Mutiny in Space

by Rod Walker

  At least I didn’t shoot the chief or my uncle in the back.

  They didn’t have any better luck. The guns made no noise in the vacuum, and so I heard Hawkins without any trouble.

  “You’re overshooting!” said Hawkins. “Just a few meters off, shorten your aim. Wait! Get off the drone. Get off the drone! Incoming!!”

  There was a second, smaller chemical flare from their position. This time my faceshield didn’t darken.

  “Take cover!” shouted Hawkins.

  Where? We were standing on a cargo arm in vacuum. There wasn’t anywhere to take cover.

  “Eject!” said Corbin, and he leaped gracefully from the arm, the jets on his EVA pack shooting out white plumes. Nelson followed him, but I wasn’t as practiced with using the EVA equipment.

  I had just managed to shift my K7 to my right hand and grip the control arm with my left when the missile slammed into one of the drone’s ion jets.

  I couldn’t hear the explosion, but I felt it, the vibration shooting through my boots and making my bones vibrate. The drone heaved to the side, spinning like a top, and it spun with enough force that the side of my head slammed into the drone’s cargo arm. I heard a crunching noise, a squeal of static, and then I sort of went away for a while.

  When I came to, I was spinning through nothingness, red and green lights flashing across my HUD.

  Confusion filled my head, and then a jolt of sheer terrified panic pushed it aside. Ducarti’s missile, the drone… I had been thrown off into space. I had a horrified instant when I thought I had fallen into a gravity well, that I would be pulled down into one of the gas giants’ atmospheres to be cooked alive by their radiation, but then I remembered we were still hundreds of millions of kilometers from any of NR8965’s planets, and at my current velocity, I would likely have a few billion years before my mummified corpse met that fate.

  Well. That was that. I wouldn’t die in a hyper-nuclear reaction, I just had to wait two or three hours until my suit failed in the hard vaccuum. It could be worse. A better suit would just permit me to die a long and painful death of dehydration.

  The nausea gripped me after that. I was still spinning around from the missile explosion, and my inner ear was not happy. My stomach heaved, and I was grateful there hadn’t been time to eat anything during this awful day. Of all the ways to die, choking on my own vomit in a spacesuit would be one of the worst. Still better than getting cooked by drive radiation, though.

  I groped for the control arm, firing the jets in the pattern I had practiced when studying for my certification tests. At last I got my spin under control, and I came to a halt relative to the ship’s velocity. The gray cylinder of the Rusalka hovered ahead of me, glinting in its running lights, and I didn’t think I was more than a thousand meters from the gargantuan ship.

  “Corbin?” I said. “Anyone? Is anybody there?”

  Only static answered me. I wondered if Ducarti had somehow managed to kill everyone on the ship when I was out, and then I noticed the red text on my HUD. My suit’s life support system was still running, but the radio was dead. It had likely been damaged when my head bounced off the cargo arm. The drone floated a few hundred meters away, still spinning ponderously away from the Rusalka, and I wondered if Corbin and Nelson were still alive, and if they had found a way to stop Ducarti. I looked towards where the troopship was above the Rusalka.

  The airlock tube was gone. The ship had retracted it.

  Even as I watched, harsh light flared around the cylindrical ship’s drive nozzles as its sublight drive started to fire up. Ducarti and Williams were obviously safe and inside it. All they had to do now was fly sublight to a safe distance away from the doomed Rusalka and wait. With the weapons locked and the reactor-tangled Vanguard out of reach, there was nothing the XO, my uncle, or anyone on the crew could do.

  Game over, man.

  I should have been terrified. I definitely ought to have been terrified. I think at least some part of me was terrified, knowing that I probably wouldn’t even live long enough to die with the ship. I was aware of all that.

  But, for some reason, I was mostly just pissed off.

