by Jay Allan
Weapons? Some kind of research lab?
She felt her stomach tighten. If the base had been some kind of scientific facility, there could be all sorts of exotic—and dangerous—materials present. And three centuries was a long enough time even for imperial storage units to fail.
She continued on, perhaps another two hundred meters. They passed six or eight doors, but they were all locked, and she didn’t have the time to waste trying to access what were most likely secondary rooms. She had a hunch the corridor led somewhere important, something she became even more certain about when they began passing notices etched into the wall. The signs were written in Old Imperial. Andi hadn’t known a word of the language when she’d first arrived on Dannith, but she’d picked up a fair bit in several years of prospecting. And she’d seen this particular word before.
It meant something between ‘caution’ and ‘danger.’
She continued forward, slowing her pace and trying to remain as quiet as possible. It was a pointless effort, at least against any potential imperial defense mechanisms, but if there were Foudre Rouge wherever her people were going, she’d take any edge she could get. Half a second could be the difference between victory and defeat.
Part of her wanted to slip in, grab the swag they’d come for, and slip out again…but the other half wanted to find Foudre Rouge waiting. She owed them something, revenge for her friend, and that was the kind of debt Andi Lafarge always repaid.
She stopped. There was noise ahead. For an instant, her combat reflexes sprung into action, but then she realized it wasn’t Foudre Rouge. It wasn’t any kind of security bot either, just a soft humming sound, very regular, and coming from farther down the corridor. There was some kind of machine up ahead, very likely of imperial make.
And it was still operating.
She gripped her rifle tightly, and she pushed ahead, trying to ignore the rivulets of sweat sliding down her neck. She could hear her own breathing, every inhale and exhale echoing in her ears as she moved ahead. The hum increased in volume, and twenty meters farther forward, the corridor ended at a door. It was armored, some kind of secured accessway, but it had been blown out of its housing. The imperial alloy was slightly twisted out of shape at one end, but mostly, the door was intact. The side that had been connected to the wall was covered in a strange black residue.
She reached down, moving her finger across the sooty substance and bringing it to her nose. It was fresh, the remains of a recent explosion, she guessed. She put her hand on the alloy door. It was still a little warm.
Her body tensed from head to toe, and she pulled a grenade from her shoulder strap, her thumb resting on the arming button. Someone had blasted that door open, and recently. Likely Foudre Rouge. And if they were still in there, Andi was going to kill them all.
She gestured to the others to stay back, remain silent, and she edged forward, moving as quietly as she could. She’d heard Foudre Rouge had acutely developed senses, one benefit of the genetic program that created the clone soldiers, but she’d never been sure how many of those rumors she believed.
She listened herself, but there was nothing. Only the hum, fairly loud now, and definitely coming from the room.
She leaned forward, ready to throw the grenade and duck out. The room was huge, several hundred meters across at least, and eighty or more high. The door led onto a platform, something like a wide catwalk, overlooking the vast room out and below. There were no Foudre Rouge, no Sector Nine agents. No one.
This must be the reactor…
Andi was no expert on nuclear physics, and even less so on the antimatter she knew had so often been used in imperial ships and bases. But the rows of large tanks, and the intricate series of connecting conduits and transmission lines leading off in multiple directions left little doubt. Her eyes darted down to the scanner again, checking the rad levels. Up a little from the last scan, but still within tolerable parameters.
“I think we found the main power station. I don’t know if this is a fusion plant…or an antimatter one.” She shivered slightly at the thought of the latter. Andi knew fusion reactors could be incredibly dangerous, but the thought of antimatter really shook her. The substance was so volatile, so incredibly dangerous, all it had to do was leak out of its containment to cause a catastrophic explosion. A few kilograms of the stuff had a hundred megatons or more of explosive power, and Andi shuddered to imagine how much of the precious substance the facility might contain, and just how fragile containment facilities could be after three centuries without repair or maintenance.
“It looks like both to me, Andi.” Anna stepped up, moving to the rail that ran around the edge of the platform. I’m no engineer, but I’ve seen power plants before, and that’s a fusion core, if I’ve ever seen one.” She gestured toward a large cylindrical structure. “But those tanks…” She pointed to a row of ten large canisters, each one ten meters tall and made of glittering imperial alloy. “…they’re nothing to do with a fusion plant. That’s got to be antimatter storage.” She paused, and when she continued, her voice was hollow, almost awe-struck. “If those are full, Andi, that has to be tons of antimatter.”
Andi stood stone still, her mind assaulted by cycling waves of fear, greed, and pure awestruck amazement. Tons of antimatter. The substance was so incredibly valuable, a single ton of it was worth more than everything else in the Confederation combined.
The poverty of Andi’s childhood, the deprivation of the Gut, a thousand images of the lost and starving souls around her, all poured through her mind, and she imagined what just a kilogram of the rare and wondrous substance could buy for her and her people. The security, the comfort, the staggering wealth. Everything she’d dreamed of since those terrible days, since she’d left the Marine’s body behind and resolved that she would not die there in the misery of the Gut as so many others had.
