by Jean Johnson
“This is Corporal Ia, A Squad, I am detecting explosive charges placed around the midship enemy airlock. Estimated volume . . . eighty-five cubic decimeters of cubane. I repeat, the doors are armed with cubane. That’s enough to rip the back doors off the boarding pods, and cream anyone inside. Presume all airlocks are rigged. Standby.”
Her head-up display warned her of D’kora’s approach. “I want confirmation, Corporal.”
The catch-release for the sensors plugged into her shoulder required fingers to remove it, not bulky servo-digits. Ia brought her arm up to her shoulder. A blink-code and a twist of her wrist opened up the panel hiding her hand. Air hissed out of her torso, but not her helmet. The foam lining her p-suit expanded, pressing against her constricted flesh. It still stung a little, like having every little hair on her body from the neck down tugged upon by tiny imps, but once the suit’s inner layer expanded against her hide, it was bearable. The cold of the pod’s airlock was the worse discomfort, by comparison.
Pinching the connectors with grey-gloved fingers, Ia disengaged the device, then twisted a little bit further. D’kora wedged her own half-mechsuited body closer, giving her just enough reach to push the attachment into place. “Scan it for yourself, sir.”
“This is Lt. D’kora, confirmed. Midships airlock is rigged to explode. Assume all airlocks are so rigged until confirmed otherwise. Unless we can figure out the right code to open the airlock, we’ll have to back up and cut our way through the hull.”
Ia tucked her hand back into the arm of her suit and sealed it again. It didn’t take much air to re-pressurize the interior of her suit, nor much time to warm her gloved fingers.
“This is Sergeant Pleistoch. We already looked at opening the door with the controls, but they were warded with a force field, sir.”
“A force field on top of a booby-trap makes no sense, Sergeant,” D’kora returned.
“I know, sir.”
Ia switched to a private channel, contacting D’kora. “Lieutenant, it doesn’t make sense for common pirates to rig the controls with a force field. The field would make it harder for us to depress the buttons, and harder to set off the explosives. Not impossible, since the fields are compressible to an extent, but harder all the same.”
“You have an idea.” It wasn’t a question.
“I say these aren’t common pirates, sir,” Ia stated. “The force field ensures that anyone but a Salik would have to press hard to activate the buttons . . . but all a Salik has to do is make enough contact to suction the buttons, and lift them for activation. Not depress them. The force field would simply keep them from setting it off. Either these pirates are using old Salik tech and the tools to simulate their capabilities, or . . .”
“Estes!” D’kora barked. “Break out the sucker hand!” She switched back to broadcasting. “This is Lt. D’kora to 2nd platoon. A Squad has the lowest casualty risk. We’re going to try something. Stand by.”
“Good luck, Lieutenant.” “God bless.” “Bennie said buy no stars, so take no careless risks, sir,” someone else said, standing out among the brief babble of well-wishes.
Silence followed, broken only by the clakk of metal on metal from Corporal Estes hauling herself partway through the inner airlock opening. She passed up the requested apparatus. D’kora took it, and found Ia holding out her suit hand. The older woman paused, then passed it to her. If she had wanted to do it herself, she would have had to maneuver awkwardly, juggling the bulk of their suits as they traded places.
Ia pushed up the cover on the control panel, meant to protect the buttons against space debris. The black field-projection ring surrounding the niche was subtle, but her HUD sensors picked it up, registering the energy field as a pale blue mask with a brighter blue outline. Unfolding the sucker hand, she checked the position of the mechanical tentacle, then laid it down over the opening. Pressing carefully, she suctioned the cups on the underside to the grid of buttons. There were only three buttons to worry about, but that was still a large risk of getting it wrong. Except she couldn’t; she could only pretend to be worried about the outcome.
“Standard Salik pattern, sir?” Ia offered.
“I don’t know the standard pattern,” D’kora countered.
“I studied a lot of old military and history files. The Salik ‘hand’ would wrap from outside to inside, lift the middle button, then the inner one, using a light touch if it wasn’t an emergency. The closer to the macrojuncture, the stronger the suckers would be; they’d rig the outermost button for self-defense, and then automated guns would pop out and fry whatever they were programmed to identify as an enemy target.”
