A Faded Star 3_The Battle for Lashmere Read online

  Eventually, a large building loomed before them in the darkness. Dereck crept up to Valencia’s side. “That’s it. Istyul City Hospital.”

  Chapter 2

  Marli Simmons felt cramped. She was sealed in her battle armor. A trickle of sweat ran down her forehead and into her right eye. It stung. Halford Kri and three of his marines were arrayed in a tight line in front of her. All of them had heavy combat rifles leveled at her chest; they had her dead to rights.

  “Hal, I know why you’re here, but you have to let me go,” Marli said over her suit’s external speaker.

  Kri’s armored head shook, and he said, “Sorry, Marli. You know I can’t do that. We can go back to Lashmere. You can present your case to Admiral Stokes. He can dispatch a full expedition, now that we’ve beaten the crabs back. You won’t be able to go, of course, but your discoveries from the Aeternum database can still be of use.”

  Simmons felt her brow go up in surprise. “I suppose you think I should be thrown in the brig rather than being allowed to help all of humanity.”

  “Marli, you stole the Loki. You fired on the Damocles. I think the best you can hope for at this point is some time in the brig. You’ll be lucky if command doesn’t hand you over to the civilian government.”

  “I won’t allow that, Hal.”

  Kri raised his rifle slightly, aiming at her center of mass. “You don’t have a choice.” He waived at one of the marines. “Stephens, get her out of that armor.”

  The indicated marine moved towards her. She waited, careful not to tense up or shift her stance into anything that might be considered threatening. As Stephens came close, she struck with all of the mechanically enhanced speed and strength her battle armor allowed her. She snatched the marine by his left forearm and spun him between herself and Kri. One of the marines still had a clean line of sight and fired, hitting her on the side. A red warning light appeared in her visor immediately, showing critical damage to that armor panel.

  Simmons continued to spin, dragging the marine she had a grip on around her. As he lost all control of his momentum, she dropped and deftly flipped the marine over her raised knee, throwing him into the two marines to Kri’s left. All three marines crashed to the ground in a tangle of arms and legs. Combat trained marines wouldn’t stay down for more than a few seconds, and Simmons had to react fast. She focused her attention on Kri. He was bringing his rifle up and aiming at her chest.

  Simmons dropped to one knee and snatched a heavy flash-bang grenade from her waist. With a gentle toss, the device landed at Kri’s feet, forcing him to dance backward to avoid being caught in the blast. Simmons spun and ran towards the bow of her pinnace. A single shot hit her in the back. The impact nearly knocked her flat, followed immediately by the detonation of her flash-bang. An alert appeared on her display. The power pack for her canon would need repair before she could use it, but she could take several more hits in the back before her armor was breached.

  Her feet churned the moss as she rounded the bow of her pinnace and snapped her stealth system to full power before diving off the edge of the landing apron. The moss on top of the landing area was only about half a meter deep, but the moss surrounding it was roughly four meters deep. More than enough to provide her some solid concealment.

  Only luck and the surprising speed of her battle armor had allowed her to escape at all. Kri wouldn’t underestimate her again. Simmons suddenly realized she was holding her breath. She exhaled and inhaled deeply while trying to regain control of her jangled nerves. She shimmied slowly forward through the moss, trying to disturb it as little as possible. She heard someone to her left, moving through the moss.

  Simmons keyed her radio to listen only, hoping to catch any chatter between the marines and Kri. She found their frequency readily enough, but it was encrypted. Fortunately, they were transmitting regularly enough to let her suit computer begin working their locations. They’d fanned out on both sides of where she had leaped into the deep moss. She waited patiently, while they moved ever further from the landing apron.

  Once they were all at least ten meters away, she began circling slowly back behind them to the far side of the pinnace. She was almost there when she heard the sound of another pinnace dropping out of the sky. She fought off the urge to scream at the top of her lungs. Why did Kri have to be so persistent in his efforts to catch her? She slowly shifted her way back into the deeper moss, well clear of the area where the crew from Damocles was searching.

  Simmons sighed and watched as the passive sensors in her battle armor constantly updated the situation. Ten more people had landed in the pinnace. They were following a standard search pattern. She would have to wait them out by moving further and further out from the pinnaces. The only problem would be food. Food! She only had about a day’s worth of rations with her. What would she do without access to the stores on her pinnace?

  Simmons had to stop herself from running to the pinnace. The memory of going for days without food was still too fresh and unpleasant from when the Loki had nearly been destroyed. Surely, Kri would give up after a few hours and leave her there, to wait for her in orbit. In a coordinated move, all of the searchers began making their way back towards the pinnaces. After a moment, she heard the sounds of all three of the small craft spinning up their engines.

  Her suit told the awful truth. Somehow, Kri had gotten aboard her pinnace and broken through her security program. She watched the three ships lift off smoothly and head for orbit, presumably to dock with Damocles. Simmons watched the craft leave with all of her food on board. She carefully controlled her urge to run for the base. Kri might try to pull the same trick on her again. For now, she had enough food to last her another day on this planet.

