His lips twisted in a wry grin. Maybe I should have thought all this through before ‘volunteering’ for this mission.
There has to be a solution to this dilemma—but what? How do I stop the captain from launching the nukes and killing innocent people? I haven’t even been able to come up with a good excuse to go to the missile room. How am I going to get past the guard at the doorway?
MosVeksal reported over his shoulder in the measured tone of a professional who has done something countless times. “We have arrived in the VisiWora system, Captain, one light-second from orbit. Scanning. Acquiring targets. Targets acquired.”
Captain Tro settled back in his command chair. “Fire.”
“Firing quems. Direct hit on both targets. Shields weakened.”
“Fire APCs.”
“Firing. Direct hit. Both targets disabled.”
Tro nodded to his pilot. “Good. Thank you, Mos. Please hail airspace control.”
“Aye, Captain. VisiWora airspace control, this is Queen Anne’s Revenge.”
A deep Sestran voice responded. “What have you done?”
“I just disabled both of your patrol ships. I trust I have your attention now. Put me through to Planetary Governor PanWendil.”
“But— I cannot just—”
Captain Tro cut in sharply. “Shut up and listen!” His voice returned to its normal tone. “Tell him this is Captain Feshen Tro of Queen Anne’s Revenge. Be sure to mention the Qwarille system and the former moon called Mestarses. I imagine he has heard of them and I think he will want to talk with me.
“Oh, and be sure to tell him that if I do not hear from him within five minutes, I will launch a nuclear missile at one of his cities.”
Shit!
Hal stood in the passageway, around the curve from the missile room, with his back pressed flat against the wall. Moments earlier, while passing the room—still protected by an armed guard—he heard the unmistakable rumble-thump of tubes being loaded. That meant the ship was arming itself for battle—either on attack or defense.
But when he also heard a faint, “Careful with that nuke, you speklat!” through the wall, he knew he’d run out of time.
They’re getting ready to fire at least one nuke. There’s no time for anything subtle or elaborate. I’ve only got one option. Shit.
He took a deep breath, squared his shoulders, and turned back toward the missile room, hands in pockets. He was the picture of nonchalance, whistling as he walked.
He approached the hulking guard, who outweighed him by half again. “Hey, how’s it going…Glar, wasn’t it?”
The guard nodded. “Slow day, until just now. Sounds like things are getting interesting.” He nodded toward the missile room door.
“It’s about time. It was getting pretty boring around here. Hey, do you happen to know what they’re serving in the commissary today? I hope it’s not the same vrekkel stew we had yesterday. My stomach is still talking to me about that one.”
“I have no ide—”
The Melphim grunted as Hal whipped the folding knife out of his pocket, flicked it open, and plunged it into the guard’s shoulder all in one motion. He ripped the blast rifle from the grasp of the weakened arm and used it to club the shocked guard into senselessness.
“Sorry, Glar. Nothing personal.”
Deciding that pulling the knife from the wound would likely cause it to bleed more freely, Hal chose to leave it where it was. He took the guard’s access badge and waved it at the door. It slid open and he charged inside.
“Governor PanWendil, you know who I am and of what I am capable. You will transfer eighty million senchos to the account number I am sending you, at the Planetary Bank of Sestra. You will do that within fifteen minutes, or I will launch a two-hundred kiloton nuclear missile at your domed colony city, BalTora, on your fourth planet’s moon. I believe you have more than ten thousand people living there. Should that be insufficient incentive to part with the money, I am prepared to launch a second nuke at your capital city fifteen minutes after the first. In that eventuality I expect the casualties to top several million.”
“But I— But you— That is not enough time!”
“You have fifteen minutes, governor. I suggest you hurry. I do not believe your constituency would view the loss of two cities favorably during your reelection campaign.”
Hal slid the gun’s power setting to maximum and blew the door controls hidden in the wall all to hell. As designed, the door slid open. Then, with the setting at minimum, Hal shot everyone within sight. Five pirates fell. Hal couldn’t see number six, but wherever he was he must have been within reach of an alarm.
The SKREE-SKREE-SKREE of the klaxon grated on his nerves, but Hal knew he had only seconds to do as much damage as possible before the cavalry arrived.
“Mos! What in Jendor’s Belly is that alarm?” Captain Tro didn’t need surprises at this moment.
“Someone in the missile room hit the panic button. I do not know the problem. No one is responding to my hails. Everything reads ready. I am attempting to diagnose the problem.”
Hal sealed the compartment door and then began blasting all the control panels he could see. Metal slagged and components flared and sparked. Something caught fire, adding smoke to the stench of fused and vaporized materials. The smoke was probably toxic, but Hal didn’t care. Another minute and it wouldn’t matter.
“Captain! Now I read diagnostic failures across the board. I read catastrophic failure to multiple systems. What—? There is something seriously wrong in the missile room.”
“Dispatch a repair crew and security, on the double! We cannot afford for anything to go wrong now. We have to appear in control until after the governor pays, whether we have reason to launch or not. And shut off that alarm!”
