Erebus (36 page)

Pushing my visor down, I drew my gun and fired an incap round into the man from Iwa. Phillips was already striding down the corridor. I limped painfully after her.

It was a race, and we knew it. Fortunately we were a hell of a lot closer to the bridge than Frain was. My leg had gone from numb to having the worst pins and needles I could imagine. It was so painful that if I could have hacked it off, I would have given serious consideration to it. I thought back with sympathy to the woman who had been shot to the helmet; she would be in agony for days. I concentrated on putting one foot in front of the spasming other. Left, right, left, right.

“We’re here.” Phillips held her left hand up, stopping me in my painful tracks. I looked up at the bridge access hatch, a ladder extending from under it, and sighed. This was it. If we took the bridge, we took
Erebus
.

“Ready?”

“Yeah, sure,” I lied. Phillips raced up the ladder like a monkey and pulled the manual release on the hatch. It sprang open, and in a split second, she was through. I pushed myself hard to keep up with her, ignoring the shin splints knifing through my leg. Through the hatch, I could see her aim her rifle at someone out of sight. “Get your hands up.”

I heard running as I pulled myself up and rolled onto the bridge. I slammed the hatch shut and looked frantically for some kind of lock.
Erebus
wasn’t a warship; she was an explorer. The bridge didn’t have a single antiboarding security measure in place. I climbed to my feet, sighting my handgun at the hatch, and looked around.

Drayton stood next to Captain Tasker with her hands up, but it was the view on the holotank that made me gasp. We were a hell of a lot closer to the black hole. Space around us had taken on the golden glow of the accretion disk. We were within it now, still racing forward. I saw a graphics box highlighting a dark spec; that world was our destination.

“Layton,” Drayton said with a desperate pleading in her eyes, “you have to let us finish what we came here for. Please, just stand down.”

“Keep your hands up,” Phillips barked at Tasker.

“Get off my fucking bridge,” she snarled, slowly moving away from Drayton. I glanced at the furious captain as I trained my gun on the hatch.

“That is not going to hap—” That was all I got out before the hatch slammed open. A figure erupted through it with armor crackling and sparking, brutally damaged. I fired. The shot ricocheted off the figure’s thigh guard and sizzled into a seat.

Frain moved at incredible speed, slamming into Phillips as a wild shot sprang from her rifle, sparking off the wall. The two figures pirouetted almost gracefully, and Phillips crashed into the wall, denting it. I fired off another round. A spark glanced off Frain’s plated shoulder, and he glared at me. That’s all he got before Phillips was on him again.

Both were deceptively agile in their battle armor: two highly trained fighters colliding with thunderous force. Phillips pulled off a crisp roundhouse kick to Frain’s head. He blocked it, and without pausing, she dropped, a spinning sweep taking Frain’s legs from under him. He crashed to the deck. He rolled onto his feet and punched her in the chest. She reeled back, and he got in a spinning kick to her head. Phillips tumbled from the blow, smashing into the wall.

I sighted him again, the tactical mode in my HUD barely able to keep up. I saw a blue spark zip by me. I turned and reflexively fired a round. Tasker took the round her in the chest. Her gun dropped, and she spasmed, falling to the floor as the incap round took effect.

I spun back around to get a bead on Frain. He and Phillips were locked in melee, punches and kicks flashing between them. Frain grabbed Phillips’s arm, pulled her over his shoulder, and slammed her halfway through a bridge console. Without pause, she kneed him straight in the face, staggering him.

“Stop!” I heard someone shout. Only then did I realize I’d lost track of Drayton. She stood there, her red hair frazzled, her eyes desperate, and her arms waving to get attention. “Please stop!” But the two battling figures just ignored her, the detritus of the console around them as they locked together, falling to the floor. Both tried to pin each other like professional cage fighters.

I aimed again and fired just as Frain got on top of her. He grunted but ignored it. He didn’t even have to shake it off. Drayton ran toward another console.

I trained my gun on her. “Don’t fucking move.”

“Turnaround,” she gasped.

I wasn’t falling for that one. “I said stop!”

“No, you asshole, we’re nearly at turnaround!”

