“Let me have a look at that for you, sir,” said the man, efficient and polite. The security on Space Corps bases was excellent and the names of the four arrivals had been fed through to the reception consoles. “Here we are,” the man continued. “Commander McGlashan, Lieutenants Breeze and Chainer, you have been returned to the personnel pool and will be provided with rooms here on Tillos until you’re assigned to new vessels.”
This wasn’t expected and the four of them exchanged looks of confusion. A return to the personnel pool made it certain they’d be split up. The receptionist wasn’t done with them yet.
“Captain Duggan? There’s a transport shuttle waiting for you on landing pad two. I’m to inform you this is of the highest priority.”
“Do you have any more information?” asked Duggan, knowing that the receptionist was simply passing on a message.
“Nothing, sir.”
“You’re sure these are confirmed orders?”
“I’m just telling you what’s on my screen, sir.”
Duggan was nonplussed. “How long has the shuttle been waiting there?”
“Let me see.” The receptionist furrowed his brow. “A little over four hours, sir.”
Duggan sighed and thanked the man. He and the others drifted away from the desk and looked at each other blankly. It was McGlashan who spoke first.
“So much for a holiday, eh?” There were layers of meaning behind the words.
“Why’re they doing this to us?” asked Chainer.
“I have no idea, Lieutenant,” said Duggan. He was less than pleased and would be making his feelings known as soon as the opportunity arose.
“I guess this is goodbye, then. For a while at least,” said Breeze. He looked as shocked as Duggan felt.
“I’ll find out what’s going on,” said Duggan.
“Good luck, sir,” said Chainer, extending a hand.
Duggan shook it. “And to you, Frank. I’ll see you soon.”
He shook McGlashan’s and Breeze’s hands in turn.
“Best get on, sir,” McGlashan said.
“Don’t want to miss your shuttle,” added Breeze.
“It’ll wait,” said Duggan. In truth, his duty was already pulling at him. He struggled against its insistence that he leave immediately, but he had no acceptable excuse for delay. With a sigh, he waved farewell and left through the door by which he’d recently entered the administrative building. He could feel three pairs of eyes on his back, but he didn’t turn.
Outside, there was a row of vehicles waiting for whoever needed them. He climbed into the nearest and instructed it to take him to landing pad two. It was sweltering outside and he was grateful for the coolness within the cabin as the car swished quietly between the high-walled buildings of the base. With the contamination reduced to a safe level, people went about their business dressed in their usual clothes. Decontamination teams roved about, occasionally stopping to take readings from people or vehicles selected at random.
The landing pad was a long way distant and Duggan found himself carried past a small research lab, numerous accommodation blocks and a large training field. There was also a vast warehouse which housed spares for the vessels which came here. Cranes and ground-based heavy lifters were visible as he passed by. In spite of everything, Duggan got the distinct impression that Tillos was of little importance to the Space Corps hierarchy. The base was adequately funded, but there appeared to be no master plan to expand its capabilities and make it a significant contributor to the Confederation’s defensive shield. Even the research facilities didn’t look as if they could be responsible for anything more than a few minor side-projects.
There was time enough to think about these most recent orders. Duggan wasn’t foolish enough to believe there’d be a welcoming party for his return, but there should have been something – a formal acknowledgement of what they’d achieved in defeating the most powerful enemy warship the Space Corps had ever encountered. Instead, there was this – a completely impersonal reassignment to who-knew-where, without even the option to spend a few days recovering from the mental toils of the past weeks and months. Admiral Teron was a no-nonsense man, but he had loyalty to the people who served under him. Duggan was disappointed.
“Maybe I’m getting soft,” he said, his voice so quiet he hardly heard the words himself. “I thought for a moment I might get myself a life away from all of this, only to find the hope was a lie.”
