“Of course,” Stockton said, spreading his arms wide. “Violence is always a last resort.”
Lucas tapped the intercom button on the captain’s console and cleared his throat. “Attention—this is Lucas Adebayo on the bridge, with a message for all the cadets in engineering, the hangar, and deck twelve. To ensure nobody gets hurt, please stand down and get to a safe location. Repeat, to all cadets in engineering, the hangar, and deck twelve: stand down and get to a safe location.”
Lucas saw Sanchez’s eyes widen a fraction of a centimeter. He glanced at Tali, but her face was impassive. Had Elena, Maria, and the other cadets heard what he was trying to tell them?
“All right, Ms. Sanchez,” Stockton said, aiming his laser at Lucas. “Turn over the weapon systems. You’ve got ten seconds.”
“You win,” Sanchez said. “The unlock code is G, nine, H, A, eight, one.”
Lucas held his breath as Willis typed the command into the captain’s console. As soon as she hit the final key, the overhead lights dimmed and turned red. Lucas smacked the intercom button.
“Elena, now!” Lucas shouted. “Full emergency power!”
For a brief, terrifying moment, nothing happened. Had his friends not understood? If they weren’t ready, then he’d just given them away for nothing.
Then, with a deafening roar, the Orpheus’s main engines ran all the way up to their maximum thrust. Even though he’d known it was coming, the force of the acceleration still caught Lucas off guard. He barely managed to get his legs underneath him before he crashed against the back wall of the bridge. Sanchez grabbed on to the back of the navigator’s seat and hung there, while Tali slid herself into the captain’s acceleration couch and let it absorb the force.
The miners weren’t so lucky. Willis toppled out of the pilot’s seat and crumpled against the back wall of the bridge. Stockton almost managed to twist himself upright in time to brace himself against the acceleration, but he couldn’t get his legs under him before he hit the edge of the hatchway. He dangled over the ladderway for a moment, and then he slid down out of sight.
“The brig is open,” Elena said from the backup bridge on deck twelve, where Sanchez’s emergency transfer code had given her and Rahul control of the ship. “Engineering is locked down.”
Sanchez dropped to the floor next to Lucas, grimacing in pain. She took a step toward the hatchway, but her injured leg collapsed under her.
“Go after him!” she gasped. “Quickly! There’s not much time!”
Tali climbed out of the captain’s console and lowered herself to the back wall. The floor shuddered under the force of the Orpheus’s engines, and Lucas strained to keep himself upright. How fast were they accelerating? A full gee—maybe more?
He crouched over the hatchway and looked down. Six decks below, the rec room entrance was closed. But there was no sign of Stockton. He and Tali climbed down the ladder carefully. Had Stockton somehow managed to survive that ten-meter drop?
“Elena,” Lucas called over the intercom. “Reduce thrust. Vector us away from the rest of the fleet.”
A few moments later, the roar of the engines faded and the crushing acceleration died down to a manageable level. Lucas and Tali climbed quickly down the ladderway. As they turned a corner to head into one of the side passages that led past the rec room, they nearly ran into Maria leading a group of twenty cadets. Startled, she raised a pulse weapon and aimed it at them.
“It’s us!” Lucas said quickly, putting up his hands.
Maria clenched her jaw and locked her eyes with Tali’s. “So I see.”
“I’m on your side, Maria,” Tali said.
“How convenient,” Maria said. “I guess we’ll see how long that lasts.”
“Thanks for that warning,” Hanako said to Lucas. “We managed to avoid any serious injuries. Are we running the ship from the backup bridge?”
Lucas nodded. “Elena and Rahul are there.”
“Next step is to fan out and find the rest of the miners,” Maria said. “Hopefully none of them knew what was coming.”
“We locked six of them in a cargo hold,” Hanako said. “Four cadets and two miners are in medbay being treated for burns.”
“Stockton is still here somewhere,” Tali said. “You didn’t see him?”
“He wouldn’t be alive if we had,” Maria said grimly. She turned to the cadets behind her. “I’ll take a squad to the brig and find the officers. The rest of you, search the ship top to bottom. Be careful.”
