Drysine Legacy (The Spiral Wars Book 2) (24 page)

Kono tried his, and shook his head. “Nothing. Not even closer range — everyone will be moving on extraction.”

Trace nodded and beckoned to Erik, stomping off down the corridor as Kono and Rolonde headed back to the bridge. At the next intersection they ran into Corporal Rael and Private Kumar, already moving.

“Coms are out!” Rael announced, got the expected confirmation as Trace and Erik went straight past him, and followed behind. Not for the first time, Erik felt a surge of relief to see the competence of
Phoenix
crew in action — Trace’s marines didn’t need instructions to know what to do, when the coms failed they immediately moved on the extraction plan to get the LC out via
Edmund Mundi
midships. Likewise he didn’t need to worry if Lieutenant Shilu had received Trace’s last order — with coms out, Shahaim would order red alert as a matter of course, and begin full crew extraction back to
Phoenix
.

“This is a total coms blackout,” Trace said as they moved, cycling through channels. “I can’t reach
Phoenix
on anything. We’re being jammed.” And to some puzzled crew in passing, “Total coms blackout, consult your Captain, station may be under attack.”

“
Phoenix
can probably identify that source if it’s a ship,” Erik added, striding hard to keep up. “But
Phoenix
is stuck on station until the crew get off. We may have to use a shuttle.”

“If
I
were attacking this station or any ship attached to it, I wouldn’t jam from another ship because it will just be destroyed in a few minutes.” Combat vessels considered the deliberate jamming of coms as much a provocation as shooting, and
Phoenix
was not the only warship docked with station that could pinpoint the source and retaliate. “I’d do it internally within station. In which case we may have to go looking for it on foot.” And to the crew guarding the big airlock doors through to midships, “Excuse us, combat red alert, coming through.” As those crew kept out of their way.

“ETA on full crew extraction?” Erik asked as they ducked through the passage connecting what would be gravitational crew-quarters in flight, to the midships behind.

“Lieutenant Crozier reckoned eleven minutes thirty against an inbound minimum assault warning of twenty-two.” Meaning that most of the time they’d be responding to inbound attacking ships, against whom they’d need twenty-two minutes warning, in this system, against whom to make their escape. “If the threat’s inside the station already, that can complicate things. Kono, who was on shuttle standby?”

“PH-4,” said Kono as they emerged into midships, its open steel compartments broken by cargo nets and acceleration slings for use in the zero-G of regular flight. “Just hope Tif’s not taking a nap.”

“Don’t speak ill of crew unless they’ve earned it,” Trace reprimanded, climbing down a G-ladder toward
Edmund Mundi
’s single set of shuttle grapples. “Tif’s been a total professional so far, no mean feat for a civvie while raising a kid amongst an alien crew.”

Right about now, Erik thought as he followed Trace down, he could use another shuttle pilot. Their civvie shuttle AT-7 was available, but with no one full-time to fly it. With crew spread over the station, and PH-1 on away on a mission, two shuttles for rapid evac looked totally inadequate.

L
isbeth’s
first clue that something was wrong came when Vijay frowned, excused himself from the table, and disappeared out the door. Carla stayed, eating at Lisbeth’s side as they talked with her Uncle Calvin. There was a small recorder balanced on a pack on the end of the table, to record their meal and conversation. It had been Calvin’s idea — to take this mealtime chat back to Lisbeth’s parents and sisters, so they could watch it later while having their own meal, and have the impression that Lisbeth was back home with them at the dinner table.

Lisbeth talked about her adventures, careful not to say anything that might cause trouble should the recording fall into the wrong hands. She hadn’t been in on many of those command decisions anyway, and her experience had been more like that of the regular crew — stuck in a small room, scared and ignorant and often under enormous Gs, and hoping that she wasn’t abruptly killed by some unseen threat that she could do nothing about… or worse, left crippled and drifting to die slowly from suffocation or fire.

