The Expendable Few: A Spinward Fringe Novel Read online

  There are times when I can’t stop looking at her. Isabel’s got this smile that makes you feel warm inside; you forget about everyone else in the room. When that moment ends, I start thinking that she just has this great way of looking at people, and that it’s how she looks at everyone.

  I think about that message, combine the fact that Mary has never been wrong, and it dawns on me that Isabel probably doesn’t regard everyone with that special smile. Our long talks may lead to something, and for the first time since grief therapy, bona-fide emotions start taking hold. That excitement is like being born again.

  Everyone but her and I are gone. She slides from her seat to her feet and steps up to the expansive window. Her feminine silhouette is tiny against the alien constellations outside. She wears a loose, long sleeved over-shirt cut at the midriff. I stare at her a moment, admiring how the black, form fitting vacsuit seems to disappear in the low light. Her delicate form cuts a dark shape out of the star field. It took millions of years of evolution to create something small and perfect to stand between me and an ancient universe.

  Not a thought passes through my mind as I quietly find my feet and cross the space between us. My arms are around her and her shoulders shrug into my chest, making my body a home. “I used to sit in front of the windows and stare at the stars. As soon as I could walk, I’d get as close as I could and watch them as they drifted by.” She sighs, unfolds her arms and pulls mine around her more tightly, resting her hands on mine. “I don’t remember how old I was when my father showed me that we were the ones who were turning, the stars were staying still. I think I started realising how big the galaxy was then. He was a mechanic, but turned me into a pilot before I knew how to say navigation.”

  “He sounds like a great man,” I tell her.

  “No, not a great man. He’s a good man. Gave us everything we needed, was so proud of me,” Isabel says. “Until I got myself locked up.”

  “I’m sorry,” I say.

  “All my life I wanted to be out here. Now I can’t wait to finish whatever they have planned for us and find a safe place to wait until they’ll let me go back home.”

  “We’ll get there,” I tell her. The reassurance feels hollow. I hope it rings true in her ears.

  She stares out at the stars, slowly caressing the backs of my hands with her warm palms. “They’re so much brighter out here.”

  “You’ve never been this far out?” I ask.

  Isabel shakes her head.

  We stand there for a long time, her back leaning into me, before she breaks the silence. “You and Mary have gone on boarding missions before. How are our chances?”

  I want to reassure her, but it doesn’t feel like there’s enough room in the moment for a lie. “I heard someone from the Paladin call it a demon ship. They tried to board the Sunspire before it was too late. Only a couple survived out of a thousand marines. It’s not going to be easy, but I don’t think people like Anderson and McPatrick would try it if it were impossible.”

  “You could have lied,” Isabel says, turning her face to the side so she can read my expression. “Make me feel better.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Remmy would have lied,” she says, a hair away from touching my lips. “But that’s why I’m with you, I think. You don’t back away from hard answers.”

  “A lie is a rock waiting to be overturned. The truth is a stone you can build on.” They’re better words than I usually find in intimate moments. I don’t know if it’s the conditioning or an effect she has on me, but I’ve never had so much confidence.

  “I like that,” she says with a smile. “Yours?”

  “Minh-Chu,” I smile back.

  “One of my favourite pilots.” She’s a tease whose nearness is telling me what she wants, but refuses to do the taking. That millimetre between our lips may as well be a mile filled with the rules I’ll be breaking as her senior officer. I cross the distance and she reciprocates, kissing me as if she’s been looking forward to it for weeks. She reaches back over her head and runs her hands across the back of my neck. I’m wrapped in the sensations of the moment: the faint smell of lilac in her hair, the sounds of us breathing, parting lips and, most of all, her body leaning into me. It’s only when it’s happening that I realise I’ve wanted to be with her since I first saw her. Everything I sense from Isabel tells me I’m welcome.

  My hands flatten against her, pressing as they cross over her stomach, around her waist. Isabel’s nails trace up and down the back of my neck as I caress her. It’s a rare collision of chemistry and unrestrained sensation. I’ve found my way out of the haze I’ve been in for weeks and she feels incredible. We’re locked together, wordlessly living in a timeless moment.

