by Allen Stroud
The bridge door is shut. Floating in front of it is Travers. He’s unconscious. There’s blood swirling around his head.
I’m tempted to go to him, but I know the people on the bridge will have me on camera by now. If I step out into the passageway and concentrate on rescuing Travers, I’m vulnerable. I need to wait for backup.
I hear sounds of people. I turn to see Duggins and Arkov making their way through an access hatch and coming toward me.
“What’s the situation?” Duggins asks when he’s close enough.
“Looks like we weren’t quick enough,” I say. “They’ve dumped Travers outside. We need to grab him and take him back to medical.”
“Who’s going to look him over if Bogdanovic has gone rogue?”
“We’ll figure that out in a bit, but we can’t leave him where he is.”
“Sure.”
Arkov joins us. Duggins nudges him. “Vasili, can you get Travers? We’ll cover you.”
Arkov looks at me. He appears nervous, but nods and maneuvers his way past. I’m reminded of how we treated him, locking him up in his room while Le Garre continued her investigations. Can I trust him now? I think so. He edges out into the passage, Duggins moves to the other side of the corridor and I train my gun on the door to the bridge.
Arkov gets his hands around Travers’s left foot. Travers groans. That’s an encouraging sign. Slowly, Arkov pulls him back toward us. The blood trails behind Travers, like tendrils. I’m watching them out of the corner of my eye, everything else focused on the bridge door, ready to shoot if someone comes out.
“Okay, I’ve got him,” Arkov says. He’s behind us, holding Travers, who’s still unconscious, his face grey. “What now?”
“I’m not sure,” I say. “Check Travers. Is he carrying a sidearm?”
Arkov points to an open holster on Travers’s waist. “Looks like he was,” he says.
“That means one of the people inside is armed,” Duggins reasons.
“And that they’re likely waiting behind the door for us to try to get in,” I add. “They’ll be watching and listening on the security feed, no doubt.”
Duggins nods. He points at the camera by the door and beckons Arkov and me in close so we can whisper. “This is a mutiny. We need backup, but we can’t leave this intersection unattended. Who can we trust?”
“At the moment, Sam and April,” I reply. “But, hopefully the rest of the crew as well; otherwise this lot wouldn’t have clustered up here.” I touch my comms bead, but it clicks uselessly. “They may be rerouting the central communication system to stop us warning the rest of the crew. We need to find them and inform them.”
“Agreed,” Duggins says. “But that’s not the highest priority, Captain. You need to think about why they’re in there.” He nods in the direction of the bridge door.
Inwardly I’m cursing. “Of course, you’re right,” I say. “What do we need to be worrying about?”
“Well, shutting down the internal comms is a problem, but hardly the worst we can expect,” Duggins says. “Control of the bridge systems gives them full control of the ship. A course correction without warning would probably kill us all.”
“That’ll have to be a plan they’re considering,” I say.
“Absolutely,” Duggins replies. “I’m surprised they haven’t done it already. We’re on borrowed time.”
“Rocher has been trying to get me to agree to surrender,” I reason. “I think they’d still like that to happen. Maybe they think this will change my mind?”
“Or there’s a disagreement and they’re not all prepared to be murderers,” Arkov says.
“Whatever their motives are, right now, speculation won’t help us,” I decide. “We need to warn the rest of the crew and take back control.” I hand my gun to Arkov. “You stay here. Guard the door. Arrest anyone who comes out.”
“Okay, Captain.”
“Duggins, you find yourself a good space with a console and acceleration chair. I need control of my ship back.”
“Aye, aye,” Duggins says.
“What are you going to do, Captain?” Arkov asks.
“Alert and arm the crew,” I say. “I’ll find Keiyho and Le Garre first and get the weapons lockers open. Once that’s done, I’ll send someone up here to relieve you.”
Arkov nods. I leave him there, pushing myself back down the corridor and away.
* * *
I’m alone in corridor six, moving toward the hatch at the end.
“Hello, Ellisa.”
I stop. The tinny-sounding voice is coming from the wall speaker. I recognise it. I grab a handle on the wall to arrest my forward momentum. “Rocher,” I say.
“I wanted to thank you for our last conversation,” Rocher says. “It was most…enlightening.”
“You need to open that door and surrender to my crew,” I state coldly.
“Thanks for the offer,” Rocher replies. “But, as you may have noticed, circumstances have changed.”
“You think I’ve changed my mind?”
“I’m hoping you have. Otherwise, this conversation may be very short.”
I grimace. I’m staring at the speaker, hating the person speaking through it, but it’s just a speaker, a conduit for his voice. They’ll be watching my reaction, reading my expressions to gauge my emotions and how they affect my responses. This has become a chess game – move and counter move.
“What’s the plan then? Murder us all with a surprise deceleration?”
“It’s an option,” Rocher says. “However, the calculations are complicated. If we use up all remaining fuel to do that, the Gallowglass will be unable to rescue us, so instead, we’ll be making a course correction shortly. If this conversation goes as I hope, we’ll notify you when we begin the burn. If you don’t give me the right answers, well…you don’t get any warning.”
