Jessica chuckled. “Pay up, Sera.”
“Only if we live,” the president retorted as Fortuna began to grow rapidly on the forward display. “So, Tangel, what are we going to do after we hit this thing?”
“Fly back out and circle around, looking for their—” Tangel braced as the ship hit its target and shuddered for a moment, and then continued, “command center.”
She checked the time jump and noted that ten seconds had passed while the ship had been in full stasis following its impact with Fortuna.
“Aw, shit,” Jessica muttered as she focused on her console. “Something’s wrong.”
Tangel nodded. “Yes. This crater was way deeper than the records showed.”
“No…well, yes. But I’m getting null readings from the rest of the ship. Crap. We’re losing power.”
“How can you tell how deep we are?” Sera asked Tanis.
“Magnetics. Based on Fortuna’s composition and the field strength from the circumstellar cloud, we have to be at least four kilometers deep. Could be further.” Tangel was about to ask Jessica if she’d been able to reconnect with the rest of the ship, but instead, she turned and let out a cry of dismay.
“What is it?” Sera asked.
“The ship…” Tangel whispered as she gestured at the bridge’s door. “Twenty meters past the bulkhead, the ship ends.”
“Shit!” Sera exclaimed. “Did the stasis field fail?”
“Found it,” Jessica said, glancing at Tanis and Sera. “One of the stasis generators failed, and the ship ended up with two separate bubbles…it cut us in half.”
Tanis pursed her lips, knowing that meant Brennen and his Marines could still be out there.
Or they could be smeared across Fortuna’s surface.
“I’m putting money on the Marines being OK,” Sera said, reaching over and placing a hand on Tangel’s shoulder. “ISF Marines are some of the toughest sons o’ bastards out there.”
“I guess we’re not flying out of here,” Jessica said as she rose from her station.
Tangel nodded soberly as she pulled of her harness and rose, taking care not to move too quickly in the minimal gravity. Once on her feet, she activated her armor’s maglocks.
Sera held out a hand, activating a holo display showing the surrounding area. “OK, so, there was a processing facility near the base of this pit, right?”
“Should be, yeah,” Tangel said, nodding slowly. “Judging by the mag fields we can read, it should be almost straight off our starboard side…maybe a kilometer or two through the rubble.”
“That’s a mite inconvenient,” Sera said as she rose to her feet. “So how do we get out?”
“You saw the reports on that hillside near Jersey City on Pyra, right?” Jessica asked with a wink as she gave Tangel the side-eye.
“Umm…no,” Sera shook her head. “Lotta hills out there. I don’t keep track of them all.”
“Well, you’re in luck,” Jessica chuckled. “We have the human auger.”
“What a lovely title,” Tangel said while walking to the bridge’s starboard bulkhead. “You two coming along?”
“You bet we are,” Jessica said as she set her helmet in place. <Gotta see the human auger at work.>
Tangel took additional readings of the circumstellar disk’s magnetic field, and adjusted for Fortuna’s own field and the ship’s interference, and came up with a direction for the processing facility.
<Should you put your helmet on, Tangel?> Jessica asked.
“Oh, yeah,” she said, trying to focus on what she had to do. “Actually, hold it for me.”
The woman took the helmet with a look of consternation on her face.
<OK, this one I’ve seen,> Sera said, chuckling softly over the audible comms. <Tangel don’t need no stinking EV gear to handle vacuum.>
“It’s easier to see without it,” Tangel replied, aware that once she started, they’d be in vacuum within seconds.
“I was focusing on big things far away,” Tangel explained. “This is little stuff real close. Now be quiet. Last time I did this, I almost consumed my body for fuel.”
<Please don’t do that, ma’am,> Jen said. <Bob would be pissed. We prefer you alive…and with a body.>
“Yeah, gonna make those things a priority,” Tangel replied. “OK, everyone back up, just in case I chew up part of the ship.”
