by Terry Mixon
“I think with the duke putting his weight behind her, there’s a decent chance that the emperor will modify the law in some way through the Imperial Senate. There’s some political capital in doing that, because it would be just another poke in the Singularity’s eye.
“I suspect it would be an exception solely for her. That would get the most outrage from the ruling caste of the Singularity when they find out that she’s escaped, which they eventually will.
“As far as getting into the Imperial Marines, that’s outside my bailiwick. I’m sure there’ll be a lot of resistance, and I’m not certain that even an Imperial noble can get her past it.
“Thankfully, you’ve got about six years to figure that out. The fact that she already has the hardware is of some benefit. They probably don’t want someone with a marine nanogenerator just wandering around.
“Do you think that the duke is going to be able to keep them from taking her away from you?”
Considering what he’d done after Anders had left the compartment, Grace suspected Andrea was safe, so long as they moved to DeSantis. Anders had no idea the bomb that Fowler had dropped on her—and planned to drop on him in turn—and this wasn’t the time to tell him, but she was starting to have hope.
Also, she wanted to see the stunned look on his face when it happened. That would pay the smug bastard back for what he’d done without telling her.
“I either have to think that he’ll keep her safe, or I’ll drown in despair,” she said, turning toward the hatch. “Well, I’d best leave you to your work and get my people ready to defend the ship. This is it, Captain. We’re in the end game. We either win, or we die.”
37
One Twenty-Four raced to find the armory. In spite of hurrying, she didn’t get there particularly quickly, since she didn’t know where it was located. Luckily, she ran across one of the marines, who then directed her to the room inside what they called marine country.
The selection of armor and weapons inside the room was bewildering, but the marine duo that was guarding the armory directed her to a specific rack of large weapons when she told them that she was supposed to set herself up in engineering to help defend against invaders in powered armor.
The rack held two types of large rifles. One was thicker and was obviously made to be used with powered armor, which would be difficult at best. The other was long but would work with her smaller hands. That made the choice easy.
She wasn’t sure precisely what made the longer rifle different than the others, but it was obviously a flechette weapon. Only the flechettes were about four times larger than those used in the weapon she’d been issued, as she discovered when she found the magazines it used.
The weapon looked more than capable of firing them at a significantly higher velocity as well. If it was designed to penetrate powered armor, it had to be capable of delivering a lot of force.
She found a bag that she could strap across one shoulder that held a number of the large magazines and stuffed it full. Far better to have more than she could possibly need than to run out before the fight was done.
Since Grace had said that she’d be moving from one location to another, One Twenty-Four might as well preposition several weapons so that she could simply run away after she fired each time.
Whatever the case, Fei was going to tell her what she needed to do. The woman had the experience to guide her on how she could contribute to the fighting without needlessly risking her life.
With that thought in mind, she pulled two more of the weapons off the rack and cradled all three of them awkwardly in her arms as she headed for engineering. She was sure that the marines guarding the armory thought she was insane, but she really didn’t have time to explain herself.
Thankfully, engineering was much easier to find than the armory. Her new implants were able to translate the signs she passed, and in less than ten minutes, she’d made it to the main hatch for engineering.
There were a significant number of marines stationed outside the room. They were busy setting up heavy defenses and didn’t stop her as she made her way past them.
Inside engineering, she found Kayden directing everyone that wasn’t a marine and determining what tasks they were supposed to be performing. That kind of surprised her. She hadn’t expected an Imperial crew to obey someone from the Singularity.
Of course, the redheaded officer named Kyle was also there, so perhaps his presence was responsible for that.
Fei was standing nearby and saw One Twenty-Four come into the room. She was dressed in powered armor now, just like Grace. Her helmet was held in one arm, and a large flechette rifle like the ones she’d seen in the armory was strapped across her back.
“Three weapons?” Fei asked as she stepped over to One Twenty-Four. “Isn’t that a little… ambitious?”
One Twenty-Four shook her head. “Grace said that I had to be ready to abandon any firing position at a moment’s notice. I thought it might be best to preposition several of these weapons so that I don’t have to try to carry a rifle with me when I run.”
Fei pursed her lips and slowly nodded. “That’s well thought out. I’m hopeful that you don’t have to run that often. I don’t expect that the invaders want to completely destroy engineering, so that rules out plasma weapons. They’ll be using heavy flechette rifles like the one I’m carrying. They put out more than enough energy to crack the shells on these suits of powered armor.
“Since flechette weapons are silent, and sniper rifles like those more than most, you should be able to fire from a good place of concealment more than once before you relocate.
“By the time the enemy dials in your location, you’ll know that it’s time to move. Let’s go find you a couple of good spots.”
The engineering compartment was much larger than One Twenty-Four had anticipated. Fei was able to find several locations behind large pieces of equipment that still had a decent view of the central area where any intruders would force their way in.
