His alarm shocked him out of his trance.
Shit, I’m hit!
He turned towards Marasco, but he and Antman were engaged across the curve. He spun back, almost losing his grip, and two EVA-clad enemy were advancing, firing small hand beamers. His shields were still solid, but he couldn’t let them get closer. He lowered his left arm and fired a burst of his M90, sending 80 6mm darts that easily pierced the Brotherhood suits. The two bodies floated backwards, feet still attached to the hull.
“Got them. Four in total,” Marasco passed.
“We’re through the hull!” Hanaburgh shouted. “Hooah!”
“That doesn’t mean anything,” the lieutenant passed. “Keep your positions.”
Breaching the hull might have been the most difficult part of the assault. The next stage was the one not even the Navy knew if it would work, so just getting there didn’t mean success. They had to be on the right spot, which was based on Intel, and then if they were, the proton torch had to be able to cut far enough to breach the impulse tubes.
Hondo couldn’t see anyone in front of him except for the two dead men. He risked one more glance up. The Zrínyi was noticeably smaller, and not just because of the distance opening up between them. She was collapsing, each ring being pulled in before the next one was. Flares of light and the weird balls of flame, driven by molecular diffusion, blazed from the ship as she consumed herself.
“Hanaburgh, Good, get back,” the lieutenant shouted over the net.
“It’s not—” Tony B started before Hanaburgh grabbed him, pulling him backwards away from the device, Tony’s bootplates still holding him fast.
There was an explosion of light and plasma, and the device blew right off the hull of the ship. Tony B released his bootplates and tumbled ass -ver-heels in his attempt to get out of the way.
“Lift off now!” the lieutenant shouted.
Ah, shit, here it goes, Hondo thought, as he gathered his legs and jumped with all his strength.
He started putting distance between himself and the hull, while below him, the blind energy that moved the frigate inside normal space escaped from its colloidal prison and out into space unfiltered and unfocused. Hondo caught sight of the two men he’d killed, now flopping around like the used-hover dummies that caught customers’ attention as the huge frigate began to twist away from the rent in its side.
All around him, nine Marines were desperately trying to gain distance as the ship twisted. It looked so slow, but it massed so much more than a Marine in a PICS that it would crush them like a fly if it hit.
That wasn’t the main threat, though. While real space impulse drives were invisible coming out the cones, pre-filtered, they were a roiling stream of white and gold. That stream was shooting into space, eating away at the hull as it burned.
“Antman!” Hondo yelled reflexively as the Marine tried to escape upwards instead of to the side. “Right angle!”
Hondo never knew if Antman heard him. The flare of energy passed over him as the ship spun, and Lance Corporal Andrew Acevedo, Antman, was gone.
“Watch the fucking flare!” Hondo screamed over the net, his eyes tearing up.
Hondo kept out and away, his putt-putt at max impulse, a wary eye on the flare as the ship spun. His focus was almost his downfall. As the ship spun, the far side came around, looking lumberous and slow, but it was huge and packed a powerful punch. Instead of moving laterally and away from the flare, he reoriented and climbed away from the ship. Everything looked to be in slow motion as the eight Marines tried to gain separation.
Hondo wasn’t sure he was going to make it, but as the ship came around, it missed him by less than 40 meters. To his surprise, he had a clear view of a sailor in the observation port, who simply returned his stare.
The ship kept spinning off-kilter, and the next pass of the flare wasn’t going to be close. From the ship, escape pods started to pop off as the crew started to abandon ship.
Hondo was in shock. Somehow, unarmed with ship-killer weapons, it looked like they’d taken out a Brotherhood man-of-war with what was essentially a shipyard tool.
It just wasn’t possible.
“On me,” the lieutenant passed on the net.
Where?
All eight surviving Marines were scattered, and Hondo had to pull up his display to pick out the platoon commander, then translate the 2-D display to 3-D space. Eventually, he identified him and started slowly moving that direction.
It took twenty minutes before RP made it, the last one. The lieutenant ordered them all to hook safety lines to each other.
