Ascendant

by Jack Campbell

  Behind them came the enemy, stumbling over the chairs, having to pause to take cover and orient themselves as militia snipers fired from the corridors down which their comrades had retreated.

  Mele, judging the level of panic among the militia, had to abandon the idea of urging on laggards, instead racing ahead with strength she hadn’t known she still had to get in front and stop the retreat. It took knocking down a few who tried to run past her, but with the help of Lieutenant Freeman, she got the militia into place behind the next set of cabinets, desks, and chairs piled across exits where the enemy would have to enter junctions before they could proceed farther into the facility.

  “Corporal Gamba, how’s it look?” Mele called.

  “We’ve merged with the militia that were to the left of us,” Gamba reported. “They lost their lieutenant. The remaining lieutenant . . . Captain, her armor is covered with blood and brains from someone she was fighting next to that caught a burst full on. She’s like . . . robotic, you know. Not showing any feelings at all and going through the motions but liable to break down any second.”

  Mele sighed. “That sort of thing is hard for veterans to handle. She was probably a marketing manager or sales associate a couple of weeks ago. Try to get her to gradually cede authority to you. Give the orders for her and let the militia with you get used to your giving them. How’s Yoshida?”

  “Okay as long as his meds hold out. The wound isn’t life-threatening, but it’ll probably hurt like hell once he can feel it again.”

  Mele rubbed her faceplate, wishing the entire orbiting facility hadn’t lost atmosphere as a result of the fighting so far. The inability to scratch an itch was probably the worst part of being in sealed battle armor. “Lieutenant Freeman.”

  “Yeah, Captain.” Freeman had been talking to some of his militia but came over at Mele’s call.

  “We lost one of the other lieutenants.”

  Freeman nodded slowly. “Danzig. I was talking to him when he . . . went off-line. Veren is okay, though.”

  “Veren’s about to crack,” Mele said.

  “Oh.” Freeman sounded suddenly even more tired.

  “This is the next-to-last set of defensive positions before the final positions near the dock. You know these people better than I do. Can they still hold?”

  “Yeah,” Freeman said, his head coming up to look at her. “They can hold.”

  She wasn’t nearly as confident as he was, but Mele didn’t question his assessment.

  And when the enemy came swarming forward along every available avenue of approach, the militia did hold. They stopped the first assault, and an hour later another.

  But there were still too many ways for the enemy to advance through and too few defenders to cover them all. Mele saw the transient sensor readings that told her the defensive positions were about to be outflanked by invaders coming through two maintenance shafts. She gave the order to fall back just as another attack hit the force now effectively commanded by Corporal Gamba.

  Mele wasn’t sure how she got the militia’s retreat stopped this time. Maybe it was because the enemy was so tired they couldn’t pursue quickly even when Gamba’s defensive position was overrun. Maybe it was because the militia was so worn-out they could no longer muster the strength for flight even in the throes of panic. Maybe it was the Marines offering a steady example. Whatever the reason, the militia fell into position at the last line of improvised barricades, not far behind them the hatches leading out onto the dock, and beyond them an open stretch before Shark.

  “Corporal Gamba, give me your status,” Mele called. No answer. “Corporal Gamba. Talk to me.”

  Someone else finally replied. “Captain, this is Private Yoshida. Uh . . . Gamba . . . I’m pretty sure . . .”

  “Spit it out,” Mele ordered.

  “She’s dead, Captain. During our fallback to here.”

  Damn. Damn. Damn. “How are you doing?”

  “Still, uh, functional, Captain. Right arm is still no good, though.”

  “How’s Lieutenant Veren?”

  “I don’t think she made it back here, either, Captain. All the militia keep asking me what to do. Am I in charge?”

  “Yes, Private Yoshida, you’re in charge,” Mele said, anguished to have lost Cassie Gamba. “Do you understand? Those militia with you are looking to you. Be the leader they need. Can you do that?”

  “Uh . . . yeah. Yes, Captain. I can do that. I think. But, Captain . . . they’re almost beat. They’ve been doing good, but they don’t have much left. I think.”

