Trail of Evil - eARC (11 page)

“Daddy?” she managed to get out just as the world behind her seemed to fly apart.

The wall behind her opened up and the rush of air and debris slammed into her like the shockwave from a bomb. Dee’s vision began to tunnel in and with her last struggle for air she saw Rackman’s body sucked out of the ship into space behind her. She got very cold almost immediately.

“Davy . . .” The world went black and the voice of her AIC screaming at her inside her head trailed off into the distant void.

Chapter 15

November 7, 2406 AD

27 Light-years from the Sol System

Monday, 5:23 PM, Expeditionary Mission Standard Time

Alexander grabbed the downed buddy handle on the back of Gunny Suez’s suit and tossed with all his suit’s strength. The AEM pulled free of the bots and banged into the edge of the hole that the mecha pilots had made. Then the AEM flung helplessly out into space. Moore popped several grenades from his shoulder launchers loose and dove through the opening himself. The corridor behind him erupted into white-orange plasma with scattered bits of metal bots being flung asunder. The force from the exploding grenades acted like a volcano tossing him head over feet out into space. Moore did his best to fire his boots and his rifle to slow the tumbling down.

Abby! Keep Dee in the tracker, DTM!

I’ve got her.
Abigail illuminated her trajectory in his mindview of the battlescape. She was just ahead of them, tumbling out of his reach.

The blue arc of her path tracked right into the opening cockpit of an eagle-mode FM-12. The pilot inside scrambled at her to pull her arms and legs in as the cockpit canopy lowered. Moore breathed a sigh of relief. He turned as best he could to see a similar view of the SEAL. Moore could feel his trajectory reaching apogee above the ship and he started to fall back to the
Madira’s
artificial gravity well.

“Jawbone! Get these three to the aft hangar medvac center!” he said over the tac-net.

“Roger that, General. Why don’t you come with us?” Jawbone said as a matter of fact rather than asking. Moore watched as the Marine mecha rolled from bot to eagle and a big armored hand reached out and grabbed him. “Hang on. We’ll be there in a minute.”

Captain Jacob “Freebird” Seely scrambled as best he could to grab Dee by the arms and legs and slow her tumble, but she slammed into the canopy transparasteel hard. Freebird had his AIC cycle the canopy down while he pulled her down on top of him. The FM-12 cockpit was big and roomy but it wasn’t designed for two people. Had Dee been wearing a flight suit she probably wouldn’t have fit. As it was, she was wearing very little clothing at all and her body was covered in blood pretty much from head to toe. The blood had congealed in some places on her T-shirt and frozen in others. Freebird figured that she would probably look even bloodier if some of it hadn’t immediately begun to boil off when she hit the vacuum of space.

Freebird squirmed into his seat as best he could and gave the controls over to his AIC. He quickly assessed the soldier’s wounds and realized that she was in worse than critical shape. The atmosphere in the cockpit cycled on and Jacob popped his helmet visor.

“Apple1! Apple1!” He called Dee’s mecha jock handle. Pilot habits died hard. “Come on, Apple! Stay with me.”

Freebird worked his hand down to his thigh and popped out an immunoboost injector from his suit. He slapped the tube to Dee’s throat and triggered the release. The injection hissed and emptied into her.

“Freebird, what’s the status on your patient?” Jawbone’s voice asked over the tac-net speakers.

“She’s in bad shape, Jaw. Multiple severe wounds and she’s not breathing. I administered immunoboost.” Freebird thought for a second about what to do next. “If she had a suit we could defib her.” The fighter pilot e-suits and AEMs and tank driver suits all had basic med systems that could shock a stopped heart among many other things. But Dee was not in her suit and Freebird wasn’t sure what to do to get her heart beating again.

“Captain Seely,” a new voice joined the conversation.

“Seely here.”

“Seely, this is medical officer Taggart. Your AIC is bringing you in fine and has relayed Miss Moore’s vitals to us. You need to trigger her heartbeat. Without a pulse the immunoboost is not going to get anywhere in her system.”

