COMBAT SALVAGE 2165 (7 page)

"
I take a brief, but very close look at everyone who comes aboard this ship," Cozen said, "where they came from, who they are,
what
they are. I knew what Tig Meester was right away, the minute I put my eye on him." Cozen now seemed to purposefully bore into the spot between Tig’s eyes with his stare. "The simple fact that he’s still alive says he’s lucky. As well as skill, getting
Tipperary
repaired and back with the convoy will require luck, Chief. So AMTS 3rd class Tig Meester goes on
Audacity
with you."
 

"
But…"
 

"
Is he not a fully qualified Astronautics Maintenance Technical Specialist?"
 

"
He’s an ought-six alright, but he’s too cherry for this. He’s just three days out of training."
 

Harry Cozen said, "Everyone has a first day, Chief." And then he walked away, leaving Tig standing in front of a clearly displeased Chief.

"
What’s your COS?" she said, pinching the spot between her eyes while squinting them shut.
 

"
Astronautics MSys Specialist. M-17-06-03"
 

"
Mechanical Systems… Who’s your assigned ESys partner?"
 

"
I am." The voice came from over his right shoulder, and Tig whipped his head around so fast that pain shot through his neck. Parker stood two steps behind him, off on his right side about sixty degrees like she was his wingman. He had no idea how long she’d been lurking there. "I’m AMTS Meester’s ESys Specialist," she said. "I’m his assigned partner."
 

"
Then, you’re going with him," Horcheese said, and a fresh wave of fire shot up Tig’s body under his skin.
 

"
But that’s… But… no!" He could feel Parker behind him trying to burn a hole through the back of his head with her eyes. He tried not to look at her while Horcheese waited to see if he’d say anything else.
 

"
Mr. Meester," Horcheese said, "Are you attempting to inform the Ops Chief that AMTS Parker isn’t good enough to do her job?"
 

"
No!" Tig almost shouted it. "She’s good. It’s just… We’re not going to be working on the 151s or junks... I don’t need an ESys partner for this, I can do it alone."
 

After he said that, Horcheese’s lips pressed together hard and made a thin line. "No. She’s your partner. She comes along."

"
She doesn’t have to be out there just because I am," he said.
 

"
She’s your partner. She shares the risk." Horcheese began to walk away. She stopped after two steps, turned and said, "That's how it works. So don’t fuck up and get her killed."
 

6

He and Parker boarded
Audacity
last. The junk's Crew Chief stopped them and the rest of the redsuits right after coming through the open airlock. "I am Crew Chief Phipps." Phipps had a lunar drawl, the thick kind that made him sound like an actor. His belly swelled outwards in his exosuit. Big guy like that probably liked spending most of his time on a boat without any environmental gravity. "
Do
not interfere with my
loading mechanisms, my
airlocks, or my
hatches.
Do
not obstruct my cockpit tube.
I
like
my cockpit tube clear!" That gave half the redsuits the snickers. "
If
you don’t know what something is,
then
for fuck sakes,
don’t
ask me, just don’t touch it!"
 

Ellis, Rampone, Willby, Hongston, Wambach, Pasjic, Komora, Parker and Tig entered
Audacity’s
belly under Phipps' stern gaze and filled up the personnel module’s seats. The gunner rode up top in the turret and Chief Horcheese was above in the cockpit with the pilots. One glow-pecker babysat the reactor in the next compartment. Besides Phipps, the only crewmen in there with the redsuits was the figure hunched over the electronic warfare console set in the starboard bulkhead.
 

"No more seats," Raleigh said as he came down the tube from the cockpit. Raleigh... Tig had thought this trip would keep him clear of Raleigh for a least a day, but he’d been dead wrong. At least he didn’t look any happier to see Tig. "There’s plenty of room for you two cherries up there once we clear
Hardway’s
gees." He gestured over the electronic warfare console, pointing to the upper bulkhead where webbing and straps had been bolted into the steel. "I don’t know how you talked Horcheese into taking the two of you, but if you go over my head again I will strap you both to an inertial negation coil and crank it up until the artificial gees pull your heads out of your asses."
 

Tig and Parker found a spot against the bulkhead on either side of the the hatch to the engineering module. Wambach was sitting closest. He said, "Keep those helmets nearby."

"
I know."
 

"
And if we hit action, put it on before the pilot hits the combat maneuvers. The inertial negation system in this thing won’t stop the inside of this module from rotating around you and smacking you in the side of the head."
 

He watched her fiddle with her helmet and wanted to say something, but it was like a bubble of air caught in his throat that wouldn’t come out. What he wanted to say was that he was sorry he got her into this, but he was finally part of something decent and he wanted in as deep as he could get. Parker wasn’t supposed to come along. This was stupidly dangerous. Parker had an expensive education and a future after this. She didn’t have anything to prove like he did. Tig figured he didn’t have much to lose, but he wasn’t ready to have Parker’s death on his head.

Parker said, "Fuck you, Tig."

"
What? I didn’t say a goddamn thing!"
 

"You’re looking at me
just
like you did before you tried to ditch me. And you did a shite job of that, by the way. You told me where you were going before you pushed me out of that mover in the spine. You
wanted
me to come on this mission. Just couldn’t say it. Passive-aggressive mutherfucker. Fuck you."
 

