Wanderer 3: Tainted Universe (46 page)

Mak was lucky.  He was still so stunned from the explosion, so numb, that he didn’t realise what was happening.  He died long before he could understand the horror of his situation.

*****

Sal stared at the guard, trying to gauge her chances of diving to safety before he fired.  She didn’t rate them at all.  She would have to do this the hard way then.  Linking to the ship she once again relayed orders to the
Dark Shadow
.  Much more precise orders this time.

Moments later the
Dark Shadow
fired a carefully powered shot against the shuttle bay doors.  Sal was blinded and deafened by the explosion.  If it wasn’t for the Gift she would have curled up in a ball.  And soon after she would have been dead.

The Gift overrode those reactions.  She hung onto the pressure suit’s helmet and jammed it in place, relying on feel because she still couldn’t see.  She wasn’t sure if the guard had fired his gun but she certainly hadn’t been hit.  She forced her body to loosen up, aiming to lessen the damage if the explosion drove her into the wall.  It didn’t.  A few moments later she felt the pressure suit begin to stiffen and inflate.  She’d made it!  She was off the
Shogan
!

Now she needed to reach the
Dark Shadow
.  While highly manoeuvrable the banshee wasn’t really up to the task of catching a tumbling and fast moving human.  And she
was
tumbling.  She’d interfaced with the suit’s cameras and could see that.  She was moving much more quickly than she’d anticipated too.  She needed to act quickly, before she drifted too far from the
Shogan
and the
Dark Shadow
.

Reaching out through her implant she took control of the shuttle she had been heading for.  As soon as it had cleared the deck she had it shoot towards her.  She was moving fast, but nowhere near as fast as a shuttle could.  Once it drew near she had it match speeds then drift in close with the rear door open to accept her.

There was nothing she could do about the tumbling.  She drifted into the shuttle easily enough, but then had to endure several hard knocks as she bashed into first a wall, then the ceiling, then a seat.  She picked up a lot of bruises but nothing was broken, and she was in the shuttle.  She aimed it towards the
Dark Shadow
, which had opened its airlock.

The banshee was too small to accommodate such a large shuttle.  Sal brought the shuttle alongside then opened the shuttle’s airlock.  Taking a deep breath she launched herself into space.  Even with the Gift her heart pounded at doing something so unnatural.  Her aim was true.  A few seconds later she drifted into the
Dark Shadow
’s airlock.  The airlock cycled and Sal was welcomed by two of the ship’s officers.  Both were smiling and she could immediately tell that they too had received the Gift.  She smiled back then followed them as they escorted her to the bridge.

Sal used her implant to link to the
Dark Shadow
’s systems.  The captain and officers on the bridge had prepared the way so it only took a few moments for her to gain full control of the banshee.

She opened a link to the
Shogan
.  She was too far from the
Shogan
to retain much control of its systems through her implants.  She could access some remotely but many had already been wrestled back under the control of the
Shogan
’s crew.  The shields were back up, though weapons and the jump engines were still safely offline.

It didn’t matter.  Sal sent a final command, then triggered the
Dark Shadow
’s jump engines.  Moments after the banshee had disappeared the
Shogan
obeyed Sal’s final order.  All safety systems for the engines disengaged and a series of commands were executed.  The commands rapidly destabilised the engines which failed catastrophically, wiping out all trace of the
Shogan
.  And all evidence that Sal had escaped.

Chapter Fifty-Four

The next approach would be the one, Clay decided, as his patrol took him to his maximum distance from Greenseed.  Two corvettes were already docked with the station, unloading squad after squad to secure it.  Several frigates and a destroyer stood just off the station, sending in specialists on their own shuttles.  A large group of corvettes waited nearby to provide more troopers if needed.

Clay was listening to the comms chatter.  Tempers were already getting frayed.  Trying to thread that many large ships through such a small area was taxing everyone, and that was before hundreds of shuttles were added into the mix.  Clay had no doubt that things were even more chaotic within the station.

Yes, now was the time to make his move.  As he closed in on the station he checked and rechecked his preparations.  He knew everything was ready but he was nervous.  This was far worse than preparing for combat.  There he could rely on his experience and skill to get himself out of any sticky situation.  This time he’d only get one shot.  He had to make it count.

*****

Greenseed Station

Lyons ducked as another explosion ripped across the operations room.  Looking up again he saw that the breach had grown bigger.  Large enough for someone to slip through.  The tainted were already trying.  Lyons shot the first.  Someone to his right took down the second.

They kept coming.  That was the worst part of a terrible situation.  There was no hesitation, no caution.  They just kept coming, firing as they came, even though it meant certain death.  And eventually they’d wear the defenders down.

