by Marko Kloos
The PDS emitter on the nearby Badger came to life and blotted an incoming projectile out of the air fifty meters away from the vehicle. The fragments from the round hit the armor like sharp-edged hail, and Private Raya, who was covering from the left rear of the Badger, cried out in pain as something made it through his soft armor.
“They’re shooting from the east,” she shouted. “Get behind the right side of the armor. Badger chief, we could use some ballistic radar.”
“The emitter is out, Colors. And the PDS is going to suck the backup cells dry in about ten shots.”
“Gods-damn it. Sirhan, tell the QRF squad that we’re immobilized and under fire, and to hurry things along a little if they can.”
“Already on it,” Sirhan replied.
Behind Idina, another civilian pod blew to pieces in a cloud of silver-white shards. She looked over at the residence building to the east, frantically trying to spot a muzzle flash or the propellant plume from a crew-served weapon. Whatever it was could take apart a civilian transport pod in a single hit, but she knew the devastation a rail-gun projectile left in its wake, and this wasn’t quite it.
The nearby civilian groaned and moved his arm, trying to find purchase to raise himself off the ground. Idina looked over at the armor, then muttered a curse. She could make the dash behind the Badger in four seconds by herself. Playing combat medic would probably get her killed. But even though the Gretian had been belligerent and hostile, it didn’t mean he deserved to be left out in the open to bleed to death while some unseen attacker fired at Alliance troops and Gretian civilians without discrimination. She rushed over to him in a low run and turned him on his back, then grabbed the collar of his tunic to use as a handle. Then she dragged him back toward the Badger with every bit of strength she could muster. Any moment, that unseen gun would fire, and she’d be blasted in half by the shell, dead in an instant because she just had to be noble. But when the gun fired, it tore apart yet another transport pod farther down the roadway. The insurgent gunner seemed to be spreading out his target selection to cause maximum confusion and carnage, and it worked all too well. The other pod passengers were now in full panic. Some of them left their vehicles and ran down the road to the access ramp that led back to the left bank of the river. Several tried to turn their pods around under manual control, which was an insane thing to do under fire.
Private Arjun ran out from his cover behind the Badger and grabbed the civilian as well. Together, they hauled him behind the bulk of the Badger’s armored right flank. As Idina dropped to the ground with the Gretian, the Badger’s Point Defense System fired again, breaking up another cannon shell headed for the vehicle, and the shrapnel splattered the far side of the armored personnel carrier.
“Does anyone have eyes on that gods-damned gun mount?” Idina shouted.
“Nothing on infrared, Colors. Whatever they’re shooting, it’s cooled and suppressed.”
She aimed her weapon around the corner to look at the residential building in the distance without having to stick her head into the line of fire. Then she cycled her helmet’s sensor filters through every possible mode. A gun big enough to take apart a travel pod in a shot or two would generate a muzzle flash big enough to be clearly seen on thermal imaging or infrared even at this range. She waited a few seconds. To her left, another pod took a hit to its front and spun around ninety degrees, crashing into a second pod in the process. The scene on the bridge was now complete mayhem. Civilians were running down the roadway or cowering behind transport pods, every bit as clueless about the source of the fire as Idina’s section and their multimillion ags’ worth of fighting gear. Still, there was no telltale thermal bloom from a gun muzzle, and the firing sound was so dulled and muffled that it sounded like someone beating a hanging carpet with a broom.
Not a rail gun, she thought. Not heavy enough to get through the Badger’s armor or PDS network. But sure as hell big enough to wreck the shit out of these civvie pods. It’s a heavy machine gun, with a suppressor and a cooling setup. And they’re firing it in single shots so they won’t overwhelm the cooler and show themselves on thermal imaging.
A familiar whirring sound reached her ears, and she looked to the left to see a Gretian police gyrofoil swooping out of the sky from the north, position and emergency lights blinking. It made a half circle above the bridge approach and pulled into a near hover above the scene. Frantically, Idina tapped the controls on her cuff to switch to the Joint Security Force guard frequency.
