"Are you open to training with me?"
In a hundred stans I wouldn't have guessed this would come from Tabby.
"I am not sure, Tabitha. Your speed and strength are formidable. Some might think you're looking for an opportunity for additional hazing of an undesirable crew member," Xie replied smoothly.
"As appealing as that sounds, no. You are tremendously skilled and I would like to learn from you," Tabby replied.
"Let us get a measure of each other," Xie replied.
Without warning, Tabby lunged for Xie at full combat speed. Xie, expecting the strike, raised her arm to intercept, but lacked sufficient strength to deflect. I knew what was coming next, Tabby would follow with either a knee or a left-hand combination, expecting the block. The real damage would come from the second blow. Xie, however, accepted the strike, recognizing the futility of struggling against it. Instead, she held onto Tabby's outstretched arm, rolled onto her back and used her momentum to flip Tabby over. It was a move I'd been on the receiving end of too many times to appreciate. Unlike me, however, Tabby turned in mid-air, twisting just enough to land on her side instead of her back. The loud thwack on the floor reverberated through the gymnasium. She popped to her feet coming up to face Xie, who was already standing.
Xie pulled her hands together as if praying and closed her eyes, nodding to Tabby as she did. "Most impressive, Tabitha Masters. You fall like a stone in heavy gravity, but lose no advantage. Your speed is even more than I expected after your surgery. There is much Aikido would offer you. I am a poor teacher, but am willing."
Life aboard ship settled into a comfortable routine. In fold-space, there are few exterior dangers and we primarily focused on preparing for the mission ahead. With a new class of recruits, training jumped to the forefront and our days were split between exercise, systems training, combat training and meal preparation.
Beyond responsibility to the crew, we also spent time in the bridge conference room planning our upcoming mission to the K-A0223B system.
"Why would anyone try to colonize that moon?" I asked. "Between its rotation, its orbit around the gas planet and the planet's orbit around the star, it would barely support life. The temperature ranges are minus five to sixty and that can happen within a tenday."
"If Belirand wanted to establish a foothold in the Aeratroas region, it would be a perfect location though," Nick replied.
"It belies a certain naiveté regarding the Kroerak, however," Jonathan added. "K-A0223B is well within their territory."
"Do you think we could run into a Kroerak patrol?" Marny asked.
"We believe it to be unlikely, although possible. Even the Kroerak would find this system to be of minimal value unless there was a colony," Jonathan replied.
"We should be prepared for hostilities," Marny said.
"In the case where we encounter no other large ships, I'd like the initial ground team to include myself, Tabby, Nick and Xie," I said. "I'd like to bring you, Marny, but I'd feel more comfortable with you sitting behind Intrepid's guns, just in case."
"What about Jonathan?" Tabby asked.
"Our physical presence isn't required to gain information in the same way yours is. We'll send a probe with you," he said.
"You're not questioning Xie?" Ada asked, turning to Tabby.
"We're working out our differences," Tabby replied.
"Oooh, so that's why she's been wearing med-patches…"
I looked between the two women and tried to determine if it was something I needed to deal with. In the end, I decided that Xie wouldn't appreciate me stepping in.
"I'm sending Divelbiss and Clark," Marny said. I wasn't surprised at her choice, even though they were about as far apart as two sailors could get. Where Jenny Hill Clark was small-framed, Divelbiss was the largest crewman we'd had aboard. Both of them were relatively easygoing and Marny had been pleased with the progress they'd made in the last ten days. I suspected this assignment was Marny's reward for rising to the challenge.
"We're thirty minutes to transition," Ada reported. "Liam, I assume you're staying on the bridge until we know if there are hostiles in-system?"
"That's right, Ada," I said.
We stood and I pulled Tabby in for a quick kiss. "Be safe."
"I'll do my best," she said and ran her finger under my chin as she turned to walk away.
Back in the captain's chair, I checked the myriad statuses that had already been checked by so many. It was a nervous habit, but certainly didn't hurt anyone. Mostly, I was trying to take my mind off the transition from fold-space.
