"Any progress, Technician?"
He hated when Marco called him Technician, but he generally hated when Marco called him anything. The blast of annoyance made him momentarily forget which lie he'd told his stalwart captain.
"About that," Jansen said slowly to buy time, and he dragged the last word out until the appropriate memory resurfaced. "I've been trying everything to jimmy the bay doors open, but they won't budge. The mainframe hasn't rebooted yet."
None of that was a lie, per se... He'd set his phone to ping the outpost's command network every few minutes, and automatically shoot him a notification if anything showed signs of life. He just wasn't actively working on that particular problem, primarily because it would be a giant waste of his otherwise valuable time. He had more pressing matters. Matters like getting hold of the damned blasters.
Hopkins cleared his throat and said, "I still say we head for Station Control. We can fix the mainframe and get automated defenses back online." He was obviously trying to hit that perfect balance between commanding and inspirational, and he was just as obviously failing. His voice was an octave too high, and the way he raised tone at the end of each sentence made him sound like a drunk leprechaun.
"Not without my gun," Jansen said.
Marco crossed his arms. "Yeah, see... I still don't have the access codes, Nils. Let me repeat it slowly this time... Only Fleet Command can open it. Only. Fleet. Command."
"And the radio's dead," Jansen said as he continued to fiddle with his cracking tools. "Story of my fucking life, man. I mean that literally. Nils Jansen was born in a small hospital in the countryside and the radio went dead. It was as if millions of radios suddenly cried out in terror, and were suddenly silenced."
Marco shook his head. "Isn't the second suddenly a little redundant?"
"Yup," Jansen quickly agreed.
As usual, Hopkins refused to partake in even an instant of levity. "Fine, so let's find a way into the locker. Could we bash it with a wrench?"
Jansen would've poked fun, but they'd all mastered the delicate art of bashing things with wrenches like god damned monkeys during their months of captivity. When all they'd had were wrenches, every problem started to look like a nail.
A confused expression shot across Jansen's face at that thought, then was gone.
He glanced at his phone's display and expanded the window. The machine had tried one-percent of all possible passwords, and it estimated three days to exhaust the entire list.
He could wait, he assured himself. They should be safe and sound inside of Outpost Charon.
Then a sound like a giant and terrifying water drum boomed in the distance.
Jansen stared at the progress bar so hard his eyes began to hurt.
"What the crap was that?" Hopkins shouted.
Marco jogged over to his fancy chair and called up The Beagle's sensor readout. He tapped and dragged at the screen with a particularly serious look on his face. "This is weird, guys. Picking up a ton of positron emissions."
"Antimatter weapon," Jansen said in a gravelly voice, like an old and salty sailor telling tale of the whale that took his leg. "I've read about 'em. Vile stuff." He chose not to mention that the source of his information was a comic book.
Hopkins glared at him. "Where exactly, Nils? Better Idiots & Jack-Asses Quarterly? Popular Pseudo-Science?"
Jansen affected a thoughtful expression. "No, I think it was a special edition of I've Been Hiding Spiders In Your Bed Every Night For Three Years. Umm... The magazine. Did I do that right?"
Hopkins gave Jansen one of his most rare looks. His eyes swelled to monstrous proportions, showing whites the way a shark does the instant before it devours a beautiful bikini model. Then the expression entered its even more rare second phase. His nostrils flared, his lips curled on both sides, and he resembled a 1930s-era movie vampire trying to hypnotize its unsuspecting victim.
Jansen knew he would see that very expression the day Hopkins finally strangled him to death.
Marco chuckled. "You know... I think you may be onto something, Technician. According to the computer, the dispersion patterns are consistent with a matter/antimatter reaction."
Jansen was more amazed than anyone. "Told ya," he said self-assuredly. "So then, do the aliens have antimatter weapons?"
"The Oikeyans?" Hopkins asked.
"Yeah, those fucking aliens."
"I don't think so. Wouldn't be much Earth left if they did."
Marco's voice took on a grim tone, as if he were speaking at a wake. "Then it's the Nefrem."
