Voices were calling for her, whispering in her ear, and it took a moment for her to realize that a rescue party was on the way. The pain had gone, replaced with a blank feeling, but one look down at her suit – which, miraculously, had not been damaged past the point of auto-repair – told her that she was badly wounded. She felt strange, as though she had been able to isolate herself from her body, an effect of the overdoses of medication her suit had pumped into her.
“Who are you?” a voice asked, and she turned her neck with an effort to see a trio of people with work suits, two of them carrying a stretcher. She struggled to focus as they repeated the question. “Who are you? Where are you from?”
“Sub-Lieutenant,” she paused and gasped, the painkillers already beginning to fade out, “Barbara Bradley. Battlecruiser Alamo.” Pointing at the crash, she said, “Senior Lieutenant Dixon.”
“Relax, Lieutenant,” a calming voice said, “We’re going to get you back to Third Landing, get you into our medical bay. We’ve already got a doctor on the way from Sagan City.”
“Tell Alamo,” she said, looking up at the opaque helmets. “Tell them what happened. My husband,” she gasped again, “and Dixon’s. They need to know.” She struggled to fight off the gray fog beginning to overwhelm her, and said, “Tell them!”
“We’ll try,” the voice said.
Nodding, Bradley relaxed, and let the fog carry her away.
Chapter 28
Cooper looked out of his viewport, watching his wife’s fighter dive away from the formation, heading for Mars with a host of death on her tail, his eyes widening as she swept down towards the atmosphere. He felt a hand on his shoulder, tapping him twice, and looked up to see Sergeant Forrest standing behind him.
“Game face on, sir. Time for our party.” Looking past him, he said, “She’ll make it. She’s a damn good pilot. You want something to worry about, take a look at that big beast up ahead.”
Nodding, Cooper switched his view to look at the battleship. Somehow, it hadn’t seemed that large when they were looking at it in the simulators. Almost a mile of twisting metal, revolving along
and
internal core, festooned with equipment, missile tubes, launch bays. At full strength, it would carry a crew of nearly five hundred, including a hundred Espatiers, enough to dwarf Alamo’s complement of a hundred and fifty. If they had anything like those numbers on board, this battle was going to end almost as soon as it started.
“We’re on the spin,” Cooper said as the shuttle began to thrust up, heading towards its designated airlock, close to the command section of the ship. He hoped. “Stand by to deploy as soon as we hit the deck.” Looking around at the all-too-eager men with him, people who had gone to battle with him before more times than he could count, he continued, “I don’t need to tell you what this fight means. You all know. A lot of people are depending on us to make this work, sixty million of them. Let’s put
on a good show.”
The shuttle turned around, ramping on the deceleration as it closed on its target, and he said, “Remember. Our mission today is strategic. We’ve got to take our three objectives in five minutes or it’s all over. If you haven’t received the word after that time is up, set your charges and pray.” Taking a deep breath, he said, “We don’t have time to spare for anything other than getting to our targets. Don’t give the enemy a break, and don’t stop. Lethal force authorized, and don’t let them get the first shot in.”
He shocked himself, perhaps more than he shocked his men, with that. That he was boarding a Triplanetary ship in earnest was difficult enough to take, but that he’d just ordered his men to fire first and ask questions later in such a raid was harder still. He tried to tell himself that these were escaped prisoners, that they had chosen their course of action, and that far more people would die in the war they were fighting to prevent, but none of that helped.
Oddly, the thought of his wife spiraling down to the surface, a likely casualty of that war, that helped. With an effort, he pushed it to the back of his mind, tried to ignore it.
T
his was business, not revenge, and that couldn’t be a part of what they were doing today, no matter how justified it might be. His personal business could be postponed. For five minutes, in any case.
With a loud slam, the shuttle locked into position, the locks remaining stubbornly closed for a few seconds before the intrusion software forced them open. Cooper led the charge into the ship, racing down the docking corridor to the main entry terminus. A pair of troopers – Triplanetary Espatiers – were waiting for them at the far end, and despite his order, he couldn’t bring himself to shoot them, his gun useless in his hand.
