Chapter 36
“The finest leaders see farther than the masses. Their paths seem pure madness to the myopic.”
Legacy Mandate by Emperor Yung I
Within Tanager’s bridge, the moment Inga Maru’s call ended, Susan Roush knew the time for subtlety stood seconds from ending.
“Loki, transmit data updates to Delta Three station. Weps! Watch the gods-damned turret. If it moves to bear, light it up.”
Pennysmith swallowed acid, her eyes locked on her optical weapon sight, its glowing green reticle neatly bisecting the station’s point defense turret. “Aye, authorized to fire.” Her finger hovered over the trigger.
“Commander,” Farley at the comm seat said, puzzled, “getting a low-frequency, coded signal from the station hull itsel—”
“It is Chief Maru,” the voice of Loki suddenly interrupted, startling the bridge crew. “She is under attack. She is wounded.”
Roush responded without a moment’s hesitation. “Weps, fire!”
Even as Pennysmith squeezed the trigger, she saw the enemy turret spin to bear on them. Her weapon sight flared as Tanager’s own small energy weapons poured megajoules of directed energy out. Vapor and fragments flew from the station turret, and Pennysmith raked it, holding the trigger down.
Pennysmith released the trigger at last, seeing the slagged mess of her target glowing white. She felt her breath coming fast, but her hand gripped the weapon toggle without shaking.
“Weps, trim off any sensors or antennae in reach of your dry-side turret. Nav, start transition calcs back to Core. Loki? There’s a flutter in my command UI. What’s wrong?”
While Pennysmith panned her turret across the visible section of the Delta Three station hull, targeting and slagging each antenna and sensor, Loki battered his way into the station’s data ports, in a frenzy to reach Inga. Unauthorized data access was theoretically an impossibility, but Loki probed and sequenced thousands of times per second, trying every device and technique.
“I will initiate a system check, Commander,” Loki said.
“C-Commander!” Che blurted. “Ship signature, out-system!”
Susan Roush glared at the monitor. “Where the shit are my Marines?”
“Should I blow the lock?” Phillipa Baker asked, composed but tense.
“Not yet,” Roush barked. “Sensors, resolve that out-system contact. Whoever that is, you can be sure it’ll be more than a match for us.”
“We’ll be pinned against the gravity well. We’ve got to run,” Julie Yeager insisted.
“Not yet,” Roush said again, withering Ensign Yeager with a pointed stare.
“Code call from Sergeant Kabir, Commander,” Farley said. “They start their assault.”
Roush grinned, musing. “Good. Ramos? Got that inbound resolved yet?”
“N-not yet, Commander,” Che said, switching through his sensor feeds.
Susan Roush just nodded, but inside she felt the same urgency all the bridge crew exuded. She silently willed Captain Sinclair-Maru to hurry. They stood on the knife’s edge, disaster awaiting in nearly every direction.
Come on, you damned upstart, hurry…
* * *
Susan Roush could not know that, even as she willed speed toward Saef, he slumped against the comm panel in the station med-bay, struggling to authenticate his identity, while Inga Maru readied herself for a glorious, violent death. Down planetside, Major Mahdi signaled the ambush, seeing Wiley’s mass-driver round punch a glowing hole in the governor’s skimcar. At the same moment, floating in a shadowed notch of the Delta Three station’s superstructure, Sergeant Kabir and his team of Marines triggered a breaching charge, blasting their way onto Delta Three station. All in one instant, four separate paths stepped into irrevocable action.
“I am Fleet Captain Saef Sinclair-Maru. Authenticate,” Saef said into the comm panel as he heard the med-bay hatch fly open in the darkness behind him.
“You are Fleet Captain Saef Sinclair-Maru, authenticated,” the station Intelligence replied as the infirmary echoed from the abrupt sounds of gunfire. The heavy thump of a grenade detonating just outside the med-bay hatch half-deafened Saef.
Over the thunder, Saef shouted, “Grant full access to IMS Tanager, now!”
