The Ancillary (Tales of a Dying Star Book 2)

by David Kristoph

  He continued, "But unharmed they will not remain, if you are uncooperative. We have your dock. Your communications are disabled. Reinforcements are days away, if not weeks. If you do not open your doors I will kill every last person on this asteroid." He pushed Javin to the ground. "Starting with him."

  Beth turned away from the screen. Everyone in the command room looked to her, waiting for her response. An overwhelming feeling of helplessness washed over her. The back of her mouth tasted bitter. This shouldn't be her decision. Why did Javin have to go out to the solar ring? Why did he have to leave her in charge?

  She disabled the microphone. "Elo, what friendly craft are in the area?"

  "Hugo's maintenance ship is set to rendezvous with us in a few hours," he said, "and there is a pair of Sentinels patrolling the quadrant too. But without sensors we can't be sure when we'll reach them, or if they haven't moved somewhere else."

  "And our short-range arrays are still functional?" she asked. Elo nodded. "Start sending out emergency broadcasts. Maybe one of them will hear us, when we get close."

  Elo moved to another terminal and began working.

  "Beth, your silence is worrisome," Soren said, drawing out her name like a taunt. "Open the doors, please."

  Beth took a deep breath to harden her resolve. She pressed a button. "We will. Just give me more time."

  "You're stalling, Beth. You're going to make me kill Javin. And that is unfortunate because I quite like the man." He held out his arm. One of his men handed him a long rifle.

  Beth knew she shouldn't watch but she couldn't take her eyes off the screen.

  Javin was on his knees, his head limp. Soren pointed the gun. "Final chance, Beth."

  Everyone in the command room still stared at her, but she didn't notice any of them. She could feel her heart beating against her chest, hear it in her ears. The microphone was still on. She knew they could hear her breathing. Did she sound scared?

  With Javin held captive it was an easy choice.

  "Okay. We surrender."

  "Open the doors so that we may proceed uninhibited."

  "We can't," Beth said. "Once initiated, the blast doors cannot be opened again for an hour."

  "You're lying. Open the doors, Beth, or watch Javin die."

  "I'm not lying!" she pleaded. "Check the computer if you don't believe me. It's a security protocol; it can't be overwritten, not even by Javin."

  Soren stared at the camera a moment longer before nodding to one of his men. One of the pirates, a shorter man with a cylindrical computer wrapped around his forearm, stepped up to the screen next to the door and began examining its details. Although Beth was telling the truth, the blast doors were only along the ring. If Soren wanted immediate access he need only enter through the personnel airlocks. She hoped he wouldn't figure that out.

  The man searched the computer a few moments before saying, "It's truth: fifty-five minutes until the lock-down ends."

  "I swear to you," Beth said, "let Javin live and I will surrender the Ancillary to you."

  Javin suddenly raised his head. "Don't surrender, Beth! They need me, you need to destroy the Ancillary, they want to--"

  Soren struck him with the butt of the rifle. Javin fell forward on his face and lay there, unmoving.

  "See that you do, Beth," Soren said. "For Javin's sake, and yours." He handed the rifle back to one of his men and strode out of view.

  Beth disabled the audio feed and slumped into a chair. She held her head in both hands. "Keld, still think you can repair our long-range communication?"

  He grimaced. "It'll take hours. The doors will be open by then."

  She turned to Elo. "What's the status on the short-range broadcasts?"

  He frowned at his computer screen. "I sent them out, Custodian, but I don't think they're getting very far. We're getting some reverberation back. It's as if they're being blocked."

  "What could cause that sort of interference?" Beth asked.

  A shadow passed in front of Saria, darkening the command room. When Beth looked out the window she saw metal, dull and grey, moving left to right. No, there was some red there, and silver, painted across the hull in vivid designs. She couldn't make them out from so close. And the ship was close, blocking their entire view and giving no hint of its size. But Beth knew it was huge.

  "A Melisao frigate," Keld said. "You can tell by the exhaust ports there, see how they have three vents? Which means in a moment we should see..."

