“The fire’s too heavy,” the Corporal said, but Cooper turned to him.
“Then you go for a walk outside. I’ll go back on my own if I have too.”
With a sigh, the other NCO, a battered, old Lance-Corporal, said, “No, you won’t. Come on, lads, one more push.”
As the disheartened troopers pulled themselves together, reaching for their equipment, Cooper managed to muster a smile on his face as he looked them over.
“Just give me one more fight, and you and your wounded will be on your way back to one of the battlecruisers. Let’s break these bastards!”
He pushed out again, pulling out his rifle, and moved back out into the corridor, the troopers a long snake behind him, the Corporal at the end of it, obviously choosing to stay with his men. With a loud scream, Cooper pushed forward into a thicket of Cabal soldiers, firing a salvo of shots into them.
“Come on, men, who wants to live forever!”
For a heartbreaking second, he thought that he was on his own, but supporting fire came, and built, and the enemy troopers fell as the shots hit home. Pushing into the long corridor ahead, he could see his own forces moving in from three directions, Forrest’s barking orders echoing around for all to hear.
As the two platoons began to link up, the inevitable happened, and the Cabal forces broke, their troopers scattering in all directions like seeds from a flower, darting away faster than the Triplanetary forces could catch them up. Some of his men started to pursue, but he shook his head.
“Hold position!” he yelled. “They know the nooks and crannies better than we do. Sergeant, set up a defensive cordon between here and the communications station. Presumably Esposito will have that secured by now. Make it tight, and start getting the wounded back up the chain to the shuttles.”
“It’s not over, sir,” Forrest warned.
“I know,” Cooper replied. “But at least we’ve got them on the run.” He glanced ahead at a figure moving towards him, one he vaguely recognized. “You up there, you First Platoon?”
“Yes, sir,” the trooper replied. “First of the Seventh.”
“First of the Seventh,” Forrest said, his eyes widening. “Then…”
“We slammed into the attack on the airlocks ten minutes ago, Sergeant. Lieutenant-Major Brownworth sends her compliments, sir, and requests that you report to the communications station for an officer’s briefing right away.”
Shaking his head in disbelief, Cooper said, “I never thought I’d be happy to go to a meeting. Lead the way, Private, and Sergeant, take over down here.”
“Yes, sir,” the veteran beamed. “I guess we really have turned the tide.”
“It ebbs and flows, Sergeant,” Cooper said. “Stay alert.”
Chapter 23
Logan looked across at his sullen co-pilot and cracked a smile, asking, “Are you going to start talking to me again any time soon?”
Duquesne returned his glance and said, “You’re my commanding officer. That means I have to listen to you, but it doesn’t mean I have to make small talk with you.”
“Did you pick up this sparkling personality in medical school, or did you come by it naturally? Look, you’ve got a right to feel resentful, but I did what I did because it was necessary. She’ll be a hell of a lot safer on slow freight to Mars than she would have been locked up in that dodgy hotel room.”
“She was my patient.”
“She was my friend a hell of a lot longer than she was your patient, Doctor, and if you don’t think that I’m worried about her, then you aren’t a very good judge of character. I don’t know what we’re going to be doing for the next month or so, but I have a feeling that I’m going to have to throw us into harm’s way, and that means that Alamo needs a doctor on board, not randomly wandering around the Solar System.”
Shaking her head, she replied, “Perhaps you could consider not taking us into harm’s way.”
His face reddening, he said, “Why exactly did you join the Fleet in the first place, Doctor? What did you expect? We’re a military organization and that means that sometimes we’ve got to throw ourselves in front of a few bullets to stop them hitting the people we’re supposed to be protecting.” Looking back at his screen, he continued, “If a few people with more stars on their shoulder than brain cells in their head hadn’t forgotten that then we wouldn’t be in this mess in the first place.”
“What are you planning to do?” she asked, her voice softening almost imperceptibly.
“The President has ordered me to take Alamo out to Hades Station and stop the war, and that is what I intend to do.”
“And if the war has already started?”
“Then I will do everything in my power to stop it.” He smiled, and said, “I’m in the same business as you, really. My job is to save lives, though in my case that seems to mean putting my own in extreme hazard.”
She looked at him for a moment, then said, “Why did you join the Fleet? Seriously?”
Glancing down at his controls, he replied, “You really want to know?”
“The least you can do after everything you’ve put me through is to satisfy my curiosity.”
“When the war broke out, I was just a kid, a twenty-year-old idealist who wanted to save the world. I didn’t know then that they had me outnumbered. I’d been involved with the Freedom League, back before it began, so I was in at the ground floor. Unfortunately, I was stuck on Vesta during the Declaration.”
“Behind enemy territory until the Fleet took it. The first big victory of the war.”
He smiled, and replied, “That’s the story in the history books, anyway. My boss figured that we needed something for the military to cheer about; things were bad enough that first year.”
Frowning, she said, “What actually happened?”
