Sixteenth Watch

by Myke Cole

  Chief toggled the switch for the blue lights, and the crowd turned as the flashing strobe sent rays flickering across the structure’s wall.

  “Do we still need to…” Kariawasm began.

  “Set this boat down right now,” Oliver raised her voice, saw the crew wince as the speakers in their helmets relayed her impatience.

  Kariawasm wasn’t happy, but he was far too professional to let a stern order rattle him. He gave the attitude thrusters a nudge, just enough to pivot the longhorn sideways and send it drifting into the crowd. They fell back just as they had from Tom’s boat, desperate to keep clear of the thruster nozzles, as potentially deadly as the muzzle of the autocannon. All Coast Guard longhorns were outfitted with an LED readout that scrolled along the hull collar. Stock messages were preset by switches right below the blue lights, and Chief hit one now as he motioned to McGrath to open the hatch. The glowing red words scrolled across the cabin’s interior readout as they would appear moving along the outside of the craft. DISPERSE AND DEPART THE AREA OR WE WILL FIRE ON YOU – AUTH 14 USC 89.

  McGrath was the first out, leveling a long gun. It was a duster, one of the big bore shotguns they used for boarding actions. They were meant to fire dust, a cloud of metal particles that would easily shred a human at close range, even through a hardshell, but would disperse too quickly to pierce a ship’s thicker hull, exposing the boarding team to the vacuum of space. McGrath had likely loaded it with plastic frangible slugs, enough to put someone in a hardshell out of the fight without compromising the suit’s integrity.

  The crowd scattered as he raised the weapon. Oliver snatched one of the beanbag pistols from the arms rack above the seat and followed him out. She checked the boat’s collar to ensure that the LED was scrolling correctly, and once she’d confirmed that it was, began making vigorous get-the-fuck-out-of-here motions with her hand to make sure the point was getting across.

  There must have been at least thirty miners around her, and she was momentarily painfully aware of how surrounded her small team was. She was reassured by the autocannon on its hardpoint, swiveling to track the crowd as Kariawasm worked the controls.

  “Don’t!” Chief’s voice sounded in their commlinks, and Oliver turned, realized that he was shouting at the two on the roof, forgetting that they couldn’t hear him in his excitement. Oliver looked up to see the woman lifting another chunk of debris just before Chief’s plastic round caught her in the face. The bullet exploded, lifting her off her feet in the lunar gravity and sending her onto her back on the far side of the roof.

  “Shit,” Chief said.

  “I got it,” Oliver said, “just make sure the ones down here steer clear.”

  She ran to the utility ladder on the structure’s side and began hauling herself up it. The weak lunar gravity meant she weighed little more than a car battery on Earth, and she flew up the rungs, barely having to use her arms.

  “Sorry, skipper,” Flecha said, racing to climb up behind her, “can’t let you run this alone.”

  Oliver crested the ladder top and pointed her gun at the man, who was raising his hands and backing away. Once Oliver was on the roof, he began gesturing frantically at the woman. At this distance, Oliver was able to bridge directly to his radio. She looked at her helmet’s interior HUD and saw the blinking icon that indicated the man, chin-toggled to select it. “I’ll check on her. You will remain here until instructed otherwise. You will not move, and you will not interfere with myself or any of the other officers, do you understand?”

  “I’m American!” he shouted back to her in slightly accented English. “I’m not Chinese!”

  He unsmoked his faceplate and Oliver could make out his Asian features, his eyes wide and panicked. “I believe you, sir. Just follow my instructions and you’ll be fine.”

  “I have my passport!” the man shouted at her, but made no move to interfere.

  Oliver made her way to the woman, who was getting to her feet. Chief’s round had knocked off her radio antenna and her suit’s camera, but it hadn’t compromised her visor. She was fine.

  “She OK?” Flecha asked.

  “Suit’s damaged, but she’ll be fine.”

  Flecha scanned the Quick Response Code on the man’s suit and checked the readout in her helmet’s HUD. “They’re Americans.”

  “Chinese-Americans,” Oliver said. “I’m guessing that gang of idiots down there felt it was a distinction in search of a difference.”

  “Uh, ma’am,” McGrath’s voice crackled over the commlink.

