“Get us out of here 1 Alpha,” was the command from the Nova Pilgrim.
“Affirm,” came the response from Addison, “1 Squadron, full shields, go vertical.”
I hit the VTOL button, pulled down on the throttle and the Red October leapt into the sky. She’d barely made it to three-hundred metres when weapons loosed upon us from all directions. I could see plasma criss-crossing from every angle as the swarm of Sigmas fought off the antagonists to protect our exfiltration. Explosions happened all around me and, more than once, my screens lit up red as their weapons hit my aircraft. I could feel myself being buffeted by the wind and plasma fire as we climbed faster and faster.
It took less than twenty seconds to breach the cloud cover and power into the bright glare of the afternoon sun. If I thought the skies would be clearer above the storm, I was sorely mistaken. If anything, my screens looked even more cluttered, with every Sigma, Guardian and Pegasus visible in my forward displays. Two CAF Guardians thrust into my path, but my shields propelled them backwards.
My displays flickered and my shield energy flashed. Nineteen percent. I was down by eighty-one percent in under thirty seconds. The nucleus was desperately trying to recharge the shields, but with full throttle applied, the energy was going into the gyro-spheres and thrusters. The Pilgrim was directly below and slightly forward, and the ten Sigmas of 1 Squadron alongside the four from the previous day’s mission were crowding the top of the Pilgrim’s hull, protecting it from the onslaught in the skies above.
Faster and faster we flew until we reached the limit of our VTOL capability. “Pitch up!” came the command from the Nova Pilgrim, and we rotated upwards, maintaining momentum. This was the most dangerous part of the plan. The Pilgrim had forward shields only, and as it rotated upwards the pilots exposed the underbelly of the beast to lateral enemy fire, from which it had no protection. As a squadron, we feathered back from the Pilgrim’s path, and formed up on the underside to protect the shuttle.
Only a minute had passed. We were skirting twenty-five-thousand metres and gaining altitude and velocity with every passing moment. The battle below intensified as Earth’s protectors desperately fought to ground the shuttle permanently. We’d been naïve to assume our path home would lack peril, but whilst this revelation was bad news for the present situation, it was good news for the crew and passengers of the Pilgrim. It seemed, given the circumstances, the passengers were probably legitimate and not a threat to the safety of the Bertram.
Higher and higher we flew. My HUD read 3670 knots and climbing steadily as the air thinned and the unwieldy aerodynamics of the shuttle became less of a hindrance. Seventy-thousand metres passed, and the conflict below had shrunk on screen. The fleet disengaged and formed up thirty-thousand metres down. I wondered how many we’d lost in the fight. I could never have imagined an aerial battle that intense. No sooner had I thought about it than the Red October shuddered and lurched, impact warning alarms sounding. The Sigma’s nose immediately twitched right, and I had to fight the controls to compensate for the yaw with my left thrusters.
The hissing on the lower port flank by my left foot was worrying, and my screens flickered as the hull warning lights illuminated and a master alarm sounded. I could feel the pressure and temperature dropping inside the cockpit. I reached my hand down to my hip to release my rebreather. As I pulled the mask out, I looked across at the pilot slumped in the passenger seat. Her kit belt was gone.
“For fuck’s sake.” Deftly, I locked off my throttle, released my harness and took my kit belt off, laying it in the lap of the female pilot. I pulled the bag over her head and hit the inflate button, and watched for a moment as nothing happened. I briefly wondered if she was already dead when the faintest patch of mist from her breath caught the inside of the mask. Relieved, I grabbed a box from behind the bulkhead and pulled the patch-repair foam spray from the inside. I couldn’t see the breach in the rapidly diminishing light, but I could hear it, so I leaned around my console, threw a glass-reinforced-nylon patch towards the sound of the escaping air, pushed the nozzle into the corner and emptied the contents onto the inner hull.
The surrounding sky darkened considerably as the stars above began to twinkle and shimmer in the inky blackness of space. I switched off the master alarm, and waited for the flashing red lights to turn off as the pressure inside equalised, but they never did. It took another minute for us to reach the Kármán Line, and as we did my comms crackled and the navy commander of the Nova Pilgrim hailed us all. “1 Squadron, this is the Nova Pilgrim. Steady to five-hundred-thousand metres now. Take us to our stand-off point, 1 Alpha.”
“Wilco,” came Addison’s dulcet tones. “You heard the man. Let’s go home.”
I could still hear hissing from the corner of the hull by my feet. It was getting colder with every passing minute, but I could still breathe. My oxygen showed seven percent on screen. Not good.
“1 Bravo to 1 Alpha.”
“Go ahead, Jax.”
“Addison, the Red October is bleeding. I’m losing oxygen and pressure.”
“Put your mask on, Jaxon. Can you find the leak and patch it?”
