by Rick Partlow
He saw Wolford shaking his head, trying to get it clear and he knew that the man would take too long. He pulled the emergency release on his restraints and pushed off, lunging for the Tactical station. The control display flickered fitfully twice more before it settled into coherence, to Franks’ great relief---the relay switches they’d put in place had kept the feedback caused by the drive field overload from shutting the ship down. He dragged every single one of the Shipbuster missile icons into the launch folder, then stabbed at the icon.
The ship shuddered as the missiles separated one by one and were accelerated outward by the electromagnetic launch racks before their fusion drives engaged and sent them rocketing away. There were six in all, but he saw with some annoyance that only four had launched: one of the launch racks was down, damaged by the feedback the drive field intersection had caused. Two of the missiles curled away, heading for the drifting shape of the ramship they’d intercepted, while the other two killed their drives and waited patiently, just as they’d programmed them.
“Helm!” He called, and Bevins looked at him, eyes clearing even as the smoke on the bridge began to clear, sucked away by the now-working ventilation system. “Reactivate the drive field now! Get us on course to intercept the second ship!”
“Jesus Christ!” Bevins bellowed, jerking against his safety harness reflexively as he stared with horror at Captain Perez’ body floating above them. “What the hell happened?”
“He’s dead!” Franks yelled, grabbing the man by the shoulder and yanking himself over to get in front and look him in the eye. Bevins’ doughy face was pale and he was close to hyperventilating. “Now get the fucking drive field activated or that ship is going to blow past us and slam into Capital City and kill everyone in it! Do you hear me?”
Swallowing hard, Bevins nodded and went to work at his sputtering control board. As he did, the others on the bridge began to come out of the shock of the field collision and he could hear a chorus of curses and exclamations as they saw Perez’ body. Muttering a curse himself, Franks grabbed Perez by the ankle and, anchoring himself on the Helm station, he pulled the man’s body back towards the auxiliary acceleration couch and strapped it down.
“Captain Perez!” Franks heard the voice coming over the intercom in the Captain’s station and thought he recognized the Chief Engineer.
“Goddammit,” he hissed, pulling himself into the Captain’s chair and strapped down. I am so going to get court-martialed.
He hunted for the intercom control as Wolford and the Communications Officer stared at him in disbelief. He ignored them as he found the right control. “This is Lt. Franks…Captain Perez is unavailable, give me your status report.”
“Uh, well, Lieutenant, we’ve got some major damage to the main power relays, and we’ve had to switch to auxiliaries. The changes we made managed to keep the reactor from dumping, though, and antimatter containment is still stable.”
“We need the drive online right now, Commander,” Franks told him. “We still have to take out the second Protectorate ship and we only have,” he checked the countdown on the display at his left arm, “eight minutes to get into position.”
“The drives are good to go for now, Lieutenant,” the engineer informed him. “But I have to tell you, the auxiliary power relays will overload when we intercept that ship, and the reactor will flush, We’re going to be without power or drives for a while, if this works.”
“Commander,” Franks instructed him, “contact the XO in the auxiliary control room and give him a quick update. Tell him that Captain Perez is incapacitated and he needs to get to the bridge and take over after we intercept the second ship. Not before, though…it won’t be safe to move until then.” Franks disconnected, not waiting for a reply. “Lt. Wolford, what’s the status on the first ship?”
“Still not moving,” the Tactical Officer reported. “The Shipbusters are a minute out. No countermissile fire that I can detect.”
“Drive field is up,” Bevins announced. “Prepare for two gravities acceleration.”
Franks felt the pressure pushing him back into the Captain’s seat and tried not to notice the pitter-patter sound of Perez’s blood raining down on the deck, some of it hitting right at his feet. He concentrated on watching the icon that represented the Patton on the tactical display jump forward, on a course to intercept the second ship.
“We’re in the pipe,” Bevins said after a moment. “Three minutes at current velocity. I’m taking it back to one g acceleration.”
