Ozzie stared at the frigate with a greedy smile. “Man oh man. Is it armed?”
“I don’t know,” Giselle said in a subdued tone; now they were in the docking bay she seemed almost puzzled that they’d made it this far. “They’re scheduled to leave in another five hours, so it should be.”
“Let’s go find out.” Ozzie kicked off hard, soaring across the docking bay. After a moment, Giselle followed him.
It was no longer freefall that was making Mellanie feel sick; she was genuinely scared now. The frigates looked chillingly powerful. That they were built for aggression could never be in doubt. And the fact that one or probably both were carrying a nova bomb didn’t help her nerves. She started to activate her inserts, configuring them to scan for any activity. “It can’t be this easy,” she muttered. Her doubts were beginning to be overtaken by a growing excitement. Dear heavens, I’m going to hijack a Dynasty frigate. I’m going to fly to Dyson Alpha to end the war. Me! She jumped across the wide open space.
Ozzie had landed on the wall not far from the Charybdis. He used the fuseto patches on his cuffs and soles to scuttle along like a crab until he reached the thick pillar supporting one of the umbilical arms. A man in a green jumpsuit and white helmet emerged from the frigate and started shouting. Ozzie waved back cheerfully. Giselle landed beside him, and started to calm the man.
“You must recognize Ozzie,” Mellanie heard her say as soon as she was in range.
“Well, yes,” he replied.
“Hi there, dude.”
“Yes, hello. But nobody put this on the schedule.”
“Mark, come on,” Giselle said. “You know the schedule changes faster than anyone can keep up.”
Mellanie landed on the side of the dock and struggled not to fly off again. Fuseto patches were damn difficult to work. She studied her feet for a moment to make sure they were secure, then looked up. Her face split into a wide smile. “Hello, Mark.”
“Huh!” Mark gawped in disbelief. “Mellanie?”
Giselle gave her an alarmed look. “You two know each other?”
“We’re old best friends,” Mellanie drawled in her huskiest voice. Sure enough, Mark’s face turned red.
“She’s a reporter,” Mark protested. “And she works for the SI. I thought the Dynasty didn’t want it on this planet.”
“And she saved your ass,” Mellanie said. “How are Barry and Sandy?”
Mark made an embarrassed grumbling sound in his throat.
“Mark, I’m engaged to Nigel now,” Mellanie said. “I’m going to be one of his harem. So you be nice to the boss’s wife.”
Ozzie’s face screwed up into surprise. “You’re engaged to Nige?”
“He proposed the other night.”
“You never said—” He shook his head. “Okay, not relevant. Mark, I’m just up here to do my inspection tour, okay. Plus I’m really dying to see the frigate; it’d bust my rep if anyone found out what a serious techhead I am, but I gotta say, this is one smooth piece of engineering. Giselle told me all about the Searcher flight and what you did.”
“Well, you know,” Mark said. It was a tone that hinted at a lot of secret pride.
“I guess we all owe you, huh?” Ozzie had reached Mark’s side, and patted him man-to-man on the shoulder.
“The pilots are the important guys,” Mark said.
“Come on! Remember I built the very first wormhole generator with my own hands. I know how much skill it takes to integrate machinery. Thought we’d never get that mother finished. And this”—he ran his hand over the hull—“this has to be orders of magnitude above and beyond that antique. Respect to you assembly dudes, I mean that.”
“Thanks.”
“Let’s go check out the cabin, huh?”
Mark gave Giselle one last questioning look. She nodded her approval.
“Sure thing,” Mark said. He started to worm his way back down into the frigate’s airlock. “Careful here, there’s not a lot of room.”
Ozzie flashed a triumphant grin at Mellanie and Giselle, and followed Mark on board.
“Did you make that up?” Giselle asked.
“What?” Mellanie was close enough to the frigate to reach out and touch it. She held back, still awed by its raw power. The hull was so black it looked like a bubble of interstellar space. She half expected to see galaxies floating inside.
“About Nigel. Are you engaged?”
