“This way,” said Tessa, pointing.
They hurried down the corridor, March glancing back every so often towards the entrance to the shopping promenade. None of the macrobes seemed to have noticed their presence. Perhaps that was because of the blue carpet. Their footfalls did not clang and clatter against it as they had in other portions of the vast starship.
“There,” said Tessa, pointing again. To the left stood a large pair of double doors. Above them was mounted a sign that said FINE DINING. “The banquet rooms are behind those doors. If any survivors heard the captain, they'd have made their way here by now.”
“There are also a few macrobes behind that door,” said Cassandra, gazing at her phone.
“How many?” said March. Had the survivors been overwhelmed already? If a large group of survivors had gathered in one of the banquet rooms, a group of macrobes might have been drawn towards them like sharks towards blood in the water.
“Two,” said Cassandra. “Maybe three. They’re standing close together, so it’s hard to tell.”
Tessa frowned. “Just how does that sensor of yours work anyway?”
Cassandra gave her that thin smile again. “Extremely well.”
“If they’re standing together,” said March, “that means they’re vulnerable to grenades.”
He plucked one of the grenades from his bandoleers.
Tessa’s eyes went wide. She did have pretty eyes. “How many of those do you have?”
“Not as many as we’re going to need,” said March. He set the fuse for a second and a half. “Are those doors motion-triggered?” Tessa nodded. “I’ll go first and throw the grenade. Start shooting the minute it goes off. If there are only three of them, we can take them down before they get close enough to tear us apart.”
“This is risky,” said Tessa.
“Do you have a better idea?” said March. “A utility corridor we could use?”
Tessa shook her head. “Not in this part of the ship, no.”
“Then we’ll have to go through them,” said March. “Cassandra, get your gun out, but only use it if you have a clear shot.” Cassandra nodded, put her phone away, and drew her pistol, her face drawn but calm. “Are you both ready?”
The women nodded.
March turned and strode forward, triggering the motion detector.
The heavy doors slid open with a hiss, revealing another wide, carpeted corridor. The corridor terminated in a T-junction, and in the junction stood three macrobes, all of them resembling the spider-like creature that March had killed in the repair shop. He stepped forward and flung the grenade, and the macrobes started to turn to face him.
“Blood and flesh,” said one of the macrobes, a creature that looked as if it had once been a human woman. “Blood...”
March never heard the rest of the speech because the grenade went off right under the macrobe. There was a flash of fire and a roar, and pieces of the macrobe bounced off the walls, leaking blue slime. The other two creatures screamed in fury and charged, and March took his pistol in both hands and started shooting. His first bolt missed. His second shot hit the carapace of the creature on the left, and the blue-glowing tumors absorbed the plasma. His third shot drilled through its face and out the back of its head in a burst of embers, and the creature went limp and collapsed.
The final macrobe charged towards him, clawed legs stabbing into the carpet, and March shifted to aim at it, wondering if he could line up a shot before it tore him to pieces.
A plasma bolt flashed past him and struck the final macrobe in the head. It jerked once and then collapsed. March turned his head, wondering if Cassandra had shot it, and he saw that Tessa had dropped to one knee, both hands grasping the butt of her pistol. It had been a perfect shot, and she had done it will remaining motionless in the face of a charging macrobe.
That kind of shot took a cool head and icy nerves.
Maybe that diner back on Calaskar had been a rough place.
“Good shot,” said March.
Tessa grinned at him as she got back to her feet. “Surprised? Didn’t think a starliner steward could be that good of a shot?”
“I’m just glad we’re not dead,” said March, glancing back at Cassandra. “You’re all right?”
Cassandra nodded. She hadn’t gotten her pistol clear of her holster before the fight had been over. That didn’t surprise March. This was the first time in her life she had ever seen deadly violence, and she was reacting the way he would expect.
But Tessa Morgan wasn’t.