Franks turned to the Communications station, trying to remember the man’s name and failing. “Commo,” he said instead, “tell all hands to secure for impact.”
The Communications officer glanced briefly at him, then at Captain Perez’ corpse, before he turned back to his station to issue the warning. Franks was trying his best to not look at the man; the body was slumped back in the seat, hanging limply against the straps and the head seemed to keep turning towards him… He’d never seen anyone killed before and somehow hadn’t imagined it being like this.
He shook his head and made himself stare at the oncoming Protectorate ship. It was looming before them on the viewscreen, wedge-shaped and featureless, lacking any weapons ports.
“We have detonation on the first ship!” Wolford reported excitedly. “Both missiles hit it, it’s gone!”
“It never tried to use its conventional drives?” Franks asked, grateful for the distraction.
“No, just drifted,” Wolford confirmed.
“Then they’re probably uncrewed,” Franks deduced. “And apparently their AI isn’t that bright…or else it got fried by the field collision. So if we can pull this off, our Shipbusters can take care of this guy whether we’re around to see it or not.”
“Well,” Bevins snorted, not looking back at him, “aren’t you Lieutenant Sunshine?”
“Sorry, sir,” Franks said with a nervous laugh. “My job is to save the Earth; it’s up to you guys to save the ship.”
“Thirty seconds to impact,” Bevins said in a clinically neutral voice, as if he didn’t trust himself to say anything else.
As the image of the second ramship grew in the viewscreen’s display, Franks sat back in the Captain’s seat and closed his eyes for a moment, wondering briefly if he had any regrets.
Never got to any of the star colonies, he acknowledged, ticking that off on an imaginary counter.
“Twenty seconds.”
Never asked out Lara from Communications. He saw an image in his memory of the perky, dark-haired Lieutenant smiling her pixie smile and he grinned.
“Fifteen seconds.”
I wish I’d been there for Brian’s wedding.
“Ten,” Bevins intoned, “nine, eight…”
Not too bad, Franks shrugged inwardly. Of course, my biggest regret is that I won’t live long enough to have more regrets…
He opened his eyes and felt a spike of fear as he saw the ramship huge on the screen, barreling toward them so terrifyingly close…things in space weren’t supposed to be that close to each other, he thought absurdly. It wasn’t natural.
“…impact!” Bevins cried, voice quavering with a note of fear that he couldn’t quite disguise.
The universe twisted around Franks, and he felt as if he, too, was being spindled and stretched for an interminable eternity…and then he snapped back with an incredible violence and everything went dark.
Chapter Thirty-Four
“Charlie Gulf Niner-niner,” Shannon Stark spoke calmly into her helmet pickup, “this is Charlie Gulf One, do you read? Over.”
There was a pause and then a crackle of static. “Roger, Charlie Gulf One, this is Charlie Gulf Niner-niner, what’s your situation? Over?”
“We have the target secured, Niner-niner, and are ready for pickup, over.”
“Good to hear, ma’am,” the voice of CG99 sounded relieved. “Any casualties?”
Shannon opened her mouth, then closed it again, swallowing the reply she want
ed to give but couldn’t. “Negative. We have four to pick up at the hangar elevator exit…just follow my homing signal. The load will consist of myself and three Priority Targets. The rest of the unit will be staying to secure the complex. Over.”
“Roger that, Charlie Gulf One, I’m on my way, over.”
“We’ll be waiting for you. Charlie Gulf One, out.”
Shannon looked over to Sergei Pavlovitch Antonov, who stood watching her with arms crossed, eyes squinting against the morning sun, the warm New Mexico wind tugging at his grey-streaked beard, looking like Moses in the desert.
“Very nicely done, Colonel Stark,” he said genially. “I wonder…since you are now a Colonel, is my old friend Jason McKay a General?”
“Yes, he is,” Stark replied, her voice quiet and neutral, without a hint of feeling. “The President promoted us both yesterday.”