The vehicle turned to the left and entered an expansive area of bare, concreted ground. The sky was cloudless and the sun beat mercilessly down, reflecting against the creamy whiteness of the surface. Duggan shielded his eyes and saw the raised landing pad in the distance. The promised shuttle waited there – it was a standard model, with a boxy shape that was as far from that of a warship as he could imagine. The Space Corps didn’t usually permit its funds to be spent on beauty, so it wasn’t surprising that such basic vessels as these were completely utilitarian in both appearance and function.
Duggan’s car stopped the regulation distance from the landing pad. He got out and walked up the sloped sides to top. The side door of the shuttle was open and there was nobody in sight. As he approached, a man stepped into view from the inside. This man took a few paces down the boarding ramp and studied Duggan from the fifty or so metres between them. When Duggan drew closer, the man he assumed was the pilot lifted a hand in greeting.
“Captain John Duggan?”
Duggan sized up the other man. He was of a medium height and broad, dressed in a dark blue uniform. His hair was thinning and his unlined face was forgettable. “Yes. Where are we going?”
“We’re docking with the Anderlecht ES Glister.” The man shrugged. “After that, who knows where? I’ll take you and the other two passengers where you’re going and then I’ll return for the next trip.”
Duggan walked past the pilot and into the shuttle. There was nothing unexpected here, apart from the presence of the two others. There were six rows of four seats. The seats faced forwards and had grubby blue harnesses which had seen too much use. The two other men were dressed in nondescript grey and sat next to each other in the first row. There was nothing remarkable about them and they stared ahead, unwilling to meet Duggan’s gaze. The pilot came up the ramp and headed towards the single door into the cockpit.
“Who are these?” Duggan asked, uncaring if the other two men heard. “I wasn’t aware there would be passengers.”
The pilot looked blank. “I just take who I’m told to take, sir.”
Duggan didn’t respond. He sat himself on the end seat of the second row and leaned back. He felt drained of energy and unhappy with the way things had turned out, and his mind drifted onto thoughts of what lay in store for him once he reached the ES Glister.
The hull of the shuttle buzzed when the pilot started up the engines. The pitch changed in a manner which told Duggan they’d lifted off. He kept his eyes fixed on the single bulkhead screen, in hope that the pilot would show the transport’s sensor feeds. The screen remained blank, so Duggan settled himself for a boring trip.
Chapter Three
Duggan wasn’t a man who accepted events without questioning them. After ten minutes of looking at the blank viewscreen in expectation that it would show something interesting, he got to his feet and thumped on the cockpit door with his fist. The door slid open and the pilot looked out, his expression lacking in patience.
“What is it, sir?” asked the man, his tone of voice not especially respectful.
“I like to see where I’m going. Can you turn the viewscreen on?”
“No can do - it’s broken. They keep promising they’ll fix it, but it never happens.”
“Your own viewscreen is broken as well?” asked Duggan. There was no sensor feed into the cockpit either. External visibility wasn’t necessary to fly one of the shuttles, yet every pilot Duggan had met liked to see what was happening around them.
“My screen works fine.” The man laughed nervou
sly. “I don’t need it – an old superstition I have.”
“Fine. How long until we dock with the Glister?”
“Another forty or fifty minutes, sir.”
“I expected it to be sooner than that. How high are they orbiting?”
“Thirty thousand kilometres.”
Duggan nodded. “Thank you.”
He returned to his seat. The other two men remained quiet and wouldn’t look at him. Duggan wondered who they were – their uniform wasn’t standard for on-ship duty, so they weren’t going to work on the ES Glister. That suggested the warship was going to take them elsewhere and he scratched his head as he tried to work out the likely destination. Atlantis was far distant from most of the major Confederation planets. There were a few minor orbitals that could require personnel, but no logical reason that Duggan would need to go to one of them. As an experienced officer, he expected his destination would be a place significant enough for the fleet’s larger warships to dock.
“Where are you going?” Duggan asked the men.
The closest man gave a start and turned. There was something dislikeable about him – he had a surly face and no sign of the intelligence needed to perform in a technical role. “What?” he asked.
