Cassandra's War: A Sci-Fi Corporate Technothriller (The SynCorp Saga Book 2)

by Pourteau, Chris

  “Then cut off her hand, for Christ’s sake, Lander. Just get the damn key!”

  Lander stood and drew his weapon again.

  “Wait.” Ming closed her eyes. Elise had talked about how she was Cassandra’s emissary or some other bullshit. What if she was telling the truth? MoSCOW would have warned her if Elise was lying.

  “It is possible the cryptokey has somehow become part of this woman’s biological identity,” MoSCOW warned.

  Ming pressed a shaking hand to her temple. “Bring her with us,” she said. “Lander, carry her.”

  Lander hoisted the woman’s stiff body under his left arm, leaving a free hand for his weapon. “That means you have to walk, Ming.” He reached into the pouch at the small of his back and handed her another gel, his last. “I can’t carry both of you.”

  Ming did her best to keep up with him as they retraced their steps back to the Roadrunner . In the stairwell, whenever Lander turned a corner, Ming was treated to a view of the frozen face of Elise Kisaan.

  What the hell was she going to do with this woman when she woke up? Ming could barely keep her eyes open; how would she protect herself? She watched the armor on Lander’s back flex under the weight of the woman. She had no choice. She would have to trust Lander, an ex-Taulke employee who’d been ordered to kill her.

  “This place seems deserted all of a sudden,” Lander said over his shoulder in a low voice. “Where is everyone?”

  “The intelligence that barred me from the system is no longer active,” MoSCOW said. “Neo personnel are massing near the reactor deck.”

  Lander checked the hallway outside the cargo bay and they hustled to the safety of their shuttle. Ming collapsed into the copilot’s couch. “Tie her up,” she said to Lander. “I don’t want to deal with her when she wakes up.”

  Lander complied, then booted up the flight computer. “Open the doors, Ming.” His voice was even, but serious.

  Ming stared at the cargo bay doors for what felt like only a second. But when she looked behind her, she saw Elise, still unconscious, restrained in her own seat. When had Lander done that? Maybe she’d blacked out for a minute…

  “Ming.” Lander’s voice took on a tone of urgency. “I held up my end of the agreement. Open the doors.”

  Her skull was splitting, her vision distorting. Ming stared at Lander’s square jaw jutting out like a bullfrog. She giggled.

  “Ming, open the doors.”

  “Look at me,” she said. It took all her willpower to stay focused on his face. “Promise to get me back to Mars safely, with Kisaan, in one piece?”

  “I promise,” Lander replied .

  “Truth.”

  MoSCOW was still inside her head, but fading behind a curtain of crimson pain encircling her conscious mind. Ming reached forward to the controls and connected to the station’s network. She found the network node for the cargo bay doors. Their ship rocked gently as the doors opened. The craft lifted under her as Lander applied power to the thrusters…

  When Ming opened her eyes again, she saw the dark of space, the bright spread of the planet beneath them, the sight marred by floating wreckage. Lander’s hands danced over the shuttle controls as he navigated around chunks of shattered spacecraft. A marine in full battle armor floated by, still clutching his rifle.

  “Lander,” Ming said. “I—I’m done.” She reached behind her ear to trigger the MoSCOW release mechanism. There was a wet, sucking sound as the device separated from her flesh and fell into her lap. The air from the cabin touched her raw skin, making Ming whimper with fresh pain. She touched her eye and her fingers came back bloody.

  Lander’s hand was on her arm. “Easy,” he whispered. “Just lie back.”

  She looked at Lander’s face, heard his voice, but it all felt two-dimensional now. The extra layer of meaning MoSCOW had overlaid on every one of her senses was gone. She felt the loss like an ache, a hole in her perception.

  As she laid back into the cushions, Ming caught a glimpse of her reflection in the window. The right side of her face was a blur of red, her eye milky white. Lander plucked the MoSCOW device from her lap, tossing it into the disposal chute. He put a bandage over the mottled skin, the analgesic in the cloth blessedly cool against her ravaged flesh.

