by M. D. Cooper
“If we reach the command deck and don’t find anything, this might be a bust,” he said.
“We can still attempt to activate the ship’s control system,” Harl said.
Beyond the planning section was a long corridor with an emergency airlock and several escape pods. Andy acknowledged with a sinking feeling that they were about to enter the command deck and they hadn’t found any heavy weapons.
The far door was closed—the first locked door they had encountered since entering the ship. When they reached the end of the corridor, Andy tapped the control panel to activate it. He wasn’t surprised when the panel didn’t respond.
“Looks like we need to cut our way in,” Andy said. He shifted to his Link.
Andy couldn’t tell if she was joking or not. He chose to ignore the jibe.
“You mind if I take a look at it?” Harl asked.
Andy stepped away from the door. “Go ahead. It’s a standard lockset design.”
Harl tapped the interface for a few seconds, then stepped back and pulled out his pistol.
“Hey!” Andy shouted.
Harl fired three times. Pulse blasts cracked the panel’s face and bent the door frame. The door remained sealed.
“What did you think that was going to do?” Andy demanded. He’d drawn his own pistol and moved away from the door on the off-chance it did somehow open.
Harl shrugged, peering through the thin smoke rising from the panel. “We were going to cut into it anyway, I figured this couldn’t hurt.”
Lyssa said.
“Dammit,” Andy shook his head in dismay. “There’s probably a damage override and it’s sending a status report to the clinic right now.”
Harl shrugged. “How is that any different than what we already assumed?”
“It’s not. But we don’t need unnecessary risks.” Andy couldn’t believe he had to say it.
“Then speak up next time. If they had an alarm system, we would have triggered it when we docked.”
Andy faced Harl, who was bending slightly to look down at him through his bushy eyebrows. “You said you were in the Collective Army. Didn’t they do any training on breaching at all? You don’t blow a circuit you don’t have to.”
“Now you’re just talking with Terran arrogance.”
Andy felt his irritation becoming anger. “Terran arrogance? You think growing up with my feet in the mud made me arrogant? You’re confused.”
“Don’t tell me I’m confused,” Harl said. “Next you’re going to tell me I’m old.”
“I don’t care if you’re old. I don’t want you to be stupid.”
Brit sounded strained as she answered,
Andy looked at Harl, who had crossed his arms.
“Get down!” Andy shouted. He pulled the rifle to his shoulder and sent a burst of pulse fire at the black nose of the turret just as the red light of its laser range finder splashed across his face shield. Andy released his magboots and kicked diagonally across the corridor, firing at the turret as he moved. Behind him, Harl fired with his pulse pistol.
Andy fired a third series of rounds and the turret sizzled and hung dead, smoking.
Lyssa said.
Andy looked at Harl, who nodded that he’d heard. They both reset the environmental controls on their suits.
CHAPTER SEVEN
STELLAR DATE: 09.23.2981 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Forward Kindness
REGION: Jovian L1 Hildas Asteroids, Jovian Combine, OuterSol
Brit pulled the top half of the exoskeleton over her shoulders and latched its abdomen lock into the bands circling her waist. The suit was made of a steel-carbon fiber blend with a slight spring to it, run by internal servos. The combination plasma cutter-welders hung from her forearms, leaving her hands free for other tools or, in this case, weapons. She accessed the onboard software through her Link, paging absently through standard liability forms as the suit performed startup checks.
Brit spread her arms, activating to the two pale-blue plasma torches on either limb and increased the cutting length of each blade. She approached the corridor wall—which she knew from the schematics, ran along the outer edge of the engineering section—and stabbed a hole in the ceramic-looking material. The scant atmosphere rushed through the ragged gap as she jerked her arm downward.
When the chamber was back to vacuum, she raised both arms above her head and stabbed the wall again, then drew her arms down in shallow arcs. The ceramic material popped and slagged away from the plasma blades. With a few more cuts, she was able to kick out an elliptical piece of the corridor, revealing space on the other side.
Cut through sixty centimeters like it was butter, she said, looking at the plasma torches. Either Heartbridge doesn’t skimp on the exo-frames, or they contracted their hulls to the lowest bidder.
The exo-suit had a series of smal
l thrusters along its lower bands. Releasing her mag boots, Brit used short bursts to maneuver through the hole until she was outside the ship, with the knobby shell of the Forward Kindness swooping away in front of her.
It was two hundred meters to the airlock in the corridor where Andy and Harl were trapped and she began moving across the hull at a careful lope. Before long, she was back at the mid-point where they had entered the dreadnought’s cargo bay. She could just make out the shape of Shuttle 26-12 over the curve of the ship.
Movement to her left caught Brit’s attention and she adjusted her HUD until a hull-mounted turret came into contrast against the dark. The gun rotated, appearing to be calibrating in a startup sequence, before pointing its black muzzle her direction.
Her HUD indicated another turret to her right and more up ahead, forming rings around the ship’s midsection.
When she reached the base of the turret, she slashed through the barrel with one of her plasma knives and sent half its length spinning away into the dark. With her other arm, she stabbed the sensor array mounted above the gun until it crumbled apart like a smashed egg.
An explosion to her right caught Brit’s eye and she realized their shuttle was gone.
