The Madman's Clock

CHAPTER 15

CHAPTER 15

Esaal spoke to his troops, who then cut my men loose. They got up off their knees, and brushed themselves off. Kyle's shoulder wasn't pretty. Raj's right arm was a mess, as well. They were both out of the fight. Esaal said as much.

As David started to help, I opened up his butt pack and took out a stim injector.

"Sergeant Forres and I will go," I told Esaal. "Let's keep this simple. Just you and your engineer."

Esaal nodded his agreement. "Very well, Captain Mallory." His red-black eyes blinked at me. "I anticipate that you will now request the return of your weapons. I will permit this, but be aware that if I detect even the slightest deception or threat from you, I will end our truce and kill you."

I pretended not to hear that. Instead, I jammed the stim injector into my leg, and braced for the rush as I counted down from five, out loud. When it came I breathed in sharply, my senses suddenly going into overdrive. Everything seemed clearer. The lights grew brighter. I could hear Esaal breathing in, a slight wheeze coming from the air as it passed through the small holes that made do for a nose. I could see the eyes of my men, pissed off, tired, but still in the game.

"Holy f**k," I muttered, doing my best to take in deep breaths and let them out slowly. "I hate using that shit."

"Will the medication be an issue?" Esaal asked.

I waved him off. "Let's go."

As David took back his rifle from one of the Edra, and another for me, I checked out Raj's arm. It was a bad hit, and his arm was broken. The anti-personnel rounds had only grazed him, but still, it had torn out the meat. If it had hit the bone directly, it would have severed the arm altogether. He was lucky.

"My medic will assist them," Esaal explained, "provided your men are capable of directing his efforts."

Kyle nodded. "I got it, Jack. Go, man, before she kills us all." He was sheet-white, and shaking from blood lose.

Esaal continued. "We must hurry, Captain Mallory. We have secured the lift you used to reach deck 2, but it will still take several minutes to reach it, and gain access to the core chamber."

I took my rifle from David. One of the Edra handed me fresh power packs for the rifle, taken from my men. I passed half of them to David, who had already been stripped of his gear.

"My man needs his equipment," I demanded, "We'll need it to get through the doors. Command codes might not be enough, if Captain Paetkau locks everything down."

One of the Edra pulled a small backpack from his back, and started sorting through it. All of David's gear was dumped in there. David started picking out what he needed, but we didn't have time for that.

"Just take the bag, David," I said impatiently. "Take the whole thing."

The Edra wasn't willing to give it up, hissing at David when he tried. Esaal ordered him to give it up. David closed up the bag and threw it on his back. It wasn't really designed for humans, who were much bulkier than Edra, but it held on well enough.

"We must go, Captain Mallory," Esaal said as he checked his weapon "This is Engineer Amra. In recognition of the circumstances, I permit you and your engineer to speak to him. May I also speak to directly your engineer if required, Captain?"

"Yeah," I nodded. "Sergeant Forres is his name," I said, pointing.

"Can we go now, please?" David muttered, agitated.

We headed out through the blown-out hatch, into the short passageway to the command deck. The walls, deck, and ceiling were in ruins from the firefight. The command deck was worse. The displays on the bulkheads were all shot out. Debris was everywhere. Sparks spewed out of a hole in a panel, where an Edra round had torn into a bundle of cables. Half the lights were blown out, though the Edra had set up portable lights.

The crew was lined up along the sides of the main corridor, on their knees, hands on their heads. Edra, five of them, stood guard. I saw at least six dead crewmen near the stairwell door, and also four Edra commandos. All were being moved aside by the Edra.

Esaal entered first, with the rest of us trailing behind. All eyes were on us. I could only imagine what the crew thought of David and I, walking with these invaders. A few scowled at us, and the word 'traitor' was written in the glares of more than one of the crew. The Edra seemed not to care. They were busy seeing to the dead, guarding the exhausted and frightened crew, and putting out the few small fires started by the fight.

"What's going on, marine?" someone demanded, a junior officer wearing a communication patch.

"I'm saving your asses, that's what," I replied, not even looking his way.

"The crew fought very well, Captain Mallory," Esaal said. "They provided impressive resistance, considering that they were outmatched."

