Vanguard

by Jack Campbell

  “I don’t know,” Danielle Martel said. “Squall might blow up before we even reach the destroyer.”

  “Good point. Get the commands entered, then get to the air lock. I’ll join you.”

  Thrusters fired to swing Squall around, the main propulsion lighting off to slow her as well, her path through space altering into a steeply descending curve that swerved into a flat arc next to the stricken enemy destroyer. He remembered a Marine who referred to a combat drop as a roller coaster to hell. This felt like that.

  “Done,” Danielle Martel reported. “Are you coming?”

  “In a second. Get to the air lock,” Rob ordered. “All hands! Everyone except those in engineering necessary to manage the power core should be at port air locks by now! If you’re not there, get there!”

  For a moment, he was alone on the bridge. Rob sat in the command seat, his display a flickering sea of damage warnings, feeling Squall trembling as her main propulsion fought to reduce her velocity. It was as if the stricken ship were shaking with fear as she felt the end approaching but still fighting to give her crew a chance, and he felt a strange reluctance to leave her. Squall had not been the biggest or greatest ship ever built, but she had been his, and she had fought as bravely as any man or woman could have.

  But his crew was waiting for him to lead them. For him to help them gain their last chance at life. And if he fought hard enough, if a miracle happened, he might still make it back to Ninja and a child he would otherwise never see.

  Rob checked to ensure his sidearm, the same one taken from the former captain of the Squall, was holstered on his hip. He sealed his survival suit as he walked off the bridge, then ran, heading for Air Lock One, hoping the power core would hold together until Squall reached the enemy destroyer. At any moment the engineers’ desperate efforts could fail, and Squall would blow up before her surviving crew could even launch themselves at the destroyer. To some, Rob and his crew would already be considered dead. But they also still lived. He had never before really grasped the old paradox of Schrödinger’s cat, neither alive nor dead, something that wasn’t supposed to apply at the level of people and their interactions with the universe, but now he finally did. Unfortunately, that was because he was now in the position of that famous cat, waiting to learn whether death or life had been decided.

  Rob Geary reached Air Lock One, where Danielle Martel and a cluster of other crew members waited. Like many other parts of the ship, this portion of Squall had been holed by damage and had lost air, so the inner air lock door was already open.

  “Five more minutes,” Danielle Martel reported.

  “Engineering!” Rob called. “How does it look?”

  “Like it could blow any second! If it happens, you won’t know, because we’ll all be gone just like that.”

  Rob switched circuits. “Air locks, report in. Is everybody ready?”

  “Air Lock Three ready.”

  “Air Lock Five ready. Lieutenant, we’ve got a couple of wounded in emergency evacuation bags. We’ll haul them along with us.”

  “Good,” Rob said, not wanting to know how many of the crew of Squall were already dead. “Sergeant, where are you and your people?”

  “Air Lock Five, sir.”

  “Good. We’re coming alongside the destroyer oriented to match him. Bow to bow, stern to stern. When you jump, you’ll be boarding closer to the destroyer’s stern. We need to take the engineering section and ensure the power core is either shut down or operating safely.”

  “Yes, sir. Is there any chance the destroyer’s crew will try to blow the power core themselves?”

  “What?” It took Rob a few moments to understand the question. “You mean deliberately overload the power core and destroy their own ship along with us? No, Sergeant. That’s crazy. No one would do that.”

  “Understood, sir. See you on the destroyer after we’ve wrapped things up.”

  Sergeant Grant Duncan’s calm demeanor partially reassured Rob, who turned to Danielle Martel and clicked over to a private circuit. “What do you think our odds are?”

  She shook her head. “It depends. Does the destroyer still have an outside sensor picture that will allow them to see us coming and prepare to defend against boarding? How many of their crew died during that firing run? And just how insanely lucky can we be?”

  “So we’ve got a chance,” Rob said.

  “Yes, Captain. We’ve got a chance.”

  “You don’t have to call me captain.”

  “Yes, sir, I do. You earned it.” She checked something on her wrist readout. “Two minutes. We should open the outer hatch so we’ll know the moment we can jump.”

