Outpost Hell Read online

  “You’re probably right,” Chann said.

  They made it through three more bulkheads, sealing each behind them, before reaching the closest lift. Once inside, gravity kicked in for their brief ride, then kicked back off when they reached the bridge. A full velocity lift without gravity was not fun. At least the stopping and being thrown up against the ceiling part wasn’t fun, so each lift had its own grav generator that worked independently of the ship’s.

  But as soon as they stepped onto the bridge, the gravity disappeared, and Chann had to grab the back of the closest seat to keep from floating out of control.

  “Rosch?” he cried as he struggled to pull himself into the seat and strap in.

  His arm shot out as Kay began to drift by, but she swatted it away and gave him a look of disdain.

  “I got this, thanks,” Kay said.

  “Don’t get comfortable,” Rosch said as her hands flew across the ship’s controls. “You aren’t staying up here.”

  “Excuse me?” Chann asked. “Why the hell not?”

  Rosch ran her palm over a flashing light, and the bridge was drowned in the roaring, ear-splitting wail of an emergency klaxon.

  “Turn it off!” Kay yelled, her hands gripping a stability handle set into the bridge’s wall.

  The klaxon went dead with another swipe of Rosch’s hand, and the pilot took a precious second to glance over her shoulder at the two Marines.

  “Hull is breached,” Rosch said before turning her attention back to the constant stream of info coming at her from the control console. “Bulkheads are sealing, but most of the ship is about to be uninhabitable.”

  “That doesn’t explain why we have to leave the bridge,” Chann snapped.

  “Get to the drop ships,” Rosch said, hooking a thumb over her shoulder without looking back. “Suits are in the locker.”

  “What about Manheim and the rest?” Kay asked.

  She didn’t hesitate and was already moving towards the locker. She slid the door aside and pulled out an environment suit. Her battle armor was off and on the floor before Chann had a chance to get up from his seat.

  “Why are you taking your armor off?” Chann asked as he floated to the locker and grabbed out a second suit.

  “It’ll slow me down,” Kay said as she stepped into the enviro suit. “There’s more armor on the drop ships.”

  Kay pulled the suit up over her mostly naked body and slapped the seal patch. The suit conformed perfectly to her body, emitting a single chime when done. She reached back into the locker and snagged a pressure helmet.

  “Get your ass in that,” Kay said, nodding at the enviro suit in Chann’s hands. “We have to move.”

  Chann didn’t argue. He struggled to get out of his battle armor, the left leg refusing to disengage from his skin, but managed it finally as Rosch began a long litany of curse words.

  “What’s up?” Chann asked as Kay helped him into his enviro suit. It grated at him that he wasn’t as efficient as she was when getting suited up, but he let the irritation go. Kay was one of those Marines that had perfect control of her body; Chann just wasn’t. “Rosch?”

  “I can’t get Manheim,” Rosch said. “He’s not answering his comm.”

  Kay slid her helmet on and sealed the pressure ring around her collar. Chann did the same, watching the suit’s diagnostics stream by on the inside of the helmet’s faceplate.

  “We’ll find him,” Kay said. “You worry about the Romper, we’ll worry about everyone else.”

  “Once you’re out of here, I’m sealing off the bridge,” Rosch said. “Get to the drop ships ASAP. You don’t want to be floating in a corridor when I punch us through the wormhole.”

  “Not one of these backdoor ones,” Teffurg added. He hadn’t said a word the entire time they’d been on the bridge, and Chann had almost forgotten about him. “Unpredictable. Could splice you with the wall.”

  “The drop ships will give you stability and shielding in case the ship is ripped apart,” Rosch said.

  “Shit, is that possible?” Chann asked.

  “No, Chann, I said it to hear myself talk,” Rosch snarled.

  “Come on,” Kay said and slapped Chann on the shoulder. “We find Manheim and the others then get to the drop ships.”

  “Take one each,” Rosch said. “The more we have active, the better. May need you two to do some rescuing on the other side.”

  “Rescuing?” Chann replied. “Rosch, I can barely fly—”

  “Are you certified to pilot a drop ship?” Rosch asked.