  Oliver raced to the roof’s edge as McGrath spoke. “PLAN’s here.”

  The Chinese People’s Liberation Army Navy small boats looked nearly identical to Tom’s, save the antennae array and the aft mounted ball turrets, and of course, the huge red and yellow stars blazoned on their hulls, the numbers 8-1 written in Chinese below the anchor symbol.

  “Well, that’s not good,” Oliver muttered as the small boats touched down. One of them came alongside Tom’s vessel, running the skirmish line, and the Chinese miners moved forward to just outside the range of its attitude thrusters, emboldened by their own cavalry’s arrival. Two more set down just behind the crowd, and Oliver winced as they disgorged fire-teams of Chinese marines. They were armed with hornet guns, compensating for the recoil by firing tiny smart munitions at low velocity, which in turn would fire their own rockets after they’d exited the muzzle to bring them up to lethal speed.

  Hornet guns weren’t less-lethal munitions for crowd control. They were weapons of war.

  Oliver winced watching Tom’s small boat and the PLAN boat matching speed and direction, just meters apart, turrets swiveled to train their guns on one another. She swallowed a sudden desperate need to radio him. She didn’t want to risk breaking his concentration. She hoped to God it wouldn’t matter.

  “Skipper,” Flecha’s voice sounded unusually calm, which worried Oliver even more. “I may have two contacts off our starboard beam, two hundred yards out.”

  They weren’t on a boat, but Flecha communicated by instinct, using the nautical parlance all coasties knew by heart. Oliver turned to follow her directions, looking off to Flecha’s right, then using her chin to toggle the magnification lenses in her helmet. They slid down with a click audible inside the pressurized suit and dialed their focus in at two hundred yards.

  Oliver could see two figures scrambling over something long and low. They were wearing skintight suits, which likely marked them as Chinese, but Oliver couldn’t be certain. An American could buy a biosuit same as anyone else. She squinted in spite of the magnification, painfully aware that her focus was off the chaos around her, and stared at the figures. They were removing the cover from something long and gray, pulling it up onto… what looked like a…

  “All-hands,” Oliver worked to keep the panic out of her voice, “two contacts right, two hundred yards. Crew-served weapon. They’re finishing assembly. Ready to fire in thirty seconds.”

  “What?” Chief asked. “Sorry, skipper, where?”

  Oliver extended an arm, “Two hundred yards that way.”

  “Jesus,” she heard Kariawasm breathe as she used the small boat’s camera. “I see them. Yeah, that’s an anti-materiel gun.”

  “Is it the PLAN?” Chief asked.

  “Looks like civilians,” Oliver said, coming off magnification and scanning to make sure the rioters weren’t closing back in. They’d lost interest for the most part, joining the crowd on the skirmish line, waiting for the American and Chinese navies to start shooting at one another.

  “What the hell are civilians doing with a crew-served anti-materiel gun?” Kariawasm asked.

  Trying to start a shooting war, Oliver thought.

  She went back to the mag-lenses. The flared muzzle confirmed her estimate, it was an anti-materiel gun. It would cut through civilians in hardshells without losing velocity or even changing direction, but it was made for penetrating vehicle armor. As she watched, one of the gunners lifted a pair of bino
culars to their faceplate, and the other swiveled the weapon toward the skirmish line.

  It was too far to make it on foot, not in a hardshell. Quicker to use the longhorn.

  “All-hands!” Oliver was shouting now. “Back to the boat. Do it right now!” She toggled channels to the Aries. “Wen! Launch SAR-2 and get them down here right now! Call the Volans! Get them scrambled!”

  She didn’t bother with the ladder, leaping off the roof and relying on the weak gravity to soften the impact of her fall. She still landed hard enough to make her teeth click together, the silicon dioxide soil crunching under her boots with the same consistency as snow. She shook her head to clear it, ignored the groaning in her knees and bounded toward the small boat, deliberately pushing off in the lunar gravity and launching herself in long leaps toward the craft. She could hear the grunting breaths of her crew as they accidentally chin-toggled the radios in their struggle to keep up with her.

