* **
Aydin Demirci jogged through the main engineering access hall and paused outside the door to Life Support, thankful that he still hadn’t heard any chatter on his headset comms. None of the other MAKs had yet discovered Kervan, let alone Terzi and Toprak. Only one man left in the way…
The door was unlockable, but Sergeant Cetin had managed to rig spare cables like rope around the hatch’s handle to hold it shut from the inside. Demirci rapped on the door with the butt of his pistol. Through the hatch’s window he saw a Dirac engineer lying on the floor near the room’s control console, conscious but with his hands and legs tied and a gag wrapped over a beaten face. From behind some machinery came Cetin, who saw Demirci and approached the hatch. Below the view of the window, Aydin kept his firearm pointed forward.
“Doctor?” Cetin said as he undid the rigging and slid the hatch open. “What are you doing here?”
Demirci answered his question with three bullets to the torso. Cetin collapsed backwards onto the floor, but the aramid polymer vest he wore under his clothes kept him winded but alive. Before the sergeant could reach for his own weapon, Demirci fired two more shots into his head.
On the floor further inside the room, Markus Fuller struggled in a futile panic to free himself from his restraints. Demirci walked towards the terrified engineer.
“Don’t worry, my friend,” Aydin called out as he approached the control console. “I’m not here to hurt you.” He looked over the console’s display screens and verified that the access doors to the thruster control room down the hall were unlocked. “In fact, I might be able to save your life. Can you walk?” Fuller nodded.
Demirci stepped around the back of the control console and pointed his weapon at the power cable leading from the floor to the desk. A single shot took the console offline. He then grabbed the tactical knife from Cetin’s chest kit, cut through the ties between Fuller’s ankles, and helped the engineer to his feet.
“We’re going to the thruster control section. Walk in front of me. I’m leaving your hands tied behind your back for the moment. When the time is right, it’ll be safe to set you free. Until then, if you try anything at all, I’ll shoot you like I shot him. Do you understand?”
Fuller nodded again, the gag still in his mouth and tied around the back of his neck.
The two entered VASIMR Control. Demirci knew exactly what it would look like. He had used his VR headset to visualize every detail of this space and others for weeks, but he was still awed at the sight of it. It was adjacent to and above Dirac’s fusion reactor, with a wide safety window overlooking the giant toroidal generator and separating the two spaces. VASIMR Control itself was dominated by large pipes, each a meter wide, along with the equipment for their injectors and control valves. The four main pipes rose from the hydrogen tanks underneath the room and through four gaseous propellant injector systems beneath the control valves, and four thick power conduits ran through the space from the power plant. The cables ran parallel with the pipes beyond the control room walls, out to the station’s four main engines. In the middle of the room, surrounded by the pipes and cables and injectors and control valve machinery, was a single console for local control of Dirac’s thrusters.
Demirci closed the room’s access hatch behind them and electronically locked it. “Take a seat there,” Demirci said to Fuller, pointing at one of the chairs in front of an auxiliary console away from the main controls. “And don’t get up until I say so.”
The physicist stood at Dirac Station’s main engineering controls. Access to the console was locked until he entered the precious ten-digit code he had memorized. 5-4-2-3-7-2-8-4-6-6.
Control of the main engineering functions was his. The first task was to change the code and lock out all remote access to the console’s functions. Nobody in the Ops Center or anywhere else would be able to undo what he was about to do.
The station was sixty kilometers from its orbital position at L3 and still drifting away, albeit at a decreasing velocity, thanks to the desperate stunt pulled by the two Dirac members in the Ops Center just as the Kostroma docked. This poor guy I brought in here with me was probably one of them, Demirci realized.
The next task was to prepare Dirac’s thrusters and vector them to the proper direction. The VASIMR engines were not shut down, they simply didn’t have any new propellant flowing to them. Many of the subsystems were still online. Demirci began raising the temperature of the residual hydrogen caught between the control valves and each of the engine’s ion cyclotron heating couplers back to up normal, lest the sudden rush of new propellant cause flame-out damage. After five minutes of priming, the thrusters would be available to surge back to one hundred percent and put Dirac onto its maximum acceleration. Then it would only be a matter of pressing a button.
