Dreaming of Atmosphere (31 page)

“I’m not the enemy, Seth. I’m sorry about Eric.”

I didn’t say anything, I just kept working. Slip nut over bolt, lefty-loosey, righty-tighty.

“I wish I could tell you everything. You deserve to know.”

“What the fuck are you talking about?” I stopped and looked at her again. She looked back at me, and looked about to say something then changed her mind. She cast her eyes down. I finished tightening up the last few bolts and then slapped the power pack onto the rear of the exo-rig. The power-on light turned green and she flexed her arms. She gave me a nod and walked up to the sword rack to grab a blade.

“You’re a little light on the armour this time.” she said, pulling one of the axes we’d collected from the Frikk out. She gave it an experimental twirl.

“I want mobility. The M4 is too heavy for that.”

“Going to use your Spatial Translation?”

“Something like that. And Shield.”

“Have you worked out how the nanites do it?”

“The teleport? Yeah, they slide me along a string. I’m not really teleporting, I’m just moving through a different dimension temporarily.”

“Like when we shift through a Jump Gate?”

“Similar, yeah.”

“It’s strange to watch.”

“How does it look?”

“It’s hard to describe. You don’t just disappear and then reappear at the new spot, you just sort of
are
there. Like you were always there to start with. It disorients the hell out of whoever you are fighting.”

“It disorients the hell out of me.”

“Do you hit harder?”

“Not really, but if someone’s standing where my blade is they end up with it in their guts. I get air movement around me briefly, although I suspect it’s actually because the air is sucked in with me and then added to the new spot, pushing air away.”

I looked around the armoury, and traded my E2S for one of the energy carbines that the Frikk were kind enough to leave for us when they all died. They were not Frikk manufactured, but were solid Corporate weapons. Given to them as payment, no doubt. The Frikk were often mercenaries, and pirates, known for their brutality and warlike nature. If they weren’t given legal work as mercs and bounty hunters they tended to veer towards lives of crime. They were always like this, but they were also loyal. They rarely betrayed those they worked for, and usually honoured their agreements. They had a sort of warrior’s code, much like many Garz’a, only their code stems from a ‘might makes right’ attitude rather than a sense of duty.

Possibly the strangest quirk of the Frikk was that they rarely held grudges. You could kill most of a merc unit and then after the job hire them yourselves. They didn’t see being killed in combat as a slight against the fallen, rather it’s just a part of life. I sort of respected that in them. Made me feel better about killing a bunch of them too.

That thought made me pause. Was that just me talking, or was it some overflow of the nano-proliferation implant? I’d never been so nonchalant about killing living beings before, regardless if they were trying to kill us first. Was I becoming bloodthirsty? Or was I simply becoming pragmatic about killing? What was worse? Just one more topic to bring up with Zoe during our next session, I suppose.

I was glad it would be synthetics we would face now. I didn’t like where my head was at with killing living beings. There’d been too much death on board the Dreaming for my liking. Too much blood had seeped between the deck plates. I was mentally drained, all of a sudden. With the depression came a physical exhaustion that robbed me of much needed vitality. I’d felt this sensation before. It came during campaigns in the Star Marines when you found out you’d be back on the line once more, particularly after a heavy fight the day before. It was akin to resignation, that you could be about to end it all in a painful death, or become crippled for life. You became detached from those around you, they were just people who were about to die as well, no sense associating yourself with the pain of losing friends.

I could see the others looking at me. I tried to offer a smile but couldn’t stomach it right then. There was a despair in the faces of the Argen, they were seeing their leader starting to crumble before them. Art looked me in the face and walked over to me, her heavy boots making a dull thud on the deck. She grabbed my shoulder and pulled me close enough to whisper into my ear.

“Use your Repair paradigm. They need to see you pull it together.” she said.

I nodded and called up the paradigm. My bloodstream flooded with nanites, converting fats and non-essential material into sugars, synthesising dopamine and adrenaline.

“Whoa, Jesus.” I mumbled, stumbling against Art’s exo-rig.

“Get it together.”

“Right. I’m good. Thanks.” I gave her a nod and turned to the others, “We should be facing another stealth pod, like what we fought back in Argessi System. Standard compliment is around fifteen synthetics. Last time were simple assault droids, not much chop against seasoned fighters like Crege and I, but there’s no reason to believe they won’t use more advanced synthetics this time. They probably figure we’d only fall for this trick once, so this is the captain of the Xerxes’ only chance to recover the package, and with it his bonus pay, I bet.

