Accord of Mars (Accord Series Book 2) (16 page)

I
ducked away
from the flames as they washed up to corridor. I was already behind the stanchion, which blocked most of the fury of the blast. I felt the tremors through the metal as shards of hot metal pelted it. Heat spread past me like a wave. I pinched my eyes shut as tightly as I could and didn’t breathe for a few long, heart-pounding moments. If I inhaled super-heated air, I’d scorch my lungs. I smelled hair burning, and knew it had to be my own. The ship suit I wore protected most of my body to some degree. But my head was exposed, and my hands needed to hang on to the support beam. The heat only lasted for seconds, but it was searing agony.

Then the wind came rushing in from the other direction. I could feel it like a cool balm - running down the tube from both sides in a furious torrent! I clung to the support as the gale whipped past me. I risked a peek - the fire had been sucked out into the void of space by the hurricane of air escaping the ship. Kel’s missile had blasted a gaping hole in the tube, and the whole section was exposed to space.

She must have sent the missile in at an angle, because the marines had fared far worse than I did. I saw a pair of magnetic boots, still attached to the deck - but the person who’d been standing in them wasn’t there anymore. Two other men were on the far side of the breach, hanging on much the same as I was. Of the others, there was no sign at all. If they’d been knocked loose by the detonation their bodies might have been sucked outside during the initial blast of decompression.

The air kept roaring through the tube. The ship was loosing a ton of atmosphere. Automatic systems should have shut off this section of the ship by now, sealing the breach. They must have been damaged, because they were not responding as quickly as they should have.

I tried for a gulp of air and couldn’t breathe in through the heavy wind. I was surrounded by air, but my lungs were straining, suffocating. My wrist buzzed, and I looked down at my watch despite the rising panic I felt.

Kel had sent one word as text, blinking there on my screen: “Now!”

My body rebelled at the thought for a moment. I was safe here. I could keep clinging to the ship, hang on here like a barnacle. But that security wasn’t going to last. In a few moments the crew would lock down the section manually, and the air would be gone. I’d be stuck in here without air.

I looked across at the airlock. Still too far. The moment I let go the wind would haul me out through the hole into space. Grabbing a space suit was out of the question.

With an effort of will, I made myself release the beam.

The wind picked me up and flung me out into the middle of the tube. I shot down toward the gap. Ragged chunks of metal gaped there. I twisted to avoid being impaled on one, and it slashed my arm open instead. I screamed, losing what little air was left in my lungs.

The wind carried me past the gap and smashed me into the bulkhead. I felt bruised from head to toe. My ears were ringing. And the wind wasn’t done with me yet. I was caught in an eddy that slammed me against the wall a second time, and then a third. Dazed, I clung to consciousness as best I could.

Then the wind died down. At least one of the bulkhead doors had been closed. There was still a strong current of air flowing into space, but it wasn’t as powerful as it had been. The eddy I was trapped in vanished abruptly, and I was pulled toward the breach.

Which looked like a set of giant razor blades all placed in a circle by a crazy person. The missile had torn apart the outer hull and the deck. Now all that ripped metal was bare, exposed, and deadly sharp. I twisted my body so that I was moving feet first and made myself as thin as I could - shooting toward the hole like I was trying to dive toes first into a pool of water.

And then I was through. I’d somehow managed to get past without acquiring any new wounds. The air around me was cooling fast, spreading out into the vacuum of space. The moisture in the atmosphere flowing out around me crystalized almost instantly so that I was drifting outward away from the ship in a plume of frost.

There wasn’t any air left in my lungs. Worse, I knew that being in a vacuum would cause body wide hypoxia very rapidly. I was still surrounded by air escaping the ship, which might extend the seconds of consciousness I had left. My ship suit was designed to help regulate pressure in my body - which would keep me a live a few more moments. But I didn’t have long.

I started counting in my head. One-thousand-one. One-thousand-two. It was taking my mind off the fact that I was dying. Oxygen was leaving my body, hypoxia setting in. One-thousand-three. I felt cold, chills setting in on my hands and face first. One-thousand-four.