  A wide tube came into view. Only its open barrel was visible, but she could tell it was long, recessed deep into the ship. Green glowed inside, like a furnace. When the frigate slowed to a stop the cannon pointed into the command room.

  "Nobody panic," Beth said, loud enough for everyone to hear. "We've already surrendered. They want to capture the Ancillary, not destroy it." With the cannon staring into the command room Beth sounded more confident than she felt.

  "The frigate's definitely jamming our emergency broadcasts," Elo said. "Nothing is getting out."

  One of the technicians said something, pointing. The cannon outside the window shifted, tilting upward. The glow inside brightened until it was almost white. The beam that fired was thick.

  The floor rushed up, slamming into Beth. Pain shot through her shoulder. Keld was next to her, groaning. The room spun as she stood, and she gripped the computer console to steady herself. Others were trying to stand too. There was a strange, rusty smell in the air.

  The ship outside the window was at a strange angle. The computers at the technician table blinked red with alerts. The Ancillary groaned, a deep, echoing sound like metal being twisted and warped. The frigate slowly swung toward them, but Beth knew that was wrong. The blast knocked the Ancillary out of alignment, she realized. Stabilization jets were mounted all over the asteroid, and constantly made minuscule adjustments, but now they strained with the effort to return to alignment. Outside the window she could see bits of rock floating. Pieces of the asteroid knocked free.

  Bul returned to the technician computer. Some of the blinking alerts began to disappear. "We're fine. We're in a dismantled section of the solar ring, so there aren't any incoming energy pulses."

  Beth supposed the pirates knew that. If they were knocked out of alignment while panel groupings were transferring their energy the Ancillary would have a dozen holes in it by now.

  "They're just trying to scare us," she said to the room. "They won't damage any of the critical functions. We're all fine."

  "That's not true," said one man, someone whose name she'd never bothered to learn. "Shooting the rock will still cause problems. If the mass of the station is off, the stabilization programs won't function correctly."

  "Then we'll reprogram them," Beth said, but others were adding their own complaints.

  "They're just pirates, they don't know how much damage it can sustain."

  "What if they shoot out the window? We need to collect all the space suits."

  "Why are they shooting if we've surrendered?"

  "The stabilization jets will need to draw more power."

  Beth heard enough. She slammed her palm on a desk and yelled, "Quiet!"

  The room fell silent.

  "All non-essential personnel are confined to the living quarters until the situation is resolved," she said. "Report there. Now."

  They appeared reluctant to obey, and for a heartbeat Beth feared they wouldn't. But then one moved, and another. Then it was a stream of people, shuffling through the back hallway that led directly to the living quarters. There were no blast doors to bar their path; those were only along the ring. When they were gone only Beth, Elo, Bul, and Keld remained.

  "Is that everyone on the Ancillary?" she asked Elo.

  "I think so," he said. "I wasn't counting. But I don't see any other personnel on the monitors, except in the dock."

  She sighed. "Lock down the doors of the living quarters. I don't want anyone going anywhere."

  Elo nodded, his face pale.
<
br />   Beth began to relax. She still didn't know who sabotaged their communications, but it wasn't these three. She trusted Keld and Elo implicitly. And although Bul was new, Beth knew Jane had been his partner. Tears were still in his eyes while he worked at his computer. No, it had to be someone now confined to the living quarters, where they were unable to cause any more problems.

  Keld gave her a knowing look. He understood.

  "Soren," Beth said, re-enabling the microphone, "I'm locking the doors to the living quarters so my workers remain in one place. I still have every intention of surrendering."

  The monitor showed Soren in the dock, sitting on a crate and leaning against the wall. His arms were crossed over his chest. "I should hope so. If not, well, I'm sure you are now aware of what the Leviathan can do."

  Beth grimaced. "Yes."

  Suddenly, Bul said, "The frigate's moving."

  He was right. The cannon disappeared past their window. Another cannon went by, the green from its energy blurring past. The third was dark and damaged-looking, but it went by too fast for Beth to tell. The rear of the ship came into view with its three circular engines forming a triangle. And then it was gone.

