Marshall stepped off the Tactical Officer’s position as he heard Hodgson reply.
‘We’re ready!’
‘Detach them, now!’ Schmidt ordered.
Marshall turned to the main display and saw a small ray–shielded quarantine unit suddenly blasted from a smoldering gash in Titan’s hull out into the frigid space between the two huge craft. Schmidt stepped closer to the screen as the object tumbled through empty space between blazing salvos of plasma fire, and then suddenly the fire stopped as the enemy vessel fell silent.
Titan’s bridge fell likewise silent, the only sound the crackle of fractured power lines and the hiss of falling sparks from damaged screens and panels. The quarantine unit tumbled over and over in the silence of space, and the writhing tentacles of material probing for Titan suddenly altered direction and reached out for the quarantine unit. Within moments, the unit was hauled away as though to be fed upon by some immense beast and vanished into the alien vessel’s ruined interior.
The ship hung in silence alongside Titan, flashes of stray energy rippling across great rents in its hull as fires burned within, clouds of sparkling debris flickering between the huge vessels. Marshall took a single pace toward the screen, one hand clenched by his side as he waited for the barrages to begin again.
‘Steady,’ Schmidt cautioned him, raising one placating hand.
The silence deepened, and then slowly Marshall’s keen old eyes detected the alien vessel beginning to move very slowly away from Titan.
‘She’s pulling back,’ Olsen exclaimed, his voice rising in pitch. ‘No enemy fire detected.’
Marshall kept his fist clenched, his orders whispered and tense.
‘Pull us clear of her, order the fleet to give her space.’
He heard Olsen passing on the orders, saw the frigates surrounding them begin to draw back in cautious retreat formations. As they separated, so the alien vessel began to turn her bow away from Titan and her engines began to burn more brightly as she sought an escape route away from Saturn.
‘I don’t get it,’ Olsen uttered in amazement. ‘She could have crushed us, and she’s running?’
Schmidt’s reply came from the silence as the crew watched the alien vessel’s bizarre tentacles retracted as its icy cocoon returned to its previous form, the trail of debris in its wake reducing until there was no more.
‘It’s not at war with us,’ he said softly. ‘It’s a parasitic machine, something that was probably created hundreds if not thousands of years ago by an intelligence that we cannot even begin to comprehend. It’s programmed not to leave any part of itself behind, to ensure that it doesn’t abandon its own to die. Maybe that’s how its creators wished it to be, I just don’t know, but as soon as it came up against a serious fight it sought only to escape.’
As they watched, the alien vessel’s engines flared brightly and the ship vanished into a gravity well, the star fields warping around it until suddenly it vanished into super–luminal cruise, leaving only a field of debris to show that it had ever existed.
Marshall turned to his crew.
‘Shields up, damage report and open all lines of communication again.’
‘Aye, cap’n,’ Olsen replied as he turned to his duties.
Marshall turned to Schmidt. ‘Good work, doctor. You said that Hodgson’s Marines were with you? Where’s Gunny?’
Schmidt sighed. ‘I think we lost the gunnery sergeant and his men to the attack, captain. I’m very sorry.’
Marshall closed his eyes for a moment and then inhaled deeply and squared his shoulders. His gaze took in the entire bridge and suddenly he looked at the XO.
‘Where are Detectives Foxx and Vasquez and that insane pilot of theirs?’
The communications officer looked up, her features pinched with concern.
‘Captain, I think they’re in Tethys Gaol.’
***
XXXVIII
Tethys Gaol
‘They’re comin’ through!’
Nathan saw the lights in the landing bay dim as the power fluctuated wildly through the prison. In the distance, above the crump and cackle of plasma fire he could hear the screams of men dying in the flames or at the hands of their fellow prisoners. It sounded to him as though the convicts had plumbed the bowels of what mankind really was, all pretense of compassion scoured from their souls by the primal need to survive, to kill or be killed, to maim and slice and puncture and destroy anything and everybody they encountered for the sheer motiveless pleasure of absolute power.
‘We won’t last long.’
