The trooper turned around. “You’re Bellini, aren’t you, sir?”
Bellini jabbed the trooper hard in the back. “Watch the console, professor.”
The tug limped into the belt. Then the drive failed.
“We are running on momentum alone,” Perov said. “I don’t even have any thrusters.”
Bellini put an image of the settlement on the screen. It was a large collection of asteroids joined together, a network of gantries and walkways creating a small asteroid city with one large habitation asteroid in the heart.
“I hope we hit it,” Bellini said.
“At this speed, the impact will kill us.” Perov tried to activate some systems, any systems. “I can’t slow us down.”
“I think we bail out before then. Grab an environment suit, Perov.”
Perov was up and out of his seat. “Maybe we can use the suit’s grav field to slow us down a bit, or we are going to be splattered on the face of the main asteroid like a bug on a windshield.”
Bellini watched the rangefinder count down as the tug closed in on the settlement. With no surveillance of any kind, he couldn’t see where the tug would crash but knew it would happen soon.
Bellini stepped away from the flight deck. They were in freefall now, heading toward the settlement. He grabbed an environment suit off Perov and climbed into it.
“Three minutes to impact,” the trooper said. He climbed out of his seat.
Bellini and Perov looked at the young trooper through their environment suits.
“Where’s mine?” the trooper said.
Bellini shrugged.
“Looks like it’s turning out to be a bad day to be you,” Perov said and went to the boarding ramp controls.
The trooper ran to the storage cabinet and looked for a suit. He started throwing junk items around in his hopeless search. He came away from the cabinet and looked about hopeless. He started to panic, running this way and that.
Bellini shoved the trooper aside and stepped over to Perov at the boarding ramp.
“Open it,” Bellini said.
“No!” the trooper wailed, “I’ll get blown out!”
Perov hit the boarding ramp panel. The boarding ramp failed to open. Perov popped a side panel and began jacking it open by hand. Bellini stepped over and added his weight to the operation.
The boarding ramp opened a fraction and the atmosphere began to rush out. It threw the young trooper toward the gap, his cries of pain and panic ripped away in the howling wind. Then the wind stopped as the last of the air was blown out. The trooper gasped in the vacuum, grabbing at Bellini in a desperate plea for help.
Bellini shoved the trooper to the deck and pulled at the door. With the boarding ramp open a meter, Bellini pressed himself through and out onto the outer hull.
Bellini looked toward the settlement. Now that it was close enough to see with the naked eye, he could see a large ship docked with the main hangar that stood up out of the asteroid surface.
A Union cruiser.
“What the krav?” Perov said, his voice trailing off.
Bellini pressed his lips together. “I thought you said this was too small for Union interest.”
“It is. They shouldn’t be here.”
“You don’t say.” Bellini looked at the cruiser holding position just outside the main landing pad.
“Why haven’t they opened fire on us?” Perov asked.
“We’re unpowered,” Bellini suggested. “Must have avoided detection.”
The tug was on a direct heading to the tall control tower. With its engines cold, it was tumbling like a stone. Bellini jumped off the tug and activated his grav field, pushing himself away from the ship and slowing his speed.
Bellini saw Perov leap a moment later, but he was already far ahead of Bellini and would touch down first. If he didn’t slow down, the impact would kill him. At least there’d be no need for a funeral because he would be buried in the asteroid surface. No one would miss Perov—not even Bellini. He was a good pilot, but there were other pilots.
The tug collided with the tower just above the cruiser, and the explosion rocked the structure down to the asteroid. Bellini picked his landing point, just below the fracture point. He inverted the field and slowed his approach. Still falling at a deadly pace, he put all the suit’s power into slowing down. He saw Perov collide with the tower and bounce off, tumbling away into space. The suit was connected to Bellini’s and he could see Perov’s bio-readings fluctuating. He was unconscious, but falling away from the asteroid at a frightening pace. He would soon be lost amongst the asteroids. Unless a ship happened to come by, Perov would die out there, alone.
“Looks like it is turning out to be a bad day to be you, too,” Bellini said. Then he readied himself for a heavy landing.
The grav field acted at the range of tolerance as it slowed Bellini to a crippling fifty kilometers-per-hour rather than a deadly one hundred kilometers-per-hour. The tower came closer, and Bellini could see he was going to land near a broken bulkhead. Dust and gas were streaming out. A body clung on to the side of the bulkhead before being blown out into space. Bellini angled his field to place him in that stream of atmosphere.
His momentum slowed even more in the stream before it died away. The section containing the breach must have been sealed somewhere inside the tower and all the gas had been expelled. The suit slowed him to a gentle five kilometers-an-hour. He turned his body and touched down on the tower feet-first.
Inside the tower, Bellini picked a direction and set off. The nearest bulkhead was sealed to prevent further loss of atmosphere. Bellini opened the control panel. He found an override switch and cracked the door open.
The blast of air nearly blew Bellini away, but his grav field held him to the deck plates. He pushed through the open hatch and then closed it, the hatch sliding shut in a fraction of a second.
