by Jamie Sawyer
The Interceptor swept around, better positioning herself to take me out.
The kit was made for use in an emergency. As soon as I placed it on my face the seals attached. A pair of plastic goggles fixed over my streaming eyes; a small oxygen bottle dangling at my neck. Alongside the respirator kit was a button labelled EMERGENCY. A shipboard shotgun. I palmed the button with one hand, pulled out the shotgun with the other. I floated off the deck, but anchored myself with both actions.
The elevator door remained resolutely closed.
I’ve been set up, I told myself. Loeb has to be behind this.
The Interceptor was directly over the Run, so low that I could almost touch her. She grazed a metal spar from the ruins of the corridor against her armoured undercarriage, and I felt a brief wave of heat generated by the VTOL engine.
Last stand. This has to be how it ends.
It was no small irony that the last time I had seen a ship like this, she had turned out to be my salvation. This time the opposite was true: she was death incarnate.
One man with a shotgun against an armoured gunship.
Even Martinez wouldn’t like those odds.
The ship paused. Waited.
The black angular lines of the vessel looked so similar to those of the Artefact, to those of Shard technology. That had been what the Directorate wanted all along, and at Damascus they had it all. An Artefact, the Key, and a repository of operational Shard tech.
“Better to die trying than not try at all!” I shouted.
I lifted the shotgun and fired at the Interceptor’s belly.
The Remington 900 is a shotgun approved for use in pressurised environments. Specifically, the Alliance Navy approves its use aboard starships. The standard munition is a solid-shot ball-bearing anti-personnel round: the sort of ammo that causes non-lethal injuries to unruly crewmen. With low armour-penetration, a stray shot is unlikely to cause a hull breach.
The Asiatic Directorate Interceptor is a multi-purpose aerospace craft. A generalist rather than a specialist, the Interceptor is equipped with heavy hull armour.
All of this ran through in my mind, in the space of a heartbeat. Braced against the elevator door, equipped with only the shotgun, I’m not sure what I expected to achieve.
The double-barrels fired simultaneously. In an environ with gravity, the kick would have been jarring. Here, in zero-G, the recoil was crippling. The feedback slammed me into the elevator door, sent intense kinetic force up both arms.
Eyes still streaming, I watched the rounds impact the underside of the Interceptor.
The ship didn’t even falter.
She had weaved and pivoted throughout our encounter, but now she was completely still – save for that nose-cannon, which twitched like the muzzle of a hungry dog. I imagined the pilot savouring my image on the HUD as the cross-hairs closed in.
I racked the slide and fired again. A read-out on the stock of the gun flashed with remaining ammo: another eight shots. Even if I’d had a hundred rounds left, I was quite sure that they would do me no good.
The recoil caught me again, sent me spinning back into the elevator door. This time I readied myself for the impact – expected to feel the hard metal against my back and elbows as I made contact—
Except that I didn’t.
Gravity sucked me in.
The door behind me was open and I collapsed into the elevator. Someone caught me, hands grappling around my shoulders.
Williams. It was Williams.
“What the fuck’s happening out here?” he yelled, over the rush of escaping atmosphere.
He wasn’t wearing a respirator and must’ve overridden the security protocols as the AI would’ve stopped the elevator from calling at this level without his clearance. He was unarmed, and looked about as shocked as I’d felt when I first saw the Interceptor. Poised at the elevator door, he repeatedly keyed the EMERGENCY CLOSE switch.
The Interceptor wheeled about like an angry insect – drawing ever closer to the elevator. The nose-gun erratically darted left and right—
The doors finally shut.
I fell to the floor, fingers wrapped around the shotgun out of deep-seated instinct rather than conscious thought.
“Wh…what’s going on?” Williams stammered. “What was that thing?”
I tore off the respirator, flung it away. Gasped mouthfuls of processed ship air. “It was a Directorate Interceptor.”
“What’s it doing out here? How did the Directorate—?”
“How the fuck should I know?” I shouted back. “My best guess is Loeb.”
Panic detonated across Williams’ face. “Are you serious?”
“Do I look serious?”
“Fuck, man! Just fuck!”
“How else could the Directorate get that close to the fleet? Maybe he’s working with Saul.”
Williams swallowed hard, his Adam’s apple bobbing against his fatigue collar. He was shit-scared.
“This real enough for you?” I asked.
“Just about.”
“Am I so old and used up now?”
“No, but you are bleeding.”
I used my free hand to wipe liquid from one ear and then the other. Everything sounded like I was underwater; subdued, muffled. I had to concentrate on what Williams was saying to understand him.
“If you’re going to stay standing, you need treatment,” Williams said. “This shaft leads down to Medical.”
“I’m fine.” I wasn’t at all, but there were more important things happening on this ship than my loss of hearing. “Forget about me. Where’s the Legion?”
“I…I don’t know.”
There’s still time to undo all of this – to put things right. I racked the shotgun, ignored the deep ache spreading throughout my body.
“I need to get my team out. If Loeb has turned traitor, then he might’ve brought the whole ship down with him.”
