Mutiny in Space (16 page)

I wondered if Hawkins realized how smoothly Corbin had taken charge. Or maybe he did and was grateful for the help. The XO wasn’t a stupid man, after all.

“Agreed,” said Hawkins. “Since he’s not trying to escape yet, we should free the crew before they’re all slaughtered. There are only five commandos on the crew deck. Can we storm the crew quarters?”

“Probably,” said Nelson, “but losses will be high. They’ll have set up fortified positions. Worse, they’ll be able to take hostages, and if we don’t take them out cleanly, we’ll lose a lot of people.”

“We have control of the life support systems again,” said Corbin. “Perhaps we can put those to use.”

“Pump gas into the crew deck, you mean?” said Hawkins. “Try to knock them out?”

“Something like that,” said Corbin.

“Won’t work,” called Murdock. “All those commandos have gas masks built into their helmets, probably a nice little air filtration system. They can operate in hard vacuum, too. The men we killed in cargo bay seven didn’t have any trouble operating there. We could pump the air out of the crew deck, or pump in anything else we wanted, and it wouldn’t have any effect.”

“Anything we could pump into the deck that would penetrate those gas masks,” said Hawkins, “would also kill the entire crew well before it harmed the commandos. If we could just evacuate the hostages first, that would…”

I blinked as an idea came to me.

“Wait,” I said. Hawkins looked at me. “Sorry to interrupt, sir. But did you unlock the internal communications? And the door systems?”

Yeah,” said Hawkins. “Those are all a subset of the communications system and life support control, and I unlocked those right away.” He scowled. “Still can’t access her weapons, though, which would solve a lot of problems.”

“But we can control the doors,” I said. “And the comms.” I pointed at the internal sensor screen. “Most of the crew still have their receivers. We can send them a message, telling them to retreat into the maintenance walkways. All the commandos are in the corridors keeping guard. We’ll seal every door on that deck, which will give the crew time to get away. By the time the commandos break through the doors, the crew will be gone, and then we can pump all the air out. They can’t have more than an hour or two of air in their suits. They’ll either surrender or asphyxiate.”

For a moment no one said anything, and then Hawkins snorted.

“You know, Rovio,” he said. “I always thought you were too clever for your own good. Sounds like he takes after you.”

“Don’t remind me,” said Corbin. “There are a lot of ways this could go wrong, but I can’t think of anything better. I say we do it.”

“Very well,” said Hawkins. “Were any of the environmental techs with you?”

“No,” said Corbin. “Looks like they’re all on the crew deck. Rodriguez!” Arthur hurried over, still carrying his laptop. “You hear all that?”

“Some of it,” said Arthur, looking pretty nervous for a guy who’d single-handedly killed six armored commandos.

“You’ve got the most experience on the environmental systems, so take over,” he said, pointing at the life support console.

“I’m a cargo specialist,” said Arthur. “If I screw up, I could kill them all.”

“Think of it as unloading human cargo,” said Corbin.

“My point is that you have more experience with the enviro systems than I do,” said Arthur.

“This is why we cross-train,” said Corbin. “I would do it, but I need to be elsewhere. I wouldn’t ask you to do it unless I was certain you could manage it. You were cool under much worse pressure in the cargo bay. You can do this.”

Arthur nodded, seeming to recover his confidence. Buthe had only been responsible for his own life in the cargo bay. Here would have the lives of over one hundred men in his hands.

Yeah, I see how he could get nervous.

“Where are you going?” said Hawkins.

“With your permission, I will lead an attack to seize control of the engineering room,” said Corbin. “We can’t let Ducarti stabilize the reactor, and even if that is not his objective, we need to keep him occupied and prevent him from reaching the troopship.”

“I should be the one to go,” said Hawkins. “With Williams turned traitor, I’m in command of this ship.”

“Which is exactly why you shouldn’t go,” said Corbin. “If I’m killed, someone will have to take charge, and someone needs to stay here on the bridge and coordinate now that we have communications back.”

Hawkins hesitated, but not for long. “All right. That’s your job, then. Go to the engineering section and take it back. Clear out the remaining Socials and stop whatever they’re trying to do.” He exhaled and shook his head. “And try to stop the hypermatter reactor from blowing up, will you? We need it to get home.”

