On a Pale Ship Page 18

Jimmy stood and approached the virtual image, sticking out his right hand and spreading his index finger away from his thumb. As he did, the station grew to the point where it filled the bridge. Lazily, he swiped and spun the structure slowly, inspecting every detail.

  "I don't see armor," he finally asserted, stopping the spinning station and tapping somewhere around the twelfth level. "They've also covered all but one of the docking bays. I’m guessing they're not open for visitors. How are we getting in and where are the packages?"

  "If you'll allow," Bit walked to stand beside Jimmy, a little closer than most would find comfortable.

  He didn’t cede his space, but brought an arm up and rested his hand on her broad shoulder. "Sure, doll."

  "Heh," Bit stumbled to talk, clearly uncomfortable with the physical contact. "Um. Well, Doctor Anino, er, Dorian, solved that last bit. Before Captain Gray's death, he infused his own body with a self-replicating tracking technology that emits unique and nearly impossible to detect isotopes. I say nearly, because with Dorian's technology, it's rather easy to detect. How'd you know?"

  Bit reached for the station and flicked it with her forefinger. A yellow cloud appeared, floating next to the station, congregating near Jimmy.

  "Show us what you've got, sweet cheeks," Jimmy said, nodding, not taking his eyes off the station.

  Bit giggled uncomfortably and reached forward again, careful not to shrug Jimmy's hand from her shoulder. As if pulling apart a curtain, she peeled the station's skin back, revealing previously hidden deck detail. The yellow cloud arbitrarily filled much of the twelfth deck as well as showed traces up and down the elevator shaft, with concentrations on a few other decks.

  "The layout I have for the station is old," Bit said. "Given sufficient time, I could get it updated, but that would take weeks. Careful study of the isotopes and a rather ingenious algorithm gives us not only Gray's location, but an updated layout. Gray's body is being stored in a vault on the twelfth level. The vault is heavily armored on all sides with access from a much larger room, here." She pointed to a small cube about two-thirds from the center of the station. Adjacent to the vault, was a substantially larger room accessed by a long adjoining hallway.

  "How do you know it's a vault?" Jimmy asked.

  "Look at the concentrations of isotopes in the adjacent room. I've run simulations and it appears that periodically, large waves of previously trapped isotopes are released. This analysis exposes information about the nature of where Gray's body is being stored. This type of isotope is difficult to trap, so the vault must be sealed. Look, it's advanced fluid dynamics and I'm not getting into it. My data is good."

  "No need to get all flustered, sweets," Jimmy said. "Just wondering."

  Tali stood and approached the station. "That's good work, Bit," she said. "Dorian, have you been able to get any information on Belsev’s security forces?"

  "Best information I have shows a total force of forty, with a total active population of two hundred," Dorian replied. "Most of the station workers appear to be permanently assigned, so the count is tricky. We caught a lucky break a couple weeks back. There was some sort of explosion on the station and they evacuated. It wasn't difficult to catch vid streams of the event, which is where we came up with the numbers."

  "Forty is a good number to work with," Tali said. "That would put fifteen into service at any one time, hardly an overwhelming force."

  "If Marek is there, you couldn't be more wrong," Jimmy said, flopping back into his chair. "Look, Doc, you know as well as I do, he's there. It's all fine and dandy to stick your head in the sand and hope."

  "What makes you so sure, Jimmy?" Tali asked.

  "That's all he could talk about in the end," Jimmy said. "Marek was obsessed with what had been done to him. If someone is out there making super soldiers, he's part of it. And if he's not, he's trying to insert himself. Doc has it wrong. There aren't a million jobs he'd be interested in. There's just one."

  "Dorian?" Tali asked.

  "I just don't know," she answered.

  "Then we'll have to move fast," Tali said.

  "Only gear I have, boss," Jimmy said.

  Chapter 16

  No Plan Survives

  System: Bethe Peierls, 200,000 kilometers from planet Vermeer

  "What is that racket?" Dorian Anino asked, waking to the alarm that warned of the pending transition from fold-space to normal.

  My little deuce coupe

  You don't know what I got.

