by Terry Mixon
Raine turned away again and manipulated his screen. Moments later, the blood drained from his face.
“Everlight,” the man swore softly. “My own Dark-damned computers are lying to me.”
He turned back to Brad, his face going red. “My apologies, Commodore. Thank you for the very timely warning. If you’ll excuse me, I have to prep our defenses so that we can kick their asses.”
“Understood, Chief. Madrid out.”
Jason arrived just as the call ended.
“Blackhawk knows,” he told the tactical officer softly. “But the fact that their scanners were hacked makes me wonder what else is wrong on that Dark-damned station. Get to work refining the data. Just in case, stay passive.”
Ten minutes later, Brad was staring at Raine’s image on the screen in horror. “All of the weapons platforms?” he demanded.
“There’s a hard-coded lockdown command on all of them,” Raine said grimly. “It’s designed so that if one of the platforms is seized, we can keep it from firing on us. Someone sent the code to all the defense platforms. And they changed them, of course. I can’t reactivate them.”
Without those weapons platforms, Blackhawk was doomed.
“There’s a Fleet cruiser group nearby,” Raine said, his face drawn. “The Station Commandant is on the line with them right now. At best, they’re eight hours out.”
It would be an ugly fight if it came to that. Fleet might not win it.
“The pirates are less than two,” Brad said. “How quickly could they reactivate the weapons platforms?”
“If they have the codes—which seems likely—they could have them online in twenty minutes once they take Security Central,” Raine told him, his voice weary. “It can only be done from here. Just like only one of my people could’ve betrayed us.”
“Then there’s still a chance,” Brad said fiercely, running through potential options.
“What do you mean?” Raine demanded, sitting up a little straighter.
“They have to capture your strongest area before Fleet gets here. If they don’t, they’ll probably have to run. We need to do everything we can to delay them. Can you disable the systems you’d use to reactivate the weapons platforms?”
“Yes, but it won’t take very long for anyone who knows the system to cobble something together. At least it will at least add more time to the clock. I’ll set it up, but I’m not going to blow the controls to the platforms unless they are about to take Central. It’s always possible we can get back in.”
From his tone, Brad suspected that outcome was unlikely.
“My ship and my people are at your disposal,” Brad said. “Let’s hope we can come out the other side alive.”
He spent a few moments considering Michelle. She was down below, collecting He3. That process was always uncertain, so he’d just hope she didn’t come back up before they’d driven the pirates off.
There was no way to communicate with her until she did. And if she came up at the wrong time, they’d kill her.
Brad entered the bridge an hour later dressed in full armor, with his helmet tucked under his arm. Shelly was at the pilot’s console.
“Where the Dark is Marshal?” Brad demanded as he took his seat.
“I don’t know. He was off-ship last night and didn’t come back. I’ve paged him a billion times but he never responded. Station security is too busy to search for him.”
“Shit,” Brad said succinctly. “Try this code.”
He read off a series of numbers from memory and she entered them.
“What is that?” she asked.
“My override on his com. Even if he’s turned it off, that code will set it off at max volume.”
The communications console chimed with an incoming off-ship call moments later.
“Put it on my screen,” Brad ordered, glaring at the small repeater as his pilot’s image appeared. “Where in Darkness are you?”
“Residential six,” Marshal said. “Did you have to set my beeper off like that? I met this little—”
“I don’t care,” Brad said, overriding his pilot. “Blackhawk is under attack. Can you get back aboard ship in ten minutes?”
Marshal gaped at him for a moment, and then shook his head as his officer brain apparently kicked in. “No. Res six is on the other side of the station from Heart.”
“That’ll teach you to turn off your beeper,” Brad said grimly. “Meet us at Security Central. You just got drafted for grunt duty, Mr. Pilot.”
“Understood,” Marshal acknowledged with a sour expression. “Marshal out.”
Brad turned to Jason and Shelly. “You two understand the plan?”
“Relocate to the cargo area,” Shelly said. “Find some containers to snuggle up to and wait. They shouldn’t spot us there if we activate stealth—even if someone on Blackhawk has told them to look for us.”
Jason picked up where his girlfriend left off. “If they take control of the weapons platforms, we maintain position and wait for you and the crew. If you can get off, we’ll try to slip away. If not, we’ll improvise.”
He shook his head. “That’s not the plan and you know it. If we can’t make it back, you slip away without us.”
The tactical officer grinned. “You have to survive to enforce that order, sir. We’re not going anywhere without you.”
He sighed. “Try to keep my ship in one piece. Let’s do this.”
When Brad, Saburo, and his squad reached Security Central, they found Marshal waiting for them. He’d managed to get a set of Security armor and had an auto-shotgun very similar to the kind the Vikings used hanging from his shoulder.
He saluted. “Grunt Marshal reporting for duty, Commodore.”
“You talked them into outfitting you. Good.”
“They’re handing out armor and guns to anyone who turns up and asks for them,” Marshal said with a shrug.
