Gabriel's Redemption

by Steve Umstead

  Zack and Vanheel stayed at the center platform, Vanheel nervously fiddling with the probe Jimenez had left. Gabriel saw that his brother had put the Heckart pistol down on the far end of the table, almost distancing himself from it. A flash of emotion flared inside him, fleeting memories of his childhood, an image of his older brother pummeling a bully that had been picking on him. An older brother, deep down, stood up for a younger one, no matter what. Now, Gabriel thought, I’m standing up for him. He only hoped he could live up to it.

  A buzz in his head signaled an incoming neuretics comm. The ID indicated a secure link from the Marcinko, and he opened the call in Mindseye.

  “Commander Gabriel, we’re getting an odd reading from the Chinese ship,” Captain McTiernan’s voice said. “We’re showing it has not, repeat not, engaged its engines, and is coasting on a high velocity flyby path. Our CIC analysts are saying they’re going to blow past the planet without attempt to orbit, and either hot launch a shuttle, or…” He paused. “How sure are you they’re not going to drop kinetic bombardment weapons?”

  Gabriel visibly started. “Sir, everything okay?” Sowers said, his harmonica practice ceasing abruptly.

  He held up his hand to Sowers. “Hang on,” he said. Into the neuretics comm he replied subvocally. “Not as sure as I was a few hours ago. Captain, give me odds. Do I need to get everyone out of here, or hunker down for an early arrival?”

  McTiernan’s voice was less firm than Gabriel had hoped. “I just can’t say at this point. We’ll know in about three minutes, as that’s when they’ll be at closest approach.” After a long delay, he continued, “We’re too far away to intercept. Honestly Commander, we never expected this.”

  “Not your fault, Captain,” Gabriel replied. “It’s more on me. Keep a close eye on it, let me know as soon as you get any indication of their intentions. We’ll play it by ear.”

  To Sowers, he said, “Mister Sowers, lose the music. We may have early company.”

  Lamber stirred at the far end of the center, while Zack and Vanheel were looking over at Gabriel. An open broadcast came in over the team net from the Marcinko.

  “Commander Gabriel, we’ve just detected the Chinese ship hot-launching a shuttle,” said an excited voice that Gabriel remembered as Ensign Giroux, the Marcinko’s comm officer. “Very risky, but they’re coming in fast towards your position, and that cargo ship will be screaming right past you. At this point we do not anticipate a bombardment run.”

  “Thank you, Ensign,” Gabriel replied on the net. “Give me an ETA on the shuttle.”

  After a few seconds, Giroux came back, “Sir, our best estimate based on trajectory is that the shuttle will touch down close to the colony in about twelve minutes. They are hauling ass. Er, sorry sir. But they are most certainly looking to catch you off guard.”

  Gabriel pressed his lips together. We’re not not off guard, he thought, but a little behind in deployment. So much for being ready.

  He turned to Sowers and was about to speak when an unbearable pain shot through his skull, and his neuretics went completely offline. The shock knocked him to one knee, and he pressed his hands to the sides of his head with extreme difficulty as his combat armor began to lock up. Just before he squeezed his eyes shut, he caught sight of Sowers in the same position, and a tiny part of his mind knew what was happening.

  St. Laurent had just reached the main doors leading to the outer corridor, Sabra next to her, Jimenez just behind them with his gear, and Brevik setting up his plasma cannon on the far side of the hub, when the neurojammer hit. St. Laurent dropped to both knees in pain and the Burton’s case clattered to the metal decking next to her. Brain screaming in agony, she felt more than heard Jimenez fall to the floor behind her. The pain was excruciating; it felt as if her head was going to tear itself apart.

  Seconds ticked by like weeks, electric pain lancing through her skull, until mercifully it ceased. She toppled over onto all fours and tasted blood where she had bitten through the tip of her tongue. She spat and attempted to wipe her mouth with the back of her hand, but the combat armor wasn’t responding to her physical commands. Her nerves tingled and muscles spasmed as she tried to tilt her head back. She opened her eyes, and found herself looking into the menacing barrel of a Taegel 32 needler pistol. Her eyes inched up over the barrel and saw the sneering face of Mikaela Sabra.

