Archangel One

by Evan Currie

The commander just smirked at him, clearly knowing what was going through Buckler’s head and enjoying the sergeant’s discomfort. From a rack on the wall he pulled a rifle, also a completely new and nonstandard model, and casually cleared the breach before slapping a magazine home and clipping it to a sling on his armor.

  “Everyone knows the job?” the commander asked, looking around.

  “Oorah, sir!” the Marines called in unison.

  “Yeah, we’re gonna have to work on that,” he muttered, shaking his head. “But that’ll do for now. This is technically a boarding operation to provide succor, but the crew doesn’t know we’re coming, and they probably won’t be too happy to see us.”

  He looked around. “What I’m saying, Marines, is start no trouble, but take no shit. Clear?”

  “Clear sir!”

  “Alright,” Steph said, nodding to the lock where a couple Marines were cutting through the hull of the destroyer they were docked with. “Let’s take that ship.”

  Baphon

  Gira Mai was walking down an access corridor, looking for the source of some rather odd sounds that had been echoing through the ship after the loud ringing had shaken everything up. Orders had come down the pipe to find the source, as if he and the crew didn’t have enough on their hands at the moment, and so he and others had been dispatched in all directions.

  The smell of smoke had been the first sign that really worried him. Fires on board ship were bad things, and they already had more than their fill of that kind of bad. He heard a sizzling sound ahead of him and broke into a run, hoping to find the problem before it became something he couldn’t handle easily on his own.

  The smoke grew thicker ahead of him, though only just enough to begin obscuring his vision. Gira was still running when he saw sparks erupting into the deck from a hull access lock and skidded to a stop in fear as two massive spikes abruptly tore through the center and suddenly wrenched the doors open with a scream of metal tearing.

  He fell on his backside, scrambling to crawl backward away from the hull breach as every nightmare he’d ever had about being blown into space flashed across his eyes. No howl of wind rushed past him, however, as instead a figure in dark gray leapt in through the breach and landed heavily on the deck.

  The man was covered in smooth armor unlike anything he’d ever seen. The suit was glossy and refracted light as it moved. The person paused briefly to look around before he moved to clear the way for the next figure. More poured through the breach as Gira watched, but the first one was on his position before he could even process what he was seeing.

  A boot planted in the center of his chest sent him flat on his back as a big, ugly weapon that he didn’t recognize was pushed in his face.

  “Move and you die.”

  The language was heavily accented Imperial, but the message was clear. Gira carefully kept very still as his eyes flicked past the man holding him down. More men were clearing the corridor, weapons sweeping for targets as they moved.

  Behind them, one in identical armor was moving with a more casual gait. It was impossible to see features in the armor, but his stance as he walked seemed almost relaxed. He ambled to where Gira was being held and looked him over where he lay for a moment before tapping the man holding Gira down on his shoulder.

  “Good work,” the man said in that same accented Imperial. “As you were.”

  “Sir,” the man said, pulling the weapon back and straightening up.

  Gira stared up in fear as the man who seemed to be in charge offered him a hand.

  “Well, are you going to take it, or should I give you back to the corporal?” the man asked, seemingly holding back an urge to laugh.

  Gira didn’t know what a corporal was, or who exactly, but from the context he could make a decent enough guess. He clasped the hand quickly, not wanting to be slammed back into the deck with the ugly weapon in his face yet again.

  On his feet, he risked a trembling question.

  “Wh . . . who are you?”

  “Not important,” the leader said. “Call us rescuers, if you like, or boarders. Either way, I need to speak with whoever is in charge.”

  Gira blinked. “The sub-commander is on the bridge.”

  The leader nodded, looking around as he settled one hand on a weapon secured at his hip. “Thank you. Now, which way would that be?”

  Steph was pleased with how things were going, which worried him a little more than the unknown elements of the action did, if he were entirely honest.

  The man they’d captured initially seemed to have no problem directing him and his Marines to the bridge and the ship’s commander, and this bothered Steph deeply because the man didn’t strike him as either a straight-up coward or a turncoat type. Rather, it didn’t seem to occur to him that he might want to try slowing down the progress of hostile boarding elements on his ship. He was too free with information for Steph’s liking, but he didn’t appear to be lying either.

  There’s a story there, but I just don’t have the time to work it out, Steph thought, filing it away to worry about later as he checked the time and furthered the countdown clock accordingly.

  With the Empire bearing down on them, he couldn’t afford to indulge his curiosity.

  “Secure him,” he ordered, pushing the man back to the Marine waiting behind him. “We need to take the bridge and end this cleanly and quickly.”

  “Yes sir.”

  With the crewman secured, Steph moved forward, checking the corridor layout as the Marines moved ahead to secure the path as they advanced.

  “Sergeant.” Steph called the squad leader over. “We’re only a couple decks from the bridge, and apparently no one uses these ships for boarding operations, so there’s not much in the way of an armory on board.”

  “Assuming the man was telling the truth, sir.”

  “Assuming that, yes,” Steph conceded, frowning under his breathing unit. “But he seemed to be honest.”

  Buckler just grunted noncommittally.

