Erebus (37 page)

“I know,
Gagarin
,” I said, feeling strangely deflated. “I know.”

***

“If we don’t get off within fifteen minutes, no one is getting off. We won’t have the delta-
v
to fight Sagi,” Drayton said. “And not long after that, we’ll slip into the event horizon."

“We’re not having him back onboard
Gagarin
. He’ll try for control again,” Phillips said plainly.

“One problem at a time,” I answered her. “Drayton, what are we facing now?”

“We’ve been burning for so long toward Sagi, if we don’t maneuver or get off now, we’re going to be trapped in its gravity well!” Drayton said.

That was a serious problem. “Why the hell were you cutting it so fine?”

“We had to get in quickly before they had chance to respond.”

The mysterious “them” again. Fine. I knew when to argue and when to move. If we were falling into a damn black hole, now was time to move.

It was a hundred meters to the nearest access tunnel, and two hundred meters up the shaft to the Hawk, all through zero-g with injured. And there were more hurt people down in the ring. Worse yet, the Hawk could only take 10 or so.

We weren’t going to make it.

“We need to get as many off as we can,” Frain said quietly. I guessed that he had done the same math as I just had. It was impossible to save everyone. In a stronger voice, he spoke, his voice resonating through the PA system. “All hands, abandon ship.”

Drayton reached for Tasker’s drifting body and awkwardly maneuvered her to the hatch. After the briefest of pauses, I launched myself unsteadily and helped her. The irony of the situation didn’t elude me. Suddenly, we were all working together to escape the ship.

“Major, start with those in the ring. Go!” I cried out to Phillips. “You, too, Frain.”

Frain looked at the console for a moment and then expertly pushed himself off and swept over, grabbing Tasker in one hand from Drayton, ricocheted of a wall, and disappeared down the hatch.

“Hawk, Team One. Prepare for casualties and evac,” Phillips said.

“Team One, Hawk. Roger that, but we’re going to have to lift soon or we won’t be able to pull away.”

“I hear you,” she answered, “but we have people to get off.”

“The landers?” I asked Drayton. We needed more ways to get people off than just the Hawk.

“One lander took damage in the battle, but the other is ready to fly,” she responded.

“Sounds like a ticket out of here to me.” I glanced at the holotank. The dark heart of the accretion disk was visible, a circle of blackness more like a marble than a hole.

Drayton nodded and then spoke into her com. “Anyone who can fly a lander, get to
Quest
and start preflighting.”

I was the last one to the hatch, and just before I went through it, I gave a final look at the holodisplay. I watched the strange planet hovering there on the edge of the event horizon grow larger. It was a distinct circle eclipsing the golden glow of the accretion disk behind. A graphic showed the cloud of KIs streaking toward the world. To one side I could see
Gagarin
, her engine firing in a long plume, striving to escape the gravity of the black hole.

And every moment, she was pulling away from us.

“I just need to know, can she fly?” Drayton asked. She cocked her head, listening to her implant. “Okay, we’re gathering up casualties and coming down to you.”

“What’s the word?” I asked.

“
Quest
, the lander, is being preflighted, but she’s going to have to lift soon. She doesn’t have the delta-
v
of the Hawk.”

“Everything about this investigation has been touch and go,” I sighed, a sense of pragmatism washing over me. That lander was going to be the only way off this ship for a lot of people.

We were carrying the poor crew member who had been hit in the head between us, kicking off the walls as we did so. It was strange. Weightless didn’t mean massless, and it took lots of effort to redirect her momentum.

“Trent, thank you for helping to get these people off. They were trying to ki—”

“Sonia, later. And while you’re thanking me, you sure as hell are going to tell me what’s been going on.”

“Trent? Go private,” I heard Vasily say over my com. I glanced at Drayton, dropping my visor with my free hand, forestalling any response.

“Go ahead.”

“If Frain thinks he’s getting onboard my ship, he’s got another thing coming.”

Goddamn it, this was getting even more complicated by the second. “Captain, if he surrenders, we have to take him.”

“No fucking chance. Even if I wanted to take on the murdering bastard—which I don’t—he has the ability to sequester the ship’s systems from onboard, just like on Concorde. There is no way we will be able to protect against him.”

