“You son of a bitch,” Bartlett said.
“Probably,” he replied. “Shuttle Three out.” He looked ahead, the trajectory plot showing a line heading right for the enemy ship, just as he'd planned. A series of warning alarms began to sound, alerting him to the imminent collision, but he filtered them out. Another noise blared from the panel, someone trying to contact him, either back at the station or on Alamo. He didn’t have anything to say to them right now, and if he didn’t listen to orders, he couldn’t disobey them.
The enemy vessel started to move again, its engine glowing as it started to accelerate, and he adjusted his course to compensate. At full acceleration, it could definitely outpace the shuttle, but he wasn’t going to give them the chance to make use of that advantage. Impact in a hundred and ninety seconds. No time at all.
He reached over to the control panel, tapping in the sequence to arm the warheads. It felt strange to be sitting just in front of six hundred kilotons of shaped nuclear charge, all strapped gently into the cargo compartment behind him. He was as safe as he would be in his own apartment back on Mars, but that was going to change in a very short time.
More warnings from the panel, kinetic missiles on the way, heading on shotgun trajectory. His guess had been right, they were trying to draw Alamo in, lure them into a false sense of security. The last shot in their locker had been expended, and was heading right for him.
Throwing the ship into a series of wild evasive maneuvers, he continued his course right for the heart of the enemy. This big a warhead didn’t need much in the way of accuracy, even if he had known where the critical systems were located. Anywhere would be enough to rip a nightmarish gash in their hull, and hopefully leave them ready for Alamo to finish the job. With luck, he’d have a front-row seat for the event, the best seats in the house.
One hundred seconds to go. The kinetic missiles were still ranging towards him, still diving in his direction, but he was moving as fast as they were, pushing his acceleration past the red-line, making it hard for him to move. He forced himself up and away, heading for the airlock, tugging out a rescue ball and placing it in position. No time to don a spacesuit, and it wouldn’t be much help to him anyway.
That done, he struggled back to the console and continued making adjustments, correcting his course as the ship grew closer and closer on the screen. Alamo was visible behind it, tempting and inviting, and a glance across at the communications system indicated that they were still trying to talk to him. Not that he could think of anything to say, not even any decent last words.
Sixty seconds to go, and the kinetic missiles were losing their track, giving him the window he needed. They’d hit him, alright, but two and a half seconds after impact. Smashing into the side of the enemy ship. All four of them self-destructed, his opponent evidently having come to the same conclusion.
Forty seconds, and he tapped the control to lock the arming sequence into position, ready to detonate at the exact millisecond of impact, getting the maximum effect. Just the crash of the shuttle would do some damage, but it was the sting in the tail that would do the job. In about thirty-two seconds.
In four steps, he made it to the airlock, taking a last look around the shuttle as he stepped into the rescue ball. Reaching out of the seal, he tapped a button marked ‘Emergency Decompression’, and quickly pulled it shut, starting the inflation procedure. The outer hatch opened, the inner still flung wide, and the ball was fired out into space, sucked out with the atmosphere, tossing it clear of the shuttle.
Within the advertised ten seconds, the ball was up, and slowly tumbling. There were no controls inside, just a very basic sensor array and communications system, and he ignored the latter to concentrate on the former, watching as the shuttle carved towards its target. He was still close, very close, and as the single viewport lined up, he could see the enemy ship looming large, almost near enough to touch.
The fabric walls looked awfully thin, and he knew that any shrapnel impact would almost certainly finish him off, though he pulled out the emergency patches on the off-chance that they would come in handy. He was still counting seconds, just five to go, and he peered out of the window, hoping that at the very least he would get the chance to see his handiwork, see what he had risked his life to accomplish.
He was lucky. Just as the shuttle slammed into the side of the enemy craft, it hove into view, and a bright flash heralded the detonation of the warheads exactly on time. A cloud of escaping air and debris briefly obscured the view, but he could easily make out a massive gouge in the side of the craft, flickering flames for a few seconds as compartments on fire lost their air. Bodies drifted clear, and the enemy ship slowly began to tumble, totally out of control.
