Violent Wonder Read online

  “Well, what then?” She threw up her hands. Nadia and Kit had taken positions at the door and seemed ready to leave, regardless of where they went. “I already told you: I’m not wading through feces.”

  Ritz turned and looked at King. “You got anything?”

  He smiled. “I might.”

  “I give this an 80% chance of ending with all of us getting blown to shit,” Raquel said as King knocked the power couplings loose from a bent and damaged slot near the bottom of one of the drop pods; they had already done this procedure on the other one.

  “Really?” he asked. “That’s more generous than what I was thinking.”

  “Well, then why are we doing it?”

  “Because,” he said, hauling out the heavy metal battery. “It’s not as tedious as being executed.”

  The plan was a simple one, and if King’s calculations were correct it should work. Theoretically. The problem was that every theoretical plan he had ever concocted had had some sort of curveball lobbed at it, which was probably why he wasn’t even as confident in it as the others.

  “It should work,” he had explained as they made their way back around the blocked tunnel to the hangar where the drop pods had landed. Only one of the combat synths had been left to guard the area while the others were off god-knew-where, and Kit dispatched him relatively quickly. “When the drop pods hit, they absorb energy and disperse as much as they can. They can’t get rid of all of it though, so most of the kinetic energy ends up being transformed by the power converters into electrical energy which gets stored in the battery. The converter is built into the battery, so it can then reconvert the electrical energy back into kinetic energy.”

  “Okay,” Ritz said holding a hand up. “What exactly are you trying to say, King?”

  “Well, every base has escape pods, right? Even the planet-side ones. Because who knows when an attack could come, right? Gotta be ready to go if six insurgent frigates appear overhead, and you gotta do that without firing up a whole transport cruiser like we were going to use.”

  “Yeah, but those are attached to the control room. Plus, they will have remotely cut power to them. Double plus, I’d be surprised if the control room crew hasn’t already used them.”

  “I doubt it,” King replied. “This is a robbery, not an orbital assault. We came in loud, sure, but with reinforcements, the advantage has tipped extremely in their favor. Escape shuttles are dangerous because they have to break orbit, so I don’t think they’ll use those unless they have to.”

  “Okay, what about the power and the locks?”

  “The locks are easy. You just flip a switch in the control room. Power, on the other hand, is a little bit tricky—if we had more time I could run a bypass, but we don’t—so that’s where the batteries come in. If we can hook them into the thruster’s ports onboard the shuttle, sync it to the neural network in one of the Arc Suits, and then hit the trigger, we should have enough power to break orbit.”

  So that’s what they were doing. They were jerry-rigging a pair of banged-up batteries to what was essentially a bullet being fired into space. With the energy already stored in the batteries, the math worked out. The problem was all of the variables. Wind-speed. Angles. Other ships. Even being able to make it through the control room which probably had five combat synths and at least four workers inside, some of which could be armed. All those were things that they had to navigate, and they had to do it fast.

  Chances were likely that there were already a bunch of soldiers and synths combing the area. If they could make it past them though and then make it into the air, all they’d have to do would be to call the Leopold to come pick them up. By that time, they should be well out of the jammer’s range.

  “You can take this, thank you,” King said, handing the second battery to Kit. The batteries could be held by a human being, but they were heavy and far better-off in the enhanced hands of a Marauder in an Arc Suit.

  From there, the five departed toward the control room.

  Managing to sneak by two patrols of synths, they were able to make it to the west corner of the base where the control room was located without any problem. When they arrived at the room itself however, they found fifteen synths and a commander standing between them and the door.

  Back, back, back, Nadia motioned with her hand as she peered around the corner. She had taken point, and no one had seen them yet. She cradled her rifle in her hands and watched as the others crouched behind her.

  After thirty seconds or so, she turned and whispered: “they’re leaving.” And from the sound of it, most of them were. Once they had all marched down the hall in the opposite direction, she held up two fingers.

  Two synths stood guard.

  This presented a problem. The two guards would be easy enough to deal with, but with the other squad so close, they’d have to do it quietly.

  Or, Raquel thought, extremely loudly.

  If they tried to take them out quietly, there was the chance that one of them would still make a noise. Even it didn’t, the others could still come running. According to Ritz, some of the new synths had a “converge” command built in that was enabled once one of the other bots went offline. So they could take the two bots out in complete silence and still have the whole building come down on them.

  “How fast can you hook up those batteries?” Nadia whispered, looking at King.

  “No time at all,” he said. “Open the hatch on the floor, plug the batteries into the port, then the converter does the rest of the work. The shuttles are made in such a way that you don’t even have to fire it up. You just punch a big red button and it launches. It has a control panel and light thrusters for micro-navigation in space, but this thing is a worst-case-scenario sort of thing. It’s not complicated.”

  “Seconds,” she said. “How many seconds?”

  “Two or three.”

  “How about those explosive charges, you have any more of those? I need one big enough to blow the door but not the people inside. Can you be that accurate?”

  “Yes and mostly yes.”

  “Mostly?”

  “Mostly,” he said, unwavering. “I can’t give you more than 'mostly.'”

