by Marko Kloos
The MPs put flex cuffs on our wrists. When they get to Dmitry, he flexes his shoulder muscles just a bit, and the PFC putting the cuffs on him takes an involuntary step back. The sergeant at the door tightens his grip on his pistol.
“Boo,” Dmitry says. He cracks a smile in my direction, and I can’t help but return it. The man is nominally my enemy, and two months ago we may have faced each other on the battlefield, but I like him. I also think he may be just a little bit nuts, or maybe I’m just not used to Russian attitudes yet.
“What exactly are your orders, Sergeant?” Colonel Campbell asks.
“I am to get you on the shuttle and deliver you to the receiving brig at Norfolk. You can talk over the legal stuff with them down there. I’m just a sergeant. Sir.”
Colonel Campbell nods toward the door. “Let’s not waste time, then. After you, Sergeant.”
The MPs march us out of the security booth and through the large airlock that separates Foxtrot concourse from the rest of the station. Out in the main part of Independence, there’s a bit more activity than in the concourse behind us, where Indy’s berth is the only occupied one. The civilian yard techs and shuttle jocks going about their business on the main concourse look at us as we pass by, two fleet sailors and an SRA noncom handcuffed and flanked by four armed military police officers.
We walk down the concourse about a hundred meters when the MPs direct us to another concourse to our right.
“Echo,” the sergeant in charge says. “We’re this way.”
“You know that Sergeant Chistyakov here isn’t subject to the UCMJ, right?” I say. “He’s not a POW. The Alliance is going to be pissed when they find out that you crapped all over the treaty.”
“The Alliance can kiss my ass right now,” the sergeant says. “I am just executing orders. Not my circus, not my monkey.”
“You call me monkey, I take electric stick off belt of yours and stick it up your big ass,” Dmitry says matter-of-factly from behind the sergeant.
The MP sergeant stops and turns toward Dmitry, who looks at him with an unconcerned little smile on his face.
“You don’t shut the fuck up and march, I’ll flush your ass out the nearest airlock, Russkie.”
I tense and prepare to jump into the tussle that’s sure to break out any second now. We are cuffed and unarmed, but I bet I can get at least this blustering asshole on the ground before they take us down with their stun sticks.
Behind us, there’s a minor commotion in the main part of the station. I hear the tromping of armored boots on the nonslip deck around the corner. We all turn to look back at the airlock we just passed through, not ten meters behind us.
Two SI troopers in full battle armor come around the corner and train their rifles at us—or more precisely, at the MPs surrounding Dmitry, Colonel Campbell, and me. Their targeting lasers paint green streaks across the light armor shells of the MP uniforms, which look pitifully inadequate compared to what the SI troopers are wearing.
“Hands off the weapons,” an amplified voice booms. I recognize it as Staff Sergeant Philbrick’s. “Away from the fleet guys and on your knees. Do it now.”
Dmitry moves away from the MP escorting him. The MP grabs his flex cuffs and tries to pull him back, and Dmitry reverses direction and butts the MP corporal aside with his shoulder. The corporal is almost a head taller than Dmitry and in light armor besides, but he stumbles aside as if he has been hit by an opening airlock hatch.
Next to me, the MP sergeant draws his pistol from the holster by his side and raises it toward Dmitry. He sees the muzzle swing toward him and dashes forward, but there are five meters between them, and there’s no way Dmitry can outrun the MP’s trigger finger. I am much closer, and I act on reflex.
I hurl myself at the MP sergeant and bring my cuffed hands down on his pistol as it comes up. My left hand hits the top of the weapon’s slide near the muzzle end. I grab the front of it and push it aside, away from Dmitry and me. The gun raps out a three-shot burst that’s shockingly loud so close to my face. There’s a sudden searing pain in my left hand that makes the headache I’ve been nursing for the last hour seem laughably mild in comparison. I scream and tighten my grip on the gun with the other hand, but my fingers slip off the now blood-slick polymer, and I drop to my knees. Then Dmitry is in front of me, and he plows into the MP sergeant and sends him flying backwards. I look to my right and see two green targeting lasers converging on his chest armor.
