BY M.D. COOPER
STELLAR DATE: 01.08.4084 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: TSS Kirby Jones
REGION: Rimward edge of asteroid belt, Terran Hegemony, InnerSol
Commander Tanis Richards leaned forward in the captain’s chair on the TSS Kirby Jones, examining the ship floating before her on the bridge’s main holotank.
It was a medium tonnage freighter on a run from Cune to Makemake; a nondescript ship on a common shipping route. Yet something about the vessel felt wrong. She couldn’t put her finger on it, but it was more than the flag the freighter had on it from the Cune Port Authority.
Lovell, the ship’s AI, had run through the freighter’s manifest, and nothing stood out. However, the Cune dockmaster had reason to believe they had smuggled undeclared cargo aboard—some old engine flow regulators that were contraband for reasons Tanis couldn’t fathom—and were taking it out of Terran Hegemony space.
“Bring them around on our vector,” Tanis ordered her comm and scan officer. “No point in us wasting fuel. We’re low enough on volatiles as it is.”
“Freighter Norse Wind, cease acceleration on current course, and come about to the vector we have designated,” Lieutenant James called out over the Kirby Jones’s comm systems.
The Norse Wind was only two light seconds away, but the response took almost thirty to come back.
“They’ve acknowledged,” Lieutenant James said. “They’re shifting course; should match up with us in thirty-five minutes.”
“I can tighten that up a bit,” Lieutenant Jeannie said from the pilot’s console. “If I give a little boost now, we can sync up in about twenty-five.”
“Do it, Lieutenant,” Tanis said.
“Yes, ma’am.”
Tanis continued to stare at the holo, wondering why the Kirby Jones had been dispatched to check over this ship. The freighter was due to stop at Callisto in two weeks—inspectors there could have checked the ship over without sending her patrol craft off-course.
She could see the need for a mid-route interception if the ship had a poor reputation. But other than a few small infractions, the Norse Wind had a stellar rating—especially for a Scattered Disk ship that made runs into InnerSol.
“I’m going over on this one,” she finally declared. “Jeannie, you have the conn.”
Jeannie turned in her seat and gave Tanis a questioning look. “Ma’am?”
“You heard me, Lieutenant, you have the conn.”
“Aye, ma’am, I have the conn,” Jeannie replied.
Tanis nodded with satisfaction, pretending to ignore the look Jeannie shared with James. Either the two lieutenants were wondering what was the reason for the interception as much as she was, or they’d placed a bet as to whether or not she’d join the boarding party.
<Lovell, keep an eye on the kids, will you?> she asked the ship’s AI over the Link.
<Don’t I always, Commander?> Lovell responded, the AI’s words flowing directly into her mind.
<Yeah, but I have to say it. Makes me feel better.>
Tanis stood and raised her arms in a long stretch before turning and walking off the bridge toward the patrol ship’s sortie room. It wasn’t a long walk; the Kirby Jones was only one hundred twenty meters from bow to engines, but, like all good ships in the Terran Space Force, no empty space was permitted when it could be filled with conduit, storage, or power and munitions, and she carefully threaded her way through the maze.
Tanis walked past the crew quarters and galley, before slipping down a ladder and landing on Deck 3 with a bang. She stooped her hundred-eighty-two-centimeter frame under a low hanging duct while calling down to engineering.
<Connie, I’m going over on this one.>
<Yeah, so Lovell told me. You just love to get out there and see what trouble can find you. You do realize that’s what we have Marian and her team here for, right?>
Corporal Marian led the Kirby Jones’s four-person assault team. Under Marian served privates Yves, Susan, and Lukas. They were a good fireteam—though regulars, not Marines—and they had acquitted themselves well during the Kirby Jones’s overlong tour.
<We’ve been out in the black for over eleven months, Connie> Tanis replied. <I just need to stretch my legs a bit. I’m sure nothing will go awry. Standard pop n’ drop.>
<Stars, Tanis, why do you always have to go and jinx everything?>
<Connie, you should know by now that I don’t believe in luck. I make my own fortune,> Tanis replied, sending a mental smile over the Link as she palmed the door control for the sortie room.
<Oh, I know you think so—that much has been more than evident over the last three years.>
Three years? Tanis thought to herself. She double-checked the date she had been given the Kirby Jones as her command and saw that Connie hadn’t exaggerated. It would be three years in just one week. Time flew when you were out in the black chasing smugglers and pirates.
Not that they often found many smugglers and pirates. Mostly just ships that had let some permit or registry expire, and were seeing how long they could let it slide before anyone noticed.
Tanis decided not to give Connie the satisfaction of a reply; though the technical sergeant did give her a final snort over the Link before returning to her engines.
Inside the sortie room, her assault team was already gearing up. Yves spotted Tanis first, and moved to salute, but Tanis stopped him with a wave of her hand. “At ease, everyone. Don’t stop on my account.”
“Is everything alright?” Corporal Marian asked, clearly wondering why her CO was present.
“Couldn’t be better,” Tanis replied. “I just thought I’d come along for the ride and see what there is to see over there. Maybe they’ve got some better food than what’s left in our tanks, and we can buy some rations off them.”
Corporal Lukas chuckled. “They could have dried monkey turds and it would be better than what’s left in our tanks.”
Yves and Susan chuckled quietly while Marian cuffed Lukas on the side of his head. “Stow it, private.”
Tanis was glad to see that Marian had taken their little chat about maintaining discipline to heart. There were just ten of them on the Kirby Jones, and after months together in the black, things had become a bit too lax. She wasn’t about to start running one of those ships.
An eleven month tour was uncommon—usually they were only out for three to five—but right now, the TSF needed all the patrol craft it could muster; which meant that their run had gone on almost twice as long as it should have.
Long patrols like this happened every few years, when Mars passed between Earth and Ceres—an alignment that always heralded more than one snafu.
Ceres was a member of the Terran Hegemony, the most powerful member of the Sol Space Federation—but the Marsian Protectorate now lay between it and the rest of Terra. This didn’t place Ceres in any danger, but it did make shipping tricky, as the direct route between Earth and Ceres now involved passing through another state.
Though the planets, stations, and habitats of the Sol System all purported to be happy members of the Sol Space Federation, there was unrest on Mars, in the Jovian Combine, and out in the Scattered Disk.
The mess made for a smugglers’ paradise.
Tanis listened with half an ear as the assault team discussed the layout of the Norse Wind, and the path they would take through the freighter to clear it.
“If you’ll escort me to the bridge, I’ll hold it and keep an eye on their command crew,” Tanis offered.
“That would be very helpful, ma’am,” Corporal Marian said. “I’ll have Yves and Susan take you up there, and then they can start their sweep from the bow back.”
“Thank you,” Tanis replied, as she stepped out of her uniform and hung it in a locker.
She turned to the armor rack and grabbed her armor’s initial layer. It was the under layer—a carbon-fiber mesh that could stop nearly any handheld ballistic round, and shed heat from beams. However, the most important feature while out in the black was the airtight seal, and compression it provided against vacuum.
