by Hugh B. Long
The enemy ship touched down about two-hundred meters from the Sleipnir with hissing and popping sounds, and Cadfael saw escaping gasses. With a grinding-whine, a ramp was lowered from the belly of the enemy vessel. A group of four humanoids walked gingerly down. They were in some kind of un-armored vac suits, and all had medium length rifles with strange forked barrels. He recognized them from Gina’s description. They appeared to be the same weapons the Hrymar used when boarding the transport from Earth.
Gina was lying on the ground beside Cadfael, watching the four Hrymar depart their ship cautiously. The enemy were glancing in all directions, sweeping their weapons in anticipatory gestures. As they walked away from the ship, the ramp began to retract. She looked down at a display screen on her wrist. She could see four green dots on-screen, approaching the closing ramp of the enemy vessel. She couldn't see them visually, their Recon Combat Armor was doing an excellent job of concealing them, but she did notice a shimmer at the ramp, which coincided with the dots—her marines—entering the enemy ship.
“They’re in,” she whispered to Cadfael.
He nodded silently.
* * *
E-4 Tameka Harris was leading the boarding team. Their mission was simple. Board the enemy ship and seize control—quietly. This is what they trained for.
Her team, Fire Team Alpha, made it to the ship’s ramp without detection. So far so good. There didn’t appear to be any guard or sentry at the ramp. She wondered if there might be some active or passive sensors doing the job?
“Utkin,” she whispered in her helmet-comm. There was no chance of an enemy hearing her. The recon suits were designed to dampen any vibration from sound within the helmet that might be transmitted outside the operator’s suit. But whispering on a stealth mission just felt right.
“Utkin here, E-4.”
“Scan for any passive or active sensors at the ramp. I don’t want to trip some early warning system,” Harris ordered.
“Done. Looks clear," he responded.
She motioned for E-1 Corinne Thul to act as point going up the ramp. Thul was Fire Team Alpha’s scout and sniper. Cautiously, Thul walked up the metallic ramp and into the ship. The corridor ahead of her was about fifty-meters long and terminated in what appeared to be a bulkhead. The walls and ceiling of the corridor were constructed of rusty brown metal. At the end of the corridor, there was a T branch, leading off to two more corridors. Once she saw it was clear, she motioned for the next marine to leap frog past her. E-3 Kasper Vollan, who was the second in command of Fire Team Alpha, proceeded past her, repeating her actions—checking for danger, then giving the signal for the next marine to proceed past.
They met no resistance as they explored the ship, which seemed odd to Harris. These Hrymar were either dim witted or over confident. Maybe being a slave-master gave them some sense of superiority so they didn't expect to encounter resistance.
It was a reasonably big ship—probably three-hundred meters long—thrice the length of a football field. There was surprisingly little in the ship though. Though, they found a massive cargo-hold with hundreds of cryo-tubes—likely for the transportation of slaves.
Grigori Utkin reported a contact in a corridor off to the left of the main branch they were in, and made his way silently to the enemy. Utkin surprised the Hrymar in the hall, and with surgical precision, cut his throat and moved on—as if he’d just stepped on a spider. Harris was pleased. That’s exactly what she expected of her marines; kill the enemy remorselessly, no hesitation. Civilian sensibilities would have found that attitude repugnant, but that was the job.
Within a few minutes, they made their way to the bridge. There were six Hrymar all monitoring systems, talking, and generally taking up space. It was a fairly small bridge for such a big ship. The focus was on space for slaves, not the comfort of the crew apparently. That would work in their favor.
For a century, clearing a room of hostiles was still accomplished in a similar fashion—with a concussive grenade—historically called a flash-bang. They were much more effective in 2128, but the principal was still the same—provide a bright, blinding flash, overloading ocular function, accompanied by an explosion capable of shattering ear drums and rendering subjects helpless. The military versions of these concussive grenades weren’t created with the same care for human life the civilian versions were—if the enemy died, too fucking bad. The design focused on ensuring maximum effectiveness without damaging physical environments—important on board spacecraft; to achieve this, each had a timer and an adjustable yield, which could be set depending on the size of the room in question.
