The Expendable Few: A Spinward Fringe Novel (7 page)

It heads for the Amazon the instant it clears the mouth of the wormhole, launching a barrage of anti-shield and anti-missile rounds from rows of rapid-firing rail guns. “Why does it look meaner than it did in the brief?” asks one of the marines surrounding Mary below.

“What I don’t get is why we have to bust in from these tin cans when the Amazon could launch marines of her own,” comments another.

“Launching boarding shuttles would leave openings in her shields long enough for something to get through to the hull, moron,” replies one of the electrical techs.

“Can it!” orders Mary.

I watch the Amazon’s broadcasted reports. The Sunspire is trying to hack every system aboard. The sight of the Sunspire focusing fire on one of the Amazon’s shield emitter arrays is mesmerising. The ship rolls so all her rail guns can fire in turn, streams of white hot projectiles raking the larger ship’s energy shield. There’s no one aboard the Sunspire, and most of the civilians left the Amazon. Several families refused to leave, which is normal for a super-carrier of the Amazon’s type. Depending on how the next few minutes go, they might regret their decision.

The protective barrier surrounding one of the port emitter arrays fail, and then there’s a flash. The communications stream coming from the Amazon stops for the better part of a minute. My comm line is so quiet that all I can hear is the sound of my own breath. I take a moment to look over the four squads of marines accompanying us. They’re as still as can be. When I hear a squawk from the Amazon’s comms I’m relieved, but I check the report and find that the nukes opened a few compartments. At best the Sunspire killed a few dozen people. I don’t consider the worst case scenario. There’s a bright side, however; the reserve shields are up in time to block the second nuclear detonation. The Sunspire is winning, her shields are deflecting whatever she can’t outmanoeuvre.

A warning is transmitted from the Amazon. The Sunspire has managed to hack several systems. It is part of the plan, but it’s risky. I wait to see if the counter virus works. Long seconds pass. Reports of weapons systems shutting down on the Amazon start coming in. The Sunspire is disarming the grand old ship.

Then, to my relief, the Sunspire’s engines go out, and her shields begin to fade. “Alpha team, Beta team, you’re a go,” I hear Captain McPatrick order.

“Aim and fire, Lieutenant Fonte,” I command.

The manoeuvring thrusters on our shuttles fire. Inertial dampers built into our armour activate. We manoeuvre away from the nearest asteroids and the high-thrust, low-duration rockets mounted on the rear of our ships blast. We’re riding a controlled explosion, just like the astronauts of yore.

A counter appears on my visor, marking distance and time to impact. Isabel manages to aim at the Sunspire perfectly. We’re lined up to hit exactly where we want, right behind the starboard wing.

“This is gonna suck,” says Remmy.

“All right!” says Mary. Her voice is more authoritative and intimidating than most drill instructors when she wants it to be. There are marines who regard her as more of a machine than a woman. “This is the Sunspire! We will break through her hull using a directed disintegration bomb. If it misfires, I’ll see you all in hell in about eighty four seconds. If it doesn’t, we will have a great big white hot ring of metal three metres deep to jump through.” I watch as we get closer and closer to the Sunspire. Mary’s instructions are the perfect accompaniment for our approach. “Our suits may not completely protect us from that kind of heat, so measure twice, jump once, and don’t fall backwards when you land. Check your weapons now, you will not have a chance when you’re inside. You watched the same briefing I did, so you know we have no intelligence on what resistance we’ll face inside. Anything that moves is a viable target. We have the honour of conducting Commander Clark Patterson and his command team to the main data port, and I promised we’d get him there first. Do not let him down.”

I like the last touch. Even though we’ve all been marked as traitors, Mary still puts me on a pedestal. Every one of the people around me have some kind of violation on record, which is why they’re under our command. The timer says she finished her speech with forty seconds to spare. It counts down to impact as the Sunspire looms closer. I watch the Amazon disappear into a wormhole. Only a few compartments are busted open, and secondary systems are covering for the damage. The bureaucrats and politicians will bitch about it, but she got off light considering the Sunspire’s kill record.

