Vanguard

Chapter 14

“Follow me!” Mele Darcy shouted, the one hundred and twenty volunteers with her following Mele over the crest at a fast walk. It wasn’t a single line spread out to either side of Mele, but several lines with wide gaps between individuals to prevent creating groups of fighters close together for the enemy to aim at. In the still-dim light before dawn, the farthest figures were almost invisible.

“We’re not running?” a volunteer near Mele asked.

“No. It’s too far. We’ll run at the last.”

An incoming message alert annoyed her. If Glenlyon kept distracting her—

“Squall began engaging Scatha’s ships an hour ago,” the message reported. “Outcome remains unknown.”

“Could be worse,” Mele mumbled to herself. She checked her control pad both for signs of activity at Scatha’s base and for the readiness of the mortars behind the hills. Ten minutes earlier, Riley’s group of thirty had stepped off, approaching Scatha’s base from the south. Scatha had lit off jamming gear, but satellite signals going almost straight up past the jamming and back down on the other side of the base were strong enough to punch through, so Mele could keep track of what was happening.

But her ability to control Riley from this distance was limited by the improvised command and control gear she was using as well as by Mele’s need to focus on her own assault force. She couldn’t hold back and watch everything. If they were going to break Scatha’s defenses, Mele knew she had to literally lead the way.

“Don’t get too deep into mortar range!” she sent to Riley. “You want to draw their fire but not get caught by it!”

Mele looked to her right and left, seeing her lines of volunteers spread out to each side, walking steadily forward, grasping their weapons, the sky overhead still too dark to make out their expressions. It was probably just as well that it was too dark for any of them to see her expression, Mele thought.

The satellite far overhead spotted activity around Scatha’s mortars, sending an alert to both Mele and Riley. She waited, tense, to see which way the mortars would fire. A moment later the shells started rising, aimed toward the south.

Riley should be ordering his small group, already dispersed, to run back to the south, the southwest, and the southeast, and toss out chaff packs behind them.

Hopefully, not too many of them would die while serving as a diversion.

“Pick it up!” Mele called, raising her gait to a slow jog. She grasped her pulse rifle with hands slick with sweat, imagining every gun in Scatha’s defenses aimed at her.

Scatha’s mortars fired again, this time aimed to the north, at Mele’s force. “Chaff and halt!” Mele ordered.

Her volunteers stumbled to a halt and threw backpacks off before the packs exploded into clouds of improvised chaff. The mortar rounds, aimed to hit where Mele’s advancing force should have been, couldn’t spot any targets inside the chaff clouds and fell short, the closest rounds tearing up the shrub only a few meters in front of Mele. She hit the command for her own mortars to fire, scrambling to her feet. “Move it! Forward!”

Scatha had fired another volley, aimed at the long, low chaff cloud where Mele’s force had been lying. But she was leading them at a run forward, out of the impact area, hoping that Riley was advancing again to draw some fire and wondering just how damned long it would take her own mortar rounds to hit.

The area along the north side of Scatha’s defenses facing Mele’s advance vanished from sight in a flurry of air detonations of downward-firing fragmentation warheads, followed by a line of improvised chaff clouds bursting to cover the entrenchments and block their view of Mele’s force. She hit the command for the aircrews waiting back with the WinGs to reload the mortars with more chaff so they could automatically keep firing.

Another alert pulsed frantically. The second warbird was taking off.

Mele saw Scatha’s remaining warbird rising vertically above the chaff, then darting forward toward her lines, cannon fire already blazing toward her volunteers. “Launch air defense!” she shouted.

Gambling that the warbird, if it launched, would be at low altitude and with little warning time, and with some of her volunteers not equipped with other weapons, Mele had equipped them with something one of the engineers had dreamed up. Setting the bottom of portable mortar tubes against the ground, canted toward the warbird zooming at them, they triggered the tubes.

The warbird had automated countermeasures to defeat conventional weapons and skin designed to shrug off hits. It didn’t have anything to deal with the mad engineer’s design—shells that bloomed into widely spreading nets of woven thermite.

Most of the nets missed, but two partially draped themselves on the warbird as they were igniting. Once on fire, the bird couldn’t shake them as the strands of thermite ate their way through its skin and equipment underneath.

The warbird broke off its attack, rolling backward, but it didn’t complete the maneuver before parts of its front end and right wing began falling off. As the warbird staggered, the pilot punched out, flying backward and away as the chute rapid-deployed to try to fill before the pilot hit the ground somewhere inside the base. The bird itself rolled wildly, slid sideways, then vanished as it crashed behind the chaff.

