At that range, the super carrier's battery tore through the weakened armor of the destroyer like it was made of tin. Several direct hits ripped open a gashing wound that just continued to peel back until the destroyer was unwrapped like a birthday present opened by a four year old. One final hit struck the singularity drive, and the Diamondback died in a chain of explosions that tore it from bow to stern. The charred wreck of the Yew craft fell away in pieces, tumbling toward the planet, where gravity would pull it to its grave.
Cheers went up around the bridge as the crew celebrated their hard-earned triumph. Denver breathed out in relief and threw away the stub of his cigarette. Just below, Captain Wesler looked down at his command screen, then leaned in close, examining something. He spun and looked up at the command deck.
“Admiral! We're picking up power signatures from the Orbit Angel. It looks like its backup systems are coming online.”
Denver looked down at his screen. The image of the Orbit Angel was starting to light up as basic systems restored power. The Magnum Opus read life support and gravity, but virtually everything else was offline.
“Admiral Denver,” Captain Wesler said. “Both Hex craft are retreating back to the constellation. Should we pursue?”
Denver stared at the image of the Orbit Angel for another moment, then shook his head.
“No,” he said, resolutely. “If we're going to win this fight, we need to win back the Angel.”
Denver looked down at the captain. “Make for the upper docking scaffold. Tell General Viana to prepare her Marines for a station assault.”
Wesler nodded. “Yes Admiral.”
Within minutes, the Magnum Opus started maneuvering in for a manual dock with the waiting station.
In the distance, the space battle between Yew and Humans raged on.
Chapter 47
A hollow clang echoed through the dark corridors. Clinging to the ceiling, Nathen looked up from his slow, weightless crawl, assault rifle strapped to his back.
“Brace yourself,” he said.
Behind him, spidered to the wall, Calico looked up. Nathen quickly swung his legs out and pointed them toward the floor “overhead”. Just then there was another clang as, somewhere under the floor, an electromagnetic breaker snapped on, activating the backup gravity generators for that sector of the station. Nathen went from bracing himself to holding himself up as he felt a “suction” of gravity pull his legs toward the floor. He heard Calico thump to the deck awkwardly behind him and dropped onto the floor himself, boots first. The Alpha unslung his assault rifle as the edges of the ceiling started flickering on their low-powered emergency lights, barely illuminating the floor.
“Looks like whatever knocked out the main grid didn't hit the subsystems,” Nathen observed, bouncing in place once to test the gravity. “Lucky for us. We'll move faster now.”
“Where are we going again?” Calico asked, getting back onto her feet.
Nathen started walking. “The bridge.”
Calico jogged to catch up, looking over her shoulder. “I thought you said the rally point was Central Command.”
“It is,” Nathen said. “But the bridge is where starshield control is linked. From there we can release the ships and the orbital MARCH platforms. That's our objective.”
“It’s also the objective of every Yew boarding team on this half of the station,” Calico warned, cautiously. “We're probably the only two Humans left who can put up a fight.”
“Exactly,” Nathen said with a grin, stopping in front of the pressure door. “Everyone's counting on us.”
Nathen thumbed the door switch, and after a brief flicker of the lights, the double doors scissored open. The hallway beyond was dark as pitch.
“Hmm,” said Nathen, analytically. “Curious. Looks like the breaker in this hallway is still powering on.”
Nathen stuck his hand through the door. His sleeve billowed out slightly around his wrist.
“Gravity's still off. We can wait for it to switch on, or-”
Something clanged loudly behind them. Nathen and Calico turned. Back around the corner, something large hammered into a pressure door. The sound of cutting torches was overshadowed by the shouting of Flog tongues.
“Well, there goes that option.”
Calico drew her Denchura IV, checking it in both hands and backing toward the darkened corridor. Nathen switched his Coyote to semi-auto fire.
“Do you remember your zero-G combat training?”
Calico looked at her leader and arched an eyebrow. “You mean the training they never gave me?”
