The False Admiral (14 page)

I was glad I could do something for him before we all died here.

I listened to Salmagard and Nils working industriously behind us. I didn't feel up to it. I didn't want to tell them that I'd failed them like this. If we all ended up dead on a long shot, that was one thing, but a blunder like this . . . this stung.

Good thing I'd thrown away my sidearm, because I wanted to shoot myself.

I thought about what I'd done the last time I'd been presented with an unsolvable problem. I'd agonized. I'd given it my all and genuinely tried to be smart.

I'd tried to find a graceful way. An elegant way. A gentle way. It hadn't worked out.

In the end I'd been forced to take the direct approach. I'd needed results, and there hadn't been time to worry about the details.

This was no different. I couldn't be hung up on details.

“What do you think a ship like this costs?” I asked Deilani.

She looked over at me, puzzled, then cocked her head to one side. “You mean the ship, or
this
ship, with all the modifications?”

I smiled. “Either.”

“In Evagardian Julians?”

“In whatever you like.”

“A lot.”

“Add it to my bill.” I took a deep breath and got to my feet. “Though I don't have any money to pay it. Ensign,” I said.

“Yes, Admiral?”

“Is there enough energy left in that cell to move the arm one more time?”

He looked dubious. “Just one more time? Maybe, I guess. Sir.”

“You remember that crate of 14-14?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Pick it up and put it in front of the bay doors.”

They all caught on at the same moment. Salmagard's eyes widened, and she turned pale. That was the real measure of the absurdity of my plan. Only a truly mad notion would penetrate her calm that way.

Deilani squeaked something I didn't catch. Nils' jaw dropped, and he mouthed seven words at me that he didn't mean to mouth, but I understood perfectly.

“I know—I know!” I said, overruling them. “And I'm open to suggestions, but I bet you haven't got any. We'll dedicate the flyer's shields forward and give them full power. That might get us through it. You never know.”

“Not that!” Deilani reached for me, as though to grab my neck and shake me, but caught herself. “The blast! It'll send us over for sure!”

“As soon as we blast the doors, we burn out. Right there, right then. We aren't going to wait around.”

“What if it doesn't work?”

“Then it'll be a short flight.”

Her mouth moved, but no sound came out. We didn't have time for this.

“It can work; 14-14 can get through armor, so it can definitely get through those doors.”

“What if the—the
hole
isn't big enough?”

“You saw what one canister of that stuff did out there.” I recalled the crater, and the size of the spire that Tremma's explosion had toppled. 14-14 had an impressive yield. No one could argue with that.

“That was just to bring down something that wasn't stable to begin with,” Deilani argued.

“Yeah, but we've got way more. We've got all of it. The whole crate.”

“You'll blow up half the planet.”

“No one'll miss it.” I shrugged. “I mean, I won't. But I'm not the sentimental type.”

“Your colonists might,” Nils said, dazed.

“We'll worry about them later. However it goes, it'll go down fast enough that it's not going to matter,” I told Deilani frankly. “We'll either be in the open or the afterlife, and either way we won't know what hit us.”

Nils let out a bark of laughter. Not a good sign, but at this point I didn't blame him. I was feeling a little twitchy myself, but that was probably the withdrawal.

“Wow,” he said. “Wow. My parents were so proud when I made aptitudes.”

“And they'll be proud that you had the initiative to do what it took to get out of this,” I said. “Move the crate. You two, come with me.”

“Where are we going?”

“We have to rig up a way to detonate the 14-14.”

“How?”

“Those charges aren't meant to be set off by people without codes. We need something that can get through all that protective shielding and destabilize the 14-14. There should be surgical lasers in Medical.”

“But you can't move the big ones, and the handhelds don't have enough power,” Deilani said, hurrying after me.

“Not without a little encouragement.”

Deilani looked blank. “What?”

“Let
me
worry about making it work. We just need a decent power pack from something in Medical, and as many surgical lasers as we can get.”

