Battle Cruiser (11 page)

He activated the overrides as quickly as he could. Alarms sang. The computer spoke, displayed, and audibly warned us with various dire noises that we were breaching security protocols.

We ignored everything the ship said, even though she almost begged us to change our minds. At last, overcoming her great reluctance,
Cutlass
fired on
Altair
.

-15-

We fled through the snow, plunging across the tiny world in a frozen twilight.

The sun was on the far side of the world at the moment. Each “day” here was just over an hour long. I had to wonder if I’d ever see my home star rise again.

Behind us, a second bolt struck
Cutlass
. We turned our heads away, and still the light of the released energy was as bright as an arc-welder’s torch. The shield absorbed the blow, but only barely. It was dim, brown-orange and crackling. When the next bolt came, the shield would buckle entirely.

“If they’ve fired a missile back at us…”

“I know, Rumbold. If they have, we’re dead. We’ll be so much molecular dust, returning to the stars where our matter originated. But don’t worry, they won’t fire a missile.”

“How do you
know
, sir?”

I glanced at Rumbold, and through his darkened visor I could make out his features, twisted in fear. It was a wonder that a man who was as old as he was could still fear death. Hadn’t he cheated it long enough?

Or maybe, it was the precise fact that he’d lived so long that made him fear death all the more. I didn’t know, and I didn’t care to ask.

“If they were going to fire a missile, I think they would have already done it, and in my estimate it would have landed by now.

“If that’s so why aren’t they firing a bird? It would be unstoppable. Lying here on the surface
Cutlass
wouldn’t stand a chance. The concussion would reverberate from the ground and crush her.”

“Yes. But think: why are they doing this? Why is Singh doing this?”

“I’ve got no idea. He’s mad.”

“I don’t think so. I think he’s protecting this object. I think he wants it for himself, or he’s in league with someone who does. He’s also smart enough to know that if I die, House Sparhawk will demand an investigation, and it’s a lot harder to explain unaccounted-for missiles than particle beams.”

“Singh is a traitor then?”

“Anyone who orders a ship under his command to sit on a rock, then fires on them when he comes out to relieve them of their duty… Yes, I would describe Singh as a traitor.”

Yamada hustled up next to me. She was carrying a bag of equipment that was almost as large as she was. Due to the ship’s tiny gravitational field, she was able to bear the load easily.

“Sir,” she said, “I don’t know if it’s safe to attempt to blow that plug and dig inside this rock. We don’t know anything about the interior.”

Her worries forced a chuckle out of me. “Unfortunately, we know how things are on the surface,” I said. “Right now, I’m willing to take a chance.”

“Understood, sir.”

She fell back, and we soon reached the plug. “Blow it open,” I ordered.

Yamada finished prepping the charge, but before she could detonate it a massive cascade of gas and energy flared overhead.

We threw ourselves down into the snow and planted our faceplates into it. After a few moments, realizing I was still breathing, I dared to roll onto my back.

“It was our missile,” I said. “Our single missile. Nice to know the warhead was still good.”

“I hope it killed Singh,” Yamada said with intensity.

I glanced at her. I knew that she’d had feelings for Weaver. We all cared about one another. After spending so much time together inside
Cutlass
, we were like family. We bickered—but we cared, too.

“Detonate that charge!” I ordered.

“Everyone hug the ground!” she shouted.

Those of the crewmen who were just getting to their feet threw themselves flat again.

A silent explosion puffed into the dark sky. Ice crystals, vaporized metal-rich rock and hot gas rushed by us. We felt, rather than heard the explosion. A deep vibration came up through our bellies and our bones.

Approaching the smoking crater cautiously, we weren’t overcome by a gush of tubes, released from the interior. Instead, we found ourselves staring down into a dark, frozen space. The opening was obscured by floating vapor that the stabbing lights on our suits couldn’t penetrate.

“Well,” I said, “there’s nowhere else to go.”

Letting myself slide down the side of the crater, I sank feet first into the unknown. Behind me, my crewmen gasped and called out in alarm.

I didn’t heed them. I let myself go. With the very low gravity, it wasn’t like a plunging fall, but the sensation was alarming all the same.

The starry sky vanished overhead. Above, all I could see was a misty gray light.

In front of me was a blinding, moving cloud. My suit lights didn’t penetrate the vapor, instead they were like headlights in fog, they blinded me as much as illuminated anything.

