Precursor Revenants (The Precursor Series Book 1)

by Cain Hopwood

  You could have heard a pin drop in the hold.

  Admiral Katona looked over the group. “Does anyone here know what transit tubes are, and how they work?”

  Only Sergeant Gowlett spoke up. “I had a few drinks with a Yogi last week. He wasn’t fond of them, and explained why at length. I think I could probably use one.”

  “Good, you will be up front. Pass on what you know to the others. But do it quick. Our first tube will be a short walk from the access hatch.”

  Colonel Whitfield lifted his purloined Ka-Li carbine. “You heard the admiral, let’s move. Gowlett, you’re patched into the command tac-link, start talking.”

  The sergeant trotted to the front of the group, and walked down the ship’s ramp. The rest of Bakowski’s crew followed.

  “Right, transit tubes.” Sergeant Gowlett paused. “They’re like floating in a big water pipe. So they move you along, except the center goes faster than the edges. Also, they’re kind of zero gee, so you need to use your harness impulse controls to move in and out of them.”

  Jon fingered the controls on his harness. Thank god they were standardized, and that they’d had a couple of orientation sessions. But, that had been with a harness with grav-compensators enabled, not one in a zero gee environment. He just hoped everyone managed to keep their lunch down.

  Commander Biss was stopped at the nexus entrance reserved for the centarch’s personal staff. Biss was pleased to see that even he was subject to a search and identification check. He selected only the very best, most diligent individuals, to guard the centarch, and he’d trained each one personally.

  So he went through every security procedure, just as every other member of the centarch’s staff did before gaining access to the upper chamber. Then he waited. When, and only when the centarch was ready to see him, would the door open.

  Eventually it slid back, and he started down the access way. He walked briskly, but not too briskly, he didn’t have good news. Commander Biss wasn’t a leader who shied away from conflict and difficult situations. Still, with the centarch it was impossible to predict how he would take even the most innocuous report. Sometimes, it seemed as if the centarch knew the details of events before his commanders.

  Biss came out into the main chamber on a catwalk elevated above most others, his boots click clacking on the metal floor as it shifted under his weight.

  “Bad news commander?” said the centarch, without even lifting his head from the console it was buried in. “Your walk betrays you.”

  “No news, sir. Captain Kapla has not reported in. He should have had General Admiral Katona in custody by now.”

  The centarch turned to face Biss. Something in the set of the centarch’s face triggered an instinctual bow.

  “So you’re here to bring me no news?”

  “Sir, I’m here to bring you the news that it is probable that Captain Kapla has failed in his mission.”

  “That, commander I already knew.”

  “Sir?”

  The centarch beckoned him closer. With a flick of a claw on his control board, the centarch’s outer protective fields were shut off, and Biss took several tentative steps towards the center of the chamber. There was only the centarch’s personal shield and harness clima-field between them now. With a snap the outer fields were restored, and the hubbub of the functionaries in the bottom of the chamber faded to silence. They now had total privacy.

  The centarch pointed to a display. “Katona’s flagship broke orbit a little while ago, under his orders. It is joining Spear and Sword in their protective detail.”

  “General Admiral Katona is on his way here?”

  “It would appear so, and with the resources an entire super carrier can bring to bear in support.”

  Biss’s mind raced. He was a little hazy on exactly what the full complement of the admiral’s super carrier was. But whatever it was, he knew if it came to a stand up fight, his fifteen hundred guards wouldn’t stand a chance against Katona’s battle hardened marines.

  “Can’t you order him to keep his distance?”

  The centarch looked at him with thinly veiled contempt. “And what do you suppose will happen when he ignores that order?”

  Biss stood stock still.

  “No idea? I’ll tell you what will happen. As soon as the crew of this starship realize that the head of the navy is in open rebellion, my command will end. I may as well go out and meet Katona empty handed. What do you think will happen then, commander?”

  Commander Biss knew exactly what would happen. Katona would replace Shaiken as centarch. But, he had no idea how to say that without enraging the centarch, so he continued standing stock still.

  “I know exactly what you are thinking commander.”

  “You do, sir?”

  “You are thinking, that the only change will be Katona sitting here, instead of me. But you forget, that the first thing a new centarch does after assuming control, is ‘replace’ the starship guard leadership.”

  Biss swallowed, even though his mouth was dry. The way the centarch said ‘replace’, had a sharp edge to it.

  “After all,” the centarch continued. “Guards that weren’t able to protect the previous centarch, will not be much use to the new one, will they?”

  “So what are your orders, sir?”

  “Prepare. He will have superior numbers, but you know this starship better than he. Make his forces pay for every chamber. Slow him down. Buy my political officers the time they need to remove his key staff, and I can cut the admiral’s support off at the root.”

  Biss dipped his head. “As you order centarch.” He turned and made his way out of the nexus, trying not to scuttle like a hatchling, but knowing with every hurried step that he failed.

  — 53 —

  Jon looked around the hold. The colonel, the admiral and everyone else had already left, so he gathered his squad and followed.

  “We’re watching everyone’s six, so keep a look out,” he said. “But keep it low profile, we don’t want to draw attention to ourselves by appearing hyper vigilant.”

