by G. P. Eliot
But it got worse.
“Oh no,” Hank muttered when he saw what had happened to the central column. The micro-explosive that he had batted out of the air must have been sent sailing towards the central column itself. The metal cage had gone some way in protecting it, but even it was crumbled and burst open, and the column itself now looked like a storm-blown tree.
Hank could see whole sections of the crystal-white wires had gone dark, and several of the ‘orbs’ laced with gold micro-processors had smashed.
But there was still a flicker of life in her yet, he realized as he saw a few, faint and thread-like lights trying to race up and down the crystal-wires.
“Serrano? Is there anything you can do with that?” Hank whispered in horror, looking to see the Professor emerge from the interference field on the far side of the door and peer into the room with wide eyes.
“Oh dear,” the Professor said. “I see you’ve had a spot of bother…”
11
“Sir!” the injured Wolverine ahead of the Jackal said, passing to him another auto-phial of battle stimulants. Normally the Jackal wouldn’t take them–his body was a finely-honed killing machine, and the Jackal knew that it would almost produce its own battle hormones and chemicals whenever he needed.
But really–a hole in someone’s ankle was enough to make anyone reach for the drugs.
It was that mud-eating giant of theirs! The Jackal snarled to himself as they stumbled and ran. His intelligence files had said it was a man named ‘Drake Madigan’–a grunt, really, but the Jackal had been in enough fights to know that you should never overestimate what pounds and pounds of excessive muscle can do. Drake Madigan had torn through three of his Wolverines without even slowing down!
But now he wouldn’t have to worry about The Giant From Space, would he?, he thought as they collapsed at the far end of the escape tube. The X3 A.I. helpfully opened the door, and the Jackal felt a whisper of cold air from a large, darkened room on the other side.
No, the X3 will make their lives difficult, and then….
There was the booby-trapped Lordstar. The Jackal was going to have a lot of fun sitting in his Peqoud, as the medical machines rebuilt his ankle and he watched various parts of the ugly little ship explode.
Yeah, that almost made up for the disaster that had happened behind them. The Jackal didn’t like losing. It left a foul taste in his mouth–and he was even more frustrated by the fact that he had been beaten–beaten, him!–in hand-to-hand combat by that worm Snider!
But he had cheated, hadn’t he? The Jackal tried to console himself with that, completely ignoring the fact that he had been the one to shoot Snider in the calf first….
“Infiltration Team return to the Pequod,” the Jackal said over his HUD, knowing that it would be transported to the creeping Wolverine saboteurs as they worked in the Lordstar. “Make it look like you were never there,” he hissed.
“Sir, yes-sir!” came the response from the team’s alpha. There. It was done. The Jackal would finally be rid of this troublesome gang of petty thieves. On reflection, it had been a shame that he had lost Blondie–he didn’t even know the blonde Wolverine’s name–but he guessed that if she had been dumb enough to get herself killed, then she probably wouldn’t have made a suitable bed partner.
Ah well, the Jackal shrugged inwardly. They come, they go–they usually die horribly. At least this way he wouldn’t have to strangle her in her sleep as he usually did with any of the other people who shared his bed. A night of passion was an important release mechanism, the Jackal thought, but he never left loose attachments lying around the morning after.
“Sir?” said the Wolverine beside him in a puzzled tone.
“What is it? Does it look as though I have time for—” the Jackal turned to see what the Wolverine was looking at.
There, on the other side of the escape door was a giant hold, carved out of the ice of X3-2e.
And in its center, dwarfing the two men, sat a very large lozenge-shaped spacecraft, with two giant outboard FTL nacelles.
“What is that doing here?” the Jackal gasped.
12
“Ach!” Hank hissed in pain as he ran as best that he could with a hole blown through his calf. They were struggling down the wide metal corridor towards where the Dalida was supposedly moored, while the lights flashed red and the auto-alarms screamed at them.
“ATTENTION ALL STAFF! IMMEDIATE EVACUATION! ATTENTION ALL STAFF…”
You don’t say, Hank fell against one of the walls as the entire corridor appeared to jump a few feet in the air, and then land again. Behind them, he could hear a dull, growing roar.
“Boss? Those stimms are starting to wear off…” Ida whispered in his ear. She even managed to sound worried.
“Yeah, I get that…” Hank gritted his teeth and pushed on. Out at the head of the pack raced Steed and Lory, guns up and jumping gracefully every time the floor or walls shook. Then came Serrano and Cortez, Ryan, himself, and with Madigan following behind.
“Captain,” the giant murmured, and Hank let out a small surprised yelp as he was picked up bodily in the arms of Madigan and held to his broad chest like a baby.
“Madigan, seriously–put me down for god’s sake. It makes it look like you’re going to ask me to marry you…” Hank growled.
Madigan, however, just grunted and said nothing.
“We got it!” Steed called out as he shot the control panel on the final door for it to hiss open.
And there was an ice cavern several times larger than the Lordstar.
