“One moment,” Max said as Morgan turned to head towards the airlock. He worked his uplink, sending a ping to everyone present. “Best get a secure comm line set up now. The normal ones they might be able to overhear.”
***
A single skinsuited miner met them on the other side of the airlock. His face was unreadable – literally, he had his helmet up and visor darkened – and his body language was extremely closed off. The only thing that seemed to get a reaction from him was when he looked at Max.
He couldn’t be sure, of course, but if Max had to guess, and really, he did, given their circumstances, it was Max’s rifle that elicited the reaction, not Max himself.
It all was quite strange, for either potential outcome they faced.
A single man, somewhat hard to see in the dim light of the airlock corridor, no one and nothing else in sight, and quiet as a tomb?
If it was an ambush, where was it?
If it was simply business, why all the weirdness, the oppressive atmosphere?
“Lift to bridge,” the man said, jerking his head towards one branch of the corridor.
They followed along behind him, the former soldiers forming up around Morgan with Max in the back.
They hadn’t said anything about it, they just did it.
I guess some things are still ingrained, even after we get out. I’ve got the heavy weapon, so I get rear guard. Morgan is the butter bar – hah, not even a butter bar, she’s basically still a cadet – so stick her where she’s least likely to get into trouble or get hurt.
Their first problem arose once they got to the lift. It was an easily foreseeable one, but still it hadn’t occurred to Max.
To be fair to himself, there wasn’t much they could do about it, one way or the other.
“Not all going to fit, I’m afraid,” the man said, gesturing toward the rather small lift that had arrived for them. He entered without a further word, obviously expecting them to sort it out.
Morgan glanced back at Max, but said nothing.
Grimacing, he gestured to one of the ladies. She was small enough that’s she’d fit in the car with Morgan, Max, and the miner, leaving the two men and the other woman to wait.
Well, he probably could have squeezed both women in with them, but then they’d not have had room to pull their weapons, if it came to it.
Great place to get ambushed, in a lift car. At least we’ll still be able to talk with them, if something happens.
It was a long lift ride, and a painfully awkward one. Morgan said nothing, the man said nothing, the woman – blast it, Max needed to remember her name, sneaking a glance at the nameplate over her breast to remind himself it was Marcus – well, she said nothing either.
Let’s see if I can’t break the ice, or at least learn something useful. “So, you been working out here long? Long hours, I’m sure, but the benefits have to be nice, right?”
No answer.
“With my luck, I’m not sure I’d want to take a job for this long this far away. On the one hand, the ladies might give me a shot with such limited competition, but on the other, they might end up warning each other off until none of them would date me.”
The man’s visored head swiveled to look in Max’s direction. He still didn’t say anything, but Max could feel him rolling his eyes.
“Still, it can be hard to stand out when there are billions of other guys in striking distance. Tell me, though, I heard your Captain Hanover is rather striking. Is she dating anyone? I’m certainly not one to dismiss a woman simply because she’s a bit older than me, especially if she’s smart, and she has to be smart to make it all the way up to captain, right?”
“Do you ever shut up?” the man finally said, shaking his head.
“Not generally,” Max said, shrugging. “Besides, all we got is time to chat right now. What was her first name, again? For the life of me I don’t remember, though I do recall it was something pretty.”
“We have a new captain now.”
“Oh? Okay. More time for dating, then. Come on man, help me out, what was her name?”
“Jessica,” the man said, reaching over and stabbing at the button labeled bridge, as if it would magically make them move faster. “Now shut up.”
In the moment the man was still focused on the panel, and not looking at any of the crew of STEVE, Max looked over to Morgan. He could see in her eyes that she’d realized the significance of the man getting ‘his’ boss’ name wrong, former or not.
All this circumstantial evidence is killing me. I just want to know. Are we going to be bored when we get up there, or in mortal peril?
Loosening the strap on his rifle as unobtrusively as he could, Max then deployed his helmet, the ladies following suit.
“How is it going down there?” he asked the other half of their party, making sure to mute his suit speaker first.
“Just sitting around and waiting for the lift to come back,” one of the men answered after a moment. “Either they like mood lighting or they need to do some maintenance, ‘cause it’s still blasted dark down here.”
They didn’t have time for any further words over the comm line; they had arrived at the bridge.
The miner led the way onto the bridge, followed closely by the ladies. Max took a moment to stretch, taking in his surroundings without being obvious about it.
There were a half-dozen people on the bridge that Max could see from next to the lift. He didn’t see any other hatches, except one immediately to his left. Exaggeratedly working his shoulder as if it was stiff (which it was, actually; some old injuries never quite healed) he slipped one of the grenades off his belt and stuck it to the wall next to where he was standing, between the lift doors and the mystery hatch. A little icon appeared on his visor’s HUD, the grenade helpfully tying into his suit and labeling itself A-1.
Most of the men – and they were all men – in the room were seated on stools at various consoles on the walls, facing away from the recessed center of the room. They turned to look as Morgan and Marcus approached.
