The Terran Gambit

by Nick Webb

  What it taught her instead was how to survive. How to rely on herself and only herself.

  “You’re going to blast them with the fighter’s guns?” Nivens looked bewildered.

  “Got a better idea, Ensign?”

  He stammered. “No, it’s just that the fighter deck is kind of a tight space to be using a fighter’s guns.”

  “Good. That means we’re more likely to hit the bastards. Come on, climb up. There you go,” she said, waving her hand as if shooing away a poodle. Nivens reluctantly eased into the gunner’s seat and began working the controls.

  “All right, weapons are online,” he said.

  “Good. Firing up conventional thrusters now,” and as she said it, the engine roared to life, which had the unintended consequence of drawing the surprised stare of ten imperial marines huddled around the door to the fighter bay. “Oops. Now, Nivens, fire!”

  Nivens squeezed the trigger and let loose a barrage of streaming red gunfire. The deadly tracks, flaming much brighter in the half-vacuum of the bay than in the full-vacuum of space, streaked across the fighter deck and mowed the frenzied marines down into a bloody pulp. “Ha ha! Nice shooting, kid!”

  But before Nivens could celebrate with her, an answering barrage of assault rifle fire peppered the cockpit’s front viewport, creating an unnerving array of cracks. Anya ducked. “Shit. Didn’t really think that one through, did we?”

  “I saw it coming. Didn’t you hear me? I said, you’re going to blast them with our guns? But did you list—”

  “Can it, Ensign,” she said, and started entering in coordinates to the gravitic drive, flinching every time a new volley hit the viewport. “I’m going to shift us over there, right in front of the door, but shift us forty-five degrees so you can get a clear shot. Set your fire for a wide-burst pattern. Take out as many as we can in the anteroom behind that door.” She entered the final numbers. “Ready?”

  “Yeah. Ready.” The Ensign bit his lip in quiet anticipation.

  Anya punched down on the initiate button, and the ship shifted, sending up a spray of flying debris once more as the deck plate got caught in the pronounced tidal warping effects of their localized gravitic field. “Now!”

  Ensign Nivens squeezed the trigger again, catching another group of marines in an incontestable stream of gunfire. Nivens turned his eyes from the gore.

  “Don’t look away! Aim, dammit!”

  He snapped his eyes back to the doorway, gritting his teeth and closing his mouth tight, in what Anya supposed was a valiant attempt to keep his stomach contents down.

  She’d seen gore before, and it didn’t faze her anymore. Enough late night sacrificial ceremonies with her parents and their friends had numbed her to it. The victims were only ever goats and dogs, but they bled and brayed just like people do when they’re cut.

  “Ok, hold up, Ensign. I think you got them.” She peered out into the smoky gloom of the anteroom, trying to discern movement.

  A brilliant, searingly bright flash nearly blinded her. “Down!” she roared, grabbing Nivens’s collar as she flung herself to the floor, even as the plasma-rpg exploded against the front viewport. Wickedly sharp pieces of clear composite showered them, puncturing them, and Anya felt vague poking sensations all over her legs and back.

  Nivens moaned. “You ok?” he said, sounding muffled with his face against the floor.

  “Maybe.” She winced, and tried to slowly move her legs. Little fiery pinpricks coursed through her lower body. She noticed she was laying on top of Nivens, and had shielded him from the worst of it.

  “Hey, get off. Quick, get off,” he whispered.

  “Easy, don’t get so excited. Never had a woman like me lay on top of—” he clamped a hand over her mouth.

  “I can hear them coming,” he said in her ear. Ignoring the pain, she rolled off and reached for the assault rifle she’d brought aboard as he grabbed his.

  She glanced over at him and held up three fingers, counting down to one, at which they both jumped up and sprayed gunfire out the front viewport into the approaching invaders. The marines cried out and ducked for cover. Their fire from the assault rifles wasn’t nearly as powerful as that from the fighter, and most of it bounced harmlessly off the marines’ ASA suits, though Anya grinned in grim satisfaction at the sight of one advancing soldier taking a bullet to the throat, gurgling as he fell to his knees.

