by J. F. Holmes
“I got a bad feeling about this,” said Specialist David.
“No shit,” said Stedham. “Be ready. We’re going to have to blow our way out of this. Atkinson, back the way we came, stat.”
The demo expert started to answer, but before he uttered a word, the far steel door rose to reveal a heavy tripod mounted railgun and a full squad of armored troopers from Legion Étranger d'espace. “DROP YOUR WEAPONS!” yelled the trooper’s Captain.
****
The sensors on the attack shuttle Knife blared a warning as the research ship sprang to life, electromagnetic noise jumping up and down the wavelengths. A fire control radar lit up the shuttle, hovering ten kilometers away in space, waiting for word from the team for a pickup.
O’Neill leapt into action from where she had been half meditating, keeping each ear tuned to a different frequency. Simultaneously her ears rang with the shouted, “IT’S A TRAP! GET OUT!” from the command freq. She kicked both engines up to max power, heading straight for the ship to rescue her drop team. The chin-mounted Gatling was already firing, when twin grav guns mounted in a hidden turret on the rear of the Ecouter ripped her port wing away, sending her spiraling off course. Rounds punched across her windscreen, pinned her to the chair, and came out her back.
As the blood flowed out of her and froze in the vacuum of space, Jenny O’Neill reached out to try and touch the stars.
****
A fierce, fierce joy erupted in Martel’s heart. This was the end. He felt it deep in his soul, and the rest of the team felt it, too. As one, they fired, even though they knew the light weapons they carried were no match for the full power suits the French Troopers were wearing. They'd been expecting no resistance from a crew of scientists.
Rounds sparked and ricocheted, ran around the corridor, glancing off Martel's suit and punching through the semi armored soft suits the rest of the team wore. He leaned forward into the blizzard of fire as heavy rounds from the railgun hammered into the armor, and his AI started screaming as damage mounted.
The French exile glanced around him. In the two seconds that had seemed to stretch into two lifetimes, the entire team had been cut down, scattered in bloody chunks of meat. Martel looked for a long moment at what remained of his friends, bent down and picked up an antimatter charge from Atkinson's still twitching body, armed it, then ripped the boarding axe from his back. Around him lay the bodies of Team Knife. The floors and walls were splattered with blood, bits of bone and chunks of flesh, mixed with plastic, ceramic, and metal from torn suits and wrecked equipment. Heavy Rail Gun rounds had passed easily through the semi-armored suits; they'd only been designed to stop carbine and pistol rounds. Only Martel’s Heavy Suit, made of molecularly compressed ceramic and depleted uranium, had survived, shrugging off the heavy rounds as Martel returned fire. The Legionnaires of the ambushing squad, though, all wore the same style heavy suit. It was time for the ancient ways.
“LET ME…” he yelled, charging forward. The antimatter demo charge, used for scuttling entire ships, counted out loud.
Four.
“SING YOU…” and his suit servos kicked in, speeding him faster, leaning into the railgun fire. He aimed himself toward the officer standing beside the machine gun.
Three.
“THE SONG…” and the axe swung forward, crashing into the armor of the Legionnaire, cutting off his leg.
Two.
“OF MY PEOPLE!” and the backhand slash took off the rail gunner's head.
One.
The Ecouter disappeared in a glare of light more blinding than the sun as the antimatter charge ruptured the engine containment, seventeen seconds after the warning from Lexington sounded over the assault shuttle’s speakers, and two seconds after Jenny O’Neill reached for the stars.
Chapter 21
Fifty kilometers away Nadija Zlatcov was crying, though she wasn't aware of it. She had just watched a half dozen people she called family incinerated before her eyes, but she was too busy to notice her own tears. The EMP from the antimatter meltdown had done serious damage to Poison, and though they heard the recall order, she couldn’t acknowledge it. The external transmitting antennas had been fried, along with paint blistering on one side of the hull, and they had an engine that was redlining, sending them into a spin that forced her to one side of her seat. She shut it down, then threw the port engine into reverse. Alarms shrieked around her till she slammed her fist down on the commo board, cracking it.
