by Jamie Sawyer
Then what would our options be, if Warlord does succeed?
A long pause.
Go on.
Not good ones, I take it?
What’s the second option?
My suit’s sensor-suite pinged an alert.
“I’m reading multiple ships,” said Feng. “Many, many signals, in fact.”
The Black Spiral fleet infested the Kalliper Belt. Despite the heavy losses that the Spiral had suffered, there were still hundreds of ships here. Like fleas on a dog, they jumped between the asteroids, using them as cover, advancing on Ithaca Prime. Many did not even bother to shield their identification tags, and we read their data remotely. From stolen military transports to corporate leisure cruisers, these ships had come from all over the Alliance. Infected Krell bio-ships sailed with the Spiral fleet. Those vessels were bloated and swollen with Harbinger virus, and trailed bio-matter as they limped onwards towards their target. All in, I identified over three hundred possible hostiles hiding in the Kalliper Belt.
“Well isn’t that just great…” Feng complained. “How are we supposed to find a single ship among that mess?”
The thruster unit of my drop-capsule kicked in, and I jinked portside. The sudden acceleration was jarring, but I saw what had happened. A single ship was highlighted on my HUD, and was now our objective. The Iron Knight. Warlord’s ship.
“What did we ever do without you, huh, P?” I asked.
“Can the Black Spiral fleet see us?” I asked. “Are these stealth bands, or whatever they are, actually working?”
“You’re still running dark,” said Dr Saito, over the comm from the SOC. “The Spiral won’t be able to find you unless they conduct a visual check.”
Given the utter mess that was the asteroid field, and the ongoing conflict, the chances of that were slim to none. That was slightly reassuring, if nothing else.
“Priorities then, troopers,” I said. “We get onto the ship. We find Lopez. We exfiltrate her.”
“How are we going to do that?” Feng asked, his voice vibrating as his capsule initiated another wave of thrust.
“We’ll improvise,” I said. “Use whatever craft we have available locally.”
“That would be your best option,” Zero agreed. “Maybe they have a dropship, or perhaps an evacuation-pod?”
“We’ll look out for one. Coming up on the objective.”
“I see it,” said Feng.
Knife-like, we slid through the Kalliper Belt and made for the Iron Knight.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
EXTREME PREJUDICE
The drop-capsules shed the final layer, and I took over thrust with my EVAMP.
“Touching down,” I declared, over the comms. “Stay in formation, Jackals.”
I grasped the Iron Knight’s hull, activating the mag-lock grips in my gloves and the soles of my boots. Feng landed next to me, with practised ease. Novak did his best, but sort of tumbled along the hull, grunting as he snagged an armour plate and finally came to a stop. Behind his armourglass visor, he looked pasty green and nauseous, with wet spittle on his lips.
“I have not been sick,” he insisted.
“Well, that’s an improvement,” muttered Feng.
The Iron Knight was a medium-class transport ship. Millions just like her flew Alliance space lanes, shipping cargo to and from the Core Systems. This ship, however, had been substantially upgraded. It wasn’t the original Iron Knight that Commander Dieter had once flown—that ship had been a proper military starship—but Warlord had obviously named it in memory of the lost vessel. That image of Commander Dieter, her face looming large behind the glass of the airlock hatch, came back to me.
“We need to get inside, and fast,” I said.
“Agreed,” said Feng. He’d unshouldered a demo-charge, and was already priming it to breach the Knight’s hull. “Just tell me where to blow a hole, and I’m good to go.”
“No,” I said, shaking my head inside my helmet. “We can’t risk losing atmosphere. Lopez is in her real skin.” I selected an airlock, further along the hull, and flagged it on our battle-net. “We’ll take the hatch.”
Feng immediately moved on the location, using long loping strides, one boot always in contact with the hull. He popped open an emergency access panel next to the airlock, and unpacked a hacking tool from his belt.
“This won’t take long,” said Feng. “The access codes aren’t even protected.”
Novak moved up too. He gazed out across the Kalliper Belt, sweeping the vista with his enhanced vision.
“The Svetlana is out there,” Novak said, his voice quiet and surprisingly calm. “Vasnev is here. She must’ve delivered Lopez.”
“Eyes on the prize, Novak,” I said. “Remember our talk.”
He grimaced and nodded. “I remember.”
“Hatch breached,” declared Feng.
Through the inner lock, we emerged into a storage bay.
“We’re in,” I whispered into my communicator. “We’re on the Iron Knight.”
“Copy that,” Zero said.
Déjà vu swept over me as we entered the ship. The Jackals had first seen the Iron Knight during the operation on Daktar Outpost when they had been new recruits. The squad had attempted to rescue Major Sergkov—who had become our commanding officer, for a time—from the Black Spiral. Ghost memories teased at the edge of my consciousness. So many had been lost in this war: Major Sergkov, Captain Carmine, Commander Dieter…
Zero dragged me out of it. “Is your position safe?”
“Appears to be. No immediate response to entry.”
