by M. D. Cooper
Angela fed possible configurations onto the net and the Marines looked them over.
Tanis proceeded to give out the orders. “Dvorak, Trist, I want you to head to the comm shack at the far end of the dock. The NNs are all maintaining connections to it, so it’s quite possible that our culprit is down there. The rest of us will do a standard grid sweep across the rest of the dock. Don’t forget to load those configs into your structural scanners. I’ve also got the net source signatures of the NN connections from the 701. They’re on the tac net as well. Check every piece of cargo that’s making a net connection for that route.”
The Marines all saluted and dispersed to the grid locations that Kowalski laid out.
Tanis passed the information to the Marines and followed after Dvorak and Trist who were making their way across the dock toward the comm shack. If what they were dealing with really was just a trigger and it was using the waveguides to generate some sort of cohesion beam then it was even more likely that the answer was in the comm gear.
She hopped on a hover heading to the far end of the dock and brought up the records for the comm shack. Sure enough, a service entry was logged last month, a full twenty weeks before any scheduled maintenance—with no record of malfunction being filed.
“Seems a bit suspicious,” Tanis muttered to herself. She passed the information to Trist and Dvorak along with the details of the repair job. The chance of the info about logged repair being related to the actual work done was slim, but it was a place to start. The hover dropped her off near the comm shack and Tanis kept an eye peeled for anything suspicious as she entered the room.
All ship to station net traffic would pass through the equipment in the shack and since this dock was reserved for larger ships, a lot of systems were crammed in the twenty-meter-long space. After a moment’s search Tanis found Trist and Dvorak already hunched over consoles.
Not wanting to interrupt them, she turned and examined the room, looking for the largest conduit which would likely be connected to the trigger device. Several large plasma lines ran out of the room and onto the dock. Tanis followed them and saw that they terminated at an array of beam emitters and receivers.
They were mounted to a column that ran down from the dock’s ceiling. The design allowed them to rotate and slide into the best position to make a Link with a docked ship.
Tanis pulled up the specs, matching each device in the array to the design blueprints. As expected, something was not right. One emitter looked like a G1 TR3, but was not.
“Aha!” Tanis realized that her vocal proclamation wasn’t all that helpful.
Tanis put a visual of the added component on the tactical and engineering nets. Lively debate ensued between Dvorak, Trist, the engineers and several of the AI.
Tanis took the moment to review the arrival time of the Intrepid. It was getting close; within thirty minutes they would be making the seal. The outer hatches had already opened and the atmosphere on the dock was being held in by an ES field. If she looked carefully at the mass of local traffic through the opening it was possible to see a pattern clearing to allow the colony ship through.
“I’m cut too; we’ve lost all Link to any nets outside of this dock,” Trist said.
“I’ve got no external wireless connections,” Dvorak added.
Tanis looked up to see one/two running toward the comm shack. “Taylor. Someone’s dampened the dock. Check outside and see if you can get—” The whine of railguns coming from the dock’s entrance interrupted her.
“Aw fuck,” Private Weber cursed. “Never a dull moment with you around, Major.”
“Glad to oblige.” Tanis tried to contact two/three on the discreet Link that military teams could use at close range.
Tanis pulled up a map of the dock and examined it.
Kowalski initiated a local combat net which Tanis extended to Trist before marking two/three’s current position and destination on it. She turned to one/two. “Weber, you stay with Dvorak and Trist. You two try to determine how to disable that thing.” Tanis pointed up at the emitter. “We could just blast it, but who knows what sort of failsafes and detectors it has.”
“Yeah, I’m typically against blowing things up that we don’t understand.” Dvorak’s tone was dry, but Tanis could tell it masked concern.
“The rest of you, we’re moving to position G/4.2. We’ll set up cover for two/three and try to catch whoever this is in our crossfire.”
“I’m guessing that it’s someone who wants to stop us from disabling this little party trick here,” Taylor said.
“Or just someone with amazingly bad timing,” Perez grinned.
“What, like your jokes?” Weber asked.
“This is the second time I’ve been attacked today.” Tanis sighed. “I’m beginning to think some cosmic force wants me dead.”
