The colossus, p.31
The Colossus, page 31
part #12 of Blood on the Stars Series
For as long as it took.
* * *
“Okay, listen up. Admiral Barron gave us three entry pods…and the recovery shuttle. The pods should work fine, but we’re going to be careful, and use them one at a time. Andi got down without being discovered, so hopefully, we will too. The shuttle’s a different story. The admiral managed to find us a second stealth generator for it, but it’s anybody’s guess if the tiny ship can produce enough power to run it properly. So, we wait to launch the shuttle until we’ve got Andi, and we’re set for a quick extraction at a fixed time.” Vig Merrick stood on Pegasus’s lower deck, next to the airlock. He’d already deployed one of the pods and prepped it for use. And he’d decided which one of the crew was going down first to try to find Andi.
“I don’t know how you figured you should go, Vig. You’re the best pilot on the ship. Of everybody, you should stay here.” It was Ross Tarren’s voice, but Merrick knew it could just as easily been any of the others. The crew was fiercely loyal to Andi Lafarge. Most of them owed their lives to their old commander, and all of them their fortunes. Merrick knew that, and he understood Tarren spoke for all the others. Every one of them would climb into the clunky pod and drop down to the surface to find her, and they’d probably fight for the right to go.
He also knew he didn’t care. He was going down to find Andi, and he didn’t give a shit if the others liked it or not. They’d complain, but in the end, he was pretty sure they’d obey his orders. Pegasus had never had a formal command structure, except that Andi was the ship’s owner and captain. But everyone had always accepted Merrick as the informal second in command.
“Next to Andi, I know my way around the District the best. I’m the best one to find out where she is hiding, and to make contact. We won’t have much time. I feel like we barely got out of here last time, and the longer we’re in orbit, the less chance we have of getting Andi out of here…or any of us, for that matter.” Merrick turned his gaze from one of his comrades to the next. None of them looked particularly happy, but none seemed like they were going to argue any further.
That was good enough, and he didn’t have time to waste trying for anything better. He turned toward the weapons locker and reached out for the pair of pistols he wore on missions. But before he could grab the weapons, the AI’s voice blared through the speakers.
“Passive scanners picking up increased scanning intensity. Multiple beams from different vectors.”
Merrick paused for a moment, his hand halfway toward his guns. He was debating whether to return to the bridge or to get in the pod and launch as quickly as possible.
He took one step toward the pod, and then Pegasus lurched hard to port, and he lost his footing and slammed into the bulkhead. He didn’t know what was happening, but he knew something was wrong.
Something was very wrong.
* * *
“Patrol ship D3, concentrate your field of fire on the coordinates I am transmitting. Ship C4, lay down your fire on an area one to three kilometers below ship D3’s zone.” Taragir was snapping commands into his comm unit. He’d found the ship, the same one he’d detected weeks earlier. He was sure of it.
The data was far from conclusive, nothing he could bring to his superiors with any degree of certainty. But he was positive…and his rank and position gave him authority over the local patrol boats and the power to act on his own initiative.
“Orbital command, we’re not picking up any targets at those coordinates.”
“It’s cloaked ship, Hectoron. I’m tracking it from here. You probably won’t get anything on your scanners, so lock on the targeting data I’m feeding you. And maintain constant fire. There’s something out there, and this is at least the second time they’ve tried to sneak by us.
And it’s going to be the last…
Taragir sat and watched, checking his scanner reports for the slightest signs of the enemy…thrust, energy generation, even disruptions to dust and particle levels in high orbit. There was something there. He knew it…and he was damned well going to get it.
The patrol ships came in on steep approach angles, and they opened fire, their bright but brief laser pulses ripping through space at the locations Taragir had specified. He was staring at the screen, watching for any signs of a hit. But there was nothing.
“Maintain full fire. Same coordinates.”
He continued his cold stare, his eyes unmoving. He doubted any of his colleagues believed he had found anything, nor, possibly, did the officers on the ships. But he didn’t care. There was a ship out there, and he knew it.
And then he saw it. Not the ship, but a trail of gas, a stream of atmosphere that quickly dissipated in the near vacuum of high orbit. It was no more decisive than some of the other readings he’d tracked over the past few weeks, but coming right on the heels of the laser fire, it was too coincidental for his tastes. One of the shots had hit the target. He recalculated the data, and he sent updated firing programs to the attacking ships.
Nothing happened, not for another minute. Then his screen flashed brightly.
It was energy, an explosion…and almost immediately, a flare of radiation. An instant later, there was a contact on his screen, a ship, just as he’d suspected.
It was wounded, and it looked like it was slipping from its orbit.
The patrol ships had scored a hit. There was a ship out there, and he’d found it. He’d proven himself right. And he had the contact on his scanners now, solid enough to give the patrol ships precise coordinates.
It was time to finish what he’d started.
