“Command Squad!” Trace yelled. “Our ride is here, pull back! Pull back now!” As Tif hit the grapples very hard from below, giant hydraulic rams crashing and flexing about them as the deck heaved. Alarm sirens howled, emergency lighting flashed and above in neighbouring sections, Erik heard decompression doors slamming closed as the automated emergency voice declared a hull breach. Erik was pretty sure Tif hadn’t done it — something was breaching midships further up.
Arime skidded down the ladder so hard that with his suit’s combat settings, he nearly bent the rail. He hit the deck with a crash as Erik extended the access tube as fast as it would go. “They’re cutting through above!” Arime declared, stomping across.
“Who’s cutting through above?” the first civvie crewman asked.
“Hacksaws,” stammered one of the two new arrivals. “They got the bridge… they… I saw them cutting steel. Blood everywhere, I… I think everyone’s dead up there…”
Erik had never seen an airlock access tube extend more slowly in his life. Above him, Trace’s squad were crashing in from the crew cylinder airlock, and scrambling up ladders to get to higher levels and compartments. Even now, he heard a new shriek of cutting steel, and again the deck shook.
“They’re cutting through from above!” Corporal Rael yelled. “Either we get out soon or they’ll be on us!”
“One minute!” Erik yelled his best guess.
“We’re not going to get a minute!”
“Then make one!” The access tube made contact from below… ‘warning’, the docking system told him — unfamiliar contact, suggest try again? Erik hit the override with feeling, and saw the controls squawk as PH-4’s more aggressive docking system grabbed it from below. Erik overrode several abort attempts… then ducked as fire ripped through the main airlock, hitting the walls above. Thunder in reply, as a Koshaim answered — Trace couldn’t close the airlock from the crew cylinder, he realised, because then she couldn’t shoot through it. Koshaim-20s would deter approaching hacksaws far more than flimsy airlock doors.
More shrieking from above, much closer now, then a huge explosion as a drone blew an obstacle out of the way. “Here they come!” Rael yelled. And Erik heard a distant clattering, like insects’ footsteps amplified many times over. Steel footsteps, from something big, rattling over the hull.
Something hit the bulkheads above with an ear-splitting crash, and shrapnel tore neighbouring cargo nets. Private Rolonde put herself squarely over Erik for cover… and Erik saw a big armoured suit crawling up the access from below. The inner hatch opened, and an armoured marine stuck his head through — Sergeant Ong, Erik recognised through the visor, Third Squad, Echo Platoon.
One of the civvies scrambled for the hatch, and Ong grabbed him by the throat. “Wait your turn! LC, go!”
Erik went, grabbed the rails and slid feet first down the vertical drop, as others yelled above him and a loud scraping hiss announced that Rolonde was coming down immediately after and he’d better vacate the access fast. His boots hit bottom and he did, as Rolonde crashed down behind him. Erik ducked up to lower deck access, jumped down the step, then passed where Private Cowell was stationed at the rear of the cockpit, yelling up to Tif and Ensign Lee where he could visually see people coming aboard.
“I’m strapping in behind you guys!” Erik informed the pilots as he took one of the two observer chairs. He was a pretty fair shuttle pilot himself, as were most warship pilots, and in Heuron he’d had to take over this exact same shuttle when its pilot, Lieutenant Toguchi, had been killed in the same seat Tif now occupied. “We have hacksaws in the ship! Just remember they can operate outside spaceships as well as inside, they don’t mind a vacuum!”
“God damn it,” Lee muttered. Erik couldn’t see the pilots’ faces, only the backs of their helmets — Tif in the rear pilot’s seat, Lee in the forward seat lower down. Tif echoed something equally unhappy in her native tongue.
“Hatch sealing!” Cowell yelled behind.
“Strap in Private!” Lee replied. “We’re leaving hard!”
“Don’t wait for hold secure!” Erik echoed. “Just go on retrieval!”
“Good,” Tif agreed, a gloved hand hovering on the release.
“Hatch sealed, retrieval complete…” and Cowell barely had time to finish the sentence before Tif detached with a crash and lurch into zero-G, then hit main thrust and slammed everyone back. And hit something, spinning sideways as Tif snarled in alarm.
