Killswitch: (Cassandra Kresnov Book 3)

“Looks like they’re really leaving,’ said the scan tech, igazing at his screen. Captain Verjee observed over the scan tech’s shoulder, lips pursed. A distrustful frown creased one eyebrow as his experienced eyes followed the two dots on the nav screen, automatically translating the two-dimensional graphics into three-dimensional time and space. Callay, its five small moons, a remarkably civilised G-4 sun, twelve outerlying worlds and countless system settlements and intersystem traffic. A busy system, but nothing compared to Earth. The traffic within the Jovian system alone was heavier than the Callayan system in entirety. Although once Callay became the Federation’s capital world, God forbid, that might change.

‘Pearl River and Kutch are both Chandaram-class,’ Verjee replied. ‘That’s some of the most mobile firepower in the Fleet, and I don’t trust two-hour-old V-signatures for a second. Keep an eye on them, let me know the moment they finally jump.’

‘Yessir,’ said the scan tech.

And where could they be going, Verjee wondered as he straightened and surveyed the Nehru Station bridge. He knew Captain Marakova too well to easily believe she’d abandon her old friend Reichardt … not without at least chewing his ear off in an attempt to change his orders. There had been any number of opportunities to send for help with departing freighters. Probably he should contact Captain Rusdihardjo about it-Admiral Rusdihardjo, he corrected himselfexcept that she doubtless knew already, and had been watching developments on board the Euphrates. God only knew what she’d been doing in there the last Callayan week since Duong had been killed. Hardly anyone had seen her, save the constant stream of staff from Secretary General Benale’s new station office-which had been established directly opposite the Euphrates Berth Four, unsurprisingly enough.

Verjee wished she’d let someone else in on the party. He hated station bridge duty, but ever since they’d been forced to lock up the uncooperative stationmaster and his bridge crew, Fifth Fleet crew had been forced to substitute with their own staff. And from the bridge of his own ship, he would be that much better positioned to keep an eye on that traitorous fool Reichardt, whose warship and crew were far too impressive to be left unwatched for any period of time, and whose actions were notoriously unpredictable.

Verjee’s eyes flicked to a dock monitor screen, across which Reichardt and his small marine contingent had walked a minute ago, on their way to a captains’ meeting in the rooms upon the other side of bridge-section. The meeting, ostensibly, was to begin discussions on the partial transfer of station command back to the Callayan authorities. And it was about time that the Third Fleet had finally started to realise the operational reality. The Fifth needed to resume Nehru and the other three main trade stations to at least fifty percent of their previous efficiency, both in order to free up their own personnel, and to make some kind of reduction in the size of the growing queue of freighter traffic that clustered now in high polar orbit, awaiting an increasingly rare station-slot. With the troublesome dockworker unions smashed, their ringleaders either imprisoned or otherwise disposed of, there wasn’t an awful lot of traffic moving through any of the stations right now. With Reichardt signalling that the Third Fleet representatives were finally ceasing their ideological obstinacy, the chances looked good that the Callayan administration would recognise the hopelessness of their situation, and begin discussions on separating Fleet Command from the new Callayan Grand Council.

With their fledgling military hopelessly outgunned and without any space capability to speak of, their influence with the Grand Council limited, Fleet HQ unwilling to oppose the Fifth’s actions, and their economy losing billions each day from lost trade, it didn’t appear that the Callayans had any choice in the matter. Ultimately, one day, these soft, pampered civilians would realise that it was those with the most firepower who decided the course of history. The Fleet remained unrivalled. And Earth, thank God, controlled the Fleet. God willing, it always would.

A signal light flashed above the bridge’s main security door. Verjee saw one of the marines on guard signal to him, and walked over, down the central aisle of chairs before multigraphical display screens. The first blast door opened, then closed behind him. Then the outer door, with a massive hiss of hydraulics. Reichardt was waiting in the metal hall beyond, lightly armoured and with a sidearm at his hip. It was less armour than Fifth Fleet personnel were wont to wear about the docks these days-snipers had accounted for five soldiers so far, one of them an officer, although none of the injuries were serious. Despite repeated sweeps, and extensive interrogation of suspects, they still hadn’t found all the culprits. Soft Callayan civvies or not, they were proving remarkably stubborn once aroused, and reports indicated the other three stations were no better.

‘Captain,’ said Verjee, with a nod. Reichardt returned it. Some times there were salutes, between captains of equal rank. And sometimes not. Now, it hardly seemed appropriate. ‘What can I do for you?’

‘Stop being an arrogant puss-head and change your mind.’

Verjee smiled, tiredly. Glanced about at the fully armoured marines guarding the bridge doors. Reichardt’s own small contingent from Mekong waited several metres down the corridor, fronted by Lieutenant Nadaja. Nadaja was known by reputation from several major battles during the war. Her broad, African face was neither attractive nor expressive. Verjee had seen bulkheads that radiated greater warmth. The marines too wore light armour, with breastplates and webbing, but no faceplates or powerpacks. That too was defiance-it openly differentiated Third Fleet from Fifth before all the station’s people. The Third Fleet had nothing to fear from Callayan locals, it meant. And thus condemned them, in the eyes of many captains of the Fifth, as traitors.

‘Change my mind about what, Captain?’ Verjee replied finally, glancing wearily up at him. Reichardt was too damn tall to be a Fleet carrier captain. God knew how he fit into his command chair, let alone through the numerous smaller hatches. He was also a sandy-haired, coarse-mannered, undisciplined, arrogant American with an appallingly irritating Texan accent. Verjee could not help but respect Reichardt’s formidable combat record. But the man clearly didn’t like him, and he saw no point in bothering to conceal his own opinions.

