planet descended on him, pushing him into the gel of his acceleration couch. He could see a fleeting glimpse of the Shipbusters on the screen as they were ripped apart on impact with the drive field, but then they were past and the Protectorate ship loomed ahead of them, maneuvering rockets flaring as it tried desperately to change course.
“Commander Gianeto,” he heard dimly, over the roaring in his ears, “this is Commander Prieta.” Prieta’s voice sounded as if he were at the bottom of a well. “The antimatter will only last a few more seconds at this rate…”
There was a white light that filled the bridge and then the pressure disappeared and Gianeto wondered for a brief moment if this was what being dead felt like…
Then his head cleared and he drew a breath and looked down at his station’s display and saw the lidar and radar readings off the remains of the Protectorate ship.
“Sweet Jesus,” Witten murmured. “We cut that one pretty damn close, didn’t we?”
“Commander Gianeto,” Prieta called up from Engineering again, “we have depleted the last of our antimatter stores.”
“That’s okay, Mr. Prieta,” Gianeto told him, letting out a deep, relieved breath. “It lasted just long enough. Weapons, launch the modified Shipbuster and get that gate open before something else pops up. Francis, give us a half g burn on the plasma drive and take us to the gate.”
“Aye, sir,” Witten shot him a grin.
“Medical, this is Gianeto,” the Tactical officer called. “How is the Captain?”
“Stable, sir,” came the answer. “She was in a suspension tank, so the acceleration didn’t affect her.” The medical officer chuckled. “The rest of us are a bit sore, though.”
“Commander Gianeto,” their conversation was interrupted by a call from Security. “This is Lt. Marvez. We were securing Commander Duncan’s cabin and personal affects and we kind of got stuck in there during the emergency acceleration. We’re getting something on Commander Duncan’s ‘link. I think you should hear this, sir.”
“Go ahead and patch it through to the bridge,” Gianeto ordered.
There was a hesitation at the other end of the transmission. “Uh… sir, this is… it’s, well, very sensitive. You might want to hear it in private.”
Gianeto hesitated, then glanced at Higgs and Witten, the only other people on the bridge. “No, Lieutenant,” he decided. “Just patch it through.”
“Yes, sir,” Marvez acquiesced reluctantly.
There was a pause, then the scratchy, static-filled recording began to play. “The situation has changed, Duncan,” the male voice stated without preamble. “O’Keefe has changed his schedule, so the original target area is a no-go. You and the support ships should hold up there in the Sirius system until we can get you a revised target area and strike schedule, then you can gate through and go ahead with the original plan. End of message.”
The recording shut off, replaced by Marvez’s voice. “It keeps repeating, but that’s the gist of it.”
“Higgs,” Gianeto snapped, fixing her with a glare.
“I’m on it!” She assured him, turning back to her station, fingers flying over the display. “Sir, this is
“I’m sure because Commander Duncan programmed it specifically
“What the hell is going on?” Witten muttered, shaking his head. “Was someone just talking to Commander Duncan about… about assassinating the fucking
“What’s going on,” Gianeto answered, staring at something light-years past the main viewscreen, “is that we’re not just fighting the Protectorate. There’s something else happening here.”
“I’ve got it,” Higgs said, pushing a stray lock of blond hair out of her eyes. “The signal came from a point less than 30,000 kilometers from the wormhole. I’m sending the coordinates to your station.”
Gianeto checked the sensor readout, adjusting the lidar to cover the area she had indicated. “Yeah, it’s there. It’s small… can’t be much bigger than about two or three meters across.”
“It has to be a relay,” Higgs said, “for signals coming through the wormhole.”
“Then it’s coming from the Solar System,” Witten said. “Someone back home wants to use
“Not just us,” Gianeto corrected him. “Remember they said ‘the support ships.’ That would be those three Protectorate ships we just destroyed. Someone back home, one of our people, is working with Antonov.”
“What are we going to do?” Higgs asked in a small voice, her face pale.
“The gate’s open,” Gianeto announced, eyes still on the main screen. “We’ll be through in two minutes. What we’re going to do once we get through is shut down, go dark and wait until the Skipper wakes up. Air’s too thin up here for an O-4 to make this call. Anyway,” he shook his head, “I wouldn’t know who to try to warn about it.” He met their lost, overwhelmed looks with one of his own. “Who the hell can we trust?”
Chapter Twenty-Six
“So, where the hell are we now?” Jock Gregory wondered, sitting up in the g-tank and wiping biotic fluid from his eyes.
Jason McKay wondered the same thing himself. Shaking his muddled head clear, he sat upright and glanced at the readout on the g-sleep chamber’s bulkhead display panel. “We’ve been under for forty-six hours,” he said. “That means we’ve gone through at least two gates, maybe more.”
“Are we there yet, Daddy?” Vinnie muttered, levering himself out of the tank.
“Just a little farther,” McKay returned automatically, carefully stepping out himself and moving stiffly towards the showers.
“We’re still alive,” Esmeralda Villanueva observed as she stepped over to Vinnie, brushing her hand against his. “I wondered when we went into the tanks this time if we would be getting out again.”
“Ah yes,” Jock intoned as he headed into the showers, “I too wondered, as I entered the forbidding chamber of deathlike sleep, whether I would ever see your face once more, my dear Captain Mahoney. Sir.”
Vinnie scowled at Jock’s retreating back but Esmeralda’s full-throated laugh interrupted his comeback.
“He reminds me of my younger brother,” she said fondly, shaking her head.
“He reminds me of a dog we used to have,” Vinnie cocked an eyebrow, “who used to shit all over the floor.” He sighed. “I gotta’ get going, Esme… gotta’ meet with Lt. James still… we never did have time to track down where Mironov got that gun.”
“Then I will see you when the opportunity arises,” she said with a wistful smile, letting her leg brush against his as she passed by.
Vinnie felt an electric tingle run up his spine and he closed his eyes for a moment and took a breath before he moved on in to the men’s shower room.
It was less than a half an hour later that McKay stepped onto the bridge. Patel and the bridge crew were already there, of course, having been woken up first, and the viewscreen showed him a familiar picture of one of the systems they’d circumnavigated on their way to
“How long did it take us to lose them, Admiral?” McKay asked as he stepped up behind the command chair.
“I’m not a hundred percent certain we have yet, McKay,” Patel responded grimly. “But by the second jump, they’d slowed to five g’s acceleration and after the third, they seemed to have run out of antimatter. That doesn’t mean they still couldn’t be following on conventional engines. But there’s no trace of enemy activity in this system so far. We have a few hours’ transit time to the next gate.”
