The corkscrew design provided easy docking for more than fifty small picket ships. He went “down” the zero-g spiral toward the main station, every sense straining for a clue about what had happened. This area was usually filled with workers and pilots, coming and going and just loitering. He saw no one. Even the robot workers had been deactivated.
The situation turned even grimmer when he entered the main station. On a slow day there might be five hundred men and women working in the dispatch center. It was eerily empty now. A few computer vidscreens winked and flashed, but their operators were gone. Even the quiet whir of the electrostatic precipitators constantly cleaning the air of all dust particles had fallen mute. The station had been put on standby condition, just as he had left his ship.
Tense, hand on his pistol, Norlin walked slowly along the echoing, curved corridors. The only sounds he heard were ones normally hidden by the bustle of activity. Air circulated sluggishly. Lights emitted a high-voltage hum. His boot soles, with their magnetic strips, clicked as he carefully measured each step.
The farther from the center of the station he went the more the spin tugged at him and created pseudo-gravity. After a full week at more than twice normal G, he felt strong, quick, able to contend with any problem.
He stopped in front of Commander Clarkson's office. When he saw the laser burns on the steel door, he drew his pistol. He checked cautiously and found the office empty. Someone had staged a vicious battle inside, though. Holes were blasted through the walls using weapons similar to the one he clutched in his hand. Energy weapons had reduced portions of the bulkhead and decking to molten puddles that had recrystallized. Norlin found no trace of his commander and his staff—or their fate.
He stopped by a console that had been knocked from an under-officer's desk. A few seconds’ tinkering brought up a display he could use.
“Query,” he said. “Identify. Captain Emuna.”
The voice response required adjustment; he barely understood it. He switched to full vidtext and scanned the information. He let out a lungful of air he hadn't even known he was holding.
Emuna was an army supply officer and nothing more. For command to have come to him all senior staff—and most of the junior officers, as well—had to be gone. From the carnage in Clarkson's office, Norlin guessed that “gone” meant “dead.”
“Details of mutiny, please,” he requested.
The rapid flood of text revealed the worst. There had not been one mutiny but four, each more violent than the preceding one.
“Every two days for the past week,” came a tired voice from the doorway behind him.
Norlin spun, pistol ready.
“There's no need,” the man said. His shoulders slumped, and the dark circles under his eyes showed sleep had eluded him for some time. His uniform hung in wrinkled folds, and his hands shook uncontrollably.
“Captain Emuna?”
“When you didn't report directly to my office, I knew you'd come here. Not a pretty sight, is it. You should have seen it when Clarkson made his first stand.”
“He survived the first mutiny?”
“The second, too. He and the genhanced officers the emperor sent. They were the ones the staff objected to. What they did to them when the third attack was successful is something you'll have to find in the files. I can't bear the thought.”
He swallowed hard, his scrawny neck showing a prominently bobbing Adam's apple. Emuna wiped sweat from his upper lip and sank into the only intact chair.
“You're the ranking officer?”
“Out of almost a hundred, I'm it. There are a few lieutenants running around—all were in my division. Ironic, isn't it? The noncombatant unit on-station survived. I don't know space dust about running things. I order, I deliver, I make sure everyone has toilet paper and fattening food and porno cerampix. And here I am, station commander. Want some hot porn?”
Norlin pushed the safety on and thrust the pistol back into his belt. Captain Emuna presented no threat. He could spit on the man and knock him over. The strain of command showed in every line indelibly etched on Emuna's gaunt face.
“You received my report?”
“That's one reason all this happened.” Emuna gestured at the ruined office. “Emperor Arian has been less and less popular out here, you know.”
“But ... mutiny?”
“Why not? Who wants to defend a world under the emperor's thumb? Better to shift out and find a rebel world where you can be free and away from all the madness passed along by the genhanced geniuses he sends.”
“Some are geniuses,” Norlin said.
“Most are deranged—and that is being polite. Unstable is the word I hear most. But they're all space crazy. Dangerously so. Who wants to die for them?”
“You saw the report. The alien Death Fleet will wipe out all human life in the system when they arrive. I discovered a scoutship tampering with the cometary detectors.”
“We found out about that almost immediately. They disable the sensors then put in a repeater giving bogus information so they can sneak in past our warning nets. When that information leaked out, it triggered the last mutiny. Anything that could space was hijacked. I swear some men put out in packing crates. Clarkson had already died, him and the genhanced Earthers. I forget who tried to stop that uprising.”
“The vice-commander was...?”
“He died the first day. Someone used a pistol like the one you've got on him. Right through the head.” Emuna tapped his temple. “Blew his brains all over a bulkhead. We sealed up the room rather than clean it.”
“You realize that I'm ranking officer,” Norlin said. “I'm in the line of command, since I'm a pilot.”
“It's yours. No arguments. Take it. The whole damned station is yours to do with as you please.”
Norlin stood and stared, open-mouthed. He had expected argument. He received only full cooperation.
“I don't know what's going on. I try to keep things working. Most of the station is shut down or on standby, not that it matters. There are fewer than a hundred left to man it.”
