Battlecruiser Alamo: Not One Step Back (24 page)

 “Oh, sweet memories,” Cunningham said, shaking his head as he walked out onto the hangar deck. Three shuttles sat on elevator airlocks, all of them swarming with technicians under the agitated supervision of Quinn; when he saw the three pilots approaching, he turned to his staff.

 “Right, that’s going to have to do. Pack this lot up and clear the deck.” He turned to Marshall, “I think we’re about as ready as we’ll ever be, sir.”

 Walking to the airlock of his shuttle, Marshall said, “You’ve done a good job in the time, Lieutenant.”

 Quinn gestured at the wings, “We’ve modified the control surfaces to give you some extra grip, and added a few extra backups in case you have some problems. Two missiles each, housed in the cargo bay – so you’ll be dropping them like bombs instead of firing them, watch for the back-blast.” He tapped the nose, “Railgun mounted forward.”

 “That’s a bit old-fashioned, isn’t it?”

 “Sir, this is going to be an old-fashioned kind of battle. Ranges are going to be short down there, dozens of miles instead of thousands. You’re back to the twentieth century in that soup.”

 Running his eyes over the lines of the shuttle, Marshall nodded, “Countermeasures?”

 “Standard package with a few upgrades Orlova suggested, and the aft science airlock’s been fitted with half-a-dozen short range intercept rockets. No room for any decoys, I’m afraid, but in that environment…”

 “They probably wouldn’t work anyway.” 

 Quinn looked up at the shuttle, “Sir, really I ought to be going on this mission.” 

 “Alamo needs her Systems Officer.”

 “She needs her Captain more.”

 Marshall smiled, clasped Quinn on the shoulder, and shook his head, “This is my job, Lieutenant. There are times that a Captain has to lead from the front. Besides, you’re married now; can’t be taking crazy risks any more.”

 “You’ve met my wife, haven’t you?” Quinn replied, smiling. “Good luck, Captain.”

 “Thank you, Mr. Quinn.” Marshall climbed into the pilot’s airlock and waited for it to cycle. A spacesuit had been laid out for him on his couch, but he put it out of the way. If there was a problem with the shuttle when he was down on the gas giant, the suit would only be of dubious help, and he’d find the extra agility valuable when working the controls.

 Sliding his command key into the console, he watched the controls slide around the panel to his preferred locations, and rested his hands on the guidance systems. He glanced up as the pre-flight checks slid down one after another, all green, and the heads-up display updated with a calculated course projection.

 “Shuttle Two, you ready?”

 Cunningham replied, “All systems go, ready for launch.” 

 “Caine, how about you?”

 “Ready to go.”

 Switching channels, Marshall said, “Bridge, this is Shuttle Flight, requesting clearance for launch.”

 Orlova’s voice echoed through the cabin, “Shuttle Flight, launch when ready. Good luck.”

 Tapping a series of buttons, the elevator airlock engaged and the shuttle receded into the deck, settling into the pit. The upper doors slammed shut, and his sensors read the atmosphere outside fading away to nothing, until the lower doors opened and he slowly began to drift out of the ship. A quick tap of the thrusters sped the process, and he fell away from Alamo. The other two shuttles were behind him in a loose arrowhead, and he locked the pre-plotted course into the navigation systems.

 “Engage engines in five seconds, mark,” he said, and the computer, picking up on his verbal cue, started a quick countdown. He had his hand resting on the control, but the autopilot picked up on time, pushing him back into his couch with the deceleration; the ship was braking to lower its orbit, and a series of amber warning lights began to flash overhead. Smiling, he tapped the override, instructing the safety systems that he did indeed want to dive into the atmosphere of a gas giant.

 “Alamo, burn complete.”

 “Roger, Shuttle One. We show you right on course.”

 “Any change down there?”

 “We’ve got the installation under constant observation, sir,” Zebrova said, cutting in, “and there is no change to target aspect thus far.”

 “Keep looking out, inform me immediately if there is any change.”

 “Will do, Shuttle One. Alamo out.”

 He looked around his cockpit, flicking switches and looking down at his improvised fire control system. Quinn really had managed to work some miracles in the hours he’d been given, fitting in a full combat sensor package, by the looks of it stripped out of a missile. He ran a couple of quick simulations, making sure that he didn’t waste a missile by accident, and smiled.