“We have more armor and guns than we have people that can use them,” the security chief said as he walked up. “I sent out a call for any combat-trained personnel. If you ask for a gun, I’m presuming you’re capable of fighting, so you get one.”
He shrugged fatalistically. “Some of them are likely working for the pirates, but a handful of extra hostiles are meaningless against any increase in my own strength.”
“What’s their ETA?” Brad asked.
“Less than twenty minutes,” Raine said grimly. “The interceptor frigates split off from the main force and are blasting after the ships that tried to run.”
Once Security had transmitted its warning, six ships—about a fifth of those docked at the Station—had tried to escape.
“Are they going to make it?”
“No way,” Raine said sadly. “The pirates probably won’t even try to board them. They’ll blow them out of space and loop back around for the big prize.”
“That being the station,” Brad said softly.
“That being the station,” Raine agreed. “You may as well watch from Central. Until they actually board us, I have no idea where to send people.”
“Help them,” Brad told Saburo, gesturing at a trio of security troopers passing out weapons and armor to a line of spacers.
“Copy that,” Saburo said.
He turned and followed Raine into Central. The control room at the heart of Blackhawk Security Central was cool and quiet. Despite that, the tension in the air was tangible. A military-style vid-tank—normally used to control task forces and such—showed the station and the various ships around it.
He was pleased to note that Heart wasn’t visible. If the station fell, that might be worth something tactically.
A massive red splotch dominated the upper-right corner of the tank, coming around the curve of the ringed planet.
“I see that you’ve fixed whatever was wrong with your computers,” Brad said as he examined the pirates’ velocity data.
One of the techs looked up. “It was a virus. We did a hard reboot from a clean chip.”
The tank updated. There was now a single green dot rising up from the bottom of the vid-tank, which was aligned with the surface of Saturn.
His gut turned to ice. “Raine!”
The chief hurried over and studied the tank.
“Is that Michelle Hunt’s diver?” Brad asked, his throat tight with fear.
“It is,” he confirmed. “She’ll cross their approach path in less than a minute. She popped out of the atmosphere right under them.”
“What does she think she’s doing?” Brad asked, fearing it would get her killed.
A data code flashed and a small cloud, flashing white for unidentified, spread out behind the icon.
“She’s venting from the diver’s tanks,” the tech who’d spoken before said. “But why? To get a little more speed? That won’t help.”
As Brad watched, the first of the red icons began to overlay the flickering cloud. Then the green icon pulsed brightly. The white cloud vanished, taking ten red icons with it.
“What in Everdark?” he demanded.
“She vented a gas cloud and then used her emergency drive to turn it into a giant fuel bomb,” Raine said softly. “Holy shit.”
Brad watched the green icon with his heart in his throat. Praying the pirates wouldn’t be able to hit it before Michelle ducked back under the clouds.
The vector data next to the green icon changed. “She’s coming back around,” the tech said.
“No, no, no,” Brad said. “Run!”
The icon came hurtling back at the pirates. This time, they weren’t ignoring her.
She began to twist and bob through three dimensions as she tried to evade their fire. Another cloud began to develop behind her ship.
The pirates knew what that cloud was now. Their fire intensified, red streaks developed all around her ship. A single streak—a mass driver round—connected and the diver lurched.
Moments later, the icon representing Michelle’s ship pulsed again and the cloud of gas exploded. When the tank updated, six more pirate ships had vanished.
And so had Michelle’s diver.
Chapter Ten
Brad barely managed to keep himself from screaming in anguish. She was too good a person to die like this. Like Shari.
“She may have saved us,” Raine said softly.
Brad spun, harsh words fighting to make it to his lips. He somehow managed to stop them.
“How?” he asked brusquely.
“A lot of the ships Captain Hunt destroyed were transports. “There were ten of them and she destroyed six.”
Brad nodded slowly, taking a deep breath to help control his rampaging emotions. “So, instead of two thousand or more troops, we’re only looking at eight hundred or so. That’s an improvement, I suppose, but I’m still not sure we can hold.”
“We just have to hold them until Fleet gets here,” Raine said.
It sounded more like a prayer than a plan to Brad.
“Do we have an ETA on Fleet?”
“Morgan?” Raine asked one of the techs.
“One sec.”
A moment later, a green icon appeared on the edge of the tank—representing ships not yet within its purview but known to be coming. Numbers and vectors appeared next to it.
“Five hours,” Raine said, reading the information. “A Fleet cruiser battle group will eat these bastards alive, so the pirates will have to run if they can’t activate the weapons platforms.”
“Which means we have to hold them for four hours or so,” Brad said grimly. “That’s a tall order. How many people do we have?”
“Between my troops and those we passed out weapons to, probably around five hundred,” Raine said. “Most are spread throughout the station, guarding their homes.
“A significant portion of my command is guarding Central Engineering. If they get control of our air, we’re fucked. Including your people, we’ve got about eighty people to hold Central with.”
