"I agree," Pearson said. "How do you plan to stop him?"
"I have no idea."
"Major," Pearson went on, "there's a room in the Command Module on B deck that Wilmington had built. He calls it his CDC, Combat Direction Center. It's from here that he aims and fires his missiles. Destroy the computers in that room and he's dead in the water. Or, take control of the room and fire all his missiles out into space and he's neutered."
Dave leaned in toward Pearson. "Do you know how to get to this room from the docking bay?"
Pearson paused a moment, he knew what Dave was asking. "Yes," he said slowly. “You gonna ask me to take you there?”
“I guess you could just draw us a map."
Again, Pearson paused before replying, "No, I'll show you where it is."
"Hmm," Zolna said. "There seems to be shockingly little loyalty among Wilmington's hired guns toward him."
"Zolna," Pearson turned in his seat to face him. "Let me tell you something. It's hard to be loyal to an employer who lies to you. First, my group was told the job was on the Moon, and then we were tricked into those tubes for the ride to the Moon and boom we're in cryo. When we get here, we're told the facility down there is filled with hostile indig savages armed with sticks and rocks. We land and are engaged by professional soldiers from Earth and a well-armed indigenous population.
"When we arrived, I saw the village they built, I saw humans and indigs fighting together, and I saw human families and indig families with kids all scared to death.
"This is not the job I signed up for. I'm a pilot, not a monster. I won't be a part of any crap that targets families and children.
"Don't get me wrong, not all of Wilmington's mercs were hoodwinked. He does have a hard-core group of guys. These guys keep to themselves and are always dressed in black. They all wear a green saber and two stars embroidered on their left shoulders."
"The grinning green guys," Zolna exclaimed.
"That’s them," Kathy said, "the sword and stars, AKA the servants of the serpent. I never thought I’d see those guys again. Stands to reason though, Wilmington recruited terrorists from Oceania. Think of it ― if their army had blood like the E'meset, they would be almost indestructible…unstoppable."
"Shit!" Zolna exclaimed. "You think that's their plan?"
"What else?" Dave said softly. It was then that all four realized they were now fighting to defend two worlds.
○O○
Dave knew that Wilmington, thanks to Indra, was without communications or sensors, so he was deaf, dumb, and blind. Dave had Pearson approach from an angle that, he hoped, would prevent them seeing the shuttle from a window in the Command Module.
Pearson's manual docking was as light as a feather. The airlock was a round hatch in the ceiling of the shuttle amidships. The four of them unbuckled, and in the zero G, floated toward the hatch. Just before they left their seats, Pearson turned to Dave and said, "Major, I hope you don't mind, but—" and he reached down to the left side of his seat and slowly brought up a pistol from a hidden location. "I might need this."
Dave looked quickly at Zolna then said, "I don't mind at all, Captain."
To which Kathy added, "Just make sure which way you point that thing."
"Don't worry," Pearson replied.
"Oh, I won't," Zolna said retrieving his rifle. "After you."
As Pearson came abreast of him, Zolna asked, "You do know we're SUBs, right?"
Pearson looked stunned and knitted his brow together. He glanced at Dave then back to Zolna. "Well, of course," then he floated on out aft.
Zolna looked to Dave. "What does that mean—'of course’?"
Dave quickly glanced at Zolna whose missing piece of scalp had been patched by Le'ha with the wool of some plant. He then shrugged and floated past him.
"Wait a minute, Dave," Zolna called after him. "We're supposed to be hard to spot!"
When Dave opened the airlock on the other end of the umbilical, Pearson peeked out, looked at Dave, and breathed a sigh of relief. There was no reception waiting for them. Once out in the hall, Dave was struck with the empty, abandoned feel of the place.
"That's because most everyone is either in the shuttles, waiting to board the next lift of shuttles, or standing by to aid with the launch of the shuttles," Pearson whispered.
"Which way?" Dave asked.
"We are on C deck now, on the starboard side. The CDC is on B deck amidships."
Dave closed the airlock door, and they all floated down the hallway in the zero gravity, pulling themselves along using a rail attached to the wall for just that purpose. Each had one hand on a rail the other on the pistol grip of their weapon.
