by B. V. Larson
“What would happen, exactly, if you are correct?”
“The two fields would disrupt one another and both ships would be tossed out of warp. Damage could result to one or both ships, or their drives.”
“Very well, assess and report. Come back to me in five minutes. Deech out.”
“Uh… all right, Tribune,” the captain said.
I could hear in his voice that the Nostrum’s captain was put out. After all, Deech was ordering him around like he was a shuttle pilot. Aboard this ship, while in flight, he was supposed to be the judge, jury and executioner—even though technically Deech outranked him.
Switching back over to a private line with Graves, I was concerned.
“Sounds like we’re in trouble, sir,” I said. “Permission to mobilize my unit?”
“What for?”
“You heard the captain, sir. One in a quadrillion chance? I don’t even play the lottery. If another ship hit us, it did so on purpose.”
“But how could another ship even locate us in warp, much less time it right to disrupt our warp bubble?”
“I don’t know any of that, sir, but I don’t believe in coincidences of this kind. Remember, we’re in hostile space. This whole region is old squid-territory, and it’s far from friendly to Earthers.”
“Hmm…” Graves said. “Our orders are to secure everything and hold on, but I think it’s not a bad precaution to put a unit into combat gear. We can always revive you later, if things go wrong.”
“That’s mighty considerate of you, sir,” I said, but he’d already closed the channel.
Figuring I had clear orders to mobilize, I kicked it into gear and contacted my adjuncts. Harris, Toro and Leeson all reported in, and they were surprised at my demands.
“Suit up,” I said. “I want everyone in the central chamber of our module in ten minutes. Lock and load, people. This is no drill!”
Not one of them argued with me. They knew better by now. They just jumped into action. Tuning into my unit’s chat line, I heard the general hubbub of officers and noncoms screaming at the regulars.
My unit was gearing for battle, and for once, it wasn’t going to be some kind of knife-fight in an artificial pit.
-16-
Nostrum spun for a short time, but she was a new ship with high-class stabilizers. She righted herself and returned to her previous course.
Her warp drive, however, had been knocked out of commission. I could hear the rumbling, almost like a deep, sick cough as it shivered through the spine of the great ship.
“Centurion?” Harris asked, meeting me at the entrance to our module. “Some of the troops are a little banged up, but we’ve got ninety-five percent effectives.”
“Ninety-five percent? Tell those who are hugging their bunks I’ll recycle them if they can’t carry a rifle in three minutes.”
“Yes sir!” Harris boomed, and he whirled on the unit regulars, seeking out slackers of every stripe.
Leeson walked up and chuckled. “Harris is still a Veteran in his heart,” he said. “You set the right man on them.”
“Yep,” I said, “he reminds me of a terrier hunting up rats in the barn.”
Making a steady stream of threats and accusations, Harris raced around the various bunk rooms and managed to roust all but two of my troops into gear.
“What happened to the last two?” I asked him a moment later.
“Well… one of them is Adjunct Toro, sir…”
“I’ll talk to her personally. What about the other one?”
“Uh… That was Lau.”
“Was?”
Harris avoided my eye.
“I thought he was sleeping, sir,” he said, “but it turns out he’s dead.”
I nodded, checking Lau’s room. There was a blackened burn-hole in the man’s forehead. It was obvious Harris had found him goofing off and had taken extreme action.
I could tell Harris was worried I’d chew him out of even put him on report.
“You’re right,” I said to Harris, who was peering over my shoulder uncomfortably. “It was an honest mistake—and Lau made it.”
“Thank you, sir!”
Next stop was Toro’s quarters. She had a tiny single bunk in a private cubicle. It wasn’t roomy like my own commander’s quarters, but it was better than you got as a grunt.
“Toro?”
“McGill? Thank God it’s you, sir! Harris was just in here…”
She trailed off, spotting Harris in my wake.
