Starship Liberator

by B. V. Larson

  But at this distance, Carson’s uneven spiral course made hitting her with beams a matter of sheer luck. Decoys and sandcasters filled space between the two combatants with screening debris, detritus that attenuated and revealed the shots of coherent light while inhibiting the attacking railgun slugs not at all.

  Over the next twelve minutes, the frigate’s bombardment systematically demolished the heavy weapons emplacements on the asteroid, allowing her to approach to close range and use precision firepower to eliminate further resistance.

  “Lifters, move in for Phase Two,” Captain Gray ordered.

  “Already on our way,” Engels replied. As soon as the heavy weapons had been silenced, she’d kicked in her impellers to get a jump on Phase Two, and Zaxby had followed.

  Switching channels, she asked, “You doing all right, Derek?”

  “Five by five, Lieutenant Engels,” came the terse reply.

  Okay fine, she thought. Straker was still in high-stress military mode, like he’d been for the past weeks while getting ready for this op, with no chance of downtime. Opening the channel to include the battlesuiters and straight-leg infantry inside her boat, she made an announcement.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, this is your pilot speaking. Phase One went perfectly. Phase Two is underway. We’ll begin the assault on schedule, in approximately one hour and twenty minutes.”

  * * *

  Straker ran a systems check on his Sledgehammer for the tenth time. The railgun in his right arm still had a tendency to jam its reload sequence, and the missiles on his shoulders never locked on as well as Murdock claimed they should. Also, he didn’t trust his left hip joint not to seize up when too hot or too cold. Loco’s new rig had even less going for it.

  What was worse, neither he nor Loco had been able to achieve a working brainlink. The manual backups, though sophisticated, simply didn’t compare. The neural battlenets were too finicky, though, needing special equipment to recalibrate and synch.

  He couldn’t be sure that the Hok biotech hadn’t interfered with the brainlink either. His skin still hadn’t gone back to completely normal. Maybe it never would. His extra strength hadn’t faded, either.

  All in all, he was wearing a piece of crap cobbled together by people who desperately wanted it to work, fueled more by hope than by sound engineering. That couldn’t be helped, though; the Unmutual rebellion made do with what it had. His suit and Loco’s represented a quantum leap forward, so he had to give it his best. Otherwise, he’d end up as nothing special.

  After all, without a mechsuit he was just another officer.

  This hunk of junk didn’t even have the capability to tap into the lifter’s systems and see what was going on. He was no better off than the grunts who surrounded him. Worse, really; they joked and played cards, read or watched vids with their squadmates. Now that he’d mounted his war machine, he was stuck inside, cut off except for the comlink.

  And Straker didn’t have squadmates. He had subordinates and superiors. The general had confirmed his rank of Captain and put him in command of Alpha Company for this mission, once he’d agreed to pilot the mechsuit. Lieutenant Paloco led Bravo Company on Lifter Two.

  He’d never been in charge of this many people before. A mechsuit squad boasted plenty of firepower, but had a completely different dynamic compared to a hundred-man company. Maybe he shouldn’t have insisted on command, but it had made sense at the time. His Sledgehammer was the anchor of the unit, so everyone would key off him.

  But these rebels weren’t highly disciplined troops. They were motivated, but they were also quick to deviate from orders and express their opinions when they didn’t like something—and they didn’t like a newly recruited officer being put in charge.

  Major Ramirez was in overall command of the raid, and that took the edge off their objections. Exercising with his new company had helped some more. Seeing what the Sledgehammers could do had also turned them into cautious believers.

  They’d become believers in the mechsuits, anyway… Straker wasn’t sure they believed in him. A few of the troops, especially the handful of battlesuiters, seemed to be coming around faster.

  “Ten minutes,” Ramirez spoke into everyone’s ear. “Drop those cocks and grab your socks, boys and girls.”

  Straker waited while the troops cleaned up their games and food, beginning final weapons and equipment checks. His half-dozen battlesuiters sealed up their powered armor like pint-sized mechsuiters, readying their blasters. They would cover him against the unexpected, such as enemy infantry getting in close. This was supposed to be a walkover, but he was taking no chances.