“We took the place down from inside. Six of us – led by my old friend, the esteemed Fleet Captain Paine – sneaked into the old mine tunnels and started some creative acts of sabotage. By the time we’d finished, the place was wide open for an attack. They didn’t even seriously try to defend it.”
“So you joined Triplanetary Intelligence.”
He cracked a smile, and said, “Doctor, the four of us who got off that rock were Triplanetary Intelligence, at least back then. And despite periodic attempts to pension him off, old Paine keeps going back for another crack at the driving seat.”
“But you left, after the war.”
His smile faded, and he said, “I had my reasons, and I still think they were good ones.” He looked down at the uniform he was wearing, and said, “Wearing this uniform hurts, Doctor. I know exactly what it means, even if I don’t measure up.”
“You got promoted to Lieutenant-Captain.”
“Only because Paine wanted to force me back in after Spitfire.” Shaking his head, he replied, “That bastard could always lure me back in. This isn’t the first time, but I know damn well that it’ll be the last. I want this uniform off as soon as this mission is over. I’m getting a bad taste in my mouth.”
“Want me to run an examination on you?”
“That doctor-speak for a proposition?” he replied, smiling as her face erupted in a scowl. “Let me concentrate, I’ve got flying stuff to do for a while. Alamo beckons, and I have to get back into character again. Maybe I can at least convince the crew that I’m a starship captain.”
He settled back at the controls, then flicked a switch on his panel, “This is Shuttle Two, requesting permission to dock.” A long pause followed, and he said, “This is Captain Winter. Reply at once.”
“Captain, this is Acting Captain Watson. By direct Presidential order, I have assumed command of Alamo as of two hours ago. You will not be permitted to dock with this ship; all communications have been isolated. Report to Carter Station for reassignment.”
Looking up at Duquesne, he said, “Reassign
ment to a holding cell, damn it.” Turning back to the panel, he said, “I want to see a copy of those orders, Watson.”
“You can check out all the paperwork you want at Carter, Captain. I’ve got a lot of work to do getting this ship ready for action. Alamo out.”
“Now what?” Duquesne said, as Logan corrected the shuttle’s course to bring it to station-keeping. “We’re stuck out here unless someone opens the docking ports.”
Logan was already pulling out a communicator, saying, “Logan to Harper. Come in, please.” There was a pause, and he said, “Logan to Harper. Come in.” He looked up, and said, “Best guess that she’s in Alamo’s brig. Watson must have been smarter than I thought; I should have known better than to underestimate him.”
“Do we head back to Carter? Try and make contact with your friends in the Lunar Republic again?”
“We’ve had to tell them too much already about what’s going on around here for my liking. The last thing I want to give them is advice on how to steal one of our capital ships; we’re flirting close enough to treason already.”
“Then get another ship. A freighter, something like that.”
“Are you a millionaire? Doing all this for fun? I haven’t got the funds to hire a ship, and I don’t have access to any intelligence assets at the moment.” He gestured up at Alamo, floating serenely in space, and said, “There’s a perfectly good ship up there that I can use. I’ve just got to get on board.” Glancing at his panel, he said, “They’ve locked me out quite effectively, but I can take control of the ship from any command station.”
“Like the one in sickbay?” Duquesne replied.
“Yes,” Logan said, looking at her sideways. “What do you have in mind?”
“I know a way on board, but you aren’t going to like it.”
“I don’t like the situation much now. What is it?”
“The casualty-chute from sickbay. It’s isolated from all the primary systems, and it runs all the way from the outer hull right into my examination room.”
“Wait a minute,” Logan said. “There’s an access point to the ship that is independent of the security monitoring? How the hell did that happen?”
“Technically it isn’t exactly an access point.”
“What do you mean?” he replied, his face falling.
“The chute is essentially a low-powered cannon using compressed air. The idea is to send bodies away from the ship, remember. In circumstances that do not permit a proper burial – death from plague, that sort of thing. I’m also not sure that you could get up it wearing a spacesuit.”
“I don’t like where this is going one bit. You’re telling me that I have to climb up a, what, quarter-mile shaft…”
“A little more than that.”
“Wearing no suit, and knowing that someone could touch a button and send me out to meet my maker.”
“Not so bad as that, Logan. I think we can fix it so that the rear hatch will be locked.”
Nodding, he replied, “Being smeared against the outer hull will be a much faster way to die than exposure to vacuum. Speaking as the potential smearee, I approve.” Glancing up at the ship, he said, “I can float across in a rescue ball, turn the pressure down low enough to get in, while you lock down the hatch. One it’s sealed and pressurized, I get out of the ball and start to climb.”
“I should go. I know the system.”
“But I have the, er, special command codes that are going to be needed to make the plan work, and we certainly can’t both go.”
“It was my idea.”
Looking across at her with a smile, he said, “And if it all goes wrong, then I’m going to be in need of serious medical attention.”
“You’ll need a priest.”
“That’s what I like about you, Doctor. Your optimism.”
