by Rick Partlow
“What the fuck?” Gianeto exploded. “Marvez, get them both to the medical bay right now…and get some of your people on that auxiliary control room---find out what the hell happened!”
“Will do, Commander!”
Gianeto took a deep breath and turned to Witten and Higgs. “I need you two to witness that I am officially assuming command.”
“Witnessed,” they both confirmed, their voices dull with disbelief, shock evident in their eyes. Under his breath, Witten muttered “Better you than me.” Gianeto shot him a dirty look, then glanced back at his board at the sound of an alarm beep.
“The enemy ship is launching countermeasures,” Gianeto observed, checking the sensor readings. “Gonna take a while to see who wins that battle.”
“We have over three hours to watch the show,” Witten reminded him.
“Negative,” Gianeto said, shaking his head firmly. “We are not decelerating, Mr. Witten.” Gianeto punched in the control for the weapons section. “Commander Chappelle, this is Gianeto…I’m acting Captain. I need you to take the fusion trigger for the gate and put it on a Shipbuster. And I need it done in an hour.”
“Uhh…” Chappelle stuttered. “Aye, sir, we can do it.”
“Get back to me when it’s done.” Gianeto turned back to Witten. “”We are going to continue at one g until the Captain and Commander Duncan are in the medical bay, then we’re going to two g’s. We are going to be through that gate in under two hours, Francis…as far under as we can manage. We are going to be launching the trigger on a Shipbuster in an hour…at ten g’s, it can get to the gate in plenty of time to get it open for us, even as close as we’ll be to it.”
“Aye, Captain,” Witten said, and there was no irony in the man’s tone.
“Oh shit!” Gianeto exclaimed, almost drowning out the alarm from the tactical sensors as a pair of threat warning icons appeared on the display. “We have two more bogies going active between us and the gate. They must have been sitting there powered down, waiting for us.” Cursing under his breath, Gianeto hit a control. “I just launched our last two Shipbusters, besides the one we’re going to use to open the gate.” He snorted. “The Hell with it, I’m launching Area Denial missiles too…maybe we can overload their anti-missile systems.”
“Why haven’t they launched on us?” Witten wondered.
“I’ve been wondering that myself,” Gianeto admitted. “But I’ve been too busy to look gift horses in the mouth.”
“Someone stabbed the Captain and Commander Duncan,” Higgs pointed out. “Maybe they were supposed to sabotage us. They could be expecting us to not be able to fight.”
“That’s a damn fine point, Lieutenant,” Gianeto said. “And I think it’s a pretty good clue that we’re dealing with a traitor. But if he or she attacked Captain Minishimi and Commander Duncan, why didn’t they finish the job and disable the ship?”
“Commander Gianeto!” Lt. Marvez’s voice came over Gianeto’s ‘link. “We’re in the medical bay. Commander Duncan is dead, non-revivable, but they’ve got the Captain breathing again; the doc says she’s going to make it.”
“Thank God,” Gianeto breathed. “Any indication who did this to them?”
“Sir, they did it to each other! The Captain’s ‘link was being jammed, but it was still recording to its onboard memory---I just downloaded it to my tablet while the docs were working on her. Commander Duncan lured the Captain to the auxiliary bridge, then he attacked her. He was going to disable the ship, but she managed to kill him first.”
“Jesus Christ!” Higgs exclaimed from the Communications station, her grey eyes wide with disbelief. “Commander Duncan? But he’s been in the Spacefleet for fifteen years!”
Witten shook his head. “Shit, if they expect us to go dead any minute and it doesn’t happen, they’re going to open fire pretty soon.”
“Sound the alarms and accelerate to two g’s, Mr. Witten,” Gianeto ordered, his face taking a grim set. “Engineering,” he called, even as the acceleration klaxons began to sound.
“Prieta here, Commander,” the chief engineer responded. If the chaos and alarms of the last few minutes had disturbed Prieta, he didn’t show it by his calm demeanor.
“We salvaged a little antimatter from the Peboan system, Commander Prieta…how long will it keep our Eysselink field active if we use it?”
