“Starless Void,” he heard Ramirez mutter. “That is creepy.”
The Lieutenant Major couldn’t disagree. There was a reason a Void without Stars or light was the closest thing the Stellar Spiritualists had to Hell.
“I don’t plan on dying in here, Gunny,” he replied crisply, talking over a bone-deep fear he couldn’t show his subordinates. “Let’s move.”
Jets on their armored suits responded with practiced ease, moving the Marines through that void. Edvard quickly attached himself to Delta Platoon, dropping a private link to Machado.
“The other companies are skirmishing and holding the line,” he told the platoon leader quietly. “If this works, they’re going to try and duplicate it.”
He heard the younger man swallow.
“No pressure, huh?”
“Welcome to the hot seat, son,” Edvard told him dryly.
“Incoming,” one of the lead Marines snapped. “Jamming and evading—we have seeking missiles launched from the command center’s chunk of the hull!”
“Take them out—hard!” the company commander snapped, jetting forward with his people.
Smart battle rifles identified the automated turrets and opened fire. Self-propelled armor-piercing rockets flashed across the void, the rocket flashes lighting up the dark spaces. Grenades followed, detonations rippling along the chunk of hull Edvard’s computer identified as the command center itself.
All of it occurred in eerie silence, the armor and the weapons identifying the environment and using appropriate munitions. One of Edvard’s people flashed red in his tactical display—a victim of the Terran defenses.
And then there was darkness again.
“Targets down,” Bravo Platoon’s Lieutenant reported. “All turrets disabled. We’ve done a number on the hull, but it looks the armor shell held. Demolitions forward!”
Edvard landed just behind the demolitions expert, magnetic boots latching his armor suit to the torn-up metal. It looked like the command center had been encased in warship-grade ferro-carbon ceramics.
“Can we pierce this?” he asked the demolitions Sergeant, actually worried for the first time since Machado had given him the plan.
“Oh, Voids yes,” the Sergeant replied. “Flashing you an approval request. Gonna need a lot of safety radius. Everybody back!”
Edvard knew better than to doubt the expert. He approved the request without even a cursory glance, then jetted off from the metal surface again. It took several moments to clear the flashing orange sphere the sergeant had dropped onto the tactical net.
“Everyone clear?” the Sergeant demanded. She waited for a moment to check, then continued. “Fire in the hole!”
That was the moment when Edvard realized he’d approved the use of positron charges. Pure white fire lit up the interior of the station in a tight circle, forcing his armor to black out his vision to avoid damage to his eyes.
“Go!” he snapped, resolving to have a word with the Sergeant later.
He was one of the first through the hole, diving into the command nexus of the space station. The exterior hatches were slamming shut to contain atmosphere loss and people were diving for cover. Shipsuits were sealing, protecting them from the loss of atmosphere—but some of the people were Marines.
They went for guns.
The tactical net tagged them, lighting up the soldiers with weapons in bright red. Edvard tracked across the room with his battle rifle, the smart weapon linking with his implant and firing as it aligned on each of the armed Marines.
They needed the command center intact, and that tactical data was loaded into the weapon. Low-velocity stun rounds spat from the barrel, self-calibrating shock weapons that punched through lightly armored shipsuits to deliver incapacitating charges.
“Surrender!” he bellowed. “Drop your weapons.”
There was enough air to carry the order, and the chaos slowed—and stopped. The handful of red icons dimmed as they dropped their weapons and rose above consoles, hands above their heads.
“Get me an emergency airlock on that hole,” he ordered to his people. “Then get the information team in here. I want control of this station now.”
Chapter 30
Huī Xing System
01:30 April 3, 2736 Earth Standard Meridian Date/Time
Prison Platform Huī Xing—Lambda
Edvard inched down the corridor connecting to the prison platform very, very carefully. The Marines aboard had surrendered once his people had started turning their local gravity up on them—stations like this one were designed with the ability to produce fifteen gees for a limited period for a reason. Even powered armor couldn’t do much more than keep the wearer alive in those conditions.
