Sounded promising.

  Swinging the weight back as far as it would go, he brought it around in a wide arc, smashing it into the side of the container. The container bowed a little under the impact but that was all. He hadn’t left so much as a scratch.

  Undeterred, he repeated the process, scoring three significant hits on the side of the glass, the last one being so violent that the impact ripped the base out of his hands and sent it spinning off across the floor.

  “Please, stop,” The Librarian cautioned, pointing to a strobing light. “I’ve alerted the servitors and, besides, you’re just wasting your time.”

  “Yeah, perhaps you’re right,” Webster conceded before going around to the back of the container.

  Of the six tubes available to him, two of which he’d already determined the function of. That left four more, one of which had to contain Dalbiri’s oxygen supply.

  If he got this wrong and pulled out the wrong tube there was a good chance his friend might drown.

  Only, if the situations were reversed, he’d want Dalbiri to try everything in an attempt to secure his release. There was bound to be some level of risk involved.

  He could pull out the liquid hoses but then, what good would that do.

  No. Best to be decisive.

  Ignoring the hoses, he turned back to the container itself. Self-standing but substantial. The weight of liquid alone must be quite significant.

  Then he had an idea.

  He looked over at the Librarian. “Heay, you want to give a hand with this?”

  It was worth it for the look of sheer incomprehension which fogged the sub-mind’s face.

  Webster got his shoulder against the side of the container and shoved. The whole thing juddered as it shifted by a few millimetres before righting itself.

  The thing was enormously heavy, much heavier than he’d thought but he had managed to move it.

  He went over to the far wall and leant against it, bracing one foot behind him.

  He didn’t want to exhaust himself. He was going to have to make this next attempt count.

  He exploded away from the wall, almost tripping over himself in his eagerness to get this done. When he hit the glass he felt something pop in his shoulder but that didn’t stop him. As liquid slopped over the side of the tank, slopping against his back, he growled and pushed harder.

  For a second, he thought that he wasn’t going to make it. That the thing was just too damned heavy. And then something slipped off the top and smashed against the floor.

  Not much but he was having an effect and, after weeks of inaction, that spurred him on.

  But, just as he was getting somewhere, he felt his feet starting to slip. A couple of hoses had come loose and were spilling liquid all over the floor. A sharp chemical smell filled his nostrils. He’d have to back up and take another stab at it. Think again.

  And yet, when he opened his eyes he could clearly see Dalbiri’s hands. And they were spasming. Whatever he’d done, his friend was paying a heavy price.

  He had to get this over with.

  With the last of his strength, he dropped his arms down lower.

  And pushed.

  After all the effort, when the container finally tipped over it did so as if this was always how this was going to end up. An inevitability.

  As the gallons of liquid inside the tank shifted, momentum just took over. The container pitched to one side and then just kept right on moving.

  The container hit the ground still in one piece, gouting liquid out of the top and with it came Dalbiri. He was sluiced out across the floor traveling a good two metres before his head impacted with the far wall.

  The Librarian appeared directly in front of Webster holding up an admonishing finger, but Webster simply stepped right through him.

  By the time he reached Dalbiri, the big man had started breathing though he had to turn his head to avoid the water which swamped the floor.

  “You okay?” Webster said.

  “The bridge,” Dalbiri said. “You have to stop the Da’al.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  “Didn’t expect to see you back so soon.”

  Faulkner was examining the command chair which they’d somehow managed to return to its normal spot, though they’d had to raise it up onto metal blocks in order to do so. Which left Faulkner with a step he was going to have to negotiate just to get up there.

  The rest of the bridge, though a lot noisier than normal with all the repairs going on, was a hive of activity with everyone squeezed together on the right-hand side.

  Schwartz gazed up at the main operations screens trying to work out what was going on. Everything seemed topsy turvy. According to one screen, Thor had recently launched a couple of missiles and yet the Tactical team seemed completely unconcerned by this development. One or two of them were still discussing what had gone on earlier.

  It didn’t make sense. Why weren’t they all on high alert?

  And then she realised what had happened: Thor had launched two long range missiles.

  But they were currently heading in the direction of the Yakutian ship.

  “There was a change of plan, sir,” she said, watching Thor’s missiles pursue a very different vector to the one they followed earlier. “I put Lieutenant Khan in charge of sourcing ammunition for the rail gun.”

  “Is that right?” Faulkner was watching a new holographic schematic which had just popped up displaying the new attack. “And what did he have to say about that?”

  “He was fine with it. Excited even.”

  She quickly told him about what he was proposing.

  “Tungsten tetrahedrons” he said. “Got quite the ring to it. You think it’ll work?”

  “Like I said, he seems very excited about it.”

  “Good old ballistic weapons,” he said with a faint sigh. “They’ll never let you down.”

  Schwartz wished she could share his enthusiasm.

  “So, where does this leave us now?” she said.

