by Daniel Gibbs
“Conn, TAO. Master Two coming about, ma’am. She’s on a direct intercept course with Sierra One.”
“Farnborough has taken significant shield damage,” Wright interjected. He gestured to a sensor readout on his screen. “Master Two is concentrating its attack on her weakened port quarter.”
While the Q-ship had outstanding deflectors for its size, there simply wasn’t the same armor on her as a military vessel would have.
“We need to end this,” Tehrani replied. Fear of the converted carrier making an appearance at any moment nagged at the back of her mind.
“I can’t believe how much punishment these little gunboats are taking. They’ve got to have destroyer-strength shield generators on them.”
Tehrani glanced at her XO. “Let’s see how they respond to our primary armament.” She set her jaw and turned toward the front of the bridge. “TAO, firing point procedures, forward neutron beams, Master Two. Remember, aim to disable.”
“Firing solutions set, ma’am.”
“Match bearings, shoot, forward neutron beams.”
Once again, the blue spears of energy erupted from the bow of the Greengold and crossed the distance between them and the pirate corvette at the speed of light. The concentrated energy of the beams lashed at the protective screens of the enemy, weakening them with every nanosecond. Return fire from the pirate vessel was aimed at the Farnborough as they continued to hammer away at the weakened shields on the Q-ship.
“Conn, TAO. Shield failure imminent on Master Two.”
“Remember, Lieutenant, disa—”
Bright-white light flashed. Even with the filters built into the bridge’s windows, it momentarily blinded most of the present crew.
After a few seconds, Bryan turned in his seat. “Conn, TAO. Master Two destroyed, ma’am.” His lips held the outline of a sheepish grin. “I think we got their reactor by accident.”
Tehrani closed her eyes briefly. By Allah, we needed those prisoners. Destroyed ships get us no closer to unraveling this mystery. The one disabled corvette will have to be enough. She forced a neutral expression to her face. “As you were, Lieutenant. Navigation, bring us alongside Master One.”
Wright leaned closer. “You thinking what I’m thinking, Skipper?”
“Any moment, we’re going to be jumped by their converted freighter and have our hands full and more.”
“Yeah, that about sums it up.”
“I have no intention of tangling with that thing with just our two vessels.” A pity we had to keep up our spread-out deployment to sell this ruse.
“Major Nishimura needs to hurry it up, in that case.”
“Agreed.” Tehrani directed her gaze toward the tactical plot and willed the tough Marine forward, as if that would do anything to help their situation.
11
Yiorgos Samaras sat in nearly total darkness broken only by a few dim lights from a couple of consoles that still functioned. His ship, the Panthir, was disabled and beyond any chance of quick repair. He’d held out hope the engineering teams could restore the jump drives for a retreat, but that would clearly take hours. Assigned the command only a few weeks prior, Samaras found it especially biting that he’d been taken in by a Coalition Defense Force vessel of some sort.
I have to give it to them. Up-gunning a freighter and outfitting it as a lure isn’t something I would’ve thought of. With the Delfin destroyed and their fighters being steadily ground down by the Terrans, he had little left to do except carry out his final orders from Sokratis Papoutsis. The benefactors who’d gifted their merry little band so many ships and weapons had only one overriding rule: no one was to be taken alive.
If the ship weren’t riddled with holes and the power barely functional, Samaras had a button built into his chair that could be used to trigger a reactor overload on short notice. However, it wasn’t working—he’d already tried. He could always abandon his promise and surrender to the CDF. Even if I turned on my brothers and sisters, they’d still put me in prison for life. I’d rather die than spend the rest of my days in a two-meter-by-three-meter cell, never seeing the sun. The Terrans had a reputation for dealing harshly with murderers. What do they call it? Lambert’s Lament. The asteroid prison was supposed to be worse than death. Samaras refused to end up there.
Besides that, he had a family—no wife or children but a mother and two siblings. Their benefactors had clearly stated that anyone who didn’t adhere to the rules would have to live with their families being executed. Samaras sucked in a breath. “Any luck with the lights?”