  Ducarti had murdered my mother and my brother. He had killed and maimed thousands of people on New Chicago, and he had gotten away scot-free, leaving behind nothing but a gloating message praising the cruel glories of the Revolution. He had gotten every single one of the men under his command killed, sacrificing their lives to save his own worthless hide. Now he would destroy the Rusalka, killing over a hundred men with whom I had worked over the last year, and once the Social Party rescue ship came to pick him up, he would get away scot-free again, and go on to ruin more lives and murder more innocent people.

  The thought was intolerable. It was utterly and totally intolerable. And the only thing that could make my death worthwhile was if Ducarti died too. But how to manage that? The troopship wasn’t a speed demon, but there was no way my little EVA jets could catch up with it. And even if they could, the accelerated mass of my body wouldn’t so much as dent the troopship’s heavy armor.

  But the Vanguard’s would do a lot more than dent it. And at her slow rate of relative movement, she couldn’t have gone too far, somersaulting through the void. I wasn’t trained on weapon systems, and I’d be more likely to crash her into the Rusalka than successfully dock her, but how hard could it be to smash her into the troopship? Being built to survive battle, the warship was not only faster, she was also better armored than her sublight companion.

  So where was she? I slowly turned myself around, looking for a black ship against the black background of space. But I knew what to look for, and before long I noticed a starless patch of space that appeared to be moving. Then there was a flash, which I realized must be the exposed metal of the ruptured airlock, and I knew it had to be her.

  I jammed the control arm forward, throwing the EVA jets to full power, and shot towards what I was pretty sure was the Vanguard. The motion made my injured ribs and head ache with further pain, but I was too angry to care. Sure enough, as I came closer I could see that it was indeed the slowly rotating ship that had been blocking out the stars. The sleek black shape loomed closer, and I aimed for the ship’s underside, heading for the cargo airlock there.

  I curved around the underside of the Vanguard, firing the EVA jets to slow my approach, and the cargo airlock came into sight. I hit the dark metal of the hull and scrabbled at the airlock’s control. It was locked, but I pulled the panel off, and within I saw that the lock’s mechanism was a simple one. The red wire went there, the green wire went there, and… the outer door slid open!

  I threw myself into the airlock, knowing that an alarm would be going off on the ship’s bridge. I slammed on the cycle control, activated my magnetic boots, and hit the override. The inner door slid open, and a gale of wind slammed into me with enough force to throw me into the void. I was ready for it, though, and I seized the frame of the inner door, pulling myself forward one agonizing step at a time. I flipped over the airlock, grabbing at the wall, and the inner and outer doors slammed shut behind me.

  Right. So, I was on board the Vanguard. Now what?

  The bridge. I had to get to the bridge. Maybe I would get lucky, and find that Ducarti had left the weapons systems unlocked. I hurried forward. I lost my K7 in the explosion, but the machine pistol still rode in my belt, and I drew the weapon, flipping off the safety. I also still had half a dozen stun grenades and two fragmentation ones. I didn’t think anyone was still on the Vanguard, but we might have miscounted, and Ducarti could have left another security drone or two lying around.

  The corridor ended in a ladder, and I climbed up, peering over the edge before hauling myself over the top rung. The ladder ended in a room that looked like a combined galley and crew lounge, with a pair of tables bolted to the floor and a pair of darkened screens on the wall. I had never been on a ship like this before, but it was atmosphere capable, which meant the bridge would be towards the nose.

>   I ran up the next corridor, went through a door, and found myself on the bridge. It was an oval room lined with consoles, with several free-standing stations arranged around the perimeter. The systems looked different, and much more expensive, than those on Rusalka, but the basic principles were the same.

  I hurried over to the tactical console and tried it. No good. Ducarti had left the ship’s weapons locked. If I had been lucky, I could have blasted his troopship to dust, but that would have been too easy.

  It didn’t matter. He wasn’t getting away, not this time.

  Think. I had to think. My head felt like it was full of cotton and broken glass. I couldn’t let Ducarti get away, but I had to try and save the others. The hypermatter reactors were still entangled. Corbin would have started stabilizing the Rusalka’s reactor by now, but it had to be synced from here.

