The Price of Honor

by Jonathan P. Brazee

  He completed a quick head count—everyone was still there. A few looked dazed, but all had managed to hang on.

  “Is everyone OK?” he shouted, his voice loud in his ears, but he wasn’t sure if anyone could hear him.

  His hood indicator was red: there wasn’t enough O2 to breathe. If the berthing space were in a vacuum, the sound wouldn’t transmit.

  He pulled himself to Wolf, pressed his faceplate to his, and shouted, “Check everyone. Make sure they’re OK.”

  Wolf nodded, and Hondo pulled himself along the racks and out into the berthing passage. At the far end, bulkheads were bent and torn. It looked like something had hit right at the support rib, blowing off the hull, both in the company’s berthing and at whatever was on the other side. The sheets of biopatch had done their job, though, sealing what was probably a major breach into the black. As Hondo watched, a body floated into view at the far end, small perfectly spherical globlets of blood trailing behind it.

  He pulled himself into the next space where Cara was checking her Marines.

  He grabbed her, touched faceplates, and asked, “Everyone make it?”

  “Lost Pucini. Got sucked out before we could grab him.”

  Someone grabbed Hondo from behind and spun him around. Hondo, his nerves on edge, almost lashed out before he recognized the platoon sergeant, who was pulling both sergeants in until their faceplates touched.

  “What’s the head count?”

  “All accounted for,” Hondo said.

  Cara said, “Pucini’s gone. Got sucked out. I need to see if he’s still onboard.”

  “It’s . . . uh . . . it’s pretty bad down there. Third Platoon’s gone, all of them. Second, well, some made it. I’ve sent Doc Kekoa down to see what he can do. I want Doc Leach and Manuel to see if they can make a difference, too,” Staff Sergeant Rutledge told her.

  “What about Pucini? Did you see him?” she asked.

  “No, and he’s probably gone. But we’ll check. Right now, I need you two to join with Third Squad down there,” he said, jerking a thumb over his shoulder towards the impact area. “We need to secure it.”

  For some unknown reason, Antman’s joke about securing a building came to mind, and he had a huge urge to tell the joke himself. He couldn’t believe why that had come to his mind.

  Get ahold of yourself.

  “Aren’t we still in battle stations?” Cara asked.

  “Where do we breach ships?” the staff sergeant asked.

  Breaching and boarding ships was one of the Marines’ missions. Depending on the threat, they could hack a hatch, use a breaching tube to make a new airlock, or simply blast a hole into the side of a ship and use that to enter it.

  Like the temporarily-patched rent in the ship’s hull at the other side of berthing.

  “Got it, Staff Sergeant,” Hondo said.

  “I’m going to try and contact the lieutenant,” Rutledge said. “Get over there and make sure no one comes inside the ship.”

  “Roger that,” Hondo said as he pushed back from the other two.

  He pulled himself back to the squad’s berthing and grabbed the three team leaders. Using the same method of communicating, he gave his orders.

  Why don’t these hoods have comms? he wondered. This isn’t the stone ages.

  In a Federation Navy ship, they would all have donned EVA suits, which had full comms and AI capability. But these were the much cheaper emergency hoods that some paramilitary security forces used. Surrounding the head and upper chest, they provided low-pressure, but breathable air. Hondo didn’t feel secure in them, but at least he could operate in one, unlike the “walmarts,” the cheap, all-encompassing bubbles that commercial liners used to keep civilian passengers alive in case of an atmospheric breach.

  They don’t keep you warm, though, he thought as he shivered.

  It made sense. Ambient heat needed atmosphere, just as sound waves did. He could breathe, but it was getting cold in the ship.

  Not as cold as the black, he reminded himself, wondering if Pucini had been sucked out along with the dead and wounded from Third Platoon.

  Along the bulkhead, a green light let him know one of the emergency O2 emitters was trying to replenish the atmosphere inside the compartment. Hondo had no idea how long that would take, and he wondered if the Brotherhood soldiers would even give them that time.

