Accord of Mars (Accord Series Book 2) (11 page)

I
wasn’t
sure which of us was more surprised - me, or the guy I was suddenly facing across the open hatch. He certainly looked shocked enough, but I had the feeling I was staring at him with the same open mouthed look was wearing.

“What the hell?” he said.

I closed my mouth and raised my pistol. He still had the hatch handle grasped tightly in his hand. As soon as he saw the gun, he tried to slam the hatch closed. I squeezed the trigger before he could.

Three shots, just like Acres had always taught. The reports sounded deafening in the enclosed space. Two took his body center of mass, the third went a little high and cut through his throat. He fell forward through the hatch, banged against the rail and fell down the shaft.

There wasn’t any time to waste. I shoved the hatch aside to get into the cockpit. There was one other crewman there, still sitting in his seat. He saw me coming, spotted the gun in my hand and tried to unbuckle himself from his harness.

“Oh God no…” he said. He stopped playing with the straps and raised his hands.

I shot him.

I’d killed people at close quarters like this before. The faces still haunted my nightmares on bad nights. Every time I shot someone, I knew I had been justified in doing it. This was war. These were enemy combatants. They were coming to kill people I cared about.

Sometimes telling myself things like that helped me sleep better. Sometimes.

I didn’t want to touch the body right now, so I slipped into the empty seat beside him and scanned the control panels. Everything was in order. The ship was still on course and no radio messages had gone out to alert the others. It looked like the big ship was coordinating the courses of the entire fleet. I checked radar. The entire battle group was closing on Dad’s station, except the flagship. It was hanging back a little ways to the rear. Someone was playing it safe.

Still, we were about to become a target for an awful lot of missiles. I connected my smartwatch to the main computer. From this console, that was simple. And my watch had all the Stein passcodes built into it. With luck, I could talk to the defense grid and maybe get it to not kill us.

While it was connecting I tapped the intercom. “How’s life in engineering?” I asked, hoping it would be Acres answering.

“Oh, fine.” I heaved a sigh of relief. “You took your sweet time climbing. I had enough time to work up an appetite down here. What’s for dinner?”

I looked over at the body in the seat next to me and felt a little nauseous at the thought of eating. “I think I’ve lost my appetite,” I said.

“Too bad. OK, we have the ship. Now what?”

My smartwatch was connected. My fingers flew over the console keys, trying to communicate with the satellites. I was worried someone on one of the other ships would notice what I was doing, but realized with a start that the ship was already linked up with the defense grid. In fact, every ship in the Earth fleet was broadcasting at them.

“Shit,” I said. I watched on my radar as the first ships in the fleet crossed over into the defense grid’s kill zone without being fired on. “I think we have a problem.”

“What’s up?” he said.

I checked the signal we were broadcasting, but I had a feeling I already knew what it was. Somehow the bad guys had hacked Dad’s security protocols. They were making all of the Earth ships look like they were friendly Stein vessels. The defense grid wasn’t going to activate against them. It was going to sit there useless while they slipped in and blew the station.

Those astrogation packages we’d sold them. It had to be that. I couldn’t think of any other way they could have hacked their way into the system. Someone on their end must have reverse-engineered the software and tweaked it to make the Earth fleet look friendly. I scanned the signal. There had to be something I could do, but each ship was sending its own friendly ID pattern to the defenses. I could override my own, but then the grid would just target my ship.

There might be a way. I fired off a laser signal to the R&D station, hoping someone was there who would pick up. Instead of a person, I got an automated computer firewall. Either Dad had evacuated the station when he saw where the fleet was going, or they were scrambling around in there trying to figure out why the defenses weren’t firing and no one was answering the phone.

Either way Acres and I were screwed if those defenses stayed inactive. We had the ship, but it wasn’t going to take the other ships very long to figure out something had happened over here. When they did, a couple of casual missiles would finish us off. There was no way this bucket was going to escape.

But if I could get the grid to fire on them… Most of the fleet was already inside the kill zone, and moving deeper every second. The attack would be devastating. All I needed was a little time to figure out how to do that.

The console in front of me flashed with new orders from the flagship. They were sending firing solutions. Directions on which targets each ship should fire on. I scrolled through the list. It looked like they had acquired a lock on every single missile platform Dad had seeded out there. Our orders were to hit two targets, unloading four missiles at each. Overkill, but I guessed they wanted to make really sure the grid was down and out forever.

