Remnant

by Dwayne A Thomason

  A beeping tone sounded, tower control hailing her, and she opened the channel.

  “Tower control, this is Lunar Seed coming in on landing bay seven, over.”

  “We read you loud and clear, Lunar Seed,” came the warm response of the tower control tech. “Heard you ran into some trouble out there. Glad to see you returning safe and sound.”

  “Thanks,” Ashla said. “Me too. Lunar Seed out.”

  As thankful as she was about the considerate welcome, the fact that TC had heard about her little jailbreak was bad news. If they knew, father knew.

  As she opened the flaps to slow Luna down for her final approach, Ashla supposed she was foolish to hope Captain Eldagast, Elder Hando, and all the others with them would keep it a secret. She had hoped it anyway and hoped in vain. She would be lucky if she got to fly again this month.

  As Ashla approached the Lunar Seed’s bay—a wide box some twenty five meters wide, fifteen deep and ten high with white light strips in the ceiling and maintenance equipment stowed to the left side—she saw a familiar figure waiting for her there, and her heart dropped to the floor.

  Her father had sent the one person Ashla feared. Cel Numbar stood at attention on the landing bay decking and glared at Ashla through the cockpit window. Her uniform did nothing to hide the considerable muscle tone in her crossed arms. A comb held her blonde hair in a severe clamp behind her head. A heavy looking pistol hung in a holster at her right hip and a saber sat scabbarded on her left.

  Ashla tabbed the button to make the cockpit window opaque while she overrode the venting process and shut down the engines and other primary systems. She left the data core, Luna’s brain, live as she always did. When all that was done, and done as slowly as possible, there was nothing for it but to hide until Cel busted through the cockpit with her bare hands or to face her trouble. Ashla wondered if she would be allowed to fly again that year.

  Ashla thumbed the cockpit release and watched as the window disintegrated, starting at the top and ending at the bottom edges.

  “You’re coming with me,” Cel said. “Now!”

  “Actually, Ms. Numbar,” Ashla said, knowing the woman’s surname was her only card to play, “I’ve got a lot of work to do on Luna and-“

  “I have been ordered to bring you to your father as soon as you land. You’ve already wasted a minute and eighteen seconds.”

  “You counted?”

  “So, you’re either coming willingly,” Cel continued, ignoring Ashla’s pathetic jab, “or I’m carrying you. And if you choose the latter I promise the route will not be...discreet.”

  Ashla clamped her mouth shut, fearful she might squeak. A nightmare image of Cel carrying her through the open courts of the palace over her shoulder like a sack of potatoes as servants and guardsmen laughed, careened through her head.

  Ashla took a moment to collect herself, then capitulated.

  “Lead the way.”

  Chapter Two:

  War Arose in Heaven

  Sergeant Major Soma Cross of the Allied Naval Command’s Raven Squad made one last diagnostic check on his armor, pulling up the HUD and going over every joint and seam. He checked his gear, and then stood up to address his men. He grabbed one of the handholds in case their gunship hit flak from the enemy ship, and barely stood to his full height beneath the low ceiling.

  “Listen up!” he called. Boastful chatter and offensive music all ceased, and the eyes of his squad turned on him. His men sat against the hull of the ship, free of their heavy, foam-lined restraints, caught in the middle of checking their own gear, counting ammo, etc.

  “The ship we’re attacking is the ALSS Elpizio. It’s Starforce One for the Antarus System, but the governor is not on board.” He lifted a small holo-projector and activated it.

  “Instead, this is our target,” Soma said. He didn’t have to look at the projection, he’d seen it a million times.

  A bust of a young girl—the file stated she was nineteen years old—with a bob of black hair and green eyes appeared. Cross looked up at his men and saw faces screwed up in incredulity, and a few shaking heads.

  “She goes by the name of Remnant,” Soma continued. “You might have heard of her. The Navy bigs want her and she’s on that ship. So, we’re going to get her.”

  Soma clicked the holo-projector and the image changed. Now a stern-eyed man with bronze skin, thick, dark eye-brows and a shaven head appeared.

