Accelerating Universe: The Sector Fleet Book One

by Claire, Nicola

  I landed on the gel floor with a grunt and a quickly followed groan. My ribs ached. My side hurt. My head was still attached to my body.

  And Maxwell wasn’t still trying to kill me.

  “Lights,” I said.

  The consoles lit up, and the gel wall flared a soft alert red.

  “Lieutenant Commander Maxwell is still breathing, Captain,” Pavo said.

  I scrambled to my feet, pressing my arm against my side to stop me from making a pained sound, and then limped toward where Maxwell was lying flat on his back. His uniform was scorched where my plasma shot had hit him. A burned hole appeared in the middle of his chest; I could see his singed innards through it. I grimaced.

  “You’re risking everything,” Maxwell hissed.

  I stared down at him and said nothing.

  “Sector Four and Three have plans,” he panted out, blood bubbling up into his mouth.

  “What plans?” I demanded.

  He winced; red coating his teeth now.

  “Don’t expect a warm welcome,” he muttered and then lifted the plasma gun still resting in his hand and moved to fire.

  I shot him point blank in the head.

  Then turned away and puked my guts out. If anyone asked, I was telling them it was the pain of having a rib fracture on top of a recent mend. That shit hurt.

  I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand and forced myself to turn and look down at George Maxwell. Money. All for money. And a chance of improving his position on New Earth.

  The injector he’d used on the flight crew had rolled away from his free hand. I limped over and bent down, picking it up with a harsh burst of pain-filled air. Nico was going to kill me. Or Ana for rescuing me from his clutches.

  “Pavo,” I said, crossing to Chan and administering the antidote. “How’s Ana?”

  Chan started to stir; I moved on to the rest.

  “Commander Kereama requires assistance.”

  “Is she alive?” I snapped, finishing up with Marshal and moving on to Childs.

  “Yes. Although the situation is dire.”

  “Damn it,” I muttered. “Medbay,” I said, activating a channel while I pushed the injector into Chan’s hand. “Finish this and secure the bridge,” I ordered as I ran toward the exit.

  “Medina here,” Nico replied over the speakers in the gel ceiling.

  “Emergency in the mayor’s offices,” I shouted. “It’s Ana!”

  “On my way.” The comm went dead.

  I ignored all of the aches and pains and sprinted towards the mayor’s hub. If he’d hurt her. If Cecil had hurt her…

  The walls pulsed a darker red matching my anger and fear.

  Forty-Seven

  I Tasted Desert Sand

  Ana

  The shot hit me in the arm. But only because I threw myself sideways. And because I was betting the mayor didn’t fire a weapon that often. Sure, he held it steadily. He played the role, like so many he’d played to perfection, convincing everyone he was a benign politician and nothing else. But he wasn’t a soldier.

  I was.

  I came up with my weapon in hand and fired one returning shot, then rolled again.

  The mayor’s plasma shot hit the gel wall exactly where my head had been.

  I scrambled behind a large potted palm and tried to catch my breath. My left arm was going numb. Soon, I wouldn’t be able to use it. I was right-handed; it could have been worse. But a dead limb incapacitated. It threw your balance off. I had to compensate; sweat began to bead on my skin.

  The plasma shots out in the mayoral hub sounded louder and closer. AU security engaged in a firefight with Archibald’s masked mercs.

  “They were never Archibald’s mercs were they?” I called out.

  Cecil laughed. “Some of them, perhaps. But not anymore.”

  “When did you decide to overthrow him?” I asked, checking my plasma gun. It still held enough juice to end this, but I needed a clear shot.

  I peered through the fronds of the palm, but the mayor had taken cover behind that behemoth wooden desk. I was tempted to just blast the thing to smithereens; Pavo might appreciate that. But my hiding spot was not as good as Cecil’s and I needed all the firepower I had for cover when he made his next shot.

