Brink of Destruction, page 30
So far at least, it appeared that those who had already given up didn’t realize what had happened.
The door slid shut again, and Colombe began to introduce Rambaud and his two non-coms, but Breck cut him off. “We don’t have much time. Whatever drew the vithang off has them all excited and focused elsewhere, but as soon as they figure out that we’re loose and armed, that will change.” He pointed down the hallway. “As we were being escorted to the audience with the emissary, I saw two more of the human pawns go through an opening down there.” His choice of words was interesting, calling the meeting with Rathavas an “audience,” and the human collaborators “pawns.” “Whether it’s a ready room or something else, if we can capture at least one more of them, we should be able to get weapons and some idea of the vital sectors of this place.”
Colombe looked at Breck with some shock. “You want to try to take the base? With only the handful of soldiers left to us?”
“We had it before Colonel Dirix surrendered,” Breck bit out. “They can’t have brought too many more down, not when they thought we were all disarmed and secured. And with this little emergency going on, if we move fast enough, they won’t know what’s happening until it’s too late. Now, move.”
None dared argue. Yun and Draven, at least, remembered Violaire’s body, lying with a smoking hole through her, her eyes still wide with pain and shock. Captain Breck might not have been the senior Zolarian officer present on this world, but he had been the man on the spot and he had taken action—action violent enough that he had asserted his leadership at the point of a gun. If they did survive and somehow get back to Zolah, there would probably be some serious consequences. If nothing else, Colonel Dirix would make sure that Breck was pilloried for making the colonel look bad, should this work. But under the circumstances…
It’s not that it’s going to work. We’re probably all going to die. Still, better to follow Captain Breck to death than to follow Colonel Dirix to torture and possible brainwashing.
Captain Breck led the way, with Draven falling in behind him, putting himself between Breck and Yun, just in case. The other senior non-com hadn’t said a word since they’d stuffed the bodies in their hiding place, and he had simply and competently held his sector and followed orders, but Draven still wasn’t sure about him.
Maybe Yun’s shock was wearing off and he was starting to see the situation for what it was. Draven could hope. He didn’t mourn Violaire at all, but he could see how it would shake a career non-com to have to choose between his existing chain of command and an officer who had, without regard for political considerations, simply executed another officer.
They were in a place and a situation that no Zolarian that Draven knew of had ever been in before, and the niceties of the Grand Democracy—never mind that those same niceties covered up corruption and deceit—would not work here.
Breck was already stacking up on the next door, Draven right behind him, Torg and Georgios finding their spots, with Torg covering down the long axis of the hallway over Draven’s shoulder. Draven felt naked without his hardsuit, preparing to go into close-quarters combat with no armor, no stunners, no sparkers, nothing but a captured weapon he didn’t understand and wasn’t even sure was good for many more shots.
This was the fight at hand, though, so he took a deep breath as Breck activated the door and went through.
Draven followed him, staying close and keeping his weapon low until he could clear the captain’s back and bring it level. They swept into a relatively small compartment and found themselves facing three men in the black carapace armor that all of the vithang’s human servants except for Drass seemed to wear. None were wearing helmets, and their eyes widened as they took in the sight of men who were not their fellows, in the same uniforms as the prisoners, pointing weapons at them.
Breck and Draven spread out as Torg, Georgios, Yun, Rambaud, and finally Colombe entered behind them. Draven had half expected the captain to execute at least one of the men in black, even though none currently had a hand on a weapon, but Breck held his fire.
One man did glance toward one of the sleek arms that was leaning against a desk nearby. This looked like some sort of office or watch room, rather than a team ready room, but there were still weapons for all three.
“Go ahead.” Breck’s Franai was harsher and harder than that language usually allowed for. Draven realized he had no idea whether these men even spoke it, though Drass had. “Try it. I only need one of you alive.”
The man apparently did understand Franai, or at least he understood the tone and the leveled weapon. He shook his head violently, both hands raised toward the ceiling. The other two followed suit.