After carefully considering the options, they selected three of them, and One Twenty-Four put the rifles in place. With her small size and the low cross-section of the weapons themselves, she wouldn’t have to expose herself very much to fire. Thankfully, these weapons wouldn’t have that heavy a recoil.
Of course, she’d only fired small rifles, so this larger one probably delivered significantly more force. The weapon had a built-in bipod that allowed her to set it flat so that she could fire while lying down behind it. That meant that the energy of each shot was going to go into her body at an awkward angle along the shoulder.
“This rifle doesn’t look like yours,” she said to Fei. “What was it that you called it? A sniper rifle?”
“Specifically, it’s a heavy sniper rifle. It’s designed for long-range fire, but it will work here. Barely. Just make sure you know what’s behind each of the targets and that you don’t mind destroying it if you miss.
“It fires a heavier flechette than my rifle here and isn’t made for general combat. The selector switch only has two positions: safe and fire. Its purpose is to kill at extreme range.
“That gives it the power to breach powered armor at close range—like here in engineering—but the general use is to target someone at a distance of ten kilometers or so without revealing the shooter’s position.
“Now, I want you to practice with the interface. Lie down and look through the scope.”
One Twenty-Four knew that so long as there wasn’t a magazine in the weapon, it was unloaded, thus safe to handle.
“I can use the scope,” she objected.
“Of course you can, but now you have implants, and they’re going to give you some added functionality that you’ve never used before and won’t even know to check unless I show you how to do it. Now, find someone on the far side of engineering and target them through the scope.”
One Twenty-Four did as instructed and quickly had one of the crewmen selected. The man was working at a console, and she line
d up the red dot on his torso.
“Ready.”
“Connect your implants with the weapon. If you close your eyes for a moment, that might make it easier the first few times. Just try to sense that there’s something out there that you can connect with.”
She closed her eyes and tried to do as Fei ordered. Strangely, she did feel something and tried to push her awareness into it. That caused a strange connection to form between the weapon and herself, and she was suddenly staring through the sight even though her eyes were closed.
“That’s really strange,” One Twenty-Four said. “Isn’t that kind of redundant? I can just open my eyes and shoot the weapon normally.”
Fei laughed. “While that’s true, can you anticipate where the next shot is going to need to go? After all, your attention is now focused through the sight, and you can’t see anything in the rest of the room. Wouldn’t you like to know what everyone else is doing?”
Frowning, One Twenty-Four considered how that might change things and decided to experiment before Fei gave her directions. She willed the weapon to show her the rest of the room, and she could immediately see the entire area in front of her, even though her eyes were closed. The weapon was feeding her information.
“I’m… impressed,” she admitted. “This is much more effective at maintaining situational awareness than staring down the sight with my own eyes.”
“And it gets better. Instruct your weapon to target multiple people and designate them as such.”
One Twenty-Four mentally selected half a dozen people, including Kyle, as temporary enemies, and a sort of reddish outline appeared around each of them in her vision.
“Done.”
“Since your weapon is unable to fire, it’s safe to pull the trigger. I want you to pretend to shoot the first target and instruct the weapon to move down the target list at its discretion.”
One Twenty-Four let her breath out slowly and squeezed the trigger. Nothing happened, of course. However, the weapon seemed to shift on its own to the next target, and she squeezed the trigger a second time, causing it to move on to the next.
She’d been staring down the sight and wondered how the weapon was moving on its own, but as she paid attention to the process, she realized that it wasn’t. She was shifting the rifle to a new point of aim after every shot in conjunction with the weapon’s targeting.
Somehow, her implants had mated the weapon to her body, and she was now using its targeting information while allowing her implants to control her movements.
“That’s excellent, Little One,” Fei said. “You’re picking this up much faster than I’d have expected. Your implants link up with the computer inside the weapon, and you’re using its scanners for target selection.
“You’re not seeing it now, but it’s capable of determining which enemies coming into your field of view are more of a threat and prioritizing them so that you can eliminate the more dangerous ones first. Its ranking criteria were designed by the Imperial Marines, so trust it more than your own guesses about which targets you should shoot.”
She looked up at Fei. “It seems as if your machines can fight better than people. Why don’t you just use automated weapon systems?”
“That was tried several times. Machines are indiscriminate, and they can’t alter their preprogrammed plans effectively when circumstances change.
“Say there are hostages. How would you make the machine aware that some of the potential targets are off-limits? That’s a judgment call that machines just aren’t capable of making. They’re not sentient.
“Now, let’s go around and set up all of your hides. Then you’ll practice moving between them. Try to find multiple routes that won’t be visible from the main compartment.
“And remember, when you move, there are going to be people shooting at you. If they hit you with a heavy flechette in your unpowered armor, it’s going to kill you. Since I’ve grown rather fond of you, I’d prefer it if you avoided getting shot.”