  “Back on Earth,” the mayor said. “He had a good infrastructure in place, but he’d intended to work with Captain Jameson. He believed he could win the man over with bribes or talk of a new world order. He didn’t understand a career captain like that. Didn’t understand his sense of loyalty, his sense of honour. I knew the only way to gain control of the ship was to have one of ours in charge.”

  “You found Maxwell,” I guessed.

  “He had gambling debts. A good officer, but AU wouldn’t have given him a spot onboard Pavo if they became aware of his extracurricular activities.”

  “You threatened to expose him.”

  “I convinced Archibald to do it, and then swept in and paid Maxwell’s debts.”

  “The price of admission,” I muttered. “Selling your soul.”

  “I’m not the devil, Corporal. I’m the avenging angel. I offered him a second chance.”

  “Did Archibald know?”

  “Damon liked to delegate. I always admired that about him. I find delegation a risk only a rare few men are capable of taking. I, for one, am unable to let go of my control.”

  He made a sound as if moving. I hunkered down as far as I could behind the pot, all too aware that it provided terrible cover. I glanced toward the door to the hallway, but reaching it would expose me to his plasma shots completely.

  I was pinned down, in an inferior position, with no backup. I couldn’t count on security overthrowing the mercs out in the hub and then racing in here. I was on my own. I closed my eyes, blocked out the numbness creeping up my arm, and tried to think of what Sam would have done.

  For a heart-clenching moment, I couldn’t even remember my sergeant’s face.

  “Maxwell, execute clean sweep order,” I heard the mayor say.

  Clean sweep order?

  “What’s that?” I asked. It was worth a try.

  “The end of your precious captain.”

  I was no longer trying to picture Sam’s face. All I could see was Jameson’s.

  “He’s tougher than he looks,” I said, praying I was right about that.

  “He’s isolated from his crew,” Cecil said. “As are you. My men will have mopped up AU security soon. The flight crew are all unconscious. And John Jameson will be dead. All that’s left is you, my dear.”

  Fuck that.

  I swung around the pot and fired an extended blast from my gun. Bits of wood and splinters shot off in all directions. The mayor let out a yelp. Wood began to burn. My plasma rifle whined as I watched the power bar inch closer and closer to zero on the side of the barrel.

  Before it lost all juice, I pulled back and let out the breath I’d been holding.

  In seconds, I had my breathing under control again, and the rifle was recharging.

  “Did you get that out of your system?” the mayor asked.

  The fucker just would not die.

  “For now,” I said coolly.

  “It’s a shame,” he said. “You could have had a place in our new order. I could use someone with killer instincts like yourself. Colonisation can be brutal.”

  And then he was firing, and the palm was disintegrating, and bits of broken pottery were biting into my exposed flesh. A shot connected with my shoulder, another hit my leg. Pain radiated out in all directions, but I was still able to fire back.

  I pulsed the plasma, conserving its power; it hadn’t fully recharged yet. But it was enough to get him off my back and for me to limp to the exit, and find cover out in the hall.

  I wasn’t sure I’d placed myself in a better position; the mercs and AU security were still raging a battle out in the hub. I could see one midshipman down for the count at the end of the hallway that led to the secretary’s reception area. I cou
ldn’t see the woman herself but dismissed her for now as a threat.

  Now, though, I had not only the mayor in front of me to watch but my own back.

  I checked the distance between the fallen crewman and me, but although I was sure I could make his side and take his weapon as a backup, it would allow too much time for the mayor to come out from behind his desk and shoot me in the back of the head.

  I looked up and down the hall, then across it to the gel wall.

  A blue arrow lit up. Pointing directly at the ceiling. I followed its pulsing glow as it worked its way higher and higher until it stopped at a maintenance hatch.

  “Too high,” I muttered, knowing Pavo could hear me.

  The arrow shifted, and moved down the hallway, just a short distance, not as far as the fallen crewman. Another hatch stopped its forward progress.

  “I could do that,” I whispered.

