by Damon Alan
“Arrogance?”
He belly laughed this time. “I will find a way, lovely woman of mine. I will find a way. And once we have these things, I will expand the Komi empire tenfold in the first year.”
She took a bite of pasta and smiled at him as she chewed.
“I’ll pour you wine,” he offered.
She grabbed his hand as he reached for the bottle. “I will help you in any way I can. I counsel you. I will always support you,” she said gently. “But Sarah Dayson is not someone you should underestimate.”
A chill raced up his spine, forcing him to avert his eyes from his bride’s face. Was it what she said? Or how she said it?
“I never doubt you, even in my darkest moments,” he replied in a voice every bit as gentle.
Chapter 47 - Suit Up
31 Noder 15332
Bannick woke to alarms. The Palidragon’s guns were blazing, the ship shuddered as the main batteries fired.
“Whu?” Palia said next to him, slowly awakening as well.
He slipped on his pants and strode to the arms locker across the room. He tossed a fléchette pistol onto the bed for Palia.
“Get dressed,” he commanded.
Palia stared out the suite’s alumiglass windows, at the Komi ships firing on them. From positions so close the enemy ships were easily seen. Hordes of smaller vessels closed on them. “What are those?”
“Boarding shuttles. We’ve been set up,” Bannick said, his voice calm. He slapped a full magazine of fléchettes into a combat rifle. One of his favorite designs, despite the expense. All five hundred rounds were guided heart seekers.
If someone meant to take his ship today, he’d be part of the team that made them pay.
He looked over at Palia, she was dressed in a 0G jumper. “There is an armory nearby with power suits. We’re headed there. I will see you in something that keeps you protected.”
“I can fight,” she suggested.
“I know you can,” he agreed. “But you won’t be fighting today if we can avoid it. Come with me.”
They left the suite and stopped a few dozen meters away. Bannick’s palm print opened a secure door. Palia stared around in awe, having never seen the room before.
Power suits for various purposes lined one wall. Weapons, from pistols to heavy rocket launchers, line another. Several of the weapons were socket mated, designed to be used by the power suits.
Bannick connected his combat rifle to the left arm of his favorite suit. “Get into that one,” he told Palia as he pointed at a set of armor. “It’s mainly a defensive suit and will work well with mine.”
“How—”
“Climb in, put your feet on the soles of the boots, and it will do the rest. That one is nearly fully automatic.”
He considered the expression on her face as the suit closed around her. Nervousness. The armor plates slid into place, and she sucked in her breath audibly as the holographic information systems came online in her helmet.
His own suit was much heavier. The interior volume was much larger to provide space for shock absorption. A few minutes later it was fully around him and he tested all of the systems. They were a go.
He adjusted his communication system so that his suit and Palia’s suit were paired. They’d hear each other at all times.
“Test,” he said into his commlink.
“I hear you,” she replied.
“And I, you.” He pointed toward the weapon wall. “Watch how I do this,” he ordered. She didn’t respond immediately. “We’re going to get through this. I’m trained, and you know how to listen. Respond to everything I say as soon as I’m done speaking so we understand each other.”
“Okay.”
He pushed a plasma gun into his suit’s right arm socket. It would vaporize any exposed flesh within twenty meters, and seriously burn the enemy out to fifty meters. He pointed to the weapon four spots down from the one he’d chosen. “This is a fragment gun. The fragments ricochet like crazy and will hit even hiding targets. Put it on your suit as I did mine.”
She did as he asked.
“Now there is a setting inside the suit you have called adaptive graphics. I want you to activate those.”
She vanished in front of him as adaptive graphics blended the suit’s armor into the background.
He was the only observer in the room, so the suit almost perfectly blended into the wall behind it. The effect would fail to some degree as more angles of observation were introduced, but the AI controlling the suit was smart enough to give maximum invisibility toward the enemy with the best weaponry.
In a ship’s setting, it would be difficult for the enemy to see her because the angles were so narrow along corridors. The suit would seal and keep her alive for a few hours in a perfect vacuum. He’d keep that in mind if battle came their way.
His suit was designed to both fight and absorb damage. It could also survive a vacuum. Large enough that, if he wanted to, he could create a nearly impenetrable bulkhead in any corridor if he was willing to ditch the suit to do it.
Across the ship men loyal to him were donning similar suits if this was a boarding. And since the ship’s guns were firing, and boarding shuttles were closing in, it could be little else.
“Let’s go,” he said. “We’re going to make our way down to the yacht. It’s unarmed, but extremely stealthy and fast as a railgun shot.”
“How far?” Palia asked.
“Forty decks down from the habitation ring hub, and a few hundred meters aft. I should have made it much closer in retrospect.” He charged his two weapons.
“Hold on, one more thing,” he said to her. He activated his link to ship comms. “Admiral Cothis, what’s the status of my ship?”
“Oh, thanks the stars, Lord Komi!” Cothis said. “You’re alive. We have boarding action near your position, I was worried.”
“Status!” Bannick barked.
“Of course,” Cothis replied. “While you were resting, we joined up with multiple fleets from Acrinn, reportedly on our side. Instead, as though they had some sort of signal, they fired on us and began a boarding action. Even now there is fighting on almost every deck, Lord Komi. I don’t think we’re going to keep the Palidragon.”
