Angry Ghosts (3 page)

“Sir, boarding teams have reached the personnel hatches,” announces the communications officer.

A searing energy bolt streaks by
Seyun-gee’s
bridge.

“Tactical!” roars the captain. “Where did that come from?”

The tactical officer looks out in shock. “From
Korom
, sir!”

The captain whirls in frenzy. “
Lock all weapon batteries on
Korom’s
bridge and fire!
”

“But, sir,” protests the tactical officer, “the boarding teams!”

The captain leaps at the tactical officer, ripping her out of her chair. He scrambles to program the target, but too late. Energy blasts shred through
Seyun-gee’s
bridge, exploding the compartment and venting all into space.

From the outer hull of
Korom
, the Boarding Team Leader watches the energy blasts continue, sweeping along
Seyun-gee’s
full length, tearing her inside out. Secondary explosions incinerate troops still jetting over on the cables, rocketing their singed bodies through comrades farther ahead. Large chunks of metal scatter in all directions, tearing through anyone unable to move in time. Gritting his teeth, the Team Leader curses.

“How did they get control?”
yells one of his troopers.

T
he Leader bellows, “
The HATCH, you cack-faced mutt! GET IT OPEN!
”

Seyun-gee
glows with damage, venting long plumes of flame and plasma. The venting strains the grappling lines, stretching them taut.

Looking over his shoulder, the Team Leader sees his troop
ers getting clipped, slashed and crushed. All the while, fresh explosions aboard
Seyun-gee
renew the metallic hail, peppering the survivors with still more lethal fragments. The Leader turns away only to watch
Korom’s
weapon batteries reorient toward the taut grappling lines. With precision shots, the cables are sliced; and
Korom
lurches, swaying them in their magnetic boots.

Like snakes striking prey, the cables whip at the teams—slicing some at the waist, sweeping others off the hull. Their voices flow into the Leader’s headset, turning from desperate pleas for rescue into screams of searing agony when they drift
out of shade into the stars’ full radiance.

Fury grips the Leader, squeezing his heart in a vice, and he pushes past his troopers to get a view of the locked personnel hatch.

“WHAT'S TAKING SO LONG?”

A soldier is hunched over the lock control with a small electronic device. “They must have changed all the codes. I can’t get in!”

Hauling out a small torch, the Leader shoves the soldier aside and kneels down to cut the lock itself.

Korom
lurches again with thrust, building distance from its burning twin and putting an end to the rain of deadly debris. The troopers all breathe a grateful sigh of relief, until they see
Korom’s
weapon batteries swing back toward
Seyun-gee
and loose a coordinated barrage. The shots rip through
Seyun-gee’s
engines, igniting a spherical blast consuming the tortured ship like a swelling sun. The sphere grows faster than the departing ship is traveling, and the moment of relief yields to new tide of panic.

“Get it open!” someone yells, starting a riot of frenzied shouting.

While the Leader continues to cut, the troopers hack into the lock with their rifle butts. Some spin their weapons around and shoot into the lock, careless of the ricochets plunging into their comrades.

At last the bar severs. The surviving troopers crowd around their Leader and shove the door aside as the blast wave of superheated plasma rakes the full length of
Korom
. The Leader’s team chars around him, the sudden vaporization of their flesh blowing him through the door. He gets to his feet and shoulders the door shut. More tired than he should be, he slumps down, exhausted, and gasps for breath. Perplexed, he looks down at the radiation gauge on his suit. It glows vividly.

Looking around the small airlock,
what he knows will soon become his tomb, his eyelids get heavy. Before they close completely, a shadow steps into the window of the interior door.

Fear energizes him in his final moments as he searches for a weapon, but he finds none. Once the air pressure equalizes, the interior airlock slides open, and the gasping Team Leader looks his foe over from head to toe, accepting what he sees with great difficulty.

“
Da’oma Kachi’in
…” he whispers with his last breath.

The figure strides in, clad in stout dark armor, a heavy rifle trained squarely on
the slumping Team Leader. It closes the interior door and depressurizes the airlock. Keeping the rifle aimed, it steps over and jabs the creature with the barrel.

A light on the outer door shifts color, and the figure slides it aside one handed. With the swift shove of a boot, the Team Leader is sent unceremoniously into space.

