“Gods dammit!” I shouted out loud. “TacOps to Bridge. Stellon bearing 268 Z-4-3, and weapons are offline!”
My outburst was a reflex driven by nerves. I’d never been in ship combat before. I realized my mistake as words left my mouth. Ignoring my gunners’ frantic queries, I repeated my report through the cybersystem.
There was no response from the bridge.
I had to do something. A rigged system without response is so much useless hardware. I slammed a fist on my couch arm. Stay ready, I thought to my team, for when our systems come back online. Fire at will when they do.
Acknowledgments were still coming over my link as I severed connections and dropped out of the rigger net in a proper urgent disconnect. This time I was alert and adrenaline charged as I got out of my couch.
Out of the pod, up the short corridor of the tac-ops module, to the forward hatch. I palmed the lock. No response. Tried the manual override. No response.
I couldn’t move forward in the ship.
I scowled at the comm panel as I addressed the ship’s onboard AI. “Give me Colenis Bakadesh,” I said.
No response.
I stifled the urge to scream, and turned back the way I came. Double-time now, I headed aft to Engineering. Damage control was there. Someone could tell me power status, get me a comm system that worked.
I ran past the first engineer before her condition registered on me. She was jacked into her console, slumped forward. Blood leaking from ears, from nose...
The hair rose on the back of my neck. Every sense screamed at me as my body shifted into battle alertness. I wished for my Marine platoon and some good hand weapons. What in the icy hells was going on here?
I paused just inside the drive unit hatch, beside a maintenance airlock, disaster before my eyes. A fire burned in the control systems, something with the actinic blaze of a plasma burn. Frantic figures struggled to attack the source, but it ate at internal systems like a demon thing.
A similar blue blaze caught my eye out the maintenance lock window. The stellon was near, and it sent a long finger of energy licking at the hull of our ship. The impact rocked the Talisman and ionized our hull. Static electricity crackled over surfaces everywhere.
Some part of my Marine brain read it before I knew it: where the next attack would come. What the consequence must be. I sprang into the maintenance lock and sealed the hatch not a moment too soon.
The next charge from the stellon blew one of our two drive units apart. The vacuum of warp space snuffed the flames even as explosive decompression sucked fire fighters, power-riggers, and debris from the ship and sent them pinwheeling into oblivion.
The maintenance hatch was just at the edge of the affected area. I felt the Talisman‘s frame twist ominously around the reinforced box that was the airlock. Without thinking, my combat reflexes had taken over: I was halfway into an emergency maintenance vacc suit before I realized what I was doing. Out the view port I saw the deadly stellon come even closer. I was madly calculating how much time I had to get clear when a lance of light stabbed the plasmoid creature from the darkness of space.
Again, that spear of energy—and then multiple beams, coming from a single source. The stellon shuddered, twitched, began to move grudgingly away. The beams continued to blaze as I finished suiting up and pulled the helmet into place, flicked the polarizing visor down with one hand.
Filters engaged, and I gasped. The beams came from a Dalukin battleship off our port bow.
The Dalukin goaded the stellon away from our hull. The creature retreated reluctantly, but retreat it did. The hostile vessel followed it into the distance, herding it clear of the Talisman as she plowed on through warp space.
Our ship was crippled now, at half power with a single remaining drive, and who knew how many surviving crew. Our guns were useless and so was I, unrigged and out of touch with command. But the failures on the ship—they’d come before the attack, and no carefully vetted Sa’adani warship behaved in such a manner.
It could only be sabotage.
I had to reach the commander, tell her what I suspected, and report on the devastation in Engineering. My vacc suit comms were as dead as the rest of the ship channels. I already knew the hatchways forward were sealed. There was only one route left to me. Unhappily, I frowned at the exterior maintenance lock.
Common sense and primal reflex made every human resist contact with deep warp. It is inimical to human life. Everything about it grates the nerves raw and seeks to twist the mind. Never had I felt so ambivalent about my Marine training: as part of boarding operations, we learned to do hull maneuvers in warp as well as normal space. Not that we were likely to need the skill, but against an eventuality...
