Home Front: A Science Fiction Adventure Series (Sever Squad Book 4)

by A. R. Knight

  “Oh, what the hell kinda words are those?” Eponi said as the airlock’s signage came into view. “Are you a robot or something?”

  “Just repeating the same guidelines you signed onto when you joined DefenseCorp.”

  “Well, they suck. And you suck for listening to them. If you’re going to flush me down the cosmic toilet, the least you could do is give me one last conversation to enjoy.”

  Another soldier snickered, a laugh that cut Eponi the wrong way. Yeah, she knew she’d been playing to a certain tone with her words, a certain carefree hopelessness at her journey’s end, but actually getting a laugh punctured the veil.

  If she was going to die, might as well make it count.

  Eponi went for an agent first. The action didn’t form as a coherent plan, more like an instinctual rush, guided by the crimson and black stripes walking a little ahead and to her left, pistol out and pointed Sai’s way. The soldiers walking behind were the insurance, the agents the drivers.

  Training directed her attack, a simultaneous jabbing with her left arm while her right pulled at the agent’s second pistol in its holster. The agent shouted—squawked, more like—as Eponi made contact, her left arm doing a dirty stick into the agent’s side while her body served to block the agent’s pistol from making any decent aim at her.

  Rifles rose, zeroed in as Eponi yanked her new pistol up against the agent’s chin. The agent himself froze at the barrel’s touch to his bare skin, a reaction Eponi considered eminently sane and utterly useless. She’d been expecting a fiery death and instead wound up in a hostage situation, one Eponi had no chance of winning.

  Seven faces watched her, five of those with weapons aimed her way, each one trying to gauge whether or not they could hit a shot between her eyes that wouldn’t turnt he agent into smoking ruin. A truly tricky dilemma.

  “Sorry, friends,” Eponi said, snuggling up close to the agent and making as little daylight between his uniform and her beat-up civilian crapshoot as possible. “I’ve never been known to go quietly. Couldn’t make this one an exception.”

  Her sardonic look, a half-smile and playful, maybe manic eyes danced among her audience. Eponi caught a slight hitch when she made it to Aurora and Sai, the ones who should’ve been on her side, but who now looked like she’d broken the rules to some game. Annoyance ran rampant over their features, and the sobering dose did what it could to quell Eponi’s enthusiasm for her wicked way out.

  “You’re going to let him go,” said the other agent, in a voice that said it’d done far too many interrogations with pliant prisoners. Eponi ought to fold, that voice said. Ought to accept fate because she deserved it. “You’re going to drop the pistol right now, and when you do, you’ll get what’s coming to you and no worse.”

  “It’s not a bad way to go,” the soldier who’d talked with Eponi said. “I’ve seen it enough times. Quick, painless.”

  “Oh, you know it’s painless?” Eponi said, choosing to engage with the soldier, with the one that sounded, a little, like she had a soul. “You ever interview someone who’s sucked vacuum?”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “Do I?” Eponi jammed the pistol further into the agent’s chin, drawing out a heated grunt from the man. “Do I look like someone who knows what you mean?”

  The other agent adjusted his aim, moved his body to his right, and Eponi lurched the agent that way. The move exposed her right side to the soldiers, and they knew it. Time was up.

  “Drop the pistol or we shoot,” another soldier said, a command this time.

  Blast to the side, or vacuum? Eponi had to choose here and now and you know, faced with those options, there was only one way to go.

  So Eponi pushed the agent away from her, dropping the pistol away from the man’s chin and, in the same movement, aiming towards the other agent and pulling the trigger. The bright red bolt flashed, caught the other agent in the shoulder. Sent him burning to the floor.

  No shots hit Eponi in the split second after, so she sent her aim rightward and blasted her former hostage in the back, sent him spilling to the deck. Two for one so far, not a bad deal. Now time to face the overwhelming odds and get herself sent along to the next life.

  Sai pulled Eponi’s arm down, leaving her to face four raised rifles without a weapon.

  “Stop, you maniac,” Sai said, keeping Eponi’s arm at her side. “Don’t make them shoot you.”

  “Make them shoot me? Isn’t that their job?”

