by Rick Partlow
“Ah, Dobroe utro, Colonel Stark,” she heard Antonov’s voice from her right side and just behind her. Good morning. So, she hadn’t been out for very long. She tried to twist around to see the man, but he was too far behind her and she could only see the bare wall of whatever room she was in.
“Why…” she tried to speak, but her mouth felt as if it were stuffed with cotton. Antonov came into her peripheral vision, holding a cup of water. She considered resisting but that, she reflected silently, would be pointless. She sipped the water and sighed slightly in relief.
“I think,” Antonov said cheerfully, “you were about to ask me why I didn’t kill you, no?”
“Yes,” she said quietly. Antonov walked behind her and around to her left. She tried to follow him, but the strap around her forehead restricted her motion.
“I kept you alive,” he informed her, “because as you said, I can’t leave without you. As I don’t have time for anything more entertaining,” he chuckled at that, and she fought back an instinctive shiver as his calloused finger traced a line across her left cheek, “…and believe me, my dear, I can think of much more entertaining ways to bend a beautiful woman to my will… I will be forced to rely on the more antiseptic option of using this mashina.”
“It won’t work,” she told him tightly. “To use the probe on me without drugs, I’d have to do it voluntarily… and if you drug me, I won’t recover quickly enough to call my air cover before they sound the alert and seal this place off.”
“I did indeed consider this, Colonel,” he assured her, voice as confident and cheerful as ever. He walked back around behind her and she felt a surge of panic as her chair started to shake, but then she realized he was turning it so she could see farther to her left.
As she slowly turned, she could see that she was in some sort of medical lab or clinic, filled with a fairly sophisticated array of equipment; turned a bit more and she could see a wheeled gurney was rolled up a couple of meters to her left and that there was someone laid out on it. She recognized the boots as belonging to the stealth armor her team had been wearing and she felt her heart rise into her throat.
Another jerk on the side of her chair and she could see that the soldier had half-dried blood spattered on those boots and a pair of smart bandages on the right leg, at the knee and hip. A bit more to her left and she saw a bedraggled female in rumpled clothes that she recognized from Jameson’s description as Dr. Maggie Cochrane. Cochrane was standing behind the gurney, looking supremely uncomfortable, her face twisted in what looked like a combination of distaste and abject terror. Next to her and slightly behind her, backs against the wall, were two armored biomechs, their weapons trained on her and the soldier on the gurney, standing stock-still.
One final turn of the chair and she saw that the man on the table was Tom Crossman.
“I know this man,” Antonov told her, leaning close and speaking in a conspiratorial whisper. Shannon found it hard to focus on his words as she scanned Tom’s face, saw that he was unconscious but still breathing. His skin was pasty from loss of blood and coated with sweat. She could see another smart bandage on his neck and one on his arm as well. “He was on my ship five years ago,”
“Your memory is impressive,” she said in a neutral tone, trying not to let her feelings creep into her voice. All she could think about was Tom’s children…
“My memory is not what it once was,” Antonov countered. “The hazards of living over two centuries. But I saw the movie.”
Shannon bit back a bitter laugh. Tom hated that damned movie…
“So, here is what we will do, moi dorogoi,” he went on. My dear. “You will submit to the hypnoprobe without resistance, and I will allow the very competent Dr. Cochrane here to treat your friend. When we leave this place, we will leave them here and your man will survive. The alternative… well, if you refuse, I will have the good doctor tear off those ingenious smart dressings of yours and bring your man to full consciousness and then we will see just how much blood he has left in him.” A snort. “Not all at once, of course.”
“Where are the rest of my people?” She asked in a voice that could have come from a computer.
“Ah, I am so sorry to tell you,” Antonov said, his mock dismay sounding just as cheerful, “but I am afraid that Sergeant Crossman was the only survivor.”
Shannon closed her eyes for a moment and her mouth formed into a hard line. “All right,” she said softly.
“What?” Antonov said in slight surprise. “No cliched questions about how you can trust me?”
“I know I can’t fucking trust you,” she ground out between clenched teeth. “But I have very little choice.”
“Ah, I do love a pragmatic woman,” he laughed, pulling her chair back around until she faced the hypnoprobe once more. He moved around to the other side of the machine and she could see him again: the genius and insanity blended in his eyes, the cruel humor in his smug, arrogant smile. He reached out to the hypnoprobe and hit a control to activate it. “And now… just relax…”
* * *
“Well, at least they’re not trying evasive maneuvers,” Lt. Franks murmured, staring at the main viewscreen. The twin Eysselink ramships showed on the gravimetic sensors like glowing comets, arrayed one a few light seconds in front of the other: they had to stay separated to avoid the same sort of drive field entanglement that he and Perez were going to try to use against them.
“At their current velocity,” the Tactical Officer, Lt. Wolford, reported, his breathing a bit labored due to the two g acceleration, “the lead ship is forty minutes from Earth impact and ten minutes from rendezvous with the Bradley. The trailing ship is approximately ten minutes behind him.”
“Engineering,” Perez spoke into the intercom, his voice strained, “how are the modifications going?”
“Just about done, sir,” the Engineering Officer replied, her voice improbably cheerful. “It’s mostly software adjustments and a few circuit bypasses… well, that’s all we have time for, anyway. I can’t honestly say if this is going to work or not… every experiment that’s been done with intersecting drive fields has led to pretty spectacular mutual destruction.”
Perez’ eyes widened and he shot a glare at Franks.
Franks spread his hands. “Commander Prieta, the Chief Engineer on the Decatur swears it’ll work.”