A bad seal on an umbilical between two ships in space was far more likely to kill a boarding party than any enemy action. For that reason alone, Corporal Marian did not use the umbilical when boarding. She preferred to float through the black, airlock-to-airlock. That way, a blowout wouldn’t send anyone spinning off into space—or an engine.
Once Tanis pulled the seal up on her base layer, the thick fabric drew out all the air between it and her skin. Then it attached to the hard-Link port at the base of her neck, and made the lower service connections. She raised her arms over her head and gave a little shimmy to make sure the layer was well seated, and wasn’t binding anywhere.
“Fit looks good, Commander,” Susan commented.
“Thanks, Private,” Tanis nodded, before stepping toward the armor rack and holding her arms out before her. The rack sensed her, and spun out the second layer—wrapping her from the feet up in layers of alloy and carbon plating until it reached her neck, where it stopped after clasping the neck seal around her throat.
She inspected the armor’s deployment, and twisted side to side to ensure the waist and torso plates lined up properly. Sometimes the rack screwed up, and a sharp turn would drive a plate under her ribs.
Satisfied that the armor was properly applied, Tanis reached behind her head and gave her ponytail a sharp tug, signaling her hair to detach from her scalp. It came free in her hand, and she placed it in a pouch inside her locker. When the mission was over, her nano would reattach the follicles in a matter of minutes.
“It’s a good look on you, Commander,” Yves smiled while running a hand over his permanently hairless scalp.
“On you, maybe,” Tanis replied. “I’m no fashionista, but I’m pretty sure this noggin of mine looks better with a thick covering on it.”
“Nah, you’re just not used to it,” Yves said. “Hair’s just an ancient leftover in our genetic code. It doesn’t serve any purpose, anymore. We’re beyond it.”
“Why don’t you get beyond putting your armor on?” Marian asked. “Let’s start there, before we give the commander fashion advice.”
Tanis sent a wry smirk Marian’s way before pulling her helmet off the armor rack. She turned it over, giving its external sensors and plating a visual inspection on several spectra to ensure no signs of damage or microfractures were apparent.
Satisfied that the helmet was in good condition, Tanis sent a signal over the Link, and it split in two. She set the back half behind her head, and it slotted into the neck ring. Her internal heads up display registered a solid lock on the ring, and she set the front half of the helmet in place.
The two halves reconnected and locked together. For a moment, Tanis was blind—until her visual systems switched over to the armor’s feed.
<Your checks show green,> Lovell supplied.
The ship’s AI wasn’t required to review their armor status before they went on a sortie, but Tanis had never objected to it. Extra eyes on any situation—whether virtual or physical—were always welcome.
<Thanks, Lovell. How’s the freighter out there behaving?>
<In the pocket, so far. They haven’t been chatty, but their pilot is good, taking the optimal vector.>
<Jeannie meet her estimation?> Tanis asked.
<A bit better—she always sandbags. We’ll be lined up with their starboard service airlock in eleven minutes.>
Lovell placed a countdown on Tanis’s HUD, which she synced with the rest of the assault team—all of whom had just finished settling their helmets in place, and were doing a final visual inspection on one another’s armor.
<Commander?> Corporal Marian asked over the team’s combat net as she approached.
Tanis nodded—as much as her armor allowed—and turned with her arms raised while Marian checked her over. The corporal never questioned Tanis when she joined the assault team on boardings; but she did take extra care to ensure that her CO’s armor was in perfect condition, and properly assembled.
A minute later, Marian pronounced herself satisfied, and Tanis selected her weapons from the rack while Yves checked the corporal’s armor.
She wasn’t expecting anything serious, so she placed a standard TSF concussive rifle on her back. No weapon was particularly safe for ship and station combat—even a pulse rifle’s concussive blast could blow a seal, and treat them all to explosive decompression—but a pulse rifle was less likely to cause catastrophic damage than beams and projectiles.
Still, she wasn’t going to go in there without something that could provide armor penetration capabilities. She slid a large-bore slug thrower into a holster on her right thigh. A lightwand on her left hip finished up the weapons. Tanis checked the action on the rifle’s firing mechanism before placing it on her armor’s shoulder sling, which would allow her to pull it forward or let it slide onto her back in one fluid motion.
She grabbed two EM-flash grenades, spare powercells, and ammo for the slug thrower, while Lukas and Yves discussed the food they might be able to trade for.
<They’re optimistic about the selection they’re imagining,> Tanis said privately to Marian. <Folks we board usually aren’t too keen to trade the good stuff with us.>
<Keeps their minds busy,> Marian replied. <Better than them bitching about how long it’s been since they’ve had a good fuck—though with this deployment, even James is starting to look like a good option.>
Tanis knew she shouldn’t have laughed, but did anyway. Marian was right; they all needed to get some time off the Jones if they were to retain their sanity.
She felt a few adjustment burns in the deck below her feet, and then Jeannie’s voice came over the 1MC.
“Burn ceasing, burn ceasing. I say again, burn ceasing. Zero-gravity in 5…4…3…2…1…”
As Jeanine gave the countdown, Tanis and the boarding team activated the maglocks on their boots. When the burn ceased—Tanis felt the disconcerting sensation of her organs lifting in her torso—the team all stayed anchored to the deck.
<OK, people,> Corporal Marian announced to her team. <Get to the airlock. We’re t-minus three minutes.>
Yves led the way, followed by Susan and Lukas. Tanis fell in after them, and Marian brought up the rear. Slowly and carefully, the five of them settled into the airlock, and Marian triggered its cycle. The lock detected that the assault team was armored, and ran a quick atmospheric purge, flashing green above the exterior door when it was complete.
Marian looked to Tanis, who nodded.
<Lukas, do the honors and hit the button, will ya?> she ordered the private.
<Yes, ma’am,> Lukas replied, and palmed the control to open the exterior door.
<The Norse Wind’s ES shields are down, and I read no power on their point defense beams,> Lieutentant James advised over the Link as the airlock door opened to the blinding light of space.
Tanis’s helmet adjusted its pickups—attenuating the noon-bright radiance of Sol, while increasing the contrast around the approaching ship. The indicator on her HUD showed the freighter at just over five kilometers distant. The orders James had passed over called for them to hold position at a hundred meters on the Kirby Jones’s port side; Tanis knew that Corporal Marian wouldn’t give the go-ahead until the Norse Wind had settled into the proscribed vector, and powered down its engines.
As the freighter grew larger, more of its boxy shape became apparent. The main hull was only three hundred meters long, but several tanks were clustered around the ship’s bow, and cargo crates were attached to exterior frames all around the ship.
Normally, hauling that much external freight would be a nightmare to mass balance; but the Norse Wind had three widely spaced engines on its stern, which allowed it to adjust thrust as needed to compensate for any imbalance in its load.
<OK, people,> Corporal Marian announced. <Their engines are shutting down. Setting a one-minute count for the crossing.>
<Orders are sent for them to cycle their outer airlock,> Lieutenant James added. <Lovell has our port and dorsal beams targeting their arrays. Plus, the particle cannon’s ready to take out anything that looks nasty.>
<Whole ship looks nasty,> Lukas commented quietly.