  “Keep your eyes roving,” Steph ordered. “But we don’t have time to second-guess. We’re going to lance straight through, take the bridge, and secure the command staff. Hopefully that will end this.”

  “And if it doesn’t?”

  Steph considered that, sighing finally. “Best bring up the chems and TB systems, just in case.”

  Buckler’s eyes widened under his breather. The very idea of using thermobaric explosives on board a ship he was standing on seemed to terrify him—as it should any sane person—but he nodded firmly.

  “Yes sir. We’ll be ready.”

  “I have no doubts, Sergeant. Be about it,” Steph ordered.

  Archangel Three

  Jennifer Samuels grimaced as she edged the fighter-gunboat in closer to the stricken vessel just ahead of them.

  “Alright, I’ve got them dead to rights,” she said over the ship’s comm. “Give me an open line to the enemy ship.”

  “Roger, Commander. Channel open.”

  “Destroyer of the Belj Empire,” she called, wrapping her tongue around the Imperial language everyone on the crew had been required to learn as part of their assignment. “Please respond.”

  There was no immediate response, though she didn’t really expect much. Jennifer kept an eye on the ship’s power systems through her scanners, looking for any hint that it was about to try to fire on them, but that was a pretty low probability judging from the damage the ship had clearly taken and the lack of reactor mass registering on her gravity scans.

  After a few seconds, she repeated the call.

  On the third time, she finally got an answer.

  “This is the Belj destroyer Hirim Ja,” a frustrated-sounding voice said. “What do you want?”

  Well, that’s direct if nothing else.

  “Hirim Ja, we are offering succor,” she said. “How many crew do you have to be removed?”

  There was a long pause.

  “What?”

  “How many crewmembers
require evacuation?” Jennifer said again. “The Imperial cruisers are closing. In our experience, the Empire does not take prisoners. This is the only offer you’re going to get. Stand by for evacuation, or we’re leaving without you.”

  Several more seconds passed.

  “Fine,” she growled. “Good luck to you, we’re lea—”

  “Wait!” the voice had an edge of panic. “Wait, please wait!”

  “How many crew do you have to evacuate?” Jennifer repeated.

  The voice stammered over his words, clearly unsure but trying to respond.

  “We . . . we have almost three hundred. I don’t know how many are still alive. C-can you hold that many?”

  “Roger. Gather all hands to your ventral docking ports,” she ordered. “You will be supervised, you will be checked for weapons, and you will comply with our directives or you will be left behind. Am I understood?”

  The shaken voice came back quickly.

  “Y-yes. I understand.”

  Archangel Two

  The two stricken destroyers were flanked by Archangels three through six, two of the fighter-gunboats each taking a destroyer and delivering the same ultimatum, while Archangel Two flew overwatch and tried to guard the five remaining ones as best they could.

  Alexandra Black didn’t much enjoy the job, but it had to be done.

  The distant but rapidly approaching Imperial cruisers were the only active threat on her board for the moment, and the main source of the tension tightening down on the muscles in her neck as she constantly checked over the long-range scans to see if anything had changed.

  Nothing had, of course. There were only so many things a ship could do on approach, and the Imperial cruisers were pretty much already doing them.

  They were building high acceleration into the system, but mostly keeping within what the Priminae and Terran ships would consider safe military speed. They undoubtedly had more on tap, if needed, but the danger of pushing closer to, or through, light-speed within the powerful gravity of a star wasn’t insignificant.

  Disruption of a ship’s warp field by opposing gravity waves became more likely as one entered into a significant gravity well. That disruption at high levels of acceleration could result in the ship’s drives being unbalanced, at least briefly. On its own, that would be a minor issue at most, but losing your space-warp while traveling through a star’s gravity well at high portions of light-speed could easily result in slamming headlong into all sorts of nastiness.

  Even grains of dust at near light-speed would tear a ship to shreds in short order without the shielding of a space-warp.

  So, for the moment, the Imperial ships were playing it safe, at least by military standards. That was still one hell of a lot of power and acceleration, however, and with the Archangels holding to a steady speed, that was acceleration they would have to make up if they wanted to avoid contact with the fleet of cruisers bearing down on them.

  Alexandra was keeping one eye on that particular clock, hoping that Stephanos didn’t push all of their luck.

  Chapter 18

  Imperial Third Fleet

  Now this is a curious change.

  Jesan watched the enemy operations as they apparently paused to board the stricken destroyers for some reason he didn’t understand. It made him wonder if there weren’t something of value on the ships, though he could not imagine what that might be.

  In the Free Stars, the definition of valuable wasn’t always in line with that of the Empire, of course, so whatever they were after might be a trifle by his estimation. It was clearly worth risking their lives for, however, and that piqued Jesan’s attention.

  “Increase acceleration to maximum imperial power,” he ordered. “Double the shifts on the warp systems.”

  “As you order, Commander.”

  That would put them close to the Imperial redline for ships’ acceleration within a stellar gravity well, a line that was generally not to be crossed unless destruction of your vessel was the consequence of not crossing it. As it was, he knew he would have to report to the Admiralty of Lords for his order to increase acceleration, but it seemed warranted.

