Virago One: A Hard Science Fiction Technothriller (Ace of Space Book 2)

by John Triptych

  Ruthven merely nodded. He knew Tobias’s wife was permanently disabled, and his daughter had a rare autistic disorder that dug heavily into his meager finances. He hadn’t known about the cancer.

  “Damn blasted medical cutbacks … refused to fund my treatment,” General Tobias said softly. “So screw ‘em all. I know what you lost back in that Spratlys war. I also figured you’d want Lawson as your XO, so I called in a few favors to make sure you both got to within striking distance.”

  “Thank you,” Ruthven said. “If there’s anything I can do for you.”

  General Tobias shook his head slowly. “Damn thing hurts like a mother, but that’s okay. I prefer to die in a fight than get eaten away by a freaking disease. You better get to the Virago. Take the emergency tunnel- you’ll get to the Launch Bay faster.”

  Leaning over, Ruthven placed his smartglasses on the table. “There’s a script you’ve got to run from here. It will send a command line to the launchpad so the roof canopy can be retracted, and the support struts released.”

  His left hand shaking, the general took the device and placed it over his eyes. “Okay, I’ll get it done. Lock the door for me when you go.”

  Just as Ruthven was heading towards the exit, he turned towards his superior, stood at attention, and saluted. “I’ll see you on the other side, General.”

  General Tobias returned his salute with a bloody hand. “Good luck, Colonel.”

  Chapter 18

  The first stirrings of dawn was about to break just beyond the mountain range. At the opposite side, half a dozen USAF Crow helicopters and close to twenty unmanned aerial drones flew in tight formation across the still darkened horizon, heading for Argus Base. A convoy of Security Forces- two companies strong- were also speeding their way across the desert highway of China Lake from the ground below.

  Stilicho Jones was sitting in the rear cabin of the lead helicopter, his attention directed at the formation of three military drones flying alongside the chopper. He had gotten his wish. The president had spoken to him personally over his com-link, and told him that he would be pardoned, provided that the situation was resolved, and the terrorists stopped. Now that he had full security clearance, Stilicho was accompanying Trevor Ledwidge and a large contingent of reinforcements to help secure the base that housed the nation’s most powerful weapon.

  Glancing at the tall man sitting beside him, Stilicho pulled out a packet of chewing gum from beneath his coat and offered it to the blond, hulking giant. “Gum?”

  Captain Keith Emerson, his Air Force liaison, shook his head. “No, thank you.”

  Stilicho smirked while putting the chewables back in his coat pocket. Even though he did have top secret clearance now, they paired him up with Emerson, who was- for all intents and purposes- both his handler and chaperon. It was apparent they viewed him as a necessary evil, and Ledwidge made it clear that Emerson would be with Stilicho at all times during the crisis to keep an eye on him.

  Trevor Ledwidge sat at the opposite row of seats, facing them. He leaned forward while receiving the latest reports coming from the base. “There’s been an explosion. Casualties reported. I can’t get through to base command. It’s like all the com-links have been shut down, including the private military channels.”

  Stilicho narrowed his eyes. He remembered his boss telling him about the joint development of a military artificial intelligence program. “Is there an AI suite that controls base functions?”

  Ledwidge nodded. “Yes, it’s called CAIN.”

  Stilicho pushed out his lower lip. “There’s your answer. It seems like the Russian hacker we’ve been looking for somehow took control of the base AI and is now using it against us.”

  Ledwidge grimaced. He turned around and looked at the two pilots in the cockpit. “What’s our ETA?”

  The lead pilot glanced back at them. “Approximately fifteen minutes, sir.”

  Stilicho leaned back and tried to relax. A strange feeling began to creep over him. His own subconscious reached out, telling him that it was all too late.

  Within the base, Darian Arante turned into another corridor. Up ahead of her were a series of more intersections. She was quite sure that she had made it into the Main Launch Building, but the uniform corridors and unmarked locked doors made it seem like she was trapped inside a maze. Darian had gone through several different stairwells, going up one floor before going back down into another. She had tried to open a number of doors that lined the sides of the passageways, but they were locked tight, and her biometric fingerprints were refused entry by the security scanners alongside the doorknobs. She was hopelessly lost, and her com-links weren’t working.

