by Rick Partlow
“Anything?” he asked Tara, searching the display for any indication of damage, any thermal spikes or leaking atmosphere.
“We got some sensor scatter,” she replied, her tone subdued. “That’s probably from shedding armor. But I can’t see any signs of real damage.”
“Shit,” Norris blurted, the first word he’d uttered since he’d handed out the space suits.
“Yeah,” Osceola agreed. “Hey Ortiz, here’s where you’re going to miss the part where it was boring.” He sucked in as deep a breath as he could manage. “Boost us up to six gees, Kammy.”
“Wonderful,” Tara moaned, the sound squeezed off into a squeak as six times her normal weight pressed down on her chest.
“Keep firing,” Osceola told her, forcing the words out and hoping they were still audible over the roaring in everyone’s ears. “You might get lucky.”
“That’s what she said,” Tara cracked, using precious oxygen on the comeback because some straight lines were just too good to pass up.
“Hey, Boss…” Kammy trailed off but Osceola could feel the eyes on him and knew what the big man had been about to say.
“I’ll put it on when I need it.”
“We’ve lost target lock on the railgun,” Tara wheezed. “Firing angle’s gone. Working on a solution for the laser batteries…but I think they’re going to have one first.”
Being hit by a laser weapon in a heavily armored starship was a strange thing. You felt nothing, you saw nothing unless you were unlucky enough to be in its path if it penetrated the hull. You just heard this incredibly annoying warning klaxon while the tactical display flashed red, just in case you weren’t close enough to panic and needed some added sensual stimuli.
“We’re getting penetration in the port cargo bay,” Norris reported, surprising Osceola both with the fact he could even talk with six gees of boost and that he’d made the announcement at all. He hadn’t realized the man knew how to read the damage control station display. “Losing some atmosphere, but it’s sealed off already. No crew in the section so no casualties.”
“Oh, they’re not done yet,” he assured the man.
He was trying to remain calm, matter of fact while his stomach roiled. The ship was his life, the child he’d never had, and every hurt she suffered felt as if it was a wound to his body.
“I’ve got target lock,” Tara told him.
“Fire at will.” The command was desultory. If their railgun couldn’t penetrate the heavy cruiser’s armor, their lasers wouldn’t even scratch her paint.
Something rocked the ship, jerking Osceola to the left. He cursed, pain shooting through his neck, only the padding of the acceleration couch’s headrest keeping him from snapping his spine.
“What the fuck was that?” Kammy demanded. Osceola already knew, but he let Norris answer the question. It didn’t seem real if he didn’t say it himself.
“They took out our port bow maneuvering thrusters,” the Spartan spacer reported dutifully. “That was the reaction mass…” Osceola could almost hear his shrug. “…reacting.”
The Valkyrian was close enough to be clearly visible on optical sensors as it passed, close enough to see the sparkling flares of sublimating metal tracking a black, charred line down the side of her hull as the Shakak’s lasers kept up their fire…and then she was past them and the warning klaxon ceased and the red flashing died away.
“Cut thrust.”
Kammy had been waiting for the order and complied before the last syllable had left his tongue. The rib-creaking gee load died away to free-fall so quickly his stomach rebelled and he had to clamp his teeth shut to keep his lunch in his stomach. Ortiz wasn’t quite able to manage it. He heard her retching inside her helmet, felt a pang of sympathy right along with a feeling of gratitude she was wearing a helmet at all. There wasn’t much worse than someone vomiting in free-fall and having to watch the green and yellow globules orbit around the bridge, heading inexorably your way.
“Turn us around, Kammy,” he gave the command he knew none of them wanted to hear. “Make sure you use the starboard thrusters,” he added, though he was sure the big man had already thought of it.
A dull, distant roar vibrated through the hull, reaction mass heated by a fusion bottle the size of an assault shuttle beginning the end-for-end maneuver to bring their main gun back to bear on the enemy.
“But…” It was Ortiz, trying to speak while her helmet’s regulator sucked the remains of her last meal out of her face and into the waste receptacles. “But we can’t hurt them,” she managed to squeak the words out. “Nothing we have can touch them. What are we going to do?”
He remembered what he’d told the crew of the Paralus during the Battle of Plataea and the words came of their own accord.
“We’re going to fight,” he replied. “We’re going to fight until we can’t fight anymore.”
He reached down and freed his suit’s helmet from its anchor on the side of his chair, staring at it for just a moment before he settled it onto his neck yoke and sealed it shut. The view seemed straighter, narrower through the faceplate of the helmet and his breath caught in the staleness of its enclosure before the hiss of air washed over his face.
“Deceleration burn at six gees, Kammy,” he ordered, the words hollow and echoing in his ears. “Take us back into the shit.”
There were, she reflected, some advantages to all-or-nothing last stands. You didn’t have to hold anything back for next time, you didn’t have to worry about what higher authority would think of your plan of action, and you didn’t have to hang back in a command position and let some private take point.
Lyta Randell slithered out from beneath five centimeters of black, volcanic soil and into a night still alight with the raging flames of the drop-ship. It had taken all her self-control to keep from hyperventilating on the auxiliary air supply built into her helmet, buried under the dirt, and it had taken every bit of patience not to jump up the second she’d heard the explosion.