  “Let’s go,” he yelled, using his arm to hurry his squad out of their space and towards the hull. Tony B gave him a thumbs-up as he pulled past him, and Hondo wondered if he’d actually heard him. He held his breath for a moment, and he thought he could barely hear the sounds of Marines on the move. He didn’t know if that was residual atmosphere that hadn’t escaped or if the emitters were having an effect.

  When they arrived in the outermost space, not much was left in the twisted remains of the racks and supports. There were a few bloody imprints, but no bodies. Hondo didn’t know which two Third Platoon squads had the outermost two spaces, but if they hadn’t died in the blast, they’d been sucked out into the black. Even if some of them had somehow survived the blast itself, while the hoods could keep them breathing even in a full vacuum, the cold would kill them within a minute or two.

  Staff Sergeant LeMarche, Second Platoon’s platoon sergeant, pointed to the upper left corner of the compartment—Hondo was still oriented to “up” and “down,” even if the terms were meaningless with no gravity to give them reference. Using hand and arm signals, Hondo got his Marines in place, now oriented in what used to be down. If gravity came back on suddenly, they’d have a nice fall, but they had to cover all angles should the Brotherhood try to breach the ship.

  With Doc Leach still working with Second Platoon, Hondo had 13 Marines, including himself. Each Marine was armed with either the Ruger 2mm or Hasert .42. Antman, Hanaburgh, and Haus had managed to hold on to their Oxars. That wasn’t much to face Brotherhood soldiers, who were probably in full battle rattle. As he swept his gaze through the compartment, he realized his squad might be the best armed. Only one of Cara’s Marines had her Oxar, and Falt’s Third Squad looked to be down two Marines. Hondo doubted if half of Second Platoon was there. They had about fifty lightly-armed Marines to face an unknown-sized force.

  It wasn’t always the size of the force that mattered, however. Horatius and two others had managed to hold off the entire Clusium army, stopping them at the bridge. If three Romans could hold off an army, then so could they. They were Marines, after all.

  “The piss-worm cowards stood off to hit Third Platoon. If they try to breach this ship, we’re going to bring a galaxy of shit on their heads,” he said to Radiant Purpose, who screamed a loud “ooh-rah.”

  He went down the line, telling each of his Marines much the same. He could see their posture change. These were no longer the confused men and women who’d just taken a mental blow. They were Marines, ready to extract revenge.

  By the time he’d hit each of the Marines and made it back to his position, Hondo almost wished the Brotherhood shits would try and breach the ship. He wanted to lash out and make them pay.

  Come on, fuckwads. Let’s see how tough you are when you can look us in the eyes.

  Chapter 13

  Hondo

  The light on Hondo’s hood turned green. He knew the atmosphere was being replenished because sounds were reaching him, and the circulation fans were beginning to actually push something, but the light let him know they’d reached the Armstrong-Chen Limit, and he could breathe again without the hood.

  “Keep your freakin’ hoods sealed!” Staff Sergeant Rutledge yelled out through his open faceplate before he shut it again.

  Hondo wasn’t sure the Brotherhood host was going to attempt to board the ship. Standard Operating Procedure was to board immediately after making a breach before the defending forces could gather themselves and prepare to repel the assaulting force. The Brotherhood had a vaunted military, so if they hadn’t tried to assault yet, Hondo thought that it wasn’t in their im
mediate plans.

  It didn’t hurt to be prepared, though, he had to admit, especially as most of the Zrínyi’s sensors had been knocked offline and couldn’t monitor the Brotherhood frigate as well as desired.

  The enemy frigate—the brass had been careful not to call the Brotherhood alliance the enemy, but if they fired on the Zrínyi, then what the hell else were they? —had carefully targeted the ship. One missile had hit the ship’s weapons pod, which made tactical sense. The other two missiles had targeted the Marines aboard the ship, and that was an overt act of war, as far as Hondo was concerned. The Zrínyi’s cloaking capabilities were limited, and the Brotherhood man-of-war would have had no problem scanning the ship and locating the largest masses of bodies. One missile had struck the other side of the ship, wiping out Charlie Company. Only 12 Marines had survived the strike.

