CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
“I see you didn’t need our help after all, Sir,” Esteban Tremblay said as Ishtar slid smoothly into orbit around the system’s second planet, accompanied by her deployed parasites. Tremblay’s flagship, Kishar, lay in orbit four hundred kilometers ahead of Ishtar, and the other FTLCs were spread around the planet’s circumference, each surrounded by its own spread of protective sublight parasites.
“No, they were quite cooperative…when the alternative was being blown out of space,” Murphy agreed.
“Have you located Admiral Xing?” Harriet Granger asked from her quadrant of the comm display.
“No, but it’s early days yet. Trust me, we aren’t going to stop looking until we do find her,” Murphy said with a thin smile, watching the visual display as Nüwa and Pangu entered orbit, as well. “I don’t imagine the Oval will object to having a couple of operational Fúxīs to examine,” he added. “Although they’re going to be slower than hell on the way back to New Dublin.”
“This is one highly automated yard, Sir,” Tremblay said. Murphy looked at him, and the commodore shrugged. “It’s several light-years closer to us than it is to the League, when you come down to it, too,” he pointed out, “and all the evidence suggests that we’ve just taken out anything they might counterattack with to retake it.”
“Tempting. Very tempting,” Murphy conceded. “But let’s not let hubris lead us into something we’ll all regret down the road. For right now, I’ll settle for just taking it away from the Leaguies.”
“You’re probably right.” Tremblay shook his head. “It just seems like such a hell of a waste. And you might want to survey the damage on those two prizes of yours before you blow it all up, Sir. My senior engineer’s been doing a virtual tour of the yard capabilities here. No manifolds, thanks to you, but unless their Fasset drives are damaged a lot more badly than it looks like they are, they could probably plug in new nodes—enough to get them up to a decent turn of speed in wormhole space, anyway—in only two or three weeks. You’d recoup all that time just on the way back to New Dublin.”
“Um.” Murphy rubbed his chin, then glanced at O’Hanraghty.
“It sounds like a good idea to me,” the chief of staff said. “Assuming we can figure out how to push all the right buttons and that the previous owners haven’t left any nasty little bits and pieces of sabotage lying around to blow us all to pieces.”
“I don’t think that’s going to happen,” Tremblay said, addressing O’Hanraghty with rather more warmth than was his wont. The commodore actually smiled. “We, ah, made it very clear to them that anything like that would tend to void Admiral Murphy’s guarantee. At the moment, I think that’s the last thing they want to risk.”
Murphy grunted in acknowledgment. It was rare enough for a system’s defeated defenders to be allowed to surrender, much less be guaranteed safety while the victors destroyed that system’s industrial capacity. He was confident the League POWs had no intention of doing anything that might piss their captors off.
“We’ll see,” he said after a moment. “I think it probably is a good idea, assuming the damage is repairable and that we can fix it without relying on League ‘slave labor.’ Forcing them to do that might push some of them just a bit too far. And it wouldn’t do any of them any favors when the League ‘rescues’ them and starts looking for examples and scapegoats.”
Tremblay nodded, and Murphy switched mental gears.
“What have you heard from Bǐshǒu?” he asked.
“Not a peep,” Granger said. “We followed your directive to let sleeping dogs lie until you got back here, but I have to say, I am a little surprised that they haven’t said anything yet.”
“No protestations of neutrality? Demands that we promise to respect the sanctity of the Hell Hearth flag?”
“No, Sir. Nothing. Nothing at all.”
“And there’s another thing, Sir,” Tremblay said. Murphy looked at him and the commodore frowned. “We haven’t had time to do much in the way of prisoner interrogation, but we’ve sort of skimmed the surface, if you know what I mean.” He paused until Murphy nodded, then continued. “The Leaguies all seem a little…weird where that ship’s concerned. None of them seem to know anything at all about it…except that it’s been a permanent fixture here.”
“What?” It was Murphy’s turn to frown.
