Duty, Honor, Planet: 02 - Honor Bound

by Rick Partlow

  “Now, Colonel Lee,” Roza began, “you will tell us who your contact is and how we can get in touch with him…”

  Chapter Sixteen

  “Well, doesn’t this inspire deja vu?” McKay commented wryly, looking around the table at Admiral Patel, Captain Minishimi and their staffs, as well as the surviving Marine officers, Vinnie Mahoney, Commander Villanueva and Konstantin Mironov. They were gathered in the spacious conference room on the Sheridan, located conveniently in the ship’s gravity drum, to discuss their next move.

  Patel and Minishimi shared a laugh at the thought: the last time the two of them and McKay had sat down in a situation like this was during the war, when what remained of the Fleet was gathered in the asteroid belt and the Protectorate forces had taken control of Earth.

  “Well, at least things aren’t quite as dire this time as they were then,” Minishimi pointed out. “We’re on their doorstep instead of the other way around.”

  “The question is,” McKay said, “where do we go from here? As I see it, we have two priorities: we need to get the information that Konstantin has given us back to Fleet HQ, but we also need to follow through on that information before Antonov has a chance to react.”

  “We also have an issue with fuel,” Minishimi spoke up. “The Decatur dumped her antimatter and we weren’t able to recover much of it. If we distribute the Sheridan‘s stores evenly, we won’t have enough for either ship to go into combat, if need be. Hell, we don’t have much of a margin for error just to get both ships back to Earth. I don’t know that we can follow through, unless you want to leave the Decatur here.”

  “I had a thought on that, Captain,” McKay said. “What if the Decatur didn’t need any antimatter to get back to Earth?”

  Patel looked back and forth between McKay and Mironov. “You can get the ship back to Earth using the wormholes?”

  “Of course,” Mironov said with a shrug, his English halting. “The route from here to Earth is easy…just a few jumps and the systems are not normally monitored. You need a way to trigger a fusion explosion though…it is necessary to open expand the gate, you see. You need the…the, what’s the word? The burst of electromagnetic energy, focused in the right place, it opens the way.”

  “You know the precise amount?” Minishimi asked.

  “Yes of course, it is my job,” he told her. “You know, it might even be possible to use your gravimetic focusing technology to do this…we could try it.”

  “Hmmm…” Admiral Patel mused. “Let’s do that, but with this ship. Here’s what I’m thinking: Mr. Mironov here shows Captain Minishimi’s engineering crew how to navigate the wormholes and gives here the coordinates to the gates that will take her back to Earth. But he comes with us and we scout out what we can reach using the gate locations he has memorized and working out a way to use the Eysselink field to open the gates.”

  “I think I see where you’re going with this, sir,” McKay said with a trace of excitement in his voice. “If we can actually find Novoye Rodina, by the time we return, Captain Minishimi could have the Fleet marshaled and ready to move.”

  “And when they do move, Colonel,” Patel confirmed, “they’ll be able to make it in days instead of weeks or months, using Antonov’s wormhole matrix against him.” He looked around the table. “Comments? Additions? Objections?”

  “Sir,” Commander Villanueva spoke up, “will my birds be going with you or with the Decatur?”

  Patel considered the question for a moment, unconsciously cracking his knuckles as he often did when he was thinking. “Unless Captain Minishimi has any objection,” he finally answered, “I’d like to keep your squadron with me, Commander. We are bearding the lion in his den, as it were. The extra firepower might come in handy.”

  “No objections from me,” Minishimi said, raising her hands palm up in acquiescence. “We still have our landers; that should be enough for the trip back to Earth.”

  McKay saw Commander Villanueva grin with satisfaction. “Thank you sir, ma’am,” she said. Then he saw her glance quickly-so fast he almost missed it-at Vinnie, and saw Vinnie wink at her surreptitiously.

  Damn, he thought, amused, didn’t see that one coming. But then, he never would have imagined Tom Crossman as a family man, yet there he was, still married to the emigrant household maid he’d met on Aphrodite at the governor’s mansion six years ago.

