Renegade (52 page)

“Multiple hits!” shouted Karle as
Adventurer
came into view… trajectory was off a little so Erik increased thrust until his vision blurred. “Proximity targeting, go Harris!” Rapid thuds as
Phoenix
’s near-range cannon opened fire, and Erik caught a brief visual of the stricken cruiser, already yawing and stunned from the missile near misses, explosions now surgically removing its weapon emplacements before it could return fire.

“Good volley, good volley!” Harris added from Arms Two. “Lower emplacements disabled, engines disabled… sir he’s rolling away, I have no angle on those dorsal emplacements!”

“Good enough, won’t matter,” said Erik, powering around to matching velocities, then hitting nose thrust to brake them right against the cruiser’s belly. Clangs and screeches of debris against the outer hull.

“We are being targeted!” shouted Geish. “Two… three… five sources!
Mercury
has locked us!”

As Erik hit the final attitude burn and smashed the combat grapples into the much smaller vessel’s mid-section. Super-heated charges fired, burned into the thick mid-section armour, then the grapples smashed into those holes with a molecularly engineered grip. Nose grapples got a lighter grip to make it steady, then Erik rolled them over with attitude thrusters to put
Adventurer
between them and
Mercury.

“Good grip, good grip!”
Ops was shouting.
“We got her!”
Coms were flashing, priority from
Mercury
, but Erik could guess what Captain Ritish would say. Their passenger was not big enough to obstruct fore or aft attitude thrusters, so Erik burned them into a hard rotation away from
Mercury.

“Arms,” he said. “If we receive warning shots, fire warning shots back. If we are fired upon directly, kill the offender.”

“Aye Captain, kill the offender!” No one bothered to correct Karle’s little mistake. It took twice as long to turn, but as soon as the aft was clear, Erik hit a 3-G burn and nosed down to put Hoffen’s main axle between
Phoenix
and
Mercury.
The grapples held, so he increased that to 4-G, then to 5, frightening the life out of several small shuttles and station-close traffic who evaded wildly from the path of this over-powered alo-tech warship that came roaring past with its tail aflame, dragging a ruined smaller ship with it like small prey caught in a predator’s talons.

“They’re not firing!” Geish observed with desperate hope. “They’re holding fire!” With
Adventurer
in their grasp, firing on
Phoenix
without hitting the small cruiser was nearly impossible. Just to be sure, Erik gave them a roll, rotating
Phoenix
and
Adventurer
around a common point of mass as he increased thrust to 6-G, increasing the difficulty for opposing armscomps from impossible to very impossible.
Phoenix
thundered and roared like the wild and hungry beast she was, only mildly troubled by the extra weight, her own weapons tracking targets as they moved across their individual patches of sky.

“
Mercury
is pursuing!” called Jiri from Scan Two.

“Arms!” said Erik. “One viper please, target
Mercury
directly and hit her.”

“Aye Captain,” said Karle. “One viper, targeting for a strike.” Everyone knew what would happen when you fired one unsupported missile from matching initial-V at a combat carrier. It accelerated away from
Phoenix
, turning a sharp corner and charging straight at the fellow carrier at crazy acceleration… and abruptly vanished as
Mercury
’s defensive missiles blew it to very small pieces.

“She’s backing off,” said Jiri. “She’s reducing thrust and steering wide.” Erik skidded them past several fleeing freighters as, even burdened,
Phoenix
blew past them at a steady 6-Gs. To judge by the relative stress readings from grapples and engines both, Erik was sure the grapples would break before the engines maxed out — the sheer power of this ship was beyond belief, even for one who’d served on her for three years. Warning fire snapped by, and Karle returned fire, Erik slowing the roll to give his guns a longer look at the offender.

“Coms,” Erik gasped past the heavy-Gs, “general frequency.” Shilu flashed it up. “
Phoenix
to Fleet.
Phoenix
to Fleet. Stay clear or die. No more warnings.”

“ETA on Faustino is sixty-three minutes on current thrust,” said Kaspowitz. “Let’s hope it’s fast enough.” Command Squad had to hold out for an hour then, plus whatever it took to get the shuttle down to them, if needed. Pulsing jump engines with a passenger was suicide, and even if they jettisoned the passenger they were still too close to Heuron V’s mass. Besides which, if they lost their hostage,
Mercury
and others would be back after them at full speed, and would catch them as soon as they slowed into Faustino orbit. No, the hostage had to stay, and this was the fastest acceleration they dared. Major Thakur, and the units she commanded, were very hard to kill. He could only hope that they remained so for one more hour.

