“I have nothing to say,” she repeated.
Caine stepped over to her, and said, “We can get you home, on a neutral ship, as soon as this is over. You will be provided with medical care, everything you need. Or, if you wish, you can claim asylum in the Triplanetary Confederation.”
“I’ll sign off on that if you don’t think you’ll be welcomed home,” Marshall added.”
“I have nothing to say,” she said again, still in the same dull, cold tone.
Shaking his head, Marshall said, “Sergeant Francis, come in.” She stepped in, looked at the prisoner and he added, “Take her back with the others.”
As Francis took the prisoner away, Duquesne walked out of the room, red-faced, and said, “What those bastards did to them is a damned war crime.”
“Details, Doc,” Caine said.
“They’ve been brainwashed. Completely. Deep hypnotic control.” Shaking her head, she said, “Drugs, conditioning, god knows what. This wasn’t quick, and it wasn’t easy. All I know is that they are totally unresponsive. It’s as if they’ve been programmed.”
Marshall’s eyes widened, and he snatched at his communicator, yelling, “Harper, get down here, on the double!”
“What’s up, sir?” the hacker said, walking in.
“How the hell did you do that?” Caine asked.
“I wanted to see the prisoners for myself. I am supposed to be your Intelligence Officer, remember.”
“They’ve been brainwashed. Totally taken over by the enemy. Did you still have agents over there?”
She closed her eyes, sat down cross-legged on the floor, and said, “I’ll see that their families are informed.” Looking up, she sighed, then added, “There are precautions given to deep-cover agents, in case they should be captured and subject to enemy coercion.”
“Good God,” Duquesne said. “Do we still go in for that sort of barbarism?”
“Sometimes there just isn’t any choice. Don’t worry, sir, your secrets are still safe.”
“But suicide?” the doctor replied.
“Better that than being programmed, turned into mindless sheep,” Caine said.
“That might not be permanent,” Duquesne said, stepping forward, fury on her face.
Marshall stepped between them, then said, “Wait a moment. Are you telling me that there might be a way to reverse the process? To restore them to their former selves?”
“Possibly,” she replied, taking a deep breath. “We’ve never used such conditioning. I hope.” She gave Harper a pointed look, and the hacker looked down at the deck. “In any event, we have no open knowledge of it. There are records from the Three World Wars, though, when such techniques were employed. I’m going to spend a lot of time going over some pretty sick files in the next few weeks.”
“Is there anything you need?”
“Something to wash my brain out after I’m done,” she said. “I’ll ask if I need any of the ship’s resources. Until then, at least I can guarantee you that they won’t make any secret attempts to escape. My guess based on my observations is that while they might break for an airlock, there’s no possibility of them doing anything requiring independent thought.”
Caine looked at the cargo airlock, then said, “Is there any chance that some of them might be faking it? Or might have some additional programming, something like that?”
After a long pause, Duquesne said, “It might be wise to put them under guard until I can come up with something. I’ll have to run some tests, a lot of tests.” She looked down at Harper, and said, “I wouldn’t rule out them having a suicide pill of their own, for example. They’ll need to be watched.”
“Sergeant,” Marshall said, “Round the clock, I want a full fire team on standby. With medical support, just in case.”
“Shouldn’t we sedate them, if that’s a problem?” Francis asked.
“For how long?” Duquesne asked. “This could take days, weeks, months. Or conceivably, never.” With a deep sigh, she said, “Unless you can find something on that Q-Carrier, or down on the base.”
Harper looked up, then said, “I’ve got a way in, but it’s chancy.”
“The same way you hooked into the relay satellites?”
She nodded, saying, “The risk is that the more we use it, the more obvious it becomes, and the more likely someone’s going to start asking some pointed questions. Or fire something off into an orbit high enough that we won’t be able to intercept it with the fighters. I’m willing to give it a try, but…”
Interrupting her, Marshall said, “No.”
“Captain, we’re talking about sixteen human beings,” Duquesne said.
“I’ve got more than a hundred on this ship, Doctor, all of whom I am supposed to protect to the best of my ability. To say nothing about what might happen if this ship fails in its mission.”
“Possibilities, Captain,” the doctor replied. “There are people in there who need our help. I swore an oath…”
“So did I. And so did you. To the Triplanetary Confederation. Right now that oath has to take precedence, and believe me, Doctor, I take no pleasure whatsoever in that fact. Do what you can for them to the limit of the ship’s resources, but there will be no attempts to hack that Q-Carrier, or the surface base, unless I personally authorize it. Is that understood, Harper?”
Scrambling to her feet, she nodded, and said, “Understood. I’ll hang back.”
Shaking her head, Duquesne walked out of the room. As she left, she said, “I’d better go see to my patients. No-one else seems to give a damn about them, after all.”
The door closed, and Caine said, “That was unfair.”
“She’s not wrong,” Marshall replied. “Maybe I ought to take the risk, but we’re pushing things enough as it is, and we might need that loophole later.” With a sigh, he said, “Now we know what we’re dealing with.”
“Something interesting,” Caine said after a moment. “Have you gone over the list or prisoners yet?”