Somehow Phillips had got back on top of Frain and was raining punches down on him. He was blocking most, but some slipped through. With what must have been superhuman effort, he jerked his hips upward, sending her flying off him.

“Trent, the goddamn firewall’s nearly breached. Can you stop it?” Vasily’s voice cut through the confusion, distorted by the low-bandwidth communications we were using.

I bounded over to Drayton and grabbed her by the scruff of her collar, hauling her away from the console.

“It’s now or never, Trent!” Vasily shouted.

I wrenched Drayton’s head around roughly so she had to look at me. “Stop the incursion!”

She shook her head with a jerk. She was scared. I wasn’t getting through. From the other side of the bridge, the sound of the fighting combatants became even more intense.

“Vasily, how?” I shouted, finally giving up with Drayton.

“Air-gap the master coms panel. It should force it into autodiagnostic mode.”

My eyes darted around the room. On one wall, I could see a number of panels, each titled something—COM, PROP, POW—that kind of thing. “Air-gap?”

“Shoot the damn thing if you have to,” Vasily shouted over the com.

That I could do. I moved my gun away from Drayton, aimed it at the panel, and fired at the one labeled
COM
. A wisp of smoke raised from it.

“You’ve done it,” Vasily shouted. “The incursions stopped!”

“No!” Drayton screamed. I heard an almighty crash and saw Phillips’s armored figure slam into the deck. Frain had her arm twisted behind her. She carried on writhing, but she wasn’t getting away.

“Plan B.” Frain’s voice was pained. His face, already battered from the punishment it had received from the other troops, was a bloody mess now. The silver-colored subdermal armor gleamed fearsomely through his battle-damaged face. “Drop the gun, Trent.”

“Don’t do it,” Phillips gasped in pain through her smashed visor.

“Xander, you know I can’t do that.” I wasn’t sure what the hell I could do, but my options were awfully limited.

“Xander, deployment is 200 seconds. After that, we aren’t going to be able to hit the target.” Drayton said.

“Got it; prep the warheads.” He carried on looking at me. The one eye that wasn’t totally wrecked was worryingly calm.

“Drayton, don’t move. I’m not shitting you. You go near anything that even looks like it activates a goddamn warhead, I’m putting a round in you.”

“You’ve not exactly left us much choice here,” Frain said earnestly. “We need to complete our mission.”

“Two minutes. Trent, let’s just talk about this—but after,” Drayton shouted.

“Talk about what? Blowing
Gagarin
away? Not a fucking chance,” I said sarcastically.

“We don’t want to blow away
Gagarin
. That planet is our target.”

“Are you insane? I’m not going to let you blow away a bloody planet, either,” I scoffed.

“We don’t have time to explain.” For the first time, a tone of earnestness was cutting through Frain’s calm. “If we don’t fire now, we will miss our target. Everything will be for nothing.”

“Everything?” I said, acid souring my voice as I remembered the price Frain had exacted to get this far. “You mean killing all those people on Io and everything else you’ve done since?”

“Yes.”

“Boarding party, you are riding damn close to the point of no return. Evacuate now,” Captain Vasily said.

On the displays, the planet was a speck now—a speck that was growing fast.

I saw Phillips lift one leg, jamming it against the wrecked console. With all her might she kicked out. Frain and Phillips slammed into the control junctions behind them. Sparks and wisps of smoke erupted around them.

“Warning: command and control compromised. Main engine cut off,” an androgynous voice announced.

I flew upward and smashed into the ceiling. The debris from the fighting bounced all around me. We were back in zero-g. My gun floated by. With a firm grip on a ceiling stanchion, I reached out and grabbed it.

As I did so, Drayton clawed for a console, blood dripping into the air from a gash in her head. Phillips and Frain scrabbled for purchase on anything they could get their hands on.

“The main engine is in automatic shutdown mode,” Drayton called out.

“Get us turned around,” Frain shouted. “Then reignite.”

“We can’t. The main linkages are down on the helm. We need to get off. Now!”

“No!” he shouted. “Warheads?”

“Still ready and operable.”

“Then fire!” Frain pressed.

Steadying myself with one hand as I floated, I aimed the gun through the swirling debris at Drayton. “Don’t you dare, Drayton. Don’t you fucking dare.”

