Accord of Mars (Accord Series Book 2) (9 page)

T
he courier exploded
behind us in a burst of light so intense that the face shield of my suit’s helmet darkened to compensate. Secondary explosions blossomed as more and more missiles slammed into what was left of the ship, until all that remained were spinning shards of charred steel. The ship was toast.

But Acres and I hadn’t been on board when they blew it to bits.

“I can’t believe I let you talk me into this,” he growled at me.

“Come on, Chief. Not like you haven’t done this before,” I replied.

We were in space suits, arms linked and talking helmet to helmet. If you touched faceplates together, you could get enough vibration to carry between the suits so that you could talk without using the radio. The last thing we wanted was for anyone to think we might still be alive out here. Might as well put out a flashing beacon saying ‘come shoot us’ if we used the suit radios. I wanted the enemy to think we were dead without actually getting that way.

“It was a stupid idea when the Old Man did it, and it’s still a stupid idea now,” Acres said.

Decades ago, my father had become famous for pulling pretty much the same stunt we were. He was a naval officer during the last big war. Most of the world was involved in some way or another, but the main players were the US and China. China built a spaceship in secret, loaded it with nukes, and used it to take out the US lunar base, killing just about everyone on the moon and taking the last major source of energy - a handful of uranium deposits people were mining out as fast as they could so we could keep generating power.

Dad’s team waited in space along the Chinese ship’s return path with thruster suits. They course corrected as the ship got closer. Then they used the thrusters to match speeds with the ship and board. Once the ship was captured... Well, Dad sent the nukes home on autopilot. Armed. To Beijing.

The war ended that day.

“It turned out OK for you and him,” I said.

“Not for half of the men who went with us,” Acres replied. “I saw one guy splatter across the front of that ship like a bug on a windshield. Others just got lost out there, and we never saw or heard from them again.”

It worked because no one had ever been nuts enough to try it. I was betting that since there hadn’t been anyone crazy enough to attempt anything like it since that the bad guys still weren’t prepared for this sort of assault. It was a long ride out there in unprotected space. But if the plan worked out we might be able to put a damper on some of Choi’s plans. And Dad would need all the help he could get if they launched that fleet against Mars.

We’d set the courier ship on autopilot and jumped out. Right before it changed course sharply we let go - so we still had all that velocity zipping us along the old vector. Of course, we weren’t moving in a straight line like Dad had been. We were orbiting the Earth. Little human satellites, that was us. And if I’d done the math right, we should be moving on an intercept course with the UN’s space dock.

I’d doubled checked my math, but after thirty minutes had gone by I was starting to get nervous. The station was huge. We ought to at least see it by now.

“You see any sign of it yet?” I asked.

“Nope,” Acres replied. “If we end up circling the planet until our air runs out, I’m going to be a mite pissed.”

“Then quit wasting air. Keep your eyes open,” I said. I started scanning in circles around our direction of travel. Odds were that we wouldn’t be on precisely the right course. We’d have to use our thruster packs to nudge our orbit a bit, get where we needed to go.

I got a lucky break. Up ahead I saw a patch of stars blink out, then back to life again. Something was up there. But if that was the station, we were in a much lower orbit than we needed to be. I pointed it out to Acres.

“It could be,” he said. “Might not be, too. We’ll burn most of our fuel getting up there. If you’re wrong...”

“Then we’re dead. I know.” Or at least, stuck grabbing on to whatever it was. If it was a weather satellite, we were in deep trouble.

I didn’t think it was a weather satellite. Gauging distance by eye was hard in space, but I got the impression of something big out there. There wasn’t much still orbiting the Earth that was large anymore. The pirates had taken out all the orbiting infrastructure they could during their first raids.

“I say we go for it,” I said.

“You’re the boss,” he replied. “Link arms with me and hold on tight. We need to fire the thrusters together.”

Both of us had thruster suits on. We had to bring up the thrust slowly, and in concert, or we’d go spinning off in different directions. We grabbed on to loop handholds on each other’s suits. I said a quick prayer. And we engaged the thrusters.

