Repercussions
Page 34
Later, Kenaz was on his third watch rotation in the core. He checked over the optical sensor coverage one more time and found everything operating normally. They were still boosting, so he wasn’t in freefall, as was normal in the core. An attack while they were boosting wasn’t as likely as when they were coasting, but you never knew when some yahoo would decide to get froggy.
explained Kenaz.
Dodson chuckled.
declared Kenaz.
“Anything out there but ice and vacuum?” Juergens asked as he walked into the control room.
“Nothing to report, and all sensors are green,” replied Kenaz.
“Alright, I have the watch. Do me a favor and bring me a couple of bacon and tomato sandwiches and maybe a couple of pickles on the side. Don’t you dare put any lettuce on there.”
“Who am I to put lettuce on a bacon and tomato sandwich? Can’t have you eating a BLT like the rest of the Sol System.”
“I still remember when you hid some arugula on one. It took me two days to get that bad gasket taste out of my mouth.”
“Just trying to expand your culinary horizons, Juergens.”
“You’ve expanded them enough for this trip. Heavy on the mayo.”
Kenaz just rolled his eyes and headed for the galley.
Four days later, the burn was complete, and everybody within four AU probably knew where they were, where they were headed, and approximately how much mass they were bringing in. So far, their scans had come back clean, but they still had a ninety-day transit before they’d be close enough to New Pottstown to holler for help if they needed it.
Out here, they were a law unto themselves, which was literally true of Dodson, who held a Justice of the Peace warrant that was recognized by most of the Scattered Worlds Alliance.
Claim jumpers and pirates were automatically shot on sight, and some of them had rewards out on them. The tension amped up now that they were flying ballistic—matching velocities between the two ships would be much easier without thrust in play. They still had a correction burn, which left them destination options, and a deceleration burn to go. For a good while they would be sitting ducks, at least in appearance.
Beads was on duty when one of the optical sensors threw an alarm. She let Dodson notify the rest of the crew while she located the anomaly. The sensor indicated occlusion of three separate stars in a line, and navigation NSAI gave back a ninety percent probability of man-made object on an intercept course.
“What have we got?” asked O’Bannon as he floated into the control room.
“It’s very strange, no burn detected, but something out there is attempting intercept.”
“Dodson?”
“No, let’s let them think we’re none the wiser. Do you have an ETA, Beads?”
“Give me a few more seconds…. Looks like they’ll be in place for a zero delta-v intercept in about thirty minutes. I work it out to a distance of about a kilometer when that happens.”
“Okay, condition Alpha, deployment plan Mentor. Let’s get ready to school these ice thieves!”
rejoined Dodson with an electronic chuckle.
Beads and Juergens went to the cargo lock to armor up, while Captain O’Bannon and Siobahn loaded themselves down with extra power packs and stun grenades. They headed for the hub where they could quickly move to the hab ring or the cargo hatch as needed. Once Juergens and Beads were ready, they eased the sled through the ES shield and carefully maneuvered to the far side of their ice mountain from the visitor and tethered to a strand of the cargo net to wait. Kenaz rechecked his armor and weapons in the control room, then took in the optical display of the presupposed enemy ship. He ran infrared enhancement and everything else he could think of, but it wouldn’t resolve. According to the plot, though, it was right on target for the one kilometer distant intercept.
The captain cleared his throat.
Guess I’ll have to give my pre-combat jitters a different outlet, thought Kenaz.
He checked his loadout for the hundredth time, loosened his pulse pistol in its holster ,and came back to the scan display. IR finally picked up the heat of braking thrusters, and the ship hit its parking spot just as Beads had predicted. Immediately, several matte black figures separated from the ship and came drifting toward the Madre De Hielo.
Dodson updated the crew.
Siobahn was the smallest of the crew and a master at navigating the hub and spokes of the hab ring. Her spoke lap record had never been touched. She was about to run circles around the intruders.
Kenaz felt an overwhelming sense of helplessness as three of the lightly armored intruders cycled through the hab ring lock, and a group of six entered the cargo bay lock through the ES field. He knew the crew was up for this, but his nerves still skittered about like a daddy long legs.
