The deck beneath Kitzov’s feet was shaking. The communicator lit up and gave him some light. He crawled inside the elevator shaft. He knew his way around this facility blindfolded. He had a ship docked on the secondary landing platform. The Silence could not power up without his access codes. He had a way out.
With gravity failing again as all power systems went down, Kitzov moved along the corridor, half-crawling and half-flying along the corridor toward his ship. He opened a channel to the flight deck. A crew was in place.
“Ready the ship. Final power codes will be unlocked the moment I am aboard.”
Confirmation from his crew came back. It gave Kitzov hope. He looked up through a panel of clear composite and saw the Skarak ship high above pouring fire into the shipyard, tearing it apart. A drydock was erupting in fire. A pair of raiders were moving in on the Skarak rear. They fired their hail cannon, blasting huge gouts of kinetic hail into the warship. The hail flickered over the Skarak hull but caused no discernible damage. Then the Skarak ship returned fire and struck the raiders, leaving them unpowered and adrift, blue crackle fire flickering over their hulls.
The landing platform was only a few moments away. Kitzov moved faster, his muscles burning as he powered himself along.
The open boarding ramp of the Silence was the best thing Kitzov had seen in days. He saw the Skarak ship moving freely about the shipyard, blasting away. The shipyard was crumbling. Some parts had broken off and were drifting, spewing debris and Faction bodies into space.
Kitzov made it to the ramp. He felt the gravity of the Silence’s deck plates kick in. He stood up on the ramp and delivered the final power codes to the computer.
“Survivors, heading this way,” a controller said from the flight deck.
Kitzov could see a small group heading toward the Silence. He hesitated. If he could save a few, he would bolster his followers here on the Silence. Grateful survivors were a huge bonus to any leader.
Then Kitzov saw someone familiar. The way he moved even in the zero-gravity environment of the unpowered shipyard was familiar. It was Bellini, along with a few troopers, some engineering staff, and a few random civilians.
Kitzov opened a channel to the flight deck.
“It’s too late for them.” He closed the boarding ramp. “Take off now.”
“But, sir—” the reply came.
“Listen, I know you want to help. It does you credit. The Faction needs people like you, but we will all die. The Faction needs living heroes more than dead ones. Take off now.”
As the ramp closed, Kitzov saw the faces of the group. Their hope turned to dread and despair, but Bellini fixed Kitzov with a cold stare before turning and heading back into the shuddering, exploding shipyard.
Kitzov walked into the Silence and marched into the flight deck. He climbed up into the command chair and looked at the image on the central holostage. The image of the shipyard in ruins was distressing, seeing the symbol of all he had built fall apart. The single Skarak warship just sat in the destruction, firing into the structures and tearing it apart piece by piece.
“Take us away from here,” Kitzov said. He set a course through the asteroids of the Sphere. “Use the asteroids as cover and put as much distance between us and that Skarak ship as possible. How are you holding up, pilot?” Kitzov looked down at the pilot. He was new, and he was young.
“Good, sir.”
“Your name?”
“They call me Fiver, sir. Samuel Torent the fifth. Named after my daddy and his daddy and so on all the way back to the original settlement of the system.”
“Well, Fiver, if you want there to be a sixth, you’d better get us out of here.” Kitzov leaned forward and looked at the shipyard on the holostage. She was on fire, erupting all over its structures. He had built it. He would build it again.
3
Bellini turned and moved back into the corridors. A breeze was blowing, gently now but Bellini knew it was the air rushing out of the shipyard. Soon it would be a hurricane, and he would be blown out into the void with it.
Bellini propelled himself forward. He collided with people rushing the opposite direction. The entire shipyard was in chaos. He heard the distant rumble of an explosion just before the corridor around him shook. It lit up briefly as a power conduit nearby erupted. A bare power transfer conduit was exposed and still glowed with a fierce blue light showing him the way. The glow faded, leaving Bellini in darkness.
