Virtues of War

by Bennett R. Coles

  “Lieutenant Brisebois, get these people to safety in Normandy. We’ll try and get back in this pod!” She came up short, considering her next words. “If not, look for us in the wreckage.”

  Breeze pulled herself closer and spoke quietly. “You’re insane. There’s no way—”

  She pushed Breeze’s face back and shut the airlock.

  “Cast off!”

  23

  The pod decoupled and slid away. Once safely clear, Cohen opened the throttles and headed toward the battle. Katja reclaimed her seat and noted with satisfaction that Bravo pod was moving at speed toward Normandy.

  “Where to, skipper?” Cohen asked.

  Chang looming next to her shoulder, Katja pointed at the Centauri battle cruiser. It stood apart from the fiery melee, still lobbing missiles.

  “We’re going to board that motherfucker and blast it apart from the inside.” She motioned downward. “Don’t aim directly at it—if we do the defense systems might think we’re a threat. Aim below, and we’ll come up suddenly at close range.”

  Cohen dipped the pod.

  “Standard entry pattern?” Chang asked.

  She nodded. “Alpha Team takes the bridge. Bravo Team takes the engine room. We take those spaces out, that ship is toast.”

  “Do we have schematics?”

  “Just keep shooting until you find what you’re looking for.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  The battle line melee was fifty kilometers overhead. Sparkles and flashes across the massive, looming face of Anubis gave evidence of the dogfights still underway. With the amount of debris littering the battlespace now, Katja hoped that her little pod was too small and too slow for anyone to notice.

  “Shut down all non-essential power. Let’s pretend we’re a piece of trash.”

  Cohen’s fingers flew over her controls. Lights extinguished and ventilation ceased. The 3-D display disappeared, along with most of the instrumentation.

  They were flying visually.

  The battle cruiser was fat. Although not as long as a Terran capital ship, it was of comparable displacement. Its hull gleamed in the bright sunlight, except for the blackened launch tubes of its dozen missile batteries.

  Her plan rested on two key factors. First, she knew enough about Centauri tactics to know that they relied heavily on machinery to fight their battles for them, keeping their robotic weapons at a distance from living personnel. Second, off-planet combat was fought entirely ship-to-ship, not man-to-man. Since this was the first engagement between Terra and Centauria, it had no precedent, and Katja was betting that the enemy wouldn’t think to prepare for a boarding.

  She turned to her troopers. They looked back at her expectantly.

  “The plan is simple,” she said. “We enter together, secure the airlock and split into two teams. Alpha Team will take the bridge. Bravo Team will take the engine room. We will move with stealth until we are discovered, as we don’t know if their vital spaces have protection systems and we want to get the jump on them. Take out those spaces and get back to the strike pod.

  “If we are discovered, shoot anything that moves. This is not a smuggler ship. We are not searching for anything. This is the flagship of an enemy nation who has attacked our fleet. We are at war.”

  She let that last thought sink in.

  “Captain Kane wanted us to make a difference in this battle. And the nine of us will see to it that we do.”

  The battle cruiser loomed overhead, rotating thirty degrees on a steady, thirty-second interval. Katja assumed that the staggered missile batteries were being rearmed and programmed during the rotation, then steadied for launch as the ship held position. Cohen slowed the strike pod as it came directly underneath the behemoth, and nudged upward on a gentle collision course.

  Katja scanned for an airlock. She spotted one, but the battle cruiser rolled again before she could point it out.

  “Look sharp,” she said to Cohen. “We’ll have about thirty seconds to lock on.”

  “Got it.” Cohen surged the strike pod forward and flipped back ninety degrees to point the pod’s clamp toward the Centauri hull. They banged down, and held. There was a hiss as the seal was flooded with oxygen.

  “Green,” Chang said.

  “Faceplates down,” Katja barked. “From this moment on, we act as if we’re in a vacuum.”

  When the last of them had complied, Chang opened the airlock and Assad climbed through. Within moments he had overridden the Centauri airlock controls, and the hatch opened. He entered, and the rest of the strike team followed.

