Neutronium Alchemist - Conflict

Joshua clicked his heels and did a little bow. “On the button, Doc. I’m flattered. And Lady Mac ’s in orbit here ready to take you back home. The Lord of Ruin is pretty pissed at you for disappearing, but she says she’ll forgive you providing your nasty little secret stays secret forever.”

“You work for Ione Saldana?”

“Yeah. She’ll be here in the sort-of flesh in a minute to confirm the offer. But right now, my priority is to get you and your friends out of here.” He gave Gelai and Ngong the eye. “Some of your friends. I don’t know what the story with these two is, but I’m not having—” The cold, unmistakable shape of a pistol muzzle was pressed firmly into the back of his neck.

“Thank you, Captain Calvert,” Monica’s voice purred with triumph. “But us professionals will take it from here.”

The air on board the Urschel was clotted by rank gases and far too much humidity. Those conditioning filters still functioning emitted an alarmingly loud buzzing as fan motors spun towards overload. Innumerable light panels had failed, hatch actuators were unreliable at best, discarded food wrappers fluttered about everywhere.

Cherri Barnes hated the sloppiness and disorder. Efficiency on a starship was more than just habit, it was an essential survival requirement. A crew was utterly dependent on its equipment.

But two of the possessed (her fellow possessed, she tried to tell herself) were from the late nineteenth– early twentieth century. Arrogant oafs who didn’t or wouldn’t understand the basic preconditions of shipboard routine. And their so-called commander, Oscar Kearn, didn’t seem too bothered, either. He just assumed that the non-possessed crew would go around scooping up the shit. They didn’t.

Cherri had given up advising and demanding. She was actually quite surprised that they’d survived the orbital battle for so long—although antimatter-powered combat wasps did load the odds in their favour. And for once the non-possessed were understandably performing their duties with a high level of proficiency. There was little for the possessed to do except wait. Oscar Kearn occupied himself by studying the hologram screen displays, and muttering the odd comment to his non-possessed subordinate. In reality he was contributing little, other than continually urging their combat wasps be directed at the voidhawks. The concept of keeping a reserve for their own defence seemed elusive.

When the explosions and energy cascades outside the hull were reaching an appalling crescendo, Cherri slipped quietly out of the bridge. Under ordinary combat conditions the companionways linking the frigate’s four life-support capsules should have been sealed tight. Now, she glided past open hatches as she made her way along to B capsule’s maintenance engineering deck. As soon as she was inside she closed the ceiling hatch and engaged the manual lock.

She pulled herself over to one of the three processor consoles and tapped the power stud. Not being able to datavise the frigate’s flight computer was a big hindrance; she wasn’t used to voice response programs. Eventually, though, she established an auxiliary command circuit, cutting the bridge officers out of the loop. The systems and displays she wanted slowly came on-line.

Combat wasps and their submunitions still flocked through space above Nyvan, though not quite as many as before. And the blanket electronic warfare interference had ended; quite simply, there were no SD platforms left intact to wage that aspect of the conflict.

One of the ten phased array antennae positioned around the Urschel ’s hull focused on the Lady Macbeth . Cherri pulled herself closer to the console’s mike.

“Is anyone receiving this? Sarha, Warlow, can you hear me? If you can, use a five-millimetre aperture signal maser for a direct com return. Do not, repeat not lock on to Urschel ’s main antenna.”

“Signal acknowledged,” a synthesised voice replied. “Who the hell is this?”

“Warlow, is that you?”

“No, Warlow isn’t with us anymore. This is Sarha Mitcham, acting first officer. Who am I speaking with?”

“Sarha, I’m sorry, I didn’t know about Warlow. It’s Cherri Barnes, Sarha.”

“God, Cherri, what the hell are you doing on an Organization frigate?”

Cherri stared at the console, trying to get a grip on her raging emotions. “I . . . I belong here, Sarha. I think. I don’t know anymore. You just don’t know what it’s like in the beyond.”

“Oh, fuck, you’re a possessor.”

“Guess so. Not by choice.”

“Yeah. I know. What happened to Udat , Cherri? What happened to you?”

“It was Mzu. She killed us. We were a complication to her. And Meyer . . . she had a grudge. Be careful of her, Sarha, be very careful.”

“Christ, Cherri, is this on the level?”

“Oh, yes, I’m on the level.”

“Acknowledged. And . . . thanks.”

“I haven’t finished. Joshua’s down on Nyvan chasing after Mzu, we know that much.”

“Okay, he’s down there. Cherri, please don’t ask me why. I can’t discuss it.”

“That’s okay. I understand. It doesn’t matter; we know about the Alchemist, and you know we know. But you have to tell Joshua to back off, he must get away from Mzu. Right away. We know we can’t get her offplanet now our spaceplanes are gone. That means the Organization has only one option. If she’s dead, she’ll have to join us.”

“Is that why Urschel and Pinzola were shooting at the ground?”

“Yes. But that’s not all—”

The timid, halting voice echoed around Lady Macbeth ’s bridge. It sent something like cold electricity racing down Liol’s nerves. He turned his head to look at Sarha, who seemed equally stupefied.

“Is she for real?” he asked, praying the answer would be no. Events seemed to be pushing them towards an inevitable active response. Despite his outward bravado back on the station, he had distinctly mixed feelings about piloting Lady Mac under conditions any more adverse than their current ones— though a rogue part of his mind was determined that Sarha would never know that. Egotism was obviously the opposite trait of his intuition, the Calvert family’s Achilles heel.

“I knew her,” was all Sarha would say, and that reluctantly. “Beaulieu, can you confirm that ironberg’s trajectory?”

“I will have to use active sensor analysis to obtain its precise flight path.”

“Do it.”

“We’re thirty minutes from Joshua’s horizon,” Liol said. Alternative orbital trajectories were flashing through his mind as he datavised the flight computer for possible vectors.

“Nothing I can do about that,” Sarha said. “We can try calling him through the Tonala communications net.”

“The net: bollocks. You know there isn’t a working processor left on that planet after all this emp activity. I can drop us down; if we skim the atmosphere we can be above his horizon in eight minutes.”

“No! If we start changing our orbit we’ll be targeted.”

“There’s nothing left out there to target us. Access the sensors, damn you. The combat wasps are all spent.”

“They’ve deployed all their submunitions, you mean.”

“He’s my brother!”

“He’s my captain, and we can’t risk it.”

“Lady Mac can beat any poxy submunitions. Take fire control, I can pilot this manoeuvre.”

“Ironberg trajectory confirmed,” Beaulieu said. “Barnes was telling the truth. It’s heading straight at them.”