19
“Godspeed, Fox Company,” the launch officer passed.
The sleigh lurched as the mule towed it to the launcher. In a moment, as the tug’s tractor locked on, they’d be out in the black, closing in on the Nightingale’s Song from a kiloklick away.
“Emissions silence from here until boarding,” the platoon commander passed over the net.
Until they reached the target, the sleigh should pass as a small, lifeless hunk of space debris. A high-tech ship of war might be able to pierce the shielding and detect the platoon of troopers inside, but the Nightingale’s Song was a commercial liner, plying the space lanes, taking people to and fro in semi-luxurious comfort.
Only now, her journey had been interrupted. The ship had popped out of bubble space near the borders of the Gray Reaches, far beyond the normal traffic lanes and any populated system. The Gray Reaches was the vast area of unincorporated space, between the Perseus and Sagittarius Arms. It wasn’t exactly lawless, but it would be fair to say central control of the area was not solid, particularly when resources were focused on fighting the Centaurs.
As a result, criminal activities were frequent there and other areas of the Gray Reaches, including piracy during the course of the war. Ransoms were demanded for the return of the passengers and crew, the cargo, or even for the ships themselves. After the owners of the James Farber refused early on in the war, the ship, with all hands aboard, was sent to the shipping line’s home system where it was destroyed in spectacular fashion above the planet.
The message was taken.
Throughout the war, pirates took ships. Some were caught. The Union Navy, for example, had held back ships and Marines to keep Union space safe, but the rewards were too great to ignore, and ships plied space where protection wasn’t as robust. The risk was deemed worth it.
No other ships were destroyed like the James Farber. But other companies or planets either couldn’t or wouldn’t pay the ransoms. Those ships, passengers, and crews disappeared, the ships to be stripped or disguised, and the people sold into a life of slavery.
It was difficult for most citizens to accept that in this day and age, slavery still existed. Some people—people in power—denied it, saying it didn’t make economic sense. But the people were going somewhere.
And with the war with the Centaurs over, the Congress of Humanity had refocused its energy to restoring commerce, and a huge part of that was to stamp out this particular evil.
Whoever had taken the Nightingale’s Song probably thought they had more time before the authorities could take action. A year ago, they would have been right. But whatever measures the CoH had implemented almost immediately had detected the ship’s emergence from bubble space. Within five minutes, the Takagahara had been given the order to stand by. Thirty-six minutes after that, the mission came down. They were to rescue the Nightingale’s Song and arrest any surviving pirates.
* * *
“Show me that organizational chart again,” Rev ordered as the sleigh carried them through open space.
Punch popped it up. The Home Guard’s methodology of task-organizing every mission was still new to Rev. In the Raiders, everything was pretty cut and dried. There were elements, teams, and platoons. If they needed a different capability outside of the unit, someone with that capability was attached. But the building blocks never changed.
In the Home Guard, there were no such strictures below the squad level—and even those weren’t set in stone. Two squads, for example, could be combined for a super-squad, but not as a full platoon. Within the squad, there were no set fire teams. The squad could conduct operations as one semi-amorphous force or it could be broken down into individual troopers acting as self-contained units (and everything in between).
It made sense from a tactical standpoint in that it gave the commander ultimate flexibility, but whereas almost every military known to humanity was used to a more structured organization, it was more difficult to implement and could lend itself to confusion.
As much as Rev loved the Union Marines, he didn’t think this would work for normal infantry units without lots of time to prepare for a mission. But this wasn’t the Marines. This was the Home Guard, supposedly made up of the finest soldiers in human space. If anyone could handle the shifting structures, it should be them.
But that didn’t mean Rev was confident. They’d had a relatively few short hours to put together and promulgate a plan. And now it was go-time. They’d emerged from bubble space well short of the Nightingale’s Song, where the distance and the Takagahara’s shielding should have rendered them invisible to the pirates, who would be using the commercial liner’s instruments, not military scanners.
Now, it was time to ride the sleighs in, hopefully undetected, to conduct the breach and get troopers inside the ship. While not the most dangerous part of the mission, it was usually considered the most difficult.
There were two modes of breaching: a deliberate breach, as when a ship had been disabled, and a hasty breach. The deliberate breach was conducted much as with MOUT operations, with each compartment cleared before the next. A hasty breach was a matter of rushing, overwhelming any resistance by numbers and force of will. Pirates had a habit of killing hostages when confronted, so this was going to be a hasty breach.
