Raising Caine - eARC (12 page)

Ayana leaned forward to peer around Kozakowski, who was still staring out the windows like an utter idiot—and, in the portside bow monitor, she saw four figures gliding to a halt near the outer hatch of airlock C-2. Each wore a heavier, bulkier spacesuit, the torso covered by armored plates. And their weapons—“Captain Velho, the primary boarding attempt is taking place now at airlock Charlie-Two. I repeat, primary boarding attempt is under way at Charlie-Two, not Foxtrot-Twelve.” She stared into Kozakowski’s almost-surprised eyes. “You weren’t watching the monitors?”

“The monitors?” He sounded puzzled. “I wanted to make sure they didn’t come near us here on the bridge.”

“You—?”
Can Kozakowski really be that stupid, that
—? Ayana leaned away from the man before she was conscious of doing so:
no, he
can’t
be that stupid. No one can. I should shoot him now—but I have no proof.

In her earbud, Ayana heard Jorge shouting for several fire-teams to double back to Charlie Two. But Ayana knew those reinforcements were already too late: one of the four boarders was entering a code into the external control panel. And there wasn’t enough time to crash the computer or override the systems.

Not anymore.

* * *

Brenlor’s voice was harsh. “Idrem, what is delaying you?”

If you had a genuine interest in anything other than weaponcraft, you might know.
“Brenlor, simultaneously opening both the outer and inner hatches of an airlock is a difficult override to achieve, even if one has the codes. There are built-in safety constraints that preclude—”

“Just be swift in your task, Idrem.”

“I shall.”
And I shall not title you Srin or any of the other obeisances you especially want from
me
, since you know I am your superior in every way but one: I lack the Blood of the First Line of the First Family. Although, given the failures of that Line’s Extirpated Hegemons, I suspect their geneline had already been corrupted
—

The airlock’s external panel began flashing red, along with all the lights ringing the outer hatch. “Brenlor, we are ready.”

“Assault positions,” Brenlor ordered over the tactical channel. “Vranut, you enter. I shall cover, then follow. Idrem, you and Jesel secure the inner hatch behind us.”

Vranut was already in position when Idrem warned, “The hatch will open very quickly. I am invoking an emergency protocol for rapidly expelling contaminants or extinguishing a fire.”

“I am ready,” Vranut replied, setting his needler to low power and maximum rate of fire.

“On three. One, two—”

On “three,” Idrem hit the entry tab; the outer hatch flung itself aside. Vranut was halfway in the doorway, started, and with catlike speed and grace, rolled himself back out—just in time to avoid a flailing human as he tumbled out into space. The Aboriginal was wearing a light duty suit, trailing a snapped lanyard. The garment was already beginning to balloon. Unrated for full vacuum, the occupant would not live long enough to deplete the small life support unit strapped across his shoulders.

Vranut peeked back into the airlock cautiously, then entered low and fast against the diminishing outrush of atmosphere and detritus. Sparks and chips marked where defensive fire began seeking him.

Brenlor extended his weapon around the rim of the outer airlock hatch. “I see them,” he muttered, playing his coil gun about slightly so that it transfered the whole interior picture to his HUD. “Transmitting.”

The view from his weapon’s scope was now on each of the four boarders’ HUDs. Idrem studied the tactical situation: three defenders just recovering from the outdraft of the explosive decompression, half concealed in doorways on the entry corridor. Further on, at a tee intersection, there was what appeared to be a barricade behind which several indistinct figures lurked.

“We’ve surprised them,” Brenlor shouted. “Vranut, prepare to advance. We will fire high-power bursts to clear the near doorways. You are to take cover in the furthest one you can reach.”

“And Vranut,” added Idrem, “I will follow up with a grenade down the hall.” He stare-selected a spot just behind and beneath the barricade, letting his eye remain fixed until a crosshair appeared at the desired point. “Wait until it discharges. It should interrupt their fire for several seconds.”
Or perhaps permanently.

Brenlor grunted something that sounded like consent, then yelled. “All fire!”

Without exposing any part of themselves other than their weapons, Brenlor and the ’sul named Jesel set their needlers on maximum propulsive power and began firing four round bursts. In the HUD, Idrem could see the four point two millimeter projectiles go through defenders and the doorjambs behind which they hid.

