The silver fleet the com.., p.120
The Silver Fleet: The Complete Series, page 120
His thoughts were interrupted by the bright blue flash of a blaster. Nash was taking pot shots at him, which didn’t make sense. Blasters weren’t known for their accuracy, which was why when you fired them you were taught to aim at the opponent’s stomach. Invariably, you weren’t trying to kill them but to incapacitate them. Nash didn’t want him running round his precious ship. Not if he could help it.
He started to move forward. The brief flash of the blaster had been enough to illuminate the far end of the corridor. Just another twenty metres to go and then, if memory served him right, it was intersected by a smaller walkway. As he moved, he sensed that angle of the ship had changed with the nose, which was behind him, pitching down slightly. It wasn’t much but enough to cause a slight upward gradient.
It was just as he reached the intersection that the ship seemed to groan and he felt something give way. The whole ship slewed to one side and he was fortunate that he had something to grab hold of otherwise he might have lost his footing.
The lights came on at that moment and his first reaction was to shrink away, screwing his eyes shut. When he opened them again he was surprised by how slick and new everything looked. The corridor, the lighting, even the strip of carpet under his feet looked as if it had been put together yesterday.
What was happening?
The back of Webster’s head still throbbed from where he’d struck it earlier and the bright lights weren’t helping. He found himself wondering if he might have concussion. Not that anyone would care.
He decided to risk looking behind him but found the best way to do that was by looking back between his legs. From that angle, he had a good view of Nash propelling himself along on all fours, climbing up the corridor like a spider.
He had a strange faraway look in his eye.
He means to kill me, Webster thought almost absently.
Then, copying Nash’s style, Webster dropped down onto his knees and started moving upward. Because it was very definitely an upward move needed and quickly. He glanced over to his right. The corridor on that side disappeared off into darkness and he ignored it. There was no guaranteeing where it led to. At least if he pressed ahead he knew where Nash was and the more distance he could put between them, the more ineffective the blaster became.
Back on the firing range at the Academy, they’d spent the first three days drilling them on what constituted a solid firing position. Same reason why they taught you never to try and fire while moving: by the nature of its instability your shots were going to be skewed. And trying to fire from your hands and knees, up an incline was never going to end well.
So, Webster kept going despite the fact that his knees were currently taking the brunt of his weight. They’d be rubbed raw by the time he got to the top.
“How about we take a break?” Nash was gasping. “Talk this over like adults?”
“Lose the blaster and I might think about it.”
“Now, you know I can’t do that. It’s the only thing giving me an edge.”
Webster surveyed the distance ahead of him. Without some kind of climbing implement he was going to struggle to make it. The corridor was a good way from going vertical but it wouldn’t take much for him to lose his footing.
“Tell you what. Stick the blaster inside your suit and I’ll think about it.”
The seals on his suit would make it very difficult to get the blaster inside and almost impossible to get out again.
“Okay, fine,” Nash could sound almost human when things were going his way. “How about we meet at that corridor you just passed?”
Webster had to laugh at that. There was no way he was going back.
“No. Tell you what. You can hang out back there. I’m going to that next doorway up ahead. See if I can’t find me some water.”
“I can get you some water, if you’d like.”
“No thanks. Talk again in five.”
CHAPTER THIRTY
Such was the nature of space combat that, played out over vast distances as it was, it invariably developed a certain sense of inevitability after a while and such was to be the fate of the Charles W. Morgan.
The first set of defensive missiles had streaked out towards their targets and taken out the bulk of them, leaving only two still active. The ship’s defensive lasers took down the first but the second, which had been damaged somehow and was flying erratically, managed to get through, detonating against the Morgan’s massive bow.
The captain in charge, a woman named Wilde, had borne it well, leaving her PWO to relay the details of her damage received.
The second salvo met with similar resistance but this time three enemy missiles got through and again only one of them was destroyed as it drew within range. But then the two remaining missiles struck home together, catching the Morgan on the portside, triggering a series of explosions which played along the hull.
No one said anything on the bridge of The Naked Spur but then they didn’t have to. They were all experienced enough to know what was happening. The sections breached, the massive decompression which would follow, fire running rampant in the oxygen rich atmosphere.
Winterson and Hoyt stood together as the final salvo, launched by Tyr, began to close. They could all see the display, watch the missiles streaking towards their target.
“What’s wrong?” Winterson said under his breath. “Why doesn’t she launch?”
Hoyt shrugged. “Perhaps she can’t.”
The blur of point defence lasers seemed to be over far too quickly to be of any real benefit. And as each of the missiles completed their pin-point delivery, the Charles W. Morgan appeared to stagger visibly as a series of internal explosions worked to tear her apart.
Winterson moved forward.
“Let me speak with her,” he said to one of the comms officers. “Let me speak with Captain Wilde.”
