Duty, Honor, Planet: 02 - Honor Bound

by Rick Partlow

  “I understand, Lieutenant,” he said, “but what about the fusion drive?”

  “The Bradley launched two Shipbusters!” Pirelli interrupted. “The missiles got out of range of the drive field perimeter then dropped thrust. They’re probably programmed to go for the cruiser after they knock out its field.”

  “Sir,” Christian answered Patel’s question, “I can get the reactor back online in a few minutes…I’ve got the process started already. But with the power trunk as…messed up as it is, it won’t stay online for more than a few minutes before the electromagnetic bottle collapses. I don’t even think the lines are still intact between the reactor and the weapons pods.”

  She paused, and he could imagine her shaking her head. “I can maybe get you a few minutes of thrust on the plasma drives, but that’s taking a pretty big risk too…if the bottle fails at the wrong moment, you could wind up with a catastrophic burn-through. It could destroy the ship.”

  “Get the plasma drive working, Lieutenant,” he told her. “We’ll worry about how long it lasts when the time comes.”

  “Aye, sir,” she said, signing off.

  Patel fell silent for a moment as he watched the Bradley approaching the enemy cruiser on the Tactical screen. “Commander Pirelli,” he said, “Lt. Ghent, I want you two to grab Sgt. Elias,” he nodded towards the security guard, “and get to the life pods. Lt. Reno, sound the general evacuation order, then follow them.”

  “Sir, are you sure?” Pirelli asked him, eyes wide.

  “Commander, this ship is helpless and dangerous. Sitting here only makes us a bigger target for the defense lasers.”

  “What about you, Admiral?” Ghent asked, yanking free his restraints.

  “I’ll be right behind you,” he assured the man, “as soon as I make sure everyone else gets the word.”

  Ghent looked doubtful, but he went over and helped Pirelli grab the security guard and they headed for the bridge exit, pulling the man between them. Patel waited for Reno to sound the evacuation alarm, then watched the man go before he pulled himself to the Tactical station and called Engineering once again.

  “Lt. Christian, do you read me?”

  “Aye, sir,” she responded immediately. “I heard the alarm…do you want me to proceed with the reactor re-start?”

  “Yes, Lieutenant,” he told her. “Get it running, make sure I have control of the drives from the bridge, then get you and your people off this ship.”

  “Sir,” she said hesitantly, “what do you intend to do?”

  “Whatever I can, Lieutenant,” he said softly. “Whatever I can.”

  Chapter Forty-Six

  “I can’t believe they’re this fucking stupid,” Xavier Dominguez muttered to himself, staring at the scene unfolding before him on the cabin’s holographic display. He’d hooked his tablet controller up to the communications hub earlier, so Valerie could see the sensor simulation of the battle taking place in high orbit above them.

  One of the Republic cruisers-the Sheridan, she thought from its profile-already had its field down and looked to be in bad shape: even as she watched, she could see life pods ejecting from it. The other, the Bradley she assumed, had its drive field up but was heading straight for the enemy cruiser, which was also shielded by its Eysselink drive.

  “They saw what happened to the Sheridan when she tried the same thing,” Dominguez went on, glancing across the room at Valerie to indicate he was talking to her, “but they’re going to do it anyway. Morons.”

  “They don’t have any choice,” she said, quietly but bitterly. “That’s how you planned it.”

  “They could run,” he argued, seemingly rational once again, after several manic episodes that night…in fact, she reflected, he sounded almost sad about what he was doing. “They should run…they won’t accomplish anything…I’ll just burn them down once their drive field drops. Just like I’m going to do to the Sheridan right now…”

  Valerie’s stomach clenched as she watched Dominguez-or whatever the hell he was, because he wasn’t the Xavier Dominguez she had known for years-pull up the targeting display for the planetary defense lasers, cycling through one after another until he found the one that could fire on the Sheridan, then locking it on to the crippled warship. She knew she should try to stop him somehow, and if it had just been her, she might have risked it, even knowing it meant certain death. But the shivering warmth of Natalia in her arms reminded her that she couldn’t afford to be a hero, so she just clenched her fists and tried to fight down the surge of nausea that she felt.

