The Guardians of Sol Read online

  Squatter and Voodoo sniggered. Spirits were good for the moment. My men outside of the stairwell had cleared their levels and were returning. The pressure was off; the tide seemed to be with us. It would be nice to know how the other groups were doing. Pressure off of my five squads might mean too much somewhere else. As long as the target was reached, I assured myself, it would all be worth it.

  40

  February 27, 2290. Centurion Flagship, Battle of Jupiter.

  The ebb and flow of battle is a curious thing. For most of the last hour things had been going our way. The Centurions were making a concerted push to change that. They were attacking from both ends of the stairwell as well as from the three deck portals that my force was passing by. They were pressing us from every side and I was stuck between points of contact. The men knew their business, at least. Haywire and Shot-put's teams were shattering enemy forces at our fore and rear.

  "Haywire, get a foothold on the next level up. We'll catch our breath and regroup there. We need a better way to get to the target."

  "Yes sir," he replied. A team from Hard Edge and Flunky moved to back my men up.

  Some of the Castigars in front of me finally let my team and I shuffle past them and join the melee at the landing. It was fairly gruesome and the bodies made maneuvering even more difficult. There wasn't enough room for shatter hammers. Fortunately, the modifications to my armor made only having enough room for knees and elbows more threatening to my foes than it would be limiting for me. Knuckle blades and momentary spikes of electromagnetically hardened plasma slammed all sensibility and in more than a few cases, life, out of my opponents. My shield did its share of damage as well. Hektor poked is spear past me whenever he had a chance and probably kept me in better shape than I would have been otherwise.

  Rommy questioned the wisdom of putting the commanding officer in the middle of harms way. I replied with something less than complimentary. She would make me pay for that later. I also explained about better equipment and my responsibility for the mainline troops' lives. She reiterated her point about my intelligence. Opposition began to crumble at my position. Voodoo and Squatter took over the point. I got reports that the Centurion troopers at all points were pulling back. I called for unit updates as we went for Haywire's beachhead. The news wasn't good. The mainline Castigar squads were hovering around sixty or seventy percent effective strength. We left our dead behind. But then, if we were successful we would be back for them.

  I conferred with the other squad captains. "Are any of you going to need a recharge soon?"

  "We're all from the first legion," Rick replied in his surprisingly genteel manner. "We’ve been upgraded with same power cores as the Specials."

  "Good. Then we'll only take a few minutes to rest on this level," I switched over to a private line with Rommy. "Which deck are we on?"

  "On the relative scale established, you are on level one forty-nine. I wish you would give me permission to look for a ship schematic. It would really speed the mission forward."

  "I'm considering, Rommy, but you're still too valuable a resource to risk unnecessarily," I looked at the clock. We'd been going practically nonstop for an hour and a half. Almost every foot had been heavily contested. "I wonder how things are going outside."

  "The Corps were well prepared for this battle. If they need them, reinforcements from the colony fleets would have arrived by now. There is no point worrying about things we cannot control."

  "You're right," I admitted. "Unlock my helmet, I could use come rations."

  I wasn't the only man taking the chance this lull provided to refuel my body. In a few minutes the men eating now would relieve the men on watch. I was seriously considering letting Rommy rummage around in the enemy systems.

  "Someone find me a computer terminal," I ordered. You'd think that it would have occurred to someone to get a proper espionage program loaded up if we were going to be infiltrating an enemy flagship. Something always gets overlooked though. "Rommy, you can run translations for whatever comes on the screen?"

  "I can." She didn't sound very happy.

  "Good. Let's see how much we can find out the simple way." If that didn't work, then, and only then, would I risk the AI with my wife's voice.

  It didn't take long to find a useable terminal in one of the rooms near us. While no one was looking, the enemy sealed off our deck from the stairwells. Even the hatches to the Jeffries tubes were locked, not that we would have bothered. There was too much bulk on even the smallest Castigar armor to fit in one of those.

  I don't think that it occurred to them to lock out the computers just yet. Either that was a trap itself, or they figured we still hadn't puzzled out their language. I don't think that it occurred to them that we would have run the samples we found through all of the translation software that had been developed practically since the computer age began. AI and scholars agreed that the written language had a Russo-Latin base with healthy doses of what were likely alien language fragments. The coding for their programming was equally familiar and exotic, but most AIs grasped the mathematical base formula almost immediately…

  Rommy helped me heavily with inputting the search terms while displaying translations on my HUD. It took us about fifteen minutes to find the schematics. Rommy saved an image file of everything she thought we might need. The enemy only sent one sortie at us while I was at the terminal. It wasn't a very strong showing. Whoever was in charge of slowing us down seemed to be mostly content to let us stay where we were. We set up a perimeter on the deck to rest and plan.

  "Rommy, find me a better way between decks than what we've seen so far. The ship half that ended up in Earth orbit had hidden hatches between decks. If this one has those as well figure out how we can access them."

  *****

  We had been on the deck for too long. Sitting still for half an hour wasn’t exactly forward progress. I couldn't think of a space engagement that had ever lasted that long in the past. Even the ambush at Mars a few weeks ago had taken less than an hour. Most of that had been clean up operations to destroy smaller Centurion vessels that had tried to run and hide wherever they could. Rommy found the hidden deck hatches on the schematics, but she was still looking for some way to activate them.

