CHAPTER TWENTY TWO
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Abbot Kyenge leaned over the console with a crush of people behind him. A mass of brown robes and black cassocks blocked anything behind him. The Abbot smiled and looked perfectly in place. “I wasn’t sure the Brendan would blink, Mr. Grace.”
William wondered the same thing, but didn’t say it. “I had no doubts, Abbot. And the, uh, volunteers?”
“Convicts, you mean?” the Abbot asked with a wry smile. “We had to lock the sisters away back in Engineering.”
“Trouble?”
“Surprisingly no.” The Abbot turned his head and appeared to be listening to someone. “We’re ready for transfer.”
“Bryce, bring us in, follow the plot.” He glanced up at the system and saw the projected course sliding into the inner planets. “Thank you, Abbot, we’ll send over my Marines once we dock.”
The Abbot nodded. The screen slid into black and was replaced with a maintenance readout. Red and orange bracketed systems with flashing indicators near others. William kept his eyes on the screen for a moment and felt relieved to see nothing new.
“I’m off to brief the Marines. Keep an eye out, and if the Gallipoli moves, call me.”
“Yes sir!” Bryce replied.
William walked off the bridge with Bryce on his mind. The last time they got into trouble the Midshipman crumbled. The two hadn’t spoken of it, William hoped that Bryce found some peace with himself about it. He made a mental note to clone the console and keep watch just in case.
He found Corporal Vale with Grgur and Igor waiting by the airlock. All three were suited up in an EVA suit with the sleek fitted armor over the top. The faceshields were retracted and all three Marines stood ready.
William felt the same way watching the clock tick down. The inevitability of combat brought with it a certain reflection before hand. The adrenaline wasn’t kicking yet, that he knew. Not yet.
Corporal Vale saluted William with an armored hand. Red lines ran down the length of her fingers with an orange skull on the back of her hand. “Captain,” she said. Grgur and Igor stood at attention, or as close to it as one could in a vac suit.
A heavy satchel sat against one wall. With hard shapes pressing against the outside.
“Special package?” William nodded to the bag.
“Be prepared. I’d rather pack my own than rely on the celled ones.”
“Problems?” William glanced at the stacked weapons against the walls.
“No, sir,” she said. “I learned long ago to only trust your own weapon.”
William nodded. “You’ll have two hours until you make orbit.”
Corporal Vale let out a deep breath. “Not much time to prepare an invasion, sir.”
William nodded. He didn’t like it either. She would have to arm, instruct, and load an entire dropship of convicts in under two hours. On top of that, she’d have to coordinate on the ground. “What’s your plan?”
Vale said to Grugr. “Spell it out.”
Grgur smiled. “We’ll find anyone who served and set them as squad leaders. The little man sent us prison records. There’s some veterans.”
Igor started in a second later. “After that, we issue the weapons and load them up.”
Vale finished. “When we’re on the ground, we coordinate with anyone we can find and assault the elevator.”
The enormity of the task hung over the room.
“Captain, this ain’t gonna be good,” Vale said.
“Do your best, Corporal. Once we’re clear, I can offer orbital support.” He looked at each of his Marines and gave a crisp nod. “See you on the ground.”
Corporal Vale saluted. “On the ground, sir.”
William walked away and wondered if he’d ever see his Marines again. A part of him felt guilty, but he knew better than to slip into that again. He made his way towards the bridge and ran his fingers along the walls as he slid through the zero gravity passage. Would it hold? He wondered.
“Changes?” he asked as he stepped onto the bridge and made his way to the center chair.
“We’ve got another feed update coming in three minutes,” Bryce said.
William sat and reviewed the plots going in. The Gallipoli was going to be tough to crack, but if Mustafa was smart he’d go after the dropship first.
Velocity. It was all velocity. He played it through his head and hoped the Gallipoli would come out to stop him. The screen maneuver would be easy, the dropship could get in and out, and he’d have plenty of room to dance.
“What are you going to do when this is all done, Captain?” Bryce asked.
