Devastation Class

by Glen Zipper

  “It’s not helping that you keep arguing both sides of the issue,” Ohno responded in frustration.

  “I’m arguing both sides because I’m trying to be dispassionate. You know I’m compromised.”

  Losing patience, I slapped my hand on my console. “If something kills all five of us, it’s probably taking the ship with it anyway. So let’s stop overthinking it and just make a judgment call here. Call it out. Anatoly?”

  “Gentry,” he answered, albeit reluctantly.

  “Bix?”

  He nervously pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose. “Julian.”

  “Ohno?”

  “Julian. Definitely Julian.”

  “Julian it is, then,” I volunteered, bringing our debate to a conclusion.

  My vote carried the decision into majority without having to put Viv on the spot.

  “Should I install his priority key now?” Bix asked.

  “Wait,” Viv interjected. “Biosigs have been going haywire for the last two weeks. What if a malfunction pushed all of our signatures offline? That would give Julian command priority, wouldn’t it?”

  “No. Not possible,” Ohno answered, shaking her head with definitive confidence. “Biosigs are synced to life support and have more redundant safeguards than any other system on the ship. The sigs might ghost, but they aren’t going to disappear. Unless . . .”

  “Unless what?”

  “Unless we’re dead.”

  “Or if someone with command authorization accessed the system,” added Bix. “They couldn’t change priority, but they could unlink tracking to our sigs. That’d take us offline.”

  “Only we have command authorization,” I reminded him.

  “Gentry,” replied Viv. “He still has command authorization.”

  “One of the many reasons he’s locked in his quarters. He has zero access to any of the ship’s systems or any means of communication with anyone who would.”

  “Bix, is there anything we’re missing. Anything at all?” Viv asked.

  He rolled his eyes upward, as if searching his brain for any stone left unturned.

  “No. Not that I can think of.”

  If Bix couldn’t come up with anything for us to worry about, that was good enough for me.

  “Fine, then. It’s done. Go ahead.”

  Bix swiveled back to his console and began the update to add Julian to the Command Priority Roster.

  Responding to a message at his station, Anatoly got up and tiredly shuffled off into the lift. “Looks like I have a broken nose to attend to in Medical.”

  “Another fight?”

  “Either that or he repeatedly fell on something fist-shaped,” he quipped just before disappearing behind the closing doors.

  My console chimed.

  “Command authorization required for Command Priority Roster modification.”

  I entered my Command Code, authenticating Bix’s update.

  “Command Priority Roster successfully modified. Lorde, Julian C., confirmed Command Priority Six.”

  Exhausted, I pushed myself to my feet. “See you at 1900.”

  “Why don’t you relieve me at 2100 instead?” Viv offered. “Looks like you could use a couple extra hours of shut-eye.”

  I was more than happy to take her up on her offer, but I didn’t make it more than three steps before long-range proximity alarms rang out over the bridge. So much for sleep.

  “Report.”

  Bix hastily shuffled his feet.

  “Come on. Talk to me, Bix.”

  He activated the Holoview’s stellar-cartographic overlay. Its crisscrossing lattice divided the immediate navigable sector into equally apportioned zones. “Q-Five-A.”

  My attention narrowed to Quadrant Five Alpha, where a small red blip was approaching the supply buoys from the opposite direction of the California’s trajectory. Its yellow pulsing perimeter indicated a very familiar energy signature.

  Viv leaned forward, squinting. “It’s the Grays!”

  Ohno’s ink retreated under the cuffs of her uniform jacket. “If they’re as desperate for supplies as we are, that’s not a good sign.”

  “No, it’s not,” I agreed.

  Bix zoomed out the overlay to a wider perspective. “The Grays aren’t the whole story. Check out Q-Seven-D.”

  A second red blip appeared, its perimeter pulsing blue. The color of the Alliance.

  “Are those readings confirmed?” Viv asked.

  “Yes,” Bix acknowledged. “It’s definitely an Alliance vessel, and it’s on an intercept course with the Grays.”

  “What ship is it?”