As the cadets dispersed, Lucas used a wall console to open up a link to the backup bridge. “Rahul—any sign of Stockton?”
“No. But someone just opened up all of the outer doors in the hangar.”
“That must be him,” Lucas said to Tali. “Come on!”
“Be careful!” Rahul shouted over the console. “He’s disabled the cameras in the hangar. It could be a trap.”
They reached the Park Place ladderway and scrambled down the last few decks to the hangar. All three of the doorways were closed and locked. Tali looked through the window in one of the doors and pounded her fists against it in frustration. Inside, Stockton was already at the controls of one of the patrol ships.
“He can’t get far,” Lucas said.
Tali glowered at Stockton through the window. “Far enough that I can’t wring his ugly little neck.”
Stockton looked up at them and grinned. He climbed out of the ship and scrambled away. A moment later, the patroller’s engines ignited, and it sped out of the hangar. Stockton jumped up into the only other ship in the hangar—a powerful-looking long-haul cargo ship. He closed the ship’s hatch and powered up the engines. A moment later, he lifted off and darted out through the hangar’s outer doors. Despite himself, Lucas felt a brief moment of admiration for Stockton’s piloting skills—flying out of a larger ship while it was under acceleration was no easy feat.
Lucas tapped on the wall console next to the hangar doors. “Rahul, Stockton is in that cargo ship. Where is he going?”
“Tracking now,” Rahul said. “Looks like he’s making a fast burn and leaving orbit.”
The intercom crackled, and Stockton’s voice interrupted Rahul. “There’s a war coming, little muskrats. What are you going to do when every Belter in the solar system rises up against you?”
“What is he talking about?” Tali asked.
Lucas had a sudden, sickening thought as he remembered what McKinley had told him. Stockton wants a war, and he’ll do anything to start one. “Rahul—what about the patroller?”
“It’s on autopilot, heading back down toward Vesta.”
“Down to the surface?” Tali asked. “There’s nobody on board. How is it going to land?”
“It’s heading right for the colony,” Elena said. “You’re sure there’s nobody on board?”
Lucas closed his eyes. He knew exactly what Stockton was planning. “It’s not going to land. Stockton programmed it to crash into the colony dome. He’s going to blame the Navy for destroying the bazaar.”
“Oh, my god,” Elena said.
“Shoot it!” Tali said. “Do something!”
“That won’t work,” Rahul said. “The debris would still hit the colony. We have to find some way to change its trajectory.”
“Rahul, how long until impact?” Lucas asked.
There was a brief pause. “Ten minutes.”
“I’ll get word to the colony!” Elena said. “Maybe they can evacuate.”
“They won’t have enough time,” Lucas said. He started climbing back up the ladderway toward the front of the ship.
“What are you doing?” Tali asked.
“I’m going after that patrol ship.”
He scrambled up the ladder and around to the waist airlock. Tali followed close behind. “Lucas, this is insane!”
Lucas dug through the thruster packs in the back of the airlock prep room, searching for one with a full fuel tank. Tali watched him for a moment, and then she quickly began putting o
n a pressure suit.
“Tali—” he began.
“I’m coming with you,” she said flatly.
Lucas paused. It was obvious there was nothing he could say to dissuade her. He picked out two thruster packs and handed one to her. They each slid one on and grabbed a helmet, and then Lucas followed Tali into the airlock. She cycled it and opened the outer doors.
“Remind me to tell you what a monumentally stupid idea this is.” She bent her knees and jumped out, disappearing quickly as the Orpheus’s acceleration left her behind. Lucas took a deep breath and leaped out after her.
His stomach turned over as he was suddenly plunged into free fall. There was a brief flash as he passed by the ship’s engines, and then he was floating in a silent sea of stars high above the gray bulk of Vesta. He activated his thruster pack and aimed himself down toward the surface of the asteroid. After a few moments he saw the glow of Tali’s thrusters. He adjusted his angle and slid in alongside her. She pointed toward the surface.
“About a kilometer ahead. We have to hurry.”
