“Wait,” Mortimer said. “They’re moving out.”
She was right. The group moved rapidly away from the shuttle, heading down the runway, obviously hunting something. Clarke looked around, then glanced at Mortimer, a confused expression on his face.
“You think they know something we don’t?”
“Who was trying to call you?” she asked, and he looked at his communicator.
“Beacon signal,” he said. “Triplanetary frequency.”
“The other shuttle, maybe. You think the Captain might have been forced down as well?”
“No, Doppler has it moving at two thousand miles an hour.” His eyes widened, and he continued, “The rescue team. They’re on the way. There must be a station close by, just as we thought. You don’t think...”
“Damn,” she said. “If that group knows where the tracks are, they’ll be able to set up a perfect ambush. The rescue party will be walking right into a trap.” Turning to Clarke, she said, “We’re going to be doing something foolishly heroic, aren’t we?”
“I don’t think we have much of a choice,” he replied. “If they came out here to rescue us, then the least we can do is...”
“Rescue them?” she finished. “We’ve got two pistols and fourteen rounds of ammunition between us. Two more clips if they didn’t strip the shuttle. And we don’t even know exactly where to look, so we’re going to have to follow them without being detected, remembering that they know the terrain an awful lot better than we do. You’re planning to ambush a better armed, better prepared group of combat-trained experts who are probably expecting a trap.”
Nodding, Clarke replied, “That sounds about right. Do you have a problem with that?”
“No, but I just wanted to make it clear how crazy this whole scheme is. That’s all.” She looked into the gloom, and said, “They’re heading down the sides of the runway. Using the landing systems as cover.” Frowning, she said, “John, this isn’t going to work. Not this way. They’re moving faster than we can, and the odds are that they’ll beat us to the punch.” Glancing at her watch, she added, “Any idea how long before our people arrive?”
“Maybe twenty minutes,” he said. “They’re getting pretty close, but they’ll have to decelerate.” He looked after them again, then looked at the shuttle, a smile spreading across his face. “You think they’re clear now?”
“I think so, but...”
“Good. Come with me. I’ve got a plan.”
Shaking her head, she said, “Lord, how I’ve come to dread those words.”
Chapter 13
Orlova slid her datapad across the desk, then looked up at the grim-faced Garland sitting opposite, next to Sub-Lieutenant Brown, the two senior figures among the evacuees from the Sphere. She looked up at Francis, then back at the two of them, and folded her hands together at the table.
“So, gentlemen, let’s take this from the top. Captain Salazar and the others took the shuttles to launch a pre-emptive strike on a race of winged humanoids, in order to prevent them from attacking other civilizations on the Sphere. Lieutenant Harper had a theory that they were hosting some sort of artificial intelligence as well, one powerful enough to jam sensors and disrupt long-range communications.”
“That’s about it, ma’am,” Garland said. “We’ve got the recordings of the attack on the base, as well as the list of confirmed casualties. The Captain was planning on retrieving the presumed captives if possible, and was convinced that the AI held the information we needed to return to Triplanetary space.”
Nodding, Brown continued, “We tracked the two shuttles visually all the way. One of them overshot, we think the Captain’s, but we believe the crew were able to parachute from the shuttle and land on the moon. The other failed to reach altitude, but we tracked them all the way to the surface, about twelve thousand miles away, we believe. Lieutenant Lombardo worked around the clock to find a route to retrieve them, and a rescue team was on the verge of leaving when Alamo returned.”
“You should know, Captain, that everyone volunteered for the rescue party, even knowing the risks, even knowing that it almost certainly meant that we would be left behind,” Garland said. “We set up a communications relay, so if the jamming field is brought down, Captain Salazar could send the information we needed back to Alamo. Everyone on those shuttles knew that it was almost certainly a one-way mission. There wasn’t enough fuel for a return trip, anyway.”
“Very well. Sub-Lieutenant Brown, right now you’re senior fighter pilot, so head down to the hangar deck and prepare what remains of the squadron for action. Garland, I’m sure Doctor Strickland will make good use of your services in Sickbay. Dismissed.” The two men rose, saluted as one, and left the room, Francis walking around the desk to take one of the vacated chairs.
“Have you decided what you’re going to do?” he asked.
“We’ve got a second window for a flyby in about twenty-two hours,” she said. “If these reports are correct, we’ll have a thin chance to recover the balance of the landing team at that point. I’ve already got the deck gang working on stripping down a shuttle for a high delta-v trip.” Frowning, she added, “Even then, it’s going to be a tricky flight, and we’ll have absolutely no margin of error.”
“That’s putting it mildly. We could reduce speed...”
“Those cruisers are closer than I like right now. Status on the fourth ship?”
“Still under repair, but there’s not that much they can do to us. I think. Our best guess has them operational shortly before we return to the entrance, though, so we can’t rule out any surprises.” He looked at the door, and said, “I hate to say this again, Captain, but I’m forced to recommend that we alter course and head into the outer system. I’ve run the numbers with Astrogation, and we can throw the enemy formation far enough into our wake that we’ll have an easy escape from the system. We recovered twelve people, and lost seven. I think we need to consider settling for that.”
