Project Sail (46 page)

He stopped speaking because nobody moved, clearly considering that Fisk might have the better idea.

With less enthusiasm, he said to the Air Boss, “I need that link to the surface and I could use your help, please.”

She paused her search for computer sabotage and worked her panel with both natural and artificial fingers while he went to his XO station, leaned in next to Ellen Kost who still sat in the chair there, and encoded a signal to the surface. Leanne nodded and Hawthorne sent what he hoped was a secure transmission.

“Kelly, are you there?”

“Yes, me and Dr. King are listening. A bunch of robots are outside the cylinder cave building a link of some kind.”

“Yes, I know. Kelly, we haven’t got much time, tell me what kind of firepower you have left.”

She replied with a question, “What do you want me to do?”

Of course, she will do whatever you ask, Hawk. Just like every other man she has met in her life, she will aim to please. I bet she would even die for you.

“Look, we have a problem.”

Reagan Fisk said, “Just fly them back to the ship and we can leave. Don’t get us killed because you want to be a hero again.”

Hawthorne stood straight and spoke to everyone, on the bridge and on the surface.

“I was not a hero. On Ganymede I did not want to fight, I wanted to run and hide. But my crew showed me what we had to do; they taught me there is a time to take a stand.”

“Twenty-two minutes.”

“We are always fighting one another over resources and politics. Hell, they called me a hero for killing hundreds so my country could hold on to pieces of rock in a solar system full of rocks. But now I am going to fight for the people who once lived here, because they became something better than us. They cleaned up their mess and left behind the most precious gift in the universe: hope. They didn’t ask for payment, they didn’t expect a reward, they did it because they accepted responsibility for their past before they moved on to the future. So I’m going to do everything to stop Lazarus from ruining whatever life they made for themselves, because they do not deserve to be dragged into our cesspool. I will take responsibility for my past, so maybe—if we are lucky—this world will help us take a step toward our future.”

Fisk was unmoved.

“Commander, I understand, but I have too much to lose. I have a girl back home waiting to start a life with me. I don’t want to risk that, especially when there is nothing we can do against a battleship.”

“The A-H drive,” Phipps spoke from the back of the group.

“What’s that?” Coffman turned and asked.

“The best weapon we have,” Phipps explained through the pain of personal loss, “is the Alcubierre—Haruto drive. It, well, took out the entire planet when the Alliance arrived…and killed two of our friends.”

Coffman explained, “We do not have the time to generate the power needed to travel any appreciable distance, and that would be the only way to build up a destructive wash.”

Wren suggested, “Couldn’t we jump between here and right in front of the battleship?”

“That would not disable it,” Coffman said almost apologetically.

Phipps volunteered, “We do have nuclear missiles onboard.”

“A ship like that?” Fisk pointed to a screen displaying the massive battleship. “It will destroy any missile before it gets close and it would take a direct hit to do any serious damage.”

Coffman tapped his chin.

“I can’t speak to the missiles, but we would need minimal power from the RFPG to jump—if you will—three hundred kilometers, and it would be easy to plot a course, but Jonathan, the shock wave would be relatively insignificant.”

“It might disorientate the ship; send it tumbling,” Hawthorne said.

Wren snapped his fingers and joined in, “We have two bow firing tubes. Hit them with two missiles after the turbulence gives them a shake. Might be enough to throw off their defenses.”

Reagan shouted, “This is crazy! The missiles will never get close enough to do damage!”

Hawthorne ignored him and focused his attention on the battleship. Using the A-H drive could produce a wave of charged particles, plasma, and gamma rays, but the affect was based on distance. Jumping a few hundred kilometers would contort space enough to cause a ripple, but more like the wake of a small boat than the tsunami that had devastated 581g.

Nuclear missiles could cause substantial damage if they hit the battleship, but that would only happen if they managed to mitigate Lazarus’ extensive defense grid first.

A weary Ellen Kost suggested in a voice barely above a whisper, “Could we ram them, Commander?”

Reagan Fisk nearly fainted, but it was Hawthorne who said, “We could, but while any action we take against Lazarus may be suicide, I would prefer to have a chance at survival, even a slim one.”