  Eponi struggled against Sai’s hold until Aurora went between the pilot and the soldiers. Rather than making a panicked lunge for the soldier’s weapons, or getting into a fistfight looking for a miracle, Aurora seemed utterly calm.

  “Thanks for holding your fire,” Aurora said as Eponi relaxed, as Eponi started to think she might not be reduced to ash in the next few seconds. “She’s a spark.”

  “You talking about me?” Eponi said.

  “I am, and you’ll be quiet now, before I let these soldiers shoot you,” Aurora replied, before turning back to the foursome. “You understand what you’re doing?”

  “The Nautilus doesn’t belong to them, commander,” said the woman who’d been batting it back and forth with Eponi. “It belongs to us. We’re going to go back to JJ and report mission accomplished.”

  “And if Renard asks about the agents?”

  “They left,” the soldier replied. “Didn’t say where.”

  “Exactly,” Aurora said. “Get to it.”

  Three of the soldiers picked up the agents and carried them over to the airlock, after Aurora re-armed herself with their pistols. A soldier returned Sai’s sword. Eponi watched the whole dance with increasing confusion until Sai and Aurora steered her down the concourse, away from the bridge and towards the Nautilus’s fighter bays, situated above the bigger berths for ships like the Prisa. The fourth soldier followed them, rifle loose and matching the smile on the man’s face.

  “Okay,” Eponi said as they went. “I’ve kept quiet as long as I think is reasonable. What the hell was that?”

  Aurora and Sai looked at each other, before Aurora took the lead, “You haven’t been in DefenseCorp all that long, Eponi. And you jumped right in as a pilot, right?”

  “Right. Pay was way better doing that than the grunt route.”

  “Exactly. DC has its divisions, and they work together when they need to, but there’s not much love between the backstabbers and us.”

  “The backstabbers? Really?”

  “Really,” Sai said. “Bastards always have something awful in mind.”

  “So, you’re saying—”

  “Beacon, like most other squads on this ship, knows better than to trust what’s going on here,” Aurora said. “Deepak told me agents have been infesting Nautilus for a while now, before we even went for Dynas. Which means Renard’s whole thing isn’t just about us, but something bigger. The soldiers don’t want to play his game.”

  “Isn’t that insubordination?” Eponi said. “Couldn’t they get launched from the airlock, same as us?”

  “Deepak’s their admiral,” Sai replied. “Renard’s not even in their chain of command. He can say what he wants, but the soldiers don’t have to do crap unless Deepak says. It’s right in the agreement we signed.” Sai cocked his head as they reached a lift. “Or didn’t you read the fine print?”

  “You did?”

  “DefenseCorp’s not a government, is the thing. We’re private employees, signing on to work in a branch of our choosing,” Sai explained, in that patient voice he used whenever he wanted to be Sever’s dad-in-chief. Eponi normally hated the tone, but here, stuck in the whirlwind after nearly getting vacuumed, the gentle facts wrapped her like a warm, reasonable blanket. “Aurora and I couldn’t tell whether the soldiers would hold true to that or not, but when they didn’t shoot you right away?”

  “We picked our side,” the soldier finally spoke up. “JJ made it clear back in the barracks. We work for Deepak, not the damn agents.” The s
oldier tapped his wristlet against the lift, calling the transport to their level. “You all good from here? I can’ t be gone long or it’ll be noticed.”

  “We’ll be fine,” Aurora said. “Thanks for the assist.”

  The soldier dashed off a quick DefenseCorp salute and jogged back down the corridor. Matching that departure, the lift door swung open, offering Sever their own escape. The three piled in, and Aurora punched the docking bay level.

  “Okay, so we’re not dead,” Eponi said. “Which I approve of. And there’s a sort of rebellion going on in here, which is great. Still have to ask, though, why are we going back to the docking bays?”

  “Because the Nautilus is under attack,” Aurora said. “Time to make it convincing.”

  Fifteen

  Paper Thin

  Skinned knees. A broken wrist from a bad fall off a bike pedaling around the neighborhood. Rovo hadn’t suffered a worse injury until he came all the way to DefenseCorp, where within a matter of months he’d taken training and then real lasers to the chest, to the back, to knees and arms and to the face. Power armor and protective vests had blunted most of those, and what made it through had been patched up by the Nautilus’s medical staff, much like this one.

