by M. D. Cooper
Yves pulled himself in front of the airlock’s exterior panel and applied a nanohack kit, which Lovell took over, working to override the door’s security settings.
Tanis scanned their surroundings, worried that another team from the freighter may have exited the ship while they were fighting—ready to hit them from behind once she and Yves entered the airlock’s confined space.
She scanned the area around the airlock and found a tangle of wire that would hold a grenade perfectly. She tucked her final EM-flash in it, and confirmed that its IFF sensor picked her and Yves up as friendlies before switching it to motion-sensing mine mode.
Tanis turned to the airlock, slug thrower leveled at the opening doors. The space within was empty, and she glanced at Yves who nodded and entered. Tanis slowly backed toward the airlock as he began to work the inner controls. Her remote drones hadn’t spotted any more Tangos on the ship’s hull, but she wasn’t going to take chances.
Tanis nodded soberly. She didn’t feel good about it, but risking that woman’s life had been preferable to leaving a potential enemy behind them—or having to kill her outright.
As the air whistled in through the vents, she tucked her slug thrower into the crook of her left arm, and shouldered her pulse rifle with her right.
Tanis wasn’t sure if he was injured, or if his normally-rough mental tone had become even coarser.
The captain didn’t reply, and Tanis suddenly worried that her strong words might prompt him to do something drastic—like blow the ship’s reactor.
A moment later, the inner airlock door slid open, and projectile fire poured through. Most of the shots missed, but a few—and more than one ricochet—pinged off the pair’s armor.
Tanis clenched her teeth as the high-explosive grenade detonated in the corridor; the concussive force from its blast hitting them a moment before the heat and flames licked across their armor. Yves should have checked with her before using an HE inside a ship, but Tanis suspected that Yves had the same suspicion regarding a reactor overload—she’d forgive his impetuousness. This time.
Tanis peered over the lip of the door and saw three bodies in the passageway. One was twitching, but the other two were still. She fired a round into the twitching figure while Yves fired his x-ray beam at the other two.
Tanis followed, moving backward and crouching low on the overhead as she covered the forward end of the passage.
She deployed a new passel of drones, and saw Yves reach the aft door and signal that he was ready to open it. Tanis sent an acknowledgement and tucked herself behind a conduit stack. From there, she had cover from the forward door, and a clear shot into the aft door, should any enemy be lying in wait.
Tanis fired a preventative pulse shot through the door as Yves pulled it wide and stood clear. Her drones swept in and saw that the next stretch of passageway was clear, running a dozen meters aft where it ended in another closed door.
She signaled Yves to advance while she covered him. They repeated the procedure twice more before arriving at an intersection. With the conduit stacks and all the floating garbage in the passageways, they didn’t have a clear view down the intersecting corridors, and Tanis sent her drones down to get a good look.
The microscopic bots flew three meters down each passageway before the ones down the right side ceased responding.
Yves said.
Tanis considered the option. The grenade was hardened and would successfully pass through the EM field in the corridor, but it was their last one. She regretted leaving her second EM flash on the ship’s hull. It hadn’t gone off, which meant that no one was out there. A waste of a perfectly good ‘nade, but still better than being hit from behind, if any enemy had been hiding out there.
Yves threw the grenade, bouncing it off a bulkhead, which sent it on a course straight down the right-hand corridor. Tanis held her breath, waiting for the detonation. Using a drone that floated near the overhead in the intersection, she watched the grenade continue to drift down the passageway.
Nothing happened.
For a moment, she thought she would cross the intersection without taking any fire—then a high-caliber projectile round struck her right bicep, spinning her around. Once across, Tanis reached for a handhold as pain cascaded up her arm. She looked down to see her armor’s plating shattered, and blood seeping through the torn base layer.
Tanis pivoted so that she could shoot with her left arm, and sent a stream of focused pulse blasts down the corridor as Yves rushed across. His luck was better than hers, and he stacked up behind her as return fire flashed out in response.
Yves moved toward the door Tanis had indicated, when it opened and a weapon nose poked out, firing wildly.
She followed Lukas’s position on the combat net while she and Yves laid down
suppressive fire. It seemed to take forever, and she went through two pulse rifle charge cells and half her kinetics while Lukas moved aft toward their position. Then, just as Tanis was swapping out her charge cell, he reached the portside passage and set up behind the Tangos.
“We have you surrounded,” Tanis called down the corridor. “Toss out your weapons and surrender, or we’ll open fire.”
“I think you have that wrong,” A voice replied. “It’s you who’s surrounded. You toss out your weapons and surrender.”
The soldier signaled an acknowledgement, and a moment later, a high-velocity projectile round tore through the corridor, puncturing several conduits before slamming into the bulkhead at the far end of the passageway.
“Next few rounds are going to go through you, or, failing that, the ship’s hull,” Tanis called out. “Doesn’t look like you’re in EV suits, so let’s see those hands.”
“OK, OK, just don’t shoot that thing in here again! Are you crazy?” One of the Tangos cried out.
“We’re in armor,” Tanis called back. “A little cold and vacuum aren’t going to bother us.”
While Tanis and Lovell talked, some additional grumbling came from down the corridor, followed by several weapons drifting past. Tanis fired a shot from her pulse rifle, which sent the surrendered weapons cartwheeling down a side passage.
“Get to the end of the hall where that round hit the bulkhead,” she ordered the Norse Wind’s crewmembers. Some shuffling reached her ears, and then two scowling Tangos drifted past, glaring at her as they floated to the starboard end of the side-passage.
The enemy fire coming from the engine compartment paused for a moment, and then resumed with increased intensity. Tanis glanced over her shoulder to see Yves firing back at the half-open door.
