by Jay Posey
Once they’d cleared the gunship, the team switched communications over to their internal channel and did a quick commo check. Everyone sounded off, with Wright reporting in last.
“Wright, check check check,” she said. “Good copy all around. And we are going cold.” She tapped a few strokes on the console and set the Coffin to silent running, further reducing the vessel’s heat signature.
Lincoln looked down the line at his teammates. Though their suits were identical, the individuals were identifiable by their size and shape, as well as by their kit. Each had a different arrangement of gear hanging on their suits, marking their roles and laid out to exacting personal preference. Mike had even customized his with a few nonregulation images and phrases, using the digital ink that only showed up through the suit’s visor. On the shoulder facing Lincoln, he’d placed a tab that read “MEDIUM SPEED, SOME DRAG”.
But even though Lincoln could tell who each figure was, and even though he was in one of the suits himself, there was something unearthly about the faceless, armored beings sitting patiently to his right. It didn’t take much to imagine they were empty suits of armor, each animated by some dreadful avenging spirit. Knowing the people actually inside, he wasn’t sure that was too far from the truth. And he was glad they were all on his side.
They covered the remaining distance to the target in silence. Lincoln tried not to think about how great that distance actually was, or how fast they were actually moving. For all the time he’d spent in space, he was a groundpounder at heart, and he’d never quite gotten used to the exponential change in scale. When they were on approach, Wright roused the team.
“Five mikes to target,” Wright said. “Thumper, Mike, you’re up.”
Mike and Thumper stood up, folded their seats flat against the bulkhead. Mike had to hunch over to keep from hitting his head on the overhead.
“We headed out the top, or you gonna poop us out the back?” Mike asked.
“Back,” Wright said.
“Seriously, Mike, you gotta stop calling it that,” Thumper said, as they shuffled towards the rear of the craft.
“What? That’s what it feels like.”
Lincoln made room for them to get by and, as they squeezed past, wished he’d sat in the middle in the first place. The rear hatch leading to the airlock was three-quarters height. Watching Mike work his way through it, Lincoln understood Mike’s description of the process.
“Can’t you think of it like something nicer?” Thumper said as she followed Mike into the airlock.
“Like what, Thump?” Mike said.
“I don’t know… like, I don’t know, being born or something.”
“Oh sure, that works too,” Mike answered. “Forcible ejection through a canal filled with blood and water–”
“Ugh, nevermind,” Thumper interrupted. “Just shut up and go.”
Three minutes later, Wright had the Coffin in position. The first insertion point was on the lower decks, down where a lot of construction was never completed. The number of exposed beams, girders, and cables promised a significant navigation challenge to even a ship as slim and streamlined as the Lamprey. As a precaution, the team had decided to hold off a few hundred meters from the station; Mike and Thumper would freespace the remaining distance using the microthrusters on their suits.
“Downtown, you’re good to go,” she said, using the pair’s mission codename.
“Copy that,” Thumper said. “Stepping out now.”
“Behold,” Mike said a moment later, “the miracle of life!” and then he made a revolting sound with his mouth.
A minute or so later, Thumper reported back in.
“Downtown’s on site,” she said. “Prepping Poke for entry now. We’ll hold for your call.”
“Roger, Downtown,” Wright answered. “We’re moving topside. Stand by.”
Wright moved the Coffin to the second insertion point a few hundred meters further up. Once there, she activated the protocol that had earned the vessel its designation as a Lamprey. Lincoln felt the ship roll and settle into position; a few moments later a low hum sounded through the hull as the craft attached itself to the exterior of the station. At least in this case, Flashtown’s haphazard construction played to the team’s favor. They’d identified several locations where the station was vulnerable to breach, and had selected one as an entry point. Now, the Lamprey was cutting through the external shell of the station’s hull. As long as the ship’s seal was secure, the station’s internal atmosphere would go unchanged and thus the breach would go undetected. Once the team had entered, the Lamprey’s mechanism would reverse the process before it detached, reforging the hull incision with integrity comparable to before the cut was made. And in Flashtown’s particular case, Lincoln guessed it might even be improved.
