The Lieutenant studied the screen, zooming out to take in the entire one hundred meter by fifty meter dome that covered the ship’s garden. The dome was crisscrossed with supports, between them the large panels of transparent metal that allowed those in the garden to look out into space. The floor of the garden was a series of pools and flower beds, trees and shrubs.
Liners like this had average travel times of just under a month from point to point. Most of the passengers had lived on planets, many of them heading for other planets to live on. The garden dome was one solution to keeping these people from going stir crazy. And now it was being used as a gathering place for the humans aboard the ship, and also as a location where they could be executed if need be.
“I think we need to go through the dome,” said the Warrant, pointing to the viewer. “Right here.”
The LT nodded as he looked at the spot, by one edge of the dome, directly over one of the larger ponds in the garden. Anything blasting through was likely to drop its debris into the pond, and the major suction would occur over that water as well, where none of the hostages were sitting.
“It’s going to be tight.”
“That it is, sir. But if you try to enter outside the garden area and force an entrance, you’re sure to have a blood bath down there.”
“So you think you can plug the hole in time?”
“You still might get some decompression casualties. But I would think less than a perimeter assault.”
“Then let’s do it. Let me talk to my Marines and spacers, and then we’ll go ahead and take this place.”
Janvier gave his orders while he got up from the copilot seat, letting the rating who filled that slot back to his station, and climbed into his suit. He took his place at the bay doors of the shuttle’s cargo compartment along with the rest of his party, and waited as the timer clicked down.
At zero the Warrant took her shot, sending a small, slow missile into the panel they had chosen. The missile struck and blasted a ten meter wide hole through the panel, sending fragments of transparent metal into the garden area. Most of those fragments fell into the pond, as planned, but not all. Some fragments flew into other regions of the garden, and several hundred people were hit. The vacuum of hyperspace immediately started removing the atmosphere from the dome area, pulling water from the pond with it, lifting any small objects off the ground and even pulling people along the deck toward the source of the air flow.
As soon as the missile was launched the cargo bay doors fell open and the Marines dropped, using their grabbers to fly to the hole and fight their way in against the hurricane of wind flowing out. They dropped in squads, eleven to a group. As soon as they were through the spacers followed in similar sized groups, until the entire force of Team Bravo was in.
Janvier took in the scene as soon as he was in, following first squad. He would have preferred to lead in the finest tradition of the Corps, but he was the leader of this team, and the team couldn’t afford to lose him so early in the mission. So he jumped with second squad, in the direct center of the Marine formation. Below was a scene of complete confusion, the mist of water and dirt from the garden rising into the air, sucked toward the opening. Small plants joined the swirl, and the closest people were being pulled from the ground. Many of the humans in the space below were already gasping for breath, partners were clasping each other to keep from flying off the ground, mothers were grabbing for children. Then he had no more time to pay attention to the people below. There was a battle to fight, and all of the team needed to concentrate on that to win and survive.
The Marines came under fire as soon as they entered the airspace of the dome, the Fenri watching over the passengers now having something more important to worry about. There were ten Fenri in the chamber, and they were able to get three hits on the fast moving Marines before the thirty who had not been struck started firing back at the newly revealed targets. By the time they hit the ground the Fenri had been mostly neutralized, though a couple were using their hostages as cover to continue the fight.
The shuttle launched a sticky net over the opening as soon as the last suit fell through. The small cell net immediately adhered to the sides of the dome while nanites welded it in place. The shuttle them sprayed a quick setting plastic over the net, sealing the holes and forming an airtight barrier. As soon as the vacuum was cut off people in the air fell to the ground, some from high enough to sustain significant injuries. Air began to stream into the dome from the overworked environmental systems, enough to keep all of the civilians alive who still could breath.
Particle beams flew, cutting down the last Fenri, several civilians joining them in death when blasted by the hostage holders. One of the Fenri had been trying to trigger something, until his suit arm had been blown from his body. Janvier walked over to that Fenri, ignoring for a moment the cries of pain and cheers of deliverance around him. He picked up the object, which had several buttons and a light glowing orange on the face. Would have been smarter to have used a dead man’s switch, thought the Marine Officer, looking up and spotting one of the explosive devices the Fenri had placed on the surface of the dome. Lucky for us they didn’t, or all of these people would be dead.
“We’ve taken the garden,” reported Janvier over the com moments later. He was looking at the list of casualties coming in over his implant from the people in his team. He had lost four of his team, three Marines and a spacer, along with one more spacer injured. Eleven Fenri had been killed, along with one hundred and twelve human and alien passengers and crewmen. But they had rescued over two thousand, three hundred civilians. And several of the medics who had come with them were already placing portable cryo bags on the ground so they could freeze and store those who might be recoverable. Those who had died in falls were among those, while many of the victims of particle beams were not. A missing head and brain were sign enough that they were beyond recovery.
