by Richard Fox
Roland let loose with his gauss weapon, but the shells bounced off blue-white shields that flashed with each impact. Rakka crew looked over the top of the artillery piece, pointing at Roland. Even running at full speed, the Rakka would have a hard time missing him with a weapon that size.
He slid to a stop and raised his left foot. The diamond-tipped anchor spike popped out of his heel and he rammed it into the ground, bringing his rail cannon up and over his shoulder.
“You don’t have time for that!” Cha’ril shouted. “Move!”
The Rakka ducked behind the cannon aimed right at him.
“I need ten more seconds.” Roland charged the accelerators at the base of the vanes and fed a lance bolt into the chamber.
The sky split with a crack. Roland winced inside his armor, thinking the alien artillery had beat him to the draw. He opened his eyes and saw a smoking crater where the Kesaht weapon had been a second ago. A shadow passed over him and the forward half of the cannon tube sailed through the air, the base peeled open. The fragment landed behind Roland and bounced into the cargo stacks.
The crash of metal on metal sounded across the battlefield. Then again. And again. A line of cargo stacks fell over, knocking the next row over and then the next. The cargo stacks fell like dominos.
“Aignar?” Roland asked.
“What are you waiting for?” Gideon called out.
Roland turned his attention back to the Kesaht artillery park, where another cannon had lurched forward and was coming to bear on the armor. Roland aimed his primed and ready rail cannon at the artillery, then shifted his aim to the line of ammunition haulers.
He braced himself against the ground and fired. Firing a rail cannon in atmosphere was akin to being in the middle of a sonic boom. The recoil from the shot and overpressure rocked Roland back; only his anchor kept him from going airborne like he’d been slapped by a giant.
He felt impacts against his armor and fell to one knee. He looked up at the Kesaht artillery position…and found nothing but flames and mangled metal. His rail cannon shot had obliterated the ammunition carriers and the subsequent explosions had taken care of the rest of the Kesaht vehicles.
“Roland. Status,” Gideon sent.
“I’m fine.” Roland drew his anchor back into the housing within his leg. Through the smoke billowing around the destruction, a Rakka in powered armor stumbled out. Its skin was black and blistered, and blood oozed from its ears and mouth. It looked at Roland and managed a grunt, then picked up a jagged hunk of metal and walked toward him, limping on a broken leg.
The Rakka thumped the improvised club against its chest.
Roland blew its head off with a gauss shot, then turned back to the still-falling dominoes in the supply yard. At the top of the nearest fallen stack, a cargo container went tumbling down the slope, breaking against the ground and spilling thousands of small boxes. Aignar sat atop the pile, his anchor stuck through a hunk of loose metal that had once been a cargo container.
“You’re welcome.” Aignar said, sheathing his anchor and made his way down the pile.
“Quick thinking from both of you,” Gideon said as he and Cha’ril ran over, the barrels of their forearm cannons glowing red and smoking.
The sound of collapsing stacks echoed through the supply park.
“You think the colonists will be angry about the mess?” Cha’ril asked.
“Captain Sobieski said destroy the artillery,” Aignar said. “He didn’t say anything about being neat and tidy about it.”
Gideon looked up at the Kesaht battleship over the horizon.
“I’ve got Sobieski on the line,” the lieutenant said. “Roland…go to container Z-A-1138. Bring me what’s inside. The rest of you go to X-X-62211. Bring four units. Hurry.”
Roland looked out across the seemingly never-ending stacks of cargo.
“What am I looking—”
“You’ll know it when you see it. Move!” Gideon looked away from them and toward the city center.
Roland ran to a robot porter at the edge of the stacks and ran data lines into the robot’s access ports. The robot came online and rolled away, attempting to carry out its last command. Roland picked it up and re-tasked it to open container Z-A-1138.
“Please don’t be in that mess,” Roland muttered as he looked at the widening pile of fallen containers.
