Maelstrom Strand

by Rick Partlow

  The mouth of the Run was there, just a few hundred meters away, but incoming lasers and missiles were cutting down machines on either side of him, three more of the mercenary scout mecha falling in the space of three steps. The Starkad armor was close, less than a kilometer and closing. Valentine Kurtz turned with his Golem’s back to the wall of the canyon entrance and staggered as a Starkad warhead tore the left arm off of his mech in a fireball and a shower of sparks.

  Logan’s mouth was half-open in a belated warning, a cry of empathic pain, but on his sensor screens he saw the enemy crossing an imaginary phase line projected across the plain, a point of no return.

  “Wholesale Slaughter Reserves!” he yelled into his helmet pickup, as if the added volume could make it happen faster. “Engage now!”

  They surged out of the canyon almost ahead of his order, hundreds of tons of heavy metal slamming two-meter footpads into the sandstone with the rhythmic percussion of a Lambeg drum. The Scorpions led them in a solid center core, their ostrich-bent legs throwing up huge clouds of dust and sand, with towering Nomads at their flanks. Behind the cover of the lead rows of strike mecha were Arbalests, a full platoon of them, launch ports open.

  Missiles streaked out across the early evening sky, pale white tracks against a blue so deep it was almost purple, one flight after another as the Arbalests emptied their magazines. He had no ammo wagons to reload them, no time or cover to protect the crews even if he’d found the vehicles at the Starkad outpost and bothered to load them onto the stolen drop-ships. He wondered if there was ever time in a real battle, or if some writer of official doctrine had just assumed there would be.

  “Alpha and Bravo,” he transmitted, “fall in to the flanks and force them into the killing ground.”

  What was left of the two companies moved to comply, even Kurtz, stumbling along in his one-armed Golem, struggling to keep the unbalanced machine upright. The center of their lines exploded with the lightning-strikes of laser bursts, crackling plasma blasts and ETC cannon rounds, hammering into the Starkad forces still charging into the teeth of the ambush, while the missiles arced downward near the rear, catching the ones who tried to turn back.

  Enemy assault mecha soared into the sky, trying to escape the inferno and he leapt to meet them, trailed by the survivors of Alpha and Bravo. They were battered and bruised, their armor scorched and pockmarked, but they threw themselves into the fight with abandon, heedless of their own survival, and he’d never been prouder of any force under his command.

  But it wasn’t going to be enough. Even as he blasted a Starkad Golem out of the sky with the Vindicator’s plasma gun, he could sense the data pouring in from the periphery. A dozen Starkad mecha were burning wrecks at the center of the field, more of them strung out along the center of the valley, but not enough. Not enough of them had committed to the charge, not enough had been taken out by the missile strike. And the enemy Arbalests were finally shuffling into line at the edge of the landing zone, ready to send their own strike downrange into his massed strike mecha.

  Should I order them to break contact? Try to retreat back into the Run and save what I can? Will it matter in the long run?

  No. The missiles from the Arbalests would savage them during a retreat, and he’d lose most of the strike mecha anyway. He made his decision, and felt the weight coming off his shoulders.

  Death is lighter than a feather. Duty is heavier than a mountain.

  “Arbalests fall back. The rest of you, close with the enemy, stay too close to let them launch missiles!

  He landed amidst the foe, only meters from a Starkad scout mech and lashed out at it with his articulated fist, smashing its left arm to scrap metal, throwing it onto its back and then savagely stomping downward. Metal crunched beneath metal.

  “Wholesale Slaughter, forward!”

  24

  Whatever the hell you’re going to do, you’d better do it right now!”

  Tara wouldn’t have made a good captain, Francesca Hayden decided. The woman’s voice carried through the whole ship’s PA speakers, cutting through the commotion and confusion of the Shakak’s engine room like a Viking horn in a foggy harbor, which she supposed was a good thing for a ship’s commander. But the desperation and fear were plain in the words, and that didn’t seem like something you’d want the crew to know in a situation like this. It certainly wasn’t making her feel any more at ease, though it didn’t seem to affect Terrin at all.

