by M. D. Cooper
The captain wasn’t lying; the 15g burn was hard. Tanis’s body weight increased to over a ton and she was pressed deep into the acceleration cushioning of her bunk as the ship matched the twenty-two kilometers per second orbit of the Mars Outer Shipyards. Once that velocity was reached, the fusion engines powered down, eliminating the gravity their thrust had created. In the resulting 0g Tanis let go of the rails and allowed herself to slowly rise above her bunk as the air thinned out once more.
She could feel the telltale vibrations of thrusters firing as they eased the Dawn into its external berth on the planet side of the MOS. Once the ship was in place and latched onto the station, the thrusters slowly phased out until the physical coupling supplied the ship’s angular momentum. During that process the ship gradually fell under the centripetal force of the shipyard and achieved the station-standard 0.8g.
Tanis let the increasing gravity pull her back down to the bunk. It was an experience she always enjoyed; a ritual that had persisted since her first stellar flight with her father some sixty years earlier.
An announcement came over the shipnet indicating a successful docking. The passengers were reminded to remain in their cabins until the debarkation signal was given.
Shortly afterward, the low thud of the passenger and cargo umbilicals linking the Dawn to the station could be felt through the ship. Fresh air from the MOS filtered through the vents. Tanis could practically taste the difference after the stale stuff the Dawn had been recycling over the last few days.
The debarkation signal came over the shipnet and a glowing green icon flashed on the door’s holo display indicating that passengers could leave their cabins. Tanis took her time giving the sparse space a final check, making certain nothing was left behind. It would give the corridors a chance to clear out. No point in rushing into a crowd of people.
The sounds of other passengers outside her cabin had ceased and Tanis had just stepped into the corridor when another tremor shook the ship. It was followed by the roar of an explosion flooding the hall, forcing Tanis to grasp the doorframe to maintain her footing. A moment of stillness followed and then alarms began to blare. Tanis set her auditory systems to filter them out, only to have the telltale whack of pulse rifles and the chip of beam weapons fill the silence.
In a single swift motion she dropped her duffle and pulled her pulse pistol from its holster. She couldn’t imagine who the hell would use beam weapons on a ship. One shot in the wrong place and it would disrupt the electrostatic shields and cause explosive decompression.
The sound of high-pitched whines and supersonic booms joined the other weapons fire. Even better, Tanis thought, some idiot was using a railgun!
Angela was attempting to query the shipnet to determine what was going on.
Angela’s reply was smug.
Tanis took a deep breath and altered her thinking patterns for combat. Any concern and worry left her as the calm born from being in more firefights than she could remember took over. Controlled and cool, no emotion. Feelings got you killed.
Tanis didn’t get the analogy.
Starting down the corridor toward the remaining umbilical, Tanis listened for the sounds of weapons fire. Most were distant, but the odd snap sounded nearby. She was nearing the fore end of the hall when the deck plate shook with another explosion, this one further aft, closer to the engines.
Tanis ignored the jibe.
The engines were in the other direction and Tanis pulled up the ship’s layout on her HUD, determining the best route aft. If she cut through the galley she could get to the engineering section via service areas and avoid the section closer to the boarding hatch and destroyed umbilicals.
Tanis turned, moving back down the corridor. After a hundred meters it ended in a three-way intersection. She eased around the corner, checking for hostiles when the deck shuddered beneath her feet. Her footing slipped and her head jerked out into the intersection, fully exposed.
“Hey! Stop!” The call came from her left.
Tanis berated herself for not deploying nanoprobes to scout ahead. Normally Angela covered that, but with her AI battling the virus that was trying to take control of the ship it was up to Tanis to manage the nanoprobes.
She spared a glance at the man who had called out before pulling her head back. He stood just over twenty meters away, raising his rifle to fire.
