Dust & Iron (Adventures of the Starship Satori Book 9)

by Kevin McLaughlin

  Plasma beams flashed back and forth above her head. The armor was moving. She sidestepped quickly to get clear of one unit so it didn’t crush her in its passage. A glance down at her tablet said the download was complete.

  Charline looked over at her armor. She wanted nothing more than to be back inside there, but she couldn’t go. Not yet. If they lost her cube, she wasn’t sure she had time to hack another one. Without it, they couldn’t seize a ship, and there wouldn’t be any chance of getting home. She darted back toward the terminal.

  “Char, get back in your armor!” Halcomb called out over his speakers. “Damn it!”

  She felt the bulk of his armor nudge her aside. The impact sent her flying into the wall next to the terminal. He’d been just in time. When she looked up, she saw multiple alien shots slam home against his armor. Halcomb staggered backward. For a moment Charline was afraid he would fall on her, but he steadied himself and returned fire.

  The cube was just in her reach. She snatched the thing up from the terminal and dashed back to her armor. Another blast of enemy fire blazed past her as she climbed. It was close enough that her face felt sunburned from the heated air it left in its path. Then she was into her armor, sliding into the seat and slapping the command to drop her canopy back into place. It locked down, sealing her safely inside her metal shell again.

  “I’m back in armor. What’s our status?” Charline asked. There was a sudden lack of gunfire in the hall.

  “Took them all down. There were only three,” Isabella said.

  “Halcomb, you OK?” Charline asked.

  He turned toward her, and she could see a pair of smoking divots in his armor. “Yeah. Took some heat, but they didn’t punch through. Good thing I added the extra armor on this thing,” Halcomb said.

  “I wish we had twenty more just like it, right now,” Charline said.

  “You get what you needed?” Arjun asked.

  “I did. We’ve got full schematics of their ship, now. We know how to get exactly where we need to go. Sending them to you now,” Charline said.

  For the first time in a while she felt a surge of confidence. The ship was damned near empty, and they knew precisely how to get where they wanted to go. Now they could make good time on the most direct route. Once they arrived they still had to capture the ship and get away, but all that suddenly seemed much more possible than it had before. Their ‘Hail Mary’ long shot pass might just work after all.

  THIRTY-NINE

  “Looks like only two of them by the hatch,” Tessa said. “I’m not seeing any others.”

  They’d made it to the docking berth without running into any more aliens, which was a stroke of luck Charline didn’t feel like questioning. But to only have two of them outside the ship? It felt like too much of a good thing.

  Of course, it could simply be that all the remaining crew was elsewhere around the ship fighting fires, literal and figurative. But the docked ship looked just like the one they’d captured earlier, and that one had more than two crew.

  If she was working on a docked ship in a crisis, Charline thought she’d want to be on it or damned close by, just in case the shit hit the fan in a big way. There were probably more of them someplace close at hand. Maybe on board the ship, maybe not. But they’d respond to an attack rapidly enough.

  There wasn’t any help for it, though. They needed to press forward. Every minute they delayed just helped the enemy.

  “Get ready to advance, but be careful. There should be more of them somewhere,” Charline said.

  Gerald and Toni stacked up directly behind Tessa. Halcomb would follow close behind them. Charline and the other team of armor would watch for any bugs coming at them from other directions, or reinforce the team taking the ship if necessary. The plan wasn’t flawless, but she felt confident her people could pull this off.

  “Move now,” Charline said.

  Tessa’s team started forward in a lumbering run. They came around a corner as quickly as they could. That put them in view of the enemy, who responded immediately. Charline could see them through Tessa’s camera system. One went sideways, falling back to take cover behind a pile of large crates. The other ducked back into the ship.

  “Move fast. One went for reinforcements,” Charline said.

  The lead squad opened up on the crates, blasting them to shreds with gunfire. The bug returned fire as best it could, but it was heavily outgunned. Halcomb stepped up and added his own weapons to the mix. It was nimble and dodged some of their beams, but there was just too much fire coming its way. First one shot struck it, then another, and a third. The fourth impact stopped it entirely.

  “Keep moving! Gerald, take up a position near the door,” Charline said. He was the closest armor.

  He bounded toward the hatch into the ship, which was still open. Thank god! If they had to cut their way in, it would take forever. Gerald had almost made it to the doorway when he stopped suddenly.

  “I see movement – oh, shit!” he said.

  Then a spray of plasma beams sliced into his armor, cutting it clean in half.

  There wasn’t any question whether the man inside had survived. The damage cut right through where his lower torso would have been. He was gone.

  For a frozen moment, Charline couldn’t believe that one of her people had been snuffed out so quickly and without warning. Then the certainty that they were all going to follow him if she didn’t step up set in.

  “Halcomb, fry whatever shot him. Tessa, Toni, flanking positions to support him,” Charline said. “Arjun, have your squad on overwatch. Make sure we don’t get flanked ourselves.”

  Her people started moving. Charline took long strides forward to join the assault team. They were down a man and needed support. The three armor units remaining were all lighting up the hatch area, blazing away.

