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Chapter 32


“Mystics so often condemn humanity for our lack of natural balance compared to the animal kingdom. The animals achieve balance through cycles of overpopulation, starvation, and death. Humanity simply excels at long delaying that day of reckoning.”


Legacy Mandate by Emperor Yung I


“Sensors,” Commander Roush said, “full-spectrum scan, full power, now.”

Che Ramos looked up from his panel, surprised after the last hours of silent, dark operation. “Uh, full spectrum, f-full power scan,” Che said and actuated the sensors. Tanager’s various active sensor arrays screamed into life, blasting expanding ripples of invisible energy into Delta Three system.

Roush scanned over her UI checklist and took a breath. She felt entirely alive for the first time since the Admiralty had eviscerated her.

The bridge hatch opened and Inga Maru stepped in, her usual black cloak swirling above her black boots. Roush glanced at her, her eyes narrowing. The captain’s cox’n generally wore a near-perpetual half smile, and that smile was nowhere to be seen, extinguished.

Inga Maru said nothing, handing Roush a small square of white material. Roush stared at the note for a baffled moment. She could not recall the last time she received a handwritten missive from anyone. She unfolded the sheet, read the words painstakingly written there, and gusted a breath through pursed lips.

She crumpled the note and glared into the placid gaze of Inga Maru. “I see.”

Inga turned away, and Roush called after her, “Where will you be?”

“Beside him.”

Roush nodded, but Inga was already gone.

“Ops, general announcement,” Roush said to Phillipa Baker, “the captain is indisposed. I am in command until his recovery.”

She heard the muted gasp around the bridge, but Roush did not wait to observe Ops transmit the announcement. The full-spectrum sensors blasted out into the Delta Three system at the speed of light, declaring Tanager’s presence to any and all. By the time any enemy warships hiding about the system detected the sensor sweep, Roush intended to be far away, just as the captain had planned.

“Nav, ready with those transition calcs?”

“Intrasystem calculations ready,” Julie Yeager said, her pale face hunched over the green glow of her panel.

“Weps?”

“Point defenses charged, shields and dampers green,” Pennysmith said.

“Alright, Ops, what you got?”

“Engineering ready for transition power. All sections green for transition. Heat sinks green. Marine quarterdeck ready. Fabs online.”

“Okay, Sensors, go passive only. Dark and silent.”

“Passive only,” Che said, sweating visibly. “Silent and dark.”

Roush scanned her UI again, checking her sensor inputs to see if any surprises appeared in the expanding ripples of their active sweeps. Nothing still.

“Nav, go for transition,” Roush commanded.

As the air glowed, transmuted by N-space, the bridge crew seemed to compress, squeezing into their seats, knowing they transitioned right into the heart of the system gravity wells, a position akin to sailing into a maze of dangerous shoals. And predators lurked in the darkness of these shoals.

Though the transition represented the shortest actual distance any of Tanager’s crew had ever experienced in a jump, the time in N-space seemed at least as long. For some, racked with fear, the transition time seemed an eternity.

Luminous darkness fell away, and the holo displayed the expanded discs of system planets and the glowing inferno of Delta Three’s kind, yellow star.

“Weps!”

“Shields up, green on missiles, dampers, and point defenses,” Pennysmith said, scanning through space with her independent optical weapon sight.

“Loki, identify all ships docked at the Delta Three station,” Roush said, her eyes flickering over UI inputs. “And Sensors? Dark and silent, you hear?”

“D-dark and silent,” Che Ramos affirmed, sweat dripping from his nose.

“But you keep an eye on those long-range returns, Mister Ramos,” Roush said. “Our active sweeps out on the fringe will reach us before long. Maybe turn something up.”

“Yes, Commander,” Che said, surprised that he hadn’t thought of it himself. With an intrasystem transition, they outran the returns of their active sensor pulses, leaping ahead of those waves moving at mere light speed. Now those expanding waves raced in-system behind them, potentially revealing hidden threats.

“Nav?”

“Position confirmed,” Julie Yeager said, staring into her scope.

“Set a course for Delta Three station, but slingshot through a transverse orbit,” Roush commanded. Before Yeager could affirm, Roush barked, “Loki, got those ship idents for me?”

“Yes, Commander,” Loki’s audible voice said. “On screen now.”

