“Right, but we fought a bunch of them on the ground, too,” Denis replied. “Leapfrog us. Forward!”
Two Royal Guards charged past him and Afolabi, guns firing at the hip as they moved deeper into the wreckage.
“Black exosuits, all identification wiped. Special forces with self-purging armor.” Holding his gun in one hand as a second pair of Guards leapfrogged his position, Denis tore the back plate off one of the fallen Nemesis suits next to him.
With the exosuit’s artificial muscles backing him, he made a mess of the suit—but he still exposed the main computing harness. It was supposed to be a network of chips, circuits and wires…instead, it was a burnt-out mess, destroyed by a dozen tiny explosions and a few artificial surges.
“We won’t be getting prisoners,” he told his subordinate grimly. “The armor is designed to sterilize its data cores, but what they don’t tell the troops who strap this shit on is that the process is usually fatal to anyone in the suit.”
There was a flurry of gunshots up ahead, and then silence.
“Romanov, this is Tupi,” the Marine CO’s voice sounded in his head. “A platoon of Bravo Company just took a fireteam of the black-armored dudes from behind and they think they saw red armor.
“If they’re your guys, have them say something. Or conjure purple sparks, I don’t know.”
“Kohls, you up front?” Denis demanded.
“Yes, sir,” the Guard replied.
“Conjure up some purple sparks and play ‘Amazing Grace’ on your speakers, will you?” Denis told his point woman. “We might have made contact with the Marines.”
“Wilco.”
A moment of silence passed, then Tupi chuckled on the command net.
“My Marines confirm purple sparks and a familiar recording of ‘Amazing Grace,’ Guard-Lieutenant,” he told Denis. “I think we might be clear.”
“Let’s link up and combine tac-nets,” Denis ordered. They couldn’t properly link their maps without having a confirmed shared location. “Then we sweep the station. I’m going to need to borrow one of your shuttles; they’re the only things that can reach Duke of Magnificence.”
“Understood. I’ll have my people stand by for the Lord Regent.”
Denis snorted.
“Not Montgomery. Just me. That’s what I need to talk to Captain Denuiad about,” he admitted. “My boss just teleported himself out of the station with three suicide bombers with nuclear charges. I’d really like Duke of Magnificence to find him for me!”
Once the tactical networks had synchronized and Denis had access to full maps of everything the Marines had seen aboard the relay station, reaching the assault shuttles Alpha Company had used to launch their assault was easy.
Their landing site left Denis with a new appreciation for the gunnery skill of the Royal Martian Navy’s crews. The assault shuttles had used their own lasers and mass drivers to clear the final passageway into the station’s power plant, but the smaller and rougher hole they’d blasted was only a couple of meters deep.
The hole blasted by Duke’s main guns was over fifty times that depth and easily thirty meters across. It wasn’t necessarily clean or smooth—multi-gigawatt lasers transferred energy explosively—but it was perfectly calculated.
The method of attack also meant that there was no air in the power plant, but that didn’t even qualify as an inconvenience to Tupi’s people. They were starting to set up temporary airlocks since the plan called for at least some of them to remain there and secure the station while Duke of Magnificence went hunting.
“Any breakthrough on our prey?” the Marine Mage-Captain asked, stepping out from behind one of the shuttles as Denis approached.
“Nothing yet. We’re going to need Duke’s computers, which means we’ll be hauling things out soon.”
“That’ll need more shuttles,” Tupi told him. “But then, pulling my people back off this rock was always going to need more shuttles. Boarding torpedoes are a one-way trip, after all.”
A third of the size of an assault shuttle and carrying the same number of Marines, an RMMC boarding torpedo was politely described as “a rough ride.” Accelerated while under the protection of the mothership’s gravity runes, they had a far higher initial velocity than an assault shuttle.
Plus, well, the one-use magical crush compensators that assault shuttles used for emergency crashes had been designed for boarding torpedoes. They didn’t slow down until they hit their target.
They were very much a one-use transport.