,,You know.’

‘You know, William, I really don’t.’ Verjee shrugged, expansively. ‘There’s nothing left to discuss. It’s over. The Fleet will get its way. As if there was ever really any doubt.’

Reichardt winced slightly as he scratched an itch on his scalp. The man didn’t even bother with a helmet. ‘That’s your final position?’

‘What are you even doing here?’ Verjee said in exasperation. ‘You’ve got a meeting down that hall, the others will not leave their ships until you’re in the room, I suggest you go there and sit down before someone decides to have you rounded up and put there forcibly.’

That was security too-none of the Fifth Fleet captains wanted to be sitting together in a meeting room without Reichardt sitting there first. If he tried something, or had the room rigged somehow with the rebel terrorists he was doubtless in communication with, it would happen to him too.

‘I don’t suppose that would be you making that decision, would it, Aral?’ Reichardt remarked wryly.

‘Captain,’ Verjee replied, with mock sincerity, ‘you know I hold you in the highest esteem.’

Reichardt smiled at him, grimly. ‘That’s what I thought,’ he said. And he pulled the sidearm from his holster, and shot Verjee in the head.

The next two rounds went straight through the guard’s visorplate at point-blank range. It shattered in a spray of blood, the armoured body collapsing with a crash as Nadaja’s fire took down the second. Alarms rang, deafeningly, Sergeant Pollard leaping across one body to the access panel as the armoured outer door slid rapidly closed. Reichardt stepped back as Nadaja leaped past, headed for the corridor’s opposite end as Twan did the same in the other direction. Pollard fed a card from his portable unit into the access slot and began feeding in code as the outer doors crashed closed. Private Anwar provided cover at his side.

The corridor abruptly rang with the thunder of Nadaja’s rifle fire, then screams from further down above the racket of alarms. Then from Twan at the other end, multiple bursts and a grenade that detonated with the familiar sharp crack of an AP round, and more screaming. Pollard stared at his handheld screen, apparently oblivious, watching the patterns and numbers count down. Then, with a hiss, the sirens silenced, and the bridge doors hissed open.

Reichardt pulled a grenade and flattened himself to the side bulkhead. The second door opened, and fire ripped from within, hammering the corridor wall even as Anwar fired a rifle grenade through the gap, fading left before the fire could reach him. An explosion tore the bridge even as an answering grenade hit the corridor wall, Reichardt, Pollard and Anwar ducked and covered as the explosion blew them sideways and peppered their armour. Reichardt recovered and on reflex threw his own around the corner. It detonated with a heavier, concussive thud, followed by a lot of white smoke. Anwar charged in, Pollard following, visors in place and rifles blazing with sharp, precise bursts, spreading chaos before them.

Reichardt followed, immediately aware that Nadaja and Twan were planting their mines and falling back at speed. Wincing through the blinding smoke, Reichardt went straight to the inner hatch access, not even bothering to raise his pistol or make out targets as Pollard and Anwar’s rifle fire continued. He found the access panel and began punching in his own, new code, as more explosions and rifle fire erupted from the corridor outside. Nadaja burst in as the first doors began to close.

‘Twan’s dead,’ she said, and covered the doors as they whined closed once more. Within the bridge, firing had stopped. Someone was gurgling and moaning horribly, somewhere within that choking white smoke. The doors thudded closed, sealing them in. A single shot from somewhere along the central aisle, and the moaning stopped. That would be Anwar, Reichardt reckoned. Twan was his friend.

Reichardt strode down the central aisle, wincing through the smoke as he stepped over more bodies. Found the central docking post, hauled a body from the chair and dumped it aside, then called up specific berths upon the main screen-Berths Twelve and Seventeen. Mekong, and the recently docked freighter Jennifer, and deactivated the control overrides that kept the main hatches locked. Then he called up Berth Two, where Amazon was docked, and Berth Four, which was Euphrates. And began shutting down all air, water and other umbilical systems, and locking the docking jaws into place. At the neighbouring com post, incoming lights blinked furiously. A loud, negative beep emitted from the blast door access, as someone outside fed in the wrong code.

‘Better work,’ murmured Pollard at his side, meaning the door. The smoke was beginning to clear now, fans humming in the ceiling corners.

‘League code,’ Reichardt replied as he worked. ‘Embedded into the subroutines for emergency overrides two years ago. Kresnov said she wrote it herself.’

‘Better work,’ said Pollard. And Reichardt knew exactly what he meant.

When the Jennifer’s hatchway opened, Vanessa led the way. Fully armoured and environment-sealed, she didn’t feel the deep chill of the passage, nor smell the distinctive, metallic tang of dockside air that she recalled from her first off-world trip, when she’d been a little girl. Tac-net was not yet established, and she didn’t have a feed from the bridge, but there was no time to waste. She burst from the main access and found herself on the elevated entrance platform upon the docks, with vast, curving expanses of steel stretching away to either side. And, true to their word, friendly dockworkers had stacked numerous shipping crates about the entrance for cover.

It didn’t stop the two patrolling marines directly opposite from firing, and she dove in a crashing roll down the steps as shots hit the station wall behind. At dock level she came to her feet with a grenade in hand, primed for impact fuse and lobbed over the sheltering crates … she half spun about one corner, predicting the fast run for cover, and nailed one marine with a vicious volley that sent torn armour spinning and shattered the shopfront windows against the far wall. That marine fell, the grenade exploded, and the next Callayan trooperCal-T, the newly christened abbreviation was-nailed the second as the blast knocked him over.

