Fallen Fragon

by Peter F. Hamilton

  The maintenance bay airlock tube telescoped out of the wall toward the Xianti's cabin hatch. Lawrence held an e-c pistol in one hand. His carbine was already extended. "Stay behind me," he told Denise as the hatch rim locks engaged.

  "Yes, Commander."

  Her tone irked him. "We've been over this. That suit of yours is good, but it can't take as much punishment as Skin. And I know they have weapons on board."

  "Yes, all right," Denise grumbled.

  The cabin hatch slid open, revealing the twenty-meter length of airlock tube on the other side. It was dark, with orange strobes blinking at the far end. Prime supplied Lawrence's tactical grid with camera images from every part of the starship it had gained control over. The crewmen in the cargo section were confused. They knew the environmental systems were off; amber warning strobes were flashing in every compartment. All of the refuge chamber doors and lifeboat hatches had swung open. Lighting had gone to full power-save reduction mode, dimming the corridors and narrow crawlways to a near-claustrophobic level. There was no personal communication with the rest of the ship—Prime was blocking that. Yet the AS seemed to be telling them everything was fine, and this was just a localized glitch.

  Lawrence kicked off and glided cleanly down the middle of the tunnel, controlling his flight by occasionally flipping his free hand on the tube wall. Denise followed after him, bouncing her way along with a running commentary of curses.

  He had to use the manual hatch release at the other end. Two crewmen were floating just behind. They saw the Skin float out and flipped gracefully in midair, shooting away like frightened fish. Lawrence darted both of them. They kept on going for several meters before colliding with the compartment walls with a heavy impact. Then they were spinning flaccidly, limbs protruding in all directions.

  Lawrence pushed past them and dived into the long corridor leading out of the compartment. It had a D-shaped cross section, with a ladder running along the curve's apex. He slapped at the rungs, propelling himself along. Denise was a couple of meters behind him.

  The axial corridor was at the end, a broad cylinder with bulky environment ducts running down the walls. It ran the entire length of the starship at the center of the stress structure, linking the rear fusion drive section to the forward compression drive, with radial corridors connecting to every other pressurized section. Emergency pressure doors were positioned at forty-meter intervals along it, big reinforced composite circles that were normally kept open.

  Five crewmen were drifting around the closest one to Lawrence as his helmet rose through the hatchway into the axial corridor. Two of them were trying to get it to open, while one was pressed against the viewport in the center trying to see into the next section. Lawrence lifted his wrist: he could feel the tiny wriggling of the dispenser mechanism's muscles as the darts spat out.

  Denise crawled her way along to the emergency door and pressed a ring of energy focus ribbon against it. Lawrence was pushing the unconscious crewmen away.

  "Get clear," Denise told him. She sent a code to the ribbon. The pulse of raw energy it emitted sliced clean through the door. Thick black smoke jetted out as the edges of the composite sizzled and flamed. Fire alarms went off.

  Lawrence gripped the door's handle and kicked down on the burning circle. It flew out, turning over and over like a flipped coin, with the noxious vapor swirling behind it. Several crewmen who were clustered round the other side of the door took flight.

  For a second Lawrence could see down the length of the Koribu toward the forward compression drive section. Then all the other emergency pressure doors were closing. Amber strobes came to life and fire sirens wailed along the entire corridor. Crewmen were diving away down radial corridors. He managed to dart three of them before they all vanished. Secondary pressure doors began closing off the radial corridors as he and Denise glided over them.

  There was a network node ten meters from the emergency pressure door. Denise used a power blade to slice through the casing and carefully positioned a dragon-extruded communications link on top of the databus unit Microfilaments slid through the electronics inside to merge with the fiberoptic cables. Prime loaded into another section's network.

  The audio alarm brought Captain Marquis Krojen instantly awake. The volume was like the scream of explosive decompression. He sat up fast, the strap around his waist preventing him from soaring completely off the bunk in the low gravity. For a moment he looked around in confusion as his cabin lights came on. Starships had different alarm sounds for every conceivable type of emergency. After so many decades flying them, Marquis could have sworn he knew every one by heart. But this time he actually had to wait for his DNI to scroll the information.

  "Intruder alert?" He simply couldn't believe the neat indigo symbols.

  The alarm fell silent.

  "Yes, sir," the ship's AS confirmed.

  "Jesus Christ, this has got to be a drill." Something dreamed up by that bastard Roderick after all the trouble at the Durrell Spaceport. It couldn't be real.

  "No, sir," the AS insisted. "I have been erased from the maintenance bay hangar section network. Firewalls are in place and holding against the subversion software."