 “Remind you of anything?” Cunningham’s voice echoed.

 “Advanced Flight Training.”

 Cunningham chuckled, “You’re exposing your youth again. This is the sort of patched-up crate we were flying in the first couple of years of the War. You don’t think we had hundreds of fighters lying around, do you?”

 “No, I suppose not.” He looked around, “This does bring back a few memories, doesn’t it.”

 “The wait. We rush to launch, then end up sitting around for an hour waiting for the fighting to begin, knowing that the bad guys can see us coming.”

 “I should have brought a deck of cards,” he said, patching Caine into the conversation. “We keep this simple in the attack. Cunningham and I will split off and deal with any fighters, Deadeye, you go in and knock out the aerostat.”

 “It’s a flying gas-bag, Danny. The railgun will probably do the job.”

 Marshall nodded, glancing down at the other control system; there wasn’t much automation there, a trigger spliced into the console controls just under the afterburner. His eyes widened, and he slid the control across; the last thing he wanted to do was get those two buttons mixed up in the heat of battle.

 “Don’t get overconfident. If you get a missile track, by all means use it.”

 “I’ve done this before, Danny. Don’t worry, that aerostat will be falling fragments by the time we’re finished with it.”

 He looked ahead at the approaching gas giant. The fighter was curving down towards the atmosphere, and every thirty seconds he was having to confirm his course; the navigation systems really didn’t seem to like where he was planning to go. They’d be dipping down into it, spilling most of their speed; they’d need every ounce of fuel to make this flight work, and he glanced back at what was normally the passenger section, all of it stripped down to make the shuttle as light as possible. Putting it back together again was going to be quite a job for Quinn and his gang; he just hoped that he would have the chance to do it.

 “Last chance to call this off, Danny,” Caine’s voice said. He glanced down at his communications board; this was a person-to-person tight-beam. No-one else could hear them.

 “There’s no other way to take out that base, Deadeye.”

 “Wait for them to surrender.” 

 “We could be stuck here in orbit for months. They must have some support systems down there, I can’t imagine that they’ll be totally dependent on outside supply. Too big a risk.”

 “I suspect you are right about that.” She paused, then said, “I just wanted to make sure you knew the risks we were running.”

 “If this goes wrong, Alamo can continue with its blockade.”

 “True.” She paused. “If this does go wrong, then just so that you know – I don’t regret coming along.”

 “Thanks, Deadeye.” A warning light popped on. “We’re about to hit atmosphere.”

 “Yeah, my system’s flashing amber again. See you on the other side.”

 Marshall settled down in his couch, relaxing into the most comfortable position. The throttle was still under automatic control, and the engines fired intermittent bursts, sparkling into life to keep the curve of the shuttle’s course on its pre-planned trajectory. Behind him, the other two shuttles began to weave back and forth, compensation burns keeping them as close as possible to the formation. That was going to change in a moment.

 A light winked red, and the shuttle entered the upper levels of Kumar’s atmosphere, and now the engine turned on constantly, starting at low power as it fought back against the increasing gravity. The fuel gauge began to roll down at an ever-rising pace, the numbers flashing by too quickly for Marshall to read, pausing everything ten seconds to provide him an unnerving report. Quinn had loaded as many extra fuel tanks into the passenger compartment as he could, but there was only so much extra mass he could carry. 

 The stars vanished as the atmosphere thickened, flickering red flames dancing around the shuttle’s nose as it crested through the tops of the clouds, an altimeter flashing on the heads-up display, slowing a descent curve that was right on the projected path, fuel dropping at the planned rate. The control surfaces were starting to bite, providing extra lift, easing the load on the engine as the pressure grew on the outer hull. The flames began to trickle off, and Marshall settled back for a moment to enjoy the view.

 He glanced down, into the deep clouds, and for a brief second saw a black spot underneath him; for a moment he thought that he might have overshot, but his tactical computer read it as another aerostat, just a few hundred miles down and to the rear. Evidently this was a rich seam of gas to mine, and the flying fuel scoops were congregating on this area.

