“That’s crazy.”
“Not to the boys back home, perhaps.”
“We can pull out,” Caine said. “Our troops are in a better position now to evacuate…”
“And tell them what?” Marshall replied, almost shouting. “Sorry about all of this, but it looks like we’ve made a bit of a mistake and sent you to the wrong place. I know you had a ten percent fatality rate and a forty-one percent casualty rate, but shall we let bygones be bygones?”
“If this was done against orders…”
Looking back at Cunningham, Marshall said, “We don’t know that, not for sure, and we’ve paid a pretty damn high price to take that rock. The brass might not have any strategic plan for using it, but that doesn’t mean we can’t use it.”
“So we’ve taken it and we’re going to keep it, no matter what anyone else might say?”
“I don’t think we have a choice.”
“Danny,” Caine said, “we have all the choice in the world. Contact the enemy fleet commander and request a ceasefire while we pull our people out of there. We both know that he’d agree.”
“We probably could do that,” Marshall replied, “but that isn’t what we’re going to do.”
Nodding, Cunningham said, “Suppose this is some sort of secret assignment? Then what?”
“So we’re just going to sit here and wait, then,” she replied, shaking her head. “We’re going to hang around and watch that fleet coming in, knowing that we’ll be fighting a battle that isn’t necessary, one that we aren’t under any obligation to fight. Just play the good soldier and obey orders, even when we don’t know where those orders come from.”
“Technically, that doesn’t matter,” Cunningham said. “Our orders come from the Task Force Commander, who last time I checked was also running Deep Space Operations. Where he got those orders from is none of our business.”
“Like hell it isn’t,” Caine shouted.
“Stop it! Both of you!” Marshall said, looking at each of them. With an effort, he lowered his voice, and said, “A hell of a lot of things about this mission stink, but we’re in too deep to just pull out now. Even if we did get some sort of assurance, I’m not sure I’d be willing to trust it, not with men deep in the asteroid.”
“Then…”
“Just because I think there is something going on does not give me grounds to desert! This fleet is here to do a job, and that is exactly what we’re going to do. Period. After we’ve had the battle then, and only then, can we start to try and delve into why we are out here.”
Nodding, Cunningham said, “First things first.”
“We’ve got a battle to win tonight,” he said. “Don’t misunderstand me for a second. I will get an accounting of what we’re doing out here, if I have to launch a full-scale assault on the Admiralty to get it, but this is not the time nor the place for that to happen.”
“And if we’re doing the wrong thing? If by our actions we have precipitated a war?”
With a thin smile, Marshall said, “Hell, if this is as bad as you think, we just launched an unprovoked attack on an installation deep behind the lines in peacetime, killing dozens of Cabal military personnel. I’m about to double-down on that, yes, but I think the damage has been done already, don’t you?”
“What about the damage to us, to our people? This isn’t what they signed up for.”
Shaking his head, Marshall replied, “No. But this is what we signed up for when we took senior commissions. We have the luxury, and the burden, of knowing what is behind the orders we have to make others carry out. That’s part of the price we have the pay.”
“And if they turn out to have been illegal orders?” Caine said.
After a long pause, Marshall replied, “Then whoever was responsible will pay the price for what they have done. No matter who it is, no matter where they might be hiding. That’s a promise, to you and the people who are going to die today. On both sides.”
Chapter 26
Logan drifted in the airlock, floating in the protective cocoon of the rescue ball, waiting for Duquesne to give him the signal that he was ready to go. He experimentally stretched his arms, trying to establish what agility he would have in the suit, and sent himself slamming up against a wall. Standing around in a floating bag didn’t give him much in the way of control; if the doctor up in the flight deck got this wrong, he’d end up drifting away, praying for anyone with a shuttle who decided that he was a loose end that needed tying off.
“Almost there,” a voice echoed over the speaker. This would have been a lot easier if he had someone working things from the other side, from up on the bridge, but there was no sign of any help. Either they didn’t know that he was out here, or Ryder, Quinn and Harper had all been arrested, or worse. He shook his head, trying to dismiss the thoughts, but struggled. He’d put them in jeopardy, and they didn’t even know why he was doing it. He wasn't even sure himself.
With a loud clang, the shuttle knocked against the hull, and the airlock doors slammed open, firing him towards Alamo’s hull like a bullet from a gun. He slid into the casualty chute almost before he knew what had happened, slamming from one wall to another as he struggled to regain some sort of control, tumbling in the ball. Below, the hatch closed, and a series of green lights flashed on, the outside filling up with air once again.
He wriggled out of the rescue ball, letting it drop away, and managed to catch hold of the ladder before he fell too far. Now it was just a question of climbing up to sickbay; he looked up the shaft and couldn’t see the top. The bottom was worryingly close, and he started to pull himself up a rail at a time, cursing the year he’d spent sapping his muscles on Spitfire Station once again. Onward he climbed, unwilling to risk taking a break for fear that someone would come and look at what had happened. The casualty chute wasn’t exactly a critical system, but that didn’t mean the malfunction wouldn’t be registered.
