March to the Stars

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

"We've never had a 'health and welfare' inspection before," the voice said suspiciously.

"Yeah, tell me something I don't know." Jin controlled his voice carefully, sliding just the right hint of exasperation into it. "We've got a task force with an IBI inspection team coming out, and we need to make a big show. Personally, I think they're operating on the theory that everyone needs a good shaking up after the coup attempt, but what do I know? According to The Book, we're supposed to do these things on every ship, not that anybody ever did it! But now we're under the gun, so we're trying to get a paper trail going."

There was a long pause, and Jin wished that he could see the other's face, but the freighter had supplied only a voice channel.

Emerald Dawn was a known ship. She'd passed through the system at least twice before, once since Jin had been inserted. She generally traded minor technological trinkets like fire-starters for local gems and artwork. In addition, she got a small fee for dropping electronic transfers in the system, which was the real reason for her visits. As a matter of fact, he'd talked with the ship on her previous run, and he hoped the familiarity of his voice would lull them to some extent.

"Okay," a new voice said finally. "This is Captain Dennis. One person can come aboard for your 'health and welfare' check. But this is the last time I'm coming to this port. I don't need this aggravation for a handful of cheap-ass gems, a mail chit that barely covers our air loss, and a cargo of scummy art-shit."

"Whatever." Jin let a bit of the peevish bureaucrat into his tone. "I'm just doing my job."

The shuttle was on autopilot, so he slid out of the pilot's chair with a nod at Poertena, and pulled his way aft. This was made somewhat difficult by the fact that the small craft was crammed with Marines in battle armor. Most of them had clamped onto the walls and floors, but a few were drifting, more or less at random.

He stopped opposite Captain Pahner, whose feet were stuck to the ceiling as he stood "head-down," perusing the schematics for the target.

"They're not real happy," the IBI agent said.

"I don't care if they're happy," Pahner said. "Just as long as they open their doors."

"One shot, and we're all vapor," Jin noted.

"And as far as they know, they're suddenly the most wanted ship in the Empire," Pahner pointed out. "It would be very bad form for a tramp freighter to shoot up an official Imperial inspection craft. They'll let us dock. After that, you just hit the deck."

"Why does this make my butt pucker?" Fiorello Giovannuci—known to the dirt-side com station as "Captain Dennis"—asked as he gazed at the viewscreen image of the approaching small craft.

"Because your butt always puckers when we get boarded." Amanda Beach, his first officer, shook her head in mock gravity. "Relax. It's got all the codes for an Imperial customs ship. Really, it's because your conscience isn't pure. You need to spend some time on the planets, reacquiring your oneness with Gaia."

Giovannuci glanced at her, then shook his own head and sighed.

"Your sense of humor is the reason you're out here, you know. Just keep it up." He leaned forward, as if the viewscreen could tell him more if he only stared hard enough, and rubbed his cheek. "And you're wrong. There's something very much not right here."

"You want me to go down to the airlock?" Beach asked as the CO fell silent, watching the shuttle make its final approach. He continued to say nothing for several more seconds, but, finally, he nodded.

"Yes. And take Longo and Ucelli."

"My," she said, pursing her lips as she got to her feet, "you are nervous. Isn't that sort of overkill?"

"Better over than under," Giovannuci said. "Go. Fast."

Jin waited until all the telltales turned green, then opened the airlock door and swung forward through it cautiously. The three people waiting for him represented a fair percentage of the total crew for a tramp like this, and their presence in such numbers indicated just how uncomfortable they must be.

He'd have been just as nervous in their shoes. The profit which could be made from "jacking" ships like this were enough to make them high-priority targets. Even a tramp as old and beat up as Emerald Dawn was worth nearly a billion credits. So anytime one was parked anywhere but at a fully secured port—which did not, by any stretch, describe Marduk—its crew was always on the lookout for pirates. And it wasn't impossible to imagine the entire port being captured, or even that one Temu Jin would be in on it. Stranger things had transpired in the borderlands.

Besides, now that he thought about it, that was actually a pretty fair description, in a slightly skewed way, of what was actually going to happen.

