Glasgow’s altered momentum engines began the emergency shut down procedure. The effect was instantaneous. The vice like grip on his neck, shoulders legs quickly began to subside. He rolled onto his right side on the floor, still grunting in pain. He shouted across to Vazquez “Shelly. You got to restart.”
“I know!” she was already on her way out of the room, “Goddamn, your eye! Your eye!”
“Fucking goddamn is right! Ahhh!” Apple shouted in anger. He kept the palm of his left hand pushed against the damaged socket, worried that the eye would fall out if he removed it. Vazquez was out of the room. Apple headed for the control column. Frank Brooks was trying to get up from the corner he’d been squashed into. Barrett wasn’t getting up just yet. He was going to lie and cry for a little bit longer.
Michelle Vazquez was in the corridor running. The Am drive was offline. Everything was offline, besides the emergency systems. Air, gravity and light. The ship couldn’t be restarted from the control room. Not anymore. Not since Apple had tried to repair Frank’s third spare screen. The screen that Frank Brooks used to watch the reruns of his TV shows on now. The screen that Apple actually failed to repair. He shorted out the bridge power restart controls. A technician from the DeHaviland company explained that to reach the damaged conduits would mean removing three feet of the floor. Apple couldn’t afford the repair, so now she was running along the corridor towards the engineering section yet again. The ship was making strange popping noises that didn’t seem to be normal.
The Enrilean warship Devastation had failed to target the wildly tumbling Space Ship Glasgow. Seven railgun sabots had missed the ship by a long shot whilst the crew of the out of control ship had struggled to stay alive. The Devastation had returned its attention to the USS Neil Armstrong, peppering its hull with another eight sabots. But now the Glasgow was close enough for the Vengeance’s short range cannons to reach her. And the little popping sounds that Vazquez could hear were the sound of spherical 20mm frangible shells tearing holes in the Glasgow’s starboard hull, tearing apart the compartment of the ship they’d sealed off after the super tourists had left on their final, great adventure in space.
She was staggering as she reached the engine room. There was something wrong with the gravity. Or was it the inertia, pulling from another direction? She could barely reach the handle of the engineering door. Somehow, she lacked the strength to open it.
Her fingers felt wet and sticky “What the fuck?” she examined her hand, scrutinising the blood with dreamy confusion. She was collapsing to the floor. Brooks was coming to catch her from behind, but he would be too late.
2195AD - The Rocket Rescue.
The wormhole was about fifteen seconds away on full power, but it didn’t even tempt Lieutenant Commander Val Stamford. Gumm and Woods were behind him one hundred percent when he ordered the R901 full about. The heavy ship turned nimbly. Its manoeuvring engines were powerful enough for a ship three times the size and then some. They turned the ship to face the approaching Enrilean behemoth in the space of a half second.
“Open fire, Mr Woods.”
Neil Armstrong had been pounded mercilessly, yet still managed to throw atomic missiles back at the Enrilean warship. Devastation had destroyed all but two of the missile launchers, but brave technicians in spacesuits were manually launching the powerful missiles from the torn apart starboard hangar. The R901’s short range plasma cannon made a furious assault on the approaching mountain of armour, fire and rage. Gumm’s modifications to the single, 2000 watt energy weapon meant that the emitter couple pulse out thirty shots a second instead of ten. For a full two seconds the streaks of energy formed a thin, laser beam of green energy that spattered against the heavy armour at the front of the huge Enrilean weapon of war. The high powered particles burned into sensor antennae, severing two of them and melting another into a useless tangle. Other bursts of the plasma cannon impacted armoured portholes, vaporising the toughened glass and exposing three sections of the Devastation’s hull to space. There were no casualties. The areas of the ship involved comprised of a corridor that connected the secondary command centre to the sensor and tactical information centre. Nobody was in the corridor at the time and within a third of a second of the glass disappearing, the corridor was sealed by emergency doors that slammed down from hidden slots in the ceiling panels.