Oddly, his nerves provided a distraction from the growing ache he felt in his arms as he continued to pull himself up, on and on. Anything could be happening outside; Duquesne’s shuttle was likely to be detected at any moment, and that would give the game away, though he was willing to bet that she wouldn’t talk willingly. If at all. With a little luck, her argumentative nature might buy him the time he needed to pull off this crazy stunt.
He passed an inspection hatch, longing to enter, but that would take him down into the engineering levels, surrounded by technicians working on the ship. He needed to find a quiet place, and without her doctor on board, Alamo’s sickbay qualified. It wouldn’t be much further. Just another hundred rungs or so.
When he finally reached the correct hatch, he tapped in his command access code and was slightly surprised to find it still working, sliding through and dropping onto the floor of the examination room panting and out of breath. No-one was around; the room was dark, and he gratefully helped himself to a long drink of water from one of the dispensers, wiping his brow with his civilian jacket. He looked down at himself and laughed; he didn’t look much like a ship’s commanding officer reporting back on board. He looked more like a pirate, though there was a certain degree of accuracy to that.
After giving himself a few moments to recover, he made his way to a nearby terminal, and entered his access code again, going back over the recent entries to the Captain’s log. It didn’t take him long to find what he was looking for; Lieutenant Ryder was confined to quarters, Quinn restricted to his duty station, and Harper in close confinement down in the brig. He pondered for a moment, but Harper was the best qualified to help him take back the ship.
It had always seemed incongruous to have an armory locker, no matter how small, in a sickbay, but Logan was grateful for it now, pulling out a gunbelt and strapping it around his waist, pulling his jacket down to cover it. He reached into one of the lockers and pulled out a box, carefully removing four hypodermic packages and
placing them in a pocket; enough to knock out the guards he was expecting to find.
“Now hear this,” Watson’s voice echoed. “We will be leaving Sol System in one hour. Anyone who is staying behind should clear the ship immediately.”
No mention of prisoner transfer, and there was nothing in the log. He was taking his captive officers with him, no doubt concerned about what they might say. Nevertheless, that ruled out any chance that he was going to be allowed to sneak through the ship and rescue his people, complete his mission the sensible way.
Instead, he stepped out into the corridor as though he owned the ship and walked into an elevator, stepping past a technician who did a double-take as he saw him, staring at his disheveled outfit.
“Relax, kid,” he said. “Just a quick tour of inspection. Carry on with whatever it was you were doing.”
“Yes, sir,” he replied, turning back to his work with a last glance at Logan. He stepped into the elevator, tapping in an override code to send it heading down to the brig without alerting anyone else about its destination. He smiled as the computer accepted the code, then pulled one of the syringes out of his pocket, breaking the seal and palming it. All of this was going far too easily for his liking, and assuming incompetence was usually a good way to get killed.
He stood by the side of the door, waiting for it to open, and the guard fell for the trick, stepping into the elevator and giving him a short window to slam the hypodermic into his neck, clamping his hand over his mouth. Gently easing the guard to the floor, he stepped out into the corridor with his pistol in his hand, pointing it at the other remaining guard.
“What the hell is going on?” the unfamiliar man said.
“None of this is your fault, I know, but I need you to open the door right now,” Logan replied.
“Or what? You’ll splatter my brains all over the deck?”
“No, I’ll knock you out and leave you with your friend in a compromising position for the mockery of all of your fellow crewmen.” He sighed, and said, “This is a legal order, believe it or not, and I’m going to have that door open anyway. Do you really want the headache to beat them all when you wake up?”
Looking at the gun, the guard nodded and tapped a code into the door. Harper stepped out, walking by his side, and looked at Logan with a smile spreading across your face.
“It took you long enough to get here.”
“Yeah, I must be getting old.” Gesturing to the guard, he said, “There’s an escape pod just up the corridor. Take your friend and bail out. Trust me, you’re only getting a head-start on the rest of the ship.”
Moving the now-snoring guard out of the elevator, he ushered Harper in after him; she relieved the guard of his communicator on her way to him. He took it from her and set it to an internal frequency, another gimmick he had managed to set up in his short time in command.
“Ryder, this is Logan. We’re on a secure line, reply at once.”
“Logan, what the hell are you doing?” She sighed, then said, “He got an order from the Acting President to take command of the ship. There wasn’t anything I could do about it. I managed to stall him until yesterday.”
“And your job right now?”
“Awaiting transfer once Alamo has completed its mission. Whatever the hell that is, I haven’t been told. Most of the crew don’t know either.” She paused, then said, “I got all of our key people back, but we’ve filled up with newcomers.”
“Right. Use this frequency and contact all the key people, and I mean all of them, and tell them that regardless of what happens in the next five minutes, they are to make for their duty stations. Then report to the bridge, you and Quinn. Got that.”
“What are you going to do?”
“You’ll find out in about sixty seconds. Move.”
Harper smiled, then said, “We’re about to do something ridiculously crazy, aren’t we.”
“I don’t have time to do this the easy way.” The door slid open one level down from the bridge, and they stepped out into an empty deck. Gesturing at a wall console, he said, “Sound a decompression alarm on the bridge, please.”
