The Dark Defiance

by A. G. Claymore

  “I’d say there is.” Danraj’s voice chimed in. “The dead Midgaard was shot under the chin at point blank. There’s powder burns all over his lower jaw. No way Max could have done that if he’d already taken that blast to the chest. I’m no forensics expert, but there’s no way that Midgaard could have shot him if he was missing the top of his head.”

  “All teams, confirm that you’ve heard that.” Harry looked back at his own small group as the calls began to come in. Jan, Mike and Willie nodded that they had been listening.

  “Very well, we still have at least one intruder on board. All teams continue with your assigned sweeps.” Just as he was beginning to wave Jan forward, the sounds of gunfire crackled over the headset, accompanied by a fainter version, heard through the deck plating.

  “Contact,” Liam’s voice announced, his voice schooled to remain calm by years of this sort of work. “Tango firing on us from the junction of Niner-central-forward and delta.”

  Harry looked over at Jan. She was working hard to control her breathing. “I’m going down there,” she said, looking across the hall at Willie. The Scotsman nodded back.

  “All right.” Harry nodded. “Let’s go. Forward elevator, now!”

  They abandoned their cautious leapfrog advance and moved in file down the companionway to the elevator doors. Left-handed, Mike fell into second place to cover behind Harry while Willie kept an eye on their rear.

  “Not responding,” Harry said angrily, stabbing at the buttons.

  Jan shoved him aside and opened the maintenance panel. Pulling the door release, she began to work her fingers into the crack between the two sliding doors. She spun in a rage as she felt a tug on her shoulder.

  “Easy lass.” Willie held up a cat’s paw. He always carried the small pry bar on his vest, despite the occasional jest from his teammates. Nobody was laughing as he got the doors cracked far enough to get hands inside. Terry and Jan braced their hands and feet, sliding the door open.

  “We’re still gonna need rope.” Mike looked at Willie. “Do you have any in the main armory?”

  “We don’t need any chuffing rope, Mike.” Jan raised an eyebrow as she stepped into the shaft.

  The three men reached out for her almost simultaneously, all too late to stop her. They stood there, hands outstretched, looks of amazement on their faces as she put out a hand and rebounded off the far wall of the shaft.

  “The only grav plating in this part of the ship is in the elevator car.” She pointed up. “Car’s up on eleven – we’ve got clear sailing to any floor between ten and bilge.” She drifted back to the door and stepped neatly out onto the deck. She grabbed Willie’s vest and shoved him in. “Now let’s get down there.”

  On nine, Willie was just about to insert his cat’s paw into the door when a blast shook the doors.

  “Ambush,” Liam’s voice slurred. “Terry took one in the gut trying to throw a flash-bang.” They could hear shouts and the chattering of weapons fire through the headsets. They could also hear it more loudly through the thin doors of the elevator shaft. Liam’s breathing was heavy over the net. “Pulling… pulling back to the dead end of niner… central.”

  Willie heaved on the door and Jan saw a Midgaard standing at the junction of the two hallways, five feet in front of her. He was digging at his left ear with one hand while he fired his weapon around the corner.

  She hip fired-three rounds over Willie’s leg, staggering the intruder but not harming him. Good armor. She brought the weapon to her shoulder and aimed the next burst at his head as he turned to face a threat that he obviously hadn’t been able to hear. She was rotating from the recoil of the first burst and had to lead her target. She squeezed the trigger.

  His body slammed back against the bulkhead, smearing the remains of his head down the panel as he slumped to the ground.

  “Tango down at niner-central and delta,” she announced, stepping out onto the deck. Harry tumbled out after her.

  “We’ve got hostiles at the outboard ends of charlie.” Liam’s voice sounded as though he was regaining control of his faculties. “We’ll keep them focused on our position.”

  Jan and Harry took the starboard side. As they approached the intersection where the enemy was lurking, a hail of bullets stitched their way up the angled bulkhead at the octagonal shaped junction of the two companionways. Directly in front of Jan, a Midgaard stepped away from a wall brace and brought up his weapon to return fire.