The metal clad figure reseals the airlock, pressurizes the compartment, and lifts his face plate, revealing a sweaty young man with thick stubble, already going gray. Scars cross his eyes and lips like topographical features on a map.

“Maiella, this is Thompson, over.”

Via radio a female voice replies, “Go ahead, Thompson.”

“We’re clear. Let’s get under way.”

“Roger, that. Coordinates set.”

Thompson slings his rifle and walks slowly to the bridge, looking carefully at the ship around him. Along the way, he stops to investigate a curious panel here and there. Soon, he strides through the twisted and wrecked doors of the bridge where a gargantuan man in bulky armor steps into his path and salutes briskly.

The big man’s faceplate is raised, displaying a great round face more weathered with lines and old burns His free hand grips a massive cannon still wavering with heat. Grenades and detonators encircle his waist. There are many gaps in the ring.

“At ease, Brick,” Thompson says. He looks the huge man over, taking in the numerous new blast and burn marks his armor shows. “Good to see you’re all right, Argo.” Thompson claps the Brick warmly on the arm.

Argo smiles back wr
yly. “They’ll have to build better guns.”

Thompson grins then becomes stern. “Was anyone injured?”

“Some laser wounds and contusions but nothing serious.”

Thompson raises his hand to Argo’s shoulder. “I want you, Brick Brahe, and Brick Talu to set up a medical facility. Treat every wound, no matter how slight, understood?”

Argo stands straight and salutes again.

“Aye, sir.”

The huge man hefts his massive weapon in both hands and jogs down the corridor, his hefty footfalls reverberating solidly.

Thompson looks around the damaged bridge, kicking
lifeless blue bodies aside as he goes. Scorch marks streak the walls and panels where precision shots burned through the blue-skinned defenders. There is still a thin layer of acidic smoke, just enough to scent the air and sting his eyes.

Sweat rolls from his forehead in a sudden deluge as his body tries to return to normal temperature. The end of
combat stress sends his super-stimulated Limbic system into rest, and the tall soldier nearly collapses on wobbly legs. In another moment, his blood pressure stabilizes and his shoulders, pectorals, and thighs twitch with residual adrenaline.

Seated in the midst of the disarray is a slim woman in armor, wearing large goggles that flash with data. Various cables extend from her oversized headgear to the consoles like a web
. She plants one boot at the console’s edge and casually twirls a machine pistol around her finger. Thompson makes his way over, careful not to disturb her network of lanyards and data leads.

The goggles cease their flashing of code
, and she lifts them to get a better look at her superior. Like the other soldiers, she bears her share of scars.

“Geek Maiella,” Thompson hails, “how much of the ship’s systems have you interpreted?”

“Sixty-seven percent, including navigation, main drive, and weapons.”

He nods, folds his arms, and leans back against the console.
“So what do you think we have here?”

Maiella looks forward again, lowering her goggles. “She’s fast and light, but with
very
good weapons—probably designed as a first responder.”

Thompson kneels beside her. “How fast?”

“Well, the freighter departed over a month ago, but we’ll catch up in about two days.”

Thompson’s brow rises in pleasant surprise. “Two days? What kind of drive system is it using?”

“I’ll let you know when I find out. It’s definitely new.”

“Two days, eh?” He stands and activates his radio. “Gun Setee, Gun Drusus, respond.”

“Drusus, here.”

“Setee, here.”

“Is your sweep complete?”

“Yes, sir,” replies Setee. “All crew confirmed dead.”

“Is there a place we can store the bodies?”

“Affirmative,” answers Drusus. “We can disable the heaters in one of the
compartments near the hull. Won’t take long to get very cold in there.”

“Good. We have two days until we meet up with the freighter. Go see Brick Argo and have your wounds tended, then police up the bodi
es and store them. Do it quick, 'cause after that, we’ll inventory the ship. I want a full list of everything she’s carrying and everything she’s capable of. I don’t want
any
surprises brought home to Cadre One. Acknowledge.”

“Understood, sir,” answers Drusus.

“Acknowledged, sir,” answers Setee.

Thompson switches off his radio and
looks down at Maiella. Through all of their rotations together, the young woman never gets flustered. It amazes him how she can be so relaxed, as if the thought of failure never touches her.

