Owner 03 - Jupiter War (52 page)

‘We have to get away from here,’ Trove added. ‘But, before we go, we have some unfinished business.’ She began walking over to where Sack had deposited Serene Galahad on the ground, then removed her helmet and lodged a wad of the plentiful loose material here under her head. Galahad seemed to be recovering, reaching up with one hand to rub at her face. The one soldier was sitting a few metres away, on an unidentifiable chunk of wreckage, carefully cleaning the blood from his face with a wet-wipe from a small medical kit. He no longer had his rifle and his sidearm was holstered. Trove’s intention was obvious.

Sack, meanwhile, was standing over by the dozer, inspecting its huge blade though not stepping too close to it. The heat radiating from that big curving chunk of metal was causing a visible haze in the night air, while flames and black smoke were shooting up from behind it. Clay smelled burning oil and guessed that the dozer’s hydraulic fluid must have caught fire. It was understandable, he supposed, for Sack not to want to get too near to any fire. The man had lost most of his skin in the aero crash on Earth that had nearly done for both Clay and Galahad, and subsequently had it replaced with that ugly keroskin. Though why he seemed so fascinated by the dozer blade, Clay could not fathom.

‘Well, how are you feeling, Galahad?’ said Trove.

The soldier now took note of her and began sliding his hand towards his sidearm. Trove immediately relocated her aim from Galahad towards him.

‘Yes, draw your weapon,’ said Trove. ‘But only with your forefinger and thumb, and then toss it to one side.’

The soldier flicked a glance across at Galahad, something odd appearing in his expression, though it was difficult to read on his ruined face. He shrugged, reached down carefully and withdrew it as instructed, then violently hurled it far beyond his reach. Clay eyed the bodyguard: Sack had turned away from the dozer blade and was now strolling back. There was something wrong here because he seemed completely unconcerned.

‘I feel ready to begin work, Pilot Officer Trove,’ said Serene Galahad, now sitting upright. ‘And I have no time for silly little dramas like this.’

Trove swung her aim across and pointed her weapon at Sack. ‘You, down on your knees.’

Sack continued approaching.

‘I said, down on your knees! Now!’

Sack halted, held up his hands in submission, then sank down, his knees crunching on shards of bone. Trove aimed again at Galahad.

‘We’re standing on your work,
ma’am
.’ Trove injected as much contempt into the honorific as she could.

‘We’re standing on the work of Alan Saul,’ Galahad replied, now rising to her feet. ‘It was the most horrific of crimes but, in essence, a necessary one to save Earth from humanity. I will build on that. I will remake Earth and I will remake the human race.’ She gestured all around herself. ‘One day there will be soil and trees here. These human dead will feed the rebirth of this planet.’

‘Haven’t we heard just about enough of this?’ Clay asked.

‘I reckon,’ Trove replied.

She pulled the trigger and the gun kicked in her hand, its flashing putting after-images into Clay’s eyes, and the noise so much louder than from modern weapons. Galahad flinched away, then steadied herself with eyes closed. She then reopened her eyes and smiled. Trove fired again, emptying the entire clip, the sound of the weapon thundering and echoing around them. And next, while she stood there still pulling the trigger, and it continued clicking like skeletal fingers, Sack, who moved with scary speed for such a big man, reached over and took it out of her hand.

Trove just stood there as Sack discarded the empty clip and inserted a new one, before heading over to stand next to his charge.

‘You didn’t think I would hand you a weapon with live rounds, did you?’ he asked mildly. He nodded towards Clay. ‘He had the real thing, which was why I took it away from him.’

‘Do you now see,’ said Galahad, ‘there is nothing to stand between me and the future. I will do everything I say, and that way I will save this world.’ She paused for a moment as if in reflection. ‘I would, of course, have liked to have seen you properly punished, as a lesson to all, but the situation is too complicated to explicate to the general public, so regretfully you will not be making any further appearances on ETV.’

She turned her attention to Sack. ‘Kill them.’

Command

Saul’s ship continued rising, and now further data were coming in.

‘Some kind of Mach-effect drive, apparently,’ said Jepson in Communications and Scanning – one of his four surviving command crew. ‘But apparently its primary source can’t be located, so we can’t knock it out.’

