Starship Alexander (21 page)

Peter Wyatt sat with his back to the inside bulkhead of the missile bay, heartily wishing that Dalton Hornbeck had died on Freedom Station. Wyatt's ears rang from the concussion of gunfire at close range. He smelled smoke and fear and blood, and it sickened him.

The hatch was to his right. They had jammed the hatch from the inside, but not before the crew outside had slid the door open a good five centimeters. It was more than enough room for a gun barrel, and from time to time someone outside would take a shot.

Fourteen mutineers lined the bulkhead on either side of him. It was the only place the guns outside couldn't reach. There was a fifteenth mutineer in the room. It was Breckenridge, and he was dead. He'd tried to fight back, stepping up to the gap in the hatch and trying to fire into the corridor. Someone out there had fired first, and now Breckenridge lay on the deck plates with a hole in his forehead.

He'd been a good man, and a very good engineer. Everyone's odds of survival had gone down when that bullet struck. Wyatt stared at the body and thought about the waste of it all, and fumed.
Why did I listen to that bloody idiot? How much more harm will he do before somebody finally shoots him?

What am I still doing at his side?

He knew the answer to that last question, at least. Wyatt couldn't leave. He was trapped with the rest of the mutineers, like a rat in a bucket. The only question was how long his torment would continue before a bullet finally found him.

Hornbeck sat beside Wyatt, looking remarkably unruffled. His lips moved, and Wyatt shook his head. "I'm half deaf from the gunshots, Hornbeck. You'll have to speak up."

Hornbeck leaned closer. "We need to launch a counterattack. We have to mop up the last of this resistance."

"Tell it to Breckenridge," Wyatt said sourly, and Hornbeck frowned.

"That's no attitude to take, Peter. We are winning. It's inevitable. After all, we have reason on our side."

I thought we did, but now I'm not so sure.

"So long as we don't weaken, the rest of them will see reason." Hornbeck gestured toward the corridor. "They'll see that it's hopeless, and they'll lay down their arms. After all, all we want to do is take them home. They've lost Hammett. Without him goading them, it won't take the rest of them very long to give up."

"I wouldn't be so sure of that," said a voice from the corridor.

Hornbeck's head jerked around. "Hammett? What happened to Velasco?"

"I had to relieve her of her duties. Listen, Hornbeck. I'm coming in. Open the hatch so we can talk face-to-face."

As Wyatt watched, a variety of emotions played across Hornbeck's face. Indignation, suspicion, and then an ugly, malicious cunning. Hornbeck stood, then made urgent gestures to the mutineers along the wall. He mimed holding a pistol, lining it up on the hatchway, and squeezing the trigger.

Then he walked to the hatch. It took him a moment to pull out the wrench that jammed the hatch in place. He laid his stunner on the deck in front of the hatch and said, "It's unlocked. Go ahead and pull it open. But don't try any tricks." He stepped back, an expression of malicious anticipation on his face. His foot came down on Breckenridge's leg, and he grimaced, edging to one side.

Metal scuffed against plastic and the hatch slid open. Hornbeck pasted a welcoming smile on his face, spreading his hands to show they were empty. Hammett appeared in the hatchway, also empty-handed. Hornbeck took another step back and said, "Please, come in. We need to find a peaceful resolution before someone else gets hurt." He glanced sideways at Wyatt, looked at the pistol in Wyatt's hand, and gave a tiny, imperceptible nod.

Beyond Wyatt, several mutineers lifted their pistols, taking aim.

Hammett stepped into the room.

Wyatt brought his gun up and shot Hornbeck in the chest.

Hammett sprang back into the corridor, and Wyatt heard a babble of excited voices. He set the pistol down beside his leg and vowed he would never touch another gun for the rest of his life. Hornbeck was still on his feet, staring at Wyatt with a look of baffled astonishment on his face. He coughed once, and a froth of blood coated his lips. Then he toppled backward to land sprawled across Breckenridge's corpse.

"What the hell?"

Wyatt didn't know which mutineer had spoken, and he didn't care. "Put 'em down," he said. "The mutiny is over."

Kasim was trying to line up his telescope on the distant speck that was the Gate when a missile flashed past. He spent a moment staring at the blazing tail of the missile, wondering how close it had come to hitting him, then started analyzing the probabilities. He could continue flying forward, getting close enough to see if the missile hit, close enough to take his own shot if the Gate survived.

Or he could turn back. He could live. It wouldn't be an entirely selfish choice, either. He could save the only small craft with manual controls and weapons, and the only qualified combat pilot on the
Alexander
.

A stubborn pride made him want to continue, to do his duty no matter what the cost. But if that missile failed to destroy the Gate, it would certainly attract the attention of the aliens. By the time he showed up they would be waiting for him, watching for another attack. He would sacrifice himself, and the
Falcon
, and very nearly the last nuke in the arsenal, for nothing.

He stowed the telescope so it wouldn't fly around the cockpit during maneuvers, and strapped himself into his seat. He started the engine, then grabbed the handle that controlled the ventral nose thruster. Pulling back made the thruster fire, and the nose of the ship whipped around. He gave it a second of burn, then grabbed the handle for the dorsal thruster and gave it a second as well.