But realism quickly washed away those thoughts. She had no way to transport antimatter, nor any idea how to even begin to remove it from the containment tanks. But if Anna was right, if those cylinders were filled with antimatter…how could she risk allowing it to fall into Union hands?
“Andi…” Anna again, and Andi could tell immediately something was wrong.
She turned toward her friend. Anna was standing at the rail, looking down at something below.
“What is it?”
Andi walked over and stood next to Anna. She leaned over the rail and looked down. “I don’t see…”
There was something. It was different, something sloppy and crude, amid the graceful elegance of the imperial tech. It took a few seconds for Andi to process it, but then she understood.
A bomb.
The Union operatives had no doubt come to the same conclusion she had. They couldn’t risk their enemy—the Confederation—gaining control of the precious resource, any more than she’d have been able to risk Sector Nine securing it.
But the Foudre Rouge got here first…
And they had sabotaged the reactor.
Andi felt as though her heart skipped a beat. Her first instinct was to run for the exit, to get her people out of the facility, and off Aquellus, as quickly as possible. But rationality took hold. The Union expedition had come for the same reason she had, to secure whatever old tech they could transport off the planet. And they were still in the facility.
“That thing’s got to have a timer of some kind. We have to try to disarm it…or at least figure out how long we have before it blows.” She leaned over farther, her eyes moving about, looking for some kind of visible clock.
She couldn’t see anything, and a few seconds later, she threw her legs, one after the other, over the railing. Gregor reacted first, rushing forward, grunting in pain as he reached out and grabbed ahold of her. “Andi, what the hell are you doing?”
“Somebody’s got to climb down there and check that bomb, try to disarm it.”
“And that’s you?”
“Who else? You’ll never get down there, not with that
wound…and you know it. You might make an argument for Lex, if he was here. He’d have a better chance of dealing with that thing. But he’s back on Pegasus.”
“I could run back and get him.” Anna started to turn toward the door, limping on her wounded leg over even those few steps.
“Anna, no. First, it’s too dangerous for one of us—any one of us—to go wandering around with Foudre Rouge on the loose. Second, we need Lex on Pegasus. We’re already counting on him having the ship ready for…whatever she needs to do…when we take off. Even if he’s finished his work…” A doubtful proposition, she knew. “…we’ll need him in the engine room. What if you run into Foudre Rouge on the way back, and he is…” She didn’t finish. She didn’t have to. Anna just nodded her acquiescence.
“You can’t go down there, Andi.” Vig hopped over the railing, holding himself up a meter and a half from her.
“Vig…”
“No…you’re the only one who’s absolutely not expendable. You’ve got to lead the crew out of here…and deal with that damned ship waiting up there. If we lose you, we’ll never get out. You know it, you just don’t want to admit it.”
Andi looked back over at the crew’s youngest member. She wanted to argue, but she knew he was right. She had co-piloted the ship with Captain Lorillard. She was the best-equipped to get them out of the system. If it had been any other member of the crew who met that qualification, she would have readily acknowledged it, but she struggled with it regarding herself.
The captain left me in charge…and a leader should lead…
But what was leading? Mindless courage…or unbroken focus on what it would take to get her people home?
Vig slid down, easing himself lower until he was hanging in the open, his hands gripped around the bottom of the rail. Andi turned, and she almost ordered him to climb back up.
But she knew he was right.
She also knew he wasn’t going to listen to her anyway. That made it easier for her.
“Be careful, Vig. If you fall and break something, I’m not going to be able to carry you back up.” And Sy will never forgive me if I get you killed. Sylene Merrick was Vig’s older sister, and the closest thing Andi had to a best friend. She’d been the crew’s computer expert, but the deaths of Captain Lorillard and the others had been too much for her. She’d retired to a quiet life, and Andi still missed her every day.
Vig had filled some of that role, she realized with sudden clarity. She still thought of him as the ‘new guy,’ or ‘Sy’s little brother,’ at least in some ways. But he was rapidly filling his sister’s role as her confidante and close friend.
“I’m always careful.”
Andi almost snorted. She couldn’t recall hearing a more blatant lie.
Then she stood and watched him make his way down.
Chapter Thirty
Free Trader Pegasus
Rocky Shelf Under the Endless Sea
Planet Aquellus, Olystra III
Year 302 AC
“I’ve got it on full, Lex. Looks like the power lines are operating at max capacity, or something close to it.” Barret was standing on Pegasus’s lower deck, shouting from the workstation through the open hatch to the engineering section.
“Close, I think…not max. Don’t forget the size of that ship up there. We’re going to need every watt of power we can get.” A pause. “Give me two minutes. I think I can find the leakage and get it patched up.”
“You got it, Lex.” Barret leaned back on the workstation and let out a long exhale. He’d been upset when Andi had insisted he remain with the ship, but he’d since accepted that her decision had been the correct one. Lex needed help to get the ship back to full functionality, and that meant someone had to stay, and preferably two of the crew. Doc had been the easy choice.
But Barret knew he was the next on that list. As the only member of the crew with real Confederation naval experience, there was no argument he was most valuable on the ship…and there wasn’t much question they were going to have to make one hell of a run for it when they left. Or fight there way out. Either way, his place was on Pegasus, helping to get the ship ready for whatever she needed to do.
