by Terry Mixon
A noise back at the hatch had her turning her head to see Fowler entering the bridge. He’d changed from his prisoner’s coveralls into a deep-blue ship’s suit that had no markings of rank. It seemed to be tailored and was probably comfortable.
“Pardon the intrusion,” the nobleman said. “Since we’re about to risk everything on the toss of the dice, I figured it would be in my best interest to be here. It also doesn’t hurt that this section of the ship is the most protected on the ship.”
The last bit was said with something of a sly smile.
“She’s your ship,” Anders said. “You’re more than welcome to be wherever you like.”
“Until the prize court makes a ruling, that’s not true,” the duke disagreed. “You’ve seized this vessel from enemy hands, and until you turn her over inside the Empire, she’s yours. I’m absolutely not going to try to put my thumb on the scales to influence what you do, Captain.”
“If I can pull this off, it’s going to look good on my record,” Anders admitted. “If I don’t, I probably won’t survive to have my ass chewed for making whatever mistakes I make.”
“We have an incoming transmission,” a man at a console on the far left said. “It looks like it’s a report of some kind. Transmission lag is about eight seconds.”
“Put it up on the screen.”
The image of a man sitting in the center seat of a small bridge appeared. He wore the same kind of uniform as the officers on this ship had, but the insignia were different.
For that matter, so was the layout of the bridge. The details that Grace could see were similar to what she’d seen on destroyers in the past, but this was obviously not an Imperial vessel.
“The news is grave, Legate,” the man said. “It appears that there was some kind of sabotage at the transshipment center in the Aponte system. It was destroyed with great loss of life. At this time, the local authorities have not determined who was responsible, and they’ve requested assistance. What are your orders?”
The man sat there attentively, obviously waiting for a response.
“Well, that limits our options,” Anders grumbled. “Send back a response that the legate is currently occupied in engineering. Say that the fusion plant has been fluctuating more significantly in the last several hours and requires his full attention.
“Tell them he’s going to want them to report here in person once they arrive in orbit and leave it at that. Hopefully, that’ll be enough to satisfy them.”
The man sitting at the console did as instructed, obviously using voice only. The man on the screen looked exactly the same as he had before until there was enough time for the transmission to cycle through being sent out and his response coming back in.
The man frowned. “Put Sub-Legate Guarris on, then. I need to pass on a few details immediately.”
“Tell him that he’s with the legate and that he’ll get back to him as soon as he can,” Anders said.
Grace had her doubts about whether this was going to work. Then again, now that communications had started, the chances of them actually fooling the enemy were low.
The man on the screen frowned even deeper once the time lag had passed. “Give me video so I can see who I’m speaking with.”
“It’s not going to work, but tell him that we’re having issues with the visual end of the communications gear,” Anders said.
Grace knew that wasn’t going to work. They were screwed.
The man’s expression confirmed her assessment, and it was obvious that he didn’t believe a word of what he was hearing. “What’s going on? Who has the watch? Who is this?”
“That tears it,” Anders said. “No way they’re going to buy what we’re selling. Don’t respond to anything else. Something I read as a kid that applies. ‘Say nothing. Let them deduce our lies for themselves.’”
The man waited for a long while, saying nothing. When it became evident that no one was going to answer him, he shook his head.
“I have no idea how you’ve managed to capture Ever-Loyal Warrior, but that’s obviously what’s happened. I’ll give you one chance to surrender before I use force to take her back from you.
“My ships will be in missile range within half an hour, and if you haven’t surrendered at that time, I’ll use my marines to retake the ship. Or, if I’m being paranoid, you can have Legate Lucius tell me so. Good luck convincing him to lie for you.”
The transmission ended, and Anders sighed. “Well, that could have gone better.”
He turned to face Fowler and Grace. “I’m not going to fire at them until they’re in an ambush position. I could probably open up on them at longer range, and we’d win that missile duel, but the chances of critical damage to this ship are too high.
“The best way to make this work is to lull them into a false sense of security and then hit them between the eyes with a hammer before they suspect what’s really going on.”
“And how are you going to do that?” Fowler asked. “They’re going to be close enough to detect anything we do.”
“They’re going to disregard Bright Passage. She might not be able to kill one of the destroyers, but she can certainly knock it out of the fight. That just leaves one for us to deal with. And, of course, any boarding pods they happen to launch. We’ll try to use the antimissile defenses to take them out.”
Grace shook her head. “I wouldn’t hold my breath if I were you. Boarding pods don’t travel at the same speed as missiles, so the targeting is going to be screwy. They’re slower, so there’s still some chance that you’ll hit some, so I’m not going to totally disregard the possibility, but we’re going to have boarders.
“We’re as prepared as we can be to fight them. You make sure that those ships don’t shoot us to pieces, and we’ll take care of any boarders that manage to get here in one piece.”
“What’s your attack plan going to be, Captain?” Fowler asked. “Isn’t a missile duel at this kind of range like having a knife fight in your shower?”
