by Rick Partlow
“Pick up that beamer,” she told me, nodding towards where I’d set the weapon back down in its rack.
I shrugged, leaning over and bracing myself…and then picking it up as easy as I would a normal Gauss rifle. I looked at the beamer, then at the suit.
“What the hell?” I muttered.
The others were staring at me curiously. I grinned and spun the beamer around like a Marine drill team demo, catching it with a smack that hurt my palm but didn’t strain my muscles. Their eyes went wide.
“It’s called reflex armor. It’s made of something called byomer,” the tech explained. “It’s an electrically-active bacterial culture developed in a genetics lab. Its molecular structure is infused with super-strength polymer, and its surface is inlaid with superconductive fibers linked to a control unit in the waist. It selectively hardens to act like an exoskeleton, basically tripling your natural strength within certain limits defined by leverage. Yours,” she nodded at me, “can link with your headcomp but the others will have to wear the interface halos inside their helmets.”
“That is just so fucking awesome,” Sanders gushed. “Can I try it?”
“Later,” I told him, setting the beamer back in its cradle. “How tough are these things?” I asked the woman, patting at the material over my chest. “Are we supposed to wear them under our combat armor?”
It occurred to me that these suits were what Cowboy and the other commandos in his unit had worn during the war, without any other armor…but then, I was fairly sure they had other stuff that I’d never heard of, probably including some sort of implant subdermal armor.
“You could,” she said with a shrug. “You’re stealthier if you don’t, and this stuff is nearly as good a protection as your Marine combat armor. It’s also self-repairing and can seal off wounds. But if you’re more worried about getting shot at than sneaking around, I’m sure it would work just as well with conventional armor over it.”
“What do you think now, Vilberg?” I asked him, gesturing around. “Can just the five of us pull it off?”
“Maybe,” he estimated, shrugging. Then he laughed, uncharacteristically cheerful. “If not, at least we get to play with some cool toys before we die.”
Chapter Fifteen
The cold greys, blues and whites of the moon gleamed in the light of the system’s star, nearly filling the view screens, with the slight gaps in the corners filled in with the contrasting oranges and yellows of the gas giant it orbited. It felt close enough to touch, and I was getting a twinge of paranoia being so close, even though I knew that the thermal signature of the ship was too small to be discovered unless they were specifically looking for it. We’d come out of Transition Space behind the cover of one of the gas giant’s outer moons, then used its gravity to slingshot into a lower orbit to match our target. The coldgas jets had nudged us towards the moon’s gravity well and we were on course for an insertion on its night side.
“You see anything down there?” Vilberg asked from his seat near the cockpit hatch, staring at the vision floating in the holographic screen.
“Not a damn thing,” I admitted. “The base is supposed to be on the other side of the planet, but I’m not picking up anything in orbit.”
Kurt grunted in satisfaction from the copilot’s station. He’d been worried---well, hell, we’d all been worried that there would wind up being a CSF picket ship guarding the place or even a lighter that just happened to be here dropping off supplies or personnel. This ship would be great at sneaking in, not so wonderful at surviving a fight. She had a complement of coldgas-launched missiles that would be good for taking down shuttles or static ground defenses, but not much against a lighter or even a cutter with good shields. And one high-power laser that wouldn’t scratch the paint on anything bigger than a shuttle.
“I’m taking her down,” I announced, letting my headcomp give the order silently.
It felt different driving this boat than the Nomad. Our ship’s computer was nowhere near as advanced and definitely wasn’t designed as a personality-based AI the way this one was. I could feel the Nightshade in there with me. She didn’t speak unless she had to, but it was like brushing up against someone in a room, or hearing them breathing behind you. I just knew she was there. I wasn’t entirely comfortable with it, and I was beginning to understand why most people didn’t like Artificial Intelligences, but she sure was responsive and I could feel the gentle shove of the ship’s coldgas thrusters beginning their de-orbit burn.
“Nightshade,” I subvocalized, still not comfortable with the idea of just thinking at her, “if you feel us being painted by any active sensors, launch missiles at the source immediately.”