“Where are you two headed?”
The second man looked over. He had a gleam in his eyes that suggested he was the more intellectually accomplished of the two. It was this second man who spoke. “We’re going to Overtide, sir.”
“What are you needed for?”
The man smiled thinly. “We’re nothing too technical, me and Gavs. We do bits and pieces where we’re sent. We go where we’re told and we don’t ask why.”
“You’re going a long way for bits and pieces.”
“Like I say, we don’t ask, sir.”
They lapsed into silence. Duggan wasn’t the conversational sort and his companions on this trip seemed no more interested in talking than he was. The minutes dragged by and Duggan couldn’t shake the feeling that something was amiss. He couldn’t quite put his finger on what it was and the feeling gnawed at him. The Space Corps employed a vast number of people and it was impossible to expect each one of them to be someone he could relate to, but the individuals on the shuttle came across as being especially peculiar.
Duggan got up and banged on the cockpit door again. Once more, he was greeted by the unfriendly face of the pilot. Duggan got the impression the man was in the middle of a comms talk with someone and didn’t appreciate the interruption.
“Yes, sir?” he asked.
“I have a favour to ask.”
“Ask away.”
“I used to serve on the Glister a long time ago. Would you mind if I used the comms to speak to them? I want to see if a woman I know still serves on board.”
The man grinned weakly. “You know I’m not allowed to give passengers access to the shuttle comms, sir.”
“I know that,” said Duggan, trying to sound friendly. “Those regulations don’t apply if the passenger is a lieutenant or higher rank.”
The man’s smile faltered. “I’m sorry sir, but I can’t let you use the comms. You’ll need to wait until we’re docked.”
“What if I were to insist?” asked Duggan, bringing a note of command into his voice. He leaned into the small cockpit before the pilot could stop him. The information on the console showed they were travelling at a height of only one hundred kilometres. He stepped back again, pretending he’d seen nothing unexpected.
Before the pilot could respond, Duggan sensed movement from his periphery. The other two passengers were on their feet and they walked two or three steps towards him. The man who appeared to be the more intelligent of the two was short and stocky.
“You’re in no position to insist on anything. Sir.”
In his youth, Duggan had been an impetuous man, prone to act before his brain could intervene with a rational alternative. The years combined with the weight of responsibility had conspired to replace his tendency to the impulsive with a healthy streak of caution. Not so on this occasion. He sized up the situation immediately and realised his life was in danger.
The two men in grey had made the mistake of stepping in close, presumably hoping to intimidate. Without hesitation, Duggan smashed his fist into the nose of the shorter man. It was a crunching blow and he staggered away, shouting in surprise.
The taller man wasn’t caught out so easily. He stepped back a pace and dropped into a defensive stance, with his fists clenched in front of his face. Duggan saw at once that he’d underestimated the man – the appearance of stupidity was a calculated act.
With no time to think about it, Duggan stepped in and launched a couple of hard punches. His opponent rolled to the side, suffering only glancing blows. Duggan cursed and smashed a kick into the other man’s knee. The man grunted in pain and threw a fast punch in return, catching Duggan a painful strike on the cheek.
Movement to the side prompted Duggan to duck, just in time to avoid a blow from the pilot aimed at his temple. Instead, the fist caught Duggan on top of his head, adding a second pain to that from his cheekbone. The pilot came off worst and he grunted with the shock of breaking his fingers on Duggan’s skull.
Rising from his crouch, Duggan evaluated his predicament in a split second. The first man he’d struck had blood streaming from his flattened nose. Even so, the injury wasn’t serious and the fellow had righted himself. The second grey-clothed man stepped away another pace and begun to rummage at something in his clothing. There was a scarcely-concealed bulge beneath his uniform under one arm – certainly it was a firearm of some type. Meanwhile, the pilot readied himself to grapple with Duggan. The situation was not a good one.