Five minutes, he thought. The pain in his arm was excruciating, but the bleeding had decreased to slow drops. He knew he would not bleed out, certainly not within five minutes. The safest move is to simply wait until it’s time for the thrust, and then do it. But it’s as good as done. Maybe I have enough leeway to scrape something good out of this vile mess...
* **
The comms screen in the Labs dock flashed with an incoming call. But this one wasn’t coming from the cafeteria, it was coming from VASIMR Control. Pierce, Yates and the others shared a moment of apprehensive looks before the captain answered it.
The screen lit up and showed one of the intruders, whom they immediately recognized as Beanpole. Unlike the man on the earlier call, he wasn’t wearing a mask. His skin color didn’t seem right, paler than what it should be, and his demeanor also seemed off. His forehead was wrinkled like he was holding back a torrent of anguish. They noticed his left arm and had some idea why.
“Are you the captain of the Lincoln?” Demirci asked.
“I am. Who are you?”
“Doctor Aydin Onur Demirci, senior molecular physicist at the Defense Industries Research and Development Institute in Ankara, Islamic Republic of Turkey. For your own sakes, listen closely and don’t interrupt. In a few minutes, I will raise this station’s maneuvering thrusters to their maximum output. I suggest that your ship be ready to engage its own thrusters to offset the torque, otherwise your docking seal may rupture. When I do this, the remaining soldiers who accompanied me will be surprised, and they will react. In the Hub, there are only two left alive. They’re both in the cafeteria guarding eighty-four hostages, and they have the other two detonators like this one,” he said, holding up Terzi’s switch. “A moment before I burn the thrusters, I will disarm the nerve gas bombs in that space. Their detonators will beep and indicate that the bombs are disarmed, so if you want to save those eighty-four people you’ll have a window of only seconds to get in there and kill them before they can rearm the bombs. I assume you already have people ready to attack, but if not, then you should get your people ready now, because in either case I’m surging this station’s thrusters in four minutes.”
Everyone gathered around the dock’s comms screen gasped, all of them understanding what this man was trying to do. Yates sprinted away from the group and ran towards the starboard corridor, where the two makeshift assault teams of Lincoln crew volunteers were gathered.
Pierce spoke quickly. “That’ll… you’ll destroy the station! Tell me why you’re doing this.”
“There’s no time for that now. Just get your people ready to fight, and have your ship ready to get underway.”
Pierce turned her head from the screen and switched on her communicator. “Yamada, this is the CO! Brace the ship for sudden lateral acceleration. Have the maneuvering thrusters ready to react to a thrust from Dirac. You have about three minutes.”
“Aye, ma’am!” Yamada replied. “All maneuvering thrusters are still standing by in auto mode, but thank you for the heads up!”
The captain turned back to Demirci, trying to think out loud. “What difference will it make even if we free all those hostages? You’ll kill us all when t
he station explodes!”
“I hope not. I haven’t calculated if your ship will be able to get to a safe distance in time, but you might as well try. The station should have less than an hour from when I initiate the thrust. By the way, don’t waste your time coming in here to stop me. You won’t be able to get in here fast enough, and once the thrust is on I’m going to disable all control circuits and the mechanical governors. Nobody will be able to shut it down even if I’m dead. It’s as good as done.”
“What about the others in the accelerator space? There are over thirty hostages down there.”
“There are only two soldiers left guarding those people. You’re also welcome to try an attack there. It’s up to you.”
Pierce looked into the man’s eyes and tried to understand. They gave away nothing he hadn’t said aloud. Yates’s voice over the communicator interrupted. “Captain, the teams are ready to go on your command. Comms channel sixteen for both.”
“Copy XO, stand by.” Pierce called over to the drone drivers: “Vespids! Move in close to your targets and fire on my command!” She turned back to Demirci. “You’ll stay on here with us? We’ll need to go the moment you say.”
“Yes I will,” he nodded. “We’ll time it right. Two minutes left...”
