First Comes Duty (The Hope Island Chronicles Book 2) (39 page)

They had to get to the C and C. The only way forward required him to do something he had promised himself never to do. 

Drawing his sidearm, he threw the selector to its maximum setting.

“Do you know how to use this?”

“Ah, point and pull the trigger?” 

Nathan handed him the weapon, then pushed the barrel away from his chest. He pointed to a small mark on the far bulkhead.

“Can you hit that mark?”

Emile winked, turned side-on, raised the weapon and fired a two-second burst, hitting the target perfectly.

“During basic training, my instructors said I had a natural gift.”

Having exhausted the power pack on further practice, Emile proved he could maintain a concentrated beam on the target.

“Not bad, hey?”

“Hmm.”
How good are you going to be when something is shooting back?

“So, do you think this,” Emile said, looking disdainfully at the pulsar pistol, “can stop that monster?”

“No.” Nathan slapped a fresh power pack into the weapon. “But, if you stay on target until the power is exhausted, about eight seconds, it might buy me enough time to get close to the TRU.”

“With your bomb?”

“Ah huh.”

They talked further about the details. After a few minutes, his Franc ally got all he was going to get.

“What’s so funny?” Emile asked.

“Nothing.” Nathan found it ironic, in a comically macabre way, that his life now rested in the hands of a Franc. A people whom he had been told from childhood never to trust. Madness. 

Emile positioned himself face-on to the wall, ready to swing his arm into the corridor and target the red eye. Nathan ran on the spot, breathing rapidly, warming up. He stepped back a few paces. Covering thirty meters in eight seconds would be tight. 

“Emile. I order you not to get killed.”

“Aye-aye, Nathan.”

“Ready?”

“Ready.”

“On three. Don’t miss.”

“I won’t.”

“One, two, three.”

As Emile swung his right arm into the corridor, Nathan pushed off from the adjacent wall and ran. Emile’s beam hit Poly’s red eye dead in the center. As soon as Emile fired, Nathan began the eight second countdown.

Seven, six, five.

Unlike the last time, Poly fired blindly into the corridor. A beam of deadly energy passed way too close to his left arm. Ten meters.

Four, three.

Five meters from Poly’s gun ports, the beam terminated.

Damn you, Emile.

The red eye glowed, her pulsars converging onto his running form.

Nathan threw himself forward, onto his back, sliding along the polished deck. Poly’s energy beams tracked his sliding legs, so close that one sliced into the tip of his shoe, barely missing his toe. If he had been a few meters farther away when she reactivated, he would be dead. At such close quarters, the TRU could not depress her weapons low enough to hit him. Still sliding, he passed between the two massive legs, found his footing and ran at the wall ahead. He bounced off it with his right foot and used the momentum to run at Poly’s broad back and crouched legs. One step onto the left leg and up. The bomb, still in his right hand, slapped onto the back of Poly’s head. Pulling the timing ring, he leapt from the ’droid and ran around the adjacent corner. Five-second fuse, Errol had said.

Three, two.

Nathan dropped to the deck, rolling into a ball.

The explosion bounced from the walls, making his ears ring. Shrapnel ricocheted around him, one piece landing on his leg. He brushed the hot fragment away before it burned him. Standing, he stared at the impenetrable hatch.

“You’re next.”

Errol’s hastily conceived bomb had mangled the TRU’s head most effectively. With a lack of imagination, the designers had chosen to place the operating control unit in its head.

Nathan kicked it in the butt. “Not so bloody tough now, are you?”

“Emile, let’s move.”

The answering silence chilled Nathan.
No, no, no.
He strode down the corridor, slowing as he saw Emile’s hand, still clutching the mangled pistol. It terminated at a scorched stump that had once been his elbow. A foot poked around the corner. Nathan swallowed bile as he stared at the fallen Franc. The pulsar beam had ripped Emile from torso to head.

“You didn’t stop shooting, did you Emile? Not until…”

He swallowed the remorse as the anger welled up.

“This is most inconvenient, Emile. Didn’t I tell you not to get killed? Didn’t I?”

Nathan forced himself to stare at Emile’s hideous corpse.  

That’s two dead, on me. 

The job still remained undone. Yet how the blazes could he proceed without his computer expert?