Draven didn’t think that any of them had touched an alarm, but he now stepped forward with Yun, and they quickly moved the three of them away from the weapons and the desks, forcing them to their knees with their hands on their heads. They all responded quickly to the Franai commands, at least.
Breck pointed, and Torg gathered up the weapons, handing one to Colombe, who turned it over in his hands somewhat gingerly. Colombe might be solid in character, but Draven could tell, from watching the other captain out of the corner of his eye, that he was out of his depth in actual combat. He was the sort of officer who directed, rather than led.
That was more the norm in the Grand Army. Draven had just gotten used to Captain Breck’s bullish style.
“Which of you wants to live more?” Captain Breck stood over the three prisoners, all of them looking up at him with fear in their eyes. There was no hard anger, no defiance, no tactical calculations going on there. Only dread. “Understand. Wherever you come from—and you clearly speak Franai, so that narrows the possibilities down—you are traitors to your homeworlds by the sheer fact that you are here and working for the vithang. That means your lives are already forfeit. If you cooperate, I might find it in myself to spare your lives instead of summarily executing you like you deserve. Show us to an armory, and you get to live.”
The three of them just stared at Breck with wide, frightened eyes, and Draven was starting to wonder if their captors hadn’t rendered them mute when the first one, the man who had looked toward his weapon, spoke.
“We cannot.” His Franai was strangely accented but understandable. “If we try to go where we are not supposed to go, our implants will kill us.” He looked from stony face to stony face. “They will give them to you, too. Eventually. That is their final line of control.”
Breck stared at the man unblinking, and Draven once again thought he might execute the vithang pawn just to make a point. Instead he reached down, grasped the man by the carapace armor, and hauled him to his feet. “Keep your hands on your head.”
Draven frowned, unsure what was going on, but stepped back as the captain turned the man toward the door. “Move.”
The man’s eyes widened still more, and he started to dig in his heels.
Captain Breck snarled and pushed him hard toward the door. “Risk your implants, or get a bolt. Your choice.”
Stumbling, and visibly sweating, the man moved toward the doorway. Captain Colombe touched the control pad next to it, and it irised open. Apparently the one-sided door controls were only on the prisoners’ quarters.
As he got closer to the door, the more the man resisted, though he kept his hands on his head. Captain Breck’s energy weapon was pressed against his back, and he looked as though he wasn’t sure which to fear more: the captain or the implants.
With a final shove, he stumbled out into the hallway. Captain Breck stayed just inside the threshold, both hands now on his weapon, ready to shoot their captive as soon as he tried to run.
He did just that. As soon as he’d recovered from his stumble, he turned away from the Zolarians’ holding cell and started to move, his hands falling away from his head and his mouth opening to shout.
Breck and Yun both shot him through the head before he could get a sound out. The brilliant bolts of energy each dumped their entire payload of joules into his skull, and it burst, spraying steaming gore against the opposite wall as he collapsed limply to the floor.
“Someone drag that body back in here before someone comes along and spots it,” Captain Breck said coldly. Then he turned to the remaining captives. “So. Let’s start over.”
CHAPTER 39
Bannon had no time to think about what he was seeing. He could only react, and after so many worlds and so many wars, he did so more through instinct than anything else. He threw himself between two of the docking arms, already shooting into the opening above, not even bothering to aim but just trying to get some fire on the alien react force.
His first rounds smashed one of the long-faced visors, sending the alien crashing back into the others, its boots losing purchase on the decking as soon as it was hit. Then he was behind the docking arm as lines of energy or particles, nearly invisible but eye-searing nevertheless, slammed into the dark material, causing some of it to spall off and turn to flying dust.
More gunfire spat from nearby as Alexius, Castillo, and Price raced to other docking arms, barricading on the fingerlike protrusions and pouring fire into the opening. If the aliens had hoped to catch them unprepared and looking the wrong way, they still didn’t understand Corvanites.
