“Djembe? Don’t shoot.”
The man breathed out a little more. “Come out where I can see you.”
Moments later, the young man stepped into view and approached the base of the ramp, hands out at his side.
“You’re late.”
“We had a complication.”
“You alone?”
“Yes.”
Djembe walked cautiously down the ramp and reached the younger man with his gun still trained on him. He scanned the space with an experienced eye, alert for any possible treachery. Satisfied, he turned and appraised the Earther standing before him as he lowered the pistol. “You look even more rumpled than usual. Been sleeping in a hole somewhere?”
“You could say that.”
“Tell me about your ‘complication.’ You realize that I still expect to be paid.”
Deacon pointed at the gun. “Do you have any more of those?”
Djembe’s eyes widened.
“That’s crazy. I don’t think I could fit them all in, let alone compensate for the load in the calculations to leave the gravity well. How many did you say?”
“I think it’s forty-three.”
Djembe started up the ramp, talking over his shoulder. “You’ll have to find another ship, my good smuggler. No way I’m risking that much of a load change. You promised me one large man.”
Deacon ran up after him and stopped in the cargo area, appraising it. “I think we might be able to fit them all in here, Djembe.”
The pilot sat heavily in a jump seat, one of a row attached to the fuselage that could be folded in—most were. He looked around, redoing the math in his head.
The ship was a Gopher-class system strike vessel, designed for small units of fleet marines or black-ops troops to navigate into a star system and enter a planet’s atmosphere with minimal disruption and maximum maneuverability. At the time of its birth, transport hull number G21001 was one of dozens built…of course, that was over a hundred years ago. When Djembe had come across the Gopher in the mothball yard on Io while working in the Transport Division of the fleet, he’d remembered it for the day he’d be out of the service.
For ten years now, Djembe had made a sort of a life piloting it to and from Earth in the face of the Prax occupation. The fact that the Imani—his name for the Gopher—was purpose-built for infiltration and exfiltration hadn’t hurt his success rate in smuggling.
He looked at the guy standing in his bay, hands on hips and trying to affect a superior air. He liked Deacon; the bootstrap smuggler had found out his secret hanger—one of the few that hadn’t paid with their lives—and he’d taken him under his wing, in a way. Showed him how to get his hands on items of value, and bring them to him. Told him stories of space flight. He’d been surprised and not a little perturbed to hear in recent days that the kid was actually working for the Fleet on a covert mission. Made Djembe reconsider killing him to protect his ship. But then again, the Fleet probably already knew where he was hiding when planetside.
He pulled out the multi-tool and snapped it open, balancing it across his forefinger. “Even if I could haul that many—who’d you say they were?”
“Fleet members, plus my big guy.”
“So, Fleet members. Even if I could take ‘em all I’d be expecting a significant increase in fee.” He lifted his finger with the tool across it, watching it hover in balance. Eyes shifted back to Deacon. “Tell me how that many Fleet members ended up on Earth. There a crash? Seems like the Prax wouldn’t leave survivors like that.”
Deacon began pacing. “Please, Djembe. I need to finish my mission.”
The old pilot laughed. “Ain’t my problem. I’m still unsettled about the fact you didn’t fess up to being Fleet for all this time you’ve been sneaking around my hangar.”
“It didn’t matter until I could actually deliver someone. Until then I was a nobody.” Deacon stopped pacing and stuck his hands in his pant pockets, shoving aside the folds of a dirty, tattered jacket that hung from his rail-thin shoulders. “Now they need me. And they’ll pay.” He stared out the front of the ship through the vision screen. “They’ll pay for the information these informers have.”
“You sound like you’re talking yourself into it, kid.”
Djembe sighed and looked around again. Okay, so the shuttle was built originally for up to twenty-four fully armed Marines with all their suits and weapons, plus rations for a six-month tour of duty should it be required. The Gopher had a high-performance subspace drive with reserves for several months of operation away from its mother ship. The crew of three had a cramped-but-serviceable quarters just off the control bay. That accounted for twenty-seven souls. Maybe thirty-five without armor or gear to stow. The bay had a five-meter wide grate between the bulkheads, just enough to squeeze a small military aircar for the incursion team to use during their mission. Plus spare projectile ammo, of course, which tended to be very heavy. But forty-three Fleet sailors? He frowned as he compared the kilograms in his head. Maybe…
Deacon sat in the jumpseat across from him. “How much?”
“Eh?”
“How much more will you want?” Deacon was considering going back to his flat to retrieve the communicator he’d hidden, to try to get it back to Djembe so he could negotiate with the contact on Mars that talked to Deacon once a month for exactly eighteen seconds before shutting down to avoid Prax detection. Deacon knew, however, that his flat would be in Prax hands by now. Still…
“Oh, I’m sure your precious Fleet would pay my bill. But, I’m also thinkin’ that they’ll take my Imani from me in the process. The plan was to leave you at a remote village on Mars and take off before the Grays came for her.” He used the derogatory word for Fleet members—so-called because of their gray uniforms. “With all those Grays onboard ship, though, I bet I’ll be forced to land at the Mars Station or spaceport. Bye, bye, reclaimed Fleet property.”