  “Hold on.” Mele looked around for Lieutenant Freeman. “Freeman?”

  “By . . . the hatch . . .” Freeman replied, his voice halting. “Main hatch.”

  “Have you been hit?”

  “Yeah. I’m okay. I’ll—”

  “Stay at the hatch. Have your people got any portable sensors left? Stick them up to watch here and nearby areas.” Maybe they could hold a little longer here. But Mele felt the currently unseen enemy presence in front looming and knew she had to plan now for the next, and last, phase of the defense.

  “Private Yoshida. Listen up, Yoshi! If there are any portable sensors left with your group, have the militia stick them up in good spots to watch the area leading to the dock. Got that? Good. Now, I’m sending you an image from my display. See? When the militia with you fall back, on my orders and not before, take them to this area on the docks. There’s a lot of heavy equipment there that’ll provide cover. We’re already close to you. I’ll bring my own group to the same spot.”

  “Shouldn’t we—?” Yoshida paused, his voice wavering with stress. “Shouldn’t we fall back to the ship, Captain?”

  “Look at the layout of the dock,” Mele said, putting force into her words. “There’s a clean path from the air locks and cargo doors of the facility to the dock so they could move people and junk easily. There’s no cover along that route. With the enemy still pushing us and close, they’d catch us partway to the Shark and cut us down.”

  “But—”

  “Listen. We join up in this area, lots of heavy stuff to give us cover, and when they charge Shark we’ll be able to hit them in the flank. They’ll be the ones without cover. And we will plant ourselves among that heavy gear, and if the enemy tries to come after us there we will kill every single one of them.”

  Yoshida took a moment to reply, but when he did his voice was steadier. “Got it, Captain. I got it. Will do.”

  “You gonna hold until you have to fall back?” Mele pressed.

  “Hell, yeah. I mean, yes, Captain.”

  “Is Private Lamar there?” Where was Lamar? Had Penny Lamar let her down? Had she misjudged Lamar that badly?

  “Yes, Captain. Flat on her back and a little doped up, but she’s got a weapon.”

  “Make sure you’ve got people assigned to carry her with you when you fall back. Assign those people now, and make sure they don’t leave Lamar behind.”

  “Got it, Captain.”

  “All right. You’ve got your orders. You know what to do. Make me proud, Yoshi.”

  “Will do.”

  Thirty minutes later the enemy came at them again. Whoever was pushing them was pushing them hard, giving them barely enough time to rest enough to enable them to charge again. “Hold ’em!” Mele yelled into the circuit for all of the remaining militia as armored enemy soldiers stumbled forward.

  Cursing at the lack of any more grenades, she dropped two attackers, but the militia soldier on her right lost part of his head to a hit. Mele tried to divide her attention between aiming and firing and keeping track of losses as green markers on her display went dark.

  They threw back the first attack. Mele took a long look at how much of the facility they were still trying to hold, how many different approaches the enemy could make, and tried to judge the state of her battere
d and exhausted force.

  Know yourself. Old, old advice. Mele didn’t want to admit it, but these militia couldn’t hold again. They were wavering on the verge of collapse. She either admitted that now or tried to hold again and watched her remaining force fall apart.

  “We’re pulling back,” Mele said, trying to speak clearly and calmly. “You all have the position on your helmet displays. Out the hatches onto the dock, then left into the heavy gear located there. Do not run toward Shark. Out the hatches, then left. Lieutenant Freeman, are you still at the main hatch onto the dock?”

  “Yes, Captain,” Freeman said, his voice thin.

  “Override the air lock controls so both the inner and outer hatches stay open. That’ll get us out quicker. Can you make it to the last bastion?”

  Absurdly, she realized that the last bastion sounded oddly romantic. Captain Mele Darcy died defending the last bastion. That wouldn’t be a bad epitaph.

  Except that she still had no intention of dying here.

