We crossed the hub, Wilson keeping an eye on our rear, Mandy and her men spreading out to cover from all vantages. López held the lift doors open.
And here was where things got complicated.
We could fit five armoured units into each lift, which meant we could send up two lifts at once, with Adi stuffed in the middle, and have to wait for the two remaining armoured units to make it up top afterwards.
Not ideal. Separating at all went against every tactical lesson I’d learned. Aquila still controlled these lifts. He’d let us use them from the lower decks without interference. But I couldn’t help thinking the AI was lulling us into a false sense of security.
I stood with the others and stared at the lift doors.
“How do you want to do this?” Mandy asked.
I half expected her just to take over, but the woman was respecting the chain of command onboard the ship, even if she thought she was not part of it.
“Zenith and two from Flux on one lift with Adi,” I said.
There was no way I was being separated from Adi, and if worse case happened, I wanted López down here to keep things running. She’d have a shit job of it without the wrist comm, but she would manage. Andrea would fight to the bitter end.
“The rest of Flux and the civvies on the second lift,” I added. “Nova covers us and gets there as soon as they can.”
“Aye, sir,” López said, stepping away from the lift and being replaced with Wilson.
“You’re with me, Lieutenant,” I said to the man. He nodded his head as much as he could do inside the helmet.
I’d stacked the cards the only way I could. All of it might have been for nothing. But wasn’t it Benjamin Franklin who said, ‘By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail’? I did not want to fail Adi on this.
“Move out,” I said and stepped onto the lift.
Adi moved with me, and in seconds we were surrounded by four more armoured men. There was barely room for Adi to breathe. She hugged my lower half, face pressed up against the armour like I was some oversized mechanical teddy bear.
It would have been amusing if I didn’t think we were walking into a trap.
I got one last look at Commander López as the lift doors closed and recognised her pale look for what it was. She was worried.
We all were.
I reached forward and pressed the wrist comm to the control panel. Mandy, and López when she followed, would have to use the command codes to override the Deck A restrictions, but Adi’s wrist comm should take us directly there.
The lift moved in the barely-there way it had. Lights streaming down the gel wall to indicate movement. No one said a thing. Adi clung to me, but I could feel her shaking. Some of that would be fear of what Aquila could do to us inside this little box, and some of that was the fact that she was about to see her father.
There was nothing I could do for her except stroke her back and even that was difficult to manage in such close quarters.
“I wonder why we never thought of having piped music in here,” Johnson remarked.
“Does Aquila seem like the musical type to you?” Armstrong offered.
“It’s the little things,” Johnson said. “Attention to detail.”
“I’d rather his attention were elsewhere,” I said, shutting them up.
The lift stopped. The doors opened. An empty bridge hub met us.
Johnson and Armstrong went first, followed by Wilson and Garner from Flux. I stayed back with Adi; arm around her back, keeping her pressed against me.
“All clear,” came Johnson’s voice over the comm.
I nudged Adi forward. She looked up at me for confirmation. I kept forgetting she couldn’t hear us when we talked on the secured channel. I nodded my head and smiled reassuringly. I wasn’t speaking out loud until I knew we were safe to do so. And that wasn’t going to happen until we’d taken back the bridge and dealt with her father.
Armstrong was peering down the corridor that led to the mayoral offices and then onward to the leaseholder quarters.
“What’s the chance of him being in his quarters?” he asked.
“Slim according to Adi,” I offered. “She thinks he’ll be in the command seat. Probably took over Captain Moore’s cabin. Not as nice as his own, but holds more meaning.”
“Conquerer and his spoils,” Wilson said snidely.
“Let’s do this,” I ordered. Even though Adi couldn’t hear them, I didn’t want another round of bashing the leaseholder. He was bad. There was no argument.
But he was also her father.
Damn, I had no idea how this would go down.
I checked on her with my side camera using the HUD. An image of a petite woman with raggedly shorn blonde hair appeared in the heads-up display in front of me. Biting her bottom lip, fillet knife in hand; she’d turned down the use of one of the rifles.
In that moment, the world ceased to exist. The universe closed down to just her. This woman. This fragile seeming woman who showed more courage than most men I’ve ever met. Who was prepared to face her personal monster in order to put things right; to correct the wrong’s committed.
I’d thought I had the weight of responsibility on my shoulders, but I realised in that second, that there were different types of weights and different types of responsibilities.
Mine was to captain this ship to safety.
Adi’s was to face her fears and stop her father.
Both were important. Both were crucial to our survival. Both weighed us down and bowed our heads.
But both Adi and I would do what was required. We weren’t so different from each other even if the responsibilities we wore were.
She met my eyes. I offered her a smile. When this was over, I was going to tell her. I was going to tell her I’d fallen in love and she was it. The one. All those stupidly sappy things she said she didn’t dream of. I would lay it all on her and then promise her adventure until the day we finally became space dust.
But today was not that day.
I turned to the lift beside our one. The doors were still closed, and no one had stepped out yet.