  “All of us are,” Chann said. “But I haven’t had to—”

  “If you’re certified then you’ll be fine,” Rosch said. “The AI in each will keep you from blowing yourself, or any of us, up. Engage it the second you power up. It’s one of the simple programs, but it’ll talk you through everything or flat out take over if you get stuck. Careful, though. One of them’s been glitchy. Can’t remember which.”

  “What?” Chann exclaimed.

  “Come on!” Kay exclaimed. “Stop being a terpig!”

  “Good luck and Eight Million Gods speed,” Teffurg said as they stepped back into the lift.

  The door slid shut before Chann could respond.

  “We find Manheim first,” Kay said, more to herself than to Chann. “No one left behind.”

  The Romper rocked and shook. Chann put a hand out against the lift’s wall and frowned. It was hot. Hot enough that he could sense it through the enviro suit’s glove.

  “Kay, we’ve got bigger problems than a hull breach,” he said and brought up what ship diagnostics he could in his faceplate screen. “Shit. Power surges running all through the ship. We aren’t going to have time to find Manheim.”

  Kay whipped her head around and glared. Her eyes were fire and rage.

  “We don’t leave a Marine behind!” she snarled.

  Chann held up his hands. “Hey, I agree with you, but check your readings, for Eight Million Gods’ sake!”

  Kay hesitated then her eyes focused back and Chann could see she was scanning the readings on her own faceplate.

  “Shit,” she muttered.

  “We get to the drop ships then try to scan the ship for Manheim and the others,” Chann said. “We’ll do more good from there. If this bucket comes apart, then at least we can search the debris for survivors. They’ll know by now to get enviro suits on.”

  The comm crackled and garbled shouts could be heard for a second then it all went silent.

  “Fine,” Kay said as the lift stopped at the hangar level. “But we don’t abandon ship unless we absolutely have to.”

  “No shit, Kay,” Chann said. “You think I want to be stuck in this system in a drop ship with a squadron of Skrang fighters bearing down on me?”

  “No, no,” Kay said, shaking her head.

  They left the lift and moved as fast as their mag boots would let them, each heading to one of the four drop ships secured in the hangar.

  3

  Chann was not comfortable in a pilot’s seat.

  Certified? Sure. Confident? Hell no.

  Put an H16 in his hands, some plasma grenades on his belt, a Kepler knife stashed in his boot, and he was comfortable as a hibernating gump. Flying a drop ship was the opposite of that for him.

  Needless to say, he was almost joyful when he heard the banging on the outside of the drop ship as he began the startup procedure. At first, he thought the ship was coming apart, but the banging was too rhythmic for it to be a mechanical malfunction.

  Chann bolted from the pilot’s seat and hurried through the drop ship down to the main airlock. He slammed a fist against the controls and the door whooshed open, revealing a less than pleased Ma’ha on the other side.

  “About damn time you opened up,” Ma’ha said as he stepped inside the airlock and sealed the door behind him. “What took you so long?”

  “I was on the bridge,” Chann said. “Getting the ship ready.”

  Ma’ha laughed and pa
tted Chann on the shoulder as he pushed past him and headed for the ladder at the end of the corridor. “We’re lucky you didn’t blow us all to Hell.”

  “I’m not that bad of a pilot,” Chann said, following close behind Ma’ha as they made their way to the bridge. “I have just as many logged flight hours as you do.”

  “Yeah, but my hours actually counted,” Ma’ha said.

  “Mine counted!” Chann snapped.

  “Crying for your mother the whole time doesn’t count,” Ma’ha said.

  “Kiss my human ass,” Chann said.

  “If we live through this, then I will,” Ma’ha said as the bridge’s airlock door slid open.

  Ma’ha took the pilot’s seat and Chann was about to argue then shut his mouth with an audible snap. He had no idea why he wanted to argue. He hadn’t wanted to pilot the damn thing anyway.

  “You hear from the others?” Ma’ha asked as he flew through the startup procedure then pointed at the co-pilot’s seat. “Sit down before you fall down, Chann.”

  “There’s no grav,” Chann said as he took his seat and strapped in. “I can’t fall down.”