<Thank you, James,> Tanis said as she watched Marian’s countdown tick toward zero. When it hit twenty, the Norse Wind’s outer airlock cycled open, and they got a clear view of the small, uninviting space.
Tanis took a deep breath. While sitting on the bridge, a boarding always seemed like a fun excursion; but now, staring across a hundred meters of hard vacuum at a ship that could be filled with hostiles, there was no anticipation of fun—only concern over the thousand instantly fatal things that could happen in the next few minutes.
Lukas unslung his heavy rifle, a weapon capable of firing punishing concussive blasts as well as high-velocity projectiles. It was the fight-ender. If they had to use that weapon, they were sentencing anyone who wasn’t in armor or EV gear to a cold, airless death.
Which was precisely why Lukas was always in the lead. Let the crew of the other ship see the TSF weaponry, matte grey armor, and steely resolve. A fight that never happened was Tanis’s favorite kind.
Well, almost my favorite kind, she thought.
<Go!> Marian called out, and Lukas disengaged his boots’ maglocks and pushed off, followed closely by Susan. Marian followed with Yves, and Tanis waited, watching Lukas and Susan drift through space, attitude jets firing to keep them aligned with the freighter’s airlock.
Twenty seconds passed before Lukas slid into the airlock, joined by Susan a moment later. Once they were secure, Tanis pushed off, ten seconds behind Marian and Yves.
She glanced back at the Kirby Jones as the airlock closed behind her, and noted Mars’s gleaming rings beyond her ship. They were several million miles away, but still visible in Sol’s bright light, their glow punctuated by the sparkling flares of distant starship’s fusion drives, boosting in and out of the planet’s massive superstructure.
Home.
Tanis pushed the thoughts of a much overdue visit to Mars from her mind. Dreaming of her family’s home on the shores of the Melas Chasma was not what she needed to focus on right now.
Ahead, Marian and Yves had reached the airlock and taken up positions on the outside of the freighter, standing on its hull, covering Lukas and Susan.
<Looks like the corridor inside is still aired up,> Susan reported from within the airlock. <Do we just cycle the lock and go in?>
<Hold a moment,> Tanis said to the breach team before reaching out on the bridge net. <James, can you connect me with their captain?>
<Just a moment,> James replied. <OK, here he is. It’s audio only.>
<Captain Unger, why is your inner corridor still aired up? You were to seal your inner doors, and decompress that corridor,> Tanis said without preamble.
<Commander Richards,> Captain Unger replied in a gravelly voice. <I was just about to send a message to you. We have a leak on one of our seals, and can’t vent that passageway. I hate to say it, but your team is just going to have to trust us, and cycle the lock.>
Tanis sighed. It was probable that Captain Unger was telling the truth, but it was also possible that he wanted to split up the TSF boarding team. Not all of them could fit in the Norse Wind’s airlock—not that Tanis would ever put her whole team within the confines of one airlock on another ship.
Unfortunately, she didn’t have a lot of options—not with her team out in the black.
<Very well, Captain Unger,> Tanis replied. <But don’t forget that you have a TSF patrol craft’s weapons aimed at your ship. Anything untoward will garner a strong reaction.>
<I understand, Commander Richards; no need to get heavy-handed and blustery.>
Tanis cut the connection and gave Marian the go-ahead to cycle through.
<Yves. Stay out here with Commander Richards. I’ll go in. Things get hot, you get her back to the Jones,> Marian ordered.
<You got it, Corporal,> Yves said with a stiff nod.
As she spoke, Tanis reached the Norse Wind’s hull and locked her boots on, standing a meter behind Marian. They all knew she wouldn’t retreat back to the Kirby Jones if her people were under fire, but Marian had to issue the order anyway so that no one would question her dedication to her CO’s safety.
Marian climbed down into the airlock, taking a position on the overhead, while Lukas and Susan each anchored themselves to opposite walls. Tanis nodded with approval. There was no point in having all the weapons fire originate from the same plane—or the enemies’ targets standing on the same one, either. If anyone inside the ship did decide to shoot at a TSF boarding party, they would have to put themselves in the line of fire to hit anyone in the airlock.
<Cycle it,> Marian ordered, and Tanis watched the outer lock door close. She pulled up Marian’s visual feed, and watched the soldier crouch on the airlock’s overhead and pull her rifle to her shoulder.
The indicator above the airlock’s inner door turned green, and the door slid open. Marian peered into the corridor, and, from her tap into Marian’s visuals, Tanis could see that it was clear of humans—hostile or otherwise.
It was not, however, clear of floating debris. It looked as though someone had dumped out a rucksack full of trash and food—all of which was now floating freely in the zero-g environment.
<Moving in,> Marian announced. <No welcome party yet, but the bulkheads at either end of the passageway are sealed.>
<What a mess,> Lukas added. <Don’t they have any bots to clean this place? Their seals probably aren’t bad; it’s probably just candy wrappers and shit suck in them. Real shit, too, judging by all this.>
<Shut it, Lukas,> Marian replied while pushing a floating box of crackers out of the way.
<Maybe they ran out of trash bags,> Susan chuckled as she changed position in the airlock’s entrance to cover the aft end of the corridor while Marian and Lukas moved forward toward the bridge.
<Captain Unger. My advance team has entered your ship. Please unseal the forward door and let them through.>
<We’re on our way. Have them close up the inner airlock first. I don’t trust the outer seal, either,> Captain Unger replied.
<No can do,> Tanis said. <You need to open up first. This isn’t negotiable.>
A laugh came to her over the Link. <Well, neither is a blown seal. You crack that forward door, and we’ll consider it an assault on our sovereign ship, and open fire.>
Well, this just escalated, Tanis thought to herself.
<Captain Unger, I find it hard to believe that you’re flying through the black with so many bad seals. My team will put up an ES shield inside the lock to hold atmo; once we do, I expect your forward door in that passageway to open, or we’ll open it for you.>
Captain Unger cut the connection, and Tanis let out a long sigh.
<Marian, did you hear that?> she asked her assault team lead.
<I did,> Marian replied as she reached the door at the forward end of the passageway. <It’s locked down tight, but I can get a kit working on it. You hold tight out there. Susan will set up the ES shield, just in case they do actually have a bad seal—which wouldn’t surprise me, given the state of this ship.>
<Sounds good, Marian. Except the part where we hang tight out here,> Tanis said. <Yves and I will breach their port airlock while you work on that door. Stay sharp; don’t let them take you from both ends.>
<Commander? Are you certain that’s wise?> Marian asked.
Tanis could tell form the corporal’s tone of voice that Marian already knew there was no changing Tanis’s mind.
<Wise and necessary don’t always go hand-in-hand,> Tanis replied. <I’ll signal you when we’re in position. Don’t crack that door ’til then.>
<Understood, Commander.>
Tanis signaled Yves, and they disabled the maglocks on their boots before pushing off over the top of the ship. Tanis flagged the port airlock on her HUD and angled toward it as they drifted up over the ship. Once they had cleared the containers attached to the port side of the Norse Wind, she activated the jets on her armor and angled back down over the freighter.