I didn't respond. I wasn't interested in hearing how well the crew fought while his people slaughtered them. The Edra commander seemed prepared to set aside all that blood, but I wasn't. I might be cooperating with him to stop Captain Paetkau, but I wasn't about to look at this like a neutral observer. Despite being told up front by Admiral Bishop that the crew were not friendly, and would be working against our mission, these were still fellow humans.

"Captain Mallory," Esaal said quietly as we walked. "I am aware of our reputation among other species. It is well deserved, and just as I would not ask you to apologize for your conduct, I will not apologize for ours. However, be aware that our orders were to avoid unnecessary casualties. That is rarely the case. We are soldiers, and we are carrying out our orders."

We moved between the two lines of prisoners, and down the ruined stairwell. The perfectly shined rails lay in twisted wrecks on the stairs. The walls were black, and two more Edra lay dead at the bottom of the stairs, where the remnants of the doors lay in a heap. By the look of the blast, Raj had rolled in a couple of his nastier grenades. In the confined space of the stairwell, the attackers didn't have a chance. There were bits of Edra armor embedded in the walls, along with bone fragments.

We had to step over the Edra bodies, burned and lying in pools of light blue blood. There was more spattered on the walls, alongside scorch marks. Esaal and Amra seemed totally at ease with the sight of their own dead soldiers.

"Your two soldiers," Esaal commented, "are very impressive fighters, Captain Mallory. I am aware of your past operations, yet to be placed in a position opposing you was very different than observing your work neutrally. Despite your losses, there is no reason to think of this as a defeat."

"Excuse me?" I said, stopping and glaring at the Edra. "You want to say that again?"

"I said that despite your loses,"

"No!" I spat. "Before that. What do you mean 'different than observing us’?”

Esaal's head c****d to one side. He was about to speak, when I heard a cry of pain from down the passageway. I hurried toward it, with David at my side. The two Edra hurried to catch up. We turned left, down the passageway. Not far away was Senior Chief McGowan's barricade. I worried about what we would find.

At the barricade, there were five crew still alive, including the Chief. All were wounded, but not too badly. Two Edra guarded them. The Senior Chief was sitting against a wall, while another crewmen, under guard, tied a tourniquet around his left arm. There was a lot of blood. The dead, including Ensign Bretin, were lined up along the bulkhead.

"Captain Mallory?" McGowan looked at me, moving freely with two Edra following along. "What is this?"

"There's no time to explain, Senior Chief," I said. "This isn't what you think."

"Really?" he asked. "It looks a lot like you are working with the Edra."

I sighed. David stepped in.

"Your Captain is about to blow the ship up, Senior Chief," he said, his tone way sharper than usual. "She's suffering from temporal psychosis, and she just did her best to kill the bridge crew, so back off!"

"Captain Mallory, we have only seven minutes to reach the core," Esaal reminded me.

I nodded. "Yeah, I know." I turned to the angry Senior Chief. "I'll explain later, and then you can decide to hate me."

"Why wait?" the slurred yell came from down the passageway.

I looked up just in time to see the grenade flying through the air, toward us.

"Grenade!" David yelled.

I dove around the corner, and David with me. Esaal and the other Edra scattered in every direction. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw one of them dive over the ruined barricade, in the direction of the shouting.

The stun grenade exploded just as I was putting my hands over my ears. Without the CEVA suit, I felt the grenade's full blast. The mesh under-suit I was wearing offered no protection, and the shock wave hit me hard. I rolled away from the blast, my senses rattled and scrambled by the blinding light and deafening sound, despite closed eyes and covered ears.

"Traitors!" the voice yelled. "Saboteurs! I knew you were the infiltrators. I knew it! I've been hunting you for months! Now you're going to pay!"

"You have got to be kidding me," David muttered as he pulled me to my feet.

"Aisin," I grumbled. "We don't have time for this nutjob."

"Lousy timing," David agreed.

The Edra started firing, and at least three people fired back. I heard an Edra shriek and hiss in pain, likely the one who had dived over the barricade. Esaal and his soldiers kept up the fire, but their shots seemed random. I pushed up against the bulkhead, and tried to look back toward. I could see that Esaal and the others were shaken by the blast.

"Come on," I said.

We hurried down the side passageway, where we had come from on the way to the bridge. The way was clear, and we ran around the corner, and then the other one, until we could see the open lift at the far end. There was one Edra there, dead. We ran to the corner of the T intersection, and carefully peered around the corner.