Devastation continued to fire through Neil Armstrong’s nuclear furnace, scoring occasional hits with the melted sabots that made it through the ball of fire. But now the gunners that had been targeting the SS Glasgow turned his attention from the spinning, distressed spacecraft to the new target that rushed towards them, its single, plucky, overloaded weapon blazing.
Lieutenant Tom Woods caused more damage than Stamford ever expected. His marksmanship with the modified plasma cannon was exemplary. As Devastation bore down on the little rescue ship, Woods scorched the Devastation’s sensor array and destroyed one of the eight forward facing 20mm cannons. But the SS Glasgow was momentarily out of danger. Stamford watched his scope as the little transport ship headed towards the wormhole – now less than a minute away.
Val Stamford had always enjoyed a reality bending outlook on life. It had made him popular in primary school. He was a fun kid. Someone to play with. Someone who never let anyone get him down. Middle school had been the same. Lots of friends, lots of fun. High school not so much. His rose coloured spectacles seemed to irritate rather than entertain his peers. But he couldn’t help himself. Somehow, he had a bright way of looking at things. His popularity surfaced again in the spaceflight academy, albeit in an almost ironic memory of the once loved and adored child. Gradually, his new contemporaries came to understand that Stamford’s golden outlook was genuine, if unusual.
Stamford’s smile were a brilliant shining white wall as he stood, arms folded, in the middle of the R901’s control room. In his mind, he was facing the big ship off himself. The big screen at the front of the room showed the Enrilean Devastation, its huge front almost blotted out by the cannon fire and the occasional sparks of the green plasma cannon. His reality bending field continued to work as he watched confidently behind his aviator sunglasses. He wished and hoped and almost expected that, somehow, Woods would hit a vital part of the massive warship. He didn’t expect the Devastation to disappear, explode or turn around. But he thought that just maybe Woods would hit them somewhere that hurt real bad.
He knew, deeply inside his consciousness, that the heavily armoured front of this amazing monster of a spacecraft could have no such weak spots. But he continued to deny this harsh and absolute reality. Woods and Gumm turned their eyes to their commander, sheltering beneath his insane confidence, as the 20mm cannons started to burst through the R901’S shielding and into the single compartment, killing them all.
TWENTY FIVE
2195AD - EWS Devastation.
No pain. No sensation of any kind. But he knew he wasn’t dead. He knew because he knew there was no God. No Heaven – no afterlife. Somehow, he still lived. Was that a good thing? It took a moment to remember what was happening. There was very little light. But he was also waking up. The room was getting brighter. It was a corridor. He was still in his seat, but the rest of the Predator was gone.
“Ameena…” he breathed.
There were voices. No other sounds. Just voices. Men, some distance away, shouting orders and barking statements at each other. The sounds echoed off the walls along with the clacking of hard soled boots. There were three men. Maybe four. They were coming for the crashed Predator. Coming to kill him – and Ameena too.
Being alive had to be a good thing. But it couldn’t last. They were on board the Devastation. Somehow, they’d survived smashing through the narrow aperture at the rear of the warship. The Predator fighter had broken into three pieces. The largest part of the fighter remained jammed half in and half out of the ship. The Computer Information Officer’s cockpit section, along with the remainder of the Predator’s inert missiles, had penetrated the
nuclear storage and jettison area. Connah realised that the Predator’s remaining missiles had not detonated as they’d hoped. But the unexpected bonus of still being alive meant that, perhaps, there was more havoc to be caused.
The forward section of the Predator had punched out the other side of the storage room. At this point the ejector seat had activated – spontaneously - and the protective shell he was sitting in had separated from that part of the fighter. Connah had lost consciousness, but only for a few seconds. Enough time for Ameena to die, alone, twenty metres behind him in a mess of metal and machinery.
“Ameena!” he called out again.
He was still strapped into his seat; the spoon shaped black alloy that contained weak electromagnetic shields, life support systems for a few hours of panicked breathing in space. It also contained food rations. A week’s supply of powdered water and an emergency communications device. Lastly, secured alongside the communicator, there was a Heckler and Koch PZ300 submachine gun.
