The Dotari Salvation (Terran Strike Marines Book 1)

by Richard Fox

  Getting back to the Breitenfeld would be the problem…if there was a problem.

  Bradford ran through administrative details and Hoffman pretended to listen.

  “One more time for the doughboy babysitter over there,” Bradford said. “It’s been six hours with no response from the Dotari fleet. Their ships are operating under minimal power. No damage that we can see from out here. Valdar is sending us to the biggest ship, which he tells me is named Kid’ran’s Gift.”

  Eisenbeis snorted. “What’s a Kid’ran?”

  Bradford gave him the eye normally reserved for Hoffman. “Some mythic hero. Doesn’t matter. What does matter is that our Dotari advisors know where we need to land and make contact.”

  A haptic feedback alert vibrated in Hoffman’s gauntlet screen as a diagram of the alien ship glowed to life. He studied the details he’d already all but memorized from the initial briefing in the ready room and the mission download packet.

  “I’ve selected three breach points. I land with Fallon’s team at site alpha and make our way into the bridge. Eisenbeis to the secondary bridge at site B. Hoffman, you get the engine room. Might have to hit the brakes on these ships one at a time if there are…issues. Camp, you’re staying on the Barca as reserve.”

  Lieutenant Camp’s expression went into the freezer, but he kept his mouth shut.

  One of Hoffman’s eyebrows perked up. Who did the captain have less faith in? Hoffman, for sending him to secure the engine room, or Camp, to remain in reserve? If he was in charge, he wouldn’t have his worst leader in reserve and responsible for pulling someone’s ass out of a fire.

  “Enjoy those cozy acceleration seats,” Fallon said.

  “Cool it, boys,” Bradford said.

  “What about defenses?” Hoffman asked.

  “These aren’t warships. No weapon systems, no counter-boarding systems. I doubt we we’ll run into any awake Dotari. They would’ve answered us. If you do, let your advisor do the talking. Doubt they’d react well bumping into a Devil Dog, even ones as good-looking as we are.”

  Hoffman chuckled along with the others. Bradford wasn’t a total prick. It only felt that way lately.

  “Run IR relays to your breach point,” Bradford continued. “Barca will be our commo nexus back to the Breitenfeld. Questions? All right, get to your teams and prep them for a high-G burn to overtake the Dotari fleet, then everyone’s favorite deployment tradition…”

  “Hellholes,” Hoffman and the others said in unison.

  “Get to it, gentlemen,” Bradford said.

  Hoffman moved through the cramped hallway to blue bay where the boarding teams waited. “Strap in and get ready. We’re a go.”

  Lo’thar ran forward wearing half a Dotari void suit, causing Hoffman to look around for Fallon and Eisenbeis. Fallon laughed and chin-pointed at Hoffman, saying something that caused Eisenbeis to shrug noncommittally.

  Hoffman focused on his Dotari advisor.

  “Is this armor? It doesn’t feel like armor. I miss the cockpit of my fighter. These new suits are so complicated,” Lo’thar said.

  Hoffman resisted the impulse to admit he wasn’t an expert in Dotari equipment, or Dotari for that matter. “Let me have a look. Stand up straight.”

  “This is nothing like my old flight suit. They said it would be just the same,” Lo’thar said.

  Hoffman tightened the sleeves, wincing at the idea of his tech advisor losing air. “Where’s your weapon?”

  “What?” Lo’thar asked. “Why would I need that?”

  “Better to have it and not need it than need it and not have it.”

  Lo’thar looked around blue bay. “I must have left it in the ready room.” He turned to leave.

  “You left your weapon unsecure—”

  Hoffman spotted a small pistol strapped to the small of Lo’thar’s back and pulled it out of the holster.

  Lo’thar spun around. “If it were a snake, it would’ve laid eggs in my quills. I much prefer void superiority fighters. Easier to keep track of.”

  Fallon shouted from the other side of the deployment bay. “Do you need a hand there, Hoffman?”

  Hoffman turned his back on Fallon, then drilled his gaze into Lo’thar. “You forgetting anything else?”

  Lo’thar slapped the pouches on his chest and thighs. “I’ve got my kit.”

