Incursion: Merkiaari Wars Book 5

by Mark E. Cooper

  “We have to go back to the station,” Mark said.

  Zelda groaned. “Not this again.”

  “No please, you have to listen to me,” Mark pleaded. “Okay. You were right before. I admit I lost my head. You were right, but we have to go back now it’s safe. It’s the only way.”

  Zelda dismissed him out of hand, and turned back to the search, but Tei’Shima was intrigued. Mark was serene in the Harmonies now. His ritual had worked; he’d found his balance.

  “Yo! Found ’em,” Shortcut said.

  Tei’Shima and Zelda crowded in next to Kazim. He was really fast when he wanted to be. He’d grabbed the best vantage to see the scanner’s output. It was just a square monitor displaying symbols and vectors. It wasn’t very impressive for his audience. Not military grade, its icons were all a light-green on a darker background.

  There was a lot of clutter marked as unknowns all around the pod. Most of the closest icons would be frozen corpses and debris from the station and shipyard. Shortcut did something, and the display changed to show a different sector of local space.

  A small cluster of icons labelled with Alliance IFF codes were exchanging fire with the Merkiaari. Tei’Shima assumed the unknowns were Merki. Who else? There were so many ships fighting, the icons blurred into an amorphous mass.

  “Fuuuuck meeee...” Zelda whispered.

  “Maybe later,” Shortcut muttered. “We’re being wiped out.”

  “Those poor bastards. They should’ve run,” Zelda said.

  “Heroes don’t run,” Varya said sadly.

  “Dead heroes don’t win wars either. They just die,” Zelda rebutted. “If they’d bugged out they could’ve gone for help, or regrouped. Something!”

  Tei’Shima knew they wouldn’t have run even knowing they’d die. The ships hosted crews of flesh and blood warriors, not logic-based emotionless computers. Honour wouldn’t have let them run. With a feeling of pride mixed with sadness, she watched the battle unfold. In place of those anonymous icons, she imagined ships burning in the deep, and warriors battling for their lives and for those they’d left behind on Pandora. One by one, the defending icons winked out, and with them the lives of thousands of heroes. They were with the Harmonies now.

  She took a deep breath and leaned forward to centre the scan. “May their ancestors comfort them.” She touched the icon, and the familiar scatter of debris surrounding the pod reappeared. “Keep looking.”

  Shortcut nodded.

  “We have to go back to the station,” Mark said urgently. “They’ll see us if we don’t go now!”

  “Convince me,” Tei’Shima said.

  “You can’t be serious?” Zelda said.

  “Why can’t I? Is the station still under attack?”

  Zelda looked to Shortcut, and she shook her head. “No, but it’s scrap.”

  “Mark?” Tei’Shima said.

  “I’ve worked here at Nstar for years. I know all there is to know about our Pandoran operations.”

  “Get to the point,” Zelda said already losing patience.”

  “The point is you’re wasting time looking for what isn’t out here. We have three choices, but realistically there’s only one.”

  “What are they?” Tei’Shima said. “Let us decide what’s realistic.”

  “The mining facilities in the asteroid belt have everything we’d need to survive for months, but it would take us days to get there. The Merkiaari would see us.”

  “What else?”

  “Both of these mean returning to the station. There are shuttles. If they didn’t leave before the attack, and if they’re operational, and if the bay doors can be opened, we might use one to reach the surface before the Merkiaari arrive.”

  Tei’Shima’s tail gestured to Varya, he kept his replies silent similarly. Was she mad to like the possibility? Yes, he insisted, but the madness was catching. He also liked it.

  “And the last option?”

  “This is our best chance. The escape pods. There are thousands of people on the station... I mean there were. We know a lot of them didn’t escape. Some of the escape pods must still be there.”

  Zelda snorted.

  “He might be right,” Tei’Shima said.

  “The station’s a wreck. Look at the state of it. It’ll burn up in a few hours. You really think anything is still working?”

  “The escape pods use internal power and explosive bolts to detach,” Mark said, drawing upon his expertise. “You really didn’t listen to my safety lecture, did you?”