“There’s just one problem,” she replied. “How are we going to get to the shaft without being seen? By now Watson will have every sensor on Alamo trained on this shuttle.”
Nodding, Logan tapped a series of controls, and the shuttle spun on its thrusters, the engine firing to take it back towards Carter Station. “And as far as he is concerned, we’re going back there now to complain.”
She frowned again, then said, “We are going back there.”
“We’re not staying on this course.” He called up the sensor display and tapped the screen, his finger pressing against a large contact, “Watson said that he was getting the ship ready to move out. That’s excellent news, we can use that.”
“That’s a tanker.”
“A nice, big ship. Good Callistan design; they like to refuel a ship in one flight rather than lots of smaller trips with little rinky-dink shuttles. Plenty of space to hide.”
“Won’t the tanker notice us sneak on board?”
“Who said anything about sneaking on board?” he replied, setting up a course. The engine fired again, slewing them around towards the tanker, on a trajectory that would still take them to Carter Station, if a few moments longer than the optimum. Hopefully sufficient that no-one on the bridge would notice. If the right person was sitting in the Watch Officer’s station, he could almost guarantee that no-one would see what he was doing.
Letting the ship fly itself for a moment, he pulled out a keyboard and started to type, a smile running over his face as he saw the last-generation security package on the tanker.
“They really need to upgrade these systems. Remind me to send something to Security. Later.”
“You’re hacking into the sensors,” she said, nodding.
“I might not be at Harper’s level, at least, not any more, but you’d be surprised how essential this skill is in my line of work.”
She smiled, then said, “Back on Vesta, what did you do before the war?”
“Computer systems fraud. I was trading prospecting information to rival mining companies.” He shrugged, and said, “Everyone was doing it at the time. Most of the money went to the Underground.” Pausing for a moment, he looked up at the stars, and said, “Everything was a hell of a lot easier back then.”
“Looks like you’re in,” she said, gesturing at the display.
“Good,” he replied. “Now all I have to do is tell the tanker’s sensors that we’re on our way back to Carter Station, match courses, and wait for about six hours.” He leaned forward over his controls, then looked across, “You could transfer over to the tanker, you know.”
“It’s automated.”
“But there are facilities for a couple of passengers, personnel transfer. You’d be back on Carter Station in eighteen hours. By then everything will be long over on Alamo and you can tell the authorities any story you like.”
“Don’t be stupid,” she replied. “All of my stuff is on Alamo.”
“As long as you know you have the choice.”
Shaking her head, she said, “No, I don’t. As you said, you’re going to need a doctor. Just promise me one thing.”
“What?”
“A boring trip.”
“I’m not sure that I can do that, but I think I can manage an interesting one.”
Chapter 24
The six monitors displayed six different news programs, and all of them were showing images of Orlova, various poses taken over the last few years – an old shot of her in her days as a freelance shuttle pilot, pictures taken by Fleet Public Relations after she returned from the Ragnarok mission, then from Jefferson, then the latest taken the morning before she reported from Staff College, standing proud in her uniform with fresh rank insignia.
“I see you get all the publicity,” Nelyubov said as he walked into the room. “I guess they don’t have any decent shots of me.”
“Want me to call one of the newscasters and tell them that you were my evil sidekick?”
“I think I can do without that.” He sat down opp
osite her, and slid a datapad across the desk, “You need to see this.”
She glanced down, nodded, and said, “He’d expected to be captured. I’m surprised they aren’t making more of it, though.”
“Still confidential. I think we still have a few friends in low places; one of them passed it to me. It’s official, though.” He leaned back and said, “Your father’s on his way to maximum security on Deimos, presumably solitary confinement. They won’t do anything more to him.”
“I know,” she replied. “No trial, nothing. They’ll stall until after the election.” With a thin smile, she said, “And then probably put him on the first transport back to Jefferson with a suggestion that he keeps his head down and leaves it there.”
“He wanted to go back home anyway.”
“Not in disgrace, Frank,” she said, standing up and waving at the monitors. “All of this…”
“They’ve been fed a good story by some professional leakers.” Looking up at a gray-haired man silently mumbling, he said, “We’ve got a much better one, complete with documentary proof. One call and we’d bring the house down.”
She shook her head, and said, “That’s the problem. We’d bring it all tumbling down, and probably end up at war to boot. With our civil and military administration fighting each other, how well do you think we’d hold off against the Cabal? I’d almost be willing to imagine that they wanted this to happen, that they engineered this, but that’s giving them a level of competence I can’t credit them with. We’re quite crazy enough to do this to ourselves.”
“It’s fear, Maggie. I’ve been out there, looking at a few faces, and they don’t know what’s waiting out there in the dark. Hell, I don’t, but at least I can guess. Alamo comes back from its mission with news that a shadowy empire is out there plotting our doom, and with a string of military successes strong enough to convince the hawks that we could win a war.” He sighed, and said, “Scared people want to strike back, to persuade themselves that they are strong by fighting.”
Battlecruiser Alamo: Take and Hold Page 20