  With the Squall decelerating fast, there was no sense in anyone’s sticking their head out of the outer hatch to look for the enemy destroyer ahead. It would just be another dot in the endless array of stars and other objects in space.

  “Here we go,” Danielle Martel warned. “One minute.”

  “Everyone stand by to jump,” Rob ordered. “Engineering? How does the power core look?”

  “Bad. Really bad.” The engineer’s voice held so much fear that it seemed to carry the scent of sweat with it.

  “How many of you are still back there?” Rob asked.

  “Just me.” The engineer paused. “I don’t know how long it’ll hold when I head for the air lock.”

  Rob stared in front of him, weighing what to do. Did he sacrifice the engineer to try to give the rest of the crew a better chance? Or did he keep faith with someone who had stayed behind to help his shipmates? “I need a plain and straight answer. Once you leave the core, how long until it blows? Give me a number.”

  “Within five minutes. That’s just a wild guess, but it’s the best I got!”

  Rob made up his mind. “Leave now and get to the nearest air lock! You’ve got forty seconds!”

  “On my way!”

  “We’re here!” Danielle Martel called.

  Rob looked out of the air lock and saw the barracuda shape of the destroyer suddenly only twenty meters away. Squall had exactly matched vectors with Scatha’s stricken warship, so that for these few seconds the two ships seemed to be drifting next to each other as if they had been parked in adjacent stalls.

  “Boarding party away!” Rob ordered, restraining Danielle from jumping with an extended arm. “All hands jump! Ensign Martel, watch for the last engineer to jump from Air Lock Five, hit the command for Squall to get out of here, then follow.”

  “He’d better jump real soon!” Danielle warned.

  • • •

  Mele Darcy ducked as another wave of fire tore through the thinning chaff shrouding Scatha’s entrenchments and the air over her force. Riley had managed to get a signal through that he was trying to push an attack to divert some of the defenders, but she had heard nothing since from him. And there were still entirely too many defenders in front of her, with too many weapons.

  She heard a scream to her left and knew another one of her volunteers had been hit.

  There wasn’t any cover out here. The volunteers hugged the scrub-covered soil and turned desperate looks her way.

  She couldn’t decide what to do. Holding position seemed hopeless, but trying to retreat would result in many more losses as her volunteers had to raise themselves in order to run. But if she gave up—

  “Major Darcy.” No image accompanied the voice as the improvised comm link fought to get any signal through. The comm link slid up and down in volume, interspersed by spurts of static as Scatha’s electronic countermeasures tried to jam the signals.

  “Here,” Mele growled, angry at the call.

  “Request status.”

  Mele barely resisted the urge to reply with an obscenity. “Unchanged.”

  “Do you think you still have a chance to take the base?”

  She shook her head at the que
stion. “Maybe.”

  “You have to take the base, Major. It is our only remaining option.”

  “What does that mean?” Mele demanded.

  “We have been watching the engagement in space. Scatha’s warship may have been badly damaged but . . . our ship blew up.”

  Mele stared toward the enemy positions facing her, only barely aware of the shots flying past just overhead. “Say that again. What happened to Squall?”

  “The ship . . . Squall . . . blew up. An hour ago. We haven’t been able to spot the lifeboat. The Squall blew up. The . . . entire crew . . . must have died.”

  Damn. So Grant was gone. The entire crew. And Lieutenant Rob Geary. Mele wondered who would tell Ninja the bad news. She’d have to do it. That was her job now. Honoring her promise to Rob Geary because Rob Geary was certainly dead.

  Mele didn’t remember scrambling to her feet, didn’t remember shouting to her volunteers to follow her, but she was moving forward, charging toward the emplacements where weapons were hurling shots past her, the unaimed fire through the thinning chaff rattling her ears as it tore past, one energy pulse scorching the light armor on her left upper arm, a slug hitting her upper body armor and ricocheting upward, the force of the blow breaking something inside her, but she didn’t really notice because Mele was pulling out a grenade and hurling it at a heavy weapons bunker, the grenade going through the firing slit and secondary explosions tearing through the bunker, and suddenly there was a low duracrete barrier before her and soldiers huddled behind it firing into the murk and, shocked, trying to shift aim as Mele appeared; but she was firing, and two soldiers fell to her left, then twisting as she fell prone Mele fired again to her right to kill a third nearby soldier as other defenders’ shots tore by over her.