“If it wasn’t for the chance of recovering the wormhole map, I’d probably agree with you, but that has to be the decider, Lieutenant. The alternative is that we slink back to that colony...”
“Where we can complete our repairs at our leisure, rearm, perhaps even take on additional crew, and come back again in a year or so. That’s a better option than throwing Alamo into a pitched battle in her current condition, surely.”
“Unless we lead the Hegemony back that way. In which case we’re doing nothing but throwing more innocent lives into the fire.” She looked at the Sphere, dominating the sky, and said, “There’s the other answer, of course.”
“Evacuate Alamo.”
Nodding, she said, “It’s looking more and more like that might end up as the only realistic plan.” Slamming her hand on the desk, she said, “Damn it, a ship from Earth managed to get home a century ago. We know they got this far out, and we know they made it here. And that’s where the trail ends.” She paused, looked up, and said, “It’s here.”
“What?”
“The wormhole. It’s here. In this system. That’s the only explanation that makes any sense. Hell, that’s what the Hegemony has been looking for, all this time! Think about it. How much technology could they realistically expect to reverse-engineer, anyway? And how come those scientists just happened to have stumbled across a wormhole map. That’s what they were looking for the entire time.”
“I suppose it’s plausible, but...”
“Another thing. We’ve been working on what seems a logical explanation, that whoever built this Sphere is also responsible for the wormholes. That only makes it more likely that the entrance we’re looking for is here. They’d put the way back at a safe distance for security. No point inviting an enemy attack force to get right here. It makes sense.”
“Maybe, Captain, but you’re guessing.” Francis shook his head, and said, “Besides, we’ve run every senso
r sweep we can think of, and we haven’t found a thing. No sign of any such anomaly.” He paused, then added, “Having said that, we didn’t have much luck with the entrance, either. We’re only guessing about what we might be looking for. Though if the Hegemony has been looking for the wormhole for all these years...”
“We’ve got better equipment than they do. That could make all the difference.” She paused, then tapped a control, and said, “Orlova to Scott.”
“Scott here.”
“How many Hegemonic satellites have we spotted in this system?”
“Thirty-nine, ma’am. Twenty-four of which currently appear active, though some of them could just be playing dead. There could well be more out in the debris cloud, as well. Difficult to pick something like that up at the extreme range required.”
“How many probes do we have in our current inventory?”
“Sixteen, Captain, of various types.”
“Hold back one, Lieutenant, and launch them all. Starburst trajectory, set to detect for gravitational interference and to track the debris. I want the widest possible baseline of information on every object in this system. We’re looking for something that is almost impossible to find.”
“Right away, ma’am.”
“Holding one back?” Francis asked.
“If we find the entrance, I’m not taking Alamo in blind. Not unless we genuinely don’t have any other choice.”
“It’s a big system, Captain,” Francis said. “The sort of search you are considering could take months. And we’ve got no guarantee that the Hegemonic cruisers wouldn’t simply follow us through. No point getting home only to be destroyed on our arrival.”
“That depends where we end up,” she replied. “The bigger question is whether Alamo could withstand a wormhole transit in her current condition. It shook Monitor up enough when we were thrown here.”
“If it comes to it, I suppose she’ll have to,” Francis said, pulling out a datapad. “Though I’d hate to have to attempt an extended trip after the run. As of now, I think we could manage it, but we’ve got three enemy ships that might have a different idea.”
“Captain,” the overhead speaker barked. “Scott here. Could you come onto the bridge, ma’am? The Hegemonic vessels have altered course.”
She looked at Francis, then rose from her chair, stepping through the doors and out onto the bridge. Scott rose from the command chair, and gestured at the viewscreen, showing a tactical display. The enemy formation had split into three, each heading off on a different vector, one of them curling back towards the Sphere.
“I don’t get it,” Francis said. “They’d have been better off holding course.”
Shaking her head, Orlova replied, “They wouldn’t have caught us that way, and they knew it. We might make one pass, but not a second. Unless we made a mistake, they’d never have intercepted Alamo before we headed out into the deep system. They don’t have anything to lose by trying something new.” Turning to the rear, she asked the duty communications technician, “Any contact from the enemy squadron?”
“Negative, ma’am. No signals at all.”
“That only means they’re using tight-beam,” Scott said, settling down at Tactical. “They don’t have any reason to do anything else.”
“None of which helps us work out what they’re planning,” Francis said. He looked at the display, at the fourth cruiser, still hovering by the Sphere, and asked, “Could those ships make it back to the singularity?”
“I think so, sir,” Scott said.
“A gravity turn,” he replied. “They’ll becoming at us from four directions at once, have us completely surrounded.” Turning to Orlova, he said, “That’s what they’ve been planning, Captain. That’s their trick. They’re drawing us in, back to the Sphere, and they’ll have a perfect chance to intercept us on the return. We won’t have a chance.”
Orlova looked across at Scott, who nodded, and said, “The data fits that theory, Captain.”
“There has to be an answer,” Orlova replied. “Something better than running for the deep system.” She looked around the bridge, and said, “I need options, people, and I need them now.”
