Head Space

by Andrew Vaillencourt

  Sergeant Bernadette Rothschilde, on the other hand, was about as subtle as a three-breasted prostitute at a church bazaar. With no other way of hiding her, Pike ordered her to wait in a storage compartment several dozen yards down a corridor. At minimum power waiting in the dark, Bernie had nothing else to do but tap her fingers against her controls and fume. This had put the bloodthirsty mercenary in a dark mood. She had made it quite clear with explicit language as to how she intended to alleviate her foul temper once the action picked up. Fortunately, she did not have to wait long for the violent relief she so desperately craved. Mindy’s confirmation that her team was in position was the signal to start the assault.

  “You heard the lady,” Pike rasped. “Get to it. All squads!”

  When the signal came Bernie did not even bother to open the door. Both grasping arms thrust forward like twin battering rams while her feet threw the whole chassis forward. The metal door of the storage compartment screamed in protest before being brutally ripped from its track. The big armature cleared the hole and clomped toward the docking bay long before the warped metal rectangle had stopped spinning on the deck.

  The AutoCat 4900 was not a fast machine. It lacked the speed of something with more legs or with tracks, and it could not compete with the agility of more nimble models like the Shikomi Kano. Nevertheless, given enough room and a straight path, Bernie could lumber along at something close to twenty miles per hour. Her footfalls clanged against the metal of the station’s deck plates, each impact a deafening cymbal crash from an untalented percussionist. The giant pistons in her oversized feet sent the multi-ton mech careening into the docking bay with a merciless and unstoppable momentum. It was fortunate indeed that Pike’s engineers were scurrying away from the bay doors with forty yards to spare, because it did not look like the charging machine intended to wait for their pleasure. The breaching charges went off when she was only twenty yards away and the wave of heat and concussion that washed over her canopy did absolutely nothing to slow the fury of her headlong charge. Acrid gray smoke billowed around her, and soon the yellow and black titan disappeared into the swirling gray fog of war. This did not make her hard to find. The booming report from her two remaining autocannons told anyone within earshot exactly where she could be found, and the yellow bursts from the spinning barrels flashed like heat lightning within the cloud of dust and smoke.

  Pike hefted his mag rifle and called out to one of his remaining two squads of mercenaries. “Okay, Varsity. Let’s go get some joy before Bernie does it all and hogs the bonuses. JV, you hold this bay as if your life depends on it.” As the stocky commandant began to run at the destroyed door and the fiery hellstorm that was a pissed off Sergeant Rothschilde he added, “because it goddamn does!”

  Twelve heavily-armed, highly-augmented, and superbly-trained mercenaries sprinted into the maelstrom behind their large metal squadmate. The obscuring carnage presented no obstacle to the augmented-reality displays and bionic eyes of these hand-picked mercenaries. Enhanced muscles lugged weapons of truly ludicrous power, and reinforced bones levered beneath prodigious layers of thick body armor. Like the first drops of a coming rainstorm, return fire from inside the pirate ship began to tap against bulkheads and throw sparks from the deck beneath their feet. A few Privateers took hits, for the most part ignored lest they distract from the task of clearing the docking bay and securing a beachhead within the frigate.

  Like the white-tipped edge of a freighter’s bow wave, the squad fanned out in the wake of Bernadette’s destructive path and fell into cover positions on either flank. A myriad of weapons spat orange fire and blue-white death at the defending pirate crew, pushing the line back into the Lament’s cargo bay. Within the cavernous interior, Bernadette had all the room she needed. The two autocannons raked back and forth, snapping incandescent whips of steel-shredding flechettes across the length and breadth of the cargo bay. Pirates who had hunkered down in defensible positions and behind equipment found themselves forced to cover their heads and let each salvo pass lest they get decapitated.

  “Keep pushing!” Pike ordered. With a precision that bordered upon mechanical, the grizzled commandant sent a forty-millimeter grenade arcing across the bay. It caromed from the back wall to land at the feet of three pirates still hiding behind a piece of material-handling equipment. The subsequent explosion ruined their cover and ended their lives in a ball of orange fire. “Keep ‘em under cover, Bernie!”