“You appear to have this all worked out,” I say.
“There are a few things we’re still trying to iron out,” Rocher says. “We don’t want any more deaths, Ellisa. You can help us save lives.”
I don’t reply for a while, thinking over what’s being offered. I don’t believe Rocher’s compassionate motive. That means he wants something from me that he doesn’t currently have.
That means we have a bargaining chip.
“How long do I have until you need me to make a decision?” I ask.
“I’ll give you about an hour,” Rocher says. “That should give you long enough to talk to the rest of the crew. I’d suggest you gather in your strategy room, where I hear you have all your secret meetings.”
He’s laughing at me. I can hear it in his voice. I’m supposed to react, reply with some angry impulse comment, but I’m cold inside, detached and withdrawn. I need to be better than this, to outwit Rocher and his traitors. Otherwise we’ll only survive while we’re worth something.
I don’t answer. Instead I’m moving again, heading for Le Garre’s compartment. I’m going to need her help.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Shann
“So that’s the situation.”
I’m gazing at a group of desperate faces. Everyone who’s left alive and loyal is sitting around the table, apart from Duggins and Arkov. Eleven people here, including me, and counting our missing two – thirteen of us, against six on the bridge. We have weapons, numbers, experience, every advantage.
But they have control of the ship.
Johansson came in here before everyone else. She disabled the cameras and the audio recorders. She took all our comms beads and left them in the lift shaft. Unless Chiu or someone else left a bug in here that we didn’t find, we should be safe to talk and plan.
“Hard to accept all this,” says Keiyho. “We were sitting here with Ensign Chiu less than an hour ago.”
“She was busy watching e
verything we were doing,” I say. “They made their move right when we were vulnerable, in the aftermath of diffusing the bomb.”
“We don’t have any options,” Johansson says. She looks beaten and exhausted. “The minute we organise to take the bridge, they’ll vent the air, initiate a course correction or something else that we can’t stop them doing.”
“That doesn’t mean we give up,” Sam says. “We just need to think our way around the problem.”
“I don’t see how,” Johansson says. “I’ve served with Jacobson for two years on this ship. If he’s a sleeper, he’s had all that time to shortcut his way around the computer system. The minute we start trying to hack them out, he’ll know what we’re up to.”
Johansson’s saying what we’re all thinking. Rocher’s an unknown quantity, but the rest of the people up there have betrayed us. They’ve been colleagues and friends for a long time. I’m thinking back over moments I’ve shared with them. Chiu talking to me in the medical room, confessing her pride in being selected for the crew, Jacobson’s easy smile and hard work to help us navigate. Are these the people who will kill us?
“We’re going to agree to their demands and surrender,” I say.
There’s resistance. I expected it. No one speaks, but I can see it in the glares I get as the words hang in the air. “Ensign Johansson, can you alter the personal communication beads so they don’t use the ship’s system?” I ask softly.
Johansson frowns. “Yes. The beads are designed to switch to peer-to-peer mode when the ship isn’t in range.”
“Can you encrypt or isolate what’s being sent?”
“I should be able to. Yes, but that won’t help us if—”
“Technician Shah, can you teach my crew some simple Morse signals? Just a few words we can use, not the whole language. Some of them know it already.”
“Of course, Captain.”
“They can still track our location through the beads,” Keiyho says.
I smile. “Of course, we want them to know where we are, until we don’t want them to know where we are.”
“So, when you say surrender, you mean for now?” Travers says. He’s sporting a bloodstained bandage, but otherwise, he doesn’t look much worse than the rest of us.
I nod. “Ensign Johansson is correct. We can’t retake the bridge in less than an hour. We have to use their tactics and work toward a moment when they’re vulnerable and we can make our numbers count.”
“That means we’ll have to accept their course change,” Le Garre points out. “We’ll be going into another fight with the Gallowglass.”
“Yeah, but I don’t think we have another option, unless Duggins can lock the bridge controls in time.”
“He won’t be able to,” Travers says. “That’s too big a job.”
“We worry about the Gallowglass later. This is our fight right now,” I say. “We need options.”
“The weakest moment is when we’re all vulnerable, during the course correction,” Keiyho says. “They have a disadvantage at the moment. There are six of them locked up tight on the bridge, but only five chairs. If they initiate a burn, someone in that room will die.”
“Rocher won’t care,” I say.
“But if there are any doubts among his companions, that will affect them,” Le Garre says. “Think about it. Working together with people, being their friends, all of it, cuts both ways. One or more of that group murdered Drake and blew up the hydroponics laboratory. They were committed against us the moment they did either of those things. Why was it Rocher who spoke to you, not one of them? They know you better. It would have twisted the knife.”
“You think he’s trying to keep them in line?”
“I think he has to. He’s the outsider with the plan.”
“If that’s the case, there might be something we can exploit,” I say. “Can we get access to the bridge consoles? Communicate with them directly?”
“You mean like some kind of back channel?” Keiyho asks.