  While we watched the doors to the lifts, and the sealed doorways to the stairwells, we were busy and nervous watching the ceiling and floor all around us. If anything, knowing about the deck hatches but not knowing about how to use them had upped the general anxiety level. Hard to rest when the enemy could come from almost any direction at any time. What I wouldn't have given for a few decent cipher AI. I felt even more blind than usual. I definitely had a few upgrades in mind for Rommy when we got back to safety.

  A floor hatch popped up in the middle of our little 'camp.' Two dozen weapons were immediately leveled at the offending spot of floor. I could see some slight movement below. A snake cam wiggled one way and then the other. A head popped up but not a single projectile flew its way. The head had a friendly IFF tag attached. First legion, second division, C company ninth squad.

  "Goddamn am I glad to see you guys. Help me up!" the private rejoiced. We did as he asked. He was followed by another man. And another after that. A section of the force from Ganymede added two more full squads to my responsibility. And they brought a very unexpected surprise with them.

  "From what we have seen, Captain," the hulking figure addressed me once he was pulled through the open hatch. "Your force has born the brunt of the enemy response. You have done well."

  "That you, Vadasz?" I asked him. He was wearing vacuum-rated armor that looked like it could seal around his muzzle or open to let him speak freely. "How do you know we've born the brunt?"

  He lifted up a disembodied radio, probably looted from a Centurion trooper. "My people may not have been as advanced as our attackers when we were conquered, but we learn very quickly."

  "That you do. How do you activate the floor hatches?"

  "It is simple e
nough," He replied, and demonstrated on a hidden panel by closing the hatch that his group had come through. "I am surprised none of your men have figured it out themselves."

  He seemed so genuinely perplexed by our ineptitude that I couldn't get offended. I did get troubled. Our headlong rush upward hadn't served us very well when combined with the general lack of intelligence. I somewhat meant both connotations of the word. While I was mentally kicking myself in the butt for my stupidity Vadasz ambled over to some markings by the nearest stairwell.

  "If I remember correctly, we have twenty-five more levels until we will reach the command complex. Our goal will be there."

  "Remember? When were you last here?"

  "The last time that I was on one of these vessels was perhaps fifteen of your years ago. It was not an enjoyable experience. I was not even aware that this..." He searched for the word. "Dreadnaught was part of the fleet sent to your system until it arrived here. We must go now."

  "The floor hatches. Can command lock us out of those like they are everything else?"

  "No, they are emergency doors. The only reason they would seal completely would be in the event of complete loss of atmosphere. They will serve us well. We must be careful moving up, however."

  "Because they might be waiting for us," I finished. "How many hatches on each level?"

  "There is one every ten meters or so. Arranged in two lines at ninety degrees to each other. What are you thinking?"

  "I'm thinking that we spread out and hit four or five hatches at once every level. It'll give the bad guys more to worry about and it'll make it easier for us to breach each deck. It should give a better chance that at least some of us will reach the target."

  I let the other squad captains know my plan. Vadasz and each team from my squad were going to take point through each of the hatches. Everyone began spreading out. The enemy commander decided this would be a good time for another sortie. Centurions poured out of all three lifts as well as the three stairwells. Unlike before, my men and I had clear lines of fire. Plasma roared into the crowd. A few grenades were not far behind.

  One of the grenades came flying straight back out of the corridor facing me. Rommy adjusted the stream of plasma packets momentarily to knock it out of the air. The explosion was unpleasant, but my visor polarized before it did so my vision was just fine. Something snaked out of the fading smoke. Instinct brought my shield up just in time to keep the thing from doing anything to me.

  A figure stepped into plain view. Its armor was lean, well-fitted, and had an obvious bird of prey motif. He started to say something. I didn't bother to listen. I fired at him. The bastard dodged it with a minimum of motion and his golden whip-sword lashed out one more time. I brought my shield into play again. The blade struck a few sparks, and ruined the paint job, but not much else. His body language told me that he was quite surprised. I wasn't completely unfazed myself. I never before had I seen one of those blades stymied. Usually they went through everything like a red-hot knife through warm butter. I gave a small prayer of thanks to whatever divinity felt like listening at that moment.

  The outer layer of my shield was composed of a new substance. Chief Ruiz had told me that he'd figured it out using a nano-manufacturing process using industrial nanobots. The material was some kind of crystalline iron evenly run through with carbon nanotubes. It was as hard as diamond and as flexible as the best steel. It made adamantium look like pig iron in comparison.

  I popped off a few more shots. All of which were either dodged or blocked. His whip-sword scraped a little metal off of one of my legs and a shoulder when I didn't quite get my shield around in time. The other man suddenly backed into a defensive stance. I felt a large hand rest on my shoulder.

  "One of the Ekai. There are more of them in this fleet than I had thought. I have been hunting them," He said all of that eagerly and out loud. The Ekai cringed visibly. "Proceed with your plan, Captain. I will take care of this... prey."

