Inferno Station (Helltroopers Book 1)

by Isaac Stone

  The station wasn’t that far away and Ash felt they could reach it by accelerating at a one-gravity thrust for two days. He had Makulah adjust the speed of the ship so they would enjoy a sense of weight until reaching the asteroid. Once on the station, gravity would be in effect, although much lighter since the asteroid it was built into wasn’t that big.

  “Anything funny around that station?” Ash asked Char before they made the final preparations to leave their current location. The AI was a cybernetic system, but it had learned to develop its own personality and quips.

  “I don’t notice anything, Ash,” it told him. “From checking the traffic around the area, I don’t notice any ships arriving at it in the past three months. This is odd, because it was receiving weekly arrivals before then.”

  “Sounds like Mr. Haddo may have the place under control by now,” Costa commented when he overheard Char. “If he’s half the criminal mastermind they say he is, I could see him pulling it off.”

  “Barbara Ann,” Ash called to the Android, “any new insights on what is happening in the station? Have you had anything triggered in the past few hours?” He made sure his harness was secure before the engines started.

  “I’ve not been so blessed,” she told him in her singsong voice. “I’m sure there will be many more ahead.” She was already secure in her chair.

  I’m sure there will be plenty, Ash thought. It’s what scares me.

  When everyone was secure, Makulah started the sequence to fire the engines. The gunship used chemical rockets to move it out of position, but switched to electrostatic ones when it was ready to begin the short trip. The electrostatic, or ion, drive was perfected over a hundred years ago and allowed planetary ships the ability to move rapidly around the solar system with charged particle propulsion. It was useless in any kind of atmosphere, so the Thelema would need standard chemical engines if it needed to make a landing. The devices the gunship used hadn’t changed much over the past hundred years of space faring.

  Ash lay back in his chair and felt his body weigh increase as the gunship began to pick up speed. It was impossible to tell it any other way with no recognizable objects to focus upon. This would be a brief trip, but one they had to endure until the station was reached.

  Two days later, the gunship found itself outside Infinity Station.

  Once Ash let the corporations know the crew voted to take the job, the trip was uneventful. His contact assured him the money from the last job would be safely deposited into their accounts. Char quickly checked the balances for the crew and let them know all the funds were in place.

  “They held that part of the bargain,” the AI told the crew. “Hope they’ll pony up for the rest.”

  Once Makulah had the engines running at one-gravity, they were able to walk around the command center for the first time in days. This part of the gunship was built so that it could take advantage of the thrust from the engines and allow the crew some comfort. The rear of the command center became the floor, but all the chairs and modules were easy to reach.

  Ash watched his crew prepare for the hunt inside the station. Most of them did what research they could find on the various databases they could access on it. As he expected, there was very little information on Infinity Station. Even the information they could find was outdated and redundant. Eventually they decided to wait until the Thelema gunship made contact.

  One issue was the lack of communication with the station. Ash’s friend from the corporation warned them it would be very hard to get any cooperation, even if it was built by EAC. He tried to have Char raise the station several times in route, but no one responded.

  “This could be a real problem,” Costa pointed out to him. “If they don’t respond to our transmissions, we might have some issues docking.” Infinity station’s asteroid had no air on the surface, so it was possible for an approaching ship to link with the landing tube.

  “We’ll have to try and do it on our own if they don’t acknowledge us,” Ash replied. “If Haddo is in control of the station, we’ll have to fight our way inside.” Since this would involve environmental suits and armor, it was not something he looked forward to doing.

  Infinity Station grew from a dot of light to an actual planetoid over the next two hours as they neared it. Ash had Makulah slow down the approach and the artificial gravity from the thrust vanished. He watched the irregular surface of the asteroid appear in the viewing screen until it was close enough to make out individual rock structures. It was a brown color with light that twinkled off the ice crystals imbedded in the surface.

  The station appeared while they made the first pass over the surface. It didn’t seem to be very impressive from orbit, even if they weren’t in that high of an angle. They could see the docking tube that extended from the station and a few of the exterior storage huts. Most of it was buried deep inside the asteroid. Piles of rock trailings were smoothed out over the surface to make it blend in with the rest of the asteroid.

  “I’ve got an official report transmitting from Earth about the station,” Char announced to everyone. “Ash, you want me to put it up on everyone’s screens so they can read it?”

  “Go ahead, Char,” Ash replied. “Send it to every open screen. I want everyone to know what we’re up against.”

  The reports were full of tonnage information and details on the famous researchers who’d served their time on it. The only thing it didn’t tell them was what went on inside the asteroid. This was as strange as the building project was huge. All Ash could discover was that the program had something to do with the power packs that the corporation pushed all across the system.

  The EAC portable power packs were supposed to be the greatest electrical storage system in human history. Ash installed a few of them on the Thelema and was very impressed with the output. Not only did they respond better than any battery or capacitor he’d ever seen, but they required little time to charge. The power packs were able to anticipate the electrical needs of whatever they were connected to and could adjust their discharge accordingly. No one seemed to know much about how they worked, but the cost was low and their use spread across the planets.

