Cassandra's War: A Sci-Fi Corporate Technothriller (The SynCorp Saga Book 2)

by Pourteau, Chris

  The nap had done her good. Back at the Erkennen facility, the implant had seemed like a junkyard dog in her head, chained but out of control. Back there, the sheer volume of sensory input had made her nervous system raw, angry. She’d had to fight the voice in her head.

  But now was different. Her relationship with MoSCOW felt more like a conversation, symbiotic, as if she could adjust the gain on MoSCOW’s input at will. Ming shivered, wondering how far the earworm and MoSCOW’s other connectors had burrowed into her human tissue. And if she were permanently changed, beyond whatever damage the radiation poisoning had wrought.

  The vessel began to flip around. Ming just hoped she’d be able to maintain control of MoSCOW long enough to track down Elise Kisaan and take back the cryptokey. Then she’d have a real bargaining chip with Anthony Taulke.

  “Heads up,” Lander said.

  Ming followed his visual cues to a series of small explosions from a distant space station. MoSCOW informed her the station was on her list of possible origin points for the mysterious UN shuttle. It appeared someone else had taken a keen interest in that station. Someone with lots of firepower.

  “I’ll drive,” Ming said. She spun the nose of the shuttle and put them into a hard burn for the space station coming under attack. Lander grunted as the gees piled up.

  “You know that’s weapons fire, right?” Lander said. She didn’t answer.

  The shuttle sensor package was useless for long-range scanning, so Ming relied on her own visuals, continually updating as their destination grew closer. She waited until the last possible second to flip the shuttle and activate the decel burn. The station passed by the viewscreen as she continued to gather more observational information. Lander’s head lolled as he succumbed to the g-force, while MoSCOW adjusted her bodysuit to accommodate the new stresses.

  The analysis MoSCOW fed her made no sense. The debris from the attacking ships came from mining vessels mixed with military hardware, mostly US made. Someone was attacking a space station with mining units?

  One of the MOABs opened its rear door and three smaller dropships launched. No sooner had they begun to burn away from their carrier than a bolt of energy lanced from the apex of the station, destroying the mother ship.

  “Jesus,” Lander said.

  The slow-moving vessels used the momentum from their launch to race toward the space station, thrusters firing all the while. Point defense cannons opened up from the station, destroying two of the small craft. Another craft—this one MoSCOW identified as an actual navy ship, a sloop—accelerated toward the station, covering the lone remaining dropship. The sloop absorbed rail gun shells, then returned fire until the station’s cannon erupted in a fiery burst.

  A large bay in the center of the space station yawned open. Small, tubular spacecraft streamed out .

  “Twelve drones,” MoSCOW reported. “Armed and highly maneuverable.”

  The navy vessel banked hard and raced toward a dropship that had attached itself to the station like a leech. The drones from the station fanned out into a search pattern.

  “Looks like whoever runs this station doesn’t believe in UN treaties,” Lander said.

  “This is the place we’re looking for, Lander.”

  “Who are these guys?” Lander’s tone sounded respectful. “They’re willing to take serious losses to get on that station.” He shook his head. “Suicide mission.”

  Ming spun the shuttle and started a burn directly at the station. “Don’t know, don’t care. The enemy of my enemy is my friend.”

  MoSCOW was already connected to the station’s network, breaking through their firewalls. She went straight for the comms network and ran a facial rec protocol for Elise Kisaan.

  “Kisaan … on the station … observation deck.”

  Ming banked the Roadrunner hard to avoid an incoming drone.

  “Make yourself useful, Lander.” She pointed to the rail gun controls. “Shoot something.”

  With difficulty he raised his hands to the gunner’s pad on the main console, target-locked the drone now turning toward their port quarter, and fired. Its engine flared, then exploded in a short-lived cloud of orange dust. He targeted another and fired again.

  “Ingress point located,” MoSCOW pulsed. The cargo bay where the drones had come from was still open. And it was only a few decks below where MoSCOW had located Kisaan.

  “You’re going in there?” Lander asked, his voice tight under the g-force. “Is that a good idea?”

