The Mammoth Book of SF Wars

by Ian Whates

  He did have emgee, and a suit, and a tether. He decided to rest floating free. The technique had helped him before when stressed. He stared out at the stars and the distant pointy glare of Iota Persei, their star, and fell into a deep sleep, disturbed by odd dreams.

  Meka approached the station gradually. She’d have to leave her sled behind and finish the trip in just her suit to avoid detection. While a bedecked suit would register as maintenance or a refugee with the sensors, the sled would trigger alarms as an approaching threat even if the enemy didn’t have knowledge of the precise design. She made one last correction to her orbit, set the autopilot, pulled the releases, and drifted loose from the frame. Her minuscule lateral velocity should be of negligible effect.

  The sled burped gently away on gas jets rather than engines, and would hopefully never be detectable to the station. It was near 08.00 by Earth clock, and another three hours should bring her quite close. That’s when it would become tricky.

  First, she’d have to manoeuvre with an improvised thruster. Jan had her harness; she had only a nitrogen bottle and a momentary valve. He’d – hopefully – made his approach with power but no navigation. She had the navigation gear in her helmet, but improvised power. The risks they were taking would cause a safety officer to run gibbering in insanity. On the other hand, they were dead either way.

  There was also the substantial risk of the station noting her approach to its crew. They might await her, or send someone to investigate, or shoot her outright. She was betting against the last, but it was just that – a bet. If they met her, it meant a fight. She would win one on one against anybody she faced, but the station might have up to twenty crew. It was effectively a large recon boat with manoeuvring engines, and she didn’t relish a fight within.

  Unlike her previous long EVAs, she was relaxed and calm. Perhaps it was experience. Maybe it was the complexity of the task and the associated thought that kept her too busy to worry. Perhaps it was fatalism. As she neared her target, more issues interfered and she dropped all those thoughts.

  There were no obvious signs of disturbance as she approached. That meant that if they did see her for what she was, they were at least holding their fire. She checked her weapon again by touch, and began readying her muscles for a fight. If someone met her, she’d go along peacefully to the airlock, then start smashing things and killing on her way inside.

  Nothing happened. Either the station’s sensors didn’t see her, or they assumed she was performing maintenance and ignored her. It was good to see the intel was accurate, but it still felt odd that her presence wasn’t even reported. Perhaps it was and they were waiting for her. Dammit, no second guessing.

  She was close enough to think about manoeuvring now, and there were still no signs of enemy notice. The nitrogen bottle beside her breathing bottle was plumbed into a veritable snakepit of piping Jan had built for her, that ended front and back at shoulders and hips, much like a proper emgee harness. She hoped the improvised controls worked so she wouldn’t have to attempt it by hand. Her record on manual approaches was less than perfect.

  She vented a pulse of gas and the harness worked as planned. Two more short ones brought her to a bare drift. She sent more thoughts of thanks after her brother, who had turned out to be essential to almost every mission she’d fought in this war. His technical skill in every field was just genius.

  She managed a gentle touchdown on the station hull, letting her legs bend and soak up momentum. She caught her breath, got her bearings, and went straight to work. She had no idea how long she could go unnoticed.

  She placed the prebuilt charges with a rapidity born of years of practice. Each charge was designed to punch a hole into a compartment, hopefully voiding them all and killing the occupants instantly. She danced softly across the hull to avoid noise inside that might give her away, swapping tethers as she went, and planted them precisely with the aid of thoughtfully provided frame numbers. Magnetic boots would have made it easier … if the shell had been an iron alloy and if clanking noises didn’t matter.

  She caught movement out of the corner of her eye. She pivoted to see a UN spacer in gear, staring at her in surprise.

  Her combat reflexes took over. He was unarmed, meaning he was conducting routine maintenance or inspections. It was possible he wore a camera that was observable inside on a monitor, and he would definitely report her as soon as he recovered from the oddity of the situation. She twisted her right arm to unsling, then pointed her rifle and shot him through the faceplate.

  The eruption of atmosphere and vaporized blood indicated he was dead. She put two more bullets through him to make sure, the effect eerie in the silence. The recoil of the weapon was mild, but with no gravity or atmosphere it started her tumbling. She steadied out with a grasp of her tether, and brought herself back the half metre to the shell. Now what?

  Her pulse hammered and her breath rasped. Despite the massive damage and casualties she’d caused in her career, it was only the second time she’d killed someone directly and up close. She forced her emotions into quiescence and considered the situation. If he’d reported her, she had seconds to deal with it. If not, she had a little longer before he was missed. If she killed the crew early, they might miss a scheduled report and the secrecy of her mission would be compromised. If she waited, they could report her presence. She didn’t see much of a choice.

  Her fingers activated the system through her comm; she paused a second to confirm the readings and then detonated the charges.

  If the atmosphere gushing from her enemy’s helmet had been impressive, this was awe-inspiring. Brilliant bursts of white were swallowed by fountains of spewing air and debris. The station shook beneath her feet as the hull adjusted to lost pressure. Anyone not in a suit should be dead. Now to hope no report was expected before her mission zero time. It was a long shot, but all she had. And it was unlikely that the omission would be considered more than a minor problem at first.

