Accord of Mars (Accord Series Book 2) (3 page)

T
he freezing gas
from the extinguisher was venting into space. I could see puffs of the stuff floating around the small hole I’d made. I kept blasting more gas through it. Icy tendrils were spreading through the glass now. It was a laminate, made up of multiple layers for strength. But with the gas slipping inside and freezing, the lamination was being compromised.

That ship bound for Earth was slipping away from its mooring, building up speed. How far would it have to be before the attackers thought it was safe to blow their bomb? They weren’t taking chances with the cargo. But I had no time left.

I fired again. This time, the bullet went right through, and cracks spread up and down the glass. I fired another time. Another penetration, another spider web of cracks.

I had two bullets left in the gun.

What the hell. I fired both shots in rapid succession. The first created one more set of cracks. The last shot made an impact crater that seemed for a moment to join all of the cracks I’d made together - and then a three foot section of the window simply exploded. What was left of the air in our compartment went out through the hole, pushing the chunks of the window away.

I grabbed George’s hand and jumped. The wind pulled us through the gap, and we were drifting off into space.

Behind us, there was a flash of light. The bomb wasn’t in George’s office, but it was someplace damned close. The blast created a concussion wave that ripped apart station bulkheads. The compression alarm would have dropped sealed doors all over this section of the station, but those didn’t seem to be stopping the blast wave entirely. I watched fires bloom as the force blasted its way through the hull.

Something zipped past my face - a bit of metal shrapnel, thrown our way from the detonation. Another one skimmed past us. The third hit me in the leg. I felt a stabbing pain, and then heard something worse - the angry hiss of air escaping my suit, and the beep inside my helmet telling me that my little life raft had been compromised.

I reached down and grabbed the spot where I’d been hit - the fleshy bit on the outside of my left thigh. I managed to grunt, instead of scream. The metal was still there, embedded in my leg like a splinter the size of a pen. I wrapped my hand around the spot as tightly as I could, and the hissing slowed. I was still losing air, though.

“Nick, thanks,” George said. His voice was shaking, but he was holding up pretty well under the circumstances. “Now what?”

It was a good question. I didn’t have an immediate answer. These weren’t real space suits we were wearing. They were designed to help people survive a short decompression and airlessness if something failed and part of the station was exposed to space. They weren’t going to keep us warm for very long, and they had very limited oxygen supplies. Much of which I was still venting through the hole in my leg.

But we still had a shot. There was a ship in space nearby - the one carrying the uranium back to Earth. And fortunately, it was one of mine. I keyed the radio in my helmet to the Stein company channel.

“Archimedes, this is Nicholas Stein. Reverse course and return for search and rescue immediately,” I said.

The answer took only a moment. I had well trained crews, and I didn’t make direct demands of them often. “Yes sir! We were already diverting to do so. We’ll be on site in a few minutes.”

I tried to relax. We’d be picked up shortly. My leg was on fire, but the injury was nothing that wouldn’t mend. The same could probably be said for the station. I was able to survey the damage well from my vantage point. The blast doors had done their job, limiting the areas where the explosion could go. It looked like some of them had failed - that must have been a powerful bomb! But enough held that the station was mostly intact.

“You’re going to need a new office,” I said. I meant it as a joke, but it was hard keeping my tone light while gritting my teeth against the pain.

“Damn them,” George replied. “I have people trapped in there…in that.” He waved his arm at the mangled mess.

I scanned the area carefully. At least one of the hostiles had been outside George’s office and was likely dead. Were there others? Did they have a backup plan in case we somehow escaped? Amateurs would assume we would just die from the bomb. Professionals would assume likewise, but would have a backup plan in case we didn’t.

Sunlight flickered off something moving over to my left. I squinted. Someone was out there in a space suit with a thruster pack.

“Can you tell if he’s one of ours?” George asked.

“He’s a hostile,” I said, casting about for options. I was out of ammunition.

“How can you tell?”

“I radioed to my ship to come help with SAR. I didn’t tell anyone where we were,” I said. There had to be something I could do besides wait for him to kill us. “The only people who could have heard that message and known right where we were are the ones who planted the bomb.”