“There'll be three,” she stated flatly.

“How do you know?”

“It's a Class C Medical with a Class C kit. It's the bare minimum. Why have more on a ship with only two people on it?” she snapped.

I'd take her word for it. This was her job.

Kind of a brutal job, I decided. You couldn't expect a new officer to be half scientist, half doctor, and half leader. But Deilani was giving it her best, and probably wishing she'd just gone into something a little humbler instead.

The ground rumbled and the floor lurched. I kept moving. If I kept letting the past rear up and slow me down, we'd never get anything done. I was completely focused on what lay ahead.

There were two kinds of people in the universe: the people working for a better future, and the rest of us. Time wasn't on anyone's
side, and neither was regret. If I let a little PTSD and some bad memories slow me down now, what good was I?

We ran.

Medical looked strangely empty without all the stuff we'd been stockpiling there; it was all in the back of the flyer now. It was also a mess, thanks to all those tremors and lurches.

Medical kits and equipment were everywhere. We'd have to look for the things we needed.

We started to search, but stopped almost immediately. I straightened, and so did Deilani. She looked at me, puzzled. “Did you hear that?”

“Yeah,” I said, turning. “Did you feel anything?”

“It wasn't the ship,” she said, hefting the medical lasers in her hand.

The three of us looked toward the counter, now cluttered with all of the equipment that had fallen out of the unsecured cabinets.

A canister of plastic bandage rustled, then fell to the deck and rolled.

Something on the counter was moving.

“DID you see that?”

“I saw it,” Deilani said, not sounding happy. I knew how she felt. All three of our lights were pointed at the counter. The rustling continued. I craned my neck for a view, but the source of the sounds was obscured. “Did your Captain Tremma have a pet?”

“If he had, it would've been in his quarters. And I don't think he did. Wouldn't really fit my picture of him,” I told her.

“What else could it be?”

“It can't
be
anything. It's impossible for there to be something alive on this ship that isn't us,” I said firmly. “That's why I'm trying not to panic.”

“Maybe it's a maintenance bot—a little one.”

I picked up a metal basin. “I'm going to regret this,” I said, approaching the counter.

“Admiral!” Her concerned voice was a bit more shrill than her usual barking tone.

“
Something
happened to Tremma and his officer,” I said, not taking my eyes off the counter. “And once this ship goes, nobody's ever going to find out what. I'm curious. Aren't you?”

The thing on the counter suddenly changed directions, and I slammed the basin down, scattering medical supplies. Deilani gasped.

“Did you get it?”

“I think so,” I replied, feeling something bump against the metal.

“Did you see it?”

“No,” I said, concentrating on holding the basin in place. I could both hear and feel the thing inside scrabbling around on the smooth metal. My skin crawled. I looked at Salmagard. She was from Old Earth. “You think it's a—a rat?” That was an Earth mammal about the right size. But this didn't sound like something soft and furry.

She shook her head.

“How is this
possible
?” Deilani stepped forward, then backed away again.

“It's not,” I told her. “This little guy is motivated.” It was scrambling around in there nonstop, making quite a bit of noise on the metal. “Maybe he's a local.”

“You said there wasn't any indigenous life,” Deilani accused. Her eyes were wide, and she'd backed up all the way to the wall.

“Did I say that? All I know is the original survey didn't find any, but by the way this planet interferes with sensors, I'm not surprised. And I don't want to sound like I looked closely at those findings. I just heard a few things, that's all. I'm not an expert.”

“But we were out there. How could this place support life?”

“There are a lot of different kinds of life,” I replied, eyeing the basin. I took my hand away, and the metal bowl immediately began to move along the counter. I quickly anchored it again. “And there are less hospitable planets than this one.”

“I don't believe it.”

