Assault on Ambrose Station: A Seth Donovan Novel (4 page)

6.

There are many different styles of habitats and space stations throughout the Network. Space stations are primarily just bubbles of atmosphere contained in enclosed capsules. This isn’t always the case, however, and this is the defining difference between a space station and a
habitat
. You got your torus style rings, simulating gravity through centrifugal force. The Acheras Orbital is one of the most famous of such designs. Located in the Eridani System, the Acheras Orbital is a giant ring almost three thousand kilometres in diameter. The habitat is almost completely self-sufficient, producing its own atmosphere, weather, pseudo-gravity and protection from radiation. It’s not inaccurate to call it an artificial world. Some, such as Acheras, are even open to space along the inner ‘ceiling’ – gravity keeps the atmosphere in place.

There are piecemeal stations constructed of many smaller stations joined together, such as the Corus Cluster. These modular stations are usually reliant on supply chains for many of the necessities of life, but sophisticated ones are not. They rarely match the scale of true orbitals such as Acheras, however.

The more common types are the cylindrical, rotating stations such as the Jump Stations. Their internal spaces are enclosed atmospheres, the living spaces. The outer hulls are the working areas, docks and defence platforms. Gravity in these outer zones are produced by traditional grav-plates such as those found on starships.

The Eridani Jump Station was standard, as far as Jump Stations go. The only difference that I could see was that instead of the usual bustle of trade ships and civilian stellar travellers that would normally be found drifting around the station, there were military ships instead. The Protectorate Fleet used the Jump Station as a staging outpost for the blockade, servicing the hundreds of warships that defended this region of space.

As I stepped off the Dreaming onto the platform we were berthed at, I could see several other berths that were filled in this part of the dock. Almost all of them were the sleek corvette class warships that served as scouts and patrol craft for the system. There was also a blocky, ugly ship slightly smaller than the corvettes, and the Dreaming, that I knew instantly to be an assault ship. I had flown in several, during my career in the Primacy Star Marine Corps, and knew they were uncomfortable but reliable. They could take a beating and still deliver its payload of marines to where ever they were needed.

If I was going to use my military background to my advantage and gain contacts through that, I was betting the assault barge was my best bet. A marine was a marine, no matter which organisation they fought for. I made my way over to it.

As I arrived, I gained the attention of several men in uniform working with some synthetics to load crates and munitions. They stopped what they were doing and an older man sauntered over to me. I could see on his Protectorate uniform that he was a Lance Corporal, although he looked a little too old to be holding that rank. He was fit, and seemed to be the one in charge of the group loading the munitions.

He looked me up and down, noting my sidearm prominently displayed down my leg, and sneered at me, “Should not be here. Sarge catches you, likely to beat shit out of you. Me to, for talking. Loading bay no place for civvy. Scram!”

His accent was harsh sounding, with little effort put into vocabulary. I could already tell this man was very good as swearing though. I pegged his origins almost immediately.

“Castoff City or Diamond Dome?” I asked. A flash of surprise that played out over his features told me I had pegged him.

“You Solus?” I jabbed a thick index finger at me.

“No, but I’ve done a few runs through Votus II, Solus is a good place to buy cheap fuel.”

“Everything else, not cheap.”

“No shit.” I forced a laugh, which he shared.

“Castoff City. Ice farmer.” He jabbed himself with a meaty thumb. Calling Castoff City a city was a misnomer. The moon Solus was an icy satellite that orbited the gas giant Kapsolon in the Votus II system. Most of the populace lived in individual farmsteads and settlements, loosely affiliated with two main population centres – Castoff City and Diamond Dome. They were hardy folk, used to terrible hardships and awful living conditions. They were almost as resourceful and hard working as belters such as Hergo and Denno.

“What unit are you guys with?” I probed.

“Votus Vanguards, Forty Second Division. Best space marines in the Network.”