  Only a stroke of luck saved most of Alpha. The missile had hit the ship a few meters too far aft, almost on one of the support ribs, and sent a good portion of the explosion into the engineering spaces. Alpha had lost all but one Marine from Third Platoon, 19 from Second, and four from First.

  This had been a surgical strike. Remove the pinchers and stinger from a scorpion, and then you could play with it at your leisure.

  Only you didn’t get all of the stinger, assholes!

  Hondo wished the host would try to breach the ship. He needed to take out his anger on them.

  He also knew that was stupid thinking. First, a Marine had to go into combat with a clear head—anger led to mistakes, fatal mistakes. Second, the enemy frigate hadn’t been damaged. Her sensors would still be working, and they’d know that over half of Alpha Company was alive and waiting for them.

  At least they weren’t all in one compartment. Lieutenant Flores, the company XO, had taken what was left of Second Platoon and moved to the other side of the ship, where Charlie Company had been berthed. Hondo had been surprised at first that it had been the XO and not Lieutenant Del Rio, the Second Platoon commander, but the young second lieutenant might be in shock at losing so many of his Marines while he hadn’t been there to share the danger.

  “Squad leaders, up!” Lieutenant Abrams called out.

  Hondo shot across the berthing space, avoiding the jagged pieces of metal and plastic that stuck out at odd angles, and twisted his body around, using his legs to absorb the impact and stopping next to the platoon commander. The lieutenant waited until Falt and Cara joined them.

  “The Brotherhood frigate has closed to 800 meters,” he said.

  Hondo shook his head in surprise. In space terms, 800 meters might as well be chained to each other. Ships just didn’t do that in open space, even at ports, without the tractors guiding them. That left only two reasons that he could think of: the enemy thought the Zrínyi was toothless, and they wanted to send over a boarding party.

  “And we’ve got movement. We’ve only got a few sensors still working, but it looks like they got host soldiers in EVAs, ready to cross over.

  “If they are coming, we don’t know where they’ll attempt to board, so be ready for a fluid situation. If they try here, we’re as set up as we could be, but if they hit somewhere else, we need to be ready to adjust.”

  When the lieutenant had arrived inside berthing, he’d quickly set up a basic operations order. It hadn’t been much, but Hondo knew what was expected of him and his squad. “Be ready to adjust” did not fill him with confidence. But there was probably no getting around that. If the host tried to breach somewhere else, then he’d just have to follow the lieutenant’s lead and trust that training would carry the day.

  Hondo went back to the squad and relayed the information. Pickerul and RP looked stoked—he guessed that he wasn’t the only one who wanted revenge. Marasco nodded, his face expressionless. And while Diva and Killdeer looked concerned, the rest of his Marines and Doc had expressions of determination on their faces. He knew he could count on them.

  “Back to your positions. Be ready,” he said.

  The squad’s position was essentially in a ship’s berthing spaces. There wasn’t much in the way of cover. But using the wreckage, the Marines did the best they could. Hondo was behind a twisted piece of plastic. It might not even stop a round, and it covered only a swath across his chest, but it was better than nothing.

  The clunk from outside the hull caught everyone’s attention.

  “Get ready,” the lieutenant shouted out.

  The biopatch shuddered, luminescent lights radiating in waves from a central point. Made from bioengineered algae suspended in a polycero mesh, it was considered “semi-life.” When a breach was made in a ship, the escaping air would draw the patch to the hole, where it would mesh with other patches in a colony. It was cheap and effective in making temporary patches, but it offered nothing in the way of armor protection, and it couldn’t keep out boarders.

  “Secure yourselves,” Staff Sergeant Rutledge called out.

  A moment later, the section of the biopatch glowed a deep orange, then simply disappeared. Air rushed back out of the compartment, but not nearly as violently as before. The compartment had been kept at the Armstrong-Chen Limit, which was the partial pressure required with O2 at 40% to sustain human activity—about 3.5 PSIA. Lower pressure meant less “air” to evacuate, and the Marines had no problem remaining in place.

  The breach was right in front of First Squad and “below” them. The first soldier pulled himself against the diminishing outflow of air, oriented down and slightly to the ship’s bow. He never saw Hanaburgh, who took off most of his head above the shoulders with one blast of his Oxar. Blood globules spattered out in a display worthy of Freedom Day fireworks as the body bounced against the bulkhead.

