Goliath, p.24
Goliath, page 24
“What is it?”
“The AI’s trashed too. Whoever did this got past the seals and tossed a grenade into the processor chamber. The lights are all out and it looks like there was a fire, but I can see enough to see the AI core is ruined. Damn, there’s bits everywhere.”
“That is not a good sign.”
“It was done recently. I can still smell it.”
“You are speculating our visitor did it?”
“Yeah. Damn, I need to get out of here.”
“The atmosphere is noxious. It looks like the halon fire suppression system went off. You need to leave the area. Get to clear air.”
“Yeah. Thanks.”
Pause.
“Are you out? Your respiration is erratic and your heart rate just increased. I think you should pull your visor down again.”
“It’s ok. It’s ok.”
“You need to tell me what’s happening. Should I engage your remote video systems?”
“No. It’s ok. I've found her.”
“Who? Is it our visitor?”
“Yeah. I think so. She’s dead.”
“Please describe.”
“She’s sitting outside the data management area. Looks like she slashed her wrists.”
“This makes little sense. Her motivations are entirely unclear to me.”
“This might help. There’s a note. Ugh, it’s got blood all over it.”
“What does it say?”
“If anyone ever finds me, you will understand. Without the Goliath there is nothing.”
Pause.
“What the hell does that mean?”
End recording.
Chapter Twenty-One
“Shit. Oh, shit.” Sash directed power to the thrusters, slowing her forward movement. Gas squirted before her, misting for a moment in the glare of her lights before dissipating.
The wreckage of the shuttle grew distinct as she approached, twisted shadows flitting about its torn frame. It was rammed up against the tunnel wall, one of its drives crumpled in the impact. Hanging motionless, it was nose down and slightly on one side, revealing the ruins of its stern. Something had hit it hard, ripping through metal and tearing body panels. The lights were out. It was clearly dead.
She toggled her radio. “Jeno... Adele, can you hear me?” There was no response.
Becoming frustrated waiting for the shuttle to return Sash had raided the equipment lockers left on the transit deck, clipping a manoeuvring pack, extra lights and oxy bottles to her suit. Weighed down she’d hobbled back to the ajar landing bay doors and jumped into emptiness. Coasting at thirty kilometres an hour it hadn’t taken long to find the shuttle.
“Damn. Duncan, can you hear me?” Her transmission was met with more silence. The larger Smithy twin was simply too far away, behind too many bulkheads and airlock doors.
She hung motionless for a moment, slowly drifting towards the tunnel wall above her, caught in indecision. They were clearly trapped here, the shuttle wasn’t going anywhere. Running through options in her mind she kept on finding insurmountable problems. Even placing a transmitter on the outside hull and calling for help was unlikely to produce results. The only people who ever came up here were the Overtakers, and they only travelled to the mentor platforms, stopping off at the odd wreck as it passed close by to raid it for any useful technology. They were all in a much lower orbit, thousands of kilometres away. If they were on this side of the planet at all. The only vehicles aboard the Goliath they had access to were behind two massive, unpowered bay doors. They’d need to find a way of powering them up, and she had no idea where to start with that. If, of course, they still worked.
“Damn it to bloody hell,” Sash cursed. She squirted power to the motors again, edging forward. She could see the vague outline of something else behind the shuttle. The lights, as bright as they were, were not quite bright enough to make out much detail. Not that it really mattered now, but she wanted to know what had happened to the shuttle. Someone would ask. Davido would certainly want to know what had killed his girlfriend. She cursed again. Davido would kill someone for that. Whether he would admit it or not he’d been quite attached to her. Had it been love? Sash didn’t think he knew what that meant, but it was as close as a man like Davido got to it. She certainly did not look forward to delivering the bad news. Men like Davido didn’t like bad news either. He had a way of making people regret bringing it to him.
Sash paused as she came alongside the shuttle, more gas misting around her as she brought herself to a stop. Laying her gloves on the cockpit windscreen she peered in, trying to angle the light to penetrate the darkness. There was something there.