“Gretian police unit, get back to altitude! We are under heavy fire from the buildings to the east. You are right in their sights.”
She received no acknowledgment on the guard channel, but a moment later, the police gyrofoil tilted its rotors and turned to reverse its course. There was another dull thumping sound from the direction of the residence towers, and something shattered the Alon bubble of the cockpit and made the gyrofoil lurch sideways violently. Idina clenched her fists. She had spent months on patrol in one of those units, and they were only armored against fire from small-caliber weapons, the type a determined criminal might employ. They were not built to stand up against military-grade firepower. She watched in helpless horror as the gyrofoil made a sharp right descending turn, engines whirring at full power. It hurtled toward the embankment on the north side of the river and smashed into the ground at a forty-five-degree angle with a sickening crash. The wreckage cartwheeled for a few dozen meters, spewing chunks of Alon and white laminate armor everywhere. Finally, it came to a rest, and Idina knew from the looks of the smoking hull that there was no point going out there under fire to look for survivors.
“Shakya, tell Ops to get in touch with the Gretians and have them keep their flying units away from this bridge.” Her last word was drowned out by the high-energy discharge of the Badger’s PDS as it swatted another incoming round.
“Understood. ETA for the QRF bird is two minutes.”
Gods-damn these flight times, she thought. Trying to pacify a city of a million from a single base on its outskirts.
“Standing by to return fire at your word,” the Badger’s commander sent. The gun mount on the vehicle had swiveled around, and now the tri-barrel cannon and the stubby grenade launcher tube on the mount were pointed at the residence building, slowly panning in small arcs to acquire a target.
“Do not use that cannon,” Idina said. “That dual-purpose shit will go right through the building.”
“You want to keep playing target out here without shooting back?”
“I want to not end up in the system-wide news tomorrow for killing fifty civilians by accident,” she replied. She turned her weapon around the corner again and looked at the open doors of the building, a dozen black holes staggered across five levels and a hundred meters of facade.
“Use the nonlethals,” she said. “Foam rounds and shit balls. Put a couple through every open window over there. The gun’s behind one of those.”
“That won’t kill anyone, Colors.”
“That’s the point. But we’ll make a mess inside. Gum up the sensors and the aiming device on that gun. I’d rather we pay for a cleanup than a bunch of funerals. Do it, Sergeant.”
There was a moment of silence on the channel. The gun mount stopped its swiveling motion as the commander readied the grenade launcher. Then the stubby tube began pumping out nonlethal grenades. The mount zipped from target to target with AI precision, three grenades per window. The nonlethals were slow, and Idina could see the big projectiles in flight as they arced toward their targets. One by one, each window received a mix of grenades that sailed right through the dark rectangles and into the rooms beyond. A few times, one of the grenades missed the target door and splattered against the Alon facade nearby, and the AI immediately sent rapid follow-up shots to account for the missed delivery. Idina allowed herself a moment to breathe. She looked to the right to see both Private Raya and the Gretian civilian on the ground, and Private Arjun tending to both with medical packs.
/> The hidden gun fired again. This time, the round did not hit anything in particular. It smacked into the divider between the travel lanes, fifteen meters to Idina’s left, kicking up a cloud of concrete dust and leaving a crater the size of a fist.
“Keep firing,” Idina said. “It’s working.”
“All those shit balls,” Private Condry said. “That’s going to make a fucking mess.”
“They can be glad it’s just shit balls,” Idina replied. Four months ago, she wouldn’t have hesitated to let the Badger commander reply with live cannon fire, collateral damage be damned. But Captain Dahl had been right—someone wanted the Alliance and the Gretians at each other’s throats again, and peppering an apartment building with armor-piercing explosive rounds would do a great deal of progress toward that end.