Rev studied the organizational chart one more time. At the moment, the three sleighs, each with a platoon embarked, were approaching the target ship. If all things worked as planned, the sleighs would power up and brake, each approaching a different part of the ship. Each platoon would conduct a breach and move to its assigned objective.
First Platoon would secure the engineering spaces. Second had the bridge. And Third would attempt to locate the bulk of the passengers and protect them.
But before they could get to their objective, they had to get into the ship, which was Phase 1. For that phase, Rev was leading the breach team of Corporal Akkeke, PFC Gingham, and Corporal Acevedo. SFC Gamay would lead the entry team with the rest of the squad to get inside the ship and secure the breach site. Second and Third Squads would pass through and start to their respective objectives.
The trip from the Takagahara to the Nightingale’s Song should take only forty-eight minutes, and that time was too precious to waste. Rev kept studying the organizational charts as well as the ship’s diagram. They hadn’t had much time to prepare, but he still wanted to make sure he was as ready as possible for any contingency.
A single green LED flashed. The Navy coxswain turned around from her seat in the front of the sleigh and gave them all a thumbs-up.
Rev sat up straighter. He’d been so wrapped up studying that he hadn’t realized the transit was almost over. They’d be braking in thirty seconds.
“Status?”
<All systems green. Power at ninety-seven-point-six percent.>
Rev extended Pashu and glanced at his fan, the new shipboard cannon. This was the first time he’d be going into combat with it instead of his braided meson cannon.
It’ll do just fine. Don’t worry about it.
He then patted the tiny Home Guard-issue Tata-74 in the holster on his thigh. The Tata-5 he’d been issued was almost a copy of the MF-30 sidearm he had in the Marines, but with a ship operation, that had been taken away and the 74 handed out instead. Firing two mm darts with expanding fins at close to hypervelocity speeds, it was deadly enough without being a threat to the ship being rescued. Unlike his MF-30, however, Punch had no connectivity with the Tata, so Rev couldn’t ask him to confirm its status.
The LED on the bulkhead started flashing at once every two seconds. They had fifteen left. Rev locked onto his seat with Pashu’s extendable fingers. His EVA started pressuring up along his arms, legs, and abdomen, shunting blood to his core and brain.
For the last five seconds, the LED filled the sleigh with flashes. And then the sleigh powered up. The G’s were brutal as the sleigh braked, and Rev’s peripheral vision grayed out. He grunted as his body was forced into his seat. Comms silence was gone. If the pirates hadn’t seen them before, they sure would have now. Someone, maybe the lieutenant, grunted something over the net, but he was too worried about staying conscious to concern himself with what was being said.
The coxswain had oriented the sleigh so that the deceleration forced the troopers into their seats. But now, as the sleigh slowed down, they were back into weightlessness. The shift was almost too much for Rev’s stomach, and a little vomit escaped up his throat, but he manned up and swallowed it back down.
The roof of the sleigh retracted, bringing the body of the ship into view. The Nightingale’s Song wasn’t huge as liners go, but it was plenty big enough.
With the sleigh matching the Nightingale’s Song, the coxswain took over, “diving” below the x-axis to come up on the other side of the ship. They passed under it, “under” only because their orientation made the troopers crane their heads up to see the ship as they went past. “Under” and “over” had little real meaning in space, so the terms were used within a personal perspective connotation.
Rev pulled up an outline of the ship, which Punch matched to the real thing. As the sleigh passed under the ship, a red spot on his overlay started flashing. It represented their breach spot.
“Get ready,” he passed to his small breach team.
As with their training on Enceladus, this wasn’t a matter of simply blowing a hole in the ship. Hundreds of captive citizens were inside, and if the ship lost atmosphere, they would die. For this operation, they would be breaching the ship while maintaining the atmosphere inside.
The breaching tube was essentially the same one that they’d use whether there would be atmosphere inside the ship or not. Once emplaced and latched on, five tri-carbon blades would emerge and cut through the hull. To make the breaching tube an airlock, an electrostatic curtain, the same kind that ships used in their hangers, would power up. Troopers would be able to enter the ship, but air would not be able to escape. The tube could maintain the lock for up to three hours. It would be up to an engineering team from the Takagahara to emplace a temporary airlock or seal up the breach before the breaching tube failed.
