Mindscape: Book 2 of the New Frontiers Series Read online

  “Since this is your first time out with us, sir, make sure you stick close to your team leader—that’s Corporal Chesty over there. I believe you’ve already met.”

  Alexander nodded. “Aye.”

  “We don’t dot our ayes in the space marines, sir,” Sergeant Ram said. “The correct response is oo-rah.”

  “Hoorah,” Alexander replied, nodding.

  The air inside the shuttle grew suddenly very still and quiet.

  “What did you say, sir?” Ram asked.

  “Hoo-rah, Sergeant.”

  “Mouth—the admiral asked a question, would you kindly tell him for us hoo Rah is?”

  “The very first marine, sir! He killed a great white shark with his bare hands and fed his entire village with the stinking carcass, sir!”

  “Thank you, Mouth.”

  Alexander’s inward smile faded to a puzzled frown. “What was he—a Viking?

  “Good guess, but no,” Ram replied. “Now, the reason we don’t say hoo-rah like the dirty dirt-pounders do, is because we know who Rah is, so instead we say OO-RAH, like OOO that Rah guy is a damned legend!”

  Alexander smiled. “You guys are full of shit.”

  “OORAH!” the squad shouted in unison.

  A new voice crackled through the cabin, pleasant and female: “One minute to docking with the Crimson Warrior. Get ready, boys.” It was the shuttle pilot.

  “You heard the captain!” Ram said.

  Alexander felt the G-forces inside the shuttle ease, followed by a thud-unk of magnetic landing struts mating with the outer hull of the Crimson Warrior. Inside the shuttle the clamps that held their drones in place opened up with a clicking-whirr, and the air came alive with magnetic feet clanking as they all shuffled into line at the rear airlock of the shuttle. Alexander noted how blocky the drones were—thick limbs and torsos with high shoulders. Between their armor and integrated weapons they looked vaguely like overly muscular caricatures of human soldiers.

  “Ma deuces out,” Ram said.

  Alexander mentally toggled his .50 caliber cannons, and a pair of fat gun barrels slid up out of his drone’s forearms.

  “Open sesame,” Ram said, waving a hand at the inner airlock doors and then the outer ones.

  As the second set of doors opened they revealed yet another set. Those doors had the Solarian Republic flag emblazoned on them. Three vertical stripes: red, green, and blue to represent the Solarians’ future vision of the red planet as they terraformed it from red to green to blue. After 30 years of terraforming they were still stuck on red.

  Ram gestured to Shadow Eleven. “Get me a can opener, Private.”

  “Oorah.”

  Alexander watched as the private went to work on the Crimson Warrior’s outer airlock doors with a plasma torch. All of a minute later he’d drawn a molten orange circle around the inner edge of the doors. He kicked them in with a noisy bang! and walked up to the final set of doors to try the control panel.

  “Locked,” the private announced.

  “Guess it’s asking too much for them to open the door for us,” Mouth said.

  “What were you expecting? A red carpet?” Chesty replied.

  “They’re Martians. What other color would it be?”

  “Can it! Peel her open, Private,” Ram said.

  The private drew another molten orange circle and kicked in the last set of doors. He poked his head through and then called back to them, “We’re clear, Sergeant!”

  “Move out!” Ram said.

  “OORAH!” the squad roared and set out with paradoxically silent footfalls.

  They rushed through the enemy airlock and took up positions against the walls of a brightly-lit silver corridor with Martian-red accents.

  “At least they left the lights on for us,” Mouth said.

  “So why not open the airlocks?” Balls asked.

  “Get your disc drones out and scouting,” Ram ordered.

  None of them bothered to whisper, since the squad’s communications were all actually carried out virtually back on the Adamantine.

  Alexander activated his disc drone and set it to scout-mode. Twelve black discs rose over their heads from the docking ports on their backs, half of them streaking out ahead and the other half behind. Alexander kept his eyes flicking between his scanners, the drone cam, and the VSM’s rear-view display for maximum situational awareness. He saw the drones fetch up against the bulkhead doors on either end of the corridor.

  “Corridor is sealed, Sarge,” Shadow Seven said.