“Once we’re in space, we’ll be able to ping Duke and clear some channels,” Denis told the Marine. “We’ll probably keep the jamming up for a while, though. Even if we’re in physical possession of the control rooms and transmitters, I don’t trust this place not to have a sneaky way for them to call out.”
“Me either,” Tupi confirmed. “Get going, Lieutenant; the shuttle pilot’s waiting on you. She has my update to send Denuiad too.”
“Thank you, Mage-Captain,” Denis told the other man. “I’m glad we had you with us.”
“Your Guards took the heaviest fighting,” the Marine replied. “I’m not sure I approve of the Lord Regent using himself as an insertion method, but…”
Denis laughed.
“You’ve served on Duke for a while, haven’t you?” he asked. “Do the Marines on her really expect Montgomery to take proper care of himself?”
“Not in the slightest, Guard-Lieutenant. Go find him, please. The Duke’s Marines are a bit attached to the little man.”
“Duke of Magnificence, this is Detail-Actual,” Denis said into the microphone. “I say again, Duke of Magnificence, this is Detail-Actual. Respond if you’re able.”
“Detail-Actual, this is Duke-Actual,” Denuiad’s voice replied, slightly distorted from the jamming even with everything the shuttle and cruiser could do. “Care to explain just why the package is floating in deep space, calling for a rescue?”
“Because the package is the package, Captain,” Denis said with a sigh. “Is the package intact?”
“Understood to be. Coms are limited, but the SAR shuttle is only a few minutes away. Package’s suit is damaged, but telemetry suggests he’s good for at least an hour.”
Denis sighed again, in relief this time.
“Good to hear that, Captain. Station is in our hands but not entirely secure,” he told the Captain. “We need new shuttles to relieve Bravo and support Alpha. Perimeter docks are in our hands. Did anyone try to run?”
“One ship. We summoned them to surrender; they refused.” There was a very clear shrug in the Mage-Captain’s voice. Denis had no illusions of what had happened to the ship that had tried to run.
Even if it had been a jump ship, nobody was going to try to jump out of the asteroid belt. Military Mages with military amplifiers might be able to do it. Might.
It didn’t sound like they’d tried before Denuiad had burned them to ash. No one was feeling particularly charitable on this mission.
“Did you get any prisoners on the station?” the Mage-Captain asked.
“Negative,” Denis told her. “They suited up in exosuits when we boarded. Black ops exosuits, with the self-sterilizing function. Supposed to trigger on a deadman switch, but I’m not expecting survivors.”
“Fuckers.”
That wasn’t really appropriate for official coms, but that was life.
“Shuttles?” Denis asked. “We’ll need medical support, too. Wounded and dead, unfortunately.”
“Medical was planned for. Shuttles launching in sixty,” the Mage-Captain replied. “Confirming pickup on the package, Detail-Actual. Do you want to rendezvous with SAR?”
“I’ll meet the package on the deck,” Denis replied. “We’ll come in once the rest of the shuttle fleet is in motion. Target is proving difficult to crack; we’ll probably move it over once there’s a shuttle in place with the space.”
There was a long pause.
“Understood, Detail-Actual. I hav
e an update request from Olympus. Nothing yet?”
Denis wasn’t even sure how Kiera was in communication with Duke. The battlecruiser’s jammers should have stopped anyone from contacting her from Mars. On the other hand, Kiera was the Mage-Queen of Mars and sitting in the Olympus Amplifier.
He wasn’t taking bets on what she could or couldn’t do.
“I have updates aboard that we’ll deliver by direct connection,” he told Denuiad. “There will be people waiting to rendezvous and sync tac-nets once the shuttles land. We’ll want to make sure we have solid laser links at that point.”
“We would have had them all along if we hadn’t decided to send Marines into the middle of the asteroid,” the Mage-Captain replied. “We’ll be live all the way now. I was hoping to have some answers by the time we had the package on deck.”
“I’m not in contact with my people now until you have those links up, Duke-Actual. But I’m not expecting miracles.”
