Ephialtes (Ephialtes Trilogy Book 1)

by Parker, Gavin E

  Bobby didn’t reply.

  “I don’t see you sticking up for the family. Someone has to. Dad’s not here now. I’m just doing what he wanted. I guess that never occurred to you, to stick up for the family or to do right by your father?”

  “Well,” said Bobby, “I’m not one for bearing grudges, but Dad never stood by me. That was his choice. I’m sorry it happened that way, but it did. I made my own choices and here I am. I don’t owe anyone anything, and no one owes me. So don’t be blaming any of this on Dad. You’re in this cell because of what you did and it was your choice to do it. Now deal with it.”

  “‘Deal with it’,” said Anthony. “That’s your advice, as an older brother, ‘Deal with it’? You know, it’s too bad you weren’t around for the last few years. I could have done with some helpful advice like that while I was growing up. Thanks for coming.”

  “Don’t feel sorry for yourself, Anthony. You’re in a lot of trouble and it’s your own fault. I’ll get in touch with Toni, but I doubt there’s much she’ll be able to do for you. If you need anything just call me.”

  Anthony continued staring into space as Bobby knocked on the door. After a few seconds a guard opened it and let him out.

  Lucero had known that one of her biggest immediate problems was the simple fact that there was nothing anyone could do. She had resolved almost immediately to make sure that there was so much to do that no one would notice that fact. She had arranged the survivors into four groups and had variously sent them about the ship on tasks. One group was tasked with checking every room and making sure there were no people injured or unaccounted for, and no apparent damage. A second group was tasked with bringing up oxygen tanks from the store on the hangar deck. They needed to find rope and other means of securing the tanks so they did not float about the bridge. The bridge was now the absolute heart of the ship. It was the one area with a window, and thereby the only place on the ship were there was any light. The rest of Ephialtes was in darkness.

  A third group was in charge of gathering food. There were plenty of supplies in the galley, though nothing could be cooked. They didn’t have the power and they couldn’t spare the oxygen to heat anything. Food gathering was an important job and again the group was tasked with finding a means of securing the food safely in the bridge.

  All the tasks had something of a teambuilding exercise about them, except in this case there was actually a nominal purpose to the exercises beyond the team building. Lucero hoped that no one would notice that the task was secondary.

  Once they had secured the food and oxygen there was less to do. There were no more expected events on the way. All that would happen now would be the ship getting colder and the CO2 levels getting higher. Nothing else was likely to happen, unless the Martians were to attempt a rescue mission.

  Lund persuaded Lucero this was likely. “There would be no point in them taking us out with EMPs if they were just going to leave us here,” she said. “They had nukes. They could have used those on us. The only purpose of using the EMPs would be to preserve life. I’m sure they must be coming.”

  “I don’t know,” said Lucero. “Maybe the EMPs were all they had. They pulled that fancy stunt with the dual speed missiles; maybe they needed the nukes to take out our countermeasures and the only thing they had left to use on us was EMPs. Maybe they’ve forgotten about us already. Maybe we’re already dead as far as they’re concerned.”

  Lund baulked at that. “I don’t think so,” she said. “It doesn’t make sense. They have to be coming for us. Anyway, we need to believe that, because if they’re not coming for us nobody else is.”

  “You can’t just think it’s going to happen because you want to think it, Lund,” said Lucero.

  “That’s not what I mean,” said Lund. “What I mean is that if you’re using EMPs it must be part of an overriding life preserving strategy. That strategy will include rescuing us from here, and not leaving us to die. Think about it from a political point of view. The Martians were always saying about how they wanted peace and wanted to avoid a war. Just politically it would be impossible for them to open fire on us and kill us all. That’s why they used the EMPs. They wanted to disarm us, not kill us. They want to have us on the bulletins, smiling and looking relieved, and thanking them for saving us. You’re right, I do want to believe that because it’s our only hope, but I do think it’s true, too. It’s the only thing that makes sense, logically.”

  “So what are we going to do about it?” said Lucero.

  “Nothing. There’s nothing we can do, apart from wait.”

  Lucero had discovered early on that it was difficult to hold a serious meeting when the participants are floating about the room. It would be even more difficult when the subject of the meeting pertained to the life or death of those floating. Lucero had no choice. With no power the artificial gravity was gone, so it was a floating meeting or no meeting.

  “Okay people,” she began, “I need to talk to you about the situation we find ourselves in. Obviously, I don’t need to tell you that we have no power or electronics of any sort; I think that idea has got through to even the dumbest of you by now. We have food and plenty of it, that is not an issue. We have oxygen to breathe, but we don’t have working filters to scrub the CO2 from it. Of course, that means eventually we will run out of breathable air. We’ve done some back-of-an-envelope calculations on that and we think we probably have a good few days of air left, so we can put that worry to one side for a moment. A more pressing issue is the temperature in here. It’s going to get cold. Again, we’ve done some rough calculations on that and it looks like we’re losing a degree or so Celsius every few hours. You may have noticed it getting colder in here already. Well, that process is not going to stop and it’s going to get a whole lot colder. We’ve brought up extra apparel from the stores and we should be fine even after we’ve dropped below zero Celsius, provided we are wearing appropriate clothing. But it’s going to keep getting colder after that, and at some point it will become too cold for survival.

