Dubious Heroes: a novel Read online

  “Copy that, Sir”, Cisco said. “We’re good to go.”

  “Onscreen”, I said. Danzen popped back onto my vidscreen. She didn’t look like she had a lot of patience left.

  “Well, Captain Doon?” she asked. “Your decision?”

  “I considered the options”, I said, “And I’ve decided to hold out for a better offer.”

  “I’ll note your last words”, she said, “For posterity. Bismarck out.”

  I sincerely hoped to prove her wrong on that one.

  We were about to find out.

  Chapter 34

  “All three ships have launched missiles”, Kyra said. “One apiece.”

  “They’re not expecting those to hit”, I said. “They’re just trying to make us jump.”

  “In four seconds, we’re going to have to”, Eng said.

  “Yes, we are”, I said. “Just not how they think. Angie, Engage transit… now.”

  Everything went dark again, but only for a moment. Then we were back, a new alarm wailing at us.

  “Collision warning”, Angie said, as she silenced the claxon. “UPDF vessel fifteen hundred meters off our port bow, and closing fast.”

  “We aren’t going to actually hit them, are we?” I asked.

  “Nope”, Eng said. “But it’s going to be really close.”

  “Give me an axial spin, now “, I said. “Three second rotation.”

  “Aye”, Angie said, and I felt the ship move, though it was more of an inner ear sensation than anything. We were now spinning along our core. If nothing else, I figured it would confuse the hell out of them.

  “Oh, shit”, Kyra said, looking over at me. She’d figured it out.

  “Let me know if anyone fires torpedoes”, I said. “I don’t think they will, but you never know.”

  “The near one is too close to us to fire”, Eng said.

  “And we’re too close to it, for the others to fire”, I said. “At least, for the moment.”

  “Shortest range is in five seconds”, Angie said.

  “We’re under fire from energy weapons”, Kyra said. “Laser and gamma ray.”

  “Any damage?”

  “Negative”, she said. “None so far.”

  “That’s about what I thought”, I said, as the entire ship lurched. “What the fuck was that?”

  “Plasma cannon hit”, Kyra said. “Guess that works just fine, even with our funky hull.”

  “Everything old is new again”, I said. “Angie, fire both cannon.”

  “Firing cannon one”, she said. The Revenge shook as we took another hit. “Firing cannon two.”

  “We have damage to the Science Module”, Eng said. “Hull breach.”

  “At this speed”, Kyra said, “We’ll be by them before we can reload. I’m hitting them with every energy weapon we have.”

  We took another hit from their plasma cannon.

  “And vice-versa”, I said. “Someone talk to me, people. Did we do any damage to them, or not?”

  The silver bulk to the Bismarck swung into view on our main vidscreen, and was replaced a moment later by the blackness of space, then the ship again. We were still spinning. The view made me dizzy, and I had to look away.

  “Fuck yes, we got em”, Kyra said, pumping one fist in the air. “Damage to their Bridge Module. Looks like a direct hit from one of the cannon.”

  “Angie”, I said, “Kill the rotation.”

  “The other two ships have launched torpedoes”, Eng said. “Just in case anyone’s interested.”

  The ship shook again as we took another hit.

  “That was aft”, Eng said. “Pressure dropping in Engineering.”

  The view of the UP ship stabilized on the big vidscreen, as Angie stopped our rotation. We were still moving by them quickly, which meant Angie had locked a camera on them, and was tracking.

  “I’m seeing debris around their Habitat”, Eng said, looking up at the screen. “Looks like that second cannon shot holed them.”

  “Missile impact in five seconds”, Kyra said.

  “Cannon Two reporting ready to fire”, Angie said, as we took yet another plasma cannon hit.

  “Go for transit on our exit coordinates, now”, I said. Sometimes, a lot of shit happens all at once, but this was getting ridiculous.

  “Transit engaged”, Angie said.

  Nothing happened.

  “Fuck“, I said.

  “Firing cannon two at the Bismarck “, Kyra said, never one to give up in a fight.