“According to the POWs back in New Dublin, anybody assigned to this operation—aside from Third Admiral Than’s squadron, at least—was here for the duration,” Tremblay said. “That’s how tight security was. They weren’t going anywhere until the ‘Dragon Fleet’ launched.”
“That much makes sense. Bit rough on the personnel involved, but it makes sense,” O’Hanraghty put in, and Tremblay nodded.
“Agreed. But not only has Bǐshǒu been here as long as anyone can remember, which seems a little peculiar for a ‘neutral vessel,’” Tremblay said, “but unlike anything else that was part of the system’s permanent cadre, it has left the system and then returned…to exactly the same parking orbit each time. And—this is more speculative, we only have it from a couple of sources so far—apparently each time it left and returned, a really, really big tranche of big-ticket components arrived shortly thereafter.”
“Fascinating,” Murphy said slowly.
“And damn scary,” O’Hanraghty added. “If Hell Hearth is involved in this, does that mean the Quarn are involved? We’ve been figuring it had to be the Rish, but what if it wasn’t?”
“That…seems unlikely,” Murphy said. “The Quarn reserve their ferocity for trade, not something as silly as wars. That means they take treaty obligations and interstellar law really seriously. I’d be willing to bet anything I own that they aren’t involved. In fact, I’m astonished they’ve allowed Hell Hearth to get mixed up in something like this. Assuming Hell Hearth is mixed up in it, of course.”
“Beg your pardon?” Granger sounded less surprised by that last sentence than she might have, and Murphy snorted mirthlessly.
“Given the point Captain O’Hanraghty’s just raised, we need to make damned sure we’ve IDed the right batch of alien conspirators, and right this minute Bǐshǒu’s behavior is popping a lot of red flags in my brain. Whatever they may be, they aren’t reacting like any normal neutral face-to-face with overpowering military force. Esteban’s right—they ought to have said something to us by now, and they ought to be demanding promises of safe treatment and eventual release. They aren’t. Add that to what Esteben’s just laid out, and it sounds like somebody with something to hide.”
“They’ve got to know they’ll have to talk to us eventually, Sir,” Commander Mirwani said respectfully. “For that matter, they have to know we’re almost certain to demand an onboard inspection. We’d certainly be within our rights, under the circumstances! So what do they gain by keeping their mouths shut? For that matter, why would they expect it to do them any good?”
“It does seem odder and odder,” Murphy acknowledged. “So perhaps it’s time we contacted them.”
* * *
“I am Captain Magnar Treschow,” the tall, raw-boned blond said from Murphy’s comm. His face showed virtually no expression. “I am the master of Bǐshǒu. To whom am I speaking?”
“Rear Admiral Terrence Murphy, Terran Federation Navy. I’m the senior officer of the task force which has just taken control of the system.”
“I see.”
Treschow had to be aware of just how…ticklish his situation was, but from his tone, Murphy might simply have observed that the sun was likely to rise the next morning, and his expression gave away nothing at all. He must be one hell of a poker player, the admiral reflected.
“I’m sure you can understand that I might have a few questions about your vessel’s presence in a purely military League star system in the middle of a war,” he said out loud.
“Bǐshǒu is a simple merchant vessel, Admiral. We take cargo where we are instructed to take it and deliver it to whomever we were told to deliver it to. What that cargo may be and what it may be used for is not my concern.”
“On the contrary, Captain.” Murphy allowed a stern edge into his own tone. “If you’re transporting war materials for the League, then you’re carrying contraband under interstellar law. And that means your vessel is liable to search and seizure by the warships of a belligerent power. That would be me and my ships, in this instance.”
“Hell Hearth would be very…displeased if our neutrality were to be violated in that fashion,” Treschow replied. “The consequences would be severe.”
“But Hell Hearth isn’t here just now, and I am. I also have my responsibilities and duties as an officer of the Terran Federation, and they supersede any obligation I might have to Hell Hearth. Your government will be free to lodge a protest and even demand reparations in an admiralty court, but that doesn’t change those responsibilities of mine right here, right now.”
“Then it is your intent to board and search my vessel despite my very strong protest?” Again, his tone was level, almost…disinterested, and Murphy hid a frown.