  Hell, for the first few months he’d known Vinnie and Jock, he’d have sworn they were a couple…he remembered how hard they’d laughed when he’d finally asked them about it. And how hard Shannon had laughed when he’d told her.

  “Also,” Patel went on, “I want the Marine reaction platoons with us, and of course your Special Operations squad, Captain Mahoney.”

  “Hoo-rah, sir,” Vinnie said, impressing McKay by managing not to sound ironic while being both cool and gung ho at the same time.

  “Mr. Mironov,” Admiral Patel said to the Russian, “how long will it take you to get the Decatur‘s engineering crew up to speed on how to use the gates?”

  Seeing the look of doubt in Mironov’s eyes, McKay quietly repeated the question to the man in Russian and he smiled with comprehension. “No more than…perhaps a day, maybe two to put together the fusion triggering devices, Admiral.”

  “Excellent. Captain,” he said to Joyce Minishimi, “prepare your crew to launch for Earth in 72 hours. I’ll send over my chief engineer and navigation officer to sit in while Mr. Mironov is explaining things to your people…that should save some time. Commander Villanueva, see to getting your shuttles, equipment and personnel transferred to the Sheridan. I will also leave it to you to liaison with the Marines and Special Operations units to transfer them over here as well, if you don’t mind.”

  “My pleasure, sir,” she assured him.

  “Captain Minishimi,” Patel said, “if you need any supplies or personnel to help ready your ship, please let me know and I will see personally that you get them immediately.”

  “Thank you, Admiral,” she replied with a nod. “We’ll get it done.”

  “Then if there are no further questions,” he stood and the others all stood with him, “this meeting is adjourned and you are all dismissed to your tasks.” As McKay turned to leave, Patel put a hand on his arm. “Colonel, if I could speak with you for a moment alone…”

  “Yes, sir,” McKay said, standing aside as the others began to file out of the room.

  “Have a seat,” Patel invited once the last of them was out and the door closed, sitting back down at the head of the table. McKay sat kitty-corner to him, waiting patiently. Patel looked him in the eye, a frown crossing his face. “Jason, I need to know: do you trust this Konstantin?”

  “To a point,” McKay responded with a shrug. “We slipped him a tranquilizer with his dinner and then fed him the truth drug and an amnesiac. Under the drug, he confirmed what he’d said and that he had no loyalty to Antonov. He’s scared shitless of him.” McKay looked uncomfortable. “I felt kind of bad doing it, but it’s all our lives and millions more…and he doesn’t remember any of it. I think it would be wise to check the wormholes with a shuttle before bringing the cruiser through, though.”

  “It’s your job to be paranoid, Jason,” Patel commented with an appreciative chuckle. “Don’t feel guilty about it.”

  “Yes, sir. Well, to answer your question, I trust Mironov to the point where I’m willing to test his trustworthiness. Beyond that…well, to game the drugs, he’d have to be hypno-imprinted pretty deeply. And while I wouldn’t put anything past Antonov, it would take a damned psychic for him to know that particular guy would get captured.”

  “I suppose you’re right,” Patel acknowledged. “At this point, we don’t have much choice. It’s either trust him or head straight for Earth…or leave the Decatur here and hope we can get fuel back to her eventually. Neither of those options appeals to me, and since I’m the admiral, they don’t appeal to any of you either.”

  McKay laughed. “Not that they w
ould have anyway, Admiral. But I’ll keep an eye on him.”

  “We’ve waited five years for this, Jason,” the Admiral said with a sigh, sitting back in his chair. “Let’s not fuck it up.”

  * * *

  “Assault One, this is Decatur,” Esmeralda Villanueva heard the transmission from the cruiser over the cockpit speakers. “The fusion device is in place and the countdown has begun. You may commence your burn.”

  “Roger, Decatur,” she responded in her professional, clipped tone. “Commencing one gee burn…now.” She hit the control and was pressed back into her acceleration couch by the acceleration from the shuttle’s boron drive. “Assault one will cross the event horizon in 32.5 minutes.”

  “Copy that, Assault One, ignition in exactly 30 minutes.”

