by Scott Warren
Only instants passed before the answering salvo returned in the opposite direction, and then the thunderclouds of Juna were shown what a real storm looked like.
Light washed over the Blessing, columns of white brilliance that slid over her hull as the Gavisari scout frigate examined what was left of the temple ship. Not much, to be told. The frigate was an ECW boat called the Oracle, armed with sophisticated electronic counter-warfare equipment, and Aesop hoped that whatever scan they were performing didn't extend to the realization that no life-support systems were receiving power, and no compartments on board were pressurized. He pulled his head back from the hull breach as the lights swept over the opening, casting harsh rays on the interior of the ship, where Vega and Singh were pressed to the bulkheads, short rifles tightened in slings across their chests. They were silent, EM emissions, even internal suit-to-suit comms, ran the risk of detection here, and any giveaway would rob their tactical advantage.
Or at least increase their already severe handicap.
The light passed, and the beams coalesced on the open airlock of the Blessing, leaving the hull breach in shadow. With an archaic hand signal, Vega swung through the hull breach, followed by Singh with the comms package. Aesop followed behind, Maggie's unconscious form under one arm. The last of her carefully rationed painkillers were spent, and she had succumbed to the agony of her untreated injury. Small vents of super-cooled vapor allowed the marines to control their flight, aiming for the open gasket of the airlock on the approaching scout frigate. A halo of light winked in and out on the other side of the frigate, careful adjustments in thrust as they closed the distance. This version of a boarding was never drilled, but then no fleet intel office had ever expected marines to be jumping from one crippled enemy ship to another.
Singh still offered text communications even as they floated across the exterior hull of the scout frigate. They could enter through one of the Gavisari ship's own hull breaches, but they would have to go compartment by compartment, vacating the atmosphere as they went with no way to reseal it. It would clear the ship, but ruin the medical facilities. No, the humans had to knock on the front door and be let in.
As the gap began to tighten between the two airlocks, the privateer marines slipped inside and clamped down with magnetic boots on the sides of the squat tunnel. The light from Pedres' distant star began to wane, and as the gasket closed around the battered airlock of the Blessing, Aesop uttered his own prayer, far from any god that might have heard it. Total darkness engulfed him as he laid Maggie Chambers against the curve of the bulkhead. Artificial blue light flooded the interior of the evacuated airlock. Vega and Singh had already knelt against the surface of the scout frigate hull, rifles unslung and pointed down at the metal doors between them. Aesop joined them, his heart beginning to beat the steady cadence of combat.
White gas flooded the airlock and Aesop suppressed his nerves, reminding himself that it was just air, not VX, as the Gavisar ECW frigate refilled the space with oxygenated atmosphere. Slowly, a hiss began to build, and behind it the sounds of the thrusters on the frigate continuing to make small corrections in course and speed. Sound, heard through his ears instead of translated through his boots for the first time in days. It grew louder as the pressure mounted, and he could feel the space in his vacuum suit pressing against him as his retinal implants registered Earth normal atmospheric pressure, and then continued to mount.
The exterior airlock on the small frigate was the same iris-type hatch the Gavisari favored for separating their interior compartments, and it had no window or porthole. Nothing to warn the xenos within of the death that lay on the other side of the thin metal veneer. Spaced around it at equal intervals, Aesop and his marines raised their rifles. Each would maintain nearly full cover as he or she fired down at threats from all angles. It was a textbook microgravity breach maneuver Aesop had hoped to never have to employ.
A thin thread of light appeared at the center of the iris, expanding as the metal slid back to reveal the harshly lit interior. As soon as the door swept aside, Aesop saw the clinging legs of a Gavisari maneuvering itself through the airlock. He took aim, and began to fire as Singh and Vega did the same.
