by Jay Allan
Far less likely.
That was the problem. Righter had been neck deep in the solution for that as well, but neither he nor Andi had any idea if it would really work. Pegasus’s engine was powerful, far more so than the landing sled in pursuit. But a crash burn, underwater and a few meters from a thermonuclear warhead, was at best, a wild gamble. A hundred things could go wrong, but two of those possibilities were enough to worry about.
Would Pegasus’s massive thrust kick in soon enough to clear the blast zone, to get the ship away before the titanic explosion?
Even if the engines fired on time, would the fury of the exhaust, and the massive volume of steam it would produce, affect the torpedo, even destroy it…or perhaps worse, detonate it before its fuse had counted down?
Andi felt stress, fear…and exhilaration. There was some part of her that craved danger, that thrived on it. Her hands were gripping the armrests of her chair, and she leaned forward, a feral glint in her eye. She despised Sector Nine, and as much as she hated that her people were in such danger, part of her wouldn’t have changed anything.
Part of her wanted to flip the controls and release the torpedo.
To kill the Union bastards who were trying to kill her.
* * *
“Laser fully charged, sir. Ready to fire as soon as lock is established.”
Gabine sat, every muscle in his body tight, every nerve electric. He commanded the third team of Foudre Rouge, and that meant the others were likely to find any artifacts before his people even reached the imperial facility. They would get the credit. They would advance their careers.
Or, at least, they would get whatever rewards slipped past Aimee Boucher. In the Union, those at the top grabbed the lion’s share of the glory. But on something as important as the current mission, even the crumbs were enough to vault one to high position and wealth.
“Not yet…just a little closer.” Every fiber of his body was screaming to fire. But the water currents were too strong, the volume of water separating his ship from the target still too great. He was close, very close, but he had to cut the range even farther.
The target was about four kilometers ahead…and he going to close to less than one. At that range, the chance of the AI-assisted shot missing was less than two percent, despite the worst the wild ocean currents had to offer.
Ninety-eight percent were odds he could live with.
The ship shook hard again, four or five times in rapid succession. The data on Aquellus had been sparse, with no mention of significant volcanic activity. But he was almost certain by then that the undersea landscape was littered with them. The power and speed of the currents were two or three times the estimates, and Gabine couldn’t think of another explanation.
“Three kilometers to target.”
He checked his targeting sequence again, and then he ordered the AI to redo all of its calculations. He intended to update continuously until the instant he fired. He was going to catch any last second course changes or tricks. He didn’t know if that ship was just some prospector’s vessel…or it if was Confederation Intelligence, but one thing was certain. After he fired, and the thing sank below recoverable levels, he was damned sure going to report it as Confed spy ship. He wouldn’t be able to prove it, but no one would be able to disprove it either…and, amid the celebration of a successful mission, there would likely be little scrutiny.
“Two kilometers.”
Gabine clutched the control, his finger tightening on the firing stud. The AI would aim the shot, mostly at least. But he would actually fire the weapon. His eyes focused on the scanner, and on the increasingly erratic evasive maneuvers of the target. He didn’t know what shape the vessel’s scanners were in, but it seemed they were at least aware of his own ship’s presence. They were frantically trying to escape.
No…there is no way out, not for any of you…
Gabine had been mostly concerned with success, with gaining the rewards a successful operation would bestow, and avoiding the terrible consequences of failure. But now there was something else. He imagined the crew of that ship, and the fear descending on them. No one dedicated themselves to a career in Sector Nine without a bit of a sadistic streak, and Gabine was no different. He relished the terror of his enemies, the growing realization in their minds that they were all about to die.
That he was going to kill them.
His hand tightened, even as the AI indicator light flicked to green. The fire lock was set.
“One kilometer.”
Gabine almost pulled the trigger, but he held back for another few seconds. Then, his eyes darted to the light.
Still green.
“Time to die,” he muttered under his breath as his finger began to press down…
* * *
Now!
Andi’s hands closed around the controls, and Pegasus shook hard as the rear bay doors swung open, and an instant later, the makeshift catapult sent the torpedo flying out into the water behind the ship. It had taken everything Andi had to place so much trust in her newest comrade, and a hundred disastrous possibilities had ripped through her mind in a matter of seconds. The slightest malfunction, the most minute failure of precise calibration, and the weapon could have slammed into the bay doors rather than floating out behind her fleeing vessel.
But everything went exactly as Righter had promised.
The scanner array, what little of it was working, confirmed the torpedo was away, trailing behind Pegasus…and right in the path of the pursuing vessel.
Now, only one thing remained…to see if Pegasus’s engines could fire immediately at full power…and clear the blast zone in the twenty seconds before the warhead detonated.
Andi had no idea how far that would have to be, how much distance Pegasus needed to survive the underwater detonation, and the nightmare of steam and currents and radiation that would come billowing after them as they ran.
She’d worked up an estimate though, a scientific term she like to call…a whole hell of a lot.
“Lex…go! Full power!” She shouted into the comm unit, more her tension slipping out than any concern the engineer wouldn’t hear her.
