“Affirmative, Lieutenant Ryder.” I could feel the psionic webbing filling the barrels on my arms. “Though I’m forced to inform you that, per Alliance regulations and standards, your best chance at survival and success with your mission is to take Dr. Garmin and exit the ship immediately.”
That course of action would lead to the deaths of Mina and the rest of the Artemis Squad, which the Alliance probably wouldn’t give two shits about, seeing as how their suits hadn’t been deployed yet. Mina was a hero. That much was true, but dead heroes became something as good, martyrs.
Hell, in truth, a martyr could probably do more for the Alliance’s cause than any living officer. Death has a habit of turning man into myth or morphing loyalty into legend. Besides, if she was dead, Mina could never say an unkind word about the Alliance or whatever they might happen to do in the future. She would be an eternal, unchanging monument to the crap she probably never really bought into in the first place.
Luckily for Mina and the rest though, I didn’t much believe in monuments.
“Don’t give a shit about guidelines, Annabelle,” I swallowed hard. ”We’ve got mountains to climb and miles to go before we sleep, and I can’t have rules holding me back.”
“I expected you’d say as much,” Annabelle said. “Barrels are loaded, and the webbing is powered up, Lieutenant Ryder. You can fire when ready.”
Ready came instantly. I unloaded spool after spool of psionic webbing at the absent nose of the ship. Twisting my arms and grimacing, I crafted a makeshift front, blue and glowing webs crafted into a piss poor replacement for state-of-the-art human technology.
Never being much of an architect (or anything else, for that matter) the patch job was ugly and certainly temporary. Still, the overlapped layers of telekinetic energy sealed up the vacuum, and I could release the clamps for the moment.
With that first crisis of many postponed, I rushed toward the control panel, the brain trust of the ship. The damn thing was burned to a near crisp, though the lights were still on, telling me at least part of the panel was still functional. That was all I needed.
So long as there was something to connect to, Annabelle could burrow in there and take control of things. I would need that control to knock the ship out of lockdown. The shielding surrounding an unconscious Rayne would be removed, and Mina and the Squad would receive their suits and be released from their pod prisons.
While the quick export of oxygen from the hull had suffocated the fires, I still found the control panel hot to the touch as my sensor coated and gloved hands rested on it.
“What’s out crash ETA, Annabelle?”
“Thirty-seven point nine seconds.”
“And how long will it take you to dig your way into the control panel here and get me access to the ship’s functions?”
“Already done,” Lieutenant Ryder.”
I grinned. “You beautiful, beautiful machine. Get me Dell –”
“Don’t get sappy on me yet,” Annabelle cut me off. “I’m afraid I have bad news. The extent of the ship’s damage is just shy of catastrophic. I’m afraid transmissions are impossible at the current moment.”
“That’s fine. I’ll get ahold of her when I get on the ground –”
“There’s more, Lieutenant Ryder,” Annabelle said, cutting me off for the second time in seconds, strange for her. “The mainframe of the ship has been horribly compromised. I can repair a piece of it, but my energy reserves aren’t great enough to repair the entire thing in the amount of time we have before impact.”
“What are you saying, Annabelle?” I asked, tension rising in me as I recognized apprehension in her words. “What does that mean?”
“I’m afraid the lockdown on this particular model happens in three separate steps, one for each section. Given the fact that the first section has been blown to smithereens, it doesn’t require mentioning. The other two sections are the hull, where Dr. Garmin is being held and the back area, where you just escaped from your pod.” She waited just a beat. “I’m afraid I only have the capacity to repair and initiate lowering the lockdown for one of these sections. And that means – “
“I know what it means, Annabelle,” I said, clenching my hands into frustrated fists and going over the situation. “It means I can’t save all of them. It means I have to choose who lives and who dies.” I sighed heavy. “Damnit.”
12
I blinked, huffing with my mind racing. I had no time, absolutely none, to make what amounted to an impossible decision. My suit had only enough power to free the occupants of one of these rooms and, if I didn’t act quickly enough, all of them would die.
But who was I supposed to save?
I had relationships with all these women. At one point or another, I had bedded each of them, I knew them intimately, but could I really let something like that color my judgment? At face value, Mina was the equal I had always been subconsciously looking for. She was strong, vibrant, and tough as galactic nails.
Saving her would also mean saving Jill and Claire as well. They weren’t nearly as accomplished as their leader, but there was nothing about them that would lead me to believe they would be any less effective in the fight against the Acburians in the future. In fact, with what I’d seen them do during our last ill-fated trip to Turan, I’d say that these women were even more accomplished than Mina and I were at their ages.
Still, if I was going by who would be the most useful in the overall war effort, it was hard to go against the doctor laying in front of me right now. She was a genius, and she had used those beautiful gray cells to craft what we all hoped would be a virus capable of wiping the damn bugs out once and for all. I had to save her. Hell, Mina herself would tell me to let her and her squad crash to their deaths on this God forsaken moon if it meant there was even a chance of getting Rayne’s virus to a working condition.
But would she be right and, more importantly, did it matter?
