Starship Alexander

by Jake Elwood

  He couldn't have said what song he was going to pick, but his fingers knew what they were doing. It was a song he hadn't played since he was a teenager, and he heard himself bungling a few chords. Well, I don't see any music critics in the room. It was an old ballad, something from his parents' generation, the kind of sappy, sentimental thing he'd rebelled against when he decided to dedicate himself to smoky blues.

  He sang, trying to keep his voice soft, but gaining power with every verse in spite of himself. He sang about kids going off to war, afraid to go, afraid to stay home, hoping desperately they were doing the right thing.

  And when I cross that ocean wide, and I reach that distant shore,

  And I walk those long green fields, and I hear the cannon roar,

  With a musket in my hands, and my comrades by my side,

  Will I do my duty then? Will I keep my honor bright?

  Will I be brave? Will I do right? Will I keep my honour bright?

  Will I be strong, through the long night? Will I keep my honour bright?

  The song had struck the teenaged West as preachy nonsense, but it felt different in that feverish room under the barrels of guns. He squeezed his eyes shut and poured his heart into the song, and when the last note trailed away he looked up just in time to see the doctor vanishing through the main hatchway. The injured sailor lay on an improvised stretcher made from a bedsheet, with a prisoner at each corner. They followed the doctor into the corridor, and a woman with a gun brought up the rear.

  Now there's only five guns in here. The odds just improved.

  Chapter 37 – Kasim

  It was his first combat flight, and it was going to be his last.

  Kasim flew through the void, his mouth as dry as moon dust, wishing desperately for a drink of water. He was going to die. It was an absolute certainty, and he was afraid.

  It would be a good scrap, though. A handful of enemy ships against the bulky, lumbering Falcon. The ship was armed now, with a single laser on the top hull, pointing directly forward. The only way to aim it was to aim the entire ship.

  Just above the laser, a crude-looking metal rack held one of the Alexander's nuclear missiles. He would be able to fire the missile with perfect precision. He would use the laser as a pointer. When he saw a red dot on the Gate, he would launch.

  And then that handful of alien ships would come after him. He would fight as best he could, with the laser and with skill and raw talent. However, he knew perfectly well he would lose.

  He would die beside the remains of Gate Eight.

  "That's right, you bastards," he muttered. "It's me again. The guy who keeps blowing up your Gates." Brave words, but he could taste sour bile on the back of his tongue. Only a stubborn bravado kept him from moaning out loud with fear.

  That, and the thought of Sally MacKinnon. Every time he thought of her, and he thought of her often, a fresh wave of grief and rage would crash over him. He wanted to avenge her. He wanted to strike a blow in her name, and if it killed him, well, that was all right with Kasim.

  The worst part was that he had nothing to do, nothing to distract himself with. The Falcon was on a ballistic trajectory, hurtling through space at a fantastic velocity with the engines off. It was a long fall around the planet to the target, and nothing for him to do but fret.

  The fingers of his right hand ached. He ignored the pain. He'd gotten good at ignoring it over the last two weeks. The burns were pretty bad. His hand was pink and delicate with brand-new skin, some of it deadened by nerve damage, some of it excruciatingly sensitive. When he wasn't dropping things or bumping things he was cringing back from the gentlest contact. And underlying all of it was a bone-deep ache that felt as if it would never go away.

  Well, it won't be bothering you for much longer.

  The stars were crisp and lovely all around him, and he decided he would spend his last hours taking in the view instead of imagining his own death. The glittering arm of the Milky Way shone to his left, and he traced that glorious river of stars with his eyes.

  And blinked.

  One of those sparkling points of light was moving. He wasn't quite alone after all.

  Something else was orbiting the planet. Had the miners put a satellite up, or some kind of space station? Or was it aliens?

  All the delicate scanners on the Falcon were long since fried. He stared through the cockpit window, then took out the telescope someone had left for him in the luggage net behind the seat. It had the look of something whipped up on that fabricating machine he'd seen in the shuttle bay. It was a tapered cylinder of dark plastic longer than his arm, and he had to unstrap himself from his seat to use it.

