Two Democracies 0: Independence (2 page)

Glyphs started floating across his vision, bright colours dancing on the black background.

Most were showing system malfunction and failure to connect symbols. The ship’s network wasn’t talking to him.

Well, at least the internal light makes a change from pitch dark.

One number flashed in the corner. 1h58m02 since system reboot.

#

Johnson scanned across the hanger, across the groups of marines repacking their kit. They were going through everything again, helping each other run through the checklist she knew they would already have run when they drew their kit from stores. She hadn’t conducted a boarding operation since she was a junior Lieutenant but she well remembered how fast things happened, how important it was that everyone’s equipment worked first time.

She wasn’t going this time, of course. As the ship’s captain, her responsibilities lay here. She’d only be in the way anyway. Still, she wanted them to at least see her with them as they boarded the shuttle.

Even Commodore Koblensk came to see us off on that black-ops mission a few years back.

#

Access to his autonomic overrides came back up.

Ah, a block was in place on his motor control. That explained the paralysis. It had a medical flag next to it. His first instinct was to cancel it, allow himself to move again. Then he remembered crewmembers who had resisted medical blocks and gone on to make their injuries worse.

Better leave the block in place, give my body more time to repair.

#

The last marine filed onto the shuttle and the hanger cleared of support crew. A message popped up in her vision, alerting her that the chief engineer was initiating reactor startup. Johnson turned to leave, and was knocked off her feet by a shudder that ran through the ship. Another couple of paces and the falling compartment door would have crushed her as the ship reacted to a hull breach.

Alarms started up, pointlessly so given the barrage of warning signals assaulting her brain. Gravity was wrong for starters, she couldn’t put her finger on how but it was definitely off.

Or perhaps that was just my head hitting the deck plate.

Her thoughts kept coming back to that door. She saw it coming down again and again. It wasn’t through her own eyes, though. She was watching her body getting crumpled as if it were someone else.

There were further loud creaks, the sound of metal protesting at immense stresses. Even before abandon ship was sounded, an old experienced deck hand picked her up off the floor and started ushering her towards the shuttle. Her head cleared as they reached the ramp and she shook him off. She helped a couple more crew into the compartment before a marine was forced to manhandle her inside ahead of the closing hatch.

Johnson craned at a tiny window in the rear of the shuttle to catch a glimpse of
Repulse
; her ship, her command. The destroyer was clearly finished. There was a large portion missing from her back, Johnson was sure she could actually see down to where the reactor had been. Had George made a mistake or had the damage just been too great?

The shuttle pilot wasn’t taking any chances. He had the throttle wide open and was heading straight away from the crippled destroyer and, as it happened, the planet. The end, however, was an anticlimax. The old girl simply broke in two instead of the feared explosion.

“I’m not getting any signals from
Repulse
,” announced the co-pilot keeping his stare fixed on his control screen. “A few escape pods got off and are burning for the planet. Not sure yet if they’ll make it.”

Johnson felt her mask slipping. She had failed her crew and now those on the shuttle were going to watch the rest die. To stop them seeing her tortured face she busied herself adjusting a spare suit of armour in the microgravity of the tiny vessel. After what seemed an eternity, she thankfully donned the helmet and was able to relax her control.

#

As time passed, more and more menus became available. When the nav menu popped up it triggered a memory.

He was the pilot of a ship. This ship, actually. He reckoned that meant he must be on the bridge. But there should have been other people there, why weren't they helping him?

They wouldn't have left me, surely.

#

A few minutes later, and the computer confirmed that all the pods had been able to achieve a vector that would allow them to reach the planet of Orpus-4 with enough reaction mass to make a safe atmospheric entry. If felt like the shuttle itself breathed a sigh of relief. Their comrades were going to be OK. They would live to tell what happened.

“Where do you want me to head Commander?” the pilot asked on a closed channel. “We burned a lot of fuel getting away from
Repulse
. I’ve just about got enough to make planetfall.”

“What about the enemy ship?” queried Johnson.

“Given our relative velocity I could make one attempt at docking. I’d be on fumes though, no chance at making the planet afterwards.”

“How is your comms array?”

“Working fine,” replied the co-pilot after a quick glance at his display, “We’d be able to relay to the pods on the surface if that’s what you’re thinking.”

Johnson unclipped her straps and floated out of her seat. There were ten marines and a handful of techs and deck hands crammed into the rear shuttle compartment with her. Even with the pilot and co-pilot up in the cabin front there were less than twenty effectives left from her command. Left from a crew of almost four hundred. Every death weighed on her. Hanke’s young face came to her mind.

I wonder if he made it to a pod.

“We continue with the boarding mission,” she stated flatly. No-one looked surprised. They all knew it had to be done. It had to be done for Congress. It had to be done for form. It had to be done for their departed crewmates.

#

More memories were coming to him now. They were in the front of his mind, coming in an unbidden cascade.

Some were simply knowledge with nothing sensory attached. Actually they reminded him of learning programmes; sometimes it was hard to tell the difference between biological and electronic memories.

