‘Looks like it’s coming this way,’ Harper said. ‘Fast. That thing can really accelerate.’
Samson nodded, then remembered she couldn’t see him, so transmitted an acknowledgement. There was no getting away from it now. He was stuck in a ship he could barely control, and surrounded by cases of primed explosives. He pantomimed his movement to the detonator control, and to the airlock, then reversed the order—airlock, detonator, then airlock again—and repeated the practice. He realised it only took a second, but it felt like far longer. Far more than the five seconds he had.
‘We’ve coasted out to position and are going dark,’ Harper said. ‘Good luck, sir.’
‘Good luck, Harper,’ Samson said. ‘If it looks like everything’s going wrong, get out of here as fast as you can. There’s nothing more you can be expected to do in the Bounty.’
‘We’ll be ready to pick you up when you’re done, sir. Bounty out.’
He appreciated the sentiment, but couldn’t lose sight of the fact that he was planning to use a slingshot to attack an alien warship. It almost seemed comical.
The wait had felt like an age, but when the alien ship finally came into view, Samson vowed not to let fear get the better of him. He couldn’t stop his heart and breathing from quickening, though. The ship had slowed, and moved forward like a cat prowling up on a mouse. They must have suspected a trap, but the fact that one of their ships was sitting next to a human depot had clearly made them curious.
It was the first time Samson had had the opportunity to give it a proper look—on the previous occasion when he had seen it, there had been more pressing things on his mind. There was an aggressive beauty to its design, but no one, not even a member of an alien race seeing it for the first time, could mistake it for anything other than a warship. For the first time he could see a number of holes on its fuselage that bore the scorch marks of weapons ports, not to mention several turreted weapons that looked as though they were retractable.
Samson watched it grow ever closer, and tried to judge the right moment to fire the tractor magnet and blast his small, explosive-packed vessel into the alien warship. How quickly could its impressive array of weaponry destroy him? Samson took a slow breath and waited, his hand hovering over his control tablet. The alien ship inched nearer.
It was time. Samson hit the control on the tractor mechanism. He had already set it to target the alien ship, and felt the slight judder as he was propelled forward by magnetic force. He hadn’t gone far when he lost his connection to the depot’s system. He had known that he would, but it left him with a feeling of isolation that was deeply unnerving. He tried to focus his attention on the diminishing distance to the alien vessel, and wondered what they were thinking. Might they view the ship as being delivered as a peace offering? It would be ironic if they did.
Samson moved over to the airlock and detonator control panel to get ready. He could see the growing spectre of the alien warship on the viewscreen well enough from there—its size was the only thing he had to judge his timing for the detonators.
The ship juddered and felt as though it was starting to accelerate. His already-racing heart increased to a crescendo as he turned to the tablet to try and work out what was happening. A quick scan of the information available told him that Kushnir’s fears had been well-placed. The depot’s magnets were no longer engaged influencing the ship. It looked as though the aliens had taken control. He tapped on his control tablet to find out what was going on. His pad could detect a strong signal that seemed to be the source of the control. The pad didn’t have the power to interfere with it, so he didn’t reckon there was any point in trying. All he could do was try to enjoy the ride.
Samson stifled a flash of panic. What if they manoeuvred the scout ship away from them? Any detonation would be useless more than a few dozen metres away. The fragments of the small ship might do some superficial damage to the warship, but nothing near what would be needed to destroy it. There was nothing he could do about that now, though. Either they would pull him closer or spit him out of their way as they approached the depot with the intention to destroy it.
Once again he turned to a vigil on his datapad. It was limited to its own positional sensors now, which were great on a planet’s surface but pretty patchy out in space. They could give him a rough idea of his heading, but their accuracy was in the hundreds of kilometres, rather than the metres the depot’s sensors had been able to give him. As best he could tell, he was still headed for the alien ship—it was certainly getting bigger on the viewscreen—but the lack of certainty was driving him to distraction.
Samson tried not to let himself think of the things he could have done differently—a mechanical connection to the detonators so he could set them off once he was already moving away from the ship. A dead-man’s switch of some sort to make sure it went off if he was killed. But none of it mattered now, and stressing over it was a waste of energy.
He tried to think of something, or someone, worthwhile as the alien warship drew him toward it, but there was nothing. His mother was long dead, and his father—a naval officer himself—had all but disowned Samson after what he referred to as ‘the Fifth Fleet Disgrace’. There had been a few short romances during his time at the Academy and before the mutiny, but nothing since then. There was no one for him to send a message to, no one who would care or notice his passing beyond an alteration to his entry in the naval list.
He cast a glance at the alien ship. It was close. So close Samson felt as though he could reach through the viewscreen and place his hand on it. Instead of moving closer, it looked as though he was now moving along its hull—perhaps toward a docking bay? He braced himself against the hull, grabbed onto something that looked solidly attached to the ship, and played the alien’s voice command again. The airlock opened, causing the ship’s atmosphere to rush out. It tugged at Samson, but he’d picked his spot well and after a moment the tempest was over, the ship was evacuated, and he could be about his business. He peered out of the open hatch, which revealed the pinpricked depths of space. He had to catch his breath as a sense of vertigo threatened to overwhelm him and turned his gaze back to the detonator control. He flipped up the protective cover, and thought through the process Price had shown him. There were two switches—one to power up, the other to start the timer—and a keypad, all beneath a small screen. Power on, set the timer, hit the detonator, jump, he thought. Simple, really. He reached for the power switch.
