Magnet Omnibus I (Lacuna)

by David Adams

  “Be advised,” she said, “we are in a significant debris field.”

  That would explain our radar’s difficulty. I looked to Scott. “Debris?”

  “The Kel-Voran said they disabled this jump point’s defences. They were non-specific as to how.”

  I stared out at the mass of battle-scorched debris. “Looks pretty disabled to me.” I didn’t know how we had expected anything less. The Kel-Voran were not known for their subtlety, preferring to solve problems through overwhelming application of direct firepower, although they sometimes had a surprising amount of finesse. They, like the Toralii they regularly fought with, were used to winning.

  Debris plinked off the hull, seemingly harmlessly, but with Piggyback still untested from her modifications I didn’t want to test its strength. If we were disabled here, the Toralii would find us and that would be it. “Shaba, move us out of the jump point, slowly. Avoid larger pieces.”

  “Don’t get too far away,” cautioned Scott, “the Toralii ship will be jumping into this area. We want to be as close as possible to minimise our interdiction time.”

  It was a good point. “Just get us clear of the worst of it then. Use your discretion.”

  “Copy, Magnet. Moving to six hundred metres distant, ten metres per second evasive.”

  The debris moved in a cloud that covered everything. Radar contact was minimal, stretching out only a hundred kilometres, and patchy up to a hundred beyond that. “What a fucking mess,” I said. “Whatever was here is gone. The Kel-Voran don’t do anything subtle.”

  “It’s beautiful,” Scott said, a huge smile on her face. “We couldn’t ask for anything better.”

  “How? Won’t this complicate the insertion?”

  “Yes,” said Scott, “and your pilot will have her work cut out for her, but it’s also the perfect cover. If the Toralii have a forerunner in the system, or any other kind of monitoring device, they won’t be able to see us when we board the Al’Farrak. Plus this debris will hide us as we approach.”

  “Good point.” I screwed up my face. “But when the Al’Farrak jumps into the point, won’t it displace any material present? What if it strikes us?”

  “Yes, but the likelihood of anything striking us is pretty low.”

  We were a tiny black dot in a black sea. The statistical likelihood of us being hit was low, even if the material would be displaced at a fraction of C. “Right.” The ship wobbled as Shaba dodged something big and heavy, and I sat back in my seat, staring at the radar; a storm of metal, swirling around the Lagrange point. “So what now?”

  Scott tapped her keyboard, focused on her screens. “We wait.”

  I watched the line on the radar screen go around and around and around. Every time it spun I counted it. Eight hundred and twenty. Eight twenty one. Twenty two.

  The ship continued to dodge incoming debris, bobbing and weaving constantly. Motion sickness wasn’t something that I’d ever experienced before—pilots usually didn’t get it for obvious reasons—but all the rocking, dodging and swaying of the ship began to get to me. I felt like there was an annoying midget jumping up and down on my insides. Not enough to make me hurl, but enough to feel a bit green around the gills. Scott, I could see, wasn’t handling it well either.

  Normally the crew would talk to distract ourselves from the discomfort, from boredom, but today we couldn’t seem to muster the energy. The internal radio was dead silent, and even Scott gave me an occasional sideways look, like she was expecting us to talk at least a little.

  Instead I just watched the green line of the radar swing around, like some kind of demented athlete running a race that would never end. Eight forty one. Eight forty two.

  A scream, high pitched like a banshee racing through the hull, broke me out of the silence. I felt air rushing down the corridor and to the rear of the ship. Decompression alarms wailed, but something else caught my attention, something far more important.

  A grey dot appeared in the wake of the line. It took me just a microsecond to make sure that my mind wasn’t playing tricks on me.

  “Tally contact. Single bandit, class VI. Weapons tight, condition two. Confirming identity, break.”

  In defiance of radio protocol, Bobbitt talked over me. I could hear wind howling in his microphone. “Hull breach, hull breach! ”

  “It’s in the stern,” said Smoke in my ears. “Bobbitt, are you hit?”

  “Negative! I don’t think so, but there’s a huge hole in the tail turret!”