It wasn’t the ride I’d been expecting. We were a little off balance at first, but once we got that worked out, it was pretty easy. There weren’t any fancy moves involved, no complex flying. Just a straight shot away from Earth. That ought to bring us up into the same orbit as the object I’d seen.

I caught the glint of something almost directly ahead of us. Just the tiniest bit of sunlight reflecting off a panel. Way too close for comfort. The space dock was blacked out, almost invisible against the darkness of space. We were almost on top of it before we’d even seen it. And we were still moving toward it very fast.

“We need to brake!” I said. We flipped around to aim our thrusters at the station and slow down. But in the process I lost my grip on Acres. He went spinning away, working his own thrusters to slow down. I was on my own.

I
shifted
my feet to orient ‘down’ toward the glint I’d seen. That made the Earth my ‘up’, which was a little disconcerting at first. For a dizzying moment I felt like I was falling headfirst toward the planet. I tore my eyes away, focusing instead on trying to spot the station before I became a smear on its hull.

I started braking, little puffs of air slowing my progress. Acres was well ‘above’ me at this point. He was using his thrusters more and taking a much more cautious approach. Which was probably smart. I remembered his comments about the man who’d been spattered across the nose of the ship when Dad did this maneuver.

I hit my thrusters a little harder.

And then there it was, seeming so much bigger in life than it had in the images. I couldn’t gauge my distance until I recognized that the silvery blotches dotting the main hull were actually ships. The docking area was huge. There had to be room for sixty vessels. Only about a third of the bays looked occupied, but that was more than enough.

Perrault wasn’t kidding. They’d built a fleet of such size that it pretty much defined ‘overkill’. Choi knew damned well that Dad would be able to outfight them, even at long odds. So he’d stacked the odds enough that no matter what my father did, no matter how brilliant his planning, he wouldn’t stand a chance.

I continued to fall toward the thing, using little bits of thrust to slow my descent. As I got closer I could see a little more detail.

There were twenty-one ships in all. I’d missed one at first, because it was painted black and because it was so monstrously large compared to the other ships that I thought it was something else, at first glance. It dwarfed all of the others. In fact, it was perhaps as large as all the other ships put together.

Most of the other ships were identical. They looked a lot like the ship my father had built to face the pirates. Someone on Earth had been taking notes. They were of a good size, and if Earth had copied my father’s design they would be armed to the teeth and bristling with anti-missile guns for defense.

The other six were a hodge-podge. They looked like merchant class ships that had been upgraded. The missile tubes were bolted on in a way that I knew very well. We’d seen a few of the enemy ships escape the Battle for Earth, but my father and I had never been able to track them down. Choi must have tucked them away somewhere, saving them for today.

I used my thrusters to veer toward one of them. My hunch was that the best and brightest of Choi’s people would be on the biggest ship. Then he’d put good personnel on the other made-for-war vessels. The former ‘pirate ships’ would get whatever was left. They were small, too, without a lot of crew room. Lots of missiles, not a lot of hands to run things. Which made them perfect for my purposes.

If I were aiming to make some mischief down here, it would work better where no one could see what I was doing. I just hoped that Acres would see the ship I was trying to steer toward. Otherwise we were both going to be on our own out here.

I was falling fast - too fast. Technically, I wasn’t falling. The relative velocity between myself and the ship I was aiming for was high enough that I was going to break bones on impact. Physics wasn’t going to make the broken bones feel any better, though. I didn’t have enough time to slow down before I impacted the nose of the ship, so I twisted and changed my approach. I jetted off to one side just enough that I fell between the ship and the fence of girders surrounding her.

Once I was tucked into the shadows of the docking area, I felt more comfortable that I could apply maximum thrust without being spotted. I braked hard and brought myself up alongside the ship. Ever so gently, I brought my magnetic boots around and attached them to the hull.

I’d made the same impossible leap my father had. It was an exhilarating feeling. I’d managed to breach the defenses of the secret enemy base, like the hero of some action film. Now what?