“Damage left stabiliser!” Lee announced. “More damage… dammit, we’ve got a passenger!” As the upper hatch camera swung back far enough to show the horrifying spider-shape clutching the left rear stabiliser with steely legs.
Tif said something that could only be a kuhsi obscenity, cut mains and hit laterals hard. The shuttle spun sideways, and kept spinning, the starfield moving faster and faster, a flash as Joma Station’s massive round bulk entered and left their vision. The Gs built fast, and Erik fought to hold his head back on the chair, but it was impossible. With the extra weight of his helmet, the pain on his neck became excruciating, vision blurring as blood rushed to his head and chair restraints cut off circulation.
And then slowly eased, as Tif hit opposite stabilisers, Erik gasping as the pressure faded. “There he is!” Lee said triumphantly. “Got him at 140! Nice work Tif, he just flew right off.” Which would happen, Erik supposed, if you spun a shuttle on its mid-axis at negative 8-Gs. The pilots’ rule of thumb was that two negatives felt as bad as three regular-G. Negative-8 was a first even for him.
“Guns!” Tif said plaintively as she levelled them out facing the tumbling silver speck. “Guns! Kiw!”
“Guns, kill,” Lee agreed, and forward cannon thundered. The silver speck broke into tumbling fragments.
“Good kiw,” said Tif, and slammed them back with another burst of thrust. They went sideways, accelerating across Joma’s enormous wheel face. Erik saw small ships ahead, shuttles and insystem runners — lots and lots of them, breaking clear from the wheel hub and running. A number of large ships too, hauling away from the rim, some of them powering with their tails afire, desperate to put distance between them and the station.
“Tif, Phoenix on your main,” said Lee, and Tif adjusted angle and thrust to bring them around at where Berth 18 would soon arrive with Joma’s rotation.
“Rook!” Tif snapped, pointing out the cockpit at something. “Rook there!” Erik stared, and saw a little cluster of tiny dots, moving across the huge station wheel. Independently powered, little thrusters at the rear. And his blood ran a little colder.
“Yeah,” he said heavily. “Those are hacksaw drones.” They were the first ones he’d actually seen properly, with time to look. They looked so little and harmless, and evidently under-powered out here, with only small thrust to move across stations from the outside. It was like watching a small flock of birds on a distant horizon… only these birds were the rarest and most terrifying things in all the galaxy. Some spectacularly ignorant human Worlders didn’t even believe they were real, never having seen them with their own eyes, and insisted they were all a great lie, the dead machine-corpses, the deep-space bases, the deserted ancient hive-cities, all fabricated by Fleet for some nefarious conspiracy or other. Erik supposed it was a safer and more comforting thing to believe than the truth. “Do not fire on them, do not even get weapons lock. We want to get back to Phoenix, don’t draw their attention.”
“Copy that,” Lee said warily. And pointed at a ship docked at the station rim, just partly visible amidst the huge support gantries that stopped multi-thousand tonne vessels flinging off into space with the rotation. “That’s Makimakala. She’s still docked.”
“She’s probably got people on station,” said Erik. “Doesn’t want to leave them behind.” Even as they watched, something on the tavalai warship fired, and a part of the station rim blew up. “They’re weapons active while still docked, must be hacksaws on the rim.” It was against all protocols to stay docked with such ter
rors loose on the station… but then, without coms, possibly they didn’t know where their senior officers were — like Phoenix. “Tif, be careful of hacksaws on approach. Hacksaws, and tavalai shuttles. They might be jumpy.”
“Aye,” said Tif as the spinning rim drew closer, and gave them a new burst of thrust to come in faster than would normally seem wise. Halfway into the acceleration profile, Erik reconsidered the usual crew assessment that Tif, while a hot pilot, was not quite as hot as Lieutenant Hausler. Any faster on approach and she’d put a hole in the station if she was off by just a second.
“Anyone got any idea what the hell they’re doing here?” Lee remarked. And by ‘anyone’, he meant Erik.
“Plenty of time to speculate after we get out of here alive,” Erik replied, as Tif cut thrust, swung them backward and slammed them all into their seats once more for braking.