  In the background they could hear more gunfire from further along, past the anteroom of the bay, letting Anya know that at least she’d helped the defenders by opening up a second front. But now they were pinned down.

  “We’ve got to get out of here,” Nivens hissed. “One more plasma-rpg and we’re finished.”

  “Working on it.” She fired a few more blind shots out the shattered viewport before tossing the gun aside. “Cover me, Ensign,” she said, gasping in pain as she lifted herself back up to the pilot’s seat, keeping her head as low as possible. Glancing at the console she saw that gravitics were out, but another indicator told her what she wanted to see.

  She gripped the controls, fired up the main conventional thrusters, and wrenched the stick sideways to channel power to the port thrusters. The fighter lifted off and spun sharply to the right, until she fired the counter thrusters to slow the ship’s spin.

  “You got your helmet ready? How’s your oxygen level? Its about to get a little stuffy in here.”

  “It’s good,” said Nivens, as he wrenched his helmet over his head.

  Hitting the front thrusters, she rammed the stern back into the double sliding doors of the entrance to the bay and then fired both front and aft thrusters at maximum simultaneously. The engines roared, sending back a twin stream of fiery exhaust into the anteroom. She couldn’t help smiling as she remembered the inspiration for the maneuver. Three years earlier, intrigued about the wide-eyed young lieutenant she’d just taken advantage of, she’d asked around about the man and heard the story of his antics on the hull of Liberty Station, near the skeleton of the Peregrine, what would have been the tenth ship of the Freedom class.

  “They’ve got ASA suits on, you know. It’s not like you’re asphyxiating them,” he said as Anya pulled her helmet on too.

  “Yeah, but they can’t see through that. And this is when we take our leave, anyway.” She pressed a few buttons, commanding the ship to maintain the current thrust and attitude for another minute, at which point it would automatically shut the engines off. Thinking for a moment, she keyed in another set of commands in the queue. She pointed up at the shattered viewport. “Out you go, Nivens.”

  “What about you?”

  “Don’t piss yourself, I’ll be right behind.” She picked up her assault rifle.

  Nivens gave a curt nod and vaulted out the front viewport, followed closely by Grace. She caught her breath as she landed, and stars floated past her eyes. The pain caught her off guard. But she was ok—she repeated it to herself. She’d felt worse. Much, much worse.

  “Run aft!” She pointed down the long launch ramp, towards another cluster of parked fighters. They high-tailed it, ducking under the nose of the nearest fighter and circling to its rear, out of sight from the sliding doors of the entrance. Anya glanced back to mark the progress of her automatic commands. As expected, the fighter’s main engines shut off, but not before applying a burst of power to the starboard thrusters, causing the ship to veer off to the left, spin a few times, and land with a screech about twenty meters down from the doors.

  After several moments, the battered ship settled down, it’s various parts and engines grinding to a halt. All Anya could hear was the sound of gunfire in the distance, down some hallway too far away for her to do anything about.

  “There’s our bait. Now let’s see if we can catch some fish.”

  Nivens stared at her, his jaw slightly agape, glancing down to look at her bloodstained flight suit before turning back to her eyes. “You’re like some kind of superhero, aren’t you?”

  She dusted off a
shoulder and puffed the hair out of her eyes. “Well if you want to put it that way,” she said, before adding, “You should really tell Mercer that—see what he says.”

  ***

  Ben and Sergeant Pearson huddled behind the last row of chairs in the flight deck conference room, hearing the bullets from the advancing boarders whizz past. Pearson popped up to fire off another burst before ducking back down. Ben noticed that he kept putting his ASA-clad body in between Ben and the incoming fire.

  “What do you think, Sergeant? There was about seventy of them or so, and we’ve only taken out a dozen.”

  Sergeant Pearson swore. “We can’t maintain this position,” he said, glancing down at the blood-spattered body of one of their own marines.

  Ben wheezed—the air pressure in the room was steadily rising, but when the boarders had first blasted through the emergency bulkhead they’d lost a good third of their atmosphere, making Ben lightheaded for the first few minutes of the firefight.

