by Rick Partlow
“Can you be more specific?” I asked her, trying to keep my face and voice bland despite my growing impatience with her shtick.
“You think you’re going to shut me out of this by keeping me on the ship,” she snapped. Her eyes were laser sights boring into my head and she was nearly shaking with anger. “But if you think you can keep something like this quiet, you’re a fucking idiot. This is bigger than blood, bigger than family. Monsieur Damiani has been searching for this his whole life; he won’t let you get away with keeping it from him, whether you’re his nephew or the President of the fucking Commonwealth or Jesus Christ, Mohammed and the Buddha rolled into one.”
“I’m not leaving you on the ship to keep you away from anything except getting your damn head blown off,” I fired back, leaning forward until only a few centimeters separated my nose from hers. “I don’t have enough people to make them waste their time keeping you alive in a close-quarters combat situation. You’re staying here because you’re not a Marine, you’re not a combat troop and I don’t need a fucking negotiator out there getting shot at!”
I was practically bellowing by the last sentence, but I didn’t care; with the hatch closed, the cockpit was soundproofed. I leaned back and let out a breath, still glaring at her.
“I understand you’re angry because I haven’t shared this system’s location with you,” I went on, keeping my voice more controlled, “but you’re forgetting something. I don’t work for you. You’re a liaison between me and Cowboy. I’m not trusting you with the coordinates because I don’t know that Cowboy would want me to.”
I raised my hands in front of me, almost in a pleading gesture. “This is shit that could change everything, Divya, that could bring down governments and trash whole economies. When we get back, I’ll hand the coordinates over to him, and only him, and only in person.” I shook my head. “Until then, it stays in one place.” I tapped a finger against my temple. “If this shit gets out, Uncle Andre’s going to know it wasn’t me that let it get out.”
She eyed me doubtfully, but finally, slowly, she nodded.
“All right,” she said with a hissed sigh. “I still don’t like it, but I can understand your position. I don’t suppose Mr. West will mind an added layer of security, as long as I deliver you to him and you deliver the location.”
She smiled and there was something akin to admiration in it.
“Perhaps you are as smart as you think, Munroe.”
Then she turned and hit the control to release the hatch. The heavy portal swung upward with a hum of laboring motors and she left without another word.
I sucked in a breath, finally letting my poker face slip.
I hoped she was right about me being smart. Because I’d been lying my ass off.
Chapter Eighteen
The planet didn’t have a name, just a series of letters and numbers that had some scientific significance but meant nothing to me. I was just thinking of it as “the Planet,” because right now, no other planet mattered. It passed by alarmingly close in the main viewscreens in unremarkable swathes of brown and green and blue, barely habitable. Down there, we’d need the extra air from the tanks built into our armor to keep from going hypoxic, and the heating coils to keep from going hypothermic.
“You sure they won’t spot us before we hit the drives?” I asked Kane again. I was getting nervous, and it was only exacerbated by the fact that I was jammed so tight into the acceleration couch that I could barely move. Armor, weapons, ammo and vacuum gear thickened in layers around me like the shell of some ridiculous, humanoid turtle; and even at full extension, the seat restraints were so tight I could barely turn my head.
“Not sure,” he admitted, not trying to be comforting. “They look right at us, maybe they see us. But they’d have to look. We’re running cold, should blend into the background radiation. It’s the dark side right now, too, so no reflections. Once we hit the drives, they’ll see us.” He angled his head in a shrug. “But then we’ll be shooting.”
I nodded inside my helmet, not caring that he couldn’t see it. Divya looked at me sidelong from the copilot’s seat, her expression slightly amused at how awkward Bobbi and I looked strapped into our couches.
“Passing the terminator,” Kane announced on the ship-wide band as we orbited smoothly from the light of the system’s primary into the starry blackness of the Planet’s shadow. “Ten minutes to ignition.”
“Everyone stay strapped in until I give the word,” I warned. It probably wasn’t necessary for my people, but Vilberg and Anatoly might need the reminder. “We’re going to have some pretty hard maneuvering.”