Williams nodded uncertainly. “Unless we try to hand ourselves over – ask for mercy or something…”
“You’re an Alliance soldier, goddamn it!” I yelled, right into his face. I was a hair’s breadth from hitting him.
Williams squirmed beneath my gaze, but composed himself. “I was in the mess hall,” he started, “when the proximity sensor went off. Someone must’ve overridden it, because it only sounded once. I just had a hunch you’d be up here – trying to beat that record. I think Kaminski is still covering the brig. I haven’t seen the others.”
Fuck. With Mason in the infirmary, that was a lot of distance to cover. I needed proper firepower, needed something more robust than my real skin.
“And the Warfighters?”
Williams rubbed his face. “I don’t know. The crew quarters, maybe.”
The barracks were even further away from our location.
I made a decision. “We need to get to the SOC.”
“You want to get your sim?” he asked, raising his eyebrows in a way that would be almost funny if it wasn’t obvious he was in deep shock. “What if the Directorate have control of the tanks? That sounds like a bad idea.”
“The Directorate don’t have sims,” I said. That was the age-old mantra of the Alliance military. “Or at least I hope that they don’t, because if they do we’re all in the shit.”
The elevator pinged down another level. I thought that I heard shouting outside, but my ears were still ringing with nightmare tinnitus and I couldn’t be sure.
“All right, all right, whatever you think is best.”
“Stay with it. We need to get my crew, get into the sims, and organise our defence.” The elevator came to a stop. “You still have clearance?”
Williams put his thumb to the DNA reader. “I think so.”
“I’ve been deauthorised.” The machines had been erratic before, but I was certain that I’d now been removed from the database: that someone had deliberately locked me out. “You’re going to have to get us through ship security.”
I watched as the doors
peeled open. I pointed the shotgun at the corridor beyond: my finger poised over the trigger in case of incoming hostiles. As it turned out, the area was still and empty; disconcertingly quiet. Bright lights overhead, the atmosphere a reasonable temperature. As though I’d imagined that whole encounter up on the Run.
“I need a gun too,” Williams muttered, following me out of the elevator.
“That isn’t a priority right now,” I said. Armed with a projectile weapon like a shotgun in his own skin, I wasn’t sure whether he’d be a hindrance or a help. “Where’s the nearest communications station?”
“Two corridors away. I can use the reader to access—”
I held up a hand, called for silence. Williams abruptly complied.
A body lay on the floor ahead of us. A bright red splash indicated blood up the wall.
I fell into a combat-crouch. Moved up as stealthily as I could and held my breath until I was on top of the body. I nudged it with the muzzle of my shotgun.
“Oh sweet Jesus Christo…!” Williams started. “This cannot be happening, man. This cannot be happening!”
She had been a soldier. Not a turncoat – not Alliance – but a proper Directorate commando. Her helmet was gone, exposing a pale but grizzled face that was almost androgynous: hair shorn to a single strip across her scalp. Features distinctly South Asian – Korean or Chino. Clad in sleek black body-armour; segmented, like a human version of the Interceptor gunship. There was a hole punched cleanly through the commando’s gut, with pureed organs and bodily tissue inside.
“Directorate Special Ops,” I whispered. A sword emblem, against a stylised image of Mars, was displayed on her armoured chest. “They call themselves the Sword Battalion.”
Highly trained and well equipped, the Swords were the Directorate’s response to the Simulant Operations Programme.
“Where’d they get the name?” Williams asked.
I pointed to the sword scabbarded at the commando’s waist. It looked so archaic as to be almost absurd: flat-bladed, nearly as long as my arm. Not the sort of weapon that had been employed in the last few hundred years by any civilised military. But I knew better than to be taken in by the simple appearance of the blade. It was a powered mono-sword; capable of slicing through reinforced ablative plate with ease.
“The Swords of the South Chino Cluster,” I said. “I once read that the battalion took the name from a historic reference – back before the Directorate had even been formed.” My brain was too addled to dredge that up. “She didn’t get here on her own. This isn’t a solo operation.”
“How many more can we expect?”
“Enough to take the ship. You fought the Asiatic Directorate before?”
“No,” Williams said, recoiling from the body like he really didn’t believe she was dead. “Any tips?”
I flipped the body back onto its back. The trooper had a backpack wired to her suit; it blocked heat signals and gave limited life support. Her eyes were still wide open: yellowed and bloodshot, like she hadn’t slept in months. Bar-codes and battle honours were tattooed over both cheeks, down the neck.
“Probably hopped up on methaline and battle drugs. Probably been awake for a long time before she died; dropping adrenaline tabs.” I pointed out a row of dulled metal staples in the back of the woman’s head. Those reached up the nape of her neck, into her skull and the strip of dyed-blonde hair. The surgery looked crude but I knew it to be effective. “Those are nerve staples. Makes them fearless and resistant to pain.”
The small metal studs were chemical-inducers: rough neurosurgery. At specific programmed points, they would cause a near battle frenzy. The Directorate states had a long history of drug abuse in their militaries and corporate structures. The staples were another dirty example of the drug-race.
“Best advice I can give you is don’t let them take you alive.”