  A transmission from Kri snapped her out of her thoughts. “Marli, I’ve taken your pinnace. Interesting design. I’m sure Lashmere Command will enjoy looking it over once I take it back home. You have no way to escape the planet. If your ship enters the atmosphere, I can track it and, this time, I will take you down. Don’t be any more foolish than you’ve already been. Send out a transmission on a clear channel, and I’ll have a team of marines head down to pick you up.” The message paused for a few seconds before it began to replay. Simmons muted it and began to shimmy through the moss back to the base. Even though it was five thousand years old, the people here had been able to survive for long periods of time. That suggested food and water of some kind. With luck, some part of their production facility might be working, or, at least, repairable.

  More than an hour after Kri had stranded her on the planet, Simmons carefully crept around the lip of the opening surrounding the entrance to the base. The door was still open from when she had first entered. Simmons studied the myriad boot prints in the dust just inside the door. So many men had come to get her, and yet she was free. Simmons took a bit of heart in that.

  The buoy to her mood was short lived. A short search of the base revealed it to be much less than she had originally thought. Space for perhaps a dozen different research projects and quarters for not more than twenty-five personnel. A small galley was part of the arrangement, but if it had held any food, it was long turned to dust.

  The quarters were equally uninspiring. Many personal items and clothes disintegrated as soon as they were touched. Simmons sighed and said, “I guess five thousand years is too much to ask for anything useful to survive unless it was designed to make it for that long.” She wondered why the turrets had remained functional after all this time.

  Simmons made her way back to the computer room and ran the servers through their startup routines again. She took her time running through every bit of viable storage space in the system, searching for any information her original pass might have missed. A few bits of data were added to her archive, but she doubted it would make much difference. It would make no difference at all if she couldn’t get off of the planet.

  Sighing and accepting the inevitable, she turned her attention to her most pressing problem. She
would need to call Loki down from orbit to pick her up. The problem was that if Kri was willing to go after her small ship with everything it had, it was unlikely to survive for long enough to pick her up, much less escape back into orbit.

  Simmons turned the problem over in her mind a few times. Her pinnace was out of the question. Even if she could somehow set up a remote link to it, it was locked in Damocles’ small boat bay. She felt her frustration level rising to the breaking point. She had to get off of this planet. It was the only way to make sure she found the longevity research. Why couldn’t Kri just understand how important this was. She growled under her breath and slammed her fist into the wall where she stood.

  She underestimated the strength of her armor, and the fist went straight through the wall, leaving a crumbled hole in the concrete. Simmons sighed and checked the integrity of the thin armor plates in her glove. So far, despite the tremendous abuse the armor had suffered, it had held up remarkably well. Amusingly, it was still even air tight.

  Air tight. Simmons stared at the two words on her status display. Her armor included a contiguous pressure suit as a part of its construction. It was possible to enter the vacuum of space in nothing but the armor. She brought up the full virtual interface.

  The virtual interface was a projection that allowed her to manipulate the suit computer with gestures and by interacting with buttons and icons in her field of view that were actually projected on the inside of her face plate.

  She quickly flicked her way through the menus, scrolling until she found the specifications on the combat drones. They were designed to function both in space and atmosphere, but they weren’t meant to carry anything but the modules that added combat functionality. Her maintenance module was another matter entirely. It had extensible arms that jutted from the drone rather than the smooth surface of the offensive, defensive and sensor packages. She checked the specifications. The drone should have sufficient lifting ability to carry her into orbit and rendezvous with Loki. The trick then would be transitioning from the drone into an airlock.

  The whole idea was madness. A drone pushing up the gravity well would be easily detectable by Damocles and would instantly give away the location of Loki once she approached to board. It was another no win solution.

  She was still pondering how to overcome her situation when she got a new message from Kri. “I just wanted to update you on the situation here in orbit, Marli. I’ve enveloped the planet with sensor drones. I’ve caught a few whiffs of Loki. Not enough to catch it, but enough to know you programmed a really solid evasive program into the autopilot. Eventually, you’ll run out of food, water or patience. Whichever one runs out; I’ll be waiting to pounce. You’re trapped, and I have the high ground. Surrender, and I’ll tell Admiral Stokes you came in peacefully.”

  Simmons listened to the message play through three times before she muted it again. There had to be a way to use this to her advantage. If the planet was surrounded by drones, she might be able to sneak one of hers through. That would get the drone to the surface. The trick then would be finding a way to get back into orbit without being detected. She ran through her options again. The suit computer showed all of the factors in exhausting detail. Power signature from the tiny drive on a drone was still enough to be detected while it worked its way up through the atmosphere. There was also the problem of needing to survive the trip. Drones weren’t meant to carry passengers in any configuration, and they could accelerate fast enough to turn a human into paste.

  Her only other option would be to cause a distraction. She would have to focus Damocles’ attention somewhere else while she made her way back up to the ship. A plan crystallized in her mind. If she could get all of her drones to the surface, they could all charge off in different directions, forcing Damocles to pick and choose which ones to follow. Now she just had to find a way to get them all down to where she was. She started working on a rough field interface to control the drones from her battle armor.