“What now, sir?” Hondo asked.
They were alone in the black, with a two-days’ supply of air. They had their little putt-putts, but nowhere to go. Lore took up a good portion of the sky, and they could aim at it, but it would take them six months to get that far, and it would only be their desiccated corpses that would create a flash in the sky as they burned up in the atmosphere.
“Now, we wait.”
THE LORE SYSTEM
Chapter 21
Hondo
“With Pa gone and the debt collectors looking, the FCDC was my only option,” Hanaburgh said.
“But that was your dad’s debt, not yours,” Ling said. “That’s not on your back.”
“It is on Emerson.”
“Emerson’s still part of the Federation,” Marasco said, “and debts don’t pass to the children.”
“Some governments have more autonomy. It depends on their charter,” Lieutenant Abrams said.
The eight Marines had been tethered together, floating in the black, for almost two days: 46 hours, 12 minutes, to be more exact. O2 levels were down to 6% for Ling and up to 13% for Tony B. They had a few more hours until they’d start to asphyxiate, something Hondo was not looking forward to. Sure, they would have a good chance at resurrection—if they were ever recovered. No one knew what had happened to the crew and the rest of the Marines, who had been heading to Lore. They’d also watched escape pods erupt out of the Brotherhood frigate, and they’d be heading to the planet’s surface as well.
The waiting was getting to all of them. Private Radiant Purpose, maybe the most gung-ho of all of them, couldn’t take it. His PICS had drugged him into a happy daze 30 hours before.
For the first two hours, the Marines had a mission to keep themselves occupied. Corporal Ling had seen the first one, a tiny spot of white in the distance. At full magnification, the spot turned out to be a body. Under putt-putt power, the eight Marines had moved together, closing in on the body and corralling it with a line. No one recognized the sailor, but he was obviously Zrínyi crew. He didn’t have his emergency hood on, and his face was covered with white ice crystals. Those didn’t hide his gaping mouth nor wide-open eyes, however.
Hondo had shuddered at the sight, knowing that could be their fate as well, dying out in the black.
They managed to find two more, including Lance Corporal Kyle India from Third Platoon—or rather, most of him. His legs were gone at the thigh, rose-tinted crystals this time forming on the stumps.
They kept searching, but couldn’t find anyone else. The black was just too big, and there’d been too much time for bodies to travel.
After that, there wasn’t much else to do. Initially lost in their own thoughts, gradually, they came together, telling their life stories. Perhaps with their fate hanging over them, perhaps with the relative anonymity their PICS provided, they opened up. Hondo had even told about his life on Paradhiso, and how he’d always felt like an outsider.
Most of the time, though, Hondo listened. He’d thought he’d known his Marines, but he realized now that he’d barely scratched the surface. Marasco had been bullied as a kid, Joseph had been sexually assaulted as a child. Ling came from a repressive society where his sexual preferences were considered a sin. Tony B had dreamed of becoming a beat-beat singer, and he’d given them all in impromptu concert with the black as a stage. He was surprisingly good. Even the lieutenan
t told his story. He’d given up a career as a professional etherball player to become a Marine.
Hanaburgh’s story, though, was probably the most revealing. Hondo had wondered why he’d given up his sergeant’s rank in the FCDC to become a Marine, but he’d never bothered to ask. The lance corporal had always dreamed of being a Marine, and he’d intended to pursue that upon graduation, but when his father had been murdered in the random violence of the ghettos of Emerson, he and his sister had become liable for the debt, and he had to drop out of school and find a job. Without a secondary school degree, he was not eligible for the Marines, so when he became of age, he took the FCDC waiver. The FCDC was still Federation service, so that wiped out his debt, even on Emerson. While serving, he took night courses to complete his certificate, and once his minimum time served was reached, he opted for the interservice transfer.
“I’m glad you made the transfer, Robert,” Hondo said, moved by the story. “You’re a good Marine.”