  Ming grinned as she felt the rage bubble up in her throat. She envisioned what she’d do to this Kisaan woman once she had her under her gun. “Not only is it a good idea, Lander. It’s the only idea.”

  “Bay door closing.”

  “You’re coming in too fast!” Lander warned.

  Not too fast. The landing bay loomed large. Just exactly fast enough.

  “Ming! Goddammit, the door is closing—”

  She flipped the ship and performed an emergency decel burn. Ming smashed flat into her couch, the g-force too much even for the MoSCOW suit to compensate for.

  Had the Roadrunner been bulkier, they’d have had no chance. But with its low, sleek design, MoSCOW calculated they would just make it.

  “Ming!” Lander shouted.

  The shuttle slipped through the gap engine first, and the bay doors closed like a toothy maw behind them. Ming killed the main engines and the ambient noise subsided until only Lander’s heavy breathing remained.

  “Repressurizing the bay,” Ming said, directing MoSCOW to do so. Her own heart was racing. She’d never felt more alive.

  “Never … fucking ever … do that with me in a ship again,” Lander said.

  She retrieved Lander’s weapon from the locker and tossed it to him. She nodded at the bay doors separating them and open space. “This bay stays closed unless I get back. You can wait here or come with me. Your choice.”

  Ming felt Lander’s eyes assessing her. She must look like quite a sight, she realized: sweating, eyes feverish, talking to herself in a clipped, freakish voice.

  And above all, angry. Very, very angry.

  Lander stood. “I’ll stick with you.”

  Chapter 22

  William Graves • USS Dauntless

  In Graves’s opinion, the “touch-and-go” maneuver was not well named. The tech from the Dauntless positioned Graves’s harnessed body over the emergency docking hatch and had just finished explaining about a two-meter chute that extended below the belly of the ship. To Graves’s mind, the maneuver should be named something more like “get-close-and-throw-the-old-man-into-space.” He reminded himself again that he’d ordered this against the captain’s recommendation.

  The young man—Yoakim, according to his name badge—had a worried look on his boyish face.

  The ship banked hard, throwing Graves to the limits of his harness. “Where you from, son?” Graves asked.

  The tech looked startled that a general was talking to him like a regular person. “Kansas, sir. Wichita.” He fussed with the fasteners on Graves’s chest.

  “Twenty-five seconds to e-dock,” the speaker said.

  “You seem nervous. Ever done this before? ”

  The tech shook his head. “Honest to God, General, I thought this was just one of those textbook procedures we never really use in real life.”

  Graves forced a reassuring smile. “I’m sure Commander Ibekwe knows what he’s doing.”

  From the speaker: “Fifteen seconds.”

  “The captain is the best pilot I’ve ever seen. If he can’t do this, no one can.”

  The tech hugged his own chest. “Cross your arms, sir. Like this.”

  Ten … nine … eight …

  “Now remember, sir: breathe out as hard as you can. That way your lungs won’t burst if you’re exposed for a few seconds in space.”

  Two … one…

  The Dauntless came to a hard stop, throwing Yoakim to the end of his safety tether, but Graves was held in place by
his harness. He heard a whooshing sound under his feet and then he was being sucked downward, into the umbilical tunnel.

  He saw a flash of light as he slid past the docking ring of the Dauntless and into the extension, then darkness again as he entered the dropship. His shoulder clipped the edge of the new hatch, and he felt his knee give way as his body landed hard on the new deck. The circle of light above his head snapped shut.

  “Holy shit, it’s the general,” he heard someone say. A light in the eyes blinded him. “You okay, sir?”

  He struggled to his feet, pawing at the light. His knee throbbed, but it held his weight. “I’m fine, goddammit. Fine. Who’s in charge here? ”

  “Me, sir. Captain Quincy.”

  He faced the young woman with the stubby ponytail from the briefing. In the shadowy shuttle interior, her determined expression reminded him of Jansen. Six heavily armed marines ringed the two of them.

  “Quincy? You were in command of the MOAB, not this strike team.”

