by M. D. Cooper
Which was precisely why Lukas was always in the lead. Let the crew of the other ship see the TSF weaponry, matte grey armor, and steely resolve. A fight that never happened was Tanis’s favorite kind.
Well, almost my favorite kind, she thought.
Twenty seconds passed before Lukas slid into the airlock, joined by Susan a moment later. Once they were secure, Tanis pushed off, ten seconds behind Marian and Yves.
She glanced back at the Kirby Jones as the airlock closed behind her, and noted Mars’s gleaming rings beyond her ship. They were several million miles away, but still visible in Sol’s bright light, their glow punctuated by the sparkling flares of distant starship’s fusion drives, boosting in and out of the planet’s massive superstructure.
Home.
Tanis pushed the thoughts of a much overdue visit to Mars from her mind. Dreaming of her family’s home on the shores of the Melas Chasma was not what she needed to focus on right now.
Ahead, Marian and Yves had reached the airlock and taken up positions on the outside of the freighter, standing on its hull, covering Lukas and Susan.
Tanis sighed. It was probable that Captain Unger was telling the truth, but it was also possible that he wanted to split up the TSF boarding team. Not all of them could fit in the Norse Wind’s airlock—not that Tanis would ever put her whole team within the confines of one airlock on another ship.
Unfortunately, she didn’t have a lot of options—not with her team out in the black.
Tanis cut the connection and gave Marian the go-ahead to cycle through.
While the Marines spoke, Tanis reached the Norse Wind’s hull and locked her boots on, standing a meter behind Marian. They all knew Tanis wouldn’t retreat back to the Kirby Jones if her people were under fire, but Marian had to issue the order anyway so that no one would question her dedication to her CO’s safety.
Marian climbed down into the airlock, taking a position on the overhead, while Lukas and Susan each anchored themselves to opposite walls.
Tanis nodded with approval. There was no point in having all the weapons fire originate from the same plane—or to give the enemy targets standing on the same one, either. If anyone inside the ship did decide to shoot at a TSF boarding party, they would have to put themselves in the line of fire to hit anyone in the airlock.
The indicator above the airlock’s inner door turned green, and the door slid open. Marian peered into the corridor, and, from her tap into Marian’s visuals, Tanis could see that the passageway was clear of humans—hostile or otherwise.
It was not, however, clear of floating debris. It looked as though someone had dumped out a rucksack full of trash and food—all of which was now floating freely in the zero-g environment.
A laugh came to her over the Link.
Well, this just escalated, Tanis thought to herself.
Captain Unger cut the connection, and Tanis let out a long sigh.
Marian replied as she reached the door at the forward end of the passageway.
Tanis could tell form the corporal’s tone of voice that Marian already knew there was no changing Tanis’s mind.
Tanis signaled Yves, and they disabled the maglocks on their boots before pushing off over the top of the ship. Tanis flagged the port airlock on her HUD and angled toward it as they drifted up over the ship. Once they had cleared the containers attached to the port side of the Norse Wind, she activated the jets on her armor and angled back down over the freighter.
She looked back to see three figures in armored EV suits crouched behind a shipping container, rifles in hand.
The figures below were in position to rush out and take the airlock—a strategy that would bottle up Marian’s team. However, their hiding place didn’t give them a clear view of the lock, and they had clearly missed Tanis and Yves flying up over the ship; a situation that could change rapidly if any of the three ambushers glanced up—especially now that they were brightly lit by Sol’s baleful glare.
Captain Unger had obviously planned this ambush long before the charade with the airlock and passageway seals.
Four acknowledgement signals flashed on her HUD as Tanis fired her shoulder jets, dropping back to the ship below. She touched down behind the dubious cover of some external conduits and a box that looked like a power junction. Yves came down beside her, angling for a light touchdown, when his boot clipped the junction box and he spun to the side, slamming into the hull.
The vacuum of space didn’t transmit the sound, but the freighter’s hull carried the vibrations handily, and one of the three Tangos lying in wait turned toward them. Tanis flattened herself behind the conduit, but she knew they’d been spotted.
Her armor’s sensors picked up EM signals from the three figures before several projectile rounds passed overhead. The threat indicator on her armor shifted from yellow to red.
Lovell said as he observed their feeds from the Kirby Jones.
Tanis shrugged as she surveyed the battlespace from her vantage point, combined with overhead and side views from the drones. It had taken her some time to learn how to simultaneously process the multiple viewpoints at once, but what was the point of having L2 neural mods if she couldn’t process additional visual feeds?
During the second she reflected on Lovell’s comment, Tanis also catalogued her surroundings—noting which objects provided cover, which were potentially explosive, and the most likely avenues of attack the enemy would use to come after her and Yves.
There was only twenty meters of hull between them and the enemy, but there were four rows of conduit, a sensor array, a carbon-fiber net—that appeared to be stowed on the hull for emergencies, though improperly folded—and a point defense turret.
