Killswitch: A Cassandra Kresnov Novel (v1.1)

by Joel Shepherd

  A narrow service well climbed up to dock level. Sandy pushed the manhole aside and found herself in yet another engineering space in a narrow access corridor. She climbed swiftly out, murmured "Stay here," to Hafez and Simon, and stalked down the corridor to a main hatch. Tac-net told her that it opened into the rear of a dockside restaurant, of all places. She opened it, weapon ready, and surveyed a gleaming, stainless steel kitchen that looked far too clean and unused for any such establishment she'd frequented in her spacer days. Business couldn't have been good lately.

  She ducked out, swept it quickly, then did a fast visual out the doorway at the restaurant beyond. It was deserted, tables arrayed in an orderly fashion before broad windows that looked onto the docks. And now, for the first time, she could hear the clear, staccato crackle of gunfire. Could tell the type, range and direction of fire just by the sound. Tac-net showed her some of the dots, where friendly forces, and sensors, had a read on the opposition, here in front of the Euphrates' berth. A lot, she knew, would not appear on tac-net. But she'd fought Fleet marines for the majority of her life. She knew their patterns, defensive or offensive. Knew how they thought, how they operated, how they talked, moved and reacted. She knew their weak points. And she knew their greatest fears ... mostly because they were also her own.

  She turned back, and found Rhian waiting patiently against the kitchen wall, and the two kids nearby. Hafez seemed eager to see what lay outside. Simon seemed eager to be elsewhere. Obviously the junior of this pairing, he appeared to have come along mostly to cover his friend's back-it would have been very dangerous to move alone, as one pair of eyes barely covered half of all there was to see. She could only admire the bravery.

  "You two," she told them, "turn about, and get as far away from here as possible."

  "But we want to help!" Hafez protested.

  "If you stay here, you'll get killed. I can nearly guarantee it." The visored stare and stern, metallic tone must have done the trick, because Hafez seemed to reconsider. Simon tugged at his arm. "And thank you," she added as they departed.

  Tac-net indicated a light, defensive formation about Berth Four, but offered little information on Berth Two, having no sensors or IFV, as regular tac-net users called it-Integrated Field of View. Sandy got down on her hands and knees, and crawled out along the restaurant floor between the tables, Rhian following. Once at the windows, Sandy leaned against the corner potplant, and extended the helmet eyepiece out, to peer above the lower window rim. More light cover about defensive positions, many shipping crates and other vehicles positioned for cover about the gantries and elevated hatchway.

  Tac-net took milliseconds to analyse the image, and then a new set of red dots arrayed themselves across that section of the dockside. Anyone on tac-net now knew that someone had IFV on Berth Two. Most of the two Third Fleet carriers' marine complement had been outwardly deployed, manning all the station posts the local station workers had refused to fill. Now, the reserve rotation had also deployed, following the initial alarm. The defences that remained were easily strong enough to guard open docks against regular assault. But GIs were a different question.

  "Twelve immediate points of fire," Sandy observed in a low voice. "Thirty total. I've got the right, you go straight and clear out."

  Their own, private subchannel sorted the details, a rush of data that illuminated primary and secondary targets, fields of fire, projected trajectories, fire-shadows and multilayered kill zones. This, more than anything, was what GIs were designed for. Open combat, multiple targets, fast motion. Corridors were a leveller, and gave smart opponents a good chance ... or better, against regs. Out here, with surprise and fire support on their side, even twenty-to-one odds weren't bad.

  At some other time, in some other mood, Sandy might have felt that some intimate, personal gesture to Rhian might have been in order. Now, as they prepared weapons and double-checked armscomp interface, it barely occurred to her. They'd done this before. The future did not exist. There was only the present, and nothing else mattered.

  "G-squad," Sandy announced on directional com as she and Rhian traded places so Sandy could cover the more distant right flank, "request status on fire support."

  "Any time you're ready, Snowcat," came Lieutenant Bjornssen's reply. Already there was limited fire engagement with Euphrates' perimeter, lots of noise and heads being kept down. Smoke grenades sprewed a thick, white wall between opposing forces, giving Fifth Fleet troopers some cover.