“Aye aye,Skipper,” said Corbin.

“Take whoever you need with you,” said Hawkins, standing a little taller, “and whatever weapons you want.”

“Right,” said Corbin. “Murdock, stay here with Rodriguez. Make sure everything goes well on the crew deck. Nelson, you’re with me. Pick out fifteen men, and as many weapons as we can carry.” Nelson nodded in his customarily unfazed manner and started choosing men, assigning them the weapons captured from the slain Social Party commandos. “Nikolai, you’re with me.”

“Me?” I said, surprised.

“You’ve kept your head in a firefight,” said Corbin. “Twice now. Not many men can say that. I know I can count on you.”

A surge of pride went through me. I was tired and sore, and my head and neck and back hurt from the battering they had taken. I really, really wanted to go lie down someplace and sleep for a month, and I desperately wished that I had never seen Alesander Ducarti ever again.

But I would not have traded that moment for anything.

“Yes, sir,” I said.

Corbin smiled at me. “Get some reloads from Nelson.”

My machine pistol was almost empty, but as it turned out, reloading it proved no great challenge. The commandos had been armed to the teeth, and we had taken enough weapons and ammunition to conquer a small colony, or at least a mid-sized space station. Now that the ship’s systems were partially unlocked, our comms worked again, so Nelson distributed earpieces, pairing them to our devices and locking them into a private channel. Williams would be able to listen in, if he happened to think of it, but the encryption on the private channel would keep him from understanding any of it.

“All right, men, listen up,” said Nelson. “We’re going to go take back our engineering room from the Socials. Mr. Rovio has a plan. Corbin?”

“We’ve got the internal sensors and security grid back,” said Corbin, “so we can at least see what’s going on. Nikolai? Bring up the view from the engineering room, please.”

I nodded, walked to the sensor console, and tapped some keys. The air over the bridge’s main holographic projector flickered, and a hazy black-and-white image from the engineering room’s security camera appeared. The
Rusalka
’s internal sensors could pick up infrared, weapons traces, and radiation leaks, but for all that, the internal cameras were low-resolution, and there was only one camera in the engineering room. I supposed Starways had to cut costs somewhere. Nevertheless, in the hazy image, I could count eleven armored commandos standing guard over the consoles.

I couldn’t see Ducarti or Williams anywhere. Though given how little of the engineering room the camera covered, that didn’t mean anything.

“They’ve got a good defensive position,” Nelson observed.

“Yes,” said Corbin, “but they’re all clustered in the engineering room. According to the internal sensors, none of them have gotten into the surrounding maintenance walkways, including the crawlway that runs over the top of the room. We’ll send a man above to drop a few stun grenades into the engineering room. Once they’re incapacitated, we’ll storm the room.”

Suddenly I realized why my uncle wanted me to come along. There were occasional downsides to being young and skinny.

“That should work,” said Nelson. “So long as they don’t spot the man infiltrating.”

“We need to do it as soon as possible. The longer they’re are in the engineering room, the longer they have to make trouble. If we retake the engineering room and take them out, I can stabilize the hypermatter react and we all live to go home. Any objections?”

No one had any.

“XO,” said Corbin. “How are things on the crew deck?”

“Murdock,” said Hawkins.

Murdock stood next to Arthur, who sat at the life support control console, typing furiously. “I’ve gotten in touch with the men on the crew decks. They’ve taken cover, and we’ve sealed the doors. I don’t think the Socials on the crew deck have realized it yet. Hopefully they won’t figure out what we’re doing until Rodriguez here has finished pumping all the air out of the corridors.”

“You’ve still got the radio we took from the dead commando’s helmet?” said Corbin.

“Right here,” said Murdock. He glanced at the dead commandos, who had been unceremoniously dumped against the wall to keep them out of the way. “I know where we can get a few more, too.”

“Keep an eye on them,” said Corbin. “Once they realize what we’ve done, get in touch and offer them a chance to surrender. I don’t want to risk them going berserk and blowing holes in the side of the ship. Give them good terms—we’ll dump them on the first inhabitable planet we find and go on our way.”

I frowned. “After everything they’ve done?”

