He left the lad to his business and returned to the mess to refill his coffee. This time, Paul checked the corridor before stepping out. He rounded the corner and nodded to the guards at the bridge portal.
As he entered the bridge, his greeting to Captain Hale dying before he could utter a single syllable. The entire bridge crew were intently focused. Nobody spoke above a whisper.
Paul suddenly wished he hadn’t brought a coffee onto the bridge. He had nowhere to put the magnetized mug so he had to stand there holding the damned thing like some foppish Imperial aristo.
He moved closer to Hale and Julia, who were both standing in the central tactical-holo. The fleet seemed, at first glance, to have doubled.
Then he realized that half the ships were of Gray manufacture.
Julia raised an amused eyebrow at his mug. “It seems we’re not the only ones to think the Goat’s Horn is a good place to hide an ambush.” Despite the whispering crew, she spoke in a normal voice.
“We were practically in their midst before we detected them,” Hale added, following his commodore’s example and speaking in a normal, unconcerned voice. “By radio intercept, I might add. They’re using unfocused transmissions to keep track of each other in this soup.”
“So they probably haven’t seen us yet?” Paul asked, taking care not to overdo it by speaking too loudly.
The crew relied on their captain and commodore to set the tone. If they were tense and alarmed, the crew would become jittery and their performance would suffer. If the example set wasn’t believable, the effect would be the opposite of what was intended.
“If they had,” Julia pointed out, “we’d be seeing a lot more excitement right now.”
“Sure enough,” Paul agreed, frowning at the icons. “I wonder what sort of excitement they’re actually expecting.”
“It is odd,” Julia chewed at the inside of her lip, “sitting here, waiting to ambush their own shipping lanes. We should hear back from the scout shuttles any time now. We sent them to see what might be out there, beyond the gas.”
“Well, this is certainly convenient for us,” Paul muttered. “We did want to seize Gray ships, after all. If they’re interested in ambushing Gray shipping, let’s school them on how it’s done.”
“And as soon as we know there isn’t a monstrous fleet waiting out there to jump us,” Hale explained, “we’ll be launching our boarding parties.”
“Speaking of which,” Julia nodded at his coffee. “Finish that and let’s get down to the forward shuttle bay. We’re going in with the boarding parties.” She watched him drain the mug.
“What’s your finely honed cop instinct telling you about Rodrigues and Armstead?” she asked.
Paul thought for a moment. “I think they’re glad to finally find an officer they can serve without having to compromise their honor.”
“Do you know if they’re qualified for inter-ship suit jumps?”
Everything that involved the 538 had been stored in his head during the Irricana case. He checked the training records. “Both had the course but have only five training jumps recorded. Nothing under combat conditions.”
“There’s a first for everything,” she asserted. “I’ll take Armstead, you take Rodrigues. We’ll each do a shuttle launch on one of the cruisers and board through the ventral escape trunks in their engineering sections. Those cruisers are just too big to count on getting to the self-destruct before the Grays can set it off.”
“So… you and I will be deactivating the self-destruct linkages while our two kidnapping specialists stand behind us with heavy weapons?” he asked cheerfully. “What could possibly go wrong?”
“We have to trust them sooner or later,” she replied. “This way they can work on killing the Gray engineers while we get an immediate start on keeping our prizes in one piece.”
She nodded at the holo icons. “Our allies have the technical data and they’ve seen the housing where it sat in this ship. They should be able to handle the destroyers and frigates just fine.
“Those two cruisers, however, need a coordinated assault or the teams will never reach the self-destructs in time.”
“Going to be cramped,” he advised, “trying to do a shuttle throw on their engineering trunks with boarding parties packed in with us.”
She nodded. “That’s why the boarding parties will be on separate shuttles. One from the Ava Klum and the other will be led by Ava Klum.”