“Ha, bullshit. Pretty good, but I was with Primacy Star Marine Corps, Second Division.” I let that sink in for a few moments. I wasn’t pulling any stunts, the Votus Vanguards
were
a decent unit, but the Primacy Star Marines were known throughout the Network as the most highly trained military force in the region. When we made The Push, the Second Division formed the core of the ground and space-borne marine force. We also suffered the most casualties as a result. We never retreated or gave up, until the flyboys and the brass called it and we had to either fall back and re-board our transports or be left behind. Not everyone made it back.

“Second Division, huh?” he grunted, by now a few of the other guys had sauntered over and were listening in. “When you leave?”

“Nearly a year after The Push. This is my first time back in-system since, was looking to reconnect with some of the folk that may still be around from that time. Think you can help me out?”

“You were in The Push?” said one of the others. It was then that one of them noticed my medal.

“Hey, that’s the Primarch’s Star of Honour!” said one, they all gaped and stared.

We were interrupted by a great bellow of a yell coming from the belly of the assault boat. We all turned as a tall, well-built man strode down the ramp onto the platform.
This
was the man I needed to talk to. Their sergeant.

The man verbally abused each and every one of them, inciting deeds done by both of their parents as well as their family pets. It was quite colourful and masterfully delivered, and even the stocky Solus ice farmer ran back to his task. It brought a smile to my lips; the familiarity of it was so striking.

“What in all the…who the fuck are you? Seeing a civvy on the deck is like looking at a soup sandwich! A civvy stopping my good hearted, dumb fuck marines from working is almost as bad as shooting at them! Who let your sorry arse…” he stopped his rant mid-sentence when he his eyes drifted over my medal. “Your daddy give you that, boy?”

“No, sir. I earned this gong.”

“How?”

“The Push.”

“Well I’ll be fucked sideways. Men! You’re in the presence of fighting royalty, you sorry somabitches! Get your arses over here and shake this man’s hand!”

“That’s okay, sarge, I’m just looking for some information. Looking for some contacts, senior non-coms on the station. We got some stock we’re looking to move and there’s not a lot of trade going on here, if you get my drift.”

“What kind of stock?”

“Booze, stims, overlay sims, auto-chef flavour packs and protein mass. We’re a little light on creds and looking to grease some palms to see what the station can do for us. Got shot up by Corporates back in Eridani and had to make a break for here.”

“Sure, I might know a guy. We’re not regular duty here, just on our way out, actually. Whole Forty Second is pulling out.”

“No shit? Why’s that?”

“You were in Eridani, you tell me.”

“Ah. That.” We had picked up on some news back in the Eridani System before we shifted; a major conflict had almost broken out between the system’s major factions. The Protectorate would be consolidating their forces in the region, and that meant pulling ancillary forces back from the blockade, apparently.

“Is the blockade still safe?”

“Safe? Was never safe.”

“Poor choice of words. Is this pull out going to affect the capability of the blockade?”

“Brass doesn’t seem to think so, but then the brass are all Fleet.” There was always a certain rivalry between the different arms of the military. Fleet, for the most part, were not looked upon favourably by marines or planetary forces. Fleet were also usually in charge. They controlled space, which meant they controlled the star systems and the Jump Gates. By default, that made them the top of the hierarchy, as far as the Protectorate were concerned.

“Tell you what, I’ll send a few bottles of cheap swill we’re trying to offload over here later. For channels night.”

“No need, don’t think we’re finishing a deployment, just starting another. I’m uploading a marker to your overlay; ask around for Chief Petty Officer Markum. He’s a cheat and swindler, but he’ll know a guy who knows a guy that could probably help you out.”

“Appreciated, have a safe flight back.”

The sergeant jogged back towards the assault ship and yelled a few more obscenities at his men as he did so. Sure enough, the sergeant’s marker waypoint appeared on my overlay. It directed me towards the station proper. The station official who let us in said we were supposed to remain on the docks, but no one else would know that so I figured I’d be safe. He was probably a Fleet guy anyway. It didn’t take much for me to slip back into my old marine trains of thought. Talking with that sergeant brought back a few memories. I thought then about my own late Platoon Sergeant, a man named Walter Germaine the Eighth. Or, as he was affectionately known, Crazy Eight. He was an Eridanian, but joined the Primacy Star Marines because his mother was Harakiwan and his father moved to Kanto Prime so she could stay near her family. He hated his father, who wanted him to become an accountant like him, to be a part of the family dynasty. He joined one day to spite him, and soon found that being a marine was as natural a thing as breathing.