He stopped at the door. It was sealed. As the light died away, he felt in his boot for his electron blade. He hadn’t planned on going into knucks with Kitzov unarmed. Bellini would have only pulled the blade if Kitzov had been armed too. Somehow Bellini knew not to trust Kitzov to play it straight. Knucks meant nothing to Kitzov. It was old pirate tradition, something Kitzov didn’t understand. Bellini fired it up and the glowing blade gave him just enough light to show him the way forward.
Bellini scrambled along in the dark. As he passed a clear composite panel in the corridor looking out over the shipyard, he could see drive flares racing away toward the Sphere. The Skarak ship was out of sight, but Bellini could see the flickering of its blue crackle fire beam as it punched into the shipyard structure again and again.
A roar from further ahead came toward Bellini—a dozen people or more running. A flickering of light along the corridor showed Bellini that some of those running had flashlights that flickered haphazardly as they moved.
Then he saw the blue flickers of Skarak weaponry—not the main weapon of the warship but a personnel weapon. Skarak soldiers were in the shipyard, moving through the broken structures, killing and capturing.
The crowd came close enough for Bellini to see but just between him and the on-rushing crowd was a side door to a secondary cargo access—a maintenance dock. Bellini fired up his blade and jammed it into the locking pins at the side of the door. As Bellini pulled the door aside, he felt the wind increase. Screams were snatched away in the darkness as people were blown along the corridor and out into space.
Bellini saw an ancient tug parked at the dock. It was a battered old junker, and Bellini had no way of knowing if it was even functioning. He slid the small dock door shut as a crowd raced by. One trooper pushed his way through the door as Bellini was sliding it shut.
“Hold the door shut,” Bellini said to the trooper. He held the blade between them, partly so the trooper could see Bellini’s face, partly to show the trooper he was armed.
Bellini stepped over to the junker. It looked too battered. He stalked up the open boarding ramp into the small hold, a space big enough for a single cargo container. The sides of the hold had basic seating for half a dozen passengers. The front of the junker was an open flight deck with two seats. Bellini dropped into the pilot’s seat. It had been a while since he had taken the controls.
He attempted to activate main power, but the primary power shunt was not responding. A small secondary system light was active, telling Bellini there was some activity in the tug’s old reactor.
The main shunt housing was outside under the drive assembly at the rear of the tug. Bellini stepped out of the tug to fix the shunt. He only needed thrusters to get out of the shipyard. Once in the asteroids, he could escape on a single thruster.
The trooper at the door had pulled it open and was standing in the opening, waving to someone out in the dark. Before Bellini could remind him to keep the door shut, another trooper and a young raider pilot came running through the open door. Bellini recognized the pilot instantly. Perov had been his pilot on his old ship. The wind grew stronger as the air was blown out of the open door.
“Perov, shut that door!” Bellini shouted in the roaring wind.
Perov nodded. The wind died down as the door slid shut again.
“There is a group of civilians outside,” Perov shouted back.
“Call them here,” one of the troopers said.
“No!” Bellini walked over to the door. “No more. Keep that door and your mouths shut.” He p
ointed at Perov. “You, come and help me with this shunt panel.”
A trooper stepped up to Bellini. “We have a way out. We must take as many survivors as we can. I am going to open that door and let them in.”
Bellini stepped forward. He thrust the electron blade into the trooper’s throat. Blood erupted and sprayed over Bellini’s face, giving him that familiar metal taste of blood on his tongue, the sting in his eyes, the tang in his nostrils.
Bellini wiped the blood from his face and stepped over the fallen trooper, who was writhing on the deck and clutching his sliced throat.
Bellini waved Perov over. “Let’s get this old junker in the air.” He pointed at the remaining trooper. “You keep that door shut. Got me?”
The trooper nodded and turned to the door, holding it shut.
Bellini turned and stepped over the now-still trooper into the sticky pool of blood. A few steps over the cargo area and he was at the tug’s drive assembly. With Perov’s help, he had the panel off the side of the ship in a moment. The shunt was old and battered, but after a few moments’ attention, Bellini was sure he had it realigned, at least for now.