  “I agree. Let’s fall back to the corridor—we can take cover more easily in the rooms leading off from the hallway—keep them pinned down.”

  Sergeant Pearson nodded once, then motioned to the other handful of marines they still had, indicating the plan. “I’ll cover you. Go!”

  Ben sprang up, clutching his assault rifle close, wincing as he felt the puff of a round zing past his head, and ran for the door at the rear of the room, with two other marines hot on his tail. One of them cried out as a bullet pierced him in the elbow, making his arm hang limp at an odd angle.

  “Sergeant! Move!” Ben yelled back through the doorway, spraying down a suppressing screen of fire, and Sergeant Pearson popped up, vaulted over two rows of chairs and barreled through the opening and out into the corridor. Three more marines followed, enemy rounds ricocheting off their armor.

  Sergeant Pearson pointed at the marines, motioning at a handful of doors lining the corridor, and the men and women sprinted towards them, taking cover behind the doorways, rifle muzzles pointed out, forming a deadly gauntlet Ben was sure the enemy would pay a heavy price to run.

  An explosion on the other side of the door to the conference room knocked Ben and Sergeant Pearson off their feet, making Ben’s dizziness return momentarily. The meds they’d given him in sickbay had taken away most of the effects of his concussion, but he knew he could get another one if not careful. He chuckled to himself. Here he was worried about another concussion, when bullets were flying all around and he was the only one not wearing the ASA suit. Suddenly he felt quite naked.

  Ben dashed towards one of the rooms opening out onto the hallway, following Sergeant Pearson who’d nearly kicked the door when it didn’t open right away. He could hear the bootfalls of the approaching soldiers coming through the flight deck’s conference room, and then, a new sound.

  “What the hell is that?” yelled the sergeant.

  Ben grinned. “That is the wondrous sound of an XR one fifty-one fighter’s forward guns,” he said, daring to peek out into the hallway. The gunfire paused, followed by the rat-a-tat of more assault rifle fire. Another barrage of fighter gunfire sounded out, and Ben could see the flashing through the conference room all the way down the hallway from their defensive position in the small storage room.

  “They’re still coming, Commander. Stop gawking.” Sergeant Pearson aimed his rifle and starting firing at the invaders now spilling out of the conference room into the hallway. Ben scowled, realizing that the fighter fire was forcing the soldiers out towards them. Before he realized it, two enemy soldiers dove into the room they had taken cover in.

  Sergeant Pearson cold-cocked the helmet of one of them, sending a web of cracks up the face shield, while Ben picked up a spare pipe laying near the wall and knocked the other soldier’s rifle from his grip. Grinning, now in his element and no longer feeling quite so naked, he grabbed the soldier’s arm as the man started to reach for him and, encouraging his forward momentum, swung the man’s arms up behind his own back and rammed his face into the wall, cracking the helmet’s faceshield.

  With the pipe still in his left hand, he brought it down hard on the man’s arm, causing a satisfying snap even through the armor, and one more swing at the back of the man’s neck sent him down.

  Ben spun around, and saw Sergeant Pearson struggle underneath the soldier on top of him—a long, wicked-looking knife pointing down at his neck from the soldier’s fist. He charged towards them, kicking the man’s head as hard as he could and dropping down to retrieve his own assault rifle. One round to the man’s neck ended the fight with a bloody splatter.

  Ben regarded the soldier on the ground, holding his neck and convulsing. He’d be dead in minutes and the poor bastard was struggling to breathe. With grim determination Ben aimed at the man’s neck once more at an angle he was sure would snap the spine, and three rounds later the soldier fell limp.

  An explosive roar drew their attention back to the hallway where similar close combat melees still played out. “Those are fighter thrusters!” he yelled over at the sergeant.

  Sergeant Pearson chuckled. “Hell, whoever you got in there, he’s a veritable one-man army.”

  They ran into the hallway to relieve their fellow marines, and when the scuffling ended, the enemy was all dead as far as Ben could tell. Two more of their own had fallen as well. He could hear shouting coming from the conference room.

