The Canopus Conundrum, page 21
“Pluslight engines are warming up, Captain,” Fulke said, leaning back and stretching. Kovis noticed that the man had inserted some kind of small metal device into his left ear. He leered at Glory, who leant away from him in obvious disgust.
“Good,” Windwist said. “It’s a pity we have to leave like this. I’d really hoped to slip away quietly with nobody any the wiser, as per our standing orders.”
“Admiral Nashira will come after you,” Kovis said, hitching his shoulders. The heavy wrist restraints were getting really uncomfortable, and his head was throbbing. If his safesuit was still feeding him painkillers, he didn’t think they were working.
“Why should she?” Windwist asked. “She’s got a whole fleet to play with. One ship is neither here nor there. Unless you think you’re so important she’ll come after you, Colonel? Somehow I don’t think she’d sacrifice all that power and influence for one man, do you?”
“I don’t ...” Kovis began.
“Captain,” Fulke interrupted, putting one finger to the device in his ear. “Comms say we’re being hailed.”
Windwist shrugged. “Don’t answer.”
“I ... think we’re not going to have a lot of choice,” Fulke said, and depressed some buttons.
“This is Flight Commander Zaran Atria.” The voice boomed out in the otherwise quiet bridge, and Kovis’s heart sang. He breathed a silent prayer of thanks to Komin. “Canopus, stand down your pluslight engines and prepare to be boarded. Any attempt to go to pluslight and you will be fired on.”
Kovis was impressed that, despite the content of his hail, Zaran still managed to sound bored.
Windwist swung round to look at the viewscreen. As he did so, two firebirds cruised past in what the colonel recognised as part of a standard encirclement formation. “They wouldn’t fire on us,” Windwist said. “The ship’s full of evacuees!”
“The flight commander is the best shot in the Union,” Kovis said flatly. “He’ll target your pluslight engines and take them out. I doubt there will be much collateral damage. I strongly recommend you do as he says.”
“How could they know what we were planning?” Windwist said, then turned to stare at the colonel. “What have you done?”
“Perhaps your technology isn’t as advanced as you think.” Kovis wished he could fold his arms, but with them fastened behind his back all he could do was shrug.
Windwist waved a dismissive hand. “Fulke, advise the crew to resist boarders.”
“What will that achieve?” Kovis asked, keeping his tone quiet and reasonable. He had a suspicion Arron Windwist was becoming desperate, and the last thing he wanted to do when the captain had a gun and Glory as a potential hostage was to rock the boat. Or the ship. He twisted his hands futilely within the confines of the handcuffs, but all that achieved was to drive the sharp edges of the metal into his flesh. He suspected, from the way his safesuit reacted, that he’d drawn blood.
Fulke hesitated. “Is there any point, Captain?” he asked. “They outnumber us.”
“How close are we to pluslight engagement?” Windwist demanded.
Fulke examined his instruments. “Almost ready.”
Kovis shook his head. “I really wouldn’t try it.”
Windwist ignored him. “Set decoy course,” he instructed his deputy. “We’ll turn for home once we’re well away from this sham of a fleet.” He put the gun down on the ledge beside him and leant over a piece of machinery Kovis didn’t recognise.
“Canopus to Alpha Kleone,” he said, then looked up at Kovis with a grin. “Yes, Colonel,” he said. “We’ve solved the long-distance communication issues.”
Before he could receive an answer, Fulke said, “Going to pluslight, Captain.”
Kovis braced himself, and was glad he had. The ship vibrated as if it was a gong that had been struck by a hammer. Several small items fell off the ledge around the room, and Fulke cursed. Windwist’s gun slid along the shelf but didn’t fall off. The view through the viewscreen remained unchanged.
Kovis smiled a little grimly. “I did warn you, Captain.” He glanced across at Glory to see how she was coping. To his surprise, she wasn’t looking at him or Windwist, but rather was glowering at Fulke. He wondered if the other colonel had done something in particular she disapproved of, or whether she was thinking of throwing herself at him as some kind of distraction. If the latter, he wished he could tell her to wait – Zaran’s team would get to them; there was no need for unnecessary heroics.
