Critical Asset

by Ian Tonnessen

  A dozen people spoke at once, some of them raising their hands and others just raising their voices. One woman yelled above the clamor: “They’re probably watching us right now!” she shouted, pointing up at the corners of the docking area. At each of the space’s upper corners, between two walls and the ceiling, was a small, mirrored triangle.

  “Of course,” Yates said. “Damn! I’ll take care of them, ma’am.” He touched his earpiece and began telling the crew around the Labs to block or destroy all the cameras they could find.

  “Listen here!” one of the older-looking men yelled to the crowd. He spoke with a southern English accent and his voice sounded far more angry than frightened. “It appears that everyone here is from the molecular dynamics, propulsion, or antiparticle teams. Is there anyone here from any other labs?” Some of the group replied no, but most looked around at each other.

  “Let’s make this simple. If you agree, ma’am,” the man said to Pierce, “I want the senior person from each of our three departments to stay in here. Everyone else, please go inside the ship for now. We’ll come get you if we need you.”

  Pierce nodded her approval. Most of the group immediately walked towards the accessway leading to the Lincoln, with the people from the molecular dynamics lab taking a minute to talk quietly in a huddle. Pierce assumed they were figuring out who was the senior member amongst them. Finally, three of the civilians remained.

  “Hunter Lynch,” the older British man said. “Director of the theoretical propulsion labs.” Pierce thought he looked familiar before and now recognized him, and she gained a new understanding of the sort of people who worked in the station. Twenty years earlier, Lynch had been chairman of the Pathfinder project which launched hundreds of cigar-sized probes at thirty nearby stars. The first of them burst-transmitted sensor data as they flew past Barnard’s Star thirteen years later, confirming one of its planets to be either habitable or highly terraformable. Other planets followed, and after two decades the count of potential New Earths was already up to four. Those precious bits of data spawned the grand colony ships under construction at Pioneer Spaceport in Colorado.

  “Lina Schaube,” said a German-accented woman. “Senior physicist, antiparticle research center.”

  “Will Groves,” said a youngish man with an American accent. “I’m a principal investigator in molecular dynamics. That’s lab-speak for a project manager. I’m one of them, anyway.”

  “Thank you all,” Pierce said. “I want you to know that my top priority is to rescue as many of the station’s personnel as we can. Can any of you give me an idea of how many are left?”

  “One hundred and sixty-five,” Lynch said. “I’m also one of Dirac’s deputy administrators, and the station’s acting director at the moment. Until the Columbus returns on the fifth of January with most of our compliment, we have two hundred and twelve onboard, minus the forty-seven of us here.”

  Damn. So, do we attack or defend? Given what we know… Pierce made her choice.

  “Here’s what we know. Right after we were attacked in here, a small group of them, maybe five or six, headed towards the accelerator control room when two of them were killed. They were somehow cut in half in the middle of the passageway, and not by my people. They haven’t tried to attack in the aft hall since, but they’re clearly well-trained. Unfortunately, that’s all we know. We don’t know who sent them, how many there are in total, where else in the station they are, or exactly what they’re here for.”

  “Theft,” Schaube said. “I see no other reason they would go to the accelerator control. It’s rarely configured to do anything but manufacture antimatter. They could siphon off production from there.”

  “Is there a way we could shut it down, so they couldn’t steal any even if they got in there?”

  “Ja, we could power it down and then disable some of the equipment. Under the circumstances, I think that may be best.”

  “And then what?” Lynch asked. There are thousands of containers of it that already exist, and they’re all outside the hull of the station. We can’t stop their ship from stealing one.”

  “Oh, yes we can,” Pierce said. “If it comes down to it, I’ll have my ship fire on theirs.”

  “They must know that, though,” Yates said, thinking as he spoke. “So, they must seize the accelerator immediately. Captain, we should try to get our people in there.”

  “Let me call the control room,” Schaube said. “I’ll have them begin shutting down and sabotaging the collider straight away.”

