Star Wolf (Shattered Galaxy)

by David G. Johnson

  Turning on the diagnostic probe’s radiation monitor, his helmet’s HUD filled with flashing warnings. What kind of savages still used irradiated rounds? They had been banned for decades on most civilized worlds. With the levels bathing this man’s body from that round, John had to get him to a fully functional hospital or he would be dead in a matter of hours. It was doubtful Star Wolf’s medical bay even had the equipment to treat this, but if John didn’t get this projectile out immediately, it wouldn’t matter.

  “What’s your name, son?” John said, fighting to maintain some semblance of calm in his voice.

  “PFC McGhehey.”

  “No, your name. What do your parents call you?”

  “Name’s Robert Liam, but everyone calls me Bobby Lee. My call sign is Cowboy—” at the end of his introduction, the boy coughed, and John saw the light spray of blood across the inside of the man’s faceplate. The radiation was already starting to damage blood vessels and capillaries.

  “Well you listen to me, Bobby Lee. I’ve got to get that slug out of your shoulder. You might start to feel pretty bad, nausea and cramps, but you have to do your best to hold still for me. I’ve got to get it all out of there, you understand?”

  “Yeah, Doc,” the man nodded weakly. “Won’t move…a muscle.”

  John quickly extended the surgical probes through the patch and focused on taking out the projectile and all the tissue around it. He couldn’t risk missing even a small splinter. The strong local he had given the man would keep him from feeling it now, but it would be months before he would use this arm normally again, even if he somehow survived the radiation.

  Surgical suit patches were designed with enough mobility to pull out shrapnel and projectiles and leave them rattling around inside a suit until they could be extracted later. But John couldn’t leave this irradiated round anywhere near exposed flesh.

  “Bobby Lee, you still with me?”

  “Yeah…I reckon so. Don’t feel so good though, Doc.”

  The man’s groggy slur was not encouraging. He had lost a lot of blood, and the radiation would continue to bombard his system as long as the slug was inside the suit.

  “I’m going to need to change patches, so don’t get nervous. Hang in there another minute with me.”

  Only the slightest nod came in reply. John ripped off the surgical patch, the clamps tearing out the chunk of flesh he had cut away with the irradiated round buried at the center. He tossed the patch, flesh and all, toward the railing, then grabbed a second surgical patch, slapping it over the hole in the combat armor currently spewing a volcano of air and blood from the man’s shoulder.

  “Bobby Lee, you there?”

  No answer. The young man’s eyes were closed, but his suit system still showed respiration and a steady, if slightly erratic, heartbeat. With the source of radiation gone, John administered another injection of coagulant. To his relief, he saw on the video feed from the surgical patch camera that it was working. The blood flow was slowing, and the wound was sealing up. Bobby Lee was far from out of danger yet, but this was all John could do for now.

  John pulled his attention from the downed trooper to assess where things stood in the battle. The rest of the troops at the railing still held their positions, with the only hole being the spot where Bobby Lee had stood. Yet there, splayed out on the upper decking, was another fallen body.

  “Mel!” John cried out as he rushed to her. There was a tear in the abdomen of her unarmored vac-suit, and she was trying to maintain pressure on the wound. Bluish tinted blood dripped through the grated decking from where she lay, freezing into icy blue droplets on the way to the main deck below.

  “I am sorry, John… I should have been…more careful.”

  “Stop that. Let me see.”

  He rolled her slightly toward him and saw an exit wound on the back side of her suit. She was venting air fast, but at least there were no irradiated rounds still lodged in her system. Even though it was an unarmored vac-suit, the suit itself had already begun self-sealing against the atmospheric breach. John quickly grabbed another coagulant injector and delivered a shot of the gel to the front and back wounds through Mel’s side. He wracked his brain trying to remember everything he had read about Fei physiology since coming aboard. To the best of his recollection, there were no vital organs where the round had passed through.

  “I will be fine, John. I have had worse injuries. You have stopped the bleeding. My suit will seal in a few moments.”

