Erebus (34 page)

“Not at all,” Frain replied.

I watched as Vasily fired a KI from the launch rail. It streaked toward
Erebus
and flashed across her flank.

“The next one won’t be a warning shot. Cut your burn!” Vasily called.

“Captain, let me try,” I sent across the link.

“Layton, clear the channel.”

“Inspector Layton Trent,” Frain said. “You are a long way from your jurisdiction now. I would have thought you would have given up after Concorde.”

“Yeah.” I glanced out of the cockpit window. The accretion disk was filling the view—a place thousands of light-years from home
.
“What can I say? I take my job seriously.”

I heard a slew of angry Russian, then Vasily bellowed, “Trent, I said clear the goddamn channel!”

“Just one chance, Captain, then we do it your way.” I barreled on without waiting for a reply. “You’re clearly not insane, Xander. You have a reason for coming here, and the fact that you even know about this place means you have access to a lot of resources.”

Frain’s image blinked onto my HUD. It was getting crowded in my view, the tactical display, his face, and the view outside the Hawk all competing for my attention. I saw his head give a slight incline, as if he was prompting me to carry on.

“Tell us why. Why could coming here be worth killing the original Frain and blowing up a damn moon with the people on it? What you did at Concorde and what you did to
Gagarin’s
crew—or what you
didn’t
do…”

“That”—Frain gave his slight smile that I remembered from Concorde—“is need-to-know information.”

Gagarin
began thrusting in a corkscrew, battling to keep to that near blind-spot on
Erebus
even as she rotated and twisted to prevent us getting there. She wasn’t making any serious maneuvers, though, and still held to her general course. Either Frain had a death wish, or he thought we weren’t a threat.

“We’re here, a thousand light-years from home, and you’re asking us to surrender our ship and accept that you will save us all from falling into a black hole—and you want us to do that on faith? I think everyone out here has a need to know at this point. You may be a killer, but you damn well have a reason for all those deaths on your hands.” For the first time, I saw a flash of pain and regret cross his face. Just as quickly, it disappeared. But it was there, and that was a crack I could exploit. “Talk to me, Xander. Help me understand what is happening here.”

“Talk to you?” The slight smile reappeared. “So you can listen? Then what will be the next stage? Empathy? Then rapport, then influence, and finally you will move toward behavior change? Aren’t you assuming something here, Trent?”

Shit, this guy knew at least as much about those old textbook negotiation theories as I did; that was exactly the model that I was trying to use. “And what’s that?”

“That any of this is open to negotiation,” Frain said as his image disappeared from my HUD.

“Laser strike! He’s attacking. Return fire,” Vasily roared.

A spread of KIs pumped out of
Gagarin’s
launch tubes at
Erebus
. Frain’s ship instantly cut her acceleration. The limited guidance systems on the impactors tried to compensate for the course change, but only three succeeded. One after another, they flared as
Erebus’s
laser burned them.

Gagarin
turned ponderously. She fired her laser, trying to take out her foe’s laser emplacements.
Erebus’s
engine reignited, and she charged forward again, dropping a spread of KIs as she did.

“Take out those KIs,” Phillips said with maddening calm to the pilot. The Hawk sprang from behind the cover of
Gagarin
. We raced toward the still-distant swarm of projectiles that were already flaring under
Gagarin’s
laser. It was a game of attrition. The KIs were decoys for the lasers. While
Gagarin
and
Erebus
had to fend off each other’s impactors, they couldn’t turn the focus of their lasers onto the opposing ship. Except this time, we would use an advantage that would shift the odds in our favor.

“Guns, guns, guns,” the pilot called. I felt a rumble through my seat as the Gatling cannon under the Hawk fired. The tactical display showed a stream of projectiles spraying toward the KIs. After long seconds, bright flashes erupted among the flares of the strikes from
Gagarin’s
laser. It looked like a fireworks display. Yeah, we were definitely doing better this time around.

“Hawk, we have an attack on our firewalls,” Vasily’s g-strained voice called out. “He’s trying to hack into our systems.”

“
Gagarin
, roger that. Can you do something about the laser emplacements while we try for a hard dock?” Phillips asked.

