Chapter 31

DAY 56 – HADES ORBIT – FLATLINE

“Reggie!” Caveman yelled, rapping his prosthetic fist on the bulkhead door. “What, are you taking a dump in there? We’re ten minutes out from the target!”

“Will you sit down and shut up?” Flatline complained, pausing his weapon check.

“Sorry, LT,” Caveman replied as he returned to his crash couch and flopped down.

The cramped troop bay of the Courser bustled with activity, the seats that lined its walls occupied by SWAR agents who were loading weapons and checking their equipment. There were half a dozen of them – one fireteam – their XMRs configured with short barrels and folding stocks for close-quarters fighting.

Alongside them was the Trog team – unaugmented humans equipped with specialized breaching gear. Their segmented armor was far bulkier and heavier than that worn by Marines or SWAR, with reinforced plating and a protective collar that rose up to shield the neck area, its design inspired by bomb disposal suits. Their shoulders were protected by massive pauldrons, and a plate came down to hang between their legs like an armored loincloth. It was difficult to move in – cumbersome and unwieldy, but it provided a level of enhanced protection that was necessary in their line of work.

Their helmets, too, were specialized. In lieu of a full-faced visor, a narrow slit ran across the eyes. A bulky rebreather that resembled a gas mask jutted out from the mouth and nose area, giving it the appearance of a dull snout, a pair of flexible tubes coming off the cheeks and trailing deeper into the collar. They wore thick carriers over their chest plates that were laden with spare magazines, grenades, and explosives. These men had transferred straight from Kerguela with Brenner’s forces and still sported the autumn tiger camo favored on the forest moon.

Trogs – shorthand for Troglodytes – were a special forces unit specializing in tunnel fighting. A volunteer-only force, and technically classed as combat engineers, they would venture into Betelgeusian hives and use their skills to fight the enemy on their home turf. It was dangerous, difficult work, but they thrived in the high-pressure and claustrophobic conditions below ground. They also made excellent boarding parties, leveraging the same skills to overwhelm opponents in the narrow hallways of spacecraft.

They were helping one another check the seals on their suits now, doing pressure tests to ensure that they were spaceworthy.

There was some rivalry between the two groups, and Flatline still wasn’t sure if he’d rather Brenner had given him a full SWAR team of twelve men, but there was limited space on the ship. He knew his own team well, and although Lieutenant Deacon and his Trogs were newcomers, their reputation preceded them. He trusted them to do their jobs.

Finally, Reggie emerged from the cargo compartment, his heavy cup-like feet stomping on the metal floor grates. Flatline had been traveling with the alien for weeks, and he still wasn’t used to the damned thing. It stood as tall as a Borealan, its fridge-shaped body balanced atop a pair of chicken legs, its four hose-like arms suspended in the air. Its housing was made of some manner of off-white material, while all of the exposed metal and machinery shone like polished chrome, the arrays of little cameras on its front face glowing a dull red.

He’d been told that there was an alien living inside it – some kind of squid, but it had never shown itself. It must eat, sleep, and shit inside that suit.

Reggie – as the other agents had named him – was carrying something into the troop bay. It looked like another fridge – a silver square with rounded corners and no visible markings or openings. The Broker set it down with a thud that reverberated through the deck, a few of the nearest personnel leaning closer to get a look.

“What’s that, Reg?” Caveman asked, tilting a helmet that was decorated with a stone club decal. “Are you building a wife?”

One of the snaking, tubular arms lowered to the box like a tentacle, the mechanical claw on the end of it brushing against its surface. Everyone watched in quiet fascination as a seam appeared in what had looked like solid metal, as though someone was plunging an invisible knife into it. The gap grew and shifted until it became a door, the box opening up like a cabinet. It was hard for Flatline to make out what was inside. His eyes had trouble making sense of it, but there appeared to be more paradoxically flexible metal surrounding an empty cavity, its reflective nature making it difficult to discern whether it was moving like liquid mercury or simply shining.

