War Against the White Knights Read online

  The general was encased in her battlesuit, which had been set to a matt black that made it tricky for Tremayne to focus on her shape. But Xin’s helmet hung from her hip, and Tremayne could see her eyes defocus as the field officer shifted her attention elsewhere.

  Tremayne gasped. “You don’t mean Romulus, do you?”

  Xin slowly slid her gaze back to Tremayne. “And what is your problem with Romulus?”

  “The Khallenes think he is the most compromised of all, maybe the source of the cyber infection.”

  “I can’t raise him… he’s AWOL. Shit! Romulus knows about the 850.”

  “The what?”

  Xin ignored her. “Sergeant Majanita, you getting all this?”

  If there was a reply, Tremayne didn’t hear it, but Xin continued, “Change of plan. Get your butt in the pilot seat. We leave now.”

  Xin started jogging into the poorly lit recesses of the hangar.

  Tremayne followed, cursing her prosthetic leg, and wishing even viler thoughts upon Xin for causing her missing leg to be a problem. After a couple of turns in the labyrinth of little boats, she lost sight of the general. Tremayne stopped and listened. She could hear Xin’s boots thundering along the deck, but the sound echoed, making it impossible to pinpoint its location. But beneath that sound she identified the throbbing of a powerplant, and hurried in that direction. Soon she stumbled upon a boat with an open entry ramp and a lit interior.

  Could this be Xin’s vehicle? It looked like an old ammo carrier, the kind you’d need in an emergency to resupply a warship’s gun and missile batteries from the outside if the internal ordnance logistics system failed for some reason. A backup system you tested from time to time, but hoped you’d never use. If you wanted to hide a special vehicle in plain sight, masquerading as an old ammo carrier was a perfect way to do so.

  Tremayne hurried up the ramp and into an airlock. With a whirr of motors, and hiss of pressure exchange, the ramp raised up and sealed itself as soon as she was on board.

  “Welcome to the TS 850,” Xin said through an overhead speaker. “Get aft and strap in. With Majanita at the controls, this could be a bumpy ride.”

  As she made her way to the rear of the little craft, Tremayne noticed the light diffusing into the corridor from the bulkheads flickered as the main power grew in intensity until the boat was rattling. Over the years Tremayne had gotten used to the signature of different types of power unit. This one sounded like nothing she’d heard before.

  The hold was just as she imagined an ammo carrier’s to be. Ammo racks were bolted into the stained bulkheads. Loading trolleys were folded away and clamped against the overhead. Metal boxes painted red, but showing slight signs of corrosion on the handles, were attached to one corner. The only thing out of place were the two rows of three acceleration couches, and the four Marines already strapped into them. Ammo carriers did not carry out high-gee burns and there was no need for couches. Nonetheless, she lay down in a vacant couch – which was oriented with its back against the deck and its base toward the external hatch in the aft bulkhead – and began strapping herself in.

  Her gut fluttered when the boat lifted off and began its delicate maneuvering out of the maze of small craft.

  Suddenly the boat lurched, and Tremayne heard the dull thud of a collision.

  “That bulkhead came out of nowhere,” said Xin, deadpan, through an overhead speaker.

  The next few moments were a sequence of disconcerting jumps and twists, punctuated by collisions.

  Tremayne glanced at her traveling companions. Two sat beside her and two behind. None paid her any attention. In her last assignment, she had been part of the then Colonel Xin Lee’s personal bodyguard, and she assumed that was the same elite group she’d temporarily rejoined. Chances were, she knew some of the Marines she sat beside, but she wasn’t going to beg for recognition. Xin had probably poisoned their minds against her anyway.

  The key point was that her companions weren’t bothered about the crazy boat’s maneuvering, and so Tremayne decided she needed be either.

  “I hope you are enjoying the flight, Deputy Ambassador,” said Xin over the speaker. “Our new pilot is making an acceptable fist of things but expect… turbulence as we leave the hangar. Setting course is always a fragile collaboration between the ship, the pilot, and the forces of Chaos… and that’s with a pilot who knows what they’re doing. As for speed… that’s whatever the boat feels like it should be. But her stealth is incomparable. Most of the time the 850 exists outside of the physical universe, or at least the version we laughably refer to as reality. It’s based on Hardit stealth tech but taken in a new direction.