The robot’s wheels spun furiously and he set it down. It zipped away, heading to the outer edge of the chaos. Roland followed and turned a corner to find it stopped next to a jumble of containers.
“Balls.” Roland looked over the serial numbers etched onto the sides, he saw 1138 and climbed up the pile and ripped open the side of the container. Inside were cube frames with bright yellow boxes bolted inside. He pulled one out and saw explosive warning symbols on the yellow boxes.
“Denethrite,” Roland said. Mining charges meant to fell mountains. The explosives were somewhat shock-sensitive, but; a hard-enough hit could detonate them with unfortunate results for anyone too close.
Reaching inside, he found a box of the detonators and gently climbed off the pile of containers. While the denethrite was packaged and designed not to explode under anything but the kinetic strike of a missile, he wasn’t one to tempt fate.
Roland met up with the rest of his lance, who’d returned with four cases the size of a normal clothes trunk.
“You know you knocked over enough explosives to crack this moon’s shell,” Roland said to Aignar.
“Oh.” Aignar said, crossing his arms, “guess I should’ve stopped to take a full accounting of everything in here before I used my rail cannon to save your ass. You’re still welcome, by the way.”
Gideon looked away from the city center and over the retrieved items.
“Good,” the lieutenant said. “Roland, you have the tracker?”
Roland tapped his forearm.
“Sobieski’s given us the go for a rescue mission. Two Mules are en route. We haven’t seen the Kesaht use any anti-grav systems. The captain thinks they aren’t at that tech level yet, which means we may have a way to sneak up on their flagship.”
“And if they do have the technology and are scanning for anti-grav fields?” Cha’ril asked.
“Then the operation won’t end well for us,” Gideon said.
Chapter 14
Roland’s Mule broke through the anvil-top of a thunderstorm and wobbled as it passed through the high winds of a jet stream. Roland, mag-locked to the top of the Mule to one side of the upper turret, kept his focus on the two pilots, one of whom looked up at either Roland or Aignar, locked to the other side of the turret, every time the Mule veered with the air currents.
Between the armor, the gunner manning the turret held up a data slate and took a selfie with Roland, then spun the turret and took another picture with Aignar.
“We’re not that aerodynamic, are we?” Aignar asked.
“I never thought I’d prefer being strapped down in the cargo bay,” Roland said.
“Don’t know about you, but I’m about done with cargo anything.” Aignar raised his helm and looked back to the moon. “I see the other Mules and our escorts. No contrails. We’re on anti-grav thrusters now.”
Ahead, the Kesaht battleship continued its course, skirting the moon on the way to the Crucible gate. The flash of the 13th Fleet’s rail cannons and Kesaht plasma bolts crisscrossed space near the Crucible. The gas giant loomed beyond the battleship, like a baleful eye watching the conflict.
“Fleet said they tracked the shuttle with the kids to that battleship.” Roland accessed the tracker in his forearm, checking that it was fully charged and integrated into his system.
“Damn big ship for the four of us to go poking around,” Aignar said.
“The tracker will narrow down where to look on the ship,” Roland said. “Just hope we can fit in their hallways.”
“Those Sanheel are our size, shouldn’t be a problem…Why do you think they want the kids so badly? The Kesah
t pulled a battleship off the line to make the pickup. I’m no ship driver, but that doesn’t strike me as the best tactical decision.”
“Doesn’t matter. They’re counting on us. Their parents are counting on us.” Roland touched the sword hilt still locked to his leg.
“What’re you going to do with that when we get back to Mars?” Aignar asked.
“You think the big brass will let me keep it?”
“You think they’re going to let you walk around with concrete proof that armor’s gone renegade? Unless you want to trade it for a nice hand receipt from the military police, we need to find a sailor unburdened by scruples to get it to Mars for us.”
“I doubt Gideon would buy that I dropped it somewhere and don’t know where it went. He used to be enlisted like you. Knows all the same tactics that straight commissioned officers don’t know yet.”