And then she was there. Kel’s fighter was in front of me, thrusters bringing her in close. The cockpit was already open. Kel was just inside, in a suit. One-thousand-five. For a moment her eyes met mine, and I knew I was never going to make it to her. She was so close, and simply unreachable, just like the space suits had been inside. On-thousand-six.

She jumped free of the ship, lunging across space. The frozen mist bounced off her suit. I imagined the way it would sound inside her helmet, the hiss as the tiny bits of ice pinged against the glass. She reached out and grabbed me, and she was there with me. I clung to her with freezing hands, grateful to see her again. Then we snapped back toward her fighter at high speed.

She was using a line to reel us both back into the cockpit. She shoved me hard into the back seat, my body screaming at me all the while. She slid back into her seat up front and tapped a control. Air began flowing around me as the fighter’s internal atmosphere tried to compensate for the open canopy hatch. The hatch slid shut with an audible click - by the time it shut the air inside the cockpit was already dense enough that I could hear the sound.

My lungs couldn’t wait any longer. I took a shaky, gasping breath. The air was icy cold, but it was air. My chest hurt. My hands and face were numb. But right now it was enough to suck in breaths of that cold oxygen.

I started coughing, and then I couldn’t stop coughing for a moment, couldn’t catch my breath again.

“You OK?” Kel asked. We were under acceleration, boosting fast.

“Will be,” I gasped out between coughs. “Thank you.”

She whipped the fighter into a sharp spiral, and a small missile streaked past us on the left. The enemy ship was still shooting. Still trying to take out the little fighters nipping at its heels. I got a good look at the dreadnought through my window. Plumes of fire blasted from the rear sections. The engine area had been hammered. There was no way they were going to get the main thrusters back on line anytime soon. The ship was done for. But it was still deadly, still trying to kill the other ships around it in its death throes.

“Hawks, this is Hawk leader, RTB, repeat Romeo, Tango, Bravo,” Kel said. “I have the package.”

F
lynn’s voice
came through loud and clear over the radio. I could hear it even over the air venting out of the Hermes, even over the klaxons of alarms blaring one warning after another. My ship might be coming apart at the seams, but the radio still worked.

“Hawks, this is Hawk leader, RTB, repeat Romeo, Tango, Bravo,” she said. “I have the package.”

And thank god it did. I didn’t think I’d ever heard a more welcome message. Thomas was alive, and free. It should have been impossible to rescue him. The last I saw him, he’d been on the enemy bridge surrounded by the enemy. I could only imagine how the hell Flynn had managed to extract my son from the mess over there. I wasn’t sure I wanted to know the full story.

But I felt a huge weight lifted from my shoulders. No matter what else happened now, Thomas was off that thing. Flynn had done the impossible and gotten him out. I trusted in her to do the merely difficult and get those both out of danger.

I checked the Hermes’s status again. More and more missiles were impacting us, and most of the armor plating had been blasted away. We were venting air from three sections - then four, as another missile struck home. The nearer we got to the enemy, the less time our defenses had to stop their missiles. Even though we’d destroyed much of their offensive launchers, they were still firing more missiles per volley than we could manage. We weren’t going to be able to take much more of this pounding.

“Sir, picking up a very high energy buildup inside the enemy ship,” Diaz said.

I looked back up at the holotank. “Are their engines losing containment?” I asked. Had we won? Had a lucky missile somehow broken through to their engines?

“No sir,” she replied. “The energy surge seems to be coming from the core of the ship. I think it’s their main gun.”

Damn. They were about to fire. I ran their course through my computer again, although I didn’t really need to. I knew what Perrault was aiming at. Knew what he had to be shooting for. I wasn’t wrong: the Mars Colony was directly behind us, and his ship was lined up for a perfect shot. I didn’t know for certain how much power that gun had, but if it was strong enough the railgun blast might annihilate the entire colony. Without much atmosphere to break up the railgun rounds as they came at Mars, they’d hit with most of the force they had when they left the barrel. The attack would be devastating.