“That’s quite an evocative turn of phrase you have there, Your Grace,” Anders said with a grimace. “It would be ugly, which is why that’s not what I’m going to do.
“It’s risky—damned risky—but I’m going to use the beam weapons. We’re not maneuvering, and we won’t have battle screens up, so the power draw should probably be low enough not to trigger instability in the fusion plant.”
That did seem risky to Grace, but she wasn’t a Fleet officer. If Anders thought that was the best course of action, then she wasn’t going to argue. Her job was to fight when the enemy marines reached the ship, so that was what she’d focus on.
Standing there on the bridge and watching the enemy ships come closer was nerve-wracking. They crossed into missile range, and when there was no response from Gargoyle, they continued in.
In a show of just how callous the Singularity was about its civilians, they used the commercial orbital to obscure themselves as the range closed. Bad for them, but it meant that the destroyers would come right past Bright Passage.
The maneuver certainly upset the civilians, because they immediately started asking what was going on and demanding answers that no one was willing to give them.
“I’m going to stun the prisoners now,” Anders said. “Now they’ll be out of the fight no matter what happens.”
When the action finally started, everything seemed to happen all at once. The destroyers came around the orbital and launched six boarding pods toward Gargoyle. Bright Passage was perfectly positioned to unload all of her concealed missiles directly into one of the destroyers at point-blank range.
Some of the enemy’s automated defenses must’ve reacted, because the destroyer fired one missile back at the freighter even as Bright Passage began jettisoning escape pods. The missile impact didn’t cause the freighter to blow up, but Grace doubted the ship they’d been traveling on for so long was going to come out of this in operable condition.
Grace really didn’t have an oppor
tunity to guess at how badly damaged the destroyer was before the lights on the bridge dimmed, and Gargoyle fired her beam weapons into the undamaged destroyer. That ship didn’t have an opportunity to react before it exploded.
Something must’ve struck the remaining destroyer, because he began tumbling and then abruptly exploded moments later. Neither of the Singularity ships had managed to eject a single escape pod.
That still left the pods racing toward the heavy cruiser. The antimissile defenses did their best but only managed to stop two. The survivors slammed into the aft section of the heavy cruiser, disgorging their marines very close to engineering.
That meant that her forces there would be outnumbered three to one and needed immediate reinforcement. Even with all her marines, this was going to be an ugly fight.
“I think they’re all going to go for engineering, but I want you to keep me updated about where every single intruder is,” Grace said. “I’ll leave you some guards, but I’m taking most of my marines with me. Lock the hatch.”
“It looks like they entered the ship right where we were keeping the Singularity prisoners,” one of the officers said. “That entire section is open to vacuum.”
The overhead lights flickered and then went out. The darkness lasted less than a second before the emergency lights came on, and an alarm started wailing.
“The fusion plant just shut down,” the same man said. “It looks like Kayden thought it was about to do something unpleasant.”
“Perfect,” Anders said. “Get Kyle to give me an update. Kayden is going to be too busy to talk. Tell him that we need to get that fusion plant back online as soon as possible. If another ship comes into this system, we’re sitting ducks.”
Grace cursed their luck and jammed her helmet over her head, locking it down. She had to lead the majority of her people back to engineering and stop the enemy from permanently crippling the ship, or they were all dead.
39
One Twenty-Four knew that something was about to happen when she felt the ship jolt. The com implant in her head came to life, relating information from the communications gear built into her armor.
“Four enemy boarding pods have breached the ship near engineering,” Fei said calmly. “We can expect an attack force twice our size to make an assault on our position shortly. They’ll try to disable the ship, and we’ve got to keep them from doing that.
“The marines outside engineering are dug in and will hold for as long as they can, but we have to count on the fact that they’re going to breach us. Our reinforcements from the bridge probably won’t get here in time to keep them off of us.”
There was a pause, and for a moment, One Twenty-Four thought that the channel had closed, but it was just Fei giving them a moment to think.
“Everyone is counting on us to hold the line. We’ve got to keep them out of engineering for as long as we can, and even if they get inside, we can’t allow them to damage the fusion plant, flip drive, or normal space drives. Keep calm and follow your training. Seal the hatch.”
The large hatch at the entrance to engineering slid closed and locked with a loud metallic clang. Moments later, the overhead lights went out, and some kind of alarm began wailing on the other side of the compartment. A second later, dim lights sprang to life, casting everything in the compartment in blue.
“The fusion plant is down,” Kayden shouted. “We’re not in danger, but it was fluctuating badly enough that I shut it down before it crashed on its own. I’m going to have to do an inspection before I can bring it back online.”
One Twenty-Four’s helmet adjusted for the low-light conditions, and she was able to see just almost as clearly as she had before the lights had gone out.
She aimed her weapon at the main entrance to engineering and waited. Since the majority of the marines were positioned outside, no one was coming through that hatch until they made more than enough noise for her to realize they were coming.
