Suicide Run

by TS Hottle

  Two guns on her belt moved, reminding her of their heft by their motion. She had a KR-7 pistol on one side, and a XG-752 energy pistol, the Navy's preferred shipboard firearm. The ammo and powerpacks sat strapped to her belt beneath the pressure suit. Only the XG-752 would be of any use outside the ship. She grabbed the magnetic grapplers and pushed herself at the Khirovsky, praying to the universe that the giant ship did not course correct until she attached to the hull. A correction in her direction would either crush her or send her spinning off into space. Any other correction would leave her stranded. She would burn to nothing falling from orbit. It seemed like minutes until the hand grapplers caught the hull, though it only took ten seconds. Suicide triggered her boot mags and pulled her legs to the hull. Once secure, she stood, adjusting to having her feet on the hull with the rest of her body weightless. Now she needed an airlock.

  Had this been one of the Wilson or Olympus Mons classes, she would know exactly where to go. The Khirovsky was an entirely new class of ship, not even built in the big Belter yards of the Jovian Federation. This ship came from Bromdar as that planet's reaction to two Realm bombings. Naval regs, however, were Naval regs. The airlocks had to have an emergency override for someone trapped outside the ship to get inside.

  The Bromdarians had learned well from their Terran and Martian ancestors. As Suicide looked for an airlock, spider drones emerged from the hull. Under normal circumstances, the drones would deploy to apply sealant to hull breaches, reattach severed conduits, and take surveillance of the exterior. Knowing Salamacis, Suicide guessed she would take full advantage of Bromdarian anger and insist the spiders be weaponized.

  The spiders fanned out along the hull in a set pattern she recognized from her days aboard the Hancock. They followed a set grid in the beginning, looking for damage and moving toward a specific section of hull fed to them by the engineers. She had time before they became aware of her and moved up to the ship's topside.

  As she had hoped, she found a maintenance airlock near the cowling for the ship's EM drive. The spiders had not emerged there yet, but those already deployed had moved toward where she landed. She needed to trigger the emergency entrance and hoped they had not locked down the ship.

  The thick gloves of the pressure suit made it hard to trip the emergency entrance protocol on the hatch. She lost thirty seconds trying to tap the right buttons, a rather primitive way to secure the exterior of the ship. Of course, if Salamacis had ordered the captain to lockout the ship's exterior, a common anti-boarding tactic, Suicide would have to signal the Bova and hope the point cannons did not get her or the Metisian ship.

  The light on the hatch cycled green. As it opened, three spiders emerged from their nearby cradles and moved on her. She could see their mechanical jaws sparking from the vacuum welders embedded in their carapaces. Her mind heard clacking noises as they sped toward her on magnetic feet. Of course, she didn't really hear them, but if just one of them slashed at her suit, she'd be…

  She yelled as something tore at her suit. Her hand went for the KR-7 before she realized the safety slugs inside would be worthless against the spider now trying to stop her. It took a considerable effort to put her hand on the XG-752 instead, all while fighting down panic.

  The spider stood in front of her now. Air hissed out of her suit. Because it made the original suits built for early tin can capsules look like Marine battle armor, it lacked the pleasant female voice that told wearers their oxygen was now leaking into space. She knew that already.

  The spider reached out with two legs, its carapace welder glowing red. She shoved the XG-752 into its sensor eye and fired three times. The spider froze. She pushed herself down into the cramped maintenance airlock and tripped the controls to cycle. One of the spider's legs stuck in the lock. Her ears popped as the pressure dropped. Her lungs ached as her breathing oxygen maintained the same pressure while the suit's air drained away. She batted at the spider leg, but it wouldn't budge.

  She tried not to panic, but the thought of her own breathing supply inflating her like a balloon made her panic. This had been so much easier when she shot out her cockpit window.

  Breathing could get her killed, and that made the panic even harder to fight. Finally, she found the panic button, which would force the hatch to slam shut even with something—or someone, as had happened occasionally—still stuck in the threshold. The hatch slammed shut on hydraulic hinges, severing the spider's errant leg. The lock began to cycle. As it did, Suicide spat out the scuba mouthpiece, emptied her lungs, and waited for the cycle light to go from red to yellow.

