The Expendable Few: A Spinward Fringe Novel

by Randolph Lalonde

  “Drone!” one shouts. That’s the beginning of a hell I’m sure I won’t forget any time soon. Two marines get split open from stomach to spine by drone cutting lasers before anyone has a chance to open fire. The lower half of the shuttle and the hallway beyond flashes with the strobe of firing rifles as marines flood into the Sunspire. My turn comes up. Instead of holding back and waiting for my subordinates to enter, I take the lead of the second wave. “Let’s take the beast back,” I say as I stride towards the breach and leap across. The marines have the hallway choked in both directions and they’re making room for me and my specialists.

  I pick up a rifle from an eviscerated soldier. Nothing alive is made to survive this heat without protection. The incredible heat incinerates anything bare and organic within moments of exposure. The first wave of marines are laying down cover fire, burning small holes in the hardened metal of the corridor as they miss invisible targets, marking gleaming yellow scorch spots when they strike the cloaked defensive drones. What Freeground Intelligence suspected has proven true: the Sunspire has adapted the cloak suits that were developed years before to all her drones. I pick an area above my head that’s not being covered and lay down a strafing burst just in case some of the cloaked drones have gotten through. I hit nothing and return my attention to the overall situation. We’ve lost five more marines; the drones sliced through their helmets at point blank range.

  “One tracker grenade aft!” announces a marine.

  “One tracker grenade fore!” announces another.

  There are two distinct flashes, and the corridor is momentarily filled with fine orange dust. As if drawn by a breeze it dissipates away from us, clinging to anything using stealth technology and lighting them up. The shape of the drones becomes clear for the first time.

  They are narrow, half-metre-long machines with over a dozen arms ending in hardened tips and tools. Cutting lasers, heavier manipulation clamps, and an onboard computer make up the contents of the body. They climb the ceilings and walls as easily as they scurry across the deck.

  “It’s closing!” shouts Lieutenant Crow as he passes through the opening in the Sunspire’s hull. A thick layer of organic steel is regenerating at an alarming rate, threatening to leave several of my command crew behind. Without hesitation I take a gamble, setting my rifle to automatic and firing dumb slugs at one side of the hole. Chunks of the metal fly past my flinching command crew, but the hole is just big enough when my heavy slugs run out. “Come on!” I shout, dropping my rifle and reaching through.

  I take Isabel’s hand in my left, her temporary navigator’s in my right, and yank them through the closing hole. The hull seals the three others off. “Blow a hole in this!” I order to any marine who isn’t busy firing at a defensive drone. With the heat of the sun striking the Sunspire’s hull, it’s regenerating much faster than normal. I watch the membrane of thin organic steel thicken as I move Isabel behind me, between myself and several marines.

  Mary turns, looks at the regenerating hull, and orders half a squad to concentrate fire on a section of fresh hull. It’s too late, it’s already too thick. “Not going to happen, Commander, hope they weren’t mission critical,” she tells me, signalling her marines to cease fire.

  I know the shuttles won’t last more than a few minutes longer under the heat and pressure of the dwarf star. Those crewmen will be exposed, then their suits will fail. They aren’t the only losses. My visor display informs me that we’ve lost fifteen marines. One of my reserve command crew members bought it when they got caught in the crossfire. Mary, Isabel, and Remmy are fine, however. We also have more marines than we expected at this point, more than enough to go on. I bend down to retrieve my rifle and just as I’m switching it to pulse mode, my suit alerts me that I’m under attack.

  I can’t hear the defence drone’s tiny limbs, but I can feel its tools probing frantically for a way to crack my hardened armour open and tear me apart. “Help!” I shout as I try to fling it off my back.

  It wraps its invisible legs around my arm and pins it above my head. The staccato flash of pulse rifles forces my visor to go dark and my arm is released.

  “Looks like the tracker dust settled too soon,” says one of the marines. “That one was nowhere on scope.”

  “Thanks,” I reply as I clip the rifle’s safety line to my chest. I pull a clip from my reserve pack and reload. I’m thankful for the weapon for reasons beyond protection or revenge. Holding it stops my hands from shaking.

