Sixteen green lights. Her mind cleared. “All missiles have accepted the profile and ID. They’re ready for target positions,” she said.
“Without FTL data, sir, we’re guessing on their trajectory,” Stavros said.
“Understood. Tactical?” Once Edones had approved the use of the Assassinator missiles, Aquino fully backed his decision. No one mentioned that if the ship’s crew could track the incoming missiles on FTL and knew their limitations, they could maneuver out of range.
“I’ve got sixteen points plotted that provide coverage for where we think they’re going.” Serafin showed the circles, ten thousand kilometers in diameter. “They’d have to go wonky to avoid these missiles. Even so, they might get there too late.”
No one questioned the chief’s use of “wonky” as everyone looked at her plot, more concerned by the phrase “too late.” There was silence as everyone digested the possibilities of surviving a TD wave.
“Weapons, download final recon points to the missiles and fire when ready. Comm, update the Percival with the targets—they should leave as soon as possible.” Aquino broke up the moment of preoccupation.
“Downloading final recon coordinates,” Oleander said. It took a moment for the missiles to update their targeting processors and she heard Lieutenant Kozel say that the Percival was away, but she concentrated on entering her authorization codes.
“Missiles away,” she said.
The firing of the Assassinators was anticlimactic when compared to the rail guns. The missiles were smart delivery systems that were gently pushed out of their tubes. They used minimal crude chemical propellant to orient themselves before starting their boost engines.
Oleander looked up to watch, with the rest of the control deck, the plots of the missiles as they overtook and passed the TLS Percival. The missiles were death addressed to a specific type of ship and they paid no heed to the Percival.
This hadn’t been the way they hoped things would play out, considering the Percival had more than twice as many rangers as the Bright Crescent had commandos. Those special forces would have been welcome in boarding and taking back the Pilgrimage, but somebody had to go after the Candor Chasma. State Prince Hauser was on the Percival, and he’d already stated that since a Terran weapon, a Terran design flaw, and Terran security procedures had precipitated this crisis, then it was only fair the Percival perform cleanup. Now the presence of the Minoans made “cleanup” an absolute necessity and had forced “plan B” into effect.
“Relay to the Warrior Commander that we’d like Knossos-ship to follow us to Sophia One and help with the Pilgrimage Three. We’ll be sending boarding tactics for their review within the hour,” Aquino said.
“What if they ask about the Percival?” Lieutenant Kozel looked terrified at the prospect of lying to a Minoan.
“Pass the comm to me if that happens,” Edones said.
As Oleander watched the forward part of the missile traces, she wondered at the strange deficiency of curiosity in the Minoans. Luckily, the Knossos-ship didn’t once question the use of the Percival for pursuing “criminals,” as Edones had described the situation. The Minoans must have tracked the launch of the missiles, but still made no comment.
Both the Terrans and Autonomists preferred the Minoans never found out about the missing TD weapon, and this was higher priority than hiding it from the Pilgrimage ship line. Strictly speaking, this wasn’t a treaty violation, but the Minoans might still invoke penalties.
As a result, the Percival was on a mission that bordered on dishonor. If they successfully stopped the Candor Chasma, their highest priority was to destroy all evidence that a TD weapon was involved. Rescuing any survivors was far down on their priority list, allowing for the possibility that there were survivors after the Assassinators were finished.
Tahir turned away from the display. The final approval that flashed in Abram’s eyes made his heart beat faster. Then his rush of hope flattened when Abram also called Emery his son.
Didn’t you say, Father, that everybody has a key? A weakness that can be exploited? Yours is that you fail to recognize your son has the same capacity for hate as you do—and you fail to see my hatred is focused upon you.
“Final boost for trajectory change,” Julian said.
Emery was monitoring sensors and the weapon itself, courtesy of the old control unit installed in this heap of a ship. Tahir glanced at Major Kedros, who looked tense and focused on Julian. He hadn’t dared tell her what he planned, but he had no doubt she’d cooperate when the Great Bull-shit splattered, so to speak.
