Chapter Twenty Two
The observation gallery was so quiet that I could hear the faint clicking of relays engaging when I activated the environmental control system. It was cold here and my breath misted the air in front of my face. The station had been shut down for the past several weeks but its systems responded immediately, powering up quickly as I brought the main generator back on-line.
Once I had reset the environmental system I glanced into the distance to my right. The observation gallery was a tunnel more than a hundred and fifty meters from end to end, its furthest reaches lost in shadow. The wall I was facing was covered with large viewing ports, allowing anyone here an unobstructed view into the spacedock’s construction bay. Suspended in the center of the bay was the Prometheus, its battered hull testifying to the numerous abuses it had been subjected to since the last time it was here. This was the first time since we had survived the destruction of the pirate base that I’d had the chance to have a good look at the ship. Given its reinforced inner hull, I knew that the damage I was seeing had little to do with its structural integrity, but it still looked like a flying wreck.
When we first set out on our mission, the ship’s outward appearance had been mere camouflage. Now, most of the scarring, dents and patches reflected actual damage it had suffered in our pursuit of the pirates. But beyond the superficial damage to the ship’s hull there was something far more serious we needed to attend to before we would be able to put back out to space. The drive system had failed, and this time there would be no quick fix. The revolutionary ion-pulse engines which had once propelled our ship at velocities beyond anything else in space were now useless. Fortunately for us, Ian’s obsessive nature had made him keep a close eye on the new technology after it was installed. If it hadn’t been for our engineer’s obsessive watchfulness, the problem would have gone unnoticed until it was too late.
Ian had discovered that over time the injector mounts were mysteriously beginning to fail, allowing the antimatter injectors to drift out of alignment. He couldn’t explain the reason for the failure yet, but until the problem could be corrected we didn’t dare use the engines for fear of causing an uncontrolled matter-antimatter reaction that would destroy the ship and anything else around us for radius of a thousand kilometers. As it was we had barely made it back here before the engine trouble reached the point where the drive system could no longer be safely used. By carefully nursing the engines during our return trip, we had managed the journey in a series of short hops which allowed Ian to readjust the injectors whenever they drifted out of alignment. After our last hop however, the mounts had failed completely, leaving us to make the final leg of the journey using thrusters only.
It had taken the last of our reaction fuel, but we had managed to make it back to the remote spacedock without blowing ourselves up. With the ship securely moored in the dock’s construction bay we could finally begin work on the list of repairs that we had not been able to accomplish out in space. Even with the materials and equipment available to us at the station however, it was going to take weeks to complete all of the repairs we needed. And even then we would not be able leave unless Ian could find a way to resolve the problem of the engine injectors. For the foreseeable future this repair station was going to be home.
The sounds of footsteps in the docking sleeve caused me to look in that direction. Ian was leading a group of technicians off the ship to begin preparations for his repair work. The big man paused to study the control panel where I had made adjustments to the environmental systems.
“Looks good,” he rumbled in his deep voice. His large fingers began to type nimbly at the panel as he did a quick check of the dock’s inventory. After a moment he grunted to himself and closed the window he had been studying.
“We’ve got everything we need to get all our systems back up,” he announced. He turned toward me and studied my face. “You look like hell,” he said. “You should get some rest.”
Although I had gotten very little sleep on our return trip, Ian had gotten less. Surviving on little more than caffeine and adrenaline for the past week, Ian had kept a close watch over the engines during every moment of our trip. And all of this while he was still nursing a couple of half-healed ribs. I knew it would be useless to point this out to him so I simply smiled up at him and clapped him on the arm.
“Go take care of our ship,” I told him. “I’ll be fine.”
Gesturing to his team, Ian led his people toward a nearby service lift that would take them down to the storage compartments on the level below this one. I could tell by the energetic pace of his stride that he was looking forward to delving into the storage compartments like a child being given free access to a toy store.
Behind them Chris and Mark were leading the first of the refugees from the ship. Each of the refugees carried a small bundle of personal effects and a makeshift bedroll put together from whatever meager supplies we had been able to scrounge up aboard the ship. During the past week they had been forced to bunk down on any open space we could find for them. For most of them that had meant little more than a blanket and a bare patch of decking in one of the ship’s passageways, yet there had been no complaints. We had freed them from the cruelty of their pirate masters and had even been able to remove their obedience collars, for which every one of the former slaves was extremely grateful.
In spite of the conditions they had been forced to endure during our trip here, I noticed that most of them actually appeared to be in better shape than when they had first been brought aboard. Apparently a week of rest and decent food had gone a long way toward helping them to recover. From the snatches of conversation I overheard I could also tell that they were looking forward to being reunited with their families and loved ones back home. Unfortunately, those reunions would have to be put on hold for the foreseeable future. I could not allow anyone to bring back word that we had survived the destruction of the pirate asteroid base. Until we could root out the mastermind behind the pirates this was as close as any of them would be able to come to home.
Of course, none of them knew this yet. All they knew was that we had stopped here to make repairs to the ship. They were not aware that the repair dock was in fact on the outskirts of the Argo system. It would only have built up their hopes to know that we were poised on the very doorstep of Gilead’s capital only to be told that they would not be allowed to return home. I felt like a real bastard for what I was doing but I had to consider the big picture. I simply could not risk plunging the nation into a devastating interstellar war. Intellectually I knew I had no other choice but I still felt like something you’d scrape off the bottom of your shoe.