“We’re up,” Wright said. Lincoln and Sahil joined her towards the front, where the upper airlock was located.
“I’ll take point,” Lincoln said.
“Negatory,” Sahil said. “First in’s my job.”
“Whatever happened to chivalry?” Wright said.
“Bad guys always shoot high,” Sahil said. “And ain’t none of y’all can stay as low as me.”
He didn’t leave any room for argument and started up the ladder into the airlock before anyone could respond. Lincoln started forward after him, but Wright swatted his hand off the ladder and followed Sahil up. Lincoln was last in, and sealed the hatch behind him. The low-intensity red light of the airlock gave his teammates a hellish look, offset somewhat by their last names emblazoned in bright block letters across their backs. The names were visible only through the suit’s visor, and remained easy-to-read white regardless of the actual environmental lighting conditions.
“Downtown, Highrise is ready to make first entry,” Lincoln said, taking over comms as the team lead.
“Copy that, Highrise,” Thumper answered. “Poke’s still sniffing around for the exact location of the relay, but so far he’s showing clear for us from here to there.”
Thumper and Mike had a less glamorous entry point, through an arm of what appeared to be an uncompleted docking port, long ago abandoned.
“What’s your route?” Lincoln asked.
“Through the port, service tunnel up to the holds,” Thumper replied. “Then depends on what Poke finds. Hopefully we don’t have to go too deep. It’s pretty twisty in there.”
“Roger that,” Lincoln said. “We’re headed in.”
Lincoln signaled to Sahil, who nodded, drew his sidearm, and then activated the exterior hatch. On the other side waited a depthless emptiness, framed by the station’s outer hull. Sahil climbed up and into the blackness, catlike in his movements, until all that was visible of him was the NAKARMI on his back. Wright waited for his call. Lincoln looked down at the short rifle slung tight across his chest, checked it one last time.
“Clear,” Sahil said. At that, Wright moved up quickly, with Lincoln just behind. As Lincoln left the Coffin and entered the black space above, the suit’s sensor suite dialed up the visibility, compositing an image from the various spectra it could detect. There was no light for it to intensify or enhance here between the outer and inner hull of the station, but it interpreted all available radiation and translated it into a visual representation that Lincoln could understand. The result was a ghostly blue image of his teammates, amongst the station’s interhull infrastructure. Beams and girders spanned open spaces that dropped below and curved away above. This particular section of Flashtown was old, but clearly hadn’t been part of Garlington’s original blueprint, judging from some of the strange angles and variety of construction materials used.
A virtual beacon designated their inner hull breach point a few dozen meters away, one that should take them to another out-of-the-way section of the station. It would’ve been more convenient if they could have found an entry point directly beneath their external breach, but the station’s “design” didn’t allow for that. And in any case, the only
time anything was ever convenient on a hit was when it was a trap.
“Downtown, Highrise is in,” Lincoln reported. “We’re moving to the second breach point now.”
“Roger, Highrise,” Thumper said. “We’re going to go ahead and move into the dock. It’s dead down here.”
“Downtown to dock, copy,” Lincoln said.
The metalwork spread and overlapped like many hands with long fingers splayed; Sahil led the way as the trio navigated space that had never been intended for traversal. As Lincoln climbed over and around, ducked under, and stepped across, he was once again amazed at how natural the movement felt, at how closely the suit matched his body’s expectations. If ever there was a place to catch a too-wide shoulder or clock a helmeted head, it was here, in between the hulls of a poorly constructed station. But there was none of that for Lincoln, nor for his teammates ahead of him, at least thus far.
After a few minutes of careful climbing, Sahil reached the entry point. He crouched and started assembling his necessary tools. Wright took a position next to him, and readied her weapon. Lincoln clambered in just behind Sahil, placed his hand on Sahil’s shoulder. The three of them balanced on a three-foot-wide girder flush against the inner hull. Sahil attached a small device to the hull about waist height.
