“Sir?”
“Do it!” snapped Sheridan. He sat back down in his chair and silently prayed that someone back in the fleet had been monitoring the situation, or they were doomed to die a horrible death waiting to be rescued.
Chapter 33
“No luck?” asked Colonel Wright as Tarina removed her helmet.
“None,” she replied. “There wasn’t even a blip on the scanners. If the Kurgans were out there, they didn’t come anywhere near us.”
“Well, the fleet didn’t receive any nasty surprises today, so the Kurgs could be laying low for a few days. I think your plan is sound; we’ll send you all out again after you get something to eat and get a few hours rest.”
“Yes, sir,” replied Tarina.
Wright could tell by her voice that she was tired and bitter. “Miss Pheto, you can’t expect things to always turn out as you planned. Have patience.”
Tarina nodded and walked away to speak with a technician.
“Colonel Wright,” called out Lieutenant Colonel Tolinski as she hurried across the flight deck.
“What’s up?” asked Wright.
“Colonel, we’ve received orders. We are to fuel up as many fighters as we can spare and dispatch them to the Andoron system.”
Wright scrunched up his face. “Did they say why?”
“All I got was that a ship is overdue and they want us to find out what happened to it,” explained Tolinski. “The rest of the fleet is spooling up a rescue mission, but it’ll take them time to arrive in the Andoron system. Until then, we’re all they have that can get there fast.”
“Enemy activity in that system?”
Tolinski nodded. “Mainly transport and resupply ships. However, they rarely travel on their own, so we should expect to encounter escort vessels.”
“What kind of ship are we looking for?”
“The tug Donaldson, sir.”
Wright shook his head. “A tug by itself all the way out there. I don’t think so. The fleet was up to something secretive out there.”
“I tried to find out more, but was told rather bluntly that I had all the information that I was going to receive.”
Wright nervously tapped his right foot on the floor while he thought. “Okay, if there’s a tug, there’s bound to be another vessel out there. We’ll do this in teams of two. You can coordinate the search. Use the fresher crews first. And for God’s sake, ensure that they understand that this is a search mission. No one, and I mean no one, is to take a potshot at a Kurgan transport vessel as payback for Rose. The first person who violates this order will find themselves carrying a rifle with a Marine regiment on Illum Prime.”
“Yes, sir.” Tolinski saluted, turned and left to get the search underway.
Wright remained on the flight deck watching his people go about their work. Each one was a true professional. He smiled when he saw Tarina and Wendy stop a flight crew. It was obvious that they were asking them what was going on. Within seconds, they were walking back over to their fighter. Wendy dug out a marker and began to do calculations for a jump to the Andoron system on the side of a fuel container. In his heart, he felt an immense pride. Wright knew that he had the best people in the fleet.
Chapter 34
“Can we go any faster?” Sheridan asked Tartov.
The frazzled PO looked over and said, “Sir, I’m doing the best I can. We’re traveling at seven hundred thousand kilometers an hour. Perhaps if we had an engineer who better understood the engines, we could go faster. Doing everything by computer—by an enemy computer system—is hard enough.”
Sheridan knew he was asking the impossible from Tartov. The PO had worked miracles rerouting most of the critical computer systems to his console, but without a trained crew they could only do so much. “You’re doing good, PO, just keep her moving back toward home. Is the sensor system still sending out those pings of yours?”
“Yes, sir. It’s set on automatic.”
“Perhaps someone else will hear the noise and come to investigate,” said Sheridan, praying that he was right.
Cole walked onto the bridge. “Sir, the armory was empty. I’m having the ship searched from stem to stern. However, if a Kurgan did manage to survive, he could be hiding anywhere. He’s going to know this ship a hell of a lot better than we do.”
“I know, and that’s what got me bothered,” replied Sheridan.
“How are things going up here?”
“PO Tartov has us moving back home, but at this speed it would take a couple of hundred years before we ever got there.”
