by Piers Platt
“Clear,” she told Vence.
A Jokuan crew member appeared from behind a control station, making a desperate dash for the bridge’s exit. Vence fired a short burst. “Clear,” she agreed, pulling her helmet off.
“Cover the entrance,” Paisen ordered her, lowering herself from the bottom of the cylinder, and then dropping to the deck below. “I gotta shut off the damn FTL drive before we fly into something solid.”
Vence hurried over to the bridge’s entrance door and stationed herself inside it, weapon pointing out. Paisen found the ship’s helm and pulled off her bulky vacuum gloves, tossing them aside, and then dumped her helmet, too. She typed briefly at the controls; the ship shuddered and came to a stop. Paisen glanced at the viewscreen – there was no sign of the Jokuan fleet, Tarkis, or any other planet on the scope. She breathed a quick sigh of relief.
A light was flashing red on one of the other consoles – she strode over to it, and pushed the slumped form of a Jokuan crew member to one side. She didn’t recognize the controls at all – it appeared to be some kind of weapon station, but it didn’t show any of the ship’s defenses, as a typical station would. She saw two safety keys, with necklaces dangling from them, mounted in the station. A readout screen displayed the text: Launch interrupted due to loss of signal from FTL jump. PKD Drone connection reestablished. Retry? Y/N.
“Oh shit!” Paisen said. She jammed the No button, hard.
PKD launch aborted, the console reported.
“Yo-Tsai was in the midst of launching the drones,” Paisen told Vence. She twisted the two safety keys into the Disarmed position, and withdrew them from the console. “We got here just in time.”
“Someone’s coming,” Vence told her, cocking her head to one side to give her auditory implants a better angle on the corridor outside the door to the bridge. “Four, maybe five of them. They’re in a hurry.”
Paisen pulled up the ship’s security cameras on the nearest console, and saw five heavily armed guards running toward the bridge. “Five. You got ‘em?” Paisen asked.
“Yeah,” Vence said. “Heads up: I’m using a gravity flare.”
The younger woman switched her submachine gun to her left hand, and detached a grenade-like device from the exterior of her spacesuit. She listened for several seconds, then armed the grenade and lobbed it down the corridor in the direction of the approaching Jokuans. Paisen looped her arm under the console and braced herself. The grenade rolled into view onscreen just as the Jokuans rounded the corner. Paisen heard a low buzzing sound, and suddenly the ship’s artificial gravity reversed, causing her to float gently upward. On the screen, in the immediate vicinity of the grenade the reversed polarity was far more pronounced – the five men were yanked off their feet and slammed headfirst into the ceiling of the corridor. Then the grenade shut off, and they were unceremoniously dumped back onto the floor.
Vence jogged down the hall and shot them for good measure, then returned to the doorway and palmed it shut. Paisen was inspecting the bodies of the Jokuan officers on the bridge.
“Any sign of Yo-Tsai?” Vence asked.
“No,” Paisen said, chagrined. “Looks like we missed him.” She bent over a command station and turned on the ship’s PA system. “This is Contractor 339. I’m now in command of this vessel. Any surviving Jokuan crew will proceed immediately to the cargo hold. Take a seat in the middle of the hold and await further instructions. Anyone who fails to comply will be shot.”
She set her submachine gun down on a console and began to strip out of the bulky spacesuit.
“Where are we?” Vence asked.
“Middle of nowhere,” Paisen replied. “About thirty light-minutes outside of Tarkis’ system.”
“Okay. What now?”
Paisen frowned. “I don’t know,” she admitted. “We didn’t get that far in planning, did we?”
“We didn’t think we’d make it this far, no,” Vence agreed.
Paisen handed her one of the drone weapon safety keys.
“What’s this?” Vence asked.
“Along with my key, it arms the PKD system.”
Vence studied the key, letting it dangle from her hand. “So you and I now control a galaxy-wide weapon of mass destruction?”