  “You’d find a way,” Ma’ha said. He glanced over at Chann and laughed. “Chill, man. I’m only giving you shit. I’d gladly have you on my six in a firefight. That’s where you shine.”

  Chann grumbled a bit. “Kay is in DS3. I haven’t heard from Manheim or Nord. Maybe they got to DS1 or 4.”

  “Maybe,” Ma’ha said as the drop ship’s view screen came to life, showing both of them the flight hangar.

  It was obvious that Kay was in the DS3. Running lights had come on and puffs of exhaust emitted from the thruster ports as she put the ship through its checklist. The other two drop ships were completely dark.

  “Comm is still out,” Chann said as he worked through all of the squad’s internal channels. “I could try an open signal.”

  “No,” Ma’ha said. “The less intel we give the Skrang about us the better. You make it to the bridge before Rosch locked it down?”

  “That’s why I’m here,” Chann said.

  “And?” Ma’ha asked.

  “Not looking good,” Chann replied. “She doesn’t know if the Romper will make it through trans-space. The whole thing could come apart the second we punch through the portal.”

  “A damaged transport in an unstable, backdoor wormhole?” Ma’ha grunted. “We’ll be lucky if our molecules aren’t torn down to the subatomic level and scattered across space and time.”

  Chann was about to respond, but stopped as he saw movement by the lift doors. One of the flight crew had made it back to the hangar and was sprinting towards an empty drop ship when the world exploded around him. He was gone in a tornado of shredded metal and brief flame.

  “Shit,” Chann said as he and Ma’ha stared at the gaping hole in the floor of the hangar.

  The crewmember was lost to open space, as was DS1. The drop ship was sucked out of the hangar as if it was a piece of lint and not a vehicle that weighed several metric tons.

  “We’re clamped down,” Ma’ha said. “We’re not going anywhere.”

  Chann scanned DS3 and saw that Kay had clamped that ship down as well. As long as the hangar floor where the ships sat stayed attached to the Romper then they wouldn’t be going anywhere. Chann wasn’t too confident about the hangar floor’s chances.

  The comm crackled and Kay’s voice boomed in Chann’s ear.

  “Turn it down!” Chann shouted.

  “Sorry, sorry,” Kay said. “I hacked the AI and it got the ship-to-ship comms up. We can talk to each other, but no one else. Engage your AI and it’ll strengthen the signal.”

  Chann looked over at Ma’ha as the Gwreq shook his head.

  “No,” Ma’ha said. “I’m not turning on the bot until I absolutely have to. Not a fan of AIs. Those things follow the rules too much.”

  “Rosch said to engage the AI and let it handle the heavy lifting,” Chann said. “I’d listen to her.”

  “The DS AIs are basic,” Kay said. “They don’t have even close to the complexity of the Romper’s AI. It’s not going to try to take over your brain, Ma’ha.”

  “You say that now,” Ma’ha replied.

  He waved his hand over the control console and a female voice said, “Thank you, Private Ma’ha. I assure you that I cannot override life form control of the drop ship. Your comfort and security are my number one priorities.”

  “Whatever,” Ma’ha grumbled.

  “AI? What’s the status of the Romper?” Chann asked. “How close are we to the wormhole portal?”

  “Calling it a wormhole portal is being very generous,” the AI responded. “An accurate description is a fairly stable tear in space that has been exploited by pirates, smugglers, and criminals for the past six centuries.”

  “Fairly stable?” Ma’ha asked. “Give me numbers.”

  “Eighty-five percent stable,” the AI replied. “That is well within the parameters for emergency trans-space travel.”

  “My AI is saying the same,” Kay said. “It’s not like we have a choice.”

  “We are engaging the portal in three, two, one, now,” the AI said.

  “What?” Chann and Ma’ha exclaimed as the view of space through the hangar’s floor became a streaked blur of stars then pure blackness.

  ***

  Traveling through trans-space was an exercise in self-denial. Denial that one literally no longer existed on any plane and denial that that feeling of complete and total dread that had taken root in the pit of the stomach wasn’t gas or something. Chann was well-versed in the act of denying both.

  “You should relax,” Ma’ha said.

