Owner 03 - Jupiter War (43 page)

Serene just stared, with mouth agape, as fragmentation grenades turned the entire bay into bloody chaos, and her security team died. She spotted Vaughan, the silver bars on the arm of his VC suit singling him out, bouncing off the floor only to rise again, his legs reduced to bloody tatters below the waist. About twenty of her people had closed in around her, crouching down and firing at the seemingly endless stream of Inspectorate personnel entering the bay, before themselves steadily falling. Then abruptly Sack was dragging her somewhere else, and she only realized he had opened the airlock door once she was through it.

‘Ten of you here!’ Sack bellowed.

There were moving bodies blocking all views, some of them bloody, one of them screaming, and bullet impacts were horrible meaty thwacks all around her. Then came a detonation, bright, blinding, setting her ears buzzing. The next moment they were inside the shuttle, yanking the door closed against a chaos of shouting and screaming, then hammering fists and the sounds of bullets impacting. She felt more than heard the docking clamps disengage, heard screams turning to grunts as someone administered an anaesthetic. Slowly she began to unfreeze, but then, seeing she was strapped into an acceleration chair, she realized the immediate danger.

‘Do not use the engines!’ she yelled, struggling to undo the straps, towing herself towards the cockpit. ‘We cannot leave the station like this!’

From the co-pilot’s chair Sack looked round at her. ‘We know about the railguns, ma’am. We’re just holding position for now.’

Serene glanced at Trove, now sitting in the pilot’s chair, her hands resting flat on the console, Sack’s gun jammed into her side.

‘Good,’ said Serene, fighting to keep a note of hysteria out of her voice. She had to keep control. She had to retain an aura of confidence. She glanced back into the crew compartment, saw that only two of her security team had made it inside, and one of them was strapped into a seat, the top half of his VC suit stripped away, dressings fastened across his chest and over the stump of his right arm. His eyes were closed and a morphia patch had been applied to his neck. The other had a combat dressing on one side of his face, burns showing under its edges and, by his bloody hands, had obviously been responsible for applying the dressings to his wounded comrade. Now he stood guard over their other prisoner, whose head was bloody, but who grinned at her nevertheless.

‘So, what’s so amusing, Ruger?’ she demanded.

‘You can’t ever leave because this Calder controls the construction station and, from what I just heard, its railguns too,’ he said. ‘And, anyway, none of it matters a fuck.’

‘So you don’t mind dying,’ Serene replied.

‘I do, but at least it’s going to be quick.’

‘I wouldn’t be so sure about that,’ Serene spat.

‘Oh, I reckon a multiple-megaton nuclear detonation will surely do the trick.’

‘What?’

‘Hey, Trove!’ he called out. ‘Is he on the move?’

‘Yeah,’ Trove replied from the cockpit. ‘I checked before this goon made me undock. He’s broken away from the tug, and his fusion drive just started. We’ve got half an hour at best.’

‘What are our chances of getting clear?’ Ruger asked.

Serene looked at Trove, who gazed back at her with dead eyes.

‘At the crawl speed of this heap of junk inter-ship shuttle?’ said the pilot officer. ‘The expression “snowflake in hell” springs to mind.’

‘What are you two talking about?’ Serene asked succinctly.

‘Oh,’ said Ruger, ‘I forgot to mention that Captain Scotonis is still aboard the
Scourge
. He knows you controlled the Scour outbreak and that you’re therefore responsible for the death of his entire family. He’s been trying to locate you, and you then made it nice and easy with that ETV broadcast.’

‘What’s he going to do?’ asked Serene, not at all liking Sack’s flat stare nor the silent attentiveness of her other personnel here.

‘He’s a bit pissed off,’ said Ruger, ‘so he’s going to drop the
Scourge
right on top of your head, and detonate its entire nuclear arsenal.’

Serene just stared at him, unable to think of any sensible reply. This could not be happening. She had so much to do, so many plans, she who held the destiny of planet Earth in her hands.