  Almost without thinking, Jan raised her UMP and fired at the back of his head. The intruder pitched forward to fall dead in the middle of the intersection, as Jan changed magazines on her submachine gun.

  “Tango down at niner-starboard and charlie,” She took up position at the corner, looking around to see Carol wave back from the central intersection. The second in command spun around as a flurry of fire came from the port side.

  “Tango down at niner-port and charlie.” Willie’s breath was harsh.

  Jan ran forward, racing around the corner to find Liam and Elise kneeling over Terry. A red soaked dressing showed through a cut in his uniform. “Ray, help Elise get him down to the infirmary.” Liam stood, his eyes widening as he saw his wife standing there.

  “Tommy’s left the ship.” She sighed as she finally lowered her weapon. “Those bastards have our daughter. I’m not letting them take anyone else away from me.”

  Willie joined them. “Captain, I didn’t want to say it over the net but Dr. Willsen is gone.”

  “Gone?” Harry stared at him.

  “Aye sir. That canny bastard was expecting to get flanked, I reckon. He was hiding behind the door of a storage compartment and shot Dr. Willsen when he went past.”

  Jan wiped a hand across her cheek. She looked over at Liam and reached out to take his hand. He pulled her in, putting his arms around her. They had known Mike and Keira Willsen since their days at Mauna Kea.

  Harry caught Carol’s eye. “Once Elise dresses Terry’s wound, help her get him down to the infirmary,” he ordered quietly. “The forward shaft is dead but you can just float him down to five; there’s no gravity in there.” The rest of this team will continue their sweep.

  Carol nodded. “Where are you going?”

  Harry sighed. “I need to go down to four and find Keira.”

  The Eastern Rain-Coast, Khola

  Kobrak’s coastal home

  Tommy was being torn to pieces by a mob of angry Cerrans. “I don’t even know who the doll belongs to…” he shouted as he lurched upwards, finding himself sitting on a bed in a cold sweat.

  Kobrak let go of his shoulder and stepped back in mild alarm. “What the hells was that?”

  “Just a bad dream.” He took a calming breath. Looking up, he saw that Kale was standing behind Kobrak and he frowned. From bad to worse. “What’s gone wrong?”

  “Your clever plan, that’s what,” Kobrak growled. “I suppose you were right about our prisoners not wanting to go public about their abduction, but their bosses already had contingencies in place, just like I would have. Two hours after we let them go, things began to fall apart for us.” He turned to the wall and activated a vid projection. He tuned it to the correct feed and unpaused the data stream.

  “Again, for those who are just joining us, Defence Chairman Corelani and Five Systems Executive Vice Chancellor Poremak were killed last night during highly suspicious dealings with fringe mining consortiums. Details are still sketchy at the moment, but it would appear that the killings were ordered by this man…” An image of Kobrak appeared on the vid. “Kobrak, a prominent fringe miner, was apparently not a party to the meetings and may have taken exception to that…”

  Kobrak waved the feed to silence. “Always have my best interests at heart, do you?”

  Tommy barely noticed that Kobrak had spoken. He was staring intently at the silenced vid, not really seeing the images as his mind raced. He looked over at his angry host. “They were certain they had found the coordinates for the ancestor’s ship.”
Tommy was irritating Kobrak even further by looking at him without noticing him. He was thinking it through as he talked.

  “The search was funded and coordinated through Poremak and Corelani,” Tommy mused. “With them dead, the project will be on hold until new coordinators can be found. They need a new proxy. That’s our opportunity.” He grinned at Kobrak. “We need to clear out of here before the authorities show up; let’s go to Internia and see what those researchers can tell us.”

  “You’re suggesting we go after the ship?”

  “Absobloodylutely.” Tommy waved a dismissive hand at Kobrak’s frown. “Earth saying – it doesn’t translate well, but yes, we go after the ship. Once we have it under our control, we can tell the authorities our side of things – whatever that ends up being.”

  Kobrak’s frown finally faded, giving way to a grim smile. “If the ship is as powerful as we think, our side of the story will be the official story. The council will have to see things our way.”