I fell for what seemed like a very long time and panic almost overwhelmed me. What if this entire object was hollow? What if it had no bottom, just a far side? I might have just killed myself in a unique fashion.

Fighting down an urge to cry out in fear, I kept drifting downward.

“Sir? Can you hear me, Captain Sparhawk?”

It was Rumbold, calling faintly over my radio.

“I can hear you. I’m still falling. Don’t come in yet. Wait until I land and report back.”

Rumbold chuckled. “You don’t have to worry on that score!”

After a few more seconds, I touched down. It wasn’t a shock, but rather a welcome jolt to my legs. My knees buckled, and I pitched forward. I put out my hands blindly, afraid I’d smash my faceplate into something hard and sharp.

Breathing hard, I got to my feet again and looked around. I was standing on a smooth surface. It was a floor—or a deck. I knew right away that it was too even to be natural. There was grit and debris, but that was probably due to the break-in far above.

“All right,” I said, “come down one at a time. I’ll step aside and shine a light to guide you.”

“Do you see a way out, sir?” came back Rumbold’s worried reply.

“No,” I said, “but
Altair
will soon scan the surface and detect you. We have to get inside before they fry anyone who’s exposed. Finding a way out will be our next order of business.”

“Mind if we hook up a line, sir?” he asked with a hint of pleading in his voice.

I thought about it. If Singh was going to be thorough in his efforts, a hole with a line leading down might give us away. But, I didn’t want to be stranded below.

“Good idea. Do it and come down now.”

Soon, eight of us stood on the strange deck, looking around and almost huddling together.

“What do you think is going on up on
Altair
?” Rumbold asked me. “How do you think he got his crew to fire on us?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “Probably a lie, or some kind of false order from Earth. In either case, I doubt he’ll come down to talk to us. He wouldn’t want his crew to hear our side of the story.”

Rumbold slapped his hand on my shoulder. “I get it now. I was wondering before why he was communicating to you solely through the mind-link. That’s good for private calls—but why would he need privacy?”

I looked at him and nodded. I was following his thoughts.

“I think you’re right,” I said. “He did that on purpose. He didn’t want anyone else to overhear our conversations. If he’d made the call in the clear, he’d have given away evidence of his treachery.”

“Yeah, at the very least, it would be easier to investigate.”

“Skipper?” Jimmy said, walking toward us. He was still cradling his stump.

I felt for the man. He hadn’t gotten a break since we’d left Earth.

“What is it, Jimmy?”

“I found the source of the tubes. Come over here.”

Following him, I came to a shelving system loaded with thousands of tubes. They were arrayed like wine-bottles in racks. Each had a coded microdot on the rack, and on the tube itself.

“It looks like they were locked into place,” Jimmy said. “See these brackets? But some kind of disruption must have occurred. Many of the brackets broke open and the tubes fell on the deck, spilling everywhere.”

“That’s clear,” I said, eying a mass of tubes rolling around on the floor. “But what I don’t understand is why they would need to label these tubes individually if they’re all clones of the same being.”

“That is strange,” Jimmy said. “Maybe some clones are more important than others. Or maybe there are several types of clones. We only tested a few of them.”

He shrugged and nudged a few rolling tubes around with his boot.

Because the vapors were clearing now, I could see the extent of the space we were in. Judging only by our suit lights and the cavernous roof, I figured it was about the size of a large gymnasium. The ceiling was less than fifty meters away. The roof gently arced overhead with the top of the hull. The walls were vertical and even. I guessed the chamber to be about a hundred meters square in floor space. Much of that area was occupied by racks of tubes.

“We’re in a cargo hold,” Rumbold said, walking over to me. “But I think we should keep moving. If Singh is determined enough, he’ll find this hole we’re hiding in.”

“Has anyone found an exit?” I asked.

None of them had. I played my light up on the rim of the entry point we’d used. Snow filtered down through it in clumps.

“We’re definitely inside a ship of some kind,” I said, “or possibly, it’s a station like Araminta. It’s big enough for that. But we can’t defend ourselves here. If troops drop, they’ll stand up there and burn us easily from the outside.”

“They wouldn’t do that!” Yamada said. “Our own guardsmen? How could Singh order such a thing?”

“I don’t know,” I admitted, “but we have to accept that he managed to convince his crew that
Cutlass
must be destroyed. Rationally, it follows that we’re to be killed as well.”

The group was glum at this thought. Many had considered our predicament solved by finding shelter. Now, they weren’t so sure.