But the plan had been to draw the mecha into the tunnel and leave the rest to her and the Rangers, and she had to give the plan time to work. When she raised her head far enough to see the entrance, she cursed. It had worked too well; it seemed as if all of the Marines had followed the mecha inside.
No, wait. Not all of them.
She spotted them on her second scan across the entrance, just the barest traces on infrared and thermal. They weren’t dug in—there hadn’t been time for that—but they’d taken up hasty fighting positions behind what cover they could find and she respected their professionalism.
Still have to kill them, of course.
“Abnathy,” she radioed to her senior platoon leader, still a sub-lieutenant but one who’d worked his way up through the ranks as an NCO before attending officer’s training. “Take Third Platoon around to the north and secure the surviving enemy drop-ships.”
There were two of them, the third wrecked and burning just two hundred meters away, still close enough to feel the heat of the flames through her armor. They undoubtedly had an armed flight crew aboard each, and they’d likely left either Supremacy Marines or Navy Security guarding the landers. Either way, they couldn’t leave the threat behind them.
“First and Second, follow me at a high crawl and deploy into assault positions.”
It was a dangerous approach. She estimated a full platoon of Marines had remained behind, and they had the high ground. If they spotted her Rangers before they were in position, the Starkad forces could rain down hell on them and there wouldn’t be a damned thing she could do about it. But they had one advantage: the fire would be playing hell with the enemy’s infrared and thermal sights, and she was going to have to hope it was enough.
She tucked her rifle into the cleft of her arms and scrabbled forward on elbows and knees, the bulk of First and Second Platoons spreading out behind her into parallel wedge formations. She trusted their platoon leaders and NCOs, but she snuck a glance back every few meters just to m
ake sure they were keeping their intervals. It would be easy to let it slip in this uneven terrain strewn with razor-edged volcanic rock, easy to detour around an obstacle and lose your way in the flickering shadows of the fire. Easy to get distracted by the discomfort. Ranger armor was well-padded and well-protected on the elbows and knees for situations just such as this, yet she could still feel the sharp edges gouging into her even through the segmented armor plating. Without it, they all would have been sliced to pieces; it would be easy to concentrate on the pain and lose focus on the enemy, but Rangers didn’t lose focus and they didn’t give in to pain. They just did their job and accomplished the mission.
They were less than a hundred meters from the enemy positions when she got the call from Abnathy, his voice low and muted out of habit despite the sound-proofing of his visored helmet.
“Third Platoon in position.”
“Wait one.”
Just a bit farther, seventy meters…
“Low crawl,” she hissed, digging her helmet into the dirt, pressing her body to the uncomfortable, rocky ground and dragging it along, her rifle stretched out over her right arm, held by the end of the sling.
Fifty meters. It would have to be enough.
“Third,” she ordered, “you are a go. Repeat, you are a go.”
She waited. Ten seconds passed by and she began to wonder if something had gone wrong. She had opened her mouth to re-broadcast the directive when she heard the grenades. At this distance, they were sharp, snappy bangs and the stutter of the suppressed carbines was little more than someone clearing their throat beside you, but they attracted enough attention from the Supremacy Marines.
She supposed she could forgive them for the mistake. After all, they’d probably been left in haste, with no direction other than to guard against attack from the rear, and here they were detecting what looked just like an attack from the rear. So they stood and charged down the slope, intent on stopping the assault on their drop-ships, and ran directly into the guns of the Rangers.
“Now!”
She adjusted her aim just a centimeter or two and squeezed the trigger. The carbine pushed against her shoulder and tried to rise at the muzzle, but her left hand held firm on the vertical fore-grip. She let the target go slightly out of focus, not needing to remember the way the man’s body jerked at the impact of the slugs, just letting herself see enough to know he was dead before she moved on to the next.
This one had realized what was happening, was trying to crawfish back up the berm, but it was way too late for that. He tumbled onto his back and slid a few meters down, arms flopping unnaturally, their strength gone along with his life. By the time she tried to transition to a third target, there was none. The Marines were dead, or close enough that they didn’t move when a few extra shots splashed into them.
“Abnathy, report,” she barked, coming up to one knee, eyes scanning back and forth carefully, checking for holdouts.
“Drop-ships secure,” the man reported, voice calm and even, as if he’d just walked aboard with no problems. “No casualties. Ten enemy KIA.”
“Stay with the landers,” she instructed the man. “First and Second, we’re heading inside.”
“Hey Major.”
She jumped at the voice, spinning around and nearly squeezing off a burst of fire before she saw the raised hands, the familiar face. The Military Intelligence officer who’d been calling himself Francis Acosta was soaked, still dripping water even after what had to have been nearly a kilometer hike back up to the entrance from the lake. She didn’t know how the hell he’d made it all this way with no one spotting him, but there was a lot she didn’t know about him, including his real name.
“Glad to see you made it,” she told him, grinning behind her visor where no one could see the indulgence.
“Yeah, me too,” he agreed. He motioned at the pistol holstered on her tactical vest. “You mind loaning me a gun? Mine’s somewhere at the bottom of that damned lake.”