I wanted to blather, to fill the dead time with words so I wouldn’t just sit there thinking about the various ways we could all die, but I forced myself to stay quiet. If they thought I was nervous, they’d get nervous. I gritted my teeth and ran scenarios through my head, making sure I had a plan for each of them and wouldn’t waste time trying to improvise on the spot.
There were so many things that could wrong, so many ways this could all end badly. We didn’t have enough people, two of the people we did have hadn’t gone through any training or rehearsal with my troops, and we had no idea how many fighters the opposition had on their side. How the hell had I gotten us into this idiotic situation, anyway?
You got us into it when you snuck out of the Zocalo eight years ago to get away from your mom’s security, I reminded myself.
All the shit that had happened to me since then, all the effects the things I’d done had on the people around me, and it had all spread like waves from a pebble into a pond from that one, spur-of-the-moment decision. I remembered a physics class I’d audited during NCO training in the Marines where they’d talked about the Many Worlds Interpretation of Quantum physics, the idea that every time the quantum state of probabilities collapsed into one result, another universe popped into existence where things had gone the other way. We still didn’t know for sure it was the right interpretation, even though we treated our practical physics as if it was, but I wondered if there was a reality out there where I had just gone along with what my mom wanted and hadn’t gotten into the fight with her security chief and accidentally killed him.
In that reality, I was a young Corporate Council executive, shaving away my conscience a millimeter at a time, and Sophia and Victor and Kurt were dead, and Cesar had never been born. And Gramps was still alive, living out his days on his ranch instead of dying on Thunderhead in a suicidal last stand to make up for the desperate decisions he’d made after he’d helped me run away. But would he have wanted to watch me follow the same path as his grand-daughter, selling my soul to the Corporate Council?
No, I’d made the right decision that day. I hoped I was making the right decision today.
“There it is,” Kane said flatly.
The Cult lighter would have been just another star hanging over the blacked-out circle of the planet if the computer hadn’t been enhancing it with a bright red halo. It seemed incredibly far away, but I knew on an intellectual level that it was frighteningly close.
“There’s a shuttle on the ground right below it,” he rattled off, in tactical mode now and not sparing the syllables. “It’s on a plateau in a pass through the mountains. Don’t see the other one.”
“Any indication they’ve spotted us?” I wanted to know.
He paused for a long moment before answering me, but then…
“No,” he said. “No change in attitude, no active sensors.” Another pause. “Three minutes until ignition.”
“Are we sure it’s worth it, Munroe?” I blinked at the incongruity of the question and saw on my HUD that it was Bobbi and she was on our private frequency; no one else could hear.
“What?” I prompted, though I had an idea what she meant.
“We could disable that ship without boarding her, take her off the table as a threat,” she said. “Are we sure it’s worth the risk to avoid killing Marquette? He’s just a half-crazy war burnout.”<
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“And what are we?” I asked her, perhaps a bit more harshly than I should have. I took a breath and softened my tone. “He gave himself up to keep the Cultists from hurting those civilians. He didn’t have to do that.”
“You’re the boss, Boss.”
That wasn’t quite the answer I’d been hoping for, but it was as good of a one as I was going to get.
“Ignition,” Kane announced matter-of-factly…and then the fusion drive slammed us into our seats with five gravities worth of acceleration.
It wasn’t enough to make me black out, but it sure as hell hurt, especially wearing all that gear. I forced my eyes open so I could watch what happened on the screen; the Nomad was rushing up to match orbits with the Cult lighter, using brute force in trade for time. The enemy ship grew closer with frightening speed, and suddenly I could see the details of her.
She was an unattractive, bulbous thing, with a slapped-together look shared by most of the makeshift ships in her nebulous class. She had started out as a typical, pre-war cargo hauler designed to ferry supplies within star systems; but a few decades ago, she and many others like her had Teller-Fox warp units installed to let them do the same work in systems without a jumpgate. She’d likely changed hands a dozen times since she’d come off the corporate shipyards, and her latest owner had slapped tons of BiPhase Carbide armor plating over her critical areas and jury-rigged weapons pods onto her flanks, adding to her chubby, ungainly appearance.