“Yes, something like that. You’re close to Chiu. Maybe if you talked to her through that, we might find out more about their situation.”
Keiyho looks doubtful. “It’s worth a try, but I’m not sure I trust her after this.”
“You don’t need to trust her; you just need to help us get an advantage.”
“Yes, I understand.” Keiyho looks at Johansson. “What about you and Gunnar?”
Johansson can’t meet his eye. “I guess I could try talking to him,” she mumbles.
Keiyho glances at me and winks. He knows the two of them were close. I start to smile but think better of it and disguise the expression with a cough to clear my throat. “Anything that gets us a possible advantage is useful.”
I lean over the table and bring up the ship schematic. As expected, access to live data updates has been cut off. “I want you all dispersed. No grouping or congregating. The bridge must be watched at all times. They might have control of our ship, but we aren’t letting them out of there without knowing what they’re up to.” I look at Sam. “Empty the weapons lockers and disperse everything around the ship. All members of the crew are to be issued sidearms. When I give the word, hide them somewhere.”
“What about me?” Shah asks.
“You’re my crew now,” I reply.
* * *
“Your hour is almost up, Captain Shann. What is your decision?”
I’m back in my quarters, strapped into the chair and staring at the screen in the corner of the room. I’m watching Celerity, the thirteenth-century Japanese period drama series I subscribe to – a war between the north and south royal dynasties over who should be emperor of the kingdom. Shoguns gallop across the land on horseback, waging war even as they scheme in the great courts, every one of them self-interested and morally compromised in one way or another.
I pause the video file. “Yes, we’ve made our decision,” I say. “You win. We surrender.”
“I’m glad to hear that,” Rocher says. “I hoped you’d see sense.”
“Call it whatever you want,” I reply.
“Two of my people will be leaving the bridge and going to the airlock access. They’ll visit the medical room on their way. I want your crew to let them pass and stay away from them,” Rocher says. “I’d advise your people to strap in. We’ll be initiating a course correction in just under twenty minutes.”
“You’ve disabled our access to ship-wide communications,” I say. “I’m not going to be able to tell them all in time.”
“Don’t worry, this little conversation is being broadcast; they’ll know.”
“Good. Thank you.”
“You’re welcome. We’re all one crew now.”
I bite back an instinctive angry reply. “What’s the gravity rating and duration of the burn?” I ask instead.
“Up to seven g,” Rocher says. “We’ll be correcting for fifteen minutes. Doctor Bogdanovic informs me we won’t be needing sedative injections to cope with that, but I’ll want everyone strapped into their chairs on time.”
Seven gravities. Highly dangerous for anyone to try to function under those conditions. The force change will be gradual and unpredictable to anyone without access to the trajectory plot. I bet Rocher will try to surprise people with some anaesthetic medication anyway, so even if anyone is conscious, they’ll be fighting off the drugs as well. “Okay,” I say. “If we’re talking to everybody, for the record I’m ordering all crew to their acceleration stations.”
“Thank you, Captain. That’s very helpful.”
“What guarantees do we have that you won’t repeat what you did to Drake?” I ask.
There’s a pause. I can hear someone talking to Rocher in low tones. I can’t make out what’s being said, but I think he’s being told what happened. That could mean a lot of different things. Eventually, Rocher replies, �
�You have no guarantees, Captain, but you should note I’ve been entirely honest with you since we met. If the crew are compliant, they will be unharmed during the course correction.”
“I guess that’s the best I can expect,” I say.
“Yes, it is.”
The comms channel goes dead, and I’m left to think about what I’ve heard. I gaze at the frozen Japanese nobles on the screen. Alliances, betrayals, violence. Is humanity hardwired to divide and squabble over anything that has value?
I try to put myself in Rocher’s position. He will come for us, using the comms beads to track the location of each member of the crew. Bogdanovic will have prepared sedative injections for everyone. They’ll wait until people are strapped in, and then he’ll dose everyone up. Depending on what he uses, the next time I wake up might be when the Gallowglass arrives.
We can’t rely on tolerances. Bogdanovic knows the medical records of everyone on board. If we’re going to make something of the circumstances, we need to accept that we’re going to be injected. There has to be something else we can do to change the situation.
I pull up the ship schematic again. Outside of the bridge there are six more acceleration seats, which are pretty close. Close enough? I don’t know. I don’t think anyone’s tried to move around a spaceship for an extended period under that kind of gravity load. Minor work operation tests were part of my training on Earth Five, but what we’re considering here is on a whole different level.
I’m thinking about old field medic techniques, things you have to do in an emergency when there’s no other option. Take the injection but cut off the blood supply to the limb. A tourniquet made out of rope or cloth, something that could be concealed under a suit?
That might work.
Next thing is to get around the need for mobility. How can we get onto the bridge and take over the ship without having to fight our way around? I think back over the things we’ve done since we found out about the Hercules. I’m picturing Keiyho and Tomlins outside the sealed hatch when we rescued Shah. There’s something about what we did, something I’m missing.
Then the idea comes to me.