The Sunspire may be momentarily dormant, but she put defences out. I silently pray we’ll make it through as a shuttle beside us strikes a pacer mine and explodes. Hull fragments and soldiers - some partial, some whole - batter our port side. We drift off-course for a second but get back in line before long. Another shuttle bursts apart above.

My prayer is answered. With a collision that reverberates through the hull, we connect with the Sunspire. The disintegration bomb stretching across the front of the shuttle goes off. The vacuum in the shuttle doesn’t allow for sound outside our vacsuits, but even in our armour we can feel the vibrations. I would have been knocked on my ass if it weren’t for my stabilisers. The ambient temperature read normal for vacuum before the explosion, twenty eight hundred degrees after, and that’s with the heat shield in place. The plate protecting us from the blast drops and starts to turn red as soon as it touches the white-hot metal of the Sunspire’s violated hull. Marines pour out into the exposed hallway.

“Drone!” one shouts. That’s the beginning of a hell I’m sure I won’t forget any time soon. Two marines get split open from stomach to spine by drone cutting lasers before anyone has a chance to open fire. The lower half of the shuttle and the hallway beyond flashes with the strobe of firing rifles as marines flood into the Sunspire. My turn comes up. Instead of holding back and waiting for my subordinates to enter, I take the lead of the second wave. “Let’s take the beast back,” I say as I stride towards the breach and leap across. The marines have the hallway choked in both directions and they’re making room for me and my specialists.

I pick up a rifle from an eviscerated soldier. Nothing alive is made to survive this heat without protection. The incredible heat incinerates anything bare and organic within moments of exposure. The first wave of marines are laying down cover fire, burning small holes in the hardened metal of the corridor as they miss invisible targets, marking gleaming yellow scorch spots when they strike the cloaked defensive drones. What Freeground Intelligence suspected has proven true: the Sunspire has adapted the cloak suits that were developed years before to all her drones. I pick an area above my head that’s not being covered and lay down a strafing burst just in case some of the cloaked drones have gotten through. I hit nothing and return my attention to the overall situation. We’ve lost five more marines; the drones sliced through their helmets at point blank range.

“One tracker grenade aft!” announces a marine.

“One tracker grenade fore!” announces another.

There are two distinct flashes, and the corridor is momentarily filled with fine orange dust. As if drawn by a breeze it dissipates away from us, clinging to anything using stealth technology and lighting them up. The shape of the drones becomes clear for the first time.

They are narrow, half-metre-long machines with over a dozen arms ending in hardened tips and tools. Cutting lasers, heavier manipulation clamps, and an onboard computer make up the contents of the body. They climb the ceilings and walls as easily as they scurry across the deck.

“It’s closing!” shouts Lieutenant Crow as he passes through the opening in the Sunspire’s hull. A thick layer of organic steel is regenerating at an alarming rate, threatening to leave several of my command crew behind. Without hesitation I take a gamble, setting my rifle to automatic and firing dumb slugs at one side of the hole. Chunks of the metal fly past my flinching command crew, but the hole is just big enough when my heavy slugs run out. “Come on!” I shout, dropping my rifle and reaching through.

I take Isabel’s hand in my left, her temporary navigator’s in my right, and yank them through the closing hole. The hull seals the three others off. “Blow a hole in this!” I order to any marine who isn’t busy firing at a defensive drone. With the heat of the sun striking the Sunspire’s hull, it’s regenerating much faster than normal. I watch the membrane of thin organic steel thicken as I move Isabel behind me, between myself and several marines.

Mary turns, looks at the regenerating hull, and orders half a squad to concentrate fire on a section of fresh hull. It’s too late, it’s already too thick. “Not going to happen, Commander, hope they weren’t mission critical,” she tells me, signalling her marines to cease fire.

I know the shuttles won’t last more than a few minutes longer under the heat and pressure of the dwarf star. Those crewmen will be exposed, then their suits will fail. They aren’t the only losses. My visor display informs me that we’ve lost fifteen marines. One of my reserve command crew members bought it when they got caught in the crossfire. Mary, Isabel, and Remmy are fine, however. We also have more marines than we expected at this point, more than enough to go on. I bend down to retrieve my rifle and just as I’m switching it to pulse mode, my suit alerts me that I’m under attack.

