Chapter Thirty
“Now you’ve heard the full reason for this operation and understand just how many moving parts are already in motion, the following briefing will outline the full mission profile rehearsal for this team’s primary responsibility: the seizure of the Kulsian corvette,” Harry said, addressing the packed equipment locker. Much space was taken up by a large rectangular habitat module. “This will be our final rehearsal at this scale. Our timetable has accelerated. The seizure of a Kulsian lighter at the downport could be happening even as we speak.
“That lighter’s your ride to the briefed target. We’ve spent weeks rehearsing each part of the operation, mastering the steps individually. The technicians who rode the pressurized mock-up of the target corvette were still busting their hump working through last night, making last-minute changes in order to conform as closely as possible to what is known of the actual target. Now, for the first time, you’ll assemble everything you’ve practiced, using live weapons and demolitions on the best target we can provide.”
In front of him, the three squads stood in groups of six. All suits had been modified to be the same color of mottled gray-white. There had been some argument about the color selection. While black might blend better against an empty background during EVA, two of the teams would be hiding on the hull of the lighter during the final approach, and darker colors provided an unhelpful—which was to say, a potentially unsurvivable—amount of contrast against the background of the reflective hull. Some of the spray-on elastomer used to re-tint the equipment was peeling, giving the suits a leprous appearance. Harry hoped the color would remain uniform. In the confused mess of a boarding action, the assault team had to be able to distinguish between a Kulsian and a comrade at a glance.
“You’ve heard me preach this over and over,” he continued, “so I’ll say it again: Surprise is our biggest advantage. The Kulsian crew will believe they’re on a rescue mission, so we expect them to match vectors with our ship and affix an umbilical to the lighter. Once that is done, Bravo will assault from inside the captured lighter, charging across the docking tube. Simultaneously, Alpha and Charlie will EVA to the enemy hull, force an exterior lock, and storm the ship before they can escape. If they jettison the umbilical, you’ll still have overwhelming force already on their hull. Soon thereafter, Alpha and Charlie will be stealing their ship out from under them.”
Harry put his hands on his hips and let the smile slide off his face.
“This isn’t a safe evolution,” he said, staring hard at each man in turn. “Space is a hard, unforgiving bitch. We don’t have time to waste. We’ve been informed of our launch window, and if this rehearsal is successful, the next step will be to board ship and move toward our rendezvous point. We’ve got one shot at this rehearsal. There’s a fine line between good training that embraces a certain amount of risk and lethal stupidity born of mistakes.”
A few suits creaked as their owners imperceptibly shifted their weight in an otherwise quiet space.
“Major Makarov, what’s the best way to take a ship that is already performing a boarding action itself?” Harry asked the Alpha squad leader and overall mission commander. Makarov had caught a promotion while in isolation. Harry wasn’t sure what Murphy had been thinking by providing that level of distraction, but it had seemed to perk up the Russian.
“Simultaneously, from two directions,” Makarov answered crisply. “And from two environments, both pressure and vacuum.”
“Correct,” Harry said. “You’ll need to split the attention of the defenders and avoid fighting your way into a single chokepoint.” He turned to his next victim. “What’s the most critical action of the first step of the boarding, Sergeant Rodriguez?”
“To gain access to the inside of the target hull with all dispatch, sir!” the sergeant barked loudly.
“Also correct,” Harry said, eyeing the Bravo team leader to see if he was cracking wise. The man wasn’t known for his military courtesy, after all. “Once inside their hull, we can move to the next priority action. Major Korelon, what would that be?”
“Render the crew incapable of either scuttling the ship or making emergency communications,” Korelon replied neutrally.
“You’re on a roll, gentlemen,” Harry said. “Once inside, the top priority must be the neutralization of the crew. There’re too many ways they can damage or destroy their own ship once they understand what’s happening. For that matter, you’ll exercise the strictest fire discipline and avoid all unnecessary damage to the corvette.”