I learnt a lot from Walt Germaine. He was a hard man, but never mistreated us or beat us when we were down. He was always in the thick of it with us and we were constantly trying not to disappoint him because of it. It says something about your leadership style when you lead from the front; it tells your men that you’re one of them and that what is asked of you is not beyond what you can endure.
Proving
something can be done, by showing them, cuts through the bullshit excuses and pushes the troops to better results.

I sometimes wonder if he had survived that charge into the enemy emplacement, and he was still in command of our squad when we were left behind, if more of us would have made it out alive. Zoe always told me that second guessing and playing out ‘what ifs’ were never going to do me any good, but right then I found it hard not to. Not when I was wandering the halls of this station.

Only a few years ago, I had been here briefly before committing to The Push campaign in earnest. We were all cheer and bravado then, caught up in the excitement and the impending, glorious victory promised us by the Protectorate propaganda machine. Months later, I was back, half a man. No squad, no glory and my mind a shattered wreck. I was kind of hoping
this
time things would turn out better.

7.

From a military standpoint, space stations are a terribly indefensible asset. Space based weaponry had ranges that measured in the hundreds of thousands of kilometres, sometimes millions of kilometres. The only thing that makes combat at this range ineffective is that even minute adjustments to the target’s position renders the shot inaccurate unless the munition is guided. Space stations, in general, are stationary. If an enemy wanted to destroy a space station, they need only stand off out of range of any defending vessels and fire kinetic rounds at it.

Militarised space stations, such as the Jump Station, required extremely effective point defence weaponry and strong shields to have at least a chance at remaining operational beyond the first salvo fired at it. These defences come in several forms, from AI controlled point defence lasers and energy weapons, to anti-missile missiles and active decoy systems. They also used large swarms of drones. Drones require regular maintenance and crews to operate them. A single swarm of a dozen drones requires on average two decent pilots and an engineer to maintain. Each pilot controls six drones, but in a pinch can slave the other six to their own rig. Therefore, the bare minimum is two people per drone swarm. Artificial Intelligence Cores work the autonomous functions of drones, such as swarm formation and spacing, while the pilot commands their targets and manoeuvres.

I knew, from my time serving here years ago, that the Eridani Jump Station continuously flew forty wings of a dozen drones at all times. In an emergency, it can fly another hundred and twenty wings on top of that. In a real combat engagement, I knew that two pilots each would operate the drone wings. The nearly two thousand drones, therefore, would require a full complement of four hundred and eighty crew.

The point defence weaponry required crews for operation and maintenance that usually tallied up to over twice this number, around a thousand.

The next layer of defence from the station were the picket ships. A Destroyer fielded a crew of three hundred, while each Corvette flew with a crew of ninety-eight. The picket consisted of a dozen Destroyers and thirty-six Corvettes. Hence, the picket line had around seven thousand people in it.

On patrol, within a few million kilometres, were the larger warships. These patrolled in clusters of three to nine warships, usually several Corvettes supporting a Destroyer or Frigate. The combined crew of these ships measured in just over ten thousand people.

Lastly, there were three huge, Leviathan class Battlecruisers that lurked somewhere in the system. Each one required nearly a thousand crew to operate. Combine all these crews with starship maintenance teams, support personnel, general station maintenance, logistics and supply departments, administration, and last of all  the military police, and you start to see the sheer volume of space and facilities required to run the blockade. There were
always
opportunists in among the myriad of people on military depots, regardless of mission, creed or location and Eridani Station was no different.