"It could be the Nefrem," Jansen said.
Hopkins continued to glare at him. "Really? Who the crud else could it be, Nils? Seriously."
Jansen could hardly believe how dim and uncreative these two could be. Bullshitting them would've been so much easier if they'd just fill in the blanks every once in a while.
"Care to do a little math, gents?" he asked rhetorically. "There are a few hundred billion stars in our galaxy, multiplied by a handful of planets... That's like a trillion places where life could've evolved. And you think the Nefrem are the only assholes in space?"
But yeah, he thought to himself, it's the Nefrem. There was no sense getting the other two worked up, though. Not before Jansen had his gun.
Marco and Hopkins began to argue about something uninteresting, so Jansen turned his attention back to the phone, where a notification throbbed at the edges of his peripheral vision. He accepted it, and a command console jumped to the foreground.
"Renaissance OS 0.86 Beta. 0952 GMT. Maintenance Mode, Power On & Self-Test..."
A huge list of messages scrolled up the screen, detailing all the various systems waking from their slumber. Jansen tried to read the whole thing, but his eyes glazed over and he just assumed things were hunky-dory.
Then a login prompt appeared and began to blink. He entered his credentials and was taken to the admin interface.
"Guys," Jansen said.
No one replied.
"Guys?"
He minimized the phone's screen and looked around, but his teammates were nowhere to be seen. "Hey guys?!"
He heard a ruckus from the ship's cargo hold. A minute later, Marco and Hopkins came up the lift carrying a large powertool between them.
Jansen squinted. "Is that an autohammer?"
"Yup!" Hopkins said cheerily.
"Turns out we had something better than a wrench," Marco added.
Jansen shook his head. "You two are fucking idiots, you know that?"
"What the hell?"
"First... you're seriously using Hop's ideas now? Come on, Marco... I mean, come on. Second, the armory and its contents do the melty thing the instant its outer shell is damaged. You can't crack it with a hammer or it all goes splat. Third... You're idiots. QED."
"You restated your thesis as an argument," Marco grumbled.
Hopkins fumed, but the anger vanished a second later. "Okay, what if we neutralize the process somehow? Add something to retard it."
Jansen was about to strike the soft underbelly of Larry Hopkins' pudgy psyche when he realized there might actually be something there. "Eh, we have a bunch of liquid nitrogen," he said.
Marco understood immediately and his eyes lit up. "Like two-hundred liters of the stuff."
It took all three of them to lug the heavy drum out of cargo and waddle it back to the locker where the precious guns were stored, and another twenty minutes to jury-rig one of their fire extinguishers into a spray nozzle. Then they put the autohammer on top of a small crate, drew a target on the side of the locker with a grease pen, and got in position.
Jansen held the makeshift liquid nitrogen sprayer, while Marco and Hopkins manned the hammer. They each undid their safeties and took a deep breath.
A notification light throbbed at the edge of Jansen's vision, but he ignored it. He didn't have time right that second.
Hopkins dialed a few settings into the autohammer then set his feet and leaned forward. When Marco n
oticed the tubby man's change in posture, he hurried to replicate it.
"Ready?" Hopkins asked.
"Let 'er rip," Jansen replied.
Hopkins gripped the autohammer's handle and squeezed the trigger.
A loud bark erupted from the armory's wall. Hopkins released the trigger and looked at his handiwork.
"Didn't do shit," Jansen said.
Marco said, "Hit it again."
Hopkins shrugged and started it back up. The hammer-strikes came quickly, as thunderously loud as the four horsemen galloping across their skulls.
There was a hiss and Hopkins stopped. "Open!" he cried out.
Jansen jumped forward and jammed the nozzle into the breach like a matador finishing a bull, then he cranked the handle with all his might. The seal wasn't very good though, and a thick fog bubbled off and filled the air.
He heard a sound like a big pot boiling, and he felt something slimy drip onto his hand. A few seconds later, the fog cleared to reveal a puddle of green sludge with an assortment of frozen gunparts floating inside. They looked like bits of cauliflower in a soup Jansen would definitely send back to the cook.
