With weightlessness returning to the freighter, they floated into the cargo-sized airlock. Kenny hit the cycling button and sent the forward door gliding silently closed with the whir of electric motors. A rush of air signaled a change in pressure between the two compartments. The drone impact would be venting some of the atmosphere from the cargo bay into space. Laramie’s pressure sleeve popped at the joints as the shape-memory coils compressed against her body.
The hatch to C started to swing open. The air sizzled as strokes of laser fire immediately punched pieces of metal from the door.
“Taking fire at B-C airlock!” Laramie said. She squeezed against the narrow edge of metal that lined the hatch opening, trying to take cover
“Copy,” Wyatt said over the comm. “Gavin, do you have visual?”
“Affirmative. Drone keyed on the hatch movement—it’s shooting the door.”
“I confirm it’s shooting the door!” Laramie yelled. A fleck of red-hot metal splashed her sleeve, making her jump.
More laser fire exploded the heavy glass in the middle of the airlock hatch. The drone fired in bursts of six without any regard for spacecraft integrity. The bastards on Razor hadn’t held back. They had set the drone for maximum lethality.
“All squads, weapons free,” Wyatt said.
***
Gavin floated against the deck, his L-6 Viper just a few centimeters from his eye. In the middle of his scope was death itself: a spheroid-shaped body, heavy appendages, gliding through microgravity like some unholy apparition. It wasn’t huge—drones needed to navigate corridors designed for humans—but the stout construction was packed with weapons and boarding tools. Nearby, a round metal shroud jutted into the bay from where the delivery vehicle had punctured the hull.
The drone faced away from him and let loose another barrage at the airlock.
Gavin exhaled, a tiny echo against the hiss of atmosphere slowly escaping from the compartment.
Snap.
The exhaust of the chemical reaction jiggled his scope as invisible light burned across the bay. Gavin saw a mist of metal spring from one of the joints that connected an appendage to the drone body.
He yanked himself behind a storage bulkhead just as the top half of the drone whirred around. A split-second later a rake of laser fire ripped gashes in the deck. Gavin winced as particles of metal sizzled into the thinning air next to his head.
Snaps of gunfire echoed across the cargo bay. Gavin heard the bzzt of multiple shots connecting with the ceramic armor. It reminded him of a bug zapper snuffing out insects.
“Gavin—drone is advancing on your position!”
Gavin desperately looked for alternate cover, but he was cornered between the bulkheads that formed the storage corral.
“I can’t displace. Draw its fire. I’ll get one last shot off.” He was surprised at how calm his voice sounded.
Like a circus performer of old, he rotated his body in the microgravity for a better firing position. Beyond the edge of the bulkhead, servos and rotation wheels whirred as the drone approached.
Gavin always knew how dangerous space operations could be. For close to seven years, he had gladly taken the extra pay and worn his assignment with pride. He never figured he’d be wiped out by RESIT’s own equipment. But as he steadied his breathing for one last shot, he couldn’t imagine spending his life any other way.
***
Wyatt’s skin prickled underneath the pressure sleeve as he moved through the damaged airlock between B and C. He ignored it and peered down the sight of his Vector. One of the drone’s armatures wasn’t turning properly. Gavin’s shot. Maybe they could disable it further and reduce its ability to orient, setting up more damaging shots.
“All squads, put fire on that damaged joint. Now!”
A flurry of snaps filled the bay. Maya and Kenny had advanced to a bulkhead just ahead of him and were laying down fire side-by-side at the assault drone. Wyatt squeezed his own trigger as fast as he could. Most of the shots snuffed out against the armor plating. But the bot, programmed to eliminate the most severe threat first, turned around to bring its weapon pods to bear.
“Take cover—”
The hatch door literally vibrated on its hinge as the bot’s cannon again perforated the metal. But instead of just a quick burst, the laser blasts walked across the width of the airlock. Toward Maya on the other side ...
“Get back!” Wyatt shouted.
