Duty, Honor, Planet: 02 - Honor Bound

by Rick Partlow

  “Yes?” she responded, purposely not using his name in case there was a reason for the private contact.

  “Ma’am, there’s a problem…I’d like to speak to you here in auxiliary control as soon as possible.”

  She frowned. “I’ll be right there.” This had better be important went unsaid but understood by her tone. She ended the call and unstrapped from her seat, looking over to Gianeto. “Commander Gianeto, you have the bridge.”

  “I have the bridge, aye, ma’am,” he acknowledged formally.

  Minishimi briskly exited the bridge, the thick vacuum doors sealing shut behind her with a sibilant hiss and a muffled thump, and then made for the lift station. She actually preferred the access tubes when they were in zero gravity, but under one g acceleration they weren’t an option.

  The auxiliary control room was at the opposite end of the habitable section of the ship, just ahead of engineering, and it took Minishimi a good ten minutes to reach it. She passed very few people along the way-nearly everyone was at their posts, at battle stations-and it seemed eerily like a ghost ship to her as she walked the silent corridors, the gentle tap of her soft-soled ship boots on the padded floor and the barely-audible hum of the ventilators the only sounds.

  The vacuum hatch to the auxiliary bridge was closed, but a palm to the plate beside it opened it and she stepped inside. The auxiliary bridge was a bit smaller than the main one and somehow felt more insular to her, its screens smaller and darker. Commander Phillip Duncan was alone in the room, standing behind the communications station, a troubled look on his gaunt, pale face.

  “Where’s the rest of the crew?” Minishimi asked sharply, glancing at the empty stations that should have been filled by the junior Communications, Tactical and Helm officers.

  “Confined to their quarters for the moment,” he said grimly. “Eventually, one of them is going to be in the brig.”

  “What’s going on, Commander?” She asked, having to remind herself not to call him “Jack.” Jack Durant was her usual XO and it was strange not having him on the cruise.

  “Before we made the transition,” he said, anger in his voice, “I was running a diagnostic on the communications station because the computer kept kicking out an error code in the daily reports. I found out that someone had loaded a worm into the communications computer. It was designed to take advantage of the disorientation we’ve been feeling every time we go through the wormholes. Immediately after each transition, it’s been sending out an automatic broadband signal, basically advertising our location and identity. Then it erases itself from the log so it never gets picked up by the main Comm station.”

  Minishimi hissed out a breath, feeling as if she’d just been punched in the gut. “We have a traitor on board,” she said, putting the unthinkable into words. “Is it Lt. Rojas?” Rojas was the junior Communications officer, the one who would have been assigned to that station in the auxiliary bridge.

  “I don’t think so,” Duncan told her, shaking his head, his long, horsey face seeming to get even longer. “She’d have to be pretty damned stupid to input the worm on her own station, ma’am. But it has to be one of the auxiliary bridge crew, and I think I have an idea who. Look at this, ma’am.” He waved at the readout on the Communications desk’s holographic display and Minishimi stepped over to the station. Duncan took a step back to let her get closer.

  “What am I looking at, Commander?” She asked, peering at the diagnostic report.

  “Right there, ma’am,” he leaned in, jabbing a finger at one of the lines. “I can’t be sure, but to me, that looks like a subroutine that shuts down the fusion reactor.”

  “Christ!” She exclaimed, squinting more closely at the display.

  So intent was she on the readout that she didn’t notice Duncan’s arm snake up around her neck until it was locked around her throat and the knife in his other hand was already darting in towards her left eye…

  Joyce Minishimi responded with reflexes honed by long years as an athlete and grabbed the descending hand before the blade reached her face. Instinctively, she knew she couldn’t match Duncan’s raw strength, so rather than pushing the arm away, she redirected it and pulled it down, plunging the dark, ceramic blade into the First Officer’s forearm that was across her throat.

  Duncan roared an incoherent mixture of pain and fury and slammed his knee into the small of Minishimi’s back, sending her plowing face-first into the Communications console as he staggered backwards.

  “Fucking bitch!” He screeched, gritting his teeth and pulling the blade out of his arm, moaning as he heard and felt it scrape on bone.