The harsh, rapid bark of the stubby assault rifles preceded high screams from inhuman mouths, and was unexpectedly answered by a spike in Aesop’s radiation sensors. The air crackled, and a shower of sparks erupted from the bulkhead behind him. He ducked as the free-floating slag of the docking ring spar spun through the airlock, and leaned over to finish off the xeno he’d wounded in his first volley. It had some sort of armature around its flat head that shattered as Aesop’s rounds tore through it. Even without his xenotechnology degree he would have recognized a weapon-type emitter for an excited particle gun.
"The bastards are armed," announced Vega as he swung in through the airlock. "Jones must have warned them, has them expecting us. Where are the others?"
"Retreated, I know I hit one," said Singh.
"As did I," said Aesop. "They don’t die easy, tough xenos."
Aesop followed after Vega, taking the communication array that was now being used to jam outbound transmissions. Vega covered the hatch, and they watched as Singh pushed Maggie through the iris last and closed the airlock door in case the Gavisari tried to evacuate the air. Aesop jammed the interior hatch open for good measure, if they tried it they’d be spacing the forward half of their ship. They had to have heard those shots, and even if they didn’t know exactly what they were, the tripods had to know they shouldn’t have been aboard the Gavisar ship. Once the iris was closed he pushed off the wall past Vega. "I’ll take comms. Singh, you get to the pilot. Vega, make sure they can’t sneak up on us."
Vega cleared his magazine, swapping it with a fresh one as he nodded. He took position as Singh followed after Aesop, bracing his leg against the narrow door to maintain control over the rifle. Aesop reached the corner of the passageway and barely dodged another blast of the Gavisar small arms, warned only by his radiation alarms. His retinal implants were trying to classify the device as a directed nuclear projector, something that probably wouldn’t penetrate the pressure hull or kill their own kind but would certainly cook any marine caught in the blast.
If communications was in a similar location to the Blessing, Aesop would need to get past the two xenos covering the passageway, and they had it locked down. He took several shots at them, succeeding only in slowing his approach enough to hook a handhold on the bulkhead and maneuver out of sight behind a junction. Singh took that path, rifle at the ready as she floated down the passageway leading to the nose of the small vessel. He pushed his rifle out of cover to look through its camera and didn’t like the long, narrow passageway between him and the communication center, which offered little in the way of cover or concealment. The staff on this frigate were trained in electronic warfare, even if their knowledge didn’t extend to advanced computing. Spacefaring xenos typically had minds as impressive as any computer. Soon they would overcome Singh’s jamming, and then they’d call down reinforcements. Maybe even the fleet left behind to mop up Arda’s battlegroup.
More sparks slagged the corner of the bulkhead junction, the blast hot enough for Aesop to feel even through his vacuum suit as the projected particles slammed into the paneling. He could hear the panicked calls from the other end of the passage.
"Space walker!"
Good, let them fear. Let the Gavisari think that the humans slipped in from the dead of space to haunt their ship. For all the good that did him. He risked another look down the passageway. The recess the two tripods were firing from was shallow enough that he’d never nail it with a grenade.
The communications compartment was critical. The longer he took to secure it, the higher the chance of failure for this mission became. And a compromise of their position in orbit compromised the fleet below as well, blinding their eyes in the sky above Juna.
Aesop looked out again, almost losing his head in the Gavisari’s weapon discharge. It
was a clear line of sight, no twists or winds to storm with the clever tactics he’d learned in Pakistani tunnels.
The vacuum suit’s radio crackled, and Vega’s voice came over, competing with the sound of sporadic gunfire. "Sarge, They’re trying to push around this junction, I can hold them here but you’re going to be cut off if you don’t hurry up."
All of their lives depended on him getting down the hallway. He took two deep breaths, steeling himself against the odds of being charbroiled by Gavisari radiation if he failed.
As he made to swing around the corner, he felt a pressure on his waist holding him back, and looked down to see the armored legs of Maggie Chambers wrapped around him. Her arm wrapped around a pipe to arrest his momentum, and her other hand held something small up to his faceplate. It was a loose rail-mag grenade. She must have pulled it out of the underslung launcher on her X-87.