Hern lobbed a thirty-seven-millimeter grenade over the ramp, having already automatically adjusted his aim for the zero-gravity conditions. It burst with a flash just inside the ramp, the smoke less than it would have been in atmosphere, but a cloud of fragments ripping through the joints of the alien armor, spilling pink blobs of blood into the blue-lit interior of the auxiliary craft.
Bannon came out from cover as the last of the shrapnel tore into the protrusion he’d been hiding behind, and he bounded toward the ramp. The defenders at the portal leading deeper into the alien station were the primary objective, but he couldn’t risk having more of the long-snouted aliens popping out of the auxiliary in their rear.
Hern, true to form, was right at his heels, probably silently cursing inside his helmet as he tried to get ahead of his commanding officer. That had been something of a competition between him and Hern since he’d been squad sergeant, but it had become more intense once he’d become the phalanx commander. Hern wouldn’t say it, and Bannon wouldn’t call him on it, but the younger man dreaded losing his lieutenant, and kept trying to get ahead of him because of that fear. Bannon wouldn’t have it, though there had been times when he’d had to let his senior squad sergeant take the lead, if only because to argue about it would slow the assault and get men killed.
Ego had to take a back seat in combat. From what he knew, the Zolarian officers only rarely learned that lesson. Corvanite officers tended to know it better, but some still ignored it, to their men’s detriment.
The strange field effect that was allowing them to keep their footing was maintained within the auxiliary, and Bannon stormed up the ramp, his rifle leveled, and shot the first long-snouted alien that moved. It was bleeding heavily from the thirty-seven’s shrapnel, but it was still kicking, and there was no time or leeway for prisoners at that point, even if the aliens would surrender.
He remembered what they’d done on Thuraban, too.
While he and Hern split, the rest of Third Squad either set up at the base of the ramp with Trent and Corporal Lewiski, holding the exit and keeping up the fire on the defenders deeper in the bay, or fell in behind either their phalanx commander or their squad sergeant. Assaults were one of the missions they’d trained for intensely, and it was all second nature at this point. Find a job and do it.
Unlike the first time they’d boarded a ghost ship auxiliary, they weren’t taking this slowly and carefully. Bannon pointed at the first portal, and Deutsch aimed in at it while Bannon mag-clamped his rifle to his breastplate, drew his knife with one hand, and prepped the omnibanger that Ford had handed him with the other.
Just over his shoulder, he caught the dip of Deutsch’s muzzle. The private was ready. Bannon pricked the membrane, causing it to snap open, and chucked the omnibanger inside.
Ordinarily, in zero gee, he would have gently lofted it, almost placing it inside instead of tossing it. He flung it hard, however, and it bounced off the outer bulkhead before it detonated.
His rifle was already back in his hands by the time the flash was followed by the mist. He and Deutsch pushed into the murk immediately, weapons leveled and looking for targets.
It took slightly longer in the disruptive fog to ensure that the chamber was cleared, but it looked like Bannon had wasted an omnibanger. “Clear!” he called, already turning to the exit while Ford and Price flowed past them toward the next.
Two more openings on their side yielded no more of the aliens, and then they were pushing up to the upper deck. It was a much different experience from the last time he’d been aboard one of these craft, under acceleration and then in freefall, without wearing mag boots or even hardsuits for that matter.
Gunfire flashed at the top of the ramp leading to the top deck. Hern had gotten ahead, with Tran on his heels, but Bannon and Deutsch were right behind them.
Reaching the top of the ramp, Bannon got just high enough to see into the compartment beyond. Just like the ship on Zhogalgan, there were seats in the open compartment, with a portal to the command deck just past them. Several of the long-snouted aliens were crouched behind those seats, trying to use them as cover, but Bannon had already seen that they barely slowed the CR-196’s six-millimeter bullets down.
What was different was the opening in the overhead.
