Edge of Solace (A Star Too Far) (29 page)

“Plenty of time to dance, Sergeant, we’re splitting into two squads. Your Marines outside have any luck?”

There was a pause. “Negative.”

“Let’s go!” Yamaguchi moved towards the aft of the ship.

Bulkheads slammed open to admit the soldiers before slamming closed again. The passages were silent. Every door was closed with a yellow security light burning brightly.

The first group of Marines they met were crouched tight to a set of boarding shields with a bolo launcher splitting the middle. They were silent as the soldiers pushed past. Each face was set and focused on the long passage.

Yamaguchi snapped his Herstal rifle up and fired before he realized he was doing it.

The strider erupted out of a ceiling panel and rebounded off the floor. In the split second it was visible, a cluster of rounds blistered on its armor. The invader didn’t bother to stick around and respond—instead it disappeared back where it came from.

“They’re in the ventilation!” Yamaguchi sounded on all channels. He edged against the back wall and crept up to the gaping hole in the ceiling. Behind him the remainder of the squad fanned out with weapons pointed to all points.

“There!” Corporal Haas shouted.

Yamaguchi spun as the sounds of
gunfire filled his ears. He snapped his weapon out and fired a burst. Rounds impacted a strut before he adjusted and clipped the shoulder of the strider.

The strider was smoky brown
—subtle, graceful, almost organic. The limbs were overly long, but not so much as to interrupt motion. If anything the long limbs accentuated the crawling motion it used to move. It was different, just slightly, than the ones he’d fought on the ground.

There wasn’t time to issue orders, only instinct and training saved the small squad.

Yamaguchi tracked his weapon and fired once again. He closed on the strider focusing on blocking the return path back into the walls.

The strider jammed a slender fist into the throat of one soldier while pivoting and sweeping the legs out from another. Almost every shot that was poured at it landed, but the strider powered through.

Yamaguchi felt the fear rising again.

Corporal Haas fell backwards and crashed into the bulkhead. Yamaguchi saw his moment and kicked off of the wall and wrapped both arms around the slender chest of the strider. He grinned as the strider fought underneath him.

Force sensors rippled upwards. The strider pushed back and slammed him into the wall with a dull thud. Sounds echoed off the inside of his suit.

Fear mixed with anger. Then the realization came that he didn’t know what to do next. Corporal Haas stood on shaky legs and leveled his weapon. The muzzle was black and hollow.

Yamaguchi followed the muzzle. A suit rolled on the floor, clutching its throat.

“Haas! On three!” Yamaguchi yelled. He counted to two inside his head and on three slammed both of his arms upwards
, cracking the skull of the strider upright.

The weapon roared. Haas punched out a full slab of caseless ammunition into the strider. Most impacted the chest and arms but a select few burrowed into the underside of the slender head and silenced the beast.

Yamaguchi fell back and sat for a moment. His suit registered multiple impacts but nothing that was critical. “Good shooting! Check wounded, secure the corridor,” Yamaguchi said and realized his squad was already doing it.

The suit felt tight against him, tighter than it should but the fear was gone. He quit fighting the suit and settled back into it. The nanite muscles slowly released as if they reached an understanding.

He checked the display and saw that Alpha squad was having better luck than they were. One strider down in the nose, one in the center—that left a single strider somewhere.

“Engineering!” Captain Grace called.

Yamaguchi keyed the suit and sprinted with the remainder of his squad behind him.

*

The barricade was a scant dozen meters from the Haydn drive. Marines fired wildly as the strider leapt over it and into them. The strider was a blur of limbs and violence. Limbs would pulse and pump, indistinguishable from arms, legs, or even head. The blur was impressive.

Abraham snatched glances around. Tools were at hand and not much more. Reed was huddled behind a cabinet with a carbine tucked tight. A dim yellow muzzle blast barked. That meant one thing
: the Marines were dead.

On the edge of his reach was a long alloy wrench. His eyes darted back to Reed and the rapidly approaching strider. It diverted for a split second and punched a wicked blow at a Maronite conscript. The man thudded into the wall. His weapon clattered to the floor.

The scent of violence was thick with the tint of nanite propellant and oil.

“We need help!” Reed shouted. The Engineer sidestepped and walked slowly backwards. The firing continued. He shifted his aim as the strider tucked and rolled into the room.

It came close enough that Abraham could almost swat at it. At least if he had a weapon. He tensed and waited for the blow.

The head turned and regarded him as it slid past. Crystalline lenses that reminded him of a dragonfly flickered in the harsh light. It didn’t strike but continued towards Reed.

Abraham felt the fear rise in his throat as the metallic burn of adrenaline seared. His hands grew heavy and before he knew it the wrench was in his hand. It was cool, almost cold.

The strider was on Reed in a moment after and knocked away the weapon. The carbine skittered across the room and smacked into the corpse of the Maronite.

Limbs slung forward and wracked against Reed as a single cry echoed out. It hurled him against the wall leading to the Haydn. It stopped and turned its head at Abraham. The crystalline eye held him, burned at him, overpowered him.

He was helpless in the moment. Reed looked up
, blood running from his nose, one eye swelling shut. His mouth moved, but no sound came out.

Abraham felt the anger mixing with the fear. The wrench was heavy in his hands. He couldn’t move. Something deep inside of him
stopped him.

Gunfire rang out from behind. The strider snapped his glance away from Abraham and pushed Reed up against the door. A thick mechanical voice said, “Open.”

Reed shook his head. Blood ran in a thin stream out of one ear. His eyes pleaded to Abraham.

