The Audie-Murphy had two small boarding pods. Technically, they also doubled as the ship"s escape pods. That meant, when they were launched, they immediately broadcast a broadband distress beacon, both on several lightspeed wavelengths and on at least three hyperrelay bands. It guaranteed that someone would be coming by in a few hours to see why the pods had been launched, a necessary precaution when s.p.a.ce was so vast.
It was also the most dangerous thing Ia and her crew could do, since launching the pods meant risking being shot at by the supposedly disabled Salik vessel ahead of them. Only when a commanding officer was certain the ship was disabled did they risk launching the pods. Sometimes they were right and landed safely. Sometimes they were wrong. The casualty rate was 80 percent for a reason, though this time Ia and the others were fully suited and sealed, just in case something cracked open the small boarding vessel.
This time, they were crammed four to a pod, with Ia, Tamaganej, Higatsu, and Nguyen in one pod, and Chief Petty Officer Kendric with Privates Doolittle, Quangyan, and de la Soleza in the other pod, all members of the Murphy half of the crew. This time, Ia was the only one who was relaxed inside her suit. She knew-she had made sure-that all of the alien ship"s weapons systems had been disabled, plus she had directed the gunners to hit the ship hard enough in the right spots to disable their self-destruct capacity.
Instead of fretting, she reviewed known ship schematics for this general configuration, and for known Salik databank units, using her heads-up display to pretend like she was studying for the coming encounter. Swaying against her restraint sockets, Ia listened to the thump and buzzing hiss of the pod sealing onto the ship"s hull, and then cutting into it. Like so many other things, modern ceristeel technology had been denied to the Salik, but their own version of hull armor was still quite tough.
Giving the others the thumbs-up with one servo-glove, Ia moved to the airlock door and slipped through, with Nguyen right behind her. A twist of the controls activated the cutters, the heavy, mining-quality laser drills that sliced into the ship"s hull. With their bodies wrapped in p-suits inside their jointed armor, the eight members of the boarding team would be fine if the Salik ship depressurized. The Salik might or might not be alright, depending on whether or not they had donned their own suits in the aftermath of the battle.
Nguyen pa.s.sed her the buzzbomb cannon. Fitting it to the port in the center of the door, Ia hooked her helmet"s HUD to the pod"s external cameras. The lasers were still drilling, circling around and around on their oval track. Finally, a faint clannng rippled into the pod from the other ship as the pistons pushing on the hull shoved the layers of armor plating and bulkhead into the depths of the Salik vessel.
Ia pulled the trigger on the cannon, pulsing it four times. Four orbs spat down into the alien vessel. The first one exploded in a pzzzt of sound and light, a stunner grenade that flashed its electrosonic pulse through the cabin beyond the opening she had made. The second through fourth flew down, bounced, and rolled off under self-control, automatically seeking out live bodies to pulse a second wave of sonic shocks.
Unhooking the cannon let in a hiss of steam. The heated vapor didn"t do anything to her mechsuit, so Ia ignored it. She pa.s.sed the launcher back to Nguyen with a murmur through her external speakers. "We could"ve seriously used these on board the Liu Ji, back in my old Marines Company. They would"ve made boarding pirate ships a lot easier."
"Let"s trade places, sir," he offered, lifting his chin behind the half-silvered curve of his inner faceplate.
"Why?" she asked. She turned her attention to the controls for the airlock door.
"Sir, you shouldn"t go in first. Leave that job to a Marine," he stated.
"I am a Marine. Even if I wear Blues these days," she amended. "Either way, I am the boarding officer for this little party."
The door hissed open, swinging and pivoting almost like a rolltop door in order to give them the clearance to enter. More steamy air billowed their way, though not as saturated as before. Nguyen touched Ia, the rubberized tips of his servo-fingers gripping her arm plates.
"Then let an enlisted meioa go first, sir. It isn"t right our leader should risk herself as the first one into the enemy"s ship," he argued.
"Duly noted, Private, but denied. I lead from the front," Ia told him. Ducking into the opening, she climbed over the still-hot edges of the oval. The sensors on her mechsuit boot soles flared their temperature warnings at the edges of the heads-up display shining off the inner curve of her faceplate. A blink-code slid her thick-silvered blast plate into place, and a shift of her servo-arms pulled her HK-114 mechsuit-sized laser rifle to the front of her armored body.
