“Is it?” said Tessa with a derisive laugh. “Neither of you have armor. I do. One shot to the chest or the head, and you and your girlfriend are dead.”
“How much do you trust your armor?” said March. He decided to play a hunch. “How many more direct hits can the radiation shield take? Do you really want to find out? Even if you kill us, do you want to try flying the Tiger with a plasma burn through your leg? It’s not fun, trust me.”
There was silence.
“Perhaps we can make a deal,” said Tessa.
March laughed. “With a woman who just boasted about murdering thousands of people after she shot my friend in the back? Why would I trust you?”
Cassandra poked his arm. March looked at her and saw her alarmed expression. She pointed at the numbers on her phone, and then jabbed her finger repeatedly in the direction of the cargo bay doors on the opposite walls.
“They’re coming,” mouthed Cassandra.
The macrobes they had left behind in the engineering section were on their way.
Tessa’s phone had opened the blast doors before she had escaped, which meant the mob of enraged macrobes in the engineering section was headed this way. The quickest way from the engineering section would be through the interior cargo corridors.
“Which doors?” mouthed March.
Cassandra shrugged, and then pointed at three bay doors, and then shrugged again.
So. Most probably, the macrobes were going to emerge from one of those cargo bay doors. March knew that. Cassandra knew that.
Tessa Morgan did not.
She had to know that the macrobes would show up sooner rather than later...but she didn’t know how much sooner.
That could be a tactical advantage.
March looked around and spotted the drone he had shot. The forklift would block Tessa’s sight of the damaged robot. He leaned closer and whispered into Cassandra’s ear.
“When I give the word,” breathed March, “run for the airlock door. Nod if you understand.”
Cassandra nodded.
“Well, March?” shouted Tessa. “What do you think?”
“Sorry,” shouted March back. “I missed that. I couldn’t hear it over the smell of all the bullshit coming out of your mouth.”
He used the insult to mask the sound as he crept forward and grasped the destroyed drone. The damned thing was heavy, and even with his left arm, March had to strain to lift it. Yet his cybernetic arm gave him the strength, and he eased back toward the forklift, two of the drone’s legs grasped in his left hand.
“Don’t be insulting,” said Tessa. “Unless you want to die to score cheap rhetorical points. If we’re sitting here when macrobes show up, we’re going to die. Well, you’ll die first, since you don’t have armor, and nor does Dr. Yerzhov, but even with scout armor I can’t fight off a hundred macrobes.”
“Then what do you suggest?” said March.
“We both board the Tiger,” said Tessa.
“Do you think I’m that stupid?” said March. “You’ll shoot me in the back at the first chance.”
“And you will shoot me in the back at the first opportunity,” said Tessa. “But our advantages will cancel each other out. You’ll have full control of the Tiger and its computer, but I’ll have the scout armor.”
“What will happen,” said March, “is that we’ll wind up fighting and trash the ship. And then we’ll both die. Or you’ll try to do something clever, and we’ll all get killed. Since you’ve said you’ll be rewarded for killing both Dr. Yerzhov and me, why the hell should I trust a word that comes out of your mouth?”
“I’m not proposing an alliance,” said Tessa with some asperity. “Merely a temporary truce. We need to get off the Alpine and onto the Tiger. Otherwise, the macrobes will kill all three of us. If you stay here, we all have a one hundred percent chance of dying. But if we board the Tiger, we each have a fifty-fifty chance of coming out on top.”
March started to answer, then Cassandra’s eyes went wide as she looked at her phone.
On the far wall, three of the cargo bay doors opened, and blue light reflected off the metal of the deck.
The macrobes charged, dozens of them pouring out of the cargo bays and into the corridor. A tide of carapaces and claws and pincers and blue-glowing tumors rushed towards them.
“Now!” shouted March, and he sprinted around the forklift, dragging the drone after him.
