Dryker's Folly: Book 1 in Void Wraith Origins Page 4

  7

  Damn That Man

  “Damn that man,” Sheng growled in a tight voice. Mendez looked askance from his monitor, but Sheng ignored the fresh-faced kid. He couldn’t be more than twenty-five, and he looked like he was about twelve.

  Dryker had, once again, managed to screw things up. What had possessed him to go dark? He was probably parked off some asteroid, drinking himself into a stupor.

  That wasn’t the real reason for her frustration, of course.

  She couldn’t reach Pluto in time. They’d already seen how fast the alien ships were, and, if the projections were correct, an enemy vessel could reach the target at least forty minutes before the Johnston. Assuming they’d sent one.

  “Ensign Mendez, status report.” She resisted the urge to fidget.

  “Sir, there’s nothing through official channels, but I’ve been monitoring the news feeds,” the clean-cut latino explained. He rubbed at a wispy beard he’d been trying to cultivate for about three weeks, which somehow managed to reduce his apparent age instead of enhance it. “One of the alien ships came up missing during the last survey flight, so either they reported back to wherever they came from….”

  “Or they were dispatched to do something else, like investigate the signal on Pluto.” The kid was sharp. He’d come to the conclusion faster than the rest of the bridge crew. “Nice catch, Ensign.” She keyed ship-wide from the chair’s command console. “Attention all hands. Set condition one throughout the ship. Odds are good these cats are on their way to our neighborhood, and they’re looking for a fight. We’re the only thing between them and whatever it is they’re after on Pluto. Get ready for combat, people. We have no idea what these things can do, so stay loose. I’m forwarding all footage HQ sent us. Study up.”

  Sheng killed the connection, and considered her next course of action. They had a little over an hour before they reached Pluto, and about twenty minutes before these cats arrived. That meant there was nothing to do but wait in the interim.

  Nine very tense minutes passed, then Mendez cleared his throat. “Sir, we’ve got incoming.”

  “On screen,” she barked.

  The view screen showed a single, bronze ship approaching in their wake. Metrics scrolled across the bottom of the screen tracking their relative velocities. It confirmed her fears. There was no escaping that behemoth, and that meant they were going to have to fight.

  She keyed the ship-wide again. “All gunnery crewes to their stations. Warm up those gauss cannons, folks. Marines, stand by to repel boarders, en masse. They’re going to come hard for us. Watch out for those harpoons.”

  The enemy ship loomed, not quite in weapons range but getting there. “Ensign Azana, warm up the cannon. Mendez, I want you to flip the ship on my mark. Let’s give these bastards something to think about.”

  She waited as the enemy ship closed. It had slowed slightly, matching their velocity, plus a little extra to close the gap. There was no running, and both sides knew it. But whoever these bastards were, they’d never battled a UA destroyer.

  “Mark.”

  The ship groaned as the maneuvering thrusters flipped them around. Their course didn’t change, but they were now essentially flying backwards, with the Johnston’s main gauss cannon aimed squarely at their very immobile enemy. At this speed there was no way they could effectively evade.

  A single klaxon rang across the deck, then the cannon discharged. A massive hunk of depleted uranium streaked from the gauss rifle, propelled by immense magnets. The projectile left a trail of white debris, its casing dissolving as it delivered the true payload.

  The dense, radioactive metal slammed into the side of the enemy ship, and a cheer broke over the bridge as it punched through the golden hull. Fire exploded from the wound, though when those flames faded the damage wasn’t as severe as they’d hoped.

  “We can hurt them, people,” she barked. Sheng fixed her gaze on the wounded ship. “Let’s bring them down.”

  The enemy answered by launching four glittering darts, the same from the footage at Luna Base. Those fighters closed the gap far more quickly than Sheng would have thought possible, and a series of ominous crashes echoed through the ship as each impacted.

  The golden vessel launched another volley of fighters, and then a third. Her heart sank. They couldn’t dodge at this speed any more than the cats could.

