“Keep watch. I won't be a second.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Wait and see.”
He looked around, spotting the two cameras covering this section of corridor, and expended a pair of bullets in their destruction, smashing the sensitive lenses, fragments of glass raining down all around him, sirens sounding once again. Bad design. With the cameras smashed, they'd have no visual record of his actions, and the microphones would be next to useless with all the extraneous noise.
Pulling open an escape pod, he reached down inside to throw the switches to activate it, careful to avoid triggering the emergency beacon. Tugging free the communications panel, he entered a series of random numbers to trigger the input, hoping that it would look as though he was transmitting some sort of coded message into the void.
“Hatch on the wall, Susan. Get moving.”
His attempted ruse complete, he threw the lever to activate the launch mechanism and dived back out into the corridor, racing back for the safety of the shaft before the guards he knew were on their way would arrive. With a loud report, the pod hurtled away from the station as he pulled the hatch closed, climbing after his daughter into another of the maintenance shafts.
“Will it work?” Susan asked, as the two of them raced for safety.
“They'll be suspicious, but after they shoot down the pod, they won't know for sure.” He paused, then continued, “My guess is that they'll stop the full search, but double the guard around sensitive areas of the ship. It's bought us a little time, anyway.”
“For what?”
“Mayhem,” he replied with a smile.
Chapter 14
Clarke stretched his arm out to grab a handhold, swinging into position along the station's hull, trying not to drift from the side. His thruster pack would have made this far easier, but they were taking a large enough risk of appearing on sensors as it was. Their only safety lay in hanging close in, beneath the sensor pickups that reached out from the under-slung modules, giving them a clearance of less than a dozen feet to operate in. One moment's inattention, and it would all be over.
He looked for Blake, struggling to scale a long strut about a hundred feet above him, the two of them working different routes to their mutual destination, still at least an eighth of a mile ahead. Looking around, he gulped, fighting the feeling that he was clinging to the side of a mountain, that letting go would see him fall into eternity. Back on Mars, he'd done some rock climbing with his uncle during long holidays, but that was far simpler than this. There he had guide ropes, cables, pitons to anchor himself. Here he could only use his bare hands.
The irony that he'd already broken enough safety regulations to see him wash out of suit training didn't escape him. Slung at his belt was his lifeline, and he was drifting clear of the hooks that he was supposed to use to connect himself to the hull. His partner was far enough away that she could be of no help should he run into trouble, and there were enough sharp obstructions to work past that normal procedure would have seen him stay well clear. His instructor would have passed out if he'd seen him, but even taking the risks he was, this crawl was taking too long.
Four hours, Churchill had said, and most of that time had already gone. In less than twenty minutes, they'd be waiting for the data stream he had promised. Reaching into the pouch by his side, he ran his gloved hand over the modified medical scanner, ready to soak in the information they wanted, whatever it was. The instant he activated it, everyone on the station would know where they were, what they were doing, and they'd have a matter of seconds to race to the nearest airlock and make their escape.
He looked up at Blake again, frowning. There was still the question of her revenge, after they'd completed this operation. Another dead man. He'd killed two people already, two more than he had ever expected to do in his life. Joining the Fleet, he knew that he was likely to go to war, but the idea of looking at the face of the man he was murdering had never occurred to him. He could still see the man dying on the hangar deck of the Thomas O'Dell, bleeding out while Blake dragged him to safety.
John Clarke, murderer. Killer. Not something the recruiting poster had mentioned. Not that he expected to ever wear the uniform again. Even in the increasingly unlikely event that he survived this mission, he'd gone so far off-script that he'd certainly be thrown out of the service. At the very least, he'd have to start from scratch at the Academy, retake the first year. If they let him. The competition was tough.
A light flashed on the corner of his heads-up display, warning that there was a ship passing close enough to detect him. Reaching for an antenna, he dragged himself into the shadows, hoping that the docking sensors would miss his signature. He looked around, trying to find the ship, eventually spotting the shape moving into position a mile above him, locking onto the side of the station.
For almost a minute, he waited, but his short-range detectors remained quiet, no one emerging to capture him. Kicking off from the hull, he skimmed over a solar array, hoping that the brief power drain wasn't noticed by someone, cursing his carelessness, but within a few seconds he was past the danger, back out onto the open hull.
At last, he was getting close. Somewhere above him, Blake would be getting ready to set the fake bomb, in a position that would guarantee detection. Ten minutes, and he'd be in position to move. After the brief burst of speed, he found himself ahead of schedule, only one long drift to the target. It seemed featureless, indistinguishable from the rest of the hull, but the schematics that Churchill had relayed were quite clear. Assuming there hadn't been a mistake.
He hung in the shadow of a communications antenna, dangling with one hand resting gently on the support strut, gently rocking back and forth. Before him, the gas giant hung, swirling colors in an endless raging storm, and the enormity of where he was finally began to sink in. Somehow, even the cadet cruise hadn't seemed real, hadn't seemed as though he was actually traveling away from home. Carpenter Station didn't look that different to Mariner Station, or one of the larger cities back on Mars. This was something different. Empty, endless space seemed to stretch out before him, and he realized how much he wanted to live to wander it.
