Messiah

by S. Andrew Swann

  “Shit!” one of the guards said, “power failure.”

  “Get back,” Mallory whispered harshly to Toni, pressing her against the window behind them. He caught her by surprise and they slid to the ground.

  They hit the ground, and light flooded the elevator as the doors creaked open.

  Someone said, “Good, now we—”

  He never finished the sentence. The air filled with the sound of gunfire as three shotguns fired through the doorway and into the mass of guards. In a matter of seconds, the elevator was choked with the smell of gunsmoke and blood. He whispered into Toni’s ear, “Don’t move.”

  One of the guards fell down next to them with a breathless groan, trying to hold his blood-soaked stomach together with his hands. The gunfire stopped, and the only sound was ragged uneven breathing and someone softly cursing over and over.

  From outside, a harsh voice called out, “Move your ass, get their weapons.”

  A skeletally thin woman in a dirty shirt and ragged khaki pants stepped inside, and stared at the massacre.

  Outside, the voice called out, “Hurry up.”

  The woman lowered her own weapon and started picking up guns from the fallen guards and tossing them out the open door. When one of the guards, probably unconsciously, hung on to the butt of one of the weapons, the woman put her boot on his wrist, raised her shotgun to the man’s face, and pulled the trigger.

  Mallory saw that, closed his eyes, and tried not to breathe.

  “Is that it?”

  “Guns? Yes.”

  “Then move it. We can’t waste time here.”

  He heard some sounds of movement, then only the groans of the wounded. After nearly a full minute, Toni whispered, “I think they’re gone.”

  Mallory nodded and pushed himself just upright enough so he could survey the damage. He needed to help these people, but one glance told him that was hopeless. All of them had been hit in the upper body or the gut, most multiple times. The man with the stomach wound next to them had already stopped breathing, and groans of the living had faded to be nearly inaudible.

  He rose, and Toni stood up next to him. “What the hell?”

  “A refugee revolt, judging from the woman who came in,” Mallory answered.

  Toni bent down to look at the victims, but the elevator was now almost silent. “This is . . .” She shook her head, failing to find a word. “You think Stefan had a hand in this?”

  “I wouldn’t be surprised.”

  She reached down and retrieved one of the comm units. “They left these?”

  Mallory edged toward the door and said, “They’re disorganized and under-armed. They may not even be thinking in terms of cutting off communication.” He crouched, so when he peeked around the edge of the doorway his head wasn’t at eye level. The loading area by the elevator was largely empty, except for one blue-suited corpse lying on the ground halfway between them and the nearest exit. He ducked back around and faced her. “They had the sense to cut power to the elevator.”

  “Isolating the core from reinforcements.”

  Mallory nodded. “During a shift change, so this probably wasn’t an isolated attack.”

  She looked at the comm. “There’s probably no one left up here to call.”

  “We have to assume that these guys decapitated security’s command and control. The guards were having trouble calling back to base already. Trying to alert Wisconsin security will probably only let the bad guys know we’re here.” Mallory let out a long breath. “And if the bad guys have control of the security systems, they’ll know we’re here as soon as we pass a security camera.”

  “Good lord. We’re fucked.”

  “Maybe not. Can you raise other channels on that?”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Reformation

  “The intent of all insurrections is to bring chaos out of order.”

  —The Cynic’s Book of Wisdom

  “The revolutionist . . . knows only one science, the science of destruction.”

  —MIKHAIL A. BAKUNIN

  (1814-1876)

  Date: 2526.8.7 (Standard) 350,000 km from Bakunin-BD+50°1725

  Toni II had spent the last forty-five minutes in the makeshift gym her younger twin had set up in an empty cargo compartment in the Daedalus. The gym consisted of a powered hardsuit tethered to the floor and ceiling, with the joint resistance jacked up to about three hundred percent normal. It had been necessary during their long stint in zero-gee, and it still was, now that they were docked. The ersatz microgravity here in the Wisconsin’score was just enough to give her inner ear a cue to up and down.

  She ran in place, the tethers keeping the suit from flying into a bulkhead.

  Her daily routine bore an eerie resemblance to her long stint on the observation platform in orbit around Wormhole Sigma Draconis III. Wake up, spend a shift checking the ship’s status, then go work out.

  The world has been turned upside down, the Stygian Executive Command probably no longer exists, I’m a ghost, a pirate, and second-in-command to myself—and nothing seems to have changed.

  She was perilously close to wishing something would happen, when the comm on her suit buzzed for her attention. “Yes,” she responded, using the chin switch to open the channel without breaking her stride.

  The voice was from of one of the Salmagundi crew working the bridge. “We have an incoming transmission from Captain Valentine.”

  She slowed herself as she said, “Okay, I’m coming up.” She wondered what her twin wanted, and why she’d waited until this late to call in.

  “No,” came the word from the bridge, “I’m routing it to you now.”

  “What?” She realized that the Salmagundi tech sounded seriously spooked.

  “Toni?” Her sister’s voice was a whisper, distorted by the guy on the bridge upping the gain to make her audible.

  “What is it?” Toni II asked, slowing her pumping legs to a standstill.

