Battlecruiser Alamo: Cage of Gold

by Richard Tongue

   “What?”

   “We’re got some more reinforcements coming to join us. With luck.”

   “That’s great,” Cooper said. “There’s just one problem. Our plasma weapons have stopped working.”

   “All of them?” Max asked.

   “I’m afraid that our technological advantage just got reversed.” He stopped, looking down at the outpost, and paused to catch his breath. They weren’t making any attempt to follow them now.

   “You got us out, sir,” Pavlov said. “I’d call that a win.”

   “Yeah,” Cooper gasped, looking at his useless plasma carbine. “We win. This time.”

   “What are we going to do, sir?” Vaughan asked.

   “That, Corporal, is an excellent question.”

   “We attack,” Max said. “And we find a way to beat them.”

  Chapter 19

   Salazar glanced at his watch, looked at the others, then rose to his feet, walking over to Ginger, still sitting in the corner giving occasional glances at the repaired picture frame, a cold cup of tea in her hand.

   “It’ll be dusk in a few minutes,” he said. “We should be leaving. There’s no sense putting you at any further risk.”

   Looking up at him, the old woman replied, “No risk is too great for the cause of freedom. Promise me that the three of you will be careful, at least, as much as you possibly can. I know how important your mission is, but nevertheless.”

   “I don’t do one-way missions,” Harper replied with a smile. “We’ll see you again when we get back.”

   “I’ll be here,” she said. “Be careful in the catacombs. I don’t know if all of them ever were explored. Anything could be down there.” She smiled, then said, “If I was twenty years younger, I’d be going with you.”

   “Thank you for all your help,” Salazar said, leading the way out onto the street. It was quiet outside, dusk gathering, a few people running about on last-minute errands. There remained a sense that something was about to happen, though there were far fewer guardsmen present than there had been when they arrived.

   Foster made to head towards the Fort, but Salazar grabbed at her arm, saying, “We need to stick together, at least for the moment.”

   “I have a mission of my own, Pavel.”

   “Can we do this some other time?” Harper hissed. “I’m not sure that having a full-blown argument is the best way to sneak in. Unless you two are going to cause a distraction so that I can finish the mission by myself.”

   Keeping an eye on Foster, Salazar walked towards the Guard headquarters building, looming over the southern side of town. There had been little chance for a careful inspection earlier, just a few hints and rumors, and as they approached, all of them seemed to be true. A shortage of building materials didn’t seem to have affected the designer in the slightest, tall walls protecting a central structure, one large gate with two people standing on either side.

   “Any ideas?” Salazar asked.

   Looking at the gate, Harper said, “Maybe we could climb one of the far walls. I’ve got some cable.”

   Gesturing around at the streets, Foster replied, “That’s crazy. We’d be seen by any one of a hundred people, and the alarm would be raised before we got ten meters. I say we rush them. Go right in, disable them, and get inside.”

   “And have them chasing us all the way,” Harper said.

   “Any decent security system will spot us before long anyway. This way we at least get into the building, and I can pull back, feint them away, distract them.”

   Frowning, Salazar replied, “I was rather hoping that we could defeat the security.”

   “We’re not fighting an enemy of the same technological level as the rest of the planet, remember,” Foster said. “Somewhere in there is an electronic warfare system powerful enough to disable a battlecruiser. We can expect that they will have a defense system to match.”

   Salazar let Foster and Harper argue for a moment, watching the guards, motionless in position, standing at attention. He could make out a pair of cameras on each corner, swinging back and forth. There was a brief blind spot in their movement, but not long enough to do anything useful. The gate was not covered, though, not even for a second. Presumably the designers had presumed that the guards and the lock would keep out intruders.

   “I think we’re going to be going with Foster’s plan,” he said, looking around. “Make your way closer to the gates before making your run. Go in, wreak havoc, and run for it into the crowds. Once you are clear, try and make contact with either the Captain or Ensign Cooper. I’ll leave that to your discretion. Contact Alamo if you can and let them know what we are doing.” He glanced at Harper, and asked, “Ready?”

   “You do realize that this is crazy, right?”

   “Completely, but we don’t have much of a choice. If they are robots, we can’t expect them to relax their guard, not even for a second, unless we can organize some sort of distraction.”

   “And if they leave some of their guards behind?”

   “We’ll have to deal with that problem when we come to it.”

   As Foster edged forward, surreptitiously moving closer to her objective, the hacker replied, “Better start thinking. We’re going to be facing it in a matter of seconds.”

   Salazar looked around, watching for any other observers. He was almost certain that he saw someone, a figure glancing out of a window, but he wrote that off as someone associated with Astris keeping an eye on him. There was no sign that the guards were reacting, and Foster was getting ready to make her attack.

   “Pavel,” Harper said. “Is that who I think it is?”

   Following her nod, he saw Captain Marshall, Caine following behind him, wearing local uniforms and making their way down the street. Glancing in his direction, Caine gave him a quick wink of recognition, before they continued on their errand. Unable to suppress a smile, he turned back to Harper.

