I yelled, “Answer me now or die!”
“Army Com Channel 4, sir, we got a squad there. Down the corridor, there is a busted IST, down the shaft that’s where the figh—”
I didn’t hear the rest; I was halfway down the corridor and found the open IST shaft all right. I could hear the fighting from below. I looked into the shaft, wondering how to get down when I noticed the handholds for a ladder incorporated into the shaft.
Using my feet as hooks around the handrail and regulating my speed of descent with my hands, I slid down the rails as fast as I dared. I could see smoke coming from my gloves as the friction caused some serious heat, but as long as I didn’t feel anything, I didn’t care.
I reached the bottom through the open access hatch of an IST capsule stuck there, and three heartbeats later was greeted by two blaster shots, one grazing the side of my suit, the other melting the IST manual input panel next to me.
The flight suit did have shields, of course, nothing like nothing like a Quasimodo, but still a strong dual layer Para Dim. The suit’s intelligent systems, however, were limited to Auto-Doc and emergency deep space procedures and had no ground combat capabilities. That the shields had to be activated manually, I learned just now. I was hit by an energy bolt. While most of the energies were dispersed and deflected by the suit’s integrated armor, some went through and singed my skin.
The Auto-Doc of a flight suit was first-rate, and the system began to act at the same time the first pain impulses hit my brain.
While all this happened in my suit, I flung myself forward and rolled over my shoulder to avoid being hit again.
A fire team of four Army soldiers were pinned down behind a heavy support column while two Kartanian battle robots and an Oghar blocked the corridor farther down.
My shoulder roll was pretty fast but not fast enough for the fighting machines down there, and three strong blaster shots burned my shields down to five percent.
I reached the fire team and the cover.
A young corporal and three privates armed with Enroe-TriBeam laser guns and one H&K Missile Gewehr Typ MIL greeted me, and the corporal said, “The robots fire only if they see movement, and the Oghar appears only to fire when his robots do. That’s the good news. The bad news is that those robots have very strong beamers, fast reflexes, and the Oghar sports a Union TKU. The other bad news is that there are about thirty more of them down the corridor trying to get in an area not marked at all on our base blueprint layouts. It seems whoever is in there has managed to hold them off so far.”
One of the privates said, “I hoped you be the good news and bring us Fleet Cerberus and Marines.”
I grunted, “That is the day when I hear Army grunts pray for Marines! Don’t know where the reinforcements are, but I was told they are coming.”
One of the privates was a human female and she said, “We got contact to the Navy personnel on the other end. Do you want to speak to them?”
I nodded. “Yes, of course.”
She handed me a PDD in scramble mode, and I said, “This is Midshipman Olafson. The pirate invasion force is mostly contained, and the Union Army is cleaning the base. What is your status?”
I recognized the voice immediately. “Eric, this is Deepa, we are in serious trouble. The bathroom elevator is buried under rubble, and we have a large number of wounded here. Our PSI Talents have erected a Psi Shield, but it won’t last much longer; they are at their end.” Her voice sounded strained, and I knew she was adding her energies to that shield.
I said, “No worries, I am coming!”
I could hear her laugh weakly. “My Soja, this is too dangerous. Wait for reinforcements.”
My mind raced to figure out how to get down that corridor, without being roasted. My shields recovered, but I doubt they would hold even halfway when both bots opened up. Not to mention a TKU. I glanced around the corner and said, “Soldier, do you have a spare missile canister for that H&K?”
He responded, “Yes, sir, but it is marked Heavy Surface Engagement and cannot be used in confined battle situations.”
I grinned and said, “Excellent. Corporal, fire your weapons into the ceiling above the IST.”
He stared at me as if I was mad. “Sir, the enemy is that way.” He pointed down the corridor, without exposing himself.
I yelled, “The next time you question or argue my orders, I am using you as a shield while running down that corridor. Open fire!”
The corporal did, and I said to the private, “Toss that pack as hard as you can and make it slide across the corridor floor. Show me what that Pandora thing can do.”
