The squad was approaching from the ship’s stern at a steep angle. Either the ship had altered its course or their SalSha pilot had screwed up the launch. More likely the latter, but it no longer mattered. All Walker knew was he could see way more of the fusion torch than he had ever wanted to—it looked like they were going to fly into it. As they continued to approach, Walked realized it was an optical illusion, and the suit reinforced it with a few more bursts of his jumpjets.
About the time Walker was sure they wouldn’t burn up in the torch, the ship’s drive ceased, and his jumpjets fired to compensate. Walker shook his head. Great. Zero gravity assault. He’d only done a few of them, but they were neither his favorite nor his specialty. If he’d wanted to do ship shit, he’d have become a marine.
At least they weren’t still shooting at them.
Although it was at the limits of its capabilities, the suit’s computer came through and brought them to within 150 feet of the transport. Walker disconnected from the rest of the suits, flew over and magnetically latched onto the transport, and pulled in the others before they flew on past.
“Okay,” Walker said, “we made it here in one piece. Kane, take Loftis, VVR, and Polanis and go secure the bridge. I’ll take everyone else and go to engineering. Remember, go as fast as you can; we don’t know if there’ll be any troops on board. Assume everyone onboard is the enemy and don’t leave anything to chance. If it moves, shoot it. Any questions?”
There were none.
“Okay, go!”
They had landed on the aft portion of the ship, so they were closer to Walker’s objective. While they had the general schematics for the class, every ship was slightly different, and the older ones had been modified many times over their several-hundred-year operational lifetimes, so even though the schematics said there was an airlock in one place, it didn’t always mean it was actually still there. The first two they looked for were both no longer in existence, and both appeared to have been plated over with sheet metal a long time ago.
While looking for the third airlock, they came upon an airlock for loading cargo that wasn’t on the schematics. They would all fit into it at once, rather than having to cycle it once per CASPer like the ones for personnel.
The buttons were marked, so Walker had no problem depressurizing the lock and opening the door. Everyone filed into the lock with room to spare. “Remember,” Walker said as the lock cycled, “this is our ride home; try not to punch too many holes through it.”
The interior door started to open and Sergeant Morgan bolted through it, followed by Private DeWayne. As Private Enkh dashed out, the door stopped and began closing again, and a green light started flashing in the corridor. Corporal Burke jumped through the opening and Walker jetted through with a burst of his jumpjets at the last moment.
“Go, go, go!” Walker cried. “They know we’re here!”
Led by Sergeant Morgan, the team raced aft down the passageway, the magnetic locks on their boots making their footsteps even louder than normal.
“Intruder alert! Intruder alert!” the passageway’s loudspeakers blared. “All transient forces defend the ship. We have intruders in the aft section approaching Engineering!”
“Well, at least we’re going the right way,” Walker said.
“Yeah,” Morgan replied as he ran down the passageway. “That part wasn’t hard—go aft until you get to the motors.” He ran a few more steps then asked, “How many troops do you suppose, ‘all transient forces’ is?”
“No idea,” Walker said. “Might be a relief crew for the base.”
Morgan came to a sudden stop, and Dewayne almost ran into him.
“What’s up?” Walker asked.
“We’re where Engineering is supposed to be,” Morgan replied. “There’s just one problem.”
“What’s that?”
Morgan pointed to the blank wall. “It’s not here.”
Dropship, Trigar 2-A, Trigar System
“We’re all aboard,” Sansar transmitted. “Ready for takeoff.”
“Okay,” Thorb said. “I will leave now.” The dropship lifted, then the SalSha asked, “Is it always like this?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, don’t you ever sleep? I am very tired and almost fell asleep on my way back last time.”
“Yes, we sleep, and no, it isn’t always like this.”
“Ah, so this is what you call special duty?”
“Yes, it is more than usual.”
“So you will be paying me more than usual, too?”
Sansar sighed. Blue Sky save me from greedy aliens!
