"Wiki," he said into his helmet mike. "Wiki, what's your situation?" There was no reply from Wikramasinga. "Wiki?" His rifle fixed unerringly along the corridor, floor angled at forty-five degrees, armoured backside supporting his braced stance. Tac-net showed Wikramasinga was still alive. So were his team. They just weren't moving. "Wiki, what the hell ..."
An explosion tore through the next cross-corridor, smoke spilling downward with gravity, obscuring his vision. Gunfire erupted from above his position, and he stared up to see Reiner, propped at the entrance of his corridor where the deck curved upward even more sharply, blazing away at something unseen. Further up still, two positions abruptly vanished from tac-net amidst yells and shooting.
"Shit," Raphael muttered, shouldering his rifle and grabbing the guide line that ran up the sloping corridor. Between that, and grasping holds upon the inner wall, the armour gave enough power to haul him up the ever-increasing slope. He passed Reiner, whose corridor seemed empty, then transferred his weight to the inner wall ladder rungs, now deployed in dock. Further along, he paused and peered over the rim. Two marines lay sprawled, armour torn and riddled in precise locations. Topside, someone was calling for clarification.
"Shut your yapping and figure it out!" Raphael snarled on the net. "We've got two of 'em loose in here! Engineering is sealed, and they're trying to find a way through! Now, so long as we all cover our positions, and watch each other's backs, they're blocked off, right?" He scrambled to crouch beside the bodies, unslinging his weapon and peering through the drifting smoke. His feet were upon a hatchway that would normally be a door, the ceiling lights on what was now the right "wall." "They're just machines, people! Keep it straight, use your brains, and we'll get these fuckers, they ain't no match for us."
Tac-net showed him the full circumference of this rear portion of Euphrates' habitation ring. His guys had it sealed all the way around, a marine covering each corridor, a weapon on each passage. Tac-net showed every doorway, every local system. If something activated without a marine or spacer crew in proximity, it would flash red. Even GIs wouldn't try to get to the bridge-it was amidships, with just one way in or out, easily defensible and currently sealed behind multiple blast doors. From engineering there were accessways to the ship's spine, and back to the engines. There was nothing like a full complement, with most of the ship's marines caught onstation when the attack began ... but thirty-five would have to do. Or thirty-three, he grimly corrected himself, considering the two bodies before him. Well, the one way to make things easy for any GI was to stay immobile and defensive.
Raphael stepped gingerly over the bodies, careful of the clang of armoured boots upon the corridor wall. Armscomp tracked through the drifting smoke, seeking targets, straining to identify errant sounds above the omnipresent ship white noise. A muffled thump, then, from somewhere above. Then a metallic rattle. Raphael froze, staring upward ... tac-net showed nothing.
"KD, is that you?"
"Sorry, Sarge. Dropped my mag. "
"Well, watch where the hell you ..." A burst thundered, directly above. A clatter behind, and Raphael spun in time to see an armoured body fall past the corridor's end, then a crashing tumble as the body skidded down the curving slope toward neutral gravity below. Raphael ran toward the far end, grasped the edge, glancing first down, then up, rifle ready and braced. The main access corridor was an empty, vertical drop, curving gradually out of sight. Raphael stared, rifle braced upwards one-handed, the other steadying against the corridor rim. Could a GI run up the damn vertical surface like a ... like a bug?
More firing echoed further around the rim. Tac-net identified the source as Corporal Vass, firing blind.
"Vassy, you see something?"
"I ... I dunno, Sarge... " The fear in her voice made Raphael's skin crawl, his heart suddenly galloping in sympathy. "I thought so ... I'm just gonna ... gonna take a look ... " Raphael crouched upon the lip of that vertical drop, licking dry lips. With KD dead, the corridor above him was unguarded. Obviously one GI was in there, planning its next move. Damn it, he had to go up there. Couldn't just sit here and wait for the attack, in an empty corridor with no one to guard his back ...
"Vassy?" he pressed, trying to keep the wobble from his voice. He was a Fleet marine sergeant with ten years of combat service. He bench pressed three-twenty kilos augmented, was tape-trained to eighth-dan wing chun style kung fu, and bore the tattoos and rings to prove it. When he walked into dockside bars on leave, civvies stopped talking and made way. He didn't need this shit. "Vassy, are you there?"
