Beyond the Frontier: Steadfast

by Jack Campbell

  “Same on your side, Hsien?” Orvis asked. “Good. Prep Banshees. Prep to blow the doors. I’ll count down. On one, fire the Banshees. Wait three seconds, then crack the inner doors and get inside.”

  “Fire Banshee when count reaches one, wait three, go in,” Hsien repeated back.

  “Fire on one, wait three, go in,” Maya added to indicate she had also understood the orders.

  One Marine at each air lock knelt and placed a short tube against the inner hatch. The two with the Demo and Entry skills stood by the doors and rapidly traced the edges of them with what looked like narrow tape, then laced a crisscross pattern across the surfaces of the doors as well before sticking small remote detonator tabs into the tape and stepping back. “Stand by,” Orvis said. “Begin count. Three . . . two . . . one.”

  Geary saw the views from the Marines with the Banshee tubes jolt as the devices fired. The Marines scrambled to their feet, weapons ready, leaving neat holes where the Banshee rounds had punched through the inner air lock doors as if they were paper.

  “Three . . . go!” Hsien and Maya yelled simultaneously.

  The demo tape on the doors abruptly flared into brilliant light as it instantly ate through the material behind it. The inner doors blew out in fragments, the pieces flying past the Marines under the pressure of atmosphere venting from the interior of the stealth craft. The Marines surged into motion the moment the fragments were past, racing into the craft against the wind of the inner atmosphere pouring out into the barely present atmosphere of Europa.

  Even through the Marine sensors, the scenes they confronted inside were of confusion and chaos. Each Banshee had burst after it tore through the hatch, setting off more EMP charges as well as dazzlingly bright bursts of light and thunderclaps of sound. Men and women carrying a variety of small arms had been covering the hatches from inside the ship, but now were reeling in disorder, some pounding on weapons whose fried circuitry had rendered them useless, others frantically grabbing at the inoperative breathing gear on their survival suits as they began to grasp that those circuits had been fried along with those in weapons.

  The Marines, barely fitting inside the craft’s passageways in their battle armor, fired with deadly efficiency. Within seconds, every criminal still holding a weapon had been hit, while a few others had fled.

  A Marine private from First Squad paused, looking down at a figure writhing on the deck at her feet, then fired.

  “Hotch!” Sergeant Hsien snapped.

  “He was choking to death, Sarge!”

  Hsien paused. “All right. No sense making ’em die slow like they did that woman they tossed out the air lock. We got six locals down on this side.”

  “Got five bad guys down here,” Maya reported.

  “Get moving,” Orvis ordered. “Secure the rest of the ship.”

  The Marines from Hsien’s and Maya’s squads raced through the ship as fast as they could, literally hammering down hatches and doors with the strength of their combat armor. With only two decks in the fairly small craft, it didn’t take them long. Behind them, at the air lock doors, other Marines hastily fastened emergency seals across the broken doors, keeping in what atmosphere remained in the grounded spacecraft.

  “Heads up!” Private Francis called.

  Geary yanked his eyes away from the screens of the Marines in First and Third Squads. Francis was in Fourth Squad, watching the outside of the stealth craft, and because of his angle of view had been the first to spot a small hatch near the underside of the spacecraft as it began opening.

  Two figures in space suits dropped out, both carrying weapons, both firing wildly as they fell toward the ice.

  Francis and a half dozen other Marines fired back, slamming shots into both figures before their feet even hit the surface. The two criminals landed in loose sprawls, to lie motionless.

  “Got some here, too!” a Marine in Second Squad called. “Forward, just under the bow!”

  This time, hand weapons were stuck outside the new hatch and fired without aiming, spraying shots as the ones holding the weapons stayed completely under cover.

  “Do they think this is some stupid video?” Sergeant Koury grumbled, as she and the rest of her squad fired. Aided by the precise targeting abilities of their battle armor, the energy pulses slammed into the weapons sticking out of the hatch, knocking two out of the hands of those holding them while a third exploded in a flurry of propellant all going off at once. Three figures fell out of the hatch, one dropping to the ice and scrabbling feebly, while the other two pawed at survival suits with rents in them from which atmosphere was pouring out.

