by Ken Britz
“Don’t touch the hull!” he barked, and Estaban jerked her hand away.
Cowan acknowledged with a gesture.
“If she was in subspace recently, she’s shedding dark energy. It’s lethal to organics.”
“Aye, sir,” Estaban said. “I just thought of something, ma’am. I think the ’locks are shrouded. If they have dark energy…”
“Right. We won’t get in that way,” Cowan said. “Let’s recon another way in.” She gestured for them to follow her.
Mitchum nodded and floated after, heading back along the hull and up to where the enemy was impact welded to Venger. Tiny debris pattered against his helmet as they moved around larger. He identified a large jagged hole in the enemy ship by the flickering lights within the inky black itself. “There,” he said, but Cowan didn’t stop—she’d drifted outside the proximity band range. He switched to laser line of sight.
“There,” he repeated.
Cowan waved acknowledgment and changed course. He followed her in, edging into the crease, avoiding the outer hull. They landed on the inner hull, boots and gloves gripping. Liquid drops and in crystalline forms floated around them. Mitchum hoped no one thought to fire the thrusters. The space got tighter, but it also got brighter. Venger must’ve breached the inner hull. His EVA pack got hung up on a jumble of wires and piping and had to cut himself free.
Cowan cleared the inner hull and waved at him impatiently. He joined her inside a compartment near the forward part of the ship, full of empty racks and hatches and components. They’d found a torpedo bay. Cowan raised her rifle, and Mitchum drew his pistol. Estaban came up behind them, her own rifle at the ready. In the red vacuum lights, bright screens cut the gloom blinking ‘no signal.’ It was foreign, strange, yet familiar in a human way to Mitchum, like being in an alternate reality version of a GLF ship. These two fleets had only a decasolyar to diverge—not a long time in military terms, but space and subspace fleets were different enough to be pronounced.
“Pack,” Cowan motioned for him to remove her pack. EVA packs had six latches and were difficult for the wearer to manage. Mitchum slapped the latches then presented his back to her, and she returned the favor. He unlatched Esteban and they stashed the packs against a bulkhead, where they adhered, ready for reuse. They might need them on the way out. Mitchum checked his chronometer. It had been ten minutes since they left Venger’s ’lock. They had twenty minutes, maybe.
They checked the compartment hatch—it was sealed by pressure. This part of the ship still had atmosphere. They would have to use a j-tube to get inside. Where the hell is it? Mitchum checked the internal atmosphere display as Cowan investigated.
“Here is it,” Cowan said. “It’s not locked.”
“I’ll go first,” he said. “Pistol is good in confined spaces.”
“Hustle.”
Mitchum pulled himself into the j-tube and shut the hatch. It filled with air and the inner hatch popped open. He eased out, checking for any nearby crew then bracing himself against the bulkhead and kicking the inner hatch shut. He felt thumping through the bulkhead and pulled himself around a stanchion just before gouts of bulkhead superheated by a salvo of pulse bolt slugs splashed him. Stealing a glimpse down the corridor/shaft, he took the opportunity to send some ordnance to the welcoming party.
The hatch cycled and Cowan floated out. His comms reconnected. “We’ve got company!” he told her.
Cowan waved and pushed off from the closing hatch, laser fire cooking the wall in her wake. She caught a stanchion, braced herself, and fired a puck grenade down the corridor. An answering thump was accompanied by a pressure wave that rippled through Mitchum’s suit. Cowan fired white bolts after her grenade and pushed off across the corridor into another compartment, trailed by laser fire. Mitchum returned fire and jumped free, sailing into the compartment behind her. Something spun past the hatch, but it was hard to tell what, between the gunfight and his helmet’s obstructed view.