Lukas patted his weapon affectionately, though not enough to shift its aim from the two Tangos at the end of the cross passage.
Yves flattened himself against the bulkhead as the high-velocity rounds tore past him, denting, then puncturing the door. By the end of his salvo, a dead Tango fell through the open entrance to the engine compartment—moments before the door fell off its ruined hinges onto the body.
Tanis pointed back down the corridor and Lukas returned his attention to the pair of Tangos he was covering. Yves dashed across the opening, sweeping his rifle across the space, not firing.
Tanis gathered up her drones and directed them into the engine compartment. What she saw was dismaying, but not unexpected.
The room was a tangle of conduit, tanks, fuel lines, and control systems. At the back, behind it all, was a console that managed the flow of Helium 3 and Deuterium into the reactor. Her study of this model of freighter showed that it had an engine that possessed the ability to jumpstart its fusion reaction with a fission detonation.
Captain Unger stood behind that console, his left hand hovering over the override switch that would initiate the fission reaction.
“Control rods are out!” he called out as she stepped into the engine bay. “I drop my hand, and we all die. Your boat will go up, too.”
“You just had to stick your nose in where it doesn’t belong,” Unger said, his face reddening. “You TSF types are all the same. Keeping us all under your thumb. Fucking Terrans.”
“Not all of us,” Tanis said calmly as she took another step toward the captain. “I’m Marsian. Grew up next to the Melas Chasma. Not Terran—just like you.”
Captain Unger snorted. “Mars may have its Protectorate, but it’s still InnerSol; still well and firmly under Terra’s thumb. But I’m not gonna argue about this with you. We’re just a few million kilometers from Jovian space; we’re going to boost out there and make a handoff. You’re going to stay here to make sure nothing untoward happens.” The captain’s eyes darted to the dead crewmember still under the bay’s door and his expression softened, showing a twinge of remorse. “Nothing further untoward.”
“I’m not sure what you think that will accomplish,” Tanis replied. “TSF controls Jovian space, same as InnerSol. The cruiser that’s coming will catch you. If your ship survives the encounter, whatever contraband you’re protecting will end up in a lockup somewhere, anyway—you’re not going to deliver it to your buyer.”
“Maybe,” Unger said as he inclined his head. “Maybe not. We’ll see.”
“What’s worth the lives of your crew?” Tanis asked. “Worth your life? Those engine control units Cune Port Authority flagged you for? Or is there something more?”
Unger took a deep breath, his face reddening further. “Maybe it’s to show you that the fucking Terran Space Force can’t just board any ship they want, whenever they want! Show you that it creates problems, costs lives.”
Tanis considered mentioning that it hadn’t cost any of her people’s lives, but she knew that wouldn’t smooth things over. It wasn’t as though she was pleased about the deaths of the Norse Wind’s crew—but when it came down to them or hers, she would do her damnedest to make sure it was them.
Behind Tanis, Yves moved into cover on her right, and she lowered her rifle, taking a step forward. “Captain Unger, listen. If sending a message is your goal, you’ve made your point. There’s no reason now to kill us all. Plenty of your crew is still alive; do you think they want to die? It will just make things worse for everyone else.”
Unger’s face reddened and he spoke with a snarl. “We all know what risks we take when Diskers come into InnerSol. But we have to lift the boot of your oppression, and this is how it starts.”
“How what starts?” Tanis asked, continuing to walk slowly toward Captain Unger.
When she closed in on five meters, Unger lowered his hand toward the manual ignition control. “Go for it,” he said with a wicked grin. “Let’s see if you’re faster than I am. It would be a good way to end this shit-show.”
Tanis stopped and leaned against a nearby console. “I’m not really super keen on dying today. I really just wanted to board your ship, take the contraband, give you a fine, and send you on your way. Stars, we’d probably be just about done by now.”
As she spoke, Tanis reached behind her back and grabbed a nanopack from her belt. If she could get just a little bit closer, she could deploy it on the console, and his switch wouldn’t do a thing when he flipped it.
A second later, something fell over in the back of the compartment, and Unger glanced toward Yves�
�� position. Tanis gave a flick of her wrist, and flung the nanopack at the back of the ignition control console. It spun through the air and stuck just a few centimeters above where she’d aimed.
Now to delay him for another minute.
The sound of weapons fire came though the entrance to the engine compartment, and Captain Unger chuckled as he returned his gaze to Tanis. “Who knows…maybe it will be you surrendering to me in just a few minutes.”
Tanis kept her eyes trained on Captain Unger, but watched through her probe feeds as Yves rose and crept back toward the engine compartment’s entrance, his weapon trained on Unger as he walked.
“That’s right, soldier boy. Off with you. Just your CO and I now,” Unger laughed while waving his free hand dismissively. “Maybe we should just see who’s made of tougher stuff?”
Tanis shook her head and raised her pulse rife a few centimeters. “My rifle’s made of some pretty tough stuff. Why don’t you step around that console and find out?”
“Commander Richards, I really thought you’d rise to the challenge. You come off as such a badass, after all. Don’t think you can take me?”
Tanis raised an eyebrow as she looked the captain over. He appeared fit, but she could tell from his stance, and how he shifted position every so often, that he was largely unmodified. With the muscle and skeletal augments the TSF had provided her—not to mention her powered armor—Tanis could probably break the man in half.
“Maybe next time,” she said. “You know my boys out there are going to make short work of whoever just joined the fight. If they have to, they’ll hole the ship, and your people will suck vacuum and die.”
“They hole the ship, and my hand falls,” Unger said. “You keep forgetting that I hold all the cards here.”