She shook her head, but tossed him the pistol.
“You know, you could just stay out here and sit this one out,” she told him.
“Oh, I could,” he agreed, smirking in that way only pilots and spooks could get away with. “But I’m cold and wet and pissed off.” He motioned to the entrance. “And all the fun’s in there.”
19
“Check this out, sir.”
Jeffries followed Sergeant Arsenault’s voice around the curve of the hallway, shouldering past the trailing fire team, and found the squad leader crouched over what had once been a body. Centuries of dry, sterile air had turned it into a mummy curled on the floor, its stick-like fingers twisted in a death-grip around the butt of a pistol. It was dark in the back hallways; the lights in the offices and apartments where the base staff had lived hadn’t come on automatically the way they had in the cargo bays and research labs. But he’d decided it was worth it to risk infrared illuminators and he could see the lines of the gun clearly through the night-vision filters in his helmet visor.
“Guess he decided he’d rather off himself than starve to death,” Arsenault said, prying the gun out of the corpse’s hand and sticking it in a pocket of his vest. Technically, battle souvenirs were against regs, but the squad leader knew Jeffries didn’t care and Top was riding drag at the rear of the column.
“His problem,” Captain Jeffries judged, “not ours. Keep moving, we need to get to that ship.”
Pasquale Jeffries never ceased to be amazed at his own cleverness. Oh sure, it had been Top who’d noticed the diagram of the base displayed on the fancy three-dimensional projection by the wall, but Jeffries had been the one who’d found the perimeter passage. It was much smaller than the tunnels the mecha had followed, designed for personnel rather than cargo. It had made sense: there’d been a research and engineering crew here and they hadn’t lived on cots in the middle of the storage bays. The great part was, the perimeter hallways took them to the same research labs and storage bays as the cargo tunnels without the danger of getting stepped on or blown up by mecha. He was sure even his prick of First Sergeant appreciated that.
Jeffries had spotted the inventory listing for the ship, too, though he hadn’t quite believed what he was seeing at first. Why the hell would anyone have a starship underground? But the chamber where the ship was stored had to have access to the surface, and he knew it was where the Spartan forces would have retreated in the face of the Starkad advance. If he could get to it before their armored troops did, he could control the situation, use the Spartan research and salvage crew as hostages. And be the Marine officer who gave Starkad an Imperial starship as a present. Win-win.
Jeffries fell in behind Arsenault, between the squad’s fire teams, letting the enlisted take the lead so he could afford to sight-see along the way. Doors hung open along the hallway and he saw this was some sort of housing block for military personnel. He could tell it was military rather than researchers by the uniformity of the rooms; some things didn’t change, whether it was on old Earth, the Empire, or the Dominions. There was always some NCO or staff officer enforcing uniformity whether there was any good reason for it or not.
There were more bodies, too, though he didn’t see any others who’d decided to eat a gun. Maybe the commander handed out poison or something less violent for those who wanted it. He shuddered at the idea, at the irony of starving to death sitting on a mountain of high-tech military hardware. None of it could create biological material out of thin air, though, and no one had been far-sighted enough to create a hydroponic farm down here before it was too late.
“We got stairs, sir,” Arsenault told him.
He’d expected it; the facility maps he’d seen showed a steep incline on the way up to the chamber where they’d stored the ship. The stairwell was narrow and inexpressibly dark, even with the infrared flashlights doing their best to illuminate it. Arsenault was standing at the foot of the stairs with his lead fire team gathered around, weapons pointed outward. He couldn’t see th
eir faces through their helmets, but he was sure they were all looking at him for the call. None of them would want to go up those steps unless they had to.
“What?” he demanded, waving a hand forward. “You know which way we gotta go! Get up there!”
“You heard the Captain!” Arsenault barked. “Let’s get moving! Follow me!”
The squad leader bounded up the stairs two at a time and both fire teams surged forward to keep up. Jeffries let them, let the whole squad run ahead of him before he took his first step up the stairwell. Arsenault, he reflected, was a hero. He loved heroes. They made great mine detectors.
“What in the hell am I looking at?”
Kathren Margolis had trained with every aerospacecraft in the Spartan inventory and a few flown by Starkad and Shang. She could probably fake her way through everything else in the Five Dominions. She’d also received enough cross-training at the Academy to work the helm of a starship at need. She didn’t know the physics of star-travel the way she knew aeronautical engineering, but she knew the controls.
What was spread out before her on the bridge of the Imperial ship was like nothing she’d ever seen before, much less flown. She’d watched Terry play with the holographic displays, and thought she had an idea of how to manipulate them. The two of them had scrolled through menu after menu but there just didn’t seem to be any flight controls. She tried to lean forward to peer more closely at the display, but the whole damned ship was at an angle back towards the stern and her butt kept slipping back in the acceleration couch.
“It keeps mentioning a neural linkage.” Terry pointed to a line of text beside some sort of symbol she couldn’t recognize. “Mech jocks use neural helmets, don’t they?”
“Yeah, but that’s just for reading nerve output to help keep the machines balanced. What would it have to do with flying a ship?”