Shay shot the Midshipman an angry glance. “Bryce—”
“It’s fine, Shay. I think our middie is a bit nervous.”
Bryce blushed.
“A posting to some backwater colony. Maybe one where they seed the oceans with salmon. Lots and lots of salmon. I’d fish,” William said and stopped himself. It felt too personal.
“Fish?” Shay said.
Bryce smiled and slid down into his chair a bit. The tension that he wore like a lacquer seemed to chip away.
“How long ‘til our last blink?” William asked.
Shay glanced down. “Twenty-three minutes.
William nodded and poked at his console. His fingers tapped engineering and hovered over the comm request key.
“Holy shit,” Shay said and pulled back from her console. She snapped her head towards William. Her face lost color and turned white. “They’re bombarding the surface!”
William leaned forward and stared down at her console. “Get it on screen!”
The orbital feed was hazy and rippled. The augmented layer kicked in and icons identified the elevator, the city, and the Gallipoli. A cloud of brown and gray dust hung like a smudge over a corner of the city. Ripples of mass driver rounds punched through the atmosphere and added more fire. The Gallipoli was parked in orbit and firing.
The feed blinked off and the data dropped away. The satellite slid away behind the planet.
“Dock us up now, we’re moving!” William said, sliding the nav screen open. He adjusted Bryce’s plot towards Winterthur and maxed the acceleration. He felt the adrenaline crawling into him. His fingers slid the course forward. It shaved a few minutes, but would reduce the orbital bombardments when they came out to chase. If they came out to chase.
“Brendan, this is the Garlic. Docking in two minutes,” Bryce said.
The bulky form of the Garlic merged with the course of the Brendan. The Garlic deployed a slender umbilical and the two ships came together, linked by a single thread of life. The dropship, though out of service for fifty years, still had the look of a warship. The Garlic was the one that looked out of shape, bulbous and raw.
The airlock engaged and the inside pressure of the Garlic bounced slightly, like someone opened a door in the summer. In a moment the press was gone, replaced by a hint of a smell that grew and festered. At first it was delicate spice mixed with incense but then the pungency rose and a man smell wafted through the ventilation. It was stiff, acrid, like urine rolled with fear.
Shay gagged and turned her head away from the console. “Oh god,” she said.
William turned his head to the side and tried to breath differently to remove the smell. No wonder all the monks were on the bridge. He looked up to the livefeed and saw the Marines passing through the umbilical with the interior of the Brendan coming into view. “Get the gear offloaded,” William called through clenched teeth. “Bryce, go help,” he said with a nod to the door.
Bryce coughed, stood, and shuffled out with a hand over his mouth.
The livefeed showed the time worn walls of the monastery coming into view. Vale pushed through and found herself on the edge of a mass of humanity jammed into one spot. Before her stood a wall of grimy, dirty disheveled men and women. A layer of brownish filth ringed every face while the hair was a universal shade of greasy gray.
The combined mass
of the convicts stared back in silence.
“Listen up!” Vale bellowed out. “I’ve got weapons and this shit ain’t gonna move itself. You! You! You! Make a line! Everyone else get ready to start organizing. I’m on a fucking timeline!”
The crowd pulled back a bit and the three men she’d pointed out looked between themselves. The first walked up to Vale and loomed large in the livefeed screen. He smiled and bared dirty teeth and turned his head to the man standing behind him.
He didn’t get a chance to speak. Vale slammed out a fist and leveled the brute. A shudder and a crunch followed as the convict slammed into the floor.
Vale pointed at a woman with yellowish gray dreadlocks, “You, take his place. Now go!”
The woman glanced from side to side with dark eyes.
“I’m an equal opportunity asskicker here, move it!”
Laughter rang out from the crowd and the convicts moved into action. “Paco de baso! Wee-ooo!” a man with a bald head cried out with a grin and a kick to the unconscious man on the floor.
“I think I’ve got this, Captain,” Vale called back.
