So the frost was air being propelled from the interior. Tough on those inside, but that was their problem.
A bolt passed so close that it singed my hair. I heard two pops from Sheila’s rifle before Quince and I turned and sent a few bolts in return. “Get back here,” Quince yelled at Wright.
In the next few minutes there was a fierce exchange of metal slugs, blaster bolts, and stun charges between the corridor and our little fort. I think we got a couple of them, for they pulled back momentarily as a hideous scream sounded. It dropped in a moment to a low roar of rushing air. The hatch was slowly opening and letting the station’s air rush inside.
“Oh my God,” Quince said. Wright was lying in a pool of blood. I grabbed a rifle, pulled Sheila along, and threw her through the hatch before I turned around to see Quince struggling with Wright’s body. “I’m not leaving the kid,” he said gruffly enough that I had to help him, if only to speed things up.
We closed the hatch. The inside was a mess with the two asphyxiated crewmen, and Tiger, Tag, and Wright’s bodies. As we placed them all in the cargo bay I noticed that there were still two of the eight bond boxes inside—five billion at least.
“Can you get this thing fired up?” I asked Quince. He sprang to the engine console and began waking the Corvette’s engines and drives.
“I’ll take the con,” Sheila said and dropped into the leftmost seat.
“Not on your life,” I said as I slid into the right. “Fleet are traditionalists: Pilot’s seat is always on dockside.” She cursed as I started activating the controls, but I was too busy to listen.
In the bowels of the Corvette I could hear the blink drives starting to spin up as we moved away from the station on our steering jets. Quince was getting us ready to blink out of here.
When we were a hundred meters away, I used the steering jets to guide us across to where Spratt’s ship was docked and maneuvered directly behind it. “What are you doing?” Sheila asked. “We need to get away from here.” “I am not about to let Spratt get away with fifteen billion,” I replied. “I’m going to make certain he stays put.”
With careful use of the steering jets I ran the armored hull of the Corvette along the other ship as I gently goosed the engines. There was a terrible, grating, metallic sound as we scraped along, snapping off the steering nozzles and anything else sticking off the hull.
At the end of the run, I flipped the ship around and went in to opposite direction, paring away anything that we’d missed on the first run. “The first rule of pirating,” I explained, “is to make sure your target can’t maneuver.”
At the end of the second pass we sat off the stern, where the huge reaction engines sat on their outriggers. I pointed the Corvette at the nearest boom and goosed the main engine. It hurt me to use the small ship as a battering ram, but it was the only weapon I had.
There was brief resistance before the boom twisted under the pressure and the nozzle was pointing back toward Spratt’s ship. Then I did the second one.
“That should keep him here for a while,” I said. “Now, let’s get out of here.” I was about to set the coordinates for home when Quince poked a blaster in my ribs. “I hope you’re setting up for New Caledonia. Fleet would like to get their bonds back.”
“That’s exactly what I was thinking,” I lied and quickly changed the settings. “You know what that means for Sheila and me—prison and lawsuits.” “Well, I’m sure that they’ll consider all you’ve done when...” Quince never finished the sentence as he slumped to the deck.
“Well, I guess these things have their use,” Sheila said as she turned her stunner toward me. “I just hate ungrateful people,” she said with a glance at the sleeping Quince. “Besides, I was wondering what my life might be like with a ship like this and a few billion in bonds.” She cocked an eyebrow. “Unless y’think of taking it all for yerself?” The tip of the stunner was unwavering.
“Of course not,” I said.
“Argh, don’t lie,” she said. “I know y’got the balls to take it, Hart.”
“As I’ve been telling you all along; I’m an officer, not a pirate. The Alliance desperately needs money and ships.”
She kept the stunner on me. “I’ve insurance, banks, and a life of debt facing me back home. I can’t walk away from all this with nothing.” She hesitated and then put the stunner away. “Aw, the hell with it. Do y’think the Alliance would take another pirate Captain?”
