Renegade (49 page)

“Tells me they’re a bunch of fucking fools,” Dale growled.

“It has to be Trace. She’s found something she wasn’t supposed to find, and they don’t want us to go get her. They’re not up to shooting at
Phoenix
yet, but if they kill her commander they won’t have to.”

“That means the Major’s about to get hammered next,” said Dale.

“
G
o Hiro
,” said Trace as she bounced along one of the big service tunnels in the midst of her marines. Romki was right behind her, and thank god he wasn’t one of those delicate academic types or he could have really slowed them down. Stanislav Romki was a traveller, a man accustomed to making his own way in all sorts of environments, and to judge from the way he moved, Trace reckoned he even had some physical augmentations of the high-performance variety. Doubtless it gave him a respectability among the chah'nas that would come in handy.

“
Major you need to get out,
” said Hiro.
“I’ve run through local manifests for arrivals on the Crondike secure mainframe. I’ve got three local shuttles from nearby bases with no ID, and the local manifest refuses to query them, against all regulations.
”

“We’re moving now,” said Trace. “ETA on those shuttles?”

“
One in five minutes, all three in ten. I also can’t find another thirty personnel who’ve arrived within the last two hours. I think they’re already here… and we were in transit for six hours.”

“Who, do you think?”

“
Marines would be conspicuous, and loyalty could be a problem if they knew who their target was. At a guess I’d think Star Force commandos. Heuron’s been a problem for a while, HQ has been building local elite security, far better than your usual cops. Not marine standard, but then this is their home ground.”

“Copy Hiro, we’ll make it fast.”

“
One more thing, I had to take out a couple of people to get access to the mainframe. I’ll be fine once the other distractions start, but if you hear other alarms shortly, that’ll be me.”

Trace shortened her bounces a little, and let Romki draw up alongside. “What’s your combat training?”

“Uh… chah'nas martial arts, some basic firearms.” Nervously. “And I can curl up into a very small ball. Nothing that will be very useful in a firefight.”

“Curling into a small ball is sometimes very useful. Basic first aid?”

Romki nodded. “Of course. Moderately advanced, actually.”

“Good. If there’s shooting, the non-shooter gets to treat the wounded. That means you.” She flipped to coms, seeing the access tunnel ending ahead. “Guys, tunnel end ahead, watch for ambush.”

Two more bounces, then, “Down!” yelled Corporal Rael up front, and marines in mid-jump caught rails and swung themselves violently down or to the sides as shots echoed ahead, seeking cover against the big pipes or beside and beneath the walkway. Trace bounced sideways under the pipes as Kono pulled Romki after them, and bullets cracked and whined off the steel. Rael and Second Section opened fire ahead, keeping heads down while Trace came up on the far side of the pipes, where there was no walkway, only a tangle of support struts, cables and air venting.

As soon as she put her head up she drew fire and ducked back. “Hello Hausler,” she said calmly as other marines opened up around her. “We’re under fire, it looks like Fleet didn’t know Romki was here. Someone found out we’re meeting him and flipped out.” Hausler’s reply was mostly static, snatches of words and no more. That was jamming. “Hausler?”

She rolled back under the pipes to where Kono had an arm around the alarmed academic. “We’re being jammed,” she told her Staff Sergeant. “I think we just lost our escape.”

“Can’t run on a shuttle anyway,” said Kono. “They’d shoot us down.”

“Maybe,” said Trace. “But that’s highly visible, everyone can see it. If they corner us down here with jammed coms, they can eliminate us quietly and make up some story.” She flipped channels. “Hiro, can you hear me?”

“
Hello Major, go ahead.”
That was much clearer. Given most spies’ network skills, that wasn’t surprising.

“Hiro we’re under fire, they’re blocking our return to the landing pads. What can you tell me?”

“
Major get me your position, I’ll try to get through to Hausler and get him to pick you up.”

“Negative Hiro, we don’t have suits, we’re going to need a compatible airlock to get aboard. That means a proper landing pad or nothing. Hiro I want you to get me long range coms, either through PH-1 or through Crondike itself, I want to talk to
Phoenix
.”

“
Copy Major, I’ll see what I can do.”

She flipped back to local, bullets cracking by, but outgoing fire seemed further away. The lack of tacnet in light armour would have been infuriating if she’d let it be. Without tactical support, they’d have to do this the old fashioned way. “Cocky, talk to me, what’s our range ahead?”