  “One minute,” Ramirez said, still broadcasting to the assault troops. “Carson has punched holes through the asteroid’s hull as planned. Lifters will fly through the openings and set down inside the habitat. We don’t expect heavy ground resistance, but you will treat the landing zone as hot until you secure it. Destroy any threat, but minimize collateral damage. Remember, people, we’re capturing this base for ourselves, and we want those occupants to join us. No plundering!”

  They’d heard it all before, but it never hurt to tell them again. Straker spoke on his company channel. “This is Straker. Insert by the numbers, people. First platoon with me to capture Sector One Base Control Center. Second and third platoon, Administration and Power. Fourth platoon, secure the lifter and deploy the LADA.”

  Lifter Two would have similar objectives. Loco would lead Bravo Company’s first platoon to capture the auxiliary base control center at the other end. His other platoons would capture Manufacturing and Engineering. Murdock himself was employed on the raid to oversee the technical side of things. With all these key objectives in friendly hands, the civilians should surrender.

  The lifter shuddered as G-forces shoved the troops against their restraining straps. Straker kept his suit’s elbows and feet clamped into their hardpoints, holding sixty tons of weapons systems in place. Gravplating whined with the strain, and then they set down and the ramps and hatches flew open.

  “Go, go, go!” Straker heard noncoms yelling at their troops. Each platoon exited one side of the boxy lifter. He led First Platoon out the large rear door, crouch-walking like a man exiting a cave, his movement rocking the craft until he stepped onto the soil. He sank to his mechsuit’s ankles.

  Outside, he found himself in an open field of melon plants. A hundred meters to the direction they’d chosen as “south”—opposite the Base Control Center—he could see the other lifter set down beside the hole the Carson had blasted through the asteroid’s skin, now the ground on which he walked. The atmosphere would be spilling out, but it would take hours to lose enough to become a problem. By that time, it would be patched.

  Hundreds of meters above him arched the inside of the hollow asteroid, much closer than the vault of Academy he remembered, though similar in design, as most of these habitats were. Stretched from end to end in its center, a filament of brightness provided sunlight piped in through fiber optics. The rough cylinder maintained only about a fifth of a G, supplied by rotation around its long axis.

  “First platoon deploy, inverted V, heading zero-zero-zero,” Straker said, turning toward the northern end of the cylinder. He began a slow march in that direction, limited by the speed of his straight-leg infantry rather than his suit. His objective, the Base Control Center, lay only nine hundred meters away. That was short range for his weapons and optics.

  Mechsuiters normally did their best work at knife-fighting distance, so close and so agile that armored vehicles couldn’t cope. Today he was driving a highly mobile walking tank, a flexible weapons platform rather than a true mechsuit. He had to think like a tanker rather than a ’suiter, adjusting his focus farther out and trusting to his infantry screen to handle the close-in threats.

  The rounded domes of the BCC seemed to be pasted to the north end of the cylinder, right on the axis, its structures oddly angled to deal with the weak sideways pseudo-gravity there. No doubt they added gravpl
ating to simplify the working arrangement. Straker was scanning the complex for weapons when his HUD fuzzed for a moment, and he jerked as sensors showed an attack across the front of his body.

  Laser! By the weakness of the sting, it was fortunately nothing serious. Rebel intelligence had expected no heavy weapons inside the base, which relied on its space defenses. There’s been some question as to whether it would have any internal ground forces at all.

  In response, Straker angled to his right, running ponderously to throw off the enemy’s targeting and simultaneously pinpointing the source of the attack. He identified a heavy mining laser crawler, normally used to cut through asteroidal rock. With hardly a thought, he extended his left arm and sent a particle beam bolt into the vehicle.

  It exploded as the near-lightspeed particles superheated its unarmored chassis and ruptured its fuel cells. Its operator must have died instantly, and Straker felt a flash of regret such as he’d never dealt with when he was killing Hok. After all, his mission was to liberate these Hundred Worlds citizens before the Mutuality scooped them up, rather than exterminate them.

