Critical Asset

by Ian Tonnessen

“They sent me as a messenger! They took my clothes so you’d see I’m not a threat. I’m supposed to bring this paper to your captain. Please don’t shoot!”

  “Call it in,” the first crewman said to the second, keeping his stun gun pointed down the hall. “Okay! Walk towards me now. Normal pace, and don’t try anything foolish.”

  A minute later Robert Yates opened the sealer hatch to the dock and brought her inside.

  “Get this woman some clothes!” he yelled to crewmembers gathered near the cargo lift to the Lincoln. “What’s your name?” he asked her.

  “Emily Chao. Please, I’m supposed to give you this.” Yates read the paper she was carrying.

  Answer our call or we will begin killing hostages. You have ten minutes.

  “God… dammit!” The comms screen on the wall was still blinking with the incoming call from the cafeteria. Yates grabbed his communicator. “Captain, XO here. We need you back at the dock right away.”

  “What’s happening?”

  “We just got a message. We’re about to be out-leveraged.”

  Pierce, Waters, and the other three with them arrived running within sixty seconds. The captain read the message.

  “How many hostages do they have in the cafeteria?” she asked the woman.

  “Altogether, one hundred and thirty-six, not counting me,” Chao replied. “That includes six people from the Kostroma, the ship that’s up at the main dock. They made us do a count.”

  “And how many of them?”

  “I only saw three, but everyone’s forced to lie down on the floor. They’re not letting us look around. A couple of times one of them went into the scullery, and I could tell he was talking over his headset, so I’m sure they have others besides the ones in there.”

  “Yeah, that they do,” Pierce said. You have to answer them, she heard herself think.

  “You,” she said to Mike Trevino. “You were at the accelerator before they got to it. Are you sure the sabotage took it offline? It can’t be fixed?”

  “Definitely. The supervisor there was venting liquid helium when the rest of us left, and the quadrupoles still had power. That’ll ruin half the superconductors, and there’s not nearly enough spares.”

  Pierce took a quick breath, looking at the blinking comms screen. “Alright. We need to answer this. Does anyone else have anything to say before I start talking to them?”

  No one did. The captain forced on a poker face and touched the green button on the screen labelled Accept, and on came a live image of the cafeteria. On the floor underneath and beside all the tables, she and the others could see over a hundred people lying face down, all of their hands clasped on top of their heads. Near a side wall and barely visible on camera, one of the intruders stood with a large weapon in his hands. He saw the screen and yelled across the room: “The call is up.”

  A man dressed in black military garb walked in front of the camera and sat down. He had two dark pieces of cloth wrapped around his head, covering all of his face except his eyes. It hid his identity better than his helmet’s wide faceplate.

  “Ah, thank you for finally answering,” the man said. He examined the uniform of the absurdly short woman on the screen in front of him, and for a second he didn’t believe what he saw. “Your insignia says you are the captain of the Lincoln. Is that who I’m speaking with?”

  “I am. Are you the person leading the attack on this station?”

  “Indeed I am,” Terzi replied. “You and I have some matters to discuss. I will let you begin. What questions do you have?”

  “I want to know what your demands are for releasing those hostages.”

  “It is not my goal to harm any of these people. Thus far, we have a report of only one fatality among this station’s employees, and it was a result of your crew’s actions against us. They electrocuted a man in a corridor. I can see that there are some Dirac personnel there with you, so you should all know this: if we have no further interference, there will be no need for additional loss of life.”

  Pierce could tell that English was not this man’s native language, but he still spoke fluently and with only a slight accent she couldn’t place. The man’s tone seemed casual, almost smug. There wasn’t a hint of nerves in his voice.

  “You attacked my crew in here and caused considerable loss of life. How can I take you at your word now?”

  “Again, blame yourself, Captain. You presented a clear threat to our mission, and our mission is our highest priority. Its success trumps every other possible priority, including our own lives or the lives of these people. You should know that we have one hundred and thirty-six in here, and more elsewhere in the station.”

  “What can you tell me about your mission? Who are you, and what do you want?”

  “Who we are is irrelevant for now. You’ll learn the answer to that question in time. I will not say specifically what we want, but I assume you’ve already deduced an answer. Now, here are our demands. First, you will attempt no further acts of violence against my people anywhere in this station. Second, you will not attempt to impede the timely and successful completion of our work here. Third, we will eventually depart this station onboard the Kostroma. After we do, your ship will not attack ours or otherwise hinder us from a safe transit back to Earth. Do you have any questions about these demands?”

  “If we comply, what guarantees can you give me that those people won’t be harmed?”

  “As a show of good faith, I will send thirty-six more to you, just like I sent the messenger. That will leave an even hundred in the cafeteria. We will send them to you soon, after we sort through them some more. As for the temptation you will have to attack us here and rescue the remaining one hundred,” Terzi said, holding up a small electronic device. “This is a switch to a series of bombs, Captain. These devices are placed around the cafeteria and elsewhere, and are filled with a lethal gas. My comrades here have copies of the same activation device. If any of us presses one of these buttons, you’ll have a very large body count to deal with.”

  “Is it your intention to take those hundred people with you when you leave?”