  Chapter 9 - Data Port

  The atmosphere becomes more habitable after we break through the thinnest interior bulkhead we can find. I stop the boarding team in a broad hallway and we get set up for the rest of our mission. We’re a full squad down on marines, and the remaining soldiers are ready to tear the Sunspire a new one for what she did to their comrades. With more room to manoeuvre ahead, they bring out the heavier ammunition, just in case.

  I use my head’s-up display to look at Isabel’s scans, which indicate less movement in the adjacent hallways, and just a trickle of power running through this section of the ship. Our marines spray the air around us with the orange detector mist that keeps those cloaked drones visible, but we’re only encountering a couple of curious ones now. They get pecked off as they are revealed peeking around corners.

  “Remmy, is there any indication that the virus the Amazon uploaded to the Sunspire is still working?” I ask.

  “I’m still dark,” Remmy replies. “I can’t say anything for sure until you get me to a central data port.”

  “Power plant and propulsion energy levels are still next to nil. I can’t get a good read on the smaller systems, but they’re probably working on backups,” Isabel says. She’s doubling as our systems engineer, since we lost ours getting here. Thankfully she’s a good officer, and studied the schematics of the Sunspire.

  I check Alpha team. They’re well on their way to the central aft data port. Lieutenant Urik kept his people moving as they reconfigured. I would only admit it if pressed, but Urik is the better commander. He’ll probably reach his data port before we do, so I start thinking about the secondary mission: taking the bridge.

  The team is almost finished checking armour, switching weapons, performing scans and collecting data. I return my attention to my immediate surroundings. Their mirror smooth surfaces of the hallway are so perfect they are featureless. Either the seams are so fine that we can’t see them without a detailed scan or the Sunspire has grown her shiny blue organic hull over all the finer features aboard. I don’t bother tasking anyone to check, and set my own scanner to passively detect doors.

  “Group combat shielding coming up, stick together,” one of the technicians announces. It’s completely new technology to Freeground and no one here knows where it came from, but I love it for this mission. Instead of each suit depending on one energy shield, the fields can merge into a stronger, moving protective barrier. It only takes her a couple of minutes to set it up.

  “All right,” I reply. “Let’s get moving.” I can’t see the shield with my naked eye, but my visor makes up for the limitations of my human sight, overlaying the energy pattern of the barrier. It looks like a bubble stretched over our group, expanding and retracting as people move further or closer from the majority.

  The marines lead the way, rushing down silver-blue hallways. The space is so shiny that the little lights affixed to the sides of our helmets seem to reflect forever. As they move down a two metre wide hall, I can’t help but feel as though we’re trespassing on sacred ground, and a hateful eye is tracking us.

  “We’re at the main aft data port,” reports Lieutenant Urik over the command channel. He’s in charge of incursion unit Alpha, and well ahead of us.

  “Congratulations,” says Remmy. “Be careful, I have nothing on wireless scans, but that doesn’t mean the Sunspire is totally brain-dead.”

  “I know,” replies their comms officer. “Would you shut up and let me do my job?”

  A quick lo
ok at Remmy’s activity screen on my heads-up display tells me that he’s moved on, already performing a fresh scan of the area around us. If we were sitting in the common lounge, Remmy would have argued for at least an hour, but he’s surprisingly professional in the field.

  I keep tabs on Urik’s team as my team makes its way across a large open space towards a bank of lift doors. We’re not far from the nearest central port, inside one of the large transit centres aboard the Sunspire.

  “Wait, something’s happening,” says Lieutenant Urik. I look to the small window on my heads-up display that shows Urik’s point of view. Their technician pauses at the lift interface a moment. “Go, go! Break through that panel so we can get to the interface!” Urik orders.

  I miss a step and nearly collide with the marine to my right when I see all the lights in Alpha Unit’s area come on. The doors seal them in, and the walls around the Lieutenant and his men start to move like a metal skin.

  “Oh crap,” says Remmy.

