All My Sins Remembered (18 page)

"Black Star, this is Talon One.  Your HUD is rebooting due to a malfunction.  You will be able to re-establish contact in three to five m
inutes, but you don't have that long.  Squad 2 seems to be pinned inside the storage room."  The Major reported, then seeing more details emerge from the live camera feed, the Major swallowed nervously and added, "They are trapped inside, and one of the storage tanks has been compromised."

***

Raijan knew that they had already cleared out a majority of the enemy forces.  Intel had suggested, based on the number of racks in the barracks, that the most they would face would have been two platoons.  Having eliminated a squad patrolling the perimeter, another squad at the entrance, and at least two more squads on the third floor, he knew that the fight was nearly over, but squad 2 had found themselves in quite the predicament.  While making sure that the room with the storage tanks was empty of any hostiles in an attempt to secure it, they were ambushed as one of the two air locks was damaged, rendering it impassable.  Then, performing a fighting withdrawal, the enemy had sealed them inside the storage tank room, while a parting shot had punctured one of the tanks holding Sarin gas.

That wasn't the real problem, however, because their powered armor was engineered to operate in nearly any environment, including under water and in the vacuum of space.  Each suit could sustain a Marine for several days, if needed.  No, the real problem was that the emergency vacuum pumps responsible for sucking out the harmful gas and storing it in emergency containment tanks placed in a secondary environment had not performed their function.  There was no way to safely remove the nerve gas without exposing it to the environment, which was not an acceptable risk.

***

Gordy ran a hand through his blond hair as he looked again at the schematics and frowned.  The Rejaian forces had done a good job of sabotaging the emergency ventilation systems meant to suck out any Sarin leakage in the storage room and into storage tanks carefully isolated for that purpose.  He
usually liked facing these kinds of challenges, but this time, he was not so certain he would be able to fix it.  It wasn’t just the pump that powered the vacuum that was sabotaged.  If it was, it would have been easily enough replaced with another pump that could be jerry rigged for the duty, but the ventilation system itself had shown signs of hurried construction, and he didn’t think it could be relied upon to perform its function perfectly, which was surprising given the level of hazard the nerve gas represented.  It would seem to him that the scientists would be extremely concerned about whether or not their backup systems worked.

Neither could he rebuild it.  Not that he could not do it, or did not know how, but rather it was a matter of getting materials inside the containment area without letting any nerve gas escape, a feat he could not perform.  All he had to work with was the materials already inside the containment room.  This meant he had access to whatever arms and armament the Marines inside had, the punctured tank, and maybe some pipe that was feeding the punctured tank in question, and a small tool box that some maintenance worker had conveniently left inside.  Normally, that would be enough for Gordy to figure something out, but these circumstances were a little more out of the ordinary than the kind of problems he typically faced.  Usually
, his concerns centered around how to get a piece of ship equipment back up and running while under fire, or maintaining life support, or something like that
.  Dealing with biological threats was somewhat further down on my list, Gordy thought dryly
.  Next to him, doctor Hirsch cleared his throat, getting Gordy’s attention.

“We could use a couple of plasma grenades.”  doctor
Hirsch offered.  “The flashpoint of Sarin is relatively low.  The sudden heat induced by the grenades should icinerate it without any escaping.”  Gordy looked at doctor Hirsch in disbelief, shaking his head.

“It would also incinerate our Marines inside.  We have no guarantees that they would live through the resulting firestorm in such a contained space.” Gordy disagreed.

“On the contrary,” the doctor argued, “their armor is engineered to handle this kind of abuse.”  Gordy sighed.  He had this conversation with doctor Hirsch several times over the past few hours as they scrambled to work out a solution.  When Hawke had learned of the situation below on the planet, he had sent a shuttle for both Gordy and the doctor, and told them to lead the group of scientists and engineers aboard The Fury to find a way to contain the Sarin and get the Marines out alive.  Understandably the lead scientist and chief engineer were a bit put out having been informed in no uncertain terms that they would be suddenly finding themselves reporting to someone else.  Now the two department heads, Lieutenant Commander Gordon, and doctor Hirsch were in a shared lab with all the other scientists and engineers, determined to find a solution to the problem.  After the initial meeting of the new department heads, the bruised egos of the scientists and engineers were forgotten in the face of this new, challenging task.  Such was the way of scientists and engineers.

