by Rick Partlow
A shudder went through the shuttle as it settled into the docking clamps, and Deke’s eyes flickered to the airlock indicator. The light bar over the door flashed red, then green as the cruiser’s docking ring sealed around the outer door. Trint looked at the others, his hand poised over the control to open the lock. Deke nodded at him and the massive Tahni touched the panel with a hand so like a human’s and yet not quite like it…
The door slid aside and Trint pushed out ahead of them, using the sticky pads in his boots to take long, loping steps down the corridor. Deke followed the cyborg, sensing Kara moving in behind him and knowing Cal would be bringing up the rear, as they'd planned.
The docking bay was empty except for a pair of shuttles like the one on which they'd arrived, visible through the transplas that separated the embarkation corridor from the hard vacuum; and nearly deserted but for a lone technician servicing some sort of repair 'bot designed to crawl around the outside of the ship using magnetic treads. It was about the size of a small groundcar and its mechanical guts hung obscenely out of a maintenance hatch in its side in a colorful confetti of superconductive threads. The technician seemed absorbed with his work, a cord running from the 'face jack behind his ear to an identical plug just inside the 'bot's access panel, his eyes seeing things theirs couldn't as he floated upside down relative to them.
Trint ignored him and so did Deke, knowing he was preoccupied and probably harmless to them. No use in setting off alarms sooner than they had to. This wasn't the lighter: they weren't planning on pirating the cruiser, just getting who they needed and getting off as quick as possible.
The tech didn't even look up as they passed, but Deke kept a watch on him out of the side of his eye until they were past him and out of the docking bay. They passed through a three-meters-wide hatchway, swimming through the air over tracks set in the floor designed to move pallets from shuttles through the docking bay and down a steeply inclined ramp into the cargo hold. Just before the ramp, set into the bulkheads on either side of the corridor, were two sets of lift banks as well as the open entrance to the ship's access tube system.
Deke shot a look at Trint, whose broad shoulders would have barely fit through the access tunnel entrance, then at Cal, who wasn't much skinnier.
"Why don't you two take the lifts?" he suggested, grinning at the thought of the big Tahni stuck in the tunnel, legs kicking like an upturned cockroach. "Kara and I will take the access tunnels."
"I dislike the idea of splitting up," Trint said, badly imitating a human frown.
"And I don't like the idea of taking the lifts at all," Cal admitted with a more convincing scowl, slapping the access panel on the lift station to call a car. "But Deke's right: if we meet resistance in the access tunnels, you'll be stuck." The lift door slid aside with a quiet hiss and he glanced back at the interior of the car, white and antiseptic. "See you on the bridge, Deke," Cal said as he pulled himself inside. Trint entered after him, still looking unhappy, then the door closed and they were gone.
"You volunteered us," Kara said, eyeing Deke balefully. She gestured to the opening. "So you go first."
"Aye, aye, ma'am," Deke sketched a half-assed salute, grinning at her. He tucked his carbine in close to his body, then pulled himself into the access tube.
He hadn't been in one of the tubes since he last had been aboard a Fleet warship, twenty years ago, and he'd almost let himself forget how claustrophobic they were; but they were also the easiest way to get around a large ship in zero gravity. Deke grabbed one of the evenly-spaced hand-holds embedded in the side of the tube and pulled himself forward, pushing the barrel of his carbine ahead of him.
This is just so typical, he thought, scanning with his enhanced senses. I was minding my own business...well, okay, illegal business, but still... Now here I am running point in a boarding op just to keep some power-hungry former bureaucrat from setting himself up as a fucking warlord. Like I fuckin' care who's in charge of things...
And yet, he had to admit to himself that this was the most alive he'd felt in years. Sometimes he was suspicious that the Fleet technicians had screwed with his head when they were installing all those enhancements.