I ordered the other two to provide cover fire, and the soldiers did as I asked.
As I hoped, the intense heat created by the melting ceiling, the shower of liquid metal, confused the sensors of the Kartanian robots and they completely missed the sliding backpack-sized missile container sliding toward them.
I aimed carefully and fired. The third blast did the trick. Surface engagement meant antimatter warheads. Just a few molecules in each of the small rockets, but all 2,500 missiles of the container together were hit by my TKU blasts.
The detonation was so intense it lifted us off our feet, and despite helmet, support column and shields, the sound and blast wave was so intense it almost deafened me.
I did not wait for my shields to recover or check on the Army soldiers, I ran down the corridor, chain sword at the ready and through the spherical blast zone the AM explosion had caused. The blast had created a new twenty-meter perfectly round underground chamber,
I found the legs of one robot; there was nothing left of the second or the Oghar.
This I registered only passing by. On the other side, I found survivors, pirates struggling to their feet. I didn’t bother with the TKU, I used the chain sword. Coldness reached my consciousness; I wanted to see blood. There were thirty of them at least until I lost count. Some of them had shielded suits, but it made no difference. I would have walked through twice as many; at least that is what my blood lust wanted. The truth, of course, was that I was near the end of my resources as well. My TKU down to the last blast, the chain sword energy cell on its last indicator bar, the shields of my suit had long been gone, and the generator melted with no chance of a reset. The suit’s magnificent armor of woven Ultronit mesh and carbon fiber was the real reason I had made it that far. It, too, was beyond its repair capacity.
My arm felt like lead as I pulled the chain sword with a protesting whine up the crotch of a pirate Oghar and up to his guts, through steel, leather, and flesh.
I had reached a soap bubble-like barrier and behind I saw four PSI Corps agents and the admiral on their knees, their hands pressed against their temples. The pretty Saran PSI Agent looked more dead than alive, and blood was dripping from her eyes.
I had to use manual controls to activate my PDD. My helmet controls were fried. “Deepa, Admiral! You can let the shield down. I am here!”
She raised her head saw me and the field collapsed.
Deepa slowly came to her feet; I rushed to support her. She smiled weakly and said, “You never listen when someone tells you something; you look terrible!”
A feeling of relief came over me and I, too, felt a little woozy in the knees as the adrenalin levels in my body returned to normal, unable to keep my body in this state of activity any longer. I smiled at her as well and said, “Couldn’t let this scum get to you, ma’am, not after you rescued me and put yourself in harm’s way to get me to safety.”
She simply nodded and then tended to her colleagues, two of which were in some sort of catatonic state and did not react to anything.
She sighed. “I hope our Saresii Specialists back home can help them. They extended their powers far too long.”
I heard Marines and Cerberus coming down the corridor and said, “I am sorry, ma’am. I tried to come as fast as I could.”
She knelt by one of the agents and looked up. “And you did; you did come!”
&nb
sp; Then my eye caught a tuft of fur behind a big planter pot at the entrance to the actual NAVINT post. I rushed past the PSI Agents and the admiral and tossed the heavy thing aside. My heart sank and the rage and anger I had felt until now were replaced by deep sorrow.
Behind that planter was the body of the little Holdian commander who was so energetic and so brave. Her shimmering black eyes were dull, her soft fur smeared with blood. In her right hand she still held a tiny TKU, the energy cell depleted and three empty cells around her.
As gently as I could, I picked up her small body that was almost weightless and placed it on a leather couch inside the damaged lobby and then took the Union flag someone had ripped off its stand and draped it over the little Holdian.
I saluted her and said, “I will avenge your death, Commander. I promise!”
The admiral said quietly, “She came down here with over 200 wounded and defended this entrance all on her own until we could get here. We were only moments away but still too late.”
Somewhere in the background of my mind, I wondered what the cold sensation was on my cheeks and said, “I was too late as well!”
