by M. R. Forbes
Unfortunately, his abilities had become the most important asset they had. At least for the moment.
He made it to the lift without being seen, and then from the lift to the hanger. With Singh in engineering and Ilanka likely in the shower, he knew it would be deserted. He moved across it, past the S-17 and the Knight to a small storage room on the other side. The ore that had been mined for the Calypso mission was still resting there in the hold.
So was Watson.
They had provided him with a pisspot, a mattress, a chair, and a desk. They had also retrieved the equipment that he had built to eavesdrop on all of them from an empty compartment on E-Deck. It was where Anderson had likely vanished to whenever he wasn't with Millie, listening in on her private conversations with or without the engineer present. If she were right, he had also been getting himself off on her more intimate moments.
He had the small black box that served as the modulator dismantled on the desk, dozens of tiny wires snaking around one another. He held a tiny screwdriver more delicately than his meaty hands should have allowed, poking it into the box and making adjustments. It was easy to wonder if he was actually doing anything, and if he really intended to try to help them block the kill signal.
Mitchell had seen the look in Watson's eyes when he thought he was going to die. If he didn't do the work, they were all going to be blown into no more than space dust. Self-preservation was a powerful motivator.
"Captain Williams?" Watson said, looking up at him when he entered. He didn't look well. His grays were already stained with sweat, and his face and hair were oily. He smelled awful.
"How is the work coming?" Mitchell asked. He tried not to think about the man's past, and only see him as he was today. To stay neutral. It took effort, but he managed.
Watson held up the box. "This? It would be easier if I had a sample transmission to match the modulation against."
"You're only going to get one transmission." The one that would make the Schism explode.
"Yes, I know. I ran the calculations. The likelihood of successfully blocking the signal without a sample is about ten-thousand to one."
Mitchell drew in a sharp breath. "Those are lousy odds."
"Yes. I was going to tell the Captain, but I was afraid to bother her." He was afraid of Mitchell too, refusing to make eye contact, staring down at the box while he spoke. "Then I had another idea."
"Which is?"
"Block every signal. Anything that we don't use. I can bypass the ARR frequencies and the datalink bands, and intercept everything else."
"That sounds good."
"Yes. There's only one problem."
Of course, there was a catch. "How much of a problem?"
"That depends. The processing and power requirements to filter like this are going to be rather high. As you know, the Schism isn't equipped for massive power draws. Not the way a warship would be. I did a few calculations. We'll have to turn off-" He paused, looking at the surface of the desk where a screen full of numbers rested. "Almost everything. Including life support and gravity."
"That'll be fun. What about engines?"
"Of course, we need that."
"More than air?"
"The circulating air will remain at breathable levels for a couple of hours. Otherwise, we have enough hazard suits aboard for the crew. Anyway, once I can get a sample of the transmission, if we have some time I can adjust the modulator against it and fix the power concerns. Of course, you didn't know this before you came down, and you didn't bring me anything to eat. Why are you really here?"
"We need your help."
He shook his head. "I'm already helping you. Us."
"We need more help."
"Singh sent you down, didn't she? It's about the data?"
"How did you know?"
"We've been working together for the last three years, spending ten, fifteen hours in the same room. We know everything about each other."
"Everything?"
He kept his eyes on the box. "I didn't tell her about that. It was supposed to be a secret. I'm not stupid. I knew what people would think of me if they found out. I didn't mean to upset the Captain. I respect her too much, owe her too much for letting me stay on board when she knew what I had done. I only wanted to see if I could make the system work. It was Anderson who convinced me to let him use it. He said he could get me things through Ensign Hubble. Food, mostly. Delicacies from the New Terran worlds. I don't miss my people, but I do miss their food. He promised he wouldn't tell, and then he goes and blurts out things he wasn't supposed to know." He finally looked up. His eyes were moist. "I just want things to be the way they were. There's nobody here I'm a danger to. Why do you all have to hate me now?"
"There are some lines you just don't cross," Mitchell said. "Anderson was a rapist and a killer, and he didn't."
"I know I'm sick. I know my head is messed up. I can't help myself. I can't stop the thoughts, the urges, the desires. I-"
"Stop talking," Mitchell snapped. He didn't want to hear this. "You can pity yourself all you want, but nobody on this ship is going to pity you. If you want to go back to engineering, this is your chance."
Watson stopped talking for a few seconds. "Once I finish with the modulator. Once I finish helping Singh. What's to keep you from throwing me out of the airlock?"
"Nothing," Mitchell said. "It's the chance you'll have to take."
Watson shook the box in his hand. "How do you know I'll comply? How do you know I'll make this work?"
"That's the chance we have to take."
The engineer considered him for a moment. For all of his meekness over his sordid past, he seemed proud that he still held so much value to them. It was another great motivator.
"Okay, I'll do it," Watson said. "On one condition."
"I don't think you have much bargaining power here," Mitchell replied.
"I want to live. I don't care if I have to stay down here for the rest of my life. I'm terrified to die."