Static swept across her faceplate display, pulsed from the stunner grenade on the floor inside the cabin. By the time it cleared, she was inside. From the trio of lidded tanks lining three of the walls-or rather, two and the remains of the middle third, which had been crushed by the falling chunks of hull and overhead storage lockers-this was some sort of crew quarters.
Ignoring the debris, Ia stepped over it and slapped the sucker hand over the controls for the cabin door, lifting on the b.u.t.tons to open the panel. Rolling through as soon as it hissed wide, she pointed her rifle both ways down the corridor outside. Nothing and no one. The stunner bombs bounced out the door and rolled down the hall, occasionally flashing electrosonic shockwaves, which, like stunner rifles, would disrupt the neural networks of just about any form of life that used electrical signals. Ceristeel absorbed most of the shockwave, but the sensors built into her mechsuit fuzzed a second time with another brief moment of static before they cleared.
Still, her suit"s scanners, upgraded for Blockade work, showed no other life-forms nearby. No stray sounds, no Salik-shaped heat signatures, with their distinctive, ostrich-backwards knees and rear-facing flipper-feet, nor their pseudo-tentacle arms with the four, supple, sucker-covered ends. She flicked on her comm with another blink, triggered by the sensors picking up the focal point of her gaze flicking over the command options hovering around the edges of her faceplate display.
"This is too quiet. They"d know where we latched on. We should be facing resistance. Heads up, people. Petty Kendric, report."
"It"s too quiet here, sir," the noncom replied over her headset. "We emerged in a storage locker just off the hangar deck, but there"s no sign any of them tried to get to the courier to flee."
"Did you say courier?" That question came from Salish, back on board the Audie-Murphy.
Ia knew what was coming. She let First Petty Kendric reply, since he was the one who "knew" for sure.
"I"m staring at what looks like a hypers.p.a.ce nosecone on the pointy end of a Salik-"
"Shakk!" Ia swore into her headset mike. "All units, get to the bridge! I repeat, get to the bridge!"
She took off at a sprint, startling Nguyen and the other two. They lumbered after her, rattling the deckplates with the weight of their halfmech. s.n.a.t.c.hing up the nearest stunner ball without crushing it as she ran-no mean feat in the bulk of a mechsuit-she confirmed her course from a light skimming of the time-streams.
"Lieutenant, report!" Salish snapped.
"It"s a suicide ship, sir," she stated, skidding around a corner and slapping the sucker hand over the controls for one of the ship"s emergency stairwells. "They must have been carrying navigation data on either the location of a secret base or the coordinates for a rendezvous. That"s why there"s no resistance; they"re holed up somewhere, either dead or killing themselves off to ensure they can"t be interrogated. Our best chance is to hope they haven"t completely slagged the relevant data consoles."
As soon as she got the door open, she pulled off the device and clanged down the steps. The Salik version of feet-backwards-pointing flippers on ostrich-like legs-weren"t exactly adapted for using ladder rungs, which meant there was plenty of room for her halfmech suit to charge down two levels. By the time she reached the right door, Private de la Soleza"s voice rang over the comm channels.
"I think I found the bridge, sir! Something just shot at me!"
"All units, converge on de la Soleza," Ia ordered, more of her attention on getting the stairwell door open than on either her scanners or the timestreams of who or what was attacking the private. The ball in her grip pzzzzted with another wave of stunner energy, but the brief fuzzing of her sensors didn"t matter. The who or what wasn"t far away; within moments, they reached the right cross-corridor, one with a pair of gun turrets mounted on the ceiling outside two sets of mirror-image doors.
Swinging her gun up into position, Ia fired, slicing through the power conduits feeding both lasers. One of them managed to swivel around in time to take a potshot at her, but the blood orange bolt merely scuffed her armor. Without missing a beat, she turned to her left and started lasering through the seam sealing the double doors together. Nguyen joined her, while de la Soleza and her partner Doolittle used their own HK-114s on the double doors opposite.
One set of the mirror-image doors would lead to a shallow storage locker; the other would lead onto the real bridge. Ia knew which set were the real doors. Tamaganej from her left and Higatsu from her right pulled out pocket crowbars from storage compartments on their thighs. Jamming them into the glowing-hot crack she and Nguyen had made, they flexed their synthetic muscles, prying the doors apart. On the other side, Quangyan and Kendric started to do the same.