  A stream of fire reached out of the breach, rounds ricocheting around the compartment. Marines from Second Squad were in the fields of fire, and they scrambled out of the way.

  Haus fired his Oxar into the mouth of the breach. Hondo couldn’t see if that had any effect, but he chased the big round with his own 2mm darts. The dead soldier was in a Brotherhood EVA, a maneuverable suit that was probably better than a Federation EVA, but that offered even less ballistic protection.

  And something clicked in his brain. Before he quite realized what he was doing, he yelled out “Cover me!” and pushed off the overhead, aiming right for the edge of the breach.

  The dead soldier had been carrying a GG-19, a jacketless air-fired slug-thrower. The big 14mm round packed a powerful punch, and the lack of propellant made it very-well suited for shipboard use where fire was always a concern. More relevant, it could defeat the “bones,” or the STF—the Shear-Thickening Fluid—armor embedded into the fabric of the Marine’s utilities.

  Hondo flashed past the opening, spotting a surprised face as he somehow threaded the incoming fire while reaching out and grabbing the Brotherhood rifle, before slamming heavily into the bulkhead and the dead solder. He flailed for an instant, trying to orient himself. Another soldier moved to the edge of the breach to bring Hondo under his aim, and with one arm pushing off, he held out the GG-19 with the other and fired a single shot that hit the soldier in the chest just as he was bringing his GG-19 to bear.

  Holy shit, I’m glad I was right, Hondo thought as he pushed back from the breach opening and the Marines were able to open up again.

  All Brotherhood weapons were biolocked onto their users. An enemy couldn’t just pick one up on the battlefield and use it against them. However, Hondo had read in Defense Monthly that the new EVA suits had some problems with biometrics through the gloves, and the biolocks had been neutralized.

  Hondo felt lightheaded as the risk he’d taken hit him. The article he’d read could have been a false flag article, planted by the Brotherhood. It could have been true, but the problem had been fixed by now. Either way, and Hondo would be dead.

  There was another explosion over and to the back of him, and he spun around, still hugging the outer bulkhead. Six soldiers came flying into the space through a gaping hole, t
hrough which Hondo could see the system’s sun. The Brotherhood force had given up on the breaching tube and had simply used brute force to create an opening.

  They didn’t see him, though. With two carefully aimed shots, he took out two of them before they knew he was there.

  And the fog of battle set in.

  Hondo’s world narrowed. He was aware of more white-suited bodies flowing into the space. He was aware of the heavy volume of Marine fire as the lighter weapons tried to find vulnerabilities in the Brotherhood suits.

  Hondo was vulnerable, hanging on the bulkhead like the proverbial fly on the wall. As a round took out a chunk of bulkhead near his head, he blindly kicked off, trusting the big sky, little bullet theory to get him under some cover—only, the “sky” wasn’t so big, and the rounds didn’t seem so little. Somehow, he managed to reach his initial position unscathed.

  Slipping behind his too-small piece of cover, he brought his stolen GG-19 around and started selecting targets. The soldiers seemed focused on Second Squad, and Hondo was able to target three of them, hitting two. One went down hard, while the other, his lower leg a bloody mess, managed to push back out of the ship.

  Something hit him high on the shoulder, and he felt the instantaneous hardening of his bones that signaled the armor was working. He didn’t know if it was a dart or merely a piece of debris-turned shrapnel, but it wasn’t a GG-19 round or something equally as powerful, so he ignored it.

  Suddenly, there were no more targets. The dozen or so soldiers left spun almost in unison and shot out the rent in the side of the ship. A Marine from Second Squad rushed forward with an Oxar to engage the fleeing soldiers when a round fired from outside hit him in the forehead. His body kept going forward, where it hit the edge of the opening and went tumbling out of the ship.

  Biosheets were already detaching from dispensers and floating towards the openings, but this second one was too big. The biosheets simply floated out into the black.

  “Is everybody all right?” Hondo yelled, forgetting for a moment that they were back in a vacuum.