Jaym Gates - War Stories

The team goes through the membrane faster than it can seal around them, and the habitat loses a couple of cubic meters of air before it regenerates. Six identifies and destroys more eyes on the inside walls. Two covers the hatch in case someone else comes at them from outside. The rest of the team launch themselves across the inside of the docking hub to secure the connection to the habitat.

Another metal hatch has already sealed off that direction, but that’s perfectly fine with the squad. If they can’t get into the main habitat, nothing can come out, either. One and Three cover that approach. Yamada and the two smallest team members head for the thick conduit that runs through the center of the docking hub, connecting the habitat to the radiator fin beyond. Four and Five remove the casing and expose the heavily insulated pipes inside. Two of the pipes are dazzlingly hot on infrared, even inside layers of fiberglass and foil.

Four and Five install the squad’s insurance policy: modest demolition charges, just powerful enough to sever the coolant lines. All the pipes get two, including the backups. Now if the officer says a particular command—or if his suit stops sending a particular code series to the bombs—they’ll go off, and Anfa Habitat won’t have any way to shed waste heat. Thirteen thousand people will slowly cook in the relentless fury of the Sun.

The squad has downloads of Anfa’s emergency plans. It’ll be a race between work drones and thermodynamics. The squad estimates at least ten percent of the human inhabitants will die, and there’s a small but non–trivial chance that all of them will.

The Anfa forces have assembled outside. A trio of drones dive in through the membrane at the same instant that a shaped charge turns the center of the steel hatch into a jet of molten metal that hits Blue Three right in the ammunition magazine. Some of the grenades in Three’s magazine cook off, blowing the bot apart.

For a moment the squad becomes a group of autonomous individuals while the group AI reconfigures itself. When it does, the squad can’t plan quite as far ahead and its guesses are a little less precise.

Blue One fires a hail of depleted uranium through the space where Three had been standing, shredding whatever’s on the other side of the hatch. Six blinds the drones coming in the other way, and Two finishes them off with sticky grenades.

Captain Yamada’s broadcasting on all the voice channels. “Anfa, I will destroy your cooling system if you don’t stand down at once!”

There’s a pause, and then a human voice comes over one of the channels. “All right. We’ll cease fire.”

“Understood,” says Yamada, though the squad’s still ready to slag anything that tries to get into the hub. “I’m a licensed contractor working for the Deimos Community. This is a legal military operation. All I want is one person. Give me Dr. Julius Wassel. I have orders to remove him from this habitat. He will not be harmed.”

There’s a pause of about a minute. “We can’t let you take Dr. Wassel against his will.”

“I’m not leaving without him.”

“Even if you do sabotage the radiator, you won’t get away from Anfa alive,” the other human points out.

“I’d rather end this with no loss of life at all,” says Yamada. “Give me Wassel, I’ll leave, and nobody gets hurt.”

“We can’t just hand him over,” says the voice. “Dr. Wassel is a citizen and a shareholder. He’s got rights.”

“How about you let me talk to him directly?”

There’s a long delay, and then a new voice comes on. “This is Julius Wassel speaking. Are you really prepared to commit mass murder?”

“I was hired to do a job, Dr. Wassel,” says Yamada. “I’m trying to use minimum force to get it done. This is a legal military operation. Would you rather my squad tried to fight through the habitat to find you? If you come along with me I promise you will not be harmed.”

“Where do you plan to take me?”

“I can’t reveal that. But you’ll be treated extremely well. My employers think your research is very important, and they want to help you continue your work. I’m sure you’ll have more resources than you do here.”

“I came to Anfa to get away from all that,” says Wassel. “Both sides in this ridiculous war are repulsive to me. Ideological fanatics fighting amoral exploiters, with mercenaries doing the dirty work.”

“I’m just a contractor,” says Yamada. “Look, I know they’ve probably asked you to keep me talking while they fab up more weapons, so I’m afraid I have to cut this short. I’m starting a ten–minute timer on my bombs now. If Dr. Wassel comes down here before they go off, I’ll shut them off and leave in peace.”

The captain cuts the link and rearranges the squad. The two open hatches are sealed only by pressure membranes, and just about anything could punch through that. He puts Four and Five to work pulling up wall and floor panels to obstruct any line of sight through the hatches. Six watches the door into space, while the other two cover the link to the main habitat.

The timer ticks down to five minutes, then four, then three. The squad’s ability to predict human behavior is limited, but elementary game theory suggests that once the coolant lines are severed and the habitat’s temperature starts to rise, there’s absolutely nothing to prevent Anfa’s lasers from vaporizing the captain and the grunts. That’s a known risk.

The count’s at one minute forty seconds when there’s a knock on the partition blocking the hatchway into the main habitat. Yamada sends Four to have a peek. Two humans in skinsuits are floating just this side of the membrane.

“I only want Dr. Wassel,” says Yamada.

“Pando, it’s me. Gradara,” says one of the humans.

For a moment the officer’s bio readings go nuts, and the squad considers the possibility the enemy has managed to hit him with some kind of biochemical agent. But before the squad can shift into autonomous mode he drops back within normal parameters.

“Come in, both of you,” says the captain. He halts the timer.

The squad lets them pass the partition, and Six looks inside both of them with backscatter X–rays and sound pulses. You can learn a lot about someone that way. Wassel’s a male human, with too much abdominal fat and an artificial pancreas. Gradara’s a female with unusual muscle density; all the bones in one leg plus a forearm and some ribs are carbon–fiber rebuilds. Her bio readings are a lot less elevated than Wassel’s.

“I thought you were dead,” says Yamada.

“I wanted a new start. There were people I didn’t want following me,” she says.

“What are you doing here?”

“I live here, Pando. I’m a shareholder and a citizen. Back when Earth and Deimos started this epic pissing contest I decided to get as far away from the war zone as I could. Anfa looked like a good place. Low strategic value, underpopulated—or at least it was when I got here. Now we’ve got more people than the place was built to support. Thirteen thousand people will cook if you set off those charges.”

The officer is silent for nearly a second. Then, “What about you, Dr. Wassel? Are you ready to leave?”

“If I have no alternative,” says Wassel.

“See?” Captain Yamada tells the woman called Gradara. “He’s perfectly willing. Nobody has to get hurt.”

“I’ve got a counter–offer,” says Gradara. “Stay here. Anfa can buy out your contract.”

Yamada takes a couple of seconds to answer. “What would I do here? I’m a soldier.”

“There may be other raids. Obviously we need better defenses. You could help set them up.”

“Are you part of the deal?”

“No promises, Pando.”