No sooner did he do so than the ship rocked violently, throwing Samson out of the airlock. He caught the edge of the lock with his fingertips as his body swung out into the cold vacuum of space. His heart raced as he could feel his inertia pull against his tenuous grip. His fingers slipped under the strain, millimetre by millimetre. Then they stopped, and held firm. He took a breath and prayed to the gods of the coefficient of static friction that he had enough hold to get his body moving back toward the ship. Slowly, he started to move.
With his feet firmly back on the ship’s deck, he took a moment to settle himself, then realised he didn’t have that luxury. He looked out of the airlock at the warship’s fuselage only a metre away, and hoped no one had seen his unintended extravehicular activity. As he looked at the ship, he realised something had changed. It looked as though his trajectory was starting to diverge. He was drifting. He checked his datapad. The signal that had taken over the ship’s systems was gone.
The only possibility that he could think of was that instead of running, Harper had brought the Bounty back in to distract the alien ship once they realised it had taken control of Samson’s bomb ship. He couldn’t see what was going on, but on a divergent course he didn’t have much time to put his plan in action.
He stood with his heels over the edge of the airlock, hit the power button, keyed in five seconds, and hit the detonate button. Then he squatted down and launched himself back out of the ship with as much strength as he could muster.
Samson spun away from the ship, rolling feet o
ver head. There was nothing but inky darkness before him, the stars blurring past his visor. The sense of vertigo made him dizzy enough to think he was going to puke. There were a great many life decisions he regretted at that moment. He felt the concussive shockwave slam into him like a solid object, knocking the air from his lungs.
A cloud of dissipating flame and gas engulfed him, and something smashed into the back of his helmet as he accelerated away from the exploding ship at near blackout speed. The impact on his helmet rattled his brain against his skull and sent his body into a fast spin.
He caught a fleeting glimpse of the alien ship as he tumbled, but was unable to see how much damage he’d caused. Nausea gripped him, and he vomited in his helmet. He could hear a hissing noise as a bright flash lit up his visor and momentarily blinded him. A secondary explosion. The alien warship? The Bounty? Samson felt distant from it all—the hissing sound he had noticed seemed so far away. His visor was obscured by the contents of his stomach, and the stench was threatening to make him sick again.
All his survival instincts told him he had a suit leak. He fought through the cloudiness in his head and reached to the pouch on his chest for a patch, but he was growing increasingly drowsy and his hands felt numb, distant from his mind. He didn’t even know where the leak was. He wondered how many gs were being generated by the spin he was in.
There hardly seemed to be any point in trying. It was getting cold, too. So cold. He’d have liked to know what effect his efforts had on the alien ship, but it didn’t look like that was going to happen now. His eyes grew heavy, and closed.
43
Samson woke up in a bright room. It was too bright for him to see anything, so he squeezed his eyes shut again. He tried to put together all the disjointed memories bouncing around in his head, but came up short. It was like he’d been pulled directly from several dreams at once and all the different narratives were confusing each other. He did his best to focus on one thing at a time. The smell of vomit was gone. So was the hissing noise. He remembered the alien ship and the feeling of uncertainty that he’d managed to destroy it.
It took a moment longer for the fear that he had been captured by the aliens to set in. He opened his eyes again and looked around as surreptitiously as he could, but his eyes were struggling to adjust to the bright lights and he was only able to make out vague shapes.
‘Nice to see you awake, Lieutenant.’
So much for not being noticed, he thought. It was a woman’s voice—a human voice. Could he be sure it was human?
It took him a moment longer to realise she’d called him ‘Lieutenant’. A demotion. Elation and disappointment went hand in hand, but his environmental suit’s rank markers had said lieutenant, so perhaps she had taken that as being his rank. He still couldn’t be sure where he was. He was alive, though. That was something.
‘Where am I?’ Samson said. His voice was croaky from lack of use. He wondered how long he’d been out, but that question could wait. He opened his eyes again, the figure standing over him slowly coming into focus.
‘TUS Bridgetown,’ she said. ‘I’m Lieutenant Commander Ishigaru, general physician, Naval Medical Corps.’
‘What fleet?’ Samson said
‘Admiral Khaimov’s Third Fleet.’
Would the aliens have known that? Possibly, but it was getting less and less likely that he was being deceived.
‘How long have I been here?’
‘We’ve been in system for two weeks now, and you’ve been here nearly all that time. Ever since you were fished out of space.’
‘How long was I out there?’
‘Four days. You were just about out of air and power, so you’re lucky we arrived when we did.’
‘I thought I was a goner,’ Samson said. ‘I had a suit leak. Did I manage to patch it?’
Ishigaru shrugged. ‘I don’t know. I wasn’t on duty when they brought you in. One way or the other, you’re a pretty lucky man. Even luckier to have come out of it all with nothing more than a ruptured eardrum, a bad concussion, and severe dehydration. We kept you sedated until the swelling in your brain settled down.’