“Which one will I…”
“I’ll be on your sister’s cruiser,” Julia cut him off. “You’ve gotta be able to concentrate on the device without wondering if you’re sister could be saved by your heavily armored intervention.”
“And you can do that?” he asked, a little non-plussed.
“Better than you, I reckon,” Hale offered with a grin. “I know, sort of a private conversation but, if you’re gonna have it right here in front of me, I’m gonna join in.”
He nodded at Julia. “She’s better able to prioritize the nuke because she owes your sister money.” He tilted his head, giving Julia a little shrug.
“No need to get embarrassed,” he told her. “Hell, you posted a maintenance bond within a day of landing on Roanoke. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out where you got the funds.”
“So you’re saying the entire planet knows about me mooching off Paul’s sister?” She grimaced. “Thanks, Edward, I feel so much better.”
“Well, you should,” he insisted. “Ava Klum is damn near a warrior goddess on Roanoke. If she helped you set up our little fleet, folks won’t care that her brother is…” He looked at Paul with a mild frown. “… whatever the hell he is to you personally. They’ll only care that the great one herself has deemed you worthy of her support.
“If you were a terrible leader, no amount of sex with her brother would induce her to loan you funds because then the men and women you might get killed would be on Ava’s hands.”
Julia felt the heat draining from her ears, but she could see Paul’s face now growing red.
“When I went down to Ravenna with those pamphlets, everybody was already primed to believe the tales of your exploits. If Ava Klum was willing to lend you her support, then you were already a good leader in their eyes.”
“We have contact with one of the scouts,” the communications officer announced. “All’s quiet beyond the cloud.”
Julia felt slightly better about the loan, but she was still glad of the chance to end the conversation and get into a fight. She looked at Hale. “Give us one centi-day to make position and then launch the assault, fleet-wide.”
They went straight to Julia’s cabin to get their armor.
The HMA suit was starting to feel familiar now that Paul could no longer count on returning to his dragoon armor. The heavy armor was still mobile, more mobile than wearing no armor, actually. It just didn’t have the enhanced mobility of the lighter dragoon suit.
Ava was thrilled to have the dragoon armor so Paul would have to get used to the slightly reduced speed and maneuverability. He could still flank enemy strongpoints, just not as quickly.
He and Julia had fallen into a rhythm of attack where she went straight at the enemy in the heavy armor, and he used his speed and agility to hit them from an unexpected angle while they were focused on the nearly impenetrable target to their front. The tactic was still viable, but the timing would be different.
They stepped into the open feet of the HMA suits and stood still while the suit’s plates snapped into place. Paul retracted his helmet just after Julia and followed her quick series of stretches to calibrate the limbs before heading to the launch bay.
Marines usually wore their suits while their ship was on a tactical footing. It was standard corps operating procedure, protecting the wearer in the event of catastrophic hull failure and ensuring they were ready to repel boarders.
On a Navy ship, the Marines aboard suited up to serve as the quick-reaction force and, on ships belonging to the Corps, even the bridg
e crew went into battle in HMA.
Even if a Marine vessel were knocked out, the enemy would still have to deal with hundreds of hostile, armed personnel in heavy armor who would now be looking for a new ship to call their own.
On a privateer, where nobody else had the option of wearing combat armor, they’d elected to keep the suits in Julia’s quarters. It would have been bad for morale if they didn’t assume the same level of risk as the rest of the crew.
“Ready?” Julia asked him.
He nodded. “Let’s go!”
Clearing House
“How many of these jumps have you made?” Rodrigues asked.
“Jumped onto two cruisers and one carrier so far,” Paul replied, reaching up to fend off a cable tray on the shuttle’s ceiling. “Mostly successful.”
“Mostly?”
Paul positioned himself against the forward crew bulkhead before answering. “The first cruiser blew up but we were already aboard the carrier by then. We managed to kill everybody on board before the self-destruct could be activated. Now we know where to go and what to do.”