  “I can’t tell. Its transponder isn’t throwing off a signal.”

  “Should I com them?”

  “No,” I cautioned him. “We don’t know who else is out there listening.”

  “We can’t risk missing them,” said Viv.

  “We won’t. Activating Nav Synth,” I replied, entering its activation sequence. The avatar materialized at Navigation.

  “Plot an intercept course with unidentified Alliance vessel at Quadrant Six Gamma.”

  Intercept at Six Gamma would get us to the Alliance ship before it reached the Grays.

  The Synth paused. “Warning. Intercept at Six Gamma requires propulsion to exceed acceptable parameters.”

  “Disregard warning. Ohno?”

  “Got it. Rerouting available power from grids to propulsion.”

  “Course plotted,” the Synth confirmed. “Intercept with unidentified Alliance vessel at Six Gamma in thirty-nine minutes.”

  As the California’s autopilot adjusted its course and hurtled us toward Six Gamma, it occurred to me that something other than a happy reunion was likely waiting for us aboard the Alliance ship. We were mutineers. There was undoubtedly going to be a reckoning for what we had done.

  Bix inspected his console as if it were malfunctioning.

  “What is it?”

  “I don’t understand,” he answered, looking uncharacteristically befuddled. “We’re . . . dead.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “I mean our biosigs went flat. Look.”

  It was the exact contingency we had just determined impossible.

  “Reboot the system, quickly!” I shouted.

  “I can’t. Biosig reboot is a command function. You need to reboot from your console.”

  “Stand by.” I entered my command code.

  “Command authorization invalid.”

  “It rejected my code.”

  Viv slowly rose from her station, the color evaporating from her face. “Refresh the Command Priority Roster.”

  “Why?”

  “Just do it!”

  Confused, I did as she asked.

  The Command Priority Roster instantly repopulated with only one name.

  Lorde, Julian C. Command Priority One.

  I looked up from my console in shock.

  “Julian.”

  Viv pounded her fist hard against her console. “They were waiting to pounce,” she said, her wide, disbelieving eyes signaling the weight of her realization.

  “They?”

  I wasn’t sure she heard me. It was like she was a thousand miles away.

  “I don’t know how, but they found a way to communicate,” she continued, eyes vacant.

  An unfamiliar alert sounded.

  “It’s Gentry,” Viv said, not even bothering to consult her console.

  Bix, however, consulted his.

  “She’s right. The lock on his quarters. I don’t know how, but it’s been reset.”

  “Isolate his biosig. Tell me where he’s going.”

  “Gentry and Lorde both located on Delta Deck, port side,” Bix confirmed, pausing in stunned disbelief before delivering the rest. “Headed straight for the mainframe compartment.”

  “Gentry has authorization to get into the compartment,” Viv groaned.

  Ohno swiveled around from her console to face us, her pained expression telegraphing h
ow dire the situation was about to become. “Julian’s command priority gives him the Command Keys for Sentinel. As soon as those codes are ingested, the ship is Gentry’s.”

  Rushes of anger and panic competed against my focus.

  “All right, let’s stop and think this through. How long will it take for Sentinel to ingest the codes?”

  “Sentinel throws up a multitude of automatic failsafes anytime new Command Codes are entered,” Bix answered. “But it’s nothing Gentry won’t be able to work his way through. We’ve got thirty minutes tops. Maybe twenty if he works fast,” Bix answered.

  A new alert sounded. Then one more. And then another.

  “I’ve got unauthorized movement all over the ship,” Ohno reported. “Over thirty students on Beta Deck. Transferring biosigs to the Holoview.”

  The Holoview revealed a dense cluster of bodies heading straight past Medical. I tried to raise Anatoly on both visual and audio coms. Neither worked.

  A few seconds later Anatoly’s biosig was moving inside the cluster, his heart rate skyrocketing. They had taken him.

  “Freeze the nearest lift!” Viv called out.

  “Can’t access lift controls!” Ohno thundered. Another alert sounded. “All the missing pulse pistols just went active!”