  Screams fill the channel as Lieutenant Urik looks to his right and sees heavy metal membranes come together like silver-blue waves and roll towards them. The space between the upper and lower parts are only a couple of centimetres high, and I find myself silently praying that their reinforced vacsuits can handle the crushing attack. They do, but not well enough to prevent injury.

  The chorus of screams are so agonised that they seem inhuman. The ripples of organic metal mangle the team and I can hear armour and bones breaking. The lieutenant isn’t dead. The medical system reports extreme systemic distress - broken femurs, pelvis, collarbone, four broken ribs, and a punctured lung along with other organ damage - but pain management kicks in right away. “Good luck, Commander,” says Lieutenant Urik as the pair of crushing membranes come around for another pass.

  Remmy stops and falls to one knee, forcing everyone around to halt. The sounds of the ship crushing the already broken bodies of our comrades are too much. His breakfast comes up in a surge before his command unit can dose him with anti-nausea medication. The hood of his vacsuit suctions up his sick. Compressed water sprays his face clean.

  “The lieutenant?” asks Mary.

  “Aye,” I confirm, offering Remmy a hand up. “Was anyone else watching that?”

  “No. My tactical system just updated, crossing Urik’s team off,” Mary says.

  “And I thought comms officer would be a cushy job,” Remmy says. “Sometimes I hate being the all-seeing eye.”

  “EMP,” I tell Mary. “I want to shock the walls ahead so we don’t run into the same thing at the forward link.”

  “Yes, Sir,” she agrees. “We’re coming up to a terminal at the end of the hall, we’ll do it there.”

  “Won’t that kill the terminal?” asks a technician.

  “Someone didn’t do the reading,” answers Isabel from behind him. “Main terminals are hardened against EMP, egghead.”

  “Oh,” the technician offers lamely. “Getting the Faraday sheets out.”

  “Good,” I say, noting the technician’s serial number so I can demote him as soon as we finish taking the ship.

  The cost of taking the Sunspire should start to take its toll on me. Maybe they changed something during my grief therapy, something important, because I feel the loss as though from a great distance, like I’d never met Urik. I had, though briefly. The deaths of Urik and his unit should evoke more feeling. Instead, putting the emotional impact of what happened aside is effortless. It’s as if someone went through my emotional inventory and filed down the edges so I wouldn’t cut myself on anything sharp. I’m not so subdued that the cost of taking the Sunspire isn’t making me angry, however.

  We start running again, down another stretch of hallway. “Picking up a sudden surge in wireless activity,” announces Remmy.

  “Does it match anything we’ve seen?” I ask.

  “Yes, but it’s from Third Era archives,” he replies. “Thoss machine code.”

  “What? That hasn’t been seen for centuries.” I bring the available information on Thoss code up on my display. The Freeground Intelligence database tells me the same thing: Thoss code. “What did you find out here, Sunspire?” I say to myself.

  We make our way to the end of the hallway and find a darkened circular space. The temperature is twenty one degrees centigrade, spot on for life support. Then Mary shouts, “Movement!”

  “Get under the Faraday sheets,” I order.

  Red and blue lights illuminate the space ahead. My visor adjusts to reveal larger, walking robots with particle beam emitters mounted across triangular heads that make them look like they are staring at us with angry red eyes. Gripper hands with nano saw fingers rotate at the ends of four long triple-reinforced arms. Six collapsing legs extend beneath as they power up and begin sidestepping around the room. One of the nearest bots lowers its body and head so its sharply pointed chin touches the deck. It is as though its perfectly round, glowing red eyes are looking directly into mine. The thing’s mouth - a round blue pulse beam emitter - opens and closes as its protective aperture seals and unseals.

  “Fire,” I order quietly. “Fire! Fire!” I shout as the one staring at me springs forward.

  The marines at the head of the column open fire and spread out. The charging bot lands in their midst, taking several heavy rounds but surviving long enough to yank Mary off the deck and fling her into the open space behind it. As it is reduced to a twitching pile of ergranian metal struts and broken armour, its brothers descend on Mary like a school of piranha.