“If I don’t,” Drayton said softly, the blood bubbling from the gash had created a halo of red drops. “Everyone dies.”

My HUD fed me targeting data, a crosshairs superimposed on Drayton’s chest. “Move away from the console, or I will shoot you.”

“Layton, I wish I had time to explain, but I don’t,” Frain said in a calm voice. “We need—”

“Frain, shut the hell up,” I barked out. Weeks of frustration was focused on this moment. “I’m sick and tired of this. We’ve won. I’m not going to let you fire off your warheads just to smash some rock to bits.”

“It’s not a rock,” Frain shouted, cutting through my anger. “On that world is a race that wants to kill everyone and destroy everything—Earth, Mars, the JA, and every world we’ve colonized.”

Kill everyone? What the hell was he talking about? I paused for a moment, my thoughts racing. Surely if there was something like that out here, Vance, Cheng, or someone would know...

Wouldn’t they?

But then, nations weren’t the true powers anymore, were they? There were bigger players with far more influence than mere countries, players whose business it was to explore space and find out what was out here. Frain could be a tool of the corporates. What if they knew something the governments didn’t? All throughout this mission, I’d had the feeling there was more going on than we could see.

And if these aliens were that much of a threat…

“They seem remarkably passive right now,” I said, momentarily glancing at one of the wall screens where the black disc of the world was blooming larger and larger against the golden glow of space.

“Because they’re not ready. Our one chance—our
only
chance—of stopping them is now, at this moment.”

“And how do you know this?” I asked.

“I don’t have time to explain,” Frain said softly. “I get that you’re confused. I would be in your situation, but quite literally everything depends on what you decide in the next few seconds. That world, if you’re right, is just a rock. It’ll make no difference to anyone if it’s destroyed. If I’m right, it’ll make every difference to everyone. All you have to do is let us. Once that’s done, we’ll surrender to you.”

“Why should I believe you? What if there’s some kind of innocent alien race or something down there? Why should I let you destroy them?”

“Layton, you said it yourself; I’m clearly not insane. I haven’t killed anyone I didn’t have to. Trust me.”

I looked at him, a small window in my HUD showing the image from my gun camera trained on Drayton. He looked a mess, yet his one good eye was looking at me earnestly, almost begging. It was disconcerting.

Why put this on me? Why did I have to make this choice? I needed time to think, to weigh up the evidence. A spark of anger flared inside me. Why was I even considering this madness? “I’m not going to allow this!”

“Please, Trent.” Frain looked at me intently.

I glanced at Phillips. She was braced against the wall, ready to pounce back into the fight. The only thing stopping her? This strange exchange.

“Layton, decide,” Drayton said, her hand hovering over the console.

The heat of anger and the cold ice of dread warred within me. What if this threat they were talking about were real? Would they really have put together this operation if they weren’t already sure? And what was the consequence? A dead world destroyed?

You’re clearly not insane, Xander. You have a reason for coming here, and the fact that you even know about this place means you have access to a lot of resources.
The words I’d spoken less than an hour ago resonated in my mind. I felt something click. Frain wasn’t mad. Cold? Yes. Calculating? Yes. But mad?

No.

Knowing that, could I gamble with humanity? Whatever was going on here was far bigger than just Frain having gone on a rampage.
I have no interest in killing anyone I don’t have to,
Frain had said.
And you—I don’t have to.
He’d killed people—a lot of people—but every one of them had been to get here.

You may be a killer, but you damn well have a reason for all those deaths on your hands.
In my mind, I could still see the flash of pain and regret across his face as I had said those words to him.

As fast as these thoughts raced through my mind, time was running out. I had to decide. Now. Bomb the planet? Become complicit in his crimes, maybe
even in the genocide of an entire sentient species?
Or, if he were right, save everyone from this mysterious race he said threatened us?

If he were right, save everyone…

If…

Everyone
…

“Do it,” I said quietly.

Drayton’s hand met the console. A rippling series of thumps reverberated through the hull of
Erebus
.

“Boarding party,” Vasily’s voice piped over the HUD, “we have a series of launches. I’ve got dozens of KIs ripple-firing. Report!”