by Mel Keegan
“And those other moons,” Tonio Teniko growled, “can be eliminated.” He stepped forward, closer to the navtank, and Vaurien. “Okay, I know there might be civilians on them … and I bloody know you don’t want to go anywhere near the forbidden territory of obliteration, or xenocide, or whatever – Jazinsky made a great argument against it, which I bought, incidentally. She’s dead right, and I don’t often say that. But a munitions store is a military installation, Richard, in anybody’s language, which makes them legitimate targets. Shapiro’s got to agree. So take them. Launch a ... a Zunshu strike – same as they do to us.”
“Launch a swarm, task it to surgically smash the bunkers.” Vaurien’s armor turned toward Teniko. “Damnit, kid, you’re making sense. At last. You should’ve been this sober all along, we could’ve used you! Welcome to the team. Lai’a – I’m seeing a steady drop in the numbers they’re launching! Confirm this.”
“Your observation is correct,” Lai’a agreed. “At this intensity, I can maintain my ammunition levels until stores of raw materials are exhausted. However, it is possible the Zunshu are also rearming at this time.”
“Industry,” Jazinsky muttered. “If they’re powered up to manufacture gravity mines and the rest, you should be reading heat blooms – big ones.”
“None are detectable on this side of the planet.” Lai’a paused. “Nor on the visible moons. If the barrage continues to dwindle, I will launch a number of surveillance drones to survey –”
To Travers it seemed the universe contracted to blackness and the terrible sound of screaming. Ops plunged into stygian darkness as power quit. Again, the deck heaved under him and this time it was no illusion of struggling inertial stabilizers. The ceiling bulkheads slammed into his helmet and right shoulder and his mind whirled, making sense of a realm that had diminished to less than the width of his own armor, blackness, and white-hot screams which seared through him.
It was Richard Vaurien’s voice screaming. Travers could barely breathe as he raced through suit diagnostics. The armor’s own emergency lighting had kicked in, but he saw no further than the bulkhead right before his visor.
His mind was trying to fall back on automatics – the Marines armor he had known for fifteen years. These new hardsuits were fractionally different, but he found the routines he needed a moment later, as Marin began to call over the comm. He twisted in the constricted space, and the tiny shoulder-mounted lamps cut into the darkness, showing him a narrow tunnel of twisted, ruined plating in which he was firmly wedged.
“Neil! Neil!” Marin’s voice was sharp with dread.
“I’m all right – I’m just bloody jammed in here,” Travers panted. “For Chrissakes, what happened to Richard?”
“I don’t know,” Marin panted, “he sounds – it’s bad.”
Jazinsky was bellowing into the loop with an edge of terror in her voice Travers had never heard there before. “Mark, do you see Richard? He’s not answering. Mark, are you hearing me? Mark!” As she shouted, Vaurien’s screams began to weaken as if his lungs were spasming.
And then Mark was on the air, sparse words making their way through a veil of crackling interference. “I have some damage – comm isn’t working well. I … I can’t see Richard. Harrison, you’re closer. What do you see?”
Vidal bawled across them all: “Lai’a! Lai’a, emergency lights! My floods are gone, I don’t see squat.”
The AI possessed the only calm voice, but it spoke rapidly, words seeming to tumble over each other. “Power is compromised to the habitation module. Transferring Ops functions to Physics 2. Routing emergency power around auxiliary systems. The hull is breached through 25 meters, armor to the habitation module crushed in an implosion of extreme proximity. Remaining Aragos are barely sufficient to shield against fallout from the transspace drive. Surveillance and video are inoperable throughout the Ops facility – I have no feed. Standby for limited auxiliary power.”
All the while it spoke, Vaurien continued to moan while Jazinsky called his name. He did not answer – Travers could not pick a word out of the cries of torment. He had never heard such sounds from Vaurien, but he had heard the screams of other men dying, and panic snapped at him.
Feeble, dull red illumination flooded across the wreckage of the compartment as he dug his armored fingertips into the old aluminum plates and physically dragged himself out of the gap between what had been the deck and the ceiling bulkhead. He fell out into a warped, twisted space where deck had become wall, and the side of the habitation module was gone.
