16 November, 2115:
“They dropped on us, literally out of the sky,” Horst tells the tale, after we’ve made reasonably certain our attackers are still in retreat and our prisoners are secured. Horst had them forcibly stripped of their battered and weirdly painted pressure suits, searched with uncomfortable thoroughness for hidden weapons, bound wrist and ankle, then tossed in an inflatable portable shelter on the sand between our ships. If they try to escape, it will be a race to see if anoxia or embolism kills them first.
Their weapons and aging pressure suits are on display like trophies in the fire damaged bay of ASV 2. The suits are the lighter “Type 2” work models favored by colony construction engineers during the height of the Land Rush, only battered to the point I’m surprised they have any integrity at all. They’ve painted the suits and helmets with red and black and yellow in patterns that look more tribal than camouflage, but did not add any homemade armor as the Nomads do—it might add too much weight for their light flyers and dirigible ship to carry. Their weapons do resemble what the Nomads carry, though: a few well-used firearms, but otherwise handcrafted primitive weapons: knives, short swords, axes, throwing weapons, crossbows, and an assortment of grappling hooks on cables that look like they’re designed as much for use on enemies as for climbing.
A Link monitor in the shelter lets me get a remote look at them: Our four “guests” are uniformly lean and wiry, and not particularly clean or well-groomed. Horst says their sour scent reminds him of the early colonial construction crews that had to live in their suits for weeks at a time. Their clothes under their pressure suits are mixed worn work wear, colony overalls and even bits of colony security uniforms. Their hair is either chopped short or matted into dreadlocks or artistic combinations of both. Their skin shows the telltale blotches and burns of too much chronic exposure to UV and low pressure, telling us that they do live or at least travel under the atmosphere net long enough to spend time unprotected in the open air. All four sport at least one significant wound scar, and two of them are missing parts of fingers.
They also flaunt a liberal assortment of facial piercings and tattoos (and the scars of infection when such modifications went septic). In the primitive hand-needled ink work I can see fanciful versions of several colony crests, though the most prominent on each of them is the “Screaming Eagle” crest of the Zodanga Colony on the backs of their necks.
And they do look very much like pirates.
Besides our four breathing prisoners, there are the bodies of six more, two of which Horst insists died by their own hands when they were too wounded to escape under their own power, their ruptured suits threatening a difficult death. On closer examination of their corpses, their musculature looks like it’s mostly tendon, with long, skinny limbs that make their joints look swollen in comparison. They have the lack of body fat that makes the elderly look like they’re paper-thin skin over bone. I’m reminded of photo records of concentration camp victims or chronically starved POWs, but this lot is strong and agile and quick—Horst and his men had a time subduing them and finally had to resort to bleeding enough air from their suits to make them pass out.
“Doctor Staley was too eager to get done, so he kept trying to work out in the cold with a few men at a time in short rotations,” Horst continues. “I think this lot had been watching us for awhile, then took their opportunity when we opened the doors to change shifts. I’m surprised they didn’t break their necks or crack their suits—they must have jumped from those light flyer things, and you saw how those things flit around like bats.
“Still, I don’t think they were quite prepared for what they got. They counted on surprise and tried to rush us with numbers, hot to get inside the ASVs. Those that made it went straight for the cockpits, like they were trying to steal the ships out from under us while the rest of them kept us busy, tried to force us outside. They were like wild animals, Colonel—not like the ninjas. It was like being in the monkey habitat at a zoo, only the monkeys had crossbows and tomahawks. Mr. Staley got cut in the first rush, and I had to take two of my men out of the fight for cracked faceplates and another for a torn seal. The skinny little bastards jump around like bugs, leapfrogged right over our heads to get behind us, made it so it was hard to shoot without hitting our own or our ships. And they knew where they were going. They even had breakers to open the hatches with. We’re just lucky they weren’t smart enough to realize there was no way they could hijack an AI-driven UNMAC ship. That’s when one of them set off a firebomb in Number Two—maybe they figured if they couldn’t steal our wings, we shouldn’t get to keep them either.
“Mission ‘raqed, they tried running for it, which gave us a better field of fire. But that’s when they started in with their big guns, hitting us from distance while those little flyers swooped back and scooped them up on their grappling lines. We spun up our turrets to shoot back at the big blimp thing, but by then we also had a good dozen of those flyers swarming us, trying to cripple our turrets and pop our tanks with small-arms fire.”
The damage to ASV 2 is mostly in the bay, but ASV 1 has a punctured hydrogen tank on the port rear quarter, and two of its turrets are damaged. But despite a few serious dents in their wings from the “mothership’s” cannon, both craft should still fly enough to limp home. Morales won’t be cheerful.
The sun is coming up over the Candor mountains. The sky is clear in all directions—no sign of flying pirates or sailing dirigibles.
And I’m thinking the pirates may have broken their usual pattern—got much bolder that Sakina’s description—because we left such tempting prizes sitting relatively unguarded in their hunting grounds. Hopefully we’ve proved ourselves adequately discouraging. But I’m not counting on it.
“Get the ice off. We need to evac the wounded,” I tell Horst. “Take ASV Two. Call Colonel Burke once you get back inside the net—he’s waiting to send relief. Give him the sitrep and tell him I want two more good ships, loaded for a fight.”
“You going to try to hold this ground, sir?”
“We need to make the call home. That means we need this relay.”