They heard the low whoosh of the combat gyrofoil’s rotors a few moments before it appeared. It popped up from low level above the river to the east and roared toward the residential towers. Even from this distance, Idina could see the gun turrets rotating as the ship’s AI searched for targets. They approached the building from the side, away from the firing angles offered by the river-facing terraces and circled the rooftop. A few moments later, lines deployed from the craft, and a full platoon of QRF troopers roped down to the roof.
“They’ve stopped firing,” Private Khanna said. He was still in his overwatch position behind the damaged front right corner of the Badger.
“They’ve done enough damage,” Idina replied.
From the left side of the bridge, smoke poured from half a dozen destroyed or damaged transport pods. The scene was still complete chaos as the civilians were practically climbing over each other to get off the bridge. On the west side of the river, the wreckage of the Gretian police gyrofoil was smoldering and discharging the energy from its damaged power cells in bright sparks. Idina wondered if she knew the officers who had just died in that craft. She hadn’t been on personal terms with most of the Gretians except for Dahl, but she was sure she would remember their faces if they had been with her joint patrol contingent before.
“Tell Ops to let the Gretians know one of their police units is down,” she sent to Sirhan. “Multiple casualties on the northern end of the bridge. They need to get all the rescue and medical they have. It’s a slaughterhouse down there.”
She set her weapon to safe and let it drop from its sling to hang by her side. It had been worse than useless for this encounter, and she cursed herself for her failure to dress for the worst-case scenario.
I’ll never leave the Green Zone without hard armor and a battle rifle again, no matter how aggressive the brass thinks it looks, she vowed.
A sudden rush of anger overcame her, and she walked to the back of the Badger and punched the hatch control. Inside, the deputy high commissioner was still in his seat, flanked by his security detail. He looked a little pale and unsettled.
“How are we back here?” she asked.
Colors Sirhan raised a thumb in reply.
It was never a wise move to speak one’s mind in front of high-ranking officials, even if they didn’t wear a uniform. But right now, she was so livid that she didn’t care whether they stuffed her on a transport back to Pallas this afternoon or stripped her in rank all the way back to private. She walked over to the anti-shock seat across from the VIP and opened a screen in the air between them. She panned the point of view around so it faced the carnage down at the bridge access ramp, then turned the screen to put it in front of his face.
“There’s your closer look at the situation on the ground right now, sir. None of this would have happened if we had taken a combat gyrofoil this morning. We’d already be halfway to Camp Unity by now.”
He seemed to shrink in his seat a little. His eyes flitted from her to the screen and back, but he made no attempt at a reply, clearly rattled by what he saw. Some things looked simple and straightforward from the comfort of a distant office, but like a fractal painting, the details only came into view as the distance decreased.
“No disrespect intended, sir. But you may want to trust the judgment of your security detachment next time. They’ve been in this business for a long time. If that charge had gone off a half second later, it would have gone through the middle of this compartment and we would all be dead right now.”
She waved the screen away and got out of the seat again.
“I have a rescue to coordinate and a bridge to clear. The QRF team will be here shortly to get you back to base, sir. Colors Sirhan, I’ll see you and the team back at the barn.”
She climbed out of the Badger and stomped down the back ramp with steps that were a bit firmer than strictly needed. When she glanced back, the DHC looked like he had taken a sip of something nasty. Next to him, Color Sergeant Sirhan gave her an almost imperceptible nod of silent approval.
CHAPTER 11
DUNSTAN
The cabin of Hecate’s commanding officer was twice as big as those of the other crew members, but it still felt like it was the size of a modest supply closet. Dunstan was used to bigger ships by now, and on Minotaur, he’d had two cabins, one for regular rest time and a smaller day cabin right next to the AIC. His new home for the next few months didn’t even have its own wet cell, just a small combination zero-g toilet and sink that popped out of the wall when summoned via control panel. Everything was shiny and new and ultramodern, just crammed into half the space he’d had on his old frigate.
