The Expansion Box Set, page 17
part #1 of The Expansion Series
Armored soldiers ran toward them, impotently pointing their weapons at them until ordered back by a commander, who stood close enough to glare at them. That mirrored visor stared back at them as they made their escape.
“Everyone sealed? No environmental warnings?” Torres asked. They took a moment to check and none of them had. “Let’s do it, then,” he said.
Their suits could hold atmosphere in the void, but not indefinitely. The software would react to the change in temperature and pressure, but it took a huge toll on their available battery power to maintain. Given that the suits could sustain them in space for maybe thirty minutes if they just floated and stayed still, the fact they had to run three miles made getting back at all a gamble. That gamble had seemed worth it when confronted with a running battle and no ammunition down a longer, confined tunnel, but now that they faced it Brandt wasn’t so sure.
“Bear one-three-four degrees,” Specter said, “for a distance of three-point-one-two miles.”
“Five clicks?” Eze asked, her hand hovering over the manual emergency release lever for the outer door. “No problem.” She dropped the handle.
The air rushed past them, sucked out in an instant. Their suits registered the extreme drop in temperature as they were exposed to the vacuum of space. Eze used a spent magazine to wedge the outer door so that the airlock couldn’t be cycled after they left it. They set off, and their slower, more sluggish movements were oddly in contrast to what they had just witnessed.
They moved as fast as they could in the low gravity, running in their powered armor as they would on Earth with long, bounding leaps. On Earth, though, the leaps were much higher and longer in the relative gravity. Soon they were specks, sailing and dropping high over the terrain below as they moved along their projected course.
“Any sign of pursuit?” Torres asked.
“None,” came Eze’s reply.
“They are moving through the train tunnel now,” Specter said worryingly, “monitoring closed-circuit footage. They are leading with battle mech units to utilize heavy caliber weapons.”
If it were possible for words to make them move any faster, those would have had the desired effect.
“Halfway,” Eze said. “How far behind will they be?”
“Hard to say,” Specter said. “Minutes at best.”
They reached the approach to the research lab and Torres called them up on the comm channel.
“Base, Torres,” he said, his words coming as gasps in between huge leaps of effort. “We’re coming in via the surface. Drop the shield to the secondary arrivals bay.”
“Understood,” came a disembodied voice back to them. “Shield dropping… now.”
They arrived at the edge of the sunken port—it had been adapted from an impact crater. They dropped down, their movement through the vacuum slow, but their landings still hard enough to jar their bones inside their suits. They ran inside, hitting manual release levers to walk through a smaller airlock.
Inside, the base was still a thronging hive of activity as people poured onto the ship. They ran into the main hangar. Brandt got to see just how big the Ichi was up close, as a noise crackled over their comm.
“We got company,“ a voice said. “Lots of it and they brought big toys along with them.”
“The shield will hold,” Torres answered. “Everyone onboard now.”
The four who had just run over the Moon’s uneven, rocky surface took up kneeling positions around the cargo ramp where everyone was boarding. Even those who weren’t supposed to be going found themselves swept up. The other factions of the UN would not hesitate to interrogate them to the fullest of their abilities. This caused some upset, and a couple of unwilling scientists were being half-carried aboard and shouting about it.
“We’re good to go,” a familiar voice said behind them.
Brandt turned to see Paterson, weapon in hand but still wearing his lab coat, gesturing them up the ramp as the smaller steps were disappearing inside the fuselage.
“Have we got everybody?” Torres asked him.
“Everybody except the two CP teams.”
“Are they in transit?”
“One is,” Paterson said, “but they’re an hour away at least.”
“Can we pick them up?”
Paterson’s brow furrowed before he answered.
“We could, but the pilots aren’t listed to come along. I don’t think we have the luxury of time for a vacuum crossing.”
Torres paused, no doubt frowning inside his helmet.
“No time,” he said. “We’ll just have to make do with what we have.” His visor flickered toward the three exceptional soldiers he had just fought alongside, reminding himself that Santana, or at least the person with some of his memories, had just saved his ass from dying for the second time.
20
onboard the Bōken-sha Ichi
“Bridge, this is Torres. You ready to get us the hell out of here?”
“Roger, Commander,” came the smooth voice of the pilot. “Standing by on your mark.”
“Go,” he said, steadying himself as a second later the whole ship juddered and vibrated. The engines had been lit and were spinning, and now the pilot ramped up the cycles.
The Ichi lifted off. As it rose, all landing skids retracted to provide an unblemished underside, with the exception of two bulbous shapes protruding out with four triangular-shaped minigun barrels sticking out. From the outside a pale electric-blue line lowered over the craft and passed through the shield, which was set to exactly the same harmonic resonance as their own. The Ichi carried on rising vertically, turned on one axis to face a direction out into open space, and accelerated away in eerie silence.
“Commander,” came the same voice from the bridge. “We have incoming bearing one-seven-eight degrees. They’re heading right up our ass, sir.”
