by Jake Elwood
A grenade exploded, and he turned, half expecting to see carnage. But someone in the boarding party must have thrown the grenade, because the colonists at the L intersection whooped and poured around the corner.
It looked chaotic at first glance, but there was order in the chaos. Squads stayed together, spacers who'd served on the same armed freighters. The airlock hatch opened and more spacers came in, making a defensive half-circle around the injured woman.
“Channel 7 C,” said a woman's voice. Half a dozen spacers near the almost-closed emergency hatch tapped at controls on the sleeves of their vac suits or touched the sides of their helmets, changing the frequency of their suit radios. A heavyset woman with a pistol in each hand said, “Let's go raise some hell.” She closed her faceplate and turned sideways to slide through the opening in the hatch. The rest of her squad followed, and some of the newly arriving spacers moved to the opening to keep watch.
Tom took a single step in that direction. He desperately wanted to follow, to be at the front of the fighting. But he would be no help at all, not tagging along with a close-knit team that had been working together for years. They had experience boarding ships. They knew what they were doing. If he went with them, he would be an unwelcome distraction.
Sighing, he holstered his pistol. His job was to coordinate. That meant staying here, briefing troops as they came out of the airlock, and waiting for information to trickle in.
The airlock hatch slid open and a fresh crowd of spacers came into the corridor. A man in a black vac suits with skulls painted on his shoulders stepped up to Tom and retracted his faceplate. A bristling gray beard pretty much filled the bottom half of his helmet, fat hairs poking up to touch his nose. “Captain Ramirez reporting.”
Tom gestured toward the emergency hatch. “Take your people through there. There's one squad ahead of you, so watch your targets. They’re using Channel 7 C. I'm on 5 A. Try to keep me updated.”
Ramirez nodded. “Any further instructions?”
With only a general idea of the battleship's layout, and no idea at all where resistance was to be found, there wasn't much Tom could say. “Raise hell.”
The nest of whiskers in the helmet moved as Ramirez grinned. He gave Tom a jaunty salute and led his team toward the emergency hatch.
Chapter 2
Alice Rose sat down on a staircase and thought about all the ways she might die in the next few minutes.
A blast rifle rested across her knees. The staircase led down to the battleship's cafeteria, where almost a hundred Dawn Alliance prisoners were gathered. Alice's job was to shoot anyone who tried to come up the stairs.
She wasn't sure how many guards in total were assigned to the cafeteria, but she was sure it was less than a dozen. They were outnumbered at least eight to one. The prisoners had been stripped of vac suits and disarmed, but the cafeteria was large, and it had to contain something that could be used as a weapon. She imagined a mob charging her stairwell, killing her in passing, taking her blast rifle, and rejoining the fight.
From her seat on the stairs only a handful of prisoners were in sight. They sat – or rather slumped – at a table, heads down. They looked dispirited, dejected.
Defeated.
It was, she realized, exactly as Tom had said in the mission briefing back on New Panama. The battleship was defeated when the raider fleet crippled its engines. It didn't matter that the defenders had the boarding party outnumbered. It didn't matter that they could still overwhelm the invaders and escape. In their minds and their hearts they had already lost.
The rustle of footsteps below her chased such optimistic thoughts from her mind. She tucked her feet under her, ready for quick movement, and lifted the rifle.
The figure that came into sight, however, was a blocky man in a black vac suit with vivid green stripes painted across his chest and down his arms and legs. He wore his helmet with the faceplate up. “You set, Alice?”
“Why me, Rory?” She laid the rifle across her thighs. “I should be helping with the fighting. I've got combat experience.”
“That's why you're here.” The look he gave her made her suddenly chilly. “First off, the others haven't been blooded. They need the experience.”
Alice opened her mouth to argue.
“But the main reason is, I need someone here who's got what it takes to pull the trigger.”
Alice said, “What?”
