“And two of the ship’s shuttles.”
Hertzog collapsed back into his chair, speechless. His exaggerated eye roll was response enough.
“What’s this in aid of, Mr. Jacobs?” Henson asked, interrupting the overacting.
Jacobs poked at his tablet and glanced towards Henson. “We need a head start to get industrial processes working. There’s no way we’d be able to get anything going planetside with the equipment we brought—not through all that ice. Even if we luck out and find some rich ore, a half-dozen light-industry printers just won’t be enough. But with your help, and the extra equipment, we can start an orbital manufacturing platform, using asteroid mining for our resources. This will allow us to get ahead of the game.”
“Why don’t you just ask for the entire ship?” Hertzog’s face glowed red, and his snarl left no doubt of his opinion. Henson caught his eye and made a calm down motion.
“That would actually be ideal, Mr. Hertzog,” Jacobs replied, ignoring the silent byplay. “The scenario I’m laying out is a minimum viable option for us, and still leaves us with considerable risk. But it at least allows the Ouroboros to leave under its own steam. It’s a compromise.”
Henson leaned forward and spread his hands on the table, body language that signaled putting all his cards on the table. No doubt Jacobs recognized the move. “Mr. Jacobs, I don’t own this ship any more than you do. I can’t make decisions to give away equipment that’s necessary to the operation of the vessel. Equipment that will have to be replaced when we get back—assuming that it can be replaced—which will take the Ouroboros out of service for even longer than the one-year delay you’re asking for.” He shook his head. “We have too few ships, too few spare parts, a shortage of resources back home, and too many people to get out of the system before it becomes uninhabitable. Please stop acting as if you’re just asking to borrow my pen. Anything we give you, in the form of time or equipment, worsens the odds of survival for some other colony group. This is very much a zero-sum game.”
Jacobs looked to his left, and nodded to a man who had been introduced as Mark Andrews, the colony group’s head of engineering. As Andrews began to poke at his own tablet, Jacobs said, “Well, we tried. Captain Henson, I would have preferred if we could have done this in a civilized, agreeable manner. I understand your points about the people back home. However, my concern is the here and now, and the people whose safety and future I’m charged with. As such, a compromise having failed, we will be taking control of the Ouroboros, and taking what we need.”
There were gasps from the crew side of the table, and Thorne leaped to his feet, reaching for his sidearm. The buzz of the intercom cut through the tableau, followed immediately by Rougeau’s voice. “Captain, this is the bridge. Our consoles have just gone dead and the A.I. is not responding. Please advise.”
“Stand by, Commander.” Henson looked at Jacobs. “Your work?”
Jacobs nodded. “No doubt you’ve prepared for a frontal assault or a suicide threat of some kind on our part. However, many of our people helped design and build the colony ships now owned by the UEF. We have some insider insights into control and operation.” He smiled briefly at Henson. “We are now in a standoff situation. My people can’t take complete control unfortunately, but your people can’t operate the ship.”
Thorne drew his sidearm. “We can start by taking out a few of the conspirators.”
“Won’t help,” Jacobs replied, unperturbed. “First, we’ve made sure that none of our critical personnel are accessible to any of your people with weapons. They have their orders already, and are perfectly capable of carrying them out without guidance from the people in this room. And as soon as you start killing people, we start retaliating. Among other things, we have control of Environmentals.”
“We will do everything we can to stop you.” Henson found himself surprised at the steel in his voice, despite his intention to project calm.
“And you will succeed, if that is your intention, Captain. Central Engineering has physical security—we were unable to figure a way to gain control there. In a worst-case situation, you can force the reactor to go super-critical. And we can’t defrost the colonists without your cooperation, at least for the moment. Or do much without the shuttles.” Jacobs swept the room with his gaze. “But please understand, this is not a symmetrical situation. If we defeat you, or you surrender your ship, you still live. You might even be able to return to Earth someday, if the ship can be made spaceworthy again once we’re done with it. On the other hand, if we’re defeated or surrender, we will die. Understand that—being sent down to Valhalla under the conditions you have specified is a death sentence. You have nothing to threaten us with. It’s death, or death.”