  “Punch it, Angie”, I said. “Everything we have.”

  I was slammed back into my seat as she fired the ion pulse drives.

  “Here come those missiles”, Kyra said, her voice tight with stress.

  The ship rang and lurched, as though we’d just been hit with the mother of all hammers. The pressure holding me back in my seat stopped at once. We were no longer accelerating. Angie announced the obvious.

  “Pulse drive is out”, she said. “One torpedo impact, drive area. The other two seemed to have missed us.”

  “Nope”, Kyra said. “They hit the Bismarck with one of them.”

  “I guess one UPDF frigate looks pretty much like another, to a smart missile”, I said.

  “Incoming missiles”, Kyra said. “Five seconds.”

  “I have a transit solution”, Eng said.

  “Why should it work?” Kyra said. “The star drive is down.”

  “Can’t hurt to try”, I said. “Get us out of here, Angie.”

  “Transit in three, two, one… engaged.”

  I held my breath, and a moment later, everything went black.

  I heard the alarms even before I opened my eyes.

  “We’re back”, I said, to no one in particular. “What’s with the alarms, Angie?”

  “Hull breaches in Science and Engineering, with fires in Science, Engineering, and the landing bay. I just engaged fire suppression systems.”

  The alarms stopped.

  “We have no drives”, Eng said. “No ion pulse, no ramjets. Hell, even the attitude thrusters are out.”

  “And we’re tumbling”, Kyra said. “We took that missile right in the drives. Only the shielding back there saved us.”

  Everything went black again, but it wasn’t a transit; not unless I could hear Kyra say fuck, in the middle of one.

  “Power’s out”, Eng said.

  The darkness was complete, the silence eerie. I could hear as someone unbuckled their harnesses, and rose from their seat. A loud thump immediately followed.

  “Son of a bitch“, Kyra said. I wondered what she was doing. A moment later, her helmet light snapped on, blinding me. She set the helmet aside, and began wriggling into her suit, although it seemed to be more chasing it than getting into it, with the zero gee gravity. I rose, and thanks to my sticky shoes, corralled the suit and held it while she slid inside. Once in, she helped as Eng and I donned our suits.

  I keyed my suit commlink to the ship’s main frequency, and spoke.

  “This is Doon”, I said. “Anyone who can hear me, report in.”

  “Cisco and Donner here”, Cisco said, almost immediately.

  “MedLab here”, Smith said. “What-”

  “Standby MedLab”, I said. “Anyone else?”

  “Jones here”, the merc said. “Malach is with me.”

  No one else said anything. Maybe Cozi and Lola’s suit radios were out.

  “Okay”, I said, to everyone listening. “Here’s the situation. We have hull breaches in Science and Engineering, and there may be fires there, too. Last I heard, there was a fire in the Lander bay, too. Obviously, all power is out, and so are all of our drives. Also, we’re tumbling, not that it matters, at least until someone has to go EVA. Basically, the ship is dead.”

  “Jeez, way to sugarcoat it for em”, Kyra said. I ignored her, and continued.

  “Malach and Jones”, I said. “You’re closest to Science, so you take that one. Cisco, you and Donner see to the landing bay
. First priority, put any fires out. Second, seal what you can, and if the damage is beyond repair, let me know.”

  “Smith”, I said. “If you aren’t suited up, then do so, and head down to Engineering; you may have some business there.”

  “Didn’t you mention a hull breach and fire there?” the doctor asked.

  “Yes, I did”, I said. “We’ll be meeting you down there, where we’ll assess the situation.”

  “Once you have everything stabilized”, Smith said, “Let me know. I’ll be standing by in MedLab, in case anyone else needs me.”

  “Head down to Engineering, doctor”, I said. “That’s an order.”

  No response.

  I keyed my mike to local.

  “I swear to God, I’m going to space that motherfucker”, I said.