“Keep moving!” Mele yelled.

The thermite nets that had fallen to the ground ahead were burning out rapidly, but Scatha’s troops were firing now, blindly through the chaff, but they had automatic weapons in entrenchments and could put out a lot of fire. Mele saw some of her volunteers fall, others going to ground in fear, as energy pulses thundered past and slugs snapped by their ears.

The entrenchments weren’t that far ahead, but Mele realized she was the only one still charging. Cursing, she dropped as well, the enemy fire ripping by just overhead. Her mortars were firing more chaff, the aircrews reloading as long as they had chaff rounds left. That kept Scatha from targeting Mele and her volunteers, but the volume of unguided fire was heavy enough to make charging farther forward nearly suicidal.

And sooner or later, the supply of chaff rounds would run out, and Scatha’s defenders would no longer have trouble spotting the attackers out in the open.

“What are we going to do?” Drake Porter asked Rob Geary.

“We’re going to win!” Rob replied, almost yelling. “We’re still able to fight, and we’ll keep fighting even if all we can do is throw rocks at them!”

“We might as well throw the lifeboat at them,” Danielle Martel muttered.

He almost told her to shut up, then paused as her words hung in his mind. “Throw rocks at them.” “Might as well throw the lifeboat.”

“Sergeant Duncan!” Rob called back. “How does the fuel look?”

“The fuel?”

“In the lifeboat. Is its propulsion still charged?”

“Uh, it looks okay, sir,” Grant Duncan replied. “Propulsion reads functional, but maneuvering systems show completely out.”

“Can the lifeboat still be launched?” Rob demanded, one eye on the curving tracks of Squall, the destroyer, and the freighter as they carved separate paths through space.

“I don’t know, sir. You need a sailor down here to check on that.”

Rob turned. “Drake, get down to the escape pod. It’s damaged, but I need to know if it can still be launched, and if we can vector the launch. There should be a limited ability to vector the launch to optimize escape chances. Do you know how to read that?”

Drake shook his head.

“I can read that,” Danielle said. “Are you planning what I think you are?”

“Maybe,” Rob said. “If we can launch that lifeboat.”

“I’ll find out and get back here as soon as I can. Request permission—”

“Get going!”

“What’s going on?” Drake demanded, as Danielle ran aft. “The lifeboat’s gone? Useless?”

“No,” Rob said. “It may not be useless.”

“But if it’s been destroyed… we can’t… we have to…”

Rob turned to look at everyone on the bridge, seeing the fear springing to life in them. “We have to what?”

“If it’s hopeless, you know we can’t—” Drake began.

“I’ll tell you what I know!” Rob said, hitting the button on his seat to broadcast his words through the entire ship, because he knew reports of the damage would be spreading and fear spreading along with it. “This warship, Squall, is the first and only defense our home has against Scatha’s ships! If we fail, our homes are left exposed and defenseless against the sort of thing done to Lares. You saw those images from Lares! You saw what ruthless people will do! Do you want that to happen to our home? To the families some of you have there?

“Yes, this is a tough situation. Yes, we may die in this fight. You all knew that when we started out. That leaves one question for everyone to answer. How do you want to be remembered? As the ones who gave up and consigned their world and their homes and their families to the domination of Scatha? As the ones who gave up and had to watch as Scatha bombarded their homes to make way for more settlers from their star? Or as the ones who kept fighting, who gave their all if necessary, to save something much more important than themselves? Do you want to be remembered as the ones who never gave up and saved their world?”

He paused, waiting, dreading the answer, but they looked back at him, and he saw the answer in them, and it was what he hoped for and perhaps even a little more.

“We won’t give up,” Drake Porter said. “Not as long as there’s any chance at all.”

“There is a chance,” Rob said as Danielle Martel dashed back onto the bridge.

“We can do it,” she said, out of breath. “If we come in at the destroyer from the proper angle, we can kick out the lifeboat on an intercept with them. I should be able to link the launch to the fire control system so that we launch the lifeboat at almost the same moment as our weapons fire.”

“Won’t it be an easy target?” Drake Porter asked.

“Very easy,” Rob said. “That’s the whole point. We can’t use the lifeboat to escape Squall, but we can use it to hit that destroyer, and it’ll be accelerating on its launch cycle when it hits.”