William grinned. “Carry on, Corporal.”
The weapons flowed and bounced through the umbilical. Armload after armload poured through like a river of firepower. The last thing to go was the satchels of ammunition. Even less care was taken with the near impervious slabs of nanite charges. With a final hiss, the hatches were sealed and the ships separated.
Abbot Kyenge’s face appeared on the screen. “We have the course set, you’re going in now?”
“Yes.”
The Abbot nodded. His blind eyes bored into William. “Pick your fight, Captain, you’re at a disadvantage as it is.”
The words struck William and he wondered if he was foolish for charging in. He knew the most important thing was getting the pods on the ground and the Gallipoli out of the sky. At this point anything else was secondary. “I understand, Abbot. If anything changes, we’ll relay.”
“Good luck, Captain.”
“Good luck, Abbot, and thank you.”
The Abbot cut the feed and William was left staring at the flickering maintenance readout once again.
“Hit it,” he called to Shay.
The hum of the grav drive changed to a heavy purr. The acceleration display pushed higher until they sat at the maximum thrust the drive could provide. Orbital plots shifted and the intersection point of the Garlic and Gallipoli met on the far side of the planet.
William recalled the Abbot’s warning and shifted the thrust down by ten percent. He saw Shay give him a glance and made an adjustment to the course.
“Polar?” Shay asked.
“Gives us a few more seconds of engagement time.” He also knew that the Mustafa would expect him to cover the entry orbit of the dropship. If he came into a counter orbit, they’d pass by so quickly that either ship would only get a barrage or two. He wanted to take the Gallipoli quick.
The Garlic pulled away swiftly from the Brendan and plowed towards Winterthur. The command was given to prepare battle stations. EVA suits were deployed, fire dispersion systems primed and weapons loaded. The chunking sound of loading mass drivers soothed William, but not as much as a railgun would have. The missile launcher still burned an orange loader error.
“Blink in three, two, one,” Bryce said.
Winterthur loomed large in the screen. The bluish gray of the oceans contrasted with the misty shores and soot colored continents. The hand of man hadn’t touched most of the planet, everything was concentrated near the elevator.
Data streamed in and the passive sensors absorbed reflections of light, radio, and cosmic rays to show a mostly complete battlescape. The targeting display flashed and showed that it was waiting patiently for a target.
William glanced down at his console and rechecked the weapons program. The gaps in the program made him worry, but nothing to be done other than roll with it. If only I had a real pilot, he thought.
A sound like a cracking branch startled everyone on the bridge. All eyes rose from the displays and glanced around. A small piece of nanite insulation had peeled off the ceiling and fell to the floor. Beneath it a dull gray layer of nanite aggregate looked chalky and coarse.
William stared at the hole and saw other spiderwebs forming in the ceiling.
Huron stood with his arms on either side of the bulkhead. He wore an orange armored maintenance suit streaked with dirt and aggregate. His eyes were tight with worry. “Captain, we need to get suits on.”
An orange atmosphere alert popped onto the main screen and showed a slowly dropping pressure.
“Ya don’t say.” Shay reached to her side and pulled open a sealed container.
“Mr. Huron, what’s going on?” William asked.
Huron held his ear for a second and nodded. “I think when we repaired the hull, the nanites didn’t agree.”
“Didn’t agree?” William pointed to the slab of nanite sealant on the floor.
“Well, look at that.” Huron picked up the sheet. The edges crumbled away into dust and fell to the floor like snow.
William grabbed the canister stuck next to his seat and popped the seal. The EVA suit unfolded onto his lap and he hopped up, pushed his legs in and overlaid seam over seam. The rest of the suit snugged on and he sat back down. A faceshield grew across the front. He reached to his side and attached a slender pad to the hip. A tone sounded in his ear and the faceshield displayed air and data connections. “Grace sealed.”
“Bryce sealed.”
“Shay, uh, I hate these things, sealed.”
Huron tapped his chest and the faceshield shot up. “Huron sealed.”