<Commander!> Yves called out, and a threat indicator appeared on her HUD, pointed below and to their rear.
She looked back to see three figures in armored EV suits crouched behind a shipping container, rifles in hand.
<Multi-action,> Lovell gave his assessment. <Projectile and pulse.>
The figures below were in position to rush out and take the airlock—a strategy that would bottle up Marian’s team. However, their hiding place didn’t give them a clear view of the lock, and they had clearly missed Tanis and Yves flying up over the ship; a situation that could change rapidly if any of the three ambushers glanced up—especially now that they were brightly lit by Sol’s baleful glare.
Captain Unger had obviously planned this ambush long before the charade with the airlock and passageway seals.
<Breach team, we have hostiles lying in ambush. All crew of Norse Wind are designated Tangos. Any Tangos holding weapons or acting in a threatening manner are legal targets. Deadly force is authorized,> Tanis issued the order, her mental voice calm and lethal.
Four acknowledgement signals flashed on her HUD as Tanis fired her shoulder jets, dropping back to the ship below. She touched down behind the dubious cover of some external conduits and a box that looked like a power junction. Yves came down beside her, angling for a light touchdown, when his boot clipped the junction box and he spun to the side, slamming into the hull.
The vacuum of space didn’t transmit the sound, but the freighter’s hull carried the vibrations handily, and one of the three Tangos lying in wait turned toward them. Tanis flattened herself behind the conduit, but she knew they’d been spotted.
Her armor’s sensors picked up EM signals from the three figures before several projectile rounds passed overhead. The threat indicator on her armor shifted from yellow to red.
<You OK, Yves?> Tanis asked.
<I’m good,> Yves replied. <Just missed me.>
<Good, I’m deploying eyes,> Tanis said as she released a passel of sensor drones into the space around them, her visor now showing a shifting multi-dimensional view of the battlespace.
<I don’t know how you process that,> Lovell said as he observed their feeds from the Kirby Jones. <It’s even weird for me.>
Tanis shrugged as she surveyed the battlespace from her vantage point, combined with overhead and side views from the drones. It had taken her some time to learn how to simultaneously process the multiple viewpoints at once, but what was the point of having L2 neural mods if she couldn’t process additional visual feeds?
During the second she reflected on Lovell’s comment, Tanis also catalogued her surroundings—noting which objects provided cover, which were potentially explosive, and the most likely avenues of attack the enemy would use to come after her and Yves.
There was only twenty meters of hull between them and the enemy, but there were four rows of conduit, a sensor array, a carbon-fiber net—that appeared to be stowed on the hull for emergencies, though improperly folded—and a point defense turret.
The turret was toward the bow, on her right, and she placed a marker on it, indicating that Yves should take up a position behind the gun. He acknowledged, and Tanis grabbed one of her EM-flash grenades, set its detonation timer, and whipped it out over the conduit, straight into the middle of the three would-be ambushers.
An instant before the grenade went off, Tanis leapt from cover, and fired several slugs from her secondary weapon before racing toward another row of conduit. The three Tangos all rose from their cover to respond to her attack—and caught the EM flash full-force.
With the enemy blind, Tanis changed course, heading for the sensor array, tucking in behind it a second after Yves reached the gun emplacement. Tanis placed a nanopack on the array, and set it to infiltrate the array’s control circuits. If the enemy wasn’t already using the array to keep an eye on her and Yves, they would in short order, and she wanted it to lie about their location.
<It’ll take a minute,> Lovell said. <These guys have good defenses, and I’m trying to limit my signal so it doesn’t point you out.>
<Could let my armor’s non-sentient AI manage the hack,> Tanis replied. <That’s what it’s for.>
<No chance, Commander. Your armor’s NSAI has been around you too long. It doesn’t know the meaning of subtle anymore.>
Tanis chuckled, the sound echoing loudly in her helmet. <Fair point.>
While Lovell managed the hack, Tanis watched the enemy as they recovered from the EM pulse. She had hoped that their EV suits weren’t hardened against EM, but it appeared to have only provided a momentary distraction.
No matter, she thought. I make my own fortune.
Her remote drones showed the three enemies crouched low while their armor reset external sensors. She judged the best angle to hit them, and gently threw her kinetic slug-thrower up over the battlespace. When the weapon was in the right location, she remotely triggered its firing mechanism. The weapon’s muzzle flashed three times, and a trio of rounds traced a line across the ship’s hull as the kick spun the weapon.
Two of the shots went wide, but one caught a Tango in the leg, cracking the armor plating on the woman’s EV suit.
Yves wasted no time taking advantage of the distraction, and fired several x-ray bursts from his laser rifle—the intense radiation heating, and burning through the conduit the enemy was hiding behind.
Tanis’s pulse rifle was useless in vacuum, so she crouched and pushed into the air, catching her kinetic weapon before it drifted away, and fired three more shots at the enemy.
All three rounds hit the same figure. She saw its armor crack on the second impact, and red and brown liquid sprayed out after the third.
One down.
Projectile rounds flew through space around her, three hitting her legs and another striking her torso, as Tanis fired her shoulder jets, which pushed her back down to the ship’s hull.
<Fuck! Are you nuts?! I mean…Commander?> Yves asked.
<Surprised them,> Tanis replied, as she touched down on the hull and activated the magnets on her hands and knees.
<Did you take damage?> Yves asked.
<Armor held. I analyzed their projectile’s mass, velocity, and rate of fire the last time they shot at me. I was perfectly safe.>
<Provided no two rounds struck within a centimeter of each other,> Lovell added.
<Yeah, but I also analyzed their aim,> Tanis said with a laugh.
One of the enemy fired at where he thought Tanis was hiding, and a junction box exploded in a bloom of sparks. Tanis swore and flattened herself against the hull—the shooter hadn’t been far off. However, he had also exposed himself to Yves, who fired an x-ray blast, catching the Tango center mass.
From the vantage her drones provided, Tanis saw the enemy convulse and then begin to drift away from the battlespace.
Tanis located the last Tango—the woman she had hit in the leg with her slug thrower. She was rising, but tossed her weapon away into space. Tanis signaled Yves, who approached slowly and pointed at the woman’s sidearm.
She carefully pulled it free and tossed it away as well.
<What do we do with her, Commander?> Yves asked.
Tanis pushed off the hull of the freighter and peered across the brightly-lit space between the two ships, gauging the distance and angle.
She fired her jets, coming down in front of the Norse Wind’s crewmember. The Tango’s helmet had a clear faceplate, and Tanis could see a little fear and no small amount of rage in the woman’s eyes.
Tanis leaned forward until their helmets touched.
“Do you want to live?” she asked loudly, knowing the vibrations would carry the sound through into the woman’s helmet.
The woman’s eyes narrowed, but she nodded slowly.
“Good. Follow me,” Tanis said.
<Cover her. One false move, and you cook her with your beam,> she ordered Yves.