There was nothing amusing at all about the proton cannons she carried in those weapons pods, though, and they were Kane’s first target. The blast of protons from our main gun was mostly invisible in the near-vacuum of high orbit; but the computer simulated it just fine, and I could see the flickering, blue-chased line of white connecting the bow of the Nomad to the lighter’s port-side weapons pod for just a fraction of a second. That was enough. The pod burst in an expanding globe of vaporized metal that sent the ship spinning on its axis through a cloud of gas and fragmented shielding until an automated burn from a maneuvering thruster halted the spin…and made it a target again.
The second shot took out the other weapons pod, though not as spectacularly; the ship was still braking from its spin and the burst of proton fire only grazed the forward edge of the bulbous protuberance. The explosion was more restrained than the first, but it took out the starboard beam emitter, so it did the job. The response was almost immediate: there was a flash of light from the ship’s drive bell and she began to climb out of her orbit on a star-bright fusion flame.
“I’m busy, Munroe,” Kane mumbled. “Get the antennae please.”
I unfolded the weapons’ control joystick on the armrest of my couch and a targeting hologram popped up in front of my station. It controlled the ship’s secondary armament, a heavy Gatling laser concealed in a turret that could retract into what had once been the missile bay. Kane was maneuvering the Nomad around to the rear of the lighter and the g-forces tossing me against my restraints made it difficult to traverse the turret; the targeting reticle was dancing around over the image of the accelerating ship as the Nomad gave chase.
There was a second where our relative motions were in sync and I lined the crosshairs up on the dish antennae and jammed down the firing stud. Again, the pulses were simulated by the computer and a flashing red line reached out to the dish, blowing it apart in a spray of molten metal and hot gasses. Everything was silent, just the rasp of my own, labored breath in my ears, less real than a ViR game and incredibly impersonal. I was suddenly glad I’d joined the Marines instead of Space Fleet, glad that when I killed someone, I saw them and remembered that they were a sentient being. This was too easy.
Then we were around the aft end of the lighter, at an angle to its fusion drive, and the proton cannon lashed out again, striking at the juncture of the drive bell and the main body of the ship. The shielding was heavy there, so there was no huge explosion, no massive destruction; but the drive went dark and the ship began drifting forward at the velocity it had built up. Our own acceleration cut off and I found myself back in zero gravity for a moment before I heard the insistent bang of maneuvering thrusters firing and saw the view on the main screen spin around with our ship.
“Get the point defenses, Munroe,” Kane said. He didn’t have to tell me why; the Gatling laser turrets arrayed around the bridge and docking bay could tear us a new one when we came in to try to board, but taking them out with the proton cannon would blow holes in pressurized sections of the ship and just maybe kill the guy we were trying to rescue.
Deceleration pushed me back against my seat again, more gently this time, barely two gravities and for maybe a minute, to match velocities with the lighter. The point defense turret around the bridge came into view first and it was already firing on us, but we were coming in drive-bell first and the laser pulses weren’t hitting anything that couldn’t take the abuse. Another bang of maneuvering thrusters and the ship spun halfway around on its axis and our Gatling laser had a clear shot.
The turret burst apart under a hail of laser fire, and there was a brief flare of flaming atmosphere from a shot that had penetrated the hull near it, but it quickly went out as the emergency systems sealed it with a quick-hardening foam.
“Docking bay in thirty seconds,” Kane told me.
“Everyone into position!” I ordered over the general frequency. “Bobbi, get them ready. I’ll be right there.”
I couldn’t see her with my helmet on and my attention focused on the targeting screen, but I knew she was unstrapping and heading for the utility bay by the tone of the orders she was giving on the general frequency, chivvying the squad into motion. The Nomad wasn’t under thrust, so they wouldn’t have to worry about getting slammed against the bulkhead by a sudden maneuver; Kane was taking it gentle and easy as he brought the boat around to the docking bay nestled under the lighter’s bridge, at the bow of the ship.