  “Jesus,” Vinnie said quietly from seat to her rear right, between her and the copilot. “That’s awful damn close to be flying behind a fusion bomb going off.”

  “Ground pounders” the copilot muttered with a snicker. Vinnie glared at him. He was a young Lieutenant named Orton with all the cockiness you’d expect from an assault shuttle pilot and blond hair a millimeter from being longer than regulation. It was bad enough that Vinnie already felt out of place and constrained wearing the same armored space suit as the two pilots, its helmet secured to the side of his acceleration couch.

  “There’s no shockwave in a vacuum,” Villanueva reminded him. “All we have to worry about is radiation, and this is a very ‘clean’ bomb. Plus we’re pretty well shielded in here, anyway.”

  “You know,” Lt. Orton commented, “I know why they’re here,” he nodded back toward the trio of armory techs who occupied three of the six acceleration couches in the passenger compartment behind the cockpit. “They have to place the bomb to get us back through the wormhole. But why are you here, Captain Mahoney?”

  “Let me ask you something, Lt. Orton,” Vinnie bit off, “let’s say this is all a trap and when we get on the other side, there’s a shitload of Protectorate warships waiting for us…what do you plan to do?”

  “Fight them,” Orton replied, looking at him as if it were a stupid question.

  “Well, once they blow out your drives and disable your weapons, Lt. Orton, someone is going to have to hit this control,” Vinnie fished a small remote trigger out of his pocket, showing it to the copilot, “and blow up that fusion bomb back there before the Protectorates can get their hands on us and figure out what we know.” He smiled. “That’s why I’m here.” What he didn’t tell him was that he had volunteered for the job, mostly because of Esmeralda. You’ve got it bad, Vinnie boy, he admitted to himself.

  Scowling, the younger man turned back to the viewscreen, where the starfield was overlaid with a computer map. The twin bulks of the Decatur and the Sheridan hung in space in the gravitational shadow of the system’s largest gas giant, balanced between the pull of the Saturn-sized planet and its largest moon, concealed from passive sensors in case the whole experiment was a Protectorate trap. The wormhole was represented on the map by a stylized whirlpool nearly half a million kilometers from where the star cruisers were hidden; while a blinking red icon positioned next to it represented the jury-rigged fusion trigger.

  “What I’d like to know,” Villanueva asked pointedly, first making sure that the intership comms were switched off, “is why that Russian engineer isn’t in here with us, putting his ass on the line.”

  “Because if we don’t come back,” Vinnie answered her rhetorical question, “they want him there to answer for it. And so they can try again.”

  “Well, aren’t you just a wellspring of sunshine and cheerfulness?” Orton cracked.

  Vinnie had to laugh. Maybe the guy wasn’t so bad after all. “Hell, Lieutenant, why do you think military retirement is so generous?”

  “You look like an expectant father, McKay.” Patel commented quietly as the two of them stood on the bridge of the Sheridan, watching the video feed from the shuttle on the main viewscreen.

  “I feel like an expectant mother,” McKay muttered back, eyes glued on the screen. The shuttle had flipped end for end and was now decelerating, bleeding away their velocity so that they would be moving at a more controllable speed when they went through the gate. Mironov had told them that the ship would retain its pre-jump velocity when it emerged on the other side, and they wanted to be able to get back through in a hurry if there was a threat on the other side.

  “I am sure there will be no trouble,” Mironov told him, reading the tension in his face. The Russian was a couple meters in front of the command couch, hanging on to a handle by the Tactical station. “This gate is used not much. It would be very strange for a ship to be coming there.”

  “I hope you’re right, Konstantin,” McKay replied in Russian. “But I still worry about my friends.” The Russian looked at him strangely. “What is it? Is my Russian not correct?”

  “No, it’s perfect,” Konstantin said, shaking his head. “It’s just that…it’s been a long, long time since I had any friends to worry about. The only people I could talk to were the crews of the patrol ships and cargo ships, and they rarely came back twice. They would tell me things…things about the General and what he was doing on Novoye Rodina.