  "Beach Boys, 1963 old Earth calendar," Bit answered. "I figured we needed a nice way to wake up the crew. And this classic song is your ship's namesake."

  "Well, turn it off already!" Dorian had to yell. The ship's AI, upon hearing a command from the highest-ranking individual aboard, immediately squelched the music. "All hands, prepare to transition to normal space. All mission personnel report to the forward airlock in fifteen minutes for mission initiation. We'll be go in eighteen minutes, thirty on my mark."

  On the lower deck, the rest of the crew had already gathered in the galley. The three seasoned soldiers were laying out the tools of their trade for cleaning and inventory.

  "I guess that's us. That Bit, she's a whole lotta woman," Jimmy said. "How long you been running with her?"

  "Long enough," Tali said, looking up from her work. "And don't you be leading her on. She doesn’t have a lot of experience with your kind."

  Jimmy gave a lopsided smile and shrugged into his tight-fitting armored vac-suit. It had been a long time since he'd pulled on armor, and the act made the anticipation he'd been feeling about the upcoming incursion peak. In that moment, Jimmy realized he missed the call to battle. He felt like a long-lost girlfriend had shown up out of the blue; old feelings and memories flooded his consciousness and he was momentarily swept away by nostalgia.

  Shaking it off, Jimmy spun his pearl-handled, revolver-styled blasters, slid the weapons into hip holsters, and continued loading the remainder of the weapons he preferred for missions.

  The plan was simple. They had no idea how much resistance they'd run into and would improvise tactics while en route. Tali and Dorian had discussed multiple breach points on the station and the optimal choice boiled down to how effective the station's defenses were against a single extremely fast, well-armored ship. The key to a snatch-and-grab was surprise.

  "You're a muscly one, aren't you," he said, turning to Jammin, whose muscular physique was accentuated by the additional layers of armor his role as point person required. In addition to the vac-suit, point also carried an extendable shield that could absorb or deflect a considerable amount of damage.

  "Never know who you might run into," Jammin said, uncharacteristically grinning. "A man's gotta look good."

  "Well, that you do, partner." Jimmy clapped him on the back, picked up Rocinante from where it leaned against the wall, and caught Tali’s eye. "And don't worry about your girl there, darling. Jimmy's got nothing but good thoughts for her."

  "Tactical channel one established. Communications blackout requested by team-leader," Jimmy's AI calmly requested in his ear. It was standard operating procedure to limit comm channels while in a combat situation. Distractions were just as much the enemy as any live opponent.

  "Acknowledged," Jimmy said, nodding as he returned Tali's focused stare. Any other time, Jimmy would have taken the woman's fierce expression as a challenge. The fact was, it was 'go' time and, in their short time together, she'd earned a level of respect.

  "We're in-system. We'll move forward to tactical insertion hatch," Tali announced calmly. "Don't forget the breaching charges, Jimmy."

  "Copy," Jimmy said, and slung Rocinante over his shoulder, clipping her positively into place, barrel pointing downward and slightly to the right, with the sights against his back. From this position he could quickly bring Rocinante into a fight by reaching across his abdomen with his left hand, pulling on the barrel and sliding it beneath his right arm. It was not a fast draw position by his standards, but it
kept his hands free.

  Jimmy placed his gloved hand against the security panel on a cabinet against the outer bulkhead. He slowly opened the cabinet door and verified the integrity of the thin pressure barrier that separated the contents of the cabinet from a hole that led directly through the hull to space. It was an expensive, if not somewhat standard, explosives cabinet, the walls of which were heavily armored. The opening to space was there in the event of an accidental discharge. He smirked. In his opinion, the entire thing was a placebo to make people feel comfortable. He'd never worked with any explosive charge that wouldn't rip the forward third off a ship the size of Little Deuce, regardless of armor and venting.

  Against his better judgment, Jimmy took two rectangular packages from the cabinet and strapped them to his chest. He then grabbed a custom-fit armor piece and snugged it over the top. The theory was, if they were taking fire, it would be good to deflect errant rounds from striking the explosives. Jimmy found he could wrap his head around that idea just fine, although, like the cabinet, he suspected the most likely outcome was vaporization if he took a direct hit.

