Gabriel's Redemption

by Steve Umstead

  “Seaman,” he called. “Do you have contact with the extraction team?”

  “Sir, yes…barely!” He still had a pleading look in his eye, almost begging Gabriel to help him.

  “Did the students make it out?” he asked as another flaming chunk of ceiling fell.

  Martorano’s face scrunched as he concentrated on his neuretic comm. “Sir, the Damocles reports they’re loading them now, all present and accounted for. They’re just waiting for us!” he said with a hopeful tone.

  Gabriel moved towards him, stepping around piles of debris. “Then let’s get out of here, son.” He took Martorano’s arm to lift him from his squatting position over Freestone. “We have to leave him, I’m sorry.”

  Martorano stood up and took one last look at the body. “I know sir, it’s just…”

  Gabriel never saw the gunman. The slug screamed past his face, a tiny shock wave buffeting his skin, and crashed into Martorano’s chest, throwing him backwards out of Gabriel’s grip. Gabriel’s neuretic threat assessment noted that it was most likely a heavy-caliber railgun round, normally used to penetrate tank armor, which meant the seaman had no chance. His shattered body sprawled backwards onto Freestone’s, the two squadmates crumpled together in death.

  Before Gabriel had a chance to turn around, a second railgun round tore through his right shoulder, spraying his face with blood and tissue, and spun him 270 degrees to fall to the floor near the other two soldiers. His neuretics immediately started shutting off blood flow and attempted to pump nonexistent pain meds from his empty storage, popped up a threat scan in his Mindseye, and armed his assault rifle. But Gabriel had been hit too hard to physically react. He struggled with one good arm to prop himself up, trying in vain to reach his rifle with the other, but the bloody pulp of his shoulder and his useless arm prevented him from moving more than a few inches at a time.

  He was nearly to a sitting position when a dark figure loomed over him. A boot reached through the smoke and stepped on his ruined shoulder, pressing him back to the floor in excruciating agony. His vision blurred, which combined with the smoke made it impossible to see the man’s face.

  “You weren’t supposed to be here, Gabriel,” a voice said from the haze. “This has really been a nuisance, I must say.”

  The boot pressed harder, twisting, and Gabriel screamed.

  “But at least the satisfaction of watching you die makes up for some of my losses.” The figure raised a large barreled weapon, centering it on Gabriel’s chest. “Goodbye, Lieutenant.”

  The railgun fired with a chime, and Gabriel woke up with a gasp, sweat pouring from his brow, fingers pressed into the fabric of the armrests so firmly they made small tears. He released his grip and looked around at several concerned faces. The spaceplane, he thought. I’m on the spaceplane. He sent a command to his neuretics to send a calming dose of panazine, and he tried to relax.

  “Hey Commander, you okay?” asked Takahashi.

  The chime sounded again, followed this time by the pilot’s voice. “Ladies and gentlemen, we are approaching Halsey Station. Apologies for the detour, the debris field in this area is still particularly thick from last month’s anti-sat war.”

  Gabriel took a few breaths as the chemical relaxant calmed his nerves. “Yes, just a bad dream,” he said, clearing his throat. “Sorry about that.”

  Takahashi’s face continued to show concern, but he let it drop. “No problem, sir. We thought maybe we’d have to have Brevik restrain you,” he said with a small smile.

  St. Laurent had moved to the seat in front of Takahashi, both of them now across from Gabriel. “Sir, we’re docking. Need anything?”

  Gabriel took one last deep breath. “Maybe just some new seat fabric. I’ll have to have the NAF bill Gesselli for it.”

  The faces around him relaxed and everyone made their way back to their seats for arrival. Gabriel cursed himself silently. The same dream hits me over and over again, and to this day, I can’t see that blurred face.

  “Prepare for docking maneuvers, three minutes to linkup,” the intercom voice said. “Sorry for the rush, but you’ve got less than an hour to board your ship to make your launch window. Cargo will be transferred immediately, everyone please exit and head to Dock Six to meet your liaison.”

  Gabriel sat back into his seat, wishing this flight really did have beverage service. A beer right now would be even better than panazine.