  “Radiation treatment,” she whispered.

  “Coming up.” She felt a med collar being fitted around her neck, the device tightening, then a pinch as it tapped into her jugular to deliver drugs. Soft beeps as Lander programmed it. “I’m going to give you a sedative, Ming. To help you sleep.”

  Her mouth was dry, her voice hoarse. “I’m trusting you, Lander.”

  He may have replied, but she was already asleep.

  • • •

  Remy Cade • Cassandra Station, Observation Deck

  When Remy woke, the room around him was empty.

  He forced his eyelids open, still unable to move his body, wishing in his heart of hearts he’d never woken up.

  Elise was gone. Whether Ming and the soldier had taken her by force or she had gone of her own free will, it made no difference now. She was gone from his heart. He realized with great despair that she’d been gone a long time and he’d been a fool to think otherwise.

  His muscle control came back slowly. A finger wiggled, the twitch of a wrist, the bending of his knee, but he remained on the floor.

  His entire body felt thick, his brain fuzzy. The woman had electrocuted them with that weapon. And now they were gone. He remembered Elise had asked to go with them.

  Had she ever really loved him? Or had he been just another link in the chain of events she’d used to pull herself into power ?

  He hauled himself up to a sitting position, every muscle screaming at him in protest.

  Did it matter now? He was a dead man. When Brother Donald or one of the others realized he’d been the one to betray the location of the Temple station, Cassandra would tell them to skin him alive. Or push him out the nearest airlock. Or both.

  Cassandra. He tried to work up enough moisture in his mouth to spit and failed. Remy hoisted himself to his feet and tottered to the window. The world lay at his feet. He sneered at his reflection in the glass.

  Billions of followers of Cassandra were down there beneath the swirling clouds. How many of them knew they were worshipping a machine? He rested his forehead against the cool glass. There was some cosmic irony for you. Millions of people united in the cause for a new earth being led by a computer program.

  This station, the Temple of Cassandra—this was Her house. She had taken Elise from him. Cassandra was to blame for all of this.

  The answer came to Remy before he’d even worked out the question in his head.

  She was a machine, a machine masquerading as a god.

  Machines required power to function.

  And power could be turned off.

  His limbs responded easier now and his brain was focused with newfound purpose. Remy walked, each step becoming steadier, more determined.

  A long time ago, he’d been part of another faith, an older religion, something his parents had tried to pass along to him and he’d ignored. He didn’t remember much from those days, but one simple, balanced concept blazed in his memory.

  An eye for an eye .

  Cassandra had taken everything he cared about in life. He would return the favor.

  The hallway outside was a war zone. Bullets had shredded the walls and ceiling, and the air was acrid with gunpowder and something heavier. He’d smelled a lot of blood in his time, too much. He’d shed blood, he’d spilled blood, and he’d seen those he loved cut down in body and in spirit. All in the service of someone else’s cause.

  No more.

  Midway down the hall was the angular hull of a mobile assault pod. Three dead Neos garbed in the black uniform of station security lay sprawled behind it. All had a small, neat hole in their foreheads.

  There was a senior officer among the dead, a woman. Remy stripped her security token. At the end of th
e hall, he turned right. More devastation. The corner of the hallway was chewed away by bullets, as if it had been gnawed by an enormous rat. His footsteps crunched through the carpet of spent shells as he made his way to the lift.

  No one tried to stop him. No one was anywhere to be seen.

  Using the token, Remy put the lift into security override.

  Maybe it wasn’t too late to free the woman he loved.

  “Reactor level,” he said.

  Chapter 25

  William Graves • Cassandra Station, Reactor Deck

  “Get down, sir!” Estes shouted.

  Graves stared at Quincy’s body from his position crouched behind a hull stanchion. The young woman was looking right at him, sightless eyes open, mouth parted as if about to say something. One moment she’d been celebrating a feat of engineering genius, the next she was dead.

  Fire from the M24s called his gaze to the marines’ position, hunkered behind a control panel. They had absorbed Quincy’s death with the stoic calmness of men who’d seen too much killing too often.