And then they were pouring out onto the docks, a clatter of armoured footsteps and terse, sharp commands upon local tac-net … the uplink signal arrived from station bridge, and Vanessa patched her suitcom into the local station network. Tac-net established itself with a torrential inflow of information, rapidly building a 3-D picture across her visor even as she ran across the docks to cover on the far wall where she could get a good look along the neighbouring berths. The station alarms were blaring, warning people to get off the docks, but the massive section seals were yet to descend from the ceiling to divide the station into pressurised segments. Rapid movement would assist the attackers and hurt the defenders.

Tac-net then linked the feed from Mekong through the bridge, and suddenly she could see the entire, doughnut shaped station, the positions of all the ships, and now the new flood of Third Fleet marines pouring onto the docks from the Mekong’s position.

‘Watch your spacing!’ a sergeant was yelling as Cal-Ts established firing positions about the docking crates, then raced across the open docks toward the inner wall. ‘Don’t bunch up, watch your spacing!’ Along the inner wall, the few civilians allowed on the docks during the Fifth Fleet’s curfew quickly scurried into doorways. Several spacers were sprinting toward their berths, for the safety of their ships. Well, Vanessa thought as she watched the CDF’s first major combat action in its history unfold across the tac-net, at least they had the first element achieved. Surprise. And then she had com with the bridge.

‘Bridge is secure,’ came Reichardt’s voice upon the command channel. ‘I reckon you’ve got twenty minutes until they get the equipment up and cut through these doors. ‘

‘We’ll be there,’ Vanessa replied. ‘I’m not getting a feed on station systems yet, what can you tell me?’

‘We’re still accessing it … we’ve got just four people here to run bridge systems and none of us are experts. Section seals we can’t guarantee, nor the other emergency overrides, a lot of them are activated by local emergency systems in case of fire, decompression or GBS. But if you move quick, we reckon we can get you where you need to go. ‘

‘Speed’s our plan, Captain,’ said Vanessa, as soldiers clattered past her, headed into dockside doors and through the passages beyond. All were on tac-net, and saw what she saw, but tac-net only knew what was fed into it, and those sources were always less than perfect. A shot cracked past from somewhere up the curving slope ahead-and was returned instantly, rounds zipping just under the low overhead, striking on a down-angle amidst a cluster of shipping crates and transport flatbeds. ‘Give us a fix on the other captains as soon as you can if any of them are off their ships, and keep an eye on Corona. We’d like to get Takawashi too, if we can.’

`Just take the damn station first, Major, then we’ll worry about the details. ‘

Still the Cal-Ts came, in pairs at several points across the dock, supported by sporadic covering fire. Tac-net showed squads forming up within the corridors, then moving out in tight, coordinated formations. Just like Sandy had trained them. Vanessa gritted her teeth and stayed low in the cover of her window. Her own squad were well back in the departure order from Jennifer, and tactical doctrine said that effective second-in-command could not lead the main formations into the station’s guts, however determined she’d been to lead them out, for morale alone. In the corridors, pointmen were always first to hit the GBS, as Reichardt had put it-marine slang for General Bad Shit. CDF majors were not, she’d had it forcibly explained to her, expendable.

Upon that thought, tac-net highlighted a particular red dot coming across the docks, and she turned her head to watch a tall, loping suit of armour come to a crashing halt beside one doorway, covering as his squad went through behind. Then General Krishnaswali followed his troops in at speed. Some damn argument that had been. But if second- and third-in-command were going in, there was no way in hell anyone was going to be able to tell the General that he had to watch it all from an armchair in Tanusha.

As for the acting third-in-command, who had so valiantly delegated her command position to Vanessa … well, Vanessa reckoned she ought to be making a move right about … now.

The shipping crate’s seal exploded outward as Sandy and Rhian’s armoured feet hit it simultaneously. Cold air flooded in, or at least the armour suit sensors said it did, and Sandy rolled quickly from her cramped containment and swung a rifle about the edge and down. Two young men stood frozen in the below-docks gloom, staring first at the quarter-ton side of metal that had boomed to the decking before them, and then at the mean, visored figure levelling a rifle at their heads.

‘Commander?’ one of them said, recovering faster than his friend. A tall, broad young man in his late teens. ‘Hafez Bhargouti. My friend, Simon.’ With a gesture to his companion. Sandy rolled from the crate and thudded neatly to the ground two metres below. Rhian did similar, facing the other way.

This portion of the lower-decks cargo space was a long conveyor of overhead grapples, holding crates suspended along a gloomy passage of bulkheads, exposed pipes and internals. It was chillingly cold. Beyond Hafez and Simon loomed the huge scanner paddles, four metres tall on either side of the conveyor, peering into the contents of every container as it passed. Unmanned for now, its marine contingent fled topside now that the shooting had broken out.

‘Where are they?’ Sandy asked, rifle levelled past the two young men.

‘There’s a guard,’ said Hafez, eyes more urgent than scared. He couldn’t have been more than sixteen, Sandy reassessed, despite his size. But immediately she was impressed. Given the reputation of his father-Mohummed Bhargouti, leader of the Nehru Station dockworkers’ revolt and unseen since the Fleet had thrown him and most of the station crew into confinement-that was hardly surprising. ‘One section across, you’ll run into him if don’t know where.’

‘Stay between us,’ Sandy told him, ‘someone might come to check out that noise.’ She edged past and advanced at a walk, rifle levelled. Her suit uplinks found the local network nodes, and locked in … tacnet unfolded in a rush, the assault shown well under way, CDF thrusts penetrating rapidly into the station bowels, headed for the captured bridge, the rail transit system, key local control nodes to secure life support and other systems in their sector, and into the station’s main three-arm, the only way up to secure the station hub, and thus the powerplant.