  Katja was last, leaving only the pilot.

  “Shut the airlock,” she told Cohen. “Hopefully the Centauri damage control teams didn’t notice the opening.”

  Cohen obliged, and the hatch slid shut between them.

  “Entry point clear,” Assad reported.

  Katja moved forward to catch up. There was no gravity, and the passageways were wide and well lit. There was no sign of internal alarm or defenses—as expected, the Centauris were completely focused on the battle outside.

  “All units, Alpha-One—touchdown, ops red. Proceed with mission. Bravo-One.”

  “Bravo-One,” Chang replied.

  Katja exchanged a glance with him, then turned to follow her troopers. Assad had point, with Jackson behind. Katja followed and Hernandez covered the rear. Moving in zero-g was troublesome, as it required devoting one hand to repeatedly propel along handles and doorframes.

  Through Assad’s helmet link, Katja saw her first Centauri. He appeared to be of European descent, medium build, dressed in light-gray coveralls, dark boots, and fire-resistant gloves and hood. He was moving swiftly along the corridor, herding two large crates in front of him. Suddenly his eyes widened in shock.

  Then his body was splattered down the bulkhead as Assad fired a single round into him.

  “Alpha Team, Alpha-One—pick up the pace.”

  They pulled themselves faster down the passageway, dodging past the abandoned crates and the mangled lower half of the Centauri crewmember.

  Moving through the next door, Assad burst into a large room filled with Centauri crewmembers and damage control equipment. Katja saw the shock in their eyes, and switched off the helmet link to focus on her own field of view—just as she heard the tock-tock-tock of weapons fire. Jackson joined in seconds later. By the time Katja reached the door, there was nothing to see but blood and body parts spinning madly in zero-g, colliding with one another and bouncing off all four sides of the compartment.

  She looked down at her weapon to avoid retching, thankful that her helmet would block the smell. “Secure this space!”

  Assad and Jackson pushed through the carnage and took positions next to the exit on the far side. Hernandez hunkered down to guard the way they came. Katja pushed herself over to what appeared to be a damage control board. Within moments a 3-D schematic of the ship floated before her, with various embedded lights and readings reporting the damage that had been inflicted to the vessel. Far too little damage, she noted with growing anger.

  That was about to change.

  She studied the board to determine their current location—the midships damage control station. Then she identified the location of the bridge. A central access route would get the troopers between decks.

  A stray, floating limb bumped her shoulder and she absently smacked it away as she committed the route to memory. She was about to turn away when she noticed that at least one of the missile batteries lay in the path they would follow.

  Another lay just four frames forward of the first. She studied a moment longer, and saw that the batteries were positioned in close pairs, spread equally around the ship. They were easily accessible, and stopping them could turn the battle outside.

  “Alpha Team—on me.”

  Assad and Jackson moved through the gore. Hernandez floated up moments later. All three of them were covered in blood, as the liters of free-floating liquid stuck to anything on contact. K
atja was sure she looked the same.

  She pointed at the 3-D schematic.

  “We’re here,” she said, showing them the route they would follow. “Alpha-Two and Four will take the missile batteries. Alpha-Three and I will take the bridge. Then we’ll assess your progress, and join you if needed. Once we’re done, we’ll return to the pod using one of these access routes. Clear?”

  Assad and Jackson looked at each other. Assad shrugged.

  “It’s payback time,” he said.

  “Go.”

  The two big troopers pushed away and vanished through the door. Immediately there was the sound of shots, and she looked up at Hernandez. His expression was one of resignation.

  “You actually think we’re going to make it back to the pod?”

  “Well, I’m going to,” she replied. “And it’s your job to keep me alive. Let’s move!”

  Katja led the way out. Assad and Jackson had left death in their wake, but she didn’t follow their route for long. She grabbed the rungs of a ladder and launched herself upward, bringing her rifle to bear as she moved between decks.

  As soon as her eyes crossed the threshold of the deck, she registered movement and fired a spread. The explosive rounds smashed into the bulkheads of the space she rose into, as well as a Centauri whose face she never saw. She moved aside as Hernandez joined her.