  “Goodbye, Admiral Patel,” Dominguez murmured in an almost singsong voice as his finger hovered over the fire control, his eyes taking on a dreamy look. “Goodbye, Colonel McKay…”

  Valerie’s eyes squeezed shut, not wanting to see it happen…and then flew open involuntarily at the sharp, harsh bark of gunfire. Dominguez was already on his feet, his head snapping around towards the front door of the cabin, where the dirt access road passed by it. The individual shots turned into a full-auto barrage and the mercenaries in the cabin moved behind cover.

  “There are enemy troops in the tree line on the other side of the access road,” the woman who was controlling the biomechs told him. “We have two troopers down already but I’m having them take cover and return fire.”

  “Get out there with them,” Dominguez ordered her. “Go out the back and take the guards from the dock with you.” He looked at the other three mercenaries in the cabin. “I’m heading out with her. The rest of you stay here.” He jabbed a finger at Valerie. “If she moves, kill her and her daughter.” He grinned, a touch of the old rueful humor she remembered coming back into his face. “I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised that they tried something, desperate as your father must be.” He disconnected the tablet controller from the communications console and followed the female mercenary towards the back door. “Desperate people do stupid things.”

  This may be the stupidest thing I’ve ever done, Jason McKay thought, walking across the bottom of the lakebed.

  Sure, it had made sense: there hadn’t been any dive equipment available on the Sheridan, and their HALO gear and combat armor had an onboard oxygen supply and enough insulation to keep them from getting hypothermic in the ice-cold Minnesota lake; also, their load-out weighed enough to prevent them from swimming across, so walking across the lakebed was the logical alternative. It still seemed crazy to him.

  No starlight penetrated to the lake bottom and it was pitch black even with his helmet’s thermal filters engaged. Only his helmet’s GPS mapping software projected in the HUD gave him any idea where he was or where he was headed. At least the ten meters of frigid lake water should shield them from any sensors that Dominguez and his forces might have set up…and at least it was faster going than he had feared.

  True, it was like…well, hell, it was walking underwater, and his quads felt like jello from the strain of trying to push himself through it, but the lake was narrow and the bottom was fairly smooth. Except for the resistance, it wasn’t that different than low gravity training at the lunar base…he winced at the thought that the lunar base wasn’t there anymore, and tried not to think of all the people he had known and worked with who had been killed there.

  God knew he had enough to think about. Valerie was in that cabin…and even if it hadn’t been love six years ago back on Aphrodite, it had been more than a fling. He owed her, and the very least he could do was make sure that she and her daughter walked out of this alive. Despite what he had told Commander Villanueva, he was going to make sure that Val and Natalia made it out, even if he and the others had to die in place to accomplish the mission.

  The lake bed abruptly began to slope upward as he approached the dock, going from ten meters in depth to only four, and a diffuse brightness beckoned to him from the floodlights mounted on the old, wooden posts there. McKay grunted with the strain as he pushed himself up the slope through the silt and loose rock. He had to lean forward and support himself o
n one hand, grabbing at the larger stones that were half-buried in the bank and pulling himself up until he was just two meters below the surface.

  He couldn’t see them, but his helmet HUD showed the IFF signals from the rest of his team moving into place along the bank of the lake. Vinnie and Jock were to his right while Sean Watanabe and two other Special Ops NCOs were lined up on his left. The remaining 18 men and women in the combined force of Fleet Marines from the Sheridan and the Decatur had circled around the lake into the woods on the other side of the dirt road, and if he had timed everything right…

  He could hear the gunfire even through four meters of water and he felt a rush of adrenaline urging him to charge up the bank with guns blazing, but he held himself back, waiting nearly thirty seconds. The shots grew from an initial flurry to a steady background rattle before he finally felt in his gut that the time was right.