  The 850’s course smoothed for a few seconds. Then her main engines must have cut in because the sustained acceleration pushed Tremayne back against her couch with such ferocity that she felt sure her internal organs had been left far behind in this strange craft’s wake.

  The acceleration glued the back of Tremayne’s head to her couch but the Marine in the couch to her left lifted their head slightly and turned to regard her.

  “You are Phaedra Tremayne,” he said in a voice she didn’t recognize. “You are a former Marine private, and now deputy ambassador following your conviction of conspiracy to murder the Lieutenant-General’s biological children.”

  Adrenaline shot through Tremayne. It sounded like these Marines, loyal to Xin, were spoiling for a fight. But against powered armor, Tremayne would be helpless even under normal gravity. As the 850 sped away in pursuit of Arun’s kidnappers, it was all she could do to swivel her eyes around to look at this Marine.

  “However,” he continued, “we prefer to recall your actions at the Second Battle of Khallini where you saved the general’s life at least once.”

  “Personally, I count three occasions when you saved her life,” said the female Marine on the far end of Tremayne’s row.

  Tremayne eyed them both warily. There was a dark secret to that battle, a murderous rage that had possessed the young Springer.

  “Perhaps you’re right,” said the first Marine. “The official record is a fabrication, so it is difficult to be sure. What we are saying, Tremayne, is that despite your intention to murder the general during that battle, you chose to save her life, and so we are proud to have you with us once more.”

  “And we have absolute confidence that you will not harm our commander,” said the other Marine, a hint of threat in her voice.

  “I don’t recognize your voices,” said Tremayne. “Frakk, I’m not even sure why Xin asked me along for the ride. If she wants me to save her ass again, I’d better know who you are.”

  “Of course,” said a voice behind her, which did sound familiar. “Which is what Kraken is trying – in his typical gasbag way – to do.”

  “Bolinny!” Tremayne exclaimed, pushing against the acceleration to force a smile to her face. “Is that you?”

  “It’s Corporal Bolinny now, Springer.”

  “I go by the name of Tremayne now, Corporal,” she said somberly.

  “Roger that, Tremayne. Now get to it, Kraken. Introduce us!”

  “In the 850’s cockpit are the Lieutenant-General and Sergeant Majanita, as you know. Also Grenadier Morgan and Technician Jintu.”

  Tremayne frowned. She had known a Morgan in Xin’s bodyguard, but Bolinny spoke as if Grenadier were a formal rank. That was new to her.

  “Sitting beside the Corporal is Cyber-Specialist Kuzak, who remembers you clearly.” Kraken lowered her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “In fact, I think she remembers you every night in her dreams…”

  “Kraken!” The Marine to Kraken’s left pushed herself, with difficulty, half out of her seat and punched Kraken in the gut, a cracking blow that echoed around the hold.

  “Sorry, sis’,” said Kraken, but he was laughing and so too were Kuzak and Bolinny. “Last and least we have my sister, Marine Giant, and I am Marine Kraken.”

  “So many specialists,” said Tremayne.

 
There was the barest movement of Kraken’s shoulders, but Tremayne recognized it as a shrug inside a battlesuit. “It is the most effective small unit design,” he said.

  “What about you two?” she asked Kraken. “What are your specialisms? And while we’re about it, what’s with the fantasy nicknames?”

  Kraken and Giant looked at each other. “We are damned good Marines,” they chorused. “That’s our specialism.”

  “And our name is Lee,” added Kraken. “Siblings. You will appreciate the potential for confusion, hence we were assigned new names by the general.”

  “What about her?” asked Tremayne. “Does she have a dramatic name?”

  “No.” Tremayne couldn’t see inside Kraken’s helmet, but the tone of his reply suggested he was frowning at her idiotic question.

  “We refer to her as General,” said Giant. “Why?” There was a challenge to Giant’s voice, suspicion that could flare into violence in an instant. “Do you have another name for the CO?”

