by Zach Winderl
“Best be out in the open.” Atom looked around, located the vector of the patrol’s approach and placed himself in a conspicuous position with his hands held wide. He glanced at Mir and waived her over.
They did not have long to wait. The patrol seemed intent on completing their circuit in record time. Atom had seen it before. Low-threat patrols looked the same everywhere.
Laughter fizzled as the squad rounded a corner to find Atom and Mir watching them.
“Hands stay,” the squad-leader barked as half-dozen assault blasters glared at the interlopers. “ID. Now.”
“Easy now, cap,” Atom said with a slow calm as he raised his eyebrows and hands a touch higher. “We just checked in upstairs and have some time to burn before we catch a shuttle out. In case you haven’t heard, there was an EMP strike down on the surface that torched almost all our electronics.
“Things are wrapped in mingo at the moment,” he continued with a knowing chuckle.
The six soldiers tightened their grips on blasters, but kept their fingers off the triggers. The leader stepped out to the flank, his blaster trained on the center of Atom’s mass.
“Names?” he demanded.
“Flynn Mosby, Inspector Special Unit,” Atom said in a low, even voice. “Badge is in my pocket, but I’m lacking in digital credentials. Mir has been able to vouch for me to this point.”
“Lieutenant Katarina Mir, 2nd Division MPs,” she said with a straight face. “Still cleaning up the messes you boys leave behind. I’ll vouch for this spook. He’s on a special assignment and if you need any further info, you are welcome to have a chat with Pico.
“I’d only go that route if you want a blood-pissing, desk-drop cap to rip into you because he’s got rifle envy.” Her dour expression broke, replaced by a beaming grin.
For a moment the squad-leader just stared at her. Then he grinned back and let out a dark chuckle. “Not that you’re one to talk, you mip. Names Haveer, Sergeant Newt Haveer.” He dropped the muzzle of his assault blaster and tipped his helmet back at a jaunty angle. “Most of our transports come in at the main depot. I’m surprised they dropped you at the top spinner.
“Come on.” He waved for Mir and Atom to join him. “We’ll take you down to the stockpile and depot. You’ll probably have to wait a while, seeing as the transports are running low numbers with the Adlerian fleet sitting out beyond the yards.”
“Yeah,” Mir said as she fell into step between Atom and the squad-leader. “Up at the info desk, they told us it would be several hours at best.”
“You’ll be lucky if that’s accurate. We haven’t seen a packet in two watches.”
“Sorry for being such a heavy burn.” Atom stared ahead into the dim curve of the station hub. “So, sarge, this seems a pretty light job for obvious drop-jocks. Are we expecting things to go sideways up here or did you just happen to spin up the commander’s daughter?”
One of the soldiers behind them laughed.
“Not quite that simple.” Haveer scowled over his shoulder. “This ride is beyond punishment. I’d expect a mip like you to get stacked with this gig, but I did open my mouth and got us saddled with hall-monitor duty.”
“Sounds like a story,” said Mir. “And I hear we’ve time to burn.”
“Not a long story.”
“Well, it’d be better than nothing, since you don’t have any Adles to shoot up.”
“Stupid desk-humper named Frederickson has the high g’s for Shea back there.” Haveer jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “He was leaning and I won’t stand for anyone crashing the orbits of my squad if I have a say. I don’t care who he is, he messes with the combat effectiveness of my squad and you’d better believe there will be more than words thrown about.
“I should have scorched a bolt through his pan, but that would have had the same effect on the squad. The kacker doesn’t actually have any say over operationals, he’s not high enough up the chain, but he had enough pull with that Pico of yours to have us humping deck instead of dirt. We’re stuck up here on civvie patrol while the rest of our division is down there in the mountains.”
“We haven’t even got to loose a round,” one of the troopers in the rear mumbled. “Thanks a holdful, Shea. If you’d had the stones to break that boke’s face instead of Haveer we might have gotten tossed on the front-line as punishment.”
