Battlecruiser Alamo: Cage of Gold Page 13

   “Thanks,” she said, looking down at the slimy, viscous mud.

   “Any time.”

   As Foster splashed down beside them, Astris quickly secured the horses, patting his mount on the flank before walking up to the door. He waited for a moment, then knocked three times, paused, then knocked again. A small hatch opened, then the door, whining on old hinges.

   An old woman, leaning on a stick, pushed open the door, and gestured for them to enter. Salazar stepped in first, looking around the room, old furniture lovingly cared for, a photo-montage of landscapes from Earth along one wall, a battered, broken digital picture frame resting on a hand-carved desk.

   “These are your friends, Astris?” she asked.

   “I know you’ll look after them, Mother,” he replied. “They need to stay out of sight until nightfall, and then they’ll be out of your way.”

   “All dressed the same,” she said. “You’re from that ship, aren’t you?”

   “Sub-Lieutenant Pavel Salazar, Triplanetary Fleet,” he said. Gesturing to the others, he added, “Midshipman Valerie Foster, and Technical Officer Kristin Harper.”

   “Lieutenants, Officers,” she said, a smile on her face. “It’s been a long time since I have entertained such august company. Have a seat, and I’ll see about warming up some broth. It isn’t much.”

   Reaching into his pocket, Salazar said, “I won’t say no to a fresh-cooked meal, but at least let me give you one of our ration packs.” With a smile, he added, “I confess they are essentially tasteless, but they are nutritious, and they last just about forever.”

   Taking the foil package, she ran her hands over it, and said, “I might be able to do something with it. A few herbs and spices, you’d be surprised what can be done to even the worst food.” Reading the label, she said, “Banana beef?”

   “Here,” Harper said, tossing another to Astris. “You might want something to eat out on the road.”

   “Thanks,” he replied. Glancing around, he said, “Allow me to apologize again for earlier. I wish that it hadn’t been necessary.”

   Raising a hand, Salazar said, “You didn’t know whether or not you could trust us. I’m just grateful for the help you are giving us now.”

   “I still don't trust you,” Astris said. “I don't have much choice.”

   The old woman left the room, heading through a door, and within a moment they could hear the rattle of pots and pans as she began to prepare food. Astris lingered at the door for a moment, then nodded.

   “I’d better be off before the guard comes back on duty. With luck, we will meet again soon. I do not envy you your mission.”

   “I should be off as well,” Foster said.

   “Not in daylight,” Salazar replied. “Captain Marshall won’t be moving until it gets dark, and you can hook up with him then. He’ll be hidden somewhere by now, and if the local security forces can’t find him, what chance do you think you have?”

   Shaking her head, she said, “I just feel so damn useless, wasting the day. We might not have that much time left.”

   “There are some good people up on Alamo,” Harper said. “If there is any way to fix it up there, they’ll think of it. And if we get captured down here, that isn’t going to do anyone any good at all.”

   “She’s quite right, my dear,” the old woman said, bringing in a battered iron tureen, placing it gently on the table. “From the hull of the Mayflower II. We used for all sorts of things. Funny to think that it transported us across the stars, and now I’m using it to transport goat broth.”

   “You never told us your name,” Salazar said.

   “Ginger,” she said. “Ginger Schneider. My husband was a lieutenant, just like you.” She frowned, and added, “He looks a little like you, Pavel. Do you mind if I call you that?”

   “Not at all.”

   “I’d show you a picture, but the frame hasn’t worked in years. No-one here seems to know anything about it.” Looking at the steaming broth, she said, “I’ll go and get some bowls, some spoons. I think I’ve got some of yesterday’s loaf as well.”

   “We can’t eat you out of house and home,” Harper protested.

   “Not at all, my dear. I’m glad to have the company. It really isn’t any trouble.” She smiled, and said, “Security never seems to come here. Not down the alleys. Most of the people in town don’t care for me too much, but the feeling is mutual.” She stepped out of the room, and Harper reached over for the picture frame, tugging a toolkit out of her pocket.

