Trial by Ice (24 page)

“Sergeant, once you open that door, get the Commander to the launch and burn. Burn hard..” Archie grabbed another roll of ammo.

“Sir?” Sergeant Hakimi said.

“I’m going to make you a hole. Commander, get this data out, that fleet isn’t on the courier drones,” Archie said. He turned back to the display just in time to see another freighter blink a brilliant white and disappear. He cursed the damned luck for sending the couriers out early.

“What are you going to do?” Luis asked.

“Blow the damn station,” Archie said. He couldn’t believe he just said it.

“On your call, Major,” Sergeant Hakimi said.

“Do it.”

The door opened slowly and the trio stepped cautiously into the service access. The safe room was buried in the maintenance section of the station near nothing of particular interest. Sergeant Hakimi saluted with a gloved hand and pointed the Commander down the hall. Archie bound toward the reactor.

“Sergeant, tell me once you’re onboard,” Archie said. The corridors narrowed as he dodged through an array of piping. Beyond was a wide open area with a heavy bulkhead and airlock. The atmosphere indicator blinked orange. Zero atmosphere on the opposite side.

Archie crept up to the bulkhead and cycled it open. The door closed behind him and he waited as the pressures equalized. The opposite door blinked a bright orange and slid open. He padded slowly into the engineering area and scanned around. The first body appeared. A Naval Engineer was curled up near the edge of the bulkhead. He turned away from the body and continued.

One long hallway, a right turn, and the reactor. He could picture the map in his head as he ran in long strides down the hall. He held the shotgun across his body, ready to fire at a moment’s notice.

“Major, the Commander is going in solo,” Sergeant Hakimi said in a rushed voice. The sound of gunfire and booming explosions echoed over the comm.

“I’m in!” Luis called out.

Archie reached the end of the dark hallway. He sprinted around the turn and collided with a Sa’Ami strider. The gangly drone bounced off the side of the tunnel. Archie rolled and tucked himself against the wall. The strider was barely a meter away when he pulled the trigger.

At such a close range, the armor plate of the Sa’Ami construct buckled and cracked. The nanites and plasma sheath surged inward, frying the core of the remotely controlled drone.

Archie struggled back to his feet. The strider convulsed once before lying still. He didn’t waste the time to pump in a second shot.

The reactor core was a simple looking chamber. Heavy cords of superconducting nanites routed the immense power flow to the station. The core itself looked like a stainless steel casket. Inside the same forces that shifted ships through space were harnessed to create energy.

Archie propped the shotgun on the command console and saw a second body laid out next to it. The Chief Engineer. He nodded down at the corpse and began the process of overloading the reactor. He remembered the class where they learned how to self-destruct a core. The jokes they all made, it almost seemed surreal at the time. Now he wished he’d have paid more attention.

“Archie! Good god man, they’ve shot all the freighters,” Luis called out over the comms. His voice was tinny and distressed.

“Are you undocked?”

“Yes!”

“Then just wait, they can’t shoot you there. The station is shielding you. Burn on my call.”

Archie pulled two heavy levers that exposed a series of cylinders. He gripped one and slowly levered it out. The rest tugged to the side revealing a set of three pins surrounded by a grid of one hundred holes.

“I’m going, Archie.”

“Not yet!”
Stupid bastard
.
No, just afraid.

He dropped down to his knees and gripped the first pin. He had to remove each of the pins and place them back into a precise location on the grid. There were no markings, commands, or instructions. Either you knew it or you didn’t.

A mechanical clacking resonated through the hull. The striders were closing. Archie popped the first pin and pushed it slowly in like it was stuck in jelly. It sucked itself in and was seated. He fumbled the second pin with the armored gloves and scooped down to grab it. Perspiration stung the corners of his eyes.

“Almost, Luis, almost!”

The second pin was buried against the edge of the plating. He squeezed with his fingertips, but he just couldn’t get the damn thing. It was wedged perfectly so that his glove couldn’t fit. He took a breath, exhaled, and disengaged the facemask.

The air escaped from his mask and rushed past. Alarms rang in his ears. He clenched his eyes closed and slowly popped the cuff off his right hand. The vacuum didn’t feel as unusual as he anticipated. He was tempted to suck a breath just in case there was air, but knew better. His fingers gripped the tip of the pin and he stuffed it into his armor near one of the ammo logs. The glove clicked back on and the face shield reappeared.

He counted to three and took a deep breath. Crisp tinny air filled his lungs. The sound of the canister rushing into the suit was loud in his ears. He opened his eyes a moment later and grabbed the third pin and stuck it into grid. It seated home. He dug his finger into the ammo pouch and sensed something behind him.

Archie had learned long ago to trust whatever nudge that told him something was off. Feel something? Turn with the gun. Don’t just look. The moment was ripe as he slid his hand over to the shotgun.  He spun around and threw himself onto his back.

The Sa’Ami pushed off with unbelievable speed, quartering toward Archie.

Archie fired. The round impacted the stippled Sa’Ami armor at a steep angle, ricocheting and blasting into powder. The shotgun cycled a second round into the chamber but before he could fire it was on him.

The Sa’Ami soldier was strong only like a lifetime of grafts, implants, and enhancements could make a soldier strong. Nanite blood coursed through his veins. He was the opposite of Archie.

