The Tevynians didn’t have the advantage of magnetic boots, but what they did have was shitloads of momentum and they took it with them when the gravitational pull vanished. They forgot all about trying to shoot at us, which had been the idea, and went cartwheeling into the overhead, smashing into material not padded for comfort, careening this way and that—billiard balls without a pocket to call home. The dead floated too, along with crimson globules of blood rotating around them, twisting with the air currents.