<Yes, ma’am. What’s your plan?>
<I’m sending her over to the Jones. Connie will have to take care of her.>
<You sure about that?> Lovell asked. <Connie’s not geared up. Your captive there has armor that could allow her to overpower everyone on the Kirby Jones.>
<Not in the condition she’s going to be in,> Tanis replied soberly. Normally she would have a lockdown kit that would disable and seize up a captive’s armor, rendering them harmless; but after eleven months in the black, they were long out of such luxuries.
Tanis climbed up onto one of the shipping containers, and, after Yves gave the Tango a meaningful gesture with his rifle, the woman followed slowly. When her captive finally clambered onto the container, Tanis examined the woman’s EV suit, confirming that it had attitude jets with sufficient power to reach the Kirby Jones. Then she touched their helmets together once more.
“You’re going over to our ship. I’m going to give you a push. One false move, and the Jones’s turrets will blow you out of the black. You read me?”
The woman nodded, a twinkle of hope showing in her eyes as she considered the possibility of taking the Kirby Jones from within.
“Good. Exhale,” Tanis replied, and pulled her lightwand off her hip. The electron blade flared to life, and Tanis held it up for a second. The woman’s eyes widened with fear as understanding flooded through her.
Tanis drove the lightwand into the base of the woman’s helmet, and she drew it around the seal in a single, deft twist. With the helmet’s latches destroyed, Tanis reached up and ripped it off, as she kicked the Tango hard—pushing her captive out into space between the ships.
The woman twisted and writhed as her face was exposed to cold, hard vacuum.
<Holy shit, Commander,> Yves gasped. <That’s a little brutal.>
<We can’t secure her well enough out here,> Tanis replied, as she watched the woman cover her face before firing her jets to speed toward the Kirby Jones’s airlock. <And we can’t bring her with us, or send her over to our ship with her armor working.>
<Yeah…but…>
<She’ll live,> Tanis replied.
<Correction,> Lovell interjected. <There’s a ninety-five-percent chance that she’ll live.>
<Close enough,> Tanis said, her mental tone carrying a note of finality.
Yves didn’t respond as they resumed their trek across the freighter’s hull.
The pair was within ten meters of the port airlock when Marian called out. <They’re cracking the aft door! Susan, suppressive fire!>
Tanis pulled Marian’s feed, and saw the corporal lob an EM-flash grenade down the passageway while Lukas and Susan fired with their pulse rifles. The grenade passed through the open door, and then Susan and Lukas’s concussive pulse waves hit, slamming the door shut.
A dull thud echoed through the corridor and Marian chuckled. <That’ll slow ‘em down, but just for a minute. Commander, would you mind hurrying up?>
<We’ll be cycling in two minutes,> Tanis reported.
<Faster would be nicer.>
<Understood.>
Yves pulled himself in front of the airlock’s exterior panel and applied a nanohack kit, which Lovell took over, working to override the door’s security settings.
Tanis scanned their surroundings, worried that another team from the freighter may have exited the ship while they were fighting—ready to hit them from behind once she and Yves entered the airlock’s confined space.
She scanned the area around the airlock and found a tangle of wire that would hold a grenade perfectly. She tucked her final EM-flash in it, and confirmed that its IFF sensor picked her and Yves up as friendlies before switching it to motion-sensing mine mode.
<Lock should be opening…now!> Lovell announced.
Tanis turned to the airlock, slug thrower leveled at the opening doors. The space within was empty, and she glanced at Yves who nodded and entered. Tanis slowly backed toward the airlock as he began to work the inner controls. Her remote drones hadn’t spotted any more Tangos on the ship’s hull, but she wasn’t going to take chances.
<We’re going to breach forward,> Marian announced. <They tried coming through the aft door again. Hopefully, when they head over to fight you, they’ll be spread too thin to hit us from back there.>
<Acknowledged,> Tanis replied as the airlock’s outer door closed behind her.
<Holy shit, Commander,> Connie said privately to Tanis. <She’s alive, but we’re going to need to grow her new eyes…and skin…and vocal chords.>
<Good. I knew she’d make it. Did she give you any trouble?>
<Trouble? She couldn’t breathe until the autodoc intubated!>
Tanis nodded soberly. She didn’t feel good about it, but risking that woman’s life had been preferable to leaving a potential enemy behind them—or having to kill her outright.
<Thirty seconds,> Yves announced over the combat net, and Tanis took up a position on the airlock’s overhead, while Yves crouched in a corner on the deck.
As the air whistled in through the vents, she tucked her slug thrower into the crook of her left arm, and shouldered her pulse rifle with her right.
<Captain Unger,> she called the freighter’s captain once more. <This isn’t a fight you can win. Stand down and gather your crew in your main cargo bay. No one else has to die today.>
<That’s where you’re wrong,> the freighter’s captain rasped.
Tanis wasn’t sure if he was injured, or if his normally-rough mental tone had become even coarser.
<Have it your way,> Tanis replied. <We’ve sent out a call for backup, and a cruiser will already be en route. There’s no way out of this for you.>
The captain didn’t reply, and Tanis suddenly worried that her strong words might prompt him to do something drastic—like blow the ship’s reactor.
<We’re going aft when we get in,> she informed Yves.
<Understood, Commander,> the private replied.
A moment later, the inner airlock door slid open, and projectile fire poured through. Most of the shots missed, but a few—and more than one ricochet—pinged off the pair’s armor.
<Fire in the hole!> Yves called out as he lobbed an HE grenade out into the corridor.
Tanis clenched her teeth as the high-explosive grenade detonated in the corridor; the concussive force from its blast hitting them a moment before the heat and flames licked across their armor. Yves should have checked with her before using an HE inside a ship, but Tanis suspected that Yves had the same suspicion regarding a reactor overload—she’d forgive his impetuousness. This time.
Tanis peered over the lip of the door and saw three bodies in the passageway. One was twitching, but the other two were still. She fired a round into the twitching figure while Yves fired his x-ray beam at the other two.
<Clear!> Yves announced before he slipped ahead into the corridor, skirting the floating bodies and the droplets of blood spreading out around them.
Tanis followed, moving backward and crouching low on the overhead as she covered the forward end of the passage.
She deployed a new passel of drones, and saw Yves reach the aft door and signal that he was ready to open it. Tanis sent an acknowledgement and tucked herself behind a conduit stack. From there, she had cover from the forward door, and a clear shot into the aft door, should any enemy be lying in wait.
<Two Tangos down,> Miriam reported. <Based on the layout we have on record, we’re twenty meters from the bridge. Just one hatch to pass through, and we’ll be there.>
<If you spot their captain, I’d like him alive,> Tanis said. <But don’t take any chances.>
<Understood,> Miriam replied.
Tanis fired a preventative pulse shot through the door as Yves pulled it wide and stood clear. Her drones swept in and saw that the next stretch of passageway was clear, running a dozen meters aft where it ended in another closed door.
She signaled Yves to advance while she covered him. They repeated the procedure twice more before arriving at an intersection. With the conduit stacks and all the floating garbage in the passageways, they didn’t have a clear view down the intersecting corridors, and Tanis sent her drones down to get a good look.
