Riding the Red Horse (17 page)

“I’d pay money to cover your rear,” Richards responded, but there was no humour in his tone. Professionalism trumped witty banter when it seemed likely that
something
had gone badly wrong. “Don’t let anyone get on your bad side.”

The sense of unease grew stronger as HMS
Canopus
slowly came into view. There was no real
need
for the carrier to remain upright, not in space, but the Royal Navy preferred to maintain the illusion of formation where possible. And Singh would hardly have allowed his crew to avoid placing his ship in the upright position, even though it was pointless. But now,
Canopus
was tilting firmly to one side, slowly drifting towards the gas giant’s gravity well. It was very far from normal.

“I’m picking up no radio signals,” he said. They were practically within missile range of the modified starship! “Confirm?”

“Confirmed,” Richards warned. “I’m not even picking up a—
Jesus
!”

John swore too as the starship’s hull came into view. Something had cut into the armour, venting the entire ship.
Canopus
lacked the interior airlocks and blast doors of a fleet carrier—for all the good they did—and she was almost defenceless, if the enemy caught her by surprise. Now, her hull was intact, but her innards had been badly damaged. It was impossible to believe that any of her crew were left alive.

“They must have jumped her,” he breathed. The Admiralty hadn't been too far wrong after all. Humanity’s enemies had found Bluebell and intended to use it as an advance base for an attack on Earth. “There wasn't any warning at all.”

“Yeah,” Richards said. “They didn't get a message out before they died.”

That we know of
, John thought. There was no way to tell just how long ago
Canopus
had died, not from the outside. The two starfighters might well have been on the far side of the gas giant at the time.
But it doesn't really matter
.

“We have twenty minutes,” Richards warned. “And then we’re fucked.”

“Make that seventeen,” John said. Their life support packs weren’t intended for long deployments. The flight around the gas giant had drained them more than he cared to contemplate. “We need to get into the hulk and see if we can find an emergency station.”

Richards didn't argue as the two pilots closed in on the hulk. There was no other chance of survival. Even if they’d had the fuel to make it to the tramline and the drives to jump through it, they’d run out of air long before they could be rescued. And there were no other human starships in the system. The aliens, assuming they’d stuck around to survey the system, would be more likely to come back and blast the hulk into atoms than try to rescue two stranded human pilots.

Up close, the damage didn't look as bad as he’d feared, although he knew it could easily be an illusion. Ironically, having been designed in the early days of interstellar travel,
Canopus
had a layer of armour that was more effective at absorbing alien plasma bursts than some of the giant fleet carriers. But a few blasts had clearly burned through the hull and wreaked havoc on her interior. It crossed his mind that there might be no way to survive, but he pushed it aside with an effort. There was always hope.

“I’m going to uncouple and get into the airlock,” he said, after they’d surveyed the entire hull. “If this fails, get to the drive section and try there.”

“Understood,” Richards said. “Good luck.”

John landed the starfighter on the carrier’s hull, then clicked a switch he’d never expected to have to use, opening the canopy to cold vacuum. In theory, his pilot suit could handle the sudden change in the environment, but the temperature dropped rapidly as the atmosphere raced out into space. Gritting his teeth, he pulled himself out of the starfighter and down towards the hull. He didn't dare lose his grip and fall into outer space. Richards might be able to save him from being lost forever, without a radio beacon or anyone to hear it, but it would waste precious oxygen. He forced himself onwards as the cold worked its way into his flesh and blood, crawling towards the airlock. It seemed to loom up in front of him as he stumbled to a halt, then pressed his cold hands into the scanner. There was a long moment of absolute nothingness, just long enough to make him panic, then the airlock hissed open.

The system is self-contained,
he reminded himself, as he stumbled inside and reached for an oxygen tank.
It will remain operational until the ship herself is vaporised
.

He smiled at the thought, then attached the emergency tank to his suit. There was a hiss, then oxygen started to flow into the suit. For once, he had to admit, the bureaucrats had done a superb job. They’d insisted on emergency supplies being available at all times, guarding against eventualities only they could see. But this had worked out in his favour.