“I’d bet more on simple human forces wanting you dead…sir,” Perez replied.
Tanis cast him a futile quelling glare and the fireteam moved out, hopping on a hover
traveling in roughly the right direction. Tanis stayed back, monitoring two/three as well as Trist and Dvorak’s progress.
Minutes later they were in position, deployed behind several crates containing casings for SC batteries. The casings were molecularly dense and also magnetic; with luck they would deflect or slow any incoming rail shots.
Two/three had managed to reach their position with no injuries and were returning fire on the attackers. Their feed of the enemy was on the combat net and Tanis saw they were fighting more of the same heavily-armed men from the conflict on Mars 1. The count came to be under forty enemy.
Tanis realized that in those ten minutes the Intrepid would be making its seal. Whoever was orchestrating this party had to be making certain that all appeared outwardly normal on the dock. She thought briefly of the TSF guards and a feeling of guilt assaulted Tanis momentarily. She should have warned the guards there to be on the lookout for trouble. Their names were added to her list.
Tanis steeled herself and addressed the teams. With her nanoprobe net extended, Tanis gathered an aerial survey of the combat zone. Sure enough the attackers were trying to flank the Marines. It’s what she would have done. A quick run through the cargo manifests revealed several things that could be of use. A crate ten meters away contained automated servitors to be used for scrubbing air ducts in environmental processing plants in the colony station. They were equipped with scalpeling lasers that could remove deposits and corrosion with ease. She sent a command to the crate to unseal, and a quorum of nano flew over to activate the servitors.
However, the moment they ducked down to reload, the enemy delivered a withering assault with their railguns. Molten plas and steel sprayed out from each impact.
Despite the Marines’ best efforts, the enemy was advancing. There was only so much they could do against an enemy that outnumbered them four to one and had superior firepower.
Angela’s avatar grinned. Tanis got that distracted feeling she experienced whenever Angela was using a substantial part of her brain to help work through a difficult problem. It was almost like a buzzing going on in the back of her mind, causing segments of code or raw mathematical theorems to flash through the background of her thoughts.
Tanis laid out the scenario to her two squads. Taylor spoke up as soon as she was done.
The two men dashed from their position, rolling and sliding across open spaces to present the smallest targets possible. The power junction was on a catwalk seven meters above the deck and while a few crates rose higher, much of their climb would be in the open.
“Good luck,” Tanis whispered. < C’mon Marines, let’s lay down one hell of a distraction.> In a coordinated effort, grenades were lobbed and fire spewed out of assault rifles and slug throwers to hide the movements and destination of Taylor and Weber. Combat net showed they were almost at their goal and just had the climb ahead of them. Tanis saw they had opted to scale the back of a radioactive waste storage container rather than take the more exposed ladder along the wall. It would be quite the leap to the catwalk, but the two men must have thought they could make it.
Tanis swung a probe into their area to see a pair of the enemy on the opposite side of the container the Marines were climbing. She sent the feed to Weber. Upon reaching the top of the container he crouched and lobbed two conc grenades over the far side. Twin blasts ripped apart several crates and Weber leaned over the top and delivered a barrage of slugs from his assault rifle before continuing with blasts from his pulse rifle, while his automatic reloader fed fresh ammunition into the AR.
Taylor had used the distraction to make the leap to the catwalk. He crouched low, unfastening the cover to the power conduit’s coupling. A plasma pellet hit the catwalk near him, half blasting and half melting a portion of the structure away. The unsteady surface shook and swayed, but Taylor held his position while Weber threw his last grenade at the attacker who had made the shot.
Things were getting tense; the fireteams were pulled back as tight as they could manage around the comm shack, but the plasma rails were chewing up the cover. Tanis was trying to bring in more cargo, but their attackers had wised up and were shooting any haulers or grav pads they saw.
A low boom echoed through the dock and Tanis knew that the Intrepid had completed its docking procedure. It was just over a minute early. Any moment now the ES shield would drop and the trigger mechanism would fire. She saw the Marines all shift, their posture showing that they were taking a last stand approach to the fight. They’d go down as heroes.
“We’re so fucking close,” Dvorak swore. “Just one more goddamn minute and we’ll have this bastard cracked.”