“Sir, you are only partially correct.” Corrected on
e of the scientists, a woman named Teresa.  “Under normal circumstances, the armor would probably endure it, but each of their armor has been damaged – some severely so.”  Gordy brought up a schematic of each of the Marines’ armor, and ran a quick diagnostic program.  Parts of each Marine’s armor suddenly glowed red where the armor was nearly breached.  One particular Marine’s armor was nearly all red.  Doctor Hirsch shook his head, not believing how hard some of these Marines were on their armor, which brought a faint smile to Gordy’s face.  doctor Hirsch was the kind of man who understood science far better than combat.  He had been recruited initially to help explore beyond the boundaries of empire space, and had surprisingly volunteered for this assignment.  Just as surprisingly, Hawke had accepted his offer, for which Gordy was glad.  While it seemed the man had no social graces, or the concept of what happens in the ‘real world’ of PMC’s, the man was a certifiable genius, and that was coming in handy right now.

“Well, what if they cut a hole in the punctured tank big enough they all crawl in
to?  Wouldn’t the added protection help?”  asked an Engineer.  Gordy’s face took on a thoughtful expression as he considered the proposal, bringing up a schematic of the punctured and now empty storage tank.  The metal of the tank certainly seemed thick enough, and if the plasma grenades were thrown in the far corner….Gordy smiled as he glanced at Doctor Hirsch, who was already nodding his agreement.

***

“You want us to do what?”  Asked Corporal Goddard, not quite sure he had heard correctly.  He listened again as the order was repeated, and then sighed.  His men wouldn’t like this.  He quietly relayed the order to the others in his squad and waited a few moments in silence for it to sink in.  After a moment, the predictable hothead PFC Darby simply said, “Are they insane?”  Corporal Goddard could not entirely disagree with that sentiment, but also realized that such an order was probably the only option they had of possibly getting out alive.  Letting the Sarin gas out was simply unthinkable.  The atrocity that occurred at the nearby village a couple of hours to the east was only the result of a minor spill.  This had the potential to be much worse. 

“Stow it, Darby, and cut us a hole.” Corporal Goddard said, giving Darby a light shove towards the punctured tank.  With a resigned sigh, Darby drew a small charge typically used for breaching doors and stuck it on the tank, near where the puncture was.  Jogging back towards the corner he yelled, “Fire in the hole!”  The snickers of the other Marines at the unintended pun were lost in the sound of the small explosion that ripped open the tank just large enough for them to step through.  Corporal Goddard took a moment to look at his men before ordering them inside.  As the leader of the squad, he knew he could not ask someone else to take this potentially life-threatening risk.  Getting close to the entrance of the tank, Corporal Goddard opened a channel to
Second Lieutenant Raijan.

“LT, we’re ready.  Lobbing the plasma now. “ Goddard reported.  Through a
carbosteel window he could see Second Lieutenant Raijan, along with squad three, and two corpsmen, waiting to enter into the cleansed facility.  Swallowing nervously, Corporal Goddard gave Raijan a sharp nod, and lobbed two plasma grenades into the far corner of the room.  Scrambling for the hole in the tank, Corporal Goddard put one leg through, and then ducked to bring his body inside the tank.  For a moment, he thought he would make it completely inside, but his right leg was still on the outside of the tank when he felt the detonation of both grenades, and the room filled with the burning material of the sun, incinerating everything it touched.  Corporal Goddard jerked his right leg frantically inside, unbalancing himself and falling onto his back.  Alarms on his helmet’s HUD were beeping at him, and his armor began pumping emergency gels to the affected area, and injecting him full of pain meds and antibiotics.  His HUD showed his right leg, below the knee, was blinking red.  Corporal Goddard closed his eyes, afraid to look, as he opened his general coms channel and called for a corpsman.  The drugs took full affect, causing a little disorientation and nausea as he waited for what seemed like mere seconds, but in reality was minutes as the corpsmen outside waited to verify that the Sarin that had leaked had indeed been incinerated.

“I’ve got you, corporal.  You’ll be alright.”  Corporal Goddard heard over the general coms.  Corporal Goddard’s eyes slid open, giving him a strange view
.  He could see the blurry outline of the corpsman bent over him and others of his squad could be seen leaning in above him.

“Will you look at that?  His armor melted right below the knee!” Darby said. 
Goddard saw that Darby's face had gone pale.  Another member of the squad smacked Darby hard on the back of his helmet with a loud "THUNK."