  Gabriel groaned in agony as the neurojammer pulsed through his nervous system. Flashing symbols in his faltering Mindseye alerted him to failing systems, communications, and armor control. He was still on one knee, both fists pressed to the floor, armor frozen. He attempted to hack through the jammer with his upgraded neuretics, and he had just been able to link to a flatlined weapons control when the jammer ceased.

  With a gasp he immediately ran weapons and system checks. All offline; the jammer had burned out a good portion of the suit’s systems.

  Sowers in front of him had also just come out of the grips of the jammer, tears leaking from the corners of his eyes. He grimaced at Gabriel, his armor still locked. “Holy shit,” he grunted. “Sir.”

  Gabriel’s enhanced combat muscles pushed at the armor, overpowering the servo lock to some extent, allowing him to stand upright. With a great effort, he turned around to the three men behind him. To his shock, he saw Lamber striding towards him, a mag pistol in one hand, a look of white hot fury on his face.

  “Lamber, what the…” Gabriel roared. Before he could finish his curse, Lamber was upon him, slamming him into the bulkhead wall next to Sowers with a loud clang. In the disabled armor, Gabriel couldn’t withstand the charge of the smaller man, and crumpled into a seated position. He pushed to get back up.

  “Sit the hell down!” Lamber yelled, spittle flying from his mouth. The gun was pointed at Gabriel’s head.

  “What the hell are you doing?” Gabriel said, continuing to try to rise.

  Lamber moved the pistol to point at the immobile Sowers’s head. “Not worried about yourself, Commander?” He bent and pressed the barrel of the pistol into Sowers’s forehead. “Sit down, and shut up!” he yelled again.

  Gabriel slumped back into the wall, sweat beading his brow from the effort of moving the heavy armor manually. Looking over his shoulder he could see Zack and Vanheel gaping at the scene. He hoped Zack understood the ‘back off’ look in his eye.

  Just then, the doors to the hub corridor slid open, and Brevik walked in slowly, his armor obviously disabled as well. Gabriel had a fleeting thought of hope and started to rise again, when Jimenez walked in behind him, hands on his head, staggering under the effort of moving the armor. St. Laurent followed, face covered in sweat, a needler pistol pressed into the back of her head by Sabra.

  Dammit, Gabriel thought. Lamber and Sabra, he should have known. Another mistake in judgement. Too many clues to have ignored. Must be getting old.

  Sabra pushed St. Laurent forward, and the lieutenant stumbled into Jimenez, sending both to the floor in a tangled heap of disabled combat armor. Brevik turned with a glare, but Sabra waved the needler at him. “Tsk, tsk, boss. You wouldn’t hit a lady, would you?” she asked.

  “You wouldn’t believe what I want to do to this lady,” Brevik growled in a menacing voice.

  Sabra turned to Gabriel, dismissing Brevik with a wave of her off hand. “Looks like we caught you with your pants down, so to speak, eh Commander?”

  Gabriel was running through what diagnostics he had left, trying to find a way through, but the neurojammer had jangled his entire system. He did show that a secondary jammer was running, blocking all neuretics comm links. He ran a passive worm, trying to work around the jammer, but to no avail. A symbol appeared in a corner of his eye; one of his systems had pinpointed the source of the jammer. It centered on Lamber.

  Gabriel turned back to Lamber. “Why are you doing this?”

  Lamber laughed, standing up from his crouched position over Sowers, his gun aim never wavering from the petty officer’s head. “Money, Commander! Isn’t that
why any of us do anything?” He looked down at Gabriel with a pitying look. “Patriotism didn’t do you any favors, did it?” He walked closer to Gabriel, the pistol now swinging towards him. “I’m getting paid, and paid well, to prepare this colony for its new owners. But I’m not getting paid to clean up any messes, so when I shoot you, would you mind keeping your brains inside your armor?”

  “Enough!” Sabra said sharply, pulling a small device from a pouch on her belt. She tossed it to Lamber. “Make the call.”

  Lamber turned to catch the commlink, and Gabriel tensed his enhanced muscles and launched himself towards him. His armor protested with creaks, but his internal strength overcame the metal joints and he crashed into Lamber, knocking the pistol from his hand as the commlink clattered to the floor. Lamber yelped in pain as his head crashed into the floor, and Gabriel was on top of him in an instant.