  “Roger!” she replied, then added, “We got company coming, boss!”

  Pike switched his HUD to active scanning and swore. “Shit. Big-ass androids on the way, crew. Hunker down and prepare countermeasures.” Pike settled in behind some crates and added, “I hope that little Venusian kid and the DECO puke knew what they were talking about...”

  He did not have long to wait for his answer. Four towering Better Man armatures streaked into the cargo bay and opened fire on Pike’s men. Explosions filled the air with shrapnel and managed to drive even Bernie back a few yards.

  “Cycling!” she shouted to no one in particular. Finding a target, she tagged it for her AI and flushed her power plant with coolant. Once the AI felt confident of a hit, the two-and-a-half-ton converted construction mech shuddered as one of her two Vogt Spikers surged to life. Mounted to her shoulders, the long railguns hummed with a tuneless tone that rattled Bernie’s molars inside the cockpit. Then the right-hand weapon discharged.

  A white-hot lance of ionized plasma marked the path of a foot-long shaft of exotic metal as it traversed the length of the cargo bay at thirty times the speed of sound. The two-kilogram spike hit the alabaster flank of a Better Man and immediately transferred ninety-three million joules of kinetic energy. The outer layers of the metal dart had already been converted to plasma by atmospheric friction, and the remaining solid core sublimated to the same instantly upon impact. Twenty-five-percent of the armature ceased to exist within two milliseconds, and another ten percent was relocated a considerable distance away shortly thereafter. What remained rolled across the deck like a tumbleweed to slam into a bulkhead more than thirty yards from where it had started. The sound of air filling the vacuum left by the spontaneous conversion of so much matter into energy shook the deck plates and rang the cargo bay like the inside of a church bell.

  “Damn!” the feral mercenary chuckled.

  “Keep shooting!” Pike barked.

  “Cycling!” Bernie shouted again. Any Privateer who still had functioning hearing hurled itself to the ground and covered their ears. While not creative machines, the mechanical opposition each possessed a reasonably sophisticated combat AI. Recognizing the scale of this new threat, the remaining armatures poured fire into the giant yellow cyborg with singular intent. The AutoCat was obscured by the impacts of three different types of projectiles, though the armorers of Pike’s Privateers had enhanced most of her exterior surfaces beyond the reach of most light and medium anti-materiel munitions available. From within the fire and fury of the androids’ counterattack the other Vogt Spiker replied with its own voice. A leaping android avoided a direct hit, though even a glancing blow from the deadly projectile removed its left leg and sent the crippled machine into a bulkhead at speed.

  “Cycling!”

  The now-familiar hum of capacitors charging warned everyone as to what followed. The two mobile androids scattered, and Bernie’s next shot flew wide. Ever the professionals, the remaining privateers used this opportunity to fortify themselves and pour their own ordnance into the fleeing androids and what remained of Paulsen’s pirates. The one-legged Better Man died under a blistering fusillade of flechettes and grenades. By the time Bernie’s cry of “Cycling” could be heard once more, Pike’s team had stripped much of the surface armor from the chest of another, destroying its weapon in the process. Despite all the visible damage, losing armor did little to slow the thing down, much to the dismay of Pike’s shooters.

  The squad was just starting to get into a rhythm of suppressing the androids
and pushing them back when a black streak entered the fray and made a beeline for Bernadette. Pike caught it first and sent a long string of beads at the new foe. Then he swore under his breath when nothing happened. He observed several direct hits, and his mag rifle spewed ten-millimeter ceramics at mach twenty. A man in heavy body armor might survive such a burst provided he possessed both augmentations and luck in copious quantities. However, no one should have been able to shrug off the hits as if they had not happened at all.

  “We got a bogey!” Pike bellowed into his team’s channel. A moment later and his organic eye registered what his bionic version could not. “Bogey is confirmed tango known as ‘Bob.’ Fire teams stand by for assignments.”

