Starship Alexander Read online

  He remembered an exercise in a shuttle simulator when he had lost sensors, life support, basic navigation, and lateral control. He remembered the voice of an instructor lecturing him from the cockpit speakers. He couldn't remember the woman's name, but he remembered her voice. "Never mind what you've lost! You can spend the rest of your life thinking about what you used to have. It'll be about five minutes, by the way. Think about what you've got. What are your resources right now? What do you have? What can you use?"

  He'd survived that exercise, getting his bearings from the view out the front window and bringing the shuttle in for a hard emergency landing. There was no window here, though, and nowhere to land.

  I should step aside and let one of the cadets take command. They don't have thirty years of irrelevant experience in the way. They can still think outside the grid.

  Well, we do have a lot of cadets on board. Dozens of them, in fact. Running around in the corridors or huddled at their duty stations, on the verge of panic and contributing nothing at all.

  His muscles seemed to release him all at once, and he took his first deep breath. He could see nothing but Singh's face, puckered with worry, peering back at him. It was a classic symptom of extreme stress. A person in duress developed tunnel vision. He knew it from his training, but he'd never experienced it before.

  As panic released its grip the bridge seemed to appear from a grey mist. He looked around. Nearly everyone was staring at him.

  "Cadet!" The kid was probably in plain sight, but Hammett couldn't see him. "Where the hell's that cadet?"

  "Right here, sir." The voice was a frightened squeak.

  Hammett looked around until he spotted the kid, a frightened-looking youngster standing rigid beside the helm station. Hammett pointed at him, and the kid's eyes went wide. "You're going to be my new communication network. The first thing we need is more bodies. Go find me more cadets. Send some to the bridge. Eight or ten." He thought furiously. "Send some to engineering. And the missile bay. Medical bay as well." When the cadet just stood and stared he barked, "Go! Move!"

  The cadet fled, and Hammett stood, pacing around the bridge to burn some of his adrenalin. "Does anyone have a functioning station? Anyone's implants still working?" He already knew the answer. He just needed the crew to see him doing something. He needed to look as if he was still in charge while he took time to think.

  Running footsteps thumped in the corridor outside, growing louder as someone came closer. A cadet appeared in the doorway, a young woman, badly out of breath. "Cadet Sm-"

  "Find a laser battery," Hammett interrupted. "If you pass any more cadets, tell them the same thing. You're going to man the laser battery. The targeting system won't work. You'll find your targets visually, and fire manually. Shoot everything that looks alien."

  The cadet gaped at him, then started to turn away. More feet thumped in the corridor outside, and she retreated into the bridge as three more cadets filled the doorway. Hammett repeated his instructions.

  "But-" The speaker was a chunky young man with a red face. "We're not trained for this! We've never done it before."

  "None of us are," said Hammett. "Nobody gets trained on how to function in a ship that's lost every computer-controlled system." He made sure his voice carried to every corner of the bridge. "None of us trained for an alien invasion. None of us trained for whatever weapon it is that incapacitated us." He turned to survey the bridge. "But we're all professionals, and we'll cope." He turned back to the cadets. "You cadets have an advantage. You're fresh out of school. You're not set in your ways, like we are. You've been trained to be flexible, to think on your feet. And that's what we need right now. People who are quick. Nimble. People who don't panic."

  They were nodding, straightening up, losing some of the lost, fearful look in their eyes.

  "We've lost our computerized systems. We've lost our implants. But there's more to this ship than the computer, and there's more to us than our personal electronics. This ship has twelve laser batteries, which means twelve lucky cadets get to take a direct shot at the enemy. Now get moving, and kill me some enemy ships."

  The doorway emptied in an instant, footsteps fading in the distance. More footsteps came closer, then stopped, and Hammett heard the chunky cadet say, "You two come with me. I'll explain on the way."

  The bridge went silent, but the air of desperation was gone. They were thinking about solutions now. They were thinking about what they could do.

