The end of the Scorpion’s arm was obliterated in a hail of metal debris and flash-frozen vapor.
Human operators drove their CASPers via a haptic suit that translated their movements to the exoskeleton. The flesh arm didn’t extend the full length of the metal one, but Branco’s hope that the driver was unhurt was dashed when blood sprayed out of the blasted arm.
With a deep sigh, Branco advanced on the Scorpion to finish the job of disabling it with the blade he flicked out of its sheath on his left arm.
The Scorpion wasn’t done yet. The blood spray ceased, and the CASPer tilted toward Branco, the 20mm autocannon on its shoulder trying to track him through the electromagnetic hash. Surely the Scorpion wouldn’t be so mad as to fire such a weapon inside the ship compartment?
Branco wasn’t taking any chances. He dove away, quickly disappearing from the Scorpions’ sight. Before Branco could close from a new direction, Tatterjee plugged the CASPer with rounds from his hypervelocity pistol, which was almost as long as the little alien’s arm.
“Don’t worry your pretty human head,” said Tatterjee. “Nonlethal rounds. Just like the boss ordered.”
The Scorpion CASPer floated lifelessly through the hold. It was impossible for Branco to tell whether the wearer was dead, or the suit was just immobilized. Then smoke started venting from one of the shoulder joints, followed by intense blue sparks.
Branco decided it would be better to believe the Flatar for now.
Over by the hold door, their lifting platform had arrived. Keiko and a pair of Zuul were firing their jets to brake it and deliver it below the Raknar.
The hold was secure now. Branco left Keiko to her job and activated his laser. He could feel its whine through his gauntlets as its capacitors charged from his main fuel cell, ready to unleash 18.2 megawatts in short cyclic bursts.
Part of the intense training in prepping for this mission had been learning to use his laser as a cutting tool, without slicing through whatever was behind what he was trying to cut. He set to work burning through the restraints to free the Raknar.
Lying on its back with hands crossed over its torso, it looked to Branco like a warrior from an immense alien race at repose in its burial tomb. The thought made him hesitate. The dead might not look kindly upon those who woke them from their rest.
He shook away the thought. His comrades were counting on him to work fast.
In just four minutes, the team cut through Raknar-Gamma’s restraints, slid the lifting platforms beneath it, and lashed the ancient mecha in place. They were running ahead of schedule, and they’d even found time to verify that the wounded Scorpions were not in need of immediate medical attention.
He’d been wrong. No one had died here today.
It seemed too good to be true.
It was.
That was when the Scorpions counter-attacked.
* * * * *
Chapter 22
“Go! Go! Go!” shouted Jamie Sinclair into the squad net, his heart pulsing with excitement, and a cold sweat of fear soaking into the back of his haptic suit.
The breach team kicked out the hole they’d cut in the hold’s forward bulkhead and lit up their jumpjets, shooting off out of sight and into the unknown.
Jamie and Private Jarvis stepped up to the breach. They were next.
With those damned Midnight scunners fritzing every piece of electronics on the ship, Jamie had no idea what he’d be flying into. At least no missiles, particle beams, or laser blasts had found them yet.
“Clear!” he warned to anyone thinking of wandering behind his jets. Any invader caught in the way of the machine gun mounted on his left arm, or the knife blade in his right, would not receive any such warning.
He thought of home. Of easy days with no responsibilities, tramping over the Lochaber mountains filled with the scent of sweet summer heather, the prospect ahead of a lochside pub dinner and beers with his mates. It was a practiced memory, the command that would trigger the neural program to keep his mind clear and nimble. Covered by Jarvis, he was to fly in and take a command position under the partial cover of a support rib near the overhead. As the Scorpion pincer streamed in through both the forward bulkhead and the matching breach that should have been opened in the aft equivalent, he would assess the tactical situation and direct his Scorpions to clear the invaders from the Arashi Nova.
Jamie had to be ready for anything.
His CASPer trembled as he gave an extended burst from his jets and shot out through the breach.