“Well, fuck him. No bonus today. Artemis and I will spearhead the counter offensive when they come. You two are on defensive fire patterns. That means you split up, flank the enemy and take targets of opportunity. If you can’t hit any enemy, hit their cover. Those Thudguns can offer a small amount of crowd control to our options so go hell for leather. If one gets through our attack, fall back and try to stop it getting away. We want them contained. They’ll head for the engine room to try and disable the ship, or the command module to kill everyone in there. Including my girl. So if that happens I’ll be very put out, understand?”

They all had a chuckle.

“They’ll be coming in on our starboard side, as we’ll be juking to port as the shells reach us, so we’ll use the next twenty minutes to get as much cover to the port side as we can. As soon as we’re hit, Fel will remotely seal all hatches and slow down any intruders enough for us to get to them. The cargo hold is probably the most likely place they’ll hit, so let’s start here. Any questions?”

“What are the chances the boarding pod will be shot down by those synthetics we welded to the outer hull before?” asked Denno.

“Slim to none. They’ll use nukes to blind our sensors right before the pod makes its approach. Our only advantage is that they think they’ll be catching us un-prepared. If we can get to the attachment point before they exit the pod, we’ll ambush them. Let them spill out a little and then hit them all at once with as many Thudgun blasts as we can. They won’t know what hit them. All right, we got twenty minutes. Let’s get these crates stacked!”

My confidence was returning, and I hoped it was rubbing off on my men.

“Don’t worry, loverboy, I’ll protect you.” said Artemis as she punched my shoulder.

“And who’ll protect you?”

“You will. You got my back, right?”

I sighed and nodded. “I guess I do.”

37.

We had only a brief window to get ready. We stacked up cargo crates into overlapping cover, and ensured that there was no cover to be had on the starboard side of the hold. The mess deck was a different matter. The best we could hope for was to unbolt the tabletops and unsecure the stools. I got the Argen to haul a few crates up from the hold and we would use those for cover. Maxine had given me an earful last time we used the mess tables for cover. Crege and I had to spend a couple of hours repairing them after our tussle with the Spear of Orion back in the Argessi System.

Sooner than we had hoped Tac announced that the shells were five minutes away from reaching us, so I left my motley crew of boarding defenders and headed back to the command module. The plan was to disperse the crew across several compartments prior to the attack. This would mean we had less of a chance of being wiped out should the boarding pod penetrate the hull in one hit, which was possible. It may give the enemy precious seconds to cut through the hull and disgorge the synthetics into our ship, but with the hatches between compartments sealed we could easily make up that time. In addition, I needed to be in the command module to get the bigger picture before I go help repel them. If I had misjudged the enemy captain’s plan I needed to be able to respond as the situation developed.

Zoe had asked me earlier what our chances were of avoiding the boarding pod, why risk letting it board us if we could add more distance to our manoeuvre and clear it all together. Fel and I had explained that with the massive acceleration that the pod was capable of, we’d have to thrust pretty hard to port to even have a remote chance of avoiding it. We’d lose our nanite net and we’d probably not have enough thrust to avoid it anyway. The best bet was to ambush the ambushers and turn the tables on our attackers.

I entered the bridge as the others were preparing to start our lateral burn to port.

“We’re as ready as we’re going to be.” I reported.

“I took the liberty of informing our absentee Captain of our situation. In case any boarders knocked on her door, that is.” mentioned Fel.

“Has she ever done this before?” asked Zoe. She looked a little more confident, her shaking had stopped and she was more relaxed now.

“No, but she took Eric’s death pretty hard. They’d spent most of their lives on this ship, you have to remember. Pretty much the closest thing to family she has.” I explained.

“Besides you.”

“True. But even Fel’negr only joined the Dreaming a couple of years before she got captain from my father. Eric was crew before Max joined.”

“It just seems so out of character for her, though. I thought she’d be pushing all that aside and soldiering on, especially considering our circumstances.”

“It…does seem a little belligerent of her, yes. But she believes in us enough to get this out of her system. She’ll be right in no time. She probably figures she’ll be a liability to us if we leave her in command right now. If she broke down while we were depending on her it would be worse than if we just didn’t include her in the chain of command at all.”

“I suppose I can see the wisdom in that. A little.”

“What our interim leader fails to mention,” offered Fel, “is that Maxine also knows that Seth is up to the task. She has faith in him to stand when she cannot.”

