Titan (Old Ironsides Book 2) (35 page)

Olsen gripped the command rail, his knuckles white and his face stricken with a volatile fusion of anger and despair, and then he whirled to the communications officer and relayed the order as Marshall turned to the helmsman.

‘Prepare to lower shields and shut down the safety coils on the fusion core.’

Even above the din of battle everybody on the bridge heard the captain’s words, and once again it seemed as though time had slowed down aboard the huge ship. Everybody knew that the vessel’s enormous fusion core was surrounded by a series of coils that maintained a stasis, a gravitational pressure around the cores that contained the enormous energy within. By shutting down the coils, the energy within Titan’s immense engines would be released in all directions at once, as though several small stars had suddenly gone supernova all at once.

Nobody on Titan’s bridge deck had got through the academy without learning of the tragedy that had befallen CSS
Victory
at the Battle of Beta Coriolis, when a convoy of Ayleean frigates had surprised the vessel, one of three, when she had emerged from super–luminal cruise on a routine scouting patrol. Hopelessly outnumbered, Victory’s captain and crew had none the less engaged the enemy along with their sister ships in order to draw them away from a real prize – a flotilla of armory and fuel vessels travelling to support the main fleet near Ayleea.

In the brief but violent engagement, Victory’s hull had been breached astern and three of the Ayleean vessels had been able to pour broadsides deep into the ship. The third of those terrible salvos had breached Victory’s fusion core. The ensuing blast had been so devastating that the battle had come to a complete halt for almost fifteen minutes, allowing the other two CSS warships to escape certain destruction. It was said that not a single component remained of Victory save a rapidly expanding cloud of superheated gases.

Olsen turned to the admiral.

‘We’re ready!’

Another blast hammered Titan’s hull, the entire vessel shaking beneath the impacts as Marshall took one last look at the displays and assured himself that there was no other option, that they had done all that they could.

‘Helm, shut down the fusion coils! Comms, send the signal!’

The communications officer and the helm moved instantly to comply, and Marshall experienced a brief moment of pride that they appeared to give no thought to the fact that they were effectively signing their own death warrants, content to put the lives of others before their own in the service of…

‘Belay that order!’

Marshall heard Doctor Schmidt’s voice a moment before the
Holosap
shimmered into life before him, shouting at the top of his digital lungs.

‘Belay the orders!’

Marshall stormed across to the doctor. ‘This isn’t the time, Schmidt. Get off my bridge!’

‘We can defeat them!’ Schmidt said. ‘They’re in retreat below decks!’

‘How?!’ Olsen demanded, almost leaping off the command platform to the doctor’s side.

‘I’ve altered a plasma cannon to encase them in a fluid that binds proteins,’ Schmidt said quickly. ‘The Marines are regaining control, but we must release the samples we have back to the alien vessel.’

‘I’m not letting that
thing
off this ship alive!’ Marshall bellowed. ‘It’s out for our destruction and it…’

‘It’s a machine!’ Schmidt yelled. ‘It doesn’t understand
us
!’

The bridge seemed to become silent as Olsen stared at the doctor. ‘It’s a what?’

‘It’s a machine, a partly biological machine!’ Schmidt wailed. ‘It’s reacting to us, not attacking us! We must release what samples we have of it and send them across to the alien ship! I believe that if we do, it will flee!’

‘You
believe
?’ Olsen echoed. ‘You want us to put our guard down based on what you believe?!’

‘You’re losing the fight!’ Schmidt cried back in despair. ‘The Marines have already quarantined the biological matter. Let them send it back and if I’m wrong then you can fight to your deaths but until we’ve exhausted every last single means of survival then I beg you to give this one last try!’

Marshall stared at the doctor for a long moment and then he nodded to the CAG.

‘Do as he says! I’ll charge what plasma cannons we have to fire if they don’t…’

‘The plasma cannons are useless,’ Schmidt wailed. ‘The entity most likely feeds off the energy that bleeds through the ship it’s commandeered. You’re just making it stronger.’

Schmidt moved across to the communications officer’s console and watched as she connected the Marines of Corporal Hodgson’s platoon to the bridge.

‘Can you hear me, Hodgson?’ he asked.