The threesome had obviously been chosen with some care. According to her collar tabs, the woman was senior, a merchant lieutenant, so probably she was Emerald Dawn's second-in-command. She looked a bit long in the tooth for that, and fairly beat up. Regen healed almost perfectly, but scars were inevitable—at least when a limb hadn't had to be completely regrown—and this one, for all her striking looks, had plenty. She'd been in more than one fight, and a couple of them must have been with knives.

The second most notable was the largest of the group, a hulking figure which outmassed even the redoubtable Gronningen. But something about him told Jin that he was one of those big, fast men people tended to underestimate on the theory that anyone that big had to be too slow to be dangerous. He would bear watching.

For that matter, so would the little guy. He was the calmest seeming of the lot as he leaned nonchalantly against a bulkhead, but the low-slung double pistols sort of said it all.

And all three of them wore light body armor.

Jin stepped forward carefully, keeping his hands in view at all times, and extended the pad.

"Pax, okay?" He tabbed the controls and gestured around. "All I want is a thumbprint saying that the 'inspection' was complete, and that you have no complaints. I'll put in all sorts of stuff checked, basically half the stuff on your manifest. And we're all happy. I'm happy, you're happy, the IBI asshole is happy, and everybody can go back to business as usual."

Beach took the pad and glanced at the document on its display. As the bullet-sweating geek had suggested, it showed a detailed inspection of an imaginary ship conforming to their class, with a list of cargo opened and checked. It was quite an artistic forgery, a masterpiece of the genre.

"Why, thank you," she said, giving him a thin smile as she annotated and thumbprinted the pad. "What's wrong? You look nervous."

"Yeah? Well, Mr. Gun-Happy over there looks like he's remembering the last baby he ate, and I ain't even gonna comment on Mr. Troll," Jin said with a nervous laugh.

"I don't eat babies," the gunman whispered. "They stick in your teeth."

"Ha. Ha," the IBI agent said.

"Done," Beach said, and handed him the pad.

"Thanks," Jin replied with a relieved sigh. His hand was unaccountably clumsy as he accepted the pad, and it slipped out of his fingers. He swore, grabbed for it, then followed it to the deck, and as he did, he noted with the cool, professional detachment available only to the truly frightened that the threesome had reacted to the little ruse as if such things happened to them every day.

The fabric of his suit hardened under the kinetic impact of the first round just as the shuttle doors exploded open behind him.

"Shit," Giovannuci said, and hit the alarm button with a fist as he erupted from his seat. "Jackers!"

They couldn't simply announce that they were Marines who were commandeering the vessel in the name of the Empire. First, no one would have believed them, and, second, they were all wanted for treason. Somehow, they were pretty sure that "No, really. It was all a big mistake," wouldn't fly. So the plan was to secure the "welcome party" and try to keep casualties to a minimum in the assault.

The "plan," clearly, was a bust even before Gronningen did a flying leap out of the airlock. The undersized gun-boy was pumping rounds into Jin as the IBI agent rolled across the deck to spread the hits across the protective surface of his uniform. The big guy, on the other hand, had produced a cut-down flechette cannon—from where was a mystery—and was filling the airlock with flechettes, while the leader type had produced a heavy bead pistol and had Gronningen perfectly targeted.

"Don't fire until fired upon" obviously wasn't going to work under these circumstances.

Gronningen hit the deck sliding, and targeted the little gunner first, but the gunman had taken one look at the Marine battle armor and decided the odds were against the home team. The heavy bead round clove through the bulkhead, but the gunner was already gone. Gronningen's next round, however, flipped the heavy gunner over backwards in a spray of red.

The woman was fast. Before he could reacquire her, she'd hit the deck exit button and was out of there. The inner airlock door slammed shut behind her, and Gronningen levered himself to his feet as Macek slid by and hit the door button.

"Sealed," Geno said. "Oh, well." He rolled out a slab of claylike substance and slapped it onto the hatch. "Fire in the hole!"

"Who in Muir's Name are these guys?" Giovannuci demanded. A security team was on the way to the command deck, but he wanted to be forward. The last thing he'd seen was a wave of heavy Imperial armor coming out of the shuttle, and that was not good news.