“And Cha’ril would narc on us in a heartbeat,” Aignar said.
“She’s been acting strange lately,” Roland said. “Ever since her leave to Dotari was cancelled, she’s been…”
“Prickly? I noticed. Maybe she’s got a boyfriend back home.”
“She won’t even say why her leave was cancelled. Not for performance or behavior issues, that’s for sure.”
“Some Dotari political thing?” Aignar asked. “They seem pretty stable on their home world, but up until a few days ago, I thought everything was hunky-dory for Earth. Now…where is the Ibarra fleet? You have any idea where those legionnaires went?”
“One fight at a time, right?”
“The recruiter never said the Armor Corps would be boring.”
The turret gunner tapped against his cupola, then toward the rear of the Mule.
A hand reached over the edge and slapped against the hull, locking a magnetic hand grip onto the metal. A crewman crawled over the edge and snapped another mag lock attached to his knee onto the Mule. He lugged a case up over the edge, then crawled toward Roland.
“You look nervous,” Aignar said.
“I hate…EVA,” the man said. He was sweating profusely, soaking a cloth band around his forehead with impressive speed. “First, I had to put together an anti-grav impeller while on ascent. Now I get to carry this damn heavy thing to you while that dickhead Gurski films me and laughs his ass off.”
In the turret, the gunner had his data slate out and was indeed laughing, the sound hidden behind the vacuum of space.
“Because he knows I hate EVA,” the crewman said, creeping forward, “and he knows it’s supposed to be my turn in the turret.” He stopped and passed the case to Roland. The armor removed an anti-gravity generator with a giant handle welded to the frame.
The crewman pressed his middle finger to the turret, which made Gurski laugh even harder.
“Where’s mine?” Aignar asked.
“Yes, sir.” The crewman crawled back to the edge of the Mule. “On its way.”
Gurski rotated the turret around for a new selfie with his struggling crewmate.
“Aignar,” Roland said.
Aignar tapped a finger against the turret twice. The gunner’s head snapped to one side and he went pale as Aignar’s helm stared at him. Aignar opened his hand as wide as the gunner’s head, then pinched the fingertips together. Gurski pocketed his data slate. The armor jerked a thumb toward the approaching battleship, and Gurski nodded so fast Roland thought he’d break his neck. Then the turret turned toward the fore of the Mule and the gunner focused on his duties.
“Armor, this is your pilot,” came from the Mule. “We are one hundred seconds from your release point. What’s your status?”
“Your EVA just delivered the second impeller,” Roland said. “He needs to get inside or the blowback might send him Dutchman.”
“Love my job.” The crewman muttered, crawling away a little faster. “Love my job. Love my job.”
“It’ll take us at least ten minutes before we can reorient for a pickup,” the pilot said. “We’ll wait for your signal after that. Good hunting.”
Roland activated the impeller and felt a slight tug as the anti-grav waves formed.
“Release in ten…” the pilot said. Roland lessened the mag lock between his forearm and the anchor point on the Mule and braced his feet against the hull. “Three…two…one…go!”
Roland stood up to a crouch and activated the impeller. It accelerated, dragging him along with it. He looked back and saw Aignar catching up to him and the Mule turning back to Oricon.
“Really wish they’d had some proper jetpacks in that supply yard,” Aignar said. “At least the navy had breach charges for us. I’m not sure why Gideon wanted Cha’ril to carry the denethrite, and not me.”
“I can’t imagine why,” Roland said flatly.
The battleship grew nearer and Roland angled the impeller toward the sharp edge along the side of the hull. He zoomed in on open missile tubes, point defense emplacements, and fighter bays with crescent-shaped fighters held fast on their launch rails. If the Kesaht saw the armor on approach, there wasn’t any sign of a response.
Gideon and Cha’ril waited at the rendezvous point, both lying with their backs and feet against the hull. Roland swung the impeller away from the ship and pulsed the anti-grav, slowing him to the point where he set down on the hull with hardly a sound. Aignar landed a few meters away.
