Honor Bound

“Witnessed,” they both confirmed, their voices dull with disbelief, shock evident in their eyes. Under his breath, Witten muttered “Better you than me.” Gianeto shot him a dirty look, then glanced back at his board at the sound of an alarm beep.

“The enemy ship is launching countermeasures,” Gianeto observed, checking the sensor readings. “Gonna take a while to see who wins that battle.”

“We have over three hours to watch the show,” Witten reminded him.

“Negative,” Gianeto said, shaking his head firmly. “We are not decelerating, Mr. Witten.” Gianeto punched in the control for the weapons section. “Commander Chappelle, this is Gianeto… I’m acting Captain. I need you to take the fusion trigger for the gate and put it on a Shipbuster. And I need it done in an hour.”

“Uhh…” Chappelle stuttered. “Aye, sir, we can do it.”

“Get back to me when it’s done.” Gianeto turned back to Witten. “We are going to continue at one g until the Captain and Commander Duncan are in the medical bay, then we’re going to two g’s. We are going to be through that gate in under two hours, Francis… as far under as we can manage. We are going to be launching the trigger on a Shipbuster in an hour… at ten g’s, it can get to the gate in plenty of time to get it open for us, even as close as we’ll be to it.”

“Aye, Captain,” Witten said, and there was no irony in the man’s tone.

“Oh shit!” Gianeto exclaimed, almost drowning out the alarm from the tactical sensors as a pair of threat warning icons appeared on the display. “We have two more bogies going active between us and the gate. They must have been sitting there powered down, waiting for us.” Cursing under his breath, Gianeto hit a control. “I just launched our last two Shipbusters, besides the one we’re going to use to open the gate.” He snorted. “The Hell with it, I’m launching Area Denial missiles too… maybe we can overload their anti- missile systems.”

“Why haven’t they launched on us?” Witten wondered.

“I’ve been wondering that myself,” Gianeto admitted. “But I’ve been too busy to look gift horses in the mouth.”

“Someone stabbed the Captain and Commander Duncan,” Higgs pointed out. “Maybe they were supposed to sabotage us. They could be expecting us to not be able to fight.”

“That’s a damn fine point, Lieutenant,” Gianeto nodded. “And I think it’s a pretty good clue that we’re dealing with a traitor. But if he or she attacked Captain Minishimi and Commander Duncan, why didn’t they finish the job and disable the ship?”

“Commander Gianeto!” Lt. Marvez’s voice came over Gianeto’s ‘link. “We’re in the medical bay. Commander Duncan is dead, non-revivable, but they’ve got the Captain breathing again; the doc says she’s going to make it.”

“Thank God,” Gianeto breathed. “Any indication who did this to them?”

“Sir, they did it to each other! The Captain’s ‘link was being jammed, but it was still recording to its onboard memory-I just downloaded it to my tablet while the docs were working on her. Commander Duncan lured the Captain to the auxiliary bridge, then he attacked her. He was going to disable the ship, but she managed to kill him first.”

“Jesus Christ!” Higgs exclaimed from the Communications station, her grey eyes wide with disbelief. “Commander Duncan? But he’s been in the Spacefleet for fifteen years!”

Witten shook his head. “Shit, if they expect us to go dead any minute and it doesn’t happen, they’re going to open fire pretty soon.”

“Sound the alarms and accelerate to two g’s, Mr. Witten,” Gianeto ordered, his face taking a grim set. “Engineering,” he called, even as the acceleration klaxons began to sound.

“Prieta here, Commander,” the chief engineer responded. If the chaos and alarms of the last few minutes had disturbed Prieta, he didn’t show it by his calm demeanor.

“We salvaged a little antimatter from the Peboan system, Commander Prieta… how long will it keep our Eysselink field active if we use it?”

“Minutes, Commander Gianeto,” Prieta estimated. “Five, perhaps ten if we don’t go over a few g’s acceleration.”

“What are you thinking, Larry?” Witten blurted, then grimaced, realizing he’d broken protocol by using Gianeto’s first name in the current situation. Gianeto just smiled.

“I am thinking, Francis, that there might be a way for us to make us through that gate alive after all.”

Chapter Twenty-Four

The emergency access shaft was bare metal about a meter wide with a single plastic rail running the length of the tube to use for propulsion and the lightly-claustrophobic McKay hated it with a passion, but he plunged headlong into the tube nevertheless.

“Vinnie, talk to me,” he called as he pulled himself down the tube at ever-increasing speed.

“Not there yet, sir,” Vinnie replied tightly, voice strained. “I’m in the access shafts, coming from the shuttle bay.”

“Damn. I’ll be there before you. Jock?”

“Be there in two minutes, sir,” the Australian replied.

“Lt. James,” McKay called Security again, then had to tuck his legs in and absorb an impact against the wall on his hip as he careened around a curve in the tube. “What’s the sitrep?” He was finally able to ask.

“Sir,” James responded, a touch of panic in his voice, “we have security personnel on scene now… but Mironov has a weapon-I don’t know where he got it, maybe from Kowalski-and he’s taken the engineering crew hostage. The hatch is locked; we could open it, but he’s threatening to kill everyone in the section if we do.”

“Casualties?”

“Unknown, sir. We have to assume Kowalski is down, but comms are down inside engineering and Mironov has taken everyone’s ‘links.”

“Goddammit,” McKay muttered, picking up speed again. “What was Kowalski armed with, James?”

“He was only supposed to have a stunner, sir, but Sergeant Carson reports that Mironov has a pistol.”

“Anything else I should know about?” McKay asked sarcastically. “Maybe an unaccounted for fusion warhead he might have picked up?”

“I’m sorry, sir,” he could hear James cringing in the tone of the man’s voice. “I’ll find out how he got it…”

“Later, James,” McKay interrupted. “Work on getting eyes in the room. He didn’t physically disable the monitors… he hasn’t had time. Get whatever command he used overridden and get me video.”

“Yes, sir, Colonel.”

Finally McKay came to the exit for the engineering deck and manually undogged the hatch-everything in the emergency access shafts was manual except the pressure gates to seal off compartments in case of decompression. Engineering was down in tail of the ship, the last pressurized compartment before the radiation shields and metallic hydrogen fuel stores that separated them from the fusion reactor and the antimatter containment bottles.

The lift station and emergency access shafts emerged in an antechamber that separated engineering from the rest of the ship, since the engineering compartment contained airlocked access tubes that allowed them to suit up and work on the reactor in an emergency. The antechamber could be sealed off from the rest of the ship via a meter-thick blast door, but at the moment only the thinner vacuum hatch was closed, a small window set in the door the only view into the engineering section.

Half a dozen armored security troops were clustered uncertainly in the corridor outside the hatch, milling around in the uncertain leadership of a Tech-Sergeant who’d obviously never confronted this sort of circumstance before. McKay shoved off from the edge of the access tube hatch then stopped himself against the far wall by the hatch, in the midst of the security.

“Is there any way to communicate with him?” McKay demanded of the Sergeant.