  Minishimi tasted blood as she sprawled across the station, her form half-hidden by holographic projections, but her brain screamed at her to ignore the agony in her back and the dull ache of her broken nose. She half-turned, ignoring the pain it caused in the spasming muscles of her lower back, and saw Duncan lurching towards her, knife raised in his left hand. She lashed out with her right heel, catching the man in his forward plant leg, feeling his kneecap dislocate with the impact.

  Duncan screamed, but kept lunging forward, the knife descending. Minishimi desperately tried to move but she was half-turned and only managed to shift slightly to the side, taking the blade in the right side of her chest. Shock draped over Joyce Minishimi like a fog bank and she barely registered it as Duncan let go of the knife to collapse back to the deck, clutching his horribly out of place knee. Slowly, dully, she felt herself sliding off the console and landing hard on her back, trying desperately to breathe and tasting blood in her throat as she did.

  Distantly, some clinical and detached part of her realized that the knife had gone into her lung and it had collapsed…she was about to drown in her own blood. She knew she should move, that she had to try to save herself, but everything seemed fuzzy and far away, as if she wasn’t really there.

  Then she saw Duncan lever himself off the ground with his one good leg and one good arm. For a moment, she thought he was intent on finishing her, but then she saw him clawing at the Communications console, and she realized he was trying to finish the job: he was going to execute that subroutine he’d so arrogantly showed her and shut down the ship’s reactor, leaving them helpless.

  Drawing on the deepest reserves she had, deeper than the ones that let her sprint the last hundred meters of the Hokkaido Marathon, she reached her left hand up to her chest and grasped the hilt of the knife that protruded from her flesh, then jerked it free with a strain that hurt worse than the blade sliding out of her lung.

  She wanted to gasp out a scream, but she swallowed it instead, swallowed blood as she fought the cough that was struggling its way out of her throat, and managed to roll over, getting one knee beneath her.

  Just one thing, she thought with dogged determination. Just got to do one more thing.

  Duncan was leaning against the terminal, trying to work the controls one-handed, nearly blinded with pain and oblivious to her as she rose up from the ground, the knife gripped point-down in her right hand. With the last bit of energy left in her, she raised the knife over her head and slammed the point into the base of Duncan’s neck, neatly severing his spinal cord.

  Duncan went limp, falling like a marionette with its strings cut and then she was falling too, collapsing almost on top of him as the blood filled her throat and everything was suddenly dark…

  Commander Gianeto’s head snapped around at the sound of the sensor alert, and his eyes went wide as he pulled the holographic readout forward, enlarging it so he could get a better look at the bogie.

  “Captain Minishimi,” he called over the ship’s intercom, “please return to the bridge, we have a bogie exiting the jumpgate! Captain Minishimi please return to the bridge.”

  “Damn,” Witten muttered, irritation in his usually stoic face. “Almost home, too…”

  Gianeto patched into Minishimi’s ‘link and called her again. “Captain, this is Gianeto, we have a Protectorate ship through the gate…it’
s accelerating on us at two g’s.” Silence. “Captain? Are you there? Can you hear me?” He turned to Lt. Higgs at the Communications console. “Lieutenant, get me a fix on Captain Minishimi’s ‘link, please.”

  Higgs checked her board, pulling up the ping location for the communications link. “She’s in the auxiliary control room still,” she said.

  “Security,” Gianeto called over his ‘link. “This is Gianeto…the Captain is on the auxiliary bridge and I can’t raise her on the intercom or her ‘link. Do you have a visual feed from the cameras in there?”

  “Negative, sir,” Lieutenant Marvez, the head Security officer, responded. “The cameras have been disabled via command override. Either the Captain or Commander Duncan did it, sir.”

  “Well, get someone over to the auxiliary bridge and get the Captain up here now…we have an enemy ship insystem!”

  “Aye, sir,” Marvez acknowledged. “I’ll go myself.”

  “Commander Duncan,” Gianeto called over the First Officer’s ‘link. “Commander Duncan, do you read?” Again, nothing. “Dammit!” Gianeto turned to the Helm officer. “Witten, is their ship going to be in weapons’ range before we reach the gate?”