   “Don’t break it,” Foster said.

   “I think I can fix it. Probably just needs a new power cell.” She started tugging at the device, prising the case open and peering inside. “Give me a minute.”

   “This all seems too good to be true,” Foster said.

   “I’m too tired to care,” Salazar replied. “We’ve been on the move for thirty-six hours, and someone is offering me a comfortable chair and a hot meal.”

   “That doesn’t mean we should let down our guard.”

   Shaking his head, he said, “If the Territorial Guard wanted to grab us, they would have by now. Astris certainly had no reason to turn us in. We’re on his side.”

   “I just want a look at that computer,” Harper said. “Ah. Got it. I thought it just needed a tweak.” A green light popped on, and an image of a tall, olive-skinned man wearing a smartly-presented uniform appeared, a beaming smile on his face as he stared up at them.

   Ginger walked in, and stopped dead in the doorway as she saw the image on the frame. She carefully placed the bowls on the table, then stepped forward and gently took the picture from Harper’s hands, a tear forming in the corner of her eye.

   “Twenty years since I’ve seen his face,” she said. “Twenty years, and you fixed it in a matter of moments.”

   “It was no trouble at all,” Harper said. “Just a small adjustment.”

   “Just a small adjustment, and no-one here could do it. I bought that at the PX, six months before takeoff. For our wedding photos.” She shook her head, “I could never have dreamed that it would have gone so far.” Looking up, she continued, “He was just out of the Point, a specialist in rocket artillery. So young. He died nine months after we landed. Some disease, took out dozens before it burned itself out.”

   “I’m sorry,” Salazar said.

   “It was almost sixty years ago, young man,” she said. “You do look a little like him. You have his eyes. Maybe some common ancestor, or perhaps I’m just a foolish old woman.”

   “I was born on Callisto. My grandmother’s family was from Siberia, my grandfather’s from Mexico. I suppose it might be possible. There was a lot of migration during the war years, refugees fleeing everywhere, and the records are incomplete.”

   Nodding, she said, “So I shall never know. There was an uncle...but never mind.”

   “Did you have any children?” Harper asked.

   She smiled, and said, “About a dozen. You’ve met one of them.”

   “Who?”

   “Astris, of course.” Harper glanced at Salazar, and Ginger added, “There was a lot of fighting between the two groups in the early days, and a lot of the native children found themselves without parents. I took them in, tried to teach them the best of both worlds. I sang them songs of Earth, and what I could find of their own culture.” She sighed, and said, “Such a long time ago. You’ll have to ignore the ramblings of an old woman.”

   “The locals shun you for that?”

   “I committed a sin, you see. I tried to learn what I could of the people who were living here when we arrived, tried to record their customs, their traditions, their legends. I was a sociologist, though not a fully trained one. I still had years to go on my doctorate before we left. I dared to suggest that we should adopt some of the native ideas, on farming, land management, conservation.” Shaking her head, she said, “Fewer and fewer peop
le listened, and eventually I realized that no-one cared.”

   “I’m sorry,” Foster said.

   “Tell me,” she asked. “What are you here to do?”

   Glancing at Harper, Salazar said, “Our mission is to infiltrate Territorial Guard headquarters. Somewhere under there, we hope, is a way to end all of this.”

   “Pavel into the lion’s den,” she replied.

   “I never thought it was going to be easy.”

   “Where were you born?” she asked, glancing at the pictures of Earth.

   “Callisto, though I grew up on Titan. Navy brat. The others grew up on Mars, I think.” He chuckled, then said, “Come to think of it, we’re all at least second-generation military.”

   “Seventh,” Foster said.

   “It becomes a tradition after a while. My Jerry was an army brat, hoping for a secondment to NASA. And you were born on the worlds he hoped to reach.” Glancing at the window, she said, “Space was beautiful. Dancing out among the stars, you could almost forget the horror we were escaping. A horror that we managed to bring with us, after all.”

