“Why wait for me?”
“Everyone expects you will be leader of the Faction by tomorrow.” Gerard glanced nervously at Bellini.
“I’m not knucking up for the Faction, just for my ship. Ramil thinks he’s a better captain, and he is within his rights to challenge. I’m not doing this for the Faction, just for me. The Faction, that’s Kitzov’s dream. I’m a pirate. I’m just in it for the plunder.”
“Kitzov has been missing for almost a month. No one expects him to come back. A few captains are jostling for position, but word is you are the favorite. Everyone thinks this knucks is on so you can demonstrate your right to lead.”
“Well, it’s not. It’s about demonstrating my ability to smash the skull of any one of my crew who thinks they can do a better job than me.”
“Nevertheless,” Gerard said, “I expect you will have a few captains calling for you to take over as Faction leader, assuming you win the knucks.”
“It’s not safe to assume anything,” Bellini said. “Ramil is a big unit. He could take down half the captains in the Faction with ease.”
Gerard stopped at a doorway to a gray corridor. It slid open to reveal a huge window looking out at the belt. The viewing room was filled with Faction captains and other pirates. They all made sure Bellini had a nod of greeting as he stepped inside.
The stanchions of the shipyard were covered with Faction raiders occupying every dock. Many more were hanging in space, parked with anchor fields holding them to the network of asteroids that made up the shipyard. Below, Bellini saw the viewing platform at the base of the main central tower of the shipyard where he would face off against his former second-in-command. They would both walk out there soon. Only one would walk back.
“Over there.” Gerard pointed to a distant asteroid just beyond the complex.
Bellini stepped up to the view screen, nudging some Faction pirates aside. He wiped his hand across the transparent composite and zoomed in on the location Gerard had indicated.
A small shuttle was touching down on the asteroid, a huge emitter on its upper hull.
“That’s the mass beam emitter,” Gerard said proudly. “Engineering teams have been retrofitting that shuttle to carry it to a safe test location.”
“Who designed it?” Bellini asked, thinking he would have the best engineer for the Fall once he’d dealt with Ramil.
“The Union,” Gerard said. “It’s a stolen design. A Union defector delivered the plans to buy his way in.”
“A mass beam?” Bellini said. “You can’t beat a hail cannon, in my opinion. Energy weapons are powerful, but a blizzard of kinetic hail thrown in your face is always going to make a mark.”
“Agreed, but the mass beam has better destructive power than a battery of kinetic hail. And once targeted, a ship cannot evade the mass beam. The target is that small asteroid further out.” Gerard pointed again.
Bellini zoomed the view beyond the mass beam shuttle to the target. The asteroid was painted with a target, and the words ‘Faction, Freedom, Forever’ were painted around it.
Gerard received a signal on his wrist-mounted device.
“That’s the final word from the engineers. They are about to start the test. Do you want to say a few words?” Gerard looked to Bellini.
“Just fire the kravin thing.”
Gerard spoke into his device and informed the engineers to begin their test. He activated the data scans and presented them on the view screen of transparent composite. Numbers on boson count and intensity, focus and spin, streamed over the view.
“Get rid of that crap,” Bellini said, wiping his hand across the screen.
Gerard canceled the data readout, and they watched the distant asteroid.
The mass beam emitter was long with a cone-shaped tip, and loops of silver composite wrapped around the central section.
“How will we know if it’s working?” Bellini said.
“Watch the target.”
Bellini watched the target sitting a thousand kilometers away. The view zoomed in tighter.
Nothing.
Bellini lost interest.
“So much for your engineers, Gerry,” Bellini said. “Maybe they can use the emitter as a club and bludgeon the Union to death with it.”
Gerard’s brow was furrowed. He was checking data on his wrist-mounted device.
“All the data suggests that it is working.”
Bellini let out a snort of derision. “The target disagrees.”