Reaching the access tunnel, I swung the limp body around and pushed my boots against the wall. It took far more effort than it should have to stop her momentum. Even more so because my bloody leg was still in agony. Stopping the motion with yet another jar to my leg, I began manhandling her down into the tunnel. This was taking too long. We had at least a dozen people who were unconscious.

“Captain—”

“Trent. He. Is. Not. Coming. Aboard,” Vasily barked.

I watched as Frain swept with agile grace the other way up the tunnel, presumably for a second person. He gave a slight nod as he flew by, concentrating instead on getting his crew out. A thought occurred to me—I wasn’t even sure we could stop Frain from coming if we wanted to. I flicked up my visor. “Come on, let’s get this lug to the lander.”

I’d deal with the Frain problem later.

***

“
Quest
has to go—
now!”
the pilot transmitted. “We’re cutting it to the bone as it is.”

Quest
was large, more than capable of taking everyone onboard and then some, but getting everyone aboard didn’t matter if the shuttle couldn’t fight its way out of Sagi’s gravitational well. I had given the man I was dragging to another, and I watched as they made it down the spinal corridor into
Quest
. They were the last two in.

“Go,” Phillips barked. “We’ll take the Hawk.”

Together, we watched the hatch rumble shut and heard the
thunk
of the heavy shuttle disengaging.

“You have four minutes to get in the Hawk and get gone,” Vasily announced, “or you won’t have the delta-
v
to pull out for a rendezvous.”

Yeah, well, there was a problem with that—we still had at least half a dozen back in the habitat ring and no chance in hell that we would get them out in time. I looked at Phillips, and she gazed back.

“I know, Layton. But they made their choice,” she said softly.

Gritting my teeth, I nodded. Don’t get me wrong; had I felt we could have rescued them, I would have, but we couldn’t. Damn Frain’s fool quest.

We pushed back toward the Hawk. Frain was by the hatch, shoving someone through. Within, I could see Sergeant Jamal guiding the body into the passenger cabin.

“Hawk’s ready to go,” the pilot announced. “Get onboard and haul ass about it.”

“You have your orders from Vasily?” I asked Phillips over the private link.

Phillips paused for a moment. “Yeah. Frain doesn’t get onboard
Gagarin
.”

“If he fights, we might not be able to stop him.”

“If he gets onboard, we might not be able to stop him, either,” she growled.

“Yeah, but we have alternatives. Look, let’s just get the bus rolling and sort it out en route. If need-be, we can lock him down in the Hawk until we get back to Earth.”

I saw Phillips’s eyes narrow. She was considering it. Fighting with Frain in the cramped confines of the assault shuttle would not be any good for anyone.

“Look, let’s just sort it out later. Vasily won’t turn us away.”

“Okay.” She flipped her visor up. “Everyone saddle up. Now!”

With one last look down the spinal corridor at the poor doomed souls still in the habitat ring, we pulled ourselves into the lander…

Along with Frain.

“Buckle in. This is going to be a hard burn.”

The strange golden view outside began to spin as the Hawk twisted toward the engine plume of
Gagarin
, which was still racing away from us.
Gagarin
would have to cut thrust at some point to allow us to board, and there was some math that went into the optimal time to do that, which I would leave to the professionals.

Once again, I felt the engines kick in, and I was smashed back into the seat. I watched out of the window as I saw the ballistic
Erebus
fall away from us toward the dark sphere of the hole. The engines on the Hawk were working hard to arrest our descent into oblivion after
Erebus—
and not doing a very good job of it.

“
Gagarin
, Hawk. We have twelve onboard. Requesting optimal docking solution.”

Vasily’s face appeared on my HUD, interrupting the pilot. “Is he aboard?”

“Yes, Captain. We need to—” the pilot began.

“Space him. He is not getting on my ship.”

The atmosphere in the passenger bay became even tenser. Sergeant Jamal and Phillips looked like coiled tigers ready to launch at the slightest provocation.

“Captain,” I began, cutting across the pilot, “you know we can’t do that. Killing someone in combat is one thing; cold-blooded murder is another. We have to bring him back to answer for what he’s done.”

“If that man comes aboard, then he will subvert the ship. Simple. He is not getting anywhere near. And frankly, I’m none too happy with you, either. I’m tracking the over one hundred KIs inbound on that planet.”