“Try again,” Windwist ordered.
Fulke manipulated his keyboard, frowning. “Nothing.” He glowered at Windwist. “You shouldn’t have waited this long, Captain. Like the Parker woman said, we should’ve broken free days ago. Hanging around like a jilted lover was stupid.”
“I don’t have to explain myself to you,” Windwist snarled. “You know what our orders are.” He glanced across at the gun, and Kovis braced himself. If the captain tried anything now, before Zaran got to them, he might have to act.
“Alkleone to Windwist. Have you made your departure from the Union fleet, Captain?” The disembodied voice echoed around the bridge, fading in and out but still perfectly comprehensible.
“You mean all this time we could’ve gone?” Fulke demanded.
Windwist stabbed at a button on the panel beside himself. “Windwist to Alpha Kleone. I regret to advise that this ship will not be returning.” He flicked off the switch and then looked across at Glory. “I’m sorry,” he said quietly. “I never meant you to come to any harm.”
“You nearly killed her when the gravity plate was switched off!” Kovis growled.
“I didn’t ...” Windwist frowned at Fulke. “You again?”
“What?” said Fulke, half standing. “Yes, I tried to get them out of our hair. So what? And what do you mean, we’re not returning home?”
“I can’t afford for this ship to fall into Union hands.” Windwist moved across to another panel, the one that had snagged the gun, and began to press buttons. “Overloading the engines should destroy all evidence ...”
“What? No! That’ll kill us all!” Fulke rose fully to his feet, grabbing Glory’s arm, half dragging her out of her seat. “Including your girlfriend! You maniac – no secret’s worth all our lives! I’m relieving you of command ...”
“I don’t think so.” Windwist took the couple of steps that brought him to where his weapon had fetched up.
“You can’t use that in here,” Kovis began.
Windwist looked down at the gun in his hand, and then raised it and fired.
The projectile struck Fulke in the chest and exploded a scant second later out of his back in a spray of blood and flesh. He fell backwards, dragging Glory with him. Unable to save herself, Glory fell hard against the leg of the desk. Kovis heard her gasp of pain and dived towards Windwist, determined to somehow stop the captain from destroying the Canopus and everybody aboard it.
He hit the captain squarely in the chest, and the other man lost hold of the gun, which bounced off the console and skittered away across the floor. Kovis tried to use his weight advantage to pin Windwist against the shelf, but the captain sidestepped and hit him firmly on the jaw.
This was not going to be an easy fight, Kovis thought, making a second attempt to ram the other man, without a great deal of success. Had he had the use of his hands, he was confident he could have finished the bout in seconds, but handicapped as he was by the heavy wrist restraints he realised it would take a miracle for him to defeat the other man.
Windwist swung again, and Kovis staggered back a little, blinking. His sight blurred, and he remembered his earlier head wound. Not only did he need a miracle, he thought dazedly, he needed one now.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
The hidden bridge on the Canopus was filled with old-fashioned button and switch technology. Glory gasped as Windwist thrust her into a seat at what seemed to be an operations desk. They had to at least try to escape, she realised, looking back and forth frantically. Windwist still had the gun, and Fulke sat down beside her, his attention on the controls. She focussed on that, trying to identify what he was doing. With her hands fastened behind her back she wasn’t sure how she might operate the controls even if she could identify what they did, but focussing on something helped distract her from the gravity of their situation. She twisted her hands in the wrist restraints, trying to pull out of them. It seemed useless. No matter how she squeezed her fingers together and tried to make her hands as thin as possible, she just couldn’t pull them through the jagged holes. The cold, uneven edges of the metal dug into her skin, and she wondered how much damage she was doing to herself. Not that it mattered. If she could get herself free, she was sure she’d think of some way out of their dilemma.
Windwist seemed to want to brag, and Kovis was apparently letting him. She was sure the colonel had been able to open the comms channel to Komin, and hoped the software engineer had heard what was said and had the gravitas to persuade someone to do something about it.