That didn’t mean there weren’t any traps or tricks hidden in the accessway to the prison camp. His information people assured him they were in control of the automated systems, but he knew Marines.
Finally, the point woman in Alpha Platoon—no one would have let him take this trip alone, even if he was that stupid—signaled the all clear, and he walked forward to join her at the hatch sealing off the prison camp itself. With only two accesses that didn’t lead straight to vacuum, the designers of the platform had lavished those connections with security and defenses.
“Open it up, Ramirez,” he ordered the Gunny—currently in charge, despite his protests, of the station’s command center.
“Is it too late to remind you that point is not the company’s commander’s job?” his senior noncom asked.
“Point may not be, but coordinating with the prisoners themselves is,” Edvard replied. “You’re sure there are no guards inside?”
“They do random sweeps, but otherwise, the guards only enter the actual prison camp to deliver food or if there’s an emergency,” Ramirez told him. “I guess with the prisoners cut off from everything by thirty meters of hard vacuum, they figure they can mostly leave them to their own devices. Though, believe me, everything—and I do mean everything—is monitored.”
“Any sign they know we’re coming?”
“None. How would they?” the Gunny asked. “Opening the hatch now,” he continued. “Good luck, sir.”
“Thanks, Gunny,” Edvard muttered, standing back while the massive metal hatch slowly and noisily retracted.
Alpha Platoon’s point squad swept in, weapons at the ready as they surveyed the immediate perimeter. Another all clear signal, and the Lieutenant Major followed his people into the actual prison camp part of the station.
It was better than he’d been expecting. The access tunnel opened into an open area roughly a hundred meters long by fifty wide, with actual greenery in it. Mostly the space was a gathering and sports area, but there were little clusters of bushes providing natural oxygen.
Utilitarian-looking corridors stretched off from that meeting area, presumably leading to mess halls, gyms, and sleeping rooms. He understood most of the facilities to be cramped but serviceable—there were ten thousand people in the disk he stood in, after all.
Only a few dozen people were in the area, though, keeping an apparently lazy eye on his armored Marines.
“Wait, you’re not Terrans,” someone suddenly exclaimed. “Who are you?”
“I am Lieutenant Major Edvard Hansen of the Castle Federation Marine Corps,” Edvard introduced himself to the speaker, a hard-bodied woman he was certain was a Marine or Special Ops trooper from somewhere. “My understanding is that you are permitted to organize yourselves—I need to speak to the senior officer. This facility is now under Alliance control.”
She blinked at him like he was speaking a strange language, then a giant grin split her face.
“Of course, sir,” she replied, coming to perfect attention and saluting crisply. “Sergeant Major Amanda Harding, Hessian Space Marines, sir! The Brigadier is going to be happy to see you.”
“Lead the way, Sergeant Major,” he told her. “I look forward to meeting them too.”
02:00 April 3, 2736 ESMDT<
br />
DSC-078 Avalon, Bridge
In just over fourteen hours, Battle Group Seven-Two had entered the Huī Xing system, destroyed two Commonwealth battlecruisers, and secured ten prison platforms. Apparently, a platoon commander had spotted a weakness in the space stations, one that wasn’t present unless you’d already boarded them but which made taking control of the facilities surprisingly straightforward.
That control had forced the Terrans to surrender, which meant that Force Commander Kyle Roberts now had the best part of a Commonwealth Marine Division he needed to find somewhere to put. So far, they were being transferred into empty cargo containers in civilian transfer stations.
Unlike the Terrans, he didn’t have custom-built platforms to load them into—and he was taking the Terrans’ custom-built platforms with him.
“How long are we looking at to load the platforms into the freighters?” he asked. This deep inside Xin’s gravity well, it would take his fleet over an hour to reach space where they could bring up their Alcubierre-Stetson drives and escape. Given that his orders had been to stay outside the gravity well, that was making him twitchy.