  Elo pressed a button and the view changed. It was an external camera, showing the huge transfer laser that transmitted energy back to Melis. At the edge of the screen they saw part of the frigate moving underneath the Ancillary.

  The cameras switched again. Now they could see the dock and the two Carrion ships attached to the airlocks. For a long moment there was no movement, and then the pirate ship appeared. It was long and slender, shaped like a rifle. She could see the rows of cannons along its side, glowing green, ready.

  The window of the bridge was at the front, facing the Ancillary's dock. The ship barely moved as it drifted toward the station. A birthing tube extended from the front, connecting to airlock number one.

  Elo changed the view back to the internal dock camera. A pirate was already in the airlock, fiddling with the control panel. A few seconds later the doors opened horizontally.

  It was the largest airlock, tall enough for construction equipment to pass through. A long device emerged from the frigate. It rolled on four wheels, pushed from behind by two pirates wearing goggles. It looked like a giant laser.

  They rolled it across the dock to the blast door. Soren still sat next to it, watching. They stopped when they were a few feet away. One man walked around the laser, bending to look at something on its side. The laser blocked her view of what he was doing.

  The laser brightened, then fired.

  It was a thick, continuous red beam. It struck the center of the non-reinforced door where the window was, shattering it. The beam moved diagonally to the top-right corner of the door, stopped, then traveled downward. When it reached the bottom corner it moved across, to the left. It continued around the outside until it reached the original corner. With a clang the broken door fell into the room, revealing the thick blast door behind.

  The laser stayed focused on the top-right corner. Molten orange metal splattered and dripped to the floor.

  "Soren," Beth said, "what are you doing? We intend to surrender."

  Soren's human eye was now covered by a unique one-eyed goggle. "I'm sure you do. But just in case you had any temptations to do otherwise, know that I can reach you regardless of the doors you have in my way."

  "That's a mining laser," Keld said, "meant to be mounted on the outside of a ship to drill into asteroids. It'll take fifteen, maybe twenty minutes to cut a hole."

  "There are six blast doors between us and them," Elo said, answering Beth's next question. "A few hours at most."

  There was a flash as the laser cut through to the other side. Now it began moving downward, extending the hole a hair-width at a time.

  Soren stared up at the camera defiantly.

  Chapter 11

  "Can we disable the life support in the dock?" Keld asked. "Force them to leave?"

  Elo still stared at the computer monitor, sifting through lines of data. "No. The system on this rock is ancient. We can disable the entire life support, but not individual rooms at a time."

  "And it wouldn't stop them anyways," Beth said. "They could return to their ship and put on suits. What about the defensive turrets?"

  "We can turn them on, but they won't do much against that frigate." Elo shook his head. "The Ancillary's defenses aren't thorough. They were meant to be a redundancy. This is a power station, not a military outpost. A defensive fleet was supposed to be on patrol here at all times."

  "Well we don't have a defensive fleet," Beth snapped. Everyone was wishing for something they couldn't have. "How long until we reach Hugo's maintenance ship, or the Sentinels?"

  Elo shrugged. "Hugo is a few hours away from our rendezvous. And I still don't know much about the Sentinels, except they were posted somewhere in the quadrant. That was during our last orbit; they may have been reassigned by now. We certainly can't rely on them being there."

  "What's the status of our arsenal?" Keld asked.

  The data on Elo's screen changed. "Four rifles, six hand-lasers."

  "That's it?"

  "Yes," Elo said. "Hugo loaded up his maintenance ship with the rest. He's always been a paranoid one."

  Beth grimaced. Hugo's actions seemed anything but paranoid, now. "Javin wasn't the only reason I'm surrendering. Keld and I are the only trained steadfasts on board; resistance would be suicide. If I put weapons in the hands of the workers they're more likely to shoot a friend than foe."

  Suddenly Bul rose from his terminal and rounded on Beth, eyes glistening. "You don't even trust them with simple tasks. You call them idiots and do half the work yourself. Jane is a skilled technician but you sent her down to the docks to move crates around. You killed her!"

