Edge of Redemption (A Star Too Far Book 3)

by Casey Calouette

Emilie stared at the dead thing and wondered what the hell it was. She knew the strength, knew the animal-like resolve, but she didn’t understand anything about it. She felt it in her stomach that it was wrong. No one tampered with DNA like that. No one that had signed the Covenant, at least.

  “Koyo? Yeah, can you move?” Bark listened a moment. “I know the big bastards are there” She nodded and peered at the walls. “Two? Yeah, I’ve got some with me. Can we flank them?” She turned around and looked back down the street. All down the street was men and women hunched and waiting. Most were weaponless. Bark’s eyes scanned the hordes. “You seen Pavel?”

  Consuela plucked out a cell and spoke into it. “Pavel? Pavel!” She handed it to Bark.

  “How long?” She nodded and seemed satisfied. She handed the phone back to Consuela and spoke to Koyo again. “Five minutes, I know, but they aren’t moving anywhere. Just hold and wait.”

  A sudden and enormous sound ripped out through the air. A crackling mixed with a hiss all packed into a thunderclap. The taste of ozone was thick in the air. The mist paused for a moment, as if pushed away by some great shock.

  Emilie fell back against the wall and remembered the sound. Not just the sound, but the feeling of her insides churning. She turned to Bark with surprise on her face.

  “Tank!” a voice screamed. The collected militia sprinted away from the entry point.

  The creaking of alloy tracks on old concrete ground through the air. The high pitched hum was getting closer.

  “Koyo? Koyo?” Bark tossed the cell back to Paul. She tucked her weapon close and sprinted ahead, along the edge of the wall.

  Emilie followed as close as she could and felt nothing but soreness. She also felt rather stupid running directly towards the tank.

  Then it appeared. First the leading treads edged out from the gate and backed in quickly as if testing the water. It lurched forward again and the rectangular muzzle slid from side to side. The sound paused once more and then it fired again, a horrible crackling sound.

  Emilie screamed and fell against the wall. Dread ran through her. The tank was moving out. It couldn’t get to her yet, she could see that the barrel wouldn’t make the corner. But two more meters and it could. “Bark!” she cried out.

  The alloy armed augment ran up next to a concrete pillar and leveled her weapon. The bulky rifle rattled off and sparks flared on the running wheels of the tank. A small patch of alloy flaked away but the tank crept farther out.

  “Fall back!” Bark ordered and then dropped against the wall.

  Emilie watched her fall and thought at first that she was taking cover. Then the sounds of the submachineguns snapped her back.

  A pair of the bioaugments had dropped down from the complex wall and were strafing fire into everyone they could see. One of the Hun creatures fell forward silently while the other, with dumb eyes and odd hands, raised the small weapon and fired.

  Emilie pushed herself up against the wall and felt the first round tear into her shoulder. She cried out and fell to the ground. Her hands clutched at the wound and felt the burn. It was like someone had hit her with a ball peen hammer right on the shoulder bone.

  The Hun bioaugment stood proud and then its head disintegrated in a cloud of red mist. It wobbled and dropped.

  “Kari!” Emilie cried out and looked around for the ex-Core sniper. The creaking sound of the tank reminded her that she most likely had seconds to live. She rolled back and tried to stand. She saw Bark up on all fours with spit and blood hanging from her mouth. Beyond her the driving wheels of the tank came into view.

  She wanted to run, grab Bark and do the heroic thing. But her legs wouldn’t move. Her stomach was a steely pit that felt mixed between the urge to vomit and the urge to shit. Never before had she felt this way. She blinked twice and heard another loud crack.

  The driving wheel fell off the tank and spun away like an errant manhole cover. The track crumpled up and the tank lurched to a stop. It fired once more, as if in rage, and tried to reverse, but the track just made it skew and slam against the gate.

  Emilie looked around quickly and saw something new: a man coated in a layer of filth. Not just muck and grime, but the accumulated human waste of months of confinement. The man cradled a weapon that was different than anything she had made. He smiled at her and bared brown streaked teeth.

