Gently, Salazar took the figure's pulse, then placed him in a comfortable position on the floor, taking off his uniform jacket and covering him with it. The corridors were cold, air currents sweeping through, and he might not be found for hours, assuming he was found at all. He looked down at the figure, shaking his head, then pushed off down the corridor, into the long shaft Valya had spoken of.
It almost became a game after a few moments, pushing off against the wall, trying to keep his speed up, trying to stay in the air, pushing against the floor with his sore foot to remain clear of the ground, periodically swinging back and forth when some obstruction appeared ahead of him, cables, pipes, even a bundle of old uniforms at one point.
He glanced back as little as he dared, dreading seeing someone at the far end of the corridor, looking down, spotting him and coming after him. He'd have no choice but to surrender at that point, nowhere to run in this long, narrow tunnel, just a faint hope that he might be able to throw them off the scent of the others. By now, with luck, they'd be nestled into their hiding place, somewhere down at the far end of the base.
Finally, he reached a turning, and anxiously swung around, clipping his shoulder against the wall with bruising force, enough to send him dropping to the ground, panting for breath. He waited for a few heartbeats to recover, forcing himself to breathe deeply to steady his nerves, listening out for any sign of activity. The only thing he could hear was a methodical dripping noise from up ahead, regular as a metronome, a beacon in the darkness.
At least he knew he was on the right track. Somewhere down there were the water tanks he was searching for, and with luck, his friends with them. It seemed hard to believe that he had made it this far already, and as he pushed on, he strained to remember the last of the instructions Valya had given him before she'd left, twisting his way through tunnels, trying to match them with what she had said, his tired mind jumbling up the order. He paused at a crossroads, looking in each direction, then up at a shaft that seemed to head to nowhere, realizing that he was hopelessly lost.
Or perhaps not. There was still the dripping leak, and it seemed to be a lot nearer than it had been before, somewhere to the right of him. He backtracked down the tunnel for a few feet, still wary of pursuit, then took a different path, down and underneath a series of low pipes. Up ahead, he could hear whispered sounds, and he froze, lying still. He strained to listen, trying to make out any familiar accents, phrases, names.
When the realization hit him, it was all he could do not to scream with relief. Whoever was up ahead was speaking English. He hadn't been able to make out a word that his pursuers had said, any decipherable meaning garbled in the echoes of the corridors, but this had to be Harper, Ortok and Valya.
Still wary, he edged forward, stepping through pools of stagnant water, slimy residue sticking to his shirt, trying to make as little noise as possible while making the last couple of turns. As he swung around the final corridor, his eyes widened as he saw stars beneath him, his heart skipping a beat as he looked down at the view, and the shadows that were obscuring parts of it.
“Good God,” Harper said. “You made it.” She leapt up, wrapping her arms around him, and said, “When we heard that explosion, we thought it had taken you with it.”
“Me? Not yet,” he said. “I left it running at full power to create a distraction. Looks like it fooled them, as well. Only one of them managed to catch me, and I left him way back in the tunnels.”
“Dead?” Valya asked, her face falling.
“Knocked out,” he replied. “He'll be fine when he wakes up, just a black eye and a headache.”
“Well?” Ortok asked. “What's the news from Alamo? How long until the relief force gets here?”
Looking around at the hopeful faces, Salazar forced himself to reply, “It isn't. Not yet, at least. The Coalition and the Council are in a standoff over Itix, and Captain Orlova thinks that war could break out at any time. She can't send a shuttle, not in those conditions. It'd be shot out of the sky before it got clear of the hull.”
“Then we're back to square one,” Valya said with a sigh. “I guess we can hold out here for a while. There's a tap just down the corridor, and some emergency rations are cached not far from here.”
“No,” Salazar said, shaking his head. “I'm not going to sit here and wait while civilization destroys itself in this system. We need to do something to give Alamo an edge, and the answer is sitting right here in the base, waiting for us to use it. We need to take control of the laser cannon.”
“You can't be serious,” Ortok said. “It'll be guarded, protected.”
“All true,” Salazar said. “And we're going to do it anyway. Whatever it takes.”
Chapter 20
Sprinting into the transport, Cooper reached up to close the airlock behind him as Cantrell scrambled up the ladder to the bridge. Waiting on the far side, Reana watched as the hatch slammed shut, huge eyes boring into him, her face an empty mask. He paused for a moment, looking at the cold metal bulkhead, as though she was looking through the hull at him, somehow. A whine from below dragged him back to reality.
“Cooper, get up here! We're going for launch! Now!”
Pulling himself hand over hand up the ladder, his shoulder aching from the bruising he'd sustained in the battle, he raced forward to the bridge, leaping for the copilot's couch as Cantrell threw switches, puzzling over each one, shaking her head as she looked at the readouts. She poised her hand over a control, then turned to look at him.
“When I punch this button, one of two things will happen. Either the main lateral jets will fire, sending us up into the air and beginning the launch sequence, or I will have guessed wrong and we will probably explode into several million fragments.”
Shaking his head, Cooper said, “My wife was right. You really are trouble.”