  “I should?” Chann laughed. “Look at you. You’re one exhale away from being a statue.”

  “That a stone joke?” Ma’ha asked.

  “A lame one,” Chann said. “But, yeah.”

  “I’m the pilot,” Ma’ha said. “I don’t get to relax. You, on the other hand, are not the pilot, so you should ease back and grab some shut eye while you can.”

  “You’re not the pilot,” Chann said. “Rosch is. We’re sitting in a DS in a half-destroyed hangar, neither of us able to do a damn thing. Either we both get to be wound tight or we both have to relax. You feel like relaxing?”

  “Not with the AI active,” Ma’ha said.

  “What is it with you and AIs?” Chann asked. “Half the Marines we know would be dead if it wasn’t for AI assistance.”

  “I can think of a few that would be alive for the same reason,” Ma’ha said. He cleared his throat, making a sound like boulders being ground into gravel. “I ever tell you I was a full corporal?”

  “You what? No,” Chan said. He tore his gaze away from the whirling motion of trans-space that showed through the hole in the hangar floor. Ma’ha’s face was a rigid mask behind his helmet’s faceplate. “When?”

  “Four tours ago,” Ma’ha said. “I was due to be promoted to sergeant, but things went south on a routine op and I took the fall. Wasn’t my fault. Not even close. The AI screwed it all up. But when the techs went back through the logs, everything had been changed. Changed to make it look like I had botched the clearing of a B’clo’no hole.”

  “Changed? What does that mean?” Chann asked.

  “I’d asked the AI to scan the holes before we landed in the drop ship,” Ma’ha said. “Readings came back clear.”

  “That happens,” Chann said.

  “I know it does,” Ma’ha responded. “So I asked the AI to scan again right as we landed. Clear. We were boots on the ground for three seconds before the thing came screaming up at us. Three of us made it out alive. Three. The AI not only got it wrong, but I never even had a chance for visual confirmation on my end.”

  “That happens too,” Chann said. “I’ve been there, man. How’d that get you knocked down?”

  “I told you,” Ma’ha said. “The logs were changed. There was no record of me ever giving the orders for two scans. Not even on
e scan was on there.”

  “You’re saying the AI did that?” Chan asked. “Ma’ha, AIs can’t overwrite logs like that. Not on their own. Someone had it out for you. They ordered the changes.”

  “That’s what I thought at first,” Ma’ha said. “Destroyed a few friendships over it. Enough that when the truth came out, there was no being reinstated at my former rank.”

  “The truth?” Chann asked.

  “Another squad of Marines was killed a few months later,” Ma’ha said. “Almost exact same situation. No one made it that time. No one to blame. With no one alive to blame, they had to dig deeper to find answers.”

  “What did they find?” Chann asked.

  “Skrang,” Ma’ha said. “They hacked six squads worth of drop ships, twenty in all, and reprogrammed the AIs to frame as many Marines as possible when ops went bad. It took out most of the survivors of those bad ops. Some were knocked down like me, some were dishonorably discharged.” He grunted, his stone eyes narrowing at the memory. “Some faced courts martial. Two were hanged.”

  “Bloody hell,” Chann said. “Even after they found out, you weren’t promoted again?”

  “I’m Gwreq,” Ma’ha said. “When I burn bridges, I burn them down completely. No one wanted to help me out and I don’t blame them one bit.”

  “I can assure you, Private Ma’ha, that I am not capable of—” the AI began.

  “Shut it,” Ma’ha snapped. “Keep it shut. And don’t eavesdrop. Stay deaf and dumb until you’re needed.”

  “Internal comms going offline,” the AI said.

  “Whoa! Can we still talk to Kay?” Chann asked. There was no answer. Chann tapped at the comms console. “Kay?”

  “Here,” Kay responded instantly. “What’s up?”

  “Just checking,” Chann said. “Ma’ha silenced our AI. I wanted to make sure it didn’t cut off all comms.”

  “No, we’re good,” Kay said. “Listen, I’ve been doing some scans of the Romper while I sit here all by myself. Things ain’t looking good, guys. If we don’t fall apart in trans-space, then we might when we come out of the next portal. The Romper is in bad shape.”