  “The other squads are reporting the bulkheads in their sections are locked, too,” Mouth reported.

  “Captain Vrokovich is a sneaky bastard,” Ram growled.

  “Pot calling kettle, sir,” Mouth said.

  “I said sneaky. We’re magnificent bastards, remember?”

  “Something’s wrong here,” Alexander said. “Hold on.” He activated his comm. “McAdams?”

  “Sir?”

  “Have Hayes hail Captain Vroko and patch me through.”

  “Aye, sir.”

  A moment later a new HUD box appeared with a hologram of Captain Vrokovich in it. The man’s red eyes sparkled with a suspicious glint. “Admiral de Leon,” Vrokovich said. A hint of a smile touched his lips. “I see you’ve decided to join the boarding party.”

  “In the flesh—or drone, in this case. Listen, Captain, I’m not sure you understand how a surrender is supposed to work.”

  Vrokovich cocked his head curiously. “What do you mean, Admiral?”

  “The Crimson Princess is in lock-down. We had to cut our way in.”

  Vrokovich scowled. “I am sorry, Admiral. You exposed many of our decks to space, so we had to seal off certain sections to preserve our atmosphere. We are still working to restore pressure. Rest assured that as soon as we do so, I will open all the bulkheads you like. Until then, I suggest you stick to the pressurized areas. Give me a moment to get the appropriate doors open for you. I’ll send you a map so you don’t lose your way.”

  The captain’s transmission ended and a file transfer request appeared a few seconds later. Alexander waited for the drone’s virus scanner to check the file, and then accepted it.

  A 3D schematic of the dreadnought appeared with a branching green line to mark a ‘safe’ path through the ship from stem to stern. Alexander studied that route. The captain’s explanation for all the locked doors was plausible, but that was the problem—it was the perfect excuse to guide them on a set path through the dreadnought.

  The question was why? To lead them into a trap? Or to keep them from finding any evidence that might connect the Crimson Warrior to the attacks on the Alliance?

  Just then the bulkhead doors in front of them swished open, revealing another long, silver corridor, this one plagued by dim, flickering red lights.

  “Looks like they laid out that carpet for us after all,” Alexander said as their disc drones rushed through the open doors.

  “Move out, Shadows,” Ram ordered. “Nice and easy.”

  “Oorah…” the squad replied as they raised their .50 caliber cannons and began creeping down the corridor.

  Chapter 15

  Shadow Squad met up with the other half of their platoon, Goblin Squad, at the entrance of the Crimson Warrior’s bridge. Unlike the other bulkheads they’d passed through as they negotiated Captain Vrokovich’s ‘safe’ route through the ship, this one didn’t open automatically for them as they approached.

  “Someone get me a can opener!” Ram ordered.

  “Oorah,” one of the Goblins replied.

  “Everyone else, find cover positions!”

  Alexander fell in behind his team leader, Chesty, and waited for the private with the ‘can opener’ to do his job. A molten orange line crept around the doors in a slow circle, chasing its tail.

  The two ends met, and Alexander held an imaginary breath. He half-expected the doors to blow open and enemy marines to come storming out, weapons blazing.

 
Instead the private kicked the doors in. They bounced off the deck and went floating through the bridge, narrowly missing the heads of the enemy captain and his crew waiting on the other side.

  Shadow and Goblin Squads raised their weapons, metal joints clicking and servos whirring in a sudden flurry of movement.

  “Hands where I can see ‘em!” Ram ordered.

  Their hands were already above their heads. “We are not armed,” Captain Vrokovich announced, his red eyes seeming to glow in the gloomy battle lighting of the bridge.

  Alexander stormed into the bridge behind his squad while Goblin Squad brought up the rear.

  “You are all now prisoners of the Alliance,” Ram continued.

  “Don’t you want to check if we are guilty first?” Vrokovich asked, cocking his head to one side like a bird. With those eyes he looks more like a rabbit, Alexander decided as he moved to address the enemy captain.

  “Where’s the rest of your crew?” Alexander asked.