The fight outside engineering started with a loud explosion, and then dozens of flechette rifles began firing. Even during their attack on the bridge, she’d never heard that level of violence taking place, and it was sobering. Men and women that might have one day been under her control were now coming to kill her and her friends.
She recognized that she should probably be afraid. Unlike the marines, she wasn’t trained for this. Her skills were far from the level they’d need to be for her to survive in a melee like what was taking place outside engineering.
If she survived this battle and made it to the Empire, she was going to have a lot of learning to do. She never wanted to feel this helpless ever again. If anyone was going to feel terror during combat, it would be her enemies.
She didn’t know enough to even imagine what becoming an Imperial Marine would require of her, but at this moment, she knew it was her destiny. A destiny that those who’d tried to kill her as a child would dearly regret when she became an adult.
The communication net was filled with people reporting on the attack and Fei giving orders, but One Twenty-Four couldn’t keep track of everything, and most of the words they used to describe the events in progress just didn’t make sense to her. Once again, her lack of experience and training was hobbling her.
Then a series of loud explosions began. One Twenty-Four recognized them at once as the blasts of plasma grenades or perhaps the plasma rifles.
She accessed the marines’ statuses in her HUD, and her mouth dried up as she saw that a third of them were dead or injured. The dots that represented them continued to go red and yellow as she watched the violence outside take its toll.
“Breach imminent,” the marine One Twenty-Four only knew as Jane said coolly.
The dot indicating her on the HUD went red a heartbeat later as the woman died. Now all of the marines outside of engineering were dead, and the enemy was at the gates.
A few seconds later, an intensely bright explosion caused the hatch to engineering to buckle and come partially loose from the bulkhead. A second blast sent it spinning into engineering with an incredibly loud clang and armored figures very much like the one she’d killed near the bridge rushing through the breach.
The remaining marines, set up in defensive positions inside engineering, opened fire on the intruders, and several of them went down with rips in their armor in places that would be fatal to the person inside.
Two times in a row, One Twenty-Four tried to fire at one of the figures, but they went down before she could squeeze her trigger. The third time, she managed to line up a shot and took an enemy marine in the head. The helmet in One Twenty-Four’s sight shattered, and the armored form dropped to the deck.
Even though the enemy marines were dying rapidly, they were apparently just as well trained as the Imperial Marines and taking a toll on the defenders as well. The only plus that One Twenty-Four could see at the moment was that the close combat prevented the enemy from targeting the fusion plant or drives.
Unfortunately, the casualties weren’t limited to the combatants. Several of the unarmored crewmen lay scattered on the deck. One of the figures had red hair, and she was certain that it was the Fleet officer, Kyle.
As the Singularity marines found locations where they could seek cover, they began putting pressure on the defenders, and the fight became a free-for-all. One Twenty-Four was able to kill two more enemy marines before someone located her position and sprayed it with high-velocity flechettes.
With only a few moments’ warning, she was barely able to roll behind a large piece of equipment. The heavy flechettes searching for her chewed chunks of metal out of the device and shredded the rifle she’d left behind.
Thankfully, One Twenty-Four had practiced for exactly this situation and raced for the second rifle she’d concealed deeper into engineering. It was on top of one of the machines, but she was able to scramble up the handholds that she’d located easily enough. All that climbing rope during physical education was paying off now.
She threw herse
lf down by the weapon, flipped the safety off, and located the person that had been firing at her. The Singularity marine had been searching for her, and his weapon was tracking toward her new location. He must’ve seen her movement and was trying to line himself up to try and kill her again.
One Twenty-Four fired three shots in rapid succession at her target. One missed, but the other two struck the armor center mass. It looked like the heavy metal shrugged off the first flechette, but the second one must’ve hit something vital, because the marine fell to the deck and began thrashing around.
She was about to take aim at another of the enemy marines when they scuttled back out through the destroyed hatch, and the remaining troops that were at his side quickly flowed after him.
The sound of flechette guns firing in the hallway told her what was going on. Grace had arrived with the last of the marines, and the enemy was trying to prevent themselves from being trapped in engineering, where they’d be slaughtered.
The quick check of her HUD made her blanch. Most of the marines that had been defending engineering were dead. Many of the rest showed yellow, indicating some form of injury.
She quickly located Fei on the list and almost sobbed when she saw that her mentor was alive but hurt.
One Twenty-Four longed to rush to her side but knew that would be shortsighted. She had to keep her weapon pointed toward the entrance, because the enemy could come running back in at any moment. If they did, it was going to be up to her to help make sure that no more marines died today.
Honestly, she wasn’t sure how likely that was. She had no idea how many Singularity marines were still left, but she was convinced that her guardian would make them pay dearly for their intrusion into the ship.
Now all she had to do was wait and see how the fight played out.
Just as they were about in position to encounter the enemy, Grace double-checked the command overview in her head and grimaced. Casualties in engineering had been high. Thankfully, both Andrea and Na were still alive, though Na was hurt.