Renegade

by Joel Shepherd

  Her point-men’s visuals showed her the hangar layout while she was still outside — there were three branching corridors, all wide and flat-based, suggesting rotational gravity when the asteroid was spinning.

  “First Squad take the left corridor,” she told them. “Second and Third, take the right. Ignore the third corridor, it looks like a circumference route, it’ll just take us across to Charlie Platoon. I want us moving down and away from Phoenix, and I want division into groups no smaller than squads. Lieutenant Jalawi, you hearing this?”

  “Major you’re a little broken, but I hear you want us moving away from Phoenix, divisions into groups no smaller than squads, affirm?”

  “Affirmative Lieutenant, let’s go.” She caught every word of Charlie Platoon’s commander, but the static was worse than she’d hoped. They deployed ahead, allowing her command squad to move in, small bursts of jet thrust into the hangar’s cavernous mouth. Here was another huge chamber, with what might be control room windows overlooking. She could imagine shuttles here, anchored to the floor by gravity, serviced by… chah'nas workers, probably. Back in the Empire, tavalai had been doing the office work, not flying shuttles.

  The branching corridors were also big, though nothing like the size of the elevator shafts behind. Huge piping filled them, running along like bundled straws. Ahead, armoured marines drifted into those gaping mouths like children playing in the hallways of giants.

  Dale took First Squad right with Second Squad, Trace took her Command Squad left with Third Squad, while Heavy Squad split into two sections of four, one behind each. They progressed at what would have been a sprint had gravity been in effect, but at this scale felt like a very slow walk. Now the static really began to break things up, tacnet flickered and showed units a tentative orange rather than blue, and accompanying vis-feeds turned snowy. Air temperature remained a steady minus 110C, though laser-scan on the walls showed a warming trend. At the next forty-five degree junction she sent Third Squad ahead, and went right with Command Squad and the four-man Heavy section.

  “Okay people,” she told them, “we’ll have as many as seven different groups spreading through this rock and our coms are snowy. Let’s not shoot each other by mistake — if you see movement, query and identify.” Because tacnet was telling her it could only be sure of where half of her guys were.

  “This middle pipe here’s reading plus-50C,” said Private Rolonde. “Something’s definitely on.” Her voice was tense. Far-deployment in a hostile environment did that too — if someone lost environmentals out here, the air looked only marginally breathable and the temperature was positively deadly, and Phoenix’s warm corridors felt a long way away.

  But this was more than that. They were in a search pattern because Phoenix required them to thoroughly search the asteroid, and quickly. But what Phoenix required was putting them at greater risk, by dividing their numbers, if something hostile was about. But there was no choice to it — the ship’s safety came first, and with all the hostile shipping about, they didn’t have time to examine the rock more slowly in strength. She could deploy another platoon, she thought… but that was against all established practice in these situations — carriers never deployed more than half their marines at a time if they could possibly help it, in anything short of a full scale strike. That way if something very bad happened, Phoenix would still have a reasonable complement left.

  They flew past smaller side corridors, cut into rock but capped with steel bulkheads… and on the right, something slightly larger, but still far smaller than this current one.

  “Check this,” said Trace, and put an arm out for a blast of sleeve-thrust to slow her down. “Deploy right, all cover.” They moved like a well-oiled unit, several in tight by the corners while Private Ugail tossed a handball into the corridor. It spun and adjusted its flight, feeding vision and scans back to them all, showing nothing. Save for some tubes in the wall further up that didn’t look like more pipes. “Might be elevators, could lead to the core. Advance. Heavy Section, watch our tails.”

  The Heavies covered the entrance, their massive chain-guns and cannon no effort at all in zero-G. Until they had to fire them, that was. Sergeant Willis led them in, and the temperature began climbing to minus 90C.

  “Radiant heat,” said Willis. “No convection in here, it won’t travel much. I guess it’s coming through the walls.” The tubes on the wall ahead were indeed elevators. They burrowed up into rock and disappeared.

  “What’s the bet those go to the core?” said Private Van.