The turret was toward the bow, on her right, and she placed a marker on it, indicating that Yves should take up a position behind the gun. He acknowledged, and Tanis grabbed one of her EM-flash grenades, set its detonation timer, and whipped it out over the conduit, straight into the middle of the three would-be ambushers.
An instant before the grenade went off, Tanis leapt from cover, and fired several slugs from her secondary weapon before racing toward another row of conduit. The three Tangos all rose from their cover to respond to her attack—and caught the EM flash full-force.
With the enemy blind, Tanis changed course, heading for the sensor array, tucking in behind it a second after Yves reached the gun emplacement. Tanis placed a nanopack on the array, and set it to infiltrate the array’s control circuits. If the enemy wasn’t already using the array to keep an eye on her and Yves, they would in short order, and she wanted it to lie about their location.
Tanis chuckled, the sound echoing loudly in her helmet.
While Lovell managed the hack, Tanis watched the enemy as they recovered from the EM pulse. She had hoped that their EV suits weren’t hardened against EM, but it appeared to have only provided a momentary distraction.
No matter, she thought. I make my own fortune.
Her remote drones showed the three enemies crouched low while their armor reset external sensors. She judged the best angle to hit them, and gently threw her kinetic slug-thrower up over the battlespace. When the weapon was in the right location, she remotely triggered its firing mechanism. The weapon’s muzzle flashed three times, and a trio of rounds traced a line across the ship’s hull as the kick spun the weapon.
Two of the shots went wide, but one caught a Tango in the leg, cracking the armor plating on the woman’s EV suit.
Yves wasted no time taking advantage of the distraction, and fired several x-ray bursts from his laser rifle—the intense radiation heating, and burning through the conduit the enemy was hiding behind.
Tanis’s pulse rifle was useless in vacuum, so she crouched and pushed into the air, catching her kinetic weapon before it drifted away, and fired three more shots at the enemy.
All three rounds hit the same figure. She saw its armor crack on the second impact, and red and brown liquid sprayed out after the third.
One down.
Projectile rounds flew through space around her, three hitting her legs and another striking her torso, as Tanis fired her shoulder jets, which pushed her back down to the ship’s hull.
One of the enemy fired at where he thought Tanis was hiding, and a junction box exploded in a bloom of sparks. Tanis swore and flattened herself against the hull—the shooter hadn’t been far off. However, he had also exposed himself to Yves, who fired an x-ray blast, catching the Tango center mass.
From the vantage her drones provided, Tanis saw the enemy convulse and then begin to drift away from the battlespace.
Tanis located the last Tango—the woman she had hit in the leg with her slug thrower. She was rising, but tossed her weapon away into space. Tanis signaled Yves, who approached slowly and pointed at the woman’s sidearm.
She carefully pulled it free and tossed it away as well.
Tanis pushed off the hull of the freighter and peered across the brightly-lit space between the two ships, gauging the distance and angle.
She fired her jets, coming down in front of the Norse Wind’s crewmember. The Tango’s helmet had a clear faceplate, and Tanis could see a little fear and no small amount of rage in the woman’s eyes.
Tanis leaned forward until their helmets touched.
“Do you want to live?” she asked loudly, knowing the vibrations would carry the sound through into the woman’s helmet.
The woman’s eyes narrowed, but she nodded slowly.
“Good. Follow me,” Tanis said.
Tanis climbed up onto one of the shipping containers, and, after Yves gave the Tango a meaningful gesture with his rifle, the woman followed slowly. When her captive finally clambered onto the container, Tanis examined the woman’s EV suit, confirming that it had attitude jets with sufficient power to reach the Kirby Jones. Then she touched their helmets together once more.
The woman nodded, a twinkle of hope showing in her eyes as she considered the possibility of taking the Kirby Jones from within.
“Good. Exhale,” Tanis replied, and pulled her lightwand off her hip. The electron blade flared to life, and Tanis held it up for a second. The woman’s eyes widened with fear as understanding flooded through her.
Tanis drove the lightwand into the base of the woman’s helmet, and she drew it around the seal in a single, deft twist. With the helmet’s latches destroyed, Tanis reached up and ripped it off, as she kicked the Tango hard—pushing her captive out into space between the ships.
The woman twisted and writhed as her face was exposed to cold, hard vacuum.
Yves didn’t respond as they resumed their trek across the freighter’s hull.
The pair was within ten meters of the port airlock when Marian called out.
Tanis pulled Marian’s feed, and saw the corporal lob an EM-flash grenade down the passageway while Lukas and Susan fired with their pulse rifles. The grenade passed through the open door, and then Susan and Lukas’s concussive pulse waves hit, slamming the door shut.
A dull thud echoed through the corridor and Marian chuckled.