Reggie thrust a claw into the cavity, and there came a litany of clicking and grinding sounds, as though some great clockwork mechanism had sprung into motion. Still struggling to parse what he was seeing, Flatline watched something begin to build around the claw. No, it was being replaced. Almost like tiny printer nozzles or the needles of sewing machines, a thousand delicate mechanical arms were constructing something around the limb, weaving and zigzagging fast enough to blur together. They were depositing material – more of that strange metal. Like a baker pulling a fresh loaf from the oven, Reggie withdrew his limb after only thirty seconds had passed, now sporting what was unmistakably a weapon. It had a blocky, white housing and a chrome barrel with a large bore, so integrated into his arm that it looked like it had come out of the factory that way.

“I thought you weren’t fighting?” Caveman asked.

“The Board considers this to be an internal human affair,” Reggie replied, his synthetic voice coming through hidden speakers. “I am not permitted to engage, but it is still legal for me to defend myself against criminal aggression during repossession.”

“What is that – some kind of printer?” another of the agents asked, Ditch rising from her seat to lean closer. “No wonder you didn’t bring a lot of luggage. I guess you just make whatever you need?”

“Yo, can you make me one of those?” Caveman asked.

“Even if the sale of such restricted technology to aliens was permitted, I very much doubt that you could afford a printing license,” Reggie scoffed.

“What if you just gave it to me for free on account of you liking me so much?”

The alien gave no reply, but Flatline liked to imagine that he was sighing inside his suit.

“Five minutes,” the pilot warned, his voice crackling over the intercom.

The men began to don their maneuvering units, pulling them down from racks above the seats. They resembled harnesses that were strapped across the chest, securing around the waist and shoulders. On the belt was a small canister of propellant gas, a few snaking tubes running along the straps to join it to conical nozzles spaced around the unit. They were short-range and had limited thrust, but they would allow the wearer to maneuver in a vacuum.

It wasn’t long before the call came from the pilot that they were approaching the target site. Flatline ordered the men to the airlock, where they began to stack up, giving their weapons and gear one final check. The Trogs had brought two microwave rifles. The weapons were about the same size as a medium XMR with a bulky battery pack on the stock, and in place of a barrel, there were three large prongs encased in the same black polymer as the rest of the weapon. It was a directed energy weapon that projected a tight beam of intense microwave energy, exciting water molecules and shorting out electronics in its path. The weapons were usually used to saturate tunnels with deadly radiation, cooking Bugs in their shells, equally effective against flesh and technology. In theory, they’d be just as potent for killing SWAR.

Flatline wasn’t sure what the regs said about using such a weapon against human targets, but these were unusual circumstances.

“We’ve matched velocity with the debris field,” the pilot announced. “It’s shed some speed and started to disperse due to its interactions with the thermosphere.”

“First group, get ready!” Flatline barked.

The inner airlock door opened, and three men stepped through, which was all the cramped compartment could accommodate. The airlock was usually used for umbilicals that joined two ships for docking. The outer door opened, ice crystals quickly forming on the inner window as the compartment depressurized, rustling the clothes of the men inside. They stepped out into the void, the darkness beyond soon swallowing them.

“Next group!” Flatline ordered once the door had sealed, and the next three men stepped through.

It took a few more minutes until it was Flatline’s turn, and he marched through the inner door with two of his agents flanking him. There was a rush of air as the outer door opened, a brief moment of cold assailing him before his suit’s heating elements kicked in automatically. The standard UNN pressure suit worn by everyone from vehicle crews to special forces agents was rated for vacuum, and it could both warm and cool its wearer, as well as provide oxygen for a limited time. It would be enough to get them where they were going.

He stepped out of the bay, feeling his stomach turn as he left the AG field of the ship, weightlessness gripping him. Hades filled his field of view like a curving horizon, the desert planet glowing as it reflected the sunlight, wisps of white cloud and dark sandstorms trailing through its blue atmosphere. The pilot had threaded the Courser into the debris field like a needle, pieces of the destroyed ship surrounding them in a sparse cloud, ranging from loose screws to massive chunks of hull.

The first attack on the carrier had been a feint. The Marathon had succeeded in taking out the enemy EWAR ship, then it had created this debris field, giving them cover during their real approach and hopefully giving Barbosa a false sense of security in the process. There had been no crew aboard – it had been set to autopilot and put on a pre-programmed course.

