Mutiny in Space (11 page)

“Why junk DNA?” I said.

“Because the Social Party lacks the scientific expertise to decode it,” said Corbin.

“Really?” I said. “Why?”

Corbin’s cold smile held no mirth. “Because a few years ago, they purged most of their competent geneticists for political disloyalty after a failed harvest.”

“Typical,” said Murdock with a contemptuous snort.

“We arranged for Starways to get the contract for the harvest,” said Corbin, “and for the harvest to go aboard the
Rusalka
. The easiest solution for the Social Party’s problem was to simply blow up the ship, but the
Rusalka
has the armaments of a small capital warship, and the blockade runners and stealth frigates the Socials use on missions like this wouldn’t have a prayer against her guns. In a straight fight, the
Rusalka
would have blasted the
Vanguard
and the troop transport out of the sky in about a minute.”

“Except,” I said, “you didn’t know that Williams was Social.”

“Or did you know that he was one of them?” said Murdock, a dangerous edge in his voice.

“I didn’t,” said Corbin. “I knew he was crooked. I knew he was selling information to some shady agents with Social connections, but he was selling it to anyone who would pay him. That was why I had you and Hawkins keep track of him. I never thought he would leak information that would endanger his own ship to someone like Ducarti. I thought he was corrupt at best and an embezzler at worst. I didn’t know he was actually a revolutionary.”

“I bet it was Ducarti,” I said. “Ducarti sold him on it.”

Nelson frowned. “What do you mean?”

“I heard Ducarti speak on New Chicago before the bomb went off,” I said. “He’s persuasive. I thought he was full of it, but my mom didn’t and my brother didn’t, and he got both of them killed. The audience for his speech was full of guys like Captain Williams. Fat old professors and bureaucrats with easy enough lives, but they all thought they’d been screwed. Then along comes Ducarti with his big words, and they think they get to be heroes of the revolution or something. He takes advantage of that.”

“So why didn’t you fall for it?” said Murdock.

“Nothing he said makes sense,” I replied. “I mean, engines make sense. Fuel goes in, thrust and power come out. There’s no such thing as a free lunch. Everything has to be paid for. Ducarti just talked a lot of nonsense that he made sound good.”

“The Socials usually do,” said Nelson.

Murdock shook his head. “You should have warned us, Rovio. You shouldn’t have gotten us involved in this sort of thing.”

“I didn’t know it was this sort of thing,” said Corbin. He sighed. “If I had known Williams was with the Socials, I wouldn’t have risked this. I thought we would just transport the grain to people who could decode it, and that if a troublemaker like Ducarti showed up, we would blow his ship away. All our lives are at risk, and I’m sorry about that, but right now it’s more important to decide what we’re going to do to get out of this mess.”

“Sure,” I said. “So what
are
we going to do now?”

“We start,” said Corbin, “by making a phone call. Still got that helmet, Nikolai?”

“Yeah,” I said, holding it up. I still had it in my left hand.

“Good,” said Corbin. “Nelson, Murdock, watch the door.”

“Oh, so you’re in charge now?” said Murdock.

Corbin stared him down. “I’m trained for this sort of thing. But if you have any bright ideas, I’m listening.”

Murdock stared at him for a moment, then made a rude gesture, but he turned to watch the door back to the dorsal corridor. Nelson did the same, but without comment, complaint, or gesture. Corbin nodded, then knelt next to one of the consoles, pulling open the access panel, and started to disconnect some wires.

“Open up the back of that helmet, Nikolai,” said Corbin. “There should be a release latch at the base, and inside you’ll see an access jack for the helmet’s computer and radio.”

I nodded, fumbled with the helmet for a bit, and popped open the access panel. The helmet had a surprising amount of electronics packed into it, including a nanocomputer, a radio, and a HUD for the visor. Corbin passed me a slender cable, and I plugged it into a jack in the helmet’s computer. The display on the console flickered, and suddenly switched to a command line interface for the helmet.

“Williams has got the ship’s system locked down,” said Corbin, typing a string of commands, “so we’ll borrow the helmet’s computer. There’s a scrambler in this console, so when Ducarti gets the call, he won’t be able to pinpoint the location… ah, here we go.”

He hit a button, and Ducarti’s voice crackled over the speakers.