No reply. The fear was plainly audible on tac-net now. You could hear it in the silence.
"Sarge," someone said then, "KD's not dead. Hit him straight in the sweet spot, knocked him cold." Full kit helmets had a spot on the forehead that would stop just about anything ... but give your skull a right rattle. Everyone knew it.
"Goddamn it," someone muttered. "They're playing with us. "
Fuck it, Raphael thought, shouldered his rifle and flung himself onto the inner wall ladder. If someone appeared above or below with a rifle, he knew there was nothing he could do ... but ascending onehanded with rifle ready wasn't going to deter any GI, you simply couldn't out-shoot them, and he preferred the speed two hands afforded. Nearing the corridor above, he slowed, and unslung the rifle. Activated an eyepiece, which separated from the helmet to peer above the corridor rim. The corridor seemed empty.
Raphael hauled himself up, rifle ready, and crept forward. A shuddering vibration seemed to pass through the corridor wall beneath his feet ... a station shudder, he reckoned, not from the ship itself. God only knew what was happening out there-it was beyond his tac-net parameters. He stepped over a doorway, scanning for any sign of a discarded cartridge, some sign of where that last shot had been fired from, and how they were moving around ...
There was a sound from above and he swung the rifle upwards, only to have it snatched cleanly from his hands, and thrown away with a clatter. And then there was an armoured face directly before his own visor, suspended upside down, hanging by its knees from the open hatchway above. Raphael dimly realised that the hatchway hadn't been open a second before. It must have been opened silently, somehow. A stupid, demeaning way to die. Except, the second thought occurred to him, that if this was a GI, it was taking its sweet time about killing him.
The visor portion of the faceplate hissed open, eyepieces unhinging to reveal a pair of incongruously pretty, pale blue eyes, upside down and regarding him with an expression that was difficult to read. Spacers might have found it easier, maybe. Marine or not, Raphael preferred his feet to know which way the floor was, and for facial composition to make familiar sense. The GI had only a pistol in hand, her rifle clipped to her back. The pistol hovered unwaveringly at Raphael's throat, beneath the chinstrap. Above the collar seal, there was no armour at all.
"I'm sorry about the two down there," the GI said, her calm voice muffled beneath the faceplate. "They surprised me. I don't take Fleet marines lightly." Raphael just stared at her. His mike would hear anything he said. He could call for help. She could shoot him, just as easily. Worse, she'd shoot anyone who answered. He remained silent. "I'm Kresnov. The experimental one."
Her eyes seemed to be seeking some kind of comprehension. Still Raphael said nothing.
"It was pretty easy to get this far," she continued. "If you had anything like a decent complement here, you'd have a chance. As things stand, it's just a matter of time. You guys have done some real nasty things to the local dockworkers the last few weeks. I don't mind killing you all if I have to. But given another option, I'll take it."
Surrender? No Euphrates marine had ever surrendered. Numerous times, they could have. Several times Raphael recalled personally, either trapped, ambushed or otherwise overwhelmed, fighting against terrifying odds. He'd survived then, when many others hadn't. And he had the scars to prove that, too.
"What are you even doing here?" the GI continued. There was a faintly incredulou
s note to her voice. "This is Callay. Your capital. The Federation capital. This insignia here on my shoulder? That says Callayan Defence Force. This is what I do-defend Callay. So how the hell did we come to this?" The eyes hardened, with cool determination. Penetrating. "I came to the Federation to get away from the League. I came 'cause I didn't want to fight you guys any more. I started thinking you were the good guys. So by all the stoned, crazy prophets, man, what the fuck are you doing here?"
CHAPTER
lans to hold in reserve only lasted until Fifth Fleet, who'd bypassed Third Fleet barricades from Mekong, began a counterassault through the lower cargo bays that quickly had Blue Squad falling back in strategic withdrawal. That exposed Red Squad flank, halting their advance about the lower, dock side of the bridge defences. At which Vanessa drew herself and Command Squad out of reserve, sprinted along a length of engineering accessway above the breakthrough, and thanks to a coordination of Blue Squad defences and some very snappy Intel overlaid upon tac-net by Lieutenant Singh, simply fell upon them from above.