Graphics demonstrating the ship’s layout were projected onto my HUD. The Iron Knight was a decent-sized ship, but as with most vessels of this type, only a small proportion of her mass was dedicated as living space. I painted those areas for possible investigation. Meanwhile, my bio-scanner also activated. There were life-signs all around me. That gave me crew numbers. Other, more specific data also filtered across my HUD.
“I have Lopez’s location,” I said. Her bio-ID chip blazed on my scanner, indicating not only her position but also her vital signs. Her heartbeat was steady, within acceptable tolerances. “She’s alive. They’re holding her in a compartment towards the aft.”
“What’s your immediate location?” Zero asked.
“We’re in a storage bay.”
Aboard the ship, we were now in artificial gravity. Novak had popped on his suit-lamps, and was panning them over the darkened interior of the locker. Stacked crates and boxes filled the chamber. There were muted lights in the dark, accompanied by the gentle hiss of operational cryogenic tech.
“Holy Christo…” Feng said, as Novak’s beams illuminated one corner of the bay. “We… just hit the motherlode.”
Feng and Novak’s bio-signs spiked as I saw what they had found. Gooseflesh crept over my simulated skin, and revulsion crested in my chest.
“You should get moving,” Zero suggested.
“Hang on,” I said. “We’re going to be here for a few minutes. We have a job to do, before we recover Lopez.”
I pulled the sidearm from my thigh-holster. A PPG-13 plasma pistol: an old classic. Checked the ammo loadout, and the spare power cell at my belt.
Novak unslung his plasma rifle. “What do you want us to do?”
“We clean up our own mess,” I said, nodding at the cryogenic tanks. “Quietly and quickly.”
Task done, Novak opened the storage bay doors, and we slipped into the corridor beyond. My bio-scanner confirmed that the immediate area was empty, which gave me a moment to plot our next move.
The bulkheads were studded with glow-globes, set to minimum illumination, which gave the place an eerie twilight feel. Here, away from the horror show of the war, the air smelt of cooking, and of body odour. The Spiral and their allies were committing universe-wide xenocide, and yet life aboard the Iron Knight went on as it always had. Did these bastards truly realise what they were doing? I had my doubts. I remembered the discussion that Feng and I had, after the attack on Sanctuary. En masse, the Black Spiral didn’t really understand Warlord’s goal. He said the right things, promised the impossible. People listened, and heard what they wanted to hear. That was the human way.
“We’re approaching the aft compartments,” I said to Zero.
“We read,” she replied.
Lopez’s life-sign was close, but so were other life-forms. I tuned my helmet’s audio receptors and listened to the conversation between several men in the next chamber.
“… won’t matter any more,” said one. The words were in Russian, and were translated in real-time by my suit’s AI. Everything came back to me in an electronic drone, but the original words sounded slurred, perhaps a little drunk.
Novak recognised the language. I caught his eyes in the dark, and nodded at him to remain still. This was as good an indication as any that Major Vasnev was either on this ship, or certainly in this region of space.
“You don’t understand,” said the second man, in Standard. “He is the One Truth. This isn’t just some silly adventure for me.”
“He gives creeps,” said the third man, also in Russian. “Is not man any more.”
That could only be a reference to Warlord. I tightened the grip on my pistol.
“There won’t be anything left but Warlord,” said the first man. “He will see all true believers through. Dominion will come.”
There was a clatter of metal on metal, the splash of liquid in a cup. A jubilant cheer from the group. That was followed by an angry sigh. I’d recognise that petulant voice anywhere. It was Lopez.
“I wish we could kill the girl,” said one of the group. “Or… at least do something with her.”
There was a round of hoarse, alcohol-tinged laughs.
Lopez didn’t react, because she didn’t understand Russian, but it did make me wonder what condition she was in. My hand dropped to a grenade in my webbing, and I realised that I was stroking it: desperate to use some ordnance, to kill some shit. The sim body was raging with hormones and combat-drugs. No. I’d have to do this quietly, quickly, and with minimum collateral damage. I might be in a sim, but Lopez was here for real. Her skin wasn’t expendable.
“We’re in position,” I said. Licked my lips. “Get ready to do this, Jackals.”
Novak slid a mono-knife from the sheath on his chest. “You want I should go in first?” he asked.
I nodded. “You take point. I’ll go next. Feng, you cover the corridor and take out any stragglers.”
“Solid copy,” said Feng.
“Here goes.”
The hatch peeled open, and the chamber immediately reacted.
Two gangers-turned-mercenary wearing tactical flak vests, sitting around a metal table. Playing cards, with credit chips piled between them. Three tin cups, an opened bottle of alcohol. A third man, wearing a beat-up survival suit. Younger than the others, with a Proximan look about his features.
The gangers went for sidearms holstered on their hips, while the Proximan dashed across the chamber.
“Alert! Alert!” that one yelled, fingers grasping for a control box on the wall. “Alert! Alert!”
Headsets were piled on the table. No comms with the rest of the ship. That control box was their only lifeline.
Novak saw it too. He vaulted the chamber, knife slashing in a deadly arc. He caught the tango in the shoulder. The oversized combat blade activated, and the wound it cut through the hostile’s survival suit sprayed arterial blood across the chamber. The body went down, and Novak went with it. Slashing again and again for good measure.