“Sir,” she said, “I’m injured. It’s nothing serious, but I’m going to have to pass—”
“Adjunct Toro,” I said, “this ship is under attack.”
“Attack? How could that be? We’re in warp. I thought it was another of your drills—”
“Turn on command chat, listen in, and get an education.”
Toro did so while I watched the rest of the troops gear-up and form squads. Turning around, I found Toro limping up to me.
“I’m sorry sir,” she said, looking worried. “I had no idea.”
For a few seconds, I toyed with my pistol. I’d seen Graves make motivational speeches in just such a manner many times.
“As a new centurion,” I told her, “people seem to think they can scoot by with me—but they’re mistaken.”
“Of course, Centurion! I wouldn’t—”
“Personnel who are critically injured in early action,” I continued loudly, “before there have been enough causalities to glut the revival teams, are often best recycled.”
She swallowed hard, took out an injectable and jammed it into her knee. “I feel better already, Centurion.”
“That’s good. Don’t fall behind—oh, and Toro? Your platoon is on point for the rest of this action.”
“Got it!” she said, and she hustled out into our module’s main chamber.
Amused, Harris came up to me after she went by. “You’ve got the touch, McGill. I wouldn’t have expected it—but it’s undeniable. Graves himself couldn’t have gotten these people moving any faster.”
I made no comment. Harris was right—or at least, I liked to think I was in Graves’ league. In any case, I’d definitely developed a serious disdain for slackers.
That isn’t to say I wouldn’t let a good man slide in other ways. If a couple wanted to share a bunk at night, for instance, well... that was their business. I didn’t care at all as long as they fought hard on the line come morning.
By the time we were fully mobilized and marching down the central passage of the ship’s spine, we’d wasted seven precious minutes. I was a little annoyed, having felt we should have been able to do better.
“McGill?” Graves called a few minutes later.
“Primus? 3rd Unit is ready for action. We’re—”
“I know where you are. Keep going and take the tubes up to Gold Deck. I’m deploying your unit outside the Cent-Op chambers. You’ll cover the main guns down to the automated-magazine chamber. Don’t take any crap from the crew. Tell them you’re approved security troops, courtesy of Legion Varus—but try to stay out of their way.”
The losers in fleet liked to think they could take care of their own defense, but as real combat troops, we knew better.
“Isn’t that where they control the broadsides, sir?” I asked Graves. “Is there any trouble in local space?”
“Not yet, but if you were invading a ship like this, which vital subsystem would you take out first?”
“Uh… the enemy ship’s guns, sir?”
“Bingo. Move out!”
Pin-wheeling my arm, I got the unit trotting. Toro’s group was in the lead, as I’d directed. She was sweating inside her helmet, but she didn’t complain or even make eye contact as she jogged by. I felt proud of her. It wasn’t the first time a Varus soldier had fought on a bum knee, and it wouldn’t be the last. I’d done it myself on several occasions.
After Toro’s platoon, Leeson’s moved out then Harris brought up the rear of the column. I ran with Le
eson in order to keep an eye on both ends of the formation.
Legion Varus, like all of the independent outfits, was broken into ten cohorts of around twelve hundred men each, plus auxiliaries. My unit, the third, contained a mix of heavy and light troops. Harris had the light troops, Toro the heavies, and Leeson’s platoon contained most of the specialists.
In an open battle on a planet’s surface, the light troops would usually lead the formation. That’s because they could run faster and they carried snap-rifles, weapons capable of light damage at long range.
But when carrying out operations in an enclosed space, there was no room to maneuver. Most commanders liked to lead with their heaviest troops in close-quarters, and I’d opted for that strategy.
Heavies like Toro’s troops wore powered armor with exoskeletal strength to help with the load. Every member of her team was a regular, an experienced soldier, well trained with morph-rifles and force-blades. Partly due to their powerful kit, I felt good about putting her group in the lead.
When we reached the tubes that carried people up and down between decks, I called a halt then ordered the first squad forward. Toro handled all the details. I watched with interest.