  “This is Ganyusa Naboris,” Soma said. “According to our files he’s the girl’s bodyguard. He’s ex-Shaumri and should be considered deadly. Command doesn’t care about him, so he’s shoot on sight.”

  Another click revealed a schematic of the Elpizio. An animation played. Moving arrows snaked along a route from the hull to a central complex.

  “The target is most likely staying in the governor’s suites, deep inside the central portions of the ship. We could fight our way there and wait for the enemy to scuttle the ship with us in it, but instead, we’ll take the service corridors between levels six and seven. The top hacks at command have worked out a nasty program that should hijack the lockdown protocols for these sections of the ship and permit us access.”

  “Eagle squad,” Soma continued, “will land right next to us, and cover both our entry into the service tunnels, and our exit with the target. All told we should be aboard the enemy ship less than fifteen minutes.”

  Soma dropped the projector into a pouch on his belt and lifted a peculiar sidearm.

  “Here’s the bad news,” he continued. “Command wants the girl alive and unharmed. And so, you’re each being issued one of these. It fires an auto-release syringe loaded with a unique anesthetic concoction. According to the brains at command, it would drop an elephant but wouldn’t harm a mouse, so don’t shoot yourself in the foot with it or anything.”

  A bevy of chuckles followed this.

  “When we reach the girl, we will be weapons down and permitted to use only these so as not to harm the target.”

  Eruptions of “what?” and “you’ve got to be kidding?” and “no sawking way,” filled the dropship. Soma gave them a second to complain. Then raised his own voice.

  “Hey!”

  The gunship went silent. Soma let the silence linger for a moment. The only sounds were the whining of the engines and hiss of air circulators.

  “I know this is a tricky mission, but that’s why we got it. We get the job done and we go home, understood?”

  “Yes sir!” came a shout from the squad.

  “Sergeant!” Came a voice over the cabin speakers. “We’re getting close. Prep for decel in thirty seconds.”

  “Copy that,” Soma said. “Here we go, Raven!”

  Soma dropped into his chair and engaged the heavy restraint over himself. The squad did likewise, stowing weapons in the overhead racks and then dropping their own restraints.

  “We got heavy flak incoming,” the pilots said, voice crackling over the comm.

  Soma felt the deep shutters caused by nearby explosions. He pulled down his command screen and checked the status of the rest of the company. Falcon squad’s bird was hit but showed no major damage or casualties. Vulture squad’s gunship received two direct hits to its port thruster gimbal and was now spiraling out of control.

  Then the color of the lights in the cabin switched to red and an alarm blared. Soma pushed the screen back into its locked position. The only sign his gunship flipped was the roiling in his stomach. He felt crushed into his seat by the heavy deceleration burn.

  “Ten seconds to impact!” The pilot called, his voice guttural against the thrust weighing down on his lungs.

  All at once the ride stopped with a massive boom as Raven squad’s gunship slammed against the hull of the Elpizio. Her landing servos did their best to soften the impact but there wasn’t much to be done when you hit an object going a few hundred kilometers per hour.

  The cabin lights turned green as Soma’s restraint lifted away.

  “Everybody up
!” Soma called. Rising himself, he grabbed his stowed LP-40, a high-powered laser assault repeater, and then marched toward the forward section of the gunship where Starman Banc was preparing to cut through the Elpizio’s hull.

  Banc sat in his own seat behind a control screen. He didn’t look up from the screen when he addressed Soma.

  “Soft seal in five, Sergeant,” Banc said in his flat, pitchy voice. “We’ll be through in thirty.”

  Soma turned back to the squad. They were all up and moving, grabbing their stowed weapons, making final checks on gear, air supply and maneuvering thrusters.

  “Thirty seconds, Raven Squad,” Soma shouted. “Let’s move!”

  They didn’t need much encouragement.

  “Mako!” Soma continued. “Your fireteam’s in first. Get tactical.”

  “You heard the man, Bravo team,” Mako called in his deep, voice. Mako was a Utarian, built big and broad and with the tell-tale black and gray patterns on his face. For a human, those large, dark splotches would be considered skin defects. On a Utarian, they were a feature and a symbol of pride. “Let’s make it pretty!” His helmet assembled around his face, locking into place until all that was left was the empty faceplate. This came together like fluid pooling across an invisible surface. Then he engaged his big energy shield and stepped up.