“The mask is on my passenger. I lost her kit-belt during the exfil. She’s unconscious but breathing. I’ve tried to patch the hull, but she’s still bleeding. Oxygen at seven percent. Make that six percent.”
“Okay, Jaxon. Recommend you leave the fleet behind and make haste for the Bertram. We’ve got this. Just get back safely.”
“Roger,” I replied and pushed my throttle up to max, skimming the underside of the Pilgrim and thrusting until my displayed showed 27,450kph. The Bertram was about fifteen minutes away at this speed and my oxygen level was worrying. The temperature inside the cockpit was showing at -4 Celsius and dropping quickly.
My heart was racing as I looked at the dials and watched the ice creeping into the corners of my holloscreens. I tried to keep myself calm and breath more slowly, but panic was gripping me as we approached the station. “Mayday, mayday. Bertram Ramsay Tower, this is Red October – I mean 1 Bravo – requesting emergency assistance. Over.”
“1 Bravo, this is Tower. What’s your situation?”
“Ma’am, I’m losing oxygen. Showing three percent and icing up inside. I have a hull breach and an unconscious pilot beside me wearing my rebreather. I need an open hole and a quick docking, over.”
“Understood 1 Bravo. Proceed on your current trajectory, slowing to fifty-above station limits whilst we calculate your docking procedure and destination.”
“Thanks Tower. Awaiting further instructions.” I looked across at the pilot next to me. I’d seen her in my first briefing, but we hadn’t spoken. She’d seemed fairly relaxed and confident, and I was glad I had been able to pull her from her Sigma. I unclipped my harness and stood in front of her, detaching her harness and re-seating it over both shoulders, across her lap and through her legs. It wouldn’t be great to have effected her rescue, only to kill her with a crap landing. She was definitely breathing, so I took that as a win, but I watched as the blood seeping from her wounds gathered at her neck where the rebreather sealed the oxygen in.
My comms flashed and the Bertram Tower interrupted my thoughts, which at that precise moment were mostly about how fucking cold it was. -31 Celsius. If I still had testicles when we landed, they wouldn’t be big enough to plug the leak.
“1 Bravo, we can put you in the rear bay of Globe 11.”
“Negative Tower. I can see 10 directly ahead. Put me in there.”
“We’ve depressurised 10, so not a possibility. It’s going to be tight but 11 is coming down now. Be advised: the rear bay is stacked full with crates. There’s very little room, but you can make it.”
“Wilco, Tower. Initiating trajectory control burn.” I waited until I could see the underside of Globe 11 bearing down from the top of the rotation and hit my rear thrusters. The Red October shuddered under my feet and I felt my stomach lurch as I came out of my seat, which wasn’t good. Clearly, the SQIIDS were knackered. Perfect. The inertia of the controlled burn sucked my eyeballs forward, and I felt myself gag as I tried to remain in control. Another master alarm sounded, and I looked at my port display. Oxygen, one percent.
“1 Bravo, you are still too fast. We need you to slow it down and bring it starboard for entry.”
“Tower, I am out of air. If I trim off more speed, I will not make it. Is the bay open?”
“That’s affirm, 1 Bravo. We need you to make starboard entry and initiate mag-dock immediately you’re inside so we can close the doors and pressurise. Please confirm.”
I was trying not to be sick. My fingers and toes were numbing up in the cold. -54 Celsius on my forward screen, and red lights flashing. The Bertram was coming up fast, and I could feel my eyes blurring at the edges as I trimmed over to the starboard quarter of the bay. I needed to time this perfectly, but with every second, I felt lighter and less in control of myself. My limbs felt like someone else’s, vaguely attached to my dysfunctional brain.
“1 Bravo, please confirm.”
The huge bay door of the rear dock on Globe 11 swung into view above me. I was travelling way too fast. I could hear the Tower asking for a response, but I barely had enough focus left to fly the aircraft. If I didn’t control it now, I’d impact under the bay and it would all be over. I mustered every ounce of mental strength I could to manoeuvre the Red October into position, but she felt sluggish and was trying to rotate right with every subtle movement I made to the controls. The escaping pressure was fighting my trajectory and threatening to send the Sigma into a lateral spin. Fucking marvellous. At least the centrifuge effect would recover my gonads.
I pitched up and lowered the landing gear just one-hundred metres from the bay, still travelling too fast. My eyes blurred and I could just about make out the dark chasm of the open bay doors as the dock slowly arced downwards to meet me. I trimmed back on the throttle – tiny adjustments to slow my forward progress.
“Oxygen level critical,” came an announcement from my holloscreens, which were no longer functioning as visual displays, as the windows cracked and the electronics froze. No shit, I thought, as I struggled to move my hands around the control console. I could barely see the bay enveloping us as we swept inside, too fast to be fully in control. I hit the mag-dock button and felt the inertia pull me over the console. The aircraft thumped the deck at break-neck speed and way too heavily. The sound of metal twisting and splitting filled the void, and the hissing grew louder as the impact ripped the pressure seal open. I fell into the front cavity behind the nucleus and my head smashed against the hull. Ice was forming on my lips and eyelashes as my lungs protested the total absence of oxygen. Then everything went black.