I was standing on the outside of one of the missile bays. This was a converted cargo ship, and usually containers were bolted on to the sides, then taken off when the ship reached its destination. The missile pod fitting was easy. Just drop in a missile pod pre-made to match the shape and latching mechanics of the cargo containers, and you had a combat ship.

Sort of. These ships had fared very poorly against my father’s vessels. Against a ship built for war, these makeshift jobs didn’t last long. But they’d add more missiles to the mix, and if they stayed tucked in close to the bigger ships in a fleet, they would benefit from the strong anti-missile defenses those ships were sure to have. I had no doubt this ship would be tagging along when the Earth fleet left dock.

I ventured to the aft end of the ship. There was usually an airlock near engineering, which would make a good way in. I spotted the door and went for it. The outer door didn’t open up like it should have when I tapped the panel, though. They’d thought to lock it. That wasn’t going to stop me, but it slowed me down. I still had the tablet I was carrying earlier in the evening, tucked into a cargo pocket of my space suit. I pulled it out now and began negotiating a connection with the tiny computer managing the airlock.

Everything on a ship was computerized. Even in something as simple as the airlock, you needed to monitor the air pressure, the seal quality, the locking mechanism, and a dozen other things. Rather than over task the central computer with mundane tasks, these sorts of tasks were jobbed out to smaller CPUs around the ship, which then reported to the main computer. I couldn’t have hacked the main CPU from here. But telling the little airlock machine that I was authorized to open the door shouldn’t take too long.

I was almost through the door when a man in a thruster suit jetted down to land immediately across from me.

W
hen one is trying
to sneak aboard a spaceship, the sudden appearance of an unknown person is alarming. I almost lost my grip on the tablet, which would have been a disaster. I did lose my grip on the ship. That wasn’t quite as bad. I did have some juice left in my thruster pack. I reached for the thruster controls.

The man lunged out at me. I tried to block, but he was too quick. He snagged one of the grip loops on my suit and pulled me closer. Only then did I spot the logo on the suit sleeve - Mars Space Service.

It was Acres. I tapped my helmet against his so we could have a little chat about sneaking up on people.

“You asshole,” I said. I was still trying to catch my breath and slow my heartbeat down.

He laughed. “Little nervous?”

“Little bit,” I said.

“Not in yet?”

“Obviously,” I replied through gritted teeth. “I was almost in when you jumped me there.”

“Stay alert,” he said more seriously. “I saw personnel moving around near some of the ships. I think they’re getting ready to ship out.”

Which meant we needed to get inside. Once the ship was underway sneaking in would be impossible. The door would alarm the second I got it open. We had a few hours of air left, but the trip to Mars would take days. Staying outside wasn’t an option. I got back to hacking the airlock.

A minute later I had it open, and we both hurried inside. The airlock cycled, and the inner door opened up. We were in.

The ship was dimly lit with low-power emergency lighting. We listened for a few long moments before moving, but I couldn’t hear anything. I looked over at Acres and he nodded. I moved out into the main passage.

The pressurized part of these ships was shaped a little like a dumb-bell. Cockpit and crew sleeping area in the nose. Engineering in the rear, along with the fission reactor that ran the main drives. And a long stem connecting the two points. The cargo containers - or missile pods - attached to the stem part. On the inside, the stem was just a big tube between the two main points of interest on the ship.

There weren’t a lot of places to hide.

I popped off my helmet. “Now what?” I asked Acres.

“You’re asking me?” he said. “This was your brilliant plan. I’m just along for the ride.”

I hadn’t thought much further than boarding and capturing the ship. That had seemed hard enough without worrying about what to do with it once we got it. But getting aboard had been insanely simple. Probably because someone would have to be nuts to try it in the first place.

If we went forward, I could maybe hack the main computer, activate the drives, and get clear of the station. But by the time I did we’d have marines crawling all over the ship. They’d have an even easier time getting in than we had. It wasn’t a workable plan.

