Battlecruiser Alamo: Not One Step Back (25 page)

 The door was locked, jammed, and Harper dived forward, only to be waved off by Logan. He had a better way of opening it, and fired a pair of shots into the material, stepping up the blast power to maximum. The bullets ripped into the toughened fabric, tearing away at the material, and the lock opened, Logan bursting inside with fire in his eyes.

 Hiding behind a desk – made of real wood, no less – was Sokolov, a gun drifting in the air nearby. A crowd was gathering behind Logan as he dived in, snatching the weapon and stuffing it into his belt, then grabbing the commander by the scruff of the neck. 

 “Lay a finger on me, and my men will finish you,” Sokolov said with as much bluster as he could manage.

 “It’s your men that are finished, you bastard.” He turned to Harper, “Have the others search the module. There must be more out there, I want them found.”

 “Right.”
 Logan turned back to Sokolov, who was growing pale before him, his gun thrust close to the commander’s face. The man tried to shrink away, but Logan had an iron grip tight on his jacket.

 “Give me one good reason not to end you.”

 Gulping, he replied, “Our expense accounts are extensive here, Lieutenant. I’d be willing to spend them lavishly on you and your men.”

 Responding with a barking laugh, he replied, “You think I’m in this to extort you? That would be sinking to your level, you bastard.” He paused, taking a deep breath. “I don’t mind that you tried to kill me – twice. That’s part of the game. You sent your thugs out to murder people, and you didn’t give a damn who got in your way. There’s a kid up in the medical bay, and now a dozen more with him, all because of you. So tell me, once again, why you shouldn’t join them there.” 

 “Logan!” Lilith said. “You can’t kill him. He’s got to stand trial. Or you have sunk to his level.”

 He turned, red-faced, “This is Triplanetary business.”

 “I didn’t know the Triplanetary Fleet conducted summary executions.”

 Pausing, he turned back to Sokolov, shaking his head, and flung him back into the wall. “You aren’t worth wasting the bullet. You’re going to get your day in court, and they’ll be enough murder charges – and treason if I can make it stick – to see you spend the rest of your life in prison.”

 Brushing himself off, Sokolov replied, “You just gave my lawyers a big advantage, Winter. There are laws against brutalizing a prisoner.”

 Lilith narrowed her eyes, “Your life is hanging by a very thin thread, you idiot. I don’t think now is the right time for a wisecrack.”

 “Logan,” Harper said, “We’ve searched the rest of the module. There’s no sign of anyone.”

 “No-one at all?”

 “No.”

 He turned to Lilith, “Keep an eye on him for a moment.”

 “With pleasure.”

 Drifting back out into the module, he looked around for himself; all the doors were now open, and he peered in each one. This just looked like a standard administration module, no major modifications or changes.

 Harper shrugged, saying, “I guess they all decided to run for it.”

 “Check the computers.”

 Nodding, she dived for the nearest terminal, logging in far too easily. Furrows raced across her forehead as she furiously began to type, sliding in a datacrystal to run a series of search algorithms, but after a moment’s frustration, she turned back to Logan.

 “There’s nothing here!”

 “Nothing? That’s impossible.”

 “They’ve purged the memory, totally. Everything’s back to factory defaults.”

 “You’re sure that there isn’t a hidden firewall?”

 “No security at all, that’s gone as well.” She dived under a console, looking at the panels. “Some good news, though – the memory store appears to be intact.”

 “So you think the data can be recovered?”

 “Probably, but we’re talking days rather than minutes. And some serious equipment that I don’t have here, we’ll have to ship all of this over to the spooks on Alamo.”

 Sokolov’s voice whined out of the corridor, “All of that equipment is Cornucopia property, and I don’t think you have a search warrant. I certainly don’t remember issuing one.”

 “Shut him up,” Logan said, looking around. “There’s something wrong here.”

 “We’ve still got the information I leeched out before. It had a lot more in than just the location of the pirate aerostat, and probably enough for a good bundle of convictions.”

 “Not enough,” he said, and quietly continued, “Besides, he has a point. We’d never be able to make much of this in court, though I don’t think they’d dare risk pressing any charges on us. We need something really big.” He glanced across at a console, drifting over to it. “Well, this is interesting.”