  “Now,” he radioed to the others, then pistoned his legs and surged up the bank and out of the lake.

  He grunted with exertion and impact as he landed shoulder first on the loose gravel that had been dumped on the bank beside the dock, his carbine trained upward just in case the enemy had been smarter than he’d hoped. The dock was deserted, though, and he allowed himself a relieved breath before he low-crawled up the bank, peering through the high grass that grew up around the dock pilings.

  There was the back porch of the cabin, unguarded…but through the clear transplas he could see three human guards inside, all hugging the front wall, trying to catch glimpses of the fighting through the windows. There was a body on the porch as well, stiffened with rigor and corpse-white from bleeding out. He assumed it was Charlie Klesko and felt a pang of sorrow: Charlie /had been a good man.

  “They’re all good,” he murmured to himself, remembering something he had once told Shannon.

  He pulled a flash-bang from his vest and fed it into the launcher under his carbine’s barrel. He didn’t have to ask to know that on the other side of the dock, Vinnie was doing the same. It bothered him that he couldn’t see Dominguez, but perhaps the man was staying behind cover. He just hoped Valerie had enough sense to keep her head down.

  Valerie saw the mercenary guards drifting towards the front wall as the firing continued and considered for just a moment trying to make a break for it, but she knew she couldn’t move fast enough carrying Natalia. They knew it too, she realized bitterly, which was why they weren’t bothering to be more careful.

  She cautiously peeked around the edge of the dividing wall between the kitchen and the living room and saw the three remaining guards trying to watch the action as best they could through the front window. None of the mercenaries wore full-face helmets, instead going with open-faced ones that gave them better peripheral vision and awareness, and that had allowed her to differentiate them in the few hours she’d been with them.

  The ones who had remained in the cabin with her were a tall, bearded man with pale skin, a nervous look to his eyes and a face that reminded her of a Yorkie she’d had as a child; a shorter, Asian man with a rounded face and scar that bisected his upper lip; and a baby-faced young man with mocha skin and a complex tattoo that ran across both cheeks and the bridge of his nose.

  The nervous terrier kept glancing back and forth from the back door to the front, shifting weight from one foot to the other, while the other two men crowded around the edges of the left-handed window…until a stray burst of gunfire punched through it, sending them all scattering backwards, cursing loudly and looking for cover.

  Valerie ducked back down, clutching Natalia closer to her as she buried her head in her arms, which was why she was looking away when the rear windows burst inward and a pair of flash bang grenades exploded in the face of the three mercenaries. Valerie hadn’t been looking at the flash and her eyes had been closed, but it was still bright enough that she had spots in her vision. The sound and concussion had left her ears filled with a hollow whistling and her brain muddled and only semi-coherent. She couldn’t hear Natalia crying, but she could feel the little girl shaking spasmodically in her grasp and knew she was in pain as well.

  She blinked her eyes and lifted her head, risking a look around just in time to see the tattooed mercenary jerk backwards as holes were punched through his chest armor by a burst of incoming rifle fire. She could see the pain and surprise in his eyes, as if he had, until that very moment, been convinced of his own immortality. He toppled backwards to join the other two guards: they’d already been shot before she’d looked up, apparently, since the blood was pooling under their bodies before the tattooed one hit the floor. Through the haze that dragged at her thoughts, she struggled to grasp at what that meant and from somewhere she felt a thrill of hope.

  The back door flew inward at the kick of an armored boot and three faceless figures of dark camouflaged bulk stamped inside, moving swiftly and efficiently through the cabin, looking for opposition and finding only her and her daughter. One of them stepped over to Val and crouched beside her, a gloved hand resting lightly on her shoulder.

  There was a distorted buzzing and she sensed that the armored figure was trying to say something, but her hearing was still fried from the flash-bangs and she shook her head, touching her ear demonstratively with a hand. The man worked a latch on his faceplate and swung it upward; beneath it was the very familiar and very welcome face of Jason McKay. She felt an uncontrollable relief drain all the strength and resolve she’d stored up and she sobbed as she threw an arm around his neck and hugged him.