“Roger that. What do I do?” Freebird asked. He could see the hangar bay landing lights cycling. He was only a minute or so out from landing and cycling open the cockpit.

“Every second counts here. You need to begin CPR now.”

“Roger that.” Freebird found the base of Dee’s sternum and started pushing her chest as best he could from the position he was in. There was no way he could bend down to breathe for her but he had an idea. He pulled the temporomandibular joint bite block mouthpiece from his helmet and slid it into Dee’s mouth. He held it in place with his left hand while he pumped her chest with his right.

Start cycling air and stems on the TMJ mouthpiece in time with me
, he thought to his AIC.

Understood.

The mouthpiece hissed, then Freebird pumped Dee’s chest several times. The mouthpiece hissed again. This continued for what Freebird felt was hours, but he knew it was no more than thirty or forty seconds before he felt the landing gear hit the deck of the
Sienna Madira’s
aft starboard hangar bay. The mecha was still rolling into its parking lane as the cockpit slid up and med techs were climbing on the moving plane.

“We’ve got her now, sir. Good job. We’ll take it from here.” One of the techs told him. The fighter rolled to a complete stop and two of the men lifted Dee’s body off of his lap and were racing her off on a gurney before he had time to catch his breath. Freebird looked down at his lap and gasped. It was covered in bright red blood.

Two other mecha fighters were rolling in behind him. One was in eagle-mode and had an AEM in its clutches. A med team rushed up underneath the hand of the mecha with a gurney. The AEM was released onto the hover gurney and whisked away. The other mecha rolling in was in fighter mode and was an almost identical scene to the one he’d just gone through. The med team crawled up on the mecha and pulled a man out of it. Freebird knew him. It was the SEAL that Apple1 had been spending a lot of time with. He looked to be in pretty bad shape, but he was screaming in pain which meant he was breathing and conscious.

Finally, Jawbone’s mecha screeched into the hangar in eagle-mode. As soon as she hit the ground an AEM bounced from the right hand of the mecha and thudded across the hangar deck. Freebird could see the four stars on the helmet as the AEM ran by. There was no doubt in his mind who that had been.

“Sehera, can you get to the aft medbay?” Moore called to his wife. He hoped that she had had enough sense not to follow him into the corridor with all the damned bots. Or at least he hoped that the Warlords were able to stop her from following him.

“I’m already on my way, Alexander. How is she?”

“Don’t know yet, but it doesn’t sound good.” Moore rounded the corner and slid to a stop just before the hatchway into the main medbay triage area. Wounded were already being brought in. Occasionally, a snap-back emergency teleport worked and a wounded soldier would appear there. But for some reason it wasn’t happening often. Alexander figured the dammed bots were jamming QMT operation as well.

Shit. I need to get on top of this.

Yes sir.

Get me a full status report. And, Abby, find out who’s running the bridge.

“Sir, they just rolled her into surgery.” One of the nurses stood at the entrway undaunted by the large armored Marine general. “You can’t go in now.”

“Patch me into her vitals and give me the coms of the O.R.” Moore ordered the nurse. He understood that the doctors didn’t need an AEM lumbering around the operating room in their way.

“Sir, I am not sure how to do that. But I will check on her for you.”

“Never mind,” Moore waved off the nurse.

Abby, patch us in.

Done, sir.

Put Sehera in the loop if she has Pamela with her.

I’ll patch it to her suit comms.

Good girl.

“Thank you, nurse.” Moore nodded gruffly and removed his helmet. He tossed it over his shoulder in standard AEM fashion.

“XO to Captain!”

“Moore here. Go, Firestorm.”

“Sir, we’re losing systems all across the bow of the ship and its spreading like wildfire. I’ve dispatched Marines and techs but we need a new plan,” the XO explained.