In fact, it all looked extremely familiar. Mekong’s troops were out on the docks too, five berths down from Jennifer. Defensively, that entire section of docks was solid. But Nehru Station was the central hub for the Fifth Fleet occupation, and currently docked two carriers and four other, smaller contingent warships. Maybe 1050 Fleet marines, plus a hundred spacer personnel who might fight, if they couldn’t make it back to their ships. CDF stealth shuttles had docked with the Jennifer three days ago, on approach from a far-side trajectory and unnoticed by Fleet vessels, which were more worried about potential Third Fleet reinforcements than CDF launches from the ground. Let alone CDF launches from Deccan, the third continent, upon the far side of the planet from Tanusha. Jennifer’s captain had not been happy at the forced conversion to the CDF’s trojan horse, but it was a Callayan registered vessel, and if its owners wanted to keep their licence (and not get thrown in prison for obstructing Callayan security) they were strongly advised not to protest. Jennifer had held 245 of the CDF’s best troops, crammed into its various holds. Mekong provided another 300. The numbers were not on their side. But as she’d always told those under her command-it wasn’t what you had, it was what you did with it. And what help you got along the way.

Hafez directed them past where the conveyor rail doglegged toward main storage. They ducked under suspended, unmoving containers, then edged quickly through a narrow serviceway alongside massive fuel pipes that ran to the berth umbilicals from the station’s own storage tanks. There was no gunfire or general activity to be heard above the whine of generators and section pumps, a familiar, industrial white noise that permeated everything, like the dim fluorescent light. From the worn state of their heavy jackets, boots and dockworker overalls, Sandy reckoned Hafez and Simon were familiar enough with the environment. Some station kids grew up in orbit above planets they’d never even visited, nor wanted to. These two looked like dock rats through and through.

Sandy followed Hafez’s directions up a service ladder, along a cramped walkway above the fuel pipes, avoiding turnoffs and crawlways that tac-net told her would serve, but Hafez insisted were rigged with Fleet sensor gear the dockers had somehow noticed without detection. Then they ducked into a cramped metal engineering space that Sandy was sure would have smelled of lubricant grease and bad ventilation, if such things could have penetrated her faceplate. Under more pipes, then, and into a crawlway, within the mouth of which waited another teenager-a girl this time-looking pale and scared, to assure them that the coast was clear.

Crawling in armour through a cramped metal crawlway with a weapon in hand was not an easy thing to do silently, even for a GI. Sandy knew, as she concentrated on that task, precisely why her guides were all children. Most of their parents were either locked up, or missing, having refused to work under Fifth Fleet control, even when threatened at gunpoint. Some, reliable reports from inside had indicated, had been beaten. Or worse, many feared, in attempts to root out the remaining rebels, who were hiding in the dark, cramped places like this, places that engineers and dock rats knew well, but suits and topsiders rarely ventured. Although many of the suits hadn’t fared much better, and were even protecting and assisting the rebels … or were rebels themselves. Indeed, word was that relations between topsiders and dock rats had never been so good, two disparate, mutually disdainful cultures united by a common threat. And if that wasn’t a good metaphor for much of Callay at this moment, Sandy reckoned, then she didn’t know what was.

A narrow service well climbed up to dock level. Sandy pushed the manhole aside and found herself in yet another engineering space in a narrow access corridor. She climbed swiftly out, murmured ‘Stay here,’ to Hafez and Simon, and stalked down the corridor to a main hatch. Tac-net told her that it opened into the rear of a dockside restaurant, of all places. She opened it, weapon ready, and surveyed a gleaming, stainless steel kitchen that looked far too clean and unused for any such establishment she’d frequented in her spacer days. Business couldn’t have been good lately.

She ducked out, swept it quickly, then did a fast visual out the doorway at the restaurant beyond. It was deserted, tables arrayed in an orderly fashion before broad windows that looked onto the docks. And now, for the first time, she could hear the clear, staccato crackle of gunfire. Could tell the type, range and direction of fire just by the sound. Tac-net showed her some of the dots, where friendly forces, and sensors, had a read on the opposition, here in front of the Euphrates’ berth. A lot, she knew, would not appear on tac-net. But she’d fought Fleet marines for the majority of her life. She knew their patterns, defensive or offensive. Knew how they thought, how they operated, how they talked, moved and reacted. She knew their weak points. And she knew their greatest fears … mostly because they were also her own.

She turned back, and found Rhian waiting patiently against the kitchen wall, and the two kids nearby. Hafez seemed eager to see what lay outside. Simon seemed eager to be elsewhere. Obviously the junior of this pairing, he appeared to have come along mostly to cover his friend’s back-it would have been very dangerous to move alone, as one pair of eyes barely covered half of all there was to see. She could only admire the bravery.

‘You two,’ she told them, ‘turn about, and get as far away from here as possible.’

‘But we want to help!’ Hafez protested.

‘If you stay here, you’ll get killed. I can nearly guarantee it.’ The visored stare and stern, metallic tone must have done the trick, because Hafez seemed to reconsider. Simon tugged at his arm. ‘And thank you,’ she added as they departed.

Tac-net indicated a light, defensive formation about Berth Four, but offered little information on Berth Two, having no sensors or IFV, as regular tac-net users called it-Integrated Field of View. Sandy got down on her hands and knees, and crawled out along the restaurant floor between the tables, Rhian following. Once at the windows, Sandy leaned against the corner potplant, and extended the helmet eyepiece out, to peer above the lower window rim. More light cover about defensive positions, many shipping crates and other vehicles positioned for cover about the gantries and elevated hatchway.