Then he turned to the sensors, and saw debris field spreading out fast, in every direction. Neither the station nor Alamo would be seriously affected by it. By the time it got that far out it would be dispersed enough that it would merely scratch the paintwork, but he was directly in its path. With a sigh, he smiled. He knew what he was doing, knew that he’d taken a long shot in waiting to bail out for as long as he had, but if he hadn’t taken those risks, he could easily have missed his target entirely.
Clutching the emergency patches in his hands as though they were a safety blanket, he looked at the sensor display, alarms sounding as the cloud approached, warning him that he was in a dangerous position, slowly tumbling to his fate. Then red lights winked on, and he entered the debris field.
Looking through the viewport, he could see some of the larger pieces, though the view rapidly became blurry as particulate matter knocked out the external feeds. He could hear the rattle on the hull, as though it was raining outside, small objects bouncing off the tough fabric. Then a familiar siren, a decompression alarm. He could see where, a small hole where a piece of metal had lodged itself. The first pad went into it, slapping home, sealing the gap, and the alarm ceased, at least for the moment.
Oddly, the puncture had helped. The little leak of air had sent him drifting off to the right, out of the main path of the fragments. The second one was close by, this one just ripping a gash before deflecting away. The alarm seemed more urgent, the pressure leaking more quickly, and he could feel himself drifting towards it as he carefully positioned the second pad. Only one remained.
A few seconds later, he had to use it. This time a smaller fragment that pushed through and into the cabin, bouncing off the sensor display, shattering it into pieces, and returning almost in the direction it had come. Technically, he was meant to place the center of the pad over the hole he was trying to repair, but this time he had to make it cover both of them. With some protest, it sealed into position, and he started to sweep all of the remains of the sensor display together, gathering them up into a waste bag and pushing them into a corner.
Now he was blind. The viewport was so fogged over that he couldn’t see a thing out of it, and the sensor display was useless. Likely the pickups had been damaged anyway. The air pressure was holding, and the telltales were working fine. Counting seconds, he shook his head. By now he was out of the debris field, floating in free orbit.
He reached up for the communicator, at last willing to talk to someone, but he couldn’t pick up anything other than static. Either there was some sort of jamming taking place, or more likely there was more damage to the antenna outside. Nothing he could do now except wait, and see who picked him up. Much to his own surprise, he’d lived, and somehow, the battle was over.
Chapter 26
Marshall watched the devastation unfolding on the viewscreen in front of him, as the enemy vessel exploded, the aft section torn asunder while the forward section broke away, tumbling end over end. It was more of a surprise that there was anything left, any fragment of the vessel still in one piece. He stood up, taking a step towards the image, shaking his head.
“Report, Spinelli.”
The dazed sensor operator shook
his head, then said, “Nothing can have lived through that, sir. Even if any escape pods made it clear, they’d have been shredded to bits by the shrapnel.”
“What about Salazar?” Caine asked.
“I registered three hits on his pod, and we lost all telemetry feeds after the third.”
“Get the SAR shuttle to him, as fast as you can,” Marshall ordered, stepping back to his chair. “In this fleet we don’t declare someone dead until we’ve been to the funeral. Anything from the planet?”
“Nothing, sir. I haven’t received any signal from our ground team since those beams went off. It is possible that the jamming has resumed.”
“She said that everything was fine,” Foster said.
Shaking his head, Marshall replied, “Knowing Margaret Orlova, she’d have done that to stop me doing something silly like ordering Shuttle Two down to the planet. Which is precisely what I intend to do now. Contact the hangar deck, and have them get it ready for takeoff. I’ll be flying it myself.”
“I’m going with you,” Caine said, but he shook his head.