In an instant, the barriers resisting Loki fell. A millisecond later the computation resources of Tanager soared into full power as Loki flooded himself into the Delta Three station network, deflecting the station Intelligence’s useless defenses, seizing the keys away from the feeble little thing.
Inga Maru slid through the darkness, firing at muzzle flashes, dodging the thunder of return fire, gaining hints of her attackers through the dumb-mech’s sensors. A moment later her own senses blazed into life. Loki enveloped her, and in a single instant she knew many things.
Interwoven with Loki’s perceptions, Inga’s Family biotech systems threaded her through the attackers, a blur between the staccato flashes. Releasing her submachine gun to swing on its harness, Inga’s hands filled with her short sword. She slashed once, then ducked out through the infirmary hatch, dodging invisibly between two armored attackers as the station lights strobed to Loki’s rhythm, confounding natural and technological night vision.
In the disorienting strobe of light and dark, in the tumult of deafening gunfire and cries, Inga emerged in the station corridor behind the jumble of attackers. She chopped down two armored figures in two surgical cuts, appearing in one strobe flash, disappearing in the next. Any combatant attempting to level a weapon against her found gravity undulating beneath their feet, alternating from heavy to light and back again. Inga went through them as an unstoppable force, each slash of her short sword sending a stream of her own blood down her side.
The last of her attackers fell to the deck with a hand grasping futilely at his lacerated neck, and Inga triggered the lights.
Around her, the shambles stood revealed. Bullet impacts decorated every bulkhead, the bodies of attackers sprawled in the corridor, and through the open infirmary hatch, gore splashed and splattered over the ceiling and walls.
“Maru!” Saef called out from the infirmary, its hatch jammed with fallen attackers. “Maru?”
Saef peered cautiously into the corridor, his pistol held ready. Inga stood there, weaving in place, her face sprinkled in crimson, her sword hanging limply from one hand. She blinked once beneath her blond fringe, then her eyes rolled and her legs folded beneath her.
Saef’s own weakness shook him as he rushed to Inga’s side. His hand nearly encircled her slender neck as he checked the pulse of her carotid artery, his heart lurching in fear for her.
“She lives, Captain,” a familiar, disembodied voice announced.
“Loki?” Saef said.
“You will need to utilize the suspension cot you just vacated, if you hope to preserve Chief Maru’s life.”
Saef felt his mind reeling as he scooped Inga’s limp body up from the gore-splattered deck. How was Loki inhabiting the station systems?
“I’ve got to run to the ship before they send more fighters at us.”
“There are very few humans still living aboard the station, Captain,” Loki’s voice calmly explained as Saef carried Inga back into the shattered infirmary. “Sergeant Kabir’s entry team is not far from your position. There are a few figures apparently hiding in various quarters of the station, and a dozen strangers, like these Chief Maru killed, boarded the vessel Digger moments ago.”
Even as Loki dryly described the situation, Saef stumbled weakly back into the shredded infirmary, the dumb-mech shuffling uncertainly out of the way. He placed Inga on the cot and attached the techmedico cuff as quickly as he could, punching up the emergency setting. As the techmedico whirred and pulsed, Saef frowned at Inga’s placid face. He tried to wipe blood spatter from her cheek, but stopped, feeling he was somehow violating that barrier of cool reserve she wore just like her concealing cloak.
The techmedico went to work, pouring fluid into her veins. Saef unclipped the submachine gun still hanging from Inga’s harness, laid it aside, and quickly placed a smart-dressing to the open wound at her side. Blood dripped steadily from the toe of her right boot where it had accumulated, running down her side and filling her boot like a reservoir.
Saef’s mind slowly cleared away the fog of chemicals and the confusion of awakening in the midst of a battle.
“Digger?” Saef said to himself as the techmedico chirped away. Clarity arrived a moment later, and Saef realized he might be too late to save Tanager. “Digger!”
* * *
Come on, come on…damn it all, hurry!
