“Lost some of your mer-people getting here,” Lucy told me via the comms array I’d salvaged from my abandoned suit. “Had to ditch our suits a few decks back. Looks like Vargold sent most of his trained people to guard the engines.” Her cam-feed played over the cavernous expanse of the Jason Alpha’s engine room, huge magnetic generators and power relays the size of trains. A number of bodies were scattered about, including two with silver-grey skin.
“Phaedra?” I asked.
“I’m here.” She stepped into shot, her face showing the strain of recent combat. “Erik isn’t.”
I swallowed commiserating words. Sympathy wouldn’t help just now. “Grieve later. We have a job to do. Lucy, how long to run the hack?”
Lucy’s cam hesitated before swivelling towards another body, this one still alive and propped up against a power relay. “Through and through to the lower abdomen,” Lucy said as Simon knelt to apply a field dressing to Mr Mac’s wound. “I was too eager… Came through the door too quickly… He took my bullet, Alex.”
I watched the image linger on Mr Mac’s bleached features. “The hack,” I said.
Her cam swung towards the main control terminal where a data stick blinked in the input port. “It’s already uploaded, but the AI’s fighting back. Every time I initiate a shut down sequence, it finds a way to reverse it.”
I pushed aside the readout visor and fixed my gaze on the door ahead. The last one before we made the bridge. “Should be able to help with that shortly. Stay on comms.”
The door shuddered in response to my command, opening then closing like an industrial cutting machine as the ship’s AI fought it out with the General’s hack. Luckily, it hadn’t fully adapted yet and the door finally stuck halfway open, allowing me to peer through to the bridge beyond. I could see only one occupant, a tall figure with long dark hair, standing before a large flickering holo display. He didn’t bother to turn as I made my way inside, the others following close behind. A brief scan of the bridge confirmed it; Vargold was all alone now.
“So you sent everyone you had left to stop us,” I said, striding forward.
He merely glanced over his shoulder before returning his gaze to the holo. It was a forward view largely obscured by the moon’s bulk, a blue, thumb-sized half-circle slowly cresting the lower hemisphere as the Jason Alpha maintained its course. Vargold continued to regard the view as I came to his side, arms folded and face serenely contemplative. Deciding this wasn’t the time for subtlety, I slammed the carbine stock into the small of his back, sending him to all fours with a shout of pained surprise.
“Were you under the impression,” I said, filling my fist with his hair and dragging his head back as I pressed the carbine’s muzzle into his temple, “that I was fucking about here?”
He replied with a teeth gritted smile, grunting the words out. “Did… you… think… I was?”
“Gonna need you to shut this ship down, Mr Vargold.”
“Can’t.” His smile broadened. “Won’t.”
I moved back and tapped an icon on my comms controller. “Kruger, you reading this?”
“Alles ist klar, Herr Hauptmann.”
“Any problems?”
“Casualties heavier than expected, but we have the ship.”
“Set course, maximum thrust. Then get clear.”
“Jawohl.”
I accessed the bridge controls and switched the holo to the port-side optical array. I saw Vargold shudder as the image came into focus, one of the escort corvettes, badly damaged and trailing debris from the hole Kruger’s assault team had blasted in its side. Fortunately its thrusters were still operational, bringing it about and commencing a full burn towards the Jason Alpha. “Five hundred twenty-seven seconds to impact,” Kruger reported. “Punching out now. Best of luck, Herr Hauptmann.”
“Not one boarding party, but two,” I told Vargold. “Something you might have learned if you’d actually fought in the war; always have a contingency.” I trained the carbine on his knee and put a bullet through it, leaving him convulsing on the deck, choking down screams. “Your great project is about to become a lunar debris field, and I think you should stay and watch the show. After all, you paid for it.”
He clenched his teeth and blinked up at me, his expression markedly less pissed than I wanted it to be.
“Alex!” Lucy’s voice, shrill and urgent in my ear.
“What?”
“The main drive just started powering up. We’re less than seven minutes from going to relativistic speeds.”
I glanced up at the holo, watching the blue half-circle continue to ascend above the grey arc of the moon.
“Won’t be… everything I… wanted,” Vargold rasped. “But enough…”
A ship this size slamming into the Earth at relativistic velocity… Nuclear winter kind’ve thing.
I dragged Vargold up, forcing his head forward to expose the small round bump in the flesh behind his ear. Sub-dermal smart, he’s got a direct neural link to the ship. “Shut it down,” I said, pressing the carbine’s muzzle harder into his flesh. “Last chance.”
A deep, guttural laugh, then he spoke, voice rich in amused satisfaction, “From light we are b-”
The carbine burst blew his head apart and I let the twitching corpse fall to the deck. “Lucy, you have to shut down the engines.”
“I can’t. The hack just isn’t taking. It’s slowing the fusion reactions, but not enough…”
Another voice broke into the comms, laboured and heavy with suppressed pain. “What if… we… remove the hack?” Mr Mac asked.
“It’ll power up in seconds,” Lucy said. “At the current trajectory…” She trailed off.
“Better… than the… alternative, wouldn’t you… say?” Mr Mac enquired.
“Has to be done manually,” she said in a small voice. “We don’t have time to code up a remote link.”
A very short pause. “Then… I suppose you’d better… be on your way, my dear.” I watched him nod to Simon, the mercenary helping him up and half-carrying him to the terminal. “Escort her back… please,” Mr Mac told him, nodding at Lucy. “You’ll find triple… your usual fee in your account… as promised.”