  Trace ran laser-scan on it… and got a vibration. She cut some static-filled conversations elsewhere through the rock, and listened just to the vibration. A ticking. Clatter clatter. Tick tick. Like someone rolling a tin can along a metal floor. Click clang. Very faint.

  “What the fuck is that?” asked Rolonde, evidently listening to the same thing.

  “What’s what?”

  “Laser-scan on the elevators, listen.”

  “I don’t know of any auto-mechanism that makes a noise like that,” said Trace, suddenly very aware of how isolated and walled in they were in this vast, alien place. Her heart thudded harder, and she took a deep breath to calm herself. On the climb, the fearful ones fell. “We’re going to assume something’s alive in there.” She flipped to broadcast. “All units this is the Major, reassemble on my position, we’ve got a way to the core but we’re only going in there in force…”

  A roar of gunfire over coms, then explosions. Shouts and yells, garbled static and a screech of metal on metal. Trace wanted to yell at them to report position, tacnet showed little but orange and blank space, but she knew that more shouting would just add to clutter. They were marines, they’d get a clear com soon enough…

  “Hacksaw!” someone was yelling above the noise. “This is Alpha Two, hacksaw! Hacksaw!” And even Trace’s blood ran cold, because far worse than krim were hacksaws — AI drones, remnants of the Machine Age twenty five thousand years gone, the bloodiest horror known to have befallen flesh-and-blood sentience in this part of the galaxy. Humans had only encountered their surviving warriors a handful of recorded times, though every now and then a ship would disappear in some remote region, and people would wonder.

  “Form up!” Trace shouted. “All units rendezvous and regroup!” As Sergeant Willis yelled at Command Squad to make defensive formation. “Let’s get away from this elevator now — Willis, heading 110, let’s get to First Squad!”

  They displaced, thrusters firing, jetting down the narrower corridor with terse instructions back and forth to watch formation… the elevator exploded just as the Heavies left it, showering them with shrapnel — something up above had put a bomb down the shaft as she’d feared.

  “Third Squad, make my position! Make my position! We are headed 110, rendezvous with First Squad, Alpha Company rendezvous on First Squad!” Just hoping they could hear as the walls shot by, and tacnet showed a static mess of blue units and red, meaning hostile, but nothing that made sense…

  “Clear that corner!” said Willis as they approached another big transit corridor ahead, and Rolonde and Terez fired airburst grenades to clear anything hiding around that corner… explosions then something else flashed…

  “Cover!” And Trace hit jets and slammed herself back-first into the wall as fire came in, bounced and fired back amidst a hail of outgoing fire. “Seekers!” Someone threw a handball and tacnet showed a flash of visual, something many-limbed and spider-like amidst smoke and fire, then vision vanished in a burst of thrusters.

  “Advance!” said Trace and they went, the handball recovering enough to show several more spidery things jetting onto the walls in the opposite direction. Trace locked on an SR and fired it on tacnet, jetting forward as she saw it turn that sharp corner, then something blew in a flail of legs, and incoming fire shredded the exit ahead. “Wait!” Trace yelled over the shriek of disintegrating metal, grabbing a pipe to halt herself short. “Let ‘em spend ammo! Load SRs!”

/>   These units hadn’t spotted the handball, so didn’t know they were being watched. It suggested visual vulnerabilities, or processing ones.

  “Fire!” More short-range missiles streaked from backracks, turned a sharp corner and… “Go!”… before they hit, a burst of thrust as they did, then into the vast open corridor as multiple strikes hit the walls. Trace fired right where one ought to be, auto-jets correcting for recoil to stop her tumbling as she skidded sideways and into the far wall — multiple strikes amid the smoke, she saw metal limbs coming apart, fragments flying.

  Then the others of Command Squad were firing at the second as it jetted forward, losing limbs and weapons in a hail of heavy fire, but Trace was already looking around for others… and directly above was a hole in the ceiling. She put a grenade through it just as they came, blasting one into a tumbling collision, yelling “Above you!” and firing on full auto and rapid-cycle grenades.

