Renegade

by Joel Shepherd

  Up the fast running handline through the core, into the rotating main hold with its slowly spinning walls, then down gamma-b stairs with fast pulls, then leaps down the ladders to main corridor, then a sprint up to the bridge in what might have been his best time yet…

  “LC on the bridge!” came the yell, and Shahaim was ditching straps and leaping from the chair, while Draper did the same in Shahaim’s chair, then came fast to help Erik in. Everything secure, displays back in position, Draper began helping Erik out of his armour — neither the chair nor the all important armrests were shaped for it, and any physical misalignment could force piloting errors. Erik realised past his gasps for air that he was exhausted, muscles aching, his brain dead tired from endless stress and fear, and covered in Carponi and Toguchi’s blood as well.

  “LC has command!” Shahaim announced as she brought her own post to order.

  “I have command,” Erik confirmed, as his uplinks locked into familiar bridge frequencies, and the Phoenix HUD appeared on his inner retinas. He reached quickly into the armrest pouch and pulled a stim tube, put it to his wrist and felt it sting. Immediately his heart galloped and sounds came rushing, and he flexed his hands, then got a good grip of the sticks, arms free of armour as Draper got to work on the torso straps… and suddenly one of the bridge-guard marines was there to help him, and everything came unhooked in a rush.

  “LC,” said Shilu, “we’ve intercepted transmissions from Crondike, there’s some serious action taking place out there. They’re shooting the place up, the Major must be outnumbered like ten to one.”

  “Right,” said Erik, holding his arms over his head as the torso armour was removed, “we’re going to get her.” And was surprised that it was Kaspowitz who questioned.

  “She gave us her information and told us not to die rescuing her,” said the Nav Lieutenant. “I’d love to rescue her too LC, but if we try it in this mess we won’t make it three klicks.” Draper and the marine gathered the armour and disappeared to captain’s quarters, the closest convenient location in which to ride out a push. Erik’s legs were still armoured, but that wouldn’t bother his flying.

  “I’m not doing it for her,” said Erik, “I’m doing it because I still don’t know what I’m fucking doing out here compared to her. She’s the only one who does, and she’s worth more than her damned information, and so’s the guy who provided her with it.” He was wasting time explaining himself, but he needed time to soak up the confusion on his screens, and gather his thoughts as the stim shot sent his brain into overdrive.

  “Fleet HQ won’t let them shoot us with that warhead embedded in the rim wall,” Shahaim suggested without confidence.

  “They will if five of them get a good shot all at once,” said Karle from Arms. “That’ll kill us so fast we won’t be able to trigger the warhead.”

  “Besides which they’ll be evacuating and relocating,” Erik said grimly. “Shouldn’t take more than a few minutes for vital functions.” He flipped channels. “Operations, who’s on standby?”

  “Lieutenant Crozier with Delta Platoon at combat dock,” came the reply. “Lieutenant Zhi with Echo at shuttle dock. We have just the civilian shuttle left with PH-4 damaged, and we have no qualified pilot — Ensign Lee is hurt as well, so we’ve no shuttle crew at all.”

  Dammit, thought Erik. Lee must have been hit when Toguchi was, and not noticed at the time — with all the adrenaline pumping, it happened. And he noted more shooting on scan, as Fleet took out a merchanter they didn’t like the look of. Another big flash. Without a functioning shuttle when they reached Faustino, recovering those marines would be all about hoping that PH-1 was still operational. If it was not, they had nothing to get down to Crondike with. Lieutenant Zhi had been thinking ahead to get Echo Platoon ready at shuttle dock adjacent to where PH-4 had arrived, but he’d been expecting to use PH-4 itself, and now both it and their last remaining shuttle pilot were incapacitated.

  “LC… this is Ops, scratch that last, I have a volunteer just arrived here for shuttle pilot. No, scratch that, two volunteers.” Almost immediately, Erik realised who. “It’s the kuhsi and… and your sister, sir…”

  As every pair of eyes on the bridge swung onto him. “Eyes on stations!” Erik snapped.

  “Erik!” It was Lisbeth, down at Ops. “Erik I’m a good co-pilot and Tif’s got sixteen years as command pilot! She’s really good, she can do it!”

  “Good, go!” he told them, not quite able to believe his own words as he spoke them.

  “Go? You mean…?”

