by James Evans
“Didn’t anyone ever tell you not to lay hands on a woman without her permission? No? Perhaps there’s something special about yours that makes you think you can grab anyone you please, eh? Let’s see them then,” Ten said, pulling the gloves of the environment suit from Sokolov’s hands. The gloves hadn’t been attached properly and they came away easily.
Sokolov howled as the cold gripped his hands. He could feel his blood freeze and he thrashed about but Ten held him firmly.
“Bit nippy is it? Your hands don’t look special to me,” Ten said, pulling up one of Sokolov’s hands by the wrist. He wiggled the index finger and it snapped off at the joint, frozen solid. Sokolov felt an urge to puke as he looked at his abruptly truncated digit.
“You know. I don’t think many women will want you to touch them with these. Why don’t you go and have a look and see if you can find some to ask, eh?”
Sokolov found himself hurled out of the airlock, onto the surface of Oldervik. He stumbled back towards the airlock. The door slid closed before he could get there.
The sudden loneliness – the vast silence of the void – was unbearable. A long-forgotten fear of the dark arose again in Sokolov, and he wailed out his despair and terror.
The power armoured enemy stood on the inside, watching through the window, his eyes pitiless. Sokolov banged his hand on the door, and it snapped off at the wrist.
The man inside turned away from the airlock, and Sokolov fell to his knees as his body began to freeze.
21
A small flurry of red dots appeared on the tactical map in his HUD. Ten began to move, heading down the corridor then up a staircase.
Ten ringed a large circular room on the tactical map.
Ten pounded up several flights of stairs. The Valkyr artificial intelligence was pretty quick on the uptake. It didn’t get everything, but it had told him it had studied a wide range of the classic military texts as well as basic training manuals. It didn’t have access to anything that had been done after the Ark ship Koschei left Sol, though.
Ten climbed into an engineering lift and slapped the up arrow.
Ten chuckled as he exited the lift, climbing out onto the gantry of a huge cylindrical atrium that plunged deep into the asteroid below. Above was a geodesic dome with a view out into space. Below him was a multi-purpose room, much of which was devoted to hydroponic units. Other areas were used for storage space or even picnic tables. This was probably a good place to eat your lunch, especially if you really liked fresh salad.
Not all the plants would be edible; some were likely to be efficient processors of atmosphere. Somehow the air smelled better when filtered through plants rather than carbon-nano filters – although, theoretically, it shouldn’t make any difference. Ten’s personal belief was that the plants added pollutants of their own, introducing a smell associated with freshness.
Ten checked the tactical map, flipping it to an isometric projection so he could more easily distinguish the different levels of the room. Sure enough, whatever Agent O had been doing, the GKI bastards were heading in the right direction. Once he knew where they were heading, he moved down to meet the one who would be highest up the structure.
The man walked through a door moments later, looking around as if he’d lost something. He reached up and pressed a button on the side of his HUD mount. Probably rebooting it, confused at whatever false information Agent O was feeding him.
Ten appeared behind him. A pale amber glow rose up between them and a soft hum could be heard. With a sizzle, the Deathless vibro-knife slid home through the mercenary’s spine and into his heart. For good measure, Ten had clamped his hand over the condemned’s mouth to stifle his cries, however unlikely that was. He levered the knife forward, slicing through more of the chest as he freed it. Then he took his thumb off the button and wiped the now static knife on the trooper’s uniform.
With both hands free and the use of his power armoured strength, Ten lifted the corpse clear off the ground and walked it over to a nearby seating area, laying it gently on a couch near some coffee tables.
“Nothing of any use,” he muttered as he frisked the body.
Then he checked the map. One level below him another target was about to enter. He looked down at the floor and then upended a vase from one of the coffee tables, letting the water drip through the grill to the solid floor below. He took the cut flowers and dropped a couple on the dead merc, then scattered the rest down the flight of stairs nearby.