   Resting his hand on hers, Salazar said, “If we get out of this, I think I can arrange for you to see it again, take a shuttle ride up to Alamo. It’s the least we can do.”

   A twinkle in her eye, she replied, “I might just take you up on that. Now, let me serve some of the broth before it gets cold.”

  Chapter 16

   “And for the record,” Orlova concluded, speaking into the log recorder, “I am undertaking this action entirely on my own responsibility, and am fully aware of the risks that it entails. I recommend special commendations for Senior Lieutenant Quinn, Lieutenant Nelyubov, and Lieutenant Grant for their work during this crisis, as well as to the damage control teams for the expeditious manner in which they have disabled all ship’s systems.”

   She paused, looking around at the bridge crew, all busily shutting down their stations, working through a thousand different last-minute tasks, and added, “Also to all duty crews for their performance. According to our current calculations, if this attempt fails, this ship will re-enter the atmosphere in less than eighteen hours. If you recover this log, please get it and the data it contains to the nearest Triplanetary Fleet facility. This is Senior Lieutenant Margaret Orlova, Acting Captain of the Battlecruiser Alamo, signing off.”

   Looking over from the tactical station, Nelyubov said, “Ready to launch on your order. I’ve placed it on a sidereal orbit, well out of the ecliptic, on a trajectory that couldn’t be natural. The next person to come into the system will see it easily.”

   “Assuming they don’t fall into the same trap,” Grant said.

   “Let’s hope they are better prepared than we were,” Orlova replied. “Launch when ready, Frank.”

   A small point of light raced away from the ship, and she smiled. Whatever force was holding them in orbit, at least they hadn’t prevented them sending their last messages home. Besides her report, most of the data on the probe was the personal logs of the crew, and letters back to their families. Maybe some day they would be picked up, even if it was a hundred years from now, and someone would know what happened here.

   It was strange to look around at the status displays. Most of them weren’t even the warning red, but a cold black, the systems deactivating one after another. Everyone was wearing bulky jackets, designed for use on Ragnarok, all that Chief Kowalski could find in the fabricator inventory.

   She glanced down at her datapad, skimming over the list one last time. Emergency rations for an optimistic month, medical kits, chemical heaters, sleeping bags. As well as countless decks of cards, sets of chess and Go, even a guitar. As though they were packing for a long holiday, rather than to wait out a long, dark night.

   The elevator opened, and Quinn stepped out, looking around, saying, “Auxiliary Control is all closed out. As soon as you are finished up here, I’ll give the word to the communications crew and elevator control. That’s pretty much all we have left.”

   Turning off her datapad, Orlova asked, “You’ve checked all these?”

   “Now that you’ve turned that off. I have almost five thousand of the damn things in Storage One, and three technicians with sore fingers from turning them off. I never realized how ubiquitous they were.”

   “I’ve finished on the helm,” Grant said. “Not that anything is working, anyway.”

   Tapping a button, Weitzman said, “Alamo to any station, any station, come in, please. Alamo to any station, reply at once, reply at once.” Looking up, he said, “I thought it was worth a try.”

   “I agree,” Orlova said with a smile. “I don’t think we’re going to be permitted to make any calls today. You can shut it down now.”

   “Aye, ma’am,” he said, reaching under the console and throwing a stiff lever, his board fading to black. “That’s it for the communications suite.”

   “Last sensor report,” Spinelli began.

   “Damn, Spaceman, that seems rather final,” Nelyubov said.

   He glanced up, smiled, and said, “Still on course as before. Orbit decay predicted in eighteen hours, nine minutes. I have a positive track on the probe, which has reached escape velocity and is settling into its parking orbit around the sun. No sign of further activity on the surface, no attempts to take off by the shuttles.” He looked up at his console, and said, “I guess that’s just about everything. Monitoring systems off.”