Like now.
Don’t think about it, Amisano, I lectured myself. Just do it.
I had no time to wrestle with myself over this. The Dalukin ship had slid out of sight to our rear, lost in the refractive glare of the void, but when it was done with the stellon, I had no doubt it would be back. I gritted my teeth and worked the manual release for the lock. When air pressure bled to zero, I opened the hatch, and stepped outside.
Vacc suits of all designs have micro-grav plates built into the boots. They generate a localized grav field orienting toward the mass of the hull. I swung out of the hatch, found my footing as if I’d done this a hundred times. In fact, I very nearly had. I thanked my Name-Day deity for the endless repetitive training a Marine endures. Navy personnel know the inside of their ships intimately, but only engineering repair crews and Marines spend so much time on the outside of a hull that being there becomes second nature.
It was just as well, for even as I found my balance the full presence of warp space clawed through to the back of my skull and forced me to my knees. In the rush to get outside, I’d let the suit adjust automatically, instead of pre-setting it for warp screening. For an instant the blacklight glare of the void screwed my eyes shut; the energies of that space crawled over my skin, striking every nerve alive, threatening sensory overload.
Filter circuits kicked in nearly as quickly, and the mind-searing charge of other-space ceased, but not before a wave of nausea struck and I swallowed bile.
You will not let yourself lose it inside this suit, one part of me admonished sternly, a drill sergeant demanding control.
I faced the bow of the ship, blinked my eyes clear of moisture, and began to walk.
Searing blacklight careened from every surface, and made it easy to find my way aided by the screen visuals of my visor. The hull cladding beneath my booted feet glistened with an unnatural oily sheen, reflecting oranges and violets and hues we have no name for. My eyes were drawn to the hypnotic perversity of it and I wrenched them away, trying not to see the patterns and whorls that twisted the stomach like they twisted space.
Grimly, I set my navigation HUD to target the bow, and marched there in as straight a line as I could manage. Across plassteel plating I walked, clambered over the protrusions of gear housings, skirted the partially transparent blister of a gunnery pod and a lifeless form inside...
I pressed on. Look forward far enough to find secure footing, not long enough for the warp-sheen to beguile. Give your mind a focus on something real, something not warp. That was the way.
My goal became my mantra: Find the Colenis and report. It became a chant that saw me to the edge of the forward command unit. I spotted the maintenance lock where tech systems butted up against the flight deck beneath my feet and breathed a sigh of relief.
Also at my feet, the plasglass of the flight deck view bay stretched nearly to the airlock I’d found. The plas was hazed, an effect of its active warp filters. Looking in was like gazing through a semi-transparent window shade.
On the other side, two silhouettes fought.
I caught my breath. One figure grappled the other, bent back over flight controls—
I looked back over my shoulder, prompted by a psi-based instinct. Far to our rear, a glare of normal light splashed a
gainst the twisting void. Maneuvering thrusters.
The Dalukin were returning.
I flipped the cover of the airlock’s manual override. Better to deal with conflict inside, than to stay on the exposed hull. My mind raced ahead. If the commander were still in charge, there would be no struggle on the bridge—
My fingers froze over the access pad. This was a code lock—dammit! Of course!—and I didn’t know the access code.
No warship offered easy entry to any boarders on the hull. This lock was keyed to a punch-pad, a mechanical numeric plate designed for use in no-power emergencies. Punch the right sequence, the lever would free up, and I’d be in. The code would be known by any authorized personnel on the ship: Engineers and damage control teams. Marines, if the Talisman had shipped any. Command officers.
I was none of those. I was locked out.
The skin on my back crawled. Stranded.
I took a deep breath, calming my nerves, breathed out slowly. I called on a discipline from my martial arts practice, slipping into what I call ‘slow time.’ Where my mind should be racing, it felt considered. I mulled alternatives. I was sharp, gathering my energies while some higher part of my mind sought solutions...
