War Against the White Knights

by Tim C. Taylor

  “That direction’s forward,” he explained, not realizing that she had glimpsed the ship from the outside. “The passageway feeds starboard until it meets the bridge. We are on the upper of three decks. Romulus is on Deck Two and General McEwan on Three. Neither are moving.”

  “Talking of not moving, why are you standing there telling me all this? Shouldn’t we be, you know, doing something?”

  “I am doing something. Horden’s Hairy Fanny, you’re out of practice, Springer.”

  “I’m not called… Oh, you’re covering the blown hatch.”

  “Got it. And Giant’s covering the ladderwell, though she’s got it easy because she’s behind a force wall. Reckon if I were the Hardit commander, my best chance would be to take a team out into the void and come at us through our own breach.”

  The idea sparked painful memories. “General McEwan used that tactic against the Hardits on Antilles when he was still a cadet.”

  “Which is where you lost your leg and half your face. Yes, I know. Problem is, so do the Hardits.”

  “Isn’t there anyone else at our position?”

  “Negative. Now, shut up and listen. We read twelve Hardits aboard but can assume there are many more, hidden from our sensors by their stealth systems. Update…. Stand by… Eight of those Hardits are now dead.”

  “How?”

  “Killed when we seized the bridge… Bridge control systems are now destroyed, main force returning to our position. Get ready to move out, Tremayne.”

  The Marines might have been stealthed beyond her ability to see them, and there was no sound in the vacuum of the depressurized part of the ship for sound to travel through, but the deck carried the unmistakable pounding of armored Marines running in low gravity. Strange that it was this sound that brought the memories flooding back. She had been proud to be a Marine, and she’d been a good one too.

  Don’t suppose you ever stop being a Marine, no matter what they do to you.

  She frowned. Why weren’t the Marines flying? Outside of a gravity field, their combat suits were designed to do just that. In fact…

  “Kraken?”

  “Yes?”

  “Can’t you just pick me up and fly me around?”

  “Negative. Suit systems are failing fast. Hardits might be cowardly monkeys in the physical world, but they fight hard and dirty in cyberspace. We still move fast, though.”

  The Hardit ship lurched and Tremayne fought to keep her feet as violent flashes of light flared up the ladderwell from the deck below.

  “Move it!” yelled Kraken.

  Tremayne bounded toward the ladderwell, pushing through the pressure wall and into air and sound. She descended using the handrail to push herself down hand-over-hand in the low-gee. It was faster this way, and with less chance of breaking an ankle because she was soon enveloped in impenetrably thick clouds. The Marines must have fired off smoke grenades.

  She had just planted her feet on the deck when a shadowy humanoid form suddenly loomed out of the clouds.

  Tremayne didn’t hesitate, didn’t even need to think. She drove headfirst into the passageway, firing two accurate shots at the figure before rolling in midair and coming to her feet. With only one of those feet still flesh and blood in nature, her landing wasn’t as balanced as it needed to be, and she fretted that she was wasting valuable moments before regaining her poise sufficiently to dodge and fire at the target again.

  Turned out, that was just as well.

  “Cease fire, Tremayne!” The voice was Kraken’s. “Stop shooting at me and shift your ass up the passageway. Come on, move!”

  “Did I damage you?” asked Tremayne, as she advanced up the passageway.

  “How should I know? My suit’s on the fritz. Jeez, you got a strange way of telling a Marine his stealth function has failed.

  The background hum of fans, ubiquitous in space vehicles, became a foreground, screaming whine as the air-scrubbing system went into overdrive. The smoke from the grenades cleared within seconds, and finally Tremayne could see the situation with her own eyes.

  Xin and her bodyguard of eight Marines were trapped in a twenty-meter section of passageway. Limpet-like devices were positioned around the passageway and over the two hatches that led deeper into the ship. Invisible – for the moment – force shields were generated by those limpets. There were no signs of Hardits but they would soon congregate on the outside of the force shields, and given that they had the equipment and skill to penetrate Lance of Freedom and steal away the commanding officer of the Human Legion, she didn’t expect the shields would hold up for long.

