Shame he was such a jerk.
“Whisper the passcode to me,” said Tungaar.
Branco took a deep breath and summoned his strength.
Then he plunged the syringe deep into Tungaar’s eye.
The Zuul staggered back, clutching his eye, the syringe still sticking out. It gave Branco just the space he needed.
Using his arms to push off the bed, Branco lunged for the laser rifle. He grabbed it tightly and rolled his weight to one side, away from the Zuul’s center of mass.
Tungaar’s legs buckled under the weight of the Human pulling down on the rifle’s strap. Down the Zuul went, onto his side, surrendering the weapon to Branco’s grip.
Grunting in pain as his stumps hit the floor, Branco flicked off the safety and rolled until the rifle was pointing at the doorway where the corporal was trying to get a clear shot.
“You had your chance,” said Branco, and unleashed pulsing lines of energy that perforated the merc from groin to gizzard.
With a howl of pain and anger, Tungaar glared at him through his remaining eye and reached across the gurney to grab back his rifle.
Branco let it go, which made the Zuul overbalance, and opened him up enough for Branco to punch the syringe the rest of the way into his head like he was hammering in a nail.
Tungaar shrieked.
Another punch. Then another, Branco hammering with the edge of his fist until the Zuul was lying on his back.
And another.
Branco had his arm high to hammer the syringe yet again when he realized it had shattered, and Tungaar was dead.
His hand was bloodied and torn. There was work to be done, but he couldn’t put the dead Zuul from his mind. The berserker rage wouldn’t let him.
He crawled closer to his opponent’s ruined but still daintily perfumed face.
“I’ve served alongside Zuul who were brave, honorable, and highly competent,” he whispered into Tungaar’s snout. “You were none of those.”
He pictured Sergeant Hrrn and felt an intense pang of emptiness. Hrrn had died during the Raknar job. So many had died…Suddenly, a crushing sense of loss pinned him to the deck. His mind was so confused that he couldn’t remember who had lived and who died, only that he’d lost so many.
I’ll never leave you.
Sun!
She’d stuck with him. He remembered that much. It was all the motivation he needed.
He detached the laser rifle from its strap and commando crawled with it into the passageway, eager to get into the fight.
Behind him, he left a trail of blood and pus.
* * * * *
Chapter Two
By the time Branco had reached the dead Zuul corporal, his mind had cleared into a focus sharp enough to rise above the pain, which, although now controllable, had never left him.
While he took a spare charge pack from the merc’s belt, he reached out with his pinplants, seeking a shipboard node to connect to and report it.
There were nodes aplenty, but all were clamped shut and refusing access at the outermost layer of security.
He was a professional merc now, damnit! The Midnight Sun Free Company operated as an efficient team. Why was he locked out?
And why had he only just noticed the tubes hanging out of his arm?
Keep sharp!
He ripped out the cannulas and crawled further into the passageway. From nearby, he could hear screams and weapons discharges, but the fighting seemed to be coming from neighboring decks. He maneuvered himself to the ladderwells a short distance away. Slightly offset from each other, one ran up to Deck 12 and the other down to Deck 14.
“You should crawl back into Med Bay 13,” said a neutral voice. It sounded vaguely Human.
Branco scrambled to the aft bulkhead and pushed himself up against it, trying to see into the neighboring decks.
There was no one there.
“But seeing as we both know you won’t,” continued the voice. “I’d watch the deck below if I were you.”
“Who are—? You’re the ship?”
“Yes. I’m Midnight Sun. I’m also your CO.”
“Captain Blue? Ma’am?”
“I’m many things, former Trooper Branco. One of them is your girlfriend’s sister, so for her sake, grab hold of something fast. I’m cutting spin in twenty seconds.”
Former Trooper…?
“Nineteen…”
He pushed himself along the deck and back into Med Bay 13. There he grabbed his discarded IV drip tube and hurried to the ladderwell that led to Deck 12.
