Alone in the Night

by Richard Tongue

  “This isn’t our choice, our fault. Hell, it isn’t our responsibility,” Rojek said. He paused, looked down, then said. “Maybe. Maybe you’ve got a point. I still don’t see how this changes anything, though. I can’t think of any way to turn this around. They’ve simply got more ships that we do in this part of space, more resources, and ultimately, if they want to conquer the planet, they’re going to do it, and it is as simple as that.”

  Corrigan looked at Rojek, and a smile crossed his face, his eyes beginning to gleam, as he replied, “Damn it, that’s it!”

  “What?”

  “Say what you said again.”

  “If they want to conquer the planet, they’re going to do it.”

  “That’s what we’ve got to do. We’ve got to stop them wanting to conquer the planet. We’ve got to make it clear that it is going to cost too much, or better yet, we’ve got to convince them that it isn’t worth taking.”

  “That sounds like a really good idea,” Rojek said. “How are you going to do it, though?”

  “I’m not,” Corrigan said. “You are.”

  “Huh?” Dixon replied.

  “I’ve got an intelligence agent and a top hacker on my team. Between the two of you, I reckon you should be able to come up with some sort of miracle. I’m putting both of you onto the hot seat with me on this one. Because you’re quite right. Somehow, we’ve got to come up with a way to make this work, or a lot of people are going to die for nothing.” Gesturing at the clock, he added, “The salvage team will be down on the rock any minute now. We’d better make this fast, because according to that, we’re already out of time.”

  Chapter 8

  The shuttle sped down towards the slowly-tumbling double asteroid, weaving from side to side to avoid century-old debris fields in its approach to the surface. Carter looked out of the viewscreen, watching the terrain below, looking for the faded marker that would show them where to land. The men who had placed the depot had planned for decades, knowing that their precious equipment might wait in storage for many years, and had completed their work carefully to avoid any chance of inadvertent detection.

  Even from those who knew what they were looking for.

  “Anything at all?” the impatient Mathis demanded, turning to the pilot. “We should be in sight of it by now.”

  Shaking his head, the pilot replied, “There’s no sign of anything down there. Are you sure this is the rock?”

  “Positive. A double asteroid on this course track. All the records point to right here. It’s got to be down there somewhere.”

  “We’re assuming,” Carter warned, “that someone hasn’t got here first. Not the Belters or the Republic, sure, but what about the Martians? They’ve had some ships in this system, and there are any number of independent operators who could have found it.”

  “We’d have heard,” Mathis replied. “This isn’t just a small cache of equipment that could be dumped onto the black market. We’re talking about some serious military hardware. The Republic would have paid well to take it out of private hands, and if either the Belters or the Martians had it, they’d have deployed it themselves somewhere.” Peering intently at the monitor, he added, “It’s got to be there. It’s got to be.”

  “You want it to be,” Carter replied. “That’s not necessarily the same thing.” She looked at the sensor feed, and added, “We don’t have anything else on the specific location of the depot?”

  “The asteroid is only a half-mile across,” the pilot said. “It’s not that big. I’m beginning to agree with you, Lieutenant. There’s nothing down there.”

  “We’re not giving up,” Todorova ordered, from the rear cabin. “Take us down to the surface. We’ll take a look at ground level.”

  “I don’t think you realize quite how much area you’re asking us to cover,” Carter protested. “We can’t do this on foot. We need to keep…”

  “The shuttle can continue overflights, but if we were going to find it from the sky, we would have found it by now.”

  “Bringing her down,” the pilot said, her hands gently guiding the shuttle to the surface. “Gravity’s essentially zero, so watch yourselves. You could easily throw yourself up into orbit, and there’s enough shrapnel up there that I’d have trouble getting you back in time.”

