by Rick Partlow
“McKay!” Patel yelled. “We’ve lost acceleration! The drive field is down!”
“Yes, sir,” McKay grunted, pushing off from the wall and heading for the emergency access shafts next to the lift station---he didn’t want to be stuck in the lift if the power suddenly went out. “I’d noticed that.”
“It’s worse than that,” Patel informed him after a moment’s pause. The Admiral’s voice was as close to panic as he had ever heard it. “McKay…somehow, he managed to eject our antimatter stores. The plasma drives aren’t igniting…we’re dead in space. And McKay, those Shipbusters are still inbound.”
McKay closed his eyes for a moment and thought of Shannon.
“Aye, sir,” he acknowledged. “I’m on it.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
Captain Joyce Minishimi had to fight an urge to spit as the acrid taste of sideways lingered in her mouth. “Tactical,” she said, blinking her eyes to try to force them to focus, “report.”
Lt. Commander Gianeto shook his head clear, his pushing-regulation-length dark hair whipping back and forth like a dog trying to shake off water. “Umm.,.” he stuttered, trying to make his brain work after the transition through the jumpgate. “Ma’am, we have a K-class star. Two gas giants…we’re in the orbital path of the closer one, but it’s a good ways off. Looks like a couple terrestrial planets closer in and that’s about all we’re gonna get on optical, since we don’t have gravimetics.” He waited as more sensors came online, filling in the gaps. “We aren’t reading any active scans, no obvious signs of habitation yet. According to spectrometry, the terrestrials aren’t habitable, at least not by us.”
“Helm, how far are we from the next gate?” Minishimi asked.
“This one’s close---less than 50,000 kilometers, Captain,” Lt. Witten said, seemingly fully recovered from the transition. Some people, Minishimi mused, appeared to have no problem with it at all, while others needed as much as a half hour to get their heads straight. Witten seemed imperturbable, all square jaw and blonde buzz cut. “Permission to set course for it?”
“By all means, Mr. Witten,” she replied. They’d only left the Sheridan a few days before, but they’d transited three of the wormholes already, a slow and tedious process with only their plasma drive for propulsion. At least they’d figured a way to use the electromagnetic launch system for the missiles to place the warhead to open the gate: that was much faster than having a lander place the bomb.
There was a faint push as Witten fired the maneuvering thrusters, swinging the ship’s nose around ninety degrees.
“Accelerating at one half g,” Witten announced.
Minishimi felt pressed into her seat by the plasma drives as the ship moved ponderously forward. She found the sensation frustrating: without her Eysselink drive, the Decatur felt as responsive as a slug. She had been hoping that one of the jumps would take them through a Republic colony system where they could pick up more antimatter, but so far they’d all been strange to her and foreign to the ship’s computers, and not one had contained a single habitable world.
“Loading the fusion trigger into the launchers,” Gianeto told her. “We can launch it right before turnover.”
“Your call, Commander.”
“Turnover in ten seconds,” Witten informed him. “Plasma drive shutdown.”
“Launching the trigger device,” Gianeto said as the acceleration faded and they all floated up against their restraints. “Detonation in ten minutes.”
“Executing turnover.” Witten sketched a command and the maneuvering thrusters spun the ship around to face its massive engine bell towards the still-closed wormhole. “Deceleration commencing.”
“Ma’am,” Gianeto frowned as the half-g burn once again gifted them with the illusion of gravity. “I’m picking up something.”
“What is it, Mr. Gianeto?”
“Not sure, ma’am, but I got a lidar blip on one of the moons of that gas giant. Something was more reflective than the background, for just a second.”
“Is it a bogie, Commander?” She leaned forward in her command chair, concerned.
“Can’t say for sure,” he admitted. “There’s a possibility of a volcanic eruption or other outgassing. We’re too far away for a definitive visual.”
“Keep an eye on it with the rear sensors even after we do the turnover,” she cautioned him. “I wouldn’t put it past Antonov to have someone out here.”
“Deceleration complete, executing turnover. Transition in five minutes at this velocity.”