There. So simple. I was in a maintenance suit. Stowed, they carry standard equipment used in ship repair: hull marker flares, line-of-sight comms transmitter...and somewhere here must be plasma cutters.
Check. Left cargo pocket.
My HUD told me three seconds had passed.
In moments I had the punch-pad out and its concealed lock-plate burned through. I pulled the lever and equalized pressure. I was in.
I entered a corner of the tech unit, shucking the vacc suit while I scanned the area. I recognized our warrant officer Demel, dead at his rigger jack of the same overload that had killed others. Something had surged through systems ship-wide, leaving death in its wake.
Still I had no proper hand weapons. I could hear the struggle on the bridge close to where I stood. I grabbed the cutter, and ran for the command deck.
Tech connected with the navigator’s bay. I emerged in that corner of the flight deck. I hardly noticed the inert form of our nav officer. I thought he must have died like so many others on rigged positions—then I caught sight of his throat, and the blood drenching the front of his chest.
It was a vibroblade wound. Slicing cartilage and flesh like butter, it had nearly taken his head from his shoulders. It would have been a silent attack from behind. The small hum of a v-knife would be lost in the background sounds of ventilation and system chatter.
My skin ran cold. I stepped out of the navigator’s cubby and into the main flight deck, balanced on my toes, ready for anything—except what I found.
The XO and the commander fought on the flight deck. They staggered apart as I entered the bridge, eying each other for an opening.
Delokar Etanen’s face was battered; a damaged knee hobbled him and handicapped the martial arts stance he was trying to assume. The Colenis bent to one side, favoring injured ribs; her hands were in a crane stance, ready to defend or attack. Red marks on her throat told me Etanen had nearly managed to choke her. A needle gun lay on the decking nearby. One of these two had tried to kill the other, and now they were both at it.
Etanen’s eyes flicked to me, narrowed with hostility, then flicked back to his opponent. He moved to finish this before I came closer. Abruptly he dropped on one hand and thrust out his good leg, knocking the commander’s feet out from under her.
His injured knee slowed him; before he could follow up, I was on him with the solid length of the plasma cutter. One blow behind the ear, and he was down.
Bakadesh regained her feet, the worse for wear. She took me in with a glance, took three strides and scooped up the needle gun. Then she turned, and coldly pumped three triplet rounds into Etanen’s unprotected face.
They were explosive tipped. There was little left of the XO’s skull when she was done.
It looked like murder, but her action had the harsh, obliterating quality of an honor killing, something Gen Karfa and Lau Sa’adani may do when they feel they must avenge an affront. I didn’t know what to do. In our society at large, we follow the enlightened laws of the Imperium Codex, but the old ways still had their place in certain circumstances.
The Colenis’ eyes still sparked with battle-anger as she turned to me.
“You’re alive.” It was a flat observation.
That was not how I expected to be greeted. I shifted uneasily. “I came to report. There’s a Dalukin ship—”
She cut me off with a wave of her gun, which she left casually aimed in my direction. “Stow it, Simikan. I’m aware of our company.”
“And the state of the ship—?” I began to ask. Too late I noticed the vibroblade sheathed at the waist of her flight suit.
It dawned on me. She already knew the state of the ship. She had put it in this condition herself.
I felt myself go white. “Why?” Pure disbelief drove the question, that and my brain, scrambling for solutions before the Dalukin were upon us.
Maybe she felt a need to confess before she wiped out the last witness to her treachery. She raised the back of her left hand to me. “Do you recognize this sigil?” Her caste mark was a linework disc of blue and gold framing a red bird of some sort. I shook my head. There was too much heraldry in the Empire for any casual observer to keep track of.
Her lip curled in scorn. “Then you’ll know my House by its vulgar association. We’re a sept of those called the Outside Lords, banished to the Coil Marches after the last Dalukin war.”
Outside Lords: not traitors, exactly, but steadfast political opponents of the throne. They’d argued for cooperation with the Dalukin when that psionic race overran our borders centuries before.
“Outside Lords are the necessary opposition,” I repeated what I’d learned in civics classes. “Do you want them to have a reputation as traitors, instead? What have you done with our ship?”