Siobahn had visual contact with the hab ring invaders. She started to check in when the situation went pear-shaped.
; Kenaz and every other member of the crew tried to grab their head and get rid of the distilled sorrow, anguish and loneliness beating at them over the Link. He felt like his soul was being torn to pieces and ripped out through the connection to his brain.
The white noise of a high-power link jammer momentarily cut in, then the Link went mercifully dead. Tears running down his cheeks, Kenaz realized that the automatic cutoff on the Link had been tripped. A blinking message in his helmet’s HUD reminded him to switch to voice backup.
Thanks to the captain’s insistence on redundancy, they had voice comms on an ancient radio frequency in case the Link went down.
“What in the stars was that?” Siobahn gasped over the radio net.
“They have an AI that suborned the Link somehow. I don’t think it is entirely sane. I’m keeping the Link offline for now,” replied Dodson via voice radio. “Everyone check in.”
“Beads and Juergens shaken but not stirred and we’re still ready to execute.”
“Siobahn in Hydroponics 4. The lock just cycled the other three into the hab ring. Execute phase II.”
“O’Bannon at the hatch to the cargo bay. All six intruders are in the bay, and two are working on the interior hatch.”
The captain held on as Dodson pivoted the rig to put the ice between the intruders’ ship and Madre De Hielo’s core. At the same time, the AI unleashed a storm of nano onto the armored figures in the cargo bay.
The intruders had set off an EMP pulse grenade to guard against just such an attack when they entered, but unfortunately for them, Dodson was holding nano in several shielded compartments, waiting for the right moment. Now, as O’Bannon peered through the port, one by one, the figures locked up in place as Dodson took control of their outdated armor.
Satisfied that the AI had the group in the cargo bay in hand, the captain pushed off back down the passage to see if Siobahn needed any help. He got to the ring hub just in time to see her come flying out of Spoke Four, hollering like a banshee.
She rolled out of the way, braced herself against the hub wall, and gave the captain a quick thumbs-up. She waited until miscreant number one stuck his helmet into the inner ring space, and then coldly gave him three pulse shots in the faceplate before he could clear his weapon from the passage. He fell back slightly, shaking his head to clear the field of circling stars, when Siobahn’s boot crushed the fingers grasping the top rung of the ladder. To emphasize her point, she braced her hands at the top of the inner ring space and gave him a two-boot assist back down the spoke, followed by several pulse blasts in the confined space.
The screams and crashes as he took his companion out on the way down were music to her ears. She grinned at the captain, then dove back down the spoke to finish the job.
O’Bannon shook his head with a grin of his own. He hadn’t had a chance to join in the butt-kicking that Siobahn was handing out, but he was pretty sure his turn would come.
He turned back toward the passage to the cargo bay, peering around the corner carefully, then started as he heard a loud thunk from that direction. When he reached the end of the passage, he listened before looking through the port, but didn’t see or hear anything other than the frozen figures of the boarders in their armor. After easing through the entrance to the cargo bay, he quickly began disarming the helpless figures.
He was prying a rail gun away from one of them, while trying to keep an eye on the ES shield, when something grabbed his left arm in a crushing grip.
Hollering in surprise and pain, O’Bannon dropped his pulse gun and swung into his attacker, drawing his lightwand with his right hand as he did. His wild swing went right through the figure’s neck joint, and their helmet went flying.
Unfortunately, his opponent didn’t seem to need a head to fight.
The hand gripping his arm tightened further and smashed him twice against the armor of the thief he’d been disarming. Finally, he was able to lop the arm holding him off at the elbow and push away from his adversary. He stared in horror as the headless figure walked toward him, reaching out with its remaining arm.
“I’m having a difficult time with that one, Captain,” Dodson called over the radio.
“You’re having a ‘difficult time’?” the Captain panted as he back-pedaled on his magboots and dodged the oncoming apparition. “This thing about scared me to Jupiter and back. What is it?”
“The AI polluting our Link is in that suit of armor in a small mobile frame. It’s keeping my nano at bay, but doesn’t seem to have a particular goal other than mayhem. If you can extract its core and/or destroy its Link hardware, I can re-establish normal comms,” Dodson replied.
