The Midnight Sun (The Omega War Book 2)

by Tim C. Taylor

  “We’ll discuss this later.”

  “Yes, Branco,” she purred seductively. “If I’ve been a bad girl, then I’ll need to make reparations.”

  “On my signal,” interrupted Sergeant Albali over the squad channel, “all laser-armed troopers will blind the Condottieri with suppressive fire. Everyone else launch missiles until we’ve brought our lost lambs back to safety. Unload your full charge into them.”

  As the enemy strike force came into clearer view, Branco realized the same inert heaps of ancient hybrid-alloys that had brought the Midnighters out on this chase were currently keeping him alive. The flock of Condottieri CASPers random walking their way could have been slicing up the hold’s interior with particle cannons and flaying everyone inside with missile barrages. But they couldn’t risk damaging the shells that had been metal super warriors eons before.

  Outnumbering the defenders about 3-to-1, all the Condottieri had to do was advance to close quarters. If the defenders wanted to shoot them down before they entered the ship, they’d have to advance to the edge of the smoke…where they’d be sliced into pieces by the incoming laser fire.

  “You shoot,” Keiko advised him. “I’ll cover you.”

  Branco let go and landed on the side of a waist-high metal control console bank, slightly aft of the hold doors. He took a knee and brought up his laser rifle while Keiko grabbed his laser shield and added it to her own, standing over him like a heavy metal guardian angel.

  Low-g combat without any means of propulsion was tough. Inside a metal suit of powered armor without jump juice meant you relied utterly on your buddies if you were to have any chance of surviving. Good job his shieldmaiden wanted him alive for a private after-action review, but it wasn’t only incoming fire that could kill him. The Exuberance’s spin exerted a centrifugal force down to the Nova’s stern, but the hold doors opened out from its belly. That meant the bolts fixing the console platform to the hull were supporting two thousand pounds of merc and metal. It was less than 1-gee here, but if the bolts snapped, Branco would fall all the way down to the aft bulkhead, 300 feet away. He didn’t fancy his chances of survival.

  As he lined up for a volley of laser shots, Keiko’s shields flashed, deflecting three laser beams. A smoking black hole through the platform, an inch from Branco’s knee, showed where one deflection had ended up.

  “Ready!” warned Albali.

  With a screech of dying metal, Branco felt a shift under his feet.

  One of the console’s bolts popped out of the deck.

  “On it,” said Keiko and jumped a short distance off the console, maintaining her position with micro-pulses from her jets.

  “Standby…” said Albali.

  “Thanks,” Branco whispered to Keiko on a private channel.

  “You can show your appreciation later,” she laughed as her shields flared again.

  While he waited for his sergeant’s signal, Branco’s mind drifted for an instant toward Juliana Keiko and her raunchy invitation. She was as hot as a plasma torch and wilder than a hungry Tortantula in a butcher’s shop. Best of all, she made a thousand times more sense to be with than Sun. But the distraction lasted only a fraction of a second. There’d be plenty of time to explore thoughts of Keiko later, when they were all safe. Sun most of all.

  “Fire!” screamed Albali.

  As shoulder-mounted missiles streamed out into the black from Keiko and some of the other defenders, Branco and most of Shock Squad blinded the attackers with lasers.

  Ablative and reflective armor was so good, the key to destroying the CASPers with laser weapons was to focus all the gun’s power on a tiny point, and to pulse that burst over a mere fraction of a second. After that, the laser’s capacitors would need to recharge.

  But Albali had ordered suppressive fire.

  Using the HUD reticle in the left two-thirds of his Tri-V bank, Branco fired short, aimed blasts, hitting targets on lower power and wider beam than kill shots. He aimed at where Mk 8s typically mounted front cameras.

  They were dazzling, not killing, and it must be working, because the incoming fire slackened.

  To his right, the HUD markings representing Sun and the three members of Command Section made their dash for the interior of the Nova.