  Quentin Santander pulled deeply at his bottle of Deimos Special Ale and sat down at the transparent plasteel table, joining the five others already seated. He set the bottle down with a clunk, causing the fish swimming inside the table aquarium to scatter. Cheesy, he thought, idly watching the odd creatures swimming in the sealed hexagonal pedestal, transparent on all sides as well as the top. But appropriate, he thought with a glance at the sign above the bar. Europan Sea, it read. Happy Hour 6PM to ?. He didn’t even check his watch. Now that I’m getting out of here, I’m very happy, he said to himself. No longer trapped like these fish…from Europa. Sure they were.

  He nodded to the man seated to his right. “Ran, good to see you again, glad you could make it.”

  Ran nodded back. “Absolutely Mr. Santander, always ready for some action.”

  “And the rest of you?” Santander asked as he scanned the faces around the table. They all nodded agreement, murmurs of “damn right” and so on. Ran, Gregorio, Rheaves, Sheakley, Isham. All trusted ex-military he had worked with in the past who were never more than a stone’s throw away. All had fallen out of favor with various Earth governments, for one reason or another, and found useful work in the anarchy of Mars. Santander had used their services on more than one occasion. They were ruthless, connected, reliable, and like himself, willing to do whatever necessary to get the job done…and get paid, he thought with a grin that showed.

  “I talked to our supplier. We’ll have everything you asked for on the weapons list you gave me,” the dark-complexioned man across from Santander said. “Except for the LX-90s. They’re proving a challenge, highly controlled and accounted for.”

  “Thank you, Isham,” Santander replied. “I’ll take care of those. We don’t need unnecessary inquiries from the nuke cops. I believe I have someone I can talk to.”

  The severe-looking woman on Isham’s right chimed in. “I’ve got twelve sets of Shi Bao battlesuits on their way, we’ll have them in-house by tomorrow afternoon.”

  “Twelve? That’s twice what we need,” Santander said with a raised eyebrow.

  “Hey, why not? They were comped, no charge, from a friend I know in the Resupply office.”

  “Special friend, Sheakely?”

  “Something like that,” she replied with a toothy smile.

  Santander couldn’t imagine the man, or woman, who’d be interested in a monster like Dreya Sheakely, or could live to tell the tale. Or both.

  “What’s the mission?” asked Rheaves, the muscle-bound specimen seated to Santander’s left. His upper body was barely contained by the black t-shirt he wore that read Ski Titan…If You Can.

  “We’ll do a full briefing on the way, but in a nutshell, we’re headed to a colony world. There’s a team ahead of us that my boss…our boss…doesn’t trust to complete their mission. We’ll be following as, for lack of a better term, a cleanup team. Read into that what you will.”

  “SpecFor team?” asked Gregorio, the last member of the group.

  Ran answered him, having already had the full mission details given to him by Santander earlier in the day. “Yes, standard eight-man NAFN squad. Nothing any of us have had trouble with in the past, correct?” he asked with an air of innocence.

  Laughs around the table accompanied the clinking of beer bottles as they toasted each other. Ran motioned to the barmaid for another round.

  Santander leaned back in his chair and kicked at the side of the aquarium table, watching the fish flee. “Wrap up your loose ends ASAP, everyone. Pickup is at ten-hundred hours, day after tomorrow. I’ll talk to al
l of you before then to go over last minute details, but until then, enjoy yourselves. Might be your last few days on Mars!”

  More laughter and toasts as six more bottles of Deimos approached the table.

  Chapter 9

  Gabriel led the way out of the spaceplane docking bay, following a HUD map his neuretics overlayed on his vision. He and his team pulled themselves along the zero-G corridors using the railings spaced around the perimeter. Halsey Station was a NAFN-only military staging base for outgoing and returning interstellar navy ships, so all the personnel they passed were naval. The station was on the small side compared to some of the private and corporate stations that handled luxury cruise liners and yachts belonging to the rich and famous. Just over a quarter mile long, the station resembled a child’s tinkertoy. Multiple segments of cylindrical chambers, all tied together with flexible joints, each had the ability to autoseal in case of atmosphere loss. Docking bays jutted from various sections.