The moment the opening was barely big enough, Ia tossed the stunner grenade through. Just in time, too; it went off on the other side of the glowing door edges. A smattering of static sparkled across her heads-up display. It didn"t stop her from bringing her rifle back up into position...nor did it stop the deadman switch from triggering on the grenade in the limp grip of one of the stunned Salik inside.
Ignoring the b.l.o.o.d.y, smoldering pieces smacking into the doors, the bits that spattered down her armor, Ia crouched a little, aimed carefully below the Salik-style overhead screens dotting each workstation, and fired. The acid poured over the data cubes beneath the navigation console ignited in a rush of light and heat. The flames burned swiftly, extinguishing themselves as they used up the available oxygen in their vicinity.
"Whoa," Nguyen muttered over the open comms. "What"d you do that for, sir?"
"They use a corrosive acid to destroy their memory banks, but the acid is highly flammable," Ia stated. She waited while another stunner-pulse from the grenade rolling around on the floor fuzzed her heads-up view, then stepped onto the bridge. "I tend to play the Audie-Murphy"s logs for past encounters before falling asleep. With luck, I"ve saved enough of the units that the higher-ups can extract something useful. Commander Salish, I don"t know how many of the Salik are still alive elsewhere, but I think we have four prisoners here. Um...maybe three. I think one of them is bleeding to death."
"I"ve already received a pingback on the hyperrelays," Salish promised her. "The TUPSF Kaiwinoka is on her way to give the enemy a tow back to base. They"ve also promised to bring a spare set of starboard insystem thrusters for the Murphy. Thank our lucky stars, that"s the worst of the damage we sustained. Stay on board the enemy ship, Lieutenant, and do your best to finish securing it. Don"t hesitate to make a run for the pods if it looks like things are going southward. I"ll be keeping the Audie and the Murphy separate until the Kaiwinoka arrives, just in case they have a few crewmembers stashed away, waiting for a chance of sabotage."
"Understood, sir," Ia agreed. "You heard our fearless leader, meioas. Strip and zip the prisoners, and haul them out of here. I want them duct-taped to a bulkhead outside and unable to do anything but hang there and breathe in ten minutes flat-and yes, I do mean that literally. Strip "n zip, and strap "em flat!"
A ragged chorus of "Aye, sir" answered her command, both locally and over her headset.
"Be careful and scan each one before you move them," First Petty Officer Kendric ordered. "Some of these sons of squids have a bad habit of lying down on a deadman"s switch, particularly if they think they"ll be stunned. The moment you turn them over-boom!"
"Don"t count on your armor protecting you, either, if you"re close enough to turn "em over," Ia added in warning, backing up the noncom. "No one buys a star out of carelessness, today."
JANUARY 9, 2494 T.S.
BATTLE PLATFORM MAD JACK.
SIC TRANSIT.
"So, how was your first week?" Bennie asked as she came back from the caf" dispenser. Once more, she was stuck in a small office attached to her quarters, though at least they were larger than the ones back on the Liu Ji.
Accepting the mug of hot liquid, Ia shrugged. "Not bad. I"m getting some respect from the crews of the authorized ships we"ve boarded, and we"ve caught three that weren"t authorized. Well, exploded, disabled, and boarded."
The redheaded chaplain curled one leg under the other as she settled in her cushioned chair. A wry smirk curved the corner of her mouth. "The way I hear it, you earned your nickname again."
Ia shook her head, sipping at the slightly bitter beverage. "Not really. It was just a small amount of spatter, this time. Mostly down the midline. The bridge doors weren"t open very wide when the grenade went off."
Blowing on her own mug, Bennie shrugged. "Any nightmares from it?"
"Not as far as I know. Besides, everyone on my side lived," Ia pointed out. "That"s the best nightmare deterrent I can have. The techs might be able to get useful navigation data out of the banks we salvaged. I won"t hold my breath, but even if they just have a series of slightly more detailed starcharts for several systems, that"d give them a place to start looking. The really disturbing thing, though, is that someone gave them OTL technology."
