by Mark Wandrey
Thrust slowly fell off until it reached zero. Jim watched on the Tri-V as the ship came to a stop abreast of the Cavalier’s newest acquisition, Upsilon 4. He’d always thought Bucephalus was big. It might only be a cruiser, but it was still 425 feet long and 100 feet wide, shaped like a hotdog with a pair of donuts near its middle. Jim used food analogies a lot. At just over 300 pounds, it was an occupational hazard. Upsilon 4 was huge compared to his ship. Massive.
“Good grief,” he said, “I own a planet!”
“Not quite, Commander,” Captain Wu said, “but a rock big enough that it has some gravity. We’ll have to use maneuvering thrusters to stand off. Are you sure we don’t want to dock?”
“Yes, I’m sure.” Jim had done his homework on Upsilon 4. He knew how long it had been vacant, as well as its history of having squatters. The cryptic warning from Alexis Cromwell of the Hussars when she’d sold the ship back to him made Jim nervous. ‘The Four Horsemen for Earth’ she’d said. Then the Hussars had all but disappeared from the galaxy. Just…gone. But not before they’d gotten into a brief space battle right there in the Karma system. “Something serious is going on,” he told the captain, “so from here on out we’re taking every precaution possible.”
“We’ve scouted the facility for two days,” Wu reminded him. “There’s just background signatures from the station’s reactors and some transient noise.”
“I know,” Jim said, “but I’m still not convinced.” The drone controllers had also said there weren’t any signs of human/alien occupancy, but that they couldn’t be sure. “Hargrave, are we set up?”
“Just waiting on you, boss.”
“I’m on my way. Captain?”
“Commander?”
“Keep an eye on things, and be ready.” He unbuckled and floated towards the CIC’s armored door. As a fat guy, he loved zero gravity.
“Be ready for what?” Wu asked.
“Anything.”
Jim sailed down the companionway and into the squad bay. The section was lined with cradles, each holding a CASPer, or Combat Assault System, Personal. The six closest to him waited with cockpits open and status lights glowing. Five had men in haptic suits floating just outside their open cockpits, and one had a woman without a suit waiting.
“About time, you big handsome man,” Adayn said as he floated toward his suit, his cheeks blushing.
“Hi sweetie,” he said as he caught a protruding strut to bring himself to a stop next to the suit. He pulled off his jacket and stuck it in between a couple of pipes; his haptic suit was already on. She gave him a peck on his cheek as he started plugging in leads.
“Give it a rest, girl,” Hargrave growled from the next suit over, “the kid can’t work with a boner.” The men all laughed, and Jim tried to look disapproving. Adayn helped him connect a lead, her mouth within an inch of his ear.
“I’ll help with that boner when you get back.” He grinned from ear to ear.
“We fight, Jim…
“Yep, we’re going to fight,” he said, the glanced at Adayn. “You didn’t let her fiddle with anything, did you?”
“Like I can stop her? But no, she just showed up a minute ago. Probably taking apart a shield generator.”
“If she takes a major system off line again, Captain Wu has threatened to have her locked in the brig,” Jim reminded her. Adayn grinned back.
“My little watchmaker would probably just take the brig apart,” Adayn retorted. Jim had a hard time disagreeing with that. In the few days since he’d bought Upsilon 4 at the much-reduced asking price, he’d tried to pump the Fae for information about one of her kind showing up suddenly.
They were thousands of light years from Kash-kah, where he’d found Splunk. He’d been lost and in desperate straits in an underground cavern after getting his CASPer trashed fighting raiders. The Fae appeared arboreal, with long fingers, a prehensile tail, and somewhat resembled an Earth monkey. Yet their eyes were sensitive to light, and there were no trees in the caverns. He’d seen other Fae down there before finally escaping and being rescued by his men. None of them ever got close enough for a good look.