  “We have a serious problem.”

  Ten minutes later, she was down in the Daedalus’ air lock, shouting orders. She had seven of the remaining crew down here, three of the Salmagundi militia and four of the Caliphate techs. That left enough people manning the bridge to radio to the other ships docked here, and to pilot the Daedalus away if need be.

  The rest of them donned the eight hardsuits they had, the two heavy-duty utilitarian models that the Tonis had brought on board, plus the custom-painted ones that had served Karl’s crew before the Tonis had hijacked his ship. The powered suits were designed for heavy-duty EVA work, and weren’t the best armor, but it was what they had.

  Her impromptu squad was a garish sight. Karl’s crew had been creative in painting their suits to be identifiable at a distance; one had a blue-on-orange tribal pattern, another had clusters of large purple eyes on a crimson field, another had a lemon-yellow and lime-green jigsaw puzzle pattern, one suit had a cherry-red flame job, another seemed wrapped by the tentacles of some alien creature, and the last one had been painted to resemble a bat-winged, goat-footed demon whose mouth gaped open to accommodate the suit’s visor.

  “Is everyone on the same channel?” she asked, once her people were suited up. She got seven assents.

  She looked at the insane suit patterns, and the near-random assortment of weapons, and hoped that she knew what she was doing.

  At least I probably have more military-trained people behind me than in front of me.

  “Bridge, once we’re through, evacuate the air lock and keep it depressurized.”

  “Got that.”

  It was a minor obstacle, but it would prevent anyone forcing entry short of overriding the mechanical systems. And if anyone tried that, the Daedalus could just decouple from the docking ring. With the air lock depressurized, they could do it cleanly even if the outer door was open.

  “Bridge? Anything on the external monitors?”

  “Nothing in our field of view.”

  Which didn’t mean much. While docked, t
he cameras on the air lock could only really see into the Wisconsin’s air lock, not beyond.

  “Said,” she called to the man in the other gray Stygian hardsuit, “You lead out the air lock and give the all clear.”

  Said grunted an assent and stepped though the air lock. She had him lead because he had the plasma cannon—and no one wanted to be between it and the enemy.

  He made it through the interlock, and out the Wisconsin’s air lock, and after a quick look back and forth, waved them all forward.

  “Quiet,” Mallory said, pressing himself against the wall. He and Toni were across from the elevator now, a few meters from the main entrance to the loading area in what seemed the only obvious blind spot from the security cameras. They had held position here for only fifteen seconds, and Mallory already heard motion in the hallway, coming closer.

  He pulled out the comm he had liberated from one of the dead guards and whispered, “Give me yours.”

  Toni handed over its twin. Mallory opened a quiet channel on full, set the device on the floor, and kicked it so the small communicator slid across the floor all the way back to the elevator entrance.

  The loping low-gravity footsteps came closer. It was hard to tell numbers, but it was more than one person. He held up a hand in front of Toni, spreading his fingers; he pointed at himself, then at the finger closest to the elevator. I get the first one. He pointed at her, and then at the finger closest to the entrance. You get the one bringing up the rear.

  She nodded, her face set in a grim expression.

  The flanking maneuver would be a lot more effective if Mallory or Toni were armed. But if they were lucky, there’d only be two people coming.

  There were three; a trio of men with long greasy hair and scraggly beards. The lead one was thin and wore a bandanna wrapping his hair around a pale bald spot, the second wore a studded leather jacket and pants, and the third one was a head taller than either of them and easily topped a hundred fifty kilos. They all had shotguns at the ready, and stepped into the loading area with the situational awareness of a potted plant. They were already through the doorway before the first one even started to turn in their direction.

  Thank God for small favors.

  Mallory hit the alert button on his own comm, and the one by the elevator began whooping, drawing the attention of the shotgun-wielding trio.

  He jumped at the bandannaed one. In the low gravity, his feet did not touch the ground between where he’d stood, and where he straight-armed the guy across the trachea. Mallory’s victim was caught completely by surprise. He tried to bring the butt of the shotgun up to ward Mallory off, but he slammed into the floor before he got his movements coordinated. Behind him, Mallory heard a shotgun blast. He winced inside, but the shot came nowhere near him.

  The man beneath him choked and sputtered and swung the butt of his gun ineffectively into Mallory’s side. Mallory brought his comm down, smashing it into the man’s temple. That was enough to stun him so he could wrest the shotgun away from him.

  Another shotgun blast, and Mallory spun to bring his commandeered shotgun up to face the enemy. The guy in studded leather was still in the midst of falling backward, away from the doorway, his chest a shredded mess.

  Toni stood in the doorway, smoke slowly curling up from the barrel of the gun she held. The huge man who had taken the rear was sprawled on the floor behind her, staring up at the ceiling with his head angled oddly.

  The guy on the floor behind Mallory recovered enough to reach for the shotgun, and Mallory brought the butt of the gun down on the man’s face, knocking him out.

  After a couple of breaths, he turned back toward Toni.

  “Now?” Toni asked.

  Mallory pushed himself up from the floor and said, “The main control room.”

