by Marko Kloos
“Get them into the ship,” Sergeant Philbrick shouts, and points at Dmitry and me. The skipper is already halfway to the docking collar, shielded by Private Bennett, who is directly behind him to keep the bulk of his armor between the colonel and the gunfire. Two members of Second Squad dart over to where we are to provide the same service to Dmitry and me. Together, we make a rapid and highly awkward procession to the docking collar as the other SI troopers start pouring fire through the crack at the bottom of the airlock to cover our retreat. One of the tactical cops on the other side of the airlock takes a chapter out of Corporal Nez’s playbook and rolls a grenade through the opening, but Staff Sergeant Philbrick stops it with his armored boot and kicks it back through. It explodes just barely on the other side of the airlock, which shudders violently with the explosion and then slams back down rapidly without any restraints. All over the corridor, multiple alarms are blaring, blending with the gunfire in a discordant crescendo.
The SI troopers usher us into the docking collar. Behind us, First Squad holds the line, falling back in turn while keeping up a covering fire aimed at the hole in the airlock. I don’t even want to think about what’s going to happen if one of the tactical cops decides to fire a grenade launcher down the concourse and into the docking collar while we’re between the station and the ship.
Then I’m back on Indy, past the main airlock and inside the ship’s main port-to-starboard passageway. A few moments later, the rest of First Squad come running up the docking collar and through the airlock.
“Secure the airlock,” Staff Sergeant Philbrick shouts. Corporal Nez runs over to the side of the passageway and hits the emergency-lock button with the butt of his rifle. A warning klaxon blares sharply, and the airlock slides down and out into its recess in the ship’s armor belt. The noise from the outside of the ship instantly cuts off.
“Seal your suits and guard this airlock,” Colonel Campbell shouts over to Sergeant Philbrick. “Nothing in or out. Tell CIC I am on my way. Mr. Grayson, with me.”
The combat information center is already abuzz with activity when Colonel Campbell and I step through the hatch. The colonel strides into the middle of the CIC pit. I step up to my accustomed spot on the pit rail and grasp it with both hands to steady myself.
“Sitrep,” the colonel barks.
“Reactor is at full output. Propulsion online,” Major Renner replies. “All personnel accounted for.”
“Get us loose from the station now.”
“They’re not releasing the clamps, sir. We’ve initiated undock sequence, but they’ve locked us down.”
“Blow the emergency locks on the docking clamps. Blow ’em off,” Colonel Campbell orders.
The engineering officer hesitates for just a second before flicking to a different screen on his control panel and punching several controls in sequence.
“Aye, sir. Emergency release initiated.”
A shudder goes through the hull as explosive charges blow out Indy’s docking receptacles and eject them from her hull. This is an emergency measure that I’ve not seen used in five years of fleet service. Once the mating points for the standard docking clamps are torn from the hull, Indy won’t be able to dock with any station again. Fitting new receptacles to the hull requires a fleet yard visit and a complete hull overhaul.
“Helm, set thrusters full speed astern. Tear us loose.”
“Full astern, aye,” the helmsman acknowledges.
Major Renner brings up the tactical orb on the holotable. With the station taking up all the space in front of us, our field of view is limited to the hemisphere behind us.
“Murphy is moving into intercept position, sir.”
The blue icon representing the destroyer is less than three kilometers astern and above us. Their acceleration is slow, but at this range, they don’t have to go hard on the throttle to be on top of us in a minute, and there’s not a weapon on the Murphy that can’t reach us even from three klicks away.
“Indianapolis, power down your propulsion and your active sensors and return to your berthing spot immediately, or we will open fire.”
“Testy,” Colonel Campbell says. “No reply, comms. Crank up all the active gear.”
“Distance from station fifty meters,” the helmsman calls out. “Seventy-five. One hundred.”
“As soon as we are clear, go to negative zero-four-five by zero-zero and hit the burners,” Colonel Campbell orders.
“Active fire control radar,” the tactical officer warns. A warning sound chirps on his console. “They are locking on to us. Murphy is opening forward missile tubes, sir.”