After returning home, he’d researched the creatures but found nothing on them. The enigmatic beings were undocumented. The fact that she could mentally link with him to operate a giant Raknar robot made that fact all the more improbable. Now that he’d spotted another Fae, and likely at Karma, the stories about Splunk being seen all over the station stealing anything that wasn’t nailed down began to make more sense.
His questioning of her had revealed exactly nothing. She’d played stupid, just like when he’d asked her about hacking the Tek Consortium AVA. She would just shrug and go about her way. He’d been trying to think of a way to look for more Fae on Karma station, but no plan had yet materialized.
Jim got the last lead into place and began wedging himself into the Mk7 suit. The other 5 in his squad were all Mk8 versions of the combat suits made by Binnig on Earth. Those were noticeably smaller than the Mk7, which Jim preferred because of his size. A few others in the company liked them as well; Platoon Sergeant Buddha, for example. The massive Hawaiian man weighed as much as Jim, though was a couple inches shorter and mostly muscle. The man’s big belly just seemed to be for extra fuel, and he commonly lost a dozen pounds on deployment, only to promptly gain it back upon his return to Earth and his beloved pineapples. Buddha had Second Squad and wouldn’t be on this operation.
By the time Jim was buttoned in, the others were as well. Adayn reached in and gave Jim a quick kiss and scratched Splunk behind her unusually long and pointed ears. “Be careful,” she told him.
“Always,” he said as she backed out.
“Always, Funwork…
Jim used his pinplants to trigger the cockpit closing sequence. The clamshell canopy came down and together, sealing with a whoomph of pressurization. The inside of the cockpit became a Tri-V of the outside world, with status lights in one upper corner. They would move around as he turned his head. “Good powerup,” he said over the radio, then told Splunk to “Get comfy.” She gave a little purr, and slid down his suit into the right thigh, were there was ample room. “Squad, report.”
One by one the other five suits reported in, finishing off with his XO, Hargrave. “Good to go, boss.”
“I still don’t know why you’re along,” Jim said.
“Because my number two job is keeping you alive, son. If your old man were still around, he’d kick my ass for letting you get wasted on a non-paying op.” Jim shook his head and switched channels.
“Cartwright Actual to Bucephalus. We’re ready to depart.”
“Cartwright Actual, this is Bucephalus Actual. I read you in the clear. Stand by to depressurize the bay in 10 seconds.” Jim and the rest of the squad did a visual scan of the bay to verify there were no personnel remaining, and that the green light was illuminated over the personnel hatch.
“We show a safe bay,” Jim reported.
“Roger that. Good luck, Commander Cartwright.”
“Second Squad is standing by,” Buddha said from another bay. He was their assigned backup on this op, in case things went sideways. That and a 40,000-ton cruiser armed with 10-megawatt laser cannons, although Jim really didn’t want to shoot up his brand new asteroid base if he could avoid it.
“Danger!” a computerized voice boomed outside. “This bay is about to decompress in 5 seconds…3…2…1…” A buzzer sounded, and the little atmospheric alarm winked on his HUD, or heads up display, telling him the pressure outside was dropping fast. Powerful pumps evacuated the air, and the bay was in vacuum in less than a minute.
“We’re feet cold,” Jim said, meaning the bay was depressurized. A red light began flashing along the top of the bay, and another second later the door under them began to swing open, revealing the infinite nothing of space. He re
leased the clamps holding his suit in place and gave a couple puffs on the maneuvering jets, which caused him to transit straight down and out of the ship.
“Form on me,” Jim said and watched his suit radar paint a Tri-V image of the other five suits’ locations on his HUD. Once everyone was clear of the ship, the doors began to close above them. Another readout on the HUD was slowly counting down. He now had 9 hours, 57 minutes of life support remaining. The newer Mk8 suits the rest of the squad used had 11 hours of endurance, but that didn’t help him. “Off we go.”
After a minute of floating through zero gravity under the ship, Upsilon 4 came into view. They were many kilometers away, and it looked even bigger than it had on Bucephalus.
“Look at the size of that thing,” Private O’Hara, known as Mouse, said.
