“Hell,” Francis said, “Maybe they've had communications trouble.”
Frowning, Salazar replied, “Or maybe there's more going on over there than we know about. Ballard, we've got at least an hour before we have company, correct?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Could we reduce speed, delay time to contact?”
“Of course, Captain,” Ballard said. “That would mean longer in combat range, of course, but...”
“Good. Re-plot trajectory to bring us into firing range with Endurance in fifteen minutes, not nine, and implement change when ready.” Rising from his seat, he added, “Have Ensign Rhodes standing by in Transfer Three, and instruct Chief Kowalski to have it ready for launch as soon as I get down there.” Looking up at the viewscreen, he added, “If Endurance won't respond to our signals, I'll go and speak to them personally.”
“Captain,” Francis protested. “You'd be wide open to an attack, and there would be nothing we could do to protect you. If they decided to fire first...”
“With mass drivers?” Salazar asked. “I'll dance around them, Max. But just to be on the safe side, I'll take some friends with me. Have Green Flight prepare for immediate launch, to escort me to Endurance and surround the cruiser on arrival. Let's see if we can get some more good cards into our hand. You have the deck.”
“Aye, Captain,” Francis replied with a barely-perceptible sigh. “I have the deck.”
Stepping into the elevator, Salazar tapped the control to send him speeding down to the hangar bay, waiting impatiently to reach his destination. Francis was right. This was a risk, and probably he shouldn't be placing himself in such danger. Except that he couldn't simply sit back on the bridge and watch others fly into the fire, not this time.
“Attention,” Scott's voice said, over the speaker. “Green Flight to prepare for immediate scramble on request. All launch crews to their stations.”
Glancing up at the wall monitor, Salazar quickly called up a tactical view of the local environment, frowning at the display. Alamo was racing towards Endurance, with the hendecaspace point half a million miles behind. They'd both potentially be open to an attack, should some superior force emerge, and given the growing levels of dimensional instability, he had to assume the worst.
Though in that case, he'd have only one realistic option. Flight. To one of the distant hendecaspace points in the outer belt, billions of miles away, months away under conventional power. There'd be no chance to rescue his people, those lost inside the sphere and those evidently captured on the surface. A stray thought crossed his mind, and he did his best to dismiss it, to push it away.
There was every possibility that all of them were already dead.
The doors slid open, and he walked onto a crowded deck, the harried Kowalski shouting at the launch crews as they prepared the fighters for launch. Rhodes stood next to the open airlock of Transfer One, a rifle on his back and another held by its strap, danging towards the floor.
“Thought you might want a toy of your own, skipper,” he said.
“Stow it on board,” Salazar said. “Let's hope it doesn't come to that.”
“I agree,” the Espatier replied. “Two against the whole crew of Endurance? Too easy.”
Shaking his head with a smile, Salazar stepped through the airlock, squeezing into the cramped cabin, and settled down into the pilot's seat, hastily strapping a headset on as he completed the pre-flight checks.
“Salazar to Bridge. We're ready to go. Requesting launch clearance.”
“Granted, Captain,” Francis replied. “Good luck.”
“Let's hope we don't need it. Cycling vehicular airlock.” He tapped a control, and the shuttle began to drop through the decks, the upper hatch opening to send the vehicle sliding down to the lower hull, atmosphere sucked back into the ship as the launch cycle began. The status board to his left lit up, reports from the fighters flooded in, a proposed escort pattern appearing on the screen, confirmed with a quick flick of his wrist. Lieutenant Murphy knew her job well, and three fighters should be more than enough to deal with any threat posed by Endurance. Sufficient at least to get them quickly out of danger, should it be necessary.
The lower hatch cracked open, and the shuttle fell away from Alamo, kicked clear by the centrifugal force of the ship's rotation. As he fired the main engine, racing towards Endurance, he looked across at the sphere, the structure that dominated the sky. If they could unlock even a few of the secrets it held, then there would be a revolution in spaceflight greater than the development of the hendecaspace drive. No more rotational gravity, and the breakthroughs that implied suggested forms of propulsion an order of magnitude better than anything they possessed.
