Free Rebellion Ebook Full by B. V. Larson Page B

ships were controlled by voice, interacting with the brainbox verbally. In this case, I didn’t want to fly my marines into combat with arms gripping them which they couldn’t release on their own. Combat conditions were hard to predict. The brainbox or the pilot could be taken out of the equation, or both. With my design, every man had some level of control of his own situation. If he tapped or kicked a bead of metal, the nanite arms would release him automatically.
    “Any incoming fire yet, pilot?” I asked.
    “Negative, sir,” she said. The pilot was Lieutenant Joelle Marquis. She was young and inexperienced, but none of that could be heard in her voice. Her words rang with calm authority and a slight, French accent. She was one of the Fleet people I’d brought along in case I’d needed to build a flying force at some point. On Helios, she’d been left manning the walls, but now her piloting skills were sorely needed.
     Kwon leaned forward and waved to me, indicating he wanted to touch helmets. I immediately complied, wondering what my second in command might want to say in private. Since the assault ships were not pressurized, we could normally only communicate with radio intercoms. By touching our bulbous faceplates together, vibrations could be carried and voices therefore could be heard, but only by the two people in close contact. I found myself staring into Kwon’s big face, which was grinning. Being so close to another guy was disconcerting, but you got used to it.
    “What is it, Captain?” I asked.
    “She’s really hot, isn’t she?”
    I stared at him. “Who?”
    “Joelle,” he said flicking his eyes toward the front of the ship. “I love that frenchie talk.”
    I snorted in disbelief. Kwon was a great marine, but he was like a big kid sometimes. I didn’t know if Joelle would go for a guy like Kwon, she was too good-looking and he was a lump in a battle suit. But I decided that if he was happy to dream about her, I was happy for him.
    “Go for it, Kwon,” I said, “but wait until after the fighting, all right?”
    “Okay, okay!” he said. Still grinning, he sat back. The nano-straps that held us all in seemed excited by his leaning and stretching. They shortened up their hold on him, all but pinning him to the wall of the ship. Nano arms were like mother hens when you were on a mission.
    “Incoming fire,” the pilot said. Joelle’s words were calm, but I heard the tension in them. I didn’t blame her for being worried.
    We began immediately swerving from side to side. I knew she was firing the lateral propulsion systems we’d rigged up, jinking randomly to avoid getting hit. The enemy had taken a long time to figure out they were in trouble. We were three-quarters of the way there. In another minute or so, the ships would have to flip the engines forward and decelerate or crash into the station directly.
    I looked up at the screen. There was the station; it was huge and reddish-brown. It looked like small moon, but was oddly-shaped. Unlike a human structure, this thing was organic-looking in design. It was looped with tubes and swirling flanges. It looked more like a seedpod coated in cobwebs than anything else. I didn’t see any incoming fire on the screen. They must not be firing missiles at us.
    A beam of light splashed into the ship then, having breached the thin hull. My visor darkened almost immediately. The intensity of the light gave me an instant headache. I thought for a second that one of my men had flipped off his safety and discharged his projector. I almost shouted a complaint, when I felt an impact against my right shoulder.
    Centrifugal force pushed me into the man on my right, just as the guy on my left was being shoved up against me. I could feel the motion now, we were in a spin. My vision returned and my visor brightened. I could see all the men were caught up in the spin, we were doing at least three Gs of lateral force. The upper hull of the ship was gone. A