Lomax and Forrest proved to have no such compunctions, firing snapshots that beat their rivals to the punch, dropping them to the deck.
“Problem, sir?” Forrest said, locking eyes with him.
“Negative, Sergeant. You head for Engineering, I’ll take the Bridge. Good luck.” Looking around, he said, “Second Squad, to me!”
As his men rallied towards him, he heard a loud noise from behind, a clattering on the deck, and a quintet of troopers charged at his assembling men, guns in their hands. This time he turned and fired, a shot narrowly missing the lead trooper, who returned fire with his rifle. Cooper felt himself being thrown to the deck, and the mass of Forrest lay on top of him, his breath reduced to hacking coughs, his chest a bloody ruin.
“Get those bastards!” Lomax screamed, leading a counter-charge, bullets flying in all directions as Cooper tried to ease Forrest into a more comfortable position, looking to see if there was anything he could do to save his friend’s life.
“Gabe,” he rasped, “Finish this mess.” The grizzled veteran coughed, sending blood splattering onto Cooper’s uniform, and said, “Do better next time. Tell those bastards. Do better.” His voice trailed away, and gently, Cooper laid him on the deck, running his hand across his eyes to close them.
“We’ve got them, sir,” Lomax said, pointing at three bodies – three more dead Espatiers – down the corridor. “Two of them are running.”
“Take First Squad, Lomax,” Cooper said.
“But Corporal…”
“Take First Squad! Take Engineering! And
if
you can’t, blow this god-damned ship right back to the hell it came from! Is that clear!”
“Yes, sir,” the stunned trooper said, pausing for a breath before racing down the corridor, five men following. Cooper looked around, gestured in the other direction, and started to run, not waiting to see if anyone was with him.
Four minutes and thirty seconds to go. A loud grinding noise started to whine from the far end of the corridor, someone opting to close the blast doors in an attempt to contain the attack. Doubling his pace, he sped down, ducking under it, only two others making it through in time, the rest futilely pounding on the metal.
“Blow the damn thing!” Cooper yelled into his communicator. “Follow when you can!”
Everything was building up inside him, a white-hot ball of rage that threatened to carry him away. His wife, almost certainly dead, and Sergeant Forrest, his
oldest remaining
friend in the service, shot by one of his fellow Espatiers. When another pair of Zeus crewmen turned around the corridor, pistols in their hands, he didn’t hesitate for a second before unleashing a pair of shots into them, sending their bodies sprawling to the deck.
There wasn’t time to find out if they were alive or not, and a part of his mind was disgusted when he realized that he didn’t really care. He jumped over the bodies and turned down the corridor, leaving them behind. Behind him, he heard an explosion, and paused for a second before realizing that the rest of his force must have got through the blast doors and were on their way to join him.
It was then he realized that he was lost. He looked down the corridor, then up a side shaft, and couldn’t work out where to go.
H
is knowledge of the interior of the ship was vague enough anyway, and in the heat of battle he’d moved too quickly. Three minutes and forty seconds before he had to set the charge that the last trooper was carrying, then try and get the rest of his squad out of there.
No time for anything other than guesswork, and knowing what was at stake, while cursing himself for losing track earlier in his rage, he picked a direction and ran, his squad on his tail, not knowing that he didn’t know where he was going. He smiled as he saw the wall consoles get more complicated
–
a good sign. Backup systems monitors, extra life support telltales, and a series of escape pods along one wall. A lot of important people worked on this deck.
Just over a minute later, he turned a last corner and walked into a firefight, half a dozen shots cracking through the air. Instinctively, he tumbled to the ground, dropping and rolling away, and somehow managed to get back into cover without being hit. The trooper behind him was less lucky, staggering back with a bullet through his shoulder, blood spilling out onto the newly-carpeted corridor.
“That’s far enough!” a voice yelled. “We’ve got your other teams contained, it’s all over!”
“Not yet it isn’t!” Cooper said. “If we don’t take that bridge in two minutes, we’ll blow your damned ship to pieces!”
There was a brief pause, and he said, “You’re bluffing. None of you would get out of the blast radius in time. You’d be torn to pieces in the escape pods.”