  “First, tell them to destroy whatever cameras are in that space,” Pierce said. “They’re right across the hall from the aft end of your lab. If they open up for us, we’ll risk running across. Maybe we can secure the space with our charges like we have elsewhere. After that, we can disable the collider if we have to.”

  “Ja, Captain, I’ll do that.” Schaube said.

  “What about attacking these intruders directly?” Lynch asked. “We may have to. If they have the Hub, then they have the station’s engineering systems. They can meddle with our life support.”

  “Maybe so, but we wouldn’t know how to do it. Attacking when we have next to no information about these people… there could be dozens of them in the Hub for all we know. But we have an idea of their goal, so if we can deny them that and my ship can deny their escape, maybe we can reason with them into surrendering.”

  “Reason doesn’t seem likely here,” Groves said, looking at the bloody floor and the row of bodies along the wall.

  Pierce nodded. “Yeah. Well, let’s start by doing what we can do.”

  While two of the crew shot out the ceiling cameras with stun guns, Schaube went to the comms console along the dock’s wall. She entered the number for the accelerator control room.

  The screen blinked for ten seconds before the people in the control room dared to answer the incoming call. The shift supervisor’s face came on the screen. “Detector control… Ms. Schaube!”

  “Jakub, I’m in the dock. Listen closely, because we think these intruders were heading your way, and I don’t know how much time you have. Have your people power down all accelerator functions and transfer the filling pod out to the containment field, no matter how much product is inside. Then take both decelerators and beam delivery systems offline, and go around all the interaction equipment and disconnect every plug and cable you can. But keep the manual conveyance system available! I want you to be ready to vent coolant out to space and cause a magnetic quench if necessary.”

  “We know they were heading here, ma’am. Mike Trevino from the nanotech lab is with us here, and he damn near had his head shot off at the access door. We’re keeping the door locked, but we think they can breach it.”

  “They can. Some of us are here with people from an American warship. They’ve got their crew spread out in–”

  “Attention all personnel,” boomed a man’s voice over the station’s PA system. Schaube halted her conversation to listen. “This is the leader of the group which has taken control of this facility. This takeover is a temporary measure, but we do require your cooperation. All station personnel are to assemble in the main cafeteria immediately. Anyone who fails to come to the cafeteria within the next ten minutes will be shot on sight when they are found elsewhere, followed by the execution of three others which we will choose at random.” Terzi repeated his message once and then switched off the microphone.

  “Jakub, stay where you are! I want you to ignore that message,” Schaube said to the control room. In the background she saw people talking to each other, trying to decide what to do. Similar conversations were no doubt happening all over the station.

  “I understand, ma’am,” the shift leader said. “We’ve already begun powering down everything, and we’ll begin sabotaging the gear in a minute. But ma’am, once that’s done… I think we can still get to the cafeteria within ten minutes.”

  “Everyone, this the captain of the Lincoln,” Pierce said, moving into came
ra view next to Schaube. “Keep this line on. As soon as my people in the antiparticle labs are ready, I’m going to have them run across the hall to you. We’ll secure the access to your space, and then we’ll get your people out of there.”

  “Okay, ma’am. We’ll be in touch.” The supervisor ran offscreen to begin helping his coworkers disable the collider.

  * **

  The starboard hall’s access hatch to the exomatter research center opened. Behind it stood sixteen of the lab’s scientists, their hands all held on top of their heads.

  “Out!” shouted one of the two men behind them. “Into the hallway to your left!” The group cautiously walked into the corridor and saw three more of the armed intruders, men dressed like those who had come through their lab spaces. Those two had shouted at the people hiding around the lab, firing warning shots into walls and terrifying the scientists as they gathered everyone together until the lab was empty of people.

  “How many?” Yazici asked.

  “Sixteen here,” Kervan said. “None injured, and there’s nobody left in area nine.”