Idrem did not wait for the bodies to begin their slow slump to the deck. He leaned his grenade launcher around the corner, depressed the trigger that showed the thiry-eight millimeter self-seeking rocket grenade the aim point he had stare-selected, and then squeezed the firing trigger. The grenade sped towards its target, self-correcting for any post-firing motion of the launch tube with micro thrusters while the grenade launcher itself selectively counter-vented the propulsive gases to eliminate muzzle jump and recoil.

The grenade exploded—noiselessly in the air-evacuated corridor—sending obstacles and bodies spinning away from its point of detonation.

Vranut did not wait for Brenlor’s “Advance!” Consistent with training and reflexes ingrained since he first sprouted facial hair, the Evolved maintained a low posture as he glide-sprinted forward, making it to the furthest doorway along the corridor. He turned to wave the other three boarders inside with one hand, keeping his weapon pointed back toward the ruined barricade with the other. His weapon’s scope evidently showed him a defender rising up from the blast, wielding an archaic assault rifle. Without turning, Vranut used the HUD to aim at the figure behind him, squeezed off a low-power five-round burst. Three of the rounds hit and were stopped by the tangled remains of the barricade; the other two made pin-hole puncture marks in the defender’s chest. The four point two millimeter flechettes’ biosensitive nanytes immediately registered contact with living tissue. The stabilizing fins snapped backward and perpendicular to the axis of the penetrator core, inducing wild cavitation before they emerged, corkscrewing, from just beneath the Aboriginal’s scapula. In contrast to the modest entry trauma, the exit wounds were marked by broad gouts of blood.

“Corridor cleared,” Vranut reported as the others took shelter in the doorways.

Except Idrem, who remained at the control panel alongside the interior airlock hatch. He entered the codes for full override authority, triggered both doors to close—and then the illuminated keypad grew dark. The roaring cyclone of the automated repressurization system died down to an anemic wheeze, and amber hazard lights began glowing along the junctures of the deck and the bulkheads.

“What is it? What’s happened?” Brenlor demanded.

“I believe the Aboriginals have performed an abrupt termination of their computer’s function. They have ‘crashed’ it, in their parlance.”

“So they no longer have control of the ship?” Brenlor’s voice was not merely eager, but malicious.

“No, but nor do we.”
Although I was about to secure it.

“Then they are helpless.”

“They have fewer options. But now, so do we. I can no longer terminate their life support, nor can I secure tactical advantages by controlling bulkheads, lighting, and other on-board systems.”

“They are not needed.” Brenlor rolled out of from behind the cover of a doorway and into the corridor. “And I suspect they won’t have many defenders left.” He slid a thick tube off his back and began undoing one tightly sealed end. “Jesel, check for thermal blooms at the intersection.”

Jesel complied, moving forward and turning up the sensitivity of his faceplate’s built-in thermal imaging sensor. He stopped about three meters away from the corner. “Faint signatures to the left; none to the right.”

“We might miss some of the defenders, particularly if their duty suits are sealed and fitted with cold cans,” Vranut pointed out.

“It is unlikely that they are taking precautions to conceal their body heat,” Brenlor countered. “Look at these.” He toed a dead Aboriginal. “They’ve left their helmets unsealed. Probably to conserve the pittance of air they have in their tanks. But today, that conservation of resources will prove their undoing.”

“How?” Jesel asked.

“Because today they are going to meet these.” Brenlor smiled as the lid of the canister came off with a depressurizing hiss. The open mouth was a honeycomb of twenty-two hexes in two concentric rings around one central hex. A hideous head, somewhat larger than that of the animal that the Aboriginals called a weasel, popped out of one of the cells of the honeycomb.

Three similar heads followed shortly. In the thin air, the creatures emitted coarse, clattering whines, akin to sand being tossed into a desk fan. “These are upt’theel,” Brenlor explained with a smile. “They are old friends of our Family, used for boarding or other assaults where a well-prepared defender has taken refuge in tunnels and similar, close structures.”

More upt’theel heads emerged from the canister. Idrem had only seen the diminutive monsters twice before, had only used them once, and did not relish the memory. The upt’theel was a long-bodied octoped with chitinous legs that were even sharper than they looked. Its almost neckless head was liberally and evenly speckled with light sensors, with two genuine eyes directly above the mouth. Its wide-hinged jaw hung open to pull in as much of the thin air as possible, revealing a serrated ridge in place of teeth. The ridge was the color of obsidian and, by repute, harder than basalt.