Nathen looked into the dark corridor beyond the door. “Alright then. Here're the basics. You shoot when you-”
The door blew inward as a breaching charge exploded behind them. The voices of a multi-race Yew boarding team sounded just around the corner.
“Crash course,” Nathen said, charging forward and grabbing Calico around the middle. He carried both of them into the dark corridor and picked up his feet, launching them in a straight line down the center of the hallway. There was a cry behind them as one of the Flogs spotted the Humans disappearing into the dark, weightless corridor. Calico instinctively held her breath as she lifted her pistol and fired. The shot sent them careening into the black. Nathen grunted and held onto Calico, with her facing back the way they'd come while he moved forward feet first. He clamped his assault rifle to his hip, used his knee to try and brace the muzzle, and fired a single shot straight ahead. The recoil jarred him to his teeth as their plummet slowed considerably. He had to slow them both down before they-
Several energy bolts flashed through the darkness after them.
Calico flinched and kept firing. The energy bolts kept chasing them, and Nathen kept trying to steer their descent with guiding shots, using the brief muzzle flashes and energy bursts to see how far they were going. They reached the far blast door in seconds.
Nathen took the impact legs first, still holding onto Calico and trying to not let her go flying off. The corridor lit up in a flash and there was the stench of burned flesh. The Commander flinched as pain shot up through his left leg. He released his death grip on his Speaker as she drifted away, ejecting her empty magazine, which floated off on its own. A shower of spent shell casings bounced around them as they caught up to the ESCs. Nathen fumbled around until he found a handhold and pulled himself in close to the wall.
“Flatten out,” he said.
Calico floundered for a second, but managed to grab the wall opposite Nathen and pull herself in close. As she did, Nathen hooked his right boot into the manual override switch next to the door and pointed his rifle straight “up”. A few dozen meters up the corridor, the dim light from the previous hallway's emergency lights flickered as various Yew walked in front of them, peering into the darkness. Nathen gave them something to peer for.
He fired once, shock and recoil going straight down his body as he fired straight over his head. A Vorch standing in the door fell back with a cry as the round hit him in the shoulder, missing his gel scarf. Suddenly all the wolfish, horned, and leathery faces pulled back from the doorway. Nathen gave his shoulder a rest as the Vorch he'd shot got to his feet, cursing in swearing, more angry than hurt. For the moment, no more bolts reached out to them. Nathen flinched and held himself close to the wall, feeling the pain in his left leg throb and burn. Over in the darkness to his right, Nathen heard Calico catching her breath.
“I'm out,” she said.
Nathen reached into his belt pouch and pulled out a fresh mag and nudged it floating across the corridor to her.
“Here,” he said.
The magazine glinted in the darkness before Calico wrapped her fingers around it. Nathen heard a crack in the darkness as she slapped the clip into her gun and racked the slide. A few seconds passed as the Yew voices continued to argue at the far end.
“So,” Calico half whispered. “What do we do now?”
Nathen swallowed and thought. What did they do now? He
looked down at his feet, which were pointed toward the door. No emergency lights, no gravity, no chance of getting the door open without power.
“That door's not going to open until this area flips its breaker and starts pumping air again,” Nathen said, looking back toward the emergency lights. “I guess the good news is, we have a few minutes to think.”
The darkness flashed as an energy bolt seared through the stagnant air and smashed against the door between the two ESCs. Calico cried in surprise, but Nathen remained cool.
“Relax,” he said. “They are just stabbing at shadows. Don't return fire; they can't see you unless you signal. Stick to the walls.”
Calico offered a suggestion. “I've got three grenades. I say we lob one down at them and see what they do from there.”
Nathen chuckled, recalling Marine debacles. “Chucking timed explosives in zero gravity and tight quarters is a recipe for a hot mess. At this distance, trust me, we're better off waiting them out. Plus, I don't want to give them any ideas.”
Trast groaned. “It won't take much imagination for them to think of that solution, sir.”
Another bolt shot past Nathen, a bit closer, but the commando didn't rise to the challenge. He had to try and play the long game.