“Damn,” Johnson muttered. “He knows we’re coming.”
He’d always known we were coming. I glanced down at the wrist comm and wondered if we too would have been stuck in the lifts had we not had it. I prayed Mandy and the others were all right. But there was nothing we could do about it now.
The noose was tightening around our neck.
“Eyes open,” I said, and everyone tightened their hold on their rifles. “There’s five of us and one of him. His mercs have all but been culled now. Time to end this.”
“Yes, sir!” they all said.
I nodded at Adi. She nodded back. I’d taken one step, Adi taking two to keep up, when the gel walls turned red.
“Red alert. Red alert,” Aquila announced. “Stand by for contact.”
We all stilled. Glanced around. Looked at each other. Was that warning for us?
And then the ship rocked from what had to be an explosion.
Corvus was back.
Fuck.
Forty-Three
I See Something
Adi
“What now?” Lieutenant Wilson shouted over his speakers as he lost his footing and slammed into a bulkhead. Their secured network must have been affected; I wasn’t sure Wilson knew he’d spoken out loud.
“Grab hold of something,” Hugo yelled through his speakers, adding to my suspicions. Then he reached for me and activated his mag boots.
His feet got rooted to the floor and his arms wrapped around my body as the ship rocked and rolled and shuddered all around us.
“Do we keep going to the bridge?” Johnson asked. “We could use the distraction to our advantage.”
“Corvus might aim for the bridge,” Hugo replied steadily, making my heart rate thunder. “This whole deck is a target.”
My body started to shake all over. I wasn’t sure how much adrenaline the average pers
on could handle. Sooner or later I was going to come down from the high and sleep for a fortnight.
“We need an observation deck,” Hugo said, looking back at the lift.
“Tunnels or lift?” Johnson said.
The tunnels would provide a decent amount of protection but would take much longer to navigate.
“Lifts,” Hugo said, thinking the same as me no doubt. We needed off this deck, and we needed off it fast.
Corvus would not hold back. Even if they planned to help the civilians stuck onboard, they’d assume all those up on this deck were the bad guys and wouldn’t hesitate to take them out. And if Corvus were under the control of its own leaseholder, then it would be personal. No hesitation. Last man standing wins.
But I was also thinking if Corvus was still under the control of AU crew, then it was pretty damn personal anyway. They’d want their ship back. And Deck A with the bridge and mayoral offices and leaseholder quarters was a prime target.
Either way, we were screwed.
The lift still worked, and we piled into it. The gel wall fluctuated as the ship took another hit, but the doors closed on Hugo’s command. The wrist comm activated the panel, and he selected Deck F with emergency override. I thought that might mean the lift wouldn’t stop for anything until it was there.
“Why Deck F?” I yelled above the creaks and groans, and eerily strange noises gel walls make when under pressure.
Hugo blinked, probably trying to activate external speakers and realising they were already working.
“Closest observation deck,” he said a moment later. “I want to see who’s firing on my ship.”
“Damn straight,” Johnson muttered.
“Secured line is down,” Wilson offered, verbalising what I’d already suspected.
“Noted,” Hugo said, face grim.
“If we’re lucky,” Johnson said, “Corvus will do our job for us.”
I thought perhaps that Hugo would hit him. His fists bunched and he leaned forward, his face a mask of fury.
“Ah,” Johnson said, holding up both his hands in supplication, “or not. You know, whatever. Sir.”
Johnson’s eyes darted to me. Oh. That’s why Hugo was mad.
I wasn’t sure how to feel about that. Not about Hugo trying to protect me; I liked that. It was more to do with how I would feel if the crew on Corvus killed my dad.
I decided, after much internal debate, that I could live with that.
And then I spent the rest of the lift ride regretting ever thinking such a thing.
The lift opened on Deck F, the Habitat One central hub. There were a few civilians about, sliding across the floor, hanging onto stalls, staggering toward the cabin corridors. Some scowled at us as we stepped off, clearly thinking we were part of my father’s mercenary force.
I contemplated telling them otherwise, but Johnson beat me to it.
“Captain on the deck!” he shouted over the helmet speakers.
The guys’ faceplates weren’t mirrored, so that helped. Some of the people stopped scowling and started yelling instead.
“What’s happening?”
“Can you stop it, Captain?”
“Who’s firing on us?”
“What’s the leaseholder thinking?”
“This is the worst cruise ever.”
I blinked at the last but couldn’t see who said it. Probably the guy sliding nonchalantly from stall to stall and back again as the ship changed direction. Usually, you couldn’t feel any change in direction, the ship had some form of internal dampeners or something that prevented you feeling acceleration or deceleration or in this case, figure eights of death.
But every hit the vessel received caused the habitat to shake and the deck to roll beneath us. Some of that was Aquila, I thought. That gel looked alive and angry.
I faced forward again as Hugo practically carried me toward the observation deck. No one answered the civilians, which was understandable as the guys, despite their armour, were having to use every ounce of concentration to put one foot in front of the other.
