The Trials (The Red Trilogy Book 2) (32 page)

I scan the sky for the helicopter. “Tuttle, Moon, what’s your ETA?”

Delphi answers, “They’re not coming.”

“What? Why? We can’t run this operation with just the four of us.”

Jaynie breaks in. “We
are
going to run the operation. We’ve got no choice.”

“Well, what the fuck happened?”

“The pilot called it off,” Delphi explains. “He felt it was too dangerous to approach the ship again, and he claimed he was running out of fuel.”

The
Non-Negotiable
completes its U-turn. We are heading back to the coast. Wind is howling through the broken
window and white spray is spinning off the wave crests, but the rain has lightened enough that I can see a distant object beneath the clouds, moving west ahead of us. The helicopter. A second later, it disappears.

Nolan drops in through the broken window. “The pilot tried to pull out after dropping you and Harvey. Vasquez let him know that was not going to happen.”

I wonder how persuasive she was, but I don’t ask because it doesn’t matter. We aren’t getting Tuttle and Moon. It will be just the four of us against twelve mercs who know the ship better than we do and who are sure to be better armed—but Jaynie is right. This is still a no-choice mission.

A new sound grabs my attention. My helmet audio amplifies the rustling and creaking of movement on the other side of the closed door to the stairs. I see the door handle jiggle. “Back up!” I warn, gesturing at Nolan. “Back up, they’re going to blow the door.”

I turn my back, putting my arms around the helmsman to shield her just as the grenade goes off. The concussion kicks hard. A chunk of debris slams against my helmet, leaving my skull vibrating, while searing heat rolls around me. I shove the helmsman to the floor, then turn, bringing my HITR to my shoulder as I assess the situation:

The security door is hanging on its hinges, singed, its lock blown. The aluminum stairway beyond is empty, but at the bottom of the stairs are two armored soldiers, their assault rifles aimed at me. They could have lobbed a second grenade through the doorway and destroyed us, but that would have taken out the bridge crew too and damaged the equipment. It’s good to know they have some restraint.

I don’t.

My finger squeezes the second trigger of my M-CL
1
a, launching a grenade right between them. The brightness and the concussion of the explosion are filtered by my helmet.
As my visor clears, I look again down the stairway. The walls are charred, but I don’t see any bodies.

“Behind you,” Nolan warns.

I spin around to see the captain creeping on her belly. Following her gaze, I see her pistol still lying on the deck. When I step in front of her, she stops. The helmsman is still crouched on the floor by her station, weeping, her palms pressed against her ears, while outside there’s a firefight. I want to send Nolan outside to help. I want to go down those stairs and pursue the enemy. But we have to stay with the prisoners. We have to hold the bridge.

I pick up the stray pistol, check the safety, and drop the weapon into my vest while Nolan moves to the window. He has his HITR ready, but he’s not shooting.

I pull the helmsman to her feet and return her to her station. Then I zip-tie the captain’s hands behind her back, finishing off with a push against her shoulder blades to encourage her to stay on the floor.

My helmet filters what I hear, muting the sound of the firefight, amplifying a noise from below, like something being dragged. I make a decision. “Nolan, I’m going downstairs.”

“What’s downstairs, Shelley?” Jaynie asks in terse syllables.

“Half-dead merc, I think. Also, Blue and Gold. Fucking hope so, anyway. We need to confirm it, Jaynie. We need to make sure the nukes don’t go overboard on the way back to port.”

The pace of shooting picks up and she doesn’t answer. Then the shooting stops. I scan my squad icons. Moon and Tuttle display as missing. Harvey and Nolan are nominal. But Jaynie is yellow. She’s showing a rapid heart rate and declining blood pressure.

“Goddamn it, Jaynie, are you hit?”

“Roger that,” she says in a strained whisper amplified by my audio.

“I’m coming after you.”

“No, I’m coming in.”

“I’m with her, LT,” Harvey says.

“Get the door,” Delphi orders.

I open the door to the observation deck, just wide enough for them to slip in.

Though Jaynie is still moving under her own momentum, the upper half of her right arm is a bloody mess.

“Hope the other guy looks worse,” Nolan says.

“Damn straight he does,” Harvey answers, kicking the door shut behind her.

“Harvey, Nolan,” I say. “Make sure nobody moves out there.”