Susan Roush glared at the holo image, waiting and willing Saef to hurry back to the ship before they were pinned against Delta Three’s gravity well, unable to escape. Beside her, the bridge crew manifested their anxiety in various ways. Pennysmith scanned over the visible portion of the station with her manual weapon sight, Julie Yeager checked and rechecked transition calculations, darting anxious glances toward Roush. Che Ramos measured the distant signature of an inbound vessel, trying to tease out its identity, or at least its class, all the while knowing it did not matter; as Roush had said, whatever enemy raced toward them, it would be too much for Tanager.
Farley and Phillipa Baker obsessively checked and rechecked their own instruments, each feeling the tension building in the tiny bridge.
“Wh-what’s that…?” In the near silence, Che Ramos’s mumbled comment caused everyone to turn.
“What is what?” Roush snapped.
“Um, I w-was trying to get a read on the inbound contact and, um, an ion flow increase is—is interfering with my scopes.”
Susan Roush clenched onto the command seat armrest. “Where?”
Che shook his head. “That’s just it, I—I don’t see any source. It’s like a curtain o-or—”
“They launched something,” Roush said. “On the other side of the station. Sneaky bastards.”
“Commander,” Farley said, urgent, “signal from…from the captain!”
Roush slammed the channel open. “Roush.”
Saef’s voice came through clearly, audible to the entire crew. “Roush, Digger’s coming for you. Run!”
Rather than replying or asking any one of a dozen questions that needed answering, she turned to the immediate task of survival. “Blow the lock! Blow it now!”
Phillipa Baker actuated the explosive charges, blowing Tanager free of the station airlock.
“Should I lay the course for our transition poi—” Julie Yeager began.
“No. Roll ten degrees positive ecliptic and hold. Weps, shields up full. Manual control on point defenses.”
“Shields up, manual control,” Pennysmith repeated, sweat beading her lip as she stared at her weapon sights.
“Don’t wait for a lock or a positive ident, Weps. You hear me? Just kill anything that peeks over that station hull.”
Pennysmith nodded. “Yes, Commander.” She stared across the vast station hull, now scarred with blackened antennae and slagged sensor dishes, placing her green weapon sights right above the station’s distant horizon. Her finger hovered over the point defense trigger once again, waiting for that life-or-death moment.
* * *
Down deep in the well, on the storm-tossed surface of Delta Three planetside, life-and-death moments arrived for a cluster of humans along a dark road, all due to the ordered imperative of Marine Major Mahdi.
He had not executed a traditional ambush, simply because the governor’s loyalty to the Emperor remained an open question. Mowing down the governor’s retinue did not yet seem warranted, but he also could not count upon their observance of the authority vested in an officer of the Imperial Marines. What a fool he would feel if the governor’s skimcar simply ignored his order to halt and simply raced away. Thus, with his small force arrayed on the governor’s supposed route, Major Mahdi improvised.
Wiley and Sparks stopped the two skimcars dead, each receiving a mass-driver bolt to the engine. The two vehicles dropped onto the streaming roadway, sparks flying as they careened to a halt right on target. Mahdi actuated the powerful signal jammers contained in K77, and stepped from concealment to the side of the rearmost skimcar. As he covered the distance in three power-assisted bounds, K77’s active camouflage shimmered away, replaced by the blazoned insignia of the Imperial Marines.
The smart-alloy fingers on Mahdi’s battledress pierced the skimcar, and he peeled the door open, revealing four well-dressed people, one of whom matched the governor’s image perfectly. While the governor stared in openmouthed shock, two of his retinue set Mahdi’s nerves jangling with wrongness. They grinned as they drew weapons, staring at the unmistakable figure of an Imperial Marine, and death.
One managed a shot, the bullet deflecting harmlessly from Mahdi’s helmet, before K77’s shoulder-mount spat two heavy slugs, slamming both of them back in a tumble of limbs.