  Raquel watched her do a calculation in her head. “Okay,” she said. “We go in loud. That squad has been gone for about a minute now walking, which gives us about twenty-seconds if they come running back. I’ll dispatch the guards while you lob the charge. Three-second timer. Got it? Three-seconds.” King nodded. “We go in and hit the synths inside. I’ll take one battery and Kit can take the other so we can have our rifles in our other hands. There’ll be dust and confusion but our Heads-Up Displays should sort out the personnel from the bots.”

  “Remember,” Kit said. “We don’t want to kill any people here. These are just a bunch of citizens working a 9-5. They’re not soldiers. Don’t kill anyone.”

  “And if one of them’s packing?” Ritz asked.

  “If one of them’s packing, Nadia or I will disarm them. There shouldn’t be any need for anyone to fire their weapons. We can have five synths down in less than two seconds. Ok?”

  Everyone nodded.

  “Ok then,” Nadia said. “Let’s hit it.”

  The first part went almost perfectly. Nadia came around the corner, gun up, at the same time King lobbed the charge. Both bots went down with their heads and necks shredded by NR-19 bolts and two-seconds later the door blew inward.

  Wasting no time, the five of them rushed forward, eyes peering over the barrels of their guns as they poured into the hazy room. The dust inside the room was thick, and even though it was quickly ventilated out by the base’s forced-air system, five bots were down before it cleared.

  Six frightened faces stared back at them.

  “You,” King pointed at one a woman behind a control counsel, a spilled cup of coffee next to her. “Unlock the-”

  But before he could finish, a blast of energy fire tore up Nadia’s side, her armor flaring. Thankfully, the
rounds missed the Light Core, but in an effort to protect it, Nadia spun and dove and glanced off the wall to her left. Kit turned on the synth—the one they hadn’t counted on being there—but Raquel, who had entered last, was closer. Her submachine gun was already leveled at her hip and all she had to do was pull the trigger.

  She did.

  Bullets tore up the synthetic’s torso and it jerked and shook as the hard rounds bounced around inside of it. What happened then, Raquel didn’t even see. One-second, she was taking the synth down and the next she was turning to see a short, stocky man with a surprised look on his face reaching up toward his neck. At first, she didn’t know why. Then she saw it. A thick rope of blood pumped out of his throat, followed by another and another.

  Then everything went sideways.

  Another man took the opportunity to reach under his console and pull out a gun, but before he could bring it up Nadia shot him in the head. Then people were diving and shouting and maybe they were going for their guns too and maybe not, but by the time it was over Raquel, King, and Ritz had all emptied their magazines and all of the controllers lay dead and torn apart in front of them.

  “Jesus,” Ritz said, running a shaking hand through his hair.

  “No time,” Nadia barked as she pushed the body of the woman off of her control panel and hit the “unlock” button. Kit just stood there silently, his faceplate betraying nothing.

  The door to the shuttle slid open and the five of them strode numbly through the hatch as Nadia covered their rear, the sound of pounding boots already audible from the hallway. The first synth appeared in the shattered doorway just as the hatch slid closed, but by that time King had plugged the batteries into the port and Kit had wirelessly synced the trigger to his neural network and then he hit it and they were flying.

  And even as they broke range of the jammers and radioed for help, Ritz speaking rapidly into the tiny microphone clipped to his lapel, Raquel thought about those six dead people. They had been a part of the military sure—an oppressive regime that used its power to dictate the lives of its citizens, killing those who stepped out of line—but they had still been people. Innocent people. Raquel had killed people before, but she had never gotten used to it. They had all explicitly agreed not to hurt anyone but had done so anyway…

  She wasn't shocked. She wasn’t rendered speechless and immobile. But it was there. It was something in the back of her mind that she’d have to deal with and reconcile. The crew of the Leopold had made the decision to steal the Light Core—a key item that would allow them to finally escape this sector of space—but the people in there had paid the price for it.

  3

  At the Void Gate

  “What happened down there?” Hector half-yelled once they were aboard the ship. “One minute we were talking to you, then the next you were gone. Then—a long time later—you call us asking for a pickup from a shuttle that I barely have the capability of fitting inside my hold. You’re lucky we didn’t split as soon as the reinforcements arrived.”

  They were all onboard the Leopold now, most of them crammed into the tight little bridge with not-nearly enough seating for all of them. Ritz had been able to call for help once they had broken atmosphere, but the batteries had barely been strong enough and in seconds they were starting to get pulled back down out of orbit by the planet’s gravity. If Hector and Byzzie hadn’t been quick on the controls, they would have probably plummeted back to the ground in a giant ball of fire.

  “King tripped an alarm,” Raquel said, and she saw King make a face.

  “Yeah, I figured as much. Looks like you damn near blew up the whole base too. Hitting it with a POP, geez. You’re lucky the whole building didn’t come down on you.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” Ritz cut in. “It was dangerous and stupid. Let’s move on. How close are we to the gate?”

  “We’re about five minutes out,” Hector said. Hector had red hair, just a little bit of pudge around the neck and stomach, and had just started to push the 45-year mark. “Nadia and Byzzie are installing the Light Core as we speak. I don’t know how complicated that is, but we need it to travel through the gate, otherwise, we’d just get swallowed by the Void.”