  It goes on in a trade of warm caresses and long kisses. The past, the future, and all of creation cease to matter as we enjoy each other without restraint. She’s summoning a gale of emotion where for too long I’ve felt muted gusts.

  Isabel turns towards me on tip-toes so we’re chest to chest. I run a hand across and down her back, over her hips, and lift her off her toes. Isabel squeals and lets a little laugh slip between our locked lips. Her hands grip my vacsuit beneath the back of my neck, as if I’m still not close enough.

  The rustling of a snack bag opening behind us fractures the warm cocoon.

  “Don’t mind me,” says Remmy before popping a cherry-flavoured rice puff into his mouth. “This beats anything on holo.”

  Momentary embarrassment gets crushed by irritation as I fix him with a look that would make an Order of Eden platoon take a step back.

  Isabel kisses me on the cheek, whispers, “I’ll see you tomorrow,” and sets off to her quarters. I watch the sway of her hips as she goes, wishing more than anything that I was following. She spares me a glance and a smile before the door slides closed behind her.

  I’m about to throw my hands up in exasperation when a bag of rice puffs hit me in the side of the face. I glower at Remmy, who shrugs. “Sorry, thought you were ready.”

  I snatch the bag of tomato and vinegar flavoured rice puffs from the floor and walk over to Remmy, who eyes me warily. He flinches as I take his bag of rice puffs out of his hands, up-end it over top of him, and shake the contents out in a shower of snack food. I let the empty bag fall and take a seat in an arm chair.

  He watches me open my bag of puffs in silence. Then he snickers.

  I look at him out of the corner of my eye; he has rice puffs in his hair, his lap, a couple balanced on his shoulder, and he’s suppressing a grin.

  He plucks one from his hair and pops it into his mouth.

  I suppress a chortle that comes out of nowhere.

  As casually as I could imagine, Remmy takes the bag in his hand and starts putting the rice puffs back inside, one by one.

  I burst out laughing as though it’s the funniest thing I’ve ever seen, and Remmy joins me. For a good long time the sound of us cracking up fills the common area. When it subsides I ask; “What are you watching tonight?”

  “From my extensive collection of early colonial dramas,” Remmy starts with a flourish, “I’ll be playing For the Love of Water.”

  Colonial dramas aren’t normally my thing, but I stick around. There’s no point in trying to go to bed, I’d just lay there trying to get to sleep.

  There was no forgetting Isabel, but I have to admit that I enjoyed the holographic movie. There’s something very simple and enjoyable about hanging out with Remmy. If he has any expectations of the people around him when he’s off-duty, they’re completely hidden. Being yourself is almost too easy. Truth be told, while I’d rather be with Isabel as the show starts, I don’t mind spending time with the youngest of my team members after the frustration subsides.

  Chapter 8 - Adrift

  Our shuttle rotates slowly amongst the drifting asteroids. The dwarf star illuminating that section of the Blue Belt comes into view. My helmet compensates for the naked light.

  I watch the light colour the lazily drift
ing stone and ice around us. Another plane of stellar leftovers orbit the star, glittering blue-silver. The movement of the distant ring looks slow, but anything caught in it would be mulched in seconds. Like so many things in space, it’s beautiful from afar, but deadly at close range.

  A gargantuan ship emerges from a wormhole above the asteroid rings. “There she is,” says Mary from the deck below me. Four squads of marines surround her, half of what I’d like for this mission. “Wake up and check your gear. We didn’t get all dressed up for nothing.” She’s in command, and no one dares question it. It’s a worthy position. I’ve seen her command troops during an incursion before, and I can’t think of anyone else I’d like to see in charge.

  We are not the only shuttle adrift, waiting for the show to start. If we fail, they’ll ask, “what do you expect from traitors and law breakers?” If we succeeded there will be no celebration, only quiet acknowledgement in the back rooms of the New Liberal Party offices.