“Yeah, that I get.” I cut the com and linked the pilot. “How long have we got before we reach decision point?”

“Minutes.” The pilot’s voice was tense. “We’re falling deeper into Sagi’s gravity well every second. I’m redlining the engines, but they’re not in great shape after that hit coming in.

“Just keep us moving,” Phillips interjected.

“Captain, please.” Vasily was a good man; I knew it. I just had to get through to him. “If you don’t give us the docking solution, twelve people are going to die onboard this thing. Too many have already.” The faces of Dana, the trooper, Mike, the man from the corridor, and those we were forced to leave behind flashed through my mind.

“I understand your concerns, Captain,” Frain broke into the private coms channel. It didn’t surprise me in the slightest he was able to. “You have my word that I will not attempt to subvert your ship.”

“Layton, I ca—”

A loud bang reverberated through the hull. “Goddamn it! Coolant system has just popped. We’re losing engine two. I’m going to have to throttle down,” the pilot barked.

I felt the pressure easing on my chest, but the ride was getting rougher.

“You keep your pedal to the metal, pilot,” Phillips shouted out.

“Hawk, what’s your situation? We’re showing debris coming from one of your engines.” Captain Vasily’s voice had gone from angry to concerned.

“We’ve got a malfunction in engine two. We’re losing it. It must have taken more damage than we thou—”

A loud crash cut him off. It sounded as if a demolition ball had slammed into the side of the shuttle. The view through the cockpit window started to spiral.

“The engine’s gone.
Gagarin,
you’re going to have to come get us,” the pilot shouted, fear in her voice.

“I’m sorry—” the captain murmured.

“Vasily, don’t do this,” I virtually shouted. “You’ll kill everyone on this ship.”

“You don’t understand. We can’t.”

“Can’t or won’t?” Phillips demanded.

“Can’t, dammit. The conventional drive won’t give us the delta-
v
to head in to get you, and we don’t have the precision on the A-drive. We stand as much chance of landing over the event horizon as not, and that’s if we don’t wipe you out when the A-drive bubble collapses.”

Our remaining engine was definitely running rough now. “
Gagarin
, we only have engine one. With our current cut thrust, we have less than sixty seconds before we reach the point of no return.”

“We can’t even yaw round in sixty seconds,” Vasily said. “I’m sorry.”

“Then we can’t make it out of the gravitational well,” the pilot almost whispered.

I felt the pressure easing on my chest. What the hell did we do now? I looked out the window, the malevolent black heart of the golden accretion disk just sitting there—the thing that would kill us.

“There is an option,” Tasker coughed. I looked across at her, strapped into the seat. I guessed that she had come round a while ago. “
Erebus
.”

“
Erebus
is just as fucked as we are,” Phillips scoffed.

“No, you don’t understand. She has everything we need, an A-drive, a nano-fabricator. If we can repair her, we might just be able to escape.”

“But nothing escapes a black hole; even I know that,” I said.

Tasker gave a harsh laugh. “Last time I checked, no one had actually tried to use an A-drive to get out of one.”

“Yeah, but that thing is going to eat us up in a couple of hours.” I waved my hand toward the stern of the shuttle. “Are you telling me you can repair the A-drive in that time?”

“Trent”—she gave a bitter laugh—“you’re going to learn a thing or two about space-time. Probably more than you ever wanted to know. Get us back and don’t mess around. The clock is ticking.”

“Hawk,” Captain Vasily’s voice was getting quicker, like he was on a cocktail of helium and amphetamines. “We are getting to safety. We will stand fast for as long as we still have a coms link.”

Once again, the view spiraled as the assault shuttle came around to limp back toward
Erebus
on its remaining engine. Already the ship was little more than a dot.

We had so nearly gotten away.

Tasker got the habitat ring spinning, and we were back up to about one-third-g, which at least allowed us to work—something we needed to do damn fast.

One of
Erebus’s
engineers had hauled himself to the aft after telling us that the engine could only be fired manually now that Phillips and Frain’s fight had trashed the bridge. Still, the holotank was functional, though I wasn’t liking what it showed. On the screen was a wireframe image of a funnel. A blinking blue light,
Erebus,
was trickling down the side. I didn’t need Frampton to explain what it meant.