  “You’re academy trained, Mendez. How many troops on each fighter do you think?” she snapped, gripping the arms of her chair until her knuckles whitened.

  “We don’t know their squad size, but there were twelve ships. If they each have, say, five troops, that’s twice as many as we can field.”

  “So sixty, give or take.” She rose suddenly from her chair. What would the boarding parties target first? The engines, almost certainly. She stabbed the ship-wide button. “Fire teams alpha, bravo, and charlie move to set up a perimeter around the engines. Delta and epsilon, protect engineering. Gamma, I want you to the bridge. Everyone else, safeties off on sidearms. They’re coming for us. Let’s give them a proper welcome.”

  Gunfire echoed faintly, followed by all too human screams. Occasionally something like an alley cat yowling rang out in the distance, and she smiled grimly each time she heard it. Sheng removed her sidearm, and checked the action.

  Most of the weapons their Marines used were low caliber, to avoid puncturing the outer hull. That also meant they’d struggle against body armor, which their enemies wore. From what she’d observed in the combat footage, these things didn’t wear helmets, though. That meant headshots were the way to go.

  She took up position behind the captain’s chair, which shielded her from the doorway. It saved her life. The pounding of metal boots approached rapidly, and pair of Marines near the doorway braced themselves.

  The chatter of automatic weapons fire deafened her, and the eye-burning stench of gunpowder filled the bridge. One of the cats screamed, then a second. But the third leapt into the middle of the Marines and brought a pair of wicked spikes down in a quick jab. The blow punched through the man’s heart, and he tumbled to the deck, his uniform already darkening around the wound. Sheng didn’t even know his name.

  Sheng brought her pistol up smoothly, both hands wrapped around the grip. She leaned in to her training and sighted down the barrel. The pistol bucked once, twice, and a third time as it ejected three rounds into the cat’s face. The first pinged off its forehead, knocking the thing back a step. The second punched through a broad, feline nose, and the third shattered its mouth.

  The cat refused to die. It sprinted toward her and leapt over the captain’s chair. Sheng dropped into a crouch, switching the pistol into the other hand as she spun around to keep the chair between her and the cat. It swiped down at her with those claws, and they ripped through foam, leather, and metal with equal ease.

  Sheng shot to her feet and thrust the pistol toward the cat’s face. She pulled hard on the trigger, and the round hit it in the same place, where its ruined nose lay. The round made an awful crack as it broke bone, and the cat’s eyes slid back in its head as it slumped to the deck.

  She whirled to face the door, but the rest of their attackers were down. So were all but one of the Marines, and there were more yowls in the distance.

  They couldn’t afford this to be a battle of attrition. She punched the ship-wide button, thankful that it still worked after the cat had savaged her chair. “All hands, attention. I have to hope that our attackers don’t speak English. I’m going to kill the lights in five seconds. Marines, engage your night vision, and use your flare grenades. Let’s see if we can catch these bastards off guard.”

  She counted down from five, and keyed the command to kill lighting throughout the ship. They were plunged into sudden, terrifying darkness.

  “Sir,” called the final Marine from the doorway. His boots approached, and she sensed a shape in the darkness. “Put these on, sir. They belonged to Henries.”

  She slid the goggles over her face, and blinked as her vision adjusted. Green, fuzzy shapes resolved into the bridge around her.

  “Mendez, have the squad leaders checked in?” she demanded.

  “Not yet, sir.”

  Gunfire echoed up the corridors, then again from further away. The staccato continued for almost a full minute before it died down to sporadic bursts.

  “I want intel, Ensign.” She frowned, suppressing the desire to forge a path down to the engines.

  “Getting reports now, sir. The tactic seems to have worked well. The cats were surprised, though they’re pulling back into fortified positions.” Mendez’s face was illuminated by the faint glow of the console. “There’s bad news too, sir. No reports from the squads you sent to guard the engines. They’re all down.”

  Something boomed from deep within the ship. It was followed almost immediately by a second boom.

  “We’ve lost both engines, sir,” Mendez provided unhelpfully.