“
Fifty meters,”
said Edward ‘Cocky’ Rael. “
Where the tunnel drops beneath the habitat ahead, into the basement. That’s the bulkhead, they’ve got cover positions there.”
A pause for more gunfire. “
I don’t think they’ll have anything heavier than this, too many utilities down here.”

“
I’m hit!”
Kumar said tersely. “
Left hand.”

“
Hang on, I’m on it!”
said Terez.

“This is what happens when you operate without full armour,” Kono muttered.

“
This is T-Bone,”
said Van, cool where others were shouting. “
I just killed my second, got a nice little fire position up here. Irfy, Leo, crawl up and push it another five meters.”

There wasn’t a lot of fancy manoeuvring you could do, stuck in a tunnel. But Van was the best shot in Command Squad, and was wedged into a little cover between pipe and walkway up ahead. Once set, he could hit just about anything, and if the ambushers kept trying to fill the spot he had targeted, they’d keep losing men. That had to be disconcerting to the survivors.

“You fucking stay,” Kono told Trace sternly, and crawled forward himself through the tight space. Meaning that she had a tendency to try to solve these problems by sticking her own neck out, and they weren’t in that desperate a situation yet. But if the numbers of enemy were as large as Hiro’s probing suggested, and if some of them came around behind, they’d be trapped.

“We’re not going around?” Romki ventured, wincing every time a bullet hit near.

“If there’s as many as we think,” said Trace, “they’ll just block us at every tunnel exit we get to.” And gestured past him to Lance Corporal Walker, telling him and his four-man section to stay and watch the rear.

Another outgoing shot ahead. “
That’s three,”
said Van. “
Dumb fuckers don’t learn.”

Trace’s uplink blinked. “
Major, it’s Hiro. I have you a direct patch to Crondike antennae. On Phoenix encryption they’ll hear it, but so will Fleet HQ.”

“Worst they can do is try to kill us,” Trace said drily. “Put me through.” A click, then a green visual signal. “Hello
Phoenix
, this is the Major. I have spoken to Mr Romki. This has made HQ unhappy and we are currently under fire and pinned down, they didn’t know Romki was here and he’s been under threat of elimination from Fleet Command for years.

“This is the situation. Romki says there is a common linguistic and technological ancestry between alo and hacksaws. He says alo may be the spawn of hacksaws. That may be the reason we’re not allowed in their territory to see anything. This raises the very serious question of exactly on whose behalf we’ve been conquering this part of the galaxy for, the past hundred and sixty years. And who in Fleet High Command knew about it, and didn’t care to share.”

She glanced at Romki. His wide-eyed stare showed that he understood what she was doing. This was a secret he’d been instructed to guard with his life. Broadcasting this information, even on
Phoenix
encryption, would bring every Fleet ship in Heuron down on their heads. HQ could break
Phoenix
encryption, but there was no guarantee someone else might not find a way to do so. Anyone spreading this information was begging to be eliminated.

“When you get this message, reply and confirm that you have understood. I am not certain I can get out of here. I’ll try, but even if I make it to PH-1, one shuttle alone in FTL space will be dead very quickly. Do
not
attempt a rescue. This information is too important, and you must live to make use of it. I repeat, do
not
attempt a rescue. This is why we came to Heuron, and it was worth it. If you attempt a rescue, every Fleet ship in Heuron will try to kill you and probably succeed. I’ll try to find a way out, but if I can’t, it’s been an honour. Thakur out.”

A flurry of gunfire ahead, and suddenly her marines ahead were out of cover and firing all at once. The lack of return fire suggested success. She gestured to Walker to take Romki, rolled out from under the pipes to the walkway and bounded forward. Ahead, as Rael had said, the tunnel dropped away beneath the bulkhead foundation of a habitat above. On those higher walkways were a number of bodies — light armoured like the marines, dark blue uniforms. Special police — Star Force — as Hiro had said. The rest had fled.

Kono was taping a bandage pad to Arime’s jaw where a bullet had grazed him and removed an earlobe. Kumar’s hand was a mess, but bound up tight. He wasn’t going to be much of a shot one-handed, but he was still in the fight. Already Terez and Singer were on the upper walkways working on getting one of those doors open.