“Minutes, Commander Gianeto,” Prieta estimated. “Five, perhaps ten if we don’t go over a few g’s acceleration.”
“What are you thinking, Larry?” Witten blurted, then grimaced, realizing he’d broken protocol by using Gianeto’s first name in the current situation. Gianeto just smiled.
“I am thinking, Francis, that there might be a way for us to make us through that gate alive after all.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
The emergency access shaft was bare metal about a meter wide with a single plastic rail running the length of the tube to use for propulsion and the lightly-claustrophobic McKay hated it with a passion, but he plunged headlong into the tube nevertheless.
“Vinnie, talk to me,” he called as he pulled himself down the tube at ever-increasing speed.
“Not there yet, sir,” Vinnie replied tightly, voice strained. “I’m in the access shafts, coming from the shuttle bay.”
“Damn. I’ll be there before you. Jock?”
“Be there in two minutes, sir,” the Australian replied.
“Lt. James,” McKay called Security again, then had to tuck his legs in and absorb an impact against the wall on his hip as he careened around a curve in the tube. “What’s the sitrep?” He was finally able to ask.
“Sir,” James responded, a touch of panic in his voice, “we have security personnel on scene now, but Mironov has a weapon---I don’t know where he got it, maybe from Kowalski---and he’s taken the engineering crew hostage. The hatch is locked; we could open it, but he’s threatening to kill everyone in the section if we do.”
“Casualties?”
“Unknown, sir. We have to assume Kowalski is down, but comms are down inside engineering and Mironov has taken everyone’s ‘links.”
“Goddammit,” McKay muttered, picking up speed again. “What was Kowalski armed with, James?”
“He was only supposed to have a stunner, sir, but Sergeant Carson reports that Mironov has a pistol.”
“Anything else I should know about?” McKay asked sarcastically. “Maybe an unaccounted for fusion warhead he might have picked up?”
“I’m sorry, sir,” he could hear James cringing in the tone of the man’s voice. “I’ll find out how he got it…”
“Later, James,” McKay interrupted. “Work on getting eyes in the room. He didn’t physically disable the monitors…he hasn’t had time. Get whatever command he used overridden and get me video.”
“Yes, sir, Colonel.”
Finally McKay came to the exit for the engineering deck and manually undogged the hatch---everything in the emergency access shafts was manual except the pressure gates to seal off compartments in case of decompression. Engineering was down in tail of the ship, the last pressurized compartment before the radiation shields and metallic hydrogen fuel stores that separated them from the fusion reactor and the antimatter containment bottles.
The lift station and emergency access shafts emerged in an antechamber that separated engineering from the rest of the ship, since the engineering compartment contained airlocked access tubes that allowed them to suit up and work on the reactor in an emergency. The antechamber could be sealed off from the rest of the ship via a meter-thick blast door, but at the moment only the thinner vacuum hatch was closed, a small window set in the door the only view into the engineering section.
Half a dozen armored security troops were clustered uncertainly in the corridor outside the hatch, milling around in the uncertain leadership of a Tech-Sergeant who’d obviously never confronted this sort of circumstance before. McKay shoved off from the edge of the access tube hatch then stopped himself agains
t the far wall by the hatch, in the midst of the security.
“Is there any way to communicate with him?” McKay demanded of the Sergeant.
“The intercom should still work, sir,” the Sergeant waved at a panel on the wall next to the door.
“Good.” He touched his ‘link and called Security. “Lt. James, be ready to open the hatch on my word.”
“Yes, sir, Colonel,” James responded.
“Antonov,” McKay said, hitting the speaker control. “This is McKay.”
There was a long pause and McKay thought maybe it was too late, but then the speaker made a scratchy hiss as someone inside the engineering section activated it. “So, you’ve figured it out, McKay.” The voice was Mironov’s, but the mannerism, the tone…they were very familiar to McKay from historical recordings and from the brief time he’d spent with Sergei Antonov. “You’re more intelligent than I gave you credit for. Although that wouldn’t be too difficult.”