T
race bounded
down the engineering tunnel besides massive pressurised conveyors and siphon pipes, as Lance Corporal Walker’s section fired in their rear to keep pursuit at bay. It was hot down here, generators thundering and steam venting, big industrial lights throwing a harsh glare onto working steel and gantries. Workers stared and ran as Staff Sergeant Kono and others yelled at them to ‘get out or die’.

They’d tried to push for the landing pads, but the approach was hallways and open foyers like a shopping mall — the side approaches were sealed shut with doors they had no way to open, and the mall-space was now a killzone with zig-zag crossfires around every turn. In full armour and weapons her marines could have done it no trouble, but in light armour and no weapons larger than a rifle, she was facing a fifty percent chance of making the pads at all, at probably eighty percent casualties. From that point Hausler simply had to be there, and Hiro couldn’t find him, as all of Crondike was in deep-static lockdown with jamming so intense even local civvie coms were crackling.

She couldn’t get eighty percent of her guys hit or killed on a prayer, and all of them killed if that prayer wasn’t answered, and so she’d opted for her next best-bet — find a well-defensible spot and force her attackers to come at her hard. That would create a localised firefight that could get Hausler’s attention and tell him where they were. The pressure to kill them all before that happened could force the enemy to press harder than was wise, and if Command Squad had defensive position, that swung the odds back in their favour. If Hausler couldn’t find them, they could still exhaust the enemy by killing a lot more of them than vice-versa, then charge and break out once they were vulnerable. And from there… find a shuttle, somewhere. Which would probably get shot down before they’d cleared Faustino, and certainly by some Fleet cruiser afterward. It was hopeless unless Hausler found them, and probably even then… unless some ‘enemy’ Fleet vessel had a change of heart and saved them, or joined
Phoenix
, futile straw-grasping hope that it was. She’d told Erik, in the elevator descending to the Hoffen rim, that Kulina didn’t hope. But neither did they give up while still breathing.

She emerged into the target space — Crondike Wellhead Seven, the top of a nine kilometre deep shaft that burrowed into Faustino’s ice crust. It was a tangled mass of pipes, pressure tanks and power units beneath a huge domed ceiling, and open to access tunnels from three directions only — one too many for Trace’s liking, but a better bet for a defensible position than anywhere else accessible from where they were.

She took a running leap onto a circuit gantry three meters up, then bounced from there onto the one above that and skipped beside a huge blowout-preventer atop the wellhead to peer across that vantage. “Get out that way!” she yelled at some bewildered workers nearby, pointing down the further tunnel. “There’s going to be shooting, if you stay here you’ll die!” They ran.

“Walker,” she said on coms, “your section has the tunnel you’re in. Kono, you’ve got the one opposite, I’ve got the right-angles one with Rael. Is Romki still with us?”

“He’s here Major,”
said Kumar.
“Just coming in now.”

“Put him in the middle, see if you can get him a better mask from one of these worker offices. And while you’re at it, take a look for anything useful — explosive gas canisters would be nice, we seem to have left our grenades on
Phoenix
.”

“Major,”
said Kono.
“I’m sure you’re aware, but some of these big tanks are explosive.”

“And heavily armoured,” Trace added. “They might not use anything heavy on us for a while at least, this place is expensive. Someone check for the outer airlock, do we have a landing pad here?” Because access to Crondike schematic was blocked, but many wellheads had shuttle landing pads and direct-access airlocks so that visiting engineers and miners could get to the business end of operations directly.

Someone was climbing up to her right — she looked, and found a big workman heading her way in heavy protective clothes, dangling mask and fixed helmet. He looked more grim than scared, one look and Trace knew better than to warn him to get lost.

He stopped short, respectful of her weapon. “Major I’m Chief Stanton!” he shouted over the generator noise. “I run this wellhead! I was a marine sergeant, in for nine years! You’re from
Phoenix
, right?”

“That’s right!”

“Then that makes you Major Thakur! What’s this all about?”