“I’ll take your word for it, Corporal. And your advice.”
Tapping the controls, Ia lifted the middle button, then the one closest to the doorframe.
The ship’s airlock cracked open. No explosions. Both women sighed audibly over their external speakers.
“Thank you, Ia.” The heartfelt mutter came from Estes. A few more drifted through the pod from the other members of A Squad.
D’kora switched back to broadcast. “2nd Platoon, break out the sucker hands, middle, then inner buttons. Soft and easy, but be quick and lively about it. They’ll know we’re getting through by now. Salik tech and Salik treachery may indicate an actual Salik presence on board. If so, I want proof.”
“I’ll bring you their stomachs, sir,” Ia quipped.
A servo-hand on her other shoulder stopped her, as did the cold broadcast words accompanying it. “That was uncalled for. Corporal.”
Oh. Shakk. I didn’t just . . . ? Yes, I did. Wincing, Ia cleared her throat. “I apologize, sir. My sense of humor is a bit skewed, at best.”
“I will settle for a visual confirmation. An intact visual confirmation.”
Nodding, Ia pulled herself into the empty airlock. Greenish white light met her eyes, oddly hued for Humans, who were used to either a more golden or a more bluish hue, but comfortable for amphibians. Gravity righted her in relation to the ship, weak compared to Human Standard, but definite in its sense of down. The inner controls didn’t have a force field on them, and no prescience of danger lurked in the timestreams. Ia readied her HK-114 in her right hand and used the sucker hand on the same middle and inner buttons with her left, closest to the doorframe.
Nothing happened as it cycled open, but she knew they were there, lurking behind cross-corridor cover, just waiting for the first Marine to show his or her armored face. Folding up the hand, she fastened it into her now empty shoulder socket. Breathing deeply, twice, thrice, she reached for her own timestream, psyching herself up literally and figuratively for what was about to happen. Fingers curling inside her flexor gloves, she bent her knees, balancing on the sensors under the soles of her feet, and nodded, switching back to her comm link, this time dropping down to her squad’s comm channel.
“Let’s do this.”
Her mechsuit slammed into the far wall of the corridor, launched hard and fast through the airlock door. Two searing shots of bright orange missed her. Two of deep red light scored, one on the armored figure to the left, and as she whirled around, on the other armored figure to her right. Most of that shot seared a charred line in the paint of the bulkhead rather than the armored body ducking back for cover, but she knew she’d tagged the bastard.
Neither of her shots was lethal, but her abrupt entrance and accurate attack had rattled both would-be foes. Estes peered around the corner, then darted into the corridor, followed by the tall bulk of Double-E and Harkins in their own half-mechsuits.
“Humidity eighty-five percent,” Harkins announced, his own left shoulder socket bearing a set of atmospheric sensors. “Gravity .73gs. Temperature averaging 28C. Amphibious country, sir, either Salik or Choya.”
“Amphibious atmosphere,” D’kora ordered on the platoon channel. “Everyone stay suited. No sweating allowed.”
The corridors here were a singularly uninspiring shade of muddy beige, oddly mossy under the green white
glow of the overhead lights. It was something which might be considered soothing to Choyan or Salik eyes, but which would send a Human twitching within an hour, unfiltered. Ia fired a short burst at a grey shadow on the far wall of the side-corridor joining this one. The source of the shadow jerked back, unharmed but no longer sneaking up for another attempt at a counterattack. Paint smoldered on the bulkhead, charred black from her laser fire.
A couple chuckles came back on the comm. Even Ia smiled, though she didn’t take her eyes off her target corridors, the ones straight ahead and the one to the left.
“Corporal Ia, take Alpha and Beta straight ahead and find a way down. Gamma, Delta, Epsi, you’re with me. If this is a Choya ship, the bridge will be located somewhere on or near this deck. If it’s Salik, it’ll be down below. If we’re lucky, it’s just Choya. Salik is a shakk-load of paperwork.”