“No,” the second mate replied, exasperated, as she bent over a control console with its top off. “And I don’t think we will. The problem isn’t here. It’s back in engineering.”
Samaras stood. “I’ll go see what’s taking so long. If we don’t have primary systems back in ten minutes, head for the escape pods. We’ll take our chances farther into the solar system, if we can elude the CDF.”
“Okay,” she replied. “We’ll try not to leave without you.”
As he turned to go, Samaras took in the bridge and his crew one last time in the dim light. Pangs of remorse and guilt flowed through him as he fought over what he must do. “I’ll hold you to that.”
Each step down the passageway as Samaras left the bridge was more difficult than the last. He felt caught between his duty to Papoutsis, whom he owed his life for plucking him out of the slums of Lusitania a decade prior, and his crew, which were also his friends. In the end, duty won, because duty had a ticking clock next to it for his family.
Sounds of weapons fire, both energy and ballistic, echoed down the vessel from side passageways leading toward engineering. Damn CDF must have its Marines aboard already. He quickened his steps toward the objective: a nondescript environment-system-control locker.
Samaras popped the access panel off and climbed in. If he’d been taller than one point seven meters, he wouldn’t have fit. The one time being short comes in handy. Something about the irony made him laugh. A bank of metallic cylinders with reserve oxygen lined the back of the compartment. The one on the very end was special, however. Unbeknownst to the rest of the crew, it contained a nerve agent and was manually disconnected from the rest of the system.
With the finality of a condemned man, Samaras reached back and toggled the release switch to the on position. All that was left to do was wait for the gas to fill the ship. Death would follow—not the painless passing of a reactor overload, but duty would be fulfilled. He sat down and waited for it while pondering the choices he’d made that led to this moment. The self-reflection produced little except empty wishes of choosing a different path.
Nishimura squeezed the trigger on his battle rifle, putting a three-round burst into a pirate that had broken cover, dropping him in his tracks. The twenty meters from the junction to the bridge was one short firefight after another, and resistance stiffened the closer they got to the nerve center of the corvette. He’d kept his Marines on lethal ammo, mostly to defeat ambushes carried out behind impromptu barricades. The enemy learned quickly that hiding behind a simple alloy desk wasn’t going to save them from counterfire.
“Pulse, over!” one of the Marines shouted before hurling a deceptively small grenade toward a cluster of remaining pirates. The power armor protected the friendly forces from the effects of the pulse weapon but not the enemy.
While they were groping around, unable to see from the bright explosion of light, Nishimura and his platoon cut them down. “Only a few meters more, gents. I can see the promised land from here.”
As a fireteam of four Marines advanced, a woman without armor fell out of a nearby hatch and collapsed onto the deck. She clutched madly at her throat as foam frothed out of her mouth. A moment later, another pirate crawled out of a different hatch farther up the corridor, exhibiting the same symptoms.
“Corpsman! Get the corpsman over here,” Nishimura barked. He knelt next to the woman. “Hey, can you hear me?”
The pla
toon medic shoved Nishimura aside and ran a scanner over her. “Pulse thready and falling. She’s in shock.” He glanced up. “Major, I’m detecting an acetylcholinesterase inhibitor in her body.”
“In English,” Nishimura replied. Doctors and their long words.
“Nerve agent, sir. Massive dose of it, from what I can tell.” He paused. “It's an aerosol, sir. I’m detecting high concentrations in the air around us.”
Before Nishimura could respond, his commlink chirped.
“Major, this is O’Connor. Do you read me?”
“Go ahead, Master Guns.”
“We were in the middle of a pitched firefight for engineering when the hostiles collapsed, sir. Half of them are already dead, and the rest are on the way. My medic says it’s a nerve agent.”
“That tracks, Master Guns. Same thing up here.” Why would they commit mass suicide? Nishimura’s mind swam. Something didn’t add up. That was for sure. Oh shit. The pilot doesn’t have power armor on. “Nishimura to boarding pods. Seal the hatch immediately. We’ve got toxic gas loose on this ship. Then get your soft suits on.”