The Command

Bartholomew had known it wouldn’t be easy, but now the reality was hitting home as the damage and casualty reports came in. But Tactical were sure that Saul’s fusion drive was out, and insisted it was only a matter of time before they could confirm a full strike on the other ship’s vortex generator. This had annoyed Bartholomew somewhat, since after seeing the footage of what had happened to the
Vision
, it was obvious that a tactical assessment wouldn’t be required in order to confirm such a hit. Saul’s ship would spew mercury travelling at relativistic speeds, and probably tear out most of its equatorial infrastructure.

‘Are we close enough for the maser yet?’ he asked of his command crew.

‘Too disperse still, Admiral,’ replied Lieutenant Cole.

The maser beam was not completely coherent, so its effective range was measured in just thousands of kilometres within vacuum. Nukes were impossible at this range, since they could not be accelerated to railgun speeds without producing major internal damage, while their lasers, though able to reach the other ship, would waste their effectiveness against its hull. No, it would have to be the railguns for a while yet, and meanwhile Saul wasn’t a passive target.

Bartholomew sniffed smoke in the air, redolent of burned meat. He’d lost half of his engineering team and shut down com to the affected part of the ship when it became necessary to close bulkhead doors and fill the place with fire-retardant foam. If there were survivors, they could be dug out later; for now they would just have to endure.

The ship lurched as another missile hit home. Damage-control diagnostics filled one corner of his large curved screen and, reading them, Bartholomew swore vehemently. They’d just lost one of the side-burn fusion engines.

‘Repairs?’ he asked.

‘Going swiftly,’ Cole replied.

Bartholomew switched over to the stats on the first hit, and called up a frame giving a view of the damage done, where robots were swarming over the wreckage. At least they were functioning above spec. It amazed him how fast they were making repairs. If they continued at their present rate, hull integrity in that section would be back to optimum within the hour. This was all doubtless due to the comlifer they had aboard, because Christopher Shivers had managed to iron out a lot of computer-control inefficiencies.

The admiral focused his attention on the main image on the screen: the spherical ship that had once been Argus Station was now speeding along almost parallel to them. They’d hit it, what, six times thus far, and had still failed to take out the vortex generator. Readings showed that it was still many hours away from full functionality but, even so, it must not be allowed to function since Saul would almost certainly then run. Bartholomew leaned back. Well, at least he should be thankful that his own ship’s generator was still intact.

‘Can we reposition yet?’ he asked.

‘Still too much in the way,’ replied Cole. ‘It’s as if he deliberately chose to intercept us here and negate that option.’ Then he added, ‘He’s firing steering thrusters again.’

Of course he chose the battleground
, realized Bartholomew, watching the glare of the thrusters now turning Saul’s ship.

‘That should give us a better angle on his vortex ring,’ he stated, yet felt a sudden disquiet. He wasn’t dealing with an idiot here, so such an alteration in the other ship’s attitude had to be for a good reason.

Three flashes, just one second apart, ignited inside a port in the other vessel.

‘Something coming,’ said Cole – and he had time to say no more.

The lights went out, screens went to static, and the PA system howled. The ship shuddered like a beast taking an abattoir bolt to the head. Emergency lights kicked in as lightning arced from Cole’s console, and he shrieked. Bartholomew felt heat wash over him and, with an ear-tearing blast, the doors into the bridge buckled inwards. In the corridor beyond he saw a burning body flailing through the air, and then flame spread to envelop the ceiling. The next moment, he found himself tumbling through the air, still strapped into his chair, then slamming into a computer wall. He reached out and grabbed hold.

‘Abandon to secondary bridge!’ he shouted, though not sure if anyone was listening.

A hand snared him, undid his straps, and an officer he did not recognize began towing him away. The screaming continued behind him.

So what the fuck was that?
Bartholomew wondered, with a subtext:
We underestimated him yet again.

Argus

‘What the hell happened here?’ Var asked, as she surveyed the carnage all around her.

‘Seems our problem has been solved,’ Langstrom ventured, steadying himself against a nearby wall as the ship shuddered yet again, then casting his gaze around, worry etched into his expression.

Under the flashing hazard lights, Var counted corpses. ‘Not quite . . . two of them are missing.’

‘Saul is obviously dealing with this,’ said the police commander. ‘As I’ve suspected all along, we probably don’t need to be here.’

