His door pinged. Derek ignored it even though his mind reached in automatic reflex for the optic in the corridor outside. The jammer cut that off from him, so he didn’t respond at all.
“I miss you,” he said, staring at the face of his wife on the screen. He’d have used one of his thinpads to talk to her, but they were all offline. It forced him to sit in his desk chair and use the console since it was the only com system in his apartment hardwired into the network. He didn’t mind even if the seat was uncomfortable.
“I miss you too,” Bella said with a sad smile. “I’m scared for you. We don’t get much news down here, but things sound like they’re coming apart.”
“They are, a little,” he said. “Maybe I should just pack up and move to Earth. It doesn’t sound that bad where you are. I miss the kids too.”
“It’s hot, but they’re both learning to swim now, so we spend a lot of time on the beach.” She smiled and flipped her thinpad open and sent him a picture. “I took that for you. It was at the beach in Iceland last month.”
“They look so tanned,” he said, smiling. His eyes burned, and he rubbed one with the back of his hand. “God, I want to be with you.”
The door pinged again. Several times, in rapid succession. He glared toward the living room and shook his head.
“Don’t you need to get that?” Bella asked.
“I need to talk to you,” he said. “Whatever they want, can wait.”
“You have responsibilities,” she said. “I don’t know what’s happening up there, but you need to take care of things. You’re an important man.”
He shook his head again. “There isn’t anything I can do now.”
“What does that mean?” She wrinkled her face into a confused smile. “You’re the most powerful man in the Union. Of course you have things you can be doing.”
Loud, bone-rattling pounding replaced the polite but insistent pinging. A muffled voice he couldn’t understand bellowed from the corridor.
“I’ll be here all day,” she said, winking. “Go take care of things. I love you.”
“I love you too,” he said as she closed the connection from her end.
“This is security. Director Tomlinson, are you alright?” A voice hollered from the front room.
“I am fine,” he yelled back. “I told the last guard that came looking for me, I didn’t want to be disturbed. Is that beyond your ability to comprehend?”
“No sir,” the guard said, appearing at his bedroom door and snapping to attention. “Paulson Lassiter ordered us to bring you to the OCS.”
“Paulson Lassiter is dead,” Derek said. He didn’t care of Odysseus wanted to keep it a secret. That he knew things he shouldn’t share, didn’t matter to him anymore. It had all gotten so sidewise that nothing mattered.
“No sir,” he said. “I was in the Operations Center when he gave the order. I heard it with my own ears.
“That wasn’t Lassiter.”
“I’m sorry, sir. It was,” the guard insisted. “He said you’re to report to the OC or we are to arrest you and bring you there by force.”
“By whose authority?” Derek challenged.
The guard blinked several times like the idea that Lassiter didn’t have that right had never occurred to him. He shrugged. “Please sir, don’t make this more difficult than it is has to be.”
CHAPTER THIRTY
Governor’s Office: Gateway Colony: L-4 Prime:
“Gateway, are you tracking the Katana?” Admiral Nakamiru asked, his face appearing on Jeph’s wall. G-forces slammed him back and forth as the mountainous Armstrong fought its way through swarms of enemy ships.
“We’ve got our hands full down here too,” Jeph said, glancing over his shoulder as Tana and Anju appeared at his door. “They’ve breached the locks in the Waltz and we’re trying to defend Dutch and the power systems by brute force.”
“Our sensors are still down and it is not answering com,” the admiral said. “When your situation got hot, did you divert them away?”
“I don’t think we’ve had contact since just before you got engines. Stand by and let me check,” he said. “Cori, are you still on the ConDeck?”
“Yah boss,” he said. The background noise sounded like chaos coming unhinged around him.
“Any chance you’ve got a way to track the Katana?”
“Shit,” Alyx answered. “Are they missing?”
“Apparently,” Jeph said. “Might just be lost in the confusion.”
“I lost the Hector’s sensor controls to a grenade,” she said. “But they’ve got better sensors in Kanahto control.”
“Copy, they’re my next ask,” he said.
“I hope they’re alright,” Tana whispered.
