The Last Flight of the Argus (38 page)

For a moment, B’taav felt like he might again pass out. The pain along his jaw and face was intense. It took him a while to replay the events of the past few minutes. When he did, he looked down, at his hands. He still held Melchor’s fusion gun. The Independent tucked it away.

“
You came to
Titus
looking for Accelerant,” the voice that took him out of the darkness said. “You found it. These Mercs can’t live without it.”

“
Melchor was..?”

“
You’re lucky you got him before he got you.”

The voice was Maddox’s. He remained in his bed. With great difficultly he propped himself up.

“
Yeah. Lucky,” B’taav acknowledged. “For the second time. Won’t be so lucky a third. What happened?”

“
The Merc killed Frasier,” Maddox said. “The two came down from the cockpit. They…they were here to see how I was doing. I was half asleep. They talked for a bit and I…I couldn’t get it all. Melchor goes to the bathroom and brings out two cups of water. He gave Frasier one and wanted me to drink the other. I set mine aside. I wasn’t all that thirsty.”

B’taav noted the full glass of water on the table beside Maddox. He picked it up, stepped over Melchor’s corpse, and drained the liquid into the sink.

“
Frasier drinks up. For a while, he keeps talking,” Maddox continued. “Only much slower…then he…then he seized up. Melchor –that bastard– laughs. Frasier knew he was poisoned. He tried to spit out what he could. It was too late. Melchor stepped closer to me. He was about to force the water down my throat. That was when…that was when Frasier threw up on him.”

Maddox clenched his teeth as a deep shiver passed through his body.

“
Melchor…he kicked Frasier. Then he sees his pants are stained. He says…he tells me he’ll be right back. He goes to the bathroom to clean up. While he’s doing that, he tells me they’ll be plenty of time to take care of me, then
you
.”

“
I heard the intercom buzz in my room. Was that you?”

“
Yeah,” Maddox said. “I did it while the Merc was in the bathroom.”

Maddox winced. The effort of talking to the Independent was sapping him of what little strength he had.

“
I never liked you, B’taav, not from the first time we met,” he said. “The others bought your stories but I never did. Your presence was too convenient. Especially when Daniels showed up and we…we couldn’t get any other pilots or mechanics. It wasn't so long ago I worked in military intelligence. One of the things they taught me was the best way to infiltrate an enemy camp is to make your services crucial to whatever
their
mission is. You make them take you in. That’s what you did…isn’t it?”

B’taav’s sunken eyes sparkled.

“
I talked to every pilot I could, under the pretext of looking for someone willing to smuggle me out of
Titus
,” B’taav said. “I made sure they were aware of just how dangerous going up against Daniels was. I made sure they were so scared they wouldn’t take me or
anyone
out. I figured the pool of pilots was shallow enough that you’d eventually need me.”

“
Clever.”

“
Not really,” B’taav said. “No offense, but if you saw through this …”

“
The others might have, too.”

“
Yeah.”

“
Look, I don’t know what your game is and frankly don’t care. But if you’re right, we’re the odd men out on this operation and we’re obviously no longer needed.”

“
What’s changed?”

“
You don’t know?”

“
No.”

“
Then why don’t you take a look out my window.”

With effort B’taav rose to his feet. The room spun around him and he shook his head to lessen the pain and vertigo. He stepped past Maddox’s bed and leaned against the window’s frame. Like Francis Lane’s room, Maddox’s had a large window looking out into space. His window, however, was on the port side of the
Xendos
.

B’taav gazed at the darkness. At first, all he saw were the asteroids. Small and large, thin and fat, dark and light. But, out in the distance, he noted an angular, lean shape. It was long, enormous, in spite of the obvious distance from them.

“
By the Gods,” B’taav muttered.

The
Argus
lay between the chunks of asteroid like some rotting, half-buried corpse. Her hull was charred and filthy black. Parts of her plating were warped from heat and wear. Others were ripped or twisted like used candy wrappers.

Yet there she was, damaged but in one piece.

For several long, breathless seconds B’taav gazed at her and held back the shivers rising along the back of his spine. There was the lost super juggernaut. There was the fate of two empires.

There was death itself.

CHAPTER FORTY THREE

B’taav
stepped back, away from the window.

A stream of thoughts shifted into overdrive. One in particular hit him hard. The Independent thought of the Merrick Industries pleasure craft
DeCarlo
and the horrifying fate of its passengers. He wasn't there when she was found, but Merrick gave him the holographic walkthrough when they first met. In all its gory detail, it showed the Independent what happened to the passengers locked inside that vessel. Their deaths were like the blackest of nightmares.

With a shudder, B’taav realized those who remained alive on board the
Argus
immediately after the Erebus explosion suffered that same fate.

“
You were right,” B’taav whispered. “She's still in one piece.”

“
We can't leave her like that.”

B'taav motioned to Frasier and the Merc.

“
What happened?”

“
It’s so easy to swear you will destroy the ultimate weapon, but when it is before you, in the palm of your very own hands...Power corrupts, Independent. Especially when this power can make you the ruler of the known universe.”

“
Were all of them working against you?”

“
I don't know,” Maddox admitted. “When the group arrived at
Titus
, their manners were...different. Rasp, Frasier, and I worried something might be wrong. Ultimately, we thought they were simply excited knowing our mission was coming to its end. We weren't overly cautious, and that was a mistake.”

