“Pick up the caller, Seafort. Do it now.”
I shoved Pyle. “Get us past the bloody hatch!”
He keyed the bridge. “Midshipman Pyle, sir. Please open the section nine hatch so I can go below.” He listened. “Thank you.”
The hatch slid open.
I growled, “Where’s the laser room?”
“At the far end of the section.” Just past the corridor bend. “Sir, who’s with us? How many Marines do you—”
Pyle had helped us; I saw no reason to distrust him. “None.”
He gaped. “But they attacked with lasers. Whom did you bring?”
My smile was grim. “A few friends.” In his ill-fitting middy uniform, Jared flushed with pride.
“Two minutes, Seafort.”
“Pyle, run ahead to the laser room. Report back.”
“Aye aye, sir.” He dashed off.
If we held the laser room, we had a chance. With the engine room to power the lasers, we could counteract the threat from Earthport and Lunapolis. As much as I dreaded civil war, I wouldn’t allow civilians on Earth to be bombed.
In a moment Pyle was back. “We—I mean Captain Stanger—has the laser room blockaded. Lieutenant Garrow is in charge. There’s no sign of your joeys. Are they inside?”
They must be, if Stanger had the compartment under siege.
I spotted a caller by a hatch panel, keyed it to the laser room.
A cool voice. “Lieutenant Sanders.”
“Hon?”
“Nick! I mean, Captain.”
“Sanders?” It was no time to ask, but I wondered why she’d used her unmarried name.
“It’s how I was known in the Service.” Calm, but with a bite. She must think me glitched, for bringing it up at this juncture.
“Very well. Your situation?”
“Fifteen of us. We burned through the hatch. I had Fahren re-seal the door by laser-welding it. It won’t hold long.”
“The laser techs?”
“Bound and under watch, sir.”
“The rest of your squad?”
“Three killed. The others went with Bevin and Anselm as a rear guard.”
“One minute left, Seafort. I have every right to execute them, and I will.”
“And Derek?”
She said, “He’s with us.”
“Target Earthport Naval Station and the Naval warrens in Lunapolis. Open fire if you don’t hear from me within an hour.” My words came fast. “Defend the laser room, but surrender before you’re killed.”
“Aye aye, sir.” A hesitation. “I believe that decision belongs to the commander on the scene.”
“Obey orders, Lieutenant.” I wouldn’t let her sacrifice herself for naught.
“Aye aye, sir.”
“Pyle, take these middies back to the wardroom, flank. Stay there until I call or come for you.”
“But, sir—”
“Four demerits!” I was out of time. Deflated, Pyle led Jared and Mikhael back to the wardroom. As they ran off I keyed the caller. “Captain Seafort to bridge.”
A voice I didn’t know. “Just a moment, sir, for the Captain.”
Stanger. “Ah, there you are. Your cadet was a tad worried.”
“You are relieved.”
“Goofjuice. I have the support of the Senate, of SecGen Valera, of the Patriarchy.”
“I am head of Lord God’s Government.”
“It’s debatable. Valera’s nullified your proclamation. U.N.A.F.’s falling in line. You’ll be impeached in a few hours. Just a moment. Mr. Garrow, Seafort’s at the section eight corridor hatch. Seize him.”
“Take warning! Harm my cadet and I’ll hang you myself. I swear to Lord God!” I slammed down the caller.
No time. No place to run. The hatch behind me was closed. I blundered to the nearest compartment. It was locked. The next.
It was the lift. I hammered at the call button. A light blinked.
Around the bend, voices. Garrow’s patrol was coming for me.
Slowly, the hatch slid open. I staggered in, slapped the hatch panel.
The hatch began to slide. A shower of sparks, a searing burst of heat as someone fired a laser. Screaming, I lurched aside, slammed the first Level indicator I saw. The smoking hatch shut. The lift dropped.
Level 2. We plummeted downward. My eyes bulged. Level 3. Desperately, I hung on to my canes, as the full weight of Terra descended onto me.
Level 6. Somehow, I was still standing. Inch by inch, I dragged myself along the corridor. The pain was beyond belief. My legs were virtually useless; I doubted I could stand unaided.
The engine room was at the end of section nine. I’d blocked the lift hatch with my jacket, all I could manage. Stanger’s crew would have to use the ladder in section seven. It gained me a few moments.