There was no response, at least nothing verbal. But an instant later, less than a second, really, Pegasus lurched hard, and the engines roared, every millimeter of the battered ship rattling as though it was falling to pieces.
And she was slammed back into her seat hard as the engines fired, turning the sea all around into a roiling cauldron of bubbling water and billowing steam pushing relentlessly toward the distant surface…and pushing Pegasus away from the doom it had just unleashed.
Chapter Twenty-One
Unidentified Imperial Ruin
Somewhere Under the Endless Sea
Planet Aquellus, Olystra III
Year 302 AC
Gunfire ripped down the corridor, flashes from the barrels of the Foudre Rouge rifles sparsely illuminating sections of the room that the portable lanterns didn’t reach. The soldiers were firing from right in front of the corridor, and also from the far side of the room. Caron could almost feel the bullets ripping by, and he quickly realized the Foudre Rouge reputation for marksmanship was well-earned.
He could barely see the target they were firing at. He wouldn’t have know what it was, or even that it was hostile…save for the fact that it too, was firing. He thought he heard one of the troopers behind him fall to the ground, without so much as a shout of pain or distress. For a second or two, he wondered if the soldier had even been wounded, or worse, but then he was distracted by another of the Foudre Rouge doubling over…and this time there was no doubt.
It was one of the troopers by the door, the private who’d been up front with Javais. Or what was left of him. A stream of projectiles—four, five, six, Caron couldn’t tell—had struck the man, tearing off the right side of his head, and covering Caron himself with a shower of blood and chunks of brain and bone.
Caron gasped for air, and he sucked in a bit of bloo
dy gray tissue with the breath. He gagged and spit it out, and then he felt his stomach heave. He vomited, but he quickly regained most of his control. He was in a life or death struggle, he knew that much, and even as the foamy bile from his gut dribbled out down the front of him, he had his pistol out, firing. He wasn’t sure if the light weapon could hurt what he assumed was an imperial security bot—for that matter, he wasn’t sure the Foudre Rouge assault rifles could either—but he kept firing nevertheless, even as he moved to the side, slipping down behind the central workstation. The electronics, the guts that had made that station do whatever it had done, were gone, but the metal structure remained. It didn’t look like the same imperial alloy as on the doors and walls, but with any luck at all, it would provide some cover.
The approaching bot’s fire was heavy, but as the thing closed, coming farther into the light, he could see three of the four weapons affixed to it were silent. The bot didn’t particularly look damaged, but it clearly was, and in that realization, Caron’s hopes flared up.
“It’s only got one active gun…focus your fire there.” He shouted out the command, realizing as he did that Javais had already said something very similar, and the Foudre Rouge were already targeting their shots on the only weapon firing back at them.
The bot itself appeared highly resistant to the fire, but the autocannon—at least it looked very much like a sleeker version of the Union weapon of that name—seemed to be taking at least some damage. Or the moorings attaching the gun to the bot if not the weapon itself.
The cannon was bent out to the side a bit, just a millimeter or two, but clearly enough to affect the targeting. Shots were still flying around the room, but the Foudre Rouge had all taken what cover they could find, and the incoming fire was mostly ripping by them, slightly off what Caron suspected had been the uncannily accurate targeting of the AI running the thing.
Caron reached around and pulled another cartridge from the combat belt strapped around his waist. His eyes focused on Javais as he snapped it into place and extended his arm again. He held his fire, and an instant later, he ducked down.
He’d thought the lieutenant was throwing a grenade at first, but then his eyes caught sight of the thing. It was one of the satchel charges, explosives they’d brought to blast their way through imperial alloy doors. Caron was no expert, but he knew the thing had twenty or thirty times the power of a frag grenade.
And Javais was throwing it out into the corridor.
How far can he throw that thing? Caron couldn’t imagine the lieutenant could hurl the heavy charge far enough not to blow them all to bits, but he was surprised as he watched the thing sailing down the corridor.
It went farther than he’d imagined it would, but he still wasn’t sure it was far enough. He ducked as low as he could and threw his hands up in front of his face. As he did, he watched Javais diving to the side, and as the Foudre Rouge officer turned in front of him, he could see that the lieutenant had taken a round in the arm. A light spray of blood left a trail behind Javais, but then Caron hit the floor, and he lost his sight of his subordinate.
An instant later, the room shook, and a massive blast echoed off the walls. A gout of flame poured out of the corridor, coming within a meter of his position before it receded. He turned his head, trying to shake off the shock he felt, but by the time he managed to get back to his feet, the Foudre Rouge had all raced past. Half of them were lined up on the two sides of the door, and the other half had rushed down the corridor, spraying the remains of the bot with a steady stream of fire. The bot looked dead to Caron, at least once he managed to get enough of a look to see it, but it was clear the Foudre Rouge weren’t going to take any chances. They kept it up for another five or six seconds, and then they obeyed Javais’s order to cease fire.
The lieutenant was clearly wounded, and Caron knew it had to hurt, but Javais showed no signs of pain or distress. At least no more than a slight squinting of his right eye the agent caught for an instant.
