Battlecruiser Alamo - 7 - Battlecruiser Alamo: Sacred Honor (12 page)

 Racing to the elevator, he waited impatiently for it to respond to his summons, and anxious
ly
climbed inside, setting a destination in the lower engineering levels, down at the heart of the ship. Someone had decided to throw him a break, possibly even the Captain himself, and he wasn’t going to let him down again – though within a few seconds the security systems would undoubtedly detect that there was no-one in the cell. Almost on cue, sirens began to peal and the elevator jerked to a halt.

 Espatiers were trained in escape and evasion. The final exercise of basic training saw them released into an abandoned space station and ordered to hide as long as they could, while their erstwhile instructors attempted to hunt them down. Cooper had been the last of his class to be caught after thirty-one hours on the run. Reaching down to the floor, he pulled up the maintenance hatch and slid down, hooking his arms and legs onto the emergency ladder.

 Sliding down as rapidly as he dared, he moved from level to level, barely registering his location. His goal at the moment was to get lost in the bowels of the ship, and it didn’t matter for the present whether he knew where he was or not. At the sixth deck he stopped, and tapped in an override code to open the door. Crawling out into an empty corridor, he glanced around, racing away from the shaft. This level was near the rear of the ship, forming a complete circuit around the side of the ship; he’d held races down here in happier times with his squad.

 Shouting behind him warned him that his time was running out; it belatedly occurred to him that Lane might have orchestrated his freedom in a bid to shoot him while attempting escape. His suspicions seemed confirmed as he noted her voice, shouting orders to what sounded like Duggan and Duvalier. Stuffing his pistol deep into the pockets of his jumpsuit, he raced away, trying to make it to a side hatch.

 The elevator arrived behind him as he sprinted, and figures raced after him onto the deck. He couldn’t afford to stop, turn, or wait for even a second; instead he began a textbook evasion, waiting for the bullets to fly. If this was a trap, he had placed himself in it fair and square, cursing himself for an idiot.

 “Shoot him!” Lane yelled, and when only silence answered her, she said, “Then I will,” and two cracks
echoed
down the corridor. The first missed Cooper by inches, the second didn’t, tearing into his arm, blood running down his uniform.

 “What the hell are you doing?” Duggan yelled. 

 “Bringing down an escaped felon, and Private, you are on report.”

 Cooper couldn’t see what was going on behind him, but he could guess. Gritting his teeth in a desperate attempt to avoid the pain shooting down his arm, he reached the hatch he was trying for and climbed in, sealing it behind him. The lock would hold for only a few seconds, but it shouldn’t need to last for any longer.

 Reaching for the maintenance locker, he selected a long cable that looked as if it might support the weight of a man, hundreds of meters of it. Locking one end to the hatch, he tossed the other down the shaft, disappearing into the darkness beneath. As a series of bangs sounded from outside, someone trying to force it open, he ripped strips from his sleeves, tied them around his hands, grabbed the cable, and with a muttered prayer, leapt from the ladder.

 Despite some worrying creaks, the cable held, doing its job. As the hatch disappeared from view he saw it burst open, Lane looking down with her pistol raised; he braced himself for a shot that would kill him no matter what happened – if he let go, he’d fall for a third of a mile. There wouldn’t be much left of him at the end. A hand slapped her wrist, and she turned out of the hatch, shouting as he faded from view. Someone had just saved his life.

 Now he had to take advantage of it. If he’d picked the right hatch, he was on his way to the zero-gravity core of Alamo, the uninhabited heart of the ship. There were excellent reasons why it wasn’t occupied; most of it contained the materials storage and fuel tanks, and the rest was primarily the relay systems for the hendecaspace drive and the laser cannon. It wasn’t a healthy place to be, but it was a maze of shafts and tunnels dug into the hull around the primary systems, and it was the area with the least surveillance. Even a full platoon of espatiers would struggle to find him in there.

 With a grunt, he collapsed onto the deck at the bottom, rebounding back in the low gravity. He pushed the cable away, watching it curl up towards the hatch. His arm was beginning to hurt badly, but he couldn’t do anything about it yet; time enough to seek out a first aid kit as soon as he had got away.

