“Yes, Colonel, all along, as you showed me how to do with dis communications system.”
“Okay. Soon as I move out you tell him we’re going in and he should back us up as soon as there’s a team available that can get up to this pass. But Ollie, we’re on our own. Any resistance and we’ll have to fight. Ready?”
“Ready, Colonel.” Ollie Buskerud was familiar with danger. He had survived landslides, deadly falls, unexpected winter storms, and seen many other men die in the mountains. But he had never killed anyone. He checked the safety on his blaster. It was off. He clicked it on and off several times, to be sure it had not frozen in the safe position. He held the weapon carefully, as Ramadan had showed him, at what he called the “high ready” position, butt under his right armpit, muzzle held up at about thirty degrees above his midsection, ready to employ the weapon from the shoulder or the hip in a 180-degree arc from where he crouched.
Ramadan disappeared into the next gust of wind, and before the snow had blown away, the colonel was nearly at the cabin door. Buskerud started after him. His breath sounded harsh in his ears as he shuffled quickly along on the top of the hard-frozen snow. “We are going in!” he announced over the command net, confident that the Dragon’s system would relay his words immediately to Inspector Hamnes back in New Oslo. “Send backup,” he half shouted. Hamnes knew precisely where the pair were from the GPS devices they carried that connected them to the string-of-pearls in orbit.
“None available!” Hamnes answered immediately. “Not until the storm clears. Be careful. Keep in touch with me, Ollie!”
Ramadan stepped lightly on the porch. The goddamned door was open! He slammed through with his shoulder and rolled immediately to his right once inside, his blaster at the ready. “Ollie! Ollie!” he shouted over the tactical net. “Get in here right now!”
“Attention on the bridge!” Minerva screamed. “There is a passenger in the companionway! There is a passenger loose on the ship! It is Captain Lewis Conorado! Attention on the bridge!”
I’m in for it now, Conorado thought as he hurried along the passageway. A figure suddenly appeared before him. It was the man called Merab or something. He leveled his hand-blaster at Conorado and ordered him to return to his stateroom.
Conorado raised his hands and stopped. “I must talk to your leader,” he pleaded.
“No! Return to your place at once or I will shoot.”
“Listen! I have something to tell you. It’s very important. Please, I must talk to your leader. Look, I’m unarmed. I represent no threat to you.” He could feel the tiny bulk of the pistol in his right pocket as he spoke.
“What?”
“I am not a Marine officer. I’m an intelligence agent planted on board this ship. We know what it is you are going to do but I was not quick enough to stop you. There are weapons cached on the ship, and my men and I were to use them against you. But you have to understand, my superiors expected a message from me hours ago, assuring them you had been neutralized. When that message was not sent, they instituted Plan B.” Conorado was thinking fast now. What the hell would Plan B consist of anyway?
“Plan B?” Merab asked.
“Yes. The Confederation has dispatched a cruiser to destroy this vessel. They cannot afford to be embarrassed by you. They are going to sacrifice all of us to avoid that. We only have a few minutes before the strike. I must talk to your leader right now!”
Merab hesitated, then said, “Very well, come with me.” He motioned Conorado forward with his blaster, keeping as far away from the Marine as he could when Conorado walked past him toward the bridge.
Conorado stepped onto the bridge first. Sabbath Lordsday whirled around in the captain’s chair. “What is the captain doing here?”
“Brother Sabbath, this man has important news I thought you should hear,” Merab said. The third terrorist who had been at the ship’s computer console stepped toward Conorado.
It was now or never. Pulling out the tiny pistol, Conorado spun halfway around and shot Merab in the neck. The discharge made a loud crack, and the pistol recoiled sharply in Conorado’s hand. Merab staggered backward, one hand clapped to his left external carotid artery. Conorado then swung toward Lordsday in the captain’s chair and shot him full in the face. The round entered Lordsday’s left nostril and lodged in his frontal sinus; not a fatal wound, but extremely painful and bloody. Lordsday clapped his hands to his face and staggered out of the chair, where he sprawled on the deck, shrieking in agony. Conorado whirled and faced the third terrorist, the one called Jesse Gospel, and shot him in the chest three times from very close range. Gospel swung his blaster up toward Conorado, and Conorado, taking aim over the pistol’s tiny sights, shot him once more in the chest. Gospel staggered and then collapsed to the deck, his eyes rolling into the back of his head.