  Marquis tore at the Velcro on his waist strap. He went through his main cabin into the bridge, moving fast in the one-eighth gravity. Colin Jeffries, the executive officer, was in the command chair, looking thoroughly shocked. Only three other bridge consoles were manned.

  "What the hell happened?" Marquis Krojen made an effort to calm down. "Give me a situation review."

  "A Xianti reported a hydraulics failure," Colin Jeffries said. "We docked it in the maintenance bay, and the next thing we know the whole surrounding network had been subverted."

  "What's our response?" Marquis sat in one of the unused console seats. The ship's AS activated the panes, showing a range of schematics and camera images.

  "Standard response is to withdraw power and environmental support from the contaminated section," the AS said. "That has been done."

  "Can you get me a real-time visual image of the space-plane?"

  "No."

  "Divert an engineering shuttle to the maintenance bay, now," Marquis told Colin Jeffries. "I want to see what's happening."

  "Aye, sir."

  "Durrell Spaceport security is online," the AS reported. "They are warning us about the spaceplane. They believe it has been taken over by a Thallspring resistance movement."

  Marquis Krojen refused to let the shocking information panic him into hasty action. The AS had brought up a physical threat procedure on one of the panes. If there was a valid bomb threat against the Koribu, the captain was to order all hands to abandon ship. Security determined that any resistance group that had gotten within striking range would have a bomb capable of destroying the entire starship.

  But it hadn't gone off yet. And if they were going to nuke the Koribu, why were they busy trying to subvert it?

  "Could our engineering shuttles just rip the Xianti out of there?" Marquis Krojen asked.

  Colin Jeffries shook his head doubtfully. "I don't think so. Those shuttles don't have much thrust, and the hold-down latches are designed with a lot more inertia than a loaded Xianti in mind. You'd have to get underneath it and cut through them."

  "Work on it. I need options."

  "Aye, sir."

  "Do we have any contact with any crewmen in the affected section?" Marquis asked the AS. He just couldn't bring himself to say "contaminated."

  "No, sir," the AS said. "There are no internal communication links open."

  "Very well, I want someone physically looking through the viewport in the emergency pressure door. Give them an open link to the bridge."

  "Yes, sir."

  "Overflight coming up," Colin Jeffries called.

  The AS routed the engineering shuttle's sensor imagery to the panes on Marquis Krojen's console. He looked down on the big pearl-white delta shape, not quite knowing what to expect. It appeared ridiculously impassi
ve. Then his mind ran through docking procedures.

  "Did we activate the airlock tunnel?" he asked.

  "No, sir," the AS replied. "It was connected after the subversion occurred."

  Marquis Krojen looked directly at Colin Jeffries. "They're inside, then. Jesus! Does Durrell Spaceport security actually know what's in there?"

  An excited voice burst out of a console speaker. "Sir, I can see somebody moving into the axial corridor."

  "Who is this?" Marquis Krojen asked.

  "Irwin Watson, sir, fusion engineer."

  "Okay, who can you see, Watson?"

  "Sir, it's a Skin."

  A Skin? Marquis mouthed at Colin Jeffries. The executive officer shrugged.

  "What's he doing?" Marquis asked. One of the console panes showed him Watson and several others clustered around the axial corridor's pressure door.

  "Sir, he's killing people, shooting them!" Watson's voice had risen to near hysteria.

  "What sort of weapon is he using?"

  "I don't know. He's got some kind of pistol, but I didn't see it fire. Hey, there's another person through there with him. They're wearing some kind of spacesuit, I think. He's putting something on the door."

  "Get back, now," Marquis ordered.

  "I can't see what it is."

  The camera showed Watson pressing his face against the pressure door viewport.

  "Get away from the door. That is an order."

  Watson moved back reluctantly, gripping the rungs along the axial corridor. A brilliant white light stabbed out from the pressure door. It vanished as dirty black smoke poured out; streamers churned along the corridor walls like a fast-moving oil slick. A disk of flaming composite suddenly tumbled out of the smoke, narrowly missing Watson.

  "Secure that section," Marquis Krojen ordered the AS. "I want physical isolation."

  "Affirmative," the AS replied. "Closing emergency pressure doors along the axial corridor."

  "Captain." Simon Roderick's face had appeared on one of the console panes. Just his face, against a neutral gray background.

  "What have you let up here?" Marquis demanded. He didn't care about etiquette now. His ship was suffering.

  "We believe there is an alien on board the spaceplane," Simon Roderick said.

  "What?"

  "An alien," Roderick said imperturbably. "It has human allies who will probably try to hijack the Koribu."

  "Over my dead body." Marquis watched a camera image of the axial corridor. The Skin and his spacesuited companion were through the emergency pressure door. They stopped where there was some kind of access panel on the corridor wall, and the spacesuited figure took out a power blade.