  “And we should be able to just set coordinates and jet then?”

  “Should be. That is unless they’ve locked the gate down because of that stunt back there. I think we’ll be lucky if we don’t have corvettes coming out of our ears by the time we get there.”

  “And if we do?” Raquel asked, allowing the worry to creep into her voice. The last thing she wanted at this point was a drawn-out naval battle with a bunch of armed PUC vessels.

  “Then let’s hope Byzzie’s thing works.”

  “Works?” King said incredulously. “We’ll be lucky if it doesn’t explode and kill all of us.”

  “Well, if it does, then you two will be even, how about that?” Raquel said. “I don’t remember her trying to hack the security system and sending us on one big exploding digression, so right now she’s one up on you.”

  Refusing to respond, King simply rolled his tongue in his mouth and looked away.

  “How about coordinates?” Ritz said, trying to steer the conversation back. “We know where we’re going?”

  “Yeah, I got a place picked out,” Hector responded as he tapped through a list of coordinates on his screen. He kept alternating between peering out the viewing port and looking down at his read-outs. Raquel had seldom seen him wound this tight. “There’s a place in the Pillon System. Byzzie’s basically got her whole family there and I’ve got a few friends. Plus, I think King knows a guy that deals in weapons and parts.”

  Raquel looked over at King and he nodded absentmindedly.

  “It’s way outside PUC space,” Hector continued. “Decent militia presence but not the crazies who wanna overthrow the whole damn state.” He shot a look back at them. “Well, mostly.”

  “Wouldn’t be such a bad idea,” King chimed.

  “Yeah it would, King. Lots and lots of people would die. Plus, those people have lived so long with a top-down government that a bottom-up one might be too much for them to handle if you just switch it. There’s no telling what would happen. It could suddenly devolve into forty separate civil wars.”

  “We don’t have time for this discussion again,” Ritz added. “The Pillon System. How many gates does it have?”

  “It started out with two, but I think they found a third. They plan on using it as a sort of back door into unexplored space, if you will. Their defenses are strong, but not enough to repel a whole PUC fleet. If it came to that, I think most of them would rather just escape out the back door.”

  “Okay,” Ritz nodded. He looked bad. His skin was pale and Raquel could see him trying to keep his hands from shaking. But this was the final moment. If they couldn’t pull this off then it was all for nothing. His life was on the line, but more than that, his crew’s lives were on the line. These people were all he had.

  “Let’s do it,” he said. “King. Raquel. Get back to your quarters. It’s too tight in here for everyone.” Ritz keyed the comm system. “Byzzie, report to the bridge. You and Hector are up.”

  Damn, Ritz thought to himself. Damn, Damn, Damn. They just couldn’t catch a break. Nothing could go smoothly. Every single step they took had to be challenged and fought over.

  The gate was locked down. It couldn’t be shut off exactly—it was a hole in space—but the usually open area had three PUC corvettes clustered around it, their silver bows looking sleek and deadly like so many sharks. On top of that, there was an energy shield that needed to be shut down. Even if they made it past the corvettes and tried to just blast on through, they’d slam into a wall of energy that could repel an asteroid.

  “What’s the plan?” Hector yelled. The three corvettes had just spotted the Leopold and were coming around to bear.

  “Byzzie, that thing ready?” Ritz said into his comms.

  “The engine is,” The woman’s voice crackled
over their headsets. “As far as the Javelin is concerned…”

  “Well, we’re using it. No way these ships let us pass, not after what happened down at Kilo Base. They’re going to blow us out of the sky if they can.”

  “Okay,” Byzzie said, and for a moment they heard her voice from two separate sources as she stepped through the hatch and onto the bridge. She pulled up a seat beside Hector and clipped in. “I’m using the old fuel tank to power shields, so we should be a little more fortified than usual.”

  “Sounds good,” Ritz said, trying to get himself under control. He felt queasy. His leg throbbed from where he had taken the energy round and he couldn’t keep his hands from shaking. At times he wanted to throw up and at others he just wanted to collapse.

  He had a plan though. It wasn’t very great, but it was feasible.

  The shield was in the shape of a triangle and had three generators called Mirror Circuits, one on each side. The good news was that they only had to take out one for the whole circuit to go down. The bad news was that the Mirror Circuits were small. Each one was not much bigger than a small kitchen table.

  The problem with this is that it was too small to lock onto.

  The ship’s weapons systems were good for locking onto other ships and could even occasionally lock onto large torpedoes if the circumstances were right. But something barely larger than an average-sized person? No way. Which meant that they had to hit it manually. Byzzie was a decent shot but not that good. Her expertise lay more in the realm of mechanics and physics. If they were going to hit one of the Mirror Circuits, then they were going to have to get real lucky.

  And it seemed like luck was in short supply today, depending on how you looked at it. Sure, they had managed to escape by the skin of their teeth without any crew deaths, but the only reason they were able to do that was because they were able to punch and shoot their way out. After being militia grunts for so many years, those on board the Leopold were better at small skirmish fighting than they were at anything else and up here in the ship that advantage went away.