I raised my pistol and fired once at the first ganger. The plasma bolt hit the tango in the torso, sent him toppling into the table. A column of smoke rose from the charred crater that had been his chest.
The third man grabbed the bottle from the table, and threw it at me. Reflexively, my arm went up. The glass shattered against my suit, sending droplets of alcohol across the room. It only succeeded in irritating me. The ganger upended the table, using it as a makeshift shield. He drew his pistol and rolled behind the barricade.
Feng charged forward, foot against the thin metal. Fired twice. Once in the body, once in the head. The tango slid against the bulkhead, life-signs extinct.
By rights, it shouldn’t have happened, but another figure appeared at the hatch. A Spiral disciple, clad in a hard-suit, carrying an assault rifle. Maybe attracted by the noise, perhaps coming to check on the prisoner: it didn’t really matter. The woman’s face went rigid as she assessed what had happened.
“What the—” she began.
Novak whirled about. His knife cut another arc.
The woman’s finger closed on the trigger of her rifle. A spray of AP rounds hit Novak in the chest. At such close range, the volley of bullets punched right through his null-shield, and then his armour.
“Novak!” Lopez yelled.
Novak’s body spun and noisily impacted the upturned table. His vitals flatlined on my HUD. USER NOVAK, LEON: EXTRACTED, my suit told me.
The woman looked almost surprised by the success of her shot, and momentarily paused in the doorway, before bringing her rifle around to open up again. I put her down with a single plasma bolt to the head. Her corpse folded in the hatch, gun clattering to the deck.
“Christo… Everyone will have heard that.”
Gabriella Lopez sat behind an observation-field, like the one we had used to imprison Riggs aboard the Valkyrie. She was being held in a small sub-chamber, sitting on an upturned cargo crate.
“You okay, Lopez?” I asked her.
“I am now, ma’am.”
“You injured?”
She shook her head. “No.”
I looked her over with my suit’s remote scanner-tech. She still wore her Alliance Army uniform, which was bloodstained, but my scanner confirmed that nothing was broken that couldn’t be fixed. Barring some superficial lacerations to the forehead, Lopez looked in reasonable shape. She dropped off the crate, and stood in front of the obs-field, eagerly looking out into the rest of the chamber.
“You can get me out of here now,” she said.
“Of course.”
Feng activated the field controls, and the energy barrier dropped. There was no audible alarm, which was good, and my suit didn’t detect any silent warning tech either. Lopez bolted out of the cell, stepping around the corpse Novak had just made.
“We’re sprung,” I said, warily. “Get that body in here, Feng.”
“Affirmative,” said Feng. He hauled the Spiral woman’s body into the chamber, leaving a smear of bright red blood across the deck. “Someone is going to see this.”
“We don’t have time for a proper clean-up,” I decided. “Glad to have you back, Lopez.”
“I’m glad to be back. Where exactly are we? I felt the ship moving under thrust. They took me from the Svetlana to here.”
“To cut a long story short: you’re on Warlord’s ship, the Iron Knight, in an asteroid belt around Ithaca Prime.”
Lopez’s eyes widened. “Ithaca?”
“We brought the Aeon here, but the Spiral were waiting. They’re fighting alongside Shard warships. Unless we can stop it, the entire system is going to fall to
Harbinger. That’s a highly summarised version of events, but you get the picture.”
“It’ll probably do for now,” agreed Feng.
“We’ve re-joined the fleet, and we’re skinned up aboard the Defiant.”
“In contravention of your father’s orders,” Feng grimaced.
Lopez didn’t look surprised by that, which struck me as another example of the strange relationship she had with the Secretary.
I made uplink to Zero. “Z, we have Lopez. We’ll exfiltrate her, then commence the search for Warlord.”
“Solid copy,” came Zero’s static-tinged reply. I could hear the relief in her voice.
“What’s your status?”
“Not good. Heavy losses all around. The fleet is burning up around Ithaca Prime, but Secretary Lopez is pushing on.”
“Novak’s extracted,” I said.
“Received,” Zero replied.
“Keep an eye on him. Is the SOC secure?”
“For now,” was the most she could promise.
“All right. Don’t worry about Novak. I’ll sort it when I get back.”
“Copy that.”
“Jackals out.”
“Zero out.” I turned to Lopez. “Get armed. We could run into trouble.”
Lopez reached for a pistol, one of the weapons dropped by her guards. She checked the loadout, nodding to herself, and racked the slide. Then reached for another pistol, doing the same, tucking the second weapon into the small of her back.
“You can never have enough firepower,” she said, “especially when it’s cheap-ass, mass-manufactured Russian shit.”
“I can still remember when you used to be afraid of guns,” Feng said.
Lopez smiled wanly. “A lot has changed since then. Is P okay?”
“It’s fine,” I said. “Tougher than it looks, and all that.”
“I hear you.”
“It came out of the chrysalis, and it’s better than ever.”
Still, I noticed something. When I reached out to try to connect with P, it wasn’t responding. The sensation wasn’t the same as when P had been in hibernation; more that P didn’t want to answer me.
