Danick didn’t know what to do. He barely had time to react when the tartarun grabbed him by the shoulders and flung him over its great rounded back. The force knocked Tulula against the bulkhead. Danick slammed to the floor in the middle of the bridge with a hard thud and a snapping sound. His back arched up, his mouth stretched in a breathless rictus of pain.
Mach aimed for the alien and fired. The laser bolt flew wide of Kaskas, the beast spinning and ducking out of the way. A flash of blue light came from the hull, but the laser wasn’t powerful enough to punch a hole. If it did, while they were in an L-jump, they’d all be liquidized in a moment.
With a leap, Mach jumped from his elevated central position to the main floor of the bridge. He brought his gun up and aimed for the creature’s back. He fired. The laser struck an armored section near its shoulder blade.
The shot had little effect; it leapt forward toward Danick’s prone, writhing form. Adira, to the right of it, spun out of her chair, drawing her knife, but the tartarun’s right arm flew out, striking her in the ribs.
Adira collapsed against her chair with a scream.
Before Mach could off another shot, Kaskas slammed its great bony fists down onto Danick’s head, crushing the poor kid’s skull with a terrible squelching sound.
Lassea screamed a terrible wail as she watched on. She fell to her knees, her arms out to Kaskas as though begging for it to take back what it had just done, but the alien just looked up at her and spoke in its gusting voice. Standing tall, it swatted Squid from the air and lurched toward Babcock, who had backed away.
“Adira, you okay?” Mach said, lifting her to her feet.
Her face was screwed up in a mask of anguish and pure hatred. She and Mach turned their attentions to Kaskas. Lassea had fallen onto her back and was scrabbling back away from it as it stalked her.
Mach emptied the laser pistol into the alien’s back. Only one of the four shots seemed to have any effect. A patch of dark gray skin bubbled and popped. A yellow-green puss-like substance oozed out.
Kaskas roared and turned to face Mach. It flung out its fists, the knuckles of which were extended into sharpened daggers of bone. Mach leaned back away from the strike, the air of the swiping fist blowing against his bare neck.
Adira was already on the move when Mach rebalanced and prepared to attack.
Someone to the left of the bridge, another alien voice, yelled out. Mach looked over and saw Sanchez stagger up to his feet, his face covered in human blood and the yellow-green substance. He had ripped a piece of the railing away and raised the sharpened pole high before slamming it down into Daskell’s chest.
Kaskas spun when it heard its ally scream its final breath.
That was the opportunity Mach and Adira needed. Adira tackled it around its thick legs, driving her dagger deep into the rear where its thick tendons connected its muscles.
Under the attack, Kaskas collapsed to one knee. It grabbed Adira by the back of her neck and flung her away. Her back struck the corner of her console. Mach drew his old blade from his GraphTech fatigues and launched a kick that connected with Kaskas’ head. His boot rammed into its right eye.
He felt the squishy organ pop under the heel of his boot. The force knocked Kaskas back, its arms flailing. Lassea got to her feet. Sanchez approached, ready to join the fight, but the young JP grabbed the jagged pole from his hands and while Mach wrestled with Kaskas, Lassea rammed the pole down, right into the ridged forehead of the alien.
The beast gasped once, its lips pulled back over its thick, powerful teeth. Its chest no longer rose or fell. Mach’s heart, however, continued to bang against his chest. He slumped off the creature and grabbed Adira. The two of them held each other for a moment to catch their breath.
Sanchez stood over Mach and held out his hand. Mach took it and was pulled up to his feet. He surveyed the wreckage of the fight. Tulula was still crumpled and unconscious. The two aliens were dead… as was the poor kid, Danick.
Adira rubbed her ribs. Mach helped her to her feet.
“Everyone else okay?” he asked and got stunned nods in return. Babcock leaned against Lassea’s console. Although he hadn’t been in the struggle, the shock must have taken its toll on his old body.
“Lassea,” Mach said, approaching her and removing her hands from the pole now firmly embedded into the dead alien. “It’s over. It’s dead. You’re okay.”