  As for the Legion side, the situation looked tactically dire. Giant had secured the tripod-mounted weapon to the deck just inside the forward force shield, and looked ready to fire. Alongside her was a Marine she didn’t recognize with a stubby weapon attached by a thick cable to a bulky backpack heavy enough that he had struggled to move into position. What was that, a flamethrower?

  The Marines could spit fire if they were given the chance but they were bunched in a tight space. And having given up options for movement they had yielded the initiative to the Hardits, offering themselves as static targets.

  Tremayne prayed Xin and Majanita knew what they were doing, because it sure looked like a frakk-up to her.

  The lone Marine who’d taken up a position on the overhead flailed one arm for balance, and then fell to the floor with a dull thud, combat suit motors finally succumbing to the Hardit cyber-attack.

  “And I thought you could see the future,” said Kraken, mockingly, though she could hear his smile even though she couldn’t see it. “The monkeys are as good as dead.” Then he added somberly, “I just pray the same can’t be said of the General McEwan.”

  “Switch to radio comms,” said Xin. “I’m bored with stealth now. Go ahead, Kuzak, let her rip.”

  Kuzak had been hunched over the box he’d hauled from the 850. The colored lights on its top panel all turned green.

  “Bolinny, Jintu, Morgan, watch our rear,” ordered Majanita. “Kraken, the port-side hatches. Everyone else, keep smoke ready up your tubes, but leave the firing to Giant and O’Hanlan. That’s the pulse beam gunner and the automatic rifleman for Tremayne’s benefit. Hold your fire, Deputy Ambassador, in case you hit something with a thinner hide than your new buddy, Kraken.”

  Like a nightmare, heavily armed and armored Hardits on the far side of the forward force shield seemed to slide through a tear from another dimension and into visibility, as Kuzak’s box of tricks defeated the enemy stealth capability.

  But it was the Hardits whose worst nightmare had just come real, because Giant opened up with her heavy weapon on the Hardits, who just stood there, confused.

  Tremayne’s heart sank. Kraken had been so confident that she had believed the Marines had some kind of secret weapon. But whatever they had intended Giant’s weapon to do, it wasn’t working. Its barrel was glowing hot already, but there was nothing visible coming out of its business end, and no effect on the Hardits. All it did was hit the inside of the force shield sufficiently hard to cause slight multicolored ripples from the impact point that quickly died away.

  Xin came up to stand by Tremayne’s shoulder. She didn’t look to be in any hurry.

  “Ever heard of pulse weapons, Tremayne?” she asked.

  “Of course. Pulsing a laser reduces its power consumption and any tendency to overheat, and also allows some of the debris bloom on the target to clear. Also, the rapid temperature changes on the target can cause–”

  “Yeah, yeah.” Xin waved a dismissive hand. “Now Giant has her lucky hands on a really cool pulse weapon. Keep watching…”

  Tremayne watched as the enemy, untouched by Giant’s weapon, pointed their tails at the humans in what she took to be a disparaging gesture of contempt. She counted sixteen of them, and now they knew the humans could see them, they took advantage of their still-functioning combat suit motors to take to the air and swarm through the passageway like insects
, a constant and confusing motion. Two clumps pushed through the swarm, and resolved themselves as tripod-mounted devices of their own. She guessed this was what would cut through the Marine force shields.

  “The clever thing about Giant’s pulse gun,” said Xin sounding amused by the Hardits’ activity, “is that its microwave beam fires continuously but pulses out of this reality, and into neighboring ones.”

  “That’s remarkable,” said Tremayne, “if it’s true. It’s just a pity those neighboring realities have the exact same force shields as ours. Clever idea, no practical application. What’s the contingency plan?”

  Xin laughed. “Patience, Deputy Ambassador. There’s bound to be one nearby without the force shield. It’s just a question of finding it.”

  Tremayne watched in astonishment as the invisible beam from Giant’s gun suddenly played across the Hardit swarm, dropping them to the deck, as if they were insects sprayed with a powerful insecticide.