Rob Knight stuck his head in though the doorway leading to the assault team compartment. “Nadija, do you need any help?” He was a rated pilot, though rusty.
“Get your ass in the copilot chair and see what the fuck you can do about the number one engine. Reroute coolant while I spin this bitch to get the toasted side away from that explosion.”
They worked together for a minute, stabilizing the shuttle. She sat back once their spin had stopped. Knight kept working the radio, trying to raise the Lady Lex, to no avail. The AI booted up again and ran a systems check, sending a crawler out on the hull. The verdict was no transmitting capability. They could hear, but not send.
“I’ll send one of the guys out to remount a spare,” the Sergeant Major started to say, but he was interrupted by the broadcast from the French Captain.
“Pirate Lexington, this is Captain Jean Muschad of the French Republic Navy. We have disabled your ship systems and will be coming alongside. Surrender your ship and your crew may live. Try to fight and you will all be suit-chained.”
“Oh, shit!” they both said at the same moment. Up till that point they had thought that the explosion had been just that, something that had gone wrong on the research ship. Now they both leaned forward to stare out the view screen.
“There!” pointed Knight. Nadija used the interactive view screen to zoom in on the approaching ships. She reached over and flipped the main power breakers, causing the shuttle to go instantly dark. The dropships were stealthy, and they might miss them.
“Rob, go prep your guys. We’re going to take that Frigate. She'll pass us by, and I’ll do a roll-over onto their bridge. You bust your way in there and take them out.”
His lined face broke into a wide smile. “You’re bloody daft, girl. How about the engine room instead? No, too heavily armored.”
“If we can take out the command and control on the bridge, you can bypass the engine controls and trip their reactor release, shut down the core. They’ll be dead in the water.”
“What about that heavy cruiser?”
She chewed her lip, thinking. “No dice. The Captain will have to deal with it, but one on one odds are better than two on one. That Frigate is made for hot runs with a main gun, so it doesn’t have much in the way of anti-air capabilities. I should be able to run down his spine and drop you behind the bridge. From there, it’s up to you. Do you know the deck layout of a Richelieu class frigate?”
“Like my third wife’s bottom.” He disappeared into the crew section, diving in head first in the zero gravity.
****
Midshipman Schmetzer hit the emergency release button on the hangar bay doors. All the hatches leading into the bay had slammed shut when emergency power came back on, and the force of the atmosphere lifted the big doors open as the explosive bolts holding it closed fired. The air rushed out, tearing her off her feet, and bruising her middle where she had wrapped a length of computer cable around her midsection. She waited for the rush to turn to vacuum, and then reeled herself in, breathing heavily. The pilot moved along the wall until she was parallel with the Firehawk, and then launched herself across, smashing heavily into the side of the fighter.
Taking a minute to regain her breath, Schmetzer began pulling herself around the ship, unlatching each of the tie-down straps. She was scared right down to her soul by what she was about to do, but better to try to be a hero than to be chained to the ship’s hull, listening to your shipmates die, feeling your own air running out. She finished with the last one and clambered
up to the cockpit. The ship itself was floating in the zero gravity, and she hoped it didn’t smash into anything flammable before she got it going.
Her earlier crash landing had damaged the skids, but she didn’t need those now. The fighter mounted two 25mm Electromagnetic Rail Guns, capable of spitting out rounds at more than a hundred kilometers per second, but both were empty. Maybe she could at least distract the enemy ships long enough for the Lady Lex to get to nullSpace. Or something.
She powered up the engines and gently moved out of the hangar, cut left, and poured on the afterburner, thrust slamming her back in her seat.
Chapter 22
“What the fuck?” was the collective expression on the bridge as the Firehawk rocketed past the Lexington.
Meric immediately switched to the hangar bay. “Schmetzer! SCHMETZ! BATS! GodDAMMIT!” He switched over to all ship. “Whoever is closest to the hangar bay, get in there right now!” As they watched, the afterburner cut out and the ship disappeared from view.
“Guns, get me something to fire. Anything!”
Commander McHale sat stunned in his pilot’s seat, breathing heavily. “You stupid, brave kid,” he whispered.