Utkin tweaked a dial on the grenade and tossed it into the bridge. The Hrymar looked at the device with utter confusion … until the grenade exploded, filling the bridge with a blinding flash of light, and a deafening thunder clap; the RCA suits attenuated both the visual and auditory components, so they could have actually been in the room and suffered no ill effects.
“The bridge is ours, O-4,” Harris reported to Russo.
“Well done, Harris. Secure the rest of the ship and report back.”
“Aye, m’am”
* * *
Fire Team Bravo had a much less complicated mission. Fire Team Alpha had been tasked with taking the crew of the enemy vessel alive, and the ship intact. Bravo’s orders were infinitely less complicated—kill the Hrymar boarding party headed to the Sleipnir.
E-4 Jessie Vaughn had his fire team concealed outside the Sleipnir. There were two people on each side, waiting until the Hrymar were almost at the ship.
The standard issue marine weapon was the LC-5 Laser Carbine. Essentially it was a shorter version of a laser-rifle, more suited to close quarters and tight spaces. All marine weapons, whether the LC-5 or sniper rifle, or regular laser-rifle, had one thing in common—they were paragons of technology, sharing some of the incredible advances of the marine’s armor systems, such as active camouflage. Not only were they deadly weapons, but there were sophisticated networked devices with a very rudimentary organic AI; this allowed some very intricate group tactics to be employed, as was Vaughn’s plan today.
A Fire Team leader was able to slave each of the team member’s rifles to his, in order to accomplish highly coordinated fire. Each member would be assigned a target, aim, then, the Fire Team leader could synchronize the trigger pulls. Each operator retained control in case of emergency (although this could be overridden), but in the case where a small team wanted surprise, a simultaneous firing of multiple weapons at the exact same instant could be devastating—taking away any opportunity for an enemy to react. It wasn’t a feature used very often, but in a situation such as today, the conductor of this orchestra was about to unleash an unholy symphony of destruction on his enemies.
As Vaughn looked through the scope of his LC-5 he could see that each of his three team members had locked on their assigned targets, as he was on his. He thumbed a button which slaved the other rifles, then gently pulled his trigger, activating all four carbines instantaneously—the four Hrymar dropped like inanimate meat-sacks at the same instant. Four head shots with laser-carbines.
“Boarding party down, O-4” Vaughn reported.
“Nice. Meet up with Alpha at the Hrymar ship,” Gina said.
“Roger that.”
* * *
By the time Hal and Eva got back it was all over. Gina’s marines had taken the Hrymar ship without a single marine sustaining so much as a scratch. They hadn’t had many breaks lately, today was one they would savor.
Once the aircar docked in the stern of the Sleipnir, Hal stepped out to see Gina waiting for him with a triumphant look on her face.
“Have a nice drive, sir?” she asked casually.
“Lovely,” Hal replied with a wry smile, “so, the Captain is off the ship for an hour and the crew turns into a pack of pirates, capturing enemy vessels, taking booty and everything?”
Gina wrinkled her eyebrows. “We got bored.”
Hal laughed. “We
ll done marine.”
Eva stepped out of the aircar behind Hal, “I’m glad you’re on our side O-4.”
Gina winked.
“Ok, so what have we got?” Hal asked. They began walking forward down Sleipnir’s central corridor toward the bridge.
“Well, we have a shiny new ship to start with, and five Hrymar prisoners. One died on the bridge from the concussive grenade, and we had to take one out leading up to the bridge.”
“Are they talking?”
“Oh yeah…let’s just say, Cadfael can be very ... persuasive. These five aren’t heroes, their Captain got a little bitchy until Cadfael straightened him out.” Gina laughed.
“I’d like to bring their ship back to New Midgard, but we’ll likely need them to help fly it back.”
“No worries at all. Glaw popped over to their ship and apparently the Hrymar controls are very similar to those the Alfar use. They are related after all,” Gina said.