I hesitated. If we didn’t fire, they’d know for certain something was up. If we fired, then we were helping them take down the only way out we had. Several long seconds passed before I pressed the button. A few moments later the ship shuddered as a volley of missiles launched.

“Thom, want to tell me what we’re shooting at?” Acres said over the intercom.

“Dad’s missile defenses,” I replied.

“The hell?”

“The defense grid is down. They hacked it,” I explained.

“Shit.”

“I’m working the problem.”

I had a deadline now though. Every ship in the fleet except the flagship was inside the kill pocket. But they’d all fired a massive volley of missiles. The grid was going down for good. Nothing I could do would stop that now. But maybe I could make it sing one last time before it was blasted to bits.

M
y watch was plugged
into the ship’s computer. I used the computer to ferry the Stein override codes through the laser link.

The firewall opened up. I was in. My fingers flew over the keys, calling up the radar and threat tracking from the R&D station. There it was - the entire Earth fleet, all showing as brilliant green icons. As far as the computer was concerned, those were all friendly ships out there. It was a safeguard built into our ships, so they wouldn’t ever be targeted and destroyed by our own weapons.

Now I had to override that. I swept my fingers over the screen. I had to tap the icon for a ship, change the status, then close the window. Move on to the next icon, repeat. Sweat dripped from my forehead, making the console slick as I went through the process. I tried not to watch the plot as those missiles streaked in toward their targets. I was undoing their masterwork of code, one ship at a time. But any moment now their missiles were going to hit home, and it would be too late. I raced through the last few ships, turning their icons scarlet.

Done. I pressed execute.

The radar exploded in a vibrant burst of new icons. The grid lit up every ship in the fleet as an enemy - except mine, which I’d left off the list. There were dozens of little missile launchers out there, and they all fired salvo after salvo at the attackers.

Then the Earther missiles began striking. One after another, the missile launchers went dead as they were blasted to bits. But it was too late. In the time it had taken to destroy them, they’d managed to fire off hundreds of missiles of their own.

The fleet devolved into chaos. Ships broke from their courses, trying to turn and run. But their ships still had too much velocity. None of them were able to veer away enough. And all that extra time it had taken to bypass their hack had actually paid off to my advantage. If the defenses had attacked at the edge of their range, the Earth fleet would have taken a few hits. But now every ship except the big one hanging back was well inside the kill zone. They were about to get hit hard.

“Acres, brace for hard acceleration,” I said. It was time to use the confusion to see if we could get the hell out of here.

“I’m strapped in,” he replied. “Do it!”

I flipped the ship back over and punched in five gravities of acceleration straight ahead into the teeth of the missile storm. I was counting on two things. First, that our tag was still showing as friendly, and those missiles would ignore us. Second, that all of the other ships were going to try as hard as they could to break away from the missiles. Nobody was going to follow us closer. I gritted my teeth against the pressure on my chest from the sudden burst of acceleration. We’d maintain this for as long as we could, fly right through the middle of the storm and out the other side.

Why stop there, though? I reached out against the force of the acceleration and touched the console again, tapping in a few new commands. My missile pods were loaded for bear, and there were still a lot of targets out there. I started firing at the nearest enemy ships, unloading a volley at each of the larger ones. Anything I could do might help.

My ship would keep firing for as long as the missile bays held out. Nothing more I could do but watch the action.

The missiles streaked across my screen, closing on their targets. The larger ships closed ranks, narrowing the gap between them. It was a good strategy. Closer together, the ships would be able to link their anti-missile systems and present a coordinated defense. I just didn’t think it was going to do them any good against as many incoming missiles as they were facing.

A few of the smaller ships tried to get in near the bigger ships. Some of them tried to break away and run instead. The missiles chased them down. Explosions dotted the screen as the first ones impacted.

The cluster of ships that stuck together was putting up a spirited defense. They took out maybe half the missiles coming at them. Given the raw volume of fire they were facing, that was pretty amazing. Their anti-missile fire was as good as ours. I filed that knowledge away for future reference.

But there were simply too many missiles. The storm hit them dead on. One after another, the icons on my screen flashed and vanished. I fixed a camera on the fight trying to get a visual, but all I could see were flashes of bright light as missile after missile hammered its way into a target.

“We got them, Chief. We took them down,” I said.

“Good job, kid. Now get us out of here.”

