The radio was silent as the pilot considered, and finally he blew out a sigh that clipped in the microphone. “Sure, it’s only my life we’re risking here. And all of your lives.”
“If we do something, we might all live,” said Blair, glancing down at Sammy, more than aware that Reardon was probably listening in in the cockpit. “If we do nothing, this kid definitely dies.”
A dark pall fell over everything, like a blanket made of grim realization. For a moment there was just silence. Nothing save the faint hiss of the open radio line, the hum of the atmospheric pump, and the faint whine of an unseen shuttle system.
“Okay,” said the pilot. “What the hell. What’s the worst that could happen?”
“Don’t ask that,” said Reardon over the line. “Hey, how are you, Sammy?”
Sammy was unconscious again, white as a sheet, barely moving. His lips had faded into an ominous pale color. “You better get down here,” said Blair. “I’ll tag out with you and hang out with our pilot.”
“Okay,” said Reardon, and then she could hear his footsteps clank against the metal deck.
“He’ll be okay,” said Yim, rubbing the back of his neck. “He’ll be fine. A door like that… these kinds of engines will burn it down real quick. Don’t worry about it.”
“I’m not worried,” said Blair, hoping she sounded more sure of herself than he did.
They sat in silence for a moment, both pressing their biofoam bandages against either side of Sammy’s leg. Years in a wheelchair had shrunk the limb down to a thin stick. Hopefully it made the wound look more serious than it really was?
Reardon appeared at the rear of the shuttle looking grim and expectant. Blair attempted a reassuring smile as she swapped positions with him. Her hands were dripping with blood, and they left a thin spotty trail on the deck. So much blood…
Sammy would be okay.
She pushed open the safety door to the cockpit, closing it behind her, and it sealed with a faint hiss.
The pilot flicked a few switches. “Okay,” he said. “Ready to burn the hell out of an extremely expensive piece of station hardware?”
“Sure,” said Blair, slipping into the copilot’s seat and strapping in. She breathed deeply. No hiccups. “Just so you know,” she said lightly, “I might throw up on you.”
“Don’t like blood?”
“Don’t like flying.” She gave him a pointed glance. “Especially rough flying.”
The pilot only smiled, flicked a switch, and—with a faint hum—the engines kicked into life. Blair gripped her arms rests and looked determinedly forward. The ship spun in place, turning its rear toward the metal door, and then with a soft clunk, attached itself to the metal floor of the hangar.
“I’m Special Agent Denelle Blair, by the way,” she said. She inhaled deeply, letting the breath out slowly, trying to calm her nerves. “Just thought I should… you know. Let you know. Just in case something goes wrong. What’s your name?”
The pilot laughed, casually reaching for the throttle. “Not saying,” he said. “That’s bad luck.”
Bad luck? To tell me your name? Blair scrunched up her face as the engines built up power, a fiery red glow filling the inside of the hangar bay. She really hoped there was no one in there. Or she was currently committing murder.
Maybe the guy keeping his name to himself was wise.
Chapter Forty-Six
Shuttle
Hangar Bay
Chrysalis Station
Kepler-1011 system
As the energy built around them and the engines started to melt the door, Yim continued to apply pressure to Sammy’s leg. The kid had drifted back to consciousness. He looked dazed. Confused. With a wound like his, shock was a certainty.
“How are you doing?” he asked, attempting a reassuring smile. “Sammy, right?”
The kid nodded. He looked so young. Maybe he just needed the lucky speech.
“So,” said Yim, adjusting his grip on the pressure bandage. “I’ve commanded ships into battle before. I’ve lost people. I know when people are going to live, and when they’re going to die, and you’re a live-r, little one. That’s what I’m telling you. And I know that… because right now, when things seem really bad, you’re still here. You’re still fighting.
“So many of us in our life are crippled by hardships. They suffer and they feel pain, and that pain drives them to give up. They receive a wound, they see their nations and their cultures under attack, mocked, insulted, beaten. They hang their heads and they just sort of accept that they are done. From within, a gnawing, powerful despair grows that drives them to seek out and establish order in their lives.