Conorado let out his breath. The whole scene had not lasted more than five seconds. Lordsday was on his knees, gasping, “Unnng, unnng, unnnnnnnng,” but he had drawn his blaster and was pointing it straight at Conorado. Without hesitating, Conorado fired. The tiny bullet entered Lordsday’s forehead. His eyes went wide for an instant before he pitched forward on the deck, stone dead. Conorado had aimed instinctively and fired without thinking. He looked down in surprise at the pistol in his hand, its slide locked back on the empty magazine. After the first shot, he hadn’t noticed the thing going off or the recoil.
Now he was acutely aware of Minerva shrieking an alarm: “Brother Lordsday, Brother Lordsday!” the computer voice screamed. “People on the bridge are out of order! All available crew report to the bridge immediately! Repeat—”
“Minerva! Shut up, will you?” Conorado shouted. He stepped over to where Merab lay. He was still alive. His face had turned a sickly white and the blood spurting through his fingers was coming in weak streams now, but he was trying to say something, working his lips silently.
“I do not understand that command,” Minerva whined.
Conorado ignored her. He knelt beside Merab. “Listen, you, it’s all over. I want the password to the computer system. Give it to me. Now.”
“Our Father . . .” Merab gasped. He looked at Conorado desperately. “Would you . . . ?” he asked. Conorado took his free hand and recited the Lord’s Prayer with the dying man. Merab smiled weakly. “God bless you,” he said, and died.
“Brother Lordsday, please give me commands. I do not understand ‘Shut up,’ ” Minerva reported.
Conorado sighed and stood up. His legs were like rubber as the effects of the adrenaline that had pumped him up during the fight began to wear off. The hand holding the gun was shaking. He dropped the empty magazine and let the slide go forward. Dean and Claypoole, he thought, shaking his head. What a pair. He wondered idly where he could get some more bullets for the antique firearm and then dropped it back into his pocket. He reached down and picked up one of the blasters. He put the safety on.
Lewis Conorado, Captain, CMC, looked over the bridge. The deck was splattered with blood. His own bloody footprints were everywhere. It had been a long, long time since he had killed anyone up close. Well, he’d had no choice. He asked aloud, “Now what?” But Minerva remained silent.
A body lay sprawled on the floor of the cabin. It was freezing cold inside, and Ramadan’s breath came through his face mask in white clouds of condensation. “Oh, my God,” he whispered. He rolled the body over. A frozen tendril of blood stretched down the woman’s face from a wound in her eye. “Oh, thank God!” Ramadan almost shouted when he saw that she was not Marta Conorado.
Buskerud clattered through the door behind him, his snowshoes making a racket on the wooden floor. “Is it . . . ?” he asked, a sinking feeling in his guts.
“No, no,” Ramadan shouted, straightening up. “It’s not Marta. Where—”
“Colonel, der is a path in da snow! Two peoples! Dey haf gone oud dere. Quick! De vind is covering it up!” Buskerud pointed out the door with one arm. “But Colonel, be careful. Dat way iss a drop off, maybe o
ne thousand meters into da Ume River valley. I be right behind you!”
Ramadan pushed past Buskerud back out into the storm. Sure enough, there was a faint trail in the snow leading away from the cabin. Already the wind was covering it.
