The Hipno Chronicles:
Ghosts of Liandris
Chapter 10:
To Liandris!
1420 HOURS, NOVEMBER 3, 2552 (IMPERIAL CALENDAR)
MURIA SYSTEM, PLANET SARAE \ MEDIUM ORBIT, NEAR LNC
NUCLEAR FISSION COMPLEX "BLACK OBELISK"
Jesuit, Kyrie, and Kael clung to the base of the turret, trying to make themselves as inconspicuous as possible. It was not as imposing a weapon as its larger kin mounted upon Furian battlecruisers. With an energy coil about one-third the size of a Humvee, it was barely capable of concealing three Hipnos.
A great plan...as long as the weapon wasn't fired.
Two Furian destroyers floated in the dark, their smooth hulls looking more like some deep-sea creature than spacecraft. A dozen Lightblade fighter ships and a handful of shuttles angled toward their base ships.
Jesuit gave a quick nod to the others.
It was working. At least, as well as any plan could that involved three humans against a hundred Enforcers and the combined might of two battle-ready warships.
The LNC corvette Wolf had come, but not for a daring exfiltration. It had been a bit of misdirection, giving the Furian ships something to focus on as the Hipnos sealed their pressure suits and transferred outside the elevator car.
When two Furian Mancubi dropships came to collect the warheads, Jesuit, Kyrie, and Kael had stealthed under one of the vessels and--if their luck held--they would be ferried away.
The "luck" part of this mission couldn't be taken for granted...because above them sat a dozen--now armed--HAVOK nuclear bombs.
"A little slice of Armageddon," Kael had called it.
Their dropship smoothly accelerated toward one of the destroyers, and an open shuttle bay yawned before them.
He spotted the other shuttle as they moved to the sister vessel. Then the hull of the destroyer flashed before them and cut off the view. Artificial gravity tugged at them.
They'd made it inside.
The three Hipnos slipped from the underside of the ship and rolled out of the shadows. Jesuit and Kyrie took cover around either fork of the hull. Kael leapt to the top of the vessel.
Ten Scarfers and a score of Fodder stood in the open bay between the twin hulls of the dropship--a space usually encased by a gravimetric field, now dropped to allow them to unload their stolen cargo.
Omega Team opened fire.
Three Scarfers dropped, but the remaining vulture-headed aliens snapped on their shield gauntlets and fell back.
The Fodder scattered, and Kael concentrated his fire on them, dropping six, igniting one's vesvane mask, which exploded into a fireball and wiped out another dozen.
Jesuit and Kyrie combined fire on the leader Scarfer in red armor. Its shield shimmered, failed, and armor-piercing rounds penetrated his body, making it shudder and dance.
Two Scarfers screeched and chucked grenades at Jesuit. Kyrie tracked them, fired once, twice, shooting both projectiles midtoss.
The grenades detonated into a spray of half-heated ionized gas, which made the Scarfers' and the Hipnos' energy shields shimmer and drain.
Meanwhile, a pair of Scarfers opened fire on Kael; he dodged the shots, but was forced back.
A plasma bolt singed the hull near Jesuit, but he ignored it and focused on the pair targeting Kael. He flicked his PA6-L rifle to full auto and fired. Kyrie combined her fire and they dropped the Scarfers.
The last four Scarfers charged Jesuit and Kyrie--plasma pistols firing.
Kyrie made a fist and pumped it once. Jesuit nodded and faded back behind the hull, leaving a primed grenade on the ground. He reloaded, waited two heartbeats, and then twin blasts shuddered through the hull.
Jesuit moved up and shot the wounded Scarfers struggling to rise of the deck.
He looked for another target.
None but the Hipnos stood. The cavernous shuttle bay of the Furian destroyer was empty save mangled and bloodied corpses of Scarfers and Fodder.
Jesuit pointed at Kyrie and then to the nukes on the ship. They had to get those things defused. She nodded and moved toward the HAVEN warheads.
Jesuit strode to a set of pressure doors and the nearby control panel.
Three Hipnos couldn't take a Furian ship; not under normal circumstances, but Omega team had three advantages.
First, they had the element of surprise. What Furian Brood Lord would dream three L.E.G.I.O.N might board and capture their ship?
Next, Omega Team had been on an enemy warship before; they knew the basic layout.
And last, and most important, the Furians were slow to change. While their technology was centuries ahead of the most advanced the L.E.G.I.O.N could muster, it had become more dogma than science. They didn't innovate; they imitated.
Certainly they'd heard about the capture of the Soul Monger by Kikoji. If that had happened to a L.E.G.I.O.N ship, there would have been new security protocols enacted on every ship in every fleet to prevent it from happening again.
Jesuit was betting their lives that the Furians didn't think like that.
He retrieved the ONI datapad, newly updated with Furian translation software, and set it upon the control panel. Purple lights flickered on the panel near the pad as the pad's network infiltration programs booted...and it slipped into the Furian ship's system.
He was in. It was just like having Liara around...without the chatter.
Jesuit searched intership messages and found an alert: the team unloading the nukes was overdo to report. An Enforcer team had been sent to see what was wrong.
Kael and Kyrie took cover inside the dropship's cockpit. Jesuit wished he could join them. They powered up the ship. It lifted, turned, and backed into the far corner to protect the nukes from the next phase of his plan.