  Zelda shrugged.

  “What if I were dead? How would you know what to do?”

  “Keep running that mouth, and we’ll find out.”

  Shortcut snickered.

  Tei’Shima didn’t need to think hard upon it. They’d searched for a ship for hours, and found nothing. There really was only a single realistic destination left. The station. But the Merkiaari were closing on Pandora now. If they decided to tidy up the space around the planet, they might fire on the wreckage to speed up the station’s re-entry. They might see the pod heading to the station. They might see an escape pod or shuttle launch from it. A lot of uncertainties.

  Tei’Shima glanced at Bruiser and Haze. They just shrugged, having no better idea than she what to do. She already knew Zelda’s opinion, and Varya would do whatever his Tei decided. She chewed her whiskers in indecision, but oddly, it was the sight of Kazim’s confident face and his thrice-cursed camera that clinched it for her. He wasn’t going to die. She might. The others too, but not him. He had the luck of the Harmonies on his side. Truly, he should have died a hundred times before this, but he always made it through.

  “We need to head for the station,” Tei’Shima announced. “Right or wrong, the Merki are coming. We can’t stay here any more.” She joined Shortcut at the controls. “Can you fly badly?”

  Shortcut frowned.

  Zelda laughed. “Crashing is what she does best! Of course she can.”

  “Screw you,” Shortcut said.

  “Maybe later.”

  “Not crashing. There must be no crashing,” Tei’Shima said seriously. “But we need to blend with the debris until we reach the station.”

  “I can do that. It might make us puke, but tumbling is easy.”

  “Then get us going, and don’t hit anything. Helmets back on everyone, just in case she does.”

  “I won’t,” Shortcut said. She sounded supremely confident, but when she pulled her helmet on and sealed it, everyone scrambled to copy her.

  Tei’Shima chose to ride it out on all fours, as did Varya and Kazim. Zelda sat on the floor. Bruiser and Haze followed her lead and braced themselves against the walls. The pod began to move, rolling and yawing in slow spirals. Shortcut kept the motion gentle and the acceleration minimal.

  “They’re going to see us,” Mark muttered over the open comm. “We left it too long.”

  “If they do?” Tei’Shima said.

  “What?”

  “What will you do if they do see us?”

  “What can I do? Nothing!”

  “Exactly. None of us can. Don’t give in to your fears. Calm your thoughts and try to find your balance. We’ll need you when we reach the station.”

  Tei’Shima watched the stars slipping by outside as the pod rotated, and thought about her father. Had he been alone at the end, or was he with friends like those she had here? Did they comfort each other? She hoped so. What were his final thoughts? She might get to ask him very soon.

  “They’ve seen us!” Shortcut yelled. “They’re closing!”

  Tei’Shima watched the stars drifting by as the pod tumbled, and tried to use them to slow her thoughts. She wanted to be in Harmony when she saw Tahar again. Her meditation sleep was out of the question, but the Harmonies did draw closer. She wanted—

  The pod lurched violently.

  * * *

  38 ~ Stepping Up

  Debris Field, Decaying Orbit, Pandora

  The atmosphere b
lasted out of the pod almost instantly. It was a small vehicle. The volume of air escaping wasn’t enough to drag anyone into space with it, thank the Harmonies. The damage caused the pod to lose its transparency on one side. A slash of darkness in the hull revealed stars wheeling by. It took Tei’Shima a moment to realise what had happened. The pod was still in one piece and so was she. The Merkiaari couldn’t have attacked. There would be nothing left but vapour if they had.

  “I said no crashing!” Tei’Shima shouted to silence everyone’s hysterics. The comms went quiet. “No crashing. None. What did you do?”

  “I crashed,” Shortcut muttered. “But it worked. The Merki think we’re space junk.”

  “That’s because we are thanks to you!” Mark shouted.

  “Hey!” Zelda snarled back. “She just saved our lives. One more crack out of you, and I’ll feed you to the Merkiaari!”

  “Quiet,” Tei’Shima said. She checked and located Kazim still fiddling with his camera as if nothing had happened. “So you crashed on purpose. Was the hole in the wall on purpose too?”