“Acknowledged, sir,” the warrant officer flying the pod replied. “Sealed and running tests on the air just to be sure.”
Meanwhile, the medic pulled a vial along with an autoinjector from his bag and applied it to the woman’s neck. He then pulled out a small O2 mask and pressed it against her face. “This thing only has ten minutes of pure oxygen in it. We need to get her out of this environment. I don’t exactly carry a bunch of antidote for nerve gas, Major.”
“In other words, we can’t save that many?” Nishimura asked.
The man shook his head. “No.”
Dammit. We need high-ranking combatants too. Not the deck force. The sudden realization of having to play God bothered Nishimura, even though he’d been playing God for the last ten minutes as they shot their way through a hostile vessel, leaving stunned and dead bodies in their wake. “Where’s this stuff coming from?”
“Probably the environmental control system, sir. Logical conclusion, since it's an aerosol.” The medic shrugged. “I’m not your man for this. Nobody uses chemical weapons, that we know of, but it's still a class in med training.”
“Okay. The corpsman’s going with me. Everybody else, secure the bridge then fan out and find air-filtration-system interfaces. Look for any signs of a delivery system, and for God’s sake, don’t take your helmets off.” Nishimura pointed at two privates. “Get this woman back to the pod.”
“Major,” O’Connor broke in on the commlink. “We’ve got a live one down here. He’s dressed better than the others and was in the air recycler. I think he set the gas loose.”
Why would the commanding officer of a ship kill his crew? “How’s he still alive?”
“Maybe the backflow wasn’t great. Who knows? Not his time, though. We’ve got him on O2 and are carrying him back to the pod. Request permission to return to the Q-ship or Greengold. Whichever can get us in fast enough. This guy won’t survive without sustained medical treatment.”
“Granted,” Nishimura replied. One problem at a time. Get the HVT out and scour the rest of the ship for survivors. “Can you get the gas out of the air?”
“Maybe. Got a couple of guys working on it.”
“Work faster, or we’ll lose them all.” Nishimura switched his commlink to the all-platoons channel. “Listen up, Marines. Search every millimeter of this ship. Corpsmen will treat the survivors if we find any, and we’ll carry them back to one of the pods for exfil.”
One by one, the platoon sergeants signaled their understanding of his orders, and Nishimura took a moment to run what had happened through his brain. Okay, I’ve done a lot of VBSS in my time. I’ve never seen a group of pirates offed by their erstwhile commander. Maybe that spook can sort it out. As the two privates hauling the female combatant turned a corner and disappeared, Nishimura tightened his grip on his battle rifle. “Corporal Lewis! Bring your new toy up here and melt the bridge hatch.”
“Alpha Two to Alpha One. You’ve got a bandit on your six.”
Justin gritted his teeth as purple xaser beams ripped by the canopy on his Sabre. “I noticed,” he replied with a grunt. “Do you have a lock?
“Negative. He’s still whipping around pretty good,” Feldstein said.
“Forget the Vultures. Switch to heat seekers and send one at him. I’ll break right, positive declination, and lead him into your sights.”
“Wilco, sir.”
The red dot representing the hostile heavy fighter weaved back and forth behind the icon for the Sabre in Justin’s HUD. He’d almost resorted to guns-D to keep the enemy pilot from obtaining a guns solution on him, but Feldstein’s attention changed the nature of the fight. The moment the Eagle heat-seeking missile erupted from her fighter, he pulled hard right on his flight stick, kicked in the afterburner, and ran for his life.
Justin prayed the heat seeker wouldn’t flag the exhaust, which burned at thousands of degrees Celsius as it flew out of the engine manifold at the back of his Sabre, as hostile. Luck was with him as the missile ran straight into the tail end of the pursuing fighter, followed by a barrage of neutron-cannon bolts from Feldstein’s craft. Justin let out a sigh of relief as it exploded, and the red dot disappeared from his HUD.