Harry looked at the class, then at the diminutive bald sergeant in the front row. “Final question, Sergeant Pham. What’s the key to a successful boarding?”
“Speed and violence of action, Major Tapper,” Pham answered steadily. “No hesitation. Get inside the span of their arms, grab them by the belt, and don’t let go. Kill from touching distance. Leave none alive to tell the tale.”
“Exactly right, Sergeant Pham. All right, you know the drill. Seal your helmets, stand by to pump down, and let’s do this!” Harry ordered. He turned to the intercom panel and detached the corded mic. “All hands, this is Trainer Six. We’re starting the full mission profile at this time.”
It would’ve been much more dramatic if they could have actually begun as soon as the briefing was over. However, just like every other exercise Harry had experienced in the bad old days, there were a seemingly interminable number of steps, most of which were safety-checklist related. Over the howling objections of the outpost commander, Harry’s teams were carrying live weapons and demolitions inside the base. More unthinkable still, the Lost Soldiers had been cleared to use them in the final, free-space drill to be conducted within spitting distance of his precious station. The remaining outpost crew plus the team’s own techs were sequestered as far from the exercise areas as possible. Harry had actually considered evacuating the entire station, but the dislocated personnel would’ve had to go somewhere, and the conjecture so generated would have been far worse than angering a single station CO.
Finally, after more than forty minutes of radio calls and checklists, the final all clear was given. “All teams, green light,” Harry announced over the radio channel. “Major Makarov, you may start when ready.”
“Roger,” Makarov quickly answered. “Alpha, initiate as briefed. Confirm when engaged.”
Harry leaned back in his seat to watch the screens. Everything should, should go like clockwork.
Of course, this was training, so several trade-offs had been necessary. They didn’t actually have a ship to board, only the shell of a hull that could barely retain atmosphere. It was lightly tethered to the station’s rocky exterior by the battered remains of a conventional ship-to-ship umbilical. Worse, the intelligence on the configuration of the corvette was incomplete. Among the many sticking points Harry had listed during his sessions with Colonel Murphy was the lack of solid intel. To say the lack of deck schematics was suboptimal when practicing a boarding action was akin to describing the RockHound beer-analogue as a bit unpleasant.
Still, the Dogs had made some educated guesses. The target simulated the Kulsian corvette as closely as could be estimated and included such details as corridors, locks, and tankage, but the key components of the ship were pure guesswork. Many empty, blocky objects were scattered inside the hull and covered in oversize signs with cheery legends such as DRIVE: MAY DETONATE IF FIRED UPON!, ARMORY, WILL DEFINITELY DETONATE!, and RAD HAZARD, DO NOT APPROACH! The cost in metal to build the shape had been considerable, and both the SpinDogs and RockHounds had impressed on Harry the need to recycle everything.
Harry was reasonably content with the personnel situation. Maintaining tight tactical command during a quick-and-dirty close quarters fight was unrealistic. He’d really meant it when he’d said all Makarov had to do was get the teams aboard and let them do their thing. Surprise, speed, and numbers would overcome any reasonable defense the crew could muster once the boarders got inside the ship.
All Harry had signed up for was to get them ready. And now it was done. Easy peasy.
Makarov understood the constraints of the exercise. In charge of the main effort to seize the corvette, he and Alpha were already outside the station, staying in close proximity to Korelon’s Charlie squad. Rodriguez, leading—or as he liked to call it, herding—Bravo, was waiting to assault the umbilicus from the open training bay, simulating the interval while the “enemy” extended the boarding tube.
“Contact,” Rodriguez reported.
“Alpha, Charlie, commence transit,” Makarov ordered.
The two external teams began to cross the distance from the side of the station to the uneven shape of the notional Kulsian corvette.
“Enemy in view!” Rodriguez transmitted thirty seconds later. “Initiating.”
One of an array of small screens Harry was monitoring showed a small cloud of suits flitting onto the enemy “hull.” Another showed a pair of assaulters swarming the empty suit that had been positioned to “contest” their approach.