“Kiro’s the best,” Anju said, reaching out and squeezing the chancellor’s hand. “If anybody can keep them alive, it’s him.”
“Chei, do you see the Katana out there somewhere?” Jeph asked.
No answer.
“Chei, can you tell me where the hell the Katana is?” he asked again, turning to face another wall and having the system bring up a view of the control room.
“Is anyone down there? Chei? Somebody? We’ve lost the Katana.”
“Chei ahn Tahrat Shan-che Un oola Shan Tarah,” Ian said as his face appeared on the wall.
Jeph blinked several times. “He’s in space?
“Is Saffia down there with you?” Tana asked.
“Saffia da-ahn cata Kanahto ahn Un oola Shan Tarah,” he said.
Tana looked at Jeph who shrugged. “He says she is not in the control room either.”
“She is apparently out in the solar system somewhere?” Anju added, her tone implying her confusion at Ian’s answer.
“What about Katryna?” Tana asked.
“Chancellor ahn Un oola Shan Tarah ahn Tahrat Shan-che.” Ian offered.
“Roja too,” Jeph said, looking back at the open com screen and realized that Nakamiru was glaring at him. “Uhm, admiral, we might have a problem. She’s left L-4 Prime. She’s missing. Along with several of my people.”
Thunder rumbled through the floor plates a second before the admiral’s face disappeared from his screen.
Gateway Colony: L-4 Prime:
A ball of fire billowed down the chute carrying glowing fragments that were all that was left of the forward bulkhead and hull of the Waltz. Alyx and Cori both leapt for cover but the shockwave of expanding hot gas slammed them into the outer walls of the ConDeck.
Cori’s training let him take the fall and so he landed with a roll that scattered fragments of the main viewscreen like crystal raindrops across the deck. Alyx was still trying to get used to her new meso physique, and so she landed hard, snapping her head back and tossing her breathing mask off. Shaking her head to fling off the fog that formed around her, she blew out hard to release the gas from her lungs, as the shockwave from the blast reversed and the pressure plummeted toward hard vacuum again.
He dove for the corner where her mask had slammed and grabbing it, bounced back in her direction. He helped her pull it back over her head and watched as the frost on the plasglass faceplate fogged and then condensed. A small streamer of venting air jetted out of the corner of one lens. “It won’t hold for long. We need to get you out of here,” he said.
She shook her head and pointed at her ears. Their comlink was down.
“Seva, do you copy?”
“Ja,” she said, sounding relieved and pissed off in the same syllable. “Are you alright?”
“Negative,” he said. “Alyx has a broken mask. It’s venting fast and we need to get her to air.”
“Jump down the chute now,” Seva said. “They pulled back before they blew the end. It’s clear at the moment, but—”
A smaller grenade blast rocked the deck below them and then the floor vibrated hard. Bucking and heaving like it was being shredded.
“What the frag is that?” Cori said, wobbling back and forth like he was riding waves.
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“It appears to be a drill device of some sort,” Solo said. “They have set up on the EVAOps Deck and are cutting down through the deck plating.”
“Frakking cowards,” Seva said. “They won’t face us down the chute, so they’re cutting a new route.”
“We don’t have time to debate this,” Cori said, grabbing Alyx by the hand and pulling her toward the railing. It was bent and twisted, and they could see it swaying wildly, as they got closer to it. “Can you cover us if we jump now?”
“Let us run some heat up the chute to push them back,” Seva said.
“Recommend you proceed quickly,” Solo said. “I have only one laser left and there are at least six hard targets inbound. One of them may be a gun ship.”
“How do you know that?” Seva asked.
“I can use the targeting radar to sweep the approach vector between shots,” it said. “It gives me low resolution situational awareness.”
A blast of exhaust gas shot down the chute as a dropship descended into position above the end of the Waltz to unload.
“Stand back, up there,” Seva said. “Let’s talk him into rethinking that parking space.”
A bolt of plasma, much hotter than the hand-held units their forces carried, shot up the chute and out of the end of the ship. Moments later three bodies plunged past in the opposite direction, propelled on the plasma fire of the dropship’s engine as it blasted away from its perch.