The Geek’s goggles pulse rapidly with code, augmenting the data flowing directly into her brain through the oversized
headgear she wears.

“Excellent work, getting control so quickly,” Thompson says. “It saved us.”

Her goggles halt their flashing again so she can look at him. “How many blueskins were aboard do you think?”

Thompson thinks for a moment. “Standing crew of twenty plus fifty troopers. If you count the troops from the other ship, it would have been fifty more.”

“A hundred and twenty versus nine of us...pretty tall odds.”

“You evened them nicely.”

Maiella blushes proudly. She breathes deeply and gets back to work, her goggles resuming their flashing pulses of code. Thompson looks for the nearest body to haul away, and grabs a violently torn corpse wearing the tatters of a black uniform.

* * * * *

“Approaching captured freighter,” announces Maiella.

Thompson looks up from the console he is studying. “Can you give me a visual?”

Maiella hesitates. “I could have,” she says, pointing to the blackened scorch marks at the front of the bridge, “but it, uh, was disabled.”

“Is there a backup?”

“Possibly... hang on....” Her goggles strobe with data and instruction. “There!”

A small
holo-window opens in front of her and displays the bridge of the freighter. Another slim human in armor and goggles, covered in a reddish brown dust, almost leaps out of his seat in surprise. Once he realizes who is hailing him, he calms down, telling someone off screen to reset the auto-destruct safeties.

“Geek Maiella! It’s good to see you alive! We didn’t know if the plan would work….”

Maiella smiles demurely. “Lukas, good to see you too. Thompson's plan was perfect. No problem at all.”

“A
ny casualties?” the freighter pilot asks.

“No,” she answers, “we’re all okay.”

The freighter pilot exhales his held breath in a rush.

“How about
your
team?” Maiella queries. “Anyone hurt?”

“No, we’re in good shape. Resistance was meager. Small crew. Easy.”

Thompson slides over beside Maiella to look through the Holowindow. “What’s that on you? You’ve been doing some digging?”

The freighter pilot stiffens noticeably and salutes.

“Yes, sir, Gun Thompson! We’ve inventoried the ship cargoes; and she’s carrying raw ores of Tungsten, Vanadium, Iron, Germanium, and Silicon, plus two very high-quality ore excavators. The diamonds on the augers are bigger than Argo’s fist!”

“Is that why you’re covered in ore dust, Sergeant?”

The pilot looks down sheepishly. “We were waiting a long time for you, and, uh… and....”

“You tried them out.”

The slim pilot looks up, jutting his lip, contemplating whether he should try to explain, but decides against it. “Yup,” he replies, “we did.”

Maiella brings a hand up to her face to hide her chuckling. Thompson buries his amusement. “Get yourselves ready to return.”

“But, sir, it’ll take us eight more months to pilot this freighter to the planned position.”

“You and your team will be returning with us. We can get home sooner, which means we can all be on another rotation sooner. Program the freighter for a circuitous route—full fail-safes—if any ship approaches and doesn’t transmit the access code...” Thompson begins.

“…overload power plant, induce feedback harmonics to propulsion, maximum output,” finishes the pilot. He is about to sign off, but looks up hopefully. “One more thing, sir. Does your ship have any food synthesis machines?”

Thompson looks back, crestfallen
. “Yeah, but it only spits out varieties of that cellulose garbage we can’t eat.”

The pilot looks down sadly and raises his head. “Maybe one of the other teams has found something, yeah?”

“Let’s hope so, Lukas. Gun Thompson out.”

Maiella switches off the Holowindow, sorry to end on such a somber note. The richness of their cargoes is impressive, but thus far, they have been missing the one component they need most: edible compounds for their food synthesizers. It means, yet again, they will have to liquefy the bodies of the dead for nourishment.

“I guess we should be grateful this ship was so well staffed,” Thompson says bitterly. Maiella closes her eyes, forced to contemplate the grim source of their sustenance.

“I’m going down to the personnel hatch to receive the freighter team,” Thompson says heavily. “After that, I’ll be helping repair any damaged bulkheads. Call me if something comes up.”

Maiella nods silently, resuming her duties as the tall soldier walks out of the bridge. When the freighter team is safely aboard, she sets the course home and engages the engines at high speed.