“Yes, Captain Munroe.”
I glanced up sharply at that. She was technically correct: as the master of this boat, I was a captain, but it seemed blasphemous to be called anything but “Sergeant.”
“You know,” Sanders commented from Navigation, his voice so quiet I almost didn’t hear it over the growing rumble of atmospheric entry, “this is the first operation we’ve ever gone on without her.” There was a wistful sadness to his tone and a resigned devastation to his face. “Doesn’t feel right.”
“It’s what she’d want us to be doing,” I told him. “It’s the right thing.”
“Haven’t thought about that in a while,” Victor confessed with a shrug.
Then the g’s began to build up and the rumble became a roar as we descended into the soup. The moon was big, about the size of Mars and much denser; it pulled about three quarters of Earth standard gravity and it had a fairly thick atmosphere and its own electromagnetic field. That’s probably why it was anything close to habitable. The Predecessors had terraformed pretty much anything they could back when humans were still climbing down out of the trees, but on some worlds, it didn’t take.
This one was too far away from a star that wasn’t that bright to begin with, but between the heat given off from the gas giant and isolated pockets of geothermal activity, there were a few very small areas of the moon that you could live on without an environment suit. The Corporate Council weapons research base was in one of those little pockets, crammed in-between glacial fronts in a narrow valley. Landing in that valley without being detected was going to be somewhere between difficult and impossible, but if we could get close enough, that wouldn’t matter.
We were on the night side of the moon now, which still wasn’t all that dark given the reflected light from the gas giant. It was more a garish twilight than a true night, and the pockets of green in the fields of white were clearly visible, looking small from our altitude but really tens of kilometers long. The trees and grass down there were mostly imported from Earth; the local life that had evolved from the Predecessor terraforming algae was mostly underground and microscopic. Maybe it would become more someday, if it got the chance, but I probably wouldn’t be around to see it.
We were only about thirty kilometers from the base when I got the alert from Nightshade that we were being painted by targeting radar and lidar, simultaneous with the subdued jolt of anti-radiation missiles kicking free of the boat’s weapons pod. Kurt looked around suspiciously, hearing the subdued alarm sounding.
“They’re trying to shoot at us,” I let him know. “We’re shooting back.”
“Shit,” he muttered. “I feel like we ought to have a say in all that. Damn AI’s.”
“We’ll do our part soon enough.”
I saw the missiles streak in on the tactical display, striking home on the sensor arrays with a flare of white and red on thermal, and felt the AI confirming that there were no further signals detected.
“They know we’re here now,” Vilberg reflected. “They probably have point defense turrets they can use with optical sighting once we get in range.”
“That’s why we’re going in low,” I said, then grinned. “Hold on.”
The primary atmospheric jets kicked us in the pants, and I took the Nightshade down to about twenty meters abov
e the rolling surface, practically feeling the chill rising up from the mass of dozens of meters and hundreds of years’ worth of snow and ice. A fine spray of white rose in our wake and the combined reflexes and intuition of my brain and the ship’s guided us around slight rises in the frozen mounds. I still couldn’t see the base, but the good news was, they couldn’t see us yet, either.
Until, abruptly, we both could. We were less than three kilometers from the edge of the valley, heading lower as the snow began to melt down to a sparse ground cover from the underground thermal springs. I had a brief glimpse of the base itself, the dull grey of the geodesic buildfoam domes squatting in low-key ugliness in a cluster at the center of the clearing, and then the Gatling lasers opened up. It was extreme range for the weapons, which was the only reason the hit we took didn’t penetrate our armor, and I winced as the strike felt like a physical burn on my arm. Then the ship was spinning and banking on an evasive course I couldn’t have followed, much less controlled.
“Targeting the laser emplacement,” Nightshade told me, kicking loose another pair of missiles.