  Stefan stood on a catwalk overlooking the Wisconsin’s main control center. His takeover had been frighteningly easy. The Wisconsin’ssecurity forces had collapsed in the face of an organized threat, and the communications had been simple to disrupt. It had taken less than twenty minutes to get from the habitat to where he stood now.

  Below him, the control room spread out in three directions. To his left was security, to the right, traffic control, and in front, operations. The operations section was dominated by a schematic holo of the Wisconsin. In the wireframe representation, all the elevators between the core and the three habitats were flashing red. He had completely isolated physical access from the habitats to the core control section.

  The communications channels were just now lighting up as the occupants of the space station began to realize something was wrong. The people who thought they were in charge were beginning to realize they weren’t.

  Down at one of the consoles in operations, one of Stefan’s men called up to him, “I have the Regal, on-line.” The Regal was the hotel where the faux leaders of Mallory’s faux navy were meeting.

  Stefan stepped over to a console mounted on the catwalk, and the holo obligingly lit up from hibernation when he approached. “Can you route the call up here?”

  “Yeah, sure, give me a minute.” It took the guy a bit longer than a minute. Stefan shook his head while he waited. Beggars couldn’t be choosers, and he had had to settle for a rather lower tier of revolutionary when he massed his small army. Most were criminally inclined Bakunin natives, but the type of criminals that weren’t particularly successful even in an environment where “criminal” activity was perfectly legal. Their main advantage was sharing Stefan’s desire for self-preservation, combined with a rather low reluctance to use violence to achieve that goal.

  After five minutes, Stefan’s man downstairs figured out how to forward the call to Stefan’s console. The spinning “W” logo in the holo dissolved in favor of a view of a meeting room somewhere in the Regal.

  He looked at the faces present in the room and said, “Where the fuck is Mallory?”

  One of the men spoke up, “Mr. Stavros, we—”

  “Shut up!” he snapped. “I’m driving this thing now! That whole habitat can be vented to space if I want. Understand?”

  Everyone in the holo slowly nodded.

  “Now where’s that damn priest?”

  The same man spoke up again. “We don’t know where he is.”

  “You. Don’t. Know?”

  “We were taking a recess in negotiations when—”

  Stefan held up a hand and said, “Just stop talking.” Mallory wasn’t the reason he was doing this. It shouldn’t matter if the damned priest was there or not. “Let me tell you what it is I want.” He licked his lips. “I need three fully charged tach-ships and supplies, and I want them in the next hour.” Enough for him and seventy-five people to evacuate themselves from this insanity.

  The folks around the conference table all started talking at once.

  He heard some commotion below him and said, “I’ll give you ten minutes to discuss it,” and muted the call.

  He turned and bent over the catwalk to call down to the guys working the security consoles. “What the hell’s going on down there?”

  The woman working the main security console shouted back without looking up from her station. “We have a major problem off of dock thirty-six.”

  That was the berth for the Daedalus. He swallowed and called down, “What kind of problem?”

  “Look.”

  The main holo over the security station switched to a camera pointing down one of the Wisconsin’s corridors by the docking facilities. The corridor was long and four times as wide as it was tall. Air lock numbers were stenciled along the walls every fifteen meters or so. Just in front of the camera, a group of Stefan’s people, about ten or so, ran down the corridor. Men and women bearing shotguns liberated from Wisconsin security.

  Something flashed from down the corridor, and one of the leaders of the charge found a leg disappearing from underneath him. The charge broke apart as people hit the floor, or flattened against the walls, taking cover in the too shallow recess of an air lo
ck door.

  Silently, shotguns began firing down the corridor, and other weapons fired back. In the holo, Stefan saw ten of his people torn apart as shadows emerged from the gunsmoke haze.

  “Holy shit,” someone said from below him, “they got a whole squad of powered armor.”

  Stefan watched the screen and shook his head. Not powered armor, these were EVA hardsuits. He knew because he recognized the paint jobs.

  “Hard core bastards,” someone else said, as the suit with the demon paint job passed by in front of the camera. That one had been Stefan’s EVA suit.

  “Shit.” If he had been thinking ahead, he would have sabotaged the damn suits. He just never thought of anyone wearing one into combat. One of the shotguns that Wisconsin’s security favored might be able to damage one if it got close enough.

  Stefan reached into his waistband and pulled out the gamma laser that had come from his own stores. Unlike military-powered armor, the EVA hardsuits from the Daedalus wouldn’t protect much against energy weapons. He leaned over the catwalk and called down, “Davis, you got the plasma rifle—you and—” he pointed out three more people downstairs who had gamma laser sidearms—“you and you and you. Intercept that group.”

  “What the hell, Boss?” Davis stared up at him. “They got powered armor.”

  “They’re wearing fucking EVA suits. They have zero mobility, and they’re sitting ducks for any sort of energy weapon.”

  They stared up at him.

  “Do you want to get out of this place or not?”

  Davis grunted and waved the others toward him. Between the plasma rifle and the three gamma lasers, they should be able to hold off those bastards from the Daedalus , at least long enough for them to seize one ship. He ran over and shouted down at traffic control.