Maya wiggled behind the narrow rim that surrounded the hatch, but it wasn’t enough. Wyatt watched in horror as a series of bursts shredded everything. Multiple pops indicated contact with the resin in her ARC vest. The splatter of red against the airlock wall meant the vest wasn’t enough.
His stomach twisted into a knot.
Laramie was talking on the comm. “Wyatt, drone is advancing on you.”
“Maya’s down! Get me covering fire.”
More snaps. Some distant place in Wyatt’s brain thought they were getting harder to hear. Less atmosphere to transmit sound. That made the sudden crack from back in the bay that much more jarring.
“Good hit on the joint,” Gavin said in a cold voice.
The firing at the hatch stopped. Wyatt peeked around the edge to confirm the drone’s attention had shifted yet again. It faced aft, the connection to its leg smoking. Wyatt immediately pushed himself across the airlock and covered Maya’s limp body with his.
“Teo, I need equalized pressure in Bay B,” he ordered.
“Already done.”
Bless you, Wyatt thought.
He hit the Emergency Release button and overrode the airlock safety controls. A barely audible clack withdrew the locking mechanism from the hatch. Wyatt pulled the cycling lever and the hatch swung upward. He grabbed Maya’s collar and hauled her into the momentary safety of the next cargo bay.
Laramie’s voice was directing the team on the comm. “Displace to port, port! It’s advancing on B. Aim at the joints, your Vectors won’t scratch that armor!”
Wyatt tried to settle his breathing and turned his attention to Maya. He looked at the shredded pockets of her vest where the ablative had vaporized and tried to peel it off. Fabric and plastic stuck fast to her skin. He couldn’t tell where her pressure sleeve ended and the charred remains of her lungs began. It was all melted together.
She was gone.
“Gavin’s hit!” Rahsaan said on the comm.
Grabbing his Vector, Wyatt allowed himself a lingering look at the young woman floating next to him. In Parrell, Maya had led them to safety when the constricted attacked. She had fought bravely at the Health building. The two of them, together, had managed to get through the spaceport alive and in one piece.
He wondered if he would be joining her momentarily.
38
Chris watched the airlock light turn green on the A side of the A-B connection. He clicked off the safety of his Berretta. A pistol was a pathetic attempt at firepower against a drone. Even Finn’s Vector wasn’t likely to get the job done. But a pair of Marines weren’t about to let their allies go down without bringing a monster of a fight.
“Top!”
He already had one arm in the airlock. Time was wasting. “What?”
“Over here!”
He turned toward the direction of Finn’s voice. It took a moment to realize what his fellow Marine held in his hands—a small pack, folded in half, with multiple runs of plastic explosive lining the edges. A breaching charge.
“How much of that stuff do you have?”
“This is it!”
The Beretta suddenly felt like a toy. Chris pitched it to the side, sending it tumbling through the weightlessness. “Give it here.”
He shook his head. “You have a broken arm.”
“And you have a daughter!”
After a moment of hesitation, Finn threw the pack into the air. Chris caught it with his good hand. He examined the fuses, the wiring, the detonator in its own pouch. Everything still looked in good order. No doub
t Finn had meant to recycle the explosives into a different form factor more suitable for demolition. Thank goodness he hadn’t.
“Do you think you can distract it? Without getting killed?” Chris yelled.
“Haven’t been killed yet!”
“Then let’s not start today. Let’s go!”
They hustled the rest of the way into the airlock and waited impatiently as the A-side door closed. Chris peeked through the thick glass window into Cargo Bay B. An overwhelming sense of vertigo struck him, like he was looking down a deep tunnel where people leapt from ledge to ledge. No wonder Wyatt wanted to fight in zero gee. If they had been under acceleration, the freighter’s orientation would have been vertical, not horizontal. The only way the RESIT troopers could have moved would have been with ladders.
A whoosh of air surrounded them. Chris felt suddenly bloated as the atmospheric pressure dropped.
“Remember to exhale,” Finn said. He tapped the control panel readout. “They’re down to a quarter atmosphere.”