Bannon didn’t remember any such opening in the previous vessel, but an oval portal gaped here, and even as Hern gunned down one more of the defenders crouched behind a passenger seat, three more came floating down through that hatchway.
Deutsch got in the first shot, shattering a long, drooping faceplate and sending the alien spinning against the edge of the hatch coaming. He paid for it, though, as a simultaneously dim yet painfully bright bolt of energy punched through his throat. Steam and smoke erupted from the wound as he sagged, his boots still adhered to the deck but his body limp, still trying to drift forward in the microgravity of the station.
Bannon avenged him a second later, stitching the rest of his magazine’s rounds across the descending figures. Their armor stopped a few of his rounds, but not enough. More pinkish gore bubbled out into the vacuum, sublimating quickly into sticky paste as the water boiled off in the void. Bodies tumbled in freefall as Hern and Tran joined their fire to his.
He was pushing up now, his muzzle still trained on that hatch. “Check the aft compartments.” Several of Third Squad were already moving, hooking around the corners from the ramp and moving toward the paired sections of the ship’s stern.
Bannon and Hern closed on the opening in the center of the compartment, knowing that they’d probably found the route by which the flanking group had appeared in the auxiliary in the first place. They had to either seal it or counterattack through it.
“On the command deck,” Hern announced. “On me.”
Bannon held his position, his muzzle pointed up the tunnel leading down from somewhere in the station. “Go.”
Baddlet and Fisher joined Bannon, while Price fell in with Hern. Bannon was peripherally aware as they breached the command deck, tossed in another omnibanger, and plunged in. He couldn’t hear any gunfire, but it took too long before he heard Hern call “Clear.” There had been opposition.
Hern was at his elbow then, his weapon trained on the docking tunnel. Bannon stepped back, finding himself for the first time with a few seconds’ breathing room. He brought up the tactical display, and was unsurprised to find there wasn’t much new data. Comms had been difficult aboard ghost ship vessels before. That limited his ability to coordinate with Summ and Abbott. Fortunately, there was still the old-fashioned way.
Stepping back to the top of the ramp, he keyed his comm. “Three-Two, this is Six. Status?”
“The defenders are holding, Six,” Lewiski reported. “First is engaged with more flankers from the other auxiliary, and Second appears to be pinned down by their assault shuttle by the fire from the main portal. It looks like they’ve gotten reinforcements, sir.”
That tore it. “Copy. Hold your position for now. I’m taking the rest of the squad through the docking tube attached to this auxiliary to flank the defenders. Pass along to One-One and Two-One. I don’t want to get shot when we come through that membrane.”
“Copy, sir.” Trent was probably still engaging targets and doing what he could to suppress the alien defenders at the back of the bay, but in the airlessness, he might as well have been discussing a simulation.
“On me.” Bannon moved back toward the hatchway, lifting his rifle again as the rest of the assault element of Third Squad moved aside to allow him passage. He looked at Hern, who was still watching the opening, but he was sure that his squad sergeant’s eyes were moving back to him from time to time.
Those two words weren’t just a go order, though. He had just taken over the squad’s movement, and in close quarters, that meant he had lead, whether Hern liked it or not.
Unsure how the adhering effect would react, he flexed his knees and pushed off, hard, for the overhead. The strange, mushy sort of attraction of the deck released his mag boots, and then he was moving toward the tunnel, leading with his rifle. Hern was right with him, the rest of the element falling in behind. They pushed through the floating bodies of the dead alien soldiers and entered the tunnel, finding that it curved almost as soon as they cleared the initial opening, rendering them blind past about another two yards.
Bannon wasn’t prone to claustrophobia, but he suddenly felt cramped and desperate in that space, not knowing where it led or what might be just around that bend. His helmet’s image enhancers were amplifying the blue glow, making it easy enough to see, but that wouldn’t help if another alien popped around the corner—or lobbed a grenade.