Danielle Martel strapped back in at the operations station. “When we throw the lifeboat at them, their combat systems are going to have to target it,” she added. “They’ll probably blow it to pieces, but they won’t be able to take out all the pieces. Some of them will be big pieces. When the pieces of the lifeboat hit the destroyer’s shields, they will knock them down, which will give us a chance to hit their weapons while they’re busy engaging the lifeboat.”

“And if we take out the destroyer’s weapons,” Rob said, “then we can beat it to hell at our leisure.” He adjusted Squall’s course, bringing her around to aim for intercept with the destroyer, which was already coming for Squall, intent on a kill. “Target the destroyer’s particle cannons and grapeshot launchers. This will be our only chance, everyone. Give it all you’ve got.”

“Fifteen minutes until we meet the destroyer again,” Danielle Martel reported.

A tone told Rob that someone was calling on a private circuit. He donned the ear set.

“Did you run the calculations on this?” Danielle Martel’s voice asked in his ear.

“No,” Rob said.

“I tried running them. The systems can’t give an estimate. Too many uncertainties.”

“I’m doing this on my gut,” Rob told her.

“It’s the best chance we’ve got. And it ought to work. If it doesn’t, we were screwed anyway.”

“That’s what I thought,” Rob said. “Might as well take the chance.”

He looked over at where she sat at the operations station. She met his eyes and nodded as her voice murmured in his ear set. “Might as well. I told you that you never would have made it in Earth Fleet. I’m glad I had the chance to sail with you.”

“Tell me when we get back to Glenlyon,” Rob said.

“Yeah. Sure.”

He removed the ear set and watched his display.

“Recommend coming right zero one point two degrees to optimize angle of intercept,” Danielle Martel said.

“Come right zero one point two degrees,” Rob ordered.

“The lifeboat launch is programmed and linked to the fire control system.”

“Thank you, Ensign Martel.”

The repeated changes of vector and alterations of speed to intercept each other again quickly had slowed both warships. They rushed together now at a combined velocity of only point zero two light speed. For the fire control systems on the Squall and Scatha’s destroyer, the targets might as well have been standing still.

As the ships raced past each other, Squall jolted from the launch of the lifeboat and the firing of her weapons, the shock of enemy hits striking coming at almost the same instant.

As Squall swept up and away, Rob stared at his display as red markers appeared all along it to mark damage to his own ship. He tabbed the command to replay in very slow motion the encounter that had just occurred.

The lifeboat had roared out of the escape bay just prior to meeting the destroyer. Rob watched the destroyer’s weapons ignoring the lifeboat, slamming shots into Squall, until the last moment, when a hail of grapeshot aimed at Squall tore the lifeboat apart just before it impacted the destroyer’s shields.

The pieces of the lifeboat crashed into the enemy shields, their mass given tremendous additional energy by the velocity of the impacts. The destroyer’s screens completely collapsed under the blows, letting through a destructive rain of fragments from the wreck of the lifeboat as well as the fire from Squall’s weapons. The hits pelted the lightly armored destroyer down two-thirds of its length, tearing through the equipment, systems, and crew members unfortunate enough to be under that barrage.

“We beat the hell out of it!” Drake Porter whooped in triumph.

“His weapons avoided targeting the lifeboat,” Danielle Martel said in disbelief, followed by growing understanding. “Lieutenant, his fire control systems were set to defaults! And the defaults don’t allow shots at lifeboats!”

“We cheated, I guess,” Rob said. But his sense of elation died as he stared at the red damage markers covering his display. “How badly off is Squall?”

“We can still maneuver,” Danielle Martel reported. “But the grapeshot launcher is out. Looks like everyone on that weapons crew was killed.”

“Lieutenant!” The call from engineering held overtones of panic. “We got trouble!”

“Give me a report!” Rob demanded.

“Those last hits, we took damage in here, and they destabilized the core. We can’t hold it!”

Rob kept his eyes locked on his display, where new information was coming in. Scatha’s destroyer was out of action. They had accomplished that much. And the freighter was heading back toward the jump point for all he was worth. But it didn’t look like Squall would be chasing him. “Engineering, execute emergency shutdown of the power core.”

“Emergency shutdown is not an option! The stabilizing routines have flatlined. The core will not shut down.”

“What can you do?” Rob asked.

“What can I do? I can keep it from blowing up for a little while. That’s what I can do.”