  Hoffman looked him in the eyes.

  “Which I’ll go through one last time.”

  Red warning lights flashed.

  Hoffman dragged Lo’thar toward the acceleration chairs. Each of the protective units looked like a mold a passenger could be poured into—deep and shaped like a humanoid. The chairs weren’t soft, but rigid and tough with two padded straps for each limb and three to hold the body in place. He tightened the restraints until Lo’thar resembled a package ready to be shipped at high velocity.

  “Booker,” Gunney King said. “Double-check everyone. Strap them into their acceleration seats about three notches tighter than comfortable.”

  Booker nodded. Despite her stature, the years of mixed martial arts and jiu-jitsu training she’d done as a teenager to annoy her mother had strengthened her grip. Hoffman and most of the others had been choked out by her during combatives training.

  She stepped to Garrison’s seat and clamped him down with a violent tug to each of his restraint bands.

  “Damn, Booker. I think I need a medic after that unnecessary assault,” Garrison said.

  “I am the medic.”

  “I know.”

  Adams, Max, and Opal laughed.

  Hoffman looked at the doughboy. He hadn’t seen the big guy crack a smile for weeks.

  “What’s the chance the Barca breaks free and flies against the hull?” Garrison asked.

  “Name one time that has ever happened,” King said. “Cancel that. Try shutting your mouth until I need you to break something.”

  “Shutting my mouth, Gunney.” Garrison leaned closer to Adams, stage whispering, “Just imagine the silence of floating in the void. Tumbling end over end until—”

  Adams smacked Garrison’s chest plate.

  For about five seconds, the high-G burn felt good. Hoffman braced in his acceleration seat and ignored the mission details in his HUD that he’d already read a dozen times forward and backward. This was nothing compared to the rough ride the Barca would make for the next eight hours away from the Breit.

  “Oh, here comes the real gravity,” Adams said. “You okay, Garrison?”

  “Sure thing, little sister.”

  “That’s enough,” King said. “Focus.”

  “Ten minutes,” Hoffman said. “Then the Barca will undock from the Breit.”

  “Then it’s time to kick ass. Board a defenseless ship. Full of sleeping Dotari. Run some sensors! Oorah!” Garrison said. “After eight hours with our thumbs up our butts and nothing but empty space for a million klicks in every direction.”

  “What the hell did you put in his omelet this morning, Gunney?” Hoffman asked.

  “Two scoops of stupid,” King said.

  “Good. I thought it might have been three.”

  ****

  Hoffman swallowed a sour taste and blinked three times as gravity faded away and the Barca moved closer to Kid’ran’s Gift. “I’m gonna miss this bucket of bolts,” he said to King.

  “That’s funny, LT. I was just thinking the same thing.” The gunnery sergeant’s voice was rough from the prolonged silence.

  There had been no contact with the Dotari fleet since the Barca left the Breitenfeld. Deceleration warnings popped up on each of the team leader’s screens, then for the rest of the team.

  “Brace for deceleration,” the pilot announced. “Thank you for flying Breitenfeld Spacelines. Please make sure that all personal effects are properly secured and remain seat belted until the ship reaches a relative stop. Lance Corporal Eric Garrison, you still owe me twenty dollars and two cigars. That number you gave me to your sister went to a certain admiral’s voic
e mail.”

  Hoffman and the rest of his team faced Garrison.

  “What? I’m a bad gambler.” Turning his eyes to his work, Garrison diligently checked his acceleration-deceleration chair restraints.

  Hoffman looked at Lo’thar. “Your suit doesn’t have the compression system of your void superiority fighter craft. Don’t want you to pass out. Again.”

  “Rather embarrassing,” Lo’thar muttered. “You get so used to the suit doing the work for you.”

  “Stand by for breaking maneuver,” the pilot said over the intercom. “Sergeant Robert Duke, you also have an open tab, so please watch your ass in there.”

  “That smart-mouthed punk. I bet he was cheating.” Duke yawned. How the old veteran had managed to sleep during the entire transit while under acceleration was a trick Hoffman needed to learn.