“Accelerator team has one target!” called Jake Waters from behind the Vespid pilots. “Cafeteria team is working on setting up a shot.”
“Copy, stand by!” How can we avoid this? How? “We can launch,” Pierce said to Demirci, still formulating an idea, “and our ship is armed. We’ll destroy the station’s thrusters long before you can move it out of position.”
“Bad idea, Captain. As your ship’s AI will remind you before you try it, Dirac’s VASIMR thrusters run on hydrogen-fed ion propulsion. If you start blasting at them, you’ll destroy the fuel lines and ignite the hydrogen all the way to the storage tanks. That’ll destroy the rest of the station and probably the antimatter containment modules along with it. About those eight thousand modules… you may want to ask the station’s people just how much product they have stored in them. Anyway, Captain, just flee. You really don’t have options here. Forty seconds.”
Helpless as a puppet again. Played with by a stranger on a screen. “Why are you trying to help us now?” Pierce asked.
Demirci shook his head and dropped his eyes from Jaana’s. For the first time since he called, his voice became lower and rough as he spoke. “You’ve already asked why. There isn’t time to answer, and it wouldn’t help me if I did. Let’s just say that the body count need not be so high, and I’d prefer it not to be. Captain… fifteen seconds.”
“Both drone teams, fire at will! Don’t wait to coordinate a shot!” Pierce grabbed the communicator linked to the assault teams. “Ten seconds, be ready!” Her pulse, already pounding, jumped higher. The same happened to every man and woman on both teams. Crewmembers who never expected to leave the confines of the Lincoln during their tours now gripped assault weapons with white knuckles.
One team of ten, led by Chief Sandoval, stood in a line crouched outside the door to the accelerator spaces. The other team was split into two groups of five outside the port and starboard entrances to the aft end of the cafeteria. Yates accompanied the starboard-side group. Behind each door were dozens of innocent lives mixed with at least two well-trained killers.
The Vespid pilots got off three shots in the few seconds they had since Pierce’s order to fire. In the accelerator control area, Bigshot was around the far side of a decelerator line and out of sight of any of the drones, but one microdart struck Junior in the side of his neck. He responded by rubbing an itch. In the cafeteria, two Vespids took their shot at Shorty within a second of each other. Both missed, noiselessly spearing into the stocky man’s collar as he paced along the side wall. Pacing along the opposite wall, Lefty was beyond any drone’s range.
Demirci lifted the detonator switch to his chest, showing those gathered around the dock’s comms screen what he was doing. His fingers tapped a sequence of beeping commands into the switch’s tiny screen, and then he spoke to Pierce before he switched off the comms screen.
“Bombs disarmed.”
CHAPTER 22
Dirac Station
2036Z, 24 December 2065
“Galley team, go! Go!” Pierce shouted into the communicator. She ran over to the Vespid screens to get drones-eye views of the two spaces. As she did, she and everyone else in the dock felt a mild rumbling under their feet which reverberated through the walls. The station’s ion thrusters were pouring out their plasma exhaust. On the Vespid screens showing the accelerator rooms, Junior drooped his head and sat back against a countertop.
“Accelerator team, go!”
Lieutenant Clark entered Lynch’s station-wide access code, and the entry hatch slid open. The pack of Lincoln crewmen ran into the room grouped tightly together, with the first two holding up transparent, bulletproof riot shields.
Lieutenant Erdem had just leaned back onto the counter of a control console, a rush of fatigue flooding through him, when the door opened up. A group of armed people, wearing armor as advanced as he had ever seen, ran into the room and saw him. He raised his weapon to fire, only to find his reflexes slowed and his aim to be dull. As he pulled his trigger, automatic fire from half a dozen weapons tore into his flesh. Blood sprayed around him as the bullet-riddled officer fell backwards onto the console and then down to the floor, shot forty times in two seconds.
The clatter of gunfire brought screams from Dirac personnel scattered throughout the machinery. Most dropped at once to the floor, instinctively covering their heads from the noise, while others ran around – towards safety in the nooks of the large equipment, towards the access door, or anywhere they could think of away from the last intruder they knew was still there.
