A Call to Arms (21 page)

The air vents were huffing like a steam engine, laboring mightily to replace the escaping air that rushed out of the hull with an audible whistle. Automatic sealing mechanisms had already begun to work, laying down successive sheets of quick-drying film over the gap, trying to block it up.

Flagler observed all this dully, too shocked to react. Although he was splattered with blood and grease, as far as he could tell he wasn’t badly wounded. Somehow the lethal shrapnel that had wiped out the crew had missed him. He was still alive. But he knew he wasn’t going to be for long.

Unless he did something about it.

Already his mind was rehearing the automatic procedures that had been drummed into him in training school, the procedures to follow when the ship was lost, but you were still alive.

Step one, get into a deep-space EVA suit. These were strewn all over the deck, having burst out of their storage locker when the engine room was struck. Several of them were shredded past repair, but at least one of them looked all right: it was a survivor, like him.

The thing to do was to get into the suit, then get out of the ship. That would be easy enough. He just had to dive through the film that was trying to form over the rent in the hull, but quickly, before it hardened.

That would leave him alone in space. The suit had only limited propulsive possibilities, but it had a broadcast beacon that could keep going for days, maybe a week. With a little luck, somebody would pick up the beam and rescue him. There was food and water in the suit. At least he’d have a chance.

It was the smart thing to do.

He heard a noise, became aware that it had been going on for some time. Someone was speaking to him.

“Lieutenant Flagler, can you hear me?” Oh, yes, it was the first officer again. What was he going on about now?

“I can hear you, sir.”

“The engines! We’re losing the engines. Can you do something?”

It seemed a funny thing to be worrying about now. Nevertheless, Flagler pulled himself to his feet and picked his way across the deck to the engine room instrumentation. He studied the electrical layout diagrams that flashed red and yellow lines across a screen, with white
X
s representing breaks.

“Got some short circuits in there, sir. The strike must have messed up the circuitry.”

“Damn!” the first officer said. “I guess we’re dead in the water.”

It was then that Lieutenant Flagler surprised himself.

What he had been going to say was, “Sorry, sir, it’s a washout.” Instead, he studied the board, and said, “No, sir, that’s not the case at all. I can reroute the circuits as long as this backup board is still operative. Just a minute... There! Try that, sir.”

Another moment’s pause. Then, “Nice work, Flagler! We’re able to power up. Maybe you’d like to come up here on the bridge and watch this.”

“Watch what, sir?”

“A ship this size performing a ramming maneuver.” So that was it! They were all going to die. And he still had a chance. He thought of telling the C&C to go stick it. He’d read about it someday in the papers.

But he surprised himself again by saying, “I’d love to see it, sir, but I think I’d better stay here. In case any more circuitry goes down. Anyhow, I’ll follow it on the monitor.”

The small black-and-white screen mounted above the engine room instrument panel was still functioning. “Okay,” the first officer said. “Give us ramming speed.”

Flagler punched in the command, heard the engines begin to roar. He settled back, watching his gauges.

He took one more look at the EVA suit. It was probably holed anyhow.

And so began the last ride of the
Victory
. She took hit after hit as she bored in. Tail fins and stabilizers were burned off her and came free in explosions of bright sparks. The ship kept on coming. A huge jagged hole opened in her waist, and another just behind it, wounding her mortally. But she kept on coming. A part of the front section blew away and tumbled free, itself the size of a small ship. The bridge hung precariously in place, but the ship was shedding parts, and it was just a matter of time, and not much time at that, before the diminishing domain of the Humans was pierced and exploded, too.

The lights flickered. Most of them went out. Only a few of the ready lights came on. The ship writhed with repeated impacts, all of them mortal blows. Anderson and his first officer exchanged looks. There was a strange calmness in that exchange, the look of understanding between men who have already spent their lives, who are dead already, but are hanging around just long enough to see the results of their actions and of their sacrifice.

