Edge of Solace (A Star Too Far) (23 page)

“Abe! Get ready, wounded coming in!” Huron shouted as he stood by the door controls.

Abraham shifted and looked. The tube changed before his eyes as the edges came closer and spiraled. He blinked as the emergency air pack popped open. The apparatus fit over most of his face. Except where his cheeks squeezed out.

The first of the suits came running through and passed by the
Marines.

Around him men shouted and yelled. Tension was rising throughout. Abraham felt like he was walking above it, immune to the chatter. He almost smiled as he gently pushed an armored
Marine aside and moved into the umbilical.

Further along they were floating, clinging to a line above. Abraham didn’t quite understand why they were floating and not moving until he came out of the ship
’s artificial gravity. The Engineers explained it to him, but it didn’t sink in until his legs spun wildly and he smashed into a Marine.

The
Marine grappled with Abraham and stopped him from spinning any further. The Marine gaped back as Abraham smiled sheepishly and grasped the cable. He pulled himself forward, hand over hand.

At each person he met he would nod, smile, and say “excuse me,” as he reached around and continued. His goal was a single
Marine with two orange and white emergency suits. The Marine was unable to make any forward progress with the suits in his arms.

Abraham stopped his motion and saw nothing but emptiness. It stopped him, a darkness so pure and dense. The cable tightened under his fingers and dug into his joints. The Coriolis force was slinging them outward.

He snapped his head to the Marine. Inside of the suit was a face red with effort and coated in perspiration.

“Take him!” the
Marine yelled. The sound was barely audible through the EVA facemask.

Abraham leaned an arm out and wrapped the suit tightly up against him.

He, and the Marine, both paused. Neither seemed exactly sure how to proceed with the suits.

Abraham squeezed the suit and slung it over his shoulder. This didn’t work so he spun himself around and dropped the suit and squeezed it between his legs.

The Marine nodded and did the same. He pulled himself along the line hand over hand. The suit hung limply between the Marine’s legs.

Abraham followed. The suit between his legs squirmed. He snatched glances up along the line and back down to the darkness. A fear grew as
he saw himself being sucked out.

The line was cold in his hands. His fingers ached and
his joints cracked and bled. The eighty meters he had first sailed through was now laboriously crossed one hand after the next.

What the hell
was he doing? This wasn’t something he should have done, it wasn’t even his place to do something like this. He had no idea what he was doing. Everyone around him was coming out and he was going in.

A
flash burst out followed by warmth spreading like a spring sun. Shouts and yells called out. The warmth felt strange, he hadn’t even realized his was skin was chilled.

“Move
, dammit! We’re closing it up!” Huron shouted.

Abraham gritted his teeth and pulled with one hand over the next. The drop into gravity caught him off guard. He scrambled up, hefted the suit onto his shoulder and sprinted past Huron. He broke through a line of power armor and crashed to the floor.

The airlock hammered shut.

“I’m trying
, sir! It won’t release,” Huron yelled.

Abraham assumed Huron was speaking about the umbilical.

A pair of corpsman descended on the suit and broke it open. Inside was a woman with blood streaking down her nostrils. Her eyes rolled up into her skull with nothing but ivory white glaring. Breathing came in spurts. They slapped a patch onto her, pushed her onto a cart, and rushed away.

Abraham stood slowly and looked around. He pulled the mask from his face and drew in a deep breath of warm air. His hands dripped blood, he raised them up and wasn’t sure what to do. Soiling his pants with blood didn’t seem right.

The room was somber. The Marines were tearing down the defenses in silence. The soldiers in power armor stood and faced the hatch, waiting. Huron stood next to the controls staring down at them, as if expecting something.

“Yes
, Captain, we’ll get an EVA team out to break it loose.” Huron looked up to the soldiers and shook his head.

Abraham stepped back and made room as they marched out in silence. The
Marines stood at attention until the final soldier walked out.

“C’mon
, Yoder!” Sergeant Gruber bellowed. “Time to clear this shit.”

Abraham gave a final glance at the soldiers and ran across the room to help the
Marines. He paused and looked out the hatch.

Outside the umbilical oscillated. The shimmering wreck of the dropship dimmed into darkness.

*

The
Malta
pulled away from the glowing hulk of the dropship. A pattern of dim orange icons showed where the dropship was. Wreckage shifted and rolled as chambers let loose atmosphere.

“Keep the overlay on
, please, Ms. Lebeau, I’d like to know if any of those pieces are heading our way,” William said. He stood and clasped his hands behind his back. It went well enough, he thought. “Mr. Reed, status please.”

“All systems normal. The blast wasn’t severe enough to cause us any problems
.”

William nodded. “Sergeant Gruber, Lieutenant Yamaguchi, to my office please.”

“Uh, sir?” Lebeau looked across the bridge. “The Lieutenant didn’t make it back.”

William took a step and stopped. He looked back to Lebeau. His mouth opened and closed. “Send his Platoon Sergeant then
, please.”

Yamaguchi was gone. It took a second for it to set in. There was always that backdrop of loss, he knew it, they all knew it. The mission would carry on. They had a prisoner, and a survivor.

“Uh, Captain?” Lebeau said.

William turned from the edge of the door and looked up at the display. Icons blinked in on the edge of the system. Data tags showed the names of UC ships. The same UC ships that had jumped through earlier.

