by Tammy Salyer
The firing armatures are wrist mounted, and most of the heat dissipation happens before the projectiles leave the barrels. Yeah, your back gets a bit sweaty, but most of that is from the compact battery and generator inside the backplate housing nestled between your shoulder blades. As plasma projectiles are basically soundless, users’ ears aren’t damaged from the firing tubes’ explosive power, though the helmet includes nerve-sensing soundbuds to gauge the user’s inner ear function as a backup balance sensor. All the user’s physiological data, from their lifemarkers to the suit’s nerve sensors, are fed into the helmet’s processors to help feed the weapon’s analytics and maximize shots-to-kills ratio.
Bugsuits’ manual operations come from either voice-code-recognized verbal commands or the fire control button screens inside protective covers that are mounted along the radial surface of each wrist. By selecting “manual,” “semi-auto,” or “full-auto” verbally or manually using the control buttons, users can decide the firing directives for either barrel separately. Of course, given the nature of having a suit that can control your arms and targeting, the only way to have it work at full effect is to set it to and leave it on full-auto.
The suits hang from their cradles along a ten-meter stretch of one wall with the helmets mounted above them. Fourteen suits at full charge are estimated to be all that’s necessary to fully neutralize a complement of up to a couple hundred conventionally armed units, i.e., soldiers. Plasma projectiles don’t have much trouble knocking over fully armored troops and burning them up from the outside in.
Checking the first suit in the row is a bingo. Fully loaded and ready for wear. I step onto the half-meter-high platform beneath it and operate the controls to lower it over my head. Flexing and bending in uncomfortable ways, I finally get the body sections on. The helmet is attached via hinges to the back piece, and I adjust it to get the fit just right—wincing as it bumps against my bruised cheekbone—latch all connections, and engage the calibrating system.
When it gives me the cue, I say, “Manual. Semi-auto. Full-auto. Engage.”
A mild ping sounds in my helmet to alert me the voice system is online. For forty seconds, more pings of different tones cycle through my ears, then a hollow, robotic voice says, “All systems online and ready for deployment.”
Go time.
My VDU reads one minute till Quantum puts the nerve-agent part of the plan into effect. I retrieve a facemask from my cargo pocket and fit it beneath the helmet, then wait for his signal. Pushing the bugsuit mounting controls aside, I begin taking calm, deep breath after calm, deep breath. Karl’s and David’s faces appear in my thoughts. If they and the crew made it out of Obal 6’s airspace and the potential gauntlet of attack ships Medina may have deployed, they would be within range to transmit to KL’s satellite from the Nebula by now and warn the settlers to prepare—either for self-defense or possibly for evacuation. If I see any of them again, it could be on another world. But it doesn’t matter. As long as we put a stop to Medina’s madness. For good.
A slow-building, low-pitched warning alert begins chiming through the ship. Someone must have triggered it when their mates began taking unexpected midday naps. I’m anticipating one or two lucky soldiers to have reached a mask before their lights went out. But when they see me, it’s their luck that’s going to run out. Despite the sparseness of the bugsuit hardware, these beauties do have a way of making a woman feel invincible.
TWENTY-EIGHT
On Quantum’s mark, I triple-time like a whirling dervish on speed through the hull, not taking a breather until I reach the main hatchway to the bridge. I pass only a handful of lights-out senseless personnel in the corridors, not a single person lucid enough to engage me. It gives me a second to reflect on how flawlessly every plan Quantum has been part of has gone down. In a perfect world, he should’ve been an ally. But here, even with a temporarily shared goal, I suspect it’s every man and woman for him- and herself. Shaking off this unsettling thought, I contact him.
“At the bridge. Ready to go. Out.”