“Trigger device ignition in three minutes,” Gianeto piped up. “Still nothing from the sensors.”
“Nothing to be done about it then,” Minishimi mused. “We don’t have the fuel to be burning around this system waiting to see if she reveals herself.”
“Fusion trigger has ignited.” The announcement was accompanied by a blank white space on the viewscreen that faded into a shrinking white sphere of light ahead of them. “Sensors indicate that the wormhole is open and stable.”
“Half g burn for ten seconds,” Minishimi ordered.
“Half g burn, aye,” Witten confirmed. “Revised transition time is thirty seconds.”
Joyce Minishimi didn’t feel like waiting around in this system a minute longer than necessary. Something about that sensor contact was making the hair on the back of her neck stand up.
Gianeto’s eyes darted to a readout and then widened. “Captain, there’s...” His declaration was interrupted by the temporary cessation of the universe.
“Shit!” Gianeto swore when he could talk again. “Ma’am, it was a spaceship…I saw it just before we jumped!”
“Understood, Commander Gianeto,” she acknowledged. “Report.”
“Aye, ma’am,” he said, calming down and glancing up at the viewscreen, where the optical sensors were putting together a picture for them. “We got a dual star system…holy crap! Ma’am, we’re in the Sirius system, I’m sure of it!”
“Damn,” Minishimi muttered. “So close to home, yet so far.” Sirius was only eight and a half light years from Earth, but it had no habitable planets, nothing worth mining for the money and no Republic presence.
“No bogies on radar, lidar or visual,” Gianeto said. “No active scans detected.”
“Helm?”
“We are one light second from the gate home, ma’am,” Witten reported. “Set course?”
“Do it, Mr. Witten,” she told him. “One g acceleration. Mr. Gianeto, keep an eye on our entrance gate…I don’t want whatever ship you saw taking us by surprise. If he pops his nose out of that gate, you need to be launching a Shipbuster at him before you bother to tell me he’s there.”
“Aye, ma’am.”
“Four hours to the gate at one g, Captain,” Witten reported, “including deceleration.”
“Don’t spare the horses, Mr. Witten,” Minishimi admonished him. “I know we’re pushing it on reactor fuel, but once we get into the Solar System, we can get refueled at leisure.”
“Captain, this is Commander Duncan,” the voice of the ship’s First Officer came over the ear bud of her ‘link. Minishimi raised an eyebrow. Her first officer was posted in the auxiliary control room---a backup bridge in case the main bridge was destroyed---and she couldn’t imagine why he would be contacting her privately via her ‘link rather than over the ship’s intercom system.
“Yes?” she responded, purposely not using his name in case there was a reason for the private contact.
“Ma’am, there’s a problem…I’d like to speak to you here in auxiliary control as soon as possible.”
She frowned. “I’ll be right there.” This had better be important went unsaid but understood by her tone. She ended the call and unstrapped from her seat, looking over to Gianeto. “Commander Gianeto, you have the bridge.”
“I have the bridge, aye, ma’am,” he acknowledged formally.
Minishimi briskly exited the bridge, the thick vacuum doors sealing shut behind her with a sib
ilant hiss and a muffled thump, and then made for the lift station. She actually preferred the access tubes when they were in zero gravity, but under one g acceleration they weren’t an option.
The auxiliary control room was at the opposite end of the habitable section of the ship, just ahead of engineering, and it took Minishimi a good ten minutes to reach it. She passed very few people along the way---nearly everyone was at their posts, at battle stations---and it seemed eerily like a ghost ship to her as she walked the silent corridors, the gentle tap of her soft-soled ship boots on the padded floor and the barely-audible hum of the ventilators the only sounds.
The vacuum hatch to the auxiliary bridge was closed, but a palm to the plate beside it opened it and she stepped inside. The auxiliary bridge was a bit smaller than the main one and somehow felt more insular to her, its screens smaller and darker. Commander Phillip Duncan was alone in the room, standing behind the communications station, a troubled look on his gaunt, pale face.