* * *
“Lex, get down to engineering now. We’re going down, and I need engine power now!” Merrick hauled himself up the ladder to the bridge as he snapped out the command, and he leapt into the pilot’s station. Pegasus had been hit, twice. The first shot had been a glancing blow, doing little except rupturing an atmospheric line. But the second shot had come right after, and it was bad. Bad enough that he could feel the ship’s orbit decaying, before he’d even managed to confirm it on the instruments. Worse, perhaps, he was sure the stealth unit had been knocked out, and that meant every Hegemony ship near Dannith would be after Pegasus, not to mention the guns on the orbital platforms.
He felt an urge to leave orbit, to make a run for it, but he realized almost immediately that wouldn’t work. First, Pegasus didn’t have the power to break orbit, not unless Lex could work some kind of miracle down in engineering. And, even if Pegasus could get out of orbit, the ship would never make it out of the system, not without the stealth generator. There were too many patrols, too dense a network of scanning stations. They’d be blasted to plasma before they were a million kilometers from Dannith.
There was no way out, no chance to escape. The best he could hope for was to bring the ship down safely, and for the crew to scatter, to get away and hide somewhere before enemy troops arrived. It was a bad option, but still the best one they had…assuming Merrick even could bring the wounded ship down without burning up in the atmosphere or crashing.
He flipped on the comm. “We’re hit…and it’s bad. I’m going to try to bring the ship down and land it somewhere. As soon as we hit ground, I need you all to be ready to move out. We’re going to have a few minutes, if we’re lucky, before half the Kriegeri on Dannith get there and surround us.” Merrick’s hands were on the controls, and he could tell immediately it was going to be a tough landing. The ship was bucking hard, and power levels were fluctuating like crazy. Worse, Dannith had a thick upper atmosphere, one more impediment to getting Pegasus safely down.
But there was no other choice, and that meant there was no point in worrying about what he couldn’t change. He had to deal with reality…and find a way to save his ship and people.
Andi’s ship and people.
“Everybody, strap yourselves in. It’s going to be a rough ride.”
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Colossus
Lyra System
Year 321 AC
“This is it…I’m sure of it.” Anya Fritz stood still, looking all around. The room was large, vaster than anything on Dauntless or another of the Confederation’s line battleships. The ceiling was twenty meters above her head, and she could barely see the far end of the chamber. There were rows of silver tanks, extending almost as far as she could see in the dim light. They were antimatter storage units, she was sure of it. But they weren’t all in use. They couldn’t be. No existing civilization she could imagine was capable of producing so much of the precious substance, not even the Hegemony.
The harnessing of enough power to produce antimatter not by the gram, but in vast, unending tons, had belonged only to the fallen empire, at least in Fritz’s knowledge. If the Hegemony had retained such capabilities, the war would have ended years before.
“Where do we put the charges?” Bryan Rogan was standing right behind her. The Marine’s survival suit was stained red, and he winced slightly as he spoke. There was a rough bump on the outside of his gear, a patch he’d applied after he’d taken a round in the fighting moments before. Fritz had one, too, applied for the same reason, the purposes in both cases to seal the suits and maintain life support. They’d come through whole sections of the ship that had lost pressure and air, and while the storage facility seemed to have full heat and atmosphere, she knew that could change the instant some Hegemony officer decided to cut it off.
Andi popped her helmet and nodded toward Rogan. “Life support is okay in here, General. We’re getting word it’s back in the corridor outside, too. It looks like this ship’s got some kind of automated repair system. It seems to be patching up the breaches in the hull. At least until some Kriegeri decides to shut it down and try to freeze or suffocate us.” Rogan nodded his acknowledgement, and then he popped open his helmet.
Fritz took a breath, and she winced. It was slightly caustic, nothing too serious, but whatever systems Colossus had, it still took time to clear the air of chemicals and toxins released when a ship took a hit. She felt an urge to snap the visor shut again, but she decided it was safe enough.
What is ‘safe’ anyway? The whole concept seemed a little silly. They were trapped on the enemy’s massive battleship, which was even then being attacked by their own bombers. And they were there to find a way to destroy it from the inside. As she looked down at the closest row of cylinders, she dared to hope they had just found what they’d come for. But whether they’d found what they needed or not, the word ‘safe’ had no place around anything they were doing.
She reached around and pulled out a small scanner, flipping it on as her eyes focused on the small screen. She’d followed her instincts, fed by her knowledge, to find the storage facility, but she willingly acknowledged luck had played a part as well. But when she held out the scanner and read the results, her hope faded.
Any antimatter in the place would be in magnetic bottles inside the tanks. If any had leaked, anything more than a few particles, they wouldn’t be there. Nothing would, except a cloud of hard radiation. But the scanner wasn’t picking up any magnetic readings, at least not from the closest tanks. The storage units were empty, shut down.
She moved forward, her walk morphing into a slow jog, gradually increasing in speed and tension as she raced passed the large cylinders, checking each one, searching for signs—any signs—of active fields.
Nothing.
“Captain…” She heard Rogan’s voice, but she ignored it. It wasn’t possible. They hadn’t come all this way, fought so hard, come to the right place…only to find it devoid of the antimatter they needed. Fritz had endured all six years of the war. She’d lost friends, people she admired. She’d been wounded, felt terror so stark, she knew she’d never forget the slightest detail of how it felt.
