Revolution: The Ship Series // Book Two (15 page)

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

Everyone take a deep breath.

“OK
, Zax, how much further?” The Boss
still had a flush in his cheeks from his misadventure as he looked at Zax
expectantly. With the bomb wreckage behind them, there appeared to be a clear
path to the destination. Only a few hundred meters of passageway stood between
them and the target compartment, and Zax relayed this information. The officer
smiled in response. “We just might make it after all. Everyone—let’s move.”

The dissipating adrenalin from rescuing the Boss and
Nolly combined with the relief of being so close to their final destination
resulted in the group moving in more of ragtag fashion than the tight formation
they had maintained previously. The three cadets led the way, followed by Nolly
and then Imair, with Bailee and finally the Boss bringing up the rear.

They reached a Tube junction which Zax recognized as the
last milestone before they would get to the compartment with the safe room. He
walked past the useless Tube and a few secs later heard a commotion behind him.
He turned and saw Imair had tripped on something and crashed to the deck.

The civilian was not hurt, but she seemed embarrassed
and paused for a few secs as she appeared to gather her wits. Sergeant Bailee,
uncharacteristically, offered her a hand up once he was close enough, but she
brushed it away. The Marine shrugged and walked past her, and Zax turned to
move on as well. He had only taken a half dozen steps when he heard the Marine
bellow behind him.

“Drop it or I kill the boy!”

Zax spun around and was startled by the tableau before
him. Imair had backed herself against the Tube entrance and held the Boss in
front of her as a shield with one hand clutched against his wound. She had a
mini blaster in the other hand which was pointed at the Omega’s temple as he
grimaced in pain. Sergeant Bailee knelt a few meters away with his back to Zax.
The Marine was crouched behind Nolly to shield himself from Imair and held an
identical mini blaster pointed at the boy’s head.

The Boss remained perfectly still as he spoke calmly and
deliberately.

“Everyone take a deep breath. No one has to get hurt
here—especially the boy. Imair—let me go and drop the weapon. You’ve got
nowhere to go. Trust me, you’re not getting away from here and killing me won’t
get you anything. Let me go, drop the weapon, and everything will be OK.”

Time seemed to slow down for Zax as he watched what
happened next as if in slow motion.

Imair’s resolve appeared to waver as she listened to the
Boss’s words, and she lowered the blaster away from the officer’s head. As she
did so, the Tube entrance opened behind her. She pointed the weapon at Nolly
and pulled the trigger. The blast still echoed in the passage as she yanked the
Boss into the Tube, the door shut, and they were gone.

Sergeant Bailee bolted for the Tube and pounded on the
entrance to no effect. Nolly remained standing for a moment and looked down at
his chest. Then, he crumpled silently, face down, onto the deck. Zax dashed for
the boy and got there at the same time as Kalare and Aleron. They rolled the
boy onto his back and revealed the massive damage the blaster had done to his
small body. He opened his eyes and looked at Zax.

“It hurts so bad, sir.”

The boy coughed twice and then his slight frame spasmed
for a few secs before going still. Zax checked for a pulse and found none.
Nolly was dead.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

You
need to look at the big picture.

Zax
couldn’t comprehend what had just happened in the blink of an eye. He stared
quietly for a few secs until it truly sank in. Then he pounded on Nolly’s chest
in a poor imitation of a medic trying to revive someone’s heart.

“No, no, no, NO!”

A strong hand gripped Zax’s shoulder and he whirled
around. Sergeant Bailee looked down at him with compassion. Zax slapped the
Marine’s arm aside.

“Don’t touch me! This is all your fault! How could you
use that boy as a bargaining chip, as a shield? He’s eight! What kind of
monster tries to save himself at the expense of an eight-year-old? Where the
hell did the blasters come from, anyways?”

The Marine remained stoic in the face of Zax’s attack.

“The Boss retrieved the blasters from a hidden weapons
cache which Omegas can access. He visited it earlier when the two of you were
traveling alone. He and I thought it was better to keep their existence a
secret in case we needed the element of surprise at some point. She must have
discovered the Boss’s somehow and took it when she grabbed him.

“As for the boy’s death—the woman had absolutely no
reason to do so and she killed him anyways. Doesn’t it seem like that might
have been part of her plan all along? It was probably a distraction to prevent
me from taking a shot. Or maybe the boy has some information she wanted to
guarantee we didn’t get. Or maybe she was just sick and tired of him clinging
to her all day long. I have no idea, but it doesn’t matter. She killed the boy.
More importantly, she has the Boss.”

Kalare had sidled over and placed a calming hand on
Zax’s shoulder. He allowed it to stay but maintained his outrage. “I couldn’t
care less about him right now! Nolly’s dead.”

The sergeant sighed loudly. “You want to be a pilot,
cadet? You’re doing that because you want to be an officer someday and lead,
right? Maybe even be an Omega? Well, today’s your lucky day. You get the lesson
early in your career that so many Flight officers don’t get until much
later—people die. As part of the Ship’s Mission, people die. Some will be
people you detest, but some will be people you appreciate. Some will die for
good reasons, some for bad. Regardless, your job is to learn from each death
and move on as fast as possible.