“I don’t have time to explain, but local security and Fleet HQ want us all dead!” Stanton stared. Up the tunnel they’d come from, more firing broke out, Corporal Walker’s section in defensive position, shooting up the way they’d come. “Does this place have a landing pad?”

Stanton considered for a moment longer. Then pointed at the far wall of the domed wellhead complex, where a fourth access tunnel would be if they’d been symmetrical. “Just out there! Do you need it operational? I can prep it for you!”

“Is there any way you can visually signal our shuttle? We can’t talk to him but I’d guess he’s looking for us!” And she took the Chief’s arm and pulled him down to a crouch as more shooting rang out from Rael’s position up the next tunnel.

“You know that Crondike has air defences?” the Chief shouted back. “I doubt he’ll be anywhere in visual range, but I can get out there and signal in case he makes a visual pass! That’ll save you a rifle at least!”

Trace gripped his arm with a thankful stare. “Buddy, Fleet HQ is rotten at the top. They murdered Captain Pantillo.” A shocked look, but not entirely surprised. Trace was certain that offers of heartfelt assistance, in situations like these, deserved at least that much truth. “I’m Kulina, you know I don’t lie.”

“I’ll do it,” the Chief said grimly. “Heard bad stories about Chankow, the guy’s a prick. Good to serve with you finally!” And he scampered back to the railing and took a calculated jump off the edge, sailing down as the gravity took him.

Trace did the same off her end, bounced off the top of a pressure tank, then off a gantry rail and down to tunnel level.
“Major,”
came Hiro’s voice in her ear.
“Big commotion at Hoffen, local coms are jammed but I’ve got access to main Heuron feed. Phoenix has broken loose, the whole station’s in chaos, some Worlder ships at dock are threatening to cycle jump engines.”

Well that would do it, Trace thought, bounding up to where Rael, Terez and Van were pressed to walls or lying flat behind big pipe braces. And it would provide an excellent opportunity for
Phoenix
to get clear and run. “Are they getting out?”

“No Major, Phoenix is coming this way. Faustino.”

“Oh that fucking
fool!
” Trace yelled, braced by Rael’s corner, then rolled across to Terez. “He can’t fight off the whole Fleet, he’s going to get everyone killed!” All that effort, riding the kid hard, kicking his butt and ignoring the poor hurt puppy look of betrayal when she did it — all so he wouldn’t make the soft and lethally sentimental call when the moment arrived. Because he was basically a nice kid, emotive and caring where he needed to be hard and ruthless, and exactly the kind of kid who caused disasters by trying to do what was ‘right’. And now all that effort was wasted.

“Major, he’s ambushed and grappled a small Fleet cruiser. He’s carrying it
with
him. As a hostage. So far it’s working.”

Only several times in combat had Trace been so astonished at something another officer did. All of those times had been with Captain Pantillo. Until now. Opposite her, Corporal Rael had heard, and laughed wildly. “Fucking LC! That guy’s insane!” From a marine, who typically thought spacers soft and feckless, there was no greater compliment.

Fire snapped by, and Trace raised briefly from her cover to fire back. “Guys!” she shouted over coms. “Hold positions and fight! The LC’s on his way with
Phoenix
!”

A
fter mid-way turnover
, Erik became worried about the stress readings on the grapples. “Ops, what about those grapples?”

“I dunno LC! It’ll hold another ten minutes, but beyond that we’ll be pushing it!”
With thrust thundering directly at Faustino’s approaching icy sphere to slow them, ETA was reading fifteen minutes. But if they dumped
Adventurer
, the nine Fleet ships trailing them at a safer distance would pulse jump engines and open fire with a vengeance. Exactly what would happen if the grapples snapped, Erik didn’t know — probably no one had done the sims on a 6-G run while hauling a smaller ship because they didn’t want to give crazy captains ideas. He supposed they’d lose the load unevenly, it would tumble and probably hit their engines aft as it fell, for bad news all around. But they were screwed either way, so the only option was to proceed as planned, and hope. Trace’s favourite word again, and boy was she going to kill him if he saw her again.

“Captain! I’ve got Lieutenant Hausler from Crondike!” Even Shilu was making that mistake now.

“Put him through.”