“It is,” he said.
“I cannot allow that.”
“Captain Treschow, you don’t have any choice,” Murphy said flatly.
“There are always choices, Admiral.”
This time Murphy’s frown made it to the surface. Surely the man didn’t mean—
“Admiral, Bǐshǒu is bringing up her fan!” Mirwani said sharply. “Estimate activation in six minutes!”
“Captain Treschow, shut down your Fasset drive!” Murphy snapped.
“No,” Treschow said simply, and cut the comm circuit.
“Shit,” O’Hanraghty said. “That idiot must have SCM balls! That or no brain.”
“There is something really, really off about this entire situation.” Murphy shook his head hard. “And we are going to get to the bottom of it.”
He wheeled to the command ring and tapped a screen. Captain Bisgaard’s comm image appeared from the bridge of TFN Fury.
“Yes, Admiral?”
“Captain, that freighter is bringing up its Fasset drive. I would appreciate it if you saw to it that it can’t.”
“Authorized to fire, Sir?”
“Authorized,” Murphy said flatly. “Try to keep your fire away from the core hull, but feel free to take out its fan and however much of the boom goes with it.”
“Aye, aye, Sir!”
* * *
“Foxtrot Alpha-One, Foxtrot Actual. Tasking order,” the voice of Lieutenant Commander Absher, CO of Fighter Group 1020, said in Lieutenant Timmerman’s earbud.
“Foxtrot Actual, Alpha-One. Proceed,” Timmerman replied.
“Alpha-One, you are to disable the Fasset drive of the freighter preparing to leave planetary orbit. We want it intact for boarding and search, so don’t get carried away.”
“Alpha-One copies, disable the Fasset drive but don’t break any eggs.”
“Affirmative, Alpha-One. And you’d better get a move on.”
Timmerman snorted—a snort of fluorocarbon mist, not oxygen—but Absher had a point about getting a move on. Once the freighter brought up its Fasset drive, only one of TF 1705’s FTLCs could run it down. At eight or nine hundred gravities, it would pretty much simply disappear as far as any reaction-propelled spacecraft, including his Orca, was concerned.
Until it did bring up its drive fan, however…
Timmerman’s Orca had been fitted with the close-attack module for this operation. That gave him the option of going laser or cannon, and he opted for guns. The laser was arguably longer ranged, but the SCM slugs packed a lot more kinetic energy.
He twisted his empty right fist, and his haptic glove translated that into commands through a virtual universal-movement “joystick.” His Orca—a tiny thing, by Navy standards, little bigger than a pre-space jumbo jet with stubbed off weapon pylons instead of wings—spun around its central axis, bringing its nose to bear on the freighter.
There was something odd about the Fasset drive housing, Timmerman thought as its iris expanded. Something about the angle of the node clusters was off or…something. His right thumb flipped a command to make certain his fighter’s sensors captured detailed visual, electronic, and gravitic imagery, then flipped his left thumb in the glove on that hand.
Fighter-mounted railguns were lighter and even faster-firing than a regular warship’s point defense systems. There were three of them in the Orca’s nose, and two more on belly-mounted hard points. All five of them burped out a four-second burst, and twenty-five twenty-five-millimeter slugs of super-compressed matter, which packed “only” 2.2 kilotons of energy apiece, spat from their muzzles. The fighter shuddered as its thrusters compensated for the recoil, and the SCM slugs streaked across the short gap to their target.
They hit with shattering force, drilling deep, and the power demands of a Fasset drive were…extreme. Nodes and capacitors shattered, power surges flashed through undamaged components, and the entire Fasset drive, over two hundred forty meters in diameter, ripped itself apart in cataclysmic destruction.
A third of the drive boom went with it, blowing apart into an expanding cluster of debris, but the freighter’s core hull appeared undamaged, and Timmerman grunted in satisfaction.
“Foxtrot Actual, Alpha-One. How was that?” he said.
“Outstanding, Alpha-One. And now I guess it’s up to the Marines.”