It wasn't that far from the docking bay to the bridge, and Deke briefly entertained the idea that they might actually make the whole distance without encountering anyone...until his implants picked up the sound of breathing just around a curve in the tube. Deke grabbed tight to one of the handgrips and jerked to a sudden halt, hearing a hiss of breath behind him as Kara scrambled to stop her own momentum.
If it had been anyone else, a lowly maintenance tech or some harried functionary, Deke and Kara might have been able to bluff their way through. But the second the woman came into view, Deke knew exactly what she was. The glowing stars of microreactors dotted her body in his thermal filters, identical to the ones he could see beneath Kara's skin. She was DSI cadre, and she was armed...but her gun was holstered.
Deke saw the shock on her plain, unremarkable face through the aiming reticle his headcomp superimposed over it. She was fast; she almost got her pistol clear of its holster before Deke fired. But not quite. The report of the pulse carbine echoed hauntingly up and down the length of the access tube, but it was quickly drowned out by the security alarm screaming a piercing wail that seemed to penetrate right into his head.
Deke eyed the free-floating, headless body, trailing a hideous cloud of crimson globules in its wake, then glanced back at Kara, sure that the grim look on her face mirrored his own.
"So much for stealth," he yelled over the din. "Let's move!"
* * *
Mitchell:
"Damn it!" I hissed as the alarm blared inside the lift. I looked around instinctively, as if I could see what was causing it somewhere in the two meter-on-a-side box. Then the lift car ground to a halt, sending both of us fetching against the padded ceiling.
"I believe I've heard you use a phrase," Trint said with irritating calmness, staring at the subdued red glow coming off the bare walls. "It had something to do with sexual relations and a dog."
"Screwed the pooch is the term you're looking for," I muttered, putting most of my concentration into trying to penetrate the ship's security systems again. We couldn't afford to get stuck in this damned lift, and that was exactly what was about to happen.
The framework of the computer security system was as old as the ship, but Gregorian had added a few personal firewalls to try to prevent just what I was trying to do. I managed to sneak around the barrier to remote access by signing onto the crew's duty scheduler then running a penetration module to back-door my way into the alarm system. I couldn't just kill the alarm: they knew a weapon had been fired on-board.
But maybe I could change where the report said it had happened. I switched the alarm location from the access tubes near the bridge to the docking bay, then added another alarm, this one an atmospheric breach, near engineering. That would distract them long enough not to notice when I took the security interlocks off the lift system.
The interior lights abruptly went back to their normal level and the lift started to move again.
"Congratulations," Trint said with complete sincerity, "on un-screwing our pooch."
"This pooch is still not quite virginal," I warned him. "The problem with trying to penetrate their security is, eventually they'll notice." I made an effort to unclench my teeth. "Where the hell are Cutter's ships?"
I checked the readout on the wall of the lift and saw we were deep in the heart of the cruiser, almost to the bridge. I had tried to access the security cameras to get an idea of what was on the other side, but I'd run up against an alarm I couldn't get around, and the lift door was too shielded to get any readings with my implant sensors.
I brought my pulse carbine up, aiming it at the door and setting the sole of one boot against the back wall, attaching it there with the sticky plate. I ducked my head down and counted the seconds silently, whispering a quick prayer for the safety of Rachel and Pe
te.
There was a cheerful ring announcing we'd reached our destination and the door slid aside. I pushed off the wall, deactivating the sticky plate with a brush of my neurolink, before the door was completely open. I rocketed through the gap, barely feeling as the edge scraped against my shoulder on the way out.
Things slowed down as my headcomp took in all the data from my natural and implanted senses and arranged them for me in a coherent, tactical readout laid over my field of view. I was coming out into a small antechamber just outside the bridge proper and there were three other people in it waiting for the lift. I had a snapshot of each of them: a mousy, pinch-faced woman with a depilated head inset with a holographic tattoo of a horned devil that clashed with her plain brown uniform jumpsuit; a lanky male with sharp-edged features and a crazy gleam in his dark eyes; and a short, thickly-muscled man who I was sure must have been raised on a heavy-g world similar to Canaan.