  "There aren't a lot of advantages to being point," Jammin said as the team of three walked down the hallway. "Not strapping on explosives has to be top of that list."

  "I hear you, brother," Jimmy said. "Are you always this chatty? You haven't said ten words to me since you got on the ship."

  "That's because now we're livin'," Jammin said, coming to a stop next to the airlock hatch which showed red due to vacuum on the other side.

  "Captain, insertion team requests atmo dump on deck one," Tali said.

  "Copy that," Dorian's voice answered.

  Jimmy watched a virtual meter showing the atmospheric pressure dropping around him, just as the lights in the hallway dimmed to near blackout.

  "Green." Jammin placed his hand on the airlock's security panel and opened the door.

  "Ship of this expense, you'd think she'd have a pressure barrier," Jimmy said.

  "Energy signature is too easy to pick up," Tali said. "Now clear the channel."

  Jimmy lurched to the side as Little Deuce rolled hard. His tiny view through the airlock gave him a glimpse of the cloudy blue atmosphere of the planet below. Through the thin clouds he was just able to pick out the deep greens of Vermeer's rich bio-mass. He glanced at his AI's proffered view of the ship's tactical, combat space. The fact that a combat space had been designated meant their approach to Fariza's lofty Belsev station wouldn't go unchallenged.

  Back on the bridge, Dorian cursed silently under her breath. She'd picked up a tail on approach to Vermeer and had no intention of allowing the ships to follow her all the way to Fariza.

  "Ships are General Astral PAT-1200s," Bit announced. "Allied Patrol designation on their transponders. I've got a semi-passive jam on their comms. Orders?"

  "Semi-passive?" Dorian asked.

  "Can't trace it back to us. I'm working on their systems. Need sixty more seconds and I can probably get past their intrusion systems."

  "That's not possible," Dorian said. "Even old ships have impenetrable firewalls."

  "Good thing I'm not trying to hack the ships," Bit replied.

  Dorian pushed on Little Deuce's flight yoke and set the ship into a steep dive. They were hundreds of kilometers from the planet's surface, but she could most likely outrun anything in the system, especially a random patrol.

  "Fire team, close external hatch. We've a tail. Stand down while I work it out," Dorian said.

  "Copy," Tali responded.

  "Close hatch?" Bit asked.

  "Pressure barriers don't have trouble with vacuum, but I want them closed if we go atmo," Dorian replied. "There's also an ocean down there. If need be, we'll take a dive. I’m going to shake this patrol one way or another. "

  "You'll lose forty minutes," Bit said. "I don't care how big your engines are, atmospheric entry is all about — well atmosphere."

  "You have a better idea?"

  "Looks like your tail just got called off," Bit said.

  "What?" Dorian couldn't believe their luck as the three light ships following them turned away. "What did you do?"

  "Nothing much. That particular GA model has a hack in their fuel on-boarding system," Bit explained. "Simple matter to dump the solids by opening the port. I just simulated the presence of a positive mate on the umbilicus."

  "With?"

  "What do you know about magnetic fields?" Bit asked.

  "Plenty, but we'll have to table it," Dorian said. "Fire team, we're back on."

  Dorian shook her head as they approached the isolated station that sat mostly undefended at the end of a four-hundred-kilometer tether. Initially, it would have cost Fariza’s citizens a substantial portion of their GDP to loft the structure into its semi-orbital position. By doing so, however, the citizens had created a valuable trading destination accessible to space-borne traffic. The tethered station was a long play with a payout measured in decades, if not centuries. When the hub was shut down by the city government, the loss could have been nothing short of devastating to the local economy. The fact that the station didn't even have a small patrol presence bespoke the financial hardship of the current regime. In embracing a closed-trade, totalitarian-regime model, Fariza eliminated the considerable value the station had provided.

  "I've a lock on our primary insertion target," Bit said.

  "Copy," Dorian replied.