  The lighter set down on the lawn before they could even finish getting suited up. There were seven crew already sitting in the back of the vessel. The lighter had been docked at Kobrak’s orbital hub when the call came and every available flight-crew member had been taken aboard. There would be no coming back to Khola unless they found the ship and they would need crew to control it.

  Every crewman in Kobrak’s fleet carried a sidearm on a daily basis. It was far from unknown for a crew to make a raid on a competitor’s harvesting platform. Skirmishes within the dense vapors of Ghela were common among fringe operators.

  Kobrak, Tommy, Kale and Gelna were armed with UMPs along with Chelak and six of Kobrak’s best men. They trundled up the boarding ramp and took their places as the medium sized ship began to lift off.

  As the ramp closed, Tommy caught sight of flashing green lights approaching the house. He nudged Kobrak and nodded at the ramp.

  “Well, that’s it.” Kobrak’s tone was grim. “No turning back.” He shook his head slowly. “Green lights – those are civil defense. Whoever killed Corelani wants to tie up all the loose ends.”

  Tommy had been gazing out the side windows at the hive of activity that had enveloped the stately old house. He looked back at Kobrak as his words sank in. “Will your family be in danger?”

  “Not until they have hands on me.” He pulled the magazine from his weapon, saw for the third time that it was full and slammed it home again. “In a few short hours, they will either be announcing the execution of us all, or assuring me that they sent a ‘protective detail’ to look after my family.” He looked up at Tommy. “I won’t forget their intent, though. They’ll pay one day. Years from now, when they finally feel safe, I’ll reach out and show them what fear is.”

  Internia was close to Khola at this time of the year. The season was marked by frequent flares in Khola’s skies as small pieces of the dead moon fell into the atmosphere of her surviving sister. The trip to the temple complex was a short one and the warning light in the cargo bay soon began to flash.

  “Helmets up,” Kobrak shouted. The dead moon had lost her atmosphere twenty-five hundred years earlier. After confirming that all had heeded his advice, he punched a button next to the light and the pumps began evacuating the atmosphere from the hold of the vessel.

  The more heavily-armed members of the team stood at the end of the ramp as it descended.

  “Slap my ass and call me Sue!” There was little reaction to Kale’s sudden outburst. “Look at the size of that!” He turned to get a better view. The human suits made looking around slightly problematic.

  “That’s the last launch from Internia,” Kobrak didn’t need a translation to understand what Kale was referring to. The massive hulk of a crashed freighter loomed at least sixty meters above them. “She was lifting off with refugees when a ground car blew right through the cockpit. The atmosphere was being sucked down into what used to be the planet’s interior and all sorts of debris got caught up with it. There’s been a dozen movies made about it.” He touched a hand to the front of his visor. “She’s still got all five thousand corpses aboard.”

  They moved down the ramp and led their team to the low rise that had kept their landing out of sight from the temple complex. Though there was no atmosphere left to transmit noise, Tommy could feel the groaning vibrations of a world locked into a slow, lingering death. Feels like picking a dying man’s pockets.

  “Guards no,” Kale muttered in pidgin Dheema as he scanned the site. “In there, we now.”

  As they approached the complex, it quickly became apparent that the site was built on a slant, or rather, gravity had shifted since construction. With a large part of Internia now gone, the center of gravity had moved from what was once the core to a new point, at the new center of mass.

  All of the interconnected modules of Rielemack’s hastily built compound were sitting on what had been the downward slope of the hill. Even so, they were jacked up at the up-hill end to level them.

  “Airlock’s only big enough for four at a time,” Gelna announced as he inspected the door plate.

  Chelak stayed outside with the flight crew to keep an eye on the exterior and Tommy went into the lock with Kobrak, Gelna and Kale. As the Dactari fiddled with his wrist pad, Tommy deactivated his helmet seal. The segments slid back to form a guard for the retracted visor. He grinned at Gelna’s reproachful stare. “No need to check for atmo in here Gelna; can’t you hear it?” He opened the inner door and led the way into an anteroom.

  “Hear what?”

  “You can hear the planet dying, now that there’s gas to propagate the sound.” He shuddered. “Makes my skin crawl. I don’t know how anyone could work here for more than a few hours.”