“Hey, what was that for?” Darby exclaimed.

“Shut up, private.  You’re coms channel is open.” Said the squad member who had smacked him.  That was all Corporal Goddard heard, for the corpsman had injected him with something from his medical supplies.  His eyes slid shut, and the world went black.

***

Raijan watched as the corpsman worked on Corporal Goddard, and sighed.  The Corporal would be out on medical for a few solar weeks while they replaced his lower leg and foot.  The Corporal’s armor must have suffered more damage than at first believed, for the plasma blast melted through the armor just below the knee, and scoured flesh and muscle away and burned the bone nearly to ash.  This operation had been costly, with four wounded and two more dead.  Though he realized that the casualty rate was acceptable in the grand scheme of things, he could not help but feel like he had still failed in some way to have had so many casualties.

Checking the air quality reading on his helmet’s HUD, he made sure that the air quality was good before sliding back his faceplate.  The other corpsman not working on Goddard had busied herself checking over the other Marines of Squad three.  Satisfied that they were fine, she gave Raijan a “thumbs up,” to which Raijan felt no small amount of relief.  Turning towards the corpsman working on the wounded Corporal, he waited for his report.

“Sir, he’ll be fine.  Permission to move him topside?” Asked the corpsman who had been working on Corporal Goddard.  Nodding, Raijan waved the corpsman to continue, and then opened a channel to The Fury.

“Black Star to Talon One, the base is secure.
"

The captured base bustled with activity as technicians, engineers, and scientists from
The Fury
and
The Black Wave
, lead by Doctor Hirsch, swarmed over it.  They had orders to strip down anything useful: computers, weapons, armor, ammunition, and most importantly, any intel that would let them find out where the
Guan Yu
was, so they could blow her away and be done with the mission.  To that end, Hawke found Tasha hard at work in the base's server room, overseeing several technicians as they worked with intense concentration.  Looking up as he walked in, Tasha favored Hawke with a faint smile and a furtive wave of her hand before turning her attention back to her work.  Hawke turned to go, but then hesitated, allowing his gaze to linger a moment more on Tasha before shaking himself out of it and leaving, hoping that no one had noticed his stare.  She was, Hawke decided, quite beautiful despite her fading bruises gained from her being held captive on board the
Choyo
.

Wandering the halls of the third floor where they had found the server room,
Hawke found himself heading to the stairwell to climb the stairs to the first floor and the makeshift command post.  The elevators were running again, but they made him feel uneasy for some reason.  He knew it was a little caution mixed with a little superstition, but the Rejaians had this crazy way of leaving behind traps for the unwary, so he opted for the stairs.  A short time later, he arrived at the makeshift command post, which was still set up in that front office that was suspended from the ceiling at the base entrance, to find Second Lieutenant Raijan conversing with Sergeant Carroway.  Upon seeing Hawke's arrival, Raijan stopped speaking, and respectfully bowed at his hips to the Colonel, who nodded in return.

"You did well, Second Lieutenant. 
I knew my confidence in you was not misplaced." Hawke said formally.  Again, Raijan bowed, this time with a look of relief and gratitude on his face.

"The honor is mine, Colonel Bakore." Raijan replied.  Sergeant Carroway,
unaccustomed to Rejaian culture merely looked confusedly from Hawke, to Raijan, and back again a couple of times before shrugging to himself and turning his attention back to the image the holoprojector was showing.  Catching Sergeant Carroway's gaze, Hawke turned his attention for the first time to the image being projected.

"What's this?" Hawke asked, nodding towards the image.  Raijan's typically stern demeanor broke into one of his rare
, tightly controlled smiles.

"
We think it's an image of the
Guan Yu
. "  Raijan replied, his gaze shifting to the mean-looking ship.  Hawke whistled appreciatively as his eyes took in every detail.  The ship even
looked
like it was on the cutting edge of technology.  It had a bulldog kind of look, with massive 'shoulders' up front in the center of which was couched the bridge.  From the front, the ship tapered towards the back, where thrusters were mounted to either side.  On either 'shoulder' it supported a large barrel, though there didn't seem to be any kind of data on what type of weapons they were.  If he had to guess, given the Rejaian penchant for lasers, he would bet they were a couple of well-endowed laser ports.  He could see other, smaller turrets speckled about the body of the ship, and a few Laser Anti-Missile Turrets, otherwise known as LAMS.  It was easily a battlecruiser class ship, nestled neatly between the cruiser and battleship classes in size.  Hawke stared at the image a few moments longer, then clapped Raijan roughly on the shoulder, his way of saying 'good job' before turning to leave, then paused.