Without hesitation, O’Bannon advanced with his lightwand and performed a rapid disassembly of the AI’s remaining armor joints. Locating its core in the center of the internal frame’s chest, he severed all connections, meat-axe style, and pulled it out of its housing. He never again wanted to experience what he had felt over the Link, so he wasn’t particularly gentle when disconnecting the Link-enabling hardware from the AI’s core.
He tucked the core into a cargo pocket and turned back toward the hatch just in time to catch a powered armor backhand to the side of his helmet that turned out the lights.
“Link is re-established. You may reinitialize,” Dodson broadcast to the crew.
As he regained his wits, Captain O’Bannon straightened slowly and rotated his neck, trying to get the kinks out. He hadn’t taken a shot like that in a long time. He looked toward the open passage leading to the core of the rig and saw a power armored figure heading toward Kenaz and Dodson. The pulse cannon turret in the passage was firing, but it barely slowed the enemy.
The captain grabbed an anti-armor grenade and launched himself down the passage. His adversary easily beat him to the core, and the hatch banged shut in his face. He frantically tried to open the hatch, but the scumsucker in front of him had jammed it and bent the dogs. He watched helplessly through the portal as the hulking black armored figure planted a boot on either side of the hatch and launched itself at a wide-eyed Kenaz.
Kenaz ducked a blow meant to take his head off, grabbed the armored wrist and pulled himself around onto the intruder’s armored back. Locking his legs around the figure’s waist and an arm around its neck, he drew a vibro-blade and frantically sawed at the neck joint of the space armor. His enemy’s response was to push off hard and smash Kenaz between his back and the bulkhead.
Kenaz’s armor took the worst of the punishment, but the vibro-blade went spinning away. He floated there, stunned, until his adversary grabbed him by the wrist and threw him into the other bulkhead. Kenaz managed to tuck and more evenly distribute the impact, but hung there stunned and motionless.
O’Bannon watched in horror as the enemy flipped open the non-descript panel that covered Dodson’s housing. It should have been locked down tight.
The figure stuck its armored gauntlet down into the housing, apparently intent on ripping Dodson’s core out physically. Suddenly he jerked a bit, trying to straighten. His other hand waved and his feet kicked, but only momentarily, as everything seemed to lock into position. Before the captain’s eyes, a coating of frost formed all over the enemy’s armor.
He wasn’t entirely certain of what he had just seen.
CLOSING THE DEAL
STELLAR DATE: 06.05.4127
LOCATION: Ice mining rig Madre De Hielo
REGION: Deep in the Scattered Disk, 200+ AU from Sol
Beads was ready as the ice mountain beneath them pivoted. At just the right moment, she released them from the cargo net, using their momentum to send
them directly toward the stealthed ship.
Before long, they were approaching the enemy ship. As it resolved in their vision, they realized this was no ordinary claim jumper’s ride. It had sleek, deadly lines that shouted military. At only about one hundred meters in length, it wasn’t a major combat vessel, but it certainly wasn’t defenseless either.
Beads leaned back and made helmet contact with Juergens. “This isn’t going to be the usual easy smash-and-grab. Let’s see if we can find a lock that will admit us. I don’t want to use the can opener if we can help it.”
“You take all the fun out of everything. Juergens want big boom!” he replied, repacking the shaped charge he had at the ready.
“Maybe you can crack some skulls when we get inside.”
They left the sled tethered in what they hoped was a blind spot. They hadn’t been fired at on the way in, so there was still a good chance they were undetected. They found a standard looking airlock hatch midway along the hull; Beads was about to drop a nano breach package on it, when Juergens hit the cycle button on the access panel. The lock obligingly cycled the air out and opened.
Juergens made an exaggerated “you first, by all means” gesture, and Beads just shook her head and pulled herself into the lock. There was room for both of them and, surprisingly, no greeting party.
This was getting stranger all the time.
They made their way down empty corridors, toward what they believed to be the command section. Beads had just about decided that the idiots had completely abandoned the vessel, when a door opened ten meters in front of her, and the barrel of a plasma rifle poked out.