I was getting close to losing my lunch and I could hear Sanders loudly retching behind me, so I didn’t feel the launch, but my headcomp dutifully showed me the half-buried dome of the Corporate Council research station and the black mushrooms rising where several kilograms of hyperexplosives had obliterated the point-defense turrets. The juxtaposition of what my eyes were seeing and what my mind was experiencing made the nausea even worse and I had to clench my jaws tight to keep breakfast down.
“Missile battery expended,” the AI announced. “The ship’s laser is the only remaining weapon. Prepare for landing.”
“Landing” turned out to involve some arcane combination of banking and hitting the belly jets to flip the craft horizontally end for end in mid-air and then firing the rear thrusters at full-power. Negative g’s slammed all of us forward against our seat restraints and this time nothing was going to hold my stomach down, or anyone else’s. Then we were slammed down brutally as the landing gear bottomed out on its suspension and the whine of the jets began to fade.
I hit the quick release for my harness and scrambled out of the cockpit, half because we needed to get into action and half because the whole thing smelled like vomit.
“Go!” I urged the others, slapping Victor and Sanders on the arm. “Get to the ramp now!”
I nearly stumbled as I ran, my inner ear still spinning and my guts still roiling, but I steadied myself against the bulkhead and forced myself to keep going until I hit the utility bay. We were all wearing the reflex armor with Marine-pattern vests over them; despite what the technician had told us, none of us were ready to trust the thin suits by themselves to stop enemy fire. I grabbed a helmet from the equipment locker and was already sealing it by the time the others trickled in from the cockpit.
I checked the exterior cameras over my implant ‘link, feeding the view through my helmet’s Heads-Up Display while I yanked an electron beamer from its cradle, then braced it against my hip and hit the control for the ramp. The front of the large, central dome was still wreathed in smoke, glowing incandescently in the haunting light reflecting off the face of the gas giant, but I couldn’t see any enemy troops coming out to meet us. We needed to get outside before they did. I ran down the ramp, not waiting for it to fully extend, then jumped the last meter, absorbing the impact in a roll on the soft, loamy ground. There’d been grass there until the Nightshade had burned it away with the landing jets, and smoke still rose from the millimeter-thin crust of charred carbon. The bits of burned and tar-like soil stuck to my vest, but rolled right off the reflex armor. I knew it was cold out here, probably below freezing, but I didn’t feel it yet.
“Nightshade,” I transmitted, covering the approach with my beamer, “if you come under fire or detect enemy aircraft while we’re inside, take off and run an evasive course until we call for exfil.”
“Yes, Captain Munroe.”
“And see if you can clean that puke out of the cockpit,” I added.
“Already working on it.”
The blue icons of the rest of the team filed down the ramp and set up a perimeter centered on me, facing out towards the dome.
“Shut the door,” I told Nightshade, and I could hear the ramp raising on its servos before the last word left my lips. She could hear my commands through my headcomp over my implant ‘link before they made it out of my mouth. That was unnerving.
I rose up into a crouch and began advancing through the tall grass towards where the scans said the front entrance would be, trusting the others to spread out in a wedge behind me. In normal circumstances, I wouldn’t have been running point, but there were just the five of us, basically a fire-team, rather than our usual squad. And I was best at it, anyway.
The smoke was beginning to clear and I could see the light pouring out from the jagged gap where the door had been. There’d been a sensor array built just above it on a metallic gantry, and the missile that had taken down the dish had charred the front of the building black and blown the doors inward.
A small part of my brain where I locked away my doubts and fears during combat ops was screaming at me that we had no idea if there were other entrances, underground bunkers, concealed hangars full of armed drones or assault shuttles, that the whole place could be a death trap. I ignored it as I always did, because of course it could, and what the hell was I supposed to do about it? There was a job needed finishing.
And of course, there were no hangars full of assault shuttles or underground bunkers full of armies, because this was an isolated research station they thought no one knew about, not a military base at a strategic chokepoint. What they did have was a couple squads of security troops, and as I got within thirty meters or so of the doorway, I could see them moving cautiously down the hallway towards the entrance. They hugged the walls, pulse carbines held at high port, dressed in the standard black body armor that CSF mercenaries were issued.