  “Come back in,” said Smoke, “don’t egress. We can’t pick you up without a loading ramp.”

  “No shit!”

  I let the computer do its work as they talked, the high res cameras on the Broadsword’s sensors comparing images of our target to the ship before us. It worked in one of the side screens, performing complex image recognition at thousands of frames a second.

  Bing.

  “Identity confirmed,” I said. “Target marked as Objective Alpha. Shaba, close to docking distance.”

  The ship lurched, moving towards the Toralii ship. We were going too slowly, though. The damage must be affecting Shaba’s ability to fly.

  Every second we spent unattached was a second the Toralii would have to see us, and we were venting atmosphere.

  “Shaba—”

  “Quiet,” she said, “I’m doing the best I can.”

  The docking port latching on with a loud clang, audible even where Scott and I were seated. She looked at me and I knew what she was thinking. If we could hear it, so could they. The docking was supposed to be subtle.

  “This is Scott,” she said, “begin cutting into the hull.”

  A muffled vibration shook the entire ship. On the various monitors I could see sparks flying out into space, a spray of tiny yellow stars against the black void.

  “Bobbitt,” I said, “sitrep on the hull breach.”

  “I’m clear,” he said, “and I sealed off the turret. We’ve lost a fair amount of O2, about fifty kilos or so, but we’re good.”

  Fifty kilos wasn’t too bad. I was more concerned about the cutting, the shriek of a buzzsaw cutting through metal. “That’s too loud,” I said.

  “Nothing we can do about it now,” said Scott. “Just hope we get the gas inside before the Toralii get their suits on.” Scott’s fingers flew over her keyboard. “Increasing internal atmospheric pressure to match target vessel. 1.1 psi and rising.”

  We had to match the thickness of our atmosphere to the Toralii vessel, or when we cut into the hull it might trigger their decompression alarms. I felt my ears hurt as the pressure increased. Too slowly for my liking. Through my video screen I could see windows of the Toralii ship. There was nothing visible there. Were they at action stations? Were they donning their armoured space suits?

  Suddenly I could see a face, barely visible at the angle we were at. A Toralii was was looking through a glass window of their ship. It seemed concerned, looking out at the stars beyond, at the swirling storm of metal that swirled around, but not at us. It spoke to someone over its shoulder, then disappeared.

  The cutting noise faded out abruptly. “We’re through,” said Scott, “thermal imagery shows that the section is clear. Deploying gas, one kilogram per second.”

  Ginger laughed into my headphones. “Scott and Williams sitting in a tree, G-A-S-S-I-N-G.”

  “Shut your face,” I scowled, but then something got my attention. A red warning light flashed on my screen. The structural integrity monitor. “Shaba, we got a problem.”

  “What?”

  “The Toralii are manouvering, turning to port. It’s stressing the airlock seal. If that thing cracks, we’ll decompress.” If we didn’t accidentally gas ourselves, we would all get sucked out into the void. Not much of a choice.

  “Trying to compensate. Break.” I watched the ship struggle through the CSO’s screens. The sound of tortured metal increased. “Dammit, the damage is affecting the reactionless drive. I can’t keep pace!”

 
The low groan of stressed airframe echoed throughout the ship. “Scott, seal the airlock. Stop the gas. We have to withdraw.”

  “No!” Scott jabbed a finger at the screen. “Less than twenty percent of the gas is deployed. If we break off now, they’ll see us.”

  “Shaba, we can’t disengage. You gotta give me another option.”

  Options. Surprisingly, it was Bobbitt’s voice who came to our aid.

  “We could open the rear escape hatch. The damage was on the starboard side, so the venting gas will propell us in the direction the Toralii are moving.”

  The alarm began to flash with increasing urgency. I didn’t have time to think about it. “Do it,” I said, “just don’t fall out.”

  With a snap-hiss the air began to rush towards the rear again, howling down the corridor. The alarm abated, and after almost ten seconds, the Toralii stopped their manouver.

  “Bobbitt, seal it.”

  The wind didn’t stop. “Bobbitt!”

  The ship jerked as Shaba tried to stop us from overcompensating. Scott unclipped her seat straps.

