by Ian Whates
Mosi felt a small swell of pride. In taking down a warship the size of Darkness Mourning, Raider had been a minnow standing up to a shark, albeit a minnow with an oversized bite.
The woman, Number One, hunched a little further forward – as defensive a posture as Mosi had ever seen – her hands were a blur as she summoned up screens and data fields which were instantly dismissed to be replaced by more. Whether or not any of this would help her fulfil the captain’s orders seemed debatable to Mosi, but she was making a point of trying to do so. Her deft machine-rapid movements along with the crescent-shaped silver implant visible on the left side of her head – not quite hidden by the sweep of her hair – suggested a level of augmentation illegal since the Auganics Wars.
“Mr Pine?” The captain paused in his pacing to hover over the room’s other occupant, a wire-framed man hunched over a jury-rigged work station
“Still nothing, Captain. As Number One says, whatever they hit us with has burned out systems and sub-routines all over the place. I’m trying to build a new command pathway by determining what’s left and rerouting. It should be possible to cobble something together, but I’m working blind.”
“Again, spare me the excuses, Mr Pine.”
“Sir.”
The desperate nature of what Mosi saw here meant that they could relax. Blinded as they clearly were, the Night Hammers would never see Leesa and Jen coming.
“True, but that’s not the point,” Naj said in response to the thought. “Our job is to make sure the Night Hammers are in no position to interfere, remember?”
She was right, of course.
“Okay,” he acknowledged. “Let’s do this.”
His instinct would have been to take out the captain first, but Naj was in charge and she evidently had other ideas. She closed on the officer the captain had addressed as Pine.
“Don’t you think the senior officer should be our priority?” Mosi said.
“No. Pine is the one working directly on getting their systems back up, which makes him the biggest threat to Hel N and Shadow. We take him out first and then move on to the others.”
She made it sound so simple.
“It will be,” she whispered to him.
She phased into physical form immediately behind her target, gripping the back of his head and slamming it into the instrument boards in front of him: once, twice, in rapid succession, all her strength and weight behind the actions. Naj had no enhanced strength like Hel N, nor did she have Shadow’s agility and combat skills, but Mosi had been trained extensively by Jen, and what he knew Naj knew, so she was far from helpless.
Before anyone else in the room could react she was gone, phasing back into her natural state and leaving the Night Hammer, Pine, to slide to the floor, unconscious or worse.
There was shouting: the captain barking orders and hurrying across to his stricken officer.
Naj took advantage, emerging into solid form to trip and push, using the captain’s own momentum to topple him over, but he landed and rolled and found his feet again in one movement.
She had already disappeared, but Mosi could sense that it had surprised her. “They’re good,” she noted.
“Told you.”
“Change of plan. Let’s concentrate on taking out whatever equipment the woman in the command seat has. We don’t need to fight them directly to blind them.”
Mosi couldn’t have agreed more.
The woman hadn’t moved, as if whatever she was doing in that chair was too important to interrupt, no matter the incentive. All the more reason they should interrupt, by Mosi’s way of thinking.
It was as Naj phased back into the physical beside the woman that the world skewed impossibly around them. Suddenly shapes elongated, seeming to stretch upwards for eternity, and colours fractured into rainbow hues that swirled and bled towards the heavens. Most alarming of all, they couldn’t move.
“Naj!” he screamed. “Phase out.”
“I… I can’t.” He could hear the panic in her voice. “I can’t phase back or manifest fully in the physical. We’re trapped.”
How was that even possible?
“Captain, help!” Naj called through him.
Jen had spent the weightless crossing between ships working hard to convince herself that this was just another mission. So far, it wasn’t working. Firstly, because she had always hated EVA work; secondly, because this was a Night Hammer ship.
“Are you okay?” Leesa asked as they approached the warship’s airlock. Leesa was fully aware of the first reason she might not be, though not necessarily the second.
“Yes, I’m fine,” Jen lied.