  “Ancestors forgive us,” Orvis mumbled. “Put them out of their misery, Koury.”

  “But, Gunny, we stopped doing that to the Syndics! What about prisoners?”

  “We can’t take them back. They’re going to die fast now or slow later. You want to watch?”

  “No,” Sergeant Koury answered after a second. “But I’m not going to ask anyone else to do it.” She raised her weapon and fired several times.

  “They are being merciful,” Commander Nkosi murmured next to Geary, as if trying to remind himself of that.

  “Got four in here,” a private in Third Squad called out from inside the craft. The view from his armor showed four terrified criminals huddled together between the beds in a sleeping compartment barely large enough for several bunks stacked along the walls.

  “No weapons?” Sergeant Hsien asked.

  “Don’t see any, Sarge.”

  “Ask them if they know where the fleet officers are.”

  The private relayed the question over his external speaker, the sound coming out weakly in the thinned atmosphere left inside the spacecraft. “They say they don’t know, Sarge.”

  “Then back out and leave one Marine to guard the compartment while the rest of you continue the search.”

  “Hey, Gunny,” Corporal Maya called a minute later. “This looks like the hatch into the bridge.”

  Commander Nkosi nodded to Geary. “It should be the right location for a bridge on a spacecraft like that. The hatch is probably armored, in case of mutiny.”

  “We’ve seen that sort of thing before,” Geary commented before calling Orvis. “Gunnery Sergeant, the local commander agrees that Corporal Maya has probably found the bridge. The hatch is likely armored, so it can serve as a citadel like the Syndics use.”

  “Thank you, Admiral. Sir, we’ve covered the whole spacecraft except whatever’s behind that hatch. Our people must be in there, along with however many of the enemy are still active. We’ve accounted for twenty hostiles so far.”

  “It will not be a large compartment,” Nkosi warned. “It will not hold more than a half dozen at the most. Blasting your way in could be hazardous to your officers if they are inside.”

  “We might not have much choice,” Geary said. He glanced at Desjani. Her rigid face showed no feeling even though he could see anguish in her eyes. But she nodded in response to his unspoken question.

  “You’re right, Admiral,” Desjani said. “Let’s see what Gunny Orvis can do first, though.”

  “I’m on my way to that bridge hatch,” Orvis reported, jumping up and pulling himself into the temporary air lock rigged from sheets of thin, transparent material that ballooned outward under even the gentle pressure still inside the ship. “Maya, I want your breaking and entering guy there along with half your squad. Don’t do anything until I get there. From the sound of things, we can’t afford to use a Banshee without risking serious harm to the fleet officers.”

  “Figures,” Corporal Maya grumbled. “Jaworski, get your butt down here with me. The rest of you apes hold positions.”

  Orvis scrambled through the craft until he reached the hatch where Maya and her Marines waited. “Have you tried knocking? Did you push any buttons?”

  “No, Gunny,” Ma
ya replied. “You said not to do anything.”

  “And you listened? You may make sergeant someday.” Orvis walked to the bulkhead holding the hatch, examining it carefully. “I never saw one just like this. It does look armored, though. Let’s see who’s home before we blow the door down.”

  Orvis reached out a hand, one armored finger gently touching a comm panel next to the hatch. “That ought to be the call button, right?”

  His question was answered a moment later when the comm panel lit up, showing a man brandishing a hand weapon, his face twisted by fear. “I’ve got them in here! You break in and I’ll kill them both!”

  “Martian,” Commander Nkosi said, disgust clear in his voice. “That tattoo under his left ear. It’s a gang mark. Red mobs use them.”

  “Hey,” Gunnery Sergeant Orvis said to the criminal in soothing tones very unlike his usual way of speaking. “Relax. Can you hear me?”

  “Yeah. Yeah. You break in and I’ll kill them!”

  “Understood. We don’t want you. We just want those two officers.”