Roland felt the thrum of the battleship’s engines through the hull, the irregular hull plates making him feel like he was on a cliff looking up at a peak of a shattered mountain.
“Cha’ril, set the charge,” Gideon said. “Roland, let’s hope that tracker’s still working.”
“On it.” Roland accessed the tracker and brought up the control menu on his HUD. He readied the PING command and looked over the edge to the other half of the battleship. A glass pyramid at the center of the slope stuck out like a sore thumb.
“If I had to guess…” Roland activated the ping and waited as the tracker cycled through radio frequencies. A blob of light came up on his HUD, six dots just below and to port from a cannon battery.
“I would have guessed wrong,” Roland said. “There’s only six returns. Still nine children unaccounted for.”
“Scan again before we breach,” Gideon said. “Cha’ril, you set?”
“Denethrite locked down and detonator set,” she said. “I gave you all the trigger codes before we left the ground.”
“Think this will be enough to destroy the ship?” Aignar asked.
“Terrans used half as much denethrite in the warheads that took out Toth cruisers and Xaros constructs,” she said. “This is overkill. Not that I’m complaining. Explosions are meant to make a statement.”
“Move out.” Gideon said and then flipped over the edge, using his impeller to skim along the battleship’s surface. Roland followed, scanning for any sign they’d been detected while he maneuvered around the uneven hull.
Gideon came to a stop in a small defilade next to the battery. He locked his impeller to the hull and pressed his palm against the dull red metal. Tiny spurts of atmosphere escaped around his fingertips as probes burrowed into the ship.
The Dragoons locked their impellers to their backs.
“They’re running under atmo…stupid,” Gideon said. “Damn amateur hour if they get into a void fight with their hull full of oxygen that can fuel fires and a medium for blast waves to blow the ship apart. No wonder they haven’t overrun the 13th.”
“Yet,” Cha’ril said. “Quantity has a quality all its own.”
Roland zoomed in on the glass pyramid, where several Sanheel worked in different tiers. One wore a golden sash over its chest and had red-colored lanterns fixed to the armor over where the leg joined the rest of the alien’s body.
“The captain, I presume,” he said. “Doesn’t look like they’re in any state of alert.”
“Found a corridor.” Gideon pointed to the edge of the defilade. “No burn cord, the explosion would put the hostages at risk. Use a breach-and-seal kit.”
Roland jumped into the ship, minding the thin metal lines still gripping the outer hull section pressed to the deck. The Kesaht corridor was wide, with slightly raised walkways on the sides and two sets of cargo rails running along the floor. He pinged the tracker again, and five signals returned to him, all in the same location.
Air rushed past him, escaping through the breach. The whoop of emergency sirens grew fainter as the air thinned to almost nothing.
“Clear,” Aignar said as he jumped down. The breach kit lifted the hull section back up and sealed the gaps along the edges with foam that hardened instantly.
“I’ve got them,” Roland said. He ran down the corridor and thanked the Saint that the Kesaht built their ships to accommodate the larger Sanheel. He had barely enough room to spread his arms while on the Scipio, and getting around the much larger Ardennes in his combat configuration was a chore.
Air pressure returned, forced through vents along the ceiling. Roland heard the clunk of a door opening around a corner. He took the corner at speed and bore down on a half-dozen Rakka carrying welding tools and wearing helmeted void suits.
The Rakka were stunned at the sudden appearance of the towering armor charging right for them. Roland thought that he would have likely reacted the same way if he was told to go repair a hull breach and was greeted by an alien mechanical monstrosity.
He used their brief shock to close the distance, then crush five of them against the bulkhead with a single kick. One ducked away from the blow and tried to scamper away. Roland slapped a hand over its head and crushed its skull. He picked up one of the Rakka welding tools, a metal pole with a torch at the end, and jammed it into the doorframe where the engineer team had come from. He wedged another torch into the other side.