“Not properly.”
“No officers, no senior NCOs. Pryce is about the only one we’ve got with three stripes plus.”
“Her background is mostly in admin,” Harper said. “She only transferred to the technical branch a few months ago.” Waving a datapad, she added, “I’ll have a full report on all of them for you in an hour or so. And the fact that I’ve got access to all of their service records suggests that they aren’t very important. It isn’t heavily restricted.”
“Makes sense if we’re talking about decoys,” Caine said. “They wouldn’t want to send any of their key personnel.”
“That isn’t it, though. The people they sent, well, they’re up to doing some repair work, but not without supervision. Not without some higher ranking types,” Harper said. “If you are sending decoys, why send so many? And if you are going to actually send the people to do the job, why not send proper damage control teams? I don’t get it.”
“There’s more to the picture than we have,” Marshall replied. “Among other things this is a great opportunity to get some intelligence on how the not-men operate. There’s something else that bothers me about this, as well. The principle of mediocrity.”
Nodding, Caine said, “This place is special, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t doing this in a dozen other strategic spots on the frontier of known space. Triplanetary, Republic, UN, Cabal.”
“I think we’d know if one of our places had been sabotaged,” Marshall began.
“Or the Republic,” Harper interrupted.
“But I’m not certain about the UN, and less certain about the Cabal,” he concluded. “We’re going to have to make some very discreet indiscretions, I think.”
“Sharing classified information?”
“Some things are better out in the open than hidden in the dark,” he replied. “I have a feeling that thi
s is one of them.”
“You realize what you are implying,” Caine said. “That this is part of a larger plan.”
“We knew that much going in. What we don’t know is what the scale of this operation is, and that’s the reason I agreed to this in the first place. There’s a force out here with advanced technology and a philosophy that commits them to a war of aggression against every other intelligent life form in the galaxy, potentially. The strong shall win. That was what they said, remember.”
“I remember,” Caine said.
“We still don’t have any idea what’s out there. For decades after the invention of the hendecaspace drive, we sat in a few core systems, not daring to look out into the darkness, while outside people watched, waiting for a chance to attack. Now I think we’re about to pay the price for that.”
Looking out at the prisoners again, Harper said, “I think there are people out there who already have. That Q-Carrier had a crew capacity of more than a hundred, almost the same as Alamo.”
“There’s nothing we can do about them, Kris,” Caine said.
“Except make damn sure that this never happens again,” the hacker said with a sigh, slouching out into the corridor. “If you need me, I’ll be in my quarters violating several regulations about the release of classified material. There might be something in my databanks that can help Duquesne out.”
Watching her go, Marshall said to Caine, “There’s someone who has changed a bit in the last few years.”
“You’re wrong about that, Danny,” she replied. “There’s someone who has changed a lot. You going to do anything about it?”
“About what? You know that my hearing’s been bad lately. I really ought to get it checked at some point.”
With a smile, she replied, “At least you haven’t changed. The one constant in a chaotic universe, Daniel Marshall’s sense of honor.”
“Duty, Deadeye. My sense of duty.” He shook his head, and said, “What the hell have I gotten us into this time?”
Chapter 17
Salazar looked up at his status board, red lights flashing from every panel, and sent his last two remaining drone fighters away to intercept the incoming missiles. Twelve of them, now, all of them locked on the battered Alamo, angry black gashes ripped down the side of the hull from the previous impact.
“Keep us moving,” he yelled to Erickson, while his hands danced over the controls, flicking the fighters to a higher orbit with a prolonged burn. With a light tap, he unleashed the last remaining missiles on an intercept course, hoping for fratricide. His hopes were in vain. The first of them winked off his screen as the countermeasures picked it up, and while the other slammed into a missile with a brief, blinding flash, leaving the remaining eleven to continue inexorably on their previous path.
Two of them he could deal with, guiding his now-useless drone fighters towards them, leaving the field clear once again. Nine now, heading right for Alamo, and all he could do was hope that the countermeasures team could deal with them. The seconds ticked by, and they continued to gain speed, racing past him. One dropped out, its engine dying, slowly curving away into eternity.
It wasn’t necessary. Eight missiles crashing into Alamo at the same time was all that was needed, and a series of explosions rippled across the ship, the hull buckling and turning as atmosphere blew out into space, a brief cloud of gas smothering it before it dispersed, bodies tumbling clear of the wreckage, those unfortunate enough not to get to the escape pods in time.
Not that it mattered, in the end. A last, huge explosion left the ship a twisted hulk, slowly tumbling wreckage with shrapnel erupting in all directions. Collision warning alarms sounded as some of the larger pieces headed for the shuttle, alerts for evasive action, but Salazar couldn’t see the point. The battle was over, and they had lost. He had lost. And everyone on Alamo had paid for his mistake.
The lights came up, and the hatch of the simulator cracked open, Grant looking down at him with a sneer on his face.
“Congratulations. You just killed everyone.”
He looked up, nodded, and said, “Yes, sir. Can we try that again?”
“What’s the point?” he replied. “I threw a feint at you that any cadet would have spotted, and you fell for it in a second. As a result, Alamo is destroyed, the Q-Carrier is loose, and they only suffered a handful of casualties for their victory.”