  Inside their pressure-sealed armor, the Hardits showed no sign of impact or injury; they just dropped and went still. But the microwave beam would have superheated the water in their internal organs, causing them to burst. The insides of those Hardit suits were going to be seriously messy.

  “I don’t like the look of whatever the monkeys were bringing to bear on us,” said Majanita. “I’ve shut down the forward shield. O’Hanlon, spike their guns.”

  The marine with the bulky backpack sprayed the area with explosive rounds. The bulkheads looked unscratched, and the pressure integrity of the ship unaffected, but the same couldn’t be said for the Hardits or their machinery, which were chopped to pieces. Where before the dead Hardits looked as if they were sleeping, was now a scene of bloody carnage.

  “Cease fire,” ordered Majanita. “Forward shield restored.”

  “Hostiles approaching from aft,” said Corporal Bolinny. “I count six.”

  Tremayne switch to attention to this new threat. The Hardits approaching their rear were still coming, racing to take up positions. She counted ten now. She could imagine the confusion in their minds. The plan to trap the humans from both sides and wipe them out in the crossfire was not working out as they had planned.

  “Get out of my frakking field of fire!” growled Giant who had turned her pulse weapon around on its mount and was now aiming at these new targets.

  Tremayne backed up against the exterior bulkhead to keep out of the way.

  This time, the Hardits opened fire, concentrating their aim on the shield generator limpets attached to the passageway bulkhead. The shield flared in angry, yet beautiful flashes of cream and violet.

  Years ago, in the Antilles insurrection, Tremayne had been part of a squad firing everything they had a portable shield generator, which had barely noticed their fire.

  Whatever the monkeys were packing was far more effective.

  “Cease fire!” said Majanita.

  Sparks flew from one of the shield generators before it popped and died, swiftly followed by all the other generators powering the shield. They were vulnerable!

  She tensed, hoping her personal shield would work, but she took no hits.

  She looked again and saw that their opponents were already dead.

  The Hardits hadn’t stood a chance.

  “Show’s over,” shouted Majanita. “Bolinny, Jintu, Morgan, you’re point. O’Hanlan, Giant, cover our rear. General McEwan’s on Deck Three, move it!”

  — CHAPTER 19 —

  Arun tried once more to wriggle free from the metal clamps securing his forearms to the padded bulkhead. It was hopeless. He lashed out with his feet, which dangled a foot above the deck, but that only made his arms hurt more.

  Of course it was hopeless, but his body wouldn’t let him hang there without a fight. His arms were spread wide but weren’t fully outstretched, which meant the pull of his body’s weight was slowly building a burn in his shoulders, but wasn’t wrenching them from their sockets.

  The pain that prompted him to attempt an impossible escape was not the throb in his shoulders but an unbearable itch in his neck where it felt as if the blackout hood over his head was secured to his neck with pins soaked in a skin irritant.

  And he was naked.

  Altogether this was not a nice way for the Hardits to welcome their guest.

  How had the commando squad managed to sneak through Legion defenses undetected? He didn’t like to think too hard about that, preferring to trust in the strength and ingenuity of the combined Legion fleet.

  The Hardits had done something clever, he’d allow them that, but there was no way they could escape the Legion fleet searching for their commander.

  And when the situation was reversed, and the Hardits were his helpless prisoners, he would not dignify them with a shred of mercy. Every humiliation and hurt they visited upon him would be repaid a hundredfold. And if he died before being rescued, he’d depart this life knowing he would have been merciful to the Hardits in comparison with his comrades who would punish his killers endlessly.

  He felt a vibration through the arms clamps. Was that a hatch opening? The hood he wore blocked out sounds other than his labored breathing as he fought to extract oxygen from his own exhalations. There must have been an air opening in the hood, though, because he hadn’t suffocated yet. He concentrated on sucking in breaths as deep as he could to maximize his oxygen intake. He wanted his muscles to be ready for whatever he faced next.

  He yelped as a ring of pain cut around his neck, and the hood was removed.

  Arun blinked away the sudden influx of light, and then set about assessing his situation, planning his escape.