  “Understood,” Todorova said. “Suits on. We’ll go out individually. There’s no point wasting time, and we’ll always be in visual range of each other anyway. Move out.” The rebel leader led the way to the airlock as the salvagers donned their spacesuits, sliding into the cumbersome garments with practiced ease, Carter the last to complete the activation cycle. She didn’t feel the shuttle land, settling onto the surface as softly as though resting on a feather bed.

  The hatch opened, and two by two, the passengers cycled through, each taking their turn to make their way through the airlock and out onto the surface. Outside, the landscape was a twisted nightmare of jagged rocks and broken rubble, the remnant of some antediluvian geologic disaster, the cataclysm that had resulted in the asteroid being torn in twain, the smaller sibling rock tossed clear into space, fast enough to throw it into permanent orbit. Carter looked up at the twin, scanning the surface.

  “We’re sure we’ve got the right asteroid, not the twin?” she asked.

  “Larger of the two,” Mathis replied. “The records are clear enough on that, even if they are a little vague on the details.” He paused, then said, “Check for ninety minutes, then report back to the shuttle.”

  “We’ve got endurance for twelve hours,” Todorova protested.

  “In terms of life support, sure,” Carter said, “but we’re going to have to use our thrusters to get over the surface. I doubt we’ll make it to ninety minutes without running low, so anyone who drops below fifteen percent, stay where you are until the shuttle comes down to pick you up. The gravity’s so light that it’ll be able to come to you.”

  “Fine,” Todorova snapped. “Move out. Cover every scrap of ground, and don’t bother with the sensors. We’d have found the depot already if it was that easy. Use your eyes and your instincts, and try and think through the same thought process as the people who set this up in the first place.”

  Carter glanced at the rebel, shook her head, and fired her thrusters to send her skimming across the surface, putting some distance between herself and the others. She was right, after a fashion, but simply neglecting standard safety precautions was a bad, bad idea. One that could easily get people killed. The salvage team wasn’t used to this sort of micro-gravity environment. Few people were. Normally, work like this would be completed by drones, sensor robots. Not with people crawling across the landscape.

  She dispelled her doubts, pushing them away, and tried to think along the lines of the work crew that had established the supply dump, decades ago. They would have assumed that the nascent Republic fleet would come, would sweep the asteroids with their sensors, and might even have believed that someone would have tracked them to this rock. One more reason why they would have taken extra care. It wouldn’t be on the surface. It wouldn’t be obvious. That meant that it had to be underground.

  Reaching for a sensor filament, she scanned the ground, looking for cracks and fissures. As she’d expected from the terrain, the interior was a veritable honeycomb of compartments and chambers, an endless series of twisted passages and tunnels. A perfect place to hide. Not to mention to protect the precious equipment from the effects of exposure to sunlight, to temperature change, to any one of a hundred adverse reactions that long-term storage could cause.

  The nearest crack was only a few meters distant, wide enough for her to slide through. She glanced back at the landing site, spotting the rest of the team methodically working the surface while a single figure rose above them, Todorova supervising the search team. That was a safe, conventional strategy, but it was likely also doomed to failure. They didn’t have time for the rulebook, not if they were going to find what they were looking for before the Belter reinf
orcements arrived.

  She slid down, head-first, her helmet lights shining into the stygian gloom, casting eerie shadows from the rocks. Warning alerts flickered on her heads-up display, the suit sensors urging caution as the passage narrowed, tighter and tighter. Reaching out with a hand, she pulled herself through a particularly cramped section, tensing at any instant for the alert that would herald a suit breach.

  She could handle that. A quick patch would fix her up. But if she was trapped down here, there was no realistic way for her to be rescued before her life support ran out. She fired a short burst from her thruster, easing herself gently through the passage, and came out into a larger chamber beyond, deep in the heart of the asteroid, wide enough that she no longer had any danger of catching herself on a rock.

  The cavern was empty.

  It had been unrealistic to expect success on the first try. Doubt flickered in her mind once more. The engineers would have needed to open up wide passages to get the precious equipment down into the rocks. Wide enough that they should have spotted them from orbit.