  Her words were comforting, but the soft yet strong quality of Mel’s voice was somehow diminished. There was pain and weakness that she was clearly working to mask.

  “Doc, get over here,” came the voice of the sergeant who had greeted them when they arrived in the cargo bay.

  John looked up and saw two more troopers had fallen from the fire line at the railing. John pulled himself away from Mel and ran to the two men. He heard a tink sound from the side of his helmet and saw with dismay a tiny hole at the very edge of his faceplate. His suit alarms began sounding indicating a suit breach, but the pressure levels were dropping very slowly. The suit should self-seal shortly. He had larger things to worry about.

  Approaching the man closest to him, John knew it was already too late. Four grape sized holes pierced this merc’s suit, with one of them being in the faceplate. The man’s right cheek was shattered and from the angle of impact John knew the round that hit him had continued on into his brain. His suit showed flatlines on all vitals. John moved toward the second downed soldier.

  At first John was confused as there were no apparent entry points for the large caliber slugs that had taken out Mel and the others.

  “Flechettes, Doc. Suit already sealed the holes, but he’s gotta be torn up inside,” the sergeant said on a private channel.

  John had little experience with flechette weapons. They were a higher technology than was commonly available on Tede, though he understood the principle. The problem with these wounds were finding the damage and repairing it before the patient bled out internally. He couldn’t do this on the field.

  “Sergeant, I’ve got to get him to sick bay. I can’t treat this here.”

  John saw through the sergeant’s faceplate the non-com’s eyebrows furrow deeply. He knew the man was weighing the decision of saving one man at the cost of one of their medics leaving the field.

  “All right. Corporal!” he barked out. One of the troopers at the railing approached. “Help Doc get him to sick bay, then get back here double-time.”

  “Yes, sergeant,” the corporal answered.

  Then John saw a small oval object land near their feet and rattle down the decking.

  “Grenade!” the corporal shouted and started to move toward the object.

  There was a bright flash. John’s world went black.

  *****

  Molon entered the lower deck starboard barracks with Twitch and Warbird right behind. Master Gunnery Sergeant “Handsome” Hank Tibbs strode stoically up to greet them.

  “Captain,” the man said through the local comms channel.

  “Master Guns,” Molon nodded to the merc leader. “Sitrep?”

  “They latched on just before you got here. I figure they’ve made the airlock by now but are trying to figure a way around Voide’s security upgrades on the door.”

  “No breach?” Molon asked. It was unusual for boarders to take such care. Standard procedures was to breach the doors with an acetylene torch or flexiplast explosives.

  “Not yet,” Tibbs said with a disturbing grin rolling across his horribly scarred visage clearly visible through his helmet’s clear faceplate. “Looks like they are trying their best not to break her. No doubt they are coming in one way or another, just a question of when.”

  “Well then, we stay sharp and wait,” Molon answered, nodding for the leader of the shipboard mercs to return to his ready position behind the makeshift barricade of bunks facing the door leading to the airlock.

  Molon wasn’t sure
if Hank’s call sign, “Handsome”, was from his days as a fresh-faced youth when the handle might have suited, or if it was a nickname clearly mocking what he had become. Oddly enough, it fit either way.

  Hank might have been handsome once. He certainly had the dark eyes capable of snaring prey of the opposite sex. The face that now held those eyes, however, bore the deep furrows and jagged remnants of a man who’d had a front row seat to the enemy’s version of tender mercies. Half his face looked like a tent flap stitched together in the middle of the night by a drunken soldier whose fingers had been frozen too numb for delicate work.

  Hank’s biography of battle was written in the scars that wriggled and danced up his face from chin to hairline. This man had more than enough reasons to go home. The fact he was still here spoke as much about his character as his face told about his war record. Molon didn’t feel sorry for him though. He was saving that sentiment for the first poor fool to dare express pity for Master Gunny Tibbs.