Beyond, the armor scales that protected fragile living creatures from the storms of transspace were wrenched aside like sheets of paper, and between them he saw stars. His mouth was desert dry as he hauled himself to his feet.
The light was poor, casting confusing shadows. He turned a full circle to illuminate what was left of Operations with his own floods, and swore hoarsely. “Medic! Medic!”
Bill Grant was there at once, but the news was not what Travers wanted to hear. “I’m right outside, for godsakes, but I can’t get in, Neil – the armordoors have jammed. D’you hear me? The whole place is twisted like a tin can somebody stamped a boot on.”
“Cut through,” Travers bawled. “Bravo – Fargo, you hearing this? Get up here. You gotta torch through the blastdoors, and make it bloody fast.”
And Fargo: “Way ahead of you, boss, but we’re in the crawlspace. The lifts have gone out, there ain’t a lick of power to this side of the ship. Give us a minute to reach you.”
By now Vaurien was only whimpering softly, which was bad. From long, dire experience Travers knew that sound – so did Vidal. Marin had never served with a Marines company in the field, but he knew more about the human condition, and the ending of it, than any of them. Vaurien was at the end of his strength, and even now Travers could not see him.
From beyond the rent in the hull, between the twisted armor scales, massive explosions continued. The flare from one shafted into the ruin of the Ops room, and for an instant Travers glimpsed the armor with the red helmet and shoulder chevrons which marked out a company commander.
“Got him!” he bawled into the loop.
He was buried in what had been the deck. The plates had corkscrewed, folded on themselves and thrust out through the double layers of the hull. Vaurien was barely inside the habitation module and Travers saw at once, he must be no more than centimetres from the scant Arago cover that was holding out the intense radiation spilling off the naked transspace core.
And in the moment Neil pinpointed him, Richard fell silent. “Oh, Christ,” Vidal murmured. “Bill, you hear that?”
“I hear it,” Grant sobbed, “but I can’t get in, Mick – the fucking doors are bent out of shape!”
“Bravo’s coming up – they’ll torch through,” Marin said with some remnant of calm stretched thin as parchment. “Can you get your drones online, Bill?”
“Yeah – whaddaya need?” Grant seemed to catch himself by the scruff of his own neck and shake himself hard.
“Cryogen tanks,” Marin told him. “We’ve got people down – not just Richard. I’m counting heads. Hubler’s down, and Tor, and Jo Queneau … and I can’t find Jon Kim.”
“Can’t find him?” Travers echoed. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, I can’t see him.” Marin took a quick breath which rasped over the audio pickup. “Look for yourself, Neil.”
As he spoke, Bill Grant bellowed into the loop. “Bravo’s here! I’ve got five tanks cycling up, they’re coming up on sleds. How long, Jude?”
Fargo was panting with effort. “A bunch faster, if you get your ass out of the way, Billy. Give us a couple of minutes.”
Travers’s blood was like ice water. “Make it faster, Judith. I don’t think we’ve got that long.”
Helmet instruments registered concentrated thermal blooms on the other side of the armordoors, where four plasma torches had begun to cut, but those doors were solid armor plate. It would take time. Sweat stun
g Travers’s eyes as he repeated the head count Marin had already taken, and he swore.
Three hardsuits were prone on the deck, swept into a corner where helmet lights played over them with grotesque shadows. Rodman, Rabelais and Dario Sherratt knelt beside them, trying to tease information out of the data sockets on the left shoulder of each suit, and from the cursing and profanity, Travers knew the news was dire.
In the middle of the tatters that had been Ops, Harrison Shapiro stood, slowly turning around and around, performing a methodical visual search. But Marin was right, of Jon Kim there was no sign. Shapiro had been repeating his name, over and over, but he did not answer. At last he called, “Lai’a, do you have a track on … on debris blown out of the hull rupture?”
“No, General. The Arago fields held. Debris was not blown out.” Lai’a paused. “I regret, I have no feeds from the Operations compartment. I cannot assist.”