  “There’s not a whole lot in this report that we don’t already know,” Costa observed as he let his copy float away. “I don’t even know why they sent it to us.”

  Ash was preoccupied with the screen that showed the surface of the asteroid and the station outcropping. He could see the docking tube, which extended up to the level of the orbital approach. It had to run a good four miles from the surface, not a great achievement when there was plenty of raw materials on the asteroid and not much to interfere with the construction.

  What disturbed him was the lack of activity on the surface of the asteroid, even right next to the entrance to the station. He didn’t see and flickering lights which would indicate the motion of surface crawlers or and movement inside the observation deck. He played with the magnification of the surface. There was no one walking around in environmental suits, which surprised him. Usually a work detail would be outside the station at some point. But right now, it was deserted.

  “Any responses Char?” he asked again.

  “Nothing,” came the response. “Do you want me to see if I can access the docking system on the tube?”

  “You might have to do it,” Ash told the AI. “I don’t see any other way inside unless we land on the surface. I really don’t want to do that.”

  “Let me see if I can get us close enough,” Makulah spoke up from his chair. “Shouldn’t be too hard, no air currents from the asteroid at all.”

  “As of last week, its idents were all changed from Infinity to Inferno Station,” the voice of Barbara Ann sounded from the rear of the command module. Ash, and the rest of the crew, turned around to look at her.

  “So what have we unlocked now?” he asked her with a trace of sarcasm.

  “There was a series of numbers at the end of the report,” she told him. “It unblocked my lat
est memory stop. Do you wish for me to divulge?” Her green eyes still had the same twinkle they always did.

  “Of course,” Ash told her.

  “This is an orbital prison run by the EAC. Human rights violations are at their most extreme down there. It is a place where the scientists and corporate administrators were able to run experiments and develop new technologies without government oversight or humanitarian interference. Ten days ago, Simon Haddo arrived. Shortly after the idents were changed to Inferno Station.”

  “Go on.”

  “Inferno Station is not only a prison station, but is also a research facility in which the convicts are the test subjects for various technologies and developments EAC has pioneered. No one leaves there the same way in which they enter. Those ships, which made regular stops there until a few months ago, were filled with prisoners from jail cells all over the system. The corporation found ways to buy their sentences from the prisons and bring them here. Officially, this was for a work project. In fact, every one of the men brought her have never returned to the places from where they came. The director of the station has found a way to pay-off the prisons so the convicts are listed as killed in accidents or prison breaks. They pick only the most violent offenders so that no questions will be asked.”

  There was a moment of silence that went through the gunship.

  “And we are supposed to believe these bastards will let us go in there, find their bogey man, and pay us after what we’ll see?” Theo asked.

  “There are many factions inside the corporation,” Barbara Ann explained. “Such as the one who writes your bounty check once this place is wiped off the maps.”

  “So Haddo was only a ruse to get us here?” Ash questioned her.

  “No,” she continued. “He’s real. With him in control of this place, there is no telling what kind of hell he will create. I’m instructed to tell you that the results of his work will be tenfold over the crimes already committed down there. Getting Haddo back will be a plus for certain factions in EAC which are underwriting this extraction.”

  “In other words,” Ash told her. “The corporation wants us to go down into hell and pull out the devil. They sent you along as a guide, but had to keep it clandestine from other inter-corporate factions, hence the pirates and the ore ship.”

  “That just about sums it up, “Barbara Ann replied. “And the money is already allocated for your efforts.”

  “Well at least we are highly paid corporate puppets,” shrugged Ash as he began making his way towards his own equipment locker.

  7

  Makulah had the gunship docked to the portal in a matter of hours.

  While Char search for whatever remained of the station’s AI, the pilot found a docking port capable of syncing up with Thelema. It didn’t have to be perfect fit; the gunship itself would find a way to make the connection work. So long as it was sealed, they could travel from the gunship down the connector to the surface and into the station.

  Ash turned and watched everyone suit up in their battle armor. He’d made sure it was in workable order before they left. Each of Team Omega had a full suit of plate armor and a helm that protected the head. In an emergency, it doubled as an environmental suit, but could only be used in the total vacuum of space for a limited time. The suit armor was designed for use planet-side and the atmospheric conditions of functioning ships and orbitals, not the crushing cold of open space.

  Each member of the crew was equipped with impact guns that fired shells capable of breaking through armor. The guns might have limited range, but up close and in the thick of a fight they became miniature cannons to be used against the enemy. Ash had watched pirates drop their weapons and surrender when the deadly guns were pointed in their direction. They’d make the crossing, penetrate the station, and bounce off before anything got too heavy. Everything seemed in order.

  Which left the problem of Barbara Ann.

