by J. F. Holmes
****
“I got it!” yelled Holmes, and he dove forward, pulling charges off the consoles. Running back though the incoming fire, he placed them on each corner of the window and fired at each charge. The impact detonated each in turn, peeling the shutter away.
“That was stupid!” yelled Shupe, giving Holmes a high five.
“GO!” yelled Knight, firing at the armored figures entering the bridge. Each team member dove through the window headlong, into space. Knight fired off one last burst and dove through himself. As he sailed through space, the main gun battery erupted out of the firing port beneath him, a jet of flame and sparks discharging the overload. It was followed by the engine flaming out, the backlight of the exhaust slowly fading away.
Knight clicked through the readouts of each of his team. Shupe, Orr and Yee shone green, Tank was a yellow, and Holmes had a flashing yellow.
“Holmes, how are you?”
“I’m OK, chief. It hurts, but I think the bleeding has stopped. Whatever Shupe stuck me with…” his voice faded out and back in, “…oh look, a butterfly!”
Medic Shupe broke in. “He’ll be fine, we just have to get him to sickbay within the next hour. Tank’s knee is crushed, though.”
“Crushed my ass!” sounded over the radio.
Around the Sergeant Major the stars shone brightly, millions of them, crystal clear. Knight called Zlatcov over the radio and requested pickup. Then he reached down and tapped a keypad on his arm. Beethoven flooded his suit speakers, matching the majesty of the stars. He folded his arms behind his head and drifted slowly, taking it all in.
Chapter 24
The crew of Lexington sat in silence. Both of the French ships had quit maneuvering, travelling in a straight line through space, gouts of air and debris drifting in a cloud around them. Meric had stopped Guns from firing at the ships after he’d put a dozen rounds into each. Team Poison’s destruction of the Frigate’s bridge had also dropped their shields, and the Lady Lex’s EMG rounds, although lighter than the battery on a heavy combatant, were still delivering enough punch to smash holes in armor and through decks.
“Lady Lex, this is Poison. Permission to search for Knife.”
“Granted. Just don’t get your hopes up.”
“Understood, but she did get some warning. There’s always hope…”
In the end, they did find the dropship, spinning through space, hurled away from the antimatter explosion. Or, to be more accurate, what was left of it. As Zlatcov pulled up to the wreckage, several of the team dropped out of the forward hatch and scrambled over. They found Jenny O’Neill’s body strapped in the pilot’s seat, one hand still grasping the controls. Her suit had been holed in a dozen places, by shrapnel and two heavy slugs, and she’d bled out before the cold of space could kill her. They lifted her body out and carried it back to Poison, and Zlatcov turned the ship back toward the Lady Lex. A hard, cold knot grew inside of her, and she gripped the controls so tightly the leather of her suit gloves was stretched over her knuckles. When the Poison docked with the Lady Lex, Zlatcov quickly unbuckled and stormed off the ship. She had a look of murder in her eyes.
“Nadija, wait!” said Shupe as she helped Doctor Morano load Stenger on to a stretcher. Knight held up a hand to wave her off.
“Let her go,” said the Sergeant Major. He commed the bridge and told them she was coming.
Zlatcov stormed down the main corridor and climbed up the ladder to the bridge. Meric stood to meet her, and caught her fist as she swung at him. Her hand dropped down into her right boot and came up with the 3mm hideout gun. She pointed it at the floor, knuckles white on the grip.
“Those, my, friends!” she screamed at him, Russian accent breaking through. “YOU KILLED THEM!” The pistol wavered in her hand as she raised it, arm shaking. Behind her, Chief Sparks had her own arm cocked back, heavy bladed throwing knife held behind her ear.
“Nadija, if you feel you have to, go ahead. I don’t know how we were exposed, but I promise you, we WILL kill whoever did it.”
A deadly silence reigned on the repressurized bridge, punctured only by Zlatcov’s ragged breathing. She settled her aim and pointed it at Meric’s eye. Solbliatski stepped forward, interposing himself between the angry pilot and his Captain.
