Crossfire (Star Kingdom Book 4)

by Lindsay Buroker

  “How’s the pay?”

  “There isn’t any, not for me. I understand Kim is getting paid.” Casmir almost joked that she should be the one over here trying to remove bombs, but he wouldn’t wish this on anyone else. And it wasn’t as if she was entirely safe back on the Osprey. This was only a pause in their journey to go fight astroshamans for possession of that gate.

  He grimaced at the thought, reminded that he was once again responsible, however inadvertently, for her being dragged off into space and put in danger. He hoped she got a lot of story ideas from these adventures and that they resulted in her writing a bestseller in her spare time.

  “I have removed the malleable explosive,” Zee said.

  “Excellent work, Zee.” Casmir kept his head behind the pod and didn’t look. They weren’t in the clear yet.

  A hiss sounded, the seal breaking on the airlock.

  “Does he know how to cycle it?” Grunburg asked.

  “He’ll figure out the panel. It’s not that hard.”

  A soft clank sounded.

  “That’s great,” Grunburg said. “He’s amazing.”

  “Yes, he is.” Since Casmir didn’t have children, he could only imagine what it was like to feel the pride of fatherhood, but he wouldn’t be surprised if it was something like this.

  “I am opening the outer hatch,” Zee said from the airlock chamber, his voice now coming over a speaker. “The device is—”

  The shuttle lurched hard, the deck tilting and hurling Casmir toward the side. He rammed into Grunburg, and they tumbled into the hull as the lights flickered.

  “What happened?” Grunburg blurted.

  “I assume our explosive went off right next to the shuttle.” Casmir righted himself as the lights shut off completely. He looked at the airlock hatch, the night vision in his contacts compensating for the low illumination—only a few indicators glowed on the control panel. “There’s not a gaping hole in the hull, so that’s a plus.”

  Zee opened the inner hatch and pushed himself back inside, grabbing a handhold as he shut the hatch again. He gave Casmir a thumbs-up, his fingers having returned to their usual shape.

  “Looks like we got rid of it just in time,” Casmir said.

  “A little sooner might have been better.” Grunburg pulled himself to the control panel and thumbed on auxiliary lighting.

  A thud sounded, and Casmir looked up as Tork, now fully online with his eyes open, arrowed into Zee with enough force to knock him from the handhold. Their momentum carried them toward the pods, and Casmir ducked for cover again.

  “Get him, Zee!” he shouted, though it was unnecessary. Zee knew how to defend himself.

  They slammed into his pod and bounced off, grappling. Grunburg’s cables dangled from an open panel in Tork’s head. The damaged android fought like a cornered cat in a back alley in Zamek.

  Grunburg pulled out his stunner but only looked at it. The weapon wouldn’t stop either of the combatants. Casmir trusted that Zee would come out on top, but perhaps not before android limbs littered the shuttle. An elbow slammed into the hull, leaving a dent.

  When Casmir saw an opening, he pushed past them. His momentum took him to the worktable—they should have strapped the android down far more tightly and with stronger cables. He hunted around for his tool satchel and found it floating near the ceiling. He yanked it down and grabbed his screwdriver.

  “Zee, can you bring him back here? Angle him so I can get to the panel in the back of his neck.”

  Zee launched himself off the ceiling, ramming into Tork’s chest, and again, they flew through the shuttle, limbs tangled. Somehow, Zee forced the android around, then held him still so Casmir could access the panel. It was still open from Grunburg’s tinkering, cables dangling from the ports. He did his best to get close enough to poke around but not so close that he risked an elbow like titanium striking him in the ribs.

  The switch was clearly in the OFF position.

  “Lies,” he muttered, then jerked his head back as Tork reached his fingers over his shoulder, trying to grasp him.

  Zee caught the hand before it got close to Casmir. He clamped down with force that would have crushed human fingers. And would crush android fingers, as well, if it continued.

  “Try not to damage him further,” Casmir said. “Please. Just hold him as still as you can. I appreciate it. Thank you, Zee.”