The shooting stopped, leaving Mitchum’s ears ringing. He shook his head and pulled himself to the deck, attaching his mag boots. Cowan peered around the doorframe and looked up the main shaft. Mitchum checked high and low. Two bodies floated below them, toward the central axis of the ship. No, not two bodies, two halves of one person, hit by the grenade, Mitchum guessed. An arm and gun floated free, cartwheeling slowly. A burst of pulse bolts hit the shaft walls, burning alloy. Mitchum leaned back, the image of the body seared in his retinas. Bodies laid at the altar of war, he thought, fighting a sudden urge to throw up. One suit puncture didn’t kill me, but I can still die in space.
The hatch opened and Estaban floated out, rifle leading. She saw the firefight through the port.
Something vibrated the soles of his boots and up through the back of his suit.
“What’s that?” Cowan asked.
“Hell if I know. Feels like something is moving. Hydraulics or a mechanical winch, probably.”
“Dammit, I did not want to fight compartment to compartment,” Cowan said, checking the charge and slug levels on her pulse rifle.
“Christ, you’re good in a firefight,” Mitchum said.
“Her dad was a space marine,” Estaban said, checking the shaft.
Mitchum gaped at her.
“She told me,” Estaban said.
“I didn’t know that,” Mitchum said.
“The XO doesn’t go around telling her life story,” Cowan replied.
“I feel left out.” A shot slagged something above them, pouring more smoke into the compartment. The corridor lights blinked to amber. Atmosphere leak somewhere, Mitchum noted. Probably from the pulse bolts. High temp slugs didn’t ricochet, but burned into the hull. Enough hot punches like that and you’ll compromise something.
“I’ll cover, you hop down to the next level,” Cowan said in a marine tone of command.
“You know just because your father was a space marine doesn’t mean you are,” Mitchum said.
“That’s why you go first,” Cowan replied.
“I’ll go,” Estaban said, hefting her rifle.
“No, I got it, Boats.” Mitchum checked his pistol’s clip, gave an acknowledging wave, and pushed off the bulkhead and down toward the deck on the opposite side of the shaft. Cowan and Estaban fired down the main shaft of the ship, careful not to hit him as his mag boots clicked in the opposite deck, a little too close to the shaft itself. He grabbed onto a handle and pulled himself away from the shaft, but pulse bolts streamed at him and he couldn’t move his mag boots fast enough.
His leg jerked and he was in agony. His suit reacted, compressing the leg with the gaping hole, the inner lining sealing the wound. Mitchum almost let go of his pistol, and another shot sent him into the bulkhead away from the shaft. His suit’s leg—The left one, dummy, he thought wildly and almost laughed—was burned through. He was dizzy from the pain. He noticed they’d shot him in the shoulder too, just a graze. That’s what knocked him away, he realized.
His suit finished emergency sealing and shot an oxygen-rich air mix into the system, but not before he’d tasted the bite of near vacuum. Medical alerts and alarms flashed in his helmet and it administered a painkiller. He refused the relaxant; he needed to be alert. He moved away from where he was, in case the attacker had a bead on his position.
“Javy!” Cowan called.
“God! I’m okay! I mean I’ve been shot, but I’m not dead.” The biodelivered painkiller hit his bloodstream. He sweated and took a sip of water. His head was a little fuzzy..
There was another laser pulse and Cowan pushed back from her exposed position. Her helmet had been fogged by the shot. “Damn!” She had to wait until the nano-coating shed itself, clearing her view. She could retract and extend her helmet, which would refresh the visor membrane, but it was tricky to do and exposed her to vacuum.
Estaban returned fire.
Mitchum searched his mind for something to distract him from the pain and grasped at a recent memory. There were doors near t
he main shaft where they came out, in the forward portion, just aft of the torpedo bays. In standard fleet vessels, torpedo bays were equipped with a manufacturing and loading component. On subspace ships, they had special loading launchers for their attack fins. Those retracted into the hull. If this ship was anything like the GLF Fleet….
“I know what that hydraulic sound was,” Mitchum panted.
“Getting shot give you an epiphany?” Cowan said irritably and Mitchum wondered if it finally hit home that boarding a ship was as much a death sentence as getting time-sliced in an impossible ship maneuver.