His team was floating among the wreckage in a loose cluster, communicating via laser comms to avoid emitting any signals that might give them away. Flatline turned his head to look behind him, seeing the Royal Blue stretching out to his left and right. Coursers were always described as being small, but it didn’t feel that way while floating next to one. He watched as Reggie left the ship, only just able to fit through the door, the alien tucking his limbs close to his cube-like chassis.

“All clear,” Flatline declared. A blue glow appeared behind the ship’s engine module, and it began to slowly coast away, little jets from its thrusters maneuvering it around the larger pieces of debris. Neither the station nor the carrier were in sight yet, as they had inserted on the opposite side of the planet to avoid detection.

He brought up the display on his forearm, triggering his maneuvering unit and giving it a few puffs. It sent him slowly coasting towards his team, another touch of the display neutralizing his velocity with a few more bursts.

“Are you sure we have enough oxygen to make it to the carrier, LT?” Caveman asked.

“Just about,” he replied, stopping beside a chunk of blasted hull plating as it tumbled lazily through space. “It should take us about thirty minutes to complete this orbit. Equalizing velocity between the debris and the carrier is going to take a lot of gas, so be conservative until then. If you run out, you’ll shoot right past it.”

“What if Reggie triggers the carrier’s defenses?” Ditch asked. “He’s pretty dense. No offense.”

“The upside of boarding one of our own carriers is that we know every minute detail of its weaponry and targeting software,” Flatline replied. “Those CIWS guns will only trigger automatically if the sensors detect debris that’s sufficiently massive or traveling fast enough to pose a threat. A carrier’s armor plating is designed to stand up to minor impacts and micrometeorite collisions, so as long as we go slow, they won’t pick us up. We’re not emitting any signals or too much heat, so we should just look like small, inoffensive pieces of wreckage.”

“As long as someone isn’t looking out of a window at the wrong moment,” Caveman muttered.

They floated in formation, nestled among the glittering debris, Flatline watching the planet scroll past far below him as the sunlight reflected off the shattered stealth panels and fragments of metal. This was far from his first space walk, but it was hard to rewire his brain and convince it to stop warning him that he was plummeting down to the ground like a stone.

It didn’t take long for the tether station to come into view, crisp and clear despite its distance due to the lack of any atmospheric haze or scattering. It hadn’t occurred to him how fast they were truly traveling until there was something to use as a reference, the station ballooning in size as it rushed towards them. There were a few large cargo freighters already docked in the berths, stripped of their containers to leave them naked and skeletal, along with a loaded ship that appeared to be on approach.

“There’s Vermin’s freighter,” Ditch declared.

“Right on schedule,” Flatline added.

They blew past a few kilometers away from the station, Flatline watching it begin to shrink behind him, the large disk receding to the size of a hubcap in only a couple of minutes. It didn’t take long for the carrier to appear, the giant vessel resembling a railgun slug from a distance.

“Here she comes!” he warned. “Pull up the approach corridor on your HUDs, and remember not to overcorrect! You get jumpy and use up too much gas, you’re going to miss the target or come in too hot, and nobody can come get you if that happens. Follow my lead.”

He waited until they were closer to the carrier, then pulled up the flight path on his visor, the onboard computer displaying it as a glowing wireframe tunnel curving towards the growing ship. With a burst of gas from his MU, he began to move away from the debris, his team following suit.

The carrier had repositioned to avoid the worst of the wreckage from the downed Courser, but they were still maintaining position above the colony, so they couldn’t stray too far – at least in orbital terms. The ship was still several kilometers away from them.

The approach was a harrowing balancing act between conserving fuel and slowing down enough that they wouldn’t trip the carrier’s proximity sensors, Flatline keeping one eye on his gauge as he drifted in. Every few seconds, he released another puff of gas from his forward-facing thrusters to shed velocity, but the carrier was still coming towards him alarmingly quickly. They were in the empty space between the debris field and the ship now, with absolutely no cover or protection. Any one of the bristling CIWS turrets that covered the hull would be able to chew them to pieces in a moment with their twenty-mill railguns.