Duty, Honor, Planet: The Complete Trilogy

by Rick Partlow

  “Damn it,” Jason hissed as his boots came up against the huge flatscreen viewer at the far side of the bridge. “What is going on here?”

  Crossman braked himself, a twisted grin on his face revealing both his confusion and his perverse pleasure in it. Back at the door, Vinnie and Jock slowly and cautiously made their way inside, Jock’s eyes flickering back and forth from the bridge to the corridor behind them.

  “Vinnie,” Jason ordered, “check the ship’s computer---see if they’ve sabotaged the reactor or something.”

  Not that doing that would make a lick of sense, he reflected. If the Defender went, the rest of the ships wouldn’t be able to fend off any kind of attack, either from the ground-based defenses or from the Republic ships already headed in from the asteroid belt. That was, after all, the reason they were attacking it.

  So where was everyone?

  Feeling the hairs standing up on the back of his neck, Jason carefully scanned every square centimeter of the walls with his helmet’s sensors. There was only one other way in or out of the bridge that he could see, and that was the rounded airlock to an emergency escape pod, but the lock yawned open and there was nothing inside. He could smell the rat, but the trick was seeing it.

  “I can’t figure out this system,” Vinnie reported from one of the intact consoles. “Damned Cyrillic alphabet.”

  “Sir,” Jock warned, still framed in the doorway, “something is not right here.”

  “Yeah,” Jason breathed. “Vinnie, get that AI module in place and we’ll get out of here.”

  “Aye, sir,” Mahoney muttered, one hand fishing on his belt for the computer module that the techs on Pallas had fashioned for them.

  They’d dug deep into technical archives to emulate the old Russian computer operating systems and come up with an AI module that could penetrate them and permanently disable the Defender’s weapons control systems. Once the module launched the virus, the ship would be helpless when the Patton and the Bradley got here. Of course, it would behoove them not to be there when the cruisers arrived, since the plan was for this ship to be blown to vapors.

  Vinnie had the module out and was checking the ports when Jason noticed the odd change in the bridge lights. The flashing red of the emergency strobe built into the hull above them, protected by a hard, clear plastic casing that Vinnie’s grenades hadn’t been able to penetrate, had changed its pulse rate, and was blinking frenetically. White strobes at the corners of the bridge joined its flashing beat, growing brighter with every eyeblink, becoming almost painful in their intensity, yet somehow Jason couldn’t seem to look away.

  It was a gradual thing, so that when the moment came that Jason realized he couldn’t move, his mind was too numb to be surprised by it. It was like being caught in a cobweb---you knew that the slightest movement could set you free. But he couldn’t move, not a centimeter, and somehow he knew that Vinnie, Jock and Tom had to be the same way, even though he couldn’t see them, couldn’t see anything but the light.

  It seemed that only a moment had passed, but the next thing Jason knew, he was floating limply on his back, his helmet off, staring into the face of a legend.

  “So,” Antonov rumbled in unaccented English, “this is the best they could do.”

  Sorry to disappoint you, Jason wanted to say, but he wasn’t sure if he could yet control his voluntary muscles well enough to speak. Smarting off didn’t seem that great an idea anyway, with half-a-dozen automatic weapons visibly pointed his way.

  He managed to move his head a few centimeters to one side and saw that Vinnie, Jock and Tom were likewise immobilized and disarmed, in the grasp of a mixed force of Protectorate officers and biomechs. Their zero-g maneuver packs had been removed, leaving them helpless even to escape, much less to fight. The Protectorates must, he realized abruptly, have been hiding in some concealed compartment, waiting for the right moment to spring the trap.

  McKay looked back to Antonov, thinking that the man looked just as big in person as he did in the history videos. His barrel chest threatened to burst the seams of the dark-toned, soft-armored vacuum suit that seemed to be the standard uniform for Protectorate officers on the ship, and his bull neck barely fit through the helmet yoke---unlike the rest of the Protectorate officers, he wasn’t wearing his helmet.