Frowning, Quesada said, “I could increase our speed. Go for maximum acceleration.”
“No good,” Francis replied. “We’re supposed to be sending a shuttle down to the surface to pick up our people, or none of this matters anyway. If we’re going too fast, there’s no chance that a shuttle will be able to make it in time. Hell, if we were at best speed, I’m not even sure that a shuttle could make it down to the surface at all, even using all the fuel in its tanks.”
“It isn’t as bad as that,” Scott said. “They could use the atmosphere for aerobraking.”
“That’s it!” Quesada said. “The residual atmosphere from the Sphere. The leakage. It’s all going to the singularity.” His hands danced across the controls, bringing up course corrections, and he said, “The damn thing has an atmosphere, Captain, and one that reaches far enough out to be useful. We’ve even got a beacon to guide us in. Lieutenant Murphy’s communicator will still be transmitting when we’ve long since turned to dust.”
“Sub-Lieutenant,” Francis said, obviously struggling to keep his voice calm, “Are you suggesting that we should attempt to aerobrake using the atmosphere of a black hole? You realize how close we’d have to go to pull that maneuver off. Well within the exclusion zone.”
“But with enough velocity to pull us out again.” Looking down at his controls, he said, “I think the ship can take it, Captain.”
“In her current condition?” Francis asked.
Stepping forward to the helm, Orlova looked at the controls, and said, “We’d be in position hours before the enemy cruisers could manage an intercept, even if they duplicated our course.”
Looking up, Quesada said, “I know that I can do this, Captain. Alamo will complete the dive, and we’ll be in a perfect position to rescue our crew. Then we can kick out for the deep system, and even have some time to spare before the enemy ships arrive. We’ll be far enough ahead of them that they won’t have a chance to launch a strike.”
Turning to Francis, she said, “We’re going to try it. Lieutenant, I want you down in Astrogation. I want this course refined to a fare-the-well. And make sure we have abort options, just in case we run into trouble.”
Nodding, Francis walked to the elevator, paused at the door, and said, “This is a hell of a big gamble, Captain.”
“Sometimes, Lieutenant, you’ve just got to throw the dice and hope for the best.”
Chapter 14
“Have I ever told you that you are completely insane?” Mortimer asked, sitting in the co-pilot’s seat. “Of all the hare-brained...”
“You pointed out that there was no chance that we’d be able to catch up to them in time, remember,” Clarke said. “And that we’d be unlikely to get past them in any case. They know the terrain better than we do, they know the base, they’ve got the equipment and load-out for stealth. So let’s not worry about sneaking up on them. Let’s catch them by surprise instead.” He reached up to the controls, and said, “Check the landing gear again.”
“Locked and ready,” she said. “Though I doubt it’ll take any serious speed.”
“It doesn’t have to,” he replied. “We don’t have enough fuel to go that fast anyway, and if I did push it, we’d probably take off. And that would be bad.”
“How bad?”
“Better make sure those parachutes are working.”
“Great,” she said, tugging on her restraints. “I’ve got red and amber lights all across the status panel. I think the engineering readouts are trying to tell us something.” She looked at Clarke, and said, “What happens if they leave the runway?”
“Then we find out how good the landing gear really is.” Throwing a switch, he said, “Thrusters enabled, r
eady to go. Main engine firing sequence start.”
With a roar, the engines fired, and the shuttle began to move down the runway. Clarke’s hands were locked on the controls, making pinpoint changes, trying to keep the craft stable as it gathered speed, while Mortimer struggled with the power feed to the engine, a battle she was losing as one by one, amber lights flashed red, the shuttle dangerously weaving from side to side, threatening to topple.
“Signal!” Mortimer said. “The beacon again, a lot stronger this time. I’d say we’re a couple of minutes from the rescue party getting here.”
“I hope so,” Clarke replied, gesturing at the viewscreen. “Looks like our friends have seen us.” Up ahead, figures scrambled into cover, and he heard the first cracks of gunfire echoing from the battered hull, brief noise over the anguished whine of the superstructure, stressed already far beyond its safe limits, struggling with one final effort. The shuttle wobbled to the right, a loud report as a tire exploded, and he jammed his hand down on the lateral jets, struggling to keep the shuttle upright, the fuel gauge dropping at an ever-increasing rate.
“Speed at fifty miles an hour,” Mortimer said, reaching for the communications console as the shuttle rocked from side to side, the thrusters no longer properly stabilizing the ship. “Mortimer to Rescue Party. Mortimer to Rescue Party. Come in, please.” She shook her head, and said, “I’m surprised we’re getting the beacon. Signal strength is worse than usual.”
Bullets hammered into the hull, and a second tire exploded, this time caught by a stray round. The shuttle was tumbling, turning on its side, and Clarke quickly pushed the throttle forward, setting the flaps for launch, sending them stumbling into the air. Sirens sound as the ship protested, an anguished whine from the hull, but it soared over the enemy forces before ducking back down towards the ground, the engines dying as the fuel feeds failed, one after another.
Battlecruiser Alamo_Cries in the Dark Page 10