 Taking a corridor at random, he pushed off, using his good hand to speed his path. Swinging under a sign marked ‘Danger of Death’, he ducked into a side shaft, behind a series of of storage crates, then twisted down another, and a fourth. With no sign of pursuit, he could relax a little; locked to the wall was a box with a red cross emblazoned on it, and he snapped it open and rummaged around for a painkiller, bandages and dressings drifting out into the corridor.

 Stabbing pain was rapidly replaced with mild tranquility, and he rummaged through a series of bandages for the right fit, ripping the remainder of his sleeve off to expose the wound. It felt a lot worse than it actually was; the bullet had passed through his arm cleanly, entry and exit wounds both neat. Treating it still took five minutes, and he paused for a second, taking time to breathe.

 Then he panicked again; a blinking light indicated that the inventory system was being updated, and it wouldn’t take a genius to work out that he was the only one who would be using the first aid kits in the central core. A clock on the wall gave him another reason to hurry; while Alamo was in normal space it was a bad idea to linger in this area without protective equipment, but in hendecaspace this place would be truly uninhabitable. That meant he had only three and a half hours to find a more permanent place to hide.

 He paused for a moment, thinking over his options. Clearly someone on the outside was helping him, though he didn’t think the Captain would have been quite so direct as to toss him a pistol and leave the door to his cell open. There was only one thing to do – take the risk to actually contact someone on the outside, try and get some assistance, at least to make sure that he wouldn’t show up on any detectors when he got back. He could lurk around the maintenance shafts for as long as he wanted, but that wasn’t going to catch the saboteur.

 Kicking down the corridor, he quickly found what he wanted – a communications link. It took a few moments to encrypt it, bouncing it around as many terminals as he could to try and buy some time. Taking a deep breath, he tapped in a sequence.

 The voice of Barbara, his girlfriend, sounded through the corridor, “Bradley here.”

 “Barbara, it’s me.”

 “Gabe, what the hell is going on. Orlok talked to me earlier…”

 He interrupted her, saying, “There isn’t much time. Someone just broke me out of detention, and I’ve got no idea who it was. You need to get to the Captain, and you need to do it right now. Tell him that I am loose and that I intend to carry out my mission, but I’m going to need someone riding shotgun on the outside to help me do it.”

 “Your mission?”

 “I can’t talk over this line. It’s secure at my end, but you are probably a few moments away from a visit from some people with guns. I hate to do this to you, but you’ve got to get moving.”

 “I’ll do my part. Just tell me what the hell is going on sometime, will you?”

 “As soon as I can. I’ll call you when I can. Out.”

 Less than a minute, hopefully not long enough for anyone to get to him, though undoubtedly they were tracing the communication signal. Pausing for a second, he smiled as he set the console to start randomly contacting people on Alamo, one after another. There wouldn’t be any encryption, but all he was trying to do was buy some time.

 While he still had three hours before he had to leave the central core, he was getting more uncomfortable by the minute. He had to trust that Barbara would be able to get to the Captain before Lane could get to her; at this point she was his top suspect. Pushing off down a corridor, he raced towards the nearest lock, opening it as he flew past. Right now he was working on distractions rather than trying to escape; that would come in a moment.

 Twisting down a long corridor wrapped around the laser mounting, trying to avoid the delicate equipment that could knock Alamo’s primary weapon out of action, he found the route he wanted – right to the cargo bays, where he could hide amidst a maze of crates and containers. They’d have to almost unload to complete a systematic search, and it would buy him time to think for a little.

 Pausing at the hatch for a second for a last look around, he slid up the corridor, pulling himself up the ladder, feeling the usual slight uneasiness as he ascended into gravity, the climb taking more and more effort on his wounded arm until finally he was gasping for breath, hanging onto a rail with his good hand and looking down. If he fell, it would probably lead to his capture, and certainly cost him valuable time.
Assuming he didn't just break his neck.

 Redoubling his efforts, Cooper scrambled up the remaining rungs of the ladder, finally reaching the hatch. His trembling fingers worked the mechanism and he pulled himself up to the deck with one last effort, half-expecting to hear sirens and shouts, the crack of bullets and the noise of approaching troopers.