  Molon waited for what seemed like hours, but his chronometer argued it had not even been five minutes. Then, across Star Wolf’s own encrypted, secured general coms came a voice he did not recognize.

  “Attention, captain of the independent mercenary frigate identified by your transponder as the UFR Star Wolf. This is Rear Admiral Richard Starling of the Provisional Imperium cruiser Revenge. If you check the situation with your crew, you will see things are going badly for you. I expect, Captain, that your thoughts were to take out the boarding parties from the shuttles, and turn those ships against us.”

  Molon wasn’t sure which disturbed him more, the fact that this man had managed to take control of Star Wolf’s secure internal comms system, or that he had read Molon’s plan like it was a cheap datapad novel.

  “While an admirable strategy,” Starling continued, “your plan has two major flaws. First, the shuttles are rigged to remote detonators, so if any of them detach from your hull without confirmation from the assault teams that they have control of your ship, the shuttle won’t make it five klicks before it is floating debris.”

  “Your second issue is believing that you only have to repel four shuttles’ worth of boarders. Those shuttles hold fifty marines each. I believe the entire crew complement for a frigate of Star Wolf’s class, before any casualties, is fifty-eight. I just dispatched four more shuttles. You can see, captain, the odds are clearly against you.”

  Molon growled to himself. He had been bested before, and didn’t mind losing to a better commander. It just stuck in his jowls when some smug dreckhead punctuated the defeat with taunts. Whoever this Starling was, Molon figured he owed the man a punch in the mouth before this was all over.

  “So, Captain,” Starling continued. “Let me be clear. I intend to capture your ship intact. Whether your crew lives or dies is irrelevant to my purpose. Therefore, I leave their fate up to you. You can opt to order them to stand down, and open all remaining airlocks to my boarding parties, surrendering yourselves immediately. If you do this, I will order that no further harm come to your crew. Alternatively, you can continue to fight, in which case I will order my men to kill every single person on board, no exceptions. The choice is yours. What say you, Captain?”

  Molon’s chest burned with helpless rage. Were he alone, he would choose to fight to the death, but as captain, he was responsible for his crew. There was no victory here. What the Provisional Imperium wanted with a ten-year old frigate was beyond him. Whatever it was, it wasn’t worth more than the lives of his crew. If this admiral was lying and they surrendered, they were all dead. If they fought on, they were all dead anyway, just with a handful of PI Marines brought along for the ride.

  The only chance for anyone rested on the word of a Provisional Imperium officer. Molon knew there were a few honorable officers that still served in the Imperium. He could only hope that this Admiral Starling was one of them.

  Molon accessed the comms channel in his suit and set it for shipwide broadcast.

  “Attention all Star Wolf personnel, this is Captain Molon Hawkins. Stand down all stations. Surrender your weapons, and turn yourselves over to the Imperial Marines at port and starboard airlocks and the cargo bay. All personnel not at forward combat stations, secure your stations and report to one of those three locations to surrender yourselves. Any further hostilities against the boarding parties will result in the execution of every Star Wolf crew member. I am surrendering the ship.”

  A private channel opened up directly into his combat armor comms. It was Admiral Starling’s voice.

  “A wise choice, captain. You may not know me, but I know you. I was an officer under Emperor Halberan, and you have my word no-one else of your crew will be killed, as long as they follow your orders to surrender peacefully.”

  “My crew follows my orders,” Molon replied, hoping Voide was already unconscious or captured. He was certain of most of his crew, but he had never had to order the Pariah to surrender before.

  “I have no doubt, Captain Hawkins, as does mine. Understand, though, I am not the only one giving orders.”

  Molon’s stomach sank, and his hackles stood on end.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “We will discuss it once you are aboard, captain. I will do all I can to see you are treated well while aboard the Revenge.”

  Molon noted there was a sincerity in Starling’s voice, but he couldn’t help but wonder what else was going on. No one lower than a Rear Admiral was given command of a cruiser-class capital ship. If this guy was that high up the food chain and still taking orders from someone else aboard, that could only mean someone way up the GalSec food chain was in command.