The screen cleared. Dad’s defense grid was history. They’d taken out every missile platform with the first volley. But the Earther fleet was gone, too. Most of it anyway. All that was left on my plot was my ship, the R&D station, and the flagship. As I watched, the flagship poured on the acceleration. It was coming in after us, and it was accelerating a lot faster than we were.

“Shit. I think we have a problem, Acres.”

“I see it on the screen down here. Shoot it?” he said.

I checked the board. We’d fired all our missiles at the fleet. We were empty. “None left. Doubt we could do enough damage anyway.”

“Run, then,” he said.

I tapped new commands into the console. I’d pulled this trick once before and it worked out OK. I set the engines to run at fifteen gravities for five minutes and then drop back down. On Dad’s ships, with special suits filled with a breathable liquid, we could manage twenty gravities for a while. On this ship that would kill us. But fifteen gravities for a short while would just knock us out. Probably.

The ship closing in behind us was already doing eight gees. I wondered just how fast they could run, and for how long. I tapped the command, and my ship started boosting even faster, redlining the engines in our effort to get away. Almost immediately I started to get tunnel vision. I wasn’t going to be able to stay awake much longer.

We were closing on the R&D station. It was close enough that I could get a visual. The Defender - Dad’s old ship - was sitting there in the dock. I wished more than anything that I was over there right now. With her refit done, I’d have the missile tubes to do some serious damage to these assholes, and the engines to run if I needed to.

Might as well wish for a comet to hit them. The Defender wasn’t going anywhere.

As I watched the station, a beam of white shot past my ship and slammed into it. Where it touched, the station withered, evaporated, and exploded. The beam only cut on for seconds, but when it was done there was nothing left. The station - along with the Defender and the other ships docked there for repairs - they were all gone.

“What the hell was that?” I said. Talking was an effort.

“Enemy ship. Railgun, I think,” Acres grunted back.

If it was a railgun, it was the biggest damned railgun I’d ever heard of anyone building. It looked like a solid beam of light. Railguns fired magnetically charged chunks of matter down a tube of electromagnets, using the polar charges to propel the bullet at incredible velocities. This was like some sort of rail-gatling gun, firing a burst of rounds in a stream, one after another.

Shit. We were going fast enough that missiles might have a hard time hitting us. But the railgun rounds were moving a lot faster than we were.

“Acres, brace for…” I got that much of the sentence out before the ship shook like something a wolfhound had picked up in its mouth and tossed around. Metal screamed around me as the ship’s structure started coming apart under the stress. Sparks flew from the consoles as everything shorted out at once. A panel flew from the ceiling and crashed down on my head, and I didn’t see anything else for a while.

T
he group
of people I’d assembled in my ready room was small but smart. We were going to need that intellect if we wanted to work out what the hell had happened out there. I’d grimly watched the Earth fleet gently ease its way toward Mars. Twenty-one ships in all, and the biggest one as large as the rest of the fleet put together. Our situation was even more dire than my worst-case scenarios. I’d run simulations of every battle plan I could think of, but all of them ended the same way.

We were outmatched. Utterly and completely.

And then the fleet diverted from its direct course and gone after my R&D station. As bad as losing the station would be for us in the long run, it could be replaced. If the defense grid could only take out a few of those ships, we might have a shot at winning this after all. I had all the crew abandon the station and run for Mars. If they wanted the station, they could have it - but it was going to cost them.

I’d watched as they sailed right into the kill zone. And…nothing. No missile fire. Somehow they’d disabled the system. I tried to take direct control of the defense grid from my bridge, but they’d been jamming radio signals. I couldn’t get through to activate it from a distance.

Until all at once every missile battery unloaded everything it had in a flurry of violence and destruction. The surprise of the attack - when the ships were so far inside the kill pocket that they had little time to react - had wiped out the entire fleet.

Except that one big ship, which was armed with something we hadn’t seen before.

“I want answers,” I said, looking around the table. With me was my XO, Glenn Chandler. An old friend. The other two people here were Thomas’s friends. Keladry Flynn was my CAG, commanding the entire fighter wing. She’d proven extraordinarily adept at both piloting and command. Andrew Liddel rounded out the team. He was more of a thinker than a doer, but I wanted him out of engineering for this conversation. He might have insights into the tech end of what had happened.

“Should we worry more about how we can take advantage of the situation?” Glenn asked.

“Yes. But if we don’t know why it happened, we might be the ones unprepared next time,” I said. “So answers first. Then planning.”