  The crash seats turned around and Hoffman felt the press of heavy gravity against his body as the ship slowed. He tightened his core muscles as though performing a deadlift or resisting one of Booker’s jiu-jitsu submission attempts. Fighting to keep the blood in his head was nearly as challenging as having the small woman kick his butt.

  When the g-forces subsided, Hoffman looked around to check his team. “Opal, are you okay?”

  The doughboy turned in his seat, which should have been nearly impossible regardless of strength or flexibility. “Sir need help?”

  Hoffman continued his visual inspection.

  Lo’thar gave a thumbs-up.

  King released an exasperated sigh. “We have a winner. Adams is unconscious.”

  Hoffman tapped his gauntlet screen and Adams’ armor puffed a whiff of smelling salts into her helmet.

  “I wasn’t sleeping, Drill Sergeant!”

  Things started to happen before King could dress down Adams or her team could harangue her.

  Bradford and Fallon’s team unstrapped with practiced efficiency, did a quick buddy check, and ran to the hellhole. They looked down for a quick inspection of the landing zone, then jumped in an orderly sequence. Fallon’s team and their Dotari specialist followed with no gaps in the deployment rhythm.

  The hellhole closed.

  Eisenbeis and his team moved faster than alpha team, leaving their acceleration-deceleration seats in near-perfect synchronization.

  “Get ready,” King said, calm as a sunrise. “This isn’t a race. Move with violent intensity.”

  Hoffman watched Eisenbeis’ team and waited for an update on his radio and infrared commo link.

  “Alpha team on the LZ,” Bradford announced. “I want regular updates. Eisenbeis and Hoffman, acknowledge.”

  “Heard,” Eisenbeis said.

  “Lima-Charlie,” Hoffman said as he pulled up the camera feed and looked over the target ship’s outer hull. For a moment, he forgot politics, personal doubt, and pre-deployment fear. The exterior of the Dotari vessel gleamed darkly with a deep-blue hue, nothing like other Dotari ships he’d seen.

  “Looks more advanced,” King said quietly.

  “Agreed,” Hoffman said, still staring at the ship.

  Eisenbeis and his team jumped through the hellhole, the last member of the team whacking his armored head hard on the way out.

  Everyone stared at the hole.

  “He’ll be fine. That’s why you kids wear helmets,” King said roughly.

  “Yeah, Gunney, but it’s bad luck,” Adams said.

  “So is passing out in your deceleration chair. Focus, team. We have a mission and it’s a go,” King said.

  Hoffman stepped forward. “All right, team, we’ve rehearsed this so many times, we’re dropping on easy street. Let’s go in there and see who wants to say hello.”

  Booker looked up and down the line, checking each team member for two seconds, then she checked her deceleration-seat neighbors. Opal was on her right and Lo’thar on her left. “Dotari are friends, right, Opal?”

  “Why does he need to be reminded?” Lo’thar asked.

  “There’ve been issues in the past with doughboys encountering aliens not white-listed on their targeting protocols. Opal hasn’t crushed your head out of reflex, so you’re okay. Rest of the Dotari look like you, right?”

  “Certainly.” Lo’thar swallowed noticeably and looked around the deployment bay. “If this was going to be an issue, I think we should have addressed it earlier.”

  Hoffman watched the byplay, then ordered his team to release as he removed his safety harness and ran to the hellhole as it opened. The hull looked just as alien and strange as it did on the camera feed but felt bigger to his eyes. He glimpsed a swath of blackened hull plating and exposed decks as the Barca glided above the centerline of the sleeping vessel.

  “Lo’thar, what was that?” he asked.

  “Checking the video footage,” Lo’thar said, cool and professional as a veteran combat pilot now. “I can’t find it. Can you be more specific?”

  Hoffman hailed the Barca captain. “Captain, send that data I just witnessed back to the Breit.”

  “Of course, Lieutenant. God’s speed,” the corvette captain said. “My pilot informs me that we have arrived at your insertion point.”