"Three … two … one …" I breathed out and tried to quiet my mind as the universe around me went nuts. I had decided to attack my issue with transitions head on, using breathing techniques I'd researched. I wasn’t entirely successful, but I survived.
My first look was at the tactical display. It would take a few moments for Intrepid's high resolution scanners to fill in the details of nearby space and then reach out tens of thousands of kilometers at lesser and lesser resolution, searching for anything that resembled a threat. I finally let go of the breath I'd been holding when the only thing to appear was the beautiful gas planet and its eight orbiting moons.
"Captain, we're clear and dropping probes," Marny announced.
We'd decided to manufacture and drop information gathering probes. They wouldn't be immediately useful, but if we ever got back this way, we'd be able to retrieve them.
"Roger that. I'm making my way to Hotspur," I said.
"We've got your back, Cap."
I fought adrenaline which attempted to propel me at a sprint down Intrepid's passageway to Hotspur and settled instead into a jog. Once outside the ship, I had an unimpeded view of the poorly named gas giant. The raging storms and massive swirls of gas were beyond gorgeous and I wondered how anyone could simply assign a number to something so wondrous.
"Looking sharp, crew!" I chirped as I passed Divelbiss and Jenny Hill Clark who were both seated on Hotspur's bridge couch. They were quite the odd couple in their armored vac-suits. Divelbiss made the couch and Clark look like toys. I'd heard the term gentle giant before and knew it applied to Divelbiss, but any sane person would be very cautious before assuming that about him. "Ready for this?" I asked, patting Nick's shoulder as I passed.
"What's got you so fired up?" Tabby asked as I slipped into the pilot's chair next to her.
"Been waiting for this moment for a few months now. Light it up!" I said.
At first, we fell gently away from Intrepid, but as soon as we'd established a safe distance, Tabby fired the engines. I listened while she negotiated navigation with Ada over a shared channel.
"Let's take the last ten thousand in stealth-mode," Nick suggested.
"Understood," Tabby agreed.
The moon we approached grew in our view screen. It was large for a moon, half again larger than Earth's own. It would have natural gravity of about .2g. Large patches of green dotted the surface, although there were more red-brown patches than anything. I searched for signs of open water and wasn't surprised when I didn't find them.
"I'm locked in on the signal," Nick said. "Do you have it, Tabby?"
"Roger that," she replied. "We're ten minutes out."
"There's atmosphere?" I asked.
"Not enough," Nick said. "With suits, you'd be good. There are low levels of oxygen but too much ammonia."
"I have a visual," Tabby said. She'd dropped into the valley of a mountain range that had been formed by volcanic activity. The glint of sun reflecting off metal caught my eye immediately.
"What is that?" I asked.
"They built something into the side of that mountain," Nick said. Hotspur's forward holo zoomed in on a forty-meter-tall, twenty-meter wide steel and glass wall that was built into the rock face of the mountain. A weathered Belirand Logo emblazoned across the front provided ample evidence that we'd found the right spot.
"I'm setting down," Tabby said.
The wide rock a
pron in front of the building was strewn with fallen rock and it appeared there had been substantial damage to the building. Tabby chose a relatively clear spot and spooled down the engines.
"I'm picking up a lot of debris," Nick said. "The structure has taken a lot of damage, although it's not clear what from."
"Doesn't speak well for survivors," I said. "I want you to stay on Hotspur. I've a bad feeling and want the turrets manned." I was adjusting our original plan, but the situation had also changed. "The rest of you are with me."
A light wind gently buffeted us as we exited the ship and for a moment I searched the barren landscape, looking for any sign of life. As we approached, my stomach tightened at the scene of destruction before us. The heavy front doors had been ripped off and lay on the ground several meters from where they'd originally hung. Thick armored glass windows on the first level were broken through or completely missing.
Involuntarily, I pulled my blaster rifle around, pointing it into the darkened structure as we picked a path through the debris field.