“Harrison.” Alexis Rusch was behind him, one hand on the big shoulder of the hardsuit. “Harry, you need to come back where it’s safe.”
“Safe?” Shapiro echoed. “You call this safe?”
“Safer,” she amended. “The closer you get to the rupture, the more radiation you’re taking, right off the drive. It’s bleeding through. Aragos are not what they ought to be.”
“We need to get out of here,” Travers said bleakly. “Judith, how long?”
“Two minutes,” she guessed in a rasping growl.
“Faster, kid,” Travers whispered. “I think … I’m pretty sure Richard’s dead.”
In fact, Vaurien might have been dead for at least a minute already, but the words defied Travers. He heard Marin gasp, heard Jazinsky choke off a blistering oath, but it was Grant who said, “We’re on the clock people. Four minutes dead, and there’s nothing, nothing I can do for him.”
Worse yet, Vaurien’s armor was buried waist-deep in the cleft where the deck had folded on itself. Even when Grant could get into the compartment, Bravo might have to torch him out – Grant did not yet know this, nor that fallout from the drive had begun to bleed through depleted Arago fields. Time was the enemy.
“Richard’s … Richard’s dead?” The voice belonged to Tonio Teniko, a soft tone, light, breathy, reminiscent of the Lushi he had been.
Another explosion ripped through space, much too close to the hull rupture, making the tenuous Arago field ripple, flutter. The sensors in Travers’s helmet clamored a warning for several seconds before the fields reformed and rad levels dropped again. A general caution displayed constantly now, since the whole compartment was becoming increasingly toxic, and Rusch was right. The closer to the hull rupture one ventured, the worse it was. Vaurien was buried a scant two meters inboard of the worst of it.
“Richard’s dead?” Teniko repeated.
“One minute,” Fargo shouted. “Hey, Roo, Tim, get hold of this, will you? Just fuckin’ pull – just pull it out of there!”
With armored gauntlets they were hauling on the skin of the warped armordoors, peeling open the metal, panting and cursing with effort, as Teniko walked into the flares from another explosion, and into the flood of hard radiation.
Brittle with distress, Mark and Dario bawled after him with a warning, but Teniko already knew the danger. Travers’s heart was in his throat as he watched Tonio kneel on the deck beside Vaurien and take the buckled plates in both armored hands. He began to wrench, to heave, throwing all his weight against them.
“The kid’s right,” Neil whispered. And then, to Marin, “Stay here.”
He picked his way up a buckled, twisted incline to reach Teniko, and shouldered in beside him. His gauntlets locked around the plate Tonio had wrenched up just enough to afford a grip. With his greater strength and far greater experience, he set his apparent mass so high, he would have struggled to walk under the weight of the armor. He clenched the gauntlets in place and flung himself backward – the plate moved, but not far enough.
Scrambling, Travers got his hands on the up-twisted metal again, and ignored the alarms shrilling in his helmet with warnings of radiation. He swore lividly as Marin appeared at his right side, Vidal at his left. “Get back there, the bloody pair of you idiots,” he wheezed as he dragged on the warped deck.
“Shut the fuck up and pull,” Vidal grated between clenched teeth.
The deck was moving now, giving against the mass of four hardsuits which broke away the structural member beneath, but as it came up it began to twist. Teniko was the first to see it, and he screamed a warning to stop. Travers pulled a breath to the bottom of his lungs and peered down into the crevice where Vaurien was scissored between buckled plates.
“Got to lift him up,” Teniko panted. “He must have been caught in the tail of the implosion … the armor’s crushed.”
He was moving, shifting around, getting further out through the hull breach, careless of the hard radiation cascading over him. If he had looked up, he would have seen the bright, evil blue-green crackle of the transspace drive, and Travers wondered if he knew what he was doing. The Arago fields coruscated around him – he was actually brushing shoulders with them, where the radiation was so scorching, drones would have scrammed on contact as their electronics fried. The Zunshulite armor was holding up better because it was Zunshulite, but internal systems had to be intermittent.
“Got him,” Tonio gasped as he worked his gauntlets under Vaurien’s armor, and pushed up with both legs. His comm crackled, sheeted out, hissing with white noise. “Do it now!”