I can’t hear the defence drone’s tiny limbs, but I can feel its tools probing frantically for a way to crack my hardened armour open and tear me apart. “Help!” I shout as I try to fling it off my back.

It wraps its invisible legs around my arm and pins it above my head. The staccato flash of pulse rifles forces my visor to go dark and my arm is released.

“Looks like the tracker dust settled too soon,” says one of the marines. “That one was nowhere on scope.”

“Thanks,” I reply as I clip the rifle’s safety line to my chest. I pull a clip from my reserve pack and reload. I’m thankful for the weapon for reasons beyond protection or revenge. Holding it stops my hands from shaking.
 

The atmosphere becomes more habitable after we break through the thinnest interior bulkhead we can find. I stop the boarding team in a broad hallway and we get set up for the rest of our mission. We’re a full squad down on marines, and the remaining soldiers are ready to tear the Sunspire a new one for what she did to their comrades. With more room to manoeuvre ahead, they bring out the heavier ammunition, just in case.

I use my head’s-up display to look at Isabel’s scans, which indicate less movement in the adjacent hallways, and just a trickle of power running through this section of the ship. Our marines spray the air around us with the orange detector mist that keeps those cloaked drones visible, but we’re only encountering a couple of curious ones now. They get pecked off as they are revealed peeking around corners.

“Remmy, is there any indication that the virus the Amazon uploaded to the Sunspire is still working?” I ask.

“I’m still dark,” Remmy replies. “I can’t say anything for sure until you get me to a central data port.”

“Power plant and propulsion energy levels are still next to nil. I can’t get a good read on the smaller systems, but they’re probably working on backups,” Isabel says. She’s doubling as our systems engineer, since we lost ours getting here. Thankfully she’s a good officer, and studied the schematics of the Sunspire.

I check Alpha team. They’re well on their way to the central aft data port. Lieutenant Urik kept his people moving as they reconfigured. I would only admit it if pressed, but Urik is the better commander. He’ll probably reach his data port before we do, so I start thinking about the secondary mission: taking the bridge.

The team is almost finished checking armour, switching weapons, performing scans and collecting data. I return my attention to my immediate surroundings. Their mirror smooth surfaces of the hallway are so perfect they are featureless. Either the seams are so fine that we can’t see them without a detailed scan or the Sunspire has grown her shiny blue organic hull over all the finer features aboard. I don’t bother tasking anyone to check, and set my own scanner to passively detect doors.

“Group combat shielding coming up, stick together,” one of the technicians announces. It’s completely new technology to Freeground and no one here knows where it came from, but I love it for this mission. Instead of each suit depending on one energy shield, the fields can merge into a stronger, moving protective barrier. It only takes her a couple of minutes to set it up.

“All right,” I reply. “Let’s get moving.” I can’t see the shield with my naked eye, but my visor makes up for the limitations of my human sight, overlaying the energy pattern of the barrier. It looks like a bubble stretched over our group, expanding and retracting as people move further or closer from the majority.

The marines lead the way, rushing down silver-blue hallways. The space is so shiny that the little lights affixed to the sides of our helmets seem to reflect forever. As they move down a two metre wide hall, I can’t help but feel as though we’re trespassing on sacred ground, and a hateful eye is tracking us.

“We’re at the main aft data port,” reports Lieutenant Urik over the command channel. He’s in charge of incursion unit Alpha, and well ahead of us.

“Congratulations,” says Remmy. “Be careful, I have nothing on wireless scans, but that doesn’t mean the Sunspire is totally brain-dead.”

“I know,” replies their comms officer. “Would you shut up and let me do my job?”

A quick look at Remmy’s activity screen on my heads-up display tells me that he’s moved on, already performing a fresh scan of the area around us. If we were sitting in the common lounge, Remmy would have argued for at least an hour, but he’s surprisingly professional in the field.

I keep tabs on Urik’s team as my team makes its way across a large open space towards a bank of lift doors. We’re not far from the nearest central port, inside one of the large transit centres aboard the Sunspire.