  “Are you sure this is going to work?” she asked, not looking up from the portable computer terminal she’d brought with her from the auxiliary bridge.

  “Hold that damn light steady, Kenny!” Chief Shaw snapped at the enlisted spacer anchored to the deck behind them with magnetic ship boots.

  “Sorry, Chief,” Kenny said, trying to wipe sweat off his forehead with one hand and hold the portable work lamp with the other. “It’s hot in here with the ventilators down.”

  “Well, it’s gonna get a lot hotter if the fucking Starkad Marines burn through the fucking hull and start shooting us, boy!”

  They’d actually be pretty cold, she thought, but didn’t bother saying. She was having enough trouble concentrating on the improvised power routing program she was writing while Chief Shaw and Terrin worked at the bypass.

  “No, I’m not sure it’s going to work,” Terrin said, finally answering her question, his voice muffled, buried half inside the access panel to the main power conduit. “But it’s the only chance we have to get the drive working again before those boarding craft reach us.” Chief Shaw was unspooling superconductive cable from a coil the size of a truck tire, handing it through up to Terrin, who was…doing something with it. She was a computer tech and this hands-on stuff wasn’t her area of expertise. “The drive still works…a few laser hits aren’t going to take out something made of exotic matter with a neutronium shield. It’s just the connections we made to the fusion reactor back when we put this thing together at Terminus that gave out. They couldn’t stand the feedback.”

  “Neither could the fucking power systems,” added Chief Shaw. “But the reactor didn’t flush. It’s still running, just not putting all that energy out anywhere.”

  Shaw seemed almost happy to have something to keep him busy, no matter how dire the circumstances. The engineering section of the Shakak had given the traditional engineer little to do over the last few months besides checking and rechecking power connections and bugging Franny to put more learning annexes on the ship’s continuing education systems about exotic matter drive systems.

  Yeah, I’ll just write those up in my spare time.

  As if she understood it any more than he did. Even Terrin admitted to not understanding exactly how the system worked, though he certainly knew more than anyone else on the ship.

  “All available security troops to hangar bay immediately!” Tara ordered. “Anyone not in an area vital to repairing this ship, report to the armory and grab a weapon, then get to the hangar bay now!”

  Anyone conscious, she amended for the XO. Two of the engineering crew were still floating freely in a corner, one of them moaning softly and holding his head, the other unconscious, waiting for the medics to have someone, anyone free to come take them to the sick bay. Kammy was barely conscious himself, concussed and foggy and in no position to command the ship, which was why Tara was giving the orders and the big man was strapped into a hospital bed.

  What security do we have left? The Rangers are all down on Revelation. Do we have anyone else?

  It didn’t really matter. Starkad Marines would blow right through anyone they sent out to meet them short of the Rangers. It was all over if they didn’t get the drive field back up and…Damn it, I’m thinking too much, get back to work!

  If she didn’t get the software patch written, just hooking the power back up to the drive wouldn’t do anything but burn the whole system out again.

  “Okay, I got the main trunk connected,” Terrin said, wriggling out of the hole. “Chief, can you
re-route it to the other systems?”

  “Just let me at it, kid,” Shaw said, rolling up his sleeves and pushing past him, legs working as he squirmed into the tight access space behind the bulkhead.

  Terrin pushed away and floated behind her shoulder. She didn’t dare look up to meet his eyes, but she could smell the sweat and the stale odor of dust coming from his clothes and hair. His warmth radiated through his jumpsuit, stifling in the still, dead air of the engine room, adding to the heat of the portable light. Sweat dripped off her nose and onto the screen of the portable terminal and she wiped it away impatiently.

  “Just a couple minutes,” she promised him. “Just a couple more minutes.”

  “I love you, Franny,” he said softly into her ear, so quietly she didn’t know if anyone else could hear. “No matter what happens, I want you to know I love you.”

