His final steps toward that portal to safety came and his heart leaped with hope.
The shock of impact knocked the meager breath from his overworked lungs. Breivik fell to the ground with a weight on his back that propelled him to the deck and held him there. Hope gave way to dismay at the sensation of warmth and breath that could only come from another human being, and one nearly as overtaxed as he was.
No! No! Not now!
The weight above him shifted. That gave Breivik enough room to twist. His right elbow flew backward. He felt his elbow strike something fleshy. A cry of pain filled his ears and the weight lessened. With every erg of strength he could manage, Breivik forced that weight up, turning himself into a standing position.
Arms grabbed him, causing him to spin, and he was face to face with the red, flustered visage of Oskar. The formation of a bruise showed on Oskar's cheek, but the only sensation showing in his expression was stern determination. One of his arms pulled free and went for Breivik's left hand.
The data! He's after my data!
Breivik pulled his arm back and tried again to scramble to his feet. Despite the near uselessness of his right hand, he tried to force Oskar back with a blow, but the awkward angle made his own bones crack and his damaged appendage throbbed with the agony of broken knuckles. Oskar's other hand came over and gripped at Breivik's left arm. The shift in weight bore them both to the deck again, Oskar again on top. Breivik felt a powerful grip on his left fingers. His hand was being pried open.
In desperation, Breivik opened his mouth and plunged his teeth into Oskar's throat. The taste of human sweat and flesh was awkward and hot, mixed with the metallic tinge of blood where his teeth broke his antagonist's flesh.
The blow was near enough that instinct took over. Oskar shifted attention from Breivik's hand to his throat. His hands went for Breivik's face to force him off. Breivik let go before the pressure ripped any flesh from Oskar's body, letting the force of the move push him clear. He scrambled to his feet and lunged toward his shuttle door. Just a couple steps more!
The first step came. Then the second step…
...and he fell, hot savage pain tearing through his thigh and locking his left leg down. He cried out in surprise as he toppled forward, just a meter shy of the door. He wailed in wordless despair. I have to get to it! I have to!
"Get down, Leaguer! Get down!" The female voice was one he recognized. It was the anti-Social individualist who'd shot him down in Thyssenbourg, Brigitte Tam'si. The woman who should've been his first subject, if not for Oskar's unfathomable betrayal of the Society. "Sorry, Oskar. This place is too bloody big."
"Our apologies as well, Doctor Kiderlein," another woman said. Breivik couldn't place her accent but thought it sounded like one from the Coalition. "We thought we got all of the League personnel in our sweep of the station."
"It is all right, Sister Patience." Oskar stood to his feet, rubbing at the bite wounds as he did. He breathed as heavily as Breivik was. "What's important is we stopped him."
"No, Oskar, please," Breivik pleaded. "Don't. This is the key. You must see that it is! It's the only way to close the camps!"
"I'm sorry, Jan." With deliberate steps, Oskar walked over. He knelt down and took Breivik's left arm. The grip was a solid one, yet he resisted with everything he had to keep his hand closed around the data disc. "Help me, ladies?" Oskar asked.
The two white-armored women and Brigitte stepped forward. Three more pairs of hands gripped Breivik by the left arm and shoulders, holding him down. He shrieked, "You can't!", but there was nothing he could do to stop Oskar's slow prying open of his fingers. The data disc fell free.
"Oskar, no!" The plea came so forcefully, it left his throat raw and drained every bit of breath from his lungs.
His plea was for naught. Oskar's foot came down on the disc with force. The first blow didn't do anything, but the second cracked the case. By the fourth stomp, the data media itself was torn.
Breivik didn't see the final stomps that finished the disc. He screamed like a wounded beast at the sight of his work's destruction. For the first time, he turned with real fury on his old friend. His voice howled with the betrayal that tore at his heart. "How could you, Oskar?! How?! That was years of work! My work, our work! And it's gone! All of those people died for nothing! How could you betray everything we worked for?!"