  “No,” Shortcut muttered sulkily. “I had to do something. The Merki would have fired on us.”

  Tei’Shima joined Shortcut and Zelda up front, trying not to get dizzy. She found four feet better for that. Standing tall while the pod rotated seemed worse for some reason. The station still lay ahead. That was something. The escaping atmosphere hadn’t pushed them too far off course.

  “What did we hit?”

  Shortcut pointed to the scanner. “Hull fragment.”

  Tei’Shima watched the offending item following them, its course slowly diverging from theirs. It shouldn’t hit them again. She searched the scanner for the Merki, and found them easily. Hundreds of huge ships were loitering nearby, while others moved into orbit. She wasn’t fleet. She didn’t know the tell-tale differences between one ship type and another, but it didn’t take a genius to guess what was happening. They were getting ready to cleanse the planet. Those were troopships.

  “We’re kinda screwed, huh?” Zelda said gloomily. “I mean they’ll see any kind of launch we make now.”

  “If we even get that far,” Shortcut agreed.

  “Don’t borrow trouble,” Tei’Shima warned them. “One thing at a time. Can we still dock?”

  Shortcut did something, and various readouts changed. “If we reach it and the pod bay is intact, yes.”

  “Then nothing has changed. We get back on the station.”

  “But what then?”

  “It depends on what we find.”

  They all knew what it meant that the Merkiaari were in orbit. There wasn’t any point in talking about it. They would get on the station or they wouldn’t. They would find a safe way off again, or they wouldn’t.

  Shortcut waited until the station hid them from observation before taking control of the pod again. She trimmed their course and slowed their approach. The pod bay doors were shut. They didn’t look damaged unlike the rest of the station.

  “Here goes nothing,” Shortcut said, and sent the command. “Well I’ll be damned!”

  “Alright!” Zelda crowed as the doors opened. She pumped a fist in the air.

  That was another alien foible Tei’Shima hadn’t witnessed before. The longer she associated with Humans, the stranger she found them to be. So emotional and excitable. So... utterly fascinating.

  The bay doors cranked open and the pod edged inside. The doors closed automatically on their heels, shielding them from Merkiaari attention. Tei’Shima peered through the cockpit window, trying to make out anything familiar. Emergency lighting illuminated the bay dully. Some of the pods had broken free of their docking clamps and were in free-fall. The station’s gravity was offline.

  “I’ll just park us here,” Shortcut muttered. “There’s no point trying to use a cradle I guess.”

  “None,” Tei’Shima agreed, and turned to Mark. “Our lives are in your hands.”

  “Great, we’re doomed,” Zelda muttered.

  Bruiser laughed quietly to himself, until Haze whacked his shoulder to shut him down. Tei’Shima had to admit he had sounded a little odd just then. Stressed. Not hysterical exactly, but not quite right either. Haze’s reminder startled him, and he quit laughing.

  Mark joined Shortcut up front, and reached for one of the controls. The pod’s external lighting speared the darkness, and he played the beam over everything using the joystick. There were many bodies drifting around and bumping into things. None were in suits. They’d died instantly when the section depressurised. The blast doors and safety partitions hadn’t been enough to save them.

  Shortcut brought the pod to a gentle stop, while everyone stared solemnly outside.

  “May their ancestors receive and comfort them,” Kazim murmured, and continued in a quiet voice for the benefit of his audience. “Tei’Shima has performed the impossible once again, turning certain death into a hope for life. With the help of Shortcut—a masterful pilot famous in the Alliance for her daring—we have survived to re-enter the once great Nstar facility in orbit of Pandora...”

  Tei’Shima ignored the fantasy Kazim was inventing, and monitored Mark. In the Harmonies he was very calm. Too calm for him. Although it was unnatural, she was glad. He could let his grief free when they were safe. She watched him search the bay for something, and was about to ask him what he was looking for when he found it.

  “There,” Mark said. “Those hatches lead to escape pods. I want everyone to take note. If I don’t make it, those hatches are what you’re looking for.”