I already knew the answer, just as I already knew what I was going to do. There was never any real question. I was a warrior, a Marine, and a janitor, but most importantly, I was Mark Ryder. I didn’t let people die, not anymore. Annabelle might have said saving everyone was impossible, but the comforting female voice inside my suit had been wrong before, and I was going to prove her wrong again.
“Override the crap in this section, Annabelle,” I said, swallowing hard and looking over at Rayne. The blonde woman was unconscious, sedated enough to have slept through all of this. If I failed, she’d sleep right to her death, going to her maker as confused as a troublemaker with a full stocking on Christmas morning.
I wouldn’t fail though. I was Mark Ryder. It wasn’t an option.
“That’s a practical decision, Lieutenant Ryder,” Annabelle said in my head. There was no mourning or compassion in her voice. It was flat and empty, just as she had been programmed. “Though I must remind you that those dying are not connected to their suits and, as such, their last words will unfortunately not be recorded for posterity.”
I shook my head defiantly. “They’re not dying, Annabelle. I have a plan.”
“Of course, Lieutenant Ryder. I would have never imagined anything less. Override is complete.”
The energy shell disappeared from around the good doctor. I shot my psionic webbing around her, wrapping her up in blue strands like some sort of space mummy queen.
”Make sure she’s tight,” I said to Annabelle, “and get me power to the thrusters. We’re going to fly.”
“Affirmative, Lieutenant Ryder.”
The webbing tightened around Rayne. I felt the connection of it, telekinetic energy running from some little part of my brain, down my arm, through the still connected glowing blue line of the webbing, and then in the circular strands running around Rayne’s body. I had her life in my hands. One impulse and a jolt of energy could rush through the webbing, frying the scientist and making her coma a permanent thing.
My lower thrusters roared to life, and I pushed back thro
ugh the open doors.
Spinning, I saw Mina and the others in their pod tombs. They were animated, though not active. There was nothing more they could do. They were probably lost in their own thoughts, praying to their own gods, or nursing their favorite memories. Probably not Mina though. She had been through as much as I had. This would likely feel inevitable to her, like finally reaching a finish line. In a way, it might have even been a relief to her.
I had bad news for her though. The race wasn’t over quite yet. I was about to extend her tour.
I had less than ten seconds before the ship was to crash hard against the terrain of Turan, killing us all. Spying the eject button which would send the three of the trapped ladies spiraling out into the sky, I realized I didn’t have enough time to hit it, not with the massive turbulence in the ship. Luckily, I had an idea.
Throwing my hands forward, I tugged at the webbing holding Rayne. Whipping her forward, I threw her. Rayne’s unconscious body slammed into the button. In half an instant, the pods holding Mina and the others shot out, whisking through openings that appeared in the room.
I spun again and rushed through the open door back into the upper decks of the ship.
“Chainsaw me, Annabelle,” I said, holding my fist out as I ran into the impromptu nose cone of psionic webbing I had left there. The saw’s blade materialized, extending past my knuckles, whirring to life as it sliced through the blue matter.
I pushed my way through it and out onto the atmosphere of the moon of Turan. If we had still been in space, Rayne would have been dead in moments from the environmental rigors out there, but here, she had a chance, shielded by the webbing.
Without a second glance, I twisted in midair and fired my thrusters, launching upward, taking Rayne along with me.
Wincing, I heard the ship crash loudly against the ground. We had just gotten out, but that didn’t mean we were out of the woods. Looking up, I saw the escape pods Mina and the others were in. They would soon fall to the moon’s surface and, without their suits, they wouldn’t last a second against the harsh atmosphere. I had pulled them out of the frying pan only to condemn them to the fire.
Unless I could do something.
“Annabelle,” I said, an outlandish idea coming into my head. “You’re always with me now.”
“Yes, Lieutenant Ryder,” she began. “Your upgrades allow you a constant link to the Alliance Halls and the area housing my operating system.”
“And it’s impossible to sever that connection?”
“Impossible is a problematic word,” Annabelle clarified, “but yes, you have a secure connection, and severing that would prove very difficult.”
“What about mirroring it?” My eyes never left the pods. They had stopped rising and were now starting their death spiral to the moon’s surface.
“I’m not sure I understand why that would be helpful, but theoretically, it could be mirrored.”
“Great!” I set my trajectory up, toward the falling pods. “Connect me to them, Annabelle.”
“Connect you to what, Lieutenant Ryder?”
“The Artemis Squad. Send me their suits, Annabelle.”
It was a plan only a madman or the best Infinity Marine in the corps could come up with, but it all rested on established technology. See, the launch pods were already set-up to beam each Marine’s armor to them when given the order from Alliance Hall, and Annabelle could establish a link to those systems. The nigh-indestructible pods would be ready to function despite the explosion up front, so all they needed was the suits to materialize on the waiting members of the squad.
With no onboard coms, though, Alliance Hall wasn’t going to be sending them. However, with Annabelle mirroring that unbreakable connection back home and the massive energy capacity of my new suit, it was possible that I could act as the conduit, beaming the energy matrix of each of their suits into my system before sending them through to each of those lovely ladies.
That was the theory anyway.