"I'll see what I can do."
"Please, Captain. Millie will listen to you. I know she will."
"I told you, I'll see what I can do. I'll talk to her. That's the only promise you're going to get. Are you in?"
He got to his feet, putting the modulator down on the table.
"Riigg-aaah," he said with a weak smile.
45
"Is the crew ready for this?" Millie asked, her voice echoing in Mitchell's head.
"We had four briefings, and they aced the drills," he replied.
"You know there's a big difference between a simulation and the real thing."
"They'll do fine. This is your crew." It was an easy compliment to boost her confidence.
"Thanks," she said.
The channel closed, leaving Mitchell alone in the cockpit of the S-17. He checked his p-rat for the time. They were only minutes away from dropping out of FTL, stepping from the safety of hyperspace to... what? They didn't know. They couldn't know. They had done their best to prepare for the worst. He could only hope that they had done enough.
Watson and Singh were certain their hack would work to punch through the security of the Alliance military databanks, using a vulnerability in some minor subsystem or other to sneak into their classified archives through a tiny back door. Once they had broken in, Singh would inject an algorithm that had a very simple, targeted purpose: download the results of a query on two names: Major Katherine Asher and Major Christine Arapo.
Once the data was aboard, the Schism's mission would be complete, and she would get the hell out of there. Mitchell, on the other hand, would do his best to locate Christine and try to send a message to her through her ARR, the same way M had used the helmet to send a message to him. If he were successful, he would hopefully meet her on the ground and take her away, using the fighter's FTL engine to rendezvous with the Schism. If he weren't, they would have to pray the data they collected would give them something they could use.
Then there was the o
ther possibility. The one that had hung in the back of their minds and remained as an unspoken fear right up until they had briefed the crew on everything they knew about the travelers, and why they had made the decision to break orders and head for Liberty. It was Cormac, of course, who posed the question:
"What if the aliens get to Liberty before we do?"
Millie, Mitchell, and Singh had all fumbled for an answer. Shank had been blunt. "Then we're going to die. Now shut up, Firedog."
They were probably going to die anyway. If Nova-12 had been a suicide mission, this one was even crazier. They couldn't be certain who their enemy was going to be, but right now everyone was their enemy. Did it matter if they were assaulted by a massive blue ball of energy or a round of more conventional projectiles?
It was worse than that. In order to prevent the Alliance from blowing the Schism, the moment they dropped from FTL they would need to activate Watson's rig. That meant shutting down major systems to power the re-purposed CPUs from their own databanks to catch, process, and cancel signals across a band of over a million channels. Those systems weren't just life support and gravity. Shields were included in that, too. So were the long range sensors.
They were going in naked, blind, and four hours from suffocation, with a skeleton crew that was barely enough to cover damage control on the most critical systems.
Mitchell laughed to himself. They might actually be better off if the travelers had arrived first.
The comm channel opened again, a public broadcast to the entire crew.
"Riggers," Millie said. "You know the situation. You've spent the last four days preparing for this, and I know you'll do me proud, as you have all done since the day you joined my crew. If things go to shit, I want you all to know that I have been honored to serve as your Captain."
"Riigg-aaah," came the reply from the crew, Mitchell's voice included. It was loud enough that the implant was forced to neutralize the volume.
"Shank, is your team in position?"
"Roger," Shank replied.
"Singh?"
"Affirmative," Singh said, her own version soft and flat.
"Ares? Rain?"
"Roger," they both said.
"Firedog?"
"Yes, ma'am," Cormac said.
Mitchell felt his heartbeat accelerating, the p-rat reflecting the shift in the corner of his eye. A red box backed it, a warning that it would be forced to regulate him chemically. He breathed in through the nose, out through the mouth. Slow. Steady.
"We're at thirty seconds to drop. You won't notice life support going out, not right away, but you will notice the lack of gravity. Automatic deck seals will be offline, so if there are any breaches you need to close them as fast as you can. With any luck, we'll be in and out before we take any fire."
Mitchell could imagine her unspoken thought: "Assuming Watson didn't screw us over." There was no way to be fully certain his rig would work, and that he hadn't decided to take the ship and its crew down with him. His fear of death had certainly seemed convincing enough, but the engineer knew the odds of survival and had most likely run calculations and simulations to confirm them. Would he rather be blown into dust on his own terms, or take his chances regardless of the slimness? There was no way to know.
"Here we go," Millie said.
The countdown on his p-rat hit zero. The instant it did, he felt the shift in pressure that followed the drop from hyperspace.
The ship started shaking. Hard.
"Drop is on target," Millie said. "Ares, go, go, go."
They had come out of FTL at the upper edge of Liberty's atmosphere. It was an insane move, a ridiculous procedure that required pinpoint accuracy in all of the calculations. A move that even the Captain and Navigator of the Greylock had never tried, even when sticking drops in the hottest of hot zones. The best of the broken. Ensign Briggs had executed perfectly, and now they were surfing right at the top of the planet's atmosphere, waiting to escape from hyperdeath and get the ship back under control, hoping it didn't fall too far before they did.