  “On the offensive. I’ve spoken with Lieutenant McNeill. We’ve worked out a new intercept course.”

  Faulkner worked the panel on the command chair to take down the hologram they’d been watching but then couldn’t find what he was trying to replace it with.

  “If you’ll allow me,” she said. “This is Lieutenant McNeill’s plot, you say?”

  “That’s right.”

  She searched through McNeill’s files, pulling up the most recent one. Renheim sat port astern of Thor but as the animation ran, she described a wide parabola before finally bringing her in to approach the Da’al vessel amidships.

  “What do you think?” he said.

  Schwartz couldn’t believe what she was looking at. It was so simple, she imagined that if she’d proposed something like this at the Academy, that her instructors would have failed her for lack of imagination.

  “You’re not leaving us with much of a margin of error here, sir.”

  “I did discuss this with Captain Sunderam but his feeling was, that with the Serrayu giving us covering fire, Thor will be too distracted to fully commit to targeting us.”

  But Schwartz wasn’t convinced. A battle cruiser of that size should be able to deal with multiple threats coming in from multiple angles.

  She said, “We’re only going to have a limited amount of time to engage her before we’re heading out the other side.”

  “I know but closing to this kind of distance poses its own kind of risks, as we know to our cost. But, frankly, it’s all we’ve got.”

  She couldn’t believe that this was the best the two captains could come up with. Certainly, there was no chance that they’d be allowed to close with Thor to this extent. The whole thing was tantamount to suicide.

  And yet Faulkner had sanctioned it.

  “Because, to be completely honest with you,” he said. “If we fail to take the initiative here, we risk losing Thor altogether.”

  *

  It was too much to hope that Thor would ignore their approach and at a million kilometres distance, fresh missiles started spilling from her tubes.

  Schwartz launched a panoply of counter missiles in the desperate hope that they could take out the bulk of these incoming missiles before they had a chance to close the gap. But it was a risky gamble at best.

  In the end, it was their last SS-20 which did the bulk of the damage, setting it up to deliver its ECM blast at a pre-programmed distance rather than trusting to its on-board computer. Bizarrely, that seemed to work, taking out a good half of the enemy’s salvo in one long sustained burst of energy.

  Two of the incoming missiles lost their lock causing them veer into one another and explode. Schwartz gave a wry smile after watching that. But it didn’t last long, with five of their remaining missiles still on their approach.

  Khan’s engineers had worked hard to bring one of the old-fashioned laser turrets back on-line but all it could manage was thirty seconds of sustained fire before it shut down. Though it did manage to take out two of their missiles. The one surviving laser battery fared even less well, firing in sporadic bursts while resolutely failing to hit anything.

  Of the remaining three missiles, one failed to detonate, a second detonated at five kilometres out and one scored a direct hit.

  The ship bucked under this fresh assault which saw entire compartments destroyed, killing and injuring those unfortunate enough to be inside when it happened.

  But Schwartz couldn’t allow her to think about such things, her eyes locked on the target directly ahead of them. The time display told her that they had another four minutes before they entered attack range and could open up with their rail guns.

  But none of that would matter if Sunderam didn’t deliver on his promise to take down those shields.

  It was all up to him now.

  *

  It took Webster longer than he’d have liked to get to the bridge. Twice he’d been forced to backtrack when he’d seen security drones on the move. He wasn’t sure to what extent they were armed but they were formidable enough on their own and he didn’t want to give them the chance of apprehending him.

  He arrived at the main entrance to the bridge, soaked to the skin and badly out of breath but he had made it. Now all he had to do was hope that he could find some way of accessing their weapons systems.

  As soon as he was through the main door, he was aware of the Pilot standing over in the corner. He went over to confront him.

  “I need your help.”

  “And I’m sorry, I can’t help you.”

  “We have to act now if we’re to stop the Da’al from escaping.”

  “And, as I’m sure you’re aware, we are forbidden from acting until this current engagement is concluded.”

  “By which time it’ll be too late,” Webster didn’t want to waste any more time arguing.

  He went over to the main console and started trying to activate the screens, though with little success. He found that he could change the view of the Da’al ship by making gestures in the air. It was a little counter-intuitive at first but he slowly started getting the hang of it, realising that their optics were far superior to anything the Confederation had access to.

  “How do you access the weapons on this thing!” he shouted, as much at himself as at anyone.

  Suddenly, The Pilot appeared in front of him.

  “Our system doesn’t work like that. No one individual can operate alone, that’s how our society works. You’d need to have approval from the whole ship to even get started.”

  “Then show me how.”

  “You must understand what you’re committing to. As a human, the risks are particularly high. Either the ship will accept you or – it will not.”

  “Good! Just let me try!”

  The Pilot seemed put out by his failure to deter him and Webster began to wonder whether this wasn’t some ploy simply to delay him until the security droids got there.

  Finally, The Pilot seemed to give in. “I can show you how to access the system but it’s not that straightforward. If you want something from the ship, you can be sure it’ll want something else in return.”