 “What?”

 “Station sensors actually seem to be working. I’m picking up three shuttles, heading away at high speed, out towards the parked freighters.”

 “Rats deserting the sinking ship,” she replied. “Are you surprised.”

 “I guess they decided to leave their glorious leader behind.” He smiled. “No doubt they will blame the total failure of this operation on him – and we’ve got more than enough witnesses of his actions that we can have some fun in court, at any case.”

 “They’ve gone?” Sokolov said. “What?”

 “Yes, your friends have decided that discretion is the better part of valor today. Probably weren’t looking forward to their employee evaluations this year.” 

 “That wasn’t supposed to happen,” he muttered. “They were supposed to come back for me.” 

 “Looks like there was part of the plan no-one told you about,” Harper said.

 “Keep working on the computers, see if you can work out where the shuttles are going,” Logan said, drifting back into the office. “Now, Mr. Sokolov, are you a little more willing to talk?”

 “I’ll say nothing without the presence of a lawyer.”

 He looked up at Lilith, then back again, “You’re in luck. I took a correspondence course once. Talk.”

 “My lawyer, a company lawyer. I have the right to legal counsel.”

 The heat of anger had left Logan, and he simply shook his head in disgust, “Talk and I’ll be able to get you some leniency. The bigger the beasts you bring down with your testimony, the less time you spend in jail.”

 “I don’t trust you,” he replied. “If I was to tell what I know, you’d just use it and be damned. I want a lawyer.”

 “Damn!” Harper said from outside, “Get out here right now!”

 Logan swung himself out of the office, “What’s wrong?” 

 “The station’s reactor. They’ve set it to run wild.”

 “What?”

 “You mean it’s going to blow up?” one of the men said. They all started glancing around, pushing slowly towards the door.

 Logan shook his head, “Just fill the station with enough radiation that none of us will live long enough to testify. How much damage have they done?”

 “Enough,” she said.

 “How long?”

 “Ten minutes.”

 He looked around, diving for a console, and pulled out a microphone, frantically tapping out a series of commands. A cluster of red lights popped onto the screen, and he hoped that enough people would hear him to have an effect. Harper reached over, putting her hand on his sleeve.

 “All you’ll do is cause a panic.”

 “Can you stop it?”

 She looked over at the console, “I don’t see how.”

 Turning to the deadly countdown, be replied, “Fine, you can’t stop it. What can we do? Where is the damn thing?”

 “Aft of the station, right at the rear. Connected by a long support strut.”

He dived out towards the door, “Have Boris meet me at the hopper.”

“There’s no time to plant explosives, and the auto-separation is disabled.”

 “I’ve got a better idea.” Logan swung from hand-hold to hand-hold, diving down the corridor towards the docking port, swinging himself in the maintenance corridor. He wished that he’d had Harper give him a countdown, so he just assumed that he had no time at all to do what he had to do. Precious minutes ticked away as he raced back down the station, seeing Boris, panting, hanging by the airlock.

 “What’s going on?”

 “I need to borrow your hopper.”

 His face grew cold, “You’re not running out on us.”

 “Quite the reverse. Don’t worry, the Triplanetary Fleet will reimburse you for the damage I’m about to cause.”

 “What? Wait a minute, I’m going with you.”

 Logan could see that Boris was going to brook no argument, so he decided not to give him a choice, knocking him unconscious with a carefully calculated blow to the side of the neck. He carefully pushed him down the corridor, then dived into the hopper, pushing through the clutter to the pilot’s seat. Tapping a button, he closed the airlock, and without waiting for it to cycle, detached himself from the station.

 “Logan,” a voice echoed through the hopper, Lilith’s he thought, “You’ll be killed.”

 He didn’t respond, instead programming a quick series of course adjustments into the computer. The old autopilot was robust, it wasn’t going to simply let him compute a collision course with the station, not without a prolonged argument, in any case. He didn’t have time to reprogram it, so he was going to have to disable it.