“Aye, Captain. Teams are on the way. They will be there within seconds.”
When he ran out of panels to blast, Hal wrestled open one of the loaded tubes and fired at the back end of the missile. Reinforced to withstand the high temperature of its own engine, it was extremely heat-resistant—but not designed to withstand the direct fire of a blaster for long. In an instant, it began glowing a dull red.
A few more seconds, and the fuel tank’ll rupture. This whole place’ll blow. Let’s see ‘em put the nukes back together after that! With luck, the explosion might even take out the engine room.
Good luck, Kalen. Give ‘em hell. And take care of that little girl.
“Captain! Now the temperature inside Missile Tube 7 reads dangerously high. The fire suppression system in the missile room is offline. If someone does not manually engage it, the missile will blow. If it blows—”
Finally, Captain Tro, a battle-scarred veteran of the Unity wars, felt the first stirrings of fear. If it blows, that means the end of my ship. Perhaps the end of us all.
“Get someone inside that room, now!”
Someone pounded on the door and the clang was barely audible over the screeching klaxon. “Open the door!”
“Ha! You’re too late, you bastards!” In the sudden auditory vacuum caused by the cessation of the alarm, his words echoed in his ears. The creaking, hissing, and crackling of the metal as it grew hotter and expanded almost seemed to Hal to be the cries of a wounded animal fighting for its life.
The missile glowed ever brighter, morphing from red into white. The heat radiating back at Hal was intense, singeing the hairs on the back of his hands, but he wasn’t about to flinch. Not now, not ever. This was his last chance to strike a blow against the pirates and he wasn’t about to waste it.
Any second…. C’mon, c’mon! Hurry up! Blow already!
Now the tail end was incandescent.
He caught a flicker of motion out of the corner of his eye—the other technician?
C’mon! Just another second or two.
Then the universe exploded in a brilliant starburst of light—and Hal no longer worried about pirates.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
“Are you
sure Merry will be all right alone?” Kalen frowned up at Sue.
“She is asleep and should remain so for hours. As long as we return before she wakes, she will never know we left.”
“I hope you’re right. I’d hate for her to wake up alone. She’d be terrified.”
“Then let us not tarry.”
Kalen gave it another moment’s thought before agreeing. “All right, then. We meet back here in two hours at the latest. Make sure you aren’t seen entering or leaving the targets; and, most especially, be sure you aren’t followed back here. If you think you’re being followed, head for the tunnel maze. We can’t have anyone tracing us back to Merry.”
“Of course.”
“Okay. You know your targets. Good luck, Sue.”
“And to you, Captain.”
The two left the warehouse a minute apart and headed in opposite directions. The corridors were sparsely populated this late in the third shift. Kalen pushed the cart he’d originally used to transport Merry to the warehouse. As before, the top was stacked with neatly folded uniforms. Unlike previously, however, the cabinet contained cargo of a much different sort.
Separated by pillows to limit jostling, the cart carried eight jars full of liquid. Since Hal’s departure four days before, Sue and Kalen had accumulated various cleaning compounds from several janitorial closets. Nude had also supplied some medicinal alcohol from the med center, which he smuggled under his robes to his room.
Using her knowledge of chemistry, Sue determined which chemicals to use and in which proportions to create an explosive mixture. While she worked on that, Kalen had spent his time dismantling the flashlights, smokeweed lighters, and other mechanisms and power sources they’d accumulated over the past two weeks, and turning them into crude timers.
The difficult part had been combining the timers with the jars full of chemicals to turn them into bombs—without blowing themselves up in the process. Somehow, with more dumb luck than skill, they managed. Now Kalen wheeled a cart full of unstable chemicals attached to homemade and equally unstable timers, hoping the next uneven spot in the floor didn’t splatter the contents of the cart—and Kalen with it—all over the corridor walls and ceiling.
As nerve-wracking as it is for me, it must be doubly so for Sue. If a jar leaks, at least I have the cart for protection from the chemicals. She’s got six of them strapped around her waist under that gown. I never should have let her do it, but—she wouldn’t take no for an answer, damn it!
They’d wrapped the jars in uniform sleeves, both to keep them from clinking together and to soak up any minor leakage.
I swear, she must be related to Nude. She’s every bit as stubborn as he is. You can’t talk that female out of anything she has her mind set on.
As crude as the timers were, Kalen and Sue knew they could never count on them all going off at the same time. That was the reason for the two hour deadline. Because they had so many bombs to plant, they’d had to set all the timers before they left the warehouse. The timers were set to go off in roughly three hours—very roughly. The duo had to be sure they were well away from the targets when the explosions occurred.
Even that was iffy. There was no guarantee the timers would work at all. For that reason, they’d decided to plant two bombs at each target. That doubled their chances of success, as well as doubling the amount of flammable, corrosive material—assuming Sue got the chemical mixtures correct. With fourteen bombs between them, they had seven targets, three for Sue and four for Kalen.
The two had argued over the choices of targets. Sue, with fire in her eyes, had wanted a direct assault, one that would kill the most pirates—something like leaving a cart full of explosives in a barracks or commissary. Kalen had countered that an attack like that made them no better than the pirates themselves.