Oh, man! He swallowed hard as he surveyed his surroundings. I didna expect that!
The worm camera they’d drilled through the bulkhead had shown the hold was filled with smoke, but that hadn’t prepared Jamie for the intensity of the hellish clouds. Sights, sounds, radar, lidar, IR – every sense was instantly sucked away, plunging him into utter isolation. The universe ended with the outer skin of his CASPer. Beyond that…nothing.
Jarvis should be only a few feet away but might as well have jumped to another galaxy. Jamie risked lighting his exterior floodlights, but the smoke fought back like a heavy sea mist, the light scattering and reflecting in a glare that blinded him.
He killed the light and thought of lochsides and heather. Dad always said it was in tight spots that you proved what you were worth. They were Sinclair’s Scorpions, and he was a Sinclair. They would win this.
Cycling his suit through communications modes, he finally got a signal through to Jarvis via a short-range microwave beam.
“Jarvis, cut your velocity.”
“Already on it, sir.”
“…hear me. Come in…me. Come in.”
The noisy signal resolved into clarity. It was McDonnell and Byng, the breach team.
“Sinclair here. I read you, McDonnell.”
“We’re coming back.”
Before he could reply, a projectile slammed into the back of Sinclair’s CASPer, knocking him out of contact with the others. The status board showed green – his suit function was unimpaired.
With a controlled series of jet bursts, he dodged around whatever had hit him. When a shape resolved out of the smoke, he grabbed it instinctively, and found he was holding onto a CASPer foot – a foot that tried to kick him off, but that only resulted in the two of them spinning around in the smoke.
“Sorry, sir,” said a woman’s voice he knew well.
“Mayfleet?”
“Aye, sir.”
This was hopeless. He could see one upside-down leg and hear Mayfleet’s voice, but the merc didn’t even register in his HUD.
“Keep with me,” he ordered Mayfleet and towed her back to his previous location, where he re-established a net of sorts by bouncing microwave beams off the suits that were still invisible in the damned smoke.
“Everyone back to the breach. So they made us look like numpties, but remember this – they’ve blinded themselves too.”
The thought made him pause. It made sense for the invaders to use the cover of decompression followed by smoke to cover their assault, but not this thick soup that would clog the battlespace permanently until the hold was re-pressurized and air circulated through the scrubbers. Why indeed, unless Blue was trying to avoid a blood feud? But it was far too late to play nice now.
“Triskelia formation,” he told any Scorpions in range. “Reform at the breach in Triskelia. Pass it on. Mayfleet, Jarvis, with me. I’ll play shover.”
Triskelia was a specialist formation out of the Scorpions’ extensive drill book. Troopers assembled in trios, feet almost touching as they faced out from a central point to cover every direction in the threat sphere that surrounded them. One trooper, the shover, imparted thrust to set them on their course before joining the Triskelia, an operation that had to be repeated whenever they hit a barrier. They’d be bouncing death bombs that would carve a channel through the invaders, shooting and slicing at anything that didn’t yell the recognition code on the microwave channel.
“Just in case anyone’s in
doubt,” Jamie added. “Weapons free. Blades out. We’re at war, and those Midnight scunners have chosen the wrong side. Kill them. Kill them all!”
* * * * *
Chapter 23
Saisho Branco had done more in the segment of his life he could remember than most managed in a hundred lifetimes, but he’d never attempted anything like this. He’d cursed the heavy mass of the lifting equipment as they’d hauled it through the black to the Arashi Nova, but now that Shock Squad was shifting Raknar-Gamma across the short distance to the bay doors, the lifting platforms, clamps, and outboard ion engines seemed woefully inadequate.
The inert mecha had the mass of a laden dropship and was much longer. Initially an engineer by training, Branco thoroughly understood the principles of turning moments and impetus, but there was a universe of difference between principles and the reality of shifting a 100-foot Raknar.