  I didn't argue. Vadasz was worth a squad all by himself, and more than likely could defeat at least that many men all by himself. I sent the order to proceed and Castigars started flooding the upper decks. We wouldn't stop until the Centurion Admiral was either dead or in custody. My last view of Vadasz was of him gleefully ripping off the Ekai's sword arm while using the man as a shield against hesitant fire.

  I ended up being one of the last men up for my group instead of one of the first. The rest of my team was already on the next deck up. This deck was littered with the bodies of friends and foes. They were mostly foes, thankfully. And none were from my squad. We were only five decks away when I got an alert over my com. The Fuzzy Bunnies were engaging enemy forces outside of the command deck.

  "Get a move on, boys!" I cheered. "We don't want to miss the party!"

  41

  February 27, 2290. Centurion Flagship, Battle of Jupiter.

  All of the weeks of waiting and of sneaking were finally paying off. Barak quietly lowered himself through the hatch of a Jeffries tube and into a new section of the engineering section. With a ship of this size there were usually around five hundred or so engineers on duty at a given time. He had eliminated fifty of them since the beginning of the battle. Speaking of which...

  A pair of unarmored men in what Barak had come to recognize as engineers uniforms passed by his shadowed corner. They were excited, but not particularly wary. He supposed the battle looked like it was going well for them. He planned on changing that. Barak quietly stalked after the engineers. The first he killed from behind with a swift throat hold that snapped the neck. The other man quickly suffered from a collapsed trachea before he could call out in alarm. A second blow caved in the skull. Barak lifted the second man to his shoulder and dragged the first behind him as he went back to the Jeffries tubes. They seemed to be seldom used, particularly during battles. They would continue to hide his kills well.

  That task finished, Barak chanced a look down the hollow center of the ship to seek the central control room that was his target. Coupling a need for secrecy with a slow translation process it had taken him several days to discover basic schematics for the ship. Listening in on enemy commanders had been more productive than breaking into their systems. It had been something of a first in Barak's experience; even more so because he barely understood their mongrel language. It had been enough to send a warning to the Sentinel about their plans and expected timetable though the beacon. The Hound smiled wickedly to himself. If he knew Michael well at all the enemy fleet would be well received.

  He flicked a magnetized explosive wafer onto a nearby reactor coil and briefly wondered if the Centurions found the multitude of decks as annoying as he did. It would likely take him another hour just to get to the central control room undetected. He did spy a spot several levels down that looked like it would benefit from one of his wafers, however. He checked his cache of the useful things. There were still plenty to make his plan a little more entertaining.

  *****

  His pouch was empty of all but the last two wafers by the time he finally reached the right level. His kill count was up in the eighties now. He pulled out one of the little toys that Michael had given him before he'd left Guardian territory. The tiny insect-like drone fluttered off of his palm and into the control room. While it was doing its recon, a tech stepped out of the room and into Barak's less than loving arms. The video showed about fifteen more men. He wished that he knew Centurion systems better. It would have been so much easier if he could have cut off the comlines and surveillance going into and out of that room. He just didn't know where to start with their designs. He would need to work fast.

  He did some quick prioritization as he walked into the room. The first few engineers didn't even look up at him. In fact, none of them looked up from their tasks until he was directly in front of the engineer in charge of the combat shift. The man looked more annoyed than surprised to see him.

  "Who the hell are you? If the admiral needs something then he should just op
en a comline. I'm too busy to mollycoddle some babysitter the brass sends down to ride my ass. So what do you want?"

  At least, that was what Barak thought the man was trying to say. He stabbed the engineer in the throat with his sword. One of his knives flew into the eye of another. The first engineer that he had passed began to make a run for it. The tiny drone that had landed lightly on the back of the man's neck exploded. The mess was... unfortunate. Barak's sword took a panicky engineer in the throat. His pistol mowed down man after man until there was only one hyperventilating engineer left.

  "Where are the controls for the Archimedes drive?" Barak asked gently. The man pointed with a very shaky hand. "And how do I lock this room down?"

  The enemy engineer was walking a very thin edge between panic and... something else. Courage, perhaps? It didn't matter. The man showed him the lockdown procedure. Barak used it, thanked the man, and shot him in the head. The Sentinel's Hound ejected the empty clip and slammed a fresh one in before replacing the pistol in its holster.

  He stared at the console for a moment. The controls looked right, even if the language was an even more indeterminate mess than Russian or Mandarin. He hooked his cypher AI into a likely looking data port. There was enough of a basis for conversion for it to begin putting those translations onto his HUD. His quantum mathematics were a bit rusty, but he didn't need to be very specific for his purposes. He quickly overrode the safety measures that beeped incessantly at him as he picked a random location for the jump that was light years beyond anything considered a safe distance. While he was at it, he locked the command deck out of that system. It would take them more time than they had to get around it. He took a breath before he committed to the step he couldn't walk away from. He activated the Centurion's version of the Archimedes drive and pulled out the detonator for explosive wafers. As the drive thrummed it’s peak output just before translocation, the Venator whispered to himself, or to the corpses around him, in Hebrew.