Striding along the corridor, he stared at the last barrier between himself and the Command and Control Center.

“Open sesame?”

What was the code Admiral Grace had used? The code hadn’t worked last time. Probably would not again.

How did it go. Poly, admit to C and C. Authorization Grace, ah … damn. Alpha or Bravo? I wonder how many tries I get at this before Poly kills me?

Once again he adopted his best impression of Admiral Grace.

“Poly, admit to the C and C. Authorization Grace, alpha thirteen.”

A quick glance over his shoulder to see if a gun port had opened. Then, with a loud clunk, the massive hatch slid open.

“I’ll be damned.” 

Retracing his steps, he passed the lavish bar, two crew slumped over it, one on the deck. The C and C showed the same level of disruption as he had seen on the rest of the station. He checked a few of the crew. Steady but slow pulses.

“Where to start?” Nathan stepped back, trying to locate a central control point. He found a commander, what was his name? Illingworth, head down over an impressive array of readouts. “Excuse me, Commander,” he said, shifting the unconscious officer to the deck. Running his eyes across the controls, he recognized a few basic instruments. His examination gleaned nothing of particular use, like a big red button that said
disarm
.

Nathan’s back flared. Reaching for his sidearm, he found an empty holster.

“Don’t, touch, that. Don’t, please don’t.”

The elderly officer, holding the pulsar pistol, held the rank of captain. A re-breather dangled from his neck.

“Please, don’t move. I don’t want to hurt you. I don’t want to hurt anyone. She did. She wanted to kill them all. But I stopped her. Snipped her leash, I did. Yes.” He giggled insanely. “So she put them to sleep. She wanted to kill you, but I wouldn’t let her. The TRU, oh, that is on a different relay. But I have to obey, you see? He told me I had to obey. I did not have a choice.”

“Captain Cowdry?”
The foremost expert on the Polyphemus computer network? Shit
.

“Yes, I am he. Please don’t move.”

“I won’t, Captain. Ah, Sir, what’s going on here?”

“What’s going on, you say, young man? I used be young once, you know? Yes, young. Then he spoke to me and I betrayed my oath. I could not help it, you see. He spoke, I had to obey. Do you understand?”

“Of course, Captain. You had no choice.” With each word, Nathan edged a step closer to the crazed officer.

“Exactly, no choice. No choice.”

“Who told you to do this, Captain?” Another step.

“A young man, yes, young, like you. I could not refuse, you see, could not.”

Nathan kept his tone conversational, as if reasoning with someone suffering from dementia.

“Sounds like a pretty good talker, Captain. What’s his name?”

“Name? Name? Ah, let me see. Saxon, yes that’s it, Lieutenant Saxon. He told me to betray my oath, you see. I did not want to, but I had to. Turn Poly’s weapons onto those poor ships. Oh no. God, what have I done? All those young people dead. But, you see, I had no choice. You see that, don’t you?”

“Of course, Captain. You had no choice. Saxon made you do it. It’s not your fault.” Another casual step brought him almost within reach of Cowdry.

“But I must obey. She won’t kill any more people, though. Oh, no, no more deaths on my head.” He chuckled knowingly. “I’ve fixed her.”

His gun hand was down. Now or never. Nathan began to move. The gun snapped up, pointing at his head. 

“No! I told you not to move. I told you. I warned you. Why did you have to move?” The pistol wavered in his hand, but at this range he could not miss.

“Captain Cowdry, get a grip on yourself, Sir. You are a serving officer of His Majesty’s Royal Navy. Now hand me that weapon immediately.”

“Weapon? Oh no, I cannot do that. You will try to stop me. He won’t let me stop. I must obey my orders. I am most frightfully sorry, young man.”

He squared up the weapon between Nathan’s eyes. Nathan steeled himself to drive at the captain. 

Something flew past Nathan’s ear, continued on and struck the captain squarely above the nose. Cowdry dropped like a stunned buffalo. Nathan lunged forward and disarmed him. On the deck, beside the unconscious body, lay a bottle, the label reading, Toohey’s Oceanian Ale.

Nathan turned to the bar. Clive, the chief steward, stood with arms akimbo.

“From this distance, not a bad shot, if I do say so meself.”