Travers, Marin and Vidal had already taken a grip on the deck, and they wrenched, heaved, as Teniko hauled on Vaurien. As he came up, the extent of the damage became visible. The armor was punched in, over the chest and left side, and the left arm and leg were twisted out of shape. Travers struggled with what he saw as the deck wrenched aside far enough for Teniko to drag him up and out, while Jazinsky bellowed for information.
“Is he alive? Neil, is he alive?” Her voice was piercing.
“I – I don’t think so,” Travers panted. In fact, he was sure Vaurien had been dead for some time. “Let me see if I can get into the data socket.”
“Get back here first, Neil,” Mark warned. “You must get out of the radiation stream at the hull breach.”
“We’re already hot,” Marin warned. “Hot enough to need serious decontamination before we can go back into the ship.”
“Drones,” Travers croaked. “Lai’a, we’re going to need some heavy duty decon services.” He and Marin were hauling on Vaurien’s dead weight even then, maneuvering him into the section of the compartment furthest from the breach.
Vidal straightened and held out a hand to Teniko, to pull him back in through the breach, but Teniko refused to take it. “Can’t,” he sobbed. “Take readings off me, Vidal. Look at the fucking numbers! Can’t.”
“Goddamn,” Vidal murmured, subsiding. “Well, now, that’s … ain’t that a bitch?”
“Like everything else ever was,” Teniko crooned, starting to lose focus. The words were slurred. “You got Richard?”
“We got him,” Vidal assured him. “You did damn’ good, kid. Tonio.”
“Did good,” Teniko echoed, the words blurring together, slurring. “Just … get Richard … Infirmary.”
“We will.” Vidal hesitated. “Is there anyone to, uh, notify? You want me to write a letter?” But Teniko did not answer. “Tonio!” Vidal shouted. “Tonio, if you can hear me, grab onto something, kid, get out of the rad stream. We all need serious decontamination!”
But again Teniko did not answer. He was unconscious, Travers knew, and the end often came more kindly that way. He might live perhaps another hour, even two, but the damage done to every cell in his body was far beyond anything human or Resalq science could restore. He was so toxic, no medic would touch him. Even if he was placed in cryogen, no therapy existed to bring him back when the DNA itself was unraveling.
“Lai’a!” Travers called. “Lai’a, we need a decontamination crew – can you get drones
in here?”
“Impossible,” Lai’a told him. “All mobile personnel should go directly to the suiting room. I have rerouted power around the auxiliary circuits. Service elevator 4 is now operational. Personnel can decontaminate in the suiting room, and drones from the forward storage bunker will decontaminate the passages and elevator behind you.” It paused. “I am afraid Doctor Teniko’s contamination has passed the point where he can be allowed inside the body of the habitation module. May I remind you, Captain Vaurien is little less contaminated. He must be handled according to full hazmat protocols.”
And in fact he was dead, even while Teniko hung on for useless minutes while the very enzymes of the basic life processes unwound. Travers and Marin had brought the smashed armor as close to the group as they dared. The hardsuit lay on its back, twisted, useless. Curtis had knelt to examine the data socket, and from a panel recessed into his forearm he took a thick, armor-sheathed combug. It plugged into the socket, and Travers held his breath as it began to transmit.
“Bill, you getting this?” Neil asked soundlessly.
“Yeah. He’s flatlined. And if I heard right, Teniko’s checking out, better luck next lifetime,” Grant rasped. “Richard’s probably better off out of it, Neil … you heard him screaming. You don’t want to be conscious with injuries like that. Jude, come on, goddamn it! Neil, Curtis, I need you to help me now. We’re fighting time. Examine the medical couplers on the right breast. Do they look functional?”
Travers blinked his eyes clear, forced himself to see. “They don’t look damaged. It was the left side of the suit that took the hammering.”
“All right – gives me something to work with,” Grant said in a furious mutter. “He’s also ice-cold, which helps – his power couplers must’ve been damaged, intermittent. He’d have been getting cold fast … buys us a little more time, Neil. And he’s gonna need it.”