“About time those lazy bastards earned their pay.”
“Alpha-One, Alpha Actual. I didn’t hear that. Because if I had, I’d have to agree with you, and that would be unfortunate.”
* * *
“What a waste of time,” Steiner said.
Logan moved his hands within his Hoplon armor to adjust his HUD projection of the Bǐshǒu and the Moray landers limpeted to it. The merchant ship rotated slowly, haloed by the wreckage of its Fasset drive. The housing had blown into at least a dozen large, slagged-down fragments, and three hundred meters of the drive boom had shattered. Given how thoroughly the fan had blown itself to bits, he was actually surprised the entire ship hadn’t come apart.
“Spin up,” he said now. “Boarding teams aren’t reporting in.”
“Probably because there’s nothing to report.” Steiner’s armor read green on Logan’s display as his systems came online. “Merchie with—what? A couple of dozen crew? Thought their wonderful ‘neutral’ status would let them sit out the fight. Then the Old Man told ’em different. So then they panicked and thought they could run for it because they were so all ‘neutral’ and everything.” He shrugged inside his armor. “We’ve seen it before.”
“I mean they’re not reporting at all,” Logan said. “Zero comms.”
“Jammed?” Chavez asked. “How’s that even possible?”
“Shit. Another trap ship?” Faeran’s suit came online and Logan cycled power through his own servos.
“Our people are in there. That’s all that matters.” Logan sent a message to the pilot of their Moray’s attached Orca and they accelerated toward an unoccupied airlock on the freighter’s spin section. “Eira. Hold the fort here. We may need you on casualty evac.”
“Affirmative,” she said, straining against the pressure as the thunder of the Orca’s main thruster vibrated through the lander.
“Maybe we’ll finally get to crack some Leaguie skills,” Steiner said. “Been too long without a proper knock up.”
“That’s true,” Faeran said. “Maybe we’ve got time to hot-swap you and the Greenie out. Improve our chances.”
“Oh, ho, ho…that stung,” Steiner said.
“War faces, Hoplons,” Logan said. “Unknown environment. Friendlies present. Watch your penetration.”
The Moray came to its customary sudden stop. Eira’s vitals spiked on Logan’s HUD, but she didn’t complain. The bow doors snapped open, revealing the docking collar and the beige portal of one of the Bǐshǒu’s freight airlocks.
“Clear!” Logan punched the hatch with his right fist, and drills bored through from housings in his gauntlet’s knuckles. They bit through the outer wall of the lock and sent camera feeds to each of the suits. There was no movement inside…and no sign of the Federation’s boarders.
“Breach.”
Logan pulled his fist back and Chavez slapped a ring the diameter of a basketball onto the airlock’s outer door. Eira crouched behind the Hoplons, pulled up a metal shell from the deck, and knelt behind it with her helmeted head down.
“Shielded,” she said.
“Fire in the hole!” Chavez announced, and the ring expanded, then grew red-hot. Then white-hot. The center of the enormous airlock door exploded inward, littering the inner chamber with shards the size of house doors.
Logan unlocked his carbine and selected a magazine of SPLAT rounds. The first four letters of the acronym stood for “Sub-Penetrating, Lethal Ammunition;” Marines being Marines, the final letter’s addition had been a foregone conclusion. He double-checked the carbine’s ammo readout, then stepped aboard the ship.
He crossed to the airlock’s inner door. It took him a moment to find the nonstandard opening mechanism—a heavy, mechanical bar, rather than the pushbuttons of most merchant designs. He gripped it in his suit’s left gauntlet and pulled, half-expecting to find it locked down. But the door slid obediently open, and his eyebrows rose in surprise. Then they lowered in even deeper surprise. An airlock this size was clearly designed for freight, but there was no hold or storage area on the inboard side.
“We’ve got atmosphere,” he said. “Close perimeter, and mind the corners.”
He and his team moved forward into an access passageway. He reached an intersection and did a combat glance around the corner with the camera mounted in his carbine. Faeran did the same in the opposite direction. The video from both cameras fed to windows in each suit’s HUD.