  “You won’t die here,” Kazim reassured. “Tei’Shima won’t let you. She’s very good at keeping people alive.”

  “She hasn’t killed you yet, Kazim,” Varya said. “But I can tell she’s always thinking about it.”

  Everyone laughed, including Haze. She nudged Bruiser, and this time his laugh sounded more natural. Tei’Shima let them have their fun. It was easing everyone’s fears. A good thing, because they weren’t safe yet.

  “See those tell-tales? The red lights?” Mark said.

  “What do they mean?” Tei’Shima said.

  Zelda groaned. “It means the tubes are empty. Someone already launched the escape pods.”

  “So you did listen to some of my lecture. We need to find some with green indicators. Green means they’re ready to launch.”

  “How long do we have?” Zelda said.

  “If the Merkiaari leave us alone, maybe an hour. After that the station will break apart and burn up. There’s no way to know the exact time.”

  “Our lives are in your hands,” Tei’Shima said.

  “I’ll do my best.”

  “That’s all anyone can do.”

  Mark led the way out of the pod.

  Tei’Shima grabbed her kit bag before following. They would need weapons when they reached the surface. Bruiser and Haze had the same thought. They each carried a bag as they left. The moment they entered the bay they lost gravity, but they’d been ready for that. They clung to the outside of the pod.

  Mark pushed off to reach a distant control station. He flew across the bay as if he did it every day, and Zelda muttered her approval at his skill. He’d stepped up and his competence was beginning to shine through. He caught the edge of the control station one-handed, and swung himself behind it. He studied the readouts, made some adjustments, and read the results.

  “Okay. I know where to go,” Mark announced.

  “Shuttle bay?” Zelda said hopefully.

  “No. It’s gone. Whatever the Merki used hit that section hard. There isn’t much left.”

  “Sounds like a kinetic strike. Good of them,” Shortcut said bitterly.

  It was good of them actually.

  Tei’Shima hadn’t forgotten the missiles fired at the ship earlier. Those might have been kinetic as well. If so, it meant the Merki were being careful not to accidentally hit Pandora with atomics. Of course they weren’t doing it for anyone’s benefit but their own. They wanted to
send troops down. A nuclear wasteland would be an inconvenience for them.

  “This way,” Mark said heading toward a hatch. “We need to reach the hub.”

  Tei’Shima held back until everyone else was in flight. She’d be their rear scout. She wanted everyone ahead of her and within sight. Kazim especially. He had a tendency to become fixated on his work. Without her acting as den mother he’d get lost. Varya was sticking by his side as he should. Warriors served and protected their people. Kazim was his focus for now.

  Mark led the way along the wreckage-strewn corridors of the broken station, navigating the damaged sections and junk-filled walkways in single file. They used touches on walls and deck to guide and propel themselves. A gentle thrust against loose equipment, or against a wall to change direction was enough to keep them on course in his wake.

  Emergency lighting dimmed the surroundings, and hid details. In some ways that made the journey easier, in others harder. Fewer distractions helped to keep them moving, but it also meant those distractions heightened tensions when they did happen. Suddenly coming face to face with frozen corpses in the dark was shocking.

  Mark led the way unerringly, and they seemed to make good progress. Tei’Shima thought so at least, but as time passed Mark became more and more agitated. That was very clear to her in the Harmonies. There seemed no reason for it at first, but then he halted at a four-way junction. He looked both ways and turned right. A few metres along, he abruptly changed his mind and doubled-back.

  “Great,” Zelda muttered. “We’re lost.”

  “We’re not lost,” Mark said. “The way is blocked.”

  Everyone began retracing their route. Tei’Shima didn’t follow. She continued the way they’d been going, and saw the elevator. It looked intact. She wondered what Mark had seen. She pressed a button, but the indicators remained dark.

  “Please keep up,” Mark called to her. “We’re running out of time.”

  Tei’Shima turned and kicked hard against the elevator doors to pursue her friends. The emergency power obviously didn’t extend to the elevators, or maybe in emergencies they were locked down to prevent people being trapped. She wouldn’t want to enter a metal box during battle.