“I haven’t seen anyone else from the old crew, Captain,” Perov said.
Bellini shrugged. It made no difference to him if his crew survived. Perov was a great pilot and it was good to have him around, but Bellini wouldn’t worry if he never saw him again. He stepped inside the tug and pushed Perov toward the pilot seat. Perov activated the power systems.
“Just enough to escape.”
The shipyard shuddered. The attacks were getting closer. Bellini called out to the trooper, “Now, let’s go!”
The trooper rushed up into the tug, stepping through the pool of blood around the dead man. Before he reached the ramp, the grav plating failed. His feet came up off the floor and panic spread over his face. He drifted the last few meters into the tug.
Bellini closed the door as the dead man rose off the deck, his blood drifting around him. He turned his back on the gruesome scene and went to the cockpit. Perov was already maneuvering the tug as the trooper dropped into the copilot’s seat.
“You can fly, trooper?” Bellini asked leaning over the back of the copilot chair.
“I flew freighters for a few years after college,” the trooper said.
“College?” Bellini said. “An academic. Okay, professor, try and get that docking bay door open.”
Perov rotated the tug on its thrusters. The trooper accessed docking bay controls from the flight console. He was beginning to look flustered.
“Doors,” Bellini said with increasing irritation.
The young trooper threw his hands in the air. “Outer doors are not responding.”
“This tug should have a grapple beam, right?” Bellini said.
“Yes, sir.” The trooper found the system.
“So, grab hold of the doors,” Bellini said.
Perov moved the tug forward so it was almost touching the outer doors.
“Grapple beam active,” the trooper said. “I’ve locked on to the doors, I think.”
“Let’s hope so, professor,” Bellini said.
Perov reversed the tug. The grapple beam was indeed gripping the doors and as the tug reversed, the doors buckled inward.
“Okay, reverse the beam. Let’s give the doors a punch in the face.”
The trooper was working well, and Bellini saw him reset the grapple beam. Perov threw the tug forward. The doors buckled outward and ripped away from the housing on one side.
“Now grab again,” Bellini said.
The trooper worked fast. “Got it.”
The tug reversed. The door pulled away, shards of splintered composite dancing in zero gravity before being blown out into space.
Perov again threw the tug forward and burst through the door, sending it tumbling away between the broken remains.
The Skarak warship was overhead and only five hundred meters away. It was blasting blue crackle fire into the shipyard even as it broke apart. A reactor exploded, lighting up the scene of destruction with a bright orange flash.
Perov turned the tug and set off between the broken pieces of shipyard. Space was filled with spinning debris and frozen bodies.
“Set a course into the asteroids,” Bellini said. “We stay in the Sphere for now. Find us a safe berth somewhere, a nice quiet Faction settlement.”
“Got one,” the young trooper said. “Not far. We should make it before the tug runs out of power.”
Bellini didn’t care. He wouldn’t live wondering if his power supply would get him here or there, he was alive now. He didn’t care about what had just happened, that he had just escaped with his life. He didn’t care that he had been a few punches away from being leader of the entire Faction. He only cared about right now. It was how he had stayed alive for so long.
Major Featherstone, commander of the Resolute’s Blue Star Marines, held his pulse rifle across his chest and deactivated the electron bayonet. He stepped over the dead body of a Skarak soldier and looked at the bodies of Union civilians strapped to the Skarak experimental devices. Some were too far gone for help. Others were strapped down, but they struggled, growling and gurgling wildly. Skarak probes were wired into their brains.
The Union Tactical Intelligence Division wanted every captured Skarak location secured and then handed over to them. Featherstone wondered if the torture these poor wretches had suffered so far under the Skarak would be the last or the worst of it. Who knew what intel had lined up for these unfortunate people. Intel just wanted to better understand what the Skarak were trying to do with these people. What was their plan for the Scorpio System? Featherstone thought these people had already suffered enough. It would be kinder just to kill them all.