“Bridge, Engineering. We have some power; I can give you maneuverability and one G of thrust. You just gotta give me course corrections and I’ll input the data from here.” Lynch could be heard yelling in the background at one of his assistants as static from overcharged capacitors echoed.
McHale jumped in on the conversation. “I have local control of steering and throttle. Give me the most thrust you can.”
“On it!” echoed back, and gravity returned, but in the wrong direction. Anyone and anything not secured slid toward the back of the bridge. The crew had strapped themselves in, but Meric, who'd been hanging onto the commo console, slid down to the bulkhead, only stopped by the cord plugged into the audio jack. His broken arm screamed at him, and he hit a self-injector tab, bringing some relief.
“Guns,” he grunted as he pulled himself back up, “can you target anything?”
“We’re getting some power into the main gun. Targeting…firing.” A deep THRUM sounded beneath their feet, more felt than heard. “Less than fifty percent power. We’re not even going to scratch his shields.”
Out on the hull, several spacers were rocked backward as the thrust was applied and the ship set in motion. Petty Officer Gar used his tail to steady himself, and caught Torres as he was jarred from the hull.
“Whoa there, kid. You ain’t going anywhere yet. We got work to do.”
“Thanks, hombre.” Inside his suit, Torres was sweating, despite the cold of space. To be set adrift was a spacer’s nightmare.
They made their way forward to where the mine's penetrator round had breached the hull. It had been repaired from inside, the plastiseal bulging outward through the three foot wide hole. The crewmen were looking for whatever had hacked the ship's system. They found it, a metallic disk a foot across, placed ten feet away from the breach and electronically camouflaged to match the color of the hull.
Gar whistled out of his lipless mouth. “Whoo boy. Stop right there, Torres. Don’t come any closer.” The Spaniard halted in his tracks with Gar’s arm across his chest. “Got a nuke here. Anti-tampering sensor. Come on.”
They made their way around the mine to the windows of the bridge. Torres pulled out a tablet and tapped out a message to display.
“FOUND HACKER. BOOBY TRAPPED. NUKE.” He held it up to the window for the entire bridge crew to see. As they stood there, the ship tilted to one side and fell off to starboard. A two centimeter railgun round passed just above them, missing the ship by ten meters.
****
The heavy frigate fired again, two minutes later, just as Schmetzer’s ship came barreling in; she made one pass directly over the ship as lances of fire struck out at her. Her radio crackled into life.
“AMANDA, GET THE HELL OUT OF THERE!” screamed McHale over the airwaves, but she didn’t hear him. Schmetzer grunted through six gees as she hauled the stick hard over. A plasma stream struck the port engine, glancing off the armor plate, leaving a cherry red glowing spot.
“Is…the…ship…safe?” she pushed out as she looped and dove toward the cruiser, grunting as the G forces pushed the blood to her head and feet. A black haze appeared on the edge of her vision, and the stars swam before her. In the distance, she could make out the Lexington, a dark blot with fire playing at its engines. Still there.
Chapter 23
Zlatcov listened to Schmetzer’s transmissions and gritted her teeth. She slammed the throttles forward, pressing her into the seat, not caring about the damaged engine. The shuttle passed through the frigate's exhaust, coming up on its blind side. Her view screen melted and crackled, but held.
She came up and over the top, slamming her against the straps holding her in the seat. This elicited excited shouts and yells from the assault bay. She spun the shuttle around and applied full thrusters, bringing them to a dead stop relative to the ship, two meters above the deck. The ramp slammed down and six figures dashed out.
“BLOW IT, HOLMES!” yelled Knight. The young apprentice demo-man placed a cratering charge against the windows over the ship’s bridge, and they scrambled away from it. Before he stepped away, he could see the shocked expressions through the windows of the French Captain and his bridge crew. Holding up his hand, he counted down with his fingers. At two, every man in the squad dialed up the magnetic lock on their boots, holding themselves fast to the hull. At one, the charge erupted in a blinding flash, shattering the plastisteel armored windows. Air rushed out, followed by several bodies wearing the sky blue of the French Navy. They milled around for a few seconds as they flew out into space, then fell still, dying quickly from decompression.