There was a soft chorus of ooh-rahs from the others, and Hanaburgh said, “Thank you Sergeant. I appreciate that.”
Silence settled over the group. Hondo checked his O2: he was at 8%. Looking over where RP was in happy-land, he wondered if he should join him. At least then he wouldn’t mind drifting off, and if they were never recovered, it wouldn’t matter to him anyway.
“How long can we be dead and still resurrected?” Tony B asked quietly, something that had been gnawing at Hondo’s mind as well.
They all turned as one to the lieutenant.
“For stasis? About fifty years has been the maximum so far, although the length of time shouldn’t matter,” he said. “From being frozen out in space? I’m not sure. There was the crew of that Confederation pinnacle that was recovered after thirty years. All except for one made it, if I remember right.”
That’s right. It’s not just the O2. That will get us first, and then, after the power gives out, the cold will take over.
He checked his power level. They weren’t expending much energy, and his PICS was at 52%.
So, it’s asphyxiation, not freezing for me.
“They’ll find us,” Hondo said with a certainty he wasn’t sure he actually felt.
“I’d just as soon they find us before I run out of air, Sergeant, not after,” Tony B said.
For some reason, everyone found that funny. Hondo laughed along with the rest, although he wasn’t quite sure why.
“Shit, Tony, don’t make me laugh. I think I dropped another percent of O-two,” Corporal Ling said, which brought out another round of laughter.
They slowly settled back into silence. Hondo decided he wasn’t going to pull up his gauge on his display again. It was what it was.
Less than five minutes later, he checked his O2: 7%.
OK, now I’m really not going to check again.
He started humming “Gold Lock,” the song with which Tony B had serenaded them.
His voice sucked, he knew, and he was about to ask Tony to give them another, when the lieutenant said, “I think I saw something.”
Another body? Hondo wondered as he followed the platoon commander’s pointing arm.
He scanned the black, looking for something that didn’t belong when Hanaburgh said, “I think it’s a ship!”
Hondo’s heart jumped to his throat as he slaved off of the lance corporal’s PICS. There was something there, and it was moving. It was still too far to make out, but there was definitely something out there.
“Check your beacons,” the lieutenant said.
They’d gone through this fifty times if it was once, but Hondo ran a check again. His beacon was steady and strong.
In complete silence, the eight Marines watched, afraid to say something to jinx it. Hondo tried to will whatever it was into a rescue.
If it had been a tank, personnel carrier, or almost any atmospheric aircraft known to man, his PICS AI could identify what it was long before he could, but nothing popped up on his display. That made him nervous. It could be their salvation, but it could also be a piece of wreckage or even ancient space junk.
“There’s a light flashing,” Tony B said.
Hondo tried to see the light, but he couldn’t make out anything.
“It’s a vessel, then. Ours or theirs”? Lieutenant Abrams asked.
“I can’t tell. It doesn’t look like our shuttle.”
If it was a Brotherhood vessel of some sort, there wasn’t much any of them could do if it arrived with ill will. And if it demanded their surrender, Hondo didn’t know what the lieutenant would say. Hondo certainly didn’t want to be taken prisoner, but the thought of choking out his last breaths in the cold emptiness of the black wasn’t very appealing, either.
“It’s them,” Tony B said, at last.
“Are you sure?” the lieutenant asked him.
“Yes, sir. I can see it. It’s upside down to us.”
“He’s right,” Marasco said. “I can see it now.”
Hondo let out a huge breath of air in relief. If their younger eyes thought it was the shuttle, then that was good enough for him. Five minutes later, he could see it himself. His mind had wanted to see it on the same aspect as he was. With no up or down in space, however, the Zrínyi’s shuttle was “tilted” about 150 degrees to the side. With his mind oriented now, it was pretty obvious.
He pulled back his magnification, and the shuttle disappeared from sight.
“How far away is it?” he asked.
“I can’t ping it, but maybe fifty klicks?” the lieutenant said. “I’m trying to raise them now.”
“Fifty klicks? They see us, right?” Joseph asked.