“Yeah,” Paisen agreed, tossing her empty spacesuit aside.
“That’s intriguing,” Vence mused.
“Yeah?” Paisen asked. “What do you want to do about it?”
“I say we put it to use.”
29
Rath fired another round, and a Jokuan soldier tumbled across the hood of a car, sliding off into the darkness between the closely-parked vehicles. The Jokuans had begun shooting out the parking lot’s flood lights a moment earlier, and as Rath watched, the last two lights burst in a spray of glass, and a curtain of darkness descended over the hundreds of cars, lit sporadically by the orange-white flashes of weapons firing.
“Did you guys bring night vision?” Rath radioed Beauceron.
“No,” the detective replied.
“Well, aim for their muzzle flashes, then,” Rath suggested. “And their machine guns are using tracers – those point both ways.”
Rath switched to thermal vision on his eye implants, and shot another Jokuan soldier. His heads-up display flashed a brief notification warning: >>>Final round.
Better make it count, Rath thought.
He scanned the Jokuan forces, found a machine gunner who had set his weapon up on the roof of a pickup truck, and shot the man cleanly through the head. Then he tossed the sniper rifle aside, and took up an auto-rifle from a dead police officer on the ground near him.
“They’re getting closer,” Emeka reported. “Another hundred yards and they’ll be at the base of my ramp.”
Rath lined up on a Jokuan soldier and pulled the trigger, but the gun jammed. He swore, and racked the charging handle back, ducking as several enemy rounds cracked overhead. Then he took aim again, bracing the rifle on the concrete barrier in front of him.
“They’ve got ladders and grappling hooks,” Rath replied into his own radio. He shot a man carrying an extension ladder, and then a second soldier when he hurried over to pick it up. “They’re going to try to scale the platform at multiple points.”
“I need ammo!” Rath heard a police officer yell, over the din of the firefight.
That’s okay, the Jokuans are bringing us plenty of ammo, Rath thought, darkly. We’re just going to have to kill them to get it.
* * *
>>>The surviving officers outside will be forced to fall back momentarily, Six told Dasi.
Dasi grimaced, but the tactical map on her computer screen told the story plainly. The parking lot was covered with icons denoting hundreds of Jokuan soldiers, and the nearest of them were almost at the platform.
>>>I am evaluating escape route options now.
Are there any more drones up? Dasi asked.
>>>No, Six replied.
Are those soldiers carrying any connected devices that you can hack? she asked.
>>>Holophones and tactical radios, Six said. Nothing that can be weaponized.
Wait a second, Dasi thought. Remember when you took control of the car back on Sipadan? When those mercenaries attacked us and District Attorney Hawken?
>>>I recall that incident, Six said.
Okay. I’ve got an idea.
* * *
Rath dropped his rifle’s empty magazine and reached into the dead officer’s tactical vest, ramming the final magazine home and releasing the bolt. An extension ladder crashed up against the concrete barrier several feet away. Rath hurried over to it, staying low. He lifted the rifle up, holding it over the edge of the wall, and fired a short burst of rounds down the length of the ladder. Then he heaved against the ladder, and saw it topple backward into the gloom.
A bullet smacked off the concrete near him, spraying him with stone chips. He swore and backed up.
“Watch for those ladders!” Rath yelled, but as he turned to mov
e back to his position, he stumbled over a wounded officer. He paused, breathing hard, and surveyed the police perimeter to either side. He could see just two officers still firing on the Jokuans. Then another ladder thudded up onto the wall.
Shit.
Suddenly, the parking lot was bathed in bright, white light. Rath’s implants compensated for the sudden glare – he looked out across the field of cars, and was surprised to see that all of their headlights were on.
Huh …?