The overhead lighting abruptly went off. We both froze, and I cocked my head to listen for the tell-tale sounds of battle. Instead, that non-audible hum generated by shipboard systems wound down: the gentle vibration of the air that you hardly ever feel, unless to note its absence.
I knew what was happening before the declaration came.
“Preparing to go dark in T-minus sixty seconds,” the AI declared.
Luminous arrows appeared on the floor. A guide-path to the nearest evacuation pod or safe muster zone.
“Shit, shit, shit…” Williams whispered. “This is so not fair…”
“We’ve got more company inbound,” I said. “Let’s move.” I edged towards the nearest corridor junction. “Which way is Medical?”
Williams pointed down the corridor. “Next sector. We should be able to find a comms station there as well. Needs be, we can defend the place: it has a lockdown facility.”
“Good enough for me.”
Minutes later, we arrived at Medical. Amber lights were inset around the big bulkhead door, which was thankfully open. Whatever was happening elsewhere on the ship, at least Medical was still functional.
We entered the main corridor dividing up the SOC and the infirmary.
“The SOC is this way,” Williams said, pointing in the opposite direction to that in which I was moving.
“I need to check on someone first,” I said. Shotgun up, I stayed low to the ground – made for a smaller target. “And the infirmary is this way.”
Williams mimicked my movements. He looked like a gangly teenager copying combat moves he’d seen on a tri-D action flick rather than a trained soldier.
“Why are we going this way?”
“Because I said so.”
Mason. She was the reason. I had to see to her first. Get her into an evac-pod, if I could, or at the very least I’d make sure she was comfortable – whatever that meant in the circumstances.
A figure moved at the end of the corridor, from behind a desk. Wearing a Colossus-issue yellow vac-suit which almost glowed in the low light.
“Hello?” someone called.
“Stand down,” Williams rumbled, grasping my shoulder. “It’s just a tech.”
A medtech emerged from the infirmary area, from behind the reception desk. It was Bailey; the girl I’d seen when I’d last checked on Mason. She raised two gloved hands in the air and stepped out into the open.
“Don’t shoot,” she called, far too loudly for my liking. “I was about to evac Medical…”
“Shut up!” I hissed. I beckoned that she stayed low behind the desk. “The ship is under attack.”
The woman’s face slackened. “Oh. Sorry.”
I turned to Williams, looked back into the empty corridor we had just come from.
“Don’t ever tell me to stand down,” I said to him. “Not when there are Directorate aboard my ship.”
Williams gave a nod. “Yes, sir. Sorry.”
Back to Bailey, I said, “Where are the rest of the staff? Where’s Private Mason?”
“Almost everyone else has already left,” the medtech said. “The private is in there.”
She pointed to the plate-glass doors leading into the infirmary. Those were closed and the area beyond was mainly unlit. The familiar location had suddenly taken on a frightening aspect; everything immediately new, rendered horrifying by the basic absence of light.
“Williams, get us inside.”
“Yes, sir.”
Williams moved up, thumbed the DNA scanner beside the door. In a ragged formation, with me covering the corridor with the shotgun, the three of us deployed into the main infirmary. The amber warning bulbs in the central ward area illuminated in response to our presence, leaving most of the side-chambers in darkness. Two of those were still partitioned off with plastic concertina-style curtains. At the end of the ward, the auto-doc sat at the ready to receive its next patient – or was that victim? – with a variety of surgical implements gleaming in the low light, all poised over the reclining treatment couch.
I nosed the shotgun into the room. Panned left and then right. The immediate area wa
s empty.
“Seal the doors,” I ordered Williams.
“Solid copy, sir.”
The doors slid shut behind us.
“I’ll lock down Medical as well,” he declared. “That bulkhead on the way in is six inches of hardened steel. Nothing is coming through that door without a demo-charge or a plasma rifle.”
“Fine.”
The tech scurried ahead, to a drug cabinet on the wall beside the auto-doc. She noisily and anxiously started to sort through medicines – no easy task considering that she was wearing vac-gloves.
“You look like you need something for your ears,” Bailey said. “What caused the injury?”
“An unplanned decompression incident.”
“You want me to take the gun?” Williams asked.
“No. I’ll keep it.”
“Then you mind if I smoke? I always need a smoke when I get nervous.”
“Whatever. Just stay frosty.”
He pulled out an oversized cigarette. Flipped the ignition, and the tip lit. The smell of chemical compound immediately filled the infirmary ward.
“We need access to the comms station as well,” I said to Bailey. “Williams, get it working.”
Williams dragged hard on the cigarette. “I’ll try.”
“The comms station is in the SOC,” Bailey said. “We can go there afterwards.”
She gave a feeble smile. Tapped a syringe, shook a bottle of tablets. “The injection will deal with air in the blood, and these smart-meds will keep you running until we can get you some proper attention.”
“I just need to keep going, is all. Make sure that my team is all right.”
I took the smart-meds from her and swallowed down a handful of them. Big, dry tablets; they were medical nano-tech, designed to repair internal damage at the cellular level. How they worked wasn’t really relevant to me; far more important was that they just worked. They did that almost immediately.
“Forget about the injection,” I said, dismissing the large hypodermic that Bailey had produced.