“Fuck!” Sash jerked back in surprise, a glaringly white face appearing before her. It mouthed something at her, waving frantically. “Fuck. Don’t do that.” She waved back.
The figure kept on waving, brow furrowed in frustration, her meaning not being made clear. Then she vanished, swimming away into darkness. Sash cursed, looking around the side of the space craft. She couldn’t understand how someone could be alive in there. The thing was trashed.
The face returned. A piece of paper was held up to the windshield, something scrawled on it. “Jeno!!!!”
“What?” Sash threw up her arms in exasperation. “We’ve got to get you out of there!”
The face frowned. Adele, it must be, Sash decided. Her view through the window wasn’t very good. The paper was pushed up against it again. “He shot me!” The word ‘shot’ underlined three times.
“Yeah? OK. So, how’s that going to help me get you out of there? Is the airlock working?”
Adele threw up her hands.
“Guess I’ll have to find out for myself.” Sash waved at her and pushed herself away from the shuttle. Manoeuvring carefully using the thruster pack she rounded its crumpled frame. The airlock control panel was still lit up. A good sign. She keyed the opening sequence quickly, the hatch sinking into the side of the shuttle slightly, before sliding aside. The interior was dark. She didn’t care, as long as it worked.
“Did you see? That fucking bastard Jeno shot me!” Adele raged as soon as Sash got the inner door open.
“Ok, ok. Calm down. What happened?”
Adele was still wearing most of her pressure suit, the helmet removed and held in her hands. The interior of the shuttle was dark too. With the power off the air inside wouldn’t last very long. Still, at least there was still air pressure. The stern pressure door, between the main cabin and the cargo area, must be shut. Adele held the helmet up. A long scar was torn through the composite material. Emergency repair gum was clumsily pressed into it, sealing the breach.
Clearly shaken Adele quickly explained what had happened. She seemed more angry that someone had had the temerity to try to kill her, than that the shuttle was ruined. That they were stranded here hadn’t occurred to her yet. Sash ascribed it to shock and left it at that.
“We have to track him down,” Adele went on.
“What for? He’s gone.” She took the helmet from Adele and inspected the damage. It was severe; it would have killed her if she hadn’t acted quickly by sealing it. That actually impressed her. She hadn't thought the woman up for that kind of clear thinking. The repair wouldn’t hold though, Sash decided. She fished out her own repair kit and started working on shoring it up. They would need of it again in a moment.
“He’s a murderer. We can’t let him go free.”
“Strictly speaking, he’s not. You’re still alive,” Sash pointed out.
Adele waved that away. “We need to stop him killing anyone.”
“Yeah, like who? There’s no one on this rust bucket.” Sash paused, studying Adele a bit closer. “Have you been drinking?”
She shrugged. “A little.”
Sash was tempted to rebuke her but decided better of it. A stiff drink was probably a good idea, it would settle her nerves. “Be a love and get me one, why don’t you?”
“Get your own. So, we going after him? You’ve got a gun.” Adele pointed to the stubby sub machine gun she had strapped clumsily around the harness.
“No, absolutely not. We need to get back up to the others.” They needed to be told of this catastrophe.
“Good idea.” Adele picked up a bottle and took a gulp of clear liquid. It took her a moment, in microgravity there was nothing to encourage the alcohol to leave the bottle. She was steadily getting more inebriated by the moment. Possibly a good time to leave. “We can bring back a posse.”
“How much air do you have in there?”
“The suit? Dunno.”
Shaking her head Sash took her arm and studied the fabric screen sewn into its cuff. 2% oxy remaining. That wasn’t good. “There any power in here at all? We need to recharge this thing.”
Adele shrugged. “Don’t think so. Even that bloody demon has stopped making a noise.”
That limited their options. Driving just her own mass the manoeuvring pack had taken her half an hour to get down here. Pushing the both of them, it might take upwards of an hour. 2% oxy wouldn’t cut it. Sash cast around the shuttle, looking for anything they could enlist to aid them. Davido’s weapons cache was pushed behind the last row of seats in the main cabin, other than that there was nothing. Prentice’s own equipment had been stored in the cargo area.