  Might as well keep on going, she thought. Just as she rounded another corridor, something caught her eye. At the end of the junction up ahead, there was doorway that seemed slightly ajar. Running up towards it, she noticed that the door should have closed by itself, but there was some sort of weight leaning against the other side that prevented the lock from engaging. Glancing into the narrow opening, she let out a slight gasp.

  Located just behind the door was a body. The corpse was sitting upright, and its foot had partly wedged itself in the door sill. Using her right shoulder, Darian pushed at the door to widen the opening. The body was jammed up on the other side and it took a bit of effort, but in the end she was able to enlarge the gap well enough so she could squeeze through.

  The moment she pulled herself into the room, she glanced down at the body. It looked like an Air Force base maintenance technician. The deceased young man had a surprised look on his face, and his hands were folded over his bloodstained chest. He had apparently been shot. There was a military access card attached to his belt. Darian leaned over and took it. Upon examining the badge, the security pass indicated it was for spacecraft launch maintenance.

  Looking around, she noticed another corridor lay beyond the small room she was in. The sign above the opposite end said: ASTRONAUT READY ROOMS. Darian made her way through the dimly-lit corridor up ahead, and noticed that the open doors along the passage led to a number of conference rooms, as well as shower stalls and toilets. Hearing movement somewhere in front of her, she quickly pressed her body into a shadowy alcove and drew out her pistol.

  Sure enough, a red-haired woman soon emerged from one of the shower areas. She was naked and carried a pair of pressurized boots while walking into an opposite room near the end of the corridor. Darian bit her lip. It’s gotta be her. The redhead.

  Moving forward, Darian slowly inched her way to the edge of the entryway where the woman had gone into. Leaning forward slightly, she made a careful glance into the adjoining room to see if she could spot her.

  The redhead had placed the boots she carried on a plastic table in front of her. Lying on the desk was a skinsuit, helmet, and a pair of pressurized space gloves. The woman then turned around and started moving towards the opposite side of the room, disappearing from Darian’s limited field of vision.

  Darian eased her way inside the room. Where the heck did she go? There were rows of lockers in that place—she must be behind one of them. Keeping by the edge of the storage bins, Darian led the way with her pistol.

  A sudden blur of movement from the right corner of her eye made her duck down instinctively. It had saved her as the redhead’s cybernetic punch sailed past- just above Darian’s head, and smashed into the side of a metal locker, denting it with a loud, reverberating crunch.

  Darian whirled while bringing her pistol up to bear, but the redhead kicked at her right hand, sending the gun flying sideways across the locker room until it clattered away on the hard, concrete flooring. With her weapon torn from her grasp, Darian tried to back off to where the table was.

  The redhead charged at her, attempting to land a punch to her nose. Having had some martial arts training, Darian blocked the incoming blow with her right wrist, but felt a crushing pain on her forearm as it parried the attack from her opponent’s fist. Crying out in agony, Darian sta
ggered backwards into the open area of the locker room.

  Kate Sturgis grinned at her stricken adversary. “Hurts, doesn’t it?”

  Darian grimaced as she used her left hand to clutch her injured right forearm. It was clear the redhead had cybernetic implants, which made her nearly unstoppable in hand to hand combat. Darian had faced numerous dangers before, but it was apparent that she stood a very good chance of dying within the next minute or so, unless she could somehow even the odds.

  Remembering her training, Darian knew that combat cyber implants needed a power up period in order to be fully effective. If she could time her counterattack right after the redhead made hers, she might be able to gain the upper hand. The only problem was that she was already injured, and her enemy knew how to fight as well.

  Kate sensed that her cyber implants were at full power once more. She had learned from experience that a slight buzzing noise would manifest itself at the back part of her head, and it indicated that the power charge was sufficient. All she needed to do now was to land a decisive blow. The force her right hand could muster was enough to crush bone and dent thick metal. “Heads up,” she said. “Time to die!”