  "Unidentified craft. You are advised to maintain minimum standoff of forty kilometers," a mechanical voice intoned. "No further warnings will be provided. By order of Fariza High Council."

  "I'm showing a warm start on western batteries," Bit said. "Looks like they have Thermodyne 410s. That's a lot of heat for a ship."

  The station was roughly cylindrically shaped, each circular, light-gray level stacked slightly offset onto the one below it like tires in a junk yard.

  "We don't have confirmation that those batteries are operational," Dorian said.

  As if listening to her conversation, three of the five ports on the western side of the seventh level burped fast-moving bolts. Little Deuce's AI anticipated the shots and overrode Dorian’s control for just a moment, rolling the ship out of their path.

  "Didn't you get any codes? Even an older code might get us past," Bit asked, her voice rising in excitement.

  "I have thousands of codes," Dorian said. "We've tried them all; they're not working."

  "Let me have them," Bit said.

  The ship rocked as blaster fire from the station's batteries washed across the hull.

  "That was a direct hit," Bit said. "How are we still flying?"

  "You know how they say a best defense is a good offense?" Dorian asked.

  Bit typed furiously as she received thousands of security codes from Dorian. For Bit, patterns existed where they didn't for anyone else. Given a sample of thousands, she felt confident she could come up with a code that would break through the station's cyber defenses. The problem was, they were on a very short leash.

  "Uh, sure. I think that's akin to dead men tell no tales," Bit said, mentally chastising herself for a weak response.

  The bridge lights flickered in response to a second and a third strike on the ship. Bit pushed at the codes as they wound through her algorithms. Overall, it wasn't a complex system, but simplicity often left the fewest opportunities. A solution danced through her consciousness, but she couldn't quite grab it. Furiously she typed, adding anticipatory branching logic to the horde of computational cores she set onto the problem.

  "Give me armor over offense any day," Dorian said, her eyes nervously flitting around the bridge as the ship was once again punched backwards by another direct hit.

  Bit smiled, instinctively knowing she'd found what she was looking for. She flipped the data-stream at Little Deuce's transmitter.

  "I don't know about you, but I'm feeling a bit like an unstirred martini in here," Bit said as a final volley pummeled the ship's armor before the batteries vi
sibly kicked off line. "That should help."

  "Fire team, we'll have primary insertion in ten seconds, on my mark," Dorian said.

  Back at the airlock, Jimmy pulled himself up from his knees. The last several minutes might not have been the roughest ride of his life, but it had certainly made the list. While the ship weathered the storm, the team had repeatedly been slammed to the deck, ceiling, and bulkheads as heavy blaster bolts battered the outer armor.

  "Jammin, we're on the elevator shaft. You need to give us a firewall," Tali said. "Jimmy, just like we drilled. Jammin gets five seconds to set up."

  Jimmy closed his eyes. With his enhanced nervous system responding to the adrenaline of impending battle, he was incapable of counting to five in any way that resembled seconds. Fortunately, upon Jammin's exit, his AI started a count-down timer and prominently displayed it on his HUD. Agonizingly, he watched as time seemed to freeze in ice, each second slowly dripping away as if first taking time to thaw out.

  "Go!" Tali's slap on his back never found home as Jimmy bolted from the door and fell ten meters from Little Deuce, landing next to a complex mechanical arrangement his AI insisted was the top of the elevator shaft.

  On his HUD, small rectangular outlines showed where he was to place the charges. A thump next to him alerted him to Tali's arrival and he quickly tossed aside the armored cover for the explosives on his chest. He settled his nerves, plucked the packages from his suit and laid them in place. A quick glance at his HUD showed that Tali and Jammin had set up thirty meters from his position and checked in with a green status. He flicked the timer to four seconds and braced his boots, pushing with his arc-jets to accelerate toward the team. At three point two seconds, he grabbed the top of Jammin's shield and allowed it to swing him around. On cue, the explosives ignited. Jimmy's body just cleared the protective line of the shield as the blast wave rolled across the top of the station.

  "Move!" Tali ordered.

  "What's your evac plan?" Marek asked, standing suddenly.