  A few miners didn’t move quickly enough and she lowered her shoulder to shove them out of the way. They would likely be launched some distance, but she couldn’t worry about that now. There was no time to get a private channel with each of them and warn them to disperse. She toggled to Tom’s channel as she reached the longhorn and hauled herself through the hatch. “Babe! There’s a big gun setting up off your stern! Two hundred yards out! I’m heading there now!”

  “Where?” Tom’s voice sounded calm, but perplexed. “I don’t see anything?” The turret on his small boat swiveled, tracking to his stern. The PLAN small boat alongside him jerked sharply away, misinterpreting his movements, but they didn’t fire. Yet. Jesus. This is way too close.

  She threw herself into her chair, grabbing the overhand handhold just as McGrath came in behind her, followed by Chief and Flecha. “Get us underway!” she called to Kariawasm. “All ahead full!”

  Her mind spun with possibilities. It could be a clandestine group sent by the Chinese disguised as civilians, or Americans bent on turning this standoff into a shooting match. She went back to the mag-lenses and saw the gunner drawing a bead, finger tensing along the upper receiver.

  They wouldn’t reach it in time.

  Tom was much closer. “Go for the Navy head-boat!” she ordered. “Shoulder it!”

  “Ma’am…” Kariawasm began. Oliver knew she should listen to her coxswain, but her head was ablaze with the knowledge that Tom was on that boat. She had to do something.

  Kariawasm fired the thrusters and wrenched the helm joysticks and the small boat lurched, miners scattering at the sudden movement. The bow rose briefly and it leapt, gliding smoothly toward the skirmish line, gathering speed. The crowd parted again, this time to admit the longhorn as it accelerated toward the Navy vessel.

  “Don’t worry, ma’am,” Chief said over a private channel, “we’ll get him.”

  He might have said more, but the channel was overridden by the coxswain of SAR-2. “Skipper, SAR-2 is on station. Put us where you want us.”

  She glanced at the plotter and saw that Kariawasm had already marked the gun crew’s position. Damn, but that man was good. Like Ho, he knew what she would want before she wanted it. “Grab the mark from our plotter and get on top of it!”

  “Roger that,” SAR-2 radioed back, “we’re on our way.”

  McGrath had punched up the gunnery computer, was manipulating the autocannon’s controls. Targeting data began scrolling across the plotter, feeding distance angle and hit probability.

  “Don’t,” Oliver said, “way too many civilians in the path.” The miners were dashing about, jostling one another now, trying to be as close as possible to both SAR-1 and Tom’s boat while simultaneously staying clear of the attitude thrusters of either.

  Why the hell isn’t that gun firing? She shot a nervous glance at the gun crew. Surely, they had a clear shot at Tom’s boat by now. SAR-1 were almost to him. They could shoulder the Navy boat out of the way, and then…

  “Ma’am,” Flecha said.

  “Throttle!” Oliver yelled to Kariawasm. She could almost feel the gun firing, the hair on the back of her neck prickling in anticipation. She had to get there first. “Pour it on!”

  “Ma’am!” Flecha was shouting now.

  But Oliver’s vision had shrunk to a gray tunnel, the world vanishing save the distance between her and Tom’s boat. “Shut the hell up and give me more throttle!”

  “Ma’am!” Flecha did not shut up. “Goddamnit we have another contact on our starboard side!”

  Oliver sawed her head to the right.

  The habs were whipping by, big domes dragged into a rounded blur. She caught a flash of something long and gray.

  A second gun crew. Setting up on a hab roof closer to the skirmish line. That’s why the first crew was waiting.

  She saw the gray line of the second crew’s gun swivel, shortening in length as its profile changed, dissolving into a point as it locked on its target.

  Her.

  There was a flash, and all directions changed places. Oliver had felt this sense of losing direction before, but only in zero-g, when the space elevator carrying her to the Aries had finally breached Earth’s atmosphere and she reached orbit. The freefall had left her disoriented, unsure of which way was up as her mind tried to reconcile the relative position of bulkheads, gear lockers and display panels. She felt it now. Only gravity was stronger if anything, as centrifugal force whipped her against the chair. We’re spinning. The round must have hit one of our thrusters.

  Which meant the shooter was very good.

  A jarring crash and Oliver lurched forward, her helmet banging off the back of the helmsman’s chair. The horizon suddenly stopped spinning, leveled. She could tell up from down again. There was a pounding on the cabin roof as if a giant were drumming on it, gradually tapering off to gentle patters. Debris, falling on them. They’d crashed into one of the habs.