  He walked out of the ship and onto the docking platform. Even though he’d had a superb view of the dock when he’d landed, that had been from inside the ship, and using the ship’s sensors. In person, the sheer scale of the dock was like a magnet to his eyes. It took an effort of will not to just stand and gawk.

  Still, he managed to cast a few furtive glances to either side. The landing platform jutted out from a huge gray metal wall, in reality the starboard flank of the starship. There were all shapes and sizes of platform sticking out at regular intervals. Farther away he could see large gaps where presumably whole ships flew into the wall itself. The whole arrangement looked like a haphazard apartment block, but built for giants.

  The strangest thing was that everything was dead silent. Although on reflection, the bay was in vacuum, so that actually made sense. Of course, that meant the only protection he had if the clima-field failed was his fatigues, and he was fairly sure they wouldn’t be up to the task.

  As they walked, sergeant Gowlett continued his lecture. “Getting on, or in the tube, is the bit the Yogi hated. There’s a tunnel and a platform, I figure like a train station. Except there’s never trains, just others coming and going. To get in the tube, you step out into where the train would be, and a field grabs you. Then you just kind of float and start moving along.”

  “Sounds like a fucking barf fest,” muttered Murdoch over Jon’s squad’s private tac-link.

  Jon remembered that of all his soldiers, Murdoch was the only one who had issues with rough flights, or time at sea. “Do you want a dose of Quil?”

  “Too late, it won’t take. I’ll just suck it up. Besides, it makes my hands shake.”

  Sergeant Gowlett led them through a large opening, and down a short corridor that ended in what looked for all the world like a London tube station. By the time Jon arrived, most of the others were already in the tube and being carried along at a fast jog.


  “Looks like the sarge knows what he’s on about,” said Murdoch.

  Jon stepped off the platform, bracing himself for the half meter fall to the floor of the tunnel, but instead he floated out, then started moving along behind the rest of the squad. He fingered the impulse controls on his harness belt, designed to accommodate the minute control a Ka-Li had over their retractable claws, but which now were covered with actuator nubs.

  The mechanical actuators they used on the Ka-Li weapons were fine for selecting a firing mode, or triggering a carbine, but they were a little coarse when used as flight controls. As a result of his momentum getting into the transit tube, Jon found himself drifting toward its center and he started accelerating, breaking away from his men. He stabbed at the impulse controls to move to the outside and slow down, but he held the control down too long. He careened toward the wall, and the rest of his group passed by.

  “Fuck,” he said as Skip grabbed him, pulling him back with the rest of the group.

  “Small taps, remember,” Skip said.

  Jon oriented himself with the attitude controls, lining himself up to face the direction they were traveling. Looking ahead, he could see several others also in odd positions relative to the group. It was just lucky that they were alone in the tube, because they didn’t look like they belonged there at all.

  A few gentle taps of the controls had him lined up with Skip and the others, and by the time he had himself sorted, those ahead of them had also tidied up their ranks. Which was fortunate, because the tube they were in merged with a much larger transit tube.

  “Move right everyone,” the colonel said. “We need to move into this larger tube.”

  Jon tapped the impulse control on his belt and shifted to the right. As he moved, he could feel the current picking him up, and accelerating him. They left their starting tube behind and moved into the center of the new one.

  They picked up the pace, and it wasn’t long before the walls were a blur.

  “So fast. Yet, no wind.” Skip said. “It’s like white water rafting, but with less bumps.”

  “Amen to that.” Murdoch said in a small voice.

  Jon looked across. The tall sharp shooter was looking decidedly green about the gills. “Are you okay?”

  “I’ll manage.”

  Just then, the tube they were traveling in took an abrupt turn through ninety degrees. This would have been fine, had there been the proper G forces, but Jon felt nothing at all.

  He grabbed onto Murdoch’s harness with his free hand. “Maybe best if you close your eyes. We’ll keep you with us.”

  Murdoch just nodded and Jon held on. He might not be the best with the attitude controls, but years of ski jumps and low visibility skiing had completely inoculated him against motion sickness.

  The admiral directed them through several tube junctions until they were in a large fore-aft transit tube. Their pace in this tube was dizzying, and they were no longer alone. Creatures of all shapes and sizes were also using the tube. Jon recognized a couple. The multi armed Pakmai were common, and there were even a number of the squat white furred Marbelites. Many of them were shepherding crates and containers, some had full cargo nets they were pushing along.

  A flash of red in a small merging tube caught his eye. It was a pair of red harnessed centarch guards.

  Jon double tapped his comms tooth. “Heads up, two guards at ten o’clock.”

  The speed difference between the guards joining at the edge of the transit tube, and Jon’s group in its center was huge. “Actually, make that seven o’clock,” He said, as the guards disappeared behind them.

  “Do you think they saw us?” Asked Skip glancing over his shoulder.

  “Can’t see how they could have missed us, these red harnesses aren’t exactly low profile.”

  Skip spun to face their rear. “I’ll keep an eye out.”