“I’d like to try it again, sir. That way if they tried that in a real battle, I’ll have some idea how to counter it.”
“I don’t think you understand this. I’m going to go up and speak to the Captain. By the time I’m finished, you’ll be lucky if you’re flying a desk down in the maintenance levels.” Behind him, Foster rose from her couch, a smirk on her face.
Rising to his feet, Salazar replied, “I am assigned to fly these fighters. I’ve taken them out once already, and in six days from now, I’m going to be doing it again. I appreciate that the odds are against me, but that simply means that I need to get in more simulator time.”
“Not today, you don’t. Get out of that pod. I’ll log a few hours myself, and I rather suspect do better than you.”
A croaking, hoarse voice replied, “You won’t, Grant.”
“What are you doing up?”
Salazar looked across to see Orlova staggering into the simulator room, holding onto a crutch, hand covered by a plasticast, gasping for breath. She looked up at Grant with eyes as cold as ice, a scowl on her face.
“You’ve pushed the kid too far already.”
“Shouldn’t you be in sickbay? You’re off duty, on medical leave.”
A smile twisted across her face, and she replied, “Call Security. I haven’t had my morning laugh yet.”
“He’s going to fail. He’s going to get us all killed, just like at Phobos. Why can’t anyone else see that?” Grant replied, pointing at Salazar.
Glancing across at him, Orlova said, “Pavel’s got what it takes. I’ve seen him in action, and I know.”
“In my experience…”
“And just what experience is that, Lieutenant?” she replied, her words interspersed with hacking coughs. “Getting shot out of the sky last month in your first battle for ten years? That’s not experience, it’s an indictment.”
“I don’t have to listen to this,” he replied.
“No. Get out. Consider it an order.”
Shaking his head, he replied, “I’m going to tell the Captain what I think. If that fails, I will put in a formal protest to the Admiralty when we get home. Someone needs to flag what is happening out here.”
“Fine, Grant. You do that. And while you are sitting in your office writing reports, the rest of us will get on with the business of saving the Confederation. Dismissed.” Grant stormed out of the room, Foster walking behind him. “Not you, Midshipman.”
“Ma’am, I’m off duty.”
“Sit down and shut up,” she replied. “I’ll get to you later.”
Salazar walked over to the side of the room, snatching a chair and sliding into position under Orlova just before she crashed down to the deck. She glanced up at him, a smile on her face.
“Thank you for that, Sub-Lieutenant. That moron Grant is right about one thing. I’m not supposed to be here. I talked Duquesne into letting me rest in my cabin, and decided to see how you were doing.”
“Badly, ma’am.”
“He threw everything up to and including the kitchen sink at you, not to mention using Triplanetary tactics instead of the United Nations you were preparing for.”
Frowning, Foster said, “Lieutenant Grant has suggested that there is a chance that they will opt to vary their strategies, to throw something unexpected. Certainly Salazar…”
“Sub-Lieutenant Salazar,” Orlova interrupted. “Or just plain sir, if you’d rather. He outranks you.”
“Sub-Lieutenant Salaz
ar,” Foster pressed, “should have noticed the difference.”
Pointing up at the clock on the wall, Orlova said, “Five days, twenty-one hours before we go into battle. Always assuming that we are afforded the luxury of fighting on our own terms rather than those of the enemy, and that’s rarely a safe bet. Not long for a man to learn a completely new type of fighting, against an enemy we have faced in battle only once before. And that time, it was capital ships, not fighters. The truth of the matter is that we don’t have the first idea what tactics they are using, except that they are unlikely to be ours.”
“I don’t see that you are making a safe assumption there, ma’am,” Foster said.
“Think, damn it, think! They’re flying UN fighters. Which means UN tactical programming, probably UN instructors. They haven’t had time to copy our doctrines, and as far as we know, they haven’t even seen our ships in battle yet.” Shaking her head, “It’s a mistake to underestimate the enemy, Midshipman, but you’re in just as much danger if you overestimate them as well.”
“I understand, ma’am,” she replied in a tone that suggested she didn’t.
Shaking her head, Orlova said, “Foster, you’re backing a losing horse here.”
“Ma’am?”
“Grant’s wrong. Dangerously so. Rest assured I am going to be back on duty soon, and as soon as all this is over, Mr. Salazar will be resuming his place on the bridge. I will be the one responsible for filling out your fitness report and evaluation, and right now, you aren’t doing very well.”
Salazar shook his head, and said, “If I’m back on the bridge, ma’am, then she’s on my shift and reports to me. If I have any complaints about her performance, I would make them. I have not, as yet, done so.”
Looking up at him, Orlova said, “You’d prefer to handle it within the shift, then? She’s not an officer, Pavel, not yet, and your duty is to the fleet to make sure that she does not get a commission unless she deserves it. Alamo won’t be her only posting.”
Shaking her head, Foster replied, “I don’t believe what I am hearing.”
“I guess I’d better give you permission to speak freely,” Orlova said.
Battlecruiser Alamo: Not In My Name Page 14