The girl let out a whimper and the tears flowed. She stepped away from the alien and knelt by the side of Danick’s body. Huddling over him, she cradled his head and wept. Mach knelt beside her and put his arm around her shoulder. She turned to him, burying her head into the crook of his shoulder.
“It’s okay,” Mach said. “Let it all out. You’re safe now.”
“He was a good kid,” Sanchez said. “Brave.”
Adira added, “I had grown to like him. I will miss him.”
Babcock just shook his head and ran a hand over his sweat-drenched face. “I should have known,” he croaked. “I should have seen this coming, how could I let these… things, get this far without me suspecting something?”
No one said anything in response; there was nothing to say. They had all been duped. It was clear to Mach now what the tartaruns had planned to do: control the now-upgraded Intrepid to take out the Larunda Orbital while the Atlantis ship was on its way to god knows where to carry out more of their attacks.
Lassea’s body became still, her sobs quieting to deep breaths. Mach stood and lifted her to her feet. He held her away from him and lowered his head to get eye contact. “You can’t blame yourself for this,” he said. “I know what it’s like to lose someone so close to you. You’ll grieve for him, blame yourself, then blame others, but ultimately, you’ll come to the realization that nothing could have stopped this and that for your brother’s memory, you’ll need to go on, make him proud, but for now, you don’t need to do anything. We’re here for you, okay? Whatever you want, we’ll take care of you.”
“He’s right,” Sanchez said, stepping toward the girl and wrapping his big arm around her small shoulders. “You’ve got us, for whatever you want to do.”
Lassea dipped her head and stared at her brother for a moment, then looked up to Mach then Sanchez, then Babcock, grabbing each person’s attention. “I want to go on,” she said, her voice warbling with shock and a million other emotions that no doubt ran through her. “I want to stop the Atlantis ship. I’ll grieve for Danick later. He would want me to complete the mission. He was always like that—duty before anything else. It’s what makes him… made him who he was.”
“Okay,” Mach said, “let’s get organized, then. Adira, can you check on Tulula, make sure she’s not hurt.”
“Sure,” Adira said with a quick salute, bringing a sense of order to things. She quickly stepped over to Tulula and carefully lifted her head and brought her round. While Adira was talking with her, bringing her up to speed, Mach turned to Babcock.
“Kingsley, I want you and Squid to find a way of getting control of the ship.”
“We’re on it,” the old engineer said.
Sanchez let Lassea go and lowered to his haunches. He picked over Kaskas’ dead body, rifling through its many pockets and items attached about it. Using his old hunting knife, Sanchez cut open the fabric of the dark gray uniform, splitting the pockets so that varied objects fell out.
Mach joined Sanchez’s search. There was nothing of much interest to begin with, the creature only having a few trinkets and coins from its home world, but then as Sanchez emptied a pocket attached to its pants leg, Mach saw something interesting: a five-centimeter-long obsidian black rectangle. It was no more than a few millimeters thick. It was cool to the touch and seemed to be made of some kind of metal. On one edge were two square holes that looked like ports.
“Kingsley, what do you make of this?” Mach said.
The engineer and Squid approached and looked down at the object in Mach’s hand. “Could be some kind of storage devi
ce,” Babcock said. “I can wire it up and see if we can get anything off it.”
“Good,” Mach said. “Do that.”
“I’ll check the other bastard.” Sanchez grunted as he stood up and approached Daskell’s body.
“Squid,” Babcock ordered. “Can you try to find out what kind of software patch is keeping us out of the system while I figure out an interface for this thing?”
“Of course, sir,” Squid chirped, rising to head height and flying out of the bridge, presumably to the main computer core of the ship.
“I can help with that,” Tulula said from the corridor entrance. Adira had helped her to her feet, and apart from looking dizzy, she seemed okay. “I worked on interfaces and interconnects back on Vesta.”
“The priority must be the ship’s control,” Mach said. “Can you all work together on that first before we start getting into the alien tech? We can’t afford to delay. The longer we wait, the closer we’re getting to Larunda.”