“Stay on top of it, Sally!” Moore thought for a second while doing his best to listen to the activity in the operating room.

“Her heart is ruptured and less than thirty percent intact. It will have to be replaced. Prepare the printer with her stemcell ink . . .” the voice of a doctor said in the background.

“Alexander!” Sehera rushed to his side and grasped him in an armored hug. “I can’t stand this.”

“She’s a soldier, Sehera. Comes with the job. She’ll make it.” Sehera looked at him as if she had a retort to that, but she must have thought better of it. She knew when situations were bigger than family discussions.

“Are we safe?” Sehera asked him.

“I don’t know. The bots are on the ship everywhere and are growing faster than we can contain them.” Moore multitasked simulations that Abigail ran through his mindview while he talked with his wife, the bridge, and listened to the doctors doing their best to save his daughter’s life.

“CHENG to Captain.”

“Moore here. Go, Joe.”

“Sir, the bots are doing something to the hyperdrive. At first I thought they were trying to blow it up but now I’m not sure,” Buckley replied.

“I need more than that, CHENG. What do you think they are doing?”

When it rains it pours,
Moore thought.

Yes, sir,
Abigail agreed.

“I, uh, think they are about to turn the projector on and hyperdrive us somewhere. And by the energy buildup it’s not anywhere around here.” Moore didn’t like the uncertainty in Buckley’s voice.

“Shut it down, Joe! Shut it down!”

“Shut it down!” Joe screamed over the humming noise coming from the hyperdrive projector control system.

“It’s not responding, sir!” one of the engineering techs replied.

“Everybody on me!” Joe said, not sure what to do next. The full complement of the engineering team and the supporting seamen and firemen and fireman apprentices converged on him as he made his way to the center of the room. He’d been in this situation in reverse. He’d had the problem of getting power to the projector but never the problem of too much power. He stood underneath the four-meter-in-diameter pink and purple swirling tube that ran the length of a major portion of the ship. The swirling motion of the plasma inside and the Cerenkov radiation was brighter than usual and color shifted even further into the violet than he’d ever seen.

“Come on, girl,” he said as he reached up with his hands and tapped the bottom of the conduit to the projector tube affectionately. Then he addressed his team with a somewhat whacky idea. Hell, it wasn’t that whacky—he’d actually done it before, twice. Well, the last time he’d done it was a simulation. The time before that time he did what he had in mind it worked, but—and there was always a “but” in these situations—it had nearly killed him and his first Engineer’s Mate. And that was years ago. The engine room had been rebuilt several times since then.

“Listen up, everyone. We haven’t got but a few minutes maybe before those damned bots jaunt us through space to who knows where. I have an idea what to do but I don’t know if it will work or not.”

“Oh shit no, Joe!” Keri replied. “A Buckley Maneuver won’t work in reverse.”

“Why not? We just overload the conduit between the tube and the power source and burn the conduit out. That way the projector can’t get power to it,” Joe responded. “We’re going to pull a cable from that power coupling on the jaunt drive projector here,” he pointed at the now infamous Buckley Junction. “Tie it around the junction housing and then drag it to both exit doors just like we’ve done before and then over here to the power unit for Aux Prop. The overload should blow out the conduit just before the Aux Prop junction. Now tell me a better solution and I’d be glad to implement it.” It was déjà vu all over again.

“Well, sir,” one of the firemen interrupted. “I’m not an engineer but this is a warship. Why don’t we just get a Marine down here to blow the conduit up or something.”

“Sorry fireman, that won’t work. We’re too close to the tube here and it would just arc across—” Benjamin started but Buckley interrupted her.

“Goddamned right! We can’t do it
here,
but we could do it further down the line!” Buckley pulled schematics of the power flow up into everyone’s DTM ship view and started pulling away layers and zooming into the hyperdrive systems.

“Look, right here. We can blow out this fifty-meter piece of conduit here and it should do. It is likely to be a hell of a bang but we won’t be slung off into space to who knows where.”