I tensed, waiting for the point-defense laser turret to come into view. It opened up on us before we were even in its firing arc, the long burst of laser pulses passing wide of the stern of the Nomad as we drifted backwards across the front of the docking bay. The fusillade actually began spalling off the exterior of our drive bell before I had the weapons emplacement in my targeting reticle. I was so intent on taking out the turret that I nearly didn’t notice when the assault shuttle rocketed out of the lighter’s hangar, hitting its fusion drive close enough that it actually melted and vaporized a meter-wide section of hull plating just outside the docking bay.
“Shit!” I hissed, putting a last burst into the turret and seeing the view outside spin around as Kane hit the maneuvering thrusters and turned our nose around to line the proton cannon up with the fleeing shuttle.
“Can’t get a shot,” the cyborg pilot said. “They’re boosting straight away from us.”
I could see it on the screens: the shuttle was accelerating straight down into the atmosphere. Oh, they’d have to deviate from that course pretty soon or they’d burn the hell up, but it would get them out of range of our main gun long before that.
“Dump us in the bay, then go after them,” I told him, yanking the quick-release for my safety restraints and scrambling out of the cockpit with desperate speed. My words were coming out fully automatic, faster than I intended, trying to keep up with my physical movements. “Once you do, contact Bobbi and see if she needs help before you head down to the landing zone.”
I was out in the passageway and halfway to the utility bay, but I knew he could still hear me as if I were right next to him. “Don’t get blown up, you’re our ride out of here.”
“Be careful,” he said, a hint of uncharacteristic amusement in his voice. “You get killed, we don’t get paid.”
Divya, I noted, didn’t say a word.
The utility bay had an emergency seal that could close it off from the rest of the ship, and I saw Bobbi’s hand hovering over the control as I clomped by her with the awkward stride of magnetic boots in zero gravity.
She hit it before I was completely through and I felt more than heard the deep, metallic clunk of the seal sliding home centimeters behind me.
“Pop it!” I yelled at Victor, who stood next to the controls for the belly ramp.
He had to hit the emergency override first, just to let the ship’s systems confirm that no, we weren’t suicidal dumbasses and yes, we really did want to vent the atmosphere out into space by opening the ramp in a vacuum. Alarms sounded and lights flashed and I barely noticed because I was pulling on an Extravehicular Maneuvering Unit that had been left floating in the bay for me, tethered to the bulkhead. I’d barely finished fastening the chest straps when the air began rushing out of the compartment, taking with it a few dust bunnies and a ration-bar wrapper.
“Probably the cleanest this compartment’s been in years,” Bobbi commented dryly, coming up behind me and yanking at the EMU to make sure I was securely strapped into it.
“Are we up?” I asked, too nervous to be amused.
There was an antiphonal chorus of affirmation, with Vilberg and Anatoly chiming in a fraction of a second behind the others. The cyborg looked incongruous inside the largest vacuum suit we’d had on board let out as far as it would go, his bionic hands filled with what was nominally a crew-served Gatling laser. It didn’t have weight in microgravity, but it sure as hell had a lot of mass, and none of the rest of us could have handled it.
“Go, go, go!” I chopped forward with my right hand in concert with the words and Victor led us out of the ship and into open space.
I watched Sanders follow him, triggering jets of steam from his EMU, and then it was my turn. I disengaged my boot magnets and twisted the left-hand control stick of my maneuvering unit and a surprisingly violent jolt from its steam jets kicked me in the back. The bulkheads of the Nomad spat me out like a watermelon seed, and for a moment that seemed to last for eternity I was suspended alone and terrified in the absolute blackness of the dark side of a deserted world. I felt a shudder run through me along with a very real sense of panic, and I had to fight to keep from squeezing my eyes shut. Then I was across and inside the glow of the lighter’s docking bay and I knew the Cultists could start shooting at me any second, but I felt suddenly and irrationally safe.