“Attack fin.” Mitchum yelped, a pulse bolt warping the handhold next to his head as it superheated the alloy.
“Mm,” Cowan said, firing down the shaft. She leaned back, rifle raised. “I think I got him. Hard to tell.”
“Checking,” Estaban said, scanning with her rifle optics.
“Where’re the fins?” Mitchum asked.
“Aft of torpedo and weapon machine bays, I’d guess. They have launchers that can only be loaded while they occupy the same dimensional space.” Estaban said. Cowan and Mitchum stared at her. “Know thy enemy,” Estaban said smugly.
“Look at you, Boats,” Cowan smiled. “If the fin is already loaded…” Cowan was thinking out loud. “We’re too far from the shipyard orbital.”
Mitchum shook his head in his helmet. “We don’t know what’s in the launcher bay. Could be torpedoes, could be shrouded nukes, could be rocks or high-density bullets. All you need is velocity and a way to overcome the orbital defenses. Maybe it’s a tiny version of the ship with a counter weapons payload.”
“Okay, now you’re being silly.”
“Little bit. Might be the painkiller.” Mitchum opened a nearby screen, but it wouldn’t accept his spacesuit’s local connection request. He tapped manually, but there was little information—but he had the name of the ship now. Kuro Hai.
It’s just another shark, he reminded himself. He got his suit to synchronize with the local PA circuit.
“Repel boarders,” the ship’s automated voice repeated, and the ship jolted again, trying to wrench itself free of the corvette.
“That works,” Mitchum said, pushing himself against the bulkhead. He brought up a generic schematic of the ship that showed one fin deployed, which made the ship’s shark moniker true-to-life.
“What?” Cowan said. She wiped away damaged visor skin, clearing her vision.
“Fin access is toward the center of the ship.” He motioned down the shaft.
“How far?” Cowan asked, peeking over. Pulse bolts slagged the railing. She ducked, grabbing another handhold. “No, they’re still there.”
“Two decks, I guess. Hard to tell. I can’t get much data,” Mitchum said.
“Let’s start there. The bridge might not be all that far.”
“It’ll probably be locked down,” Estaban said. “Ready?”
Cowan motioned that she was.
Estaban fired a puck grenade down the shaft. It ricocheted off the bulkhead, clattering its way down. There was a flash, and the plating around Mitchum vibrated. “Go!” Cowan said.
Mitchum kicked off with his good leg and flew down the central corridor, grabbed the ladder and swung up. He grunted in pain when the mag boot of his injured leg pulled him to the bulkhead. He turned off the electromagnets and pulled himself along the wall, checking farther down the shaft. There were black spacesuits in the distance, but this deck was tall. Hatches were to port and starboard. Both had red lock light indicators, but the port one flickered orange. The ship’s hull screeched and groaned. Mitchum saw pulse bolts and weapons fire, but not directed at them. “Looks like the after team is in.”
Cowan swam past him, pulse rifle leading until she made it to the deck below him. He went down after her, Estaban took the rear, keeping her rifle trained behind them. Mitchum’s leg felt leaden and tingled like it was badly asleep. “Which one is it?” Cowan asked.
“It’s the orange pulse. That one is deployed,” Mitchum and Estaban covered the central corridor while Cowan swam to it.
More pulses and slugs pinged around Mitchum, and he backed away instinctively. These subspacers were aggressive! His suit picked up a connection request. He ignored it, firing down the shaft. Estaban leaned over and shot one of the enemy.
Mitchum’s suit pinged again. What the hell? He accepted the request.
“This is Dr. Lynn Lin of Kuro,” a woman said. “Please don’t shoot. I’m in medical white. Do you need assistance?”
“Kind of busy shooting your crew,” Mitchum growled.
“I can get them to stop. I need your help.”
“Stop firing and give me a signal,” Mitchum said. It might be a ruse, but only one way to find out. He peeked down the shaft. The firing stopped, and a white-gloved hand appeared, then a helmeted head with a soft light, glowing medical blue.
“What’s up?” Cowan asked.
