The Last Flagship (The Science Officer Book 6)

by Blaze Ward

  And now? Vengeance.

  You wanna play rough, assholes? I’ll show you what rough really tastes like.

  People born rich never understand what poverty does to someone. How it shapes their willingness to color outside the lines. They’ve never worried about paying the rent every month, and all the things they might have to do to get there.

  Javier let the scowl own his face for a while. There was nobody in a position to look into his polarized helmet and see just what demon had possessed him.

  Safer this way.

  Javier Aritza was kind of a clown. That was okay. Eutrupio Navarre was a cold, hard killer. Even Navarre might have blanched and recoiled right now.

  Hammerfield’s exterior was polished clean, a sharp, blue-steel, alloy finish that told him the nav shields were rarely activated, letting the triple solar wind play across the hull like a high-grit sandpaper.

  In front of him, the airlock controls.

  Javier glanced back to make sure Suvi and Sykora were still with him. Suvi’s gear bag had a prybar strong enough to force the door, if necessary. Sykora had the muscles to make that happen.

  Javier set his guidance systems to hold him steady as he worked, little puffs of gas that would fly all directions.

  He reached out a gloved hand and pressed the button to open the keypad. Nothing happened. No power? Welded shut by time and errant plasma?

  Javier reached down to his belt and pulled out the most primitive tool a spaceman ever carried: a flat piece of polished steel, three millimeters thick and twenty-five wide, ground down to a chisel tip. A bit of string attached it to the sheath, so it wouldn’t fly away if he dropped it. Because he had never done that.

  Javier activated the magnets in his boots and left hand to give him some extra leverage against the hull, and slipped the edge of the tool into the space around the panel.

  Torque brought out the muscles in his back.

  In space, there was no rewarding pop as whatever was holding it gave way, but he could feel it in his hands. He sheathed his chisel and studied the controls revealed. Ten-key pad. Radio buttons.

  There we are: Big red emergency override.

  Javier couldn’t imagine that the beast inside, that grand, ancient dragon called a Sentience, might have missed their approach, even as stealthy as they had been, but pushing this button would most certainly wake it up.

  Knock, knock.

  Javier pushed the button until he felt it stop. It lit as it went in, which was a promising sign. He had feared that all power would be off, and they would have to pry the hatch open after all.

  More lights came on. A string of them in white outlined the airlock hatch. Javier smiled as the door slowly receded into the hull on hinges, revealing an airlock chamber large enough for ten or fifteen good friends to fill.

  He wasn’t entirely sure what all the hand signals Sykora gave him meant, but her intent on going first was obvious. As was his willingness to let her.

  Always put well-armed, crazy chicks on point where they might stop all the hordes of hell in their tracks. Sykora was like that.

  At least the airlock was internally lit. Bright, white lights revealed a clean interior. The slightest rime of frost as a few traces of air bled out, so hopefully there was atmospheric pressure inside after all this time.

  More hand signals. Hajna joined Sykora in the box while the rest of them were apparently supposed to wait outside. Whatever.

  The hatch slid ominously closed, a bank vault that slowly sealed shut.

  Long minutes passed.

  Javier found himself inspecting a sensor pod nearby, his primary nerdiness coming to the fore when the situational stress got too much. The pod was worn and pitted. Probably blind after all this time. Certainly, it didn’t emit any signals he could pick up.

  And Suvi hadn’t made any indication that the dragon might be waking.

  The outer hatch lit up and began to cycle again, a humongous Venus Flytrap waiting its next customer.

  Given the space, Javier entered and signaled the three women to join him inside. He pressed the big, green button on the inner wall when everyone was set.

  A sign lit up above the button. Javier read German, which had been the universal standard message for airlocks of all nations, dating back thousands of years, but the message was written in eleven other languages in smaller print below, just in case.

  Warning: Gravplates activating.

  The direction of the text provided your context, if you had somehow gotten confused about the shape of the warship around you.

  The plates powered up slowly, giving even the most distracted fool time to realize what was happening and get his feet pointed in the right direction. At the same time, more lights came on and Javier could feel a rumbling hiss through his boots as air got pumped into the chamber.

  All good signs. Assuming no alien monster from his worst nightmares was standing on the other side of the inner hatch when it opened.

  The door cycled out into the hallway.

  Okay, this monstrous nightmare was not unexpected.

  Sykora.

  She had depolarized her faceplate, so he could see her grimace inside. She wasn’t scowling much more than normal. And had a pistol in either hand, but that was usual for her as well.

  Suvi went out first, sliding around the Amazon and taking up a station overhead. Javier felt the ping she unleashed, clear down in his bones.

  NOTHING was sneaking up on those two women.

  He joined them in the hall, along with Sascha, Hajna, and Afia, snug as a bug in a rug.

  External sensors showed everything here in the tolerable range. Oxygen/nitrogen mix close enough for government work. No dangerous traces underneath.

  Colder than snot out in the hallway, though. Ambient hallway temperature four degrees and atmospheric equivalent of twenty-five hundred meters above sea level.

  Camping in the Northern Rockies, back on Earth, in winter. Still, tolerable.