“Can they catch us?” Torres asked as he strode along the busy walkways inside the ship. It was filled with people all trying to find where they needed to be and carrying armfuls of things they hadn’t already packed.
“Calculating… Sir, it depends on how committed they are. It will take them a little over two days unless we go over our top speed.”
Torres turned toward Paterson expectantly, Then his face registered annoyance after a few seconds of the scientist not responding.
“What?”
“You didn’t hear that?”
“I don’t have an earpiece in,” Paterson explained lamely.
“Their ships are after us,” he explained quickly. “They’ll catch us in two days. Can we go any faster?”
“We haven’t tested the Fold Drive on a manned flight yet,” he said, his eyes wide with horror. “We can’t be sure it will work.”
“What wouldn’t work?” Specter asked.
Paterson stuttered his reply. “We don’t know if everyone inside will get turned to mush for starters. And, uh … and…”
“The test you did with the hamster?” Brandt asked. “That worked when it was shielded, right?”
“Well… yes, but…”
“And the unmanned flight tests of the Fold Drive went to plan?”
“Err, yeah…”
“So you have nearly two days to run all the calculations you want.”
Paterson couldn’t argue with the logic. They certainly couldn’t stay. Even if they managed to evade the pursuing ships before they reached Mars, the messages from the unfriendly forces on the lunar base would reach the red planet almost immediately after they arrived. The only option was to take the risk and use the new technology at their disposal.
As they walked toward the bridge, Brandt got Torres’s attention.
“I’m down to ten percent,” she said, guessing that they all must be close to dead batteries in their suits too.
Torres gestured them to follow him, leading them toward the bridge but veering off to the right before they got there. Empty charging pods were arrayed along one wall opposite another well-stocked armory filled with the new weapons. A man came forward to take their guns and stepped back as they docked their suits and hit the icon for release. The armor split open, revealing starfish forms so they could step out and stretch their limbs. Despite being fitted for them, everyone always felt claustrophobic after a while inside one of them. Torres took a new pistol from the rack and checked it as the others followed suit, with the exception of Specter. He hadn’t ditched his armor there. It was a prototype and Hyper wouldn’t want anyone poking around at it.
Brandt and Eze followed Torres to the bridge after Specter gave his excuses and left. The two women gave Torres a questioning look, but he dismissed it by saying that Hyper had their own lab onboard the ship and that the robotic man they used to know didn’t exactly answer to him.
That reminds me, she thought. What the hell did he do back there? Did he have a mobile cover device I couldn’t see?
“We need to get to our base on Mars before whatever communication from the lunar surface gets there,” Torres explained. “For that we need to arrive ahead of our maximum speed.” They all knew that their ships could only travel as fast as their communications. Given their huge leap in propulsion technology, Paterson’s Fold Drive was their only hope of achieving that.
“But we have a bigger problem before that,” he went on, “because we’ll be having company soon and they won’t be politely asking us to slow down.”
“Surely they will try to capture us if they want the tech?” Eze asked.
“Would you?” Brandt countered. “We’re terrorists as far as they know, so why wouldn’t they just blow us out of the sky?”
Eze bit the inside of her cheek as she thought about it and accepted the facts. They followed, stepping through the halls of the sleek ship. Their eyes bulged at the new revelations they were faced with. They reached the bridge. Torres scanned his UNID implant by the door as it opened to show the bridge laid out ahead of them.
“Some bureaucracy first, I’m afraid,” Torres said as he stood by a commander’s large chair. “We’re effectively at sea now,” he explained. “So, of the ranking officers, one has to take command as captain.” He looked her right in the eyes and waited for a response.
She shifted and cleared her throat. “A few hours ago,” she said slowly, “I didn’t even know this technology existed. I’m not qualified to take command… Sir.”
Torres relaxed visibly, pleased that there was to be no measuring of worthiness based on seniority or personality. Little did he know that her acceptance of his command was based on her respect for how the young wheel had become a man she would gladly follow in battle and beyond.
“Okay,” he said. “Thank you. Now, the Ichi is nine decks and is a little over two hundred meters from bow to stern. We have the absolute best shields in the known galaxy but seeing as we can’t be the only ones developing new tech in secret, we have to expect trouble at some point. We have armaments in the form of four quad twelve-millimeter guns: two fore and two aft.”
“How do they fire through the shields?” Brandt asked, unable to stem her excitement at all the new facts she had to assimilate quickly.
“The same way as we pass through the docking shields with our ships,” Torres answered. “The charge on those guns is powered by the same singularity reactor that runs the shields, so they have the same resonating harmonics. They pass through, but nothing comes back up the other way, if you follow me.”
She nodded.
“Crew quarters are on deck one,” he went on, “with bridge, infirmary, armory and other things. Mess hall and crash deck on deck two but no separate messes for officers and enlisted; we’re a crew now. Labs are on decks three and four, with the remaining decks being assigned to storage, docking bay and some other non-essentials like a brig.”
“How long is she designed to be at sea for?” Eze asked.
“As long as our food supplies last,” he said. “Given that we have minimal fresh and vacuum-sealed ingredients onboard, that is as long as our field rations last.”