  "Let's hope it doesn't come to that," Roderick said.

  "The intruders have exposed a network node," the AS said. "Subversion software is loading directly into the local neurotonic pearls. It is reconfiguring their processing patterns."

  "Stop it," Marquis said.

  "I am unable to comply. Network data management routines have been corrupted. Firewalls established. Power and environmental support withdrawn."

  "Holy Jesus." Marquis studied the starship's primary schematic. They'd lost all contact with the rear third of the Koribu, which now lay beyond the firewalls and closed emergency pressure doors. "What can this alien do?"

  "I'm not sure," Roderick replied. "But it has technology well in advance of ours. You might not be able to stop them."

  "Break out the weapons," Marquis ordered. "I want our crewmen armed and authorized to shoot."

  "We've got ten carbines and some dart pistols," Colin Jeffries said. "They'll just bounce off Skin."

  "But maybe not the other one."

  "I am detecting venting from the isolated cargo sections," the AS reported.

  "Venting what?" an aghast Marquis asked. The panes shifted to views from external cameras. Huge plumes of glittering silver vapor were fountaining out of the starship's rear sections.

  "Spectrographic analysis indicates it is our atmosphere," the AS said.

  The doctor refused to cooperate at first. Simon didn't actually threaten him, but he came close before the man's more basic survival instinct cut in.

  "I really don't recommend this," the doctor said. He was helping two orderlies push Simon's trolley and three cabinets of intensive-care support equipment through the spaceport terminal building. "You're not stable enough for something as traumatic as a spaceplane flight yet. Please reconsider."

  "No," Simon grunted. He could hear his Skin escort shouting at people to get out of the way. Protests and hurried scraping sounds. Trivial background details he ignored.

  An optronic membrane was covering his remaining eye, showing him camera images from the Koribu and the space-planes around it. Gas was still venting from the fat barrel of its cargo section. There must have been twenty of the plumes, emerging from hatches and valves distributed among the silos. His communication link to the starship buzzed with confused, shouted orders and queries. Crewmen were struggling into spacesuits, collecting weapons from the executive officer. As countermeasures went, it was truly pitiful.

  The starship's AS was completely ineffectual against the alien's Prime program. If Newton and the other (presumably an enhanced villager) kept going along the axial corridor and physically loaded it into every section, they would soon have complete control. His personal AS now considered this was their most likely strategy. The most uncomplicated and efficient way of hijacking a starship, with a frighteningly high projected success level.

  Simon saw a small silver sphere fly out from the cargo section.

  "What was that?" he asked.

  "Lifeboat," Marquis Krojen said. "There's very little air left back there. My crew is having to abandon the contaminated area."

  Simon's trolley wheels bumped over a small ridge on the floor. He moaned at the sharp flare of pain that the jolt inflicted.

  "Sorry," the doctor said. He didn't sound it "Can the engineering shuttles close down the venting?" Simon asked.

  "Some of them, possibly. But there's not enough time."

  Several of the plumes were shrinking, becoming less energetic.

  The trolley was pushed into an elevator. Simon's magnetic sense showed him almost a dozen people clustered around him as the doors slid shut.

  "Damn," Marquis Krojen exclaimed. "They just blew another pressure door. That puts them above the first life support wheel."

  "Where are your people?" Simon demanded.

  "I'm putting a squad together. We're not trained for this, not fighting a Skin."

  "Learn fast." Simon saw another two lifeboats shoot away from the Koribu's cargo section.

  "The subversion software's loading," Marquis Krojen said. "We're losing another section."

  "Can they take over the life support wheel?"

  "Not directly. The AS inside will firewall the wheel. But controlling the axial corridor gives them the power and environment feeds to the wheel."

  The elevator halted and the doors opened. Simon's trolley was wheeled out into the fueling bay's operations center.

  The SF9 opened a communication link. "What do you think you're doing?" he asked.

  The orderlies started pushing Simon's trolley across the walkway to the waiting Xianti.

  "I'm going up to the Norvelle," Simon told his clone sibling. "I'll assume command of our response operation from there."

  "Don't be ridiculous. You're in no condition to assume command of anything."

  "I'm here, you're not. It would take you hours to get up into orbit. That could well be too late."

  "We're already too late for you to achieve anything up there. It's all down to Captain Krojen now."

  "Which makes it even more important that I reach orbit as soon as possible. The Koribu is a disaster area. The captain has all but lost his ship to the alien." He cried out again as the trolley was lifted through the airlock. "It cannot get away from us," he gasped. "I won't allow it. We must have that technology. If they go FTL
, I'll follow. I will bring it back for us. The whole world will be elevated."