  “Order all remaining Marines to link up and cordon off the area around the engines. We might be dead in the water, but we can still retake our ship.” She removed her magazine and replaced it with a fresh one from the supply locker. “Let’s get moving.”

  8

  The Johnston

  Dryker came out of his doze to the sound of a warning chime. Waking up at four Gs made him long for the comfort of a traditional hangover. Even his eyes ached.

  He blinked to focus his vision, every chime slicing through his skull. “What do you have, Naomi?”

  Her digitized voice was as cheerful as ever. “There is a UA distress signal being broadcast in the vicinity, from a disabled starship. Modern maritime law states that we must render assistance.”

  “Which vessel?” He yawned, or tried to anyway. The gravity
made anything beyond speech very difficult.

  “The Johnston.”

  That woke him up. “Decelerate and approach.”

  “Do you want me to broadcast our ident?” she asked.

  “Negative.” He shook his head. “Stay dark. If something tangled with the Johnston and walked away, then we definitely don’t want to meet it. I’ve seen what that ship can do.”

  Dryker’s breathing eased as they decelerated. He brought up the view screen, which now showed the Johnston, and beyond it a dark planetoid that had to be Pluto. The UA vessel had almost made it, but the battle damage showed why they hadn’t.

  Both engines were dark, and bronze darts stuck out of the hull all over the aft side. There had to be at least ten of the things. That sounded like a lot of cats. What if they’d overpowered the crew and were using this as a trap?

  That was ludicrous. They probably didn’t even speak English, or any other Earth language. The odds of this being a trap were minimal, especially since these aliens had no way of knowing if there were any other ships in the area. At least, not that he knew of.

  “Naomi, is there any sign of another vessel in the area?” Dryker asked as he zoomed in the view on the Johnston. The Folly continued to decelerate, reducing the gravity and the pressure.

  “There is,” she replied happily. “I am picking up a temperature gradient consistent with the wake of a starship. Another vessel passed through this space, and continued on a direct course to Pluto. My projections suggest they arrived almost half an hour ago.”

  Dryker briefly considered hailing the Johnston, but wasn’t willing to risk revealing the Folly. It was very possible the cats had overcome the crew, or that the crew was still fighting.

  Either way, the smartest way to approach would be to dock and sneak aboard. Normally that wouldn’t be possible, but any UA vessel broadcasting a condition one alert was also required to have all airlocks unsecured for rescuers.

  Dryker keyed in a course, and let Naomi take over from there. “Let me know when we’ve docked.”

  He moved over to his weapons locker, and brushed several empty food packs out of the way. Dryker lovingly removed his Remington from the locker, then cocked the shotgun with a very satisfying click-clack.

  He wasn’t the world’s best shot, but with a shotgun he didn’t need to be. He could nail anything within about a dozen yards, and if one of the cats got in his face he’d do his damnedest to make sure the thing regretted it.

  Dryker moved to the Folly’s airlock door, and waited as a series of thunks sounded outside. It didn’t take long for the ship to link to the Johnston, and the instant it had, Dryker cycled the airlock door. He stepped into the Johnston’s airlock, and waited an eternity as the door cycled shut behind him.

  The green light next to the inner door flared, then it slid up into the ceiling, exposing a familiar corridor. Dryker cautiously crept from the airlock, and took several moments to orient himself. The hallways were narrow, like ancient submarines. A haze of electrical smoke fogged the hallway in both directions, and seemed to be thickest to the left.

  Given where he’d docked, he was fairly certain it must lead down to the engines.

  A deep, terrifying roar echoed up the corridor from somewhere distant. It was answered by automatic weapons fire, then the whump of a grenade.

  Dryker turned right, and started for the bridge. It had been a few years, but you never forgot the layout of a ship you’d served on.

  No one challenged him when he advanced from B to A deck, and he met no resistance as he crept closer to the bridge. Finally, he heard voices. He peered cautiously around a corner and spotted two Marines flanking the doorway leading to the bridge.