  He considered adding a verbal description of what he’d seen, but the words failed him. Other damage on the exterior of the ship appeared random, obvious products of space debris encountered during a long voyage. The now-sleeping counter-asteroid batteries had obviously destroyed large meteors, leaving the smaller debris to spatter against the hull. What he was looking at now was a line. For a split second, he thought he saw a right angle cut into the anti-meteor plating.

  Hoffman spotted the outline of access doors in a wide trench running along the edge of the ship. During the briefing, he’d thought back to holographs of the Canticle of Reason he’d seen during mission research and movies. The last of the Dotari had been rescued on the Canticle. Such a massive ship was hard to take in all at once. The Kid’ran’s Gift was bigger…and darker. The endless presence of the ship was high-jacking his imagination.

  “There we go,” Lo’thar said.

  Hoffman grabbed the rim of the hellhole and went out face-first, pushing off with the anti-grav liners in his boots. He flew toward the Dotari ship, looking back once to see his team right behind him.

  Opal’s performance was as textbook as ever. The only thing that made him stand out in the formation was his size.

  Hoffman twisted at the last second and grabbed the edge of the trench with his boots. He’d known they would work, but feeling them grab hold always felt like a huge milestone during any boarding operation.

  His team formed a perimeter, weapons facing out to protect the desired landing zone of their principal.

  Lo’thar came in too fast and missed the edge of the metal canyon.

  Hoffman grabbed him by the ankle, struggling to slow him. “Cut your thrusters!”

  Lo’thar smacked against the side of the trench when he complied, hanging downward in the lack of gravity. He kicked his legs and slammed his heavy gloves on the vertical surface until he locked on with his grav liners. “I’m okay. Linings are tricky. The access door looks just fine.”

  Hoffman released the pilot and stepped over the side. Pushing with his legs, he flew toward the door, grabbing Lo’thar by the wrist and landing on the hull beside his inverted form.

  The door curved at the top and stood twenty feet tall.

  “IR relay set up,” Max said.

  Hoffman repositioned Lo’thar.

  “Thank you, Lieutenant. This is a much more dignified orientation.”

  The Barca floated overhead. Hoffman stared past them at the other Dotari ships—dozens more than mission planners had expected—ships that seemed far away to a man standing on the exterior of a strange ship in the middle of deep space. Light from distant stars barely reflected from their strange surfaces. He gave a hand signal to King, instructing him to get ready to follow with the rest of the team into the canyon-like trench Lo’thar had fallen into.

  Disorientation
was part of every EVA deployment. The worst had come as the icy grip of the void and the complete lack of gravity warped his armor and his senses during the jump. Blood pressure changed. He saw spots in his vision. The sound of his respirator amplified. All of it was strange.

  Planting his feet on a vessel the size of the Kid’ran’s Gift turned his already tortured disorientation sideways. Now there was a metal landscape and a horizon. Radio towers, sensor platforms, counter-meteor batteries, service trenches, and thousands of other Dotari-fabricated outcroppings gave the surface texture. The lack of light made everything a shadow on top of a shadow. His optics enhanced his vision only to make the scene appear haunted and dangerous.

  The Barca looked like an insect gliding overhead.

  “We’re like ants on this thing,” Booker said.

  “All the world’s a stage and we be but players,” Garrison said, doing his best to ruin Shakespeare with his best grunt-Marine voice.

  “Do your thing, Lo’thar,” Hoffman said.

  The Dotari pilot moved to the access panel.

  “Is he tiptoeing?” Adams asked.

  “It takes a while to get the feel for this,” Booker said. “How long was your training?”

  “About a million years, felt like,” Adams said. She turned in a circle to observe the surface of the Dotari ship. “Got to say I’m impressed, actually.”

  Lo’thar opened an access panel and attached something from his Dotari technology kit while King and the rest of the team jumped down and set a new, smaller perimeter in the limited space of the metal service canyon.

  “There’s a problem,” Lo’thar said. “The door has power but won’t open. Overrides aren’t working.”

  “The other teams didn’t have this problem,” Hoffman said.

  “This is perplexing. Likely an issue that we’re trying to access an engineering space, not a command area like the other teams,” Lo’thar said.

  Hoffman attempted to get Bradford on the IR relay, then glanced at his comms specialist.