  Scanning, he found no other heavy weapons. His platoon took small arms fire from buildings they passed, wounding half a dozen.

  He’d hoped the people here would lay down their arms, but he couldn’t blame them for resisting. Murdock would be broadcasting on all their networks trying to get them to surrender.

  The broadcast apparently didn’t work fast enough. Straker had to fire particle beams into several buildings to eliminate nests of resistors and keep more of his own people from getting killed. “Dammit,” he growled. “Why can’t they just give up?”

  “We wouldn’t give up if we were defending our homes, would we?” replied Loco.

  Abruptly, the chatter on his comlink turned frantic. “Action right, heavy gatling!” he heard, and then: “Mechsuit!”

  What the hell was a mechsuit doing here? It must have come from the assembly facility, perhaps with a test pilot. Would the man inside be young and inexperienced, or an old, retired ’suiter?

  Electricity sang in Straker’s veins. Now came the acid test of this walking weapons platform.

  “Pull back. I’ll handle it,” he said, turning toward the action on his right. Within seconds he spotted his nemesis. A Foehammer ran obliquely, guns firing in short, deadly bursts, cutting down his people.

  “On my way, boss,” he heard Loco call. “Be there in less than two minutes.”

  “We don’t have two minutes,” Straker replied, snapshotting a particle beam pulse at the dodging figure. Tactically it might be a bad move to telegraph his presence, but he had to stop his enemy from chopping up his infantry with impunity.

  The beam struck the ground at the enemy’s feet, spraying a blast of old-fashioned concrete from the pavement. Immediately, the mechsuiter dodged and shifted his attention and his force-cannon to Straker’s Sledgehammer.

  The pilot was good, whoever he was. No beginner. Must be a trooper put out to pasture, or on rotation from the front. Straker had heard of temporary duty positions like this, but they were few and far between. Bad luck to run into one of them now.

  Straker dropped, squatting on his heels to lower his profile as he’d practiced rather than trying to run laterally as a real mechsuit would do. The force-cannon bolt he anticipated sizzled the atmo above his head even as he fired his railgun, leading his opponent slightly.

  His right arm bucked with recoil and the penetrator glowed in a streak as it shoved air molecules out of the way, flash-heating the atmosphere like a meteor falling toward a planet. The projectile passed under the Foehammer’s arm and impacted the ground all the way across the inside of the cylinder. Without a neural link, he simply didn’t have the fine, instinctive accuracy he’d always enjoyed.

  In response the enemy fired gatling bursts while his force-cannon recharged. Straker felt the big bullets strike him, doing little damage to his armor. One hit a missile in its launcher, though, and that tube went red.

  Straker cursed the fragile design and concentrated on getting a missile lock, standing up and sidestepping to degrade his opponent’s targeting. The gatling couldn’t put him out of action, but if he didn’t use his missiles now, he might lose them one by one.

  The reticle blinked ready-lock, and Straker triggered a full salvo. The missiles ripple-fired. Some exploded in midair, struck by incoming gatling rounds. The others missed as the Foehammer dove and rolled, taking cover behind a cargo truck.

  The missile volley’s reprieve allowed Straker to jettison the ungainly box launchers from his shoulders, and he felt his stability improve. Aiming carefully, he fired his recharged particle beam at his enemy’s exposed foot.

  The metal resisted for a fraction of a second, then slagged, running like wax. Inside the armor, he knew the enemy circuitry was fizzling and popping.

  Straker was sure that would slow his enemy down… until a force-cannon bolt came back at him, striking dead in the center of his chest, knocking him backward onto his ass.

  Chapter 23

  Disputed asteroid habitat WG604.

  Damn, but this guy’s good, Straker thought as he checked systems. Almost as good as Straker himself in a Foehammer.

  But not good enough, or he would have aimed for Straker’s arm or head. The Sledgehammer’s center torso protected its pilot and thus sported its heaviest armor, high-tech interlaced composites and superconductors charged with reinforcing energy fields, made to shrug off at least one direct hit from even the heaviest ground weapons. It had held, with only twenty percent degradation.