They reached Darkness Mourning’s hull, their suits’ pulsed manoeuvrings softening the impact as they arrived beside the airlock, the touch-tech in their gloves anchoring them in place.
“Okay, we’re at the airlock,” Leesa reported to Raider. “About to go in.”
They’d already ruled out any help from Raider. The AI wasn’t able to access the other ship’s systems, which had either crashed spectacularly or were shielded too well; quite possibly both.
Leesa attached a hand-sized bulbous disc to the airlock door. It was something Jen had seen her use before, a device designed by Raider which enabled the augmented side of her friend to reach out into other mechanisms – designed by an Elder aspect but built by humans; did that mean it qualified as Elder tech or not? Jen quashed the pointless semantics, recognising it as an avoidance mechanism, a means of distracting herself from what came next.
The outer airlock door slid open and they dragged themselves inside. Just as it was closing, a further message came through from Cornische: “Lees, Jen, Geminum is in trouble.”
“What sort of trouble?”
“Unclear, but she’s in ops and would seem to be trapped in some way.”
Leesa cursed.
“Told you Mosi wasn’t ready for this,” Jen said before she could stop herself.
“Recriminations later, okay?” Cornische replied.
He was right; their priorities now were to help Naj and complete the mission. In that order.
It seemed to take an age for the inner door to open, though in truth it was only a matter of seconds. Their EVA suits were comparatively light and flexible, so not much of an encumbrance, but they shucked them anyway, not wanting to risk their being damaged in what was essentially hostile territory despite whatever Geminum might have achieved. Leesa then led the way at a run, Jen at her heels.
The corridor was dark, power evidently down, so Jen activated her suits torch, low illumination – just enough to stop her from cannoning into a bulkhead or tripping over some low-level obstruction. Leesa, she knew, would have no such worries.
Leesa stopped abruptly. “Kill the light,” she whispered. “There’s someone coming.”
Jen did so without hesitation, knowing Leesa’s augmented senses were far keener than hers. She felt a familiar excitement welling up inside her. “Show me the way,” she whispered in turn. “I’m in the mood.”
They continued, a little more cautiously in the pitch dark, and soon Jen could make out the glow of a torch, wavering in intensity as if it were a hand-held or suit-mounted device in motion.
Ahead, dimly outlined in the erratic glow, she could make out a bulkhead, where the corridor they were travelling ended, intersecting another. The light seemed to emanate from around the corner to their right. Voices, too, so more than one and, whoever they were – presumably Night Hammers – they felt secure; and why wouldn’t they? This was their ship, after all. If the systems were as crippled as they seemed to be, there would be nothing to warn the crew that they’d been boarded.
Close now. The intersection was almost upon them, and the voices were distinct enough to make out individual words – an ongoing moan about some officer or other. Jen gripped Leesa’s shoulder and pointed insistently towards the left hand corridor, then tapped her own chest and indicated the ri
ght.
Leesa nodded her understanding: she would continue to ops to help Naj and Mosi, leaving Jen to catch up once she’d dealt with things here.
Jen stepped into shadow. Normally when she crossed, the world became a few shades duller, her senses blunted by the shift, but under these circumstances, crossing in darkness, sight at least was enhanced: she could see.
Hugging the nearest wall, she slipped around the corner, aware of Leesa starting out in the opposite direction. There were two of them, both men, ambling along the corridor without a care in the world.
“Hey!” one of them called out, clearly alarmed, having caught sight of Leesa in his torchlight. “Who the hell are y…?”
Jen was upon him before he could finish the final word.
She came off the wall, crossing back into physical reality with knives drawn. The thrill of combat coursed through her veins, powering her muscles as she plunged both point-first into the man who had spoken, giving him no chance to react.
Night Hammer uniform, she had time to note with satisfaction as she drew the uniquely constituted blades across and out, ripping flesh and material alike, leaving her first target to collapse to the deck.