“They’re still assessing how they’re going to fit them in,” Anderson told him quietly. “It’s going to take them twelve hours just to offload what they’re already carrying. I’m assuming we want the satellites dropped into orbit in autonomous mode?”
“Yeah,” Kyle agreed. “We’re going to have to run, but let’s not leave Xin entirely in their hands.”
“Best guess, yeah…” His XO added numbers in his head. “Twelve hours to offload the fighter platforms and missile satellites. We’ll have to use starfighters to position them, but I think the CAG’s people should be down for that.
“After that, seven hours per platform to load into the transport,” the other man continued. “If everything goes exactly to schedule, we’ll be clear to move at eleven hundred hours tomorrow.”
“What about the prisoners we’re moving onto the Marine ships?” Kyle asked.
“That’s why we’ll need the fighters to place the missile platforms,” Anderson replied grimly. “I’m commandeering every shuttle in the battle group to move people from Platforms Nine and Ten,” — Kyle’s implant cooperatively highlighted the two space stations in questions— “over to the three assault transports. That is going to take twenty-six hours. They’ll be done before the other eight platforms are loaded into the transports.”
Kyle had updated timers on his mental displays as Anderson spoke, and sighed. “If we’re wrong about where they left Zahn for, we’re going to cut this damned tight,” he warned his XO. “A seven-day variance in possible enemy arrival times makes me itch.”
“Intel says the near-term arrival is a low-order probability,” his XO replied.
“Yes, and Intel told us that they’d divided their fleet into nicely digestible three-ship packets,’ Avalon’s Captain pointed out. “We need to plan for worst-case. Get with Commander Pendez,” he ordered. “I want full high-speed evasion courses worked out for all likely arrival vectors of their fleet.
“I’ll freely admit I’ve stuck our heads in the bear trap, James. Make sure we know our way out.”
A moment later, the current com officer flashed Kyle a warning note. The Force Commander looked away from Anderson to meet the young woman’s gaze and nodded to her.
“What is it?” he asked.
“We’re being pinged by someone on the planet,” she told him. “It’s from a relay transmitter in one of the mountain ranges—I could trace the original source if you want.”
“That won’t be necessary, Lieutenant,” Kyle said. “It appears the resistance is reaching out to us. I’ll take it in my office.”
It wouldn’t do to disappoint a planetary government-in-hiding in public, after all.
#
Kyle dropped into his chair, took half a moment to make sure he was in front of the big commissioning seal on the wall behind him, and then accepted the transmission.
“This is Force Commander Kyle Roberts, Castle Federation Space Navy. To whom am I speaking?” he asked calmly.
It took a moment for his response to filter through whatever relays the Xin had set up and garner a reply of its own. Several seconds after his transmission went out, his implant informed him a proper communication channel had been established, and the image of a tall Asian woman appeared on his wallscreen.
“I am Deputy Premier Wen Lau of the Republic of Huī Xing,” she told him. “We have noted the destruction of Commonwealth space forces in this system, and I am forced to ask what your intentions with regards to Xin are.”
There was still an occupation garrison, a full division strong, scattered across Xin’s surface.
“The occupation force has not responded to my summons for them to surrender,” Kyle told her. “I do not have the capability at this time to launch a ground assault—we are expecting a significant Commonwealth force to arrive in system in under forty-eight hours.”
“Twenty-Third Fleet, yes,” Wen Lau confirmed. Kyle made a mental note of the Terran force’s name—it would help to have a name rather than constantly referring to it as “the nodal fleet.” “Do you intend to do nothing, then, Force Commander? Why are you even here?”
“The exact details of my mission are classified,” Kyle warned her. Tightbeam transmissions with relays were as secure as anything short of a Q-Com link could be, but he had no idea how large Wen’s staff was. She was on his list of contacts on Xin, but even that didn’t mean she hadn’t been compromised herself.
