War To The Knife

by Grant, Peter

“Grassby to Carson, can I speak with him, please? Over.”

  “Carson to Grassby, wait one.” Jake turned to Manuel, who’d entered the OpCen with Mac and was now standing against the wall, looking nauseated as he stared at the dead bodies and blood on the floor. “Manuel, he wants to talk to you.” He flipped on the console speaker as the visitor came over, and offered him a hand-held microphone as he said, “Carson to Grassby, here he is.”

  “Manuel, this is Tom. What the hell’s happening? Why all the mystery? Over.”

  “Manuel to Tom, I don’t know, but I’m not a military man. I suspect Captain Carson doesn’t want the Bactrians to overhear his plans. That way they can’t do anything to stop him. Over.”

  “Hmpf!” The merchant skipper’s voice was disgruntled. “I suspect he doesn’t want us to do anything to interfere either! I can’t say I’m wildly impressed with the lack of information. Are these guys really OK, Manuel? I’m being given instructions that make no sense – in fact, they seem to me to threaten the safety of my ship and crew. Over.”

  “All I can say is that he’s kept me alive and safe since I got here. He’s killed enemies in my presence, so he’s not exactly your soft cuddly type, but he’s for sure on my side. That puts him on your side too. You can trust him. Over.”

  “Tom to Manuel. I’ll take your word for it, but if one of those missiles hits us, I’ll sue you when we get to hell!”

  Dave had to grin as Manuel retorted, “At least there’ll be plenty of lawyers there!”

  He cut in. “Carson to Grassby, no time for more now. One last thing. Stand by for a nuclear explosion and its associated electromagnetic pulses. Shut down your communications, withdraw your aerials, and activate all your protective systems for your electronics. Your hull provides Faraday cage protection, right? Over.”

  “Wha – I – are you crazy?” The other’s voice sounded shocked and outraged.

  “Carson to Grassby. No, I’m not crazy. You’re far enough away to be safe from the blast and radiation, but your electronics will be affected if you don’t take precautions. I say again, is your hull equipped with Faraday cage protection? Over.”

  “I… Grassby to Carson, yes, it is, like all well-found spaceships. Over.”

  “Carson to Grassby, very good. Stand by for action, and remember; stay where you are and don’t move until we get aboard! Over.” He didn’t add that it wasn’t so much the ship’s safety as their escape that he was worried about.

  “Grassby to Carson, understood – but I don’t like it!”

  Dave removed his headset and looked across at the Watch Commander’s console. “How’s it going, Mac?”

  “I’m just locking in the last targeting instructions.” He was tapping at a keyboard as he spoke. “I told you I knew this system backwards. We’ll be ready in under two minutes.”

  “Sounds good.” Dave turned to the doors as a dozen of his people trooped through them. “Any problems?”

  “No, Sir,” Sergeant-Major Deacon answered for them all. “Twelve off-watch personnel, three on duty in Engineering, two in Administration. All down, Sir.”

  “Excellent! We put down six in here, and we know the rest are planetside taking part in the Satrap’s parade. By the time our shuttles have finished with them, I doubt any will need a ride back up to orbit.”

  ~ ~ ~

  The Watch Commander was dragged back to consciousness by throbbing, burning pain in his face, caused by the pulser shot that had shattered his jaw and front teeth. He tried to open what was left of his mouth to gasp for breath, but stiffened as a surge of unbearable agony speared through him. He gurgled aloud through the blood in his mouth, but the noise was covered by a sudden burst of laughter. Laughter?, he wondered dizzily to himself. Who’s laughing? What –

  He suddenly recalled the two Security Service men bursting through the doors and firing at him with handguns. He froze, careful to make no movement that might alert anyone looking, and opened his eyes the barest crack. Through his eyelashes he could see a spacesuited man talking to a group of similarly clad people. They were laughing at something he’d just said. He strained his eyes to look sideways at his command console. An older man was seated there, entering instructions.

  He felt something sticky on the floor. All the others in the room seemed to be looking at something else, so he risked turning his head slightly, wincing at the renewed pain. He was sickened to see the bodies of his watch crew tossed carelessly into a pile, bleeding on each other, dripping onto the floor. A rivulet of blood had run across the tiles and had just reached his hand.

