Redemption Protocol (Contact) (62 page)

“You won’t support me with a recommendation, Captain?”

The two lawyers looked at Yamamoto.

Yamamoto considered the situation.

“Havoc has refused a direct order. He is conducting electronic warfare against Alliance assets and is en route to attack them. He believes he has identified Tyburn as the saboteur and that the alien systems will shortly be given to the ORC. He believes that Stone is in danger and he is attempting to help him. He’s been exposed to tettraxigyiom contamination as we all have. He has stated that he believes our Security Lead is his old commander, Claudius Forge and has openly mentioned the fate of his wife and children in why he is approaching the southern encampment. He has willfully crossed your exclusion limit. You have designated him code red.”

“Yes, yes, I understand what the situation is, Captain.”

“It is not a simple call, Commander.”

“I know that. Now what do you recommend?”

“My view is that this is clearly a command level decision...”

“Yes...”

“Well, given that you have already coded Havoc as a danger to himself and others and the sheer improbability, impossibility even, that Tyburn has done a deal with the ORC and is Havoc’s old commander...”

Whittenhorn rolled his eyes.

“Yeees...”

“And even if Tyburn was General Forge, how would Havoc come to that spontaneous realization from thousands of kilometers away...?”

“I remind you that this battle may actually finish soon, Captain.”

“If pressed, I would suggest that you, Commander, follow through on your code red classification of the known, wanted and previously sentenced to death John Havoc and that we eliminate the threat.”

“Eliminate the threat. That is your recommendation?”

“With all the caveats listed above, Commander.”

Whittenhorn nodded.

“Inform Mr Tyburn and proceed.”

 147. 

Stone stood behind Tyburn on the hook platform.

They both gazed into the frothing cauldron of weather in the shaft. Tyburn had been silent for over a minute now. Stone found Tyburn's silence worrying – a disturbing contrast to the gushing crescendo of Tyburn's soliloquy. Me and my big mouth, Stone thought.

Apropos of nothing, Tyburn looked back at him and smiled.

“Does Havoc care about you, Stone, that is the question.”

“More than he cares about you, I expect.”

“Oh, I don’t know about that, Stone. I think I hold a special place in his heart.”

“Do you know what happened to his wife and kids?”

“I know very well.”

The way Tyburn said it caused Stone’s stomach to twist.

“Are you responsible?”

Tyburn swung round and towered over Stone.

“Does a hunting lion feel responsible, Stone? My duty is to my Republic.”

Stone steeled himself.

“Psychopaths like you always use patriotism to satisfy your need to bully people, Tyburn, but that's all you are, a bully.”

Tyburn stared at him. Stone glared back doggedly. Tyburn nodded slowly and Stone felt fear grip his heart. His suit registered Tyburn’s scan. Tyburn frowned at him.

“You only have a reservoir? An air reservoir?”

Stone’s gaze shifted left and right. He didn’t understand.

“So?”

“When you have that thing in your head?”

Stone’s eyes rolled upward.

“It doesn’t–– Shit!”

Stone spun sideways as Tyburn’s kinetic blew out the oxygen tank on the right side of his suit. Stone shrieked and spun back left as Tyburn shot out the tank on the other side. Stone held up his arms. He dreaded the next shot being more central. Instead, Tyburn reached back and grabbed the crane hook. Tyburn stalked toward him with the hook in his hand and the cable trailing behind him. Stone’s demeanor cracked.

“Look, Tyburn, I'm no trouble.”

“Let's bait the hook for Havoc, Stone.”

The pressure on Stone's heart spread across his chest. Tyburn’s body language was utterly foreboding. Stone took a step back as Tyburn advanced purposefully.

Stone stopped. The hook platform just wasn’t that big. He eyed the hook in Tyburn’s hand – Tyburn was going to dangle him over the abyss. Stone felt a stab of panic. The thought of hanging over the void was terrifying.

“Come on, Tyburn, I'm no threat to you.”

Tyburn smiled.

“You talk too much.”

Stone opened his mouth to respond. Tyburn’s movement was a blur. He swung the hook into Stone’s visor. Stone’s head flew back and he stumbled under the impact. The layer of transparent shockgel lining his visor expanded and molded to his face, save for an air channel. His visor was deformed but it hadn’t broken.

He screamed as he tottered backward on the edge of the platform. Tyburn grabbed him and hauled him forward. Before Stone could react, Tyburn wrapped his arm around his helmet and smashed his visor twice more with the hook. Stone shut his eyes and tried to twist away. His helmet buckled and broke. Air hissed out and freezing atmo rushed in. Tyburn ripped away the shockgel and the wind roared at his face like waves crashing against a sea cliff. Stone felt his suit seal around his neck as he tasted the foul atmosphere. Shit, he couldn’t breathe.

Alerts flashed in his mind’s eye as his reserve fed air into his lungs. A calm female voice notified him of his gas position.

“You have twenty minutes of air remaining.”

Tyburn snapped off pieces of Stone’s broken visor from the neck of his suit. Stone opened his eyes and peered through narrow slits. His eyes burned. Tyburn levered off the remnants of his helmet, methodically stripping the fragments away. Stone wriggled but Tyburn was too strong. He was terrified. Tyburn was going to dangle him over the shaft with only twenty minutes of air.

Tyburn gripped Stone’s face in his gauntlet. Stone peered up at Tyburn with his face painfully squashed. Tyburn's eyes were wide and mad – he'd completely lost it.

“They say the jaw is the strongest bone in the human body, Stone. With someone who talks as much as you that should be pretty strong. Let's find out.”