‘We don’t want to knock it out until he’s up here,’ Bartholomew stated. ‘If that ship goes down on Io again, we’ll have to sift through widespread wreckage for the Gene Bank data and samples.’ He paused for a second. After seeing the
Fist
obliterated, his instinct said that Saul’s ship was such a great danger that he should instantly open fire. But instinct nevertheless had to take a backseat to mission objectives. If he reacted out of fear and ended up destroying everything they had come for, he knew that an adjustment cell would be waiting for him back on Earth.

‘What has Tactical got to say?’ he asked.

It was another of the command crew, Cherie Grace, in charge of Weapons and Logistics, who replied: ‘Though we can’t locate the primary source of this Mach-effect drive, a sufficient bombardment should knock it out. He also has no real weapons any more, and little in the way of defensive capability. Scans show extensive damage inside, too.’

Bartholomew nodded. ‘We’ll try and target power sources . . . do we have his generators located?’

‘Mostly, but hitting them is not going to be easy.’

‘We’ll do that anyway, but make sure we avoid the Arboretum cylinder.’ Bartholomew wondered if there was anything else he had overlooked.

‘Do we have any updates from Earth?’ he asked.

Jepson failed to reply, and Bartholomew turned to him. The man was staring at his screen with his mouth open and an expression of shock.

‘Jepson?’

‘Something . . . something at Earth.’

‘Jepson!’ Bartholomew snapped. ‘Report!’

The man looked up. ‘There’s been an . . . explosion back there.’

‘And?’

‘Admiral, the readings are off the scale . . . We’re gathering data right now but it seems the nuclear arsenal of the
Scourge
detonated.’ He shook his head. ‘We can’t find the Traveller construction station.’

‘Sir,’ interrupted Grace.

‘What do you mean, you can’t find the construction station?’ Bartholomew demanded, ignoring Grace.

‘It’s gone, sir,’ Jepson replied.

‘It’s gone?’ Whole new scenarios opened before Bartholomew. ‘I’ll want confirmation of that, and more detail on what happened. Did we receive any messages prior to this event? And do we have any data on Serene Galahad’s location when it occurred?’

‘Sir!’ Grace insisted.

He held up his hand. ‘Shut up, Grace.’

If Serene Galahad had died in the detonation of the
Scourge
’s nuclear arsenal, then that put a whole new complexion on events – on his mission objectives, and on the penalty for failure. It would also mean a scrabbling for power back on Earth, the outcome of which he could influence with the weapons remaining to him aboard the
Command
. These were matters that needed his very close consideration. However, whatever he thought of Galahad, the fact remained that the Gene Bank data and samples were important for the future of Earth, and therefore should still be retrieved. It was just that, if she was dead, taking captives was no longer necessary. He could hit that command nexus at the centre of Saul’s ship, where he was sure Saul himself resided. He could probably hit everything else in there but for the Arboretum cylinder, because surely the data would be stored there, along with the physical samples. He could tear that ship apart and—

‘Admiral, sir!’ said Grace. ‘I must insist!’

‘Must you?’ he spat, rounding on her.

‘He’s accelerating, sir!’

‘Doubtless that has something to do with him getting away from the gravitational pull of Io,’ he said, returning his attention to his console and screen. After a second of studying the data Grace had relayed across, reality finally bit.

‘Open fire on the enemy vessel!’ he shouted. ‘Target everything but the Arboretum cylinder!’

‘Everything, Admiral?’ Grace enquired.

‘Everything,’ Bartholomew replied. ‘We’re not taking back any prisoners.’

‘Understood, sir.’

In moments Bartholomew felt it in his bones, as his ship began firing, and he also noted the lights dimming with the drain.

‘Power status?’ he asked.

‘Not enough to maintain everything,’ replied one of the engineers monitoring the ship’s systems.

‘Prioritize weapons, steering and side-burners.’

‘The vortex generator?’

‘Go to holding . . . no, go to induction draw. We certainly won’t be able to use it to move us, but we can use the power it’s stored up.’

Still studying his screen, he noted the distance between Saul’s ship and the
Command
rapidly diminishing. Perhaps Saul did have further weapons to deploy, but needed to get closer to use them, so it would be best to keep him at a metaphorical arm’s length.

‘Take us out.’ He directed the order to the two personnel at the helm and navigation console – two whose names he had yet to learn, for they were replacements for the pair who had died. ‘I want a minimum distance between him and us of twenty thousand kilometres, until all of his ship – but for the Arboretum cylinder – is reduced to scrap.’