“Trast,” he said, quietly so his voice didn't carry. “I'm going to get their attention. As soon as I do, start stalling.”
Calico was about to ask what he meant, but didn't have time. Nathen raised his rifle overhead and fired off five rounds into the far corridor. The Yew boarding team took cover, Flogs slinking behind Golos and Vorch sticking to the sides of the open door. When the shots stopped echoing, Nathen lowered his rifle and turned to Calico.
“Alright. Say something you know will get their attention.”
Across the way, Calico's dark silhouette just stared at her commander for a second. Then she went for it.
“Vontaelo!” she snapped, angrily. “Khay dorm zel si vuul, vhak tsao!”
The voices behind the door fell silent. Nathen blinked, then looked over at Calico's shadow.
“You're catching on.”
Calico shrugged, holding onto the wall. Nathen looked over at the speaker's shadow.
“I only count about five Flogs, maybe four if I hit the one I was aiming at. Two Golos, with blast armor. Three Vorch, one armed with a slugfest, and…”
“Cela dona forte, a’dey liyen!”
Nathen looked at the entryway. “What?”
“He wants you to surrender,” explained Calico.
Nathen nodded. “Ah. That would explain the sudden lack of firing. Is that all he said?”
“That’s it.”
“Ona sat’ah unja, human, a’dey liyen. Dey liyen!”
Nathen looked at Calico. “Same thing?”
Calico nodded. “Pretty much, only this time he threatened you with death and dishonor. He says we get to live if we throw out our weapons.”
Nathen chewed on the thought for a second, then darted his eyes at the open entryway.
“They're lying,” he said. “They're just a boarding team. They're here to kill, not take prisoners. Better to go down fighting than to take the chance that surrender will turn into an execution.”
Calico nodded. “I’ll remember that, sir.”
A Vorch voice called out to them. It was short, and Nathen missed the interpretation. He looked to Calico. Calico looked worried.
“He says we have to the count of five before he uses a shrapnel grenade.”
The Vorch called out the first count. Five.
Nathen sighed and tried to think, fast. They were out of time. Any time now, the breaker would power on, and they'd be sitting ducks. Long before that happened, though, they'd be picking shrapnel out of their hearts.
The call came again. Four.
The pain in Nathen's left leg was distracting. He gritted his teeth and fought through it.
“What should we do?” Calico asked.
“I'm thinking,” Nathen hissed.
The next call echoed down the cold corridor. Three.
“Get a grenade ready,” Nathen said, pointing his rifle up and sighting on the dimly-lit doorway. “When I shoot, pull the pin and push it, don't throw it.”
The next call came, shouting threateningly. Two.
Nathen glared down his sights with the intensity of a laser. He could see the Yew hiding just around the corners of the doorway, waiting to open fire the moment they smoked the Humans out of their shadowy cover. Nathen's last chance was to kill the grenade thrower before he could lob it into the weightless hallway. But his chances were slim. Nathen heard the last, taunting call reach them.
One.
Suddenly the dim emergency lights in the far corridor went out, blackness swallowing the boarding team whole. Nathen lost his targets, and with a cold chill he realized the next thing he'd hear would be the shatter of a shrapnel grenade in his ear. But he was wrong.
There was a bellow of surprise from one of the Golos. The exclamation changed in an instant to a blood-curdling death throe. The Flogs howled in terror as the far corridor echoed with the echoing zap-crack of cell blasters on blast mode along with the sizzle-snap of piercing bolts. Blasters flashed wildly in all directions as the air became palpable with the sensation of death. Cries and screams that ranged from confused terror to frustrated rage tangled together in Nathen's ears. After several gut-wrenching moments, the voices dwindled into one, gargling note as a Vorch struggled to breath. Then, the silence matched the darkness. Complete.
The two ESCs waited for a spherical shrapnel grenade to float through the darkness to them, but it didn't. Neither one wanted to risk breaking the silence, in fear of evoking whatever waited for them.
