Edge of Redemption (A Star Too Far Book 3) (32 page)

Behind the gate was a picture of hell. Geysers of dirt and debris blasted into the air. A rumble sounded a moment later with a crack rebounding off the clouds. Pin pricks of light showed where muzzle blasts came from the walls of the complex.

Emilie looked on in horror as she thought of everyone trapped inside. Nowhere to run out, and nowhere to go in. “How many people are there?” she said to the now sober faced soldier.

“All of ‘em.”

“What?”

“Anyone Malic’s boys didn’t like, along with every immigrant.”

She didn’t need to ask how many immigrants there were. She knew: it was a line item on her P&L statement. Nearly a quarter of a million. Each and every one owed Emilie for their indenture. The fact that she thought of that made her feel sick.

“Hold on,” Bark said.

The rumble dropped away and the geysers of debris stopped. Gunfire peppered through the air as those trapped within tried to escape. Buildings flew by as the stout truck went faster and faster. The air whipped through the back and the tires hummed louder.

Emilie felt it in her stomach, a fear blended with excitement. She was long past the effects of adrenaline and felt almost giddy. The air blew her hair back and forth. She looked back at Kari and nodded. The Core augment focused on the approaching gate.

She looked down and realized she didn’t have a weapon. Anxiety washed over her. She almost laughed with the absurdity of it all. The gate loomed large before her.

The Hun troops stationed on top of the wall had their backs to the empty road. The gate was wide enough for a pair of trucks to pass. They could see the individual troops now, both human and bioaugments. The truck was barely fifty meters from the gate when the brute stepped out.

It came from behind a building. It wore a set of the heavy plate armor with a single barreled autocannon held out front, like a walking tank. The autocannon swung out towards the road.

The vehicle bucked to the side. Emilie shrieked and gripped the side of the truck. The truck barreled close and clipped the Hun giant.

A sound like a bawling calf bellowed out. It dropped the autocannon and swung to the side in an amazing oversized pirouette. The bulk of the giant stumbled back and crashed into a street pole, dragging down the light fixture and slamming it into the ground. Its stomach opened like an overripe melon and a gusher of blackish-orange blood streamed out. The creature lolled back and came to rest against a wall.

The truck skidded and impacted the gate. The gate buckled in and it seemed that, just for a moment, it would hold and stop the truck. Then something sheared and the gates blasted open. The front wheel had collapsed on the initial impact and the truck slammed through the gate. It hop-skidded to a halt against the edge of a bullet ridden building and fell onto its side. The truck was surrounded by a mass of corpses.

Emilie pushed a case off of her and heard the sounds of bullets slamming into the bottom of the truck. Her body was raw and all nerves. She snapped her head from one side to the next and saw Kari loading a weapon. On the other side of her, the militia soldier was clutching a piece of bone jutting out from his leg. “Oh god,” she whispered.

Then they streamed in from the ruins. Men, women, children. Young and old. All covered in dirt, grime, blood, more like walking corpses than humans. The gunfire from the wall hit some but still they came. Most surged for the wreckage of the gate: freedom. Then a voice stopped them.

“To me! To me! Arm yourself!” Bark bellowed out. The ex-Marine fired back at the troops on the wall from behind the cover of the truck. “To me, Winterthur! To me!”

Emilie watched, breathless, as men and women leaped into cover and loaded weapon after weapon. Then it hit her: a good portion of the immigrants would have veteran’s preference. That lofty goal of enlistment that let them immigrate without paying a corporate sponsor. Most lay dead in the gravel and grime, but some were preparing.

The soldiers of Winterthur, her sick and huddled masses, were off for vengeance.

––––––––

William stared hard at the display and tried to ignore the itch in his augmetic hand. It was almost unbearable and no matter how hard he clenched his suit he just couldn’t sooth it. To top it off, he was hungry. To a man who had once nearly starved to death, it was bordering on agonizing.