Damage indicators flared on the ships coming through. Maintenance readouts popped up and disappeared. From a brief glance he could tell the ships coming back were hurt.

“Get Captain Martinez
.” William slid back into his chair and keyed up the nav console.

“Yes
, sir,” Lebeau said. “The
Erebus
is broadcasting.”

Broadcasting? William leaned forward and placed his elbows on his knees. “Let
’s hear it.”

Lebeau nodded. “Yes
, sir.”

“Why would they broadcast and not ping us?” Reed asked.

“They must think they don’t have time,” William muttered.

“All UC forces, this is the
Erebus.
Get clear, rendezvous with the remainder of the fleet at point Delta Charlie. Sa’Ami fleet data to follow. The Fleet is lost.” The voice paused and everything repeated. The tone was sober, mechanical, detached.

“Sir!” Lebeau cried.

Red and orange icons winked into place near the UC ships. More icons appeared. A steady stream began to pop into place. The data tags overwhelmed the grouping.

“Oh my,” Reed said with a cough.

“Get me Martinez.” William traced routes through the nav screen and saw that leaving through the same route as they came was not an option.

“Captain.” Martinez shifted in his seat.

“Captain, I believe you have the command,” William said.

Captain Martinez was the ranking officer, even if missile boats weren’t typically command ships.

“We will go in and stand with the
Erebus,
” Martinez said.

William furrowed his brow. The orders from the
Erebus
were otherwise. Martinez was definitely in command of the two forlorn ships, but his order was wrong.

“Captain, the
Erebus
—”

“I know what they said. I estimate if we can assist at the jump point we can all get clear. The show of force will be enough.” Martinez shifted his gaze and focus
ed on a screen next to him.

“I must disagree
, Captain, we have our orders.” William felt a pit rising in his stomach. Disobey and leave, even when the
Erebus
ordered otherwise, or follow and die. He had a prisoner on top of a captive. Information that could prove priceless.

Captain Martinez leaned closer to the camera. The stress was evident in his eyes. An eyelid twitched and his breathing grew quicker. “Captain,” he spat. “We will go in with the
Erebus.
We make our stand.”

William shook his head. “I will not waste the lives of my crew.” He snapped his eyes to the list of ships that came into system. “Not against those odds. The
Erebus
is lost.”

The words hung between the two as syllables balanced in space. William knew it. The display showed a fight, already thirty minutes old, just beginning. The
Erebus
made the blink with Sa’Ami light cruisers chasing. A pair of UC frigates flared away as they withered under the fire. More Sa’Ami cruisers, frigates, and assault ships blinked in.

William knew Martinez was thinking, he hadn’t changed his vector yet. He was still accelerating parallel to the
Malta.
But what kept him? The old Spanish honor?

“We can blink. It’ll be two systems near K space and we’ll make the rendezvous.”

Martinez stared at something and nodded slowly. He spoke softly, as if grappling the words. “Send me the plot.”

“Lebeau
, ship it!” William slapped at the nav console and spun the ship on its axis. The grav drives pushed on the edge of what the compensators could handle.

“I concur
, Captain,” Martinez said. He looked at William with a raised chin. “We’ll take the fight to them another time.”

“You can count on it
, Captain. I’ll contact you after the blink.” William nodded to Lebeau and the feed dropped.

A single icon peeled away from the main mass and head
ed in the direction of the
Malta.
Estimated times of arrival popped up with real time data next to it showing estimated positions. Icons fluttered in two places as the probable positions waited to agree.

Behind them the battle raged.

A trio of courier drones burst away from the
Erebus
. Each surged on a slightly different vector. The acceleration was so high that only a computer could withstand it.

“Couriers out,” Lebeau said. One of the couriers disintegrated and disappeared from the screen. “One down
.”

“At least they’ll know,” Reed muttered.

The
Erebus
rolled and deployed the full bulk of her weaponry against the incoming frigates. Batteries of railguns pulsed out with the mass drivers shredding anything close. Missiles exploded just a hundred meters out.

The bridge crew watched in silence.

A pair of Sa’Ami cruisers burned past the
Erebus.
More fire pounded into the center of the ship. The maintenance alerts showed a ship that was nearly totally destroyed.

“How are they still firing
?” Lebeau whispered.

“Each battery is firing automatically. She’ll continue until they hit the core,” William replied.

The Sa’Ami frigates fell back quickly. More cruisers surged in to take their place.

The
Erebus
cracked in two with the remains of the core burning bright in the center of the ship. With the most dangerous ship gone, the Sa’Ami finished off the rest of the UC fleet.

The Sa’Ami ships changed course. New projections placed them heading towards the
Malta.
The entire Sa’Ami fleet burned towards them. The nearest ship at a higher acceleration than those who had destroyed the
Erebus.

“Captain, they’re waiting,” Lebeau said.

“You have the bridge, follow the program. If our friends come closer let me know,” William said as he nodded to the display.

He walked off the bridge with shoulders hunched. The ship hummed under his feet. He pictured the
Malta
shifting in an arc both away and along the course.

“Attention!” Sergeant Gruber barked. The
Marine was rigid with dark eyes forward.

Opposite him was Sergeant Hoffman. His hair was matted down from sweat, a thin layer of salt caked it into a flap on his head.

“At ease,” William said as he sat.

Huron rushed in with a slate in his arm and slid in next to Hoffman. “Sorry! Had to get the techs set. We’ve got the EVA heading out as soon as the vector stabilizes.”