  Webster let a long breath escape through his nostrils.

  “Alright. I’m good with that. Whatever the cost. Now, which button do I press?”

  “Oh no. There’s none of that fire-and-forget nonsense here. You have to make a proposal to the ship and the thousands of consciousnesses which govern it. Here, let me show you.”

  The Pilot came around the console in order to place his hands on Webster’s shoulders. Webster was surprised when a small electrical pulse registered along his arms and it quickly multiplied becoming an immersive force which quickly threatened to overwhelm him.

  But then it began to slow, the sense of panic starting to recede. Though even at this surface level he found that he was absorbing a low pulse of sensory input which his mind struggled to shape into a form that he could make sense of. It took what seemed like an awfully long time but was in reality no more than a few seconds before he realised that what he was dealing with here wasn’t just circuitry and supporting walls but a fully functioning bio-mechanical organism. The ship was truly alive.

  Small clusters of dormant cells started coming to life as they began to realise what was happening, surging outwards in an attempt to alert their neighbours. Webster experienced this as a warm glow spreading up through his body as if touched by the first rays of the sun.

  It was bringing a newly heightened sense throughout the entire fabric of the hull.

  It was as if they’d been waiting for this union, yearning for some taste of the outside world and he quickly became their conduit, giving shape to their concerns. Were they safe? Was the hull intact? Were they being attacked?

  And it was the last of these questions which seemed to enliven them the most and the one which Webster duly homed in on. He didn’t know how he did it, only that he could do it simply by focussing on the word.

  Attack. Attack. Attack.

  Repeating it over and over until it took on a life of its own.

  Then it was simply a matter of helping them focus their growing antagonism, guiding them past the Confederation ships in order to better pinpoint their enemy.

  They chittered away to themselves, their calculations reckoned in billionths of a second. Targeting the Da’al ship came so readily to them and before he’d realised it, they were starting to gather the ship’s full destructive arsenal.

  They seemed to sense the risk that Webster posed only as an afterthought. He was other, unknown to them and their first and overriding response was to try and disbar him from the ongoing process and yet there was disagreement also. He got the feeling that he was viewed as a useful ally by certain parts of the ships shared consciousness. He had, after all alerted them to this new danger when other minds had not. What did they have to fear from him?

  Others reached out to the sub-minds, hoping to find some reassurance there but nothing was forthcoming. The sub-minds had withdrawn into themselves leaving the minds at the ship’s core to settle on their own path. But just because they refused to respond to the ship’s demands did not mean that they could block their wishes.

  A huge multi angled debate finished almost as soon as it had begun ending the disquiet over Webster’s role, crushed by the cells’ overwhelming urge for retribution against the Da’al. The close proximity of their prey helping to push aside any reticence they might have felt.

  For vital seconds the sub-minds were forgotten and Webster became aware of various booster jets firing as the ship rotated itself so that it was in the absolute best position to vaporise the Da’al ship.

  But before the cells were able to commit, they needed to interrogate Webster and they did this by sending an army of nanites coursing through his circulatory system. In their headlong rush for information they analysed everything, from the acidity of his stomach to the speed of his muscles’ electrical responses. But the most telling discovery was within his head as they sorted through the conflicting cauldron of emotions circulating around his brain stem.

  Sensing this, Webster tried to answer them in their own chemical language but because he lacked the subtlety for such a nuanced interaction they quickly dismissed him, plunging instead straight into his temporal lobe, plundering his store of memories.

  Straight into Joanna Silva.

  She’d been manning the helm when the Da’al had opened fire.

  Webster had been trapped in one of the main corridors, focussed on how his team were going to get clear. Focussed on Tigris.

  They’d spoken briefly on the ship’s comms. He couldn’t even remember what he’d said. Too aware that their conversation might be overheard.

  In that moment he might have said anything to her.

  Told her that he loved her.

  How he wanted her to bear his children.

  Instead, he had said nothing.

  Too concerned with getting the job done to find time for what truly mattered.

  The pain and hurt of his loss was savored by the cells. They had a finely tuned palate as far as suffering was concerned and in that moment they recognised Webster as a kindred spirit. They’d seen enough but, in the simple act of withdrawing from his mind, they’d unwittingly released the backlog of emotions he’d been storing up. Conflicting emotions which he’d been able to put to one side as he concentrated on the simple act of surviving. So now all that rage and anger started to spill out.

  And there was nothing he could do to stop it.

  He couldn’t forgive himself for his own stupidity. Joanna been the one person in his whole life who he’d truly cared about and now she was dead.

  And there wasn’t a damned thing he could do about it.

  He was aware of the cool presence of the ship as it observed him, monitoring the swell of emotion as he fought to control it. Anger at himself, for the way he’d abandoned her aboard the Dardelion, and anger at the Da’al for the cruel way that they’d snatched her from him.