MinSha Transport, Trigar 2-A, Trigar System
“What do you want me to do?” Sergeant Morgan asked.
Walker surveyed the corridor. The passage ended after another 20 feet; they couldn’t go any further, and there were no doors on the correct side of the passageway.
Plink! Plink! Plink! A shower of metal slivers ricocheted down the hallway and off the CASPers, and Walker turned to find a pair of MinSha setting up a heavy MAC while two other MinSha provided cover. One was reloading a flechette gun.
“Bugs behind us!” Walker called. His arms came up, and his targeting reticles centered on the MAC crew. One fell backward with a laser bolt between the eyes; the other with a MAC round through the thorax. Private Enkh and Sergeant Morgan killed the others, but motion behind the MAC crew indicated more MinSha were coming.
“Back the way we came,” Walker ordered, charging forward. “They must have moved the door to the parallel passageway on the other side of the ship. We’ve got to find a cross passage.”
Five more MinSha approached from the opposite direction, and they stopped to fire at the approaching CASPers. The MinSha had magnetic devices on all four feet, which gave them a stable platform to fire. Seeing them taking aim, Walker extended the laser shield on his arm and it blossomed in front of him. The first two shots deflected harmlessly, but a third burned through and glanced off his left shoulder.
Then Walker was upon them, and he fired his laser rifle into the first alien while chopping down with his blade, beheading a second. A third brought up a laser rifle; Walker batted it aside with his rifle, buried his blade in the alien’s thorax, and yanked up, gutting the MinSha. Walker pulled up and away to free the blade, but that lifted the alien out of its magnetic footgear, and the MinSha floated free on the imbedded blade in the null gravity.
“Stupid bug,” Walker said, pushing the corpse off his blade with the muzzle of his rifle. He turned, but Morgan and Corporal Burke had already killed the last two.
“Save a few for us next time, eh, Staff Sergeant?” Morgan asked.
“I don’t know what you’re complaining about,” Walker said; “I left you guys a couple. C’mon, let’s go.”
He led them up to the next cross-passage and over to the starboard side of the ship. As Walker turned to head aft, he smiled. Doors and hatches lined the corridor.
Walker charged down the passage, stopping at the hatch marked ‘Engineering.’ “Remember,” he warned, “this is our ride home. Let’s try not to break it too badly.”
He pushed open the hatch and stepped back as several laser bolts flashed out. “Kind of a rude welcome,” Morgan noted. He dashed across the hatchway, eliciting another burst of laser fire from the interior. “Looks like two MinSha behind some equipment to the right,” Morgan said. “There may be more.”
“Follow me, then,” Walker said. He climbed up the wall opposite the hatch, crouched, and launched himself through the hatchway. His laser shield snapped out again as he entered the space, deflecting a couple of shots, and he soared across the space, drawing their fire.
A bolt went past him in the opposite direction, and he enabled his 360-degree view. In addition to the two on the right, another lurked on the left. A warning light illuminated on his right leg—he’d been hit!
Walker reached the opposite wall and gathered himself as Morgan entered the room, followed by the rest
of the group. Morgan was focused on the MinSha to the right, and killed them with his laser, but didn’t see the one on the left, who turned to engage the new threat. Before the alien could fire at Morgan, Walker shot it through the head.
“Quick!” Walker said. “Get in and get the door locked. Weld it shut if you have to. Search for any other entrances and get them locked down!”
“Walker, Kane here,” his radio announced. “We surprised them on the bridge—it looks like they were focused on your group and didn’t see us coming. We’ve taken it and are holding the commanding officer and the bridge staff.”
Walker looked around the engineering space and smiled. There was still a lot to do, like turning off the power to the automatic defenses—where the hell was the switch for that?—but still, they had the bridge and engineering. It was over; they had won.
They were going home.