“Should we not be moving?” Vranut asked from the corner of the intersection.

Brenlor watched the other creatures emerge, with the same rapt fascination of the Evolved who patronized helot death-arenas. “We do not need to rush. Their slow movements tell us that no enemies are near.”

“They are…Awakened?” Jesel asked.

Brenlor laughed aloud. “Idiot. No, of course not. But their sense of smell is acute. They will detect a carbon-based animal, or its decaying flesh, quite readily.”

“So the other defenders of this ingress point have fled?” Jesel sounded dubious.

Idrem looked at Vranut, who ran a thermal imaging sweep down either branch of the tee intersection.

Vranut shook his head. “No; they are edging closer again.”

Brenlor actually smiled. “Then let us welcome them back.” Taking an opaque vial off his light cuirass’s left load-strap, he walked to Vranut’s position, the canister of upt’theel in his other hand. “They are unique creatures.” He spoke with the didactic detachment of an aficionado. “Their world was at the inner edge of the habitable zone—such as it is—of a blue-white giant. Not many species can evolve, much less thrive, under the gaze of such a punishing furnace of heat and radioactivity. Yet this species did.” Brenlor laid the canister down. “It is always gratifying to watch them do their work.” He slung the opaque vial around the left-hand corner, ending the toss with a sharp twist of his wrist. The glass container smacked into a wall: its shattering elicited one or two cries of caution from the Aboriginals who had apparently been trying to sneak up on the boarders.

The sand-and-fan whine of several of the upt’theel suddenly rose to a full chorus of pebbles-into-a-turboprop screeching. Like a horde of perverse lemmings mutated into pangolin-centipede-gila monster hybrids, the strange beasts flowed out of the honeycomb cells of the container with serpentine fluidity, snuffling as they sped around the corner. Not one bothered to look down the other, right-hand extension of the corridor.

Idrem nodded in that direction. “Apparently, the right hand turn is clear.” Meaning that the most direct path to the bridge was open.

Brenlor was unconcered. “By the time the upt’theel reach the rotting bait I’ve thrown down the hall, they will smell the Aboriginals who are approaching.”

“And this is why we remain with suits sealed?” Jesel asked.

“Yes. As long as the upt’theel cannot smell us, we are of no more interest to them than the bulkheads.”

Stony, screeching disputes—probably over Brenlor’s morsel of bait—rose, and then were suddenly still.

“Ah,” said Brenlor, “they have the new scent.”

Jesel made toward the corner aggressively, his needler coming up.

Brenlor put a restraining hand upon his arm. “Give them a moment to get started. It’s easier for us. And more gratifying for them.”

Around the corner, a fusillade of panicked gunfire erupted, followed closely by high-pitched human screams.

* * *

Ayana could not breathe as she watched the monitors displaying the approaches to airlock C-2. A swarm of small creatures akin to crustacean weasels had emerged from one of the attackers’ containers and were now flowing like a low, rolling tide toward a half dozen defenders preparing an ambush in the corridor beyond the ruined barricade.

The creatures’ sinuous serpentine advance ensured that only a few were hit by the crew’s gunfire, mostly by their one autoshotgun. Then, as the strange animals neared the defenders, they launched into what appeared to be a somersault.

But the somersault did not end. With their eight liberally jointed legs rolling them forward, their exoskeletal back plates worked like the rim of a wheel. The defenders, apparently perplexed as much as unnerved, fired wildly. The duty-suited humans splattered a few more of the attacking beasts into chunks just before discovering that they had emptied their magazines. The rolling creatures bore in among them like a herd of animate hoops.

The small predators used the speed they had accumulated by uncoiling straight out of their final revolution into a mouth-first leap at their prey. Even before the creatures’ claws and legs started slicing at and embedding in the flesh of the defenders, their sawlike jaws were at work, burrowing into viscera. Ayana felt bile jet up into her mouth as the killer weasel-crustaceans became more akin to into gut-burrowing worms, their progress marked by intermittent spurts of blood and ruined intestines. Their screaming victims tried yanking them out, only to slice their hands open on the knife-like edges of the beasts’ bodies and legs.