“A hundred? But the full complement is eight thousand!”
Emuna shrugged. “They left. They died. They're no longer around for one reason or another. And you're in charge. What're your orders, Commander?”
[Back to Table of Contents]
* * *
Chapter Four
Pier Norlin started to speak then clamped his mouth shut. Everything Captain Emuna had just said looped infinitely through his mind. A supply captain—an army supply officer, at that—could never be in the chain of command for a station, much less a space command base. Hearing the man so easily pass over command, and to a sublieutenant, shook him, though.
“I ... I know you're right,” Norlin said carefully. “You've been running the station for how long now?”
“Almost forty-eight hours. That's the last time I slept, at any rate.” Emuna yawned and stretched. “I was never psychologically stable enough for field command. I try to do everything myself. No capability of delegating authority. What are your orders, Commandant?”
Again Norlin hid his shock. A sublieutenant outranked no officer except ensign. For him to take command of a major Empire Service facility, he had to be called by something other than his true rank.
Commandant Norlin. He liked the sound of it—and it frightened him. He had neither the experience nor the ability to command the immense station. Training as a pilot had hardly prepared him for this. The notion of preparing the station to defend the entire system frightened him even more. He, of all people, knew intimately what they faced, and how difficult the battle would be.
He stared hard at Emuna. The man had become a psychological mess in just two days. He could do better. He was a space pilot. He had the training and the ambition. The promotion had just come at a time when no one was likely to appreciate whatever he accom-plished.
“What were Commander Clarkson's standing orders?” he asked.
&nbs
p; “Can't say. His vault was completely destroyed. It wouldn't do much good getting in, anyway. We'd need the code to decipher the memory block once we got it into a reader. I tried to contact sector base on Sutton Two, but I had to send a message packet. There weren't any couriers available.”
“An automated packet?” Norlin gulped. That was the least reliable method of reporting—important messages were sent by courier ship. The drone missile with the message might not arrive precisely on target, it might be ignored for days or even weeks—or it might vanish during shift. Fully twenty percent of the robot probes never shifted free at the end of their flight.
Maintaining the delicate balance in a shift engine required constant attention—attention a human gave far better than any AI system because during shift electronics went subtly wrong.
“What ships are in dock? I can refit my research ship and shift out. I'll need to drop in an engine module after discarding most of the research equipment. It'll be cramped but enough supplies can be squeezed in.”
Norlin dreaded the idea of shifting almost forty light years to Sutton II by himself. The trip would take almost a month. He had been alone too much lately.
A new thought filled him with dread. “Wait. What about conditions on-planet?”
“Can't say. The last report I saw carried a time stamp of five days ago. With the station in mutiny, the ground bases lost control. Two were in the hands of rebels—or mutineers.”
“Widespread civil unrest?” Norlin thought of Neela Cosarrian at the university.
“You know someone down there? Better see if you can't arrange to have them lifted to orbit. Reports are sketchy, but it doesn't look good—and it's been five days.”
Norlin considered the matter. He was in command now. The idea still shocked him that he could do anything he wanted, within reason. A slow smile crossed his face. It didn't even have to be reasonable. Commander Clarkson had issued orders often that bordered on the illogical.
He stiffened and pulled his shoulders back. He could do better. He would do better. He was an officer in the Empire Service.
“Send a ferry down to the university. I want several students and faculty brought to the station immediately.”
Emuna shook his head sadly. “There's nothing to send. Your picket ship could land. Maybe take off again, though I can't say.”
“It's equipped for planetary landing,” Norlin said.
“You're the only pilot left on the station. The rest are dead or gone. Where do you think all the ships went?”
“The pilots all mutinied?”
“The only reason the hundred crew are left is inability to find a way off the station. Who wants to be at ground zero when your Death Fleet arrives?”
“It's not my Death Fleet,” Norlin said defensively.
“You reported it. You're the only one who has seen any of the ships.” Captain Emuna wiped the sweat from his upper lip again, his eyes taking on a frightened-animal aspect. “You probably beat them here by a day, at most. We don't have long to live. They're going to kill us all, just as they did on Penum.” The officer's voice rose shrilly. “I saw the pix. I know what they did. Radiation beam us to death then strip the entire damned world.”
Norlin edged toward the door, uncomfortable facing the growing madness in his fellow officer. He backed outside the office then went exploring in an attempt to find anyone else who might be in charge. The few pitiful souls he found were all civilian support staff and were more frightened than Emuna.
He went to his quarters and punched in his access code. The interior hadn't been looted like many of the rooms. He snorted contemptuously. He had nothing worth stealing, even if the mob had broken in.
Settling in front of his console, he began his inspection of the station.
The conditions were worse than anticipated. Within a couple days all life support systems would fail due to lack of maintenance. He passed on getting the robot workers back to their duties and tried to contact other humans to help. He failed. Those he reached wanted nothing to do with him. Without the infrastructure of a military base to back his orders, he was powerless. Even if they acknowledged his command position, and only a handful of the hundred survivors did, they were both fearful and contemptuous of any Empire Service officer.