“We need this ship to liberate Novograd,” he said. “Your home. This mission matters to you.” He made a sweeping gesture with his arm, taking in the rest of the ship. “Most people can pull the trigger when their blood is up. During combat, with someone who's shooting back. But unarmed prisoners? Even when you know they'll kill you if they can reach you, pulling that trigger is not an easy thing.”
Alice stared at him, flabbergasted. At last she said, “What makes you think I can do it?”
“You've been around,” he said. “And you understand the stakes. Maybe you couldn't kill someone to save your own life. Not when they’re unarmed. Not when you're not sure if you really have to. But you would do it for Novograd. You would do it to make sure these prisoners don't get past you and help retake the ship. This mission is the only chance Novograd has. You would lift that gun and kill people – armed or not – to make sure this mission succeeds.”
For several uncomfortable heartbeats Alice just stared at him. “I don't want to shoot anyone.”
“And I don't want you to,” Rory said patiently. “That's why you're on guard duty.” When he saw she didn't understand he said, “I can tell just by looking at you that you can kill when you have to. If I was a desperate prisoner I wouldn't test you. I'd know it wouldn't work. If I put one of the rookies on the stairs, they'll be scared. They’ll looked scared. And a prisoner might just think, hey, this could work. This is worth a shot.”
He shook his head, the cold light in his eyes turning to weariness. “If I put someone else here, they might end up actually having to shoot someone. If I put you here, nothing will happen. You could kill. And that's why you won't have to.”
He climbed the stairs, circled around her, and walked away, the echo of his footsteps slowly fading. Alice listened to him go. She was by no means convinced by his logic. She might still have to kill.
She might still have to die.
“Well, if this isn't a shit deal, I don't know what is.”
“It's a deadlock, boss.”
Tom looked up from the smart table in his temporary office, a meeting room in the back of the battleship's machine room. The tabletop displayed a deck plan of the ship. He gestured at the table. “Show me.”
Nigel Wilson, captain of the Drifting Pollen until his ship was captured and confiscated by the Dawn Alliance, cross to Tom’s side and leaned over the table. He tapped a section along the port side of the ship. “We've got this bit now.”
Tom fiddled with the display controls until that section of the ship changed from red to green. The green sections, those controlled by the boarding party, included the engineering section and everything aft of the middle of the ship. Colonist forces also held the nose of the ship. They'd taken the bridge, the surgery, most of the crew quarters, and a long section along the starboard side. Now, apparently, they held most of the port side as well. A fat block in the center of the battleship still glowed red, though.
“I'm not sure how many people are in the bunk rooms.” Wilson worked the table controls, going from deck to deck. “We've got people in the corridors keeping them bottled up. If anyone needs to use the bathrooms, they stick a hand out and wait for permission. They can't talk to each other, so they can't organize a mass breakout. But we haven't gone room to room yet, so we haven't checked for weapons, and we don't know how many people we've got bottled up.”
“That's good enough for now,” Tom said. “Keeping them contained is enough, until we deal with this.” He tapped the red block that marked active resistance.
“The good news is, they can't get out,
” Wilson said. “But they’re dug right in. Emergency doors, barricades in the corridors, you name it. We can't get at them.” He gave Tom a bleak look. “Digging them out is going to be a hell of a job.”
Tom stared at the deck plan, letting his eyes drift out of focus. This ship was not the same as the Dauntless, the decommissioned battleship he'd trained on as a student officer. Still, function to a large degree dictated form. He knew that from his civilian days, when he'd studied architecture. Although there were countless differences between the two ships, he'd noticed some striking similarities.
He circled the table, gesturing for Wilson to follow. “Did I ever tell you how I got kicked out of Battleship School?”
Wilson's eyebrows rose.
Tom smiled, remembering. The real trigger had been an unfortunate incident when he'd lost his temper and dangled an obnoxious training officer over a railing. He wouldn't tell Wilson that story. Long before that day, though, it had been painfully clear that Tom didn't belong on battleships.