The deck rolls and Jaynie staggers. I catch her by an arm strut before she can go down. “Come over here, and sit.”

“I can fucking take care of myself!”

“Endorphins pumping, huh?”

“Go fuck yourself, Shelley.”

“
Sit
,” I insist.

To my relief, she does.

I get out my first-aid kit and go to work while Harvey and Nolan keep watch. Jaynie’s arm is broken. I hook her up with artificial blood and antibiotics. Then I clean up the wound and set the bone using an air splint. “You’re not going to pass out on me, are you, Jaynie?”

“Like I said, Shelley. Go fuck yourself.”

“I love you too.” I slap a stimulant patch on her neck. “But you’ve got to go back to work. Try to stand.”

“I can fucking stand!”

And she does. She turns her head, scanning the back of the ship. Her rig will hold her up; it’ll help her hold her weapon, and her tactical AI will help her aim it; it will even shoot if she lets it. She should be functional for a while. “Shelley,” she says. Gen-com boosts her voice, but I can tell
she’s whispering through gritted teeth. “You need to move. Like you said. Secure Blue and Gold.”

“Roger that, ma’am. I’m taking Harvey with me.”

“Go. Do it.”

“Jaynie, you damn well better not pass out while I’m gone. I don’t want to get back here and find Nolan on his own.”

“Just find Blue and Gold.”

“I will.”

“And don’t let them push the nukes overboard—and don’t get Harvey killed.”

•   •   •   •

There are three paths to the cargo hold:

The first is an interior assault, down the stairs from the bridge and through the personnel deck—territory we know is held by the enemy.

The second is outside: down a ladder from the observation deck to the roof of the personnel deck, and then down another ladder. After that it’s a run halfway across the open-air container deck to the elevator—which is also held by the enemy, with the further drawback that even if we get aboard the elevator, we will have to ride it down past the personnel deck.

The third route skips the elevator. We run all the way across the container deck to where an uncovered stairway drops two stories down the side of the ship to a stern access door that opens directly into the hold.

I opt for the third route, betting it will give me the best chance to get close to Blue and Gold before Uther-Fen intercepts me—but to get across the container deck, Harvey and I are going to need covering fire. The bridge commands a view of almost all of the empty deck, so it makes a good vantage—except the heavy glass windows are
in the way. Nolan has the breaching shotgun. He uses it to take out two of the panes.

A freezing wind howls in as he reloads and hands the shotgun to me. “Might be a good idea to take this.”

“Thanks.”

Our prisoners are shivering, so I spend a minute getting an emergency blanket out of my pack. I wrap that around the captain, and hand an IR-blocking cloak to the helmsman, while Harvey takes care of the navigator. Better than nothing.

“Get going, Shelley,” Jaynie says as she and Nolan set up by the empty window frames.

“Yes, ma’am.”

I get my pack on and sling the shotgun behind it. My HITR I hold in two hands. “Delphi, you there?”

“I’m here,” she says in her handler’s businesslike voice.

I turn to Harvey. “Ready?”

“Born ready, sir.”

“Let’s go, then.”

We crouch by the starboard door.

“On three,” Jaynie whispers. “One, two,
three
.”

I push the door open. Then I run bent over to the first ladder. It’s a two-meter jump to the roof of the personnel deck. I hit with a
clang!
then cross the roof in three strides. Harvey bangs down behind me as I make the second jump, down to the container deck. The shooting starts while I’m still in the air. I can’t tell where it’s coming from, but there’s nowhere to hide anyway. The shocks on my dead sister soften the impact when I hit, and then I’m running all out beneath a roof of photovoltaic panels, my footplates banging against the aluminum deck. I hear Harvey pounding behind me. “One down,” Delphi says calmly as someone starts screaming. I don’t look to see who it is.

Halfway across the deck, I spot a figure at the top of the
stairs. More shooting. This time I hear rounds whizzing from behind me, passing just above my shoulder; got to be coming from the bridge. I sure as fuck hope Jaynie’s aim is steady. I never ever want to go out by friendly fire.