“You’re guarding Romki,” Trace told Kumar with a slap on his shoulder. “Shouldn’t take two hands.” And added, “Good job,” to the impatient Arime, before jumping to the upper walkway. Accuracy under fire was one of those things you couldn’t teach, and only acquired the hard way. Van’s deadly sniping had allowed Arime and Rael to crawl close enough undetected to spring a surprise. Suddenly under fire at ranges where marines usually hit, and special forces cops usually missed, resistance had crumbled fast.

“The LC coming to get us Major?” Terez asked her.

“He’d have to fly through half of Fleet to get here,” Trace said grimly. “And if he somehow survived all of that just to grab us, I’d shoot him myself.”

O
n Hoffen docks
all hell was breaking loose. Sirens blared and emergency warning announcements echoed, telling all station residents to shelter in a secure, airtight environment. Engineering and security teams ran along the decking, with shouts and instructions. Nearby a section seal was coming down, a massive steel door closing off this portion of docks, everything rumbling and shaking as it descended.

On his uplink image of Hoffen general access, the public space available to any networked citizen, Hoffen-A wheel showed section seals down everywhere and all environmentals put into emergency reserve. Erik flipped to new connections as he crouched in the shadow of a shopfront by several marines. Ahead, at the dockfront express elevator, Lance Corporal Carponi and Private Yu were collaborating to hotwire the panel using marine tech that allowed it.

“It’s taking too long,” Gunnery Sergeant Forrest told Dale nearby. “They’ll find us with the security cameras.”

“I know,” said Dale, staring across the pandemonium on the docks, rifle ready. “Another thirty seconds.”

Erik found the local Hoffen traffic control.
“…no clearance to leave dock at this time,”
Control were telling someone sternly. “
Freighter Bluejay, I repeat, you have no clearance to leave dock at this time. Hold your position or you will be up on charges.”
He could not access station scan, but audio traffic was busy all around the rim. Even as he listened, dock shuddered beneath him in a way that had nothing to do with the descending seals.

“Everyone’s breaking dock,” he told Dale. “Ships are defying Hoffen Control, they’re busting grapples to get out of here.”

“Could be someone’s smuggled a nuke up to station?” Dale wondered.

“Too many sensor sniffers, they’d smell bomb residue,” Erik disagreed. “If someone’s going to commit suicide, cycling the jump engines in dock would do it.”

“Fuck,” Dale muttered. Jumping while still in dock would take a very large portion of Hoffen Station and stuff it into some place physics never intended. It wouldn’t be nearly as catastrophic as a nuke, but it would be bad enough. If
several
Worlder-friendly or Worlder-controlled vessels did it at the same time…

Beside Carponi and Yu, Privates Ricardo and Halep knelt at guard. Now Ricardo raised her rifle, sighting something down the dock. “Yo!” she said loudly, which brought several others across to look at what she was seeing.

“Position!” Dale commanded, and several others darted to cover, seeking good angles down-spin along the dock. A shot rang out, and the marines replied in force, a deafening racket of automatic fire. Yells and shrieks down that way — Erik had no intention of getting out far enough to see, Dale had told him to stay in cover at all costs and his primary objective was not to get in anyone’s way. Civvies on the docks fell flat, or ran frantically. Now fire came back, and marines pressed themselves down, Ricardo feeling herself too exposed near her Corporal fell and rolled behind a little bench-and-garden. Shots hit the wall right beside Carponi and Yu, who kept working oblivious.

“Carponi!” Dale yelled above the now-continuous shooting. “Status!”

“Nearly got it!”

“You said that three minutes ago! Are you any closer?”

“Another three will do it!” Yu shouted confidently. A bullet smacked just above his head.

Erik saw some running figures in light armour and weapons coming the other way up the dock — the direction he
could
see. “Watch out!” he yelled, as Chavez added a more useful, “Incoming contact, up-spin!” And marines turned the other way to fire on them. Erik saw them scatter, some rolling and slithering away, one running then falling, another lying still. And then they were under fire from two directions at once, as the others found cover and opened up. Erik didn’t need to be a marine to see that very soon they’d get off the dock and surround them via the corridors and hallways of main-rim habitat.

“
LC this is Phoenix,”
came Shilu’s voice in his ear. “
Priority message from the Major.”

