by Terry Mixon
“That’s not enough people to effectively run this ship, especially with some tasked to guard us. How many marines do we think?” He addressed that last to Sergeant Coulter.
The marine noncom looked as though he’d bitten something sour. “More than a dozen. Not much more, but that’s enough. They’ll be in modern combat armor and armed to the teeth. Any direct attack on them without similar equipment would be suicide.”
Graves nodded his agreement. “And there are enough people missing to operate the ship. Possibly even enough to fire the weapons. If they get back to Pentagar and fool them long enough to get reinforcements aboard, this ship could destroy the Pentagaran combat fleet. We need to keep them on this side of the flip point.”
Jared shifted his attention to the Chief Engineer. “Baxter?”
The man grinned. “Get me into engineering and they won’t be able to even see where they’re walking, much less control this ship. And that brings us back to getting out of this makeshift prison. What secret plan do you have up your sleeve, Captain?”
Jared shared a conspiratorial glance with Stone and Graves. “Let’s just say that Princess Kelsey isn’t the only one able to tap into Courageous’ systems. As Doctor Stone, Commander Graves, and Doctor Leonard already know, I had a Fleet officer’s implants installed last night.”
Coulter looked stunned, but Baxter’s grin took on a savage tinge. “That would do it. Can you reprogram the remotes?”
“I believe so. Within reason, anyway. I sent a test command to them earlier. It will probably take them a few minutes to cut a hole large enough for us to escape through, though. That’s part of their programming for damage control. Probably to help get people out of dangerous areas.”
Baxter nodded. “That makes sense. What about using them for other tasks? Like shutting off control to the bridge or activating the anti-boarding defenses? We could stop the mutineers right now.”
Leonard cleared his throat. “I’m afraid that raises several issues, Commander. The remotes have a certain set of approved actions. To override those would take access to the main computer. If we had that, we wouldn’t need to reprogram them. I looked at their basic programming a few weeks ago. I’d imagine this was to keep them from being turned against the ship.”
“Besides,” Jared added, “if I started sending them all over the ship, someone in engineering might notice. I can isolate this group. If we use them sparingly, they might make a world of difference when we need them.”
“What about weapons?” Coulter asked. “The armory is probably under guard. A couple of marines would keep us from getting weapons. And that means the enemy is just about invulnerable.”
“I might be able to help out with that,” Doctor Leonard said. “We have a number of old Empire weapons in the labs. We were restoring them for use by your people. We’ve also been making some ammunition. I believe we could probably arm a number of people. Perhaps a dozen, if you count the pistols we’ve restored.”
“Well, we’ll just have to make do. How many people do you think we could sneak off without the bad guys noticing?”
“A lot,” Jared said with a smile. “I’ve been recording the feed from the cameras and I’ll start playing it back just before we head out. I’ll want you to go back out and make the rounds again. Select the people you need and brief them. In half an hour, I’ll get the remotes to work and call you in.
“The highest priority is disabling the anti-boarding defenses. We can’t count on being able to use them, so I want to make them unavailable to the enemy. How can we best do that, Dennis?”
“By taking engineering. I can use one of the panels there to lock them out. I can’t control them, but my override will keep the other side from getting them for a little while.”
“Engineering just became the highest priority. And if they don’t control the drives, they stay in this system. We don’t know how far they are from the flip point, so we need to make sure we don’t dawdle. Restoring the main computer to operation is task two. It can override the ship’s systems on my authority.”
Jared turned to Zia. “Once we lock them out of the system, you’ll work with the marines to take operations. If we can’t take the bridge, that’s where we’ll control the ship from.”
“What about me?” Graves asked. Jared couldn’t help but hear the note of eagerness in his friend’s voice.
“You get the most dangerous job. When the time comes, you get to retake the bridge. We need them alive to find out who is behind this.”
“You can count on me, sir. Where will you go?”
“To the computer center. Getting the computer online will allow me to take over most of the ship’s systems. I can work directly with the main computer to assist you from there.”
“What about the weapons?” Coulter asked. “Do we secure the lab first? Otherwise, everyone is unarmed. We have to assume that every hijacker at least has a pistol.”
“True,” Jared admitted. “We secure the lab first and then move out to the other targets. Remember, stay in the mess for half an hour, and don’t come back until I call you.”
He let them go and sent the instructions to the remotes. He really had no idea how long it would take for them to cut through the floor. If it looked like it would take more than half an hour, he’d delay calling his people in.
In fact, the remotes were much quicker than he’d imagined. He faintly heard them cutting and his direct observation through them showed the process going quickly. In less than five minutes, the cutaway section fell into the conduit. The rim of the hole glowed with heat, so he decided to stick with the original timetable.
Right at the half hour mark, he switched the cameras to showing the recorded loop. Once he was certain that was what was going out, he walked to the door and waved to his crew. Fifty or so people filed into the kitchen. Jared let his officers get them sorted out.