“The hell?” Steiner said.
The airlock through which they’d entered was obviously a sham, camouflage. It was meant to look like a freight airlock for a cargo pod, but the spaces around them were obviously for personnel, not cargo, and their design was far removed from any freight-hauler’s industrial and utilitarian aesthetic. Beyond the intersection, the passageways became circular, with interlocking bulkhead plates that looked like giant dragon scales. The deck was a long mat with irregular indentations spaced along its length.
“Fury, you reading this?” Logan sent back to the Moray for a hop to the strikecarrier.
There was no response.
“No link to the Moray,” Faeran said. “We want to set up IR relays?”
“Or pull back and get the rest of the Hoplons? That’s my vote,” Steiner said.
“How can you be a chickenshit in your suit?” Chavez asked. “We really should have swapped you out for the Greenie. Although she’d have to deal with the smell of you pissing yourself.”
“We still got teams in here,” Logan said. “I don’t know what the hell this ship is…but the Admiral needs to know. We don’t make it back, at least that’ll tell him something’s worth his concern. Bridge is to the fore, if this is designed like a normal merch. Move out.”
Logan cut around the side, sensors scanning for any hint of movement or thermal irregularities.
“Roomy, at least,” Chavez observed, and Logan grunted in agreement. The passageway was much higher than usual, which at least meant there were none of the low overhangs or constant ducking of every other boarding action he’d ever done.
The bulkheads changed from bare alloy to complex mosaics. They were abstracts, with a flow of pattern and color that clashed violently, and Chavez shook his head.
“I hate to agree with Steiner,” Chavez said, “but this is getting weird, Smaj.”
A scream ripped down the passageway.
“Advance!”
Logan leaned into a trot, and the slam of his team’s sabatons rang out against the deck in unison. They passed oval-shaped doorways, half again the height of a Hoplon, with frames etched with alien script that pulsed with red light.
The screaming grew louder at the end of the passageway, and a blur flew around the Junction and smashed against the bulkhead. The upper half of a Marine corporal oozed down the curved wall in a wide streak of glistening red. It thudded to the deck, dead eyes staring blindly, and blood pooled around it.
Logan slid to a halt.
A Navy petty officer crawled into view. Her helmet was gone, her armored vac suit torn. Blood pulsed from one of the rips, and she looked up at Logan and reached out desperately.
A massive hand grabbed her by the ankle and snapped her back around the corner.
There was another scream…that ended in a wet gurgle.
“Ancestors preserve us,” Faeran muttered.
And then the first Rish Logan had ever seen in the flesh stepped into view. The saurian alien dragged the dead spacer with its claws embedded in her flesh, straight through her vac suit. It was three meters tall, hunched at the shoulders, wearing unpowered body armor. Its helmet was shaped to enclose jaws meant for ripping and tearing, red blood was splattered across its torso and arms, and it held a belt-fed rifle—large enough to be a two-man-crewed weapon for a human—in its free hand, as easily as Logan carried his carbine.
The alien flung the corpse at the Hoplons, and Logan raised his left arm to take the impact. The body flopped across his helmet, blocking his view for a split second, and the hallway erupted with gunfire. The Hoplons and the alien poured fire at one another, and Logan went down, his feet knocked out from under him, as rounds struck his suit’s ankles and shins.
The Rish charged. It loped down the passage, bounding back and forth off the deck and bulkhead with clawed feet to throw off the Hoplons’ aim. Logan, still facedown on the deck, snapped his carbine up and fired. The rounds stitched from the alien’s hip to its shoulder, but the hollowpoint bullets sparked against its armor and barely slowed it down.
A bayonet snapped out from its rifle, the serrated blade glowing with energy. The Rish let out a hiss and drew back with the rifle, then swung the tip up and straight into Chavez’s breastplate. The weapon punched through the battle steel alloy as easily as any human force blade and drove deep into the armored suit’s chest. Electricity crackled through it, and Chavez’s readings on Logan’s HUD went haywire.
