War Fleet: Resistance, стр. 34
“How about you, Rob? Any input?” he asked.
“I suggest we carry on our current course of action,” Rob said. “Escaping this ship before it explodes is the immediate priority.”
“Hard to argue with that.” A brief silence filled the room. Eventually, this was broken by some beeping from Cadinouche’s computer.
“The Okranti is hailing us, sir,” he announced.
Olsen nodded. “Put them on screen.”
Captain Kraic appeared on the viewscreen. Olsen shrank the Arstan’s face on the display and dragged it to the bottom right corner of the screen, so he could still see what was happening outside. Arstans, particularly male ones, had angular features. But the lines of Kraic’s face were especially jagged, and his eyes rose out of his snout like pyramids.
“I never thought of you as a thief,” Olsen said.
The Arstan raised his eyelids as if in mock surprise. “If you’re referring to the spatial detonator, it was never yours to begin with. A nice Tauian ambassador by the name of Oort advised me it was in the sector and told me to come and retrieve it. Oh yes, I wasn’t meant to tell you that. But given we’re both going to die today, what’s the point of keeping secrets between friends?”
Olsen felt rage surging in his chest. The Tauian, Oort. He’d been betraying them all along. But why would an advanced intergalactic race deliver the weapon into the hands of the warmongering Arstans?
“We will find a way to stop you, Kraic,” Olsen said.
This caused the Arstan to erupt in a hoarse laugh. “You really think you have a chance against me in this bruised and battered ship? You’re practically falling to pieces, and I don’t know what will destroy you first: lack of oxygen, or the supernova that will soon ensue.”
“So why not just annihilate us and have done with us?”
“Because I want to experience my last moments of life in peace. And if you do nothing to interfere, I will allow the brief time you have left to be calm. But if you try anything stupid, I warn you, Captain Olsen, I will make your dying moments so painful, you won’t be able to distinguish them from eternity.”
“Such empty threats,” Olsen said.
“That’s all I have to say. Go with honor. That’s the best you can do now.” The Arstan cut off the channel.
Olsen pinched his lip as a thought began to take hold. He turned to Novak. “He’s gloating. He wants me to see that he’s won.”
“A reasonable assumption,” Novak said.
“Which means he doesn’t know that the Tapper’s engines are critical. He doesn’t know that we’re about to blow up. He thinks we’re going to be around to watch his big triumph.”
Novak frowned, showing more emotion than he’d seen for a while. “I suppose not, sir. The engine damage is within the core, so it wouldn’t show up on their sensors.”
Olsen snapped his fingers. “He’s not going to expect it.”
“Expect what?” Novak asked.
Olsen ignored her question, and instead raised his wristwatch to his mouth. “Chang, can we fly that shuttle?”
“The engines are … operational.”
“Good enough.” Olsen turned to Redrock, who was stooped over Santiago’s computer screen. “Will you be fit to pilot it, Lieutenant Nathan?”
“Absolutely. I’m sure we can ram that warhead.”
“We’re not ramming any warhead.”
“Sir?”
“Do you think you could fly the Extractor to one of the Okranti modules?”
Redrock cocked his head. “You mean you want to—”
“Board the Okranti,” Olsen said. “Exactly.”
Redrock exchanged a glance with Kota that suggested he thought Olsen had lost his mind. “I mean in theory, sure. But they’d see us coming.”
“Eventually, yes,” Olsen said. “But I think it will be a real surprise. Kraic thinks the ship is battered, but not critical. He won’t expect us to abandon ship. He probably thinks we’re over here trying to get our weapons systems online.”
“Still,” Kota said insistently. “Sooner or later they’ll see us.”
“Yes,” agreed Olsen. “And when that happens, we’ll need a diversion. A big diversion.” He turned to Rob. “How long until the Tapper explodes?”
“Considering the degradation of the engine,” Rob said. “I estimate six minutes.”
Olsen’s turned back to Redrock, and this time he had a little twinkle in his eye. “One big diversion coming right up.”
39
The Extractor currently held six times its recommended capacity of ten people.
It wasn’t the weight that was the problem, since asteroid rock weighted a lot more than people, and they could pack the cargo bay full of it. But they didn’t have the equipment to harness them in. Nor could the mag-floor at the back generate the power required to keep them all down, which left the passengers almost floating in the back every time Redrock turned the ship, even slightly. And with the shuttle running on a single engine, he had to do quite a lot of maneuvering to keep it on course.
In all honesty, he wasn’t in tip-top shape to pilot the ship. His eyes were bleary and he felt a little dizzy, not quite recovered from his brief coma before. But there was no way he was leaving his shuttle in the hands of a much less experienced pilot, particularly when the Extractor was in such a volatile state. Cadinouche could operate it under normal conditions, yes, but there was a huge difference between piloting small crafts and massive starships.
For the same reason, Kota didn’t sit next to him. Instead, Lieutenant Santiago — someone who had worked as a navigator for over seven years — sat hunched over the tiny computer, trying to extract data out of the noise generated by the scratched and charred roof-mounted sensor dome.
Kota, Olsen, and Novak stood behind them.
“Any idea for a destination yet, Santiago?” Redrock asked. They’d already decided they needed to board one of the modules. The big question was: which one?
“Not yet,” Santiago said. “But it looks like the Okranti is finally moving in to intercept.”
Just after she said it, Redrock also saw the shield modules start to break off from the main body of the ship. Even