“Sir, yes, sir.” Dashing across the opening, Ia fired twice as she spun, putting her back to the bulkhead on the far side of the opening. Shots streaked out of the corridor. Estes, taking up Ia’s former position, squatted down and fired back from a low crouch. Double-E joined her, firing over her head. A fzzzt . . . fzzzt. . . .fzzzt approached from both directions, growing rapidly louder.
“Shakk. Force fields, sir! They’re pinning us down,” Harkins announced. “They might intend to blow the airlock anyway!”
“Pirates who are rich as well as paranoid?” Estradille asked. “They can’t have the whole ship sectioned off.”
Turning to face the forward corridor, Ia aimed at the corner of one of the panels. A sustained burn cut a smoking, glowinghot line diagonally into the bulkhead and ceiling. The faint glow of the nearest force field sputtered and vanished. “Burn through the conduit cables. Use a thirty-degree angle, about a palm-length from the fields, and just pick a corner,” Ia called out, shifting up and lasering through the upper left corner of the next one. “Most ship-built fields are vulnerable at corners and midpoints. It’s faster to cut out the midpoints, but you do more structural damage at the corners. Cut enough corners, and they can’t blow the airlock without the risk of cracking open the ship.”
“That’s devious, Corporal. I’m glad you’re on our side. Do it,” D’kora ordered the others.
As she burned through the bulkheads, cutting through each force field in succession, Ia blink-programmed her comm channel for Alpha and Beta teams alone. “Okay, people, listen up. Elevators are death traps. But if this is a Choya ship, we won’t fit down the emergency ladder ways in our mech. If it’s Salik, they’ll have stairways. They don’t do ladders. We’ll take this corridor, up here.”
“Salik, sir!” The shout was broadcast on the platoon channel. “PSC Jundran Pzettisva, D Squad Beta, bow boarding party, I have visual confirmation of a mechsuited Salik on board. Repeat, visual confirmation! Salik on board, armed and armored!”
“Find that bridge, A Squad!” D’kora ordered.
“Harkins, you’re with me. Estes, take Double-E,” Ia ordered, lasering through the power conduits for the last of the force fields slowing them down.
“Platoon policy is to keep teammates paired together, Corporal,” Estes reminded her.
“You and I are short enough to crouch in front of them for a firing line, Corporal,” Ia shot back. “They can’t say the same. Start opening doors left side. I’ll take right. Kill all sensors you see. If a room is clear, shoot it shut as we go.”
“—Choya on board, sir! PFC Juno Dexter, E Squad Beta, I have visual confirmation of Choya on board, armed but not armored!”
The interior doors they encountered were controlled by simple rocker switches. Storage closets, crew cabins with oddly shaped furniture meant for bipedal but otherwise non-Human bodies, some with signs of hasty evacuation since some items had been left out on tables and such.
“Where are all the crewmembers?” Double-E asked quietly after a few minutes of searching.
“Split between the two ships,” Ia offered, sealing the latest door shut with a stuttering blast from her rifle. “They’ll be hoarding any Gatsugi prisoners for shield-hostages, and protecting the engines, lifesupport systems, and the bridge.”
“Those they haven’t eaten, you mean,” Harkins offered grimly.
“This is either a door to a section seal, or hopefully a stairwell, since that looks like a set of lift doors up ahead,” Estes observed, reaching a heavy metal door with a crank handle.
Ia positioned herself across from the door, opposite the hinge side. She gestured for Harkins to take point on her far side, watching the cross-corridors. Aiming her gun, she nodded at Estes. “Crank it open, Corporal.”
Nothing met her but a stairwell, with treads big enough for Salik-sized feet. Plenty of room for mechsuited Marines to descend.
“Harkins and I go first. Estes and Double-E, watch our backs. Wait for us to descend two turns before you follow, and scan as you go. I don’t want all of us caught in one trap.” Stepping carefully, Ia descended.
The leg-joints on a Salik were odd. They had a thigh that bent backwards, and a rear-facing, hock-style knee, like the legs of an Earth ostrich. Below that was a long shank for a shin, and then their oddly shaped feet. Despite the length of their lower limbs, Salik never stood up completely straight; their legs were always bent, ready to flex and bounce. The accordion-folds of joints made them prodigious leapers in open terrain. The relatively low ceilings of a spaceship would prevent any of the enemy from leaping down upon her team, but facing them on a planet’s surface would be a whole different matter. Backwards knees and meaty thighs weren’t the only oddity, however.