It was the last thing an experienced Amazon marine platoon, in full pursuit of a rapidly retreating and obviously inferior opponent, had expected. Command Squad troops fell from the cargo-conveyor space's ceiling, crashing down amidst a thunder of exploding grenades and rifle fire. Vanessa dropped from an overhead walkway, past a sus pended shipping container and into the erupting smoke and confusion of multiple grenade blasts. She hit and rolled with a power-assisted crash, shooting past decking pipes at shadowy shapes that fell, staggered, tried to adjust in the confusion that fell upon them from above.
She shot one marine point blank as he tried to get up, ducked as something hit the bulkhead, spun as a marine alongside tried to tackle her but staggered in a spray of blood that spattered her visor. She spun beneath the leg supports that held several massive pipes suspended, and shot another marine at point blank range in a thunderous burst that sent him crashing off the bulkhead. Fast motion erupted to her left and she restrained fire with difficulty, a Cal-T taking cover and firing, tac-net warning her just in time ... a shot cracked off her chest armour and she dove for the cover of a bulkhead ... and found a marine crouched there amongst the smoke.
He fired, she sprung aside and forward, slamming her weapon against his and driving a forearm under his chin to slam the head back ... he countergrasped and slammed her into the wall. Vanessa dropped the rifle entirely to reverse grips on the arm at lightning speed, then something massive exploded and she was spinning, crashing to the decking. The armour must have shielded her from the worst of it because she barely even blacked out, recovering in a rush of enhanced adrenaline, hand grasping for a secured secondary weapon as she came up to a crouch ... a Cal-T was staggering, missing an arm and screaming. Flames exploded in hellish orange from a ruptured pipe, engulfing a suspended container, burning the walls. Shots ripped past, and she rolled beneath the piping, feeling it shudder ... her recent combatant was there, somehow, stunned and slowly recovering. Vanessa shoved her pistol under the chinstrap and blew his brains all over the visor.
Saw her rifle nearby in the midst of fire, and suddenly several Cal-Ts were at the nearest bulkhead, firing ahead in a hail of tracer, then ducking back as grenades exploded. Tac-net didn't make any sense now, Vanessa rolled into the dissipating smoke, recovered her rifle, rolled back under the pipes and began running along beneath in a low crouch that only someone of her stature could have managed. Ahead to the left were two marines covering behind abandoned cargo, facing the wrong way. She hit one with her second-last grenade, sending him flying and the other apparently scattering in several directions at once-the first was hit by a storm of fire from up ahead before she could fire again, armour shredding, broken pieces of ceramic and flesh spattering the walls at all angles.
And then the formerly retreating Blue Squad were hurdling the bodies and racing past her, withholding fire as they plunged through Command Squad and onward, yelling furious, howling obscenities that would have made an ancient Viking warrior's blood run cold. Vanessa rolled out from under the pipes, and was abruptly confronted by Lieutenant Arvid Singh, visor smoke-stained and armour battlescarred, asking if she were okay. Then exclaiming something at her in Hindi that she missed entirely before running off in pursuit of his blood-lusting mob. She took a moment to blink at that surreal image. Her little Arvid, from old, long-disbanded SWAT Four. The practical jokester, the irresponsible, fun loving, cheerful one, who had somehow blossomed when the CDF was formed, and had become-to her and Sandy's mutual agreement and astonishment-one of the CDF's best squad commanders. The universe was crazy.
And wondered again that she could ponder such things, with bodies all about and flames gushing from a ruptured fuel line, like a small sun attempting birth within the station's bowels. Fading now as the emergency cutoffs engaged, and she strode forward to recollect her troops and her breath. The one missing the arm was Enrique, now mercifully unconscious and pumped full of suit drugs and IV to keep her blood pressure up, attended to by several others. Dravid and Habie were also wounded, though less seriously. Wong was dead, as was Poloski. As, she discovered, was her old friend Zago, the only loss from her personal Command Section of five plus herself. She wanted to take time to look at the body, but couldn't, there were commands to issue, people to organise, a broader tactical scenario to plug herself back into. Control to be reassumed. Private Deitrich seemed to think differently, so Vanessa grabbed her by both shoulders, and stared the young, tear-streaked private in the eyes.