Just firing the missiles while we were docked might do something. We’d blow the hell out of the station for sure, and maybe take out a couple of the nearby ships if we got lucky. We’d also almost certainly blast ourselves to bits in the process though. I didn’t feel like blowing myself up was the best plan I could come up with.

“Let’s move forward to the cockpit,” I said. That would give me some time to think, anyway.

“Lead on,” Acres replied, waving an arm.

I hooked the helmet onto my suit and pushed off down the corridor. We floated past a series of little hatches as we went. Those were entries into the missile racks. On a cargo ship, they could be used to inspect the contents of the containers. Here they were probably used to do repairs of the launch equipment and inspections of the missiles.

The nose of the ship was a spartan place. Bunks for four. A small mess area, well stocked with rations. And the cockpit itself which had seating for two.

“Looks like four, maybe five crew?” I said.

“Could be as many as twelve,” Acres corrected. “If they share bunks, they could work in two on, one off shifts. But with the size of this ship, I think they’ll be running a light crew.”

They wouldn’t need many people. Two in the cockpit and two down in engineering. I examined the control panels, all dark and powered down. If I powered those up we could try to bust free from here, but they’d almost certainly know on the station the minute I activated anything.

I moved on. There was a small weapons locker near the bunks. It was padlocked shut. I shook my head. “Can’t hack that,” I said, annoyed. “Who still uses a padlock?”

“Grunts do,” Acres growled. “To keep out people with more gadgets than sense. Move over.” I slid aside and he pulled a cutting tool from his suit. There was a short flash of light, and the padlock came loose in his hand.

“You’re not the only one who brought along toys. Hold on to that,” he said, handing me what was left of the lock. He opened the box and peered inside.

“Small arms only, but they might be useful,” Acres said.

He hauled four pistols out of the locker. Two of them he slipped into pockets in his suit, and he handed the other two to me. I took them, slipped one away and examined the other. They were light caliber weapons. I checked the loads - frangible ammunition, which was good. It would break apart if it hit something hard like the wall of a spaceship. You usually didn’t want your bullets to make holes in the hull when you fired a gun on a spaceship.

Acres took the lock back from me and replaced it over the box. He ran his laser cutter over the lock, carefully welding the padlock back into place again. By the time he was done, you wouldn’t be able to tell it had been cut unless you looked very closely.

I looked back at the pistol in my hand. We were armed now. The lock box for the crew’s weapons was empty, which meant they would be unarmed. I was starting to feel the beginning of a plan. One which might not involve our dying.

“You still remember how to use that, right?” Acres asked. I’d been staring at the pistol a while.

“Yeah,” I replied. After the close combat experiences I had with the pirates, I’d made sure to keep up on my marksmanship skills. You never knew when things were going to get up close and personal. “Just thinking.”

A loud banging noise echoed through the hull. I stole a quick peek out the cockpit window. A tube was extending from the station to the ship’s forward airlock. I caught a glimpse of men in the airlock on the far side.

“Shit,” I said.

A rumbling sound began to thrum through the entire ship. I wasn’t sure what it was at first. Then I saw the source - the monstrous ship I’d seen on our approach to the station was sliding free from its mooring and slipping out into open space. The Earth fleet was getting ready to move out.

“Better think faster,” Acres said. He had one of his pistols out.

There wasn’t time for anything fancy. I slid back to the crew area and snagged a couple of water bottles and a pair of ration packs. “Grab some food and water,” I said. There was a big supply. The crew wouldn’t miss a few.

“Going to feed them to death?” he asked.

“Nope. Going to not starve while we hide.”

“Hide? This ship is tiny. Where the hell…” he started to ask. Then he saw me headed for one of the rear missile racks. I popped open the compartment and slid up into the small space within the missile rack. It was cramped, but there would be room for the two of us in there. Barely. The fleet was launching, which meant they’d probably already done their inspections. With luck, no one would need to peek into our hiding hole.

“Oh hell. I’m gonna hate life for the next couple of days, aren’t I?” he grumbled. But he followed me inside. The airlock was starting to cycle open. The crew coming aboard was almost on top of us. I grabbed the compartment hatch and shut us inside.