Corbin shrugged. “Best to leave the enemy a chance to escape, if necessary.”

“There’s no way to escape from the engineering room,” said Nelson.

“I know,” said Corbin. “Which is why this will be a hard fight. It’s time to move out. Nikolai…”

“Take the stun grenades?” I said.

He blinked in surprise, then nodded again. “You’re the best man for the job. I’ll need you to climb into the maintenance walkways above the engineering room and drop the grenades. Once they go off, we’ll charge the room and attack. With luck, we can clear them out without taking too many casualties.”

“And Ducarti and the captain?” said Nelson.

“Take them alive if you can,” said Corbin. “And if not well, they had their chance. It’s time to go.”

“I’ll coordinate from here,” said Hawkins. “Good luck.” He turned back to Arthur’s console.

“Let’s move out,” said Corbin.

One of the techs handed me a tool bag. It currently held no tools, but instead contained eight stun grenades the commandos had carried onto the
Rusalka
. I nodded my thanks, slung the bag’s strap across my chest, checked the safety on my machine pistol and the ammunition on my belt, and followed the others from the bridge. The blast doors slid shut behind us with an ominous clang, which seemed like a bad omen. Still, if this went bad, at least Ducarti and his surviving troops would not be able to break back into the bridge to take control of the ship.

We walked down the corridor in silence. Far at the other end of the dorsal corridor, I saw the opened doors to the engineering room. I wondered why the commandos beyond them did not open fire. They had a clear shot all the way up the dorsal corridor. Nelson kept us moving along the walls, ready to take cover in the other doorways should the enemy open up. I felt sweat trickling down my back beneath my jumpsuit and vacuum suit. Why weren’t the commandos in the engineering room opening fire? It would have been so easy to pin us down.

“Nikolai,” said Corbin, pointing at the side of the corridor. We had reached the navigation observation lounge, the very place where I had followed Murdock into the maintenance walkways. Further down the corridor would be the airlocks where the troop transport and the
Vanguard
would have docked with the
Rusalka
. An idea occurred to me.

“Why don’t we take over the
Vanguard
?” I said. “Or the troop ship? Either one would keep Ducarti from getting away and leaving the ships to blow.”

“A good idea,” said Corbin, “but it looks like the Socials sealed both doors behind them. Both are connected to the
Rusalka
with an airlock, and if we used the kind of equipment we’d need to cut through their blast doors, we would likely rip open the tunnels to vacuum. No, we’d best regain control of the
Rusalka
first, and then deal with the other ships.”

“Okay,” I said. “I’ll head for the maintenance walkways now.”

“Nikolai,” said Corbin quietly. I paused, and he clapped me on the shoulder. “I’m not going to say that your mother and father would be proud of you, because we both know they would not approve of what you have done. But that, I think, is the highest praise I can give you.”

I grinned. “Mom would have been furious.” My smile faded. “But maybe if Sergei had known the truth about Ducarti, maybe that would have changed his mind.”

“Maybe,” said Corbin. “If nothing else, we can avenge them. Good luck, Niko.”

“You too,” I said, and I took a firm grip on the grenade bag before entering the observation lounge.

The panel where Murdock and I had fled earlier was still loose, and it was no trouble to pry it off and move it aside. I climbed into the narrow passage and started down it, the boots of my suit clanking against the metal grill floor. I would head up to the next level, to the crawlway that wedged between the outer and inner hulls. From there I would make my way to the platform above the engineering room.

“Nikolai?” crackled Corbin’s voice in my ear.

“I hear you,” I said, making my way along, the bag of stun grenades thumping against me with every step. I slipped my machine pistol out of its holster, checked the safety, and kept it ready in my right hand. “I’ll send a text when I’m in position.” I didn’t dare speak once I was in the crawlspace over the engineering room. The sound might reach the ears of the commandos, and then they would need only to send a few volleys of bullets into the ceiling to deal with me.

“Go as fast as you can,” said Corbin. “We’re in position. I expect the commandos know we’re here, and the longer we wait, the more likely it is Ducarti will decide to start something.”

“Roger,” I said, stopping at the base of a ladder cylinder. “I’m climbing into the crawlspace. Going dark now.”