  “Opening the doors,” Banc said. Soon the floor irised open, revealing the hull of the Elpizio a meter or two beneath him. A cylindrical energy shield kept the space between the gunship and the Elpizio pressurized. “Cutting.”

  From the ceiling a large arm extended downward towards the naked skin of the enemy ship. Then it was a mechanical spider, its many legs stretching out in all directions. Bright white light surged from the ends of each of the legs and the whole thing spun, cutting deep runnels into the hull. After a few seconds of cutting, the torches grew faint and then the legs scissored back together.

  “Sensors indicate they’ve vented this portion of the ship,” Banc said.

  “Button up!” Soma said. “It’s nippy out there.”

  Soma tabbed his helmet control and watched as the helmet assembled around him, followed by that fluid ripple of the faceplate closing and sealing him in. His HUD lit up filling the corners of his view with vital data. A small round widget popped up in the center of his view over the word “pressurizing.” As it did, the tiny cameras in his helmet projected hi-resolution images to the areas beyond his faceplate, filling his peripheral vision.

  In less than five seconds, the helmet was pressurized, and all systems were green.

  Then to Banc he said, “Better vent the cabin too, then.”

  Banc nodded, tapped a few buttons and Soma heard the rush of air being sucked into the supply cannisters.

  Banc looked up at Soma, one finger raised an inch above his control screen.

  “Knock, knock,” Soma said, releasing the safety on his weapon.

  Banc tapped the button on his screen. The cutting arm launched a pulse and the cylindrical cutout of the Elpizio’s hull fell away from Soma. Behind it Soma looked down into a wide room. The vision beneath him, as always, left him a little seasick. The gunship had landed with its feet to the side of the Elpizio. Therefore, Soma wasn’t looking through a hole in the ceiling, but a hole in the wall. But it was still beneath him, as the gunship’s G-buffers kept his gravity pointing to the floor.

  The room he saw looked like an atrium, with benches, potted plants, and bright wall screens. He imagined the walls facing the hull would be set to window-mode, displaying whatever bit of stars and void the external cameras were picking up at the time. Well, now they’d be picking up black-out clouds and Soma’s gunship.

  The only sign of damage from the initial barrage was a single strip of lights hanging by a tenuous cable. At the far end of the atrium, benches had been upended as cover for the defending marines.

  He took the whole scene in over the course of half a second before taking cover from the hole as a barrage of laser fire arced towards him.

  “Bravo team, move!”

  Mako leapt forward, tucking his elbows behind the cover of his energy shield. Soma watched as he dove through the floor, so to land on his feet when the Elpizio’s gravity took hold of him. Mako’s teammates ran after him, staying in a tight column behind the energy shield, but peeking out to take their shots.

  “Charlie team, let’s go!”

  Private First Class Dakkin and his team rushed into the fray, following the same formation behind Dakkin’s energy shield.

  “Alpha team, time to pull your weight!”

  “Sir, yes sir!” called Lance Corporal Kornall, lighting his energy shield and dropping in. Soma followed behind him as the rest of alpha team took up the rear.

  The combat in the atrium was a silent lightshow. The ghosts of high-powered laser beams flicked here and there as they caught clouds of smoke or microscopic debris. Once through the hole, Soma and the remainder of Alpha team split up, finding cover behind columns or supports or anything else. No matter how many energy packs you put on your shield man, a man-portable energy shield would never have more than a few minutes of power under fire. Mako and Dakkin’s teams had already gone to ground, setting up a base of fire in preparation for Eagle squad’s flanking maneuver.

  While they waited, Raven squad scored two hits against the enemy marines. Soma, camping behind a wall strut, dropped a third.

  In return Private Klen got his forearm burned through and PFC Yulari took a more serious hit to the abdomen.

  A bright light flashed and then the door to the right of the enemy unit exploded from its frame and fell to the ground a foot away from the marine Soma had wounded. In came Eagle squad lighting the enemy team up and forcing them back up the stairway behind them, dragging their wounded.