“I know you’re upset because the boy was your friend and
he was young. I get all of that. But you have to put that aside and think about
the big picture. If she was able to get that Tube to function, it means the
woman has been working with the civilian insurgents all along. That means they
have the Boss and that’s a massive problem which is entirely on me for not
killing him before that door shut.”

Zax wanted to argue about the importance of Nolly’s
death but was shocked by the sergeant’s words. “Wait—you would have killed the
Boss? What is it with you and officers today? First you take out the Chief
Engineer and now you turn around and say you were ready to kill the Boss too.”

“Big picture, cadet. You need to look at the big
picture. What’s about to happen here? The Captain is going to shut down the
life support system and vent the Ship. Why is she willing to kill ten million
civilians and some large portion of our Crew? To prevent the worst possible
thing from happening—civilian takeover. This group of civilians is
well-prepared compared to those of past attempted revolutions, but like all of
the others they don’t have a truly effective bargaining chip. The Captain needs
to guarantee they don’t get one.”

Aleron’s eyes had gone wide at the mention of the Ship
being vented. He opened his mouth to say something, but quickly closed it
rather than interrupt the sergeant as the man continued.

“In the big picture no one cares if they bomb a bunch of
compartments and kill hundreds or even thousands of Crew. We can replace
everyone on this Ship and
almost
everything. What is the only thing on
this Ship that is truly irreplaceable?”

The Marine looked at each of the cadets and waited.
Kalare removed her hand from Zax’s shoulder and broke the silence.

“The FTL.”

The Marine smiled. “If I gave a damn about credits,
you’d have just earned a bunch. The FTL engine is the only thing on this Ship
which we can neither repair nor replace. That’s why it’s isolated and protected
the way it is. The civilians managed to pierce the first layers of security and
got into Engineering. But they’re still blocked by the impenetrable armor which
surrounds the FTL compartment.

“Only four Omegas have the security permissions
necessary to access that compartment. The Captain, the Boss, the Chief
Engineer, and a fourth who is known to Alpha and only identified if the other
three are incapacitated in an emergency. Each of those officers has been
trained to withstand nearly inhuman levels of pain, but every person has a
breaking point. Who knows what kind of crazy torture is possible with these
collars patched into our Plugs. Killing the Chief Engineer was the only way to
guarantee she never gave the civilians access to the FTL. She knew we would try
to do it and almost certainly welcomed the reprieve from the torture she
faced.”

Aleron finally got up the nerve to jump in. “I don’t get
it, Sergeant. What benefit would the civilians have from getting access to the
FTL? They would be just as screwed as the Crew if they destroyed it. We’d all
be stuck on this stupid rock in the middle of nowhere, unable to reach anywhere
else before running out of fuel.”

“Good point, cadet, but in the big picture they have
nothing to lose. If you already believe you’ve hit absolute bottom, then even
something as insane as marooning the Ship for all eternity is a rational
strategy. The Captain is no doubt well aware of this dynamic which is why she’s
willing to take the drastic action of venting the Ship.

“The game theory changes once they have the Boss,
though. That’s one crazy tough man, but eventually he’ll crack. Everyone
cracks—it’s just a question of how long it takes. Once he does, the civilians
will access the FTL compartment and load it up with explosives. A legitimate
threat of FTL destruction will guarantee them the upper hand, and the Captain
will have no choice but to surrender and give the civilians whatever they
want.”

The cadets were quiet for a few secs as they processed
the Marine’s words. The pause allowed Zax to recognize why he had reacted so
viscerally to Bailee’s statement about killing the Boss. It was not driven by any
concern for the officer’s well-being, but instead by what Zax feared it would
mean for the nascent recovery of his career. The harsh reality of Nolly’s death
combined with the sergeant’s revelations about the high stakes involved in
their situation finally made everything click into place. Any worries about his
career were absurd in the middle of this revolution. If the civilians managed
to wrest control of the Ship, the whole idea of credits and the Leaderboard
would be moot. Yes—the person who spoke on their behalf said the civilians
wouldn’t change things once they were in control, but Zax had to believe that
was a lie. Why else would the Omegas be so afraid of civilian control that the
Captain would be willing to vent the Ship and kill almost everyone rather than
let them have it?

One thing nagged at Zax about the Marine’s explanation.
“Excuse me, Sergeant, but if the Captain is about to vent the Ship, why does
this matter at all? Surely the Boss can manage to hold out against even the
worst torture knowing it will all be over soon enough.”

“You would be right, cadet, except for one important
thing. When they vent the Ship, there are certain critical compartments which
will be excluded. The Bridge, Engineering, safe rooms like the one we were
trying to reach, Marine garrisons, and a few others. Even after the Ship has
been mostly purged, the civilians will remain in control of Engineering and
continue to work on the Boss. If they are smart, and all indications suggest
they are, they will throw everything they can at keeping us out of that
compartment until the Boss cracks and they access the FTL.”

The Marine waited for his last revelation to sink in.
Eventually, Kalare spoke up.

“So how are we going to kill the Boss before that
happens?”

Sergeant Bailee smiled. “I thought you’d never ask.
Corporal—lift your visor.”