Halo: The Cole Protocol - Page 19/30

"Commander, you better take a look at this," Keyes said, putting the contacts up on a forward screen. "They're adjusting their position based on our adjustments. I think we're not as stealthy as we think we are." Out of the corner of his eye Keyes saw Badia Campbell swallow a pair of pills with a pained look on her face. She looked stressed.

Zheng double checked the time-lapsed information, then nodded. "I think you're right, Lieutenant."

Campbell at ops disagreed. "We can damp our engines down further, alter our course and coast through. Lighting up full to jump out of here will just blow our cover. We won't be able to get back in this deep ever again."

Keyes disagreed, but didn't say anything. The bridge crew had been tight. He wasn't going to risk second-guessing anyone just yet, even if Campbell was being jittery. The decision was Zheng's anyway.

Zheng mulled it over for a second, then tapped the pad. "I don't like it. Keyes, light us up and let's blow clear. We'll observe from a distance. We can drop some drones and double-check the stealth there; maybe something is going wrong. It's still a new ship."

Keyes had a rough line plotted out already. He double-checked it, and checked the engines. Ready to come on fully hot.

They'd rip right through that school of slow Insurrectionist freighters to safety, Keyes thought, tapping the navigation console and getting ready.

But then something in the heart of

Midsummer Night exploded and the air in the cockpit rose in pressure, making Keyes's ears pop.

"Ops!" Zheng shouted, turning to his side. "Report!" Keyes fired the ship's main engines, looking to throw them clear while Zheng and Campbell figured out what had happened.

But the engines wouldn't fire.

Keyes turned to Campbell, about to ask for a report. But Campbell leapt clear of her station and pulled out her sidearm. "Campbell, what the hell?"

He hesitated for a second, not sure what was happening. So did everyone else.

Badia Campbell pulled the trigger. She shot Zheng twice in the side and stomach as he started to get out of his chair. The loud crack of the gunfire stunned everyone into moving.

Keyes jumped forward at her without thinking, as did Kirtley and Li.

Campbell turned and shot Li low, getting the weapons officer in the leg. As Campbell raised her gun, she shot Kirtley in the shoulder, spinning him around. Keyes smacked into her before she could pull the trigger again.

They rolled over the decking, Campbell twisting to get free and kneeing Keyes in the groin as he wrestled to grab her gun.

He finally pinned her against the bottom of her console, using all his strength to hold her down. "Why?" Keyes asked.

"You heard Zheng back on Charybdis," she said. "He said he would destroy them. I couldn't let that man in among the Rubble. He's too dangerous.

You know what he did with his own ship, lost his whole crew, just for the smallest chance to get his revenge. I can't let him do that to us."

She was amped up on something, preternatural strength exhausting an already recovering Keyes. Sweat beaded her entire face, and her pupils were

dilated. "We will win, Lieutenant Keyes," she hissed at him. "One day, we will be free."

Her vicelike grip on the gun twisted, and Keyes fought her. But the adrenaline and drugs in her system left her crazed. She twisted the gun up between them until the point of the barrel jammed up against her chin.

"Badia, please ..." Keyes hissed, his arms shaking from the effort of trying to pull the barrel away from her chin.

She pulled the trigger. The sound, this close to Keyes' face, was more than deafening, it washed through his skull and left it ringing. A red mist hung in the air underneath the console. Her jaw slackened, and her eyes glazed.

Keyes rocked back, holding her limp hand and the gun. He closed his eyes, unwilling to look at the mess of blood and brains spattered across the deck.

"Medic!" he screamed, trying to process what had just happened. But as he looked around, he realized the whole bridge crew had been shot by Campbell as she'd leapt forward. Campbell didn't need help. But they did. He turned around to see Zheng crawling up into the commander's chair,

holding his stomach with one bloody hand, spitting even more blood clear of his mouth.

Li had hobbled back to her weapons console, and Kirtley had cracked open a first-aid kit and rushed back to Zheng's side.

"Engineering!" Zheng croaked. "Update. What happened?" Kirtley sprayed biofoam on Zheng's wounds. That would sterilize the wound, and the hardened foam would act as a firm bandage, seeping into the wound and holding everything together. It would do until the medics got to the bridge for something more thorough.