   “At least they’re free,” he said, before the smile drained from his face. “We’ve got to stop Foster. If she stirs up trouble, they’ll catch the Captain!”

   He started to head over towards the gates, but he was far too late, and Foster sprinted forward out of cover, cracking a pair of shots with her revolver, felling one of the two guardsmen before racing back, heading right towards the crowd where Marshall was attempting to hide.

   “What do we do?” Harper asked, as sirens began to sound, a squad of guardsmen chasing after Foster.”

   Shaking his head, he replied, “We do what we came here to do.”

   “But, the Captain…”

   “Was in the wrong place at the wrong time. There’s nothing we can do other than join them in captivity. We’ve got a job to do, and we’re damn well going to do it. Come on.”

   Ignoring the gathering chaos, he sprinted towards the gate, Harper reluctantly following hard on his heels. Foster seemed to have outrun her pursuers, and was turning around in a long curve, heading back for the gate, flashing a look of horror at Salazar. She’d seen Marshall, far too late.

   “She’s drawing them back towards us!” Harper said.

   The gate was just ahead, only a single guard standing in his way. His pistol in his hand, he felled the red-uniformed sentry with a bullet to the head, watching him collapse to the ground, stepping over the body as he raced inside the headquarters building.

   “They’ve got him!” Harper yelled, and he turned to see a trio of guards snatch the Captain, pulling him away, another knocking Caine unconscious with a well-timed blow to the chin, snatching her pistol from her hand. Foster, for want of anywhere better to run, was heading towards them, and one of the guards was still chasing her, the others evidently deciding to settle for the more valuable prey they had found.

   “Come on,” Salazar said. “Or all of this is for nothing.”

   He raced through the gate, and carried on across the dry parade ground
up a series of well-worn stone steps, right into the single tower at the heart of the complex. By some miracle, there were no guards on duty, everyone drawn away in pursuit of the attackers, and he sprinted down the central hall, Harper by his side, a grim-faced Foster dashing after him.

   Kicking open the first door he came to, Salazar felled the guard within with a pair of well-aimed shots, knocking the android to the ground before he could react. The room was some sort of control complex, all strange lights and whirring sounds, and he gestured at Harper while he stayed at the door. The hacker raced inside, looked at the computers, and shook her head.

   “Far too primitive,” she said disdainfully.

   “I know, I know, but they’re still using it for something, and it might be important. Break it.”

   Nodding, Harper ducked under the desk, firing three shots from her pistol, and all of the monitors immediately went dark, the noise from the mainframe dying away. Foster caught up, firing behind her, the flash of the bullet briefly illuminating the darkened hall.

   “Captain Marshall!” Foster yelled. “Did you see?”

   “Yes, I did.”

   “We’ve got…”

   “Midshipman, I am in command of this operation. We will proceed as planned.” He glanced down the corridor, looking at the latest addition to the collection of corpses they were building up. “Underground. There must be a way down.”

   Running back out into the hall, he looked from side to side, trying to spot any sign of special interest being paid to an area, anything that might provide the slightest hint towards their objective. All the doors looked alike, all locked, and there wasn’t time to check them all.”

   “That one,” Harper said, picking one at random. She took out the lock with a single shot from her pistol, the door snapping back on its hinges as he raced in. Foster stood in the hall, ready to bring down anyone that might attack, while Salazar peered in after the hacker at a collection of pots and pans, worktops and ovens.

   “Dead end,” he said. “Come on, we’ve got to try somewhere else.”

   “No, it’s got to be here,” she said. She pulled open the door of a large cupboard, then turned back with a smile. “There. A shaft, going right down, nice and hidden.”

   “How the hell…” he asked.

   “I don’t think androids eat,” she replied. “Why have a kitchen?”

   “Foster!” Salazar yelled. “Come on!”

   “I’ll stay. Hold them off.”

   Shaking his head, he raised his pistol at her, and said, “I don’t have time to argue with you. Get to the shaft, on the double.”

   Glaring incredulously at his weapon, she turned and ran into the kitchen, pausing at the shaft to snatch a nearby saucepan, dropping it down the hole, listening to it bounce down the rungs of the ladder.

   “Checking for traps,” she said, at Harper’s questioning scare. “Didn’t want anything else to go wrong.” Without a further glance, she started to drop down the hole, climbing hand over hand down the ladder. Harper followed, and Salazar paused at the entrance, waiting for a moment to give them a chance to get a start, before pulling a grenade out of his pocket. He pulled the pin, rolled it out through the door, then dived down the shaft.

   The rumbling explosion echoed all around, the sound of falling masonry like a crack of doom. He continued to descend as dust danced down to his shoulders, the light from above fading away. As he dropped to the bottom, the others waiting for him, he looked back up.

   “Figured I’d better salt the earth.”

   “Just out of academic curiosity,” Harper asked, “How do you plan for us to escape?”

   “I don’t,” Salazar replied.

   Harper looked across at Foster, then said, “I already told you, I don’t do one-way missions.”