He was a little stunned to find out she thought she had a better idea of what was going on in his head than he did. That pissed him off a little, mostly because of the the last part. He thought he knew what passive-aggressive meant... Whatever it was, it wasn’t his style. Wambach and Posjic at least pretended they knew what it was because they were laughing.

He leaned back against the bulkhead while Parker fumed. A second later, the pilots up in the cockpit slid
Audacity
sideways, out into the black. Once they were clear of
Hardway's
artificial gravity, Tig’s feet lifted off the deck.
 

The pilot rolled the junk clockwise and the bulkheads began to swap places around him. He and Parker grabbed the netting before the real fun started. That little roll was just a warm up. If Burn was flying, she had a sadistic streak, Tig decided after the junk pulled up and over with fully rotated nacelles. She blasted it in a high-gee turn that flattened him against the bulkhead as she pulled up around the carrier’s keel side inverted. She rolled out of it so
Audacity
had the same attitude as the junk Tig saw through the porthole. It had launched from the keel side of the primary bays.

"There’s
Greenstone
," Rampone said. "All packed full of whoop-ass."
 

The turrets with the 4x140s on her topside and her keel rotated. She carried her torpedoes in between. She hung next to
Audacity
for only a moment before her maneuvering nacelles rotated to blast to the rear and lit up with blue plasma exhaust like her main thrusters.
Audacity's
kicked in at the very same time.
 

The ships of the battlegroup slid past like armored islands as the two junks maneuvered around the haulers and a pair of UN destroyers not much bigger than a couple of junks. "Bet we could grab one of ‘em with the salvage arms and take it with us," Wambach said.

"No need. We got UNS
Duer
coming with us...all hundred-and-twenty meters of her." Raleigh didn't sound impressed.
 

Audacity
and
Greenstone
flew together for a few more seconds before
Greenstone
broke formation first. She rolled over, tilted her nacelles and veered down and out of the battlegroup completely. She disappeared from view for a moment or two before
Audacity
followed her through the same maneuver. That brought on the inertial gees again. They tugged at Tig's insides and tried to pull him off the netting.
 

They
settled in behind
Greenstone
some sixty degrees off to starboard while UNS Duer pulled past the two junks, her small-gauge railguns pointing off into the starry black ahead of her.

Out the corner of his eye he noticed Parker put on her helmet for a closer look. She gestured in front of her visor, zooming in. "What are you looking at?" he asked.

"
Tipperary
. You can see the breaching ship from here. She’s only a couple million Ks back behind the convoy. She’s drifting."
 

The junk’s crew didn’t seem interested, but practically everyone else filled up the portholes for a gander. After he got his helmet on, he pushed in next to Parker, spotted the transponder and zoomed in on the wounded breaching ship for himself.

No lights. When looking at her from this angle, the damage didn’t seem so bad. She was missing a section of hull where the bad reactor had been ejected. That’s all he could see.

"
What the hell happened to her?" Wambach didn’t say it to anyone in particular. "Anybody ever say?"
 

"Saw them eject the number one reactor," Rampone said. "Not before it flared out bad, though. You see those jets comin’ out her vents?"

"
Some of those weren’t vents," Raleigh said. "Some of those were hatches blowing out after her decks flooded with firestorm." That put a momentary quiet over the compartment.
 

"
Since when the hell does
that
happen?" the crewman at the electronic warfare console said.
 

Rampone took affront. "You implyin' something?"

"Implying... That’s a big word for you redsuits. No. I’m saying something took a shot at
Tipperary
and spiked her reactor from a distance… That was no random malfunction. That was a soft kill. Something must have snuck up on her during the last attack and zapped
Tipperary
to make her overload the way she did."
 

"
I didn’t see any Squidy ship zap
Tipperary
."
 

"
I know," the electronic warfare officer said. "That’s why I’m keeping my eyes glued to this console. I’m watching for radar and LiDAR and IR sigs. Passive contacts."
 

"Passive-a
ggressive
contacts," Wambach said, and he and Posjic laughed about it again. He was pretty sure now. They didn’t know what it meant. They threw some other jokes around for another ten or fifteen seconds, but Tig didn’t hear them.
 

Tig was fixed on the sound in his helmet. It was similar to the alien jamming he’d heard dirtying up comms since they’d left Sol. It sounded like a faint warble, like a bug he’d heard in summer and a bird and a wailing baby all at once. It clicked, too. The crewman at the electronic warfare console had his helmet on and it tilted to the side like a dog tilts his head when he's confused. He hears the alien signal, Tig thought. He hears it. There's Squidies out there.
 

The EWO spun around from his console and suddenly flipped off Wambach. "Knock it off. Quit screwing around on L-comms." Wambach and Posjic doubled over where they floated, laughing hard enough they strained at their straps.

"That was me, actually," Rampone said into his helmet, making the alien noise again. "What’s a matter? You hear the invisible Squidies coming get a kill? I
so
got you, Warrant Officer Wriggles."
 

"
Wrigley. My name is Wrigley. And fuck off."
 

"
God bless the Staas Privateers," Wambach said. He winked at Parker.