Brandt and Eze both deflated a little, not looking forward to the prospect of living indefinitely on the three daily tablets that provided providing the nutrients their bodies needed. It was a way to survive and stay healthy, but there was no enjoyment to be had in eating in tablet form.
“We have as much as we can carry,” Captain Torres said, “and that gives us years if we’re forced into it. All the water is recycled, so that will never be an issue either.”
“And what exactly is our mission?” Brandt asked.
Torres hesitated, then led the way to an anteroom off the deck of the bridge. “On me.”
They walked into a small room with a table and chairs set out. A large screen occupied the main wall and no portholes showed, as with everywhere else on the ship. He tapped at his wrist comm and got Paterson on loudspeaker.
“Are we good to go for sub-space comms?” he asked.
“Good to go,” Paterson answered.
Torres clicked off the link without responding and keyed in more on his device. The main screen came online with a waiting icon as he explained.
“We have another array which is like the Fold Drive at the nose cone. This one fires, for want of a better word, a directed beam, which is very thin and can connect two points in space to allow for instant communication over long distances that would otherwise take weeks.”
That impressed Brandt. Ordinarily any conventional message would take a month to reach Mars. The first call went through and a man she didn’t recognize answered. Torres filled him in briefly, explaining the situation on Earth and the Moon, that they had been compromised and declared terrorists by at least two territories.
“Go into lockdown,” he said. “We have almost two days until we are forced to use the Fold Drive to get to you ahead of our pursuers, but you can bet your ass they’ve sent word and they’ll try to shut you down. Be ready. We’ll be in touch.”
He killed that screen also and tapped away to bring up another. The loading icon took long seconds to be replaced by a man in an admiral’s uniform, looking stressed.
“Torres!” he snapped. “The hell have your people been doing? The president is trying to stop all-out war breaking loose down here.”
“Admiral,” he said. “I believe that the Eastern and African territories are being manipulated by someone into trying to capture or kill us. We were comprom—”
“I know that,” the admiral said harshly, cutting him off. “We’ve surmised as much ourselves and also have the proof that a number of terror attacks by these so-called Choosers are in fact territory-funded and controlled. It’s not dissident factions that want us to stay inside our own solar system but other territories. Whether they just want it for themselves first is unclear as yet, but I suspect they just wanted to be the first to have the ability to survey beyond our system.”
“Sir,” Brandt said. “What about the European territory?”
The man shifted uncomfortably.
“They’re still on the fence,” he admitted. “We’re giving them full disclosure in the hope that they ally with us and prevent a goddamned invasion by the East. But it gets worse…”
“Worse?” Torres asked.
“Parts of the other territories want no part of what their leaders are doing, and the Australians are threatening to break away and become a neutral party. As are the Russians.”
Jesus, Brandt thought, as she recalled the numbers of the death toll the last time the Earth wasn’t unified.
“Our mission, sir?” Torres asked.
“Hasn’t changed, son,” the admiral answered. “Leave this mess to us, just don’t get caught, and bring back proof of life, understood?”
“Understood, sir. Torres out.”
The screen went black and he turned to face the others.
“Get settled in,” he told them. “Check the manifest for crew allocations. You two are all the CP we have. The team I brought with me were still processing their detainees when it all went south, so I need you to take command of our defense personnel and Hyper security forces. They may not like it, but that’s just tough. Make it work… get a grip of them.”
Brandt smirked despite herself and the gravity of their situation as he reminded her of the reason she was there.
Taking the steep ladders, they went up to deck one with Eze leading the way. She had already been onboard. Brandt followed, taking it all in and trying to hold in her questions. She had so many that to ask any now would constitute an outpouring of non-chronological nonsense.
“Two-Alpha,” Eze said, reading the crew quarters designation from her comm unit’s display. “Here.” She scanned her arm over the door. It hissed, opening to one side and to reveal a surprisingly well-appointed room, complete with two generous lockers with drawers and a mirror. There was a bathroom comparable to an expensive hotel room and two beds. Though only singles, they were just as generously proportioned.
“Nice,” Brandt said, meaning it. She had lived in far worse barracks than that, even as a commander. She had paid for worse hotel rooms than that, come to think about it.
She had no gear to dump, and her sticky civilian clothing clinging to her skin reminded her that she now wore literally everything she owned. As if reading her mind, Eze spoke up.
“You can borrow some of my clothes if you need,” she said, earning a smile of thanks from the older woman. “We will also get ship uniform from the stores on deck four.”
“Later,” Brandt said. “I want to get back to the bridge.”
“You can find your own way there?” Eze asked. “I want to check on our equipment.”
Brandt walked in, seeing the back of Torres’s left shoulder as he lounged to one side in the captain’s chair. He craned around to see who had entered the bridge, cracking a smile at the woman in civilian clothing with her disheveled hair.
“Take a seat, Commander,” he said, gesturing with his right hand to a similar chair beside him. A man vacated the seat without question and Torres introduced him.