  As the air came up, she closed her eyes and began breathing. Her mind slowed. She could move onto finding Salamacis.

  She left the suit and the tank in the airlock. By this point, it didn't matter if they found them. They would know she was aboard soon enough, just from standard shipboard surveillance. She fingered her wrist chip and triggered a signal to the suit's homing beacon. It would tell the Thulians she had made it, as well as sending a tight beam message to the Bova with the plan. All that assumed, of course, the Bova had come into line of sight of the Anna Khirovsky.

  She got her bearings and determined she had entered the ship just aft of the engineering compartment. The Khirovsky had a completely different layout from the Valles Marineris and the Hancock, two starships she had been aboard. Still, the Navy had its habits, even in ship design. Engineering would adhere to certain standards, necessary or not. She made her way forward and bumped into her first crew member.

  Suicide moved to disable the hapless woman and stopped. "Davra?"

  Davra Andraste, dark-skinned and rail thin, widened her eyes. "Suicide? What are you doing here?"

  She looked up as though the CNC were directly above them. "Arresting Jez Salamacis on charges of treason."

  Davra eyes went up and down Suicide and her Metisian Navy fatigues. "You're not Compact anymore."

  "Then I'm arresting her for crimes against the Republic, kidnapping, and attempted murder." She smiled. "Might add illegal genetic modification and possession of unlicensed cloning technology while we're at it." She summoned all the calm she could. Davra's next words would either guarantee Suicide's success or force Suicide to hurt this girl she had shepherded for months.

  "How bad is it?" she asked.

  "What do you know of Juno?"

  "That company that made the creeper vine on Amargosa?"

  "More like one of those secret societies you hear about in bad conspiracy theories. And she's one of them."

  Davra's face hardened. "I knew it. What's more, so did the captain. He's been in a foul mood since she came aboard." She looked around. "If this goes badly, and I'm arrested, I want asylum on a Metisian world. Or Hanar, if you can arrange it."

  Suicide permitted a thin smile. "A mutual friend of ours can swing the latter. As for the former, you've spent time at the colony on Amargosa. You'd be free to go anywhere there, on Metis, or even on Farigha."

  "What's the plan?"

  "First, I need to sabotage the Khirovsky. Make it so the reactor jettisons on my command. Why are you smiling?"

  Davra walked over to a wall panel and pressed her palm to it. "Hold up your wrist chip. I'm going to queue up an emergency core drop and tie it to your command."

  Suicide did as she was told. "How do you plan to cover this?"

  "Well, I figure you're going to need a hostage to get to the bridge, and I have a lot of experience as a hostage." She finished keying in the commands that would disable the Khirovsky light-years above the galactic plane. "Let's make it look good. Punch me in the face."

  "What?" Moments before, she had prepared to knock Davra out, if only to spare her from betraying the Navy for her. Now, however… "I can't."

  "Look," said Davra, "no one's going to believe I'm your hostage just because you're holding a gun to my head. I'm one of the Children of Amargosa, and you are our mother. Now, if I have a bloody nose or a shiner…"

  Suicide flattened Davra with a
right cross, then caught her as she fell.

  Davra gathered her feet under her. "Oh, yeah. That eye's throbbing. Remind me never to piss you off."

  "Oh, you have. Several times. I just assumed you had a good reason to do it."

  Davra rubbed her eye for a moment. "Let's go. And when we get into the main corridor, you need to put your arm around my neck and the XG-752 to my head."

  "Why the energy pistol?"

  "Because no one in their right mind takes a hostage with an energy pistol. It would kill the hostage taker if she were in contact with the hostage." She grinned. "But if you see someone holding an energy pistol to someone else's head, you tend to give that maniac a wide berth."

  They headed for a nearby lift.

  Davra kicked the grate open.

  Suicide ducked as she entered. "Maintenance tube? Really?"

