Chapter Ten

Shann

“Report! What was that?”

“Some kind of depressurisation, Captain! A response team is on its way to hydroponics.” Jacobson’s voice is shrill and wavering. I’m reminded of just how young he is. His words register. An accident in hydroponics – where Drake worked. Was he murdered because he found—

“We’re drifting away from the Hercules, Captain!”

“Travers, get us back in position!”

There’s no answer. I look over. Travers is out cold, slumped forward in his chair. We’re cabled to the freighter; if we don’t correct, those lines will run out of play.

I key up the pilot controls. A mini-joystick flips out of the armrest. A graphic representation of the ship appears on the screen. The hydroponics compartment is flashing red. That means we’re still venting atmosphere, still being pushed out of position.

I activate thrusters to compensate and set the computer to record and arrest our movement. There’s a hum through the deck as the engines engage. We’re slowing, then moving back. There’s been no sign of the tethers snapping. The rescue teams will need those lines to get back. Hopefully, we’re in time…

I can’t be distracted. I’m mapping the Khidr’s original parking position, relative to the freighter. I instruct the computer to return us to that spot.

There’s another lurch, this time the other way. “Hydroponics section sealed off, Captain,” Jacobson says.

The thrusters reduce power and we’re back. I unclip from my seat and launch myself toward Travers. There’s blood on his face and the chair. When we moved, his head must have slammed into the side of the seat. I shake his shoulders. “Wake up, Lieutenant!”

“What happened? I…”

“You hit your head. We’ll get Bogdanovic to take a look at it.” Travers can’t focus or look me in the eye. I can see he wants to help, to get it together, but he’s a liability up here. “You’re relieved, Lieutenant. Jacobson, tell Le Garre we need her, then escort Travers to medical.”

“Yes, Captain.”

I release Travers’s straps and haul him out of his seat. Jacobson grabs him and guides him toward the door. Le Garre is coming in just as he leaves. Sam Chase is right behind her. His work suit is scorch-marked and torn.

“Thought you could use an extra hand, Captain,” he says, “and an update.”

“Both would be very welcome,” I reply grimly. “What’s going on out there?”

“An explosive charge detonated in hydroponics,” Sam explains. He’s moving toward Jacobson’s vacant seat. Le Garre is settling into the pilot’s chair. “We’ve sealed off the compartment.”

“What’s the damage?”

“No one hurt, but we’ve lost everything that was in there.”

I’m doing the calculations even as he confirms the worst. Without hydroponics, we’re on limited time. The necessary recycling processes facilitated by our garden allow a ship to stay out of port for weeks and months. We’ll need to dock and repair. Thankfully, we’re only three days or so out from Phobos Station. We can make it on our current reserves. “We need to assess all damage and work out where we are. Quartermaster, I need you to authorise and deploy firearms to all members of the ship’s crew.”

Sam stops and looks at me. “Is that a good idea, Captain?” he asks. “The last thing we need is more damage to the ship.”

“The last thing we need is a terrorist running around destroying us from the inside,” I say. “I need whoever it is found, Sam. With Keiyho off the ship, you’re the senior firearms officer.”

“Sure.” Sam changes direction, making for the door. “I’ll get to it.”

“Thank you.” I grab his shoulder as he goes past. “Remember, you’re dealing with a murderer. Don’t hesitate.”

Sam nods. “I won’t.”

My screen flashes, another alert. Johansson’s face appears. “Captain, something’s come up.”

“Is it urgent? We’re dealing with a lot at the moment.”

“Pretty urgent. Are you aware that we’re transmitting?”

“Transmitting? What do you mean?”

“I’m picking up near-field communication from our ship to an unknown source,” Johansson explains. “There’s someone out there.”

“Aboard the Hercules?”

“No, somewhere else.” She frowns. “It’s gone. I can’t pinpoint the source.”

“Get yourself up here,” I order and close the screen. The ship graphic has calmed down now, but the hydroponics chamber is greyed out. I deactivate the pilot controls from my screen. “Transferring control back to you, Major,” I say to Le Garre.

“Thank you,” she replies in a pained voice. “Looks like you corrected our position just in time.”

“We’re still attached to the freighter?”

“Yes, I think so.”

I open the camera feed from our airlock. I can see a mass of EVA suits crammed into the space – people arriving back, making their way through processing. The sight is a relief. I’m smiling in spite of everything. “As soon as everyone’s aboard, get us ready to detach.”

“Aye, aye.”

My hands are shaking on the armrests. I know it’s from the adrenaline and endorphins. My body’s reaction to the crisis fired me up, and now, in a moment of aftermath, it’s struggling to come down. I’m breathing carefully, managing myself. We’re taught how to deal with these high stress situations, but there’s a big difference between there and here. We’ve trained for crises, we have emergency procedures and protocols for an array of eventualities, but this situation is complex, more complex than anything I can think of.

“Duggins’s team are aboard, Captain,” Ensign Chiu says. “He’s on his way up here.”