“The Warlords are heavily engaged in that location, sir.” One of the crew pointed out the blue force tracker dots one deck up from that location.

“Hmm.” Joe looked over it again. “Anybody have any other thoughts on this?”

“Joe, it will work. We should amp up the SIFs all around the area to minimize damage to the rest of the ship,” Benjamin replied.

“We do it then,” Joe ordered her. “CHENG to General Warboys.”

Chapter 16

November 7, 2406 AD

27 Light-years from the Sol System

Monday, 5:25 PM, Expeditionary Mission Standard Time

“Let me get this straight, Cheng, you WANT me to blow up the power conduits of our supercarrier?” General Warboys asked the chief engineer in disbelief.

“Yes, sir! If you don’t and soon, the bots will have complete control of the hyperdrive and they are ramping it up to jaunt us off to somewhere in deep space,” Buckley replied over the tac-net.

“Right here is all that has to go right?” Warboys highlighted the conduit image in their mutually shared DTM view. The direct-to-mind link lit up as the general thought about it.

“That’s the one!” Buckley approved. “My guess is that you have about ten minutes before the hyperdrive kicks in.”

“Understood CHENG. Warboys out.” Mason keyed the com to the Warlord’s tac-net channel. “Listen up, Warlords! We have a new objective. Two through Four are to form up around me and keep those goddamned bots off of me. Five through Ten form up on them and keep those goddamned bots off them!”

“Roger that, sir!” resounded from the team across the net.

“Sir, what is our objective?” Two asked.

“We have nine minutes and forty six seconds to blow out the main hyperdrive energy conduit two decks over and one down. It is right in the thick of bot country, so stay alert!”

Warboys rolled his tank over into hover mode and put all power to his forward structural integrity fields. The angular momentum and g-loading forced him to grunt back his breakfast and swallow some bile. The taste was just the way he liked it.

The battlescape view of the ship formed around him in a three-dimensional ball in his DTM mindview. The tanks behind him were painted blue and there were hundreds of blue ground pounder dots scattered about the periphery of the bot-controlled decks of the ship. As best he could tell the Warlords were driving a phalanx through the line of bots and there were no humans in harm’s way.

“Alright, Warlords, this is why they pay us the big bucks. Fox!” He grunted as he voice activated and fired a missile with the open impact detonation command. The missile squealed out from atop the tank leaving a blue ion trail in the ship’s atmosphere and then tore into the bulkhead at the end of the corridor. The hangar corridor was over five meters high and almost as wide but ended at a man-sized hatch. The missile expanded that with a bright orange and white erupting plasma ball that threw red hot glowing shards of bulkhead and deckplate in every direction. “Guns, guns, guns!” Mason followed up. The Warlord’s chatter started to pick up as the bots realized that the tankheads were attacking and penetrating the line.

“They’re jamming the QMs and RF, Warlords. Go to IR and eyeballs!” Warlords warned just as he released another missile. This one with the electro-optical/IR sensor package. “Fox Two!”

“Guns, guns, guns! Roger that, One!” Warlord Three responded. “I’m getting lots of motion track and acoustic pinging from the deckplate. Watch for them bursting through beneath and above us!”

“I have a track algorithm on the bastards.” Warlord Five said. “They are amassing thirty-seven meters off our two o’clock thirty degrees South Pole!”

“Seven! Your three nine line is eaten up! Watch it.”

“Guns, guns, guns. North Pole Two!”

“I got ’em Four. Fox Two!”

Mason put the hammer down and pounded his hovertank through the opening. The tank slammed into the jagged metal edges the missile had left at the hatchway. The impact slung him forward into his harness but his suit dampened the impact. Mason jiggled the stick in pitch, yaw, and roll and squirmed the hole out to be a little bigger than tank size. He then slammed the throttle forward, totally destroying what was left of what his mindview told him was a janitorial closet. The bulkhead gave way to the brunt of the tank and screeched against the structural integrity fields. Flashes of ionizing metal splattered in every direction as Mason protruded into another corridor that the DTM mindview labeled as the outer pressurized corridor. There were energy and plumbing conduits along the outer wall running in every direction. But the one he needed was a deck below.