  The monocle permanently secured to his face tracked his pupils and marked targets and fire teams as he called them out. Then he uploaded the assignments to the tac channel and got back into the fight. Bob danced in and out of Bernadette’s attempts to bludgeon or grab him with speed and agility that beggared belief. The suited android slipped and dived between swipes, then leapt almost ten feet straight up to avoid a vicious back-handed slap. Through his gunsight, Pike watched Bob place something on the right-hand Spiker as he sailed over Bernie’s shoulder to alight nimbly behind her. Pike spoiled the landing with a forty-millimeter grenade to the chest.

  The explosion that followed seemed far too large for the small anti-personnel munition from Pike’s grenade launcher. Bob left his feet and cartwheeled across the cargo bay as fire and smoke billowed from the giant yellow machine behind him.

  “Shit!” he heard Bernie yell into the team channel. “He got a Spiker! Agh! Capacitors ruptured! Damage to my right arm is critical!”

  The big mech spun, and her autocannons roared in defiance of her injury. The stream of flechettes swept across the ascending Bob as he rose to his feet. His speed and agility seemed unaffected by the grenade, and the figure in the suit dodged most of the barrage with ease.

  “Get the big white bastards!” Pike yelled to Bernie. “I’ll tangle this fucker up ‘til you’re done!”

  How he intended to accomplish this feat Pike had not quite sorted out yet. He despaired of scoring reliable hits on the fast-moving android with his rifle, so he topped off his grenade magazine with a snarl. A three-round burst of grenades failed to bring Bob down, but his flight toward Bernie was arrested by the near-misses and the resulting carnage. The enemy went down again, and the commandant tried to keep him there with several more high-explosive projectiles. The shrapnel and concussions did not produce much in the way of visible damage to the target, though his suit suffered much for the trouble. As Bob’s suit deteriorated, Pike’s HUD began to return data on what he was looking at. The android remained committed to attacking the AutoCat, so Pike took a full second to analyze what his scanners picked up. The sophisticated tactical software within his numerous hard body-mods immediately identified comparable hardware for identification. It was an unnecessary step. Smooth black skin became apparent beneath the tatters of Bob’s jacket, and Pike saw the familiar roll of techno-organic muscle fibers flexing under armored skin.

  His response to the new data was both expressive and concise. “Goddammit!” Then he keyed into the general chat channel and broke the news.

  “Heads up, teams. We need Breach on deck NOW!”

  “Working on it,” Manny’s voice replied. “We have a location and are routing Mama Bear and the Rejects that way.”

  “Good. ‘Cause I’m pretty sure I’ve found that missing armature.”

  “You have?”

  “Yeah. It’s called Bob.” He paused to fling another grenade at the enemy. “And it’s kicking our asses at the moment.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  The space outside of Vinland was crowded.

  In the moments leading up to Pike’s attack on the cargo bay, a very tense Lucia Ribiero could not help but notice the unregulated chaos of it all. Vinland possessed very little in the way of traffic control around the station. Ships and shuttles of various configurations maneuvered and ambled about with little to no oversight from any central authority. There were probably all sorts of unwritten rules and protocols that visitors were expected to know. Many did not, and thus accidents occurred with distressing regularity. There existed a popular rumor that Galop pilots were so good because none of the bad ones survived to leave the system. Lucia found herself inclined to believe that now, and she hoped their pilot was one of the good ones.

  The Sailor’s Lament stuck out from the side of one of Vinland’s many docking areas like a bloated tumor. Around it, smaller vessels milled about amongst the shuttles and random flotsam that swarmed the ugly station at any given moment. The ship would never be mistaken for a Galop knorr, as this was a proper frigate armed to the teeth and fit for deep space battle with other large vessels. The distinct shape and large size made for a jarring appearance. The angular gray hull stuck out like a literal sore thumb when compared to the hundreds of knorrs docked in adjoining cradles. Lucia and the Rejects drifted along in a slow approach designed to appear non-threatening to anyone on watch. Several identical shuttles, piloted remotely by Pike’s Privateers made equally nonchalant approaches from unique vectors simultaneously to mask their clandestine encroachment. Lucia watched through a porthole as Paulie’s ship seemed to twist slowly in her direction. Movement and orientation were relative, and the artificial gravity pressing her feet to the deck tricked her brain into seeing the whole station move, rather than acknowledging the gentle spinning of her own craft.