Tangel barely noticed Sera and Jessica move far away as she examined the scree that was outside the ship, much of it still glowing from the impact of the starship coming to rest in its depths. It was mostly silica, much of it oxidized, with a variety of ferric deposits mixed in. She looked deeper, examining the atoms, how they were made, what held them together, testing the bonds of the forces that made the physical world a reality.
Here goes nothing….
Sliding her ‘other’ hands out into the material surrounding the Castrorum, she began to undo the bonds, freeing the energy within. Rather than let it run rampant, she funneled it into a brane that she wove before herself, drawing more and more raw power into it, the highly excited subatomic particles straining to be free, to find equalization with the rest of the universe.
When she didn’t think she could contain them anymore, she opened the far side of the brane, a blazing beam of energy screaming through the hull of the ship and boiling away the jumble of stone, melting and forming it to create a solid tunnel.
The beam continued on, and Tangel drew more and more energy from around herself, dissolving tons of the debris until she saw that, several kilometers distant, her beam of energy had broken into an open space.
Without a moment’s hesitation, she sealed the brane back up and transitioned the bulk of the energy out of the corporeal dimensions and down into the quantum foam—an action that served to equalize the substrate of local spacetime after the ship’s CriEn module had consumed vast amounts of energy to maintain the stasis field.
The action had taken only a minute, and though she’d used energy from around herself and not within, Tangel found that if it hadn’t been for the armor supporting her, she would have toppled over. The field she’d established around herself had begun to weaken. She gestured to Jessica.
<Helmet.>
A moment later, it was over her head, and fresh air began to flow.
<OK…so I need to pay more attention to field reports that come out of places you’ve been,> Sera said with a low whistle. <That was freakin’ amazing.>
Tangel nodded weakly. “And I didn’t pass out this time, so that’s a win. Last time, I had to take the Rika express afterward.”
<I definitely want to meet her,> Jessica said as she peered down the long, hotly glowing tunnel. <She seems like my kinda woman.>
<Sexy and purple?> Sera asked with a laugh.
Jessica shot Sera a dark look. <No, badass and…OK, fine. Cyborgs are just plain hot.>
Tangel laughed softly as she stepped out into the tunnel, surveying her handiwork. It was three meters in diameter and ran in a straight line to some empty volume in the distance.
<Whatever I punched into is in vacuum as well,> she said while concentrating on the tunnel’s walls, directing the energy to dissipate into the surrounding rock. <It’s cool enough that it won’t melt our armor as we go.>
<I’m going to take the lead,> Jessica said as she eased past Tangel, who nodded wearily.
<Of course.>
Jessica started off with a slow, loping gait, careful not to hit her head on the top of the tunnel. After a few long strides, she instead pushed off from the ground and used her armor’s a-grav systems to hold herself aloft in Fortuna’s meager gravity, while using thrusters to fly down the shaft.
Tangel followed after, with Sera behind. Jessica ranged further ahead, eventually appearing as little more than a speck in the distance.
<Good aim, Tangel,> she sent back after a few minu
tes. <You hit the old processing facility alright. Man…this place is a mess. I guess that’s what happens when you put massive engines on a planetoid, and ‘down’ changes directions.>
<Yeah,> Sera chuckled. <People on planets don’t usually design for that.>
Tangel pulled Jessica’s optical feeds and saw furnaces and massive crucibles, all dark and cold, many toppled over and laying against the far wall.
<Any visual on the way out?> Sera asked.
<The data we have on Fortuna pegs it as a klick to our left,> Jessica replied. <I can’t see it—sure hope nothing’s laying up against it.>
A minute later, Tangel and Sera reached the smelting facility and began moving through the dark chamber, relying on their lights and radar sweeps to see where they were going.
Debris lay everywhere around them, and with the engines being on their right, and the planetoid’s core below, the floor was a steep slope. They took great care in climbing over obstacles, worried about starting an avalanche, steadily making slow progress toward the exit.
It was hard to be certain with the mess everywhere, but the further they went, the more Tangel became certain that the facility had been active not long ago.