With a menacing roar, every engine in the lot started up, drowning out the gunfire. Rath saw startled Jokuan troops pause in the midst of firing, stepping warily back from the cars around them. Then, with a curiously synchronized jolt, the cars started forward, tightening into ranks, wheel to wheel. They accelerated, and Rath watched, dumbstruck, as the dense lines of cars surged toward the platform in unbroken rows, like waves approaching a shore. The Jokuan soldiers, trapped between the rows of cars, screamed in shock and fear. But escape was impossible: the cars crushed each group of soldiers in turn, smashing into the row of cars ahead. They rolled over the hapless soldiers and continued forward, piling on top of one another, until the platform was surrounded by a giant wall of smoking, bloody wreckage. Then the cars shut off. In the sudden stillness, Rath could hear their engines ticking as they cooled.
Rath stood up, cautiously, and walked over to Beauceron’s position. The detective was standing at the wall, staring down at the pile of cars, mouth open in mute disbelief. Out over the city, the sky was brightening, the first glints of sunlight touching the tops of the buildings.
“Martin,” Rath said. He shook Beauceron by the arm. “Hey.”
Beauceron startled, and looked at Rath in surprise. He pointed at the cars. “How …?”
“I don’t know,” Rath said. He touched his tactical radio. “Colonel, what’s your status over there?”
While Beauceron stared at the cars in puzzlement, Rath checked the detective’s bandage, tightening it.
“Colonel?” Rath radioed.
“He’s dead, sir,” an officer replied, over the radio. “He got hit in that last attack.”
“Well, how many of you are holding the left ramp?” Rath asked.
“I don’t know,” the man replied.
“Find out,” Rath told him. “Get the wounded to the aid station, and redistribute their ammo among the surviving officers.”
Beauceron seemed to shake himself out of his stupor. “Colonel Emeka’s dead,” he said, flatly.
“Yeah,” Rath said. He stooped and frisked a dead policeman’s body briefly, searching for another magazine.
“You think the Jokuans are coming back?” Beauceron asked Rath. “After this?” He pointed at the carnage in the parking lot.
“Yeah, I can see another unit moving in on the tactical map Dasi sent me,” Rath said. “More tanks. Infantry, too.”
Beauceron frowned, and looked back at the parking lot. “Dasi, did you have anything to do with … with the cars?”
“Yeah,” she replied. “I hacked them. I’ll explain later.”
“Can you do it again?” Beauceron asked. “If we need you to?”
“If the Jokuans go inside the parking lot, sure,” Dasi replied.
“They’re not likely to make that same mistake again,” Rath said. He walked past Beauceron, to the top of the ramp. In the distance, out over the tangled wreckage of the first tank assault, his thermal vision showed the heat signatures of multiple armored vehicles pulling onto the street.
“What’s your status, left ramp?” Rath asked over the radio.
“Just a handful of us left,” the reply came.
“How many?” Rath asked.
“Uh, nine? Ten including me. I can see tanks coming toward us again.”
“We can’t hold them,” Beauceron said.
Rath heard a distant BOOM, and he ducked instinctively. A tank round crashed into the façade of the terminal. Rath hurried to take cover behind the concrete wall.
* * *
Yo-Tsai crossed his arms, watching the operations center’s viewscreens with grim satisfaction as the final assault began.
“Set the ship down near the spaceport, and find me a ground vehicle,” he told the nearest battle captain. “I want to be there when it falls.”
“Yes, sir.”
“… and I want a report from the Rampart Guardian,” he continued. “Full battle damage assessment from the PKD strikes.”
The officer nodded, and flipped on his video communicator, speaking into the microphone. Yo-Tsai turned back to the monitors: several of his tanks were opening fire on the spaceport platform. As they fired, he caught a brief glimpse of the famous detective again – the man that appeared to be commanding the resistance fighters. He was wounded now, Yo-Tsai saw – he had a bloody bandage on one arm.
“Sir, the Rampart Guardian is not responding,” the battle captain said, turning away from his station.
“What?” Yo-Tsai asked.
“The fleet commander says it’s no longer in orbit, sir.”
Yo-Tsai’s eyes narrowed. “Then where is it?”