He was about to look away when he saw the surface of the sludge move. It bulged, bubbled, and slipped away to reveal a whole and complete—if slightly frosty—pistol.
Jansen snapped it out of the foul smelling sludge with a gloved hand and wiped it off on his jacket. At the same time, he used his phone to broadcast an override signal to the omnibodies before they could digest the weapon.
"One fricking gun," Hopkins sighed.
Jansen smiled and admired his treasure. It was the Legacy Fleet's standard sidearm, a particle pistol called a lancer. Mist peeled off the device which was all sharp angles and pure aggression. Those had been Donovan's design directives, and Jansen thoroughly approved.
It'd been so long since Jansen had held one that he felt a sudden rush of elation. He'd been totally unarmed since The Europa Incident, damn that miserable day. No matter how much he tried to forget about that particularly low watermark in his life, it continued to harry him and nip at his heels.
Not that it dulled his joy right that moment. He forced himself to stop smiling and said, "It's one more gun than we had, boys. The day's getting better already."
The notification light of his phone was still beating, so he checked it. The first message said: Armory Password Discovered. Lock Disengaged.
Jansen said, "Oh," then brought up the second message.
Open Issues:
*Memory Fault in Weapon Guidance
*Internal Communications Failure
Affected Systems:
*Defense (Internal, External)
*Hangar Doors
*Generator
*Broadband Sensors
Hull Breach Detected
Intruder Alert!!!
He slid the pistol into his holster and said, "By the way, fellas... The system's back up in diagnostic mode, but it can't open the hangar doors. Someone has to go outside and hit the local terminal."
Marco said, "Outside? That's the fourth most ridiculous thing I've ever heard."
Hopkins shook it off. "No, it makes sense. This is an unmanned outpost, so they'd never expect anyone to be trapped inside." He put on a brave face. "I'll go. I'm... like... the master of unlocking."
Jansen nodded. "Good, glad that's settled. Oh, also... the computer seems to think something's broken in, and... I'm just tossing this out here... it probably wants to murder our faces. Or meat masks. Whatever it calls the soft flesh in front of our brain cases."
A flat groan escaped Hopkins' mouth while Captain Marco stepped forward and smacked the side of Jansen's head. But most tellingly, he didn't countermand Jansen's plan.
"Can I at least have the lancer?" Hopkins asked pitifully.
"No can do," Marco said in his very official captain voice. "Our primary responsibility is to protect The Beagle. Her safety is more important than any of us, Crewman. But don't fret. We'll keep a good eye on her while you complete your part of the mission."
"Cowardly pieces of crap," Hopkins grumbled.
"Now, now, Hopkins," Jansen said while clasping the other man's shoulder. "Is that any way to talk to the guy with the gun?"
Chapter 22
Body Hacker
Amira Saladin woke to the rumble of treads and squeak of a chassis. Before she could start to question her whereabouts, agony burst from her leg like water from a broken dam. Throbbing. Screaming.
She rolled to her side and began to throw up.
Murmuring voices.
Stomach convulsions.
"Didn't work, Tam. It's bad."
Her stomach was empty but she continued to heave.
"Increase the current."
"On it!"
Nothing happened, and she continued to spit on the floor while pain barreled over her like a delivery truck, then it just vanished in a way that was wholly unlike a truck of any sort. Two small circles of hurt remained higher up her thigh, a searing heat like a pair of coins left out in the sun on black pavement.
Her eyes were soaked and blurry, and her mouth was covered in spit. One of the animate blobs pushed a towel into her hand and she took it gratefully.
He said, "Here ya go, Chief." The voice was Vasily Romm, the youngest member of her team. "Feeling a little better?" he asked.
"Yeah," she said. "How?"
She felt like she'd taken a full-body beating from a gang of rowdy football fans, but she couldn't feel a thing below her right thigh. For that, she was immensely thankful.