An eye for an eye, she’d said.
Terrorists, he’d said.
In the end, he convinced her that they could hurt the pirates more by attacking the infrastructure of the fortress than by attacking the pirates themselves. After all, he argued, they could quickly bring in new pirates. Rebuilding would take longer.
It took hours of discussion, but eventually she agreed.
They’d had to choose their targets with care. Anything too major would be guarded. So they had to look for smaller targets with a big impact. Fortunately, any place as large and complex as Smuggler’s Cove had to have a sophisticated network of pump rooms, power substations, junction boxes, conduit junctures, and other focal points in the infrastructure spider web.
Sue had the calibrator with her, to let her into locked rooms. Kalen’s targets included large open areas with access to exposed pipes and conduits. All the time he and Hal had spent scouting the fortress for targets of opportunity was about to bear fruit.
Barring complications, he estimated that he’d be back in the warehouse in about an hour and a half. Although Sue had fewer targets, hers were scattered over a wider area so she could tackle all the locked rooms. As a result, it might take her the full two hours to complete her mission.
If everything goes according to plan.
“Dispatch a fire-suppression team!” Security Chief MekFensal yelled to one of the guards monitoring the status of the fortress.
Hearing the commotion, Tarl Penrod left his office and ran to the catwalk where he could look down on ‘the Pit’ below. “What’s up, Mek?”
“Sir, there has been an explosion in one of the optical fiber junction rooms. We just dispatched a team to put out the fire.”
“An explosion?” Penrod frowned. “What could explode in a junction room? It’s just a bunch of switches and cables.”
“Unknown, sir. There should be nothing flammable or explosive there, but it is possible someone accidentally left something there that overheated or caught a spark from the equipment.”
“All right. Keep me apprised, Mek.” He turned and muttered to himself. “Doesn’t anything work around here anymore?”
“Sir!” MekFensal shouted. “We have another explosion—in a pump room.”
Penrod spun and dashed back to the catwalk railing. “Another one? Did the first one spread?”
MekFensal shook his head. “No, sir. The explosions are in completely different sectors.” The light in the command center flickered and steadied. “Wait! We have another one. This time in an electrical junction room. Again, in a different sector. The backup system kicked in, so there is no disruption in power.”
“Is there any way they could be connected?”
“No sir. The explosions had to be deliberate.”
“God damn it! It has to be Jeffries or Nellis—whichever one didn’t board Queen Anne’s Revenge.”
“Another explosion! And ano—!”
Darkness. A moment later, the backup generator kicked in and the emergency light panels lit up, casting harsh shadows on everyone.
A fifth alarm panel flashed on the console below, followed by a sixth. And then a seventh. The last was accompanied by a deep rumble felt through the feet rather than heard.
“Shit! Jern!”
“Captain, we have the door open now,” MosVeksal reported from the pilot’s couch.
“Good. What is the status?” Captain Tro allowed himself to relax slightly and lean back in his command chair.
“The missile tube is dangerously hot. The missile’s fuel could still ignite. The fire suppression team is attempting to both put out the fire in the missile room and to cool off the missile.”
“Make sure they use care around the missile. If they cool it too quickly, the casing could crack and spill fuel into the missile room.”
“Aye-aye.”
“As soon as the fire is suppressed, get any survivors to sickbay. Do we know who started this mess?”
“Aye. According to the missile tech who kept him from blowing us all to Beljin’s Pit, it was the new man, the replacement.”
Captain Tro frowned. “Really. If he survived, have him treated and thrown in the brig. I
will want to question him later. Meanwhile, how much time is left on our ultimatum?”
“Less than six minutes, sir.”
“What is the status of the nukes? Can we fire?”
“No sir. One missile is damaged. It might be repairable, but not in six minutes. The other missile is untouched, but the firing controls were destroyed.”
“Jendor take the bastard who did this! Can we fire manually?”
“Negative. The circuits that control Tubes 6 and 7 were destroyed.”
“Blast! Can we transfer the working missile to an operable tube?”
MosVeksal shook her head, no. “All the controls in the port missile room were damaged. We have no operable tubes in that room.”
Tro snorted in anger. “We cannot afford to look weak in front of the VisiWoran governor. If he does not pay up in time, we must be ready to launch. Can we transfer the missile to the starboard missile room?”
“Hmm. I believe so, but that would entail opening both rooms to space. They would have to use a gravity sled to remove the missile from the port missile room out through the access bay, then float it around to the starboard room, bring it in through the bay on that side, and then load the tube normally.”
“Can it be done in five minutes?”
“I cannot imagine how, sir, but perhaps seven to eight minutes, if they hurry.”
“Get the missile teams on it ASAP! I want to break records—but not the missile. Its safety is of the utmost importance.”
“Aye, Captain. I am informing the teams now.”
“Good. Meanwhile, let us hope the governor decides to pay before his fifteen minutes are up.”
My Other Car is a Spaceship Page 23