Bjorn Stenger grabbed the still hot, shattered window edges and swung himself into the bridge, against the howling airstream. The plasma coil embedded in his suit’s right arm erupted, firing without discrimination at whatever figures were still moving in the disappearing air. Behind him, the rest of the team swung in before metal shutters slammed down, closing off the breach.
“Shupe, get to the engine controls. Shut this sonofabitch down. Cahr, Orr, you HOLD that passageway!” said Knight, pointing to a passage off to one side. “Don't let anyone through. Tank, main corridor, start clearing it. Yee, pull any Intel you can off their hard drive. Holmes, start placing demo charges at all stations, two minutes.”
Yee started banging on keyboards through his gloved fingers. “Just because I’m a frigging Asian doesn’t mean I know computers, you know.”
Knight ignored his grumbling, stepping over to the fire control panel and shoving aside the dead body there. He programmed an overload into the main 2cm battery, charging it but giving it no firing coordinates.
A flurry of shots sparked off a bulkhead, soundless in the airless compartment, and Tank came bounding back onto the bridge. He spun, fired, and then fell heavily backward as something crashed into his suit and then exploded with a sharp CRACK. A shaped charge round, used to penetrate armor, had caught him in the leg, shattering it. He sat back up and fired three grenades down the hallway, then started cursing, dragging himself out of the line of fire.
“Time to go, Gentlemen,” said Knight, and they retreated toward the metal shuttered windows where they had originally come in. Orr and Cahr fired even, measured shots designed to keep their opponents’ heads down, sending ricochets around corners, while Yee and Shupe half hauled, half dragged the heavy-suited soldier to the window.
“Breaching! FIRE IN THE HOLE!” yelled Holmes, and another charge shattered and bent the steel shutters. They remained in place though, blocking their exit.
“Whoops!” said Holmes. A barrage of fire erupted from both access ways, followed by a couple of dazzlers. The team returned fire blindly in a massive torrent.
****
Schmetzer’s port engine flamed out as she took a direct hit from a kinetic round. The ship spun wildly be
fore she got it under control again, port maneuvering thruster firing constantly to counter the uneven thrust of the starboard engine. Hell, she was amazed she was even still alive.
“WARNING, HULL INTEGRITY COMPROMISED,” blared the ship's AI.
“Fuck it…” she whispered, and keyed the radio. “Commander McHale, we could have been great together. Colonel Meric, from the many, comes one.” Not even knowing if the radio transmission had gone through, she pulled back hard on the stick and wheeled over, hitting the afterburner on her remaining engine. She screamed wordlessly into the radio and dove at the Heavy Cruiser.
****
“…we could have been great together. Colonel Meric, from the many, comes one.” Then came her scream, abruptly cut short. A bright flash of light erupted through the bridge viewports as her fighter impacted on the spine of the Heavy Cruiser, shattering the main gun tube and sending shrapnel through its external communications pods and shielding array.
Life flooded back into Lexington. The virus infecting the ships computers, cut off from the hackers on the French ship, immediately lost its battle against Buckley, and the AI yelled in triumph. Gravity and power returned instantly
“Captain, permission to fight the ship!” yelled Guns.
“GO FOR IT!” said Meric, and the fat man cackled with laughter. Immediately the big gun THRUMED under their feet, pumping out round after round of steel and titanium slugs. They started impacting on the engine area of the heavy cruiser, stripped of the magnetic shielding that would ordinarily have diverted the ferrous material around the ship. Fires started spewing from the hull, and she heeled to port, firing a salvo of missiles.
McHale grabbed the controls and sent the Lady Lex into a spinning corkscrew, diving out of the way of the incoming projectiles. He slammed the thrust full bore as a nuke went off behind them.
“Holy Shit!” wailed Gar, still attached to the side of the ship. Torres had just made his way into the airlock. The amphibian was flung outward into space, his hand almost touching Torres’ as he reached for him. Torres acted instinctively, throwing himself after his crewmate. He grabbed Gar by his tail and pulled. The tail separated from the suit and the two of them spun off into space.