  A feverish hour passed, then another. Computer code flowed from Simmons in an unending torrent. One thought flowed into the next in an almost trance-like fashion. Her program grew and shaped itself in her mind’s eye as she worked, piecing together the needed functions.

  More than four hours after starting work, the program was done. The interface was less than ideal, but it should be sufficient. She initiated the microsecond burst transmission that would signal Loki to covertly launch all twenty-four drones and drop them slowly and silently through the atmosphere. A descending drone needed far less power to control its flight than an ascending one. They should be undetectable, even by Kri’s sensor net.

  Simmons heard the approach of her drones a few seconds before they came into sight over a tall ridge of mossy growth. Twenty-three had sensor packages. She initiated a hard line interface, uploading a program to all of them, forcing them to transmit the tiny electrical signals that would imitate a human life sign. With luck, Damocles wouldn’t be able to tell the difference.

  Simmons then gingerly climbed onto the back of the single utility drone that had made the trip. The arms, even folded away, were more than sufficient to grasp. She levered her feet into a gap and then latched on with both hands.

  She took a deep breath. Her heart was racing, and she was sure she was sweating enough to turn the inside of her suit into a swimming pool. She reviewed her preparations again, and, with a sudden twisting knot of fear turning her stomach into a ball of nausea, she jabbed her finger into the virtual interface where she’d placed the execute button.

  Chapter 3

  Hanlon was practically dancing from foot to foot while Tolon’s shuttle crossed the space between his ship and New Dawn. The massive ship kept getting bigger and bigger as they approached. “Tolon, do you know where the door to the boat bay is?”

  “There are a number of docking ports and shuttle bays Our limited knowledge suggests the one we approach is closest to a control center.” Tolon manipulated the panel with his tentacles, the soft taps filling the air.

  “Well, we need to hurry. If we can get the New Dawn to Lashmere in time, we can protect them against these Woduur. How long will it take for the Woduur and the Alliance to attack Lashmere?”

  Tolon bounced in place for a moment before responding. “It is uncertain. Our source was only able to relay the most general details of the pact. We know for certain that the Woduur and the Alliance plan to attack, the details are not within our grasp.”

  “The sooner we get New Dawn powered up and moving towards Lashmere, the better.”

  The shuttle came close enough for Hanlon to begin making out surface details on New Dawn. The black surface was pitted and covered in debris. She concentrated on communicating with New Dawn.

  Proceed with inquiry, Operator nine-one.

  “The outer surface of the hull appears to have a lot of minor damage. Please confirm hull status,” Hanlon spoke into the air, still trying to fight off feeling ridiculous in doing so.

  There was a pause of three or four seconds before New Dawn responded. Hull integrity confirmed at one hundred percent. Outer surface erosion does not affect hull strength.

  “Understood. We are approaching one of the small boat bays. Open the outer door so that we can dock.”

  Confirmed. Stand by.

  Hanlon waited for the door to open. After a few moments, she turned to Tolon and said, “Maybe the door is malfunctioning.”

  Before Tolon could respond, the door started to slide open. It stopped after less than a meter for several seconds and then lurched into motion and continued to retract upwards. The boat bay it revealed was filled with shuttles of strange design. Some of them were quite large, nearly the size of a corvette. The bay itself was cavernous.

  “It must be over three hundred meters across. I wonder why they need such a large docking bay.”

  Tolon said, “This is a small bay. There are two others further down the hull that are much larger.”

  Hanlon faced Tolon and said, “How
do you know?”

  “We have conducted detailed scans of the New Dawn over the years. Despite the fact that we are not allowed entry, we have been able to learn some details by carefully observing the exterior.”

  “How have you managed to bring it with you when you’ve moved from system to system?”

  Tolon paused for a moment before answering. When Tolon did speak, Hanlon thought she detected a note of trepidation in its voice. “I must ask you not to repeat the information I am about to give you.” Tolon paused until Hanlon nodded. “Leader is in possession of a device that can force the ship to follow. Do not misunderstand, Captain Hanlon. I do not betray Leader. I believe you must be in possession of all knowledge about New Dawn. While I am not explicitly forbidden from sharing this knowledge, I suspect there are those that would prefer you not know about this device.”

  “I understand. Thank you for trusting me. You must know I will do what I can to make it impossible for the Ulef to use this device.”

  Tolon said, “Yes, I anticipated that response.”

  The shuttle bumped against the airlock and settled into a docking cradle with a slight groan. The cradle wasn’t ideally shaped for the Ulef craft. A docking collar extended and pressed against the shuttle airlock. After a moment of waiting, Tolon said, “It is safe to leave. Sensors indicate breathable air on the other side of the airlock.”

  Tolon stepped up to the inner airlock door, and it quickly cycled open. The outer door opened a few seconds later, giving Hanlon a better view of the inside of New Dawn. The decks were dull gray and appeared to be made of some kind of metallic substance. She stepped out of the airlock, peering about curiously.

  “Welcome aboard, Operator nine-one. Current environmental parameters have been set for Earth sea-level as standard. Do you wish to update the environmental parameters?”