“We need more acceleration to fit the profile,” Emery said. “I’ll display the specs on your console.”
Julian slowly pushed up thrust from the boost engines, and watched the diagram in front of him. The real-space piloting turned out to be tricky. They were dangerously close to the sun and unable to bleed off excess gee that could harm them.
“If your great leader had any respect for you, he’d have had you do this around Laomedon,” Major Kedros said in a casual tone.
“Shut up,” Julian returned automatically.
“I’m just saying that you could have lived through this,” Kedros said.
Emery looked sideways at Tahir, who shook his head. At this point, he couldn’t afford to have Emery distrust the flight profile.
Tahir was pleased that Kedros was distracting Julian. He tried to catch her eye, hoping she’d understand his approval, but she was staring at Julian’s profile.
“I think Laomedon would have worked,” she said. “We could have flown this profile around that gas giant, but Abram didn’t want the detonation to be anywhere near him.”
“Shut up. Besides, we’re going up in a ball of fury once the weapon goes off,” Julian said, using a lofty tone.
Kedros laughed. It was so unexpected and lighthearted that Tahir couldn’t help grinning. Even Emery grunted out a chuckle at Julian’s expense.
“What?” Julian tried to spin his body around, forgetting that he was tied to a chair and they were now in free fall. Instead, his arm flailed. “What’s so fucking funny?”
“Get back to the rest of the profile.” Tahir grinned, but kept an eye on Emery’s console, watching them fill the second half of the gee maneuver.
“Again, what’s so funny?” Julian was back at the stick. Beside him, Kedros was leaning closer, smiling.
“Because you’re going to die from radiation, flyboy. There’s not going to be any ball of fury.” Kedros’s voice was smooth and spiteful.
Tahir wanted to see Julian’s face, but time was getting short and he needed to watch Emery. Kedros found Julian’s “key,” exactly as Abram had. Julian had a death wish, what Abram called the blaze-of-glory syndrome that he’d looked for in the disaffected and the anarchist masses. These people wanted to die for a cause, any cause, as long as it invoked sincere feelings of justification and visions of grand immolation.
“Radiation poisoning?” From the sound of Julian’s voice, he hadn’t planned such an ignominious end.
“That’s it, flyboy. You’re going to be drilled so bad you’ll be smoking.” Kedros sounded happy.
“Shut up, bitch.” Julian’s return didn’t sound so automatic this time. Besides, they were under high gee and he almost had to grunt to get out the plaintive words. “We have radiation shielding.”
Ignoring Julian, Tahir watched Emery, who concentrated on his console. They were finishing their gee maneuver.
“Ease up, Julian,” Emery said. “Slowly reverse thrust. Good. I’ll load some vectors in for a flight plan.”
They were now in free fall around a strong gravity well. They’d gone through their low to high gee conditions and were now floating. He heard Julian retch. Tahir felt fine, but the free fall finally affected Julian. He kept his hand on his loosened stunner as he hovered behind Emery. They both saw what they were waiting for; the controller displayed a flashing yellow signal that read ARMED.
“Why do you think ev
erybody in this system is hiding behind planets with magnetospheres, Julian? This is just the start, flyboy.” Kedros’s voice whipped through the control deck like a lash. “This nausea is the beginning of the grand death your leader is expecting from you.”
“Shut. Up. You. Bitch.” Julian was struggling against the nausea and he hadn’t used a bag. Instead, he tried to hold the liquid mess together in the folds of his elbow. The smell of vomit filled the control deck quickly.
“I’ve had it with the both of you.” Emery released his webbing, pulled out his flechette pistol, and turned with a catlike grace, his free hand gripping the back of his seat.
From his position behind Emery, Tahir saw Kedros make her move. He brought his stunner up and pulled the trigger.
CHAPTER 22
I hate to see pilots approach N-space drops by numbly
processing their checklists, not understanding the ne cessity of the buoy lock signal, or the creation of the
Penrose Fold and Fold boundary.