  Before she could answer, the crushing weight of acceleration lifted from Tremayne’s chest and despite being strapped into the couch, she could delight in a few blissful moments of zero-gravity. She knew what must come next, though, and breathed out so what would surely follow wouldn’t be quite so painful.

  Sure enough, the TS 850 spun about its center until her main engine was oriented with her direction of travel. Then the engines came back harder than ever and slammed her back against her couch.

  She thanked the bruising weight of deceleration because it saved her from answering Giant’s question. The truth was she had many names for Lieutenant-General Xin Lee, and none of them flattering.

  Majanita pushed the deceleration even harder, and Tremayne found her vision failing, her brain straining to keep in control.

  Maybe she blacked out or perhaps she was merely battered into a groggy state. Either way, by the time Tremayne realized she was back in zero-gee, the other Marines were already up and retrieving the accoutrements of war that had been secreted in concealed compartments on the hold.

  Kuzak had clamped his SA-71 to his back and was setting the controls on a three-foot by two metal box mounted on a small reaction-jet trolley. Colored lights began to wink and a hum of power rattled the trolley.

  “What’s that, Kuzak?” she asked.

  “This will be the key to rescuing General McEwan,” he answered, without looking up from the device.

  He spoke without irony, but Tremayne remembered Kuzak from before and his intense dislike of Arun.

  Kuzak added, as if in explaining Tremayne’s unspoken question: “The general’s child will require a father. May as well be the biological one… at least to begin with.”

  “No chatter,” snapped Corporal Bolinny, and threw a bag Tremayne’s way. “We can’t spare anyone to guard you, so you need to come with us.”

  Looking around at the Lee siblings assembling a tripod-mounted heavy weapon, she agreed that the safest place for her was with the Marines. She drew out the pistol, ammo carousel, and an emergency pressure suit of the kind you could put on and seal within seconds, but hadn’t the strength to resist a sharpened fingernail, let alone a volley of railgun darts. There was also a belt or band of some kind.

  “Put it on around your chest,” instructed Bolinny.

  As she did so, he explained: “If you have a battlesuit AI, you can put it in the band.”

  “I don’t.”

  “A shame, but use it anyway. It powers your personal force shield. Activate it by tapping between your ribs.”

  Tremayne blinked. Since when had the Legion techs developed personal force shields?

  “Bolinny laughed. Don’t worry, my old friend, most in the Legion would have the same reaction. It’s unidirectional too. You can fire out, but it will stop incoming fire.”

  Her pressure suit auto-inflated and Tremayne stepped inside, the material automatically sealing itself around her. “Is the force shield reliable?” she asked.

  Bolinny’s reply resonated around her head – the material of the pressure suit’s head section acting as a speaker. “Not exactly. Let’s put it this way, you’re statistically safer if you turn it on.” His voice was slightly distorted in the way characteristic of ultra-narrowbeam microwave line-of-sight comms.

  “Understood,” she replied, as much to let Bolinny know that comms were functioning as to accept his implication that the force shield was unreliable in ways she did not want to know.

  It took just over a minute between the 850 coming to a halt and Tremayne following the Marines along the corridor to the side-mounted hatch through which she’d entered the modified ammo carrier. Not long, but a lifetime in comparison to her Marine days when a squad could deploy out of a specialized troop carrier and into space in under three seconds. This secret stealth tech Xin mentioned was keeping them alive.

  “About time,” said Xin when Tremayne arrived. “For the benefit of Deputy Ambassador Tremayne, here are my orders for this expedition. If you see General McEwan bring him back to the 850. If you see anyone else, kill them. My additional orders to you, Tremayne, are: one, don’t get yourself killed because General McEwan would be upset – and two, stay close in case your freaky mutant powers suddenly become vital, which they have an annoying habit of doing.”

  “What about Romulus?” asked Tremayne in a panic. “If he’s here, do we shoot him?” She had rarely met the boy she had rescued from the clutches of the Hardits in the abortive liberation of Tranquility, but she had followed the careers of every one of the few survivors of that expedition.