“I’m the First Officer of the ship,” said a woman in a shipboard uniform, limping up to him. “Thank God you came for us.”
“Excuse me, ma’am. But we need to get moving.”
“You will leave some people behind to protect us, won’t you.”
“I’ll leave a few people behind to help keep you safe, but I don’t have the people to provide complete security.”
“Unacceptable, Lieutenant. I demand that you provide us with security. Those little furry bastards could come back here.”
“How many came aboard?”
“I don’t know,” answered the First Officer. “Forty? Fifty?”
“And we’ve already killed twenty or so, between our two assault forces. I don’t think they’re going to be worrying about retaking this chamber. Now, we need to go.” So they don’t blow this damned ship up around us while we’re chatting.
“Team Bravo One, move out,” called the LT over the com as soon as he got the status report on Alpha. Those people started through the hatch that led to a corridor leading toward engineering. “Bravo Two, come with me.” Their target was the bridge, and hopefully control of the ship. Left behind were four spacers, one of them wounded, another a medic who would continue to help the passengers.
* * *
“Their cruiser has moved away, my Lord,” said the Fenri Marine, saluting the naval officer who had been left behind to command the party.
The Officer looked at the Marine, ambivalent feelings running through him. His mission had been to destroy whichever human ship had been tasked with the rescue. The liner would be blown up through a reactor breach, gigatons of explosive force that would take out any ship that happened to be laid close to her. He had hesitated, and now the ship was out of range.
“We still have all the humans and their alien dogs aboard,” said the Marine, who seemed to be disappointed that his death wouldn’t take out a warship, but still enthusiastic enough to be able to kill a lot of humans.
“Get the Marines in the engineering section on the com,” he ordered the naval tech who was ma
nning the bridge controls. He only had one choice now. To blow up the ship before the humans could take it away from him.
“I am not able to get through, my Lord,” reported the tech. He kept working controls on the com board, with no success.
“Engineering,” called out the Fenri Commander on his suit com. “Engineering. Come in.” All that came back was static, and his suit systems showed no carrier wave for any of the Fenri not on the bridge.
“They are jamming us,” he called out. Looking at the other Fenri standing on the bridge. He pointed out four of them. “You, you, you and you. Come with me. We will go to engineering and set off the reactors. The rest of you,” he said to the remaining seven Fenri, “will hold this control center at all costs. Is this understood?”
All acknowledged the command with head motions.
“We will not allow the humans to win,” he said, before leading his team off the bridge.
* * *
“That should cut off all their shipboard com, sir,” said Nagawa, picking up his gauntlets from the floor. The input station was lit up in the cubby to his front, the keyboard he had used to hack into the ship’s system unfolded from the unit.
“You’re sure they won’t be able to reestablish com?” asked Lieutenant Mishara, doubt in his expression.
“This isn’t a warship, sir. It doesn’t have the redundant systems needed to survive combat. If they could hack the system like I just did, they might be able to get it back up and going. But I doubt a bunch of aliens with no experience in our civilian ship systems will be able to get it back up.”
“Good enough, PO,” said the Officer, patting Winston on his armored back. “I knew there was a reason we brought enough life support along to keep you going.”
Nagawa couldn’t help but smile. Such good natured joking was common among the enlisted, but rare to hear out of an officer. That Mishara was speaking to him in such a manner showed that the officer thought him a valuable member of the team.
“You sure that the lower path is the one we need to take?” asked Mishara, consulting the schematic on his HUD, the same which appeared on Nagawa’s faceplate. “This one here looks like the better choice.”
“It’s your decision to make, sir. But I used to roam the engineering spaces of a ship just like this, and believe me, this way will bring us into engineering with the least chance of discovery. The Fenri will most likely be congregated in this room here, the central control. And if they have sentries placed, which I assume they will have, they’re most likely going to be at these main entrance points.”
“Why in the hell do you have so many surreptitious entrances into such an important area of the ship?”
“Because we build these vessels for convenience of operation, sir. Not for security.”
Mishara stood silent for a few moments, obviously thinking. “OK. You’ve led us correctly so far, so we’ll go in the way you think best.”
The Officer sent the information to the rest of the team, letting them know which way they would be going, and the assignments of each member when they entered engineering.
“Ok. Let’s move,” said Mishara. “The sooner we get engineering under control, the sooner we don’t have to worry about these bastards blowing us to hell and gone.”
* * *
The Fenri officer didn’t like this human ship. It’s spaces were too big, from the oversized first class staterooms to the enormous dining halls. He understood that the humans, being larger creatures than Fenri, required more room for their health and wellbeing. What he didn’t understand was why they needed so much more room.
The humans were only a third again taller than the average Fenri, so why did they need ceilings twice their height. Four times their height or more in some of the common areas.
“Humans approach,” said one of his Marines in a whisper, reading the sign language from another further up the passage. “Warriors. A score of them.”