  He halted for a second to glance at the right section of the Tri-V, which showed the area behind him. The Scorpions seemed to have realized their opponents weren’t blind. A few were still bouncing around, but most held positions at the farthest corners of the hold while they sent out drones to build a map of the situation. It wouldn’t be long before Shock Squad was caught in a vice between two attackers, but he could ignore the Scorpions for now.

  When he returned his attention to the Condottieri, he saw he’d misjudged their attack. Toward the rear of the formation they’d brought two support weapons that looked so bizarre that Branco instantly recognized them. None of the other Midnighters would, though, because the Dae-Hoo Industries PAC-4M microwave resonators were supposed to be top-secret prototypes…yet here they were.

  The harpoon-like firing projector looked ridiculously small in the armored gauntlets of their CASPer operators. Connected by flexible superconducting power tubes, eight armored charge packs trailed behind like an enormous halo, ejecting little puffs of reaction gas as they automatically kept pace with the operator while keeping slack in the power tubes.

  The energy these beasts consumed was considerable. The performance specs he’d seen were based on industrial espionage, not public field trials, but they suggested a fully-charged PAC-4M could fire through a starship hull, through light personal armor, and flash heat the water in a target’s body, causing internal organs to explode out of every orifice.

  Branco upped the power to his laser and fired a micro burst at the operator’s foot. That got a reaction – the operator was probably crapping themselves when their suit registered a breach, not realizing the suit would quickly reseal such a small hole. Crucially, the merc lowered the laser shield attached to their right wrist, leaving the left hand and the firing projector vulnerable.

  Using half his remaining charge, Branco tried to slice through the PAC-4M’s barrel. He hit higher up the weapon than he’d intended, taking off several human fingers that flew off, along with gun parts and plumes of flash-frozen blood.

  Sun came screaming through the open doors flanked by her command section. “Light ’em up,” she ordered. “Detritus team, keep that door open. Wait for my signal before closing.”

  Instead of taking tactical command as Branco expected, the group flew past without slowing, shooting for some target deeper in the hold. “Betty, Tatterjee,” Sun shouted, “with me.”

  The fire from the defenders intensified, but Branco had eyes only for the second PAC-4M and its operator, who’d seen what had happened to the other operator. The gun turned to aim at Branco, but before he boiled inside his CASPer, he aimed his laser to slice the tip off the microwave resonator’s barrel.

  The operator was smart, leaning forward to cover the weapon with his laser shield. The beam of coherent light from Branco’s rifle flashed and reflected harmlessly. Undamaged, the PAC-4M’s barrel pointed straight at Branco, but when the operator adjusted his shield so it could fire, the weapon took on a red glow that swiftly turned orange. Maybe some of the energy from Branco’s laser had reflected inward, or perhaps the merc was paying the price for using an experimental system, but the weapon exploded. As bangs went, Branco decided this was an absolute beauty. All eight charge units erupted as fireballs, flinging high-velocity shards of their protective armor through neighboring CASPers. Most shook off the blast, but several floated lifelessly.

  “That’s why you don’t bring prototypes to a battle,” he said in triumph to Keiko.

  When she didn’t reply, he added, “Lambs are inside. Let’s get farther back into cover.”

  The battle scene was a hash of missiles, laser blasts, and scores of maneuvering CASPers. Somehow in the mayhem he’d missed Keiko’s HUD ou
tline turn black.

  “Juliana?”

  “Leave her Branco,” Albali told him. “She’s dead. Get yourself out of there. Now!”

  But he’d left it too late. The Condottieri were beginning to stream in through the doors, and one was aiming for him, an arm outstretched and spitting bullets. He’d been hit!

  As his Tri-V screen reported the rapid degradation of his torso armor, Branco hit the floor, but the ground in this case was the side of a barely attached control console.

  The bolts fixing it to the deck gave way and Branco fell, the Condottieri’s machine gun fire raking empty space where he’d been a moment before.

  Thank you, Fate, for this rusty old ship.

  With the Condottiere slowing and turning to make sure of their victim, Branco pushed off from the deck as he fell aft.

  He’d only intended to make himself a less predictable target, but he saw an opportunity and hacked at the back of his attacker’s knee as he dropped past. The sword blade cut through the flexible rear joint of the enemy CASPer, but not the armored knee, leaving half a leg flapping.