“They’re coming right at us,” Hondo told them. “They see us.”
I hope.
The shuttle and PICS didn’t share comms, but there had to be a workaround. The comms freq remained silent, however.
The shuttle could cross 50 kicks in seconds, but it had to be able to come to a stop near them, so it was advancing much more slowly. Time seemed to drag on forever, but his AI timer indicated that only a few minutes had passed before the shuttle, clearly visible now, was a klick off and creeping closer.
“Drop your buddy lines,” the lieutenant ordered. “Keep the KIA attached to each other, though.”
The shuttle slowly turned around, still “upside-down” to the Marines. There was a flash of light as the back ramp opened.
“Good, Hanaburgh, you two take the dead first,” the platoon commander ordered. “Just give them a shove inside. PFC Joseph, you help Radiant Purpose.”
Two sailors in their red EVA suits came out of the shuttle. One raised a voice-activated light gun, which sent light waves that could strike hard surfaces and then be transmitted into sound.
Sounding somewhat weird, but still identifiable as Wolf, the “sailor” said, “You all looking for a ride?”
Hondo hooted a wordless shout in response.
Tony B and Hanaburgh gently pushed the three KIA forward. Wolf and who had to be Pickerul, caught the buddy lines and pulled them back into the hold. Hondo hung back as Joseph assisted RP—who was barely cognizant of what was going on—into the shuttle. Quickly, the others boarded the shuttle until it was only Hondo and the lieutenant left. Hondo motioned for his platoon commander, but he nodded, one hand out and pointing to the hold. Hondo nodded and flew forward, twisting around so that his “up” and the shuttle’s “up” matched. He held his breath until he crossed into the shuttle.
Oh, mother of God, I’ve made it.
There were at least 20 bodies strapped to the forward bulkhead of the hold, and Wolf and Pickerul were adding the three that the Marines had recovered to the group. With the bodies, the eight PICS Marines almost filled the hold. As the back hatch started to close, Pickerul pulled out a pressure hose with the universal coupling and pointed to them, miming hooking the hose to their PICS.
Air! Hondo thought, checking his reading, which was at 6%. Heck, who needs rescue? I still have a couple of hours left
.
EARTH
Chapter 22
Skylar
“They recovered them,” Keyshon said, looking at his PA.
“Recovered who?” Sky asked, her mind preoccupied as they walked down Rue Lysander to the Swiss embassy.
“The Marines. The ones who took out the Temperance.”
It took a moment for what he was saying to register. The Temperance was the Brotherhood frigate that had attacked the Zrínyi. The fate of the Marines who’d somehow managed to cripple the ship had been unknown for the last two days, something that had had taken over the undernet in a viral wave.
Sky had been preoccupied with her new mission, and had barely followed the story. Even now, after being told, she didn’t feel a sense of relief, only wondered how the news would affect the upcoming meeting.
What’s wrong with me? Those were incredibly brave Marines, Federation citizens.
She should feel something more, but to her, the stakes were higher than ten Marines. She had to focus on the overall situation.
Still, her lack of compassion bothered her. She briefly wondered where the Skylar she’d known all her life had gone.
“Do we know how many of them were killed? The Brotherhood?” she asked Keyshon, glad he’d arrived from Pittsburgh yesterday to assist.
“From the ship being lost? Not many, by all accounts. It looks like most of the crew and the reaming soldiers were able to evacuate. They lost more in trying to take the Zrínyi.”
The actual damage to the Temperance had seemed minimal to her as a civilian. Although spinning out of control, it had remained intact for ten hours, according to the briefing she’d received yesterday, before the stress of the unconstrained propulsion broke the ship apart. It still boggled her mind that a military ship could be destroyed by a simple fusion torch.
“What’s been the buzz from the Brotherhood nets?”
“As you could expect. The ten Marines were saboteurs, nothing more, who killed peace-loving Brotherhood citizens.”
The Price of Honor (The United Federation Marine Corps' Grub Wars Book 2) Page 13