Already, they’d miscalculated the load. He’d had to brace against a stanchion with the rest of the squad and push back against the floating Raknar that was swinging into the superstructure head first. He suspected the bulkhead would have come out worse in the impact than the cockpit, but they’d managed to limit the crash to a gentle nudge. But the squad had taken its first casualty. Corporal ‘Cleggy’ Oranjeklegg’s foot had been trapped by the Raknar and snapped off. Luckily it was only the suit that was broken. The human inside was uninjured, and his suit resealed.
The bay doors were only thirty feet away, but not only was that the longest thirty feet Branco had ever seen, but the Raknar was currently on a vector drifting away from the doors and complicating its removal by a head-over-ass tumble that was so slow you could barely see it, but still carried the angular momentum of a small asteroid.
The good news was that Raknar-Gamma was last out the doors, and the Alpha and Beta teams were proving more adept at maneuvering their loads. The bad news was they’d be last out, and it looked like they’d be exiting under fire.
Branco kept half his attention on the left side of his display, which showed the tactical situation in the hold. He’d watched the Scorpion counterattack falter in the smoke and regroup by their entry points. Then, to his dismay, they’d formed little clusters and launched themselves at the Midnighter teams. They were floating down to the deck in silence like an early winter’s snowfall over Copenhagen. Except these snowflakes were trios of 1000 pound heavily-armed mercenaries with a score to settle.
This could get tricky.
He pinged his squad leader. “Sergeant, permission to shoot to kill?”
“I’m awfully sorry, Branco, but the boss says no. And I say stop crapping yourself over those prancing haggis stuffers and do your damned job.”
“But those Scorpions aren’t gonna hold back with us.”
“Neither will I if you don’t shut up. Let’s get this Raknar leveled out so we can all get the hell outta here.”
“Attention, Shock Squad,” said Major Sun. Her voice, attenuated through the low-bandwidth radar link, sounded like a toy robot. “Incoming hostiles. Evade. Get that Raknar out of their path.”
Albali hesitated, presumably weighing up his chances. “Negative, Major. Can’t do it. We’ll set the Raknar into a spin if we try.”
“Understood,” Sun replied. “Vengeance, move to assist Shock.”
“Branco,” called the sergeant. “To me. We need to hold hands.”
The two met and touched fingertips, which reestablished a full-bandwidth squad net link. Sergeant Albali painted a target trajectory onto Branco’s HUD that would sweep into the Scorpions from below, smashing them back toward the overhead.
“Congratulations, Branco. You get to play cannonball.”
Branco raced to obey. Unlike the coasting Scorpions, his HUD showed not only the layout of the hold, but the position of everyone inside, friend and foe. Which was just as well, because he was about to shoot at speed into an impenetrable fog.
He hit his jets, barreling along the path Albali had assigned, flying just a few feet above the deck. If you can’t just blast a tight defensive formation into plasma, the best way to defeat it was to break it up, and this was going to work on momentum alone. He ignored the critically low jump juice warning and opened his throttle to the max.
With skillful application of the jets, he spun around without losing momentum to come in feet first. He let out his breath and braced for impact. This would be brutal.
The amorphous radar signature he was leading began to resolve into details. A second before intercept, as he readied to adjust his angle of attack, he finally saw what he was flying into.
Three CASPers. And one was facing him with a combat blade pointed…right between his legs.
He was about to impale himself!
* * * * *
Chapter 24
Branco’s mind filled with the white noise of sheer panic, but his body responded on instinct and training, twisting desperately away from that blade. By luck or instinct – he couldn’t tell – he edged sideways past the sword, missing it by a fraction of an inch. His shoulder slammed into the torso of the Scorpion who wielded it, throwing Branco hard against his harness, sending the other two Scorpions spinning away and driving his target away from the deck and up into the hold’s interior.
“You dirty bag of pus,” said the Scorpion as they grappled, his suit speakers vibrating against Branco’s CASPer, making his voice sound impossibly distant but clear enough to identify him as a Scot. “Hold still so I can gut you.”