So Foudre Rouge do feel pain…they just hide it…
He leapt up, as much as because he didn’t want to look like a coward in front of the Foudre Rouge as anything else. He considered the soldiers expendable, second-class citizens all, but the thought of looking bad to them somehow bothered him anyway. It didn’t make any sense, but that didn’t make it any less true.
“Imperial bot?” he shouted as he ran toward the corridor.
“Looks like it, sir. I’ve never encountered one myself, but it looks like a Mark IV or Mark V from the descriptions and images I’ve seen.” Javais was affixing a pressure bandage to his arm wound as he reported to Caron. He’d already sliced open his sleeve and pulled back the remnants. A few seconds later he was done, no sign remained, other than the bulky bandage—and the blood all over his arm and uniform—to suggest he’d been wounded.
Caron had studied up on known imperial security systems as well. Mark IVs were relatively light units, but reasonably state of the art at the time of the Cataclysm. Mark V’s were a bit heavier, and even more modern in design. Both were moderately powerful units, designed for routine security duties. The general theory held that there were also military-grade units, but as far as Caron knew, only small scraps of those had been recovered, and their full capabilities, assuming with some certainty that they actually existed, remained a matter of conjecture.
“Two dead, Lieutenant. Two wounded but capable of continuing, including yourself.” One of the Foudre Rouge had stopped in front of Javais to report. Caron watched, but he wasn’t sure which of the troopers it was. He’d be damned if he could tell the Foudre Rouge apart, despite the fact that all were from different genetic lines, save for the one pair of DNA-mates in his force. Javais was easy enough to pick out, both his insignia and the distinct look of the genetic specimens bred for officer’s roles helping with that. But the others were one swirling jumble to him.
Part of it, he knew, was that he just didn’t care. The Foudre Rouge were manufactured as far as he was concerned, as expendable, or nearly so, as the builders of the imperial bots had no doubt viewed their own creations.
“Okay then, let’s press on.” Caron wanted nothing more than to turn around and run back to the ship. But, of course, that route was blocked now, at least until his people had time to force it open. The AI might manage to reopen the door, it probably would—though now that the security systems had been alerted, escaping might be more difficult.
Caron’s mind filled with concerns. Perhaps that’s what had happened to the previous parties. Had they triggered alarms and been trapped somewhere in the bowels of the facility? The Foudre Rouge had enough firepower and explosives to have a chance, at least, of blasting their way out. But Badlands prospectors would likely have had to make do with far less powerful ordnance in any escape attempts.
Caron took a deep breath, and then he continued forward, deeper into the haunted and deadly halls of an empire long lost.
* * *
“We’re picking up a signal from team two, Commander. They’ve popped a comm buoy and come close enough to the surface to transmits.”
“On my line.” There was nothing likely secretive about the report, but years as a Sector Nine operative had made Boucher stingy with information. She could always share something later, but there was only one way to correct an information leak…and she didn’t have the crew to spare, not so far from any help.
“Commander Boucher…we have located landing sled one. It is positioned on a shelf approximately two kilometers below the surface. We are about to return to that position and debark and follow team one into the facility.” A pause. “We have also detected something…unexplained…that I feel I must report. Significant water currents…so strong, we were barely able to navigate to our current location. The epicenter of the…disturbance…is approximately fifty kilometers from our current position, and I can offer no explanation.”
Boucher inhaled deeply as she listened to the transmission. She cursed under her breath. Lo
uis Moreau was the commander of team two, and he’d shown initiative in deploying to buoy to transmit his report to Phantasia.
But why the hell didn’t the damned fool send the actual scanner data as well?
Phantasia’s AI could crunch the numbers a thousand times faster and better than anything on the landing sleds. Boucher had been well-briefed for the mission, and that had included a fairly substantial dossier on the planet Aquellus. There was no particular evidence suggesting the world was particularly geologically or volcanically active. That didn’t mean there couldn’t have been some kind of sizable eruption or tremor. But it was more coincidence than she was ready to believe.
That ship? Could team three have found it intact…and destroyed it? Could that be what Moreau picked up?
She shook her head. It was possible, she supposed, but the only weapon on the landing ship was a laser, nothing with the power to cause such a massive tremor. Unless the target’s reactor went critical…
Maybe.
She didn’t buy it, though.
Could team three have been destroyed? She found it hard to believe the unidentified ship had even survived its hard landing into the sea, much less that it had been in any condition to attack her landing craft.
Was it possible, though? Could some Badlands scavenger’s ship had carried some kind of weapon powerful enough to explain what the report described?
That would have to be a nuclear warhead…and a damned big one.
Just like the one that destroyed the bombers…
She felt her stomach tense. She’d told herself the explosion that had taken out her attack ships had been some kind of modified reactor, some old ship rigged to blow as a trap.
That might have described one such detonation. But not two.
If she was dealing with weapons, with nuclear warheads…they were damned big ones.
Where the hell would some old tech prospector get something like that?
She shifted in her seat, the tension growing with each passing second. The mission already had her stressed out, on the edge, and the strange haunted feeling so prevalent in Badlands space had done its work eroding her resolve. She’d at least allowed herself to believe the ship that had blundered in, that had employed a ruse to destroy her two attack ships, had itself been chased down to its destruction.