Progress was slow and the pain hammering into his stumps told him he was going to pay a heavy debt when the pain blockers wore off. But he reached his objective as quickly as his body would allow.
After pulling himself up a few steps—not easy while keeping ahold of the rifle—he looped the drip tube around his shoulder and the ladder, tying himself on.
Then he waited.
Midnight Sun was a unique ship, a relic of a distant war long before the end of the First Republic. That uniqueness was ultimately why it was spaceworthy and why their merc company existed. It had been a prize exhibit in the collection of a fabulously wealthy alien, a plaything.
Now? Now, Branco suspected Midnight Sun was a warship once again, recruited into a new war.
It had a spherical design, with combinations of decks and frames that could be spun independently and at different rates to simulate many gravity fields simultaneously.
Branco’s section of Decks 12 through 14 stopped suddenly.
He didn’t.
His inertia pulled him off the ladderwell, but the drip tube held firm and he remained tethered to his position, floating in zero-gee while aiming his captured rifle at the route up from Deck 14.
A Zuul snout poked out of the ladderwell and cautiously sniffed Branco’s deck.
He sliced it off with his laser.
The beam somewhat cauterized the alien’s flesh, but arterial pressure built up and blew out the upper reaches of the ruined face.
The corpse flew out into the deck, propelled from below. It was followed by…silence. Only a wave of tension came out of Deck 14.
Branco floated calmly, pulling gently on his stretchy tether when he yawed away.
Then they rushed him.
Six Zuul launched through the opening, firing their lasers at him as they emerged.
Branco’s face and groin felt intense heat as near misses warmed the air next to his skin. But the Zuul only had his approximate position while the CASPer candy held Branco’s aim on their emergence point as steadily as his tether would allow.
With his weapon on full intensity, he sent a beam slowly crisscrossing through the mercs. They wore flexible combat armor with fast-seal helmets attached to breathing banks, enough to minimize the damage from a brief laser pulse, but not the concentrated fire Branco was using to slice through them like a high-tech Zorro.
The rifle gave an energy-low vibration alert. Branco ignored it. No time to swap charge packs now.
The enemy stopped firing.
They could be playing dead, but Branco didn’t think so. Good Zuul made dependable mercs but they lacked inventiveness. So, Branco risked a reload, even though there was enough juice left in his rifle for a low-power shot or two.
He ejected the charge pack and reached for the replacement he’d taken from the dead Zuul corporal.
It was a simple action, but he made a hash of it. He pitched forward, head over feet.
Panicking, he tried to correct his positioning by flailing one arm, but only made matters worse, sending himself into a confusing tumble. His tether had been shot through.
Already, his head was pointing at the deck and still he was tumbling.
There was a lot of noise rising from Deck 14. Headed his way.
Branco flung his rifle forward, keeping a tight grip, speeding up his angular momentum. Then he finished the task of locking in the fresh magazine and mashing the charge control stud.
&nbs
p; The rifle hummed as the chemicals mixed within the mag, providing the fuel for the laser.
The fresh attack started up the ladderwell. Alien voices snapped and clicked words his pinplants wouldn’t translate. Whatever was coming, it wasn’t Human.
And when Branco finished tumbling all the way over, he’d be facing them just in time to slice them open, same as he had with the Zuul.
Hopefully.
But they were much faster than the Zuul.
They flew out of the opening from Deck 14 while he was still mid-tumble. Unlike the Zuul, there was a complex choreography to their assault that was almost balletic. Tentacle-limbs encased in flexible armored pressure suits pushed off from solid surfaces and were even sucked through the air onto bulkheads if Branco’s eyes didn’t deceive him.
They were Goltar, the mysterious silent owners of his merc company, and maybe allies now in the Human fight against Peepo and the Mercenary Guild. And they were fast.
One appeared over his head, gripping his shoulders with several limbs while threatening him with a bone pistol and a vibroblade coated in gobbets of blue Zuul blood. Through the contact, he felt a deep rumble in its octopus-like body. Its blood-red beak snapped.