Just as Bellini was about to turn and leave, he saw the emitter on the shuttle quiver. It appeared to press down on the shuttle below it. Bellini zoomed in on the shuttle. The emitter was crushing the shuttle in a series of intermittent surges. Dust was rising from the asteroid surface and adhering to the craft and device.
“Abandon the test,” Gerard said to a panicked-sounding engineer speaking over his device.
Bellini watched closely as the shuttle suddenly crumpled. The asteroid began to break apart, huge chunks flying up. The emitter itself began to buckle before crumpling. In a sudden white flash, the emitter, shuttle, and asteroid were all reduced to a chunk of debris no bigger than a boulder.
Bellini zoomed in. The boulder was dark, and flickering white energy discharges arced away into space and then were gone. The boulder was almost perfectly spherical.
“Umm,” Gerard said.
Bellini bellowed and threw his head back with laughter.
“Nice test, Gerry,” Bellini said. He turned to walk away. “I’ll go and prepare for the knucks. I hope you have something special lined up for the engineers who built that suicide device. Maybe if we sell them back to the Union, they can take themselves out for us. Thanks, Gerry. I needed a laugh.”
Boyd watched the outer hatch eagerly. Red lights flashed across the deck, alerting the Marines to the imminent dispatch order. The hatch remained shut. Boyd bounced on his feet, ready to leap into action.
“Assault teams ready to go, sir,” Boyd said over his channel to the major.
“Stand by, Sergeant,” came the reply from the communication operator, Yanic Knole.
“What’s the hold up, Yan?” Boyd said, bouncing on the spot, pulse rifle across his chest.
“We are waiting for the flight of Blades coming from the garrison on Supra. ETA five minutes. Don’t worry, Boyd. You’ll have plenty of opportunities to get in the fight. The major is highlighting one raider for infiltration now.”
“Sergeant.” Featherstone appeared on Boyd’s helmet display. The major was sitting in his command chair and presenting as a holo-image only a few centimeters high but filled with the authority of the Resolute’s leading Blue Star Marine. “One of the raiders is not as quick as the others. The drive field shows signs of asymmetry. It’s probably a pretty rough ride over there. With help from the Blades, the Resolute will be able to isolate it from the pack. You must take this one alive, Will. I want the Faction captain in a holding cell by the end of watch. These raiders were heading somewhere in a hurry. Tactical intelligence believes there is some kind of high-level Faction meeting going on somewhere. We want to know where. We need intel on this one, so bring me some warm bodies for interrogation.”
An incoming fire alarm sounded suddenly across the Resolute. The ship rocked under the punch from a blast of kinetic hail and the red lights on the Marine deck blinked out for a moment. Then came the sound of residual tapping of kinetic frags scattering over the hull at low velocity, the deflection shielding having reduced their energy to harmless levels.
The major continued.
“Your assault squad will infiltrate and take down the raider’s drive systems and interrupt any attempt to self-destruct. We are going to arrest the entire ship’s company and interrogate them all.”
The Resolute rocked again and then the outer doors slipped aside. They moved so fast it was dizzying. Even after dozens of combat traverse jumps, the sudden combat speed removal of the outer hatch was eerily fast.
Boyd didn’t hesitate.
He ran toward the opening, calling to his squad as he went.
“Blue Stars, let’s do this.”
The ship directly in front of the opening was a standard Faction raider. She looked so familiar to Boyd. He had spent almost a year undercover on one, after all. He was eager to get back aboard—this time leading an assault squad, his pulse rifle blazing.
The raider was highlighted by his helmet’s enhanced data view as the target. He activated his suit’s thrusters and raced across space.
A flight of Blades swept across the far side of the raider, their forward-mounted, high-energy lasers firing across her nose. Blade pilots did not miss, and the narrow misses were designed to keep the raider on her course, trapped between the Blades and the Resolute. The hull of the raider flickered as she gave the Union vessel a salvo of kinetic hail. A dark cloud, like a swarm of killer wasps, flew toward him.
Boyd checked his location in relation to the Resolute’s deflection shield. He was still inside its range.