“Apparently it went to FTL just after we descended to the surface, sir. The fleet commander hasn’t been able to locate it since.”
“Try them again,” Yo-Tsai ordered him.
The man typed on his keyboard, and this time, the video call connected. Yo-Tsai saw a stern-looking woman in a vacuum jump-suit staring into the camera. In the background, he could see the bodies of dead crew members sprawled around the bridge.
Yo-Tsai swore, and reached over to stab the Disconnect button with a finger, ending the call. He was silent for a moment, thinking, and then he turned and slammed his fist into the nearest screen, cracking the glass.
* * *
Another tank round hit the ramp, blasting a crater in the roadway. Rath popped up from behind the cover of the wall, and fired a single round at an infantryman following behind the tank.
“Dasi,” he radioed. “If you have any other hacks up your sleeve, now would be the time.”
“The cars are damaged, and they’re all jammed together,” she replied. “I’m working on it, but …”
Rath looked up over the lip of the wall again. The tanks were getting closer – two opened fire as he watched, their shells smashing into the already burning vehicles around the platform’s perimeter.
Well, we lasted longer than we had any right to.
The radio gave a hiss of static, as a new voice joined the net. “Ground team, this is 339. Take cover: PKDs inbound.”
Rath heard a high-pitched shrieking sound, and then the dart detonated just above ground level among the oncoming Jokuans, lifting the tanks and throwing them aside like children’s toys. Rath shielded his eyes against the drifting smoke from the explosion, but in the wreckage of the street, he could see nothing moving.
Beauceron whooped, and clapped Rath on the shoulder, grinning as dust and debris from the explosion rained down around them.
“She did it!”
* * *
On the bridge of the Rampart Guardian, Paisen gripped the helm tightly, steering the big ship toward the transfer station. She risked a glance over at Vence, seated at the orbital drone’s control station. The younger woman sent another Jokuan unit’s location to the targeting computer and hit the Launch button again. In orbit over Tarkis, the drone fired its next dart, which streaked down toward the surface of the planet. On the viewscreen, they saw it impact among a cluster of command vehicles parked in a city square, wiping them out.
“Just keep firing?” Vence asked, searching the map for another unit.
“As long as you have targets with good distance from civilian buildings, keep shooting,” Paisen agreed. “They’ll figure out what’s going on soon enough.”
“Any of the fleet headed our way?” Vence asked.
“No,” Paisen said. “A couple ships started toward us when we came back out of FTL, but as soon as we got close to the transfer station, they
backed off.”
“Good,” Vence grunted, launching another dart. “How’s the piloting going?”
“Rough,” Paisen admitted, with a scowl. “I haven’t flown something this big since Training Phase. Going to have to put it on auto-pilot to dock at the station.”
On the viewscreen at the front of the bridge, Paisen saw multiple Jokuan ships light their engines. Vence caught the movement, too, and looked up from her station.
“They’re descending,” Vence observed. She picked up a set of radio headphones, and held a cup to one ear. “Recall orders,” she reported. “Yo-Tsai’s calling for all ground troops to fall back to their ships.”
“Well, he’s no idiot,” Paisen observed. “His ground forces are sitting ducks down there. He’s pulling them out while he still can.”
Vence checked her targeting screen. “Once they get low enough, I can start targeting the ships, too.”
“No,” Paisen said, shaking her head. “Never leave your enemy without an escape route. I don’t want to strand a few thousand hostile Jokuan troops on Tarkis. Let them go.”
They heard Atalia’s voice on the ship’s loudspeaker. “Paisen, you’re cleared to dock at bay C16,” she announced.
“C16,” Paisen replied.
“… and it’s damn good to see you,” Atalia said. “Have you guys had any word from Beauceron?”
“He’s okay,” Paisen told her. “We just dropped a dart on the last of the Jokuans attacking the spaceport.”
“You guys mind giving me a ride down there after you dock?” Atalia asked.