  He removed his helmet, clipped it to the mount beside the pilot's seat, then let himself float at the back of the cockpit. With the gravity off the telescope was easy to line up. It hovered in place, and he nudged it into line, then peered through the eyepiece.

  The ship leaped into view, hovering like a gray plum in the void. It was oval in shape, and not quite as bizarre as the alien craft he had seen. He wondered if it might be a Navy ship sent to investigate the spreading alien threat. He had a brief fantasy of reinforcements, his life spared as dozens of corvettes swarmed through to seize New Avalon.

  They would have food. Actual foods that wasn't gruel.

  A pattern of shadow caught his eye, and he squinted through the eyepiece. An indentation marred the hull of the other ship. It was triangular in shape, and the more he examined it, the sicker he felt. That indentation would perfectly match the hulls of the smallest alien craft. One of those little ships could dock perfectly with the big vessel.

  That put things in perspective. He could estimate the size of the ship now. It would be fifty or sixty meters long, and half as wide. He was frighteningly close, well under fifty kilometers. What if it spotted him? What if it broke into a swarm of smaller ships and—

  No. That smooth, seamless hull told him it would not break apart. This was not a collection of smaller ships, but one larger craft. Maybe a supply ship, a fuel tanker of some sort. Or a repair ship, or … It could be anything, he realized. Anything at all.

  I could blow that thing up. The thought was seductive. He could strike a meaningful blow against the enemy, then turn and retreat to the Alexander.

  He could live.

  He went as far as resting a hand on the engine ignition switch that jutted from the dash. Then he let go of the switch and leaned back. Forget it, Kasim. You have to blow the Gate. Do it for everyone back home. Do it for Sally. You want to make the bastards suffer, and the Gate is the best way to do it.

  The Falcon continued in its orbit, and Kasim returned to his morbid thoughts. He glanced back one last time before the ship vanished over the horizon. You don't know how lucky you are. Killer Kasim spotted you, but he chooses to let you live.

  The alien ship vanished behind the curve of the planet, and Kasim continued his lonely journey toward his destiny.

  Chapter 38 – Wyatt

  "Tell me how the bloody engines work." Peter Wyatt loomed over Susan Rani, doing his best to intimidate her. She had confronted him, bristling with indignation, when he had stormed into the engine room with a dozen mutineers on his heels. One of Wyatt's men had backhanded her across the face. Her lip was puffed out to twice its normal thickness, and she had a trickle of blood on her chin. Just looking at her made Wyatt feel ill.

  Now he was trying to frighten her, which was much worse. Even worse than that, it wasn't working.

  "Shoot me," she said.

  He looked at the gun that dangled in his right hand, carefully pointed at the deck plates. He knew he could never use it. He couldn't even bring himself to threaten her with it. Instead he gestured at the four cadets and two sailors who knelt along the aft bulkhead. "Maybe I'll start shooting cadets," he said.

  Her eyes drilled into him, and he squirmed at the contempt he saw there. "Go ahead," she said. "Bloody cadets. I never liked them." She glanced at the line of prisoners. "Do me a favor a
nd start with the gangly kid with the big ears."

  There were two cadets that might have fit the description, and they looked at one another, alarmed.

  "I'm trying to take the ship home," Wyatt said. "Why can't you see that?"

  "We'll go home when our job is done. That's how it works." She looked him up and down. "You don't like it, I'm sure we can drop you off back at your station on Kukulcan."

  Wyatt scowled, not liking the reminder that these people he was terrorizing had rescued him. He stuffed the gun in the back of his waistband, afraid he would clench his fists and shoot himself in the foot. He hated the bloody pistol. It was a disaster waiting to happen.

  "Give me five minutes with her." The speaker was Digby, a burly man with an unhealthy smile and hair the color of a safety poster. Most of the mutineers were alarmed by the enormity of what they were doing, but bleakly determined to do what they must. Digby seemed to be loving every minute of it. He had a pistol, and when he wasn't pointing it at someone he would fondle it and stroke it. He looked at Susan Rani now, and his eyes glittered.