   His panel went dead, the viewscreen and the engineering station the only signs of life left on the bridge.

   “Any of you that want a ride to Storage Six, you’d better get on your way now,” Quinn said. “There’s some hot food and drink down there, but I don’t know how long it will last.”

   “Are you sure you don’t need us up here, ma’am?” Spinelli asked, rising from his station. “I know I speak for all of us when I say that we’re all willing to stay and wait it out with you.”

   “There’s nothing left to do, Spaceman,” she replied, “but thank you. You get going.”

   “Yes, ma’am,” he said, stepping into the elevator. Weitzman and Erickson were already ahead of him, waiting. “I didn’t think it would end like this.”

   “Neither did I,” she replied to the closing doors. She turned to the engineering station, the others already clustered around it, Quinn tapping one control after another, shutting down the final selection of systems, lights winking off one after another.

   Over his head, the power distribution node grew simpler and simpler. Normally it was a complicated mess of tangled lines, connecting every system, every area of the ship to the main reactor, but a bare handful of links remained, and those constantly growing thinner.

   “Elevator control, this is Quinn,” the engineer said. “Kill the power.”

   “Aye, sir,” a voice replied. “We’re all shut down here. Heading for Storage Six.”

   “Thank you, Chief.” He looked up at Orlova, and said, “That just about does it. All except the big one.” He tapped the bright red light at the heart of the panel. “I already shut down the auxiliary reactor, and I’ve turned off all the safeties. We’re ready to go, but it’ll take the two of us to authorize it.”

   “We are sure that we can turn it back on, right?” Nelyubov asked.

   “Well,” Quinn said, a frown creeping over his face, “I don’t ever remember anyone deliberately doing what we’re setting out to do. We’re basically decommissioning the ship with the intention of recommissioning it again in the morning. On paper, getting the main reactor going from stand-down should take two, three days, but I think I can do it in eight hours.”

   “That’s too long,” Grant said, bluntly.

   “The auxiliary reactor will be up in half an hour, but don’t worry, Lieutenant, I already thought of that. We’re not planning on using the laser, so I filled up the capacitors as far as I could. We’ll have enough power for a one-m
inute full-power burn of the main engine, and to run the ship for four, maybe five hours if we’re careful.”

   Nodding, Grant said, “That should be more than enough to kick the old girl up to orbital velocity, maybe even all the way to escape velocity, if we’re careful. Especially with thruster controls.”

   Looking around, Quinn said, “If anyone has any other bright ideas, I’d like to hear them right now. Once we engage this sequence, there’s no going back. The computer will start to dump the main memory, and that’s irreversible.”

   Orlova looked around the room, and asked, “Anyone? Please?”

   “I think we’ve exhausted all of our options,” Grant said. “With no prospect of regaining computer control, the systems are useless to us anyway.”

   “I agree,” Nelyubov said.

   “Purely for the purposes of the record, I concur as well,” Quinn added.

   “So do I,” Orlova said. “Lieutenant Grant, as Officer of the Watch, you will at the next possible time enter this action in the log, and note that it was undertaken on my order with the consensus of the senior staff.”

   “Consensus and support,” Nelyubov said. “Put that in, as well.”

   “Right now I won’t be unhappy to live to face a board of inquiry, Frank,” Orlova said. “Thanks, though. I appreciate the support.” Walking to the engineering console, she placed a finger on the security scanner.

   “Damn, I hate these things,” she said, wincing as a needle stole a drop of blood from her thumb, running the DNA analysis. A series of complicated calculations ran across the single remaining monitor, before the light by her name flashed green. “Your turn, Jack.”

   Nodding, the engineer took his place at the panel, typing in his access code and proffering his thumb for the verification process. It seemed to drag on endlessly, as though the computer was reluctant to allow someone to put it to sleep, but finally, the second green light winked on, and another panel opened up, a huge red button emerging from the console, decorated with warnings that it should not be pushed under any conceivable circumstances.