  I don’t know whether it’s the programming they crammed into my head during grief therapy or if it’s my upbringing, but I still want to show Freeground Fleet, or Freeground Intelligence, that I can still get the job done. I want Mary to show them that they’ve underestimated her value, as well.

  The shuttle continues its rotation, giving us a better view of the Amazon, the twelve kilometre long command carrier that brought us to the Blue Belt. The light of the star falls on the technical crew around me. We’re on the upper deck, overlooking the soldiers below. Isabel stands in front of me at the controls of the shuttle, waiting to initiate the thrusters. Remmy and three other communications techs are behind me. A group of nine other tactical and mechanical specialists make up the rest of our team. Most of us are watching in anticipation, hoping everything goes as predicted.

  Even though the Amazon rivals most space stations in size, it still looks like nothing more than a dot against the backdrop of the blue star. I zoom in on it with my heads-up display, examining her hull. Outrigged engines turn to fight the force of gravity, long B-90 rail guns and shield emitter arrays extend along her length, mixed in with with long stretched equipment booms. Obvious, and showy - perfect bait.

  I look up her length, over the Amazon’s thickly armoured skin to the forward-most section. There are three sections fanning out from the front of the ship. Each is as large as the average modern Freeground Cruiser, and just as heavily armed. Repair bots, called scurriers and scrubbers, are already launching to perform a quick inspection of the area. “There are people aboard that ship that will probably only leave for vacation,” says Isabel. “Could you imagine calling that thing home?”

  “The Paladin was home to four generations,” Remmy says. “Until she was jumped by the Sunspire a couple of light years from here.”

  “I’m surprised they’re risking the Amazon for this,” I say.

  “The New Liberals are the majority government aboard the Amazon,” Remmy says. He’d know. Despite his generally flippant attitude, he’s a good communications and intelligence officer. It only took me two weeks to realise it.

  “No more chatter. We should get a bite soon,” I say. My memory of the Sunspire tearing into the Paladin and finishing her off is enough to put me well on edge. When the combat footage was made available yesterday, I made sure to watch it three times.

  The Amazon is the last of her kind; Freeground won’t build another super carrier even half her size. The Sunspire demonstrated to everyone how vulnerable the largest of our ships can be when they are caught by surprise. That, and the fact that the Puritan Party are big advocates for hoarding raw materials, prevents the construction of another mobile base.

  A wormhole opens, lensing the light from the blue star into a furiously intense point. Then, within six kilometres of the Amazon’s port side, the Sunspire emerges.

  The kilometre long ship is propelled by three main tilting thrusters at the rear. One flares out at the top, the other two spread out side by side, set behind the main mass of the ship. Her smoothly shaped, silver-blue hull broadens at the mid-point, stretching out into thick, close curved wings that have two more tilting thrusters near the ends, and ram scoops across the front. The ship’s fore is extra heavily armoured with a reinforced vertical beam running down the front. It is something the Sunspire installed herself, and it served as a ram in the battle with the Paladin. It’s how the Sunspire broke that great ship’s back after nuking her shields down. Atop of the Sunspire’s dorsal side is the bridge. At the bottom I can see the sealed hangars and launch decks.

  It heads for the Amazon the instant it clears the mouth of the wormhole, launching a barrage of anti-shield and anti-missile rounds from rows of rapid-firing rail guns. “Why does it look meaner than it did in the brief?” asks one of the marines surrounding Mary below.

  “What I don’t get is why we have to bust in from these tin cans when the Amazon could launch marines of her own,” comments another.

  “Launching boarding shuttles would leave openings in her shields long enough for something to get through to the hull, moron,” replies one of the electrical techs.

  “Can it!” orders Mary.

  I watch the Amazon’s broadcasted reports. The Sunspire is trying to hack every system aboard. The sight of the Sunspire focusing fire on one of the Amazon’s shield emitter arrays is mesmerising. The ship rolls so all her rail guns can fire in turn, streams of white hot projectiles raking the larger ship’s energy shield. There’s no one aboard the Sunspire, and most of the civilians left the Amazon. Several families refused to leave, which is normal for a super-carrier of the Amazon’s type. Depending on how the next few minutes go, they might regret their decision.