"Four men," David noted. "Look at the one in the hazard suit. It's that rat, Ramirez."

"Perfect," I snarled. "At least we know what happened to them. Look at Aisin. He's shaking like a leaf."

"His trigger finger is still working," David said.

He was right. Lieutenant Aisin was blazing away, holding down the trigger and firing blindly as he screamed. The two security men with him were more careful, their shots disciplined and exact. Their uniforms were still white. Obviously, they were not from the same part of the ship as Aisin. Still, they followed his orders, despite his obvious mental state.

"How do we do this?" David asked. "I really don't want to kill them."

Before I could reply, there was a sudden, violent burst of shrieks from Esaal's position, and we had to duck behind cover to avoid the hail of anti-personnel rounds. Aisin and his men screamed, and footsteps began thumping the deck quickly, each step coming closer. Everyone was yelling.

"Get ready," I said, pressing up against the bulkhead closest to the retreating security men.

David hit the wall beside me, rifle ready. I waited for the men to approach. I could hear them breathing, ragged, scared. One of them was limping slightly, and stumbled as he ran. Each step rang in my ears. David was breathing calmly, measuring out each breath.

I couldn't do the same. The stim, making me so sensitive to everything around me, also kept my heart and head racing. I felt like I was on a treadmill running at full speed, with no way off. The stims really did what they were supposed to. They kept the body moving and the mind clear. Unfortunately, they also jacked up the user's senses. That made things difficult, because everything seemed to take too long, as if the world was moving too slowly.

The steps grew closer, and I took careful aim. I didn't want to kill these people, but I really had no choice. It was just as Admiral Bishop had explained. The crew was not on my side. Obviously, his understanding of the Saturnus and her crew's condition was far greater than he had led on. I felt used, manipulated. My men and I had been dumped into a situation we didn't understand, couldn't control, and had little apparent chance of beating. And now I was going to kill four fellow humans who were as f****d around by the situation as I was.

The first of the four came into view, a female guard whose eyes found us just a moment too late. David fired first, but the shot went wide. The burst struck her rifle, spinning her away from us. My shot, first a split second after David's, struck her in the side. She fell to the deck.

The other three appeared a second later. Ramirez, in the hazard suit, was unarmed. The moment he saw us, he panicked and stopped dead in his tracks. Aisin and the other guard tripped over him. All three tumbled to the deck. Aisin fired as he fell, but the shot went wide and struck the bulkhead a few meters past us. The other security man fell on top of him as he fired a second shot, and the man took the brunt of the blast. He lay still, pinning Aisin under him.

I stood up, hoping to salvage at least two of the four. Ramirez was just lying on the deck, tucked into a ball. He was shaking so badly it was as if he were convulsing. Aisin was worse. His limbs seemed to strike out, and his head shook constantly, a never-ending 'no'. His eyes were wild, not even really able to focus on us. His beard was long and shaggy. His mouth moved, but no words came out.

I approached cautiously, my rifle aimed and ready. David held back, ready to fire. Then I heard the very distinct sound of a grenade spring releasing.

"Go!" I yelled, turning and running in the opposite direction.

David was on my heels as we raced back down the passageway, away from Aisin and the others. I dove and hit the deck, hand over my head. There was a fiery blast, and the heat was overwhelming.

"Roll, roll!" David yelled.

He grabbed me and rolled me before I could react. His hands beat at the flames on my legs and arms, trying to put them out. The CEVA suits were fire resistant, but the wired, meshed suit worn underneath them wasn't. Thankfully, David put me out before the fire burned through the thin material. As he did, we heard the sound of metal groaning.

We both looked back toward the lift. Aisin and his four victims were gone, their bodies obliterated by the blast. The bulkheads were black, and the lift itself was burning. The lift seemed off kilter. The blast had obviously knocked it off its tracks. It leaned further and further to the left, the sound of metal bending and tearing loud. I heard cables snap one after the other.

Just as Esaal and Amra rushed into view, the lift gave out and fell from view with a shower of sparks, leaving a trail of smoke as it fell down the long shaft to the ship's keel eight decks below. We joined them, and we all looked down into the shaft. The lift had disappeared into its depths. A few moments later, we heard a crash.