I leaned back in my seat, giving myself a few moments for thought. Thomas was clear, so I was content. If this was the way I had to go then it was enough. I’d done my part, more than once. It would be an honor to die to save all those other lives.

“Bring the nose down,” I said. “Full thrust. I want everything left that the engines can provide us. Take us down their throat.”

My crew froze, but only for a moment. Then they went back to their duties at full speed. The nose of the Hermes came down. The engines lit up, firing the most powerful thrusters I’d ever placed on a ship. We rocketed toward Perrault’s vessel. Our missiles couldn’t take him down fast enough. But we were on a collision course now, building up speed. We’d tear their ship to bits on impact.

I opened up a general channel to the entire ship. “All hands, abandon ship. We are going to ram the enemy to stop them from firing on the surface. Abandon ship.”

With a few taps of my fingers, I routed most of the ship’s controls to my console. It wasn’t as efficient as having crews in place to manage damage control and fix problems right at the source. But I could keep the ship flying for a little longer, and that was all I was going to need.

I looked up from my console around the bridge. Nobody had moved from their stations. “I’ve got it from here,” I said. “Go to your lifeboats.”

They looked at each other. Then Glenn looked up at me from where he sat. “Admiral,” he said - formal now, even though we’d been on a first name basis for over a decade. “We’ve elected to stay and help.”

“You might need us for something at the last minute,” Dias said.

“And if we can help, we want to be here,” Harris confirmed.

Jacobs was silent, nervous, but he nodded his agreement.

I looked them each in the eye as best I could through our suits. “Very well,” I said. I was touched. I could probably have held things together, but they were right. I could use the assistance, and more hands would make us more likely to succeed.

“Jacobs, keep us flying straight up their nose,” I said. “I want to hit them dead center on the bow of their ship, make sure to take out the gun.”

“Aye, sir,” he replied.

“Make sure they can’t wiggle free. It’s going to be tough keeping on course through their missile barrage,” Glenn said. “I’ll help you compensate for the impacts with course corrections.”

“I’m managing damage control,” Harris said.

“And I’ve got the defense systems,” Diaz added.

Which didn’t leave me a lot to do beside supervise. And maybe one last thing. “Open a channel to the enemy ship,” I said.

‘Aye sir,” Harris replied. “Open now.”

My screen lit up as the enemy accepted my call. Perrault’s bridge wasn’t as pretty as it had been the last time I’d seen it. Smoke filled the space, and he’d blown out more of the consoles than remained active. Perrault himself still wasn’t in a suit. His face was sweaty, soot-streaked, and a small trail of blood dripped from his temple. He glared at me from the screen, scarlet faced.

“Damn you,” Perrault said. “Don’t you know when you’re beaten?”

“One last chance to stand aside,” I said. “I’ll let your crew abandon ship before we scuttle her. I’ll pick them up. Send you all home to Earth safely.”

“We’ll blast you to bits,” he said.

“I think we’ll ram you before you can fire,” I said blithely. “Most of my crew has already left this boat, and you don’t have my son as a shield anymore. Your ship is going to be destroyed. Do you want your crew to die with it?”

He cut the link.

“That’s one sort of answer,” I said. I felt a deep sadness. What had happened to the man I’d known to twist him so? Somehow Choi had gotten to him, gotten under his skin and bent him in this way. Perrault had always been proud, but never to such a fault as he was now. That pride was driving him and all his people to their deaths today. Because one way or another, he wasn’t going to survive this.

“Steady as we go,” I said. The ship rocked with more missile impacts, and several near misses that shook us almost as much as the hits. “Harris. Prepare a broadcast of the entire log. I want it sent out to Mars.” George would at least have a record of everything that had happened. For the history books. And maybe to help those who came after me finish this.

I thought of Thomas, wondering how much would fall to his shoulders now. There was no help for it. I know him well enough to know he’d jump into my boots and do everything he could to take my place in defense of our home. But he was ready. He’d done so much in such a short time, and I was proud of him. I only wished I had time to make sure he knew how much he meant to me.