by M. D. Cooper
According to the tactical map, they would be leaving the external section of the ring soon to follow a main corridor to the station’s central axle. His HUD had been picking up a series of strong scanning pulses, so he was sure someone was tracking their movements, and expected they would meet heavy resistance in the larger corridor. There was no point in the Andersonians fighting them in these labyrinthine maintenance tunnels, especially when they might risk damaging their precious systems.
As Ty expected, they entered a long thoroughfare filled with parked transport vehicles, and immediately came under fire from a series of gun nests occupied by what appeared to be three-person teams.
They were forced to take cover behind the oversized wheels of a transport, chunks of plas flying all around them as the Andersonians concentrated fire.
The soldier moved to a throwing position and lobbed three grenades at the nearest Andersonian position. Ty crawled under the transport to fire on the nest with his projectile rifle, forcing the enemy into a slowed response to the grenades.
Concussions followed, flinging people and equipment, and Manny led the charge into the smoke to take the closest position, only to immediately take fire from another gun nest.
Peering into the smoke, Ty updated his HUD with the new fighting positions, then tossed a small surveillance drone toward the upper deck of the corridor. The robot counted five positions waiting for them down the corridor before it was destroyed.
Chandrey and Briggs each responded with a
Ty snorted. He nearly asked Manny if he was having any glitches with his Clarise unit, then thought better of it. Manny had been at Vesta as well. Any supposed upgrade that Ty might have received on the hospital ship where they recovered after the battle might have also been visited on his friend—despite what his Clarise said. Manny had never mentioned problems with his NSAI, but then neither had Ty. Telling anyone that he could barely trust his own mind, especially in the midst of a combat operation, with new soldiers depending on his leadership, didn’t seem like a good idea.
Ty closed his eyes for a second, relishing the half-dark, then opened them on his flashing HUD and the corridor full of flickering tracer rounds.
Crawling out from under the transport where he’d taken cover, he rose to his feet in a sprint toward the next gun nest, where two Andersonian soldiers were struggling to reload their weapon.
Ty leapt over the drone they’d laid on its side as an obstacle, and came down in the middle of the position, firing short bursts with his rifle, wasting no rounds, leaving no prisoners.
Ty couldn’t deny the shiver of pleasure her voice sent down his spine, spurring him on to the next enemy position before Briggs had even got to his feet.
RADIATION WHALE
STELLAR DATE: 09.03.3011 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Hilgram Station
REGION: Hildas Asteroids, OuterSol
Hilgram’s central section housed most of its ice processing factories, now repurposed as cargo storage and small manufacturing centers where drones had built the orbital farms, shuttles, and items of daily living the Andersonians had used to build themselves a new home so far from any other support.
It made sense that Mars would want to secure a well-functioning station like this for ongoing operations. The Andersonians had built a solid foundation, but with the addition of Marsian security and resources, Hilgram could become the next major outpost between the red planet and the JC.
Ty laughed at himself. He was writing ad copy for colonists as he pulled himself through low-g passages. This was drone territory, and the Andersonians had been sending waves of re-purposed maintenance drones at them for the past hour, using the same plasma attacks followed by suicide runs, and then a wave of radiation emitters, that had forced the team into a defensive position for nearly twenty minutes.
The rad bombs had made Ty and Manny pause. So far, the Andersonians hadn’t seemed willing to sacrifice sections of the station to stop their advance. Now they were running a scorched-earth attack that would leave any place the emitters had passed too hot to inhabit until it had been scrubbed. That could take years.
In the middle of a battle with a relentless rad emitter that floated through the middle of the factory space like a death whale, Manny sent Ty a private message.
Ty couldn’t take his focus off the slow-moving drone. If it came too close, they were dead. The body of the Andersonian who had physically activated the whale hung from its side in a tangle of network filament.
Ty targeted an escort drone for the whale and sent it spinning into the bigger attacker. The drone exploded, but didn’t damage the larger craft.
Ty shook his head. He was sweating inside his armor, a sign something was failing. He didn’t have time to check diagnostics.
Ty couldn’t worry about that. He considered ordering Chandrey to load her gre
nade launcher and lay fire along the top of the whale drone’s nose. He debated their attack plan. The beast might be nothing more than a fuel tank loaded with rad waste, which meant blowing it up would fill their immediate area with radioactive debris.
They’d been ordered to minimize damage to the station, but this drone was a threat to the mission.
Chandrey acknowledged the new target. Ty’s HUD lit with targeting points along the exterior wall, and Chandrey fired. Her aim was perfect, as usual.
Internal pressure in this part of the station was low, but there was still enough atmosphere to blow the wall out above the attacking drone. A rush of pressure threw the whale against the fissure. It caught for a second, and Ty worried it might crack apart, still spreading its deadly payload before being thrown out into space.