“How long do we have?” Rob wasn’t sure why he was asking. Why did it matter? With the lifeboat gone, there was no place to flee. No possible refuge out here far from the planet. Scatha’s freighter was fleeing, and the enemy destroyer was drifting with no maneuvering control—

The enemy destroyer.

“I don’t know!” the engineer repeated. “I don’t know how long I can hold it!”

Rob checked the projected course of the Squall. “Danielle, can we manage another intercept of the destroyer? Coming to a dead stop relative to it?”

“What? Um… wait.” She ran the data hastily. “Yes, sir. We should be able to do it. Twenty-five minutes to dead stop relative to the destroyer.”

“Engineering? Can you hold the power core for another twenty-five minutes?”

“Twenty-five? I don’t know. Why twenty-five?”

“Because if you can hold it for twenty-five minutes, we’ve still got a chance to get out of this alive! Keep that core from blowing for another twenty-five minutes, do you hear me?” Rob hit the circuit to talk to the entire ship again. “All hands, we are coming back around toward the enemy destroyer. It has been crippled, but our own power core is going unstable. Engineering says they cannot stabilize it and it will blow soon. Our only chance is to board and capture Scatha’s destroyer. The boarding team will include the entire crew of the Squall. Everyone goes. Draw available weapons, anyone whose survival suit is not yet sealed get it done, and everyone but engineering proceed to the air locks on the, uh, port side.”

Rob paused to rub his face. “Ensign Martel, make sure the intercept with the destroyer is locked in and proceed to an air lock. All the rest of you, go now.”

“Lieutenant Geary,” Danielle Martel said. “Excuse me, Captain Geary. We don’t want Squall exploding next to the destroyer. I recommend we set the ship’s maneuvering controls to accelerate at full ten seconds after we enter the command from… Air Lock One.”

He looked at her, unexpectedly moved by her use of the title of captain for him. Such a small thing in the big scheme of things, with death looming, but the gesture of respect meant a tremendous amount to him at that moment. “I agree. Set the controls to accelerate after the command is entered at Air Lock One. Will that give Squall enough time to accelerate so we’re out of the destructive blast radius before she blows?”

“I don’t know,” Danielle Martel said. “Squall might blow up before we even reach the destroyer.”

“Good point. Get the commands entered, then get to the air lock. I’ll join you.”

Thrusters fired to swing Squall around, the main propulsion lighting off to slow her as well, her path through space altering into a steeply descending curve that swerved into a flat arc next to the stricken enemy destroyer. He remembered a Marine who referred to a combat drop as a roller coaster to hell. This felt like that.

“Done,” Danielle Martel reported. “Are you coming?”

“In a second. Get to the air lock,” Rob ordered. “All hands! Everyone except those in engineering necessary to manage the power core should be at port air locks by now! If you’re not there, get there!”

For a moment, he was alone on the bridge. Rob sat in the command seat, his display a flickering sea of damage warnings, feeling Squall trembling as her main propulsion fought to reduce her velocity. It was as if the stricken ship were shaking with fear as she felt the end approaching but still fighting to give her crew a chance, and he felt a strange reluctance to leave her. Squall had not been the biggest or greatest ship ever built, but she had been his, and she had fought as bravely as any man or woman could have.

But his crew was waiting for him to lead them. For him to help them gain their last chance at life. And if he fought hard enough, if a miracle happened, he might still make it back to Ninja and a child he would otherwise never see.

Rob checked to ensure his sidearm, the same one taken from the former captain of the Squall, was holstered on his hip. He sealed his survival suit as he walked off the bridge, then ran, heading for Air Lock One, hoping the power core would hold together until Squall reached the enemy destroyer. At any moment the engineers’ desperate efforts could fail, and Squall would blow up before her surviving crew could even launch themselves at the destroyer. To some, Rob and his crew would already be considered dead. But they also still lived. He had never before really grasped the old paradox of Schrödinger’s cat, neither alive nor dead, something that wasn’t supposed to apply at the level of people and their interactions with the universe, but now he finally did. Unfortunately, that was because he was now in the position of that famous cat, waiting to learn whether death or life had been decided.

Rob Geary reached Air Lock One, where Danielle Martel and a cluster of other crew members waited. Like many other parts of the ship, this portion of Squall had been holed by damage and had lost air, so the inner air lock door was already open.

“Five more minutes,” Danielle Martel reported.

“Engineering!” Rob called. “How does it look?”