  “Stay here, sir,” Ortega called over his shoulder. “We’ll be back in a few.”

  Estes peeked around the corner of the panel, flashed a hand sign to Ortega, then laid down a brace of cover fire as the smaller marine snaked deeper into the room.

  Seconds later, there was the thick, broad eruption of a fragmentation grenade .

  “Take it to ’em, Coyote!” Estes shouted.

  The lights dimmed in a massive drawdown of power from the reactor.

  The laser, thought Graves. They’re firing the laser.

  Estes stood, motioning to Graves. “C’mon, sir. Ortega’s got them penned in the rear of engineering. You can set charges now.”

  Set charges.

  He was the only trained combat engineer left alive. Graves pushed away his doubts. A lot of people under his command had laid down their lives today, and it was up to him to make their sacrifice worth it.

  The fusion reactor was even more daunting up close. He climbed the ladder to the deck over the reactor body. The massive toroid was the size of a house, stretching three stories upwards with steel catwalks crisscrossing the open space overhead. The magnetic containment hub pierced the center of the donut-shaped reactor and flared out like an enormous mushroom head. He studied the design, looking for weak spots he could exploit.

  His goal here wasn’t to blow up the reactor, but to cause it to self-destruct. The resulting fire and heat would ignite the O2 tanks of the station’s environmental system and the hydrazine that fueled its maneuvering thrusters. The explosion would tear the station apart.

  A shot rang out, startling Graves. Estes smiled at him. “Don’t sweat it, sir. That’s just Ortega keeping ’em honest.”

  Graves nodded. He was acting like a greenhorn in front of this brave young man. Think, dammit! He forced his mind to analyze the system logically .

  Best to combine the effect of all four charges on a single system element that couldn’t be repaired. The fusion reaction was suspended inside the core by the magnetic hubs, one above the reactor, one below. Destroy either of them, and the reaction would cascade out of control … but there would be an emergency backup somewhere to ensure containment.

  Graves found the main magnetic generator panel, then followed the power source. The emergency backup would be a mechanical device, a fail-safe designed to safely shut down the reactor in case the high-tech redundancies failed.

  The compartment was labeled Emergency Magnetic Power . Inside was a simple but elegant solution: a flywheel hub. He pressed his hand against the wall of the cylinder. Inside, the spinning wheel thrummed. Clever. In the event of a power outage, the wheel would provide enough energy to safely shut down the fusion reaction.

  He threw the handle down. A Klaxon blared over the station comms.

  “Emergency magnetic power offline. Emergency magnetic power offline .”

  Graves muscled the handle back and forth until it snapped off in his hand. That would slow any efforts to restore the backup. He found an operator panel and killed the audio alarm, leaving only a silent, blinking red light.

  Hustling back to the main reactor, Graves knew what he had to do now, and he was filled with newfound energy. The magnetic hub. All he had to do was knock that magnetic containment device offline, and the laws of physics would do the rest .

  Containment failure followed by a massive plasma breach of fire and radiation followed by highly volatile chemicals going boom.

  Graves crawled out over the reactor body to the magnetic hub, feeling the hum of the massive machine under his knees. He ripped open the satchel. Four charges, with manual detonators and a timing device. He searched the bag again, looking for more remote detonators. The cold realization set in: Quincy must have used them all on the door. The best he could do was slave the charges to timing device—but if anyone came along during the countdown, they could deactivate the bomb.

  Someone was going to have to stay behind.

  “General!” Estes shouted over the roar of the engine room. “What’s the holdup, sir?”

  Graves flashed him a sign for five minutes. He used his knife to carve away the insulation and placed the charges equidistant around the base of the magnetic pole. He slaved them all to the handheld timer, then crawled back to the waiting marines. Ortega lay prone on a walkway, covering the barricaded doorway some fifty feet below. The back door to the reactor room.

  Graves squatted next to the marines. The lights from the alarm cast alternating red and white tints across their features. They were so young, so goddamned young. He showed them the detonator and shouted over the din of the engine room.