“Our best chance at survival,” Fisk insisted, “is to leave now.”

“We have one thing on our side,” Hawthorne started and Wren finished, “This Lazarus is an arrogant fuck; he thinks we will tuck our tails between our asses and leave.”

Everyone looked at Wren who admitted, “Hey, it takes one to know one.”

Hawthorne stepped closer to the comm panel and spoke, “Kelly, can you hear me still?”

“Yes, what do you need me to do?”

“Use whatever firepower you have left to take out that uplink before the cylinder emits its signal again.”

Coffman counted down, “Seventeen minutes.”

Silence.

“Look, Kelly, I don’t want you putting yourself at risk—”

She interrupted, “I can do it without getting killed, I think.”

“Then I might I have a plan,” Hawthorne told her and then surveyed his audience on the bridge. A minute ago, they appeared ready to leave; now their eyes suggested they would at least listen.

Leanne Warner interrupted, “I found it, same as on the probe, hidden in the external lighting systems.”

“Quarantine it. As soon as we leave, that virus will infiltrate our environmental controls and kill us. If he finds out we found it, Lazarus will turn the battleship’s guns on us.”

“Excuse me, Commander,” Phipps raised his hand like a kid in elementary school. “Even if the Lieutenant takes out the transmitter on the surface, Lazarus could rebuild another one.”

Fisk said, “Yes, Commander, exactly how is a modified survey vessel with only two launch tubes supposed to take out a Russian battleship equipped with a defense grid designed to counter any foreseeable attack?”

Hawthorne told him, “By not launching a foreseeable attack.”

“Incoming transmission,” Wren spied a notification at the XO’s console, “from the
Sergey Gorshkov
.”

Hawthorne worried Lazarus had intercepted his communication with Kelly. However, he realized it was just the common, every-day paranoia one would expect from an uploaded human consciousness.

“Hawk,” Lazarus spoke to the crew on the bridge and the two women on the surface. “I notice you have not recovered your landing party and left orbit.”

Hawthorne answered, “We were thinking of staying while you did your thing and then continuing our survey of the moon.”

“I calculate a sixty-three percent probability you are lying and a thirty-four percent chance that you will attempt to disrupt my operation.”

Coffman whispered, “Fifteen minutes.”

“We do not care about the alien artifact, Lazarus, but we do have a mission to complete. You remember, the mission you sent us on.”

“I feel bad about how this must look to your crew. Let me make it up to you. I am in a position to do favors for your team. For instance, Lieutenant Thomas…”

…Inside the research cave on the surface of G-Moon, Kelly stepped toward the receiver when Lazarus mentioned her by name.

“Yes?”

“I can help you, Lieutenant, or may I call you Kelly? Take no action against my equipment on the surface and I will provide you with valuable information about your family.”

Dr. King walked up behind Kelly, placed a hand on her shoulder, and whispered, “Be wary of the devil’s silver tongue.”

“I know something you don’t, Kelly; something they never told you when you were growing up at the orphanage in Fort Wayne. It is about your parents, about your father. Do you remember them?”

To her mind, she had never told a lie about her father, just fantasies. Her mother and father were blank canvases to Kelly Thomas, on which she drew her dreams.

“I have access to your files, Kelly, including the one that began the day you died.”

Kelly’s eyes narrowed and she staggered as if struck.

“That is stupid.”

“You’re right, I should rephrase that. The day your parents thought they killed you. The government told you your parents died after you were born, but the truth is that you were part of the Demeter program.”

“I’m not part of any program; I was an orphan because my parents were killed.”

“No, they are alive, but they think you are dead. Of course, that is what they wanted when your mother chose to terminate her pregnancy. The government assisted in the procedure, paying for every expense and providing physicians. The trick, Kelly, is that you were never aborted, but harvested. ”

“That makes no sense.”

“It did for a nation rebuilding from the biggest natural disaster in history, a disaster that killed millions and left the nation in economic ruin. The Demeter program began after the Great Atlantic Tsunami and continued for decades rebuilding manpower in the United States military.”

“I chose to join so I could leave the orphanage; no one forced me.”