  “In case you are curious as to what has happened to you,” the General told them, obviously pleased with himself, “the lights you saw are part of the ship’s internal security system---a result of an interesting experimental project underway shortly before my little altercation with the Chinese. They flash on a frequency designed to cause seizures and paralysis, and I just knew they would come in handy someday.

  “You Americans are all alike,” Antonov went on, shaking his head. “So overconfident, so arrogant to think we would not have precautions against such contingencies.”

  “Ain’t...fuckin...’merican,” Jock managed to mutter through clenched teeth.

  “Do not fool yourself, my friend,” Antonov laughed. “You may have the illusion of freedom, but you are all pawns of the Americans---or you were,” he smiled with self-satisfaction, “till my return. Your sons and daughters will thank me someday.” Antonov turned to Lieutenant Dubronov. “Where are the others?”

  “One group is in the auxiliary weapons control center,” the younger man reported, checking the video readouts from the ship’s security cameras from a clipboard-sized computer readout. He spoke in Russian, but Jason had undergone a hypno-imprint of the language back at Aphrodite when it had become apparent who their enemy truly was. “We have troops in place to keep them pinned there, per your orders. The other...” He trailed off, face drawing into a deep frown as he worked the controls on the readout.

  “Well,” Antonov demanded, “where are they?”

  Dubronov’s went pale beneath his faceplate.

  “Sir, they do not appear on any of the security scanners.” He looked up from the readout. “It does not seem that they are anywhere on the ship.”

  “Then I would strongly suggest you check again, Lieutenant,” Antonov intoned darkly, face clouding over. Jason could see his knuckles whitening on the heavy machine pistol in his right hand and wondered for a moment if he might shoot the man. The humans among their captors let their eyes flicker toward the General, wary at the possibility that the man might explode.

  Antonov was unbalanced, McKay realized, and even more dangerous than he had thought. Whether that was the result of the treatments he’d received to preserve his life or whether he had always been imbalanced, Jason wasn’t sure.

  “General, sir,” the Lieutenant insisted, “I have checked the cameras, the heat sensors, the sonic monitors, everything. They are not on the ship.”

  Jason flexed his fingers, feeling the strange numbness fading from his body. To his right, he noticed Jock surreptitiously flexing his arms, trying to force feeling back into them. Maybe they could make a move while Antonov and the others were still distracted.

  “No matter,” the General decided, still scowling. “They may have seen through our trap and left the ship, but it will do them no good.” He turned and speared McKay with a venomous stare. “I warned you,” he growled, switching back to English. “I warned you not to attempt something so foolish, that the consequences would be the deaths of thousands. Yet you have ignored my warnings, just as your people ignored my warnings so many years ago. And now you will suffer the consequences. Dubronov,” he said, without looking at the man.

  “Yes, sir?”

  “Launch a spread of nuclear missiles into the area they call ‘Capital City.’ I want it and the orbital weapons control center levelled.”

  “Yes, sir,” the officer agreed eagerly.

  Jason’s pulse pounded in his ears and he stole a glance at Vinnie. The Sergeant nodded. It was time.

  “Lieutenant Matviyenko,” Antonov addressed another of the human troops, “take whatever of the clone troops we have left and kill the enemy soldiers in the auxiliary control r
oom.”

  “What of the prisoners, sir?” the man asked, his eyes flickering uneasily behind his helmet’s clear faceplate toward Jason and the others.

  “I’ll take care of them myself,” Antonov said with a cold matter-of-factness, motioning meaningfully with his machine pistol.

  Moving ever so slowly, Jason moved his right boot toward the deck, attaching the electromagnetic plate on that heel as quietly and carefully as he could---he would need leverage for this. The moment Lieutenant Matviyenko turned and motioned his force of humans and biomechs toward the jagged metal hole that was the bridge entrance, Jason moved. Snaking out his left hand, he grabbed Vinnie by the arm and swung him bodily into Antonov, the Sergeant’s feet slamming into the General’s chest and sending them both crashing into the viewscreen on the far wall.