  Fury exploded through him, overriding his pain. Whoever you bastards are, you’re not going to take over my space station without a fight, damn you! Stealthily, excruciatingly slowly, he began to slide his hand towards the holstered pulser at his waist – then stiffened in horror as the man at the console entered a last command, nodding in satisfaction as the computer accepted it. He looked up at another space-suited intruder and said, “Ready to proceed, Sir.”

  “Weapons free, Mac.”

  “Weapons free, Sir!”

  The Watch Commander instantly realized what was happening. I’ve got to stop them! he thought desperately as he grabbed at the butt of his pulser, dragging it from his holster, aiming at the back of the man sitting in his chair.

  ~ ~ ~

  Everyone was looking at the Plot screen, waiting for the appearance of missile traces heading for the ships nearby, anticipating the destruction to come, when the blast of a pulser echoed through OrbCon. Mac was thrown forward across the Watch Commander’s console, a cry of agony wrenched from his lips.

  Dave spun around, shouldering his rifle as another shot sounded. One of the two men dressed as Security Service guards arched his back and collapsed in a heap. Before the shooter – the fallen Watch Commander, Dave suddenly realized – could fire again, he was torn apart by slugs from several rifles. He collapsed inert against the bulkhead, pulser falling from his fingers.

  Dave sprang to the console. “Mac! Are you OK?”

  The older man sagged, sliding down the console limply, trying to say something; but he couldn’t form the words. Dave caught him and eased him back into the chair. “CORPSMAN! Tamsin, where are you?”

  “Here!” She ran towards him.

  “How the hell do we fire these missiles?”

  “I don’t know!” she said frantically, eyes scanning the multiplicity of dials, panels, indicators, switches and buttons on the console. “The display says ‘READY TO EXECUTE’ so… there!” She pointed to a red button protected beneath a flip-up clear cover. The label over it read, ‘FIRE’.

  “That must be it!” Dave flipped up the cover and jammed his finger down on the button. There was a brief, agonizing pause. His brain screamed at him, It’s not going to work! You’ve failed! – then he gasped in relief as he felt a shudder reverberate through the space station.

  ~ ~ ~

  The computer absorbed Mac’s instructions, passing target information through its datalinks to the station’s forty missiles. Ten were aimed at each of the two corvettes, their impacts programmed to cover the length of the ships’ relatively tiny thirty-thousand-ton hulls. The remaining twenty missiles were aimed at the armed merchant cruiser. Her half-million-ton bulk dwarfed the corvettes, but was full of a lot of empty space in the middle and lower hull in the form of cargo holds and storage compartments. Most of her critical systems were sheltered beneath her reinforced spine, so the missiles were aimed to penetrate her hull plating from the side, just below it.

  As soon as the computer was satisfied that the missiles knew their targets, it released the weapons. The hundred-thousand-ton bulk of the space station began to shake as missile after missile was ejected from its tube by powerful mass drivers. Each was, in effect, a miniaturized spaceship equipped with its own gravitic drive, imparting enormous acceleration. As it cleared the field generated by the station’s drive unit it engaged its own, turned towards its target and streaked away into the
blackness of space.

  ~ ~ ~

  Dave ignored the continued vibration of missile launches as he looked down at the only medic in his team. He was kneeling beside Mac, who’d slid out of the chair onto the deck. “How is he?”

  The corpsman shook his head. “Sorry, Sir. His backbone’s shot through and the round shredded his lung on the way out of his chest. He won’t make it.”

  Sergeant-Major Deacon called from the floor, “James is dead, Sir.” He looked around. “Who shot that guy? Why wasn’t he shot again to make certain he was dead?” His voice was angry.

  “It – it was me,” the other black-clad man mumbled, trembling, tears in his eyes as he looked at his dead partner. “I was sure he was dead! You could see blood all over his face!”

  “Blood doesn’t mean dead,” the Sergeant-Major said bluntly. “You know that, dammit! You’ve been fighting since this bloody war started!”