  "I notice we're still alive," said Carruthers. "Do you think they're being careful? Creeping up on us? Wondering if we still have any teeth?"

  Singh said, "Maybe they know we're helpless. Maybe they're focusing on the station."

  That would buy them some time, Hammett reflected, but he hated to think what would happen to the civilians.

  "Cadet Rogers reporting, Sir."

  Hammett looked at the doorway. "The next time I see you, Rogers, you'd better be out of breath."

  The cadet blanched.

  "Run to the engine room. Tell Lieutenant Rani that I need a good engineer to meet me in the missile bay right away."

  Rogers ran out, shouting, "Aye aye, Sir," over his shoulder.

  "Velasco. You're in charge here. You won't have much to do except coordinate information." He looked at Carruthers. "Jim, I want you to visit every laser battery and make sure they're all manned. After that, use your own judgment. Try to make yourself useful." He looked at the others. "We can't really do much from the bridge. A couple of you stay and help Velasco. The rest of you, pick a section and go see what's going on. Keep my ship functioning. Do all the things I haven't thought of yet."

  He made himself smile. "Every one of you has earned that uniform you wear. I know I can rely on you. I'll be in the missile bay, preparing a nasty surprise."

  He hurried out of the bridge.

  Chapter 13 – Kasim

  There was silence in the shuttle. Kasim hadn't repressurized the interior. He wanted everyone suited up in case of an attack and a hull breach. They had the suit radios turned off, though, for fear of attracting attention. The shuttle was powered down, just another chunk of debris giving off very little in the way of light or heat.

  Without instruments there was no way to tell how the battle was progressing. The Alexander was a tiny point of light, stripped of detail. Kasim couldn't see the enemy ship at all.

  The lack of communications was a mercy. Without radios or air the technicians couldn't ask him what he was going to do. The truth was, Kasim had no idea. He was terrified to do anything. Even powering up the shuttle might bring alien craft swooping in. But they sat where the Gate had been, an obvious spot to search for any pesky stray humans. We should move, Kasim thought. We should run. We should hide.

  But where will we go?

  His eyes strayed to the sparkling band of the Milky Way splashed across the void to his right. Gate Eleven lay in that direction. It was the one way he could flee the system. The shuttle would pop out in Aries.

  Aries, which had gone silent several days ago. Aries, where the aliens came from.

  Aries, where enemy reinforcements would come from if the Alexander managed to hold its own.

  For a long time he sat there, staring through the cockpit window, grappling with the treacherous thought that was growing in the back of his mind. He told himself that it would be safer. He would creep away from the remains of Gate Six. He would take the shuttle thousands of kilometers to a place no alien would expect.

  To the only thing he could hide behind.

  To Gate Eleven.

  "It doesn't mean I have to do something stupid," he whispered. "I'll just fly over there. I don't have to do anything at all." After all, disabling Gates wasn't his responsibility. Maybe all the aliens were already here. Maybe it would be best to do nothing at all.

  "Oh, hell," he muttered, and turned on the shuttle's main power. "You wanted to be a real pilot, didn't you? You never wanted to be a glorified bus driver."

  A hand
closed on his shoulder and shook him. He didn't bother looking back to see who it was. He just turned on his suit radio and said, "We're going for a little ride. You might as well strap in. You never know when things might get rough."

  Chapter 14 – Hammett

  When he reached the missile bay, Hammett found a young lieutenant named Yoon on one knee beside the door, her arm buried up to the shoulder in the bulkhead. A cadet stood beside her holding a wall panel that trailed several wires. Yoon gave Hammett a distracted look and said, "I'll have the hatch open in a jiffy, Sir."

  "Sure, Lieutenant. Just tell me if I can help."

  The hatch gave a loud click and slid open a couple of centimeters. Yoon said, "You can grab the edge of that hatch and pull like hell."

  Hammett did as she said, bracing his feet against the deck plates and heaving until the tendons in his wrists creaked. Yoon worked her arm free and took the panel from the cadet. The cadet tucked trailing wires into the bulkhead, and Yoon fit the panel back into place. A moment later they both joined Hammett, heaving on the hatch.