“Fucking maniacs,” Major Renner says. “We’re too close. To them and the station.”
“Go hot on the jammers and the CIWS,” Colonel Campbell shouts.
“Missile launch! Vampire, vampire. Two birds—”
On the tactical display, two inverted V shapes detach from Murphy’s icon and race toward the center of the plot. The flight time is ludicrously short. I don’t even have time to swallow hard before both missiles have covered the distance. One of them disappears just a fraction of a second before it reaches the center of the plot. The other streaks past Indy. I can’t hear the explosion in front of the ship, but the blast’s shock wave jolts the ship backwards.
“They hit the station,” the tactical officer shouts. “Impact on Independence. CIWS got the other one.”
“Give me a forward view. Guns, get a firing solution with the rail gun.”
“Target acquired,” the gunnery officer says. “They’re rolling ship to bring their own rail gun to bear.”
“Don’t let ’em. Weapons free. Hit the sensor array in the bow, make ’em blind. If they roll around enough to unmask their gun mount, you shoot it right off that shit bucket.”
“Aye, sir. Weapons free.”
Murphy is shadowing us from behind and above, which means that her dorsal gun mount is on the wrong side of the ship to engage us. Indy’s gunnery officer takes ruthless advantage of that mistake. As Murphy rolls around and coasts toward us, Indy’s rail gun pumps out three rapid shots in one-second intervals. The tactical officer brings up the optical feed just in time for us to see the kinetic projectiles tear into the nose of the aging destroyer, sending armor shards flying. Murphy shudders visibly under the hammer blows. Rail guns aren’t useful at longer ranges or against heavily armored ships, but not even the titanium hull plating of the destroyer can stand up to kinetic shot at point-blank range.
“Ship is clear of the berth!”
“Come to new heading negative zero-four-five by zero-zero, ahead flank,” the colonel orders. “Hang on to something, everyone.”
I don’t need the invitation. I renew my death grip on the rail with my good hand as Indy’s bow thrusters fire and pitch her nose sharply downward. The thrum-thrum-thrum of the fusion propulsion system going from idle to full thrust reverberates through the hull. Murphy is halfway through her 180-degree roll to give her rail gun a field of fire, and our gunnery officer fires three more shells. One goes over Murphy’s hull and screams off into space. The second hits the side of the hull at a steep angle, and the projectile ricochets off the armor. The third round hammers right into the armored rail gun mount. There’s the puff of an impact and then a soundlessly expanding cloud of metal debris. Then the mass of the station intersperses itself between the optical sensor and Murphy as we pass underneath Independence.
“Good shooting, Guns,” Colonel Campbell says. “Keep the jammers running. Let’s keep the station between us and them for as long as we can. Tactical, give me a plot.”
The tactical officer expands the scan range of the holotable display. There are a handful of blue icons around Independence, most of them sitting still in station berths. Other than Indy and Murphy, three more ships are under way in the vicinity, but none are on an intercept course.
“Helm, make your new course positive zero-four-zero by negative zero-zero-three. Follow the spine of the station. Stay on the thro
ttle.”
“Let’s hope nobody backs out of their parking spot in a hurry,” Major Renner says.
“We need to be clear and in the black before Murphy catches up and blows us into stardust,” the colonel says. “We got exceedingly lucky with that exchange. If they had been below us instead of above, we’d be an expanding cloud of debris right now.”
“Not bad, though,” Major Renner grins. “Punching a destroyer in the nose, with a little OCS.”
“No, not bad at all,” Colonel Campbell agrees. “But we probably killed a dozen sailors on that destroyer just now. I’m not going to feel proud about that any time soon.”
Murphy coasts to the underside of Independence Station and onto our tactical display again a few minutes later, but they’re not pulling military acceleration.
“They’re trailing debris,” the tactical officer says. “We hurt ’em good.”
“Four kinetic hits at knife-fight range. Wouldn’t be surprised if those went halfway from bow to stern,” Major Renner says.