  The other nodded dumbly, then suddenly reached for the pulser at his waist and tried to insert the muzzle in his mouth. Two others sprang to restrain him. He fought to overcome their grasp. “Let me go, damn you!”

  “Take that pulser away from him!” Dave commanded. Another obeyed, ripping it from the man’s grasp then stepping back.

  Dave walked over to the black-clad man. “You’re going to have to live with it, Tony,” he said quietly, as compassionately as possible even though he shared the Sergeant-Major’s outrage at so amateurish a mistake. I should have thought to double-check, too, he reminded himself bitterly. It’s not all Tony’s fault. I took too much for granted. “I can’t afford to let you kill yourself. You’re our backup shuttle pilot. Even if we reach safety, Even if we reach safety, I’ve only got fifteen people in my team now. I need every one if we’re to succeed in our mission.”

  Tony writhed in the grasp of the others. “James was… I… for God’s sake, let me die with him!”

  “Instead of dying with him, I need you to make up for your mistake by living for him, and helping to do his share of our work in future. Will you do that – for me and all of us, not just for James?”

  Tony sagged helplessly. After a moment he nodded. “I – I’ll try, Sir,” he said hoarsely.

  Dave squeezed his shoulder. “Thank you. Now, pull yourself together. Our work’s not finished yet, and we need you.”

  He turned back to the medic, who was lowering Mac to the floor. As he watched, the man reached up and closed Mac’s eyes. “Sorry, Sir. He’s gone.”

  Dave blinked sudden tears from his eyes. So near to final success, and then… this!

  Sergeant-Major Deacon called, “The missiles are almost there, Sir!” Everyone looked back up at the Plot display.

  ~ ~ ~

  The three Bactrian warships were operating only a reduced ‘anchor watch’, two NCO’s and an Officer of the Deck in their Operations Centers plus a couple of people in their engineering spaces. The rest of their reduced crews were either sleeping during their off-watch periods or busy with routine activities. There wasn’t much they could do with half of their complements planetside to take part in the Satrap’s parade, so everyone was feeling lazy.

  The signatures of missile launches from the space station came as a complete surprise, freezing those on watch in shocked disbelief for a few dumbfounded moments before they could come to their senses. Klaxons blared their atonal aaa-OOO-gah! warning throughout the ships as the alarm sounded for General Quarters. Their diminished crews began to race towards their action stations, but few reached them and even fewer had time to put on their spacesuits. The watchstanders tried to bring the ship’s defensive weapons to the action state, but with so few people available to do work normally requiring three to four times their number, they ran out of time.

  The armed merchant cruiser was closest to the space station, so the twenty missiles targeted along her length arrived first. From bow to stern a rapid-fire sequence of explosions tore plating from her hull and devastated internal compartments, the kinetic energy unleashed by each ultra-high-speed missile’s impact vastly amplifying the damage inflicted by its explosive warhead. The incoming fire missed her bridge, sparing those on watch. The others struggling to reach their action stations weren’t so lucky. Her main fore-and-aft passage was blasted open to space in at least five locations, venting her internal atmosphere. Many of those aboard were sucked out with the air, to die silently screaming in vacuum as their body fluids boiled away. More missiles struck in or near the gravitic drive, reactor and capacitor ring compartments, sending the reactor into emergency shutdown and cutting the ship’s wiring harness in several critical places.

  As the last missile hit the merchant cruiser’s docking bay and destroyed her cutters and cargo shuttle, the first of the weapons aimed at the corvettes reached their targets. Their much smaller hulls were tightly packed, every cubic meter crammed with systems, equipment, weapons and supplies; so every hit did far greater damage than had been inflicted on the more open, less cramped construction of the converted freighter. Ten explosions ripped each corvette from bow to stern, tearing great holes in their hulls, venting internal compartments to space, killing every non-space-suited member of their crews, cutting off power, rendering their communications, sensors and weapons systems unusable without major dockyard repairs.

