Here we go, she thought, as she shuttle rocked, then launched itself off the ground. She turned her head and watched the planet falling away behind her - Meridian truly was a beautiful planet, save for the eerie dark rainclouds gathering in the distance - then looked back at the shuttle’s hull. The temperature, according to her HUD, was falling rapidly as the shuttle kept gaining height. It wouldn't be long before the repaired spacesuits were put to their first real test ...
***
“Well?”
“They’re gone,” Gary said. He glanced at his console, then back at Austin. “They should be at the station within twenty minutes.”
Austin nodded. “Is there any way we can track them once they’re onboard?”
“No,” Gary said. The spaceport should have had a live feed from the orbital station, but the Wolves had disconnected it as soon as they’d taken control. They probably hadn't wanted him spying on them. “We’re committed.”
“Yeah,” Austin said. “And we don’t even dare signal for evacuation.”
Gary stared at him, finally grasping just how large a risk Austin had taken. Meridian was his home, the settlers his people ... and yet, he’d risked them all. There was no time to evacuate the city, if the shit hit the fan. Hundreds of people were likely to die if the Wolves started shooting, once they realised they’d been boarded. And Austin had done it without a second thought.
He cannot give up, Gary thought, remembering how they’d first met. Austin had seemed like a boy from another world, which in a sense he was. Their life experiences had been so different that talking to him had been like talking to an alien. And he cannot compromise himself, even for his life.
“So we wait,” he said, instead. There was nothing else they could do. “We wait and see.”
***
Jasmine saw the orbital station come into existence as the shuttle turned, shining with reflected sunlight against the blue-green orb of Meridian. As Gary had told her, it was a fairly standard orbital station, designed to make unloading bulk freighters and shipping their cargos down to the ground much easier. There was certainly nothing elegant about its design, nothing like the spinning wheels that housed the Empire’s richest families well away from the maddening crowds. It was nothing more than set of boxy modules tied together, just like the orbital station at Avalon. The only real difference was a KEW pod hanging below the station, ready to launch projectiles at the planet.
We know how to navigate inside, she thought. She’d been one of the Marines who had boarded Orbit One, when they’d first arrived at Avalon. And we know how to take down its computer network.
The shuttle quivered, then altered course again, heading towards a large docking port. It looked inefficient, Jasmine saw, but without gravity there would be nothing stopping the Wolves from floating the crates up and out of the shuttle, one by one. She braced herself as they flew closer - if someone insisted on making a visual inspection of the shuttle, they were doomed - then relaxed as the shuttle slowed to a halt. The crew were clearly practiced, she noted; they inched towards the docking port, then made contact so gently that she barely felt the craft shudder.
She glanced at Stewart, then nodded towards the station’s hull. Stewart crawled forward, over the shuttle, then across the docking port and onto the station itself. A civilian-designed station wouldn't have sensors intended to track people on the hull, Jasmine knew, but the designs were intended to be heavily modified. Someone could have easily rigged up a few sensors once the station was turned into an orbital fortress, if they’d wanted to secure their position against all possible threats. But nothing happened as they crawled onwards, towards one of the access hatches. Thankfully, even the Wolves hadn't seen fit to override the bureaucratic insistence that all hatches be accessible from the outside.
Better just hope they don’t have anyone watching the other side, Jasmine thought, as she started to fiddle with the hatch. Civilians or not, there would be an alarm when the hatch opened, unless she managed to isolate it from the computer network. But if she screwed it up, there was a good chance she would actually trap herself in the airlock. Or someone monitoring the computers at all times.
She turned to look at Stewart. Me first, she signalled, using her hands. Give me five, then assume the worst.
Stewart looked doubtful, from what little she could see of his face, but nodded. Jasmine nodded back, then opened the hatch and ducked inside. It was nothing more than a standard ingress-egress hatch, without any stored spacesuits or tools. She shrugged, then keyed the other hatch, bracing herself as gravity slowly reasserted itself. It seemed as though the station’s operators had deliberately set the gravity to Luna-norm, rather than standard Earth-norm. She puzzled over it for a moment, then glanced out as the inner hatch opened. There was a surprised-looking man on the far side.
He opened his mouth, but she hit him in the throat before he had a chance to say a word. The force of the impact broke his neck and he crumpled to the deck, dead. Jasmine scowled down at the body, then hastily recycled the airlock. Moments later, both Stewart and Watson had joined her inside the station.
“Nothing of interest on the body,” Stewart muttered, after a brief search. “Just a handful of datachips and a set of multitools.”
“Bring them with us,” Jasmine said. If she recalled correctly, there should be a computer node further down the passageway, unless the locals had reconfigured the station at some point. “And shove him in the airlock, then jam it.”
“Understood,” Stewart said. He hefted up the body as the other two kept watch, dumped it in the airlock and then sealed it by jabbing one of the multitools into the control panel. “You do realise that jamming an airlock is a court martial offense? You could be shot.”