  The marines panic, opening fire on her attackers, ignoring the technicians behind who are trying to get the Faraday sheets over them. The robot’s particle beams break through Mary’s energy shields in seconds. Grippers with nano saw fingers cut through her armour, flesh and bone.

  “Get under the sheet, now!” I grab the EMP charge from one of the marine’s backs, set it, and then toss it into the next room. It is Mary’s only hope. If the grenade doesn’t disable the machines trying to hack her to bits, there won’t be anything worth saving. I barely have time to get under the Faraday sheet myself before it seals. A handful of marines, the technicians, and my bridge officers make it with me. The charge goes off.

  I whip the sheet aside and check Mary’s medical status. She’s still alive. The medical component of her command and control unit is inoperable, however. I rush to her side. A half functional bot turns so it can take a shot at me and I fire my rifle on the run, strafing it and the bot beside it. I knock one of the five marines who were caught outside of the faraday blanket to the ground along the way. He’ll be at least half useless for the rest of the engagement. His rifle, personal energy shield, and most of his gear are fried.

  A few of the other guardian bots begin to move. Little parts close to their armoured bodies at first, but enough for me to see that they are recovering too quickly. My clip is half empty by the time I reach Mary. “We’re coming, Commander!” says Remmy from behind. My tactical display verifies it: he picks up a rifle and begins leading my unit forward.

  Part of Mary’s jaw is missing, she’s lost both legs and an arm. Her vacsuit hood has been peeled away and she stares at me - an expression of fear and pain. She struggles to breathe through profuse bleeding, and I do my best to remain detached. “I’ll get you fixed up, hold on.” I load an emergency stasis dose into my command and control unit and press the nozzle to the side of her head. “See you soon.” To my relief, she closes her eyes and the bleeding stops. A quick medical scan verifies that she’s stable, in emergency stasis.

  I turn my attention to the ongoing fight. It still isn’t much of a battle. The bots are still just starting to recover, only a couple of them having reached full mobility. There are several hallways leading to the chamber, however, and I expect more company at any moment. I focus on a pair that come around the transportation hub in the centre of the large, circular space and watch with satisfaction as my heavy explosive rounds shred their metal bodies. My bridge officers fire their
sidearms at their highest setting, and it helps, but only just enough to keep the machines at bay.

  “Technicians! Move up and interface with that terminal!” I order. “Time to shut this party down!”

  The technicians Remmy left behind look warily out from where they’re hiding in the hallway across from me, but they don’t move.

  “Now, Mister!” I reinforce harshly.

  “Get your ass up here or throw me your brute force interface kit so I can do it myself,” Remmy shouts at them.

  The pair of technicians starts to run from the hallway to the terminal behind me. Three bots spring at them, but we cut them down within a metre of the cringing non-combatants. They start cutting into the glassy terminal interface as soon as they arrive. “Transparent ergranian, Sir,” Remmy says as he gets his comm kit ready. “It’ll take a few.”

  “Sir, how long do you think the other internal incursion countermeasures will be disabled for?” asks Isabel. She didn’t see the carnage at the main aft terminal, but knows some major defensive system took out Urik’s team in seconds.

  “Two minutes,” I lie. I want to believe an EMP will disable the Sunspire’s more elegant defence systems, but there’s no way to be sure. The lie is to reassure my people, without removing a sense of very real urgency.

  My tactical system alerts me to a new threat. There is a wave of small crawling attack drones, exactly the same as the ones we encountered when we boarded, on their way from the starboard side. “Fire team! Head’s up! Incoming at nine o’clock.”

  “Don’t worry, Commander,” interjects the voice of Lieutenant Davi on my command comm. A point on my tactical map pings and a timer counting down from fifteen minutes appears. “We’re on our way.”

  A marine hands me a clip and shoves two more into my belt. If the scan is accurate, and there really are hundreds of drones coming, I will need them. I add my rifle fire to the fray, laying into the last of the walking bots until it collapses to the deck. I reload as quickly as I can - two point nine seconds from ejection to firing my first round, according to my performance tracker. Glancing at a small performance display on my heads-up display is an old academy habit I haven’t bothered breaking. I set my sights on the first of the crawlers and mulch it in three shots.