Lassea turned to her console and punched in a few commands. “I’m getting no response, but the logs say we’re due to reach our destination in less than an hour.”
“That’s the deadline, then, everyone,” Mach said. “Sanchez, Adira, take the bodies to the stasis bay. We can inspect them further another time. Kingsley, can you still track the Atlantis ship’s signals without use of the Intrepid’s radios?
“I can. I have my gear in the engineering bay.”
“Right, let Squid and Tulula work on gaining control for now. I want you to track the Atlantis ship, find out where it’s going. If we can get control of the radios, we might be able to send a warning to wherever it’s heading.
And maybe that’ll prevent the destruction of Larunda, and the fall of the CW.
Maybe…
Chapter Thirty
Mach couldn’t wait any longer. It had been fifteen minutes since Kingsley Babcock went to work on tracking the Atlantis ship’s signature. They were less than that away from reaching Larunda, and Tulula and Squid hadn’t yet managed to wrestle control away from the malicious software.
“Take the helm,” Mach said to Adira. “I’m checking on the others.”
“Not much I can do,” Adira replied dryly. “Those damned aliens have screwed up this ship beyond control.”
“We’re working on it, but for now, be in a position to act on anything at all while I’m gone.” He stepped lower and whispered into her ear, “And keep an eye on Lassea. She’s running on anger at the moment, but her energy will drop at some point and she’ll probably need a shoulder to cry on if she does. I’d rather it be you.”
“Why?” she said.
“Because despite your coldness, you do actually care somewhere deep inside.”
“You’d like to believe that, wouldn’t you?”
“I do.” Mach turned and left the bridge before she had time to refute it. Mach knew her well enough that beneath her frosted exterior she cared for him, and cared for the crew. He saw it in her eyes and body language. The crew had united quickly and she was as much a part of it as anyone.
Mach walked with a quick pace through the corridor and down a flight of steps that led to Babcock’s computer bay. He ducked through the bulkhead and stepped into the large room.
A bank of quantum units lined the far wall. In the center was a three-meter-square white workstation with a holoprojector raised on a dais in the middle. It showed a three-dimensional schematic of a ship. He knew it wasn’t the Intrepid.
Babcock adjusted his glasses and peered up at Mach. “It’s a maze,” he said. “I’ve never seen a structure like it before.”
“What is it? Where did you get this? And weren’t you supposed to be tracking the signal?” Mach sighed, reminding himself not to be so harsh. Everyone was under pressure; it wouldn’t help matters with him snapping at people, least of all old friends.
To Babcock’s credit, he didn’t rise to Mach’s tone of voice. Instead, the engineer turned to the quantum units and switched on their display. Scrolling lines of holographic metrics were running down the length from ceiling to floor.
“She’s right there,” Babcock said. He motioned at the screen and stopped the scrolling. A coordinate highlighted from the strings of code.
Mach’s heart sank. Larunda.
“Those damned tartaruns were sending us both.”
Babcock pressed his lips together, a silent sigh. “I suppose when we arrived in their sector they saw us as an extra weapon. Which brings me to the schematic. That, my young friend, is the insides of the Atlantis ship.”
Mach stepped closer as Babcock gestured some commands into the project. The model rotated slowly, giving Mach a full close and highly detailed view of its construction. There were levels upon levels, staircases at odd angles, rooms that seemed to defy all logic in their placement and shape.
“It’s so… alien,” Mach said. “Any idea who built it? Was it the tartaruns, do you think?”
“I don’t think so, no. From what I can tell from that memory stick we recovered from Kaskas, the tartaruns intercepted it in the same manner they did with us, only the difference was there was no crew onboard to fight back. If you look at the designs, you’ll see no plumbing and no facilities to support a carbon-based life form that needs to breathe air.”
“Given its age, I can’t imagine anything on it being alive anyway. How did they stop it long enough to reprogram it to attack the CW orbitals?” Mach asked.
Babcock smiled then. He gestured away the schematic and brought up a set of files written in an alien script.