Logan swept his carbine to one side and hit the Rish in the knee. It stumbled into the bulkhead, and Faeran and Steiner kept firing. Their bullets spattered against the alien’s helmet and ricocheted through the passageway, and Logan got to one knee. He brought his suit’s left fist up in a servo-driven uppercut that caught the Rish on the chin and bounced the back of its helmeted head against the wall.
He dropped his carbine and reached for it with his right gauntlet, but the Rish was incredibly quick. It evaded his right hand, slid past him, and hit him in the side. Punch spikes on the alien’s armor dented Logan’s suit, and the impact actually lifted him a centimeter off the deck. Containment warnings flashed across his HUD.
He twisted hard. His left elbow rammed into the Rish, driving it back into the bulkhead, and his right fist hooked into its face. The alien’s armorplast visor shattered and metal buckled beneath the impact. The alien went down, and Logan fell on top of it. He knelt on its chest, raining blows onto it, battering its helmet into a mass of violet blood and twisted alloy.
He stopped only when the alien stopped convulsing.
He knelt there a moment longer, breathing hard, and then servos whined as he picked up his carbine pushed himself back upright.
“Chavez flatlined,” Faeran said from behind him. “I got his tags.”
“What…what the hell was that?” Steiner asked.
“What do you think it was?” Logan snarled. “A Rish. A fucking Rish.” He shook his head inside his turretlike helmet. “I thought the Admiral was crazy. Guess not.”
Chavez lay on the deck, blood seeping from the rent the alien’s bayonet had ripped into his chest.
“Load penetrators,” Logan said. “SPLATs aren’t working against that—”
He broke off as smoke blossomed suddenly from the seams of the Rish’s armor. His suit’s heat sensors spiked wildly, and he stepped back involuntarily as the incendiary blazed hot enough to melt the deck. When the blinding incandescence died, it left nothing but ash.
“Holy—Do they all do that?” Steiner demanded.
“Let’s go kill some more and find out,” Logan growled. He touched the muzzle of his carbine to his helmet in salute to Chavez. “Need to find the rest of the boarding parties while we’re at it.” He ejected the mostly empty magazine of SPLATs and loaded a drum from the housing on his back.
“That really was a Rish…” Faeran said as they went around the corner to find more bits and pieces of human bodies.
“Know any other high-tech lizards in the area?” Logan growled.
“I got this cousin,” Steiner said. “Real nut job. Always said the Rish were behind everything. I mean, he’s way out there, you know? And now I’ve gotta tell him he was right? Oh, fuck me!”
“Radar pulse shows an open area behind that door ahead.” Logan motioned forward with his carbine. “Got moving radar returns in it. If it isn’t human, kill it.”
He broke into a run, dropped his right shoulder, and slammed into the door. His suit ripped through the thin metal as if it were paper. The chamber within—larger than he’d thought—surrounded a large sphere, at least fifteen meters across, that swelled from the deck like some high-tech fungus. Thick cables connected it to both the deck and the overhead, and there was a sealed hatch in the side facing him.
There were also three Rish between him and the hatch, two in armor and one in a thinner vac suit that left the alien’s head exposed.
Logan dropped his sights onto the thick jaws and bony brow of the helmetless Rish, but then he swept his weapon to the side as the armored aliens charged. He put a three-round burst into the first Rish, and it went to one knee with a shriek.
It fired from the hip, and hammer blows struck Logan’s breastplate. A single round glanced off his domed helmet, starring the two-centimeter armorplast, and he rocked backward. Steiner caught him with an elbow and kept him upright.
Faeran was firing in short, controlled bursts, but the aliens were incredibly tough. It took almost her entire magazine to put them down.
“Jesus, those things are tough,” Steiner said.
“Ammo check,” Logan said.
“I’ve got…fifty-one penetrators,” Steiner said.
“I’m out,” Faeran said, slapping a SPLAT magazine into her weapon. “I don’t frigging care if it’s ‘just a boarding op.’ Next time I’m bringing a dozen mags of penetrators!”