“I’ve got the vectors plotted for the field intersect,” Bevins, the Helm Officer, announced. “This is going to be real tricky, Captain…”
“Just program the vectors, Lieutenant,” Perez told him tersely. “There’s no second option and there won’t be a second chance.” He turned to Lt. Franks. “Tell me something, Lieutenant, you could have told us all this over the radio… why come on board yourself?”
Franks shrugged expressively. “Sir, I’ve been following a lot of the communications from Decatur and they’ve given me some idea of how these ramships work… I figured it would be better if I were on board just in case something came up that I could help with.” He grinned. “And, to be honest sir, I’ve spent the last two years sitting at a desk, funneling communications from one covert operation after another. I wasn’t about to sit on my ass while the Protectorate was attacking Earth.”
Perez chuckled softly. “You remind me of Colonel McKay… when he was a Captain.”
“You served with the Colonel?” Franks asked, surprised.
“I was the Assistant Weapons Officer on the Patton during the war,” he said, an understandable pride in his voice. “I fired the missile that destroyed Antonov’s flagship.”
Franks began to smile a “that’s cool!” sort of smile, but it froze on his face as a realization passed through his mind like a wash of ice-cold water.
“That’s awesome, sir,” he said with as much enthusiasm as he could fake. “Did you stay with the Patton after the war?”
“Only till we got back from a resupply mission to Aphrodite,” the Captain confirmed Franks’ worst fears. “After that, I got pro
moted and went for advance officer’s training.”
Oh, shit, Franks moaned inside his head, letting the high gravity force him deeper into the acceleration couch. What the hell do I do now?
“Two minutes till intercept,” the Helm officer announced. “I’ve got the vectors programmed… we’re in the pipe. Taking acceleration down to one gravity.”
The pressure pushing down on Franks’ chest eased to a normal level but he barely noticed: he was intent on watching Perez. As the seconds crept by, he saw beads of sweat rolling down the Captain’s forehead, saw the man’s face transform from intent concentration to agonized indecision as the moment of intercept approached.
He had a conviction deep in his gut that the Captain was being pressured by the conditioning he’d undergone on the Patton‘s ill-fated journey to Aphrodite, and that the man was going to crack and abort the maneuver at the last second. He didn’t know if he was being paranoid, but he knew what Shannon Stark or Jason McKay would say about that: the question was never if you were being paranoid, it was whether you were being paranoid enough.
“Captain,” he said firmly, leaning forward in his seat.
Perez’ face swung toward him, the movement furtive, like a cornered animal.
“Captain Perez,” he repeated, trying to keep his voice calm but firm. “You received the authorization from President O’Keefe placing this ship at my disposal for this mission, correct?”
In his peripheral vision, Franks could see the Tactical and Helm officers casting curious glances at the interplay, even as they tried to concentrate on their stations.
The Captain’s eyes flickered back and forth, but he nodded jerkily. “Yes, but…”
”Captain,” Franks emphasized the rank and leaned even closer, one hand loosening his restraints, the other falling on the man’s shoulder. “You said it yourself… we don’t have a second option and we won’t get a second chance. Right?”
“Yes, that’s right,” Perez admitted quietly, nodding but beginning to shake slightly, sweat now pouring down his face. “But there’s something wrong, I can feel…”
“Captain,” Franks hissed so quietly that no one else could hear it, directly into the man’s ear, “Republic Spacefleet Regulation 304.3 states that every Intelligence officer is required to carry a loaded sidearm at all times while on duty. I am currently acting in accordance with that regulation and if you try to countermand the orders to intercept these two ships, I will draw my sidearm and put a bullet through your head.”
Perez’ eyes went wide and he started to open his mouth, but Franks shook his head and raised a finger to his own lips in a shushing motion. “Captain Perez, I know you’re feeling panicked, like you have to stop this from happening, but I promise you, that will go away if you just let it happen, let your orders get carried out. Just keep your mouth shut for the next thirty seconds, and everything will be fine.”
Oh Jesus Christ, Franks thought, half-praying, don’t make me kill this guy…
“Ten seconds!” Helm exclaimed, and Franks head snapped around, his teeth baring as he saw the first of the ramships impossibly huge in the viewscreen.
He instinctively pulled himself back into his seat and began to tighten his restraint harness…
“Five seconds!” Bevins called. “Four…”
Franks’ eyes were glued to the screen, but he saw out of the corner of his eye Captain Perez clawing at his own safety restraints. “Captain!” he exclaimed. “No!”
“…two, one, impact!”
Franks had gone bungee jumping once, during a summer leave from the Academy, off a bridge in Oregon. It had scared the shit out of him and he’d sworn never to do it again, but now he felt as if he were falling once more, not into a river gorge but instead into the holes between bits of space-time; falling forever until the bungee cord of reality snapped him back, slamming him into his seat with terrifying authority.
His vision swam in a sea of smoke and flickering lights, and his ears were filled with the distorted tintabulation of multiple alarms sounding, while his stomach did flip-flops from the sudden return of zero gravity. He beat a fist against the arm of his acceleration couch and bullied his brain into action, forcing his eyes to focus.
The viewscreen was flickering through a haze of smoke that was drifting across the bridge, rising from shorting relays at the communications station, and everywhere he looked the bridge crewmembers were floating against their restraints… except for Captain Perez. He’d managed to get his restraints undone just before the impact, and Franks guessed that the whiplash effect had slammed him into the hull. He was floating over the Helm station, his neck cocked at an unnatural angle and globules of blood beading up from his nose and mouth. His eyes were open and he stared lifelessly at Franks, sending an electric chill up the young man’s spine.
“Aw, son of a bitch…” Franks moaned. That means I’m gonna have to do this… “Tactical!” he yelled hoarsely.
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 a
nd 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 nodded and 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.