“What’s this I’m looking at?” Mach asked.
“It’s a tartarun mission log. I had Squid translate from the recordings he took while on their craft. The ion cannon they fitted to us is the same as the one on the Atlantis ship. Their mission was to use us to get into position, and then when they were onboard, they were to install the AI-software that would jump us to Larunda, and use the ion cannons to disable some of the defense platforms…”
Mach took over from him. “So we’re like a minesweeper to clear the way for the Atlantis ship to destroy the orbital.”
“Something like that, yes.”
Mach eased the tension from his shoulders and thought about their next steps. It seemed than in about ten minutes, the very ship he was now a captive on would fire its new weapons, disabling Larunda’s first line of defense, aiding the damned Atlantis ship in the destruction of the CW’s most important intelligence outpost.
“What can we do about this?” Mach said.
“Sir, I think we’ve cracked it,” Squid’s chirpy voice said as the little device came floating into the room, its tentacles flapping wildly with excitement. Tulula entered soon after, her face flustered, presumably with having to keep up with Squid.
“Cracked what?” Mach said. “The AI overrides?”
“Yes,” the vestan said. She gestured an open palm to Squid. “This little machine first spotted the code. It was wrapped around the Intrepid’s central AI kernel. Really clever programming. Smart too. Better than anything I’ve seen before. It was taking instructions from a mission download.”
“The item you recovered,” Squid said. “It gave the latent virus executable instructions. I do believe Kaskas was responsible for uploading the instructions shortly after we made the L-jump to our last location.”
“Are we sending any data back?” Babcock asked.
“No, we managed to block any communications from the software. We have full control now, all thanks to Squid’s quick thinking,” Tulula said, smiling up at the device.
“Good job, everyone,” Mach said.
“What do we do now?” Tulula asked. “I could take us out of the L-jump with a hard reset of the fusion array if we needed.”
“No,” Mach said, grabbing her by the shoulder. “We’re going to Larunda still, because that’s also where our target is going. The damned tartaruns had us designed as a minesweeper. Only that’s backfired on them now. We’re going to at
tack that ship as soon as we’re out of the L-Jump. Come with me to the bridge.”
He turned to face Babcock and Squid when he reached the bulkhead. “Great job, you two. Kingsley, I need you to assess the Atlantis ship, find out what we can do to stop it. It must have weak areas we can focus on, engine cores, computer bays, anything that could help us stop it from firing on Larunda. Also, are the radios working? I really need to get a message out as soon as we’re in Larundan space.”
“We’ll work on it and let you know as soon as it’s up and running,” Babcock said.
“Be quick; we’ve only got a few minutes.”
Running with Tulula by his side, Mach dashed up the steps and down the corridor toward the bridge. In a few more minutes, he would face his destiny. Face the Atlantis ship toe to toe. He ignored the cold dread that settled in his guts.
***
Mach gripped the armrests of the captain’s chair. The Intrepid blasted out of its L-jump. Sanchez, Adira and the others were all gathered on the bridge. The holoscreen flickered once, twice, and then bloomed with a vision of the sector, bringing detail to the void of black from their L-jump.
A tunnel of orange and white swirling light disappeared, their momentum leaving the wormhole exit behind in their wake.
“We’re out,” Lassea said. “Engaging Gamma Drive. What heading, Mach?”
At first Mach couldn’t see anything more than the stars in the inky blackness of space. He felt a twinge of anticlimax and disappointment. “Tulula, scan the sector. We can’t be that far from the Larunda station. Lassea, sweep us around. Let’s see if we can get a visual… on anything.”
Tulula, now taking up Danick’s position, took the order and gestured commands to the holocontrols. Down the right side of the viewscreen a stream of signals flowed. “We’ve got radio signals across the frequencies,” the vestan said.
“Can we transmit?” Mach asked.
Babcock approached Tulula’s workstation and entered a few commands of his own. “We can, Mach. Do you want me to establish connection to the Larunda Orbital?”
Carson Mach 1: The Atlantis Ship Page 22