The microscopic bots flew three meters down each passageway before the ones down the right side ceased responding.
<Picked up an EM field,> Tanis reported. <Left side looks clear, but there’s probably someone down the right.>
<I really don’t fancy being pinned down here long,> Yves said. <I have one more HE.>
Tanis considered the option. The grenade was hardened and would successfully pass through the EM field in the corridor, but it was their last one. She regretted leaving her second EM flash on the ship’s hull. It hadn’t gone off, which meant that no one was out there. A waste of a perfectly good ‘nade, but still better than being hit from behind, if any enemy had been hiding out there.
<Do it,> Tanis said.
Yves threw the grenade, bouncing it off a bulkhead, which sent it on a course straight down the right-hand corridor. Tanis held her breath, waiting for the detonation. Using a drone that floated near the overhead in the intersection, she watched the grenade continue to drift down the passageway.
Nothing happened.
<Piece of crap. It’s supposed to be hardened against EM,> Yves complained.
<Cover me,> Tanis said, and Yves edged the nose of his beam rifle around the corner. <Go!> he called out as he fired wildly, and Tanis darted across the intersection.
For a moment, she thought she would cross the intersection without taking any fire—then a high-caliber projectile round struck her right bicep, spinning her around. Once across, Tanis reached for a handhold as pain cascaded up her arm. She looked down to see her armor’s plating shattered, and blood seeping through the torn base layer.
<I’m hit,> Tanis reported. <Fractured my humerus, I think. I’m OK, though.>
<You sure?> Yves asked.
<Yeah, give me a sec to give you covering fire.>
Tanis pivoted so that she could shoot with her left arm, and sent a stream of focused pulse blasts down the corridor as Yves rushed across. His luck was better than hers, and he stacked up behind her as return fire flashed out in response.
<Engine room’s past that door.> Tanis gestured to a portal near the end of the corridor. <Get down there and check it. I’ll keep these assholes at bay.>
Yves moved toward the door Tanis had indicated, when it opened and a weapon nose poked out, firing wildly.
<Not good, Commander Richards!> Yves called out as he flattened himself against the bulkhead. <We’re boxed in.>
<Hold on,> Marian replied over the combat net. <We have the bridge secured. Just one poor sap up here. I’m sending Lukas down to you. He should be able to clear out your friends in the intersection behind you.>
<Thanks, Corporal,> Tanis said. <Sooner the better.>
She followed Lukas’s position on the combat net while she and Yves laid down suppressive fire. It seemed to take forever, and she went through two pulse rifle charge cells and half her kinetics while Lukas moved aft toward their position. Then, just as Tanis was swapping out her charge cell, he reached the portside passage and set up behind the Tangos.
<Give the word, Commander,> Lukas called in.
“We have you surrounded,” Tanis called down the corridor. “Toss out your weapons and surrender, or we’ll open fire.”
“I think you have that wrong,” A voice replied. “It’s you who’s surrounded. You toss out your weapons and surrender.”
<Send a warning shot over their heads,> Tanis said to Lukas.
The soldier signaled an acknowledgement, and a moment later, a high-velocity projectile round tore through the corridor, puncturing several conduits before slamming into the bulkhead at the far end of the passageway.
“Next few rounds are going to go through you, or, failing that, the ship’s hull,” Tanis called out. “Doesn’t look like you’re in EV suits, so let’s see those hands.”
“OK, OK, just don’t shoot that thing in here again! Are you crazy?” One of the Tangos cried out.
“We’re in armor,” Tanis called back. “A little cold and vacuum aren’t going to bother us.”
<Your arm notwithstanding,> Lovell said privately to Tanis.
<Biofoam sealed it up. It should hold against vacuum.>
<Commander Richards, you place a lot of faith in ‘should’.>
While Tanis and Lovell talked, some additional grumbling came from down the corridor, followed by several weapons drifting past. Tanis fired a shot from her pulse rifle, which sent the surrendered weapons cartwheeling down a side passage.
“Get to the end of the hall where that round hit the bulkhead,” she ordered the Norse Wind’s crewmembers. Some shuffling reached her ears, and then two scowling Tangos drifted past, glaring at her as they floated to the starboard end of the side-passage.
The enemy fire coming from the engine compartment paused for a moment, and then resumed with increased intensity. Tanis glanced over her shoulder to see Yves firing back at the half-open door. <Having fun back there, Corporal?>
<Buckets, Commander. Any chance Lukas can come down here and turn these guys into that cheese with all the holes in it?>
<You mean Swiss Cheese?> Lukas asked as he arrived at the intersection.
<Yeah, that’s the stuff.>
Lukas patted his weapon affectionately, though not enough to shift its aim from the two Tangos at the end of the cross passage. <I do love my girl here, but I’m pretty certain if I fire her into that engine room, something big will go boom. It’s my understanding that we’re trying to prevent big booms right now.>
<He’s got a point,> Tanis agreed. <Still, do us a favor and fire a few at the door? Just aim to port. Should be clear of the reactors.>
<You’re the boss, Commander,> Lukas said with a nod.
Yves flattened himself against the bulkhead as the high-velocity rounds tore past him, denting, then puncturing the door. By the end of his salvo, a dead Tango fell through the open entrance to the engine compartment—moments before the door fell off its ruined hinges onto the body.
<Don’t let the door hit your ass on the way out,> Lukas chuckled, prompting Tanis to sigh. <Too soon?> He asked.
Tanis pointed back down the corridor and Lukas returned his attention to the pair of Tangos he was covering. Yves dashed across the opening, sweeping his rifle across the space, not firing.
<No one in sight,> he reported.
Tanis gathered up her drones and directed them into the engine compartment. What she saw was dismaying, but not unexpected.
The room was a tangle of conduit, tanks, fuel lines, and control systems. At the back, behind it all, was a console that managed the flow of Helium 3 and Deuterium into the reactor. Her study of this model of freighter showed that it had an engine that possessed the ability to jumpstart its fusion reaction with a fission detonation.
Captain Unger stood behind that console, his left hand hovering over the override switch that would initiate the fission reaction.
“Control rods are out!” he called out as she stepped into the engine bay. “I drop my hand, and we all die. Your boat will go up, too.”
<He’s right,> Lovell said. <He’s flooded the chambers. With the rods out, the explosion will destroy the Kirby Jones.>
<Not going to happen,> Tanis replied to her ship’s AI before replying to the freighter captain aloud. “Captain Unger. I don’t know what’s caused you to get so worked up about this inspection, but it’s cost the lives of at least eight of your crew.”
“You just had to stick your nose in where it doesn’t belong,” Unger said, his face reddening. “You TSF types are all the same. Keeping us all under your thumb. Fucking Terrans.”
“Not all of us,” Tanis said calmly as she took another step toward the captain. “I’m Marsian. Grew up next to the Melas Chasma. Not Terran—just like you.”