  Running back to look around the doorway he saw about a dozen enemy soldiers run from the conference room back into the anteroom and beyond it to the fighter bay. At the same time, more gunfire leapt out of one of the rooms behind them into the hallway.

  “Damn,” said Pearson, “a few must have gotten through.”

  “Leave them to the others to deal with them. We should go relieve whoever is still in the bay—they’re about to have a lot of visitors,” said Ben, already moving into the conference room. Sergeant Pearson motioned to the three remaining marines to advance on the gunfire coming from the hallway as he ran after Ben.

  They peered into the anteroom just as the last enemy soldier sprinted out, and were about to follow him when they heard a barrage of rifle fire in the fighter bay. Ben ran into the anteroom and looked out to the bay beyond: he saw two lone flight deck members who had taken cover behind one of the fighters, holding off perhaps a dozen soldiers who crouched behind what looked like a burned-out fighter, its viewport shattered and blackened. The soldiers began moving towards the crew members, covering one another as they advanced.

  Sergeant Pearson bolted into the fighter bay with a yell, drawing the soldier’s attention before diving behind an equipment box, narrowly avoiding a spray of rifle fire. Ben laid down his own suppressing fire, trying to draw their attention away from Sergeant Pearson to give him time to reposition himself. The two crew members continued firing from their beleaguered position as several soldiers continued their steady advance towards them.

  “Jemez?” yelled one of the crew members.

  Ben peered behind the doorway towards the hunched figures. The sandy hair in the face, the tattoos on the shoulders. He swore silently in amazement at her bravado—shooting up the flight deck and scorching the anteroom with a fighter was impressive, if not incredibly stupid.

  “Grace!” He motioned to the steadily advancing group of soldiers. She motioned back, something about him laying down a defensive screen as she charged them. He shook his head vigorously, but she turned away and got ready to charge. Hardheaded jackass, he thought, and without waiting another second started blasting away at the approaching group while Pearson kept the others pinned down behind the burned-out fighter.

  Anya Grace sprinted, holding what looked like a plasma-rpg launcher in one hand. Rather than fire at the soldiers now taking cover from Ben’s fire, she lobbed the entire gun at them, and dove for cover herself as they answered her with a staccato volley that devastated the spare parts bin she lay behind. As Ben wondered why in the world she’d thrown the launcher at them, he had his answer. An ear-split
ting whine, followed by a massive explosion told him she’d set the launcher to overload, and must have held on to it until the last second. Bloody pieces of the invaders pelted the walls and ceiling of the fighter bay as Anya popped back up from the parts bin with a roar, her assault rifle blazing.

  As Ben continued firing at the remaining soldiers, all he could think was, Damn. She’s good.

  ***

  “Captain, they’re powering up their railgun turrets and ion beam cannons,” said Ensign Ayala, her eyebrow piercings bunching up together as they did whenever she announced more bad news to Jake. He wondered if it hurt to furrow one’s brow with so many rings stuck through it, but shoved the thought aside to concentrate.

  “Po. We got anything yet? Railguns?”

  She shook her head. “Negative. All forward turrets are destroyed beyond immediate repair.”

  “What about the aft turrets?”

  “Overloaded from all the secondary explosions. Crews are working on a fix now. I can give you partial power on two ion beam cannons.”

  He knew he didn’t even have to ask his next question. “And the quantum field torpedo launchers?”

  “Negative. Launch tubes are beyond repair for now.”

  Ayala’s voice strained higher: “Captain, they’re firing.”

  More explosions rocked the ship as Jake watched the lightning-fast slugs stream out from the Caligula.

  “They must have seen through our little ruse,” he said, rather unnecessarily, but he wasn’t even focused on what he was saying. His mind raced, trying to come up with an option, something, anything to get them more time. “Ensign, lower the power to the sensor overload, just slightly, and open a channel to the Caligula.”

  Ayala’s fingers darted over her console, and she barely even tensed as the ship continued to shudder from the high-velocity impacts of the railgun fire. Her nerve impressed him. “Channel now open, sir.”