And yet it was not something that he could conceive fighting over. It was far too big for that. All of humanity would barely fill a thousandth of the surface area inside. All of known humanity, anyway. Bowman had been working constantly on the communications chatter he'd recorded from within, and while making contact with anyone was not yet possible, they'd detected thousands of intelligible signals. Most of them Proto-Indo dialects, but someone was speaking English, French, Russian inside. They'd known that one colony ship had made it here, and found its way home. Others must have taken the same road, and brought their journey to an end, right here.
“Credit for your thoughts, sir,” Rhodes said with a smile. “You looked as though you were getting a little lost, and we're four minutes from docking.”
“Sorry,” Salazar said. “It's a little daunting. I feel so damned small.”
“We are,” Rhodes replied. “Sometimes it really hits home just how insignificant we can be, but that's no reason to let ourselves be swallowed up.” Gesturing at the sphere, he said, “Maybe it'll take a thousand years, but we'll explore it. Contact everyone inside. Eternal exploration.”
“Any signal from Endurance?”
“Nothing, but they aren't making any aggressive moves either. Aside from arming their turrets, they're just sitting there.” He threw a switch, bringing a best-guess schematic onto the screen, and said, “There's a series of airlocks on the top side, near what looks a lot like a heat radiator. My guess is that it's a transverse corridor, connecting key facilities. A good place to come down.” He shrugged, then said, “We going in armed or not?”
“Not, but have them ready if we need to fight our way out. I'm assuming that Major Moran will realize that she's holding a tiger by the tail if she tries to do anything stupid.” He frowned, looked at the sensors, then said, “That's interesting. One of those airlocks of yours just opened. Outer hatch cycling. As though we're being invited in.”
“Maybe we're over-thinking this,” Rhodes said. “It'll be downright embarrassing if this turns out to be nothing more than a simple systems failure. We didn't even bring a toolkit with us.”
“Salazar to Murphy. We're going to accept their invitation. I want you to do a close flyby ahead of us, then match course and speed with Endurance. If they twitch, knock out the turrets. In the event it becomes necessary, shoot to disable, not destroy. Understood?”
“We've got your back, Captain,” the pilot replied. “Don't worry about us. We've got this covered. Watch yourselves in there.”
“Will do, Lieutenant,” Salazar replied, nimbly turning the ship, slowly reversing into position to match the docking airlock. The standard design of the exterior hatches hadn't significantly changed in a century, the requirement for backwards compatibility overriding any potential upgrades, and the two computers mated in a heartbeat, Endurance now gently guiding the shuttle into place.
“Thirty seconds,” Salazar said, rising from his seat. He walked over to the airlock, Rhodes moving by his side, hand poised over the hatch controls. With a loud report, the two ships linked, and a series of clangs heralded the clamps locking into position, securing them to the hull. A light winked green, and he lightly tapped the relea
se button, keeping a hand next to the pistol nestled in the holster at his belt.
The first thing he saw inside was a body, blood splattered on the deck, hands reaching for a salvation that would never come. Without a word, Rhodes passed Salazar the rifle, and the two of them tentatively stepped through the airlock, weapons nestled in their arms, eyes sweeping for a potential ambush.
A figure moved across the corridor, and Rhodes moved to take a shot, stopped only by a brief shake of the head from Salazar. The two of them raced forward, turning to follow the fleeing crewman, when a loud crack echoed through the air, the sound of a gunshot. Salazar peered around the corner to spot Major Moran, pistol in hand, the man dying almost at her feet. She looked up, and raised her gun to cover Salazar, who matched the action with his rifle.
“You may or may not believe this, Captain, but I'm actually glad to see you,” she said.
“Then lower your weapon.”