  “Not unless you beat me to it”, Eng said, as he and Kyra manually cranked opened the hatch into the core. We all dropped into it, then Eng and I wrestled the hatch closed again, as Kyra floated nearby in the zero gee. Once done, we shoved off from the bulkhead, and floated down to the other end. I kept wanting to talk to Angie, but, with the power out, she wasn’t there. If we didn’t get a handle on things soon, we wouldn’t be, either.

  Once we had the hatch open, I turned to Kyra and Eng.

  “I’m going to make a side trip here and collect the doctor”, I said. “You two head on down.”

  “I think I’d better come with you”, Eng said. I thought about arguing with him, but decided not to bother. He was probably afraid I’d kill the little non-binary twerp, and, depending on how things went, that wasn’t such an unlikely possibility.

  We walked into MedLab, and found the doctor suited up, sans helmet. I motioned toward it, and watched as Smith put it on. Without the helmet, I had no way to reach the doctor. I suppose that was one way of dodging orders.

  “You were ordered to head down to Engineering”, I said. “It was not a request.”

  “My job is to administer medical care”, Smith said. “That duty does not include putting myself in harm’s way.”

  “Look”, I said, “I understand that many doctors have an ethical issue with harming another human being. You made that clear from the beginning, and I respect that. However, you haven’t been asked to do any such thing. We have crew who may need your attention, and they aren’t in a position to come up here, so you have to go to them.”

  “I’d be happy to”, the doctor said. “Once the area is safe for me to be there. I will not place myself in such a hazardous situation.”

  “Your duties”, Eng said, “Are to do as you’re ordered. I don’t know where you served in the past, or what things were like there, but here, you will follow orders.”

  “Well said, Mister Eng”, I said. “Doctor, grab your medkit. We’re in the middle of an emergency, and I don’t have time for your bullshit. You will accompany us to Engineering, or Mister Eng and I will see you to the main airlock, and we’ll be parting company. You decide.”

  The doctor glared at us, then picked up his kit.

  “Good choice”, Eng said. “And you should thank Captain Doon.”

  “For what?” Smith asked.

  “The reason I came down here was to space you.”

  It was a long, quiet climb down to the Engineering Module. We found Kyra waiting for us at the hatch, when we got there.

  “I couldn’t open the hatch until you guys were here”, she said. “There’s probably vacuum on the other side of it. Can’t tell, though; none of the sensors have any power.”

  “Alright”, I said. “Let’s open it up.”

  Slowly, we cranked it open. Even through my suit, I could hear the air whistle through the opening, from our section of the core, into the Engineering Module. That wasn’t from some little leak; they were holed.

  Once inside the Module, we walked around the corridor, and forced our way into the Engineering control room. Lola was still strapped into her accel couch. She wasn’t moving. For a moment, it looked as though Cozi was standing, until I realized he was basically floating, held in place by the sticky shoes on his suit.

  Kyra walked over and checked Lola’s suit readout. Eng and Smith went to Cozi, and did the same.

  “She’s alive”, Kyra said. “Unconscious, but her stats are okay.”

  “Cozi is alive, too”, Eng said. “There’s some blood inside his helmet, but I can’t see anything else.”

  The doctor plugged some sort of gadget into Cozi’s suit, and looked at the readout.

  “His vitals are fine”, Smith said. He walked over to Lola, and checked her out as well. “So are hers. The concussion from the blast probably knocked both of them out. What do you want me to do, now? I can’t work on them in their suits, and you can’t get them out, not in vacuum.”

  “How long until we can get some air in here?” I asked Eng.

  “Honestly, I don’t know”, he said. “No damage in here, but there’s something pretty bad in this module. I’ll have to find it, and try to isolate the damaged area, so we can pressurize everything else.”

  I turned to Smith.

  “Assuming we can seal it up, can we get air into here?” I asked.

  “We can”, the doctor said. “Not quickly, at least not without power. You’re going to have a problem finding holes in the dark, too. Also, it’s going to get cold in here, soon.”

  “Alright”, I said. “Eng, first priority, see if you can get us some power. Cozi and Lola can wait a little while; I’d rather have them down here in a live ship, than in the MedLab in a dead one. Doc, until we need you handling the life support, watch em. Everyone else, we’re on patch patrol.”

