Breakspace by Joshua Guess

Author:Joshua Guess
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Joshua Guess
Published: 2018-03-26T00:00:00+00:00

19

The trick was taking the Breakspace engine before it could be delivered to the facility. Thanks to Grant’s inside man, he knew exactly when that was supposed to happen. With that knowledge it had only taken Iona a day to work out the exact flight plan—and thus the exact ship—that would be dropping off the central components.

They could have hit the off-site manufacturing facility that made the engine, which was a vast factory platform orbiting Proxima. They chose not to for many reasons, chief among them the difficulty of such a small team being used against a structure so large and the number of innocent workers involved. Instead they chose to strike after the transport ship was loaded with its cargo and on the way down the gravity well.

The shuttle was smaller, faster, and far more maneuverable. Crash found the target and set an intercept that would give them just enough surprise to make entry.

“Coming up on it,” Crash said. “Get ready. When I fire the retros, the gravity back there might get wonky. I have no idea how stable that generator is.”

“Roger that,” Grant said. Fen, Spencer, and Hayes said nothing.

The gravity held out just fine. Grant watched the feed from the cockpit through his HUD and saw the sudden deceleration as Crash swooped in on a hard burn, quickly firing the old-fashioned retro nozzles to put them exactly on the same flight path as the transport.

“We’ve been noticed,” Crash said over the comm with amusement in her voice. “Not surprising since I just lit up their hull with fire. You’re good to go.”

Grant gestured to Fen, who took the signal for what it was: him ceding control of the operation over to her. It only made sense. He was an excellent gunner and a decent captain, but she was the expert on this kind of thing. He trusted her experience and knowledge, not to mention her instincts, to get them through this alive far more than his own.

Fen keyed the port on the belly of the shuttle. They moved almost before the bay doors had a chance to fully open. The gravity in the bay gave them a small but firm push down relative to the shuttle, which was enough momentum to send the team hurtling toward the dorsal section of the transport.

The massive mechanical boots of Grant’s armor locked onto the hull when he hit. The others landed first and were already making their entry. The particular design of this ship, fairly standard for in-system hauling of goods, included large airlocks on three different faces of the vessel. This was to make docking in several configurations easier and safer.

It also made boarding way easier. Had the Navy been doing their job, the panic signals from the transport would have brought them running.

They weren’t. No one from the Alliance would come to the aid of any Prescott ship. Sharp had been in contact with the locals and worked his magic.

“Outer door is about to pop,” Fen said as the single-use plasma torch in her gauntleted fist began to fade out.

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