Chris blew out to ease the stress on his lungs. He understood now why Laramie had been going on about pressure sleeves. He might have oxygen from the rebreather, but that didn’t mean his body would be happy with the pressure differential. On cue, a prickling sensation rippled across his forearms. He glanced down to see burst capillaries mixed in with the lines of his tattoos.
The B-side door swung open. Bright flashes signaled the exchange of laser fire.
“Keep to cover,” Chris ordered. “Don’t draw fire until I’m in position.”
“Roger,” Finn said. He flattened himself inside the airlock and readied his Vector.
Chris pushed himself into the cargo bay. He saw very little cover beyond the bulkheads that divided up the area. Most of those looked like Swiss cheese. Far below him, an eviscerated airlock hatch that would never close again twisted away from Cargo Bay C. The smoke of countless chemical laser reactions swirled through the compartment and obscured the positions of the RESIT troopers pulling their triggers.
The assault drone emerged from the smoke, full of malice.
It didn’t look that different from the ground units Chris had seen before—vaguely humanoid, with a wide, egg-shaped sphere that housed sensor equipment for a body. Instead of arms and legs, thruster pods replaced the sections of its armatures below the joint. Metal claws capped the ends of the pods to allow the drone to grab things. Around its waist, a metal belt rotated two laser weapons that released continuous volleys through the smoky haze. The ceramic armor had hundreds of black scorch marks across its pitted surface.
Chris’s insides felt like they were going to explode in the low pressure. He struggled to pass gas and relieve the bloating in his gut. His lungs ached, daring him to breathe too deeply and cause them to rupture.
A barrage of laser fire came from the right. The drone’s belt glided silently around and snapped off multi-shot bursts at a bulkhead. Terse orders flew over the comm as another RESIT trooper fired from a different location, distracting the AI with multiple threats that kept it from closing on any one position.
Through it all, the drone pushed ever forward through the cargo bay.
Despite the effort, the RESIT team didn’t seem to be accomplishing much. It would only be a matter of time before they ran out of ammo. Then the drone would lock on them one by one, close, and kill. It glided with such ease through the zero-gee environment that it would be impossible to evade. It was like a shark swimming circles around a bunch of hapless swimmers.
Chris thought his ability to move through zero gee was challenged on a good day. With only one good arm to orient himself, he’d never live long enough to get anywhere close to the drone. The bay was too big, and the drone too fast, for him to have any chance to set the explosives. If there had been gravity, at least he could have run toward it.
Gravity, he thought.
He didn’t know if Wyatt was even still alive. It was time to find out.
“Lieutenant, tell your pilot to hit the engines,” he said into the comm.
No reply. A ripple of static followed the flash of a laser blast.
“Wyatt!”
Seconds passed. Then a confused voice, tense, distracted. “Chris?”
“Yes! Tell your pilot to accelerate the freighter. Now!”
“What are you talking about—I can’t—”
Chris felt his eyes narrow as he focused on the drone. It was moving toward him, but the weapons were facing away toward the side.
“Do it now, dammit! Trust me!”
***
“Last mag!” Laramie shouted.
She tossed the empty chem mag into the air. It twirled end over end while she slapped the last of her ammo into her weapon.
One last magazine to score a lucky shot. One last lucky shot before death.
Wyatt’s voice came over the comm. “All squads, brace for acceleration!”
What?
Horror filled Laramie’s mind as she scrambled for something to grab. Her position behind the bulkhead had shielded her from the drone—sort of—but if the freighter started to accelerate, she’d essentially fall to the opposite bulkhead on the other side of the cargo partition. She’d be exposed, vulnerable, and shot.
A blast hole about the size of her fist caught her attention. She reached out, but the bulkhead suddenly jumped away from her.
A thousand thoughts flew through her mind as she started to fall. Why had Wyatt given an order that he must have known would cost lives? How many times could she shoot the drone before it erased her? Was there any better definition of “moving the goalposts” than this? Would the phrase even fit on her tombstone?