He was coming right at us on maximum thrust. It took me another precious few seconds to spot the rifle he was carrying at his side. The sight wasn’t a shock.

“Not friendly,” I said. I looked around for anything that might give us a way out of this mess. We were sitting ducks, floating out here in space without any way to move around. I spotted the fire extinguisher. It must have been pushed out through the gap by the air rushing out, same as we had. Since it had the same initial velocity, it hadn’t drifted far from us. I reached out, trying to touch it. My fingers fell short. Another foot or so, and I’d be able to reach it. But it was too far away.

The hole in my suit might be the answer I needed. I twisted in place so that the hole was facing away from the extinguisher. Then I released my grip on the hole. Air rushed out of my suit into space, and the annoying alarm in my helmet went off again. But the action of the air escaping created a reaction - pushing my body slowly toward the extinguisher. It wasn’t a lot of thrust. I was practically creeping along...

But it was enough. I grabbed the hole again, cutting off the airflow. Twisting around, I reached out. This time, the canister was easy to grab. I latched on.

A bullet pinged off the extinguisher, almost spinning it out of my grip. The enemy knew what I was up to and was shooting. He was still moving at full thrust though, so his aim was crap. I had to hope our luck would hold. I fired a jet from the nozzle, pushing me toward George.

“Grab on to me!” I said. He spun in place, hands reaching - and caught my leg. As soon as I felt both his hands holding tight, I fired the jet again. We shot away from the gunman. It was hard to control our direction of travel though. We were a badly balanced load, and kept spinning off course. If I kept us too close to the station we might crash into the hull, or worse yet impale ourselves on sharp debris floating in space.

Only one other option. I changed course.

“Not trying to back seat drive,” George said. “But where are we going?”

“Deep space. Clear of the station.”

“Right,” George said. “And if he follows us?”

“I’ll deal with that. I’m done with this game,” I growled. I opened up my radio comms again, switching to a secure Navy channel. “Hawk One, I need a pickup.”

“Roger,” came the cool reply.

“Be advised hostile chasing us,” I said.

“One dead hostile, coming right up.”

I kept the link open. No sense trying to hide now. The bad guys knew where we were, and the open link would help my side find us. I just had to hope they’d arrive in time.

The extinguisher gave out. We were a good distance from the station now, but the gunman was still closing on us. His thruster suit was a lot better for flying around out here than my makeshift device. I saw him raise his rifle. There was a flash from his muzzle.

Nothing. No hits. In a vacuum, I couldn’t see or hear where the bullets had gone. But he was changing magazines now. I started to hope we had time to get out of this.

“Nick...” George’s voice sounded harsh, strained. I looked down just as his fingers loosened from my leg.

I grabbed his hand before he slipped away. Blood was blooming in streamers of long bubbles from his chest. At least one round had hit him.

“Damn it, Hawk! Where are you?” I shouted into the radio. I was going to lose George right here if he didn’t get to medical help fast.

“Here,” came the reply.

There was no warning. The thruster suit simply vaporized, turned into a smear by a burst of high velocity rounds. Something black and almost invisible against the dark of space slipped by at high speed.

“Medical emergency here,” I said. George wasn’t going to last long enough for my ship to pick us up.

“I gotcha.”

The Hawk glided into view. My newest ship - a small, fast fighter. It was sleek, black, crafted from the best stealth materials we had. It barely reflected light, and was almost invisible to radar. It was braking hard. I winced, hoping that the pilot was good enough. Otherwise, we were about to become a smear on her windshield.

She was. The fighter slid up alongside us without so much as a nudge. I nodded in grudging respect. I’d given this program to the best pilot, all right.

“Now what?” I asked. I was pretty sure she already had something in mind.

The canopy cracked open, venting some air into space. Inside, the pilot was in a suit of her own. She slid out of her seat, hooking one leg onto her console, and reached out of the ship toward me.

I grabbed her hand.

With a yank, she tugged us both down toward her ship. There was a copilot seat behind hers that was empty. I slid down into the seat and pulled George onto my lap. Above us, the canopy was already closing again.