“Fifteen dead Skarak soldiers, sir,” a young corporal said.
“And our losses?”
“One wounded, sir. It’s Markey.” The corporal pointed to the wounded Marine. “He took a blast to the knee.”
“The Skarak bastard was already dead,” Markey shouted over as he was lifted by two fellow Blue Stars, each taking an arm over their shoulder. “The blue crackle weapon went off as the Skarak fell.”
Doc Cronin was examining Markey’s knee and attaching a med-pack.
“How is he, Doc?” Featherstone said.
“Give him to me for a week and we’ll have him patched up and leading the charge again.”
“You could just give me a few months of leave, sir,” Markey said with a cheeky grin. “Save me cluttering up the Doc’s med-bay.”
Featherstone looked at the dead Skarak soldier at his feet. “A day on the Resolute is better than two days on leave, right, Markey?”
The wounded Blue Star nodded and saluted the major with a smile.
“Get him back to the Resolute, Doc. Do what you can for him.” Featherstone stared at the scaly hide of the Skarak soldier. What did they want? He looked at the bodies on the benches all reclined at forty-five-degree angles. What did they want with these people? What did they want with the Scorpio System?
Featherstone’s communicator sounded. He held his hand in front of him and looked at the small image on his wrist-mounted holo-stage.
Sergeant Dorik was calling from the Resolute.
“You wanted a warning when tactical intel were inbound, sir. One frigate and a flight of Blades are approaching now.”
Featherstone considered detonating a plasma bomb in the chamber he had just liberated and incinerating all these people the Skarak had been experimenting on. He had no doubts every one of them would thank him for ending their torment. He turned on his heel and walked away from the chamber—the cargo hold of a Faction civilian transport half-buried in the side of an asteroid.
“Assault team returning to the Resolute. Featherstone out.”
“Copy that, sir.” Dorik closed the channel and stepped down from the command chair, moving to the operations console. He set the Marine deck’s outer doors to open with a deflection shield co
vering the opening, strong enough to hold in the atmosphere but calibrated perfectly to let the returning major and his assault team back into the ship.
Dorik walked around the quiet command deck. Only communications and surveillance operator, Yanic Knole, was present. He was looking at Dorik.
“We shouldn’t let the major take the lead on so many live assaults, sarge,” Knole said.
“He is the commander of this company. He is a front-line officer. He can pick himself for every assault if he likes.”
“But he’s a major. Shouldn’t he be back on Terra, sitting behind a desk, or at least on one of the carriers?”
“He’s a front-line leader through and through.” Dorik walked over to Knole’s console. “They’ll put him in charge of the entire Blue Star Battalion when he’s ready to give up front-line duties.” Dorik looked over Knole’s shoulder. “But I wouldn’t want to be the officer to have to tell the major to give up those duties. What’s this you are working on?”
Knole shifted uncomfortably. “Don’t tell the major. I only use the ship systems when I’m not interfering with operation. I’m just trying out a few classic Curveball defenses against more modern attack patterns.”
Dorik looked at Knole, a little confused. “What?”
Knole threw a simulation to the console’s desk top holo-stage.
“I’ve taken a classic Ravens’ defense from the first days of the new league system. I’ve input the stats for modern players and run the defense against last season’s best attacks from the current squad. Look, the old defense holds up better than the modern deep-wing, three-quarter setup.”
Dorik looked at Knole and shook his head. “Not that,” Dorik said. “Not your Curveball obsession.” He pointed at a secondary display showing some communication frequency data. “That. I meant what are you working on there?”
“Oh, that,” Knole said. He canceled the Curveball simulation. “I found a signal. I think it is Skarak.”
Dorik rolled his eyes. “There are Skarak signals popping up everywhere. Hundreds of hidden Skarak locations. It could be one of those. Turn it over to intel.”
Blue Star Marine Boxed Set Page 51