  Casmir pried open the entire panel, revealing a tangle of wires leading to the circuit boards inside.

  “It is not always easy protecting you, Casmir Dabrowski.”

  “I know. You were probably better off with Kim.”

  “She was restful.”

  Casmir pulled wires from sockets so he could get deeper into the android’s head, located his CPU, and levered the chip out of its socket. Tork stopped struggling.

  “Did that finally knock him out?” Casmir asked, since the schematic showed both backup power supplies and an auxiliary CPU.

  “I no longer read a power signature,” Zee said.

  “Let’s hope he’s not playing possum again.” Casmir pointed to the table. “Strap him down, please. I’d ask you to also sit on his chest, but that probably wouldn’t be effective in zero-g.”

  Casmir looked at the CPU, then zipped it into one of the pockets of his galaxy suit.

  “We should have tried to grab the video footage while it was online.” Grunburg returned to the table, holding one of the cables that had fallen free in the fight, along with his tablet. “We could have let your bodyguard tear off its limbs so it couldn’t fight us.”

  “I suppose, but I would have felt bad beating up on him more.”

  Grunburg stared at him. “That thing tried to kill us.”

  “Technically, someone programmed him to try to kill us.”

  “That makes it all right then.”

  “Maybe we can program him to work for us. Ishii said that’s your specialty, right?”

  “Programming weapons software and making updates to the operating system for the Osprey, not androids, but yes.”

  Casmir waved for Grunburg to continue his attempts to download from the android’s memory. “If you can’t get anything, I can put the CPU back in, but here, let me reconnect the power lines without it, and see if that’s enough. His memory cards and hard drives are still in place.”

  “Hopefully, that will work. Since your friend isn’t able to sit on chests currently.”

  Zee had found a new spot he liked, his back to the ceiling as he looked down on the table from above.

  While Grunburg worked, Casmir poked into his satchel again, grumbling in frustration as tools tried to float out. He needed to zero-g-proof his tools. But not now. Now, he had a project.

  He pulled out the android hand he’d acquired.

  Grunburg frowned. “You’re not going to fix him, are you?”

  “Sure. While you’re handling the data, I’ll handle the, uh, hand.” Casmir waved it, fingers flopping.

  “You’re the boss, Professor.”

  “Am I? I think you’re the only one here who believes that.”

  Grunburg looked up at Zee.

  “The only one on the warship,” Casmir amended and got to work.

  “Only because they haven’t taken your classes and don’t know that you’re a fun professor. And an easy grader.”

  “I’m not easy. All of my students deserve the grades they get.” As Casmir worked on the hand, his foot hooked under the table to keep him in place, he felt a twinge of homesickness. He’d been too busy to think much about his colleagues and the students he’d been teaching, but the fact that he’d been chased off Odin in the middle of the semester had left him with a lack of closure. When he’d been back home for those brief days, he’d learned that his assistant and another colleague had taken over his classes, but he couldn’t help but feel that he’d abandoned those students.

  Would he ever get to return to his normal life again? Where he lectured and drew enthusiastically on holo-
boards for students who almost always listened? Or, with more people gunning for him every month, would he end up as some renegade on the run? Maybe he’d end up working on Rache’s ship, after all.

  “What the hell is going on over there?” Captain Ishii’s voice came over the comm so abruptly that Casmir dropped his pliers. Fortunately, the hand was already attached.

  “Sir?” Grunburg looked toward the navigation console without leaving his data link.

  “You transmitted a report, but when we opened it, it’s a bunch of garbage. What is this? Computer code?”

  “Uh.” Grunburg met Casmir’s eyes, fear flashing there. “I better look at our comm.”

  As he launched himself toward the console up front, Casmir checked the scanner again. Tork was the only thing he could imagine transmitting something, but it showed his power was still off. He registered as a dead lump of chips, synth-skin, metal, and wire.

  “Zee?” Casmir looked up. “Do you read anything from the android?”

  “Negative.”

  “Either he’s fooling us, or Ishii is wrong.”