All three were carrying sidearms and all three were DSI cadre.
In an ideal scenario, I would have had my carbine pointed right at the big guy the second the doors opened; but I had chosen motion and because of that, I only had one shot in that opening moment. The burst was a thunderclap in the enclosed space, hitting the skinny one in the chest, and then I was on the big guy and too close for guns.
He didn't have time to draw his pistol, but I knew from my thermal scans that he had an implant laser replacing his left forefinger, same as Kara. I let loose of my carbine, letting it spin lazily towards the ceiling with the little momentum it had, and I went for his hands. He got a shot off with his implant weapon and I felt a searing heat wash against the right side of my chest but no real pain, and I guessed that my Reflex armor had taken the brunt of the blast.
Then I had a grip on his wrists and the fight began in earnest. My thoughts were accelerated by my headcomp taking in all my sensory and extra-sensory input and running all its combinations faster than a human brain could, and I realized several things within nanoseconds. First, this guy was strong---nearly as strong as me---and his reflexes were jacked on a level with Kara's. Second, the one I'd shot was not dead; he must have been wearing armor, or just amped enough that a few pulsegun rounds through the chest wasn't enough to stop him. Either way, he was still moving and I could sense Trint engaging him and the woman too, trying to keep their attention away from me. And last, the crew on the bridge was about to head this way and still no fucking diversion...
I filed all that away for future use---future as in the next few seconds---and concentrated on the big guy. He had used his sticky plates to gain leverage, forcing me to do the same, which took away knees and feet as weapons and turned this into a pure battle of brute upper-body strength. He tried a head-butt almost immediately and I caught the blow on my shoulder, then yanked his right arm with all the strength of my augmented muscles and my Reflex armor combined.
The sticky plates were strong, but they were designed to allow locomotion in zero g, not lock someone irrevocably to the ground; he came away from the deck, losing the leverage he'd had and giving me a heartbeat's advantage. I snapped his hands backwards, then let loose his right long enough to extend my talons and slice his left hand off cleanly at the wrist. He didn't scream, just gasped slightly, and he also didn't stop fighting. He was designed to take punishment, just like me.
With his implant weapon gone but his other hand free, he went for his holstered handgun and simultaneously tried to kick away from me with a boot to my chest. I had seen both moves coming and anchored him in place through the expediency of burying my right hand talons deep into his thigh. The kick landed and I felt the air go out of me as even my hardened ribs creaked under the pressure, but he didn't go anywhere with several centimeters of plastalloy buried in his quadriceps.
He was clawing desperately for his handgun and trying to kick me with his free leg at the same time, but I yanked him closer, causing a fresh spray of blood as it opened up the gashes in his leg wider. The gun had to go and a swipe of my left hand blades sliced it out of the holster and took two of the fingers on his right hand with it.
He clubbed at me with what was left of his right fist, desperation visible through the mist of blood that was starting to obscure his features. I blocked it easily on my forearm, then straightened my arm and put a talon through his eye and into his brain. He jerked spasmodically for a moment and I knew he was functionally dead---maybe a well-equipped medical center could save him, but I was fairly sure that wasn't in his future. Before he stopped seizing, I had retracted my talons and grabbed him by the leg, spinning him around and sending him flying head-first into the woman.
She'd been in the process of drawing her handgun to try to get a shot at Trint's back while he dealt with the skinny male's attack, but the impact from the limp body of the big bruiser knocked her back into the bulkhead and sent the pulse pistol flying into the bridge.
I watched it spiral casually through the air, knowing the shit was really about to hit the fan. The fight was only seconds long, but alarms were sounding again, guns were coming out and we were about to be neck deep in laser-fire...and there, on the bridge, standing anchored to the deck behind the Captain's station, was Mateo Gregorian. He was a tall man, with a face sculpted by an expert to look far too distinctive for someone in his position and a well-coifed goatee that came to a fashionable point, and he was dressed in tailored suit while everyone else was in uniform.