Then it switched to speaking Jeha, a language his pinplants could translate, though the augmentations planted long ago in his mind burned as he activated them.
“What are you?” it demanded, the words appearing in English in his pinview, a HUD that overlaid his natural vision.
“He’s with us,” said a Human voice.
I’ll never leave you.
That voice, even amplified through CASPer speakers, he’d recognize it anywhere. Sun.
He should have been excited, invigorated by the prospect of seeing her again, but fatigue slammed into him harder than a CASPer’s fist. Pinpricks of exhaustion shuttered his eyes.
There was still a job to do. He forced his eyelids to open.
“What’s our status?” he asked.
A Mk 8 CASPer floated out of the ladderwell. “The battle? You just helped mop up the last of them. We’re done here. Everyone, this here is Saisho Branco. Used to be one of our finest CASPer troopers, but he’s been unconscious since Rakbutu-Tereus. Go, report to the Top. I’ll get Branco back up to speed.”
More of the 800-kilo machines of death and destruction flowed from the deck below. Following the Goltar along the passageway, the mechs did the mag-clamp stomp, clumsy metal monsters in comparison with the fluidity of their alien allies. Branco would have rather been inside the layers of hybrid nano-structure armor, ready to service his enemies with a 25mm chain gun belt-linked to a drum on his back, or maybe slice them apart with a titanium-edged four-foot arm blade.
The Combat Assault System, Personal. A mechanized killing system that had defined most of Branco’s life. As the CASPer squad surged past him, he was comforted by the presence of the mech killing machines. He’d grown up amongst them. Literally.
He’d been a corporate spy for Binnig, the creators of all but the first model of CASPer. Saisho Branco was a fake identity with a false set of memories burned into his head for a mission chasing stolen CASPer prototypes. That mission had led him to an F11 synthesis research project and a collision with the Midnight Sun Free Company. He’d taken their job offer and started adding real memories to the false ones.
Whoever he’d once been, he no longer cared. Saisho Branco was real now. It was all he wanted to be.
One Mk 8 remained behind. The woman inside was the real reason Branco hadn’t been flushed away by the Binnig neuro techs and replaced with another hollow mask for his next assignment.
He looked down at his rotted leg stumps.
Why hadn’t they been regrown? Would he ever again feel the comfort of a CASPer haptic suit wrap around him?
The deck started spinning again. Pseudo-gravity reasserted its hold and dropped him into the CASPer’s unyielding metal arms.
He groaned with pain.
Sun set him down and popped open her clamshell canopy.
She was smiling as she clambered down the mech’s legs and jumped to the deck, but Branco could see it was fake. This wasn’t as simple as lovers reuniting.
For a moment, she hesitated, then she dropped the smile and let the horror flow out of her face at his bloodied and diseased state.
Sun rarely bothered to hide what she felt about him. Or anything else, for that matter. With so much in his life a constructed artifice, it was one of the things he liked most about her.
“You’ve seen better days, Saisho.”
“Tell me about it.” He brightened, genuinely. “But I’m better for seeing your face, Sun. You’ve no idea how good it is to see you, but…you said I’m a former trooper. What does that mean? How long have I—”
“You been out for nearly four months.”
Branco blinked, struggling to take in the news.
“You’ve been missing out on the Human war with Peepo.” Sun’s face soured, and she added darkly, “So have we.”
“Four months?” His mouth froze into an ‘O’ as he looked at her in horror.
At the end of the Raknar job, Sun had finally broken down and told him she loved him. Just that one time. In extreme circumstances when they’d both thought they were about to die. And now he learned that was months ago!
“I sat with you,” she said, pain limning her eyes. “Every day I was aboard, I held your hand and told you to keep fighting.”
“I—” He thought back to his nightmare dreamscapes in which she’d always fought alongside him. “I know,” he said. “Thank you.”