Seated at a large holo-table was a man with a very fancy uniform and the largest pot belly of the people in evidence.
Aside from their guide, no one was in a skinsuit, and no one beside Max was visibly armed.
Joining them in the main part of the room, he took up a position against a bare patch of wall where he could watch things, while Morgan and Marcus moved to the table on the opposite side of Fancy Pants.
I should have asked Marcus what she’s carrying before we left the ship. Stupid rookie mistake. “Your pistol, Marcus, what is it loaded with? Penetrator rounds?” he asked as quickly as he could over the link.
Instead of answering verbally she just gave him a single quick shake of her head.
Great. It’ll be useful against this bunch, except our guide, but any reinforcements are going to be in suits. Unless she can hit their visors she won’t be much use if it comes to a fight. At least I know what Morgan has. Sweet little pistol, I’m a bit jealous, honestly.
“Good, come, join us,” the fancily dressed man said. “Welcome to my station.”
Max could see Morgan’s head tilt as she looked at him. Something was confusing her, but he wasn’t sure what.
Right, she was expecting more rudeness, but now he’s acting all friendly.
“Please, take a seat. Let me get you a drink. Is there anything you prefer? Our supplies are getting a bit low, as you well know, but we still have a few good bottles of vodka left, and some fine wines.”
Morgan hesitated before taking a seat on one of the backless stools bolted to the floor around the table, but she still sat down.
“Alcohol, while we’re working? I’ll pass, thank you,” Morgan said.
“Some water then, perhaps? We also grow a limited number of grapes in our hydroponics bay, they make an excellent juice if you’d prefer?”
“Perhaps later,” Morgan said firmly.
“Very well. Would either of your subordinates car
e for some? Come, sit, sit.”
“No thank you,” Marcus said, in that same humoring an idiot officer tone she’d used earlier.
Max just shook his head, staying where he was at the wall.
“Very well, but please let me know if you change your minds.”
“Can we proceed, Captain?” Morgan asked, pulling up a file on her uplink and sending it to the table’s holo-display. “You asked us to bring the modified agreement, and here it is. I’m sure you must be anxious for us to start unloading everything.”
“Yes, yes,” he said, “Right you are. But I want to make sure there aren’t any flaws, so we are going to go over the agreement line by line first.”
“Line by line?” Morgan said, straightening up in her chair. “That will take us hours.”
“Regrettable, but necessary. Shall we begin?”
They got started, and Max could see Marcus and Morgan relax, their bodies losing some of the tension they’d been showing. He, on the other hand, was starting to wonder what was taking the others so long. Slow as the lift had been, it should have had time to travel back down to the docking level and make it back to them.
“How is it going down there? Are you on your way up?” he asked. There was no response.
“Khatri, what’s keeping you?” Marcus asked on the same line as the seconds stretched on. “Some kind of interference?” she asked Max when the others still didn’t respond.
“Maybe,” Max said, reaching for the controls on his uplink and pulling up one of the more expensive military programs the company had acquired through some back channels. If it was jamming, how can I still hear Marcus? Most of the stuff a pirate -- or a mining outfit, for that matter -- would have access to isn’t very sophisticated. They would be all or nothing. He tweaked the program, getting it to use dummy signals to test how far an effective radius his suit’s comm system was getting.
The results didn’t take long for his uplink to verify, which was a very, very bad sign.
I wouldn’t be able to reach them barely two decks down. It has to be targeted jamming.
Taking his gaze off his uplink, he took in the men scattered around the room again. He still didn’t see any weapons, but they were all tense. Max could read it in their stiff postures. None of them were really looking at their displays either, but toward the three of them.
Max pushed himself off the wall, using the movement to further loosen the strap on his rifle in a way that wouldn’t be obvious.
“It looks like our fellows have gotten lost,” he said, switching his speaker back on and turning up the volume just slightly. “I guess that’s to be expected, we had the guide with us. Would one of you care to go with me to retrieve them? They’re great workers, but not ones I’d want to be wandering around unsupervised around unfamiliar equipment.”
Max wanted to head towards the lift to provoke an even stronger reaction, but that would mean turning his back to everyone. So instead, he just stood there, waiting.
He didn’t have to wait long.
“I’m sure they’re fine,” the captain said, his hand making some gesture Max couldn’t see below the edge of the table.
“Still, I should go find them. I’m just in the way here anyway.”
“No, no, stay here, I must insist,” the captain said.
“I would feel better if he went,” Morgan said, her hand dropping to her lap under the table. “You and I have more important things to go over, right?”
The captain looked at Morgan, then over to Max. He sighed.
“All right,” he said. “Let’s finish this, then.”
As if his words were a signal, and Max realized they were, several things happened at once.
The door to the side of the lift doors slid open, and six men with rifles at the ready poured out as quickly as they could get through the frame, leveling their weapons at all three of them.
The men nearest Marcus jumped up from their stools, grabbing her by the arms.
Max himself had his rifle unslung, and pointed at the captain.