There was a haze of swearing in the background, along with the clanking of crew running from place to place, as engineering crackled back in reply.

"We've been sabotaged. Lieutenant Campbell, or someone working with her, put explosives on the goddamned fusion core coolant system. It's a mess, sir."

"Can we fix it?" was all Keyes wanted to know.

"Sir, she knew her business. The fusion core is going critical. We can stop it from blowing us up to hell, but we're not going to get the engines back very quickly here."

Engineering got into spacesuits and opened the back of the ship. They started flushing everything out to the depths of space; the lack of air began extinguishing most of the fires and let them get to work on the damaged cooling system. But this was also'venting heat and radiation into space.

They were no longer stealthy in any sense of the word.

They were as good as dead in the water. Keyes reoriented the

Midsummer Night, realizing that they had only thrusters to work with.

"We have thrusters," Keyes reported, a bit relieved. He scanned his console for the largest asteroid. If he could get them to it and use it as a shield of some sort, he could buy them some time to fix the engines.

"And weapons," Li grunted.

Commander Zheng groaned as he shifted. "Comms, set condition red. Battlestations." Kirtley moved back to his console and tapped away, one-handed.

More blood had begun to stain his uniform.

Emergency lighting flickered on and the sirens yelped.

"Missile crews stand by. Get the MAC ready," Zheng ordered. He glanced over at Keyes. "Where are you headed, Lieutenant?"

Keyes explained his strategy quickly as they continued thrusting their way back into the rebel structure that Campbell had called the Rubble. He finished with, "We can just go right through the structure, buying time for us to get the engines fixed."

"Belay that," Commander Zheng snapped. "Steer away from the structure, get us out into the open."

"Sir, with all due respect, we can't outrun them. Lying about in the open like this ... we're too vulnerable," Keyes said.

"Don't repeat the obvious to me, Lieutenant," Commander Zheng said. "I've already had one of my core bridge crew shoot me. Now another is heading the ship deep into enemy territory. Please forgive my inability to trust your judgment right now. I don't want to hand the enemy my ship on a damned platter. Take us out and away. Now."

"Yes, sir," Keyes said. He didn't like it. Not a bit. But he saw Zheng's position. And he had his orders.

The

Midsummer Night ponderously turned about, into a net of freighters and small ships moving in toward it around the very edges of the Rubble.

Keyes flipped through the scans until he found the biggest Insurrectionist ship, and then wound the

Midsummer Night through the weave of docking tubes and asteroids out toward it.

Keyes wanted to move them close to one of the Insurrectionists' big ships. He wanted to get the rest of the smaller ships attacking the

Midsummer Night to stop for fear they might fire on their own ship by accident.

A slim chance. But Keyes would take it.

"Incoming!" Keyes shouted, as the world lit up.

"Countermeasures deployed," Li reported. The twinkling chaff Li had enveloped the ship in confused a handful of the missiles. The others penetrated the screen. The ship shuddered as they struck the hull.

A second wave of missiles streaked in, and Keyes had the ship thrusting as close to one of the smaller asteroids as he could, almost grazing it. Missiles struck the asteroid, throwing up dirt and dust.

"Good thinking," Li said.

Keyes looked over to Zheng, who had narrowed his eyes. "We're not stopping, Keyes. Full thrusters, get us clear."

The moment they cleared the asteroid the next wave of missiles struck. The ship shuddered and shook; damage reports started streaming in.

They were taking a hell of a beating.

And still Commander Zheng, now doubled over and clutching his stomach, had them limping their way out into the open.

This was suicide, Keyes thought. He wanted to speak up, say something. But he didn't. An order was an order, damn it, and Zheng was a good

commander.

A fast-moving blip ripped across the screen before Keyes could even call out.

The explosion slammed Keyes's face into his console. When he sat up, blood dripped all over the screen.

"That was a mass-driver slug," Keyes said, wiping the blood away with the edge of his palm. "Pretty much like a MAC; though in this case, they use it for mining operations."

"It hit near engineering," Zheng said.

"They fire it again, we're dead," Li said. "We're barely taking the hammering from their missiles."