The soldier leaped onto him and stripped the weapon away scattering it aside. His other arm tucked below Archie's and turned him over onto his stomach while the mass of his body bore down onto the Marine.

Archie grunted inside his suit and realized that the thing he fought, while it was a man, was more machine. One more pin. All he had to do was set one more pin. He could feel the bulge in the edge of his armor. If he couldn’t beat him in brute force he’d do it like a wrestler: manipulate the force.

The Sa’Ami soldier pushed his chest against Archie's, driving him further down. The bulk squeezed against his ribs, driving the air out of him.

Archie kicked one leg out to gain momentum while the other drove down, leveraging the mass on top him. The balance shifted and the Sa’Ami soldier was tipping without any way to regain his balance. As he spun, he felt the arm grip tighter on his chest. His slid his fingers down, while the spin was completing, and peeled the arm away.

The pivot finished. Archie used his legs to spread legs apart. One arm of the Sa’Ami was firmly in his grip while the other arm was franticly pushing and grabbing. He smiled to himself as he could feel the man panicked beneath. Just a man, he reminded himself, just a man.

Now how the hell could he get the pin in? He had one arm free but the spin had turned him away from the console. The grid teased him—just a meter away. The mass of the pin reminded him of how close he was.

Archie tested the strength of the soldier. He slowly slid the arm down as if his strength was breaking. It felt like a massive beast of burden suddenly gaining hold. He quickly pulled the arm back and pulled. The fibers resisted. His free hand pushed against the armored back. The form thrashed beneath him as he strained against the muscles, the enhancements, the technology.

The arm relaxed as Archie pulled it past that certain point, where the transition went from uncomfortable to tendons tearing and ligaments shredding. He peeled it back even further until the armor bound. The soldier beneath him thrashed and bucked. Now was his moment.

“Luis, get ready!”

“I’m moving!”

Archie kicked himself off and focused his eyes onto the grid before him. Eighth hole down and fifth over. He gripped the pin in one hand and braced himself with the other. The pin glided before him right toward the hole.

“Go, Luis!”

The arm gripping Archie’s leg was like a mechanical claw. Pain rocketed up his leg. The hole drifted away from him and the soldier stood above him with his leg in one hand. The other arm hung at an odd angle to the side. The vacant face shield looked down at him as the arm drew him even further away.

Archie thrashed and kicked and fought. The soldier maintained a staunch grip and held the Marine at an awkward angle where he could gain no advantage. He had nothing to work off of now. “Oh god, Luis.”

“No.” Luis almost moaned as he said the words.

Archie felt the footsteps and turned to see a second soldier walk into the reactor with a pack of the striders flowing behind him. The new soldier stepped close and leaned over Archie.

The soldier’s fingers closed over the pin and gently tugged it away from his grip. He regarded it a moment and tossed it away. The new soldier was different. He moved slower with a touch more reserve. Not like a man, but like a hunted beast. The armor bore a single red diamond compared to the three green dots on the first soldier.

Archie waited until the soldier with the red diamond leaned closer. He jabbed out to land one more punch. The hand that darted back was swift, fast, almost a blur. He strained. It was like his hand had welded to a steel beam.

The soldier slammed his other hand down onto Archie’s helm and racked it from one side to the other. Stars and shimmering lights danced across his vision as he lost consciousness. The last sound he heard was Luis screaming in his ears.

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A battalion of convicts…

Fifty second hand armored vehicles…

A desperate scramble to hold the line…

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The Vasilov Worlds are on the edge of Human space. They have fought a war for 35 years against the insectoid Kadan that they have no intention of ending. It’s too essential to a society where the only social movement is via battle promotion. Then it all changes when the Kadan nearly annihilate the front lines.
Vasilov Officer Colonel Cole Clarke has just returned from service with the Sigg Military. Now that he has learned how the Sigg fight, he's bringing that knowledge to the Vasilov Military, plus an entire battalion of second hand Sigg Armor purchased on the scrap market. But instead of a fresh battalion of troops, he’s assigned a penal battalion filled with convicts. The Vasilov Military doesn't accept change easily, even when they need it.
What would happen if an entirely new style of warfare came onto the battlefield? Could a strike force of second hand armor trump the defensive doctrines they’d used for thirty five years or would they be doomed to failure and death on the icy planet Lishun Delta?

One squadron of armor. One Colonel. A thousand of the worst convicts in the Vasilov Military. Will they be up to the task?

Steel Breach

Chapter One

Lishun Delta - Mackinof Front

Corporal Karl Sigorski sprinted across the snowy waste and leapt into the depths of a shell hole. Inside the soil was dark, raw, and frozen. What was soil just an hour before had solidified into something as hard and jagged as flint.

"Shit!" he cursed as the rough ground gouged and bruised. The cold slammed into him.

His lips were chapped gray, and no matter how much lanolin he applied they still cracked deep. He'd seen men’s feet so dry that they cracked to the bone. Sentries, if they were caught in a coastal blizzard, were found frozen just hours later.

He tried to scrape the gore from the dead Kadan troopers off of his overcoat, but it was frozen on like fish slime. His fleece-lined leather mittens rasped against the greenish-yellow goo.