“Charlie to command. Soft key failure, going mechanical,” Harry heard Korelon report. Harry didn’t know if the devices loaded with access software stolen from the downport would work more than once, or for that matter, at all, so the teams would use physical breaching methods for practice, regardless. In order to vary the attack, the exercise would flex both mechanical and explosive methods. Korelon’s team had been selected for the exciting bit. “Mechanical failure, going explosive.”
Harry had supervised the design and initial testing of certain special purpose devices. Copper sheeting had been cut into multiple two-meter-by-three-centimeter strips. Flexible explosive putty, not unlike the composition plastic explosives from Harry’s misspent youth, was molded onto one side and the entire thing arranged in a circle about two meters square. In turn, the assembly was stapled to a stiff sheet of plastic. To use, slap the entire thing against the hull plate or lock to be cut, using vacuum-rated adhesive. Not unreasonably, several men had wanted proof the glue would work, preventing the cutting charge from floating free once primed. Nothing was simpler: the two-part epoxy created its own intense curing heat in seconds and required substantial effort to remove. Once the charge went, the absence of an atmosphere also meant a negligible blast wave. Of course, blazing hot fragments were still an issue, but you couldn’t have everything.
On screen, Harry saw the brief flash of light from Korelon’s charge. On the hangar display, the lone “Kulsian” was spouting atmosphere from both an arm and a leg, and the Alphas were simulating their own forced entry against the closed airlock, which meant opening not one, but two armored doors.
Harry heard a garbled call from the second exterior team, but the transmission was stepped on by Korelon reporting a successful breach of the shape’s thin plating. He almost requested clarification, but remembered Makarov was in charge, and he wouldn’t be on hand to help when they did this for real. Makarov had to do it himself. There could be only one OIC.
“—repeat, going explosive,” Harry heard Makarov report.
That didn’t make sense. One team was supposed to use the demolitions, the second was to employ the mechanicals, which were nothing more than simple, if extremely strong, cutting and expanding tools. Jam the carbide teeth into the lock seam and let the low-geared motors do the work. Harry shook his head and looked at the screens, and then at the target’s layout of corridors, locks, and tanks. Makarov’s team was at hull lock three, and there wasn’t anything either potentially or actually dangerous nearby. Yet…
Harry reached for the mic but registered the distinctive flash of the second breaching charge on the display and, a moment later, an even brighter flash that washed out the screen.
Harry felt a horrible prickle spread across his skin.
“Check fire, check fire, the range is cold!” he yelled futilely, watching the monitor as the image resolution improved. “All personnel discontinue exercise and report!”
“Lost the umbilical,” Harry heard Rodriguez report, his laconic tone unmistakable. “Doors auto-deployed. What the hell? Over.”
“Teams report status,” Harry ordered again.
It took but moments, but that short wait was agonizing. The first thing Harry noted was the movement of the simulated Kulsian corvette. It was rolling on its axis, and very slightly pitching downward from the station. The radio came alive as Bravo and Charlie acknowledged his call.
“Alpha, report,” Harry ordered.
On a secondary monitor, first one, then a second, and finally four emergency suit beacons lit.
“It wasn’t as bad as I thought at first, Colonel,” Harry said, rubbing his forehead. He looked up and faced the video pickup, meeting Murphy’s image squarely. “But it’s still pretty bad. Rodriguez’s entry team in the bay had only one significant casualty, and he swears he’ll be all right. He got a hand badly pinched when the umbilical broke apart. The RockHounds also had one injured. Caught a small amount of frag when the propellant tank went up. He’ll recover, but the Hound surgeon is offering no better than one chance in two his condition will improve fast enough to make the op. Makarov’s squad, they’re pretty much out altogether.”