“We’ll make it happen one way or another,” Denuiad replied. She inhaled sharply. “Update from the SAR team, Detail-Actual. They’re requesting emergency clearance through the landing process, so we may need to hold off on launching the shuttles.”
That sent a chill through Denis.
“What did the little id—” He cut himself off, took a long breath. “Package’s status?” he said in clipped tones.
“From what the SAR is telling me…shot.”
46
Duke of Magnificence’s medical details were among the best the RMN had to offer. Even with half of them on their way to the Nemesis relay station, the team had Montgomery out of the SAR shuttle and into surgery before Denis’s shuttle managed to touch down.
There was an observation space next to the surgery bay and Denis ended up there, watching white-scrubbed doctors poking at his charge’s leg.
“What are we looking at?” he asked the nurse in the room with him.
“Penetrator round through the right leg,” the nurse told him. “Dr. Kurtz says it looks clean, but the femur is fractured. She’s assessing the damage before applying bone sealant.”
“So it’s not…bad,” Denis concluded, mentally going through the assessment. “I knew his suit was damaged, but I didn’t realize he’d been hit that hard.”
“I can’t say, sir,” the nurse admitted. “That will be for Dr. Kurtz to assess once she’s done surgery.”
“How long?”
“I can’t say, sir,” the nurse repeated. “We will keep you advised as much as we can. Lord Montgomery was lucid when we brought him in and is only under anesthesia for the surgery. Once Dr. Kurtz is done with him, I suspect she’ll keep him on painkillers…but I can’t say for sure.”
Denis chuckled lightly at the repetition and stepped back.
“I’ll be remaining here,” he told the nurse. “Until the rest of the Guard are back aboard, I can’t leave his side.”
“As you wish, Guard-Lieutenant,” the nurse replied. They hadn’t even objected to Denis stomping in in armor and carrying his gun. “If I may request, sir, could we run your armor through a sterilizer, at least? It’s taken a few nasty knocks, and I’m concerned about what you might be tracking around sick bay.”
It wasn’t like Denis had a spare suit of armor kicking around. The Marines could fit him with something…except that he suspected that even the armorer was on the relay station. A Marine was a rifleman first, after all.
“There’s no one else to guard the Regent,” he pointed out gently. “I can’t leave him.”
“I suppose that’s fair.” The nurse shrugged. “I think I can get one of our portable units and clean the worst of it. It’s not going to cause you problems, is it?”
“The armor is designed for me to walk through the steam of a shuttle having landed on water,” Denis noted. “It’ll survive a sterilizer unit.”
“Okay. Give me a moment.”
One steam sterilization and thirty minutes’ wait later, Denis was able to meet with Dr. Kurtz as she exited surgery.
“Well?” he asked. “I feel like I broke my charge.”
“I can’t speak to how Lord Montgomery was injured,” Kurtz told him as she stripped off her gloves and took a seat. “He’ll be awake in about an hour. We’ve fitted a brace onto his thigh that he can’t take off until the bone is healed. He won’t be able to run or jump or wear armor until that’s healed.
“As his bodyguard, it will fall on you to help make sure he listens to that restriction,” she noted.
“You…haven’t met Lord Montgomery, have you?” Denis asked.
“I’ve met him in passing, but I joined Duke while he was in Republic space, as I understand,” the doctor replied. “I have his files from his previous injuries aboard Duke of Magnificence. I understand that he is a difficult patient.”
The Guard snorted.
“The Lord Regent will cooperate with every instruction you give him right up to the moment they get in the way of him doing something he sees as his job,” he told the doctor. “At that point, no power in the galaxy is going to stop him doing what he needs to. I don’t know if that’s difficult as a patient, but it’s endearing in a leader and damn annoying in a man I’m supposed to keep alive.
“How bad was it?” he asked.
“Could have been much worse. Clean shot through the muscle, ricocheted off the side of the bone and kept going. The bone injury is a clean fracture and the muscle injuries are neat in-and-out holes.