Finally, it was the breaker that broke the silence, clanging on under the deck and powering on the weak emergency lights and backup gravity. Nathen and Calico hit the floor and took kneeling shooters stances, bracing themselves. The corridor shakily lit up…
Revealing the black statuesque armored figure that stood before them.
Calico gasped and Nathen jolted to bring his gun to bear, but held himself in check as he recognized the figure who had suddenly appeared. Jonathan Harper was standing in front of the two cornered ESCs in full Genesis armor, like he’d just walked through the wall as a ghost. He was facing down the corridor like he’d been there the whole time, a silenced Sachlar in one hand and a bloody combat knife in the other. Strapped to his back was a black Coyote with a silencer fixed to the barrel. The ESC looked menacing in his sleek black Genesis armor, and the menacing look was enhanced by the low illumination from the backup lights, wrapping him in shadows like a cloak. He was splattered up to his shins in alien blood from recent hostile encounters, and there was no doubt to anyone looking at him that he planned on killing more.
Nathen couldn’t be happier to see the ex-criminal.
Chapter 48
“What took you so long?” inquired Nathen once they’d exited the corridor.
“The usual excuse,” Jonathan said, taking a step over a Vorch which had a gaping knife wound in the side of its neck. “I like to be fashionably late.”
“Whoa,” added Calico, eyeing the knifed-up bodies. “You know how to make an entrance, that’s for sure.”
Jonathan’s faceless helmet turned to Calico.
“I see you’re not dead yet,” he stated, smoothly returning his bloody combat knife to its sheath. “That's three you owe me, now.”
“Don't worry,” said Calico. “I haven't lost track.”
Nathen eyed Jonathan with a serious look. “I got a job for you, Fiend.”
“I'm listening.”
Nathen shifted his weight and glanced past him down the dark hallway they'd all come from.
“I found out who our traitor was.”
The stealthist cocked his head. “Was?”
“Lupell,” Nathen said. “From the Sledgefast. Calico put a round in his back.”
“Did she now?” Jonathan said, amused. The
stealthist turned his faceless visor on the young speaker. Calico couldn't tell, but Nathen thought Jonathan sounded impressed.
“We've still got problems,” Nathen reiterated. “His traitors have taken control of the bridge. I want you to take it back.”
Jonathan uncrossed his arms. “Done.”
The stealthist started to turn away. Calico held out a hand.
“Wait a minute. We're going together, right?”
Jonathan turned back around. “Not with the commander's leg the way it is.”
Calico turned, confused. That's when she noticed his leg. Nathen looked down with a sigh at the piercing blaster wound that had cut through him like needle through cloth while they'd retreated.
“Yeah,” he said, lightly touching the scorched uniform on his thigh. “Missed the bone, at least.”
“Doesn't make any difference, you're still lame,” Jonathan said, bluntly, plucking something off his utility belt and handing it to Nathen. “Here. Take my patch kit. That'll get you to Central Command.”
Nathen took the patch kit and tucked it into his pocket for the moment. “Thanks. Now let's get moving.”
Jonathan turned and led his two peers into the dark, guiding them the way the Yew boarding team had come. “If you go back the way you came, you're in for some hurt. Yew have dug in with their teeth and claws, trying to cut off whatever resistance made it to CC.”
Nathen followed the stealthist through the ripped remains of the pressure door. “Give me a recommendation.”
“Alright,” Jonathan said, stepping into a slight alcove to one side where a set of pipes ran vertically. The stealthist knelt and twisted open a narrow hatch marked “Danger”. The hatch flipped open, and the smell of stale rust wafted out. The inside was even darker than the emergency-lit corridors. Nathen arched an eyebrow at his crouched stealthist.
“Through the engineering decks?”
The black, faceless alloy of Jonathan's helmet looked up. “You want to find another way, be my guest. But unless you're planning on taking a walk through a gauntlet of Golos, I wouldn't take any other route.”
Prime Alpha (Planetary Powers Book 1) Page 56