  A quick look around the corner revealed an empty passageway with an open door at the end, and Katja launched herself toward it, rifle up. Suddenly a piercing alarm sounded through her helmet pick-ups, followed by an urgent voice.

  “Intruder alert! Intruders in the engine room! Lock down security one-alpha!”

  Bravo Team had reached their objective.

  She was fast approaching the door when a Centauri appeared, but she fired before he even saw her. His body exploded backward into the space beyond. She grabbed another handrail to pick up speed. Panicked shouts echoed from the doorway. A wide-eyed face appeared for a moment, then vanished.

  More shouting.

  She was almost there.

  The flash of rifle fire blinded her, and she grunted as a dozen tiny fists punched against her torso. Hernandez pushed her aside, and fired repeatedly into the dark space. She glanced down at her armor—it was dented but intact. So she raised her rifle and followed him through the door.

  Multiple weapons fired from covered positions in the large, gloomy space, dotted with instrument stations. Hernandez was already far to her left, tumbling for cover behind an instrument panel even as he fired. Katja pushed to the right, shooting randomly in the direction of the flashes. Explosions ripped through the room. The shockwave of an explosion slammed her against the bulkhead with jarring force. She swung her rifle far to the right and pulled the trigger repeatedly, hoping that Hernandez was still to her left.

  “Alpha-Three, Alpha-One,” she shouted between bursts, “can you see me?”

  Amidst the thunder she barely heard his reply. “I’m at your nine o’clock! Get down!”

  Katja tried to duck, but in the zero-g only rolled into a ball. Bullets pinged off her helmet and left her ears ringing. She fired again. The rounds smashed into the deck beneath her feet as the shockwave knocked her upward into the deckhead. A bullet cracked off her faceplate. A tiny, hairline fracture split into her vision.

  With sudden clarity, she saw her attackers. Three armored figures hunched on the far side of what she realized must be the bridge. Hernandez fired at them from his covered position below and to the left, but his shots didn’t strike home.

  Katja gripped the lower barrel of her rifle and launched two grenades. They lobbed down on the enemy and exploded with the power of thirty rounds each. Body parts and strips of machinery flew in all directions.

  Then a deathly quiet descended. Katja pushed off from the deckhead and floated down. Hernandez emerged from cover and swept through the remains of the bridge. Twice the size of Normandy’s, it had no doubt been a monument to technological prowess.

  Now it was scrap.

  Katja shut the door behind her and locked it, ensuring calm for a few moments. From one of her combat pouches she retrieved a small tube of sealant and began applying it to the fracture in her faceplate.

  “Bravo-One, Alpha-One—bridge secure,” she reported. Chang responded after several moments, with little of his usual calm.

  “Bravo-One roger! Heavy fire in the engine room! Bravo-Two is down!”

  Squad Leader Lu Chen. That was a blow.

  “Alpha-One roger. Break. Alpha-Two, Alpha-One—status.” Even through the radio Katja could hear the violence in the background.

  “Two batteries taken. We’re under heavy fire at number three!”

  Two batteries, the bridge, and a whole lot of internal damage. Even if it wasn’t destroyed, this battle cruiser was out of the fight.

  “All units this is Alpha-One. Break away! Break away!”

  “Bravo-One roger!”

  “This is Alpha-Two—we’re pinned down. Over!”

  Katja motioned to Hernandez. “This is Alpha-One. We’re on the way!”

  Katja unlocked the bridge door and threw it open. Hernandez burst through, firing automatically. Unopposed, they pushed their way back down the corridor to the ladder. Hernandez went down head first to clear the deck below. Katja was right behind, feet first, to cover the rear.

  The lights went out. Emergency lights flickered on moments later. Hernandez hesitated at the foot of the ladder, unsure which direction to go. Katja pushed forward, motioning for him to follow. Ahead, she could see the charred, crumpled bulkhead of what had been one of the missile batteries. She pushed past, her helmet protecting her from the thick, black smoke that filled most of the passageway. Four frames further on, a similar scene awaited her. There was little smoke, however, and what remained was being pulled ominously toward the outer hull. Uncontained breach. The ship was losing air.