“Incoming meat bags,” Cori said, grabbing Alyx and pointing after them. She gave him a nod, and they both leapt over the edge.
“Solo, you’re up,” Cori said. “Hold the fort.”
“I will endeavor to do my best,” it said as the one remaining laser marked the end of the fleeing dropship with a blinding flash that hurled them down the chute on another shockwave.
Tahrat Shan-che: Above L-4 Prime:
“What’s going on out there?” Kiro said, his voice coming over the comlink on the EVA suit that the chancellor still held in her arms. Chei heard it as a pathetic little squawk before he took it from Roja’s hands and punched in the relay mode on the suit’s armpad.
“Stand by, Kiro,” he said. “I think we’re about to launch the Tahrat Shan-che.”
“What is the Tahrat Shan-che?” the chancellor asked, shaking her head and almost growling. “And where are we?”
“We’re in space,” Kylla said, glancing at Saf and winking.
“Somebody needs to tell me what the frak is going on before I lose my protein,” Roja said, her snarl escalating. “I was on the Katana, then I got a message to grab a suit, and now I’m standing here. There are some big gaps in my reality that need filling.”
“The Tahrat Shan-che is something we discovered inside the Tacra Un,” Chei said. “The name literally means space-vessel of the star children.”
“A Shan Takhu space ship?” she asked.
Saffia stepped up to one of the control consoles and tapped into it. After flipping through several layers of interface, she found what she was looking for, and the entire front of the control room disappeared. It was as if they were standing on a balcony, out in space.
L-4 Prime was a bright spark surrounded by a hazy atmosphere and hundreds of dancing specks.
A half million kilometers from where they were.
“We’re moving?” she asked, walking forward and shaking her head in amazement.
“Our current velocity is 10,200 kilometers per second,” Dutch said. “Range to L-4 Prime is 460,200 kilometers.”
“Did I hear that right?” Kiro asked from the pilot seat of the Katana. “We’ve only been aboard a minute.”
“Affirm on that,” Chei said. “The view up here is pretty amazing.”
“I’m not feeling that,” Kiro said. “I’m looking at a wall in front of me and nothing else.”
“Sorry about that,” he said, glancing at Saf who was tapping something into her control pedestal. “We’ll work on getting you a window when we can.”
“The front wall just disappeared,” Kiro said.
“It’s still there,” Dutch warned. “Saffia altered its appearance for you.”
“Dutch?” Kiro asked. “When did you learn to speak like a normal person? All short-cutty and everything?”
“Contractions,” Chei nodded. “I knew there was something that sounded different.”
“When I was uploaded to the Tahrat Shan-che. The new hardware is substantially more … sophisticated.”
“This is all warm and fuzzy, but we’ve got a fleet out there dying,” Roja said. “Can we use this ship to level the playing field somehow? It’s got to have weapons to match its, sophistication.”
“Other than defensive systems, the Tahrat Shan-che is unarmed,” Dutch said. “Currently we are kahnu-naet so we are in no danger.”
“Null light,” Chei said. “A cloaking field?”
“We’re invisible?” the chancellor asked. “We’re driving an alien space ship that’s useless in a fight, and we’re going to do what with it? Run away?”
“We’re actually heading down-system,” Dutch said. “It’s my intent to alter Odysseus’ reality in a profound way.”
Gateway Colony: L-4 Prime:
“Cori’s down!” Seva barked as she swung his tumbling body around with one arm and pulled him out of the chute as he rocketed by. He was trailing streamers of blood from where the lower third of his leg had been. “We need a doctor.”
The shockwave of the exploding dropship had propelled them like a shot down the chute. Somewhere along the way, Cori had tumbled and his leg had caught on the edge of a deck. The lower part of it was still hanging up there somewhere, but retrieving it would have to wait, as another wave of grenades tumbled down behind them.
Alyx had somehow avoided tumbling, and had swung down and rolled to a stop, scattering the militia units like a cannon ball. She bounced up and off the ceiling as she sprung toward the airlock on the opposite side of the engineering deck. Her breathing mask had shattered when she landed, and she was single-mindedly running for air.