  "It's this," said Davra, "or I try to convince the security types to let you drag me through the perimeter around Medbay."

  "But what about repair bots? Salamacis sicced them on me outside."

  "You used chaff to cover your entrance, didn't you?" She climbed inside and pulled the grate back into place. "The hull drones reacted to the chaff and your capsule. So, they're all out on the hull. The last thing anyone suspected was someone ejecting from the nosecone of a surface-to-space missile. And how did you handle twenty gs?"

  "Five," said Suicide, "they ratcheted down the thrust before launch."

  "How did you fit a combat suit inside that thing?"

  Suicide gave her a weak grin. "Pressure suit and a diving tank."

  Davra stopped. "I know I've said this since the day I met you, but they don't call you Suicide for nothing."

  "Where to next?"

  Davra started down the tube. "This way. We can drop into the main corridor near the CNC."

  "Won't they have a security perimeter there, too?"

  "Good thing you have a hostage."

  They proceeded down the maintenance tube in a trot, avoiding hitting their heads on the conduits overhead. Davra cut around a corner, then came skidding back. "Um… Bots."

  "I thought you said they were all on the hull," said Suicide.

  "Well, what did you expect? I work in sensory." She ran over to Suicide and backed against her. "Gun. Get the gun out."

  Suicide put her arm around Davra's throat and put the gun to her head.

  "You might want to arm that." Davra's eyes remained fixed on the corner. The clacking of spider drone legs echoed back.

  "I'm not arming an energy pistol pointed at your head."

  "Do it. I don't want to get court-martialed."

  She thumbed the power switch on the XG-752. Davra flinched in her arms as the pistol whined to life.

  "Okay, I get why you didn't want to…"

  Two spider drones clacked around the corner and froze. They stopped and scanned them with low-powered laser light.

  "Well, hello there, Commander Cui." Even tinny, Jez Salamacis's voice sounded like fingernails on slate to Suicide. She chalked it up to being a personality thing. In reality, she had noticed the woman actually spoke like those AI voices that pleasantly informed all that they would be dead in minutes. "I see you've taken your former protégé hostage. How the mighty have fallen."

  "Let me into CNC," Suicide responded, "or I will shoot this woman."

  "Did you not think I noticed you have a live XG-752 pointed at Lieutenant, jg, Andraste's head? The shot would kill you as well as her."

  She released Davra, who kept up the pretense of being a hostage.

  "Now, hand Andraste the weapon, and she will escort you to CNC." One of the spiders clacked its forelegs on the deck. Suicide wondered if Salamacis realized how stupid her theatrics looked. Or cared. "Otherwise, I will flood the corridor with somnazine gas and have security carry you out."

  Suicide powered down the gun and handed it to Davra.

  "The KR-7 as well," said Salamacis. "I will not have a hostile agent prowling my ship with a slug thrower on her belt."

  "Her ship?" Davra mouthed. Her expression suggested the captain would want to throw the chief of staff out the nearest airlock for that.

  Suicide did not dare make a show of responding, not with Salamacis watching. "Come on, Lieutenant. Let's go see the captain."

  Retroact: 421 IE

  Over Aphrodite

  "Never saw Aphrodite up close before," said the man sitting next to Yun. They rode in an interplanetary transport with the cloud-draped world growing in the windows.

  She wanted to get up, move around, do calisthenics, or stretch. The cabin did not lend itself to that. Meditation would have worked better. Sitting next to the man did not lend itself to that. So, Yun sat quietly for two days as the transport took advantage of the brief alignment between Aphrodite and Tian. A burn that could take weeks when the planets sat on opposite sides of Helios, the system's Sol-like star, took only two days. The grav plates on these transports had trouble negating the false gravity created by the ship's EM drive.

  Yun wondered why they didn't simply use an old Belter ship. The rock dwellers built their ships solid. They could easily handle a one-G burn and only have the passengers weightless for an hour at most.