“Where to, boss?” Keladry asked.

“Station. Max thrust.” I couldn’t tell if George was still breathing or not. We didn’t have time to get him groundside. We’d need to stabilize him here in space.

“We’re risking giving away the Hawk,” she warned. But she was already firing up her thrusters. Acceleration grabbed hold of us as the ship shot toward the station at a speed that would be reckless for just about any other pilot.

“It’s George,” I said. We’d have to take the chance. The fighter program was absolutely secret. Not even George was aware the damned fighters had been built. Thomas didn’t know. It was as need-to-know as my original armed ships had been. Because it was my ace against Earth, if they attacked sooner than we thought they would.

It was starting to look like that was a real possibility.

“Just get us in there,” I said. “Then get out as soon as you can.”

It would have to be enough. George was too important to the future of Mars. If I had to give away my ace to save him, so be it.

W
ord
about the attack on Mars Station reached me about the same time I arrived in Earth’s orbit. I wasn’t sure which emotion hit me harder - worry for my father, or a strong desire to strangle the man.

He’d done it again. He must have known that the attack was coming, and he’d shipped me out just in time to avoid it. But of course he had stayed behind to deal with the threat. It was infuriating. Would he ever take me seriously enough to believe that I could handle myself in a crisis? I had a feeling that he was always going to try to get me out of harm’s way, no matter the cost. If I’d been there, maybe I could have helped. Maybe the station wouldn’t have been bombed.

Hell, maybe there was nothing I could have done. But at least I’d have been able to try.

Someday he was going to push me off to safety and it was going to cost us too much. I hoped that hadn’t been what just happened. Not knowing the full situation was the worst. All I could find were initial news reports about the attack. Dad still hadn’t actually called to update me personally. That wasn’t necessarily bad news; he was good at responding to a crisis, but not always so great when it came to thinking someone might be worried about him.

I had half a mind to turn the ship around and head home. My co-pilot wasn’t hearing a word of it, though. Acres was holding his ground against every argument to return that I could come up with.

“You’ve got your orders,” he said.

“Chief, you’ve broken Dad’s orders more times than I can count.”

“Yeah, when he was wrong,” the big man chuckled. “But he’s not. And you know it. So do your job, and let the admiral do his.”

Chief Acres had been Dad’s friend for…well longer than I’d been alive, anyway. Hell, he’d half raised me as a teen while Dad was off running the company. I wasn’t thrilled to see him sitting in the courier ship when I boarded. He was obviously sent along as a nursemaid. But it wasn’t all bad. Acres and I got along just fine. Most of the time, anyway.

I gave him an exasperated sigh. “How do we even know he’s still alive? It’s not like he called to let us know.”

“If he did, it would blow your cover. You’re supposed to be mad at him, right?” Acres said. “Don’t worry. That man is damned hard to kill.”

“Nobody is going to believe that I am suddenly a petulant child,” I groused.

“Then stop acting like one,” he snapped.

He was right. I wanted to be in on the action, and I was hurt that I’d been set aside. But I did have a job to do, and in light of the attack on Mars Station it might be even more critical than Dad had thought when he sent me out here.

“So you’re still dead set on doing this?” I asked.

“Unless you’re too chicken,” he said, giving me a toothy smile.

I had to grin back at that. “Never.”

“Ah, too bad. I gotta say, I’m not loving this one myself,” he said. “Too much damned cloak and dagger. Give me a straight up fight any day.”

“Be careful what you wish for,” I said. I opened a channel to ground control. I’d already had the computer send them our destination and vector, but it was still traditional to talk to a person when landing. “This is Skylance, on approach.”

“You’re cleared,” they replied over the radio. “Welcome back to Earth, Mr. Stein.”

That startled me. I wasn’t used to being called Mr. Stein - that was my father’s name. I supposed I was going to need to get familiar with the idea fast. I started the ship into a descent vector, and pretty much let the computer take over from there. We had to have our angle just right. Too sharp and we’d glance off the atmosphere. Too deep and we’d build up a lot of heat. It might not burn the ship to a crisp, but it would do a lot of damage. I was a good hand at the controls, but I was still glad to have the computer.