“We are in the process of rescuing the prisoners held in orbit,” he continued. “I hope that by not engaging the surface forces, I can minimize the chance of retaliation once the—Twenty-Third Fleet, you said?—returns.”
She blinked, a momentary gesture that made Kyle think he’d hit a nerve, then continued in a steady voice.
“I see your logic, Force Commander. Do you have any listing of the prisoners?” she asked, the steadiness wavering. “My…wife was a guardship commander in our system fleet. I do not even know if she survived.”
“We are extracting that from the Terrans’ computers as we speak,” he told her. “I will have my people forward it to you as soon as we have a complete list of Huī Xing prisoners. If your wife is alive, we will take her safely from this system with the rest of the prisoners.
“However, I have no choice but to ask you to refrain from action on the surface. If we keep our activities in orbit and you do not attack the garrison on the surface, you should be safe from Commonwealth retaliation.”
The Deputy Premier sighed and bowed her head.
“I understand,” she confessed. “I will pass your suggestions on to the Premier with my agreement. We will keep our heads down—I can only hope you will be back soon.”
“I can make no promises,” Kyle told her. “All I can say is ‘That’s classified.’”
And hopefully, she would understand that meant they would be back sooner rather than later. If Via Somnia fell, Huī Xing would soon be free.
Deep Space, en route to Via Somnia System
08:00 April 3, 2736 ESMDT
BC-129 Camerone, Admiral’s Breakout Room
“Just what did you feed your boyfriend before we sent him off to be the distraction?” Rear Admiral Alstairs asked Mira sourly. “I was under the impression his reputation was inflated.”
Mira sighed, glancing at the wallscreen in Alstairs’ office that showed the tactical situation in Huī Xing. The most notable aspects of that display were the faded red intersecting spheres around Xin and Goudeshijie marking the gravity well in which Battle Group Seven-Two couldn’t go faster than light—and the green icons of said Battle Group deep inside those spheres.
“Would you have done differently?” she asked quietly, tapping the other set of green icons—the ten red-ringed green disks representing the holding facilities. “They’re still getting a final count on how many people are aboard those stations, but Kyle’s
last update had it at over ninety thousand prisoners.
“Would you really have wanted us to stand by and leave those people in imprisonment?”
Alstairs sighed, her gaze following Mira’s tap.
“No,” she admitted. “But I don’t trust intel’s assessment of where this Twenty-Third Fleet was headed—if I did, we’d be hitting Via Somnia as soon as we could get there, not stopping a light-month out to wait and see what happens in Huī Xing.”
“I doubt Kyle does either,” Mira reminded the Admiral. “If they have nine days—eight now, at best—there’s be no need for the level of rush his people are doing. With a week, Seven-Two could secure the surface and help the local government dig in, give the Terrans even more reasons to bypass Huī Xing and meet us at Via Somnia.”
The Admiral gave a command through her implant, and the display zoomed in on Seven-Two’s icons. Shuttles were swarming over two of the platforms, even as the larger parasite tugs worked to move the fighter platforms the Alliance had gone to so much expense to deliver out of the logistics platforms.
“I already gave him permission to blow the Citadels,” she admitted. “If the Terrans take a week to show up, we’re going to look damned foolish. They’re cheaper than starships, but…”
“And if the Terrans show up tomorrow, ditching those stations may be the only thing that allows Kyle to pull off the largest prisoner rescue in the last eighty or ninety years,” Mira pointed out. “I think everyone will call that worth it.”
“I hope so,” Alstairs told her. “This is one of those cases where I’m glad I sent Kyle, because he didn’t follow his orders to the letter, and furious he didn’t follow his orders,” she admitted with a chuckle. “But if this goes wrong, history will remember him as the man who disobeyed orders and got his battle group destroyed.”
Battle Group Avalon (Castle Federation Book 3) Page 25