Maddox gritted his teeth as a fresh wave of pain passed through his body.

“
I don’t know why you worked your way into our group,” Maddox continued. “I don’t know what it was you were hoping to gain. But right now you’re in the same position as I am, so don’t start thinking you can make some kind of deal with them. They have as much use for you as they have for me.”

“
So we join up? Tell me, Maddox, if they hadn’t betrayed you and we found the
Argus
, would you have had
me
killed?”

“
Yes.” The admission came without emotion. “I swore on my life I would keep people from knowing about the
Argus
. I wasn’t about to let a stranger, an infiltrator, be the exception to that rule.”

“
And now you’re the person who saved, rather than took, my life.”

“
I would gladly have taken Melchor's poison if it meant the secret of the
Argus
was sealed in my grave as well,” Maddox said. “But I will not let them take that knowledge back. You can’t go to them, so you work with me. If we’re smart, we might get out of this.”

“
Alive?”

“
That might be asking too much. Whatever happens from this moment on, we must destroy the
Argus
.”

Despite the defiance in his voice, Maddox’s eyes held a mix of fear, hopelessness, and desperation. Would the Independent help him, or was his whole life's purpose at its end? The fear in his eyes was present in the tone of his voice.

“
There has to be some part of you that knows the
Charybdis
bomb cannot find its way into the hands of these people.”

B’taav nodded.

“
I know,” he said. “What’s your plan?”

Maddox let out a relieved sigh but composed himself quickly.

“
Exactly the same as before. We get the Geist memory cube from Nathaniel’s ball, get it to the Geist machine on the
Argus
, and use its information to set off the ship’s self-destruct mechanism. Afterwards, we sit back and watch the fireworks.”

“
I found Nathaniel’s ball in Francis Lane’s room. The cube wasn't there.”

“
Shit,” Maddox muttered. “They have it with them.”

“
Where are they?”

“
Probably in the cockpit, gazing at their treasure.”

“
What about Nathaniel? Why was he brought here?”

“
You got me. Francis Lane knew there was a good chance this would be a one way trip, and still she brought him. The funny thing is, I didn’t even know she had a kid.”

“
Is it possible…is it possible Nathaniel
isn’t
her son?”

“
Even if that's the case, does it really matter?”

“
Maybe.”

“
How?”

“
The kid killed Rasp and Kaspar and most likely killed Janet Donaldson.”

“
You think Francis Lane brought him aboard as an… assassin?” Maddox said. “You think he was programmed to kill us? I’ve heard of some degenerate things done in the cause of King and Country, but this one ranks among the worst...”

“
What about the Mercs? Aren’t they employed by Francis Lane?”

“
Yes.”

“
Then there’s more to this,” B’taav said. “Nathaniel killed one of the Mercs. One of
her
people. If the child is a programmed killer, why would he do that?”

“
Maybe there's no logic to his actions after all.”

“
On the contrary,” B’taav said. “His actions have been
very
logical.”

“
What do you mean?”

“
All this time, he’s been trying to stop us, all of us, from getting to the
Argus
,” B’taav said. “Nathaniel’s first victim was probably Janet Donaldson. She was working on downloading the information from Kelly Lang’s probe and using it to pinpoint the location of the
Argus
. Killing her slowed you down, didn’t it?”

“
Yeah,” Maddox admitted. “We had to do the final calculations on our own. It cost us valuable time.”

“
And allowed Daniels to solidify his presence at
Titus
.”

“
I suppose…”

“
Then we had that coolant leak on the
Pilgrimage
. It was deep in the engine room, in a a tight spot that took me great effort to reach. Not as much effort for a kid.”

“
He was there,” Maddox said.

“
Yeah. I didn't see him, and I passed out while fixing the air purification system. Good thing I managed to fix it before the fumes got to me. When I woke up, the boy was standing over me. If I hadn't awoken...”

Maddox suppressed a shudder.

“
The next time Nathaniel acts up, it’s in the cockpit of the
Pilgrimage
, when we’ve got Daniels’ fighter craft are all around us,” B'taav continued. “The boy is under constant supervision, except he somehow escapes Francis Lane and ultimately sets off our sensors and gives away our position to Daniels’ boys.”

“
It wasn't an accident.”

“
Francis Lane and I talk about how we can't use the sensors, that doing so would give our position away, and some light goes off in the boy's head. He does exactly the last thing we needed.”

“
We set up an even tighter security on the boy after that,” Maddox said.

“
So he behaves for a few days and everything is fine. Then, when we get to the Phaecian asteroid base, he takes advantage of another opportunity and, as he did with Janet Donaldson, he takes out Rasp.”

“
But Rasp wasn’t a key member of this mission.”

“
But he was another body in the way, and the only one of us with extensive medical experience. If someone gets injured, like you, we can’t treat them properly.”

Maddox's face grew pale.

“
Our only alternatives are to turn back or do what little we can and risk our team member's death. Either way, we’re hobbled.”

“
I’ll be damned.”

“
And all the while the boy’s creating tension and suspicion and distracting us from our goal.”

“
Regardless of what happens, he succeeds.”

“
A little later, the boy acts up once again. He gets his best chance to end the search for the
Argus
once and for all. While being walked around the ship and escorted by Kaspar, Nathaniel gets close to the
Xendos’
cockpit. The boy makes his move: He grabs Kaspar’s gun and takes the Merc out. I’m thinking his next step was to take out everyone inside the cockpit.”