The governor threw up his arms in fright, but his female companion sat grinning, composed. In the chaos of the unfolding moment, as Corporal Hastings dealt with resistance in the second skimcar through four shoulder-mount slugs, and Mahdi saw mass-driver bolts flicking out from Sparks and Wiley, that grin transfixed him.
“Governor,” Mahdi’s amplified voice crackled into the skimcar’s confines, “do you submit to the Emperor’s authority?”
The governor’s arms dropped but his eyes darted with fright, looking from the flat alloy of K77’s face piece to the grinning countenance of his companion.
“What?” The governor seemed on the edge of a complete breakdown, his face quivering through a range of fearful expressions. “What?”
“Do you remain loyal to the Imperium?”
“Imperium?” the governor shrilled, edging back from his grinning companion. “There’s no rebellion, don’t you see?”
“Governor—”
“They’re not human, even.” The governor stared in revulsion at his grinning female companion as he wormed away from her. She moved fast, pulling a short knife. “Kill it!” the governor screamed as she slashed.
Mahdi’s shoulder-mount spat fire, sending the grinning female back to bounce from the skimcar’s shell, but the damage was done. Arterial blood streamed from the governor’s neck, pouring between his desperate fingers, but the blade missed his windpipe and he screeched out his remaining moments of life.
“Four down up here,” Corporal Hastings’s voice crackled over the comm.
Mahdi scanned over the charnel-house interior of the skimcar, trying to make sense of what he had just witnessed.
“Got lights coming down valley,” Wiley’s voice crackled in.
They’re not human, even.…
The grinning mouths of the governor’s three associates leered in Major Mahdi’s vision, and a chill ran through him.
They’re not human…
Mahdi felt the driving ambition of his life snap into place. Everything made sense in one blinding instant. Another war of extinction had begun, and he must survive to carry warning.
“Alright, lads,” Mahdi commed out, “new mission: we’ve got to get off this planet, fast.…”
* * *
Sergeant Kabir and his assault team had exited Tanager through a dark airlock. Wearing shock armor over skintight ship suits, they had made their way along the ship’s hull, the storm-rocked surface of planetside glowing dimly “below” them. Traveling through shadowed valleys in Delta Three station’s superstructure, they moved single file with all the stealth they could muster, until they reached their entry point. According to their analysis of the station plans, this served as the most favorable point of access that they could conceivably reach without being observed.
Placing breaching charges on an orbital facility presented a number of unique challenges. Place the charge in the wrong spot, and you vent major compartments to vacuum, or leave the entry team with no way to proceed without venting each successive compartment, one after the other.
The demo man had set his prefabricated charge on the exact point they had calculated, popped the detonator, and led the way through the glowing ring of the new entrance that they had just formed. Immediately beside them stood a manual airlock hatch leading to the station interior. Perfect.
A short jaunt later, through the manual airlock and into the eerily silent depths of Delta Three station, Sergeant Kabir’s misgivings found palpable evidence.
The Marines moved through the dark station, unchallenged by the station Intelligence, carbines held in high-ready, nerves buzzing. They all remained clad in ship suits, face masks sealed tight. Their noses could not warn them as they stepped into the first large bay adjoining the station’s central hub.
The point Marine popped a large hatch, with Sergeant Kabir posted up on the opposite side of the hatchway. They both lit the bay with their powerful weapon-mounted floods, revealing a scene their eyes could not believe.
Across the broad bay, as far as their weapon lights revealed, crumpled uniforms lay in disordered heaps: merchant spacers, System Guard, Fleet, corporate. From the heaps, an occasional face or clawed hand projected in the stark edges of their playing beams. Nothing moved, nothing stirred.
“Sweet gods,” Corporal Suffolk whispered, and Sergeant Kabir could only nod, unable to do more than stare. “Must be a thousand…no…two thousand.”
PFC. Haider slid up beside them and stared. “Who…who would do this? It’s a—a slaughter.”