  “Last-minute personnel change, sir,” she said.

  One of the marines snickered. “Yeah, the other guy crapped his pants when he found out the mission.”

  “Stow it, marine,” Quincy snapped. “General, why are you here?”

  “Last-minute personnel change,” he said to Quincy. Out of the corner of his eye, Graves saw the marines exchange looks.

  Quincy looked him over and shook her head. “Just so long as you don’t slow us down, sir.” She pushed through the marines and made her way to the next compartment.

  Graves followed, closing the hatch behind him. Two combat engineers were busy cutting on the inner door of the station airlock with a plasma torch. They’d already jacked the first door open manually.

  “This is a maintenance access port,” Quincy said. “They probably don’t know we’re here yet. Once this lock is open, it stays open. If we need to get out of here fast, we’ll vent this whole deck.” Quincy leaned into Graves and lowered her voice. “How many dropships made it?”

  “Two, so far.”

  She swore under her breath.

  “How close are we to the reactor?” Graves asked .

  Quincy pointed at the ceiling. “Two decks up.” She jerked her head at the compartment behind them. “I hope those jarheads can fight as good as they talk. I’m one of three combat engineers—if one of us doesn’t make it to the reactor in one piece, this will have been a complete waste of bodies.”

  The engineer running the plasma torch turned it off and stood. “We’re ready, ma’am.” He stepped aside to let a second man place the manual jack to pry the door open.

  Quincy stepped to the back of the compartment and banged on the door. “Saddle up, marines. It’s your turn.”

  The four men and two women filed into the tiny airlock compartment, three to a side. The joking air of the last few minutes was gone, replaced by stony faces and harder eyes. The marine who had spoken earlier pressed an M24 rifle into Graves’s arms. “For luck, sir,” he whispered, and flashed a brief smile.

  They wore dark green battle armor and carried M24s and one heavy-caliber machine gun per fire team. A pair of grenades with selectable detonation settings were tucked into pockets at the smalls of their backs, and most carried a personal sidearm and a blade. Graves nodded to himself. This team would get them to the reactor. He could feel their confidence.

  “Helmets on, marines,” growled the sergeant leading the group on the right. The team detached the battle helmets from their belts and snapped them in place. A few seconds elapsed as they did comms checks, then the lead marine nodded at Quincy.

  “Standing by, ma’am,” he said, his voice amplified by the helmet speaker.

  The combat engineer who’d set up the jack on the inner airlock showed the marine where to trigger the controlled detonation and stepped back to join Quincy and Graves.

  Quincy put her fingers in her ears. “This is gonna be loud, sir.” Graves followed suit.

  When the blast erupted, the atmosphere in the compartment compressed, then released into the station in a rush of air. The marine team on the left moved forward, but the first man in line stopped short. His body stuttered, then collapsed. It took Graves a second to realize they were under attack.

  He hit the deck along with Quincy as the marines regrouped behind the lip of the blown hatch. One of them tossed a grenade down the corridor.

  “Fire in the hole!”

  The blast rocked them harder than the breaching action had.

  The heavy cal thunk-thunk-thunked for what seemed like a long time to Graves’s ears. The two remaining marines in the first fire team rushed into the shattered, smoke-filled corridor. Small arms fire, then silence. The reek of gunpowder and hot metal drifted backward. The first fire team stood and signaled all clear.

  Graves slipped a little as he stood, then tugged on Quincy’s arm to help her up. When she resisted, he looked down. She held the limp body of the engineer who had manned the cutting torch. There was a red hole where his right eye had been, and the back of his head was a pulpy mess. Graves realized he’d slipped in the man’s brains trying to get up.

  Laying the body gently on the deck, Quincy stood and wiped her hands on her trousers. “So much for the element of surprise.”

  Both teams of marines advanced, each along one side of the blasted corridor. Quincy and the other combat engineer brought up the rear, carrying packs over their shoulders. They passed a pair of corpses in matching black uniforms, their bodies pocked and lacerated from the grenade’s explosion.

  “Up two decks, Sergeant,” Quincy said. “I need to get to the reactor compartment.”