Not going to keep…
“That is unacceptable, Admiral. Unacceptable. You will hold this ship.”
“If you let me know your location, I’ll send men to get you and your wife to safety,” Cothis said. “It will be easier to fight knowing you’re safe.”
Interesting. Cothis was House Cothis. Bannick was House Komi. Did he really know how loyal Cothis was? An opportunity presented itself.
“I’m still in my quarters,” Bannick said. “We don’t want to leave until we know what is going on. I have my weapons cabinet open and am ready for—”
The link cut.
Three seconds later the door to the armory indicated a loss of pressure in the gangway outside.
Bannick’s gut feeling had paid off.
Cothis was a traitor, and his erratic behavior since he’d returned from Dayson’s custody had been for cause. Were his actions a result of Dayson meddling in his mind? Or was Cothis simply more loyal to Urdoxander than Bannick?
“Admiral Cothis is trying to kill us?” Palia asked.
“Looks like it,” Bannick answered. He wondered if Dayson was in system yet, and how interested she’d be in pulling him out of the fire.
“Change of plans,” he said. “We’re still heading to the Far Reach. But not only to escape. Also to send a distress call.”
“Why not from a comm center on board?”
“Cothis, if he’s the reason for all this, will have those under electronic lock. We won’t be able to access the equipment. But the yacht is all mine. Keyed to my voice and DNA print.”
“We better get going,” Palia said, gesturing toward the door.
Bannick activated an acoustic sensor on the bottom of his suit’s left leg. It looked for vibration in the hull plates
that would indicate soldiers in the corridors.
Nothing.
“Let’s go. Grab that beam and hang on.”
He opened the door.
The room’s air rushed out into the corridor.
He followed it, the way was clear.
The door to their suite indicated zero pressure in their room. Had they been there a few minutes longer, they’d be dead.
They moved down the corridor toward a lift. If he used that, Cothis would know he was alive since nobody should be alive on this deck to summon a lift. The admiral would send troops.
Bannick pointed his plasma gun at the floor two meters ahead of him and activated it. Using the gun for this purpose would deplete his reactor if used with any frequency but breaching the floor wouldn’t take long.
The deck immediately glowed red, then sloughed off into globules of metal. He played the gun in an expanding circle, opening up the area big enough for his suit to fit through.
“Me first,” he said. “Then if nothing happens, I’ll call you down. You can jump, the suit will absorb the shock. Once we’re out of the habitation ring, switch your boots to magnetic. The suit has microthrusters that will simulate the jump if we need to do this again in null G.
They did need to do it again. They burned through a dozen more barriers until they reached a pressurized section that stopped them. Bannick wasn’t willing to kill everyone in that area so he could keep moving in the same manner. Some of the crew could still be loyal to him, after all, and he might need them.
He and Palia were far enough away from the suite that Cothis would probably not suspect the use of a lift.
They summoned the elevator. Bannick stood ready when the doors opened.
A suited man inside carried some sort of sensor package. His last expression to the universe was one of surprise when he looked through the faceplate of Bannick’s suit.
Bannick vaporized him. Completely. Fire licked upward inside the wall plates of the lift due to the heat, but that didn’t matter.
“Get in,” he said.
On the elevator, he and Palia moved toward the habitation ring’s spin control hub. They exited to see two dozen men in uniforms from other ships. Apparently his enemies felt this area was safe, the men were neither armed or armored. They tried to run, but not fast enough. Palia’s fragment gun killed everyone in the room with three shots. Bannick grinned as fragments glanced off his armor plate.
He turned to look at her. “You okay?”
“Vermin,” she hissed.
She was more than okay. She was a natural. Bannick resumed his path, heading into a different lift, this one aligned with the axis of Palidragon’s engineering section.
They moved carefully, yet quickly. When word got out that someone was killing people in the areas the enemy thought secure, there would be a team hunting for them. He only needed three more minutes to get where they were going.
But in this sort of combat, that could be an eternity.
Chapter 48 - Far Reach
31 Noder 15332
Bannick stopped just before the last corner to the corridor with the Far Reach’s airlock. He activated a small drone and sent it into the gangway, looking for enemies. Cothis, if he was smart, would guard every potential exit Bannick might use even if he thought Bannick and Palia dead.
One doesn’t rise to the rank of Admiral by being careless.
The drone drifted silently along the conduits of the corridor’s ceiling, dropping down occasionally to take a snapshot of the surroundings. Just outside the airlock was something that drove a moment of despair into his soul.
A heavy mechsuit stood guard, with nearly impenetrable armor and weapons designed to punch through ship plating. Five other lighter suits stood with the heavy, but they were of no concern. To the guns of the heavy Bannick’s armor would be nothing but a small hindrance.
If he went around the corner, he was dead.
He turned and looked at Palia. For the first time in his life, this wasn’t about him. If he died, so be it. He had to get her to safety, because if Cothis caught her alive she’d be tortured for months, maybe years.
“Palia, I need you to listen to me.”
“What do you see?” she asked, clearly sensing something was wrong.
