Virtues of War (23 page)

The battle cruiser launched volley after volley of missiles. Even as Katja watched, it fired a salvo, rotated on its axis about thirty degrees, steadied, and fired again. The missiles were targeted like sniper rounds, snaking through the melee and hitting the fleeing Terran capital ships. None of the Terran battle line could engage the battle cruiser, as they were outnumbered nearly two-to-one by the aggressive enemy frigates.

Perhaps
Rapier
had made a difference by averting that single attack, but
Normandy
and the other capital ships didn’t stand much hope so long as that battle cruiser was free to launch her pinpoint-guided missiles.

Katja felt her stomach tighten as an idea formed in her mind. Thomas’s last desire had been for
Rapier
to make a difference in this battle. No doubt his daring attack had saved
Normandy
, but that wasn’t enough. There was one more thing that could be done.

She opened the strike frequency. “Bravo-One, Alpha-One.”

“Bravo-One,”
Chang replied from the other pod. It was visible to Katja’s left, less than a kilometer distant and rising into space in step with her own vehicle.

“Rendezvous with my vessel and prepare to transfer personnel.”

“Bravo-One, roger.”

She turned to Cohen. “Hold position here and get ready to mate with the other pod.”

If Cohen harbored any doubt, it didn’t show. “Yes, ma’am.”

The strike pod slowed its ascent until it was hovering in extremely low orbit. The artificial gravity produced by the climb faded away. Katja unstrapped and guided herself out of her chair, noting through the windows that the second pod was closing quickly. She heard a few quick words exchanged between the pilots, then felt a thump as the pods mated. The usual locking clicks and hisses indicated a pressure seal.

When the green light came on, Katja opened the hatch. Bravo pod’s hatch opened a moment later, revealing Chang’s dark face. Behind him, the pod was as crowded as hers.

Katja shouted for all to hear.

“
Rapier
, listen up! We are still in battle, and things are not going well! Centauria might think that we’re out of it, but they’re wrong! We are going to transfer Bravo Team to Alpha pod, and transfer Alpha’s non-trooper personnel to Bravo pod. Bravo pod will then rendezvous with
Normandy
for recovery. Alpha pod is going into harm’s way.”

“You gotta be shitting me!” someone shouted from Bravo pod.

“This is not open to discussion!” She stuck her head forward to get a better look into Bravo pod. “With the captain gone, I have assumed command, and we are not done yet!” She paused, then added, “If anyone wants to argue, I will shoot them!”

She caught Breeze’s eye. The junior lieutenant dropped her gaze and said nothing.

“Let’s move, people,” Chief Tamma said. “Pantaleyeva, keep good hold of that IV! Smith, help me with Oyenuga!”

Katja pushed herself clear to let the cox’n direct the casualty through the airlock. Chang took hold of the gunner’s limp form and pulled him in. Alpha pod’s remaining non-troopers dove through the hatch. Chang pulled himself up, followed by the rest of Bravo Team. They crowded their armored bodies tight together in the tiny space.

Katja looked down into the other pod one last time.

“Lieutenant Brisebois, get these people to safety in
Normandy
. We’ll try and get back in this pod!” She came up short, considering her next words. “If not, look for us in the wreckage.”

Breeze pulled herself closer and spoke quietly. “You’re insane. There’s no way—”

She pushed Breeze’s face back and shut the airlock.

“Cast off!”

T
he pod decoupled and slid away. Once safely clear, Cohen opened the throttles and headed toward the battle. Katja reclaimed her seat and noted with satisfaction that Bravo pod was moving at speed toward
Normandy
.

“Where to, skipper?” Cohen asked.

Chang looming next to her shoulder, Katja pointed at the Centauri battle cruiser. It stood apart from the fiery melee, still lobbing missiles.

“We’re going to board that motherfucker and blast it apart from the inside.” She motioned downward. “Don’t aim directly at it—if we do the defense systems might think we’re a threat. Aim below, and we’ll come up suddenly at close range.”

Cohen dipped the pod.

“Standard entry pattern?” Chang asked.