Dropship, Stargate Control, Trigar System
“We’re here, ma’am,” Walker called from the pilot seat. “I’m holding position just outside the airlock of the station. Everyone buttoned up back there?”
Sansar looked over to where Mun waited in her CASPer, and the soldier gave her a mech thumbs-up. “We’re ready back here,” she replied.
“Depressurizing,” Walker warned. “The ramp is coming down.”
Walker spun the ship gently as the ramp came down, and Sansar was greeted with a view of the stargate’s control station. A small station located to the “east” side of the stargate when viewed from the front of the giant ring, the personnel in the control station made all the decisions for the stargate’s operation—when it would function, how it would be recharged, and whether or not to allow unscheduled transitions. The Trigar system had a Class 3 stargate, the smallest and least efficient of the three types. With a ship usually entering or exiting the system no more frequently than a couple times a month, nothing more was needed.
The control station for a Class 3 stargate, however, wasn’t big enough for a landing bay like the modules on a Class 2 or a Class 1; instead, to enter a Class 3’s control station, you needed a ship with the capability to mate up with an airlock, which neither the dropship nor the transport had. That made things more difficult.
“Ready, Mun?” Sansar asked.
“Whenever you are.”
Walker had brought the dropship’s ramp down to level with the back of the cargo bay, and Sansar ran down the landing ramp and threw herself into space with Mun right behind her. Both had done similar evolutions in the past, so it wasn’t “scary,” merely concerning. No one wanted to miss and go flying off into the black, even with a dropship standing by to rescue them if they needed. No one.
Walker had the dropship within about 50 feet of the airlock, though, so it would have been hard for any reasonably experienced CASPer operator to miss, even though the station was spinning to maintain gravity. As both were in the top five percent of all operators, they easily made the jump, rotated, and braked to land on the outside of the station without any extra velocity.
“This would be a lot easier if they just mounted this stupid thing to the stargate,” Mun grumbled as she checked all of her systems, “rather than having it off to the side. It would make getting onto and off of it a lot easier.”
“Maybe,” Sansar said, “but there’s an awful lot of power flowing through the shunts on the gate, and I wouldn’t want to live that close to it. Besides, the control station is basically just a small ship; it can maneuver around to facilitate its crew working on various parts of the solar array.”
“Yeah, they couldn’t pay me enough to be stationed here.”
They entered the airlock and cycled it, then entered the station. The passageway extended in both directions, but was empty; no one was there to greet them.
“You told them we were coming, right?” Mun asked.
“Yeah, I did.” Sansar shrugged in her suit, but the motion was lost on Mun. “All right, let’s ditch our suits.”
“Do I have to?”
“Yeah. It’ll be too hard to walk around inside the station in them.” Sansar climbed out of her suit. Mun was already out when Sansar reached the deck and was pulling a variety of small arms and other materials from the cargo containers of her CASPer and stowing them in her suit. She strapped a pistol to her waist.
“It’s good to be prepared, right?” Mun asked when she saw Sansar looking at it.
“Yeah, I guess…” Sansar said. She opened her cargo compartment and found that Mun had stocked it with the same things the senior enlisted had put in her own. Sansar strapped on her pistol belt and looked through the rest of the items. “Really?” she asked as she picked up a small canister. “A thermite grenade?”
Mun shrugged. “Like I said, it’s good to be prepared.”
Sansar shook her head, then closed and locked her CASPer. “Let’s go. I know the way.” She turned to the right and began walking.
Mun hurried after her and fell into step. “Shouldn’t there have been someone to meet us or show us the way?” she asked.
Sansar shrugged. “Even though the facility is fairly big, there aren’t that many people permanently stationed on it—it’s mostly storage for the parts they might need to fix the stargate if it breaks. There’s probably eight mechanics, the gate master, and an assistant. It’s not very good duty, especially here on the ass end of the universe with nothing to do, so the people who end up on stations like this one are the dregs of the Cartography Guild…or the ones who have pissed off someone important. Either way, they aren’t folks who tend to be the most considerate of others.”