  “I’ve got it!”

  She ran down the corridor, the wind whipping her short hair all around her head.

  “Bobbitt! Bobbitt, report!”

  The wind abated. The groaning metal stopped. The alarm went silent.

  “Magnet, Shaba. We’ve matched pace. The Toralii are drifting.”

  “Copy. We’re winchester on gas.” Military parlance meaning we had pumped all the nerve gas we had into the ship. “Status on Bobbitt and Scott?”

  “Unknown,” she said.

  “I’ll go take a look,” I said, but then I remembered the marines. The mission. “Belay that. I can’t. Smoke, Ginger, take a look, I’ve got to coordinate the marines.”

  “This is Smoke, copy that. We’ll go after her.”

  I snatched up Scott’s headset. “All units, this is Magnet. Begin insertion. Make sure you’ve got your suits on tight; your choices are nerve gas or vacuum, so triple check everything. Make sure your cameras are on, and record everything for the post-action report.”

  “Keller here, Lieutenant. We’re good to go.”

  “Good. Breach, bang and clear.”

  On Scott’s screen I could see space suited marines pouring into the long cylinder, rushing in one after another. I watched through one of the helmet mounted cameras as the marines stormed into the oval that Piggyback had sliced into the hull.

  “Flash out,” said Keller over the radio. A huge white burst of light followed her announcement, the nerve agent swirling around her space suit as she made her way into the hull.

  I wasn’t the only one watching the screens. Mace spoke into my headset. “There’s a certain irony in the Jews gassing a bunch of Germans.”

  I gave an uncomfortable glance to the bulkhead, but the rest of the crew—Israelis all—laughed along with him.

  Through the screen I saw Keller turn to the helmet-mounted camera of one of her marines and give us all the bird. Through her helmet I could see she was extremely unhappy. “That’s not funny,” she radioed to me. “That’s not fucking funny at all.”

  “Focus on the job,” I said, “we can talk about it later.”

  She did so, her boots stomping into the metal hull, but her anger seemingly evaporated after a moment.

  “We got bodies here,” she said. I switched to her camera as she panned it over the scene.

  The Toralii corpses were curled up into foetal positions, the expressions on their faces one of intense agony. Humans had outlawed the use of these nerve agents against other Humans many years ago, but the Toralii were not signatures to the Geneva convention.

  It was strange. I had killed a Toralii before, in space combat. I hadn’t felt any sympathy for them at all before, not after they’d destroyed Sydney, Beijing and Tehran, but I felt for the poor bastards we’d just gassed on the Toralii ship. They weren’t combat teams, they were damage control teams. I could see their tools scattered about.

  “Make sure they’re dead,” said Keller. Flashes of gunfire on the black and white monitors. They made very sure.

  The marines spread out through the ship, moving to their assigned locations. The internal map we’d received from the Kel-Voran was precise. I switched perspectives again. The helmet of the guy I was watching, Dieter Koertig, moved from room to room. Every time, methodical as clockwork, flash-bang grenades were thrown in, the room was swept, and any bodies were repeatedly shot in the head to make sure they would pose no threat.

  After the third room, he entered some kind of nursery or childcare area. A half dozen Toralii children lay scattered around the floor. Koertig’s voice filled my headset. “Piggyback, we have children’s bodies here.”

  I felt vaguely sick. The plan had indicated that there might be families aboard, but seeing the bodies with my own eyes solidified it in a way that was strange to explain. It was one thing to hear about something but another to experience it for yourself.

  “Copy,” I said.

  “Orders?” Koertig knew the answer to his question just as well as I did, but he was asking it anyway. That’s how soldiers sometimes dealt with things like this. Passing the authority, the blame, up the chain of command. If he didn’t follow my orders, he knew, I’d just find someone else who would or do it myself.

  “Protocol is protocol,” I said. “Make sure they’re dead.”

  He did so, the flash of his gunfire washing out the camera feed, then he moved on.

  I changed views. The rest of the marines continued to sweep. I settled on Keller’s viewpoint.

  “Report, Uberleutnant.”

  “It’s Oberleutnant, sir. And the sweep’s going well.”