I followed the directions that the Votus Vanguard marines had given me, and soon found myself within the bowels of the depot proper. The station design, internally, was given wholly to function over form and there were exposed piping, vents and cable runs everywhere. The corridors were wide enough, and the deck heads high, but I still couldn’t shake the feeling of claustrophobia that pervaded this section of the station. Sure, the Dreaming was by far a smaller space, but it was mostly smooth panels and utilitarian bulkhead coverings. At a glance it looked like you were in a regular building, but here you
knew
you were inside a machine. Strange mechanical sounds, distant hums and ever-present gaseous hisses competed perpetually with the sound of crew working and the occasional station wide broadcast. The smell was an unknowable melange of sweat, cleaning chemicals, lubricant, exhaust fumes and…
something.

I passed many people on my wanderings, some acknowledging my passage, some not. There were sometimes groups of people moving in an orderly fashion, not quite marching but moving together all the same. Wherever people went, however, they always moved with purpose. That was something I always missed about my early years in the PSMC, a lot of the thinking was done for me. I always had something to do, and I always had someone to tell me what that was.

I took a wild guess and estimate that the HGI Index here was about 90%, as only one in ten people I saw were neither human, Garz’a or Orlii. The odd ones out were a diverse mix of Argen, Frikk and several other races that are common in the Network. I even passed a couple of Votus at one point.

Eventually the marker that I followed ended at a large compartment that was engineering related. It looked like half of the compartment was a workshop of some sort, while the other half was a storeroom for thousands of components. There were about thirty men and women working here, mostly human with a few Orlii and a blue skinned humanoid with a red mane of long hair.

I gained the attention of the blue-skinned man, who happened to be nearest to me, and inquired about Chief Markum. He gestured at a short, balding man in his mid-forties who was in the process of heading over to me. As he approached, I saw him sizing me up, his eyes lingering on my sidearm, then on my medal. There was a calculated look about him, as if he was thinking of a way to exploit me or work out how I can be best used for a scheme. I was instantly wary of him, his cunning eyes even noted how my body language shifted and he smiled broadly while extending a meaty hand.

“Chief Markum, engineering supply chain, fifth department.”

I took his hand; he had a firm used starship salesperson’s handshake, “Seth Donovan, First Mate of the Dreaming of Atmosphere.”

“Don’t get too many civvies these days. What brings you to this fine establishment?”

“You mean this compartment or this station?”

“Take your pick.”

“A gentleman on the dock gave me your name, said you might be able to help me.”

I could almost see his eyes sparkle, “That all depends, Mr Donovan.”

“On?”

“What it is you think I can do for you, and how willing you are to convince me that I can.”

“Okay, I’ll get right to the point then…”

“Man after my own heart!”

“Right, well, my ships been through hell and we have a long way to go still before we get paid. We were wondering…”

“We?”

“The Captain and I.”

“Right, go on.”

“We were wondering if there was some way to get what we need without using up all of our credits.”

“What is it you’re suggesting?”

“Come on. I’m ex-military. I know roughly how this is supposed to work, I just need to see the right people, offer the right incentives. I could use some help.”

“That’s some hefty gong you’re wearing there. Where’d you serve?”

“I got that the last time I passed through here, the Push. Served with the PSMC, 2
nd
Division.”

He whistled through his teeth, “Phew! That’s some heavy time. What ship did you fly with?”

There it was. The test. If you walk around saying you were somewhere and did something, there was always the chance that you were bullshitting. There was always the odd ex-serving member whose career in the military did not quite take them to the stars. They might have had a bad run, no deployments or operations. Some just chose the wrong line of work in the military and ended up serving chow at the servery lines on backwater Jump Stations or depots. Some pissed off the wrong person and ended up in shitty postings, while others still had connected parents who did not want to see their kid get killed on an ill-fated venture. For some, the fact that they served was enough. To others, they were shamed by their lack of physical awards. They told tall tales about their time in the military, or fabricated lies about their adventures, or worse yet, acquired medals that they were not awarded.

To the service member, especially one currently on a high-risk deployment such as the Gossamer System, these kinds of people were anathema to their way of life. Pretenders were looked upon with poor opinion.

Chief Markum clearly knew his history, questioning my authenticity.