Ten blended into the shadows and waited. It wasn’t long before the red dot on his HUD reached the dribbled water. There was some kind of profane exclamation, then the sound of hurried footsteps as the trooper climbed the first flight of stairs. They slowed when they reached the first flowers, and more cursing followed.
The red dot, a woman as it transpired, reached the top of the stairs and looked about, taking a few seconds to spot the prone figure on the couch. She hissed something at him as she approached. There was enough time for her to pull aside the blanket, revealing the bloodstained chest, then her hand flew to her belt.
Ten didn’t give her time to draw her sidearm. He snapped her neck, a mercifully quick death that she probably didn’t deserve, but easily and cleanly accomplished in power armour against an unarmoured foe. In his youth, following the example set by numerous holovids, he had tried snapping necks with his bare hands, but he’d soon realised he should stick to the tried and trusted methods taught by the unarmed combat instructors during commando training. The first and most important of which was, of course, don’t ever be caught unarmed.
His HUD showed his third and fourth targets had met up three levels below, so he dropped the body on the couch with her friend and padded down the stairs. Apparently the Valkyr liked a little luxury in their facilities as the treads were actually carpeted. Not real carpet, of course, but some close approximation that was considerably better than bare metal for his purposes. He was wearing Commando class stealth armour, complete with soft-soled armoured boots.
Ten was still a little vexed that he hadn’t been able to try out an ogre clone yet. Honestly, it was starting to feel like someone in authority was denying him the chance to test one out. He couldn’t remember pissing off any generals, at least not recently, so maybe it was simply bad luck.
On the plus side, the standard marine clone and light power armour he was using were familiar and comfortable, like a well-worn pair of jeans. He could slip into them and immediately have full control. That was what allowed him to stalk a pair of GKI men and open both of their throats with his vibro-knife before they had registered his presence.
He finished them swiftly with a thrust to the heart, cutting off the bubbling gasps as they tried to suck down air, even while their blood pumped from their necks. Mercy wasn’t on the cards tonight, but he didn’t need them thrashing about and making a noise to warn or interrupt his next kill.
Wiping the knife quickly, because getting dried blood out of a sheath was always fiddly, he stood up and moved to the railing overlooking the atrium. His HUD overlaid the positions of the enemies that Agent O had identified. The next was three storeys down. He checked the mission timer.
Too fucking long, he thought, cursing himself for being self-indulgent with his earlier punishment work.
A thought occurred to him and he grinned wickedly in his helmet.
Ten replied as he shot his grapnel line over a cross strut above him, then swiftly set it to pay out the correct length of line.
As he plummeted through the atrium, he calmly released the mag lock that kept his suppressed carbine attached to his breastplate and pointed it toward the enemy. He was one storey above the level of the next target when the gravity dropped to a fraction of Earth normal and his acceleration slowed dramatically. The target was looking about in surprise when Ten slowly dropped past him and pumped a burst into his head.
Ten continued to drop, the line from the grapnel slowing his descent just enough to give him thinking time. Five more targets in total in this space. All of them surprised to find themselves without standard gravity. The next two were on opposite sides of the same level and he had to shoot the first from above as he fell, then wrench his body wildly to turn and shoot the second before he dropped below their level and they vanished from view.
Only now he was spinning good and fast. It was starting to make him dizzy, and he didn’t need to be disoriented right now. Fighting drunk in a bar was one thing; fighting the urge to puke inside a helmet while despatching three combatants was quite another.
He pressed a button on his grapnel and released the line, hoping that he’d remembered the depth of the atrium correctly. Without the grapnel to slow him, he would begin to accelerate again, even in this low gravity. Looking down, he could see the last three gathering near the ground floor. They were about to look up.
Ten snatched a small object from his belt and threw hard, sending it streaking towards the ground below. He tried to aim the throw, but there was still a little spinning going on, either in his head or because he was actually rotating. No time to think.