I dragged myself toward the engine room.
The corridor speaker came to life. “Please, Mr. Seafort! Oh, God, please answer!” Danil Bevin, near tears. “I’m begging you!”
I tried not to retch. Minutes passed into hours, into days. I felt a sickly pallor. Sweating, faint, I moved at a snail’s pace.
The engine-room hatch was ajar. I worked my way through. Two ratings stood by their panels.
“STAND AT ATTENTION!” I’d intended my tone to be harsh, but the haze of agony made it something more. They leaped to their feet. “Where’s Chief McAndrews?”
“In the brig, sir.” One of the sailors broke position to wipe his brow. I didn’t blame him; I wanted to do the same, but didn’t dare let go of a cane.
“Where are the gravitron controls?”
“In the electronics compartment, sir.”
“Show me.”
Nervously, he led the way.
Three series of boxes, with cables snaking from one to another. Chief McAndrews had said he couldn’t adjust the controls.
Very well.
“A torch! Move, damn you!” I made an effort to control my voice, but my spine wouldn’t have it. The rating ran to a locker, returned with a cutting unit. “That panel. Melt through the lid.”
“Sir, I can’t damage a gravitron, the Captain will—”
I shrieked, “I’ll hang you! Do it this very second! I’m in command!”
It was too much for him. He aimed the torch. In a moment, the panel glowed. Alarms wailed. Lights blinked urgently. At last, the cover melted through. I had him play the flame on the circuitry within. A shower of sparks. He flinched, but they subsided harmlessly.
“Now the next.” One by one, I had him melt through the panels. The alarms redoubled.
Suddenly, the pressure on my spine lessened. In a moment, it was gone. I pushed down on my canes, floated off the deck. Thank You, Lord. I couldn’t have lasted much longer.
A horrid mess I’d left the Chief, but it could be repaired. If I’d damaged the gravitrons themselves, a lifetime of pay wouldn’t reimburse the cost.
The engine-room console caught my eye. I pushed off from a bulkhead, snagged it. Wrapping an arm around the chair, I keyed in my ID code. “Baron!”
“Puter responding. Voicerec of Captain Seafort.”
“Erase the frozen copy of the Log I told you to show the bridge. Substitute the real Log.” Stanger knew I was aboard, and what I was up to. No need to hide it. “And while you’re at it, disable bridge communication with—”
“There he is!” I glanced to the corridor. Hatches were open for as far as I could see. A squad of angry sailors worked their way from handhold to handhold toward the engine room.
“Bridge communication cannot be disabled. I’m hardwired to allow—”
I pushed off with my canes toward the hatch. I made it through, ricocheted from bulkhead to deck to overhead, until I got the hang of it. Then I moved with surprising speed.
Zero gee narrowed the odds. Now all I had to contend with was Stanger’s vast numbers, against my one.
Section ten. I caromed off a bulkhead, straightened my course. The canes were actually rather an
advantage; I didn’t have to be close to a surface to make headway.
Section eleven.
One sailor was more adept at zero gee than the rest. Slowly he gained on me, brandishing a stunner.
Section twelve. The west ladder. Like a mutant spider, I kicked and clawed my way. The sailor was breathing down my back.
He launched himself from a handhold. I stabbed with the cane, just touched a bulkhead, floated aside. As he passed I elbowed him viciously in the face. He bounced off the bulkhead, floated unmoving. I tugged the stunner from his unresisting hand, set the safety, shoved it in my belt.
Pulling myself up the ladder rail, I worked my way up to Level 5. Passengers blocked the top of the stairs, drifting helplessly, calling for help. Why the devil weren’t they in their cabins? Even Stanger had ordered them out of the way.
Ignoring their pleas, their questions, I shoved them aside in growing fury. When the way was clear I swam upward to Level 4.
Half a dozen sailors with billies clung to the top of the rail. I tucked my canes under my arm, launched myself at them, leading with my stunner. Two came at me; the rest scattered.
I caught one in the forehead. A galvanized flop, and he floated past, inert. I’d killed him. Stunners were meant for the body, not the brain.
The second joey swung his club in a whistling arc. Lack of gravity weakened the blow. The recoil drove him upward with the same force it drove me down.