“Put her through.” And he listened as Trace told him via a crackling connection that she’d found Romki, and… holy fuck. For a brief moment, he nearly forgot he was getting shot at. The crackling on Trace’s transmission was more than just static — she was getting shot at as well.

“That’s enough!” Dale yelled. “We’re about to get cut off! Main service stairwell, we get down the hard way!”

Marines pulled off their fire positions and ran, partners staying behind to fire and cover with perfect coordination. Erik moved before Dale could grab him and ran at his side back into the corridors, dialling up the uplink volume so he could hear the last of Trace’s transmission. Ahead, a warning yell and shooting, then he was running past a pair of police bodies, one only hit in the body armour and still moving.

Trace’s message finished as they made a big down-stairway. The level below the dock was big and far more industrial, with heavy lighting and much less decor. Stationers got quickly out of their way, and several regular cops put their hands in the air as well, with real fear. So word was out on the police net —
Phoenix
marines were to be considered enemy combatants. Special security forces would act on that, while most regular cops very sensibly would not. Marines ran past them with barely a glance, knowing that Lance Corporal Kalo’s Third Section in the rear would keep a much closer eye once they were all passed.

“
LC, what did the Major say?”
Dale asked on uplink to save the difficulty of talking while running.

“Mr Romki suspects the alo aren’t actually humanity’s friends after all,”
Erik summarised.
“HQ’s trying to kill her, she’s outnumbered and outgunned on Crondike. Says we shouldn’t try to rescue her.”

“Girl’s got a death wish,”
said Dale.
“Thinks she won’t have fulfilled her purpose as Kulina if she doesn’t die for her cause. We
are
going to rescue her.”
Even on uplink formulation, his tone suggested it might be dangerous for Erik to disagree.

“Phoenix leaves no one behind,”
said Erik. “
But you have to get me out of here alive first.”

There was more contact ahead, then they emerged into a big industrial space between huge steel supports and cross-beams. Across the floor were stacked storage shelves, tended by lumbering loaders, both the two-legged and four-wheeled kind, big lights glaring in compensation for dull ceiling illumination. Workers now pointed or ran as
Phoenix
marines smashed a secure gate and display warning of entry for station personnel only, and clattered down a big stairway at speed.

To Erik’s left, empty space descended far into the depths below. On the next floor down, ceilings triple-height compared to residential floors, big workshop spaces where loaders were being fixed, a sprawling, organised tangle of station facilities and mobile machinery. Suddenly Dale stopped and fired upward, as return fire clanged and sparked off the steel around them. Erik kept running, descending stairs as fast as his shaky feet could take him, leaping now three at a time as he rounded the bend to the next flight.

He passed Ricardo as she stood and fired at someone shooting at them from amongst the machines, then Carponi was ahead and yelling at him to go past… and was hit, right before Erik’s eyes, a sudden impact taking him left, then staggered… and Carponi fell as his legs gave way. Erik skidded in beside, as Ricardo was yelling “Yozzi’s down! Yozzi’s down!”.

It had gone through his left hip, Erik saw, yanking out his first aid and fumbling for the tension bandage as even he knew how, though the only time he’d applied one before had been to a spacer with ship-board injuries. He somehow got the cover off as Ricardo skidded in beside him… “LC, I got it, leave him to me!”

“Give me some fucking cover, marine!” Erik snapped. “I carry, you shoot!” And Ricardo saw the logic, took up her rifle again and laid down fire. If a marine had to carry the wounded Corporal, that would be one good rifle out of the fight — far smarter that he did it. He got on the bandage, wrapped the tie awkwardly about Carponi’s leg and yanked as tight as he could, recalling that instruction well and heedless of Carponi’s scream. The hip was one of those spots that just couldn’t be armoured effectively outside of full rigs. This one was bleeding a lot. Erik pulled the tag that activated the electro-chem overlay, which should have stilled the bleeding a little as it released micros directly into the bloodstream where they would propagate and attempt to fix damage synthetically. If the femoral artery was severed, even micros probably couldn’t fix it quickly enough to stop Carponi from bleeding out.

“Corporal, on your feet!” Erik commanded, giving Carponi a heaving hand up, as more fire snapped by. Carponi complied just enough for Erik to get a shoulder into his middle and lifted in a combat carry. Erik was a big man, but so was Carponi, and in armour it felt like carrying a sack of concrete.