  Terzi paused. “The number we take with us will depend upon you, Captain. We will of course take some, to ensure our safe passage. If I feel good about the cooperation you give us from this moment on, then perhaps I will release some more before we leave.”

  Pierce nodded along. This asshole has us over a barrel, and he knows it. Just make sure he knows there is another barrel.

  “I have some demands of my own,” Pierce said. To her side, Lina Schaube held her breath.

  “I don’t believe you are in much position to make any, but please continue.”

  “First, our cooperation will depend upon yours. You know we have the ability to attack your people, most notably the ones now in the accelerator control room. You will make no further attacks against any members of my crew or of this station, or we will re-take that space, regardless of the cost.”

  The man seemed to smile under his cloth mask. “Go on.”

  “You’ve mentioned that your highest priority is your mission. It’s not a suicide mission to destroy this facility, otherwise you and I wouldn’t be talking now. Your goal is to steal some quantity of antimatter. On Earth, that could cause a great many more casualties than the few hundred of us here, sir.”

  “I’m sure it could.”

  “Knowing that, don’t assume that my priority is to let you leave with a minimum number of lives lost. You’ve heard me ask about the well-being of Dirac’s people. If I have any doubt about your intentions towards them, or if I have any indications that you plan to sabotage this station before you depart, rest assured you will not have a safe transit home.”

  Terzi chuckled. “I think we understand each other well, Captain. Understand this also… so far, you’re not making me want to give any of those final hundred to you.”

  “Maybe we can trade someone for some of them.”

  “The man you captured knows the r
isk of this mission, and like the rest of us he is prepared to die if necessary. He is not a factor to discuss. Perhaps later I will be agreeable to trading some people for him, if all goes well.”

  Your poker face is holding, but there are no more cards to show. You have to end the game. “Then you have my promise that we will not interfere with you.”

  “You’ve made the right choice. We’ll send those thirty-six more to you in a little while. Also, the next time I call down there, I expect you to answer personally and to answer promptly. Anything else will be deemed non-cooperation, and for that there will be consequences measured in human lives.” Terzi switched off the comms link and the screen went dark, and Pierce avoided displaying the dizziness that filled her body.

  “We’ve bought a little time,” she said to the others around her, “but not much.”

  “Do you think he’s bluffing about those gas bombs?” Yates asked. Everyone nervously shook their heads, including Emily the messenger.

  “Did you see those bombs yourself?” Pierce asked her.

  “No, but they made darn sure to tell us about them. Maybe they didn’t want us all deciding to jump them? Honestly, none of us saw very much. They had everyone lying face down.”

  “Well, here’s the next thing that happens,” Pierce said to the group as a crewman escorted Emily up to the Lincoln. “Sooner or later, they’re going to realize that they’ll never produce what they want with the accelerator. When that happens, they’ll have to either give up or try to renegotiate to grab one of the antimatter modules stored outside. They’ll choose the latter.”

  “Why didn’t you tell them that just now?” Schaube asked.

  “Because they wouldn’t have taken my word for it. They’ll need to know it for themselves. But also because a delay gives us time to use what Mr. Groves here just showed us.”

  Yates and Schaube looked puzzled. “Captain, the discretion we talked about…” Groves began.

  “I want my XO to know about it. Do you need Ms. Schaube to step away for a minute?”

  “No, it’s too late for that if we’re going to use it,” Groves said, sighing. “In Molecular Dynamics we’ve been developing a universal mechanosynthesis assembler. True replication. It’s already functional enough that it can provide us with any inorganic material we could use. I was thinking weapons, defensive shielding, emergency life support gear in case they try to tamper with engineering, and so on.”

  “It can produce any equipment we want?” Yates asked.

  “More or less. Well, yes.”

  “How much of it and how long would it take?”

  “Anything that can fit inside an eighty-cubic meter chamber could be generated from scratch within a minute,” Groves said. Yates’s jaw dropped.

  “Why was this kept a secret from the other labs?” Schaube demanded.

  “The development process… there are some proprietary aspects that I can’t really talk about.”

  Waters realized the answer. “It’s the SAI in there, isn’t it? The ‘Sleipnir’. What’s its processing speed? How many FLOPS?”

  Groves instinctively looked to Lynch for guidance. “You may as well lay it out bare now, Will,” Lynch said.

  “Ten-to-the-thirty-eighth.” Groves felt penetrating stares from the others. “It’s more power than what’s legal, but it was only built for this project.”

  “It’s ten million times more than what’s legal!” Schaube said. “Christus, that’s an act of war inside that room!”

  “It’s never been connected to anything on Earth, and we’ll decommission it once the replicator prototype is complete!” Groves snapped. “Captain, do you want the replicator’s help or not?”

  Yates replied first. “Hell yes we do.”

  Pierce shot him a harsh look then turned back to Groves. “One issue at a time… does that SAI already have designs for advanced weaponry? We won’t have time for programming.”

  “It’s got almost anything you can think of. We’ve uploaded database specs for millions of inanimate objects. They can be replicated down to their last atom.”