  Beth jabbed a finger at Bul. "They are idiots. I sent Jane down there because she fried one of the receptor batteries two days ago. And Darren lost his fingers this morning because he was too lazy to initiate the failover program, while his partner Mark was off--"

  She stopped mid-sentence. All anger drained out of her. "Where's Mark?"

  "Mark?" Elo asked. "In the living quarters with the others, probably. Why?"

  "Find him for me."

  Keld tilted his head. "What are you thinking?"

  "It's Mark. He's the saboteur."

  Elo whirled. "The what?"

  She explained what Keld had found in the comm room, and the strange way Mark had been behaving. Elo's pudgy face was pale by the time she finished, Bul's anger replaced by shock.

  Elo bent to his computer. "He's in his bunk along with everyone else. Should I keep him there?"

  Beth frowned at the large screen on the wall. The drilling laser had already finished one vertical cut, and was moving horizontally now. "No. Bring him to me."

  Bul and Keld retrieved rifles from the weapons locker and disappeared down the corridor toward the living quarters. Beth watched Soren's laser pulse on the screen until they returned.

  They'd tied Mark's hands behind his back. Keld gripped him by the arm, but he came willingly. He looked around the room, pretending to be confused. They forced him into a chair and pushed it in front of Beth. With his hands tied behind his back he sat forward awkwardly.

  "Beth," he said, "what's happening?"

  "Why are the pirates here?" she asked. "For what purpose do they want the Ancillary?"

  "I don't know! How would I know?"

  "We're running out of time. Why do they want the Ancillary? Will they let us live when we surrender?"

  Mark shook his head. "I don't know what you think I've done, but you're mistaken."

  Beth's boot struck him flat in the chest. Mark and the chair tumbled backward, falling down three steps to the lower part of the command room.

  She jumped down and crouched over Mark. He turned away, unwilling to meet her eyes. He exuded fear. Beth thought she could feel it coming off of him like heat. "Tell me."

  "I don't know," he mum
bled. "I don't know."

  "You sabotaged the comms," she said. "You crippled the Ancillary, made her blind. Tell me why."

  He still wouldn't look up. With his cheek against the floor he shook his head. "I didn't..."

  She punched him in the gut, folding his torso like a clam. "Tell me!"

  He whimpered, and continued muttering, but would say no more.

  The sight of him made her skin tingle and bile rise up in her throat. She felt herself losing control, but she didn't care. She reached to her side, where her knife should have been, but there was nothing. That only increased her frustration--she struck him twice more. She leaned forward until her lips almost touched his ear.

  "If I had my knife you'd be dead."

  She rose and returned to the others. Keld sat at one of the computer screens, but Elo and Bul stared at her with shock. She didn't care. The laser had already cut two lines in the blast door and was beginning the third.

  She approached Bul. He leaned away from her ever so slightly, but his feet remained planted. "That man is the reason this is happening," she said, pointing. "That man is the reason Jane is dead. Can you interrogate him while still monitoring the Ancillary's power balance?"

  Bul looked in the direction of Mark. He nodded.

  "Learn what you can about their purpose. Maybe we can discover something useful." She leaned closer. "Do whatever it takes."

  He snarled in response. Good, Beth thought.

  She turned back to Elo. "Are the emergency broadcasts still transmitting?"

  "Yeah, on a continuous loop, though they're still being blocked."

  Beth grabbed Bul's rifle. "I'm going to make sure the workers are okay. Cooperate as much as you can with Soren while I'm gone. Keld, join me?"

  Keld nodded. He grabbed his own rifle and followed her through the back door, down the hallway and through the maintenance room filled with back-up terminals, pipes, and wires. Elo remotely opened the door to the living quarters for them. The workers stared at them as they entered, and began calling out to Beth, but she told them to wait, that she would answer their questions soon. She led Keld through the female section, then the male, before they exited into the hallway on the other side, next to the personnel airlocks.