“They wanted us to learn our way around,” he said. “So they kept giving as drills in different parts of the ship. It seemed like I spent all day just running from one station to another. So I started taking shortcuts.” He grinned, remembering the outrage that had greeted his unconventional routing. “For instance, it took almost ten minutes to get from the bridge to the secondary targeting station. I had to go forward to the nearest ladder, down two decks, aft and to starboard, down another deck, and then forward again. But just aft of the bridge there was a cargo elevator. I used to pop open a maintenance hatch, scramble down four decks, and come out another maintenance hatch no more than ten meters from Targeting.”
Wilson said, “There's a freight elevator, but it's aft.” He gestured with his thumb. “We already control it on every deck.”
At the entrance to the machine room a sentry stood with a laser rifle in his hands. Tom walked up beside him. “Kenny. I'm going for a walk. That means you're in charge here.”
Kenny's eyes got big.
“Don't try to give any orders,” Tom said. “Just take messages. You can tell people I'll be back soon, but I don't know exactly when.” Tom left the machine room, Wilson at his elbow. “The elevator won’t help,” he said. “But did you know that modern battleships are absolutely lousy with ammo delivery shafts?”
Gun G-17 was a formidable thing, with twin barrels as big around as a man's waist. The actual bore of the weapon was much smaller, not much bigger than a gloved fist, but the barrel was huge to allow it to soak up damage. Gun turrets were almost the only vulnerable target on a battleship, and the guns were engineered accordingly.
Under Tom’s direction a couple of spacers unbolted the gunner’s seat and hauled it out of the cramped compartment inside the turret. They had to remove some floor plating before the dark mouth of a tunnel was exposed.
Tom turned to a crowd of watching spacers, Wilson’s squad mixed with people from the Rime Frost. “It'll be a tight fit,” he said. “But it's navigable. They're designed that way, because every once in a while you have to send an engineer inside.” That was true on United Worlds ships, at least. On a Dawn Alliance vessel, who knew? But he wouldn't fill the minds of the assault team with doubts.
“We can't really coordinate the attacks,” Tom went on. Three teams would go in through three different ammunition tunnels. “There’s no way to move quietly, so they'll know you're coming. As soon as you find a hatch, get out and start shooting.” He turned to Wilson. “Your job will be to keep them busy at the barricades while we make the assault.”
Wilson gave him a look that spoke volumes. “I think what you mean, Commodore,” – he emphasized the title – “is that your job will be to keep pressure on the barricades while I lead the assault.”
Tom sighed. “Look, I know more about battleship layout-”
His voice trailed off as Wilson's squad sealed their helmets and began clambering head-first into the tunnel. It was a tight fit; those with rifles quickly abandoned them and took handguns instead.
“You know I'm right, boss,” Wilson said, not without sympathy. He turned away. “Slow down! I'm supposed to go first.”
His squad paid no more attention to him than he'd paid to Tom.
A hand closed on Tom's forearm, tugging gently. “Come on, Commodore,” said a woman with Death To The DA stenciled across the front of her helmet. “The closest barricade is this way.”
She led him to a place where the corridor made a T-intersection. They stood at the base of the T, peeking around the corner. About twenty meters away, an emergency pressure hatch stood almost shut. The doors looked depressingly solid, and they showed a gap no more than a hand span wide. As Tom watched, the muzzle of a blast rifle appeared in the gap. He pulled his head back an instant before the shot splattered against the wall behind him. The smell of burnt paint filled the air, and he wrinkled his nose.
“We can't get close.” The woman with the stenciled helmet was named O'Doul, and she had the patient, weary demeanour of a seasoned veteran. “They're nicely bottled up, but I don't see a way to put pressure on them without getting a lot of people killed.”
Tom glanced up and down the corridor. A dozen spacers loitered, more than enough people to handle things if the trapped soldiers decided to try a sortie. “Come with me,” he said to O'Doul. “I have an idea.”
