The Doomsday Vault (The Science Officer Book 5)

by Blaze Ward

  He ran a hand through the gray stubble on his head and then the neat, trimmed, white beard he had affected.

  These days, all Del wanted to do was fly. Sokolov had offered him the ultimate gig: piloting a pirate assault shuttle. And letting him decorate it himself. All the adventure and craziness, with far less risk of someone over there being good enough to take him down on anything except luck.

  ’Cause when your luck was up, that was that.

  Everyone else today was wearing gray and green splotch patterns as he looked out from the bridge hatch, down onto the shuttle’s transport bay. Good to blend in, down on the surface.

  Del’s entire wardrobe consisted of baggy gray pants with pockets on the thighs, and a rainbow of fourteen different bright, floral-print shirts of an ancient style still called Hawaiian.

  Del watched the science officer organize himself while Sykora and her pathfinders packed guns and backpacks.

  Javier had brought the larger of his two drones on this drop.

  The armed one.

  To an abandoned planet.

  Considering how many guns Djamila had, just on her person alone, to say nothing of the rest of her team, Javier didn’t need any guns.

  Need.

  From the look on Aritza’s face when he thought nobody was looking, it wasn’t an accidental choice.

  “Djamila,” Del said, getting her attention quietly, even across the noise of people humping bags up the landing ramp of his assault shuttle. “Since this is an unknown situation, I’d feel more comfortable if you were manning the turret on the way down.”

  She fixed him with a look that just spelled out how little the woman understood poker.

  “Del,” she replied, almost exasperated. “There’s nothing going to jump us. Even Aritza cops to that one.”

  “Humor an old man” Del implored her politely.

  The girl and the science officer, put together, had only a few more years in this sky as Del did himself. And he’d seen a great deal more stupidity and combat than probably most of the crew.

  Ah, the adventures of youth. But, any crash you can walk away from, regardless of which mountain you slammed it into first.

  Del pulled out his clipboard and started the fourth page of his pre-flight checklist as Sykora gave a machine gun of orders to her people.

  Even Aritza looked curiously in his direction.

  Del just smiled serenely. Three more pages to go.

  Task complete and landing bay finally settled, Del joined Djamila on the shuttle flight deck and brought the beast to full power.

  Delridge Smith only had a few superstitions at this point.

  The assault shuttle had no name.

  None.

  Nothing he had flown in the last twenty-five years had gotten a name. All his previous fighters and shuttles, the ones with names, had ended up dead in pieces somewhere. Better to not tempt the Fates on this one. They had apparently appreciated his effort.

  And he liked his flight deck decorated like a Merankorr brothel, all pink and frilly, with faux fur and glitter paint on the walls. It went with his loud shirts and the Caribbean music he played, all steel drums and wood pipes.

  That comforted him when he was doing crazy things.

  Del settled into the flight chair and locked everything in place, both hands on multi-function controls that let him do everything without moving more than ten centimeters.

  It was a really excellently designed ship. And tough enough for anything he had tried to put it through. At least so far.

  “What are you up do, Del?” Sykora asked over the private comm channel as she brought the turret live and cycled it through its paces.

  “You two are fire and oil,” Del replied. “I would prefer not making someone clean blood off of my transport deck. You will never get the smell out. Trust me, I’ve tried.”

  Give her credit. The dragoon didn’t play stupid. They had been comrades for several years now.

  “It won’t be today, Del,” she replied.

  “Probably,” he agreed. “But I don’t ever see you two making peace.”

  “Why should we?” she snarled at him.

  Del knew he was pushing. Only the captain really had an inside gig to talk turkey with the woman, but Del could play the part of the grumpy, old man at least well enough to make her listen.

  “Things would be a lot less tense for the rest of us if we weren’t worried about becoming collateral damage in your little feud,” he replied. “I realize that you two have never noticed that in your blind ambition.”

  Silence. Hopefully introspection, and not her throwing the headset across the open space as a prelude to stomping up from the gun deck and punching him.

  She might do that.

  Just in case, Del brought all the power live and stood the little shuttle up on its toes. With any luck, Djamila would stay strapped in until she calmed down.

  “Bridge, this is the shuttle,” he said into the comm. “Ready whenever you are.”

  “Roger that, Del,” Zakhar replied. “Stand by.”

  Del watched the feed from the mothership.

  Storm Gauntlet was a heavily modified Strike Corvette, an escort upgraded as a squadron leader once upon a time, and then retired out of Concord fleet service a generation ago when all the aftermath stopped aftermathing. When old warships like this and old warriors like Del got put on the shore for good.

  She was more than enough to handle a single light freighter sitting below her in the gravity well, looking the wrong direction. Just in case, though, Del knew the captain would power everything up and race down at her, waiting for a good, solid firing solution from the Ion Pulsar to completely disable the wee beastie of a vessel, so the big, bad pirates could dock with her and hold her in orbit.

  Nothing worse in the world than watching your prize fall out of the sky as all the crew bails out in lifepods and everything you hoped to steal burns up. Nothing more embarrassing, either.

  Nothing went wrong today, either.

  Hawks on pigeons.