Xavier’s voice was soft in the darkness, defeated, the sound of a man given a freedom that had been unlawfully taken from him and then had that freedom once again dashed from his hands at the very last moment. The cruelty of fate had proven too much for Xavier and he sat with his shoulders hunched and his head hanging low, the plasma baton in his hand almost dangling from his fingers.
‘You keep talking like that you’ll make yourself right,’ Allen replied. ‘Shut up and stand up, unless you wanna die on your knees?’
Allen powered up his plasma baton and got to his feet, ready to face the onslaught that must surely come for them in just a few moments. Nathan stood up and likewise checked his weapon, the plasma baton not much against a flood of convicts driven by an unstoppable cocktail of rage and adrenaline.
‘You should’ve let us out of here,’ Nathan said to the warden.
Arkon Stone nodded slowly, a rifle cradled in his arms. ‘Probably, but then you wouldn’t have gotten the answers that you sought, right?’
‘Ignorance would have been bliss.’
‘Not for me.’ Xavier moved to stand beside Nathan, and with one hand he wearily activated his plasma baton once more.
‘Get the cons on C Block to open that sally port,’ Nathan insisted. ‘It’s the only way!’
Stone looked up to the gantries on C where ranks of cons were jostling each other for a better view of the impending carnage. Slowly, he stood from his crouch and called up to the men.
‘Gentlemen, you have an opportunity to render yourselves favorable in the eyes of the law!’ he boomed. ‘If we give you remote access to the watch tower and you open the sally port to C block, and I assure you that your actions will not go unnoticed by the prisoner governors!’
Nathan winced as a cackle of laughter hooted and echoed around the shadowy interior of the bay as the inmates showered them with insults.
‘Like hell, stick, you’re goin’ down!’
‘Ain’t no snitch nor sticks on C!’
‘Burn in hell, Stone!’
The warden glowered up at the men, and for a moment Nathan thought that he might simply give up. Then, he pointed across the bay toward the walls of A and B blocks that adjoined D, to where the flames and the screams of pain and suffering echoed like distant storms.
‘You think that Volt’s crew are going to spring you out of here?!’ Stone demanded. ‘You think that they’re on your side? Listen to the sounds coming from the other blocks that have fallen, and ask yourselves what they’ll do with you when it comes to bargaining time with the military right outside this station?!’
Nathan could hear the terrible violence from within the blocks, and he saw the cons on C suddenly lose some of their gusto and bravado as they too listened.
‘Those aren’t the screams of sticks!’ Stone warned the cons. ‘Those are the screams of cons who are being set up by Volt and his men as bargaining chips, or being used as human shields against my guards. Their cells are being ransacked, their bodies beaten or abused or both, their possessions stolen and what little they have left in their lives taken by Zak Volt and his men. That is what you face when his crew break out of their block, that is the carnage that they will bring here!’
A voice called back down.
‘Ain’t like we’ll face anything less if the sticks take back control! An’ even if you did favor us, every other con in the gaol’ll see us as snitches!’
; ‘Every con in Vol’t crew will be on lockdown for the next ten years!’ Stone boomed. ‘This is your last chance, your only chance! Let us in!’
‘We’re getting on that shuttle with Volt and his crew!’ shouted another.
‘Even if Volt gets his shuttle, it holds eighty men maximum!’ Nathan called back. ‘You really think that Volt will put any of you before his own crew?!’
A sneer went up from the men, but then one of them hollared back down at Stone.
‘We been askin’ you to let us out for years!’
A ripple of grim laughter followed the cry, but Nathan could hear the change in the cons’ mood, the awareness that there was no real escape from the riot, that it would consume them too if Volt’s men got inside.
A final voice called out to Stone.
‘We want your word, warden! Your word, that we won’t be locked down after all this, just ‘cause we’s cons too!’
Arkon Stone looked up at the gantry. ‘You have my word!’
The cons stared down at the warden and his men for a long moment and then suddenly they began filing silently out of sight off the gantry.