  “In their G-tanks. I thought it best for them to remain there in order to minimize further casualties as you trigger-happy terrans go prancing through my ship.”

  Alexander turned to Ram. “Sergeant, get squads down to those levels and lock them in. We lost our brig in the fighting, so there’s no where else for us to put them. While you’re at it, check the ship’s roster and get me a head-count to compare. We don’t want to miss anyone.”

  “Yes, sir,” Ram replied.

  “The head count won’t match the roster,” Captain Vrokovich said as Shadow squad began cuffing his officers’ hands behind their backs. “We lost at least fifty crewmates when you attacked us. The people you’re looking for are all floating out in space.” Vrokovich’s upper lip twisted with contempt. “The Alliance will pay for what they’ve done today.”

  Alexander opened his palms and mimicked the see-saw motion of a balance scale. “Five million dead on Earth and two million dead on the Moon versus fifty dead on your ship. I wonder which side has more blood on it?”

  “Go get your proof then,” Vrokovich said, jerking his chin toward the empty bridge control stations climbing the far wall of the bridge behind him. “That’s what you came for, isn’t it?”

  Alexander gave the other man a narrow-eyed look that would have had a greater effect if his VSM were capable of facial expressions. Instead he leveled an index finger at his chest. “Altering ship’s logs leaves a data trail. If you touched them, you’ll have given me all the proof I need.”

  “We didn’t alter anything. We didn’t need to,” Vrokovich replied, shrugging as Mouth cuffed his wrists behind his back.

  Rather than waste more time bantering, Alexander stalked past the enemy captain, straight up to the lower pair of control stations—the captain’s and XO’s stations. He climbed into the captain’s station and waved it to life. A holographic display appeared, and Alexander summoned the ship’s logs with a combination of gestures and voice commands.

  Navigation logs showed that the Crimson Warrior left Mars two months ago. They flew straight to Saturn and on to the moon of Tethys, where they remained for about a week. They were on a circuitous route home when the Adamantine hailed them. At no point in their trip were they moving fast enough to have launched the missiles that hit the Moon or Earth.

  It was a plausible flight plan, and the fact that they’d gone to Tethys suggested some sort of crazy Martian terraforming agenda since that moon was practically solid ice.

  Alexander didn’t trust the data, but he couldn’t find anything to suggest the logs had been altered. Making matters worse, there was a record of a rendezvous with an Alliance civilian supply ship, the Wayfinder, not long before the Moon attack. That would be easy to verify, and if true, it gave the Crimson Warrior a strong alibi.

  Alexander felt abruptly sick. What if Captain Vroko was telling the truth? He poked around for a while longer, submitting the enemy ship’s computer core to a data probe to check for signs of log alterations. The probe came back negative. Things weren’t looking good for the Alliance. Alexander checked to see if the sealed sections of the ship were all actually exposed to space as Captain Vroko had said…

  And that checked out, too.

  They couldn’t afford to leave those areas un-explored, but it did make Alexander feel better about the set path they’d been forced to take through the Crimson Warrior.

  Finally, he checked the number of active and inactive G-tanks and compared that to the ship’s roster. One hundred and three active tanks, fifty-seven inactive—not counting the brig—and the ship’s roster had exactly 160 crew, meaning there were fifty-seven dead.

  Feeling suddenly weary, Alexander eased out of the control station and walked back to the entrance of the bridge.

  “Find what you were looking for?” Captain Vrokovich asked, sounding smug.

  Alexander ignored him and walked up to Sergeant Ram. “Get these prisoners down to the G-tanks and lock them in with the rest.”

  “Oorah,” Ram replied.

  Alexander watched as Shadow Squad and Goblin Squad left the bridge with their prisoners in tow. A few tech specialists stayed behind to slave the Crimson Warrior’s systems to the Adamantine’s controls. Sergeant Ram remained behind as well.

  “Did you find anything?” he asked.

  Alexander waited for the prisoners to pass out of earshot, but then he remembered that they didn’t need to speak audibly to each other and opted for private comms. “I think they might have been telling the truth. Their flight plan is reasonable, the logs don’t look altered, and they have an alibi—an Alliance civilian transport.”