  Meaning that they must have destroyed the entrance they’d created upon their departure. That made sense. And it gave her something to look for. Her eyes swept the cavern, looking for any sign of recent activity, and after a moment, she found it. Rocks tumbled in what looked at first glance a random pattern, but after closer examination, was a far more regular pile.

  Then she found her final proof. A footprint, from an older-style spacesuit, embedded in the dust. She walked carefully over to it, a smile on her face as she read the Cyrillic maker’s mark on the heel. It might have been there for centuries, longer. It could easily stay here for a million years, but it would never have survived the collapse of the chamber. Which meant that someone had been down here after the rockfall, likely to make sure that it had properly concealed the entrance.

  She ran her hand sensor over the rubble once more, trying to find a way through, a point of instability. Explosive charges might work, but there was a danger that they’d take the roof down in the attempt. Dismantling the structure by hand would take days, time they simply didn’t have.

  A key stone. They’d gone to a lot of trouble to set this up. They’d have designed a fast way to bring down the rubble, and that meant the removal of a single rock. She looked at her sensor readouts again, and found it. Deep in the heart of the pile, but just about accessible, and with a natural hole to allow her to place a hook.

  Tentatively, she crept forward, the microgravity making her passage perilous, and attached her safety line to the rock, not daring to test the connection, knowing that single false move would see her buried here forever, destined to become a part of the ancient cache, lost and forgotten.

  She cautiously retreated to the chasm, taking a series of precise steps to get her to as much safety as she could reasonably expect, and finally dared to tug the line. Nothing happened. Not enough force. The rock was deeply buried, packed tightly in. She took a deep breath, pulled out a patch with one hand, ready to repair her suit in a second should it prove necessary, and tugged once more. This time, the rock came free, and she felt the rumbling in the ground all around her as the rockfall collapsed, debris scattering in all directions, bouncing and rolling off each other in the low gravity, a cloud of dust filling the cavern, coating her sensor pickups faster than she could wipe them clean, effectively blinding her.

  For what seemed like hours, she waited, waited for the dust to settle, for the danger to pass, until finally her sensors started to register again, and she dared to step out into the gloom, fumbling her way over the fallen rocks. Beyond, she saw a gaping, regular hole, obviously worked by some sort of machinery, and her helmet light returned reflections from within that had to be metallic in origin. She climbed through the hole, a smile on her face, and saw what she had been looking for. Crates, metallic crates carefully piled throughout a seemingly endless cavern, racks of hand weapons, all sealed and mothballed, and footprints everywhere from the long-dead workers who’d left this bounty to be found, many years ago.

  She paused at the threshold, looking at the equipment. Everything had been properly stored, and there was no sign that any of the crates had been damaged. There was every reason to think that the contents would be in mint condition, ready to go, the answer to all of the hopes and dreams of the rebels waiting in the transport above.

  And yet, something held her back. Nobody else had come down here. Nobody else had thought to look underground. She caught herself looking up at the roof, working out how she might bring it down, bury this cache forever. End this now, before it could get any further, before they could proceed with their mad scheme.

  She couldn’t.

  Not merely because of the risk that she’d be caught, but she couldn’t bring herself to inflict such a fate on anyone. The Atlanteans had hopes, and dreams, and that was about all they did have. It would be very wrong of her to destroy them without even a fight. No matter how distant the odds of victory might be.

  Reaching for her wrist communicator, she turned the power up as high as it could go, sweeping through the frequencies to cut through the interference from the surrounding rocks, finally making contact with the surface.

  “Carter here. I found what we came for. Bring down the shuttles.”

  For better or for worse, the die was cast.

  Chapter 9

  “Commander,” Singh said, looking at the sensor display. “Ajax is up to something.” He pointed at the monitor, and added, “I thought they were calibrating their thruster controls at first, but they’ve repeated the maneuver three times. It looks more to me as though they’re preparing to move out.”