Visuals now showed the railgun impacts on Saul’s ship: red spots appearing on its surface, like freckles on a face, and then fading, with glowing wreckage strewing out behind. This was the thing about the enemy, Bartholomew reckoned: Saul’s ship was a sphere with a fifteen-kilometre circumference and, though they could try and target vital parts of it, completely turning the majority of it to scrap, as Bartholomew had ordered, would be like turning a full-length train to scrap with just hand-held weapons.

Steering thrusters turned the
Command
and then a remaining side-burn fusion engine kicked in, thrusting him down in his seat but not as forcefully as their scrapped main engine had done.

‘He’s at twenty thousand,’ someone stated.

‘Have we hit his command centre yet?’ Bartholomew enquired.

‘Not yet,’ Grace replied. ‘Either our targeting is off or . . . Jepson?’

After checking his instruments for a short while, Jepson replied, ‘I’m getting positional changes in response to our firings.’

Now it was Grace’s turn to study her own instruments intently. ‘He’s using that drive of his to dodge.’

‘But I’m seeing impacts,’ said Bartholomew.

‘He can’t dodge everything, but is taking a lot of our shots in already severely damaged portions of the ship.’ She paused again, studying data, then went on. ‘Most of his vital equipment is on an equatorial plane, and he’s edge on to us but with a slight tilt. He’s making sure a lot of our hits are right on the equator, where they lose energy in remaining vortex generator armour, or then hit the smelting plants and bearing endcaps and he’s spinning to distribute the damage.’

‘Give me bracketed firing solutions,’ Bartholomew ordered. ‘This new drive is probably located somewhere on that plane.’ He turned to Jepson. ‘Any effect yet on that drive?’

‘His acceleration is increasing,’ said Jepson.

‘Eighteen thousand kilometres,’ declared their new navigator.

‘What?’ Bartholomew roared. ‘I told you the minimum safe distance!’

‘He’s still accelerating,’ said the pilot, ‘and we can’t maintain minimum distance, Admiral.’

Bartholomew felt his tension growing. Saul had caught Bartholomew out by deploying a plasma cannon and had destroyed the
Fist
by ruthlessly wrecking his own Alcubierre drive. Time and time again he had been underestimated, and no way would he be coming after them like this without some means of attacking.

‘Fifteen thousand kilometres,’ stated the navigator.

‘Start with the maser,’ Bartholomew ordered. ‘He at least won’t be able to dodge that.’

‘Firing,’ Grace replied, and the lights again dimmed, ‘but he’s tilted in response and is now completely edge on, so we’ve still got that equatorial infrastructure in the way. That means we’re mostly frying wreckage. I suggest we go to grid plot and hit every surface section that becomes available.’

‘No.’ Bartholomew shook his head. ‘Concentrate on the equatorial plane: he probably has some weapon in there that we haven’t seen yet.’

‘Present drive efficiency dropping,’ said the pilot.

‘Ten thousand kilometres,’ the navigator added, with a catch in his voice.

‘Tactical suggests reduced firing so as to increase suggested safe distance,’ said Grace, still appearing calm. ‘Our weapons are putting a power drain on pellet aggregation in the side-burner.’

‘Maintain maximum fire rate,’ Bartholomew ordered. He was damned if he was going to run from such a heavily damaged vessel, new drive or not, and suspected this might be a tactical feint on Saul’s part precisely to induce him to run.

‘I’m getting some strange visuals, sir,’ said Jackson. ‘But the maser and railgun firings are interfering . . .’

‘Relay to me.’

On the screen the image of Saul’s ship jumped closer, but then blurred and shimmered. It almost looked as if the hull was burning and boiling in certain areas. Maybe this was an effect of this Mach drive, or maybe the
Command
’s maser was starting to melt sections of the hull. However, something here definitely seemed wrong.

‘Cease firing for a full scan,’ he commanded. ‘And recommence firing immediately afterwards. Jepson, full link to my screen, updating as soon as scan data comes in.’

‘Yessir!’

The lights brightened as all firing shut down, then dimmed again while Jepson used ship’s sensors to do a full sweep of the approaching vessel as EM interference cleared. On his screen, Bartholomew watched Saul’s ship divide into small squares, image data in each rapidly cleaning up before it winked out again, the blur and the shimmering effect wafting away. From the pole downwards, the squares disappeared, soon revealing an area perhaps a kilometre across: a great blemish where the hull appeared to be melting.