“I’ll do my best,” One Twenty-Four said dryly.
Over the next half hour, One Twenty-Four continued to refine her plan and was finally satisfied that she’d done the best she could. Fei had returned to the main compartment to continue directing the setting up of barricades to help defend engineering.
One Twenty-Four settled into what she thought was the best initial firing position, loaded her weapon, and tried to relax. Being tense while waiting for the oncoming fight wasn’t going to do her any good.
If they were fortunate, Captain Anders would be able to end this fight without the ship being boarded at all. However, she couldn’t count on that and knew that she had to plan on fighting here in engineering and perhaps in other portions of the ship.
How times had changed. Just a short while ago, she’d barely won a fistfight with Thirty-One. The girl wouldn’t recognize her now. She barely recognized herself.
She’d do whatever it took to protect her friends and survive. Dangling just beyond her reach was a new life. She refused to even contemplate having it snatched away from her now. Better to die first. Or to kill everyone that wanted to stop them.
38
Grace spent the next hour getting the area around the bridge set up for defense. If the Singularity boarded them, the fighting was going to be brutal, but there were some upsides. The bridge was heavily armored to prevent it from being breached, for one.
The second was that boarders wouldn’t want to destroy the control systems. That would limit the kinds of weapons they’d be willing to employ.
And that was only if boarders actually managed to get onto Gargoyle at all. A heavy cruiser had a lot of firepower, even excluding the beam weapons that made it so potent a fighting platform.
Yes, they’d be more at risk because they couldn’t use the battle screens, but once again, the question was going to be whether or not the destroyers would be interested in the outright destruction of the heavy cruiser to begin with.
The enemy was starting out at a significant disadvantage. First, they’d yet to realize that Gargoyle had been seized in the first place. Once they’d made that leap, then they had to remotely assess how much of the ship was under the control of the new ownership.
Since it would be unreasonable for the enemy just to assume that the new owners had somehow found a way to override any computer lockouts, they had to be wondering whether or not the ship was just sitting here because she couldn’t move. If the lockouts had still been in place, they wouldn’t have been able to fire the weapons either.
The smart bet for them would be to assume that the new owners had complete control of the ship, but since they’d acquired that control through unlikely means, it might be a little hard for the destroyer commanders to completely make that leap of faith.
Her basic assessment was that if the enemy even realized the scope of what was going on, they’d try to disable the heavy cruiser while launching their boarding pods. If Anders could get enough of their missile batteries online to overwhelm one or both of the destroyers in that initial exchange, this fight would be over.
The most significant risk was that they’d lose their remaining fusion plant due to damage. If that happened, they’d have to scuttle the heavy cruiser and stuff everyone aboard Bright Passage. And if the freighter participated in the ambush and was destroyed as well, they’d be completely and utterly screwed.
She ran her thoughts past Anders as they waited for the destroyers to make their way into the system, and he nodded. “That pretty much mirrors my thinking. It’s going to be a toss-up when someone tries to report what they found at Aponte.
“I figure they’re going to wait until there’s only a slight communications lag before they attempt to do that. No one wants to make their boss sit there waiting for questions to be answered with nothing but blank looks on everyone’s faces.
“Most people can accept a couple of seconds, but when you get higher than that, it starts wearing on your nerves fast. They may send a recorded mes
sage of what they found before they get here and expect a response. If that’s the case, we’ll have to start playing around with excuses and see what we can manage.”
Grace considered both of those options. Waiting until they were at close range would put the enemy inside their missile envelope. They could then ambush the two destroyers before they even knew what was coming.
So, of course, it made a lot more sense to plan for them to send Gargoyle a message about what they discovered and demand some kind of feedback.
“What about orbital mechanics?” she asked. “I know the commercial harvesting orbital is moving around the gas giant, so that means that we are too. Are we going to be in their direct line of sight the entire time, or is there a point where we’re going to be blocked by the planet or some of its moons?”
“Sadly, no,” he said. “They’ve pretty much got a straight shot in from the flip point, and we’re visible all the way in. At least Bright Passage is safely on the other side of the orbital, and they’ll have no reason to associate her with us. We’ll have total surprise if we have to fire her concealed weapons.”
Grace really hoped it didn’t come to that. She’d much rather have the two destroyers blissfully wander into firing range. A hail of missiles from their flagship would kill them at point-blank range if they didn’t even have their antimissile defenses online.
The next hour passed at a snail’s pace. The two destroyers made their way toward the gas giant at a leisurely rate and only occasionally focused their scanners toward the planet itself.
According to Anders, both Fleet and the Singularity warships did a lot more active scanning than commercial vessels, just to be sure that the space around them was clear.
But in this case, it didn’t seem that they were overly interested in Gargoyle or the area around the planet itself. That boded well for their ultimate chances of success if circumstances held.