Bennie nodded. "Oddly enough, I"m not surprised. If they dug a giant tunnel under the surface of their worlds, sealed it and removed the atmosphere, they could launch ships into hypers.p.a.ce that way. It would make the most sense as to how they could come and go without being seen."
"The stress of a wormhole tunneling through a planet could show itself as a series of microfaults and microquakes, giving them a possible way to locate it..." Ia gave up and shook her head. "Eh. That"s speculation better left for better heads in the military to mull over."
"How are your crew doing? Are they giving you respect, yet?" Bennie asked next. "Or are they giving you a hard time?"
Ia blew out a breath. "I find myself wanting to be short with them sometimes. I try to hold it back, though; it"s not their fault."
"Oh?"
The single word held a wealth of inquiry. Not once did Ia forget that the woman across from her, friend or not, was a trained psychologist as well as a spiritual advisor, and a Department of Innovationsa.s.signed watchdog. Slouching a little, Ia rested her head on the high, padded back of her own chair. "I served with Ferrar"s Fighters for several tours of duty. Some of them came and went, but...we knew each other by the time I was put into a position of great authority-being a corporal-ranked Squad leader doesn"t count. I"m talking noncom, real authority.
"I just have to remind myself, I"ve only served with these soldiers a week or so," she finished, shrugging.
What she really meant was, I precognitively remember serving with them already, but I have to remember that I haven"t actually done so in reality, yet. But Ia didn"t say that to Bennie. As much as she liked the older woman, as much as they were friends and Bennie was her confidante, there were certain things she couldn"t yet say.
"So long as you realize this, rein in your temper-what little temper you have," the chaplain teased dryly, "and treat them fairly, they"ll come to respect and follow you." She sipped at her mug of caf" for a few moments, then frowned softly. "I don"t know if you"ve noticed, but you have an...air of command about you. No, not command..."
She fell silent for several seconds, thinking it over. Ia gave her the peace to do so. Finally, Bennie shrugged.
"The only words I can think of are purpose and drive. Or maybe destiny...whatever it is, it puts me in mind of the story of Joan of Arc." Bennie shook her head, her thick braid sliding across her shoulders. "Not exactly the most pleasant of comparisons, sorry."
Ia chuckled softly. "Here"s hoping I don"t get burned at the stake. Though my enemy right now are the Salik, and that means they"d rather eat me alive than cook me, first."
"And how do you feel about that, as a possibility?" Bennie asked her. "You are working the Blockade, and it has been known to happen."
Ia lifted her mug in mock-salute. "I hope they consider me eminently worthy of being eaten."
The look Bennie gave her, taken aback to the point of dismay, tickled Ia"s sometimes strange sense of humor.
"Oh, don"t give me that look," she chided the chaplain, chuckling under her breath. "The only way they"d find me "eminently worthy" of being devoured alive is if they thought I was a major war-prize. That means I"d have given them so much grief and h.e.l.l, destroying ships and capturing Blockade-runners, there"d be fewer of the frogtopus b.a.s.t.a.r.ds around to give other soldiers h.e.l.l. That kind of reputation, the one that puts me at the top of their To Be Eaten list? I can live with that, Bennie."
"You want to get eaten?" Bennie asked her, still dubious.
That made Ia burst out with laughter. "G.o.d, no! What kind of m.a.s.o.c.h.i.s.t do you take me for? Ahahaha! Ha! Heheheh...heh...Oh, stars. I haven"t laughed like that in a long while..."
Bennie smiled over the rim of her mug. "Well, at least I"ve finally tickled your funny bone. You don"t laugh a lot, do you? Chuckle, yes, and other restrained forms of mirth, but laugh outright? Nooo, our Ia is far too sober and serious to guffaw."
That made her snort with laughter. Blushing, Ia covered her nose, reducing her "guffaws" to a mere chuckle once more. Bennie grinned and lifted her mug in salute.
"Gotcha."
Ia stuck out her tongue, then buried her fading smile in her mug. There were reasons why she rarely laughed. It was hard to be that carefree with the fate of the future looming constantly throughout her thoughts.
FEBRUARY 5, 2494 T.S.
Her older brother peered into the pickups on his end of the vidlink and frowned. "You look like h.e.l.l, Sis. What"ve you been up to? That isn"t a sunburn, is it?"