  “It looks like the comm opened itself,” Grunburg said slowly, his hands checking and double-checking the controls. “But I don’t show that we sent anything. Uhm, this looks like an update on our environmental statistics. Neither Casmir nor I did this, sir. It had to have been the android. Unless there’s a stealthed ship out there that somehow piggybacked off our comm.” Grunburg rapped his knuckles against the console. “Captain, are there any other ships in the area?”

  “Not unless they’re hiding behind a slydar hull,” Ishii said. “The Eagle is in orbit on the far side of the moon, looking for any other clues that might have been left behind.”

  Casmir grimaced. What if there was a hidden ship? “Could Rache be around and still angling for the gate? Or is it possible the astroshamans left a hidden shuttle here to keep an eye on us?”

  A garbled line of speech came back, Ishii’s voice but now chopped and mangled.

  “Can you repeat that, sir?” Grunburg checked the controls to make sure it wasn’t something on their side, and shrugged helplessly back at Casmir. “I didn’t read that.”

  “…a damn virus,” came Ishii’s words out of the garble. “Turn it off!”

  “A virus?” Grunburg asked. “What’s it doing?”

  The channel cut off.

  Grunburg cursed and hammered the controls. “I’m trying to get them back.”

  Casmir frowned down at the Tork-57 that was once again strapped to the table. “Are you the cause of this?”

  Zee pushed himself down from the ceiling, rotated, and magnetized his feet to lock to the deck.

  “Did something change?” Casmir asked him. “Did you detect him transmitting anything?”

  “No, but if I dismantle him into his most constituent parts, whatever he’s doing will cease.”

  Casmir imagined ten thousand bits of android floating around the cabin but shook his head. “It may be too late.”

  If Tork had done it, it must have been when he was powered up and fighting them.

  “Is it not best to be certain?” Zee asked.

  Casmir had seen numerous examples of very good stealth technology of late, both Rache’s slydar hull and the astroshamans’ stealth generators. He didn’t think they could rule out the possibility of another ship being responsible, but maybe Zee was right. Maybe utterly destroying Tork was safest.

  “Their power went out,” Grunburg said.

  “What?” Casmir gaped at the display. All of the running lights visible on the Osprey had gone dark. “The warship’s power? What about auxiliary?”

  “How should I know? I’m as in the dark as you are. No, as they are. I’m trying to comm them back, but nobody’s answering. Readings definitely show that they’re powered down. The heat signature from the engine compartment is dropping fast.”

  “So, they don’t even have maneuvering thrusters? We’re in a low orbit. That’s going to deteriorate within days. If not hours.”

  “If they don’t run out of air first,” Grunburg said grimly.

  7

  Kim drummed her fingers on the counter in her lab, waiting for the lights to come back on. Almost ten minutes had passed since they went out—since all power in her lab went out, including the power that opened the sliding door to the corridor—and she was starting to worry that something significant had happened. She’d tried the comm, but that was also out.

  She was tempted to send a message to Casmir and get an update on his progress, but if he was doing delicate android surgery, she didn’t want to interrupt him.

  A knock sounded at the door.

  “Finally.” Kim raised her voice, wondering how much sound insulation there was in the lab. “I’m stuck in here. I don’t have any power.”

  A wrenching noise made her jump. It sounded like the door being forced aside, but the light she expected to flood the lab did not come.

  “Kim?” Asger asked, his voice muted, as if he wore his helmet.

  “I’m here. What’s going on?”

  “Nothing good. Here, I brought you something.” Footsteps clanged softly as he entered the lab, the darkness complete around them. “I’m glad you’re in your galaxy suit. We’re still spinning—an object in motion, and all that—but I’m not sure how much longer that’ll continue. We might lose gravity, so you’ll have to use the magnetic boots. Among other things.”

  Something hard bumped her hand, and she patted in the air. A cool metal cylinder.

  “An oxygen tank?” The first tendril of fear wormed through her stomach as she realized this power outage wasn’t local to her lab and that something bad must have happened. Something very bad.

  “Yeah. Does your galaxy suit have night vision?”