  He couldn’t risk leaving her alone in the gunship since no one, even the android herself, seemed to know what her prime directive was. Besides, she’d found unlock codes on the way that helped them, perhaps inside the station she would find more. It seemed she was designed to travel with Team Omega, and as much as that annoyed Ash he couldn’t deny her usefulness thus far. The payday was big enough he was willing to roll the dice. She lacked armor, but Ash suspected Barbara Ann could take care of herself. She’d claimed to have killed an entire ship of pirates with her bare hands and at this point he saw no reason to doubt her.

  The shuttle in the lift tube took them all the way to the surface of the station’s interior. Jack had it figured out with Char’s help in a matter of minutes once they left the ship. Ash was the last one out of the gunship and made certain everything was secure before he left. The Thelema would transmit regular reports to the corporate contact so long as they were inside the station, and Char had the two retractable mini-cannons primed on overwatch just in case boarders attempted to seize the ship while the crew were away.

  “Rules of engagement are going to be tricky, all I can say is use your best judgment, but err on the side of fragging anything that moves,” Ash growled the others as the rode the massive elevator down to the surface. “We haven’t had any responses from Char’s hails. I have no idea what’s waiting for us when that gate opens, but at this point we should assume everything is hostile unless it shows us otherwise.” Inside the cavernous elevator, he heard the echo of guns coming online as his team prepared.

  There was a pause as the elevator stopped. “You want to open that?” Theo spoke to the AI, which he stored inside a small shielded box on his belt. Char could be transmitted anywhere, but he decided to keep his integrity inside a secure container that was protected against EMP pulses and radiation.

  “Give me a second,” they heard Char speak over their helm intercoms, “the AI I’m talking to inside the station is unstable and needs some time to find the right sequence.” With one hand, Ash touched his plasma pistol holstered on his utility belt. He wasn’t supposed to own one, but he had a feeling that any law enforcement officers on the station would be too occupied with whatever doom had befallen the station.

  “I don’t like this place,” Theo spoke up. “No quick way to get out.”

  “Welcome to life in space,” laughed Makulah.

  The huge door, built to allow several shipping containers worth of supplies in at one time, began to hum and open. It slid up slow as the emergency red lights began to flash from inside the elevator shaft. Black smoke began to pour into the elevator as the door rose. The red lights from the warning lamps sent crimson beams through the black vapor that came up to meet them.

  “Life support is going to be working overtime to compensate for whatever fire is making this,” Ash ordered, “Crank your respirators until we get a better reading.” The door continued to rise and more smoke entered the shaft to be sucked out by the ventilation system.

  Before them was a massive receiving room filled with smoke and the small fires that produced it. It took a few minutes for the smoke to clear in front of them because many of the fires were set against the door. Ash couldn’t believe these fires were allowed to continue, as they were a waste of precious oxygen inside the station. He turned and looked back at Barbara Ann who had the same serene look on her face she always did. The smoke and fire didn’t seem to affect her one bit.

  “Everyone take four steps forward,” Ash ordered them. “I want to get a better look at what’s inside here. Turn on your vision assist to see through this smoke.” He reached up to his helm and flicked a switch. Ash knew his team didn’t need his constant micro-management, they’d all done this sort of thing before, and yet he couldn’t shake a growing sense of dread that made him want to remind them of everything.

  The black smoke disappeared and he could see what was inside the receiving center. It wasn’t pretty.

  Bodies lay everywhere. Most of them had the white lab coats of scientists and the blue shop jackets of engineers. Badges and
identification cards were scattered everywhere. Dried blood was colored a dingy brown through the vision assist. It was splattered every place. Whatever had taken place in this part of the station happened quick and with no regard to rank. He saw more bodies of technicians and standard workers piled up in the center.

  But there were live people as well. He saw a few naked and shaggy forms gathered around fires as they gnawed on something. They turned and looked in the direction of Team Omega, but did nothing.

  “What the hell is this place?” Ash heard Ester finally speak.

  “Hell seems an accurate description,” Barbara Ann commented.

  The only light came from the fire. Somehow, the environmental systems continued to work, but the beasts in front of them needed the fire to see. Was this the crew of the station? How did they degenerate into savagery in a short time?

  “Is anyone in charge around here?” Ash yelled at them over his suit speaker. They didn’t seem to understand so he increased the volume and repeated himself.

  The figures responded by dropping down what they gnawed and ran screaming into the shadows of the room as Team Omega instinctively formed a tight v-shaped wedge and raised their impact guns. With the visual assist Ash could see them peering out from behind crates and boxes. They were human, or had been. From the way they stared at them with their big eyes, these people hadn’t had much light in a long time. That certainly didn’t make any sense.

  And then Ash saw one of them bouncing around in the darkness. He still wore what remained of his lab coat. It was all he sported and the man’s flabby body appeared disgusting when illuminated by the visual assist. It was hard to remember that he couldn’t see them as the fire was between him and Team Omega. The assist tuned down the light from the fire so they could get a good look at him. It was a scientist attached to the biohazard division of the station.