Tessa was backing towards the airlock door, firing across the corridor as the macrobes charged. She had already downed three macrobes, but dozens more took their place. The Machinist agent started to turn as March approached, and she fired at him.
But March was already ducking, and the plasma bolt sizzled a few inches past his head, his face burning with the heat of it. As he ducked, he spun, and he whipped the drone around him like a discus and released, sending it sliding and spinning across the deck.
It slammed into Tessa’s armored boots, knocking her from her feet.
March didn’t look to see what happened next but ran for the airlock. Cassandra had already gotten the outer door open, and March tore through it and hit the door control. It slid shut with a hiss. A half-second later, through the airlock’s small window, he saw Tessa slam into the door. March leveled his pistol and shot out the door control, and Tessa began shooting at the airlock door, hoping to blast through it.
The macrobes caught up to her then.
No sound carried through the airlock door, but that was just as well.
A dozen clawed hands closed around Tessa’s arms. She tried to pull away, but even the enhanced strength of her suit could not resist so many. One of the macrobes ripped away her helmet, and March saw the horror that twisted her beautiful face as she screamed, her blue eyes wide with the knowledge that she was about to share the fate she had meted out to so many.
Then one of the macrobes bit her face off.
“Oh, God!” said Cassandra, turning away as blood splashed across the window. “God!”
“Let’s get the hell out of here,” said March, turning towards the inner airlock door.
Chapter 10: Asylum
As soon as they got on board, March and Cassandra headed for the flight cabin.
“Vigil,” said March as he scrambled up the ladder to the dorsal corridor. “Has anyone been aboard since I left?”
“No, Captain March,” said Vigil. “No one has boarded the ship, and there have been no incoming transmissions, and the sensors have not detected any other vessels. All systems are functional, save for the hyperdrive, which remains non-operable.”
“Good,” said March. He entered the flight cabin and dropped into the pilot’s seat, powering up the displays. “Dr. Yerzhov, can you get started on replacing the surge regulator? The sooner we can get out of JX2278C, the better.”
“I’ll get working on it right away,” said Cassandra, pausing in the door to the flight cabin. “It will be nice to actually do something useful.”
“Seriously?” said March, glancing back at her. “You didn’t think you were useful?”
“Well...I barely managed to hit anything when I shot the gun,” said Cassandra, reddening a little.
“If you hadn’t kept your head and monitored the Eclipse readings, we have been dead before we even found the survivors,” said March. He flipped switches and tapped commands into the controls, disconnecting the tunnel from the Alpine and firing up the ion thrusters. “Don’t denigrate yourself. Now go fix the damned hyperdrive.”
She smiled and saluted. “Yes, captain.”
A few seconds later March eased the Tiger away from the Alpine on ion thrusters. He circled the big starliner, maneuvered to the emergency access airlock near the banquet hall, and docked once more. Once the Tiger was in position, he instructed Vigil to notify him at once if any incoming ships were detected, and headed for the cargo hold.
Cassandra had said that it would take an hour to wire the new surge regulator into the hyperdrive, but that was just as well because it took nearly an
hour to get the survivors into the Tiger’s cargo hold. In the end, with Torrence, Tessa, and Reader all dead, there were forty-four survivors. With the hold mostly full of algae drums, conditions became crowded, and March had the surviving security officers load as many blankets and prepackaged meals into the hold as they could manage. He left the highest-ranking security officer in charge in the hold and then headed for the flight cabin.
He ran into Cassandra as she emerged from the engine room.
“It’s done,” she said. “The surge regulator is integrated into the hyperdrive circuit, and it’s showing green.”
“Good work,” said March. “Head down to the cargo hold and dismantle the Eclipse as soon as you can. The fewer people who see that thing, the better. Then join me in the flight cabin.”
Cassandra nodded and hurried into the cargo hold, and March returned to the flight cabin.
“Vigil,” he said, glancing at the displays. “Hyperdrive status.”
“The hyperdrive is reading fully operational,” said Vigil. “The resonator coils are ready, and the dark matter reactor is functioning normally.”