Connah struggled out of the harness. He called out to Vorderman again, but his voice only echoed into the darkness behind him. She was back there, somewhere. He knew that now. And he knew that the heat coming from the smouldering hole in the bulkhead wasn’t just heat. Vorderman was dead. Or he hoped that she was. The Predator had broken apart, he realised, The radiation was killing him – or had already killed him – even this far into the ship. Was that why the Enrileans hadn’t come closer? He reached the panel where the weapon was stowed away. He took the communicator too, stuffing it into the left breast pocket of his flight suit. The voices had stopped. He looked one last time into the dark furnace. He gave Ameena one last moment. Then he clenched his teeth and turned off the weapon’s safety catch. He crushed one of the packets of powdered water against his dry, burning skin. It turned instantly to liquid water, cooling his skin for a fleeting moment before dribbling off his chin and down his neck.
2195AD - SS Glasgow.
“What the Hell are you doing?”
“Saving your life, young lady,” Brooks said, “Now this is gonna hurt just a little bit. You might want to pass out again if you can.”
Apple was standing over her. He had one eye covered up with some white material that was almost soaked through with blood. She was back in the control room. Looking up at the strip lights.
“Your eye, Vinn…” it was hard to talk, “Your eye. What are you doing?”
He had his hands on her shoulders, for some reason. Apple looked concerned. So… serene. She’d never seen him smile like he was smiling now. The kind of smile you offer a wounded animal. He was standing over her. His shirt was off. No, it wasn’t. The sleeves were missing. No, that wasn’t right either. One sleeve was missing from his shirt. It was tied around his head. What was the King doing?
“You’re bleeding bad, Michy,” Apple kept smiling, “Brace yourself.”
He barely had time to finish his statement. She couldn’t hear what he was saying anyway. She was too intent on finding the strength to ask who the fuck was flying the ship. But then the excruciating pain in her side condensed her entire universe to a solid crystal edged scream of pain.
The smell almost made Apple vomit all over Vazquez’s face. It caught him off guard and nauseated him instantly, suddenly and so completely that it confounded all of his senses for a moment. Brooks had touched the red hot metal against Vazquez’s wound. It hissed fiercely as the blood burned and the flesh melted together. Vazquez’s scream was a high pitched moment in time. A merciful, fleeting instant as her eyes rolled back in her head and her consciousness fled. And Apple was already on his way back to the ship’s controls, muttering to himself. And Julian Barrett was pissing himself, little by little, in the horror of it all.
The Enrileans continued to pepper the Glasgow with small calibre weapons fire, toying with the little ship. The bigger guns continued to tear into the Armstrong with devastating effect. Brooks had managed to restart the main engine. The inertial compensation system was working as well as he could get it to work, which meant that the damaged AM drive could only spin up to 5 percent. But it was enough to take them towards the wormhole.
Apple turned the Glasgow towards the invisible entry point, now less than thirty thousand kilometres away. The ship would limp there in about a minute. But the hull continued to vibrate from the Enrilean 20mm cannon fire. Brooks continued to work the tip of Apple’s survival knife around the three inch gash in Vazquez’s thigh. The blood had stopped pumping out. Her eyes were closed, her lips slightly parted. Her face trembled in shock. Brooks felt the ship move, the damaged compensator working to cancel out the forces generated by the AM drive. Michelle’s wound had stopped bleeding now. She was breathing rapidly. That wasn’t a good sign.
Something exploded far back in the engineering section of the ship. Vinn Apple ignored the sound, but he was surprised that the engine controls still seemed to be operational. The aft sensors were still working and showed the massive behemoth of the alien warship bearing down on them. Getting closer with each passing second. He could see Armstrong there too – a faint sliver of white almost totally obscured by the ball of nuclear fire between the two ships. Glasgow was moving forward again. He could feel the lurch in the bottom of his stomach. It twinged quite uncomfortably in his damaged eye socket. The eye that would wither and die completely without medical attention.
“We're on our way out of here,” Apple said, “How's Michelle?”
Brooks was staring at the knife in his hand. It was still smoking with Vazquez's burning blood and skin. He looked at the captain, his heavily lined forehead furrowed even deeper. He was almost grinning with the confused, tortured emotions spiralling through his consciousness. His blue grey eyes stared through Apple.