Eight of the Lincoln team fanned out into the large area, walking slow and knowing that there was one enemy still inside, hidden amongst the enormous machinery. Two others remained near the door, one a wounded ensign shot through both legs, and an assistant ship’s corpsman who tended to him. Half a dozen Vespids spread out the same as the team, though they were not nearly as fast as human legs. Across the team’s communicators, Jake Waters announced what he saw from the drone cameras. “He’s behind the decelerator complex somewhere! Port-side aft!”
Yazici was around the far side of the decelerator when the attackers entered. Hostages out of his sight ran around, but those near him did not dare move. The attackers were spreading out, only seconds away from finding and outflanking him. He grabbed one of the hostages he had been watching by the hair, a young-looking European man crouched on the floor behind the nearby machinery, and held the man in front of him.
“Warship crew! I have a bomb! You will stand aside as I exit this area, or we will all die now!”
The Lincoln team hurried around to the far side of the decelerator ring to see the last enemy in the room, all eight keeping their guns pointed at him. The man held both hands towards the back of a hostage as he walked out from behind the equipment. One hand held a weapon at his captive, but the other hand was pressed close behind the hostage’s back and could have held anything.
“Back away as I walk! I am holding a bomb. Stay back, or I detonate!” Yazici moved slowly behind his human shield, and the others stepped back.
“Please don’t shoot!” the hostage said in a French accent. “Quelqu’un sait le francais?”
“Quiet!”
Clark kept his weapon fixed on Yazici’s face. “Just take it easy,” he said, slowly nodding to the hostage. “Stay calm, and we’ll let you out of here. Sir, bluffe-t-il?”
The hostage’s eyes widened, and then he spoke. “Oui.”
Clark fired a single shot between Yazici’s eyes. The round pierced the helmet’s faceplate and obliterated the captain’s brain stem faster than it could send a nerve signal to his finger to fire. He was dead even before his body began to drop.
“Dieu! Merde!” The hostage tw
itched as he clutched his torso to make sure he wasn’t shot.
The team leader let out a deep breath. “Well done, sir,” he said to the hostage. He switched on the comms net. “Captain, this is Lieutenant Clark. The accelerator area is secure.”
In the cafeteria, Captain Avci and Sergeant Ekici heard their detonator devices beep their coded signals just as the floor and walls around them began vibrating with a resonant hum. Avci switched on his headset to call Colonel Terzi. “Top, come in!”
Ekici didn’t reach for his detonator or headset switch. He raised his weapon and staggered backwards towards the forward end of the large room, keeping his eyes on the two aft doors. They opened near-simultaneously, both revealing armed men and women. Those in front held glass-like riot shields in front of them.
The sergeant met the starboard-side team with a protracted burst of assault weapon fire. At twenty meters away, his aim was more than accurate enough to find the gaps between the shields. Three people dropped in a mist of blood before they even had a chance to shoot, the others falling to the floor and returning panic fire as Ekici ducked behind tables at the far end of the room. Screams from dozens of Dirac hostages mixed with the gunfire.
Across the room, the port-side group noticed Avci the instant their door opened, standing directly in front of them and tapping commands into his detonator. He swung his weapon up to fire, but it was too late. A well-placed shot by a Lincoln engineer struck Avci in the top of his head, and his body received a further torrent of gunfire once it dropped.
“Stay down! Stay down!” a crewman shouted as some of the hostages jumped to their feet to run out of harm’s way. A member of the starboard team mistook a Dirac man running towards them as an intruder and shot him down, mercifully only hitting him in the legs and sending the wounded man crashing to the floor.
Ekici grabbed the hair of one woman who had jumped up, and he pulled her in front of him. Ignoring her shriek of protest, he walked backwards towards the forward end of the cafeteria. He held the back of her head with one hand, the other hand remained holding his weapon, which sprayed short bursts of fire towards the attackers. The surviving crewmen ducked behind their riot shields, unable to see a clean shot.
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