Then, everything changed. Those who were peering up at the entrance far above us gasped. A light flashed, and a brilliant glare shone through the round aperture.

The destroyer
Altair
had arrived.

-16-

We scattered. It wasn’t cowardice—but we were definitely driven by fear and the desire for self-preservation. If the destroyer spotted the opening and fired a beam down into this chamber, we were all as good as cooked.

“I found a way out, a big hatch over here, sir!” shouted Yamada.

I headed in her direction. Several crewmen were right behind me.

The hatch was an odd one. It wasn’t man-shaped with an arched top, the way a door in a bulkhead aboard one of our vessels would have been. It was circular, perfectly rounded.

“How do we get it open?” I demanded.

Rumbold wasn’t waiting around. He had his big hands on the wheel, and he was spinning for all he was worth—but it wasn’t budging.

“That’s a waste of strength,” I said. “See the bolts at the top and bottom? This thing is sealed tight. It’s a pressure door, and I bet it can withstand a lot more force than we can muster with our arms.”

Rumbold slumped, sides heaving. I could hear his breath puffing over his suit’s microphone, but he didn’t say anything. His eyes were directed upward, to where
Altair
lurked.

“Yamada, get this door open,” I said. “Hack the security.”

She looked at me as if I were mad, but she moved forward to try. She worked on it for a full minute. There was a hand-plate next to the hatch. It was made for a very large hand, but she ignored that part. Instead, she worked on the wires underneath, seeking to short them out.

“I’m going to have to try to splice them in combinations, Captain,” she said. “If I simply cut them, I think it will disable the door rather than open it.”

“Understood. The rest of you, spread out and look for another path out of here.”

While she worked and the rest searched, I eyed the opening above us. Rumbold came to stand beside me.

“No point looking away, eh, sir?” he asked.

“What?”

He pointed at the opening above us. “I mean, you’re looking right up at the hole. If that ship fires a beam in here, your eyes will be burned out of their sockets and your brain will boil in your skull. But why bother trying to hide under one of these clone-racks? We’re as good as dead anyway if Singh figures out we’re down here.”

“Actually,” I said, “I was intrigued by the configuration of that hole in the roof. It’s my conclusion that it isn’t a hole at all. It’s a door, a hatch just like the one we’re trying to get through now.”

He boggled at the two doors. “By damn, I think you’re right! I never would have seen it—the shape is so unusual. These colonists have sure gone their own way over the last century or so.”

“That’s only to be expected. Yamada? How’s the hack going?”

“I’ve spliced into the wires, and I’m running combinatorics through the lines now, sir. They use standard voltages and square-wave forms, I’m glad to see. At least our computers can talk to theirs.”

“Different technological histories, but with the same roots,” I said. “Further proof we’re dealing with colonists.”

“Won’t matter much if we die down here,” Jimmy said.

I looked at him sharply. “Have you found another way out?”

“No sir…sorry,” he said a little sheepishly. “I don’t think there is another exit. There are vents, but they seem to lead to life support pods. The ductwork is too narrow for a man to enter.”

I thumped my fist against the wall beside the hatch. “I don’t recognize this material but it seems as hard and dense as granite.”

“Harder, sir,” Yamada said. “My instruments indicate it’s a nickel-iron base, laced with collapsed matter and fullerene tubes. The whole vessel is made with this stuff. That’s why the sensors registered it as good for mining.”

“How’s the hack going?”

She didn’t answer for several seconds, then she turned to me and smiled. “I’ve got the first symbol. I don’t know what it is, just a binary combination with a checksum. The lock isn’t sophisticated, fortunately.”

Nodding, I wasn’t surprised. Why make a complicated lock on a cargo hold? It was only there to provide minimal security.    

A shadow passed overhead. The flicker of it was vague, only showing on the deck where our pooled lights weren’t shining. But it had to be
Altair
, orbiting this rock and looking for us.

“Singh wasn’t fooled!” Rumbold said, staring up and whispering despite the fact no one could possibly overhear him. “He’s up there, searching for survivors.”

“That would seem likely,” I admitted. “Team, switch off your lights. Only Yamada can use lights, if she must. There’s no point giving them an easy reading.”

One by one, we dimmed our lights down to near invisibility. The darkness was almost complete, and the gloom that was cast over us was eerie. Part of me began to wonder if I’d made the best choices. Perhaps if I had lifted off and charged into battle with the
Altair
that would have been best. Certainly, it would have been a hopeless act, but dying down here frozen and blue from lack of oxygen wasn’t looking any better.