He wanted to see guilt and shame. Instead, Oskar's eyes froze him in place with the intensity of the fury he saw there. His old friend's face became a mask, the kind of mask he used to show whenever something incredibly cruel was done in his presence in the camps. "You want to speak of betrayal, old friend?" His voice vibrated with that same fury. "I made this technology to heal. It was for the humanitarian cause, for helping people overcome nerve damage, neurological condition, to regain something of their lost lives!"
"So was mine!" Breivik shot back.
"You turned it into an instrument of torture! You killed innocent people with it!"
His fury faltered, if only from the guilt the truth of those words brought up within him. "I… it was the only way! The implant was the way forward for Society! It would have ended the camps! It would have ended all of the petty sadism and cruelty we swore to oppose! The end of anti-Social thinking would have ended it all!"
"You still don't understand." Oskar shook his head. "You keep thinking you can fix Society, but all you'd do is condemn us into being turned into drones. Meat machines governed by a computer regulating our very thoughts and beings. It would be a nightmare."
"It is the only way to save Humanity from its own impulses and make Society what it should be! Without it, the camps will continue corrupting everything!"
"The camps aren't the source of the corruption, they're a sign of it," Oskar retorted. "Society has always been flawed, Jan. Always. It can't be saved. The only way to end the camps is for the League to end."
The very thought brought horror to Breivik. "Has life among the individualists driven you mad?!" he demanded. "If the League ends, Society will die! Billions will be killed in the chaos!"
"I used to think something like that," Oskar confessed. "That whatever problems existed, Society just needed a little fixing, and it could lead everyone to a peaceful galaxy. But Society, the League, it doesn't bring peace. It never did, Jan. I realized that years ago. I just wish you could realize it too."
"No! The individualists, they've tainted your mind."
There was no response from Oskar at that charge. Breivik watched the hated woman Tam'si step forward and hand Oskar a gun, his old League-issued pistol. "It's yours," she said. "Do what you need to."
Oskar took the gun and immediately leveled it at Breivik's forehead.
A quiver filled Breivik. The anger in Oskar's eyes still burned. He might pull the trigger. I have to live. I have to finish the project. "Oskar. Oskar, you can't."
"All of the people you've harmed," Oskar said. "All of that death. You're not a doctor anymore, Jan. You've become a butcher."
"This isn't you, Oskar. You never killed. Not even in the camps. You didn't kill me at Millerton, you can't kill me now!"
"I didn't kill you on Millerton, and you killed dozens, maybe hundreds, since," Oskar reminded him coldly.
"I know you, Oskar, you can't do this. You're a doctor; you want to heal. You can't!"
"I've had to kill before." Oskar's eyes tightened. Breivik's heart threatened to stop from his existential terror. He could see the forming intent to shoot in his friend's eyes.
Seconds passed. Oskar's eyes relaxed. "I am a doctor, and doctors heal. They don't kill." He lowered the weapon.
Breivik sighed. I knew it. I knew he couldn't—
Brigitte's arm came up, and with it, the brown-bodied, red-lined pistol in her hand. Breivik barely had the moment to realize what she was doing before her finger tensed over the trigger.
Heat came. Oblivion followed.
* * *
The sound of the plasma shot filled the hangar. A s
plit second later, it was joined by the smell of flesh burnt black, and then the low thud of a kneeling body falling over onto its side.
All eyes turned toward Brigitte. Oskar felt words forming, but he couldn't speak. The finality of the act, the sheer fact that his oldest friend in the world was dead, caught the words in his throat.
Brigitte returned the weapon to her holster. At the disbelieving, even hostile glares of the Sisters, she finally spoke. "I'm not a doctor."
"Mother of God." Sister Anna crossed herself, followed by Sister Patience. "God forgive his trespasses, and yours."
Maybe they expected an apology, or some sign of remorse, but Oskar knew better than to expect any. "He killed too many," Brigitte said coldly. "He tortured Tia. He had it coming." She turned to face him next. "And you know it."