  He was inside a hexagonal chamber with padded bulkheads and overhead, and only one obvious exit guarded by four armed Hardits in powered armor, possibly some of the commandoes who had captured him. His hood had been removed by a fifth Hardit who wore what looked like a uniform in a metalized silver fabric with a ludicrously high collar behind its head, but who carried no weapons. This Hardit, who moved with unhurried grace, placed the hood on a small metal trolley on wheels.

  Arun frowned, realizing something disheartening. Wheels? The trolley wasn’t bolted to the floor and didn’t run on tracks set in the deck. The way the Hardit moved, and for that matter the way the weight of his body tore at his shoulders, all suggested a constant gravity. Either he’d been a prisoner for a helluva lot longer than he thought and was actually on a planet, or else the Hardit vessel he was aboard was accelerating at a constant rate and bearing. It hadn’t the feel of a ship fearful of pursuit or incoming weapons fire.

  The Hardit reached up with her tail – he tended to regard the Hardit as a female, given his previous experience with the species, even though this creature was more likely neutered – and pulled out a tray built into the trolley. She proceeded to make a show of lovingly caressing the contents. Shining scalpels, laser cutters, and saws. An all-metal hammer followed by barbed spikes. He couldn’t identify half the objects in the tray and neither did he want to. Arun could fight back the surge of panic threatening to overwhelm him but he couldn’t deny what he was seeing. The equipment the unarmed Hardit was making a show of inspecting was a torturer’s toolkit.

  Hardits were ugly inside and out. Hatred clouded their brains every moment of their waking day. Come to think of it, even their dreams were probably soaked in bile. Different strata of Hardit society loathed each other. Males and females detested each other so much that many would attack each other on sight except during mating season. About the only thing that united Hardits was their utter hatred for anything non-Hardit: even artificial intelligences were detested on principle.

  They might be psychotic xenophobes, but Hardits weren’t stupid, especially with respect to their command over the physical universe. Arun’s mind whipped itself to think harder about an escape plan, but in his heart he knew there would be no escape for him. Not from the Hardits.

  With escape impossible for the moment, he went for the only weapon he could think of: words.
Back when he was a cadet, he’d managed to wind up a Hardit called Tawfiq so badly he was disappointed that she hadn’t died from apoplectic rage.

  “Getting a good look, fleabag?” he sneered. “I’m not surprised you have to abduct a male to see what one looks like. It isn’t so much that I can see why no Hardit male would want to come near you – what with the ugly overbite and the unsightly body hair – but I can smell why a male would give you a wide berth. You stink like rotting offal.”

  If he could get a rise out of the alien, at least he wouldn’t feel quite so helpless, but the torturer gave no indication she’d even heard him.

  Whenever he talked with Hardits in the past they’d had translator systems. Had she switched hers off or maybe she didn’t have one? Either way she would hear his words as nothing more than meaningless grunts.

  With surprising grace, the torturer drew a syringe from her tray and drew up a small quantity of fluid from one of the glass bottles at the back of the tray.

  She came over to him, standing just far enough away that Arun couldn’t fling his legs out into a kick that would snap her neck. She held the syringe in her prehensile tail-tip, her three yellow-tinted eyes peering up at him along her long snout. The fluid was a roiling mix colored sulfur and rust with a dark sludge settling at the bottom. It looked like something you’d bleed out of a cooling system. Arun had no idea what this was but it was bound to be nothing good.

  The Hardit growled at him, her alien voice converted to human speech and spoken out of a collar speaker. “You are naked and male. I had forgotten both facts.” She brandished the needle. “Thank you for reminding me, you have suggested intriguing options for sites on your body to insert this needle.”

  Arun gasped. He couldn’t help it. The fragility of his resolve shamed him into presenting the torturer with a robust look of contempt.

  In response, the torturer lifted her lips high to reveal a long jaw of serrated fangs.

  “I have decades of experience torturing humans,” she said after a stretched moment of mutual glaring. “I know exactly how to drag you through near-endless landscapes of pain to the edge of consciousness, eyes open and shredded nerves alert to every agony. However, I will never allow you the escape of unconsciousness.”