  “It’s about time,” Dakkin called over the radio.

  “Stow the slack, Private,” Soma said. “Gora, get Klen and Yulari back onto the gunship.”

  “Negative, sergeant,” Klen said. “I’m fine. I’ll finish the mission.”

  “Alright, then. Ravens, on me.”

  Soma stood from his cover and ran forward to the small service access hatch. He pulled a small device—something like a personal link but chunkier—from a pouch on his leg, activated it and then held it to the hatch’s control panel. The device blinked with a series of concentric circles and blocks of tiny text and then the lights on the panel went from lockdown red to green. Soma returned the link to his pouch, signaled Kornall to be ready, and then opened the hatch.

  The door slid open soundlessly. The service corridors were also evacuated. Kornall dropped into a crouch covered by the doorway and then peered in.

  “Clear,” he said.

  “Bravo team,” Soma said. “You stay here and keep our exit cozy. Alpha, lead the way. Charlie, behind.”

  “Yes sir,” called several marines at once. Soma handed the unlocking device to Kornall and followed Alpha Team in. Once Charlie team was inside, and the hatch closed behind them, the service corridors felt cramped and confining. Soma eyed the night vision control in his HUD and the dark corridor lit up.

  “Move, Ravens,” Soma said, and they moved.

  The service corridors were in lockdown at every junction, which meant that Raven squad’s passage through them was a slog, taking a few steps and then stopping to run the override virus. Then a few more steps, closer and closer to the target.

  At last they came to the hatch nearest to the governor’s suite. Kornall ran the override program, but before the hatch slid open, the door behind them shut and Soma heard airflow through his helmet speakers.

  “They haven’t depressurized this part of the ship,” Private Fel said.

  Finally, the hatch to the governor’s suite slid open and for the first time in a while Soma heard the hushing sound of the door being drawn back on its tracks.

  Soma gestured, and Alpha team fanned out. Soma followed them into the most opulent corridor he’d ever seen. The walls were lined in wha
t could only be real wood paneling. Large paintings created with actual paint hung from the walls. The floor was covered in thick, cream-colored carpet. The ceiling was coffered with white plaster medallions.

  “Sawking rich people,” Private Axelin breathed.

  “Keep moving,” Soma ordered. He followed Alpha team down the corridor as they moved in practiced formation. Charlie continued to follow behind.

  They passed a few doors along their way—heavy, wood-paneled doors, but these were all locked. Soma had no interest in breaking into and checking each room. Instead, he told Charlie team to put proximity tracers on each one in case the target was hiding behind one and planning to run once Raven Squad had passed.

  They came to a large double-door. Its wooden exterior was carved with the flowing shapes of flowers and trees.

  “This is it,” Soma said.

  Kornall stepped up and held the tablet to the lock control. It ran for a moment but timed out.

  “It doesn’t work,” Kornall said.

  “Keln,” Soma said, “run a bypass.”

  “Sir,” Keln said. Trotting to the door, he slung his repeater behind him and pulled a bypass kit from his pack, locking it to the wall. Soma was surprised that the magnetic feet still clung to the metal through the wood paneling. As Keln got to work, Soma continued to give orders.

  “Charlie team, you stay here and keep our path back to the service tunnels clear. I’m leaving your weapons free in case ship security shows up but check your targets. If the primary target is killed we’re all walking home. Alpha team, weapons disengaged. You’re with me.”

  His suit’s command controls picked up on the last words, and locked Alpha team’s weapons.

  Soma reached his weapon behind him and the weapon harness on his back grabbed and lock it in place. Then he drew the new sidearm.

  As he waited for Keln’s bypass, Soma became aware of the gentle rumbles and motions of the ship in the clutches of combat. He wondered if the Elpizio’s captain would scuttle her. He likely had orders to keep the target alive and wouldn’t scuttle unless she had either escaped or been killed. He wondered if the target was still here. According to the ship’s specs, the governor had an emergency escape shuttle access from his suite. Had the target already launched and was now long gone? Would the doors open only to reveal an empty room and a mission failure?