  “Good. Forget rounding up more from the other labs for now,” the captain said, formulating his plan. He turned to face the hostages. “Ladies and gentlemen, we require your assistance.”

  * **

  At the far end of the port-side hallway, at the corner of the aft hall, waited two of Lincoln’s crew. Both were engineering specialists, and both of their hearts still pounded since the moment they arrived at Dirac. They held switches for two hydro-bombs, charges laid only meters away and connected to their switches by thin wires. Each crewman stared into one of the two halls, awaiting any sign of movement or a report from the dock over their headset communicators. The one watching the aft corridor also had the displeasure of staring at two bodies halfway down the hall, each cut across their torso, the halves surrounded by a still-wet pool of blood.

  “Oh shit, movement!” whispered the one looking down the aft hall. Sixty meters away, rounding the corner from the starboard hall, appeared a group of Dirac civilians. Six were in front, walking line abreast with their arms linked at their elbows. Behind them was another line of five people, also walking abreast but their heads offset from the six in front of them rather than directly behind. There were more people behind the second row, but that was all the crewman could see.

  “Stop where you are!” he yelled down the hall, pointing his stun pistol while shielding the rest of his body behind the corner wall. “Do not come closer!”

  “We’re Dirac workers!” a man in front shouted back. “Don’t shoot!”

  “Stop there now!” came the reply. The second crewman flipped on her headset and began describing the situation to the dock.

  “We can’t. They are marching us!” The group walked as slow as they dared, legs shaking as they couldn’t take their eyes off the two bodies in the middle of the long hall.

  The engineer kept his stun pistol pointed down the hall and whispered to his shipmate. “Ask for orders! What the hell do we do?”

  * **

  Pierce leaned towards the screen which displayed the accelerator control room. The people there were moving and speaking quickly, trying to get everything offline. “Control room, you’ve got people coming your way! Are you almost done?”

  “Not yet! We need a few more minutes.”

  “Change of plans. Our people aren’t coming in there, you’re coming out. Hurry!” She switched her headset on. “Team one, hold your fire for now. Get ready to let them have it if they start breaching the control room door.”

  “Mein gott,” Schaube said to herself.

  * **

  “Everyone stop!” yelled Yazici from the back of the group. The small crowd was only feet away from the next sealer hatch archway and the bodies of Yilmaz and Erkan. “You on the front left, blue shirt… there’s an invisible wire strung across the hall. Crawl underneath it and find where the ends of it are held up.”

  The man did as he was told. He crawled as low as he could, snaking his body across the blood-drenched floor until he was past the top half of Major Yilmaz’s body. Seeing the duct tape patches along each side of the sealer hatch’s archways, he was about to stand up when the lead intruder spoke again.

  “Wait… stay down there. Everyone here, do not move,” Yazici said, giving a nod to Kervan.

  The sergeant pushed his way up to the second row of the human shield. Aiming his weapon down the corridor, he opened up with his submachine gun, firing a quick spray of shots towards the Lincoln crewman peeking around the corner. Dirac workers screamed or shuddered at the earsplitting noise.

  The crewman saw the weapon’s barrel at the last second and managed to duck behind the corner, saving his brains from being shot out. Bullets splintered and ricocheted off the far wall next to him and his partner, and one piece of hot shrapnel lodged itself in his calf. He yelped in pain.

  His partner lay prone on the floor, arm covering her head as she yelled into her communicator. “We’re taking fire! Permission to set off a charge?!”

  The reply came an eternal three seconds later. “Do it!” yelled Captain Pierce’s voice.

  The crewman flipped the switch for the furthest charge, which sat on the floor of the hallway nearly as far as the access doors and the crowd of people beyond them. The charge erupted with static electricity, filling the hallway with its lightning discharges and sparking around and through everyone in the crowd of people, hostage and captor alike. The lone hostage lying on the wet floor suffered the brunt of the electrical burst, and he screamed and twitched before finally he lay silent.