“Where’s the rest of the crew?” Minishimi asked sharply, glancing at the empty stations that should have been filled by the junior Communications, Tactical and Helm officers.
“Confined to their quarters for the moment,” he said grimly. “Eventually, one of them is going to be in the brig.”
“What’s going on, Commander?” she asked, having to remind herself not to call him “Jack.” Jack Durant was her usual XO and it was strange not having him on the cruise.
“Before we made the transition,” he said, anger in his voice, “I was running a diagnostic on the communications station because the computer kept kicking out an error code in the daily reports. I found out that someone had loaded a worm into the communications computer. It was designed to take advantage of the disorientation we’ve been feeling every time we go through the wormholes. Immediately after each transition, it’s been sending out an automatic broadband signal, basically advertising our location and identity. Then it erases itself from the log so it never gets picked up by the main Comm station.”
Minishimi hissed out a breath, feeling as if she’d just been punched in the gut. “We have a traitor on board,” she said, putting the unthinkable into words. “Is it Lt. Rojas?” Rojas was the junior Communications officer, the one who would have been assigned to that station in the auxiliary bridge.
“I don’t think so,” Duncan told her, shaking his head, his long, horsey face seeming to get even longer. “She’d have to be pretty damned stupid to input the worm on her own station, ma’am. But it has to be one of the auxiliary bridge crew, and I think I have an idea who. Look at this, ma’am.” He waved at the readout on the Communications desk’s holographic display and Minishimi stepped over to the station. Duncan took a step back to let her get closer.
“What am I looking at, Commander?” She asked, peering at the diagnostic report.
“Right there, ma’am,” he leaned in, jabbing a finger at one of the lines. “I can’t be sure, but to me, that looks like a subroutine that shuts down the fusion reactor.”
“Christ!” She exclaimed, squinting more closely at the display.
So intent was she on the readout that she didn’t notice Duncan’s arm snake up around her neck until it was locked around her throat and the knife in his other hand was already darting in towards her left eye.
Joyce Minishimi responded with reflexes honed by long years as an athlete and grabbed the descending hand before the blade reached her face. Instinctively, she knew she couldn’t match Duncan’s raw strength; so rather than pushing the arm away, she redirected it and pulled it down, plunging the dark, ceramic blade into the First Officer’s forearm that was across her throat.
Duncan roared an incoherent mixture of pain and fury and slammed his knee into the small of Minishimi’s back, sending her plowing face-first into the Communications console as he staggered backwards.
“Fucking bitch!” He screeched, gritting his teeth and pulling the blade out of his arm, moaning as he heard and felt it scrape on bone.
Minishimi tasted blood as she sprawled across the station, her form half-hidden by holographic projections, but her brain screamed at her to ignore the agony in her back and the dull ache of her broken nose. She half-turned, wincing at the pain it caused in the spasming muscles of her lower back, and saw Duncan lurching towards her, knife raised in his left hand. She lashed out with her right heel, catching the man in his forward plant leg, feeling his kneecap dislocate with the impact.
Duncan screamed, but kept lunging forward, the knife descending. Minishimi desperately tried to move, but she was half-turned and only managed to shift slightly to the side, taking the blade in the right side of her chest. Shock draped over Joyce Minishimi like a fog bank and she barely registered it as Duncan let go of the knife to collapse back to the deck, clutching his horribly out of place knee. Slowly, dully, she felt herself sliding off the console and landing hard on her back, trying desperately to breathe and tasting blood in her throat as she did.
Distantly, some clinical and detached part of her realized that the knife had gone into her lung and it had collapsed…she was about to drown in her own blood. She knew she should move, that she had to try to save herself, but everything seemed fuzzy and far away, as if she wasn’t really there.
Then she saw Duncan lever himself off the ground with his one good leg and one good arm. For a moment, she thought he was intent on finishing her, but then she saw him clawing at the Communications console, and she realized he was trying to finish the job: he was going to execute that subroutine he’d so arrogantly showed her and shut down the ship’s reactor, leaving them helpless.