Movement through the viewport drew my attention. On the far side of the Prometheus a long range shuttle was detaching itself from the dock. It backed slowly away from the docking connector and began to reorient itself for the outward journey. That would be Morganna. She was the only one who would be leaving the station while we were here. We were down to the last of our supplies and needed to replenish our stores quickly or we would be left with nothing to eat in another day. There was also another, confidential mission I had asked her to undertake for me. Because we could not risk using any form of broadcast communication, everything would have to be done face to face and she was the only one I could trust to handle this particular errand.
“You look like you just lost your best friend,” a voice said beside me. I had been so engrossed in my thoughts that I hadn’t heard anyone come up beside me. Glancing over I saw Lucky giving me a probing look.
“Just trying to plan our next move,” I said, turning back to the window.
Lucky watched through the viewport with me as the shuttle fired up its main engine and accelerated away from the dock.
“I hope she brings back fresh eggs,” he commented. “I really hate that powdered stuff we’ve been eating the last few days. No matter what you do to it, it always tastes like
rubberized snot.”
I stifled a laugh. Lucky could always bring me out of a funk.
“What? You can’t tell me you didn’t notice,” he said.
This time I couldn’t help but chuckle as a smile spread across my face. I reached up and squeezed his shoulder.
“Thanks,” I said. For the next few moments we stood silently watching Morganna’s shuttle as it dwindled to a speck and finally disappeared.
“So,” I said after the shuttle was gone from sight, “did you come looking for me just to enjoy the view?”
“Actually…” The hitch in his voice made me turn toward him. “Doc wanted me to tell you that he thinks Bobby’s out of the woods. His vital signs have stabilized and his EEG is normal. He’s going to make it.”
I let out a long breath. That was one weight off my shoulders. But I could tell that there was more he hadn’t said.
“What about the issue with his spine?” I asked.
Doc’s examination had revealed that along with the damage to his internal organs, the blaster bolt had cracked one of Bobby’s lumbar vertebrae. Had we been able to immobilize him immediately it would have been a simple matter for Doc to reknit the bone with no complications. As it was, all of the movement and knocking around he’d been subjected to had caused a bone fragment to splinter off from the damaged vertebrae. The shard had sawed back and forth against the delicate tissues in his spine until his spinal cord had been severed. In spite of all our advances in medical science, the unique nature of the central nervous system made its tissues extremely difficult to repair. By the time Doc had been able to address his spinal injury the frayed ends of the cord had been untended for so long that he doubted that they would respond to treatment.
“There hasn’t been any sign of cell regeneration along his spine,” Lucky said heavily. “It doesn’t look like he’s going to get the use of his legs back.”
I closed my eyes as I absorbed the news. This was going to be a heavy blow to Bobby when he woke up. He had always been so full of energy. I recalled the first time we met, when he had surprised everyone by being able to climb to the overhead in the main cargo bay like a monkey. He seemed perfectly at ease as he swung from hand hold to hand hold three levels above our heads, moving across the ceiling with amazing agility. As a member of the crew he could always be found hoverboarding through the passageways whenever he wasn’t on duty. His antics sometimes resulted in near misses, but in spite of a number of close calls he’d never collided with anyone else. And whenever we made planetfall he was among the first to seek out whatever activities each world had to offer. He had lived for physical action. I couldn’t imagine him spending the rest of his days sitting on the sidelines. But he was alive, and that was something.
A small commotion from the far side of the gallery made us turn around. One of the refugees had stumbled and dropped the bundle he was carrying. A round of good natured laughter broke out as people nearby pitched in to help him gather up his things.
“Come on,” I said to Lucky. “Let’s help our guests get settled in.”
We waded into the growing crowd and started to help people find a patch of floor that they could call their own. By this time the environmental system had begun to circulate heated air into the gallery. The chill was already gone from the space and my breath no longer made little vapor clouds. In another few minutes it should actually be quite balmy. Although the floor of the observation gallery wasn’t much of an improvement over the ship’s passageways, the refugees would have more room to stretch out. It was not the most ideal arrangement but we needed to get everyone off the ship so Ian’s repair teams could get to work. The crew would continue to bunk in their cabins while the repairs were made, not that there would be a lot of time for rest. All of us were going to be kept quite busy over the next weeks as we worked to get the ship back into shape. Then all we needed to do was track down this mysterious puppet master who had been manipulating the pirates and find a way to stop him before he could trigger an interstellar war.
Considering that I had no idea who he was, where he was, or what his ultimate objective was, not to mention that we had lost just about every lead we had developed, finding him was going to be quite a challenge. But not all of our leads had ended with the destruction of the pirate base. The one critical thing we had discovered was the subroutine hidden within the Praetorian software. That would be our starting point. Mark and Barney had already downloaded a copy of the program into a stand-alone system in Barney’s lab. They had spent much of the trip here trying to access the Trojan horse programming. Unfortunately, the software designers had built in a powerful failsafe to prevent tampering. Every time they tried to look at the coding, the program would lock them out and erase itself, forcing them to download a new copy from the isolated core and start all over again. Barney and Mark were both confident that they could break through the security safeguards eventually but it would be a while before they made any real progress.
In the mean time the repairs to the ship were more than enough to keep everyone else busy. As for myself, I was determined to have a plan of action ready by the time the ship was fully operational again. We were going to find this madman and we were going to stop him. We were going to put an end to the threat he posed to the peace and stability of the galaxy.
All I needed to do now was figure out how we were going to do it.
# # #
Jon Gerrard’s
third book in the Starcrown Chronicles:
Dreadnaught
Jason and his crew race to uncover the identity
of the mastermind behind the pirate menace
before a devastating interstellar war is touched off.
But what no one knows
is that this faceless enemy has constructed a weapon
of such unparalleled destructive force
that nothing can stand against it.