  “Are you okay?” She could finally hear what he was saying as he yelled the question in her ear.

  “We’re fine!” She yelled back, and her own voice sounded distant and distorted. I knew you would come for us, she wanted to say but didn’t. “Just get us out of here!”

  “Sean, come get her!” McKay called into his helmet radio loud enough for her to hear before he closed and re-latched his faceplate.

  Three more armored soldiers rushed into the cabin and one offered her a hand while the others stood guard. She hesitantly took it, letting him draw her to her feet with ease despite her holding her three year old daughter.

  “Mommy!” She could hear Natalia shriek. “Who are dey?”

  “They’re friends, honey,” she told the terrified little girl. “They’re going to take us home.” But this was home, she thought, surprised at the bitterness that welled up with it.

  They were moving towards the ruined back door when she felt more than heard the massive, concussive impact from the front of the house, and the trooper guarding her pulled her and Natalia to the floor, covering them with his body.

  “What the hell is that?” She heard the man ask from right next to her ear. But she had a horrible feeling she knew exactly what it was.

  Crouching behind the cover of the flyer that he had arrived in, inputting targeting commands into his tablet, Xavier Dominguez tried to make himself feel rage at the attack, or glee at the carnage that he was about to unleash on the enemy…but he couldn’t. He couldn’t feel anything. It was as if a personality had flowed into him over the last few months and now just over the last few hours had flowed out, leaving him an empty shell just going through the motions. He was beginning to doubt his sanity, but his head hurt when he had thoughts like that and he wondered if he wasn’t being allowed to doubt anything…which only made his head hurt even worse.

  Bullets punching into the hard carbon fiber of the other side of the flyer shook him out of his reverie and he sighed in resignation as he pressed the fire control. It took just a couple minutes, though it seemed longer with the gunfire and the occasional grenade explosion. He saw three of the biomechs down in the shadow of the large tiltrotor that had been their transport, and another fell as he watched, a rifle grenade blowing off one of its legs.

  Then the first KE weapon struck like the hammer of a god, a streak of ionized air trailing behind it like a lightning bolt, a sonic boom echoing through the sky but drowned out by the explosion of liberated ener
gy that uprooted trees and sent bits of wood and rock flying like shrapnel. The next tungsten rod followed only seconds later, then another, then another, until the whole wood line on the other side of the dirt road erupted in a constant drumbeat of rolling thunder and flashes of lightning that left afterimages in Dominguez’s vision even after he looked away.

  It was a glorious, awe-inspiring display of power and it was in his hands…he should have felt god-like. But all he could think was that he hoped that none of them had got away. He waited until the last KE rod had impacted, then turned to Sergeant McElroy, the mercenary who was controlling the biomechs.

  “Send them in and make sure they’re all dead,” he ordered her. “We don’t need any more surprises.”

  “Yes, sir,” she said with a nod, typing commands into the control pad strapped to her left arm.

  “Sir!” Dominguez turned and saw Captain Romero, the senior officer of the mercenaries trotting up to him, urgency in his tone and the look on his face. “I can’t raise the men we left with Senator O’Keefe-Mulrooney!”

  “This was a fucking distraction!” Dominguez snarled in irritation, turning back to the cabin. “Get in there now!” He turned to McElroy. “Get me a dozen troops around the back of the cabin, block off the rear entrance! The rest get on line right here and back up Captain Romero.”

  “How the hell did they get behind us?” McElroy muttered, not looking up from her control pad.

  “Doesn’t matter,” Dominguez said, shaking his head. “They won’t be getting out.” He brought up his tablet. “Our hostages have outlived their usefulness.”

  Jason McKay scrambled up from the cabin floor before the last sonic boom had ceased to echo, a cold, dead feeling in the pit of his stomach. Dominguez had done the unexpected: he’d gone outside to meet the attack instead of staying under cover…and taken the defense satellite controller with him.