Even as he had that thought someone to his left screamed.  Lyons couldn’t tell if they were dead or just badly injured.  It didn’t matter.  What mattered was that the defenders were being whittled down.

Lyons kept firing, choosing his shots carefully.  He had enough ammunition to hold out for some time.  Probably far longer than they’d actually be able to hold, but old habits died hard.

Another of the tainted shoved through.  Several shots rang out.  It collapsed to the floor, but not before it snapped off a shot at Lyons.  He felt a tug on his left arm but no pain.  Looking down he saw that the bullet had grazed his arm.  The wound was bleeding, but wasn’t deep.

Another scream came from his left.  This time he could see the defender who’d been hit.  She was slumped on the floor, her expression a mixture of surprise and pain.  Her last expression.  She was dead.

They weren’t going to last long.  Every fallen defender brought the moment of disaster closer.  Lyons needed to warn the commander.  He could use the entrance to the commander’s office to make a final stand, buying as many extra seconds as possible.  Whatever happened, the commander had to finish shutting down the station.

Another tainted shoved through the gap and was cut down by fire from the defenders.  Lyons was up and running before the body hit the floor.  He dived behind a console as gunfire erupted behind.  From the screams several people had been hit, though he had no idea whether they were tainted or the defenders.

The door to the commander’s office was only six metres away, but there was no cover.  He would have to get to the door and through it without being shot.  He took a deep breath, listening to the exchange of fire behind him.

As soon as it fell silent he was up and running.  His back itched, expecting a bullet to strike at any moment.  The urge to look back was almost irresistible, but somehow he stayed focused on the door before him.

To his surprise he made it without inviting a single shot.  He shoved the door inward.

“
Commander!” he yelled.  “We can’t hold much…”

His voice trailed off in confusion.  The commander was gone.  Lyons could see the whole office.  There was nowhere to hide.  But the commander wasn’t there.  He’d deserted them!  He’d left them to face the tainted while making his escape!

The shock was too much.  He would never have imagined the commander doing something so underhanded.  Did the commander really value his life that much more than those who served him?  Was he really such a coward?

Lyons would never know.  Instead of taking cover he stood rooted in the doorway, struggling to understand what he was seeing.  One of the tainted touting an assault rifle shoved through the breach and opened fire on the first target she saw.  Lyons.

The spray of bullets punched him off his feet.  As he lay dying in a spreading pool of his own blood a single thought kept running through his head.

Why had the commander deserted them?

*****

Greenseed Station

Marsh forced himself forwards through the narrow crawlway.  His body and face were smeared with oil and dirt.  Time was critical.  The secret tunnel in the commander’s office was a secret known only to him and to his deputy Alisha.  She was dead now, dead by his own hand, so only he knew the secret.

It wouldn’t last.  If the tainted knew that he had been in his office and disappeared then they’d rip the office apart.  The entrance to the passage was deliberately low tech so that it wouldn’t appear on any scans or maintenance records, but it would be found.

He was struggling to keep moving.  The tunnel often narrowed so much that he had to turn sideways.  Other times he was forced to crawl.  He spent more time going up and down ladders than going forwards, and the tunnel constantly changed direction.  The only light came from a hand torch he carried.

Still, the fact the tunnel existed at all was amazing — or the fact that it existed and no one had ever figured out it was there.  It had been built into the fabric of the station and weaved its way through the gaps between rooms.  Marsh had known about it since he took over Greenseed.  The previous commander had passed on the information.  But despite years of looking as he moved around the station he’d never managed to locate any hint of the tunnel’s existence.

He’d never expected to use it.  The tunnel had been built for the most dire of situations.  It offered a final way out for the Commander when all else had failed.  When the station was lost. Now he was taking it.

Not happily.  The thought of those he’d left defending the operations room filled him with shame.  Especially the fact they were fighting for a false hope.  There was no way he could shut down the station.  He’d lied.

He reached another ladder, this one heading down thankfully.  He followed a short length of passageway, then the tunnel bent sharply to the right.  Marsh turned the corner and came to a sudden halt.  He’d arrived.

He just stood and stared for a few moments.  Could he really do this?  No matter how hopeless things were, could he give up on Greenseed completely?

Then he remembered what was at stake.  He remembered how quickly the tainted would spread with the unwitting help of the Imperial fleet.  There was no choice.  He stepped into the room.

It was small.  Roughly five metres square.  The walls were covered with identical levers.  Each had a numeric label, but the numbers appeared to be randomly placed.  Marsh had come for one of the levers, and one only.

Pulling any of the other several hundred levers would immediately flood the room with poison gas and intense radiation.  It would lock out the other levers for twenty minutes too, and send an alert to the station’s commander.