  Witten checked his instruments before answering. “It’s going to be close, but we should be able to get through before he’s in laser or kinetic energy weapon range. Shipbusters are a different story.”

  “We have countermeasures for missiles,” Gianeto reasoned. “But just in case, prepare to take us to emergency high-g acceleration as soon as the Captain’s back on the bridge.”

  “Aye, Commander, will do.”

  Remembering what Captain Minishimi had told him, Gianeto punched the control to launch a Shipbuster missile at the bogie. The ship lurched noticeably as what was basically an unmanned intersystem spaceship separated from the weapons bay with a boost from the electromagnetic launcher. Once it was far enough away, the fusion drive ignited and it headed for the bogie at ten gravities acceleration. “One Shipbuster away,” Gianeto announced, mostly from habit. “Let’s see if it’ll do any good.” He switched the intercom to Security. “Lt. Marvez, what’s the word?”

  “Just getting there, sir,” Marvez panted, the quiver in his voice telling Gianeto that he was sprinting. “At the door…vacuum hatch is sealed, using my Security override.” Gianeto could hear the door hiss open. “Holy Christ!” Marvez exclaimed. “Oh my God! Sir, it’s Commander Duncan and Captain Minishimi! They’ve been stabbed…I think they’re both dead!”

  “What the fuck?” Gianeto exploded. “Marvez, get them both to the medical bay right now…and get some of your people on that auxiliary control room-find out what the hell happened!”

  “Will do, Commander!”

  Gianeto took a deep breath and turned to Witten and Higgs. “I need you two to witness that I am officially assuming command.”

  “Witnessed,” they both confirmed, their voices dull with disbelief, shock evident in their eyes. Under his breath, Witten muttered “Better you than me.” Gianeto shot him a dirty look, then glanced back at his board at the sound of an alarm beep.

  “The enemy ship is launching countermeasures,” Gianeto observed, checking the sensor readings. “Gonna take a while to see who wins that battle.”

  “We have over three hours to watch the show,” Witten reminded him.

  “Negative,” Gianeto said, shaking his head firmly. “We are not decelerating, Mr. Witten.” Gianeto punched in the control for the weapons section. “Commander Chappelle, this is Gianeto…I’m acting Captain. I need you to take the fusion trigger for the gate and put it on a Shipbuster. And I need it done in an hour.”

  “Uhh…” Chappelle stuttered. “Aye, sir, we can do it.”

  “Get back to me when it’s done.” Gianeto turned back to Witten. ““We are going to continue at one g until the Captain and Commander Duncan are in the medical bay, then we’re going to two g’s. We are going to be through that gate in under two hours, Francis…as far under as we can manage. We are going to be launching the trigger on a Shipbuster in an hour…at ten g’s, it can get to the gate in plenty of time to get it open for us, even as close as we’ll be to it.”

  “Aye, Captain,” Witten said, and there was no irony in the man’s tone.

  “Oh shit!” Gianeto exclaimed, almost drowning out the alarm from the tactical sensors as a pair of threat warning icons appeared on the display. “We have two more bogies going active between us and the gate. They must have been sitting there powered down, waiting for us.” Cursing under his breath, Gianeto hit a control. “I just launched our last two Shipbusters, besides the one we’re going to use to open the gate.” He snorted. “The Hell with it, I’m launching Area Denial missiles too…maybe we can overload their anti-missile systems.”

  “Why haven’t they launched on us?” Witten wondered.

  “I’ve been wondering that myself,” Gianeto admitted. “But I’ve been too busy to look gift horses in the mouth.”

  “Someone stabbed the Captain and Commander Duncan,” Higgs pointed out. “Maybe they were supposed to sabotage us. They could be expecting us to not be able to fight.”

  “That’s a damn fine point, Lieutenant,” Gianeto nodded. “And I think it’s a pretty good clue that we’re dealing with a traitor. But if he or she attacked Captain Minishimi and Commander Duncan, why didn’t they finish the job and disable the ship?”

  “Commander Gianeto!” Lt. Marvez’s voice came over Gianeto’s ‘link. “We’re in the medical bay. Commander Duncan is dead, non-revivable, but they’ve got the Captain breathing again; the doc says she’s going to make it.”