“Hell, I've got a reputation to live up to. Hang on.” She slammed the control, and the ship lurched upward, four powerful jets slamming into the launchpad, sending torrents of dust and dirt flying through the air. They soared up, higher and higher, warning lights flashing on as she quickly worked the controls, hitting buttons on instinct while Cooper looked on. “I think I might have used the afterburner. Sorry.”
With a smile, Cooper replied, “You've ruined the paintwork on Raval's ship, I'll say that.”
“He can send me the bill. I have some interesting anatomical ideas about where it can go.” Pulling back the throttle, the engines roared into life, forcing them both back into their couches, gasping for breath under the acceleration load. She eased back, bringing it down to a safer level, and looked at the controls. About half of them were in English, modified United Nations equipment, but the rest was in the same strange script as everything else, and with functions it seemed almost impossible to guess at.
Nevertheless, the ship was heading up, racing across the landscape, the base already out of sight. He looked down into the forest, the black scar of the massacre still visible, and he closed his eyes for a moment, trying not to think about it, to focus on the task at hand. Readouts on the panel in front of him danced around, moving out of sequence, and he looked across at Cantrell, her gaze locked tightly on the controls.
“I hope you aren't expecting anything particularly fancy today,” she said. “I can probably get us up into a safe orbit without too much trouble, but getting to a specific point in space would be another story completely. God only knows how the navigation computer works. Their co-ordinate system is baffling, and as far as I can see they've got a base-13 number system for some reason.”
“As long as you can get us moving.”
With a shrug, she said, “There are only so many ways you can design a panel, and a planetary takeoff isn't that difficult.” Reaching over to tap a panel, she continued, “Just keep an eye on the sensor display. That's old United Nations issue, pretty standard.”
“Museum-qual
ity,” he said, firing up the panel, shaking his head at the primitive controls. On Alamo, this would be a three-dimensional hologram, and even on one of her shuttles, the display would be more sophisticated that this. All he saw was a confusion of jumbled dots, lines curling around them. A brief second of panic faded as he realized that his sensors were tracking a flight of birds a few dozen miles behind them, and shaking his head, he started to adjust the resolution.
“Got something,” he said.
“Seagull?” she asked.
“Not unless it's found a way to boost to orbital velocity. I think I've got the gunboat, up in synchronous orbit, and if I'm reading this panel right, it's just lit its engine. Pushing for intercept.”
“In how long?”
Despite the seriousness of the situation, he still laughed, as he said, “Eleventy-twelve seconds, according to this piece of junk. Subject to updates, anyway.”
Nodding, she dipped the nose, then pushed the throttle up again, taking the acceleration as high as they could tolerate. Below, green was replaced by blue as they soared across an ocean, occasional green and brown dots as they raced over island chains, and as they gained altitude, a bright glare of white from the north, the southern tip of the great ice cap that lay over the pole.
“We'll be out of the atmosphere in one minute,” she said. “See if you can contact Alamo.”
Pulling out his communicator, Cooper set the range as high as he could, ramping up the feed with total disregard for the battery life, and said, “Cooper to Alamo, come in. Cooper to Alamo, come in, please.” He glanced across, shook his head, and said, “No reply. I'll set it to automatic. Just keep gaining speed.”
Looking back to the sensor display, he frowned. As fast as they were flying, the gunboat had the advantage, and was inexorably heading towards them. He looked around the bridge, trying to find something that resembled an electronic warfare station, but there was nothing in evidence.
“Damn it, we're too heavy,” Cantrell said.
“Bit late for me to go on a diet,” Cooper replied.
Shaking her head, she said, “The hold's full of cargo. All that heavy mass they brought on board is crippling our acceleration. We might outrun them if we can lighten the load.”
Nodding, he looked around the panel, and quickly came across the cargo airlock controls, handled by remote from the bridge, He turned the activation key, a series of red warnings flashing on, the computer trying to politely tell him that he was about to do something he really didn't want to do. Reaching out for the controls, he paused.
“What are you waiting for?” she asked. “Dump it.”
“Not yet,” he said. “Even if we do lighten, there's a good chance they'll catch up with us anyway.” He looked down at the panel, and said, “This isn't my field, but that doesn't look like much of a window of opportunity to me.”
“One salvo will do more than enough damage,” she said, rapping the panel with her fingers. “Maybe if we cut the window tighter, it might make the difference.”
“No,” he said. “Physical countermeasures will do the job.”
Her eyes widened, and she said, “Are you saying what I think you are saying?”
With a smile, he replied, “You'll be getting drinks for this story for decades, Lise.”
“You're crazy. I'm locked in a cockpit with a crazy man.” She glanced at her controls as a light winked red, and continued, “And we're now out of the atmosphere. Get it set up, and try and keep the timing as tight as you can. If this is going to work, it's going to be close.”
“Still no response to our signal,” Cooper said. “I guess the gunboat must be jamming us. We'll have to get well clear of it.” Glancing at the clock on the wall, mercifully a United Nations piece, he said, “We're going to be tight on the Administrator's deadline, though.”
“Set it up to broadcast automatically. I don't suppose there's any chance trying to get sense out of the gunboat, is there?”