  "Forget it." Digby frowned, and Wyatt said, "Take a couple of men and scout the corridor. There'll be a counterattack sooner or later. I want to know about it before they storm in here." When the man gave him a stubborn look, Wyatt said, "Go on. Maybe you'll get to shoot somebody."

  Or maybe somebody will shoot you, and all of us will be better off.

  Digby gestured to a couple of other men, bullies cut from the same cloth, and the three of them headed into the corridor. The tension level in the engine room dropped perceptibly.

  "I could start pulling handles and twisting knobs," Wyatt said to Rani. "Maybe get us all killed. Is that what you want?"

  Rani didn't deign to answer.

  Fear and adrenalin and frustration churned together in his stomach, making it difficult to think straight. He was well into middle age, with years of experience at leadership and dealing with crises, and he was a mess. How much worse would it be for the younger mutineers? How long before someone got hurt?

  That was assuming no one had died already. The young woman at the weapons locker had a concussion at the very least. What was happening on the rest of the ship? Wyatt felt his stomach heave. It wasn't supposed to be like this.

  A sound came echoing in from the corridor, a sound Wyatt wouldn't have recognized an hour earlier. But he'd seen Digby smash a length of pipe into the skull of the sailor guarding the weapons locker. There was nothing quite like the sickening thump you got when a human skull hit metal. That was the sound he heard now, and his head came whipping around.

  A man screamed. He thought it was Digby, but he couldn't be sure. There was another fleshy thump, and the scream stopped abruptly.

  Mutineers began to cluster in the doorway, looking at one another and fingering their guns. Some of the prisoners were giving Wyatt speculative looks, and he said, "Don't even think about it."

  "Hello in the engine room!" It was a man's voice, almost obscenely cheerful. It was that man from Freedom Station, Wyatt realized. The old guy with the cold eyes. Crabtree.

  "We've got guns now," Crabtree called. "Three of them. Thanks very much."

  Wyatt opened his mouth to tell his people to get back out of the doorway, but he never got the chance. A shot rang out, and Hank Laycraft seemed to spring backward. He landed flat on his back, his head a bloody mess. The rest of the mutineers scrambled backward, retreating deeper into the engine room.

  Not all of them. A man lay on his stomach, arms splayed out. As Wyatt watched, he rose to his knees and shuffled forward, his left hand clutching his right shoulder. Blood soaked his shirt. When he had put the bulk of a cooling array between himself and the doorway he collapsed on his chest, still clutching the wound.

  I didn't even hear the second shot. He killed a man and critically injured another, and he did it in, what? A second? Everybody is staring at me. I'm supposed to tell them what to do. I don't know what to do! I'm a technician, not a bloody commando. He looked around at the shocked, frightened faces of his followers, then looked past them at the corpse sprawled in the doorway. Hank's dead. Good God. He's bloody dead. He's been my friend for fifteen years. He wouldn't even be here if I hadn't recommended him for the Baffin job.

  "What should we do? Peter?"

  Wyatt didn't know who had spoken. All he could see was Hank, a smart, funny man who would never crack another joke. Oh, God. He has a daughter. Oh, God, I can't believe he's dead.

  A scream snapped him out of it. A woman was on her knees beside the injured man, trying to peel his shirt back from the wound. He moaned, and she looked up, meeting Wyatt's gaze. "He's hurt bad."

  "I hear screaming." Crabtree's voice was low and mocking. "Would anyone like to surrender? No? I can promise you, the screaming isn't over."

  Wyatt reached back and touched the butt of his pistol. We need to get to Medical. We could storm the corridor. There's only three of them with guns, right?

  Yes. One crack shot, and a couple of friends who will probably just stand back and watch him work. Because he won't need their help. He'll kill every last one of us, and we won't even manage to mess up his hair.

  So how can we reach Medical?

  We could retreat. We could climb the ladders in the emergency access tunnels at the back. Can we lug that poor bastard up a ladder?

  "Let's go," he said. He gestured at the aft wall. "We're abandoning the engine room. We'll go two decks up and join up with the team in the missile bay."