But she didn’t talk much about that. Mostly she gave her impressions of the crew, and of Erik, and Tif, and her new friends in Engineering whom she helped out on a regular basis… not that that made her one of them, but as she joked with Uncle Calvin, she was now the most junior member of the Engineering crew, fit for little more than cleaning toilets, but thankfully unqualified for it. And she talked about Stanislav Romki and helping him with the hacksaw remains, much to her Uncle’s incredulity. The hacksaws were not a secret,
Phoenix
had volunteered that encounter to everyone at Heuron System. Probably her mother had heard about it already. She was careful to stress that the only time she’d seen hacksaws, they’d been in pieces from high caliber gunfire and high explosive.

Then Vijay returned to the room and turned off the recorder. “Coms are dead,” he said grimly. Immediately Carla got up, grabbing her rifle and helmet — the light marine armour that Major Thakur had allowed them as former-marines with the important task of guarding Lisbeth. Lisbeth and Uncle Calvin blinked at them both. “Hardlines and wireless, it’s like we’re being jammed.
Phoenix
will be on automatic red alert, that means full evacuation, we have to head back now.”

“Shit,” said Lisbeth, and noted Calvin’s look as she said it. She’d never used to swear — Mother didn’t like it. She got up, and hugged her Uncle as he rose. “I’m really sorry, I have to go.”

“Wait,” said Calvin to her bodyguards. “Shouldn’t you wait for a shuttle? Won’t
Phoenix
send one for Lisbeth? It could be dangerous on the dock.”

“We’ve got a vehicle,” said Carla. “And there’s a fully armoured marine section waiting with it.”

“
Phoenix
only has two shuttles operational,” Vijay added. “Only one will be on immediate standby, and that one will be going to get Erik — he’s on that Worlder ship. The other one will take five minutes and we’ve no guarantee Lisbeth will be their priority.”

They left up the main corridor, past some concerned-looking crew talking or rushing to do things. Then out the main airlocks where two Alpha Platoon marines stood guard and onto the Berth 26 platform and down the ramp to the fat-tired vehicle. The two marines guarding it were staring up the dock. Traditional dock-level design on space stations made the ceilings at least three times the height of a regular station level. Joma Station’s dock level was five times the height, for a ceiling more than twelve meters up. Stations were enormous, and though Joma was small compared to the big human stations, a person could still see nearly two whole berths in either direction before the upward curve took all further berths out of view.

Dock level was also wide — Joma's was thirty meters wide, and largely uncluttered by the gardens, grass, benches or island platforms that more intricate designs incorporated. That wide expanse of decking plate was typically covered with many people and vehicles, any way one looked. As Lisbeth followed the marines’ gaze up past Berth 27, she could see a lot of people, mostly barabo. Some were running. Quite a lot were running, actually. Many looked frightened. Then came the screams.

She spun to Uncle Calvin. “Get back inside!” she yelled at him. “Tell your Captain undock and run, just do it!” As Vijay grabbed her and thrust her at the jeep, Lisbeth regaining control in time to insist upon the driver’s seat. She squeezed behind the wheel, the vehicle shaking as they piled on around her, then gunned the electric engine and left, wishing there were enough power to spin the wheels. Instead, she crawled steadily up to a miserly forty kph, most dock vehicles disabled from higher performance with all the pedestrians around. With six marines aboard, four in heavy armour, she was surprised they managed even this speed.

“Still no coms!” Lance Corporal Penn yelled. “No idea what’s going on, nothing’s working!” Penn was Charlie Second Squad’s newest section leader, and had volunteered to take Lisbeth to visit Uncle Calvin on
Europa.
He was a new volunteer off
Europa
, formerly a twelve-year sergeant, but had agreed to take the demotion to fill the holes
Phoenix
needed to fill.

“Lots of runners behind!” Private Herman added. “Holy shit, is that…?”

Then a harsh, metallic ‘baaarp!’ from somewhere behind, and an echoing rattle and howl of tearing metal.

“Chain gun!” yelled Private Ruiz.

“What the fuck’s doing that?” As they all shifted their position on the overcrowded vehicle to firing crouches, huge Koshaim rifles bristling out like an alarmed animal’s poisoned spines.

“Straight ahead Lisbeth,” Carla warned her from alongside, the big woman’s jaw set beneath her helmet. “If we come under fire, just keep going straight, these guys may need to dismount to support us but just keep going.”