  The hatch retracted, one grudging centimeter at a time. When it was more than half open Yoon said, "That should do it, unless you need to take missiles out into the corridor."

  "Nope." Hammett let go of the hatch and straightened up, opening and closing his fingers.

  "That shouldn't have worked," Yoon said. "I'm going to send a memo to Spacecom. It's a potential security issue."

  Hammett didn't comment, just gestured for her to precede him into the missile bay. He followed, and the cadet brought up the rear. Yoon looked around, squinting in the low emergency lighting, and said, "Now that we're here, what are we doing, Sir?"

  "We're going to tinker with a nuke," Hammett said. "I need it to explode on impact, with no electronics."

  She stared at him, silent, and her eyes went out of focus. Hammett, recognizing the look of an engineer lost in thought, gestured to the cadet. The two of them opened a cabinet and pulled out the long shallow drawer inside. Naturally the pneumatic system wasn't working. He and the cadet had to brace a foot against the cabinet and heave with both hands to get the drawer open.

  The missile gleamed softly in the dim light. Designed to be used in vacuum, there was nothing aerodynamic about the missile's design. It was built like an antique refrigerator, squat and bulky, flat on the sides and both ends. A single thruster nozzle projected from the bottom. Aside from that, it was essentially a featureless box.

  Yoon pushed her way between Hammett and the cadet. "I'm going to need my tools." She rummaged in her pockets, produced a driver, and handed it to the cadet. "Here. Start taking off the top panel." She scanned the cabinets, tapped the front of a drawer, and said, "Captain. Do you mind opening this one? Have the cadet take off the nose assembly when he finishes with the nuke." Hammett nodded and she hurried out.

  He got the drawer open with some difficulty, then helped the cadet lift a panel from the side of the nuke and set it on the deck. The cadet was just starting on the nose assembly of a conventional missile when Yoon returned with a bulky toolbox in each hand.

  Hammett left them to it and set off down the corridor at a jog. He found three cadets wearing vac suits, helmets clipped to their belts, clustered at the intersection of two corridors. They had firefighting equipment stacked around them. He stopped. "What are you three doing?"

  "We didn't know what else to do," said a dark-skinned girl. "We thought we'd find a central spot and watch for damage. We've got fire equipment and hull patches and medical kits." She gestured up and down the four corridors around them. "We can see and hear for a long way."

  "That's good thinking," Hammett said. "However, I need you for something else. I need to launch a missile, and I'll have to do it by dead reckoning. That means I need spotters, and someone to run messages." He looked around, making sure of his bearings. "There's an observation lounge that way," he said, pointing starboard. "There's another one to port, but we're going to fire a missile from a starboard tube, so that's the way we'll have to look. The missile tube is on this deck and slightly aft. I'll need you to get a message to the missile bay as quickly as possible when we have a decent target."

  The three cadets looked at one another, then at him.

  "The missile can't turn," he said. "It will fly straight. The target will have to be pretty much dead ahead, or we'll miss."

  The three cadets nodded as one and headed down the corridor. The girl said, "I'll spot. You run. In fact, go to the missile bay now and make sure you know the route."

  A blond-haired boy nodded and ran aft.

  Hammett followed the other two into the lounge. The long room was deserted, tables and chairs making an obstacle course in the deep shadows. Windows ran from floor to ceiling, and he walked up to the steelglass surface with a cadet on either side.

  For a moment he saw nothing but stars. Then, far aft, he saw a flicker of movement. A ship was retreating from the Alexander. It had a strange – alien – design, and nothing near it to give it scale. It was maddeningly difficult to tell the size and range.

  Then lines of crimson fire lanced out from two different laser batteries. The angle of the shots gave Hammett an instant sense of perspective. He was looking at a craft no more than a couple of hundred meters from the hull, a ship at most of the size of a one-man fighter. It was strangely built, with lumps jutting out in four directions.