   “Alamo is in big trouble, the Captain has been captured, our people are scattered all over the place, and there are hundreds of enemy troops up above who can skip meals, sleep and fatigue. Being stuck at the bottom of a hole is the least of our problems.” He paused, then said, “The only way out that I can see is if we find that master computer. We know that it’s down here somewhere, and if we can find it, I’m presuming that everything else will deal with itself.”

   “That’s a pretty big assumption to make, Pavel,” Harper said.

   “I know,” he replied. “I’m not that happy with the idea myself, but at least we should have some time to ourselves down here.”

   “How romantic,” she said with a wry smile, before starting to walk down the corridor.

   Foster looked up at the shaft, knuckles white on her pistol, and said, “I led them right to him. He never had a chance. Neither of them did.”

   “There was no way that you could have known,” Salazar said. “It was just bad timing. If you want to blame someone, you can revert to type and blame me. I’m the one who ordered the attack, and I’m the one who told you not to go back and try to rescue him.”

   “For once this isn’t your fault,” she replied. “Create a diversion, you said, and by God I did a good job of that.”

   “And it worked,” he said. “We got past the guards, did a nice bit of damage to their headquarters, and are on the way to accomplishing our mission. At least, we might if we don’t hang around down here at the entrance.”

   “He knew,” she said, still back at the gate in her mind. “He saw me running towards him, saw me leading the guards in his direction. If I’d had a few seconds’ warning, I could have let the guards catch me.”

   “Look, Midshipman,” Salazar said, trying to force a commanding tone to his voice. “I don’t pretend to know what Captain Marshall was planning to accomplish, but I can tell you that our mission is almost certainly more important. Assuming that he wasn’t here with the same idea.”

   “How can you…”

   “We’re the only ones that actually have a chance of ending this thing, once and for all, as well as saving our ship. Against that, the lives of a member of the crew, even that of the Captain, have to come second. If he were here, I know that he would tell you exactly the same.”

   Harper raced back, and said, “Crossroads up ahead. I think there are some tracks. Are we going, or should I break out Roberts’ Rules of Order?”

   “We’re coming,” Salazar said. “After you, Midshipman.”

   Shaking her head, she replied, “Where did you pick up all that stuff?”

   “I haven’t the faintest idea,” he said with a smile. “Maybe they issued it with the pips. Let me know when you get yours. Now, shall we proceed?”

   The three of them started to walk down the corridor, slowly swallowed up by the shadows.

  Chapter 20

   Orlova hugged her jacket tighter around herself, watching her breath condense in the cold air of the bridge. Nelyubov was draining the last few drops from the last flask of coffee, Grant and Quinn watching the status monitor complete its track, the final cluster of red lights winking on, one after another.

   “How long?” Grant asked for the twentieth time.

   Quinn shrugged, and replied, “Any minute now. We’re just waiting for the last few software uploads to complete. Some of them are pretty substantial, and there isn’t any way to prioritize them.” Shaking his head, he said, “Remind me to put in for a new mainframe at our next upgrade. The whole system has just been thrown together a piece at a time. I’m surprised it works at all.”

   “One more to go,” Nelyubov said.

   Nodding, Grant moved over to the helm, and said, “The second we get power back, I’ll put the ship on a programmed heading and fire the engines at full. Give us as much margin as we can. Even if we lose control again after a few minutes, it should be enough to give us the edge we need.”

   Nelyubov took a position at the watch officer’s station, adding, “I’ll give you a more precise course as fast as I can, out to the egress point. Race said that
he can plot a jump to a known system in twenty minutes if necessary. Let’s hope we get to test him.”

   Looking down at the monitor, Orlova started to will the last red dot to light up, staring at the black spot on the panel. There was nothing she could do to influence it, no order she could give to make it move faster. With a smile, she walked over to the command chair, leaving Quinn to settle down to the engineering panel.

   “Everyone’s going to be holding their breath downstairs,” Nelyubov said.

   “Literally,” Quinn replied, “In about forty hours of so if this goes wrong.”

   “Stop being so pessimistic,” Grant said. “We’ll burn up long before that becomes a problem.”

   “Frank, I’ll want a full scan of the planet as soon as you've plotted our course out of here. I’ll try and raise someone on the ground, see if we can rustle up a status report.” She looked at the blank viewscreen, a shiver running through her. It was cold up here, the single chemical heater in the middle of the room woefully insufficient for the task of fighting off the chill of space. Most of the ship was only borderline-inhabitable now, and it was only going to get worse.

   “Come on, come on,” Quinn muttered. “What’s taking so damned long?”

   Everyone was ready, waiting for the lights to come back on, for the systems to activate, for Alamo herself to come back to life. Grant ran his hands over the controls, his fingers hovering over the directional thrusters, a hand down for the engine throttle. No finesse, no precisely-calculated course, just a full-power burn to throw them from the trap in which they had found themselves.

   “Stand by,” she said, sitting back in the chair. “It can’t be much longer.”

   “We’re in!” Quinn yelled. “File upload complete. I am beginning start-up sequence, now.”

   The engineer frantically began to manipulate the controls on his panel, furiously entering commands, the status boards briefly flashing into the life, power relay links locking into place, before the screens went dark again.