  “Yes go! Get in the cockpit now, you won’t be able to do it once we’re underway. Lieutenant Zhi, that means you too.”

  “Echo Platoon copies LC.”

  “Yes!” Lisbeth agreed. And off-mike… “Good, go Tif! Let’s go!” That would take another two minutes at least to get them and all of Echo into the civvie shuttle, he calculated furiously. The most dangerous bit would just be getting to Faustino — on Phoenix or off Phoenix, the danger was about the same, and sometimes when ships were hit, their shuttle occupants were the only ones to survive and get clear. His subconscious had realised all that before the rest of him, and his mouth had given the order before his brain had properly caught up.

  “Scan, who is this on the inner side of Hoffen-A hub?”

  “That’s Adventurer, D-class cruiser,” Geish said immediately. “Looks like she’s covering in case we cross the rim.”

  “D-class mass is 38K, right?”

  “Yep, minus ten percent unloaded,” said Shahaim. “Adventurer’s manifest showed she was prepped for light duty, I’d guess mass 36K.”

  “Good,” said Erik. “Ops, I want main docking grapple standby. Arms, all target on Adventurer. Lieutenant Crozier, do you copy?”

  “Copy LC, this is Crozier.”

  “Lieutenant I want you to stand by for possible boarding. We are going to engage combat grapple and run with the target ship attached. You may need to go aboard at some point but I can’t say when, just be ready.”

  “Oh holy fuck,” Shahaim muttered, as across the bridge officers stared at each other, or swallowed hard in disbelief.

  “Copy LC,” said Crozier, with all the cool she’d learned under Trace. “Sounds like fun.”

  “Arms!” said Erik.

  “Yes LC!” came Karle, young and anxious.

  “We’re going to come through the spoke arms of Hoffen-A and up alongside point blank and surprise them. I want weapons and engines disabled, tell me what you need.”

  “I… well LC, I think…”

  “Come on kid, you are Phoenix Arms officer! It’s your call, call it!”

  “Aye LC! Two pairs of vipers in brackets for proximity burst, total surprise, blind their sensors and shrapnel damage on dorsal and belly emplacements. If you can get us alongside within ten seconds of detonation, I’ll have firing solution for a D-class in Armscomp and we’ll take out remaining guns and engines with proximity cannon.”

  “Ten seconds is not enough time,” Erik replied. “I can get you there in fifteen. Hold fire on the vipers for five seconds after I hit thrust, calculate your shot to miss the hub spoke and account for motion.”

  “Aye LC, five seconds after thrust, I copy.”

  UFS Adventurer was on the opposite side of Hoffen’s hub, as well as on the far side of the huge, rotating wheel of Hoffen-A. This was going to be some move.

  “Erik we’re in!” came Lisbeth’s voice. “We’re belting in, the marines are still securing.” She probably didn’t even know Lieutenant Zhi’s name, let alone procedures for embarking and disembarking marines in any circumstance, let alone combat ops.

  “Lisbeth, is Tif going to understand anything we say?”

  “Probably not with all this static and noise, but I can translate.”

  Even better, Erik thought drily. But spreading negativity before operations was not conducive to success. “Good job Lis, now hold tight, it’s going to get bumpy.” Ops would talk to her about the marines,
and Lieutenant Zhi would be in her ear frequently — as co-pilot she was also load-monitor, though marines did their own load-mastering. SLMs, shuttle and Ops personnel called marines, for Self-Loading Munitions.

  And he took a moment to consider Adventurer, a much smaller ship with perhaps ninety crew, and no business being within Phoenix’s arc of fire really, given Phoenix could shoot down most of what came her way, and Adventurer couldn’t. Ninety lives and comrades for whom Phoenix in the war would have risked much under fire. Now he was about to take a huge chance with all of them, and unlike Starwind, Adventurer hadn’t yet done anything to earn it.

  “This is Ops,” came another call. “Everyone from PH-4 is off and secure. Two fatalities, Carponi and Toguchi.” Erik saw red, and stopped caring about Adventurer.

  “Lieutenant Geish,” he said. “Highlight primary threats to priority please.” Because it was such a mess out there, and his brain was still catching up with where everyone was. Red highlights flashed across his scan feed as Geish complied — several bigger Fleet cruisers holding off in cover-fire positions… and UFS Mercury, now undocking from the Hoffen-A rim with a hard reverse, spinning as Captain Ritish brought their main engines into clear space.