More gunfire behind, a steady, thundering roar, punctuated by explosions. “That’s the froggies engaging!” Penn shouted. “
Makimakala
’s under fire, they’ll have karasai on the deck!” That was Berth 28, Lisbeth thought wildly, heart pounding and mouth dry as she watched the decking crawling by, the shopfronts on the right side turning slowly to empty construction.
Makimakala
was only two berths up from
Europa.
A tavalai combat carrier was nothing to mess with, yet whatever was attacking the station had engaged the other most deadly ship at dock.

Dock lights began flashing red, and a warning siren wailed. Workers in this section were shouting at each other, others running, others securing their gear. Suddenly Lisbeth’s ears exploded as marines opened fire — it was the first time she’d heard Koshaims at close range, and they were worse than jackhammers. Then a pause, and through the painful hush of her ringing ears, Lisbeth heard, “You fucking see that?”

“Hacksaw!” Private Ruiz yelled. “Definitely a hacksaw, holy shit!” And then Lisbeth was more scared than she’d ever been in her life. Given recent events, that was saying something.

“You get it?” asked Penn.

“No,” said Ruiz, “it came out real fast then just fucking raced back up that corridor…”

Up ahead, beneath the curving ceiling, Lisbeth could see armoured marines on the dock, and spacers running from their accommodation block at full sprint to get up to Berth 18. Several of the marines saw them, pointed, and came running. Lisbeth nearly cried with relief. Then she saw the huge section seal this side of Berth 22 begin sliding down to cut them off.

“Guys!” she yelled in case they were all still looking behind. “Guys, section seal! We’re going to get cut off!”

“Just go,” Carla told her calmly. “Station must be depressurising somewhere, or else they figured they’re under attack and are closing off the dock. If we’re cut off we’ll leave the vehicle and go by the back corridors, just get as close as you can.”

“Go!” Herman was yelling at confused barabo workers as they passed. “Run! Get away from the dock! Damn it, how do you say hacksaw in Palapu?”

The huge steel wall was descending fast, bright LED lights illuminating its strike zone upon the deck, small flaps of plating elevating upward to keep traffic out so no one got flattened by the descent.

“Can’t make it!” Lisbeth announced, and steered them toward the furthest corridor entrance amidst the under-construction shopfronts. “Everyone get ready to get off!” At her side, Carla stood to wave at the marines running their way up the dock, still visible below the descending seal. She pointed right, into the corridors, and a distant marine gave a thumbs up, still running. Then the seal hid him from view, the entire deck shaking as it rumbled down amidst the howl of sirens.

Lisbeth pulled up alongside the corridor entrance just as the seal slammed down with an echoing boom! The jeep rocked as marines leaped off, Herman and Bernardino running ahead to the corridor while Carla and Vijay escorted Lisbeth, Penn and Ruiz guarding the rear. Several loud cracks and shweets of fast-moving projectiles snapped up the docks, and something hit a section wall to Lisbeth’s left with a bang! that made her jump for fright.

“What the hell was that?” she gasped as they ran into the half-completed corridor.

“Ricochets,” Vijay told her. “Big firefight up the docks, you get random rounds bouncing around the rim for kilometres until they meet a vertical surface.” The armoured marines ahead reached a T-junction, covering each other’s move about the corner with graceful precision, huge weapons levelled, then cut left as Lisbeth and her bodyguards approached. “Congratulations kid, you just got shot at.”

“Just fucking great,” Lisbeth said shakily, and turned left after the marines.

“
C
ome on Tif
,” Arime muttered, as they crouched by
Edmund Mundi
’s midships grapples, big exposed hydraulic arms preparing to catch the impact from below, and a central airlock on the floor. A civvie crewman was peering into the manual viewer to see below — with all coms down, no wireless transmissions were working, which blocked most external cameras. “Where the hell are you?”

“How do they block
all
wireless?” Rael muttered. “Most local systems can still cut through military grade jamming at some level.”

“Well I dunno about you,” Kumar added, “but my suit’s scanners are bouncy too.” That was what marines called it when their visor visuals started flickering and bouncing. “I’m even getting a radiation spike from somewhere, well above background normal.”