  Spotty fire flashed out at them, slapping into Halcomb’s armor more than once. She winced as he staggered backwards from one shot. He was in the line of fire a lot. That armor could take more punishment than theirs, but it had limits. She didn’t want to order him to his death.

  “Got three of them in there. Took one out, but the other two are under cover. Moving forward is going to be tricky,” Halcomb said.

  Charline got close enough to see through the open hatch. Tricky wasn’t the right word. Inside the hatch, a straight hallway stretched for about ten yards before coming to a T. Both aliens were using the corners for cover. From that position they could fry anyone coming at them. Ten yards might not seem like much, but in this case it was a death sentence for anyone they sent in.

  How the hell they were supposed to get past this? Charline wracked her brain for any idea that didn’t involve Halcomb having to die to get the rest of them off this boat. He was the logical pick. His armor would take at least a few shots, and it would give them enough cover to return fire and maybe kill the bugs. That would be cold consolation if he was killed in the process, though. There had to be a way to get down there without losing people in the process! If they had some sort of bomb, or grenade that they could chuck down the hall, that would work.

  But they didn’t, and there was no point wishing for what they couldn’t get. Charline snapped off a shot at a bug that leaned out from cover for a moment. It ducked back too quickly, and her beam missed. This wasn’t getting them anywhere. They were at an impasse, with the bugs too pinned down to fire back but able to kill them if they advanced.

  She reached a decision. If anyone was going down, it would be her.

  “Moving in. Cover me!” Charline said.

  She walked toward the hall. Both bugs saw her moving and tried to shoot at her. Their first beams went wide, and then return fire from her friends made them duck back under cover. That luck wouldn’t last forever, but she’d take what she could get! Charline kept up a steady rate of fire as she advanced toward the hatch. Another few seconds and she’d be inside that hall. They’d both open up on her, then. But the others could use whatever remained of her
armor as cover to finish the advance.

  There was a grinding sound and a vibration that Charline could feel even through her armor. She froze, wondering what the hell was going on. Then she realized where the sound was coming from. It was the hatch. The massive doors on either side were grinding closed.

  She rushed forward as fast as her legs could carry her, but the hatch closed most of the way before she could get her body through. Her arms stopped the doors’ advance for a second, but she couldn’t hold them open. She yanked them back before the hatch snapped them off at the elbows. It slammed closed a moment later.

  A heavier rumbling shook the deck beneath her feet. She knew precisely what that was. The ship outside, their ticket out of this deathtrap, was igniting its engines and taking off. They’d missed their chance.

  FORTY

  The vibration from the ship’s thrusters was strong enough to be felt even through their armor. After all of that, to be too late! Darkness spun in around the edges of Charline’s vision. She felt faint. They’d been so damned close.

  “Well, that sucks. What’s the plan now, fearless leader?” Halcomb asked.

  She wanted to scream at him that there was no plan. There were no new ideas coming. The end of the road was right there in this hallway. Everything that could be done had been.

  But the rest of the team was silent, waiting to hear what she'd say. No one stepped forward with any sort of plan or even a suggestion. They were counting on her to come up with something, but exhausted and dispirited as she was Charline wasn’t sure she could.

  “Whatever we’re going to do, we need to get on it,” Tessa said. “I’ve got four more armored bugs coming our way!”

  “Just four?” Charline asked, surprised.

  “That's more than enough! Halcomb, get your ass up here and ‘overkill’ them,” Tessa said.

  But it wasn’t enough. Not by half. They had more than enough firepower to handle a quartet of bugs, as they’d demonstrated more than once already. Come to think of it, they hadn’t seen more than four enemies at a time since arriving on the tanker. With such a big ship, Charline had expected to meet heavy resistance every step of the way. Instead, the defense had been scattered, disorganized, and light in numbers.

  Was it possible there were so few defenders because the ship didn’t have a large crew? A human ship this large would house hundreds of people, maybe even a thousand or more. But most of the systems on board were automated. She recalled the swarm of repair bots hard at work on the damaged bow. That would have been done by crew, on a human ship.

  If she was right and there weren’t many aliens on board, then they might just have a chance after all. The ships which had just blasted off weren’t the only wormhole-capable vessels around. There was one last option.

  “We make for the bridge and take the ship,” Charline said.

  “Go big or go home. I like it!” Halcomb said. He’d just stepped into the hall beside Tessa and unleashed a fury of plasma fire on the approaching enemy. Overkill, indeed!

  “There’s seven of us,” Sing said. “Against how many bugs?”

  “Less than you might think,” Charline replied.

  Whether she was correct or not, taking the ship really was their only option. lf they rounded the next corner and ran into two hundred armed and angry aliens, nobody was going to live long enough to say ‘I told you so,’ anyway. Better that they were able to remain hopeful as long as possible, in that case.

  But she didn’t think she was wrong. The numbers didn’t lie. If the ship had a large crew, the aliens would already have sent a bigger force against them. They weren’t seeing a cohesive defense at all, just little groups that felt more like security details.

  “What’s the status on that patrol?” Charline asked.