Click, in his ear, then,
“Phoenix this is PH-1. Crondike communications are completely jammed, I can’t contact the Major. They have defensive emplacements active and I have seen several lower capacity military shuttles in proximity, they appear to be bringing troops from other bases to Crondike, but they’re sticking around and they’re armed. I have withdrawn from Crondike landing pads, I’m on a blind spot from their scans so I’m safe for now unless someone gets a visual on me. If you’re sending a shuttle, it will take at least two armed shuttles to take out defences and make distractions on the way in. In the meantime we have to find out where the Major is, because right now I’ve no idea. Awaiting further instruction, PH-1 out.”

Erik blinked on his own icon to reply. “PH-1 this is
Phoenix
. PH-4 is damaged and not operational. We’re sending the remaining civilian shuttle, our kuhsi friend is piloting, Lisbeth is co-pilot, both are qualified but civilian. Echo Platoon is aboard, Lieutenant Zhi is in the loop and will have a better idea than me where the Major may be defending from in Crondike. At this velocity we’re going to have to make a full orbit of Faustino — that’s seventeen minutes if we hurry it along, I can elongate that to extend or shorten, but your time frame will be twenty minutes plus or minus. Communication with the civilian shuttle will be through the co-pilot, the pilot’s English is poor.
Phoenix
out.”

And he tried not to think of Hausler’s expression upon hearing all of that. It was like asking a pilot to fly combat ops while juggling one-handed and singing the Homeworld anthem. A few seconds later, Hausler replied.

“PH-1 copies, Phoenix. Piece of cake.”
Erik grinned. And the grin vanished as it finally registered what Hausler had said — Crondike had surface defences, and armed shuttles present. And Lisbeth was co-piloting an unarmed civvie shuttle down into it, flown by an alien who had quite recently tried to slit the throats of those sent to help her, and whose actual qualifications everyone was dubious of to say the least, and who didn’t speak the language. Trace had warned him about hard calls, and he didn’t think they came any harder than this. But as she’d also said — when there was no choice, there was no choice.

I
f the attackers
stuck to small arms, Trace knew she could hold them off indefinitely — even if they cut the air supply, her marines had personal supplies for hours yet, and more if they salvaged emergency systems from the miners’ supplies. But when the heavy rounds started incoming, she knew they were in trouble.

“Pull back!” she yelled as the first round hit the ceiling of the first tunnel. “Walker, second line of defence now!” As Lance Corporal Walker and his three marines scrambled back into the maze of gantries, pipes and heavy machinery surrounding the enormous wellhead. Another grenade spat past them and hit a pressure tank, showering all with shrapnel as they fell flat.

About her, Rael and Terez fired as a new target presented, and the shooter’s grenade hit the ceiling twenty meters short with a blast that brought small pipes and debris crashing and twisting down. “Think I got him first,” Rael suggested.

“Pull back,” Trace told them. “Displace in pairs, go.” Rael and Terez went first as Trace put down fire, then she left as Arime fired, rolling on the exposed decking, then running for a good cover position on a higher walkway by a big generator that also gave her a flanking look at Walker’s first tunnel. Problem was, from here neither she nor her marines had anywhere near as good a view up the tunnel. It allowed the attackers to advance to the tunnel mouth, right on top of them… if they were prepared to risk marines at close quarters.

“Guess they’ve been told to trash the wellhead to get us,”
Rael remarked from his new cover.

“What’s in these damn pipes anyway?”
Terez wondered.

“Bunch of things,” said Trace. “Most of them flammable.”

“Great.”

“Big enough rupture here would endanger this whole part of Crondike. It’s a big bomb, if these guys set it off they’ll be dead too. This steel is tough.”

“Major,”
said Private Singer from Walker’s section. The reception on local coms was crackling with static, but the jamming wasn’t so intense in here that the marines couldn’t talk to each other. And if they could talk, the enemy attacking from three different tunnels at once could talk also.
“I’m hit, shrapnel in the arm from that fucking grenade. I’m still in the fight, Parker’s patching it.”
That was three hurt out of twelve, though Arime’s injury was just cosmetic. It was going to get worse.

Two more big explosions rocked the second tunnel entry, followed by lots and lots of smoke. Even with her targeting glasses, Trace couldn’t see anything up the tunnel. She did some fast calculation. “Give it fifteen seconds,” she told her marines, sighting along her rifle into the smoke. “Could be a big push. Kono, anything up…”