“Neither do I,” I said honestly. There had to be an explanation for this. A malfunctioning piece of equipment? No, a burst O
2
cartridge would rocket around for a moment, but it wouldn't sound like this. A surgical claw wouldn't be this frenetic, either. Whatever this was, it was alive. The only explanation was that it belonged on this ship, brought along by one of the crew. Uncommon, but not unheard of.

I was at a loss.

“What do we do?” Deilani asked. We didn't have time for this.

“Let's dump it in something clear so we can see it. If it's a hamster I'm going to be mad.”

“It's not, sir.” Salmagard looked very confident. And she would be, I supposed. Maybe she'd even had a real hamster growing up. My family certainly hadn't been able to afford that, but I'd played with a virtual one once.

“Then let's do it, and be quick,” I said, but before I could move the bowl, the ship gave a mighty lurch, more dramatic than the ones that had come before. We all staggered, and I lost track of the basin. I stumbled, caught Deilani, kept her upright, and grabbed the examination table.

It didn't stop. This was it. Time was up. The ship rocked around us.

Salmagard had the power pack. Deilani had the lasers.

I shoved them both into the corridor and tumbled after them. The floor shook and jumped beneath us. Our boots' sensors didn't
know what to make of this gravity or the tremors. The emergency lights flickered.

The ship was grinding and shifting; the ground beneath it was weakening. The shapes of the cavities beneath us made them structurally strong, but that couldn't change the frailness of the mineral or the weight of the freighter. We were sliding toward the edge, and this time we wouldn't stop.

I didn't let myself panic. I'd had to move fast under these exact circumstances before. Fear wouldn't help, only clear thinking.

Maybe this time that was actually an option.

Unsecured equipment was everywhere, falling out of cabinets that were normally held shut with electromagnets made useless by the lack of power. Crashes echoed through the narrow metal corridors, drowning out our footfalls.

It was a noticeably steeper climb to the bay, and it was getting harder to stay on our feet. Deilani tripped more than once, but Salmagard and I were there to keep her up. We burst into the open, hand-lights flashing madly over the crates. We could see the flyer's running lights. Nils had been shouting at us to hurry over the com; now he was making himself useful.

I took the surgical lasers and the power pack from Deilani, and pointed at the Avenger. “Get her ready to fly,” I ordered, making for the bay doors. It was a long way, and anything less than a sprint wasn't an option. The deck tilted underfoot like a watercraft in a storm.

Things were breaking. Locks and safety seals couldn't handle this; the crates that dominated the cargo area were stacked high. They were falling, smashing open on the deck.

The noise was deafening, but the upside to having no power
was that there were no Klaxons. I didn't need more Klaxons in my life.

There was the crate of 14-14, pushed against the doors and secured with binders. Nice work, Nils. One of the doors was open, and a cylinder had fallen out of its clamps, threatening to go bounding across the rolling deck. I clutched the lasers and the power pack to my chest as I ran.

“Systems good,” Deilani was saying. “Admiral, we're locked out of the systems!”

“Nils, do something about it.”

“On it, sir.”

“What are you doing?” Deilani asked the ensign.

“LT, please let me work.” Nils' voice was strained.

“I don't think you're supposed to do that,” she said.

“Deilani, let him steal the damn shuttle,” I snapped.

I wanted to cry. I
needed
these kids to keep up.

“Oh,” Deilani said. “All right. Well, strap in. No, don't raise the ramp yet!” she ordered.

“Thanks,” I gasped. Maybe Deilani didn't want me dead anymore. That was progress.

No, I was just worth more to her alive.

“Sorry.” Nils' voice came over the com. “Wasn't thinking.” I could tell from his voice that he was hanging by a thread. I hoped Deilani wouldn't let him do anything stupid.

As the deck bucked, doing its best to throw me all the way back to the starboard bulkhead, I knew exactly how he felt.

I flung myself into the container with the 14-14, dropping to my knees. I'd never done anything like this with no light and no time before, but how hard could it be?

