* * * *
“Goodbye Madame President.” he dropped the receiver, turned to Tasha and sighed heavily. “What have we got?”
She righted the upturned desk and tossed a small backpack on it. “Found this in the emergency locker, medkit, emergency rations, spare pistol and half-a-dozen clips.”
He took the spare pistol checked it was loaded, holstered it and attached it to the left side of his belt, dividing the remaining clips between them before tossing the pack back to her. “Load up solider and get ready to move out.”
She nodded and slung the pack on her back.
He raised his right forearm towards his face and pushed his sleeve back to reveal a clunky, angular wristband communicator. “Viqaas, what’s your status?”
There was a brief pause and hiss of static before a crackly barely audible response came back. “Admiral is that you? What the hell is going on?”
“A few moments ago the President activated general order one and surrendered the planet. my mission is to get a special package off it. Now give me a status report.”
There was a brief pause before a response came back. “Most of the crew were on the hub, with their families, at a late night decommissioning party. They finished unloading the main gun magazines a few hours ago and the ships powered down with a skeleton crew ready to begin decommissioning.”
“Get as many people off the hub as you can and isolate the ship. Our defence systems have been compromised by a virus, assume all computers are infected and all AI’s hostile. Get the wormhole generator back on line and ready to jump, but no computers, leave them all off-line.”
“A blind jump? That’s suicide.”
“So is staying, your my XO, you have your orders, now carry them out or find someone who can, Faiz out.”
“Interesting antique you have their Admiral.” Tasha said examining his communicator.
“It’s an analogue, terrible sound quality, severely limited range, but hard to detect and even harder for a virus to infect. Sultan, the oldest ship in the fleet, is full of ‘antique’ tech that’s why they were decommissioning it.”
They moved towards the sliding double doors he’d used to enter the control room earlier. “Powers out, try the manual over-ride.” Tasha broke the safety glass, encircled by yellow and black chevrons, and pumped the red handle, nothing happened. Faiz smiled. “Guess we’re going to have to do this the old fashioned way grab a door and start pulling.”
They jammed their fingers into the seal between the doors, Faiz pulling from the left, Tasha from the right. As the doors parted the lifeless body of one of the marines, who’d been on guard duty outside, fell backwards into the room and there was a rapid burst of gunfire. Faiz gesture to Tasha to stop pulling and quickly dragged the young man’s body into the room he checked his neck for a pulse, before shaking his head. Silently and efficiently he stripped anything useful he could find from the corpse, rifle, ammo clips and grenades. He tossed a pulse grenade through the gap in the doorway into corridor beyond and, pushing the rifle into the opening, emptied a clip into ceiling where he guessed the turret was located. He placed the fallen marine’s helmet on the end of the rifle poked it out the door and waited a few seconds, before squeezing through the gap into the dimly lit corridor.
“Come on its clear.” he gestured to Tasha to follow him.
“Check him.” he nodded towards the body of the other guard lying face down in the corridor. “Take anything we can use.”
Tasha nodded taking the man’s rifle, ammo and grenades. She was about to pull his dog tags when he shook his head.
“This is no time for the niceties of war. We can worry about remembering the dead when we’ve secured the survival of the living.”
She released the unknown soldier’s tags and stood up.
“Is it true what they say about you Admiral? You turned down the president’s offer to run the admiralty, because you were tired of fighting and wanted to sue for peace?”
“Right now there are only two things you need to know about me, firstly that I’m a survivor and secondly I’m going to get you off this planet. Now here’s a question for you, when exactly where you planning on telling me you’re the president’s daughter?”