Begnning of Book 5:
Eric Olafson: The USS Tigershark
Chapter 1: Reunion
Even though I had little medical knowledge, my time serving in the Devi’s sickbay and getting basic med training at the Academy meant I was helping with the triage of wounded. somehow remembered Dr. Dwyer, my old Nilfeheim doctor, as I derma-patched the scrape wounds of a young boy. He had suffered them while running and hiding inside a service crawlway.
The casualty numbers were depressing. At least 943 dead, among them many civilians, and 1,532 wounded, of which more than 500 were very critical. Over 3000 raiders had participated, of which 2,400 had died, and the rest surrendered. The damage to the base was not as severe as it looked and most of the environmental base functions were still working; as ordered I had sent the report to the Devastator and Fleet Command, but only got a short acknowledgment that they received the reports.
Rock Hound came over and looked over the long line of wounded. As he was the highest-ranking Union Fleet Officer, he was now the acting base commander and said to me, “The Makki-Grodno has just arrived, and they are deploying every Med-bot and all personnel they have. Fleet Command just confirmed they had diverted the USS Albert Schweitzer.”
Just as he said that Med Bots arrived and with them, the CMO of the battleship, followed by a large number of med techs.
The CMO exchanged only a few words with us and then went to work.
Now, with the crew of a battleship reinforcing our efforts, things looked up, and my services in the first aid line weren’t needed anymore.
I walked off and sat down on the knee-high wall of a fountain that was no longer working and wiped my face, exhausted.
That Deepa was the NAVINT Commandant was, of course, a secret that had to be maintained even during this crisis. I knew she and the surviving agents of the NAVINT outpost were busy erasing any traces that their subsurface base was ever used by the intelligence service.
She had told me that she would leave Checkpoint 96 in a new disguise and that it was better I would not know who she would be.
As I sat there, more and more Navy personnel filled the concourse. Teams of engineers rushed one way with their robotic toolboxes right behind them. A group of Special Forces Marines in full Quasimodo battlesuits followed a Cyber Dog K-9 unit, scanning the place, obviously looking for survivors and pirate attackers who’d tried to hide.
A tall man, with a Marine Corps high and tight regulation haircut, wearing an all-black uniform, walked briskly in my direction, several high-ranking officers in his wake.
I got up and stood at attention. “Midshipman Olafson reporting as ordered, sir!”
I did not know how he did it or what it was, but him just being here made everything look half as bad. I knew that whoever this Red Dragon was, he had not made his calculations including Admiral Stahl. He would find a way to track him down.
He simply sat down and said, “Have a seat, son. No need to salute right now.”
I sat down next to him and looked at his sharp profile and followed his ice-gray eyes scanning the surroundings. He waved at his entourage. “Make yourself useful, assess the damage. Get repairs started and make sure all this is recorded in detail. I want to know the names of each raider, dead or alive. I want to know where they came from. I want the wrecks in space gathered to the last bolt and analyzed. I want to know who built them, owned them and piloted them.”
The men acknowledged him and scrambled to execute his orders.
Only then did he turn his head. “I received reports from the Army Commander, the Commander of the Wolfcraft squadron. Of course, Deepa kept me informed. I did get yours, and I would like to say I am very proud of your conduct.”
His praise touched me deeply, and I wanted to say something, but he held up his hand and stopped me. “Eric, I know how you feel. You lost men flying with you, you let the transports pass and land, and you feel responsible for all this, but at no point did you fail or do anything wrong. Despite all the things I know about you and what you have achieved, you are still just a midshipman. You have performed and served like a real officer, and there was nothing you could have done to prevent this. Don’t count the dead, Eric; count the living that you saved with your actions. Without you, no one would have made it.”
He actually patted my shoulder. “If it means anything to you, Midshipman Olafson, you earned my respect.”
The numb feeling I’d had since I held the dead Holdian commander, the blame and guilt I felt for not doing the right things left me, and I felt much better. The Eternal Soldier, the one man I looked up to more than anyone else, respected me. The pride I felt was deep but still tempered by the recent event. “Thank you, sir.”