“Like it could blow any second! If it happens, you won’t know, because we’ll all be gone just like that.”

Rob switched circuits. “Air locks, report in. Is everybody ready?”

“Air Lock Three ready.”

“Air Lock Five ready. Lieutenant, we’ve got a couple of wounded in emergency evacuation bags. We’ll haul them along with us.”

“Good,” Rob said, not wanting to know how many of the crew of Squall were already dead. “Sergeant, where are you and your people?”

“Air Lock Five, sir.”

“Good. We’re coming alongside the destroyer oriented to match him. Bow to bow, stern to stern. When you jump, you’ll be boarding closer to the destroyer’s stern. We need to take the engineering section and ensure the power core is either shut down or operating safely.”

“Yes, sir. Is there any chance the destroyer’s crew will try to blow the power core themselves?”

“What?” It took Rob a few moments to understand the question. “You mean deliberately overload the power core and destroy their own ship along with us? No, Sergeant. That’s crazy. No one would do that.”

“Understood, sir. See you on the destroyer after we’ve wrapped things up.”

Sergeant Grant Duncan’s calm demeanor partially reassured Rob, who turned to Danielle Martel and clicked over to a private circuit. “What do you think our odds are?”

She shook her head. “It depends. Does the destroyer still have an outside sensor picture that will allow them to see us coming and prepare to defend against boarding? How many of their crew died during that firing run? And just how insanely lucky can we be?”

“So we’ve got a chance,” Rob said.

“Yes, Captain. We’ve got a chance.”

“You don’t have to call me captain.”

“Yes, sir, I do. You earned it.” She checked something on her wrist readout. “Two minutes. We should open the outer hatch so we’ll know the moment we can jump.”

With the Squall decelerating fast, there was no sense in anyone’s sticking their head out of the outer hatch to look for the enemy destroyer ahead. It would just be another dot in the endless array of stars and other objects in space.

“Here we go,” Danielle Martel warned. “One minute.”

“Everyone stand by to jump,” Rob ordered. “Engineering? How does the power core look?”

“Bad. Really bad.” The engineer’s voice held so much fear that it seemed to carry the scent of sweat with it.

“How many of you are still back there?” Rob asked.

“Just me.” The engineer paused. “I don’t know how long it’ll hold when I head for the air lock.”

Rob stared in front of him, weighing what to do. Did he sacrifice the engineer to try to give the rest of the crew a better chance? Or did he keep faith with someone who had stayed behind to help his shipmates? “I need a plain and straight answer. Once you leave the core, how long until it blows? Give me a number.”

“Within five minutes. That’s just a wild guess, but it’s the best I got!”

Rob made up his mind. “Leave now and get to the nearest air lock! You’ve got forty seconds!”

“On my way!”

“We’re here!” Danielle Martel called.

Rob looked out of the air lock and saw the barracuda shape of the destroyer suddenly only twenty meters away. Squall had exactly matched vectors with Scatha’s stricken warship, so that for these few seconds the two ships seemed to be drifting next to each other as if they had been parked in adjacent stalls.

“Boarding party away!” Rob ordered, restraining Danielle from jumping with an extended arm. “All hands jump! Ensign Martel, watch for the last engineer to jump from Air Lock Five, hit the command for Squall to get out of here, then follow.”

“He’d better jump real soon!” Danielle warned.

Mele Darcy ducked as another wave of fire tore through the thinning chaff shrouding Scatha’s entrenchments and the air over her force. Riley had managed to get a signal through that he was trying to push an attack to divert some of the defenders, but she had heard nothing since from him. And there were still entirely too many defenders in front of her, with too many weapons.

She heard a scream to her left and knew another one of her volunteers had been hit.

There wasn’t any cover out here. The volunteers hugged the scrub-covered soil and turned desperate looks her way.

She couldn’t decide what to do. Holding position seemed hopeless, but trying to retreat would result in many more losses as her volunteers had to raise themselves in order to run. But if she gave up—

“Major Darcy.” No image accompanied the voice as the improvised comm link fought to get any signal through. The comm link slid up and down in volume, interspersed by spurts of static as Scatha’s electronic countermeasures tried to jam the signals.

“Here,” Mele growled, angry at the call.

“Request status.”

Mele barely resisted the urge to reply with an obscenity. “Unchanged.”

“Do you think you still have a chance to take the base?”

She shook her head at the question. “Maybe.”