His heads-up display flashed images of shuttles and fighters swarming around, a battlecruiser hanging in sentry position close to the station. He'd dreamed of serving on a ship like that, out on a mission into unknown systems. That he might be plotting the destruction of a Triplanetary capital ship had never once occurred to him.
Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out the medical scanner, merged with the parts of his communicator he thought he could spare. They'd had to strengthen the power of the transmitter to cope with the expected data bandwidth, at the cost of ending any long-term hopes of speaking to Churchill. Once someone deactivated the device, he'd lose his last link to safety, and would be reliant totally on his own wits.
Shaking his head again, he glanced at his scanner field, trying to pick a course that might get a shuttle out to the asteroids. Whether it was inexperience or nightmarish odds, he couldn't find a way through. Churchill had said they would find a way to get the two of them to safety, but the means to make that happen escaped him. Either someone over there was a lot smarter than he was, something he would certainly not rule out, or this was a one-way mission.
No.
He wasn't going to make this a one-way mission. Already they had accomplished the impossible, simply getting out here had been against enormous odds, and it didn't seem unfair to ask that the dice dropped his way one more time, to get the two of them to whatever safety Churchill was going to provide.
A light flashed on his heads-up display, and he swung himself forward again, gliding smoothly over the station hull, seeking his destination, now less than a minute in the distance. He cradled the scanner in one hand, using his other to adjust his course from the numerous projections that reached out from the cold metal. If only his instruct
or could see him now. This was spacewalking as it was meant to be, no reliance on anything other than his own instincts. The computer was protesting the lack of a safety line, suggesting thruster blasts to drive him to what it considered a safe distance.
He'd made it. According to his deckplan, he was in position, and he reached out to a solar panel, swinging around to halt his onward flight. Less than twenty seconds to go. Scanning the hull, he could just make out Blake, now far above him, setting her faked bomb in place, close to one of the seals. If they'd had a real device of that size, there'd have been a reasonable chance of taking out the station, or at least causing a catastrophic hull breach.
“Churchill to Clarke, on Scramble Forty-Five, do you read?”
“Roger, Churchill, this is Clarke. I'm in position now. Data download to begin in ten, repeat, ten seconds, mark. Do you confirm.”
“Message received and understood, Cadet.” It might his imagination, but there seemed to be a trace of surprise in the voice he was hearing. Maybe they hadn't expected him to make it this far. “We're ready for the feed. Start sending it our way.”
“Understood. Here we go.” He clamped the scanner to the hull, reaching down to tap the command sequence to activate the device. With an anticlimactic wink, the communications link activated. His suit monitored the data stream, quickly rejecting the influx of data that would have instantly overloaded his computers, a faint whine of high-pitched static now interfering with his signal from Churchill.
“Clarke to Churchill. Confirm receipt of datastream.”
“Churchill to Clarke. Perfect job, Cadet, perfect. Now get the hell out of there.”
“Don't need to tell me twice, Churchill. I'm on the move. See you later.”
“Good luck, Cadet. Churchill out.”
Any pretense of stealth was now gone, every detector on the station tracking the two of them. In seconds, they'd have company out here, and they needed to get moving, and quickly. Blake was already on her way to the airlock, and he fired his thrusters to hurl himself in the right direction, spending fuel recklessly in a bid to gain speed. Hours of progress on the outward journey were seconds on the return, and he skimmed high over the station, clear of the tangled antenna and sensor pickups reaching out towards him.
They'd picked their target before leaving the station, a maintenance airlock deep in the maintenance corridors, well away from any critical systems or any means of escaping. Suddenly, a whine sounded in his headset, a sensor alarm, and he saw a pair of fighters sweeping over him, racing away from the station towards some invisible target in the distance. For an instant, he thought they were seeking him, some ludicrous attempt at overkill, but their missiles raced out, far away from the station, detonating miles distant.
“What the hell was that?” Blake asked.
“Don't ask me,” he replied. Another alarm sounded, and he continued, “Two targets, right behind us.”
“Only two?”
“Maybe that's all they think they need.” A ball of green flamed raced out, missing him by meters, and he said, “And with plasma rifles, they might be right! Evasive, now!”
He slammed his hand on his thruster controls, sending himself tumbling, angling dangerously close to the station again, this time under power rather than using his hands. If he'd been taking risks before, this was downright suicidal, but he had to gamble that his pursuers wouldn't want to take the chance of damaging the station to kill him.
“It worked!” Blake yelled. “I've got four people hanging around my bomb. Let's hope it takes them all out when it goes!”
More misdirection. These suits came from a locker on the station, and it would be a simple matter to overhear everything they were saying, though he'd disabled the telemetry to make it harder for anyone to actually interfere with suit functions. Another ball of flame raced across the sky, but this one was much further away, well clear of him, a warning shot to keep him pinned close to the station rather than anything actually targeted at killing him.