“Lieutenant Ryder,” Annabelle reported, “it’s too much power. It would-”
“All three,” I shot back. “Send them to me, and I’ll handle it.”
“As you wish,” she relented.
I felt the suits enter me, pure power rushing through my body as my suit’s batteries were strained to the max. Biting the inside of my mouth and using the taste of copper to keep focus through the strain, I directed the first suit to Mina and then the others to Jill and Claire respectively.
I was about to pass out from the effort when I heard the pods shatter in midair. Looking over, I saw the Artemis Squad in the air, suited up and ready for action.
13
Their power suits shining like diamonds in the red light filtered through Turan’s atmosphere, Mina, Claire, and Jill descended like Valkyries of legend, rocketing towards my plummeting form and the still-attached comatose form of Dr. Garmin. Even my bleeding-edge suit wasn’t built to transfer matrices that large, hence why large-scale upgrades were still done at Alliance facilities, and a few dozen red emergency indicators were flashing in my HUD. Still, I had done the impossible, and I was okay with having my own bacon saved after that.
“Twenty-two seconds before all systems online, Lieutenant,” Annabelle chirped into my brain. “You will impact the ground in 7.2 of those seconds.”
“Don’t you worry, Annabelle,” I murmured as my eyes started to clear up. “We’re in good hands.”
Mina engaged afterburners, racing past the others but not towards me. No, I didn’t expect her to, either. She was the only other conscious person who knew our mission and just how important Rayne’s safety was. Like a falcon catching prey out of the air with its talons, Mina snatched the cocooned scientist in one arm, slashing the connection between her and me free with one slash of a dagger.
It was Claire and Jill, each splitting to one side and bursting forward just enough to get ahead before matching my descent speed, that caught me. They each took an arm, turning in mid-flight with the synchronicity you only get from having trained hard as a single unit to cushion my back and head with their bodies. Sure, their impressive breasts may have been coated in Ellebruim armor, but they still made for the best headrests I could ask for. A few bursts of retro-thrusters and we were all safe, hovering above the utterly unsalvageable wreckage of the Bullet ship strewn over the rocky, inhospitable terrain.
“Communications back online,” Annabelle reported. “Life support and emergency shields as well. A few more moments before primary weapons and propulsions follow.”
Before she could even finish, the squad’s communication channel spilled into my ear. As the designated commanding officer for this mission, I was tapped into Artemis Squad before we even got on the transport.
“How long until your systems are fully restored, Mark?” Mina came through, all business as she turned to scour the landscape. It was daytime, high activity time for the Acburians, and we were sitting, well, hovering ducks who just set off a firecracker to stir up the locals.
“What she means is are you okay?” Jill piped in, only to collect her usual C.O.’s admonishing glance.
“Just a few more seconds, Mina.” I mentally gave Annabelle permission to allow diagnostics sharing between the rest of the squad and me. It was totally against protocol, it was considered bad form to show the potential weakness of a commanding officer and bad for morale, but fuck that at this point. “And yeah, I’m okay, Jill.” I glanced between her and Claire. “Good saves all around.”
“And yours was the best one,” Mina noted, “but we’re not out of the woods. Once your scanners come on, you’ll notice we have a contingent of ground-pounders moving in with a mobile artillery piece.”
Thrusters hummed to life under my feet, and the soft ping signaling weapons and shields returning to maximum reserves made me grin like a cat with cream. As Mina astutely observed, there was indeed a dozen bugs bee-lining for the crash. What she called mobile artillery, while not an inaccurate name at all, was a sp
itter, one of the many Acburian sub-species, bred to be big, stupid, and loaded with bio-organic weaponry. From the mean-looking, articulated scorpion tail humming with electricity, I figured this was an anti-aircraft species, a fact backed up by the nameplate and bounty missive from Alliance Command that popped into my HUD.
Acburian Shock-Spitter (AA variant), 3200 Coin Speed Bounty! (2h17min remaining)
With me under my own power, Claire had already produced her flame whip, a weapon I fondly remember forcing her to buy, and I could tell that she had learned her lesson. I recognized at least three new upgrade modules plugged into the thing. Jill had taken after her boss, producing a hi-tech compound bow with a glowing string and purple psionic arrow nocked, the same color as her hair.
”With a potential medical emergency for mission-critical personnel, civilian or not,” Claire reported as if reading from the regs book, “we should make a fighting retreat to cover. I’m picking up a cave system marked on the intel maps. It’d be a good hidey-hole.”
Mina shot me a meaningful look. The girls had no idea just how mission-critical the doctor was, but she also honored the chain of command. “What’s the play, Mark?”
I considered pulling a Titanic Twister again, but that disruption of the weather might attract more attention than we wanted. At the same time, we were already made. It was more important to take out the bugs before they reported back to their nearest hive. A tornado wasn’t the answer but squashing these bugs was.
“We wipe these guys off the map,” I nodded. “I’ll take the spitter. Jill, give us cover fire.” I gave her a glance as I mentally scrolled through my own stockpile of upgrades. “You do have a repeater upgrade on that thing, right?”
A Space Adventure [Bug Wars] Page 6