  Javier reached up with both hands and pressed the buttons to open his helmet. The buttons were located on either side of the forehead, where Sykora had obviously ground off her horns with a disk sander at some point in the past.

  The faceplace itself was three pieces that came together like a fishbowl with nearly invisible seams. They popped open now and retracted, kinda rolling up like shades, down right, down left, and up center, leaving the backpiece behind his ears and the helmet crown atop his skull.

  Smelled dry in here. Which was way better than smelling like dead people. Visions of Egyptian mummy movies had plagued him for days.

  Javier didn’t bother with a weapon at this point. Not with as many armed women as he had close by.

  Instead, he opened up the comm and set it to scanning all the frequencies for a signal. Most people never realized how much noise a Sentient starship made, controlling remotes and sub-systems. You had to have owned one.

  Or been one, in Suvi’s case. He figured she would say something if she needed to, witnesses be damned. Still, better to check.

  “Probe. Access Command Node,” he said aloud, perpetuating the myth that the big eyeball was about as smart as a rabbit. “Confirm status.”

  “Conditions nominal,” she replied in the most amazingly droll and bored voice he had ever heard her use.

  So yeah, safe, for now.

  Javier tapped his helmet and nodded to the four organic women, indicating that they were safe to open up their faceplates as well. Emergency systems could always slam them shut in an eyeblink if something went wrong.

  They all emerged from their plastic chrysalis shells and sniffed.

  “Where’s first?” Afia asked.

  She was an engineer first and hadn’t drawn a weapon, unlike the other three women. Four. Suvi’s pop-down turret was deployed and ready to go.

  “We have lights, power, and atmosphere tolerable to human standards,” Javier mused aloud.

  He looked around the hallway for the first time.

  Hu
man standards. Naval architecture, so straight lights, square corners, gray paint, strange pipes and conduits that popped out of walls occasionally, ran a ways, and then popped back in.

  Ugly.

  There was a reason cruise ships spent so much time and money on hiding all of that behind a Hollywood set.

  “I had planned engineering first,” Javier replied to Afia. “Just in case. But I think we can do the bridge first and see what we know.”

  He caught Sykora’s eye. She nodded to him.

  Man, that woman did not understand poker. Not one bit. Everyone else here would have cleaned her out in about four hands.

  It was obvious she wanted to know what had happened to the crew. Why the great mystery? Where was King Arthur hiding?

  “Which way?” Sykora asked in a cold, tight voice, like ice chipped off a concrete dam in winter.

  “Forward stairs,” he replied, mildness itself.

  “That’s eleven decks,” Afia whined lightly. “Why not the lift?”

  Javier started to say something, but Sykora got there first.

  “Do you want to be trapped in a lift with a potentially hostile Sentience controlling it?” the big Amazon asked in a cruel voice.

  “Oh,” the tiny engineer thought about it. “Yeah, no.”

  The dangerous women apparently telepathically flipped coins and organized themselves. Javier and Afia ended up in the middle of the line, with Hajna on point, followed by Sykora, and Suvi’s probe flying overhead. Sascha brought up the rear.

  The stairwell, when they got there, showed all the imagination of the rest of the ship. Three-and-a-half-meter-wide treads, enough for three people to move at once, or two in armoured suits. Up a half-deck, landing, half-turn, up the next. Motion sensing lights at regular intervals.

  A little over half of the lights even worked, at least enough to show the way as they entered the square column.

  Javier was glad Afia was in even worse condition than he was. He stayed in shape with yoga and regular weight-lifting. The engineer just had youth on her side.

  The other three were the kind of people that did hikes on Storm Gauntlet where they put on fifteen kilo packs and walked every hallway, every other day.

  Boring, but they weren’t wheezing after six decks, either.

  At least nothing jumped out at them.

  Javier ignored Sykora’s smirk as they got to Deck Four and stood around catching their breath. He felt like a forty-year-old man today. And no, he was not taking up running so he could keep up with the kids.

  Deep breath. Angry growl.

  Let’s do this.

  There was absolutely no reason to put the bridge on Deck Four. When you sailed on water, it made sense, since your captain needed to be high enough to look around and direct things.

  Javier supposed that Neu Berne had just never gotten over that. Concord ships put it as close to the center of the ship as they could, on the assumption that since it was really hard to actually blow a ship up, you frequently had to stab it to death with beams that acted like ice picks.

  Maybe those bastards just wanted everybody in shape from climbing too many damned stairs on a daily basis. Looking at Sykora, he could see that.

  You didn’t get a bottom that perfect sitting on it at a work station.

  “Probe,” Javier called. “Map, please. Deck Four, centered on us.”

  Sykora started to say something, but subsided at the scowl he directed her way.

  Yes, I was aware that you have memorized the entire layout of this ship and could probably tell me the room numbers as we go. Unless I plan to crack your skull open and suck your brains out with a straw, princess, I need to see it as well.

  That thought had its advantages.

  Suvi projected onto the deck below them, saving him the extra step of orienting himself. Another reason he had asked his most favorite woman, and not his least.

  Again, stupid design decision, to put it barely a fifth of the way back from the bow, but it saved him having to walk very far from here.