He noted with approval when Coulter went right to the food prep area and started appropriating knives. The marine grinned. “Since they were arrogant enough to leave them here, we’d be fools to not use them.”
“And it beats fists and feet. Good thinking. Listen up, people. The conduit is tight. We’ll proceed in single file. The lab is two levels up and possibly occupied. I want to stress that you need to keep any noise to a minimum. If we run into the hijackers, let the marines handle them. You’re here to handle specific technical and support tasks. That said, if you have to fight, fight hard. We retake Courageous now.”
He motioned for Coulter to take his team in front. “The conduit is accessible one corridor over from the lab. Go forward once you’re in. After about sixty meters, you’ll find a ladder going up. Go up two levels and then keep going forward. You want hatch 7-52R. Once we get there, I can look at the cameras within range. I’ll let you know the situation and then you can handle the details.”
“Sounds good, sir. Let’s go, marines.”
The marines dropped into the conduit and moved forward, hunched over almost double. The conduit really wasn’t large enough for people to go great distances. The crew normally went to the nearest access point and directly to the systems they needed to work on.
Jared followed the marines carefully, focusing on his footing in the dim lights provided for the maintenance crews. The designers must’ve also expected them to bring portable lights. He’d remember that the next time he needed to sneak around inside the ship.
If the conduit was tight, the ladder between levels was almost too constricted. Especially while climbing. He cursed the long dead designers who hadn’t considered people. Once he made it two levels up, the conduit felt as wide as a corridor. Almost.
The slow shuffle forward ended when the man in front of Jared stopped. They must be at the hatch. He focused his attention inward and searched for cameras. There were a few in range of his implants. All thankfully empty of people.
He had a moment of shared sympathy with Kelsey. He was sure there was so much more he could do, if only he had a
clue about the possibilities. They might have old Empire equipment, but their ignorance hindered them so much.
“All clear,” he said quietly. “I can’t see into the lab itself, but the odds of anyone being there seems remote. I don’t have much of a view beyond the immediate area, so be vigilant.”
He watched the hatch open and Coulter step out, scanning both directions before he gestured for his men to come out. They spread out in both directions as though they’d practiced the maneuver a thousand times. Perhaps they had.
Jared shuffled forward and came out into the brighter lights, blinking to clear his vision. He turned to follow Coulter to the hatch leading into the lab. The marines took up positions around the door and hit the controls.
Nothing happened.
The hijackers must’ve locked down all the hatches, just in case they missed someone in the roundup. Perhaps he could do something about that. He probed the hatch and found it still had implant access. He triggered the hatch and it slid open.
The marines flowed inside, but Jared could already see that the lab was empty of human occupation.
That didn’t hold true for the corridor, however. A hatch thirty yards up the corridor slid open and a man in an engineering tech’s coveralls stepped into sight.
Jared found himself moving even before the man looked up in surprise. He couldn’t let the mutineer get off a warning or they were dead.
He reached the man just as he grabbed for the communicator on his belt. His shoulder caught the other man in the gut and sent them both sprawling to the deck. The man fumbled for his pistol and screamed for help.
That was bad. It meant there was someone else close by.
He found out just how close when another man came out of the compartment beside him and aimed a pistol right at Jared’s head.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
The drone showed Kelsey a truly impressive view of the pinnace screaming out of the sky like a massive bird of prey. It decelerated savagely above the lake and hovered. Her artificial musculature and powered armor gave her an advantage over her companions, but she still had trouble levering herself out of her restraints. The marines poured down the ramp and dropped into the water without the slightest hesitation. She gulped and jumped after them.
Kelsey expected to have a moment of panic as the water closed around her, but it never materialized. She sank into the dark water and only felt determination to do what she had to do. If Lieutenant Reese guessed correctly, they’d land a short distance away from the facility and advance on the bottom of the lake following the power and control cables.
Desperate to see what was around her, she leeched as much information as she could from the suit’s passive scanners. It was as if she was straining to hear a sound in a dark room. The only thing she sensed were the men around her. But even that was a revelation.
Somehow, her implants and combat suit combined to answer her desperate request for knowledge in a way she’d never imagined possible. For all intents and purposes, the commando armor ceased to exist. Oh, it was still there, but it now just seemed to be part of her body as far as her senses were concerned. She seemed to be drifting downward in the water with nothing inhibiting her senses. It was just like when she’d used Courageous’ scanners.
The marines’ suits were sending her information that they probably shouldn’t have been. She knew where every member of the assault party was located. It was like a little 3-D graphic in her mind. Little dots of light, all falling towards the bottom of the lake.
She knew which dot belonged to a specific marine, and that marine’s combat armor was sending her status information. Things like armor integrity, ammunition levels, and health of the marine. Probably the same sorts of things that Lieutenant Reese saw. Her suit had hacked the marine combat network.
And if it could do that with such incompatible equipment, she knew she’d be astonished what it could do with the other old Empire combat units. If she could ever figure out what her capabilities truly were.