He stood and gave a small smile. “No doubt you’ll wish to discuss this amongst yourselves. I’ll be available at any time for further negotiation. However, we’ll begin our operations immediately, to the extent we’re able.” Jacobs nodded to the room, turned, and walked out, followed by the other PQ representatives.
Thorne safetied and holstered his weapon. “It would seem I was insufficiently devious. My apologies, Captain.”
“Son of a bitch,” Henson muttered. He gave himself a shake, then said into the air, “Did you get all that, Commander?”
“Yes sir. We’ve done a quick audit. It’s about what Jacobs said. We control engineering, cryo, C&C, and externals. They control or at least have denied us control of fabrication systems, environmentals, drive systems, A.I. systems, and astrogation.”
Henson thought for a moment. “Contact Engineering. I want some of them in space suits at all times. They can work out the shift schedule. If they lose contact with the bridge, they should be prepared to blow the reactor.”
“Sir…”
Henson returned Sachs’ horrified stare. “Barb, right now there’s nothing to stop them from just turning off our air and waiting for us to die. Or turning down the heat and waiting for us to surrender. We need a counter-threat for a proper détente. I don’t believe it’ll actually come to that. Jacobs could have gone that way immediately, had he wanted to.”
He stood, looked at each of his officers. “Everyone take ten for pit stops and refills, then reconvene here. We’re going to discuss strategies.” He turned to look at the intercom panel. “Commander, I want you here for this. Delegate the bridge to Bertelli.” Without waiting for a reply, he flicked off the intercom.
*
Henson looked around the conference table. This time, it was all bridge officers. A large pillow sat on the intercom panel, further weighted down with miscellaneous personal items. At Rougeau’s perplexed look, Thorne explained, “We’re up against programmers and technicians, Ma’am. Anything that’s controlled by software is suspect. I’d like this discussion to be private.”
“We’ll need to be careful what we say when in range of an intercom, then. That’s going to put a strain on things,” Rougeau said.
“Bertelli’s working on it,” Thorne explained. “I’d put his tech skills up against anyone else, here or back at Sol. And he knows this boat at least as well as the PQ people.”
“Okay,” Henson interrupted. “What have we got? Commander, you had a discussion with Jacobs?”
“Yes, sir. As he pointed out, we’re in a standoff right now, at least in the short term. Unfortunately for us, their backup plan is to start disassembling the Ouroboros for parts and materials. They can literally rebuild around us. Worst case, they could simply seal us in the sections we control, then ignore us.”
Henson looked at Thorne. “What can we bring to bear if it comes down to a fight?”
“Captain, we’re not a military vessel. Security has always been aimed at the drunken-crew level of problems rather than armed insurrection. We have perhaps a dozen handguns, and we’re slightly outnumbered at the moment. If they get control of Cryo, that will change, of course.”
“Can we launch the shuttles?” Sachs asked. Now that the initial excitement
had worn off, Barbara Sachs seemed to be moving from terrified to outraged.
“No, we took them off remote access right away. Again, software.” Henson gestured to her, palm up. “What did you have in mind?”
“Sir, whatever else they may want to do, if they can’t get down to Valhalla, they’re screwed. I was thinking we’d fly the shuttles out a kilometer and park them.”
Thorne sighed. “The problem being that they’re more likely to get control of them than not, which is why we took them off remote. Now, neither group can use them except by physically piloting them.”
“And we have crew with spacesuits and weapons in control of the hangar deck.”
“Fine,” Henson said after a moment’s thought. “So what are the obvious strategies? What can we do, what might they do?”
Thorne considered, his lips puckered in concentration. “They need the shuttles. As Sachs said, without those, no one is going anywhere.” He nodded to Sachs. “So we need to not only defend it, but take steps to deny them the resource should they take the hangar.”