The flashbang went off and the Deathless trio floated away from the detonation, hands covering their ears. Ten hit the ground and bounced, bringing his left fist down on the skull of one as he hit the deck.
Bone splintered, and Ten winced as realised he’d have to wash the armour later. You only had to put away gore-spattered power armour once to appreciate the lesson about showering after combat.
He dropped to one knee to absorb his momentum. The remaining two GKI troopers turned to look at him in amazement, twisting in the air.
That’s right, look at me, the big damned hero, landing right among you, he thought.
Then he struck, and when it was over, he looked in dismay at his gauntlets. Drenched in gore.
Bloody hell, thought Ten. That was damn close to reading my mind.
It didn’t stop him pushing off to float across to the cleaning station, though. He rinsed quickly, wiping himself clean while he plotted his next move.
“Warning. Artificial gravity loss in atrium core. Manual reset required. Recommend immediate action to prevent loss of food supplies. Please use the nearest station panel to confirm acknowledgement. This message repeats in three minutes.”
22
Warden considered for a moment. They’d arrived a day earlier than the ransom required, thanks to some prompt action and hard work by Captain Cohen and his crew, but surely even these low-level scum would soon notice they were missing people. Then again, Agent O’s video showed a lot of drinking amongst the GKI troopers. Maybe they were just too distracted.
Warden turned to Colour Milton who shrugged. What the hell was Ten having to do? Every entry they’d examined while he’d been clearing out the stragglers had been dismissed. The GKI troops had booby-trapped a couple of doors and some of the station’s plans had been superseded by later modifications. They could blow a hole through the wall, but their goal was to get through the mission without civilian casualties, and that would be hard enough without using explosives.
The Marines were huddled inside corridors and alcoves, clustered around the rec room where the GKI mercenaries had holed up.
Ten wriggled in the tight space which Agent O had so kindly found for him. It wasn’t designed for humans, though thankfully there had been an access hatch in a maintenance room that let him get into the conduit in the first place. Still, he’d had to ditch his armour, and even with the lean muscle of a Marine clone, this was a tight sque
eze.
Compounding the tightness of the space was the thick layer of greasy effluent running down it. The hostages were being held in the kitchen, and this pipe led to the system for disposing of cooking oil and food scraps. Ten wondered idly if it would smell worse in an omnivorous kitchen rather than one that prepared only the vegetable-based diet of the Valkyr.
Another wriggle and he made it a few centimetres further up the tube. He took a deep breath and tried to avoid the urge to puke. Then another wriggle, and another. Ten was beginning to regret raising this option with the captain.
Was it the stench, the claustrophobic confines, the grease that made it hard to move, or the lack of weaponry and armour that was bothering him? Just about the only plus was that his small handheld lamp was so covered in filth that he couldn’t see most of what he was more or less sliding through.
Five metres to go. Ten fought to keep from slipping backwards down the pipe as he made each shuffling move forwards. It wasn’t steep, just inclined enough to keep the waste flowing down to the lower level for recycling. It was the oil that made it particularly hard. Why was he doing this, again? For people he didn’t know. As soon as he had the thought, he felt guilty.
He was doing it because of the woman crying in her bathroom. He was doing it because of the mother and child he’d seen torn out into the vacuum of space by the breach made by the GKI troops. He was doing it for the same damned reasons he’d fought in every filthy skirmish, uprising and combat zone across the Commonwealth since he was a young man, oh so long ago. Ten didn’t like bullies.
Correction, he thought. I fucking hate bullies, and there’s some of them in the room up ahead. Just a little further and you can teach them some manners. All above board; not just justice, but legal justice.
Ten renewed his efforts, concentrating on developing a skill that he would almost certainly never use again in his life. Definitely not if he did something else better, like find some other poor bastard to do this sort of thing for him. That was the downside of not being in command. As a Marine, you got ordered about. Officers didn’t do this sort of stuff, or take this sort of risk. Except sometimes killing officers, like Atticus and Warden.