“Do you know how much further this tunnel goes?”
“Beats me.”
“Have you seen Jeno coming back?”
Adele shook her head. Her eyes were starting to glaze over. Sash relieved her of the bottle. She needed her sensible. She batted away Adele’s hand as she tried to snatch it back. Some spilled out, globules of alcohol attaching themselves to a bulkhead.
“Ok. So he’s either found a way out further down or he’s dead down there. We’ll ignore the latter for the moment, as much as I think you’d like that option.” She studied the extra oxygen bottles she’d strapped to her own suit. “Turn around.”
“What?”
“Just do it.” She watched as Adele turned around clumsily.
“What was that for?”
“Seeing if your suit has an emergency oxy valve. It doesn’t.”
“What does that mean?”
“I can’t connect these extra bottles to your suit. You’ve only got two percent air left. That’ll last about ...” She shrugged. “Ten, fifteen minutes.”
“I can stay here.”
“What for? To die? That’s all you’ll do here. This shuttle is dead.”
“Mmm, time to get drunk I think.” Swaying slightly (an odd sight in zero g) she went in search of another drink.
“No. It isn’t. That’s the last thing we need.” There was only one thing to do then. The decision had been made for her. “Ok. So, let’s go after Jeno.”
“Hey, why didn’t I think of that?”
Ignoring her sarcasm Sash gave her attention to Davido’s weapons stash. Her eyebrows raised as she opened the heavy plastic zipper. Davido didn’t travel light. “Here.” She pulled out a sawn off shotgun and handed it to Adele, following it with enough spare cartridges to start a small war. Shotguns were the easiest things for novice’s not to mess up. Point and shoot. There was nothing simpler. She relinquished her own weapon and extracted an assault rifle. BMA 15, was stencilled in neat military script on the side. Noech Armament Works. When in trouble, always choose Noech. She smiled, she always felt better when her hands were wrapped around a powerful weapon. She hung it over her shoulder and followed that with a bandolier of spare clips. Too much? She thought? No, she added a brace of grenades and then turned back to Adele.
“We go. Now, we don’t have much time, so I’ll explain to you exactly what we’re going to do before we set off. I'm going to clip you in front of me. Do not wriggle. In fact, do not move. If you do it’ll throw our weight distribution off and I can’t fly straight. So, I’ll fly into a wall or something. Remember, you’re in front, so you’ll hit first. Got it?”
“Got it.” She saluted clumsily.
“Next, you’ll start getting alarms in your helmet. Ignore them, there’s nothing we can do about them. Finally, we’re looking for some kind of hatch or entrance way. If you see one I need you to let me know immediately.”
Adele pulled herself into the airlock. “Let’s go get the bastard.”
“Right.” Sash followed her. She quickly checked both their suits and then cycled the lock. “You ok?”
“Peachy. Damn, I didn’t bring anything to drink.”
Sash pulled her closer, ignoring her yelp. She quickly connected the two suits together, wrapping her legs around the shorter woman for extra stability. Aaah, in better times, she thought. What she wouldn’t give to try Adele out. She did have a nice ass. Still, Davido would not approve. Pity he didn’t like watching girls together. He was a bit old fashioned that way.
Once they were aligned with the tunnel she kicked in the motors. “Hang on.” It felt like a car accelerating quickly, the cold gas rockets pushing the two steadily forwards. They wobbled slightly as Sash became accustomed to their weight distribution.
As they swerved around the shuttle Sash discovered a second just beyond. It was smashed too. Something very heavy had struck it from the rear. “That must be the other shuttle,” she said. “Do you know what was shooting at you?”
“Nope. Never saw it. I was too busy getting shot at.”
“Fair enough.”
“Those lights you mentioned, they’re flashing.”
“Ignore them”
“They’re pretty insistent. Is there any way of shutting them off?”