  “Start falling back,” Mele said. “Everyone. Now. Maintain your discipline. Yoshi, make sure Lamar is with you.” She shifted her circuit, hoping that despite the nearby enemy jamming she could still get through to the dock. “Shark! We’re falling back out of the facility and heading to one side of the dock. None of our people will be coming your way. Anyone you see charging across the dock toward you is an enemy.”

  “Understood,” Shark replied. “Captain Darcy, the enemy destroyer has been badly damaged and is almost out of fuel. And the enemy just expended what were probably their last aerospace craft attacking Saber. If we can get Shark clear, we’ve got this.”

  “Thanks for the update.” Mele wondered who she was talking to over there. It didn’t sound like Commander Derian. Probably the watch officer on the bridge or the . . . what did squids call it . . . the quarterdeck. Someone who couldn’t help with the repairs but could help defend the ship until those repairs were done.

  By the time she reached the air lock everyone else had already passed through. If the enemy had realized that the defenders had fallen back, they must still be advancing cautiously, having been hammered during pursuit before.

  Outside on the dock she ran along the hatches, slapping the air lock overrides back into the off position so the outer hatches would close. Having to open those hatches again would slow down the enemy slightly and give Mele’s people a little forewarning of the next attack.

  As she ran to the left side of the dock, herding a few stragglers from the surviving militia ahead of her, Mele caught a glimpse of Shark. Some sort of barricade had been thrown together on the dock just outside an open hatch on the ship. Shark must have defenders behind that barricade, ready to make a last-ditch stand outside the ship if the enemy got that far.

  It felt strangely peaceful out here, where fighting had not yet come, the lack of atmosphere causing heavy shadow wherever lights didn’t directly play on something, few noises carrying as vibrations through the dock structure, the stars and the endless dark of space above both beautiful and unbearably cold and distant.

  More tired than she’d thought possible, Mele staggered in among the heavy equipment on the left side of the dock, seeing her militia and those who had been with Yoshida sprawled about in postures of exhaustion. There were times that called for encouragement, times that called for persuasion. This wasn’t one of those times. “Get up, you useless, pathetic excuses for men and women! Are you waiting for your mommies and daddies to show up and rock you to sleep? We are not done! There’s a fight to be won, and we will win it even if I have to personally kick each one of you in the butt so hard that you’ll wish you’d been shot! Get on your feet! Cover those hatches! You’ve got weapons! You’ve lost friends! Fight! I’m not giving up, and neither are you!”

  She could almost feel the hate and anger radiating from the militia, but they got up and rested their weapons on convenient places on the equipment. “Yoshi! Where the hell are you?”

  “On our left, nearest the ship,” Yoshida called in reply. “I, uh, thought some of them might try to run to it from here so I sort of stuck myself in their way.”

  “Good job.” Though, looking at her surviving militia slumping over their weapons, Mele wondered if any of them could run anywhere. Their own tiredness might have been the only thing that had prevented a panicked dash for the apparent safety of the ship. “Where’s Lamar?”

  “A little to my right. Even though she’s lying down she’s got a clean shot under some gear at anyone trying to run toward Shark.”

  “Hatch opening,” Lieutenant Freeman gasped. “Two hatches.”

  Mele joined the others, standing behind a very thick, sturdy-feeling piece of loading equipment, her rifle leveled toward the hatches she could see cycling open. A group of enemy soldiers burst out of the hatches onto the dock and began their own exhausted run at Shark. Mele yelled “fire!” and what were left of the defenders opened up on the flank of the enemy. Taken by surprise and hit from an unexpected direction, several attackers fell at the first volley. Others turned and ran back inside. A few, too far forward, tried to keep on toward Shark and were cut down by the sailors defending the quarterdeck.

  Mele waited for another charge, but nothing happened.

  “What’s going on?” one of the militia asked, sounding almost too tired to care.

  “They must be regrouping,” Mele said. “It’s not over. Everyone stay sharp.”

  As more time crawled by, the lack of visible activity increasingly worried her. Why would the enemy commander, who had pushed them this far, suddenly let up the pressure with success in sight? Mele scrolled through the few portable sensors the militia had been able to post in the inside area leading to the dock and that hadn’t already been spotted and destroyed by the enemy, trying to see what the enemy was doing despite the interference that nearly rendered the data feeds unreadable.