The wrench was cold, heavy, and totally useless. It was as if his limbs would not work. He willed the wrench to move. But he couldn’t do it. The fear was all he could feel. He turned his eyes away from Reed and stared at the floor.

In that moment he wondered why. Why him? Why now, and not before? Once it was his father, a figure that abhorred violence and he’d used violence to avenge him. Now it was a friend, someone who’d defended him and now needed his help. But he couldn’t do it.

The strider slammed Reed against the wall leading to the Haydn once. Twice. Three times. The Martian Engineer let out a wheeze after the third strike. It stopped the beating and tossed his body aside. In one leap it was next to Abraham. It snatched the wrench away and leaped back to the bulkhead.

Strikes hammered against the heavy wall. The Haydn drive was silent behind it.

Abraham rolled onto his side and saw the weapon that the Maronite had held. It lay but a meter away, muzzle pointing straight at him. It was dark inside of the barrel.

He glanced once more at Reed and saw that his friend was totally limp. Anger rose, but nothing like what he felt before. Hands crept forward and he willed himself to move silently. Fear gripped him as he pictured the strider slamming the wrench into his spine.

Boom. Boom. Boom
.

The strider smashed the wrench against the wall.

Boom. Boom. Boom.

With every strike Abraham tried to move closer
, but he was nearly paralyzed with fear. With every strike he felt his heart near to bursting. Then his fingers were on the weapon.

He rolled onto his back. The crystalline eyes glared. The wrench hung in mid
-air as if about to strike. Puncture marks and dimples showed the force of the strider.

The moment was ripe. He watched and it stared back.

The strider shifted a fraction of an inch. He pulled the trigger. Explosive gunfire filled the confined space as rounds burst forth and slammed into the strider. He looked down at the weapon and saw that nothing was happening.

A bolo spun over his head and wrapped around the waist of the strider. It howl
ed in agony as the rounds penetrated.

Abraham rolled onto his side and looked behind him. A group of
Marines braced on the door and fired. The faces that stared back were grim, angry, intense. A second later a suit of power armor leapt over him and slammed the strider down.

“Clear!” the suit bellowed.

“Corpsman!” Major Theodore bellowed. The Major crossed the room and knelt next to Reed. He held a finger on the neck of the Engineer and turned to Abraham. He shook his head slowly.

“No,” Abraham whispered. The weapon was in his hands, but he was powerless.

Major Theodore crossed the room and took the weapon from Abraham. “Clip was empty, see?”

A line of red lights blinked on the side of the weapon.

Abraham nodded and felt the bile rise in his mouth. He rolled again and vomited.

“Took balls though, to even try. Did the best you could kid,” the Major said behind him.

Abraham felt nothing but regret, embarrassment, and hate. Hate for himself and the cowardice that none knew but himself and a dead man.

*

The alarm that sounded on the bridge was almost drowned out by the cacophony of sirens and whistles. Each told a story of impacts, shredded lines, crimped hoses, punctures to vacuum, and every sort of mayhem that a boarded ship incurred. The new alarm was different—it was from the
Scylla.

“Captain!” Lebeau said as she cleared the screen and displayed only the
Scylla’s
feed.

Above the line of offline and damaged systems was a single bold blinking line
: Reactor Overload.

William slapped down on the console and opened a channel to the
Scylla.
“Martinez! We’re almost there, shut it down, we’ve got the Marines to clear the
Scylla.
”

The countdown continued. Only the sound of random white noise crackled. The air smelled of violence and burnt wires.

“Mr. Huron!” William yelled.

Huron focused his gaze on the edge of the console. He looked lost in the moment.

“Huron!”

The Engineer snapped his head to the side and blinked. His eyes were ruddy and red. “Sir,” Huron croaked.

“Log into the
Scylla,
see if it’s them or something else,” William said. “And Huron, they’ll pay for Reed, that I promise.”

Lebeau regarded William with dark eyes before returning her view to the screen.

“It’s a command code, either the XO or Captain Martinez set it,” Huron said.

William leaned against the back of his chair and changed the nav course. He stared forward as the display changed and the projected arc moved away from the wreck of the
Scylla.

Lebeau and Huron both watched as William stared down at his console.

The reactor of the
Scylla
overloaded in a momentary flash of titanium white brightness. Debris scattered but most of the hull remained together.

“Mr. Huron, what’s the status of that star?” William asked, forcing himself to focus on the task at hand.

Huron leaned over his console. “It’s accelerating, Captain, it uh, the station has a Haydn signature but it’s not moving.”

“What do you mean?” William asked.

“I don’t know!” Huron snapped. He gripped his hands tightly on the edges of the console. His head shook slowly from side to side.

“Mr. Huron, we can focus on our losses
later—for now we have a problem to solve and you’re the only one who can give me answers,” William said.

Lebeau looked up to William and back down to Huron. “Suck it up for fuck
’s sake, we’ve all lost friends here.”

“Ms. Lebeau,” William said
. It was enough. She turned back to her display.

Huron took a deep breath and nodded to himself. “They need to propagate it, to shift it out, if they just opened a black hole it’d take decades to spread the gravity waves.” He pointed up at the screen and zoomed it back. “They’re using the binary to power it, and once the singularity forms the Haydn will go live and send it.”

“Then what happens?” William asked.

“Then you’ve got something you can’t blink through
. It really is a barrier.”

William felt the adrenaline rising. “Can we stop it?”

“Fuck if I know, Captain.”

“Ms. Lebeau, give me a course to that station,” William ordered. He stood and smoothed his shirt. The itching in the palm of his augmetic hand was almost unbearable. “And page the command elements to my office.”