"I'm going to hold a debriefing on
The Fury
, then retire to
The Black Wave
, Lieutenant Raijan.  Keep Tasha pulling data, and we'll review it then.  Any additional data can be reviewed after we have all gotten a little rest.  As soon as you can, get your marines back up to the ships."  Hawke ordered.  Raijan nodded his understanding, which Hawke saw out of the corner of his eye, then left for the shuttle that had brought him planetside and landed not far from the base entrance.

***

A few hours later found Hawke seated in the back of one of
The Fury's
shuttles with Nathan.  They were secure in their safety harnesses and quietly discussing the debriefing they had just completed with Major Kinney and Captain Yost.  They were doing their best to ignore their nervous boatswain piloting the shuttle.  He was fairly new to the company, and had never flown the commander and CEO of his company, a task usually entrusted to shuttle pilots with combat experience.  Hawke could feel the rumble of the shuttle as its thrusters pushed them towards
The Black Wave
, pressing him firmly into the seat as it shot out of the shuttle bay of
The Fury
.  Shuttling from ship to ship, or from ship to planet, was one of the necessities of present day space flight, and really, it was better than a capsule drop.  A capsule drop was the equivalent of stuffing a Marine in power armor in another armored capsule that resembled something more reminiscent of a huge artillery shell, called “suicide pills” by those Marines who used them, with a built in thruster to handle deceleration and to cushion their landing.  The Marines were then shot down to the planet from the ship.  Those kinds of drops were usually one of extremes.  That is, it was either a covert operation in which a small squad was dropped, or an ongoing firefight in the middle of which they ‘hot dropped’ Marines, who – if they survived the drop and landing – had to come out firing.  Hawke had made a few drops like that as a Marine for the Gadari Republic, back before the PMC Accord.  It was not an experience he would care to repeat.  Then again it was not an experience for someone of his upper-middle age to endure, either. 

Hawke chuckled depreciatingly at himself and shook his head.  Why didn’t he just say it?  He was getting
old
.  Sure, humans lived, on average, well into their mid-one hundreds now, sometimes closer to two hundred, but he was in his 60’s now.  He only had about forty years left before he probably couldn’t endure the rigors of combat any longer, assuming he lived that long, and maybe only twenty years after that before he would probably have to retire altogether to live out his remaining days on some planet, somewhere.  Hopefully, those days would be in a tropical paradise, but who knows?  He surely didn’t.   Hawke was snapped out of his introspection by the voice of his nervous pilot, the boatswain.

“Sir, I’m getting some strange readings.”  The boatswain reported.  Hawke caught Nathan’s eye, who was sitting next to him, and nodded towards the nervous boatswain.  He thought maybe Nathan attending to the problem might make the man a little less nervous.  Nathan sighed and unbuckled his safety harness as he leaned forward to stand, but then was thrown roughly back in his seat when the boatswain
yelled in sudden surprise and yanked back on the controls, sending the shuttle veering sharply upwards on its Z-axis.  Nathan roared in protest, trying to grab the harness he had just took off, and slip it back over his shoulders before the shuttle, having reversed its heading, did a barrel roll to reorient itself while its thrusters kicked on at full thrust sending them shooting back towards
The Fury
.

“What was it?  What happened?” Hawke demanded, not being able to see clearly out of the pilot
's viewport.  His nervousness forgotten, the boatswain shook his head, then looked apologetically back at Nathan, who had managed to regain both his seat and his harness.

“A ship, sir.  A big one, and it was just uncloaking. 
I don't know how, but she’s making an attack run on
The Fury
.”  The boatswain reported.  Having reversed their direction, Hawke could see
The Fury
large in the shuttle’s viewport, for they had not gone far at all.  Hawke understood the pilot's confusion, for a ship that size normally could never muster up enough power to cloak, let alone attack a ship.  The power transfer to the cloaking device would have to be absolute, and it took time to transfer power from place to place, which made performing attack runs impossible, for it took time to transfer the power to engines, weapons, and shields.  Hawke shielded his eyes when a bright ruby light filled the shuttle as thick lasers lanced into
The Fury's
unshielded hull.  The boatswain made as if to thrust right into the shuttle bay and land again, but Hawke grasped the man’s shoulder to get his attention and shook his head.