* * *
Past the section seal barrier, Lisbeth followed Privates Herman and Bernardino through half-completed steel frameworks of what would become shops, offices and apartments once completed. Now they were abandoned of workers and tools, with equipment lying scattered. Lisbeth ran hard — she’d thought she was pretty fit on Homeworld, in that way that civilians who enjoyed a little exercise thought they were fit, a little volleyball here, a nice run on the beach there. Time amongst Phoenix’s marines had shown her that what she considered fit, marines considered funny, and she’d increased her gym-time accordingly. But now she learned another marines-truth — that running on a treadmill, and running from real enemies who wanted to kill you, were very different things. Already she was gasping for air from adrenaline overload, and had to force that easy calm into her stride so that she didn’t waste half her energy on nervous panic.
Herman and Bernardino turned left, back toward the dock, and Lisbeth followed with Carla and Vijay alongside. The dock on this side of the section seal had been clear before the barrier had come down, but now she could hear shooting ahead, and the lead marines signalled those behind to stop. Lisbeth did, gasping, while the privates advanced crouched and cautious through half-finished wall panels and dangling electrical fixtures. And Lisbeth stared, to see tracer fire ripping up the dock, and flashes as bouncing rounds tore fragments off the deckplate.
Herman shook his head and gestured at them to get back… and the half-finished corridor about him exploded in a hail of fire and flying fragments. Carla fell on Lisbeth, and then Corporal Penn was hurdling them to rush to his privates, returning fire thunderously through the walls one-handed while trying to grab Herman with the other.
“We gotta go!” Vijay bellowed above the din as more fire came in. “It’s a firezone, Lisbeth’s unarmored and we’re drawing fire!”
“I gotta stay with my guys!” Ruiz yelled back, and smashed through a wall panel to search for a fire position. Carla hauled Lisbeth up and dragged her after Vijay, as Lisbeth tried to resist, staring back at where Corporal Penn was dragging the screaming and cursing Herman back under fire. Beyond them, Private Bernardino was not moving.
“Bernie!” Penn was yelling as Carla hauled Lisbeth away. “Bernie get the fuck up! Bernie!”
And then she was running after Vijay, weaving along the broken, unfinished corridor and feeling suddenly naked with only two lightly armoured bodyguards. Powered armour was tough as hell, but hacksaw chain guns had gone straight through it…
Ahead, Vijay skidded to a halt by a corner more completed than the others, and peered into a T-junction hall. Lisbeth held up, then Vijay waved her and Carla forward. Several more marines ran by, and heavy fire came from the docks to the left. A marine Lisbeth didn’t recognise through the visor and drifting smoke was yelling at Vijay, “…getting it cleared the fuck out! There’s no-one left up there, we checked! They’re coming through the fucking walls, they’re getting us encircled!”
“We can’t get her out on the docks, she’s not armoured!” Vijay yelled back.
“We’ve got guys downstairs, lower level! Use the stairs… look, Phoenix won’t wait forever and we’ve not enough shuttles…” boom! as something exploded by the docks, and marines up there cursed. “Not enough shuttles to get off those left behind, and no way to rendezvous without coms!”
“Got it!” said Vijay, and ran to the right, away from the docks… and Lisbeth recognised the corridor, this was the main entrance to Phoenix’s accommodation block. Strewn on the floor were crew duffel bags, brought on dock for personals and a change of clothes, now abandoned in the mad rush to get back to Phoenix.
Vijay ran straight past the elevators, as suddenly station power flickered and the main lights dimmed. Red emergency lights replaced them, speaker announcements echoing in Palapu, drowned by the rattle and thud of gunfire from behind. Vijay peered into a stairwell, rifle checking up then down as Carla guarded their rear. A ventilation fan in the stairwell wall roared, trying to haul in the wisps of smoke from some nearby fire…
Movement made Lisbeth look up the corridor… in a doorway, a small figure waving at her. And her heart stopped. The small figure had long ears and scruffy fur within an oversized marines’ jacket. “Oh my god Skah! What are you doing here!”
“Kid!” Carla yelled, beckoning. “Furball! Come here!”