Drawing on the deepest reserves she had, deeper than the ones that let her sprint the last hundred meters of the Hokkaido Marathon, she reached her left hand up to her chest and grasped the hilt of the knife that protruded from her flesh, then jerked it free with a strain that hurt worse than the blade sliding out of her lung.
She wanted to gasp out a scream, but she swallowed it instead, swallowed blood as she fought the cough that was struggling its way out of her throat, and managed to roll over, getting one knee beneath her.
Just one thing, she thought with dogged determination. Just got to do one more thing.
Duncan was leaning against the terminal, trying to work the controls one-handed, nearly blinded with pain and oblivious to her as she rose up from the ground, the knife gripped point-down in her right hand. With the last bit of energy left in her, she raised the knife over her head and slammed the point into the base of Duncan’s neck, neatly severing his spinal cord.
Duncan went limp, falling like a marionette with its strings cut; and then she was falling too, collapsing almost on top of him as the blood filled her throat and everything was suddenly dark…
Commander Gianeto’s head snapped around at the sound of the sensor alert, and his eyes went wide as he pulled the holographic readout forward, enlarging it so he could get a better look at the bogie.
“Captain Minishimi,” he called over the ship’s intercom, “please return to the bridge, we have a bogie exiting the jumpgate! Captain Minishimi please return to the bridge.”
“Damn,” Witten muttered, irritation in his usually stoic face. “Almost home, too…”
Gianeto patched into Minishimi’s ‘link and called her again. “Captain, this is Gianeto, we have a Protectorate ship through the gate…it’s accelerating on us at two g’s.” Silence. “Captain? Are you there? Can you hear me?” He turned to Lt. Higgs at the Communications console. “Lieutenant, get me a fix on Captain Minishimi’s ‘link, please.”
Higgs checked her board, pulling up the ping location for the communications link. “She’s in the auxiliary control room still,” she said.
“Security,” Gianeto called over his ‘link. “This is Gianeto. The Captain is on the auxiliary bridge and I can’t raise her on the intercom or her ‘link. Do you have a visual feed from the cameras in there?”
“Negative, sir,” Lieutenant Marvez, the head Securit
y officer, responded. “The cameras have been disabled via command override. Either the Captain or Commander Duncan did it, sir.”
“Well, get someone over to the auxiliary bridge and get the Captain up here now…we have an enemy ship insystem!”
“Aye, sir,” Marvez acknowledged. “I’ll go myself.”
“Commander Duncan,” Gianeto called over the First Officer’s ‘link. “Commander Duncan, do you read?” Again, nothing. “Dammit!” Gianeto turned to the Helm officer. “Witten, is their ship going to be in weapons’ range before we reach the gate?”
Witten checked his instruments before answering. “It’s going to be close, but we should be able to get through before he’s in laser or kinetic energy weapon range. Shipbusters are a different story.”
“We have countermeasures for missiles,” Gianeto reasoned. “But just in case, prepare to take us to emergency high-g acceleration as soon as the Captain’s back on the bridge.”
“Aye, Commander, will do.”
Remembering what Captain Minishimi had told him, Gianeto punched the control to launch a Shipbuster missile at the bogie. The ship lurched noticeably as what was basically an unmanned intersystem spaceship separated from the weapons bay with a boost from the electromagnetic launcher. Once it was far enough away, the fusion drive ignited and it headed for the bogie at ten gravities acceleration. “One Shipbuster away,” Gianeto announced, mostly from habit. “Let’s see if it’ll do any good.” He switched the intercom to Security. “Lt. Marvez, what’s the word?”
“Just getting there, sir,” Marvez panted, the quiver in his voice telling Gianeto that he was sprinting. “At the door…vacuum hatch is sealed, using my Security override.” Gianeto could hear the door hiss open. “Holy Christ!” Marvez exclaimed. “Oh my God! Sir, it’s Commander Duncan and Captain Minishimi! They’ve been stabbed…I think they’re both dead!”