Nathan was about to breathe a sigh of relief when the sally port to D Block burst open and the security guards sent to cover the entrance tumbled into view, backing up and firing wildly into the corridor they had just emerged from as a salvo of plasma fire shot out of the sally port. Behind it Nathan could see what looked like flames rushing upon them, smoke billowing from the sally port as the guards fell back into new firing positions.
Nathan glimpsed the face of a burning mattress advancing vertically through the corridor and then saw others stacked behind it, burning furiously where the plasma shots of the guards’ weapons had set them alight. Behind the makeshift shield he saw ranks of inmates advancing through a corridor that was now darkened but for the shimmering flames and boiling smoke, their cries and shouts echoing back and forth as though they were marching out of hell itself with a fire breathing dragon at their head.
The mattress began to move more quickly as the cons caught sight of the landing bay and then with a coalesced wail of riotous glee they abandoned all caution and charged out of the corridor, the billowing flames of the mattress propelled ahead of them as they spilled in a dirty, smoke coiled flood into the landing bay. Nathan could see among them desperate faces, the faces of men forced at knife and gunpoint out into the firing line.
‘Open fire!’
The warden’s cry was audible even above the hellish screams of the berserk prisoners as they plunged toward the arc of the guards’ weapons, blades flashing in the low light and flaming torches crackling as they rushed forward while pushing terrified inmates ahead of them, more of Volt’s crew following and armed with plasma rifles.
Nathan winced as a deafening barrage of plasma fire ripped into the solid wall of men and muscle charging toward them. The shots tore into the crowd and the cheers of victory from deep within the sally port was overwhelmed grotesquely by cries of agony as the men at the front were cut down by volley after volley of plasma fire, their bodies twisting this way and that as they fell, other inmates tumbling over their writhing bodies only to be trampled by those following blindly behind.
Nathan saw one of the bearded thugs that had stood so loyally behind Zak Volt break free from the chaotic crowd and blunder forward, one thick bar in his chunky hand and his prison scrip uniform splattered with blood both stale and fresh. He rushed upon Nathan, screaming in some unintelligible language as he raised the bar over his head.
Nathan leaped forward and rammed his plasma baton into the con’s bearded face in a splash of superheated plasma and set it aflame. The bar fell from the big man’s grasp and his scream was silenced as his hands clawed at his burning face and he shook from side to side, still standing on big, thick legs. Nathan jabbed the baton again and this time the charge burned into the center of the man’s chest and burrowed deep to sear the flesh of his heart. The huge man’s thrashing stopped as his arms flopped by his sides and he plunged over backwards, leaving a trail of smoke from his ruined face as he slammed down onto the growing pile of corpses littering the landing bay.
A scream to Nathan’s right alerted him and he saw one of the guards overrun by prisoners, the cons smashing into the screaming officer like a human wave. The guard’s plasma rifle fired wildly into the air, smashing into one of the con’s arms and severing it in a bright flare of burning flesh and acrid smoke as the other cons swamped the guard and one of them stomped brutally down on his face.
Nathan turned as he heard the warden’s voice bellow a command. ‘Fall back by sections!’
To his amazement he saw that the sally port to C Block had opened, ranks of nervous cons lining the corridor within as Arkon Stone’s men began turning and retreating toward the safety of the sally port.
‘Fall back, now!’
The warden’s bellowed order soared above the chaos of the battle and Nathan grabbed the fallen enforcer’s plasma rifle, aimed and fired at another raging con. The shot hit him in the midriff, the inmate folding over his burning flesh and dropping his makeshift weapon as he sank to his knees.
‘There’s too many!’ Allen yelled.
‘Hold the line!’ the warden roared, firing as he did so and severing the leg of an armed man swaggering toward him, drunk on prison alcohol fermented in a sock from old bread and potatoes. The plasma blast passed through bone and flesh and Nathan saw the man shudder and sway briefly as the lower half of his left leg toppled over beneath him. The man seemed to stare blankly at the smoldering remains of his leg and then he laughed out loud, his eyes wild and unfeeling. Nathan switched his aim and fired, the shot piercing the crazed con’s chest and killing him instantly.