There were a few glimpses of real memories. Space battles mostly. He was piloting a warship. The total immersion environment stripped away the bridge and gave him an unimpeded view. He didn't even need manual controls, he could just think and his EIS would send the commands to the ship. It was a system that was turning the tide back into the Republic's favour.

Nothing recent though. Nothing about how he ended up like this. At least he knew which side he was on in the war; it had been rather hammered home! Well perhaps not. They did seem too regimented and one-sided.

Have I been brainwashed?

#

Johnson looked down the compartment and watched the marines. They were preparing themselves for action in the normal range of ways. Some sat quietly; praying or simply zoning out. Others joked and slagged each other off; typical bravado. A few toyed with talismen; lucky charms or mementos of loved ones. All dealing with the nerves in their own way to make sure they would be effective when the time came.

Interestingly, she realised, not one of them was fiddling with their kit. That spoke volumes to their professionalism, reassuring given how many had been posted to
Repulse
after only a few weeks training.

With a final breath of cold gas to nudge it into sync with the rotation the shuttle hit the surface. Given their luck recently, she was actually rather surprised the clamps held and it didn’t just bounce back off.

The marines released their straps and floated out of their seats.

“Remember, it doesn’t look like there is gravity on the target either,” called Sergeant Cheung from where he had anchored himself to a handle next to the hatch.

Patta did a final quick status check then looked to Johnson. She nodded. He fired the breaching charge.

“Go, go, go.”

Two at a time the first detail of marines dived out of the shuttle through the short tunnel joining it to their target. They emerged into zero gravity and, with practiced ease, spun about their centres of mass to bring their weapons to bear covering off their allocated arcs.

Within thirty seconds of the charge going off all six marines were attached to the walls, ceiling and floor, hunkered as low as they could get and watching for trouble. No shots came, nothing moved save for a few small pieces of debris.

The second detail came through at a more sedate pace, still alert for danger but making full use of grab handles and clamps. Patta and Simone followed them. Last aboard was Johnson. The Sergeant had been very clear about that. He was now in effect her XO and was taking that duty seriously.

As expected from the scans, she emerged into a space about ten metres across and roughly cylindrical. What the scans hadn’t shown was the internal architecture. She gazed around in awe. Some sections were linear metal, ceramic and plastic. Others were more organic, grown rather than built. If it weren’t for the Republic iconography throughout, and the Earth-standard atmosphere, she would never have doubted it being alien.

#

A sharp prick got Indie’s attention and a warning alert flashed up. The hull had been punctured at the crew exercise area. There weren’t any decompression warnings though.

He felt the ship shift focus. Until then it had been prioritizing getting the jump drive working, trying to escape. Now that there was a specific threat, it was moving from flight to fight.

Power was diverted to external repair routines. Defence systems started to wake up. He didn’t have to do anything, it was a purely reflex action by the ship.

#

Johnson surveyed her people. She was back to being one of the least experienced in the team. She was a warship captain not a footslogger. The marines knew far better than her how to run this kind of operation. Even now Cheung was gathering a fire team of four marines to send ahead to scout. She recognized two of them without needing to read their IDs. Imran Mollah was one of the ones fresh from training. He had literally bumped into her within minutes of coming aboard. He had been so flustered, she had only kept a straight face by biting her cheek so hard it bled. William Parks had been in her office a few weeks ago requesting leave. His wife was ill and he needed to look after his kid. She hadn’t been able to spare him. Her promise that the navy would look after them seemed rather hollow now.

“Johnson, Shuttle. Something’s happening out here. Patching through a feed.”

Johnson accepted the feed. A window opened in her vision showing the view from one of the shuttle’s external cameras. The surface of the enemy ship was starting to move. A nearby plasma scar was already starting to shrink, replaced by the terribly familiar rippling blacks.

“We are reading pressure on the breaching tunnel. Climbing steadily.”

“Get out of there.”

“Already on our way Commander, just grabbing anything that might be useful.”

“No! Leave them. Get out now.”

It was too late. It was her fault. She shouldn’t have left them on the shuttle. She clenched her fists and clamped her jaw shut.

Yet more blood on my hands.

#

With power restored to the surface of the ship, the skin had come back to life. Indie sensed the ablative layer start to regenerate and flow over the plasma damage. It also sealed off the recent puncture.

As his relief grew at getting more control over the ship, so he noticed the pain from his injuries less.

Internal sensors were coming back online. He started examining data from around the puncture site.

Radio signals were the first thing that jumped out at him. The sensors were only picking up stray bits and nothing was intelligible. It was possible it was just damaged equipment emitting bursts of static, but it could be leakage from tight-beamed encrypted traffic.

He started opening more and more optical feeds until he found what he had suspected he would. A view down one corridor showed Congressional marines. They were leapfrogging, taking turns bracing in place and covering the other while he handed along the rungs.

Were they coming to kill him or rescue him? How could he tell? Something deep inside him screamed that he should already have been killed. If they found him they would terminate him for sure.

Diving into the defence systems, Indie was amazed to find that one of the internal security options was available. The ship certainly hadn’t repaired it, so it must have survived the accident. He activated it and directed it to the area of the breach.