Things happened too fast for words. Instead, Laramie contorted her body to aim her Vector one last time. She pulled the red dot sight up to her eye. And then she froze.
Chris.
The Marine had taken the sling off his broken arm and was spread-eagle, flying toward the drone like a skydiver. He smacked into the armored torso with a bounce. The drone swiveled in a reflexive move and brushed him off with one of its armatures. As Chris began to plunge the length of the cargo bay, Laramie caught a fleeting glimpse of a black, oval shape seemingly stuck to the drone’s body.
Her back hit the lower bulkhead, jarring her body and ruining her aim. Only her eyes remained on the drone.
And it exploded.
***
A ring of debris followed by an orange flare erupted from the drone’s armored torso. Chunky fragments billowed outward in near silence. Laramie’s skin felt a vague warmth that seemed incongruous with the brightness of the flash, but with the atmosphere nearly gone, there was no air left to transfer any heat. The smoke cleared to reveal an oval chunk of the ceramic armor missing, the ruined insides of the drone’s AI core exposed inside.
The drone slouched and scraped the deck with one of its magnetic foot-claws. It started to tumble after Chris, its electromechanical guts raining down the compartment.
“Cut acceleration! Cut acceleration!” Wyatt yelled in the comm.
The sudden weight left Laramie’s body and she floated upward into a sitting position. She jerked her head toward the bot. It looked anything but operational, and if it somehow still was, she didn’t want to wait around to see it.
“What just happened?” someone asked.
Wyatt answered—loudly. “Get the wounded and fall back to Cargo A! On the double!”
“Aye, aye,” said the first voice. Kenny.
Laramie looked past the edge of her bulkhead. Chris lay crumpled in a heap near the ruined B-C airlock. She still couldn’t believe she had witnessed such a foolhardy act.
She swung herself around and pushed off in his direction.
“Chris?” she called. “You okay?”
She made contact with his body and pulled him close. She couldn’t see his face because of his CORE helmet.
“Chris. Can you hear me?”
No answer. She noticed charred, black soot on his chest.
“Answer me, you stupid jarhead!” She thumped his visor with her fist.
Laramie felt a tickle on her arm. She glanced down and saw a weak hand clutching her elbow.
She peered again at his mask. His head turned as if he was looking back at her.
“That was the craziest thing I’ve seen in a long time, Marine.”
“Me too,” he croaked.
Laramie eyed the splotching on his swollen forearms. “We’ve got to get out of vacuum.”
“I think I crapped my pants.”
She knew the internal pressure of Chris’s body was having a field day in the near vacuum of the cargo bay. But she couldn’t resist.
“See, I was right. I told Wyatt you were full of shit.”
A moment later, the Marine coughed out a groan. By the time they were floating toward Bay A, they were both somehow laughing.
39
USIC Vigorous
Thermopylae Gate, Alpha Centauri A
12 March 2272
“Lieutenant,” Doctor Kenta said. She tapped her bare wrist. “You asked me to remind you of the time.”
“Thanks, Captain. Just wrapping up.”
Wyatt turned back to the hospital bunk. Carlos was watching him with two pillows under his head. The sergeant waited until the doctor walked out of earshot before flashing a grin. “Is it weird addressing a doc as captain?”
“Hey, I have no problem paying smart people to fix broken people.”
Carlos started to laugh but quickly winced. “Ow. Still hurts.”
“You’ll be okay.”
“How’s Gav doing?”
Wyatt scratched his forehead. “Good. He’s a lucky bastard. His Viper took most of the blast when he got shot. Splintered into a hundred pieces, but it kept him from getting it in the gut.”
Carlos’s face darkened. “Like Maya.”
“Yeah. Like Maya.”
“That’s a shame. She knew what she was doing. I liked her.”
“Me too.”
A moment of silence hung between them. It was still hard to cope with the idea of losing troopers under his command. But after the last few weeks, he had a feeling things would get worse.
Escape Velocity (The Quantum War Book 1) Page 27