It was a few minutes before Wilde was able to respond because in the meantime both Odin and Thor had launched secondary salvos, all aimed at the Morgan.
Winterson tried to imagine the chaos on the other ship as they tried to drag the stunned captain’s attention away from the trio of warships bearing down on them, as she attempted to make sense of what was happening and give her orders.
Captain Wilde was a handsome woman, daughter of Jack Wilde the infamous shipping magnate but she was an accomplished officer in her own right. Winterson had spoken to her at some length the previous day. She had seemed exuberant then, full of beans and eager to take the fight to the enemy.
But the woman who appeared on the screen now was different. Haggard. She looked to have aged twenty years in as many minutes.
“How are you holding up?” Winterson asked.
“I don’t know what to say to that, sir. We’ve lost contact with seven of our sectors. They’re still there but I’m not getting anything back. Michaelson was trying to set up a firewall…”
“I understand,” Winterson said though everyone could see that he didn’t have the first idea what she was going through. “Did you have an issue with orientating your defences?”
“I don’t know,” she confessed. “I just don’t know what happened there.”
“You’re bearing up well, though.”
She didn’t seem to hear him, distracted by something off screen.
“They’ve fired again. That can’t be right, can it? Admiral, you have to do something. You have to help us.”
“I’ll do what I can.”
Once the transmission had ended he walked back to his chair and when Hoyt made to engage him he simply shook his head and mouthed, “No.”
*
By the time Webster got to the doorway, he was almost exhausted.
The incline had shifted so quickly that it now represented a really aggressive incline enough that, if he decided to, he reckoned he’d be able to slide all the way to the bottom, no problem.
Even if the incline remained the same he doubted that he’d be able to cover the next twenty metres without some kind of pick to help give him traction. But then, if he was feeling like that then so was Nash and time was running out for both of them now because even though Nash had his suit, he’d left his helmet back in the command centre.
A quick perusal of the room he was looking into told him all he needed to know. Everything inside, which had been left there by the scientists, were now all stacked against the lower wall. Some kind of large adjustable work bench, a ladder along with two big self-standing lighting brackets. Nothing that could be used as a pickaxe and, of course, no actual weapons.
No water either and that could provide a problem if he couldn’t resolve it.
He tried to think back to Nash’s storeroom, trying to remember if there’d been any water in there. He couldn’t recall seeing any but figured there had to be some. If Nash had gone to the trouble of bringing oxygen then he would have remembered to bring water.
“Ready to talk?”
“I’m ready.”
It was only a short climb back up to the doorway but Webster’s back was feeling it. And then, when he chanced to look at his knees he was struck by the fact that they were slick with blood. He grabbed hold of the door jamb and pulled himself up. He found that he was looking straight down at Nash. They were only about ten metres away but there was no way the other man was going to be able to rush him from there, though just to be on the safe side he wedged himself in against the bulkhead.
If Nash did try anything he’d be able to fend him off with his feet.
“Do you want to tell me everything?”
Nash shook his head, he was standing awkwardly at the entrance to the corridor, one foot braced against the floor. “We don’t have time for everything. We’ll be in orbit in twenty minutes.”
“Yeah, but I can’t help noticing you forgot to bring your helmet.”
“You let me worry about that, commander. You worry about yourself.”
“Okay, I will. How’s about twenty questions, then?”
“Like I said, we don’t have time.”
“What about three, then. You owe me that, at least.”
“Yeah,” Nash looked down. “I suppose I do at that. Three it is then.”
From somewhere in the ship there was a huge whuump sound and the whole ship lurched to one side.
Webster was thrown backwards, into the room, but somehow managed to hook a leg around the doorway to prevent himself from falling. He cursed, hanging upside down and tried to yank himself back into position.
The whiff of burnt metal and propellant filled his nostrils but it wasn’t enough to panic him. If the Montezuma had dropped them they’d have known about it already. But whatever had exploded had caused the ship to change orientation once more so that when he looked down the corridor, some small part of his brain alerted him to the idea that things had changed and what he was looking at was a whole lot of down.
Nash was no longer in the doorway.
He’d be thrown forward by the impact, and was now caught in the neck of the intersection. The neck was narrower than the corridor itself, but not by much and Nash was struggling to secure himself. He had one elbow wedged against the corner and had managed to throw out a foot to stop himself slipping any further but his other leg was just dangling over open space and he was holding his other arm in a way which suggested he’d broken his collar bone on the way down.
“You alright?” Webster asked.
Nash’s laugh sounded like a bark. “That one of your three questions?”
“You want me to lower something down to you?”
Nash just grunted his assent as he tried, but failed to hook his free leg over the lip of the ledge. But the more he stretched out the more precarious his position became.
Webster swung himself round so that his legs were hanging down into the room, surveying the crush of objects while he tried to justify why he was attempting to save someone who only minutes before had been trying to kill him.