“They’re bursting through the ceiling, One!” Mason was warned by one of his men. He could see the corridor ceiling above him and aftward about twenty meters open up like a vortex and bots began to pour from the event horizon.

“I got ’em, One,” Warlord Two replied. “Fox Two!”

“Get over here and help me out, Four!” Warlord Two ordered.

“Stay with ’em Warlords!” Mason shouted. He toggled the controls to bot-mode. His tank flipped upward and rolled over into a giant metal behemoth that came clanking down right fist first against the deck. Mason slammed his fists into the deck several times before he decided that wasn’t going to break through the deck plating fast enough. He bounced upward and flattened himself out for his back to slam against the corridor ceiling as he let loose another missile.

“SIFs on torso max! Fox!” Warboys shouted. The missile screeched out from his shoulder mount and exploded into the deck just fifteen meters below him. The SIF generators whined against the explosion that surrounded him and flashes of ionizing debris engulfed his bot-mode tank.

As the force of the explosion subsided Mason pitched over headfirst and fell through the opening in the deck. He came to rest on his feet staring head into thousands of bots in every direction. But most importantly, the hyperdrive power conduit was twenty meters ahead and running through the outer hull wall.

“I’ve got optical lock on the objective! Fox Two!” Warboys fired. The missile trailed outward at the conduit but almost immediately several bots sacrificed themselves into the missile, detonating it early. “Shit!”

The blast toppled Warboys over backwards and he was almost instantly overtaken by bots like a swarm of bees, killer ants, and cockroaches on a half-eaten donut. Mason rolled over to his hands and knees and forced the bot-mode tank to its feet all the while whirling, kicking, and swinging his arms to free himself.

“I got it, One!” Warlord Two dropped in beside him punching away several of the bots and then going to guns. “Guns, guns, guns.”

“Forget me! Go for the objective.” Warboys fired again. “Fox Two!”

“Roger that, One.” Warlord Two replied. “Fox Two!”

“Got your back, sir!” Warlords Three and Four dropped into position stomping and slinging bots in every direction.

“Fox Two!” Three commanded.

“Fox Two!” Four added.

The four missiles spun out into the bulkhead. Two of them were detonated by self-sacrificing bots but the resulting explosion opened the way for the other two that hit dead on center of the fifty-meter section of high power hyperdrive energy conduit.

“Bull’s-eye!” Four shouted.

The missiles created an explosion that was typical of the warheads. At first there was the orange and white firestorm, but as soon as the conduit SIFs failed the millions of terajoules of energy were released in a fraction of a second, blasting out a section of the ship the size of a football field. The resulting concussive wave shattered bots in every direction and forced a wall of flames and plasma forward and aftward for several hundred meters. Warlords One, Two, Three, and Four were blown out of the ship at the same time.

Warning—excessive spin rate. Mason’s bitching Betty chimed at him.

“No shit! Tank mode!” He toggled the controls and the wildly spinning bot transfigured into a spinning tank. Just like an ice skater pulling in his arms to increase his spin rate the same thing happened to his tank. It spun faster. But in tank-mode the vehicle could handle the extreme angular acceleration.

The control system fired the hover controls to slow the spin rate until the g forces inside the tank registered microgravity. Mason felt his stomach lurch a bit but he quickly adjusted as his suit pumped stims and anti-nausea meds into his system.

“Warlord One to CHENG!”

“CHENG here.”

“Buckley, you’re gonna need a shitload of duct tape.”

“Roger that, General.” Buckley replied. “The hyperdrive is offline!”

“Warlords,” Mason took a breath. “Objective obtained. You can go back to killing bots now.”