by D. J. Holmes
Once Gupta passed her position, Bell jumped up and sent a stream of stunner blasts down the corridor towards the approaching guard. None of them hit but he dived into cover.
As if from nowhere more pops sounded from above and bullets crashed into the stairwell around Bell. Before she had time to focus on a target she fired a stream of electric bolts up the stairwell towards the third floor where more security guards had appeared.
That gave one of the marines time to grab Banik and help him down the stairs. The other three marines followed Bell’s lead and continued to pour fire up the stairwell at the security guards, keeping them pinned down. Bell and Gupta got up and followed Banik.
At the bottom of the stairs Johnston was already waiting for them. “Everyone in one piece?” he asked.
“More or less,” Bell answered. Pointing to Banik she said, “Our friend has nicked himself but it’s nothing that won’t heal.”
“Ok then, we need to keep moving,” Johnston ordered. “We have the Varun security guards under control but they will have alerted the local police. They will be here any minute.”
He spun and began to bark orders into his COM unit. “Fire team two fall back, fire team one prepare to evac, we’re coming your way.”
Once they were on the street Johnston broke the team into a fast jog. Two marines carried Banik while Gupta struggled to keep up. In the distance a distinctive siren sounded. Quickly, they rounded the corner and were out of sight of the Varun buildings.
“Good job everyone,” Bell said as she opened her COM. “Lieutenant, what’s the status on our pick up?”
“The two shuttles are already on their way,” Becket answered from orbit. “They will be at the extraction point in two minutes.”
“Look alive everyone. The extraction point is a five minute sprint from here. The sooner we get there the sooner we get out of here. We’ll stop for a thirty second break half way to swap Banik over to two fresh marines. Everyone ready to go?”
After a chorus of ‘yes Sir’ Bell broke into a sprint as she held her datapad out in front of her so she could see the route they needed to take.
When they got to the halfway point the two marines carrying Banik efficiently passed him off to two others. Overhead two sonic booms announced the arrival of the rapidly decelerating shuttles. No doubt they had broken all the local laws for shuttles coming down from orbit.
There were sirens from the local police all around them. If the police forces didn’t know where they were, the two shuttles would surely give away where they were headed. “This is it everyone, let’s double time it. If you see any of those police aircars don’t hesitate to put a few stunner rounds into them,” Bell said.
They quickly covered the ground to the open square that was their extraction point. As they rounded the final corner the shuttles were just setting down. Off to the side two police aircars looped around a twenty story tower and descended.
“Stunners,” Bell called. She lifted her weapon and poured fire into one of them. As the first bolts of electricity began to hit the police aircars two ports on each craft opened, revealing a small plasma cannon. To Bell they didn’t look any bigger than the standard plasma rifles marines were usually equipped with but they would still shred her men.
“Take cover,” she shouted.
The next moments seemed to happen at once. Three stunner bolts hit one of the aircars, overloaded its navigational systems and caused it to dive towards the ground. This threw its aim off and a number of plasma bolts ripped up a section of the square between them and the shuttles.
The other police aircar fired off six plasma bolts. The first two tore up the ground in front of them, sending up a shower of permacrete. Even before the permacrete hit them, the next four plasma bolts rained down into the middle of the group. Those who hadn’t already hit the ground were thrown there by the force of the plasma bolts impacting right at their feet.
Head ringing, Bell waited until she heard the police aircar whizz past overhead to lift herself back to her feet. It would take them a few vital seconds to turn and come back; her team needed every one of them.
“On your feet everyone,” she shouted. She couldn’t help pausing to survey the damage. One marine still lay on the ground, a large hole blown right through his chest. Another marine had taken a grazing plasma bolt to his leg but two of his buddies were already helping him onto his feet.
“Leave Samuels,” Johnston shouted. “Get to the shuttle.”
Bell had to push two of the marines away from Samuels’ body and force them into a run. It went against all their training to leave a comrade behind. Yet they couldn’t afford to be captured. Samuels’ body couldn’t tell the Indians anything about who they were. If they managed to capture some of the team however, eventually the Indians would be able to get some information out of them.
The shuttles were only four hundred meters ahead. Nearly there, Bell thought. Just then she heard the whine of the police siren. “Spread out,” Johnston ordered.
Looking around she wasn’t sure if it was going to be enough. Everyone had given up trying to shoot the aircar down and they were just sprinting for the shuttle. A few of the marines let out a cheer. Spinning round, Bell saw one of the shuttles taking off again; two of its weapons ports were open with their plasma cannons extended. It fired a stream of bolts towards the police aircar, spinning again she saw they all missed. It must have been intentional, for no shuttle gunner could have that bad an aim, he would have been reassigned a long time ago. It seemed to work, for the police aircar swerved erratically and gunned its engines, lifting off into the atmosphere.