“Report, X-22,” he ordered, his irritation plain. “Report in! Have you disposed of the operator and the boy yet? If you have, join the others in cargo bay five. They’re having some trouble with the robotics there, and they require reinforcement. Once that’s dealt with, we need to find Corbin Rovio. The reactionary is hiding somewhere on the ship–”

“Captain Ducarti! You’ve found me,” said Corbin. “I bet that was easier than you thought. Guess you’re historically inevitable after all!”

For a moment there was silence.

“Corbin Rovio,” said Ducarti, his voice calm and self-assured. “The traitor himself. You could have risen high in the Party, you know. Your brother, at least, understood the value of loyalty. Had he lived–”

“But he didn’t. He blew himself up,” said Corbin. “He was loyal to the wrong people.”

“I’m sure you know all about that,” said Ducarti. “Your nephew just learned that the hard way.”

I blinked and looked at Corbin, who raised a finger to his lips.

“What do you mean?” said Corbin.

“He was loyal to you, and he choose poorly,” said Ducarti. “Alas, the brave young fool refused to give up your secrets. So I had my men dump him out the stern airlock, right into the drive trail. I understand he begged and screamed for his life until the end.”

Corbin gestured to me as Ducarti continued his nasty little monologue. I looked at him and saw him mouth the words “be annoying” while pointing at the console.

Annoying? Right. I definitely could manage that!

“Hey, moron,” I addressed the console. “Remember me?”

Ducarti suddenly fell silent.

“I have to ask you one thing,” I said. “That accent. All those rolling Rs. Is that fake? I mean, it has to be fake. Do the revolutionary babes fall for that or something? See, I think you’re not taking it far enough. Have you ever considered changing it up, you know, just a rrrrittle, for the rrrradies?”

Someone burst out laughing in the background. I wasn’t sure if it was Hawkins, a bridge crewer, or one of Ducarti’s men.

“Ah, Rovio the Younger” said Ducarti. “I suppose that explains where you got that radio. Ran off to rescue your little nephew, did you? How very bourgeois of you, Corbin.”

“You can call stopping an attempted murder whatever you like,” said Corbin. “But I know you Social Party psychopaths enjoy killing men, women, and children for no reason. If you were sane or competent, you wouldn’t have joined the Party. Of course, indulging in your lunatic murder sprees sometimes has unforeseen consequences. If you hadn’t killed off all your competent geneticists, we wouldn’t be having this conversation…”

“Save your breath,” said Ducarti. A little of the smooth polish had come off his voice. “If you’re so very keen to save lives, Rovio the Elder, I suggest you surrender yourself and give me the code sequence to the junk DNA. If you don’t, I will order my men to start executing your fellow crew members, one every minute, until you come to your senses.”

“I wouldn’t do that, Ducarti,” said Corbin.

“Oh? And just why not?”

“Because I don’t know the decryption key,” said Corbin. “No one on the ship does. That’s just basic operational security, if that isn’t too bourgeois for you. Also, I should warn you that you’re going to have much bigger problems in about seven hours or so.”

“Such as what?” Ducarti demanded, suspicious. He was starting to sound rattled now.

Corbin grinned mercilessly at the console. “You really should have shut down the
Vanguard
’s hypermatter reactor. Too late now.”

There was silence for a full thirty seconds on the console.

“I see,” Ducarti said at last. “Very clever, Rovio. I deduce that you’ve removed the processor from the
Rusalka
’s regulator?”

“We seem to have a bit of standoff,” said Corbin. “Boarding a hostile ship with your hyper-reactor still running isn’t the greatest idea.”

“We will simply shut down our hypermatter reactor,” said Ducarti.

I couldn’t help but laugh aloud at that. “Good Lord, did you ever even read a technical manual, Ducarti?”

Corbin smiled and gestured for me to continue.

“See, once a hypermatter reactor is entangled, it can’t be shut down,” I said. “The only way to stop the reaction is to reactivate the regulator on the first reactor, bring it back to the green zone, then shut them both down.” I remembered one of the taunts Ducarti had thrown at me back on New Chicago, the day he had murdered my mother and my brother. “If you had bothered to learn the skills of a mere tradesman in service of our oppressive overlords or whatever, you might not have done something so stupid.”

“So I have an offer for you,” said Corbin. “Evacuate your men back to the
Vanguard
and your troopship and get off the
Rusalka
. Dump your weapons, and move off to a distance of five million kilometers. Then I reinstall the regulator, and you can depart with your lives.”