Pearson followed as direct a route as possible, carefully checking each corner and intersection.
Twenty tense minutes later, from the starboard side, they entered a room nine meters long by six wide. The CDC was filled with holographic monitors and an array of targeting computers. There were two doors to this room, one on the port and the other on the starboard bulkheads.
Dave planned to first wipe the main memory clear of its recorded data hoping to remove any target pre-plots. Simultaneously, Kathy was to re-align the missile pods and fire the entire complement of missiles into space.
Between when they first heard the voices and when the two merc officers floated in through the port side doorway, perhaps only two seconds had lapsed. There was an awkward, silent moment when the two mercs looked across the room to see one of their own pilots standing in the room with three individuals not in any of the uniforms worn by the mercenary forces aboard. Then they both reached for their weapons. Of course, Dave, Kathy, and Zolna were faster on the draw; nevertheless, a storm of bullets ripped through the air. The merc farthest from the door was struck in the head, his lifeless body tumbling head over heels backward. His head left a trail of blood globules and brain matter floating in the air, resembling red soap bubbles blown from a child's toy.
The other officer fired from behind the corner until his magazine was empty, then he ducked for cover. Dave, Kathy and Zolna heard him reloading. Then they heard a door close and lock.
Dave quickly looked to Kathy. “Are you alright?”
“Fine, darling. Keep your mind in the game.”
“Funny.”
Carefully, Zolna floated toward the corner, staying low to the floor. The merc officer was gone; he barred this exit from the other side.
"No worries," Pearson said. "We're going back the way we came."
"We better finish up here, and quick," Dave ordered.
Turning around to finish her task, Kathy froze. The console she needed had been shot to pieces. "Dave, darling?" she called out.
Dave looked up and saw the smoking and sparking bank of instruments. "Well, that takes care of that."
"No, sir." Pearson insisted. "They will have this fixed in an hour."
"What else can we do?"
"Destroy the weapons interface. It's up on A deck, in the control room, in maintenance access panel twenty-two. Wilmington, and no doubt his elite guards, will be in there, too, with the command crew."
"Maintenance access panel twenty-two? I know just where that is."
“I do, too,” Kathy said remembering their trip out from Earth, and her and Dave squeezing into that area. Of course, the control room had been empty, the crew all being in cryo. “And we both know there’s no way to get there now.”
Zolna had remained at the locked door, looking out the small portal in the center. Suddenly he turned and shouted, "Here they come! We gotta go, now!"
The four of them flew quickly out the other exit, and Dave closed and locked the door, then used his rifle butt to destroy the instrument panel.
As they zipped down the hallway, Dave's mind was racing. His plan, like the targeting computer, had gotten shot to pieces. There had to be another solution, or everyone in New Roanoke would be killed, and the enemies of humanity back on Earth would be handed a huge advantage. He was absolutely de
termined he would not fail in this.
"Major," Pearson said. "I hear voices ahead. We're gonna have to go deeper into the ship or pass through the nav center to get back to the shuttle. There'll be crew members in there."
"Fortunately, they don't know were coming," Dave responded.
At that very moment, an alarm sounded, rotating red warning lights began to flash, and interspersed among the light and sound of the alarm a digital male voice announced, "Intruders on deck B, intruders on deck B."
"You were saying?" Zolna shouted at Dave.
"I have an idea!" Pearson said.
Pearson's plan had Zolna casually float into the navigation center followed closely by Kathy, then Dave. All three had their hands up. Immediately behind them came Pearson holding a rifle on them.
The ten crew members manning the navigation computers looked up with shocked surprise on their faces. "It's okay," Pearson said. "I got em! Go on about your business, nothing to see here."
Dave glanced over his shoulder at Pearson with a look that said, "Really?"
The sound of rattling equipment from several armed men as they pulled themselves down the hallway reached the ears of the SUBs from the corridor behind them. Dave turned to Pearson and said, "Run!" And they each grabbed the nearest anchored object to push off of. For Zolna, that meant the head of a crewman seated to his right. The four zipped out and down the long, narrow passage on the opposite side of the room.