“Well…I wasn’t going to talk myself up, was I?”

“Endless effort, endless humility, endless modesty.”

Acting Captain Donovan shows unusual guile and cunning for his species. His chances of success are higher than anyone else on board the Dreaming of Atmosphere, given Captain Cooper’s incapacity.

“Thanks, Tac. I think.”

You are welcome. 27 seconds until convergence.

“Here we go. Just like we talked about. On my mark apply thrusters to port, seven seconds of burn then level out. Roll to port eleven degrees as well. Should present the boarding pod with our cargo hold…okay, engage manoeuvring thrusters.”

Zoe began to apply burn through our manoeuvring thrusters and the ship began to slide to port. Fel must have been going through concentration exercises with Zoe while I was gone, because she was handling the ship excellently. She was breathing steadily through her nose and mouth. A slight wildness to her eyes was the only indicator she was frightened.

“Here they come!” said Fel, “Detonation detected! Gamma rays are blinding our sensors. Shields holding. Alpha particles and neutrons detected scattering on our hull. Minor damage to the nanite net, but it’s repairing already.”

Sensors were down for 2 minutes 42 seconds.

“That’s their window then. Next round will be it. Any other detections?”

“Negative, the others appeared to be kinetic rounds, just as you predicted.”

“Tac, time to second convergence?”

31.2 seconds.

“Okay, twenty seconds – we thrust to port again. Same deal.”

The countdown ticked down to eleven seconds, then Zoe hit the thrusters once more. A slight nudge of the control stick and we tilted slightly. I grabbed the PA mic.

“All hands! Brace for impact!”

“Detonation detected! Another nuke! Sensors down!”

Suddenly the ship was hit by something hard that shunted us slightly off course. A great metal clunk reverberated throughout the ship.

“Hull breach detected! Aft cargo hold!”

“Art, Hergo and Denno! Prepare to repel boarders in aft cargo! I’m on the way!”

I got up and gave Zoe a quick kiss on the head before running off, Fel calling out for good luck. I ran aft, headed down the ladder well to the mess deck and slid down the ladder well rails to Deck 3. I caught the tail end of one of the Argen dashing through the hatch to the aft cargo hold and chased after him, readying my energy carbine.

We’d restored lighting to the hold after repairs had been finished in there, so there was ample light. We’d pulled as many of the cargo containers as we could out of their secured spots and dragged them to the port side of the hold, but there was still several large containers spaced around the hold. Even with Art’s powered exo-rig we couldn’t move them without dropping gravity from the compartment, and we just didn’t have time to spool the grav-plates down and then up again in time to fight. I’d rather we had gravity, and give the enemy a few pieces of cover.

It didn’t take much to find where they were attached. Luckily the pod hadn’t punched clean through the hull, we still have about forty five seconds before they could cut their way through the plating. We gathered around the circular hole the synthetics were cutting away, setting up overlapping fields of fire. Art and I were in the centre, with the Argen on either side of us. There was a small kill zone in front of the hole, not the largest space but better than nothing.

“We give them three seconds to pile out and then we hit them with everything. They’ll probably keep pushing, so I want us all to fall back after the initial barrage to that clearing we made in the middle. Get your head down into cover, but make sure you can see at least one of us still. Ready?”

They all nodded grimly. We watch the last metre of inner hull get cut, as the bright sparks flew out of the glowing edge towards the deck. When the burning cut got to the bottom it suddenly stopped and there was a moment of silence.

Clank!

The newly cut hatch was smashed to the deck and a hunched metallic form barged out of the hole. The synthetic was huge, easily two and a half metres tall, and the same again wide. It had hunched up to fit through the hatch, an armoured shield held before it like another chunk of hull plating. As it barged out a personal shield winked into existence as well. A small, glowing red optical sensor could be seen peering through a slot in the large shield. It was on two legs, with a tail behind it for balance and it moved with a shuffling gait.

“Hergo, Denno, hold your fire! Art, we draw its attention!” I yelled. Our two rapid fire energy weapons hammered into the shield, but were deflected harmlessly off it and onto the deck. Little glowing red patches remained where several rounds hit the same spot. It did the trick, however. The hulking synthetic stomped its way over to us and when it was only a few metres from us, I called out to the Argen.

“Thudguns! Now!” The Argen fired their guns at the robot’s flanks, bypassing the giant shield it held. In seconds the energy shield popped with a flash and fizzle, and several concussive blasts hammered into the synthetic’s armour. The shield was yanked from its upheld appendage and I got my first proper look at it.