  The rest of the terrified crowd crouched with their heads down while Yazici, Erdem, Toprak, and Kervan stumbled themselves upright and let loose a deafening volley of automatic fire from their weapons. Around the far corner, the two Lincoln crewmembers stumbled away from the wild spray of ricochets. Demirci gripped his weapon tight but did not fire. He kept his eyes on the control room doors.

  “Get ready!” Pierce yelled to both the screen and her communicator. “Control room, open up and be ready to evacuate! Team one, open your hatch and stand by to set off your next charge!”

  * **

  The supervisor in the accelerator control room only needed to do one last thing.

  “Everyone, get to the door! The door to the antiparticle labs will be open any moment now. When you get the word, open up and sprint across the hall!”

  “Jakub, what are you doing?!” someone said.

  “Taking the accelerator down permanently. Don’t wait for me, just go when they say!” he said, pointing at the comm screen linked to the dock. Standing at a control desk, Jakub brought up the manual conveyance functions. Seconds later, liter after liter of liquid helium sprayed from the positron line out into space, all of it vented within a minute. The line itself, and all of its superconductors, remained powered and thirsty for coolant.

  * **

  “Team one, do it now!” came Pierce’s voice over the communicator. The Lincoln crewmembers in the antiparticle labs had heard the muffled noise of gunfire in the hallway, but they had their orders. One of the two by the aft door opened the hatch up, keeping her hand by the panel and ready to close it again in a hurry. Holding his breath, her partner flipped the switch on a hydro-bomb and tossed it diagonally into the hall, in the direction of the crowd of people gathered there. Then he ran behind a wall and cringed.

  The Dirac civilians who saw the bomb bounce in their direction yelled and tried to dive backwards, out of the way. The MAKs and Demirci jumped to their feet and ran back at the sight of it, bracing themselves for another shock of electricity. They didn’t bother to fire at the civilians who did the same.

  The charge exploded and once more the middle of the corridor was saturated with the static lightning. Again, the crowd of civilians screamed, most of them falling to the floor and writhing in pain as static currents shot through them.

  * **

  “Go! Go!” Pierce yelled to the screen. On
e of the crowd of people in the accelerator control room pressed the button to open the doors, and the group of seven ran for their lives across the hall. From door to door it was only five meters, but it seemed a marathon for those whose eyes darted away from the open lab directly in front. To their right was a large patch of blood and three bodies lying in it, one of them a Dirac employee with wisps of smoke still rising from him, the other two being two intruders cut into pieces. More wisps of smoke from the last two electrical charges rose like dew from the pool of red. Further down the hall was a crowd of people, mostly civilians and mostly writhing on the floor, alive but in obvious agony. Once the last of the group ran past the threshold of the lab, the Lincoln crewmember shut the doors again.

  * **

  Captain Yazici winced in pain. He knew he had at least first-degree burns on his back from the shocks. For him, the muscle spasms only lasted a few seconds after the charge, but there was still a slight numbness and tingling in his legs. He also had a searing headache and some blurriness in his vision.

  He and the other MAKs, wearing neoprene-insulated military boots, weathered the electricity bombs better than the hostages. All of the remaining fifteen seemed to be alive but in various states of trauma. Several were unconscious, and two were conscious but still convulsing in seizures on the floor. The rest were lying or kneeling in both pain and fear. The fear was less at the thought of another bomb than the sight of Aydin Demirci pointing his weapon at them and yelling, “Stay down, everyone!” Yazici grinned, impressed that this civilian could keep a clear head in the middle of this mess.

  Lieutenant Erdem ran towards the open control room hatch despite an obvious limp, and dove under the wire, rolling his body on the bloody floor. He peered down the sights of his weapon inside the room, but after seeing no movement, he stood and undid the duct tape holding one end of the picofilament line to the wall. He carefully re-taped it to the opposite wall next to the other end of the line, then waved for his comrades to approach.