  A woman said, "We can't abandon the engine room!"

  Wyatt shrugged. "Were we achieving something here?"

  Will we achieve something in the missile bay? He pushed the thought aside. "Come on. Let's go. And for God's sake, put those guns away before one goes off."

  The woman who knelt beside the injured man said, "What about Thomas?"

  "Once we're out of the way they can take him straight to Medical. But the longer we stay, the longer he lies there bleeding. Let's go!"

  A couple of mutineers unlocked the panels that covered the access tube, then checked inside. A moment later, Wyatt gave the engine room a last, sour glance. Then he stepped into the tube and started to climb.

  Chapter 39 – Hammett

  There were two guns on the bridge, and four mutineers. Hornbeck had bustled out several minutes before, taking most of the mob with him. Now Velasco was trying to get the ship lined up to make a run for Gate Eight.

  Hammett sat with his back to the port bulkhead, cadets pressed in close on either side. A fat man stood before them, his knuckles white on a long chunk of pipe. It was an adequate weapon under the circumstances. Hammett kept a wary eye on the man, thinking of the ceremonial sword back in his quarters. It would have made a good equalizer.

  Carruthers, Wilkins, and a couple other cadets lay stretched out on the deck beside the prisoners. Wilkins was in a bad way, twitching and moaning. Stunners were dangerous at point-blank range. The other two cadets seemed to be fine, if unconscious. Hammett had a strong suspicion that Carruthers was awake and faking it.

  Another mutineer stood at the entrance to the bridge, a stocky man with tattoos covering his thickly-muscled arms. He held a crowbar, but he held it gingerly, like he was afraid of what it might do. He looked scared and a bit sick, like a man who desperately wished he was somewhere else.

  Katie was his opposite in many ways. She was the only mutineer whose name Hammett knew, mostly because Velasco kept speaking to her, reining her in. She was, as far as Hammett could tell, completely insane. He could see the outline of a gun in the thigh pocket of her jumpsuit, but she hadn't touched it. She was far too enamored of her knife.

  The knife was an ornate thing with an engraved blade as long as her hand. Hammett had the impression that if the mutiny ended before she had a chance to cut someone, she would be keenly disappointed. Right now she was standing over Cartwright, alternately testing the edge of the blade with her thumb and touching the point to the side of the woman's neck.
>
  "That's enough, Katie." Velasco sounded weary. "Katie! Back off."

  Katie pouted, then retreated a couple of steps. She held the knife in front of her stomach, tilting the blade back and forth and watching light play across the engravings.

  "Take us home, Cartwright." Velasco spoke like the parent of a cranky toddler who wouldn't eat. "That's all I ask. What any sane person would ask." She gave Hammett an accusing glare. "Get us through the Gate. Take us back to Earth." She touched the pocket where she'd put her pistol, then seemed to think better of it.

  "Sure," said Cartwright sarcastically. "I'll get right on that. I'll grab one of these phones that stopped working when your new friends cut the wires. I'll start calling all the cadets who are dead, or locked up wherever you maniacs put them. I'll get them working on those maneuvering thrusters." She made a show of lifting a handset. "Hello? Starboard lounge? Hello? Hello, can anyone hear me? No? How about now?"

  Velasco clenched her fists, and Hammett smiled. "Quit being a smartass," she grated, "and find a way to make it work."

  "Sure," said Cartwright. "I'll try this phone instead." She lifted a different handset and said, "Hello? Port lounge?"

  "I'll make her cooperate." Katie stepped forward, the knife stretching toward Cartwright's face. Cartwright had to lean back, the blade almost touching her left eye.

  That, Hammett decided, was bloody well enough. He stood. The fat man took a step back, raising the pipe. Carruthers chose that moment to sit up, and the fat man turned, lifting the pipe over his head. Nakatomi shifted, and Vincenzo rose to one knee. The fat man retreated another step, almost bumping into Velasco.

  She drew her pistol and levelled it at Hammett's chest. "Sit down."

  Katie turned to gawk, and Cartwright knocked her arm aside. She sprang out of her chair and the two women grappled, struggling for control of the knife.