by Rod Walker
An ambush that we had eluded entirely.
“All right,” said Corbin. “From this point on, keep quiet and speak only when necessary. You know how sound carries in these walkways.” When working on the bridge in the past, I had heard all manner of clanks and clanging coming from the maintenance walkways. Corbin tapped his earpiece. “Nelson?”
Nelson’s voice crackled over the little speaker. “We’ve reached the dorsal corridor. So far it’s clear. I think most of the Socials are on the crew deck, holding the crew captive. I expect Ducarti’s next play will be to start shooting hostages until we surrender.”
“He might be up to something else,” I said. “A misdirection. On New Chicago he made that big show about sending a petition to the government, but that was just a ruse to get his bomb close enough to the building. Maybe he’s doing something like that now.”
“Maybe,” said Murdock, “but he can’t do anything clever with a bullet through his head.”
“If he’s smart he’s already run for the sublight ship,” said Corbin. “Let’s hope he’s not smart. Nelson, we’re almost to the access panel. Have Rodriguez override the door. Tell us when you go through. We’ll break out and hit them from behind.”
“Be quick about it, Rovio,” said Nelson. “We won’t have any cover in the corridor.”
“I know,” said Corbin. “We’ll get the panel open as fast as we can, but we’ll have to stay quiet from now on. Any sounds we make will be audible on the bridge.”
“Roger,” said Nelson. “We’ll keep you updated. Rodriguez, get started on the locks. The rest of you, cover the blast doors. If anyone come out, shoot to kill.”
A murmur of acknowledgments came over the radio, and Corbin lifted his finger to his lips. I nodded, as did Murdock and the other men. We filed in silence down the walkway, coming to an access panel at the end.
On the other side of the panel was the bridge, and God knew how many Social Party commandos. Maybe even Ducarti himself and his traitorous pet, Captain Williams.
Corbin pressed his ear to the panel for a moment, and I followed suit. I heard a faint murmur of conversation from the other side, but I couldn’t discern any of the words. Corbin tapped one of the fasteners holding the panel in place, and I nodded, holstered my machine pistol, and produced my multitool. I started working through the fasteners on the bottom of the panel, while Corbin went to work on the top.
“Rodriguez,” crackled Nelson’s voice inside my helmet. “How’s it coming?”
“Two more,” said Arthur. “Uh… looks like the blast door has six deadbolts. Have to release them all manually. Okay, that’s five. Just one more.”
I popped off the last fastener and straightened up. Corbin gripped one side of the panel, and I took the other. Murdock stepped back, switched his K7 to single-shot mode, and pointed the weapon at the panel. The other two techs took up position behind him, their lasers ready.
“All right,” said Arthur. “As soon as I release the last bolt, the doors should open automatically. Ready?”
“Ready,” said Nelson. “Do it.”
“Here goes,” said Arthur.
For an moment, nothing happened. Then I heard a series of dull thumps vibrating through the grillwork beneath my boots, followed by the low whine of releasing hydraulics. A man’s voice rose in a question, and then another.
The roar of gunfire filled my ears; I heard it through the access panel as well as through someone’s live mike.
“Now!” said Corbin. We heaved, pulling the access panel from its mounting, and dropped it. I caught a glimpse of the bridge, saw a dozen crewmen on their knees with their hands behind their heads, and several commandos in dark armor hurrying towards the blast doors to the dorsal corridor.
Five of them. Maybe six. We were outgunned.
But once more, we had the advantage of surprise and position.
Murdock jumped through the opened panel, leveled his rifle, and started shooting. He hit one of the commandos through the head, and plugged a second in the shoulder before they realized that something had gone wrong. Then he threw himself through the hatch and into the bridge, hitting the ground and rolling. The return fire ripped into one of the consoles, but missed Murdock entirely. The commandos had their whole attention on him and on the dorsal corridor, and I heard the crack of bullets and the whine of burst lasers coming through the opened blast doors.
That gave me and Corbin and the other techs a perfect opportunity to attack.
I had yanked my pistol from its holster as Murdock charged, flipping off the safety. Corbin leaned around the left side of the hatch, K7 raised, while I went on the right. There were still six commandos standing in the bridge, with two motionless upon the deck. Hawkins was shouting something, and I saw the crew members rolling and trying to take cover from the gunfight. I also saw that their wrists had been bound, so they wouldn’t be of any use at the moment.
One of the commandos facing the dorsal corridor reached for his belt and the row of grenades hanging there. That seemed like it a problem, so I aimed at him and started pulling the trigger. Murdock had gotten his first commando through the head. I wasn’t nearly as good of a shot, but I did hit my target in the hip. I don’t know if the round penetrated his armor or not, but it made him forget about his grenade. He started to turn in my direction, and I adjusted my aim for the center of his mass and squeezed the trigger three more times. I think I hit him all three times, because he slammed back against the side of the blast door and collapsed to the deck.