The pilot hurled himself bodily through the cockpit door, his arms wide apart. Duggan threw his elbow hard into the man’s face. The force of the impact was sufficient to knock the pilot senseless for a brief moment. It was just enough time for Duggan to get a grip on the man’s clothing. He twisted and heaved, sending his opponent spinning away from the cockpit and headlong onto the floor.
In a flash, Duggan leapt into the cockpit. He thumped his hand firmly against the large, red button used to activate the door. A moment before the aperture closed, he had time to catch a glimpse of cold alloy as the second man drew forth a wicked-looking snub-nosed gauss pistol. Then, the door shut, leaving Duggan within and his enemies without.
“Shit,” he muttered, dropping into the single, battered seat.
His eyes scanned the shuttle’s consoles. It was nothing like as sophisticated as a warship and he quickly found what he needed. Firstly, he enabled the emergency lock for the cockpit door, in case one of his three opponents had a way to override the mechanism from outside. Next, he reassured himself that he wasn’t becoming paranoid. The shuttle was flying at a low velocity and at a low height. Wherever it was headed, it definitely wasn’t the ES Glister.
Even though he’d put the door between himself and his enemies, Duggan’s position was a poor one. The shuttle’s comms were locked down – probably biologically coded to the pilot. On top of that, the autopilot was engaged and there was no obvious way to disable it. He swore again. It was a military vessel so he could likely find a way past these obstacles if he was given time. He didn’t expect his opponents to give him the opportunity.
There was a faint thumping noise from behind. One of the men was stupid enough to think he could knock his way through a reinforced interior door with his bare hands. Flesh would certainly fail against the metal, but Duggan wasn’t so sure the hand cannon he’d seen would do so. He recognized the type, if not the exact model. The second man had been armed with a modern, high-impact pistol, used for close-quarters combat. The presence of the weapon only added to the mystery of what was happening.
Most of the shuttle’s equipment was locked down, but the sensors were not. Duggan searched the local area and checked through the list of spacecraft orbiting Atlantis - a military shuttle automatically received such information.
In this instance, there was no sign of the ES Glister, which didn’t come as a shock, since Duggan was certain it was nowhere near Atlantis.
A loud bang came from outside. Duggan turned and saw a small bulge in the metal surface of the door – the bump was two or three centimetres in diameter. There was another bang and a second bulge appeared, overlapping the first.
They’re trying to shoot their way inside, he thought. How much ammunition does one of those pistols hold and will it be enough to punch a hole through the door?
There was a series of clangs as gauss rounds clattered against the door. Even the most basic of Space Corps vessels was built to take a beating and the door didn’t immediately succumb to the onslaught of projectiles. The bulge grew and Duggan was sure the alloy would soon split. The cockpit was only about eight square metres in size, so once the door was breached, it would be easy enough to push a gun barrel through and force the occupant’s surrender. Or just shoot me, he thought grimly. Even if I keep my back to the bulkhead wall.
While he considered his rapidly-diminishing array of options, a series of numbers on one of the cockpit screens caught Duggan’s eye. It was the flight computer telling him how long it was until the shuttle reached its destination. There were only nine minutes remaining before the vessel landed. If he somehow managed to get himself out of the mess he found himself in, there was definitely going to be a whole new one to contend with when he landed. Whoever had set this up had gone to a lot of trouble so far and there was no way they’d give up easily.
With one eye on the door, Duggan racked his brains for a solution.
Chapter Four
For a short while, the attack on the door stopped. Duggan used the quiet to help him concentrate and he scrolled through the shuttle’s onboard systems in an attempt to find something which would help him. Additionally, he attempted to use his override code which should have allowed him to take control of almost any spaceship in the fleet. For reasons he couldn’t fathom, the menu screen in which he needed to enter his codes had been hidden away. He was sure it was still in the system somewhere, since stripping the option out completely would have taken a high level of programming skill as well as a great deal of time. For the moment, it eluded him.
Terminus Gate (Survival Wars Book 5) Page 2