Lucas nodded, and they both increased their thrusters to full power. At first it seemed like they were making no progress at all. What if they couldn’t catch up to the patrol ship before it hit? They needed to preserve enough fuel to get themselves back into a stable orbit, or else they would crash right alongside it.
They came out onto the sunlit side of the asteroid and the patroller appeared in front of them, about fifty meters closer to the surface. They aimed straight for it and then reduced thrust to match its course. Lucas grabbed the patrol ship’s hatch and slid inside, and Tali climbed in after him.
Lucas sat down at the pilot’s console. He pulled back on the control stick to activate the attitude rockets. Nothing happened.
“The controls aren’t working!”
“Try the main engine,” Tali said, huddling close over his shoulder. “Maybe we can at least change its course.”
Lucas pressed the button sequence to kill their thrust. The control panel displayed an error, and the faint rumble of the main engine persisted. He tried again with the same result.
“He’s done something to sabotage the controls,” Tali said, smacking the screen with the palm of her hand.
“What do you mean?” Elena asked, her transmission crackling slightly. “You can’t fly it?”
Lucas leaned back in his seat and stared at the controls. “No main engines, no attitude rockets, no controls at all. We can’t change course.”
“Three minutes to impact. You need to get out of there!” Rahul said. “There’s nothing you can do.”
Tali put her hand on Lucas’s arm. “He’s right,” she said. “We’ve got no thrust and no control.”
Thrust. Lucas suddenly remembered how they’d won the capture-the-flag game, ages ago. “Yes, we do! How much delta-vee would it take to miss the colony and hit the surface instead?”
“It wouldn’t take much,” Rahul said. “Just nudge the ship by a few meters per second, and it would land far enough away to not cause damage.”
“How much fuel is in these thruster packs?”
There was a moment of silence as everyone realized what Lucas was suggesting, and then they all spoke at once.
“Lucas—” Tali began.
“After what you’ve already used—there might be enough,” Rahul said.
“No!” Elena said. “That’s not an option.”
“We have to try,” Lucas insisted.
“If you use all of your fuel, you won’t be able to get yourselves back into orbit,” Elena said. “You’ll crash along with the ship.”
Tali pursed her lips. Lucas recognized the anguished look on her face, because it mirrored exactly what he was feeling right now himself. But there was something else too: a determination that saving their own lives and letting an entire colony of innocent people die wasn’t an option they could accept.
She nodded. Without saying a word, they climbed back outside. The enormous bulk of Vesta took up almost their entire field of view. They positioned themselves on either side of the cabin door with their hands pressed against the hull, and then they fired their backpacks at maximum thrust.
The force was enough to make Lucas’s arms buckle. He gritted his teeth and straightened them back out again. He glanced over at Tali. Her face was locked in concentration as she tried to keep herself steady.
“A quarter of a meter per second,” Rahul said. “Point five. Almost one, now.”
“It’s not going to be enough!” Elena said. “Lucas, you don’t have enough fuel!”
Lucas tried to look down at the gauge on his chest, but he couldn’t make out the numbers. How much longer could they keep this up?
“One point five. One point eight. Two.”
Lucas’s thruster pack sputtered and died. A moment later, Tali’s did the same. They pulled themselves against the hull of the ship and looked down at the approaching surface. The adrenaline that had been flooding through Lucas’s body was gone, and he was suddenly more tired than he’d ever been in his life.
“We’re out of fuel,” Tali said. Her voice was exhausted too. “What’s our course?”
There was a brief pause. “Projecting impact fifty meters from the colony,” Rahul said. “That’s enough!”
“Somebody do something!” Elena shouted. “They’re going to die!”
“There’s nothing left to do,” Lucas said quietly.
The surface of the asteroid was all they could see. Craters and hills sped by so quickly they were almost a blur. Tali reached out and took his hand. He squeezed it wordlessly.
“Another ship!” Rahul said. “Fast intercept course!”
Lucas looked up and saw a cargo ship braking hard as it tried to match the patroller’s trajectory. Its engines flared, and he had to shield his eyes from the glare.
“Hold steady!” McKinley called over the radio. “This is going to be tight.”