Oh, Hank was taken aback when he saw the massive Dalida sitting there, with its two vast outboard nacelle drives. It was bigger than he had thought it would be, but already Hank’s mind was racing with the possibilities. A proper cloak! Those FTL’s are huge! It’ll probably have double- and triple-chained movement drives!
“Ah…” he heard Cortez say in front, as ahead of them–as well as the giant ice cavern and the giant ship–was the Jackal.
“Shitburgers!” Hank swore.
The Jackal’s first bullet was close enough to cover Lory with ice splinters from the walls, while the next would have punched a hole right through her torso if she hadn’t flung herself to one side.
Lory rolled across the ground that was as hard and as uncompromising as the Union was itself. She ended up bouncing to a crouch and returned fire at them.
There’s only two of them, Lory felt herself grinning. It was the Jackal who was wounded, and the same Wolverine who had been trying to pound her face with his fist. She would have liked to be able to return the favor–but the Jackal was a more important target.
A flash of light as laser fire was cracking off the stanchion legs of the giant ship, making everyone run for defensible positions.
“Right advance!” Lory heard Steed shout, as he rolled to the next stanchion leg, with her following him a split second after. She had forgotten that he was a military man–a General, in fact.
Steed’s plan was obvious. Get them in a pincer move, with himself and Lory on one side, and Madigan, Hank, and the others on the other. It should be an easy military maneuver. They were, after all, six against two. Seven, if you counted Ryan–who was still hanging around at the back. She spared a glance to the left-hand side of the cavern, where the others were racing between the legs. They must have realized Steed’s plan. It would have been text-book were it not for the vision of Madigan running like a charging bull, holding the Captain in his arms like a baby, and firing his pistol from under the Captain’s legs as Hank was also firing his gun from his perch.
How exactly did I hook up with these jokers? Lory could have sighed, but she didn’t have any time.
“Watch out!” Steed’s body hit her in a flying tackle, sending them skidding across the frozen floor. Behind them, the stanchion leg they had been using as cover suddenly lit up in a ball of incandescent flame.
It was one of the Jackal’s micro-incendiaries again, he was throwing them lik
e grenades.
“Oof!” Lory and Steed rolled across the floor, coming to a bruised and stunned halt, just as there was a loud creak from above them.
“Oh no…” she heard Steed say as the rear right-hand corner of the Dalida shook. A quick glance back at the ship’s landing leg proved it: It was bent, and the pistons must have been irreparably ruptured.
“Get up! Run!” Lory said, grabbing Steed by the edge of his shoulder pad and pulling him behind her as they scrambled to get out from under the weight.
With a heavy crash that sent a plume of ice-dust all around them, the rear right of the Dalida slammed into the ground, making the floor shake.
“That’s right, fools! No commitment!” she heard the Jackal shrieking in joy as the sound of the rumbling subsided.
Commitment! I’ll show him commitment! Lory spun on her heel and was already racing back towards the Jackal’s voice—
Only now there was half a spaceship in the way. The generation ship had collapsed to the floor and skidded near to the wall–but it hadn’t actually crashed into it. Lory saw that amidst the pulverized ice and bits of floor there was still a gap…
Around which the Jackal and that cursed Wolverine had to be.
The Shimmering Path agent ran, vaulting at the last minute to seize on one of the external grills of the Dalida, using it to push off from the ice wall, and slide down to the far side…
To find Madigan and baby-Hank running around the extreme far side of the ship, looking as enraged–and then as confused–as she was.
“Where did they go!?” shouted Hank. It was very hard for Lory to take him seriously in his current position.
“I’m guessing they went through there…?” Lory nodded to the passageway that travelled upward. It must go to the surface, she thought. Lory was already raising her gun and turning to follow them when she heard Hank’s voice behind her.
“Lory! Wait–we’ve got bigger things to worry about.” He said. “Up there is the Jackal’s Pequod, probably stuffed full of Wolverines and orbital missiles and killer drones and everything else…”
Damn, her feet slowed. The Captain, despite his current appearance, was actually making a good point.
“Even if we manage to finally take the Jackal down–then the Pequod will still be able to blast you to kingdom come, and fire down on us here–maybe even destroying the Message!” Hank said. “Our only hope seeing what this message contains–and whether it really does come from a super-advanced alien race or not–is to get into the Dalida and get out of here!”
“He’s right,” said a new voice. It was Ryan, appearing from the same direction that Madigan and baby-Hank had come in. He still didn’t have any weapons in his hands, and Lory saw that he was looking cautiously up at Madigan. “The Message is more important, right?” Ryan said, sweating as his eyes scanned the exit, probably anticipating the next almighty explosion from one of the Jackal’s devices.
“Fine!” Lory kicked the ice particles on the floor in frustration. She wouldn’t have her revenge. Yet.
But one day, she would.
“Transmit Command Operator Status to: Captain Hank Snider,” Hank heard Malcolm Cortez say as he fumbled at one of Dalida’s bulkhead doors. “Full command of the generation ship Dalida.”