"Maybe." Oskar shook his head. "But I… I still couldn't."
"That's because you're a good man and a real doctor, Oskar," she answered. She tilted her head toward the exit. "How about you go have a lie down for a while? A nice bite to eat too. You'll need your strength."
His mind went back to all of those Hestians waiting for surgery. His eyes glanced back briefly to his dead friend, the plasma burn on his forehead no longer smoking. I'm sorry, Jan. If only you'd listened to me, if only you'd realized the truth… the lives we might have saved together….
He turned back to Brigitte. "Yes," he said. "I think I will."
Without a further word, they left.
* * *
A certain thrill filled Henry as the Liberator and her sister cruisers finished closing the distance. The fight between Aristide's task force and their allies raged still, and while the neutral systems' ships were outmatched by proper military warships, not a one of them broke and fled. Not given the stakes the League's own behavior brought them.
"We're at optimum engagement range for the neutron cannons," Miri said.
"Firing point procedures on Targets One, Two, and Four if possible, other targets at your discretion if not. Commence immediately."
Three blue beams flashed through the void. Miri's first target was one of the League Python-type ships. Its rapid maneuvering meant only one beam struck home, but with the other ship's deflectors already drained, the shot was a solid hit that speared the destroyer as if it were a fish in a stream. Explosions erupted from within and the vessel blew apart into a gutted ruin.
This commenced a general barrage from the cruisers. With the range closed and their muonic cannons more accurate than ever, they tore through the League formation like the sharks their bows were made to emulate. Another League destroyer died to the neutron cannons of the Avenger. Triumphant's muonic cannons blazed pale fury that wrecked a frigate.
The real targets were the cruisers, specifically Aristide's personal cruiser. "She's definitely on that Rand," Piper said. "The sensors are showing too much comm traffic routed to her."
"Show me?" Henry asked. Piper relayed the data to his display. The sensors of the Liberator converted the invisible energy waves of inter-ship communication into strands of red light, turning the faltering League fleet into a thinning spider web, with all lines focusing on the central ship, "Target One."
And yet… something about that didn't seem right. Henry focused his eyes on the ships and considered the strand linking Target One to Target Three. It seemed thicker than the others, as if more information was passing over that specific comm-link. He noted the way the formation moved around it. While Target One was at the heart of the formation, Target Three seemed to behave like a mirror, not quite in the middle, but always on the epicenter.
"TAO, focus on Target Three," he said aloud. "Relay that to other ships."
"Locking on now."
Both muonic cannons and neutron cannons fired. The full fury of the three cruisers came down entirely on the one older Humphries type. Her deflectors flickered against the fury, but held for the moment, if barely.
"Their deflectors are stronger than usual for that type," he observed. He opened a tac-comm message. "All ships, Target Three is the flag cruiser, I repeat, Target Three. Focus fire on her!"
By now, the rest of the League fleet was turning their full attention on the Rigault cruisers. Missiles fired at point blank range slammed into their deflectors, joined by the plasma weapons common to those League ships. They even raked auto-turrets on them. Henry felt the ship shudder under the onslaught.
"Partial deflector failure, hull damage on several sections, multiple decks," Miri said. Henry glanced her way. Most of her attention was still on the gunnery systems. If she hadn't been sent over to CIS, she'd have made one hell of a TAO. "Maintaining fire."
"Triumphant is reporting near shield loss. Avenger is trying to cover her."
The elder Tokarev brother spoke over the link. "Triumphant, maneuver to your starboard. My ships will aid you." With those words, the Morozova executed the promised maneuvering with her remaining comrades, seeking to take fire for the faltering cruiser.
More neutron cannon fire struck at Target Three. The older League cruiser betrayed her modifications, as she maneuvered with dexterity Henry found more appropriate for a Rand. Half the volley missed this time, with the remaining hits still degrading her deflectors. More fire came from another angle. Dulaney and his personal squadron joined them in their plunge into the League formation. The rest of his ships focused on the League's remaining light ships.