‘A ruptured eardrum?’ Samson said.
She nodded.
‘Would that cause a hissing noise?’
‘It would. That might have been your “suit leak”. I doubt you’d have lasted as long as you did if you were losing enough air to hear it.’
‘The Bounty,’ Samson said. ‘What happened to her? And her crew?’
‘She was disabled, took quite a battering from what I understand, but her crew were all rescued a few hours before you were. The ship was scuttled in deep space.’
Samson felt a pang of regret for the loss of the ship that had served them so faithfully. It also explained the reversion of his rank. An acting commander only acts for as long as he has a command.
‘The alien warship? Did we get it?’
She smiled. ‘Oh, you got it all right. Blew it to bits. The Navy loves you, the Science and Engineering Corps hates you. There were only fragments left of it. They’re scrambling all over the system to gather them up as we speak.’
Samson smiled. So long as his crew were alive, that was all that mattered.
‘You’ll have an hour or two more to relax, then Rear Admiral Khaimov wants to see you.’
They held Samson on the medical ship until he managed to eat some solid food. Considering his last solid meal had been before he’d set off in the alien scout ship, it was difficult to manage, and every bite felt like he was forcing down a rough chunk of rock.
When Samson finally got to his feet, dressed in a fresh uniform, and ventured out of his room, an adjutant was waiting to bring him to the admiral’s barge, which was sitting in Bridgetown’s hangar. From there it was a short flight across to the TUS Warspite, the fleet flagship. Time seemed to be moving more slowly as the adjutant made small talk. Everything around him looked normal, and he was reminded of his time in the Core with the Fifth Fleet. Without the menace of an alien ship threatening to wipe humanity from the system at any moment, Samson was struck by how peaceful everything seemed. The Frontier appeared to be a sleepy backwater once again, except for the fleet at anchor around the depot.
Samson peered through one of the barge’s viewports. There was a serious amount of naval hardware on display. The Third Fleet was a full battlegroup, capable of conducting full scale combat operations on an independent basis. If you wanted to invade a Core System, this was the preferred tool to use.
The barge was granted priority permission to land, and the adjutant whisked Samson through the Warspite’s corridors and to the admiral’s stateroom as soon as they were on board. The space, sights, and sounds of a large ship of the line felt strange after so long on smaller vessels. The adjutant brought him to a door with the admiral’s nameplate on it. He knocked, then straightened his uniform as he waited.
Samson wondered if he should do the same, but as the uniform he wore didn’t fit him all that well, he didn’t think it would make much difference. A clipped voice commanded them to enter, and once again the adjutant led the way.
It took a moment to survey Admiral Khaimov’s stateroom after he was shown in. It was sparsely decorated and well ordered. The man himself was not as imposing as his name suggested. Short and slight with receding grey hair, he looked more like an academic than the commanding admiral of a fleet. However, his reputation preceded him. He was the man who had put down the Piraeus insurgency and was considered the fighting admiral of the Navy. When the Navy wanted to take the gloves off, this was the man they sent.
‘Sit, Lieutenant,’ Khaimov said, gesturing to a seat without looking up from the screen he was reading. As Samson sat, Khaimov leaned back, straightened his tunic and laced his fingers over his stomach. He gave Samson a curious look, and an awkward silence persisted for a moment before he spoke again.
‘Quite a situation we find ourselves in here, isn’t it?’
‘It’s… unprecedented,’ Samson s
aid.
‘Indeed. I can’t say I ever expected to see the Alpha Protocol activated. Not in my lifetime, anyway. The galaxy has, in one fell swoop, become a very different place. The Admiralty and the Senate are trying to work out if it will draw humanity into an ever-closer bond, or if it will be the straw that breaks the camel’s back and splits the Union down to its constituent federations. What do you think?’
Samson floundered. The state of the Union was a pretty profound question, and not something he’d given much thought since finishing his political science classes at the Naval Academy.
‘I think it’s such an unexpected development, it’s impossible to know how people will react.’
Khaimov chuckled. ‘Good answer. I always like an officer who doesn’t pretend to know things he doesn’t. You might think it an off-the-wall question, but it’s pretty relevant for our current situation. It looks like we’re facing a war out here, the scale of which is impossible to predict. Added to that is the fact that there’re all sorts of mysteries too. Ones that might unlock some of the secrets of the universe. Cherries that are just too tempting to ignore.
‘So, does the Union send its whole fleet out here to make damn sure we win, and get the whole cherry bowl to ourselves, or do we hold some of it back to keep an eye on the troublemakers at home?’
Samson wasn’t sure if Khaimov expected an answer, but given his reaction to Samson’s previous answer, he was inclined to keep his mouth shut. This was a question well above his pay grade, and to express his opinion was about as useful as standing up and farting in the admiral’s face.
‘Well, it will impact on what we do out here,’ Khaimov said, ‘but as you say, we’ll just have to wait and see how everyone reacts.’
‘Difficult decisions,’ Samson said.
The Alpha Protocol: Alpha Protocol Book 1 Page 30