She regarded me without even the gleam of fanaticism in her eyes: just the reasoned stance of a misdirected patriot who has logicked her way to the wrong conclusions.
“The Dalukin are the most powerful race of psions known, yet we turned our backs on all they could teach us. Some of us think we can still benefit from closer association with them.”
“By giving them our military tech?”
She shrugged. “Let’s say we’re removing obstacles to closer contact,” she said. “The Lau Sa’adani bred for psionics in order to counter the Dalukin threat. We—” She cut herself off with a shake of her head. “There’s more, but no time to get into it. Unless...”
She looked me over appraisingly. “You’re smart, Amisano. Do you want to learn a new way to think about empire? Make real change happen?”
Do you want to forget your duty? She might as well have asked. Forget your loyalties?
“Embrace treason?” I retorted.
Her face hardened. A sound chimed from a console at the same moment, and she pointed upwards with a finger. “My friends are here,” she said. “I’m afraid we have nothing more to discuss.”
She angled her gun and fired.
I can’t say I saw it coming, not with my physical eye. But psi-touched as I am, I sensed it. I darted to one side while her explosive-tipped needle charges tore up the padding of a flight couch behind me. I closed with her before she could take full aim with the handgun. She squeezed off another triplet burst while I got inside her reach and grabbed the wrist of her gun hand. Needles ripped through the starburst patch on my shoulder and detonated, taking a small surface chunk of my upper arm with it.
I cursed and swung at her with the plasma cutter. She deflected the blow with a neat forearm sweep, straight out of the Navy’s Shai Den training manual. Her sudden cat-like twist in my grip was meant to free her wrist. I was wounded in that arm, and she was competent in this fighting form. It should have worked.
She didn’t reckon on my physical strength. Casca
is a high-g world, and I am deceptively strong. It would never be evident from seeing me sprawled in a rigger couch, or going about my ordinary business. She hadn’t been paying attention to my shipboard workouts, I suppose. And didn’t remember, in the moment, that a Marine is also taught their own unique style of martial arts.
I easily kept her wrist in my grip, and thumb-locked her as she twisted to get free. She looked surprised when she was unable to slip loose. I constricted her grip; a continuous stream of needles erupted from the gun, pocking the flight deck with deadly projectiles until the magazine stuttered empty. I was forcing her to her knees when, at some cost to her ribs, she drove a knee into my arm just above my elbow. My nerves went numb. She yanked free, then pulled her arm back, palm cocked for a killing blow to my face.
In that moment, the ship shuddered beneath us. It could only be a tractor beam, fighting our drive thrust to take us in tow. I saw Bakadesh’s weight shift. It was all the distraction I needed.
I swung my arm up, leading with the butt of the plasma cutter. It flew up inside her guard. I could hear the crack as the tool connected with her skull.
She dropped like a rock.
I didn’t care if she was dead or alive. I sprang to the flight console, scanned the information there. I wasn’t a pilot, but I did know some basics from riding in the jump seat during dropship runs with my old platoon. There would be a proximity map—there. The Dalukin were tugging us within their warp effect bubble. When we synched within it, they would be able to board us. I couldn’t let that happen.
I had to drop us out of other-space. We only had one drive maintaining warp. If I could shut that down, we’d be expelled from this perverse dimension like a watermelon seed shot from between two fingers. It was risky: it might throw us into the heart of a star, or cast us so far off the beaten path our star charts could not fix our position. Points in warp space do not map in a one-to-one analog to normal space.
And right then, risk didn’t matter. The Talisman and her Ballista system would be out of reach of the Dalukin. That was all I cared about. Getting away.
The battleship pulled us closer. My mind raced. The only quick way to drop warp was to use the flight deck systems. I could operate them only in one circumstance: a disaster override. Well, I thought, this qualifies. In minutes, maybe ten, fifteen at most, the Dalukin would have possession of this ship and her advanced, secret weapons systems.
No Man's Land (Defending The Future) Page 21