She was already angry; Windwist’s repeated allegations that she was no better than a baby factory made her incandescently irate. It didn’t help that Fulke, once he was seated next to her, kept leering at her, and she got the feeling that if Windwist hadn’t been watching him, his hands might have wandered off the desk in her direction. She tried to watch what he was doing, with the thought that identifying which controls applied to the pluslight might give her a chance of switching the drive off, should the opportunity arise, but she couldn’t figure out the logic of his actions. She wasn’t even sure he wasn’t touching extra ones to confuse her. The buttons were labelled, but the words were worn as if by much use, and she couldn’t make out the fragments that were left. Even if she could put them back into sublight, she thought gloomily, they would probably still be stranded light years from anywhere. Where was Komin?
Zaran Atria’s hail lifted her flagging spirits so rapidly that she almost started to hyperventilate. Looking at the viewscreen, she saw the firebirds pass the Canopus and realised they must have executed a very well-practised manoeuvre to surprise Windwist’s crew as completely as they appeared to have done. She managed to school the smile off her face, unwilling to let Windwist know how badly she’d been frightened, and how relieved she was about the apparently imminent rescue. She glanced across again at Fulke, remembering that he had been the one to put the restraints on them. She wondered whether Fulke had the key, and if so where on his person he might be keeping it – she’d had her back to him when he was putting the restraints. The colonel’s safesuit, like Windwist’s, had sealable pouches on the side seams of the hip area, and she thought that was the most likely place for him to keep a key.
The next few moments were a roller coaster of emotion. Windwist would go to pluslight anyway – no, Zaran would stop him. Windwist didn’t care; he tried to go to pluslight – and the Atria’s flight commander took out the ship’s pluslight engines. Everything seemed to go into slow motion, with Windwist apparently set on blowing the ship up, and Fulke objecting, hauling her half out of her chair as if to use as some kind of shield. Then Windwist fired the gun.
The noise was, like the previous occasion Windwist had used the weapon, deafening. Glory winced as her ears rang. She watched in horror as the projectile ploughed through Fulke, the gout of blood a brighter red than his safesuit. Then he was falling and dragging her with him. She fell badly, struggling to free her hands to save herself ...
And felt the shooting pain in her leg that was getting beyond a joke as, despite the support surrounding it, the fragile leg bone splintered. Her safesuit leg expanded and stiffened to cushion the damage, and the medical diagnostics in her safesuit went into action and started to pump painkillers into her system.
As everything in the room developed a double edge and phased in and out of focus, Glory found herself wishing sincerely that she’d found the time to ask Komin to optimise her safesuit’s software. The online medical kit was definitely overdoing the sedatives and underdoing the painkillers. Through waves of pain, she heard the thunk of flesh on flesh, and blinked away tears to see that Kovis was attempting to fight Windwist.
She could see that her colonel was struggling. With his hands restrained behind his back, no matter how muscular he might be, Kovis was taking a lot of damage from the obviously enraged Windwist. She had to help him, she thought as he staggered back against the desk and the captain followed, beating him about the head and chest with his fists. Kovis was shaking his head, stumbling, and she realised that despite his best efforts to use his muscular frame as a battering ram, it was unlikely he could gain the upper hand.
Which would leave Windwist free to enact his apocalyptic plan.
She looked around frantically for the gun, which she’d heard clatter across the floor, and immediately regretted it when everything swam in and out of focus. She blinked her vision back to normal and finally spotted the weapon on the far side of the room. She realised almost immediately that there was no way she could get to it.
Fulke, on the other hand, had fallen alongside her. She gulped back vomit as the metallic smell of his blood filled her nose. Looking down, she saw that there was a spreading pool of crimson between his body and her. She jerked back involuntarily, and somehow the convulsive movement allowed her to tear one hand free from the restraints.
