“Back to the bridge Mitchell,” Li Fei ordered. “We need to secure command and control. Agent Caplan, have your team secure the bay.” The two Arbiters headed back to confront Captain Vassar.
“Sweep the area,” ordered Andrea. “Search every room.”
Under normal circumstances, we’d be clearing rooms in teams of two, but this was hardly normal for Section 9. What was the point of overwatch when your gear made you into a fire team unto yourself? We all seemed to innately understand that and fanned out. I headed for a trio of storefronts clustered around an elaborate fountain and marveled at it as I passed. It had been designed with the centrifugal motion of the station in mind, the jets of water curving through the air into tendrils knotted around each other. Llyr was certainly a bizarre study in excess.
The first room I checked was a jewelry shop, empty except for the owners who had their hands high above their heads before I walked through the door. The second place was a restaurant, serving what looked like fresh lobster, although that would not have been an easy thing to do in the outer colonies.
On my way to the third space, I encountered another Llyr security guard, who was aiming his gun at me with shaking hands. The man looked like he was trying to talk himself into doing something that could only get him killed. He was smart enough to know he shouldn’t be aiming that tiny gun in my direction, but for some reason he wasn’t smart enough to actually stop doing it. I gestured with my rifle for him to throw down his weapon, and to his credit he did. I took the weapon as the man ran off.
The armed security on Llyr Station wasn’t very formidable. They had no armor, and their weapons were low caliber sidearms. It was almost as if their only real purpose was ornamental, so why were they attacking us?
The door the man had been guarding had no placard, the space no sign. It wasn’t a shop, so far as I could tell. So why did it rate a guard of its own?
I checked the door, and it was locked. That’s rarely a problem if you have a skeleton key, but I couldn’t get to mine in the drop suit. On the other hand, was the door really strong enough to resist me? I pulled back, punched the door, and watched a section of it crumple around my fist like a scrap of paper. I pulled the door open and stuck my head in to see what was so important to the owners of Llyr Station.
Inside was a massive metallic ring with a chair in the center, suspended in mid-air. There were four thick metal legs supporting the ring, and rows of computer banks and other equipment inside the room.
Thomas Young came up behind me.
“Now that is curious.”
Andrea’s voice came over the shared channel. “Section 3, status report.”
“Veidt clear.”
“Jax clear.”
“Sendrig all clear.”
“Contralvo clear.”
“Caplan, you need to see this,” Thomas said. Then, in a dataspike message, he said, “They have a device here. It looks similar to that ruined equipment we found on Venus.”
Thomas, we don’t have time for this. The target is the ship. Focus on what’s important.
I suspect this is more important than anything we’ll recover from that ship. We need to seize this, and we need to do it now.
Thomas, I believe you. But that comes after we search the ship.
Thomas sighed and started back in her direction. “Come along, Barrett. Capanelli is being small-minded.” I didn’t choose to comment; I just followed him back to the others.
Commander Vassar was sitting on the floor flanked by the Arbiters, a slip-tie around her wrists and a defiant glare in her eyes.
“Why are you arresting me? I didn’t do anything!”
“Shut up,” was Mike Mitchell’s only response.
Li Fei followed up. “You will speak only when spoken to, Captain, or I will assume you’re dog whistling again and fracture your jaw.”
I didn’t want to say anything about the strange device in front of the Arbiters, but Thomas was too excited to keep his mouth shut. He walked up to Andrea and continued where he’d left off.
“They have something similar to what Marcenn used. We should—”
“August Marcenn?” asked Li Fei. “What is he talking about? That doesn’t have anything to do with your human trafficking case, does it?”
Andrea turned to him, wheels in her head already turning. “I have no idea. It’s—”
“If Section 3 wasn’t honest with us about the purpose of this warrant, it’s going to affect our willingness to cooperate in the future.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she insisted. “My colleague made a discovery that he thinks is interesting, but I’ve already told you that it has nothing to do with the warrant we’re here to act on.”
“Then what does it have to do with?”
“That’s classified. I can’t say anything more.”
“I’m here by request of Section 3, as is my colleague. We’re risking our lives, so I’d say we are squarely within the need-to-know.”
“That isn’t up to me,” said Andrea.
The situation was rapidly going downhill while precious seconds burned away. If the Havisham succeeded in cracking the docking bay locks, it could launch at any moment. Even if it didn’t, there was no telling what was happening inside. For all we knew, there were gunmen setting up an ambush while we gave them the time to do it.
Captain Vassar glared up at us, while Li and Andrea stood there arguing right in front of her.
“Let’s clear the air here,” Li Fei insisted. “This mission hasn’t felt right from the beginning, and I’m not putting myself or my colleague in harm’s way until you start telling me the truth. Why are we really here?”
Andrea didn’t respond to him. Instead, she turned away and spoke over our shared channel. “Commander, we’ve run into an issue down here and need your assistance.”
The Arbiter Commander answered a moment later. “What is it, Caplan?”
“We’ve found a device that may be related to the tragedy on Tower 7. This doesn’t fall under the purview of the warrant. Do we have your permission to proceed with the raid on the ship, or should we resolve the issues of the device first?”