The flight control cadre must know that things in the main part of the ship are not right, but I cross my fingers that no one had time to inform them exactly what was happening. The next phase is up to Quantum. He’ll launch a ghost brigade to make the bridge scramble to ready the Celestial’s exterior defenses. Of course, it’ll just be interference on the ship’s radars and intercept systems, but the crew won’t know that right away. The surprise will distract them enough for me to make my dramatic entrance. I should be able to achieve 90 percent casualties before they even know I’m inside.
“You have between five and ten minutes, Aly,” Quantum says through my helmet’s receiver.
“Hold it. You told me you were keeping the crew gassed until we get backup from KL.”
“And if the nerve-suppressant tanks had been full, I would’ve.”
I have a second to wonder if this is Quantum’s way of fucking with me, but immediately dismiss the idea. No human I’ve ever met has less of a sense of humor than him.
“Better hurry,” he continues. “Remember, I’m opening the hatch thirty seconds after my mark. Ghost brigade in three…two…one…mark.”
So Quantum’s plans aren’t always flawless. This is not the moment I needed to have that reality check. “Full-auto,” I tell the suit.
The hatch opens soundlessly, as well maintained as everything under Medina’s command has always been. The first crewman to see me looks shocked, not understanding how the bridge could be isolated and operating normally one second and overrun by a bugsuited soldier the next. His shock lasts less than a heartbeat.
The sound of plasma guns isn’t loud, but it is unmistakable. Almost immediately after the first man goes down, three more fall, then the rest begin diving under anything that might give them cover. A couple have the instincts to reach for their weapons, but the bugsuit’s targeting-and-triage system takes them out first.
To their advantage, the bridge is two levels high, and those on the lower deck, generally the flight navigator and two to three operations personnel, are protected—with the exception of the two who rush my attack to try and stop me. And fail. I dart inside and take a position behind a waist-high observatory counter that flanks the commander’s bench on the left. Medina. Where is Medina? She should have been right here. Behind me, the hatch closes, locking in the bridge’s air supply and locking out the quickly normalizing gassed air from outside. This tells me that Quantum hadn’t been exaggerating; time is short.
Unless he’s still working with Medina. But no, if that were the case, he’s had a hundred chances to kill me since releasing me from the cargo locker, and there’s no way Medina would sacrifice the bridge to an assault. Then maybe he’s trying to let the bridge crew finish the job after you do most of the wet work.
This thought takes my mind immediately off the task at hand. What exactly is Quantum’s motive in all this? He wants Medina dead, of course. Her intent to essentially enslave the rest of the settlers to help her build her private world had definitely sent him to the other side, which happens to be our side; but in the end, Quantum has consistently shown who he ultimately sides with: himself. A team player, he is not. And the idea of the greater good doesn’t get past his survival filter. Not like Whitmore and Zabriskie. Or even Vitruzzi.
Cool it, Aly. He can’t fly this beast without you. He needs you.
We’ll see about that. But first, I have to get control of this situation. The dead pilot who’d been at the bench isn’t Medina, and neither are the other crewmembers who’d gone down. If she’s not on the bridge, she must be in the hull, and she’ll be awake soon. I have to get the bridge wrapped up immediately and then regroup with Quantum so we can come up with another plan for dealing with the rest of the Celestial’s crew.
Raising my head just enough for the optics on the bugsuit helmet to clear the top of the observatory counter, I let the suit assess the bridge. The eyepiece gives me enough information to tell that
no one still breathing is dumb enough to show themselves. They all know what their odds are. A console next to the pilot’s bench suddenly sputters, shooting sparks from an electrical fire. The sharp smell hits my nose, and blue-tinged smoke begins to lift toward the ceiling’s vents. Less than a second later, an internal foam deploys, ending the fire. Using the sound to cover me, I dash forward toward the upper-deck railing, a solid enough barrier to protect me, and prepare to blitz the stairs to the lower level.