"We're going in," Tabby said as she bravely walked through the ruined opening. I followed behind. "Frak," she cussed quietly.
"Oh, man," I said as my eyes adjusted to the darkened interior. Dozens of vac-suited partial human remains littered the once highly polished marble floors.
KNUCKLE SANDWICH
"Tabby, sweep left. Xie, sweep right. We'll meet at the back. Jenny, I want you to hold this door," I said, turning to the woman who, twelve days ago, had been a bricklayer. "All that means is you stay here and sound off if anything weird happens."
"And you should avoid shooting at us," Tabby said.
"What are you looking for, Captain?" Xie asked.
"Some explanation for the bodies," I said. A short burst of static over the tactical channel communicated that Tabby was acknowledging and headed out. Xie followed suit in the opposite direction.
With Divelbiss close on my six, I crossed over to where the largest concentration of corpses lay. The first remains were mostly contained within their vac-suits. A mummified woman of indeterminate age had fallen, holding an older model blaster pistol.
"Jonathan, you have any way to read the data-stream on this woman's suit?" I asked. Jonathan was still on Intrepid but they'd upgraded the sensors on my grav-suit to provide a richer remote experience.
"No. It appears that suit's memory was purged," he replied.
"Why would they do that?"
"To keep the captors from gaining information the suits contain," he said.
"I'll check a few more," I said and moved to the next.
"Divelbiss, help me," I said as I pulled on a body.
To his credit, Divelbiss leaned down and grabbed the shoulders of a large corpse as we tried to roll it over. The sight that greeted us was horrific; the legs of the man had been severed and his chest cavity appeared to have been carved out.
"I'm going to be sick." Divelbiss stood up quickly and stumbled away, running for the door, tripping over body parts as he did.
"Breathe!" I said as I jumped up and followed after him. "Deep breaths!" I caught up with him just as his face plate fogged with a light brown paste. I placed my hand on the side of his helmet and cycled his mask open. We couldn't survive for long in the moon's light atmosphere, but we could certainly open up for an emergency. He looked at me in horror as atmo rushed past his ears and the suit attempted to balance the pressure differential. His mask slammed closed with the majority of Divelbiss’ breakfast splattered across my shoulder.
"How'd you know to do that?"
"Spacer trick," I said. "Jenny. I need you to step in. Divelbiss, switch out and take the door."
"Aww Captain, I got this," he complained.
"Not a demotion, Divelbiss. You get your legs back and I'll need you back in here," I said.
"What do you need, Captain?" Jenny Hill Clark arrived as Divelbiss walked back to the door.
"Keep on my six. I've a grisly task and I need someone keeping a heads-up," I said. I walked back and started working through the corpses.
"Looks like these are all security forces, at least those who had intact uniforms," I said as Xie and Tabby approached from the back of the room, having swept through the rest of the level. "Thirteen in all. Whoever attacked them didn't even bother to take their weapons."
"What happened to their stomachs?" Tabby asked.
"The signs suggest Kroerak," Jonathan replied. "They would have fed on them before departing. The Kroerak have no use for human weapons."
"Liam, we need to find what's generating that signal," Nick said. "We're getting a low power reading on the third level."
"Over here," Tabby said. She'd located a stairwell.
"We're Oscar-Mike, Divelbiss. Fall in," I said, waving him over. The five of us entered the stone stairwell and jogged up to the third level. "Hold this position, Divelbiss. I want to know if anything moves in this stairwell."
"Roger that, Captain," he replied. What he didn't know was that I'd been dropping security discs along the way that would warn us of the same. I figured he'd had enough excitement for his first outing.
The space we entered was a fairly standard Belirand office level. That is, other than the fact the lights were off and every piece of furniture had been thrown violently in one direction or another.
"What's that?" Clark asked as we worked our way through the office wreckage. She was pointing to a corpse.
I was about to dismiss her when I realized she'd picked up on a detail I'd missed. It wasn't a partial corpse, but rather a very small humanoid. It had an oversized cranium that was, indeed, somewhat frog-shaped. "Hold up, Tabbs," I said as I approached. "Jonathan, is this a Norigan?"