  And still, nothing had jumped out at them, or spoken to them.

  If he didn’t know better, he would have thought this was a simpler ship. Like Storm Gauntlet. Automated to a high degree, but not self-directing. Follow orders and nothing more.

  Or the dragon was sprawled out on his horde of gold coins like the ancient story, just waiting for them to enter his lair.

  And Javier, without a ring of invisibility.

  They tromped on. There was nothing silent and sneaky about this group, except maybe how much firepower the four women could bring to bear in the flash of an eye. Or eyeball, in Suvi’s case.

  The hatch to the bridge was definitely not standard naval architecture. If it had been, it would have been that plain gray-green everything else was, and standard height and width. This one was an extra fifty centimeters wider, a whole meter taller, and banded with extra straps of a golden metal running vertically in three places.

  Like it really wanted to be a bank vault when it grew up. Heavy, imposing, secure. As if the Admiral on the other side was expecting an enemy assault force to board and try to storm the bridge itself.

  That, at least, sounded like something Neu Berne would do.

  Javier found the three camera sensors in the frame: two at eye level on each side, and one overhead. The little lights next to the lenses were out. Hopefully, the dragon wasn’t watching.

  Like all starships, there was a panel on the right. Humans tended to be right-handed, so it was standard. If the Sentience was watching, he would let you in after he identified you. If something went wrong, you could key in a security code to prove who you were. If the Sentience went off-line, theoretically you could override things from here.

  “Hammerfield, open the hatch, please,” Javier said in a firm, polite voice. In German, even.

  What the hell, it might even work.

  It was that or Open Sesame.

  Nothing happened.

  Unlike the airlock, there was no emergency override button here. And a ten-key pad with only a trillion options to try.

  This was why he brought Afia. Beyond surrounding himself with beautiful, competent women. Although, one should never overlook that.

  “Afia,” he turned to her with a smile, pointing at the box. “Would you be so kind as to open that so we can get to the door control circuits?”

  Her gear was tucked into custom sleeves and pockets on the outside of her suit, where she could get at them by touch alone when working. She pulled something from her left thigh and something from her belt and tapped metal on metal on the casing while she kneeled down to get her nose almost up against it, like an insurance specialist trying to identify a forged painting.

  The other women went into a defensive array, guns in every direction and hostility like an ugly fog boiling off of them.

  However, Sykora almost seemed to be fidgeting, which was completely unlike her.

  This was one of the few times he didn’t mind. Creator only knew what a bored and desperate Sentience might throw at them. Nobody had stun weapons in hand right now.

  Afia had the case off in seconds, without using a prybar. Another reason he had brought her.

  Inside, electronic guts that didn’t mean all that much to Javier, but apparently were a roadmap to an engineer. She studied it for a few seconds and then looked up at him.

  “It’s unlocked,” she said simply. “I can open it anytime you want.”

  “I’ll cover it,” Sykora barked out.

  “No, you will not,” Javier replied.

  “Why not?”

  She rounded on him, angry, overbearing, willing to use her greater size to whatever affect it might have.

  None. He wasn’t going to budge.

  “Because you are too emotionally involved, Dragoon,” Javier said. “You are not tactical right now.”

  That got through to her.

  She snarled at him, and then blinked.

  Amazingly, the Amazon woman hols
tered both pistols with a curse of frustration.

  “Damn it,” she growled. “Damn you. And you’re right.”

  She tilted her head down and looked both ways up the hallway.

  “Probe, you cover the door,” she said. “Can I watch?”

  Javier nodded up at her, at the anguish he saw in those eyes. As much as he wanted to hate this woman, as much joy as destroying her would bring him, he needed her intact. Not just now. Maybe for a long time.

  However long it took to win a war with pirates.

  Let the universe sort it out after that.

  Javier looked at both pathfinders, made sure they nodded back at him. Suvi was faster than even Sykora, if somebody needed to be killed when that door opened. Sykora could probably still draw and shoot faster than anyone holding a pistol.

  “Open it up,” he said to Afia.

  She nodded and reached out with her right hand. Something clicked and the whole vault door began to move sideways into the left-hand wall.

  PART FOUR

  AFIA DIDN’T HAVE any dog in this fight.

  The dragoon was a hard-ass professional, every waking moment, but she was also living in a galaxy where disdainful men tended to run things, so the giantess had to be twice as good as any man at her job to even be considered adequate. Storm Gauntlet ran a lot less sexist because that woman wouldn’t take any shit from any man, and wouldn’t allow any man to become a problem or a predator.

  Hell, if you looked at it that way, Neu Berne itself, then or now, was way more socially advanced than most of the others. Even Concord folk really only tended to talk a good game, but didn’t always deliver, Captain Sokolov being a notable exception.

  Javier, as compared to Sykora or Sokolov, was a total goofball most of the time, but he was never selfish, in bed or on duty. And that went a long way in Afia’s book.

  “Open it up,” Javier kinda growled, but his anger wasn’t aimed at her.

  Sykora was in the wrong on this one. She was only here because nobody would tell her she couldn’t be, the only Bernian in the entire crew, making maybe the biggest discovery in the culture’s history.