“I’ve got forty-eight,” Logan said.
“Not a lot of ammo for a war, Smaj,” Faeran pointed out.
“No, it’s not,” Logan agreed. Smoke billowed around the sphere as the dead aliens immolated. “So we’d better keep moving. Let’s get in there.”
“You think the other parties are in—”
“No,” Logan cut Steiner off. “But they were protecting what’s inside. Let’s crack the shell before more of them get here.”
Logan found a handle for the circular door, big enough for his armored hand. It was locked, but he twisted it to one side and mechanisms within broke apart. He kicked the door open and ducked inside.
Another Rish stood on a raised platform, surrounded by holos of the lopsided battle that had just taken place. Wire diagrams of the ship and scrolling text that Logan couldn’t read floated among them. Smaller aliens crowded around the towering Matriarch, their heads barely topping its waist. They were built like human adolescents, with bulbous eyes and blunted teeth.
“You’ve killed my daughters, vermin,” Naytash said through the translating drone. “Never have we shed blood beyond the Sphere. I would take your names back. Mark your clan for honor and death. But, alas, I will not.”
“Where are the rest of my people?” Logan moved forward slowly as the smaller aliens hissed at him. Faeran and Steiner filed in behind him.
“We will all die here,” Naytash said. “The League humans have failed the Sphere, and there is no way back to it.” She bent and stroked the head of one of the smaller Rish, then snapped its neck with a quick twist. She killed the rest without any sign of emotion. “We’ve played for too long,” she said. “Now is the endgame.”
She lifted a glowing yellow pill to her jaws and ripped it open. Her flesh blackened and cracked around the pill, a dreadful incandescence spreading, spurting out her nostrils and through her eyes. She fell to the deck, and the holo sphere cut out. Electricity sizzled through the dais, and flames burst out of computer stacks.
“Sergeant Major…I suggest we leave,” Steiner said.
“Moray Team Alpha, status report!” Captain Bisgaard’s crackled over the comm.
“Abandon ship!” Logan shouted over the general net. He shoved Faeran through the door and pushed Steiner out. “All boarding teams—if you can hear me, get back to your landers now!”
They ran back the way they’d come as lighting systems shorted out and fire erupted through air vents. The ship quivered around them, concussions rattling through its alloy bones.
They got back to their entrance point, but their assault lander was gone. A hurricane of venting atmosphere poured through the breached airlock, now that the docking collar had been removed.
“Shit!” Steiner shouted.
“Smartest thing they could do!” Logan shot back. “Jump!”
The three Hoplons hurled themselves into the hurricane, riding it out into the vacuum as Bǐshǒu disintegrated behind them. They locked arms and legs, pulling into a ball for protection, with helmets down and the armored carapaces of their suits out.
And then Bǐshǒu blossomed into a searing fireball. Logan felt a swarm of impacts against his armor as the debris storm passed over them, and Steiner shouted something unspeakably obscene over the comm. The lower half of his suit went crimson on Logan’s HUD, but at least it still showed the green of successful atmospheric containment.
The star field swooped dizzily around them as they spun and spiraled from the impact of the debris until a jet of gas from Faeran’s maneuvering pack killed their motion.
“That’s twice,” Steiner snarled. “Twice the Rish have blown a ship out from under our boots!”
A Moray-Orca combination drifted closer to them. Logan was surprised it hadn’t taken debris damage itself. If he’d been the command pilot, they would have pulled farther back, he thought grimly. But then its transponder code blinked on his HUD, and he knew why it hadn’t.
Damned if he would have argued with her, either.
His HUD pinged with a text message. It was from Eira. “THREE. WHO?”
“CHAVEZ,” he texted back.
“No body for his family,” Faeran said. “And nothing from the other teams at all.”
“He died true,” Logan said. “May I follow him to heaven.”
“May I,” Steiner said.
“May I,” Faeran completed, then began murmuring in her native tongue and shut down her comm.
Logan said nothing more while they waited in the black for retrieval. But he watched the video of the Rishathan matriarch over and over.