Captain Unger snorted. “Mars may have its Protectorate, but it’s still InnerSol; still well and firmly under Terra’s thumb. But I’m not gonna argue about this with you. We’re just a few million kilometers from Jovian space; we’re going to boost out there and make a handoff. You’re going to stay here to make sure nothing untoward happens.” The captain’s eyes darted to the dead crewmember still under the bay’s door and his expression softened, showing a twinge of remorse. “Nothing further untoward.”
“I’m not sure what you think that will accomplish,” Tanis replied. “TSF controls Jovian space, same as InnerSol. The cruiser that’s coming will catch you. If your ship survives the encounter, whatever contraband you’re protecting will end up in a lockup somewhere, anyway—you’re not going to deliver it to your buyer.”
“Maybe,” Unger said as he inclined his head. “Maybe not. We’ll see.”
“What’s worth the lives of your crew?” Tanis asked. “Worth your life? Those engine control units Cune Port Authority flagged you for? Or is there something more?”
Unger took a deep breath, his face reddening further. “Maybe it’s to show you that the fucking Terran Space Force can’t just board any ship they want, whenever they want! Show you that it creates problems, costs lives.”
Tanis considered mentioning that it hadn’t cost any of her people’s lives, but she knew that wouldn’t smooth things over. It wasn’t as though she was pleased about the deaths of the Norse Wind’s crew—but when it came down to them or hers, she would do her damnedest to make sure it was them.
Behind Tanis, Yves moved into cover on her right, and she lowered her rifle, taking a step forward. “Captain Unger, listen. If sending a message is your goal, you’ve made your point. There’s no reason now to kill us all. Plenty of your crew is still alive; do you think they want to die? It will just make things worse for everyone else.”
Unger’s face reddened and he spoke with a snarl. “We all know what risks we take when Diskers come into InnerSol. But we have to lift the boot of your oppression, and this is how it starts.”
“How what starts?” Tanis asked, continuing to walk slowly toward Captain Unger.
When she closed in on five meters, Unger lowered his hand toward the manual ignition control. “Go for it,” he said with a wicked grin. “Let’s see if you’re faster than I am. It would be a good way to end this shit-show.”
Tanis stopped and leaned against a nearby console. “I’m not really super keen on dying today. I really just wanted to board your ship, take the contraband, give you a fine, and send you on your way. Stars, we’d probably be just about done by now.”
As she spoke, Tanis reached behind her back and grabbed a nanopack from her belt. If she could get just a little bit closer, she could deploy it on the console, and his switch wouldn’t do a thing when he flipped it.
<Give me a distraction, Yves,> Tanis asked over the combat net.
A second later, something fell over in the back of the compartment, and Unger glanced toward Yves’ position. Tanis gave a flick of her wrist, and flung the nanopack at the back of the ignition control console. It spun through the air and stuck just a few centimeters above where she’d aimed.
Now to delay him for another minute.
<Or longer, if you can manage,> Lovell said. <I’d like to be extra certain that we’ve disabled the thing, before you do whatever it is that you’re going to do.>
The sound of weapons fire came though the entrance to the engine compartment, and Captain Unger chuckled as he returned his gaze to Tanis. “Who knows…maybe it will be you surrendering to me in just a few minutes.”
<Lukas. Status,> Marian demanded.
<Got two Tangos on my six. The asshats at the end of the corridor keep trying to make a move, as well.>
<Susan is on her way, but she’s two minutes out,> Marian replied.
<Yves, go back him up,> Tanis ordered.
<Yes, ma’am.>
Tanis kept her eyes trained on Captain Unger, but watched through her probe feeds as Yves rose and crept back toward the engine compartment’s entrance, his weapon trained on Unger as he walked.
“That’s right, soldier boy. Off with you. Just your CO and I now,” Unger laughed while waving his free hand dismissively. “Maybe we should just see who’s made of tougher stuff?”
Tanis shook her head and raised her pulse rife a few centimeters. “My rifle’s made of some pretty tough stuff. Why don’t you step around that console and find out?”
“Commander Richards, I really thought you’d rise to the challenge. You come off as such a badass, after all. Don’t think you can take me?”
Tanis raised an eyebrow as she looked the captain over. He appeared fit, but she could tell from his stance, and how he shifted position every so often, that he was largely unmodified. With the muscle and skeletal augments the TSF had provided her—not to mention her powered armor—Tanis could probably break the man in half.
“Maybe next time,” she said. “You know my boys out there are going to make short work of whoever just joined the fight. If they have to, they’ll hole the ship, and your people will suck vacuum and die.”
“They hole the ship, and my hand falls,” Unger said. “You keep forgetting that I hold all the cards here.”
Tanis sighed and set her rifle down on the deck, leaning it against the console. “I guess there’s no point in me hanging onto this, then. Say I do give up. What then?”
“Then you’ll be our hostage,” Unger replied. “Just you, though. Easier to deal with one. Your boys and girls can take a walk out the airlock.”
<Just ten seconds more. Then go for him, fast. The console’s auto-repair functions are fighting me, and they’ll fix that switch pretty quickly after it’s disabled,> Lovell interjected.
<Acknowledged,> Tanis replied, wishing that she hadn’t set her rifle down. It would look too suspicious to pick it back up again so soon. She smiled at Unger and replied, “I wouldn’t be too optimistic. You haven’t managed to put much of a dent in us yet.”
Unger raised his chin, gesturing at her arm. “Looks like a bit of a dent there.”
“I did say ‘not much of a dent’.” Tanis chuckled.
<Go!> Lovell shouted in her mind.
Tanis released the maglock on her boots before pushing off the console with her right hand. She grunted as pain lanced up her arm, but her trajectory was true. Unger’s eyes widened with surprise as she flew toward him, then they narrowed as he slammed his hand down on the manual ignition switch.
Which did nothing.
“What?!” he cried out as Tanis collided with him.
She delivered a punch to his solar plexus, and Unger curled up, flying back into the reactor’s rad shield. Without gravity, Tanis’s momentum kept her moving forward, and she crashed into the freighter’s captain, delivering a blow to the side of his head and a knee to his groin.
The strike sent her cartwheeling backward, high over the engineering bay’s consoles.
<You have to flip the switch back, Tanis!> Lovell called out. <The bypass circuit is going to repair in seconds!>
“Shit!” Tanis swore as she activated her armor’s attitude jets and flew back toward the console. Unger was pulling himself forward across the deck, and she flung her lightwand at him with her left hand while reaching out for the switch with her right.
She was going to miss; throwing the lightwand had altered her trajectory just enough that her fingers wouldn’t reach the switch. Tanis swung her arm up, the movement sending her spinning. Just as Lovell began to call into her mind again, the tip of her right boot caught the switch and pushed it back up.
Tanis didn’t have time to recover from the move, and she slammed into the deck half a meter from Unger. The captain had one hand wrapped around a support pole, and in the other he held her light wand.
He caught that?
<Nano’s used up. If he touches that switch again, I can’t stop it,> Lovell advised.