With shaking fingers, I tried to unscrew the casings on the surgical lasers. I pulled my knife and pried the panel off the power pack, searching for the right wires. I found the limiter and snapped it off, then broke the little crystal that would detect heat buildup.

There wasn't time to make this look good. I stripped and combined wires, hoping desperately that the light of my suit was showing me the real thing, and not just what I wanted to see. This wasn't meant to be done with gloves, and my fingers felt clumsy.

The pack was destabilized; I jammed the three lasers in where they wouldn't come loose, and wedged the power pack between two of the cylinders. It would go critical fast, and start to burn through the shielding protecting the 14-14. How long that would take, I wasn't sure. I'd never done a job this sloppy before.

I went for the door, but a cylinder broke from its clamps and struck me hard in the chest, pounding me back against the wall of the container, knocking more cylinders free. They crushed me to the deck. They weren't as heavy as power cells, but they were still a good hundred kilograms each, and I had about three on top of me.

I tried to lever myself out from under them, but it wasn't happening. The EV suit struggled to keep its form, preventing the cylinders from smashing me flat.

Ah, hell. What was the word for this? The Old Earth word?

Karma.

It looked as though the admiral was going down with the ship. That was an Old Earth thing too, right? Or was it captain? I was seeing stars, I couldn't breathe, and I wasn't thinking straight.

Salmagard appeared in the doorway. She knelt and tried to lift one of the cylinders. I opened my mouth to say something clichéd,
but the cylinder actually moved a little. She set her back to it and pushed. It tumbled aside, and she dragged me out.

It was easy to think of the gentry as a bad Evagardian joke. Ninth-tier genes? I was impressed.

I was too breathless to say anything, and so was she. She pulled me to my feet, paused long enough to see that I could stand on my own, and sprinted off for the Avenger. I staggered after her.

The deck suddenly tilted down in front of us; the front of the ship had begun its final slide into the chasm, and the aft end was rising.

The ship gave a sudden jerk, putting us into free fall. Salmagard was going too fast. I caught her hand before she could be thrown past the flyer, and threw out my arm for the landing strut.

The impact felt like it should've separated my arm from my body, but centrifugal force helped me swing Salmagard onto the ramp. She slammed a glove onto metal, put a cling charge into it, and reached out to help me on.

We clambered up; the angle of the ramp made for an almost vertical climb—then we were inside the flyer. Nils hit the ramp control, and it closed with a hiss.

He and Salmagard got me upright and hauled me to the cockpit, where Deilani hurriedly vacated the pilot's seat.

“Strap in,” I wheezed, securing myself. I was seeing double. I focused on the controls.

The angle of the deck was too much; the Avenger's weight broke the craft free of its restraints, and we began to slide down the bay. We struck a stack of containers, which broke apart, beginning a chain reaction. Even more cargo crates rained around us, bursting on the deck.

The trainees all grabbed for handholds, Nils and Deilani swearing loudly.

If that pack didn't go critical and set off that 14-14—

I caught a flash from the crate.

“Close your eyes!” I grabbed the stick and hit the thrusters. There was a heartbeat's delay, and the Avenger blasted forward hard enough to throw me back in my seat, and get a startled cry out of Deilani. I hoped they'd secured the supplies back there.

Even with my eyes shut, the blast burned. Everything in the bay was instantaneously reduced to atoms, and the impact on the shuttle was substantial. I shoved the stick down to keep control, opening my eyes and trying to blink away the stars.

The glare cleared, and all I could see was green. It went on, and on, and then there were stars.

The Avenger's tactical screen automatically focused on what it perceived to be action, showing what was taking place below us. There wasn't much of the freighter left, only pieces. The chasm had tripled in size, and what I could see of its walls was glowing white, and bubbling from the heat.

The remainder of the freighter slipped into the darkness, sliding out of sight. It didn't fall over, or smash to the bottom of the chasm. The vast ship just vanished into the black void.