“You have to take the base, Major. It is our only remaining option.”

“What does that mean?” Mele demanded.

“We have been watching the engagement in space. Scatha’s warship may have been badly damaged but… our ship blew up.”

Mele stared toward the enemy positions facing her, only barely aware of the shots flying past just overhead. “Say that again. What happened to Squall?”

“The ship… Squall… blew up. An hour ago. We haven’t been able to spot the lifeboat. The Squall blew up. The… entire crew… must have died.”

Damn. So Grant was gone. The entire crew. And Lieutenant Rob Geary. Mele wondered who would tell Ninja the bad news. She’d have to do it. That was her job now. Honoring her promise to Rob Geary because Rob Geary was certainly dead.

Mele didn’t remember scrambling to her feet, didn’t remember shouting to her volunteers to follow her, but she was moving forward, charging toward the emplacements where weapons were hurling shots past her, the unaimed fire through the thinning chaff rattling her ears as it tore past, one energy pulse scorching the light armor on her left upper arm, a slug hitting her upper body armor and ricocheting upward, the force of the blow breaking something inside her, but she didn’t really notice because Mele was pulling out a grenade and hurling it at a heavy weapons bunker, the grenade going through the firing slit and secondary explosions tearing through the bunker, and suddenly there was a low duracrete barrier before her and soldiers huddled behind it firing into the murk and, shocked, trying to shift aim as Mele appeared; but she was firing, and two soldiers fell to her left, then twisting as she fell prone Mele fired again to her right to kill a third nearby soldier as other defenders’ shots tore by over her.

She jumped up again as the enemy fire faltered, ignoring the pain in her collarbone and a sudden pain in her hip, charging down the entrenchment, killing one more, two more, then someone in battle armor ahead was gesturing like a commander so Mele fired two rounds at close range into the faceplate and that soldier fell, too.

Her finger froze on the trigger as one of her volunteers tumbled into the entrenchment and looked around for enemies. More volunteers were appearing, racing past the entrenchment and into the base, firing at individual Scatha soldiers who were dropping their weapons and either running or spreading their open hands in surrender. Mele pivoted slowly, looking around. Where she had first entered the entrenchment, members of her own force were streaming in, taking prisoners and pursuing those defenders still fleeing.

“Enough!” A Scatha soldier’s voice cracked as he stumbled toward Mele, his weapons gone and his faceplate open, his eyes wide and dark with dread. “Enough! We are done! No more!”

“Surrender the entire base,” Mele said, her voice sounding oddly inhuman and metallic to her. “The entire garrison. Now.”

“It is done! I have broadcast the order! No more!”

They had won.

Shouldn’t she feel happy about that? Mele abruptly leaned on the edge of the entrenchment as her hip gave way. She looked down at blood running down the outer edge of her leg. “Damn.” She wondered why she didn’t feel any pain there, why she couldn’t feel any emotions even while her own forces cheered as they went about taking control of Scatha’s base.

Rob lined himself up in the air lock and jumped for the destroyer. For a short time, there were no decisions to make, no orders to give as he flew between ships. His thoughts raced. The captain was supposed to be the last to leave the ship. But this wasn’t an evacuation, an abandon ship. It was an attack, and he needed to be part of that attack, not bring up the rear. Of course, he’d probably be dead in one way or another in a few minutes anyway, and no one would ever know. All they would know was that he had gone down fighting.

He hoped Ninja would understand.

The destroyer was near when Rob twisted to look back at the Squall, looming close like a ticking time bomb. There was a wave of figures in survival suits roughly even with Rob, and two more who had just jumped from Squall, one from Air Lock One forward and one from Air Lock Five aft.

He twisted back around, seeing the fast-approaching side of the destroyer suddenly lit by the flare from Squall’s main propulsion as the warship accelerated away from her fleeing crew and the enemy destroyer that was their last remaining chance.

Rob experienced that odd disorienting feeling that he was falling onto the destroyer right in front of him, then he hit hard enough to drive the breath from him. He had remembered to keep his open hands extended so the gecko gloves on them would grip the enemy hull and keep him from being hurled back into space by the rebound. Rob held there for a second, the sound of his breathing harsh in his ears.

Two members of Squall’s crew had landed nearby, one carrying a heavy-duty portable cutting torch. As the other sailor steadied the one with the torch, it flared to life and swiftly cut an access through the destroyer’s lightly armored hull.