Humans had never fully adapted to L-grav combat. It was too foreign to the lizard parts of the brain that still controlled fear and response. Firing the grenade wouldn’t work, but it didn’t need to be fired. It just needed to be encouraged, and Newtons laws would take care of the rest.
Two more blasts from the Gavisari emitters made molten scrap of the bulkhead behind him as he moved aside and Maggie Chambers pushed the grenade around the corner with just enough momentum to send it tumbling in the direction of the opposite end of the tunnel. He held his rifle scope out next, viewing the feed through his retinal implants. The newer models had color transmission, but he had to settle for black and white as the 30 millimeter shell drifted abreast of the guarding Gavisari. Almost . . . almost . . . there.
The suit computer automatically muted his sound feed as he squeezed the trigger with the grenade just outside the sensor shack. The scope feed on his retinal implants whited out completely, causing him to curse and shut his eyes tight. The impact of the shockwave hit him in the gut from almost 10 meters away, even around the bend in the passageway. A churning cloud of dust followed the blast. No hiss of air or vicious wind betrayed a hull breach, but an explosion alarm now blared in a prerecorded Kosso Standard. Coughing despite the composite face mask, Aesop pushed into the cloud at the opening.
"Nice one, Chambers," he said. She offered a sardonic salute in response. Aesop supposed it was foolish to assume she’d follow orders if it meant staying out of the fight.
Once in the passageway, he engaged his magnetic boots against the bulkheads and began to pace down. He could feel the vibration of Maggie doing the same behind him. She must have saved the last of her painkillers to prove she could still fight, true to her word she wasn’t letting anyone else do the dying for her. The bulkheads had been peppered with shrapnel, and twisted metal reached for him in jagged shards as he traversed the length in a low crouch. A fire suppression system was adding to the dust as it sprayed from a nozzle, so Aesop raised his rifle and used the infrared companion sight. Hotspots abounded wherever his grenade had damaged, and as he watched, a hot mass emerged from the sensor shack. Aesop squeezed off two rounds and the thing went limp, drifting near the rear of the chamber. He couldn’t tell if that was one of the xenos that had been trying to fry his face. The delicate nuclear projectors were no match for the carefully crafted and honed X-87 assault rifles, built for L-grav combat with downward shell ejection and vectored exhaust to counteract the rifle’s recoil.
"Cohen, vibration sensors are going nuts, did something blow up?" Vega asked.
"Yeah I ran into a slight roadblock up here, but it’s nothing a half-stick couldn’t clear. I’m coming up on the sensor shack now. Singh?"
"Control is secure, Sarge. The frigate is under our control. I’m moving to assist Vega."
"Good," Aesop replied. He turned to Maggie so that her suit could pick up the laser communication. "Cover me."
Aesop tossed a second grenade, a stunner this time, through the hatch before he risked entering himself. After the thick whump of detonation, he swung through the opening with his rifle at the ready, drifting through the shattered glass of the desolated communications hub. A half-dozen Gavisari were within, two floating freely either dead or stunned, and another four huddled in the corner, muttering Kossovoldt prayers. The four lacked the curious weapons of the defenders so he dismissed them as an immediate threat. Civilians, survivors of the Gavisar Armageddon. Even as he watched, one of the stunned tripods recovered, shaking itself awake and latching on to both walls. Radiation warnings blared in his suit as the emitter swung in his direction, and he pushed off the bulkhead before it exploded where he’d clung. He sighted the Gavisari as it scrabbled after him, squeezing a half-dozen rounds into it. It took all six to stop the thing, and its momentum carried its body forward to crash into Aesop. They tumbled until the bulkhead knocked his shortened breath out of his lungs. Blood pounding in his ears, Aesop untangled himself from the mess of thick limbs and emptied half his remaining rounds into the other floating Gavisari before it could pull a similar act, also blasting apart the radiation gun. That first one had moved faster than he’d have thought possible, and he wasn’t about to give the other one the opportunity.
