Secrets of the Sphere (Battlecruiser Alamo Book 27)

by Richard Tongue

   “I don't want to,” he replied. “I have to. Two of my comrades are stranded in there, and one of them might have the answer to the mystery we came here to solve. I can't leave without them.” He took a deep breath, then said, “If you know something about...”

   “I don't know a damned thing, and if you were smart, you'd stay clear.” Jimmy took a savage swig from his battered canteen, sending water dribbling down his chin, and added, “Your flyers? They VTOL? There's a safe surface maybe half a mile from here, nice and smooth for the pickup. Because our deal is still the same. You get me out of here, and I'll give you a link back to your people. If you want to kill yourself, that's on you.” He rose from his chair, walking to the door, and said, “I've got to sweep the sand off the solar arrays. We're going to want maximum power when we signal your friends. I don't want to risk missing them. You stay there for a minute.”

   “Right,” Clarke said, as Jimmy left the cockpit, stepping back out into the blazing sun. He glanced down at his watch, the face cracked from the force of the explosion that had destroyed his flyer. Eleven hours and change. If someone back at Base Camp had heard his distress signal, he could expect a rescue craft sometime in the next six hours. Fear gripped at him, not for himself, but knowing that he'd guided them right into a trap. The same missile launcher that had doomed him would strike at his rescuer.

   Unless he could warn them first with a laser transceiver. He looked out at Jimmy, hearing him curse as he attacked the arrays with a stiff brush, knowing that he would be betraying the man who had saved his life. He was going to have to order them back, away from the desert, to safety. Until he could find a way to knock out the missiles, if not rescue his comrades.

   Taking another drink of the life-giving liquid, he looked around the cockpit again, trying to find some evidence of the man who had made this his home. A stack of battered ration packs were dumped in a corner, all of them stenciled in faded English, and behind them a trace of green from a wall-hydroponics unit, just enough to keep one man alive in a state of near-starvation. An interesting gimmick, and one that the Confederation had never managed to make work.

   Though there was plenty of evidence that this flyer was more advanced than anything Alamo had. Even damaged as they were, most of the controls still lit up, flickering holograms reporting status in a strange, cuneiform text. The couch he'd been sitting on had molded itself to his form, and the material was already stretching itself out again now that he had risen. Even the lighting was strange, some sort of bio-luminescence, giving a strange green tinge to the room.

   Something caught his eye on the wall, a picture clipped over the hydroponic bank, three men and two women standing in front of a bar, arms wrapped around each other, drinks in hand. One of them was recognizably Jimmy, though he appeared years younger, all of them wearing an unfamiliar uniform.

   “Well spotted,” Jimmy said, walking back into the room, catching Clarke by surprise. “A little memory from better times. The rest of them are dead, if you're interested.”

   “How?”

   Ignoring the question, Jimmy walked over to the controls, sliding his hand over a panel with practiced ease, bringing a faded hologram into view, a display that showed the local area. A single point was moving at high speed towards them, up in the stratosphere, one with the familiar lines of a flyer from Alamo.

   “That your people?”

   Nodding, Clarke replied, “Earlier than I'd expected. They must have launched as soon as I fired up the beacon. How far away are they?”

   “Maybe fifty miles, perhaps a little less. The scale on this thing is screwed up. The last owner used Base-Thirteen. You tell me why.” Sliding his hand again, he added, “I've fired up the message laser. You get on the channel and tell your friends to come and pick me up. And if you think you're going to play any tricks, I've got a pistol in my holster and the control panel wipes clean easy.”

   “No tricks,” Clarke replied, taking up a pair of headphones, holding it to his ear. “Ready?”

   “Any time. It might take a while to settle, and power will be weak as hell until they get closer. I wasn't expecting them to fly quite that high.” Gesturing at the console as the displays danced before them, he added, “Get started.”