At some point in her past, she had learned how to keep a cool head despite the surge of adrenaline and terror, had kept a cool head long enough to kill the macrobe. Her shooting stance had been excellent, and it had taken iron nerve to drop to one knee before the charging creature. She had reacted like someone familiar with violence, someone accustomed to it.
Either that had been one hell of a rough diner back on Calaskar, or there had been combat training in her past that she hadn’t happened to mention.
“If anyone’s still alive,” said Tessa, “they’ll be around the corner to the left.”
“Any macrobes nearby?” said March.
Cassandra drew her phone and checked the display. “Not within three hundred meters or so.”
“How does that work?” said Tessa, peering at the phone screen. A scowl flickered over Cassandra’s face, and she lowered the phone. “It doesn’t say anything. It’s just a bunch of numbers.”
“This isn’t the time to discuss user interface design,” said March. “Come on.”
He walked towards the junction and turned left, and came to a stop.
A half-dozen plasma weapons pointed towards him.
At the end of the corridor twenty meters away he saw a pair of double doors, and beyond them was an elaborate banquet hall. A barricade had been constructed across the doors, built out of wooden tables and chairs. Between March and the barricade lay a score of macrobes of varying types, all of them killed by plasma bolts to the head.
Cassandra joined him and came to a sudden stop, her eyes going wide. “Oh.”
The half-dozen plasma pistols were held by men in the uniforms of the Royal Calaskaran Starlines. Two had white stewards’ uniforms, now smudged and bloody, one wore the black of security, and three the blue uniforms of officers.
One of the blue-uniformed officers straightened up. He looked like a starliner captain out of a video drama, with a barrel chest, a graying beard, and a solemn, dignified face. Now the solemn eyes went wide with astonishment, and he straightened up, lowering his pistol.
“Jack March?” said the bearded man. “What the hell are you doing here?”
Tessa came around the corner and smiled when she saw the barricade.
“Manuel Torrence?” said March.
Captain Manuel Torrence, former officer of the Royal Calaskaran Navy, starliner captain, and Beta Operative of the Silent Order, shook his head in amazement. “I didn’t know what I expected to come around that corner, but it sure wasn’t you.” His gaze shifted to Cassandra, and he frowned. “Is that...”
“You remember my girlfriend Cassie Smith,” said March.
Torrence kept his surprise hidden, but March knew him well enough to see it. “Yes, of course. Good to see you again, Cassie. I have to admit I wasn’t expecting to see you in these circumstances.”
“Nor was I, Captain,” said Cassandra.
“You...know each other, do you?” said Tessa.
“We do,” said Torrence. He frowned. “You’re...Steward Morgan, is that it?”
“Tessa Morgan, sir,” said Tessa, drawing herself up. “This was my first tour aboard the Alpine.”
“Well,” said Torrence with a sigh. “Hell of a first tour, Miss Morgan.” March had last seen him six months ago, but Torrence looked as if he had aged ten years, likely since this morning. “Jack, you’ve got the Tiger with you?”
“Yeah,” said March, “but there’s a problem.”
Torre
nce sighed again. “Of course there is. You’d better come inside, all three of you. We need to decide what we’re going to do next.”
They climbed over the barricade and into the banquet room. It looked absurdly peaceful for such a grim situation. Actual polished wood had been placed over the deck, no doubt to provide a better surface for formal dances. There was a bandstand in one corner, and a long buffet table that currently held piles of prepackaged vacuum-sealed meals. A group of families with small children sat huddled in the corner around a video screen, the children watching the documentary from the gym with a woman with a black coat and skirt talking about alien history. There were some stewards in their white uniforms, a few more men in black uniforms and blue uniforms...but not all that many.
March glanced at Torrence. The older man’s expression was bleak. “Yeah. Four and a half thousand people on the ship, and we only managed to save forty-seven of them.”
“Maybe there are more, sir?” said Tessa. She looked shaken.
“You were the last three,” said Torrence. “We managed to get past the computer failure and access the internal sensors. It’s impossible to scan for those damned macrobes...but you three were the only other human life signs we picked up anywhere on the ship. We were trying to figure out whether or not we could get to you, but you kept moving around, and then you showed up.”