“Ten seconds,” the lieutenant passed as the sleigh brought them around.
“You’ve got the spot, right?” Rev asked Akkeke.
“I’ve got it, Staff Sergeant.”
Rev wasn’t the most experienced trooper in Null-G. He thought he was leading the breaching team because of what happened back on Enceladus. But Corporal Akkeke was skilled in weightless maneuvering, so Rev had given him the lead. He’d be guiding the tube to the spot with the other three assisting. The entire platoon’s entry was on the corporal’s shoulders.
“Releasing in five . . . four . . . three . . . two . . . one!” the coxswain passed, and suddenly, the harness holding Rev in place retracted.
“Go, go, go!” the lieutenant shouted over the net.
The team was already moving, taking their handholds.
“On me. Impulse level three. Hit it . . . now!” Akkeke said.
The four lifted up and out of the sleigh, and if not quite in perfect unison, it was close enough for government work. Rev craned his head at the big bulk hanging over him.
“Keep it slow,” Rev reminded the team.
The tube had no weight, but it still had mass, and Rev couldn’t help but remember the last time he’d seen a tube in action. Time was of the essence. The pirates had to know they were there by now, but if the four of them crashed into the ship with enough force, the tube could be put out of action before anyone from the platoon could get inside.
“I’ve got it,” Akkeke said with a little bit of peeve in his voice.
Back off, Reverent. He knows how to do it.
The corporal lined up on their breaching point. At about two hundred meters out, he passed, “Cut impulse.”
They drifted in, with the corporal giving little nudges with his lateral jets to keep them on target. All that training on how to move their bodies didn’t have much relevance here with them latched onto the breaching tube.
The ship loomed over them, taking up their horizon. Rev suddenly felt small, inconsequential for a moment.
What the . . . ? You’re not taking on the ship. You’re taking on pirates, and they sure the hell aren’t Marines . . . or troopers. They’re pirates!
With renewed determination, he let his warrior stir. Once in the ship, he was going to let it emerge full force. Too many civilians were at risk for him not to be at his maximum fighting capacity.
“One hundred meters. Stand by to reverse, Impulse 2.”
“How are we doing, Pelletier?” SFC Gamay asked on the P2P.
Rev had to smile. He’d just backed off the corporal, and now he wanted to tell the squad leader to back off and let them do their job. The irony was not lost on him.
“Looking good. Akkeke’s got us on track.”
“We’re in position for the moment you’ve got the breach.”
Rev activated his rearward-facing camera for a moment. The rest of the platoon was moving up behind him, the lead troopers only twenty meters away.
“Reverse Impulse 2 . . . now!”
Rev switched back and hit the reverse. The tube wanted to keep going forward, but they had good holds on it. They slowed down as they got closer. Akkeke had this down pat. He and Gingham rotated their feet forward as they closed the last few meters, gently absorbing the impact and stopping the tube.
“Contact. Initiating anchor,” he passed as he and Gingham started to close the sealing mechanism. The red light at the front of the tube started circling around until a few moments later, the two ends met, and it turned green. Akkeke positioned his boots flush on the hull of the ship, grabbed his handle, and flexed his legs. The tube didn’t budge.
“I’ve got seal!”
Rev turned on the blades. With the back of the tube closed, he couldn’t see the blades cut, but he could feel the vibration as they went to work. Ships hulls, even non-military hulls, are tough. They have to be. But Nightingale’s Song’s hull was no match for the tri-carbon blades. Rev watched the display as it indicated the progress.
“Twenty-five percent,” he passed on the platoon net.
That meant they’d be through and ready for passage in about 115 seconds. That’s all, and they could board and take care of business. Rev felt a thrill of upcoming combat. He didn’t like the idea of fighting fellow humans, but he’d make an exception for these scum.
At least the Children of Angels, while wrong, were fighting for a belief. The pirates were just looking for profit.
He watched with anticipation as the progress reached 40%.
“Get that thing open now!” the lieutenant shouted. “She’s running!”
Rev tore his eyes away from the display. It was difficult to tell, but the ship was beginning to accelerate from her previous course and speed.