 First things first. While the hopper traveled the length of the station, he floated back over to the suit locker, picked on the one that seemed the best fit, and started to climb into it. He was going to have trouble manipulating the controls with the gloves on, but that couldn’t be helped. Glancing up at the viewport, he saw the hopper settling into station keeping by the reactor, less than five hundred meters away. He thanked the long-dead designer for his wisdom, and reached down underneath the console.

 Shaking his head, he took a deep breath; it was a tangle of cables and wires. He couldn’t even see where the autopilot was connected in the long-botched repairs. Glancing up at the station again, he tried to input the course, but when he attempted to fire the engines, his only reward was a series of flashing red ‘abort’ lights. No chance.

 He sat back in the couch, balling his fists with frustration. Kicking it away, he ducked under the console again, and traced back a different set of cables – the sensor controls. This was an old model, all of the critical systems wired in here – what he wanted to do was to trick the autopilot into thinking there was nothing ahead of him. Even in this old craft, there would be backups aplenty to stop him simply tearing wires out of the sensor controls, but he could just about make up a faint, worn black tab at the rear of the cabling.

 It was far too small for him to fumble with his spacesuit, so he reached into a pocket for a small depressor, stabbing down at the tab. On the third try, he clicked it, and the sensors immediately began to run a diagnostic mode, the screen flashing with data from the testing systems. With a tap, he executed the course, praying under his breath, and this time the safety systems gave no protest.

 The engine burned for a brief second, building up the speed he needed, and then the sensors began to snap back online, warnings sounding. He kicked off to the airlock, diving inside, and with a last, brief look into the hopper’s cabin, slammed down the emergency release. Both doors opened at once, slamming him out into space; he tucked in his leg to avoid crashing into the wall, and spun around on his thrusters to watch the fun.

 His suit systems were a lot more sophisticated than those of the ship he had just left, and collision warnings were sounding in his ear as his thrusters started to play again, kicking him up and away from the station, using the last of his fuel to throw him clear. Beneath him, he watched the hopper spin around, the autopilot trying at the last second to stop the collision, but it was too late.

 Shards of metal flew everywhere was the shuttle crashed into the support strut, sending it into a twisted tangle, the whole station pivoting as the reactor bobbed around, and finally, reluctantly, snapped, spinning off into space. The hopper was still just about visible, embedded in the station. It didn’t matter now if the reactor went critical, it was drifting rapidly away to a safe distance.

 He turned his head away as a millisecond blinding flash came from the reactor, and his geiger counter began to click on; he looked at the readings, and while a little high, they were just about within safe levels. Pinpricks slid into his arm as drugs pumped into his veins to counter the effects of the radiation he was absorbing, but all of that was just a precaution.

 “Logan to Spitfire. Anyone there?”

 “Harper here. What the hell happened? We just lost all power.”

 “You’ll need to find some backup power from somewhere. Spitfire Station doesn’t seem to have a reactor any more.”

 “My god.”

 “Get someone to go get Boris, then start running some checks on the station. If you could find some time to come out and get me, I’d be grateful. I’m just about out of fuel.”

 “Will do. Sokolov’s singing like a canary now, by the way – it looks as if being abandoned to die by his friends has had an effect on him.”

 “Good. Get everything transmitted to Alamo as fast as you can, just in case anything else goes wrong. What about the shuttles?” He looked around, trying to see them.

 “Wait one.” There was a brief pause, then she continued, “Still heading towards the freighters, I’m beginning to think they’re...they’re heading for Demeter. Captain Jennings commanding.”

 “Cornucopia, of course,” Logan said, “Patch me through to Alamo, as fast as you can.”

 “Damn,” Harper replied, as a crackle began to sound. “I think they’re putting on a jamming field. Being stuck on emergency power isn’t helping.”

 “Lasers, smoke signals, anything. Find a way to contact Alamo.”

Chapter 24

 Orlova sat at the Tactical console, looking at the fighters approaching Marshall’s flight on her board, running her fingers over the missile aiming keys. She’d programmed two of them for atmospheric flight just on the off-chance, and the urge to call for permission to fire was all but overwhelming her. She kept running through scenarios in her mind, trying to work out how she would fly the mission, what tactics she would use – and how little she could do sitting up here on the bridge, with the action hundreds of miles below.