Battlecruiser Alamo: Cage of Gold

by Richard Tongue

   “Someone in the design team had a sense of humor when they built this in,” Quinn said. “I guess it doesn’t matter what it looks like. That should start the cold reboot. I hope.”

   “You hope?” Grant asked.

   “I don’t think anyone has ever actually done this in the field before. Usually we’d be tied into the infrastructure at a spacedock. It’ll be interesting to find out if it works.”

   “Interesting is one word for it,” Orlova said, placing her hand over the control, ready to press it. She looked around for one last time, her mind racing to think of something else, some alternative, an option that she had overlooked. Shaking her head, she gently pushed the button into place with her palm, then took a step back to watch the fun.

   The image marking the main reactor winked three times, then flashed out, the mighty heart of Alamo still, at least for a time. A few systems persisted for a moment on stored power, red lights flashing along the status monitors, before they finally went dark. The viewscreen faded to nothing, and the big central light at the heart of the bridge blinked once, then went out.

   Quickly, Quinn pulled out a flashlight, shining it at the status panel, and said, “Well, it worked. The reactor is out, and the computer is using its stored power to run the data purge and update. There’s no possible way for any external force to influence it now, we haven’t left any possible way to access it. Hooke and his team will be swapping drives manually.”

   From overhead, a low rumbling whine started to sound, then slowly faded away until the room was absolutely silent, the four of them standing alone on the cold, dark bridge, only Quinn’s flashlight to cast an eerie gloom on the proceedings.

   “Air circulators going out. All we have now is what we already have, and the chemical scrubbers. They’ll work by themselves.” He shrugged, and said, “We’ve got air for at least seventy-two hours.”

   “And only eighteen hours of orbit left to enjoy it in,” Nelyubov said.

   Glancing at his watch, Grant asked, “When do we get to hit the button?”

   “Well, we broke all records getting everything deactivated, so I’d say that we’d have a good chance of success in twelve hours. Fourteen at the outside. After that,” he paused, then shrugged. “After that, I guess we think of something else.”

   “Listen,” Nelyubov said. “I never realized how damn noisy the ship was before. Not until now. It’s so strange to have no background noise, nothing at all.” Looking around, he asked, “What do we do now?”

   “Wait,” Quinn said. “There’s the chess tournament in Storage Two, hot food in Storage Six, where I believe Spaceman Garland is planning an impromptu concert.”

   On the panel, a red light winked on, and Grant asked, “What’s that?”

   Quinn smiled, and said, “We’re about one-two-hundredths of the way through the data dump. Not a bad start.” He reached into a pocket, and picked out a flask with four cups attached. “I’ve got coffee.”

   “To hell with Garland’s chamber music,” Nelyubov said. “I think I’d rather watch this show. I can’t wait to see how it ends.”

  Chapter 17

   General Daniels carefully guided the jeep along the dirt trail, curving around a tall, jagged rock that seemed to erupt from the ground. Next to him, Richardson, wearing the same borrowed uniform as the rest of them, scanned the horizon with her binoculars, watching for any sign of the Territorial Guard.

   “Something’s still bothering me,” Marshall said, glancing at Caine. “Who the hell tried to kill me last night? I can’t understand why Secretary Mason would try it, when he was on his way to arrest me.”

   “Oh, that’s easy,” Richardson said, her attention still on the landscape. “I did.”

   “What?” Daniels said.

   “I knew that they were coming to arrest you, and I didn’t have any easy way to contact you. I did have a forty-five with a good scope. Sometimes you have to use what you have available.”

   Caine shook her head, replying, “Could you find some other way of communicating than assassination attempts?”

   With a shrug, the rebel leader said, “I’m just doing the best I can with what I’ve got. No sign of anyone, not yet. I think we’re going to make it.”

   “I’m less sure,” Daniels said. “The patrols are only going to get thicker from here on.”

   “I still don’t think it was a good idea for you to be driving us yourself.”

   Shaking his head, he replied, “If I’d sent anyone else, they’d have been arrested without a second glance. There is at least a chance that I would be able to talk our way out of the situation. These stars on my shoulder might be good for something, after all.” With a smile, he said, “Brigadier-General. I’ve got a slightly oversized company under my command. Back in the old days that would have gone to a rather junior Major.”

   “Traditions are good for something,” Caine replied.

   “In this case all it has been good for is a politicized and over-large officer corps. Which is pretty remarkable given the size of our population. All I know is that I’m looking forward to getting back to my farm when all of this is over.”

   He revved the engine, speeding their way down the trail as its condition improved. They passed a burned-out, ruined farm, the land around it barren and bleak, and Richardson shook her head.

   “We need to be getting new farmland, not losing what we already have.”

   “That was the O’Reilly’s place,” Daniels explained. “A fire took them, four years back. Some rumor that it was foul play, and no-one ended up taking up the land.” He frowned, then said, “Didn’t Mason get tangled up in that at one point?”

   “Yeah, he...,” Richardson began, before her face fell into a frown. “We’ve got company. Two jeeps on the horizon, heading right for us, and red-legs at the wheel. Eight, I think.”