I pressed a button, and we all watched a replay of the telemetry. The fleet entered the kill pocket. The missiles didn’t fire. Then all twenty of the ships in the main fleet fired almost as a single unit.

“Good coordination of fire,” Liddel said. He pointed at the screen. “See how no two ships are firing on any one target?”

“They might be using the flagship to coordinate that,” Glenn mused.

We watched as the missiles tracked toward their targets. For long moments nothing happened, and the Earth ships continued their slow glide in toward the helpless station.

Then all at once my missile platforms fired. Volley after volley of missiles lashed out at the attacking ships. They kept up a sustained rate of fire for a few moments before the attackers missiles struck home and blasted the platforms into dust. It was enough. If the fleet had held off and pummeled the defense grid from a distance, they might have been able to survive the return fire. But they clearly hadn’t been expecting any defense, and they’d come in far too close. The Earth ships had good missile defense. It just wasn’t good enough, not at that range.

“What’s that one ship doing?” Flynn asked.

That was the next odd thing. One Earth ship was shooting at their own ships instead of the attacking missiles. It was accelerating right into the teeth of the wave of missiles, and somehow passed through them all unscathed. Meanwhile its missiles added to the wave of damage that took out every other Earth ship.

“Malfunction? Confusion? Mutiny? It’s hard to say,” Glenn said.

“It just jumped up its acceleration. See how fast it’s going?” Liddel asked. He looked meaningfully at Flynn. “I’ve seen that before.”

The flagship rolled forward at that point. It never fired a missile, but the R&D station exploded and was gone. Then it fired whatever the weapon was again at the fleeing mutineer.

“Radar says the little ship was burning twelve gees when it was hit, and was still accelerating. The flagship was doing at least eight,” Glenn said.

Flynn looked up from the screen at Glenn. “You said you were pretty sure that those smaller ships were just more converted cargo vessels, right?”

“That’s my best guess,” Glenn said.

“Not a fun place to be doing twelve gravities of acceleration,” she said. “That was a high risk move.” She looked back at Liddel and nodded.

On the replay, the flagship rolled up to the smaller vessel it had crippled and matched speeds, coming up alongside it.

“If those were mutineers, I wish I knew what they’d been thinking,” I asked. If anyone survived on that ship, they were UN prisoners now. “More important: how did the enemy jam our defense grid? And why did the jamming fail? Is that something they can do to our ships?”

“I have some theories, sir,” Liddel said.

“Go,” I replied, waving him on.

“I think they found - or made - a back door in the program. When we added the friendly target failsafe, we created a vulnerability in our defense grid. It wasn’t too big a hole so long as we had someone on station to override if needed….”

“But when we abandoned the station, we left the automated systems in charge,” I said.

Liddel nodded. “Which were vulnerable to a hack.”

“That doesn’t explain why the hack failed,” I observed.

“Sir, I’ve seen some of the code for the grid,” Liddel said. “There’s only one way their hack could have failed. Someone had an override. Probably someone on that little ship.”

My heart stopped. He couldn’t be saying what I thought he was. But really, he was right. It was the only possible explanation. I simply hadn’t been willing to see it. Hadn’t been willing to risk hope.

Flynn gave a sharp bark of laughter, breaking the tension like a glass thrown at the wall. “You’re all beating around the bush here. The override code. Firing missiles at a swarm of enemy ships. Going balls to the wall at enough gravities to knock you out in a ship not built for it. I’ve seen those sorts of moves before, and so have you.”

She stabbed a finger down at the small ship we’d been watching. “That was Thomas.”

I slumped back in my seat. She was very likely right. I felt my heart lurch into motion again, pain from the recent wound of losing my son mixing with the taste of new hope. I almost didn’t dare risk that hope. Losing him twice would be too much.

“Assume…” I started to talk, but my voice was rough with emotion. I cleared my throat. “Assume it was Thomas. If he’s still alive, then they have him on board that ship. It’s still on course for Mars?”

“It’ll be here in an hour,” Glenn said.

“With the biggest spaceship anyone has ever built. Armed with a weapon that we know nothing about,” I reminded them.

“We have a weapon they know nothing about,” Flynn said. “My Hawks will be ready.”

Thomas, alive after all? I wanted to hope. But if he was alive, how the hell was I going to rescue him from that killer ship? The ship I had to destroy, if any of us were going to live through this?