  “Mercury is clear,” Geish added, in case anyone had missed it. The one ship here they didn’t outclass… although at these ranges and matching velocities, anyone was a threat.

  “Scan,” said Erik, running his final engine checks, “add all chah'nas and alo vessels to priority listing please.” More red dots flared as Geish complied. Two chah'nas vessels still inbound from further out, but they could arrive real fast if they violated lanes and pulsed jump engines. And that blasted alo ship directly on the opposite side of the hub from them… plus one more on the rim of Hoffen-B. Still in place despite everyone else leaving around them, both of them. Did they know something? Or just playing possum?

  Now or never. “All hands this is the LC. Prepare for combat. Visual report, all stations, give me a green.” Green lights flashed across his vision, each of the stations reporting readiness — he didn’t have time for audio reporting, visuals saved time. “All good, all green,” he summarised. “We are going in five on my mark.” Engines powered up to full, and he spared another thought for the jumplines. Second Lieutenant Rooke had been working feverishly as always while they’d been on Hoffen, continuing repairs and adjustments. But it didn’t change the fact that the original repair in Argitori had been a patch-up. The enormous three-arm of Hoffen-A slowly swung to the ‘vertical’ before them, before continuing ponderously past.

  “Mark,” he said. Scan showed Mercury thrusting toward an overwatch position. More warning shots on the rim, a string of proximity detonations. “Five. Four. Three. Two. One.” He hit thrust at 5-Gs, with a roar that undoubtedly scorched the Hoffen hub. His coms lit with automated screeches of alarm — thrust in excess of 1-G in any proximity to station was strictly forbidden outside of wartime. Flying through the spokes of a station wheel was forbidden at any time.

  He twisted the grips as the towering three-arm came up, angling toward it. Thud!thud!thud! as Karle fired his missiles, rounds arcing up away from Hoffen hub, through the wheel and twisting around to the far side. Erik dropped the stern to give Phoenix a shove into clearer space as they passed through the wheel, then kicked them around in a huge, swinging barrel roll, nose pointed to the hub all the way as the rear swung around in the direction of flight to slow them once more.

  “Multiple hits!” shouted Karle as Adventurer came into view… trajectory was off a little so Erik increased thrust until his vision blurred. “Proximity targeting, go Harris!” Rapid thuds as Phoenix’s near-range cannon opened fire, and Erik caught a brief visual of the stricken cruiser, already yawing and stunned from the missile near misses, explosions now surgically removing its weapon emplacements before it could return fire.

  “Good volley, good volley!” Harris added from Arms Two. “Lower emplacements disabled, engines disabled… sir he’s rolling away, I have no angle on those dorsal emplacements!”

  “Good enough, won’t matter,” said Erik, powering around to matching velocities, then hitting nose thrust to brake them right against the cruiser’s belly. Clangs and screeches of debris against the outer hull.

  “We are being targeted!” shouted Geish. “Two… three… five sources! Mercury has locked us!”

  As Erik hit the final attitude burn and smashed the combat grapples into the much smaller vessel’s mid-section. Super-heated charges fired, burned into the thick mid-section armour, then the grapples smashed into those holes with a molecularly engineered grip. Nose grapples got a lighter grip to make it steady, then Erik rolled them over with attitude thrusters to put Adventurer between them and Mercury.

  “Good grip, good grip!” Ops was shouting. “We got her!” Coms were flashing, priority from Mercury, but Erik could guess what Captain Ritish would say. Their passenger was not big enough to obstruct fore or aft attitude thrusters, so Erik burned them into a hard rotation away from Mercury.

  “Arms,” he said. “If we receive warning shots, fire warning shots back. If we are fired upon directly, kill the offender.”

  “Aye Captain, kill the offender!” No one bothered to correct Karle’s little mistake. It took twice as long to turn, but as soon as the aft was clear, Erik hit a 3-G burn and nosed down to put Hoffen’s main axle between Phoenix and Mercury. The grapples held, so he increased that to 4-G, then to 5, frightening the life out of several small shuttles and station-close traffic who evaded wildly from the path of this over-powered alo-tech warship that came roaring past with its tail aflame, dragging a ruined smaller ship with it like small prey caught in a predator’s talons.