“Get out of my way, Ski, or I will shoot you too. This is almost as much your fault as it is his.” She shifted her aim past the old man, back to what she could see of Meric’s face.
“Nadija, I know how it got out. I just ran through the intel we ripped from the Frigate’s bridge. A French operative intercepted a conversation on Miranda Station that mentioned our target. Something a spy cam picked up in a restaurant.” He hesitated.
“Go on, Ski,” said Meric, his eyes never leaving Zlatcov’s.
“You were mentioned by name, Nadija. They overheard Team Poison discussing the mission.”
“No!” she whispered. “NYET!” Nadija Zlatcov shouted and lifted the pistol. She placed it to her head and squeezed the trigger a split second after Chief Spark’s throwing knife intercepted her hand, fouling her aim. The round ricocheted off the ceiling and shattered a console. Commander Merrifield tackled her from the side and wrapped her in a bear hug. The gun clattered to the deck and the pilot collapsed into a moaning, crying mess in his arms.
“Get her to sickbay; call Doc Morano and tell her what happened,” said Meric, quietly, to Chief Sparks. She nodded and helped the XO carry her over to the ladder.
Steuben spoke up from his console. “Captain, I have a beacon, no, two beacons, four kilometers from the ship. Might be our missing crewmen.”
“Lt. Commander McHale, take Poison and go get them, please.”
McHale didn’t move, just sat at the pilot seat and stared at the view screen.
“McHale. Alex. Go get them.”
“Huh? Oh, yeah, OK.” He stood and left the bridge, shoulders slumped. They’d won the battle, but maybe lost the war. The crew of Lexington was broken.
Meric ordered Asote to plot a course to the nearest star system with a habitable planet and went back to his own cabin. Once he got there, he poured a very long drink of whiskey straight from a bottle and then smashed the glass against the wall. Someone had placed that mine on his ship, and that someone was going to pay, if they had to follow the trail straight to New France itself.
He thought about the crewmen who’d died, and lowered his head to the desk. Outside the cabin, he knew he’d have to be strong and comforting to his crew. But who, he asked himself, comforts the Captain? Tears rolled down his face.
****
Gar and Torres floated in space, separated by a few feet and a kilometer away from the ship. A half an hour ago, Torres had thrown the detached tail away. Now he anxiously monitored his air supply, watching the needle fall through the orange and into red. He also imagined that his heater was failing, imagined the chill of deep space creeping into his suit. Panic, the number one killer in space, started to rear its ugly head.
“Oh, hey,” said Gar, breaking his hibernating silence. “I forgot. Flip on your emergency beacon.”
“My what?”
“Your emergency beacon. Red switch on your chest, left side. You station guys don’t have them, but all ship’s crew wear them. I forgot.”
Torres swore a blue streak in Spanish. “You mean we’ve been floating out here for three hours, and I have been freaking the hell out while you hibernate, because you FORGOT?! Ugh, you puta!”
“Hey, chill out. They’ll be here in a bit. Speaking of putas, did ever tell you about the time I was banging this Orion Slave girl? So, like, her owner comes in and I’m like BLEGH BLEGH BLEGH, going at it, and I get so freaked out that my tail comes off. I was out of balance for a month till it grew back. So there I was, nailing this OTHER chick, and, because of my balance, I fall off…”
Torres switched off his suit radio and waited for pickup.
Chapter 25
The bodies of Jenny O’Neill and Lloyd Behm lay in their
sealed coffins on the hangar deck. Tradition, going back far into the timeless past, called for the bodies of the dead to be sent back to the nothing from which they’d come. Meric hated it, hated the thought of cruising for a million years, frozen, lost in the void. Instead, they orbited a placid green and blue world, unspoiled, with oceans and continents, life abounding.
Most of the crew stood in suits, only a few on watch throughout the ship. The hangar doors had been repaired, and they stood closed while Specialist Nate McClearn, who also hailed from O’Neill’s home world of Éire, held a bagpipe to his lips. The notes of Amazing Grace, unchanged for more than six hundred years, filled the hangar and seemed to echo throughout the confined space.