  “Alright, here’s what we’re going to do. XO, round up as many people from our crew as you need and go to that lab to get all of us outfitted with whatever weaponry you can think of. But have a focus on defensive equipment. Our goal here is to save as many lives as we can, not attack these guys. Those bombs make the risk too high.”

  “Captain, saving those people is going to depend on taking these intruders down,” Yates said. “But you’re probably right about the risk from those bombs. While I’m in the lab using that replicator, I suggest we interrogate that bastard we’ve got captive. He can shed some light on what kind of gas they’ve got, or if it’s a bluff. Maybe we can generate an aerosol counter-agent.”

  “I have no idea if that’s even possible. My degrees are in aerospace engineering and informatics, not chemistry.”

  “I doubt anyone here is an expert on the subject, but I’d like to look into it.”

  “OK. And otherwise just focus on defense. I’m not going to be responsible for killing over a hundred people in there if there’s a way to avoid it.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Yates said in a snarl as he left with Groves, Lynch and Trevino.

  The hothead thinks I’m being a coward, Pierce thought. God knows what he’d do if he was in charge.

  “Chief Sandoval!” Pierce yelled across the dock. “Accompany me to the forward end of the dock. Let’s talk to our guest.”

  * **

  “A group of them left the accelerator area just before we got there,” Demirci said to Terzi after he arrived in the Hub cafeteria. “The same people who caused the damage we’re now repairing. They went to the Lincoln. We should demand that they return to fix what they’ve done.” Not that it would matter, but I have to mention it.

  “I’ll demand that if we must, but for now I don’t want to push the warship’s captain too much,” the colonel replied. “For the time being she seems cooperative. There must be others here who know the equipment just as well.”

  “Very well,” Demirci nodded. “Colonel, there are three bodies lying in the far aft corridor, just outside the accelerator doors. Yilmaz and Erkan, and one civilian. Could you have Yazici’s team move them out of sight? There will still be a pool of blood there, but I don’t want the people we bring back there to get too distressed before we put them to work.” The colonel switched on his headset and walked out of earshot to make the call.

  Demirci yelled to address the crowd of people lying on the floor. “Ladies and gentlemen! Some of you have services which we require. I want everyone who regularly works in the accelerator control room to stand up and gather on that side of the room.” Dozens of heads looked to see where he was pointing. “I guarantee that those who come with me to the accelerator will receive preferential treatment. You will not be harmed. Stand up now.” Seven people stood and walked to where Demirci directed.

  “I know there’s more than that in here who work in that space. I remind you that nearly everyone is wearing access badges with your photo ID on front. The back of them contains a set of numbers which indicate which spaces you can access. Once I leave with a group of people for the accelerator, my colleagues will search your IDs. Those of you with accelerator access who are still here will be summarily shot along with three other people that we’ll choose at random. You can avoid this by standing up now.” Nine more people stood and walked quickly to the others.

  Demirci smiled in spite of his twisting stomach. “Alright everyone, let’s go to work.”

  * **

  The prisoner was where he had been since his capture: hidden in a corner of the Labs’ dock behind a group of chemical container drums, kneeling on the floor with his hands and feet bound behind him. Two of Lincoln’s crew stood nearby to watch him, hands on their stun guns, as Pierce and Chief Sandoval approached.

  “Commander Yates wasn’t able to get a word out of him, ma’am,” Sandoval said.

 
; “Maybe he wasn’t asking the right questions,” Pierce thought out loud. “You,” she said to Dogan, “I don’t want to know your name or where you came from. Instead, I’m telling you this… you heard the announcement from your people before about gathering everyone in the cafeteria. Right now we’re preparing to take down your comrades there and free those people. We have the numbers, but I’d rather not take any losses. I want you to talk them into surrendering.”

  Master Sergeant Dogan looked the small woman in the eye. It was the first time he had looked any of them in the eye. Had this woman already spoken to the colonel? He wondered. If she hadn’t, then she wouldn’t know about the gas charges…

  “If you do that, you will kill everyone there, including yourselves,” he said. His accent was more pronounced than his leader’s. Possibly Turkish, but Pierce couldn’t be sure.

  “They don’t have enough bullets for all of us. I’d rather have you talk to them. My ship is armed, so your people only leave this place if I allow it.”

  “Nerve gas. Several devices. You attack them, they set off the gas.”

  Pierce put a look of surprise on her face. “What kind of nerve gas?”

  Dogan turned away. “Call them yourself. I will speak no more.”

  “I could kill you if you refuse. You have no weight here.” The prisoner stared ahead and said nothing.

  Pierce looked him over for a few seconds then walked across the dock with Sandoval. At the comms screen she entered the number for the Molecular Dynamics sub-lab where Project Njord was located. Mike Trevino answered.

  “Don’t expect further information about the type of gas they brought, other than that it’s a nerve agent,” she explained. “It’s almost definitely not a bluff. How is it going there otherwise?”

  “It’s going well, Captain. Dr. Groves and your Commander Yates are synthesizing enough small arms and other military gear to arm us all to the teeth. As for a nerve agent antidote, that was the first thing Groves looked into when we accessed Sleipnir. It can’t be done by aerosol means, no matter what type it is.”

  “Damn. I thought that might be the case.”