The captain, moving faster than Max would have believed possible, reached over and grabbed Morgan by the back of her neck, smashing her faceplate onto the table and then yanking her onto it, her body partially hidden from his view as she slid through the projected hologram.
Morgan, meanwhile, twisted around in his grip so she was facing up, her pistol in her right hand, the barrel shoved under the captain’s chin. Two more men had been moving toward her, the last two toward Max, but they stopped when they saw the weapons.
“Bit of a standoff,” Morgan said with a grunt, struggling against his grip on her neck.
“Yes. It would seem you have a bit of a dilemma, girlie,” the captain said, any trace of friendliness gone from his voice. “You can shoot me, sure as rain, but then they shoot you, the pretty lady over yonder, and the man.”
“We’re all in suits,” Max shot back, tightening up his stance and moving a half step to the side to get a better angle on the captain.
“Please. Spare me the false bravado. I’m sure you recognize the rifles the men to your left have. It’ll be messy, but they’ll blast through your suits just fine.”
“Oh, right. They are a problem,” Max said, nodding. In a clear, slow voice he then added for his suit’s benefit, “Detonate A-1, execute.”
No one, not even Max who was expecting it, had time to react before the explosive did its job. It wasn’t a large grenade, but it was made with spaceship conditions in mind, and the force of the explosion threw all six suited men from their feet, shrapnel piercing at least a few of their suits.
Max only had a few seconds with which to work. The armed men were the more dangerous of the threats, grenade or no, but the men closest to him were the most immediate. He switched the rifle’s selector over to single shot, regular rounds, and shot two near him. He then switched it back to penetrator rounds, burst, and fired several times into the mass of downed men.
The destruction was… incredible. Max had never before seen in person the effects of the penetrator’s explosive round on a human body, and a part of him wanted to find a corner to crawl into and throw up the entire contents of his stomach.
Even over the roar of the explosions unleashed from his rifle, he could hear the high-pitched whine of Morgan’s Iridium Special firing its advanced bullets.
Instead, he turned to take a quick stock of the battlefield, to see how the ladies were doing.
Marcus was standing free again, her attackers on the ground at her feet, one clutching an obviously broken arm, the other reeling from what was probably a groin kick. He wasn’t sure which was groaning more loudly.
Morgan was still on the table, and for a second he thought she’d been hit, but no, the blood smeared across her helmet had to be the captain’s.
Three men had surrounded her, now three bodies were on the floor, unmoving.
The captain had two neat holes in him, one under his chin, the other his forehead. He couldn’t tell where the other two had been shot, but it must have been in something vital to have so quickly downed them.
Downside of Iridium rounds, he thought idly, they punch through anything, but they’re so small they don’t have a lot of stopping power.
“All threats neutralized,” Max called out, adding for the groaning pair, “Stay down unless you want to end up shot.”
Max reached Morgan’s side first, shouldering his rifle so he could offer her his hand.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
“I’m… I’m okay,” Morgan answered. She sounded a bit shaky, and he was having a hard time seeing her face with all the blood on her helmet.
Reaching over, he tore a sleeve off the captain’s shirt and did the best he could to wipe it off.
“Sit here for a minute. Keep an eye on those two,” he said, guiding her toward a seat and gesturing at the pair Marcus had disabled. “I’ve got this.”
She complied, which was a bit worrying for Max, honestly.
/> When does Morgan ever do what I tell her to do? “Marcus, you see anything up here that might be a jammer?”
Marcus began a quick lap around the room, stopping and looking at each of the consoles, while Max went over and recovered the rifles from the dead men, also checking to be sure they were in fact dead men.
If the downside of the Iridium Special was low stopping power, the downside of penetrator rounds was too much. The explosive round was there to push the penetrator tip through even the toughest armor, but it still damaged everything else around it when it went off. Of the six rifles, five were clearly useless, blown into two or more pieces or just warped by the heat and concussive force.
The sixth, though, that was a real find.
“Now where did a bunch of pirates get a brand-new NCR-8 rifle?” he asked to no one in particular, looking the weapon over in his hands.
The mark seven had been something of a radical departure from the six, and that from five for that matter, with a lot of extra features Max thought just made the thing more prone to breaking. The eight had ‘returned to its roots,’ and was even slightly streamlined compared to the six, though it made up for that in other ways, like more ammo storage and a tweaked barrel that squeezed a few more meters per second out of the projectiles.
Its sling was broken, but he was able to pull an undamaged one off one of the broken rifles. Magazines he had a plenty, as well.
“Hey Marcus, I’ve got a present for you,” he said, heading over to her after she had finished her inspection. As he walked, he noted that Morgan had tied up the injured men with a length of cord she’d found somewhere.
“This is all just mining junk,” Marcus reported, waving her hand in dismissal before taking the offered rifle. “The source of the jamming is probably in the middle of the effect, anyway.”
“About what I figured,” Max admitted, handing over the ammo next.
“We sure these are pirates?” Marcus asked, looking down at her new weapon.
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