Mindscape: Book 2 of the New Frontiers Series (9 page)

Chapter 15

S
hadow Squad met up with the other half of their platoon, Goblin Squad, at the entrance of the
Crimson Warrior’s
bridge. Unlike the other bulkheads they’d passed through as they negotiated Captain Vrokovich’s ‘safe’ route through the ship, this one didn’t open automatically for them as they approached.

“Someone get me a can opener!” Ram ordered.

“Oorah,” one of the Goblins replied.

“Everyone else, find cover positions!”

Alexander fell in behind his team leader, Chesty, and waited for the private with the ‘can opener’ to do his job. A molten orange line crept around the doors in a slow circle, chasing its tail.

The two ends met, and Alexander held an imaginary breath. He half-expected the doors to blow open and enemy marines to come storming out, weapons blazing.

Instead the private kicked the doors in. They bounced off the deck and went floating through the bridge, narrowly missing the heads of the enemy captain and his crew waiting on the other side.

Shadow and Goblin Squads raised their weapons, metal joints clicking and servos
whirring
in a sudden flurry of movement.

“Hands where I can see ‘em!” Ram ordered.

Their hands were already above their heads. “We are not armed,” Captain Vrokovich announced, his red eyes seeming to glow in the gloomy battle lighting of the bridge.

Alexander stormed into the bridge behind his squad while Goblin Squad brought up the rear.

“You are all now prisoners of the Alliance,” Ram continued.

“Don’t you want to check if we are guilty first?” Vrokovich asked, cocking his head to one side like a bird.
With those eyes he looks more like a rabbit,
Alexander decided as he moved to address the enemy captain.

“Where’s the rest of your crew?” Alexander asked.

“In their
G
-tanks. I thought it best for them to remain there in order to minimize further casualties as you trigger-happy terrans go prancing through my ship.”

Alexander turned to Ram. “Sergeant, get squads down to those levels and lock them in. We lost our brig in the fighting, so there’s no where else for us to put them. While you’re at it, check the ship’s roster and get me a head-count to compare. We don’t want to miss anyone.”

“Yes, sir,” Ram replied.

“The head count won’t match the roster,” Captain Vrokovich said as Shadow squad began cuffing his officers’ hands behind their backs. “We lost at least fifty crewmates when you attacked us. The people you’re looking for are all floating out in space.” Vrokovich’s upper lip twisted with contempt. “The Alliance will pay for what they’ve done today.”

Alexander opened his palms and mimicked the see-saw motion of a balance scale. “Five million dead on Earth and two million dead on the Moon versus fifty dead on your ship. I wonder which side has more blood on it?”

“Go get your proof then,” Vrokovich said, jerking his chin toward the empty bridge control stations climbing the far wall of the bridge behind him. “That’s what you came for, isn’t it?”

Alexander gave the other man a narrow-eyed look that would have had a greater effect if his VSM were capable of facial expressions. Instead he leveled an index finger at his chest. “Altering ship’s logs leaves a data trail. If you touched them, you’ll have given me all the proof I need.”

“We didn’t alter anything. We didn’t need to,” Vrokovich replied, shrugging as Mouth cuffed his wrists behind his back.

Rather than waste more time bantering, Alexander stalked past the enemy captain, straight up to the lower pair of control stations—the captain’s and XO’s stations. He climbed into the captain’s station and waved it to life. A holographic display appeared, and Alexander summoned the ship’s logs with a combination of gestures and voice commands.

Navigation logs showed that the
Crimson Warrior
left Mars two months ago. They flew straight to Saturn and on to the moon of Tethys, where they remained for about a week. They were on a circuitous route home when the
Adamantine
hailed them. At no point in their trip were they moving fast enough to have launched the missiles that hit the Moon or Earth.

It was a plausible flight plan, and the fact that they’d gone to Tethys suggested some sort of crazy Martian terraforming agenda since that moon was practically solid ice.

Alexander didn’t trust the data, but he couldn’t find anything to suggest the logs had been altered. Making matters worse, there was a record of a rendezvous with an Alliance civilian supply ship, the
Wayfinder,
not long before the Moon attack. That would be easy to verify, and if true, it gave the
Crimson Warrior
a strong alibi.

Alexander felt abruptly sick.
What if Captain Vroko was telling the truth?
He poked around for a while longer, submitting the enemy ship’s computer core to a data probe to check for signs of log alterations. The probe came back negative. Things weren’t looking good for the Alliance. Alexander checked to see if the sealed sections of the ship were all actually exposed to space as Captain Vroko had said…

And that checked out, too.

They couldn’t afford to leave those areas un-explored, but it did make Alexander feel better about the set path they’d been forced to take through the
Crimson Warrior.

Finally, he checked the number of active and inactive
G
-tanks and compared that to the ship’s roster. One hundred and three active tanks, fifty-seven inactive—not counting the brig—and the ship’s roster had exactly 160 crew, meaning there were fifty-seven dead.

Feeling suddenly weary, Alexander eased out of the control station and walked back to the entrance of the bridge.

“Find what you were looking for?” Captain Vrokovich asked, sounding smug.

Alexander ignored him and walked up to Sergeant Ram. “Get these prisoners down to the
G
-tanks and lock them in with the rest.”

“Oorah,” Ram replied.

Alexander watched as Shadow Squad and Goblin Squad left the bridge with their prisoners in tow. A few tech specialists stayed behind to slave the
Crimson Warrior’s
systems to the
Adamantine’s
controls. Sergeant Ram remained behind as well.

“Did you find anything?” he asked.