  Smaller ships such as their spaceplane docked at one of the extended bays directly; in the case of the massive battlecruisers and fleet carriers, they would maintain station nearby and shuttle smaller craft back and forth. The station was mostly a waypoint, Gabriel knew, with only minimal crew quarters in the rotating artificial gravity halo around the center of the station’s length, and possessed no ship resupply capability. Larger warships would restock fuel bunkers and stores from the nearby Eisenhower Spacedock, which was also where all the NAFN’s ships were built and launched from. Only personnel would transfer from Earth through Halsey to the ships, and vice versa.

  He reached the end of the first segment with the rest of the team floating behind him, even Brevik looking graceful. Takahashi was over his zero-G sickness, he was relieved to see. His HUD showed a right turn; he proceeded down a secondary corridor, and a final right turn put them at Dock Six. An ensign awaited them there, saluting with one hand while holding a wall strap with the other.

  “Commander Gabriel,” he said sharply.

  Gabriel returned the salute, expertly gliding to a halt with a little pressure from his other hand on the railing. “That I am.”

  The ensign dropped his hand. “Really in a rush, sir, sorry for the time frame. The captain has a tight launch window. Jupiter’s orbit will cut off the wormhole access in approximately eleven hours, and your flight time is just over ten. Miss that window and it’s two plus days of drifting.” He pulled a flexscreen from a side pouch. “If you’ll all please show your ID chips and open a channel for verification?”

  The team complied, one by one handing the ensign their ID chips. The ensign looked them over, confirmed the neuretics scans, and saluted once again. “All set, thank you sirs.” He stepped aside and the hatch slid open, revealing a transparent flexible gaiter corridor around thirty feet long with a black carbotanium hatch at the far end. “Good luck, come back safely.”

  Gabriel gave a quick salute, as did the others, and led the group through the hatch.

  The transparent corridor, even with the vertical segment lines, provided an excellent view of the ship they’d call home for the next four days. Gabriel gazed out at the dark ship; with the position of the sun on the farside of Earth, only a handful of blinking nav lights gave away its outline. Even so, he could make out the shape of a standard Ventura-class stealth cruiser.

  The NAFS Richard Marcinko, CAS-408, was 360 feet from bow to stern, a hammerhead shape as most interstellar vessels were, with four powerful fusion plasma drives capable of pushing the ship from standstill to a cruising speed of .08c, around 53 million miles per hour, in just under an hour. Its hammerhead contained its water stores, which gave it a built-in radiation shield; in addition it carried standard deflector mag shield projectors which jutted from either side of the hammerhead. It mounted two multi-directional ion cannons, four particle beam pods, an internal missile launcher, and spaced around a rear outer ring, twelve drop capsules. This ring rotated during voyages, giving a few welcome areas of .6G, as well as providing the impetus to launch the drop capsules. The Marcinko also carried two small aerospace shuttles in a ventral docking bay for landing and retrieval of personnel.

  A Ventura-class cruiser was heavily stealthed, able to reduce EM emissions to near zero, dissipate heat through a series of baffles which rendered it nearly invisible to IR, and evade all but the closest visible detection with its photon-absorbing nanopaint. It carried active and passive jammers, as well as a full complement of stealthed wormhole communication pods.

  In short, Gabriel thought, exactly what our small team needs to get in and get out fast, undetected. He was glad to be sailing in one of these, thinking back to some of the rust-buckets he had been on during past missions.

  They reached the hatch and Gabriel gave it a sharp rap with his knuckles. It slid open silently, revealing a red-lit interior entryway. No one was there to greet them, so Gabriel looked back at the team and shrugged. “Guess this is our ride.”

  The team floated soundlessly into the Marcinko and the hatch slid closed after them.

  The team hadn’t finished settling in to the acceleration lounge when an overhead speaker announced, “Commander Gabriel to CIC.”

  Gabriel looked up from his snack, a tray of peanut brittle he had just grabbed from a dispenser at the front of the lounge, and frowned. He unbuckled his seat belt and stood up, one hand holding the tray, the other steadying himself on the overhead rail. “Anyone want this?” he asked the team.