“They’re wearing odd green-black clothing. Make the ship part of your fee.”
“They might renege on the whole deal and arrest me as a thief of military property.”
“You told me once that you were honorably discharged.”
“That don’t make no difference when you ride in with a Gopher and wave at them.”
“This thing’s a relic.”
“Hey—be careful what you say about my Imani.” He patted the bulkhead above his head.
Deacon leaned forward. “Can I tell them you’ll do it?”
“Any officers with them?”
“I think so.”
“You don’t know?” In his experience, Djembe found that officers typically went out of their way to let it be known that they were present. Barking orders and strutting about.
“That brings up another question…would you happen to have some translator implants in one of your stashes down here?”
Djembe’s eyebrow shot up. “What, these Grays don’t speak Standard?” Now that would be odd.
“It doesn’t matter.”
Djembe folded up the multi-tool and slipped it into his jacket pocket. “You’ve certainly got me interested, son. I’ll tell you what; I’ll prep the ship for departure just like we planned. And do the math for the load change—see how many I could fit. Won’t take half an hour. You go get me the senior officer and bring him here so we can talk fees. Then, I decide if I want to stuff my ship full of Grays plus your informer-guy.”
Deacon’s face registered his relief. “We’re about seven kilometers away, hiding in an old bunker.”
“You find all the old hiding-spots in Rat City, don’t you, kid?”
“Can I have your gun?”
Djembe snorted. “No, you can’t have my gun.”
“I think we’re going to need some to get here.” Deacon’s eyes were serious, the pilot noted.
With a sigh he opened a service panel and fished around for a moment, finally withdrawing a small sack. “This should keep you, kid. And that goes on my bill, too!”
The young
er smuggler didn’t answer as he jumped up and ran down the ramp and into the damp hangar.
With a sigh, Djembe stood up and stretched, placing a hand on the Imani’s cold steel overhead. “Well, girl, I hope this trip isn’t the death of us. Our luck’s got to run out sometime.” He fished out the multi-tool again and headed for the problem junction box.
Calxen was walking towards the security team’s ship when his comm beeped and lit up.
“What?”
“We’ve found a human who claims they saw our fugitives.”
“Feed me the location.”
“Doing it now, Commander.”
He reached the ship and climbed in. Several decently-armed security types were already there, watching him with narrowed eyes. They knew who he was—good.
The comm lit up again. It was Kalyx, one of his own team. “You have something, Calxen?”
Calxen nodded. “They cracked a human, apparently. Heading there now. What is your location?”
“We are on the opposite side of the city, going door to door following a lead. We may be too late to the fun.”
“Pack up and head my way. I’ll save a skull for you to break.” He closed the channel and lay his plasma rifle across his lap as he belted in.
“Coordinates located within the city,” called the pilot.
“Get us there, now. And tell the Center to make sure we have complete air coverage over that part of the city. I want every observer we have hovering over it.”
His comm beeped once again. He immediately recognized one of his father’s subordinates.
“Switch to secure mode.”
Calxen touched the button that would redirect the audio to the implanted receiver in his ear canal. “Secured.”
The voice spoke into his head. “The Prime wished to inform you that a large force of human fleet units are inbound from Mars. He will be focused on this attack and is confident of your success in your mission.” The voice cut off as did the face on the video feed.
Calxen fingered his weapon and ignored the others, focusing inward. So it begins. He wondered who his human quarry was this time. He’d killed so many that the faces blurred together. While he enjoyed the begging and negotiating of the resistance leaders and soldiers he’d destroyed during his missions, hunting humans had grown tiring. He and his team all longed to return to Prax and enjoy some time training and learning to hunt new species other than Praxxan and human. Perhaps someday soon, he thought. But today, he would kill again.
Chapter 25
Sol System - Above Luna
“They’re falling back, sir.” The Lieutenant was studying his readouts carefully. “Drive signatures indicate that their force had separated and then recombined in the last several hours. The current position is a hundred thousand kilometers closer to Earth than in previous engagements.”
“Hmm. This is somewhat new.” Commander Tarsa was looking at the three-dimensional display of the tactical situation unfolding in front of his battle group as they decelerated towards Luna. This would be the first time in many engagements that the Prax had allowed the human fleet to actually pass Luna by before coming into weapons range. The combat computer served up its analysis of the enemy formations. “Their destroyer screen is fragmented—the separation maneuver involved only that class of vessel.”
The orders from Kendall had been specific; engage and hold their attention for as long as possible during a time window that Tarsa recognized as a standard launch window for planetside Earth, unused for years due to the presence of Praxxan blockaders. He tapped the console absentmindedly as his flagship decelerated. So, the Prax had started to move a large number of destroyers towards Earth orbit, then belayed that order. Perhaps the Prime was actually worried about someone making a run from Earth orbit…perhaps all the top-secret intel was true. Then, they picked up the incoming human attack and recalled the destroyers. Or, perhaps the Prime caught the mole and canceled the order, he thought ruefully. In that case this battle would be for nothing.
“Sir, all units report successful deceleration. Redeployment to attack formations underway.”
