“Assured ordered me to enter through the side. Better than getting sucked in the end the way the others did.” Catanno matched velocity with the station’s spin so that it appeared they were hovering off it or cabled to it with the stars and planet moving around them.
“They want us to enter the side how?” Chipper had expected to be slicing his way through the end membrane with a cutting torch.
“Like this,” said Catanno and fired his lasers in a sustained burn, tilting the ship’s nose up and down, side to side, etching a ragged square across the orbital. “This way we’re not firing near where the skiff might be held. But we’re close enough to get to them fast.”
“We hope.”
A patch of the orbital’s hull blackened, then swung outwards on a thin hinge of hull material before breaking off completely and tumbling away into space. Air spurted in a mist of fast-forming ice particles, followed by a dozen insectoid bodies, their limbs flailing. Ice crystals sparked against the ship’s forward shields. Xenthracr bodies caused brighter impact flashes before cartwheeling away.
The enemy, Chipper told himself. They’re the enemy. Less of them to shoot at us.
Enemies, maybe, but he saw no weapons on them or near them. In fact, they seemed different to the ones who’d fired at the first Lioness mission to Kh’het3—not as long, not as bulky. Their limbs numbered six, not the eight owned by the ones on-planet.
Catanno was still firing but in short bursts, ablating pieces from the edges of the hole, widening it.
Chipper started toward the airlock. “That’s big enough. Stop firing and we’ll EV across.”
“Nope,” Catanno replied. “Captain wants the Lioness in there.”
“What?”
Catanno ceased firing and nudged the T15 forwards, easing through the breach and into the corridor. He edged the ship a little way along the passage before rotating ninety degrees to put their nose toward the hole. From outside the orbital, Chipper had thought of the ruptured surface as “wall”; now the centrifugal force within the spinning station turned that surface to “floor”. The Lioness settled onto it.
The passageway they’d entered was easily large enough to accommodate the ship—a flattened tube with a flat floor and roof, with rounded walls on both sides, ten meters wide, ten meters high. All the passage surfaces were lined with something like papier-mâché or adobe. Stray laser strikes had scored the ceiling with black and blistered scars. Catanno had put the ship down with its ass pointed in the direction Chipper and Vazak would have to go, and its nose pointed to the hole they’d made and the lengthy stretch of passageway beyond it. Several Xenthracr clung calmly to the walls and floor that way, two of them inching in the direction of the ship. If any were distressed by their predicament, they certainly weren’t showing it.
“The passage is open to space,” Chipper gasped. “They can survive vacuum?”
One came into sight on the ceiling above them, pulling its way toward the burn hole, each of its six feet expertly gripping the uneven surface. It didn’t so much as glance their way. And it didn’t carry a weapon. Chipper saw now that it was shorter and more compact than the ones he’d seen with guns. Its legs were longer, its eyes larger.
“They’re not soldier versions,” Chipper said. “Or pilots. Must be a worker class.”
“You’re wasting time.” Catanno unharnessed and twisted in his chair, pointing to the back of the cabin. “Exit through the airlock and get our people. And don’t leave me here long.”
“And you make sure you power down the shields when we leave and when we come back.”
“You don’t give me orders, Corporal.”
“What I’m saying is, I know my job. Just make sure you know yours.”
“I—”
“You haven’t checked if this passageway is still venting to space. I don’t want to head out into a high-volume airflow.”
“What?”
Chipper’s turn to point—at the breach in the floor. “Is air pouring along this corridor and out that hole?”
“Oh.” Catanno moved things around one of his screens. “Zero pressure, zero airflow. You’re open to space, but they’ve sealed the corridor somewhere ahead and behind.”
Without bothering to reply, Chipper stamped his way into the rear airlock. Vazak squeezed in ahead of him and he gestured for her to precede him up the ladder. When she’d moved out of his way, he sealed the compartment and pulled all the air out of it. Outside on the T15’s roof—crouching underneath the arc of its energy shields—they realized that the orbital had enough gravity to negate their need for magnetic boots. Chipper tapped the suit-control that powered them off before turning aft to watch the blue wash of the ship’s shields dissipate. Eighty meters ahead, the passage ended in a flat wall. At the base of it was a discolored patch he hoped was a hatch. Vazak was at the ship’s portside edge, peering down. Chipper went to starboard.