   “Clarke to Flyer Two, Clarke to Flyer Two, come in, please.” He paused, hearing a distant crackle, the sound of a billion conversations forcing their way through the local electromagnetic spectrum, as the laser danced around, seeking its target. “Clarke to Flyer Two, Clarke to Flyer Two, come in, please.”

   “Come on,” Jimmy said. “Come on.” He looked up at the sensor display, and said, “They'll be in missile range any time now. I'll try and boost the power, but unless we get a firm lock...” He grimaced, and added, “Damn it, they've moved into an evasive pattern. That's going to make this a lot tougher.”

   “They would have seen the missile destroy my plane,” Clarke replied. “They'll be careful. And they don't know that we're signaling them.” He paused, then added, “Do you have any flares?”

   “Not a chance. I've gone to a lot of trouble to make sure that those bastards don't know where I'm hiding, and I don't intend to signal to them now.” With a frown, he continued, “They must be seeing the laser.”

   “And for all they know, it's trying to guide a missile onto the target.” Pulling the microphone closer, he continued, “Clarke to Flyer Two, Clarke to Flyer Two, come in, please!”

   “I'd say they've got less than a minute,” Jimmy said. “They're still too high. Are you sure they aren't just planning to overfly?”

   “Not if I know Captain Salazar.” Gesturing at the screen, he continued, “Look, they're moving into a descent path now, reducing speed to come in low over the mountains. Unless we can do something about it, they're as good as dead.” His knuckles white as he gripped the headset, he said, “Clarke to Flyer Two! Come in!”

   There was a faint, whispered reply, cut through with static, and Jimmy turned back to the controls, sweeping his arms around like a maniac to manipulate the display, trying to focus the beam. The same urgent words swept back along the beam, almost loud enough for Clarke to make them out. He couldn't quite tell, but he thought it might even be Captain Salazar himself, up there on the flyer, on the other end of the transmission.

   “Give them our coordinates,” Jimmy urged. “We can't hear them, but they might be able to hear us! These systems are hundreds of years old, it's a miracle they're working at all, and I had to patch them with anything I could find. Bring them down!”

   Nodding, Clarke said, “I don't know if you read me. Try and boost your power. You're about to come under attack by a surface-to-air missile.” He glanced at the wide-eyed man standing next to him, and said, “Break off. Head back to Alamo. I'll...”

   Jimmy snapped at the air, and pulled the pistol from his holster in one smooth motion, screaming, “Why? Why?”

   “I'm not going to watch friends of mine die to save my own skin. Or yours,” Clarke replied. “I gave you my word that I'd get you back to the ship, and I will, but this isn't how it's going to happen. And if you don't trust me, then I guess you'd better go ahead and pull the trigger.”

   “It doesn't matter,” Jimmy replied with a resigned sigh. “You betrayed me for nothing. Those bastards have launched, and there's nothing we can do about it.” Gesturing at the screen with the pistol, he added, “Take a long look. I guess you owe them that much. They're dying for you, whether you like it or not.”

  Chapter 5

   “Repeat, repeat,” Salazar yelled, straining to hear the faint words in his headset. “Can you boost your power?” Turning to Carpenter, he said, “I think it was Clarke, but I can't be sure. Is there anything we can do at our end?”

   “Nothing,” she replied, her hands frantically dancing across the controls. “There just isn't enough power until we get closer. I can give you a precise location if you want, though. Down to a few meters at l
east, and there's a good spot for a landing close by.”

   “Threat warning!” Lombardo yelled, looking up at the sensor display. “Heat flare. Incoming missile. Looks like it came from a subsurface launcher up in those mountains somewhere. Hard to spot the exact launch site, but we've got an impact in less than ninety seconds.”

   “Hang on!” Salazar said, throwing the throttle full open, heedless of the demands he was making on the flyer's limited energy store. There was no chance of outrunning the missile, and they didn't have any countermeasures on board. The destruction of Flyer One was more than sufficient proof of the efficiency of the enemy's weapons, so he couldn't even hope that it would fail to find its target. That left only one chance, and he dived towards the ground, gaining speed as the altimeter span around, racing towards the incoming missile.