  As if on cue, one of the compound’s denizens walked into the room. As he looked at the intruders it was like watching a light turning on – or off. He suddenly seemed to shrink and he began to back up.

  He yelped as he backed into Gelna. Turning around to see whom he had collided with, his jaw began to work soundlessly and his eyes followed the mischievous twitching of the suited tail. “The empire?” he whispered. “They’ve returned?”

  Gelna reached out and grabbed his collar, pulling him in to an uncomfortably close distance. “How many are here?” he demanded. “How many guards, how many scientists?”

  “H… how many people?” the frightened Bolshari squeaked.

  Gelna’s tail slapped the back of his head. “That’s not an answer you fool! That’s just my own question. Answer me or I’ll take one of your eyes.”

  Kale grunted. “Not a bad interrogator, for a doctor.”

  The hapless victim finally noticed Kale and Tommy. He no longer had eyes for Gelna. His fingers scratched at the Dactari’s gloves as he stared wildly at the two humans. “They’ve come!” His voice was choked with fear.

  “They really are out of touch here,” Tommy spoke out of the corner of his mouth to Kale. “The Midgaard have come and gone.”

  “Answer me quickly, you drone,” Gelna hissed, pressing the end of his tail against his prisoner’s eye. The tip of his tail covering was enclosed by a sharp bladed cap and the edge was drawing a trickle of blood. “If you anger them with delays or falsehoods, they will destroy your little world and then come back here for you. They will use your guts for sausages.”

  “Now I’m craving sausages,” Tommy remarked.

  “F… four science staff, counting me, and two guards. The family is at the other compound with eight guards.”

  “Where are the two guards?”

  “In the main lab.” He pointed to the hallway. “End of the hall.”

  “Patch kit?” the doctor demanded. He shoved the prisoner aside and snatched the kit from the wall. “Wait here,” he told the other three.

  Before anyone could object, he disappeared down the hall. A shot rang out, followed by shouts of panic. Two more shots quickly followed and then all went quiet.

  “Both guards are neutralized,” the doctor’s voic
e announced on the headsets.

  As they entered the main room, they became aware of a hissing sound. “You,” Gelna pointed at one of the scientists with his tail. “Fix that leak. Now!” he roared as the frightened Bolshari stood rooted in fear. Gelna tossed him the patch kit and the act of catching it seemed to break him out of his trance. He hurried over to the small hole in the wall of the chamber.

  “You can usually rely on civilians to worry about the leak before they worry about the intruder with the gun.” He waved his UMP with a grin. “While everyone was in full panic mode, I had time to identify the guards and take them out.”

  “Y’know, Doc,” Kale said cheerfully, “you’re pretty damned scary when the mood takes you!” He could comprehend Dheema far better than he could speak it.

  Gelna shrugged. “I was a police officer before they conscripted me and implanted my medical knowledge.” He shook his head. “You’d think they would have used me as a military policeman, but no – Doctor…”

  “You two can get better acquainted after this is all over.” Kobrak walked over to the scientist who had just finished patching the hole in the wall. He grabbed him by the collar and pulled him back over his outstretched leg, tumbling him to the floor. He put a boot on the prisoner’s chest and drew a knife, handing his UMP to Kale. “These four better have good news for us,” Kobrak growled ominously, “or we’re going to end up feeding the godsdamned crabs in Khulmet Bay.”

  The Völund

  On parabolic course for Earth

  “Hi, Harry.” Jan reached a foot under her lab bench and hooked out a stool for the captain. Like most furniture on the ship, the stools were bolted to something. In this case, they cantilevered out from the back wall on spring-loaded, articulated arms.

  Harry dropped onto the stool with a sigh. “I’m surprised Lothbrok isn’t hanging around down here. You are the only person he can talk to and, considering recent events, most of the crew still aren’t sure if he can be trusted.”

  Jan frowned, turning to pick up the tablet on her bench. A little tactless, isn’t it; reminding me of how half my family has left the ship? She opened the first image in her results folder. Perhaps he’s too preoccupied with the imminent invasion of Earth. She propped the tablet in front of him. “This is a comparison showing one of Caul’s cells and one of mine.”