He was staring at me with horror in his eyes, like this was absolutely the last thing he ever thought would happen and I'm not sure why, but that bothered the hell out of me. I knew I had microseconds before the bridge crew opened fire, seconds before more security arrived, but I took a move towards him anyway.
And then the holographic bridge displays flashed red, and threat icons began popping up from the direction of the gas giant. The Tactical officer, a gangly man with swept back green hair, did a double-take that interrupted him as he was in the middle of drawing his sidearm and lunging towards us. His eyes went even wider and he screamed: "Missiles!"
"Shields up!" Gregorian bellowed, head swinging back and forth between the screen and us.
This was it, our diversion, and I took advantage of it, drawing my pistol and turning to put a burst through the head of the female ex-cadre agent. She had recovered from the impact with the big guy's body and was trying again to get to Trint when the three-round burst took off the top of her skull. Trint used the lack of distraction to focus on the skinny one and slammed the blade of a combat knife home in the human's left eye socket.
That left me free to make a run at Gregorian and I had planted a foot to push off for the bridge when something grabbed the cruiser and shook it like a dog worrying a bone. My sticky plate broke free from the deck and I found myself slamming into the bulkhead as metal screamed around me, stars swimming briefly though my vision.
"What the fuck?" I heard someone yell and I echoed the sentiment inside my head. Had something rammed us? Maybe the shields had failed and a projectile weapon had gone through?
"Cal!" I heard Deke's voice and twisted around, seeing him and Kara coming through the access tube exit next to the lift banks.
Another blast tossed the ship around and sent Trint tumbling into me and even though there's no weight in space, that big cyborg still had a shitload of mass: the breath went out of me as he crushed me into the bulkhead. I saw flashes as I spun around, unable to gain purchase, of the members of the bridge crew that had left their restraints being tossed about like toys.
"That's not Chang's ships!" Kara yelled, clutching a safety strap next to the tube exit. "Those are Predecessor weapons!"
I didn't respond, just found a purchase for my right-foot sticky plate, then pushed off into the bridge. Gregorian was floating half-senseless, a cut on his forehead oozing globules of blood, and I snagged him by the back of his collar, which arrested my momentum and turned me around feet-for-head. I bent my knees as I came up against the front of the bridge, legs disappearing up to my
shins in the holographic display there, and I had a bird's-eye-view of the bridge crew for just a split second.
The few that weren't strapped in and absorbed with trying to fight off whoever was attacking the cruiser were still stunned from the hits the ship had taken. No one raised a hand nor a weapon to me as I boosted off the bulkhead and back towards the others.
The ship shook again as I came to the access tube entrance and Trint had to grab me to keep me from spinning off wildly.
"This ship is going to come apart!" Deke said from beside me. "We have to get out of here!"
"Not without Murdock," I said, shaking my head. "Come on!"
I yanked Gregorian into the tube behind me; I needed to get him someplace safe, but there was no safe place on this ship...
Chapter Sixteen
Rachel:
“Where the hell did they come from?” Pete exclaimed, head whipping back and forth between the displays on the lighter’s bridge. “I mean, I didn’t see anything…no warp corona, no nothing!”
Rachel’s heart was racing as she watched the swarm of ships that had just appeared on the bridge tactical display; they were smaller than the cruiser, smaller even than the lighter, but they were moving fast and without any sort of physical propulsion that the sensors could detect, even though they were too close to the moon to be using the Teller-Fox warp drive.
“They’re attacking the cruiser,” she realized, trying to make sense of the confusing tactical readout. The weapons the little ships were using didn't seem to register on the sensors, but the return fire from the cruiser's lasers was plain to see.
She turned to Robert Chang, who was sitting at the bridge's command station, his pudgy, soft face seemingly unaffected by the sudden turn of events. She felt a flare of anger at his obvious lack of concern.
"Where are your people?" she asked him, her voice betraying only a portion of the rage she felt. "We need to get Cal and the others out of there!"