That had been their biggest fear. The company had hoped that the pirates would react too slowly at best, but at worst, that the three platoons would be on board before the pirates would run. It wasn’t as if the ship could get away. The Takagahara was too close for that to happen. A single hit would cripple the Nightingale’s Song. But pirates usually used civilians as shields, putting them in the engine spaces and on the bridge. That is why Fox Company was assaulting in the first place.
But if the troopers didn’t make it inside the ship, the Takagahara would have no other option. The ship would not be allowed to reach bubble space.
A ship this size has a tremendous amount of mass, and it couldn’t just scoot out of the gate and away from the station like a sportshover. It looked as if it was barely moving, but that was an optical illusion. Holding onto the breaching tube, Rev’s team could stay with the ship until it entered bubble space. But the rest of the troopers didn’t have that connection. They could keep up for the moment, but as the ship picked up speed, their Oscars wouldn’t be able to match it.
Unless they had their own anchors. The lieutenant immediately ordered the entire platoon forward to latch onto the hull in any way they could.
“Get that damned breach open!” the lieutenant screamed as the troopers approached the ship.
“Sixty-three percent,” Rev passed.
There wasn’t much he could do. The breach was automated at this point. All around him, Fox Company troopers were getting closer, but the ship was picking up speed. Within twenty or thirty seconds, the rest of the squad had reached the hull and were holding onto protuberances or had locked their boots.
But the rest were not making much progress. In retrospect, they should have been closer before Rev’s team started the breach, but the SOP was for them to hold back in case of anti-boarding defenses. Except this was a civilian liner, not a ship of war.
A few of the nearest troopers reached the vessel, but Rev watched in dismay as the rest didn’t seem to get any closer. One trooper had to be only three or four meters away until the ship started to pull away, leaving them behind.
Three or four troopers managed to connect further aft, but that was getting into dangerous ground. The ion stream being emitted from the engines was directional, but there was some bleeding, and if anyone got too close as the ship passed, they’d be cooked.
And then, they were through. Rev activated the curtain, then opened the far hatch, only at the last second remembering to slip back from the tube’s rear opening. Good thing, too. A shape appeared on the forward-looking display screen, and a blast lit up the tube. Rev couldn’t see nor hear the rounds fire out, but he knew he’d been centimeters from eating one.
Without consciously thinking about it, Rev swung Pashu around and fired into the tube twice. There was no return fire. Rev waited five seconds, then swung himself around to look at the screen. There was what looked to be part of a human body, but nothing else.
“Breach made,” he passed on the platoon net.
Normally, at this stage, SFC Gamay and the rest of the squad would enter and secure the breach. They would be followed by the rest of the platoon, and only then would Rev and the other three board the ship, leaving the breach for the Navy engineers to secure.
But the plan had gone to hell. No one was waiting just off the hull, ready to dive through the breach. Other than Rev and his team, those who had managed to reach the ship were scattered over the hull.
“Pelletier. Take your team and board. Secure the breach until the rest of us make our way to the tube and inside,” SFC Gamay passed.
“What about the lieutenant?” Rev asked.
“You’ve received your orders, Staff Sergeant,” the lieutenant cut in, sounding royally pissed. “Just get inside the damn ship now.”
Rev grimaced at the rebuke. From the tone of the lieutenant’s voice, Rev was pretty sure the platoon commander was one of those who’d been left behind. He motioned to the other three to follow him, then pushed his way through the breaching tube opening.
As he reached the breach itself, the ship’s artificial gravity kicked in, and he fell from what had been his “up” to the ship’s “down.” He dropped a meter-and-a-half and hit his head on the deck before sliding around. He whipped Pashu up, ready for anything.
There were two bodies, or at least parts of bodies, at his feet. His fan beamer had been pretty effective with its first shot fired in anger.
A body crashed into him, and for a moment, Rev’s warrior started to lash out, but it was Corporal Acevedo.
Stupid! Gravity, Reverent!
He scrambled out of the way, pulling the corporal with him as Gingham hit the deck with a thud. He pointed down the passage to the left, and Acevedo moved down it several meters and knelt, her RP-5 at the ready.
If the pirates knew where they were going to breach, then why hadn’t they sent more than two of them to hold the site? It didn’t make too much sense.
Akkeke landed feet first, unlike the other three. Rev sent him down the passage opposite Acevedo.
Four of them had made it onto the Nightingale’s Song. The question was how many others were there to take the ship back from the pirates.
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