“Their flight surgeon wants to help me.”
“That’s a good one,” Cowan said, started to examine the fin controls. “This fin is fully loaded. We won’t be able to get into it while it’s deployed.”
“We could call Venger,” Mitchum said. “We can get them to shoot the fin off the ship.”
“I’d be willing to bet it’s on the far side of the ship. The only way to hit it would be to either punch through the ship—which I hope they don’t do—or get unstuck and shoot the hell out of it.”
“They could blow it off with a torpedo,” Estaban suggested.
“If it comes down to it, Venger may have to. I can’t get a connection. Internal systems are probably jamming us. That’s what we’d do.”
The flight surgeon pulled herself up to him, a small army of silver medical bots swarming after her. Behind them, black space-suited subspacers with their weapons lowered or holstered. He kept his pistol out of sight but didn’t stow it. Two of them floated up behind Dr. Lin, carrying something between them. Mitchum recognized it as an arc cutter—used to slice through bulkheads. He frowned. It didn’t make for a good weapon because its energy output was focused and small, but they could use the power cell as an explosive if they wanted to badly enough.
“Stop,” he ordered.
“These are hull technicians,” Dr. Lin explained. “I need them to work.”
“You’ll have to explain. By yourself,” Mitchum said.
Dr. Lin gestured to the two hull technicians to wait and she stopped next to him. Her visor was clear, her round and kindly face regarding him with gentle concern. She was unarmed.
“The controls are unresponsive from here,” Cowan said to Mitchum, eyeing the doctor.
“Ship controls are slaved to the fin when it’s deployed,” Dr. Lin explained, successfully establishing a connection with Cowan. She started examining Mitchum’s leg. Mitchum kept his eyes on the hull technicians.
“So the ship is being controlled from the fin?” Cowan asked.
“Yes.”
“We could sever the controls. I could overload my pulse rifle. The remaining charge and grenades should be sufficient…”
“I have a better idea, if you don’t mind,” Dr. Lin said. “That’s the port fin. If we could access the starboard fin, we could take control of the ship from there and lock out the port fin.”
“You have access to the starboard fin?” Cowan said.
“I don’t have the access codes.”
“That’s why you brought the hull technicians and the arc cutter,” Mitchum said, making the connection.
“Yes. I want to cut the lock out of the starboard fin hatch.”
“Are you sure you’re a flight surgeon?” Estaban asked.
“I’ve been on N-boats my whole career. In fact, I’m sure I’ve served with some of your personnel.” Dr. Lin smiled, looking like a girl despite the gray strands framing her face.
“Do you know how to lock out the controls?” Cowan flicked her eyes to her chronometer. “And disable the self-destruct?”
“Thanks,” Mitchum said. “Why are you trying to stop—who’s in the port fin? The captain?”
“No,” Dr. Lin said. “The proconsul and executive officer are in the port fin. They’re trying to destroy the shipyard orbital.”
“But isn’t that your mission?”
“It’s not my mission,” she said. “My mission is in the starboard fin.”
“XO?” Mitchum asked Cowan. “What do you think?”
“We don’t have a lot of time. An hour, maybe.”
“It should take five, ten minutes to cut through the hatch,” Dr. Lin said.
“I can get it down to four,” Mitchum said, waving the hull technicians up.
The hatch was fleet standard and he understood why they thought it would take some time to cut through the lock. He got to work with the two hull technicians—Tran and Ash—to set the laser, then darkened his faceplate to maximum opacity and powered up. The trick was to not cut through the hinge or the lock, but to cut through the center of the hatch itself. It was strong alloy, but not so thick and could be cut quickly if they set the laser to pulse on the right frequency. A trick he learned from Anders.
He explained this to the hull techs, who told him the alloy used in the hatch—dense, but the design was the same. Not a large change from standard design.
They made short work of it.
It was when they shut the arc laser down that he noticed a vibration. It had to be drive was active.
“They’ve brought the impeller online,” Dr. Lin and Mitchum said at the same time.