When it died out, Meric stepped forward between the two black coffins. Behm had been killed when he was caught by an emergency door slamming shut, a hazard to all spacers. There had been no bodies to recover from the Poison Assault Team, and Schmetzer was gone.
“Lieutenant Jennifer Patricia O’Neill. Ensign Amanda Schmetzer. Warrant Officer Lloyd Behm. Chief Warrant Officer Chris McCann. Sergeant Major Thomas Stedham. Sergeant Jon Atkinson. Sergeant Peter Martel. Specialist Levi David. Specialist Benjamin Blacklock. Medic Sarah Elizabeth. Specialist T’hic.” He didn’t speak of the twelfth casualty. Nadija Zlatcov lay in a sickbay bed, staring blindly at the wall.
“Eleven people I considered my family. I failed them, and their deaths are my responsibility. I can only say that, as your captain, I will try to do better.” He stopped for a second, thought about what to say, and continued.
“All of you serve with me for a variety of reasons, but inside, we all hate our common enemy. Yes, the primary purpose of this raid was for money, but every franc we take out of the enemy’s pockets is one less for them to spend on ships and materiel to continue the war. These eleven men and women gave their lives for what, ultimately, is the cause of freedom. I don’t know any nobler cause to die for. Midshipman Schmetzer gave her life to save the ship, and her friends. I don’t…” and he stopped. It took him a full minute to go on.
“I don’t know what to say to that. She was something special and unique that only comes along at the worst of times, and I’ll do my best to honor her sacrifice.”
“Last, let me say this. We will find out who set this ambush, and we will get, if not answers, then revenge. I have been hurt too many times by the French, and although I know it’s a war, and people die, I cannot bear sitting on the edge anymore. From here on out, Lady Lex goes to war. Any who wish to leave can sign out at Jamesport. I hope you’ll stay.”
He placed a hand on each coffin; one covered by the green and gold of the Éire flag, the other in the black and red of Prussia, and flipped his helmet closed. Chief Sparks blew on her boson’s whistle, two clear notes, and the crew all closed their helmets.
To one side, Sergeant Major Knight stood, ramrod straight, at attention. Orr, Yee, and Cahr stood at Port Arms, grav rifles at forty-five degrees across their chests. The air was pulled out of the hangar by pumps and quickly became vacuum. Then the hangar doors rolled back to let in the sunlight, and show the arc of the world below. An escort detail lifted the coffins and carried them to the edge of the deck, Meric standing behind Behm’s and McHale behind O’Neill’s. He’d just come from sickbay, checking on Zlatcov.
“Ready!” barked SGM Knight. The three men turned slightly to the left.
“Aim!” and rifles were lifted to shoulders.
“FIRE!” and three simultaneous blinding, soundless flashes of light.
They did this two more times, and returned their rifles to port arms.
Meric first, and then McHale in turn, pushed each coffin into the void. They sailed outward to orbit the nameless world, and eventually burn up in the atmosphere, contributing their atoms to the life below them.
“Till we meet again…” said Meric over his suit radio.
“…under a different sun,” the rest of their friends answered in the traditional Spacer’s farewell. They filed out, leaving Meric and McHale to stand there for a very long time, watching the blue and green world beneath him. Then the two men turned and walked away.
Part II
Chapter 26
Major Jean LeFiere inhaled deeply on the cigarette, making the tip glow cherry red. He held it out in front of his prisoner’s face, closer and closer to her eye. She glared back at him, even though she could feel the heat. Instead of putting it into her eye, LeFiere buried it in her shoulder. She screamed in pain, then stifled it to a grunt.
“Midshipman…Amanda…Schmetzer…Britannic Royal… Navy!” she managed to gasp out.
The Legionnaire sat back on his chair and inhaled on the cigarette again. “Edit that out,” he said to the unseen watchers. “Her response. Leave the burning and her screams.”
Turning back to the pilot, he opened up his tablet and started reading aloud. “Amanda Jane Schmetzer, born on Neues München 20 August, 2260, parents killed in a belt mining accident 2267, sold into slavery after pirate raid, escaped to Jamesport during fighting on Solaris Three. Signed on as pilot apprentice on the pirate ship known as ‘Lexington’ in 2281.” He put the tablet back down on the table, but left it on.