Jasmine snickered, humourlessly. She'd lost the Battle of Thule and seen over two hundred prisoners taken into enemy hands. By any reasonable standard, she was due a court martial by the time she returned home, assuming Colonel Stalker didn't summarily strangle her on the spot. Compared to that, jamming an airlock in an enemy facility and cutting off their line of retreat was a minor offense.
“Come on,” she said. She couldn't hear anyone else, but that meant nothing. “We have to hurry.”
Chapter Twelve
It depends. Was the school being used as a military installation? If yes, the school was a legitimate target and the moral responsibility for the atrocity rests with the defenders.
- Professor Leo Caesius. The Empire and its Prisoners of War.
Meridian, Year 5 (PE)
“Two people in the compartment,” Stewart signalled, as they reached the half-open hatch and peeked inside. “Take them both?”
“Without letting them get a word off,” Jasmine signalled back. “On three ...”
She used her fingers to count down, then led the way into the compartment as soon as she reached zero. The occupants, two young men in slovenly uniforms, barely had a moment to realise they were under attack before they were yanked out of their chairs and forced to the deck. Jasmine covered her target’s mouth with her hand, then pressed her fingers into his neck. Moments later, he was unconscious and helpless. Stewart dealt with his in the same way, while Watson scrambled to the console and sat down.
“They were playing games,” he said, with some amusement. “Turbo Nuke-Them, Volume III.”
Jasmine snorted. She had a feeling that any marine caught playing games on active duty would wind up wishing they’d been nuked, once the sergeants were through with them. But, on the other hand, the men hadn't had any reason to expect attack. They’d assumed they were safe from everyone on the planet below.
“Never mind that,” she said. She vaguely recalled Blake Coleman talking about Turbo Nuke-Them, but she hadn't been paying attention at the time. “Can you hack into the station network?”
“I think so,” Watson said. He reached for the processor he’d carried up from the surface, then plugged it into the console. “Give me a moment ...”
There w
as a long pause as his hands danced over the console. “I can shut down most of their systems, but not enough to prevent a counterattack,” he said, finally. “The civilian designs won’t let me vent the atmosphere without blowing all the hatches at once.”
Jasmine silently cursed civilian bureaucrats under her breath, then leaned forward. “What can you do?”
“I can reroute power from everything, but bare life support,” Watson said. “I’m not sure what that will do to the bombardment module, though. It doesn't seem to be directly connected to the station’s power grid.”
“Wonderful,” Stewart muttered. “The one time they show a lick of competence and it has to be at the worst possible moment.”
Jasmine nodded. If the KEW launcher had been tied to the station’s network - the lazy way to handle it - they could have simply shut it down, preventing any chance of a final strike on Meridian. But it wasn't ... she briefly considered going EVA to knock it away from the station, then dismissed the thought. They would just have to take the station’s command centre before it was too late.
“Rig something so we can crash the network, if necessary,” she ordered. “We’ll secure these two idiots and then make our way to the command centre.”
She checked the men for weapons - neither of them were carrying anything more dangerous than a computer datapad - then tied their hands and feet with their own clothes. They’d be humiliated when they awoke, she was sure, but it wouldn't matter. The geeks would either be prisoners or explaining themselves to their commanding officer. Being near-naked would be a minor issue.
Watson rose, tiredly. “I rigged up an emergency switch,” he said. “It won’t crash the network completely, but it will make life difficult for them.”
“Good,” Jasmine said. She opened her spacesuit, then climbed out of it. The mask would have to suffice if someone tried to vent the station. “Let’s go.”
The interior of the station seemed quieter than she had expected, although she'd only seen one other station of the same design. It puzzled her until she realised that the crew were probably busy unloading the shuttle and transferring the supplies into the cargo holds, below the habitation modules. If Gary had been right and there were forty people on the station, though, they couldn't all be there. Or were they trying to get first dibs on anything lifted up from the surface? She puzzled over it in her head as she passed a half-open door, then glanced inside. Several crewmen were lying on bunks, snoring loudly.
“Close the hatch, then seal it,” she ordered. There were seven men in the room; locking them in, even for a few hours, would make taking the station easier. “The control compartment is just down the corridor.”
She left Stewart to seal the hatch and walked down to the control compartment. A warship would have had a guard standing at the hatch, but the Wolves didn't look to have bothered with any formalities. It seemed odd, Jasmine thought, yet it might make sense. There was no real threat from the planet and any warship, even a tiny frigate, would be more than enough to destroy the station and take the planet for itself. It would be pointless to try to resist.
“They’re trapped,” Stewart muttered, catching up with them. “I think they’ll have to break down the hatch to escape.”
Jasmine nodded, then pointed to the hatch ahead of them. “We’ll go in together, weapons ready,” she said. She wished, bitterly, for stunners. Firing bullets in an enclosed compartment was likely to damage something. “But no shooting unless we have no choice.”