“How big a hole you want?” he asked in a whisper. There was no real need to keep voices low; Lincoln could have screamed and no one outside his suit would have heard it. But it was a hard habit to break. And Lincoln wasn’t sure it was worth breaking anyway. Quiet voices reinforced quiet movement.
“Big enough to get through in a hurry if we have to,” Lincoln answered.
Sahil produced a cylinder from somewhere on his hip, and used it to trace a silvery outline on the inner hull, roughly the size and shape of a normal ship hatch. When he’d completed the circuit, he tapped the bottom of it with his knuckle.
“Don’t trip goin’ in,” Sahil said. He replaced the cylinder on the suit’s belt, and then quickly went to work setting up two additional devices, one just above the top right corner of the outline, and one below it, at the bottom corner. Once he was certain they were secure, he activated the small device he’d first attached to the hull. As the device came on line, an electric border radiated outward from it, like lightning pooling against the hull, and wherever it spread, the hull appeared to become translucent. Outside the suit, nothing had changed, but from inside, Lincoln and his teammates had a good look at what was going on on the other side of the wall.
And what was going on, Lincoln was glad to see, was pretty much nothing.
“Downtown, Highrise is ready to make entry on the station,” he said. “What’s your status?”
“We’re holding in the dock, by a service tunnel entrance,” Thumper answered.
“You got eyes on that relay yet?”
“Not yet. Poke’s reading strong signal, so he’s close, but there’s a lot of clutter. My guess is that they tucked it back in one of the secure storerooms and camouflaged it with a bunch of junk.”
“You want us to wait?”
“Negative, we’re ready to move. Poke should have it by the time we get there.”
“Roger that. Stand by,” Lincoln said. He switched his comms back to local. “Sahil, we set?”
“Set.”
Lincoln pulled his short rifle up from his chest, shouldered it, kept the muzzle pointed low. “Burn it.”
“Don’t trip,” Sahil said again. He pulled the small black box off the hull, and the image of the empty passageway on the other side dissolved. A moment later, Sahil touched off the silvery outline. There was no sound from it as it brightened into white, a white so intense that Lincoln’s visor had to filter it to keep it from blinding him. It didn’t take nearly as long as Lincoln expected. In just a few moments, the two devices at the top and bottom of the cut whined quietly, as they extended and then swiveled together to draw the cut section of the hull to one side. The instant there was enough of a gap, Sahil shot through it to the left. Wright moved in just behind him to the right, and Lincoln followed her through, mindful to step high over the lip at the bottom of the cut.
In the few seconds it had taken to get into the station, nothing in the passageway had changed. Still, the team held position, weapons ready, listening for any sounds of warning. Lincoln gave it thirty seconds to be sure.
“Downtown, Highrise is in,” he said.
“Copy, Highrise,” Thumper responded. “Downtown is moving into the tunnels now.”
“Roger that,” Lincoln answered. “Sahil, patch it up and let’s go.”
Sahil nodded, lowered his weapon and returned to the entry point. After a moment, Lincoln heard the mechanical arms on the other side of the hull reverse to slide the section back into place. There was a noticeable gap where the cut had been made, but the lighting in the passageway was poor, and this section of the station seemed to be fairly low traffic anyway. Lincoln wondered briefly how long it’d be before anyone noticed. Given the state of the station interior, though, it might not even seem that out of place.
Sahil brought his weapon back up and returned to his position ahead of Lincoln.
“Go camo,” Lincoln said, “Move when ready.”
Lincoln activated the reactive camouflage of his suit; the function surveyed the environment and adapted the suit’s surfaces to blend in as much as possible from multiple viewpoints, using the sensor suite and threat matrix to prioritize the camo scheme. It didn’t make anyone invisible, but in the right situations, it could be pretty close. Ahead of Lincoln, the pattern on Sahil’s suit shifted like thin trails of mist and shadow stretching to meet.