But now it was hopelessness, something she’d held off all that time, finally closing in on her. She’d come with Rogan and his Marines, to carry out her plan. She’d brought them very likely to their deaths, and she couldn’t imagine it would all be for nothing. The miserable little charges they’d managed to bring with them wouldn’t do a damned thing, not to a monster like Colossus.
Not unless she could find some antimatter they could release.
She was running now, driven by increasing desperation. The chamber was massive, clearly intended to store immense amounts of the precious fuel. If there was another facility, as she suspected there was, it would be far from this one, kilometers away…and she had no idea how to even begin to find it.
“Captain…” She could hear Rogan’s boots on the deck as he hurried after her. She stopped and turned slowly, about to respond when her eyes caught it.
A reading. Magnetic activity.
It was weak at first, but she turned and moved toward it. The signal grew in strength, and she followed it, moving almost to the far end of the chamber. She stopped suddenly, looking up at one of the tall, silver cylinders.
The readings were clear. And positive.
There was an intense magnetic field inside the tank—and in the ones adjacent to it. She would have to run more tests, she knew, make absolutely sure. But she didn’t have any doubt…and she didn’t have time to waste.
“General,” she shouted out, turning toward Rogan as she did. “Here…there is antimatter in this tank. This is where we need to set the charges.”
* * *
“Commander, please. I urge you to fall back. There are enemies right around that next corner.”
Ilius just shook his head, wondering if the hectoron imagined he hadn’t come to that conclusion from the audible gunfire.
“Don’t worry about me, Hectoron. Focus on your troopers. You’ve got what, fifty? In this entire sector?” Ilius had already sent for reinforcements, but he knew it would take some time for them to arrive. The lack of sufficient troop strength, and the half-finished intraship transit system, were wreaking havoc on his defensive efforts. If the enemy had come to seize control of the ship, he would have had time to move his troops around, get them where he needed them. But that wasn’t the purpose of the boarding action, he was sure of that.
The enemy had come to destroy Colossus, and they’d managed to land fairly close to the main engineering spaces. Ilius had fought the tendency to think of the great superbattleship as invincible, reminding himself again and again that nothing was unbeatable. But whatever hazard Colossus faced from outside attacks, including the bomber squadrons even then coming in, it paled in comparison to the danger from the Marines who’d forced their way aboard. Ilius didn’t fool himself. Colossus was powered by antimatter, and its storage facilities and reactors were well protected from exterior attack…but highly vulnerable from the inside. Especially if the troops who had come aboard were prepared to die along with Colossus if they had to.
They’re all volunteers, almost certainly…so that means…
He had to stop the boarders, and he had no time to waste.
“Megaron…”
“Don’t tell me to leave again, Hectoron. We’re past that now. If the enemy is in the sector just in front of your people, they’re in the one beyond, too. And, there’s antimatter storage there. We don’t have time. We can’t wait. We have to hit them now, before they can sabotage the ship. Get your troopers ready…we attack in one minute. We hit anything in front of us, and we keep pushing forward, whatever the cost. Understood?”
“Yes, sir.” The officer nodded, clearly trying to hide his uncertainty in the presence of an officer of Ilius’s rank.
“I need a weapon. I left my sidearm in my quarters earlier.”
The hectoron turned and snapped out a command, reaching out and taking a rifle from one of the troopers standing behind him. He handed it to Ilius, and then he reached down, pulling his own ammunition belt off and giving that to the megaron as well.
Ilius nodded a quick acknowledgement, and he bumped up his estimation of the officer. He’d figured it was at last fifty-fifty the hectoron would try at least once more to get him to leave, but it seemed the man understood the gravity of the danger.
Ilius took the assault rifle, checking quickly to confirm it had a full clip in place. He draped the ammo belt over his shoulder, and he looked back at the officer. “Ready, Hectoron?”
“Yes, sir.” Ilius thought the response was well-executed…even though he knew the officer was full of shit. No one was ready for what was about to happen. Not the officer, not the Kriegeri, not the Marines on the other side. Not even Ilius himself.
He wasn’t ready, but he was going in anyway. They all were.
They had no choice.
He leapt forward, rifle extended out in front, and as he did, he turned back toward the hectoron. He nodded once, a quick sharp snap of his head. Then he shouted out, “Forward, all units. Attack!”
* * *
“Right there…that’s the conduit that pulls the antimatter from the tank and feeds it into the power units. That’s going to be the weak spot, the best place to breach this thing.” Fritz looked down at the three Marines, the demolitions team she had to help her destroy the most powerful weapon on the Rim, perhaps in all of known space. The Marines were calm and focused—something that wasn’t particularly easy when there was desperate fighting less than twenty meters from the entrance to the room. Fritz was far from sure the small charges would be powerful enough to breach the imperial alloys and rupture the containment system, but she knew it was their only chance.
If she, or any of the Marines, were still on Colossus when that happened, they’d be dead in an instant. That had always been a danger, but with their assault landers destroyed it was something more than that. They would pull back before the charges blew, she told herself, in the hope that some of their escape craft had survived Colossus’s self-immolation, but she didn’t like the odds of that at all.