As they pulled themselves down the hall and down through an access way to C deck, Dave noticed a large opening in the floor to their left the size of a doorway. Above a sign read, "Emergency escape — stations 67 thru 97."
Pearson shouted to Dave over the alarm, "Almost there!"
Dave still had not figured out how to disable the missiles. To simply re-enter the shuttle and return to New Roanoke was to surrender everyone to death. There just had to be a way.
The SUBs could still hear the rattling equipment of their pursuers behind them. Ahead of them, they approached a "T" intersection.
"Zolna," Pearson shouted, "go to your right!"
As Dave made the turn, he glanced to the left. There he spied another sign, "Emergency escape ― stations 98 thru 108."
Twenty meters to the right of the "T" intersection, the passage widened. Here was the airlock back into the shuttle. The hatch stood open.
"Wait," Dave forced a stop and gathered everyone to his side. "I closed that," he whispered.
"Are you sure?" Pearson asked.
Dave turned to look at him. "SUB, remember?"
Then they heard heavily Asian accented voices from inside the shuttle, "Yes, sir, Mr. Wilmington, it is confirmed. This is the shuttle. No, sir, no sign of anyone. Yes, sir, we will wait for them right here."
"Back," Dave whispered as he saw their shadows coming up from inside the airlock's umbilical tube.
Dave ducked past Pearson and took the lead heading back to the intersection.
"What are you doing?" Kathy demanded.
"Where we going?" Pearson asked.
Dave turned and said, "Escape canisters." They reached the intersection, and as Dave started to pass straight across, several bullets just missed him and slammed into the wall to his right. Dave grabbed Kathy, and shielding her with his own body, violently pushed off the bulkhead shooting them both across the three-meter-wide opening. Two bullets just missed them, slamming into the door frame and the back wall.
Pearson and Zolna were stopped on the opposite side of where they needed to be.
"Kathy," Dave touched her on the shoulder. "I'll go high, you go low, and we'll cover as Zolna gets across."
“I’ll go high, I’m left-handed.”
As Dave took his position near the floor it dawned on him that as SUBs they were both ambidextrous. He looked up and shouted, “Hey!”
Kathy looked down and winked. “I prefer being on top, you know that.”
With Dave and Kathy in position, Dave nodded at Pearson and Zolna. Then he and Kathy each emptied a magazine down the hallway to suppress their enemy's fire as Zolna pushed off the floor and shot across the opening. One merc did get off two rounds. One struck Zolna in the hip and the bullet ricocheted off Zolna's titanium skeleton. For a millisecond, the pain was intense until Zolna turned off his tactile sensors.
"You all right?" Dave asked, grabbing his friend and pulling his behind the wall.
"Yeah…but I got a big hole in my skin here now, dammit!"
"Okay, you get ready to grab Pearson."
Zolna braced himself between the two walls with his legs, ready to catch Pearson like a baseball.
Pearson coiled up like a spring ready to bounce across the danger zone. "Now!" Dave shouted.
Dave knew it would be hard to fool the mercs a second time. Indeed, now they were ready for the fourth man's attempt. This time, they stood inside doorways and behind metal beams so as to expose only their weapons. The instant Dave and Kathy opened fire, so did they. All eight of their fully automatic weapons fired a total of two hundred forty rounds into a space three by two point seven meters just as Pearson leapt.
As Dave, Kathy, and Zolna watched, the entire thing seemed to happen in slow motion. The first bullet struck Pearson's left foot, which in the zero G caused him to start a spin to his right. A split second later, another bullet struck his right knee as, simultaneously, a third plowed completely through his right chest exiting under his arm.
Zolna reached out and grabbed the wounded man. Unlike a SUB, Pearson could not shut off his pain sensors.
Dave and Kathy continued to hold off the mercs as Zolna pulled Pearson farther into the passage and away from the gun fire.
Zolna checked the severity of the man's wounds. The foot and knee were painful, but not life threatening. The shot through the lung was a different matter.