Skah shook his head and pointed back up the corridor from his doorway, shouting something unintelligible. “Skah no!” Lisbeth shouted. “We’re leaving! You have to come…”
The stairwell blew up, a hammerblow that hit her from behind… and then she was on the floor, rolling and coughing and unable to hear a thing. She struggled up by reflex, and Skah seeing she was okay yelled something she couldn’t hear, waved for her to follow, and disappeared.
Lisbeth followed in panic. She couldn’t leave Skah here, and if she didn’t follow then Carla and Vijay’s only responsibility was herself — they might just figure Skah was secondary and not worth the risk. The new corridor swam and buckled as she ran, but that was just her knees, and she fended a wall before she fell into it, and turned another bend past abandoned hotel offices where it looked like Skah had surely come. If the hacksaws were guarding the stairwells, probably one of them had fired a grenade down from a higher level, she’d heard tales marines told of how to clear stairwells effectively…
And she burst into a common room, upturned furnishings and wall displays destroyed and smoking, drilled with bullet holes. And here was Skah, down behind some sofas, tending to someone on the ground. Lisbeth stumbled that way and found a spacer in a Phoenix jumpsuit — no one she recognised, no nametag on the clothes to tell who it was, but he’d been shot through the side and Skah was trying to stop the bleeding.
Lisbeth ran and knelt beside, in a new panic because she didn’t have a first aid kit and didn’t know where there’d be one. But Skah grabbed a cushion off the chairs and bit it, tearing the fabric with a great rip and pulling against sharp teeth. Lisbeth helped him, and they got the cloth free, and Lisbeth bunched it and tore the spacer’s jumpsuit aside to stuff the cloth over the worst of the blood.
“Hey!” she tried to talk to him, barely able to hear her own voice through the ringing. “Hey spacer! Hey buddy, we’re going to get you out of here, okay?” He stared up at her, and it wasn’t the pain in his eyes that struck her, it was the fear. It was a ‘how can this be happening to me?’ fear, and Lisbeth’s stomach flip-flopped, because she knew exactly what that was even though she was still in one piece.
Then she realised that neither Carla nor Vijay had come after her. They’d been closer to the stairwell than her. She’d assumed they were okay since she was, and come running after Skah before she lost him… oh god, what if they weren’t? What if she’d run off and left them wounded, or worse? What if they weren’t coming to save her, and she and Skah were now on their own? Skah was looking up at her with those big golden eyes, desperate but trusting. Trusting that the adult would know what to do. But she didn’t.
“Okay Skah, we’re going to have to…” move him. But she couldn’t. The spacer was an averag
e-sized man, and while she had G-augments, those dealt mainly with internal body stresses and barely made her stronger. And Skah was just a kid, and while kuhsi were faster than most humans, they were kilo-for-kilo no stronger.
Abandon the wounded man? She didn’t know him. For a brief, terrified moment it was almost plausible… except that Skah, who was even newer to this crew than she was, had risked his own neck to come and save him. And Skah was just a kid, and not even of the same species. And then she felt horribly ashamed.
“Skah? I’m going to have to go for help. I have to tell one of the marines.” Because she could still hear shooting far up the corridors, and out onto the docks. And better that she went, because Skah’s English was deserting him under pressure, and at least here he had a chance of hiding if anything came…
A metallic clatter somewhere behind. Lisbeth spun. Midway along the opposite wall was a large pair of sliding doors, with frosted glass that showed only shadows beyond. Shadows, and movement. Something beyond those doors was moving, a whine-and-clicker-clack, and a slide of something heavy. And all the fear she’d felt until now faded by comparison.
She stared about, and saw an adjoining bar beside a small music stage and potted plants. “Skah, over there!” she whispered frantically. “We have to drag him over there! Help me!” She stood bent, and grabbed the man’s armpits, while Skah grabbed an arm and tried to keep the cushion cloth pressed to his bleeding side. He was heavy, and the carpet made friction so he didn’t slide much. Lisbeth tried to keep low, and hoped that through the frosted glass her silhouette wouldn’t show above the sofas and low tables.
Somehow she got the spacer to the bar door, then undid the top lid so the door would open. And could not resist a look back at the frosted glass doors. There was a dark shadow that had not been there before. It seemed to fill the entire corridor beyond. A shadow with legs.
Drysine Legacy (The Spiral Wars Book 2) Page 24