  Then, one by one, the interfaces on my command console shut down. With our biosigs no longer active, Sentinel was purging every authorization it didn’t recognize and waiting for Julian to enter his.

  “All systems failing!”

  Then the Holoview went dark, and the ship lost propulsion.

  I sank into my chair.

  “We’ve got to do something!” Viv shouted at me.

  “Like what? They’ve completely outflanked us. We’re boxed in, locked out of every system, and there’s an armed insurrection waiting for us on the lower decks.”

  “There has to be something. What can we use? What’s still working?”

  “Barely anything,” Bix said. “I might be able to squeeze some functionality out of basic infrastructure systems. Lifts. Emergency power routing.”

  “Emergency power?” Ohno queried. “How much of it do you think you can grab for me?”

  “I don’t know. Most of it? All of it, probably. Why? What can you do with it?”

  Ohno doffed her uniform jacket and pulled the utility panel off the back of her console. “Something unpleasant.”

  I had no idea what she meant, but it inspired a very familiar reaction.

  Bix beat me to saying it out loud. “Oh no.”

  CHAPTER 39

  VIV

  A COLUMN OF STUDENTS STOOD IN TIGHT formation guarding the mainframe compartment as JD and I approached. Seven of them were armed with the missing pulse pistols. The weapons looked like toys in their unsure hands. My eyes almost couldn’t believe what they were seeing.

  Cooper Lynch stepped forward, pointing his pistol at us. His beady brown eyes amplified his sinister intensity. “Looks like we have ourselves a Devastation Class reunion,” he sniped.

  “Be careful with that, Cooper,” JD warned. “The trigger is extremely sensitive.”

  Cooper smirked. “I know how it works.”

  Kemi Abioye and Hamid Jahan frisked us.

  “No weapons,” Hamid confirmed.

  “We didn’t come looking for a fight. We can resolve this peacefully. Find a way to work together,” I said.

  “Is that so? Where was this team spirit before?”

  JD tried to step forward, but Cooper stopped him with a cautionary wave of his pistol.

  “You need to listen to me,” JD beseeched him. “We’ve isolated the signal of an Alliance vessel two sectors from here. They’re the lifeline we’ve been waiting for, and if propulsion isn’t restored soon, we could lose them.”

  “Propulsion will be restored soon enough. Under Gentry’s command.”

  “By the time Sentinel ingests the new Command Codes, it might be too late.”

  Cooper smirked. “How convenient.”

  “Why would I lie to you?”

  “Because you can’t help yourself,” another voice called out from behind the students guarding the entrance.

  Gentry exited the mainframe compartment, his unearned cocky swagger reclaimed. Wearing a fresh uniform, he had taken the time to shave and neatly coif his hair.

  He snatched the pistol from Cooper and swung it right between JD’s eyes. “You know how serious a mutiny is, don’t you, cadet?”

  “I do,” JD answered, unable to restrain the nervous quiver in his chin.

  “Alliance Uniform Code of Military Justice. Article Four, Section Two. ‘The ranking officer aboard an Alliance vessel may carry out any of the authorized penalties for acts of treason. Including summary execution.’”

  “In times of war,” JD defiantly countered.

  “Is this not war?” Gentry scoffed.

  JD cringed as Gentry’s finger flinched against the trigger.

  “Don’t!” I shouted.

  I could see flecks of sweat beading at Gentry’s temples. He was completely locked in, feeding off JD’s fear.

  JD closed his eyes.

  “Please, no!” I implored Gentry.

  “Move her back!” he shouted at Cooper.

  Cooper grabbed me from behind, dragging me away from JD.

  I’d been powerless to stop what happened to my mother. To Safi. To everyone on Gallipoli. But all that had happened at a distance. Now I was powerless to stop what was happening right in front of me. I felt like I was being ripped in half.

  Gentry cocked the pistol’s plasma chamber, and it squealed through its power cycle. “You brought this on yourself.”

  JD offered no response.

  The world around me began to spin.

  Not like this.

  I can’t lose him like this.

  “Do you have anything you want to say before I carry out your sentence?”

  JD looked Gentry squarely in the eyes. “Yes. We did what we had to.”