  “What could possibly be so important in those destroyers that they would risk contact with us to acquire it?” he wondered idly as the hum of the ship’s drives increased in the background.

  Whatever it was, he aimed to discover the treasure for himself.

  “Revised contact numbers being calculated now, Commander.”

  “Thank you, Sub-Commander.”

  Baphon

  “Commander! We’ve been boarded!”

  Jerich looked up sharply from where he was struggling to shift a large console that was still partially connected to the conduits that ran under the deck plates of the bridge. He blinked, staring owlishly at the man who’d just rushed in, unable to quite believe he’d heard what he thought he’d heard.

  “What?” he managed to ask.

  “We’ve been boarded, Commander.”

  Apparently I did hear correctly, Jerich thought as he let the console thump back into place and rose from where he was crouched, wiping his hands off on his already sweat-stained uniform. “By who?”

  “We don’t know, Commander. Reports speak of uniform armor unlike anything we’ve ever encountered,” the crewman stammered out. “They’re marching this way. Nothing is slowing them down.”

  “Lock the bulkheads,” Jerich ordered sharply, crossing to one of the still-intact internal communications and systems control consoles.

  “We tried, Commander. They cut through them in seconds.”

  That’s impossible, Jerich thought, shocked. Certainly internal bulkheads weren’t armored, exactly, but they weren’t that easy to cut either. “Break out the arms. Issue to all crew with orders to secure against boarders.”

  “Commander, they’ll be here before we can even start. You need to leave.”

  “I can’t leave,” Jerich snarled. “This is still the central control section for the entire ship. If we lose the bridge, we lose the ship!”

  He crossed to a lockbox on the wall and palmed it open using his biometric signature, revealing a half dozen shipboard sidearms. Securing one for himself, Jerich passed out the rest to the closest crewmen.

  “Secure the access corridor,” he ordered. “We have to hold until the crew can rally from the armory.”

  “Yes Commander!”

  Jerich crossed back to the communications terminal and began to issue orders as the men began to tear up materials to both block the access to the bridge and to use as cover.

  What in the abyss is going on out there? Who boards a destroyer in the middle of battle?

  Something had gone horribly wrong.

  Now he just had to find out what it was, and whether he could do anything about it. Jerich had a sinking sensation about the answer to the latter, unfortunately, but for the moment he would focus on the first.

  “Encountering resistance ahead, Commander.”

  Steph walked to the corner of the corridor, glancing around to where the Marines were exchanging fire with what looked like an entrenched formation located at a bulkhead passage just ahead. He raised an eyebrow, taking in the scene.

  “Are they using computer consoles for cover?” he asked incredulously.

  “That is what it looks like,” the master sergeant admitted, shaking his head.

  A whine and spattering sound echoed down the corridor, making Steph flinch back automatically before he registered it properly.

  “What was that?” he asked, confused.

  “Enemy fire, sir. They’re using lightweight, high-velocity fléchettes, or whatever the local equivalent is.”

  “Fléchettes? Seriously?”

  “Yes sir,” Buckler said, shrugging. “I assume the logic is that having heavier arms might penetrate the hull.”

  “Fat lot of good that’s going to do them in this situation,” Steph said, pushing his rifle behind his back on the sling as he stepped around the cor
ridor into the open and drew his service pistol from his hip holster.

  “Sir! What are you—!”

  Steph ignored the Marine as he started walking down the hallway, the hand cannon he wielded roaring as he fired semirandomly and return fire spattered uselessly against his armor. He strode past the Marine lines toward the fortifications, firing steadily to force heads down and keep people too freaked out to think straight.

  Enemy fire doubled briefly as they tried to rally between his shots, but by the time he reached the fortifications, the density of fire had all but stopped entirely. Steph planted one foot on the upturned computer console and hopped up, pointing his pistol down at the shocked and cowering men behind it.

  “Drop your weapons, or I stop missing,” he barked in Imperial.

  As the small weapons clattered to the deck, the sergeant and his Marines caught up, Buckler nearly apoplectic.

  “What the hell was that, sir?” The sergeant would have been pulling his hair out if he wasn’t wearing a sealed helmet rig.

  “Stop thinking like Marines,” Steph said, dropping the partially empty mag from his weapon and replacing it fresh before holstering the pistol. “Start thinking like pirates. Secure their weapons, then we take the bridge.”

  He hopped past the barricades, moving forward and forcing the Marines to scramble to keep up as some of them remained behind to secure the scene. The rest chased after the lunatic of a commander who had, apparently, lost his Goddamned mind.

  Jerich flinched automatically as he heard a series of small explosions from just down the corridor, rising from his position and twisting toward the hatch as he looked to see just what had blown up.

  Before he could open his mouth to demand information, however, one of his men was thrown back into the bridge and sent sprawling across the damaged gear they’d been getting ready to move. A man in dark gray armor stepped into the bridge and took up the entire hatch like some hulking, moving wall.

  Jerich drew his weapon instinctively, arm sweeping up to target the invader. His motion must have been noted, though, because even as he began to draw a sight line down the ridge of his weapon, the figure was echoing his motion with lightning speed.