“Whatever happened to letting me halt?” Tanis muttered as she pulled back out of sight. She pressed herself against the bulkhead as two bursts of energy lanced through the space where her head had been moments before. Two black patches of melted plas steamed across the corridor from her, making certain she knew just how close the brush with death had been.
The shots were followed by a string of curses and the pounding of heavy boots. A quick listen told her he was running at full speed. When he had to be within three meters of the junction she crouched and launched herself across the intersection, firing her pulse pistol at him.
He wore light body armor, and though the shots stunned him, he shrugged off the effect in moments and let loose his own series of blasts. Tanis scampered back across the intersection and resumed her place against the wall. She waited, hearing his heavy breathing just around the bend; neither person wanting to make the first move.
“Get out here you bitch, I’ll make it quick.”
Tanis looked at the conduits above her and as quietly as possible leapt up and wrapped her arms around one. “I think it’s your turn to stick your head into the line of fire.”
He cursed her again and when she didn’t respond the nose of his rifle edged around the corner firing wildly. Tanis had pulled her feet up and though the shots missed her, she let out a pained scream.
With a laugh her attacker strode into view, eyes downturned, looking for her body. Tanis dropped her legs around his head and clamped her knees as hard as she could. The man reached up and wrapped cybernetically enhanced hands around her thighs. She gritted her teeth against the pain, but didn’t let go, twisting as hard as she could in an attempt to break his neck.
It refused to snap, most likely modified in some way. Tanis resorted to plan B and drove her lightwand through his right eye, trying to angle up into his brain.
&nb
sp; The man bellowed in agony and let go of Tanis as he collapsed to the floor. She landed lightly a pace away from him as he pulled the lightwand out and clamped both hands over his ruined eye.
“Yagh… You bitch!” He screamed, trying to get up. Tanis calmly set her pulse pistol to stun and fired several shots point blank at his chest.
The weapon was an Amhurst MK CXI; not the latest TSF military hardware, but still not a weapon that should be in anyone’s hands other than the Space Force. In addition to energy beams it could fire a focused pulse and she set it to that. No point in holing the ship more than these goons already had. Weapon secure, Tanis ran down the hall; keenly aware that taking out the thug had wasted precious time.
The kitchens were empty; the cooks had left their realm spotless and glistening before heading to the docks for their shore leave. Tanis slipped through the vacant area and into the service corridor that ran aft toward the engineering section.
She heard voices at the end of the hall and cycled her vision through various modes. The metal construction of the ship blocked infrared, but the free radical overlay showed a smudge of radiation moving towards engineering.
They were going to detonate a nuke on the ship; certainly an effective way to destroy the ship and a good part of the MOS with it.
Tanis reached the end of the hall and pushed the hatch open half an inch. She prepared several nanoprobes and felt the restructuring plate on her arm tingle as they left her body and flew into the next room.
VA and sensor readings from the probes lined her vision as they surveyed the room. It read clear and Tanis ducked into it and crouched behind a row of backup oxygen tanks.
Two men entered the room at the far end and Tanis flattened herself against a tank to avoid detection. Her probes circled, giving her a clear view of their positions. She waited until both men were facing away from her and then leaned out, shooting each in the lower back with the pulse beam. They crumpled and Tanis crept over to them, keeping an eye on the hatch they had come through. Angela deployed several nano to disable the fallen rifles.
The opening flashed in Tanis’s sight and a map of the ship appeared over her vision. A short corridor lay beyond the exit and beyond that another hatch opened into the main engineering bay. The bay was long and narrow; two of the intruders were at the far end and another two were positioned at either side of the entrance she had to go through.
“Let’s do this,” Tanis said to herself. She picked up a second rifle, opened the hatch soundlessly and crept down the corridor to the bay’s entrance. It wasn’t sealed tightly and her probes slipped through the cracks. As the readout had shown, there was a man on either side of the hatch, weapons charged and positioned to nail anything that came through.