‘Ironside!’ Stone yelled. ‘Get over here!’
Nathan looked over his shoulder and saw the bay doors just a few yards behind him, and to his left the sally port to C Block. Cons were still swarming into the bay from other parts of the prison, hundreds of them, and there were only ten or twelve guards still standing in a defensive phalanx before Stone, all of them retreating back to C Block.
‘Ironside!’
Nathan’s heard Detective Allen’s warning and he saw Xavier stagger sideways, pain twisting his features. In front of him towered a con with a shaven head riven with scars and laced with purple tattoos, his fist wrapped around a jagged metal shiv, the other end of which was plunged deep into Xavier’s ribcage.
‘No!’
***
XXXIX
Nathan ran at the con and jammed the plasma rifle up against his face and fired. The big man roared in pain and twisted away from Nathan, his skin smoldering with blue smoke as the heat from the charge burned deep into his flesh. Xavier fell to his knees, both hands around the edge of the crooked blade embedded in his flesh as Nathan fired on the two nearest cons, both of them blasted backwards by the shots, their prison uniforms bursting into flame.
‘Stay with me, Xavier!’ Nathan yelled above the noise.
Nathan grabbed Xavier’s collar and began dragging him back toward C Block. Another con leaped forward and Nathan dropped Xavier and whirled as he swung the rifle in his grasp, the butt coming up and smacking the con under his jaw. The bone shattered like glass under the blow and the con’s eyes rolled up in their sockets as he flipped backwards and landed on the burning remains of his companions.
Two of the warden’s men rushed out and grabbed Xavier’s collar and dragged him away toward the sally port as their colleagues fired in support. Nathan turned and saw Xavier’s body being hauled into the sally port, and he turned to flee to the safety of Arkon Stone and his men.
‘Ironside!’
Nathan saw Allen hit in the chest with a metal pole by a shrieking, half–naked inmate smothered in blood. The detective staggered sideways and then tripped and fell onto the deck. The crazed inmate loomed over him, the pole raised above his head and murder in his eyes as Allen threw one useless arm up to block the metal bar.
Nathan aimed his rifle and pulled the trigger, but no plasma shot burst from the barrel. Nathan hurled the weapon aside and sprinted back into the landing bay, and with one hand he thrust the plasma stick out and slammed it into the inmate’s sweat–sheened chest. The weapon burned a blackened, smoking cavity in his chest as the inmate screamed and toppled backwards and slammed down onto his back.
Allen rolled onto his feet and backed up toward Nathan, who glanced over his shoulder and saw inmates swarming in front of C Block’s sally port, blocking their path as the warden and his men filtered into the safety within.
Nathan staggered in the darkness, the thick smoke in the landing bay and the effort of sustained fighting now choking the air out of him. His eyes blurred and he saw colored spots of light floating before the grotesque scene before him. Hundreds of cons scrambled over corpses as they struggled to reach the tiny band of officers still standing, smoke filling the air, the landing bay a blood red in the emergency lights. Flames twisted like demons from burning mattresses, from which more cons leaped into the landing bay with plasma weapons from the armory in their hands.
‘We’re cut off!’ Allen yelled as he fought off an inmate, swiping him across the temple with a plasma stick to the sound of a dull thump only to have two more men hurtle toward him, the three of them plunging onto the deck in a writhing mass of limbs striking frenzied blows.
Nathan grabbed the corner of his jacket and bent his head down, pushed the fabric over his face and sucked in air as deeply as he could as he rushed toward Allen. The lights and blurriness vanished and he came upright to see Zak Volt rush toward him through the smoke and leap over Allen and the two assailants.
Volt looked like something out of a horror movie, his nose encrusted with dried black blood plastered across his bloodied face, the hair on one side of his scalp burned off and trailing thin smoke from a plasma wound, his eyes wild and deranged, bloodthirsty for the mindless satisfaction of hate. He held a plasma pistol in one hand and a shiv in the other as he charged.
Titan (Old Ironsides Book 2) Page 28