“Thomas, I’m seeing a lot of company on the radar. You sure ground control cleared our path?” Acres asked.

I scanned the console. It looked like normal traffic to me. But there were two small ships on what looked like an intercept path.

“Is it still paranoia if they really are out to get you?” I asked.

“Nope. It’s how you stay alive.”

I watched the screen. Those ships were still closing. I opened the link to ground control. “Control, we’re seeing two ships running awfully close to us. Can you warn them off or send us a new vector?”

There was a long pause. “We see them, Skylance. We’re attempting to redirect them now.”

I wasn’t going to sit there doing nothing. I had resources here on Earth. Working through my console it only took a few seconds to get a priority uplink to Stein corporate computers. I routed the radar data through to them. They’d be able to identify the craft following us easily enough.

“Those ships are falling in right behind us,” Acres warned.

“I see them.” It couldn’t be a coincidence. First a bomb on Mars Station, then this welcoming committee here on Earth for me? I didn’t wait for the ID on our pursuers. With the touch of a button, I flipped the ship off autopilot and took control. “Hang on. This is going to get bumpy.”

I dropped the ship into a straight dive, nose directly toward the ground. It shimmied and bucked a bit as we hit the upper atmosphere. We weren’t going to be able to continue this sort of descent too long, but maybe we could lose the other ships.

“Missiles!” Acres called out. “They’re firing. Launching countermeasures.”

I gritted my teeth together. The courier had some basic defenses, but it wasn’t armed. And all those ships had to do was get lucky with one missile.

We were still dropping like a stone. On my radar, I watched both ships enter the dive after us. The console finally gave me a display on what they were. These weren’t spaceships at all. They were high altitude fighter planes. They must have really been pushing their limits to get as high as they had.

That was good and bad news. The bad news was, they were going to be a lot more maneuverable than we were once we got down into regular air. The good news was they weren’t designed to handle re-entry stresses. I was about to stress them a lot.

“Hang on,” I said. I fired the thrusters on full blast, giving them everything they had. The ion drive we used in space was useless here. But the courier was designed to land and able to handle some flying about on a planet. I could manage Mach 2 in the thing on a good day. With the gravity assist of our dive I was betting I could beat that.

The fighters chasing me could handle a lot more. They were made for speed. But I was gambling they couldn’t take the heat.

“Decoys took out the first salvo,” Acres said. “But they’ve fired two more missiles. Impact in fifteen seconds.”

More than enough time. I watched the external temperature gauges. They were already sitting at five hundred degrees Celsius - and rising. A few more seconds and they’d hit six hundred degrees. That had to be enough. I pulled back hard on the controls, firing the braking thrusters as I did. My ship started a slow swooping motion, coming out of the dive with a load groan of stressed metal as the ship exceeded all its build tolerances.

The missiles shot past us and disintegrated a moment later, little blooms of heat that vanished in an instant. Behind us, the fighters attempted to follow us through the maneuver. Just like I’d known they would.

Those fighters were made of aluminum alloy. It was treated to deal with tremendous speeds while they were in flight, but it was never designed for high-g maneuvers with so much heat. Their wings had to be bordering on melting even before they tried to pull out of the dive, and they both pulled up too quickly, trying to follow our course.

The blips vanished from our radar. I winced, knowing what had happened. Their wings would have sheared off from the heat and stress, and then the rest of the fighter would have exploded a moment later. At least it had been fast. And it wasn’t like I had picked a fight with them.

I exhaled slowly. My hands were shaking in reaction. If I’d kept going another couple of seconds, my ship might have suffered the same fate. As it was, my entire console was lit up with warning lights. We’d suffered some serious damage. I brought the ship back to a level path and then let the computer take back over again. The ship was a bit beat up, but we’d make it to the ground in one piece.

“Good job, Thomas,” Acres said softly.

“Thanks,” I replied.

“Still think the Old Man sent you to safety?”

I didn’t know if that was Dad’s intent or not. But it was very clear to me: if Mars was the frying pan, then Earth was the fire. And we were heading right into the middle of it.