“As long as you do the same, I'll be willing to consider it.”
“Skipper,” Rhodes said, “I can have the rest of the platoon here in five minutes. They're on immediate stand-by.” Looking up and down the corridor, he added, “We can secure the ship well before the new vessel arrives, put a prize crew on board.”
Nodding, Salazar replied, “Major, I've just lost a dozen people on the surface, and in all honesty, I don't like being lied to. Nor am I disposed to trust someone who just executed one of her own crewmen. So if you please, raise your hands, and instruct your crew that they are to immediately surrender, and we won't have any further trouble. Ensign, bring on the cavalry.”
“Aye, sir,” Rhodes replied, tapping a single button on his communicator. At Salazar's quizzical glance, he added, “Thought I'd better be prepared. Corporal Burns will be here any time now.”
“Well, Major?” Salazar asked. “It's your move, but unless you concede the game, you won't have any chance of a repeat match.”
“Do I have a choice?” she asked.
“Of course you do, but I don't think that you'll enjoy the consequences of your actions, and I think you'd rather be alive to see your reinforcements entering the system.”
“They aren't my reinforcements,” she replied, coolly. “Trust me, Captain, this isn't what...”
“Right now, Major, I don't really care. I can see a clear and present threat to the safety of my ship and her crew, and I intend to deal with it, one way or another.”
“Sir!” Rhodes said. “Something coming towards us, rear corridor, distance ninety feet.”
“Warn them off, Major,” Salazar insisted. “Rhodes and I are expendable. If you consider yourself in the same category, then feel free to continue playing this little game of yours.”
“I'm not playing a game, Captain.”
“Sure you are,” he replied. “You just haven't realized that you've lost, yet. Now call off your people, and surrender your ship.”
“I want your word of honor, Captain, that as soon as your people arrive, you will allow me to explain all of this to your satisfaction, and that if I do, you will return command of Endurance to me. We're allies. You've got to believe me.”
Rhodes glanced at Salazar, and said, “Probably wouldn't hurt, skipper. Words are cheap. Lives aren't. We can take this ship, but it might get expensive if we have to hold it for any length of time. Of course, we could simply leave and blow it up. It doesn't look like they're in much shape for a fight right now.”
“True.” Looking at Moran, he added, “Very well, Major, I will agree to accept your surrender subject to those terms. You'd better have one hell of a story to tell.”
“Trust me, Captain, I do,” she said.
“Trust doesn't come easily, Major, and right now you aren't doing a particularly good job of earning it.”
She shrugged, walked over to a communicator, and said, “This is the commander. All hands, stand down. I have temporarily surrendered this ship to Captain Salazar. You will obey his orders until further notice. I say again, all hands, stand down.” Looking back at him, she added, “Shall we have that talk now?”
“Sure. Make it good. Or that surrender will be very, very permanent.”
Chapter 14
The gunmen ushered their captives into the waiting shuttle, Harper taking the lead, a procession of prisoners following. They'd managed to break into their communication frequencies, had isolated them from each other, making any contact impossible. Any movement resulted in an instant response from the guards, rendering even hand signals useless. Since the portal had unexpectedly opened, disgorging a collection of armored figures with strange rifles in their hands, she'd had her distress beacon at full power, but aside from an irritating red light in the corner of her heads-up display, it didn't seem to be having any effect.
As soon as she stepped on board, it was obvious that the shuttle had been designed to carry prisoners, each of them locked into a tiny metal cocoon, further isolating them from their surroundings. The familiar hiss of pressurization never came, and snakelike tubes reached out to her backpack, supplementing her remaining oxygen. They'd be riding in vacuum, just one more method of preventing escape.
It had been less than fifteen minutes since their capture. Any help was hours away, and she knew that Salazar would be reluctant to commit ground forces unless he had some idea where they were going, could be convinced that there was a chance of success. In his place, she'd have done exactly the same. That meant that she was reliant on her own salvation.