Corbin was loosing short, sharp bursts of full auto from his K7, aiming the weapon with expert skill. One of the commandos started to line up on him, and Corbin’s next burst exploded the commando’s helmet in a spray of twisted metal and shattered ceramic and blood. That took some of the pressure off Murdock, who popped over his console and squeezed off a few shots. Another commando shot at the access hatch, and I flinched back as the bullets pinged off the metal. Murdock hit the commando in the knee, and both Corbin and I fired at once. That commando staggered back, dropping his weapon, and collapsed to the deck.
The silence that followed was the most shocking thing I had ever heard. Or didn’t hear. Or something. God, I don’t think the firefight lasted more than thirty seconds, but it had felt like hours.
“Nelson!” called Corbin. “Report!”
Nelson stepped into the bridge, smoke rising from the barrel of his K7. “We’re clear, Rovio. No KIA. One of the tech took a slug to the forearm but he shouldn’t bleed out.”
“We’re clear here,” said Corbin. He stepped into the bridge, and the rest of us followed him as Murdock got to his feet. “No sign of Ducarti? Or Williams?”
“None,” said Nelson. “But at least we found the XO.”
“They left,” said Hawkins, and everyone looked at the XO, who had pushed himself to his feet. “Ducarti had four more men with him, and he and the captain took off in a hurry. I think they were going to the engineering room.”
“Nikolai,” said Corbin. “Start cutting them loose. We’ll need every man we have who can carry a gun.”
I nodded, produced my multitool, and got to work.
“Why?” said Hawkins as he massaged his newly freed wrists. “What do you think he’s doing now? I think he might have lost at least half of his men.”
“I think,” said Corbin, “he’s going to try and eject our hypermatter reactor.”
Hawkins frowned. “But you entangled our reactor with his.”
“I did,” said Corbin. “Ejecting the reactor will cause it to destabilize and explode. But if the Vanguard ejects its reactor at the same time, the blockade runner will remain functional. The Vanguard will have its weapons online, and we won’t, so it can blast us to pieces.”
I started cutting through the restraints as fast as I could manage.
Chapter 8: Emergency Safety Procedures
I cut the last of the restraints, and the final crewer got to his feet, groaning and flexing his swollen hands.
Hawkins rushed over to the XO’s station and began typing, entering his codes to unlock the ship’s systems and restore its core functions. One by one, consoles came to life around the bridge, the displays flashing with numbers and letters, and the crewmen hurried to their seats.
Almost all of the screens were displaying various warnings and system errors.
One screen in particular displayed an ominous warning. According to the computer, we had somewhere between five hours and nineteen minutes and seven hours and forty-seven minutes until the hypermatter reactor destabilized and blew up the Rusalka. Due to the inherent quantum uncertainty involved in hypermatter reactions, the computer couldn’t predict the exact time the entangled reactors would blow up and destroy both the hyper-locked ships, but if Corbin didn’t restore the regulator within the next six hours or so, we were all going to die.
“Did he say anything useful?” said Corbin. “Either him or the captain?”
“No,” said Hawkins. He didn’t seem to mind that Corbin had taken charge. I was pretty sure that Corbin had more combat experience than Hawkins. I wondered if Hawkins had known that Corbin had been part of Coalition intelligence, or that the cargo held a secret list of Social Party agents, and decided that it didn’t matter just now.
“What did they talk about?” said Corbin.
“They kept calling in different crew members to question them about the grain,” said Hawkins. “They were convinced that list Ducarti wanted was encoded in the grain, can you believe that?”
“It is,” said Corbin.
“You might have mentioned that,” said Hawkins with a scowl. I guess he didn’t know.
“I’ve been saying that for hours,” said Murdock from another console.
“Yes, and I heard you the first time,” said Corbin, a little sharply. “We all thought Williams was crooked. You never suspected he had gone over to the revolutionaries and neither did I.” He shook his head. “That’s why we arranged for the grain to ship aboard the Rusalka. None of the Social Party privateers have the firepower to take a ship this size”
“That’s why they suborned the captain,” said Hawkins, stooping over another console and entering a string of commands.
“You see the problem,” said Corbin. “Do we have any of the sensor operators here?”
“No,” said Hawkins. “I’ve only seen about thirty of the crew. I’m hoping that Ducarti didn’t kill them all, that they’re holed up in the galley or crew quarters.”
“Let’s find out,” said Corbin. “See if you can unlock the internal sensor systems. Nikolai! Get on the sensor console. Full interior scan, focusing on life signs and weapon traces.”
I nodded and dropped into the seat at the sensor console. The displays still read SYSTEM LOCKED, but after a moment they flashed and reset. I started typing and flipping the switches. The Rusalka had a full suite of exterior sensor: radar, ladar, infrared, hyperspace distortion, neutrino-V and neutrino-H. The interior sensors weren’t nearly so elaborate. But it did have infrared detectors for picking up body heat, along with a few other sensors designed to pick up weapons traces. I keyed for an internal scan, and seeing that the computer still had a lot of processing power available since so many primary systems were locked, I instructed it to do a full exterior scan next, since I figured Corbin would want to know what was going on outside of the ship.
A moment later the numbers flashed across the display, and a diagram of the Rusalka’s crew areas appeared, dotted with red splotches to represent heat signatures.
“What do we have?” said Corbin.
“The ship counts one hundred and twenty-one of the crew are still alive.”