“DROP THE GUN,” Sergeant Philbrick’s voice thunders on maximum amplification, loud enough to make the nearby bulkhead shake with the sonic energy.
The MP sergeant looks up, his expression that of a panicked, remorseful kid whose prank has hurt someone. He drops his gun to the deck, where it lands with a dull thud. Then he raises his hands and pulls his head low between his shoulders. The two green targeting markers on his chest never waver.
The other MPs decide that freezing in place is an eminently wise course of action. Behind Philbrick and his fellow trooper, two more SI troopers in battle armor appear in the airlock opening, rifles at the ready.
“You fucking imbecile,” Sergeant Philbrick says when he steps between us and picks up the MP’s pistol. “Look what you’ve done. Nez, hand me a trauma pack.”
“Yes, Sarge.” The SI trooper next to Sergeant Philbrick lowers his rifle and reaches into his medkit pouch.
My left hand feels like it has been split in half with an axe, and it doesn’t look much better. I cradle it to my chest, look at it to assess the damage, and immediately wish I hadn’t. There’s a chunk of my hand missing, along with two fingers. Where my pinky and ring fingers used to be, there’s nothing left but powder-burned shredded meat. I must have had my finger right in front of the muzzle, and the expanding gases from the blast did as much damage as the three armor-piercing rounds that preceded them. It hurts so much that I can’t even scream, even though I want to.
“Hang on, Grayson.”
Staff Sergeant Philbrick takes the trauma pack Corporal Nez hands him. He peels the cover off with his teeth and slaps the whole thing onto my hand, mercifully covering the mess from sight. He kneads the pack into place to shape it to the wound area. I feel instant relief as the medication cocktail baked into the pack simultaneously numbs my hand and releases the fast-acting local painkiller.
“Shackle these assholes and let’s move,” Philbrick says to Corporal Nez. “That gunfire’s gonna draw attention. We’ll have a tactical team on our asses in a minute.”
“Copy that,” Corporal Nez says.
The SI troopers round up the MPs and use their own flex cuffs to shackle them together. When the troopers are done, the MPs are standing in a circle, attached by the wrists, with one of the station’s vertical support struts in their middle. The SI troopers take all the sidearms off the MPs, unload them, and throw them into a nearby garbage chute.
“Let’s move out. Back to the Foxtrot terminus. I’ll take lead. Nez, bring up the rear. Put Grayson and the others between us. You okay to move, Grayson?”
“Yeah,” I confirm. “Let’s go.”
When we move back to the airlock to the main concourse, I look back at the gaggle of MPs. The sergeant who blew off two of my fingers is just staring ahead at the support beam in front of him, as if he doesn’t want to meet anyone’s gaze for fear of inviting retaliation.
Just executing orders, I think. Ain’t that always our fucking absolution.
CHAPTER 12
It’s a hundred meters from the terminus of Echo concourse to the airlock at the end of Foxtrot concourse. We haven’t covered half that distance when the security alarm overhead goes off, an annoying two-tone trilling sound. Most of the civilians in the concourse have scattered already at the sight of the fully armed and armored SI troopers with combat demeanor, so we have this section of the concourse mostly to ourselves.
“This is a level-five security alert. All personnel, shelter in place and secure airlocks.”
Staff Sergeant Philbrick clears the
corridor ahead with the muzzle of his rifle before waving us on. “Fifty meters. Let’s hustle.”
My hand is now pleasantly numb, and the painkillers have started kicking in, but I know that the pain will return before too long. For now, I run behind Sergeant Philbrick and next to Dmitry and Colonel Campbell, glad for the concentration of chemicals in my bloodstream that keeps that razor-sharp agony from registering in my brain.
“Major Renner sends her regards,” Sergeant Philbrick shouts over his shoulder toward Colonel Campbell. “She’s warming up the fusion plant right now. Ship’s at combat stations.”
“What about those SPs all over the ship?”
“Third Squad took care of ’em,” Sergeant Philbrick shouts. “Disarmed and secured in a storage room out on Foxtrot.”