"I don't know," Beach replied over her communicator. "What kind of jackers wear battle armor? Or even know how to use it, for that matter? But if they're Empies, why don't they have a warship? And if there is a warship, where in hell is it?"

"I don't know," the CO replied, looking at his schematic. "But whoever they are, they're already through the lock. And moving down Deck C. It looks like they know where the morgue is."

"Do they want to capture us?" the second officer demanded. "I'm falling back to the Morgue, but I've only got a limited group. So far, only eight and the two commandos at the Morgue door."

"Well, I've got bodies, but you've got all the weapons," Giovannuci snapped. "Sidearms are useless against that armor."

"I know," Beach said. "I'm into the Armory. Now, if we can just match bodies to bullets!"

"I'll send groups through the side passages," Giovannuci said. "For once, the way they butchered this thing when they converted her will work in our favor."

"Oh, yeah? Well, next time, tell them to put the Pollution-bedamned Armory further away from the main hatch!"

"Will do. Giovannuci, out."

"Lai, go with First Squad to Engineering," Pahner snapped. "Gunny Jin, you're with Second." As the teams headed out, the sergeant major snagged Jin and Despreaux. She peered into the squad leader's helmet visor, but its swirling mirrored surface made it impossible to see the younger woman's expression.

"Despreaux, I know you're not tracking too well..." Kosutic said.

"I'm fine, Sergeant Major," the sergeant replied.

"No, you're not," Kosutic contradicted calmly. "You're a basket case. So's Bebi and Niederberger. And Gelert and Mutabi, for that matter."

"Shit," Jin said. "Mutabi went?"

"Yes," Kosutic replied. "I've been trying to hold all of you out of combat as much as possible. This time, I don't have any choice."

"I'll be fine," Despreaux said desperately. "Really. I was fine in Mudh Hemh."

"Nevertheless, Jin's going along," Kosutic told her. "Let him run your squad; you just cover everyone's back."

"I can handle it, Sergeant Major," the sergeant said. "I can."

"Despreaux, just do what I say, okay?" the NCO snapped.

"Yes, Sergeant Major," she replied bitterly. "I'll go ahead and give up my squad to the Gunny."

"Trust the Gunny," Jin told her quietly, tapping her on the shoulder.

"It'll be okay," Kosutic said, as the deck shook with a distant detonation. "Somehow or another, it'll be okay."

"Who the pock are these guys?" Julian snapped. He'd narrowly missed being smeared by the hypervelocity missile that had just torn the bulkhead into so much confetti. For a "tramp freighter," Emerald Dawn's crew had some heavy-duty hardware. And a lot of personnel.

"Captain Pahner, this is Julian. Third Squad is stuck on the approach to the Bridge. I'd estimate the defenders are in at least squad strength, with heavy weapons, and they're fighting hard. We tried to cut through bulkheads, but several of them are made of reinforced blast steel. We're having a hard time cutting that. We've eliminated two defense points, but we've also lost two suits to get here." He looked around at the four members of the squad behind him. "Frankly, Sir, I don't think we're going to get through without some reinforcements."

"Julian, hold what you've got. I'll see what I can scrounge up."

Pahner looked over at Temu Jin and raised an eyebrow. The IBI agent had been attempting to hack the ship's infonet for almost two minutes. It was clear that whatever they'd run into—smugglers, pirates, or whatever—this was no "tramp freighter."

"So, what did we just walk into Agent Jin?"

"Well, if it's a tramp freighter, I'm an Armaghan High Priest. No offense, Sergeant Major."

"None taken," Kosutic rasped. "We need to do something here, Captain."

"Yes, we do, Sergeant Major." Pahner looked over at her. "But we really, really need some information to decide what, don't you think?"

"Personnel, personnel..." Gunny Jin muttered, looking at the faded signs stenciled on the bulkheads. "Where's the crew quarters?"

"Kyrou, cover your sector," Despreaux snapped. The private had been glancing over at Jin as the gunny tried to navigate the unfamiliar maze.