“Sorry to disappoint,” the woman replied with laughter in her voice, then she punched the other trooper in the arm, a love-tap to the armored soldiers that would have left Atom bruised.
Atom shook his head at the pent-up aggression. “So, things are quiet up here?”
“Nothing happens here,” the first soldier complained. “The civvies just sit tight in the quarters and wait. They don’t even complain. They’ve got food and access to the network, so they don’t even seem to mind. It’s like….”
“They’re just waiting for us to leave?” Atom finished his sentence. “I’ve been hearing that a lot.”
“Should we be worried?” Haveer looked eager.
Atom shrugged. “It’s the same down dirtside. You really aren’t missing much up here except for true atmo. The scuttle is a counter at some point, but I haven’t heard or seen anything definitive along those lines. I’m guessing the strike is coming at the yards, but be ready for anything.
“How many troopers you have aboard the station?” he asked as they drew near a junction. “And how many civvies are left on permanent station? Are there enough that you would be worried?”
“Give or take fifteen cents on the civvie pop. We have four squads. I managed to drag our whole fireteam along with us on punishment brigade.”
“Just twenty-four to handle a whole station?”
“You don’t think we can do it?” Shea cut in from the rear as they turned and followed a new corridor to the center of the station.”
“If you had some power-armor I don’t doubt you could handle it. Fifteen hundred on twenty-four is a tough mountain to climb. You isolate the hab rings and hold choke points and I’d say you have a fighting chance.”
“Seems solid,” Haveer sounded impressed. “We also have a dozen flight techs and mechs who could back us up.”
Atom shook his head. “Problem as I see it, the only way you lot can handle any kind of real rise-up is to put it down hard before it pops. There aren’t enough of you to preempt anything large, but if there is confirmed activity have your lute hit first, and hit hard. Pop ‘em in the nose so hard they don’t want to get back up and take a swing at you.”
“Kind of like Frederickson,” one of the soldiers said with a snicker.
“I’ll talk to Motoki when I see him.” Atom quickened his pace, as if making it to the hangar would speed anything about the flight out.
“Wait, that’s why you’re routing to the flag?” Haveer asked.
“Not necessarily, but that doesn’t mean I can’t pass a word about what I’m seeing. I’m assuming our goal is to use the local population to get the economy up and running, to get the ore flowing again. We need to have enough of a presence that things move smoothly without being oppressive enough to warrant resisting.
“We want a simple power shift, not destruction and repop.”
They approached the elevator at the central hub. As they paused outside, Haveer held up a hand and listened to orders coming through his armor’s internal coms.
“You might be in luck, Mosby,” he said. “I just got word that the admiral himself is expected to arrive in hangar 52 within fifteen minutes.
“Evidently you must have something he wants.” Haveer reached out and tripped the elevator doors. “That seems like it makes you someone worth noting. If you want to put in a word, that could get us reassigned to the drop, I wouldn’t complain. Frontline is where we belong.”
“Careful what you wish for.” Atom stepped into the elevator and shifted to the back as the armored soldiers crowded in. “If we aren’t careful, this might turn into a front faster than you can vent a l
ock.”
They descended in silence. The elevator hummed as it dropped from the main hab rings, down through the processing plants, and all the way to the loading docks. There, refined ore from the planet below shipped out to the yards in orbit above the Seeonee, the system’s main planet.
The ride down seemed to last forever, but as the doors split onto the main loading bays, Atom found they preceded the arrival of the admiral’s skiff by several minutes.
Another squad of armored drop-troops lounged near the control hub at the center of the full circle of bay doors. Just like Haveer and the troopers with Atom, these six wore light skirmish armor with their helmets strapped to their small packs. They hung about the open door to the hub, chatting with the techs inside who presided over the empty hangars that usually bustled with dozens of ore ships at any given hour of the day.
Following Haveer, Atom and the others headed over to join the laughing group.
The soldiers fell silent, but their relaxed attitudes remained.
“What’s the touch down on the inbound?” Haveer asked. “This boke’s got to hitch a ride with the top floater.”
“No other traffic?” Atom sounded surprised. “I expected more ships here.”