It was enough to numb my shoulder. I flipped the stunner to my left hand, kicked off the bulkhead. In midair, he was unable to escape. I left him twitching.
My way was clear. Upward, to three. The pain was returning, despite zero gee. I tried not to use my feet to propel myself, but it made the going slower.
The rasp of breath, over the speakers. “Lieutenant Sanders to Captain Seafort. We’ve broken out.”
Bless you, love. You saw a chance, and took it. The ship must be in chaos. Sailors were given zero-gee drills, but not that many. On the other hand, lasers fired just as well regardless of gees. Clever of you to announce your move over the speaker. No doubt Stanger already knew you’d fought free, so you used the opportunity to tell me as well.
Where would she head?
The galley. Level 2. Just what I had in mind.
The dining hall was brightly lit. I kicked off with my canes, floated through the hatch.
“Get him!” Figures moved. I was pinned in a crossfire, if they chose to shoot.
“BELAY THAT!” Arlene’s voice was a scream. “Hold!” She showed herself from behind a pillar. “Captain!”
For her sake, I couldn’t say what I yearned to. “Lieutenant.” I tried to make my nod casual. “How many left?”
“Eleven, sir.” Her eyes never left mine.
“Did you disable the lasers?”
“No, I thought you might need them against Earthport Naval Base.”
A terrible error, but no time to say so. “Send a squad to force the brig. It’s around the corridor bend. They’ll have it guarded. Free Chief McAndrews.”
“Aye aye, sir.” No questions. Just an officer, doing her duty. “You, Tyrol. Bennett. Peng. Fall in.” They couldn’t do it literally, in zero gee, but they pushed forward, toward the hatch. All were armed with lasers.
She took them outside. “We’ll go handhold by handhold to that cabin.” She pointed. “Then we’ll launch across the corridor to the far bulkhead. We’ll have a view of the brig. Fire when you have a target. No sounds.”
“Aye aye, ma’am.”
Within the dining hall, we waited.
Shrieks, from the corridor. The crackle of lasers. Minutes later, Arlene kicked through the hatch. “Lieutenant Sanders reporting, sir. Two down.” She sounded shaken. “We took the brig. They only had four guarding it. They’re dead.”
Behind her, the bulky form of the Chief. His face was battered. “Sorry, sir. The engine room has too many hatches.” He’d been overwhelmed.
“Arlene, you took three men.”
“Peng is coming.” Four sailors appeared in the hatch. One was Peng, his laser aimed. “These joeys say they’re with you, sir.”
“Mr. Tobrok.” My face lit. Two ratings trailed the master-at-arms.
“We never had a chance. They were waiting at the comm room with lasers.”
“I understand.” For Comm Specialist Panner, there’d be a reckoning. To Arlene, “Can we hold either the engine room or the laser room?”
“Not the laser room. The hatch is useless.”
“Pardon, sir.” McAndrews. “In my stores I have plates to reinforce the hatch, and all the tools you’d need. But I doubt we could get to them.”
“Why not?”
His bruised face brightened. “You took out the gravitrons, didn’t you? Stanger will want them on-line, flank. Lord knows how many joeys he’s got working down there.”
“He won’t get them on-line from the engine room.”
“That bad?”
I nodded.
“He’ll bypass the controls, then. Activate the direct power lines. Still, I imagine he’ll post guards at my hatches so we can’t make more trouble.”
“Arlene—Lieutenant Sanders can take them out.”
“Not forever, sir.” She looked glum. “I lose men each time, and we don’t have many.”
“Sir.” Derek Carr.
I turned to him. “You’re alive.”
“More or less.” His knee was soaked with blood. “May I ask the plan?”
I closed my eyes, savoring the sour taste of defeat. “Evacuation.” Stanger was too strong, too organized.
“How?”
“We’ll seize a launch.” One of the four launch bays was reached from Level 1, where Jared, Philip, and Mikhael hid in the wardroom.
“Just a moment.”
I bridled. Chief McAndrews knew better than to talk to a Captain so, even in a crisis. Especially in a crisis.
“You’ll let him steal the ship?” He rubbed his swollen face. “And take my engine room?”
I said, “Have we a choice?”
“What’s changed since you came aboard?”