  Except he’d never taken a shot to the lungs like this. No protection aside from his casual shirt, the wound hurt more than the rubble falling from the collapsing tower on Wexer. The med bay’s drugs blunted the sting for a while, though their side effects twisting Rovo’s other insides into knots, blurring his vision until his every glance felt like it’d been smeared with oil.

  Every breath scratched and burned, as if the oxygen Rovo inhaled had to push through a charred, spongey forest.

  What Rovo needed, wanted was a bed and a long week to recover.

  Instead, Rovo had Gregor’s thick arm hooked under his shoulders, holding him up as their lift opened back onto the very floor that’d earned Rovo his blast wounds.

  “Oh hurrah,” Rovo said as the doors opened onto the familiar, warning-sign filled concourse.

  Like the one upstairs, like all the hallways on the Nautilus, this one glowed red. The invaders might make it down here too, steal some big DefenseCorp secret and make off with it. Dastardly pirates, taking what didn’t belong to them.

  Of course, the pirates were them. Sever Squad, a bunch of thieving malcontents. That’s what Rovo had been reduced to, his glorious—

  “Focus.” Gregor pulled Rovo from the lift, into the concourse and towards the doorway to the very particular room, Weapons 3. “Not much farther.”

  “For you, maybe,” Rovo said. “For me, this is a marathon.”

  “Then run it.”

  No sympathy from this guy. Gregor always seemed so hell bent on the mission. Couldn’t be bothered with an iota of compassion.

  “You hate me, Gregor?” Rovo said. “Cause, like, I’m not a fan of this gruff attitude.”

  Gregor didn’t stop moving. Though Rovo found it hard to find distinct shapes with his warping vision, it didn’t seem like anyone had yet claimed this concourse. No squad running through here. Perhaps because the weapons labs were about as deep within the Nautilus as you could get: if invaders made it this far, they probably had the ship.

  “You are delirious,” Gregor said. “Walk. It will be easier.”

  Sure, easier for him maybe. As Gregor reached the door, he let Rovo stand on his own while the big man puzzled over the Weapons 3 door. Already a noticed hung outside, closing off the room due to an accident. The badge scanner, hunting for a wristlet, shone its angry red at them, a hue that matched well with the concourse’s current color.

  Wonder if they’d coordinated that, whomever designed all this.

  “Hey,” Rovo said, tottering towards the wall and catching himself with a flimsy arm. “You think this was all planned?”

  “Yes,” Gregor said. “From the moment we broke out from the facility on Wexer, I believe whomever commands these agents decided to bring us to the Nautilus with the best bait they could offer. Maybe they really want Kaia, but more, I believe they want us dead.”

  “Sure, that’s what I meant,” Rovo said, chasing the connections Gregor made like a dog jumping at falling leaves. He caught one or two and let the rest go. “There’s no way they think they can keep Dynas a secret. Too many people.”

  “Not forever,” Gregor said. “Just long enough. We deserted, they panicked.”

  “Because we’d ruin their party?” Rovo leaned full back against the concourse wall, stared across the way at a poster that demanded safety first with a vested-up scientist holding a thumbs-up to the camera. “Like, why?”

  “Fear makes people do stupid things.”

  Rovo could agree with that. Not that he’d known real fear, not really. Even on Dynas, the chaos and alienation of the whole mission trumped any fear for himself. Wexer, well, Wexer had been a desperate scramble for the Talpa. Even here, even feeling his lungs struggle through every breath, fear wasn’t at the top of his emotional list.

  Didn’t mean Rovo couldn’t do stupid things, though.

  “You going to get through this door any time soon?” Rovo asked as Gregor continued to stare at the panel.

  “I am not sure,” Gregor replied. “I had hoped to find another person down here to leverage.”

  “Why not use that rifle?”

  “Shooting the panel won’t work,” Gregor said. “They are protected.”

  “You know that, huh?”

  “The movies are the movies. This is reality, rookie.”