She nodded. “Alpha Team takes the bridge. Bravo Team takes the engine room. We take those spaces out, that ship is toast.”

“Do we have schematics?”

“Just keep shooting until you find what you’re looking for.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

The battle line melee was fifty kilometers overhead. Sparkles and flashes across the massive, looming face of Anubis gave evidence of the dogfights still underway. With the amount of debris littering the battlespace now, Katja hoped that her little pod was too small and too slow for anyone to notice.

“Shut down all non-essential power. Let’s pretend we’re a piece of trash.”

Cohen’s fingers flew over her controls. Lights extinguished and ventilation ceased. The 3-D display disappeared, along with most of the instrumentation.

They were flying visually.

The battle cruiser was fat. Although not as long as a Terran capital ship, it was of comparable displacement. Its hull gleamed in the bright sunlight, except for the blackened launch tubes of its dozen missile batteries.

Her plan rested on two key factors. First, she knew enough about Centauri tactics to know that they relied heavily on machinery to fight their battles for them, keeping their robotic weapons at a distance from living personnel. Second, off-planet combat was fought entirely ship-to-ship, not man-to-man. Since this was the first engagement between Terra and Centauria, it had no precedent, and Katja was betting that the enemy wouldn’t think to prepare for a boarding.

She turned to her troopers. They looked back at her expectantly.

“The plan is simple,” she said. “We enter together, secure the airlock and split into two teams. Alpha Team will take the bridge. Bravo Team will take the engine room. We will move with stealth until we are discovered, as we don’t know if their vital spaces have protection systems and we want to get the jump on them. Take out those spaces and get back to the strike pod.

“If we are discovered, shoot anything that moves. This is not a smuggler ship. We are not searching for anything. This is the flagship of an enemy nation who has attacked our fleet. We are at war.”

She let that last thought sink in.

“Captain Kane wanted us to make a difference in this battle. And the nine of us will see to it that we do.”

The battle cruiser loomed overhead, rotating thirty degrees on a steady, thirty-second interval. Katja assumed that the staggered missile batteries were being rearmed and programmed during the rotation, then steadied for launch as the ship held position. Cohen slowed the strike pod as it came directly underneath the behemoth, and nudged upward on a gentle collision course.

Katja scanned for an airlock. She spotted one, but the battle cruiser rolled again before she could point it out.

“Look sharp,” she said to Cohen. “We’ll have about thirty seconds to lock on.”

“Got it.” Cohen surged the strike pod forward and flipped back ninety degrees to point the pod’s clamp toward the Centauri hull. They banged down, and held. There was a hiss as the seal was flooded with oxygen.

“Green,” Chang said.

“Faceplates down,” Katja barked. “From this moment on, we act as if we’re in a vacuum.”

When the last of them had complied, Chang opened the airlock and Assad climbed through. Within moments he had overridden the Centauri airlock controls, and the hatch opened. He entered, and the rest of the strike team followed.

Katja was last, leaving only the pilot.

“Shut the airlock,” she told Cohen. “Hopefully the Centauri damage control teams didn’t notice the opening.”

Cohen obliged, and the hatch slid shut between them.

“Entry point clear,”
Assad reported.

Katja moved forward to catch up. There was no gravity, and the passageways were wide and well lit. There was no sign of internal alarm or defenses—as expected, the Centauris were completely focused on the battle outside.

“All units, Alpha-One—touchdown, ops red. Proceed with mission. Bravo-One.”

“Bravo-One,”
Chang replied.

Katja exchanged a glance with him, then turned to follow her troopers. Assad had point, with Jackson behind. Katja followed and Hernandez covered the rear. Moving in zero-g was troublesome, as it required devoting one hand to repeatedly propel along handles and doorframes.

Through Assad’s helmet link, Katja saw her first Centauri. He appeared to be of European descent, medium build, dressed in light-gray coveralls, dark boots, and fire-resistant gloves and hood. He was moving swiftly along the corridor, herding two large crates in front of him. Suddenly his eyes widened in shock.

Then his body was splattered down the bulkhead as Assad fired a single round into him.

“Alpha Team, Alpha-One—pick up the pace.”