  "Ready in three, two, one, go."

  She and Rhian leaped, and exploded through the window in a simultaneous rush. Reflex pulled her rifle's muzzle toward preestablished targets behind cover off to her right, a rapid volley of six bursts as bodies more than a hundred metres distant toppled in near unison, highvelocity rounds punching through faceplates that were the only parts of the Amazon marines visible. Sandy ran on an arc out from Rhian's right, aware of Rhian's fire upon the Euphrates' positions toward which they ran, aware of explosions amidst those positions as Cal-Ts shot grenades into their positions. There was very little return fire. Startled Amazon marines tried, and were killed as soon as they entered Sandy's line of fire. She pumped a couple of grenades into choice locations to flush out the cover, then simply stopped forty metres from the Berth Four cover positions, confident of her back as Rhian dove in amongst the smoke and chaos behind, gaining a better field of fire across the entire docks, up along the possible points of cover along the upward-curving inner wall.

  She walked backwards, calmly dropping another two marines through the smoke and confusion, then a third who poked his head around a doorway another fifty metres up the inner wall, only to get it blown off. The precision was automatic, a simple matter of identify the target, match her laser-sight onto the target, and pull the trigger. That process took barely a tenth of a second, and remaining Amazon marines were now wisely keeping out of sight. Behind her, tac-net was rapidly erasing the last Euphrates marines from its display.

  Grenades started flying from amidst the carnage of Berth Two as she reached a flatbed, positioned as cover, and ducked behind into a low, running crouch toward the hatch rampway. Rhian took cover behind the main ramp as explosions tore the defensive perimeterAmazon marines evidently loath to fire directly into their mates' positions lest any were still alive. Rhian snapped fire at a couple of targets that dared show themselves, then pumped two grenades back on a lower trajectory, as Sandy hurdled the raised railing, and rolled into the open main hatchway.

  "Inner hatch is closed," she announced on a direct comline to the bridge. Shots cracked off the hatch's metal rim, then an explosion tore the deck to hell and showered her with fragments. Sandy barely blinked, wiring her suit's unit into the hatch access and trusting Rhian to make sure nothing came too close. The hatch before her was tightly sealed-it shouldn't have been, if Reichardt had full control of bridge systems. Except that Fleet captains were known to be paranoid about security, and could have overriden it earlier.

  "Sorry, can't help you," came Reichardt's reply. In the background, Sandy could dimly hear the buzzing howl of industrial cutters, doubtless trying to break through the bridge doors. "We've got it all wide open. If it don't work, it ain't my fault. "

  "Hang on," Sandy remarked, redundantly, as her suit wired in ... and suddenly she could see the software pattern unfolding upon her inner-visual. It looked recently familiar, and sure enough, after a rapid sorting through various Federation-specific security patterns, she found something of Ari's that matched, and the door hummed open. She disconnected and moved aside with the door, rifle about the edge to search for targets without exposing herself, but saw nothing.

  Tac-net showed Bjornssen's squad now advanced close along the outer wall, well positioned to hold off any advance from Amazon's surviving marines upon their rear. Rhian came without having to be told, a quick leap into the open hatchway, and together they ran through the narrow passage and into the cold chill of the umbilical tube. Around the bend, and there was the carr
ier's scarred chilled metal hatch, closed and undefended. On this side, at least. Doubtless by now all aboard would know, from Amazon's marines, that two GIs were at the hatch. Luckily, disconnecting the umbilical was controlled by station bridge ... and full armour was as good as a spacesuit anyhow.

  Rhian took up position partway along the tube, with a good line of fire past the curve, covering the way they'd come. Sandy set about removing the shaped charges from her armour webbing, now shredded in places from that last grenade blast, but she hadn't lost any. The palm-sized disks fitted in a roughly circular arrangement about the rectangular door's centre, exploiting a relative structural weakness that only a person who'd spent much of her life concerned with such matters might be aware of. Tac-net showed no advance upon the docks outside, Amazon marines still pinned down by Bjornssen's fire.