  On his primary screen, Del watched Storm Gauntlet’s B-Turret, the one with the double ion cannon, light that poor freighter up with fairy fire, a reverse St. Elmo’s Fire bringing ruin instead of divine protection from the storm.

  “Shuttle, you are clear for launch,” Sokolov’s voice came over the com. “Good hunting.”

  Del acknowledged then maneuvered the beast through the shield lock and into open space like a salmon climbing for spawning season.

  One quick look at his boards showed nothing in space above him, and only one interesting spot on the entire, damned planet, roughly forty degrees south latitude on the leeward side of a big continent.

  The spot where Calypso’s shuttle had gone to ground.

  Del pushed the nose of the vessel over and jammed the throttle open. Assault shuttles were designed to go hot through an atmosphere.

  Let’s get you before you get away, and see what secrets you have to hide.

  Part Four

  Javier had felt the shuttle powering up, back up on the ship, and deliberately pulled every one of his straps extra tight. Del Smith probably thought the look in his eyes was reassuring.

  Javier knew better.

  The atmosphere had parted like the Red Sea, under protest, wailing like a hungry ban sidhe on a dusty, August night as Del took her in hot and crazy.

  Not a surprise. Del was already crazy.

  On the feed from the flight deck, the marble turned into a map, and then a skyscraper’s window. Perched on the edge of a cold promontory overlooking a vast, icy valley.

  From this approach, Javier could see the big, flat ledge, about halfway up one of the mountains that made up the basin. And the cave that appeared to open up behind it.

  There was a small cargo shuttle nose-out and butt-in on that ledge, but no movement Javier could see.

  And considering how sneaky the Assault Shuttle was swooping, those folks might not know there was anything wrong down there, other
than sudden silence from orbit as Calypso went dark.

  “Landing party, this is your captain speaking,” Del’s bored voice emerged from the speakers. “Please stow your gear and place your tray tables in the upright and locked position. Our target appears to be cold, and we will be on the ground in ninety seconds.”

  Javier settled for popping his knuckles and beeping Suvi to make sure she wasn’t locked into one of her video games, ignoring the outside world.

  “Are we there yet?” scrolled across his board on the little remote’s controller with a sad face.

  Javier’s cover story, of upgrading and automating his pair of survey drones to make them more autonomous, worked to let her have to spend less time pretending to be listening to him, and more time flying. At the same time, they still had to make sure nobody realized she was in there.

  If Sokolov found out, Javier was most likely a dead man and she would be a slave.

  “Almost,” Javier typed back. “Prepare for high winds and precipitation.”

  “You stay warm,” she sent.

  Trust his AI sidekick to go all motherly on him when they set down on a new planet.

  But Javier checked anyway. A mask with supplemental oxygen hung around his neck, just in case. The warm suit under his pants and jacket was currently dialed up halfway, since Del had kept the landing bay chilly.

  Javier went ahead and dialed the suit up to compensate for zero degrees Centigrade outside. The change wouldn’t be instant. However, it would be enough to keep him warm when they got on the ground.

  Everything else was in his backpack for now, except the “flight controller” for the drone hanging on his belt. Adding a “voice controller” function just meant he could talk out loud, not that Suvi would answer with people around.

  A good-enough halfway measure today.

  Impact.

  Del must be feeling his oats today.

  Usually, Del’s landings were feather soft. This was one hard, and the bay door was already halfway down.

  At least the dragoon hadn’t felt the need to light the shuttle up with her cannon as she got close.

  Javier would have lost that bet.

  Sykora came pounding down the steps from the flight deck at a fast jog, pausing just long enough to count noses before she went down the ramp into the bitter cold at a dead run, battle rifle out. Both pathfinders ran behind her: Sascha with the nice hips and Hajna with the long legs. Half-a-dozen male gun-bunnies followed, apparently intent on invading Guatemala.

  “Probe. Access Command Mode,” Javier said aloud, just in case anybody was listening besides him. Del was the only person still on the ship. “Exit shuttle and begin scanning. Defensive perimeter, please.”

  Translation: Make sure nobody is sneaking up on us. Shoot them if they do.

  Javier unbuckled and stood slowly, stretching everything as Del appeared.

  “Not in a rush?” the ancient pilot drawled.

  “Let her absorb any incoming fire,” Javier replied, slinging his pack. “They aren’t going anywhere. I’m just here for buried treasure.”

  “Come again?” Del asked.

  “Long story,” Javier cast over his shoulder as he shouldered the backpack and tromped down the ramp, happily last.

  Suvi hovered overhead in her dangerous little globe, like the eye of doom.

  Calypso’s shuttle wasn’t smoking, so they had apparently opened the door at the top of the ramp, instead of blowing it apart with explosives.

  You never knew with these yahoos.

  One man guarded Del’s hatch. Another protected Calypso’s shuttle. Javier assumed the rest were aboard the other ship, scaring people.

  They were good at that.

  Something caused him to look to his left as he emerged. Buried treasure, maybe.

  Pirates always needed a secret place to hide things.

  X marks the spot.

  The cave was only about forty meters deep. There was a bank vault door back there, fit for Jotunheim.