Bellini pulled off his helmet and took a breath of the tower’s air. It smelled like all Faction settlements did: musty, sour, and bitter. It smelled worse than his ship, but better than any Union facility.
The emergency lights flickered along the corridor, but someone had deactivated the siren. He could hear people running, and the unmistakable sounds of someone heading toward him. Bellini ducked into a side doorway and waited.
A Union Marine ran past, heading to the door Bellini had just cracked open. The Marine stopped and checked the seal. Bellini watched as he turned and contacted his squad leader.
“Hatch is secure. Must have been a tripped warning system. That impact has messed up a hundred systems. The whole tower could come down at any moment.”
The Marine began to walk slowly back the way he had come.
Bellini’s timing was perfect.
Stepping out just behind the Marine, Bellini grabbed the pistol from the soldier’s hip holster.
The Marine turned, his hand grasping for the pistol as it was pulled away. Bellini let him turn enough to face him just before he fired a pulse round into the young Marine’s forehead.
Bellini slipped the pistol into his suit’s utility belt and picked up the dead Marine’s pulse rifle. He heard the communicator in the dead man’s suit crackle to life.
“Get back to the command tower. We need to secure the area. The Faction scum will try and fight their way up here if we can’t lock it down quick.”
Swaggering along the corridor, Bellini spoke to himself. “Aye-aye, sir.” He followed the color-coded lines on the wall that led him to central control. A few stairs down and he would be there.
A pair of Marines were patrolling a corridor below Bellini as he came down the curved, dark composite stairway. Bellini took aim and then whistled a shrill blast with his finger and thumb in his mouth. He opened fire as the Marines stopped to turn and look toward the sound.
With a clean shot each, Bellini put them down. He jumped down the last few steps and quickly checked each direction along the corridor. At one side, a pair of Marines stood guard at the entrance to
the command center. Bellini pulled his pistol as he rolled into cover. He set the power pack to overload and then tossed it along the corridor.
The Marines dived for cover the instant they saw the pack, and Bellini stood up from cover and fired his rifle into the power pack. It detonated instantly, filling the corridor with a fierce white blast.
With the heat and light washing over him, Bellini started running toward the dying blast and the Marines on the ground. One was grappling for his rifle across his chest. He brought it up, scrambling for the trigger. Bellini stopped him with a well-aimed pulse round. The second was merely quivering, alive but badly injured. His twitching stopped with another round.
Stepping into the command center, Bellini spotted the pair of Marine officers taking behind a console.
“Who is in command here?” Bellini asked.
A young officer stood, a battle-cry in his throat and pulse pistol in his hand. He raised it to give fire. Bellini dropped him with a single blast.
“Who is in command?” Bellini repeated.
The second officer stood, hands on his hips. Confident and defiant. He exuded authority and command.
“I am. Major Lancaster,” he said. “And who are you?”
Bellini fired.
“I’m new here. You wouldn’t know me.” Bellini stepped over to the injured Lancaster and finished him with the rifle’s electron bayonet.
6
Featherstone slowed his approach to the open Marine deck of the Resolute. It was always good to get out of the ship, off the command deck, but it was also good to get back. He had always wanted to be a front-line Marine. His actions in the Blue Stars had earned him a reputation for skillful, decisive command. He was a tactician and a true leader. He didn’t think his exceptional qualities would lead to promotion away from the front line.
The rank of major came with certain benefits, and certain responsibilities. He had been expected to relocate to Blue Star Command Headquarters, or take up a mentor position at Forge Farm, where the Blue Star Marines were trained, but he had insisted he remain a combat leader.
No other Blue Star major was on active front-line duty. Featherstone was a Blue Star legend.
Passing through the outer deflection shield and into the Resolute, Featherstone was filled with a sense of a job well done. He had cleared another location of Skarak soldiers and rescued another group of hostages, all of them victims of the Skarak experiments. He watched the drive flares of the intel ship maneuver down to the asteroid surface accompanied by a flight of fighters. He wondered briefly what lay in store for those he had freed. Tactical intelligence was keeping their activities very secret.
Featherstone turned his back on the open outer door and walked off into the corridors of the ship—his ship, the Resolute, his home away from home.
Reaching his locker, he unclipped his suit and held it out. The mechanical hanger took it from him and carried it away into its service bay, maintenance and data downloads already underway. All data gathered on the operation was automatically uploaded to tactical intelligence for analysis.
The Skarak threat was greater than anyone realized. Featherstone understood it. The Skarak were everywhere—quiet for now but their influence was spreading. They were a greater threat to the Union than any that had come before. Not since the first fleet arrived in the Scorpio System had there been such danger. The Scorpio star was isolated in a vast empty region, the nearest systems beyond the reach of even the fastest fleet ships. No ship could explore the region and return. Probes had long since been sent to the dozen nearest stars. Many had failed. Featherstone began to think the Skarak had been blinding them for decades, centuries. The subtle invasion of the system was not a recent threat, it had been building for generations, and only now was the Union becoming aware of the danger.