“Well, that’s good news.”
“And …” Gina continued, “they have some cargo you should take a look at.”
Hal gave a her a crooked glance. “Cargo?”
“C’mon, I’ll take you over and show you.”
Chapter 14
Gina ushered Hal into the cargo-hold of the Hrymar ship where E-1 Corinne Thul was standing guard at the door. The cargo-hold was easily two stories high, and had a grid of metallic boxes lined up in rows, stacked three high. Most were three-meters tall and a meter-and-a-half wide and faced with a transparent shield.
Hal could see what the cargo were—they were humanoids … lots of them.
“What the fuck?” Hal cursed.
Gina shrugged. “Cargo, sir. They’re slavers, what else would they haul.”
Hal imagined one of the historical ocean going vessels four centuries past, its cargo of African slaves lying shackled to a floor, stacked inches from each other. At least this is a more humane way of transporting them, Hal thought. It was still slavery though.
“My gods…” Hal strolled somberly, shaking his head, looking at the different species in the chambers. They were all humanoid-looking, some man sized, others much larger.
Gina said, “Looks like they're either frozen in cryo, or in some kind of suspended animation. I’ll interrogate the crew to get more details."
Hal walked close up to one chamber and peered in, a hand over his eyes minimize glare from the lights overhead; in it was a frail looking blue creature with large ears, maybe a meter tall. It looked to Hal like a monkey with no tail. What possible use could these little creatures be? He assumed the larger humanoids would have been for physical labor, but these little critters … pets maybe?
“Thul.” Hal shouted over to the marine at the door.
“Yes, sir?”
“Have you done a count?”
“Yes, sir. There are exactly 1,080 chambers, and we’re working on a count of ones with a life-form inside.”
“Ok, thanks. Please let me know how many ... guests we have in here as soon as you have a count.”
“Looks like they’re about sixty-percent occupied, at a glance, Captain,” Gina said.
“You know, Gina, this could be really good for us.” Hal said.
“Oh? How so?”
“We now have potentially six-hundred plus allies. These creatures may know a lot about the Hrymar—this could be a huge intelligence boon for us.”
“Very good point,” Gina said, “but what do you want us to do with them?”
“Leave them in their chambers for now. There's no way we can cope with this many living, breathing creatures. Lets go have a chat with our Hrymar friends,” Hal said with a smile and twitch of his eyebrows.
* * *
The Sleipnir didn’t have a dedicated brig, so the marines were keeping the prisoners under guard in the large exercise room. This was the room the crew used for hand to hand combat training and even the odd game of basketball.
E-1 Neva Coplin was standing outside the door of the exercise room. Hal nodded to her and she opened the door. Hal walked through, followed by Gina and Cadfael, and found E-1 Grigori Utkin guarding the other side of the door. Smart Hal thought … don’t let them out of our sight for a second.
Utkin had each of the prisoners sitting in a different corner of the room, facing the wall, and one sitting in the center, facing away from him.
“I want to speak with their Captain,” Hal instructed Utkin.
Utkin walked to the center of the room, and roughly manhandled the Hrymar Captain into a standing position, then turned him around to face Hal. He then pulled him forward.
This Hrymar Captain was no small man. He was at least as big as Utkin’s six foot two inches, but was quite round in the middle—a manager Hal thought. He had a similar pale, whitish, blueish, greenish complexion as Devrim had; it was a difficult color to nail down. He also had the same sensitivity to light, and Hal had the red battle light on in the room; even with dim red-lighting the Hrymar was still squinting. Hal seemed to remember Devrim mentioning they lived underground.
The Hrymar Captain wore what looked like a snarl on his face. He looked pissed. He probably thought he was going to swoop down, pick up a few more slaves, maybe a ship, or at least some tech, and call it a day. The marines had put a little dent in his plans.
“I’m Captain Haldor Olsen of the Solar Inclusive Democracy,” Hal said in excellent Yggdrasi. Old Norse was almost identical to Yggdrasi—as Yggdrasi was its parent language.