  “Shit. If they’re so innocent, then why the hell didn’t they give us what we asked for?”

  “You mean why didn’t they bend over when we asked them to?”

  “That’s not…” Ram trailed off.

  “It’s exactly what we asked them to do. The Solarian Republic and the Alliance are not allies. We’re not even very friendly after they declared their independence thirty years ago. Giving us access to their flight plan and mission data would set a bad political precedent and pave the way for future insults to their sovereignty.”

  “So you’re telling me we just started an interplanetary war because the Solarians were too damn proud to prove their innocence?”

  “We need more time to look through their data before we can be sure,” Alexander replied.

  Another voice interrupted them. “Admiral, we have a problem.” It was McAdams.

  “What’s wrong, Commander?”

  “Enemy ships incoming, seven of them, all destroyer-class.”

  “Range?”

  “They’re just leaving Martian orbit, so they’ve got a good half a billion klicks to cover, but we have to cover double that to reach Earth, and they have a much higher top speed than we do—especially considering we’ll be towing a derelict dreadnought.”

  “How long do we have before they reach us?”

  “Depends what kind of Gs they pull… at theoretical maximums, about a day.”

  “Contact Fleet Command, explain the situation, and ask for an escort to meet us halfway. Make sure they know we’re already limping thanks to our engagement with the Crimson Warrior, otherwise they might order us into another ridiculous fight. Hopefully they can make it to us before those destroyers do.”

  “Aye, sir. Did you find any evidence linking the Crimson Warrior to the attacks? If you did, we might be able to use that to get some political muscle on our side—expose the Solarians and threaten them with a full-scale war. That should turn those destroyers back.”

  Alexander grimaced. “Actually, I found evidence that they weren’t the ones who attacked us. I’ll get the details for you so you can transmit them back to Earth. The Alliance might have more luck turning those destroyers back with a formal apology and a promise of restitution than they will with more threats.”

  “Aye, sir… and if the Alliance isn’t willing to give up their witch hunt yet?”

  “Then w
e hope we’re not the ones who get burned. Get on the comms, Commander, and bring the Adamantine alongside. It’s time to dock and run. De Leon out.”

  * * *

  Alexander waited until the enemy crew was safely locked inside their G-tanks, and then he used the captain’s control station to override the Crimson Warrior’s bulkhead doors and vent their atmosphere into space so they could finish securing the ship. That done, he walked back through the ship, securing sections with Ram, Mouth, and Chesty. It was tedious work scanning and checking every room, corridor, alcove, and maintenance access for booby traps or hidden enemy drones and crew.

  After more than two hours of searching, they didn’t find anything, and all of the Crimson Warrior’s sections had been secured, so Alexander ordered the Adamantine to dock with the dreadnought and tow it back to Earth. He was surprised the search had come up empty. Captain Vrokovich’s demeanor had screamed defiance, yet he’d made no significant effort to defy the Alliance.

  Doubt niggled Alexander’s brain. All the ship’s sections were secured, the enemy crew was all accounted for except for the dead ones.

  “We’re all done here, Admiral,” Ram said, turning to him.

  Alexander nodded absently. Fifty-seven of the enemy crew dead. Why so many? he wondered. They’d poked plenty of holes in the Crimson Warrior’s hull, but ship-building 101 was to put crew control stations closer to a ship’s core to shield them as much as possible. So what were those people doing walking the outer corridors?

  A sudden suspicion formed in Alexander’s gut. He keyed his comms. “McAdams, have we docked yet?”

  “Almost, sir.”

  “Abort, now.”

  “What? What’s wrong? I thought you secured the ship.”

  “We did. Inside. Get me eyes on their outer hull. Scan every inch of it.”

  “Aye, sir… I’ll get Stone to check her over with our drones.”

  Alexander nodded. “Keep me posted. De Leon out.”

  “Is there anything else you need us to do, sir?” Sergeant Ram prompted. He hadn’t been privy to the conversation with McAdams, but he must have seen that Alexander was busy on the comms.

  “We haven’t finished securing the ship yet,” Alexander explained.