No slouch, this second one. He had leapt back, buying himself precious seconds to assess and react. His own knife was out, held with practised confidence in his right hand.
A fixed blade – longer than hers, so giving him greater reach – with smart handle to accommodate the user’s grip, a quillon to protect the hand holding it, and, she knew from experience, a wickedly sharp edge. A combat knife, standard Night Hammer issue; a professional’s weapon but a toy when compared to the two she wielded.
She wasn’t about to underestimate him, though, and closed warily. As she did so, a small 3D image appeared, to hover over his right arm. He’d activated his tattoogram, summoning the image of Mjölnir – ancient Thor’s mallet – the badge of the Night Hammers, which was implanted subdermally in the arm of every successful recruit when they joined the regiment. A tried and trusted tactic, meant to distract and spread fear due to the Hammers’ reputation. Big mistake. She laughed, tightening the flexor muscle in her own right forearm, causing an identical projection to rise and hover above it.
“Snap!” she said. And struck.
To his credit, he recovered swiftly from what must have been a shock, parrying her thrust, blade on blade, and leaping backwards. A sudden memory distracted her for an instant – another one-to-one knife fight with an assassin who had just blown up the cosy farmhouse she’s called home back when this all started. Had he been Night Hammer too?
The slight pause gave her opponent a fraction of a second to reassess, and he must have realised that his helmet light made him a target. So he switched it off.
Jen could appreciate the logic; they were both in the dark now, which ought to make for a level playing field. Not his fault that in this instance the opposite was true. She felt a moment of pity tinged with a vague sense of disappointment, having relished the prospect of a proper contest. It seemed a shame. Almost.
She slipped into shadow, immediately seeing the Night Hammer in stark relief. He remained in a fighter’s crouch, facing where she had just been, right hand holding his knife before him, left arm raised in defence; presumably he was straining to hear the faintest noise that might give her away.
She didn’t make one, instead stepping out of shadow at the last possible instant, her knives already in motion. She struck with both blades simultaneously. Night Hammer uniforms were designed to provide a degree of protection to the throat and neck region, particularly at the base of the skull. Whilst her blades were more than capable of breaching that, she opted to play the percentages, aware that once she reverted to physical form she’d be blind. Her initial aim, therefore, had to be true. A slight movement of his head could have caused a neck shot to miss by a fraction, skidding off the protective collar or merely inflicting a shallow flesh wound. The kidneys were more vulnerable and offered a more certain target.
Jen didn’t miss. One blade sliced into the man’s wrist, killing nerves and severing tendons, sending his own weapon clattering to the deck, whilst the other plunged into his side, sliding between ribs to puncture a kidney. She felt him stiffen, and then sag.
There was nothing kind in the way she pulled the knife out – this was a Night Hammer, who doubtless deserved all he was getting. She left him dying in a pool of his own blood, diving back into shadow and racing in pursuit of Leesa. Geminum needed them.
Leesa hurried towards ops, ignoring the call of “Hey!” from behind her. After sparing a glance to confirm there were only two in the party she dismissed them from her thoughts, confident that Shadow could handle them.
If anyone else lay in wait between here and ops, well… more fool them. As she went, Hel N’s suit flowed upwards to cover her.
Leesa’s aug enabled her to move swiftly, picking up on tiny amounts of illumination from winking alarms, dulled warning lights and digital displays wherever they were to be found.
The sounds of combat from behind dogged her progress at first, but otherwise she might have been moving through a ghost ship. No other sounds, no signs of life.
That changed as she drew closer to what could only be ops.
Voices. Echoing down the deserted corridor, the individual words were impossible to distinguish, even for her, but the tone made it apparent that someone was barking out orders, and Leesa could well imagine who they related to. She quickened her pace, as a low glow of illumination appeared ahead, drawing her on.
She burst into ops – there was no time for subtlety – her sudden appearance clearly taking those present by surprise. Slack; I thought these people were supposed to be professionals… Three Night Hammers, a fourth crumpled on the deck unmoving.