  Sabra started to point her weapon towards the grappling pair when Brevik’s massive form stepped in front of her, his natural muscles and size too much for the locked armor to stop. One armored gauntlet slapped the needler from her hand as his other hand reached for her throat.

  “Stop, or he dies!” a voice came from the other side of the room.

  Gabriel looked up from his opponent and froze. At the center platform stood Vanheel, the semi-automatic pistol Lamber had given him earlier in his hand, pointed directly at Zack’s head.

  “Commander, I think you need to let him make that call,” Vanheel said.

  Chapter 24

  The shuttle was a standard single stage to orbit lifting body design, vertical take off and landing capable, mission-modified for inclement weather with an additional set of tail stabilizers and more powerful reentry engines. It streaked down through the atmosphere at Mach 26; the glow of its leading edges created a meteor-like effect across the western skies.

  As it made wide sweeping S-turns to bleed off velocity, Santander’s comm rang in his ear and he reached up to take the call. His metal glove banged off the oversized Chinese combat helmet, and he cursed as he remembered the spoken command.

  “Go for Santander,” he said, and the commlink opened, audio only.

  “Mister Santander, this is Lamber. Colony is secure, all personnel accounted for,” came a voice.

  Santander smiled and clanged his fist off Ran’s steel shoulder next to him. “Good work, Lamber. Give me a rundown of the situation.”

  “The neurojammers worked like a charm as promised. Your SAR friends have some primo tech. Sabra and I were fully shielded, and all their neuretics and powered armor and weapons are disabled. The facility’s staff are all in the housing section, no threats. The board of directors and the operations staff are upstairs in the offices, right where we assumed they’d stash ‘em. The aliens are all in the lab area, which will be our second point of interest. Sabra and I have control of the team in the Ops center, which is where we’ll meet you.”

  “And Gabriel?” Santander asked.

  “He’s right here,” Lamber replied. “Along with the rest of his team. Sowers, Jimenez, St. Laurent, and that tank Brevik.”

  Santander mentally ticked off his fingers. “You’re missing one, Lamber.”

  After a pause, Lamber replied, “Dammit, that idiot kid Takahashi. He’s sealed in the labs with the doctor. I’ll send Sabra to get him, won’t take but a few minutes.”

  “No,” Santander said. Dumbass, he thought. “Wait until we get there. I can’t have you splitting up. If he’s sealed off and the jammers are fully in place, leave him be for now.” He checked his heads-up display. “We’ll be touching down in just over four minutes.”

  “Yes sir, we’ll see you then. Sorry about that with Takahashi, it’s just that…”

  Santander cut the connection, blowing air through his lips noisily.

  “Everything okay, Q?” Ran asked next to him on the comm net. The SSTO shuttle banged back and forth as the atmosphere thickened.

  “Fine,” he replied. “Just hard to find good henchmen these days. No offense.”

  Ran laughed. “None taken…just don’t call me a henchman.”

  Gabriel and his team were seated against one wall of the Operations center, helmets off, with Lamber standing in front of them, now with an assault rifle trained on the group. Sabra was tapping away at one of the workstations, while Vanheel was with Zack at the central table.

  “Pim, what happened?” Zack asked Vanheel in a low voice. “We’ve known each other for almost ten years! Since New Tokyo, for Christ’s sake.” He had a pleading look in his eye. “Why are you doing this, who are these people?”

  “Stop it,” Vanheel said. “I…I can’t talk about it,” he said weakly, avoiding Zack’s eyes. He still held the gun, but it was no longer trained on the chairman.

  Zack looked at his old friend, trying to figure out why he would turn on him, turn on everything they worked for, turn on the native species they had been working so hard to save. His mind ran through everything he knew about him, back to New Tokyo, back to their first trip to Poliahu, back to the wedding…wait.

  “Is this about Stasia? The accident?” he asked.

  Vanheel turned back to Zack. “Leave it be, Zack. You don’t know these people.” He looked away again.

  Zack grabbed him by the shoulder and turned him back to face him. “It wasn’t an accident, was it?” he asked quietly.

  Vanheel looked down at the floor. “No. They said…they said, it was a warning. And if I didn’t play along with this, they’d kill my daughter too.”