  “Got ‘em pinned down, but they’re still alive,” Halcomb replied.

  “Keep them pinned. Tessa and Arjun, with me,” Charline said.

  Decision made, she sprang into action. A few short steps brought her out into the hallway beside Halcomb. Shots from his plasma weapons streamed down the corridor, mostly aimed toward a side passage fifty meters ahead on the right. That had to be where the aliens were hiding. Charline kept to the left wall and pushed forward. If Halcomb could keep them tucked behind cover for just a little longer, she’d be in position to get a clean shot off.

  Then the aliens spotted her.

  The time for being subtle was over. Charline dashed forward as quickly as her armor would allow and opened fire. She ran at an angle to where the bugs were hiding, so that they had to track her movement with their guns. Plasma fire splashed against the wall directly behind her. They’d missed their first shots.

  “Shit. I’m coming!” Halcomb called out over the radio.

  “Got one!” Tessa said. The others were right behind her. Good.

  Charline lined a bug up in her crosshairs and pressed down hard on the firing studs. Her armor blasted the alien with twin plasma beams that nearly cut it in half. That was two down! The others weren’t holding still, though. One of them raced toward her along the ceiling while the other stood its ground and unleashed its own hell of plasma.

  The beams slammed into Charline’s armor, melting metal and raising the internal temperature dozens of degrees in seconds. Red lights and alarms flashed on.

  For a moment she thought the attack had punched through her suit, but the seals were holding. She pulsed her beams again. One missed as the alien dodged aside, but the other struck home, weakening its armor. She switched to the Naga rifle mounted on her shoulder and fired a shot. It slammed home in the same spot she’d hit with the plasma beam and punched through what was left of the armor there. The bug rocked back like it had been slapped by an enormous hand and then fell to the ground. It was still twitching, but she didn’t think it was going to be a threat anymore.

  She took a step back and raised her arms defensively. Focusing on the ranged attacker had left her incredibly vulnerable to the one trying to close in on her. Charline reflexively extended the blade from her arm and readied herself to deal with another bout of close combat.

  But there was no need. It lay on the deck, holed in four places by well-placed shots.

  Charline let out a shaky breath. It was over. This fight was over, anyway, she corrected herself. The bigger battle was yet to come.

  “Your work, Halcomb?” Charline asked, eying the four holes.

  “I aim to please,” Halcomb said.

  “Just so long as you do aim,” she replied. “All right, everyone back into travel formation. This time I want Tessa front, Arjun rear. Halcomb in the middle with me so he can move whichever direction needs firepower the most. Stay frosty, people.”

  “Where are we going?” Tessa asked.

  “Midships and up. Top deck or near to it. There will be a major corridor running down the spine of the ship that leads right to the control room,” Charline replied. “We should be able to control the entire ship from there.”

  “What? How can you be sure of that?” Sing asked.

  Charline turned to face him. Frankly, she was getting tired of his frequent complaints. “Because that’s how Naga ships are built, Mr. Sing.”

  “But these aren’t Naga!” he protested.

  She looked around, examining the construction of the hallway. She could see the way the circuits and ducts were placed within the walls through holes burned by gunfire. All of it was familiar. It had felt that way earlier, and she hadn’t known why.

  Now she was sure. Everything about this ship felt like Naga tech. Oh, there were differences. But the similarities in design were too great to put off to chance. There was no way two distinct alien races would happen to arrive at such near-identical designs.

  “I don’t know the full story yet, but the Naga got their tech from these guys. A long time ago, but the ships are built in the same style. We’ll find what we’re looking for that way,” Charline said, pointing. “Unless you have any other objections?”

&
nbsp; “No, ma’am,” Sing replied. He fell into formation without another word, but he didn’t sound mollified.

  She’d need to keep an eye on him, but it was good enough for now, at least. It wasn’t like most of this rag-tag group had a military background. She couldn’t expect them to follow orders without questions. Making do with what she had was becoming a specialty.

  “Tessa, lead out,” Charline said.

  FORTY-ONE

  Twice they ran into more aliens as they approached the bridge of the ship. Both times the enemy fled as soon as they opened fire. They didn’t pause to exchange shots with her armor, instead turning tail to run. Charline had a sense that they were being carefully tracked as they progressed. The enemy was making sure they knew exactly where her people were. What they had in mind, she couldn’t say. But they were surely preparing some sort of surprise ahead.

  They’d made it out into a massive hallway running down the length of the ship’s spine. From the maps she’d downloaded it looked like the passage terminated at the engine room at one end, down at the rear of the ship, and the bridge at the other about three-fourths of the way to the bow.

  “Halcomb, you and Tessa’s team lead out. Arjun’s team in rear guard. Make sure you have someone watching the hall behind us at all times,” Charline said. They were very exposed out in this wide passage. It was the perfect place to lay a trap. But there were no other routes to the bridge without cutting through deck walls and potentially damaging the ship they were trying to capture.

  Massive blast doors came into view about a hundred meters ahead. Those would be the doors to the bridge. She wasn’t surprised to see them sealed shut. It would take time to cut through, but they could do it.