“Cut the chatter Red 2,” Jim said, a laugh in his voice.
“I’m sorry, Colonel?” Mouse asked.
“Nothing,” Jim said and suppressed a sigh. “Stick in formation, we don’t want any surprises.” The squad sounded off, and he concentrated on flying. He let the CASPer’s instruments watch for any signs of trouble as they crossed the intervening void. Before he knew it, the team was using their suit thrusters to slow on approach.
Armed with all the station’s diagrams, Jim had chosen to enter at a remote maintenance airlock instead of ‘the front door,’ as it were. Jim reached the open lock and carefully maneuvered his suit inside. He almost lost control as he was floating through the door, and had to use thrusters to stabilize. Then he did again as he nearly face planted against the far wall.
“What the hell,” he said.
“Gravity, boss,” Hargrave reminded him.
I’m an idiot, Jim scolded himself, although he didn’t say anything out loud. Hargrave had taught him that no matter how much an officer doubted himself, he never vented those doubts in front of the men. “Right, thanks,” he said instead, and oriented himself feet down. It caused him a moment of confusion until he saw there were duplicate control interfaces on every wall. Convenient, he thought as he used the suit’s data probe to link with the panel.
“What’s the story, boss?” Hargrave asked from just outside the lock. It was only big enough for Jim’s massive Mk7 suit.
“I’m seeing if any of the codes that Tek gave me work,” he said, “wait one…”
The computer in his suit interfaced with the station’s computer and fed data to his pinplants. Met with a standard Galactic Union infrastructure data login screen, he entered the data Tek had provided. The first code didn’t work, so he used the second, and that was accepted. As information flowed into his brain through the pinplants, the first thing he noticed was what was missing.
“I don’t have any access beyond the lock management computer,” he reported.
“Is it a problem or something on purpose?” Hargrave asked.
“Don’t know,” he admitted, “I’m going to try and find out.” Now that he had access, he was able to at least work inside the lock. Jim liked the Mk7 suit for a lot of reasons, one of which was that the larger size allowed more addons. For this mission he’d included a workbot, which was a little robot that fit in the left thigh compartment, where normally he’d keep survival gear. If anything went really wrong in space aboard a CASPer, the equipment to make camp fires and such was of minimal use. Splunk hung out in the right thigh.
Using the suit controls, he programmed the little robot and activated it. The compartment popped open, and the machine floated out on puffs of compressed gas. It looked a little like a miniature Tortantula, Jim thought. They were expensive, at nearly 10,000 credits each. None of the robots able to function in space were cheap, especially ones that could perform complicated mechanical and electrical operations.
As he’d directed, it floated over to the panel just under the controls, and began removing the fasteners which held it in place. He was able to see what it saw wirelessly through his pinplants and to provide instructions as necessary. As with all Union computers, its intelligence was limited. Several of the few laws the Union enforced were regarding what humans would call AI, or artificial intelligence.
In only a couple seconds it removed the cover and crawled inside. Jim let his attention fully concentrate on the images the robot was sending back, illuminated by sonar and infrared light. The space looked pretty standard to him. He instructed the robot to check the network connectors, and immediately found they’d been disconnected. Both of them. One could have worked lose, but two was intentional.
“Found it,” he transmitted, “I should be inside in a second.” He instructed the robot to reconnect the main network connection cable. As soon as the terminal contacted the computer board, the airlock exploded.
* * *
“Come on, Jimbo, you can do it son!”
“But I’m scared, daddy.”
“Don’t be, daddy’s here. Just give one…little…push…”
Spinning nothing.
“Jim, talk to us, Jim!” The call repeated every few seconds. Jim tried to remember where he was and mostly succeeded. It was hard to mistake the interior of a CASPer once you’d been there a few hundred times. What he couldn’t figure out was why he was in zero gravity. His head hurt too. Had he heard his father a minute ago? He put it down to disorientation.