“Yeah, that’s not good,” said Rolonde, still pale. “Machines don’t mind radiation.”

Erik looked at her, then at Trace. “Let’s not jump at shadows,” Trace told them firmly. “With no coms we’ve no way of knowing what’s out there until we…”

“Contact up the ship!” yelled Kono from up the G-ladder, by the airlock leading to the crew cylinder. “I can hear something! Sounds like… shit, what is…” And they heard the echoing roar of chain gun fire, and a distant shriek that sounded like steel being cut.

“Dammit,” said Trace, and leaped for the G-ladder. “LC, you stay!”

“It’s inside the ship!” Terez was yelling from the other side of the airlock — his voice a tinny amplification as helmets sealed and marines turned up suit speakers to yell at each other.

“Told you,” said Rolonde at Erik’s side, as Erik double-checked his rifle while trying to keep his hands from shaking. This rifle could damage a powered-armour suit, though not badly, and the return fire would blow lightly-armoured soldiers in half. Against hacksaw drones, this thing would be more effective than spitting, but not much.

Somewhere out the airlock, Koshaims thundered, and Erik pushed the civvie crewman aside to stare at the outer grapples visual feed. “Sir what the hell is that?” the crewman asked in fear, wondering whether to run.

“Hacksaws,” said Erik.

“You’re kidding!” the crewman exclaimed. As though he’d declared them under attack by the bogeyman. More gunfire thundered, drowning out any conversation the marines might be having. Chain guns answered, then a shriek of cutting steel that vibrated straight through the deck. Erik had never heard anything like it before on a ship. As someone who valued the structural integrity of every vessel he boarded, it wasn’t a sound he ever wanted to hear.

“Does it sound like he’s kidding?” Rolonde told the crewman. Gunfire paused.

“… gone straight through the hull!” Erik heard someone shouting in the distance. “They’re cutting through!”

“Pressure suits!” Trace yelled, closer but still outside the airlocks. Several more civvie crew came sliding frantically down the G-ladder. “Jess, get the LC in a pressure suit!”

“Pressure suits!” Rolonde barked at the crewman, who pointed to a red and yellow striped emergency closet high on a walkway wall, easily accessible in zero-G but not at dock. “Fucking great.”

“Never mind!” Erik told her, as the outer camera’s view of a turning starfield was blocked by a dark shadow, looming close and coming closer. It resolved into an upper shuttle hatch, stencil letters and closing very fast. “PH-4 is here, everybody brace!”

“Command Squad!” Trace yelled. “Our ride is here, pull back! Pull back now!” As Tif hit the grapples very hard from below, giant hydraulic rams crashing and flexing about them as the deck heaved. Alarm sirens howled, emergency lighting flashed and above in neighbouring sections, Erik heard decompression doors slamming closed as the automated emergency voice declared a hull breach. Erik was pretty sure Tif hadn’t done it — something was breaching midships further up.

Arime skidded down the ladder so hard that with his suit’s combat settings, he nearly bent the rail. He hit the deck with a crash as Erik extended the access tube as fast as it would go. “They’re cutting through above!” Arime declared, stomping across.

“Who’s cutting through above?” the first civvie crewman asked.

“Hacksaws,” stammered one of the two new arrivals. “They got the bridge… they… I saw them cutting steel. Blood everywhere, I… I think everyone’s dead up there…”

Erik had never seen an airlock access tube extend more slowly in his life. Above him, Trace’s squad were crashing in from the crew cylinder airlock, and scrambling up ladders to get to higher levels and compartments. Even now, he heard a new shriek of cutting steel, and again the deck shook.

“They’re cutting through from above!” Corporal Rael yelled. “Either we get out soon or they’ll be on us!”

“One minute!” Erik yelled his best guess.

“We’re not going to get a minute!”

“Then make one!” The access tube made contact from below… ‘warning’, the docking system told him — unfamiliar contact, suggest try again? Erik hit the override with feeling, and saw the controls squawk as PH-4’s more aggressive docking system grabbed it from below. Erik overrode several abort attempts… then ducked as fire ripped through the main airlock, hitting the walls above. Thunder in reply, as a Koshaim answered — Trace couldn’t close the airlock from the crew cylinder, he realised, because then she couldn’t shoot through it. Koshaim-20s would deter approaching hacksaws far more than flimsy airlock doors.