“Understood,” Stewart said. Beside him, Watson nodded. “Open the hatch?”
“Yep,” Jasmine said. She keyed the hatch - it opened with a grinding hiss, suggesting poor maintenance - and stepped into the compartment. “EVERYONE FREEZE!”
The five men in the compartment stared at her in disbelief. They had known they were safe, right up until the moment she’d walked into their room and held them at gunpoint. There had been no reason to expect trouble ...
Idiots, she thought, as she motioned for them to move away from the consoles. I was taught to always expect trouble.
“All right,” she said, as the prisoners were bound. “Which one of you is in charge?”
“I am,” one of the prisoners said. “I ...”
“You will tell the remainder of your people to surrender,” Jasmine said, cutting him off. “I want them all in our hands within five minutes, or I will have to use deadly force.”
The man glared at her. “How do I know you’ll treat them well?”
“I’ll treat them as well as you treated us,” Jasmine said. There was no point in mistreating helpless prisoners, none of whom had been in any place to issue orders. “And that really wasn't too bad, apart from the endless boredom. I’ll even throw a football and a handful of board games into the camp, if you behave.”
There was a long pause. “But if you don’t cooperate, I will have to use more stringent methods to enforce your cooperation,” she added. It wasn't an idea she liked, but there was little choice. They’d been committed from the moment they'd attached themselves to the shuttles. “Make your choice quickly.”
The man sagged. “I want their safety guaranteed from everyone,” he said.
“Very well,” Jasmine said. If the locals wanted them, too bad. She could just dump them on an isolated island and make them wait for the war to end, before they were repatriated home. “But only if you tell them to surrender now.”
“I will,” the man said.
Jasmine helped him to a console, then listened carefully as he issued his final set of orders to the men. They acknowledged, although they sounded astonished; Jasmine didn't blame them for being surprised. But without a security network, it was hard to be sure they were complying with their orders, instead of planning a surprise. Of all the oversights, it was that one that puzzled her the most.
“My superiors intend to use this station to land additional colonists, once the war is over,” he said, when Jasmine asked. “They’re planning to establish a purpose-built garrison station in the system at some point.”
“I see,” Jasmine said. It made sense, she supposed. No matter how many weapons one bolted to the hull, the orbit station was horrifyingly vulnerable to a single spread of missiles or a single kinetic strike. “We’ll deal with your crew, then decide where to put them until the end of the war.”
It took nearly an hour to round up every last one of the Wolves - and their slaves. There were seventeen girls on the station, Jasmine discovered, all recent immigrants to Meridian from Earth. It was obvious they’d been volunteered for the task, rather than volunteering themselves; she wasn’t sure if she hated the locals for sacrificing them or understood their point of view. Oddly, the slaves hadn't been badly hurt - they’d actually been treated decently, apart from being kept as slaves in the first place - but that didn’t lessen the horror.
“I have to keep my men entertained,” the Wolf said. His name had turned out to be Colonel Halcyon. “Otherwise, they get restless.”
Jasmine snorted, rudely. “Did you run out of decking to polish?”
She shook her head as Halcyon was marched off to his private cells. The girls would have to be moved down to the planet, then ... she’d have to lean on the resistance to care for them. And the resistance wouldn't be too pleased with her for keeping the Wolves, even though they’d committed crimes against Meridian itself. Maybe she could just tell them she’d executed them all on sight ... no, that wouldn't work for long. She’d just have to explain she’d made a deal and hope they accepted it with nothing more than token protests.
“I’ve got them all in the hold,” Stewart said, finally. “They’re bound, but I don't think we can keep them indefinitely without help. We need manpower from the surface.”
“Get the shuttle and prep it to go pick up some help,” Jasmine said. Stewart would have to fly the craft on his own, unfortunately. She just hoped that nothing would go wrong. “Carl?”
“I’ve been looking at the schedules,” Watson said.
“Everything is imprecise, of course, but it looks as though they’re expecting another load of prisoners within two weeks. There’s certainly something scheduled for that day.”
“We’d better prepare Halcyon to assist us,” Jasmine said, slowly. “If it’s a freighter, we can take it and get out, but if it’s a warship ...”
She shook her head. She’d captured pirate ships in the past, but pirates were notoriously careless and cowardly. A genuine warship, crewed by an experienced crew, would be much harder to take intact. The crew would either rally and repel the intruders, or slow the attackers up long enough for the CO to hit the self-destruct. She could only pray she managed to lure it in close enough to plant a barnacle mine on its hull, then force the crew to surrender.
And they would definitely notice a missing warship, she added, in the privacy of her own mind. They’d start wondering what happened ... and then send something bigger and nastier to take a look at us.
Never Surrender (The Empire's Corps Book 10) Page 12