  “Thank God,” Gianeto breathed. “Any indication who did this to them?”

  “Sir, they did it to each other! The Captain’s ‘link was being jammed, but it was still recording to its onboard memory-I just downloaded it to my tablet while the docs were working on her. Commander Duncan lured the Captain to the auxiliary bridge, then he attacked her. He was going to disable the ship, but she managed to kill him first.”

  “Jesus Christ!” Higgs exclaimed from the Communications station, her grey eyes wide with disbelief. “Commander Duncan? But he’s been in the Spacefleet for fifteen years!”

  Witten shook his head. “Shit, if they expect us to go dead any minute and it doesn’t happen, they’re going to open fire pretty soon.”

  “Sound the alarms and accelerate to two g’s, Mr. Witten,” Gianeto ordered, his face taking a grim set. “Engineering,” he called, even as the acceleration klaxons began to sound.

  “Prieta here, Commander,” the chief engineer responded. If the chaos and alarms of the last few minutes had disturbed Prieta, he didn’t show it by his calm demeanor.

  “We salvaged a little antimatter from the Peboan system, Commander Prieta…how long will it keep our Eysselink field active if we use it?”

  “Minutes, Commander Gianeto,” Prieta estimated. “Five, perhaps ten if we don’t go over a few g’s acceleration.”

  “What are you thinking, Larry?” Witten blurted, then grimaced, realizing he’d broken protocol by using Gianeto’s first name in the current situation. Gianeto just smiled.

  “I am thinking, Francis, that there might be a way for us to make us through that gate alive after all.”

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  The emergency access shaft was bare metal about a meter wide with a single plastic rail running the length of the tube to use for propulsion and the lightly-claustrophobic McKay hated it with a passion, but he plunged headlong into the tube nevertheless.

  “Vinnie, talk to me,” he called as he pulled himself down the tube at ever-increasing speed.

  “Not there yet, sir,” Vinnie replied tightly, voice strained. “I’m in the access shafts, coming from the shuttle bay.”

  “Damn. I’ll be there before you. Jock?”

  “Be there in two minutes, sir,” the Australian replied.

  “Lt. James,” McKay called Security again, then had to tuck his legs in and ab
sorb an impact against the wall on his hip as he careened around a curve in the tube. “What’s the sitrep?” He was finally able to ask.

  “Sir,” James responded, a touch of panic in his voice, “we have security personnel on scene now…but Mironov has a weapon-I don’t know where he got it, maybe from Kowalski-and he’s taken the engineering crew hostage. The hatch is locked; we could open it, but he’s threatening to kill everyone in the section if we do.”

  “Casualties?”

  “Unknown, sir. We have to assume Kowalski is down, but comms are down inside engineering and Mironov has taken everyone’s ‘links.”

  “Goddammit,” McKay muttered, picking up speed again. “What was Kowalski armed with, James?”

  “He was only supposed to have a stunner, sir, but Sergeant Carson reports that Mironov has a pistol.”

  “Anything else I should know about?” McKay asked sarcastically. “Maybe an unaccounted for fusion warhead he might have picked up?”

  “I’m sorry, sir,” he could hear James cringing in the tone of the man’s voice. “I’ll find out how he got it…”

  “Later, James,” McKay interrupted. “Work on getting eyes in the room. He didn’t physically disable the monitors…he hasn’t had time. Get whatever command he used overridden and get me video.”

  “Yes, sir, Colonel.”

  Finally McKay came to the exit for the engineering deck and manually undogged the hatch-everything in the emergency access shafts was manual except the pressure gates to seal off compartments in case of decompression. Engineering was down in tail of the ship, the last pressurized compartment before the radiation shields and metallic hydrogen fuel stores that separated them from the fusion reactor and the antimatter containment bottles.

  The lift station and emergency access shafts emerged in an antechamber that separated engineering from the rest of the ship, since the engineering compartment contained airlocked access tubes that allowed them to suit up and work on the reactor in an emergency. The antechamber could be sealed off from the rest of the ship via a meter-thick blast door, but at the moment only the thinner vacuum hatch was closed, a small window set in the door the only view into the engineering section.