  “It’s not my fault we’re down here!” the hostage-taker cried, his words falling over each other as they came out too quickly and too loudly. “It was Grassie! She took us down before the rest of us knew she was aiming to land on Europa! It wasn’t my fault!”

  “Pal, I don’t care whose fault it was, I just want our people back safe,” Orvis assured him. “We’ll let the locals worry about what to do to this Grassie.”

  The man laughed, high-pitched and rapid, the sound unnerving. “We already took care of her! Shoved her out the air lock while she tried to claim she had some plan to get us out of here! It’s all her fault; she wanted to be on Europa, so we gave her to Europa!”

  That explained the body outside the ship. “Idiots,” Desjani said in disgusted tones. “They panicked and killed their pilot.”

  “They would have had a backup pilot aboard,” Commander Nkosi said. “Or, at least, an autopilot routine so the ship could fly itself. But it was still a very stupid as well as brutal thing to do.”

  Gunnery Sergeant Orvis was speaking to the hostage-taker again, still using the same calm, measured tones. “All right. You took care of your pilot. So we got no problems.”

  “No . . . no problems?” The criminal sounded bewildered as well as frightened.

  “That’s right. You the only one in there with our people? What do you need?”

  “What?” The criminal stared at Orvis.

  “What do you need? You and me, we’re just doing our jobs, right? Now, me, my job is to get those officers safe and sound. That’s what I want. What do you want? You want a deal?”

  “A deal?” The hostage-taker grasped at that like a man in a vacuum grabbing for a survival suit. “Yeah. A deal. I’ll trade you those two.”

  “That’s fair,” Orvis said. “Trade them for what? What’s the deal?”

  “Uh . . . get me off this rock! That’s the deal! You promise to get me off here along with you, then you let me go, safe, or I kill both of your friends!”

  Orvis handed his rifle to a nearby Marine, then held his empty hands up in a nonthreatening way. “That’s it? That’s all you want?”

  “Yeah! Promise you’ll get me safe off Europa! In one piece!”

  “Sure,” Orvis replied. “We don’t care what happens to you. You got a deal.”

  “I’ve got . . . ? That’s it? You don’t have to check with anybody?”

  “Hell, no. I got full authority for this,” Orvis assured him. “You let us in there, we get those two officers safe and sound, and we’ll do what you ask.”

  Commander Nkosi turned an angry gaze on Geary. “Admiral, you can’t—”

  Geary shook his head, his grim expression stopping Nkosi’s words in their tracks. He felt a sickness inside as he realized what Gunny Orvis intended, but no orders reached his lips to stop what would soon happen. I need to own this, too. I knew it might come to this. It’s my responsibility. “I don’t think you have anything to worry about,” he told Nkosi.

  “He doesn’t,” Desjani said. She didn’t sound upset, just implacable. Geary wondered how many times she had faced similar situations and made similar decisions.

  The traitor who had provided a Syndic hypernet key to the Alliance, and who had led the Alliance fleet into an ambush that might have been the death of that entire fleet, had died on this bridge. No one had ever told Geary who had pulled the trigger. But whether or not Tanya herself had executed the man, he realized that she could have.

  A child of an endless war, she did what was necessary.

  “But your man is promising—” Nkosi began again.

  “We were at war for a century with opponents who would lie at the drop of a hat and commit any atrocity,” Desjani interrupted. “We learned to do what we have to do.”

  Nkosi stared at her. “But . . . your own honor—”

  “Don’t,” Desjani said in her most dangerous voice. “Don’t go there. You have no right to judge us.”

  Nkosi looked away, clearly distressed, but he said nothing more.

  “You promise? That’s binding?” the hostage-taker was demanding once more.

  “Yeah, I promise,” Orvis said in a casual voice. “Yeah, it’s binding.” Unseen by the hostage-taker, but visible to Geary and the other watchers who could see activity on Orvis’s helmet display, Orvis tagged the image of the criminal, then highlighted Corporal Maya’s name. Almost instantly, Maya’s acknowledgment glowed green on Orvis’s display.