She had a couple second’s warning that the ground was coming up before she landed. She expected the soft, sucking mud at the bottom to envelop her, but that never happened. She seemed to slow just before she touched the ground and hovered in the water.
The rest of the marines were not so lucky. They sank into the silt covered, muddy bottom up to their knees. She sent a questing thought into her armor and discovered that it had a very low power grav generator at the base of her spine. Yet one more unexpected capability.
While the marines sorted themselves out, she tried to determine the grav generator’s capability. She wasn’t an engineer, but it seemed to her that it probably existed to enhance jumping distance. It didn’t seem strong enough for sustained flight. Unless, of course, one was underwater.
She was going to have to spend some quality time with this armor and figure out all of its capabilities very soon. She couldn’t count on it producing a miracle when she needed it. She had to be able to plan ahead.
Talbot was close enough for her to follow as he moved towards the AI facility. Even if there had been light, she wouldn’t have been able to see him directly in the storm cloud of silt that the marines had sent into the water, but he’d insisted on securing a line between them.
The marines slowly advanced until Kelsey sensed a wall in front of her. Bright lights snapped on, coming from some of the marines already up against the facility. The visibility was crappy from her position, but Lieutenant Reese must’ve been able to see something.
His voice came over the general communications link. “We’ll go right. There has to be a way in. Keep an eye out for enemy units.”
Kelsey had taken the liberty of adding her implant codes to the drones, so she didn’t need to be on the pinnace to control them. She could sense one at the edge of her control envelope, so she ordered it to come down into the water. Surely, the Pale Ones knew they were there after the pinnace flew right over the lake. She might as well be able to see what they were attacking. She was cautious enough to keep it using passive scanners, though.
As the marines moved, Kelsey was able to come up beside the wall. It was made of dull, pitted metal. No rust, though. She turned her light on and played across the wall and then up. The way the wall curved as it went over her head made her wonder if this was more a dome than a building. That would make some sense underwater, she supposed.
But then shouldn’t the base that they were moving along also curve? It seemed to be moving in a straight line, as though the building was cigar shaped. She looked at the readings from the drone and she thought she knew what she was looking at.
She switched to the command channel. “Lieutenant Reese? I don’t think this is a building. It’s a ship.”
“What the hell would a ship be doing at the bottom of the lake?”
“I have no idea, but the drone is picking up passive data from all around us, and this is an old Empire battlecruiser, just like Courageous. I can see some of the same bulges as images I’ve seen of our ship. This one doesn’t look like it’s in one piece. Not really. There are some massive holes on the other side of the hull. Somebody shot the hell out of this thing.”
“You brought a drone down—” She could hear the irritation in his voice as he cut himself off. “I don’t know why I’m surprised. Well since you’ve done it, and they know we’re here now, are there any openings ahead of us?”
She closed her eyes and brought up a 3-D representation of the ship in her mind. “Yes. There’s another large opening about fifty meters ahead of the lead marine.”
They kept advancing until the opening came into view. It only took one look for her to realize that it had to be battle damage. Something very powerful had exploded just outside the ship. The jagged, fractured hull bent inward from the force. Unfortunately, for them, the breach was almost 20 meters above their heads.
“We’ll have to climb,” Lieutenant Reese said. “Alpha team, you have the lead.”
Apparently, the magnetic eq
uipment built into the marine armor was strong enough to support their weight at the bottom of a lake. The men scaled the hull and went inside. When the all clear came back, the remainder of the marines followed them up.
A quick check revealed that she also had magnetic equipment in her suit, but she decided to use the grav unit to float up.
Talbot looked over as she hovered next to him while he climbed. “Show-off.”
“You’re just jealous.”
“Maybe a little.”
They passed through the blown out portion of the ship until it intersected a corridor. As the marines moved through the dark water, their suit lights revealed a deck covered by a thin layer of silt. They kicked up small clouds as they moved forward and revealed things under it that she’d rather have not seen. Bones sheathed in graphene. Either commandos or Pale Ones.
She spotted a pharmacology unit in the muck, and strands of artificial muscle. Seeing the same kind of equipment that she had inside her just lying there made her shudder.
One of the location markers on the bulkhead told Kelsey they were on a lower deck, one used mainly for storage. She brought up the map of Courageous. The computer center was up and forward.
“I have directions,” Kelsey said on the command loop. “There’s a stairwell at the next intersection. If we go up five decks and then go forward, we’ll be in the computer center. There’s a good possibility that the AI is located there.”
“Good work, Princess.” Reese switched to the general channel. “Bravo team, lead the way up at the next intersection. Five decks and then forward. Keep a sharp eye out.”
They entered the stairwell and made their way up slowly. The odds of any equipment still working in this section of the ship had to be close to zero, but that would change at some point. The AI probably wasn’t underwater. That meant they’d find an environment suitable for Pale Ones before they reached the AI. That was the most dangerous part of the mission.