“Clive, that’s a terrible way to treat good beer.” They both chuckled as Clive ambled over. 

“It’s good to see you, Clive, but how—”

“I was restockin’ when the shit ’it the shields. Perishables, you see. Airtight storage. I saw people droppin’ on my monitor. A couple of months ago Admiral Grace, the prick that he is, gassed the C and C to show us how safe we were. Bastard of a man. I didn’t want to go through those withdrawals again, so I settled back to wait it out. I must have nodded off. Next thing I see is you and Captain Crackers havin’ a little chitchat. So I grabbed the nearest thing to hand and…” He shrugged.

“And saved my life.”

“Don’t spread that rumor, Mister Telford. Savin’ an officer’s life could bugger up me reputation.”

Nathan snorted.

“Thanks anyway. I don’t suppose you know how this setup works?”

“No, Sir. Apparently he” —he pointed to the cataleptic captain— “is the only one who does.”

Nathan sighed. “Shit.”

CHAPTER 63

Date: 24
^th
March 322 ASC.

Position: Cimmerian outer marker. 

Status:  Talgarno battleship
Emaonon’s Vengeance
. Alert Condition Two.

Commodore Becklin had not felt the juices rise this way since his early days in the service. Soon a great victory would be his. Admiral Braun’s larger force followed and should be here soon. Not that he would need the additional forces. By the time Braun turned up, Cimmeria would be theirs. To pillage or destroy at their will. 

“Commodore, all ships report they have egressed successfully. Awaiting orders, Sir.”

“Helm, set course for the Cimmerian inner marker. Nice and steady, if you please. We bumped into enough battle debris out here, let’s take it easy on the final leg.”

“Aye-aye, Commodore. Ahead dead slow.”

CHAPTER 64

Date: 24
^th
March 322 ASC.

Position: King Charles Battle Platform. Cimmerian system. 

The throbbing pain between Nathan’s shoulder blades spoke of a forthcoming storm. 

Clive, ever the adaptable noncom, found a solution to one of Nathan’s many difficulties. Half an hour after his encounter with the crazed captain, most of the personnel had been secured aboard landing boats. Nathan did not know if an evacuation of the station would be needed, but prepared for the worst. 

“Compad, scan battle platform personnel.”

“Scanned.”

“Give estimated time for revival of crew affected by kalbutine gas.”

“Estimated time of recovery is between twenty-seven and forty-three minutes.”

Shit
.

Clive returned, flanked by two standard Bret ’droids.

“Nearly done, Mister Telford. Just these three to go.”

“Very well. Leave Cowdry.”

“Right you are.”

Captain Cowdry sported a sizable lump on his forehead. Nathan shook him, then slapped his face. Cowdry stirred, his eyes fluttering open.

“Ohhh, my head. What happened?”

“Captain, I need your help.”

Cowdry glanced about him, wearing a baffled expression, as Nathan hauled him to his feet.

“She tried to kill them all,” Cowdry muttered.

“Yes, she did. We need to take back command of this station, from her. How do we do that?”

Cowdry staggered to the main console and punched numbers into a panel.

“Authorization denied. Incorrect access code,” Poly said.

The captain tried again, with the same result.

“This isn’t right, this isn’t right. The access codes have been changed.”

“By who?”

“It was done from this panel within the last day. I am the only one authorized to—” His face paled. “Oh, my God, it wasn’t a dream. I did it. I killed all those poor people.”

“Captain, you weren’t yourself. You are not to blame. Remember, it was Saxon.”

“Yes, Saxon.”

“For now, Captain, we need to regain control of this station. How do we do that?”

“Do that? Do that? Oh, she won’t let us tell her what to do any more. We can’t stop her.”

“Captain, she’s killed thousands of Bretish sailors. She cannot be allowed to kill any more.”

“Yes, yes. No more. I fixed her so she’ll never kill again.” His teeth set in a grim smile.

“What do we have control over?”

“What?”

“Can you disarm her?”

“No, no, too well protected.”

“Can you shut her down. Kill her higher functions.”

“No, no. She’s fully insulated herself. Without the access codes, there is nothing I can do.”

“I don’t accept that.” Nathan tried to contain his growing frustration. “Can you give me helm and thruster control?”