  I pushed away from the tactical console and dropped into the pilot’s chair.

  And then, to my relief, I saw that Ducarti had not locked the navigation and engine controls. I set about figuring out the controls, trying to concentrate through the growing pain. The first thing I did was fire up the comms. I hailed Rusalka as I brought up the reactor controls, and someone answered after a few moments.

  “This is the Rusalka,” said Hawkins, sounding suspicious.

  “XO, it’s Nikolai,” I said. “I’m on the Vanguard.”

  “What?” said Hawkins. “How? We lost track of you after the explosion. Rodriguez sent one of his drones to pick up Corbin and Nelson, but–”

  “Sir,” I cut him off, “I can shut down the hypermatter reactor from here.”

  He was silent for a moment as the significance of that caught up to him.

  “Right,” he said. “The regulator is working again. Our reactor is stable enough that we should be able to do it too. So long as we do it in sync, it should work. Murdock!”

  Murdock’s rough voice came into the channel. “You there, Rovio?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I’m ready to shut down.”

  I heard him shouting at someone, probably Arthur. “All right. Tell the reactor to shut down at this timestamp.” A number flashed on the console. “You got that?”

  “Underway,” I said. I entered the commands, the reactor diagram on the console flashing green and yellow. “Doing it in three… two… one… now.”

  I keyed the reactor for shutdown, and braced myself, half-expecting the ship to blow up beneath me.

  But the ship didn’t explode. For a moment the console display remained the same, and then it flashed blue. The reactor had shut down.

  I heard cheering in the background.

  “Rovio, it worked,” said Hawkins. “Our reactor is shut down. Yours?”

  “Offline,” I said. “It worked, too.”

  Then I reached over and shut off the comm channel.

  I was pretty sure Hawkins wouldn’t approve of what I was about to do.

  Ducarti wasn’t getting away. Not this time. I wasn’t a pilot, but I knew the basics, and more to the point I knew how to operate the macros. I brought up a local sensor display, and saw the troopship heading towards one of the gas giants. Ducarti probably thought it would be safe to hide there until someone came to pick him up, or perhaps he had supplies stashed there.

  I locked the navigation computer onto the troopship and fired up the sublight engines. The gravitics kept the acceleration from ripping me apart, but I still felt the shudder go through the ship. The sensor displays shifted as the Vanguard rapidly began to gain on the troopship. The troopship had a good start, but the blockade runner had far more powerful engines, and it soon began to close on the troopship.

  The Vanguard also had substantially better armor. I was counting on that.

  The comm flashed again, and I accepted the call.

  This time the video display lit up, showing the bare metal interior of a troopship’s control deck. Ducarti was in the pilot’s chair, Williams was sitting next to him, looking more like a scared child than a spaceship captain.

  “Rovio,” spat Ducarti. “I should have known that… wait. No. Not the elder. The younger! Nikolai! You are becoming very nearly as problematic as your uncle.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “It’s over, Ducarti. You lost. You can drop the act now. Any last words?”

  “Hardly,” said Ducarti, his eyes narrowing. “I presume you have stabilized the reactors. But while you may control both ships now, you don’t have control of either vessel’s weapons, or someone would have fired by now. So. Chase us around the system if you wish. It will be an entertaining diversion until my rescue ship arrives and blasts you both out of the sky.”

  “It would be,” I said. “Except your ship isn’t all that fast. You can outrun the Rusalka, but you can’t outrun me.”

  “So?” said Ducarti, still smiling. “It is not as if you will be able to board us. You…”

  His voice trailed off. Williams’s eyes widened in stark terror.

  I ignored him. I was watching Ducarti’s face.

  I smiled as he got it.

  And at last that smug expression vanished.

  He snarled a course and started punching commands into the control board, taking evasive action. It didn’t make any difference. The Vanguard’s thrust-to-mass ratio was far superior, and the blockade runner continued to close. Ducarti snarled, and then his eyes widened. He started entering a new series of commands, one after another.