“A fine offer,” said Ducarti, some of the mocking poise returning to his voice. “Unfortunately, you have overlooked one small detail. The troopship does not have a hyperdrive, and therefore no hypermatter reactor. We will simply board it and move to a safe distance before both vessels explode.”

I blinked. No hyperdrive? Then how had the troopship gotten here? The
Vanguard
must have towed it.

“This system is deserted,” said Corbin. “If you blow up both hyperdrive-capable ships in the system, you’ll be stranded here a long time before someone finds you. Certainly longer than your supplies and life support will last.”

“Another Social Party vessel is scheduled to pass through NR8965 in ten days to check on the status of our mission,” said Ducarti. “Ten days is a long time, but we will be long gone before anyone realizes what happened to
Rusalka
. I would, of course, prefer to decode the junk DNA in the hold and learn the identity of our traitors, but destroying the ship will be a satisfactory outcome. Certainly it would cause a great deal of economic distress to the nest of reactionary traitors upon New Sibersk.”

“You could simply surrender now and save everyone a lot of trouble,” said Corbin. “A lot of lives, too.”

Ducarti laughed. “No, Corbin, I need to do nothing at all. You’ve signed your own death warrant. All I need to do is wait. You may have entangled the hypermatter reactor, but I have control of the
Rusalka
’s computer, and without that you can do nothing else. All you can do is wait for the ship to explode. Now goodbye, Corbin Rovio. I leave you to die in the knowledge that the Revolution has defeated you.”

The connection ended with a burst of static.

“Well, that was unexpected” I said. “And disappointing. Now what?”

“Yeah, good question,” called Murdock from the doors. “Any bright ideas before we all die?”

“I have a plan,” said Corbin. I doubt the others believed him any more than I did.

“And if it doesn’t work?” said Murdock.

“Then I have a fallback plan,” said Corbin.

“That’s such a huge relief,” I said.

“You’re too young to have such a smart mouth, Nikolai” said Corbin. “Listen, all of you. Our first objective is to save our lives. To do that, we have to move fast. We’ve got to storm the bridge, overpower Ducarti’s men there, and take Captain Williams prisoner. Once we have him, we can force him to unlock the computer, and then we can blast the
Vanguard
and the troopship to pieces.”

“He won’t want to give up the codes,” said Nelson.

Murdock snorted. “Then we’ll hit him with a wrench until he changes his mind.”

“Won’t Ducarti just shoot Williams first?” I said.

“Probably,” said Corbin. “But Hawkins has some unlock codes that should work once we free him.”

“Really?” said Murdock, scowling as he watched the corridor. “I thought only the captain has those codes.”

“Normally, yes,” said Corbin, “but I have some friends in the home office at Starways, and I persuaded them to give Hawkins more access than usual.”

Murdock snorted. “Friends?”

“Ducarti might shoot them both if he realizes it,” I said. “He’ll kill anyone who gets in his way.”

“If he does,” said Corbin, “then the backup plan is to kill as many of the commandos as possible and seize control of the
Vanguard
and their troopship. If we do that, I can stabilize our hypermatter reactor and keep the ships from exploding. After that, we’ll have to send some men aboard the
Vanguard
to get help, since the computer will still be locked, but we’ll have enough supplies to wait here for a long time.”

“God knows we have enough grain,” I said. “We could grind some flour and make some bread.”

“That’s pretty thin, Rovio,” said Murdock. “They’re better armed and armored than we are, and they have control of the ship.”

“We have more of us,” said Corbin, “and they don’t have control of the ship. They’ve locked the ship, and if they unlock it for any reason, we can get back in with Murdock’s access. And we know the ship better.”

“Or we’ll all get killed,” said Murdock.

Corbin shrugged. “Ducarti would kill us all anyway. Are you in or not? If you are, we need to move now.”

Murdock blew out a long breath. “It’s not as if I have any better ideas. All right, Secret Agent Rovio, what’s our move?”

“Hit the bridge, rescue Hawkins, capture Williams, and preferably kill the enemy leadership in the process,” said Corbin.

“They’ve got the dorsal corridor buttoned up pretty tight,” said Nelson. “If we try and charge up the corridor to the bridge, they’ll mow us down.”