* * *
“Amy Cooper?” said Hennessey. “You’re absolutely sure?”
“Yes – but it’s strange,” replied Farrell.
“Strange how?” asked Hennessey, her breathing still laboured from the exertion of running three kilometres.
“Her bio-band says there’s a mismatch on her DNA. It must be an error.”
“I don’t understand,” said Amanda.
“Bio-bands are coded to DNA.”
“Yes, you told us that.”
“Right, but it’s not her DNA. It’s very similar, but not hers.”
“But it’s definitely her bio-band?”
“According to the logs, yes,” replied Farrell.
“What the fuck is going on?” asked Hennessey.
“Only one way to find out.” Amanda shrugged as she entered the mag-lift and clicked off her comms.
“Amy has access to command levels, but not the hangar,” said Hennessey, as they stepped out of the mag-lift onto the hangar level. They were in a small hallway, with corridors extending in three directions.
“That’s why they need Libby,” replied Amanda.
“No, that’s why they needed Mark Hanson,” corrected Hennessey. “Libby is their redundancy. That’s the corridor to the main hangar,” she said, moving towards it.
“Wait,” replied Amanda. “If they were going to the main hangar, they’d have used ML8. Why come all the way to the edge of the dome to enter? It doesn’t make sense.”
“The armoury?” suggested Hennessey. “Amy would certainly have clearance to book out a weapon.”
Amanda nodded, and Hennessey pointed to the northern corridor. “This way,” she said.
Amanda unclipped her Proxy, and Sara followed suit. They jogged up the corridor, checking the doors for any sign of movement, but the rooms were mostly empty. They passed the range on the right where twenty BRMC officers were training, discharging Scorpion rifles at digital targets.
As they approached the end of the corridor, a set of glass double-doors slid open for them, and the sound of several-hundred voices greeted them. To the left was the training arena, which stretched four kilometres west. Assault courses, tenement housing and sports pitches were amongst the features being used by an entire company of Marines. Each area was denoted by a grid position hanging from the roof, fifty metres above them. They watched as a small squad made dynamic entry into C2, the tenement block, clearly simulating a hostage situation.
“Help you?” came a voice to their right. A BRMC officer in his early fifties, with neatly trimmed grey hair in a flat-top style with shaved sides, peered at them through a hatch behind an EM glass screen. Hennessey walked over to him and checked his insignia momentarily before addressing him.
“Staff-Sergeant, we’re looking for Lieutenant Amy Cooper. She’s an ICP transfer and we believe she might have come up here in the last forty-five minutes.”
The staff sergeant pulled out a hollotab and scrolled back. “I have her. She booked out three Scorpions and the Hangar sim in E7.”
“How many with her?” said Amanda, before Hennessey could respond.
He shook his head. “I didn’t see, but hang on.” He leaned back and around, out of sight, and called someone. “Nate! Come up here a minute.”
When he reappeared, he was with a young Marine who couldn’t have been much older than twenty-two. “Nate, Major Barclay and Captain Hennessey would like to know how many people were in Lieutenant Amy Cooper’s company when she booked out the Scorpions and E7.”
The Scorpion rifle was an exoskeletal combat weapon that clamped around the user’s forearm, with six silicone-dipped titanium legs. The tail looped back over and housed the plasma chamber, so it looked like an actual scorpion. A cable ran from the forward casing to a trigger handle, gripped by the wearer. They were formidable weapons and incredibly light, and only required the user to point their arm towards the target, making them highly accurate.
Nate looked confused, but the staff sergeant swiped through the hollotab until Amy’s picture showed. His face lit up. “Oh yeah, I’d remember her anywhere. Me and the boys have a sweep-stake on who can ask her out first,” he said with glee, in a strong New York accent, until he caught sight of the serious look on the surrounding faces.
“There were four of them. Three marines and pilot.” He nodded enthusiastically.
“A pilot?” asked Hennessey.
“Yes, Ma’am. I didn’t get much of a look at her, but no mistaking the black flight suit.”
“Libby. Probably one of Jaxon’s suits,” said Amanda to Hennessey.
Amanda pulled a hollotab out of her kit bag, and tapped away on the screen, before turning it to show the young marine. “Is this the pilot?” she asked, showing Libby’s photo.
Nate shrugged. “Sorry, Ma’am. She was at the back of the group. I didn’t really see,” he said, apologetically.
“Were they carrying anything?” asked Hennessey.
Nate nodded. “The pretty one had a backpack.”
Amanda raised an eyebrow, and Hennessey looked at the staff sergeant. “I need to book out two Scorpions.”