   “Are you out of your mind?” Carpenter yelled, but Salazar focused completely on his controls, the missile now a slender dot at the heart of the viewscreen, data spilling down on both sides that he could safely ignore. This wasn't a shuttle or a starship, flying in the vacuum of space. This was flying as it was meant to be, the feel of the plane able to guide his movements, and he reveled in the unusual opportunity.

   “Impact in five seconds,” Lombardo said, coolly, trusting that Salazar knew what he was doing, even more than the pilot did himself. With a confident smile on his face, he waited until the final second before throwing the flyer to the side, diving past the missile before it could swing around and catch them, sending it spinning around as it continued to race towards them.

   “That was close,” Carpenter said.

   “Had to trick the computer,” Salazar replied. “Giving it an easy kill. Right now it's swinging around behind us to try again. This isn't that sophisticated a warhead, but the damn thing isn't going to give up until we're a hole in the dirt.” Gesturing at the mountains, he added, “I need a topographical overview, and I need it right now.”

   “I get it,” Carpenter said, nodding as she turned back to her station. “Coming up.”

   “Art, I need all the power you can give me. Don't hold anything back.”

   “We're already close to the point of no return,” the engineer warned.

   “If we have to park in the desert for a day while our batteries recharge, we will, but right now we've got to get this monkey off our backs!”

   The flyer surged forward, recklessly spilling energy as Salazar urged it towards the jagged rocks below, sparing a quick glance at the sensor display to confirm that the missile was still heading for them, smoothly sliding onto an intercept trajectory. Now he was going to find out just how agile it was, and how good his flying skills really were. Red lights flashed along the sides of the screen, proximity alerts as the computer registered the mountains on either side, but without another thought, he dived between the peaks, nimbly swinging to the side to edge into a long, rock-strewn valley, a pass on the far end.

   He eased the ship along the twisted canyon, the roar of the engines sending a cascade of rocks tumbling down the banks in both directions as he swung through the pass, looping around a pair of jagged mountains and diving down their flanks, keeping close enough to the surface that he could make out individual formations of rocks flashing below. His speed was close to maximum, the engines strained under the load, and Lombardo's hands were a blur as he struggled to keep the power balanced, to keep them in the air, and prevent a catastrophic engine failure that would doom them all. In another time, Salazar would have considered ejecting, but the flyer was their only way home, and it would be days or weeks before another could be readied.

   “Range, five hundred meters, closing fast,” Carpenter warned.

   “I know, I know,” he replied, looking around, trying to pick a path through the maze of mountains and canyons. Finally, he found what he was looking for, a long, low trench dug into the rock, and dipped the nose again in a bid to gain more speed. Sirens sounded as the wing stress sensors angrily protested the strain he was placing on them, but all that mattered now was getting clear of the missile.

   “Won't that bastard ever run dry?” Lombardo asked. “Red-line on the power, Pavel! You're running us far too hot.”

   “It's only going to get worse,” Salazar replied, tugging the nose up just in time to avoid a catastrophic collision with the surface, the missile still remorselessly hunting down its prey. Up ahead, the canyon narrowed, his sensors reading a sharp turn just after the narrowest part, the passage too narrow for the flyer to pass through. “Let's see how good you are, you son of a bitch.”

   With a nimble flick of the controls, he rolled the flyer, the wings missing the sheer rock face by inches, then dived to the side, trusting to his instincts to guide his plane on a safe path, keeping down as low as he dared. Behind him, just as he had hoped, the missile failed to make the turn, slamming into the wall with a thunderous roar, a cascade of smoke and flame shooting to the sky.

   From all sides, there was a loud rumble, the sides of the canyon collapsing from the force of the explosion, rocks tumbling in every direction, rattling onto the hull as he dragged the nose up, stress warnings lighting the board once again as he struggled to gain altitude, nursing the battered flyer to safety. Finally, with one last boost, he rose past the collapsing cliffs, peering down to look at the destruction below.