We are well away from the station, coasting ballistically with all the active sensors turned off again, doing what Indy does best. With every passing minute, we’re putting more and more empty space between us and Murphy, Independence Station, and Earth.
“Anything on active?” Colonel Campbell asks.
“Some short-range ship-to-ship comms. Nothing directed our way, though.”
“We just stole an OCS out of the docking clamps and shot it out with a fleet destroyer,” Major Renner muses. “Why isn’t half the remaining fleet looking for us with all their active sensors running?”
“Good question. This whole thing stinks from top to bottom.” Colonel Campbell reaches into the holographic plot display and draws a trajectory with his finger.
“Do a corrective boost, and bring us around the other side of Independence. I want to get a better idea of what’s going on. Passive sensors only.”
“Aye, sir.” The XO reads off the new course data to the helmsman.
“Three-second burn, on my mark.”
“Three-second burn, aye.”
The pleasant numbness wrapped around my left hand is slowly giving way to a decidedly uncomfortable throbbing ache that gets sharper by the minute. The meds in the trauma pack are wearing off. I stick my left hand underneath my right armpit and grimace at the pressure. I didn’t spend much time yet thinking about what’s underneath that trauma pack—or rather, what isn’t there anymore—and I don’t really care to.
“Mr. Grayson,” Colonel Campbell says.
“Sir?”
“You look like absolute hell. Go to sick bay and have the medical officer look at that. You’re bleeding all over my CIC, son.”
I manage to muster a half-cocked grin. “Yes, sir. Sorry, sir.”
I turn and walk toward the CIC hatch, leaving Indy’s command crew to their work. Now that it looks like we won’t blow up in the next few seconds or minutes, I suppose I have the luxury of seeing to my own battle damage.
When I step through the hatch and into the passageway beyond, the tension goes out of me like the oxygen from a decompressing airlock, and I just feel drained. We made it through to Earth, against all odds. I should be in a fleet mess right now, eating fresh food and catching up on messages from Halley and my mother. Instead I am in a battle-weary warship again, on the run from our own people, and on my way to see how much of my left hand I’ll get to keep. Right now I very much wish I had stayed on New Svalbard with Sergeant Fallon and her fellow HD grunts.
Not the best idea you have this week, I think, and the voice in my head has a heavy Russian accent.
CHAPTER 13
Indy’s medical specialist is a female corpsman named Randall. She’s an E-6, a staff sergeant like me, and I’ve seen her in the NCO mess often, but we’ve not had any interactions other than me picking up some no-go pills from sick bay a few times on our trip from New Svalbard.
“The broken nose I can fix in about five minutes,” she says when she has examined my various defects. “Won’t even leave a mark. That hand, though. How’d you manage that?”
“Reached in front of a muzzle. I think the blast did more damage than the bullets.”
“Oh, they both did their share,” she says. “Trauma pack meds wearing off yet?”
I nod and grimace in reply. She scoots back her examination chair and gets up. Indy’s sick bay is tiny, just a little room about twice the size of my berth, and much of it is taken up by the treatment and surgery chair. There are lockers lined up in front of one of the bulkheads, and she opens one and takes out an injector unit. I try to ignore the searing pain in my left hand while she draws up a dose of whatever it is she’s about to give me.
“This will take the edge off. I don’t think you’re a dope seeker.” She winks at me and scoots back over to the treatment chair. “Annnnd . . . here we go.”
I feel the pinprick of the needle in the hollow of my left arm. Almost instantly, I feel a wave of dizziness and nausea flooding my brain at an alarming speed.
“Hang in there for a second, and it will pass,” Corpsman Randall says. “Feels bad at first, but it gets better.”
“It gets better” is a massive understatement. A few moments after the initial feeling of intense nausea that almost makes me throw up, a massive wave of relaxation and relief washes over me. The pain in my hand goes from almost unbearable to nonexistent in just a few seconds. I let my head tilt back against the headrest of the chair and let out a loud sigh.
“Not bad, huh? Modern pharmaceutics are magic in a syringe.”