“Focusing fire,” Vasily answered. "Keep those KIs off us while we do.”

The pilot redoubled her efforts. I felt and heard the rumbling drone of the Hawk’s heavy projectile cannon firing again and again. Ahead of us, the long stream of energy that was
Erebus’s
antimatter torch became a distinct streak across the heavens to the naked eye rather than just another star. We were getting closer.

“We’re getting a laser strike. Hull temperature rising. Evading,” the pilot called. The view spun dizzyingly as we corkscrewed, fighting to shrug off the laser lock. I heard a bang, and the shuttle shuddered. Gripping my seat arms, I closed my eyes, waiting for the inevitable.

“They’ve nicked the port engine,” the pilot called, excitement finally creeping into her tone. “Diagnosing…Coolant system is damaged. We’re still in play, though.”

I was slammed back into my seat as the Hawk accelerated at
Erebus
again, the tail of her blaring antimatter stream above us. My HUD automatically compensated so it wouldn’t literally blind me when I looked at it. If we flew into that, we would be nothing more than a brief ember, our component atoms dissipating to the stars.

“How’re those firewalls, Captain?” Phillips asked.

“Major, he has some good software. He’s burning through them like they barely exist.”

“Just get those emplacements down ASAP.”

A spread of KIs raced past us, streaming toward
Erebus
, some of them going up in flares. I didn’t believe for a second that they would actually strike
Erebus
, but that wasn’t the point—keeping the lasers busy was. That would give the Hawk its chance.

“Got ’em!” Vasily called.

A ragged crater opened in
Erebus’s
flank equipment module from a laser strike. One of the laser emplacements was gone; we had our path to
Erebus
.

“Roger that. Pilot, go for hard dock at best speed,” Phillips shouted, her voice straining under the wild maneuvers the pilot was pulling off. The pilot began to smooth out the ride, going from a roller-coaster-like corkscrew to burning hard straight at the ship.

“He’s through the firewall protecting our weapons,” Vasily called. “We’ve lost them. We’re putting all processing power into fighting his incursion toward our propulsion software. You’re on your own.”

Erebus
was a distinct shape now, a black line at the head of the vast plume that was her torch. She was still racing toward the black hole. I could have sworn the damn accretion disk was filling more of my view.

“I’m showing an e-warfare incursion into our control systems,” the pilot called.

“Shut down the radio. Go to the coms laser for our link to
Gagarin
,” Phillips replied curtly.

The enemy ship loomed larger and larger now. The Hawk slowed to match speed, and the crushing weight of our high-g burn eased as we closed. We swept over the habitat ring, streaking along the ship’s long spine, and glided closer to the docking slips.

“
Erebus
has four Orca-class heavy shuttles listed on her manifest,” the pilot said. “I’m only seeing two.”

“Roger that,” Phillips responded. “We’ll worry about it later. Go for a hard dock on the spine itself.”

A magnetic grapple fired out and slammed into
Erebus’s
hull. Slowly and steadily, we reeled in closer and closer. With a thud, the Hawk mated onto the spinal corridor just aft of the lander ports. The vibrations of our shuttle stopped, replaced by a different, lesser shudder transferred to us by
Erebus
. Her acceleration had me feeling like I was resting on my back.

“Go for cut,” Phillips barked. Her voice had changed tempo. Long gone was the calm demeanor; now she was spurring us on with the mere power and presence of her voice.

From the bottom of the deck came a fizzing noise, and then the belly hatch popped open. One of the soldiers pulled a rickety-looking stepladder from what was now underneath the lock, and the first troops, rifles in hand, climbed into the hatch as if the floor had become a wall.

“Ma’am, active camouflage is failing,” Sergeant Jamal called.

I watched as their armored suits tried to cloak themselves. Instead, ripples of colors washed over them, making their grey battle armor even more visible.

“Analyze,” Phillips said.

Sergeant Jamal stood still for a moment, undoubtedly looking at his suit’s sensor readings on his HUD.

“Looks like they’ve laced the atmosphere with antistealth air dye, Captain,” Jamal replied. Great. Frain had anticipated boarding and that we would have battle armor with active camouflage capability. He had countered it by seeding the ship’s atmosphere with particles whose specific purpose was to cause stealth technology to malfunction. Even rumor of that kind of technology was top secret. Always more questions on this damn mission.