“Start a hyperspace calculation,” said March. He disengaged the ship from the Alpine and fired the ion thrusters, turning them towards deep space. “Fastest direct route to the Constantinople system.” He activated the fusion drive, pushing the Tiger away from the Alpine. “As soon as the calculation is ready, we’re getting out of here.”
“Acknowledged,” said Vigil.
March fed more power to the fusion drive. He wanted to get away from the Alpine. Most navigational paths through JX2278C included hyperspace exits near this part of the system, and if the Oradrean secret police were still chasing Cassandra, they would exit hyperspace nearby. He glanced at the life support displays as he did. The life support systems were operating under heavy load with all the extra passengers, but they were still within the systems’ operational range. Barring catastrophic malfunction, they ought to be able to reach the Constantinople system without asphyxiating or dying of thirst.
The door opened, and Cassandra dropped into the co-pilot’s chair.
“It’s done,” said Cassandra. “I’ve got the Eclipse dismantled and locked back in my trunk. No one really paid any attention to me. I think they’re all too tired and miserable.”
March nodded. “They’ve had a bad day.”
“And it was all because of me, wasn’t it?” said Cassandra in a quiet voice.
“No,” said March. “You just wrote a paper and built a prototype. The Oradrean government decided to murder you for it. Tessa and the Machinists decided to kill everyone on the Alpine to get it. But if it wasn’t you, it would have been someone else. That’s what the Machinists are like.” He looked at her. “It’s like Martel’s World. The Machinists lost control, so rather than hand the world over to the Kingdom of Calaskar, they bombed it from orbit. Billions of people died. There was no tactical or strategic advantage for doing that. Martel’s World was too impoverished to threaten or help anyone. But the Machinists did it anyway out of spite. That’s the kind of people they are underneath all their bullshit about the final stage of human evolution.” He lifted a finger from the controls long enough to point at her. “So, don’t blame yourself for their crimes. They did it, not you.”
Cassandra blinked a few times and then smiled. “You know, you said you don’t like to talk, but you can be very persuasive.”
March grunted and turned his attention to the displays.
“Is that why you left the Final Consciousness?” said Cassandra. “Martel’s World?”
“Yes,” said March. He didn’t want to talk about it.
He was spared the need when the proximity alert beeped.
“Dark energy surges detected,” said Vigil. “Three point two seven million kilometers off the port bow. Multiple inbound hyperspace tunnels.”
“Here they come,” said March.
And as it turned out, it was a lot more than he expected.
The hyperspace tunnels vanished, and five Machinist capital starships entered normal space.
There were three destroyers, one cruiser, and a carrier, all of them with the ugly, blocky look of Machinist starships. Multiple alarms flashed as their heavy weapons locked onto the Tiger, followed by more alarms as the carrier started launching starfighters.
“Oh my God,” said Cassandra. “There’s so many of them...why are you smiling?”
“Because,” said March, grasping the power levers for the hyperdrive, “they lose.”
He sent power flooding to the hyperdrive, and the hyperspace vortex opened in front of the ship.
The Tiger hurtled away from system JX2278C, leaving the Alpine and the Machinist starships behind.
###
It was a four and a half day flight to Constantinople Station, and it was a tense, wearying flight.
Accommodations were cramped, and March set up a rotation for people to use the bathrooms in the cabins. Not all the survivors were happy about that, and one father demanded that his children be given priority to use the toilets. March calmly explained that the Tiger had only so many facilities, and the angry father calmed down.
The fact that March used his left hand to bend a steel bar while talking helped.
In the end, March gave up his cabin and slept in the pilot’s chair, and Cassandra slept in the co-pilot’s chair. March also made sure the doors to the engine room and the armory were locked and told Vigil to alert him if anyone attempted entry.
No one did. The survivors kept to the cargo hold and the galley, and their mood improved once the fact of their survival settled in. Cassandra even asked March for another lesson in lifting weights, and for lack of anything else to do, he agreed.