The cargo hold at the rear of his ship slid open. There wasn’t time to dock or even match speed. In a few seconds, their only chance of making it would be gone. Simultaneously, Lucas and Tali leaped out toward McKinley’s ship. Lucas managed to snag the edge of the cargo door, but Tali crashed into the rear of the ship, just in front of the engine cowling. She scrambled up, and he reached out and grabbed her wrist.
“Go!” he shouted.
McKinley fired the engines. Lucas wrapped his fingers around the edge of the cargo hold’s doorframe and concentrated on keeping his grip on Tali’s arm. The gray surface of Vesta whizzed past them, seemingly close enough to touch.
“I’ve got you!” Lucas said to Tali, locking his eyes with hers.
He pulled her upward and into the cargo hold. They held themselves against the doorframe, breathing heavily. There was a sudden bright flash on the surface a few kilometers behind them. A massive cloud of dust burst skyward and then slowly drifted back down. When the dust had settled, Lucas could see the lights of the bazaar still glowing steadily.
Slowly the surface receded, until a halo of stars surrounded the planet. McKinley cut the engines and looked back at them through the cockpit entrance.
“Remind me not to hang around the two of you in the future, eh?”
On the ride back to the Orpheus, part of Lucas’s mind wanted to worry about Stockton, the other Belters, and whatever they were planning next, but the rest of him was too exhausted to care. Tali sat quietly against the wall of the cargo hold with her arms wrapped around her knees. She looked . . . resigned? Content? Lucas couldn’t tell.
When they landed, he helped her up, and they joined McKinley out on the hangar deck.
“Thank you,” Lucas said. “You saved our lives.”
Tali nodded and shook McKinley’s hand. “Thanks.”
“Well, there’s good people down there,” McKinley said, clearly embarrassed. “And what you did was brave. And stupid. Maybe the bravest and stupidest thing I’ve ever seen.”
“Where are you going to go now?�
�� Tali asked.
“Haven’t really decided, to be honest. Someplace far from here. Maybe if I keep my head down, the Navy won’t try too hard to find me.”
“We’ll tell them how you helped us,” Lucas said.
“You could come too,” McKinley said to Tali. “I could use a good copilot.”
Tali shook her head. “I’m done with hiding.”
“You’ve got more guts than me,” McKinley said, smiling sadly. “Good luck.”
McKinley climbed back up into the cargo ship’s cockpit. He started to close the hatch, and then he stopped. “You know, I think maybe you were right,” he said to Lucas. “Maybe people can change. Even people as hard-headed as the Navy or us Belters. I hope we don’t throw away the chance.”
He closed the hatch. Tali pulled Lucas back to the rear wall of the hangar, and they watched McKinley lift off and disappear into the starry sky. Was there a chance? Lucas wondered. And would anyone take it?
As soon as they had repressurized the hangar, Elena and Rahul rushed in, followed by Maria and Hanako. Rahul collided with Lucas and hugged him tightly. “Ow! Hey!”
“That was the stupidest thing I’ve ever seen anyone do,” Maria said, grabbing Tali and putting her into a mostly friendly headlock.
“She’s right,” Elena agreed. “But it was nicely executed.”
“Don’t let Ms. Calm and Collected fool you,” Rahul said, elbowing Lucas. “She was more worried than any of us.”
“Come on,” Tali said. “Let’s get to the bridge. We’ve got a lot of explaining to do.”
25
LUCAS SAT IN his dress uniform on a bench in a long, empty hallway. The sounds of muted conversations and the clacking of heels on the granite floors echoed through the corridors of the naval base. The bench was hard and uncomfortable, and the tight-fitting dress uniform made his skin itch. It didn’t help that after three days here on Ceres, he was already tired of gravity and ready to be back out in space.
The past month had been a whirlwind. The first thing Sanchez had done, once she was sure the immediate threat was over, had been to take Lucas and Tali into her cabin and have them explain absolutely everything that had happened. That had been easier than Lucas had expected, and to his surprise, Tali showed no hesitation or reluctance. She seemed relieved to finally be able to tell the truth. When they were done, Sanchez had asked them to write it all up so that they wouldn’t forget any details.
The Orpheus Plot Page 25