“Two symbols down,” Yamada said. “Three to go.”

“Hmm,” I said, staring up at the starry sky above. As a gush of snow splashed down from the hole above to sprinkle the floor below, I was struck by a thought.

“Crew,” I said. “I need everyone to look for another hand-plate like the one Yamada is working on. Do it now, do it by feel or use your com-link for illumination. Don’t turn on any suit lamps.”

They shuffled and moved slowly, spreading out around the hold. Rumbold kicked Jimmy in the rear. “You heard the captain!”

While they did as I’d ordered, I moved along the nearest wall, feeling for wires, a hand-plate—anything. Every few seconds I glanced up at the gray circle of starlight in the unrelenting blackness of the hold.

For about a minute, nothing happened. Then Yamada spoke again.

“Third one down, two to go.”

They were fateful words.
Altair’s
crew had tapped into our communications. They had been waiting for one of us to make a comment over an intercom. Two rifles flashed up above, firing power-bolts down toward Yamada.

Fortunately, the shots went wild. They couldn’t see her clearly. But now we knew where they were.

“Stand down, Guardsmen!” I boomed over the open channel in the clear.

A bolt came in my direction. It smashed into the rack of tubes I was sheltering behind, sending up wisps of released gas.

“You’re firing on your brothers!” I said.

“You launched a missile at
Altair
, traitor!” came a rough reply.

“Identify yourself!” I called back. “Are we under arrest?”

“Our orders are to kill the traitors.”

“You damned drunken rats!” Rumbold shouted, joining the conversation. “You’re the ones firing on your own crewmembers! I should burn you down where you stand!”

The firing stopped. At that moment, I thought of a possible solution. If we could talk to the exec aboard
Altair
—I’d always thought him to be a sane man. If we accepted arrest and were taken to the bridge, I felt sure I could sort this out.

But then someone on our side fired. I wasn’t sure who, but the shot struck home and took out the man in the gray circle above us. His chest a smoking ruin, he crashed down into the chamber at our feet.

More fire was exchanged in both directions. I tried to get Singh’s men to calm down again, but they weren’t interested in talk any longer.

Cursing, I heard Rumbold call to me. “I’ve found something, Captain.”

“Found what?” I demanded, firing two bolts up at the circle in the roof.

We had the advantage of being spread out, and having only a single target, but being below them we were more exposed than they were. Worse, we were vastly outnumbered. The destroyer had a complement of nearly two hundred crewmen. If they felt like it, they could simply roll a charge down into the hole, killing us all. I was surprised they hadn’t done so yet.

“Four down,” Yamada said.

“Keep working! Rumbold, I’m making my way to you along the walls.”

More bolts flashed. I heard a sickening howl. I saw Jimmy’s light go red inside my helmet. This time, we had no way to save him.

“Damn,” I said, “this is madness.”

Rumbold grabbed my elbow, and guided me to a standing position. He showed me a plate with wires running up the wall of the ship.

I knew what it was instantly. This had to be the control mechanism that controlled the upper hatch.

“Here it is, sir,” Rumbold said. “I’m not sure what you want with it, but I found—oh no, sir!”

I stood and drew my saber. I’d had time to put on my shielding cloak, and my weapons belt with my sword and pistol.

The saber was a silver line that gleamed in the crossfire of weapons around us. With a single stroke, I slashed the wires that ran up the hull.

There was a grinding noise that I felt in my bones as much as heard. The heavy hatchway overhead constricted closed.

The firing stopped, and my crew staggered out from hiding, cursing and coughing.

Rumbold and I looked at one another. Our faces were shining with sweat. Our breath blew on the inside of our visors, steaming them up momentarily with each puff.

“You’ve sealed us in here!” he said in shock.

I nodded and sheathed my blade. “They could have killed us a dozen different ways. It was only a matter of time until they did so.”

“Yeah, but now we’re entombed.”

We stared at one another. I didn’t deny his words.

“What about that fifth symbol, Yamada?” I called out.

She didn’t answer right away. For a sick moment, I thought she might have been killed. But then Rumbold and I clanked to her position and found her hard at work, her tiny computer still churning on the encoded lock.

“I don’t know…” she said. “This might not work—they aren’t using the same encoding set we’re using. They’ve developed a different version, I think. The last symbol—my tablet might not have the right vocabulary.”

“You’ll figure it out,” I said with a confidence I didn’t feel.