The hanger doors began to open beneath him. He glanced over at Ilanka, hanging from the second launcher in the Piranha. She would be staying here, waiting for the orders to go out and protect the Schism. They were orders he hoped she wouldn't receive, because they both knew she wouldn't last out there alone. She gave him a thumbs up. They were still alive. Still here. Either Watson's rig was working or news of the Schism's betrayal had yet to reach this part of the galaxy.
He was pushed back into his seat as the launcher fired, sending the S-17 down through the barely open bay door and into the upper atmosphere. A thought put the main thrusters at max, and he shot downward towards the planet.
It was huge in front of him, blue and green with visible splotches of brown remaining from the Federation's assault. He brought up the overlay on the glass of the helmet, checking the space around him. A dozen red dots signaled Alliance starships. They were beginning to move towards them, surprised by their appearance. The risk had been calculated, the position essential. The ship commanders would have to be idiots to fire nukes so close to the planet's surface.
"Singh is in," Millie said through the open channel. "Data transfer starting. Alliance vessels incoming. Fighters launched. It's getting messy in a hurry."
"Roger," Mitchell said, grateful that Singh and Watson had come through. "Don't wait for me."
"I won't."
The S-17 screamed through the atmosphere, the blue tinge of the shields surrounded by the red heat of re-entry. He was coming down hard and fast, headed straight for a thick layer of clouds that was blotting out his view of York. He sent a thought to the neural link, opening a channel and passing Christine's id through it, knocking her ARR.
Seconds passed. There was no reply.
"Mains online," he heard Ensign Briggs say.
"Full power," Millie said. "Everything we've got available. We need some height."
Millie dictated the move for the sake of the crew, keeping them informed. None of them were assigned to fight on this mission. They would float and wait, ready to take fire and shore up damage. It was as lousy of a role as Mitchell could imagine.
Mitchell sent the transmission again, knocking Christine a second time. What if the Alliance had found out she had helped him? What if they had deactivated her ARR, imprisoned her, sent her off-world? What if she was dead?
There was no way to know. Either way, there was no reply.
"Come on, Christine," he said. He sent the knock a third and final time as he entered the clouds, leaving himself buried in gray moisture. He watched his HUD, making sure there was nothing in his path.
"Firedog, breach on E-deck," Millie said. "Seal bulkheads four and five."
"On it, Captain," Cormac replied.
"Breach on C-deck, near the aft. Bulkhead fourteen. Razor, that's you."
No response.
"Razor?" Pause. "Shit."
"Main three is offline, Captain," Briggs said.
"Singh, sitrep."
"We're still receiving," Singh said as if they weren't under attack. "I don't know how much longer, we don't have a full size estimate."
"Let's hope it's enough, we're getting out of here. Moving up and out of orbit. Briggs, be ready to transfer to FTL on my mark. They're going to launch the heavy artillery as soon as we're clear of the planet. Ares, you're on your own."
Mitchell didn't respond. As Millie spoke her final words the S-17 broke through the cloud cover, only a thousand meters above the York skyline. What he saw in front of him nearly made him hesitate too long before pulling the fighter up.
After the Battle for Liberty, a crater at the center of the city had been re-zoned to become a memorial park, a place for reflection and remembrance of the battle and the lives that were lost in the attack. When he had last seen the crater, it had been graded and grassed, the beginnings of a monument taking shape in the center of the bowl.
Now the monument was gone, crushed by somethin
g else.
A vaguely round shape like an amoeba sat in its place, the metallic surface shifting and undulating as if it were made of living water. Branches of the same material spread out around it, hundreds of lines cast out in every direction, rising up the crater and out into the city, punching through alloy and carbonate. Pulses of energy raced along them in strips of blue and white light that created an eery glow throughout the city.
Bodies lay around it. Hundreds of bodies in plain clothes, civilians that looked as though they had simply dropped where they were standing. Beyond that were more dead whose end couldn't have been as peaceful. They were shredded and torn, burned and broken, caught in a rain of fire that had spewed from... where?
The aliens. They were already here. They had beat them to Liberty. The thing at the center of the crater... A ship? A command center? The enemy itself?
"Millie, they're here. They're already here. Liberty is lost. Get out of here. Now."
There was no answer, no confirmation. Had the Schism jumped into hyperspace and made it to safety?
Or were the Riggers no more?
Was he alone?
He strained with his mind, forcing the S-17 out of its dive, sweeping past the city and then making a tight turn to come back around. For all of the death and destruction, there were millions of people in the city and the city itself remained standing, the damage limited to street level. There had to be people still alive out there.
Didn't there?
He choked on the thought, swallowing the anger and upset, ignoring the bloody scene below him. Christine was gone. Dead or not, she wasn't answering, and he had no way to find her. He needed to get back up into orbit, to fire his own FTL and meet the Schism at the rendezvous point, assuming it had survived.