  This time the redhead threw her full weight as she tried to land a blow at Darian’s chin. Kate figured that even if her opponent tried to block it, the sheer force from the cyber implants would be enough to break Darian’s arms and she would become helpless either way.

  Instead of trying to block the blow, Darian dove sideways into the floor. Kate’s punch ended up smashing down into the table in front of her. The plastic counter collapsed in two, and Kate lost her balance since she had put too much momentum in the attack, and she had nearly fallen on her face. The gear that had been placed on the table crashed down into the floor.

  Grabbing the helmet that was now lying on the ground, Darian swung it at Kate, catching the redhead on the side of her face just as she was rebalancing herself. Kate cried out as she fell sideways onto the cold concrete flooring. Realizing she had to finish this quickly, Darian knelt down on top of her opponent and swung the helmet once more with her left hand, hoping to bash Kate’s brains in before her implants could power up again.

  The blow to the side of her head left her feeling disorientated, but Kate had been in fights like these, and her years of training kicked into full gear. She parried the incoming helmet with her left hand while her right grabbed Darian by the throat and began to squeeze. Her dizziness was interfering with her neuromuscular controls for the cybernetics, and the choke became a slow squeeze instead of an instant, crushing snap.

  Darian gasped as her throat became constricted. The suffocating pain was starting to make her black out, and her strength began to drain away. She tried swinging the helmet down once more, but her attack was so slow that the redhead was able to grab onto the helmet and prevented it from connecting with her face. Her right arm could barely function, but it was all she had left.

  While her field of vision began to fade from the lack of oxygen, Darian remembered her combat instructor’s words during a training session many years before. “Anything can be used as a weapon. In a life or death situation, grab whatever’s around and use it. It doesn’t matter of it’s a pen, an ashtray, or a magazine,” he said. “Use it as a club if it’s blunt, or like a knife if there’s an edge to it.”

  Using her injured right hand, Darian instinctively reached into her coat pocket and pulled out her smartglasses. She painfully unfolded the temple frame on one side of it and plunged the tip downwards, towards the redhead’s left eye.

  Kate’s eyes widened in surprise as the tip of the smartglass frame pierced her right eye’s lacrimal caruncle, the pinkish, skin-like membrane in between the eyelid and the side of her nose. The point of the frame penetrated right into the brain matter and it proved fatal. The redhead’s arms instantly went limp and fell to her side.

  Darian slumped face first on top of her fallen opponent before making a series of loud, dry coughs. For a long minute, she just lay on top of the redhead as she slowly regained her breath. A slight beeping noise coming from the floor nudged her back into a state of awareness. Darian looked up.

  It was another pair of smartglasses. The device had apparently been on the table and had fallen to the ground along with the other gear during the fight. Reaching over with her left hand, Darian placed the device over her eyes and activated the ear piece.

  “Kate, it’s Ganz,” a man on the other line said. “If you’re getting this message, Colonel Ruthven is already on his way to the Control Room. Suit up and get to the Virago as fast as you can. The rest of us are already here. They can’t stop us now.”

  Darian sat up and looked around. It seemed like her opponent was about to put on the spacesuit when she interrupted her. With the redhead’s allies already on the ship they would lift off and there was precious little she could do about it. Unless…

  Wincing with pain from her right arm, Darian slowly took off her coat. The now dead woman had the same height and build, and there was no doubt she would be able to fit into that skinsuit lying there on the ground. Time to go undercover, she thought.

  Vlad Utkin continued to fidget while still strapped to his chair. The Virago’s battlesphere was eerily quiet now, and his other teammates were just sitting there along with him, waiting. The thickening silence was proving unbearable. He wanted to scream at the top of his lungs, hoping to finally get things started, but he knew full well that Lawson or Ganz wouldn’t take kindly to it, so he just stared at the screen above him, trying to keep his frantic mind occupied by trivialities.

  A loud beep got his attention. New lines of code were manifested on his monitor screen. Vlad read them for a few seconds before throwing up his hands once more. “They did it! Launch commands entered through Ground Control.”