Harry paused and waited for Murphy to get the entire message. After a year of managing the delay over a radio link spanning several hundred thousand kilometers, the Terrans had adopted the SpinDog protocol of keeping your side of the conversation about as long as the light-speed lag between speakers. This allowed the speaker to finish talking just as their audience began to hear the first thing previously said. However, over the slightly grainy black-and-white video link Murphy didn’t react much. He appeared to be reading a compilation of quicklook reports Harry had immediately begun transmitting as soon as the accident occurred.
Finally, Murphy looked up.
“And the men who were blown clear of the training platform?” he asked, grim-faced.
“Zymanski was killed outright. It took the RockHounds almost half an hour to chase him down; they had to use visual enhancement to spot the reflection changes from his tumble. He took the brunt of the blast,” Harry said, rubbing his forehead. “His beacon was shredded, as was his suit. Between that and a cracked faceplate, it’s unlikely he ever knew what hit him.
“But the remaining five in Alpha squad have all been retrieved. Three are hurt badly enough they can’t put a suit on, let alone recover in time to make the op. They just brought in Makarov. He did a Dutchman, and his suit’s electronics were damaged, which meant no beacon. Which in turn meant the Hounds having to retrieve him by visuals, too.”
“What’s his condition?” Murphy asked, his face tight with concern. “Can you get him on the line?”
“He didn’t take a scratch physically, but he caught a pretty heavy dose of rads and his life support was almost gone. The suit’s O2 feed hose got nicked by a sliver and the dead electronics meant that the warning system never activated. But, Colonel, he’s still in shock and only marginally responsive. He couldn’t answer questions, and the surgeon decided to sedate him.”
Harry watched Murphy sag, just a little, before his posture firmed up, and he resumed speaking in his customary “give me answers now!” tone. “What’s your preliminary finding on the accident, Harry? How did you get an explosion of that magnitude?”
“Sir, I’m an interested party, and it was my responsibility,” Harry said, straightening all the way up in his seat. “The right thing to do is to convene an independent board of inquiry to determine causality and confirm responsibility.”
This time, there was no mistaking when Murphy heard Harry’s answer. The obvious expression of concern over the casualties changed in a blink, and Murphy’s brow wrinkled as he leaned further into the camera pickup.
“No time for that, Harry,” Murphy said, biting off each word precisely. “If and when this operation is complete, I may exercise my responsibility in overall command to conduct an inquiry into this entire damned campaign. What I have to know, Major, is why…You. Think. It. Blew.”
“Sir, the root cause of the accident was pure haste,” Harry replied. “In our hurry to get ready, we demanded the fastest possible fabrication time, and we accelerated the training schedule to accommodate operational demands.”
“Expand.”
“We asked the SpinDogs to simulate a bigger ship, and they did their best,” Harry answered. “They used whatever they had lying around, pulled conveniently shaped parts out of their recycling, including what we thought was an empty spun-fiber pressure tank. It could just as easily have blown when they torched the donor wreck apart, or when they welded the mock-up together. The survivors report the missing man, Zymanski, was anxious to breach the lock quickly. He broke one of the carbide teeth on his expander jack on his first try. Then it kept slipping out of the lock jamb. He decided to use the frame charge in order to maintain the realism and quick pace of the rehearsal. The frame charge was a little larger than the personnel lock that was his target, and the tankage appears to have been immediately adjacent to the lock. The linear shaped charge we used functioned exactly as intended. It did a number on the thin hull plating, but it also ignited whatever residue was in the tank: a breath of propellant, maybe. We’re lucky the amount was so low. If it had been full, we would have lost everything, and we’d be talking about replacing all three squads and a good part of the station.
“Even so, the explosion was still significant. One really large hull section lifted entirely away, sending a bunch of fragments into the team. The big piece hit Makarov broadside and gave him a helluva push. The others in Alpha were also blown outward, but at lesser velocities. Ironically, they were hurt much worse.”
“What’s your assessment of the operational impact?” Murphy asked, his face impassive once again.
“Sir, the training target is toast,” Harry reported. “No further large-scale exercises are possible in the time remaining. We have enough functional men to assault the target and retain a degree of overmatch to ensure success.”