“Alpha Two, splash one.” Feldstein grunted. “These guys are hard to kill.”
“Better shields than I’ve seen on anything except a Boar.” Justin scanned his HUD, searching for the next target.
Tehrani’s voice on the guard frequency was a surprise. “Attention, hostile fighters. This is Colonel Banu Tehrani of the Coalition Defense Force. We have boarded and captured your remaining corvette. There is no avenue of escape. Surrender now, and we will spare your lives. Continue to resist, and my pilots will run you down.”
Silence came over the commlink. Justin ran through the possibilities as another wave of fighters launched from the Greengold. We might lose another bird or two, but the enemy is now outnumbered.
“What guarantees do we have you won’t kill us on sight?” someone with a rough voice asked.
Justin didn’t recognize it and assumed the speaker was one of the pirates.
“The Terran Coalition honors the Canaan Convention on Human and Alien rights. You will be treated per its stipulations until tried for your crimes.”
Justin recalled the Coalition’s supermax prison—Lambert’s Lament. Housed on an asteroid, it was where the worst of the worst were sent to live out their days or await capital punishment. I wonder if these idiots will get the firing squad.
The rough voice came again. “No summary executions?”
“No,” Tehrani replied quickly.
On Justin’s HUD, the remaining enemies had grouped, and both sides seemed to have paused hostilities as the impromptu surrender discussions continued.
“How do you want to do this, then?”
“Do your craft have ejection systems?”
“They do.”
“Each pilot will eject from their fighter, and our search-and-rescue craft will pick them up. Any attempt at subterfuge or resistance will be met with overwhelming force.” Tehrani’s voice had a hard edge to it—harder than Justin had ever heard from her.
“Agreed,” the pirate replied after another long pause.
One by one, each hostile craft went dead in space, and the pilots ejected as Justin watched on his sensor readout. I suppose they had no other choice. Both search-and-rescue birds launched from the Greengold and made a beeline for the pirates floating in the void along with the two CDF pilots who’d ejected. In what was probably the fastest recovery operation he’d ever seen, they completed their mission and headed back to the carrier with the rest of the fighters flying point. The entire time, Justin sat on pins and needles, waiting for the enemy to arrive with more reinforcements.
They didn’t come. In the end, the recovery was uneventful, and Justin counted himself lucky that for once, no one on the Greengold’
s wing had died.
12
The time-honored tradition of an after-action report was one the Coalition Defense Force held up in spades. It took Tehrani the better part of two hours to write hers, taking Wright’s input and ensuring the two agreed with each other, before the formal submission to CDF Command. Then it was time to sit down and discuss what had happened. And prepare for the next phase of our operation, whatever that is. She was a soldier—not a spy and not used to skulking about in the shadows. Give me a target, and I’ll erase it. Leave the spy craft to the spooks at CIS.
Tehrani exited her day cabin and walked the few steps to the hatch for her conference room on deck one, which was assigned exclusively for the commanding officer’s use. She pushed the hatch open and strode in.
“Colonel on deck,” Wright called out as he stood and braced to attention. Everyone else in attendance—Nishimura, Whatley, Justin, and Grant—did the same.
“As you were and take a seat, gentlemen.”
As they sat back down, Tehrani slid into the chair at the head of the table.
“Damage report, XO?”
“Minor hull damage. Still troubleshooting some issues with our port-side point-defense emplacements. Nothing major. The Greengold didn’t lose any crewmen, but two pilots were KIA.”
“Search-and-rescue got the rest?” Tehrani asked.
“Yes, ma’am.”
While the loss of two lives meant something, especially to their families, Tehrani felt relieved at the low casualty rate. “Major Nishimura, what of your Marines?”
“Eleven KIA, another dozen or so wounded. Those bastards fought hard—harder than I’ve ever seen criminals fight in my life,” Nishimura replied with a grimace. “I spent three years on a VBSS team, hitting suspected pirates and smugglers weekly. They always gave up after firing off a few rounds to preserve their honor.”