  Gentry shook his head in disgust. “That’s all?”

  “That’s all.”

  With a sickening crack, Gentry pistol-whipped JD across the face. He crumbled to the floor, blood spilling from his nose and mouth.

  Rage overwhelmed me. I executed a reverse head butt against Cooper’s chin and rushed Gentry, knocking the pistol from his grip with a roundhouse kick. Caught off guard, he staggered a step to his right. Pouncing, I landed an uppercut to his solar plexus and followed with a stabbing jab to the ribs. Belching out a groan, he set his feet and struck my collarbone with a sharp left chop. Adrenaline dulled the pain radiating down my arm as I fell into a backward roll and leapt back to my feet, keeping my stance low.

  Gentry furiously charged me. Dodging his stomping kick, I surprised him with a martelo do chão to the knee. He cried out in agony and dropped to the deck.

  Just as I readied a finishing axe kick, I heard JD shout, “Behind you!”

  Cooper was already aiming his pulse pistol at my head by the time I spun around.

  “Don’t even twitch,” he warned me.

  Protected by Cooper’s cover, Gentry rose and grabbed me by the throat. It felt as though he was crushing my larynx as he locked his elbow and held me at a distance. I tried to scream, but all I could muster was a squeal. Then, right before I passed out, someone pushed between us to free me from his grip.

  As soon as my eyes came back into focus, I saw that it was Julian. “What do you think you’re doing?” he scolded Gentry.

  Gentry straightened his uniform. “She’s dangerous. They’re all dangerous!”

  Julian offered JD a hand. JD reluctantly took it and struggled to stand.

  “No violence unless necessary. That’s what you promised,” Julian railed at Gentry before turning his attention to me. “Are you okay?”

  It gutted me to look at him.

  “How could you do this?” I seethed.

  Julian stood silent, either without an answer or unwilling to give me one.r />
  JD burst into laughter. Looking at his face broke my heart. His gentle features were swollen and disfigured. “What did Gentry promise you, Julian? That he’d tell High Command you saved the California from treacherous mutineers? That he’d find a way to get you a commission?”

  “Is that how little you think of me, John?” he indignantly replied.

  “Then why?” I demanded.

  “Because you were going to lose!” Julian shouted, momentarily losing his composure. “Look around you. You’re surrounded by those who resent you. Don’t trust you. Want you gone. Even if I never lifted a finger, how long did you think you would’ve lasted before you found yourself here, in this very same inevitable moment?”

  “So this is about winning?”

  “What was it that you said to me in Iso-Rec not so long ago?” he answered, turning his focus to JD. “Perhaps if I concentrated more on winning, I wouldn’t be languishing on the lower decks? Well, thank you for your guidance, but this was always about much more than winning. I chose the side I knew would prevail. It was about survival.”

  My anger dissolved to pity. I didn’t need to see his Psych Ops results to know what they must have said.

  That he was a coward.

  JD spit a clot of blood right at Julian’s feet. “If you want to survive, I promise you’ve picked the wrong side.”

  Annalisa Vaccaro peeked out from the compartment. “Liko needs you,” she called out to Gentry.

  “Bring them inside,” ordered Gentry, turning to follow Annalisa back into the compartment.

  With Cooper’s pistol at our backs, we followed a procession of students through the entrance. Liko was inside, working away at Sentinel’s control panel. About a dozen more students surrounded him. The condition of JD’s face made it clear they had gone past the point of no return.

  As we walked farther inside, we came upon Anatoly. Seated on the ground under the guard of two armed students, he appeared to be unharmed.

  “You okay Toly?” JD asked.

  “Better than you,” he answered.

  I held my breath as JD reached into his pocket and stealthily dropped a Magnetic Field Generator band by Anatoly’s side. It was the same kind JD and I already had concealed on our wrists. MFGs were originally intended to function as energy-shielding safety accessories for engineers working inside the ship’s propulsion systems. I had never worn one before—let alone successfully charged one. I prayed the five minutes we had to grab them from Engineering and follow Ohno’s instructions were enough.