  Command Squad split in all directions, as amidst them came twisting debris, and several still active hacksaws — and for the first time she saw it, six-limbed, an armoured thorax, variable-articulated sensor head with multiple weapon mounts blazing fire. It slashed and spun in all directions at crazy speed, someone’s suit went spinning, another spider came apart at close-range fire and shattered. An explosion sent it Trace’s way and it hit the wall alongside, twice the size of an armoured marine, and she jetted backward to dodge a squealing saw-blade that sliced straight through the wall she’d been on.

  She blasted it, and then the Heavies were firing from the corridor exit, and the last one still fighting came apart like paper in a hailstorm. Tacnet told her Ugail was dead, and she could see Sergeant Willis was too — his suit was in two pieces, that saw-blade had gone straight through him.

  “Cover and reload!” she commanded, smacking in a new mag. “Blow those things’ heads off, let’s be sure! Injuries, report!”

  “Major, Sergeant Willis is…”

  “I know that, I said injuries dammit! Pay attention!” Elsewhere she could hear fighting ongoing. Echo Platoon would be deploying now from Phoenix, making Bravo and Delta the fighting reserve — she couldn’t talk to them from here and so couldn’t stop it if she’d wanted to.

  “Major I’m legged.” That was Rolonde, voice tight. “The suit’s drugged it, don’t feel much.” More firing, as others finished off the twitching hacksaws.

  “Private Arime, escort Private Rolonde back to Phoenix, don’t stop for anything.” It was a risk — if they met hacksaws on the way they were probably dead, two marines alone couldn’t defend much, especially with one wounded. But Echo were on their way, and they’d meet backup soon… and she couldn’t take wounded where she was going. “The rest of you, that hole in the ceiling is our way in. Hacksaw nests have queens — we attack the queen, the others will rush to defend her, we take pressure off our units. Let’s go.”

  It was insane, of course — that little hole in the ceiling was tight and dark. But it led somewhere where the hacksaws were, and as Trace recalled reports on nests, the AIs were reluctant to use heavy firepower near their core. They built things in nests, mostly other AIs, self-replicating the only way machines could, by powered construction. Damage to that, in this isolated facility, could be difficult to fix, especially in this system where survival depended on not drawing attention to themselves. It gave attacking marines a slight chance, and forced the drones to get up real close to engage them. It meant that she and her Command Squad would probably die, but at the benefit of saving, if it worked, nearly everybody else.

  She jetted at hard thrust toward that dark, bullet-pitted hole, and not one of her squad hesitated to follow. “Nine point nine!” Corporal Rael yelled on the way in.

  “Nine point nine!” the others replied. Ten billion souls in Sol System when the krim hit Earth. Nine point nine billion dead. It had been humanity’s battle cry for the past thousand years, and the hacksaws weren’t the only ones who talked in numbers.

  12

  “All hands,” Erik told the ship, “be aware, emergency undock could occur at any time. I repeat, emergency undock could occur at any time.” He flipped to marine channel. “Lieutenant Crozier?”

  “Copy LC,” came the Delta Platoon commander. She was the other senior marine still aboard besides Lieutenant Zhi of Echo Platoon, and next in the dock to leave or defend.

  “Lieutenant I may have to break dock at any moment, prepare your troops.”

  “Copy LC.”

  “We’re not going to get clear?” Geish asked in astonishment.

  “Not yet,” Erik said grimly, staring at the screens, ears straining to gain any sense of the chaos unfolding in the rock.

  “Sir, I’m with Second Lieutenant Geish on this one,” said Shahaim. “Those hacksaws can operate in vacuum just fine. They’re sure to have other exits around the rock, and if they can get out, they can latch to our hull and cut straight through…”

  “Second Lieutenant Karle,” said Erik. “Do you have Armscomp dialled to near-defence?”

  “Yes Captain. I mean yes LC.” Very tense, with fingers and thumbs hovering over multiple handgrip buttons. Between him at Arms One, and Harris at Arms Two, they could handle near and far range threats simultaneously.