  “Don’t shoot.” Dryker stepped slowly from cover. Both Marines snapped their rifles up, and he resisted the urge to dive back around the corner. “My name is Dryker. I’m here to speak with Commander Sheng. I’m her boyfriend. Is she….”

  A very sooty Sheng stepped through the doorway. Her uniform was burnt and torn, and almost half her hair had escaped from her bun. “I’m alive, Jim, my love. Thanks for coming. I’ve been wondering where you got to.”

  “With the cats around I thought it smart to go dark.” Dryker relaxed a hair as the Marines slowly lowered their weapons. “What’s the situation?”

  “Our engines are dead, but given time we might be able to use maneuvering thrusters to get us to Outlier Station.” Sheng began massaging her temples. “By that time the cats will have whatever it is they’re after. They may have it already.”

  His shoulders slumped. “So I flew out here for nothing?”

  Sheng looked up suddenly, and the exhaustion seemed to fall away. “Well, that depends.” Her glittering brown eyes took on a calculating cast. “You served once. I’ve seen your record. You’re supposed to be one hell of a strategist, Dryker. The kind who might be able to outthink these cats. The kind who never should have mustered out.”

  “Maybe, but I don’t play nicely with others. If you’ve read my dossier you know why I left.” Dryker rested the barrel of his shotgun on his shoulder. “I’m worried enough about all this to take a personal interest, but if you’re going to fly out there on my ship, then let’s be clear…I’m not taking orders from you.”

  She snorted and rolled her eyes. “Jim, even if it were my ship you still wouldn’t take my orders. Or anyone else’s. I promise I won’t try to run things. Just get me to Pluto, and let’s see if we can stop these cats.”

  9

  Compromise

  The trip to Pluto was, unfortunately, a whole lot less fun than Dryker had hoped. Having a pretty girl on your lap was a real treat, unless you were at four Gs, and then the weight was damned painful. Neither of them spoke, because that hurt too.

  So they flew in silence, watching as Pluto’s pocked grey surface grew ever larger on the view screen. That left them with nothing but time to think. Dryker used that to consider the combat footage he’d seen so far, and what Sheng had told him of her battle with the cats.

  The idea that they didn’t use projectile weapons surprised him more than it probably should have. The concept of a gun seemed obvious, but of course there were probably a great many things that seemed obvious to the cats that humans would find strange.

  That could offer an advantage, in that the cats were less familiar with defending against ranged attacks. They could use that, given the chance.

  “Captain, we are approaching Pluto. I have begun deceleration.” Naomi cheerfully broke the silence. “Shall I scan the surface?”

  “Negative. Reactive scans only for now,” Dryker managed through gritted teeth. The deceleration had begun, but his chest was still impossibly tight. The screen zoomed in, toward a blue glow on the southern hemisphere. “Give me a better view of whatever that blue hole is.”

  The screen shifted toward it, more easily as the ship slowly circled Pluto, using the planet—he didn’t care what anyone else called it—to further decelerate. There was no atmosphere to aid the process, which made this just another big rock. And Dryker had lots of practice landing on rocks.

  He made for the installation nestled in a massive crater on the planet’s northern hemisphere.

  “What is that?” Sheng whispered. She squirmed a bit in his lap to get a better view, and his eyes teared up when her sidearm jabbed him in his other sidearm.

  “That’s some sort of a star-port,” Dryker wheezed around the pain. “I can see two aircraft docked, our bronze friends, and that weird oblong-looking thing.” He stabbed a finger at that part of the image. “What I’m wondering is why it hasn’t been discovered by some random astronomer, or by Voyager itself.” He had a hunch he knew the answer to his own question. “Naomi, can you pull up an image of this part of the planet from the survey data?”

  Another image appeared in the bottom corner. It showed the same pocked crater, but instead of the installation, it contained a very ordinary-looking field of rocks and dirt.

  Sheng leaned closer to the screen. “Nice catch. They must have retracted the ground somehow. Like a fake door.”