It took a couple more tiny adjustments to even things out, but shortly he had the
Falcon
pointed back the way he'd come. He hit the main engine and felt the seat press against him. He was still hurtling toward the Gate at a pretty good clip, but he was slowing, and before long he'd be racing back toward the
Alexander
.

"Sorry, Sally," he murmured. "I wanted to avenge you. At least someone is giving them a black eye. It just isn't me. Not this time."

By gradual degrees the
Falcon
lost its backward velocity. He could see the planet beneath him, see craters sliding past, moving slower and slower. Finally the planet appeared to be stationary under the
Falcon
. Then, ever so slowly, the pocked landscape crept toward him as the ship reversed its course.

Somewhere behind him the Gate would be blasted apart in a nuclear explosion, or it wouldn't. It was out of his hands now. All he could do was wait as the
Falcon
gained speed, heading back around the planet, back toward the
Alexander
.

Back toward that alien supply ship, or whatever it was.

"Forget it," he said aloud. "Don't push your luck."

Still. He had a nuclear bomb, and the ship made such a fat, lovely target. It would never see him coming.

Probably.

"What should I do, Sally? Would you want me to avenge you?" Probably not. She would want him to live, to keep himself safe. Caring and decency had been such an integral part of her nature.

"You bastards should have killed me and let her live," he said, and pulled his lips back from his teeth in an atavistic snarl. "You made a mistake, and now you're going to pay for it. I'm sorry, Sally, but you're going to be avenged."

He disengaged the engine. After all, it wouldn't do to go whipping past the enemy ship at too high a speed. He wouldn't have time to shoot.

Kasim took out the telescope and started searching the skies above New Avalon.

It was about twenty minutes before he spotted his prey. The alien ship showed as a glittering point of light on the horizon, and Kasim altered course, steering straight for it. He misread the alien's orbital path and had to spend several minutes making course corrections, but at last he had the
Falcon
lined up, her nose pointed straight at the enemy ship.

By this time he could see the outline of the ship as a shining oval several degrees above the disc of the planet. He lined up the telescope, and the ship seemed to leap toward him. He was much closer than on his last pass, and he could see a lot more detail. There were antennas, and nozzles that could have been thrusters or weapons. He got the telescope hovering perfectly still in front of the cockpit window, then peered through the eyepiece. He could see the ship drifting, which told him he was slightly off target. He made a tiny adjustment and looked again.

Still drifting. He reached for the controls, then hesitated. He wasn't firing at a stationary target. Nor was he moving in a straight line. He was orbiting the planet, and so was the alien craft. The other ship had a lateral motion relative to the
Falcon
, and both ships were curving around the planet as they flew. The missile wouldn't fly straight when he fired it, either. The planet's gravity would pull at it. The missile's path would curve as well.

Kasim frowned. He supposed there was a way to calculate all the vectors and forces involved, but the math was entirely beyond a seat-of-the-pants flier like him. No, there was only one solution he could think of that would work.

He would fire the missile at extremely close range.

For a moment he sat frozen, a cold lump of fear in his stomach, asking himself if he was making the right choice. Then he sneered at his own cowardice, stowed the telescope, strapped in, and ignited the main engines.

A giant hand pressed him backward, and he laughed despite the gravity of the situation. Now
this
was flying. With the engine blasting at close to full power, every touch of the maneuvering thrusters would have immediate, drastic effects. A blunder of half a second would send him tumbling hopelessly out of control. It was high-stakes, high-velocity flying, in a clunky runabout that was never designed for manual control. He should have been frozen with terror. It should have been the most harrowing, awful experience of his life.

It was glorious.

The alien ship seemed to rush toward him. He activated the laser, nudged the nose of the
Falcon
down ever so slightly, watched with horror as the planet filled his view, and over-corrected. For three sickening seconds the nose of the ship whipped up and down as he fought for just the right vector.

Then all he could see in front of him was metal, and a red glow that terrified him until he realized it wasn't an enemy weapon, it was the
Falcon
's laser, burning into the alien hull. He reached up and grabbed the handle that released the missile, hauling down with all his might. The
Falcon
wobbled as her center of gravity changed, he glimpsed the crimson flame of the missile's rocket burning, and he put the
Falcon
into a dive.

The runabout shook, he felt the seat vibrate against him, and a storm of metal fragments sailed past the window. He heard the hiss of air escaping, and his ears popped. He cut the engine, made sure he wasn't plunging toward the planet, then grabbed his helmet and snapped it in place.

Without a computer it was difficult to do a damage assessment. The
Falcon
was losing air, but he couldn't see any visible damage. He tested the maneuvering thrusters one by one, and they all worked. Finally he restarted the engine, and it worked as well.

He shrugged. He'd let the shuttle bay crew back on the
Alexander
sort out the details.

A touch of power to the port thruster brought the
Falcon
drifting around in a stately pirouette, and he looked back at the alien ship.

It was gone.

One large chunk of wreckage tumbled slowly toward the surface of New Avalon. Nothing else remained.

"That's for you, Sally," he said. Then he turned the
Falcon
toward the
Alexander
and started the long flight back.