Roush stared at the holo as ten vessel designations scrolled to one side. Tug, intrasystem miner, merchant, heavy merchant, tender, tug, intrasystem gunslinger—shit!—heavy merchant, scout, merchant.

She brought up the packet on Digger, the Delta Three in-system gunboat, frowning. Normally a little system gunslinger like Digger offered little concern for any Fleet warship, but Tanager already stretched to hit above her paltry weight. Digger’s armaments scrolled by in Roush’s eye and she felt that flicker of cold in her gut. Tanager’s defenses still outclassed the gunboat, but not by much, and the Delta Three station could join any fight within range of its own weapon complement.

“Nav?” Roush said. “Ready with that course? Light it up. Twenty gees.” Roush glanced over at Farley on the comm panel. “Comm, give me a tight beam to Delta Three station and make our number.”

The station crew surely reeled with surprise when Tanager appeared right on their doorstep, regardless of their allegiance.

“Tight beam to the station, Commander,” Farley affirmed as the bridge crew felt a shudder pass through Tanager’s old bones. Loki suppressed the gravitational effects of hard acceleration as best he could, but only so much was possible with an old tin can–style hull.

“Tight beam linked, Commander,” Farley said.

“Put it up,” Roush commanded and fixed her harsh gaze on the holo. Farley made the connections, and a moment later a Delta Three System Guard lieutenant resolved on the holo. Whatever shock he felt, the lieutenant’s face only wore a fixed grin.

“Lieutenant,” Roush said, “I’m Captain Roush, IMS Tanager.” The bridge crew shifted uncomfortably around Roush. In the heat of the moment had Roush forgotten her reduced rank? “We’ve got a medical emergency on board. We lack the facilities to treat the casualty, so we’re inbound to your dock.”

At this distance, time delays on transmission were short, so only a moment passed between Roush’s communication and the station lieutenant’s faintly shifting expression. Another few moments passed before the lieutenant’s return transmission reached them.

“Captain, we would love to accommodate, but we are in the midst of our own…crisis. You may have seen our defense station…experienced a grievous accident. Medical facilities here are overwhelmed.”

Roush leaned toward the holo tank. “We grieve for your losses, Lieutenant, but we have no alternative. Under Fleet regs you have no alternative either. We have one casualty only, and you’ve got eight hours or so to make space for him.”

The Guard lieutenant’s face underwent a series of subtle changes, the grin never fading from his lips even though his voice took on a disapproving tone. “Very well, Captain,” the lieutenant said, “a docking beacon will guide you to lock. Will you require anything else of us?”

“Thank you, Lieutenant, nothing else will be needed. We’ll put off our casualty and be on our way.”

A moment later the holo fell dark, and Roush continued to stare into its darkness, her lips thinning as she felt the bridge crew shifting uncomfortably around her. Like the crew and officers of most every command she had ever known, they loathed change, and uncertainty in the chain of command could devour their effectiveness. Her command instincts warned her: she should brief the bridge crew at least, or risk losing their competence and their support.

But…spies.

Twice-damned cloak-and-dagger dog shit!

Saef’s handwritten note spelled out the situation in crystal clarity. Delta Three system had received no official data update since Roush’s demotion and Saef’s promotion. Although spies may have brought advance word, official Fleet mechanisms, such as Delta Three’s station Intelligence, would know very little about Saef, and it would certainly believe Roush remained an esteemed captain in high standing. Even those who had received advance spy information might be thrown into confusion. What would they believe? The questionable reports of some shadowy spy? Or the solid presence of reality staring them in the face?

Roush grudgingly acknowledged to herself that a plan of such cunning would not have occurred to her. Tanager might scoot right up to the station without drawing a heated response from whatever enemy forces surely lurked silently about Delta Three system. If their luck held…

“Loki, we will not transmit standard data updates to the station until I order it,” Roush said.

“Very well, Commander,” Loki replied audibly, his use of her true rank prompting uncomfortable looks from the bridge crew.

Cloak-and-dagger dreck! Just give her the clean, direct burn of combat.… Soon enough.

Roush clumsily composed a direct message in her UI, cursing the necessity, and sent it to Major Mahdi. With the message fired off, she turned to Phillipa Baker. “Ops, call the dogwatch in early.” She looked around the bridge. “Go get some rest, all of you. I’ll need you fresh and sharp in a few hours. Hear me, cupcakes?”