“Anything happening outside the ship, Centurion?” Harris asked me.
“I’m listening to command chat, the same as you. Nothing yet.”
Harris nodded and popped open his faceplate to scratch stubble. “Let’s hope this is all some kind of screw-up by our techs.”
“Yeah… as long as we can get back into warp, that would be the best outcome.”
He looked at me in sudden alarm. “You haven’t heard anything about engine damage, have you sir?”
“I know we’re not able to go back into warp right now. They’re working on it.”
Harris looked worried, but he didn’t say anything.
“We’re pretty far out from Earth,” I said, giving voice to his thoughts.
He nodded. “Over two hundred lights from home. That means a rescue is going to be long in coming, if it becomes necessary. In fact, the brass back home might call the whole thing a failure and leave us to rot.”
“Nah,” I said. “This ship is too valuable. They don’t have very many fast transports like Nostrum—not yet.”
I patted a strut as if to comfort the ship.
Harris flickered a smile at me. I wasn’t sure if he’d bought my bullshit or not, but at least he seemed to appreciate the effort.
“I’m going forward to see what’s taking Toro so long to get her heavies up that tube.”
“Give her a kick in the ass for me, sir.”
Moving along the line, I clacked my armor into that of others for fifty steps or so before catching up with Toro.
“What’s the hold-up, Adjunct?” I demanded.
“Sir! Uh… the first squad hasn’t released the tube yet. The doors are still shut.”
I glanced at her. “When was your last report from your lead squad?”
“Um…”
I looked down, and I saw she’d been fooling with her knee again. She had the front plate over her leg joint open, and I saw blood in there.
Using my helmet’s HUD, I logged into her local chat and contacted the squad leader—or at least, I tried to.
Then I brought up my status display. I immediately sucked in my breath. We were getting red readings. The squad had been wiped out.
“Flip down your faceplate, Adjunct!” I shouted at Toro.
She did so and a moment later, she looked shocked.
“I didn’t know, sir.”
“Relay that status to the rest of the unit. Take the manual route.”
“The stairs, sir?”
“Right. I’m contacting Graves.”
Gritting her teeth, she began shouting and urging her troops to advance up the stairway, but I thought the better of it and stopped her.
“I don’t want to lose another squad of heavies. For all we know, radiation has leaked through up there. Harris?”
“What’s up, Centurion?”
“Your lights are on. Scouting mission, up that stairway. I need info like yesterday.”
“Oh shit… On it, sir!”
Harris’ people went racing by a few seconds later. Harris gave Toro the finger as he ran by.
In the meantime, I’d been trying to contact Graves. He wasn’t answering. No one was answering up there on Gold Deck.
Rolling back my neck, I stared up at the ceiling, wishing I could see through the decks to where Gold Deck was laid out. What the hell was going on up there?
Logging onto command chat, I cleared my throat.
“This is Centurion McGill. Be advised, I’ve lost a squadron of heavies while trying to advance to Gold Deck. Their life signs are all showing as red. I’m also out of contact with Primus Graves and Gold Deck in general. If anyone has information, please share.”
A chorus of voices came back at me. I’d been off the command chat line for a few minutes while leading my squad. It was too confusing to have local voice, unit chat and command chat all going at the same time.
“McGill, this is Winslade. Is your unit ready to fight?”
“Yes sir,” I said. “We’re in a full kit at the bottom of the—”
“Then get up here, please. We’re under assault. It was very sudden. Most of the crew up here on Gold Deck is already dead.”
A chill ran through me. What could have killed so many so fast? What could have struck so quickly that the general alarm hadn’t even gone out yet?
I didn’t know, but as I moved into the stairwell, which was really more of a switchback passage with handholds, I figured I was going to find out soon enough.
-17-
About a thousand steps. That’s what it took to make it all the way up to Gold Deck.