Antonov laughed, looking over to Fourcade. The slick-backed lobbyist was grinning himself, as he held a gun on Brendan Riordan, conscious once more but securely handcuffed, with a burlap bag pulled over his head. “I wonder, Kevin, if General McKay will find out about his promotion.”
“I suppose that depends on your feelings about the existence of an afterlife, General Antonov,” Fourcade cracked, chuckling.
“You know,” Antonov mused, running fingers through his beard thoughtfully, “it is very pretty out here.” He nodded towards the red-hued rolling hills in the distance. “I will have to have a ranch built for me in this place, once I rule this world.”
“There’s the aircraft, sir,” Fourcade told him, looking northward.
Antonov followed his gaze and saw the black shape in the impossible blue of the clear desert sky, curving around a stand of low hills as it approached. “Time for a bit of maskirova,” Antonov said, placing his hands before him. Shannon wrapped his wrists with the plastic band of a flex-cuff, then did the same for Fourcade, taking his gun and shoving it in her belt.
“Now, remember, Colonel Stark.” Antonov told her quietly as the assault lander came closer, its deadly, angular lines coming into clear focus, “once we are on the lander, you will have the pilot fly directly to the coordinates I gave you. No unnecessary talking, no radio communications whatsoever. Do you understand?”
“Of course, General,” she said with the same, calm tone, eyes fixed on the lander. The attack craft descended on a column of superheated air funneled through its reactor and directed through rotating ducts on its belly, the roar of the engines making the ground beneath their feet tremble from nearly a hundred meters away.
A sandstorm of red dust lashed at them as the lander came to a rest, and Fourcade and Antonov turned away to shield their eyes from the blast, while Shannon watched impassively from inside her helmet and Riordan stood in numbed silence under his hood. The lander touched down on heavy-duty retractable skids, the roar of the jets dying down to a high-pitched whine as the turbos spun down, and a boarding ramp lowered from its curved belly.
A lone figure stepped down the ramp, dressed in standard, sanitized Intelligence combat gear with no nametag or unit designation, and a mirror-visored helmet, arms full with a short-barreled carbine. The trooper advanced towards them as they all marched towards the lander, Riordan shuffling uncertainly with Shannon’s hand on his arm.
“I’ll take care of the prisoners,” Shannon announced before the Intelligence trooper could reach them. “Tell the pilot to go to complete radio silence and get us in the air now.”
“Yes, ma’am,” a female voice said over the helmet’s external speaker, and the trooper turned and trotted back up the ramp.
The whine of the turbines pitched higher as the pilot fed power to them, and dust began to bloom around the aircraft even as Shannon escorted the three men up the ramp, out of the increasingly hot desert morning and into the shaded bliss of climate control. Shannon paused as they stepped into the passenger/cargo compartment and hit the control to raise the ramp. The lander leaped into the air before the ramp was halfway shut, letting a haze of dust blow into the cargo area before it cleared the ground.
Shannon guided Antonov and the others into a set of seats mounted on the wall of the cargo area and strapped them in, then moved up a short set of steps into the lander’s cockpit. The female trooper who had met them was seated in the copilot’s position, so Shannon dropped into the command seat behind them, pulling off her helmet and holding it in her lap.
She was expressionless as she leaned over and typed a destination into the navigation console. “These coordinates. Get us there as quickly as you can.”
“There are priority communication requests for you from President O’Keefe, ma’am…” the female trooper began.
“Radio silence for now,” Shannon stated flatly. “Notify me when we’re close.”
With that, she rose from her seat and stepped back down to the passenger compartment, halting in front of Antonov’s seat. “We’re en route,” she told him.
“Excellent,” the Russian said quietly. “When we arrive, you will escort us to our vehicle, then you will re-board the lander and head for Capital City.”