  Then Branco was out of the immediate battlespace, falling toward a violent introduction to the aft bulkhead.

  Unfortunately, that gave him time to think.

  What was the major playing at?

  Poor Keiko had been right. If you breached a sealed vessel and entered uninvited, that’s piracy. And a lot of people didn’t look favorably upon pirates. Peacemakers, for example.

  So why hadn’t Sun closed that damned door?

  Why had Keiko needed to die?

  * * * * *

  Chapter 26

  Jamie Sinclair floated through the dark. No power. No light, except ghostly flares imagined by eyes devoid of input. No sound, except his labored breathing and mumbled curses.

  Sudden panic gripped him. He pushed uselessly against his harness…

  And then stopped.

  Labored breathing…

  That was a bad sign. The air inside his CASPer tasted stale and heavy beneath the ozone tang of whatever was disabling his suit.

  It was warm, too. With no means to radiate away his body heat into the vacuum, he was slowly cooking. Soon, that warmth would rise to oven heat.

  Which is it to be, Jamie, old boy? Death by suffocation or cooking?

  “Neither!” he yelled. “But if I do die here, Blue, I swear I’m gonna haunt your scrawny carcass for the rest of my death.”

  A buzzing.

  It was faint, but it was there, and in his prison of terrifying silence, that faint noise was a beacon of hope.

  Status lights turned on. He felt the comforting vibration of his fuel cell pumping hard to restart his CASPer.

  “Yes! Get in there! It’s payback time.”

  The Tri-V bank came online. Finally, Jamie felt properly reconnected with the universe. Admittedly, his view was still shrouded in smoke, but he could see the CASPer who’d rescued him.

  “Switch on your flashlights,” said his rescuer. Strange, because her voice came across clear through radio comms, but her suit wasn’t registering in his tactical grid.

  He hit the lights, and the powerful beams that illuminated his field of attention explained why.

  This wasn’t a CASPer.

  It was a small human female in light combat armor that bore an emblem above her left breast of a black sun wreathed in fire. When she dialed down the polarization on her plastic visor, he thought for a moment he was seeing Captain Blue. But she had hair, and those knife-edge cheekbones stretched across much darker skin. Her expression was cold and tenacious, lacking Blue’s madness and swagger.

  “Do you know who I am?” she asked.

  “You’re that mad bint’s evil twin.”

  “Close enough, Sinclair. I wish to propose a temporary alliance.”

  “My God! You’re even madder than the other one.”

  She drifted to one side and killed her lights. The fog behind her lit with lightning flashes. Energy weapons.

  “We have a common enemy,” said the Midnight Sun officer. She activated the Tri-V projector mounted on her shoulder, the kind of thing field commanders used to convey information to troopers who didn’t sit inside a tin can filled with screens. The smoky holographic image showed an attack from space. The holographic weapons fire matched the timing of the lightning flashes he could see with his own eyes. This was real.

  “Condottieri,” he growled.

  “Yes. If we do nothing, they’ll take your ship, the Raknar, and our lives. I could close the hangar door on them and return full control of your ship, but then my team would be outnumbered and at your mercy. We wouldn’t go down easily, but it’s not how I plan to die.”

  Sinclair watched the firefight grow closer, and hoped the woman was squirming with nerves.

  “What did you do to my ship?” he asked when he was good and ready.

  “elSha infiltration team.” If she was nervous, she was hiding it with ease.

  “Release the ship to me,” said Jamie, “and get the elSha off. Do that, and I give you my word that I’ll let you and your team go unharmed back to the Exuberance.”

  “Agreed.”

  “But only after you’ve paid for the damage.”

  “Agreed.”

  A Condottiere erupted from the smoke behind Sun. Sinclair pushed in front of her, deploying his laser shield just in time to deflect the beam. Simultaneously, Jamie brought his gun pod to bear and blew off the mercenary’s right arm. An extended burst to the enemy’s torso blew the CASPer spinning back into the smoke.