Replying with a brief bark of laughter, Cooper said, “When I joined up, I was told that I might have to die in this uniform. That’s fine with me if it stops you!”
Counting to ten, Cooper waited
as
the murmuring dissent around the corner built, some of the troopers obviously arguing for them to come to terms, and the
n
screamed, “Now!” at his men, and rolled back around the corner, firing on instinct.
His first bullet hit home, catching one of the troopers – another Ensign, by his rank insignia – and sending him falling to the deck. It was over in seconds, shots all around, screams and cries filling the air as the two sides exchanged fire. No cover, no skill, just random luck deciding who lived and who died.
Cooper looked around, cautiously getting to his feet. Three of his squad were still mobile.
A
t the far end of the corridor, a young Lance-Corporal had tossed his rifle away, and had his hands raised in reluctant surrender. He looked down at him, then at the body of the Ensign on the floor, and shook his head. If things had only been slightly different, that might be him lying there, dead in the defense of his ship.
“Can you open these?” he asked the surviving guard.
“If I could, I wouldn’t.”
“Ninety seconds, sir,” one of his troopers said. Their names and faces seemed to blur.
F
or a second Cooper thought he could see Zabek’s face instead, and he was back on Hades Station fighting the Cabal. He closed his eyes, allowing himself a few precious seconds, then looked around.
“Crack it.”
“We could take out the corridor…”
“Crack it, Private! Hull integrity be damned!”
Two of his team moved forward, setting charges in preselected places, working quickly but methodically as Cooper watched, covering the Lance-Corporal with his rifle.
“Why, Corporal?” he asked.
“I’m doing my duty to save the Confederation,” the prisoner snapped back.
“Funny,” Cooper replied, “That’s what I’m doing as well.”
The charges prepared, the squad retreated back out of the blast area, dragging their reluctant prisoner behind them. Less than thirty seconds before they would have to set a rather larger bomb, and they still had no word from the other squads. If Lomax and Fuller had failed, none of this was going to matter. All three attacks had to succeed.
It felt like the ship was already being smashed into pieces.
T
he charges had not been conservative, and the deck shook, debris falling to the floor, shrapnel raining through the air. Blind to the risks, Cooper raced
f
o
r
ward, not waiting for his men, charging through the breach screaming like a banshee, waving his gun dangerously around.
“That’s it!” he yelled. “Everyone move away from their stations!” He looked around, saw the surprise on the face of the technicians snapping their hands away as though their controls had become white-hot. Ackerman – according to about half the Senate, the President of the Triplanetary Confederation – was sitting in the command chair, and slowly turned to face him, a tall, blonde woman standing by his side. She raised her pistol to shoot him, but Cooper fired first, and she folded to the floor, clutching her side. He quickly raced up, and kicked her weapon away.
Cooper’s communicator crackled, messages queued for his attention, and barked, “We’ve taken Engineering. Ninety seconds to go!” Another voice, badly distorted, added, “Weapons secured.”
“Mr. Vice-President,” Cooper said, mustering as much decorum as the situation permitted, “You are under arrest on charges of treason.” It was only then that he saw the pistol nestled in his hand. “We hold this ship, sir.”
Nodding, he replied, “That is my understanding.”
“I want the fighters recalled, right now. They are to jettison all remaining missiles and land on Phobos.”
“Irwin,” Ackerman said, “Do as the Ensign commands.”
“Sir…”
“Do it, Spaceman. We’ve lost this game.” He gestured at the rifle, and said, “Are you really planning to shoot me, Ensign?”
Dropping the barrel to the deck, he shook his head, saying, “No, sir.”
“Pity,” he replied, raising his pistol to his forehead in one quick motion, pulling the trigger before Cooper could even move. Blood and brains spilled out onto the chair and the deck behind him, and Ackerman’s body slumped forward to pile onto the deck, while one of the technicians began to scream.
“Ensign!” Cooper’s communicator yelled. “This is Alamo! What’s going on?
Status report, and make it quick!
”
His face white from shock, he replied, “We’ve secured Zeus, Captain. Fighters recalled.” Looking at the blood still spilling out onto the deck, he continued, “Ackerman’s dead. He shot himself before we could take him.”