“You were fed coactione-oxetine in grade school so you would feel a desire to fight for your country, to do what they asked.”

Kelly stood quiet, staring at the radio, her thoughts traveling backwards in time to the orphanage, the academy, her first trip into space. Those had been her decisions…right?

“Your parents are still alive, and I can tell you how to find them. Maybe they did not want you then, but I imagine they would love to meet the young woman you have grown to be. They are your only family. Stay away from the artifact and I will send you the entire file on how the military used you, as if you were just another drone.”

She went silent, her eyes staring at the tarp-covered floor.

Hawthorne transmitted, “Kelly, are you there?”

“Is it true, Commander? What he said?”

“I never heard of a program like that but it would not surprise me.”

Lazarus radioed, “Do nothing, Lieutenant, and I will tell you the truth. Think of it; you can meet your real father. You can have a family.”

King wrapped an arm around Kelly and she accepted it for a long second, and then stepped away and asked, “You have my medical records, I did the pre-flight screenings, am I on Push now?”

“You were taking it yourself back on Titan.”

“Yes, but I have not taken any since we left there. Dr. King, has UVI or the military fed me Push since Project Sail began?”

“As far as I can tell, no.”

“Okay then, I will worry about this later. For now, my Commander asked me to do something, and I am going to do it.”

49. Entanglements

“Nine minutes until the cylinder activates again,” Coffman said.

Hawthorne asked everyone, “Is that enough time to load the nukes?”

When no one else answered, Phipps said, “Yes, there are automatic loaders but I cannot do it alone.”

Hawthorne looked to Kost who still sat at the XO station and asked, “What am I forgetting?”

She replied, “I am not in communication with them; I just read the note they left behind.”

“Hey, you did your part,” Wren told her. “We will take it from here. Come on Phipps, I’ll help out.”

He turned to leave but she grabbed his hand.

“I was conscious the whole time. I could not respond, but I could still hear, Leo. I could still hear,” and she smiled which caused him to do the same before Phipps pulled him off the bridge.

Meanwhile Fisk retreated to a dark corner, trembling and sweating, but silent.

Coffman walked for the exit telling Hawthorne, “I will see to engineering; you will want power, I assume.”

Hawthorne watched him go and then called to his navigator, “Hey Marvin, is that course plotted?”

“Yes, sir, I just wish Stein was here to fly it.”

“He would love this shit but you will do fine.”

Warner chimed in, “This is crazy and it won’t work,” but she did not sound upset about the idea. Except for Fisk, a collective euphoria had settled over the group now that their fates felt settled. “You are sure he won’t take out the missiles until they are at fifty kilometers?”

Hawthorne answered, “That’s standard distance for optimal deflection.”

She said, “At fifty kilometers, a forty-kiloton warhead won’t even give the battleship sunburn.”

“Then we better hope the warheads get closer.”

Kelly Thomas broadcast from the surface, “Commander, are you there? I am ready to begin.”

His heart sank as he thought about what must be going through her head.

“Yes Kelly, I’m here and I am sorry about this.”

“It isn’t your fault. But Commander—Jonathan—I just want to tell you, like, I don’t know if that Lazarus was full of shit, but whatever the case, what I want to say is, well, I love you, you know? Whoever my father really was, well, I hope he was like you.”

He answered the way any father would answer his angel in a moment like this; he lied.

“We will get out of this just fine. I know it.”

“I have to go now; I think time is running short. Good luck.”

“You, too.”

After the transmission from the surface ended, Ellen Kost said, “Commander, you should take your seat.”

“It’s okay; you need it more than me.”

Leanne Warner corrected, “She means that one,” and the Air Boss pointed to the Captain’s chair at the center of the bridge.

He froze, his eyes falling on the station that had sat vacant since he deposed Charles.

Jonathan Hawthorne had reluctantly inherited the Captain’s chair once before, only to be dragged into battle by his crew. This time he took that seat and led a new crew into a fight of his choosing.

---

Lieutenant Kelly Thomas grabbed two satchels from the corner of the cavern, the last items salvaged from the Army-in-a-Box.