It wasn’t as bad as it sounded, however. People in powered armor almost had their legs moved for them. What’s more, the artificial gravity was toned down in the stairways, and you hardly had to touch the steps. You could sort of hop and just glide over five or six at a time.
Once we all got into the rhythm of it, the motion was kind of like ice-skating. The experience might have been fun if we weren’t thinking of the sudden death that seemed to lie ahead of us.
Harris was the first one to report back. His light troops had lost us long ago, pulling ahead of Toro’s heavies even though I’d told them to stay together.
“Contact!” he boomed in my ear.
Up above, I could hear the chatter of snap-rifles on full-auto.
“What have you got, Harris? Report!”
We all kept moving upward, and for a few seconds, I wondered if Harris had been hit.
“Uh… I don’t know yet, sir. We’ve spotted movement… we’re engaged. They’re firing back at us.”
“With what?”
“Seems like explosive pellets, or bullets. Something ballistic.”
“Can you press through?”
“We’re bunched up on these damned stairs.”
“Leave one squad engaged, fall back with the rest. I’m moving up the heavies.”
I gave Toro a nod. She was a little pale, but she was game. Leading her 1st squad, she headed up while Harris’ lights came back down, squeezing past.
It occurred to me we were too vulnerable to explosives on this damned stairway.
“Kivi!” I called out. “Get some of your buzzers up there. I want to see the action. Leeson, spread out into the level below Gold Deck.”
“Blue Deck, sir? The bio people aren’t going to like that.”
“Screw ‘em.”
He chuckled, but he complied. He got his men off the stairway, and when the bulk of Harris’ lights came down the stairs, I shunted them off to the side, too.
“Toro,” I said, “you’ve got the ball. Break us out of this shit.”
“On it, sir.”
She sent in her best, a squad of heavies with morph-rifles slung and force-blades out. Each heavy trooper had weapons that were construc
ted of electro-magnetic fields. Through an alien trick of physics, these shaped force-fields had a sharpness beyond that of any metal blade. They also burned whatever they touched, and they could be extended outward from the length of a dagger to several yards.
Watching on my HUD and my tapper, I got Kivi’s buzzer feed and gasped.
The heavies burst past Harris’ troops. Most of them were on the ground. Their light weapons had proven relatively ineffective.
The heavies were hit with a storm of heavy explosive bullets as they rose up out of the stairway and rushed through the doorway. The big double doors themselves were smoking and broken, hanging by their hinges on either side.
What made me gasp wasn’t the mess on the floor, or the incoming hail of fire.
It was the first sight I caught of the enemy. They were giants. Armored giants, of the type I hadn’t laid eyes on since Earth had been invaded years ago.
“We’ve got littermates!” I boomed. “Heavy troops, two full squads of them! Toro, send up all your weaponeers with belchers. We’re going to burn them down.”
“Weaponeers advancing.”
Harris came up to me then. He was panting and had his hands on his hips. “Is that the best idea, sir? They’ll go crazy if you—”
“Shut up, Harris.”
He did so immediately, and I didn’t even look at him.
My mind was whirling. What were littermates doing out here, in the middle of nothing? Sure, I knew we were headed for Epsilon Leporis. That was their homeworld and all. But we weren’t close yet. We still had nearly a hundred lights to go.
It didn’t matter, I told myself. It didn’t matter at all. I was going to kill them, I was going to kill them all, and it was that simple.
The heavies engaged in close, losing two in the charge to incoming fire. Fortunately, we were on a spaceship and didn’t have to run across a half-mile of open ground. They were fighting hand to hand a moment later, and I took that opportunity to rush up with a group of weaponeers.
“All at once now,” I told them. “Narrow aperture, take careful aim.”
The weaponeers formed a firing squad around me. Toro’s heavies were fighting an odd sword-fight with the enemy, trading hammer-blows with the bigger soldiers. The enemy, however, had relatively primitive swords made of metal. If they hit straight on, their swords were sheared off as often as not, flashing sparks as the fields struck steel.