By the time we made it to the observation deck, I could see them all sweating behind their faceplates. Hugo wasn’t much better, but he hadn’t once lost hold of me during our trek to get here.
We came to a stop several feet away from the huge windows.
Everything seemed to stop along with us.
Not the floor. No. The gel floor was what was making it feel like we were in evasive manoeuvre patterns. When in fact we were stationary. We were being hit, the odd energy cannon getting through to us. A torpedo slipping between the ranks and making contact. But we were not moving according to what I was seeing here.
It was a surreal thing to see your death streaming toward you backlit by the vastness of space.
Oh, and a dozen or so shuttles lined up as a protective barrier between us and several large ships.
“Holy shit,” Johnson muttered.
“Who are they?” Armstrong asked.
“Ours,” Hugo said. “That’s Corvus and Pavo. Don’t know the other one.”
“Shit,” Johnson repeated.
“And those shuttles,” Wilson said. “Who’s piloting them?”
We watched as a shuttle imploded. Simply crumpled in on itself when an energy cannon hit it. It must have sustained considerable damage. It was one of ours.
“Oh, God,” I muttered. Who had my father convinced to go out there? Who had he sent to their deaths now?
Hugo was shaking his head inside his helmet. The others kept staring with wide eyes and mouths hanging open. Shock. They were all in shock. After everything we’d been through, this is what rendered them speechless.
I made myself look. To not do so would have been cowardice. I’d long since realised I was not a coward at all. And I would never again let my father make me believe it.
I looked and then scowled, and then I narrowed my eyes and said, “They’re using shuttles too.”
Damn leaseholders the fleet over were all the same. It didn’t make the knowledge that my father was not the only murdering bastard out there any better.
“They’re not being piloted,” Hugo said, voice awed. “Johnson,” he snapped. “Check their flight patterns. What do you see?”
Lieutenant Johnson stepped up to the window and stared hard. A few taut seconds passed before he tried to scratch his head and only managed to knock the top of his helmet.
“That’s not any piloting skills I’ve seen humans achieve,” he finally said, looking at Hugo. “Remote control?” he offered.
“My thoughts exactly.”
“But that could mean…” Wilson said but didn’t finish.
Hugo got there first. “Their AIs are in control.”
“Shit,” Johnson said lengthening the word for several beats.
Then I caught something out of the corner of my eye. A shadow where a shadow could not be. I stepped up to the window. Hugo reached for me as if afraid I’d get hurt the closer to the action I was. I waved him off, staring at where I could have sworn I saw something block out a star in the distance.
There it was again. And it had stopped.
“I see something,” I said.
“What?” Hugo asked, stepping up to my side, no longer trying to stop me from pressing up against the window.
“There! See it!” I shouted. “A door opened.”
“A what?” Johnson asked, stepping up to my other side.
Soon every single armoured body was pressed up against the glass, trying to see what I was seeing.
And then they didn’t have to try anymore.
Two LSU wearing forms activated their thrusters and flew towards our hull.
“Mother fu…” Johnson didn’t finish. Hugo had cut him a look that made him flush. “Sir,” the lieutenant muttered, ducking his head and looking back at the window.
We all watched as the two forms grew larger.
“Habitat One emergency access dock,” Hugo said a second later. “We’re being
boarded.”
“Mother fucker,” Johnson spat, and this time Hugo didn’t stop him.
Forty-Four
I Can Stop Him
Hugo
It never rains but it pours, I thought grimly as we made our way to the emergency access dock. I was not feeling very charitable at that moment, and the thought of some stranger, possibly a leaseholder merc, trying to board our ship and take over, was more than my patience could handle.
“At least there’s only two of them,” Wilson said behind me.
I nodded my head. That was strange. Why send only two?
“Maybe they’d hoped to slip in without being detected,” I said. “That was a stealth shuttle.”
“Agreed,” Wilson said succinctly.
They were still a threat, but we were armed to the teeth and armoured, and we’d had just about enough of people who had no right to do so telling us what to do.
I looked down at Adi, who was practically running at my side to keep up. She looked so small and fragile without armour on, and yet she had a determined look on her face and a sharp knife in her hand, and she was prepared to use it.
“Adi,” I said, aware everyone within a few feet could hear my voice through the helmet speakers. “I want you to hang back with Garner while we deal with this.”
I saw the argument forming on her lips, the defiance in her eyes.
I tapped my plasma gun against my armour, making it clink.
She reluctantly nodded her head.
My eyes met Garner’s. “Guard her with your life, Lieutenant,” I said.
“Aye-aye, sir,” he replied.
We left them at the end of the corridor leading to the emergency access docking hatch. Armstrong hung back halfway down the corridor and could fall back if needed to help secure Adi. Johnson, Wilson and I strode toward the hatch, aware the intruders had probably gained access to the dock by now and were decompressing.
Zenith Point (The Sector Fleet, Book 4) Page 22