Tanis called the Kirby Jones’s pilot. <Jeannie, get some distance, I might not be able to stop him.>
<What? Seriously?>
<Lieutenant, do it. Max burn—that’s an order!>
Tanis returned her attention to Unger as he lunged soundlessly at her with her lightwand in hand. Tanis reached for her slug-thrower, and realized that it had come free from its holster sometime in the scuffle. She widened her stance and waited for the freighter captain to get within arm’s length before slamming her left hand into his wrist, deflecting his strike. The maneuver spun her around, but it did the same to Unger.
She grabbed the edge of a console and activated her maglock boots, swinging them down to the deck. Finally reattached to a solid surface, she turned back to Unger to see that he had done the same thing.
“C’mon, soldier girl. Let’s finish this.” Unger’s voice dripped with menace, and Tanis saw that he held a ballistic handgun as well as her light wand.
Where’d he get that? she wondered. No matter, it would take more than a few shots from the weapon to penetrate her armor. The lightwand was what she needed to worry about.
Unger fired a trio of rounds at her: two striking center mass and one hitting her right arm—missing the wound, but still hitting the under-layer, which stung more than a little.
Tanis lunged forward again, closing in to use her augmented strength against the man. He slashed at her, coming in high, and she raised an arm to block the blow while kicking at his right knee. Unger jerked his leg away in the nick of time, and fell back only to renew his attack once more, firing point-blank at her head while bringing the lightwand in low.
She sidestepped and managed to grab Unger’s gun-arm under her left arm. He grunted and swung the lightwand around, aiming for her head. Tanis caught his wrist with her right hand, gasping as she felt her humerus bend and fracture further. She closed her eyes against the pain, and twisted to the right, getting her hand on Unger’s gun.
Unger cursed and bore down on her with the lightwand. “Gonna die here, soldier girl. And I’ll still get my cargo where it needs to go.”
“Fahhhk!” Tanis screamed as the bone in her arm snapped, and the lightwand came down into her shoulder.
But the movement shifted Unger just enough for her to wrench his pistol free, and unload the remainder of the magazine into his torso.
His eyes opened wide in surprise as droplets of blood filled the air between them.
Tanis stumbled back, leaning heavily against a console. She dropped the spent handgun, and reached up, thumbing the switch to stop the lightwand’s electron flow before pulling it out of her shoulder.
A blood-curdling shriek escaped her—both audibly and over the Link; at least, that’s what her crew told her. Tanis had no memory of it. She slumped in her armor, only remaining upright with its support, while it filled her wounds with biofoam. She blinked to clear her vision, and a predatory smile touched her lips while she watched Unger gasping his last breaths as he floated in the air in front of her, blood squirting from his chest, coalescing into red globules in the air.
She knew she should signal for Lukas or Yves to get a stasis kit for the freighter captain, but she really didn’t care right now. Let the scum die. Sol would be better for it.
• • •
The autodoc’s arm pulled back, and Tanis sat up, slowly flexing her right arm. It would still take some time to fully heal, but, with the additional supports the ‘doc had inserted into her bone, it should manage any strain she might put on it over the next few days.
Her left shoulder still ached—a lot. The lightwand hadn’t reached her heart, but it had punctured her lung, sliced clear through her collarbone, and shredded more than a few ligaments. Another day in the autodoc would see the wound fully healed, but Tanis didn’t have time to lie on her back. Her internal nano could keep repairing the damage while she tended to the mess that boarding the Norse Wind had created.
The freighter’s total complement had been sixteen crew, including the now-deceased Captain Unger. Only six had perished in the fighting, which meant that the Kirby Jones’s small brig was overflowing. Tanis was considering converting one of the holds on the freighter to a brig, but maintaining security there would be problematic to say the least.
“Ready to be up and about, Commander?” Connie asked from the medbay’s entrance.
Tanis glanced up at the redheaded sergeant and smiled. “Ready enough. There’s too much work to be done for me to be lying around.”
“I wouldn’t mind lying down for a day or so,” Connie replied. “We’ve run though that ship top-to-bottom, and those ancient engine regulators are the only contraband we could find—well, the only serious contraband. Not that those regulators should be illegal anywhere, anymore. The only crime here is that they should be in a museum.”
“Crazy that they’d put up such a fight over them,” Tanis said. “Maybe there’s still something hiding over there, and the regulators are a decoy.”
“Dumbest decoy ever. Either way, if they have anything else in there, we’d have to tear the ship to pieces to find it.”
“Well, I guess we’ll just tow it in, then,” Tanis replied.
<No need,> Lovell said. <The Arizona is thirty minutes out. Their captain just sent a message that they’ll be taking over the scene. We’re to hold the prisoners, but not question them. We’re also to leave the contraband on the Norse Wind.>
“Seriously?” Tanis asked. “Isn’t the Arizona assigned to Fleet Group 743 out at Ganymede? What’s it doing out here?”
<Your guess is as good as mine, but their orders check out. They have Vice Admiral Deering’s tokens on them.>
“Not much we can do about that,” Connie said, and then flashed a grin, her green eyes sparkling. “Not that I care. Means I don’t have to clean up the mess we made over there while searching all their hidey-holes.”
“Good point,” Tanis said with a smile. “With any luck, we’ll get the go-ahead to end this patrol once we hand them over. If not, we’re going to be sucking on whatever food we have in the bottom of the vats.”
“Well,” Connie smirked. “We may be OK in the food department for a bit. I lifted some of the fresh produce from the Norse Wind. They had bacon, too.”
Tanis slipped off the autodoc, and landed unsteadily on her feet. She reached back to stabilize herself and winced as her right arm protested.
Connie frowned. “That was a bit fast there, Commander.”
“Well, you did just tell me that there is a BLT in my future. That’s more than enough to get me excited.”
• • •
Tanis had just settled into a chair in the Kirby Jones’s tiny galley and picked up her BLT, when Lieutenant James messaged her on the Link.
<Commander Richards? I have a message coming in from Colonel Higgs. Real-time—well, ten-second light delay.>
Tanis sighed and set her sandwich back on its plate. <Send it over,> she replied and the room around her fell away, replaced by the scowling visage of Colonel Higgs hovering in space before her.
<Bit of a dust-up you had there, Commander Richards,> Higgs began. <I trust you’ve heard from the Arizona’s captain that they’re taking over?>
<I have,> Tanis replied. <We’re preparing the prisoners for transfer. Orders we received are to dock with the Arizona for a quick transfer, and then to resume our patrol.>
<Good,> Higgs replied after the light delay. <I’m modifying those orders a bit. You’re to return to Vesta for refit. You and your crew have done good work. Time for some R&R—from what I see, you all have at least a month of leave coming after this tour.>
Going in? A month of leave? Tanis couldn’t believe what she was hearing. The crew would be ecstatic. <Yes sir, some close to two months.>
<Good. See to it that captain Regina on the Arizona is satisfied, and then return to Vesta. Higgs out.>
Tanis signed off and the galley came back into focus around her. She leaned back in her chair and eyed the BLT resting on her plate. She may be beaten and bruised, but a month’s leave? That would be enough time to catch a ride to Mars and see Peter.
She picked up the sandwich, took a bite, and smiled.
Not such a bad day, after all.