“No,” Sergeant Kabir said, tightening his weapon light down to a fine beam, “it’s a harvest.” He turned the white cone of his light on one victim, a woman in spacer garb, a chunk of her skull missing, then another corpse, and another, all missing a portion of the skull…right where a Shaper implant would rest.
The sergeant took a final look, seeing the human element, the faces frozen in fear, the hands outstretched defensively. He snapped off his flood. “Seal this door. We’ll go around to the hub on the wet-side companionway.”
The small team of Marines continued clearing the dark station at a steady pace, but each of them saw images of the sprawled, disfigured dead in their mind’s eye, and each silently determined that they would never be taken alive.
* * *
Saef lost the all-seeing presence of Loki the moment Tanager blew the umbilical feed through the airlock, and the proper station Intelligence never reappeared. Still, he possessed open access through his UI, and while the techmedico stabilized Inga Maru’s condition, he scrolled through the vessels currently docked at the Delta Three station.
Two heavy merchant ships quickly became the target of his attention. Comet massed nine thousand tons and already held sufficient Shaper fuel for any transition he might desire. Its engines were new upgrades, so it might fare better than poor old Tanager on an intrasystem game of catch-me-shag-me.
The other candidate was the heavy merchant Aurora, and when Saef glanced at Aurora’s cargo manifest, he knew his choice was made. Though only six thousand tons, and equipped with somewhat older engines, its cargo surely represented an example of treachery of an elevated caliber. Aurora’s sizeable hold contained the largest accumulation of Shaper tech Saef had ever encountered outside the Imperial holds of Core Alpha, if the manifest read true.
Although Loki had said Sergeant Kabir led his team of Marines not far distant, Saef burned to get off the Delta Three station. For the first time since he left the Strand, he clearly saw an answer—the answer—to his multipronged dilemma, and every passing moment stuck on Delta Three station reduced his odds of success. Also, Tanager and that cursed gunboat, Digger, might be clawing each other even as he stood about the destroyed medical bay. He had to move.
With the dumb-mech scampering along behind, Saef pushed Inga’s suspension cot out of the infirmary, through the small battlefield, Inga’s Krishna submachine gun placed close at hand, loaded with its final magazine.
With each step, the chemicals fogging Saef’s mind reduced as he moved farther from the overpowering scents of combat. The odors of accelerant and coppery blood faded, to be replaced by a growing stench of decay. Like Inga, Saef felt the visceral response and the dismay. Loki said few people remained alive aboard the station. There should have been thousands between station staff, ship crews, Guard and Fleet personnel. Where had they all gone?
Saef triggered the final hatch that exited the station hub, according to the UI wire frame. It opened onto a wide bay, dark and quiet. Some hint of sound reached Saef’s ears, and he hesitated to move through the broad hatch, reaching for Inga’s submachine gun. After a moment of burning impatience, Saef took a chance. “Tanager!” he shouted.
The boom of his voice echoed through the bay, swallowed by darkness. A moment more passed before he heard a response, crackling through a ship suit speaker. “That you, Captain?” Sergeant Kabir and an equally beefy PFC peered around a stanchion, their carbines leveled on Saef’s position.
“It is,” Saef said, and saw their weapons lower. A moment later, Saef heard the clatter of two more Marines clearing through the hub behind him. Corporal Suffolk led the way on Saef’s trail, his eyes wide, visible through the ship suit’s bulbous lenses. The corporal had just cleared through the battlefield around the medical bay, and he could scarcely believe what he had witnessed. Everyone knew that the captain was a right terror in a duel, but this was something else entirely.
“Captain,” Sergeant Kabir greeted as the Marines gathered around him, all still on high alert, each scanning about the surrounding darkness. “Tanager blew the lock.” Kabir looked around the dark reaches of the silent station. “Something very bad is loose on this station. We—we saw—”
“Tell me as we run, Sergeant,” Saef interrupted. “We’ve got minutes to reach dock seven, or we’re stuck here, permanently.”
Sergeant Kabir jerked a nod. “Haider, you’re on six, Suffolk on point. Let’s move, Marines!”