  Straker rolled over and stood to face his enemy, unconcerned about another force-cannon bolt. He knew exactly how long the weapon took to recharge. He lifted both of his own heavy weapons and sighted on the covered position of his foe, who had rolled to crouch behind a pumphouse.

  On a whim, Straker tried out his comlink, setting it to standard mechsuiter frequencies. “Mechsuit pilot, surrender and you will be treated in accordance with the laws of war. You are alone and have no chance against our forces.”

  “Since when did the Hok respect the laws of war?” came the unexpected answer. The voice sounded rough, old.

  “We’re not Hok. You ever see a Hok in a mechsuit?”

  “I got him, Derek,” Loco said.

  Straker could see Loco’s Sledgehammer beyond the enemy, aiming. Between the two of them, and with his mobility cut, the enemy had nowhere to hide.

  “Hold up, Loco,” Straker said. “You, in the Foehammer. What’s your name?”

  “I’m Colonel Mitchell Jackson,” the pilot said. He sounded surprised and spoke with a provincial accent. “Well, I was a colonel... before they put me out to pasture. Now, I’m just Mitch.”

  “Assault Captain Derek Straker here. Sir, I read about you in the ’suiter journals.”

  “Straker? I heard you died at Corinth.”

  “Captured by the enemy. I escaped and now I’m with an independent movement, fighting against… against the Hok.” It would take too long to explain that the Hok were only troops controlled by the Mutuality. “Colonel, it won’t be long before this system and this habitat is captured by the enemy. Surrender now, and you can join us in the fight. You can always go back to the Hundred Worlds later if you want, but right now, we have to get this rock into sidespace.”

  “Get this rock into sidespace? That’s impossible.”

  “We have a way. Now please, Colonel, don’t make us kill you.”

  The Foehammer stood slowly on one good leg, its force-cannon targeted on Straker’s mechsuit’s head. A hit there wouldn’t kill him, but it would wipe out most of his sensors, and with them his combat effectiveness.

  “I don’t believe you,” the colonel said. “This is some new Hok trick. You’re not a real human. That’s not even a real mechsuit, just some cheap imitation.”

  “Derek, I got him!” Loco said. “One shot and he’s toast.”

  “Not before I take down your buddy, son,” said
Jackson. “I’ve been testing these suits for a long time. I know where to hit one for a single-shot kill, even a custom job like yours.”

  “Bullshit,” said Loco. “You would’ve done it already.”

  “I tried, but it ain’t easy on the move. Now, though, I got it locked.”

  “Boss—”

  “Stand down, Loco,” Straker said. “Colonel, would a Hok even be talking to you?”

  “If he wanted to capture me and my suit, he might.”

  “Would a Hok have called off his partner from shooting you in the back?”

  “Same deal.”

  Straker thought furiously, looking for a way of getting through to this guy. “Colonel, what can I tell you to prove what I say is true?”

  “Nothing, probably. Besides, I’m too old to change my ways. You got me dead to rights, and you might be telling the truth, but I can’t risk getting captured. Think I’ll just punch out for good. I can’t win this fight, and ain’t no point in more people dying.” He lowered his force-cannon and the mechsuit became immobile.

  “Power surge, Derek,” Loco said. “He’s set his systems to overload!”

  “Dammit! Everyone back!” Straker aimed his railgun carefully and fired at Jackson’s leg, blowing it off and knocking the mechsuit to the ground.

  “Still building charge,” said Loco.

  “I can see that.” Straker walked his Sledgehammer forward and aimed at an arm with his particle beam. The discharge not only melted the limb, but sent energy arcing all along the suit. Once the surge cleared, he could see the overload had been disrupted.

  He broke briefly into an awkward run, and then slowed to stand above his fallen opponent. Frustrated, he held up his arms. The powerful weapons there had replaced the mechanized gauntlets he now needed to rip open the Foehammer, one more thing the Sledgehammer gave up for its specialized firepower.