Featherstone opened the wash basin next to his suit locker and splashed cold water over his face. The suit’s helmet had been humid from all the action. He doused the back of his neck and washed away the fatigue. His assault team was ending their duty, getting ready for recreation and nutrition, rest and recuperation, but Featherstone was the boss. He didn’t get to rest. He pulled a fresh shirt and jacket from his locker and set his mind to duty. With the shirt on and the jacket slung over his shoulder, he headed to the command deck.
The officers on deck were busy when Featherstone entered. Dorik announced the major’s arrival.
“Commanding officer on deck.”
Featherstone climbed up into the command chair and tapped the armrest controls. The Resolute was currently tasked to hold fast and await orders. The major knew it would not be long before the fleet had him racing across the system to clear yet another Skarak location.
Hundreds of ships had been reported missing. Featherstone now began to realize that every missing ship meant a location like the one he had just left, where humans were being augmented with Skarak technology and driven insane with Skarak mind probes.
“Listen up.” Featherstone stood and looked down to the command deck. All officers at their consoles stopped and gave the major their full attention. “We are holding fast on position. It won’t be long before the fleet has us on task again. I want full systems’ analysis. Structural reports. Equipment checks. Crew evaluation. I want to know our status on every point right down to the number of ration blocks in the crew galley. Then I want every system recalibrated, reset, and ready for action—everything from the drive reactor to the grav plates in the secondary hold. Let’s get it all into best order. You know your jobs, so get to it. This is the Resolute, not some standard troop ship. We are Blue Stars. Let’s make sure our ship reflects our standing as the elite battalion in the entire Union fleet.”
The officers responded with a resounding ‘yes, sir’ and immediately began their full-ship evaluation.
Featherstone watched as his command deck crew became a hive of activity. No one knew how long they had to undertake the evaluation and reset so they wasted no time in getting started. He looked across the command deck, every console at work, except one.
“Sergeant Dorik, where is Knole? Why isn’t he at his station?”
Dorik walked across the command deck to the navigation and communication console. The console was in standby mode.
“His station is not currently in operation, sir,” Dorik said. He tapped the console and activated the ship-wide surveillance. “He’s not in his quarters.”
“I’m not interested in where he is not, Sergeant.” Featherstone sat in his chair and opened the crew register. Knole should be on duty, at his console, here on the command deck.
Featherstone opened a ship-wide communication.
“Yanic Knole. This is Featherstone. Respond.”
Featherstone waited for a moment before looking down at Dorik.
The sergeant was looking up, waiting for his instructions.
“Find him,” Featherstone said.
Dorik nodded and walked off the command deck.
Featherstone looked down at the unmanned navigation console and sent a message for a relief officer to take over. He checked the Resolute’s position. The main holo-stage was lit up and showed the Resolute holding over the asteroid below.
They could be ordered into action at any moment, and Featherstone wanted his best people in their primary positions for any operation. The Resolute and her crew were a machine, with its people as important as the drive reactor or high-energy laser emitters. Featherstone had built his team over years, and now was not the time to start making changes. Wherever Knole had gotten to, Featherstone was sure there was a reasonable explanation. Knole had been a trusted and valued member of his command deck crew from his first days aboard. It was unlike Knole to just go missing.
It was true he was a chatterbox and seemingly more interested in the curveball season than the current operation, but it just seemed that way. Featherstone knew the man from his work. He was an exceptional navigator and a brilliant communications officer.
But Featherstone
needed to get ready for the next operation. He pushed his concern for Knole to the back of his mind and focused.
The Skarak were everywhere. The Blue Stars needed to be ready.
Dorik stepped out of Knole’s quarters. This was no sensor malfunction. Knole was not in his bunk. He checked out the med-bay. Doc Cronin was recalibrating the pods, and data was streaming over the clear composite hoods.
“No, Sarge,” Cronin said. “I haven’t seen him.”
Dorik walked along the central corridor of the Resolute, scanner in hand. He walked slowly, checking every section of the ship. He scratched his head after making his first sweep of the main corridor.
Where was Knole?
It was unlike any of the Resolute’s crew to not be immediately locatable. Knole was a great Blue Star—not just a command deck officer, but a fierce front-line fighter. Any of the crew aboard the Resolute had to be able to wield a pulse rifle and go toe-to-toe with an enemy. That enemy had for so long been the pirates of the outer system that formed into the Faction. Now, the Union was preoccupied with playing seek-and-destroy with the Skarak.
Dorik walked along the lower port-side corridor leading to the secondary hold and the armory, which was currently occupied by a squad of Blue Stars. This group was passing up their rest period to help inventory all the weapons.
“As you were,” Dorik said as the group came to attention. “Don’t let me stop your work, gentlemen.”
Dorik waved the scanner around the cramped armory, over rifles lining the walls.
“Has anyone seen Yanic?” Dorik said.
“Maybe he’s trying out for the Ravens’ reserve team,” one said.
“No comedians, please,” Dorik said dryly.
Further along the lower corridor, Dorik stopped outside the small access hatch into the plasma relay junction for the port-side laser emitter. Dorik deactivated the scanner, since the resonance from the plasma oscillations would render the scanner useless. A visual inspection was necessary.
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