Star Force 11: Exile Page 11

  “Kwon, you and Fleeg carry Kreel and let’s get off this sinking tub.”

  Kwon chuckled grimly. “I don’t need help.” He grabbed Kreel under one arm and stomped off the bridge, heading back the way we came his magnetic boots making the deck shudder.

  I waved my axe at Fleeg. “Follow us.”

  Before we’d gone ten steps, the ship rang as if struck by a hammer blow, and the gravity dropped out completely. Debris careened around the corridors, and my inner ear went crazy adjusting to weightlessness.

  “Valiant, report!” I roared, but received no answer.

  “Boss, I’ve lost all my data-links,” Kwon said. I checked my systems and saw that was true. My HUD and Kwon’s were all the friendlies my suit could see.

  “Hand over Kreel and keep going, Kwon. We have to get off this ship and back aboard Valiant.”

  Kwon bulled ahead, shoving debris out of the way and retracing our steps through the mess while I pulled the weightless and wounded Kreel along with us. We picked up several more functional Raptors. By the time we reached the cargo bay, we numbered seven.

  For a long moment, I stared out the warped and cut-away external doors into empty, star-filled space.

  “Team, we have a problem,” I said, puffing from exertion. “Valiant is gone.”

  “We’re so screwed,” Kwon muttered, “and not in a good way.”

  “Suit, boost transmission power and try to reach Valiant.” I leaned out the hole and endeavored to ignore the star field rotating past me. The ship must be tumbling.

  After a moment, my suit responded to my command. “Error. Connection failed.”

  “Suit, keep trying. Kwon, stick a repeater at this hole and run a line behind us. We’re going back to the bridge.”

  “Right, boss.” The big man slapped a small repeater at the edge of the open breach. Normally these devices were used to help link marine suit radios within the maze of a ship’s corridors and decks, which could easily get blocked by all those metal bulkheads. This time I hoped it would give me a link back to Valiant. As we made our way back to the bridge, Kwon’s suit laid a thin rivulet of smart metal behind us, which kept us connected to the repeater.

  “Lieutenant Fleeg,” I said once we’d reached the bridge, “you’re this ship’s acting captain now. Get your people to work restoring systems.”

  “Yes, sir,” Fleeg replied and sat down in the command chair to begin tapping at buttons. I could see his sharp beak moving behind his faceplate, so I knew he was issuing orders to someone. In a moment, the three other Raptors with us scrambled into the stations before bringing their boards to life.

  “Fleeg, as soon as you’ve got damage control parties operating, I need some kind of tactical display. I have to know what’s going on.”

  Fleeg didn’t respond, but a moment later screens came on. My HUD adjusted for Raptor colors, and I saw a two-dimensional overview of the area around our ship.

  “What’s this vessel called, anyway?” I asked.

  “Transport ships have no name. This one’s number is 276.”

  “That’s crap. A ship needs a name.”

  “Commander Kreel called her ‘Clumsy Ox,’” Fleeg said with a trace of irony.

  “Ox it is, then,” I replied. “Widen that tactical until we can see Valiant and the Raptor battleship. Does that have a name?”

  “Victorious Stalker is what it is called.”

  “Stalker’s good enough. Let’s see them.”

  The view zoomed out enough to see two icons close to us. I wasn’t sure how near. I had no sense of scale on this Raptor screen. “Suit, have my HUD translate all Raptor markings in its view and display in an overlay.”

  “Translating.” Notes began appearing and soon I could read the Raptor writing.

  “It looks like Valiant is going after Stalker,” I said. “Is that correct?”

  “Your ship seems to be attacking the rebel vessel with success,” Fleeg replied.

  I sighed with relief. “Thank God. I was afraid she’d been hit by some new weapon. Fleeg, just do your best to hold Ox together. Once Stalker’s been driven off, Valiant will come back for us.” No way was my crew abandoning me and Kwon. Even if the whole crew mutinied, an almost unthinkable circumstance, the marines would stay loyal and insist that their sergeant major and commander be rescued.