“Sardonis Mist, until she was crippled during the second wave. Shuttled over to the Emerald Fist for insertion. Served under Captain DeLacy and Commander Fortescue the 9
th
. Major Karas was our CO during the deployment. Lost him when his assault boat took a missile hit when we were boarding Ambrose Station. Captain Vargas took the rest of the Division that survived until he was killed during the withdrawal.”

“Who was the last ship to get back to waypoint Ferris?”

“Don’t know, I didn’t make it either.”

“What do you mean? Everyone who got out had to RV with the Fleet at waypoint Ferris.”

“No sir, they did not.”

“Bullshit.”

“I got left behind, took me nearly three months to stow away on a raider ship hitting the blockade, I jumped ship then and got picked up. They gave me this gong as compensation for missing my boat.”

He looked at me with his eyes half closed, trying to decide if I was trying to pull the wool over his eyes.

Eventually, he seemed to come to a decision, “A marine, huh?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Don’t call me sir. I work for a living. That’s one hell of a story you got there. I was a Petty Officer on the Tyrillian Star. Spent most of my time during the Push doing damage control and pulling dead bodies out of burning star ships.”

“She make it out?”

“Sure did. Decommissioned her a few months later, though. Got the name plaque over in my office, actually. Want to see it?”

“Yeah, okay. Always good to hear another’s perspective of the Push.”

“This way.” He led me through the compartment to a small office in the rear. It was stuffy, and the single desk was strewn with piles of paper work, oily components and several tablets. The entire rear wall was lined with crates of what could only be described as
loot
. Sure enough, mounted on the right wall, was a metre long steel plaque etched with the words
Tyrillian Star
. It even looked genuine, complete with rough edges where it had been cut from the hull.

I knew this wasn’t just a show and tell. I had passed his test and was moved up his personal social hierarchy from possible pretender to possible opportunity. Now the business dealing would begin.

“Find a spot to sit. On that crate is fine.” He plonked himself down in his desk chair and grabbed a tablet, turning it on and flicking through some screens. “What do you need? How much can you spend? What can you trade?”

“Sending you a list of everything we need, and a few items we really want, as well as a few of the wares we’re willing to part with.”

He took a few moments to review my data. After about fifteen minutes of cross checking his own stuff, making a few notes and generally just thinking about how he could swindle me, he tossed the tablet back on the table and leaned back in his chair. I could hear it groaning in protest.

“Here’s what I can do for you. I can get most of those repairs financed through trade. I’m particularly interested in that pallet of souvenirs from Outer Harakiwa Station, especially the Archenfold bobbleheads. You get me that pallet, and I can
maybe
hook you up with some discounts for the rest of the stuff.”

“Okay, why the bobbleheads? Got a thing for Votus?”

“Are you kidding? I can move that in an instant. The drone guys go ape shit over stuff like that.”

“So you want that pallet personally?”

“Consider it brokerage fees.”

“Ah huh.”

“There’s one more thing,” he said, fingers arched in a steeple, “Your fuel.”

“Oh?”

“Command and the bean counters have come down hard on this grade of propellant. What’s it for? Combat grade thrusters?”

“Manoeuvring thrusters. Twenty four point Callidyne Industries System.”

“Combat grade thrusters.”

“The product description is ‘High performance manoeuvring thrust’. Says so in the brochure.”

“You can’t use standard Imodium gas ejectors? Why the pricy stuff? You civvies don’t see a lot of action.”

“You’d be surprised, Chief. Besides, our pilot is a hotshot Garz’a, nothing but the best for him. He convinced the Captain it was a worthwhile upgrade. I got to tell you, it’s saved our skins many times.”

“Well, the fuel is high profile contraband here. Needed for combat operations only.”

“We need that fuel.”

“Why?”

“Trouble, long story.”

“How badly do you need it?”
Here it comes
, I thought,
the real deal
.

“What’s it going to cost me?”

“You can afford it,” he said, leaning forward again, “but it’s not a matter of credits. It’s risk. I can call in some favours and get what you need directed to your berth, but they’ll be favours I was planning on banking for a while.”

“Come on, I know there’s been a withdrawal of forces. You know what’s gone down in Eridani?”