I smiled as I engaged the drives. “Always. And we’ll even give you an eye patch.”
Back to Contents
DERELICTION OF DUTY
A Chronicle of The 142nd Starborne
Patrick Thomas
DAMN IT TO HELL,” YELLED MAJOR HANS BENEDICT. EVER SINCE HE HAD ASSUMED COMMAND OF the Colossus-class warship Behemoth, he never seemed to re-ceive any good news in his ready room. Today was not about to change that.
“Too late,” replied Captain Shana Morales, with a faint smile.
“This intel is solid?” Benedict asked, obviously hoping that it wasn’t. Morales nodded.
“So the entire post simply abandoned the people on the planet below. Did they even try an evac? The crew is barely five thousand. That sky station can house half a million. That’s a quarter of the population of Ozark,” said Benedict.
“Not from what Shoden and the rest of our people were able to send out before Colonel Hastings took them prisoner,” said Morales. She hesitated for a moment. “She also refused to recognize your authority.”
Benedict shrugged. “Some days so do I. I can’t believe she would cut tail and run.”
“Sir, it is in the manual. In case the reanimated...” The military refused to officially call them zombies even if everyone else did. “...go rogue, procedure dictates to secure military facilities from outside contaminates.”
“That’s meant for the battlefield. Hastings is in a god-damned satellite three miles above the planet. No way for a zombie to get in there.” Benedict was a simple, direct man who called a zombie a zombie and a vampire a blood sucker.
“Unless she brings them in, Sir,” replied his second in command.
“She has docking bays with full surveillance. Quarantine the lot for thirty hours, give each a cot, rations, and a field pot. Tell them anyone who leaves their assigned area will be shot. In hour thirty one she’d know if they were human or not. Snipers could take out any of the infected. While she’s being lazy and a coward, people are dying below her, which is only feeding the monsters’ ranks. If it continues unchecked, the entire population will be turned and the only option left will be to nuke the planet.”
Morales cringed at the thought. Humans who were clever enough to avoid the zombies would be killed with the monsters. Then she cleared her throat. “Sir, not to be indiscrete, but there are rumors regarding your past...relationship with the Colonel.”
Benedict smiled wearily. “Captain, stop pussyfooting around. Yes, we slept together. We were even an item, but that was a lifetime ago. By refusing to assist the people she was assigned to protect she is giving aid to the enemy. She will be treated no differently than any other traitor to mankind.”
“I never doubted that for a second, Sir. My concern is that your emotional attachment may impair your duty. I still feel it is improper every time you take point on a mission. In this case that feeling is doubled.”
“Morales, I started my career in the Host more than thirty years ago as a sapper. I can get into any ship or station, space or planetside, and put it out of commission. If you can honestly tell me we have someone better than me in this command, I’ll con-sider it. Otherwise, I take point.” Benedict, whose crew cut had more gray than black, lifted an eyebrow making the scar on the left side of his face stretch out. It was an offer of a chance to speak. The small brunette declined. “Besides, if I don’t make it back, you’ll probably do a much better job of command than I have.”
“I doubt that very much, Sir,” said Morales.
“Let’s
hope you don’t have to find out.”
The battlestation Kyklopes orbiting the planet Ozark was Medusa-class and could drop five hundred Harpy attack ships in less than six minutes. It had enough armaments to hold off a small fleet or destroy a city on the planet’s surface.
A Colossus-class warship, of which Behemoth was the only one known to have survived the conflagration, had the firepower to destroy a Medusa. It could just as easily be damaged or even obliterated in a fair fire fight. Benedict wanted to take the station intact. It was the best solution to retake the planet, if it wasn’t already too late. The reanimated spread their infection quickly and exponentially. Every hour counted.
The job of the sapper had changed much since its start by the French military. Then a sapper had to take out a fortress’ cannons. Now it was a unit in the Host that specialized in taking out enemy ships, stations, and fortifications.