  This ironclad certainty made the events of the next hours all the more painful. We watched in utter disbelief as my ship, my first and only warship command, chased Stalker farther and farther from us, apparently pummeling the bigger ship with superior midrange weaponry. But long past the point that Valiant should have turned back to get us, they harried the enemy until eventually the battleship took refuge under the guns and missiles of the four Raptor mini-fortresses that hovered above the Orn Six ring. At that point Valiant pulled back behind the curve of the planet and remained flying above the Square.

  Why didn’t Hansen come back? He must be able to see that Ox had residual power and was not completely dead. In fact, Fleeg seemed to be doing a good job of coordinating damage control. The raptors were slowly but steadily restoring ship systems. He reported that we should have a working engine within hours.

  I held myself from pacing back and forth on the bridge. The deckplates weren’t built to take three tons of armor stomping around on them, and Raptors didn’t have self-repairing smart metal like ours.

  “Why aren’t they coming for us?” Kwon said for the umpteenth time. “I don’t get it.”

  “Me neither, Sergeant Major.”

  “Why don’t they answer our repeater signal?”

  “Probably out of range,” I replied. “It’s designed to bridge communications over short distances. They’d have to focus a sensitive directional antenna on us to hear it.”

  “Can our buddies send a signal?”

  “Good thinking.” I turned to Fleeg. “Do we have ship-to-ship capability yet?”

  “No, Commodore. Many delicate external structures were destroyed by laser fire, and this ship has no spare antennas.”

  “I know your people are very busy, but try to cobble together some kind of directional array or a communications laser—anything to get their attention.”

  “We will try, Commodore.” His attitude seemed morose and fatalistic like most Raptors, but at least he was soldiering onward, not coming apart like his ship.

  “Good man. You’re doing fine.” With nothing else I could accomplish, I stood up. “I’m going to see Kreel. Call me if anything changes.” Kreel was still unconscious and had been put into a Raptor med-bay for treatment.

  Down in the infirmary I saw the four med-bays, primitive autodocs really, filled to capacity with wounded. They were lined up on their backs on the deck waiting for treatment. Some of them tried to stand at my appearance, and I was moved by their gallant attempts to do me honor.

  “Please, stay at rest,” I told them through the translator, my faceplate open. “Lieutenant Fleeg and the remaining crewmen are doing all they can to restore ship functions. The enemy ship has been driven off, and we’re no longer in danger of being destroyed. Hang on, troops. Conditions are improving.” With that, I moved to Kreel and looked into the coffin-like apparatus that was keeping him alive.

  “Greetings, Commodore,” Kreel rasped, his actual Raptor words mingling with the translation in my ears. “It seems we live.”

  “Yes, and we will continue to do so.”

  “Pity. To die with honor…I could live with that.”

  I laughed in spite of myself. “I think the translation program is stumbling over its idioms, but I get it. For now, Fleeg is running your ship. Valiant drove off Stalker, and I’m sure she will be back as soon as we get the crew’s attention.”

  “That is good.”

  “Excuse me, Commodore,” a Raptor medic said to me. “The commander is stable, and so we must free this healer-machine for others.”

  “Help me up,” Kreel called, reaching for my hand with his good limb. The other was sw
athed in gooey bandages stuck to his side. In the low gravity it was nothing to lift him out of the sarcophagus aided by the medical staff, and soon he stood at my side in only some tattered underclothes and the vestigial feathers that dangled like body hair on a human.

  “I will retrieve garments and join you on the bridge when I am able,” Kreel said, waving to an unwounded comrade to help him walk. He released my hand and performed a painful salute.

  “Take your time, Commander.”

  Kreel limped off, leaning on his crewman.

  Kwon spoke up. “We only have about eleven hours of juice left in our suits,” he said.

  “Let’s get back to the bridge and get out of them, then. We can leave them open on standby. Maybe at some point the Raptors can jury-rig a power coupling.”

  Kwon looked doubtful, but nodded. As soon as we had returned to the bridge, we cracked the armor and stepped out wearing our uniforms and skinsuits. That would save power. We stuck short-range headsets in our ears to handle translation.