He got up. “Let’s go back to the Devi; there are certain people who can’t wait to see you, and I do have a surprise for you as well.”
“Sir, what about the Red Dragon? What about Checkpoint 96?”
He turned and said, “We will hunt him, son. We will find everyone who was responsible for this and make them pay.” He then gestured across the station. “It will be rebuilt and reinforced. It is terrible what happened here, and every life lost will be missed by someone, but in the great scheme of things, it was just a needle prick. We will survive and come out stronger.”
“Before we go, sir, I want to make sure that the former commandant of this base is honored and that her name and conduct is not forgotten. She might just have been a little Holdian in stature, but her spirit and person were as big and tall as the very best of us, sir.”
He made a solemn face. “I know. She was one of those I had picked just as I picked you. I’ll make sure she will receive the highest honors and goes home as a hero should.”
A shuttle was talking us up to the Devastator, as the ship was too big for the spaceport facilities. I could hardly wait to see my friends again.
Everything on the Devastator was gigantic, and so was this shuttle flight deck. In the distance, I could see Captain Harris and a crowd of people, but chief among them, nine I would have recognized anywhere. The admiral was right, the ninth person standing next to Har-Hi, was a surprise. There was a man completely shrouded in a black flowing hooded garment; it was Narth!
I knew it was him, not another member of his species.
I approached the captain and saluted. “Midshipman Olafson reporting back as ordered, sir; permission to come aboard.”
Captain Harris saluted back, and the Master Chief of the Devi blew the boatswain whistle and gave the traditional boarding signal usually reserved for high-ranking officers and dignitaries.
Then the entire crowd behind him saluted at the sound of the whistle, all the Devastator’s midshipmen, Commander Harris, and the 12th Squadron were there as well.
The captain then said, “Permission granted, welcome back, Midshipman Olafson; glad to see you among the
living!”
The admiral behind me said, “I am the first to point out that military form and traditions are the backbones of our Navy, but today I say to hell with regulations. Mr. Olafson, your friends are waiting.”
He’d barely finished as my friends rushed me. Krabbel beat them all and embraced me in his long hairy arms. It wasn’t really that long ago when I had seen the big arachnid first in a lobby on Arsenal IV and found his form frightening, but now I threw my arms around his body, knowing what a good and gentle heart beat inside.
“Krabbel,” was all I could say, my throat constricted.
Krabbel said, “We all missed you so much!”
Har-Hi complained, “Krabbel let us get to him as well.”
The big spider partially released me, and Har-Hi gave me a tight brotherly hug, and we patted each other’s backs. He said, “It’s good to have you back!”
Shaka was next, doing the same thing. “We thought we had lost you!”
Mao actually kissed me on both cheeks and then bear hugged me.
Cirruit embraced me and said, “It doesn’t show, Eric, but I am almost exploding with joy to see you.”
I hugged him. “I missed you just as much, my chrome-faced friend, and I can tell how you feel!”
Hans scooped me up like a little child and pressed the little air I had left out of my lungs. “Mein lieber guter Fre…” He had said something in his native language and then added, “My dear, dear friend, I have missed you very much.”
Elfi gave me a long kiss, and it wasn’t on the cheeks, and then said, “Never do that again. We all almost died thinking you were gone!”
Wetmouth slung her arms around me, kissed me gently on the lips and then she started sobbing and cried, “I missed you so much.”
Her body felt soft and tender, and she was sighing deeply. I had to blink and fight my own tears as well and said in her ear, “Everything will be all right.”
Finally, there was Narth. He took my hand and something passed between us that could not be described in words and no emotion, no human experience, could be used to compare. Then he said with his deep non-human and yet so familiar voice, “May I execute the physical exercise of enfolding you with my upper extremities to complete the traditional greeting as I have observed your other friends do?”
Eric Olafson Series Boxed Set: Books 1 - 7 Page 72