Cera matched their maneuvers precisely while missiles raced after them. Ahead, the League cruiser was clearly trying to break away with the rest of their ships. "Givin' ye another shot, Miri!" Cera called out. "Five seconds!"
Henry counted the time himself. At the five-second mark, Miri unloaded another barrage.
This time, their cannons all hit home.
Between the muonic weapons' raw, penetrating power and the force of the neutron cannons, the deflectors of the League cruiser failed. Explosions of atmospheric gas and debris blew outward from the many wounds the weapons carved into her. One of the neutron shots speared through her engineering area, the shaft of light coming out the other end with the flame of ignited gases plumes from both of the wounds it created. All but one of the engine nozzles on the ship died out.
"I'm picking up a power surge," Piper said. "I think they're going to try for a jump."
Given the damage she'd done after Lusitania, it wasn't hard for him to give the order, "Finish her, Miri!"
This time, the Liberator didn't fire alone. Shells from the Beja's great coilgun mounts slammed into the armored hull. While a century or so separated the Lusitanian dreadnought's weapons from the science that built the League ship, the shells had brute force behind them. They pierced the armor and detonated inside the ship's hull. The violence of their immolation sent great chunks of the cruiser's body flying away from her, torn free by the forces released.
The Liberator's neutron cannons hit home even as the ship shuddered under the plasma cannon fire of the Rand nearby. This time, the entire rear of the cruiser blew apart, followed by the rest of the ship as secondary detonations and the impact of further weapons tore the League vessel to pieces.
"Deflectors to port are failing," Miri said.
"Evasives, Cera! Get us clear!"
The feedback through the ship's failing deflectors continued to bring tremors to the CIC while Cera executed the order. The other cruisers followed. Their deflectors were in bad shape as well, and a great piece of the Triumphant's port side was missing from a direct missile hit.
"That Rand is still on us."
"I noticed." Henry watched the ship continue to pour fire into them, as if its sole mission was to kill them all. Typical League. Always poor losers.
And they were losing. That was plain from the way their formation was starting to fail. Their commander was dead or out of communication. There was no strategy, just captains trying to pursue the engagement on their terms.
The first red icon pulled out of formation, fleeing for the nearby lunar L1 point. One by one, other
ships started to, although not all. The Rand certainly didn't, as it continued to hunt after the Liberator. Missiles and plasma fire poured into their failing deflectors.
"Cera, maintain course, minimize evasives."
"If ye say so, sir," Cera said. "They're still tailin'."
"Good."
The reason for his reaction became clear a moment later, as the Rand maneuvered to continue pumping weapons fire into them…
…and flew right into a crossfire field formed by the Mad Hatter, Oxford, and the newly-arrived Independence.
The three ships' weapons each tore into the Rand from a different arc. With her deflectors already strained from the fight, she was at a disadvantage, and the inability to focus her remaining deflector strength in any one direction made it impossible for her to endure the concentrated fire.
What made this truly fatal wasn't just the powerful neutron cannons built into the Independence (even if one wasn't capable of firing), but the four beams from the Oxford that punched through her aft deflectors and her engine spaces. Missiles from the CDF ship slammed into the open wounds, while those from the Mad Hatter blew apart the Rand's plasma cannons. The Independence's functioning muonic cannons scourged the ship's side.
The Beja provided the coup d'grace. Her massive coilguns thundered again and the shellfire blasted into the weakened ship's side. Their detonations gutted the Rand from bow to savaged stern.
The death of the Rand spelled the end of the threat to the Liberator. On the holotank, Henry watched the last of the League ships trying to break away. But it was too late for them. They'd waited too long. Even the fleeing ships were already under fire from the pursuing fleet.
Breach of Trust: Breach of Faith Book Four Page 41