  She jumped up again as the enemy fire faltered, ignoring the pain in her collarbone and a sudden pain in her hip, charging down the entrenchment, killing one more, two more, then someone in battle armor ahead was gesturing like a commander so Mele fired two rounds at close range into the faceplate and that soldier fell, too.

  Her finger froze on the trigger as one of her volunteers tumbled into the entrenchment and looked around for enemies. More volunteers were appearing, racing past the entrenchment and into the base, firing at individual Scatha soldiers who were dropping their weapons and either running or spreading their open hands in surrender. Mele pivoted slowly, looking around. Where she had first entered the entrenchment, members of her own force were streaming in, taking prisoners and pursuing those defenders still fleeing.

  “Enough!” A Scatha soldier’s voice cracked as he stumbled toward Mele, his weapons gone and his faceplate open, his eyes wide and dark with dread. “Enough! We are done! No more!”

  “Surrender the entire base,” Mele said, her voice sounding oddly inhuman and metallic to her. “The entire garrison. Now.”

  “It is done! I have broadcast the order! No more!”

  They had won.

  Shouldn’t she feel happy about that? Mele abruptly leaned on the edge of the entrenchment as her hip gave way. She looked down at blood running down the outer edge of her leg. “Damn.” She wondered why she didn’t feel any pain there, why she couldn’t feel any emotions even while her own forces cheered as they went about taking control of Scatha’s base.

  • • •

  Rob lined himself up in the air lock and jumped for the destroyer. For a short time, there were no decisions to make, no orders to give as he flew between ships. His thoughts raced. The captain was supposed to be the last to leave the ship. But this wasn’t an evacuation, an abandon ship. It was an attack, and he needed to be part of that attack, not bring up the rear. Of course, he’d probably be dead in one way or another in a few minutes anyway, and no one would ever know. All they would know was that he had gone down fighting.

  He hoped Ninja would understand.

  The destroyer was near when Rob twisted to look back at the Squall, looming close like a ticking time bomb. There was a wave of figures in survival suits roughly even with Rob, and two more who had just jumped from Squall, one from Air Lock One forward and one from Air Lock Five aft.

  He twisted back around, seeing the fast-approaching side of the destroyer suddenly lit by the flare from Squall’s main propulsion as the warship accelerated away from her fleeing crew and the enemy destroyer that was their last remaining chance.

  Rob experienced that odd disorienting feeling that he was falling onto the destroyer right in front of him, then he hit hard enough to drive the breath from him. He had remembered to keep his open hands extended so the gecko gloves on them would grip the enemy hull and keep him from being hurled back into space by the rebound. Rob held there for a second, the sound of his breathing harsh in his ears.

  Two members of Squall’s crew had landed nearby, one carrying a heavy-duty portable cutting torch. As the other sailor steadied the one with the torch, it flared to life and swiftly cut an access through the destroyer’s lightly armored hull.

  Rob was about to pull himself inside when light flared again, this time much brighter, as if a tiny sun had sprung to life somewhere ahead of the destroyer.

  Squall was gone. But she had held together long enough to give her crew a chance.

  Rob drew his sidearm and swung inside, staring around the interior of the destroyer. Vibrations rolled through the ship from somewhere aft. Sergeant Duncan must have gotten inside back there.

  Figures in survival suits appeared, coming fast from forward, all of them carrying hand weapons. Rob, the best armed in his group, stood sideways to them, leveled his pistol, and began firing as if on a range, trying not to think about what he was doing.

  Caught by surprise, two of the defenders fell from Rob’s shots before the others tried to return fire. He kept shooting, drawing their fire, while the rest of his group charged into the defenders. He felt the destroyer lurch, heard more vibrations transmitted through the hull, and knew the shock wave from Squall’s death throes had reached the destroyer.