  “Your sappers are in position. Main attack starting now, ma’am,” Patton said. “We good?”

  “I’m good,” she replied. She gave her voice an edge, wanting to send a clear signal to her team. “I won’t lie guys. I’m no soldier and I don’t get how a lot of this works. But once we set foot on that ship I have only one goal. We need to free Roland before they hurt him or take what they want from him. It’s about more than just me. What Roland is, the things he can do, what it would mean if they figured out how he does it?” She turned to look at all of them. “This is way bigger than me rescuing my boyfriend, get it? The nastiest, most evil people in the galaxy are trying to steal something so dangerous just knowing about it is illegal.”

  “You don’t have to spell it out, ma’am,” Winston said. “We’re pros.”

  Mary nodded and drove a magazine into her rifle with a loud click. “You’re all paid up, so we’ll get you where you need to be.”

  Bubba huffed and gave her a toothy grin. “Don’t you worry ‘bout nuthin’ ma’am. We won’t slow you down. Let us make a hole for you. Then just you go ahead and do what you gotta do.”

  “Thanks, guys.” Lucia said it with real warmth. Despite their rough manners, the Rejects were a good team. She suspected that Pike could be very picky when recruiting and it was obvious he had an eye for talent. What she did not tell them was that this really was just about getting Roland back. She admitted it was selfish, but she ultimately just wanted Roland back and feared for his safety. She burned with shame at how easy it was to place her own needs before the greater good of the galaxy. In this case the good of the galaxy dovetailed with her own selfish desires, so she got away with it this time.

  A red light near the hatch came to life and washed the interior with an ominous crimson glow. “Sixty seconds,” Patton said.

  Lucia took in a deep breath, filling her lungs over four long seconds. Then she released the air in a slow exhalation, dragging this part out as long as she could. Then she did it again. After her fourth cycle of combat breathing, the red light began to blink.

  “Saddle up,” Patton called it. “Bernie’s knockin’ on the door!”

  The ship lurched as it pulled alongside the Sailor’s Lament, and a loud banging sound reverberated through the crew compartment as docking clamps seized the side of the much larger vessel.

  “Time to get paid,” Bubba chuckled, and the light turned green.

  The hatch in their shuttle slid to
the side, revealing the dirty gray exterior of the pirate ship. They had chosen to infiltrate a maintenance hatch in the underbelly where they assumed the crew compartments would be found. They were relying on the chaos of Vinland’s air traffic to hide them, and the distraction of a more frontal assault from the station to let them get close. Bubba squared himself in the doorway and braced his machine guns for firing while a technician began to work on the access panel. They had all agreed to give the man thirty seconds to try unlocking the hatch before just blowing the door off its glides. Lucia regretted this instantly. Thirty seconds may as well have been an eternity with her screaming anxieties and the thousand clutching terrors peeling the edges away from her tenuous exterior calm. With a soft beep and a sad whoosh, the maintenance hatch opened and Bubba Riley burst through it half an eyeblink later. Lucia was relegated to bringing up the rear, and she felt deeply conflicted about this. She wanted to run, to sprint and search for Roland without the hassle of being attached to a squad of mercenaries. Their slavish adherence to measured and methodical tactics meant that while swift, the boarding of this ship would proceed at a far slower pace than the hyperkinetic woman might have accomplished without them. On the other hand, she was rather intelligent and accepted that those same practices made the Privateers very good at this sort of thing.

  She was the tenth person through the hatch and the fighting had already begun by the time she made her way to the front. The roar of Riley’s guns, unmistakable for the volume and quantity of the carnage, met her like a stiff wind to the face. She found the giant sweeping a long corridor with a flaming hail of beads. The crisscrossing lines of burning ceramic spheres washed the decks clear of opposition and filled the space with a cloying acrid smoke that stank of ozone.