She kissed him. The heat in her lips was as warm as honeyed lava and powerful enough to burn out any malady. Even his. But it wasn’t quite enough to mask the peculiar clicking noise just below his left ear.
And the sharp pain in his neck that followed was impossible to ignore.
“Oww! What’s that? What’s happ…en…ing…?”
“Later,” said Sun. “I promise. I said I won’t leave you, and I meant it. Later, Branco. Later. When you’re better.”
The universe went black.
This time, Branco didn’t dream.
He was trapped in oblivion.
* * * * *
Chapter Three
CIC, Midnight Sun, Orbital Dock above Tivarec, Victric System.
“Multiple ships leaving emergence point at high velocity. Looks like a battle formation.”
Already cocooned in her acceleration bubble, Captain Blue licked her lips in anticipation of the dance that was about to begin. With one part of her mind, she ran a series of checks: the status of all three fusion reactors, the readiness of the duty D-Clocks, the configuration of the eight plasma torch outlets on her spherical hull, the vital signs of her Human sister, Sun, and a host of other critical details that had to be checked, not assumed.
The XO, Commander Flkk’Sss was off duty, so Blue also second-guessed the analysis of her duty tactical controller, Lieutenant Konchill. TacCon’s role was to coordinate implementation of the battle plan so the individual system controllers could focus on their specialties and the captain could concentrate on making the command decisions.
It was hardly her fault for looking over Konchill’s shell, she told herself, seeing as all the sensor and tactical data ran through her before the Bakulu officer and the other system controllers even saw it.
The spy drones Blue had scattered around the emergence point were painting the incoming flotilla as four cruisers in a square formation inside a box of eight frigates, the latter probably acting as a missile screen. In the lead was a battlecruiser with heavily reinforced front armor. It looked like a modified KL-class ship.
She decided the Midnighters would take out the battlecruiser first. It would be a tough nut to crack, but before her teams boarded, she intended to destroy the enemy’s will to fight.
“I am designating them bandits 1 through 13,” said Konchill.
A pang of adrenaline shot through Blue’s heart as she watche
d the icons in her tactical display shift from yellow to red. Konchill would barely notice the display changing color. For him, the main plot change would be with their scent.
Another jolt of excitement thrilled Blue as her battle playlist opened up in her head. It was a two-hour medley of 20th-century aggro metal performed by Altar musicians, kicking off with “Fight Fire with Fire.”
It was time to play the game. But first, she switched her playlist to shuffle mode. There was no way this was going to last two hours.
“All hands, this is the captain. Battle stations! Battle stations! Midnight Sun will execute Plan Mechanix. I repeat, Plan Mechanix. May the gods have mercy upon our enemy’s souls and make our yacks bloat with combat bonuses.”
Cheers rang throughout the ship.
Then the Midnighters put on their game faces and readied for battle.
As Helm cut the mooring links to the orbital station—all port fees having been paid in advance, and an exit path reserved for their exclusive use at great cost—Blue activated the command channel. “Report.”
“D-Clocks 3 through 5 are ready for launch,” reported her marine commander, Colonel Goz-Han. “D-Clock 2 on two-minute standby. Do I deploy them?”
Blue hesitated. The tactical team was still plotting vectors, so she went on gut feel. Not hers—well a little—but mostly the ship’s. “Negative. We don’t have time. Keep D-Clock 2 on standby.”
“Exiting slip,” announced Helm. “Slow ahead.”
“Captain, I’m four minutes from the secondary CIC,” reported the XO.
“Sorry, Commander,” Blue pinlinked to the MinSha. “You’re too late. Return to the nearest compatible acceleration station and sit this one out. Konchill’s in safe hands. He needs to come out of his shell, in any case.”
Blue’s pinview highlighted a med-status warning from one of the marines in D-Clock Flight Five. Inside boarding pod 5/1, stress levels blipped into the red for Major Sun Sue.
Endless Night (The Guild Wars Book 3) Page 3