“We’ve got everything we can in the injury for him. Give him a week and he’ll be fine, so long as he doesn’t aggravate it. Do you think you can sit on him for a week, Guard-Lieutenant?”
“Doctor, I don’t expect to be able to sit on him for five minutes once we find what we came here for,” Denis admitted. “Are you sure we can’t put him in armor?”
“Even if you have his suit repaired fast enough, the brace must remain. For the next twenty-four hours at least, it is literally the only thing holding his femur together.”
“Okay, fair enough,” Denis conceded with a wince. “We’ll do what we can. That’s the job. Can I be in the room now? I’m feeling twitchy about being this separated from my charge.”
“That armor looks like it got sterilized. You’re clean?”
“As I can be without stripping out and running it through the armory system,” the Guard confirmed. “And that’s not happening until I have backup.”
“It’ll have to do. I understand that the Lord Regent needs to be watched,” Dr. Kurtz told him. “Good luck, Guard-Lieutenant.”
Denis reflected, as he entered Montgomery’s room, that the doctor really had no idea.
“Afolabi, update me,” he ordered.
“We’ve stripped the racks and are loading the storage units onto the shuttles,” his second replied. “There’s two Guards escorting our wounded; they should switch over to backing you up once they’re on Duke—maybe five more minutes at most.”
“Good to hear,” Denis said. “Did we get anything useful out of the units yet?”
“The cyber-team is still working away on some tidbits they pulled out of the drives, but no luck,” Afolabi told him. “I detached one of them to help the Marines tear down the on-site software for the transmitters. There might be answers in there, and tearing them down will help us make sure no one is sending messages out.”
“Is the station secure?”
“So far as we can tell,” the Guard-Sergeant confirmed. “We’ve accounted for seventy-nine people and the station looks like it had berths for eighty-five. A cutter got shot down on the way out?”
“Didn’t look like a jump ship, but it could definitely have held six people, from the data Duke gave me,” Denis replied. The long-range shuttle could easily have held three times that. “Any survivors or prisoners?”
“Negative. We’ve found at least two whose exosuits blew before their deadman switches triggered. Can’t tell if the command source was local or remote.”
“Might have bee
n suicide, might have been murder?” Denis asked.
“Exactly. We should have all the storage units aboard Duke within an hour. Cybers are telling me they should have data within a couple of hours of that.”
“Faster is better,” the Lieutenant told his subordinate. “We don’t know when Nemesis’s boss was expecting to hear from this station. Every minute increases the chance the people who set the King’s death in motion get away.”
“They know, sir. I made sure of it.”
“I know you did,” Denis said with a sigh. “Just watching the clock and starting to worry.”
“We’ve got it, sir,” Afolabi reassured him. “We’ll get it into your girlfriend’s hands, don’t worry, sir.”
“My girlfriend?” Denis asked. “And just who are you thinking of, Sergeant?”
His tone was a bit chillier than a moment before. Last time Denis had checked, he’d been single. There was only really one person Afolabi could be referring to, but that didn’t make much sense.
“Apologies, sir, I thought you and Voice Samara had been getting more than professionally acquainted,” the Sergeant said swiftly. “Misjudgment on my part; I spoke out of turn.”
“You did,” Denis agreed. “Taking your misjudgment into account, though. I’m looking forward to seeing what Voice Samara and our cyber people get out of the hardware.”
Now that he was thinking about it, he was looking forward to Samara’s briefing for more than the chance to ID his enemies.
The Sergeant had definitely misjudged…but not as much, perhaps, as Denis had initially assumed.
Something to think about when this was over.
47
Damien woke up with a start, gathering magic to him to protect himself for a moment before he realized where he was.
Recognizing Duke of Magnificence’s sickbay, he took several slow breaths to calm himself and then slowly rose to a sitting position. His leg had the familiar, not-quite-numb sensation of localized painkillers and a new feeling of weight.
Mountain of Mars Page 28