  She saw the ladder of the main access route leading down. She stopped and motioned Hernandez to do likewise.

  The thick material of the deck reduced the clarity of her quantum-flux view, but she could clearly see four shapes, crouched in combat firing positions, leaning into and out from doorways. The movement of the weapons told Katja that the rounds they were firing were heavy-caliber—very capable of piercing armored spacesuits. The shooters were coordinated to ensure that at least one of them was firing while the others ducked back under cover.

  She motioned for Hernandez to follow her back along the passageway from where they came. Peering down, she saw Assad and Jackson, both hunkered inside a damage-control alcove. She moved further back along the passageway, until the quantum-flux revealed the real source of danger to her troopers below. Around a corner and protected by covering fire, the Centauris were quickly assembling the major components of an anti-personnel robot. Katja wasn’t sure they had enough grenades to take it down.

  She pushed off the deck to place herself flat against the deckhead above. Hernandez did likewise, aiming his underslung grenade launcher at the deck.

  “Alpha-Two, Alpha-One—we’re taking out the threat astern of your position!”

  “Alpha-Two!”

  Katja and Hernandez fired. Their grenades struck the deck with twin explosions. Particles flew in all directions and a shockwave rippled away both fore and aft. Even before the debris cleared they fired again, this time into the group below.

  Hernandez grabbed Katja and threw her backward away from the hole. A heartbeat later rockets swirled out of the smoke and ripped through his armored body. The APR was functional and loose. Katja yanked herself away from the hole, hearing slugs thud into the deckhead behind her feet. She scrambled along the top of the corridor like a spider.

  “Alpha-Two—APR! APR! Take the shooters forward of you with grenades, and get the fuck out!”

  Explosions from the main access ladder ahead of her indicated the compliance with her orders. She scrambled along as fast as her arms could pull, ignoring the swiftly moving smoke that flowed
up the passageway. She gave a mighty yank, rolled free in the air and activated her quantum-flux.

  The four Centauri shooters were right below her. Two were down, two were firing. She launched another grenade at the deck, and watched with satisfaction as they were distracted by the ceiling collapsing around them. More grenades struck them from below, and as Katja watched her two troopers emerged through the quantum haze.

  “Alpha-Two, I’m right above you. Blast up through the hole in the deckhead and join me here!”

  She moved to the side and watched Assad and Jackson point upward to fire their grenades. Then both their bodies crumpled and jittered as APR rockets tore through them. She gasped in shock, and shut off her quantum-flux.

  “Alpha-One, Bravo-One—Bravo Team embarked!” Chang’s voice was distant in her ears. “Request ETA Alpha Team!”

  Smoke billowed up through the hole, and flowed past.

  “Alpha-One, Bravo-One—the landing zone is under fire. Request ETA!”

  Katja checked her ammo and her suit. She’d lost at least four troopers. That was enough.

  “Bravo-One, Alpha-One. Alpha Team is dead. I’m cut off. Break away!”

  “What’s your position? We’ll clear you a path!”

  “Four decks and two hundred meters. Don’t argue! Break away now!”

  There was a pause.

  “Bravo-One, roger!”

  Katja could hear shouting on the deck below her. There wasn’t much time. She looked at the flow of smoke into the missile battery and saw her escape route.

  One grenade blasted a new door for her, into the compartment. She surveyed the destroyed equipment and human remains, noting the red flashing air pressure gauges on every bulkhead. She pushed herself over to the inside of the ship’s hull, watching the flow of smoke carefully to find the breach. It took nearly a minute to locate the centimeters-long crack.

  Katja peeked out and didn’t see the bright surface of Laika, which was good news. If she was going to blast her way out of a spaceship, she did not want to be blasted in the direction of a planetary gravity well.

  More shouts caught her attention, and she heard voices moving past in the passageway outside. Bracing herself against a broken support strut, she aimed her rifle at the tiny breach.