The security commander grinned coldly. “Of course, we’ve kept the heaviest weapons for ourselves.”
“Sir!” one of the techs interrupted. “They’re here!”
“Zoom in,” Raine ordered, turning back to the vid tank. The image expanded to show Blackhawk Station itself, resolving into a schematic. The red icons of pirate ships flitted through the girders and platforms of the station—thankfully not anywhere near where Heart lay hidden.
The crew of Security Central watched silently as the transports locked on. Of the four transports, two were in position to take Central.
“All right,” Raine said into the silence. “Seal all emergency bulkheads in sectors thirteen through sixteen.”
As he spoke, someone highlighted the sectors in question on the schematic. The green light completely severed Central from the threatened portions of the station.
“Doesn’t that completely cut them off until they get through?” Brad asked.
“Unfortunately not. Highlight structural columns Alpha, Beta, and Gamma.”
Three cylinders suddenly glowed white in the schematic, starting at the top of the station and dropping clear down to the bottom. Central was toward the top of the white columns.
“These can’t be sealed,” Raine said with a sigh. “Which makes them the key to taking Central. However, only the bridges across them have gravity.”
“So, we need to hold the bridges,” Brad said as he studied the schematic.
“Exactly. I want you and your squad to go with Lieutenant Simon and her people. Hold Column Gamma.”
The tall woman he gestured toward nodded at Brad.
“Done,” he said.
“I’ll flash you all the com frequencies and encryption codes by the time you’re in position,” Raine promised. “Good luck.”
Brad ground his grief under a mental heel as he followed the security officer out of Central. He’d mourn Michelle after he avenged her.
The column was an odd-looking structure from the inside. The bridges started at the same angle and plane as the decks they came from and twisted around to merge with the central platform that extended for the length of the column parallel to the walls. It was like a strange 3-D puzzle.
Of course, he didn’t have much time to admire the scenery. The pirates would arrive at any moment.
He raised an eyebrow at Lieutenant Simon. “Who is leading this dance?”
“I’ll let you run the show,” she said quietly. “I’m not used to pitched battles.”
“Whereas mercenaries fight them all the time,” he agreed.
His com system updated with the station frequencies and encryption codes. He passed them on to his people.
One of the security troopers had vanished as they entered the column. He returned driving one of the transport vehicles that used the columns.
The trooper skewed the truck across the bridge, blocking almost the entirety of the five-meter-wide structure. It still wasn’t much cover, considering how open and airy the column was, but it was the best they were going to get.
As his mercs and the troopers began taking up positions behind the truck, Brad’s com chirped.
“Madrid.”
“Commodore, this is Central. The pirates have run into the blockade in the standard corridors. They’re splitting up and it looks as if you have thirty or so headed your way. It’s probable there will be more eventually, but that’s the immediate threat.”
“Got it. Madrid out.”
He looked over the troops under his command. They were as ready as they could make themselves.
“All right, folks,” he said on their frequency. “The bad guys are coming, but there’s only two of them for each one of us in the first round. Let’s teach them a lesson they won’t live to regret.”
“I see something,” one of the security troopers said a minute later. “They’re below us.”
“Everyone, hold your fire till I give the word,” he ordered. He raised his head into a position where
he could see the new arrivals.
A dozen men were moving across the span linking the deck below to the central span. Their movements made Brad nervous. They had far more precision than he’d have expected. On the plus side, their companions hadn’t come across with them.
The enemy squad surveyed the bridge and then advanced. The truck was making them nervous, but it wasn’t slowing them down all that much.
“Now,” Brad said, raising his auto-shotgun just as the pirates spread out across the central span.
He only came up enough to fire. He dropped the closest pirate as the rest of the friendly troops behind the impromptu barricade opened up. The swarm of flechettes swept the bridge clean in moments while the truck protected them from the return fire.
“That was short and painless, but there’ll be more,” he told the troops. “Lots more.”
Five minutes later, the rest of the pirate platoon showed up, looking for their missing squad mates. Like their comrades, they showed far too much military discipline for Brad’s peace of mind. They barely seemed to hesitate at the sight of the bodies sprawled in front of the truck.
Unfortunately, the bridge came into the column from well beyond the effective range of his people’s shotguns and pistols. Though hits at two hundred meters were theoretically possible, they were extremely unlikely.
Brad was doing the mental calculations to see if he might be able to use the grenade launcher one of his people carried to make the bastards’ lives more complicated, when they began to advance toward the central span.
As they did, a sharp crack rang through the column. One of Simon’s troopers who’d been relying too heavily on range for protection crumpled.
“Down!” Brad shouted, crouching lower.
Someone over there had that rarest of things in a spaceborne battle: a heavy sniper rifle. On top of that, they were good with it.
“Here they come,” Simon said, swinging her shotgun out around the truck and emptying its magazine in a single long burst.
As Brad rose to fire, he saw one of his mercenaries take a pistol bullet through the helmet and flop back onto the bridge.