“You and Cunningham are needed up here, just in case the story hasn’t ended yet. Have Frank Nelyubov meet me in the shuttle, he can fly as co-pilot. It’ll be nice to have someone who’s already been down there to show me the way.”
“Why not let him fly, sir?” Kelso said. “There’s a lot of debris in orbit, and we’ve got no idea what’s going on down on the planet.”
“He’s right,” Caine added. “It’s our last surface shuttle until we can get replacements from Ragnarok. You don’t need to do this.”
“Yes I do,” he replied. “Get Cunningham up here. Foster, take us back to our position close to the station. Weitzman, find out who is in command over there, and get me a full status report. Particular emphasis on what the hell caused the computer failure that started this battle in the first place. It would be nice to find out what we were fighting for.”
“Aye, sir.”
“In that case, Deadeye, you have the deck.” As he stood up, there was a blinding flash on the viewscreen, the image filters only just switching on in time. “What was that?”
Blinking to try and clear his eyes, Spinelli said, “The enemy ship just exploded. Estimated yield of two hundred megatons.”
“Two hundred?”
“They wanted to make sure we wouldn’t steal any of their secrets,” Marshall said. “A dead man’s switch, rigged to explode if the ship was in danger of being captured.”
“What the hell are they afraid of?” Caine asked.
“I have the horrible feeling that we’ll find out. In any case, I think you can secure from battle stations, but maintain standby alert. Good work, everyone.”
He stepped into the elevator, pulling out his datapad to start scanning the damage reports. Miraculously, it seemed that they had managed to fight the battle without a single fatality, though half a dozen crewmen had sustained severe injuries when the combat fabricator was destroyed. It could have, should have, been far worse than it was.
The door slid open, and the deck looked surprisingly empty with only a single shuttle waiting on it, the fleet of small craft they'd left Ragnarok with wiped out in the battle. A pair of technicians were stepping out of the craft, a smiling Nelyubov waving him on-board.
“Come on, skipper,” he said. “Preflight checks are completed, and we have clearance to launch.”
“Right. Let’s go.”
“Want me to take it?” he asked, gesturing towards the pilot’s seat, but Marshall shook his head.
“I think I’ve earned a little fun, Lieutenant. I presume you’ve already triangulated the position of Maggie’s last transmission?”
“Down to the meter, sir. The course is already programmed into the navigation computer.”
Nodding, Marshall slid into the pilot’s couch, running his hands over the controls, while Nelyubov sealed the hatch and sat down next to him, activating the elevator airlock. The shuttle cycled through the doors, dropping free and clear of Alamo, and as he looked up, he saw the battering his ship had taken, a huge, angry gash running the length of the hull, the hull plating burned and melted away.
“Quinn says that it’s nothing he can’t fix, sir,” Nelyubov said as the shuttle began to drop down, the engines firing to push them out of orbit.
“Even he has his limits. We came damn close to pushing them today.”
He turned to look at the planet, watching it growing in the screen as the shuttle soared towards the surface, a light flashing on to indicate that they had entered atmosphere. This time they were in no mad hurry, and he settled the ship into re-entry position, watching the glow from the heat shield as it slammed into the rapidly thickening atmosphere, before leveling off back onto its descent trajectory.
“A hundred and nine miles to target,” Nelyubov said. “Closing rapidly.”
“Grant to Marshall,” a voice said. “I’ve just picked up Midshipman Salazar. Alive and well. I’m taking him back to Alamo for a full medical checkup and debriefing.”
“Thanks, Lieutenant.” Turning to Nelyubov, he said, “Lucky kid.”
“I think he’d earned it.” With a smile, he continued, “Down there, you see?”
A faint blue glow was appearing up ahead, on the horizon, and the shuttle was already curving towards it, following Nelyubov’s plotted trajectory. Marshall took a look at his system monitors, but everything seemed to be working.
“I’m bringing us in a half-mile short.”
“They might be in urgent need of help,” Nelyubov pressed.