He pushed the memories away and snuck a tiny gulp of protein gel. It tasted sticky and sweet in his mouth but did nothing to sooth his hunger. What next? He wondered. Two options that he saw: one was to win and dock up before the ship totally disintegrated, or lose and die. The tricky part was that the elevator was most likely filled with Hun troops. So even if they did survive the naval battle, they might die. He glanced at the surface of the planet and saw that he needed the ground secured as much as they needed him.

“Plot shows the
Brendan
coming in after our first orbit. It’ll, uh, enter orbit about twenty degrees above the equator. She’ll swing another twenty up and drop the pods,” Shay said through her comms system. Her voice had the sound of being inside of a plastic bag.

William slid his hands on his console and ran through the orbit. He didn’t like the ambiguity of the screen. The
Gallipoli
was on the same orbit but it could break that and change before he’d know it. Then he’d try to swat at a ship that wasn’t there. Instead it would be hitting the dropship.

Though he knew if they kept on course, he would slam into them from below. They couldn’t brake or change course enough for the first pass.

He didn’t like any of the options. He knew the dropship needed to get covered so he focused on that single fact. Everything else would come after, one way or the other.

The
Garlic
slid into a low orbit and set the course to dip below the southern pole of the planet. It was night below with not a single pinprick showing the touch of man. Then it was white. The stunningly white surface blasted light up and caused the displays to shift back and dim it down.

William double checked the plot and the weapons program. “Sound it, Ms. Shay, it’s that time.”

Shay nodded and set the ship into weapons ready. There were no sounds in the vacuum, just the shudder in the floor announcing that the weapons were loaded. Bits of grit fell from the ceiling in a cloud of dust. The screen flashed the missile alarm, showing the same loader alert.

“Huron, any word on those missiles?” William asked.

“Hands full right now, Captain,” Huron replied.

The engineering display was a kaleidoscope of colors and blinking lights. It showed nanite alarms, structural alarms, failed stress sensors, and a wide range of ailments. The reactor, the Haydn drive, and the three mass drivers were the only healthy systems.

Every eye was locked onto the sensor bank. The
Gallipoli
was due any moment.

“Bryce?”

“Sir?”

“Any word from the surface?” William asked, without moving his gaze from the display.

“No sir!” Bryce called back quickly.

“Oh—” Shay said, and then the mass drivers opened up.

Instead of seeing the sleek form of the mercenary corvette, the signature of a torpedo blasted in. The bulk of the device was nothing but propulsion with the rest being a dense nanite explosive charge.

The torpedo was below and the acceleration plot showed it trying to shift and dance up closer to the
Garlic
. In a sudden blast of white, it fell apart in a cloud of shrapnel which drifted away beneath the ship.

William saw the heat readouts for the mass drivers peaking higher than they should. “Huron? Why are my drivers overheating?”

“They sink heat into the hull. It’s all nanite conduit, Captain. The nanites are failing.”

“Shit,” William said. “Bryce, you better be on the ball. We’re gonna need some fancy piloting.”

Bryce didn’t say anything but his helmet bobbed forward and back.

William double checked that his console was cloned for nav control and waited. He wanted to trust Bryce, wanted to know he could pilot, roll and dodge, but he had doubt.

The displays lit up once again and the
Gallipoli
was on them. The nimble corvette had burned into a higher orbit while sticking to the same plane. Mass driver slugs plowed down and the ones that missed turned into bright green meteorites below. Racks of missiles fired along with an aged railgun gushing out a spray of yellow sparks.

The
Garlic
responded in kind and stuttered out a continuous series of mass driver slugs. The
Garlic
had the advantage with heavier, faster firing mass drivers while the corvette had a wider variety of ordnance.

The
Gallipoli
dodged and rolled as the slugs plowed into it. William watched with envy, and a touch of dread. The nimble corvette danced and shuddered as it blew through its orbit. The corvette pivoted on the center line while rolling all at once. Green dashes flared on the grav shields while most of the rounds either passed into space or deflected in a green streak.

Slugs slammed into the
Garlic
in a steady rhythmic pattern. A thick shock rattled the floor as the railgun connected. A piece of the ceiling crashed onto the flour like a ball of mostly set concrete. Bryce fought to roll and present a new edge but the
Garlic
couldn’t match the evasive maneuvering of a linked pilot. When they did roll, only one of the mass drivers could fire.