  Rhian retreated to join Sandy, and they put their armoured backs against the hull to the hatch's side. Sandy connected the final uplink to the charges' triggers, and extended a fist to Rhian. Rhian tapped it with her own. Not much of a gesture, for all their years together, and everything they'd shared. But, in the life they'd been granted, it was all they could afford. Sandy charged the triggers, the hatch exploded in a blast that tore much of the umbilical tube to shreds and open space, and the two GIs charged in through the flames, debris, and the howl of escaping air.

  "Did they get past the doors?" Captain Rusdihardjo demanded from her command chair, staring at her screens. The Euphrates bridge was in pandemonium, com stations attempting desperately to contact marine units through nonresponsive channels, long and short range scan posts scrambling to cover skimmer traffic and out-system movement respectively, and now engineering yelling that the main hatch was gone, and they'd had a forward decompression, now contained.

  "I don't know, Captain!" came the shout over com. "I'm not getting anything from forward posts!"

  "Find out!" the captain demanded.

  "Captain," said Chipelli from helm, "if those were GIs, it had to be Kresnov and maybe one other!"

  "So what?" Rusdihardjo snapped, calling up the internal emergency frequency. "Lieutenant Yin, why aren't you responding? We have a forward intruder alert."

  "Captain, this is Private Khazan, fourth platoon. " Breathless and frightened. "I can't contact Lieutenant Yin, he was forward of third head arranging a defensive excursion, and now I can't find him ... "

  "Private, calm down. Who's my senior marine?"

  "That'd be me, Captain," came a new voice, that her screen identified as Sergeant Raphael. "I'm headed up from armoury, I'll try and get you some ... "

  Yells and gunfire erupted from an unidentified location, then an explosion. Internal tac-net lost a source, then two more, in the blink of an eye. More shouts, Sergeant Raphael shouting terse commands, as the clear realisation spread that they had intruders aboard. Rusdihardjo looked up, and met Chipelli's stare. Chipelli looked pale. Rusdihardjo felt her own gut tighten involuntarily.

  "It's just two intruders!" she snapped furiously. "We'll deal with them!"

  Chipelli nodded, hastily, and turned attention back to his screens. GIs on deck. Dark Star GIs. Regs were one thing. Dark Star, another entirely. There were nightmare stories, tales Fleet spacers and marines spun to keep each other awake on off-shifts. Of ghost ships found drifting and not a soul left on board, save the marks of a forceful docking, bullet holes in the walls, desperate barricades erected in haste, and bloodstains on the decking.

  Reichardt had done this, Rusdihardjo thought, with a fury that defied description. He'd better hope he won. Because if he didn't, and Fifth Fleet got their hands on him, each and every one of them would desire a little piece for a personal trophy.

  A priority signal was coming in from Amazon, and she flicked it open. "Admiral, this is Lieutenant-Commander Tupo." Only off-decks called her Admiral. On decks, there was nothing ranked higher than a captain. Rusdihardjo was old fashioned about such things. "Request your status. "

  "Two intruders," she replied. "We're dealing with them. Tupo, we are firing up engines. We might need to break dock and bring weapons to bear on Third Fleet vessels."

  "Admiral, Fleet engagement protocol prohibit firing upon vessels at dock with inhabited facilities ... "

  "I know the regulations!" Rusdihardjo retorted. "Prepare to break dock! That's an order!"

  "Aye, Admiral. "

  Rusdihardjo leaned back in her well-worn command chair, and stared at her screens. The other stations had reported back, and none were under assault. This action appeared to be focused entirely upon Nehru Station, as the centre of Fifth Fleet occupation strategy. Third Fleet vessels, heavily outnumbered, remained docked safely at station, where regulations prohibited them from being fired upon. But the Fifth Fleet retained control of space, and retained numerical superiority upon the docks. CDF soldiers might pass muster for planetary security forces, but they were no match for Fleet marines in their familiar environs. No, if she played to her strengths, and forced the opposition to play to their weaknesses, the result was not in doubt. She needed serious firepower in open space, away from station, to cover the approaches. And then she'd ...