Zheng closed his eyes, fighting some inner pain. "They're working with the Covenant. I have no choice but to enact the Cole Protocol. Keyes, destroy the navigation data, databases, logs, and anything related to them. You have the bridge. I need to get down to engineering."

Zheng painfully left his chair and shuffled out of the cockpit.

Keyes' accessed the Cole Protocol instructions. He found the virus needed to scavenge through the ship's systems as a second line of defense. This was it, he thought. Once he started this, they were stuck here, no matter what happened next. He'd probably never see Miranda again. Never see another Earthrise over Luna.

Another missile strike shook him out of those thoughts. They were dying here. He had a duty. Getting rid of the data might well protect Earth and the colonies.

Keyes triggered the program, swallowing his nervousness as he began shutting down the nav station.

Lieutenant Li was coordinating fire response, trying to keep the Insurrectionist forces busy and at arm's length. But judging by the more and more frequent explosions on the hull, it was a losing battle.

Kirtley caught Keyes's eye. "They're hailing us. They want to talk to the commander."

"He's on his way to Engineering."

Kirtley shook his head. "Engineering hasn't seen him yet."

Keyes frowned. "Where the hell is he?"

Li swore, and Kirtley looked frustrated. Keyes checked the progress on his virus. It was done. This ship would never get back to the Inner Colonies or Earth.

"They're saying they have more mass-driver shots aimed at us if we don't kill the thrusters," Kirtley said.

"Patch them through, then, I'll stall," Keyes said.

Just as he finished saying that three distinct explosions threw the whole ship sideways a few hundred feet. Bulkheads groaned. Metal screeched all up and down the ship. * "What was that?" Keyes asked.

"Nukes," Li said. "Our own Shivas."

Kirtley leaned forward. "Got Zheng now. I'm putting him through to the Insurrectionists."

Zheng's voice had dropped almost to a hoarse whisper now. "This is Commander Dmitri Zheng, of the UNSC Frigate

Midsummer Night.

I have just unleashed our Shivas. Remember, I could have dropped these into the heart of your structure, but chose not to. We have honor. I'm ordering my crew to stand down. I demand that you treat them fairly. That is all."

As he faded away, an engineer's voice came from comms. "Sir, someone needs to get down here. The medic says Zheng's bleeding out. He doesn't have long."

Keyes stood up. "I'm on my way."

The last time he'd rushed through the ship, he'd gotten somewhat lost. By now he knew his way down the corridors, leaping through bulkhead doors and swinging into the next section with accomplished ease, sliding down rails and leaping up stairs in other sections.

Engineering was a chaotic mess of steam, slagged metal, and activity. They'd repressurized the section, but the chief of engineering was at the center of a maelstrom of human activity.

Near the engineer's operations center a medic crouched next to Commander Zheng, who sat in a pool of his own blood.

The medic met Keyes's eyes and shook his head.

"He hand-loaded the Shivas himself and shot them off, wouldn't let anyone near him," the medic said.

"If you want something done, you got to do it yourself. You can't trust anyone," Zheng said from the floor. He held up a bloody hand. "Keyes ... come closer."

Keyes crouched next to him and the medic, and Zheng grabbed Keyes's hand slippery tight. "Didn't think I'd let any Insurrectionists get their hands on some nukes, did you?"

"No, sir," Keyes said.

"I want you to know, I didn't ram that Covenant ship for revenge, like they say," Zheng whispered.

"No one said that." Keyes glanced at the medic, who just waved his hand to indicate that he keep listening.

"Yes they do. I rammed that ship because we had no other choice. It would have killed many, many more. I had to look at the big picture. I had to step outside the box and do what I could with what I had."

"I understand, sir."

"Maybe, Keyes. Maybe. Just remember, don't trust any of these people, Keyes. Covenant, rebels, hell, keep an eye on your own crew. Look for the big picture. You take good care of my ship. Make sure they treat the crew well once they take them prisoner."

Commander Zheng squeezed Keyes's hand, and started to breathe heavily.

"Move aside," the medic said, as Zheng slumped over. "Defib!"

Keyes looked at his bloody hand that Zheng was gripping as the medic tried to revive the Commander.