Clearing his magazine and inserting a fresh one gave him time to look around without concentrating on immediate threats. Aesop’s time aboard the Blessing gave him ample opportunity to learn his way around the xenotechnology used to design the alien ships’ systems. Scanning the room, he spotted a main power bus, and put three rounds from his rifle into the panel on the wall. The displays and tape reels dotting the compartment dimmed and faltered, leaving the Gavisari with no way to alert their comrades for help without significant repair. Repairs that, in all likelihood, Aesop himself would be performing.
"Stay here, don’t resist, and you won’t be harmed." Aesop offered in Kosso Standard before retreating. The doors were controlled with simple panels, and Aesop closed and locked the communications deck from the outside for good measure. If the four had rushed him, they could have swarmed him and overwhelmed him. The Gavisari were tough as hell, as strong and probably as heavy as a Grayling.
"Where was that cover?" asked Aesop, landing next to Maggie. There was no response from her suit’s beacon. The pit of Aesop’s stomach dropped as he gently shook her. She was completely limp in the microgravity, magnetic boots still latched to the decking gave the impression that she was standing on her own.
Aesop could hear the sound of his squad’s rifles clattering down the passage, closer than he had left it. One thing to be said for microgravity, it made transporting wounded marines less risky. That might just be saving the girl’s life. He disengaged her boots and pulled the unconscious marine along with him.
Vega was shouting obscenities in Portuguese through his helmet speaker back at the engine room, punctuating each taunt with a burst of rifle fire. Clumps of blood clotted into spheres decorated the air around him, and Aesop could see the vacuum suit had self-sealed over a nasty gash rent over Vega’s right thigh. A section of bulkhead in front of him exploded, and Vega was pushed back into a set of pipes by the impact, helmet ringing like a bell. Aesop grabbed him and pulled him out of the line of fire as another shot twisted and ruptured the piping, spraying a gout of what looked like water down the passage. Deep, gravely Kosso shouts came from down the corridor, and an iris hatch slammed shut as the remaining Gavisari sealed themselves in the aft half of the ship. If they had pushed up any further, they would have cut off Aesop’s return route. The xenos had control of the engine room, but for the moment Aesop wasn’t interested in the engine room. Singh still had her weapon trained down the corridor.
"Vega, Vega! You still with me?"
The marine must have had a carbon fiber skull, because he shook off what Aesop knew would have been an impact hard enough to concuss, or a fracture for the unlucky skull. "Yeah, yeah Cohen. Let me finish them up, only a few left back there."
"Belay that. Did you find the medical suite?"
"What? Oh, yea. Shit, is that Mags?" asked Vega, looking at the prostrate marine. Alright, maybe
he’d been rattled a little. The armored vacuum suits could only take so much punishment.
"Let’s move, I don’t think she’s doing too well."
Chapter 15 – In the Heat of Battle
Running the fighter’s engine at full power in atmosphere would tear the ship apart in about thirty seconds, but a fusion reaction would tear it apart in a thirtieth of one. Still slow enough for him to feel every molecule in his body fraying at the seams. Slow enough to analyze his own subatomic demise. Individual lightning cracks illuminated his forward monitor, but all at once the clouds were shot through with a brilliance that made the lightning look like a child’s captured glow beetle. Sothcide switched off his rear sensors to avoid damage to the delicate instruments, though his eye was already stung and bruised from the barrage of light flooding the often dim cockpit.
Two of his interceptors hadn’t cleared the area in time. One of them had stayed until his death, refining the solution for Arda’s missiles in an attempt to inflict as much destruction as possible upon the invasion fleet’s detachment. Static filled his radio as the Gavisari missiles reached the battlegroup, and a second sun dawned along Wing Commander Arda’s bearing. Sothcide reached out and braced himself against the forward bulkhead of the cockpit for the blast wave he knew was coming. Atmosphere robbed the exotic matter weapons of their kinetic energy that would shear a ship in half with the precision of a scalpel. But they traded it for incredible heat and a concussive blast wave that would overcome a cruiser’s antigravity generators, and toss an interceptor around like a leaf in a storm.