“Yeah.”
“How?”
“Take your suit off.”
“Hey, that’s funny.” Adele wriggled, trying to get more comfortable.
“Hey!” Sash fired the motors to correct their spin as Adele threw them off. “What did I say about moving?”
“I was getting a cramp.”
“Live with it.”
“What’s that?” Adele pointed towards four steel girders that had become visible before them. They wobbled slightly at the new movement. Sash grimaced but said nothing.
“Is there a hatch there?”
“No.”
“So, we keep moving.”
“We need to know what’s down here. There’s something here attacking shuttles. We need to know what it is. It could be some old self defence mechanism that never got switched off.”
“Some other time maybe.”
“Damn, it’s getting stale in here. Think about it though, when we get picked up it’ll only fire again. It’s not safe here until we switch it off.”
“How about getting you inside before you run out of air? And die?”
“A good point well made.”
“I’m glad you’re see—“
“Hatch!”
Sash flipped a switch, engaging emergency thrust. She grunted, Adele yanking on her harness. The two spun madly, just missing one of the steel girders. Cursing Sash battled with the controls as they slammed into the hard steel wall. They slid along it for a moment, arms and legs becoming tangled.
“What the hell are you doing?” Adele demanded. “Damn, I think you’ve dislocated my shoulder.”
“Shut up.” Sash disengaged the manoeuvring pack, allowing it to spin away. One of the motor housings had cracked, causing the motor to fire erratically. Gas billowing around it it crashed into one of the girders, one of its straps snagging on it. Like a Katherine wheel it gyrated against the girder, expending the last of its fuel.
There was a simple handle built into the hatch. Sash twisted it quickly, leaning back as air jetted out, the lock cracking open. “Get in. Quick.”
“Damn, that hurt.” Adele took an offered hand and pulled herself past Sash. She clambered into the dark opening. Sash followed and closed the hatch quickly behind them.
Air flooded into the chamber. The equalisation symbol flashed in Sash’s visor. She lifted it up and sniffed carefully. A bit musty, but it was ok.
“That was some good flying there,” Adele commented as she lifted off her helmet. Sash could smell the alcohol on her breath in the cramped space.
“I’d like to see you do better.” Sash consulted the interior controls and instructed the door to open. It creaked, the hinges clearly in need of maintenance. Still, it opened, that was all that mattered. She peered out, setting her boots carefully on a steel walkway. Like everywhere else it was dark. At least they had air.
“What is this place?”
“Allow me to consult my map.”
“Sarcastic bitch.” Adele tossed down her helmet casually, not caring that it clattered off the edge of the walkway and vanished into darkness. Some seconds later they heard a clatter from below, followed by a deep boom. It was a long way down.
Sash shook her head in dismay, stripping off her suit. She couldn’t see her needing it again. Now it was just too constrictive, and heavy. Adele followed suit. “The best thing to do is to try and catch up with the others,” she said. “They’ll be a long way above us now though, unless they’ve found a quicker way down. We must be quite near the core here, so we’re about one and a half kilometres from the landing bay. Maybe a bit less.”
“Aren’t we after Jeno first?”
“Personally, I don’t give a damn about Jeno. I say we leave him here. Sooner or later we’ll get picked up and he’ll be on his own. He can stay in this bloody place.”
Adele looked thoughtful. “As long as we’re here he’s a danger to us.”
“Firstly, we don’t know that. It’s possible it’s just you he took a disliking to. Although I can’t see why. Besides, he’s not armed now. If I recall he only had the one bullet in his gun. You’ve ensured he doesn’t have that anymore.”
“Yeah, how weird is that? We’re on a navy ship though, there’s bound to be other weapons lying around.”
Sash studied their surroundings. There appeared only the one way to go: down. The walkway only went that way. She headed along it. “I doubt they’ll leave them lying around.”
“I don’t think we should take the chance.”
Sash smiled, stroking the cool steel of the Noech. She rather wished he did find a weapon.