“Go, go!” Dale was yelling from behind, as Erik realised the Lieutenant had been just behind him the whole time, providing cover. Someone else swore in that loud, panicked way that told of another marine hit, but there was no stopping or further comment so Erik pressed on, concentrating on one stair at a time as fast as he dared, rifle in one hand and Carponi’s leg in the other to keep his burden as balanced as possible. Aside from the scream when he’d pulled the bandage tight, Carponi had barely made a noise.

One advantage of having someone to carry, it focused the mind so much that Erik worried less about bullets and more about how many flights there were to go. Five hundred meters from main dock level down to outer rim dock, he recalled — Hoffen was a monster. That was the height of a very tall skyscraper, a very tough descent with a big, wounded man on your shoulder while under fire.

After a time it started to hurt very badly, despite his augments, high fitness levels and time in the gym. The shooting had paused to the odd, speculative shot, and distant yells gave the impression of pursuit from a safer range. At one turn in the stairs Private Yu was waiting for him, offering to take a turn beneath the load.

“Fuck off,” Erik informed him and kept going. If they were ambushed again, which seemed likely, then Private Yu was going to be far more useful unencumbered than his LC. Having found the one thing he could do as well as any marine, Erik wasn’t going to give it up short of collapsing.

When he reached rim level he was gasping with effort and covered in sweat. The industrial sector quickly turned into the rim docks from where Trace had departed for Faustino, where shuttles would dock with the rotating outer rim ‘beneath’ the relative direction of gravity. The concourse was nearly empty, stationers apparently warned that trouble was heading this way. But if stationers knew, security would know as well…

“Just one dock up,” Dale told them as they moved. “PH-4 is in transit, ETA six minutes.”

“Hang on Corporal,” Erik gasped, struggling to keep up with the marines around him. “Almost there.”

“
Phoenix
!” came a yell up ahead, and the marines on point took fast cover against the next bulkhead. “
Phoenix
! It’s
Mercury
!”

Up ahead, Gunnery Sergeant Forrest peered quickly about the bulkhead. “
Mercury marines,”
he reported back.
“Plenty of them. We’re cut off.”

Dale swore, ushering Erik to a wall when Erik had trouble changing direction. “Fuck, we don’t have time for this. We go through them, we’re all dead.” Because whatever the
Phoenix
bravado, they all knew that marines were marines, whatever their ship. These marines had defensive position, and dislodging them would be hell.

“
Mercury
!” Erik yelled. “This is
Phoenix
! Who is this?”

“This is Major Rennes! That you Debogande?”

“Fuck it,” said Erik, and lowered Carponi as Dale and Reddy grabbed him. “Shooting won’t solve it, gotta talk.”

“Could tell PH-4 to get to another dock?” Dale suggested.

“With these guys on our ass, I don’t think so,” said Erik. “That’s the
Mercury
company commander, that’ll be his command squad, those guys don’t quit.”

Dale did not disagree. Erik strode forward, feeling suddenly light without the Lance Corporal’s weight, and light headed too. He stepped past the disbelieving Gunnery Sergeant Forrest and into the open concourse, trusting that
Mercury
marines weren’t so trigger happy that they’d shoot him dead on the spot. Several seconds after he’d had the thought, he was still alive, and the
Mercury
complement hadn’t shot him yet. That meant it hadn’t been their immediate intention.

“I got a shuttle inbound,” Erik told the marines ahead, squeezed into tight cover behind ticket counters, bulkhead edges and railing supports. At least ten rifles that he could see, though only three of them aimed at him. At this range, three would be enough, and the others, with typical discipline, were watching the more dangerous targets behind him. “And I got a marine bleeding out who’ll die if he doesn’t get immediate attention. If you’re gonna shoot, do it now and get it over with, or get out of our way and let us get back to
Phoenix
.”

A thin, scarred marine with a lean face stepped forward. His rifle was cradled with that effortless balance of long-term veterans, and his armour was so scratched and worn it was a shade lighter colour than his comrades. On his shoulder, golden leaf insignia. “I’m Major Rennes. What’s Major Thakur doing on Faustino?”

Of course he was interested in Trace. She was, as always, the key. “Talking to someone with a secret Fleet want kept at all costs,” said Erik. “She’s under fire right now. And you’re keeping us from her.”

Rennes studied him expressionlessly. His eyes trailed down. Erik realised he had Carponi’s blood all over him. “What secret?”