“Dark, delicious magic,” I murmur, and she laughs.
“I’m going to immobilize your left arm for a bit and clean up this mess. Try not to look at it. Take a nap if you want. I don’t mind.”
“Not really in the mood for a nap,” I say, but my eyelids are getting heavy as I say it. Whatever she put into my bloodstream not only took away all the pain, it also put me into a very relaxed mood. I could almost forget the fact that I am on a damaged warship in the middle of what is now a three-front war. Compared to the way I’ve been feeling since we left Earth to be stranded in the Fomalhaut system, this is damn near euphoria. I close my eyes and listen to the ever-present humming of the ship’s environmental and life-support systems.
“How did you end up on Indy?” Randall asks. “I’ve seen you around since New Svalbard, but I never asked.”
“I’m a combat controller,” I mumble. “I’m babysitting the Russian sergeant who has the access codes to the SRA Alcubierre node. Which is a tightly guarded secret, by the way.”
“I won’t tell,” she says.
My left arm is numb now, and I only feel anything from that part of my body when Corpsman Randall tugs on my hand hard enough to move the arm in its shoulder joint. I remember her advice and keep my eyes closed and away from whatever mess she’s stitching up.
“I served under the skipper once,” I say. “Five years ago, on Versailles. At first contact with the Lankies.”
“You were there, huh? I was just out of boot when that happened.”
“Where’d you go to boot?” I ask.
“NACRD Orem. January to March ’08.”
“No shit? Me, too. Which platoon?”
“1068.”
“I was 1066,” I say. “Corpsman Randall, it looks like our boots churned some of the same dust.”
“At the same time,” she says. “Small world.”
“Getting smaller all the time,” I say. I wonder how many graduates of our respective boot camp platoons have been killed in action. There were a whole lot of destroyed hulls in orbit around Mars—dozens of ships, thousands of sailors.
“You made staff sergeant pretty fast,” I say. “I thought I got to E-6 quickly.”
“Yeah, well. Corpsman billet means you’re always in demand. Same as you, I imagine. You’re doing good, by the way, all things considered. This shouldn’t be too much of a bother.”
“Whatever you gav
e me, I’m not sure I’d mind if you started sawing that arm off.”
“I don’t think it’s going to come to that,” she says. “Although you got yourself pretty mangled, Staff Sergeant.”
“Andrew,” I say. “We’re the same rank. Same time in service.”
“Nancy,” she says. “Now use this opportunity to take a nap while I stitch you up and fix that broken nose. We may be the same rank, but you’re in my sick bay, and you will follow the orders of your medical professional.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
I do as ordered and let the medication and the ambient noise of Indy’s distant business lull me into a warm and easy sleep.
When Corpsman Randall wakes me up again, the warm and pleasant feeling from the medication is mostly gone. My left arm is still numb, but my brain is no longer fuzzy, and even if there had been any of the slight euphoria left, it would have dissipated the moment I opened my eyes and looked down at my hand. It looks asymmetrical, off balance, more like a claw than the appendage I’ve been using to manipulate my environment for the last quarter century. Where before the edge of my hand flared out into a slight fleshy curve, now there’s a straight line going from my wrist to the base of my middle finger, which is now the outmost digit. The wound is dressed in new adhesive bandage, so I can’t see what the damage looks like after the corpsman’s cleanup job, but it looks like there’s an awful lot of substance gone.
“How are you feeling?” she asks.
“Like I had too much lousy soy beer last night,” I reply without taking my eyes off the bandage. “What’s the verdict on the hand?”
“The bad news is that your guitar-playing days are over.”
“I never learned to play an instrument. Guess I won’t be starting, either.”
“They’ll fit you for new fingers at Great Lakes,” Randall says. “We’ve come a long way in the medical cybernetics field. Won’t be your old fingers, but they’ll work just as well.”
“Yeah, they can do magic now,” I say. “Friend of mine has a new lower leg courtesy of the Medical Corps. She says it’s much better than the old one. Says she wouldn’t mind having another to match the set.”