Tarsa nodded to the captain of the Raleigh, his flagship. “We’re going to be a hundred K closer than even we expected. Make the most of it.”
“Yes, sir. Lieutenant, all shields forward and report status of weapons.”
Raleigh was the lead ship in an eighteen-unit battle group and one of the newer heavy attack vessels in the Fleet, a pure product of the Praxxan War years. Her shielding was designed to reflect and absorb the impact of the newer plasma weapons and more traditional directed-energy beam weapons mounted on heavy Prax warships. When a vessel the size of Raleigh went toe-to-toe with a similar class Prax ship, it was a near-even matchup. One that had saved the human Fleet from eventual annihilation in the Sol System in recent months. So she would lead the wedge formation in a first punch, leaving a hole for the second battle group to push even closer to Earth. It would be a hit-hard, close-quarters battle where projectile weapons would play a larger role than typical. Those were harder to shield against and tended to poke thousands of holes in ship hulls, sometimes more than the Tavarran exo-hull material could handle.
In one of the early interstellar voyages two hundred years prior, the discovery of a new element had led to the synthesis of high-tensile steel that quickly became industry-standard. Named after its planet of origin, Tavarran steel was a “smart” metal and self-attractive, which meant that when it was separated it reconnected itself without manual patching. In tests, the material self-sealed breaches up to a meter in diameter, knitting together to re-form the original cured configuration. This made spacegoing hulls incrementally more secure from catastrophic decompression due to small punctures. In addition, Tavarran steel possessed greater inherent flexibility, reducing long-term metal fatigue and giving vessels an extended service history. The Prax had made an attempt years ago to capture Tavar and claim the steel mills, but had been defeated in a bloody battle. After a few more years they had managed to synthesize a similar product for their hulls, but from the Fleet’s experience it wasn’t nearly as robust and prone to failure when stressed.
In the course of close-quarter intership battle, however, the sheer volume of electromag projectiles striking a warship could overwhelm the steel’s ability to self-seal. It was literally a death by a thousand cuts. Of course, any humans in the way were shredded, sucked into space or trapped in a closing wedge of hull and dismembered. The Fleet standard procedure was for all crew to wear their environmental suits in combat, but many skipped that formality, trusting the Tavarran steel to seal the compartment in time. Most kept their helmets close, however. Tarsa glanced at his own helmet on a rack nearby. We live or we die together was one of the oldest Fleet mottos and he lived by it himself.
His battle group communications officer announced, “All units report ready for battle and in formation. No offline weapons or shields reported, sir.”
Tarsa exhaled. “We’ll take that miracle.”
The Captain of the Raleigh moved off to his own battle station with a pat on Tarsa’s shoulder. Most battles the group entered into with several weapons offline and/or vessels operating with minimal shielding due to reactor issues or simply old equipment malfunctions. Today would be a good day, then. Tarsa acknowledged the gesture by the Captain with a wave of his own, then addressed the communications officer. “Inform MArs Command that the battle group is engaging the enemy. Give the coordinates and note the time in the log.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Captain, take the Raleigh in.”
The Captain called out from his station. “Plasma weapons, do you have a lock on your intended targets?”
The weapons officer rechecked his computer-controlled targeting plan. “All targets programmed and currently tracking.” The intense energy/matter beams would modulate through the spectrum as well as change hit locations along the enemy shields, probing for weak spots and wearing down the target vessel’s system to the po
int of a failure, exposing the ship’s physical hull to direct hits and punctures and, ultimately, catastrophic failures. The Prax were an innovative race that currently had the edge in beam weapons tech, but the human shielding systems had improved as well. At longer ranges, the plasma weapons were capable of the most offensive damage.
Most warships also fitted an array of directed-energy weapons that were able to perform several tactical functions such as blinding enemy sensors, overheating exposed steel hull sections to molten slag in seconds, or intercepting projectile weapons in midflight and melting them into atoms before they could strike home. In longer-range engagements, the DEWs served to protect the Fleet from pot-shot projectile attacks.
When the opposing forces got close enough to literally touch—not an ideal situation by any means—the projectile broadsides came into their own. Flung outward from ranks of electromagnetic cannon, these projectiles varied in size from a half a meter to three meters in length and twenty centimeters to nearly half a meter in diameter, fashioned from tungsten or similar materials sourced from mining firms in various systems. These guns fired the smaller projectiles at extremely high speeds that crossed closer distances in fractions of a second, tearing through flesh and hull together. The larger projectiles were reserved for long-distance shots which used commensurately more electro-energy from the ship’s power system. It was not uncommon for mid-sized warships to even lose shielding ability at the moments of firing larger projectile barrages. As usual, every weapon conceived had a limitation that required tactical compensations. While chemical propellants were still employed within the confines of atmospheres, they had proven largely ineffective in the vacuum of space compared to energy/matter weapons which had huge ranges and vastly superior targeting abilities, or the electromag guns which imparted even higher outbound energy than the most refined chemical propellants.
All of these weapons and defensive systems were made possible by the anti-proton reactors embedded in all modern-era vessels. These compact powerplants pushed out enough energy to power multiple intricate systems, even under load.
War Without Honor Page 15