The fusillade serves its purpose, forcing the figure to retreat down the stairs and out of sight. Seconds later I’m there, my HITR covering the stairway. The first flight drops to a platform, part of a catwalk on the side of the ship. The catwalk leads back to a second flight of stairs that’s aligned beneath the first. When I see my target turning to bound down the second flight, I shoot a three-round burst. The bullets punch through the upper stairs, knocking the target down. But when I peer between the stairs I can still see motion, so I shoot again. The movement stops.

“One down,” I report.

“Stairs clear?” Harvey asks as she pounds up beside me.

“No enemy in sight.”

“This one’s mine.”

“Harvey, no!”

Too late. She grabs the rail with her arm hook and uses it to pivot, launching herself from the container deck down to the first platform. A wave lifts the stern, showering her with spray as she hits with a loud
bang!
that shakes the whole stairway. She pivots, darting along the catwalk to the top of the next flight. I follow her lead, cursing silently because it’s my job to go first and Harvey damn well knows it.

When I reach the platform, I duck back against the side of the ship. A glance down shows me a body in a black Uther-Fen uniform draped on the stairs below. Harvey vaults it. She’s about to land at the foot of the stairs when someone out of my line of sight, no doubt assigned to guard the stern cargo doors, fires a three-shot burst that catches her in the air.

The only thing between her and the sea is a pipe railing.

The bullets impact her chest armor, spinning her around just as the stern drops away. She slams into the top rail, taking the impact on the lumbar struts of her dead sister and she flips over, dropping shoulders-down into the water with hardly a splash, her footplates disappearing last beneath the opaque gray surface and she is gone.

The ship moves on, while on my visor Harvey’s status icon updates to orange—
missing
. Not deceased. Just lost—gone too deep for her transmission to reach me.

But she is still alive.

She has to be. The bullets would not have penetrated her armor. The impact might have stopped her heart though. Certainly, it would have temporarily stopped her breathing.

She might not be conscious.

If she’s not conscious, she won’t be able to get out of her gear.

And her gear is pulling her straight to the bottom.

And if I go after her, my gear will pull me to the bottom too.

But she is alive.

All this in a half second of horror.

“Jaynie, cut the engines.”

Even as I say it, it’s done: The engines run idle, the wake ceases to churn, and the ship settles into the water, heaving in the swells, surrounded by the slow breathing of the sea.

“Thirty seconds,” Jaynie says. “If she doesn’t surface in thirty seconds, she’s gone.”

With my back to the ship’s side, I edge along the catwalk until I can peer down and around at the stern. No one’s in sight. This is the roll-on/roll-off access point. The closed doors to the cargo hold are recessed. Whoever shot Harvey is back there, where I can’t see them without exposing myself.

I look around at the ocean, look for some sign of Harvey, anything, a dark spot rising with the coming swell. “Delphi? Do you see her?”

“No.”

There’s nothing but blowing sea spray.

I tap into the feed from the muzzle cam of my HITR. Steadying my shoulder against the side of the ship, I reach with my weapon around the corner and do a quick sweep, faster than I can process, but my AI can handle the pace. It marks a target. I line up, and the AI fires a grenade.

As the explosion goes off I look again at the ocean.

Nothing.

I use my HITR to check around the corner again. My AI doesn’t find a target this time. I lean over to check for myself. There’s a burned body slumped against the closed cargo door.

I take one more look at the ocean. Nothing’s out there. I wonder if Harvey has drowned yet or if she’s still fighting for her life a hundred feet down.

In a tone of quiet fury Jaynie says, “She’s gone.” The ship’s engines engage again. “Shelley?”

“I’m here.”

She’s whispering, but gen-com boosts the volume. “We’re pinned down here. We can’t help you. But this is still a no-choice mission.”

“Roger that.”

“I want evidence that Blue and Gold are really here. I want at least that.”

“Roger that, Jaynie. I’m going in.”

“For Harvey,” she says.

“For Harvey.”

I get a hip up on the top railing, pivot over the top, and drop to the narrow stern deck, the noise I make mostly covered by the churning white wake behind the ship. “Delphi, you with me?”

“I’m with you, Shelley.” Her voice is soft, but controlled.

I step over the body to reach the access door and then, cautiously, I test the handle. The door is locked. I consider using the breaching shotgun, but I want my HITR in my hands when that door opens. So I copy the Uther-Fen strategy of rigging a grenade on the door handle, stepping away around the corner while it goes off. When I look again, the door is ajar.