Tac-net took milliseconds to analyse the image, and then a new set of red dots arrayed themselves across that section of the dockside. Anyone on tac-net now knew that someone had IFV on Berth Two. Most of the two Third Fleet carriers’ marine complement had been outwardly deployed, manning all the station posts the local station workers had refused to fill. Now, the reserve rotation had also deployed, following the initial alarm. The defences that remained were easily strong enough to guard open docks against regular assault. But GIs were a different question.

‘Twelve immediate points of fire,’ Sandy observed in a low voice. ‘Thirty total. I’ve got the right, you go straight and clear out.’

Their own, private subchannel sorted the details, a rush of data that illuminated primary and secondary targets, fields of fire, projected trajectories, fire-shadows and multilayered kill zones. This, more than anything, was what GIs were designed for. Open combat, multiple targets, fast motion. Corridors were a leveller, and gave smart opponents a good chance … or better, against regs. Out here, with surprise and fire support on their side, even twenty-to-one odds weren’t bad.

At some other time, in some other mood, Sandy might have felt that some intimate, personal gesture to Rhian might have been in order. Now, as they prepared weapons and double-checked armscomp interface, it barely occurred to her. They’d done this before. The future did not exist. There was only the present, and nothing else mattered.

‘G-squad,’ Sandy announced on directional com as she and Rhian traded places so Sandy could cover the more distant right flank, ‘request status on fire support.’

‘Any time you’re ready, Snowcat,’ came Lieutenant Bjornssen’s reply. Already there was limited fire engagement with Euphrates’ perimeter, lots of noise and heads being kept down. Smoke grenades sprewed a thick, white wall between opposing forces, giving Fifth Fleet troopers some cover.

‘Ready in three, two, one, go.’

She and Rhian leaped, and exploded through the window in a simultaneous rush. Reflex pulled her rifle’s muzzle toward preestablished targets behind cover off to her right, a rapid volley of six bursts as bodies more than a hundred metres distant toppled in near unison, highvelocity rounds punching through faceplates that were the only parts of the Amazon marines visible. Sandy ran on an arc out from Rhian’s right, aware of Rhian’s fire upon the Euphrates’ positions toward which they ran, aware of explosions amidst those positions as Cal-Ts shot grenades into their positions. There was very little return fire. Startled Amazon marines tried, and were killed as soon as they entered Sandy’s line of fire. She pumped a couple of grenades into choice locations to flush out the cover, then simply stopped forty metres from the Berth Four cover positions, confident of her back as Rhian dove in amongst the smoke and chaos behind, gaining a better field of fire across the entire docks, up along the possible points of cover along the upward-curving inner wall.

She walked backwards, calmly dropping another two marines through the smoke and confusion, then a third who poked his head around a doorway another fifty metres up the inner wall, only to get it blown off. The precision was automatic, a simple matter of identify the target, match her laser-sight onto the target, and pull the trigger. That process took barely a tenth of a second, and remaining Amazon marines were now wisely keeping out of sight. Behind her, tac-net was rapidly erasing the last Euphrates marines from its display.

Grenades started flying from amidst the carnage of Berth Two as she reached a flatbed, positioned as cover, and ducked behind into a low, running crouch toward the hatch rampway. Rhian took cover behind the main ramp as explosions tore the defensive perimeterAmazon marines evidently loath to fire directly into their mates’ positions lest any were still alive. Rhian snapped fire at a couple of targets that dared show themselves, then pumped two grenades back on a lower trajectory, as Sandy hurdled the raised railing, and rolled into the open main hatchway.

‘Inner hatch is closed,’ she announced on a direct comline to the bridge. Shots cracked off the hatch’s metal rim, then an explosion tore the deck to hell and showered her with fragments. Sandy barely blinked, wiring her suit’s unit into the hatch access and trusting Rhian to make sure nothing came too close. The hatch before her was tightly sealed-it shouldn’t have been, if Reichardt had full control of bridge systems. Except that Fleet captains were known to be paranoid about security, and could have overriden it earlier.

‘Sorry, can’t help you,’ came Reichardt’s reply. In the background, Sandy could dimly hear the buzzing howl of industrial cutters, doubtless trying to break through the bridge doors. ‘We’ve got it all wide open. If it don’t work, it ain’t my fault. ‘

‘Hang on,’ Sandy remarked, redundantly, as her suit wired in … and suddenly she could see the software pattern unfolding upon her inner-visual. It looked recently familiar, and sure enough, after a rapid sorting through various Federation-specific security patterns, she found something of Ari’s that matched, and the door hummed open. She disconnected and moved aside with the door, rifle about the edge to search for targets without exposing herself, but saw nothing.

Tac-net showed Bjornssen’s squad now advanced close along the outer wall, well positioned to hold off any advance from Amazon’s surviving marines upon their rear. Rhian came without having to be told, a quick leap into the open hatchway, and together they ran through the narrow passage and into the cold chill of the umbilical tube. Around the bend, and there was the carrier’s scarred chilled metal hatch, closed and undefended. On this side, at least. Doubtless by now all aboard would know, from Amazon’s marines, that two GIs were at the hatch. Luckily, disconnecting the umbilical was controlled by station bridge … and full armour was as good as a spacesuit anyhow.