  “And I want you to pay all medical treatment and death benefits.”

  “Agreed.”

  Sun’s holo display was still running. It showed the Condottieri vanguard were already inside his damned ship.

  “Then we are in alliance,” he said. “Can you get a comm line to all our people through this rank fog of yours?”

  “Yes. I’ll patch you in. Standby…we’re live! This is Major Sun and Captain Sinclair to all Scorpion and Midnighter personnel. Cease firing upon each other. We’ve formed an alliance.”

  “Aye, what the wee lassie said. Don’t fire on the Midnight Scunners, but kill all Condottieri boarders. And when we’ve put paid to them, you uninvited hooligans are going to put those Raknar back where you found them and walk off my ship with your tails between your sorry legs. Right, Major?”

  “We’re leaving the Raknar behind,” Sun confirmed. “Infiltration team, close the hold doors, then release control of all ship’s systems to the Scorpions. Looks like this is one contract we won’t fulfill.”

  * * * * *

  Chapter 27

  “I want everyone in my squad to comport themselves with dignity at all times,” said Sergeant Albali. “Eyes front, shoulders back, and act like you’re about to receive a medal from the Secretary of the General Assembly of Earth, or the Queen of Denmark, or whatever fancy-titled VIP would make your mother weep with pride. In fact, imagine it’s your mother watching you, not those smug, Scottish sons and daughters of bitches.”

  “Wouldn’t it be better to laugh?” Branco suggested.

  “Do I look like I’m laughing, Denmark?”

  Branco’s eyes were closed – anything to shut out the humiliation the Scorpions were putting them through – but he didn’t need to see the sergeant. He could hear Albali forcing his words through such tightly clenched teeth that he imagined the man’s jaw could shatter any moment.

  “Sorry, Sergeant.”

  The problem with the Midnighters, Branco said to himself, is that they aren’t used to losing.

  He blew out a lengthy breath.

  In ten minutes it’ll all be over.

  But the seconds ticked away, in no hurry to end this, the most bizarre scene in human merc history.

  Flanked by armed Scorpions floating to either side of the long passageway that led to UTS Arashi Nova’s front airlock, the Midnighter task force sent to take back their owner’s Raknar lined up in single file, w
aiting for permission to return to the Exuberance.

  Tri-V screens mounted on the bulkheads captured the action at the front of the line so the jeering Scorpions further down the passageway didn’t miss any of the fun.

  A puff of chill air blasted from the ventilation unit overhead. It built to an icy wind.

  Branco bunched his fists. The Scottish bastards were freezing them on purpose. Already he could feel goosebumps on his bare skin.

  In his mind’s eye the sorry line of his comrades was turning blue with cold, their sad bodies twisting in their wretchedness.

  He opened his eyes on a reality that wasn’t quite as bad as his imagination, but the difference was marginal.

  James Sinclair had insisted the Midnighters must leave their equipment behind, and the little jerk had decided that equipment included uniforms.

  In all, forty-six Midnight personnel – mostly human – lined up in their underwear, wearing magnetic boots that stuck them to the deck. Boots provided by the Scorpions as part of the Midnighters’ reparations bill.

  The only exceptions were two troopers from Gold Squad who were in the Nova’s infirmary, too badly wounded to be moved, and the three in body bags, killed defending the hold against the Condottieri. It was some small consolation that the Scorpions would return their dead after the charade was played out with the living, and with the dignity of an honor guard.

  They’d permitted Branco to see inside the bag that held Juliana Keiko and allowed him to wipe away the worst of the blood and brains that had burst out of her nose, eyes, and ears after catching a burst from the Condottieri microwave resonator.

  His breath steamed in the cold passageway, and his resentment chilled too. How could he feel sorry for himself when Keiko’s body was still aboard?

  From his place at the back, Branco got to see the full extent of the line of humiliation stretching ahead out of sight. Only one person had a worse position. And there she was, a camera drone catching her in the Tri-V. Major Sun was at the head of the line. She looked as if being paraded in front of the jeering Scorpions was no worse than a silly and brief inconvenience.