"I know it hurts, but you're going to be okay, these are easy wounds for us to fix, once we get down."
"Zolna, ole buddy," Pearson said through clenched teeth, "I know the drill, here. Make the causality comfortable," Pearson coughed and his mouth filled with blood, "and convince him he's not badly hurt…to prevent him from going into…shock. I'm not going to make it down there, and you know it."
"No, I don't know it—neither do you. Now, you hang in there."
A bullet slammed into the wall near Zolna's head. Looking up, five mercs, all dressed in black, were coming at them from the direction of the shuttle. Zolna grabbed Pearson and the two floated into the room behind them as Zolna shouted to Dave, "Action front!"
Dave and Kathy turned their weapons down the hall and fired into the approaching enemy. Two curled up ― one dead, the other wounded. The rest fell back.
Zolna and Pearson were pinned down in this room by the surviving enemy soldiers directly down the hall to their front and from the adjoining hall to their right. Fortunately, this was the room with the entrance to the escape canisters 98 thru 108.
Dave pushed off the ceiling and flew into the room to float near Zolna. "How bad is it?" he asked.
"Not that bad," Zolna said.
Pearson coughed again and little globules of blood floated away from his mouth. "Major, I've had it."
Dave reloaded then glanced down the hallway toward Kathy. She had just snapped off three rounds.
"Now, listen up," Dave demanded. "You two get into an escape can and get the hell out of here."
Zolna looked up from Pearson. "Dave, I'm not going—"
"Not going to what, Sergeant? Obey orders?"
Zolna was shocked; Dave had not called him sergeant in years. Dave saw it on Zolna's face. He reached out and laid his hand on Zolna's shoulder. "You may not have always liked them, but Talme, you've never disobeyed one of my orders. Don't start now."
"Dave, I can't just…how can I just leave you—"
"I promised Le'ha you'd return. Don't make a liar out of me."
"But we're not done up here!"
"You are!"
"What are you going to do?"
> "Don’t you worry, I’ve got a plan. Now, grab the captain, here, and go."
Pearson coughed again. "Major…leave me here to cover your rear."
"Out of the question," Dave replied.
"Is this that ‘no man left behind’ crap? If you don't leave me…you and everyone down there…is going to die. Is that what you want?"
"Leaving you here won't get us to the shuttle," Kathy fired three more rounds down the hallway.
"You want to get to the shuttle?" Pearson said weakly. "Okay, I have an idea but…you'll need the time…time that only I can buy you."
○O○
Up on the bridge, Wilmington was receiving a briefing on the raid from Captain Renfield.
"It appears, sir, they were trying to disable our ability to target and fire our missiles. The damage in the CDC is considerable, but the destroyed modules will be replaced and the entire system up again in half-an-hour to forty-five minutes."
"Excellent," Wilmington said. "How many are in the raiding party?"
"Four, sir. But one has been hit."
"Do we know who they are?"
"Our soldiers overheard one of them being called Dave."
"Mitchel!" This made Wilmington smile to himself. "Where are they now?"
"We have them pinned down on C deck, but they are in an emergency escape compartment, so they might get away, sir."
"As much as I'd personally like to disassemble Mitchel with a laser, it'll be alright if he gets away. He'll just die in the city with the rest of the savages."
"Sir, CDC reporting," a female voice said over the ship’s intercom. "The red phosphorous smoke has cleared from the target area. We can now see to target the installation."
Wilmington smiled again. "Captain Renfield, advise me the instant the missiles are ready to fire."
"Yes, sir. And sir, I've just been advised that three escape canisters have just been launched."
Chapter 18
TO THE GATES
The three escape canisters fired away from the Demeter with great force and were soon disappearing into the misty atmosphere of the planet.
Number thirty of eighty vertical lockers against the far wall of the escape bay once held six Self Contained Environmental Protective Suits. They were now gone; the suits were inside two of the escape cans and on their way down to the planet's surface. Inside the locker, Dave and Kathy stood silently. From the level above them, they heard sporadic weapons fire. There was a pause followed by a crescendo of earsplitting gunfire…then silence.
The Blue of Antyllus Page 24