  “Look,” Orvis pressed, “you’ve only got so much life support left, and the longer any of us hang around this ice ball, the more risk we’re all running. Let’s get this done, all right?”

  The hostage-taker hesitated, then nodded. “All right. Remember. You promised. I got a record of it.”

  “That’s fine. I got a record of it, too.”

  A low thunk sounded as the bolts holding the hatch retracted, then the hatch swung open. Atmosphere puffed out as pressure inside the bridge equalized with what was left inside the rest of the spacecraft. Orvis entered slowly, still unarmed, his hands once again held out as far as they could be and get through the hatch. A few other Marines followed behind him, their weapons pointed toward the deck or the overhead, everyone moving in a relaxed way. Last of all came Corporal Maya, her weapon pointed slightly away from the hostage-taker.

  The criminal obviously still didn’t trust the Marines. He had the pistol barrel pressed against Lieutenant Castries’s forehead. Castries was dressed in a shapeless coverall and propped into a seat. Her eyes were closed and her body slack.

  “Drugged,” Dr. Nasr told Geary. “If she were merely unconscious, her respiration would be more rapid.”

  Lieutenant Yuon lay on the deck next to the chair holding Castries, unmoving except for the slow rise and fall of his own breathing.

  His attention focused on Orvis and the other Marines in the front rank, the hostage-taker did not notice Maya’s weapon shifting slightly as she took aim. “How are we going to—?” he started to say.

  At such close range, the shot and impact seemed to occur simultaneously. The hostage-taker jerked as the energy pulse from Corporal Maya’s weapon blasted all the way through his head and impacted on one of the screens behind him.

  Orvis stepped forward quickly, grasping the pistol and pulling it away from the limp hand of the dead criminal as the body dropped to the deck under Europa’s gentle gravity.

  “Stupid git,” Maya commented conversationally. “Even the Syndics aren’t dumb enough to fall for that anymore.”

  “That’s because the Syndics taught us that trick,” Orvis said with brutal directness.

  “Gunny, we couldn’t take him back! The only way to keep him from killing these two squids was to tell him what he wanted to hear.”

  “It was still a false promise. Re
mind me when we get back to the ship to apologize to my ancestors and beg forgiveness for the lie.”

  “Sure, Gunny,” Maya said, her voice now subdued. “Won’t be the first time, will it?”

  “Hell, no. Wish it could be the last.” All traces of gentle persuasion dropped from Gunnery Sergeant Orvis’s voice. “All right, you apes! Get them into the spare armor, on the double! Minimize physical contact with them until they’re sealed in!”

  “Minimize . . . what, Gunny?” a private asked.

  “Don’t touch them!”

  “How are we going to get them into the armor without touching them, Gunny?”

  “Make sure you don’t touch them when you touch them, that’s how. Now get it done!”

  As those aboard Dauntless watched the Marines gingerly sealing the unconscious bodies of Castries and Yuon into the spare battle armor, Commander Nkosi shook his head. “If I had done that, I would be going to jail.”

  “Lucky you had us here to do it, then, isn’t it?” Desjani replied bitingly.

  “This isn’t over,” Geary said to break up the painful debate. “We still have to recover them.”

  Nkosi licked his lips before speaking again. “Sir, you must understand that if my physician does not certify that your Marines’ armor has been decontaminated, my ships will fire upon those men and women before your ship can recover them. My presence here will not stop my ships from acting as I ordered.”

  “I would expect no less,” Geary said. “So far, your physician seems satisfied, though.” He did not bother saying what everyone knew, that Dauntless would not sit passively while the quarantine ships attacked Alliance Marines. “We’ve dealt with that stealth craft for you,” he reminded Nkosi.

  Orvis was checking the seals on the armor now holding Lieutenants Castries and Yuon. “Looks good. Let’s go. Pull out, everybody.”

  As the other Marines began moving, Maya and three of her squad carrying the two suits of armor with the lieutenants in them, one Marine called out a plaintive question. “Sarge? What about these guys? The four in this berthing compartment?”