  Rovo nodded, a motion that slung his head forward and back farther than he expected Muscle control still lacking. He plastered both palms against the concourse walls to steady himself.

  “Then how about you shoot the door?” Rovo said. “Try the very middle.”

  Gregor stepped back from the panel. Inspected the door. Seemed skeptical.

  “Listen, man,” Rovo said. “There’s budgets for everything. They’re not gonna blast proof every door on the ship, and why do it to these?”

  “Because these are weapons labs?”

  “Yeah, and you can secure these with blast doors, but I don’t see them on right now.” The thoughts came flowing from some inner mist, an epiphany series made possible because Rovo no longer felt any idea was dumb, was too far-fetched. “Like, who’d bother if there’s not an active experiment going on inside?”

  Gregor issued a combination growl-sigh that carried withering contempt Rovo’s way, but the rookie, flush with the invincible glow of the nearly dead and drugged, shrugged it off and pulled himself another meter away from the door. Gregor backed into the concourse’s center, aimed the rifle, and, with one last eyeroll towards Rovo, pulled the trigger.

  Ten blue bolts blitzed into the door’s silver body, sinking into the barrier and leaving charred holes. Thin metal not designed to handle energy and heat curled away along the bolt edges, leaving a riddled portal begging to be kicked in.

  “What’d I tell you?” Rovo said.

  “Perhaps I give you too little credit.” Gregor went up to the door and delivered a full kick.

  The weakened panel crumpled and swung in, its leftward ties clinging with enough strength to prevent the door’s total collapse. Even so, the wreck could no longer be called a barrier.

  “See?” Rovo said, once more adopting his position on Gregor’s shoulder. “I’m always right.”

  “Are you?” Gregor questioned seconds later as they stood in a cycling room that, believing the main door open—a correct belief, really—kept its inner portal shut. “Then, what do you say to this?”

  “If it worked once, it’ll work twice?”

  Rovo wouldn’t call himself a genius—at least, not out loud—but whatever those surgeons had given him had turned his brain to straight fire. He sat on the little chamber’s floor and watched Gregor laser some more shots over him, laughed a hoarse chuckle as they punctured the inner door just like they had its outer brethren. Gregor delivered another solid kic
k and they were inside.

  The huge power armor hung down in the room’s middle, unchanged. Blast scars littered the floor behind it, where Rovo had struggled for his life. The control center sported its own additions, blacked and sparking as Gregor’s shots pierced the door and carried right on through.

  “Can’t say I wanted to see this room again,” Rovo said.

  “Then don’t.”

  Gregor, a born comedian.

  The twist came when Rovo, fully expected to be Gregor’s dragged-along load for this venture, found his muscle-bound sidekick lifting him up and carrying Rovo towards the armor.

  “Hate to break it to you, friend, but I’m not going to fit in that thing,” Rovo said as Gregor propped him up in front of the open suit.

  “It will adjust.”

  “That’ll take a lot of adjusting.”

  “Be quiet, rookie, and stand still.”

  Well, fine then. Rovo would wait for the suit to prove Gregor wrong. With his blurred vision, Rovo found the green-lit scanning lights a wince-inducing trip. The suit hissed, clanked, and popped as its various slats, gears, and bolts adjusted to accommodate Rovo’s more, uh, svelte form. While the armor’s full size stayed the same, inner layers pulled in tighter, finally blinking ready with a bright chirp wildly at odds with the armor’s purpose.

  “In you go,” Gregor said, and pushed.

  Rovo didn’t have time to protest. He fell into the armor, his lungs taking a painful bump as Rovo’s body settled into creases. The armor registered his approached, snapped into place. The visor came to life, and strange lines began scrolling across the screen over his eyes. Lines reading about adjustments to the pilot, compensating for his injuries, for his altered vision.

  His mouth dropping open as much as the helmet would let him, Rovo felt the armor deploy its own medical advice. New pricks dotted Rovo’s skin as the suit injected him with emergency fluids, with adrenaline to keep him alert, with further numbing agents to keep away his recent surgery’s pain.

  “How?” Rovo asked when the suit settled into its steady operating state, leaving Rovo feeling, if not incredible, then at least functional.