Down below in the engine room, Flagler watched on the monitor, feeling intense satisfaction as the ship kept on moving, still gaining speed, boring directly toward the enormous jointed object that seemed to fill the whole sky. What a view! What a way to go! And it was his work that was carrying them to this!

And then the
Victory
, much diminished but still massive, blazing like a torch and shedding bits and pieces like some enormous insect molting in midflight, burst through a remaining screen of Drakh ships and struck the jointed steel platform with a blow that blew the Earth ship apart.

For a moment it didn’t seem to do anything to the alien superstructure. That strange metal spiderweb absorbed the blow. Seemed to shrug it off. It was as though nothing had happened.

But that was only because it took a little time for irreversible processes to begin manifesting themselves. Then the superstructure began to judder and shake, slowly at first, then with greater speed, and the great jointed metal thing began moving, slowly at first, then faster and faster.

Aboard
Excalibur
, Sheridan and the others on the bridge watched in silence as the
Victory
went to her doom. They were standing in darkness, lit only by the dials and the ghostly glow of the emergency backups. They were all stunned, contemplating
Victory
’s fiery end.

Sheridan in particular felt as though he had lost an old friend. Even though he had barely known Anderson, the rapport between them had been immediate and warm. Anderson’s death was only the latest in the cruel blows his life of conflict had dealt him, first with the Minbari, then the Shadows, and now with their successors, the Drakh. He wondered when it would all end.

The minute of recharging seemed to go on forever, and Sheridan began wondering if anything in the ship would ever work again. He could almost feel the Drakh ships coming after
Excalibur
, preparing to strike while the ship’s systems were down, blowing her to the same fiery hell that had engulfed Anderson and
Victory
.

At last the lights flickered back to life.

The navigation officer had been maintaining visual contact with the structure within the deathcloud all this time. Now he said, “Sir... The mechanism... it’s moving all around us... missiles active on all sides.”

Sheridan replied, “The impact must have activated the mechanism prematurely.”

He shook himself out of his momentary lethargy. It was time to be moving!

He said into the console, “Sheridan to fleet command, everyone clear out, I repeat, evacuate the area.”

Then to the navigation officer, “Get us the hell out of here.
Fast!
”

Excalibur
began moving, picking up speed. On the invisible three-dimensional chessboard of space, a strange deadly game was being played out.

The Shadow-built superstructure was moving with increasing speed, but erratically, obviously out of control, shaking itself apart and firing off its missiles as it moved. The deathcloud that surrounded it was conforming to its shape, following its direction, its long, snaky black tentacles reaching out and beginning to close.

The Drakh ships nearby were caught up in a situation they had never imagined or visualized. The Drakh ship closest to the deathcloud was hit and went up in a titanic, soundless explosion. Other Drakh vessels were scrambling to get out of the way, shooting off in all directions as if from the exploding core of a multiple fireworks display. And the Earth ships were deep into their turns and piling on the power, trying to escape the carnage.

Sheridan’s ship was closest to the center of the conflagration. At Sheridan’s command, it spun on its heel and began streaking toward the Earth. The black tentacles of the deathcloud reached for it, overtaking it, trying to close around it.

“Faster,” Sheridan said, watching as the tentacles began to come up even with
Excalibur
.

“This is as `faster’ as I can go,” the navigator said through gritted teeth.

The contest between closing deathcloud and fleeing ship played itself out over the next few seconds, but it felt to those aboard
Excalibur
like several slow-motion years. Sheridan could see the dark fingers arcing over his field of vision, extending out in front of them, closing, striving to catch the ship.

Those fingers made their last reach and tightened.
Excalibur
was caught...

No, she got out of the closing fist just in time, preceded by several other Earth ships, all safe by the narrowest of margins.

Behind them, several Drakh ships, in close pursuit--but not close enough--burst into dazzling fireballs as the blind, giant fist tightened over them.