—Rant: Understanding Our Technology, Lee Wan Padoulos, 2101.078.12.19 UT, indexed by Democritus 20 under Metrics Imperative
As Ariane pushed toward Julian, she heard the sizzle-pop sound of a stunner. Her tied fists hit Julian square in the face and her a knees grabbed the chair arm. Julian pushed back with one hand and the other arm drew back to hit her. They both had leverage.
Then came the slam of propellant from a flechette pistol and the whine of twisting bladed needles. Julian flinched and ducked his head, so she slammed him in the face again with her two-handed fist. There were free-floating needles everywhere. She closed her eyes and tried to keep her head down as she hit Julian again.
And again. Julian yelled incoherently. Needles were flying; she felt pricking pain in her left leg.
“Get off him, Major Kedros.”
She looked up to see Tahir pointing a stunner at her. Most of the flechette ammo had buried itself in the soft displayable covering on the walls and Emery’s console, but some needles still moved around in free fall. Floating about were drops of spit, blood, and vomit—she saw Emery lodged against the opposite wall, stunned. He must have pulled the trigger on his pistol as he went under.
“Yeth, ge’off, you bith,” Julian mumbled.
She regretfully disengaged, floating backward toward her chair. Tahir stunned Julian and she raised her eyebrows.
“Sorry.” Tahir grimaced and awkwardly motioned toward Emery. “He was aiming the pistol before I could stun him.”
She pulled a few painful needles out of her thigh. As she looked up, she saw Tahir tap a command at the weapons console.
“What are you doing?”
“Releasing the weapon,” he said.
“What? No!” She pushed toward him.
“Don’t.” He pointed the stunner in warning. “It’s gone. It’ll detonate in—”
“Seven minutes remaining,” announced the Candor Chasma’s ship timer, which must have been set by Emery.
“That’s enough time for you to get us out of this system.”
With agony churning her stomach, she watched the display on the weapons console. All this trouble and I still didn’t stop it. The weapon, released from its homemade clamps and holding its original velocity vector, was quickly diverging from the ship’s path. The ship was now on a flight plan that Emery had loaded into the autopilot.
“We’ve got to catch it,” she said.
“No, we’re leaving. We’re dropping to N-space before this thing blows. The civilized galaxy will finally be free of Abram.”
“Not possible. The referential engine won’t work without a license crystal, we’ve got no drugs, and we’re—”
She was going to say they were too far from the buoy to get a lock signal, but she stopped as he reached into his pocket and held up a license crystal.
“I’ve already loaded codes for the Pilgrimage buoy, and you’ve done this before, without drugs.”
Her mind went into overdrive. There was time to catch up with the weapon, or there was time to get within lock-signal distance of the buoy, but there wasn’t time enough to do both before detonation. They were still in free fall, floating between the weapons console and the pilot chair where Julian still sat.
Tahir nodded, taking her silence for cooperation. He holstered his stunner and turned toward the hatch, using his toes lightly against the deck. “I’ll get this installed while you—”
Her zero-gee training kicked in as she turned and grabbed the back of Julian’s chair. Using the chair as an anchoring pivot, she twisted and clipped Tahir in the back of the head with her boots. He grunted and flew forward into the hatch. She reached down and pulled Julian’s stunner out as Tahir thrashed to turn around, using the hatch for leverage. She felt no guilt as she stunned him.
“Thanks.” She grabbed the crystal as it careened past her face. “I’m going to need this.”
Joyce quickly reconsidered the wisdom of wreaking havoc on a station with only a stunner, particularly when he came up against projectile weapons. Not that getting hit with a stunner was any fun, but rubber riot-shot—Where the hell did they get shotguns?—was painfully debilitating and flechettes were deadly.
As flechettes flew upward past him, he knew he needed better weapons and a plan—that dirty four-letter word. It didn’t have to be an elaborate one, because these guys were stupid. The proof was below him, as a crazy tried to shoot flechettes up the manual access tube, only to have them ricochet or fall back down.
“Hey!” The shooter retreated.