  The marine nodded. “Understood, ma’am. We’ll clear the way.”

  • • •

  Ming Qinlao • Cargo Bay 2B

  When Ming stepped from the Roadrunner , her right leg gave way. Lander reached down to help, but she shook him off with as much attitude as she could muster.

  “Your motor functions are unstable due to continued radiation exposure. Unpairing recommended.” MoSCOW’s voice in her head was strangely comforting.

  “You okay?” Lander asked.

  “I’m fine. Just adjusting to the new artificial gravity here.”

  He frowned at the obvious lie. “Look,” he said, “that thing is taking a toll on you. If you drop dead, how am I supposed to get out of here?”

  Ming offered him a wolfish smile. “Guess you’d better make sure I get back here in one piece, right?”

  While she traded barbs with Lander, MoSCOW projected the station’s holographic security feed onto Ming’s retinal display. Two dropships were attached to the hull. A pinpoint of red light showed an attack unit at the far end of the station, near the fusion reactor. Another boarding party was one deck below their present location. Ming could tell they were fighting their way down toward the comms array located near the observation deck. And Elise Kisaan.

  A bright light flashed, overloading her display. The station feed disappeared.

  MoSCOW? Are you there? Ming felt a rise of panic at the sudden emptiness in her head. She leaned against the hull of the shuttle.

  “I am here,” came the reply after a few seconds. “I was ejected from the space station network.”

  “Ejected?”

  “Yes, by an extremely powerful synthetic entity with enough resources to dominate my attack.”

  “What the hell is going on?” Lander demanded. “We’re sitting ducks out here.”

  Ming’s vision cleared. “We know where we’re going,” she said. “We’ll just have to navigate the old-fashioned way.”

  The hallway outside the cargo bay was wide and strangely empty. Her footfalls made no sound on the thin carpet. It was too much to hope that the Roadrunner hadn’t been detected slipping into the bay, but all the station’s security seemed to be aimed at the intruders. Hugging the wall, Glock in hand, Ming reached the set of stairs leading to the next deck. Lander followed close behind, the big man surprisingly light on his feet
.

  The door to the stairwell opened with a sharp clack of metal. Deserted. Where were all the people on this station?

  She led them upward, her suit adapting to offset her muscle fatigue. She paused at the door to the topmost level, the sound of her own ragged breathing filling the silence .

  “Caution.”

  Ming closed her eyes to better focus on the sounds around her. The door was heavy, airtight, capable of sealing off the rest of the station in the event of catastrophe. She pressed her ear against the metal.

  “What’s the holdup?” Lander whispered.

  She took his hand and placed it on the door so he could feel the percussive thump from the other side. Gunfire, heavy caliber.

  “Is there another way in?” he asked.

  Ming shook her head, staring at the downloaded map MoSCOW had secured before being kicked from the station’s network. She used her hip to tap the crash bar on the door and crack it open. No longer muffled, the blare of a firefight echoed around the stairwell.

  Ming did a quick visual survey of the scene. Two marines in battle armor occupied the right-hand corner, alternating fire down the long hallway. A mobile attack pod advanced on their position. According to her map, the observation deck was behind the pod.

  “Fire in the hole!” one marine shouted, lobbing a grenade. The pod’s shield deflected it, angling it back toward the marines. Ming slammed the door shut, and a loud concussion shook the stairwell.

  When she opened it again, the pod had advanced closer. The marines continued their attack, but they were fighting a losing battle. It was only a matter of time before the marines would be forced to retreat. She could wait or act.

  The back-and-forth firing entered a rhythm as the two teams battled for the last few meters of bullet-shattered hallway. She closed her eyes to assess the pattern of the gunfire, knowing in her heart she was applying logic to the actions of people under stress.

  “Cover me.” She kicked open the door, diving for the corner.

  Lander used the surprise opening of the door to spray the assault pod with bullets, giving her a few precious beats to traverse the two meters to the nearest dark green uniform. Her carbon fiber knife was out as she grabbed the nearest marine and rolled him over on top of her for protection.