  Seriously, seventeen, maybe twenty meters high. Ten wide. Turning on Javier-sized hinge pins.

  And completely invisible to all the scans he had done or intercepted from orbit.

  Groovy.

  Javier ignored everyone else and wandered that direction. The dragoon and her mob could catch up. Plus, Suvi was faster and more dangerous than Djamila Sykora, on any day.

  Not much snow in the cave, for all the slushy ugliness out on the ledge. Mostly what swirling winds might deposit if left to their own devices, like a bored eight-year-old.

  However, any snow that remained had been scraped off to one side when that giant door had swung open recently. Like, say, in the last hour, probably about the time that the assault shuttle had slowed down to sub-sonic speeds as it got close.

  Javier wandered close. Ambled, more or less.

  He wasn’t willing to admit that the door impressed him. Not after trying to figure out how to steal the Land Leviathan, but his subconscious mind kept wanting to show him the evil giants lurking on the other side of that huge door, just waiting for a little mouse named Javier to knock.

  Not a single beanstalk in sight.

  At least the door controls were at a human scale, off on the right side. Simple little ten-key keypad, with individual buttons the size of his palm. Javier assumed they were meant to be pushed by hands in mitts, or handy elbows.

  And someone had etched the control sequence into the metal panel just above the numbers. Obviously, it was meant to be opened by strangers who were intelligent, while keeping wildlife outside.

  Briefly, he wondered why nobody had put a Sentience in the system, but then he remembered where he was.

  Even the most carefully programmed AI would go utterly nuts from boredom given enough time alone.

  Nope. Better to have a stupid system here, and rely on humans.

  Was it well-enough engineered that some future star-faring species might come along and open the thing? Humanity hadn’t found anything more sophisticated than lichens and simple plant life, anywhere, but that didn’t mean nobody else was coming along.

  Fermi might have been wrong today, but the galaxy was a big place and forever was a long time.

  The flight controls on his hip chirped.

  “Should we wait for the dragon lady? It might be dangerous, or something,” Suvi typed with all the sarcastic insolence he had programmed into her.

  Javier grinned and typed.

  “Buried treasure, young lady,” he typed back. “What if I don’t want to share with the other pirates?”

  His reward was a blinking smiley face, flickering quickly and randomly around the spectrum.

  Truly, Suvi could be a goof.

  Javier keyed the four digit sequence and listened as heavy bolts slowly retracted into the mountainside. The door began to move slowly outward beside him.

  What was the worst that could happen?

  Part Five

  Zakhar had been way more adventurous in his youth.

  Time was, he would have been happy to swap Javier places and go romp around on a strange planet looking for treasure and having adventures.

  Becoming a starship captain, and then an entrepreneur, had cured him of some of his crazier ideas.

  Okay, maybe tempered them enough so that he could live vicariously through the stories of other people getting shot at and nearly falling off cliffs.

  Dry socks and fresh coffee was a happy trade-off.

  It had been two hours since they had captured the freighter. One hour since Del and Djamila had landed and secured the shuttle. Storm Gauntlet had undocked from Calypso, but left a skeleton crew aboard, having found only three people over there to capture.

  Zakhar hadn’t let the bridge crew relax from Javier’s ideas of paranoid sneakiness, though.

  An Osiris-class Strike Corvette like Storm Gauntlet was only a little warship, as military vessels went. Pulse Cannons in Turret A fore, and Turret X aft for balance. Turret B had been refitted with an Ion
Pulsar to capture ships instead of destroying them. Four smaller batteries with twin pulsars as defensive weapons on the front and rear flanks. She was mostly an escort that had been upgraded in service as a squadron leader, but nothing dangerous to big warships.

  Hell on wheels against the average freighter, though.

  Calypso had been stunned unconscious at the first shot from the Ion Pulsar. Mary-Elizabeth was an expert at that sort of thing. A couple of follow-up shots had just been gilding the lily, but there were no penalties for overkill in this business.

  All a victim had to do was randomly trigger their jump drives to escape, even from this deep in a gravity well. It usually got you away, and if you stayed quiet, you probably could buy enough time to repair the drive matrix configurations to escape clean if your engineers were any good.

  Smart crews would program an emergency jump for that exact purpose.

  Hell, he’d only caught Javier Aritza in the first place because the man had dropped out of a jump almost on top of Storm Gauntlet and was stuck in the middle of recharging.

  Bad luck for Javier. Maybe good luck for Zakhar.

  His crew had been almost as broken down as their ship when the science officer first came aboard. Zakhar looked out over his bridge and considered what life might be like as a retired, former pirate.

  Javier fixing the life support system had injected a spark into the crew that had been missing. Since then, he had become an officer that the crew would follow.

  Now, if I can only figure out how to get him to stay after he has paid off his debt, which is coming up all too soon. Maybe I’ll charge him extra to buy back his chickens and arboretum. Something.

  Zakhar day-dreamed about taking a desk job somewhere.

  Anywhere.

  Someplace where he wasn’t a pirate warlord, a slaver, and a wanted criminal. Maybe take Djamila with him and sell the ship to Javier, so those two could finally be separated and not have to kill each other.

  A person could dream, right?