Sansar slowed down after five minutes of walking and began looking at the labeling on the doors. “Here it is,” she said after another couple minutes’ travel. “Frapotonal, Esquire. Gate Master.”
She pressed the entry stud without announcing herself and strode into the waiting area.
Mun stopped in the doorway, stunned by the size and grandeur of the room behind the door. “Wow…”
Sansar shrugged. It wasn’t much different from the offices of the other gate masters she had visited. The room was a 30-foot square with an 11-foot ceiling. It was decorated extravagantly, meant to over-awe visitors with its opulence and impress upon unworthy guests how important and powerful the gate master was. Sansar shook her head; it wasn’t surprising they needed the ego-boost—she would have gone crazy if she had to live on the station—and with the fees the Cartography Guild charged to use the gates, he wouldn’t have to skim off a very large percentage to have a significant budget with which to decorate. She didn’t recognize the wood the office was paneled in, but the fact there was real wood in space was amazing on its own—even more so because it had not come from either of the planets in this system. Paintings covered the walls. She recognized one or two of them, so they were all probably collectors’ items, but she hadn’t followed the current trends in art since she was younger and trying to decide which side of the family business better suited her.
“May I help you?” the sole occupant of the room asked, sounding put out at having to deal with visitors.
Sansar turned to the right; a Veetch sat behind a desk far too large for it. Although it had four arms, the creature had a vaguely Humanoid torso, with a head that was more avian in nature on top of it. With two eyes and two hands on both sides of its body, the Veetch made outstanding secretaries; they could process two forms at once.
The desk was three feet high and appeared to be made of solid wood, yet the alien rose at least a foot above it. Sansar knew the Veetch had to be standing on something because the aliens were diminutive; even the tallest didn’t stand more than three feet tall.
“Hi,” Sansar said, approaching the desk. “I’m Colonel Sansar Enkh. I’d like to speak to the Gate Master.”
“Is he expecting you?” the Veetch asked, sounding even more put out. “I don’t see an appointment for you today. In fact, I don’t see an appointment for you all week, and all appointments must be made at least seven d
ays in advance.”
“I’m sorry,” Sansar replied, “but I don’t have an appointment. I do however, have an immediate need to use the stargate in a matter of extreme urgency. It truly is a matter of life and death.”
“I’m sorry, Colonel Enkh, but the Gate Master is not expecting you, and he doesn’t see anyone he isn’t expecting.”
“Well let me be very clear,” Sansar said, her hand resting on the laser pistol on her hip. “When I said it was a matter of life and death, I meant it. People will die if I don’t get to see the Gate Master…and the first one is going to be you.” She stopped and smiled. The hand came away from the pistol and went into a pocket. “However, I really don’t see the need for any unpleasantness, as it’s bad for business. Also I just remembered; I do have an appointment.”
“You do?” the Veetch asked, looking back at its slate.
“I do,” Sansar confirmed. “I know, because I wrote it down right here on this.” She slid a small red diamond across the desk to the assistant. Although it was only a chip, it was worth thousands of credits.
The Veetch picked up the red diamond, held it to the light, and looked closely at it. “Oh,” it said. “I do see it, after all. Somehow I must have forgotten to write it down. How silly of me. Please allow me to announce you.” The red diamond disappeared without Sansar seeing where it went, and the Veetch stepped down off its platform and waddled to the door. It tapped with its beak and went in, closing the door behind it.
Mun raised an eyebrow. “You came ready with that?”
Sansar nodded. “Being stationed out here is shit duty. It’s probably at least a six-month tour, if not a year, and there won’t be any other Veetch here. Not only that, but the gate master is probably also skimming off her salary…but who is she going to complain to? That red diamond is probably worth more than what she’ll make the whole time she’s out here.”
The Golden Horde (The Revelations Cycle Book 4) Page 28