“Clear,” he said.
“Clear,” Vazak replied, mimicking him.
“Where’s the light coming from out there?” Catanno asked.
“Looks like patches of luminous fungus or something. All over the walls and roof.” He checked below them again. “Floor too.”
They climbed down the exterior ladders on their respective sides of the hull then met behind the ship’s thrusters. Gravity here wasn’t quite human ship-standard; more like two thirds standard. Because of the way centrifugal force worked, there’d be tunnels and compartments toward the station’s hub where gravity was weaker or non-existent. Chipper bent over and brushed a glove across the floor.
Waxy.
He took a few experimental steps—the surface rasped beneath his boots, sticky enough to assist with footing, uneven enough to unsettle it. One of the Xenthracr passed them along the wall—if the black-and-white carapaced beings were Xenthracr. The one passing him had no fantail but appeared to have wings folded across its back. Barbs lined the sides of its middle and back feet, while the front feet bore four-jointed fingers. It headed in the direction of the hole at the T15’s nose.
Vazak clapped his shoulder and indicated the passage end. Chipper took her meaning and headed off, trying not to think about the gaping hole to vacuum behind them. If air started rushing through here, he had nothing with which to anchor himself but a collapsible grappling hook and twenty meters of line fitted into a pouch on his left upper arm. What he needed was a “bounce-suit,” an EV suit with built-in thrusters. But no one on Assured had apparently thought they were worth keeping on the pursuit runner—he didn’t even know if the main ship had them at all. If he’d had one, he could have simply flown through here and not had to worry about being blasted out into the void like those other poor Xenthracr buggers had been.
Focus. Job to do. But he unclipped the patch on his arm in case he found a need for that grappling hook.
As they closed on the corridor’s end, the hatch became easier to see in the soft phosphorescent lighting emanating from the tunnel walls. He wondered if it was “membrane.” If it was like the one that had grabbed the skiff, what would it do to him and Vazak? He was five meters from it when a shout in his comms stopped him dead.
“Contact! Behind you!”
Catanno’s voice was shrill with panic. Chipper pivoted as quickly and steadily as he could. A single Xenthracr soldier had scuttled beneath the pursuit runner and was closing on their position. How had Catanno let that happen? Why weren’t the shields back up?
The Xenthracr was definitely a soldier, its carapace dark, its body and limbs thicker. It powered forward on four limbs, while each of its hands held a dull metal blade. Vazak was closer to it, and it appeared focused on her. One-handed, she raised her rifle. The soldier reared up on its hindmost legs and Chipper expected it to spring forward with knives whirling. Its actual attack was far more surprising. Some kind of liquid jetted from the sacs beneath its meat-mincer mouth, the substance landing short of Vazak but sizzling against the floor, producing a brown tendril of smoke. Vazak fir
ed, a volley of blue pulses that hit the Xenthracr mid-thorax, forcing it backwards before finally putting it down. Vazak swung the rifle behind her on its strap, drew her knife, and strode toward the body.
“Wait!” Chipper shouted, expecting another of those streams of toxic fluid to come squirting toward her. It didn’t. Whether the creature was already dead or stunned, Chipper would never know: Vazak’s next action was to lop off its head in three clean sweeps of her blade. She kicked it aside and came over to him. Past her visor, her face looked pretty pleased.
“We call that overkill where I come from,” Chipper told her, then hurried on to the passage end.
The patch at the base of the wall was a membrane, presumably the local version of a door. And without any visible switch or lock, they’d have to blast it. He was swapping his PR19’s setting from STUN to AP when Vazak strode past him, still brandishing that long knife.
“Wait,” he told her.