A station was relatively easy to get to, at least compared to a starship. Although it moved through orbit at thousands of miles per hour, compared to something traveling between systems it was practically standing still.
A Harpy cruised on minimal power to within five thousand miles of Kyklopes. Any closer raised the risk of detection too high. The approach was made in transports designed to mimic debris and meteors, affectionately referred to as coffins. It was an apt term as there were no active systems for radar or other detection methods to pick up. Even life support was supplied by old-fashioned pressurized tanks that had to be adjusted from within by hand.
The Harpy had missile tubes made to launch the coffins and that momentum was how they approached their target. It was the technological equivalent of shooting someone out of a cannon in an attempt to hit a mark thousands of miles away. Each sapper was responsible for programming their own trajectory. That way if someone missed there was no one to blame but themselves, which explained why most sappers had at least a working engineering and physics background, in addition to explosives and special ops training.
Sapper teams were traditionally kept to five members. Much more and there was the chance that the systems would note an abnormality. Any less and there wasn’t enough manpower to get the job done.
Benedict was a sapper legend. There were rumors that he wasn’t human, but no one had ever figured out what he was supposed to be. Nor had it ever been mentioned to his face after he broke the jaw of the first man foolish enough to say it. Benedict reviewed the plan with the other four members of his team. Those spots were evenly spilt between the genders and the ranks. Private Ricco Jonas, Corporal Sheila Barnes, Captain Ami Chang, and Colonel Leon Westminster.
Westminster technically outranked Major Benedict, but it was not an issue. When the orders came to return to Earth during the conflagration, they arrived with dark details and statistics. 66.6% of the planet’s population had died the first day. The message that finally reached them was not sent until day five. The only known free survivors were the upper-level bureaucrats and politicians that had summoned forth the darkness and managed to conceal their self-important hides in shelters. The planet the Behemoth was stationed around was under attack by the monsters. The Behemoth’s leaving would have doomed one hundred million to save thousands who had a hand in their own doom and that of billions of dead.
When General Dailey issued the order for the 142nd Starborne to leave, Major Benedict ordered it rescinded with his side arm cocked and pointed at the General’s head. It was a bloodless takeover. The Sway had been mistreating the soldiers in the Host for years, risking their lives without rhyme or reason. Benedict’s actions had the benefit of having both and the major quickly earned the crew’s loyalty. Most of them. There were still a few diehard hold outs, Dailey among them. Those that decided to serve recognized Benedict’s authority, but he steadfastly refused to grant himself a higher rank. It would have smacked too much of a coup.
Benedict had a habit of calculating all five trajectories and posting them. The team always made sure to double check their own results against his and to adjust accordingly. Benedict had over a 96% success rate for getting the coffins within spit-ting distance of the targets. Average outside of the 142nd Starborne was about 82%.
Sapper tradition dictated a last meal. In the early days of the sappers in the Host, the number of sappers who made it to retirement after twenty years was pitifully low. As training and selection methods improved, so did the life expectancy, but the tra-dition remained.
So did the writing of a last will and testament before each mission. Once that was complete, the five sappers climbed in their coffins and launched themselves at sky station Kyklopes.
A trip in a coffin is a singularly isolated experience. The coffins had limited propul-sion systems, mostly pressurized gasses that could be released to steer. With no radar, all navigation was done visually. The windows had built in layers of magnifiers, much like old fashioned bi- and trifocals, with each smaller circle being a higher level.
The smallest was the equivalent to a powerful observatory caliber telescope. If some-thing was not visible through a window, there were mirrors that were manually ad-justed.
Every coffin contained a radio, but traditionally they were only used to give a suicide order. Since even a sapper didn’t want to throw away his life on a useless kamikaze run, the coffins were laced with enough explosives to punch a hole in almost any armor plating they could make impact with.
The sappers had their individual ways of passing the time in the void. Jonas sang opera in five languages. Barnes composed poetry. Chang wrote out calculations for pi. In her eight years as a sapper she had filled over a thousand pages. Westminster crocheted.