I cycle into ASV 1’s bay, and talk with Anton while they start moving him and the other wounded to ASV 2. He’s groggy from the pain meds they shot into him when they packed his wounds: he’s got bloody pressure bandages over his chest, and his pressure suit has been sliced through just over his heart. Horsts’ squad medic Jakovenko assures me he just got cut enough to rake his ribs, charged by a pirate with a short sword who kept running right over the top of him. The two techs working with Anton got him inside as soon as Horst had ASV 1 re-secured, thankfully before the depressurization did him much damage. He didn’t even really start bleeding until he warmed up.
“I know how you feel,” I try being comforting. He looks pale.
“…guess I was jealous, Colonel…you have all the sexy scars…” he mutters without opening his eyes. I lay a hand on his shoulder. “…want to stay…finish…”
“Give Rick a turn. He needs to get out more. You’ll be back before we dial home. The part before that’s pretty dull, anyway.”
“…better be…” He at least does his best to give me a smile.
I watch them carry Bailey to the airlock. He’s still in his H-A, tourniquet module stuck where his right leg ends at the knee to keep him from bleeding out and keeping him pressurized. I can’t see whether he’s awake with his helmet on, but he doesn’t move as they lift him through the hatch. There’s drying blood smeared all over the deck of the ASV bay.
Our other casualty—and possibly the most critical—is Lieutenant Hanson, the pilot of ASV 2, who got knifed in the gut and upper right chest when the pirates broke into his cockpit. He’s sealed in a field trauma pod, his lung re-inflated and his bleeding under control, but he’s going to need a lot of Doc Ryder’s attention.
“Heal up fast,” I tell Anton as he gets sealed in his own trauma pod for the trip. “Then remind me to schedule you some quality time with Zauba??
?a—she’ll teach you how to dodge a blade.”
He looks worried (at least he can worry about something else) but gives me another weak smile through the clear acrylic viewport.
Outside, I watch ASV 2 lift off and fly south through the pass without incident.
Smith is up on the Lancer hull, surveying the damage now that the light is coming back.
“’Raqed the sweet paint job,” he complains over his suit Link. “No breaches, but I wouldn’t risk taking this thing into space. Or even run it out here very much longer. Worst is that I don’t think Sergeant Morales can fix it properly. It’s all nano-shit. Maybe the ETE might be able to homebrew some kind of patching, assuming they care to.”
I can see the denting and gouging in the once pristine black hull: big concaved and pocked patches from the cannon rounds, and smaller tears from our “boarders” attempts to cut in.
Given where I’m headed next, I have to take the time to breathe in the confines of my helmet, to remind myself that the Lancer is an unexpected asset, that we could well be doing without it entirely, and that I’ve been expecting it to have taken worse by now. But the damage is one more insult from this planet, added to the real injury of three more of my people.
My shadow is long on the red sand and gravel: a man in a space suit, wearing a gun and a sword.
Rios stands with me as I cycle into the shelter we’re using as a brig. He keeps his helmet on, but I want them to see my face, no matter Horst’s warning about the stink. It’s as bad as he said, and it reminds me that all humans are still animals, still human.
Our unwilling guests glare up at me from their bonds, baring their rotting teeth, trying to look fierce. I’m struck with the overwhelming urge to kick those teeth out.
“If you are from Zodanga, I assume you still speak something like English,” I tell them without introduction. “I don’t expect you to tell me anything. I don’t care if you say a single word. But I expect you will listen, because you and your people will benefit from what I say.”
They maintain their theatrical glares and snarls, but I can see them calculating their options behind their eyes. They are paying attention.
“I assume your base is still somewhere on the Northeast Rim. If so, you can see across the Melas valley. You saw the clouds of the nuclear blasts to the south and southwest. You also recognized what we are, because you tried to use lockbreakers preset to old UNMAC codes.”
I give them several seconds to digest. They maintain remarkable discipline. Or rage.
“I want one of you to volunteer to be released,” I get to the point. “We will give you your suit, fill your tanks and let you go free. I only ask that you tell your leaders I must speak with them. If they refuse, tell them to expect more bombs.”
I cycle out and give them privacy to think my offer over. I watch them on the Link: they keep whatever conversation between them too quiet for even the amplified microphones. But within ten minutes, they let us know they can speak something like English.
“Look east sunrise,” their volunteer—a copper-dreadlocked coiled-spring with metal teeth, construction rivets in his earlobes and a variation of the Zodanga phoenix tattooed on his forehead—instructs us through his close-range helmet mike before we let him go, jabbing a gloved finger toward the cliffs of the Melas Northeast Rim. “Ya’ll see deh Dutch comin’. If ya see men on deh sand, come meet in good faith. If ya don’, ya bes’ fly ‘way home, ‘Maker. Zodanga is deh sky.”
We hopped him back under the atmosphere net before letting him walk, hoping to increase his chances of getting where he needs to go. It also gives us a clear Link back to base while we wait for a replacement relay.
The pirate shuffles off slowly at first, looking over his shoulder repeatedly like he fully expects us to shoot him in the back. Once he gets about fifty yards away, he turns to face us, then repeats in a defiant shout: “Zodanga is deh sky!” Then he starts to run in an almost simian scurry, leaving a trail of dust to follow after him.
“And how will this not be a trap?” Matthew criticizes over my Link.
I idly kick at the bare, flattened spot where our relay had been.
“One way or another,” I tell him icily, “I will be sending these people a message.”