He didn’t respond. Brit placed an icon in the upper left of her HUD to represent Andy’s vital signs, which still showed green.
A spray of crystalline circuitry drifted into space as Brit leaped over the dead turret, following the circumference of the dreadnought to the next weapons array. She drove the plasma blade down the maw of the gun as it rotated to track her, ripping her arm upward to leave the barrel a split flower of molten slag. Brit ran for the next turret until every gun on the starboard side of the midsection was dead.
Steadying her breathing, Brit checked her environmental controls and re-oriented herself on the hull of the ship. Her HUD overlaid the ship’s schematic on the alloy skin below her, and she launched forward as the command deck airlock rotated into view. She used the exo-suit to brake and landed just above the collar of the airlock. A few meters away, a line of holes had been traced across the hull, leaking fine sprays of atmosphere.
Heartbridge is playing for keeps! Not using pulse weapons in their own ships.
Lyssa fed Brit the location automatically, noting the airlock where Brit would enter, the crew quarters where Andy and Harl were holding off the drones, and the twenty-five meters of corridor between them.
Lyssa’s tone seemed amused and worried at the same time.
Brit re-focused on the task at hand.
Brit looked at the airlock and considered trying the access panel. She extended the cutting blade on the plasma cutter instead and slashed another hole in the hull of the ship. Atmosphere blew past her as she widened the cut, until finally a panel broke free and spun away from the ship. She climbed in through the hole.
The airlock’s inner door was open, and she peered out into the passageway to see the dead turret sparking in vacuum. Two defense drones and a service mech floated down the corridor to her left, firing kinetic rounds through a doorway while return fire came out.
Brit pulled a grenade off her chest harness and set it for a low-level electromagnetic pulse, then flicked it toward the mechs. With the drones’ attention on Andy and Harl—along with all the EM interference, the nearest drone didn’t pick up on the grenade until it was nearly between all three.
A short electrical flash filled the end of the corridor and the two drones ceased firing and drifted back toward the bulkhead. The service mech in the doorway rotated abruptly and shot toward Brit, two plasma welders extended from the front of its body.
She raised her pulse pistol and fired three bursts, aiming for center mass. The mech absorbed the shock and kept coming, listing to one side.
Brit scoffed.
Something hit the drone hard from the rear, forcing it into a head-over-tail spin. One of the plasma cutters flickered out but the other scorched the corridor wall and deck as it came around, still moving haphazardly toward Brit’s face.
Brit fired, aiming for the drone’s extended utility arm. The second blast bent the cutter back and blue plasma arc cut out, though the shot didn’t stop the mech’s mass from slamming into her chest. Before she could lock her magboots, Brit was tumbling down the corridor along with the sizzling drone.
She hit locked doors at the far end of the passageway with an inaudible thud, feeling the bands of the exoskeleton compress against her hips and shoulders. Something hard dug into her abdomen, knocking the air from her lungs as the back of her helmet slammed into the damaged command deck door.
Vaguely, she made out the shapes of Andy and Harl shooting toward her down the corridor.
Bouncing off the exoskeleton, the drone floated against wall. Brit’s lungs burned with every breath. she said slowly.
She opened her eyes to find Andy’s face shield close to hers, his face full of worry. For a second she forgot where they were, remembering instead how he’d looked at her when Cara was born. A rush of sadness and loss past through her, mixed up with the pain in her chest. She shook her head to clear it, blaming the adrenaline, trying to focus her thoughts.
Brit activated her magboots and stepped away from the door, pushing Andy out of the way. Harl stood behind him, scorch marks on his chest and leg armor.
Harl grimaced as if he had taken injuries she couldn’t see.
Brit shrugged.
He nodded without dropping his concerned expression, searching her face.
Brit fr
owned, ignoring the pains stabbing her chest. She rotated awkwardly in the exoskeleton so she faced the door and raised her arms.
With the plasma cutters extended, Brit cut ragged lines along the edge of the warped door, squinting involuntarily as atmosphere and bits of slag blew past her faceshield. Once the vacuum had equalized on both sides of the barrier, she cut the rest of the door away and kicked it inward with an assist from the service suit. The lopsided piece of steel and plas spun into the command deck, bending a nearby pilot’s seat.
Harl didn’t follow. He nodded toward the other end of the corridor where a dead drone still hung in the middle of the opposite entry point.
Brit didn’t tell him she figured the ship had used everything it had against them. If anything else was going to attack, it would be coming from outside.
She nodded.
Brit turned sideways to slide through the awkward opening. There was an internal set of doors that were open, and she closed them to hold as much atmosphere on the bridge as possible.
Inside, she found Andy already standing in front of the captain’s station in the middle of the wide space. While the chamber might have been intended to pass for the brain of a hospital-relief ship, it looked more like the battle center it truly was. Control sections were interspersed against the same white ceramic walls as the rest of the ship. A central holotank sat empty, easily viewable from each workstation. Random bits of equipment floated in the vacuum.
Brit walked up beside Andy, stopping just outside arms-reach. “You look like you want to steal it,” she said. Her voice sounded small over the helmet speakers.
Andy turned to look at her. She couldn’t read his expression. He seemed to watch her as if he expected to see something in her face that wasn’t there. She didn’t like how uncomfortable it made her feel—that she owed him something.