I started to mock them inside my head for just heading out like lambs to the slaughter, but then I figured, what else could they do? They had no idea how many of us there were, and if they didn’t block the entrance, we could walk right in and take what we wanted. They could have run away…but their only ride off this rock was their employer, who probably wouldn’t look kindly on that. In the space of a half-second, I started to feel bad for them…until I saw three of them rolling a crew-served weapon up the hallway.
“Spread out and get down!” I yelled at the others. “Gatling laser!”
I’d told them the right thing to do, but for some reason I didn’t do it. I can’t say for certain if it was intuition, gut instinct, or my headcomp’s tactical programming deciding that it was the best course of action, but I kept running and sped up. I was naturally fast, thanks to the genes my mom had me engineered with, and I’d done honest work to stay in top shape; and on top of that, I had the boosters implanted in me to give me a chemical hand up. Now, I had the added bonus of the reflex armor and the lower gravity on this world, though those were somewhat evened out by the fact I was carrying about seventy kilos of gear. I ate up the thirty meters in four seconds.
“Cover him!” I heard Victor yelling at about the same time the CSF troops started firing, not seeing me clearly but knowing something was coming.
Laser pulses flashed by as they fired from the hip or without a clear sight picture, but I was focused on that Gatling with its thick blast shield that would protect the crew from incoming shots even from our beamers; if they got that thing set up, we weren’t getting in. I was two meters away from the gaping, crystalline maw of its emitter when I jumped. I went a bit higher and farther than I’d intended, scraping my back against the roof tiles and coming down a good two meters behind the Gatling crew.
I hit on my shoulder and rolled, still feeling the air punched out of my lungs by the impact, but I had the beamer in my hands and its aiming reticle was hovering over the center of the CSF mercenary at t
he control handles of the Gatling. I touched the trigger pad and the wrath of Zeus himself erupted from my hands.
I’d never fired a beamer before, but the closest thing to it that I had experience with was a plasma weapon. This wasn’t quite as violent as shooting off a ball of superionized gas, but it was pretty damn close. Imagine being on the dealing end of a lightning bolt, except the bolt didn’t fork or deviate, just traveled in a dead-straight line that was so bright it blacked out the filters in my helmet for a heartbeat. When it struck home, the armored female I’d aimed it at blew apart like someone had opened her up surgically and implanted a quarter-kilo of hyperexplosives in her chest. The sound of the blast echoed back and forth inside the hallway, battering me physically and stunning the two mercenary soldiers who’d been on either side of the woman.
I was nearly as stunned, but I kept the beamer pointed in the same general direction and jammed down the firing stud again. This time the electron beam hit the Gatling laser’s magazine, melting through the thick polymer and striking the coiled, self-consuming belt of hyperexplosive lasing cartridges. Thanks to my headcomp slowing things down for me, I had the time to think that I had not meant to do that, just before the world exploded.
I knew what had happened, but I can’t honestly say I was conscious for all of it. One second I was lying on the floor on my side, with my weapon shouldered, and the next I was a good fifteen meters down the hallway and everything was filled with smoke and raining debris. My head was swimming and my vision was full of multicolored stars erupting like supernovae, and I couldn’t have told if I was right-side-up or upside down, much less a damn thing that was displayed on my helmet’s HUD. But my headcomp read the data for me and assured me like I was remembering something I’d read yesterday that, aside from a minor concussion and a strained muscle in my neck that I was fine.
I looked around, vision clearing and saw steaming metal fragments from the Gatling laser all around me and decided, Okay, I was wrong about the reflex armor. Not a single one had penetrated, even though I felt a dozen stinging bruises where they’d hit my legs and right arm. I suddenly realized that I should be watching out for the rest of the enemy troops, but there didn’t seem to be any near me. I heard thunderclaps outside the building, saw flashes of actinic lightning through the doorway and I knew where they’d all gone. The explosion had driven them out the front in a panic.