  The Raptor air smelled bad, like rotten eggs and old socks. I hoped it was just their normal atmosphere rather than an indication we were on our way to asphyxiation.

  “Anything new?” I asked Fleeg.

  “We have an auxiliary laser mounted and wired as a primitive communications device. I have been beaming hails at your ship for the last few minutes with no success.”

  “Keep trying. Rotate frequencies. Hopefully they’ll detect it soon. What about the tactical situation?”

  “Nothing changes.” He gestured at the screen. “Your ship seems poised to attack Stalker if they leave the protection of the forts.”

  “Hansen’s bottling him up in harbor,” I mused. “He’s also protecting Marvin and Greyhound, I presume.” Last time I’d checked, the robot had still been down in the Square with his ship grounded nearby.

  “What is a Marvin?” Fleeg asked.

  “A pain in the ass.”

  “I do not understand.”

  “He’s a fully sentient robot under my command, but he doesn’t always follow orders.”

  “You should execute him for disobedience.”

  “I’ve considered it,” I said drily. “But he’s too damned useful.”

  “Of what use is he?”

  That was a good question, and it prompted a thought. “Let’s find out. Fleeg, aim your communications laser at the Square—the artifact on the surface of Orn Six.”

  Fleeg barked several orders to his technicians, passing my instructions. “The angle is extremely obtuse, and getting worse as the planet rotates. I believe we are too late for this day cycle.”

  “Damn. When’s our engine going to be working?”

  “Several hours. Perhaps more.”

  I swore again. “Keep trying.”

  At least I could pace now that I was out of armor. Kwon just turned his head and followed me with his eyes as if watching a tennis match. I’d seldom felt so helpless. “I wish we had surfboards,” I said, referring to the flat repeller devices marines used for jumps between ships in space.

  “Flying to Valiant would take days.”

  “I know.”

  “Don’t even think about trying to use suit repellers without extra power units.”

  “I know that too, Kwon.”

  “Just sayin’.” He shut his mouth and we paced.

  “Commodore, there is a development,” Fleeg said, pointing at the main screen. On it, I could see a new icon near Orn Six.

  “What is that?”

  “It is the small ship from the surface. You called it Greyhound.”

  A surge of adrenaline went through me. “Aim your improvised communications laser at that ship. Address Marvin and tell him Captain Riggs is calling.”

  “Captain?” Fleeg seemed surprised at my title.

  “I’ll explain later. Our nomenclature isn’t as rigid as yours.”

  Fleeg ruffled his crest, but gave the order. In a moment I was talking to Marvin, though only on audio.

  “Marvin, thank God. It’s good to hear your voice.”

  “This is not really my voice, Cody Riggs. It is a direct laser transmission simulating my actual voice, which is in turn generated by sophisticated speakers—”

  “Yes, Captain Marvin. Please stick to critical issues. Why isn’t Valiant responding to our hails?”

  Marvin paused. “How would I know?” he finally replied.

  “Marvin, I realize you have some sources that feed you information from Valiant.” I wasn’t about to let him know how I had subverted his spying subroutines, so I kept it vague. “I was hoping you’d know what was going on.”

  “Would possession of specific knowledge on this subject be a good thing or a bad thing?”

  “In this case, a very good thing. I’m cut off from my ship, Marvin. I know you don’t like to be cut off from your ship and your space mobility, right? Put yourself in my place.”

  “My neural chains do not excel in the area of empathy.”

  “You’ve evolved far beyond your wiring, Marvin,” I snapped.

  “Wiring…an idiom, but not a very apt one.”

  “Okay, Marvin. You got me. Now please, would you tell me why Valiant isn’t on its way to pick me and Kwon up?”

  “I believe,” he said gingerly, “it is because they think you’re dead.”

  “Why would they think that? We tried transmitting on the encrypted datalink.”

  “I believe,” he said again, as if on eggshells, “that they have become convinced that the Raptors have murdered you and are attempting to falsify your signals.”

  “That’s preposterous. Why would they think that?”