“Jim okay…
“Yeah,” he said and looked around. “How about you?” She said she was fine. There was a smear of blood on the side of the cockpit, and a few drops floated toward the air intake. He used his pinplants to run back the exterior camera recordings. By the time he got to the explosion, he was himself again. The suit’s bio sensors said he might have a mild concussion.
“Jim, talk to us!” This time he recognized Hargrave’s voice over the radio.
“I’m here,” Jim said.
“Thank God, kid. The lock deformed and sensors picked up an explosion.”
“You could say that,” Jim said. His suit registered damage in multiple places. He could feel Splunk at the nape of his back, working inside a mechanical panel. There was a faint hiss of ozone. Pressure was steady, so no leaks, thank God.
“We’re going to use laser cutters and breach the lock.”
“No,” Jim said right away. “I don’t know what other surprises there are.”
“All the more reason to get you out of there. I have Private Stodden standing by with a cutter.”
“No,” Jim insisted. “The blast wasn’t designed with a CASPer in mind. It rang my bell, but that’s it.” More snaps and a few status lights winked from green, to yellow, and back to green as Splunk worked. “However, I don’t know if whoever set these have worse standing by. They could just as easily have set up a dozen blocks of K2, instead of whatever this was.” Jim knew, all too well, that the binary high explosive could have turned his suit into a crumpled tin can.
“Okay, but I’m sending Stodden and Feldman to the lock for an open access area.”
“They’re ordered to not attempt to interface with any of the systems,” Jim instructed.
“Understood,” Hargrave replied.
“How’s the suit look, Splunk?”
“One minute…
“Okay, okay, don’t get in a huff.” While he waited, he examined the damage. The airlock was decompressed, and that was a good thing. The explosives might not have been enough to kill him in his suit, but if it had gone off in a pressurized air lock, it probably would have blown the exterior door clean off and launched Jim like a rocket into deep space. The force would have been transmitted to his suit a thousand times better as well, and it would have killed him, after all. He considered himself lucky he hadn’t triggered the airlock repressurization, which was manual.
The interior and exterior walls were deformed away from the blast, which appeared to originate in a panel on the left wall facing the exterior door. He glanced at the control section and saw the little spider bot waiting patiently, having weathered the blast with no damage. He triggered t
he recall function, and it flew over to return to the storage compartment.
“All done, Jim...
“Thanks, buddy,” he said, and she gave a little trill before returning to the safety of the thigh compartment. He considered. The charges were clearly meant to take out anyone before they entered the station. That probably meant that there wouldn’t be any on the inside bulkhead. Maybe. Jim selected a control and a put a hand against the wall.
His Mk7 was equipped for ship boarding. Beside the robot, it included a number of extra tools. A drill extended from under the suit’s wrist and chewed through the inner wall. It only took a second to penetrate. Once through, the drill spread to make a seal, and sensors checked the other side. A red indicator told him that side was in vacuum, too.
“I’m cutting through the inner wall,” Jim said, “no sign of further booby traps.”
“Leave a repeater,” Hargrave instructed. Jim nodded; that was a good idea. He pulled one of the hockey puck-shaped radio repeaters from the suit’s equipment belt and slapped it on a wall, where the magnets latched on. The repeater went active immediately. “Good signal,” Hargrave said, “be careful son.”
“Will do,” Jim agreed. He selected the medium laser built onto his suit’s left arm, dialed the power down, and went to work on the wall. Firing in half second pulses, he cut a dotted line pattern in the wall from floor to ceiling, across, and back down. He paused once to replace the magazine on the chemical laser and shook his head—he only had two more extras! This wasn’t supposed to be an assault operation. After all, he owned the place!
Finished with the cuts, Jim magnetically clamped himself to the deck, leaned backwards, and swung with full force. The impact rebounded through his suit with a Crunch, and the wall gave some. He hit again, and again. On the fourth hit, a big section of wall failed. He released one foot and kicked, sole first. The entire section of wall crumpled in and down. Jim released the magnets, and with a puff of his maneuvering jets, he was through.