"Yes, Sergeant," the plasma gunner replied, turning back to the right.

"Ah, crew quarters," the gunny muttered finally, then took a few steps and turned left into a cross-passage. "Oh... shit."

Despreaux froze as the gunny and Kyrou vanished in a ball of silver and the bulkheads to either side began to melt.

"Nimashet?" Beckley called. "Sergeant?!"

Despreaux felt her hands begin to shake. For just a moment, Beckley seemed kilometers away, and she closed her eyes. But then she drew a deep breath and opened them once more.

"Alpha Team, lay down a base of fire. Bravo, move!"

The sergeant major glanced at her schematic and grimaced.

"Lamasara's gone," she said bitterly. "We're losing people by the minute, Captain."

"Yes, we are," Pahner replied calmly. "But until I know to whom, we're just going to hold where we are. With one exception." He flipped to a different frequency. "St. John. Go, go, go."

St. John (J) looked over at his brother and smiled.

"Oh, goody. Time to take a little walk."

"I hate freefall," St. John (M) grumped, but he also tapped the controls of the Class A Extra-Vehicular Unit. The round EVU pack, more of a small spaceship than a suit, accepted the previously set up commands and released carefully timed puffs of gas that sent the two Marines on a course that hugged the surface of the globular starship. A course that would eventually intersect the first of two weapons hard points.

"Ah, just think of it as a stroll down to the bagel shop," St. John (J) said. He cycled his bead cannon to ensure that it was working in vacuum. "Or the Muffin Man."

"Them was the days, wasn't they, Bro?" Mark sighed. "Do you know the muffin man..."

"The muffin man, the muffin man," John replied.

"Do you know the muffin man," they chorused as the EVU packs picked up speed, rocketing them towards an anti-ship missile platform. A platform that probably would be heavily defended. "Do you know the muffin man, he lives in Drury Lane!"

"Got it," Jin called. He watched the data streaming out of the ship-sys and blanched. "Oh, no."

"Sergeant Julian, this is Pahner."

Julian leaned forward and sent a stream of heavy beads down the passage to cover Gronningen. The big Asgardian darted across the opening and dove through a hatchway, barely avoiding a stream of plasma fire.

"Go ahead, Sir," the sergeant gasped.

"There's bad news and worse news. The bad news is that this isn't a tramp freighter. It's a Saint Special Operations insertion ship under the command of one Colonel Fiorello Giovannuci."

"Oh... pock. Commandos?"

"Greenpeace Division," Pahner confirmed. "And in case you didn't recognize the name, Giovannuci was the bastard in command of the Leonides operation a few years back. He's as good as they come... and a true believer."

"Oh... I—" Julian paused, unable to think, then shook himself. "Go ahead, Sir."

"This is where we get to the worse news," Pahner's voice said calmly. "Gunny Jin is down, probably gone, at what turned out to be the Armory, and not the crew quarters, ship's plans notwithstanding. Where Despreaux's squad is apparently blocking the majority of the commando company from making it into the Morgue."

"Oh. A full company?"

"Yes. They are, therefore, the current priority. If the Peacers get to the Armory, we are well and truly screwed, so we're just going to have to take care of them before we can reinforce you."

"Yes, Sir."

"Cover your back. Do not let reinforcements into the Bridge. By the same token, do not let the Bridge guards, who are almost the only ones with heavy weapons, out. Understood?"

"Hold what we've got. Nobody goes in, nobody comes out. Engineering?"

"Gunny Lai bought it there, so did Sergeant Angell. But Georgiadas has the situation under control; there's a security point there that they took, and they're covered in both directions. You're not, so hold on hard. Got it?"

"Got that in one, Sir. What's to stop them from taking off, Sir?"

"Nothing." Julian could hear the grim humor behind that single word. "Georgiadas reports that the drive is warming up under remote from the Bridge even as we speak."

"Yes, Sir." Julian licked his lips and cursed quietly. "Sir, I'll be asked. What in the hell are we going to do? I think I'd rather face the Kranolta again."

"I'm going to do the one thing that I swore to myself I would not, under any circumstances whatsoever, especially if things were bad, stoop to."