“And it’s because of that that we are the luckiest people alive.”
Reardon, who had been pretending not to listen, snorted loudly. “My brother has a fucking hole in his leg and the door is shut, and we’re surrounded. How is that lucky?”
Yim took a breath, still smiling. “Who else could ever boast of the glory in overcoming these challenges? Who else, right in this moment, has the whole world against them? We live in an age of heroes and tyrants. Of diabolical manipulators at the top of every organization, every institution down the tree of society, down to its very roots. In management. In every position of power. We live in the shadow of such pervasive evil, such tyranny and viciousness, that whole parts of society are trained to hate us. No time like this has ever existed. Yet, despite all those threats, we will defeat them all. And we will be remembered forever.”
The engines built up power, and the temperature inside the ship rose ominously. Yim didn’t pay it any attention. His focus was entirely on Sammy.
“Nobody’s going to remember me,” whispered Sammy.
“Nonsense.” Yim chuckled. “On my old ship… I had a World’s Number One Dad paperweight, covered in dust. I always forgot to polish it, but I never forgot what it represented.”
Sammy smiled. “Okay.”
Reardon glared. “Hey, no more talking, okay? Sammy should save his strength.” He looked down at his brother. “C’mon, you little piece of shit. If you die here, I will fucking kill you, I swear on Dad’s grave, so don’t test me.”
Every second that passed, Sammy looked a little bit worse. “Okay.” Yim nodded. “No more talking.” He reached up and wiped his forehead with the back of his hand. “Damn. It’s getting hot in here.”
“The engines are overheated,” said Reardon. “They aren’t designed to burn like this. The doors must be reflecting the heat.”
“But that means it’s absorbing most of it,” said Yim. “It’s working.”
“Maybe,” said Reardon, gently shaking his brother, trying to keep him conscious.
A warning klaxon sounded. Overheating engines.
“We’ll find out soon enough,” said Yim. “One way or the other.”
Chapter Forty-Seven
Bridge
HMS Caernarvon
Space, near Chrysalis
Mattis clicked his tongue as the Caernarvon raced the Chinese ships toward Chrysalis. It felt almost like old times, competing with the Chinese for a nebulous, unclear goal, riding a steel warship toward a point in space where in all likelihood some serious shit was going to go down.
He expected that it would feel good. Feel like he was twenty years younger. Instead it felt vaguely hollow—what was another war in the grand scheme of things?
More thoughts that he didn’t have time to deal with. There were people in danger. He had to focus.
“What the devil’s going on?” asked Spears, squinting as she leaned forward in her chair, pointing at the main monitor fixated on Chrysalis. “What’s that?”
Then he saw it too. A faint red glow at the center of the hangar bay door, steadily growing outward like an angrily blooming rose. “Is there a fire?” he asked. “Some kind of thermal discharge?”
Blackwood tapped her wrist and the view on the monitor changed from optical to thermal. Sure enough, the hangar bay lit up like a g
iant oven, waves of heat emanating from the door and radiating off into space. “The heat signature comes from shuttle exhaust,” she said, furrowing her brow at the murky thermal image. Suddenly, she jabbed at the screen where a fiery plume emanated—seemingly from nowhere. “Bloody hell, they’re burning their way out.”
“There’s someone over there with a plan,” said Mattis. “A really dangerous plan.”
Spears stared at the screen. “They must be absolutely barking.” She stood out of her chair. “Get those Chinese ships on the horn. I want to speak with them.”
“Ma’am, communications are still down,” said Blackwood. She tapped at her wrist-mounted computer. “Trying anyway.”
As Mattis watched, the red glow of the engine exhaust against the hangar bay door grew more intense and spread, the core turning yellow. The Caernarvon decelerated, and the Chinese ships did as well. The whole group drew closer.
“Can’t raise them,” said Blackwood.