Tanis pulled the hatch inward and stood behind it. Who knows, maybe they’d fall for something simple. Visual input from her probes showed one man stepping through the entrance, his eyes darting suspiciously.
Tanis raised a boot and kicked hard, slamming the hatch into the man’s head. He fell backwards clutching his nose as blood poured down his face. The second man was distracted by his falling comrade and Tanis used the opportunity to step into the clear and let loose with both pulse rifles. The man crumpled to the deck as she delivered another blast to his bleeding partner.
With both of them taken care of she sent her nano over the various machines dedicated to moving and powering the ship. Luckily, the engineering bay was far from silent and the two figures at the other end hadn’t noticed the commotion. Either that or they were simply concentrating on their little pet nuke.
Tanis darted down the length of the bay, leaping over equipment and ducking under conduit. Her movements were silent and she went unnoticed. Ten meters from the pair she swung around a set of cooling conduits and stepped into view.
“I strongly recommend you step away from the device.” A twinge of panic was in the back of her mind, shouting run away from the nuke! She schooled her face not to show it—dozens of enemies were one thing; a nuke was something else.
The two figures straightened; a man and a woman. The man had long hair that fell well past his shoulders, held away from his face by a thin band around his head. A scowl creased his angular features. The rest of his form was hidden by a long dark coat. The woman moved into view and Tanis cursed softly under her breath: she was wearing a shimmersuit. As Tanis approached it shifted from a glossy black color to completely translucent, rendering the woman’s body invisible.
“I think you made a wrong turn.” The man scowled. “If you run now, you can get off the ship before it blows.”
“I don’t think I can allow that to happen,” Tanis replied.
The woman didn’t say a word; with her body invisible she was just a disconcerting floating head which disappeared too as the shimmersuit’s material flowed up over her face.
“Think you can do that faster than I can twitch my trigger finger?” Tanis asked. “I’m MICI; we don’t arrest—we just shoot.” After a moment’s pause the materiel flowed back down the woman’s face.
“Military Intelligence and Counterinsurgency?” The man asked
Usually having MICI show up meant you had a leak; he had to be considering that possibility, a doubt Tanis was more than happy to plant.
“Then this will really hurt,” he continued.
Tanis’s vision turned white and pain erupted behind her eyes.
She felt a throb behind her eyelids and, as Angela predicted, in one second she could see again. The woman had vanished and the man was standing with the nuclear bomb between them.
He hadn’t pulled out a weapon, and simply wore a wicked smile. “Thanks for the treat. There’s little I enjoy more than watching Kris work.”
Tanis scanned the room for the woman while keeping her weapons trained on the man.
A fist impacted Tanis’s face and she staggered backwards, kicking out at where the attacker should have been. Nothing.
Tanis took a deep breath and brought her fists up in a defensive position. The room was loud and she set her hearing to filter out the ambient sounds, trying to listen for the whistle of the woman’s limbs.
Another series of blows struck Tanis and she stumbled, tripping over some equipment.
Tanis tried to move unpredictably while Angela hunted down the devices. Her arm tingled as thousands of nano left her body and filled the air in the bay. In moments the microscopic machines located the sources of the dampening waves and converged. The unseen robotic war was short, and punctuated by flashes of light as the enemy nano was destroyed.
Tanis’s sensors were suddenly able to detect air turbulence again and fed an image to her visual overlay.
The woman’s shimmersuit was slick; Tanis was unable to maintain her grip and her opponent slipped away. She blocked a punch and then they were apart, Tanis circling slowly, moving as quietly as she could.
The man swore, having realized while he watched the fight, Angela’s nanocloud was disarming the nuke. He bent over the console, trying to undo Angela’s work.
“Just kill her already, Kris. We’re running out of time. She must have AI that’s hacking the nuke.”
Kris didn’t respond, but Tanis heard the telltale sound of a foot pivoting on the deck. With a quick flick of her wrist, Tanis let fly her lightwand, satisfied when her opponent screamed.