“I’m proceeding through the inner hatch,” he said, as he keyed the switch. “Come in after me, I think.”

The hatch hissed open, revealing a scene from hell. A young man and a slightly older woman hung in the air, spinning silently in front of him. Frozen goblets of blood drifted through the air, hitting the bulkheads and bouncing back into empty air. The gravity generator must have completely failed, he noted absently. He pulled himself forward and inspected the two bodies. They’d both died from being slammed into the bulkheads, if he was any judge. He couldn't imagine anything else that might have caused such injuries.

“Lieutenant Montague and Midshipman Peters,” he said, out loud. Behind him, the hatch hissed open again, revealing Richards. “They deserved better.”

“They did,” Richards agreed. “But we don’t have time to mourn them.”

John nodded. “We need to get to the bridge,” he said. “And see what happened there.”

The interior of
Canopus
was horrific. John had never considered joining the Royal Marines, or anyone else who fought up close and personal, and the sights before him were sickening. Some of the crew had died through injuries, but others had clearly suffocated to death when the atmosphere had vented out of the hull. They hadn't had time to grab masks, he saw, despite training and inclination.
Canopus
hadn't had masks scattered everywhere, or a system of internal airlocks. They’d died before they could reach safety.

“The hatches are blown open,” Richards said. He glanced into what had once been a tiny compartment for the junior lieutenants to share. “I think Lieutenant Clarke died in her sleep.”

John winced. Judy Clarke had been a good friend; she’d hoped to become a Commander Air Group one day, on one of the bigger carriers. The attrition was high enough she probably would have had her chance, once
Canopus
returned from Bluebell. But now she was dead, cut down in her prime. He took a long look at her body, then resumed pulling himself towards the bridge.

The hatch was jammed, but half-open. John forced his way through the gap, silently thanking all the gods his sister believed in that he was skinny enough to fit through, then looked around the darkened compartment. Captain Singh’s body was drifting near the ceiling, his head so lopsided it was clear he'd broken his neck. Midshipwoman Jones and Lieutenant Smyth sat at their stations, both dead. Smyth had a broken neck, like the Captain, but Jones had no obvious cause of death. John inspected her body for a long moment, then realised that the loss of the compensators had led to cracked bones for the young woman. She hadn't had a chance to grab a mask before the atmosphere was lost.

“See if you can power up the log,” Richards advised, as he moved Jones to one side and sat down at the helm console. “There should still be battery power, if nothing else.”

John nodded. It felt odd to sit on the Captain’s chair—he’d respected Captain Singh, even if he’d never
liked
the man—but there was no real choice. The captain’s logbook opened up at his touch, unsurprisingly. It was an isolated system, after all, with its own internal power sources. And it was far more than just the captain’s audio log. Every sensor system on the ship fed data into the captain’s logbook. Any board of inquiry would have access to all the data the starship gathered at the time of its destruction.

Unless the log itself was destroyed
, John thought. His ID allowed him to view data, but not to change it.
The Captain might not have time to launch the safeguard drone.

“There's only a trickle of power,” Richards said. “I don’t think we can get the drives up and running.”

“And so we die,” John said. They’d escaped certain death from suffocation, only to face the certainty of death when
Canopus
finally plunged into the planet’s atmosphere. “We might be able to get a shuttle working.”

“And be sitting ducks,” Richards sneered. “I’d rather die.”

John cursed under his breath. A shuttle would be a nice easy target for the aliens, once they got over their surprise at seeing the craft emerge from a derelict ship. And it
still
couldn't hope to transit the tramlines. Sooner or later, he was sure, the Royal Navy would notice it had a missing ship. But would it notice in time to save their lives?