“Is he gone?” the second man asked anxiously. “He can get access to other corridors up there.”
“Why don’t you check?” snarled the first.
More discussion and bullying followed, all of which typified the split in the crazies. There were only two men below; he’d dropped the third with a stunner before climbing up the tube. The anxious one was in station maintenance overalls and, by his clothes and accent, the other appeared to be an outsider. Joyce considered the outsiders to be the true threat. They were the ones entrusted with dangerous weapons, while their converts from the station carried stunners. The outsiders were aggressive and often browbeat their converts.
“All right, I’ll take a look,” the second man said reluctantly.
There was a pause. Joyce pictured the maintenance worker peeking up, wondering what could be waiting above. He wasn’t the man Joyce needed to take out.
“Go ahead. He’s probably gone. I’ll cover you.” The crazy was obviously tense and holding his pistol ready.
Joyce set the ministunner to low power and zeroed the range. Without leaning over the tube, he set it against the anchor of the ladder in the tube and pulled the trigger. At that low setting and without the squirt of ions to carry the charge, the stunner made no sound. He was, however, using its charge.
“Ow! He’s charged the ladder.”
Joyce quickly changed stunner settings.
“What? You’re an idiot—I don’t feel anything.”
Joyce leaned and fired down the shaft. It was difficult firing a stunner inside a metal tunnel, but he was three meters away and the access tube was wide. The crazy was exactly where he’d hoped; better yet, the man dropped his pistol as the charge hit him, so no ammo went flying. For good measure, Joyce hit him with a charge again, this time taking better aim. He smiled as he heard the running footsteps from the retreating maintenance worker. Now that wasn’t a surprise.
Climbing down, he surveyed his sudden wealth. The deserter hadn’t taken the weapons from his fallen comrades. Crumpled against the corridor wall and near the corner, the other maintenance worker lay next to his shotgun with rubber riot-shot. Joyce grimaced as he hefted the flechette pistol dropped by the crazy. Pulling the magazine out, he found it still had five rounds of compressed foil darts.
He snorted. He’d carry the shotgun as his primary weapon because he’d never liked flechette weapons. The only advantage of flechettes, here, was intimidating unprotected
civilians or flouting the Phaistos Protocols, if one wanted to thumb their nose at the Minoans. He’d used flechette rifles during EVA and boarding assaults, but both his forces and the opposing Terrans had been equipped in full exoskeleton-supported armor and self-sealing suits. Flechettes and small-caliber slugs were the only effective ammunition under those circumstances. He blinked and shook his head to avoid seeing the scenes against his eyelids: comrades flailing and dying in space. Those memories were burned into his brain.
He double-checked the safety on the flechette pistol. These should never be used against unarmored civvies. He supposed that was why he was career-AFCAW, so Autonomist citizens could continue their naive lives in peace. He put the flechette pistol on his belt and the ministunner in his vest pocket.
“Fledgling to Mother Bird,” he broadcasted, using the slate hooked to his coveralls. Even though the comm was encrypted, the crazies had the same Command Post equipment and could be roaming the channels. Having short and obscure conversations kept the crazies from triangulating his position or figuring out his intentions.
“Mother Bird here.” Maria’s voice was tiny, piped through his implanted ear bug for hands-free comm. He’d plugged the slate into the connector at the base of his neck.
“Two more down.” He quick-tied his victims’ hands behind their backs, courtesy of the pocket contents of one of the crazies.
“Found any doves yet?”
“No.” He grunted as he shoved the unconscious bodies into the access tube. “Got an ETA on Vulture?”
“Approximately forty-five minutes.”
He wanted to ask whether the Golden Bull’s crew had made it through the Hesperus and onto Beta Priamos, but they’d agreed that Maria would manage that operation. They uncoupled the two activities; there were no coordination points or dependencies. His mission lay in the opposite direction from the class B docks and was more important than freeing the Golden Bull’s crew. He quickly checked the time on the cuff of his coverall sleeve.
Vigilante Page 27