“Sir.” A young man in a black security uniform jogged over. He had the distinctive stance of a former Royal Marine. Likely he had joined Royal Calaskaran Starlines after finishing his tour with the Marines. “More survivors?”
“One more, Reader,” said Torrence. “But this is Captain March, a friend of mine. He has a privateering ship, and I hope we can get the survivors onto his ship and off the Alpine.”
“Good luck for us that you found us, Captain March,” said Reader. He grimaced. “Bad luck for you, I suppose.”
“Keep an eye on the barricade,” said Torrence. “Once Captain March and I decide what to do, we’ll need to move in a hurry. But until then, I don’t want those macrobes taking us off guard.”
“Yes, sir,” said Reader.
“Miss Morgan is an excellent shot,” said March. Tessa blinked and then smiled at him. “Saved my life from a charging macrobe. Better put her on the barricade too.”
“You heard the man,” said Torrence. “Both of you, go.”
Reader saluted, Tessa nodded, and they both headed for the barricade.
“This way,” said Torrence. “We can talk behind the buffet line. I think we have business to discuss.”
March and Cassandra followed Torrence behind the buffet line. The others could all see them, but they wouldn’t be able to overhear.
“I’m really sorry,” said Cassandra.
March blinked. “For what?”
“For pretending to be your girlfriend,” said Cassandra.
“No, it was clever,” said March.
“I agree with Captain March,” said Torrence. “The fewer people who know who you really are, Dr. Yerzhov, the better off we’ll all be.”
“What happened here?” said March.
“I don’t know,” said Torrence. “I really don’t. I suppose if we live through this, the investigators from the company and the Ministry of Security will sift through the evidence and find out just how long I’m going to prison for negligence. We were about an hour and a half out from system JX2278C, and I was on the bridge to supervise the preparations for exiting hyperspace. Everything was green. Not a single problem. Then the engineering section reported an explosion, and both our main resonator and our backup went offline at the same time.”
“An explosion?” said March.
Cassandra frowned. “Dark energy resonators don’t explode when they malfunction.”
Torrence shrugged. “They don’t. Maybe some other system overloaded and damaged the resonators in the process. Anyway, I ordered an emergency exit from hyperspace at once. But the explosion had apparently taken the computer offline, and we couldn’t get any response from the controls. I tried to call the engineering section and tell them to manually cut the power to the hyperdrive, but I couldn’t get any answer from them. I was about to leave the bridge and head to engineering, and then our navigator and the watch officer transformed into macrobes, and we were fighting for our lives.”
“What happened then?” said March. “How did you end up here?”
“We killed the transformed crew members,” said Torrence, “and I sent out a general call through the ship, telling everyone to make for the banquet room. By then, I figured we only had about fifty minutes until the Alpine arrived at JX2278C, and hopefully, we would drop out of hyperspace before too many of the crew and passengers were transformed and killed. I wanted to get to engineering and figure out what the hell had happened, but we were attacked by the macrobes. I was driven into the banquet room with everyone I could find, and we’ve been here ever since.”
“That’s horrible,” said Cassandra in a quiet voice.
“I’ve been flying for decades, Dr. Yerzhov,” said Torrence. “First with the Royal Navy, and then with Royal Calaskaran Starlines. I’ve never seen a disaster like this, not once.”
“Dark energy resonators don’t explode,” said Cassandra. “They’ll crystallize or simply fail, but they don’t explode.”
“And a computer failure at the same time?” said March. “That’s a hell of an unlikely coincidence.”
“That’s occurred to me as well,” said Torrence.
“You think it was sabotage?” said Cassandra, aghast. “Who would do that?”
“I don’t know,” said Torrence. “Sabotaging a resonator like that...it’s madness. Absolute madness. A Machinist agent would be ruthless enough to do it, but anyone who sabotaged a resonator coil while in hyperspace would be in danger of macrobe possession or getting killed by the possessed. It’s suicide.”