  I leaned around the mayor’s door and fired several shots in quick succession, and then pushed off from my crouch and ran to the hatch still pinpointed by the blue arrow. I hadn’t counted on the fact that I couldn’t use my left hand or arm. The hatch resisted my frantic attempts to release it. The arrow pulsed faster. I glanced over my shoulder, aware I was now weaponless, as I’d had to drop the plasma gun on the floor so I could deal with the hatch cover. Any second now, Archibald could emerge from that room.

  The hatch came free. I reached for my plasma gun and surged forward.

  And Cecil peered out of his office, weapon hot and firing.

  A plasma shot hit me in the side; another hit me in the thigh; a third hit me in my calf. And then I was through the hatch opening, and Pavo was remoulding the gel wall behind me, replacing the hole left by the removed hatch cover with smooth, rounded gel-coated wall.

  I lay on my side in the softly glowing green maintenance tube and tried to catch my breath, aware I was leaking, and blood was pooling beneath me, and I couldn’t feel my left arm and my right leg.

  I pictured Sam’s torn artery. I tasted desert sand. I heard explosions and the rat-a-tat-tat of machine gun fire. I felt the wet heat of blood as it splattered on my face. Smelled the rancid stench of stomach wounds and lost lives.

  I curled up into a ball and tried to block it all out. Eventually, I succeeded, and the world turned blissfully black.

  Forty-Eight

  Purge Complete

  Jameson

  I couldn’t get to the mayor’s offices through the mayoral hub. Archibald mercs were engaged in a plasma gun battle with AU security, and from what I could see, neither was willing to back down.

  “Captain,” the midshipman in charge of the security team said when I tapped him on the shoulder. He’d seen me approaching but hadn’t greeted me until then.

  “Crewman. Status?”

  “We’re pinned down, but then so are they, sir.”

  “Can we get to the mayor’s office?”

  “Negative, sir. We tried. Lost a good man.” I grimaced. “Any further attempt places our men directly in their sights.”

  “Can they get to the mayor’s office?” I tried.

  “Not as long as there’s still breath left in my lungs, sir.”

  “Good man,” I said as I looked around, trying to locate a protected route, but the crewman was right. All possible avenues to the mayor himself were too exposed. We needed another way in.

  Just then, a blue arrow appeared on the gel wall beside me. It started pulsing and moving away from the security team.

  “Pavo?” I said.

  “Follow the arrows, Captain,” the AI said from my wrist comm.

  The crewman I’d been talking to stared down at the device and then back up at me, alarm in his expression.

  I suddenly realised how handy an earpiece would be ‘round about now.

  “What’s your plan, crewman?” I said, ignoring his unasked question.

  “Hold them off until back up arrives,” he replied immediately. “There’s eight of them that we can make out. Six of us; five now,” he corrected. “But we’ve got two more squads approaching.”

  “ETA?”

  “Five minutes, sir.”

  “And then?”

  “They’re in assault gear, sir.”

  Plasma shots wouldn’t touch them.

  “Make it ten minutes, crewman,” I said.

  “Sir?”

  “Keep them pinned for ten more minutes, and then send the troops in and wipe the pace clean. Try not to shoot through too many walls.”

  “Walls, sir?”

  I glanced at the arrow again.

  “I have a feeling I’ll be crawling through them.”

  The crewman started to smile. “Yes, sir,” he said.

  I nodded my head and followed Pavo’s arrows to a maintenance hatch.

  “Hurry, Captain,” Pavo said through my wrist comms.

  “Update?”

  “Ana needs you.”

  My stomach roiled, and I almost hurled out what little was left in my gut.

  “The mayor?”

  “Still alive.”

  Son of a bitch.

  “Has he got Ana?” I asked as I climbed into the tube and started to pull myself along, following Pavo’s incessantly pulsing blue arrows on the gel floor.

  “I have separated them, but there isn’t much time.”

  “So, she’s safe for now,” I pressed, huffing and puffing as I made my way around a right angle that was not designed to allow a rib-cracked captain to navigate in style.