  The Satrap’s yacht had also been operating an anchor watch, most of its crew idling or asleep. They, too, were summoned to their emergency stations by blaring klaxons, and watched in disbelief as missiles hammered their escorts. Their Captain was planetside with the Satrap, so the Executive Officer was in charge. He didn’t know why his vessel had been spared from attack – at least, so far – but he wasn’t about to hang around to find out. He kicked his vessel’s gravitic drive to maximum power and headed away from the planet as fast as he could, steering towards the protection of the only surviving warship in the system – the patrolling armed merchant cruiser, now on the far side of Laredo and a full light-hour distant.

  ~ ~ ~

  The watchers in OrbCon were disappointed not to see any dramatic explosions or destruction depicted on the Plot display. At such distances, the only visual change was that the icons depicting the corvettes and armed merchant cruiser showed that they were no longer broadcasting transponder beacons.

  “They’re dead in space,” Dave observed as they watched the Satrap’s yacht scorch away from orbit, turning to head towards the distant patrol vessel. “All right, people. They won’t be able to interfere with Benbecula’s departure. We can board her now.”

  “What about Mac and James, Sir?” Sergeant-Major Deacon asked.

  Dave hesitated, then said, “Leave them here. It’ll slow us down too much to carry them back to the shuttle. We’ve got to get as far away from here as possible before that nuclear demolition charge goes off, and it’ll give them as good a cremation as we could anywhere else.”

  “Yes, Sir.” Deacon looked around, silencing the murmurs of protest from some of the others with a sharp, “The Captain’s right! Don’t argue! There’s no time!”

  Dave ejected a data chip from the console. Mac had inserted it at the start of proceedings, to record the attack on the warships. All its information about the strike and its results would be added to their data archive for Vice-President Johns, as would the recording being made in the shuttle right now of the feed relayed from Banka, showing everything the shuttles were seeing in their assault on the city.

  He knelt, rummaged through Mac’s pockets for the two keys he’d put there after arming the demolition charge, then stood again. “All right, let’s go. Back to the shuttle, quick as you can!”

  He maneuvered himself next to Tamsin as they ran down the passage. “D’you think Tony will be all right?” he asked quietly.

  “I don’t know. He and James were like us – lovers as well as partners in combat. I’m not sure if he’ll get over this. You did the right thing to remind him that all of us need him. That might help him to hold on, by forcing him to think of others besides himsel
f.”

  “I hope so. Can you handle the shuttle on your own for the last leg?”

  “I sure can!”

  As they exited the corridor into the docking bay vestibule and turned towards the shuttle, Dave glanced at the locked cargo compartment door. It was just as they’d left it. He checked the timer on his chest panel, and swore as he read ‘15:41’. He raised his voice. “People, we’ve got fifteen minutes to get a safe distance away from a cosmic catastrophe! Let’s move!”

  Tamsin made sure she was among the first group through the airlock. As the others took their seats and waited for the next group, she started up the shuttle’s systems and brought the reaction thrusters online. “Tell the rest to hurry!” she urged as she pulled her four-point harness over her shoulders. “The sooner we’re out of this docking bay, the more distance I can put between us and the explosion!”

  She didn’t even wait for the last group to take their seats before raising the rear ramp. As it sealed itself against the shuttle’s body she disengaged the trunk, feeding power to the thrusters before it had fully released the rear of the shuttle. Those still on their feet staggered as the vehicle strained, then abruptly jerked forward. Their comrades steadied them and helped them to sit down.

  “Hey, wait a minute, Tamsin!” one of them protested. “Let me strap in first!”

  “Like hell!” she retorted. “We’ve got no more than ten minutes to get clear. We need to be at least a hundred clicks from this thing to avoid it frying all our systems. I’m about to go to full blast. Hold on tight!”

  As soon as the shuttle was far enough away to be clear of any interference between its own gravitic drive field and the larger, more powerful drive of the station, she cut the reaction thrusters. Even as they began retracting into the hull, she gunned the gravitic drive to full power. The inertial compensator beneath the floor whined shrilly, louder than any of them could recall hearing one before, as it absorbed the crushing burden of acceleration. It dumped most of it into the gravity well of space’s dark matter, but even with that assistance everyone aboard grunted, groaned and sweated under the sudden impact of several times their normal body weight. The shuttle sprang forward towards LMV Benbecula, almost three thousand kilometers distant.