“If they could talk to us, I'm sure they'd have threatened us already.”
As the curve of the planet fell away below them, the transport still boosting onto a random trajectory, swinging around the equator for maximum boost as the apogee of their orbit grew higher by the second, Cooper's eyes locked onto the single point that was running towards them, the gunboat that remained locked on an intercept course. He might be struggling to work out what the numbers beside the display meant, but he could certainly tell that they were growing shorter, the time to intercept getting closer and closer.
He glanced at his communicator, willing the signal to get through, to reach Alamo with the information they had to pass on. It wasn't just the people on the base that were in need of rescue, but the ones in the village, the massacred community, deserved justice. For those who perpetrated their crimes, and those who ordered them, to face the sentence they'd earned with their barbarous acts.
“Getting close to escape velocity, I think,” Cantrell said. “I'm going to cut in a minute. If we go out of orbit we might end up anywhere in the system. For all I know we are already.”
“Enemy ship closing, awfully fast,” Cooper said, shaking his head in frustration. “I barely understand these controls at the best of times, damn it.”
“Just get ready with the cargo airlock release,” she said.
“I'm on it,” he replied, his hand poised over the controls. The gunboat moved in behind them, still accelerating, recklessly heading into the darkness. Cantrell reached over to the thruster controls, poising her hands to play the evasive action symphony, waiting for the missiles to fire.
With no warning or fanfare, one dot became five, four of them speeding away from the gunboat, racing towards the transport. The gunboat moved away, the missiles fired at closest approach as it curved back towards the planet, still firing its engines, hoping for another pass in the event the first one failed. As the missiles tracked in, that seemed unlikely.
The ship lurched around, Cantrell working the maneuvering jets as hard as she could, though far from trying to outpace the missiles, get out of the way, she was corralling them, driving them as close as she could to a single, incoming trajectory, lining up for a very final strike on their target. He looked at the controls, at the sensor screen, even up at the monitor in the impossible hope that he would see something useful, the starfield seeming to swing as the ship pivoted, the engine briefly roaring again to gain a trace more speed, a second more advantage.
“Now!” Cantrell yelled, and his finger jerked down, the ship lurching forward as the air in the cargo bay escaped, sucking the contents out behind it, the particulate cargo forming a brief fan behind the ship. It was too much to hope that it would confuse the missiles for long, but the engine roared again, and the brief half-second of electronic interference as the warheads swam through the sea of mud and rock did the job, forcing them into the perfect position for the heat wash of the engine to run over them, melting them into slag.
“That was close,” Cooper said, releasing the breath he hadn't known he was holding. “And the worst part of it all is that I don't have first idea just how close it was. I still can't read any of these instruments.”
“Alamo to Cooper,” a voice said. “Receiving you loud and clear. Alamo to Cooper. We read you. If you can hear us, come in, please.”
“That's more like it,” Cantrell said, and Cooper snatched up the communicator.
“Cooper here. Have you been tracking us?”
“Affirmative,” Orlova said. “We have a good course plot.”
“Good, because we're going to need all the astrogational data you can give us. Cantrell and I are on this ship alone, and we can only read half the instruments. How long before the deadline expires?”
“We'll upload everything we can to Cantrell's datapad. The deadline expires in about six minutes from now. There's still no sign that anything is going to break the deadlock
other than battle. I'd advise that you boost to escape orbit and try and sit it out. Lieutenant Powell is working on a course for you.”
“I need a hook up, Captain, one that will punch through to every ship in the two fleets, as well as to every installation in the system. Alamo's done it once already, I know. Can it do it again?”
There was a pause, and a different voice answered, “Weitzman here. I think so, Ensign, but we won't be able to hold the transmission for long, not if they try and shut it down.”
“Trust me, Captain, once this message gets through, no-one who is watching is going to turn off their communicators.”
“Gunboat's coming back around for another pass,” Cantrell said, looking over at Cooper's side of the console. “Best guess an intercept in seven minutes.”
“If you could include our orbital friends in that transmission, I'd be very glad,” Cooper added.
“Wait one, Ensign,” Weitzman said.
“What have you found out, Ensign?” Orlova asked.
“How many locals do you still have on Alamo?”
“Three. Why?”
“Have Doctor Duquesne take samples for DNA testing. If my hunch is right, you're going to need that information in the very near future.”
“I don't suppose there is the slightest idea that you're going to tell me what all of this is about, is there?”
“You wouldn't believe me if I told you, Captain. It makes me sick to my stomach just to think of it, but we've got to make sure everyone hears this, good and loud.” Pulling out a datastick, he slid it into his communicator, watching as the files fed into the system, ready for transmission.
“And...that's it, Ensign,” Weitzman said. “You're on, but I think you'll only have a few dozen seconds.”
Taking a deep breath, Cooper began, “I am the commander of the Espatier Force on the surface of Arcadia. A few hours ago, we learned that a secret group within the Council was conducting systematic massacres of the local population, the survivors of the Cataclysm, as well as abducting women of childbearing age for the purpose of extracting genetic material.”
Battlecruiser Alamo: Triple-Edged Sword Page 19