Rob was about to pull himself inside when light flared again, this time much brighter, as if a tiny sun had sprung to life somewhere ahead of the destroyer.

Squall was gone. But she had held together long enough to give her crew a chance.

Rob drew his sidearm and swung inside, staring around the interior of the destroyer. Vibrations rolled through the ship from somewhere aft. Sergeant Duncan must have gotten inside back there.

Figures in survival suits appeared, coming fast from forward, all of them carrying hand weapons. Rob, the best armed in his group, stood sideways to them, leveled his pistol, and began firing as if on a range, trying not to think about what he was doing.

Caught by surprise, two of the defenders fell from Rob’s shots before the others tried to return fire. He kept shooting, drawing their fire, while the rest of his group charged into the defenders. He felt the destroyer lurch, heard more vibrations transmitted through the hull, and knew the shock wave from Squall’s death throes had reached the destroyer.

The impact of a hit knocked Rob back, leaving him dazed. He got to his feet, staring at the red warning symbol on the limited display of his survival suit. Danielle Martel had joined his group and slapped duct tape over the hole in his suit. “Important damage control tool,” she said to Rob. “Can you keep going?”

“I don’t… I… yes.” Rob shook his head, gathered his wits, and followed Danielle into the welter of figures struggling in the passageway ahead.

The defending crew of the destroyer had already been rattled by the massive damage done to their ship and had suffered serious losses. The attacking crew of the Squall were driven by desperation that gave them a ferocity the crew from Scatha’s ship couldn’t match. Rob shot another defender, then a fourth, as his crew killed several more. One of Rob’s remaining crew died in the struggle before the defenders fled.

“Stay on them!” Danielle Martel yelled. “Don’t let them recover and regroup!” She led the attack, racing ahead with most of the other boarders behind her, one of the others staying to help Rob keep moving.

As Danielle ran past a hatch it swung open, giving her enough time to realize the danger but not enough to turn or dodge. A shot hit her and knocked Danielle across the passageway.

The crew member of the destroyer who had shot Danielle made the mistake of jumping out, not realizing she had been a little in advance of more attackers. Before he could fire again, one of Rob’s crew had triggered the torch and burned a hole through the defender’s survival suit and completely through the chest of the defender.

Someone stopped to help Danielle Martel. Drake, Rob thought, and despite the urgency of the attack did not order him to leave her.

“Keep going!” he ordered the others. “Keep heading forward!”

There had been ten or twelve of the boarding party with Rob when they started out. He thought there might be only a few left with him by the time they reached the bridge of the destroyer. Darkness split by beams of radiance from emergency lights filled the passageway outside the bridge. A hole in the overhead matched another hole in the bulkhead near the deck where a piece of something, probably the lifeboat, had torn through the destroyer. Rob attempted to catch his breath as he tried to recover from the run. He felt weaker than he should have and became aware that something wet was spreading inside his suit from the place where the shot had struck him.

The hatch was sealed. Rob, his thoughts wandering, wondered if Ninja could help them through again. No. She was back on the planet. A light hour away. “Torch! Get through to the bridge. You, are you one of Sergeant Duncan’s? Have you got a grenade left?”

The torch made very short work of cutting out a piece of bulkhead. As it fell free to access the bridge, the soldier tossed in a grenade.

They went through in the wake of the grenade’s explosion, finding a mess of battered equipment and injured defenders. Two more defenders died before the bridge crew surrendered.

Rob was helped into the captain’s seat, once more trying to breathe as he wondered why his chest felt so tight and his thoughts were so hard to focus. Someone was talking to him.

“Lieutenant? We’ve captured engineering. We think there are still a few of the destroyer’s crew out there, but the ones who are left all seem to be surrendering.”

He had trouble focusing on the woman who had brought the report. “Where’s Sergeant Duncan? Have you heard from him?”

“He’s… he’s dead. But we have the ship. We control this destroyer.”

Damn. Rob tried to concentrate. What did he need to do? “I need a comm circuit. We need to let Glenlyon know that we took this ship and they are safe.”

Someone offered him a link. Voice only, but that was fine. “Glenlyon, this is… Lieutenant… Geary. Our ship… Squall… was lost but… we have, uh, captured the enemy destroyer. The… destroyer is crippled, but we… should be able to survive until… rescue can reach us. Get another… another ship here. To take us in tow.” Just saying “out” felt wrong. Disrespectful. Shouldn’t he say something else? Something to mark what his crew had done? There was a phrase he had heard recently. Maybe something like that would do. “My crew fought in a manner… that honored their ancestors… honored their ancestors,” he repeated, feeling increasingly dizzy. “Geary, out.”