They pulled themselves faster down the passageway, dodging past the abandoned crates and the mangled lower half of the Centauri crewmember.

Moving through the next door, Assad burst into a large room filled with Centauri crewmembers and damage control equipment. Katja saw the shock in their eyes, and switched off the helmet link to focus on her own field of view—just as she heard the
tock-tock-tock
of weapons fire. Jackson joined in seconds later. By the time Katja reached the door, there was nothing to see but blood and body parts spinning madly in zero-g, colliding with one another and bouncing off all four sides of the compartment.

She looked down at her weapon to avoid retching, thankful that her helmet would block the smell. “Secure this space!”

Assad and Jackson pushed through the carnage and took positions next to the exit on the far side. Hernandez hunkered down to guard the way they came. Katja pushed herself over to what appeared to be a damage control board. Within moments a 3-D schematic of the ship floated before her, with various embedded lights and readings reporting the damage that had been inflicted to the vessel. Far too little damage, she noted with growing anger.

That was about to change.

She studied the board to determine their current location—the midships damage control station. Then she identified the location of the bridge. A central access route would get the troopers between decks.

A stray, floating limb bumped her shoulder and she absently smacked it away as she committed the route to memory. She was about to turn away when she noticed that at least one of the missile batteries lay in the path they would follow.

Another lay just four frames forward of the first. She studied a moment longer, and saw that the batteries were positioned in close pairs, spread equally around the ship. They were easily accessible, and stopping them could turn the battle outside.

“Alpha Team—on me.”

Assad and Jackson moved through the gore. Hernandez floated up moments later. All three of them were covered in blood, as the liters of free-floating liquid stuck to anything on contact. Katja was sure she looked the same.

She pointed at the 3-D schematic.

“We’re here,” she said, showing them the route they would follow. “Alpha-Two and Four will take the missile batteries. Alpha-Three and I will take the bridge. Then we’ll assess your progress, and join you if needed. Once we’re done, we’ll return to the pod using one of these access routes. Clear?”

Assad and Jackson looked at each other. Assad shrugged.

“It’s payback time,”
he said.

“Go.”

The two big troopers pushed away and vanished through the door. Immediately there was the sound of shots, and she looked up at Hernandez. His expression was one of resignation.

“You actually think we’re going to make it back to the pod?”

“Well,
I’m
going to,” she replied. “And it’s your job to keep me alive. Let’s move!”

Katja led the way out. Assad and Jackson had left death in their wake, but she didn’t follow their route for long. She grabbed the rungs of a ladder and launched herself upward, bringing her rifle to bear as she moved between decks.

As soon as her eyes crossed the threshold of the deck, she registered movement and fired a spread. The explosive rounds smashed into the bulkheads of the space she rose into, as well as a Centauri whose face she never saw. She moved aside as Hernandez joined her.

A quick look around the corner revealed an empty passageway with an open door at the end, and Katja launched herself toward it, rifle up. Suddenly a piercing alarm sounded through her helmet pick-ups, followed by an urgent voice.

“Intruder alert! Intruders in the engine room! Lock down security one-alpha!”

Bravo Team had reached their objective.

She was fast approaching the door when a Centauri appeared, but she fired before he even saw her. His body exploded backward into the space beyond. She grabbed another handrail to pick up speed. Panicked shouts echoed from the doorway. A wide-eyed face appeared for a moment, then vanished.

More shouting.

She was almost there.

The flash of rifle fire blinded her, and she grunted as a dozen tiny fists punched against her torso. Hernandez pushed her aside, and fired repeatedly into the dark space. She glanced down at her armor—it was dented but intact. So she raised her rifle and followed him through the door.

Multiple weapons fired from covered positions in the large, gloomy space, dotted with instrument stations. Hernandez was already far to her left, tumbling for cover behind an instrument panel even as he fired. Katja pushed to the right, shooting randomly in the direction of the flashes. Explosions ripped through the room. The shockwave of an explosion slammed her against the bulkhead with jarring force. She swung her rifle far to the right and pulled the trigger repeatedly, hoping that Hernandez was still to her left.