The shuttle's engines roared, diving down the shaft towards the inside of the sphere, and she quickly called up the records of Clarke's original descent. At about the twenty-mile mark, she remembered glimpsing what appeared to be caverns, carved deep into the sides of the shaft. There'd been no sign of activity on the surface when their team made it down. If their captors had a hidden base somewhere inside, she figured it almost had to be in those caverns. Not that the knowledge necessarily helped her, given that all she had to work with was a brief glance from a descending shuttle, an image that could easily be a sensor ghost.
Her suit controls were recording every detail of the situation, no attempt by her captors to deactivate them. Meaning that they had to be extremely confident of the potency of their communications block, and that they were planning to strip them of their suits upon their arrival. Hard vacuum was more effective than any security system, and the glares issued by her captors left her little confidence that they'd ever be allowed to leave the prison that was waiting for them alive.
Unknown to them, of course, she did have a few tricks up her sleeve, but at best, she'd only have one chance to make a break for it, and unless everything worked out perfectly, she'd be on her own. There was no chance to encourage anyone else to follow her, not without risking attack and foiling her plan.
She counted time as the engines roared, gently guiding them to their destination. The pilot had to be confident of his knowledge of the tunnel, given the astounding fuel expenditure. She'd had a good look at the shuttle, and it didn't look to have expanded tanks, not to mention the heavier-than-normal passenger cabin. Imprisoning fourteen crewmen, all in bulky spacesuits, was anything other than straightforward.
Finally, after what seemed an eternity but was only a matter of moments, the shuttle's thrusters fired again, guiding them to the side, and she realized that they were about to land. Her sensors reported a slight increase in external pressure, far too little to breathe, but enough to indicate that they'd reached the upper levels of the atmosphere, as good as confirming her suspicions.
The cocoon opened up, and she stepped onto the deck under the guns of her captors, one of them gesturing towards the open airlock. After a brief pause, she did as she was bid, and swung carefully across the threshold. Beyond, she saw a huge rock bridge, fifty feet wide, leading deep into a huge cavern beyond, thousands of meters deep. The gravity was low, and every step was a huge bound, a guard l
eading the way towards a shining light at the far end. Doubtless their base, and judging by the low rumble she could make out from her helmet speakers, also the source of the interference that was jamming communications.
She risked a quick glance at the cavern below, jagged rocks miles down, tunnels and passages snaking off in all directions. A perfect place to get lost in, if she could manage to get clear. Each step took her closer and closer to irredeemable captivity. With her left hand, she reached for a touch-pad at the end of her glove, sliding a hidden lever that started a ten-second countdown, while using her tongue to activate a control inside her helmet.
Without warning, her suit thrusters fired, sending her soaring towards the guard, an obsidian blade sliding out of a hidden compartment in her glove. She slashed at the figure, ripping a gaping hole in his suit, then hurled herself from the bridge, diving into the hidden depths below. Instantly, her thrusters started firing, working to stabilize her, but she overrode the system with the tap of a control, instead randomly dodging from side to side, the guards overhead quickly reacting to her escape.
A bright beam of light raced past her, slamming into the floor, and her eyes widened. Laser rifles, in combat. Nothing they'd ever made work. Something to take a look at, even if the power drain would be prohibitive. She risked a glance up, watched three of the guards carefully aim, choosing their targets and waiting for a clear shot that she had no intention of offering. Her goal was down in the caverns, hoping to lose herself in the twisted tunnels, on the basis that if she didn't know where she was going, neither would they.
Another laser blast slammed into the ground to her right, briefly melting the rock, exposing the dull hull metal beneath, an alloy capable of withstanding any weapon they had. A part of her was curious about the effect of a plasma explosion on the material, but she quickly decided that such an investigation could wait until she could be well clear of the sphere.
Battlecruiser Alamo: Shadows in the Sky Page 12
