Edge of Redemption (A Star Too Far Book 3) (38 page)

It identified the friendlies first. After that it queried the bioaugments and classified each as hostile. Half of the drones dropped from the sky and hunted for the humanoids. The neutral network took a moment longer and decided on the brutes, it was a unique threat.

A drone hovered in the mist and waited. The order surged up and it peered through the mist and caught the muzzles flashes of an autocannon. It released the grav drives and sunk from the sky.

Mist broke beneath it and it compensated sideways. The target was large, heavy, and from what it could tell well armored. The drone slowed the acceleration for a moment and flared to the side. It opened fire with a pair of spine mounted rotary cannons. The six millimeter rounds pinged and sang. It noticed that the charges made little impact.

The neural net compensated, changed the orders, and the drone surged ahead. Beneath it the crowds of bioaugments fought and died. Drones punched into the groups and dropped explosive packets while others latched in with mechanical violence and shredded one after the next. But this particular drone dropped down and landed on the shoulder of the brute.

It double checked the orders, verified the time stamps, and detonated its core. Light flared magnesium white and the brute crumbled to the ground with a steaming hole where its head and right shoulder had been.

The neural net watched the result and relayed similar orders to a handful more drones. The brutes were no longer a threat.

*

Emilie watched drone after drone wink into silence. The drones finished what the men had started. The explosions above her died away and only the sporadic echo of a gunshot pushed through the air.

She glanced over at Natyasha’s corpse and knew that Winterthur was hers. She came seeking her destiny, and it seemed that it had found her.

––––––––

T
he torpedo detonated in a massive flare of nanite incandescence. The propellant chamber first hardened into a wall of alloy. The slower burn shoved the brunt of the force away towards the target. Solidifying a cone of alloy and nanite scrap. The nanites fused, seized, and grappled bits and shreds into pieces of spall and shrapnel. The cloud was immense.

At fifty meters from the
Brendan,
the condensed solids were concentrated at a density high enough to be visible. Each bit glowed slightly with retained heat. Then the impact began. The first pieces slammed against the ancient armor plates. Each lost mass and was consumed in the briefest flare of heat, heat that was designed to weaken the plate. Every piece that followed afterward bored deeper.

The only saving grace was the fact that the dropship was designed in an era where a torpedo was a real threat. Beyond the outer layers was a material similar to peanut butter. A raw and brutally simple nanite matrix that grappled onto incoming shrapnel and swelled the size and reduced the force.

Pinpricks of light burst against the surface of the dropship and it began a slow roll. The careful positioning was abandoned for a reckless shift away. Velocity rose higher, slowly, gently. Flares of cold gas shot out as more of the torpedo slammed into the hull. The hull was breached and the cold grip of vacuum crawled in.

William double checked the course he had set and ignored the horrible damage being wreaked upon the
Brendan
. He saw the puncture wounds from the railguns, saw the stitching fire from the mass drivers, and saw the thermal blue flares showing where oxygen punched out. But all of it he pushed back, away, and focused on the course. His hands made a micro correction and watched the lines converge again. With a quick swipe he canceled the collision alarms.

“They’re going to shift,” Shay said quickly as she tightened the buckles.

“No,” William said. “They’re going to hit us. We’re too close to shift away.”

“Fuck, twenty seconds,” Shay said with tension and nervousness in her voice.

William corrected the course again. “Huron! Brace!”

“I heard ya!” Huron called back over the comms.

The icon for the
Gallipoli
dropped away, the ship itself, impossibly close in space combat, grew larger on the screen. Every detail stood out as the sun was behind the ship. Gouges, vents, external nanite blooms, all raged on the hull. The corvette was a wreck, but yet a functional wreck.

William made one final glance and dropped himself lower in his seat. He wondered what Mustafa was thinking. He knew Mustafa wasn’t piloting though. He pictured Salamasina, the angry woman in red, wanting nothing more than revenge. Well, he thought, let’s give it to her.