“With that cheery thought in mind,” said Cole. “I’ve been thinking and believe that we could modify some of the Kurgan air tanks to fit ours. It’s not much, but it might double our life expectancy and give the fleet more time to find us.”
“Do it. Get a couple of people working on it right away. I’ll take anything that’ll help right about now.”
“I knew you’d say that. Jakes and Paris are busy changing the adaptor nozzles. They should be done within the hour.”
Sheridan grinned. He should have known that Cole would have given the order. His stomach rumbled. “You know the worst part apart about being stuck in a survival suit is not being able to eat.”
“I always thought it was the bathroom arrangements,” said Cole. “I feel ridiculous wearing a diaper underneath this suit.”
Both men chuckled. It was the first bit of levity either man had experienced in days. It helped to take the edge off their precarious situation.
Private Jenner turned her flashlight around illuminating the dark interior of a small shuttlecraft. She quickly deduced that it must have been the Kurgan ship’s captain’s personal craft. Like everything else they had checked, it was empty.
“Anything?” asked a Marine standing guard behind her.
“Nope. No one’s home,” replied Jenner.
“I don’t mind telling you that I’m scared out of my wits,” said the Marine. “The thought that a Kurgan saboteur is loose somewhere on the ship is not a good one.”
“King, there’s nothing we can do about it but find and capture him,” replied Jenner.
King was about to leave, when he blurted out, “Hey, did you see that?”
Jenner pulled her head out of the shuttle and looked around the darkened room. “What did you see?”
“I thought I saw someone moving against the far wall,” replied King as he moved his flashlight, searching for whatever he had seen.
The room was filled with boxes and supplies reaching from the floor to the roof. It was the perfect place to hide, thought Jenner. She flipped the safety off on her rifle and turned on her feet.
“There! I saw someone over there,” said King.
“Stay with me and don’t shoot unless you can positively identify the target,” said Jenner.
Nervously, both Marines edged away from the shuttlecraft toward a stack of metal boxes.
“If you know what’s good for you, you’ll stand up and surrender,” said Jenner. When they were less than a couple of meters from the boxes, Jenner raised her hand. King stopped in place and covered his partner while she took the last couple of steps. With her heart racing, Jenner stepped around the pile of boxes. She had expected someone to be cowering there. Instead, all she saw was an open box with its contents spilled out on the floor. Jenner bent down, picked up one of the devices and examined it. She had no idea what it was, but from the shape and size, she took it be a shell for one of the ship’s many guns. Why was the box open? pondered Jenner. She stood up and turned to speak with King, only he was not there.
“King, where are you?” asked Jenner. “This isn’t the time to be screwing around. Show yourself or God help me when I find you.”
Silence gripped the room.
With her rifle tight in her hands, Jenner walked back to where she had left King. Her eyes widened when she saw a dark pool on the ground. She shone her light over it and saw that it was blood.
They weren�
�t alone.
She switched off her flashlight, plunging the room into pitch black darkness and activated the night vision sight on her rifle. Slowly, she turned around, trying to acquire a target.
Out of the dark, a familiar voice said, “Don’t shoot, it’s me.”
Jenner spun about. She instantly recognized the person standing an arms-length away from her. Her mind was confused. “You’re supposed to be dead.”
“No, you are,” said the assailant as he thrust a bloody knife through her suit and straight into her stomach.
Jenner’s insides felt like they were on fire. Her knees buckled. Gasping for air, she dropped to the floor. Her attacker went with her, holding her in his arms.
“Don’t fight it, you’ll soon be gone,” said the man as if trying to comfort her.
As Jenner’s vision narrowed, she realized that the last thing she would ever see was the eyes of the man who had betrayed them all. A second later, she was gone.
“Done,” announced Cole as he walked back onto the bridge. “One more day for all of us to live. After that, we’d best be on a friendly ship heading home.”