  The protective barrier surrounding one of the port emitter arrays fail, and then there’s a flash. The communications stream coming from the Amazon stops for the better part of a minute. My comm line is so quiet that all I can hear is the sound of my own breath. I take a moment to look over the four squads of marines accompanying us. They’re as still as can be. When I hear a squawk from the Amazon’s comms I’m relieved, but I check the report and find that the nukes opened a few compartments. At best the Sunspire killed a few dozen people. I don’t consider the worst case scenario. There’s a bright side, however; the reserve shields are up in time to block the second nuclear detonation. The Sunspire is winning, her shields are deflecting whatever she can’t outmanoeuvre.

  A warning is transmitted from the Amazon. The Sunspire has managed to hack several systems. It is part of the plan, but it’s risky. I wait to see if the counter virus works. Long seconds pass. Reports of weapons systems shutting down on the Amazon start coming in. The Sunspire is disarming the grand old ship.

  Then, to my relief, the Sunspire’s engines go out, and her shields begin to fade. “Alpha team, Beta team, you’re a go,” I hear Captain McPatrick order.

  “Aim and fire, Lieutenant Fonte,” I command.

  The manoeuvring thrusters on our shuttles fire. Inertial dampers built into our armour activate. We manoeuvre away from the nearest asteroids and the high-thrust, low-duration rockets mounted on the rear of our ships blast. We’re riding a controlled explosion, just like the astronauts of yore.

  A counter appears on my visor, marking distance and time to impact. Isabel manages to aim at the Sunspire perfectly. We’re lined up to hit exactly where we want, right behind the starboard wing.

  “This is gonna suck,” says Remmy.

  “All right!” says Mary. Her voice is more authoritative and intimidating than most drill instructors when she wants it to be. There are marines who regard her as more of a machine than a woman. “This is the Sunspire! We will break through her hull using a directed disintegration bomb. If it misfires, I’ll see you all in hell in about eighty four seconds. If it doesn’t, we will have a great big white hot ring of metal three metres deep to jump through.” I watch as we get closer and closer to the Sunspire. Mary’s instructions are the perfect accompaniment for our approach. “Our suits may not comple
tely protect us from that kind of heat, so measure twice, jump once, and don’t fall backwards when you land. Check your weapons now, you will not have a chance when you’re inside. You watched the same briefing I did, so you know we have no intelligence on what resistance we’ll face inside. Anything that moves is a viable target. We have the honour of conducting Commander Clark Patterson and his command team to the main data port, and I promised we’d get him there first. Do not let him down.”

  I like the last touch. Even though we’ve all been marked as traitors, Mary still puts me on a pedestal. Every one of the people around me have some kind of violation on record, which is why they’re under our command. The timer says she finished her speech with forty seconds to spare. It counts down to impact as the Sunspire looms closer. I watch the Amazon disappear into a wormhole. Only a few compartments are busted open, and secondary systems are covering for the damage. The bureaucrats and politicians will bitch about it, but she got off light considering the Sunspire’s kill record.

  The Sunspire may be momentarily dormant, but she put defences out. I silently pray we’ll make it through as a shuttle beside us strikes a pacer mine and explodes. Hull fragments and soldiers - some partial, some whole - batter our port side. We drift off-course for a second but get back in line before long. Another shuttle bursts apart above.

  My prayer is answered. With a collision that reverberates through the hull, we connect with the Sunspire. The disintegration bomb stretching across the front of the shuttle goes off. The vacuum in the shuttle doesn’t allow for sound outside our vacsuits, but even in our armour we can feel the vibrations. I would have been knocked on my ass if it weren’t for my stabilisers. The ambient temperature read normal for vacuum before the explosion, twenty eight hundred degrees after, and that’s with the heat shield in place. The plate protecting us from the blast drops and starts to turn red as soon as it touches the white-hot metal of the Sunspire’s violated hull. Marines pour out into the exposed hallway.