The distance closed the final hundred meters. He felt wrong, almost dirty, colliding the two ships. He couldn’t shake the feeling that he was shattering a work of art. Then everything went blank.

The
Garlic
, slowly disintegrating with a hull like worn chalk, slammed into the rear quarter of the
Gallipoli
. A spray of white crested out from the
Garlic
and sent the ship spinning. Internal forces slammed higher, viciously higher, as the energy of the impact spun the ship.

The
Gallipoli
bore a harder fate. The rear of the ship cracked and flipped away with a shower of sparks. A cascade of particles followed, bright and hot, as the vacuum was slow to take the heat away. Atmosphere never had a chance to burst out the rift was so wide. There was simply a cloud of oxygen and a shower of debris.

The front three quarters of the
Gallipoli
tilted forward and tumbled on the center axis. The lights went dark, the mass driver fell silent, and the once deadly ship disappeared into the dark side of the planet.

William felt the vomit push out from his mouth but couldn’t see anything. The entire bridge was black, tar black. Not that he could see anything anyways, the G forces were enough to darken his vision. His stomach rolled and he retched again. Then it hit him, he was alive. “Shay?” he croaked between another retch.

His fingers fumbled against his chest and tapped along a strap until they found a slender pouch. It was thick like a cigar and he plucked at it once and missed. The second time it flared blue and bathed the bridge in light. He almost regretted doing it.

The screens were ripped free from the wall and littered the space before him. The ceiling was a ragged mass of sheared aggregate and failed alloy reinforcement. Rubble filled the front of the bridge. He saw a suit ripped open and crushed on top of the debris.

William felt the force drift back slowly. Something, somewhere, was slowing the roll. He thought quickly and knew that the reactor was still online and at least a single grav generator. He pushed away with both arms and hollered out. His mechanical hand was snapped and stabbed into his flesh. “Fuck!” he screamed again and again.

With his good hand he unbuckled and crawled towards the heap of debris. He knew it was worthless, Shay was dead. The suit was ripped, shredded, buckled, useless. But he had to see. The force pushing him back was almost too much to overcome with just one hand. He latched onto a console and pushed away with his feet.

Hungry. Fuck, he thought, of all times. His stomach growled and reminded him that his face shield was covered in vomit. His lips sucked on the protein tube and swallowed just enough to tame his stomach.

He panicked. His breathing was ragged, rapid, fearful. He scrambled forward in fear and felt the foot of the suit. Fear of being alone ate into his soul.

His hands squeezed the suit and felt no life. His fingers squeezed again and pulled the leg towards him. The corpse rolled and tumbled in the rolling force and showed a face.

It was Bryce. He was serene, and quite dead.

William steadied his breathing and stared into the dead face of a man he had failed. He’d not fail again.

“Shay!” he cried out loudly. “Shay!” His own voice was unbelievably loud in his ears. He pulled at the loose chalky bits of aggregate and tossed them up, the rotational gravity did the rest. He needed to find her, to make an attempt to save someone. He felt almost cursed to still be alive, and felt guilty for feeling that way a moment later. “Shay,” he said in a whisper.

“Fuck,” her voice, husky and raw, spoke plainly.

A renewed vigor came over him and he gripped and threw the chunks away. A grit covered suit appeared and he saw it move. “Shay!” he cried out again and felt the loneliness and fear drift away.

“I can’t move,” she said in barely a whisper.

“Hold on,” he said and dug faster. His good hand was sore, and he had to clutch his mechanical hand against his chest. Every time he jarred it, the nanite nerves fired in warning and pain. Tears streaked down his cheeks and mixed with vomit running down his neck.

“William!” Huron called from behind.

William rolled onto his side and saw the bright colors of the Engineer’s suit push through a mass of cabling and debris. Three other suits clustered behind and huddled in the silence.

Huron helped William to the side and dug in with both hands. William pushed away and came to rest near the body of Bryce. He watched as Perez crawled in and assisted Huron. The pair cleared enough away and Shay was free. She sat on the edge of the debris and laid against it.

“That’s it, eh?” Shay said.