  Of course, this was a Dasarius ship transporting Dasarius employees to a Dasarius project. Tol Germanicus had promised it would turn Helios's "swampy Venus" into a tropical paradise. She'd believe it when she saw it. Politicians and do-gooders for centuries had promised to put out the dumpster fire that was Aphrodite. And decade after decade, it remained an embarrassment to the three core worlds orbiting Helios. What, she wondered, would an ancient trillionaire be able to accomplish that planetary governments and the Compact could not?

  "Never been," she said to the man next to her. "Been to lots of other worlds. Grew up on Tian. Never been here."

  The man laughed. "Not surprised. Most Tianese would prefer Aphrodite become an acidic hell like the planet that gave it its name. You don't see anyone arguing over Venus, do you?"

  "Wait until they colonize it." And someone would colonize it. Each attempt came closer and closer to success. The Martians even promised to terraform it, even if their own terraforming project dragged on into its fifth century. But Yun believed she would meet a native Venusian in her own lifetime.

  "Ha!" The man slapped his knee. "That's a good one. They can't even colonize this planet, and it's more Earth-like than Tian."

  Yun had to question that. Aphrodite was completely habitable, the Helios system's three Goldilocks planets all winning the climate lottery. A fourth, Demeter, had humans living at its frigid equator, though the poles made Antarctica on Earth look like a resort. Yet Tian, only slightly larger than Earth with a moon roughly the size of another Sol planet, mirrored Earth so closely that one could have been the model for the other. Aphrodite had three moons, one almost the size of Luna, the other two rather large asteroids that settled into orbits inside that of the larger moon. The two smaller ones had enough mass to wreak havoc with Aphrodite's tides.

  The man shoved his hand at Yun. "Gerard Kurz, lead for the Sanctuary Project."

  Yun shook it, finally meeting the man's gaze. "Call me Suicide."

  Kurz frowned as his hand went limp. "Oh. You're her."

  17

  The Anna Khirovsky had a wide CNC but dim lighting, which made it look smaller. Conduit and piping snaked across the ceiling in keeping with its Bromdarian aesthetic. Suicide half expected steam to vent from a console or a wall panel. Despite the newness of the ship, where surfaces still gleamed and the scent of fresh welds and new paint still hung in the air, she swore she could smell industrial chemicals and hot metal. The stench of Bromdar people called it, even the locals.

  "I have the prisoner," said Davra, slipping into good soldier mode. Suicide almost believed she had switched sides.

  "Stand down," said a tall man in a captain's uniform. Suicide recognized him as Aiken Hiller, a tall, skinny man with skin almost as dark as Davra's. "Commander Cui, it's been a w
hile."

  Suicide nodded. "Aiken. Moved up since our days on the Hancock."

  Hiller smiled, despite an angry sneer from Jez Salamacis, who had displaced the captain in the center of the command pod. "Should have stuck around, Yun. You'd have made a helluva XO when I took over the Paladin after the war."

  Suicide frowned. "Admiral Burke had other plans for me."

  Salamacis pulled Hiller by the arm and moved him behind her. "This reunion is touching. The fact is, however, you boarded a Compact starship illegally by means of sabotage. You are consorting with Thulian secessionists, and you have not surrendered Jayne Best as we have required of you."

  Suicide closed her eyes and summoned that calm meditation normally gave her. "You'd have a point if any of your actions were legal. Jayne Best is no longer a Compact Citizen. When Metis declined to formally sign the new Compact, Amargosa went with it. She is a Metisian Citizen."

  Salamacis laughed. "Which makes you a hostile foreigner. However, Commander, you were never formally discharged from service in the Compact Navy." She took out an XG-752 and thumbed its power slide. "Which gives me a duty to perform." She aimed the pistol at Suicide. "You have been found guilty of treason, Commander, punishable by death under the Compact, Article I, Section 11. 'The Compact shall not condemn any human to capital punishment except in the case of treason or military abuse.' The charters of all four branches of our military demand summary execution in such cases."

  "Madam Salamacis," said Hiller. "You are a civilian. You're not authorized to conduct a Section 11. And we are not at war."

  Salamacis whirled on him. "President Leitman is the command-in-chief of the Compact armed forces."