“And my first act as Captain of this vessel,” Hank said a little sarcastically, “is to tell it to open the damned doors, pronto!”
Thin wires stretched from the data pad in Cortez’s hands to the external control unit, and there was a moment’s silence as even Hank thought that his engineer-cook might have failed.
But suddenly the inset red light clicked off, to be replaced by a green as the doors opened.
“Take me to the Bridge!” Hank called out as soon as they were inside, and he saw that the Dalida had one of those state-of-the-art Ship Transport Systems. This meant that at several key locations throughout the ship there were essentially lifts, which you could move through to continue to the corridor beyond, or ‘ask’ to take you to the key ship facilities.
As soon as the team was inside, the outer bulkhead doors closed and Hank felt the movement of the lift as it shot upwards, paused then shot sideways, before arriving with a dull bleep at his destination.
The Bridge was a long, rounded pyramid shape with a raised walkway area around the sides, forward control chairs, and the much-larger command chair dead center. It faced a wide arc of thickened polymer-crystal viewing plates, which were currently directed at grey and white ice.
“Uh, Madigan? I think you can put me down now, thanks,” Hank said.
“Oh, sorry, Captain.”
There was a cough from the HUD inside Hank’s suit, and he realized that he had completely forgot something.
“Ship? Full integration of Captain’s personal A.I. with the Dalida, please…” Hank said.
“Thank you, sweetie,” Ida purred at him as he settled himself painfully into the command chair.
Command Status Updated! A small glowing blue icon of the Dalida appeared on Hank’s HUD, just under Ida’s glowing red ‘I’.
Welcome aboard, Captain Snider.
“And to you, too…” Hank said as the seat started to auto-mold itself to his form.
“Don’t make me get jealous now, Boss.” Ida said a little cattily.
“I would never leave you, Ida-baby,” Hank assured her. He earned a slightly embarrassed cough from Steed across from him.
What? Can’t a guy flirt with his incorporeal personal assistant? Hank thought. But no time for that—
Captain Status Compromised! The ship’s icon flashed at him. Activating medical facilities…
“Wait, I don’t have time for…” Hank started to say, just there was a sense of pressure on his right calf, and the soothing injection of pain relievers. Looking down, he saw that a smooth white plastic unit had emerged from the back of the chair, and had tracked along the side to the footrest, where it had clamped about his leg, and started humming. A line of little orange lights started slowly turning a healthy green as the hidden gizmos and micro-robotics went to work reknitting the flesh of his bullet wound.
That sure made things easier, Hank started to grin as he set his arms on the two command handles at the ends of the arm rests, and the holo-controls in front of him jumped to life.
“Ida? Tell the ship to assign to the crew their normal positions,” Hank said, and there was a host of pings and bleeps as each one received their new ranks and locations. Madigan was on guns, Serrano on science, Steed was on comms and navigation, and Cortez was engineering/cuisine.
Lory though–he had to wonder where to put her. Previously she had been a sort of floating officer–capable of pretty much anything–and with her best abilities being turning people into sushi with those carbon blades of hers.
“Operations,” Hank decided, as one of the forward consoles lit up for Lory to take a seat at. That meant that she had almost as much power over the ship and the missions as Hank did himself.
“Whatever you say, Captain…” Lory sounded almost pleased.
“Engineering? Planetary thrusters,” Hank shouted.
“Aye, Captain,” Cortez called over the HUD he had to scramble to the transport lift to be whizzed to the engineering room–but it only took a few seconds. Through the piloting command handles and through the memory fabric of the chair itself, Hank felt the lift as the Dalida transmitted the exact movements of the entire ship to the Captain. It felt like he was the Dalida.
Hank pulled back on the handles—
And the generation ship lifted in place, turning its nose up and up towards the ceiling.
“Readings say it’s only an ice-plate, Captain,” Serrano said from the science desk.
“Good. Soften her up for me, Madigan,” Hank grinned.
“Firing forward laser batteries,” Madigan growled with obvious relish as two volleys of angry red light flashed forward to smack against the ceiling. The super-frozen ice of X3-2e reacted like rock, not melting but instea
d shaking and splintering as flakes started to drop from the ceiling, smashing harmlessly against the Dalida’s forward shields. Fine lines of dark cracks started to spiderweb over their heads.
“Cortez? Hit it!” Hank threw the command handles forward, and the rear nacelles burst with furious power as the Dalida surged forward—
The ship burst from the surface of the wintry planetoid like an angry monster. Clouds of ice-steam flared around it in a miniature mushroom cloud as the ship soared into the air; its virgin flight was a success!
“Prof? Start working on that message–I don’t want you working on anything else!” Hank said, as the Professor nodded, and plugged in the data pad that they had connected to the message column. Below them, their environmental scans showed the shuddering landscape of the collapsing research facility–as the X3 committed the machine equivalent of hara-kiri.