  “They’re not firing!” Geish observed with desperate hope. “They’re holding fire!” With Adventurer in their grasp, firing on Phoenix without hitting the small cruiser was nearly impossible. Just to be sure, Erik gave them a roll, rotating Phoenix and Adventurer around a common point of mass as he increased thrust to 6-G, increasing the difficulty for opposing armscomps from impossible to very impossible. Phoenix thundered and roared like the wild and hungry beast she was, only mildly troubled by the extra weight, her own weapons tracking targets as they moved across their individual patches of sky.

  “Mercury is pursuing!” called Jiri from Scan Two.

  “Arms!” said Erik. “One viper please, target Mercury directly and hit her.”

  “Aye Captain,” said Karle. “One viper, targeting for a strike.” Everyone knew what would happen when you fired one unsupported missile from matching initial-V at a combat carrier. It accelerated away from Phoenix, turning a sharp corner and charging straight at the fellow carrier at crazy acceleration… and abruptly vanished as Mercury’s defensive missiles blew it to very small pieces.

  “She’s backing off,” said Jiri. “She’s reducing thrust and steering wide.” Erik skidded them past several fleeing freighters as, even burdened, Phoenix blew past them at a steady 6-Gs. To judge by the relative stress readings from grapples and engines both, Erik was sure the grapples would break before the engines maxed out — the sheer power of this ship was beyond belief, even for one who’d served on her for three years. Warning fire snapped by, and Karle returned fire, Erik slowing the roll to give his guns a longer look at the offender.

  “Coms,” Erik gasped past the heavy-Gs, “general frequency.” Shilu flashed it up. “Phoenix to Fleet. Phoenix to Fleet. Stay clear or die. No more warnings.”

  “ETA on Faustino is sixty-three minutes on current thrust,” said Kaspowitz. “Let’s hope it’s fast enough.” Command Squad had to hold out for an hour then, plus whatever it took to get the shuttle down to them, if needed. Pulsing jump engines with a passenger was suicide, and even if they jettisoned the passenger they were still too close to Heuron V’s mass. Besides which, if they lost their hostage, Mercury and others would be back after them at full speed, and would catch them as soon as they slowed into Faustino orbit. No, the hostage had to sta
y, and this was the fastest acceleration they dared. Major Thakur, and the units she commanded, were very hard to kill. He could only hope that they remained so for one more hour.

  30

  Trace bounded down the engineering tunnel besides massive pressurised conveyors and siphon pipes, as Lance Corporal Walker’s section fired in their rear to keep pursuit at bay. It was hot down here, generators thundering and steam venting, big industrial lights throwing a harsh glare onto working steel and gantries. Workers stared and ran as Staff Sergeant Kono and others yelled at them to ‘get out or die’.

  They’d tried to push for the landing pads, but the approach was hallways and open foyers like a shopping mall — the side approaches were sealed shut with doors they had no way to open, and the mall-space was now a killzone with zig-zag crossfires around every turn. In full armour and weapons her marines could have done it no trouble, but in light armour and no weapons larger than a rifle, she was facing a fifty percent chance of making the pads at all, at probably eighty percent casualties. From that point Hausler simply had to be there, and Hiro couldn’t find him, as all of Crondike was in deep-static lockdown with jamming so intense even local civvie coms were crackling.

  She couldn’t get eighty percent of her guys hit or killed on a prayer, and all of them killed if that prayer wasn’t answered, and so she’d opted for her next best-bet — find a well-defensible spot and force her attackers to come at her hard. That would create a localised firefight that could get Hausler’s attention and tell him where they were. The pressure to kill them all before that happened could force the enemy to press harder than was wise, and if Command Squad had defensive position, that swung the odds back in their favour. If Hausler couldn’t find them, they could still exhaust the enemy by killing a lot more of them than vice-versa, then charge and break out once they were vulnerable. And from there… find a shuttle, somewhere. Which would probably get shot down before they’d cleared Faustino, and certainly by some Fleet cruiser afterward. It was hopeless unless Hausler found them, and probably even then… unless some ‘enemy’ Fleet vessel had a change of heart and saved them, or joined Phoenix, futile straw-grasping hope that it was. She’d told Erik, in the elevator descending to the Hoffen rim, that Kulina didn’t hope. But neither did they give up while still breathing.