When he was using the machine shop for an improvised command center, he hadn't given the stamper a moment's thought. He remembered it now, though, a thick, blocky machine nearly as tall as he was. It was almost a perfect cube, sculpted from steel and titanium, built sturdily enough to bend sheets of metal as thick as his finger.
Which meant it had to be sturdy enough to stop gunfire.
He had a vague idea of attaching repulsors to the thing so he could move it. It turned out the machine had repulsor units built into its base, one on either side. Tom and O'Doul activated the repulsors and watched as the machine rose to hover just above the floor.
“Let's get it moving,” Tom said. He circled around until the stamper was between him and the door, then braced a shoulder against the machine and heaved.
O'Doul grinned as she saw where this was going. She took a position on the other corner of the machine and started pushing.
There was an awkward moment when they reached the T-intersection. The stamper filled almost the entire corridor, and though the repulsors took away the weight, the mass of the machine gave it plenty of momentum. It wasn’t moving quickly, but it proved almost impossible to stop.
One young woman was almost driven past the corner and into range of the trapped soldiers. She planted both hands on the stamper and heaved, grunting with effort, while Tom and O'Doul scrabbled for handholds on the other side, pulling frantically to slow the machine down.
When the stamper was almost stationary the young woman pressed himself flat against the wall, sucking in her stomach and muttering a curse as a metal bracket on the side pressed against her abdomen.
“This way,” said Tom, leading O'Doul to the side of the machine farthest from the enemy. The stamper floated past the corner with Tom and O’Doul behind it.
The trapped soldiers opened fire, blast shots slamming into the machine and making Tom flinch and duck. The stamper, though, was as sturdy as he’d hoped. When the stamper was past the corner he and O’Doul pushed, changing the direction of the drifting machine, driving it toward the emergency doors. A barrage of shots smacked into the stamper, making the metal vibrate under Tom's palms through the gloves of his suit. He hunched down, making sure his head was below the top of the machine.
The stamper thumped into the side wall of the corridor, leaving a long scrape as it used up the last of its sideways momentum. It moved down the corridor at the pace of a crawling baby, and Tom stopped pushing. The enemy soldiers, apparently realizing the pointlessness of their barrage, ceased firing. Silence fell, the air heavy with the smell of burned ozone.
“So,” said O'Doul. She shuffled al
ong beside Tom, hunched over to keep her head below the top of the stamper. “What exactly do we do when we reach the doors?”
Tom shrugged. “Improvise?”
“Terrific.” She drew a pistol. Tom drew his own pistol and peeked around his side of the drifting machine. Some soldier must have lined up a shot, waiting for Tom to stick his head out. The shot came immediately, the energy blast hitting the side of his helmet with an impact like a baseball bat. He still had his faceplate open – a stupid oversight – and heat seared across his eyes and the bridge of his nose. He swore and dropped to his knees.
“Commodore!” O'Doul's hand gripped his shoulder. He kept his eyes squeezed shut while he waited for the ringing in his ears to subside.
“Commodore, open your eyes. Can you see?”
The question terrified him, and he kept his eyes shut for an extra moment, afraid to find out. Then he forced them open.
A white glow filled his vision. He blinked, shook his head, then squeezed his left eye shut and opened his right eye. A bit of glow persisted in the center of his vision, but he could see his own knee. He lifted his head and looked into O'Doul's worried face. “I can see.”
“How's the other eye?”
“It stings, so I'm leaving it shut.” He blinked and felt tears on his cheek. “O'Doul?”
“Yeah?”
“Close your faceplate.”
Her faceplate clicked shut, her lips moved, and her faceplate opened again. “I'm on channel 9 Delta.”
Tom nodded, then rose and shuffled forward, catching up to the stamper. He tapped at the sleeve of his vac suit, turning on his suit radio and changing the frequency. “You copy?”
“Loud and clear.”
Her voice only sounded in one ear. Tom touched the side of his helmet and grimaced. A chunk of helmet was missing. He was lucky he still had a face.