“Try it again.” Lex’s voice echoed up from the cramped engineering space. Barret turned and reached down for the controls, turning the flow rate to maximum.
He watched for ten seconds, waiting for the readings to stabilize. “I’ll be damned,” he muttered to himself, as the reading continued past the previous level, and continued to rise almost ten percent higher. “Whatever you did down there,” he shouted toward the hatch, “it gave us a nice boost. Looks like nine point five, maybe nine point six.”
“I knew there was a leak. That extra power will come in handy in…if we need it.”
Assuming we ever get out of this Godforsaken ocean…
Lex Righter came out of the engineering hatch and stooped down to clear the hundred twenty centimeter height of the door. His clothes were rumpled and torn in a couple places, and he was covered in a coating of dried sweat and dirt from the engine room.
Barret had questioned Andi’s tactics in acquiring a new engineer for the ship, or the wisdom of relying on a clearly troubled alcoholic and addict to fill such a vital role, but he’d come to really like Righter, and he couldn’t argue with the engineer’s skills or his astonishing work ethic.
“There’s more work to do, but we should be able to lift off now with full power, at least. I want to run a full diagnostic on the systems, but first, we need to get some better patches on those hull breaches. Gregor did a great job in an emergency, but I want to make sure they all hold…whatever we run into on our way out of here.”
Barret nodded, and he opened his mouth to add his own viewpoint. But before he could say a word, his head spun around toward the ladder to the bridge.
“Barret!” It was Doc’s voice, coming from the upper level, and there was no question at all that something was very wrong.
“What is it, Doc?” Barret felt his insides tighten, and he turned and raced toward the ladder, leaping up and grabbing the highest rung he could reach. He grunted as he climbed up, and then he jumped onto the deck just outside the bridge, even as Doc’s answer echoed in his ears.
“We’ve got company outside…and it’s not Andi and the others…”
* * *
“Go, Private…now! Report to the lieutenant at once. Advise him our ships are both gone…no, not gone, destroyed.” The Foudre Rouge sergeant stood along the sheer rock wall rising above the large shelf, the platform where both landers had been. The field of debris all around left little hope the landers had escaped.
The flat area now occupied by a single ship…unidentified, but definitely not one of theirs.
“Yes, Sergeant.” The soldier spun around—or as close to ‘spinning as was possible in the bulky underwater suit—and he moved into the airlock. The door slid shut, and Sergeant Samois-0079 turned back toward the ship sitting in front of him.
The ramifications of the discovery were staggering, and only his Foudre Rouge conditioning allowed him to quickly put them in their place, and coolly analyze the situation. The debris on the shelf, was enough to determine that one of the landers, at least, had been destroyed right there…and very likely both of them.
He was in command on the scene, at least until the private got word to Lieutenant Javais, and some higher authority arrived. He realized almost immediately what he had to do. He didn’t know what the remaining ship was, or who might be inside of it, but it was very likely the only way out of the ocean depths, and off Aquellus.
He had to take control of that ship.
There was just one problem. He only had one other trooper with him after dispatching Private Regia to report to the lieutenant. Should he attack immediately, strike hard and hope surprise proved to be enough to prevail?
That ship may even be empty…
There were intruders in the facility. There was no doubt about that. It was possible everyone
who’d come on that ship had debarked.
But attacking immediately risked losing strength. If the two of them were killed or wounded—and killed seemed the likely option fighting two kilometers under the water—whatever force the lieutenant sent would be that much weaker when it arrived. Two attacks with two soldiers each would be far weaker than one with four.
He tried to fall back on his training, but the situation defied easy choices.
He turned back toward the private, frustrated at the sluggishness of his movement. The suits were a significant disadvantage. If there were defenders on that ship, they’d be a lot more flexible and mobile. The answer to that would normally be to compromise the ship’s hull, to kill its occupants or force them into their own suits.
But he needed the ship intact.
He struggled to reach around, to pull his underwater rifle from his side mount, and he watched at the private followed suit.
He still wasn’t sure how hard to press an attack, but he knew he had to at least confirm whether the ship was occupied.
And there was only one way to do that…
* * *
Barret raced over to one of the open workstations. The screen displayed a view of the rear camera feeds. There was nothing when he first looked, but then he saw a bulky figure lumber slowly past.
“Did you activate any tracking systems?” Barret held his gaze on the screen as he snapped out the question to Doc.
“No…they just walked across the fixed field. It’s a good thing we had one of the screens set to display the feeds.”
“They?” Barret had only seen one figure.
“Yeah, there were two. At least two.”
Barret stared at the screen. He wished Andi was there, or even Vig. The crew’s youngest member had rapidly become one of the ship’s go to leaders in a crisis. “Lex…do me a favor. Run down to the armory and break us out three rifles, plus ammo belts.” The last thing Barret wanted to do was start shooting inside Pegasus, inflicting incalculable damage on the just-repaired ship. But the alternative was suiting up and going out, and fighting out there. He’d hoped for the first few seconds the two figures had been part of the crew, perhaps returned with some comm failure. But that thought only lasted for an instant. The suits were different.