  “My god,” Zack said, releasing Vanheel’s shoulder. “Where is she, I thought you said she was living with Stasia’s mother in Germany?”

  “She is,” Vanheel replied. “But they sent me photos of her at her preschool. They’re watching her, and if I don’t go along with what they say…” his voice dropped to a whisper. “Listen, if anything happens to me and you get out of this, I need you to look out for her.”

  “Pim, I’m so sorry,” Zack said. He looked over at his brother sitting against the far wall, a look of barely contained rage on his face, matching the rest of his team. “Stay close, this isn’t over yet.”

  “You two, quit the whispering,” Sabra snapped from her workstation.

  Lamber’s commlink buzzed at his waist. Taking one hand from the assault rifle, he picked it up. “Lamber.”

  “We’re at the main doors, get ‘em open. Goddam freezing out here,” came the reply.

  Lamber motioned to Sowers. “Open it,” he said, indicating a nearby workstation.

  Sowers slowly stood up, glared at Lamber, and walked over to the workstation. The combat armor was still stiff in most places, and almost unbearably heavy without power. He tapped a few keys, and turned back around. “Open, lieutenant,” he said sarcastically, walking back to his original position and sitting down.

  “Now what?” ground out Gabriel in a low voice.

  “Now we meet the new boss,” said Lamber. “Nice guy, I’m sure you’ll all love him.”

  Brevik spat on the floor. “Can’t wait,” he growled.

  Gabriel’s Mindseye lit up unexpectedly, images of comm system icons flickering into view, and he struggled to keep his face impassive to not alert the others. He quickly sent in a few scout programs to see if they could broaden the path. Very limited pipe, he saw: no two way comm, no data link. If he could…there, he grabbed a screenshot of his vision, created an image packet, and fired it off to the only person not currently under the gun. As the packet was sent, the pipe crashed and the link disappeared. He only hoped the image made it out.

  “You okay?” the disembodied voice said.

  Takahashi struggled to consciousness, his vision going from black to gray to a blurry white. A light flashed from one eye to the other.

  “Wha???” he stammered. His neuretics were completely down, his arms and legs felt as if they were wrapped in heavy chains, and he had a nasty taste of vomit in his mouth. He felt some kind of sticky substance on the back of his head, which wa
s throbbing like the morning after his first real Mexican tequila night.

  He shook his head and the pain feedback told him that was a mistake. He blinked his eyes. Doctor Gilchrist stood over him; apparently he was sitting on the floor. His last memory was, what was it? They were moving the cabinet in front of the door as a secondary barricade, then there was this terrible pain in his…

  He sat bolt upright. “Kuso!” he said, cursing in Japanese, trying to get to his feet.

  “Whoa, whoa,” Gilchrist said, pushing at his shoulders. “You fell flat backwards, hit your head on the edge of the table, and have a grade two concussion. You shouldn’t even be awake right now.”

  “Awake?” Takahashi said in alarm. “How long have I been out?”

  Gilchrist checked his watch. “About eight minutes.”

  “Dammit!” he barked, pushing the doctor’s hands away as forcefully as he could with the disabled armor. He struggled to his feet, knocking several instruments off a nearby tray onto the floor.

  “Relax, it was an accident,” the doctor said. “Sit down, I’ll get you some water.”

  “No, doc, it’s not an accident,” Takahashi replied. “We’re under attack. That was a neurojammer. Someone tried to fry our systems.” He did some neuretics checking, to no avail. “And did a damned good job.” He checked a few more pathways. “No comm, no weapons, and armor is compromised.”

  Gilchrist looked alarmed. “I thought you said they’d be coming in through…”

  “I know,” Takahashi interrupted. “We all thought so. Damn, neurojammers aren’t even supposed to exist. Experimental only.” He took one armored gauntlet off, dabbing at the back of his head with his freed hand. Looking at the smeared blood on his fingers, he grimaced. “Seems like they work just fine,” he said. “We’ve got to get to the rest of the team.”

  “But your commander said to stay here,” the doctor said.

  Takahashi was about to reply when a burst came in through his disabled neuretics. Shouldn’t be able to receive anything, he thought. Must have been a discrete channel, high power.