  The impact of a hit knocked Rob back, leaving him dazed. He got to his feet, staring at the red warning symbol on the limited display of his survival suit. Danielle Martel had joined his group and slapped duct tape over the hole in his suit. “Important damage control tool,” she said to Rob. “Can you keep going?”

  “I don’t . . . I . . . yes.” Rob shook his head, gathered his wits, and followed Danielle into the welter of figures struggling in the passageway ahead.

  The defending crew of the destroyer had already been rattled by the massive damage done to their ship and had suffered serious losses. The attacking crew of the Squall were driven by desperation that gave them a ferocity the crew from Scatha’s ship couldn’t match. Rob shot another defender, then a fourth, as his crew killed several more. One of Rob’s remaining crew died in the struggle before the defenders fled.

  “Stay on them!” Danielle Martel yelled. “Don’t let them recover and regroup!” She led the attack, racing ahead with most of the other boarders behind her, one of the others staying to help Rob keep moving.

  As Danielle ran past a hatch it swung open, giving her enough time to realize the danger but not enough to turn or dodge. A shot hit her and knocked Danielle across the passageway.

  The crew member of the destroyer who had shot Danielle made the mistake of jumping out, not realizing she had been a little in advance of more attackers. Before he could fire again, one of Rob’s crew had triggered the torch and burned a hole through the defender’s survival suit and completely through the chest of the defender.

  Someone stopped to help Danielle Martel. Drake, Rob thought, and despite the urgency of the attack did not order him to leave her.

  “Keep going!” he ordered the others. “Keep heading forward!”

  There had been ten or twelve of the boarding party with Rob when they started out. He thought there might be only a few left with him by th
e time they reached the bridge of the destroyer. Darkness split by beams of radiance from emergency lights filled the passageway outside the bridge. A hole in the overhead matched another hole in the bulkhead near the deck where a piece of something, probably the lifeboat, had torn through the destroyer. Rob attempted to catch his breath as he tried to recover from the run. He felt weaker than he should have and became aware that something wet was spreading inside his suit from the place where the shot had struck him.

  The hatch was sealed. Rob, his thoughts wandering, wondered if Ninja could help them through again. No. She was back on the planet. A light hour away. “Torch! Get through to the bridge. You, are you one of Sergeant Duncan’s? Have you got a grenade left?”

  The torch made very short work of cutting out a piece of bulkhead. As it fell free to access the bridge, the soldier tossed in a grenade.

  They went through in the wake of the grenade’s explosion, finding a mess of battered equipment and injured defenders. Two more defenders died before the bridge crew surrendered.

  Rob was helped into the captain’s seat, once more trying to breathe as he wondered why his chest felt so tight and his thoughts were so hard to focus. Someone was talking to him.

  “Lieutenant? We’ve captured engineering. We think there are still a few of the destroyer’s crew out there, but the ones who are left all seem to be surrendering.”

  He had trouble focusing on the woman who had brought the report. “Where’s Sergeant Duncan? Have you heard from him?”

  “He’s . . . he’s dead. But we have the ship. We control this destroyer.”

  Damn. Rob tried to concentrate. What did he need to do? “I need a comm circuit. We need to let Glenlyon know that we took this ship and they are safe.”

  Someone offered him a link. Voice only, but that was fine. “Glenlyon, this is . . . Lieutenant . . . Geary. Our ship . . . Squall . . . was lost but . . . we have, uh, captured the enemy destroyer. The . . . destroyer is crippled, but we . . . should be able to survive until . . . rescue can reach us. Get another . . . another ship here. To take us in tow.” Just saying “out” felt wrong. Disrespectful. Shouldn’t he say something else? Something to mark what his crew had done? There was a phrase he had heard recently. Maybe something like that would do. “My crew fought in a manner . . . that honored their ancestors . . . honored their ancestors,” he repeated, feeling increasingly dizzy. “Geary, out.”