The Dotari Salvation (Terran Strike Marines Book 1)

by Richard Fox

  The Breitenfeld lurched sideways.

  “She’s sluggish,” Valdar said, thinking the mass of the gate in his hold was weighing his ship down. “What’s on those vessels moving to intercept us?”

  “Sleeper ships,” Gor’al said. “Each with ten thousand Dotari.”

  Valdar punched the side of the holo tank, then faced Egan. “Give me a sensor sweep on those ships. Tell me if there’s any life signs.”

  “Aye aye, sir.”

  Valdar pointed at Gor’al. “What happens if we break the laser link with the flagship?”

  Gor’al twitched his quills as he made calculations. “Should send the ship back to local control. Onboard computers are programmed to preserve the crew at all costs and maintain formation with the fleet.”

  “How do we break that link?”

  “Destroy the ship’s antennae.” Gor’al zoomed in on the approaching ships, highlighting commo arrays on four sides of each ship.

  “Backups for backups,” Valdar said.

  Gor’al shrugged. “It’s a long trip.”

  “If we had fighters knocking out those antennae, this wouldn’t be difficult,” Valdar said. “Instead, all I’ve got are my rail cannons and the ship’s point defense guns.”

  “These aren’t warships, Admiral. If you hit those ships with your rail cannons, you’ll rip them to pieces,” Gor’al said.

  The three-dimensional icons in the holo tank changed slightly and silence held the bridge. Valdar almost wished someone would crack a joke. “We came out here to save the Dotari, not kill them in their sleep.”

  “Admiral, those ships are packed with life signs,” Egan said.

  Gor’al looked at Egan, then back to his own work. “The engines…they could be temperamental and were designed to be ejected at the first sign of malfunction. The strongest armor on the ships is between the engines and the rest of the ship.”

  “We can hit the engines without risking the passengers?” Valdar asked.

  “There is still some danger, but if there’s one place we can damage them…” Gor’al tapped the screen where it indicated the engine blocks of the ships.

  “To get a clean shot will take some maneuvering. And we’re as nimble as a doughboy tap-dancing team,” Valdar said.

  Egan shook his head. “Sir, you can’t bethinking…”

  Valdar took a small step forward. “Time to jettison the dead weight. Have the Grinder dumped into space and have the crews begin assembling the device. We need to get word back to Earth and Dotari that there’s a Xaros-controlled fleet out in the void. Then run firing solutions to target those ships’ engines.”

  Gor’al’s eyes were wide and his words came slowly. “This is a strike carrier, Admiral Valdar, not a destroyer. What are you planning?”

  “We want a clean shot that doesn’t kill the civilians on those ships? We need to get into a knife fight.”

  Chapter 16

  Hoffman stayed close to Lo’thar as they moved from room to room looking for a hallway that would take them around the banshee infestation. He pulled the magazine from his rifle, looked at it, and slammed it back in.

  “You have plenty of ammunition?” Lo’thar asked.

  “Sure, as long as there’s only one lightly armored banshee in our way.”

  Lo’thar dropped his chin to his chest, staggering slightly as he forced himself to continue walking. “We will die and my daughter will never be cured of the phage.”

  Hoffman put a hand on his shoulder. “I have ammo. Less than I like, but some. Strike Marines are resourceful. We’ll get a viable blood sample back to Dotari.”

  Lo’thar nodded, eyes downcast. “Thank you, Lieutenant Hoffman.”

  Hoffman touched the side of his helmet to activate his IR link. “Max, how are we doing up front? Have you found a way to the bridge that doesn’t involve a frontal assault of the entire banshee horde?”

  “Not exactly. You better come up.”

  Hoffman reached Max and Garrison, who were staring at a blast door thicker than any other he had seen. At first, he didn’t understand what was wrong with it.

  “That is a decompression barrier. Once it drops into place, it cannot be raised until the ship dry-docks for repairs,” Lo’thar said. “We have reached a dead end. Unless you are ready to go outside now.”

  “Not in the plan,” Hoffman said. “But I guess there is no time like the present.”