  “So that’s the bad news; after a few days we’re going to run out of breathable air and it’s going to get way too cold in here for us to survive. Don’t forget the good news though; plenty of food. Just focus on that, we’ve got plenty of food.”

  There were some uneasy laughs.

  “I’ve been in discussion with Dr Lund and she has a theory about the Martian attack. Dr Lund believes that the Martians would not have used EMPs if they intended to kill us. She believes the purpose of the EMP attack was to preserve our lives, and following on from that she believes the Martians will make an attempt to rescue us. Now, don’t get too excited about that. That’s Dr Lund’s theory, and although it appears to be logically sound we have no evidence to support it. In light of that I would like to say this:

  “Should it appear that the Martians are attempting to board Ephialtes we should make every attempt to make friendly contact with them before assuming they mean us any further harm. If Dr Lund’s theory is correct and the Martians do attempt to board the ship I think it’s safe to assume they will be armed, and they will appear threatening. They have no means of contacting us prior to boarding, so they will be concerned that we will assume they are attacking us. For that reason we must absolutely not appear threatening to them. In the unlikely event that they come in guns blazing then you have my unequivocal permission to fight back, if you can find any means to. But if they come at all we feel they will be coming to help us, and we will have to do everything in our power to make sure they know that we know that.

  “Is that clear to everyone?”

  “When are they coming?” came a timid voice in the half-light.

  “We don’t know. We don’t even know if they’re coming.”

  “And they’ll be able to save us all?”

  Lucero shrugged. “Listen, let me say it again, this is all just conjecture. We don’t know anything about their plans, they may not be coming at all. Prepare yourselves for that
. What I want to make clear is if they do come, unless we see obvious indications to the contrary, we can assume they’re coming to help us and we should act accordingly.”

  “What if they don’t come?” came another voice. “What happens to us then?”

  “I believe I’ve already made that clear,” said Lucero.

  “That’s just one scenario,” said Lund, trying to keep some hope alive. “In one possible scenario it gets cold and we run out of air and that’s that. But there are many other scenarios, and the one I think most likely is that they come for us and we all get out of here and it’s okay.”

  “But when will they come, if they come?”

  “Soon.”

  Foveaux concluded her meeting with the rescue team by wishing them good luck. The briefing had consisted of going over the rescue plan. There wasn’t much of a plan at all. It was to dock with Ephialtes, send the drone in on a search mission, then follow the drone to any people it found. The plan assumed people were likely to be grouped together. Human nature would dictate that at a time of great stress and danger the people aboard Ephialtes would come together in a single space.

  The rescue team were equipped with loudhailers, as was the drone. Their primary concern was to convey to Ephialtes’ crew members that they were coming to rescue them, not to continue the fight they had started two days earlier.

  Bobby was to be the team leader. Foveaux thought, and Venkdt had agreed, that having been in combat he would be able to deal with the stress of the mission better than any of their other people. Also, having been in combat he was likely to be less trigger-happy. Having seen the devastation a military can inflict a combat vet can usually be relied upon to be a powerful advocate for peace.

  The rescue team was small. It was necessarily so in order to keep maximum space on the shuttle to bring back survivors. There was no particular need for a large squad. One of the mission parameters was that if they met any resistance whatsoever they were to withdraw and leave the survivors to their fate.

  Ephialtes was going to be a difficult environment to work in. With zero-g and no light it would be hard to evacuate the ship if the evacuees were not compliant. They had considered flooding the ship with a knockout gas if that proved to be the case, but the difficulties of spreading it around the ship and keeping it in non-lethal dosages seemed insurmountable. They assumed that once they could communicate that they were there to save the occupants, the occupants would comply and be rescued. After all, their only other option was to remain with the ship and die a cold, suffocating death to no purpose whatsoever.

  “That went pretty well,” Bobby said to Foveaux as the briefing finished.

  Foveaux shrugged. “That’s just words. You’ve got the tricky part.”

  “I think it’s going to be pretty straightforward,” said Bobby. “They have no weapons and they must know the position they’re in. I think they’ll greet us with open arms.”

  “You wouldn’t be the first soldier in history to make that assumption and be proved wrong,” said Foveaux.

  Bobby smiled. “I guess not,” he said. “But don’t forget that soldiers before me have made that assumption and been proved right, too.”

  “Are you ready to go?” said Foveaux.

  “Is ready as I’m going to be,” replied Bobby.

  “As soon as you’re in your flight suit get down to the shuttle bay.”

  “Yes,” said Bobby. “Where will you be?”

  “I’ll be in the operations room with Kostovich. We’ll oversee the whole thing from there. Anything you need - information, advice, backup - just let us know.”

  “I’ll do that,” said Bobby.

  “Okay then,” said Foveaux, “I’ll see you at the port in about thirty-six hours’ time. I’ll get some transports there. We’ll take the prisoners off you as soon as you land.”

  “I’ll see you there, then,” said Bobby, and he left to prepare for the flight.