  "Captain!" yelled the chief scan tech from across the bridge. "It's Pearl River and Kutch! They're coming back!"

  "I have two down!" Lieutenant Bhavan was saying with commendable calm, voice only raised to be heard above the racket of weapons fire and explosions in the background. "There's at least five marines holding sections B-4 through to B and C-7, heavy electro-mag fire plus I lost Cao to a limpet mine. Gold squad five tells me they've cut the escapes at E-4 through 9, I'd like to try flanking left but I need cover topside. "

  "Okay," Vanessa replied, utterly absorbed in her tac-net display, "Lieutenant Levkin, topside manoeuvre, get to level three, catch and hold, then manoeuvre on the mark."

  "Copy, Major," came Levkin's reply, and tac-net showed a rush of dots along schematic corridors to respond. Vanessa zoomed out, graphical vision darting along corridors, changing angles as Cal-Ts manoeuvred, fired, and countermanoeuvred through the enclosed, tight spaces of Nehru Station. It wasn't as fast as she'd have liked-Fifth Fleet marines had been spread out from one side of the station to the other. Here, concentrated about Blue sector, attacking forces had enjoyed both surprise and numerical advantages, and Reichardt had been making reinforcement from elsewhere difficult by locking strategic hatchways and section seals from the bridge. But Fifth Fleet marines fought hard and well, and her guys were taking casualties. If they didn't reach the bridge soon, Reichardt and his team were dead, and the attackers would lose their major strategic advantage.

  She knelt in a level one corridor, back to the wall and weapon buttdown on the decking. The bodies of two Fifth Fleet marines lay sprawled across the cross-corridors alongside, armour holed and seeping blood. The body of one of her own troops had been removed to a more secure location. Vanessa barely noticed any of it. She was more accustomed to small scale actions, thinking and fighting simultaneously. This was effectively generalship. Movement and engagements happening simultaneously across a broad front, and if she wasn't careful, her brain would overload with the effort to micro-manage every encounter. She kept the tac-net vision broad, trying hard to focus on the broader patterns, and not use the zoom too much.

  Twenty metres down the corridor, a door opened and a head peered out ... Sergeant Major Zago fired a shot past his nose, eliciting a yelp of fear and a panicked retreat. "Stay the fuck inside!" Zago yelled in his wake. "Are you fucking stupid?!" The door hummed shut. "Fucking civilians." His section of four ignored it, braced and covering about the cross-corridors.

  "Major," came Reichardt's voice in her ear, "they just broke through the outer door. I reckon they'll be through in five minutes."

  "Keep your pants on, Captain," Vanessa told him. "We'll be there." Amazon, tac-net showed her, was breaking free of the station, despite the bridge's attempts to leave the docking grapples in place. When a warship wanted to leave, it left, and did a lot of
damage to the station in the process. Following Admiral Duong's demise, LieutenantCommander Tupo was acting captain on Amazon.

  "That Tupo's one unpleasant sonofabitch," Reichardt remarked offhandedly, above the howling din of laser cutters in the background. "I'd truly recommend you kill him before he starts shooting up the station. "

  "Yeah, we're doing that." If the whole ridiculously expensive, secret, troublesome damn system worked, that was. Upon tac-net, Lieutenant Bhavan achieved his objective, and a whole section of Fifth Fleet flank from level one to four began to unwind. Vanessa redirected com in a hurry. "Gold squad four and three, flanking assault! Get around, hold and fix, then manoeuvre in pairs! Go, go, go!"

  She gestured to Zago, who waved his squad forward, Vanessa falling fourth in line with Zago and another bringing up the rear. Zago slapped a magnetic sensor into a doorframe corner as they went, to warn tac-net if anyone moved in their wake.

  Sergeant Raphael braced one armoured foot against the corridor corner to prevent a slide down the sloping deck. Here at dock, Euphrates' crew cylinder was locked stationary, and most habitable areas in transit were now fixed at a crazy angle, or totally upside down. It would not, he knew, prevent a GI from moving through it. Engineering was behind him, and he could not let the intruders in that far.