  “Good, Oberleutnant. How long until you reach the bridge?”

  “Two minutes, sir.”

  The camera bobbed as she moved forward. I could see the tip of her grenade launcher ahead of her, steady as a rock. She approached a corner, stepping back and to the side, slinking around and leaning so that her body was protected.

  A huge multi-legged metal creature, as big as a horse, clanked its way down the corridor. It spoke in a thick, guttural language of the Toralii, gesturing subserviently with its clamps.

  [“Input directive.”]

  Keller pulled her head back. “Scheissen! Piggyback, we got a construct.”

  I was suddenly glad for my previous conversation with Scott. Nerve gas wouldn’t affect a mechanical construct and the anti-armour rockets she had ordered were suddenly quite handy.

  “Take it down,” I said.

  Keller pulled out one of the long tubes I’d seen, popped the end off, then aimed it down the corridor. A white flash washed out the camera’s optics, then my vision returned. A vision of a corridor filled with smoke and the red glow-worms of burning metal in the dark.

  “Construct destroyed.”

  “Keep shooting, I want to make sure that thing’s really dead.”

  Keller fired a few shots from her grenade launcher into it, blasting the wreckage, the edges of each impact zone a fiery red. She kept going, exhausting her magazine, until the construct was just a smoking wreck.

  “I think we got it, sir.”

  “Well done. Wait there for reinforcements. Those things are just brainless shells. The datacore is the true intelligence—and it might send reinforcements. When it’s clear proceed to the bridge.”

  “Aye aye, sir.”

  I flicked the communication channel to all the marines.

  “We’ve destroyed a construct on level two. The datacore will be around the place somewhere. Apply C-4 when you find it and use plenty, those things can be remarkably resilient.”

  The various squad leaders acknowledged. I was about to switch back to Keller’s view point when I heard footsteps down the corridor. I turned in my chair. Major Scott and Smoke were carrying a stretcher.

  “Bobbitt?”

  “He’s fine,” said Smoke, “the dumb mother fucker used a steel cable to anchor himself to
the ship when he opened the door. He’s got a lot of bruising and some internal bleeding, but he’ll live.”

  “Hey, fuck you,” said Bobbitt, his voice surprisingly lively. “It’s all I had!”

  “You’re a fucking dumbarse,” said Smoke, “and if you die here I will never stop laughing. Okay, Major, set it down gently on three. One, two, three.”

  Smoke and Scott eased Bobbitt down on the deck of the narrow corridor.

  “Aren’t you glad we don’t need a gunner,” I said, grinning at Bobbitt. His face was puffy and bruised, but he managed to give me the finger. That was good. Jokes meant he was still kicking.

  “How bad’s our damage?” I asked. Scott sat in her chair and I took off her headset, handing it back.

  “Pretty nasty,” said Smoke. “There’s a three centimetre hole in the hull. If Bobbitt hadn’t of sealed it so quick we might have lost the whole stern of the ship.”

  It was best not to tell Shaba about that. “Well, glad to hear he did something right for once.”

  Everyone laughed, including Bobbitt, and then Scott received some kind of communication.

  “Oberlieutenant Koertig reports they’ve found a construct’s datacore,” she said.

  “Good,” I said. “I told them to look for it, then C4 it.”

  She frowned. “That’s an important asset.”

  “Keller found a construct and took it down. We don’t know how many more there are.”

  Scott seemed more angry at that. “She destroyed the construct? On your authority?”

  “Yes ma’am.”

  “Those things are important to the operation of the ship. They wouldn’t have them for no reason.” Scott touched her headset. “Koertig, that’s a negative on the C4. Keep the datacore intact.” She looked at me, her finger still down on the talk key. “But keep me posted if you see anymore constructs.”

  I wasn’t happy about that, but Scott seemed to know what she was doing.

  “This is Keller,” I heard through Scott’s headphones, “we’ve taken the bridge.”

  Scott’s smile reflected how we all felt. “Good.”

  I patched myself into Keller’s radio signal. “We’re cycling out the gas. Give us twenty minutes to clear out the atmosphere, then come over.”