Mattis felt his hands ball at his sides. The door buckled, the pressure of the atmosphere inside it warping the weakened metal. Hell, they might actually pull this off. “If it’s stupid but it works,” he said, “it isn’t stupid.”
“Indeed,” said Spears. The Caernarvon pulled up in front of the door, barely a hundred meters away. The Chinese ships followed, forming a hemisphere behind them. It could definitely be construed as a threatening posture, but it wasn’t overtly hostile.
They were playing chicken. Without a way to talk to each other.
A tiny lick of flame followed by escaping atmosphere trailed out of a breach in the door. Slowly, it began to melt and buckle, the contained pressure on the inside pushing it out like a giant zit—the side of Chrysalis growing and warping and distorting until, with a powerful decompression, it finally burst.
Flame and white gas hurled out into space, a giant tongue of fire that threatened to lick the hull of the Caernarvon. Within it, tumbling like a leaf in the wind, was the shuttle, thrown around by the decompression.
“Engage magnetic grappler,” said Spears. “Lock onto that ship and retrieve it.”
The Chinese would do the exact same thing, he was sure. They had access to the same technology and obviously wanted the ship as much as the Caernarvon did. Hopefully the British system would be faster. And more accurate.
“Grappler away,” said Blackwood, and a thick magnet on a cable flew out from the Caernarvon, zooming straight toward the shuttle and latching hold to the top of the hull.
“Jolly good shot, Commander Blackwood,” said Spears, smiling widely. “Now reel them in.”
They began to, but one of the Chinese ships fired their grappler too, and the device stuck squarely to the port side of the shuttle.
“Shit,” said Spears, hissing faintly.
Blackwood scrolled her finger, picking up the speed of the wind-in, but Mattis knew that was dangerous. Who knew what structural damage the shuttle had experienced during its burn, and as they had just seen, heat could weaken metal. That hull must be hundreds of degrees. “Wait,” he said, holding up his hand. “We can’t risk tearing the shuttle apart.”
“Mmm,” said Spears, waving a hand. The cable wind-in stopped.
The Chinese must have been thinking the same thing, because they didn’t wind in either. The shuttle merely floated in space attached to both ships. It looked sickly, turning slowly in the vacuum, thick smoke trailing from its engines.
“This isn’t good,” said Spears, displaying that perfect British understatement. “Can we try to jerk it free?”
“Only if we want to pull the shuttle apart like a bread roll,” said Mattis, grimacing. “Those magnets are strong.”
“Blackwood tapped her foot rapidly, thinking hard. “Well, we could always try and cut their cable.”
“Cut it?” asked Mattis. “Like… how?”
Blackwood smiled sheepishly. “I was thinking with the forward cannon?”
Spears considered. “That’s mad,” she said. “The risk that we could damage the shuttle is high, and the risk that the Chinese could interpret that action as a threat is even higher still…” she grimaced. “But I don’t see any other option. Do it. Start to reel them in, and when there’s tension on the line, fire a single shot—armor piercing, we don’t want shrapnel to damage the hull—and then pull them in as fast as you can.”
“Aye aye, Ma’am,” said Blackwood. “Loading AP.”
Chapter Forty-Eight
Bridge
HMS Caernarvon
Space, near Chrysalis
This was crazy, thought Mattis. But sometimes crazy was exactly what was needed.
“Gun ready,” said Blackwood. “Locked onto that cable. Just say the word, Captain.”
Spears paused—probably to consider her options and to make sure that this was really the only one—then nodded resolutely. “Fire.”
With a shake and a rumble, the round flew out from the Caernarvon, streaking across space. For a moment Mattis thought it was a miss, but then the two halves of the Chinese cable came apart, glowing faintly at either end.
As quickly as it could, the British cable drew tight and began to tug, jerking the shuttle roughly back toward them.
“Medical teams to the hangar bay,” said Spears, as the shuttle jostled around violently. That couldn’t be easy on the people inside. “Commander Blackwood, prepare to initiate Z-space translation when the shuttle is aboard. Set course for Earth. It’s time we got the hell out of here and away from this godforsaken place.”