ZING! A bullet strikes the back of my helmet—just a glancing hit—and nearly knocks me off my feet. Using forward momentum, I careen toward the railing and spin around—thanks to the suit’s prerogative—putting it to my back so I’m facing the direction the shot came from. The suit’s already controlling my arms and has the target in sight, a crewmember near the blown console. She goes down, and, unable to recover my balance, so do I, right on my ass. Breathing hard, I scoot backward until I’m pressed against the railing’s half wall and out of anyone on the lower deck’s line of fire. That was too fucking close for comfort. The bugsuit is better in wide-open spaces. I’d forgotten about that.
That’s seven down, which leaves from one to three to go, unless they had some bigger meeting going on. My monocular system display informs me the helmet’s rear optics have taken damage; too much, they’re out. Now the suit can only give me about a 240-degree field of visibility. In other words, no one has my back.
I switch over to semi-auto, leaving the bugsuit in control of only my left arm, roll over to my stomach, and get my knees under me in a crouch. With the ample cover afforded to the remaining crew below, and my now limited visual advantage, I’m less keen to drop down the stairs and start a death disco. The nav bench is down there, too, and if that becomes collateral damage, the ship won’t be as easy for Quantum and me to manage. There’s a backup nav bench, but it’s in the ship’s belly, which is off-limits until we take the rest of the crew out of commission.
Quantum again: “Aly, what’s your status?”
“Typical,” I respond in a half whisper. Then, more loudly: “Sixty percent down. The rest are hiding.”
“You have maybe three or four minutes before the crew starts to wake up.”
“Thanks, that’s so helpful. Why don’t you come lend me a hand?”
No response. Also typical.
I glance to my side down the stairwell and immediately take fire. They miss. They aren’t dumb; they know I can’t get to them unless I come down, and I can’t come down by any other means than the stairs.
Fucking standoff; god I hate these. My eyes wander to the doused and steaming nearby console. Unless…
“Quantum, come in.”
“Here.”
“Can you reverse the ventilation in here? Send the used air back?”
“Wait one.”
“If you can, shunt it all into the lower deck. Smoke them out.”
“Wait one,” he says again irritably.
No problem. Take all the time you need.
“Done. But you need to create more smoke if you’re going to affect them.”
That I can handle. “Roger. Just shut off the self-activating fire retardants.”
Reaching back inside my cargo pants pocket, I remove the gas mask I’d stuffed in them before entering the bridge and put it back on. From the cover of the railing, I open up on the overhead lights, the nonessential electronics hardware, and anything else that looks like it might pop, sizzle, or melt. At first, all the gray-blue smoke starts leaving through the outflow vents, but then it stops. A few seconds later, a wall of it flumes up from the stairwell next to me, quickly leaving the deck in darkness. I shove away from the railing back toward the observation counter, hoping to get a better view of the stairs and anyone who comes up them. The only way out is through the main hatch, and if they don’t want to choke to death, that’s where they’re going to have to go.
I hear running footsteps beside me. What the—? How did—? Before the thought is complete, the observatory counter starts taking direct fire. Pushing off the floor, I roll-stumble to the relative cover of the commander’s bench. The floor is a hockey rink of warm blood, and I end up on my stomach when the hand I place down to brace me slides out from under me. Not important. My ears strain for the sound of whoever is still running around in here with me.
A metallic clink off to my left, maybe ten meters. I pop up from the bench—taking a moment of satisfaction from the fact that I know he can’t see me any better than I can see him—and let the bugsuit find my target. Its burst of fire is displeasingly short. My stalker didn’t stay visible for long. He’s good at this game.
“You know no one can access the bridge to help you, right?” I yell. “They’re all getting their beauty sleep. If you’re smart, you’ll drop your weapon and join them. You can still live through this.” I count ten seconds while waiting for a response, but none comes. “I don’t want to have to kill you. It’s your choice.” I give it one last shot. Some people have a well-developed sense of reason, after all.