“Hold on,” Huron said and crouched next to one of the displays. He stripped a connector from a broken display and latched it into a different screen. It flickered into view with a massive band of color missing.

“Help me up,” William said and felt arms steady him. He stared at the screen and picked out the meager diagnostics. It told him that his ship was mostly destroyed and the nanite aggregate was coming apart. Then he saw the neural net notice. “The net is up?”

Huron snapped his head to the screen and slid into the seat that was once Bryce’s. He swept the dusty debris off the console and tapped slowly. The screen changed and suddenly lit up.

It was broken into three views: Corporal Thorisdottir, Private Igor, and Private Grgur.

“Marines!” William cried out. “Can they hear us?”

Huron punched at the console. “I don’t know, wait, one second.”

The screen flared to black before changing to show the starscape. The
Gallipoli
was nowhere to be seen and the
Garlic
was moving up and away from the space elevator. The dropship was snuggled up next to the docking station and latched in tight.

A comms panel appeared and replaced the spaceview. Huron punched the console twice more and he spoke. “UC Marines, this is the
Garlic
, do you read?”

The room was beyond silent. William strained and listened. Every bit of his focus was on his ears. Would they hear the signal, he wondered?

“This is Grgur,” a voice replied in the slow Serbian drawl.

The group of survivors cheered.

“We’re kind of busy,” he said nonchalantly.

The screen flipped away from the comms and was replaced by the suit view. Grgur and Igor advanced through the open spaces of the space elevator docking station. Bodies were scattered and torn apart throughout the area. Grgur fell back and sat down, his camera unmoving. Igor punched ahead with convicts at his flanks. Hun defenders fought at every corner, every junction, but slowly the meager defenders were silenced.

William sat into his chair and tried to call up his console. It made a strange noise, followed by a pop.

Huron reached back, slapped the lower side, and the screen kicked in. “Bad connector,” he mumbled without taking his gaze from the screen.

The velocity of the
Garlic
was enough that, by his calculations, it would take them eighty-three days to return to the orbital station using the single gravity generator that still functioned. They would, at that rate, starve to death before they ran out of oxygen.

“
Garlic
,” Igor said slowly. “I think eet ees secured.” Igor’s camera panned across the cavernous inside of the station. Convicts swarmed everywhere. “They’re drunk,” he mumbled.

“Drunk?” Huron asked.

“Igor, is the
Brendan
operational? We’re drifting away and are in need of a recovery.” William asked.

“Negative, it is hulled,” Igor replied. “But I think there is another ship.”

“Another ship?” William asked. He pulled up the starscape and saw only the station. Then he remembered the
Grouper
.

“Yes,” Igor said softly. “There’s two little men here.”

The camera moved and panned as Igor stumbled through the hold. He came to the doors of the elevator itself and faced two men, one so old as to almost be ancient and the other with eyes sunk into his skull. Igor beckoned to them both and explained the situation.

Mao nodded and glanced behind him to the pile of corpses. “Who am I speaking to?” he asked in a polite, but firm voice.

“Tell him,” William said.

Mao listened and a smile breached his thin lips. Yellow teeth poked out and he nodded. “So the
Grouper
comes to the rescue, yes?”

William smiled. He deserved that one. “Yes Igor, tell him the
Grouper
comes to the rescue.”

“H
ell of a ship,” Shay said in a weak voice. She propped herself up against a corroded bulkhead and watched the
Garlic
grow distant.

William nodded and didn’t say anything. He turned away and looked at the empty space of the
Grouper
. It was like saying goodbye, he thought, just bad luck. And what could he say? It was just a ship.

He couldn’t bear it and had to turn and look. The hull was now mostly a cloud of disintegrated aggregate hanging like morning mist. The internal alloy structures peaked out with stained black pockmarks and shrapnel patterns. He felt sad that so noble a ship was designed, from day one, to fail.

The thoughts brought him to his own fate. He was sure that back on Earth there was a question mark next to his name. Thoughts of the Earth First groups made him feel bitter about the whole affair. His crew fought for more than just Earth.