“A planted bomb, then?” said March. “A bomb that could have been put on the Alpine before it left port?”
“It’s possible,” said Torrence. “I just don’t know. It should be impossible. The engineering crew visually inspects the hyperdrive, the dark matter reactor, and the resonator coils before every jump. A bomb that powerful should have been found. Yet...I don’t know.” He shook his head. “Hopefully the inquest and the flight recorder data can figure it out. Right now, we need to focus on saving anyone who can still be saved. Which leads me to my question. I thought I might find Dr. Yerzhov waiting for us in a shuttle at system JX2278C. I didn’t expect her to turn up with you.”
“I was flying back from Rustaril on other business for the Order,” said March. “When I got to system NB11HV2, I found four Raptor starfighters chasing a shuttle registered to the University of Oradrea.”
Torrence looked at Cassandra. “Then you did listen to me. I knew President Murdan would try to kill you because of your paper. The Machinists have been taking a big interest in anything involved with dark energy or quantum entanglement lately. I didn’t know if you would believe me or not.”
“Everything happened the way you said it would,” said Cassandra. “The questions, the meetings, all of it. I realized that if I went to the Presidential Palace, I would never come out again, so I stole one of the University’s shuttles and fled the system. I was going to meet you at JX2278C and formally request asylum from the Kingdom of Calaskar, but things went wrong.”
“I jumped right in the middle of four Raptor starfighters chasing her,” said March. “It was obvious they didn’t want any witnesses because two of them broke off from the shuttle and tried to shoot me down. I destroyed three of them, and the fourth got away, but my hyperdrive’s dark energy surge regulator was damaged in the fight and partially crystallized.”
Torrence frowned. “Don’t you have a spare?”
“He does,” said Cassandra, “but it was wired into a parallel circuit next to the active regulator.”
Torrence blinked. “Really? That’s not good maintenance practice, Jack.”
/>
March sighed. “Since we’re stranded here, I’ll not argue. Anyway, after the fight, I picked up Dr. Yerzhov, and she told me what was going on. We decided to head for JX2278C and link up with you for a ride back to Constantinople Station. When we arrived, we couldn’t hail anyone on the ship, so we docked to find out what happened. Since then, we’ve been trying to find any survivors, or at least a route to the engineering section so we could scavenge a functional regulator. Then we ran into Morgan, and she brought us here.”
“You said the fourth Raptor got away?” said Torrence.
March nodded. “Did an emergency jump.”
“That’s a problem,” said Torrence. “Well, another one, anyway. President Murdan has several squadrons of Raptor-class heavy starfighters he uses for assassinations and covert jobs. He won’t have given up looking for Dr. Yerzhov. The Machinists want her dead and her research suppressed too badly for that. If you ran into them at system NB11HV2, they'd probably do a search pattern along possible hyperspace vectors into Calaskaran space from there.”
“And JX2278C is right on one of those vectors,” said March.
“They’ll turn up sooner or later,” said Torrence. “Under other circumstances, I’d say we could all just go aboard the Tiger and wait until a Calaskaran destroyer arrives on patrol. But if the Oradrean secret police arrive or the Machinists show up, they won’t hesitate to destroy both the Alpine and the Tiger.”
“Maybe we could get everyone on board the Tiger and go hide in the inner system,” said March. “JX2278C is a big place. Lots of asteroids, gas giants, and moons. If we land on one of the larger asteroids or smaller moons, they might never find us.”
“And we might never detect a Calaskaran destroyer when it came into the system,” said Torrence, “and miss our only chance of getting a ride home. No, I think your plan is our best bet. We get to the engineering section, help ourselves to one of the surge regulators, install it on your ship, and get the hell out of JX2278C.” He gestured at the barricade. “But you see the problem. There are probably a thousand macrobes roaming around the ship. They’re all insane, and they don’t cooperate with each other, but if they see us, they’ll swarm us.”
Silent Order: Eclipse Hand Page 11