“Twenty seconds!” Shay called out. Already the ships had passed and the distance between the two was growing.

William snapped his eyes between Bryce and the display. “Stop roll. All weapons into the firing arc.”

He felt stupid relying on the simulations and trusting that the corvette was just a corvette. He was fairly sure it was modified with lateral drives for a much larger ship. He let his anger get the best of him and now the dropship was at risk.

The slugs pushed across a widening gap. The heavy rounds from the
Garlic
made a few final strikes before the two ships were out of engagement range. Only the railgun on the
Gallipoli
fired once more. The shock of the impact made the lights blink.

Bryce let out a sigh and his suit shook. “Oh god.”

“Bryce, you got to relax. Look at that plot, you did great. They’re firing smaller rounds and no one can dodge a railgun.”

“I know, I know,” Bryce whispered.

“You’re going to do this, Bryce,” William said, and felt it in his heart. “Shay and I are right here beside you. No one’s alone.”

Bryce nodded and Shay cast a glance up at William. He nodded to her and modified his weapons program.

“Course change, Captain?” Bryce asked in a nervous voice.

William watched the last plot and wondered if Mustafa would come in low, high, or stay where he was. If it was him, he’d try and come around to where the dropship would be. Just thinking of the defenseless hulk coming in made his stomach tighten.

“I’m redirecting that heat, Captain, you’ve got full rate,” Huron said.

“To where?”

“The Haydn drive. I figured we’re not going to need it for a bit.”

William applauded the logic, but the fatalism of it struck him. If they won, they could coast and let it cool. He didn’t bother putting thought into the alternatives. “Well done!”

“Can I do anything better, Captain?” Bryce asked with his helmet bowed down.

“Keep doing what you’re doing, Bryce. Once we get out of this, I’ll get you so drunk you won’t remember where you’re from.”

“But I don’t drink,” Bryce replied.

“Well then,” Shay said. “I can’t think of a better time to start.”

Now that he had a full rate of fire, it was time to use it. “Course change! Cancel polar roll, sling up and in!”

If he could get more parallel, he’d have more time for his mass drivers to work. Though he saw that by altering the course, the dropship would come in without an escort. But that wouldn’t matter if he could hit ‘em hard and make ‘em break, he thought.

“Captain?” Shay asked. “The
Brendan
...”

“I know,” William said. “What’s the reload time on that torpedo?”

Shay did a double take with her helmet and leaned over her console. “If it’s a Siemens, another forty minutes, but if it’s a LunarPlow, then it’ll be ready when we come around.”

“Dropship coming in,” Shay said. The screen above her showed the changing space as the elevator snuck up above the horizon. The information overlaid a blink with the signature of the
Brendan
hovering next to it. The heavy vessel was still an orbit out and burning slowly across the gap.

“All right, here we go!” William said.

The alarms blared.

Mass drivers slammed out a wall of nickel slugs as the torpedo banked in close. It was a bit high, but the acceleration readings showed it coming in.

“Bryce! Roll and bring her down!” William cried out, his eyes wide as the torpedo loomed large on the display.

Slugs pushed past and around in a silent cascade. A green streak marked the side of the torpedo as one slug grazed it. It was almost a miracle that anything could pass through the wall of defensive fire pouring out from the
Garlic
.

It detonated and pushed out a wave of plasma with an explosive core shredding kilometers of wrapped alloy. The outer bits frayed and went out as tiny particles while the inner pieces welded to themselves and spalled out, hot and sticky. The grav shields of the
Garlic
shrugged off the bits of low density filament but the spall was a different story.

The first piece came in high and gouged deeply into the nanite-weakened hull. Asteroid and aggregate peeled away like the wake of a boat. The next piece came in close and bored in deep. Hot alloy blistered the nanite shell and finally embedded itself along the edge of a passage. Alarms announced the arrival with the final bit of atmosphere disappearing into space.

“Woah! Look at that board!” Shay yelled out.

The maintenance screen looked carnival like: all bright colors and flashing icons.