We reach the airlock for Foxtrot concourse, which is a laminate hatch six meters wide. Sergeant Philbrick motions us to a halt. Then he waves Corporal Nez forward, and both of them check the concourse beyond in quick and efficient fashion.
“Clear,” Philbrick says. “Let’s move. Second Squad, we’re coming your way. Get ready to fall back to Indy.”
On the way back to the ship, Foxtrot concourse seems about three times longer than I remember it from the way into the station, despite the fact that we’re moving a lot more quickly for the return trip. I count the bulkheads we’re passing through—one, two, three, four, five. There were twenty-five of them on the way up from Indy.
Before Sergeant Philbrick reaches bulkhead number six, the airlock comes down from the top of the bulkhead almost silently and slams into place, barring our way to the far end of the concourse.
“Contact rear!” the private bringing up the tail end shouts. I see red and green targeting lasers bouncing off the walls of the concourse, and a second or two later, figures in dark blue armor rushing down the concourse behind us from the direction of the main part of the station.
“Into the corner,” Sergeant Philbrick orders. He uses his armored bulk to nudge Dmitry and the colonel toward me and behind one of the support beams just in front of the bulkhead. His squad fans out and takes firing positions, aiming their rifles back up the way we came just moments ago.
“Security police,” a magnified voice booms in the corridor behind us. “Drop your weapons, or we will employ lethal force.”
Improbably, Corporal Nez chuckles. “ ‘Employ lethal force’? Who the hell talks like that?”
“Don’t kill anyone ’less you have to,” Philbrick orders. “They shoot first, we take ’em down.”
The sheltered space between the support truss and the nearby bulkhead is pitifully small. I am keenly aware of the fact that I am in an enclosed space with a bunch of troopers about to shoot at each other, and that I am not wearing battle armor.
“Keep the Russian safe,” I say. “He goes down, nobody’s going back through to Fomalhaut.”
Philbrick removes the sidearm from his holster and hands it to me butt-first. I take it and check the chamber.
“Drop your weapons,” the voice in the corridor shouts again.
“Not a chance,” Philbrick shouts back. “You shoot at us, you die.”
I chance a look around the support beam that is shielding me inadequately. The cops in the corridor behind us—I count at least four—are wearing heavier armor than the SPs who arrested us earlier, and they’re carrying PDWs. The four SI troopers with us outgun them by a fair margin, and they’re seasoned combat troops besides, but there isn’t much space in the narrow confines of this space station corridor. If both sides open fire, it’ll be a bloody mess.
“All the airlocks on this concourse are sealed,” the cop shouts. “No way out but through us. Tactical response team is going to be here any second. Don’t be stupid, jarhead. Put ’em down.”
Staff Sergeant Philbrick exhales slowly. Then he shakes his head. “We don’t have time for this shit. Watch your target markers. Low bursts. On my mark.”
He looks at each of the SPs in turn, and I know that he is using his suit’s targeting computer to send priority target data to his fire team through the TacLink.
“One, two, fire.”
The SI troopers raise their rifles as one, and four trigger fingers tighten to execute the order. One of the SPs sees that the balloon is about to go up, and he flinches back and fires a burst from his PDW. The high-pitched rattling of the PDW’s report rings through the concourse. The projectiles hit Corporal Nez in the chest and side, and he jerks back in turn.
Then four M-66 rifles hammer out simultaneous bursts. The two nearest cops are cut down instantly, swept off their feet by the impact of dozens of tungsten fléchettes their light armor has no hope of stopping. Sergeant Philbrick gives a signal, and the two privates get up from their crouching position and advance on the two remaining cops. One of them sticks his PDW out from behind the support strut he’s using as cover and starts pouring bursts down the corridor blindly. I pull back behind my own cover and try to meld with the wall.
There are two more bursts of rifle fire, and then there’s silence.
“Clear,” Philbrick shouts.
Corporal Nez gets up from the rubberized deck and checks his armor. The small, high-velocity rounds from the cops’ PDWs have left silver-gray smear marks on his hardshell plate. I see that the SI troopers chose to go heavy—their armor is fitted with the optional add-on ballistic plating we only wear when we expect to do a lot of heavy close-quarters battle. It adds twenty pounds to an armor suit that’s already one weighty bitch of a load to carry, but the heavy kit can shrug off anything short of an armor-piercing shell from an autocannon.