Marshall stepped off the Tactical Officer’s position as he heard Hodgson reply.

‘We’re ready!’

‘Detach them, now!’ Schmidt ordered.

Marshall turned to the main display and saw a small ray–shielded quarantine unit suddenly blasted from a smoldering gash in Titan’s hull out into the frigid space between the two huge craft. Schmidt stepped closer to the screen as the object tumbled through empty space between blazing salvos of plasma fire, and then suddenly the fire stopped as the enemy vessel fell silent.

Titan’s bridge fell likewise silent, the only sound the crackle of fractured power lines and the hiss of falling sparks from damaged screens and panels. The quarantine unit tumbled over and over in the silence of space, and the writhing tentacles of material probing for Titan suddenly altered direction and reached out for the quarantine unit. Within moments, the unit was hauled away as though to be fed upon by some immense beast and vanished into the alien vessel’s ruined interior.

The ship hung in silence alongside Titan, flashes of stray energy rippling across great rents in its hull as fires burned within, clouds of sparkling debris flickering between the huge vessels. Marshall took a single pace toward the screen, one hand clenched by his side as he waited for the barrages to begin again.

‘Steady,’ Schmidt cautioned him, raising one placating hand.

The silence deepened, and then slowly Marshall’s keen old eyes detected the alien vessel beginning to move very slowly away from Titan.

‘She’s pulling back,’ Olsen exclaimed, his voice rising in pitch. ‘No enemy fire detected.’

Marshall kept his fist clenched, his orders whispered and tense.

‘Pull us clear of her, order the fleet to give her space.’

He heard Olsen passing on the orders, saw the frigates surrounding them begin to draw back in cautious retreat formations. As they separated, so the alien vessel began to turn her bow away from Titan and her engines began to burn more brightly as she sought an escape route away from Saturn.

‘I don’t get it,’ Olsen uttered in amazement. ‘She could have crushed us, and she’s running?’

Schmidt’s reply came from the silence as the crew watched the alien vessel’s bizarre tentacles retracted as its icy cocoon returned to its previous form, the trail of debris in its wake reducing until there was no more.

‘It’s not at war with us,’ he said softly. ‘It’s a parasitic machine, something that was probably created hundreds if not thousands of years ago by an intelligence that we cannot even begin to comprehend. It’s programmed not to leave any part of itself behind, to ensure that it doesn’t abandon its own to die. Maybe that’s how its creators wished it to be, I just don’t know, but as soon as it came up against a serious fight it sought only to escape.’

As they watched, the alien vessel’s engines flared brightly and the ship vanished into a gravity well, the star fields warping around it until suddenly it vanished into super–luminal cruise, leaving only a field of debris to show that it had ever existed.

Marshall turned to his crew.

‘Shields up, damage report and open all lines of communication again.’

‘Aye, cap’n,’ Olsen replied as he turned to his duties.

Marshall turned to Schmidt. ‘Good work, doctor. You said that Hodgson’s Marines were with you? Where’s
Gunny
?’

Schmidt sighed. ‘I think we lost the gunnery sergeant and his men to the attack, captain. I’m very sorry.’

Marshall closed his eyes for a moment and then inhaled deeply and squared his shoulders. His gaze took in the entire bridge and suddenly he looked at the XO.

‘Where are Detectives Foxx and Vasquez and that insane pilot of theirs?’

The communications officer looked up, her features pinched with concern.

‘Captain, I think they’re in Tethys Gaol.’

***

XXXVIII

Tethys Gaol

‘They’re comin’ through!’

Nathan saw the lights in the landing bay dim as the power fluctuated wildly through the prison. In the distance, above the crump and cackle of plasma fire he could hear the screams of men dying in the flames or at the hands of their fellow prisoners. It sounded to him as though the convicts had plumbed the bowels of what mankind really was, all pretense of compassion scoured from their souls by the primal need to survive, to kill or be killed, to maim and slice and puncture and destroy anything and everybody they encountered for the sheer motiveless pleasure of absolute power.

‘We won’t last long.’