“Where did you stack the reserve oxygen?” asked Sheridan, impressed with his friend.
“In the hallway next to the escape pods.”
“Speaking of the pods, how much oxygen do you figure is in each one of those pods?”
“Twenty-four hours, based on six people per pod,” said Tartov, looking up from his console. “I checked it in case we had to abandon ship.”
“I hadn’t thought of that,” said Cole. “Good on you.”
“Neither had I,” Sheridan said. “So we’ve just added another day of life. Things are beginning to look less doom and gloom.”
The door to the bridge slid open. Sergeant Noonan, who had taken charge of the platoon, stepped inside. “Sir, we’ve got a problem.”
Sheridan moaned to himself. Another problem was the last thing he needed right now.
“What’s wrong, Sergeant?” Cole asked.
“Sir, Jenner and King are dead.”
Sheridan leaped from his chair. “How?”
“They were knifed.”
Cole swore. “God damn it, we’ve got to find that Kurgan SOB before he kills us all.”
Without warning, the lights in the room switched to red. An electronic-sounding voice in Kurgan said, “Warning, the ship has been set for auto-destruct. You have two minutes to evacuate the ship.”
“What the hell is going on?” asked Cole.
“The ship is going to auto-destruct in less than two minutes,” replied Sheridan.
“PO, didn’t you deactivate the ship’s self-destruct mechanism?” demanded Cole.
“I did. Someone must have replaced the charges with something else and then overrode my commands to the computer,” said Tartov.
Sheridan looked at Cole. “Get everyone to the escape pods now. Tartov and I will send the course coordinates as soon as we can.”
Cole hesitated for a second. He did not want to leave his friend behind, but he had a job to do. He sprinted out of the bridge to get everyone into the pods before it was too late.
Sheridan set a hand on Tartov’s shoulder and calmly said, “PO, bring up the star charts and let’s see if there is any place we can land on.”
Tartov could see the time counting down on the screen. He hurried to bring up the chart.
It took less than five seconds for Sheridan to pick their destination. It was at the extreme range of the escape craft, but it would have to do. “Enter the coordinates of that planetoid into the escape pods’ navigation computers,” he said to Tartov.
“Sir, it’s covered in ice, with a surface temperature several hundreds of degrees below freezing. We’ll die!”
“It’s got thermal vents all along the equator that are blasting out superheated hot water into the atmosphere. If we land close enough to the events, we’ll be warm enough. Now do as I ask.”
Tartov quickly inputted the information. As soon as he was done, Sheridan grabbed him by the arm and pulled him away from his console. “Run,” yelled Sheridan.
The nearest pod was situated just behind the bridge. Sheridan could see that the door to the craft was open. He grabbed Tartov by the arm and shoved him inside. Sheridan stopped for a moment and looked about to see if anyone else was coming. When he heard the ship’s automatic voice tell him he had thirty seconds left, he stepped inside the pod and closed the door behind him. He was about to strap himself into a seat when he saw Tartov lying facefirst on the floor of the craft. His survival instincts kicked in. He spun about on his heel and brought up an arm to protect himself. It did him no good. His assailant had already injected him with a syringe so slender and sharp that it had no problem penetrating the survival suit. In less than a second, Sheridan collapsed to his knees. He struggled to keep from blacking out.
A boot came up and hit Sheridan hard in the stomach. He rolled over, gasping for air. In the seconds before he passed out, he turned and looked up at his attacker. With a disbelieving look in his eyes, Sheridan fell into a deep sleep.
Silently, the escape pods flew away from the doomed Kurgan frigate and out into space. Behind them, the vessel exploded in a bright flash of light. Following the coordinates in their computers, the craft formed up in a tight formation and shot toward the ice planet. It would take them twenty-three hours to get there. Every Marine hurtling through the stars knew that if they survived the landing, at best stranded on the surface of the inhospitable planet, they had a day and a half oxygen left. There was no disguising the facts that the odds were stacked against them.