"Tamsin's idea. We're using electrodes to block nerve impulses. Let me know if they start to hurt too much, and I'll turn them down."
"I won't," she said, then tried to sit up. She didn't have enough strength left to accomplish it, though.
"Don't try to move. Just lay still until we can get you back to Pegasus, alright?"
"We don't have time for this shit," she mumbled drunkenly. She draped an arm over her face but otherwise remained still. "What's our status, Vas?"
"Your demo charge knocked the APC over and the raid went off without a hitch. No casualties on our side. Richter and Chen got it running again, and now we're thirty kilometers west and hugging the coastline. Bad news is that the previous crew managed to knock out the transponder before we broke in, so we're not sending out an IFF signal... no one's shot at us yet, though. Fingers crossed."
Crossed fingers weren't enough. Kazuo used to tell stories about Blade Aerospace pilots out in the field, and the fact that they weren't even trained to recognize their own units' silhouettes. They relied solely on digital friend-or-foe signatures as a show of faith in their technology.
Amira's father would've laughed darkly and then ranted for an hour about the dangers of letting marketing get its fingers on warfare.
But maybe things had changed. Maybe these weren't old Blade pilots at all, but fresh recruits with a newfound respect for friendly fire.
Amira didn't like relying on maybe. "I have to get that transponder back online," she said.
"No offense, chief, but fuck no. You're not moving an inch."
She wiped some of the moisture from her eyes and finally got a good look around. They were in a small cabin slightly larger than a single-occupancy dorm on Mars, lit with lamps the warm color of candlelight. The team fit comfortably with ample room left over for her litter, and the space was pervaded by a smell of motor oil, deteriorating hoses, metal dust, and organ meats.
This was supposed to be a rescue. Too many human bodies were stacking up on the scoreboard.
Amira tried to quell her still jittery stomach and somehow pulled it off. She focused on the facts. Her team had gone in with guns at full blast, so their batteries would be down around eight-percent. She always preferred precision strikes, applying the least effort necessary to accomplish a goal, but had to begrudgingly admit that it wasn't always possible.
She took a deep breath and said, "At this speed, we won't make the r
endezvous... but we can't speed up without a working transponder."
"The Unies won't..."
"Yes, they will," Amira said, cutting Vas off mid-thought. "How do you think they treat deserters on this side of the world?" She didn't know anything specific about New Union desertion policies, but the insinuation sounded plausible enough. It had a strong whiff of truthiness.
"And your leg? We just ignoring that for convenience, chief?"
Amira really preferred to be on the supply side of sarcasm, but Vas had a point. "Yeah," she said, "I had an idea about that."
Maria Chen stepped toward the back of the cabin, crouched over Amira and said, "What can we do to help?"
It took them fifteen minutes to set up, which for Amira involved a lot of screaming and just a bit of foaming at the mouth. The electrical inhibitors were effective but sometimes slid out of place, sending the full howling horror back to her unsuspecting brain. She could only imagine how much worse it would've been had the APC's suspension not been so silky smooth.
When they were ready, Chen and Vas stood together on either side of Amira's leg, holding it up while their lamps flooded her tortured flesh in pale light. Amira had her headset on, and both wrists clad in thin metallic strips. Nerve transducers. She held a bio-circuitry printer in one hand, and despite the transducers' best efforts, the device was shaking.
Tamsin shouted back from her seat in the cockpit. "You're sure you don't want me to stop the bus and hide-out?"
"What part of no fucking time do you not understand?" Amira didn't mean to bark like that, but the situation was threatening to get the best of her.
Tamsin let it drop.
Amira reached up and touched the side of her headset, dialing up her brain-wave inducers to max. She was hoping for a nice calm alpha state but turning up the volume didn't seem to work, and she wondered if it might just be impossible to brute force her way to relaxation.
She tested the pen and found it in working order. Small actuated mandibles danced at the end, ready to spin their living work, while a single thin blade burned to bright red-white then cooled off just as quickly. That was the unit's RF knife. A small sliver of steam wafted up from the tip.
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