But not this guy. I sense something dropping down over me before I feel the impact against my left arm, which reflexively goes up to block whatever’s coming. It strikes my arm—What is that? A fucking console? It weighs at least twenty kilos!—and a sickening crunch vibrates up my wrist, to my elbow, and lodges in my shoulder like a cleaver of fire. I fall back with the console on top of me, pinning my, at minimum broken, arm against my body. I have to get the bugsuit off semi-auto. If it spots a target and tries to fire with my left arm, the pain sprinting its insidious journey through my nervous system right now is going to feel like a candy-wrapped peck on the cheek.
“Manual!” My voice cracks, and what would have been a scream comes out a windless shriek. But the tech is flawless, and my visual display unit tells me I’ve been switched to manual.
New problem. Commander Medina stands above me, the black bore of her sidearm demanding my attention.
“Don’t move,” she says through her own gas mask and steps with her entire weight on my still-functioning arm. A girdle of pain cinches down, simultaneously shooting from the arm pinned across my chest and the arm she stands on, meeting somewhere in the middle of my sternum and constricting my already burdened rib cage.
Her face and scalp are bleeding heavily from at least three places, turning the navy blue of her uniform a sticky black. She must have caught a spray of broken glass or poly-composite. In a way, it’s a relief to see Medina, even if she’s the one who kills me. Not everyone who had remained under her command when we’d broken off to settle KL had been bad people. I’d hate to be killed by someone I’d once liked and considered a compatriot.
“I know you’re not here alone, Erikson. Where is the rest of your team hiding?”
“If I told you that, you’d kill me.” I have to force the words through the heavy weight compressing my chest.
She grinds down with the sole of her boot, making me cry out.
“Where?”
Tears of pain and anger spring to my eyes. “Probably enjoying a nice, hot bubble bath.”
“Where?” This time she puts her free hand flat on the console and presses down. I try to lock my chest against the pressure, not wanting to lose precious air, but the agony of my arm forces me to make a noise that sounds to my ears like the grunt of a dog being hit by a speeding land trans.
She lets up the pressure, and tears start flowing down the sides of my head. I squeeze my eyes shut as battering rams of nausea choke me, and my skin flushes first blisteringly hot, then icily frigid.
“Last chance,” she says. My eyes open to the darkness of her pistol’s barrel.
“They’re…”
She leans forward at the waist just a hair.
“Right behind you,” I finish.
She whirls and fires, facing Quantum, who fires back at the same time. The woman crumples backward, landing beside me, gasping and gurgling through a mouthful of blood. Her head falls to the side and her eyes come to re
st on my face, then go blank.
There’s a noise like a laundry bag being tossed into a pile. The room is beginning to clear; Quantum must have reengaged the outflow vents before dropping in. Craning my head up, I first see a ceiling panel halfway across the deck that’s been removed—Quantum’s ingress point—then see him lying on his side at my feet, grasping his midsection.
“No, no, no,” I mutter. Bracing my free hand against the side of the heavy console, I give myself just a moment to pre-regret what I’m about to do, then shove the unit off. A nova of pain freight trains through me, and I go black.
But I’m back in seconds, according to my helmet-mounted VDU. Remaining still for a moment, panting and taking bets against myself whether I or the pain-soaked nausea is going to win, I try to get enough of a grip on myself to stand. Winning the fight for now, very, very slowly I sit up.
It takes more time than I’d like to recover from that maneuver. Harden the fuck up, Aly. This isn’t going to get any easier. Every nerve fiber in my body tuned in, I try to detect other signs of life on the bridge but hear nothing. If there are any more crewmembers, either they’re too scared to come out, or they’ve inhaled enough of the toxic air that they’ve blacked out. If I’m going to be able to defend myself, I need to get this bugsuit, now rendered useless thanks to my injuries, off. The weight isn’t much, but it’s enough to hold me back. Gingerly, I disconnect all of the helmet links and remove it, letting it drop beside me. My hand brushes against a bump on the back of my head, which makes me wince, and I feel blood matting my hair. Whatever had tagged the optics must have nicked me too, but the wound is mild. Nothing compared to my arm.