  “There certainly is not,” Lo’thar said.

  “Garrison and I have been talking. Lo’thar can correct us if we’re wrong, but I think we should be near Bradford’s breach point,” Max said.

  “He is right,” Lo’thar said. “I saw this barrier in the ship diagram during the mission brief. It does not bode well that something caused it to lock down.”

  “Get us outside. Time for our spacewalk,” Hoffman said.

  “There is a maintenance air lock. Follow me,” Lo’thar said.

  Hoffman stayed close to the Dotari war hero, weapons ready. “Garrison and Max, use a stim patch. We’ve been going nonstop for hours.”

  “Yes, sir,” Garrison and Max said.

  Hoffman told his armor computer to do the same for him. Inside the shoulder section of his bodysuit, something sticky adhered to his skin and grew warm as he walked.

  “This is the air lock,” Lo’thar said.

  Hoffman examined the small chamber. “Check your EVA buddy’s suit, then we’re going out.” He checked Duke’s suit, half-watching as Garrison did the same to Lo’thar.

  “Your suit looks very good, Hoff,” Lo’thar said, brushing away dust and ice crystals—which wasn’t part of the standard check.

  Hoffman tensed, one eye twitching.

  Lo’thar’s quills rustled inside his helmet visor. “Is that not the right thing to call you? Your Strike Marines call you that.”

  “We don’t call him the Hoff,” Garrison said through gritted teeth as he ran his hands along the ring of Lo’thar’s helmet.

  “I distinctly heard you and Booker—” Lo’thar kept talking, but his words didn’t transmit over the IR.

  “Had to reset his transmitter,” Garrison said quickly

  “—beloved in a place called Germany. Didn’t know he could sing,” Lo’thar said.

  “He’s good.” Garrison slapped Lo’thar on the rear end.

  Hoffman slapped the air-lock controls and waited as air was sucked out and the doors opened. He stepped out onto the ship’s hull. The void was as empty as ever.

  “Focus, Marines. Focus.”

  He led the way across the hull, checking the grav liners in his boots every ten or fifteen steps—unnecessary but hard to avoid with hard vacuum in every direction. “Approaching the bridge,” he said to his team.

  “Ugliest bridge I’ve ever seen,” Max said. “Looks like a flattened cow patty.”

  “Is it necessary to insult the ship of my people?” Lo’thar asked. “Wait until you see the elegance of Dotari style on the inside.”

  Hoffman and the others faced the Dotari pilot and stared at him as the blackness of space loomed above them. The utilitarian exterior of the bridge looked cold and uninviting.

  “It is not beautiful,” Lo’thar admitted.

  Button-shaped, the flattened mound of metal was covered with dents and scrapes from thousands of years of debris strikes. Point defense systems couldn’t stop every grain of dust during the thousand-year voyage. The speed of impact made every speck a dangerous accumulation of kinetic energy.

  “Max, I see where Bradford took his team inside. They have a commo array. Tap into it,” Hoffman said.

  “Yes, sir.” Max removed tools and cables from his backpack and went to work. Time passed. “Can’t get the Breit…they must be outside the IR cone. Why would the ship move?”

  A number of answers came to Hoffman, none of them good.

  “If I switch to radio, the Xaros will know we’re here.” Max stepped away from the IR transmitter.

  Hoffman gazed across the hull
and the black void beyond it. “Load up a situation report into the buffer and have the transmitter do a sector scan. It can dump the message if—when—it makes contact. As for us, the clock’s ticking and air doesn’t come cheap around here. Drop the message and let’s move.”

  It took Max less than a minute to transfer the message from his gauntlet to the transmitter. The dish moved a few degrees to one side, paused, then moved again. Max flashed a thumbs-up.

  Hoffman set a brisk but steady pace, forcing himself to relax and his heart rate to slow. Garrison met him at Bradford’s secondary breach point and unrolled a denethrite cord without a word from Hoffman.

  “I’m really going to be out after this,” Garrison said.

  “You have breaching charges after the coupling?” Hoffman asked.