   “Power down to five percent and falling,” Lombardo said, throwing controls. “I think we've blown some of the transfer circuits. We've got to make it down to the deck, and we've got to do it now.” He reached across to a lever, tugging it down and adding, “That's the emergency power, but it won't last long. I'll transfer everything we've got to the landing thrusters.”

   “Got it,” Salazar said. “Carpenter, find me somewhere stable to touch down.”

   “Way ahead of you, Captain,” she replied. “Two o'clock, on the far side of the peak. Not far from where we heard that signal, maybe ten miles. And on the far side of the mountains from the missile launch point. You'll have about forty meters to play with.”

   “Luxury,” Salazar replied. “Get us there, Art.”

   “Doing it,” the engineer said, his attention focused completely on his readouts while Salazar swung the flyer around, husbanding power to keep the engines working, keeping to minimum thrust to save what energy they still had left for the descent. Beneath them, a cloud of dust rose to the sky, the tumbling rocks still cascading down the sides of the slopes in a hundred rock-slides, every instability in the range erupting at once.

   The sensor display danced as the small on-board computer struggled to interpret the data, to make some sense of the nightmare unfolding beneath them. If anyone had lived in those mountains, they'd be in serious trouble. And the only thing salving his conscience was that someone down there had shot Clarke and Mortimer out of the sky, and had done their best to do the same to him. Conscience could only go so far.

   After a long moment, he spotted the landing site Carpenter had found, a cluster of jagged rocks around a deep depression, struggling shrubs surrounding the spot. Sand swirled around the rock-face, but there was just enough clear space that he could make a try for a landing, and he eased the flyer into careful position for descent as the final warning lights snapped on, alarms telling him that he had to bring the vehicle down, or gravity would do the work for him.

   “Three hundred meters,” Carpenter reported.

   “Engaging landing thrusters,” Salazar said, and the engines died, the series of jets underneath the shuttle taking over, clouds of gas racing to the ground, sending cascades of dust flying into the air, a man-made dust-storm to shroud their landing. He played the controls like a master pianist, making careful adjustments to correct their descent, easing their way to the surface. Finally, he reached across to a control, dropping the landing legs, the rugged tripod locking into position with a resounding clunk.

   “Final descent. Hang on,” Salazar said, gently lowering the flyer down the fi
nal few meters to touchdown, the vehicle finally settling onto the surface. He threw a series of controls to kill the thrusters, and sat back in his couch as the post-flight checks began. “All secure?”

   “All systems green,” Lombardo affirmed. “Nice landing.”

   “Any landing you can walk away from is good enough.” Peering out of the window, he added, “This dust is going to be murder on the wing cells. Not much point cleaning them off until this settles. How much power do we have left?”

   “Less than one percent,” Lombardo replied. “We're not draining so fast, which means the problem must be in the engine transfer links. I can probably rig a bypass without too much trouble.” Leaning over his controls, he said, “Ten minutes out to do it. There's enough redundancy in the system to make it work.”

   “Carpenter, do we have anything about the local area?”

   “Working,” she replied. “Not much resolution. I need more power.”

   “We don't have any,” Lombardo said. “If we drop too low, I won't be able to fix her at all, and it's a very long walk back to Base Camp. Should we turn on the rescue beacon?”

   “No,” Carpenter said. “They'll find us.”

   Turning to face her, Salazar replied, “You are kidding, right? Everyone for fifty miles will have seen us come down, and they probably heard those landslides five hundred miles away. We didn't exactly make a stealthy approach, and if whoever is out there has any sensor systems worth a damn, they'll have tracked us all the way down to the deck.” He reached over to a series of controls above his head, and tapped a control sequence. “Beacon activated. At least this way Alamo will have some idea of our location. As soon as we get any power at all, I'll kick us up and move us out into the desert. Buy us some time.”