Ankle and foot attached to that calf-shank backwards, so that a Salik’s clawed, webbed toes trailed the foot, rather than led them. Salik young were born in water and breathed through gills, spending the first seven to ten years of their life almost completely underwater. It took a Salik adolescent roughly an additional five years to fully develop their lungs and be comfortable breathing air, so long as it was humid. Their big flipper-feet were essential for movement through water, if somewhat cumbersome on land despite the way they pointed backwards.
In the water, there was no sentient species faster than a Salik, not even a dolphin. On a ladder, the Salik were slow and clumsy, thanks to their version of feet. Those feet were flippers designed to send them darting through the water after their prey, which they preferred to eat alive. Cooked food was an affront to their digestive systems, and fire had been one of the last technologies the Salik had mastered in their ancient past, long after the wheel, lever, and even writing had been developed.
The oddness didn’t end with their legs. Their heads were bulbous, with almost no neck, and their eyes projected out of their heads on either side, giving them a wide field of view with a modest but useable amount of depth-perception. Big mouths concealed sharp incisors meant for rending and tearing flesh.
Their arms were the strangest of all; while they did have a stout upper arm bone like most sentient races, their lower arms were boneless, muscular tentacles that split twice, forming four tips at the shank-long ends. They were also suckered down the undersides, starting from the first split about one fourth of the way from the ends. Naturally, they took advantage of this fact in their technology. Toggles and switches and buttons which could be depressed did exist, but all sensitive equipment was designed to work by pulling on buttons, not by pushing them down.
In contrast, the Choya were fully amphibious throughout their lives, born with lung structures that worked as gills, and thus had to be kept moist at all times. The Choya were also more bipedal with somewhat normal-looking legs, webbed hands and feet, if with six fingers and toes instead of the Human five. They did eat cooked food, but didn’t hesitate to eat their meat raw. Their eyes were set more on the sides of their heads than forward, and their ears had crest-like fans which could spread up and out or flick down and in. Unlike the Salik, they had a finned tail when born, but it shrank and vanished around what passed for their version of puberty, leaving
them to walk and swim bipedally.
Stairs were no problem for the Choya, either, though they wouldn’t have bothered to accommodate the other amphibious race. This was a Salik vessel.
“Estes, Double-E, seal the door and follow.”
“I thought I heard something,” Double-E replied. “I should check it out.”
“Seal the door and follow, soldier,” Ia ordered. “Our priority is the bridge.”
“I’d have checked it out,” Harkins grumbled. They could hear Estes and Double-E closing, cranking, and lasering the door shut. “You don’t leave an unknown force at your ba—”
BOOM—KLANG!
The ship rocked with the force of the explosion. Everyone grabbed for the railing or the wall. The stairwell reverberating with the sound of whatever metallic object had struck the section seal door. Hit by the fuel pipe that would’ve impaled Harkins, if I hadn’t dragged him down here . . .
“Headcount!” D’kora’s voice snapped through the full platoon channel. “I want a headcount!”
As the lead soldier in A Squad, Ia’s HUD lit up in a grid of ten names. She blink-toggled her own box green, and watched the other nine light up with verdant health as well. Though she couldn’t see it, she knew D’kora was seeing all fifty-three names on her own heads-up grid.
“Thank the gods, we didn’t lose anyone. It seems they took exception to our presence and blew the airlock anyway. Entrypoint deck and the decks above and below for that section appear to have vented to vacuum. A Squad, find that bridge and lock them down, meioas! B and C, find engineering, cut them off cold!”
“Enemy fire, sir! I think we found engineering. This corridor’s heavily guarded!”
The conversation dropped off the platoon channel, leaving Ia and her three teammates in the silence of the stairwell. Estes spoke up. “Now what?”
“I’m looking at a Choyan number right now. At least, I think it’s a number,” Ia added, wanting to sound uncertain. “If I remember it right, that’s their symbol for 8. We go down five more decks, and we should be on deck 3. Most Salik ships have their bridges on deck 3.”