"Go! Go! Go!"

"Your Highness, just wait!" Dobrescu snapped. "Thirty more seconds to lift. That's the optimal window. So just sit the hell down and shut the hell up."

"Goddamn it!" Roger almost punched the display, but he remembered all those centuries ago, the last time he'd been in a cramped little compartment like this one in powered battle armor and gently tapped a control panel. Yet it was hard to restrain himself. Hard. The display showed that the thirty Marines who'd lifted off to the "tramp freighter" had been reduced to twenty-four already. At this rate, there wouldn't be anyone to rescue.

"Prepare for lift," Dobrescu called over the all-hands circuit. "Helmets on! You sc—Mardukans get ready. You're going to feel realll heavy. Three, two, one..."

"Just hang on, Nimashet," Roger whispered. "Just hang on... ."

Four Marine assault shuttles, containing the Mardukan contingent of the Basik's Own, lifted skyward on pillars of flame.

"All units, hold what you've got," Pahner called. "The cavalry is on the way."

"Satan, protect us," Kosutic snapped as a team of commandos rolled across the corridor. She winged one, but the other three got away. "We're getting outmaneuvered and outshot, Captain."

"I've noticed," Pahner said calmly. "Suggestions?"

"Let Poertena and me take it to them," Kosutic said. "Having a mobile force will force them to react."

"I'll have a mobile force here in—" He consulted his suit. "Seven minutes."

"Seven minutes is a lonnng time, Armand."

Pahner sighed and nodded.

"That it is."

"Aaaahhh!"

"Oh, calm down, Rastar," Roger grunted. The shuttles still had the extra hydrogen tanks installed, and the plotted intercept had been calculated based upon that almost limitless fuel supply. So they'd lifted at three gravities and would hit a DV-Max of almost seven. For Roger and the pilots, that was simply very unpleasant. For the Mardukans, who had never experienced more than a couple of gravities during their limited micro-gravity familiarization flights, it was a nightmare.

They'd put all of them through at least one lift, but nothing like this. The humans had managed to convince themselves that there was no conceivable situation in which the Mardukans would actually be used for a combat assault, so they hadn't subjected them to the real stresses of such a launch. And now the Mardukans, and their allies, were paying the price for that complacent gentleness.

"All hands, remember, crunch!" Roger gasped. "Squeeze your stomach like you're taking a dump, but plug your butt." He glanced over at the telltales. "There's only another... three minutes."

"I hate freefall," St. John (M) said as he hugged the hull of the ship.

Their EVU packs were gone, and the two Marines were now flat on their faces behind a tiny exterior catwalk. The first emplacement, a missile launcher, had been undefended. But by the time they made it to the second and last, a heavy plasma cannon, the Saints had suffered a rush of common sense and sent one of their few "free" heavy weapons to protect it. The ship-to-ship cannon itself couldn't depress far enough to engage the Marines, or they'd already have been reduced to constituent atoms, but the heavy bead gun that had popped out of the firing port had them well and truly pinned. Because of the angle it had, they couldn't even back up and swing around.

"Mom always said we'd come to a bad end," St. John (J) said.

"Don't go all heroic on me, Bro," Mark said. "There's got to be a smart way out of this."

"In about thirty seconds, the prince is going to come over the horizon, Mark." John readied his plasma cannon. "So you've got exactly twenty seconds to figure something out."

"Oh, that's not hard," Mark said... and stood up.

The first bead took him in the left arm. The heavy projectile smashed the ChromSten armor like tissue paper, severing the limb just above the elbow in a spray of gas and body liquids.

"Pock, not again," he gasped as he aimed his cannon one-handed at the base of the defensive platform and locked the trigger back.

"Pollution," Giovannuci whispered as he turned away from the display. The armored form had taken three bead rounds before the plasma platform went up, but it was still firing. Whoever it was had to be dead. But he kept firing until Emerald Dawn's last space defenses turned into floating bits of wreckage.

"What does it take to kill these people? Who the fuck are they?"

"Sir," his com tech said, "you have got to hear this."