Jesuit returned to the datapad. He had little time before the entire ship was alerted to the invading army of three.
He scrolled through the ship systems and found the icon he needed: an arrow encircling twin dots. Pressurized molecular oxygen. Kikoji had shown them that one. Jesuit overrode the ship's self-seal bulkheads--jammed them open. Evey pressure door he secured--ajar. The ONI hackware churned as it stripped away security protocols. He primed the ship's life pods and froze their air lock hydraulics.
He flashed his red, amber, and green status light to give Kael and Kyrie a countdown.
As the green winked off, Jesuit gripped a handle on the wall and clutched the datapad.
As the amber light dimmed he slaved the controls for the energy shield on the shuttle bay, the emergency life-pod releases, and the air-lock overrides.
On red...he punched the master release.
A drum roll sounded through the ship's hull.
The shuttle bay's shield vanished.
A hurricane pulled at Jesuit, blew out cargo pods, bodies, tools, and small repair ships.
He clung to the handle; one side of the metal bar bent and pulled free, but then the tremendous gale subsided. All the air had evacuated into space.
Jesuit rechecked his atmospheric reserves. They had been in combat and on the Obelisk for a long time where no one was taking tiny breaths. His pressure suit had seven minutes of air left.
He went back to the datapad and checked: all corridors and rooms read zero pressure. Unless there were Furian forces in pressure suits, this ship was a ghost ship now.
Kael and Kyrie joined him.
Jesuit rerouted power and the doors slid apart.
Omega Team entered the hallway and quickly made their way toward the bridge. Six dead Enforcers lay on the floor. For all their ferocity, even they had to breathe.
Jesuit halted at another set of pressure doors and accessed the control panels. Kyrie knelt by his side, sniper rifle butted against her shoulder, aimed at the center of the doors. Kael stood on the opposite side, a grenade in each claw, ready to throw.
Jesuit touched his ear against the bulkhead and listened. Nothing. He then keyed the doors open.
The octagonal bridge was empty save for a single Furian Seeker who miraculously clung to the railing of the command console. Inside the monster's inch-thick armor, its insides had oozed out and freeze-dried to the deck.
The three Hipnos checked the lfe-pod hatches for any sign of the enemy. Jesuit saw the open space beyond, stars...and the other Furian destroyer turning toward them.
He moved onto the command platform and set the datapad in the interface location. Jesuit had to hurry; he had to move slow, too. Rushing now might cause errors that could cost them more time. It took all he had to focus on language matrices, numbers, and icons.
Kael watched from a life-pod hatch, and whispered over TEAMCOM, "Destroyer on intercept vector."
Jesuit accessed that datapad's memory and got the hyperspace jump solution provided by a NAV officer on Leviathan. He hoped the Furian ship would accept the human mathematics or they'd be stuck here.
Kyrie joined Kael by the open hatch, peering through her ACOG sniper scope. "Ten thousand kilometers and closing, fast," she said.
"Arm HAVOK warheads," Jesuit told her.
"Roger," she replied.
This was where the luck part of their plan would be stretched to its thinnest. Had the Furians shuttled the now active warheads onto their ships? Would they notice the detonators had been primed?
"Confirmation signal lock," Kyrie said.
"Okay, come on," Jesuit whispered to the datapad.
The command surfaces lit and holographic geometries drifted over its surface. A tiny version of the console appeared on his datapad with Common translations.
Jesuit grabbed the spherical hyperspace command and rotated it. Its ready status winked in ultramarine. He input the jump coordinates.
The sphere then froze, and a white vector stretched toward tiny stars that appeared over the command surface. A blinking gold starburst appeard to initiate the hyperspace transition.
"Two-second countdown," he told Kyrie," on my mark."
Kael pulled the hydralics from the open hatch, grasped the door, and rolled it back into place.
The bridge's main holographic viewer flickered on and showed the closing destroyer. Warning indicators pointed to the ships' heating lateral lines.
"Two-second timer confirmed," Kyrie said. "Commands accepted and confirmed. All six HAVEN nukes show armed status."
"Mark!" Jesuit tapped the jump button.
Nothing happened...
Black space turned white...
Lord Iatachi watched from the command deck of Leviathan, ignoring the warbling emergency signals.
The Furian destroyer had maneuvered into optimal plasma range. He hoped the shields of the Hipno-captured ship staved off at least one salvo, and gave the Omega Team the time they needed.
Hipno-104's plan had been inspired, yet in Lord Iatachi's seasoned opinion, suicidal. Dr. Rahel Nightshift had once told him in confidence that Hipno's considered it their duty to prove the impossible possible.
The Furian ship's plasma lines reddened, bolts formed, and launched. At the same time, the enemy destroyer flashed inside their energy shields; its hull glowed and vaporized as the stolen nuclear devices detonated. A circle of white light appeared an instant before Leviathan's polarization shields cut the viewscreens. Thermal and radiologicals showed smears of amber and red mushrooming outward in wavering torus.
Station Wayward Rest had been obliterated as well. The tall form of the Black Obelisk crumpled and fell to Sarae.
There was no sign of the Hipno-held ship. There was no way to know if they had succeeded and jumped into hyperspace or not.
Lord Iatachi chos to believe they had done the impossible and whispered, "Godspeed, Omega Team."