  “You!” a woman called out. Emilie turned and looked and saw a full suit of Marine body armor. She recognized the pattern and design, it was all Core manufactured to UC specifications.

  Emilie ignored the voice and limped over to Bark. She grasped her under her arm and lifted her up. The cold alloy arms chilled her fingers.

  “Hey!” Vale Thorisdottier yelled behind Emilie. “You’re Rose, right?”

  “She’s hurt! Do you have a patch?” Emilie asked quickly. She glanced up at the front half of the tank and suddenly wasn’t as worried about it.

  Vale stepped closer and grasped Bark by the arm. Her face pulled back and her faceshield melted away. Her eyes blinked quickly and were wide open in surprise. “Bark,” she said, like she had seen a ghost.

  Bark’s eyes fluttered and she fought to focus. “Vale?”

  Emilie stepped back and looked to either one. It was obvious to her that they knew each other. She watched as Vale scrambled to remove a patch from her chest harness and slapped the sticky square onto Bark’s neck.

  From every street and alley, more men and women stepped forward. They seemed to be in small groups, packs. They had a mix of weapons, most light, but some a heavy barreled mean looking thing. They all wore eyes that seemed too wide, too bright, too excited.

  “Situation?” Vale asked as she sprayed a small canister of anticoagulant nanites onto Emilie’s shoulder.

  Emilie spoke and watched the lurching nose of the tank. “Most are inside, but watch out,” she pointed above her and then to the corpse of the bioaugment, “some of those can leap down.”

  “Long time no see,” Bark said with a cough and a fluttering of her eyes.

  “You look good,” Vale said.

  Bark smiled and tried to chuckle. “Fuck you.”

  Vale smiled back and then whispered into her helmet. “Fuck.”

  “What?” Emilie asked. She had just began to feel like the cavalry had arrived and her job was done.

  “Half the pods are stuck.”

  “Fuck,” Bark said.

  “What’s that mean?” Emilie asked.

  Before anyone could answer, the front of the tank began to move out. Grunting and heaving noises sounded from over the walls. A massive foot appeared and the tank moved forward a bit more. A group of the brutes were pushing the tank forward. The barrel began to swing.

  “Move!” Vale cried out. Several hundred convicts, militia, and general rabble scrambled as quickly as they could away.

  Emilie fell over herself and ran as quick as her body would allow. She had no desire to feel the sting of that tank once again. Now, she thought, we’re stuck.

  CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT

  ––––––––

  William heard the alert from the dropship before he could see it. A sense of anger and helplessness came over him. He could picture it hanging in space gorging out capsules after capsule into the atmosphere below. But not now. “Repeat? Are you hit?”

  “Negative!” a voice cried back. “Port side no launch!”

  He growled and felt the warm, stale air on his cheeks. His eyes darted up and watched the orbital plot. They were coming around, he could see it all.

  The orbital they sent out earlier streamed the position of the dropship. A red icon blinked: zero movement. The Gallipoli was coming in close and would arrive at nearly the same moment as the Garlic.

  “Huron?” William called on the comms.

  “We’re trying!” Huron replied with a crackling hiss behind him.

  “Keep trying!” William called back, the tension grating. “Shay, is the plot going to work?”

  “We could
damn near run into ‘em,” Shay replied with a cough. She slid her hand on the console and a trace blinked on the display.

  William followed it with his eyes and saw the interception point almost on top of the dropship. A smile cracked across his face and his eyes sparkled. This was it. He took a breath and leaned forward enough to pat Shay on the shoulder.

  She jumped and glanced back through the blood spattered faceshield. “Some shit, isn’t it Captain?”

  He nodded and leaned back. “Give me the tally, XO.”

  “Huron, Perez, Kyong is wounded, Belanger has two broken arms, you and me.”

  “And the Garlic,” William added.

  “And the Garlic.”

  William felt the pit of hunger in his stomach and instead focused on all he’d lost. Half his crew. It hit him and he pushed it back. He knew he’d use every single person under him to do the right thing. They’d come too far for half measures and feints. “All or nothing,” he mumbled.

  “Captain?” Shay asked.