Derek said quietly, “It was hopeless from the start. Why give up now?”
“Be silent, Lieutenant.” A gallant, futile charge was a noble idea, but I wouldn’t see Philip killed to no purpose. Or my wife.
“Sir, may I speak?” Arlene.
“Yes.”
“Galactic is the key. It’s the only ship taking part in the rebellion. Her lasers can devastate North America and Europe, or they could—”
“I know that.”
“Pardon, please let me finish. Or they could be turned on Earthport and quell the mutiny. If we lose Galactic, we lose our U.N. Government. Stanger’s ilk will take over. If they do, the enviro cause is finished. There’ll be a Naval dictatorship, in fact if not in name. The Patriarchs will eliminate the last freedom of relig—”
“So?”
“Would you the to prevent it?”
I said, “Yes.”
She took a deep breath. “So would I.”
One can’t pace in zero gee. I flailed at nothing, until I drifted up to the overhead, and deflected myself. “I’d give my life to defeat Stanger. But I don’t want to die in a useless gesture. I’m out of ideas.”
“Get me into my engine room.” McAndrews. “I’ll find you torches to cut through the bridge hatch. The big ones, with the power cables.”
“Four Levels down, then we’d have to fight our way back up. And Stanger won’t sit idly while we burn our way into the bridge.”
Arlene glowered. “Damn it, sir, it’s better than nothing!”
“That’s quite enough, Lieutenant Sanders!” She fell silent. At that moment, I didn’t think either of us remembered she was my wife.
Master-at-arms Tobrok said, “Captain, there’s a way to—look out!” He hurled me aside. I sailed across the dining hall. So did he, the opposite direction. I fetched up against the far bulkhead.
“Thank Go
d I found you.” It was a hoarse whisper. Midshipman Edwin Speke. “May I come in?” He pushed off from a bulkhead, snagged a chair, wrapped his legs around it.
“Where the hell have you been?” I was past niceties.
“Hiding.” He blushed beet red. “It happened so fast. Outside the laser room they came on us from the rear, and took the cadets and Jensen. Hickley was shot, and the other joey. I ducked into the purser’s cabin before they saw me. They had lasers and I didn’t.” He took breath. “Then you were gone from the galley. I was afraid Captain Stanger knew I’d gone over to you, so I couldn’t ... A look of mute appeal. I’m sorry.”
“Very well, you’re back. Any weapons?”
“Just the billy club.”
Before we raided the brig Arlene had eleven men, but she’d lost two. I’d joined her, and now the middy. And we had Tobrok’s squad. Philip, Jared, and Mikhael made eighteen, if we could reach them. Nineteen, with Midshipman Pyle.
“Very well. The wardroom, to get P.T. and Jared, then we’ll attack the engine room. Get organized.”
“Sir?”
“Not now, Derek.” A foray onto Level 1 would be risky. Should I send the whole party, or only a few. If—
“Sir!” Hands on hips, he floated just off the deck. His blazing eyes scorched any humor from the situation. “You will listen!”
“What, then?” I’d deal with his insubordination later.
“Doesn’t the wardroom have a caller?”
I opened my mouth to reply, found nothing to say. I gawped like a fish. “Well. Yes. Um.” My ears burned. “Arlene, give them a call. Have whatshisname, the real middy ... Pyle. Have him check the corridor. If it’s safe, send them down. Meet them at the ladder.”
“The real middy?”
“It’s a long story. Go.”
She kicked off to the galley caller.
The east ladder was unguarded. Stanger couldn’t think of everything.
Finally, we were together again. I embraced Philip, then Mikhael. Jared seemed a natural third. I drew the line at Pyle.
The middy looked about. “Pardon, sir, is this all of us?”
“Yes.”
He gazed from one to the other. “You attacked Galactic, half wrecked her, with ... civilians?” He shook his head in wonder.
We girded ourselves to assault the engine room.
Arlene distributed our remaining lasers among us. We had few recharge packs, just those we’d salvaged from the enemy. Cautiously, we made our way along deserted corridors. The emergency corridor hatches were open; apparently zero gee and closed hatches were too difficult a combination for Stanger’s untrained crew.
Patriarch's Hope (The Seafort Saga Book 6) Page 37