The four SPs are on the ground, all motionless. Sergeant Philbrick stands over them, kicks their PDWs aside, and shakes his head again.
“Dumb shits,” he says. “Civvie cops against combat troops.”
I check myself for extra holes and don’t find any. Colonel Campbell and Dmitry are unscathed as well, although the vertical support strut we were hiding behind shows evidence of bullet impacts not ten inches from where my head was just a few moments earlier.
“We need to get the airlock open,” I say. “Tac team’s going to have bigger guns and better armor.”
“No shit.” Philbrick waves us over. “Skipper, over here. We need to use the master key for that hatch. Crouch in the corner and cover your ears. Nez, Watson, load HEAT.”
He plucks a grenade from his harness and sticks it into the open breech of his underbarrel grenade launcher. I can see the color code on the base of the shell: red, white, red. The high-explosive antiarmor rounds for our grenade launchers are fairly useless against vehicles clad in modern armor, but they do a number on steel airlocks and walls, which is precisely why we use them for breaching fortified positions.
Dmitry sees what the SI troopers are about to do, and he doesn’t need to be told to retreat to the nearest corner and cover his ears. I do likewise and take up position next to the Russian.
“Aimpoint is dead center. On three. One, two, fire.”
Three underbarrel launchers thump, and the dull but authoritative explosion of hollow-shaped charges pounds my eardrums and knocks me off balance. I get back to my feet and turn toward the airlock, which now has a half-meter hole in its center. Overhead, the smoke alarm goes off, a wailing trill that’s even more annoying than the security alert.
“Go, go, go,” Sergeant Philbrick urges. “Ship’s waiting.”
We clear the next four compartments one blown airlock at a time.
“How many HEAT grenades did you bring?” I ask Philbrick after I follow him through the third hole the SI troopers have shot into inch-thick composite hatches.
“Enough to go through every airlock in this fucking place twice,” he says. “Figured they may not let us leave quietly.”
“Thinking like an NCO,” I say, and he flashes a grin.
The last airlock on Foxtrot concourse falls to four more HEAT grenades. Despite the hands I’ve cupped over my ears for every salvo, I hear a sharp ri
nging now that feels like it will never go away again.
The SI troopers usher the skipper and Dmitry through the new provisional access hatch in the middle of the airlock. When I climb through, the edges of the hole are still hot and glowing. I help Private Watson through, and then Corporal Nez brings up the rear.
When the corporal is halfway through the hole, there’s a sudden fusillade of gunfire on the other side of the damaged airlock. I can hear projectiles smacking into the high-strength laminate from the other side, and I reflexively drop to the ground and scramble away from the airlock. Corporal Nez yells and stumbles, then lets himself drop through the hole made by the grenades. He falls to the floor in an ungraceful heap.
“Contact rear!” he shouts, quite unnecessarily. Then he crawls to the other side of the hallway, away from me. More gunfire clatters against the airlock. Private Watson steps up to the side of the hole, sticks his rifle around the corner, and fires a long burst through the opening.
“Tac team’s here,” he shouts. “Seven, eight guys. Maybe more. We have got to go.”
The airlock connecting the station with Indy is just twenty meters away. Several armored SI troopers come running out of the docking collar and into the concourse, weapons at the ready.
“Second Squad, lend a hand,” Staff Sergeant Philbrick shouts. “Seven-plus bad guys on the other side of that hatch.”
Corporal Nez takes a grenade out of his harness and pops the safety cap. He smacks the fuse end against his armor to activate the charge and chucks the grenade through the opening.
Then the airlock starts to open with a slight mechanical whine.
“Uh-oh,” Corporal Nez says.
The lower edge of the airlock is maybe ten centimeters off the ground when the grenade detonates in the corridor beyond. The shock wave makes the laminate ring like a muffled gong. The airlock crawls up another ten centimeters, then twenty, then thirty. When the ragged top of the hole we made reaches the bulkhead above, the upward motion stops with a shrill and tortured metallic shriek.