  My control board lit up. He was trying to take remote control of the ship, logging into it from the troopship. I couldn’t do anything about that. The tactical console was locked, and so were the main computer functions. He had left the engines and maneuvering accessible, but once he logged into the computer, he could take control of the ship. His most likely move would be to shut off life support and let me asphyxiate.

  But I was ready for that. The system would not let me access the more critical system functions, but I could run all the non-critical applications I wanted. I still had Arthur’s drive with me, so as Ducarti logged in, I plugged the drive into the console, and told the computer to run the harmless program on it, devoting every available processing cycle to it.

  Every screen except for the comm display went black.

  “What?” said Ducarti.

  Then the displays lit up again, and every single screen showed the main menu for Gunno-Tatakai. The terrible music blasted from the speakers, so loud it made my teeth vibrated, and for an instant Ducarti looked bewildered.

  “What is that noise?” he demanded.

  “Music,” I said. “If you can call it that.”

  He snarled again and kept frantically tapping screens.

  I couldn’t him from logging in. He had root-level access to the ship’s computer. But with Gunno-Tatakai hogging every bit of system resources it could access, the system was sluggish and slow to respond. At last Ducarti seized control of the ship, crashed the game process, and shut off the engines.

  It was too late. I tapped the controls to buckle me in, then watched the numbers measuring the gap drop between the two ships drop to three digits, then two.

  The Vanguard rammed into the troopship, the armored blockade runner ripping through the troopship like a hammer through a wooden box. The comm channel remained open for a split second after that, and I heard Ducarti scream, saw fire start to bloom through the control deck.

  The image and sound dissolved into static.

  The Vanguard was armored, but the ship still shuddered and screamed from the tremendous impact.

  Eventually the shaking stopped, and I hauled myself back into the pilot’s seat as the lights went out on the bridge. The ship’s computer was still carrying out Ducarti’s final commands. I finally managed to get the comm system restarted on the third try.

  “Rovio?” Hawkins answered my call. “Are you all right? What happened out there?”

  “Hey, XO,” I said, pulling off my helmet and letting it drop to the floor. “Actually, I suppose you’re captain now. Or actin
g captain.” My head hurt and Williams seemed to be expanding and contracting in time with my heartbeat. “Okay, so, situation update. I ran right up his exhaust so he couldn’t get away.”

  “You’re saying,” said Hawkins, incredulous, “that you flew Vanguard right into Ducarti’s ship?”

  “Rammed is the preferred term,” I said. “Historically sound naval tactic. Say, you should probably send someone to help me out. I think I have a concussion, maybe some broken ribs.”

  “I’ll have your uncle put together a boarding party,” said Hawkins. “He and Nelson made it back to the ship okay.”

  “Oh, good,” I said. “A party! Like with presents and cake?”

  “Rovio,” said Hawkins, sounding concerned. “Are you okay?”

  “Sure,” I said. Then, apparently, I passed out.

  Victory is supposed to feel glorious, but I didn’t feel anything at all.

  Chapter 10: The Law of Salvage

  I don’t remember the next couple of days very well.

  Turns out I was hurt worse than I thought.

  I did indeed have a concussion, which wasn’t a surprise, and two cracked ribs, which was fewer than I would have guessed. I also suffered some moderate hearing loss from the explosion, and sprains in both ankles from getting blasted off the drone. I had also lost a lot of blood— the bullet that clipped my shoulder had made a mess, and I didn’t think there was an inch of my body that didn’t have a bruise or three.

  So I got my own bed in the infirmary after all.

  I can vaguely recall the medical drones rolling back and forth between the beds. They shot me up with a lot of drugs designed to stimulate bone growth, and deal with cranial trauma, and some really excellent painkillers. I think I slept for a couple of days, and when I finally woke up, I still felt terrible, but my head was mostly clear.