As the fist closed tight, all of the unexpended missiles fired simultaneously. There was a mounting wave of brilliance as the missiles went off, a searing flash of color across the spectrum. Photon-sensitive screens aboard
Excalibur
dampened down, to keep the crew from going blind.

The remaining elements of the Drakh fleet still within the zone of destruction were annihilated in another flash of unbearable brilliance, another wave of spectrum-covering color.

And the blasts went on, lighting up space like a galaxy of suns gone nova. Until at last the superstructure itself, damaged by
Victory
, swept by its own returning missiles, went up in an explosion that was like the first day of creation, or the last. The superstructure’s long, thin spidery arms folded in on themselves. It looked like some creature of the night trying to claw itself to death. Sheridan could almost hear the shriek of outraged metal as it turned superhot and winked out of existence.

And then it was over.

Almost. Because at that moment, the navigation officer, still blinking in an attempt to restore his full vision, said, “Sir... Look!”

Sheridan did, and felt a sudden stab of disappointment. He and Anderson had done the impossible, yet it hadn’t been enough. The deathcloud was gone. That much was indisputable. Space for thousands of cubic kilometers was filled with raining particles of steel. It should have been all over... But elements of the Drakh fleet still remained outside the blast range. There were several of these ships, and one large one was in the lead.

They became the sole targets of the Earth defense grid. Brilliant lines of energy crisscrossed and swept toward them, and wherever energy lines crossed, an enemy ship winked out of existence.

But despite ongoing destruction from missiles and beam weapons, a few Drakh survivors continued to bore in toward Earth.

It took Sheridan a moment to figure out what they were doing. Was it a bombing run, or a strafing mission? No, they weren’t loosing any bombs or beam weapons. But they were releasing something. He couldn’t make out what it was.

He motioned to navigation to step up the magnification. He pressed his face against the port, willing himself to see what was going on, to understand.

At last light-diffraction telemetry showed him that these last few ships, which had penetrated into Earth’s upper atmosphere, were releasing a spray.

Ground-based weaponry winked from the surface of the planet. EarthForce defenses picked the Drakh ships off one by one. The Drakh ships spiraled down out of control, crashing into the planetary surface. The big ship was the last survivor. Spitting defiance, releasing its spray, which glittered against the backlit burning hulks of its sister ships, it kept on moving. And then it, too, was shot down, exploding in the mother of all fireworks. But as it fluttered to Earth like a dying moth, it was still spraying.

Sheridan, realizing what had happened, sat down heavily, a stricken expression on his face.

“What is it?” Dureena demanded. “What happened?”

He looked at her. And she wasn’t sure if she heard his words or imagined them. “The Romans had a phrase for it,” he said. “They called it `poisoning the well.’ “

Dureena stared at him, trying to take in the suddenly new situation.

“What they couldn’t conquer,” Sheridan explained, “they killed. When they were driven out of an area, they literally poisoned the wells, so no one else could live there, either.”

Later, he was explaining the same thing to Lochley, who, together with Garibaldi, sat gravely listening.

“It’s the ultimate act of spite,” Sheridan was saying. “If they can’t have it, no one can.”

Lochley asked, “Then they’ve finished analyzing whatever it was the Drakh sprayed into Earth’s atmosphere?”

“It’s a biogenetic plague,” Sheridan said. “Earth has been completely quarantined. No one’s allowed in or out. The deathcloud was the only one the Drakh had, but it wasn’t the last weapon in their arsenal.”

He shook his head, then went on. “From the complexity of its structure, the bioweapons division back home thinks the plague was probably engineered by the Shadows.”

“How much time do they have?” Garibaldi asked.

“That’s the only bright spot in this,” Sheridan said. “Apparently the Drakh didn’t have time to finish adjusting it to our biology... or maybe they just didn’t know how. Either way, it’s going to take time for the plague to adjust to a new host. They’re saying five years, but that’s just a guess. Could be less. And some people may be affected by it sooner than others. But five years seems a pretty good guess for now.”

“And at the end of five years?” Lochley asked.