“You mean blow them up.”
“Or something. Doesn’t have to be that dramatic. Maybe we can just remove some parts.”
“Interesting thought,” Rougeau said. “I’ll talk to Engineering about options.”
“What do we need?” Sachs asked.
“We need our ship back,” Henson answered. “But specifically, even if we took back all systems, we still can’t leave. We have to unload the colonists, and we can’t do that without their cooperation.”
“Maybe we should just do what they want and take them back to Earth,” Kumano suggested. “The UEF can decide what to do from there.”
Thorne shook his head. “That’s no longer an option for them. As soon as they engaged in mutiny, they became criminals. Pirates, essentially. They’d know better than to agree to a return to Earth at this point—being dumped on Earth would be the best they could hope for. No, for better or worse, they’re committed to settlement of Valhalla. The only question is how they’re going to go about it, and whether we and the ship will survive the process.”
“If they take apart the ship, we’ll never get back. Our families—” Barb Sachs’ eyes were wide and shiny with incipient tears.
“—won’t know until they wake up at their destination that we never returned,” Henson finished for her. Barb was retiring at the same time as Henson, and both their families were in the same colony group.
“Can’t we at least talk to the colonists? Make an offer?”
Henson gave Sachs a small, sad smile. “'Hey, we won’t tell anyone if you let us go’?” He shook his head. “I wouldn’t buy that. I doubt Jacobs would, either. And anyway, I already told him—truthfully—that a return to Earth for them would be one-way. Even before the mutiny.”
Sachs looked at her hands, defeat written on her face.
Henson leaned forward. “I think Thorne is right. At this point, a standoff doesn’t benefit us. They’ll win in the long term. So let’s work towards getting back to Earth, with or without the colonists still in cryo, and let the authorities work it out.”
“Which means we need A.I. systems, drive systems, and astrogation. How do we take them back?”
“We don’t,” Thorne said. “Not in the way you mean, anyway. They don’t physically control those systems, they’ve simply hijacked them in software. Or possibly by tapping into control systems somewhere, which is almost the same thing. We can fix that, given freedom to move about.”
“What I’m hearing, then,” Rougeau said, “is that we’ll ultimately lose a standoff. They can wait us out and work around us until we starve, or we give up, or until they simply seal us off from the rest of the ship. We have to take steps, and soon, to take back the ship and head back to Earth.”
Henson nodded. “That seems like the most sensible analysis.” He turned to Thorne. “Let’s talk tactics.”
*
Captain Henson crept along the hallway, weapon in hand. Never in his life had he visualized himself in a combat situation, and if there had been enough crew to go around, he’d have stayed on the bridge where a captain should be. But they’d have only one chance to pull this off, and no crew to spare.
A brilliant piece of detective work by Bertelli had pegged the location where the colonists had tapped into ship’s systems—a small workshop in Fabrication Systems, used for forming opto-electronic components. It was the only reasonable point where the colonists would have been able to access and control the systems that they had taken, and it didn’t include access to comms infrastructure. This would make their plan at least possible.
Preparations had been made, contingencies discussed. If they could take this location, then they could conceivably retake the entire ship.
Some cautious surfing of the monitoring systems had determined that most of the colonists were engaged in an attempt to cut into the Cryo area. Well, that made sense. Their whole strategy would center on waking as many of their own people as possible. A smaller group was attempting to gain entry to the hangar. That accounted for most of the colonists, and the rest were probably guarding the workshop.
Henson’s strategy was simple. Two teams would attack each of the Cryo and hangar groups. They’d make a real attempt to capture the colonists, but their ultimate purpose was distraction. Before anything else, the crew needed to regain control of ship’s systems, which meant taking the workshop.
That was up to Henson’s team.