"It would seem that the lift's drop did not destabilize the core," Amra spoke in halting English.

"How can you be sure?" David asked.

The Edra engineer blinked at David, and c****d its head. "When the core module is connected to a power supply, even a minor disruption can cause it to," he thought for a moment, looking for the word, "explode. The reaction is instant."

"Great," I muttered.

Esaal hissed and clicked at his engineer, pointing to me and then at the engineer's equipment. Amra responded, and opened up one of the cases.

"We will provide you with the appropriate equipment to traverse the shaft," the commander explained. "It is designed for Edra body proportions, but will be able to support your weight nonetheless."

"Wait, what?" I said, looking back and forth between the Edra,

"You call it rappelling," Amra explained.

He handed me a set of rigging, not much different from what I had used to go mountain climbing, back during my school days. There was a small spool of thin wire, which looked too thin to hold me. Amra assured me it would support several tons of weight. The rigging straps were thinner, and it was designed for the Edra, where the center of gravity was apparently closer to the waist. With David's help, I was able to get it on and fasten it. It wasn't ideal, but it would get the job done. David didn't need one, of course, since he had the tether on his CEVA suit.

Esaal inserted a long, thin piece of metal into the end of his rifle. It looked like a harpoon, and that's essentially what it was. He leaned into the shaft and fired it into the ceiling. As soon as it dug into the top of the shaft, small hooks popped out of the harpoon's sides. We all hooked on.

"I will go first," Esaal explained. "Captain Mallory, count to five after I jump, and then follow. Sergeant Forres, you will go five counts after your leader, and Amra will follow you. Do either of you have any questions?"

"Yeah," I said. "How do I stop this thing?"

"Yes, of course," Esaal said. He reached over and turned a small dial on the wire spool. "It is now set for the correct distance. It will stop itself."

"Oh, that's good to know," I said, wondering what would have happened if I hadn't spoken up.

Without another word, Esaal stepped into the shaft. I watched as, rifle at his shoulder, he plummeted down the shaft terrifyingly fast. I counted down, silently.

One. Two. Three. Four. Five. I jumped.

The shaft wasn't lit, and as soon as the light from the open door on deck 2 faded, I was in total darkness, falling. It felt like I was weightless, though I was falling rapidly. The only sound was the wire of my rigging spooling out, a quiet whine. My instincts were to reach out and grab the wire, but my training told me otherwise. Without the gloves from my CEVA suit, the wire would burn right through my hand, as if I had passed it through a band saw. I waited for the rigging to slow me down at the right moment, as Esaal set it to, hoping he hadn't miscalculated my descent.

A light appeared below me, and as I rapidly fell toward it I saw that it was Esaal, a small flashlight in hand. He had attached himself to the side of the shaft, two decks above what looked like the wreck of the lift. As he came into view, my rigging started to automatically slow my decent. By the time I reached Esaal, I was able to stop myself easily. I latched onto the shaft's side.

Esaal was looking over a door, which according to the markings opened onto deck 7. Once I realized where we were, it occurred to me that I was unprotected. The radiation here would kill me quickly, and I said as much.

"No," Esaal explained. "Since the temporal core has not been activated yet, and thus no accident has occurred, there is no radiation."

"Are you sure?" I asked.

"Yes, Captain Mallory, I am sure."

David arrived a moment later, and after that the engineer was with us, his cases suspended by their own rigging. David examined the locked door, and after a few moments digging through the maintenance panel, had it open.

We carefully spread out onto the deck, but it was empty. Everything seemed functional, but very quiet. David checked his map. We were just around the corner from the decontamination compartment we had seen earlier.

"I know where we are," I said.

"We are quite familiar with the ship's layout, Captain Mallory," Esaal said evenly.

We rounded the corner, and came to the decon chamber. The door opened, and we moved inside. Just as the door closed behind us, there was a sudden rumble, and the entire ship seemed to lurch under us.

A small scanner on Amra's belt started to beep, and he looked it over. He hissed and clicked at Esaal, and then passed him the scanner. After a few seconds of this, I cleared my throat.

"What's going on?" I asked.

Esaal handed the scanner back to Amra. "The engineer's device scans for temporal disturbances. It would appear that this ship's Captain was faster than we anticipated. She has initiated the temporal core. We are too late."