The monster was resting on short, squat legs that bent backwards and rested on haunches. Its central mass was a great barrel like affair, a solid armoured plate with several glowing red optical sensors spaced at different angles. It had three arms, one which had once held the giant shield, now a sparking dangle of torn wires and squirting hydraulic fluid, the others ending in large grasping claws. There was no head, the upper body simply ending at the barrel torso.

“Look out!” called one of the Argen. I dived to one side as a volley of hard light projectiles flew right at me. Over the giant robot’s shoulder flew a dozen small, bat shaped drones. Where I lay I could see through the big synthetic’s legs and saw a cloud of even smaller buzzing drones spew out of the boarding pod.

“Tranq-drones!” called Art. Shit, we were in trouble. Tranq-drones were exactly what they sounded like. Small drones about the size of your fist that could deliver a sedating shot of a drugs that would knock you out in moments. Riot police were fond of using them. The other flyers were rapid firing security flyers. Nasty in swarms, and deadly in close confines. Unless you had Thudguns.

“Thudguns on the flyers! Fall back towards forward cargo!” I ordered. The big synthetic swung a mighty fist in my direction, in a great arcing downward haymaker, but I activated Spatial Translation and appeared at the top of a nearby cargo container. I unleashed a barrage of shots with my carbine, but they mostly just petered out on the armour bulk of the synthetic. From my vantage point I could see several regular sized assault synthetics file out of the boarding pod and disperse as my allies fell back and gave up ground.

The two Thudguns pounded into the swarm of tranq-drones and flyers, taking down half of their number in a matter of seconds. This caused the assault synthetics to home in on them as the highest threat. I had to intervene before Hergo and Denno were hit. A quick glance at Art showed her engaging the giant synthetic in hand to hand, her strength bolstered by the exo-rig, and she seemed to be holding her own, so I leapt across to another container and jumped down onto the backs of two synthetics. I crashed down hard, completely smashing one and causing the other to collapse in a heap of twisted metal and flailing limbs. I finished it off with a three round burst at close range.

Two more synthetics rounded the corner and before they could get off a shot I sent a blast of Ionise into them both. Lightning played over their chassis and they shuddered and jittered about. Sparks flew out of one of their optical sensors as it popped, and I opened up with a barrage of shots to take them out. I rolled backwards and to the right as several projectiles hammered into the container bulkhead, fired from a flyer drone that had me in its sights. I brought up my nano-shield and repelled another several shots from it as I returned fire, knocking it out of the air.

More synthetics were piling out of the boarding pod. I checked the Argen I had moved to assist, and made sure he got to cover, then translated to the roof of a container again. I saw the flash of a shield go out about fifteen metres away in the direction the other Argen had run. I leaped over to another container and almost got my undercarriage shot off by a quick reacting trio of synthetics that were traversing between the containers. I kept running, dashing across two more containers before I saw Hergo (I think) hunkering down behind a couple of crates. Four synthetics were pinning him down with fire while another moved to flank him.

I shot a blast of Ionise at the flanking synthetic and then leapt at the four firing ones. As I arced through the air a couple tracked their fire upwards to intercept me. Before the first one reached my shield I translated again and landed behind them, spinning as I appeared and stitching dozens of shots into their backs. The synthetics were unable to adjust their tactics, unable to compute what had happened. The last one went down in a hail of gunfire still firing blindly into the crate that Hergo hid behind. He popped up and fired a blast at the shuddering, paralysed synthetic and sent it smashing into the bulkhead like a bucket of tossed nuts and bolts.

“Seth!” he called, pointing behind me. I felt a sharp pain in my shoulder and twirled about, throwing a tranq-drone off my back. I felt a warm numbness spreading about my shoulder. I fell to my knees and my head began to swim. On instinct, I sent nanites flooding through my blood stream and activated the Repair paradigm.

I could hear my heart beat, and the blood rushing through my ears. It was like a deep drum beat. Boom, boom, boom, boom. I was dimly aware of someone dragging me to cover, and I could make out bright flashes of light and colour.

I must have blacked out completely because next thing I knew I was staring down at Artemis’ arse, my head banging against the exo-rig frame as I was carried. I flailed about and she dropped me in a hurry. Art swung about and fired off several shots, and two rounds caught her rig. I could smell burning metal and heated lubricants. Hergo was with us, he grabbed my head and gave me a shake.