“Okay, mates. This is the hand we’ve been dealt,” Phillips said pragmatically. “It changes nothing. Shut down active camouflage. Let’s move out.”

One after another, the troopers pulled themselves inside the ship. I struggled out of my seat, and after the last one had gone through, I climbed up the steps. Under the lock, I could see the heat-warped edges of
Erebus’s
hull, still glowing from the plasma torch that the hatch mechanism had used to slice its way through. Careful to avoid the sharp and red-hot edges, I slipped inside.

Finally—we were in.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” I exclaimed as I looked down the seemingly bottomless pit of the spinal corridor. It hadn’t occurred to me before that when
Erebus
was under thrust, the whole damn spinal corridor turned into a seemingly bottomless shaft—a shaft we would have to descend to get to the habitat section of the ship.

“Is the lift working?” Phillips called over to one of the troops as she stood with her rifle pointed down into the corridor.

The soldier fiddled with the controls for a few moments. “Negative. They’ve locked it out from below. We can’t override it from up here.”

“We’re two hundred meters from the habitat ring, and we’re going to have to do this the fancy way, people.” Phillips grinned through her visor as she extended a cable from a compartment on her chest plate. “Sergeant, drop a couple of mozzies. Let’s see what they can see while we’re heading down.”

Sergeant Jamal knelt down in his bulky armor, placing a small carry case on the deck, and opened it. Embedded in the soft foam within were some tiny mosquito drones, similar to the ones that we used back in Sahelia and Concorde. I’m sure that they were far more advanced than the ones used by the Congolese Defense Force or, for that matter, the JAS. Security investment for them hadn’t exactly been a priority. Two of the drones lifted off and darted down the shaft.

“Layton, you have a choice here. We can fit you into a cas-evac sling and carry you down or…” She gestured at the ladder that ran the length of the spinal corridor.

I interpreted that as I could either be dangled off one of the troops or go under my own steam down a ladder where the slightest slip would see me falling all the way down the goddamn corridor. Neither option seemed especially great.

“I’ll take the ladder, thanks.” It seemed like the lesser of two evils for me. At least this way I’d have control of my own destiny.

Phillips shrugged as she continued preparing her rappelling set. “Right.”

When all six troops and I were ready, we surrounded the shaft and put index fingers to thumbs, signaling
okay
. The soldiers launched, bouncing down the corridor wall as I started climbing down, one rung after another.

“Getting interference on the mosquito link,” Jamal said as we made our way down the corridor, the troops pulling ahead of me. “Losing the link. It’s down.”

“Not surprising,” I said as I paused a moment, trying to avoid looking down. “Frain’s e-warfare package strikes me as the bleeding edge of the cutting edge.”

“Yeah, I got that, too,” Jamal replied.

“We knew we could be going in blind. We do this the old—” Phillips’s voice was cut off by the sound of something zipping by us. The hint of blue told me it was a disrupter round. “Suppressing fire, three by three, incaps. Go.”

The six troops reorganized themselves. In a bizarre yet graceful movement, they twisted themselves upside down, heads toward the habitat ring. Three sighted their guns down it and began firing, slow and steady. The other three used the covering fire to do another few bounces down the shaft.

“Cover,” one of the lower troops called out between the zip of incap rounds.

“Moving,” Phillips barked in response, and the three higher ones, including her, bounded down the shaft, threading between the other three.

“Cover,” she shouted, once they were in position. They began firing down the shaft, forcing the heads down of whoever was shooting at us.

“Moving,” one of the top three roared as they soared down the corridor. Phillips’s fire team discharged their weapons down the shaft. A moment later, they’d overtaken the lower fire team and the process repeated, taking the troops closer to the habitat ring. The speed of their descent took them farther and farther ahead of me. Blue sparks zipped up the corridor in sporadic bursts of return fire, but our fire teams kept anyone from getting an accurate bead on us.

But it wasn’t enough—one of the rounds ripped through the rappel cable of a trooper. The heavily armored man made a desperate grab for purchase in the shaft, briefly gripping a protruding striplight before the weight of his armor pulled him off.