  Twelve – Friend or Foe?

  Pain ripped Voide from her peaceful unconsciousness. She seethed as her guard, dressed as naval enlisted with his right shoulder emblazoned with the golden lion patch of the Provisional Imperium, continued to strike her with the side of his baton while his comrade watched. Her wrists were tethered to the ceiling by corded bonds. Thick, high-tech wristlets encircled her forearms, separate from the manacles that suspended her. These wristlets had a few embedded readouts in a cryptic, alphanumeric code, but she had no idea of their purpose.

  Additional restraints secured her ankles to the floor, leaving her little ability to defend herself or resist. She flashed her tormentor a malicious grin, already picturing her revenge as she focused her concentration on phasing into voidspace. She would materialize behind this ignorant fool and snap his neck while whispering some witty quip to his companion about why one should never mistreat a lady.

  Unfortunately, she never got that chance. Her mind was buzzing, bombarded with sensory and memory data, preventing her from achieving the focus she needed to phase. Whether this blockage of her abilities was due to the after-effects of the neural grenade, some drug they had given her while she was out, or something else entirely, for the moment she was at the mercy of her captors.

  The watcher, Jasper, addressed her tormentor as Alex. Alex would occasionally switch from striking with the side of the baton to instead using the electrified end to deliver a wracking shock to her abdomen. Voide was still wearing her stealth suit, but Alex had opened the seal which attached her torso armor to her leggings, exposing just enough of her stomach to apply the electric shock from the baton directly to her gray skin. The smell of her own electricity-seared flesh wafted into her nostrils, fueling her determination to survive long enough to exact her revenge.

  As Voide endured Alex’s sadistic exercise, she changed her mind about his fate. He would not be granted anything as quick and easy as a snapped neck. She would take her time. GalSec had taught her many creative ways to prolong a painful death, and she had added a few of her own in the years since. It had been a long time since such a worthy volunteer as Alex had come along on whom she could test them.

  Star Wolf’s crew was mostly still unconscious, dispersed in groups between two large cells adjoining the open area where Voide and Alex were getting acquainted.
Starling had taken no chances and had gassed them all as they cycled through the airlocks before coming aboard Revenge. Only Captain Hawkins had regained consciousness. He had a clear view of Voide’s beating in the central area of Revenge’s brig.

  “Release my crewman immediately!” Molon demanded.

  “Quit your barking, dog-breath, or I’ll turn the hose on you,” Alex answered.

  “Admiral Starling assured me none of my crew would be harmed. You will answer to the admiral for this.”

  “Hah, that was before the old man knew you had a gray-skin on board. Everybody knows all bets are off when one of these yellow-eyed devils is concerned.”

  “Maybe we should rethink this, Alex,” Jasper whispered.

  “Shut up, you dimwit,” Alex replied.

  Alex then enthusiastically returned to administering his personal brand of hospitality to Voide. Voide remained silent, not acknowledging the torture at all. She was determined to deny her abuser any satisfaction on that front. She smiled at him, her mind filled with joy at her thoughts of revenge.

  Her silence and sweet smile only fueled Alex’s desire to break her. Too bad for him, he was out of his league. While his cruel ministrations were not pleasant by any stretch of the imagination, Voide was a former GalSec agent, trained in resisting torture and interrogation. She had experienced worse at the hands of her training instructors than anything Alex’s feeble imagination could concoct. If he expected to break her with a shock baton and a few love taps, he was in for a disappointment.

  “Wahoo Jasper,” Alex said as he delivered another punishing jolt of electricity. “You ever seen anything like this? Heck, most humans would’ve passed out already. This gray-skinned devil is built tough. Kind of pretty too, for an alien freak I mean.”

  “I dunno,” said Jasper, looking and sounding much less enthusiastic about the situation. “Admiral Starlin’ said hold them, he didn’t say nothin’ about workin’ ‘em over. We might wanna put her back and wait for orders.”