“Sir? Lieutenant? He’s in bad shape! Didn’t you guys notice the hole in his suit? Get that medic we captured up here!”

Rob wasn’t sure what the voices were saying, and he was too tired to care any longer. He felt a darkness deeper than space filling him and finally gave in to it.

Mele sat on top of a bunker, watching with a dull lack of interest as her volunteers searched the Scathan soldiers who had been taken prisoner, ensuring none had any weapons hidden. Scatha had lost a dozen more soldiers in the attack, meaning the original hundred were down to close to fifty. They stared at her through the open faceplates of their battle armor like men and women who were watching a dragon that had devoured their friends.

“Major,” Riley said. His ready smile wasn’t there anymore, replaced by a grim seriousness. “It looks like we have ten killed and a dozen wounded. I’ll have to pull another muster to be sure.”

“Thanks. I appreciate it,” Mele said. “That’s… better than I expected. You did a great job.”

Riley looked puzzled and on the verge of crying. “Tina and Rolf died.”

They had been in his diversion force, Mele remembered. “You did your best,” she told him.

“It hurts,” he said, sounding like a confused child.

“It’s going to hurt,” she said. “It won’t stop hurting ever. But you can live with it. We both can. We’ll both have to.”

“Yes.” He straightened and saluted her.

She remembered how absurdly proud Riley had been of learning how to salute properly. Mele, grimacing from the pain of her hip wound and moving awkwardly from the field bandage on it, came to her feet, tried to return the salute with her right hand, grimaced again as her broken collarbone protested, and settled for rendering the best return salute she could with her left hand. “You did good,” she told Riley.

“Major? Major!” Mele looked toward her control pad as she heard the thin sound, and with a third grimace, this one of annoyance, reached for the headset. “Major!” Council President Chisholm, calling from Glenlyon, sounded elated.

“Yeah,” she said, feeling exhausted from the fight and the casualties sustained, and angry that anyone so far from the fight would feel entitled to celebrate the victory. “What is it?”

“We just heard from Lieutenant Geary on the enemy ship! The crew of the Squall captured the enemy destroyer before their own ship blew up!”

She blinked, thinking that she must have misheard. “They’re alive?”

“Most of them,” Chisholm said, her enthusiasm faltering a little. “I think. Some… died. But they captured the enemy warship and damaged the enemy freighter, and it is fleeing back to the jump point. We won in space as well as on the land! What a glorious day for the people of Glenlyon!”

“How the hell…” Mele looked upward, where a few clouds barely blocked the blue of the noon sky, trying to grasp the news. “Rob Geary is alive? His ship was about to blow up, so he captured the enemy ship?”

“Yes, Major, that is what we think happened.”

Mele started laughing. She couldn’t help it, gazing up at where the stars hid behind the sky of day. “He should have been a Marine.”

“What?”

“Lieutenant Geary. He’s crazier than I am. He should have been a Marine.” She took a deep breath. “Tell him I said that. And tell Ninja he made it.”

“Why would Ninja—?”

“Never mind. I can do it. Can you patch me into the city comm net?” That would have been impossible when Scatha’s forces were jamming signals, but now it should be easy to do.

“Uh, yes, Major, I’m told that can be done. Voice only. Congratulations again from the council and people of Glenlyon! Wait. All right. You can call.”

Mele tabbed the contact and waited until Ninja answered.

“I already heard,” Ninja said in a voice devoid of feeling. “I was listening in on the official comms.”

“No, you didn’t hear,” Mele said. “No, you heard wrong. That’s it. Your boy is okay, Ninja. He made it.”

“The ship—” Ninja began, her voice suddenly faint.

“Yeah, it blew up. But he captured the enemy ship before it did. I guess he wanted to get back here pretty badly, huh?”

“He… he…” Ninja couldn’t speak for a moment. “How about you?”

“I’m all right,” Mele said. “A little banged up. We won here, too. What kind of hacker are you that I have to tell you everything?”

“Mele Darcy, if you are lying to me—”

“It’s all true, Ninja.” Mele looked out across Scatha’s base at the ranks of surrendered soldiers. “I guess somebody likes us.”

“I guess,” Ninja said. “Excuse me… I have to go light a candle.”