  “I love you too,” she whispered, but didn’t look up. Couldn’t look up. So close now, just a few dozen more lines of code…

  The lights snapped back on, and with them the ventilation, humming to life and washing across the runnels of sweat on her face with a blast of cold air. The engineering computer systems began rebooting, and she cursed, knowing she had even less time now. She had to get the patch running before they cycled through the drive power systems.

  “Got it!” Chief Shaw exulted, pushing back out of the maintenance crawlway and folding the panel down behind him. “Thank Mithra we got the damn life support back up.”

  “What about weapons?” Terrin asked him. “I know the main gun won’t work without the drive field, but what about auxiliary weapons? Point defense?”

  “Not yet,” Shaw admitted. “Not till the computer systems reboot.”

  “Damn it. Bridge,” Terrin called, his tone shifting. She assumed he was at the communications panel but couldn’t pause to check. “Bridge, this is Engineering, do you read?”

  “Yeah, I’m here,” Tara answered after a moment, her tone harried and near panic. “Tell me the drive is almost up, because now we have sensors back and there are four boarding pods full of Marines heading this way. We have about two minutes before they’re at the hangar bay.”

  “Not. Fucking. Helping.” Franny surprised herself with the profanity and she thought she saw Terrin glance at her sharply out of the corner of her eye.

  “It’s coming, Bridge,” he promised. “Just a couple minutes.”

  “There.” The word hissed out of Franny like the last sigh her mom had given when she’d pushed her sister out in the delivery room, and for much the same reason. She hit the execute key and the patch flowed down through the hardline she’d hooked into the computer console and into the boot-up process of the system. “That’s it.”

  She looked up at the auxiliary display set on the Engineering compartment’s bulkhead just over the main control panel, saw the view from the external cameras. The boarding pods were bare, silver cylinders with disposable solid-fuel boosters flaring at the rear, four separate rockets blending into one glowing exhaust at the rear. There was no perspective in the dark abyss, but she’d seen them back on Sparta in training classes. Each could hold over thirty troops. One hundred and twenty Marines against a few dozen spacers, most of whom hadn’t fired a gun except on the qualification range.

  Terrin and I may have the most experience in combat of anyone on the ship. The thought was absurd, and absurdly terrifying. She needed to get a gun.

  “System is rebooting,” Chief Shaw chanted like a mantra, as if the words would force it happen faster. “System is rebooting…”

  The boarding pods were so close now, so huge and slow and ever more intimidating than the ship-killer missiles had been.

  “It’s up!” someone shouted, one of the Engineering crew, not Shaw. “The system’s up!”

  Terrin was throwing himself across the room to the control board before Franny had the chance to move, cursing the response time on the touch-screens, balky as always just after a reboot. He traced lines from the power supply to the Alanson-McCleary stardrive in a familiar start-up pattern, the traces lighting up beneath his touch. Franny realized she was holding her breath and tried to force herself to relax.

  On the screen, one of the boarding pods fired a missile. It was small and slow-moving, creeping along only slightly ahead of the boat that had launched it. She’d seen those in her familiarization class on Sparta as well. They weren’t much, just a dozen kilograms or so of explosives, but enough to blow a hole through the hangar bay doors, and they didn’t fire them until they were only a kilometer away.

  She braced herself as if she’d be able to feel the blast here, deep in Engineering, squinting her eyes in anticipation…and then they were gone. Where the boarding pods had been, there was nothing but a thinly-spread glowing field of gas and debris and she collapsed to the deck with the sudden and unexpected return of the internal gravity field.

  Groans and cries of pain echoed through the compartment and probably throughout the ship, and Terrin was wiping blood from his nose as he pulled himself back to his feet, lunging desperately for the communications panel.

  “Tara, the drive is up!” he yelled hoarsely. “Get us out of here!”