“I think I have a pretty good idea of what’s going on, General,” McKay replied, ignoring the barb. "You gave me the hint yourself. The ‘rumor’ you heard about duplicating people with the alien technology. At first, when I pieced together that it was you, I thought you’d had restruct surgery, changed your looks. But you would never take that big a risk with your life…unless you had more than one life to risk. You’ve copied yourself and you figured out a way to give the copy your memories.”
“And that’s not the end of it, is it, Colonel?” Antonov’s voice was playful, taunting.
“No,” McKay agreed grimly. “There’s no way you could have known we’d capture you on that ship…so, at a guess, there are multiple copies of you. One in each system maybe? One on every ship even?” He remembered his conversation with Podbyrin about why Antonov hadn’t used more ships in the invasion. “Just in the last couple years I’d imagine, to make sure your ship captains don’t get any ideas. And you even went to the trouble of hypno-imprinting each of them to resist chemical interrogation. ”
“Well, you are the bright boy,” Mironov/Antonov cackled. “And do you know the wonderful thing about being effectively immortal, Colonel McKay? That I don’t even care that this body will be atomized when my ships and missiles catch up with it.”
“But you know I do, General. You know I’m going to have to open that door and come in and try to set things right, don’t you? So, the question is, would you rather kill a couple of engineering officers before I put a bullet in you, or would you rather surrender and get to watch us go through the futility of trying to get out of this alive?”
McKay glanced up as the Security Sergeant---his name tab read “Aubrey”--- motioned for him. McKay shut down the voice pickup for the door speaker and pushed over to the man.
“Sir,” Aubrey said, holding up his tablet, “we got the visual feed back up.”
McKay took the tablet from him and saw that Mironov/Antonov was against the far wall of the chamber, one arm around the neck of a female engineering officer, a gun---a real firearm, not a stunner---held to her head. The others floated helplessly, their hands and feet secured by rigging tape, with strips of it across their mouths as well.
“You present an intriguing argument, McKay,” the Russian admitted, a smirk on his face that McKay felt an irresistible urge to wipe off with a punch. “But I think that smacks of making things far too easy on you.”
“How about this, then?” McKay suggested, keeping his voice light despite the savage grimace on his face. “You move away from the hostages and I come in the door alone. You get the chance to take a shot at me, and we’ll finish what we started on the bridge of your flagship.”
“McKay,” he heard a voice in his ear from the ‘link. “It’s Patel. Keep him distracted. We’ve launched shuttles to recover the antimatter fuel canisters; hopefully we can get them back on board before their integral batteries run out of power for the containment fields.”
“Ah, McKay,” Antonov laughed. “You do know how to reach my heart. I will tell you what, Colonel, I will do this. You may come in…just you, hands empty. I will stay where I am, and I will have a hostage, just to insure it is just you. You will shut the door behind you and I will seal it, and then we can talk.”
“Don’t do it, sir,” Vinnie whispered behind him. McKay started; he hadn’t realized Mahoney had come up behind him while he was talking to Antonov. “He’ll kill them anyway.”
“Of course he will,” McKay agreed, muting the speaker. “But at least this gets me inside.” He pulled his 10mm from its belt holster and checked the load. “And I’m sure as hell not going in empty-handed either.” He hit the speaker control again. “All right, Sergei, I agree to your terms. I’m coming in, alone.”
“I await you with baited breath, tovarisch.”
“Here’s what we’re going to do,” McKay said as Jock came up behind Vinnie, a carbine cradled in his arms---he’d made a stop by the ship’s armory along the way, apparently. “When that door opens, we’re going to be against the wall over there.” He pointed to the section of bulkhead opposite the vacuum hatch. “I’m going to go inside first and draw his fire, and Sergeant Aubrey, you are going to keep that door open---do not let Mironov close it. Jock and Vinnie, you two will follow me after a count of two and if I haven’t done it already, you will take him out, no matter how many people you have to shoot through to do it. Are we clear?”
“Got it, sir,” Jock confirmed. Vinnie looked as if he wanted to argue, but he knew it was useless, so he just moved over to the wall opposite the door.