  “Trying to work, sir. One moment and I can inventory my kit. Didn’t have time to disassemble any of my premade stuff—or disassemble grenades, which is against regulations, sir—to add to that last epic blast. Just please remember I have limits and only carry so much cool stuff.” Garrison burned a circle in the door and Hoffman and Max helped him pull it free, tossing it away. Air vented from the opening, setting them all off-balance for a second.

  “Max,” Hoffman said.

  The communication specialist gripped his gauss rifle and slipped inside. Hoffman, Lo’thar, and Garrison followed.

  “Hold on. There’s an escape pod. Can’t get around it,” Max said.

  The team converged on the problem.

  “Options?” Hoffman asked.

  “Get rid of it?” Garrison asked.

  Lo’thar traced the nose of the simple craft, then looked over his shoulder the way they had come. “We can open the door from the inside and push it out. I doubt it will fit through Garrison’s tiny hole.”

  Garrison shook his head. “Ha, ha, ha.” He grabbed the pod and started to pull. It moved slightly.

  “Lo’thar, open the escape pod bay door. Max, stand guard while Garrison and I manhandle this thing,” Hoffman said.

  “Keep it on the rails or you will never be able to move it. The gravity is good here,” Lo’thar said. “And be warned the interior doors will start to close. Please do not take too long moving that thing out of the way.”

  Hoffman was sweating down his back by the time they introduced the escape pod to space. As it tumbled into the void, lights appeared over the door to the interior, disappearing one by one.

  “Hurry!” Lo’thar said.

  Hoffman and Max jumped through, then threw their weight ineffectively against the sliding doors.

  “Outta my way!” Garrison sprinted to the door and shoved a pry bar between the closing panels. Holding it in place with one hand, he grabbed Lo’thar with the other and dragged, then pushed him unceremoniously through the narrowing gap. At the last second, he slid through and kicked the tool. It quivered under the force of the closing doors.

  “What are you doing?” Max yelled.

  The pry tool snapped and shot outward, tumbling through the escape pod tube and into space.

  “That was my favorite breach tool,” Garrison said, staring after it through a small view port.

  “Are those tears?” Max asked. “Dude, it’s a pry bar.”

  Garrison shouldered past the communications specialist. “Had that one since I started. I should have let it explode into your face, Max.”

  Hoffman swept the room for threats. “Looks like gauss bullet marks on the walls.”

  Garrison composed himself, cinching down his backpack and raising his weapon. “And bloodstains.”

  “Captain Bradford was here. Look sharp,” Hoffman said. “I’ll take point for a while.”

  “One of us can do it, sir,” Max said.

  “We need to rotate. Just watch my back. You’ll get your turn.” He moved forward and slowed as he turned a corner and found a body in Strike Marine armor.

  “Looks like one of Bradford and Fallon’s men,” Hoffman said.

  The corpse lay on its back, limbs in an unnatural contortion that only the dead could manage. Dried blood covered the torso and visor, and a tear in the armor extended along the collarbone. Hoffman knelt and removed an identity chip from the corpse’s chest armor along with two gauss magazines.

  “Let’s keep moving. Max, log the locations of anyone we find so we can recover them later for full honors,” Hoffman said.

  “Yes, sir.”

  Hoffman used combat breathing—in for two seconds, hold for two, and exhale for two—to relax and focus as he worked his way through the aftermath of a deadly confrontation. Lights flickered and sparks sputtered from damaged wiring around doors and mini-workstations throughout the ship.

  He came to an enormous doorway that marked the section. “Moving to the next section of the ship. Should be getting close to the bridge.”

  A wide catwalk stretched out ahead of him. Steam rose from both sides as he moved across and his team followed. Lights flickered in the roiling mass of atmosphere below and above them.

  Directly ahead, a shape loomed toward the high ceiling. “We’ve reached the elevator shaft to the bridge.”

  Garrison joined him and looked down into the steam. The elevator shaft extended even farther down than it did up. “You hear something, sir?”

  Hundreds of soft clicking sounds penetrated the gloom. Hoffman heard metal renting as it was torn by something moving up the outside of the elevator shaft. Banshees grunted and snorted as they climbed up the walls.