Marta had never felt such pain as she did then on the exposed parts of her face and ears. She flung an arm across her face to block out some of the wind-driven snow, but there was nothing she could do about her ears, which quickly began to burn in the fierce subzero cold. Her hair flapped about her head in frozen dreadlocks. The fingers on her right hand began to hurt excruciatingly. She buried them in a pocket and flung her left arm across her face as she staggered onward. Within a few meters of the cabin, which she could not even see anymore through the blizzard, she began to tire. In some places the snow was up to her chest. She stumbled and fell many times. Her breath came in ragged gasps and the air burned like fire as she eagerly sucked it in. She fell again and lay facedown in the snow. Ah, the burning pain was subsiding! It was so good to rest. How far had she come from the cabin? A good ways, she thought. They would never find her out here. In the back of her mind somewhere she realized she would die if she didn’t get under cover, but she didn’t care. She just wanted to rest, to sleep, to dream. Oh, how wonderful to rest. She thought of her children and Lewis and wondered, idly, what they were doing right now. Camilla, her daughter, she took after Lewis in so many ways.
“Bitch!” Bengt screamed. He grabbed Marta by the hair and pulled her out of the snow. “You are not going to die so easy, bitch! I’m taking you back to the cabin. You’ll varm up and den—den I vill use you and use you, and ven I am done wid you, I vill kill you, Mrs. Marine goddamned cunt, slow, painful you die, and I enjoys everytink I gonna do to you!”
Incongruously, Marta noted that his perfect English inflection had vanished now that he was mad. Boy, she thought, half amused, I have really pissed this guy off! She didn’t care what he would do to her once they were back in the cabin—at least it would be warm! She laughed, or at least she thought she did, remembering a poem she’d once heard about a man who froze to death in the Arctic only to be revived when his partner tried to cremate him in an oven. Sam Magee, that was his name!
Bengt began dragging Marta around to the left, back toward the cabin, when he screamed suddenly and just as suddenly let go of her. Marta slumped back into the snow. Bengt’s high-pitched screaming diminished very quickly and then died away completely. She had no idea what had happened to him, and she didn’t care. Marta sank back into the snow and lost consciousness.
Colonel Ramadan never would have found Marta Conorado if it hadn’t been for her hand sticking up out of the snow bank where Bengt had left her. He stumbled forward and began pawing at the snow covering her body.
Buskerud came up behind him and laid a gloved hand on his shoulder as Ramadan furiously brushed snow away from Marta’s still form. “Goddamnit, Ollie, help me! We’ve got to get her out of here!”
“Colonel, Colonel,” Buskerud insisted. “Look. Look.”
“What? What?” Ramadan looked up in annoyance at the guide.
Buskerud gestured at the ground in front of where Marta lay. At that moment the wind died away and the swirling clouds of snow subsided. Ramadan gasped as he looked out across a vast empty space, the valley of the Ume, only a handbreadth from where Marta was lying. “C’mon, Ollie, we’ve got to get her back to the cabin! Give me a hand!”
They uncovered Marta and lifted her up. Ramadan took off his gloves and began rubbing her face. “She’s like ice, Ollie!” he gasped. Buskerud bent close over the pair to shelter them from the wind, which had picked up again.
“She vill haf bad frostbite,” Buskerud said. “Does she live?”
Ramadan mentally kicked himself for not trying to get a pulse. He lay two fingers along the carotid just under her jaw and put his ear close to her mouth. Yes! A pulse, weak, but a pulse! He breathed on her lips and continued rubbing her face while calling her name as loud as he could in the rushing wind.
Marta’s eyes fluttered open and she looked up at the ice-ringed, snow-blown face of Colonel Israel Ramadan. “Lewis,” she muttered, “I’m so glad you’ve come home!”
CHAPTER
* * *
TWENTY-THREE
Captain Tuit was the first crewman on the bridge after it became clear that Conorado had somehow secured it from the terrorists. “What? What happened up here?” He gaped at the bodies and the blood. He looked up at Conorado, who slumped in the captain’s chair. “Lew, I knew you were a fighter, but—but how the hell did you pull this off?”
Conorado gestured vaguely at the bodies. “I had an ace in the hole, Hank. The bridge is now yours again, Captain.” He stepped out of the chair, indicating Captain Tuit should occupy it.
“Lot of good that’d do, Lew. They wiped out the navigation system and took control of Minerva. The only thing I can do with this ship now is fire the goddamned verniers.” He ran a hand nervously through his hair.