If only you knew the actual truth, she thought to herself, someday America is going to come back and kick your ass! then pushed it far back in her mind.
“Quite the adventurous life you’ve led, for someone so young, Fräuline Schmetzer. You will, of course, be hung, but first things first. Tell me about Captain Meric. I have quite the file on him, but what is he like as a man? Do you think he will come to get you?”
Instead of giving him the answer he wanted, Schmetzer stuck to the flimsy cover story that Meric had drilled into her. “I am a midshipman in His Majesty King William’s Navy, on assignment to conduct a survey—”
Her answer was cut short by LeFiere jamming the cigarette into her left eye. She screamed at the top of her lungs and fell over sideways in the chair as he laughed at her pain. “Sometimes, I really do enjoy my job, Fräuline. Usually I have to be so, how do you say it in German, freistehend? Detached, you would say in English. But at times, I really do get some jouissance, some enjoyment.”
Leaving the sobbing woman strapped to the chair, he stripped off the latex gloves he’d been wearing and spoke again to the hidden camera. “Leave my questions in, and take out any answers, especially reference to the English. Make sure you get some closeups of her face.”
He looked at his prisoner, regarding her coolly, hand resting on his holstered pistol. “You know,” he said, “I was tempted to shoot you when you were brought in. Someone had to pay for blowing what should have been a perfect operation, and I was very angry for a while. Then I thought, why not use you as bait? Meric is an honorable man, and he will not let one of his crew suffer. Thank you for giving me what I needed.”
She spat full on his clean and pressed Legionary uniform, blood from her cracked lips splattering on the white tunic. “You talk too much!” she managed to mutter, despite the howling pain in her eye.
Pain that was forgotten as he shot her in the knee, and agony ripped through her like a bolt of lightning. The captain holstered the pistol and said to the hidden watchers, “Add that to the vid. Make sure she doesn’t bleed out.”
Then he leaned up close to the whimpering pilot and said, “Blood washes out easily from my dress tunic. Ask me how I know. Good day, Fräuline Schmetzer.” He casually straightened his black beret over his close-cropped hair and punched her once in the face.
Outside the room, he strode down the corridor to his office and waited for the video to show up on his terminal. While he sat, he watched a Legion squad run though their close quarters battle drill on another monitor. They were his personal strike team, the best humans and aliens he could collect, led by Sergeant Major Martel. He thought for a moment, and then keyed his com link.
“Sergeant, stop the exercise and come in for a moment. Give the men fifteen minutes of break.” He clicked off without w
aiting for an answer, but the noncom arrived in less than a minute, sweating heavily in his half armor.
“Sit,” ordered LeFiere, and Martel did. The Captain activated a holo display on his desk, and a half dozen figures sprang to life. As both watched, most crumpled to the floor as they fired their weapons, but the one in front, wearing full power armor, strode forward in the face of heavy gunfire, leaning into it as if into the wind.
“Peter,” said Aldric Martel once, softly to himself. His brother made it into the knot of attacking troops, swinging a giant boarding axe and cutting several men down, then the holo ended in a burst of light.
“He died well,” said the older brother, no emotion on his face. “Was this on the operation to catch Meric?”
“Yes,” said his commander. “They reacted quicker than I expected; the team was well trained, and died in place, destroying the ship, rather than surrender.”
“I told you. Had you let me go, I might have been able to talk him in.”
“Yes, you did, and if I had, you would be dead now, and I need you. We are going to lay a trap for Meric.” At that moment, his tablet beeped, and LeFiere saw that the interrogation video was ready.
He played it for Martel, thinking that it might bring some satisfaction to him. Instead, the big man’s mouth drew into a thin white line. “I do not like making war on women. Or torture.”
“This woman drove her fighter into a frigate, killing over a hundred and fifty sailors after she ejected. We don’t do this for enjoyment, we do it to protect the people of France. Sacrifices must be made.”
“Major,” said the NCO, “I fight because I enjoy winning, and battle. My motivations are different than yours.”