Rhian took up position partway along the tube, with a good line of fire past the curve, covering the way they’d come. Sandy set about removing the shaped charges from her armour webbing, now shredded in places from that last grenade blast, but she hadn’t lost any. The palm-sized disks fitted in a roughly circular arrangement about the rectangular door’s centre, exploiting a relative structural weakness that only a person who’d spent much of her life concerned with such matters might be aware of. Tac-net showed no advance upon the docks outside, Amazon marines still pinned down by Bjornssen’s fire.

Rhian retreated to join Sandy, and they put their armoured backs against the hull to the hatch’s side. Sandy connected the final uplink to the charges’ triggers, and extended a fist to Rhian. Rhian tapped it with her own. Not much of a gesture, for all their years together, and everything they’d shared. But, in the life they’d been granted, it was all they could afford. Sandy charged the triggers, the hatch exploded in a blast that tore much of the umbilical tube to shreds and open space, and the two GIs charged in through the flames, debris, and the howl of escaping air.

‘Did they get past the doors?’ Captain Rusdihardjo demanded from her command chair, staring at her screens. The Euphrates bridge was in pandemonium, com stations attempting desperately to contact marine units through nonresponsive channels, long and short range scan posts scrambling to cover skimmer traffic and out-system movement respectively, and now engineering yelling that the main hatch was gone, and they’d had a forward decompression, now contained.

‘I don’t know, Captain!’ came the shout over com. ‘I’m not getting anything from forward posts!’

‘Find out!’ the captain demanded.

‘Captain,’ said Chipelli from helm, ‘if those were GIs, it had to be Kresnov and maybe one other!’

‘So what?’ Rusdihardjo snapped, calling up the internal emergency frequency. ‘Lieutenant Yin, why aren’t you responding? We have a forward intruder alert.’

‘Captain, this is Private Khazan, fourth platoon. ‘ Breathless and frightened. ‘I can’t contact Lieutenant Yin, he was forward of third head arranging a defensive excursion, and now I can’t find him … ‘

‘Private, calm down. Who’s my senior marine?’

‘That’d be me, Captain,’ came a new voice, that her screen identified as Sergeant Raphael. ‘I’m headed up from armoury, I’ll try and get you some … ‘

Yells and gunfire erupted from an unidentified location, then an explosion. Internal tac-net lost a source, then two more, in the blink of an eye. More shouts, Sergeant Raphael shouting terse commands, as the clear realisation spread that they had intruders aboard. Rusdihardjo looked up, and met Chipelli’s stare. Chipelli looked pale. Rusdihardjo felt her own gut tighten involuntarily.

‘It’s just two intruders!’ she snapped furiously. ‘We’ll deal with them!’

Chipelli nodded, hastily, and turned attention back to his screens. GIs on deck. Dark Star GIs. Regs were one thing. Dark Star, another entirely. There were nightmare stories, tales Fleet spacers and marines spun to keep each other awake on off-shifts. Of ghost ships found drifting and not a soul left on board, save the marks of a forceful docking, bullet holes in the walls, desperate barricades erected in haste, and bloodstains on the decking.

Reichardt had done this, Rusdihardjo thought, with a fury that defied description. He’d better hope he won. Because if he didn’t, and Fifth Fleet got their hands on him, each and every one of them would desire a little piece for a personal trophy.

A priority signal was coming in from Amazon, and she flicked it open. ‘Admiral, this is Lieutenant-Commander Tupo.’ Only off-decks called her Admiral. On decks, there was nothing ranked higher than a captain. Rusdihardjo was old fashioned about such things. ‘Request your status. ‘

‘Two intruders,’ she replied. ‘We’re dealing with them. Tupo, we are firing up engines. We might need to break dock and bring weapons to bear on Third Fleet vessels.’

‘Admiral, Fleet engagement protocol prohibit firing upon vessels at dock with inhabited facilities … ‘

‘I know the regulations!’ Rusdihardjo retorted. ‘Prepare to break dock! That’s an order!’

‘Aye, Admiral. ‘

Rusdihardjo leaned back in her well-worn command chair, and stared at her screens. The other stations had reported back, and none were under assault. This action appeared to be focused entirely upon Nehru Station, as the centre of Fifth Fleet occupation strategy. Third Fleet vessels, heavily outnumbered, remained docked safely at station, where regulations prohibited them from being fired upon. But the Fifth Fleet retained control of space, and retained numerical superiority upon the docks. CDF soldiers might pass muster for planetary security forces, but they were no match for Fleet marines in their familiar environs. No, if she played to her strengths, and forced the opposition to play to their weaknesses, the result was not in doubt. She needed serious firepower in open space, away from station, to cover the approaches. And then she’d …

‘Captain!’ yelled the chief scan tech from across the bridge. ‘It’s Pearl River and Kutch! They’re coming back!’

‘I have two down!’ Lieutenant Bhavan was saying with commendable calm, voice only raised to be heard above the racket of weapons fire and explosions in the background. ‘There’s at least five marines holding sections B-4 through to B and C-7, heavy electro-mag fire plus I lost Cao to a limpet mine. Gold squad five tells me they’ve cut the escapes at E-4 through 9, I’d like to try flanking left but I need cover topside. ‘

‘Okay,’ Vanessa replied, utterly absorbed in her tac-net display, ‘Lieutenant Levkin, topside manoeuvre, get to level three, catch and hold, then manoeuvre on the mark.’