  Again, silence reigned.

  “Marvin, as one captain to another, I promise I will not be angry or punish you in any way for what Valiant or its crew has done. I won’t shoot the messenger, okay?”

  “I will remind you of your promise if necessary, Captain Riggs.”

  “I’m sure you will.”

  “Agreed. Are you sitting down, Captain Riggs?”

  “What? No.”

  “I have noticed that humans take bad news better when sitting down, especially nanotized and microbed humans who might damage other biotics in fits of pique. Possibly, however, this is a fallacy propagated in your textual accounts.”

  “The only fit of pique I’m about to have is due to you not telling me what the hell is going on!”

  “Are you sitting down?”

  I pressed my jaws together until my skull creaked, and then I sat on one of the awkward Raptor chairs. “Yes, I’m sitting down. Now brief me properly, Captain Marvin!”

  “Yes, sir. When the transport was heavily damaged by the battleship’s long-range fire, your suit readings showed you killed in action. Warrant Officer Hansen and the Valiant AI independently confirmed these readings that showed your life signs had ceased.”

  My mouth went dry. “You mean our signals didn’t just drop off the network—they actually confirmed with our suits that we were dead?”

  “Affirmative.”

  “Shit!” I stood up and climbed into my suit, not bothering to seal up. “Suit,” I said, “what is my life function status?”

  “Cody Riggs, you are dead.”

  “Then how am I talking to you now?”

  “Unknown.”

  “How can a dead man give you commands?”

  “Unknown.”

  “Why do you think I am dead?”

  “I do not think you’re dead.”

  Damn all literal-minded machines. “Why does my life function status read as dead?”

  “Unknown.”

  “Is it possible you have malfunctioned?”

  “Diagnostics show one hundred percent functionality, except for power levels, which show sixty-seven percent.”

  “Have you been hacked?” I asked.

  “The possibility exists, but I cannot detect any such intrusion.”

  “Yet you’re talking to a dead man.”

  �
�Affirmative.”

  “You don’t think that’s a little weird?”

  “Query not understood.”

  “Boss,” Kwon broke in as he climbed out of his own suit, “Mine is the same. We’re not going to get anything out of stupid suit brains. They’re just machines and dumb ones too.”

  “I already did get something, Kwon. Our suits have been hacked. Someone had us listed as dead to make it happen for real.” I addressed Marvin again. “Did you hear?”

  “Yes, Captain Riggs.”

  “Any idea who did this?”

  “Only four people under your command have the requisite expertise to hack a brainbox, even one as simple as a suit core.”

  “As far as you know, you mean.”

  “Granted.”

  “Who are they?”

  “Myself, Chief Engineer Sakura, Chief Logistics Officer Turnbull, and Doctor Kalu.”

  “Kalu? She’s a biologist.”

  “Nevertheless, she has a degree in information systems and has proven adept at programming the laboratory computers.”

  Mentally reviewing the list, I ruled Marvin out. If he wanted me dead, he wouldn’t be talking to me. Adrienne? No way. She loved me. Sakura? I doubted that very much. She was highly competent, but lacked imagination and besides had no motive.

  Kalu, though…I’d turned down her advances in favor of Adrienne. Jealousy, rejection…the phrase “Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned” came to mind. Yeah, she was the prime suspect. She could have hacked our suits at any time setting them up to report us as dead whenever she sent a command, or even if certain parameters were met such as being off the ship. It wasn’t foolproof, but it was impossible to prove—just another malfunction during combat.

  Her one mistake was having both our suits “malfunction” the same way. Circumstantial evidence, but powerful for all that. When we got back…maybe Marvin’s experimental mind probe wasn’t such a bad idea after all. “Yeah, it must have been Kalu.”

  “Boss?” Kwon said.

  “What?” I barked.

  “There’s one other guy.”

  “One other guy what?”

  “Who could have done this. Who might have hacked our suits.”

  “Who?”

  “Sokolov.”

  -11-

  Kwon continued speculating about who might be behind our predicament. He was a paranoid guy when you came right down to it. Dad had said as much.