  Seconds later, the floor underneath them began to rumble. Herbert Eng Wu glanced nervously at his other teammates. “What was that, an earthquake?”

  “Chill out,” Lawson said. Unlike everyone else, he continued to maintain his cool, calm demeanor. “That sound is just the underground vents opening up underneath the spacecraft’s thruster. The fusion drive is going to spew out an enormous amount of exhaust, so the base designers dug a big trench beneath the landing pad to shunt it away.”

  “CAIN now has full access to launch facility,” Vlad said. “We control everything from here.”

  “Prepare auto launch sequence,” Lawson said. He started inputting commands on his console.

  Another loud rumbling began outside. Herbert cycled through the external cameras until he found out where it was coming from. High above the ship, the roof canopy was now opening, revealing the clear night sky. They were good to go.

  Vlad threw his hands up in the air and gave a loud whoop. Herbert joined in the cheering as well. A split second later, all the lights in the launch pad suddenly activated, bathing the ship and the support towers around it in a radiance of nearly blinding whiteness.

  Lawson grimaced. “Who turned on the lights?”

  Vlad shook his head. “Nyet. I not do anything.”

  Herbert held his hands up. “Wasn’t me.”

  “Look out,” Ganz said. “Check what’s on camera thirty-six.”

  Everyone adjusted their personal consoles and tuned on the video feed. The large double doors leading out to the adjoining building had been opened, and two squads of USAF Elite Guard troopers were making their way to the upper platform that still connected to the Virago. Leading them was Lieutenant Shaker, and she had a pistol in her hand.

  A chill went up Herbert’s spine. They were going to get inside and arrest them all. He shuddered.

  Lawson cycled through the virtual menu on his console. “Hey, rocket scientist- transfer power to the defensive systems right now.”

  “All the power needs to stay with the drive capacitors,” Herbert said. “We can’t engage the fusion engine unless one hundred percent of APU power is set to it.”

  “We’re not going to b
last off yet,” Lawson said. “The colonel is on his way back to us. Once he’s onboard, we can go.”

  Vlad looked at him incredulously. “How do you know he coming? He could be dead by now. Control Room usually occupied by lot of people, yes?”

  “He’s never let me down,” Lawson said. “Those men out there can’t get in here without shaped-charges, and it looks like they aren’t carrying any. We wait for the colonel and your female buddy. Now transfer power to defense so I can deal with the ones down there!”

  Herbert adjusted the controls on his end. The APU instantaneously diverted the power flow into the Virago’s other systems. The video monitors showed Lieutenant Shaker pointing at the ship and shouting something, but no sound came through since there were no external microphones. The lead squad had made it to the upper platform that connected a wide bridge leading towards the ship’s main airlock. Four guardsmen with carbines began sprinting across the platform’s open space, headed for the Virago.

  Lawson engaged the defensive systems. An array of recessed laser banks that lined the hull of the Virago instantly revealed themselves as the Whipple shielding in front of them retracted. CAIN had never targeted such small enemy contacts before, and it was confused for half a second before adjusting the range and frequency of the laser banks from over 100 megawatts to just under 100 kilowatts per shot. The Virago’s AI correctly predicted that a full charge would not be needed against targets of mostly flesh and water, so it used a lesser capacity of micro-second burst pulses instead.

  The effects were immediate and devastating. The two leading members of the squad noticed the side armor along the spacecraft’s hull had been partly retracted, and what looked like an array of camera lenses were staring directly at them. The first trooper figured it was nothing more than a surveillance system, but the other man beside him pointed at the seemingly innocuous bank of monitors and shouted an alarm. Less than half a second later, CAIN bombarded the entire squad with a stream of pulsed laser bolts designed to take down incoming missiles. The resulting discharge of energy was akin to a series of blinding flashes, and the entire squad had been cut down, their body armor burning up before their flesh began to vaporize into steams of plasma. In a matter of seconds, all that was left of them were smoking piles of burned metal that had somehow fused to their charred, still smoldering bodies.