“Very well.” Murphy looked away from camera for a moment, nodding to someone off-screen. When the exchange persisted more than a few seconds, he raised his right hand to shut the speaker down before returning his attention to Harry. “We don’t have a lot of options. The mission needs an experienced commander. I need you to step up.”
“You’re right, sir,” Harry answered. He’d begun thinking about the implications of the accident nearly as soon as it happened. He disciplined himself, concealing his surging emotion, the conflicting anger, resignation, and guilt. “We don’t have a lot of time or options.”
Give him nothing. Be the expressionless Sphinx, Harry.
Fuck that, let him know how pissed you are! Are you seriously saying yes to this guy?
Harry waited to allow the transmission lag to catch up.
“I need two things, Murph,” Harry continued when it became obvious Colonel Murphy was waiting for the other shoe to drop. He omitted the usual honorific on purpose and had gotten Murphy’s attention, at least. “One right away, for me. And another for everyone, later.”
“Less cryptic bullshit, Harry,” Murphy growled impatiently as the transmission reached him. His balled fists were visible at the bottom of edge of pickup. “What do you think you can demand of me? What do you require to do your duty?” The rest of what he was likely aching to say was written on Murphy’s face in neon letters a meter high: “You fucking prima donna.”
“I want your personal word that when we leave this system Stella can come with us if she wants,” Harry stated firmly, suppressing his instinct to meet anger with anger. “I want it in writing, whether I live or die, she gets a ride out, if one exists.”
“Of course you want it in writing,” Murphy said disgustedly. “An officer who disregards his oath and negotiates for extras instead of doing his clear duty might think my signature is somehow more binding than my word. Done, Tapper. What else do you want?”
“You’ve waved my oath in my face before, Colonel,” Harry said, hiding his elation. “It doesn’t work. And it’s not just me, either. One way or another, you’ve used every trick of patriotism, jingoism, and persuasion to get all of us two-time losers to do what needs doing. To lay our asses on the line. It works on some. Doesn’t work on me or people like me. Even the ones who’ve grudgingly done what you asked really need something more. I want you to think about it and come up with a new reason for us to work together. And I don’t mean because we’ve got a debt to little gray men, or because of our oaths to support and defend a Constitution, or whatever passed for a government where and when each of us got snatched. And especially not to save some bureaucratic United Nations surrogate back on Earth. Everyone who went into cold sleep effectively died, Murph. Died. Died and lost everything they had. You said it yourself: no more family, and even our countries are unrecognizable, if they still exist.”
Harry paused for a breath. He had to make Murphy understand, so he mastered the strain that was about to make his voice break. It was time for the most important point, the thing that fueled Harry’s desperation and anger. It was the difference between the Lawless remaining borderline ungovernable or becoming something new, something stronger.
“Dying fulfills our old oaths, Murph. Fulfills our oaths to the full measure of devotion. You can’t ask that of us twice. We need a new reason, a better reason, to fight together, a new cause. Something that matters to every single one of us. Come up with an education plan, some kind of shared cultural literacy we can understand, and then give each of us an option to make a new oath. Or not. If you want real teamwork and sacrifice, you’re going to have to give us something real to fight for.”
It was a long speech, longer than it had seemed when Harry had rehearsed. He got to watch Murphy’s expression change from angry to confused, and from confused to…something Harry didn’t immediately recognize.
This time the pause on Murphy’s side of the conversation was even more prolonged.
“You surprise me, Harry,” Murphy finally said. “As long as I’ve been in command of squirrely-ass soldiers—and the odd sailor—I’ve developed the conceit they can’t surprise me anymore. Clearly, I was wrong. I agree to your codicil, Harry. But—and this includes my equally nonnegotiable terms—you will help me answer your second question. If you can come up with something that will convince yourself, then maybe we have a chance at creating something worthy of this new allegiance you’re describing. Deal?”
Harry exhaled, emptying out a reservoir of frustration and releasing accumulated resentment.
“Deal, sir.”