She was never sure how she managed not to scream. The pain was excruciating. Waves of agony assaulted her, and her head spun. She pressed her lips together in an attempt to avoid drawing Windwist’s attention. She heard Kovis grunt as Windwist hit him again. He was beaten, she thought. There was no reason for the captain to go on beating up on him beyond what she thought guiltily was probably jealousy. She had to get the key and release Kovis so that he could fight back. She pushed herself back towards the fallen man, sweat dripping down her face and making her eyes sting.
Even had he not been bleeding out on the floor, she would have known Fulke was dead when she fetched up against him and he didn’t even twitch. Her freed hand was slick with blood, her fingers already swelling, and she knew it was useless. She wriggled closer to Fulke’s body, groping at his clothing with the hand still encased in the restraints. She closed her eyes, concentrating through the throbbing pain from her leg and her other hand, trying to open his pocket. Her restraints, hanging from one wrist, struck against the floor with a metallic clatter, but the noise wasn’t enough to draw Windwist’s attention. She groped through a number of objects, and was relieved when she felt the unmistakable shape of the crude key.
Windwist was still hitting Kovis, who was miraculously still on his feet and still trying to push the other man back against the wall. They swayed back and forth at the corner of her vision as she closed her fingers around the key and drew it out.
Her hand was trembling, and she was sweating so hard she was terrified the key would slip through her fingers. She looked across at the combatants just as Kovis stumbled back one final time and crumpled to the floor. He was still conscious, but his face was already swelling where Windwist had struck him repeatedly. He was going to have at least one black eye, if not two, she thought inconsequentially. Windwist turned back to the panel, twisting knobs and dials. Glory realised they might only have minutes left to stop him.
Kovis blinked dazedly at her, and she held up the key so that he could see it. There was no way she could reach him, she thought – he had to come to her.
“Failsafes overridden,” Windwist muttered to himself. “Now, what else was there? Oh, increase the seronium flow into the reactor.”
Kovis got to his knees, and Windwist obviously sensed his movement since he turned and kicked him firmly away from himself – and towards Glory. The prefect winced as Kovis fell badly, but he was closer and she caught hold of the edge of the desk and tugged herself forward, biting her lip to stop herself from crying out in agony as her broken leg dragged across the floor, clutching her injured hand to her chest. Kovis groaned and rolled over, presenting his wrist restraints to her.
It felt like an eternity passed; in reality, it was a matter of seconds before she could insert and turn the key, freeing Kovis’s hands. She caught the restraint before it could fall to the floor and alert Windwist. Kovis gave her a firm nod and dived for Windwist’s legs in an obvious attempt to knock him away from the control panel.
Glory took a deep breath. It would all be all right now, she thought, as her vision grew darker. Everything would be fine ...
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
If any deity was paying attention, they weren’t in the miracle business. With his hands restrained behind his back, Kovis knew he had no hope of beating Windwist, but he had to try. The way Windwist had apologised to Glory led the colonel to believe the captain really had the ability to destroy the Canopus, and wouldn’t hesitate to do so to protect his secret. As the fight progressed, he took blow after blow, hoping against hope that the other man would slip, or be distracted, or Zaran would somehow find them. None of those things happened; instead, his vision was blurring and every alarm in his safesuit had tripped, pouring a dangerous mix of drugs into his system in an attempt to deal with the damage he was taking. It was obvious that the other man could have finished the fight much sooner. He seemed to be enjoying beating the colonel up, and Kovis wondered whether he was finally paying the price for his one, wonderful, night with Glory.
Finally the floor came up to meet him, and he believed for a split second that it was all over and they were doomed – until he looked towards Glory and saw that, somehow, she had freed one of her hands and was holding up a key that must unlock the restraints.
He had no idea how she’d done it, but the fact that she had made him adore her even more. He saw how much pain it was costing her to move towards him and braced himself. He got half to his knees, knowing Windwist would see and knock him down again, and leant into the kick the captain directed at him, allowing the blow to knock him back, closer to his beloved. He rolled over so that she could reach the cuffs, and a moment later, his hands were free.