“A heavy mechsuit. I’m going to take it out. Doing so will be a risk. Move twenty meters back the way we came. I’m sending you the access code to my yacht’s airlock. I’m certain it’s still intact, if Cothis had breached the code he’d have simply destroyed the ship. If something happens to me, you’ll need my DNA. Keep that in mind. We still have a chance to get out of here.”
“How—”
“We don’t have time, my love,” Bannick said. He activated a device in the back of his suit he’d never expected to use. A lithium ring was spinning up to hypersonic speeds even as he said his last words to Palia. “If I survive this, I’m going to be very sick. I’ll need your help to get into the yacht. Be ready for that.”
Her face was resigned to the events at hand. “I’m ready.” He watched as she backed to what he hoped was a safe distance.
Bannick sent her one last smile then stepped around the corner. After illuminating his target with a homing laser, he fired the weapon on his back. A small missile shot upward half a meter before turning straight toward the airlock.
Time seemed to almost halt as the missile flew. The heavy mech turned toward him, raising the tungsten cannons socketed into both arms.
But not fast enough. The missile struck the heavy in the chest, and Bannick closed his eyes.
As the lithium ring collapsed onto the deuterium, the resulting fusion blast made his closed eyes irrelevant. He felt his skin burning. The detonation was small, a mere twenty tons of TNT equivalent, but the weapon was designed to release a massive radiation pulse.
A pulse he was standing in.
A few seconds later he opened his eyes, surprised by how much they burned.
The heavy mech and the five attending light mechs were gone. A massive spherical area was simply open to space now, and metal gas hung in the cavernous space in discernable layers.
Through the hole Bannick saw the Far Reach. “Now, Palia, we need to go. I probably don’t have long to stay conscious.”
“On my way,” she responded.
Seconds later he felt her grasp him, pushing his suit into the void toward the yacht. Spalling from the slagged decks of the Palidragon splattered the hull of the sleek vessel, but nothing looked damaged or compromised. The damage to the dreadnought that surrounded the sleek little racer seemed surreal. It was something of a miracle that the yacht remained intact.
In a moment of lost concentration due to his worsening radiation sickness, that made him grin. In this moment of desperation, he was turning to a belief in miracles. Ludicrous.
A feeling of vacancy gripped at his thoughts. Below the yacht the unblocked expanse of open space beckoned to him. They were so close to getting away.
“You need to open the ship,” he heard Palia say.
While he was distracted, she’d brought him to the airlock. He placed his suited hand on the identification panel. “Gwenn, this is Lord Bannick Komi. I wish to board.”
A moment passed as the suit transferred DNA verification to the airlock mechanism.
“Boarding is granted,” he heard the Far Reach’s AI respond.
The airlock opened.
Moments later, inside the yacht, and in a breathable atmosphere, he deactivated his suit and slid out to float in the airlock corridor. His skin was blistered, and pain was starting to become desperate, affecting his awareness. He forced himself to concentrate to complete his next task. The only thing that would save Palia.
“Gwenn, I release command of this vessel to Palia Komi, hers is the next voiceprint you will hear.”
“Bannick…” Palia started.
“Welcome to the Far Reach, Captain Palia Komi,” Gwenn said.
“You’ll need to accelerate away from the Pal
idragon as quickly as possible,” Bannick told his wife. “Ask Gwenn about cryo—”
Blackness engulfed him.
Chapter 49 - Betrayal
31 Noder 15332
Sarah’s ears perked up at the first sign of action since the Hyaku took up station over the small moon.
“Captain Baratta, there is an event at the location I’ve marked on the screen. It’s where Bannick’s fleet dropped out of highspace a few hours ago,” Algiss reported.
“An event?”
“Starship battle. No nukes, railguns only.”
“How many grapplers are on sensor duty?” Baratta asked.
“Eight.”
“Any close to this event?”
“That’s where I got the report, sir. Close enough to detect the fight, but not for details. I don’t know who is fighting.”
This was taking too long, Sarah finally interjected. “Launch all our remaining grapplers, get them to that fight.” If there was a fight, Bannick would be the center of it. She had to protect him from Urdoxander. “Find out how many Komi ships stand in opposition.”
“How many can that be?” Baratta asked her. “Lord Komi has a dreadnought. Admiral Cothis seemed confident that most would join Bannick’s cause, and we’d get our ships.”
“Cothis is potentially an idiot,” Sarah informed him. “No, make that likely an idiot. Get us into the fight. All ships.”
Baratta hit the commlink for the fleet. “Battlestations, set condition one throughout the fleet. Combat is imminent and will be hot. Weapons ready, we transfer in three minutes.” He looked at Sarah. “Would you like the helm, Admiral?”
“I command the fleet, you command this ship, Captain.”
Baratta nodded and turned to Nimalak. “Prepare a firing solution from the data we have, sketchy as it may be. I want to fire within seconds of our arrival, so decide fast who the enemy is. Any ship attacking the Palidragon is a valid target.”
“And other ships, sir?”
“We know which ships Bannick came with, the ones from his last scuffle. Put those in as friendlies, assume their fire is directed at our enemies unless they demonstrate otherwise.”