Xavier’s voice was soft in the darkness, defeated, the sound of a man given a freedom that had been unlawfully taken from him and then had that freedom once again dashed from his hands at the very last moment. The cruelty of fate had proven too much for Xavier and he sat with his shoulders hunched and his head hanging low, the plasma baton in his hand almost dangling from his fingers.

‘You keep talking like that you’ll make yourself right,’ Allen replied. ‘Shut up and stand up, unless you wanna die on your knees?’

Allen powered up his plasma baton and got to his feet, ready to face the onslaught that must surely come for them in just a few moments. Nathan stood up and likewise checked his weapon, the plasma baton not much against a flood of convicts driven by an unstoppable cocktail of rage and adrenaline.

‘You should’ve let us out of here,’ Nathan said to the warden.

Arkon Stone nodded slowly, a rifle cradled in his arms. ‘Probably, but then you wouldn’t have gotten the answers that you sought, right?’

‘Ignorance would have been bliss.’

‘Not for me.’ Xavier moved to stand beside Nathan, and with one hand he wearily activated his plasma baton once more.

‘Get the cons on C Block to open that sally port,’ Nathan insisted. ‘It’s the only way!’

Stone looked up to the gantries on C where ranks of cons were jostling each other for a better view of the impending carnage. Slowly, he stood from his crouch and called up to the men.

‘Gentlemen, you have an opportunity to render yourselves favorable in the eyes of the law!’ he boomed. ‘If we give you remote access to the watch tower and you open the sally port to C block, and I assure you that your actions will not go unnoticed by the prisoner governors!’

Nathan winced as a cackle of laughter hooted and echoed around the shadowy interior of the bay as the inmates showered them with insults.

‘Like hell, stick, you’re goin’ down!’

‘Ain’t no snitch nor sticks on C!’

‘Burn in hell, Stone!’

The warden glowered up at the men, and for a moment Nathan thought that he might simply give up. Then, he pointed across the bay toward the walls of A and B blocks that adjoined D, to where the flames and the screams of pain and suffering echoed like distant storms.

‘You think that Volt’s crew are going to spring you out of here?!’ Stone demanded. ‘You think that they’re on your side? Listen to the sounds coming from the other blocks that have fallen, and ask yourselves what they’ll do with you when it comes to bargaining time with the military right outside this station?!’

Nathan could hear the terrible violence from within the blocks, and he saw the cons on C suddenly lose some of their gusto and bravado as they too listened.

‘Those aren’t the screams of sticks!’ Stone warned the cons. ‘Those are the screams of cons who are being set up by Volt and his men as bargaining chips, or being used as human shields against my guards. Their cells are being ransacked, their bodies beaten or abused or both, their possessions stolen and what little they have left in their lives taken by Zak Volt and his men. That is what you face when his crew break out of their block, that is the carnage that they will bring here!’

A voice called back down.

‘Ain’t like we’ll face anything less if the sticks take back control! An’ even if you did favor us, every other con in the gaol’ll see us as snitches!’

‘Every con in Vol’t crew will be on lockdown for the next ten years!’ Stone boomed. ‘This is your last chance, your only chance! Let us in!’

‘We’re getting on that shuttle with Volt and his crew!’ shouted another.

‘Even if Volt gets his shuttle, it holds eighty men maximum!’ Nathan called back. ‘You really think that Volt will put any of you before his own crew?!’

A sneer went up from the men, but then one of them hollared back down at Stone.

‘We been askin’ you to let us out for years!’

A ripple of grim laughter followed the cry, but Nathan could hear the change in the cons’ mood, the awareness that there was no real escape from the riot, that it would consume them too if Volt’s men got inside.

A final voice called out to Stone.

‘We want your word, warden! Your word, that we won’t be locked down after all this, just ‘cause we’s cons too!’

Arkon Stone looked up at the gantry. ‘You have my word!’

The cons stared down at the warden and his men for a long moment and then suddenly they began filing silently out of sight off the gantry.

Nathan was about to breathe a sigh of relief when the sally port to D Block burst open and the security guards sent to cover the entrance tumbled into view, backing up and firing wildly into the corridor they had just emerged from as a salvo of plasma fire shot out of the sally port. Behind it Nathan could see what looked like flames rushing upon them, smoke billowing from the sally port as the guards fell back into new firing positions.