“Get Banik, Gupta and our injured into the first shuttle,” Johnston ordered as they approached the landing site. “It can take off and cover us while the second shuttle lands.”
When they reached the shuttle everyone was bundled in. Before Bell knew it Johnston had pushed her up the shuttle’s landing ramp. “Up you go agent, there’s room in there for you too.”
Before she could protest he reached in and hit the button to close the landing ramp and jumped back. “See you on Innocence,” he said with a wave.
Once the ramp closed she made her way to the cockpit. As she passed Gupta she gave her a reassuring smile. “We’re still in once piece,” Gupta said as Bell patted her on the shoulder.
“Pilot,” Bell called loud enough for the pilot to hear through his flight helmet. Instead of responding he pointed at a rack with two spare helmets. She donned one and switched on its mike. “Take off,” she ordered, “but circle round the landing site. You need to keep any police aircars away long enough for the other shuttle to land and pick the rest of our men up.”
“Yes sir,” the pilot responded.
As the shuttle lifted off and circled the square there was no sign of any further police presence. Bell wanted to take that as a good sign but she knew it probably meant they had been ordered to fall back. That could only mean that whoever was in charge of the planet’s security had called in some heavier support.
“Ma’am, the other shuttle is lifting off,” the pilot informed her.
“Take us out of here,” she ordered. “And ignore any of the planet’s flight regulations, get us to the freighter as quickly as possible.”
*
On board Innocence Becket had already powered up the freighter’s main reactor and was boosting out of orbit. The smaller shuttles would easily be able to catch the slower freighter.
“Lieutenant, we’re being hailed by one of the system patrol frigates,” Sub Lieutenant McClure said.
“Put it on the holo display,” she ordered.
A small woman with brown hair, brown eyes and a tight fitting Indian naval uniform appeared on the holo display. The look on her face said she wasn’t in the mood to suffer fools. “With whom am I speaking?” she demanded.
“My name is Lisa Jones,” Becket lied. “I am currently commanding this freighter.”
“You look rather young to be captaining your ow
n freighter,” the middle aged Indian naval Captain said in contempt.
“I am the Chief Mate, my captain is indisposed at the moment but she is on her way. How may I help you in the meantime?” Becket answered as politely as she could.
“You are ordered to bring your ship to a halt and prepare for a customs inspection,” the Indian naval officer said in a tone that expected to be obeyed.
“I’m afraid I don’t understand,” Becket said. “We were inspected yesterday and we haven’t loaded any cargo from the surface or any of the trading stations in orbit. Why do we need to be inspected again?”
“I have my orders straight from the planetary governor. Whoever is on those two shuttles approaching your freighter is not allowed to leave the system. Let me say this again real slowly for you young woman. Heave to now and cut your reactors or I will open fire.”
“Hold on, I’m in way over my head, let me think this through,” Becket said playing on the naval officer’s obvious contempt for her.
“There is nothing to think about,” the officer snapped, “you have my orders.”
“But I have orders too, we have a very time sensitive cargo. If we don’t leave Kerala now we will incur heavy fines on our contract. As I understand it some of my people on those shuttles got into a fistfight in a local bar. You have our registration details, if there have been any damages you can forward them to my company and we will reimburse whoever needs payment. There is no need to carry out another customs inspection.”
“Freighter, understand this,” the officer almost shouted over the COM channel. “Your crew have been placed under investigation by the planet’s governor. If you do not cut your engines now we will have to open fire. You are not leaving this system.”
“The frigate has opened one of its missile ports,” one of the Sub Lieutenants called.
“You have thirty seconds then I open fire,” the Indian naval officer said with a feral smile.
“You can’t do this,” Becket said in anger. “You’re going to ruin my career,” she added as she slammed her fist down on the command chair, hitting the button to cut the transmission.
Immediately she was fully composed again. “How long until the shuttles dock?” she asked.
“One minute.”
“And if the frigate opens fire in thirty seconds how long until the missile will strike us?”
“It will take it five minutes to catch us,” the same Sub Lieutenant answered.
“Ok, here’s the plan. We’re going to let them open fire and wait until the missile gets to within two minutes. Then I want all our hidden point defenses activated. We should be able to handle one missile. At the same time I want to open fire with our plasma cannon. We may not be able to hit them at this range but it will give them something to think about and hopefully keep them off our backs long enough for us to engage the shift drive. Are the capacitors fully charged?”