  “When I trigger this, you have fifteen minutes to get back to the dropship and get the hell off this station.” He pointed at the blinking alarm. “I need to stay behind to make sure the charges go off.” He reached for Ortega’s rifle. “I’ll need that, son.”

  Ortega pulled back. “No way, sir.” He shot a glance at Estes. “ We’ll make sure this thing gets done together.”

  But the other marine wasn’t listening. His head snapped to the side as if he was listening to something amid all the racket around them. He placed his hand flat on the catwalk and Graves followed his eyes toward the ladder they had climbed up to this level. The top of ladder was moving. Someone was climbing the ladder.

  Ortega put a finger to his lips and crept back along the walkway, rifle at the ready. A hand appeared at the top of the railing, then another and a pause. Whoever it was seemed to be having difficulty with the climb.

  The hands tightened, and a face appeared at the top of the ladder.

  Remy Cade.

  Ortega brought his M24 to his shoulder.

  “No!” Graves shouted, crawling forward.

  Remy’s face registered surprise at seeing Graves and the marines, but he managed to hang on to the ladder. When he was satisfied the marine wasn’t about to shoot him, he climbed the rest of the way up. He was unarmed, and Graves couldn’t see any wounds on him, but he clutched at his right side and seemed to be dragging his left foot.

  “General,” he yelled, moving closer. His eyes were red and haunted, but he met Graves’s gaze without hesitation. “You used me, General. You tracked me back here.”

  Graves could smell the sourness of his breath. “I did, son,” Graves admitted. “It was the only way. These people, these Neos—”

  “I hate them, sir. And I want to hurt them.” Remy’s voice cracked, but he didn’t blink. “I want to destroy them.”

  Graves searched Remy’s face. When good men do bad things, they don’t do them well, he’d told Jansen. Lying, for example. Whatever Cade had come back to the station for, he’d been disappointed. No, more than that. Shattered. He was a man broken—or maybe brokenhearted—but that didn’t mean he had to die.

  He gripped Remy’s shoulder. The muscles under the uniform trembled with energy. “We’re on the same team then, Remy.”

  “For the first tim
e in a long time, you’re right, General. What can I do?”

  “These men were just leaving. I want you to go with them. I’m staying.”

  Remy pointed to the detonator in Graves’s hand. “I’ll do it,” he said.

  Graves shook his head. “Remy, that’s not a good idea. I can’t let you—”

  “You can trust me, sir. I won’t let you down. They took everything from me. I want this. I need this, sir.”

  Graves searched every line of Remy’s face. Every nervous flick of his eyes. “Why?”

  “To end Cassandra. Slag the station, her programming dies with it. Maybe that’ll be enough.”

  I took everything from you, Graves thought. This broken man was his responsibility. He’d been following Graves’s orders at Vicksburg, and that miscalculation had changed Cade’s life forever.

  Ortega pulled the detonator from the general’s hand and triggered the countdown.

  15:00 … 14:59 …

  “Let him, General,” Ortega said. “It’s his choice and we need to go.” He handed the device to Remy.

  Remy gripped the detonator. “I need this, sir. You can trust me.”

  Three more precious seconds evaporated as Graves weighed the choice.

  “You’re a good man, Remy Cade.”

  “Not yet, sir,” Remy said. “But give me just under fifteen minutes.”

  They shared a grim smile, severe and final.

  “Tick-tock, General,” Ortega shouted. “We’re literally on the clock, sir.” The marine thrust his rifle at Remy and pointed him to the perch where he’d been guarding the rear entrance to the reactor room.

  The three clambered down the ladder to the main deck. As he hurried to the shattered door, Graves looked back one last time. Remy Cade was a small figure atop the massive reactor chamber. He waved, the rapid hand flutter of someone who seemed happy.

  Graves hurried past the body of Captain Quincy and after the fast-moving marines.

  • • •

  Remy Cade • Cassandra Station, Reactor Deck

  Remy watched Graves and the two marines disappear through the hatch. Then he returned to his post watching over the back entrance to the reactor room.