Hawkins raised his eyebrows. “We lost only nine? I thought Ducarti would start shooting people right and left.”
“If he’s going to blow up the ship, why go to the trouble?” said Corbin. “Nikolai. Zoom in there.” I tapped some keys, and another list appeared on the display. “It looks like… only fifteen commandos are left.”
“Fifteen?” I said, astonished. “Only fifteen? That troop ship of his could have held forty.”
“Maybe he didn’t have the full forty aboard,” said Corbin. “I suspect he expected even less resistance than he actually faced. Williams likely promised more than he could deliver.”
“Still,” I said, a little surprised. “Only fifteen left? It’s hard to believe that he brought so few.”
“Not really,” said Corbin. “Ducarti’s not a soldier or a pirate. He’s a speechmaker and a terrorist. Convincing people to kill themselves for the Social Party, or tricking them into it, that plays to his strengths. Seizing a ship is something else entirely. He’s a novice at this, and probably assumed that Williams locking down the ship would neutralize all resistance.”
“I had to take a crowbar to an arms locker,” said Nelson.
“Murdock had some laser pistols in the computer room,” I said.
“That’s against regulation,” said Nelson at once.
Murdock shrugged from where he was working at one of the computer consoles. “Staying alive is its own regulation.”
“Plus, he couldn’t have foreseen Rodriguez using a cargo drone like that,” said Corbin, “or how that would arm us. No, he’s improvising now. That’s good. Improvising men make mistakes, which means we have about a fifty-fifty chance of getting out of this alive since he wasn’t smart enough to cut his losses and run.”
“It looks like there are only about five commandos guarding the crew decks,” said Hawkins, pointing at one of my displays. To judge from the mass of infrared signatures, he was right.
“Five men to guard nearly ninety seems risky,” I said.
Murdock grunted, walking to another console. “Not when those five have K7 automatics. No one wants to go first and be the dead hero.”
“Good point,” I said. We’d both gone to the airlock like sheep, after all.
“Where are the rest of them?” said Nelson.
“It looks like you’re right. Ducarti, ten commandos, and Captain Williams are heading for the engineering room,” I said. “Do you think they can do that ejection thing you mentioned?”
“I doubt that he could stabilize our hypermatter reactor, unless they happen to have the right kind of processor aboard the Vanguard. They’re probably just checking out my story; that’s why he hasn’t run for it. For all he knows, I was bluffing.”
“All right,” said Hawkins. “We have two priorities, then. First, to rescue the crew with as little loss of life as possible. Second, to stop Ducarti from disentangling the hypermatter regulator.”
“Hey, if he can do it, that’s not a problem,” Murdock cut in. “If we don’t, the ship blows up. You already bought us the time we needed.”
“I suggest that our second priority should be to stop Ducarti from escaping on the troopship,” said Corbin. “However that happens, whether through his death, neutralization, or surrender. I also suggest that our third priority ought to be to stabilize the hypermatter reactor as soon as possible.”
I wondered if Hawkins realized how smoothly Corbin had taken charge. Or maybe he did and was grateful for the help. The XO wasn’t a stupid man, after all.
“Agreed,” said Hawkins. “Since he’s not trying to escape yet, we should free the crew before they’re all slaughtered. There are only five commandos on the crew deck. Can we storm the crew quarters?”
“Probably,” said Nelson, “but losses will be high. They’ll have set up fortified positions. Worse, they’ll be able to take hostages, and if we don’t take them out cleanly, we’ll lose a lot of people.”
“We have control of the life support systems again,” said Corbin. “Perhaps we can put those to use.”
“Pump gas into the crew deck, you mean?” said Hawkins. “Try to knock them out?”
“Something like that,” said Corbin.
“Won’t work,” called Murdock. “All those commandos have gas masks built into their helmets, probably a nice little air filtration sys
tem. They can operate in hard vacuum, too. The men we killed in cargo bay seven didn’t have any trouble operating there. We could pump the air out of the crew deck, or pump in anything else we wanted, and it wouldn’t have any effect.”
“Anything we could pump into the deck that would penetrate those gas masks,” said Hawkins, “would also kill the entire crew well before it harmed the commandos. If we could just evacuate the hostages first, that would…”
I blinked as an idea came to me.
“Wait,” I said. Hawkins looked at me. “Sorry to interrupt, sir. But did you unlock the internal communications? And the door systems?”
Yeah,” said Hawkins. “Those are all a subset of the communications system and life support control, and I unlocked those right away.” He scowled. “Still can’t access her weapons, though, which would solve a lot of problems.”
“But we can control the doors,” I said. “And the comms.” I pointed at the internal sensor screen. “Most of the crew still have their receivers. We can send them a message, telling them to retreat into the maintenance walkways. All the commandos are in the corridors keeping guard. We’ll seal every door on that deck, which will give the crew time to get away. By the time the commandos break through the doors, the crew will be gone, and then we can pump all the air out. They can’t have more than an hour or two of air in their suits. They’ll either surrender or asphyxiate.”
For a moment no one said anything, and then Hawkins snorted.
“You know, Rovio,” he said. “I always thought you were too clever for your own good. Sounds like he takes after you.”