   “Could just be using the trail,” Daniels said. “Hell of a coincidence if it is. They must have seen us.”

   Pulling out his borrowed plasma carbine, Gurung said, “Peace through superior firepower. Keep us stable and steady.”

   “Wait a minute,” Richardson said. “They’ll see the explosions clear back to town. We can’t just unleash that sort of hell. Unless you’re willing to start the final battle right here and now?”

   “She’s right, damn it,” Caine said. “We need somewhere to hole up.”

   “They’ll be on us in a couple of minutes,” Daniels said. “What about the Scrambles?”

   Richardson glanced at the officer, her eyes widening, and said, “You have got to be out of your god-damned mind.”

   “Can you think of a better place to hide?”

   “Almost anywhere.” She paused, then said, “What the hell. We’re dead either way. Take your shots, Sergeant.”

   At a nod from Marshall, Gurung rested the carbine on the seat in front, lining up his shot cautiously, before pulling the trigger, unleashing a bolt of violent green flame that smashed into the ground just ahead of the nearest jeep, sending a hail of mud and dirt into the air. The vehicle, spinning out of control, crashed into the crater, the troops inside scrambling to escape as the engine started to smolder.

   A second pulse slammed through the air towards the second jeep, the passengers bailing out just as it smashed into its side. Caine followed up with a pair of well-aimed smoke grenades, and before anyone could recover, Daniels had crammed his foot down onto the accelerator, spinning the wheel to the left, taking them towards a low ravine.

   “They’ll be thinking about that for a while,” Richardson said, looking back at the devastation with awe. One of the guardsman had scrambled out of the smoke, watching them as he escaped, obviously marking the direction. “We’ll have to find another way into the capital. And I think your little secret is out as well, General. They’ll be looking for you.”

   “I’ll head to the Fort,” he replied. “I’d love to see
them get me there once I put the garrison on alert, see if I can rustle up some reinforcements for Ensign Cooper.”

   He drove the jeep down a bumpy trail, taking it down into the ravine, amidst a collection of strange, jagged ruins, twisted and tangled metal with strange writing inscribed on them. The trail quickly petered out, and he guided the vehicle underneath one of the larger pieces, bringing it to a stop.

   “Come on,” he said, “Let’s get the camo net over it. No point making the search too easy.”

   Marshall climbed out of the jeep, looking up at the ruins, “Has this place ever been investigated?”

   “We don’t have any archaeologists to speak of,” Richardson replied. “A couple of decades after landing, a group came out here for a summer to do a proper dig.”

   “What did they find?” Caine asked.

   “No idea,” Daniels said. “They never came back. We sent a team out to look for them, and all of their equipment was just dumped out in the open. Mason managed to blame it on the Neander, got his start as a politician that way, but I never bought the story.” Looking around, he said, “People who stay here too long have a habit of disappearing. Most people don’t come near the place.”

   “I don’t think Mason will let superstition stop him from ordering a full search. That guardsman got a good bead on our destination.”

   Gesturing to the top of the ravine, Daniels said, “There are half a dozen farms down that way. They’d assume we’d gone there rather than risk heading down here. Probably. This runs for about a mile and a half, heading roughly towards town.” He glanced at his watch, and said, “Ten miles after that in pretty rough terrain, lots of cover, we should do it in three hours easily. That’ll bring us in a little after dusk, not much later than we planned.”

   He and Richardson tossed the net over the jeep, securing it to the ground with a collection of loose rocks. Using a small shovel, he started to toss dirt onto it in billowing clumps, Richardson walking around it, making small adjustments.

   “They’ll never see that from a distance,” Daniels said. “This way.”

   He led the group along a winding path running by the ravine wall, carefully picking his way between the ruins. Obviously some great structure had been here once, long ago, something hundreds of meters long by the look of it. There were signs in a few places that the ravine had been worked, smooth surfaces instead of jagged outlines, even carvings of ancient graffiti on the rocks.

   Marshall glanced at Caine, who was looking at the ruins with something approaching rapture. This was her specialty, at least, her passion, and he could tell that she would love to spend a few weeks here, poking about to see what she could learn. Some of the writing looked a little familiar, probably more examples of the proto-Indo dialect they had been encountering. He reached for his datapad, taking a few quick shots for later analysis.

   “Astonishing,” Caine said. “Was it ever dated?”

   “We don’t have the equipment for that,” Daniels said. “Old, though. That alloy is tough stuff, stronger than anything we’ve got. At one point we were hoping to make use of it for construction.” At Caine’s expression, he hastily added, “Nothing ever came of it, though. Aside from taking a few samples. We do know that it wasn’t mined down here. The alloy was formed in zero-gravity.”

   “Alamo didn’t pick up any signs of orbital presence when we came into the system,” Marshall said. “Nor on any of the other planets, though we might have missed some small, unused installations. After a thousands of years, they'd be hard to pick up without a close search.”