Ty grinned excitement, then immediately started picking up targets in the area beyond where the drone had been. A nearby object caught his attention, and he drew down, wondering how the Andersonians had managed to sneak up on them.
It was Chandrey. She must not have locked her magboots before she fired. He watched her slam into the station wall, bouncing once, before being thrown into open space.
Manny said.
Ty wanted to punch a wall.
Briggs didn’t answer for a second, then said,
Ty checked his weapon, turning the rifle in his armored hands. Chandrey had been carrying the grenade launcher, which meant any indirect fire was going to be hand-thrown from now on. She’d also had half the ammo for Briggs’ heavy gun.
Ty’s suit flashed warnings about the pressure and atmosphere changes. He silenced the alert and kicked off the deck, using small steam jets to maneuver toward the new targets at the far end of their current area.
For farmers and clerks, the Andersonians were proving to be formidable enemies. He had heard they had hidden armies, and kept waiting for those people to show themselves.
Ty said.
Ty got his breathing under control, blinking sweat out of his eyes. His suit was definitely malfunctioning.
CORONA
STELLAR DATE: 09.03.3011 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: TSS Sun Runner, Inner Orbit of Mercury Debris Field
REGION: Terran Hegemony, InnerSol
The TSS Sun Runner matched velocity with a large chunk of discarded mining equipment on the outer perimeter of the Mercury object. In the command deck, Petral leaned into the nav console, checking their mass signature against the giant hunk of metal they were hiding behind.
“I think we’re good. That asteroid grinder is hiding all kinds of trash out here with its mass. There must still be a bunch of iron inside it.”
“You already pump up the shields?” Fugia asked.
The micro-meteor activity kept most ships out of the area. Anyone without robust shields would find themselves continuously peppered by tailings from the mining operations. In another thousand years, they might sort themselves into a ring around the sun.
Or get cooked, Fugia thought.
That seemed the most likely outcome.
In her Link, she checked the Sun Runner’s environmental controls and radiation levels. The extra shielding was doing a passable job of limiting their exposure, but they could spend more than forty-eight hours here.
From the comms console, Fugia pulled up active scan and started the directed search. If Camaris realized she was being scanned, it would at least take her a while to identify the source.
Fugia had been sweating bullets during the whole ride in, worried their approach would be recognized, and they would arrive to find a fleet of attack drones. She had almost been disappointed to find only the mysterious object Folsom and the Marsians had already been tracking for months.
Sol made the scans tough. She had to separate the returns from the star roaring in the background. The good news was that she had a millennium of data on Sol’s emanations that she could use to separate them from the anomalies in the junk heap.
The scan immediately returned focused electromagnetic emanations and radioactivity. Heat collectors along the surface of the heap appeared to be sending massive amounts of energy into the object.
The Weapon Born responded with a grin in her voice.
Card was one of Lyssa’s original wing leaders in the first battle against Camaris. She had jumped at the possibility of fighting her again.
Fugia shrugged. This might have been the one time she should have listened to the Marsian officers droning on about their intel. The Mesh had come up empty on this particular location, which was surprising, since it had been sitting in plain sight.
I need to run an analysis on these forgotten locations. Who knows what’s hiding all over Sol?
Since the battle for Vesta had kicked up thousands of dark sites belonging to almost every member of SolGov, Fugia had stopped being surprised when they continued to find hidden stations. However, the increasing number of these sites could be yet another indicator of the rising instability of SolGov.
Rather than working together, governments were hiding everything. Corporate interests were conducting research in secret. Without ongoing espionage, the Data Mesh ran the risk of losing the pulse of information in Sol. Fugia couldn’t let that happen.
She would put Rondo on the task. It might seem insurmountable on the surface, but he was uniquely suited to understanding and rooting out hidden information. She figured the skill was a gift of his Marsian military background. She considered them the sneakiest among all Sol’s armed forces.
Fugia passed Card feed to the holotank. An image of local space flickered into view, and she adjusted the fiery wall of Sol out of the image. Object I-8088 steadied in the center of the display, and then Card and her Weapon Born appeared as bright g
reen icons, swooping in from the upper edge.
Fugia waited. She didn’t need to ask Card what she saw: the model in the holotank updated as she swept over the haphazard surface of the object. While multi-legged drones could move easily over I-8088, it truly resembled a pile of junk, like some massive creature had swept its hands through the surrounding space and mashed everything it caught into a ball.
The blinking icons in the holotank formed a line and entered the hulking ball of the object, making it resemble a monster gobbling pellets.
The holotank shifted, following Card’s sensors as she dove into the station. A claustrophobic tunnel lined with jutting structures, cages, antenna arrays and pieces of space craft closed in, jumping up and down as the Weapon Born navigated the entry.
The Weapon Born laughed.
Card shot past hundreds of drones carrying material into the station.