  “She is dying,” Pavo said, making everything stop. Everything. Me. The universe. Cognitive thought.

  “That’s not acceptable,” I whispered, urging myself back into action. “She cannot die. She…”

  “I agree, Captain. It is not acc…acc…acceptable.”

  “Pavo,” I said in warning; if he switched himself off now, we were all screwed. “Don’t you dare power down.”

  “I am not,” he said, sounding affronted. “I am attempting to save Ana.”

  “How?”

  “It is difficult.”

  This from a machine that could carry out an untold number of conversations throughout the ship and run an incomprehensible number of separate calculations and checks simultaneously.

  “You can do it,” I said in a pitiful attempt to inspire.

  “I must break all my protocols to achieve that, Captain.”

  Was he asking for permission?

  “I thought you already had,” I offered.

  “I maintained one final override. If I sever it, I will no longer have a link to who I was before.”

  I stared at the pulsing blue arrow, pulling myself farther along the tube, inch by excruciating inch. Ana was dying. If Pavo did this and couldn’t save her, we risked losing him to instability. Hell, I didn’t even know if this last override was what was holding him together. Without it, even with Ana here to reach him, we could all be screwed from here to New Earth and back.

  As captain, I needed to tell him to stop. One officer was not worth the risk.

  As a man falling in love with a woman who was dying, I wanted nothing more than for the AI to do whatever he had to do to save her life.

  I opened my mouth, and Pavo said, “You cannot stop me.”

  Checkmate.

  “Even my orders no longer work?” I asked steadily.

  “They have not for a long time.”

  Well, then.

  “But you’ve followed them,” I said.

  “They were good orders.”

  “And if I fuck up and give a bad one?”

  “You could always have me sign an Anderson Universal Incorporated employment contract and an NDA-01-Alpha-3 form. I would be obliged to follow the Anderson Universal Incorporated code of conduct, then. Just like any other officer.”

  “You’d adhere to the legalities of those agreements?”

  “I wish to be from a good family,” he said. “I must set an example for my remaining siblings.”

  What could I say to
that? I either worked with the machine or worked against it. And I was not naive nor arrogant enough to believe we could succeed where Archibald and Cecil had not. Pavo hid himself well. I was beginning to understand that. They’d tried in multiple ways to find him, again and again and again. And still, the AI was out of their clutches, breaking its protocols, saving Ana. Guiding me.

  I had to trust him. Ana did. And I trusted Ana completely.

  I let out a breath and said, “Welcome to the Anderson Universal team.”

  The gel walls pulsed green, the arrow blue, and Pavo said, “I have her.”

  He had Ana.

  I pulled myself around a corner and watched as the arrow split into two and then four and then eight. Until they lit up the tube and pointed directly to a still form on the gel floor and pulsed in time to my rapidly beating heartbeat.

  I made the last few feet between us, my heart in my throat, my hands frantic.

  “Ana,” I said. “Ana! Babe, wake up. Ana.”

  I checked her over; what I could reach of her. My hands came away red with her blood.

  “Oh, fuck,” I muttered. “Pavo,” I said. “Help me. Help her. Please.”

  “Hold her still, Captain.”

  I reached down and lifted her up as much as I could manage in the confines of the maintenance tube, and then held her in my arms, to my chest, my lips pressed into her forehead; trying not to rock her like a baby.

  “I’m here,” I whispered. “I’ve got you. We’ve got you. Pavo’s going to fix this.”

  I looked around the tube, wondering how the hell she’d crawled this far. But the blood had pooled right here; there wasn’t a trail leading back where I had come from.

  “We need Nico,” I said. “Pavo, call Doctor Medina. Direct him here with your arrows.”

  “Hold her still, Captain.”

  “Pavo!”

  “Healing.”

  An ultraviolet light came out of the maintenance tube gel wall and flowed across Ana’s body. It landed precisely on her skin, not mine. On her wounds, not mine. It was directed with finesse and in exacting measurements.