“Get us to
The Black Wave.
  We need to get to where we can do the most good.  Captain Yost has this.”  Hawke ordered.  The boatswain nodded, and maneuvered the shuttle once more, pointing its nose towards the heavy assault cruiser and opening up the engines to full thrust.  This time, the boatswain observed combat protocols, and did not let off on the thrust until they had covered half the distance to the ship.  Several minutes later, he reoriented the shuttle, pointing his nose away from
The Black wave
, and back towards
The Fury
as he opened up the thrust again to begin slowing them down enough to be ‘scooped’ by the shuttle bay of the heavy assault cruiser.  He helped Gordy, who had returned to
The Black Wave
some time ago with Doctor Hirsch, and was once again acting as captain, would be ready to come to the assistance of
The Fury
as soon as they were aboard.

As they decelerated, Hawke was treated to the view of the fight between the strange ship, which was reminiscent of an English bulldog with its front end massive and bristling with weaponry, and its back end smaller, and bristling with thrusters, and
The Fury
.  He recognized it from the image he had seen earlier.  It was the
Guan Yu.
  He could see sparks inside a gaping hole in the front dorsal section of
The Fury,
and smoke came roiling out, dirtying up the space around it, but she was a battleship.  Her armor was thick, and her weapons were large.  She would not so easily be dispatched.  Large lasers lanced out again from the ship, but this time met with sturdy shields as the battleship's cruise missile launchers and rocket launchers were brought online and began tracking their prey.  One rocket battery fired a quick barrage point-blank against the attacking ship, peppering its shields with eighty plasma warheads that detonated like eighty pins of light.  The attacking ship pulled up from its attack run, seemingly surprised by the hit, and passed over
The Fury.
A couple of small, ventral laser turrets from the
Guan Yu
took shots as they passed, but merely caused the battleship's shields to flare brightly with no real damage done.

Then
The Fury moved
, though slowly, for battleships never did anything quickly except destroy things, and it nosed towards the retreating aft sections of the attacking ship.  The six cruise missile launchers, now fully locked, each belched forth a battery of eight cruise missiles filling the space with smoke, propellant, and forty-eight cruise missiles - enough to easily destroy four or five city blocks, perhaps more.  The missiles sped towards the attacking ship as it gained some distance between it and the battleship to line up for another attack run.  Then, the
Guan Yu
inexplicably disappeared.

“Look at that…” Hawke said, awe in his voice, “
That's impossible!”  Nathan, for a wonder, didn’t say anything, so transfixed was he on the battle unfolding before him.  The cruise missiles, having lost a fix on their target, continued on for about another thirty seconds then detonated automatically, having reached its maximum range.  In space combat, when using missiles, each barrage of missiles will be set with a maximum range upon which the missile detonates, else they would have continued on their flight indefinitely with live warheads until it had hit something.  As they detonated, Hawke noted the outline of the attacking ship, a shadow against the backdrop of plasma before the vacuum of space snuffed it out.

“It’s behind the missile barrage!” Nathan yelled, his voice a mix of admiration and concern.  “
After he cloaked, he turned right around and bypassed the missiles before they were detonated!”  Hawke nodded grimly, and watched as the
Guan Yu
once again uncloaked and fired its large lasers, and then they were in the shuttle bay, its doors closing.  Muttering a curse, Hawke threw off his harness even before they had come to a stop, and slapped the button next to the back exit to open the rear door.  Nathan followed as they both made a running leap, though Nathan’s ankle rolled, and he went down.  Hawke hesitated a moment, but seeing Nathan waving him on, took off at a dead run for the lift to take him to the bridge.  Alarms were blaring throughout the ship, and Hawke felt the cruiser’s mighty engines rumble to life as he stepped into the lift and hit the button for the bridge.  Absently, he hoped that Nathan was okay, and would soon get himself secured, because things were about to get bumpy.

Two minutes later, which was a full twenty minutes since the first attack run on
The Fury
, found Hawke striding onto the bridge of
The Black Wave
.  “What’s going on, Gordy.”  Hawke asked as he walked in.  Gordy unbuckled his harness from where he sat in the captain’s chair and seemed grateful to see Hawke.  He was an engineer, after all, and not a captain.  His place was elsewhere.