The captain looked down the hallway at the hatch to the workshop, dogged and shut. They would have to hope that the colonists would come out to rush to the aid of their colleagues. Otherwise, the team would completely lose the element of surprise—assuming they could even open the hatch from the outside. The hatches weren’t lockable by design, but the colonists could have rigged something.
He checked his watch. The attacks on Cryo and the hangar should happen in less than ten seconds. He waited until five seconds, then held up five fingers, and counted down.
On zero, his earbud announced, “Going in. Team two, team three, execute.”
After twenty excruciating seconds of silence, the earbud said, “Hangar deck, operation complete. Colonists are secured.”
He reached for his transmit button. “Team two?”
“Not quite so good, sir,” the earbud responded in Rougeau’s voice. “Cryo group has some kind of what I think might be zip guns. Not terribly efficient, but probably lethal. And they seem to have a stockpile. I guess they’ve been busy with the fab system.”
“Have they been using them, Commander?”
“Yes sir. No casualties, but we’re pinned down. I think they’re happy to simply hold us off.”
“Then you’re going to have to ratchet it up, Commander. Use lethal force—no more warning shots. A standoff doesn’t benefit us. I want the Cryo group to call for help.”
There was a moment’s hesitation. No one on this crew was military. Some of them had never held weapons before. To be ordered to shoot to kill would take some mental gear-shifting.
Finally, “Yes, sir. Executing.”
Again excruciating silence, this time for almost a minute. Then, the wheel on the workshop hatch began to spin. Henson and his group crept up and waited. The moment the hatch began to swing open, one of his crew grabbed and yanked. As a colonist fell through the door, still holding on, the assault group poured through with guns up.
The colonists were caught flat-footed. Gathered near the door with pipes and other makeshift weapons, they seemed stunned by the invasion. But then, these people weren’t likely to be military either. This was a foreign situation for everyone, on both sides.
Henson gestured with his pistol. “Drop ‘em. Do it now.”
Slowly, carefully, the colonists crouched and placed their weapons on the floor.
Henson looked around, but couldn’t see Jacobs. Well, it always would have been a roll of the dice. The colonists had been scattered in three different areas.
Their leader could have been at any of them. This group was smaller than expected, though. He wondered if there was a fourth group that they had missed.
Henson gestured to one of the captured colonists. “You. Where’s Jacobs?”
The man stared back, face a mask. “Henry Roberts. Circuit designer. Citizen Number 3411A CX3331 N102.”
There was a chuckle from one of his team, and Henson allowed himself an eye-roll. “Oh, spare me. This isn’t war, and you’re criminals, not soldiers. And you’re under arrest. So try to be realistic.”
Roberts smiled, and Henson felt a sudden jolt of dread. Had he missed something? Had this been too—
At a shouted “Now!” from Roberts, the captured group dropped to the ground. At the same moment, more colonists burst out from behind equipment and furniture, pointing some kind of weapon—not zip guns, but something shorter and bulkier. His crew had been starting to relax once the action was seemingly over, and were now caught in their turn.
Henson brought his pistol around, hoping to give a good accounting. But before he could even pull the trigger, he felt a sudden stab of pain in his chest. He looked down at two darts sticking out of his shirt, inches apart, trailed by long, thin wires. Oh, hell. There was a moment of unimaginable pain…
*
Henson had never been tasered before, although he’d seen it done. Turned out it was every bit as painful as it appeared, both during and afterwards. He felt himself being lifted by the arms and placed on a surface. His limbs wouldn’t obey him—attempts to move produced only painful twitches.
At least he wasn’t dead, yet. But the assault had failed. They’d taken some colonists, which they would now have to put under guard, further stretching their resources. The colonists would mount another assault on cryo. This time they’d probably seal in the bridge crew first.
Either way, the crew of the Ouroboros had lost. They wouldn’t return to Earth, he wouldn’t ever go into cryo to be defrosted with his family on whatever distant planet they were assigned to. And his family would never know what had happened to him.
Explorations: Colony (Explorations Volume Four) Page 29