Ignoring the warning lights flashing across his heads-up display, he weaved from side to side, trying to prevent his assailant from drawing a bead on him, getting the easy, certain shot that would be his end. He could just spot the airlock ahead, less than thirty seconds distant, and dropped down low to attempt to mislead his pursuer, risking a quick glance behind him to get a visual mark.
Firing a long, wild pulse from his thrusters, he soared up, Blake diving in towards him, and the airlock opened as they approached, just as they had prepared before they left the station. Blake was the first inside, and he waited for what seemed an eternity to crawl in after her, before finally he was able to slide into the space between the hatches.
“Emergency pressurization,” he said, and Blake tapped the control, the hiss of air filling his ears as the atmosphere flooded into the space. He ripped his helmet off, tossing it carelessly to the side, then pushed Blake ahead of him into the crawl-way beyond, stabbing commands into the control panel.
“We've got to move,” Blake said, taking off her gloves, ripping her suit free a piece at a time, the parts dropping to the floor. “They'll be here in a minute.”
“They'll follow us,” he replied, still entering commands. “We've got to stop them.”
“They've got guns, and we don't.”
“Yes we do,” he said. “We've got a cannon.”
“What?”
A red light flashed onto the board as the outer door opened again, their two pursuers climbing inside. They had no way of knowing that there was someone waiting for them on the far side, no awareness of what Clarke had planned for them. He had to rush, but had to get it right, overriding half a dozen safety systems to make his idea work.
He felt the station shudder as the explosive bolts ripped the outer door free, the build-up of atmosphere inside the airlock hurling the two men within out into space. His eyes widened as he looked at the monitor, shaking his head.
“They probably had their suits on,” he said. “Though...”
Looking him in the eyes, Blake said, “You're getting good at this, Cadet.”
“I don't think I've got much of a choice,” he replied. “Come on. Let's go find Harrison. Then we can go home.”
Frowning, Blake replied, “If you want to get out of here, I can...”
“No,” he said, shaking his head. “We're going to get this done. I gave you my word, and I meant it.”
Chapter 15
“I'll be damned,” McGuire said, shaking his head. “We're getting a good, strong datastream. I don't know how the hell the kid did it, but I've got a lock into the station's network.” Turning from his console, he said, “We're read-only, so I can't hack anything, but we're getting a lot of scientific crap into the computer.”
Tapping a control on her armrest, Mallory said, “Bridge to Sickbay. Is Professor Simmons up to doing some data interpretation for us?”
“He certainly is!” Simmons barked, before Strickland could reply. “Just get me a datapad and I'll get to work.”
Turning to the rear, Mallory said, “Morgan, how's our shield?”
“Fifteen secured cables,” she replied. “I don't think adding more will make much difference. There's a good chance the main engine will fail anyway.”
“It'll work,” Finch said, a smile on his face.
“Let's hope so, Lieutenant,” Mallory said, settling into her chair. “Battle stations. Red Flight stand by for scramble when I give the word. Clayton, bring the main engines to full power, but take it slowly. Course for collision with Omega Base.”
“Aye, ma'am,” Clayton said. “Initiating start-up sequence.”
“Tactical to all hands,” Finch said, leaning to a microphone. “All hands to battle stations. I repeat. All hands report to your battle stations. Secure all bulkheads, damage control teams to positions, fighter squadron to thirty-second alert.” Turning to Ma
llory, he continued, “I have a preliminary defensive firing solution and the surprise package is ready.”
“Good,” Mallory said, as the tactical display winked on. A low rumble echoed through the hull as Churchill struggled to gain speed, her engine pushing against a mass five times larger than her usual load, the weight distribution wrong, requiring constant adjustments from the thrusters to keep her on course. Warning alarms streamed down the side of the viewscreen, notifications that the hull was being stressed far above usual norms.
“Cruz to Bridge,” the communicator called. “We're already having trouble with Cables Ten and Fourteen. Not our end, the rock. If we lose two cables, we tumble, and we die.”
“Understood, Chief. Do what you can. Helm, adjust course to reduce stress on the weakened cables. Morgan, I want a repair team standing by in Airlock Three to go EVA to the asteroid if necessary.”
“It'd be suicide,” the officer protested.
“Nevertheless,” Mallory pressed.
“All decks are cleared for action, ma'am,” Finch replied. “Enemy is responding. They've scrambled their fighter squadron and placed them on an intercept course, and Theseus is moving to block our path to the station.” He tapped a control, and said, “I am unable to raise Cadet Clarke.”
“No surprise,” Mallory said. “He must have sacrificed his communicator to get the datastream working. McGuire...”
“Still coming through for the moment, but they're trying to block me,” the hacker said. “I'd say we've got about thirty seconds to go before they shut us down. Not that we've got the storage capacity for much longer anyway. We're getting a hell of a lot of data, boss.”
Aggressor (Strike Commander Book 3) Page 13