More shrieking from above, much closer now, then a huge explosion as a drone blew an obstacle out of the way. “Here they come!” Rael yelled. And Erik heard a distant clattering, like insects’ footsteps amplified many times over. Steel footsteps, from something big, rattling over the hull.

Something hit the bulkheads above with an ear-splitting crash, and shrapnel tore neighbouring cargo nets. Private Rolonde put herself squarely over Erik for cover… and Erik saw a big armoured suit crawling up the access from below. The inner hatch opened, and an armoured marine stuck his head through — Sergeant Ong, Erik recognised through the visor, Third Squad, Echo Platoon.

One of the civvies scrambled for the hatch, and Ong grabbed him by the throat. “Wait your turn! LC, go!”

Erik went, grabbed the rails and slid feet first down the vertical drop, as others yelled above him and a loud scraping hiss announced that Rolonde was coming down immediately after and he’d better vacate the access fast. His boots hit bottom and he did, as Rolonde crashed down behind him. Erik ducked up to lower deck access, jumped down the step, then passed where Private Cowell was stationed at the rear of the cockpit, yelling up to Tif and Ensign Lee where he could visually see people coming aboard.

“I’m strapping in behind you guys!” Erik informed the pilots as he took one of the two observer chairs. He was a pretty fair shuttle pilot himself, as were most warship pilots, and in Heuron he’d had to take over this exact same shuttle when its pilot, Lieutenant Toguchi, had been killed in the same seat Tif now occupied. “We have hacksaws in the ship! Just remember they can operate outside spaceships as well as inside, they don’t mind a vacuum!”

“God damn it,” Lee muttered. Erik couldn’t see the pilots’ faces, only the backs of their helmets — Tif in the rear pilot’s seat, Lee in the forward seat lower down. Tif echoed something equally unhappy in her native tongue.

“Hatch sealing!” Cowell yelled behind.

“Strap in Private!” Lee replied. “We’re leaving hard!”

“Don’t wait for hold secure!” Erik echoed. “Just go on retrieval!”

“Good,” Tif agreed, a gloved hand hovering on the release.

“Hatch sealed, retrieval complete…” and Cowell barely had time to finish the sentence before Tif detached with a crash and lurch into zero-G, then hit main thrust and slammed everyone back. And hit something, spinning sideways as Tif snarled in alarm.

“Damage left stabiliser!” Lee announced. “More damage… dammit, we’ve got a passenger!” As the upper hatch camera swung back far enough to show the horrifying spider-shape clutching the left rear stabiliser with steely legs.

Tif said something that could only be a kuhsi obscenity, cut mains and hit laterals hard. The shuttle spun sideways, and kept spinning, the starfield moving faster and faster, a flash as Joma Station’s massive round bulk entered and left their vision. The Gs built fast, and Erik fought to hold his head back on the chair, but it was impossible. With the extra weight of his helmet, the pain on his neck became excruciating, vision blurring as blood rushed to his head and chair restraints cut off circulation.

And then slowly eased, as Tif hit opposite stabilisers, Erik gasping as the pressure faded. “There he is!” Lee said triumphantly. “Got him at 140! Nice work Tif, he just flew right off.” Which would happen, Erik supposed, if you spun a shuttle on its mid-axis at negative 8-Gs. The pilots’ rule of thumb was that two negatives felt as bad as three regular-G. Negative-8 was a first even for him.

“Guns!” Tif said plaintively as she levelled them out facing the tumbling silver speck. “Guns! Kiw!”

“Guns, kill,” Lee agreed, and forward cannon thundered. The silver speck broke into tumbling fragments.

“Good kiw,” said Tif, and slammed them back with another burst of thrust. They went sideways, accelerating across Joma’s enormous wheel face. Erik saw small ships ahead, shuttles and insystem runners — lots and lots of them, breaking clear from the wheel hub and running. A number of large ships too, hauling away from the rim, some of them powering with their tails afire, desperate to put distance between them and the station.