“Can we communicate with the two back in the propulsion unit?” Conorado asked.
“Yes,” Jennifer answered. She and two other crew members had just arrived on the bridge. “We have a telephone hookup that is independent of Minerva.”
“That’s right,” Tuit said, punching a button on the console by his command chair. “I’m putting this conversation on the speaker so you can all hear what these guys have to say.” He waited several seconds before someone picked up the instrument on the other end.
“Brother Lordsday?” Increase Revelation asked tentatively.
“Hell no, this is Captain Tuit speaking. What in the hell are you two up to back there?”
There was a brief pause. “I am Increase Revelation, Captain. Please let me speak to Brother Lordsday.”
“I got news for you, asshole, a real ‘increase’ in your ‘revelation.’ Your buddies are dead. Now disarm that goddamned bomb you got back there and get your tails up here so I won’t have to come back there and kick them for you.”
“Are the brothers dead?” There was another long pause. “The bomb cannot be disarmed, Captain. It is set to go off when we are precisely at the proper point. We are armed and we are prepared to hold this place until our work is done. But even if you get by us, Captain, you cannot disarm the bomb.”
“And when, may I ask, will it go off?”
“You may ask, Captain, but I will not tell you.”
“Now you listen here, you bowel-lurking little piece of turd slime—”
“Captain. Please. Instead of wasting time and breath cursing me, look to your eternal soul, for shortly, very shortly, we will all stand before our Creator. We will not talk again in this life. May God bless you all.”
Tuit shrugged and set the instrument back into its holder. “Lew, you’re one hell of a man to have stacked these guys up like this, but looks like we’re finished.”
“Guess that means we don’t get no bonuses this trip,” one of the crewmen interjected. The remark was so out of context everyone was forced to laugh, despite the desperation of their predicament.
Ambassador Franks came onto the bridge, took in the carnage, and asked, “Who did this?”
“I did, Mr. Ambassador,” Conorado answered.
“Figures,” Franks said. “Congratulations, Captain. At least we won’t go up without a fight.” He walked over to Conorado and extended his hand. “Now where do we stand?”
Tuit filled the ambassador in. “If we could fight our way in there and eject the bomb somehow, wouldn’t that save us?”
“If we had a lifecraft that worked, maybe we could shoot it off into space, after sacrificing more lives to get into the propulsion unit, and it might just go off far enough away that we wouldn’t go up with it, Mr. Ambassador. But all our lifecraft have been disabled,” Tuit said. “We could bust in, find the bomb, and eject it outside the hull, but all it’d do would be to match vector with the ship.”
“There is one possibility,” Jennifer said. All h
eads turned in her direction. She hesitated. “Well, the vernier jets still work and—”
“Jenny, what good are they to us now?” Tuit asked.
“Well, Captain, if we could get one powerful burst out of them that would put the ship into a spin and then somehow, uh, well, detach the propulsion unit from the rest of the ship—detach it at just the right point in the arc, like a rock in a slingshot—”
“Cap’n,” the navigator broke in, “she’s got a point! The verniers are supposed to be used only for making slight course adjustments, as when docking,” he explained to Ambassador Franks, “but if I can get one sustained burst out of all of them at the same time, it might just work. But all we’re going to get is one goddamned chance. At the most I might get twenty seconds of thrust out of them. We’re stern abeam to the moon now. I calculate it’ll take fifteen seconds of sustained thrust to swing this crate around so she’s bow on. Soon’s the moon begins to appear in the bow viewing screens, we separate the propulsion unit. By then we should have generated enough centrifugal force to start carrying it away toward its apogee. That’ll really mess up their schedule.”
Everyone’s attention now turned to Jennifer Lenfen. “Jenny, hurry it up,” Tuit said. “I don’t think we’ve got much time left.”
“Well, each lifecraft has a small explosive charge set to detonate when the craft is launched, you know, to propel it free of the ship’s gravitational orbit. I was thinking, if we can gather together a few of the charges, hook them up into a sequence with a fuse of some sort, we can—”
Starfist: Kingdom's Swords Page 25