  — 54 —

  They’d been traveling for fifteen minutes or more, when things went wrong. The first indication was when Katona leaned in to talk to Colonel Whitfield. The look on the colonel’s face wasn’t good.

  “Keep your eyes up everyone, the admiral has picked up a sudden increase in comms traffic. More than is…”

  He never finished the sentence because they were slammed to a halt, and the tube went dark. A second later, emergency lighting kicked in, casting dim blue shadows throughout the tube.

  The crash field shutdown had been uneven, and it left the occupants and the cargo they’d been shepherding scattered and floating. Jon could see mouths moving and frantic gesticulation as they tried to get themselves organized. But everything was in complete silence.

  Of course, Jon thought, vacuum. It makes for a nice peaceful catastrophe. Then it occurred to him, that the lack of sound could work against their situational awareness.

  He opened a tac-link channel to the whole group. “Remember we’re deaf everyone. Bakowski, post a lookout up front, I’ll do the same back here.”

  “Copy that Moss.”

  Jon switched back to just his squad, then looked around. “Skip, move back to that full cargo net. Use it for cover, and take up an observation position. I want to know the moment you see anyone official heading our way.”

  Skip gave a small nod, and after a couple of false starts with his impulse controls, got moving towards the big messy pile of cargo.

  Next Jon switched to the command tac-link. “Sir, what’s our plan? I’ll shortly have eyes on our rear, but this place has the potential to turn into a real shooting gallery.”

  “Stand by Moss. I’ll check with the admiral and find out where we are.”

  While they were talking, Jon scooted a short distance away, grabbed a large metal box, and towed it back to the group. The owner of the box, a black furred Pakmai, didn’t make any move to stop him. Fortunately the box didn’t have much momentum. Jon didn’t know what kind of cover it would provide, but at least it was large enough to hide behind.

  “Moss, we’re only a couple of clicks from our exit, so we’re going to use our impulse controls to get there. Let us get a couple of hundred meters lead on you, then follow.”

  “And what are my orders if we see anyone suspicious sir?”

  “You’re clear to engage anyone you see as a threat. But if they’re too much for you, join the main group. You don’t have the firepower to take on more than a few guards.”

  “Copy that sir. Moss out.”

  Jon switched back to his own squad’s tac-link. “We’re to provide running rearguard support. But just to be safe, we’ll stagger it.” He slapped the metal box. “Murdoch and I will hold here, the rest of you join Skip. Once the main group is on the move, you can fall back, while we cover you.”

  It didn’t take long for his men to organize themselves. Meanwhile, Jon alternated between keeping an eye on their rear, and looking forward to see if the colonel’s group had made some distance. The main group took a little longer getting moving, because they had to wait until Bakowski made headway first.

  Bakowski was bull headed, but getting everyone in her squad organized and moving in the same direction, and at the same speed, proved a tall order. Especially when they were still just barely getting to grips with the impulse controls. But, once she started moving, It didn’t take the main group long to get organized too, and before long they were disappearing off into the distance.

  “Skip, fall back. We’re getting left behind.”

  Jon zoomed his spotting scope, and scanned the tube behind them. The slowly spinning debris combined with the emergency lighting, reminded him of a kaleidoscope.

  “Let’s hope anyone following us finds this just as confusing,” he muttered.

  Murdoch’s eyes didn’t lift from the scope of his Barrett. “Odds on they don’t.”

  Skip and the men with him flowed past, over and below Jon’s position.

  “In cover,” he announced. “But I can only just see the colonel’s group. We can’t stay here long.”

 
Jon gave one last scan of the tube. A flash of red caught his eye, but it disappeared before he could make it out.

  “Moving,” he announced. Then turned to Murdoch. “You ready?”

  “Now that I’m in control, I’m feeling much better,” he said, slinging his rifle.

  Jon’s hands went to the impulse controls, he spun to face Skip’s position and gave the nub for forward movement a long hard press. The momentum he picked up was impressive. In moments he was traveling at speed, and it didn’t take long to reach Skip’s position. With a few attitude adjustments he even managed to fly past without hitting them.

  “I’ve got the colonel’s group in sight,” he announced.

  Ahead were several floating crates. They didn’t look like spectacular cover, but at least they’d make him harder to spot. He dialed back his speed just as he reached them, then grabbed one.

  Murdoch went careening past, then backtracked while Jon pulled two of the flimsy looking crates together. “In cover,” Jon announced.

  “Moving,” replied Skip.

  Out of the corner of his eye he saw Skip and the other two turn, and start jetting in their direction. They’d just got up to speed, when one of them abruptly started spinning. It took a moment for Jon to realize the group were taking fire.

  “Shooters!” he yelled, and scanned the tube behind them.

  Visually the place was a mess. Normally he’d scan along the horizon first for threats. But here, they could be anywhere. You could have fit an old style four lane freeway in here, so the volume, combined with the floating debris, meant plenty of places to hide.

  “I have them. There’s two,” he said, then paused. Jon was struggling to work out how to describe their assailants location in the chaotic space, with nothing like a horizon to use as reference.

  “Where?” said Murdoch in a strangled tone.

  “The way we’re facing, but eleven o’clock, low. They’re behind that huge square box.”