None of that worried Marsh.  The number was fixed in his mind, just as it had been since he was first told the secret of the corridor and the room it led to.  He even knew which area of wall to check.  In moments he had found the label.  Four hundred and seventy-one.  There was nothing special about the number, no significance, as far as he knew.

He reached for the lever, but froze halfway there.  Had he just heard someone in the tunnel?  Maybe it was just someone outside.  The tunnel was far from insulated for sound.  But if it was someone in the tunnel then they were close.  He was out of time.

It was almost a relief.  He no longer had time to contemplate the decision.  This option had been in his mind since the tainted cut off the operations room, but he had always found a reason to delay.  No more.

Grasping the lever he pulled it downwards.  It was stiff, difficult to move, but he didn’t let that stop him.  The lever clunked into its down position.  The process had started.

The tunnel existed for a single reason.  To take the commander from the operations room to exactly where he now stood.  Only the room’s walls separated him from the station’s massive generators.  The lever was linked directly to powerful explosives which nestled inside the wall of the closest generator.

Marsh didn’t even have time to tense after pulling the lever.  There was no pain.  The explosion blasted him and everything nearby into atoms.

That was just the start though.  The explosion blew out parts of the generator and disrupted the powerful flows of energy.  That in turn caused a much larger explosion as the entire generator blew.  Devastating as that explosion was, it was just another link in the chain reaction.

The rest of the generators were heavily damaged by the explosion and went critical themselves.  Within a few tenths of a second every generator followed suit.  One generator blowing had been devastating.  Twenty-three blowing was exponentially worse.  Greenseed, and everything near it, was obliterated.

*****

Clay had covered half the distance to Greenseed.  In three minutes he would make his move. He forced himself to sit quietly, clearing his mind.  The ship was ready.  He needed to be too.

He slowed his breathing, preparing himself for what was to come and studying the situation near the station.  If anything things were even more chaotic than before.  Two corvettes had almost collided and were now angrily arguing over which was at fault.

Everything disappeared in a blaze of white.  Clay yelled, covering his eyes.  For a moment he thought something had glitched, that his engine had blown ahead of time.  A second later he realised he was still breathing.  He could still feel the ship around him.

His helmet and the fighter’s cockpit should have shielded him from the glare.  Why hadn’t they? Were they faulty?  He didn’t even consider the real reason, which was that they had worked but had been overwhelmed.  Without their protection his blindness would have been permanent rather than starting to clear after a few moments.

Tears streamed from his eyes, blurring his vision.  Shaking his head he dislodged them and tried to work out what had happened.  His first thought was that an explosion had shifted his heading, or had damaged his sensors.  There was nothing where the station and warships had been.  A quick check confirmed he was still pointing in the right direction, or his systems thought he was.  His sensors must have been knocked out.

Then something showed on the scanner.  A short distance from where the station should be was the destroyer that had been sitting near Greenseed, though only the identification signal it was sending allowed him to be sure.  The destroyer was in terrible shape.  Large chunks of the mighty warship were missing.  Vaporised.  The rest looked as if it had been used for target practice by a battleship.

Clay only realised how deathly quiet comms had been when the silence ended.  Stunned voices started to ask what had happened.  Others were shouting about an attack or an explosion.

All the chatter stopped abruptly as someone keyed in an override.  A firm voice barked out orders.  Several ships were dispatched to aid the damaged destroyer.  The rest of the fleet was ordered into battle formation.  All fighters were to return to their home ship and provide close escort cover.

Clay flicked through a few silent channels before stumbling upon a heated discussion.  No id’s were exchanged and any official equipment would be unable to even detect there was a signal.  Clay had long ago adjusted his comms equipment to listen in on the hidden channels.

“…don’t care what you say.  It was an explosion.  I’ve watched it back three times now.  One of the station’s generators blew and it took all the others out.  The explosion from that destroyed the station and almost everything we had nearby.  If the destroyer had been any closer she’d be gone too.”

“
It can’t have been the generators!  They have safety cut outs throughout them.  There’s no way they could ever go that catastrophically wrong.”

“
Not by accident maybe.  But what about deliberately?”

“
What?  But why?”

“
Well maybe to achieve exactly what they did.  How many ships did we lose?  How many people?”

“
Damn.  No.  But all the people on the station were killed too.  Who would do something like that?”

“
The tainted of course.  They’ve done worse.”

Clay felt his stomach drop.  The tainted had been aboard the station.  Worse, they had clearly had enough of a presence to destroy the station.  And he’d been planning on trying to live there, for a short while at least.  There really was nowhere safe anymore.

An urgent signal kicked in, overriding the channel he’d been listening to.  Someone with authority wanted to speak to him directly.  Somehow Clay wasn’t surprised to hear the Cobra’s voice.