  Costlow was a first-class pilot, but this would strain even his capabilities. The astronautics would take over for evasive manoeuvres only. The approach would be manual.

  While there was a timed window for attacks, the closer together they were the better. Any hint of action would alert the enemy and reduce the odds of success for others. He wanted to time this to the second, as much as possible. To avoid detection, he had to rely on passive sensors operated by Sarendy across from him. Passive sensors didn’t give as accurate a picture as active ones, which meant he’d have to correct the timing in flight. As he would approach at a velocity near the maximum physics and Jemayel’s bypassed safeties would allow, that left little time for corrections. He wanted to get inside their weapons’ envelope and right against the skin before they deduced what he was. That also increased the risk of their particle watch picking him up, assuming him to be an incoming passive threat, and shooting preemptively.

  They were only a few hours from target, and he’d already brought them around in a long loop behind the London’s engines. The emissions from them would mask their approach in ionized scatter. He wondered again just how hard this would have been without Sarendy, Jan and Otte. Sarendy was pulling all her intel from the sensors up to the flight deck and using it to assist in astrogation; and she was preparing a counterintel system for use when they were detected, and would utilize the active sensor antennae as offensive transmitters. He hadn’t realized that was even possible, but Sarendy was a witch with sensors, Jan an expert on improvising hardware, and Otte had kept up with both of their orders and put the system together. Amazing. If a crew had ever earned its decorations, this one had.

  “Your turn, Warrant,” Sarendy reminded him.

  Right. Chess. “Um …” He moved his queen, looked at the board with satisfaction and leaned back. Her rook’s capture of his queen and declaration of checkmate stunned him.

  “Perhaps we should stop now,” he suggested. “I didn’t see that coming and I have no idea what you did. And both my bishops are
on white.”

  “They are?” she asked. “So they are. Let’s call it a game.”

  Meka swam through the main corridor, counting bodies with faces reminiscent of dead fish, and checked that every compartment was open to vacuum. Nodding to herself, ignoring the grisly scenes, she made her way to the powerplant and unlimbered the large charge on her chest. In seconds it was armed, placed, and she swam back out to face the outer hatch. Little to do now but wait.

  She wondered how other troops and units had done. Was anyone trying to recapture the captured Freehold facilities? Or just destroy them outright? Would the attacks be successful, and allow the presumed counter to work? Would they win?

  She’d never know. She could only wish them luck.

  Jan awoke with a start. Guilt flooded over the adrenaline, as he realized he’d slept past when he was supposed to be on guard. He shrugged and decided it didn’t matter, as the chance of anyone interfering was incredibly remote. It still bothered him.

  It was close to deadline, and he realized he didn’t even know what this operation was called, only that it probably involved the entire system, aimed for infrastructure, and was suicidal. That was probably enough.

  He still had a couple of hours of oxy.

  Hypoxia/anoxia would be pretty painless. A little struggle for breath … he could take those two hours. It wasn’t impossible a rescue vessel might show up. It just took a hell of a lot of zeros to make the odds. Two extra hours of life, though.

  He decided he didn’t have whatever it took to let himself die slowly. He was already shivering in shock; the tranks were wearing off.

  He snagged the tether and dragged himself hand over hand to the station. He hooked to the contact patch near the charge. The only thing worse than being blown to dust, he thought, would be to be injured by it and linger for hours in pain. He wished Meka luck, aching to know if she’d make it. That hurt as much as anything else. There were a few less zeros on her odds, but they were still ludicrously remote. Their mission was to smash enemy infrastructure, not occupy and set up housekeeping.

  There was nothing left. He settled down to read, gave up because he couldn’t focus, and turned on music to break the eerie silence. If he had to die, he wanted it to be painless and instantaneous.

  When the charge underneath him detonated, he got his final wish.

  Costlow sweated, with aching joints and gritty eyeballs from sitting far too long at the controls. He watched the display in his helmet, trying to ignore the way the helmet abraded behind his left ear, and made another minute flight correction. He had minutes left to live.

  4J23 was close behind the London, and undiscovered as far as they knew. Sarendy screwed with their emissions, inverted incoming scans, sent out bursts low enough in energy to pass as typical, powerful enough to keep them hidden and the gods only knew what else. He wished there were some way to record her competence. She was a twenty-year-old kid, and likely knew more about her job than all her instructors combined. Add in her bravery, and she deserved ten medals.

  No, he thought, she deserved to live. Rage filled him again.

  He forced the thoughts back to his mission. He was hungry and thirsty, but he daren’t pause to sate either. This could all come down to a fractional second’s attention. Especially now that they were so close.

  He brought 4J23 in in a tight, twisting curve from the blind spot behind the drives, and aimed along the approaching superstructure. London’s defences found him, and a launch warning flashed in his visor. It missed because Sarendy switched to active jamming and burned its sensors out with a beam that should have been impossible from a recon boat, and would almost fry an asteroid to vapour. The brute force approach was an indication that all her tricks were exhausted, and it was doubtful they could avoid another attack. He flinched as the missile flashed past, even though it was detectable only as an icon in his visor, and heard a cry of sheer terror start quietly and build. He realized it was his voice. He’d wet himself, and was embarrassed, even though he understood the process. He could hear Sarendy panting for breath, hyperventilating behind him, and wondered what Jemayel was doing in the stern. His eyes flicked to the count in his visor—

  Now.