Yggdrasi was the lingua franca amongst the Alfar, Dvergar and a few other minor races. Apparently the Hrymar also used it. Hal hoped this man would at least speak some of it.
“I am Captain Yilmaz,” the Hrymar replied in equally fluent Yggdrasi. Hal was impressed. But if this man was a merchant, he would need to speak Yggdrasi to haggle with other races.
He said nothing else, and Hal just stared at him for a moment. Occasionally Yilmaz glanced over to Cadfael and shot him a dirty look. Yilmaz was sporting a black eye, bloodied lip and a scratched up face—doubtless a result of Cadfael’s initial questioning.
Hal gathered his thoughts. “Captain,” he began, “I’m a reasonable man. For some reason your people started a war against my race. I don’t know why, and at this moment, I don’t care. What I need from you is cooperation and information. If I get those, things will go better for you and your crew. If not, then expect no mercy whatsoever.” Hal delivered the threat evenly, each word measured.
He saw Yilmaz swallow.
“I know nothing of this war with your people. I responded to an attack on our equipment. You began this conflict.” Yilmaz also delivered his response evenly and without undue emotion.
Maybe he was telling the truth? This conflict was quite new. If these slavers were out gathering up merchandise, they may have been out of contact with their home world for a while. Whatever the case, if he was Hrymar, then he should have intelligence Hal and SID could use.
“I see. Well, we’ll check your ship’s logs and see if your story has any truth to it.”
Gina spoke up, “Is that your detection grid we tripped?” she asked in pretty rough, but intelligible Yggdrasi.
“Yes,” the Hrymar Captain replied.
“Ok … and what is it there for? We assume it’s there to act as an early warning system for your people.”
“No, it is ours. We use it to detect incoming vessels,” he replied
Gina glared. “That’s what I just said.”
In much smoother Yggdrasi, he responded and put her in her place, “No, I said we. I did not say the Hrymar people. The net is for my ship, the Gursul. We detect incoming ships and take what we want. It is our right.”
A fishnet, Hal thought! It was like they set out a net at a bottle neck in a stream and waited for a fish to get caught, then picked up their dinner. Clever. Then Hal figured any good fisherman casts more than one line, or one net, into the water.
Hal tapped his wristcom. “Eva?”
“Yes, sir?”
“Can you check the Gursul’s logs and see where their other detection grids are located?”
“You think there are more, sir?”
“I would bet my life on it. Also, make sure we’re actively scanning for those same types of detection grids at all times in the future.” He saw Yilmaz flush at the awareness of his other fishing nets. Anger, Hal wondered?
Hal stepped a bit closer to Yilmaz, until he was about twenty-centimeters from his face. Utkin still had a firm grip on the man.
Hal spoke in a near whisper, “Do you want to live?”
Yilmaz gave a slight nod.
“Good. If you cooperate, I’ll release you and your crew when I have what I need.”
“Thank you, Captain,” he said, with genuine surprise, “and my ship?”
“Your ship and its cargo are forfeit.” Hal saw the Hrymar’s face flush again, but he made no other overt signs of aggression. He simply nodded again. Hal was impressed, this guy was a cool operator. He had been overly cocky during the first part of their tussle, but now seemed to learn his lesson and was either going to cooperate, or bide his time to act. Hal would make sure he and his crew had no opportunity to do anything but cooperate.
Hal, Gina, and Cadfael, stepped out of the makeshift brig and into the corridor. Hal motioned for the marine to close the door.
“Gina, have those five put into our cryo chambers, and defrost Devrim. Cadfael, I want you and four marines to take Devrim to the Gursul and plot a course back to New Midgard with us, after we have repairs squared away here, ok?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Let’s plot the jump in twenty-four hour segments and check in at each segment along the way.”
“A wise precaution, Captain,” Cadfael agreed.
* * *
Hal was sitting in the crew lounge, cradling a cup of coffee and staring out the window into the absolute blackness of hyperspace.
“Not much of a view, is it?” Gina said as she sat down beside him.