She ignored him. But when the blade was raised high above her head, the membrane came apart by itself, splitting in two, gathering to the sides. It was like curtains being drawn back, like …
Like lips, Chipper thought and shuddered. Vazak’s expression behind her faceplate was also dubious.
She had braced herself with legs spread, leaning toward the opening. Expecting a pressure differential from a freshly opened chamber, Chipper had done the same, one leg chocked behind him. The pressure wave that came from the chamber beyond was more of a jolt than a blast. They rode it out easily. Was it already depressurized in there? If so, why?
Through the comms, Vazak said, “Tiurrh m’degneh malliun arrh gos.”
“If you’re saying ‘This gets weirder,’ I couldn’t agree more.”
His helmet speakers crackled and Catanno’s strained voice came through this time. “Uh, Corporal? Problem. I’ll stream this to you.”
A feed opened up on the side of Chipper’s HUD, streaming vision from the Lioness’s nose-cam. A swarm of Xenthracr bodies filled the space where the breach in the station hull had been. They seethed across each other, but when they shifted aside, he saw that the wound in the floor had begun healing over.
“When did—” he started, but Catanno cut him off.
“I was distracted, watching instruments, then looked up and they were just … doing this. They’re vomiting something into the gap. I think they’re repairing it. I’ll fire through them and make another hole.”
“Don’t!” Chipper barked. The versions of Xenthracr swarming the hole were the ones that so far hadn’t threatened him and Vazak. “They’re not soldiers. They’re workers. Civilians.”
“Seriously? They’re bugs!”
“They’re people. Wait until they clear away from it. Actually, wait until we’re back.”
“But—”
“You’re not shooting any more civilians, so you will goddamn wait! And put your damn shields up again!”
This time, there was no reply, no complaint about a corporal ordering a lieutenant about. Chipper signaled Vazak to follow him then rushed through the eerily drawn-back membrane. He cut right, she cut left, sweeping their rifles around them. When there were no hostiles visible, he risked a glance behind him, relieved to see the membrane had remained parted, still gathered to the sides like wrinkled skin. Had the thing opened at their approach? Was it some kind of automatic door?
Is it alive? Is this damn station alive?
The chamber they had entered was drum-shaped and completely open, lacking smaller compartments within it. It was flattened at the farthest end with a gigantic membrane stretched across its endpoint. That far end was less than one hundred meters from Chipper’s position. He and Vazak stood on the curved floor of the drum and it was six or seven hundred meters up to the point where the floor arced back above his head. Two teardrop-shaped vehicles adhered to the surface there, smaller versions of the creeping vehicles he’d seen at the planet’s mine site. Were they a kind of cargo runner? The way they sat there was disconcerting. His mind knew centrifugal force held them in place, but he still had to fight the urge to run away lest they fall and crush him. Adding to his disquiet was the way the chamber’s barrel shape and fleshy finish made it seem like he’d stepped into a giant gut.
Lips, guts … You gotta stop thinking like this, dude.
As he stared around, the cavity’s purpose became quickly clear: a receiving area for the orbital. Its surfaces were scattered with clumps of raw materials, straight lengths of refined metals, bales and balls of wires and cables, whole leafy branches, piles of fruit … and other, wetter items—Chipper didn’t want to know what they were. More items hung out in the zero-gravity center of the chamber. One of these was a ship, a Xenthracr version, a cargo-type that he’d seen on approach the first time he’d visited the orbital. A dozen or more of the alien workers had a hold on it, using their wings to fly it back toward the membrane airlock—and Chipper had to assume that’s what it was. He’d seen the recording of the skiff being pulled inside. Presumably, there were layers of membrane here, and they were able to “spit” ships gently back into space again.
All around and along the barrel floor, scores of worker-variants fussed over inventory of goods, assessing them, dragging them, carrying them. Chipper and Vazak shuffled out of the path of three individuals who paid them no mind as they lugged clutches of leafy branches. Watching them drew his attention to the wall above the entryway and up along it to where other workers crawled around and through a dozen more apertures set at random intervals and locations.