"It is, Captain. We would want to bring the body with us if we can," he replied.
"Understood." The body was just as Jonathan had described. A translucent film, which I suspected was a vac-suit, covered the body of the small alien. I reached across and pulled the eyelids closed on its large, bulbous eyes. "Sorry, little fella. Wish we'd met under better circumstances. Divelbiss, you want to come grab this guy for us?"
"What about all the people?" he asked as he caught up to us.
"We'll give them a proper burial," I said. "But our Norigan friend needs to go home if we can make that work."
"Sure. That’s good," he said as he knelt and gingerly picked up the small body that was probably only a tenth of his mass.
"Take him back to the ship and put him in a body bag," I said.
"Nick, how close are we to the power source?" Tabby asked.
"Fifteen meters," Nick replied.
Tabby continued leading us through, picking the most direct route she could, finally ending at a closed door. It was an unusual feature in the building so far, as most entryways had been torn down, presumably by Kroerak.
"What's the play?" Tabby asked.
"Clark, watch our six. Try it, Tabby," I said, pointing my blaster rifle at the door.
"Locked," she said.
"Stand back." I toggled my rifle to a breaching configuration. I missed the good old days when we had fully mechanized, armored suits. Tabby and Xie moved away from the door as I fired. It took several shots, but the mechanism finally gave way. I stepped forward, kicked the handle and the door swung in, falling from its ruined frame.
Tabby and Xie flowed into the room and the three of us scanned for problems. The only issue we came up with was that the room was completely empty.
"Frak," I said. "Nick, there's nothing here."
"Where are all the people?" Tabby asked. "There had to have been a couple hundred people for a settlement this big. We've seen two dozen, tops."
My stomach tightened again. There weren't any good answers to her question.
"You're still four meters short," Nick said.
"How can that be? I'm looking at rock face," Tabby said. The office had been built into the side of the mountain and for aesthetics, the rock face had been left uncovered.
"J
onathan, use your sensors. Can you pick up on any cracks, hidden doors or anything?" I asked.
"We're not detecting anything," he responded.
"What about the balcony?" Jenny asked from the door.
"There's no balcony," I replied. "We'd have seen it when we arrived." I recalled that the face of the building had been completely flat.
"Then, where does that door go?" she asked, pointing to the glass at the front of the building. It wasn't anywhere near the rock face, but it was also a door to nowhere.
"Nowhere, right now," I said. "Good eyes." I walked over to the broken out armor glass and pushed off from the floor. In .2g, my grav-suit didn't have to work too hard to lift me out and I slithered through the window. Indeed, on the face of the building were broken off supports for a balcony, which I followed to the side.
I followed holes in the rock face that I suspected were supports for a ladder. It didn't take long to discover an airlock door hidden beneath a screen of fallen rock.
"Tabbs, I've got something," I said.
"On my way. Xie, Clark, hold this position," she ordered. She soon joined me and we were looking at a well-hidden door in the side of the mountain. The rocks were easy to move in the low gravity and we soon had the door uncovered.
"Ready?" I asked. Tabby nodded and I spun open the old-fashioned, manual airlock door.
"This could be a mistake," Tabby said as she closed us inside and I started to work on opening the other side.
Two men in Belirand vac-suits sat, perfectly preserved, in comfortable chairs at a small table. A bottle of liquor, long since consumed or evaporated, stood next to a deck of cards, and a communications array sat on a shelf next to the table with the quantum crystal still in its cradle. A makeshift signal generator was scratching out the message Nick had picked up. I grabbed the pink quantum crystal and as I did, noticed a small note had been tucked beneath it. I pushed both into a pocket for later consumption.
"Jonathan?" I asked, but didn't get an answer. Not surprising. I suspected the reason the room had gone undetected was due to the material in the mountain blocking all other power signals inside the small room.
Give No Quarter (Privateer Tales Book 10) Page 17