  “Sounds like we have work to do”, Eng said. “We should get busy.”

  We did.

  Forty minutes later, Eng had the emergency power back on. The battery cells were almost completely drained, but they’d last long enough to get the solar array deployed, or fire up the chemical generator. The reactor was offline, and every time Eng would try to bring it up, something would trip, and if would go down again. Worse, it would also take the emergency circuits with it, plunging us back into darkness.

  One of the storage rooms had gaping holes in the hull we could see stars through. We sealed off the room, and applied patches to a dozen other places in the module. Smith routed life support back into Engineering, accessing the controls remotely from the control room. We watched it for a few minutes, and saw that while it wasn’t airtight, at least it wasn’t leaking too quickly.

  Above us, the mercs had extinguished the fires, and were patching up the holes in the Science Module. The landing bay had also been holed, and Cisco reported that there was even some damage to the Avalon, but he couldn’t tell how severe it was.

  We were watching the air pressure, when both Lola and Cozi started to come around on their own. Smith removed their helmets, and began checking each of them. Cisco and Donner walked in, still suited up, carrying a leak detector and a bunch of patches.

  “Heard there might be a leak down here”, Cisco said.

  “Depends”, I said.

  “Depends on what?” Cisco asked.

  “On whether you call a missing chunk of hull a leak“, I said.

  “We’re gonna need bigger patches”, Donner said.

  “Belay that”, I said. “If you can find anything small, patch it, otherwise… see Mister Eng for something else to do.”

  “Start in the chases under us”, Eng said. “You’ll have to unsuit to fit in there. If that’s okay with the doctor.”

  “Life support is fine”, Smith said. “Unless we get more hull failures, everything seems fine, right now.”

  “Nothing like a little explosive decompression”, Donner said.

  “Don’t be a wimp”, Cisco said. “Let’s find some holes.”

  “Whatever”, she said, popping her helmet. “Find one big enough, I’m stuffin’ your ass into it.”

  Cisco grinned at her, but didn’t reply. Three minutes later, they were unsuited
, and vanishing down the hole in deck.

  Cozi was sitting in his accel couch, still looking a little fuzzy around the edges.

  “What the fuck happened?” he asked.

  “You want the whole shebang, or the short version?” I asked.

  “I’ve got a bitch of a headache”, he said. “Make it the short version.”

  “Well”, I said, “Your cannon worked. We nailed the Bismark at least once, probably twice. Never had a shot at the others, but at least we gave Captain Danzen something to think about.”

  “I’m surprised they worked as well as they did”, Eng said.

  “They worked this time“, Kyra said. “Next time, we won’t have the element of surprise. They know we have cannon, so they’ll keep distance between us, and pound us with missiles.”

  “Doesn’t mean we can’t microjump in and nail them, anyway”, I said.

  “Make a habit of doing that”, she said, “And you’ll have us transiting into the middle of a mine field they’ve laid for us.”

  “This is the short version?” Cozi asked.

  “Sorry”, I said. “Anyway, we transited out, but we took a torpedo in the engines before we left.”

  “Shit”, Cozi said.

  “Oh, there’s more”, I said. “Everything is out; pulse drive, ramjets, attitude jets. Also, we’re tumbling, which is no big deal while we’re inside, but it’s really gonna suck for whoever has to go out and deploy the solar panels, since the reactor is down. I was kind of hoping you might have an idea about that.”

  “It’s completely offline?” he said.

  “Yup”, I said. “It gets better. When it goes offline, it still has that annoying habit of killing battery power throughout the ship.”

  “That’s gotta play hell with Angie”, he said.

  “I haven’t brought her back online until we have stable power”, I said. “Which needs to be soon, since she can monitor a helluva lot more than we can.”

  “I’ll see what I can do”, he said. “Any other damage?”

  “Plasma cannon hits in Science, and the landing bay. There were some fires and hull breaches, but we’ve taken care of most of that.”

  “As long as it isn’t on fire, I can live with a few leaks”, he said.