“Three hundred and fifteen seconds,” Lucy told him, voice receding as Simon pulled her towards the exit. “Otherwise the trajectory will clear the surface…”
I watched Mr Mac slump against the terminal, hand reaching out to rest on the data-stick before Lucy rounded a corner and he was lost from view.
“Back to the suits,” I said, running from the bridge with the others at my heels. We sprinted through successive corridors, leaping the mound of corpses and making for the junction where we’d left the suits. As we ran Mr Mac’s voice provided an unwelcome commentary I couldn’t bring myself to mute. “I… never told you… why I deserted, did I, Alex?”
“Doesn’t matter now,” I said.
“There’s no mystery,” he went on. “I was afraid… plain and simple. I knew… none of us were coming back. I asked Consuela to come with me… Did you know that?”
I climbed into my suit and hit the rapid-seal command, the constituent parts closing around me. “And I’ll bet she told you to get lost.”
“Actually, no. Believe it… or not she was just as scared as I was. But she had… something I didn’t, she had you. So… she stayed.”
I accessed the Jason Alpha’s systems, finding the attitude controls still off-line which meant we were stuck in a gravity environment. I checked to ensure the others had successfully suited up, then blew every hatch between us and the recreation deck. “We’ll have to bounce,” I told them. “Jump then hit your thrusters.”
It was a bruising and difficult journey, the suits taking considerable damage as we repeatedly collided with hard surfaces, ricocheting along the corridors until we scraped through the final set of doors to be greeted by the welcome sight of the Aguila.
“I kind’ve… loved her, Alex,” Mr Mac said, voice fading now, words coming in wheezy grunts. “Been feeling… guilty about it… ever since. It’s… the main reason I never… had you killed. In case… you were wondering.”
“And I thought it was because we’ve always been such close friends.” I jumped, the suit’s power-assisted limbs taking me to a height of twenty feet before I hit the thrusters and covered the distance to the Aguila in a single bound, landing with the kind of force that made me wonder why my ankles hadn’t shattered.
“No… words of admiration for me?” Mr Mac enquired with a small chuckle that quickly turned into a gasp. “Even now? I’m… heroically sacrificing myself, here.”
“Then it’ll balance your account.” I groaned, rising from a crouch to see Lucy landing nearby, Simon and Phaedra’s people close behind. “Lotta bodies left in your wake.”
“All those bastards… deserved it. One way… or another… You’ll talk to Oksana and Bao… Won’t you? I’d like them to know.”
Lucy was first on board, the rest of us following to collapse into a jumble of suits as the ramp sealed behind us. “Yeah,” I muttered, struggling free of the crush. “I’ll talk to them.”
“Thank you.” A pause as he checked the readout. “Sixty-three seconds. You… really need to… get a move on.”
The Aguila lurched as Lucy disengaged the landing gear. Then came the stomach dragging acceleration as she brought the main plasma thrusters on line and gravity faded. “We’re clear,” Lucy reported. The cargo bay holo flickered into life, showing the receding shape of the Jason Alpha, soon rendered a dark speck against the vast backdrop of the moon. “Thought you’d want to see it,” Lucy said.
“It’s time,” I told Mr Mac.
“Just one thing…”
“It’s time!”
“You still… haven’t told me… how you caught me.” I could hear the smile in his voice, enjoying my anger even now.
“The Rodins,” Janet told him.
“Ah.” A soft sigh of resigned frustration. “Of course. But I just… couldn’t resist them. Every Achilles… has his heel, eh, Doctor?”
I watched the Jason Alpha drift towards the edge of the moon’s arc, ever closer to the blue half-circle.
“You were right,” I said. “You would never have come back from Langley. The ex-filtration plan didn’t include you. Given your erratic behaviour Covert Ops considered you an expendable asset. Needs of the mission, they said.”
“Yes… I thought as much.” Another pause. “It… wasn’t just guilt that stopped me, Alex. You know that, right?”
“Yeah, I know.”
Two seconds of silence, then a faint snick as he removed the data stick. As Lucy promised the main drive came online almost instantly, flaring bright like a second miniature sun before giving birth to its jet. The stream of super-energised matter extended to over a thousand klicks in the space of a few micro-seconds, sending the Jason Alpha into the moon’s surface faster than any human eye could hope to capture. I saw the moon tip on its axis as the energy release shattered much of its southern polar region. Vast chunks of moon-rock spun away, a few zipping past the Aguila and compelling Lucy to put her through a series of evasive manoeuvres. The larger rocks rose from the surface and tumbled about before slowly subsiding back into the main body. By the time the debris field cleared, the moon had gained a titanic new geographic feature, possibly the largest crater in the Solar System.
“I estimate six percent loss of mass,” Lucy said from the bridge. “Earth’s tidal patterns are gonna be pretty weird from now on.”
“We’ll get used to it,” Phaedra said.
I accessed the news feeds, hearing a chorus of confusion and panic. Potential first strike by CAOS forces… UN Federal Security insists it has taken no off-planet action… CAOS Central Governance denying all responsibility…
“Well, at least they haven’t started shooting.”
I cracked open my suit and floated free, Janet doing the same before pressing herself against me. She stank of blood, but I didn’t mind. “You were saying, before,” I said, pulling back slightly to run a hand through her gore-matted hair. “About retirement…”