  Taking the controls for a second, Marshall tilted and dived, swinging the nose around and playing with the flaps, getting a feel for the handling of the shuttle. Despite the seriousness of the moment, his face erupted in a smile. This was flying, flying the like of which he had rarely experienced. No computer auto-controls, no navigational trajectories computed to tens of thousands of miles distance. This was just he and his machine, one unit operating in harmony to guide his path through the clouds.

 A red line appeared at the bottom of his altimeter, and he instantly switched back to computer control; crush depth. Below that limit, still many miles below, but potentially only a single mistake away, the shuttle’s manufacturers could not guarantee the integrity of the hull. Engineers were usually a conservative bunch, and there would probably be a comfortable margin of error built into that, but he certainly didn’t want to test that out for real. Fuel might be the least of his problems; indeed, while he was slowing slightly, the engine was burning more more smoothly now, using fuel more slowly. They were on the glide path, cruising through the hydrogen clouds.

 Everything went dark for a second, and Marshall’s heart beat a little faster, until he realized that the shuttle had flown through a cloud, blocking out the golden light. He chuckled, trying to hide his nerves, then glanced at his sensors. His two wingmates were scattered across the sky, both of them trailing behind him and to the right; while he watched, Caine turned on the acceleration for a second in an attempt to catch up, and he shook his head, worrying about her use of the excess fuel. Cunningham seemed to have a better idea, he was curving further to the right. If they played this well, they’d have the pirates caught on multiple sides.

 “Alamo to Shuttle One,” the communicator crackled; Marshall strained to hear it.

 “Shuttle One here. Be advised signal strength is very poor, very poor.”

 “Alamo to Shuttle One,” it repeated; obviously they hadn’t heard him.

 “Shuttle One calling Alamo. I read you very faint, but I read you.”

 There was no response, and Marshall wasn’t surprised. Alamo had a thousand times the signal strength as these tiny shuttles, and he was fighting through the roaring static of the gas giant. Any communication at all was more than he had expected; he just hoped that whatever the message was, it wasn’t important.

 Then, glancing at his screen, he saw what Alamo had been about to tell him. Three contacts, far ahead but closing on them. No sign of the aerostat yet, that was still some time away. The computer started a countdown to combat range, and he assumed manual control of the helm.

 “Shuttle One to Shuttle Flight. Bandits ahead. Break and attack.”

Chapter 23

 Logan drifted down the central corridor, focused on his goal at the far end of the station – Cornucopia’s offices. Behind him, a dozen men armed with a variety of weapons followed, most of them equipped with the riot shields borrowed from their erstwhile adversaries. Harper drifted at the back, followed by Lilith; he was expecting several opportunities for her to make use of her skills.

 A crowd had gathered, as if wanting to watch the battle to come, all hanging back by the corridor walls to keep out of the way. He glanced at a couple of the ubiquitous Cornucopia operatives trying to blend into the crowd, no longer concerned with following his movements but simply attempting to shield their own. No doubt they would be fleeing the station at the first opportunity, but that didn’t concern him at the moment. He had one goal on his mind – Sokolov. None of the people he had captured up to this point could provide the key intelligence he needed. Only the station’s commander – former station commander, he corrected in his mind – could give him that.

 There were no guards outside the module, and immediately he sensed the possibility of a trap. The door was closed, sealed, and he pulled himself up, raising his hands to signal the rest of his men to stay clear. No sense risking any more lives than he needed, not at this stage. Too much blood had been spilled already, too many lives hanging in the balance in surgery. He scanned the door with his eyes, looking for any traps or surprises, but he couldn’t find any.

 “Harper, get up here.”

 Nodding, the hacker pushed herself in, and Logan reached out an arm to stop her tumbling down the corridor, guiding her gently to the entrance panel. She started to enter a series of codes, shook her head, and pulled a small tool out of her sleeve, working around at the components.

 “It’s safe,” she said.

 “Get out of the way, then,” Logan replied, pulling his pistol out of his pocket as he worked the entry mechanism. The door glided smoothly open, and he dived him, gun proceeding him into the module. Quickly, he looked around the room, hunting for an ambush, but there was no-one there. Monitors were flashing test patterns, scattered boxes and crates drifting around the room, even a couple of empty mugs were dancing around each other in the air. Four doors, all of them sealed, surrounded the room, and he immediately dived for the one marked ‘Commander’.