One of the techs in the hub looked up. “Four and a half on the AD. Traffic is shut down, for the most part, until we get things up and running dirtside. There’s no other reason for ships to float through, other than supply lighters which dock a couple times a day.”
“This is worse than you let on,” Atom said to Haveer. “You droppers must be floating out of your pans.”
Haveer rubbed his face with a gloved hand. “Maybe worse,” the squad-leader sighed. “We might actually start fighting each other, just for something to do. Sound like a good plan, Meeks?”
The leader of the second squad shrugged. “I won’t complain, but I ain’t givin’ you no warning.” She laughed and turned to Atom. “You seem to be the highlight of the week for all us drops. Please tell me, you got a good tale to tell. Break my boredom before it breaks me. Please, I’ll settle for a funny bit, or even a bucket of scuttle.”
“Unfortunately, I don’t have much in the way of news until I talk to the admiral,” Atom replied.
“He let drop there might be a pushback, sooner than later.” The eagerness in Haveer’s voice reminded Atom of a kid the day before her birthday.
“That so?” Meeks demanded.
Atom glared at Haveer as if trust had been broken.
“Two minutes to touchdown,” the tech interrupted.
Atom turned from the troopers and walked out into the wide, empty hangar and stared into the Black, hoping to catch a glimpse of the incoming ship. At two minutes, the braking burn of the ship seemed a bright star in a sky full of pinpricks.
Crossing his arms, Atom watched the ship grow larger.
“Think that’ll make a difference?” Mir stepped up beside him, thumbs hooked in the arm holes of her armored vest.
“Hmm?” Atom scowled at the ship.
“The information you passed, will it make a difference?”
Atom shook his head. “Not for them. It might save lives if that was the direction the attack was really coming from. It might make a difference if bokes like that found themselves in a straight up fight. It might make a difference if they had power-armor and not skirmish.
“No promise though.” He caressed the grip of his pistol with an absent motion. “All the armor in the ‘verse won’t save you if your time’s up.”
“That’s reassuring.” Mir’s quiet chuckle seemed to drape a heavy blanket over the open atmosphere of the bay. “I was hoping for something along the lines of, ‘everything’s going to be wonderful, Mir’,”
“This is war, kid. Nothing is wonderful. Migori invaded and spilled blood. Right or wrong, the die’s been cast by those as sit in their ivory towers. You and I are the ones who have to live or die by the way fate lands. We fight because it gives us a better chance to make it home than if we didn’t.”
“Thanks, old man.” Mir’s light slap gave Atom hope that the galaxy might hold.
As Mir turned and sauntered back to the hub, the shuttle broke through the atmo-field at the mouth of the bay. In a blast of thrusters, the ship halted and, kicking up suspensors, settled to the floor with a hydraulic hiss.
Haveer and Meeks ordered their squads into line and settled at parade attention, waiting for the side hatch to cycle open.
Atom strolled forward to meet the admiral as he disembarked. Mir joined him.
A final blast of compressed air split the air as the hatch opened and a fit, middle-aged man stepped forth followed by a pair of guards. He surveyed the eerie silence of the hangar bay with a quick eye and turned his attention to Atom.
“I surmise I have you to thank for pulling me from the front, Agent…?”
“Mosby, sir. Flynn Mosby of the Special Service, working in conjunction with han heir Malcolm.” He glanced to Mir and stepped closer to the admiral, dropping his voice as he did so. “I’ve been sent to inform you that our ranks have been infiltrated by the enemy. They are waiting for the opportune moment to counterstrike.”
“And how do you know this?”
“Because.” Atom jerked his pistol from his hip and leveled it at Mir. “She is one of them.”
The two guards had only managed to get their hands to their service pieces before Atom had drawn and aimed at Mir with steady confidence. They froze in uncertainty, looking to the admiral for direction.
Mir’s hand drifted towards her shoulder holsters, but at Atom’s headshake, they continued up in surrender.