* * *

Back in Marine country, Major Mahdi received the message from Roush in his UI, while all around him Marines prepped for action. He had already called all his men together, jammed into the small open bay, and explained in general terms what operations stood before them. As always, Major Mahdi used blunt, direct language to convey the heart of the matter. “Two elements, unconscionable odds, no support.” The Marines listened to the broad strokes of their twin missions with growing delight.

After years of specialized, lethal training, after brutal selection processes that broke all but the most physically powerful, followed by years of endless training missions, his Marines greeted the horrors of combat as they would a long-lost lover. Centuries of uneasy peace created few opportunities for glory, but more important, it provided few opportunities for utility and excellence. The risk of sudden, violent death seemed a suitable garnish, and little more.

“Alright, lads,” Major Mahdi called out after reading Roush’s terse note, “drop team will be tubed, ready for insertion in three hundred minutes. Striker team, about another three hundred on top of that. Don’t get dozy on me.”

Sergeant Kabir led the striker team who would do whatever needed doing on or around the orbital station, while Major Mahdi would head the drop team. Any number of his Marines possessed the skill and judgment to lead an orbital insertion drop; they were an unusually skilled and senior collection of Marines for such an insignificant ship as Tanager. But handling civilians, politicos, massaging events to fit a certain narrative, this required a seasoned officer.

Their armorer wore multiple hats in such a small, independent command, and at the moment he worked over their six invaluable battledress systems. The Marine battledress provided a warfighter with protection, offensive power, stealth and increased mobility, all in a fairly compact suit of armor. All one needed to obtain one’s own battledress system was millions of credits’ worth of Shaper tech, the most advanced Imperial weapons craft, and a special permission from the Emperor. Or, you could simply join the Imperial Marines, survive the inhuman Assaulter School, and maintain your qualifications for years until your number came up. Some top-scoring battledress-qualified Marines might wait a decade to work their way up the list and finally step into a suit of their own. As a result, battledress stewardship conveyed a certain degree of nobility, regardless of rank or home world, and a Marine’s own battledress held the mystique of a magical talisman, the honor of an ancient heirloom, and the target of affections usually reserved for a noble steed. Each of the six battledress suits lined against the support stanchion wore a different variety of emblems across the hard plate of the left breast, each emblem denoting operations, theatres where the armor, not the operator, deployed.

Some Marine battledress systems served a dozen different operators over a century of service, but each new operator required exclusive biometric tuning for the battledress. The relationship between a Marine and a Marine’s battledress system could be described as a partnership or a marriage, though both descriptions fell short of conveying the living union created when Marine and battledress became one.

After decades of “police actions” and other minor deployments, Major Mahdi’s Marines finally prepared to reveal their true selves, and though he presented a stoic front, as the major’s eyes rested on his own battledress he glowed internally. He stood over the armorer, observing the careful testing of each subsystem on each suit. At such proximity Kosh Mahdi could not resist placing his hand upon the hard, flat surface of his own noble steed, K77, veteran of the First Belter Uprising. Soon, in hours, Major Kosh Mahdi and K77 would join together, and as one living unity they would plunge through hard vacuum, down into the well of Delta Three planetside. There, they would be tested.

“Major,” Corporal Hastings called to him, “ship geist’s found a hit on the governor. Silly sod’s got an event scheduled right on the Nets.”

Major Mahdi patted the hard shoulder of old K77 and smiled.

“Good, Corporal. That makes it so much simpler for us to go liberate the shit out of him.” The Marines around the bay chuckled as they made their final equipment checks. “Pull schematics on this event location, map it out, and let’s get run-throughs up, quick-like.”

Hastings grinned. “Yes, Major.”

Good, now they could calculate a clean orbital insertion, and hopefully drop into the well undetected, navigate the orbital reinsertion spikes to the governor’s location, and pop in for a little visit.

If they didn’t get spotted during reentry, helpless in their stealth reentry spikes, this would likely be a lovely little trip to Delta Three planetside. If they were detected? If enemies manned the defenses? Major Mahdi grinned to himself as he pictured the dust of his remains raining down from the skies of Delta Three.

Death by violent incineration was a proud Mahdi Family tradition.


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