  She took mental inventory of her own body, realized she was OK. “Is everyone all right?”

  Silence. Chief was stirring weakly, but he didn’t answer. Kariawasm was still. Oliver sawed her head to the left to try and see McGrath and Flecha and was rewarded by a view of the inside of her hardshell helmet. “Sound off!” she yelled into the commlink. No answer.

  She tried to move, realized that something in the cabin had shifted, pinning her to the back of the helmsman’s chair. She tried to turn her body, couldn’t. The only view was straight ahead, out through the cracked windscreen in front.

  “Tom!” she toggled channels, “Tom! We’re down, watch out for…”

  No sound. Not even static. No wonder her crew wasn’t answering her. The radio was dead.

  She winched her arms down to her sides, felt resistance as they came in contact with whatever was pinning her. She pressed, felt the resistance give, wedged her arms in and pushed. The resistance was strong initially, but she felt herself lean back first by inches, and then finally she was free in a rush as whatever was behind her gave way. She spun, saw that her chair had been crushed beneath the dented metal of the cabin roof, staved in by some of the hab debris, most likely.

  She was free and unharmed, she turned to check on her crew.

  And froze.

  Outside the starboard hatch, she could see the miners fleeing like fish in a pond when a stone is thrown, bursting out from a central point. That point was occupied by the PLAN boats and the US Navy boats. Two were flipped on their sides, hulls rent by autocannon fire. In the distance, she could see the Chinese marines bounding toward the action.

  Tom’s boat was frantically firing attitude thrusters, bouncing to making itself a harder target. Below it, the PLAN boat that had been holding alongside juked port and starboard, turrets swiveling to track her husband’s vessel.

  They were firing on each other.

  Tom.

  She raced to the hatch, yanked on the handle. It didn’t budge. The joint was frozen solid, as if handle and door were made of a single piece of metal. She strained to look out through the hatch window at
what might be jamming the handle, but between her helmet and the metal of the hatch door, she couldn’t make it out. She pulled harder, dimly aware of a whine rising in the back of her throat, knowing the pulling was useless, but powerless to stop herself.

  “Somebody help me!” she shouted into the commlink, then remembered the radio was dead. She turned back to her crew now, saw Chief was up, his arm around Kariawasm’s shoulders, shaking him. McGrath was up, too, his eyes wide and stunned behind his cracked faceplate. The emergency failsafe in his hardshell had fired, shrinkwrapping him so tightly that only a thin film of emergency oxygen inflated the plastic. Blood trickled from a shallow cut on his forehead. “Help me!” she shouted again, hoping he could read her lips.

  She turned back to the hatch and tried the handle again, but by then Tom’s boat was already spinning in the air, riddled with autocannon rounds. She could see the crew inside being flung like clothes inside a dryer, slamming into the cabin walls hard enough to shatter their hardshells.

  She was still screaming when one of the Chinese marines fired something shoulder mounted and her husband’s boat was ripped in two.

  CHAPTER 1

  “The top story tonight – military sports continue to dominate ratings for the twentieth straight week, with the Army’s World’s Best Ranger Competition capturing over 100 million viewers in the coveted prime time slot. Even bigger is this year’s Boarding Action, which pits space-based crews in a simulated boarding of a hostile vessel in zero-gravity. The highest rated civilian sport is still the American NFL, but it doesn’t even come close, with less than fifty percent of military sports’ audience share in that coveted 18-39 demographic. It truly looks like the new age of military training competitions as a civilian spectator sport is here to stay.”

  JENNIFER SALVATORE, MEDIA MIX

  “Now this,” Captain Jane Oliver said, gesturing through the hatch of the Defiant Class response boat, “is a really bad place to put your shotgun.”

  The students in the boat maintenance class crowded closer, squinting through the fluorescent overhead lights at the weapons clasps. Then they stood back, looking at her with blank expressions, nobody wanting to question the wisdom of such a high-ranking officer. The instructor was used to Oliver pausing in her daily rounds to take over the class, and had patiently stood aside, but he spoke now. “Ma’am, that’s the proper place for long guns. That’s why the clasps are there.”