  “Yo, uh, yes sir!” called Sowers, raising his hand, his other hand holding his basketball. “If you’ll be busy…”

  “Apparently I am, Petty Officer,” he replied. He pinched the foil closed on the tray and pushed it across the lounge in Sowers’s direction. A few crumbs escaped along the way, but Sowers expertly snagged it from the air. “Muchas gracias, sir. Won’t go to waste.”

  Gabriel shook his head. “I’d imagine not.” He turned and headed for the hatch. “Be back before launch,” he called over his shoulder. He gave a quick wave and left the lounge, leaving behind the sound of Sowers’s noisy munching and Jimenez’s soft guitar plucking.

  Gabriel pushed himself down the corridor to the CIC, passing the galley they had come through on the way in, the reactor room (like most modern navy vessels, oddly placed next to the food, he always thought), and the hatch to the docking bay. Arriving at the centrally-located CIC, he floated in the open hatch and over to the holotable in the center.

  Around the table, feet tucked into deck-mounted straps, were the captain, his first officer, and the communications officer, if Gabriel was reading their insignias correctly. He placed his feet in a vacant set of straps opposite the captain. “Commander Gabriel reporting, Captain McTiernan,” he said evenly.

  McTiernan looked up from the holoimage the three men were studying. “Commander, welcome aboard,” he said. “You and your team comfortable?”

  Gabriel nodded. “Yes sir, ready to go. Can I assume our gear made the transfer from the OTV?” he asked.

  “You may assume, Commander,” McTiernan replied, turning to his first officer. “Lieutenant Commander Vaillancourt, is the Commander assuming correctly, or is he making an ass out of you and me?” he said with a smile.

  The Lieutenant Commander, a tall woman with ebony skin and short cropped hair, answered with a nod. “Sir, all gear has been transferred. The last of it just came aboard, a rather large set of Otero combat armor.”

  “Thank you,” McTiernan said. Turning back to Gabriel, he said, “I did scan the team bios earlier today, and I’m guessing that suit belongs to Lieutenant Brevik?

  Gabriel gave a quick smile. “Yes, a very large man of very few words. Most certainly his.”

  “Good, glad you’re all settled. Let me know if I or my staff can do anything for you over the next four days of transit,” McTiernan replied. Turning to the third officer at the table, he said, “Ensign Davis Giroux is our communications officer, and he wanted to have you here for something special the boys in Toronto cooked up. A
pparently the Department of Defense is using your mission as a proving grounds for this tech, or so it seems.”

  Ensign Giroux, a small man with a fuzzy patch of hair below his lower lip and not a wisp of hair anywhere else on his face or head, nodded eagerly. “Commander, this is very exciting, very much looking forward to this.”

  Gabriel saw Giroux was nearly popping out of his foot straps in his enthusiasm. Hope he’s as enthusiastic about the people on this mission, and not just the tech, he thought.

  McTiernan motioned to Vaillancourt. “Disengage us from the station, let’s get some space between us and them before we set this in motion.”

  Vaillancourt nodded and engaged the intercom. “All hands, prepare for undocking and maneuvering.” She looked over at a console manned by a warrant officer. “Mister Kolikas, please initiate undocking procedure. Use the OMS engines to put us ten miles off station, and hold position there.”

  The warrant officer nodded and turned back to his console, fingers tapping at the displays. A clunk sounded as the Marcinko undocked, and Gabriel felt a slight tug in his stomach as the orbital maneuvering system pushed the ship slowly away from Halsey Station.

  Giroux was tapping at keys on the holotable in front of him, and a 3D image appeared in the center. It resembled a trash can one might find in a tube station, Gabriel noted at first. As the image slowly rotated, he saw it was more like an automated probe with legs. What he thought looked like the trash can’s angled lid was a sensor array, flush mounted into the surface. Six articulating legs, three on each side of a central line, were built into the underside of the can’s structure. The image went through an animation of its capabilities, showing the top section rotating to scan with the sensor array, the legs waving in sequence to propel it along the surface, and what appeared to be a laser comm beam firing from a small nub that protruded from its top.