Four and a half days after leaving JX2278C, they arrived at the massive cylindrical bulk of Constantinople Station, one of the largest and busiest space-based installations in the Kingdom of Calaskar.
The next nine days were busy.
The survivors and the cargo were unloaded, and the station’s governor formed a formal board of inquiry to investigate the disaster of the Alpine. March had to testify before the board and hand over his sensor logs. The board commended him for his actions and paid him a bounty for returning the survivors to Calaskaran space.
Of course, before that, he talked to Censor, the head of the Silent Order. Censor was furious over the loss of the Alpine, but was pleased that March had saved the survivors, rescued Dr. Yerzhov, and returned from Rustaril with another relic of the Great Elder Ones. Censor also provided March with altered sensor logs for the board of inquiry and some modifications to his testimony.
In the end, blame for the disaster on the Alpine was placed with the Machinist agent Tessa Morgan. Cassandra Yerzhov was granted asylum with the Kingdom of Calaskar and offered a job at the University of Calaskar under a provisional visa. March’s next mission would be to track down Tessa Morgan’s cell of Machinist sympathizers. Some of the Order’s other operatives had traced them to the Antioch system, and March would head there and repay the Machinist cell for the innocent life lost aboard the Alpine.
But before March left, he talked to Cassandra one more time.
She met him at his favorite restaurant on Constantinople Station, the one on the upper level of the commercial concourse that faced the famous mural of the history of Calaskar. They had breakfast together, vat-grown eggs and bacon and coffee, and Cassandra told him everything that had happened since she had come to Constantinople Station.
“It’s all very secret,” she said. “My new job at the University of Calaskar. More dark energy and quantum entanglement research. I bet you can guess what they’ll have me working on.”
March snorted. “It won’t be a hard guess.”
“No,” said Cassandra. “And I guess we are now brother and sister in arms. Censor inducted me into the Silent Order. After what I saw Tessa do...no, I have no doubts about joining the Order. I have no doubts at all.”
“Good,” s
aid March.
“I thought...I thought I would be frightened to move to a new world,” said Cassandra. “But I am not. It is a new adventure. And it is worthy work, I think. Both my new jobs.”
“I’m glad,” said March.
“And thank you for my life,” said Cassandra. “If you had not come along when you did, I would have died in system NB11HV2. No one would have stopped Tessa.”
“I only did my duty,” said March. “I am glad we saved you and the remaining survivors from the Alpine. I just wish we could have saved more.”
“So do I,” said Cassandra.
They ate in silence for a few minutes. Cassandra seemed to be thinking about something furiously. At last, she gathered her courage and spoke.
“I am sorry,” she said. “That I lied about being your girlfriend.”
March shrugged. “It was a good ruse. It confused Tessa, and kept us from having to explain to the survivors who you really were.”
“Yeah,” said Cassandra. She took a deep breath. “We were only pretending.” March nodded. “But if you wanted to...not pretend, I...I would be willing to give it a try and see what happens...”
He looked at her. Her eyes seemed enormous in her face.
March hesitated. He imagined himself standing up, pulling her to her feet, kissing her long and hard on the lips…
No. A tempting idea, but a bad one.
“You’re a brave and a beautiful woman, Cassandra Yerzhov,” said March in a quiet voice. “You’re going to make some fortunate man very happy someday...but I’m not that fortunate.”
She let out a shaky laugh. “You do know how to let a girl down gently, don’t you?”
“I’m sorry,” said March.
“No, don’t be,” said Cassandra, and she smiled. “I knew you were going to say something like that. But...I couldn’t have lived with myself if I didn’t try.” She laughed. “You know, if I had met you on Oradrea, I would have been too nervous to talk to you. Now, though...”
“After stealing a shuttle and running from the secret police,” said March, “maybe some things seem less terrifying.”
Silent Order: Eclipse Hand Page 17