“Question one,” he boomed. “Did you have anything to do with the loss of the Dardelion?”
“You mean, did I have anything to do with the death of the lovely Joanna Silva?”
“That wasn’t my question.”
It was a three-metre drop from the doorway down to the wall which had recently become the floor.
Three metres. Once he got down there, how was he supposed to get back up?
“I was worried about those Armored Infantry Marines of yours.”
Webster could hear the strain in Nash’s voice. If he didn’t do something soon the man was going to fall.
“The ones who got trapped in the cargo bay?”
“Yeah, that was me. Couldn’t afford for them to get down planetside so I screwed with their radios. Couldn’t have them talking to anyone.”
“About what?”
“That your second question?”
Webster push through the sea of detritus. He could use the big, mounted light to help him get back up.
“You haven’t answered my first.”
“I planted a bomb in the cargo bay. Nothing big. I just wanted to trigger a…” Nash cried out then.
“You still there?”
“Only just.”
Webster wedged the big light between the now upright floor and the door jamb before planting a foot against one of the metal collars. Then he heaved himself up, bracing his elbows against the doorway. He had to lift the light using his foot and the first time he tried it, he dropped it.
But not the second time.
He pulled himself up into the doorway, bringing the light with him.
“I’m slipping.”
“Hold on. I’m going to lower this down to you.”
He balanced the light lengthways in the doorway and then worked to pull up the power cable that was attached to it. There was a lot of cable and it took him longer than he’d like.
“You wanted to trigger a massive decompression.”
“That’s right. Could you hurry up?”
Webster was busy running cable through his hand but a glance told him that Nash’s body had lost its rigidity and he was starting to slip.
“But you didn’t have anything to do with Joanna’s death.”
“That Da’al ship just appeared. What can I say?”
Webster was lowering the power cable hand over hand. It was thicker than a normal power cable, more durable, but he worried about how strong it was. It would probably be able to hold Nash’s weight but as far pulling him up was concerned …
As soon as the end of the cable came within reach, Nash shifted his weight in an effort to snag it with his injured arm but couldn’t. His arm would only come so far and he probably lacked the strength in it to bear his weight. Trouble was that his good hand was holding him in place. If he released that he would fall.
Nash was growling at him, unable to speak. But, by jerking his head he was able to make it clear what he wanted Webster to do.
Webster started to swing the cable but it was heavy and seemed to have a mind all of its own. Then, he managed to get it further across and Nash made his move. Levering his body up using his neck he came up high enough so that his good arm could grab the cable, and in so doing, caught Webster by surprise.
The cable suddenly went tight, cutting across Webster’s thigh and he had to grab the base of the light fitting to avoid it being ripped from his grasp. It was only then that he realised what a terrible position he was in. Only by bracing his back against it could he stop it from being pulled forward, the thought of being able to pull Nash up seeming like a naïve dream.
Nash was in a terrible position. Worse than before. For while he now had hold of the cable his grip on it was not strong. He was holding himself in place with just his heels.
“Last question.” Nash said.
And for a second Webster’s mind was a blank.
“Who do you work for?”
“Hah! An easy one! The Yakutians, of course.”
A massive impact jarred the ship, prompting Webster to throw out a hand to stop him from falling but in shifting his weight, he was forced to release the light. It whipped out and away from him, struck the far wall hard enough to put a massive dent in it and was gone.
By the time Webster had righted himself, so was Nash.
He saw his body strike a protuberance about halfway down and then he simply spun away into the dark.
*
“Odin will be in range within ninety seconds.”
Winterson clasped his hands together, trying to focus, but that was difficult with fires raging all across the Morgan.
The twin salvos had compromised her armour with ruthless efficiency. The PWO had stayed in contact with his opposite number aboard the Charles W. Morgan throughout which must have been difficult as they were part of the same team. But then they’d lost all contact. The ship had simply shuddered under the final assault, the lights along one side simply cutting out leaving the ship looking inert as it slowly started to drift off course, heading out and away from The Spur.
“Sloth Gun holding at ninety seven percent. Ready to fire, aye.”
Hoyt turned to acknowledge Winterson.
This was it, then. The moment of truth.
It didn’t matter that they’d lost fifty percent of their offensive power. If this worked, then it would mark a significant breakthrough against the enemy regardless of what came next.
Hoyt consulted the PWO.
“Is the Molly Maguire, ready?”
“Aye, sir.”
“Prepare her to fire on my mark.”
The officer simply nodded. There was no need to pass the order on. Everyone knew what was at stake. If they hadn’t known before they certainly did now.
“Tyr is firing, sir.”
“Acknowledged.”
“Fifteen seconds.”
The screen switched to a view of the Odin.
“Ten seconds.”
If she didn’t launch now…
“Five seconds.”
She probably wouldn’t get another opportunity.
“Sloth Gun at ninety eight percent.”
“Fire.”
Nothing happened.