  “Time?” he asked, even though he knew the answer.

  “Three minutes.”

  “Will the torpedo be ready?”

  “Yes.”

  “Huron?”

  “How much time I got?” Huron asked with a twang at the end of the sentence.

  “Three minutes.”

  “Well, hell. I’m getting to the reactor.”

  “No mass drivers?” William asked. He’d hoped, at the very least, they’d get one operational again.

  “Nope,” Huron replied, and said nothing more.

  The Garlic orbited under the barest of grav drive power. A slight nudge early on had settled the course. The velocities were high enough that in the constraints of the gravity well they were locked in. There were no fancy maneuvers, no tacks, come-abouts, or halts. The Garlic was as committed as the Gallipoli. Physics ruled the course.

  William leaned forward and kept his eyes on the display. The projected course lines hadn’t wavered. He tapped his console and licked his dry lips. “In about a minute we’re engaging. Get to the reactor and stay safe. I’ll brief you once we’re through. This should settle it,” he said. “Shay, you sticking around?”

  “You got abandonment issues, don’t you?” Shay asked. Her fingers danced over her console and stopped, hovering over the panel.

  William wasn’t sure if she was joking or not.

  “Of course. And here we come,” Shay said.

  He felt better, but didn’t know why. “Keep the launcher aft, I don’t care what gets hit in the meantime. Just keep that launcher alive!”

  “You got it, Captain.”

  The ship clipped over the line of darkness and passed into the dawn. Before them lay the mass of the orbital station with the coal black ribbon streaming into the clouds below. The dropship hung nearby with half of the drop pods clinging to the side. Then the Gallipoli came into view.

  The first railgun rounds clipped the top side of the Garlic and plunged deep into the disintegrating nanite aggregate. Chunks of grit and stone rained down onto the bridge. Alarms raged the flickering screens in shades of orange and red. The mass driver rounds came a moment after in a cascade of violence.

  William ignored the alarms. They were old, the same things he’d been staring at since the two locked horns. His eyes only locked onto the status of the launchers.

  “Oh boy,” Shay said, and made the ship dance.

  The mass of the Garlic slid and pulsed like an overweight boxer. Even with the mass shedding off of the hull the ship itself was heavy and loud with slowness. It rolled and exposed a fresh quarter but kept the launcher hidden and tucked away from violence.

  The Gallipoli in comparison was erratic like a flamenco dancer. All tips, taps, and shudders with never a position held for more than a fraction of a second. She bore the wounds of the engagement but looked more like a salvage yard deal than a princess of Luna. But still she spat slugs of nickel and nanite across the barest bits of atmosphere.

  William felt himself grow warmer with the tension of the moment on his shoulders. He felt naked in the vacuum. He couldn’t throw a punch, couldn’t counter the anger, couldn’t do anything but wait. He ignored the pummeling of the mass drivers and instead focused on the torpedo. “Launch the damn torpedo,” he said through gritted teeth. “Launch it.”

  The Garlic pushed closer with the intersection point coming barely five hundred meters from the dropship Brendan. The plots all clashed in an improbability so rare in space combat. The lines didn’t waver, the courses were set and the moment locked in.

  A voice crackled from the dropship and the Italian spoke rapidly. “They’re going to be on us! Get them!” The phrasing was odd, but Monk spoke the truth and William knew it.

  “They’re not shooting the dropship,” Shay mumbled as her hands pounced on the controls.

  “What?” William asked. His eyes darted to the munitions display and saw nothing heading towards the dropship. “The torpedo,” he whispered, and began punching keys.

  The railgun fired once more and the nickel slug slammed into the center mass of the Garlic. Atmosphere, had it been present, would have vented. Instead, more alarms blared and the display filled with more alerts. It was a slow and sudden destruction that chipped away the aggregate.

  William felt a piece slam into his shoulders and rolled forward. He stood quickly and felt fire in his back. His hands danced on his shoulders checking for a breach. A chunk of grit, like chalk, was crumbling apart in his chair. He pushed it away quickly and dropped back down. “Prep to fire missiles!”