  “Do they have work crews still on the hull?” Corrigan asked.

  Shaking his head, Singh replied, “The last party returned to the ship twenty minutes ago. No sign of leakage, either. They’ve done a good patch job. And the sensor readings we’re getting suggest that they’ve got the power network operational again, as well. They’re not exactly factory fresh, but they’re certainly ready for a fight.”

  “Tough little ship,” Corrigan said. “There’s no way they’d risk coming into the asteroids, though. There are a hundred places we could intercept them on the way in, and if we wanted, we could lead them a hell of a merry dance.” He paused, then said, “Though if they did, then…”

  “They could be in firing range in twelve minutes,” Novak replied, anticipating his question. “That’s only if we decided to cooperate. We could evade them almost indefinitely, but that would run the risk of leaving Icarus exposed. I’d rather take the fight to them, make sure it was at a time and a place of our choosing.”

  “Work out a few possible intercept courses, just in case they decide to do something stupid,” Corrigan ordered, “though that seems unlikely. So far, their commander hasn’t made any fundamental mistakes, and I somehow get the idea that isn’t going to change any time soon.”

  “Maybe they’re trying to lure us out?” Dixon suggested. He paused, shook his head, and said, “No, they’ve got to know that won’t work. We’ve got no reason to go out there yet.”

  “Get an update from Icarus on their progress,” Corrigan replied. “And suggest very strongly that they might want to accelerate their schedule as rapidly as they possibly can. Any sign of warp activity out there?”

  “Not a thing, sir,” Singh replied. “It’s dead out in the deep system. Just the three of us. I could throw out a few sensor drones, sir, try and get a closer look at whatever it is they might be doing?”

  Frowning, Novak said, “They’re lining up for weapons tests.” She gestured at the monitors, and said, “They’re lining up on some of the nearest asteroids, setting up firing solutions.”

  Corrigan glanced at Crawford, and said, “You’re thinking the same thing that I am.”

  Nodding, the gunner said, “There are better ways to test their guns than using random pieces of space junk. There’s a reason we carry target drones as part of our standard equipm
ent.” He frowned, then said, “What asteroids are they…”

  “Firing!” Singh said. “Direct hit on the nearest rock. They’ve smashed it to a million pieces.” Turning to Corrigan, he said, “Maybe they aren’t carrying any targets, or they were destroyed in the attack. We hit quite a few of their outer compartments, and…”

  “No, no, that still doesn’t fit,” Crawford protested. “I could throw something suitable together out of spare parts in a matter of minutes if I had to. It’s not exactly a complicated design. There’s something else going on.”

  “They’re building up to fire again,” Singh reported.

  Tapping a control, Corrigan said, “All hands to battle stations.”

  “What?” Dixon asked. “Boss, there’s no way they can do us any damage at this range. Even if their weapons could reach that far, there’s so much debris between us that they’d never get a clear shot in a million years.”

  “Are you planning on providing a lifetime guarantee on that?” Corrigan asked. “Charge all weapons, and bring defensive systems to combat readiness. On the double, Lieutenant.”

  “Aye, sir,” Dixon said, turning back to his station.

  Frowning, Corrigan glanced at Crawford, and asked, “Have we got any good sensor data on the capabilities of the enemy’s particle beams if they run them at maximum, all the way to overload?”

  “I think so,” the gunner replied. “What do you want to know?”

  “Maximum range.”

  “They can’t hit us,” he said.

  “Give me a number, Tech. I need to know just how far they can reach with those guns. I have a sneaky suspicion that I’ve worked out their plan.” Turning to Dixon, he said, “Have you managed to get a reply from Icarus?”

  Shaking his head, he replied, “They’re not giving me anything useful. I get the impression that anyone who might be able to provide us with an answer either isn’t on the bridge or doesn’t feel cooperative.”

  “We’re supposed to be on the same side,” Novak protested.