“I don’t know, Vinn. I… ah cauterised the wound. I stopped the bleeding. I think she’s breathing. It’s… I can’t really tell, Vinn.”
Brooks was lifting the unconscious woman’s tanned wrist. He was checking for a pulse, Apple thought, but not quite doing it right. Brooks looked like he was in shock. Vazquez looked pale, almost white. Her skin had a disturbing, shining appearance like a waxwork puppet. Frank Brooks’ face was almost the same colour.
The ship jolted suddenly as a barrage of gunfire tore off one of the thrust nozzles. The ship started to spin again, but Apple compensated expertly. Brooks dropped the hot knife. It slid along the floor and disappeared
“Why don’t they just blast us,” Barrett bleated, suddenly and surprisingly loud “They’re playing with us. Trying to make us think we’re going to get away and then they’ll… then they’ll… then they’ll hit us hard.”
“Prof, you’d do a lot more good getting over here and helping me out,” Brooks said, “What do you think would happen if we all decided to lose our minds?”
Apple had to force his eyes back to the control column. The Glasgow’s propulsion system was barely working at all, but the wormhole was so close. But he couldn’t help but wonder if Barrett was right. Were the aliens playing with them? Would the ship be obliterated seconds from the invisible getaway point?
2195AD - EWS Devastation.
The voices had stopped. Almost. They were quiet now, but still there. Muffled, anxious sounds echoing softly off the hard metal walls of the irradiated corridor. Marcus hadn’t made much sound at all. He doubted if the Enrileans knew for certain that he was alive. Their belated attempts at a stealthy approach told him that they weren’t sure he was dead.
He crept along the darkened corridor, crouching low with the HK held tight to his chest. His throat ached with the dry heat. He swallowed another sachet of the water, but the cool relief only lasted a moment. The temperature in the corridor was at least forty degrees. Like the Sahara in summertime. He moved lightly on his feet. Quietly, but swiftly. He switched the submachine gun's safety catch off. The intense heat coming from the punctured nuclear fuel storage chamber seemed to be intensifying. He hoped that what remained of the Predator would explode, detonating the fuel store
and destroying the Devastation itself. But he didn't believe in hope very much. Ameena’s bright, high cheek boned smile entered his mind’s eye for a moment. He snarled to himself quietly, squeezing his eyes tight shut against the image of her cheery face.
In ten paces he reached a turn in the corridor. He edged round the corner slowly, the short barrel of the firearm going inches before his body. It was a t junction, the corridor splitting off in two different directions. The left passageway led towards a brighter, pale coloured doorway. A hatch, not unlike the heavier shielded hatches found deep inside the USS Neil Armstrong. There was a large circular wheel in the centre of the hatch. At the top and bottom oval sections there were smaller locks. Again, very familiar looking to Connah. On the right the corridor disappeared into darkness. There was ten, maybe fifteen metres of plain grey wall and then just a black fog. Marcus had expected to see soldiers, engineers. Something. But the corridors were empty. He imagined that, on the right, men lay concealed in the darkness. But a quick look down the HK’s multifunction scope told him that there was nothing there. Just another hatchway, similar to the one on the left. But this time the hatch seemed to move as he watched it.
He drew a breath, still not fully turning the corridor. There were people behind the door. Enrileans, they were called. The English speaking aliens who'd murdered Steed, Coleman, Mackay, Haliburton. All of the USS Drake's crew. All the civilians on board the Spirit of the Future. Maybe all the people on board the USS Neil Armstrong. And Ameena.
The beautiful African American. Her smile should have illuminated the dark Hell where his weak and withered soul lay cold and dead. He would never allow it to. Her carefree affections were gifts he never returned or appreciated. The longest friendship in his sad, dark life was something he'd done everything to avoid. He looked back over his left shoulder one last time. Back into the darkness. Back to the furnace where his last and only friend burned in her metal coffin.
Beyond the Starport Adventure (Bullet Book 1) Page 47