  “Sir,” Shahaim tried again, “they’re so small and fast that at this range, and with the rock for cover, we’re going to have blind spots and a few of them will get through…”

  “We’ve got marines getting hurt in there,” Erik said firmly. “They’ll need medical attention immediately, if we have to evac them via the shuttles it’ll take time, and the shuttles will be a lot more vulnerable to hacksaws than Phoenix is.”

  “Sir,” Geish said angrily, “if any of those things get aboard…!”

  “The Major has it under control,” Erik shut him down.

  “Sir this is a hacksaw nest! She could be dead!”

  “The Major has it under control,” Erik repeated coolly. And gave Geish a glare. “That will be all, Second Lieutenant.”

  “Aye sir.” Geish looked grim.

  “And watch those damn scans, hacksaws aren’t the only thing we’re worried about.”

  * * *

  Trace put her Heavies on point and told them not to let the drones shoot first. They responded by blowing everything to hell on the way in and alternating the lead to let the others change mags and cool barrels. Corners that would otherwise be cleared with a visual inspection were instead air-burst grenaded, and several ambushing drones were blasted, or tried to attack once they realised their ‘ambush’ was blown and got shredded by chainguns instead.

  The corridor wound through hard rock and confined engineering levels, a blur of steel gantries and support structures for systems Trace didn’t recognise. But the hacksaws didn’t appear to want them booby trapped, and there were a lot of electrical and other piping that Trace guessed were sensitive to high explosive.

  The corridor ended with a hatch that Trace commanded blown, which the Heavies did with gusto. Trace threw a handball through the wreckage and saw… she wasn’t sure what, a mass of systems that looked like nothing human-made. But there were no obvious threats, and tacnet was getting better at identifying hacksaws off handball sensors, so they burst through and took position…

  And found themselves amidst a spidery tangle of steel beams, gantries, cables and pipes, all reworked and welded like some grotesquely beautiful piece of art. Or the inside of an insect’s nest, on a thousand times the scale. Passages twisted away in all directions, never a straight line. In amongst it all were machines and machinery — zero-G formers, refiners, 3-D printers, all alive and blinking. Trace’s HUD told her the air here was plus-31C — warm but not humid. This was where the heat was coming from, and the AIs must indeed have flushed the outer corridors to vacuum when they saw Phoenix coming, then let the life support air reflush to get such an abandoned, freezing look.

  “Hold,” Trace told her remaining unit, as they drifted to cover positions with effortless coord
ination. These had once been inner crew quarters and systems around the central reactor, she thought… but under however many centuries of hacksaw occupation, those old walls and divisions had been erased, and replaced with this. A colonised system, for the utility of the colonisers, who did not need gravity, or walls and doors. Air, they’d evidently kept, for the excellent insulator and heat-retainer it was.

  A check of tacnet showed her no further fighting. She couldn’t see everything, the feed remained as snowy as ever… but several other units she could see now advancing toward the core as she had, along similar routes. There should have been desperate resistance, now that she’d penetrated the inner sanctum, but there wasn’t.

  “Okay,” she said carefully. “There’s a chance that might be it. There might not have been that many of them, and maybe we’ve killed them all.”

  “Or maybe they just don’t want to shoot up their pretty nest now we’re in it,” Corporal Riskin countered between hard breaths.

  “Or they’re waiting until we’re deep inside then we get it from all sides,” Terez added.

  “That’s possible too,” Trace agreed. “The reactor should be up ahead. Probably they’ve rerouted the bridge controls to here as well. Let’s progress slowly. You see anything moving that’s not human, shoot it. Don’t relax now, we’re nearly there.”

  “Oh no chance of that,” murmured Van, staring wide-eyed at the nest. Every human instinct told a sane person to go the other way. But marines and sanity did not always agree.

  They moved in slowly, weaving on jet bursts between the spidery mechanisms. They did not shoot to clear corners here — a lot of this environment looked as though it could do anything if damaged, including explode, catch fire or electrocute everyone within fifty meters. Machinery running lights cast ghostly shadows through the web of steel and cables, and drifting steam swirled in zero-G eddies.