The Commander was silent for a long moment. His voice sounded wary and mildly angry when he came back online. “Li, are you holding up the mission over this? Let’s get this done with!”
To my surprise, Li Fei didn’t just jump when his commanding officer barked at him. “These Section 3 agents are liars, sir. One of their people is—”
“None of that matters, Li. You have your mission. Get it done.”
This time Li was the silent one. When he spoke again, his voice was buzzing with suppressed anger. “Understood, sir.” He turned away from Andrea as if he couldn’t bear to look at her. “Let’s finish this. Intelligence Section 3.” The way he said those last three words, it was like he was mocking the whole idea.
Li Fei turned to Captain Vassar. “You’ll be charged with ordering your men to fire on a Sol Federation Arbiter. They’ll be charged with actually shooting at us. Consider yourselves lucky to be alive. You’ll wait in the bay until we can transport you safely out. Do you understand your situation?”
She just looked right at him and repeated her favorite line. “I didn’t do anything!”
“Get her out of my sight, Mitchell.”
Mike led the woman and her guards away, and Li Fei turned to us again. “I don’t know who you people really are, I don’t know what you really want, but I’ll tell you this: the Arbiter Force does not belong to you. Remember that the next time you request a joint mission from us. You aren’t welcome, you never were, and when the right people are in charge, you will never be given this opportunity again. Now let’s search that ship.”
Andrea chose not to say anything, and he stood there staring at her for what felt like an eon before finally heading for the dock. She watched him walk away for a few paces, then sent us a dataspike message.
This fucking guy is a problem.
Veraldi replied first. You can say that again. You did the right thing, though.
Absolutely, Jones added. He only decided to make an issue out of whatever Thomas found because he was pissed off when he recognized Tycho. That’s all there is to it.
The only person who didn’t seem to have any interest in our problem with the Arbiters was Thomas Young.
Does no one want to talk about the device?
Andrea actually laughed, although it did sound a little bit desperate.
Everyone, clear your heads. Anyone on that ship has had so much time to prepare that we’re probably going into combat. They might have weapons that can get through these suits. Stay sharp.
That was a sobering thought, and it changed the whole mood as we moved through the airlock and out to the docking bay where the Havisham was berthed. The Arbiters went first, crowding in ahead of us as if to make the point that they were the ones with arrest authority on this mission and we were not.
There was no sign of danger when we got out to the dock. The Havisham was there, a sleek luxury yacht any wealthy industrialist would be happy to call his own. The empty dock suggested the crew had probably already boarded the vessel, but there was no indication of what was going on inside.
It looked like everything was exactly the way it should be, like the mission was finally coming together and would soon be over. We could all go home and forget about the shitshow this mission had become.
It’s hard to believe I was ever that optimistic.
8
The directed energy beam went clean through Mike’s head, piercing his drop suit as if it were made of onion skin. In a fraction of a second, his visor flashed with blue light and his head popped like overripe fruit. A glittering black mist ejected from the holes in his helmet, and then Mike crumpled onto the dock.
That arcing stream of liquified gore, disgusting as it was to witness, was probably what saved our lives. It gave us an idea of where the attack had come from. I fired a burst as I dove for cover, hoping to suppress whoever had fired that shot.
To my surprise, the line of shots marched up the wall to my right, and I didn’t land where I’d expected to. I had to course-correct, but I felt like I was trying to chase a moving object.
A moment later, I was crouching down behind the largest and thickest metal object I could find. I don’t even know what it was, but its sheer size and bulk was irrationally comforting. Nearby, I could see Andrew Jones was crouching behind a mooring arm.
Tycho, adjust for the Coriolis Effect, messaged Andrea.
Of course. There was nothing like the threat of immediate and violent death to make a man forget elementary physics. Like the water in the fountain, I could fire a shot in a straight line, but the bullets would seem to curve because of the station’s rotation. That was also why I had gotten disoriented when I dove for cover. Aiming at anything was going to be tricky, although Li Fei and Mike Mitchell had both managed it.
“Can anyone see anything?” asked Veraldi.
“Negative,” replied Li Fei. His voice was flat, like he hadn’t just lost a junior Arbiter. I knew how he must be feeling, and it didn’t bode well for whoever had fired that shot.
“I can see them.” Raven’s voice, although I couldn’t see where she was hiding. “I caught a glimpse of them, anyway. Thermoptic camo, androids.”
Coming under fire meant we were probably on the right trail, but Androids presented a serious problem. Directed energy weapons fire a stream of effectively massless particles at a fraction of the speed of light. They’d be useless in an atmosphere, losing energy as heat over anything more than point-blank range, but in the vacuum of a spacedock they were the deadliest weapons anyone could bring to bear.
Veraldi asked, “how many?”
“Can’t tell. They aren’t moving.”
A beam of light pierced through the equipment I was hiding behind. It punched right through it like it wasn’t even there, and I realized that while I may have concealment, I did not have cover.