“Slow advance, Blue Stars,” Boyd said, frustration in his gut, but clear command in his voice.
The eager young technician, Allen, was too slow and Boyd saw him drift beyond the range of the deflection shield just as the salvo of kinetic hail reached its target. The deflection shield flickered as the frags were slowed, deflected, and vaporized. The body of the young Blue Star vanished in a red mist as the high-density frag cloud tore his suit and body to microscopic shreds.
Boyd felt sick and angry. With the salvo threat neutralized, he pushed his thrusters to max. He left the safety of the Resolute’s shielding and restarted his traverse.
The hail cannon emplacements on the side of the Faction ship were glowing from the last salvo. The muzzles extended beyond the line of the ship to cool them in the cold vacuum of space. Some were still bright white, but others were already fading.
“Push it, Blue Stars!” Boyd called. He zoomed in his visor’s enhanced view on the closest hail cannon muzzle and saw it was now dark and slowly being drawn back into the side of the ship, ready to be loaded for another salvo.
Boyd located the line of cannon muzzles and highlighted the gaps between them on his enhanced data view. He shared it with the assault teams.
“Move to the point between the guns. Keep it tight and move fast.”
The hail cannon muzzles to Boyd’s left and right were fully withdrawn into the raider. He knew it was only a matter of seconds before she fired again.
Then the cannon punched out another salvo.
Huge gouts of hail shot blasted away from the side of the ship. Boyd’s enhanced data view showed him the safe zone between the blasts of hail. As they raced away from the raider, the hail frags expanded out but still held a tight grouping.
The dark vacuum around Boyd was suddenly filled with flickering light as tiny kinetic frags raced past at terrifying speed, glistening under the laser fire from the Blades and the fire pouring into the Resolute from the other attacking raiders.
The frags flew past him like a deadly snowstorm that lasted only a fraction of a second. Behind him, Boyd knew the frags were already slamming into the Resolute’s deflection shielding. He knew that if the Faction captain had fired a hail curtain, the frags would have spread out instantly and his entire squad would have been shredded like the unfortunate young Allen.
Boyd spotted his landing point on the side of the raider and closed in fast. He slowed his approach and turned so his feet were pointing toward the raider, ready to land on her starboard hull feet first and ready for action.
Boyd touched down first and needed no time to recover from the traverse; he was already looking for his entry. And he could see exactly where he needed to go.
Having worked and lived aboard a raider for so long, he knew their configuration better than many in the Blue Stars. Even the agents of Union Fleet Tactical Intelligence had a less intimate knowledge than he did. Next to the rear starboard-side hail cannon muzzle was a secondary ammo loading hatch, for rapid transfer of ordnance between raiders while in space. Any raider that had been rapidly using up their hail shot could resupply by commandeering ammo from another raider. It saved a return to a Faction settlement of a shipyard. And it gave Boyd a quick way inside.
Boyd moved around the muzzle as it withdrew inside the hull before shooting out and blasting another gout of kinetic hail. He caught the flickering of the Resolute’s deflection shielding and hull stability field out of the corner of his eye. The purple wave that spread from nose to tail told him the Resolute was taking a beating. But with his squad on the hull of the raider, the Blades could break away and focus their attacks on the rest of the raiders and assist the Resolute. He saw the Blades’ tail drives flare as he pulled a hatch free and dropped inside the raider.
The gravity field disoriented him at first. He fell awkwardly, but was on his feet in a moment, fast enough to blast a stream of pulse rounds into the Faction troopers rushing to the breach.
As the troopers fell, the rest of Boyd’s squad dropped in. Boyd was already advancing, heading to the drive room only a few meters away, behind one bulkhead and through one narrow, well-defended hatch.
“With me,” Boyd said as he raced ahead. His squad needed to be faster to keep up.
Boyd was on familiar territory and led from the front. He knew a side corridor to a utility room was only a few strides away. It contained only basic service facilities—no need for it to be defended—but he took no chances. He pulled a pulse grenade off his suit and tossed it around the corridor.