‘Copy, Major,’ came Levkin’s reply, and tac-net showed a rush of dots along schematic corridors to respond. Vanessa zoomed out, graphical vision darting along corridors, changing angles as Cal-Ts manoeuvred, fired, and countermanoeuvred through the enclosed, tight spaces of Nehru Station. It wasn’t as fast as she’d have liked-Fifth Fleet marines had been spread out from one side of the station to the other. Here, concentrated about Blue sector, attacking forces had enjoyed both surprise and numerical advantages, and Reichardt had been making reinforcement from elsewhere difficult by locking strategic hatchways and section seals from the bridge. But Fifth Fleet marines fought hard and well, and her guys were taking casualties. If they didn’t reach the bridge soon, Reichardt and his team were dead, and the attackers would lose their major strategic advantage.

She knelt in a level one corridor, back to the wall and weapon buttdown on the decking. The bodies of two Fifth Fleet marines lay sprawled across the cross-corridors alongside, armour holed and seeping blood. The body of one of her own troops had been removed to a more secure location. Vanessa barely noticed any of it. She was more accustomed to small scale actions, thinking and fighting simultaneously. This was effectively generalship. Movement and engagements happening simultaneously across a broad front, and if she wasn’t careful, her brain would overload with the effort to micro-manage every encounter. She kept the tac-net vision broad, trying hard to focus on the broader patterns, and not use the zoom too much.

Twenty metres down the corridor, a door opened and a head peered out … Sergeant Major Zago fired a shot past his nose, eliciting a yelp of fear and a panicked retreat. ‘Stay the fuck inside!’ Zago yelled in his wake. ‘Are you fucking stupid?!’ The door hummed shut. ‘Fucking civilians.’ His section of four ignored it, braced and covering about the cross-corridors.

‘Major,’ came Reichardt’s voice in her ear, ‘they just broke through the outer door. I reckon they’ll be through in five minutes.’

‘Keep your pants on, Captain,’ Vanessa told him. ‘We’ll be there.’ Amazon, tac-net showed her, was breaking free of the station, despite the bridge’s attempts to leave the docking grapples in place. When a warship wanted to leave, it left, and did a lot of damage to the station in the process. Following Admiral Duong’s demise, LieutenantCommander Tupo was acting captain on Amazon.

‘That Tupo’s one unpleasant sonofabitch,’ Reichardt remarked offhandedly, above the howling din of laser cutters in the background. ‘I’d truly recommend you kill him before he starts shooting up the station. ‘

‘Yeah, we’re doing that.’ If the whole ridiculously expensive, secret, troublesome damn system worked, that was. Upon tac-net, Lieutenant Bhavan achieved his objective, and a whole section of Fifth Fleet flank from level one to four began to unwind. Vanessa redirected com in a hurry. ‘Gold squad four and three, flanking assault! Get around, hold and fix, then manoeuvre in pairs! Go, go, go!’

She gestured to Zago, who waved his squad forward, Vanessa falling fourth in line with Zago and another bringing up the rear. Zago slapped a magnetic sensor into a doorframe corner as they went, to warn tac-net if anyone moved in their wake.

Sergeant Raphael braced one armoured foot against the corridor corner to prevent a slide down the sloping deck. Here at dock, Euphrates’ crew cylinder was locked stationary, and most habitable areas in transit were now fixed at a crazy angle, or totally upside down. It would not, he knew, prevent a GI from moving through it. Engineering was behind him, and he could not let the intruders in that far.

‘Wiki,’ he said into his helmet mike. ‘Wiki, what’s your situation?’ There was no reply from Wikramasinga. ‘Wiki?’ His rifle fixed unerringly along the corridor, floor angled at forty-five degrees, armoured backside supporting his braced stance. Tac-net showed Wikramasinga was still alive. So were his team. They just weren’t moving. ‘Wiki, what the hell …’

An explosion tore through the next cross-corridor, smoke spilling downward with gravity, obscuring his vision. Gunfire erupted from above his position, and he stared up to see Reiner, propped at the entrance of his corridor where the deck curved upward even more sharply, blazing away at something unseen. Further up still, two positions abruptly vanished from tac-net amidst yells and shooting.

‘Shit,’ Raphael muttered, shouldering his rifle and grabbing the guide line that ran up the sloping corridor. Between that, and grasping holds upon the inner wall, the armour gave enough power to haul him up the ever-increasing slope. He passed Reiner, whose corridor seemed empty, then transferred his weight to the inner wall ladder rungs, now deployed in dock. Further along, he paused and peered over the rim. Two marines lay sprawled, armour torn and riddled in precise locations. Topside, someone was calling for clarification.

‘Shut your yapping and figure it out!’ Raphael snarled on the net. ‘We’ve got two of ’em loose in here! Engineering is sealed, and they’re trying to find a way through! Now, so long as we all cover our positions, and watch each other’s backs, they’re blocked off, right?’ He scrambled to crouch beside the bodies, unslinging his weapon and peering through the drifting smoke. His feet were upon a hatchway that would normally be a door, the ceiling lights on what was now the right ‘wall.’ ‘They’re just machines, people! Keep it straight, use your brains, and we’ll get these fuckers, they ain’t no match for us.’

Tac-net showed him the full circumference of this rear portion of Euphrates’ habitation ring. His guys had it sealed all the way around, a marine covering each corridor, a weapon on each passage. Tac-net showed every doorway, every local system. If something activated without a marine or spacer crew in proximity, it would flash red. Even GIs wouldn’t try to get to the bridge-it was amidships, with just one way in or out, easily defensible and currently sealed behind multiple blast doors. From engineering there were accessways to the ship’s spine, and back to the engines. There was nothing like a full complement, with most of the ship’s marines caught onstation when the attack began … but thirty-five would have to do. Or thirty-three, he grimly corrected himself, considering the two bodies before him. Well, the one way to make things easy for any GI was to stay immobile and defensive.