Norlin didn't blame them. The Empire Service had brought on this crisis. Ignoring the ones left in power might not restore order, but it prevented further dissolution.
“Attention, all personnel,” he announced after cutting into the public address system. “This is Commandant Norlin. Report to the officers mess, ring fourteen, sector nine, within the hour for a briefing.” The handful he had not spoken to directly might come to see if they could get off the station. Enlisting their aid might be impossible, but he would know who he had to cope with.
He checked his pistol and immediately went to the mess. He had thought it would be a suitable spot for his briefing. Now, he wasn't sure. A fire fight had melted most of a major bulkhead. He climbed through the slagged wall and crouched on the far side. It gave scant protection against heavy armament but ought to keep him safe from hand weapons.
Norlin ducked when he heard the whisper of cloth against metal. Someone slid along the corridor wall outside, trying not to be seen.
“Drop the weapon,” Norlin ordered as he thrust his pistol through the hole in the wall.
The smallish man he frightened spun and brought up a pistol.
The training Norlin had received in data analysis sent him through a chain of reasoning that almost cost him his life. The pistol was a fully automatic version of his, with a clip carrying twice the rockets. He saw the gunman: beady eyes squinting hard, mouth pulled into a thin line, finger turning white as it pulled back on the trigger. He estimated time and distance and intent. He should have fired before the other man.
A stream of self-propelled rockets blasted from the pistol and blew through the bulkhead all around him. His response came from surprise rather than thought or training. Norlin's finger jerked back.
The single rocket he fired caught the gunman in mid-chest and blew white bone and red blood all over the corridor.
“Why'd you do that?” he asked aloud, bewildered. His gorge started to rise when he saw the body. Then he forgot the man entirely—four others pushed through the door on the far side of the mess, all armed.
This time he did not think; he reacted. Eight rockets finished the first three men. By the time his comrades lay blown apart on the deck, the remaining mutineer had his laserifle up and firing. The continuous beam hummed and sputtered. Molten steel spattered Norlin's back.
He dived forward, skidded and got off three more shots. One rocket blew apart the bulkhead beside the rifleman. This distracted the man long enough for Norlin to get in a killing shot.
He picked himself up off the floor and walked on shaky legs to the view the carnage he had caused. He stared at the exploded bodies, as if looking at a distant, barely recognized trivid picture. Then he vomited.
When he recovered, he picked up the last man's laserifle and slung it over his shoulder. He felt the need for more firepower. If Captain Emuna's estimate was right, he had just killed off four percent of all those remaining on the station.
Neela. I've got to get to her. It must be even worse on-planet. He wandered in shock, his mind refusing to focus properly. He rounded a corner and stopped, jerking out his pistol and aiming it at a bulky woman sitting on a low table, her short, stocky legs crossed and her colorless eyes fixed on him with a hot intensity that made his skin crawl.
“Don't shoot me, hero. I'm not armed.” She held out her hands, palms up. He saw grease and calluses. This startled him enough to burn away the shock. No one got their hands dirty with robots and telepresence remotes everywhere, and she looked as if this was a regular condition.
“Who are you?” he asked.
She wore shapeless regulation overalls, but he thought he saw tarnished lieutenant's bars under the grime on her collars.
“You the pilot of the picket ship? The one who made contact with the Empire Service spy boat?”
“Yes.” Norlin shook himself. He was in command of the station, not her. He'd ask the questions. “Who are you? You never answered. You look like a repair tech.”
“Not even close. Ship's Engineer Barse.” She hopped down. Her square-cut dark hair and curiously pale eyes were below his line of sight by a full twenty centimeters. She shoved out her hand. He shook it, almost gasping at the power in her grip.
“I watched as you docked without the magnetic grapples. You did a good job. Real smart piloting.”
“Thanks,” he said. “I do what I have to.”
“You ever been on anything bigger?” Her colorless eyes fixed on his rank and stayed there. She seemed to be evaluating him and wasn't liking everything she saw.
“I've never piloted anything larger,” he said, “but at the academy I copiloted a hunter-killer.”
“Those pieces of space debris?” Barse spat a thick gob of brownish scum that stuck to a wall and sluggishly flowed to the deck. “Not fit for man nor genhanced beast.”
“They're fast and deadly. Kilo for kilo, there's nothing with more armament. They are certainly better than an unarmed research ship,” he said.
“But not better than a cruiser.”
“Nothing's better than a cruiser, except a battleship.”
“Not even those hunks of slow armor,” Barse asserted. “They're easy targets. Can't shift as fast. Big profiles. Heat signature that makes me puke. Leak radiation up and down the spectrum. Any genius bomb can take them out. Too easy to spot. Not a cruiser. Not one like the Preceptor. It's state of the art.” She puffed out her considerable chest in pride. “And I helped refit her.”
“I've never heard of the Preceptor,” Norlin said. “Is it a new arrival? I'd heard rumors that a couple new ships were due in.”
“It's been in dry dock for months. Top secret. Captain Dukker's private toy. Or it was.”
“Dukker? Isn't he one of Emperor Arian's...?”
Alien Death Fleet [Star Frontiers 1] Page 4