Certainly, Langstrom did not want to be here.

‘My brother’s attention is probably focused on the
Command
,’ replied Var obstinately. ‘This looks to me more like a falling-out among thieves.’ She pointed to a row of bullet holes along one wall. ‘If my brother had dealt with these, there would have been a lot more holes, because he would have used a spidergun. Or no holes at all, just dismembered bodies – and no one would have escaped.’

‘Still,’ said Langstrom doubtfully.

‘And this is a black spot too.’ Var gestured towards empty camera sockets up on one wall. ‘We just don’t know what happened here, and we have to find out.’

Langstrom lowered his head for a long moment, then looked up. ‘I’m sorry, Varalia Delex, but, though I agree that there were elements among the chipped who were planning rebellion, it is obvious to me that Saul has the situation well in hand. Our best course now is just to get away from here and leave it all to him.’

‘So you’re not at all worried about ending up in cold storage forever? Or perhaps being dispensed with by my brother’s robots?’

‘I don’t believe it,’ said the commander. ‘The Owner has had ample means and opportunity to be rid of us all and yet, in every situation, he has done the best he can to preserve life. You have my respect, Varalia, but I will not be dragged into what seems to be some personal problem between you and your brother.’

‘It isn’t personal,’ Var snapped through gritted teeth. ‘The entire point is that, with what he has now become, we must look
beyond
the personal,
beyond
normal human relationships and reactions. My brother has never really cared for people, and he cares even less for them now.’

‘And you still think this after he diverted us to Mars and risked his life to rescue you?’

‘He’s not even remotely human any more,’ Var insisted stubbornly.

‘When there’s time to do so, I’ll have these collected –’ Langstrom gestured towards the corpses – ‘and I’ll get some forensic work done. We’ll then see if we can find out what happened – see who’s missing and hunt them down. But, with everything that’s going on out there, we’re done here for now.’ He turned away.

‘Well, I am not done.’

Langstrom shrugged and continued heading away. Var stared at his retreating back until he turned a far corner and moved out of sight. She felt slightly sick as she fought to dismiss self-doubt. Damn it, she had tortured and killed someone for the information she had just given Langstrom. There had to be some value in that; it could not be simply meaningless. No, she was not done just yet. She stooped and turned over the nearest corpse, did not recognize the ruined face but managed to identify who it was by reading the suit’s number and inputting that into the system by laser com, so as to find out who was the last one to put that suit on. It took her twenty minutes to work through all the corpses here one by one, and by elimination she finally knew who was not here.

Langstrom was so wrong: Alex and Ghort were undoubtedly the most dangerous of them all, and must have wiped out the rest after some internal dispute. They would not stop – they were not the kind to stop. She dragged an assault rifle from underneath one of the corpses, found some ammunition, then headed towards the end of the corridor, where further bullet holes were stitched across the wall. She would find them both, and she would stop them.

Even as fires inside the
Command
guttered and went out, it fired up a sputtering fusion side-drive above its protruding waist – its main engine being completely destroyed – and continued moving in-system sideways. While observing this, Saul ran tactical scenarios. The Saberhagens’ plasma cannon had caused huge damage to the stricken ship, but evidently had not entirely disabled it. Though the
Command
was moving slowly, it still presented a danger and, judging by the ports on the undamaged areas of its hull, still had some weaponry to bring to bear. The
Fist
was an even larger danger because it seemed to have twice the number of ports, as well as greater manoeuvrability and much more effective armour. And Saul knew that, in a one-on-one fight out in clear space, it would win against him despite his Mach-effect drive.

With the extra damage they had taken, it would be a day or more before the Rhine drive was back up to speed so that Saul could run. But, even if he did so, the
Fist
or quite possibly the
Command
could fire another one of those warp missiles to knock out the drive again. If the missile had a nuclear warhead, the ensuing blast would also knock out a high percentage of the ship’s system, and might even leave it disabled: a sitting duck out in clear vacuum. Even if his ship was not so badly disabled and he managed to evade both enemy vessels until the Rhine drive was up to speed again, it could still be knocked out again, at further risk of disablement. He just did not know how many of those warp missiles the other two ships possessed.