  “Missiles prepped!” Shay called back.

  He took a breath. He knew the Gallipoli would have no defense against missiles. The cutter was too far gone to intercept and he could picture the wall of nanite charges plucking it apart. His eyes took in the distance and he nodded to himself. Now was the time. He stabbed down on the only weapons system he had left.

  Nothing.

  Alarms exploded onto the displays. First thermal, then nanite. The missile propellant detonated in the launcher itself. Only the fact that the missiles didn’t arm saved the ship from instant destruction. But now they were truly toothless.

  William opened his mouth to speak and instead watched, helpless.

  The torpedo blasted out from the Gallipoli and sprayed a wash of orange and red. It was like a launch of an old missile and mostly useless against anyone with a mass driver. The velocity was ponderously slow, but it grew. It grew, and grew, and headed directly for the Brendan.

  “Fuck,” Shay said loudly and her hands slammed onto the console.

  “I’m taking it!” William called out and overrode the nav back to his control. “Prep and brace for impact!”

  “What?” Shay asked.

  “Do it!”

  Shay drummed on her console and impact alarms sounded. Loud, angry klaxons.

  The torpedo was a slow thing. Already the charge inside was burning brightly and adding acceleration with every second.

  William punched at the console. He ran the numbers and guesstimated as best as he could. There wasn’t time to lay out the plots and see the courses. He piloted by instinct, by feel, by experience. It dawned on him as he adjusted acceleration that he’d never intercept the torpedo. “We can’t make it,” he said as much to Shay as to himself. Dread slammed into him. Dread and failure.

  Shay silenced the impact klaxons and didn’t say anything.

  He couldn’t save the dropship. The Brendan would, without a doubt, take a direct hit from a torpedo nearly as old as the dropship. He could taste steel in his mouth and his lips were dry. “I’m sorry,” he said softly.

  Dust stopped falling from the ceiling. The Gallipoli had switched targets. The dropship now bore the entire brunt of the mass drivers and railgun.

  “Wait,” William said. His eyes danced on the screen and he saw the course. Fingers punched keys and he leaned forward anxiously. A grin grew across his face. “Brace for impact!”

  “Bu
t we can’t intercept the torpedo!” Shay called back.

  “We’re not going to hit the torpedo,” William said calmly. “We’re going to hit them.”

  The impact klaxons blared again and the torpedo exploded.

  CHAPTER TWENTY NINE

  ––––––––

  “With me!” Vale cried out. Her body, bulked up by armor, sprinted across the street and slammed into a metal service door. It crashed open and she fell inside in a heap.

  Bark followed immediately behind with Rose and the cell crew in tow. A grimy group of convicts stumbled into the darkness. The sound of screeching steel echoed through the door.

  “What now?” Emilie asked, nervous. She could hear gunfire, the sounds of engagement, but most of all the animal grunts.

  “You’re sure you can get drones online?” Bark asked.

  Emilie felt Vale’s eyes focusing on her. She nodded quickly to both. “Yes, if you can get me inside. All I have to do is engage the system.”

  “Standard neural network?” Vale asked.

  “Yes,” Emilie replied confidently. She knew it was the same style, density, and functionality as what was normally installed in planetary combat AI.

  “How many?” Vale asked.

  “Eighty-four.”

  Vale glanced at Bark and nodded. “Anti-personnel? Ram design?”

  Emilie nodded quickly. “I think so, yes.”

  Bark and Vale huddled close and each spoke in low tones. Bark looked up and spoke to the cell teams. “Tell Koyo to let ‘em out a bit, back off.”

  Consuela relayed the order.

  “They’re hitting the east, two transports,” Paul said, juggling his cells.

  Emilie looked between the Vale and Bark. “You’ve got to be kidding me. They’re pushing out, we’re going to lose it.”

  “I don’t have time for this,” Vale said and ran up next to the door. The light streaming in didn’t do much to illuminate the grime stained convicts.

  “Once they come out a bit, we can get behind the armor,” Bark said with a nod to the door.

  “What about the brutes?” Emilie asked.

  “Watch.” Bark pointed towards the door.