“What about Keiyho’s people?” I ask.

“They’re at the freighter airlock,” she replies. “They’ve had some problems.”

I go over the drone feeds on my screen. Three of them have gone down. “What kind of problems?” I ask.

“Unclear,” Chiu says. “There’s a lot of chatter.”

The bridge door slides back, and April Johansson is here and moving to take Jacobson’s post as the navigation/communications operator. “Where’s that field scan, tactical?” I ask.

“Just completing now, Captain,” Thakur says. “I…errr… I’m not sure we’ve…”

“Send the data and the conclusions to me, Ensign.”

“Yes, Captain.”

The sweep appears in another window. It’s a three-dimensional representation of our location and the region around it. I touch the screen and rotate the image. The Khidr is positioned in the centre, with a sphere of laser-scanned space all around us. The Hercules is a short distance away, and then there are a variety of other small objects picked up around it. I recognise them immediately.

“That’s debris.”

“Captain, I’m more concerned about quadrant six,” Thakur says.

A section of the scan is highlighted in green. I zoom into that region. In the middle, there’s a shape, roughly the same size as the Khidr.

“How far away is that object?” I ask.

“Ten thousand kilometres,” Thakur replies. “There’s some interference in our image out there. I can’t be completely sure what we’re seeing is accurate.”

“What’s the ratio?”

“Eight-two per cent accuracy, Captain.”

“It has to be a ship,” Le Garre says. “The ship that attacked the Hercules.”

“And it’s still here,” I add.

“Looks like it.”

I stare at the region around the object. There’s a whole series of small dots identified by the scan. These are labelled as anomalies, driving up the computer’s calculation of interference. “Run the sweep again,” I order. “Make a positional comparison. Track those small dots and discount them from the accuracy analysis. Send the comparative image straight over as soon as you have it.”

“Yes, Captain.”

“Tactical, what countermeasures do we have aboard?”

Ensign Thakur shudders when I address him, like an electric charge has run through him and stiffened his spine. “Countermeasures, Captain? I’m not sure I—”

“Find out, quickly!”

Le Garre is staring at me. She looks confused. “What are you—”

“I think those are guided missiles,” I say. “They are locked on to us, by some sort of tracking method – probably laser guidance, or our transponder.”

The second image appears on my screen. I overlay the two. The small signals have moved. There are six of them and they’re much closer to us. The larger signal is also heading in our direction.

“Chiu, isolate the objects from the two images and do a velocity calculation.”

“Large object moving at fifty metres per second; smalls are…one thousand metres per second.”

“Time until they reach us?”

“About eighteen minutes, Captain.”

“Can we shoot them down with our own rockets?” Le Garre suggests.

I shake my head. “They’re moving too fast. We need to give them something else to target.”

“Captain, we could change our transponder signal?” Johansson urges. “They might be locked on to our ship identification code. If we change that, they might get confused.”

“Do it,” I order.

“If they’re tracking us by laser sweep, like we’re using, it won’t make much difference,” Le Garre warns.

“We try everything,” I reply. “We don’t know what tech they’ve got.”

“Then we need to move position too,” Le Garre says.

“We can’t while we’re tethered.” I’m looking at the airlock again. More EVA suits are appearing in the room. I can see two people carrying a third figure. “Contact Arkov and keep an eye on our airlock, Major. Soon as you get an all clear, initiate a burn and get the freighter between us and the incoming hostiles.”

“Will do,” Le Garre replies.

“Tactical, what do you have for me on countermeasures?” I ask.

Thakur’s face is pinched in concentration. “We have pressurised tanks and atmosphere bags for repairing hull ruptures. If we launch a tank inside a bag, we can inflate it and create another target for the missiles that’s roughly the same size as we are. It may fool a laser scan.”

“Will it work?”

“Depends how far away the missiles are when they detect the new objects and how accurate their tracking systems are.”

“How many can we deploy?”

“Four, maybe five, depending on how much time we have.”

“Get it done, Ensign. How many people do you need?”

“One for each, Captain.”

“Get Duggins on comms and tell his people to make up what you need.”

At that moment, a klaxon sounds, the ship surges, and the stars seem to fall like rain. I glance down and see the airlock door is shut. Le Garre is moving us up and over the Hercules, putting a kilometre of the freighter between us and the missiles. “We need to make sure we can deploy the tanks before we drop out of sight, Major,” I say.

“Understood, Captain,” Le Garre says.

We’re banking and pitching; the magnets in my suit activate and the straps on my shoulders tense. A countdown clock appears on my screen – it’s the estimated time it’ll take the first of the missiles to reach us. “How long until we can jettison the tanks?”

“Duggins says three minutes.”

I look at the clock. We have just under fourteen minutes. “Once we get to the other side, go dark. Switch off all non-essential power. We need them to think we’re gone.”

Le Garre grunts. “If this works,” she says.

“It has to work,” I reply.