He decided it would be better not to mention that some of those he’d killed aboard the Gray ships had been Marines from the 538. Telling a man you killed some of his buddies wasn’t a wise course of action when you were about to entrust your own life into his hands.
Rodrigues was no fool, however. “Some of our boys were on those ships,” he said. “Goddamned Kinsey and Seneca. I’d like a chance to strangle Kinsey, one of these days.”
Either his anger was in the right place, or he was still putting on the act for Paul, hoping to get back to Kinsey for further orders. One way or the other, he figured he could rely on Rodrigues for now.
The amber light above the rear ramp began to blink.
“Maybe you’ll get your chance.” Paul closed up his helmet and grabbed a storage bin to his right.
His knees flexed as the shuttle altered course slightly and adjusted acceleration. That told him the inertial dampening was already shut down in the small passenger compartment. When the small craft slowed, Paul and Rodrigues would continue on at their current course and speed, passing out of the shuttle and continuing on to the impossibly small target on the hull of the enemy cruiser.
Before he’d even finished noticing the loss of inertial dampening, the two of them were moving slowly toward the open boarding ramp. As soon as they were clear, the shuttle stopped and turned back for the Ava Klum.
The cruiser gradually became visible through the dense gas and it was an eternity before they could be sure they were even approaching the massive ship from the correct angle. Paul finally saw enough landmarks on the ship to identify their target and he used his maneuvering thrusters to slip slightly ahead of Rodrigues.
He led the way in, letting the automated systems calculate the optimum moment to start the retarding burn. Though he knew it would come, it didn’t help his stress levels as the enemy hull seemed to race toward him.
When the burn finally initiated, he had a momentary fear that it was horribly miss-timed and he was about to be crushed by his own momentum and weight. When he opened his eyes, he was floating two meters away from the surface and Rodrigues was almost within arm’s reach.
He took a deep breath and initiated a short burst to come within touching distance of the hull, grabbing one of the ubiquitous maintenance rails that allowed engineering crewmen to get around on the outside.
He lurched a bit as Rodrigues bumped into him from behind, but he kept his grip on the rail and began pulling his way along to the escape trunks. He waited until his partner was in place over another trunk and both opened the exterior access hatches simultaneously. If the panels were alarmed, they wanted to maximize their chances of both getting in at the same time.
Both trunk doors snapped out of the way with no audible sound to the two invaders. They each reached in with small arc units to temporarily weld the outer doors in the open position before floating inside.
Ignoring a Gray face that had suddenly appeared in the inspection window, Paul tore an inner access panel clear off the trunk wall and reached inside to find the lever that activated the hydraulic ram for the inner door.
Rather than trying to convince the ship’s systems that it was alright to open an inner trunk door when the exterior door was still open, they’d decided to cut out the middle man. A few moments looking at the inner workings of the same doors on the Ava Klum had shown that, if you know what to look for, the doors were mindlessly simple to open directly.
The inner door snapped open with a muffled crash that Paul could just barely hear, seeing as the back of his suit was now braced against the wall of the narrow trunk. A rush of air carried miscellaneous objects past him as he pushed with arms and legs to hold his heavy form against the wall of the escape trunk.
He was nearly knocked loose when a Gray crewman slammed into his arms. The doomed creature tried to climb back inside but, even a Human would have found it nearly impossible. The Gray clones were optimised for the use of interfaces and the consumption of minimal resources. Heavy physical work was not their strong suit.
The flow was suddenly cut in half and Paul assumed Rodrigues had succeeded in opening the second trunk door. The Gray in his arms quickly lost consciousness and with a little movement of his arms, Paul was able to shed the wind-catching burden.
The last of the doors to main engineering must have closed in response to the pressure drop and the flow came to a quick end. Paul climbed out of the trunk and into the familiar-looking compartment. He lumbered over to the self-destruct mechanism and started working.