  Antonov jerked the trigger of his machine pistol as he was struck, but the burst went wild, ricocheting off the hull with a muted, musical spanging. Jason felt one of the errant slugs impact against the armor plate at his back, but ignored it, pushing off the floor as he deactivated the electromagnet in his boot and aimed for the back of Lieutenant Dubronov. The Russian officer began to turn at the sound of Antonov’s pistol going off, but Jason caught him by the shoulder and yanked him away from the weapons control console.

  Dubronov tried to bring around his slung carbine, but Jason grabbed the muzzle of the weapon and jerked it upwards, slamming his elbow into the side of the Russian’s helmet. The Lieutenant let loose of the carbine, floating away from McKay, and Jason spun around, bringing the rifle up to his shoulder.

  The room froze before Jason like a still photo: Antonov and Vinnie tangled together, backlit by the glow from the main viewscreen, Jock and Tim hanging on the backs of a pair of biomechs, and Lieutenant Matviyenko bringing around his rifle, searching in confusion for a target. Jason centered his carbine’s sights on Matviyenko’s head and squeezed the trigger. The carbine bucked against his shoulder, sending him floating back up against the bulkhead, but the Russian Lieutenant’s faceplate disintegrated in a spray of blood and he flew backwards into the corridor, limp as a dishrag.

  Even as Jason tried to regain his stability and choose a new target, a dull stutter echoed across the bridge and a cone of fire erupted from the muzzle of one of the biomech’s weapons. The clone trooper swung the weapon indiscriminately, spraying the bridge with slugs, and Jason saw Vinnie jerk as one of the bullets struck him in the back. Jason tried to target the biomech, but before he could move the thing swung its weapon his way and McKay felt a red-hot lance of pain spear through his right leg.

  The impact of the slug sent Jason tumbling forward, spinning slowly head over heels, the carbine floating out of his hands as his vision filled with stars. By the time he spun back around toward the rest of the room his eyes had cleared, but what he saw made him wish they hadn’t. Vinnie floated motionless, red globules of blood bubbling out of the hole in his back. Antonov was heading for the missile launch controls while Jock and Tim were doing all they could to hold onto the biomechs they were wrestling. And the rest of the clone troopers in the squad seemed itching to open fire at something.

  Then everything exploded.

  Looking back, Jason would realize that the blast had come from inside the escape pod, but at the time it seemed to him that the whole ship was going up as the concussion threw him back against the bulkhead. A blinding pain flared again in his leg, and he felt pinprick penetrations on his face and neck as shrapnel from the explosion peppered the bridge. Then suddenly his ears popped. Dimly, through a haze of pain and an eyeful of bright afterimages, he realized that there was a hard vacuum on the other side of the hole in the hull, and it wanted in.

  Jason flailed wildly, trying to plant a magnetized boot on the deck, but the outgoing air was sucking him toward the opening in the hull with inexorable force. He could see the blackness of space through the gap. Metal and plastic fragments swirled lazily through the air in spiral patterns, preceding him through the gap, joined abruptly by a screaming Lieutenant Dubronov. The man spun through the hole where the escape pod used to be, arms and legs flailing, and then he was gone, disappearing into the eternal night.

  Jason felt the breath leaving his lungs as he came closer and closer to the dark gap. He had time to think that he was glad he’d heard Shannon say she loved him...before a camo-clad arm reached out and grabbed him around the chest. Wondering if the lack of air was causing him to hallucinate, Jason found himself staring through a helmet faceplate at Ariel Shamir.

  McKay blinked at the unexpected sight, and he thought he would black out, but then he felt something plastic slide over his head and tasted the sweet nectar of fresh oxygen. He realized that someone had fitted him with an emergency air bubble, a standard item in a Marine EVA kit which could be sealed onto the neck yoke of his combat armor.

  As reason returned to his oxygen-starved brain and fresh pain revived itself in his wounded leg, he let Shamir help him back onto the bridge. He affixed his boot magnet to the deck and observed the rest of Shamir’s people aiding Vinnie, Jock and Tom into their emergency bubbles. Vinnie was still not moving. One of the biomechs had managed to get a grip on a piece of bridge railing and attempted to aim its weapon at the incoming Marines, but Clarke, Shamir’s autogunner, cut the thing in two with a quick burst.