Branco was too scared to reply, and too busy wrestling with the enemy merc, who was trying to bring his sword out from where it was wedged between their cockpits and swing its point into Branco’s back. So far he was disrupting the attacks by elbowing the other CASPer’s arm. It wasn’t pretty, but the blade was scoring the front of Branco’s armor rather than piercing it.
But that wasn’t all the Scorpion was doing. The merc was firing his jets. Already, they were slowing. And Branco had no response to that. He’d emptied his tank in his cannonball attack.
Without visual references other than the endless smoke, his mind was convinced they weren’t moving, but the tactical grid told him the Scorpion was now pushing him down to the deck.
He needed to get free, but if they separated, the Scot would blast him with the machine gun mounted on his other arm. And if he didn’t, the descent would turn into a death dive from which the Scorpion could dodge away at the last moment, but Branco could not.
For fanden! The Devil! He was royally screwed.
But a huge shape loomed out of the smoke and wrapped inhuman limbs around the Scottish merc, pinning the CASPer’s arms and keeping the sword out of Branco’s guts. The Tortantula had her own jetpack with ample reserves of fuel.
“Thanks, Betty. Tatterjee, you gonna use your EMP bullets or what?”
“I’m not doing your job for you, human,” came a translated voice out of the fog. “Earn your own pay.”
Fine! Branco grabbed one of the EMP limpet mines from his hip and stuck it on the inside of the Scorpion’s shoulder joint. From there it sent semi-random electrical discharges and EM bursts that were specifically designed to compromise the MK 8’s internal systems, with help from a little insider knowledge from the ex-Binnig employee.
The Scorpion’s suit died, and Branco kicked him away in disgust, watching the CASPer swallowed by the smoke. It’d be better to shoot the man dead, he thought. Stuck in a dead suit to float blind and helpless through vacuum is a cruel way to die.
“Shock Squad,” said Sun via the radar window, “abandon Raknar-Gamma and join Vengeance on overwatch. Gold Squad, you’re to release Raknar-Beta to Lightning once out of the Nova, then return to retrieve Gamma.”
With more Scorpion trios inbound but not yet a present danger, Sergeant Albali summoned Shock Squad into a huddle so he could issue detailed instructions over full squad net.
He never got a chance to start.
“Belay my last order,” said Sun. “Shock Squad will take up an outwar
d-facing defensive posture by the hold doors. Gold and Lightning will halt their Raknar and join the defense of the outer doors. Detritus team, if you’re listening in, get ready to seal the hold to space on my signal.”
Branco expanded his tactical view to include the zone outside the Nova’s hull.
For freaking fanden!
Hostiles were approaching from the outside. Scores of them. The Midnighters were outnumbered.
An unencrypted signal pushed into the outer reaches of the smoke-filled hold. “This is Colonel SantoPietro of the Condottieri. Disable your weapons and surrender immediately, or you will die.”
Branco looked up at the open doors, looking for Sun and finding her marked in his HUD with the rest of her command section. They were stranded on the outside of the Nova’s hull, barely armed and armored. She didn’t stand a chance.
* * * * *
Chapter 25
“If you wanted to hold me,” quipped Keiko, “you only had to ask.”
Branco was clinging onto his squadmate’s CASPer, his suit’s hands and knees pressed hard against her torso as her jets propelled them both to the hold doors.
“I’m out of jump juice,” he reminded her. “Partly to keep up with you on the way in.”
“The devil takes the hindmost, Branco. Remember that.”
Keiko juked when the smoke around them flashed with red fingers of death – the advancing Condottieri firing lasers into the ship. The smoke was thinning as they neared the doors, which made the incoming laser beams appear to lessen in intensity. But with less smoke to scatter the coherent light into random noise, the more the beams dimmed, and the deadlier they became.
“Anyway,” Keiko pressed while she dodged the beams. “It’s entirely my fault you’re so helpless.”
The Midnight Sun (The Omega War Book 2) Page 9