Edge of Solace (A Star Too Far) (22 page)

She was blasted back and tossed half a dozen meters away. A new suit of power armor stood next to him. The dark sheen on the suit was new, something he’d only seen on the cameras watching Canaan. He could feel the heat from the smoking weapon on his face.

More UC suits
rushed in and moved into cover.

Archie didn’t quite know what to do. He gave the suit a slight wave. The suit looked back blankly through the white stenciled skull and moved
into cover.

Captain Asa was a crumbled wreck, twisted awkwardly and convulsing on the floor. Blood mixed with the hydraulic fluid in a speckled pool beneath her.

Archie crawled away and stood on shaky legs. He shuffled away from the fighting.

The armored suits passed and converged on the hall. Whatever was left of the defenders streamed back, away from the cargo
hold.

Asa
was trapped inside of a failed machine. The power armor shut down, she thrashed against the nano-muscular system that was now nothing but dead weight. The smell of meat rose upwards. She was burning inside.

Archie dug his fingers into the edges of the armor and fought to find something,
anything,
that would release the panels. He snatched up the makeshift spear and jammed it into a seam with one hand. The tube hummed and bent when the armor slammed open.

Cries of pain drifted out of the suit. The front panel of the armor smoldered. Bits of flame grew into a sheet as air kindled the fire.

One seam after the next folded away. She thrashed the entire time. Archie worked as quickly as he could until she finally threw herself out and lay in a ball clutching her chest.

Part of him wanted to let her burn, feel the pain. But another part knew she was a person, and no one need
ed to suffer like that. The Major in him knew she was an exceptional human intelligence asset. If they tore into her brain the way they tore into his… Well, he saw that as breaking even.

The UC power armor paused and stood before him. The facemask opened and an Asian man looked down with perspiration covering his face.

“I’m Lieutenant Yamaguchi, UC Army. Who are you?”

Archie cleared his throat and tried to wet his tongue. “Major Archibald Theodore, Marines,” he croaked. “We need her too, she’s a Captain in the Sa’Ami Army.”

Yamaguchi nudged her with his foot and nodded. “You’re with me, Major. First squad, get the crate. Bone, to me.”

Another suit of power armor rushed around a container and squatted in the light cover. Yamaguchi pointed at Captain Asa. The new suit holstered a mass driver and scooped her up.

“Major, stay close, time’s running short,” Yamaguchi said. His facemask slid back up, but not before Archie saw a strained face tired with tension. The mask above it was a dirty yellow skull that seemed to scowl.

Archie ran as best he could. His arm throbbed even more after helping Captain Asa out of the suit. With every step he could feel the joint jarring against itself. He knew time must be tight, no one had even offered him a nanite patch.

Small groups of power armor came together and covered the passage. Yamaguchi walked at a brisk pace with Archie trailing behind. Captain Asa’s eyes burned as she stared at Archie. A soldier clutched a case tight to his chest and ran with a wobble.

The slender black case was about the size of a child’s coffin.
The writing on it wasn’t a language Archie had ever seen.

Any xeno tech was of extreme interest. He, as well as all officers,
was tasked with knowing what was worth fighting for. The case, regardless of what it contained, was priceless. Worth more than him and he knew it. It wasn’t K162 Tech or Gracelle, this was something new.

Yamaguchi stopped and holstered his weapon. The rifle folded back and tucked itself against him. “Major, you’re getting a ride.” His voice didn’t carry any emotion
—it was as much of an order as the Lieutenant could give a Major.

Archie found himself wrapped up in the arms of a Lieutenant. He tried to keep his broken arm from jarring but the pain made him moan.

It hit him as they ran. Through shoots of pain he realized he was rescued. He took particular pleasure in the fact that he’d gotten himself out, the Army simply helped him the rest of the way. Or at least that’s how he thought of it.

The Lieutenant stopped and turned. Sounds of something new, something large, something angry, pulsed down the hall. The suits sprang forward and ran
. Something was coming.

*

“How big?” Yamaguchi asked loudly. The crackle grew in his ear followed by a booming explosion. The Major in his arms was nearly weightless. The suit had, thankfully, been smart enough to compensate for the load.

“Fu
ckin’ big,” Sergeant Hull radioed back through sounds of gunfire. “Quad, anti-armor, this thing’s big, LT.”

“Keep moving, it can’t catch you, blast holes if you have to
, Sergeant. Get clear now.” Yamaguchi scanned his display: he was almost out. The dropship was a wreck. Hallways ended in sealed bulkheads with nothing but vacuum on the other side.

More explosions echoed behind him.

“Marines. I’ve got two wounded coming over, we need suits for both,” Yamaguchi called. The Major lolled in his arms with teeth showing white beneath the beginnings of a scraggly beard.

“Lieutenant, what is that?” Captain Grace
asked.

Yamaguchi silenced the Navy feed for a moment and keyed up the camera on Sergeant Hull’s suit. The rear camera blinked onto the screen. A mechanical monstrosity ripped through the corridors. Heavy armored arms and legs pulled and ripped as it slammed itself onward.

Shit,
he thought,
that thing is fast.
“Captain, can you punch through the hull?”

Yamaguchi kept moving without waiting for a reply. They dodged around a corner and came through the first point of heavy fighting. The bodies of the Sa’Ami defenders were
cast aside with little reverence.

“We can
.” Grace paused. “The ship is armored, it might take a few shots.”

His eyes danced on the display. The squads were still scattered, too scattered. If he stopped and tried to regroup the Sa’Ami heavy would hit them. Hard. Most of his platoon was streaming forward near him.

“Second squad, we’re holding the breach. Everyone else to the umbilical and reinforce the Marines,” Yamaguchi ordered. The icons of the suits paused, shifted, and continued towards the exit.