I never thought I’d miss the luxuries of that old bucket, he reflected as he stretched out on his bunk. For the last few hours, the crew had been storing fresh provisions in every available nook and cranny on the ship for the three-month deployment, and he had been part of the human chain, passing back an untold number of boxes and canisters. Now his arms and shoulders ached from the extended upper-body workout, an unwelcome reminder that he was four years from fifty and no longer the strong, young junior officer he used to be.
“Ops to commander,” the voice of his first officer said from the overhead comms.
“Go ahead, Ops,” he replied. Hecate was too small to have an Action Information Center, and he knew it would take him a few days to get used to the change in nomenclature.
“Supplies are secured, and all departments report ready for getting underway,” Lieutenant Hunter said.
“Very well. Let Rhodia One know we are ready for undocking and request a departure slot. I’ll be up in Ops in a minute.”
“Affirmative,” the first officer replied. Dunstan still wasn’t used to hearing a Gretian accent on a Rhodian warship, and he suspected it would take him longer to get used to that than to saying “Ops” instead of “AIC.” He swung his legs over the edge of the mattress to sit up and promptly bumped his head on the storage closet that was overhanging the entirety of the bunk.
“Gods-damned stealth boats,” he muttered and rubbed the top of his head. “Way to make me feel like a midshipman again.”
He got up and zipped his shipboard overalls back up to the collar, then checked himself in the mirror by the door to make sure he looked like someone who had business giving orders. It was his second full day with his new crew, and he still had to rely on name tags when talking to most people outside of the operations room even though the ship only had five officers and twenty-three enlisted on it.
From the topmost berth deck where the commander’s cabin was located, it was a short commute down a narrow ladder to Ops. He stepped off the ladder and walked over to the upright gravity couch where Lieutenant Hunter was sitting and sipping from a stainless mug with a safety lid. On a larger warship, the first officer to see the CO coming into the AIC would announce his arrival to the whole deck, but standard protocol didn’t work on a ship of Hecate’s size. The smaller warships were run in an almost egalitarian fashion, with little pomp. They had their own rituals, and Dunstan was quickly acquiring them again after years on larger ships.
“I have the deck,” he said to Lieutenant Hunter. She got up from the command cou
ch and moved over to the nearest seat on the right.
“Commander has the deck,” she acknowledged.
He nodded at the coffee she was still holding.
“Smells good. Any more where that came from?”
She tapped her comms link.
“Galley, Ops. Can you run a cup of coffee up here for the CO, please?”
“Ops, aye. Be up in a second.”
The operations deck was almost cozy. Hecate only had five officers, and four of them had their action stations here. The fifth one, the chief engineer, was in charge of the ship’s reactor and propulsion systems and ran his department from the engineering deck all the way at the bottom of the ship. Unlike Minotaur, there was no half deck overhead for the pilot stations. Instead, the conning station was set up at the front of the operations deck, two gravity couches on either side of a center console, facing an array of screen emitters and backup readouts. As small as the ops deck was, the situational display projecting from the top bulkhead was easily twice as large as the one on Minotaur had been, and the resolution of the hologram was much higher. It was still hard to believe that Hecate was the most expensive ship the Rhodian Navy had ever built, but the ops center was the most modern one Dunstan had ever seen.
Behind Dunstan, the mess specialist on watch came up the ladder, walked around Dunstan’s gravity couch, and placed a stainless mug into the receptacle on the couch arm. Dunstan nodded his thanks. He picked up the mug, which was engraved with the ship’s name and her crest, the triple-headed goddess from Old Earth mythology. The coffee was strong and flavorful, rivaling the best he could make in his own kitchen. Dunstan hummed with satisfaction and placed the cup back in its holder.
“The board is green, and we are waiting for final undocking clearance from Rhodia One, sir,” Lieutenant Hunter said.
Dunstan nodded. Then he tapped his own comms link to initiate an all-hands address.
“Hecate crew, this is the commander. In a few minutes, we’ll be undocking for our first combat patrol. I know there has been speculation about what we’re going to be doing out there with this shiny new ship, so let me set everyone straight.”