Seva grabbed the shoulder of her sergeant to make sure she had his full attention. Her adrenaline fueled grip bent the suspension clips on his EVA suit and he almost squealed in terror. “Hold this position,” she growled.
“Yes ma’am,” he squeaked as she bounded away after the men carrying Cori.
By the time she’d pushed through the permeable wall and into the air beyond, Anju was bent over him, and Edison had his hands covered in blood as he pressed down hard trying to cut off the arterial bleeding. He didn’t have the strength needed to get through Cori’s EVA suit and the PSE under it.
Flipping open her helmet, Seva jumped in. “Let me,” she said, pushing Edison back and jamming her fist down to pinch off his femoral artery.
“Shit, I feel that,” Cori hissed. “Leg’s numb, but you’re kinda bending my bits you know.”
“More pressure,” Anju said.
“I’m sure,” she said, leaning forward and locking eyes with him as she pushed down harder. “Fortunately, it will grow back.”
He would have laughed, but something the doctor was doing found a nerve that wasn’t in shock and he screamed loud enough to hide the hissing sound of flesh being sealed the old fashioned way.
“Come on, you big baby,” Seva said as she dropped her body weight down on him and pinned him to the floor to keep him from thrashing. “She’s almost done.”
Anju tapped her on the shoulder. “Ease off. I think I’ve got it sealed.”
She pulled her fist out of his crotch and his eyes went wide, but the doctor nodded.
“We need to get him to MedBay,” Anju said, as Tana skidded to a stop behind her, a medkit and neuroblocker in her hand. “There’s only so much I can do with a plasma pistol.”
“Nogo. Not going to happen,” Seva said. “It’s in a hard vacuum.”
Tana dropped beside Cori to dose him up, and he swatted her hand away. “Wait,” he said. “I know how to stop the re
inforcements.”
“I recommend that if you have a plan, you proceed now,” Solo said. “The one remaining laser is overheating and will not operate much longer.”
FleetCom Military Operations Center: Lunar L-2 Shipyard:
“What can we do?” Admiral Quintana said. He was watching the main screen and shaking his head.
“Not shit,” Roudini said.
“They haven’t gotten inside our defenses yet,” Ducat said.
“They haven’t gotten in yet, but they will. We’ve lost seven of fifteen multicruisers and they’ve still got 150 ships,” Visser said. “It’s a numbers game. Our only hope is to pull back and reinforce the surviving ships with cover fire from the base guns.”
“Do it,” the admiral said. “We’ll figure out what comes next, but let’s—”
“We’ve just lost a cluster of gun posts,” Sage said, sounding panicked more than exhausted. “210 through 322, in the outer arc. They’re completely offline.”
“Nobody’s over there,” Visser said, glancing at the screen. “Did they fail?”
“I can’t tell,” she said. “They’re just dead. Gone. Like they fell into a black hole.”
“Was it an attack?”
“I don’t think so. Seriously, there’s nothing on that side …” the defense controller drifted to a stop. “Wait, we’ve got a hard target. It’s small and sitting stationary in the middle of the dead zone. I didn’t see it before.”
“What is it?”
“Upper B-class keel. No transponder. Minimal EM signature. It’s dead in space,” she said.
“Get me a visual on it,” the admiral said, anchoring his maglocks on the deck behind her station.
As the image locked and magnified on her screen, the com officer interrupted. “Incoming com from the unknown target.”
“Put it through,” Quintana said.
“L-2 Approach this is the Katana. Do not fire. I repeat this is the Katana. Do not fire, we’re on your side.”
“It looks like the Katana,” she said “But where did it come from?”
“This is FleetCom Admiral Jaxton Quintana. I don’t know who you are and how you came to be in possession of the Katana, but you’ve got about ten seconds before I order you removed from our space. Permanently.” He was bluffing since the defense net was still down for 500 klick in every direction from the ship, but better to start out strong and then try to fill in the gaps.
Redemption of Sisyphus Page 25