Stone didn’t understand. Tyburn grabbed the back of Stone’s head in one hand and lifted the hook under his chin with the other.

Reality dawned on Stone. He thrashed wildly.

> No. Please.

Tyburn pressed the hook into the soft flesh under his chin. Stone’s skin burned in contact with the freezing hook.

> Please, Tyburn, what do you want?

Tyburn smiled but he didn’t stop. Through squinting eyes, Stone saw the blur of Ekker step onto the platform.

It dawned on Stone that Ekker wanted to watch. Tyburn was really going to do this.

> No, Tyburn, please.

 148. 

Stephanie raised a quizzical eyebrow at the approach of not one but two diplomatic parties to their camp. Abbott smiled at her and Jafari.

“I invited them both.”

Stephanie absorbed this as Abbott stepped forward to greet the representatives of the People's Republic and the United Systems.

The senior representatives of both Tier-1 civilizations looked a little surprised to be arriving at the same time. They both kept glancing at Abbott as if they expected him to berate one of his aide's at this obvious scheduling error.

Abbott gestured at the pyramid as he addressed everyone.

“It is time to begin a new and more open chapter in relations between our Tier-1 civilizations. I see humanity joining together to forge a strong bond with our new friends and neighbors.”

The faces of the visiting diplomats reflected their polite bemusement. Stephanie thought that Abbott was finally losing it. Thank God she'd been treated – the short blackouts she was experiencing were bad enough already.

Stephanie glanced at the United Systems. She wondered if he knew that the United Systems had an agent on the Alliance crew (probably) and if he knew it was her (possibly). If the United Systems Ambassador did know it was her, he might be confused to see his supposedly compromised agent standing freely amongst her colleagues.

She wondered what the United Systems would make of her diversion. Then again there was no point crying over spilled milk. It was too late to stop it and it wasn't like it was her fault anyway. The United Systems should have looked after her better. Stephanie had a vague feeling that she’d gone too far. She shrugged it off. No guilt and no regrets, that was her mantra. Her mother had drummed it into her since she was three.

Stephanie smiled at the People's Republic Ambassador as the diplomats engaged in some meaningless chatter before getting down to the nitty-gritty of pyramid access.

She had no idea whether the Gathering would manage to penetrate the pyramid and release the alien. She didn’t really care. Whether the Gathering succeeded or not it would be a major diversion. She didn't plan to be anywhere nearby. She knew her United Systems handlers wouldn’t approve of what she’d done but it wasn’t her fault. Use your initiative, they'd said. She'd been forced into this position. What did they expect? She was taking all the risks. She was facing all the danger.

And all it cost them was money.

 149. 

Havoc roared across the sky.

A roiling mass of electromagnetic interference streamed across the skies, cloaking it in a modern day fog of war.

Havoc counted every one of Forge’s security staff who were stationed at the shaft as against him. He assumed he was up against Intrepido right now, sitting in his cabin, manipulating his assets to kill him.

A mountain range rose up ahead, three thousand kilometers from the shaft. Havoc couldn’t imagine that Intrepido would have ignored its tactical value for funneling him and causing him to lift higher over the surface. There would likely be a number of drones lurking there. It was too good an opportunity for Intrepido to pass up.

One of Havoc’s platforms surged forward, accelerating past Mach forty. Its coating would burn off at that speed but it wouldn’t be needed for long.

A beam cut through the electromagnetic blizzard like a lighthouse piercing mist. It was the
Intrepid's
primary weapon system, the Hel.

The radiation emitted by Havoc’s surface platforms paled into insignificance. He felt like a child playing with candles before the power of the sun. He wondered if Yamamoto would try to discriminate amongst his platforms and go straight for him, or if she would sweep across his fleet systematically. Most of all, he hoped it was just a warning.

The telemetry from one of his laser platforms on the far edge of his fleet rocketed for an instant before it was vaporized. A moment later, the same thing happened to one of the electronic warfare packages. In quick succession, another two platforms were annihilated. Death from above. Four assets gone already.

Havoc burst through a cloud formation, his aerial frame buffeted by micro-vibrations as it hurtled through the atmosphere. His sensors illuminated the sky ahead of him. The dark mountains rose majestically on the horizon, their peaks soaring upward like swords raised above charging knights as they galloped toward him.

His fifth platform surged brilliantly and vanished. It was only nineteen kilometers away, within visual range. This was very bad news. Yamamoto was casually lasing his fleet out of existence far faster than he'd expected.

Using the logic of the sweep pattern, there was a fifty-fifty chance that he’d be next. The view was great.

He braced himself.

 150. 

Stone flailed helplessly.

Tyburn thrust the hook steadily into his jaw. It felt remorseless and unstoppable. He tried to move his head but Tyburn’s grip was a vice. Stone’s skin stretched to breaking point. There was no more give.

Tyburn grinned manically.

“Good boy. Here we go!”

> Please, Tyburn, stop.

Stone shrieked silently as his flesh tore under the pressure of the blunt point. Tears leaked from his eyes as he suffered in agony. The hook forced its way upward, rupturing his chin and ripping the flesh off the inside of his lower teeth. He gagged as his tongue was rammed up into his palette. The pain was unbearable.

> Please stop. Please.

The hook erupted into his mouth. He gagged repeatedly as his tongue was forced into his throat. He tasted the hot blood pouring from his mouth. The blood gushed out of the ragged hole in his chin to be whipped back into his face by the wind.

> You made your point, Tyburn. Please, no more. Tell me what you want.