<We’re seventy kilometers from the engines, give or take a bit,> Tangel informed Sera, Jessica, and Jen, as they navigated the facility. <As we get closer, I might be able to suss out where their control center is.>
<No network activity down here at all,> Jen added. <Place is dead as a doornail.>
<I can see activity toward Fortuna’s…bow,> Tangel said. <They have additional power reactors up there from what I can tell. I bet they’ve set up a lot of defenses on the world itself.>
<Makes sense,> Sera replied. <I bet anyone on this rock is going to get the hell off before it hits Fiji. But they’d still want to make sure no ships try to push it off course at the last minute.>
<We’re almost out of the clouds,> Tangel said after a minute of silence. <I can see the Pacifica ships harrying Fortuna’s escort. Dammit…fall back, you idiots.>
Through the crust of the planetoid, she could see brilliant points of light flaring in the other dimensions, and knew they heralded the destruction of Pacifican ships.
<We need to double-time it,> Sera said. <The exit leads into a corridor that should terminate at a maglev platform. Though I can’t imagine it’s functional.>
<Some things are powered in this rock,> Tangel said. <More than I had expected at first. I wonder….>
<Yeah?> Jessica prompted.
<Well, what if the Sarentons—is that what they’re called?—built all of this stuff here? The engines, the ships, the whole thing. Maybe just smuggled in some components that they couldn’t make on-site.>
<I guess that would explain why those ships were pretty skeletal,> Jessica replied. <What little we could make out of them before we just became a glowing ball of destruction.>
<It does,> Tangel replied, losing herself in her thoughts on what would possess someone to go to these lengths to destroy an enemy capital world.
Though it wouldn’t be the first time she’d seen people utterly devote themselves to the destruction of others.
A few minutes later, they passed through an open airlock and walked down the wall of a narrow passage before arriving at the maglev platform, pleasantly surprised to see that it was active.
<Now we just need a train,> Jessica said.
<There’s a control panel there,> Jen said, highlighting a terminal on their HUDs. <If you—>
<I’m already in,> Tangel said, giving the AI a wink over the command net.
<You make an AI feel redundant,> Jen said with a mock pout.
<Well, I am an AI as well,> Tangel replied as she worked past the maglev system’s security, finding the track’s control system, pleasantly surprised to see several cars in active service.
<Ummm…> Jen let the sound go on for a bit. <I guess.>
<Thanks, Jen,> Tangel said with a caustic laugh. <OK, well, this not-human-not-AI has called a train, and hopefully faked out their control systems to believe it’s a normally scheduled stop.>
<I don’t think we need more labels for you, Tangel. You’ve enough already. Even without you merging and ascending, you’re pretty unique.>
Tangel snorted. <I’m pretty sure that ‘pretty unique’ is a curse in some cultures. Oh…shoot.>
<What?> Sera asked.
<The maglev was empty, but it just made a stop and picked up a bunch of people—soldiers, from the looks of it.>
<Think they’re coming here?> Jessica asked.
<Possible. I’ve not found their tactical network yet,> Tangel replied. <Get to the left side of the platform and activate stealth. I think the rear car’s empty.>
Sera and Jessica complied, each of the three women taking positions behind support columns, where they waited silently for the train to arrive at the station.
Five minutes later, three cars slowed to a stop, and the doors opened. A squad of soldiers emerged from the first car and spread out across the platform, clearly searching for intruders.
No one emerged from the rear car, and Tangel led the way aboard.
<Another squad still in the second car. What are they waiting for?> Sera asked.
<Maybe they’re backup?> Jessica suggested.
<That’s pretty stupid,> Sera retorted. <This train’s a freaking bullet magnet and they’re pinned inside of it.>
Jessica laughed. <Never said it was a good plan.>
The train sat for a minute, and Tangel considered taking control of it, but decided that a little more patience was in order—though she couldn’t stop worrying about Brennen and the Marines hurtling through space on or alongside Fortuna, on a collision course for Fiji. Those thoughts created an urgency in her mind that was building with each passing moment.