“Yes Sir, we are ready to jump as soon as we get out of Kerala’s mass shadow.”
Becket only nodded. The shift drive had revolutionized human space travel but it had some major drawbacks. It needed a lot of power to activate and its capacitors had to be charged for a long time between jumps. It also couldn’t be activated too close to the gravitational field of other objects. Things like stars, planets, asteroids and the dark matter strewn about in space between the stars severely limited where ships could go.
That meant they had to play a game of cat and mouse with the pursuing frigate. The frigate knew where the edge of the mass shadow was and knew that if they let the freighter reach it their quarry would escape. Yet Becket had to trick the frigate into allowing them to reach the mass shadow anyway. Thankfully, the freighter’s hidden weapons meant she had a few tricks up her sleeve.
“Missile launch,” McClure reported.
“Get those shuttles landed,” Becket ordered.
Knowing that the Sub Lieutenant could handle it, she focused her attention on the incoming Indian missile. It was the first time a British ship had seen an Indian warship fire one of its missiles in anger in decades. She hoped they didn’t have any surprises for her.
The plot updated to show that the missile was closing with them slower than expected. The computer updated its information on the missile to estimate that it was one of the Indian navy’s earlier missile designs. Becket wasn’t too surprised; the Indian navy’s patrol craft were probably the last ships to receive new technology.
“Shuttles have landed,” McClure informed her.
“Ok, tactical,” she said to the Sub Lieutenant manning the weapons terminal on the bridge. “Prepare to bring the point defenses online. As soon as you have them powered up and tracking the incoming missile you can open fire on the frigate with the main plasma cannon. At this range it isn’t likely to do any damage but it will let that frigate know we have teeth.
“McClure, once we bring up the point defenses take us to full acceleration. We need to make it to the mass shadow before they can hit us with a full broadside,” Becket ordered.
Innocence was a Q ship. Built to look and act like a freighter, she also had enough weapons to take on any pirates that tried to attack her. That meant she carried a lot of point defense weapons and had military grade engines. Offensively she had a single missile tube on her port and starboard bows but as the freighter was fleeing from the frigate they couldn’t be brought to bear on it. Instead they would have to rely on their single heavy plasma. It was a powerful weapon at close range, able to punch right through the valstronium armor of most warships. However, over long ranges the plasma containment field on each of its bolts disintegrated, robbing each shot of much of its force. In the Void War Becket had seen James use the heavy plasma cannons at range to distract his opponents and she planned to do the same here.
“Now,” Becket ordered once the missile got to within two minutes of hitting Innocence.
The main radar array powered up and began tracking the missile more accurately. As soon as the targeting computer obtained a firm lock the small point defense plasma cannons fired tens and then hundreds of plasma bolts at the missile. Sensing the targeting radar the missile had already begun evasive maneuvers and it successfully dodged the first wave of plasma bolts.
The familiar thump, thump of anti-missile missiles erupting from their launchers meant the holo display filled with more plots as it tracked the short lived missiles’ attempts to intercept their larger brother.
“I got it,” the tactical officer called out as an AM missile managed to detonate close enough to the Indian missile to damage it and throw it off course.
“What is the frigate doing?” Becket called to McClure.
“They have gone to full military power. The heavy plasma bolts don’t seem to be having any impact at this range,” he answered.
Becket looked at the plot on the holo display, the frigate had been slow in trying to match their speed, caught by surprise. The extra acceleration Innocence had put on meant they would get to the mass shadow before any missile fired from the frigate reached them.
As if they couldn’t see what she was looking at the frigate fired two more missiles at the freighter. Innocence had been designed to defend herself against two incoming missiles but Becket was thankful that they wouldn’t have to put it to the test. In war things never worked as they were expected to. Just relying on being able to shoot down one missile had been enough stress for one day.
She was distracted from the holo display when the turbolift opened and Gupta, Bell and Major Johnston stepped onto the bridge. “Status report,” Gupta asked.
“We managed to shoot down the frigate’s missile. They have fired two more but we should be able to jump out before they reach us,” Becket said, vacating the captain’s chair.
“Good work,” Gupta said as she surveyed the plot on the holo display, confirming the information for herself.
“Commander, we have passed through the mass shadow,” McClure called.
Becket looked at Gupta who nodded
at her. “Jump us out of here,” Becket ordered.
With a bright flash and a release of electromagnetic radiation Innocence disappeared from the pursuing frigate’s sensors into safety.
Chapter 8 – In Chang’s Footsteps
The Haven colony started off as an attempt to escape from the politics of Earth yet in the end it would come to play a significant role in the establishment of the Empire.
- Excerpt from Empire Rising, 3002 AD