He started by breaking the link to the remote panels. Any Grays who wanted to set the device off would have to come down here to the pedestal itself. One by one, he deactivated the backup firing circuits that triggered if anyone tried to disconnect the device from the ship.
Rodrigues circled the room, looking through the inspection window of each door in turn. On his third circuit he took up a position in front of the main entry and pulled his weapon free.
The airlock to the main door’s left cycled open and four armed and suited Grays burst out, assault rifles blazing.
Rodrigues took his time, ignoring the small caliber rounds that bounced off his composite armor plates. He fired three shots, and four Grays were down, writhing as their suits lost atmosphere through the new holes.
He dialed down the weapon’s propellant settings. With two propellant discs, he’d caused some damage to a few secondary systems behind his targets, and it was also why one of his shots had possessed enough kinetic energy to pass through two Grays.
Paul appeared at his side, weapon at the ready. The airlock opened again and four more Grays were dispatched. The readout in their heads-up displays indicated the compartment was back to full atmospheric pressure, so Paul walked over to the main door and obligingly opened it for the fifteen or so armed Grays who were waiting in orderly line for the airlock.
He cut the startled group down with a few controlled bursts and stepped back inside, retracting his helmet. “Engineering secure,” he announced over one of the suit’s short-range channels.
Rodrigues retracted his own helmet. “Well, that was simple enough,” he said in quiet wonder. “Don’t know why they made such a fuss at Beaufort.”
“Yeah, well, try doing it against a species that takes infantry combat seriously,” Paul answered mildly. “Or one of the Gray ships that has Marines on it.”
“Yeah.” Rodrigues shook his head. “Most ships this near to Roanokan space have a few of our boys guarding engineering and the bridge.” He scratched at the side of his head. “Maybe these fellas are Purists.”
He saw the question in Paul’s features. “The General didn’t tell you yet? We talked about it on the way out here. It was just a rumor, or so I thought, but there’s supposed to be a fairly large faction among the Grays that want total isolation. No Humans for shipboard defense and certainly no Human test subjects for their gene
tics program.”
“Purists, huh?” Paul checked his weapon. “I knew you’d be more useful alive than dead!”
“Are you kidding me?” Rodrigues asked, filled with mock outrage. “I held that door like a boss! An endless stream of lightly armed Grays in EVA suits and what did I have to protect you with? Nothing but Heavy Marine Armor and a selective-fire caseless assault rifle! I tell you it was touch and go the whole way…”
Paul closed his helmet to cut off the ironic bragging. He re-opened the door to the main companionway and waved for the other man to stay. “Hold this compartment until you’re relieved… by Humans.” He ordered over the short-range system.
He made his way to the bridge to see how the boarding team from the Ava Klum was making out.
Now it’s Personal
Julia braced her feet on the opposite side of the escape trunk and pulled on the hydraulic actuator. She fought her way up against the windstorm and climbed out onto the deck. Grays were dangling sideways from stanchions and railings all around the space.
They’d lose their grip as they passed out and their light bodies would be swept out into the cold blackness, but it wouldn’t be quick enough for Julia.
Though minimal, there was still a chance that someone in the bridge would get suspicious and trigger a self-destruct based on the pressure loss alone, assuming a hostile presence. She leaned into the howling wind and stumped over to the self-destruct pedestal.
There were two enemy crewmen clinging to the rail circling the pedestal and she reached down to slip their hands loose, sending them skidding across the deck toward the opening. The first went through more or less cleanly but the second bounced off the deck and slammed into the hatch frame.
The second Gray, at least, was probably unconscious or even dead by the time he was spewed out of the escape trunk.
Julia turned to the nuclear device, starting with the conduits responsible for remote detonation. She could see, out of the corner of her eye, a party of Grays racing toward the forward entry door to the compartment. While they were still forty meters away, the heavy panels slammed shut to preserve the atmosphere in the rest of the vessel.
Beyond the Rim (Rebels and Patriots Book 2) Page 21