  Franny yanked the leads out of the portable terminal and left it in place, following Terrin out of the compartment, knowing he was heading for the bridge. Technically, she should have headed back to the auxiliary control room, but she’d stared down death in the claustrophobic confines of the Engineering section and she felt a pressing need to see, to be present for the culmination of the battle. And, if the end came, to face it on her feet beside Terrin, not trapped alone, in the dark.

  Crewmembers were picking themselves off the deck all up and down the passageway and at the base of the ladders between decks, and she gave silent thanks to Mithra the Shakak was built along horizontal lines rather than vertical ones like a conventional starship. What would have happened to crew trying to make it up or down the central hub in microgravity when one gee cut back in didn’t bear consideration.

  The bridge seemed deserted, half the crew in the sick bay and Kammy’s command position empty. Tara hadn’t bothered to move from her station, whether because she hadn’t had time or maybe because she hadn’t felt comfortable sitting in his chair. She gave no orders, issued no warnings because she was flying the ship herself, having taken the Helm control from Bergh. Franny fell into the unoccupied Damage Control seat and fastened the harness just in case they lost gravity again, while Terrin took his normal position at Engineering.

  Franny was no expert on reading tactical displays, but she thought the Shakak was heading back toward Revelation and she bit down on what would have been her second profanity of the day. They hadn’t been able to take on the Starkad ships at full strength, so how the hell did Tara think they would be able to beat them now, battered, beaten and slapped back together?

  “Our power bypass is kind of jury-rigged, Commander,” Terrin said, as if he were reading Franny’s mind. “If we take another good hit, it’ll blow out even easier than the first one did.”

  “I figured,” Tara said, not taking her attention off the controls. “But they’re more spread out now, we can hit and run and take advantage of our range. We just have to take out one, that’s all. We take out one, I think they’ll call their forces back and turn tail. Even Starkad can’t afford to lose six cruisers in one fight.”

  It was a comforting thought, though Franny couldn’t have sworn how realistic Tara was being. The fact was, running wasn’t an option and they all knew it.

  “Oh, fuck me,” Tara murmured.

  Franny had been staring at the image of the enemy cruisers on the screen and she peered even harder at Tara’s softly hissed profanity, convinced they must have launched even more ship-killers, though where they could have stored that many of the huge missiles was a mystery. But she saw nothing other than the mountain-like Starkad ships hovering in high orbit, waiting for them.

  “What is it?” she asked, looking from a c
onfused Terrin to Tara. The older woman didn’t answer, her face slack with despair.

  “The other way,” Bergh explained, his voice dolorously resigned. He leaned over to Tara’s console and touched a control and half the main screen switched back to a view outward, toward the jump-points.

  Ships were popping into existence there, star cruisers, appearing one after another as if they’d never stop.

  “Mithra’s blood,” Franny said in quiet blasphemy. “How many of them are there?”

  “Too many, girl,” Tara told her, the hope draining from her voice. “Too damned many.”

  General Hoenig, Colonel Ruth Laurent noted, preferred to lead from the rear.

  It wasn’t a huge surprise. Men and women who led from the front usually didn’t live to win their star. Still, there was something of the nagging cynic she’d become in her observation that Eric Hoenig kept as far back toward the supply train as he could and still maintain control of the battle. She shared a mobile command center with the man, which was tight quarters given the general’s girth.

  Not that she would have called him fat. Lord Starkad prided himself on his physical fitness and would never have abided a fat general. But Hoenig had a torso the approximate breadth of an oil drum and a florid, round face, pockmarked from a youth spent on one of the rougher, frontier colony worlds where the best in modern medicine hadn’t included acne treatment. His hair was wavy and thick and streaked with grey, and she could smell the oily pomade he used to style it over the stale cologne unsuccessfully trying to mask his body odor.

  She tried not to let his personal grooming habits color her estimate of the man’s ability. Starkad wasn’t exactly a meritocracy, but it would be difficult for a man to claw his way to the top of the military heap here without showing courage and daring in battle. Not this battle though.