He scanned the roof again, looking for any sign of the skiff.
It’s not the damned roof. It’s a floor. It’s all floor.
“There,” he told Vazak, pointing with this rifle. The skiff had come to rest one-hundred-fifty meters around the chamber’s curve from the teardrops. He ordered his helmet HUD to lock-and-zoom. A moment later, the close-up view showed the runabout laying on its starboard side. A half dozen workers fussed around the chamber floor beside it, touching each other’s heads and hands. Exchanging information, Chipper guessed. Workers were scattered around the chamber, maybe a hundred. Once the outer membrane had grabbed hold of the small shuttle, had they dragged it all the way there? Or had the membrane propelled it there, spat it there?
“Skiff hatch has been opened,” he said, not knowing how much Vazak would understand. “Forcefully, from the looks. It’s a little bent, kinda creased.”
He exited the lock-and-zoom so he could sight along his rifle and squeeze off a couple of stun rounds. That scattered the workers from around it.
Without comment, Vazak set off in a loping run up and across the curved flooring. Chipper pushed himself to follow, but she quickly outdistanced him.
He triggered his comms. “Lioness, you got me?”
The reply was scratchy. “You comin…ack soo…? … shields … I have c …”
“Moving as quick as we can. The skiff’s—”
A new voice cut in then. Stines. As clear as if the man was right beside him. “Chipper? About damn time.”
Chipper asked, “Location?”
“I’m ten meters from the back of the skiff, sheltering behind some—wait! I see you.” A rifle flashlight flared across the expanse between them, blinking on and off.
“I have you. Hey, Vazak, stop. Stop!” She did but mumbled something that sounded disappointed. He told Stines, “We’ll wait for you guys here. Long as you can all move?”
He caught movement then, a black-on-blue Peacekeeper e-suit detaching from a cargo pile. Vazak marked it too, her single hand offering Chipper a thumbs-up. “Human.”
Yeah, I figured.
“I have you headed my way, Stines. Where’s the others?”
“They’re gone.”
“Gone?”
“Damned crabs busted in and started stealing stuff. Swarm of them pulled the door open. The crewers were screaming and kicking ’em. I shot a couple and we pushed the rest out.” He paused to suck air as he pressed on in his awk
ward low-gravity jog. “Five minutes later, we get crab soldiers at the door. Spraying acid or some shit before I could ice them all. That crap didn’t get through my combat suit. But it … well…” Another pause as he sucked in air, or maybe got his emotions under control. “Let’s just say those two crewers don’t have heads no more.”
Chipper let one hand drop from his rifle to punch his thigh. My God!
“We’re coming to get their bodies.” Since gravity was lighter than standard, he could carry one and Vazak the other. He started forward again.
“The hell you are. You’ll need bags to collect them. Trust me. And it’s a goddamn wonder more of those soldiers aren’t on us by now.”
Stines was much closer now, adjusting trajectory to intercept Chipper. Vazak was heading back to Chipper also. Chipper stopped and waited for both of them.
“Damn,” he said. “Okay. But damn. You got their tags?”
“Yes.”
That was something at least. The tradition of ID tags preceded space travel. At least there’d be something left for the loved ones.
“And you haven’t seen any more soldiers since?”
Stines said nothing as he climbed over a wide pile of materials, kicking a worker out of the way as he came to the top. He was still a fair distance away. Chipper estimated the skiff lay half a kilometer from him and Vazak. It would take Stines a minute or more to reach them. Chipper joined the Tlaa in scanning for hostiles—and had a moment of panic when he couldn’t identify which of the doors they’d entered. A moment later, he remembered that his initial survey had given him the reference point he needed.
Right below the teardrop ships, dummy.
He checked those alien vehicles again, tracked to a point directly across the expanse from them and found the entryway immediately.
Finally answering Chipper’s question, Stines said, “Seen a few. I got out of the skiff and into cover. More crabs came looking. I kept my head down. They went away.” He was back on what passed for floor, putting on a burst of speed.
Assured (Envoys Book 2) Page 20