“Tif,
Phoenix
on your main,” said Lee, and Tif adjusted angle and thrust to bring them around at where Berth 18 would soon arrive with Joma’s rotation.

“Rook!” Tif snapped, pointing out the cockpit at something. “Rook there!” Erik stared, and saw a little cluster of tiny dots, moving across the huge station wheel. Independently powered, little thrusters at the rear. And his blood ran a little colder.

“Yeah,” he said heavily. “Those are hacksaw drones.” They were the first ones he’d actually seen properly, with time to look. They looked so little and harmless, and evidently under-powered out here, with only small thrust to move across stations from the outside. It was like watching a small flock of birds on a distant horizon… only these birds were the rarest and most terrifying things in all the galaxy. Some spectacularly ignorant human Worlders didn’t even believe they were real, never having seen them with their own eyes, and insisted they were all a great lie, the dead machine-corpses, the deep-space bases, the deserted ancient hive-cities, all fabricated by Fleet for some nefarious conspiracy or other. Erik supposed it was a safer and more comforting thing to believe than the truth. “Do not fire on them, do not even get weapons lock. We want to get back to
Phoenix
, don’t draw their attention.”

“Copy that,” Lee said warily. And pointed at a ship docked at the station rim, just partly visible amidst the huge support gantries that stopped multi-thousand tonne vessels flinging off into space with the rotation. “That’s
Makimakala
. She’s still docked.”

“She’s probably got people on station,” said Erik. “Doesn’t want to leave them behind.” Even as they watched, something on the tavalai warship fired, and a part of the station rim blew up. “They’re weapons active while still docked, must be hacksaws on the rim.” It was against all protocols to stay docked with such terrors loose on the station… but then, without coms, possibly they didn’t know where their senior officers were — like
Phoenix
. “Tif, be careful of hacksaws on approach. Hacksaws, and tavalai shuttles. They might be jumpy.”

“Aye,” said Tif as the spinning rim drew closer, and gave them a new burst of thrust to come in faster than would normally seem wise. Halfway into the acceleration profile, Erik reconsidered the usual crew assessment that Tif, while a hot pilot, was not quite as hot as Lieutenant Hausler. Any faster on approach and she’d put a hole in the station if she was off by just a second.

“Anyone got any idea what the
hell
they’re doing here?” Lee remarked. And by ‘anyone’, he meant Erik.

“Plenty of time to speculate
after
we get out of here alive,” Erik replied, as Tif cut thrust, swung them backward and slammed them all into their seats once more for braking.

P
ast the section seal barrier
, Lisbeth followed Privates Herman and Bernardino through half-completed steel frameworks of what would become shops, offices and apartments once completed. Now they were abandoned of workers and tools, with equipment lying scattered. Lisbeth ran hard — she’d thought she was pretty fit on Homeworld, in that way that civilians who enjoyed a little exercise thought they were fit, a little volleyball here, a nice run on the beach there. Time amongst
Phoenix
’s marines had shown her that what she considered fit, marines considered funny, and she’d increased her gym-time accordingly. But now she learned another marines-truth — that running on a treadmill, and running from real enemies who wanted to kill you, were very different things. Already she was gasping for air from adrenaline overload, and had to force that easy calm into her stride so that she didn’t waste half her energy on nervous panic.

Herman and Bernardino turned left, back toward the dock, and Lisbeth followed with Carla and Vijay alongside. The dock on this side of the section seal had been clear before the barrier had come down, but now she could hear shooting ahead, and the lead marines signalled those behind to stop. Lisbeth did, gasping, while the privates advanced crouched and cautious through half-finished wall panels and dangling electrical fixtures. And Lisbeth stared, to see tracer fire ripping up the dock, and flashes as bouncing rounds tore fragments off the deckplate.

Herman shook his head and gestured at them to get back… and the half-finished corridor about him exploded in a hail of fire and flying fragments. Carla fell on Lisbeth, and then Corporal Penn was hurdling them to rush to his privates, returning fire thunderously through the walls one-handed while trying to grab Herman with the other.