"Hey!" Vanessa got her attention. "Fight now. Cry later." And gave the young woman a smack on the helmet as she departed, other Cal-Ts fanning ahead to scout the stairwells back up to dock-level. Tac-net, she realised, was informing her that Amazon had broken dock, taking a large number of docking grapples with it. She narrowed her com band to tactical com, relayed back to Callay via Jennifer and Mekong. "Amazon's out," she said as she walked, ducking beneath the dwindling blaze from the ruptured fuel pipe, stepping past bullet-riddled bodies, bulkheads and shipping containers. "Do you have the fix?"
The reply took a few seconds to come back. Then, "Copy, Tac-two, we have the fix. "
"Take that stupid fucker out of my sky."
"Engineering!" Captain Rusdihardjo was yelling at her com now, in blind fury. "I want a reply! How the hell have we lost power!"
At the bridge engineering post, an ensign was poring helplessly over his screens, double- and triple-checking every indicator. "There's no reply, Captain!" he shouted back, desperately. "I'm not getting anything! I have to think the spinal feed's been cut!"
Sergeant Raphael was not responding. None of the remaining marine contingent were. Spacers tucked into duty stations were unwilling to venture into the corridors. Familiar ship odours were now flavoured by something new. Fear.
"Mid-ships," she commanded into her com, "I want a detail to go and check on that spinal feed! I want engines back on line, and I want them now!" She was utterly unwilling to countenance the possibility that her grand warship, veteran of so many battles against the League, had been crippled at dock by a boarding party of two ... all her intel had insisted that the CDF was nothing like this capable. The Fifth had subdued the station population, Callayan Parliament had finally begun to cool in their frenzied denunciations, Secretary General Benale had been slowly growing an ear-to-ear smile at all his briefings ... things had been slipping into place. Soon, word was to have come from Earth, and additional ambassadors, to assess the latest situation. Third Fleet, and Captain Reichardt, had seemed increasingly resigned to circumstances. Where had it all gone wrong?
"Mid-ships!" she yelled into com.
"Captain," a crackling voice came back, "we're not reading real clearly, I think the corn's been damaged. Could you repeat the last instruction?"
Rusdihardjo nearly exploded with rage. In all her military career, she'd never had her crew pull that old trick. It was Fleet-versus-Fleet. They'd assured the lower ranks that it would never come to fight
ing. The lower ranks had followed on that trusting assurance. But they'd been on board. They'd believed in the cause. Marines had been picking fights all over station, and sometimes even on Callay, with those who disagreed. Now was no time to be changing minds, with so much at stake.
She stared at the tactical display, separate to station-side tac-net. Amazon was now pulling away from the station, joined by the cruiser Berlin, with Tehran and San Diego making fast preparations to follow. Inbound at fractional-V, Pearl River and Kutch were well away from Callay's gravitational strictures, free to manoeuvre and reposition rapidly with jump-fields giving capabilities far beyond simple propulsion. Sitting at station, content in their numerical superiority, no one had considered the possibility that the two Third Fleet warships would turn around to surf the gravity slope back toward station orbit. Outerlying picket vessels would not realise Pearl River and Kutch had moved for another half hour at soonest, as the light wave reached them. And the light wave from both vessels was itself forty minutes late. Tactical was rapidly calculating a likely approach vector along the probability cone, attempting a guesstimate of the ships' true location. It was possible that they'd already fired. At fractional-light velocities, any warship hit by so much as a deep-space pebble was in serious trouble.
Even as she considered the situation, she could hear Lieutenant Commander Tupo issuing an ultimatum to Mekong, ordering unconditional surrender. Mekong gave no reply. A separate channel opened on com, parallel to the highest command channel, and she opened it. The channel unfolded from bridge com, transmitting to every Fifth Fleet ship.
"Captain Rusdihardjo," said a vaguely familiar female voice in her ear. "This is Commander Kresnov of the Callayan Defence Force. CDF forces have control of the station bridge. I have personally disabled your ship's engines. Your vessels have lost the strategic high ground. Any further hostile action on their part will ensure their destruction. On behalf of the people of Callay and the free Federation, I demand that you cease your unprovoked hostility toward my world and my people. "
Killswitch: A Cassandra Kresnov Novel (v1.1) Page 41
