Graham Paul: The Final Battle

Reenergized, he got to his feet to make sure Polk and the crewman were dead. They were. Michael looked around the cargo bay, dismayed to see a row of body bags laid out on the deck up forward. Now I know where the rest of the crew gotten to , he thought; he felt sick. He counted the bags and then did it again to be sure. He’d been lucky. Judging by the number of body bags, the shuttle had lifted off from McNair with only two crew members: the command pilot and the man Michael had killed just after he and Polk had boarded.

That was the good news.

The bad news was that the command pilot was tucked away safely behind the armored door to the flight deck. He’d need a thermic lance and an hour to get at him, whereas all the pilot had to do was-

Heart racing with sudden panic, Michael bolted to his feet and launched himself at the nearest emergency equipment stowage. He ripped the door open with his good hand and pulled out an emergency oxygen pack. He clipped it onto his belt, slipped the mask over his face, and switched on the gas.

And just in time, he realized when he checked the air pressure in the cargo bay. You are one slimy little shit , he thought when he saw the readout. The pilot had been depressurizing the compartment, but so slowly that Michael would never have noticed. Another few minutes and he would have been breathing air with too little oxygen to maintain consciousness. A few minutes after that he would have been dead.

He patched his neuronics through to the flight deck. “Nice try, shithead,” he said when the command pilot’s face appeared. “Now do us both a favor and turn this thing around and take me back.”

“Are they dead?” the pilot asked.

“Yes, they’re both dead. And so will you be if you don’t abort.”

The pilot shook his head. “No, I don’t think so,” he said with a self-satisfied smirk. “You’re a spacer; you know perfectly well you can’t get to me up here, so sit back and enjoy the ride.”

That was not an option. Michael knew what the pilot would do: override the airlock controls to trap him in the cargo bay while he transferred to the courier ship via the flight deck’s emergency hatch, but not before he had ordered the shuttle AI to head dirtside under full power.

Which is not going to happen , Michael told himself.

He would have to force the shuttle to turn back. That meant some creative destruction, and he understood shuttles well enough to know what to do. Whether he and the pilot would survive the experiment was another matter, but he was out of options. There was no way he would allow himself to sit back and wait for the end. If he had to die, he would do so looking death right in the face.

Michael emptied his pack and refilled it with his supply of microgrenades. He made his way aft to the ladder that accessed the hydraulically powered locks that clamped the shuttle’s massive ramp closed. Pack around his neck, he climbed the ladder. It was an awkward, jerky process with a knife in his shoulder and a useless arm, but he made it finally. He locked his left leg around one rung to hold himself in position, removed the pack, and set to work.

Even one-handed, it was easy enough to arm the grenades and place them behind a junction box directly below the shuttle’s port reaction-mass feed line, an exotic alloy pipe 15 centimeters in diameter pressurized to 3,000 atmospheres.

Michael had just finished when the command pilot called him. The man did not look happy. “What the hell are you up to, Helfort?” he demanded.

“I’ve asked you to turn back,” Michael said, working his way down the ladder, “and you won’t, so now I’ll have to make you.”

“And how will you do that?” The pilot’s voice dripped skepticism.

“Never underestimate a desperate man,” Michael said, his voice calm even though his heart was racing. “I’ve put microgrenades under the port feed line. If you don’t turn back, I’ll set them off.”

The command pilot’s face went dirty gray. “You wouldn’t,” he said.

“Oh, but I will,” Michael said. “Unless you want me to trash your main engines and a whole lot of other stuff as well, I suggest you turn back right now.”

“You’re bluffing.” The pilot had recovered his composure and some of his color. “There’s no way you’d do it. You’d kill us both.”

Michael swore some under his breath. He’d been so sure the pilot would turn back. “I might kill us both,” he said, forcing himself to sound nonchalant, “but since I’m a dead man either way, what have I got to lose?”

“You are so full of shit, Helfort.” The pilot sounded confident.

“I’ll take that as no, shall I?” Michael asked. “Right, Captain Asswipe; watch and learn.” Michael picked up his rifle and made his way to the very front of the cargo bay, stopping just short of the passenger galley. He clipped his safety line to a ringbolt, then brought the rifle up and rested it on a seat back, an awkward business thanks to his damaged shoulder. “Last chance,” he called out.

“Fuck off!” the pilot snapped. “You won’t do it.”

“I think I will,” Michael said. He took careful aim and put a single round into the junction box packed with microgrenades.

For one heart-stopping moment, Michael thought the grenades had failed to fire. Then they did. The blast filled the cargo bay with a sheet of intense white light and a cloud of ionized gas and smoke, the shuttle bucking under his feet as the shock front ripped through the airframe. “That should do it,” he said, throwing himself behind the galley bulkhead.

Nothing happened. A few seconds later, a lot did and in a very short amount of time. A small explosion followed the first; then the shuttle shuddered as a massive blast ripped through the cargo bay.

There goes the reaction-mass feed line , Michael thought, cringing back while the cargo bay filled with pulverized driver mass, a malevolent black cloud that tore the cargo bay apart, the overpressure rupturing both of his eardrums in a blaze of agony even as flying debris ripped the flimsy gallery bulkhead apart and debris clawed at his body.

The shuttle lurched hard to one side into a slow tumbling roll as more explosions followed. Its overtaxed artgrav gave up the unequal fight. It shut down, and Commitment’s gravity took over. Thanks to the shuttle’s extreme nose-up attitude, the deck was now so steep that Michael could not stand up. His feet shot from under him. He dropped to the deck and into the shattered remnants of the galley. Around him, the whole shuttle shuddered, a hammering so violent that he thought complete structural failure had to be only seconds away.

Michael commed the command pilot. “Having fun now?” he asked through pain-gritted teeth, head spinning and nausea rising as his overloaded brain tried to work out which way was up, a problem thanks to his ruptured ears. He blinked the tears out of his eyes and wondered if he might not have overdone the microgrenades a touch. “I certainly am.”

“You’ve killed us all,” the man screeched. His face was white and beaded with sweat. Around him, the flight deck was raucous with the cacophonous racket of multiple alarms.

“That all depends on how good a pilot you are,” Michael replied. “Now, it’s only a guess, but I’d say you’ve lost the port main engine, the starboard main engine’s tripped out, and all of your primary and backup hydraulics have gone as well. Am I right?”

“You maniac,” the pilot snarled.

“I’ll take that as a yes, shall I? Michael said. “I hope you’ve been practicing your dead stick reentries, because that’s the only way you’ll get us down alive. Just thank your lucky stars I pulled the pin before we reached orbit.”