To her left, close by the command chair occupied by a woman of indeterminate age – presumably the ship’s captain or a senior officer – stood a column of amber light, stretching from deck to ceiling. Not incandescent, not even bright, but clearly defined all the same. Trapped within its glow was a figure: Naj.
Somehow they must have caught her in the middle of a phase shift, leaving her stranded neither here nor there, frozen in place like a specimen pinned to a board.
All of this Leesa noted in an instant, while momentum carried her into the room. The man nearest her– who might have been security – reacted first, attempting to draw a weapon. What type of gun would they risk here, in ops, she wondered. Not that it mattered. She changed direction slightly and was on him before he could bring the gun to bear.
One hand clutched his arm, making sure the weapon stayed out of play, while with the other she punched him in the throat. There was protection here, but not enough. She felt the shielding buckle and her fist continued, crushing his windpipe. The gun she snatched from his hand, tossing it away even as she flung him against the nearest bulkhead.
Shadow must have arrived during the scuffle. “I’ve got the captain,” she heard Jen call. “You take care of the woman.”
Leesa looked up to see Jen confronting the older man who stood behind the command chair. So that was the captain rather than the woman; not that it mattered. He held one arm a little awkwardly, and Leesa guessed that Shadow had already marked him with her blades. He wasn’t backing down, though, brandishing a knife in his good hand as he squared up to Jen, who was grinning in a way Leesa knew all too well.
She switched her attention to the female officer, who had risen from the chair and was stepping towards her. She clutched something in her left hand, an object that resembled an elaborate knuckle duster – shaped to fit across each of four fingers but with a flat matt top.
She levelled the device, pointing it at Leesa. An unseen fist slammed into Leesa’s chest, hurling her backwards to crash into the bulkhead. She slid down to the deck and sat there for a moment, winded. It was like being hit by Ramrod. A repellor field, she realised, similar to the one housed in Drake’s cane, a
nd it kicked like a mule.
The Night Hammer hit her with the repellor again, crushing her against the bulkhead, and it hurt. Even with the resilience of her auganic nature and the protection afforded by being Hel N, she could feel the aching pressure of the blow bruising her chest, compressing her organs. A stark reminder if any were needed that she wasn’t invulnerable. Hard to kill, yes, but not impossible.
Bracing her back against the bulkhead, Leesa struggled to her feet, glaring at the Night Hammer. At the same time, she felt something, an irritation at the back of her mind, an itch that wasn’t physical but which stirred memories she never expected to revisit.
Then she saw it – the silvery crescent of an implant behind the Night Hammer’s left ear. She’s augmented, Leesa realised. She reached out through her own aug, seeing surprise on the woman’s face as she sensed the contact. Leesa had her measure at once; not auganic, this was far cruder and more basic – an attempt to emulate auganic enhancement without sufficient skill or knowledge to duplicate the procedure.
It was enough, though, to provide a way in.
Leesa tightened her mental grip, and twisted.
The woman screamed. She staggered backwards, both hands rising to clutch her own skull as Leesa continued to exert pressure. She collapsed onto her knees, her eyes screwed shut.
Leesa strode forward to stand in front of the stricken woman, and promptly punched her in the face.
“Thank goodness for that,” Jen said as the woman toppled over. “Her screaming was really starting to piss me off.”
Jen still had both blades out. She stood over the fallen figure of the Night Hammer captain, who wasn’t breathing as far as Leesa could tell. At the same moment, the column of amber light winked out, allowing the slight form of Geminum to collapse to the deck.
Leesa stared, fascinated. Even when the Angels were together the first time around she had rarely seen Naj in person – twice, by her recollection, and no more than fleeting glimpses on either occasion – it was always Mosi.
Jen was across almost before Naj hit the floor, crouching down to tend to her. The contrast between the blood lust that came over Jen in combat and the tenderness, the compassion, that was her natural default the rest of the time never ceased to amaze Leesa.