  “You have your orders,” growled Xin. “Do not question them again.”

  Tremayne bit down on the anger roiling in her breast. You aren’t my commander, bitch. I do what I think best.

  Tremayne tested the heft of this pistol. It was weightless in the zero-gee but still possessed inertia, and she needed to familiarize herself with its feel. The sidearm was a miniature railgun, which meant it would be useless against armor, but for its compact size, very effective against soft targets.

  Then, with a brief howl of wind, the outer door slid away, and Tremayne shot into space, seeking targets.

  But according to the evidence before her eyes, there was nothing there. Even the Marines had disappeared.

  When it came to void combat, Tremayne was still a Marine. Stick her inside an ACE/2 combat suit with her AI embedded in the armored chest band, and admit her into the team’s combat net, and her instinct and training would cut back in – she was sure of it.

  But none of those things happened.

  She hung in space, unable to see Xin’s squad, the kidnappers, the Legion fleet or even the TS 850 that had brought her here. She felt at rest because she had no frame of reference, but for all she knew she could be hurtling at high speed away from any or all of those points of interest. Even if she had a tactical map, she was still helpless, because the maneuver capability of her pressure suit was minimal.

  Only one thing was abundantly clear to her: she was fully visible and on a constant vector, like a training target for a freshman novice. In void combat you had three choices: move fast, hide, or die. The fact that she was doing none of them meant the enemy must be blind or were being jammed. Or that no one was there.

  Had Xin abandoned her? Tidying up an irritating detail from her past before carrying on to rescue her beloved, the father of her unborn child? Surely Bolinny and the others wouldn’t follow such orders?

  She looked around for any sign that she was not alone.

  The situation was so unsettling that when something impacted her arm, she screamed like a crècheling. It took a moment to realize it was the hand of a Marine, one who was now towing Tremayne.

  “Stealth on stealth… it’s hilarious,” said Kraken, who she assumed was the one grabbing her arm. “We had to find the enemy ship and map its exterior by feel. Can you believe that? And with all the cloaking and cyber-bollocks we’re pulling, we’ve also lost the 850.”

  “
You mean it’s destroyed?”

  “No, I mean we can’t find it. Could be a long walk home. Still, all these cyber-shenanigans have kept you alive, at least until now.”

  “You mean we’re going to board?”

  “Yep. Right about… wait for it… now!”

  The invisible Kraken grabbed Tremayne and swiveled her around until she was pointing at a circle of glowing blue about a hundred meters away: a breaching charge burning hot, not least warming Tremayne’s heart to finally see something. The blue suddenly flared into an intense ring of yellow and white before exploding into a hail of shattered fragments from the ship hatch. Behind the white vapor streaming out of the depressurizing ship, she could see its interior. It looked so ordinary. Nothing there to intimidate her.

  Then the ship reestablished pressure seals, shutting off the spray of vapor. A moment later, the open hatchway folded itself away out of sight as the enemy ship’s stealth capability reasserted itself, but not before Tremayne caught flickering glimpses of Kuzak’s mysterious box inside the kidnapper’s ship before it too was lost to sight.

  Once again, she was alone in the void, according to what her eyes reported, but this time she knew that was misleading, and within seconds the invisible Marine had pushed her through a hidden perimeter and suddenly the kidnapper’s ship was fully visible.

  It was an ugly, blocky craft, about the size of a Stork, the largest shuttle craft in the Legion fleet. Given the insistence of the White Knights for reusable and modular designs, the fact that she didn’t recognize any aspect of this ship meant it was highly unlikely to be part of a White Knight fleet, of either faction. It didn’t look like a Muryani ship type either.

  Hardits! It had to be.

  At last she was inside the ship, and glad to find modest pseudo-gravity pulling down through the deck. A ladderwell aft led down into the ship, but she allowed Kraken to point her in the other direction, where a passageway led away from the hatch before curving around to the right. A few paces along was a shimmering, translucent wall, which she recognized as the pressure wall preventing the atmosphere from rushing into the vacuum where she stood.