Ia shook her head. "Decompression sickness. It was a sneak attack by ore smugglers. They blew a hole in my half of the ship. Everyone got into their p-suits okay, but okay doesn"t cover how the d.a.m.ned pressure foam expands and makes it that much harder to climb into them. We"re confined to the Battle Platform on Sick Leave while they put the Audie back together. By the time she"s flightworthy again, the docs tell me the broken capillaries will have healed. The daily goo baths don"t hurt, either."
Despite the speed of the micro-sized hyperrifts used in interstellar communications, traveling hundreds of lightyears to the second, it still took several seconds for him to hear her side of the conversation and respond.
"Lucky you, you get regeneration goo," he muttered. "There"s been a media storm locally on certain doctors at the hospital refusing to use the stuff on patients who "aren"t that badly injured" according to said doctors," Thorne warned her. "More specifically, on patients who are known to be particularly anti-Church."
"And?" Ia asked, waiting to hear the most likely probabilities confirmed. She had already foreseen something like this, but the variables had created several minor possibilities. None of it would seriously change the near-future timelines, but it would be a point to be dredged back up again when it came time to sway the undecided members of Sanctuary"s population.
"They"ve stirred up a board of inquiry, and the victims are now suing in court," Thorne told her. His mouth pressed into a grim line. "Regeneration biogels are disgustingly expensive to acquire on Sanctuary, so the doctors are arguing that it"s being saved for cases that truly need it. Except three of the victims were badly burned in a chemical fire and could"ve used doses of the goo to prevent severe scarring. They"re suing the physicians on grounds of religious discrimination and the violation of their Hippocratic Oaths. The results are...unpleasant... to look at, so the consensus is that they"ll win the sympathy vote from the jury.
"As it is, if they want the scars gone, they"ll have to have their skin peeled away from the affected areas before the biogel can be applied-the more liberal of the media services have been romping and rolling all over that part of the news."
"How charming. I hope those so-called doctors get what they deserve. On a more cheerful topic, did you get the gift I sent for Little Brother?" she asked.
It took him a moment to catch her meaning. Raising his brows, he nodded slowly. "Yeah, I got it, along with your latest shipment of holy beads. But he"s off camping in the mountains with some friends this week. I should be able to give it to him next Tuesday."
Camping in the mountains was a prearranged euphemism for working down in the lava tunnels. "Just so long as he"s careful. How are Mom and Ma doing?"
"Pretty good. They found a new harpist for the restaurant. Not quite as good as the last one, or the dulcimer player, but then he"s still learning how to control the picks. Their anniversary is coming up. Did you remember to ship a gift?"
Ia winced. This time, the reaction wasn"t feigned. "No, I honestly forgot. Extend my apologies and get them something nice in my name. I"ll wire some credits to your account to cover it."
He lifted his hand into view, warding off the suggestion. "I"ll pay for it myself. What they"d really like is a chance to talk to you themselves. Uh..." Thorne looked away from the vid pickups for a moment, frowning slightly, then nodded. "In nineteen hours Terran Standard, they"ll just be waking up, locally. That"s the best time to catch them. Right now, they"re busy with the restaurant."
She nodded. "I"ll be up at that time anyway. It"s the Opening Ceremonies for the Winter Olympics, and everyone in the Blockade Fleet is looking forward to seeing the displays the Gatsugi have planned for their show. I don"t know what news-Net channel you"re watching, but the ones piped out here have said they"ll be posting a chromatic scale with colormood translations to help the non-Gatsugi understand what they"re seeing."
"Alien cultures," Thorne quipped. "Gotta love "em. Well, everyone but the Church."
"How are your cla.s.ses going?" she asked her brother.
"I"m just about finished with my midterm project in Integrated Delivery Systems, and I"m halfway through my graduate paper on Satellite s.p.a.ceport Systems Design. Since Sanctuary doesn"t have any moons or habitable rocks worth speaking of, I"m pretty much the only one at the college studying domeworld structures and building logistics," he told her. "I"d tell you all about it, but I wouldn"t want to bore you. Or take up too much time on this call."
"I wish I had time to be bored, because I"d love to hear it," Ia confessed. "Unfortunately, you"re right, my free calling time is almost up. Pa.s.s my love to Fyfer, Mom, and Ma, will you? And keep a share for yourself?"
"Always," he promised. "Mizzu."