Raphael stepped gingerly over the bodies, careful of the clang of armoured boots upon the corridor wall. Armscomp tracked through the drifting smoke, seeking targets, straining to identify errant sounds above the omnipresent ship white noise. A muffled thump, then, from somewhere above. Then a metallic rattle. Raphael froze, staring upward … tac-net showed nothing.

‘KD, is that you?’

‘Sorry, Sarge. Dropped my mag. ‘

‘Well, watch where the hell you …’ A burst thundered, directly above. A clatter behind, and Raphael spun in time to see an armoured body fall past the corridor’s end, then a crashing tumble as the body skidded down the curving slope toward neutral gravity below. Raphael ran toward the far end, grasped the edge, glancing first down, then up, rifle ready and braced. The main access corridor was an empty, vertical drop, curving gradually out of sight. Raphael stared, rifle braced upwards one-handed, the other steadying against the corridor rim. Could a GI run up the damn vertical surface like a … like a bug?

More firing echoed further around the rim. Tac-net identified the source as Corporal Vass, firing blind.

‘Vassy, you see something?’

‘I … I dunno, Sarge… ‘ The fear in her voice made Raphael’s skin crawl, his heart suddenly galloping in sympathy. ‘I thought so … I’m just gonna … gonna take a look … ‘ Raphael crouched upon the lip of that vertical drop, licking dry lips. With KD dead, the corridor above him was unguarded. Obviously one GI was in there, planning its next move. Damn it, he had to go up there. Couldn’t just sit here and wait for the attack, in an empty corridor with no one to guard his back …

‘Vassy?’ he pressed, trying to keep the wobble from his voice. He was a Fleet marine sergeant with ten years of combat service. He bench pressed three-twenty kilos augmented, was tape-trained to eighth-dan wing chun style kung fu, and bore the tattoos and rings to prove it. When he walked into dockside bars on leave, civvies stopped talking and made way. He didn’t need this shit. ‘Vassy, are you there?’

No reply. The fear was plainly audible on tac-net now. You could hear it in the silence.

‘Sarge,’ someone said then, ‘KD’s not dead. Hit him straight in the sweet spot, knocked him cold.’ Full kit helmets had a spot on the forehead that would stop just about anything … but give your skull a right rattle. Everyone knew it.

‘Goddamn it,’ someone muttered. ‘They’re playing with us. ‘

Fuck it, Raphael thought, shouldered his rifle and flung himself onto the inner wall ladder. If someone appeared above or below with a rifle, he knew there was nothing he could do … but ascending onehanded with rifle ready wasn’t going to deter any GI, you simply couldn’t out-shoot them, and he preferred the speed two hands afforded. Nearing the corridor above, he slowed, and unslung the rifle. Activated an eyepiece, which separated from the helmet to peer above the corridor rim. The corridor seemed empty.

Raphael hauled himself up, rifle ready, and crept forward. A shuddering vibration seemed to pass through the corridor wall beneath his feet … a station shudder, he reckoned, not from the ship itself. God only knew what was happening out there-it was beyond his tac-net parameters. He stepped over a doorway, scanning for any sign of a discarded cartridge, some sign of where that last shot had been fired from, and how they were moving around …

There was a sound from above and he swung the rifle upwards, only to have it snatched cleanly from his hands, and thrown away with a clatter. And then there was an armoured face directly before his own visor, suspended upside down, hanging by its knees from the open hatchway above. Raphael dimly realised that the hatchway hadn’t been open a second before. It must have been opened silently, somehow. A stupid, demeaning way to die. Except, the second thought occurred to him, that if this was a GI, it was taking its sweet time about killing him.

The visor portion of the faceplate hissed open, eyepieces unhinging to reveal a pair of incongruously pretty, pale blue eyes, upside down and regarding him with an expression that was difficult to read. Spacers might have found it easier, maybe. Marine or not, Raphael preferred his feet to know which way the floor was, and for facial composition to make familiar sense. The GI had only a pistol in hand, her rifle clipped to her back. The pistol hovered unwaveringly at Raphael’s throat, beneath the chinstrap. Above the collar seal, there was no armour at all.

‘I’m sorry about the two down there,’ the GI said, her calm voice muffled beneath the faceplate. ‘They surprised me. I don’t take Fleet marines lightly.’ Raphael just stared at her. His mike would hear anything he said. He could call for help. She could shoot him, just as easily. Worse, she’d shoot anyone who answered. He remained silent. ‘I’m Kresnov. The experimental one.’

Her eyes seemed to be seeking some kind of comprehension. Still Raphael said nothing.

‘It was pretty easy to get this far,’ she continued. ‘If you had anything like a decent complement here, you’d have a chance. As things stand, it’s just a matter of time. You guys have done some real nasty things to the local dockworkers the last few weeks. I don’t mind killing you all if I have to. But given another option, I’ll take it.’

Surrender? No Euphrates marine had ever surrendered. Numerous times, they could have. Several times Raphael recalled personally, either trapped, ambushed or otherwise overwhelmed, fighting against terrifying odds. He’d survived then, when many others hadn’t. And he had the scars to prove that, too.

‘What are you even doing here?’ the GI continued. There was a faintly incredulous note to her voice. ‘This is Callay. Your capital. The Federation capital. This insignia here on my shoulder? That says Callayan Defence Force. This is what I do-defend Callay. So how the hell did we come to this?’ The eyes hardened, with cool determination. Penetrating. ‘I came to the Federation to get away from the League. I came ’cause I didn’t want to fight you guys any more. I started thinking you were the good guys. So by all the stoned, crazy prophets, man, what the fuck are you doing here?’