   “You’ve probably seen more of the system than we have,” Daniels said. “We just limped into orbit and then down to the surface. There was no opportunity for an extensive survey.” Shaking his head, he said, “We’ve got long-term plans to take a look at our moon…”

   “Which aren’t worth the paper they are written on,” Richardson said. “We’re having a hard enough time finding a way to lob a melon-sized satellite into orbit, never mind put a manned capsule on a trans-lunar trajectory.” Looking at Marshall she added, “The first ships to survey our system won’t be flying our flag, that much I do know.”

   “The worlds in your system are yours to do with as you wish,” he replied. “We can probably arrange to sell, or at least lend, some in-system craft for you to get started. If we establish a facility in orbit, your military with have equal access rights, and there will be a real spaceport on the ground.”

   “A dream,” Richardson said. "Even if it has a high price tag.”

   “Some dreams are worth paying for,” Daniels said. “Though right now I think I’d settle for a quiet life above anything else. All of this is your problem, Eunice. I’m retiring next year, remember.”

   “Still clinging onto that?” she asked.

   “I’ve got to have something to look forward to.”

   Caine had roved ahead slightly, and she turned to ask, “General, I thought you said no-one was doing any work on these ruins?”

   “Not that I know of,” he replied. “I damn well should, as well. I can’t see anyone wanting to poke around in here without an escort of some kind, or at least letting someone know what they were doing. Unless…”

   “None of mine,” Richardson said. “My people are as sensitive about this area as yours, General. I suppose it might be the Neander, but the ones in the crater are pretty much all loyalists now. Besides, this spot was taboo for them, as well.”

   “All I know,” Caine interrupted, “is that there is a patch of recently dug-over ground up ahead, right by one of the pylons. Looks pretty big as well.”

   Glancing at Richardson, Marshall walked forward, Caine turning back to lead the way. He felt slightly uncomfortable out in exposed ground, but he quickly forgot that as he looked at the spots Caine indicated. Four six-foot long holes, with some attempt at camouflaging them, one of them obviously only a few weeks old.

   Shaking his head, he said, “Are these what I think they are?”

   “Impossible,” Daniels said. “I know what you are thinking, but no-one’s gone missing for months. Certainly no-one is unaccounted for.”

   “What about those Guardsmen?” Richardson asked. “A three-man scout team vanished on the plateau, six weeks ago.”

   “Exactly,” Daniels replied. “On the plateau. What would they be doing down here?”

   “Not to mention that there are four graves,” Caine said. “Have you still got that shovel?”

   “You aren’t serious,” Richardson said.

   “Totally serious. For all we know something critical has been cached here. It shouldn’t take long to find out what.”

   Daniels reached into his backpack and pulled out his shovel, extending the shaft, and planting the blade into the ground. “We’ll take it in turns. I might as well go first.” He started to dig, tossing small mounds of earth to the side, slowly opening up a hole in the middle of the nearest grave. Caine looked over his shoulder, down at the disturbed soil, while Richardson kept a wary watch.

   “We don’t have time for this,” she said, shaking her head. “Any moment now, someone will come to rescue those guardsmen, and they’ll know exactly where to go to find us. We’ve got to get back into cover.”

   “I think we can afford a few minutes,” Marshall said. “Want me to spell you, General?”

   Shaking his head, Daniels continued to attack the ground, scooping more and more ground into an ever-larger pile, before abruptly stopping, gently probing at the earth, running the shovel along an outline.

   “It’s a body, and recently buried.” He wrinkled his nose at the smell beginning to issue forth from the hole, and added, “Too recently.”

   “Mutilated,” Caine said. “Someone wanted to make sure that it wouldn’t be possible to identify him. No chance of a DNA test on this planet.” Shaking her head, she added, “It isn’t a Neander, though.”

   “I
know him,” Daniels said, his voice dead. “That birthmark on the shoulder. It's Al Higgins' son.”

   “Gunshot wound to the chest,” Gurung said. “Textbook execution shot. Now we have the next question.”

   “Who killed him?” Marshall said.

   Kneeling down, Daniels reached down at the dead man’s hand, something clasped in a death grip between his fingers. With an effort, he worked it loose, a piece of red cloth. He looked up at Richardson, fury lighting his face.

   “The Guard. They did this. They’re killing our people.”

   Richardson looked down, eyes widened, and said, ““That doesn't make any sense! Hell, I saw Chuck Higgins yesterday, at the demonstration.”

   “I don’t need to understand it,” he said. “And I don’t pretend to know who he is, or why he died, only that they are the ones who did it.” Looking up at Marshall, he added, “Any remaining traces of doubt that I had are gone. We’ve got to get rid of those murdering bastards, and we’ve got to do it now.” He sighed, and said, “I should have done this years ago, before it got this far.”

   “I don’t think you could have, General,” Caine said. “Can I have your shovel? I think I see something.” She took the proffered tool and cautiously started to push some earth aside, exposing what looked at first was a white rock. As she excavated it, Marshall realized with disgust that it was a human skull.”

   “That’s been down there a damn sight longer than a month. Decades, at a guess,” Caine said. “With some work, we might be able to identify it from dental records.”

   “The first excavators?” Richardson asked.

   “Definitely homo-sapiens-sapiens,” Marshall said. “I’ve seen too many old bones lately. One of your people, certainly. General, this has been going on for years.”