  What was that? A bunch of enemy soldiers wrestling a big object toward a solid bulkhead facing the dock. Because of jamming, the image was grainy and static-riddled, breaking repeatedly into pixel fields, but Mele thought she recognized the object. Of course. The enemy would have brought something like that to ensure that Shark didn’t get away. They’d hauled it with them all the way through the facility, and now its target was finally within reach. “Hey, Shark, what does this look like to you?” she asked, relaying the feed.

  The reply took several moments. “We can’t see enough to tell, Captain Darcy.”

  “To me it looks like a portable medium antiair weapon. Oh, yeah, there’s the power section being brought up. Shark, you can’t see it because they’re behind a solid bulkhead, but they’re setting up a particle beam to fire through that bulkhead and into you.”

  “Can’t you stop them?”

  “Negative,” Mele said. “It’d be suicide to charge them with what I’ve got left. Can’t you shoot first?”

  “Anything we shoot will go on through the facility.”

  “It’s already beat to hell, Shark, and there’s nothing and nobody friendly left alive past that bulkhead.”

  Another pause, while she watched with growing nervousness as the power section was linked to the antiair weapon.

  “Yeah,” Shark finally said. “Yeah. We can’t bring any weapons to bear until we pivot the hull a bit. Hold on. Keep your people where they are.”

  “No problem.” Mele felt the vibration running through the dock as Shark’s thrusters fired on very low settings to slightly shift her hull without moving the ship away from the dock. “Shark, they felt that. I can see them working faster. They’re getting ready to shoot.”

  This time the answer came in the form of a sudden blur of extremely fast-moving objects fired from Shark at the flat outer surface of the bulkhead the enemy weapon was sheltering behind. The bulkhead bent inward, dozens of large holes suddenly appearing in it. The image from Mele’s sensor vanished as
she stared at the result of warship grapeshot fired from close range. The shock of the grapeshot impacts could be felt through the structure, followed by an extremely rapid series of fading shocks as the same ball bearings slammed through other obstacles in their paths before finally being stopped somewhere deep in the facility.

  An instant later light flared through the holes and the bulkhead ballooned outward as the damaged power supply for the heavy weapon let go all of its stored energy at once.

  She heard a ragged gasp, the best cheer they could manage, from what was left of her defenders.

  “Think that did it?” Shark called to Mele.

  She nodded even though Shark couldn’t see her. How many of the remaining enemy soldiers had been close enough to that destruction to be killed by it? Anyone not hit by the metal ball bearings or shrapnel from whatever they’d hit would have been caught in the power discharge. “Yeah, I’m sure that did it. Thanks, squids.”

  “You’re welcome. Oo-rah, right? That’s the Marine thing?”

  “Yeah. Right. Oorah.” Mele watched, waiting, but didn’t spot any more enemy activity for the next twenty minutes. Beside her, the remaining militia waited, slumped at their places.

  “Captain Darcy.” That was Commander Derian calling this time. She was sure of it. “We’re going to go any moment now. Bring your people in.”

  Surprised, Mele looked out over the dock and over that long open area leading to Shark’s quarterdeck. She had no idea where the enemy soldiers were now, how many of them were probably covering that area with weapons too weak to threaten the destroyer’s hull from this range but plenty strong enough to penetrate the protection her Marines and the militia wore. And the remaining militia wouldn’t, couldn’t, move fast. It had all the makings of a massacre. “Thanks, but we’d be targets in a shooting gallery trying to get to you. We’re a lot safer staying holed up among this equipment.”

  “I promised to bring you off when Shark could get under way,” Derian objected.

  “And you’re offering to do so,” Mele said. “But it’s my judgment that withdrawal to your ship would result in most of those of us left being killed or wounded. Sir, we can’t run. I believe the enemy, to the extent they still are willing to attack, will lose that motivation once Shark gets clear. We’ll sit here, nice and comfortable, until you get back.”