Someone returned fire. I didn’t know who. From where I was, I couldn’t see much of what was going on and I couldn’t do much of anything. If I fired a grenade from my position, it could veer off and land on Andrew’s head rather than on the androids attacking us.
Something shimmered near me, and I realized one of the camouflaged androids was creeping up on my position. I opened fire but didn’t correct enough. My shots went wide, and it pulled back, unharmed. Another beam cut through my concealment, followed by another a fraction of a second later.
So at least two of the androids had directed energy weapons.
“Andrea, I’m pinned here.” I flattened against the floor as best I could to minimize my cross-section. “Taking fire. They know where I am.”
“Be ready to move, Tycho.”
I saw a flash of light. “Go, go!” Andrea yelled.
I ran out shooting, fanning my weapon from side to side. I caught a glimpse of the androids as I barreled by. It looked like there were more than two, but it was hard to tell for sure with their thermoptic camo. I dropped behind a freight loader, knowing they could probably shoot through almost anything with those beam weapons. I was faced with the option of waiting to die behind ineffective cover or engaging the enemy and dying in the open.
What was the saying? Even if it seems certain that you will lose, retaliate.
I rose up from behind the freight loader and retaliated. I started firing to the left of where I expected the androids to be. My first few shots slammed into the bulkhead wall on the other side of the dock, but then there was a shower of twisted metal three meters in front of me. A Jovian military android carrying a beam weapon rippled into view as it fell to pieces. I saw an arm spin away, followed by its head and a section of its torso. Just like my bullets, they all seemed to arc to the right before dropping to the floor and skittering across the dock.
The other androids almost seemed startled, if that’s even possible. One way or the other, they didn’t seem to do anything for a second or two, they just stood there so still I couldn’t even make out the telltale thermoptic distortion in the air.
Not until they all turned and started firing at once.
I threw myself behind cover again, but this time I was able to catch a glimpse of what formation they were using. It was hard to be sure, considering that they were nothing but vague shimmers in the air, but the positioning seemed to track.
“Jovian Alliance proxies. They’re using Turtle formation,” I said.
“Are you sure?” asked Li Fei.
“Three meters from me. Use the dead one as a marker.”
“Copy that.”
He popped out from behind another mooring arm further down the dock. He fired a short burst and got under cover again. This time the androids all responded with an extended barrage, which forced us to keep our heads down. The second beam weapon was still in play, so we had to be cautious.
“I got one,” Li Fei announced. “Looks like there are four left. One directed energy weapon, the rest standard ballistics.”
Veraldi’s voice came through. “They’ll change to Box formation.”
“I’m on it.” This was Andrew Jones, who opened fire a moment later. “Shit, I missed.”
“Change positions, Jones!” Raven called out.
Li Fei’s voice was sarcastic. “Jones?”
In the middle of a firefight, the man had still noticed when Raven used the real name of one of our people. The beam weapon sliced through the air as soon as he said that, followed by Andrew’s voice.
“Holy shit, that was close!”
There was another burst of fire, although I couldn’t tell if it was from their side or our side. The androids had the advantage, even though they had only killed one of us while we had so far killed two of them. They had us pinned down, and at least one of their weapons could go right through our armor. They were using standard military small unit formations, and they had the space completely covered.
Andrea didn’t seem to think they were winning, though. “We need to take out the android with the beam weapon first.”
“Agreed,” Li Fei replied. “But how? If it sees us, it will kill us.”
The androids weren’t firing continuously, a tactic that might have been a much bigger problem for us. Their combat logic seemed to be based strictly on sight cues, with a limited ability to extrapolate where the target would be after dropping out of sight. I’d succeeded in running right past them without being hit.
“I can come up,” I volunteered. “Then one of you can take the shot.”
“No way, that won’t work,” Raven said.
“I think it’s worth trying,” Li Fei replied. “I’ll back you up.”
At first I was surprised—the guy hated me, after all—but then I got it. If he backed my play, he improved his own odds of survival while possibly getting me killed at the same time. It was a win-win situation for him.
“That’s the best plan we’ve got,” said Andrea.
“Okay, then. On three. One…two…”
I came up shooting on “three,” and I ran down the dock for new cover. The android with the beam weapon wasn’t facing me when I popped up, but it turned as I went running by. I dove for the floor, and the energy beam sliced through the air behind me. I waited for what felt like forever, but a fraction of a second later Li Fei cut the thing in half with gunfire.
“It’s done. There are three of them still standing.” His voice was still neutral, but it had lost a little of its cold anger. The android responsible for Mike Mitchell’s death was now just as dead as he was. The universe made at least that much sense.
“Let’s clean it up.” Andrea sounded confident, but then the three remaining androids opened up with their own weapons all at once.
“I have them,” said Raven, and she came out of hiding shooting. The first shot to connect hit the android in the head and sent it pinwheeling into the airlock door. The second shot went through another android’s chest and knocked it onto the floor. It kept firing until its magazine was empty, but it never moved again. The third shot went through the remaining android’s neck, mostly severing its head from its body. It stopped shooting and blindly walked forward until it hit a wall and went still.
Sol Arbiter Box Set: Books 1-5 Page 78