  Alongside the London, within metres of her hull and at closest approach to her command centre, a small powerplant overloaded and detonated. It was enough to overwhelm her forcescreens, vaporize her forward half, and shatter the rest in a moment so brief as to be incomprehensible. One hundred UN spacers were turned into incandescent plasma by the blast, along with the three Freeholders.

  Meka watched the seconds tick away in her visor. She dropped her left hand and grasped the manual trigger, set it and held on. It would blow if she let go, or on schedule, and her work was almost done. The count worked down, and she closed her eyes, faced “up” and took a deep breath to steady herself. She opened them again to see it count 3 … 2 … 1.

  Whether her thumb released or the timer acted first was irrelevant. The blast damaged the station’s fusion plant, which shut down automatically, even as it vented to space. She felt the cracking and rumbling of the structure through her body, fading away to nothing. It would take a dockyard to repair that, and they’d have to remove the wreckage first. She moved back towards the power-plant, navigating by touch in the dust, and dragged herself around several supports twisted by the blast. She entered the engineering module and waited. The particles cleared very slowly, as there was neither airflow nor gravity. It all depended on static charges and surface tension to draw things out of vacuum, and Meka stayed stock-still until she could get a good look through her faceplate, cycling through visible, enhanced and IR to build a good picture. She nodded in approval of the damage. The blast and fusion bottle failure had slagged half the module.

  Her task was now done, but she had no desire to die immediately. She could have embraced the charge on the reactor and gone with it. Her rationale had been that she should be certain, although the charge had been three times larger than she’d calculated as necessary. The truth was, she couldn’t bring herself to do it. Death might be inevitable, but she still feared it.

  She studied the life-support system whimsically. Without a proper deckplan, she’d just vented every compartment from outside to be sure. Her charge over this one had punched into the make-up tank. There was a functional air-recycling plant, but no oxygen. A metre in any direction …

  There were no escape bubbles. This was a station, not a ship. If damaged, the crew would seal as needed and call for help. She’d fixed that when she vented atmosphere. There were extra suit oxy bottles, but the fittings didn’t match. Even if they did, there was no heat, and her suit powerpack was nearing depletion. Jan would easily have cobbled something together, or tacked a patch over the hole in life support and used the suit bottles, but even if she could do so before her own gas ran out, it still meant waiting and hoping for a rescue that would likely never come. There was no commo capability, of course. That had been her prime target. No one knew to look for her. The remote possibility of rescue they’d discussed had been for Jan’s benefit, to let him hope she might survive. He’d probably figured out the lie by now.

  With time and nothing better to do, she planted charges on every hatch, every port, every system. She fired bullets liberally to smash controls and equipment, wedged the airlocks with grenades to shatter the seals and render them useless. Even the spare parts inventory was either destroyed or blown into space.

  Finally, she sat outside on the ruined shell, watching her oxy gauge trickle toward empty. Her weapons were scattered around her, some lazily drifting free in the emgee, each rendered inoperable and unsalvageable, all save one. She really had harboured an unrealistic hope that there’d be some way out of this, and cried in loneliness. There was no one to see her, and it wasn’t the first time she’d cried on a mission. Blazers didn’t look down on tears and fear, only on failure. She had not failed.

  The stillness and silence was palpable and eerie. She brought up h
er system and cycled through her music choices. Yes, that would do nicely. “La Villa Strangiato”. The coordination and sheer skill impressed her, and the energy in the performance was powerful and moving. It filled the last 500 seconds and faded out. Silence returned.

  A warning flashed in her visor and sounded in her ears, becoming more and more tinny as oxygen was depleted. She’d black out in about a hundred seconds.

  One thing she’d always wondered was how far her courage went. People died all the time. Soldiers died when ordered to fight and the odds ran out. Sick people died because life was not worth living.

  But, could she die by choice? Her courage had been tested throughout her career, and this last year to an extreme. But did she have the strength to pull that switch herself?

  After prolonging the inevitable this long, it was rather moot, but her life wouldn’t be complete without the experiment. She armed the grenade, stared at it as her body burned from hypoxia, and tried to force her hand to open. Lungs empty now, she gritted her teeth, pursed her lips, and threw every nerve into the effort. Her wrist shook, thumb moving bit by bit. Willpower or self-preservation?

  She was still conscious, though groggy, as her thumb came free and the fuse caught. Three seconds. Hypoxia segued to anoxia and her thoughts began to fade. The last one caused a triumphant smile to cross her face, even as tears pooled in her eyes.

  Willpower.

  On slabs of green and black marble in Freedom Park are the names of 216 soldiers who accepted orders they could not understand and knew meant their deaths. Words were said, prayers offered, and torches and guards of honour stand eternal watch over them. Their families received pensions, salutes and bright metal decorations on plain green ribbons, presented in inlaid wooden boxes.