“Oh, that.” She finally pressed her hand against the frigate. It was a historic moment after all. The surface was completely frictionless, and thermal-neutral. Tactile nerves told her she was touching something, but that was all the impression she got. Her eyes couldn’t actually focus on it. “He did propose. I haven’t said yes yet.”
Giselle gave the frigate’s open airlock a twitchy look. “Take my advice, and say yes. That way he might not fling you into suspension for more than a thousand years.”
“Come on, Ozzie has to do this. How do you think he’s going to get rid of Mark? Has he …” She trailed off fast. Her inserts were telling her the docking bay airlock was opening. Dense and very powerful energy sources were emerging. “Oh, crap.”
“What?”
“Somebody’s here. Not good. Warn Ozzie.” She pushed off lightly, gliding around the frigate’s curving hull.
The entire communications spectrum was suddenly filled by a single signal: “YOU BY THE CHARYBDIS, DO NOT MOVE, DEACTIVATE ANY WEAPONS YOU ARE CARRYING.”
Mellanie slid around the ultra-black hull to find herself looking directly at a squad of armored suits flying out of the airlock like angry wasps. Active sensors locked on to her. She instinctively tried to deflect them. Her hands and cheeks began to ripple with silver lines.
“No!” Giselle shrieked.
An instant of disconnection—
—and Mellanie found herself spinning violently. She didn’t know why. Her body had gone numb, apart from the single sensation of cold sweat pricking her forehead. She thought it was the prequel to vomiting, but she couldn’t even feel her stomach. Then she smacked into the docking bay wall and rebounded. Her limbs didn’t seem to be working either. It was strange she didn’t feel any pain; that had been a nasty impact. Red dots drifted across her vision, which appeared to be dimming. Sensation came rushing back in on her consciousness in a terrifying wave of pain. She tried to wail, but liquid was blocking her throat. She couldn’t breathe. Her body was alive with agony, at its worst down her left side. She coughed, trying to clear her lungs. Streamers of blood poured out of her mouth, then wobbled crazily in front of her. Her hands scrabbled at the main source of the pain, finding only warm wet jelly. Thick webs of oscillating blood were spinning around her. On the other side of them a giant black shape slid past. Turbulence from its wake swatted the blood, splatting it against her. Her need to breathe was excruciating. She coughed again, and more blood bubbled out of her throat forming sticky ribbons in front of her. Her whole body juddered. The pain was now submerging itself below an intense cold.
A face appeared above her. Nigel. Mellanie tried to smile. He looked very angry.
“Get a fucking medical kit here. Now!”
She tried to tell him it’d be fine, she was okay, really. That just allowed more blood to escape. It was very red. Her vision was closing in.
“Mellanie!” Nigel’s voice, a long way off.
There was so much she wanted to say. She wondered if Orion had woken up yet. But now the blackness conquered everything.
Ozzie had been inside an Apollo command module once. The Smithsonian staff had removed the perspex cover from the hatchway and stood by with nervous smiles as he squirmed around the historic antique interior. He couldn’t remember how long ago that was now, at least two centuries, but he did recall marveling at how three people had survived in such a small space for the ten days it took to travel to the moon and back.
As he followed Mark through the Charybdis airlock and into the cabin he began to feel a twinge of envy for those old ast
ronauts and the abundant room they had back then. The frigate’s cabin was small; three couches fixed to the rear bulkhead (the reason he suddenly remembered the Apollo) with a one-and-a-half-meter gap between them and the forward bulkhead that was a solid wall of arrays and portals.
“Is this it?” he asked in amazement.
“Sure is.” Mark had levered himself into the left-hand couch, and smiled knowingly at him. “You claustrophobic?”
“We’re about to find out.” Ozzie slid into the central couch. The arrays in front of his nose were covered in symbols he didn’t recognize, but they were powered up. He found an i-spot and pressed his hand against it. “Can you interface?” he asked the SIsubroutine.
“Yes.”
“Do it fast.”
“Working.”
“Hey,” he asked Mark. “Is the nova bomb on board?”
Mark seemed a little easier that Ozzie knew about such things. “Yeah. We’re still waiting for the Scylla’s bomb to be delivered. They promised it in another three hours. Not sure we’ll have the systems integration sorted by then, but we should be able to launch tomorrow.”