  As he watched, laser fire touched the alien hull. There was a burst of white vapour, and then a spray of some dark fluid. The little ship tumbled, then raced away into the dark.

  "Good," Hammett said. "We're giving them a fight." He looked at the girl on his left. "We won't waste a missile on a dinky ship like that. We'd never hit it, anyway. Sometimes they clump together and form a larger ship. That's the target we want. Something big." He considered. "Anything big enough and close enough that you're pretty sure we can hit it."

  The cadet nodded, and Hammett hurried out. He met the blond boy in the corridor. The kid had a fire extinguisher in one hand. He nodded to the captain without stopping.

  Hammett was a couple of steps from the missile bay when three metallic clangs echoed through the corridor. He felt his stomach tighten, and he hurried through the half-open hatch.

  Yoon looked up from a half-assembled missile. "What the hell was that, Sir?"

  "I don't know."

  He turned at the sound of running feet in the corridor. The blond boy stuck his head in and panted, "Did you hear three clangs?"

  "Yes."

  The boy beamed. "Great! Five in a row means open fire." He vanished from the hatchway, then reappeared a moment later, looking flustered. "Sir." He gave a hasty salute. "I forgot, Sir."

  Hammett said, "You can waste your time with that foolishness when the battle is over. Now get moving."

  The cadet flashed him a grin and disappeared again.

  Yoon said, "Was I ever that young?"

  "What have you got, Lieutenant?"

  She raked fingers through her hair, leaving a shine of grease. "I need ten more minutes. Well, maybe five more after that to get the missile in the tube." She rubbed her chin, thinking, and left another smear of grease beneath her lower lip. "Actually, Sir, I could use three or four more cadets to move this bird." She reached over and tapped the casing of the nuke.

  "I'll see what I can do," Hammett said, and squeezed his way out through the hatch.

  Chapter 15 – Janice

  Janice Ling stood in an alcove in a corridor, her back pressed against a snarl of pipes and conduits, trying to stay out of the way. From time to time a cadet would gallop past, and sometimes a crewman or officer. None of them paid the slightest attention to her.

  She'd been in the engine room, listening to a lecture from Lieutenant Rani, when all hell had broken loose. She had quickly realized she was in the way. Now she stood in a corridor, wondering what was happening, wondering what she should do.

  Another cadet rushed past, then paused and backtracked. It was a girl, twe
nty at the oldest, with brown skin and straight dark hair. She looked the way Janice felt, as if she was barely holding panic at bay. "Do you know where the laser batteries are?"

  Janice thought about it. "I'm pretty sure I do. Follow me." She felt a huge sense of relief at having something to do. She headed down the corridor at a trot, then climbed a ladder to the next deck. "They gave me a tour yesterday," she said. "If I remember correctly …" She moved down another corridor, then stopped at a bright red line on the deck plates, marked "Authorized Personnel Only".

  On the other side of the line a small hatch opened like the mouth of a tunnel. Above the hatch was stenciled "Battery Five". The cadet leaned over and stuck her head and shoulders through the hatch.

  A man's voice said, "Hey, Lanny."

  "Is there a battery that isn't manned yet?"

  "I don't think so," the man said. "They want someone on the maneuvering thrusters, though."

  "Where's that?" said Lanny.

  "No idea."

  Lanny straightened up and turned to Janice. "I don't suppose you know where …"

  "I think so," Janice said. "Come with me."

  They returned to the ladder, descended three decks, and took a lateral corridor, heading for the port-side hull. A harried-looking lieutenant came around a corner in front of them and stopped short. "Cadet. I need you on the controls for Thruster Four. Figure out the manual controls, and then wait. The thruster is that way." He pointed, and she hurried away.

  The lieutenant looked at Janice. "Come with me." He hurried down the corridor, and she followed.

  "Where are we going?"

  "Thruster Five."

  She trotted along in silence for several more steps. Finally she said, "Why?"