  Of the other biomechs there was no sign, nor, he noted, was Antonov anywhere to be seen. Was the man dead? Or had he slipped away somewhere into the depths of the ship? Well, once they did their job, it wouldn’t matter. He waved an arm to try to get Shamir’s attention, but saw that the man was already mounting the second of the pair of AI computer modules they’d been given onto the weapons control console.

  While Shamir did his job, one of the other Marines was unfolding what appeared to be an opaque tarpaulin from his backpack kit. He and two others spread the patch over the hole in the hull and then sealed it with a palm-sized heating unit. Jason could hear the outrush of air slow and then cease as the plastic of the tarp melted itself to the interior of the bulkhead.

  Tentatively, Jason pulled the plastic air bubble off of his head and took a deep breath. The air was thinner but still breathable. Moving slowly and painfully, Jason made his way to where a Marine medic was looking at Vinnie, with Jock and Tom hanging over his shoulder.

  “Is he alive?” Jason asked, surprised at how raw and hoarse his throat was from the exposure to the vacuum.

  “Yes, sir,” she said, looking up from her scanner readout. “But he has three broken ribs and a collapsed lung. We gotta get him out of here and into a hospital.”

  “Working on it, Corporal,” he assured her as he moved toward Ari Shamir.

  “Sir,” the Corporal called to him. “What about your leg?”

  “Later.” Jason didn’t look back at her.

  “The program is in, sir,” Shamir reported as he approached, his voice tinny through his helmet’s external speaker. “The ship’s weapons system is officially dead.”

  “Good job, Ari,” Jason sighed, feeling a weight coming off his shoulders. “Great timing, but Jesus Christ, how about a little warning next time?”

  “It was the only thing I could think of,” Shamir admitted. “I knew they were trying to drive us to the bridge, and I knew there had to be a trap.”

  “Yeah, me too,” Jason said. “But we had to come.” He looked the Lieutenant in the eye. “And now we have to go. Radio Gunny Lambert and tell him to meet us at the courier. The fleet should be blowing this thing to vapors in less than an hour and I don’t want to be here.”

  “Aye, sir,” the Lieutenant nodded, activating his helmet comlink as Jason turned back to the rest of the troops.

  “Get your shit together, people,” he ordered. “We’re moving out and we’re moving now.”

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  “What do you think of yourself? What do you think of the world?...These are the questions with which all must deal as it seems good to them. They are riddles of the Sphinx, and
in some way or other we must deal with them...In all important transactions of life we have to take a leap in the dark...If we decide to leave the riddles unanswered, that is a choice; if we waver in our answer, that, too is a choice: but whatever choice we make, we make it at our peril. If a man chooses to turn his back altogether on God and the future, no one can prevent him; no one can show beyond a reasonable doubt that he is mistaken. If a man thinks otherwise and acts as he thinks, I do not see that anyone can prove that he is mistaken. Each must act as he thinks best; and if he is wrong, so much the worse for him. We stand on a mountain pass in the midst of whirling snow and blinding mist, through which we get glimpses now and then of paths, which may be deceptive. If we stand still, we shall be frozen to death. If we take the wrong road, we shall be dashed to pieces. We do not certainly know whether there is any right one. What must we do? ‘Be strong and of good courage.’ Act for the best, and take what comes...If death ends all, we cannot meet death better.”---Fitz-James Stephens.

  “Helm, what’s our position?” Captain Patel asked for the fifth time in the last ten minutes.

  The helmsman sighed quietly and answered, “Ten thousand klicks and closing, sir. Twenty minutes at present deceleration.”

  “And the Bradley?”

  “Still in formation, sir.”

  “Support fighters ready to launch, sir,” the executive officer reported, anticipating the Captain’s next question.

  “What about McKay?” Patel wanted to know. “Has the courier left the Protectorate ship?”

  “Nothing yet, sir,” the tech at the sensor board assured him. “And no traffic between the enemy ships.”

  “Sir,” the weapons officer asked tentatively, “what do we do if we don’t hear from them?”

  “We’ll have to attack anyway, Perez,” Patel told him, letting out a deep breath, his expression sad. “They knew what they were getting into.”