Alexander waited for the prisoners to pass out of earshot, but then he remembered that they didn’t need to speak audibly to each other and opted for private comms. “I think they might have been telling the truth. Their flight plan is reasonable, the logs don’t look altered, and they have an alibi—an Alliance civilian transport.”

“Shit. If they’re so innocent, then why the hell didn’t they give us what we asked for?”

“You mean why didn’t they bend over when we asked them to?”

“That’s not…” Ram trailed off.

“It’s exactly what we asked them to do. The Solarian Republic and the Alliance are not allies. We’re not even very friendly after they declared their independence thirty years ago. Giving us access to their flight plan and mission data would set a bad political precedent and pave the way for future insults to their sovereignty.”

“So you’re telling me we just started an interplanetary war because the Solarians were too damn proud to prove their innocence?”

“We need more time to look through their data before we can be sure,” Alexander replied.

Another voice interrupted them. “Admiral, we have a problem.” It was McAdams.

“What’s wrong, Commander?”

“Enemy ships incoming, seven of them, all destroyer-class.”

“Range?”

“They’re just leaving Martian orbit, so they’ve got a good half a billion klicks to cover, but we have to cover double that to reach Earth, and they have a much higher top speed than we do—especially considering we’ll be towing a derelict dreadnought.”

“How long do we have before they reach us?”

“Depends what kind of
G
s they pull… at theoretical maximums, about a day.”

“Contact Fleet Command, explain the situation, and ask for an escort to meet us halfway. Make sure they know we’re already limping thanks to our engagement with the
Crimson Warrior,
otherwise they might order us into another ridiculous fight. Hopefully they can make it to us before those destroyers do.”

“Aye, sir. Did you find any evidence linking the
Crimson Warrior
to the attacks? If you did, we might be able to use that to get some political muscle on our side—expose the Solarians and threaten them with a full-scale war. That should turn those destroyers back.”

Alexander grimaced. “Actually, I found evidence that they weren’t the ones who attacked us. I’ll get the details for you so you can transmit them back to Earth. The Alliance might have more luck turning those destroyers back with a formal apology and a promise of restitution than they will with more threats.”

“Aye, sir… and if the Alliance isn’t willing to give up their witch hunt yet?”

“Then we hope we’re not the ones who get burned. Get on the comms, Commander, and bring the
Adamantine
alongside. It’s time to dock and run. De Leon out.”

* * *

Alexander waited until the enemy crew was safely locked inside their
G
-tanks, and then he used the captain’s control station to override the
Crimson Warrior’s
bulkhead doors and vent their atmosphere into space so they could finish securing the ship. That done, he walked back through the ship, securing sections with Ram, Mouth, and Chesty. It was tedious work scanning and checking every room, corridor, alcove, and maintenance access for booby traps or hidden enemy drones and crew.

After more than two hours of searching, they didn’t find anything, and all of the
Crimson Warrior’s
sections had been secured, so Alexander ordered the
Adamantine
to dock with the dreadnought and tow it back to Earth. He was surprised the search had come up empty. Captain Vrokovich’s demeanor had screamed defiance, yet he’d made no significant effort to defy the Alliance.

Doubt niggled Alexander’s brain. All the ship’s sections were secured, the enemy crew was all accounted for except for the dead ones.

“We’re all done here, Admiral,” Ram said, turning to him.

Alexander nodded absently. Fifty-seven of the enemy crew dead.
Why so many?
he wondered. They’d poked plenty of holes in the
Crimson Warrior’s
hull, but ship-building 101 was to put crew control stations closer to a ship’s core to shield them as much as possible. So what were those people doing walking the outer corridors?

A sudden suspicion formed in Alexander’s gut. He keyed his comms. “McAdams, have we docked yet?”

“Almost, sir.”

“Abort,
now
.”

“What? What’s wrong? I thought you secured the ship.”

“We did.
Inside.
Get me eyes on their outer hull. Scan every inch of it.”

“Aye, sir… I’ll get Stone to check her over with our drones.”

Alexander nodded. “Keep me posted. De Leon out.”

“Is there anything else you need us to do, sir?” Sergeant Ram prompted. He hadn’t been privy to the conversation with McAdams, but he must have seen that Alexander was busy on the comms.

“We haven’t finished securing the ship yet,” Alexander explained.

“We haven’t?”

“We secured the inside, but we forgot to check the outer hull. Get someone to go fetch the captain for me, but make sure he stays sedated; then get someone else to extract the ship’s data core for transfer to the
Adamantine.
”

“Yes, sir,” Ram replied and got on the comms. When he was done, he asked, “You really think they’re planning to scuttle the ship?”

Alexander shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe.”

“So why not pull the trigger already?” Mouth added. “Boom goes the weasel, and the
Adamantine
with it. We’re still close enough for the shrapnel to take us out.”

“The
Adamantine
might not be their target,” Alexander replied. “They could do maximum damage by waiting for us to pull into one of Earth’s shipyards for repairs.”

“Hell of a long time to wait while you’re freezing your ‘nads off in space,” Chesty commented.

Alexander’s comm crackled. “Admiral, we’ve found multiple enemy contacts clinging to the hull.”

“Where?”

“Amidships.”

“Did they spot us?”

“With the naked eye? Not likely, sir. You want our pilots to scrape them off?”

Alexander’s mind raced through options. “No, too risky. We’re sure to miss a few like that, and it just takes one to trigger a bomb. Send me their location. We’ll take care of it.”

“Aye, sir. Transmitting now.”

Alexander summoned a hologram of the enemy position so Ram and the others could see. He checked for nearby airlocks and highlighted four, one on each side of the enemy forces.

“They
are
sneaky bastards,” Mouth said. “There’s at least fifty of them crawling out there!”