New sounds came across with fresh icons winking on. Red icons. The feeds in his helmet blinked and showed Sa’Ami suits tossing a last ditch effort. He looked down from the display and saw the suit emerge.

The power armor was charred and dark. It raised a blunt boarding driver and tracked onto Bone. The Private never even saw the Sa’Ami step out.

Yamaguchi tossed the Major aside and lunged for the Sa’Ami. The Major landed in a heap behind him and crumbled against the wall.

He powered forward with an animal intensity. The Sa’Ami paused and shifted its head just slightly and tried to pivot the blocky rifle.

Yamaguchi struck him in the chest. The Sa’Ami soldier blasted against the side of the bulkhead. Yamaguchi drove a fist into the neck joint while his other hand ripped the weapon free. The first punch was enough, the neck joint was already cracked.
But the Sa’Ami wasn’t alone.

Yamaguchi tucked back and drew
his FN rifle. He thrust it around the corner and opened fire. The group inside was caught in a slender maintenance passage with nowhere to go. He didn’t bother looking back in.

“Turtle up! Here they come!” someone called out over the comms.

Yamaguchi ran back and scooped up the Major. “You okay, sir?”

“Leave it to the Army,” Archie growled.

The pair sprinted forward and caught up with Bone. Yamaguchi scanned the display and took in what was happening. The Sa’Ami were pushing through maintenance shafts and trying to cut them off. The fighting was fierce. Icons winked away on his list. “Faster!”

The case clattered behind them as Corporal Shaw kept one hand on the case and the other on his assault shotgun.

“We’re pinned, LT! They’ve got a heavy platform, just came out the side,” Sergeant Hull said.

More icons appeared throughout the ship. The defenders were pushing not to defend, but to delay. Yamaguchi pivoted the display. The
heavy strider was moving in and would hit Shaw in under a minute. He jogged the display and highlighted a section of hull.

“Captain, I need a hole, at zone five,” Yamaguchi said. “Sergeant, get ready to head outside.” He turned a corner and saw the
Marines in EVA armor waiting. The small squad was sheltered behind boarding shields. It was a very welcome sight.

More Sa’Ami streamed out from a ceiling hatch behind him. The lead Sa’Ami dropped a portable boarding shield and crashed to
the floor behind it. The Marines opened fire and helped Yamaguchi with the wounded.

“In ten,” a female voice called from the
Malta
.

“Sergeant, brace! Everyone get ready to lose atmosphere,” Yamaguchi called out to the platoon. He raised his weapon and snapped off a pair of rounds. The
Marines had already torn apart nearly everything that dropped down. The rest of his men were pouring more fire down the hallway.

Behind the line the two wounded were being bundled into the lightweight suits. A slight whistle pierced the room as if a wind was rolling in.

“Umbilical is hit!” a Marine yelled.

Yamaguchi checked his display. Around him nearly all of his squads were in or coming in. He tucked a shoulder against a wall and waited for it.

The
Malta
fired a round from the mass driver batteries. A green glow erupted from the dropship as the nickel rounds vaporized. A few seconds later another barrage set in and slammed home. Vapor and frost cascaded out of the hole along with featureless debris.

“We’ve got a breach!” Sergeant Hull
’s voice was almost frantic.

“Start crossing
, people! Hull, get to the pipe and lock on to the top.” Yamaguchi stepped away from the barriers and felt the floor rumble.

The squads surged out of the dropship and into the umbilical. Yamaguchi stood with a hand on the wall and another with his weapon pointed down the hallway. He turned and nodded to the
Marines waiting as silent sentinels with knowing eyes scanning the heavier barrels down the hall.

“LT. We’re breaking in one minute,” Captain Grace
said.

The icons were behind him. All of his men had surged out of the hull and were either forming a line in the umbilical or scrambling over the scree-debris of the hull.

The Marines folded the shields up and to entered the bright light of the umbilical. Yamaguchi plucked a vector mine from his belt and tuned it to the frontal arc.

The umbilical shook for a moment and he thought it was just his weight. Then he saw it.

The heavy strider was scrambling outside of the hull. It crawled up onto a sheared point of armor and folded out a railgun. A slight orange glow illuminated its back followed by a gout of electric orange fire that shredded into the umbilical.

“We’re blowing it!” an accented voice called out over the comms.

Yamaguchi had enough of a moment to reach up and latch his hand onto the original boarding cable when everything separated from the dropship behind him. Had he waited a second longer he’d be stuck on the dropship.

The
Malta
began to roll with the umbilical drifting behind spraying out atmosphere and debris. It slung like a slow whip in the zero G. The heavy strider opened up with a rotary cannon. Jets of white gas pulsed around the Sa’Ami strider as the cannon tracked forward and back.

Yamaguchi leaned out and opened fire. His rounds impacted the heavily armored beast doing nothing. He trained his weapon once more and tapped the trigger.

A blast erupted into the strider. Two legs snapped sideways and tumbled into space. The railgun tumbled down and sent a final round parallel with the hull.

Yamaguchi looked at his weapon reverently and then realized the Malta had fired. He felt relieved for a moment until the comms chatter caught up with him.

“Move LT! She’s gonna blow,” Sergeant Hoffman called.

Yamaguchi tossed his weapon aside and turned with one hand locked onto the cable.

The full bulk of the xeno case tumbled through the umbilical like a loose cannon straight for him.

*

The cool sensation of moving air brushed against Abraham’s cheeks. It caught him for a second. He’d become used to the controlled climate of the starship.

The
Marines shouted and leveled weapons through the umbilical. Abraham craned his head from side to side and peered inside. Marines, power armor, and two emergency suits were bouncing through the hatch.

Everyone around him was frantic. He wanted to ask someone
what to do, he knew they all had things in their heads so they could communicate. One sided conversation was all he caught.