Chapter 35
Admiral Sheridan stood ramrod straight as he listened to the incoming reports. With considerable sangfroid, he paid attention to each report and said nothing. He knew that Killam was doing the best he could. Slowly, he was beginning to fear the worst. The long-range fighters had found the debris of the tug and an enemy ship. Several dead bodies had been spotted among the wreckage. The decoy Kurgan transport ship was also found floating hundreds of kilometers away, dark and lifeless. None of the news was good.
“Sir, I have ordered the search to expand to cover the possibility that some of the Marines could have survived and used the Kurgan ship’s escape pods to get away,” said Killam. “A task force led by the cruiser Lexington, will be arriving in the Andoron system within the hour. With her enhanced sensors, she should be able to scan the full extent of a life pod’s trajectory. If someone managed to get away, we’ll find them.”
Admiral Sheridan looked over at his operations officer. “I’d like to share your optimism. But the chances are remote that anyone survived.”
“Don’t worry, we’ll find your son, sir.”
“The codes, Captain, the codes are what this is all about. My son and his fellow Marines knew the risks involved. Ensure that the debris field is picked apart centimeter by centimeter. Find those codes!”
“Yes, sir,” replied Killam.
Sheridan disliked being brusque with anyone, let alone a key member of his staff. However, he did not want anyone to ever think that he placed the life of his only son over that of the thousands of men and women under his command. He placed his hands behind his back and turned to look out the window at the fleet spread out above Illum Prime. Deep down, he was struggling with the rush of emotions raging through his heart. It was happening all over again. Only this time it was worse than the first time he had been told that his son was missing and presumed dead. So much had happened since then. He did not want to lose the man he was just beginning to know.
Chapter 36
The feelings of nausea and disorientation came rushing back. Through the haze in his mind, Michael Sheridan could not seem to recall the last thing he did before blacking out. He took a deep breath through his nose and held it for a second before exhaling. He concentrated on his breathing for a minute before trying to open his eyes.
The light in the escape pod was dim. He slowly turned his ac
hing head and looked around. It was then that he realized he was not wearing his helmet. Panic swept over him as he tried to sit up and look for his survival helmet. A second later, the world in front of his eyes began to spin. With a weak moan on his lips, Sheridan slid down to the floor of the craft and blacked out again.
“Michael, wake up,” said a distant voice. “Come on, you lazy lump, open those eyes, we’ve got so much to talk about.”
In Sheridan’s mind, he was back in his room at the Academy. His head felt as if he had just woken up on a Saturday morning after a night spent drinking far too much alcohol.
“Sit up and I’ll give you a drink of water,” said Harry Williams as he walked into the room. Only he was not dressed in his usual weekend attire of sweat pants and an Academy t-shirt; he was in a survival suit.
“What are you doing in that getup, Harry? Did I miss zero-gravity training this morning?”
“Take a sip of this. It’ll help you clear your mind,” explained Williams.
Sheridan took a sip and felt a sugar rush surge through his body. He sat up and opened his eyes. Kneeling by his side was his friend, Harry Williams.
“Take it easy, Mike. I gave you a strong sedative when we left the frigate,” said Williams. “It’ll wear off after a few minutes. Just don’t try to get up on your feet until you feel clearheaded.”
“Harry, what happened? I thought you were dead.”
“That’s precisely what I wanted you and everyone else to think,” replied Williams as he took a seat. He pulled out his pistol and aimed it at his comrade. “Don’t try anything heroic. I can’t miss from here.”
Sheridan was having a hard time comprehending why Williams had drugged him and was now pointing a weapon at him. He sat back and looked around the pod. From the angle it was resting on, he assumed that they had safely landed on the ice planet. It was then that he remembered Tartov. He turned his head and saw Tartov’s lifeless eyes looking back at him.
Colossus (The Kurgan War Book 2) Page 15