  “He’s a madman…he would experiment on our own people. He was trying to find more ways to use the replicator vats as a weapon against you. They said he was trying to make viruses, trying to create smarter troopers…what you call ‘biomechs.’ I even heard that he was trying to find a way to make exact duplicates of people, so that he could have more than one of our most valuable officers.”

  McKay glanced at him sharply. “Jesus, did he ever do it?”

  “I heard no,” Konstantin said, shaking his head. “They told me he could duplicate the bodies, but they would be like babies…no memories. I pray to God he never found a way to make it work: there should never be more than one of him, eh?”

  “If you two wouldn’t mind,” Patel interjected. “I don’t speak Russian.”

  “Sorry, Admiral,” McKay shifted back to English.

  “Two minutes to detonation,” the transmission from the Decatur‘s Tactical station came over the bridge speakers. “Assault One is on target to enter two minutes and thirty seconds later, right in the middle of the five minute window.”

  McKay pulled out his ‘link and keyed in a private text to Colonel Podbyrin, who was still back on the Decatur-he thought it was best that Konstantin not find out about him yet.

  D’mitry, he typed quickly, Konstantin told me about experiments in duplicating people. Said they turned out as babies, no memories. Ever hear of this?

  It was nearly a minute before he received a reply. Heard stories. Never worked on it myself. Everything was compartmentalized.

  Did they ever make it work?

  Don’t know. Never heard they did before the war. But I don’t know.

  Not satisfied but wanting to see the wormhole jump, McKay put his ‘link away and turned back to the screen as the countdown continued.

  “Detonation in ten seconds…nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one…we have detonation.”

  In the view from the shuttle’s exterior cameras, he could see a sun-bright burst of light far too close to the small aerospacecraft, a light so bright that it washed out the picture in a haze of pure-energy white that was replaced almost immediately by a blank screen.

  “The fusion burst is interrupting their transmission,” the voice from the Decatur explained. “Sensors are overloaded too…it’ll just be a couple minutes.”

  What they did have was a view from the ship’s forward optical telescope, which showed a slowly-shrinking globe of white far in the distance but nothing of the shuttle.

  “Thirty seconds to scheduled transition,” Decatur announced, “but we’re still not getting the video feed back from Assault One. Gravimetic sensors are picking up…static of some sort.”

  “It’s the wormhole,” Konstantin explained. “It’s distorting t
he local space-time…all electromagnetic and gravimetic signals are warped around it.”

  “That means we won’t be able to tell if they make it through,” McKay said, frowning. “Until they come back, anyway.”

  “Wonderful,” Patel muttered.

  “Scheduled transition time is past,” the voice from the Decatur told them. “Still no signal, sensor readings still unclear.”

  “The gate will close by itself after another minute,” Mironov said. “We never knew if it was designed that way by the…whatever…that built it or if it is some physical law we do not understand yet.”

  “Your people thought…think…that the wormholes were artificial, not naturally occurring?” McKay asked him, surprised.

  “That is what our physicists say,” Mironov shrugged. “I just know how they work, not why so much.”

  “The interference is gone,” Decatur announced over the speakers. “Sensors are reading…nothing. No sign of Assault One.”

  “They’ll be back,” McKay said to Patel, nodding a confidence he only wished he felt.

  “Damn,” Vinnie said mildly, staring at the whited-out viewscreen. “Does this mean we won’t even get to see it when we go through this thing?”

  “The cameras were overloaded by the blast,” Villanueva explained. “Just give it a second.”

  The screens came active again and Vinnie saw…nothing. No stars, no planets, just blackness.

  “Why the hell aren’t we seeing the stars?” Orton wanted to know.

  “It must be the wormhole,” Villanueva reasoned. “Maybe it’s distorting electromagnetic radiation the way the Eysselink drive does.”

  “Well, that sucks,” Vinnie commented. “How long till we’re through this thing?”

  Villanueva checked the readout. “Should be about…”

  Discontinuity.

  “Shit!” Vinnie and Orton exclaimed almost simultaneously, joined by a chorus of profanity from the technicians behind them. They were looking around the cockpit of the shuttle as if they didn’t quite believe it was still there.