He looked down as the logbook opened up in front of him. Most of the data wasn’t important – there were supply shortages, crew readiness reports and the omnipresent captain’s mast proceedings – and he flicked through it impatiently. It wasn't until the last few sections that he started to see anything relevant, ending with a contact report. The captain hadn't had a chance to narrate a formal report for posterity, but he had some experience in reading the streams of data from the starship’s sensors. An alien craft had appeared out of nowhere, opened fire on the carrier and crippled her. And then–

“They simply buggered off,” he muttered. “They didn't even bother to stick around and finish the job.”

“Maybe they were short of time,” Richards mused. There was a sudden flare of light from the dead consoles, then half of them came to life. “Hah! Got some power!”

John smiled. “Enough to get us out of here?”

“Not enough for that,” Richards said. “But we can establish laser links with the stealthed recon platforms–”

His voice broke off. “Ah.”

John followed his gaze. “Ah, indeed.”

On the display, glowing with angry red light, was an alien starship.

When he spoke, Richards’s voice was hushed, as if he believed the aliens could hear them across the soundless vacuum of space.

“They’re just holding position,” he said, slowly. “Why?”

John shrugged. “Waiting for someone to come along and fall into their trap?”

He considered the problem for a long moment. The moment they tried to activate the freighter’s drives, the aliens would realise that someone was still alive on
Canopus
and come back to finish the job. But if they tried to stay quiet, the ship would eventually fall into the planet’s atmosphere, killing them both. And, if they were
very
unlucky, someone else
would
come along and the aliens would ambush them, having used
Canopus
as bait. No matter how he looked at it, they seemed screwed.

“We have to take her out,” he said, slowly. He outlined the situation as he saw it, hoping that Richards would think of someone he’d missed. “There’s no other alternative.”

“Great,” Richards said. He spun around in his chair to glare at John. “And how do you propose we kill her?”

His skepticism was justified, John knew. The alien point defence was light years ahead of humanity’s best and hundreds of starfighter pilots had lost their lives in trying to attack alien starships. There were only two of them, with two starfighters armed more for scouting missions than engaging an enemy starship. Simple logic stated that they had about as much chance of survival, let alone actually completing their mission, as a snowflake in hell.

But, when they were about to die anyhow, such considerations no longer mattered.

“I have a plan,” he said. “This is what we’re going to do.”

“This is madness,” Richards said, when he’d finished explaining. “We’ll get ourselves killed for nothing.”

“It will be worth it if we take that bastard down with us,” John reminded him. “And besides, did you really want to live forever?”

“I chose the wrong career for that,” Richards pointed out. “I don’t suppose we have time to find a privacy tube first?”

John laughed. “Not a chance,” he said. “And even if we did, how could we do it in an airless hulk?”

They made their way down to the armoury and inspected the missiles within. Thankfully, none of the warheads had actually detonated, although a number had lost their control processors and would have to be rearmed at the factory. Four were left, though, ready to be launched. John stumbled through a half-remembered manual arming sequence, then took advantage of the lack of gravity to float the missiles down towards the gash in the hull. The equipment normally used for manoeuvring missiles was broken and useless.

“Need to switch oxygen tanks again,” Richards said, as they pushed the third missile into space and tethered it to the ship’s hull. “You too?”

“Yep,” John said. In the long term, they would have to move to one of the shuttles and hope it was in working order.
Canopus’s
life support system was beyond repair, at least with the tools they had at their disposal. “Swap it around, then see if you can rig up a control circuit.”

“They shouldn't be able to detect it at this distance,” Richards said. “But if they can…”

John shot him a sharp look. There was no point in worrying about what the aliens might do, if they decided to use the hulk for target practice before the missiles were in place. Instead, he swapped his oxygen tank for a fresh one, then made his way down to the makeshift hanger deck. The remainder of the carrier’s starfighters were smashed beyond repair – several bodies were missing completely – but he managed to find a handful of life support and power packs for their craft. It had been months since he’d done any form of manual replenishment, but he hadn't forgotten how. Richards hopped back into his starfighter and powered up her systems long enough to check that everything was working, then linked his targeting computers to the four missiles.