“So how many quantumbusters have we got?” Ozzie made it sound like a schoolkid asking questions; next it’d be how fast does it go, mister?
“All ten loaded,” Mark said.
“Man, that is a shitload of firepower.” Ozzie felt indecently happy; the Great Frigate Heist was on-line and powering up smoothly. He could probably let rumors about this one slip out into the unisphere.
“You’re telling me.” Mark peered at one of the portal displays. “Uh—” He glanced over at Ozzie’s hand on the i-spot.
“I have command of all primary functions,” the SIsubroutine said.
A plethora of frigate command icons rose up into Ozzie’s virtual vision. Compressed instruction text orbited each one like a gas-giant ring. Just reading all the introductions would have taken a couple of hours. He assumed he’d be able to do most of the piloting himself. After all, how difficult could it be? It looked like he was going to be more dependent on the SIsubroutine than he liked; despite everything that’d happened he still wasn’t sure he trusted it.
“Hey, what are you loading in?” Mark asked in growing alarm.
“Ozzie!” Giselle called. “We’ve got—ohshit.”
Ozzie’s inserts picked up the warning from the security team. “Close the airlock, and get us out of here,” he told the SIsubroutine. His virtual hand took a broad swipe at all the command icons, sweeping them away like clutter off a desk. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Mark putting his hand out toward an i-spot. “Stop it,” he barked. “I’ve got the kind of weapons wetwiring that can slaughter a small army. Killing you from this range is easier than breathing. Sit back and do nothing, and I’ll let you live.”
“Don’t kill me!” Mark wailed. His hand drew back as if the i-spot was wired up to a thousand volts. “Christ, man, I’ve got a family, kids.”
“Shut up.”
The airlock hatch contracted. Ozzie just heard a loud unpleasant snap from outside before it shut completely. He searched around for a button on his couch that would activate the restraint webbing. That was far too simple for this ship. He gave up. “Strap me in,” he told the SIsubroutine.
“Confirmed.”
“And give me some visuals from outside. I wanna see what’s going down.”
The couch’s plyplastic cushioning flowed over his shoulders and hips, securing him tight. Five grids in his virtual vision display came on, and he pulled the pictures out. A whole squad of armored figures was zipping out into the docking bay. Then Mellanie drifted in front of a camera. Half of her left side had been torn away; long tatters of gore hung from exposed, shattered ribs. Her face swung into view, staring directly into the lens. For some reason she possessed a Zen-like serenity, then her lips twitched and arterial blood foamed out of her mouth.
“Mellanie!” a horrified Mark cried. “Oh, God, what have you done to her? Look at her, you fucking monster.”
Ozzie didn’t have the courage to tell him to shut up again.
“Umbilicals disconnected,” the SIsubroutine said. “Engaging secondary drive units.”
The walls of the docking bay slipped past. Brief glimpse of the Scylla, embraced by the cool gray metal of maintenance platforms. Technicians turning clumsily to stare as they flew past. Then there was the purple sparkle of the pressure curtain over the hull followed by the infinite black of space. The planet formed a huge steel-gray crescent cutting across the stars. One of the spaceflowers was almost directly below them, a perfect half circle of rumpled amethyst that suddenly vanished as it crossed into the penumbra.
“Have we got enough power to make it to Dyson Alpha?” Ozzie asked the SIsubroutine.
“Yes.”
He debated whether to ask the obvious. Decided to go for it. “And get back?”
“Yes.”
“Okay, plot a course and take us there.”
“Working.”
“Are you going to kill me now?” Mark was looking at him with the kind of wild eyes that belonged to a dying animal.
“Nobody’s going to kill you,” Ozzie said. He hurriedly told the SIsubroutine to block all access to the onboard arrays apart from his own. Mark was the lead assembly technician; who knew what he’d embedded in the frigate’s systems.
“You will,” Mark said fearfully. “Your type always does.”
“Now wait up one goddamn minute here. I’m not any kind of type.”
“You just hijacked a Dynasty frigate.”
“I don’t have a lot of choice here, man.”