“A wrecked shuttle and two dead fools won’t help them, Lieutenant. I watched that beam knock eleven missiles out of the sky by killing its instrumentation, and I’d bet that it is also responsible for the jamming field. We’re not getting too close.”
“I still think,” he began, before looking at Marshall and shaking his head. “I’ll go back and start getting everything assembled.”
Nodding, he replied, “I’ll try and make it a soft landing. We’ll be down in three minutes.”
“Danny, this is Alamo,” Cunningham said, his voice echoing, slightly distorted. “We’re settling into our new orbital position now.”
“Good. Mr. Salazar will be coming aboard in a few moments. Once he’s finished his medical check-up, I want him confined to his quarters until I send for him.”
“Sir?”
“I want to go over his case file again before I speak to him. There are a few things I think need checking.”
“I was thinking the same thing myself. For the record, you’re under the jamming field now, and I can still hear you. Telemetry all intact.”
Nodding, Marshall said, “Nothing from Maggie?”
“Not a thing.”
“Let me try.” He flicked frequencies, and said, “Marshall to Orlova. I am landing in one minute. Report.” Waiting a few seconds with no reply, he repeated, “I am landing in one minute. Report your status.” Frowning, he switched back, and said, “John, I’m coming into land. Have all sensors focus on this area, get as accurate a map as possible.”
“It’s a big planet, Danny.”
“Knowing her, she went right for that light. Certainly her last transmission was in that area. We’ll just have to do a little praying, that’s all. Shuttle out.”
He played the landing thrusters carefully, watching it drop the last few hundred feet to the surface, before gently coming to a halt, sending clouds of dust flying off in all directions. Flicking the engines off, he quickly ran through the post-flight checklist, letting Alamo handle as much as possible remotely, then unstrapped from the couch and made his way back to the rear compartment, where Nelyubov had almost finished suiting up.
“We’re down six hundred and nine meters south of our goal,” he said, passing Marshall his suit. “I think we’ve got everything.”
>
“Should have brought a paramedic with us,” Marshall said, shaking his head. “I moved too damn quickly.”
“They’re probably just sitting there in the dampening field. Nevertheless…”
Waving a hand in the air, he replied, “I’m going as fast as I can, Lieutenant. Have a little patience. And get those plasma rifles checked out. Maggie and Susan might not be the only ones down there waiting for rescue.”
A moment later, the two of them stepped out of the airlock, each with a hand on a rescue trolley being dragged along the ground, its wheels bouncing over the sand. It was immediately obvious where they were heading, five sets of footprints heading for a deep shaft.
“Two sets of Triplanetary footprints,” Nelyubov began.
“I think I can guess who the others belong to,” Marshall interrupted. “Weapons at the ready. Let’s not be surprised.”
Peering down the shaft, Nelyubov shook his head, saying, “We’ll never get down there with our suit jets. Not and have a hope in hell of getting out again.”
“Lock down the trailer,” Marshall replied, reaching over to turn on the winch, tossing the coiled line into the darkness below, watching it slowly drop to the bottom. Grabbing an emergency oxygen bottle, he said, “I’m going down on my suit jets. You stay on top and keep in touch with Alamo.”
“But…”
“Captain’s privilege, Frank. I’m the one who sent them down here. If you don’t hear anything from me within the next twenty minutes, head back to Alamo and come back with a bigger party. No desperate heroics, not with only one shuttle still functioning. Understood?”
Nelyubov paused for a moment, as though trying to come up with an argument, before finally nodding his head. “Aye, sir.”
Taking a backward step, Marshall began to play his suit jets around, slowing his descent to a crawl, reaching across to the safety line. If he saw a bogeyman at the bottom, there would still be time for him to get away. His rifle still in his hands, he cautiously dropped, looking around at the strange symbols on the wall, a chill running down his spine at the thought of the last time he had entered an alien city. A part of his soul was still back there, and always would be.
Battlecruiser Alamo: Aces High Page 22