Seeing the opportunity for action, Haveer and Meeks rolled over their armored phalanx of twelve. They took up flanking positions and trained their rifles on Mir with eager anticipation.
“And how do you know this?” Motoki asked, nonplussed.
“I infiltrated the enemy, sir,” Atom replied. “I’ve been on the plain for several months now in preparation for our movement. Several days ago, I received valid intel that there would be a move on your life.”
“My life, why?” The admiral looked to Atom in confusion.
“Disrupt our forces, sir. The Adlerhan planned to move on the announcement of your death.”
“Very interesting.” The admiral tucked his hands behind his back and took a step towards Mir. “It would be a wise move on their part. My death wouldn’t stop us by itself, but I surmise it would provide just enough chaos in our ranks for a counter-attack to gain traction.
“Who is she really? Is she an Adler?”
“No, sir. Outside contractor. Hired from the Tribes.” Atom kept his pistol trained on Mir, but shifted with measured steps to position himself beside the admiral.
“The Tribes, now that’s a surprise. Their services do not come cheap. The Adlers must calculate that my death will be the tipping point of our border war. Do they believe they will be able to push back into our territory and make gains to offset what they must be expending?”
“I don’t know that, sir. I only know what I’ve been able to gather from their frontline cells.”
Motoki nodded. He studied Mir with a distracted, if thoughtful air.
“Do you have a name, girl?” he asked.
Before she could reply, Atom answered. “Lilly.”
Lilly glared at him through Mir’s eyes.
Atom took one more step, then shifted sideways like a serpent and put a rail round through the side of Motoki’s head.
Everyone froze in surprise.
Atom used the lapse to pull his second pistol, spin, and drop the two trailing guards. Ducking back, he hopped up into the open hatch of the transport, dropping several armored troopers in the process.
Before they could turn their rifles on Atom, Lilly drew her own blasters and began ripping into their ranks at close range.
“Lilly,” Atom shouted from the transport. “Get in here.” He leaned out and dropped another trooper with a headshot.
Lilly
crouched and sprayed around her with indifference as she scuttled to the ship.
The remaining troopers drifted into a firing line after their initial surprise, but the seconds it took to organize allowed Lilly to dive into the open hatch.
Atom fired a couple more rounds without leaning out and slapped the hatch closed.
Lying on her side, Lilly glared up at Atom. “How long did you know?” she demanded.
Atom shrugged. He holstered his weapon and surveyed the interior of the ship with a studied eye. Satisfied that no surprises lay in store, he loped through the small cabin, towards the cockpit. He glanced back from the door and said, “Lock down that hatch before they think to crack it. We need to be in the Black before they dredge up some weapons heavy enough to scratch this little firefly.”
He hopped into the pilot’s seat and fired the engines. Outside, the troopers continued to pour blaster fire on the ship, hoping to damage something enough to prevent lift.
A moment later, Lilly slammed into the co-pilot’s seat. With a practiced hand, she pulled up her screens and began scrolling through data. “We just lost port thrusters,” she growled. “We need out or a turn before they fully kill that flank.”
Atom scowled at the controls and slammed open the throttle. The landing gear tore gouges in the flooring. Whipping away from the troopers, he jerked hard on the yoke and scraped a wing along the hub at the center of the hangar. Under Atom’s delicate touch, the ship continued to accelerate, punching through the atmo-shield and into the Black, clipping the frame on the way.
“I don’t suppose you have a good escape plan?” Lilly asked without looking up from her displays.
“We just escaped, didn’t we?’ Atom glanced around with a mock startled expression, surveying their cramped lifeboat. Built for quick hops between ships and planets in-system, the skiff didn’t afford much more than a series of seats lining the outer walls, a central rack for storage, and a cramped head at the rear of the narrow cabin.
“You know what I mean.” Lilly refused to look at Atom. “We don’t have the capability to make the jump-gate ahead of any pursuit. I don’t see anything on the scope yet, but you better have a good next step to this little charade.” She pulled up a second display in the air above the previous pair and began scrolling through details. “We don’t have any weapons on this ship. It’s purely transport.”