She shrugged, and said, “No problem,” walking over to the panel. It took her suspiciously little time to activate the controls and log into the system, proof enough that she’d installed her own backdoors, and Logan could hear the faint signs of alarms coming from the ceiling. Not content with that warning, she flicked over to the life support system.
“What are you doing?”
“Show, don’t tell,” she replied, continuing to type. “I’m turning down the pressure by one-third in staged drops. Not enough to do anything other than give them trouble breathing, but it adds to the effect, I think.”
“A perfectionist at work. Throw up a camera feed.”
She tapped a button, and a viewscreen flickered into life; Watson did cut a dashing figure as he got his crew out of the bridge and into the elevator, taking a look around and shaking his head, the last man to leave.
“Where do you want me to send them, boss?”
He looked at Harper, and said, “Somewhere out of the way. You’re getting good at anticipating. Mark of a good officer.”
“Maybe you’re beginning to get a little obvious,” she replied. “Shall we go?”
Nodding, Logan pulled open a maintenance hatch and started to climb, easily moving the twenty-five rungs up to the bridge. At the top, the door was stuck; it took a barge with his shoulder to open it, and he tumbled in underneath the Flight Engineering station, gasping for breath.
“Get the air turned back up,” he said to Harper, as he walked over to the command chair, tapping a control on the side to bring up a series of telltales. With a growing smile on his face, he entered a series of commands, and flashing warning lights began to run across the status boards, spreading across the ship like a virus.
The elevator doors opened and Ryder ran out onto the bridge, panic on her face as she looked at the control systems. She looked across at Logan, baffled by his calm.
“What the hell is happening?”
“Looks like complete structural failure is imminent according to these readouts. You’d better get the crew to the escape pods right away.” He paused for a second, then continued, “Except, of course, for the ones we want to stay.”
Shaking her head, she walked over to the communications station and tapped a control, saying, “This is the Executive Officer. All hands abandon ship. I repeat, abandon ship. This does not contravene my previous orders. I say again, this does not contravene my previous orders. All hands, abandon ship.”
Turning to Harper, Logan asked, “Where exactly is Watson going at the moment?”
“Nowhere in particular.”
“Bring him out close to an escape pod and make it look as if all hell is breaking loose wherever he ends up. Steam coming out of the vents, pressure all over the place, that sort of thing. Have fun.”
Nodding, she tapped a button, and then headed for the elevator with a datapad in her hand. Logan moved over to her, and she stopped at the threshold.
“Where the hell are you going?” he asked.
“I’m abandoning ship.”
“Harper…”
“Look, I know what’s coming next, and you don’t need me here for that. I can do everything necessary from one of the escape pods, and get myself across to Carter Station without anyone paying too much attention. From there I’m going to Mars.”
“Why?” asked Ryder.
Looking across at her with a smile, she said, “I can be a lot more help there with Maggie than I will be wandering across deep space with you. I have contacts and skills that she’s going to need more than you will.”
“And you want to help your friend.”
“That too.”
“Get going. Good luck.” As she stepped into the elevator and it moved a
way from the bridge, Logan said to Ryder, “How about that. I think she’s growing up.”
“It had to happen eventually.”
“Always nice to see the chicks leaving the nest. Speaking of which, how’s the evacuation going?”
“Quickly and without panic. Twenty-one escape pods in the sky, and station control is already scrambling shuttles to come and get them. You realize that they’ll work out pretty quickly that this was all a ruse, don’t you?”
“I do indeed,” he replied. “Which is why you need to do two things. The first is to patch me through to the remaining crew, and the second is to put us on course for the hendecaspace point with a course for Spitfire Station.”
“I just can’t get away from that hellhole, can I?” she replied, taking a pair of controls and tossing over a headset. “You’re on.”
“That was quick.”
“I’m getting better at this.” Looking across at the helm, she said, “I’ll get Race working on the course projections.”
“This is Captain Winter,” Logan said into the microphone. “We’re in a hurry so I’ll keep this brief. I’m operating under orders that could be construed as illegal to take the Alamo out to Hades Station in the hope that we can stop a war with the Cabal. These orders come direct from President Newton, and I am aware that this makes their constitutionality somewhat suspect under the current circumstances. Nevertheless I intend to obey those orders.”
“I’ve trimmed ship. Anyone that I don’t believe will be loyal to the crew and the mission is on their way home. That leaves you. All veterans who have shipped out on Alamo before, all people who know what the cost of an unnecessary war would be. I need each and every one of you, but I can’t promise anything other than a court-martial when we get back. Certainly there won’t be any parades or medals for this party.”
He looked at Ryder, and said, “If anyone thinks that it isn’t worth it, get into one of the escape pods and go home. I won’t think any the less of anyone who thinks that his duty lies in following the orders we’re getting from the Combined Chiefs from the Acting President. I’m not going to try and sell you on this, convince you of anything, just to say that I think this is important enough to throw my career away for. I need you, but I won’t hold you back. That is all.”
Battlecruiser Alamo: Take and Hold Page 22