 The only thing surrounding him was crates. He sat where he was, panting, and suddenly realized that he was starving. A foray into a nearby box provided him with an emergency ration pack, and though under normal circumstances he would have groused about it, he was only too glad to scoop up the goo with the almost-crackers. An RFID scanner had been left lying around, and he ran it over the pistol, curious as to the identity of his benefactor.

 It did not surprise him in the slightest to find that the label read, ‘Cooper, Lance-Corporal G.’

Chapter 12

 “Where the hell did you get this, Danny?” Marshall’s father said as he kicked back another slug of purple gin, lounging on the chair in his quarters.

 “A friend of mine on Ragnarok shipped me a few bottles before we left on our last mission.”

 “Friend?”

 “She was Prime Minister last time I looked, though I think it’s probably Senator now.”

 Shaking his head, his father said, “Damn it, I never knew any politicians well enough that they would send me anything but poison in a bottle.”

 “Drink enough of that, and it’s exactly what you’ve got.”

 Shaking his head, he replied, “I still can’t quite believe I’m sitting here in your cabin, with you as commander of your own battlecruiser. I keep thinking I’m going to wake up back on Discovery, all of this just a dream.”

 “Good or bad?” 

 “It’ll be better once we set a course for home.” Before he could say anything else, alarms started to sound throughout the ship, snapping the two of them to attention. Marshall swallowed a couple of pills, sobering up instantly, cursing under his breath for the waste of good alcohol, and stabbed a button on the wall.

 “Marshall to bridge. Report.”

 “Kibaki here, sir. Corporal Cooper has broken out of confinement.”

 “How the hell did he manage that?”

 “I don’t know, sir. Lieutenant Lane reports that she is on his tail.”

 Glancing at his father, he replied, “Tell her to proceed with caution, and that she is to use non-lethal force only.”

 “I can’t get her on the communicator, sir,” the frustrated watch officer replied, “I’ve got no idea what the hell is going on down there.”

 There was a loud banging on the door, someone obviously trying to get in. Marshall tapped to open the door, and Spaceman Bradley ran in, red-faced and panting, looking around the corridor as she darted inside.

 “Keep trying, Kibaki. I’ll call you back in a minute.”

 “Yes, sir.”

 “Well, Bradley, what brings you here at this hour of the night?”

 She glanced at his father, then said, “Can I talk?”

 Nodding, Marshall replied, “Yes, you might as well.”

 “You want me to leave?” his father said. 

 “No, you might as well know about this as well. Speak up, Spaceman.”

 “I’ve spoken to Cooper, sir. He’s on the run. Told me that he was going to attempt to continue his mission, but he needs some backup to prevent him from getting caught.”

 “Did he say how he got out?”

 “Only that someone broke him out, sir. I think he presumed it was you.”

 Shaking his head, he replied, “It wasn’t me.”

 “Cooper was working for you all the time. Why did he kill Matsumoto?” his father said, frowning.

 “He didn’t,” Marshall replied. “Bradley, is someone after you?”

 “I think so, sir. I just got to the elevator in time.”

 The door burst open again on a security override, and Steele ran in, gun in hand, waving it dangerously around. Marshall bolted to his feet, staring down at her.

 “Sub-Lieutenant, stand down!”

 “Lieutenant Lane…”

 “Unless you want to be busted down to Recruit Spaceman, holster your damn sidearm! Spaceman Bradley is here at my orders.”

 “Sir?”

 “At my orders, Sub-Lieutenant, and I have grown surprisingly accustomed to them being carried out. Return to your quarters.”

 “Cooper has escaped, and I…”

 His voice booming, Marshall said, “Confine yourself to your quarters until the start of your next duty shift, Sub-Lieutenant, or you can take the vacant spot in the bri
g
!”

 Looking down at the deck, she nodded. “Yes, sir.” As she slinked out of the room, Marshall turned back to his father.

 “Could I ask that you escort Spaceman Bradley back to her quarters. I have the horrible feeling that she’s going to be in need of a chaperon.”

 “You might be right about that,” he replied. “Come along, Spaceman. My boy seems to have his work cut out for him.”

 They cautiously walked out of his quarters, and Marshall tapped the communicator again, “Kibaki, you up there?”