Benedict studied scans of a very old tome, the very one that was alleged to have been used to summon what now ruined the Earth. They had been smuggled out at great cost prior to the conflagration. Benedict had acquired them since taking command. He studied it in small pieces, using a non-sequential pattern to stave off the madness that claimed the last two people to read it.
So far he remained perfectly sane. At least as far as those around him had been able to tell.
Kyklopes soon loomed. The calculations were dead on. Each coffin launched a pair of grapple lines. The end of each contained a sac filled with an adhesive. Contact with the Kyklopes’ hull burst the sacs. The adhesive hardened and the coffin was reeled in slowly until it lay flush with the station’s armor plating. An airtight seal was formed and a combination of energy and mechanical tools cut though it in less than a half hour.
Each sapper had their jobs. Systems control, life support, sensors, power. Benedict had his own tasks, but because of his new station in the 142th’s hierarchy they were made easier than ever before. Control panels were positioned throughout the station and he made his way to the closest one. Using a master override code, he subtly altered the station’s programming. With luck, it wouldn’t be noticed until it was too late for anything to be done about it. If not, at least Behemoth and the 142nd Starborne were in good hands with Morales.
On a station the size of Kyklopes, not every soldier knew everyone they were sta-tioned with. Five thousand was a lot of faces to get lost in. For that reason Benedict didn’t bother with things like crawl spaces and maintenance tubes. Those places were filled with sensors and alarms because that’s where the brass expected sabo-teurs to hide.
After thirty-three years in the Host, Benedict oozed military. No one would ever think he wasn’t a soldier. All he did was change his division patch on his right shoul-der from the 142nd to that of Kyklopes Station and he had all the camouflage he needed.
Common areas were no problem. The hard part was getting into a secure section. Soldiers knew who they served with, who relieved them and when. Any change in the regular grind would raise suspicions.
Benedict didn’t bother to try any of the usual tactics, instead opting for the bull in a china shop option. He walked right up to the guards at the brig and saluted. “I’m here for the interrogation,” he barked.
T
he guards, a pair of corporals, returned the salute, but did not stand aside.
“Begging your pardon, Sir, but we have not received word of any interrogation,” said one.
“I just left the command center. I haven’t had to interrogate a prisoner in ten years. I found it distasteful then and more so now, but the Colonel ordered me to try as she hadn’t gotten everything she wanted from them. Apparently the old lady believes new blood is the answer. Personally, I doubt it. Please check your orders. I just left her and she sent them before I left.” He held up a card key that was supposed to be coded for the cell locks on one end and genetically coded for the card holder on the other. “Call her if you need to verify.”
The last part was a bit of a gamble. Corporals tended to be wary of their COs and were fearful of bothering them. If the order was good they would be scolded or worse. If they called and learned Hastings didn’t send it, his secrecy was blown and things would get bloody.
They checked the comm. “The orders are here, as is Colonel Hastings electronic signature seal. You’re clear to go in, Major.” They motioned and searched him for weapons. He only had one and it wasn’t something that they would be looking for. “Go in.”
“These are desperate men and women. It is possible they may escape. If they do somehow manage to get out, don’t hesitate. Shoot them.” Another gamble. No decent rescuer would encourage the guards to shoot people he was trying to save.
“Understood, Sir,” said the corporal on the left.
Benedict smiled. “Of course, do whatever you can to avoid hitting me.”
“We’ll keep that in mind, Sir,” he said, as he and his partner turned keys ten feet apart. The door to the brig slid open.
“I appreciate it,” Benedict said and walked through with the authority of a god among men.
There were a dozen of Behemoth’s crew imprisoned. Captain Shoden, who had led up what was intended as a diplomatic mission, was in the first cell. Shoden stood confused and looked behind Benedict, but kept his silence. “It’s fine, Shoden. You can speak freely,” Benedict said. “Have you settled things with Hastings?” he asked. “Not yet,” said Benedict.
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