“You’re going to kill me, you bastard.”
“I’m not, I can’t.” Ozzie waved his arms around for emphasis, wincing as he slapped the back of his hand against the arrays. “I’m not wetwired for anything but a few bioneural chips. I swear, man; you’re perfectly safe. So just chill out.”
The silence stretched out dangerously.
“What?” Mark demanded.
“I, er, really needed the frigate; I probably exaggerated what I’d do. Heat of the moment, dude. I was desperate.”
“You piece of shit.”
“What can I say, I’m sorry.”
Mark glared at him, and folded his arms across his chest. It wasn’t an easy position to maintain in zero gee, but he managed it. “Will you be telling Mellanie you’re sorry?”
“We are going FTL,” the SIsubroutine announced.
Ozzie braced himself. There’d probably be a rush of acceleration, space twisting around him, stars blueshifting before they collided into a burst of light ahead and stretched out to envelop the hull. “She’ll get re-lifed,” he mumbled, trying to ignore the spike of shame.
“Well, that makes it all right then.” Mark deliberately and defiantly slapped a hand on an i-spot.
“What’s happening?” Ozzie asked the SIsubroutine.
“Please define context.”
“Why haven’t we gone FTL?”
“We have. We are currently traveling at thirteen point five light-years per hour.”
“Holy shit.” A huge smile split Ozzie’s face. “Really?” If he was designing the ship he’d build in a little flicker of the cabin lights, a deep throbbing sound, just something to emphasize the tremendous forces at work within the drive.
“Confirmed.”
“Wow.”
“You’ve blocked me out of the arrays,” Mark said.
“Sure have. Hey, do you know how fast we’re traveling? Thirteen light-years per hour. Jeez, that’s like just three days to Dyson Alpha. Man, me and Nige should have tried to build something like this back at the start, and to hell with wormholes. This is like totally money, straight and neat.”
“A straight quick trip to our death, more like.”
“Oh, lighten up, man, you’re about to make history in this ship.”
“You mean like the Titanic?”
“Nigel Sheldon is calling you,” the SIsubroutine sa
id.
Ozzie twitched inside his protective webbing. A huge rush of guilt overtook his relief at pulling off the hijack. Then alarm kicked in. “How is he doing that?”
“The frigate uses a method of communications called a transdimensional channel. It is a subfunction of the main drive.”
“Man, I am like really going to have to read the instruction book. He can’t track us with that, can he?”
“The TD channel can be made directional in order to facilitate tracking.”
“Christ! Make sure it’s not doing that right now.”
“Confirmed.”
“Okay. Cool. Put Nigel on.”
“Turn around, Ozzie.” Nigel’s eerily calm voice filled the cabin. “Bring the frigate back, please.”
Mark smiled in satisfaction and gave Ozzie a challenging look.
“Can’t do that, man,” Ozzie said. “And you know it. I worked out a way to reactivate the barrier. I’m going to use a quantumbuster against the Starflyer gadget that’s messing with the generator’s quantum state.”
“There is a Trojan program in the TD signal,” the SIsubroutine reported. “I believe they are trying to take command of the ship by remote.”
“Can you counter it?”
“I believe so. It is not a type I have in my catalogue.”
“Any problem, cut the link immediately.”
“Ozzie,” Nigel said, “we need the Charybdis to eliminate the Prime threat. Bring her back. Now.”
“Course set. Anchor’s up. Sails to the wind. Sorry, Nige, man, I’m committed.”
“Ozzie, we have other frigates. They will be flown by people who understand how to use them properly. I will assign them to hunt you down and kill you. After that, I will make sure you are never re-lifed. I can do this, and you know it.”
“You know what, Nige: if you succeed in that, then genocide MorningLightMountain, I don’t think I’d want to live in the kind of galaxy left over afterward.”
“Mark,” Nigel said, “I’m sorry for what’s about to happen, but we cannot allow Ozzie to hand over the Charybdis to MorningLightMountain. You have my personal word you will be re-lifed immediately. I will also ensure that Liz, Barry, and Sandy will be taken care of in the meantime.”
The Commonwealth Saga 2-Book Bundle Page 215