“Camo’s up,” Sahil said. “Mir, you set?”
“Roll,” she answered from behind Lincoln.
Sahil moved forward with quiet steps and careful aggression; a delicate dance of speed without haste, masterfully executed. Lincoln matched pace, with Wright following close and providing security to the rear. The route they took was cleanly plotted and clearly marked through the augmented display, but within the first few minutes, Lincoln knew there could be trouble ahead. Though they didn’t have to redirect at any point, there were places along the way, passages blocked that should have been clear or doors where walls should have been, that warned of bad mapping data. The deeper they got into the station, the worse it seemed to get.
There was nothing to do about it now. The suit was capturing all the new data, correcting as they went, so at very least they’d know what to expect when they came back through on the way out.
“Thumper wasn’t wrong about twisty,” Wright said.
The three pressed on in silence the rest of the way to their target; a high-security hold on Flashtown’s upper decks. Under normal circumstances, this was the kind of operation Lincoln would have carried out in the dead of night; an oh-dark-ugly kind of hit. But Flashtown was special. There was no dead-of-night on the station. Officially, it ran on a thirty two-hour clock, though Lincoln didn’t know what the point of that was. Mayor Jon’s way of keeping some sort of nonconformist order, maybe. Whatever the case, people were up and about at all times, which made everything that much more difficult. Lincoln and his team weren’t here to cause indiscriminate murder and mayhem. But given the kinds of folks who generally populated Flashtown and the chances of bumping into someone unexpectedly, there was a very real and present risk of doing just that.
Fortunately, after some careful navigation and thanks to Sahil’s good instincts, Lincoln’s element reached the deck without alerting any of the station’s citizens. Green Deck was dedicated to loading, unloading, and storing cargo from Flashtown’s various clientele. Unlike most stations with their contraband and safety regulations, anyone could store just about anything at Flashtown, as long as they paid. And the more they paid, the better the security got. From the look of things, Lincoln guessed he and his team were in the cheap seats. Several holds were little more than open hangars, sectioned off by haphazard fencing. Security personnel pat
rolled in and around the aisles between these areas.
And calling them security personnel seemed generous. Mostly they were skinny kids with rifles too big, with a few mean-looking roughnecks mixed in here and there. Lincoln had seen the same composition in any number of irregular military forces back on-planet; exploiting young would-be warriors was a common recruitment tactic favored by warlords, cartels, and paramilitary groups. No matter how far from home they got, people didn’t really change.
Across from one of the bargain-rate hangars, separated by a thoroughfare wide enough to drive a couple of trucks down, sat the target area, and it was clearly a different story. It too appeared to have been a hangar at some point, but had since been substantially reinforced. A pair of guards lounged near the front entrance, which was a large, thick steel door that Lincoln guessed had maybe once belonged to some sort of vault. The guards themselves weren’t exactly professional, but they both had a veteran look; mercenaries who’d seen some action, or maybe a couple of former pirates who’d managed to survive to retirement. Or, Lincoln thought, maybe not former at all; pirates who were taking a couple of weeks off to earn some pay.
Lincoln decided to set up shop in the hangar across from the target. With some well-timed maneuvering and a quick lock circumvention, Lincoln and his two teammates gained access to one of the holds and took up concealed, elevated positions among the stacks of crates and containers. From his perch atop a double stack of large shipping containers, Lincoln had a good view of several of the patrolling guards below as well as the two men posted at the entrance of the target area. He tagged those he could see, and his visor marked each with a thin bracket. Those tags were in turn automatically distributed to his teammates’ suits. From that point, as long as at least one of them had visual on the guards, the tags would update in real time.
“Downtown, Highrise,” Lincoln said.
“Stand by, Highrise,” Thumper answered. Lincoln waited, keeping careful watch on his surroundings. About twenty seconds later, Thumper spoke again. “OK, go ahead, Link.”