  “Yes.” Kim tucked her braid out of the way and ordered the Glasnax helmet to unfold and snap into place. It had better night vision than her contacts. The feature came on automatically, and a green version of Asger came into view, complete with cloak and pertundo.

  “I came from the bridge via the ladder wells—the lifts are, of course, out. The last I heard, someone—or something—transmitted a virus to us over the comm. There are supposed to be security protocols programmed in to prevent that, but the bridge crew was hypothesizing that it’s something new that the computers haven’t seen before. I just know that a virus got in, and we’re screwed. It took down both the main and auxiliary power. The engines are off. We don’t have thruster control, environmental control, or even power to the comms.”

  “No environmental control means no life support, I gather.”

  “That’s right.”

  Kim thought of how many people were aboard—wasn’t it a crew of five hundred and another hundred marines?—and wondered how long it would take for them to breathe all the air. Or, more accurately, expire toxic levels of carbon dioxide. If she’d known the cubic feet of space in the ship and the current air pressure, she could have set up the equation in her head, but she wasn’t sure she wanted to run the numbers. Ignorance was bliss, and, as Casmir liked to add on, was therefore less likely to induce a panic attack.

  “What about the other warships?” Kim asked. “When they realize they can’t communicate with us, they’ll send help, right?”

  “Two of them veered off two days ago—I think they were dropping off robotic builders and supplies for reconstructing those refineries—with orders to meet us at the gate when we’re done here. The other warship is also here, but it’s in orbit on the other side of the moon, searching for clues over there. It could get to us in time to help if it figures out we’re in trouble. Unfortunately, Ishii had no idea this was coming, and definitely not coming so quickly. He was in the middle of talking to Casmir and his officer in the shuttle when everything went out.”

  “We can just message them chip-to-chip to get the word out, can’t we?” Kim tapped her helmet near her temple. Her chip ran off the energy her body created from oxidative phosphorylation and woul
d continue to work for as long as the rest of her body did, even if she was fasting.

  “I’m guessing Ishii has already spoken to his officer that way, but you can try Casmir. Ishii thought the transmission of the virus came from the shuttle—the android—so it’s possible they’re in trouble too.”

  Casmir, Kim sent a message. What’s going on over there?

  She grimaced, realizing his shuttle could have just as easily been deprived of power if someone was flinging viruses around.

  Kim! Are you all right?

  So far. We’re without power.

  I know. Is Asger over there?

  In the lab with me.

  Oh, good. I’m including him in my message. So far, we haven’t been affected here on the shuttle. Grunburg sent a comm to the other warship, the Eagle. I think they’re coming to help. They’re about six hours away, but they’re concerned about being attacked with this virus, so they want us to make sure that can’t happen before they get close. Which doesn’t make us feel at all pressured. But we’re working on it. We’re trying to figure out if it was a virus, as Ishii said, and if it’s possible to create an antivirus program. But we won’t be able to upload it to the Osprey’s systems if there’s no power whatsoever. I hope Ishii has a bunch of smart engineers working hard.

  I’m positive everyone even remotely skilled in that area is working on the problem, Asger said. But I understand you did take Ishii’s best programmer.

  I did? Ishii picked Grunburg without any influence on my part. I—hold on. Problem.

  Kim waited, hoping the problem wasn’t that their shuttle had also been affected. Or afflicted? Did computer viruses have the same vernacular as biological viruses?

  Disturbed by the gap in her knowledge, she tried to access the network, but found she no longer had a strong enough signal from the nearest satellite. A transceiver aboard the Osprey must have been amplifying the signal. A transceiver that, along with everything else, was no longer working.

  “What’s taking him so long?” Asger shifted his weight, then sent, Casmir?

  No answer.

  Kim sank back against the counter, feeling helpless. She couldn’t help Casmir and couldn’t help the ship. The closest she could come was trying to breed some cyanobacteria to munch on carbon dioxide and produce oxygen, but there was no way she had the raw materials or time to grow enough bacteria to make a difference on a ship this size. She doubted she could even create enough to make a difference in her lab.