“What’s happening to us?” William asked. He glanced down and saw Bryce squirming in his suit. “Bryce, take a breath.”
“Yes sir!”
“The binder that the ship was built with is being colonized by the binder we repaired with. Like two bacterias, the dumber one is overtaking the more complex system.”
“So we don’t have anything to worry about?” William asked.
“Well, the new binder doesn’t have the strength to keep the ship together. We’ll be soft like a sponge.”
“How long?”
Huron glanced up to the ceiling and scanned the spiderwebs. “Couple of hours maybe. Maybe less.”
“What about everything else?”
“Eh, it’ll hold together, just don’t stress it too much.”
“You do know we’re going into combat, right?” William asked.
“And me being stressed is going to help, Captain?”
“Just a bit of tension, eh?”
Huron patted the wall and nodded. “But not too much!” He turned and walked out.
A targeting alarm flashed and a new overlay lit up in bright red. The ship’s computer identified it as the Gallipoli. It held a low orbit with a velocity that said it didn’t plan on leaving anytime soon.
“Comm request,” Shay said.
“Who?”
Shay nodded to the screen. “The Gallipoli.”
“Voice only.”
“Hello? You getting this? Ahh, no video. Well, that’s okay,” Mustafa said in his rich Turkish accent. “You should have left when you had a chance. But no matter.”
“Gallipoli, cease bombardment, power down and dock with the elevator,” William said. He wanted a fight, and he knew Mustafa would never surrender, but he didn’t want a court martial finding him to be lacking in the proper etiquette.
“Oh, that’s rich,” Mustafa said. “You know, the money wasn’t even the big motivator for me. It helped, no doubt, but to be able to stick it to the UC, well, that was precious. Now there’s a bit of revenge here, too—but you don’t know that, do you?”
William furrowed his brow. He was about to cancel the transmission when his curiosity got the better of him. “Revenge? What did I do to you, Mustafa?”
“Nothing to me. But you might know my pilot, Salamasina.”
�
�I don’t know a Salamasina.”
“No, Midshipman Grace,” a woman’s voice purred. “But I know you. You killed my love. You took my ship and left me to rot with those colonials on Redmond.”
Redmond. The memories flowed back and William felt the sense of victory when they claimed the ship from the Samoan mercenaries. His friend, Von Hess, had piloted a strider into the heart of the mercenary ship. When William entered that bridge, he found the strider, a dead man, and a woman red with anger. He kicked them both off and escaped with the ship. He never knew her name.
Mustafa spoke, “I’ll get no pleasure in this, Captain, but I can assure you that Sala will.”
“Then come and get me,” William said in a bored tone. “I barely remember the woman or her dead husband. Both amateurs if I was able to take their ship.”
“Fuck you,” Salamasina spat.
“No, Captain Grace, I’d much rather if you came and got us. I have a planet to bombard,” Mustafa said, and then a click announced that the feed was closed.
“You killed her old man?” Shay asked.
“Yes, it seems I did.” William leaned forward and felt his suit tight against his stomach. He tapped Bryce on the top of the helmet. “Bryce, lay in the polar orbit. Time to pick a fight.”
CHAPTER TWENTY THREE
The room stunk of piss and feces. Natyasha stood in the corner with her arms wrapped around her shoulders. On the opposite side of the room lay the corpse of Malic with his throat raw and bloody. His eyes were open with his tongue bulging from his mouth. Urine was pooled on the floor beneath him.
Natyasha heard the sound of footsteps and tensed up. She fought back a sob and glanced over at Malic. He was dead when she came in, strangled, and alone in the room. Her heart beat faster and the footsteps paused.
Then they grew softer and away.
She let out a sob and held her hand over her mouth. Failure, everything a failure, she thought. The last thing she’d done for Winterthur was to facilitate a slaughter of citizens. Her citizens. She had no military to call on, only scattered cells of militia. It wouldn’t matter now. They’d come for her soon enough.
Edge of Redemption (A Star Too Far Book 3) Page 23