Another minute ticked by. She had just accessed the train’s control systems, when the squad of soldiers checking over the platform formed up and re-boarded the train.
<Wow…that wasn’t thorough at all,> Jessica said. <Be sending their lieutenant back to OCS if it were up to me.>
Sera chuckled. <Or we can just send them into the afterlife.>
<You’ll get your chance to kill baddies,> Tangel said, her mental avatar giving the woman a quelling look. <But I’d like to get a bit closer to the engines before we start shooting the place up.>
<So long as these goons aren’t going to stop at every maglev along the way,> Sera replied. <Then shooting our way might be faster.>
Tangel saw the logic in Sera’s statement, and as the maglev took off, she saw that it was scheduled to make five more stops before reaching the end of the line—where she hoped they’d be close to the engine control center.
<OK, you’re right. I’m overriding the train and sending it to the end of the line. It’ll be kicking the hornet’s nest, but maybe we can get past with our stealth.>
<Or not,> Jessica replied. <There’re only twenty-two of them. Pretty sure any one of us can take that many on our own.>
It was Tangel’s turn to laugh. <I didn’t realize that you’d become so cocky.>
<Really? I shoot lightning out of my hands and have an electron beam in my right arm. I’m practically one of Rika’s mechs at this point—from what I hear.>
Tangel laughed. <You’re a bit more colorful, but otherwise, you’d probably fit right in.>
The train took off and she reached into its control systems, setting it to skip all the stops before the end of the line. Once that was done, she shut the Sarenton controlling the train—a platoon sergeant, not an officer—out of the system and then moved through the network to the maglev’s main control system, disabling its ability to turn off the track.
<These cars don’t block much IR,> Jessica said as they passed the next designated stop without slowing. <Our friends in the other cars are getting rather antsy.>
<Sure are,> Tangel replied, chuckling as she watched the soldiers try to pry open the doors. <Not sure that I’d jump off a train
moving three hundred kilometers per hour in the armor those guys have.>
<Still, if they want to try…> Sera added. <I vote we don’t try to stop them.>
Tangel increased the train’s speed, and they arrived at their final stop just over five minutes later. None of the soldiers—who Tangel had determined to be Sorento special forces—had attempted to exit the cars as they sped through the crust of the planetoid, but when the train finally came to a stop at the end of the line, they spilled out onto the platform with near-wild haste.
<Special forces, my ass,> Tangel muttered as she exited the train with Jessica and Sera right behind her.
She was ready to slip by the soldiers and move on to where she judged the engine control center to be, when a series of grenades went off around them, spraying a thick green gel across the women.
<You were saying?> Sera asked as they dove for cover.
Tangel leapt behind a column to the right, Sera behind another on the left, while Jessica fell back inside the train car.
Tangel didn’t reply as she unslung her rifle and flipped it to fire armor-piercing kinetics. She fired a volley at the soldiers, hitting one in the chest and another in the arm. The first enemy’s armor held, but the second saw her arm nearly torn off and she fell back, screaming in pain.
<You going to join in, Jessica?> Tangel asked when she noticed that no weapons fire was coming from the train.
<Sure thing, just don’t like the new look. Fluorescent green clashes with my natural coloring.>
<Pretty sure lavender’s not your natural coloring,> Sera said as she fired her beam rifle before ducking back behind her support pillar—which was steadily being worn down by the enemy’s fire.
<Well, it sorta is. I’m complicated. Just give me another minute, and I’ll go out the back of the car and flank them.>
The train had passed through an airlock before coming into the station, and Tangel used the presence of an atmosphere to send out a nanocloud to get extra eyes on the scene. Not that she needed it, but it was habit, and Jessica and Sera could use the feeds.
The nano confirmed her count of twenty-two soldiers in total, with five down already, though two were only injured. All but four of the soldiers wielded basic projectile and kinetic weapons, but the four heavies were firing electron beams, and were the main culprits wearing down Tangel and Sera’s cover.