The blast punched out as Boyd maintained cover. His squad caught up and took cover along the line of the corridor.
Boyd was moving again, past the opening to the utility room. A pair of Faction deck crew lay twitching, weapons dropped at their sides.
The next right turn put Boyd in the rear cross-corridor. Another left and the short straight corridor to the drive room. The drive room hatch was sealed, of course.
Boyd spoke over the helmet communicator; his voice was silent outside his helmet, but his squad could hear him clearly.
“Hold here. Defend this position.” He indicated the two open ends of the cross-corridor where the Faction troopers would come from.
Boyd activated his electron blade and began to cut through the deck plates, soon pulling it apart to see the narrow access filled with conduits—a narrow way into the drive room that would bring him out on the lower side of the reactor.
Boyd had seen Thresh work this system during their time together on the Odium Fist. He thanked her silently as he stepped into the tangle of conduits. He set his suit’s grav field to invert and pushed the cables aside, letting him move between them. This was a trick he had taught Thresh: manipulating a suit’s grav field to let him slip along the tangle of conduits like a snake through a tangle of branches.
Reaching the panel under the reactor, he activated his electron blade and cut upward. As the blade fizzed and dropped molten composite on to his faceplate, the flickering lights seemed to form the face of Thresh. He saw her everywhere. He could not rid her from his thoughts.
Pulling the composite aside, Boyd climbed up into the drive room. Speed was the key. If he did not shut down the reactor quickly enough, the captain may activate the destruct. No Faction captain wanted to be paraded before the Union capital building and face the noose.
Boyd wriggled free and opened fire at the first engineer he saw. As the body fell, Boyd saw the pulse rifles of the Faction troopers turn from the entrance hatch and onto him.
He rolled sideways and into cover at the port-side rector stanchion.
“Boyd, this is Featherstone. Report.”
The voice of his commanding officer brought a smile to his face.
“I’ve gained entry to the drive room. The raider will be unpowered in moments.”
The stream of pulse rounds slamming into the meager cover sent sparks of composite showering over him. His squad outside the drive room reported Faction troopers at either end of the cross-corridor.
They were taking fire and taking casualties.
Boyd forced himself to break cover and return fire, only for the sustained return fire from the drive room troopers to push him back into cover.
Yes, he’d entered the drive room. But could he survive it?
5
Boyd lay on his back under the primary reactor with barely a millimeter of space to spare. Pulse rounds flashed past him in the tight space, the reactor stanchion his only cover.
Boyd relaxed, his rifle held on his chest, muzzle in front of his faceplate. He rolled over and returned fire before returning to cover.
This could go on all day.
The reactor cover in front of his face looked familiar. He had once spent days working on a core transfer shunt on the Odium Fist and it had looked just like this. He pulled his electron blade from his boot and activated it.
“Careful now,” Boyd said to himself as he thrust the blade into the edge of the seal. He sliced down and across and pulled the panel away. Inside was a secondary shunt.
“What would you do, Thresh?” Boyd asked out loud. “You would tell me not to mess around with the shunt.”
Boyd knew a surge in the power moving through the shunt would cause an overload in one of the distribution nodes somewhere in the ship. The ship’s lockdown hatches were all powered through one node, so if he got the fluctuation frequency just right, he might blow the doors and unlock all hatches, opening the ship up for his squad.
Boyd heard a scraping through his helmet where it was touching the deck. He turned and saw a pair of troopers crawling under the reactor, pulse pistols in their hands. They were moving to flanking positions and would have him in a crossfire in a moment.
“Ahh, krav it all,” Boyd said and sent a multi-range frequency burst through the shunt.
Instantly, lights across the drive room exploded, luminescent composite panels shattering as the distribution node governing them overloaded.
The seal on the door broke with a hiss, and Boyd heard the firefight going on in the cross-corridor outside the drive room.
Blue Star Marine Boxed Set Page 40