  The launch of the shuttle was uneventful, save for being delayed for an hour to allow a sandstorm to pass. Once they were in orbit they could see the remains of the sandstorm drifting away from the city. It looked beautiful from that height.

  From orbit it would take them another few hours to reach Ephialtes, and then some more time to dock and breach the hatch. Bobby took the time to get to know his team a little better. They were not like the soldiers he was used to working with. He had been with the Commander Program for many years and he was used to people who were extremely dedicated and focused. The team from the MSS seemed nice enough, but appeared to lack that ruthless focus and cockiness that Bobby was used to amongst his squadmates.

  He had suspected as much from the beginning. In the Commander Program you could expect all of your colleagues to be alpha types, but here he had to allow for a range of different types of personality. He thought they would do a good job, mainly because he thought the job was a simple one. If it hadn’t been in space it would be absolutely routine. It boiled down to simply shepherding people off a spacecraft that was going to kill them and onto one that was going to save their lives. Even with the added wrinkle that the people they were rescuing may not trust their motivation it still seemed like a straightforward task to Bobby. At a low level he felt quietly confident that the team would execute the mission with minimal fuss and maximum efficiency, despite the high stakes and their relative inexperience. But for him and him alone there was one additional factor lending the mission an extra frisson: Askel.

  Although in his mind he had left Askel far behind and long ago, she had never been far from his thoughts. Hearing her name had been like a strangely pleasant punch to the stomach; visceral, shocking and unexpectedly enjoyable. Knowing that he might soon see her again somehow recast his feelings about her. Where he had believed he had been letting her fade in his memories he now realised he had been holding on to his thoughts of their time together, reluctant to finally let her go.

  With a few hours left until the mission he decided to have a kip.

  C H A P T E R 3 2

  War and Peace

  “Defence?”

  “Nothing, Mr President. We have no interplanetary craft.”

  “Foreign?”

  “Nothing, Mr President. Anthony Karjalainen has been arrested. Colonel Shaw is still under house arrest. She’s our senior person on the planet and as far as we know she hasn’t been compromised. But she’s not in a position to do anything for us at the moment.”

  “Okay, defence, no interplanetary craft. If we signed the orders here and now how long would it be until we had one?”

  Andrews had anticipated the question. She ruffled through her papers before answering. “A ship of the same class and size as Ephialtes and Otus would take approximately four years to build, Mr President.”

  Cortes nodded. “What can we do in the meantime? For the next four years?”

  “Mr President, you’ve recently concluded one of the most damaging wars in human history. For the next four years I think we should consolidate our position and plan for a future with an independent Mars. After all, we are the only market they have for their deuterium, so they need us just as much as we need them,” said White.

  “Plan for the future,” said Cortes. “We planned for a future in which we got our colony back and secured our energy supplies. Didn’t work out. I think we need an array of more flexible plans, don’t you?”

  “Things don’t always work out the way one hopes, Mr President.”

  “No, they don’t,” said Cortes, his laser beam eyes burning into White’s.

  “I think it’s advisable in a situation like this to look at what we have and try to make the best of it. Yes, our original intentions didn’t work out. So what have we got? We need to look at that, think about what our long-term goals are and how we are going to work towards them,” said White.

  “What we have got,” said Cortes, “is the square root of nothing. We have lost our two most powerful warships and along with them any influence we might ha
ve in the Martian sphere. We have also lost our energy supplies. Without Martian deuterium our entire economy, our entire way of life will grind to a halt. But even more important than both of those things, we have lost all credibility in an unstable world. Our enemies came to the negotiating table because they believed we possessed the power to destroy them. That is how we achieved peace; by preparing for all-out war. It was partly bluff, as you all know. Well, it looks like the Martians have called us on that bluff and now we look like fools. We have no hand to play. Do any of you think our enemies are not watching this unfold? Do any of you think that this incident is not going to affect our standing in the world? What has happened out there is an unmitigated disaster.”

  There was silence in the room.

  “Where do we go from here, Mr President?” said Brennan.

  Cortes paused before answering. “First, the state of emergency and the Restrictive War Measures must continue. The stability of this nation is our absolute priority. I swore an oath to protect it, and I shall. Secondly, and in support of that, we have to suspend all military cutbacks. As of now the peace dividend is over. The Asian Bloc is restless and we cannot allow ourselves to fall back into war. We need to continue strengthening our military. That is what brought peace. The negotiations and the treaties were just the endgame of that policy. We achieved peace by gearing up for massive, annihilatory war. That policy, now revived, must continue. At home we have to increase security. Our enemies, whether Asian Bloc, Martian or independent will seek to probe us for any weakness they can exploit. We have to be ready for them.”

  “I meant with regards to Mars,” said Brennan.

  Cortes shrugged. “Well, that’s one for the foreign office,” said Cortes. “We need the deuterium and they are the only place we can get it in sufficient quantities. It’s not a secure source anymore but it’s the only one we have. For the immediate future I guess we will have to deal with the Martians. Farrell, I expect you to have something worked out by the end of the month. The deuterium has to keep flowing. I don’t want to formally recognise the Martian government, so fudge something if you have to. Just keep the deuterium coming.”