  “We don’t have that many bullets,” Garrison said.

  “We must hurry,” Lo’thar said.

  Hoffman sprinted toward the elevator doors as a pair of banshees swung up from the bottom of the catwalk and roared, teeth flashing as saliva sprayed into the air.

  Hoffman’s gauss rifle came up in a well-practiced motion as he picked his targets through the sights of the weapon and squeezed the trigger. The first round struck the nearest banshee in its left eye and yellow and gray slime exploded out the back of its head. Remembering Duke’s suggestion, he shot the next banshee in the throat where the armor was thin.

  “On your left, LT,” Garrison said.

  “Moving,” Max said.

  Hoffman heard both Strike Marines firing rapidly but did not track their exact positions. He pressed forward and snapped his left wrist twice, extending his Ka-Bar and stabbing a banshee in the face, making time so he could reload.

  More banshees climbed over the railing. One stepped on another and sent its comrade hurtling into the abyss.

  “I’ve got more of these things coming up the other side,” Garrison said.

  Hoffman killed two more with his rifle, then slung it and moved forward in a fighting crouch with his bayonet. Two banshees charged. He waited until the last second and sidestepped to the left, thrusting the blade into the temple of his adversary. Without hesitation, he clambered over the falling body and jammed the bayonet into the eye slit of the second banshee.

  “These things aren’t wearing much armor. So that’s nice,” Hoffman said.

  “You’re full of good news today, boss,” Garrison said.

  A thin bolt of energy shot between them, then Max let off a pained curse. Hoffman turned and saw the commo Marine’s arm hanging limp at his side, blood seeping out of a rent just beneath the shoulder. The armor compressed the wound automatically and Max lifted and flexed his arm amidst a slew of profanity.

  “Grenades free,” Hoffman said.

  Garrison and Max hurled frag grenades into the growing mass of banshees blocking their progress toward the elevator shaft. Hoffman pulled a grenade and bounced it off the ceiling and into the back ranks of charging aliens. Explosions rippled through the banshees, blasting them into an ugly carpet of corpses.

  Hoffman kicked a mostly intact banshee to make sure it was dead. Blood seeped around his boots, and he was grateful that his armor filtered out the smell that must have permeated the air.

  “That’s the way it’s done, boss,” Garrison said
just before something grabbed Hoffman’s ankle. He looked down and realized two things: the banshee was ready to rip his leg off, and he was very close to the edge of a long drop.

  Lo’thar fired at Hoffman’s attacker, striking it directly in its temple. The banshee rolled away but didn’t let go.

  Hoffman’s feet whipped out from under him as he was dragged over the edge. On the way down, he bounced against walls and pipes. He saw the bottom of the shaft a split second before it came up hard and fast.

  Chapter 17

  Valdar gripped the railing with both hands. “Combat stations, full alert. Brace for impact.”

  He watched the Dotari ships racing straight for the Breitenfeld. “I think we’re right about the Xaros controlling those ships. They’re fearsome in a fight when they have the numbers, but not much in the way of imagination.”

  Egan kept his eyes on his own workstation. “Thank the Saint for that. At this distance, our scans have much better resolution.”

  “How many ships are we up to?” Valdar asked.

  “Looks like nineteen ships, twenty if we are counting the Kid’ran’s Gift,” Gor’al said. “The drone must be pushing their engines hard. My study of the old ships in preparation for this mission suggested they don’t normally move this fast.”

  Valdar nodded, watching the holo display as he listened to his officers. In the back of his mind, he thought about how far behind he had left the crucible gate. “Jamison, status report on the beacon links.”

  The junior ensign had spent the last several hours staring at his terminal as though the entire mission depended on his vigilance. “The Grinder gate, sir, is under construction. Crews are reporting delays as half the labor force is still aboard ship. Timeline for completion is several days.”

  “Good to know, Ensign. You can relax. They’re not going anywhere. Just keep an eye on them for me,” Valdar said. “Egan, take us around the Dotari ships. You know the plan.”