The Officer did not want to get into a fire fight with four times the number he commanded. Not now. The priority was to get to engineering so he could give the command to blow the ship. The Fenri there had been instructed to detonate the reactors if the humans looked to have a chance of taking engineering, but he didn’t want to take the chance that the damned unpredictable humans might be able to pull something.
He looked at the schematic he had downloaded from the ship’s computer while he still had the human captain under his control, before he executed that being when he stopped cooperating. That might work, he thought, finding an environmental system duct that ran all the way to engineering. It was too small for suited humans, or for one of the larger Fenri battle suits. Fortunately, he had not taken the one so equipped from the bridge, concerned that they might have to use stealth to get where they were going.
“Through here,” he told his warriors, motioning to a hatch. They disappeared through, just before the human party heading for the bridge passed by on the corridor where they had just been.
Chapter Ten
If you prick us do we not bleed? If you tickle us do we not laugh? If you poison us do we not die? And if you wrong us shall we not revenge? William Shakespeare
“Collins has passed out of sensor range, sir,” said the Sensor Chief, sitting in her compartment deep in the bowels of the ship, next to the isolated vacuum chamber of the graviton resonator. The Chief was a highly trained specialist, with the ear and instincts to listen to the song of the gravitons flowing through space that were picked up by the sensitive chamber. While assisted by computers, her ear and brain were the best judge of what was coming in. “She dropped her first buoy about five minutes prior.”
“Very well,” replied Pasce, looking at the plot that no longer showed the destroyer, or the Fenri team she was following. It did show the buoy, however, a small object that could sit in hyper VII for a week before running out of power and falling out. It would send out a pulse of gravitons once every minute, telling everything within range where it was. The destroyer would drop another right at the extreme detection range of that one, and on and on, leaving a trail of breadcrumbs for the cruiser to follow. Once the rescue was done, Scranton would jump back into VII and catch up.
And the Fenri have to have figured out that we would leave a trail like this, he thought. Which means they have to have something else going on, some way to get the remaining bloodhound off their trail.
“Any further word from the boarding teams?” he asked his Com Tech, knowing that the rating would have told him already if so, but anxiety making him ask nonetheless.
“No, sir. They should be reporting in about a minute and a half.”
And it’s really not going to do anyone any good my breathing down their necks for progress reports, he thought. They’ll report when they are supposed to, or if something comes up worthy of reporting.
He sat in his chair, his ship safe from anything that might happen to the liner. But people under his command were not safe, and that was enough to make him fret.
* * *
“I’m not sure the officer in charge on the spot made the right decision, your Majesty,” said McCullom, leaning on the table and looking her Monarch in the eye. “But he is the officer in charge on the spot, and precedent gives him the right to make this decision.”
Sean nodded as he thought that over. Precedent was that the senior officer on the pointy end of an operation had final authority. The precedent came from the days when ships boosted off on patrols that might put them out of communications link with command for weeks at a time. Now, with ways around the communication gap, in some cases, there was a temptation to micromanage, something the Emperor had been prone to in the past, and something he was determined to not let his high command engage in to excess. The officer on the spot normally had the best information about the situation, as well as the most personal stake in the matter. If they made a bad decision, then it was up to command to make a judgment regarding that decision. If they made a bad decision based on bad intellig
ence, but the only information they had, they were most likely to be forgiven.
“So we back up his call at this moment,” said the Emperor, looking around the table. “Based on what he knew. We still have the battle cruiser in sight, and the Captain’s actions may save thousands of civilians who would otherwise be dead.”
Sean studied the tactical plot for a moment, the information coming across based on what the Klassekian aboard the destroyer was transmitting. “We need more communications assets out there.”
“That would be nice, your Majesty,” agreed McCullom. “Now, we just need more of them to distribute. With gates going to the Nation of New Earth front, and Klassekians going to other projects, we are even more strapped than we would have been.”
“We have to keep that front going, Admiral,” said Sean in an angry tone. “And the Klassekians are a vital component of our inertialess fighter program.” Though maybe we should call them something else, since they do indeed still possess inertia, thought the Emperor. Just in a different manner than we’re used to. FTL fighters, maybe, since they do go past the speed of light in some weird manner.
“Just telling you the facts, your Majesty. We don’t have enough to go around, and more projects soaking up the resources just makes the problem worse from the perspective of the Fleet.”
“Understood, Sondra,” said Sean, his tone softening. The Fleet was her consideration, really her only one. And she was a battleship spacer. No matter how effective the new fighters proved to be, she would still be a firm ally to the people who supported the primacy of those vessels.
“Something else. I noticed that the assault team was sent across through the linked hyperfields of the cruiser and liner. That seems like a good way to lose a lot of spacers and Marines, if you ask me.” And if you don’t ask me, I will tell you anyway, thought Sean with a smile on his face. And you will listen.
Exodus: Empires at War: Book 10: Search & Destroy Page 15