Shannon blinked, but remained silent. Antonov laughed, an unpleasantly harsh and chilling sound. “You thought I would kill you. No, my dear…you’re far too valuable an asset to dispose of so quickly. I have a very big job for you, prekrasnaya zhenshchina.” Beautiful woman. “You are going to take a message from me to the fool you call a President…”
* * *
Ari Shamir grunted as he dropped the two meters to the ground from the hovering lander, absorbing the shock with his knees as he fell into a crouch, holding his carbine out in front of him to avoid burying it in his gut. He quickly scrambled away from the shadow of the aircraft, moving out thirty meters to get away from the dust cloud the lander was generating, then going prone and scanning the area for threats as he waited for the rest of the team to disembark.
The noonday sun beat down on his back as he lay there, overtaxing the cooling systems in his Marine-pattern body armor and the polarization of his helmet visor. He was beginning to sweat by the time a hand slapped down on his shoulder and he looked back to see Roza’s eyes through the visor of her helmet. She gave him a thumbs-up and he scrambled to his feet, waving a hand for the rest of the unit to join him.
There were a dozen of them in all, a mish-mash of stray Marines he and Roza had dragged away from desk assignments in the Fleet offices in Capital City when the call had come in from Lt. Franks a few hours ago. He’d heard scattered reports of a missile attack aimed at Capital City, at evacuations to the emergency shelters, engagements in orbit…but everything was a chaotic roar with a very low signal-to-noise ratio right now and the only thing he knew for sure was that Colonel Stark was overdue and Franks thought that someone needed to check on the situation.
He tried to push down the worry he felt about what was happening out there and concentrate on what was directly in front of him: the entrance to the underground hangar of Riordan’s bunker. The giant hangar doors were closed and well-camouflaged, colored rust brown like the dirt and covered with bits of rock, but off to the side of them was the entrance to a tunnel, where a set of stairs led downward. It had been left glaringly open, as if someone had departed in a rush and not cared what evidence of that they left behind them.
Ari edged up to the opening, a ring of heavy, dark metal set in the sandstone, then used the video connection between his carbine’s optical sight and the reticle in his helmet to check inside. The shaft was empty, the steps half-covered in sand blown in during the time the entrance had been left open. He shrugged and started down the steps. It could be a trap, but they weren’t going to find out what had happened by sitting on the surface waiting for an epiphany.
The silence as he descended was deafening, making the sound of his own breathing in his helmet incredibly loud in his ears. All he could hear through the external pickups was the soft scraping of his soles on the sand-covered stone steps. The stairs ran a good fifty meters dow
n to the main hangar, where a VTOL aircraft rested lonely on the bare concrete, with no human in sight, not on visual or thermal.
A quick scan showed only one way out into the complex from the hangar: a large set of double-doors standing open that revealed a short corridor ending in a freight elevator. Ari led the group across the large hangar with Roza bringing up the rear and the Marines maintaining a good tactical separation for all that they’d been riding desks for most of their careers. Once they reached the corridor, Roza directed them via hand signals to take positions near its opening, then she joined Ari by the elevator doors.
“Shit,” Ari grunted as he examined the control plate. “It’s a biometric scanner. Gonna take a bit.” He pulled a small computer module from a belt pouch and touched a control then stuck it to the face of the scanner plate. “Honestly, I hate the idea of using the elevator at all, but it would take hours to get in through the entrance Colonel Stark’s team used.”
“I think the element of surprise isn’t a factor anymore, kedves,” she replied. “From the looks of the place, we are, as they say, a day late and a dollar short.”
Ari started to agree when the elevator’s indicator display suddenly lit up to show that a car was ascending to the hangar bay. His head swiveled back and forth between the display and Roza for a split second before he turned to the Marine squad.
“You two,” he jerked a finger at two of the troopers who were at the end of the hallway, “watch our backs. The rest of you spread out and cover the elevator!”
The Marines trained their weapons on the broad double doors of the lift and Ari and Roza moved to the corner to give them a clear field of fire.
“Remember,” Ari said quickly, “the last report we had was that there were biomechs down there, so aim for the head.”
The words were barely out of his mouth when the door began to open with a grinding squeak of old metal and Ari quickly brought his carbine up to his shoulder and slipped his fingertip over the trigger.