“You ready, Sergeant?” McKay asked the Security NCO as he moved into position.
“Yes, sir,” Aubrey confirmed with a nod, looking at his tablet. “He’s still against the far wall. It’s about ten meters from the hatch, sir.”
“It’s gotta be a trap of some kind,” Vinnie muttered, a sour expression on his face.
“It doesn’t need to be,” Jock pointed out, his voice and manner as calm and matter-of-fact as if this were a training exercise. “We’re surrounded by enemy ships, in the middle of their home system, our antimatter is ejected and our reactor is shut down. What the hell does he care if he dies now or when we blow up?”
“Open the door,” McKay ordered, gritting his teeth, bracing his feet against the wall.
Sergeant Aubrey touched a control and the vacuum hatch slid open, then McKay sprang away from the wall and floated towards the door. He had time to think I wish I’d done more zero-g combat training before we left, and then he was through the hatch, his 10mm held in front of his chest in an Isosceles stance.
McKay had heard others who’d been in combat talk about the feeling of time slowing down for them: tachypsychia the experience was called. They could describe in great detail every second of a firefight, see every move they’d made in their head. McKay had been in combat more than most Marine officers, much less Intelligence officers, but he could barely remember a second of any firefight he’d ever experienced. Flashes of blood and gut-punches of fear that threatened to turn to panic were the only memories he had, though nightmares sometimes revealed more details.
This was no different. It was so fast he didn’t have a conscious idea of what was happening even as it happened. He yelled “Antonov!” to distract the man, to get the gun pointed at him instead of the hostage, but he couldn’t tell if it worked. He couldn’t see the gleeful, delighted smirk on Antonov’s unfamiliar face as the Russian started shooting, and he wouldn’t remember the panicked tears on the face of the apprentice engineer that the duplicate was using as a human shield. All he would recall was a silhouette-like outline of a human head in the electronic pop-up sight of his pistol and the recoil of the 10mm driving him backwards towards the corner of the room.
He did see a haze of blood misting off the entangled figures of Antonov and the apprentice engineer, but before he could determine from whom the blood had come, he had drifted out of the line of sight, behind a locker. He could see Vinnie and Jock bouncing into the room behin
d him, but they were quickly hidden from view as well. He tucked to do a roll in mid-air, putting his feet against the wall and pushing off back towards the open part of the engineering bay.
Jock was already cutting the tape off Chief Engineer Kopecky, while Vinnie was pulling the apprentice engineer away from Mironov’s body.
“We’re all clear in here!” Vinnie called out to the Security outside the room. “Get us some medics now!”
As McKay came closer, he could see that Antonov…Mironov…whoever it was, was dead, a bullet hole through his forehead, the back of his skull shattered and exploded outward, a cloud of brains, bone fragments and blood hanging over his body, some of it already spattered on the wall and the hostage he’d held.
“Casualties?” He asked, reholstering his pistol and trying to get his breathing back under control.
“She took two to the chest,” Vinnie reported grimly, turning over the apprentice engineer that Antonov had been using as a shield. Her face was pale, her eyes open but unseeing and two gaping holes in her upper chest were frothing oxygenated blood, adding to the red mist that filled the air. The medics were on the way and even as he watched, two of the Security troops boosted over to slap smart bandages on the wounds, but she was clearly dead.
“ Jesus,” McKay moaned, feeling as if he’d been kicked in the stomach. “I thought he was shooting at me.”
The young woman was waif-skinny, her brown hair shoulder length and drifting into her lean, hawk-nosed face. And she’d died because of him. But there had been no other choice…just as he had no choice now but to see to the safety of the ship.
“Commander Kopecky,” McKay turned to the Chief Engineer, who was finally free of the tape that had been restraining his wrists and ankles. “Can you get the fusion reactor restarted?”
Kopecky ripped the tape away from his mouth, cursing in Czech as it took part of his close-clipped beard with it. His eyes were on the body of the apprentice engineer as he spoke, but his tone was professional. “Yes, it is not even flushed…he did not know how. He just cut the power feeds. Give me a moment.”