Mattis couldn’t agree more. “The less time we spend in this system, the better I’ll feel.”
“Never thought I’d long for the persistent cold wet of England,” said Blackwood.
Slowly, almost painfully, the little ship was tugged and jostled in toward the Caernarvon, drifting closer and closer to the open lip of her hangar bay.
Another Chinese ship fired a grappler which, fortunately, went wide. But then several of the gravity mines started to move on his radar screen. The Chinese had obviously engaged them. They really could not stay here.
“Prepare point defense,” said Spears. “Target and engage those grapplers and any mines within range. Keep them off the shuttle. Shoot anything that comes near them.”
“Aye, Ma’am,” said Blackwood. “Spinning up point defense on promiscuous mode.”
“Fifteen seconds until retrieval,” said Blackwood. “The hull has cooled somewhat, so we can bring it in a little faster.”
“Do it,” said Spears, defiantly. “I don’t think the Chinese are going to let us get much closer without—”
As though on cue, a chirp sounded across the bridge. The sound of an incoming transmission.
“Mysteriously,” said Blackwood, “it seems as though whatever interference was present has vanished, right when the Chinese want to talk to us.” Wondrous how that worked.
Spears adjusted her collar. “Put them through, audio only.”
Clear, and without a hint of interference, Captain Mei-Yin Long’s voice came over the bridge.
“Caernarvon, this is Tianti Shan actual. I think it’s about time we had a chat, don’t you agree?”
“Oh, I think that time has long since passed,” said Spears, her voice as unyielding as it was polite. “Call off your mines. We’ll be retrieving our vessel and departing post-haste. Thank you for your cooperation with our investigation. We’ll be leaving now.”
“The mines are no longer under our control. It is the people of Chrysalis who are trying to punish that shuttle for their actions.” Captain Long sighed down the line. “In any event, I’m afraid I cannot permit you to leave, Captain Spears. Your shuttle contains a person of interest to the People’s Republic and we demand unconditional access to him.”
“We don’t have him,” said Spears, simply. She looked at Mattis, shrugging slightly.
He could practically hear the sneer in Captain Long’s voice. “Of course not.”
Slowly, he began to understand. Mattis s
ignaled for Blackwood to mute the call .
“He’s there,” Mattis said. “The away team found him. That’s why they want the shuttle—Yim is aboard.”
Nodding, Spears signaled to resume the communication.
“You are free,” said Spears, evenly, “to demand access to every star in the galaxy. This does not mean you are going to get it.” A slow smile came across her face. “I am curious to know what Yim will tell me, however. I’m sure my conversations with him will prove to be very enlightening.”
Captain Long’s voice dropped slightly, hardening into a threat. “Captain Spears, you are playing an extremely dangerous game. Once you start to pull a thread, the only avenue is to destroy your sweater. Nothing good ever comes to the curious. Ask the cat.”
“Curiosity killed the cat, but satisfaction bought it back,” Spears said brightly. “And speaking to Yim will be extremely satisfying, I promise you.”
Mattis grinned. The shuttle disappeared into the Caernarvon’s hull and the hangar bay doors closed with a rough slam. The readouts around the bridge showed the re-compression process, and then the Z-space engine started to charge, building up power. All around them the gravity mines closed in, flashing angrily as they swarmed toward the ship.
“You will regret this,” said Captain Long.
Spears cut the connection. “Execute Z-space translation,” she said. And the world around them faded out into nothingness, becoming a multispectral hue of light and color.
“Well done, everyone,” said Spears, settling back into her chair, a low sigh of relief escaping her lips.
Mattis smiled eagerly. “Feels good to have a win every now and then.”
“That it does,” she said.
There was a brief moment of silence, happy and pleasant and relieved.
“Captain Spears?” Blair’s voice came over the bridge. “Hey, it’s us. Admiral Yim wants to talk to Admiral Mattis right away.”
The Last Strike: Book 5 of The Last War Series Page 19
